Twenty-Five Village Sermons

Genesis, vi. 9.

“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.”

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

Now you must bear in mind that the histories of these ancient men were, as St. Paul says, written for our example.  If these men in old times had been different from us, they would not be examples to us; but they were like us—men of like passions, says St. James, as ourselves; they had each of them in them a corrupt nature, which was continually ready to drag them down, and make beasts of them, and make them slaves to their own lusts—slaves to eating and drinking, and covetousness, and cowardice, and laziness, and love for the things which they could see and handle—just such a nature, in short, as we have.  And they had also a spirit in each of them which was longing to be free, and strong, and holy, and wise—such a spirit as we have.  And to them, just as to us, God was revealing himself; God was saying to their consciences, as He does to ours, ‘This is right, that is wrong; do this, and be free and clear-hearted; do that, and be dark and discontented, and afraid of thy own thoughts.’  And they too, like us, had to live by faith, by continual belief that they owed a duty to the great God whom they could not see, by continual belief that He loved them, and was guiding and leading them through every thing which happened, good or ill.

This is faith in God, by which alone we, or any man, can live worthily,—by which these old heroes lived.  We read, in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, that it was by faith these elders obtained a good report; and the whole history of the Old-Testament saints is the history of God speaking to the hearts of one man after another, teaching them each more and more about Himself, and the history also of these men listening to the voice of God in their hearts, and believing that voice, and acting faithfully upon it, into whatever strange circumstances or deeds it might lead them.  “By faith,” we read in this same chapter,—“by faith Noah, being warned of God, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”

Now, to understand this last sentence, you must remember that Noah was not under the law of Moses.  St. Paul has a whole chapter (the third chapter of Galatians) to shew that these old saints had nothing to do with Moses’ law any more than we have, that it was given to the Jews many hundred years afterwards.  So these histories of the Old-Testament saints are, in fact, histories of men who conquered by faith—histories of the power which faith in God has to conquer temptation, and doubt, and false appearances, and fear, and danger, and all which besets us and keeps us down from being free and holy, and children of the day, walking cheerfully forward on our heavenward road in the light of our Father’s loving smile.

Noah, we read, “was a just man, and perfect in his generations;” and why?  Because he was a faithful man—faithful to God, as it is written, “The just shall live by his faith;” not by trusting in what he does himself, in his own works or deservings, but trusting in God who made him, believing that God is perfectly righteous, perfectly wise, perfectly loving; and that, because He is perfectly loving, He will accept and save sinful man when He sees in sinful man the earnest wish to be His faithful, obedient servant, and to give himself up to the rule and guidance of God.  This, then, was Noah’s justice in God’s sight, as it was Abraham’s.  They believed God, and so became heirs of the righteousness which is by faith; not their own righteousness, not growing out of their own character, but given them by God, who puts His righteous Spirit into those who trust in Him.

But, moreover, we read that Noah “was perfect in his generations;” that is, he was perfect in all the relations and duties of life,—a good son, a good husband, a good father: these were the fruits of his faith.  He believed that the unseen God had given him these ties, had given him his parents, his children, and that to love them was to love God, to do his duty to them was to do his duty to God.  This was part of his walking with God, continually under his great Taskmaster’s eye,—walking about his daily business with the belief that a great loving Father was above him, whatever he did; ready to strengthen, and guide, and bless him if he did well, ready to avenge Himself on him if he did ill.  These were the fruits of Noah’s faith.

But you may think this nothing very wonderful.  Many a man in England does this every day, and yet no one ever hears of him; he attends to all his family ties, doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, like one who knows he is redeemed by Christ’s blood; he lives, he dies, he is buried, and out of his own parish his name is never known; while Noah has earned for himself a worldwide fame; for four thousand years his name has been spreading over the whole earth as one of the greatest men who ever lived.  Mighty nations have worshipped Noah as a God; many heathen nations worship him under strange and confused names and traditions to this day; and the wisest and holiest men among Christians now reverence Noah, write of him, preach on him, thank God for him, look up to him as, next to Abraham, their greatest example in the Old Testament.

Well, my friends, to understand what made Noah so great, we must understand in what times Noah lived.  “The wickedness of men was great in the earth in those days, and every imagination of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually, and the earth was filled with violence through them.”  And we must remember that the wickedness of men before the flood was not outwardly like wickedness now; it was not petty, mean, contemptible wickedness of silly and stupid men, such as could be despised and laughed down; it was like the wickedness of fallen angels.  Men were then strong and beautiful, cunning and active, to a degree of which we can form no conception.  Their enormous length of life (six, seven, and eight hundred years commonly) must have given them an experience and daring far beyond any man in these days.  Their bodily size and strength were in many cases enormous.  We read that “there were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”  Their powers of invention seem to have been proportionably great.  We read, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, how, within a few years after Adam was driven out of Paradise, they had learned to build cities, to tame the wild beasts, and live upon their milk and flesh; that they had invented all sorts of music and musical instruments; that they had discovered the art of working in metals.  We read among them of Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every workman in brass and iron; and the old traditions in the East, where these men dwelt, are full of strange and awful tales of their power.

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

This is the picture which the Bible gives us of the old world before the flood—a world of men mighty in body and mind, fierce and busy, conquering the world round them, in continual war and turmoil; with all the wild passions of youth, and yet all the cunning and experience of enormous old age; with the strength and the courage of young men to carry out the iniquity of old ones; every one guided only by self-will, having cast off God and conscience, and doing every man that which was right in the sight of his own eyes.  And amidst all this, while men, as wise, as old, as strong, as great as himself, whirled away round him in this raging sea of sin, Noah was stedfast; he, at least, knew his way,—“he walked with God, a just man, and perfect in his generations.”

