SERMON XXII. THE TORMENT OF FEAR
(First Sunday after Trinity.)
1 John iv. 16, 18. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
The text tells us how to get one of the greatest blessings; a blessing which all long for, but all do not find; and that is a happy death. All wish to die happily; even bad men. Like Balaam when he was committing a great sin, they can say, ‘Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.’ But meanwhile, like Balaam, they find it too hard to live the life of the righteous, which is the only way to die the death of the righteous. But something within them (if false preachers will but leave them alone) tells them that they will not succeed. Reason and common sense tell them so: for how can a man expect to get to a place without travelling the road which leads to it? And the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth and right, tells them that they will not succeed: for how can a man win happiness, save by doing right? Every one shall ‘receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.’ So says Scripture; and so say men’s own hearts, by the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit. And therefore such men’s fear of death continues. And why? The text tells us the secret. As long as we do not love God, we shall be tormented with fear of death. And as long as we do not love our neighbour, we shall not love God. We may try, as thousands have tried, and as thousands try still, to love God without loving their neighbour; to be very religious, and worship God, and sing His praises, and think over all His mercy to them, and all that he has done for them, by the death of His blessed Son Jesus Christ; and so to persuade themselves and God that they love Him, while they keep in their hearts selfishness, pride, spite, uncharitableness: but they do not succeed. If they think they succeed, they are only deceiving themselves. So says St. John. ‘He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ But they cannot deceive themselves long. You will see, if you watch such people, and still more if you watch yourselves, that if you do not love your neighbours in spirit and in truth, then those tormenting fears soon come back again, worse than ever. Ay, whenever we indulge ourselves in hard words and cruel judgments, the thought of God seems darkened to us there and then; the face of God seems turned from us; and peace of mind and brightness of spirit, and lightness of soul, do not come back to us, till we have confessed our sins, and have let the kindly, the charitable, the merciful thoughts rise up in us once more, as, by the grace of Christ, they will rise up.
Yes, my friends, as far as I can see, people are filled with the peace of God just in as far as they are at peace with their fellow-men. They are bright, calm, and content, looking forward with cheerfulness to death, and with a humble and holy boldness to judgment, just in as far as their hearts are filled with love, gentleness, kindness, to all that God has made. They dwell in God, and God in them, and perfect love has cast out fear.
But if a man does not live in love, then sooner or later he will hear a voice within him, which whispers, Thou art going wrong; and, if thou art going wrong, how canst thou end at the right place? None but the right road can end there. The wrong road must lead to the wrong place.
Then the man gets disturbed and terrified in his mind, and tormented with fears, as the text says. He knows that the day of judgment is coming, and he has no boldness to meet it. He shrinks from the thought of death, of judgment, of God. He thinks—How shall I meet my God? I do not love my neighbour. I do not love God; and God does not love me. The truth is, that the man cannot love God even if he will. He looks on God as his enemy, whom he has offended, who is coming to take vengeance on him. And, as long as we are afraid of any one, and fancy that they hate us, and are going to hurt us, we cannot love them. So the man is tormented with fear; fear of death, fear of judgment, fear of meeting God.
Then he takes to superstition; he runs from preacher to preacher; and what not?—There is no folly men have not committed, and do not commit still, to rid themselves of that tormenting fear. But they do not rid themselves of it. Sermons, church-goings, almsgivings; leaving the Church and turning Dissenters or Roman Catholics; joining this sect and that sect; nothing will rid a man of his superstitious fear: nothing but believing the blessed message of the text.
And what does the text say? It says this,—‘God is love.’ God does not hate thee, He loves thee. He willeth not thy death, O sinner, but rather that thou shouldest turn from thy wickedness and live. Thy sins have not made Him hate thee: but only pity thee; pity thy folly, which will lead on the road to death, when He wishes to put thee on the road to life, that thou mayest have boldness in the day of judgment, instead of shrinking from God like a guilty coward. And what is the way of life? Surely the way of Christ, who is the life. Live like Him, and thou wilt not need to fear to die. So says the text. We are to have boldness in the day of judgment, because as Christ is, so are we in this world. And how was, and is, and ever will be, Christ in this world? Full of love; of brotherly-kindness, charity, forgiveness, peace, and good will to men. That, says St. John, is the life which brings a joyful death; for God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
Oh consider this, my good friends. Consider this; lest when you come to die the ghosts of all your sins should rise up at your bedside, and torment you with fear—the ghosts of every cruel word which you ever spoke against your fellow men; of every kind action which you neglected; as well as of every unjust one which you ever committed. And, if they do rise up in judgment against you, what must you do?
