effect in this case? Not absolutely unfavourable certainly; but yet far from being much help towards good. We bear our witness that we are engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence: this is very right; but do we more than this? Do we show that we are engaged in a matter that commands our interest also, as well as our respect? If not, our witness is not the witness of Christ’s church: it does not go to declare that God is in us of a truth.
Let us go on one step more. We meet together to pray: we are orderly, we are quiet, we are serious; but the countenance shows that we are something more than these. There is on it the expression, never to be mistaken, of real interest. Remember I am speaking of meetings for prayer, where the words are perfectly familiar to us, and where the interest therefore cannot be the mere interest of novelty. Say, then, that our countenances express interest: I do not mean strong and excited feeling; but interest, which may be very real yet very quiet also. We look as if we thought of what we were engaged in, of what we are ourselves, and of what God is to us. We are joined in one common feeling of thankfulness to him for mercies past, of wishing for his help and love for the time to come. Now, think what would be the effect of such a meeting. Would it not be, clearly, positively good! Would not every individual’s earnestness be confirmed by the manifest earnestness of others? Would not his own sense of God’s reality be rendered stronger, by seeing that others felt it just as he did? Then, here would be the church of God rendering her appointed witness: she would be giving her sure sign that God is not far from any one of us.
Now, then, observe what we may lose or gain by our different behaviour, whenever we meet together in prayer; what we lose, nay, what positive mischief we do, by any visible impatience or indifference; what we should gain by really joining in our hearts in the meaning of what was uttered. It is a solemn thing for the consciences of us all; but surely it must be true, that, whenever we are careless or indifferent in our public prayers, we are actually injuring our neighbours, and are, so far as in us lies, destroying the witness which the church of Christ should render to the truth of God her Saviour.
I do not know that there is anything more impressive than the sight of a congregation evidently in earnest in the service in which they are engaged. We then feel how different is our own lonely prayer from the united voice of many hearts; each cheering, strengthening, enkindling the other. We then consider one another to provoke unto love and good works. How different are the feelings with which we regard a number of persons met for any common purpose, and the same persons engaged together in serious prayer or praise! Then Christ seems to appear to us in each of them; we are all one in him. How little do all earthly unkindnesses, dislikes, prejudices, become in our eyes, when the real bond of our common faith is discerned clearly! There is indeed neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our brethren, once or twice in every day, with these Christian eyes, would it not also, by degrees, impress us at other times, and begin to form something of our habitual temper and regard towards them?
Thus much of our meetings for prayer. One word only on those in which we meet to read the Scriptures. Here I know, that difference of age, and our peculiar relations to each other, make us very apt to lose the religious character of our readings of the Scriptures, and to regard them merely as lessons. No doubt, the object here is instruction; it is not so much in itself a religious exercise, as a means to enable you to perform religious exercises with understanding and sincerity. Still there is a peculiar character attached even to lessons, when they are taken out of the Scriptures: and the duty of attention and interest in the work becomes even stronger than under other circumstances. But with those of a more advanced age, I think there is more than this; I think it must be our own fault, if, whilst engaged together in reading the Scriptures, which we only read because we are Christians, we do not feel that there also we are employed on a duty belonging to the Church of Christ.
Lastly, there is our joint communion in the bread, and in the cup, of the Lord’s Supper. Here there is seriousness; here there is always, I trust and believe, something of real interest; and, therefore, we never, I think, meet together at the Lord’s table, without feeling a true effect of Christ’s gifts to and in his Church; we are strengthened and brought nearer to one another, and to him. But this most precious pledge of Christ’s Church we too often forfeit for ourselves. That we have lost so much of the help which the Church was designed to give, is not our fault individually; but it is our fault that we neglect this means of strength, so great in bearing witness to Christ, and in kindling love towards one another. What can be said of us, if, with so many helps lost, we throw away that which still remains? if, of the great treasure which the Church yet keeps, we are wilfully ignorant? How much good might we do, both to ourselves and to each other, by joining in that communion! How surely should we be strengthened in all that is good, and have a help from each other, through his Spirit working in us all, to struggle against our evil!
LECTURE XXX.
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1 CORINTHIANS xi. 26.
_For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come_.
When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be derived from Christ’s Church, I spoke of them, as being, for the most part, three in number–our communion in prayer, our communion in reading the Scriptures, and our communion in the Lord’s Supper; and, after having spoken of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the third for our consideration to-day.
The words of the text are enough to show how closely this subject is connected with that event which we celebrate to-day[13]: “As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.” The communion, then, with one another in the Lord’s Supper is doing that which this day was also designed to do; it is showing forth, or declaring the Lord’s death; it is declaring, in the face of all the world, that we partake of the Lord’s Supper because we believe that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.
[Footnote 13: Good Friday.]
God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have made all spiritual blessing come to us immediately from himself. Without ascending any higher with the idea, it is plain that Christianity might have been made a thing wholly between each individual man and Christ; all our worship might have been the secret worship of our own hearts; and in eating the bread, and drinking the cup, to show forth the Lord’s death, each one of us might have done this singly, holding communion with Christ alone. I mean, that it is quite conceivable that we should have had Christianity, and a great number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact, is practically the case in some particular instances where individual Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other Christians,–as has been known sometimes in foreign and remote countries; and although, through various evil causes, it has become, in many respects, too much the case with us all; for our religion is with all of us, I am inclined to think, too much a matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still it is not the design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not only to be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but through their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were to be the Christian Church, helping one another in things pertaining to God, and making their mutual brotherhood to one another an essential part of what are called peculiarly their acts of religion. So that the Church of England seems to have well borne in mind this character of Christianity, namely, that it presents us not each, but all together, before God; and therefore it is ordered that even in very small parishes, where “there are not more than twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive the communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three at the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the priest.” Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under circumstances which seem to make religion particularly an individual matter between Christ and our own single selves; when the expected approach of death seems to separate, in the most marked manner, according to human judgment, him who is going hence from his brethren still in the world; even then it is ordered that two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along with the sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in times of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only upon special request of the diseased, the minister may alone communicate with them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this true Christian notion, that at the Lord’s Supper we are not to communicate with Christ alone, but with him in and together with our brethren; so that I was justified in regarding the Holy Communion as one of those helps and blessings which we still derive from the Christian Church–from Christ’s mystical body.
It is the natural process of all false and corrupt religions, on the contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ’s Church, and to lead away our thoughts from our brethren in matters of religion, and to fix them merely upon God as known to us through a priest. The great evil in this is, (if there is any one evil greater than another in a system so wholly made up of falsehood, and so leading to all wickedness; but, at any rate, one great evil of it is,) that whereas the greatest part of all our lives is engaged in our relations towards our brethren, that there lie most of our temptations to evil, as well as of our opportunities of good, if our brethren do not form an essential part of our religions views, it follows, and always has followed, that our behaviour and feelings towards them are guided by views and principles not religious; and that by this fatal separation of what God has joined together, our worship and religious services become superstitious, while our life and actions become worldly, in the bad sense of the term, low principled, and profane.
If this is not so clear when put into a general form, it will be plain enough when I show it in that particular example which we are concerned with here. Nowhere, I believe, is the temptation stronger to lose sight of one another in our religious exercises, and especially in our Communion. Our serious thoughts in turning to God, turn away almost instinctively from our companions about us. Practically, as far as the heart is concerned, we are a great deal too apt to go to the Lord’s table each alone. But consider how much we lose by this. We are necessarily in constant relations with one another; some of those relations are formal, others are trivial; we connect each other every day with a great many thoughts, I do not say of unkindness, but yet of that indifferent character which is no hindrance to any unkindness when the temptation to it happens to arise. This must always be the case in life; business, neighbourhood, pleasure,–the occasions of most of our intercourse with one another,–have in them nothing solemn or softening: they have in themselves but little tendency to lead us to the love of one another. Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so here; your intercourse with one another is much closer and more constant than what can exist in after life with any but the members of your own family; and yet the various relations which this intercourse has to do with, are even less serious and less softening than those of ordinary life in manhood. The kindliness of feeling which is awakened in after years between two men, by the remembrance of having been at school together, even without any particular acquaintance with each other, is a very different thing from the feeling of being at school with each other now. I do not wonder, then, that any one of you, when he resolves to come to the Holy Communion, should rather try to turn away his thoughts from his companions, and to think of himself alone as being concerned in what he is going to do. I do not wonder at it; but, then, neither do I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts of his companions must return, they receive little or no colour from his religious act so lately performed; that they are as indifferent as they were before, as little furnishing a security against neglect, or positive unkindness, or encouragement of others to evil. Depend upon it, unless your common life is made a part of your religion, your religion will never sanctify your common life.
Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect of going to the Holy Communion with a direct feeling that, in that Communion, we, though many, were all brought together in Christ Jesus. And first, I will speak of our thoughts of those who are partakers of the Communion with us, then of those who are not. When others are gone out, and we who are to communicate are left alone with each other, then, if we perceive that there are many of us, the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we are so many; that our party,–that only true and good party to which we may belong with all our hearts,–that our party,–that Christ’s party, seems so considerable. Then there comes the thought, that we are all met together freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to receive the pledges of Christ’s love to us, to pledge ourselves to him in return. If we are serious, those around us may be supposed to be serious too; if we wish to have help from God to lead a holier life, they surely wish the same; if the thought of past sin is humbling us, the same shame is working in our brethren’s bosoms; if we are secretly resolving, by God’s grace, to serve him in earnest, the hearts around us are, no doubt, resolving the same. There is the consciousness, (when and where else can we enjoy it?) that we are in sympathy with all present; that, coloured merely by the lesser distinctions of individual character, one and the same current of feeling is working within us all. And, if feeling this of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it heightened by the thought of what Christ has done for us all! We are all loving him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to serve him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are all brought to drink of the same Spirit. Then let us boldly carry our thoughts a little forward to that time, only a short hour hence, when we shall again be meeting one another, in very different relations; even in those common indifferent relations of ordinary life which are connected so little with Christ. Is it impossible to think, that, although we shall meet without these walls in very different circumstances, yet that we have seen each other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our neighbour? If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions made at Christ’s table, why should we think that others have forgotten them? We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist within us. May not our neighbour’s silence also conceal within his breast the same good purposes? At any rate, we may and ought to regard him as ranged on our side in the great struggle of life; and if outward circumstances do not so bring us together as to allow of our openly declaring our sympathy, yet we may presume that it still exists; and this consciousness may communicate to the ordinary relations of life that very softness which they need, in order to make them Christian.
Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to the Lord’s table. With some it is owing to their youth; with others to a mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less excusable reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude kindness and hope. But having once felt what it is to be only with those who are met really as Christians, our sense of what it is to want this feeling is proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to think that our neighbour does not look upon us as fellow Christians? is it something cold to feel that he regards us only in those common worldly relations which leave men in heart so far asunder? Then let us take heed that we do not ourselves feel so towards him. We have learnt to judge more truly, to feel more justly, of our relations to every one who bears Christ’s name: if we forget this, we have no excuse; for we have been at Christ’s table, and have been taught what Christians are to one another. And let our neighbour be ever so careless, yet we know that Christ cares for him; that his Spirit has not yet forsaken him, but is still striving with him. And if God vouchsafes so much to him, how can we look upon him as though he were no way connected with us? how can we be as careless of his welfare, as apt either to annoy him, or to lead him into evil, or to take no pains to rescue him from it, as if he were no more to us than the accidental inhabitant of the same place, who was going on his way as we may be on ours, neither having any concern with the other?
And, now, is it nothing to learn so to feel towards those around us; to have thus gained what will add kindness and interest to all our relations with others; and, in the case of many, will give an abiding sense of the truest sympathy, and consequently greater confidence and encouragement to ourselves? Be sure that this is not to profane the Lord’s Supper, but to use it according to Christ’s own ordinance. For though the thoughts of which I have been speaking, have, in one sense, man and not God for their object, yet as they do not begin in man but in Christ, and in his love to us all, so neither do they, properly speaking, rest in man as such, but convert him, as it were, into an image of Christ: so that their end, as well as their beginning, is with Him. I do earnestly desire that you would come to Christ’s table, in order to learn a Christian’s feelings towards one another. This is what you want every day; and the absence of which leads to more and worse faults than, perhaps, any other single cause. But, then, this Christian feeling towards one another, how is it to be gained but by a Christian feeling towards Christ? and where are we to learn brotherly love in all our common dealings, but from a grateful thought of that Divine love towards us all which is shown forth in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; inasmuch as, so often as we eat that bread and drink that cup, we do show the Lord’s death till He come.
LECTURE XXXI.
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LUKE i. 3, 4.
_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed_.
These words, from the preface to St. Luke’s Gospel, contain in them one or two points on which it may be of use to dwell; and not least so at the present time, when they are more frequently brought under our notice than was the case a few years ago. On a subject which we never, or very rarely hear mentioned, it may be difficult to excite attention; and, as a general rule, there is little use in making the attempt. But when names and notions are very frequently brought to our ears, and in a degree to our minds, then it becomes important that we should comprehend the matter to which they relate clearly and correctly; and a previous interest respecting it may be supposed to exist, which make further explanation acceptable.
St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in order an account of our Lord’s life and death, that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things in which he had been instructed; and this, as a general rule, might well describe one great use of the Scripture to each of us, as individual members of Christ’s Church–it enables us to know the certainty of the things in which we have been instructed. We do not, in the first instance, get our knowledge of Christ from the Scriptures,–we, each of us, I mean as individuals,–but from the teaching of our parents first; then of our instructors, and from books fitted for the instruction of children; whether it be the Catechism of the Church, or books written by private persons, of which we know that there are many. But as our minds open, and our opportunities of judging for ourselves increase, then the Scripture presents itself to acquaint us with the certainty of what we had heard already; to show us the original and perfect truth, of which we have received impressions before, but such as were not original nor perfect; to confirm and enforce all that was good and true in our early teaching; and if it should so happen that it contained any thing of grave error mixed with truth, then to enable us to discover and reject it.
It is apparent, then, that the Scripture, to do this, must have an authority distinct from, and higher than, that of our early teaching; but yet it is no less true that it comes to us individually recommended, in the first instance, by the authority of our early teaching, and received by us, not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who put it into our hands. What child can, by possibility, go into the evidence which makes it reasonable to believe the Bible, and to reject the authority of the Koran? Our children believe the Bible for our sakes; they look at it with respect, because we tell them that it ought to be respected; they read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they acquire a habit of veneration for it long before they could give any other reason for venerating it than their parents’ authority. And blessed be God that they do; for, as it has been well said, if we their parents do not endeavour to give our children habits of love and respect for what is good and true, Satan will give them habits of love for what is evil: for the child must receive impressions from without; and it is God’s wisdom that he should receive these impressions from his parents, who have the strongest interest in his welfare, and who have besides that instinctive parental love which, more surely, as well as more purely, than any possible sense of interest, makes them earnestly desire their child’s good.
But when our children are old enough to understand and to inquire, do we then content ourselves with saying that they must take our word for it; that the Bible is true because we tell them so? Where is the father who does not feel, first, that he himself is not fitted to be an infallible authority; and, secondly, that if he were, he should be thwarting the providence of God, who has willed not simply that we should believe with understanding. He gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit of inquiry in his son’s mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent with a belief in truth, but is a necessary step to that which alone in a man deserves the name of belief–a belief, namely, sanctioned by reason. With what pleasure does he point out to his son the grounds of his own faith! how gladly does he introduce him to the critical and historical evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he may complete the work which he had long since begun, and deliver over the faith which had been so long nursed under the shade of parental authority, to the care of his son’s own conscience and reason!
We see clearly that our individual faith, although grounded in the first instance on parental authority, yet rests afterwards on wholly different grounds; namely, on the direct evidence in confirmation of it which is presented to our own minds. But with regard to those who are called the Fathers of the Church, it is contended sometimes that we do receive the Scriptures, in the end, upon their authority: and it is argued, that if their authority is sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be sufficient for every thing else; that if, in short, we believe the Scriptures for their sake, then we ought also to believe other things which they may tell us, for their sake, even though they are not to be found in Scripture.
In the argument there is this great fault, that it misstates the question at the outset. The authority of the Fathers, as they are called, is never to any sound mind the only reason for believing in the Scriptures; I think it is by no means so much as the principle reason. It is one reason, amongst many; but not the strongest. And, in like manner, their authority in other points, if there were other and stronger reasons which confirmed it,–as in many cases there are,–is and ought to be respected. But, because we lay a certain stress upon it, it does not follow that we should do well to make it bear the whole weight of the building. Because we believe the Scriptures, partly on the authority of the Fathers, as they are called, but more for other reasons, does it follow that we should equally respect the authority of the Fathers when there are no other reasons in support of it, but many which make against it?
In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on which the mind can rest with far greater satisfaction than on any external testimonies, however valuable. On one point, which might seem most to require other evidence–the age, namely, and origin of the writings of the New Testament–it has been wonderfully ordered that the books, generally speaking, are their own witness. I mean that their peculiar language proves them to have been written by persons such as the apostles were, and such as the Christian writers immediately following them were not; persons, namely, whose original language and habits of thinking were those of Jews, and to whom the Greek in which they wrote was, in its language and associations, essentially foreign. I do not dwell on the many other points of internal evidence: it is sufficient to say that those who are most familar with such inquiries, and who best know how little any external testimony can avail in favour of a book where the internal evidence is against it, are most satisfied that the principal writings of the New Testament do contain abundantly in themselves, for competent judges, the evidence of their own genuineness and authenticity.
That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes along with this evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed of sincere thankfulness; because more minds, perhaps, are able to believe on external evidence than on internal. But of this testimony of the Christian writers it is essential to observe, that two very important points are such as do indeed affect this particular question much, but yet do not confer any value on the judgment of the witness in other matters. When a very early Christian writer quotes a passage from the New Testament, such as we find it now in our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can understand, that he had before him the same Bible which we have, and that though he lived so near to the beginning of the gospel, yet that some parts of the New Testament must have been written still nearer to it. This is an evidence to the age of the New Testament, valuable indeed to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no qualities which confer authority; it merely shows that the book which he read must have existed before he could quote it. A second point of evidence is, when a very early Christian writer quotes any part of the New Testament as being considered by those to whom he was writing as an authority. This, again, is a valuable piece of testimony; but neither does it imply any general wisdom or authority in the writer who gives it: its value is derived merely from the age at which he lived, and not from his personal character. And with regard to the general reception of the New Testament by the Christians of his time, which, in the case supposed, he states as a fact, no doubt that the general opinion of the early Christians, where, as in this case, we can be sure that it is reported correctly, is an authority, and a great authority, in favour of the Scriptures: combined, as it is, with the still stronger internal evidence of the books themselves, it is irresistible. But it were too much to argue that, therefore, it was alone sufficient, not only when destitute of other evidence, but if opposed to it; and especially if it should happen to be opposed to that very Scripture which we know they acknowledged to be above themselves, but which we do not know that they were enabled in all cases either rightly to interpret or faithfully to follow.
When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the Scriptures themselves upon tradition, so we should believe other things also, the answer is, that we do not believe the Scriptures either entirely or principally, upon what is called tradition; but for their own internal evidence; and that the opinions of the early Christians, like those of other men, may be very good in certain points, and to a certain degree, without being good in all points, and absolutely; that many a man’s judgment would justly weigh with us, in addition to other strong reasons in the case itself, when we should by no means follow it where we were clear that there were strong reasons against it. This, indeed, is so obvious, that it seems almost foolish to be at the trouble of stating it; but what is so absurd in common life, that the contrary to it is a mere truism, is, unfortunately, when applied to a subject with which we are not familiar, often considered as an unanswerable argument, if it happen to suit our disposition or our prejudices.
But, although the Scripture is to the Church, and to the individual, too, who is able to judge for himself, the only decisive authority in matters of faith, yet we must not forget that it comes to us as it did to Theophilus, to persuade us of the certainty of things in which we have been already instructed; not to instruct from the beginning, by itself alone, those to whom its subject is entirely strange: in other words, it is and ought to be the general rule, that the Church teaches, and the Scripture confirms that teaching: or, if it be in any part erroneous, reproves it. For some appear to think, that by calling the Scripture the sole authority in matters of faith, we mean to exclude the Church altogether; and to call upon every man,–nay, upon every child,–to make out his own religion for himself from the volume of the Scriptures. The explanation briefly given is this; that while the Scripture alone teaches the Church, the Church teaches individuals; and that the authority of her teaching, like that of all human teaching, whether of individuals or societies, varies justly according to circumstances; being received, as it ought to be, almost implicitly by some, as a parent’s is by a child, and by others listened to with respect, as that which is in the main agreeable to the truth, but still not considered to be, nor really claiming to be received as, infallible. But this part of the subject will require to be considered by itself on another occasion.
LECTURE XXXII.
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LUKE i. 3,4.