To Noah, living in such a world as this, among temptation, and violence, and insult, no doubt, there came this command from God: “The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and I will destroy them with the earth.  And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life; but with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou shalt make thee an ark of wood after the fashion which I tell thee; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy family, and of every living thing, two of every sort, male and female, shalt thou bring into the ark, and keep them alive with thee; and take thou of all food that is eaten into the ark, for thee and for them.”  What a message, my friends!  If we wish to see a little of the greatness of Noah’s faith, conceive such a message coming from God to one of us!  Should we believe it—much less act upon it?  But Noah believed God, says the Scripture; and “according as God commanded him, so did he.”  Now, in whatever way this command came from God to Noah, it is equally wonderful.  Some of you, perhaps, will say in your hearts, ‘No! when God spoke to him, how could he help obeying Him?’  But, my friends, ask yourselves seriously,—for, believe me, it is a most important question for the soul and inner life of you and me, and every man—how did Noah know that it was God who spoke to him?  It is easy to say God appeared to him; but no man hath seen God at any time.  It is easy, again, to say that an angel appeared to him, or that God appeared to him in the form of a man; but still the same question is left to be answered, how did he know that this appearance came from God, and that its words were true?  Why should not Noah have said, ‘This was an evil spirit which appeared to me, trying to frighten and ruin me, and stir up all my neighbours to mock me, perhaps to murder me?’  Or, again; suppose that you or I saw some glorious apparition this day, which told us on such and such a day such and such a town will be destroyed, what should we think of it?  Should we not say, I must have been dreaming—I must have been ill, and so my brain and eyes must have been disordered, and treat the whole thing as a mere fancy of ill-health; now why did not Noah do the same?

Why do I say this?  To shew you, my friends, that it is not apparitions and visions which can make a man believe.  As it is written, “If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one rose from the dead.”  No; a man must have faith in his heart already.  A man must first be accustomed to discern right from wrong—to listen to and to obey the voice of God within him; that word of God of which it is said, “the word is nigh thee, in thy heart, and in thy mind,” before he can hear God’s word from without; else he will only explain away miracles, and call visions and apparitions sick men’s dreams.

But there was something yet more wonderful and divine in Noah’s faith,—I mean his patience.  He knew that a flood was to come—he set to work in faith to build his ark—and that ark was in building for one hundred and twenty years,—one hundred and twenty years!  It seems at first past all belief.  For all that time he built; and all the while the world went on just as usual; and, before he had finished, old men had died, and children grown into years; and great cities had sprung up perhaps where there was not a cottage before; and trees which were but a yard high when that ark was begun had grown into mighty forest-timber; and men had multiplied and spread, and yet Noah built and built on stedfastly, believing that what God had said would surely one day or other come to pass.  For one hundred and twenty years he saw the world go on as usual, and yet he never forgot that it was a doomed world.  He endured the laughter and mockery of all his neighbours, and every fresh child who was born grew up to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toiling for a hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they thought it; and yet Noah never lost faith, and he never lost love either—for all those years, we read, he preached righteousness to the very men who mocked him, and preached in vain—one hundred and twenty years he warned those sinners of God’s wrath, of righteousness and judgment to come, and no man listened to him!  That, I believe, must have been, after all, the hardest of all his trials.

And, doubtless, Noah had his inward temptation many a time; no doubt he was ready now and then to believe God’s message all a dream—to laugh at himself for his fears of a flood which seemed never coming, but in his heart was “the still small voice” of God, warning him that God was not a man that he should lie, or repent, or deceive those who walked faithfully with him; and around him he saw men growing and growing in iniquity, filling up the cup of their own damnation; and he said to himself, ‘Verily there is a God who judgeth the earth—for all this a reckoning day will surely come;’ and he worked stedfastly on, and the ark was finished.  And then at last there came a second call from God, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.  Yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth, and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the earth.”  And Noah entered into the ark, and seven days he waited; and louder than ever laughed the scoffers round him, at the old man and his family shut into his ark safe on dry land, while day and night went on as quietly as ever, and the world ran its usual round; for seven days more their mad game lasted—they ate, they drank, they married, they gave in marriage, they planted, they builded; and on the seventh day it came—the rain fell day after day, and week after week—and the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood arose, and swept them all away!

Gen. ix. 8, 9.

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

In my last sermon on Noah I spoke of the flood and of Noah’s faith before the flood; I now go on to speak of the covenant which God made with Noah after the flood.  Now, Noah stood on that newly-dried earth as the head of mankind; he and his family, in all eight souls, saved by God’s mercy from the general ruin, were the only human beings left alive, and had laid on them the wonderful and glorious duty of renewing the race of man, and replenishing the vast world around them.  From that little knot of human beings were to spring all the nations of the earth.

And because this calling and destiny of theirs was a great and all-important one—because so much of the happiness or misery of the new race of mankind depended on the teaching which they would get from their forefathers, the sons of Noah, therefore God thought fit to make with Noah and his sons a solemn covenant, as soon as they came out of the ark.

Let us solemnly consider this covenant, for it stands good now as much as ever.  God made it “with Noah, and his seed after him,” for perpetual generations.  And we are the seed of Noah; every man, woman, and child of us here were in the loins of Noah when the great absolute God gave him that pledge and promise.  We must earnestly consider that covenant, for in it lies the very ground and meaning of man’s life and business on this earth.

“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth; and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every living creature.  Into your hand they are delivered.  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things.  But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof shall ye not eat.  And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of men; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.  Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man.”