Cast yourself upon the love of God, and remember that God is love, and so loved us that He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Ask Him to forgive you your sins, for the sake of that precious blood which was shed on the cross: but not that you may keep your sins, and may escape the punishment of them. God forbid. What use in having your past sins forgiven, if the sinful heart still remains to run up fresh sins for the future? No. Ask Him not merely to forgive the past, but to mend the future; to create in you a new heart, which wishes no ill to any human being, and a right spirit, which desires first and utterly to do right, and is filled with the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of love, by which God made and redeemed the world, and all that therein is.
So will all tormenting fears cease. You will feel yourself in the right way, the way of charity, the way in which Christ walked in this world, and have boldness in the day of judgment, facing death without conceit, indeed, but also without superstitious fear.
SERMON XXIII. THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT
(Eighth Sunday after Trinity.)
Romans viii. 12. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh; for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.
What does walking after the flesh mean? St. Paul tells us himself, in Gal. v., where he uses exactly the same form of words which he does here. ‘The works of the flesh,’ he says, ‘are manifest.’ When a man gives way to his passions and appetites—when he cares only about enjoying his own flesh, and the pleasures which he has in common with the brutes, then there is no mistake about the sort of life which he will lead—‘Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.’ An ugly list, my friends; and God have mercy on the man who gives way to them. For disgraceful as they are to him, and tormenting also to him in this life, the worst is, that if he gives way to them, he will die.
I do not mean that he will bring his mortal body to an untimely end; that he will ruin his own health; or that he will get himself hanged, though that is likely enough—common enough. I think St. Paul means something even worse than that. The man himself will die. Not his body merely: but his soul, his character, will die. All in him that God made, all that God intended him to be, will die. All that his father and mother loved in him, all that they watched over, and hoped and prayed that it might grow up into life, in order that he might become the man God meant him to be, all that will die. His soul and character will become one mass of disease. He will think wrong, feel wrong, about everything of which he does think and feel: while, about the higher matters, of which every man ought to know something, he will not think or feel at all. Love to his country, love to his own kinsfolk even; above all, love to God, will die in him, and he will care for nothing but himself, and how to get a little more foul pleasure before he goes out of this world, he dare not think whither. All power of being useful will die in him. Honour and justice will die in him. He will be shut up in himself, in the ugly prison-house of his own lusts and passions, parted from his fellow-men, caring nothing for them, knowing that they care nothing for him. He will have no faith in man or God. He will believe no good, he will have no hope, either for himself or for the world.
This, this is death, indeed; the death of sin; the death in which human beings may go on for years, walking, eating, and drinking; worse than those who walk in their sleep, and see nothing, though their eyes are staring wide.
Oh pitiable sight! The most pitiable sight in the whole world, a human soul dead and rotten in sin! It is a pitiable sight enough, to see a human body decayed by disease, to see a poor creature dying, even quietly and without pain. Pitiable, but not half so pitiable as the death of a human soul by sin. For the death of the body is not a man’s own fault. But that death in life of sin, is a man’s own fault. In a Christian country, at least, it is a man’s own fault, if he goes about the world, as I have seen many a one go, having a name to live, and yet dead in trespasses and sins, while his soul only serves to keep his body alive and moving. How shall we escape this death in life? St. Paul tells us, ‘If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’
Through the Spirit. The Spirit of God and of Christ. Keep that in mind, for that is the only way, the right way, to mortify and kill in us these vices and passions, which, unless we kill them, will kill us. The only way. For men have tried other ways in old times, do try other ways now: but they fail. I could mention many plans which they have tried. But I will only mention the one which you and I are likely to try.
A young man runs wild for a few years, as young men are too apt to do: but at last he finds that ill-living does not pay. It hurts his health, his pocket, his character. He makes himself ill; he cannot get employed; he has ruin staring him in the face, from his wild living. He must mend. If he intends to keep out of the workhouse, the gaol, the grave, he must mortify the deeds of the body. He must bridle his passions, give up lying about, drinking, swearing, cheating, running after bad women: and if he has a strong will, he does it from mere selfish prudence. But is he safe? I think not, as long as he loves still the bad ways he has given up. He has given them up, not because he hates them, because he is ashamed of them, because he knows them to be hateful to God, and ruinous to his own soul: but because they do not pay. The man himself is not changed. His heart within is not converted. The outside of his life is whitewashed; but his heart may be as foul as ever; as full as ever of selfishness, greediness, meanness. And what happens to him? Too often, what happened to the man in the parable, when the unclean spirit went out of him, and came back again. The unclean spirit found his home swept and garnished: but empty. All very neat and respectable: but empty. There was no other spirit dwelling there. No good spirit, who could fight the unclean spirit and keep him out. So he took to himself seven other spirits worse than himself—hypocrisy, cant, cunning, covetousness, and all the smooth-shaven sins which beset middle-aged and elderly men; and they dwell there, and so does the unclean spirit of youth too.