_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that than mightest know the certainty of those things in which thou hast been instructed_.
I said at the conclusion of my lecture, last Sunday, that when we of the Church of England assert that the Scripture is the sole authority in matters of faith, we by no means mean to exclude the office of the Church, nor to assert any thing so extravagant, as that it is the duty of every person to sit down with the volume of the Scriptures in his hand, and to make out from that alone, without listening to any human authority, what is the revelation made by God to man. But I know that many are led to adopt notions no less extravagant of the authority of the Church and of tradition,–even to the full extent maintained by the Church of Rome,–because they see no other refuge from what appears to them, and not unreasonably, so miserable and so extreme a folly; for an extreme and a most miserable folly doubtless it would be, in any one, to throw aside all human aid except his own; to disregard alike the wisdom of individuals, and the agreeing decisions of bodies of men; to act as if none but himself had ever loved truth, or had been able to discover it; and as if he himself did possess both the will and the power to do so.
This is so foolish, that I doubt whether any one ever held such notions, and, much more, whether be acted upon them. But is it more wise to run from one form of error into its opposite, which, generally speaking, is no less foolish and extravagant? What should we say of a man who could see no middle course between never asking for advice, and always blindly following it; between never accepting instruction upon any subject, and believing his instructors infallible? And this last comparison, with our particular situation here, will enable us, I think, by referring to our own daily experience, to understand the present question sufficiently. The whole system of education supposes, undoubtedly, that the teacher, in those matters which he teaches, should be an authority to the taught: a learner in any matter must rely on the books, and on the living instructors, out of which and from whom he is to learn. There are difficulties, certainly, in all learning; but we do not commonly see them increased by a disposition on the part of the learner to question and dispute every thing that is told him. There is a feeling rather of receiving what he is told implicitly; and, by so doing, he learns: but does it ever enter into his head that his teacher is infallible? or does any teacher of sane mind wish him to think so? And observe, now, what is the actual process: the mind of the learner is generally docile, trustful, respectful towards his teacher; aware, also, of his own comparative ignorance. It is certainly most right that it should be so. But this really teachable and humble learner finds a false spelling in one of his books; or hears his teacher, from oversight, say one word in his explanation instead of another: does he cease to be teachable and humble,–is it really a want of childlike faith, and an indulgence of the pride of reason, if he decides that the false spelling was an error of the press; that the word which his teacher used was a mistake? Yet errors, mistakes, of how trifling a kind soever, are inconsistent with infallibility; and the perceiving that they are errors is an exercise of our individual judgment upon our instructors. To hear some men talk, we should think that no boy could do so without losing all humility and all teachableness; without forthwith supposing that he was able to be his own instructor.
I have begun on purpose with an elementary case, in which a very young boy might perceive an error in his books, or in his instructors, without, in any degree, forfeiting his true humility. But we will now go somewhat farther: we will take a more advanced student, such as the oldest of those among you, who are still learners, and who know that they have much to learn, but who, having been learners for some time past, have also acquired some knowledge. In the books which they refer to, and from which they are constantly deriving assistance, do they never observe any errors in the printing? do they never find explanations given, which they perceive to be imperfect, nay, which they often feel to be actually wrong? And, passing from books to living instructors, should we blame a thoughtful, attentive, and well-informed pupil, because his mind did not at once acquiesce in our interpretation of some difficult passage; because he consulted other authorities on the subject, and was unsatisfied in his judgment; the reason of his hesitation being, that our interpretation appeared to him to give an unsatisfactory sense, or to be obtained by violating the rules of language? Is he proud, rebellious, puffed up, wanting in a teachable spirit, without faith, without humility, because he so ventures to judge for himself of what his teacher tells him? Does such a judging for himself interfere, in the slightest degree, with the relation between us and him? Does it make him really cease to respect us? or dispose him to believe that he is altogether beyond the reach of our instruction? Or are we so mad as to regard our authority as wholly set at nought, because it is not allowed to be infallible? Doubtless, it would be wholly set at nought, if we had presumed to be infallible. Then it would not be merely that, in some one particular point, our decision had been doubted, but that one point would involve our authority in all; because it would prove, that we had set up beforehand a false claim: and he who does so is either foolish, or a deceiver; there is apparent a flaw either in his understanding, or in his principles, which undoubtedly does repel respect.
Let me go on a step farther still. It has been my happiness to retain, in after years, my intercourse with many of those who were formerly my pupils; to know them when their minds have been matured, and their education, in the ordinary sense of the term, completed. Is not the relation between us altered then still more? Is it incompatible with true respect and regard, that they should now judge still more freely, in those very points, I mean, in which heretofore they had received my instructions all but implicitly? that on points of scholarship and criticism, they should entirely think for themselves? Or does this thinking for themselve mean, that they will begin to question all they had ever learnt? or sit down to forget purposely all their school instructions, and make out a new knowledge of the ancient languages for themselves? Who does not know, that they whose minds are most eager to discern truth, are the very persons who prize their early instruction most, and confess how much they are indebted to it; and that the exercise of their judgments loads them to go on freely in the same path in which they have walked so long, here and there it may be departing from it where they find a better line, but going on towards the same object, and generally in the same direction?
What has been the experience of my life,–the constantly observing the natural union between sense and modesty; the perfect compatibility of respect for instruction with freedom of judgment; the seeing how Nature herself teaches us to proportion the implicitness of our belief to our consciousness of ignorance: to rise gradually and gently from a state of passively leaning, as it were, on the arm of another, to resting more and more of our weight on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing alone, this has perpetually exemplified our relations, as individuals, to the Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and youth, under all circumstances; taught by her, in the great majority of instances, through our whole lives; never, in any case, becoming so independent of her as we do in riper years, of the individual instructor of our youth; she has an abiding claim on our respect, on our deference, on our regard: but if it should be, that her teaching contained any thing at variance with God’s word, we should perceive it more or less clearly, according to our degrees of knowledge; we should trust or mistrust our judgment, according to our degree of knowledge; but in the last resort, as we suppose that even a young boy might be sure that his book was in error, in the case of a manifest false print, so there may be things so certainly inconsistent with Scripture, that a common Christian may be able to judge of them, and to say that they are like false prints in his lesson, they are manifest errors, not to be followed, but avoided. So far he may be said to judge of his teacher; but not the less will he respect and listen to her authority in general, unless she has herself made the slightest error ruinous to her authority by claiming to be in all points, great or small, alike infallible.
Men crave a general rule for their guidance at all times, and under all circumstances; whereas life is a constant call upon us to consider how far one general rule, in the particular case before us, is modified by another, or where one rule should be applied, and where another. To separate humility from idolatry, conscience from presumption, is often an arduous task: to different persons there is a different besetting danger; so it is under different circumstances, and at different times. Every day does the seaman, on a voyage, take his observations, to know whereabouts he is; he compares his position with his charts; he considers the direction of the wind, and the set of the current, or tide; and from all these together, he judges on which side his danger lies, on what course he should steer, or how much sail he may venture to carry. This is an image of our own condition: we cannot have a general rule to tell us where we should follow others, and where we must differ from them; to say what is modesty, and what is indolence; what is a proper deference to others, and what is a trusting in man so far, that it becomes a want of trust in God. Only, we are sure that these are points which we must decide for ourselves; the human will must be free, so far as other men are concerned. If we say, that we will implicitly trust others, then there is our decision, which no one could have made for us, and which is our own choice as to the principle of our lives; for which choice, we each of us, and no one else in all the world, must answer at the judgment-seat of God. Only, in that word there is our comfort, that, for our conduct in so doubtful a voyage as that of life, amidst so many conflicting opinions, each courting our adherence to it,–amidst such a variety of circumstances without, and of feelings within, and on which, notwithstanding, our condition for all eternity must depend,–we shall be judged, not by erring man, not by our own fallible conscience, but by the all-wise, and all-righteous God. With him, after all, even in the very courts of his holy Church, we yet, in one sense, must each of us live alone. On his gracious aid, given to our own individual souls, and determining our own individual wills, depends the character of our life here and for ever. Trusting to him, praying to him, we shall then make use of all the means that his goodness has provided for us; we shall ask counsel of friends; we shall listen to teachers; we shall delight to be in the company of God’s people, of one mind, and of one voice, with the good and wise of every generation; we shall be afraid of leaning too much to our own understanding, knowing how it is encompassed with error; but knowing that other men are encompassed with error also, and that we, and not they, must answer for our choice before Christ’s judgment, we must, in the last resort, if our conscience and sense of truth cannot be persuaded that other men speak according to God’s will,–we must follow our own inward convictions, though all the world were to follow the contrary.
LECTURE XXXIII.
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JOHN ix. 29.
_We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is_.
The questions involved in the conversations recorded in this chapter, are of great practical importance. Not perhaps of immediate practical importance to all in this present congregation; but yet sure to be of importance to all hereafter, and of importance to many at this actual moment. Nay, they are of importance to those who, from their youth, might be thought to have little to do with them, either where the mind is already anxious and inquiring beyond its years, or where it happens to be exposed to strong party influences, or that its passions are likely to be engaged on a particular side, however little the understanding may be interested in the matter. In fact, in religious knowledge, as in other things, the omissions of youth are hard to make up in manhood; they who grow up with a very small knowledge of the Scriptures, and with no understanding of any of the questions connected with them, can with difficulty make up for this defect in after years; they become, according to the influences to which, they may happen to be subjected, either unbelieving or fanatical.
If we were to question the youngest boy about the language held in this chapter by the Pharisees, and by the man who had been born blind, we should, no doubt, be answered, that what the Pharisees said, was wrong; and what the man born blind said, was right. This would be the answer which it would be thought proper to give; because it would be perceived that the Pharisees’ language expressed unbelief in Christ; and that the man born blind was expressing gratitude and faith towards him. Nor, indeed, should we expect a young boy to go much farther than this; for such general impressions are, at his age, as much many times as can be looked for. But it is strange to observe how much this want of understanding outlasts the age of boyhood; how apt men are to judge according to names, and to see no farther: to say, that the language of the Pharisees was wrong, because they find it employed against Christ; but yet to use the very same language themselves, whilst they think that they are all the while speaking for Christ.
But in this conversation between the Pharisees and the blind man, there are, indeed, as I said, points involved of very great importance; it contains the question as to the degree of weight to be attached to miracles; and the question, no less grave, with what degree of tenacity we should reject what claims to be a new truth, because it seems to be at a variance with supposed old truths to which we have been long accustomed to cling with undoubting affection.