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

And again, they would have been ready to say, ‘This God, whom our forefather Noah said sent floods, we cannot see Him; but the floods themselves we can see.  All these clouds and tempests, lightning, sun, and stars, are we stronger than them?  No!  They may crush us, drown us, strike us dead at any moment.  They seem, too, to go by certain wonderful rules and laws; perhaps they have a will and understanding in them.  Instead of praying to a God whom we never saw, why not pray to the thunderclouds not to strike us dead, and to the seas and rivers not to sweep us away?  For this great, wonderful, awful world in which we are, however beautiful may be its flowers, and its fruits, and its sunshine, there is no trusting it; we are sitting upon a painted sepulchre, a beautiful monster, a gulf of flood and fire, which may burst up any moment, and sweep us away, as it did our forefathers.’

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

Again, Noah’s descendants would have said, ‘Our forefathers offered sacrifices to the unseen God, as a sign that all they had belonged to Him, and that they had forfeited their own souls by sin, and were therefore ready to give up the most precious things they had—their cattle, as a sign that they owed all to that very God whom they had offended.  But are not human creatures much more precious than cattle?  Will it not be a much greater sign of repentance and willingness to give up all to God if we offer Him the best things which we have—human creatures?  If we kill and sacrifice to Him our most beautiful and innocent things—little children—noble young men—beautiful young girls?’

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

But see, now, how this covenant which God made with Noah was intended just to remedy every one of those temptations which I just mentioned, into which Noah’s children’s children would have been certain to fall, and into which so many of them did fall.  They might have become reckless, I said, from fear of a flood at any moment.  God promises them—and confirms it with the sign of the rainbow—never again to destroy the earth by water.  They would have been likely to take to praying to the rain and the thunder, the sun and the stars; God declares in this covenant that it is He alone who sends the rain and thunder, that He brings the clouds over the earth, that He rules the great, awful world; that men are to look up and believe in God as a loving and thinking person, who has a will of His own, and that a faithful, and true, and loving, and merciful will; that their lives and safety depend not on blind chance, or the stern necessity of certain laws of nature, but on the covenant of an almighty and all-loving person.

Again, I said, that Noah’s sons would have been ready to fear, and, at last, to worship the dumb beasts; God’s covenant says, “No; these beasts are not your equals—they are your slaves—you may freely kill them for your food; the fear of you shall be upon them.  The huge elephant and the swift horse shall become your obedient servants; the lion and the tiger shall tremble and flee before you.  Only claim your rights as men; believe that the invisible God who made the earth is your strength and your protector, and that He to whom the earth belongs has made you lords of the earth and all that therein is.  But,” said God’s covenant to Noah’s sons, “you did not make these beasts—you did not give them life, therefore I forbid you to eat their blood wherein their life lies; that you may never forget that all the power you have over these beasts was given you by God, who made and preserves that wonderful, mysterious, holy thing called life, which you can never imitate.”  Again, I said, that Noah’s children, having been accustomed to the violence and bloodshed on the earth before the flood, might hold man’s life cheap; that, having seen in the flood men perish just like the beasts around them, they might have begun to think that man’s life was not more precious than the beasts’.  They might have all gone on at last, as some of them did, to those horrors of cannibalism and human sacrifice of which I just now spoke.  Now, here, again comes in God’s covenant, “Surely the blood of your lives will I require.  At the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of every man’s brother will I require it.  Whoso sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made He man.”  This, then, is the covenant which God made with Noah for perpetual generations, and therefore with us, the children of Noah.  In this covenant you see certain truths come out into light; some, of which you read nothing before in the Bible, and other truths which, though they were given to Adam, yet had been utterly lost sight of before the flood.  This has been God’s method, we find from the Bible, ever since the creation,—to lead man step by step up into more and more light, up to this very day, and to make each sin and each madness of men an occasion for revealing to Him more and more of truth and of the living God.  And so each and every chapter in the Bible is built upon all that has gone before it; and he that neglects to understand what has gone before will never come to the understanding of what follows after.  Why do I say this?  Because men are continually picking out those scraps of the Bible which suit their own fancy, and pinning their whole faith on them, and trying to make them serve to explain every thing in heaven and earth; whereas no man can understand the Epistles unless he first understand the Gospels.  No man will understand the New Testament unless he first understands the pith and marrow of the Old.  No man will understand the Psalms and the Prophets unless he first understands the first ten chapters of Genesis; and, lastly, no one will ever understand any thing about the Bible at all, who, instead of taking it simply as it is written, is always trying to twist it into proofs of his own favourite doctrines, and make Abraham a high Calvinist, or Noah a member of the Church of England.  Why do I say this?  To make you all think seriously that this covenant on which I have been preaching is your covenant; that as sure as the rainbow stands in heaven, as sure as you and I are sprung out of the loins of Noah, so surely this covenant which binds us is part of our Christian covenant, and woe to us if we break it!