Alas! How often have I seen men whom that description would fit but too well—men who have kept themselves respectable till they have got back their character in the world’s eyes: and when they get into years, and have risen perhaps in life, and made money, are looked up to by their fellows: but what are they at heart? As great scoundrels as they were thirty years before—cunning, false, covetous, and hypocritical—and indulging, perhaps, the unclean spirit of youth, as much as they dare without being found out. God help them! for their last state is worse than their first. But that is the fruit of trying to mortify and kill their own vices by mere worldly prudence, and not by the Spirit of God, which alone can cleanse the heart of any man, or make him strong enough really to conquer and kill his sins.
And what is this spirit of God? We may know in this way. What says our Lord in the Gospel? ‘The tree is known by its fruits.’ Then if we know the fruits of the Spirit, we shall surely know something at least of what the Spirit is like. What then says St. Paul, ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.’ Therefore the Spirit is a loving spirit—a peaceable, a gentle, a good, a faithful, a sober and temperate spirit. And if you follow it, you will live. If you give yourselves up honestly, frankly, and fully, to be led by that good spirit, and obey it when it prompts you with right feelings, you, your very self, will live. You will be what God intended you to be; you will grow as God intended you to grow; grow as Christ did, in grace; in all which is graceful, amiable, worthy of respect and love; and therefore in favour with God and man. Your character will improve and strengthen day by day; and rise day by day to fuller, stronger, healthier spiritual life. You will be able more and more to keep down low passions, evil tempers, and all the works of the flesh, when they tempt you; you will despise and hate them more and more; for having seen the beauty of goodness, you will see the ugliness of sin. So the bad passions and tempers, instead of being merely put to sleep for a while to wake up all the stronger for their rest, will be really mortified and killed in you. They will die out of you; and you, the real you whom God made, will live and grow continually. And, instead of having your character dragged down, diseased, and at last ruined, it will rise and progress, as you grow older, in the sure and safe road of eternal life. To which God bring us all in his mercy! Amen.
SERMON XXIV. THE UNRIGHTEOUS MAMMON
(Ninth Sunday after Trinity.)
Luke xvi. 1-8. And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
This parable has always been considered a difficult one to understand. Fathers and Divines, in all ages, have tried to explain it in different ways; and have never, it seems to me, been satisfied with their own explanations. They have always felt it strange, that our Lord should seem to hold up, as an example to us, this steward who, having been found out in one villainy, escapes, (so it seems, from the common explanation) by committing a second. They have not been able to see either, how we are really to copy the steward. Our Lord says, that we are to copy him by making ourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness: but how? By giving away a few alms, or a great many? Does any rational man seriously believe, that if his Mammon was unrighteous, that is, if his wealth were ill-gotten, he would save his soul, and be received into eternal life, for giving away part of it, or even the whole of it?
No doubt, there always have been men who will try. Men who, having cheated their neighbours all their lives, have tried to cheat the Devil at last, by some such plan as the unjust steward’s, but that plan has never been looked on as either a very honourable or a very hopeful one. I think, that if I had been an usurer or a grinder of the poor all my life, I should not save my soul by founding almshouses with my money when I died, or even ten years before I died. It might be all that I was able to do: but would it justify me in the sight of God? That which saves a soul alive is repentance; and of repentance there are three parts, contrition, confession, and satisfaction—in plain English, making the wrong right, and giving each man back, as far as one can, what one has taken from him. To each man, I say; for I have no right to rob one man and then give to another. I ought to give back again to the man whom I have robbed. I have no right to cheat the rich for the sake of the poor; and after I have cheated the rich, I do not make satisfaction, either to god or man, by giving that money to the poor. Good old Zaccheus, the publican, knew better what true satisfaction was like. He had been gaining money not altogether in an unjust way, but in a way which did him no credit; he had been farming the taxes, and he was dissatisfied with his way of life. Therefore, Behold, Lord, he says, the half of my goods, of what I have a right to in the world’s eyes—what is my own, and I could keep if I liked—I give to the poor. But if I have done wrong to any man, I restore to him fourfold. Then said the Lord, ‘This day is salvation come to this man’s house; forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham;’ a just and faithful man, who knows what true repentance is.
But now, my friends, suppose that this was just what our Lord tells us to do in this parable. Suppose that this was just what the unjust steward did. I only say, suppose; for I know that more learned men than I explain the difficulty otherwise. Only I ask you to hear my explanation.
The steward is accused of wasting his lord’s goods.
He will be put out of his stewardship.
He goes to his lord’s debtors, and bids them write themselves down in debt to him at far less sums than they had thought that they owed.