The question as to the weight of miracles is contained in the sixteenth verse. Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? That is to say, the first party rejected the miracles because they seemed to be wrought in favour of a supposed false doctrine; the other accepted the doctrine, because it seemed warranted to their belief by the miracles.
The second question is contained in the words of the text, “We know that God spake to Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.” We have been taught from our childhood, and have the belief associated with every good and pious thought in us, that God spake to Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life; but as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. His works may be wonderful, his words may be specious; but we never heard of him before, and we cannot tear up all the holiest feelings of our nature to receive a new doctrine. We will hold to the old way in which, we were taught by our fathers to walk, and in which they walked before us.
This last question is one which, as we well know, is continually presented to our minds. No one says, that the Pharisees were right, any more than those very Pharisees thought that their fathers were right who had killed the prophets. But as our Lord told them, that they were in truth the children in spirit of those who had killed the prophets; because, although they had been taught to condemn the outward form of their fathers’ action, they were repeating it themselves in its principles and spirit; so many of those who condemn the Pharisees are really their exact image, repeating now against the truths of their own days the very same arguments which the Pharisees used against the truths of theirs.
For the arguments of these Pharisees, both as regards miracles, and as regards the suspicion with which we should look on a doctrine opposed to the settled opinions of our lives, have in fact, in both cases, a great mixture of justice in them; and it is this very mixture which we may hope beguiled them; and also beguiles those, who in our own days repeat their language.
For most certain it is that the Scripture itself supposes the possibility of false miracles. The case is especially provided against in Deuteronomy. It there says, “If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them: thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” Observe how nearly this comes to the language of the Pharisees, “This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day.” “Here,” they might have said, “is the very case foreseen in the Scriptures: a prophet has wrought a sign and a wonder, which is at the same time a breach of God’s commandments. God has told us that such signs are not to be heeded, that he does but prove us with them to see whether we love him truly: knowing that where there is a love of him, the heart will heed no sign or wonder, how great soever, which would tempt it to think lightly of his commandments.” Shall we say that this is not a just interpretation of the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we say that this is the language of unbelief or of sin? or, rather, shall we not confess that it is in accordance with God’s word, and holy, and faithful, and true? And yet this most just language led those who used it to reject one of Christ’s greatest miracles, and to refuse the salvation of the Holy One of God. Can God’s truth be contrary to itself? or can truth and goodness lead so directly to error and to evil?
Now, then, where is the solution to be found? for some solution there must be, unless we will either condemn a most true principle, or defend a most false conclusion. The error lies in confounding God’s moral law with his law of ordinances; precisely the same error which led the Jews to stone Stephen. The law had undoubtedly commanded that he who blasphemed God should be stoned; the Jews called Stephen’s speaking against the holy place and against the law blasphemy against God, and they murdered God’s faithful servant and Christ’s blessed martyr. Even so the law had said, Let no miracle be so great as to tempt you to forsake God: the Jews considered the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to be a forsaking of God, and they said that Christ’s miracle was a work of Satan. There is no blasphemy into which we may not fall, no crime from which we shall be safe, if we do not separate in our minds most clearly such laws as relate to moral and eternal duties, and such as relate to outward or positive ordinances, even when commanded or instituted by God himself. It is most false to say that the fact of their being commanded sets them on a level with each other. So long as they are commanded to us, it is no doubt our duty to obey them equally: but the difference between them is this, that whereas the first are commanded to us and to our children for ever, and no possible evidence can be so great as to persuade us that God has repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable amount of external testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead to madness;–the human mind might, conceivably, be overwhelmed by the conflict, but should never and could never be tempted to renounce its very being, and lie against its Maker;) the others, that is, the commands to observe certain forms and ordinances, are in their nature essentially temporary and changeable: we have no right to assume that they will be continued, and therefore a miracle at any time might justly require us to forsake them; and not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the times may speak God’s will no less clearly than a miracle, and may absolutely make it our duty to lay aside those ordinances, which to us hitherto, and to our fathers before us, were indeed the commands of God.
Now let us take the other question,–which may indeed be called a question as to the allowableness of resting confidently in truth already gained, without consenting to examine the claims of something asserting itself to be a new truth, yet which seems to interfere with the old. Is nothing within us to be safe from possible doubt, or is everything? Or is it here, as in the former case, that there are truths so tried and so sacred that it were blasphemy to question them; while there are others, often closely intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, because they are not eternal; which may and ought to be examined when occasion requires; and which may be laid aside, or exchanged rather, for some higher truth, if it shall reasonably appear that their work is done, and that if we retain them longer they will change their character, and become no longer true but false. “David having served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, and was gathered unto his fathers, and saw corruption; but He whom God raised again saw no corruption.” This is the difference between positive ordinances and moral: the first serve their appointed number of generations by the will of God, and then are gathered to their fathers, and perish; the latter are by the right hand of God exalted, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
“We know,” said the Jews, “that God spake to Moses; but for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.” There was a time when their fathers had held almost the very same language to Moses: “they refused him, saying Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?” But now they knew that God had spoken to Moses, but were refusing Him who was sent unto them after Moses. God had spoken unto Moses, it was most true: he had spoken to him and given him commandments which were to last for ever; and which Christ, so far from undoing, was sent to confirm and to perfect; he had spoken to him other things, which were not to last for ever, but yet which were not to be cast away with dishonour; but having, in the fulness of time, done their work, were then, like David, to fall asleep. All that was required of the Jews, was not to reject as blasphemy a doctrine which should distinguish between these two sorts of truths: which in no way requires to believe that God had not spoken to Moses,–which, on the contrary, maintained that he had so spoken,–but only contended that he has also, in these last days, spoken unto us by his Son; and that his Son, bearing the full image of Divine authority, might well be believed if he spoke of some parts of Moses’s law as having now fulfilled their work, seeing that they were such parts only as, by their very nature, were not eternal: they had not been from the beginning, and therefore they would not live on to the end.
The practical conclusion is, that, whilst we hold fast, with an undoubting and unwavering faith, all truths which, by their very nature, are eternal, and to deny which is no other than to speak against the Holy Ghost, we should listen patiently to, and pass no harsh judgment on, those who question other truths not necessarily eternal, while they declare that they are, to the best of their consciences, seeking to obey God and Christ. When I say, that we should listen patiently, and not pass harsh judgments upon those who question such points, I say it without at all meaning that we should agree with them. It would be monstrous indeed, to suppose that old opinions are never combated wrongly; that old institutions are never pronounced to have lived out their appointed time, when, in fact, they are still in their full vigour. But the language of those who defend the doctrines and the ordinances of the Church may, and often does, partake of the sin of that of the Pharisees, even when those against whom they are contending, are not, like Christ, bringing in a new and higher truth, but an actual error. To point out that it is an error, to defend ourselves and the Church from it, is most right, and most highly our duty; but it is neither right, nor our duty, but the very sin of the Pharisees, to put it down merely by saying, “As for this fellow, we know not from whence he is;” to treat the whole question as an impiety, and to deny the virtues and the holiness of those who maintain it, because they are, as we call it, “speaking blasphemous things against the holy place and against the law.” The mischief of this to ourselves is infinite; nay, in its extreme, it leads to language which is fearfully resembling the very blasphemy against the Holy Ghost; for, when we say, as has been said, that where men’s lives are apparently good and holy, and their doctrines are against those of the Church, the holiness is an unreal holiness, and that we cannot see into their hearts, this is, in fact, denying the Holy Spirit’s most infallible sign–the fruits of righteousness; and being positive rather of the truth of the Church, than of the truth of God. There is nothing so certain as that goodness is from God; nothing so certain as that sin is not from God; nothing so certain as that sin is not from him. To deny, or doubt this, is to dispute the greatest assurance of truth that God has ever been pleased to give to us. It does not, by any means, follow, that all good men are free from error, nor that error is less error because good men hold it; but to make the error which is less certain, a reason for disputing the goodness which is more certain, is the spirit, not of God, nor of the Church of God, but of those false zealots who put an idol in God’s place; of such as rejected Christ and murdered Stephen.
LECTURE XXXIV.
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1 CORINTHIANS xiv, 20.
_Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men_.
It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they who fulfilled the latter part of this command, were sure also to fulfil the former; that they who were men in understanding, were, therefore, likely to be children in malice. But the converse holds good, with remarkable certainty, that they who are children in understanding, are proportionally apt to be men in malice: that is, in proportion as men neglect that which should be the guide of their lives, so are they left to the mastery of their passions; and as nature and outward circumstances do not allow these passions to remain as quiet and as little grown as they are in childhood,–for they are sure to ripen without any trouble of ours,–so men are left with nothing but the evils of both ages, the vices of the man, and the unripeness and ignorance of the child.
It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that any should ever have united in their minds the notions of innocence and ignorance as applied to any but literal children: nor is it less strange, that any should ever have been afraid of their understanding, and should have sought goodness through prejudice, and blindness, and folly. Compared with this, their conduct was infinitely reasonable who weakened and tormented their bodies in order to strengthen, as they thought, their spiritual nature. Such conduct was, by comparison, reasonable because there is a great deal of bodily weakness and discomfort, which really does not interfere with the strength and purity of our character in itself, although, by abridging our activity, it may lessen our means of usefulness. But what should we say of a man who directed his ill usage of his body to that part of our system which is most closely connected with the brain; who were purposely to impair his nervous system, and subject himself to those delusions and diseased views of things which are the well-known result of any disorder there? Yet this is precisely what they do who seek to mortify and lower their understanding. It is as impossible that they should become better men by such a process, as if they were literally to take medicines to affect their nerves or their brain, in the hope of becoming idiotic or delirious. It is, in fact, the worst kind of self-murder; for it is a presumptuous destroying of that which is our best life, because we dread to undergo those trials which God has appointed for the perfecting both of it and of us.
But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn to the Christian wisdom of the Apostle: “In malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.” Let us turn to what is recorded of our Lord in his early life, at that age when, as man, the cultivation of his understanding was his particular duty–that he was found in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions: not asking questions only, as one too impatient or too vain to wait for an answer, or to consider it when he had received it; not hearing only, as one careless and passive, who thinks that the words of wisdom can improve his mind by being indolently admitted through the ears, with no more effort than his body uses when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when it is laid down in running water; but both hearing and asking questions; docile and patient, yet active and intelligent; knowing that the wisdom was to be communicated from without, but that it belongs to the vigorous exercise of the power within, to apprehend it, and to convert it to nourishment.