This covenant tells us that we are made in God’s likeness, and, therefore, that all sin is unworthy of us and unnatural to us.  It tells us that God means us bravely and industriously to subdue the earth and the living things upon it; that we are to be the masters of the pleasant things about us, and not their slaves, as sots and idlers are; that we are stewards and tenants of this world for the great God who made it, to whom we are to look up in confidence for help and protection.  It tells us that our family relationships, the blessed duties of a husband and a father, are sacred things; that God has created them, that the great God of heaven Himself respects them, that the covenant which He makes with the father He makes with the children; that He commands marriage, and that He blesses it with fruitfulness; that it is He who has told us “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth;” that the tie of brotherhood is His making also; that He will require the blood of the murdered man at his brother’s hand; that a man’s brothers, his nearest relations, are bound to protect and right him if he is injured; so that we all are to be, in the deepest sense of the word, what Cain refused to be, our brothers’ keepers, and each member of a family is more or less answerable for the welfare and safety of all his relations.  Herein lies the ground of all religion and of all society—in the covenant which God made with Noah; and just as it is in vain for a man to pretend to be a scholar when he does not even know his letters, so it is mockery for a man to pretend to be a converted Christian man who knows not even so much as was commanded to Noah and his sons.  He who has not learnt to love, honour, and succour his own family—he who has not learnt to work in honest and manful industry—he who has not learnt to look beyond this earth, and its chance, and its customs, and its glittering outside, and see and trust in a great, wise, loving God, by whose will every tree grows and every shower falls, what is Christianity to him?  He has to learn the first principles which were delivered to Noah, and which not even the heathen and the savage have utterly forgotten.

Hebrews, xi. 9, 10.

“By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.  For he looked for a city, which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

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

You remember the story of the tower of Babel?  How certain of Noah’s family forgot the covenant which God had made with Noah, forgot that God had commanded them to go forth in every direction and fill the earth with human beings, solemnly promising to protect and bless them, and took on themselves to do the very opposite—set up a kingdom of their own fashion, and herded together for selfish safety, instead of going forth to all the quarters of the world in a natural way, according to their families, in their tribes, after their nations, as the eleventh chapter of Genesis says they ought to have done.  “Let us build us a city and a tower, and make us a name, lest,” they said, “we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole world.”  Here was one act of disobedience to God’s order.  But besides this they had fallen into a slavish dread of the powers of nature—they were afraid of another flood.  They set to to build a tower, on which they might worship the sun and stars, and the host of heaven, and pray to them to send no more floods and tempests.  They thus fell into a slavish fear of the powers of nature, as well as into a selfish and artificial civilisation.  In short, they utterly broke the covenant which God had made with Noah.  But by miraculously confounding their language, God drove them forth over the face of the whole earth, and so forced them to do that which they ought to have done willingly at first.

Now, we must remember that all this happened in the very country in which Abraham lived.  He must have heard of it all—for aught we know he had seen the tower of Babel.  So that, for good or for evil, the whole Babel event must have produced a strong effect on the mind of a thoughtful man like Abraham, and raised many strange questionings in his heart, which God alone could answer for him, or for us.  Now, what did God mean to teach Abraham by calling him out of his country, and telling him, “I will make of thee a great nation?”  I think He meant to shew him, for one thing, that that Babel plan of society was utterly absurd and accursed, certain to come to naught, and so to lead him on to hope for a city which had foundations, and to see that its builder and maker must be, not the selfishness or the ambition of men, but the will, and the wisdom, and providence of God.

Let us see how God led Abraham on to understand this—to look for a city which had foundations; in short, to understand what a State and a nation means and ought to be.  First, God taught him that he was not to cling coward-like to the place where he was born, but to go out boldly to colonise and subdue the earth, for the great God of heaven would protect and guide him.  “Get thee out of thy country and from thy father’s house unto a land which I will shew thee.  And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee.”  Again; God taught him what a nation was: “I will make of thee a great nation.”  As much as to say, ‘Never fancy, as those fools at Babel did, that a nation only means a great crowd of people—never fancy that men can make themselves into a nation just by feeding altogether, and breeding altogether, and fighting altogether, as the herds of wild cattle and sheep do, while there is no real union between them.’  For what brought those Babel men together?  Just what keeps a herd of cattle together—selfishness and fear.  Each man thought he would be safer, forsooth, in company.  Each man thought that if he was in company, he could use his neighbours’ wits as well as his own, and have the benefit of his neighbours’ strength as well as his own.  And that is all true enough; but that does not make a nation.  Selfishness can join nothing; it may join a set of men for a time, each for his own ends, just as a joint-stock company is made up; but it will soon split them up again.  Each man, in a merely selfish community, will begin, after a time, to play on his own account as well as work on his own account—to oppress and overreach for his own ends as well as to be honest and benevolent for his own ends, for he will find ill-doing far easier, and more natural, in one sense, and a plan that brings in quicker profits, than well-doing; and so this godless, loveless, every-man-for-himself nation, or sham nation rather, this joint-stock company, in which fools expect that universal selfishness will do the work of universal benevolence, will quarrel and break up, crumble to dust again, as Babel did.  “But,” says God to Abraham, “I will make of thee a great nation.  I make nations, and not they themselves.”  So it is, my friends: this is the lesson which God taught Abraham, the lesson which we English must learn nowadays over again, or smart for it bitterly—that God makes nations.  He is King of kings; “by Him kings reign and princes decree judgment.”  He judges all nations: He nurtureth the nations.  This is throughout the teaching of the Psalms.  “It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture;” for this I take to be the true bearing of that glorious national hymn the 100th Psalm, and not merely the old truism that men did not create themselves, when it exhorts all nations to praise God because it is He that hath made them nations, and not they themselves.  The Psalms set forth the Son of God as the King of all nations.  In Him, my friends,—in Him all the nations of the earth are truly blessed.