Now, suppose that these debtors were the very men whom he had been cheating. Suppose that he had been overcharging these debtors; and now, in his need, had found out that honesty was the best policy, and charged them what they really owed him. They were, probably, tenants under his lord, paying their rents in kind, as was often the custom in the East. One rented an olive garden, and paid for it so many measures of oil; another rented corn-land, and paid so many measures of meal. Now suppose that the steward, as he easily might, had been setting these poor men’s rents too high, and taking the surplus himself. That while he had been charging one tenant a hundred, he had been paying to his lord only fifty, and so forth.
What does he do, then, in his need? He does justice to his lord’s debtors. He tells them what their debts really are. He sets their accounts right. Instead of charging the first man a hundred, he charges him fifty; instead of charging the second a hundred, he charges him eighty; and he does not, as far as we are told, conceal this conduct from his lord. He rights them as far as he can now. So he shews that he honestly repents. He has found out that honesty is the best policy; that the way to make true friends is to deal justly by them; and, if he cannot restore what he has taken from them already (for I suppose he had spent it), at least to confess his sin to them, and to set the matter right for the time to come.
This, I think, is what our Lord bids us do, if we have wronged any man, and fouled our hands with the unrighteous mammon, that is, with ill-gotten wealth. And I think so all the more from the verses which come after. For, when he has said, ‘Make yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,’ he goes on in the very next verse to say, ‘He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is much. If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?’ Now, surely, this must have something to do with what goes before. And, if it has, what can it mean but this—that the way to make friends out of the mammon of unrighteousness, is to be faithful in it, just in it, honest in it?
But some one may say, If mammon be unrighteous, how can a man be righteous and upright in dealing with it? If money be a bad thing in itself, how can a man meddle with it with clean hands?
So some people will say, and so some will be glad to say. But why? Because they do not want to be righteous, upright, just, and honest in their money dealings; and, therefore, they are glad to make out that they could not be upright if they tried; because money being a bad thing altogether, a man must needs, if he has to do with money, do things which he knows are wrong. I say some people are glad to believe that. I do not mean any one in this congregation. God forbid! I mean in the world in general. We do see people, religious people too, do things about money which they know are mean, covetous, cruel, and then excuse themselves by saying,—‘Well, of course I would not do so to my own brother; but, in the way of business, one can’t help doing these things.’ Now, I do not quite believe them. I have seldom seen the man who cheated his neighbour, who would not cheat his own brother if he had a chance: but so they say. And, if they be religious people, they will quote Scripture, and say,—Ah! it is the fault of the unrighteous mammon; and, in dealing with the unrighteous mammon, we cannot help these little failings, and so forth: till they seem to have two quite different rules of right and wrong; one for the saving of their own souls, which they keep to when they are hearing sermons, and reading good books; and the other for money, which they keep to when they have to pay their debts or transact business.
Now, my dear friends, be not deceived: God is not mocked. God tempts no man. Man tempts himself by his own lusts and passions. God does not tempt us when he gives us money, puts us in the way of earning money, or spending money. Money is not bad in itself; wealth is not bad in itself. If mammon be unrighteous, we make money into mammon, when we make an idol of it, and worship it more than God’s law of right and justice. We make it unrighteous, by being unrighteous, and unjust ourselves.
Money is good; for money stands for capital; for money’s worth; for houses, land, food, clothes, all that man can make; and they stand for labour, employment, wages; and they stand for human beings, for the bodily life of man. Without wealth, where should we be now? If God had not given to man the power of producing wealth, where should we be now? Not here. Four-fifths of us would not have been alive at all. Instead of eight hundred people in this parish, all more or less well off, there would be, perhaps, one hundred—perhaps far less, living miserably on game and roots. Instead of thirty millions of civilized people in Great Britain, there would be perhaps some two or three millions of savages. Money, I say, stands for the lives of human beings. Therefore money is good; an ordinance and a gift of God; as it is written, ‘It is God that giveth the power to get wealth.’ But, like every other good gift of God, we may use it as a blessing; or we may misuse it, and make it a snare and a curse to our own souls. If we let into our hearts selfishness and falsehood; if we lose faith in God, and fancy that God’s laws are not well-made enough to prosper us, but that we must break them if we want to prosper; then we turn God’s good gift into an idol and a snare; into the unrighteous Mammon.