Now, what is recorded of our Lord for our example, as to the manner in which he received instruction when delivered by word of mouth, this same thing should we do with that instruction, which, as is the ease with most of ours, we derive from reading. Put the Scriptures in the place of those living teachers whom Christ was so eager to hear; the words of Christ, and of his Spirit, instead of those far inferior guides from whom, notwithstanding, he, for our sakes, once submitted to learn; and what can be more exact than the application of the example? Let us be found in God’s true temple, in the communion of his faithful people,–his universal Church, sitting down as it were, surrounded by the voices of the oracles of God–prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ himself: let us be found with the record of these oracles in our hands, both reading them and asking them questions.
It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of anything is vagueness; and it is by this process of asking questions that vagueness is to be dispelled: for, in the first place, it removes one great vagueness, or indistinctness, which is very apt to beset the minds of many; namely, the not clearly seeing whether they understand a thing or no; and much more, the not seeing what it is that they do understand, and what it is which they do not. Take any one of our Lord’s parables, and read it even to a young child: there will be something of an impression conveyed, and some feelings awakened; but all will be indistinct; the child will not know whether he understands or no, but will soon gain the habit of supposing that he does, as that is at once the least troublesome, and the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this same vague impression is often received by uneducated persons from reading or bearing either the Scriptures or sermons; it is by no means the same as if they had read or heard something in an unknown language; but yet they can give no distinct account of what they have heard or read; they do not know how far they understand it, and how far they do not. Here, then, is the use of “asking questions,”–asking questions of ourselves or of our book, I mean, for I am supposing the case of our reading, when it can rarely happen that we have any living person at hand to give us an answer. Now, taking the earliest and simplest state of knowledge, it is plain that the first question to put to ourselves will be, “Do I understand the meaning of all the words and expressions in what I have been reading?” I know that this is taking things at their very beginning, but it is my wish to do so. Now, so plain and forcible is the English of our Bible, generally speaking, that the words difficult to be understood will probably not be many: yet some such do occur, owing, in some instances, to a change of the language; as in the words “let,” and “prevent,” which now signify, the one, “to allow, or suffer to be done,” and the other “to stop, or hinder,” but which signified, when our translation was made, the first, “to stop or hinder,” and the second, “to be beforehand with us;” as in the prayer, “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with thy most gracious favour;” the meaning is, “Let thy favour be with us beforehand, O Lord, in whatever we are going to do.” In other instances the words are difficult because they are used in a particular sense, such as we do not learn from our common language; of which kind are the words “elect,” “saints,” “justification,” “righteousness,” and many others. Now, if we ask ourselves “whether we understand these words or no,” our common sense, when thus questioned, will readily tell us, whether we do or not; although if we had not directly asked the question, it might never have thought about it. Of course, our common sense cannot tell us what the true meaning is; that is a matter of information, and our means of gaining information may be more or less; but still, a great step is gained, the mist is partly cleared away; we can say to ourselves, “Here is something which I do understand, and here is something which I do not; I must keep the two distinct, for the first I may use, the second I cannot; I will mark it down as a thing about which I may get explanation at another time; but at present it is a blank in the picture, it is the same as if it were not there.” This, then, is the first process of self-questioning, adapted, as I have already said, to those whose knowledge is most elementary.
Suppose, however, that we are got beyond difficulties of this sort–that the words and particular expressions of the Scriptures are mostly clear to us. Now, take again one of our Lord’s parables; say, for instance, that of the labourers in the vineyard: we read it, and find that he who went to work at the eleventh hour received as much as he who had been working all the day. This seems to say, that he who begins to serve God in his old age shall receive his crown of glory no less than he who has served him all his life. But now try the process of self-questioning: what do I think that Christ means me to learn from this? what is the lesson to me? what is it to make me feel, or think, or do? If it makes me think that I shall receive an equal crown of glory if I begin to serve God in my old age, and therefore if it leads me to live carelessly, this is clearly making Christ encourage wickedness; and such a thought is blasphemy. He cannot mean me to learn this from it: let me look at the parable again. Who is it who is reproved in those words which seem to contain its real object? It is one who complains of God for having rewarded others equally with himself. Now this I can see is not a good feeling: it is pride and jealousy. In order, then to learn what the parable means me to learn, let me put myself in the position of those reproved in it. If I complain that others are rewarded by God as much as I am, it is altogether a bad feeling, and one which I ought to check; for I have nothing to do with God’s dealings to others, let me think of what concerns myself. Here I have the lesson of the parable complete: and here I find it is useful for me. But if I take it for a different object, and suppose that it means to encourage waiting till the eleventh hour–waiting till we are old before we repent–we find that we make it only actually to be mischievous to us. And thus we gain a great piece of knowledge: namely, that the parables of our Lord are mostly designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to some one particular fault: and that if we take them generally, as if all in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of deriving mischief from them instead of good. It is true, that in this particular parable, the gross wickedness of such an interpretation as I have mentioned is guarded against even in the story itself; because those who worked only at the eleventh hour are expressly said to have stood idle so long only because no man had hired them; their delay, therefore, was no fault of their own. But even if this circumstance had been left out, it would have been just the same; because the general rule is, that we apply to a parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it to any thing else. Had this been well understood, no one would have ever found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the unjust steward.
This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to apply the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state of knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was intended to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a general truth for our neighbours. And the very desire to do this, makes us naturally look with care to the object of every passage–to see to whom it was addressed, and on what occasion; for this will often surely guide us to the point that we want. But in order to do this, we must strive to clothe the whole in our own common language; to get rid of those expressions which to us convey the meaning faintly; and to put it into such others as shall come most strongly home to us. This I have spoken of on other occasions; and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of not doing so, that I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I mean the putting such words as “persecution,” “the cares and riches of the world,” “the kingdom of God,” “confessing Christ,” “denying Christ,” and many others, into a language which to us has more lively reality, which makes us manifestly see that it is of us, and of our common life, and of our dangers, that the scripture is speaking, and not only of things in a remote time and country, and under circumstances quite unlike our own. Therefore I have a strong objection to the use of what is called peculiarly religious language, because I am sure that it hinders us from bringing the matter of that language thoroughly home to us; our minds do not entirely assimilate with, it; or if they fancy that they do, it is only by their becoming themselves affected, and losing their sense of the reality of things around them. For our language is fixed for us, and we cannot alter it; and into that common language in which we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would think and feel respecting it at once rightly, clearly, and vividly. Happy is he, who, by practising this early, has imbued his own natural language with the spirit of God’s wisdom and holiness; and who can see, and understand, and feel them the better, because they are so put into a form with which he is perfectly familiar.
More might be said, very much more, but here I will now pause. In this world, wherein heavenly things are, after all, hard to seize and fix upon, we have great need that no mists of imperfect understanding darken them, over and above those of the corrupt will. To see them clearly, to understand them distinctly and vividly, may, indeed, after all be vain: a thicker veil may yet remain behind, and we may see and understand, and yet perish. Only the clear sight of God in Christ can be no light blessing; and there may be a hope, that understanding and approving with all our minds his excellent wisdom, the light may warm us as well as assist our sight; that we may see, and not in our vague and empty sense, but in the force of the scriptural meaning of the word,–may see, and so believe.
LECTURE XXXV.
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MATTHEW xxvi. 45, 46.
_Sleep on now and take your rest; behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be. going; behold, he is at hand that doth betray me_.
I take these verses for my text, in the first place, because some have fancied a difficulty in them, and have even proposed to alter the translation, and read the first words as a question, “Do ye still sleep and take your rest?” and because they are really a very good illustration of our Lord’s manner of speaking, a manner which it is of the highest importance to us fully to understand. And, secondly, I take them as a text for the general lesson which they convey to us; their mixture of condemnation and mercy; their view, at once looking backwards and forwards, not losing sight of irreparable evils of a neglected past, nor yet making those evils worse by so dwelling upon them as to forget the still available future; not concealing from us the solemn truth, that what is done cannot be undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a vain despair that future which may yet be done to our soul’s health.
First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, as if our Lord had bade his disciples to do two contradictory things: telling them, first, to sleep on and take their rust, and then saying, “Rise, let us be going.” And because in St. Luke’s account, when our Lord comes to his disciples the last time, his words are given thus, “Why sleep ye? rise and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:” therefore, as I have said, his words in the text have been translated, “Are ye sleeping and resting for the remainder of the time?” Now, I should not take up your time with things of this sort, where I believe our common translation to be most certainly right, were it not for the sake of one or two general remarks, which I think may not be out of place. It is a general rule, that in passages not obscure, but appearing to contain some moral difficulty, if I may so speak; that is, something which seems inconsistent with our notions of God’s holiness, or wisdom, or justice; something, in short, of a stumbling-block, which we fear may occasion a triumph to unbelievers; it is a rule, I say, that in passages of this kind the difficulty is not to be met by departing from the common-received translation. And the reason of this is plain; that had not the commonly received translation in such cases been clearly the right one, it would never have come to be commonly received. Amongst the thousands of interpreters of Scripture, all, from the earliest time, anxious to remove grounds of cavil from the adversaries of their faith, a passage would never have been translated so as to afford such a ground, if the right translation of it could have been different. Such places are especially those in which the common translation needs not to be suspected: and it is merely leading us astray from the true explanation of the apparent difficulty, when we thus attempt to evade it by tampering with the translation. A notable instance of this was afforded some few years since in a new translation of some of the books of the Old Testament; in which it was pretended that most of those points which had been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original was something totally different; and, in order to show the necessity of his alterations, the writer entirely allowed the objections of unbelievers to the common reading; and said that no sufficient answer had been or could be made to them. This was an extreme case, and probably imposed only on a very few: but less instances of the same thing are common: St. Paul’s words about being baptized for the dead, have been twisted to all sorts of senses, from their natural and only possible meaning, because men could not bear to believe that the superstition of being baptized as proxies for another could have existed at a period which they were resolved to consider so pure: and so in the text, a force has been put upon the words which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change would be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our Lord’s peculiar manner of discourse, and one instance the less of the inimitable way in which his language, addressed directly to the circumstances before him, contains, at the same time, a general lesson, for the use of all his disciples in all ages.