He the Saviour of a few individual souls only?  God forbid!  To Him all power is given in heaven and earth; by Him were all things created, whether in heaven or earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers;—all national life, all forms of government, whether hero-despotisms, republics, or monarchies, aristocracies of birth, or of wealth, or of talent,—all were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist and hold together.  Every thing or institution on earth which has systematic and organic life in it—by Him it consists—by Him, the Life and the Light who lighteneth every man that cometh into the world.  From Him come law, and order, and spiritual energy, and loving fellow-feeling, and patriotism, the spirit of wisdom, and understanding, and prudence—all, in short, by which a nation consists and holds together.  It is not constitutions, and acts of parliament, and social contracts, and rights of the people, and rights of kings, and so on, which make us a nation.  These are but the effects, and not the consequences, of the national life.  That is the one spirit which is shed abroad upon a country, whose builder and maker is God, and which comes down from above—comes down from Christ the King of kings, who has given each nation its peculiar work on this earth, its peculiar circumstances and history to mould and educate it for its work, and its peculiar spirit and national character, wherewith to fulfil the destiny which Christ has appointed for it.

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

But again; God said to Abraham, when He had led him into this far country, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.”  This was a great and a new lesson for Abraham, that the earth belonged to that same great invisible God who had promised to guide and protect him, and make him into a nation—that this same God gave the earth to whomsoever He would, and allotted to each people their proper portion of it.  “He (said St. Paul on the Areopagus) hath determined the times before appointed for all nations, and the bounds of their habitation, that they may seek after the Lord and find Him.”  Ah! this must have been a strange and a new feeling to Abraham; but, stranger still, though God had given him this land, he was not to take possession of a single foot of it; the land was already in the hands of a different nation, the people of Canaan; and Abraham was to go wandering about a sojourner, as the text says, in this very land of promise which God had given him, without ever taking possession of his own, simply because it belonged to others already.  How this must have taught Abraham that the rights of property were sacred things—things appointed by God; that it was an awful and a heinous sin to make wanton war on other people, to drive them out and take possession of their land; that it was not mere force or mere fancy which gave men a right to a country, but the providence of Almighty God!  Now Abraham needed this warning, for the men of Babel seem from the first to have gone on the plan of driving out and conquering the tribes round them.  They seem to have set up their city partly from ambition.  “Let us make us a name,” they said, meaning, ‘Let us make ourselves famous and terrible to all the people around us, that we may subdue them.’  And we read of Nimrod, who was their first king and the founder of Babel, that he was a mighty hunter before the Lord, that is, as most learned men explain it, a mighty conqueror and tyrant in defiance of God and His laws, as the poet says of him,

“A mighty hunter, and his game was man.”

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

Now in the 14th chapter of Genesis there is an account of Abraham’s being called on to put in practice what he had learnt, and, by doing so, learning a fresh lesson.  We read of four kings making war against five kings, against Chedorlaomer, king of Elam or Persia, who had been following the ways of Nimrod and the men of Babel, and conquering these foreign kings and making them serve him.  We read of Chedorlaomer and four other kings coming down and wantonly ravaging and destroying other countries, besides the five kings who had rebelled against them, and at last carrying off captive the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot, Abraham’s nephew.  We read then how Abraham armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen men, and pursued after these tyrants and plunderers, and with his small force completely overthrew that great army.  Now that was a sign and a lesson to Abraham, as much as to say, ‘See the fruits of having the great God of heaven and earth for your protector and your guide,—see the fruits of having men round you, not hirelings, keeping in your company just to see what they can get by it, but born in your own house, who love and trust you, whom you can love and trust,—see how the favour of God, and reverence for those family ties and duties which He has appointed, make you and your little band of faithful men superior to these great mobs of selfish, godless, unjust robbers,—see how hundreds of these slaves ran away before one man, who feels that he is a member of a family, and has a just cause for fighting, and that God and his brethren are with him.’

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

And now some of you may say, ‘This is a strange sermon.  You have as yet said nothing of Christ, nothing of the Holy Spirit, nothing of grace, redemption, sanctification.  What kind of sermon is this?’

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

And, surely, men are doing so in these days; men are forgetting that other foundation can no man lay save that which is laid, which is Christ; they laugh at the thought of a city, that is, a state and form of government, “not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;” they have forgotten that St. Paul tells them in the Hebrews that we have “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” a kingdom which cannot be moved.  Yes, men who call themselves learned and worldly wise, and good men too, alas! who fancy that they are preaching God’s gospel, go about and tell men, ‘The men of Babel were right after all.  What have nations to do with God and religion?  Nations are merely earthly, carnal things, that were only invented by sinful men themselves, to preserve their bodies and goods, and make trading easy.  Religion has only to do with a man’s private opinions, his single soul; the government has nothing to do with the Church: a Christian has nothing to do with politics.’  And so these men most unwittingly open a door to all sorts of covetousness and meanness in the nation, and all sorts of trickery and cowardice in the government.  Tell a man that his business has nothing to do with God, and you cannot wonder if he acts without thinking of God.  If you tell a nation that it is selfishness which makes it prosperous, of course you must expect it to be selfish.  If you tell us Englishmen that the duties of a citizen are not duties to God, but only duties to the constable and the tax-gatherer, what wonder if men believe you and become undutiful to God in their citizenship?  No, my friends, once for all, as sure as God made Abraham a great nation, so if we English are a great nation, God has made us so—as sure as God gave Abraham the land of Canaan for his possession, so did He give us this land of England, when He brought our Saxon forefathers out of the wild barren north, and drove out before them nations greater and mightier than they, and gave them great and goodly cities which they builded not, and wells digged which they digged not, farms and gardens which they planted not, that we too might fear the Lord our God, and serve Him, and swear by His name;—as sure as He commanded Abraham to respect the property of his neighbours, so has He commanded us;—as sure as God taught Abraham that the nation which was to grow from him owed a duty to God, and could be only strong by faith in God, so it is with us: we, English people, owe a duty to God, and are to deal among ourselves, and with foreign countries, by faith in God, and in the fear of God, “seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” sure that then all other things—victory, health, commerce, art, and science—will be added to us, as the first Lesson says.  For this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people!  For what nation is grown so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as these laws, this gospel, which God sets before us day by day?—us, Englishmen!