It is not the quantity of money we have to deal with which is the snare, it is our own lusts and covetousness which are the snares. It is just as easy to sell our souls for five pounds as for five thousand. It is just as easy to be mean and tricky about paying little debts of a shilling or two, as it is about whole estates. I do not see that rich people are at all more unjust about money than poor ones; and if any say: Yes, but the poor are tempted more than the rich; I answer, then look at those who are neither poor nor rich; who have enough to live on decently, and are not tempted as the poor are, to steal, or tempted as the rich are, to luxury and extravagance. Are they more honest than either rich or poor? Not a whit. All depends on the man’s heart. If his heart be selfish and mean, he will be dishonest as a poor man, as a middle-class man, as a great lord. If his heart be faithful and true, he will be honest, whether he lives in a cottage or in a palace. Any man can do justly, and love mercy, if his heart be right with God. I have seen day-labourers who had a hard struggle to live at all, keep out of debt, and out of shame, and live in a noble poverty, rich in the sight of God, because their hearts were rich in goodness. I have seen tradesmen and farmers, among all the temptations of business, keep their honour as bright as any gentleman’s—brighter than too many gentlemen’s, because they had learnt to fear God and work righteousness. I have seen great merchants and manufacturers, because that they were their brothers’ keepers, spread not only employment, but comfort, education, and religion, among the hundreds of workmen whom God had put into their charge. I have seen great landowners live truly royal lives, doing with all their might the good which their hand found to do; and, after the likeness of their heavenly Father, causing their sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and their rain to fall on the just and on the unjust. Yes; in every station of life, thy dealings will be right with men, if thy heart be right with God.
Yes. Let us bear in mind this—that whatever we cannot be, we can at least be honest men. Let us go to our graves, if possible, with the feeling that there is not a man on earth, a penny the worse for us. And if we have ever fouled our hands with the unrighteous Mammon, let us cleanse them by the only possible plan, by making restitution to those whom we have wronged; and so make friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness, who shall forgive us, and receive us as friends in heaven, instead of making enemies, and going out of the world with the fearful thought, that we shall meet at God’s judgment-seat people whom we have made miserable, who will rise up to accuse us, and demand payment of us when it is too late for ever.
Let us bear in mind, even though we cannot copy, the dying words of Muhammed the Arab, who, when he found his end draw near, went forth into the market-place, and asked before all the people, ‘Was there any man whom he had wronged? If so, his own back should bear the stripes. Was there any man to whom he owed money? and he should be paid.’ ‘Yes,’ cried some one, ‘those coins which you borrowed from me on such a day.’ ‘Pay him,’ said Muhammed: ‘better to be shamed now on earth, than shamed in the day of judgment.’ He was a heathen. And shall we Christians be worse than he? Then let us pray for the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, which will make us faithful and true; so that no man may be the worse for us in this life; no man may have to say of us, when he hears that we lie dying, ‘He wronged me, he cheated me, he lied to me; God forgive him:’ but that our friends, as they carry us to the grave, may feel that they have lost one whom they could respect and trust; and say, as the earth rattles in upon the coffin lid, ‘There lies an honest man.’
SERMON XXV. THE SIGHS OF CHRIST
(Twelfth Sunday after Trinity.)
Mark vii. 34, 35. And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.
Why did the Lord Jesus look up to heaven? And why, too, did he sigh?
He looked up to heaven, we may believe, because he looked to God the Father; to God, of whom the glorious collect tells us, that he is more ready to hear than we to pray, and is wont to give more than either we desire or deserve. He looked up to the Father, who is the fountain of life, of order, of health, of usefulness; who hates all death, disease, infirmity; who wills that none should perish, body or soul.
My friends, think of these cheering words; and try to look up to God the Father, as Christ looked up. Look up to him I say, if but once, as a Father. Not merely as your Father, but as the Father of the spirits of all flesh; the good God who creates, and delights to create; who orders all worlds and heavens with perfect wisdom, perfect power, perfect justice, perfect love; and peoples them with immortal souls and spirits, that they may be useful, happy, blessed, in keeping his laws, and doing the work which he has ordained for them. Oh think, if but once, of God the perfect and all-loving Father; and then you will know why Jesus looked up to him.
And you will see, too, why Jesus sighed. He sighed because he was one with the Father. He sighed because he had the mind of God. Because God, the Lord of health and order, hates disease and disorder. Because God, the Lord of bliss and happiness, hates misery and sorrow. Because God made the world at first very good; and, behold, by man’s sin, it has become bad.