Our Lord’s habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in a wide sense, to include all language which is not meant to be taken according to the letter. Observe his conversation with the Samaritan woman; it begins at once with parable, “If thou hadst known who it was that asked of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” And again, “Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in him a well of water, springing up unto life eternal.” This seems to have been, if I may venture to say so, the favourite language in which he preferred to speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then, according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three different manners. When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that the misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition glad to find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not listening to him and obeying him, then, instead of explaining his language, he made it more and more figurative; more likely to be misunderstood, or to offend those whom he knew to be disposed beforehand to misunderstand and to be offended. A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St. John; there he first calls himself the Bread of Life, and says, that whosoever should eat of that bread should live for ever: but when he found that the Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explaining it, he only added expressions yet more strongly parabolical; “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you:” and he dwells on this image so long, that we find that many of his disciples, bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this sense, finding it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more with him. Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but yet a profound ignorance of his meaning, arising from a state of mind wholly unused to think of spiritual good and evil, he neither used, as to those who wilfully misunderstood him, language that would offend them still more, nor yet did he offer a direct explanation; but he broke off the conversation, and adopted another method of instruction. Thus, when the Samaritan woman, thinking only of bodily wants, answered him by saying, “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw,” he neither goes on to speak to her in the same language, nor yet does he explain it; but at once addresses her in a different manner, saying, “Go, call thy husband, and come hither.” Thirdly, when he was speaking to his own disciples, to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, he generally explained his meaning,–at least so far as to prevent practical error,–when he found that they had not understood him. Thus, when he had said to them, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod,” and they thought only of leaven and of bread in the literal sense, he upbraids them, indeed, for their slowness, saying, “Are ye also yet without understanding?” but he goes on to tell them in express terms that he did not mean to speak to them of the leaven of bread. And the words of the text are an exactly similar instance: his first address is parabolical; that is, it is not meant to be taken to the letter; “Sleep on now, and take your rest,” meaning, “Ye can now do me no good by watching, for the time is past, and he who betrayed me is at hand; ye might as well sleep on now and take your rest, for I need not try you any longer.” But, as the time was really pressing, and there was a possibility that they might have misunderstood his words, and have really continued to sleep, he immediately added in different language, “Rise, let us be going; behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.” We must be prepared, then, to find that our Lord’s language, not only to the Jews at large, but even to his own disciples, is commonly parabolical; the worst interpretation which we can give to it is commonly the literal one. His conversation with his disciples, just before he went out to the garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in the thirteenth, and following chapters of St. John, is a most striking proof of this. If any one looks through them, he will find how many are the comparisons, and figurative manners of speaking, which abound in them, and how often his disciples were at a loss to understand his meaning, And he himself declares this, for, at the end of the sixteenth chapter, he says expressly, “These things I have spoken unto you in proverbs;”–that is, language not to be taken according to the letter;–“the time is coming when I will no more speak unto you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father.” And then, when he goes on to declare, what he never, it seems, had before told them in such express and literal language, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to my Father,” his disciples seem to have welcomed with joy this departure from his usual manner of speaking, and said immediately, “Lo! now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb: now we know that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou earnest forth from God.”
But let us observe what it is that he said: “A time is coming when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall show you plainly of the Father.” That time came immediately. He spoke to them after his resurrection, opening their understandings to understand the Scriptures: he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit, after the day of Pentecost, leading them into all truth. And what they thus heard in the ear, they proclaimed, according to his bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy Spirit brought to their remembrance all that he had said to them, and gave their minds a spiritual judgment, to compare what they thus had brought before them, to see his words in their true light and their true bearings, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they were no niggards of this heavenly treasure; nor did they, according to the vain heresy of the worst corrupters of Christ’s gospel, imitate and surpass that sin which they had so heavily judged in Ananias. They kept back no part-of that which they professed and were commanded to lay wholly and entirely at the feet of God’s church. They did not so lie to the Holy Ghost, as to erect a wicked system of priestcraft in the place of that holy gospel of which they were ministers. They had no reserve of a secret doctrine for themselves and a chosen few, keeping in their own hands the key of knowledge, and opening only half of the door; but as they had freely received, so they freely gave; all that they knew, they taught to all: and so, through their blessed teaching, we too can understand our Lord’s words as they were taught to understand them: and what is parabolical, is no longer on that account obscure, but full of light and of beauty, fulfilling the end for which it was chosen, the most effective of all ways of teaching, because the liveliest.
I have left myself but little space to touch upon the second part of the subject–the general lesson conveyed in our Lord’s-words to his disciples: “Sleep on now, and take your rest.–Rise; let us be going.” How truly do we deserve the reproof; how thankfully may we accept the call. We have forfeited many opportunities which we would in vain recover; we have been careless when we should have been watchful; and that for which we should have watched, is now lost by our neglect; and it is no good to watch for it any more. Let us remember this, while it is called to-day; for how often is it particularly applicable to us here, from the passing nature of your stay amongst us! To both you and us too often belongs our Lord’s remonstrance, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” So short a time as you stay here, could we not be watching with Christ that little period: from which, if well improved, there might spring forth a fruit so lasting? But, alas! we too often sleep it away: we do not all that we might do, nor do you; evil grows instead of good, till the time is past, and you leave us; and we may as well sleep on, and take our rest, so far as all that particular good was concerned–the improvement, namely, of your time at this place, for which we are alike set to watch. But are we to take the words of reproach literally? May we really sleep on, and take our rest? Oh vain and wilful folly, so to misunderstand! But, lest we should misunderstand, let us hear our Lord’s next words: “Rise; let us be going,” and that instantly: the time and opportunity already lost for ever is far more than enough.–“Rise; let us be going:” so Christ calls us; for he has still other work for us to do, for him, and with him. The future is yet our own, though the past be lost. We have sinned greatly and irreparably; but let us not do so yet again: other opportunities are afforded us; the disciples would not watch with him in the garden, but he calls them to go with him to his trial and his judgment; and one, we know, watched by him even on his cross:–so he calls to us; so he calls now; but he will not so call for ever. There will be a time when we might strike out the words, “Rise; let us be going;” they will concern us then no more. It is only said, “Sleep on now, and take your rest: all your watching time has been wasted, and you can now watch no more;” there remains only to sleep–to sleep that last sleep, from which we shall then never wake to God and happiness, but in which we shall be awake for ever to sin and to misery.
LECTURE XXXVI.
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2 CORINTHIANS v. 17, 18.
_Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new: and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ_.
I have, from time to time, spoken of that foolish misuse of the Scriptures, by which any one opening the volume of the Bible at random, and taking the first words which he finds, straightway applies them either to himself or to his neighbour; and then boasts that he has the word of God on his side, and that whosoever differs from him, is disputing and despising the word of God. The most extreme instances of this way of proceeding are so absurd, that they could not be noticed in this place becomingly; and these, of course, stand palpable to all, except to those who have allowed themselves to fall into them. But far short of these manifest follies, great errors have been maintained on general points, and great mistakes, whether of over presumption or of over fear, have been committed as to men’s particular state, by quoting Scripture unadvisedly; by taking hold of its words to the neglect or actual violation of its spirit and real meaning. This is a great and a very common mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the error; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to God and to ourselves, may find their answer in the Scriptures; it is true, that if we search for this answer wisely we may surely find it.
Consider the words of the text, and see how easily they may be perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as said of ourselves, each individually, and as containing to each of us a statement positive of truth. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” If we believe that this is God’s word respecting each of us, what violence must we do to our memory of the past, and our consciousness of the present, if we do try to persuade ourselves that so total a change has taken place in each of us, that what we once were, we are no longer; that what we are, we once were not; and this not in some few particular points, but in the main character of our minds. Again, “All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” If we apply these words to each of us, what exceeding presumption would they breed! If all things in us and about us are now of God, what room can there be for sin? If God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, what room can there be for fear or for danger? And thus, while we say we are quoting and believing the word of God, we do in fact turn it into a lie; we make it assert a falsehood as to our past state, and a falsehood as to our future state; we make it say, that our old nature is passed away, when it is not; that we have got a new nature when we have not; that we are reconciled to God, and therefore in safety, when we are, in fact, in the extremest danger.
But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to ourselves words written by St. Paul eighteen hundred years ago, and applied by him to other persons. I go, then, farther; and I say, that if every member of the church of Corinth, to which they were written, had applied them to himself in the manner which I have shown above, the words would in many instances have been perverted no less, and would have been made to state what was false, and not what was true. And the same may be said of many other passages of St. Paul’s Epistles, which, having been similarly misinterpreted, have furnished matter for endless controversies, and on which opposite theories of doctrine have been fondly raised, each of them alike unchristian and untrue.
Thus our present position is this:–that oftentimes by taking the representations of Scripture as true in fact, whether of ourselves or of others, we come to conclusions at once false and mischievous; being, as the case may be, either presumptuous, or fearful, or uncharitable, and claiming for each of these faults the sanction of the word of God.
A similar mistake in interpreting human compositions, has led to faults of another kind. Assuming as before, in interpreting St. Paul’s words, that the language of our Liturgy is meant to describe, as a matter of fact, the actual feelings and condition of those who use it, or for whom it is used; and seeing manifestly that these feelings and condition do not agree with the words; we do not here, as with the Scripture, do violence to our common sense and conscience, by insisting upon it that we agree with the words, but we find fault with the words as being at variance with the matter of fact. Some say that the language of the General Confession is too strong a statement of sin; that the language of the Communion Service, of the Baptismal Service, and above all, of the Burial Service, is too full of encouragement and of assurance; that men are not all so bad as to require the one, ‘nor so good as to deserve the other; that in both cases it should be lowered, to agree with the actual condition of those who use it.
Now it is worthy of notice, at any rate, that the self-same rule of interpretation applied to the Scripture and the Liturgy is found to suit with neither. We adhere positively to our rule: and thus, as we hold the words of Scripture sacred, we force common sense and conscience to make the facts agree with them; but not having the same respect for the words of the Liturgy, we complain of them as faulty and requiring alteration, because they do not agree with the facts.
I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy has done wisely or not in thus imitating the Scripture; but I do contend that, in point of fact, there is this resemblance between them. St. Paul’s Epistles, in particular, although it is true of other parts of the Scripture also, contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church, a great many passages which, if taken either universally or even generally as containing a matter of fact, will lead us into certain error. Is it, therefore, so very certain that we do wisely in so interpreting them?
With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question now; but with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many parts of his Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be as that which actually was: he chooses to regard those to whom he is writing as being in all respects true Christians, as being worthy of their privileges, as answering to what God had done to them, as forming a church really inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and therefore being a true and living body of due proportions to Christ its Divine head. Nor does he trust exclusively to the common sense and conscience of those to whom he was writing to interpret his language correctly. He might Lave thought indeed that if he wrote to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as having all things new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of God, and the temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he was none of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that he was sin’s slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet call St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between St. Paul’s description of him and the reality, the exact measure of his own sin, and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he does not rely on this only: he notices sins as actually existing; he mingles the language of reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it quite clear that he did not mean his descriptions of their holiness and blessedness to apply to them all necessarily; he knew full well that they did not: but yet he knew also that, considering what God had done for them, it was monstrous that they should not be truly applicable.