And I say that these are proper thoughts for this place.  This is not a mere preaching-house, where you may learn every man to save his own soul; this is a far nobler place; this building belongs to the National Church of England, and we worship here, not merely as men, but as men of England, citizens of a Christian country, come here to learn not merely how to save ourselves, but how to help towards the saving of our families, our parish, and our nation; and therefore we must know what a country and a nation mean, and what is the meaning of that glorious and divine word, “a citizen;” that by learning what it is to be a citizen of England, we may go on to learn fully what it is to be a citizen of the kingdom of God.

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

Hebrews, xi. 17–19.

“By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that had received the promises offered up his only-begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.”

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

You know, most of you, doubtless, that Isaac, Abraham’s son, was come to him out of the common course of nature—when he and his wife, Sarah, were of an age which seemed to make all chance of a family utterly hopeless.  You remember how God promised Abraham that this boy should be born to him at a certain time, when He appeared to him on the plains of Mamre, in that most solemn and deep-meaning vision of which I spoke to you last Sunday.  You remember, too, no doubt, most of you, how God had promised Abraham again and again, that in his seed, his children, all the nations of the earth should be blessed; so that all Abraham’s hopes were wrapped up in this boy Isaac; he was his only son, whom he loved; he was the child of his old age, his glory and his joy; he was the child of God’s promises.  Every time Abraham looked at him he felt that Isaac was a wonderful child: that God had a great work for him to do; that from that single boy a great nation was to spring, as many in multitude as the stars in the sky, or the sand on the sea-shore, for the great Almighty God had said it.  And he knew, too, that from that boy, who was growing up by him in his tent, all the nations in the earth should be blessed: so that Isaac, his son, was to Abraham a daily sacrament, as I may say, a sign and a pledge that God was with him, and would be true to him; that as surely as God had wonderfully and beyond all hope given him that son, so wonderfully and beyond all hope He would fulfil all His other promises.  Conceive, then, if you can, what Abraham’s astonishment, and doubt, and terror, and misery, must have been at such a message as this from the very God who had given Isaac to him: “And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.  And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”

What a storm of doubt it must have raised in Abraham’s mind!  How unable he must have been to say whether that message came from a good or bad spirit, or commanded him to do a good action or a bad one; that the same God who had said, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed;” who had forbidden murder as the very highest of crimes, should command him to shed the blood of his own son; that the same God who had promised him that in Isaac all the nations of the earth should be blessed, should command him to put to death that very son upon whom all his hopes depended!  Fearful, indeed, must have been the struggle in Abraham’s mind, but the good and the right thought conquered at last.  His feeling was, no doubt, ‘This God who has blessed me so long, who has guided me so long, whom I have obeyed so long, shall I not trust Him a little further yet? how can I believe that He will do wrong? how can I believe that He will lead me wrong?  If it is really wrong that I should kill my son, He will not let me do it: if it really is His will that I should kill my son, I will do it.  Whatever He says must be right; it is agony and misery to me, but what of that?  Do I not owe Him a thousand daily and hourly blessings?  Has He not led me hither, preserved me, guided me, taught me the knowledge of Himself,—chosen me to be the father of a great nation?  Do I not owe Him everything? and shall I not bear this sharp sorrow for His sake?  I know, too, that if Isaac dies, all my hope, all my joy, will die with him; that I shall have nothing left to look for, nothing left to work for in this world.  Nothing! shall I not have God left to me?  When Isaac is dead will the Lord die? will the Lord change? will He grow weak?—Never!  Years ago did He declare to me that He was the Almighty God; I will believe that He will be always Almighty; I will believe that though I kill my son, my son will be still in God’s hands, and I shall be still in God’s hands, and that God is able to raise him again, even from the dead.  God can give him back to me, and if He will not give him back to me, He can fulfil His promises in a thousand other ways.  Ay, and He will fulfil His promises, for in Him is neither deceit, nor fickleness, nor weakness, nor unrighteousness of any kind; and, come what will, I will believe His promise and I will obey His will.’

Some such thoughts as these, I suppose, passed through Abraham’s mind.  He could not have had a man’s heart in him indeed, if not only those thoughts, but ten thousand more, sadder, and stranger, and more pitiful than my weak brain can imagine, did not sweep like a storm through his soul at that last and terrible temptation, but the Bible tells us nothing of them: why should the Bible tell us anything of them? the Bible sets forth Abraham as the faithful man, and therefore it simply tells us of his faith, without telling us of his doubts and struggles before he settled down into faith.  It tells us, as it were, not how often the wind shifted and twisted about during the tempest, but in what quarter the wind settled when the tempest was over, and it began to blow steadily, and fixedly, and gently, and all was bright, and mild, and still in Abraham’s bosom again, just as a man’s mind will be bright, and gentle, and calm, even at the moment he is going to certain death or fearful misery, if he does but know that his suffering is his duty, and that his trial is his heavenly Father’s will: and so all we read in the Old-Testament account is simply, “And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.  Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.  And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.  And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.  And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father, and he said, Here am I, my son.  And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? and Abraham said, My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering.  So they went both of them together.  And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.  And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.”