Why did he sigh? Surely, also, from pity for the poor man. His infirmity was no such great one; he had an impediment in his speech, and with it, as many are apt to have, deafness also: but it was an infirmity. It was a disease. It was something out of order, something gone wrong in God’s world; and as such, Christ could not abide it; he grieved over it. He sighed because there was sickness in a world where there ought to be nothing but health, and sorrow where there ought to be nothing but happiness. He sighed, because man had brought this sickness and sorrow on himself by sin; for, remember, man alone is subject to disease. The wild animal in the wood, the bird upon the tree, seldom or never know what sickness is; seldom or never are stunted or deformed. They live according to their nature, healthy and happy, and die in a good old age. While man—Why should I talk of what man is, of how far man is fallen from what God the Father meant him to be, while one hundred thousand corpses of brave men are now fattening the plains of Italy for next year’s crop; while even in our favoured land, we find at every turn prisons and reformatories, lunatic asylums, hospitals for numberless kinds of horrible diseases; sickness, weakness, and death all round us? Only look up yonder to Windsor Forest, and see the vast building now in progress there before your eyes, for lunatic convicts—the most miserable, perhaps, and pitiable of human beings,—and let that building be a sign to you, how far man is fallen, and what cause Jesus had to sigh, and has to sigh still, over the miseries of fallen man.
Yes, my friends, not without reason did the old heathen poet, who had no sure and certain hope of everlasting life, say, that man was the most wretched of all the beasts of the field; not without reason did St. Paul say, that if in this life only we have hope in Christ, then the Christian man, who dare not indulge his passions and appetites, dare not say, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die: but must curb himself, and give up his own pleasure and his own fancy at every turn, is of all men most miserable.
If Christ’s work is done; if his mercy and help ended when he died upon the cross; if all he did was to heal the sick for three short years in Judea a long while ago: then what have we to which we can look forward? What hope have we, not merely for ourselves, who are here now, but for all the millions who have died and suffered already? Yes: what reasonable hope for mankind can they have, who do not believe that Christ is Very God of Very God, the perfect likeness of the heavenly Father?
But what if that which was true of him then, is true of him now? What if he be the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever? What if he be ascended on high, that he might fill all things with his almighty power, and declare that almighty power most chiefly by shewing mercy and pity? What if he be for ever looking up to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God, interceding for ever for mankind; for ever offering up to the Father that sacrifice of himself which he perfected upon the Cross, for the sins of the whole world? What if he be for ever sighing over every sin, every sorrow, every cruelty, every injustice, over all things, great and small, which go wrong throughout the whole world; and saying for ever, ‘Father, this is not according to thy will. Let thy will be done on earth, as in heaven.’ And what, if he does not look up in vain, nor sigh in vain? What if the will of God the Father be, that sin and sorrow, disease and death, being contrary to his will and law, should be at last rooted out of this world, and all worlds for ever? What if Christ have authority and commission from God to fight against all evil, sin, disease, and death, and all the ills which flesh is heir to; and to teach men to fight them likewise, till they conquer them by his might, and by his light? What if he reigns, and will reign, till he has put all enemies under his feet, and he has delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all? What if the day shall come, when all the nations of the earth shall thus see Christ’s good works, and glorify his Father and their Father who is in heaven? and by obeying the Law of their being, and the commandment of God, which is life eternal, shall live for ever in that glory, of which it is written, that a river of water of life shall proceed out of the throne of God and of the Lamb; and the leaves of the trees which grow thereby shall be for the healing of the nations; and there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in the city of God, and his servants shall serve him; and the Lord God shall give them light; and they shall reign for ever and ever.
What those words mean I know not, and hardly dare to think: but as long as those words stand in the Bible, we will have hope. For God the Father, who willeth that none should perish, and Jesus the only-begotten Son, who sighed over the poor man’s infirmity in Judea, are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
SERMON XXVI. THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA
(Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 1856.)
2 Kings xviii. 9-12. And it came to pass in the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria, and besieged it. And at the end of three years they took it: even in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken. And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozon, and in the cities of the Medes: because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded, and would not hear them, nor do them.
These are very simple words: but they are awful words enough. Awful enough to the poor creatures of whom they speak. You here, most of you, can hardly guess all that these words mean. You may thank God that you do not. That you do not know the horrors of war, and the misery of a conquered country, in old times.
To lose all they had ever earned; all that makes life worth having. To have their homes burnt over their heads, their crops carried off their fields. To see their women dishonoured, their old men and children murdered—to be insulted, beaten, and tortured to make them tell where their money was hidden; and after they and theirs had suffered every unspeakable shame and misery from the hands of brutal enemies, to be stripped, bound, and marched away, for hundreds of miles across the deserts, into the cold and dreary mountains of the north of Assyria, there to live and die as slaves, and never again to see their native land. And such a land as it was, and is still: or rather might be still, if there were men in it worthy the name of men. For of all countries in the world, that land of Israel is one of the most rich and beautiful. The climate and the soil there is such, that two crops can often be grown in the year, of almost any kind which man may need; there are rich valleys well watered, where not only wheat and every grain-crop, but the olive, and the fig, and the vine, flourish in perfection; rich park-like uplands, where sheep and cattle without number may find pasture; great forests of timber, fit for every use; and all kept cool and fruitful, even beneath that burning eastern sun, by the clear streams which flow for ever down from Hermon. the great snow-mountain ten thousand feet high, which overlooks that pleasant land. There is hardly, travellers say, a lovelier or richer country upon earth, than the land of Israel, from Hebron on the south to Hermon on the north; nor a country which might have been stronger, and safer, and more prosperous, if these Jews had been but wise.