But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he call men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?–he uses all these terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he was writing;–why did he call them so, when in fact they were not so? He called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy foretell blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church afterwards, which were fulfilled on neither:–in order to declare, and keep ever before us, what God has done and is willing to do for us: what he fain would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what divine powers are offered to us, and we will not use them; what divine happiness is designed for us, and we will not enter into it. Let us ponder all the magnificence of the scriptural language,–the words of the text for example, not as describing what we are when we are full of sin; nor yet as mere exaggerated language, which must be brought down to the level of our present reality. Let us consider it as containing the words of truth and soberness; not one jot or one tittle needs to be abated; it must not be lowered to us, but we rather raised to it. It is a truth, it is the word of God, it is the seal of our assurance: it is that which good men of old would have welcomed with the deepest joy; which, to good men now is a source of comfort unspeakable. For it tells us that God has done for us, is doing, will do, all that we need; it tells us that the price of our redemption has been paid, the kingdom of heaven has been set open, the power to walk as God’s children has been given: that so far as God is concerned we are redeemed, we are saved, we are sanctified; it is but our own fault merely that we are not all of these actually and surely.
This is not a little matter to be persuaded of; if it be true, as I fear it is, that too many of us do not love God, is it not quite as true that we cannot believe that God loves us? Have we any thing like a distinct sense of the words of St. John, “We love God because he first loved us?” We believe in the love of our earthly friends; those who have so lately left their homes have no manner of doubt that their parents are interested in their welfare, though absent; that they will often think of them; and that, as far as it is possible at a distance from them, they are watching over their good, and anxious to promote it. The very name home implies all this; it implies that it is a place where those live who love us; and I do not question that the consciousness of possessing this love does, amidst all your faults and forgetfulnesses, rise not unfrequently within your minds, and restrain you from making yourselves altogether unworthy of it. Now, I say, that the words of the text, and hundreds of similar passages, are our assurance, if we would but believe them, that we have another home and another parent, by whom we are loved constantly and earnestly, who has done far more for us than our earthly parents can do. I grant that it is hard to believe this really; so infinite is the distance between God and us, that we cannot fancy that he cares for us; he may make laws for a world, or for a system, but what can he think or feel for us? It is, indeed, a thought absolutely overpowering to the mind; it may well seem incredible to us, judging either from our own littleness or our own forgetfulness; so hard as we find it to think enough of those to whom we are most nearly bound, how can the Most High. God think of us? But if there be any one particle of truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that God does love us; strange as it may seem, He, whom neither word nor thought of created being can compass; He, who made us and ten thousand worlds, loves each one of us individually; “the very hairs of our heads are all numbered.” He so loved us, that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for us; and St. Paul well asks, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, will he not also with him freely give us all things?”
Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe through, the temptations of the coming half year, than this most true persuasion that God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of us may alike repeat to himself the blessed words, “God loves me;” “God loves me; God has redeemed me: God would dwell in my heart, that I might dwell in him: God has placed me in his church, has made me a member of Christ his own Son, has made me an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” I might multiply words, but that one little sentence is, perhaps, more than all, “God loves me.” Oh that you would believe him when he assures you of it, for then surely you would not fail to love him. But whether you believe it or not, still it is so: God loves every one of us; he loves each one of us as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each, of us; let us not cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return; he does love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of us,–there will be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves us, when he will love us no more for ever.
LECTURE XXXVII.
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EZEKIEL xx. 49.
_Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not speak parables_?
Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true, than the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of the Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will ever continue to understand them differently. It is not, we are told, with the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward nature: in the knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to time made which set error on the one side, and truth on the other, absolutely beyond dispute; there the ground when gained is clearly seen to be so; and as fresh sources of knowledge are continually opening to us, it is not beyond hope that we may in time arrive infinitely near to the enjoyment of truth,–truth certain in itself, and acknowledged by all unanimously. But with Scripture, it is said, the case is far otherwise; discoveries are not to be expected here, nor does a later generation derive from, its additional experience any greater insight into the things of God than was enjoyed by the generations before it. And when we see that actually the complete Scriptures have been in the world not much less than eighteen hundred years; that within that period no other book has been so much studied; and yet that differences of opinion as to the matters spoken of in it have ever existed, and exist now as much as ever, what reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of future harmony or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth; and will not the good on these points ever continue to differ from the good, and the wise to differ from the wise?
This language, so discouraging as it is, may be heard from two very opposite parties, so that their agreement may appear to give it the more weight: it is used by men who are indifferent to religious truth, as an excuse for their taking no pains to discover what the truth really is; it is echoed back quite as strongly by another set of persons who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some supposed authoritative interpreter of it. But yet it ought to be at any rate a painful work to any serious mind to be obliged to dwell not only on the obscurities of God’s word, but on its perpetual and invincible obscurities; and, though an interpreter may be necessary if we know not the language of those with whom we are conversing, yet how much better would it be that we should ourselves know it: nay, and if we are told that we cannot know it, that our best endeavours will be unable to master it, the suspicion inevitably arises in our minds, that our pretended interpreter may be ignorant of it also; that he is not in truth better acquainted with it than we, but only more presumptuous or more dishonest.
Still a statement may be painful, but at the same time true. There is undoubtedly something in such language as I have been alluding to, which appears to be confirmed by experience. There is no denying the fact, that the Scriptures have been a long time in the world; that they have been very generally and carefully read; and yet that men do differ exceedingly as to religious truth, and these differences do not seem to be tending towards agreement. It seems to me, there fore, desirable that every student of the Scriptures should know, as well as may be, what the exact state of the question is; for if the subject of his studies is really so hopelessly uncertain, it is scarcely possible that his zeal in studying it should not be abated; nay, could we wisely encourage him to bestow his pains on a hopeless labour?
Now, in the very outset, there is this consideration which many of us here are well able to appreciate. We read many books written in dead languages, most of them more ancient than any part of the New Testament, some of them older than several of the books of the Old. We know well enough that these ancient books are not without their difficulties; that time, and thought, and knowledge are required to master them; but still we do not doubt that, with the exception of particular-passages here and there, the true meaning of these books may be discovered with undoubted certainty. We know, too, that this certainty has increased; that interpretations, which, were maintained some years ago, have been set aside by our improved knowledge of the languages and condition of the ancient world, quite as certainly as old errors in physical science have been laid to rest by later discoveries. Farther, our improved knowledge has taught us to distinguish what may be known from what may be probably concluded, and what is probable from what can merely be guessed at. When we come to points of this last sort, to passages which cannot be interpreted or understood, we leave them at once as a blank; but we enjoy no less, and understand with no less certainty, the greatest portions of the book which, contain them. And this experience, with regard to the works of heathen antiquity, makes it a startling proposition at the very outset, when we are told that with the works of Christian antiquity the case is otherwise.
We thus approach the statement as to the hopless difficulty of Scripture, confirmed, as we are told it is, by the actual fact of the great disagreements among Christians, with a well-grounded mistrust of its soundness; we feel sure that there is something in it which is confused or sophistical. And considering the fact which appears to confirm it, I mean the actual differences between Christians and Christians, it soon appears by no means to bear out its supposed conclusion. For the differences between Christians and Christians by no means arise generally from the difficulty of understanding the Scripture aright, but from disagreement as to some other point, quite independent of the interpretation of the Scriptures. For example, the great questions at issue between us and the Roman Catholics turn upon two points,–Whether there is not another authority, in matters of Christianity, distinct from and equal to the Scriptures,–and whether certain interpretations of Scripture are not to be received as true, for the sake of the authority of the interpreter. Now, suppose for a moment, that the works of Plato or Aristotle were to us in the place of the Scriptures; and that the question was, whether these works of theirs could be understood with certainty; it would prove nothing against our being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to them alone, another man were to say, that, to his judgment, the works of other philosophers were no less authoritative; or, if he were to insist upon it, that the interpretations given by the scholiasts were always sure to be correct, because the scholiasts were the authorized interpreters of the text. No doubt our philosophical opinions and our practice might differ widely from such a man’s; but the difference would prove nothing as to the obscurity of Plato’s or Aristotle’s text, because another standard had been brought in, distinct from their works, and from the acknowledged principles of interpretation, and thus led unavoidably to a different result.
The same also is the case as to the questions at issue between the Church of England and many of the Dissenters. In these disputes it is notorious that the practice and authority of the church are continually appealed to, or, it may be, considerations of another kind, as to the inherent reasonableness of a doctrine; all which are, again, a distinct matter from the interpretation of Scripture. One of the greatest men of our time has declared, that, in the early part of his life, he did not believe in the divinity of our Lord; but he has stated expressly, that he never for a moment persuaded himself that St. Paul or St. John did not believe it; their language he thought was clear enough, upon the point; but the notion appeared to him so unreasonable in itself, that he disbelieved it in spite of their authority. It is manifest, that, in this case, great as the difference was between this great man’s early belief and his later, yet it in no way arose from the obscurity of the Scripture. The language of the Scripture was as clear to him at first as it was afterwards; but in his early life he disbelieved it, while, in his latter life, he embraced it with all his heart and soul.
It must not be denied, however, that we are here arrived at one of the causes which are likely, for a long time, to keep alive a false interpretation of Scripture, and which do not affect our interpretation of heathen writings. For most men, in such a case as I have referred to, when they do not believe the language of the Scripture, but wish to alter it, whether by omission or addition, do not deal so fairly with it as that great man did to whom I have alluded. They have neither his knowledge nor his honesty; a false interpretation is more easily disguised from them, owing to their ignorance, and they let their wishes more readily warp their judgment. Thus, they will not say as he did, “The Scripture clearly says so and so, but I cannot believe it;” they rather say, “This is very unreasonable and shocking, the Scripture cannot mean to say this;” or, “This is very pious and very ancient, the Scripture cannot but sanction this.” And certainly, if men will so deal with it, there remains no certainty of interpretation then. But this is not the way that we deal with other ancient writings; and its unfairness and foolishness, if ever attempted to be practised there, are so palpable as to be ridiculous. No doubt it is difficult to convince men against their will; nevertheless, there is a good hope, that, as sound principles of interpretation are more generally known, they will put to shame a flagrant departure from them; and that those who try to make the Scripture say more or less than it has said, will be gradually driven to confess that Scripture is not their real authority; that their own notions in the one case, and the authority of the Church in the other case, have been the real grounds of their belief, to which they strove to make the Scriptures conform.