Really if one is to consider the whole circumstances of Abraham’s trials, they seem to have been infinite, more than mortal man could bear; more than he could have borne, no doubt, if the same God who tried had not rewarded his strength of mind by strengthening him still more, and rewarded his faith by increasing his faith; when we consider the struggle he must have had to keep the dreadful secret from the young man’s mother, the tremendous effort of controlling himself, the long and frightful journey, the necessity, and yet the difficulty he seems to have felt of keeping the truth from his son, and yet of telling him the truth, which he did in those wonderful words, “God shall provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering” (on which I shall have occasion to speak presently); and, last and worst of all, the perfect obedience and submission of his son; for Isaac was not a child then, he was a young man of nearly thirty years of age; strong and able enough, no doubt, to have resisted his aged father, if he had chosen.  But the very excellence of Isaac seems to have been, that he did not resist, that he shewed the same perfect trust and obedience to Abraham that Abraham did towards God; for he was led “as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth,” for we read, “Abraham bound Isaac his son and laid him on the wood.”  Surely that was the bitterest pang of all, to see the excellence of his son shine forth just when it was too late for him to enjoy him—to find out what a perfect child he had, in simple trust and utter obedience, just at the very moment when he was going to lose him: “And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son.”

At that point Abraham’s trial finished.  He had shewn the completeness of his faith by the completeness of his works, that is, by the completeness of his obedience.  He had utterly given up all for God.  He had submitted his will completely to God’s will.  He had said in heart, as our Blessed Lord said, “Father, if it be possible, let this woe pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt;” and thus I say, he was justified by his works, by his actions; that is, by this faithful action he proved the faithfulness of his heart, as the Angel said to him, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me:” for as St. James says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?  Seest thou,” says he, “how his faith wrought with his works;” how his works were the tool or instrument which his faith used; and by his works his faith was brought to perfection, as a tree is brought to perfection when it bears fruit.  “And so,” St. James continues, “the scripture was fulfilled, which says, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God.  Ye see then,” he says, “how that by works a man is justified,” or shewn to be righteous and faithful, “and not by faith only;” that is, not by the mere feeling of faith, for, as he says, “as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”  For what is the sign of a being dead?  It is its not being able to do anything, not being able to work; because there is no living and moving spirit in it.  And what is the sign of a man’s faith being dead? his faith not being able to work, because there is no living spirit in it, but it is a mere dead, empty shell and form of words,—a mere notion and thought about believing in a man’s head, but not a living trust and loyalty to God in his heart.  Therefore, says St. James, “shew me thy faith without thy works,” if thou canst, “and I will shew thee my faith by my works,” as Abraham did by offering up Isaac his son.

Oh! my friends, when people are talking about faith and works, and trying to reconcile St. Paul and St. James, as they call it, because St. Paul says Abraham was justified by faith, and St. James says Abraham was justified by works, if they would but pray for the simple, childlike heart, and the head of common sense, and look at their own children, who, every time they go on a message for them, settle, without knowing it, this mighty difference of man’s making between faith and works.  You tell a little child daily to do many things the meaning and use of which it cannot understand; and the child has faith in what you tell it; and, therefore, it does what you tell it, and so it shews its faith in you by obedience in working for you.

But to go on with the verses: “And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.”

Now, here remark two things; first, that it was Abraham’s obedience in giving up all to God, which called forth from God this confirmation of God’s promises to him; and next, that God here promised him nothing new; God did not say to him, ‘Because thou hast obeyed me in this great matter, I will give thee some great reward over and above what I promised thee.’  No; God merely promises him over again, but more solemnly than ever, what He had promised him many years before.

And so it will be with us, my friends, we must not expect to buy God’s favour by obeying Him,—we must not expect that the more we do for God, the more God will be bound to do for us, as the Papists do.  No; God has done for us all that He will do.  He has promised us all that He will promise.  He has provided us, as He provided Abraham, a lamb for the burnt-offering, the Lamb without blemish and without spot, which taketh away the sins of the world.  We are His redeemed people—we have a share in His promises—He bids us believe that, and shew that we believe it by living as redeemed men, not our own, but bought with a price, and created anew in Christ Jesus to do good works; not that we may buy forgiveness by them, but that we may shew by them that we believe that God has forgiven us already, and that when we have done all that is commanded us, we are still unprofitable servants; for though we should give up at God’s bidding our children, our wives, and our own limbs and lives, and shew as utter faith in God, and complete obedience to God, as Abraham did, we should only have done just what it was already our duty to do.

1 John, ii. 13.

“I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.”

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

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

Now for the meaning of “little children.”  There are those who will tell you that those words mean merely “weak believers,” “babes in grace,” and so on.  They mean that, no doubt; but they mean much more.  They mean, first of all, be sure, what they say.  St. John would not have said “little children,” if he had not meant little children.  Surely God’s apostle did not throw about his words at random, so as to leave them open to mistakes, and want some one to step in and tell us that they do not mean their plain, common-sense meaning, but something else.  Holy Scripture is too wisely written, and too awful a matter, to be trifled with in that way, and cut and squared to suit our own fancies, and explained away, till its blessed promises are made to mean anything or nothing.

No!  By little children, St. John means here children in age,—of course Christian children and young people, for he was writing only to Christians.  He speaks to those who have been christened, and brought up, more or less, as christened children should be.  But, no doubt, when he says little children, he means also all Christian people, whether they be young or old, whose souls are still young, and weak, and unlearned.  All, however old they may be, who have not been confirmed—I do not merely mean confirmed by the bishop, but confirmed by God’s grace,—all those who have not yet come to a full knowledge of their own sins,—all who have not yet been converted, and turned to God with their whole hearts and wills, who have not yet made their full choice between God and sin,—all who have not yet fought for themselves the battle which no man or angel can fight for them—I mean the battle between their selfishness and their duty—the battle between their love of pleasure and their fear of sin—the battle, in short, between the devil and his temptations to darkness and shame, and God and His promises of light, and strength, and glory,—all who have not been converted to God, to them St. John speaks as little children—people who are not yet strong enough to stand alone, and do their duty on God’s side against sin, the world, and the devil.  And all of you here who have not yet made up your minds, who have not yet been confirmed in soul,—whether you were confirmed by the bishop or not,—to you I speak this day.