It is, so to speak, one great castle, rising most of it two thousand feet high, and walled in by God in a way as is seen hardly in any other land. On the west lies the sea; on the south and on the east vast wildernesses of sandy desert; and on the north, the mighty mountains of Hermon and Lebanon, which no invading army could have crossed, if the Jews had had courage to keep them out. And that, the noble and divine Law of Moses would have given them. It would have made them one free, brave, God-fearing people, at unity with itself; and the promise of Moses would have been fulfilled—that one of them should chase a thousand, and no man or nation be able to stand against them. In David’s time, and in Solomon’s time also, that promise came true; and that small people of the Jews became a very powerful nation, respected and feared by all the kingdoms round.
But when they fell into idolatry, and forsook the true God, and his law: all was changed. Idolatry brought sin, and sin brought bad passions, hatred, division, weakness, ruin.
The first beginning was, the breaking up of the nation into two;—the kingdom of Judah to the south, the kingdom of Israel to the north. And with that division came envy, spite, quarrels; wars between Israel and Judah, which were but madness. For what could come of those two brother-nations fighting against each other, but that both should grow weaker and weaker, and so fall a prey to some third nation stronger than them both? The ruin of the kingdom of Israel, of which the text tells us, arose out of some unnatural quarrel of this kind. Pekah, the king of Israel, had made friends with the heathen king of Syria, and got him to join in making war on Judah: and a fearful war it was; for the Israelites, according to one account, killed in that war a hundred and twenty thousand of the Jews, men of their own blood and language, all Abraham’s descendants as well as they. On which, Ahaz, king of Judah, not to be behind-hand in folly, sent to the heathen king of Assyria to help him, just as the king of Israel had sent to the king of Damascus. He had better have been dead than to have done that. For those terrible Assyrians, who had set their hearts on conquering the whole east, were standing by, watching all the little kingdoms round tearing themselves to pieces by foolish wars, till they were utterly weak, and the time was ripe for the Assyrians to pounce upon them. The king of Assyria came. He swept away all the heathen people of Damascus, and killed their king. But he did not stop there. In a very few years, he came on into the land of Israel, besieged Samaria for three years, and took it, and carried off the whole of the inhabitants of the country; and there was an end of that miserable kingdom of Israel, which had been sinking lower and lower ever since the days of Jeroboam. This was the natural outcome of all their sin and folly, of which we have been reading for the last few Sundays.
Elijah’s warnings had been in vain, and Elisha’s warnings also. They liked, at heart, Ahab’s and Jezebel’s idolatries better than they did the worship of the true God. And why? Because, if they worshipped God, and kept his laws, they must needs have been more or less good men, upright, just, merciful, cleanly and chaste livers: while, on the other hand, they might worship their idols, and nevertheless be as bad as they chose. Indeed, the very idol-feasts and sacrifices were mixed up with all sorts of filthy sin, drunkenness and profligacy; so that it is a shame even to speak of the things which went on, especially at those sacrifices to Ashtaroth, the queen of heaven, of which they were so fond. They choose the worse part, and refused the better; and they were filled with the fruit of their own devices, as every unrepenting sinner surely will be.
But did the Jews of Judea and their king escape, who had thus brought the king of Assyria down to murder their own countrymen, and lay that fair land waste? Not they. A very few years more, the Assyrians were back again, and overran Judea itself, laying the country waste with fire and sword, till nothing was left to them, but the mere city of Jerusalem. And so they, too, were filled with the fruit of their own devices. In their madness they had destroyed their brethren, the people of Israel, who ought to have been a safeguard for them to the north; now there was nothing and no man to prevent the Assyrians, or any other invaders, from pouring right down into their land. Truly says Solomon, ‘He that diggeth a pit, shall fall into it, and he who breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.’ From that day, Judah became weaker and weaker, standing all alone. Good king Hezekiah, good king Josiah, could only stave off her ruin for a few years; a little while longer, and her cup was full too, and the Babylonians came and swept the Jews away into captivity, as the Assyrians had swept away Israel, and that fair land lay desolate for many a year.