Nothing that I have said is, in any degree, meant to countenance the opinions of those who talk of the Bible,–or rather, our translation of it,–being its own interpreter; meaning, that if you give a Bible to any one who can read, he will be able to understand it rightly. Even in this extravagance, there is indeed something of a truth. If a man were so to read the Bible, much he would, unquestionably, be able to understand; enough, I well believe, if honestly and devoutly used, to give him, if living in a desert island by himself, the knowledge of salvation. But when we talk of understanding the Bible, so as to be guided by it amidst the infinite varieties of opinion and practice which beset us on every side, it is the wildest folly to talk of it as being, in this sense, its own interpreter. Our comfort is, not that it can be understood without study, but with it; that the same pains which, enable us to understand heathen writings, whose meaning is of infinitely less value to us, will enable us, with God’s blessing, to understand the Scriptures also. Neither do I mean, that mere intellectual study would make them clear to the careless or the undevout; but, supposing us to seek honestly to know God’s will, and to pray devoutly for his help to guide us to it, then our study is not vain nor uncertain; the mind of the Scriptures may be discovered; we may distinguish plainly between what is clear, and what is not clear; and what is not clear will be found far less in amount, and infinitely less in importance, than what is clear. I do not say, that a true understanding of the Scriptures will settle at once all religious differences;–manifestly, it cannot; for, although I may understand them well, yet if a man maintains an opinion, or a practice, upon some other authority than theirs, we cannot agree together. Nevertheless, we may be allowed to hope and believe, that in time, if men could be hindered from misinterpreting the Scripture in behalf of their own opinions, their opinions themselves would find fewer supporters; for, as Christianity must come, after all, from our blessed Lord and his apostles, men will shrink from saying that that is no truth of Christianity which Christ and his apostles have clearly taught, or that that is a truth of Christianity, however ancient, and by whatever long line of venerable names supported, which they have as clearly, in our sole authentic records of them, not taught. It is not, therefore, without great and reasonable hope, that we may devote ourselves to the study of the Scriptures; and those habits of study which are cultivated here, and in other places of the same kind, are the best ordinary means of arriving at the truth. We are constantly engaged in extracting the meaning of those who have written in times past, and in a dead language. We do this according to certain rules, acknowledged as universally as the laws of physical science: these rules are developed gradually,–from the simple grammar which forms our earliest lessons, to the rules of higher criticism, still no less acknowledged, which are understood by those of a more advanced age. And we do this for heathen writings; but the process is exactly the same–and we continually apply it, also, for that very purpose–with what is required to interpret the Word of God. After all is done, we shall still, no doubt, find that the Scripture has its parables, its passages which cannot now be understood; but we shall find, also, that by much the larger portion of it may be clearly and certainly known; enough to be, in all points which really concern our faith and practice, a lantern to our feet, and an enlightener to our souls.
LECTURE XXXVIII.
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ISAIAH v.1.
_Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard_.
Whatever difficulties we may find in understanding and applying many parts of the prophetical Scriptures, yet every thinking person could follow readily enough, I suppose, the chapter from which these words are taken, as it was read in the course of this morning’s service; and he would feel, while understanding it as said, immediately and in the first instance, of the Jewish Church or nation, seven centuries and a half before the birth of our Lord, that it was no less applicable to this Christian church and nation at the present period. We cannot, indeed, expect to find a minute agreement in particular points between ourselves and the Jews of old; the difference of times and circumstances renders this impossible; both they and we stand, on the one hand, in so nearly the same relation to God, and we both so share, on the other hand, in the same sinful human nature, that the complaints, and remonstrances of the prophets of old may often, be repeated, even in the very same words, by the Christian preacher now.
If this be so, then the language of various parts of the service of the Church in this season of Advent ought to excite in us no small apprehension; for whilst the lessons from the Old Testament describe the evil state of the Jewish people in the eighth century before Christ, and threaten it with destruction, so the gospels for this day, and for last Sunday, speak of the evil state of the same people when our Lord was upon earth; and the chapter from which the gospel of this day is taken, contains, as we know, a full prophecy of the destruction that was, for the second time, going to overwhelm the earthly Jerusalem. We cannot but fear, therefore, that if our state now be like that of God’s people of old, eight centuries before our Lord’s coming, and again like their state at his coming: and if, after the first period, their city and temple were burnt, and they were carried captive to Babylon,–and again, after the second period, the city and temple were burnt again, and the people were dispersed, even to this day,–that, as the punishment has twice surely followed the sin, so it will not fail to find it out in this third case also.
And be it remembered that the people, or church of God, as such, can receive their punishment only in this world: for, taken as a body, it is an institution for this world only. We each of us, no doubt, shall have our own separate individual judgment after death; and, in the mean time, our fortunes and our character often bear no just correspondence with each other. But nations and churches have their judgments here: and although God’s long-suffering so suspends it for many generations that it may seem as if it would never fall, yet does it come surely at the last; and almost always we can ourselves trace the connexion between the sin and the punishment, and can see that the one was clearly the consequence of the other. And thus our church and nation may feel their national judgments in this world quite independently of the several personal judgments which will be passed upon us each hereafter individually, when we stand before Christ’s judgment seat.
I have thus ventured to bring the condition of the church as a body before our minds, although well knowing how much more we are concerned with the state of our own souls individually. Yet still the more general view is not without great use; and indeed it bears directly upon our individual state: our actions and our feelings having often a close connexion with, general church matters; and these actions and feelings being necessarily good or bad, according to the soundness of our judgment on the matter which occasions them. Besides which, it seems to me that general views, rather than what relates to particular faults, may be with most propriety dwelt on by those who have no direct connexion with the congregation which they are addressing.
In the first place, then, whenever we think of the state and prospects of Christ’s church, whether for good or for evil, it is most desirable that we should rightly understand our own relations to it. “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;” or, in the language of the New Testament, “Christ is the vine, and we are the branches.” Men continually seem to forget that they are members of the church; citizens, to use St. Paul’s expression, of Christ’s kingdom, as much as ever they are citizens of their earthly country. But they speak of the church as they might speak of any useful institution or society in their neighbourhood, whose object they approved of, and which they were glad to encourage, but without becoming members of it, or identifying themselves with its success or failure. For example, they speak of the church as they might speak of the universities, which indeed are institutions of great importance to the whole country, but yet they are manifestly distinct from the mass of the community: they have their own members, their own laws, and their own government, with which, people in general have nothing to do. And so many persons speak and feel of the church, regarding it evidently as consisting only of the clergy: our common language, no doubt, helping this confusion, because we often speak of a man’s going into the church when he enters into holy orders, just as if ordination were the admission into the church, and not baptism. Now, if the clergy did indeed constitute the church, then it would very much resemble the condition of the universities: for it would then be indeed a society very important to the welfare of the whole country, but yet one that was completely distinct, and which had its members, laws, and government quite apart: for men in general do not belong to the clergy, nor are they concerned directly in such canons as relate to the peculiar business of the clergy, nor does the bishop’s superintendence, as commonly exercised, extend at all to them. But God designed for his church far more than that it should contain one order of men only, or that it should comprise commonly but one single individual in a parish, preaching to and teaching the rest of the inhabitants, like a missionary amongst a population of heathens. Look at St. Paul’s account of the church of Corinth, in the 12th chapter of his 1st epistle to the Corinthians, and see if any two things can be more different than his notion of a church, and that which many people seem to entertain amongst us. Compare the living body there described, made up of so many various members, each having its separate office, yet each useful to and needed by the others and by the body,–and our notion of a parish committed to the charge of a single individual: as if all the manifold gifts which the church requires could by possibility be comprised in the person of any one Christian; as if the whole burden were to rest upon his shoulders, and the other inhabitants might regard the welfare of the church as his concern only, and not theirs.
But not only is the church too often confined in men’s notions to the single class or profession of the clergy, but it has been narrowed still farther by the practical extinction of one of the orders of the clergy itself. Where the laity have come to regard their own share in the concerns of the church as next to nothing, the order of deacons, forming, as it were, a link between the clergy and the laity, becomes proportionably of still greater importance. The business of the deacons, as we well know, was in an especial manner to look after the relief of the poor; and by combining this charge with the power of baptizing, of reading the Scriptures, and of preaching also, when authorized by the bishop, they exhibited the peculiar character of Christianity, that of sanctifying the business of this world by doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. No church, so far as we know, certainly no church in any town, existed without its deacons: they were as essential to its completeness as its bishop and its presbyters.
Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we find? A bishop, not of that single town only, but of fifty others besides: one presbyter in each, church, and no deacons! Practically, and according to its proper character, the order of deacons is extinct; and those who now bear the name are most commonly found exercising the functions of presbyters; that is, instead of acting as the assistants of a presbyter, they are often the sole ministers of their respective parishes; they alone baptize; alone offer up the prayers of the church, alone preach the word: nothing marks their original character, except their inability to administer the communion; and thus, by a strange anomaly, the church in such parishes is actually left without any power of celebrating its highest act, that of commemorating the death, of Christ in the Lord’s supper; and if it were not for another great evil, the unfrequent celebration of the Communion, the system could not go on: because the deacon would be so often obliged to apply to other ministers to perform that duty for him, that the inconvenience, as well as the unfitness, of the actual practice, would be manifest to every one.
Again, what has become of church discipline? That it has perished, we all well know: but its loss is the consequence of that fatal error which makes the clergy alone constitute the church. It is quite certain that men will not allow the members of a single profession to exercise the authority of society; to create and define offences; to determine their punishment, and to be the judges of each particular offender. As long as the clergy are supposed to constitute the whole church, church discipline would be nothing but priestly tyranny. And yet the absence of discipline is a most grievous evil; and there is no doubt that, although it must be vain when opposed to public opinion, yet, when it is the expression of that opinion, there is nothing which it cannot achieve. But public opinion cannot enforce church discipline now, because that discipline would not be now the expression of the voice of the church, but simply of a small part of the church, of the clergy only.
So deeply has this fatal error of regarding the clergy as the church extended itself, that at this moment a man’s having been baptized is no security for his being so much as a believer in the truth of Christianity: no matter that he was made in his baptism a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven; no matter that at a more advanced period of his life he was confirmed, and entered into the church by his own act and deed; still the church belongs to the clergy; they may hold such and such, language, and teach such and such doctrine; it would be very improper in them to do otherwise; and he has a great respect for the church, and would strenuously resist all its enemies, but truly, as for his own belief and his own conduct, these he will guide according to other principles, as imperative upon him as the rules of the church upon churchmen. Well indeed, do such men bear witness that they are not of the church,