The king of Assyria, we read, after he had carried away the people of Israel, brought heathens from Assyria, and settled them in the Holy Land, instead of the Israelites. But the Lord sent lions among them, we read; the land, I suppose, lying waste, the wild beasts increased, and became very dangerous: so these poor ignorant settlers sent to the king of Assyria, to beg for a Jewish priest, to teach them, as they said, the manner of the god of that land, that they might worship him, and not be terrified by the lions any more. It was a simple, confused notion of theirs: but it brought a blessing with it; for the king of Assyria sent them one of the Jewish priests who had been carried away from Samaria; and he came and lived at Beth-el, and taught them to fear the Lord. So these poor people got some confused notion of the one true God: but they mixed it up sadly with their old heathen idolatry, and made gods of their own, and some of them even burnt their children in the fire, to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim, from which town they had come. And so they went on for several hundred years, marrying with the remnant of the Israelites who were left behind, and worshipping idols and the true God at the same time. Now these people are the Samaritans, of whom you read so often in the New Testament. The Jews, when they came back, hated and despised the Samaritans, and would not speak to them, eat with them, trade with them, because they were only half-blooded Jews, and did not observe Moses’ law rightly; and so they were left to themselves: but as time went on, they seemed to have got rid of their old idolatry, and built themselves a temple on Mount Gerizim, by Samaria, in Jacob’s old haunts, by Jacob’s well, and there worshipped they knew not what. But still they did their best. And their reward came at last.
Many a hundred years had passed away. The proud Pharisees of Jerusalem were still calling them dogs and infidels; when there came to that half-heathen city of Samaria such a one as never came there before or since; and yet had been very near that place, and those poor Samaritans, for a thousand years.
And being wearied with his journey, he sat down upon the edge of Jacob’s well, by Joseph’s tomb. The well is still there, choked with rubbish to this very day; and Joseph’s tomb by it, all in ruins, among broad fields of corn. And on the edge of that well he sat. Along the very road which was before him, Jeroboam, and Ahab, and many a wicked king of Israel, had gone in old times, travelling between Shechem and Samaria: along that road the terrible Assyrians had marched back to their own land, leading strings of weeping prisoners out of their pleasant native land, to slavery and misery in the far North. He knew it all; and doubt not that he thought over it all, as never man thought on earth. Doubt not that his heart yearned over these poor ignorant Samaritans, and over the sinful woman who came to draw water at the well. After all, half-heathens as they were, Jacob’s blood was in their veins; and if not, were they not still human beings? They were worshipping they knew not what: but still they were worshipping the best which they knew.
‘Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. . . . So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word; and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.’
Oh, my friends, despise no man; for Christ despises none. He is no respecter of persons: but in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him. Despise no man; for by so doing you deny the Father, who has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the earth, and has appointed them their times, and the bounds of their habitation; if haply they may feel after him, and find him: though he be not far from any of us; for in him we live and move and have our being, and are the offspring of God. For hundreds of years those poor ignorant Samaritans had felt after him; in that foreign land to which the cruel Assyrian conqueror had banished them: but it was God who had appointed them their habitation there, and their time also; and, in due time, they found God: for he came to them, and found them, and spoke with them face to face.
Better to have been one of those ignorant Samaritans, than to have been King Ahab, or King Hoshea, in all their glory, with all their proud Jewish blood. Better to have been one of those ignorant Samaritans than one of those conceited Pharisees at Jerusalem, who, while they were priding themselves on being Abraham’s children, and keeping Moses’ law, ended by crucifying him who made Abraham, and Moses, and his law, and them themselves. Better to be the poorest negro slave, if, in the midst of his ignorance and misery and shame, he believes in Christ, and works righteousness, than the cleverest and proudest and freest Englishman, if, in the midst of his great light, he works the works of darkness, and, while he calls himself a child of God, lives the sinful life, on which God’s curse lies for ever.
So you who have many advantages, take warning by the fate of those foolish Jews, who knew a great deal, and yet did not do it, and so came to shame and ruin. And you who have few advantages, take comfort by those poor Samaritans, who knew a very little, and yet made the best of it, and so at last saw a great light, after sitting in darkness for so long. Schools, books, church-going, ordinances of all kinds, they are good. If you can get them, use them, and thank God for them: but remember, God does not ask for learning, but for goodness and holiness: he does not ask for knowledge, but for a right life. And do not fancy, that because your children have a good education now, and you had none, that God does not love you as well as he loves them. His mercy is over all his works; and the promises are to you as well as to your children. There is many a poor soul who never read a book in her life, who is nearer God than many a great scholar, and fine preacher, and learned divine. All Christ asks of you is, to receive him when he comes to you; and to love, and thank, and admire him, and try to be like him, because he will make you like him: while for the rest to whom little is given, of him shall little be required; and to him who uses what he has, be it little or much, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance. For God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted by him.