Now, first of all, consider this,—that though St. John calls you “little children,” because you are still weak, and your souls have not grown to manhood, yet he does not speak to you as if you were heathens and knew nothing about God; he says, “I have written unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.”  Consider that; that was his reason for all that he had written to them before; that they had known the Father, the God who made heaven and earth—the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—the Father of little children—my Father and your Father, my friends, little as we may behave like what we are, sons of the Almighty God.  That was St. John’s reason for speaking to little children, because they had already known the Father.  So he does not speak to them as if they were heathens; and I dare not speak to you, young people, as if you were heathens, however foolish and sinful some of you may be; I dare not do it, whatever many preachers may do nowadays; not because I should be unfair and hard upon you merely, but because I should lie, and deny the great grace and mercy which God has shewn you, and count the blood of the covenant, with which you were sprinkled at baptism, an unholy thing; and do despite to the spirit of grace which has been struggling in your hearts, trying to lead you out of sin into good, out of light into darkness, ever since you were born.  Therefore, as St. John said, I say, I preach this day to you, young people, because you have known your Father in heaven!

But some of you may say to me, ‘You put a great honour on us; but we do not see that we have any right to it.  You tell us that we have a very noble and awful knowledge—that we know the Father.  We are afraid that we do not know Him; we do not even rightly understand of whom or what you preach.’

Well, my young friends, these are very awful words of St. John; such blessed and wonderful words, that if we did not find them in the Bible, it would be madness and insolence to God of us to say such a thing, not merely of little children, but even of the greatest, and wisest, and holiest man who ever lived; but there they are in the Bible—the blessed Lord Himself has told us all, “When ye pray, say, Our Father in heaven;”—and I dare not keep them back because they sound strange.  They may sound strange, but they are not strange.  Any one who has ever watched a young child’s heart, and seen how naturally and at once the little innocent takes in the thought of his Father which is in heaven, knows that it is not a strange thought—that it comes to a little child almost by instinct—that his Father in heaven seems often to be just the thought which fills his heart most completely, has most power over him,—the thought which has been lying ready in his heart all the time, only waiting for some one to awaken it, and put it into words for him; that he will do right when you put him in mind of his Father above the skies sooner than he will for a hundred punishments.  For truly says the poet,—

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

And yet more truly said the Blessed One Himself, “That children’s angels always behold the face of our Father which is in heaven;” and that “of such is the kingdom of heaven.”  Yet you say, some of you, perhaps, ‘Whatever knowledge of our Father in heaven we had, or ought to have had, when we were young, we have lost it now.  We have forgotten what we learnt at school.  We have been what you would call sinful; at all events, we have been thinking all our time about a great many things beside religion, and they have quite put out of our head the thought that God is our Father.  So how have we known our Father in heaven?’

Well, then, to answer that,—consider the case of your earthly fathers, the men who begot you and brought you up.  Now there might be one of you who had never seen his father since he was born, but all he knows of him is, that his name is so and so, and that he is such and such a sort of man, as the case might be; and that he lives in such and such a place, far away, and that now and then he hears talk of his father, or receives letters or presents from him.  Suppose I asked that young man, Do you know your father? would he not answer—would he not have a right to answer, ‘Yes, I know him.  I never saw him, or was acquainted with him, but I know him well enough; I know who he is, and where to find him, and what sort of a man he is.’  That young man might not know his father’s face, or love him, or care for him at all.  He might have been disobedient to his father; he might have forgotten for years that he had a father at all, and might have lived on his own way, just as if he had no father.  But when he was put in mind of it all, would he not say at once, ‘Yes, I know my father well enough; his name is so and so, and he lives at such and such a place.  I know my father.’

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

Well, but you will ask, What has all this to do with confirmation?  It has all to do with confirmation.  Because you are God’s children, and know that you are God’s children, you are to go and confirm before the bishop your right to be called God’s children.  You are to go and claim your share in God’s kingdom.  If you were heir to an estate, you would go and claim your estate from those who held it.  You are heirs to an estate—you are heirs to the kingdom of heaven; go to confirmation, and claim that kingdom, say, ‘I am a citizen of God’s kingdom.  Before the bishop and the congregation, here I proclaim the honour which God has put upon me.’  If you have a father, you will surely not be ashamed to own him!  How much more when the Almighty God of heaven is your Father!  You will not be ashamed to own Him?  Then go to confirmation; for by doing so you own God for your Father.  If you have an earthly father, you will not be ashamed to say, ‘I know I ought to honour him and obey him;’ how much more when your father is the Almighty God of heaven, who sent His own Son into the world to die for you, who is daily heaping you with blessings body and soul!  You will not be ashamed to confess that you ought to honour and obey Him?  Then go to confirmation, and say, ‘I here take upon myself the vow and promise made for me at my baptism.  I am God’s child, and therefore I will honour, love, and obey Him.  It is my duty; and it shall be my delight henceforward to work for God, to do all the good I can to my life’s end, because my Father in heaven loves the good, and has commanded me, poor, weak countryman though I be, to work for Him in well-doing.’  So I say, If God is your Father, go and own Him at confirmation.  If God is your Father, go and promise to love and obey Him at confirmation; and see if He does not, like a strong and loving Father as He is, confirm you in return,—see if He does not give you strength of heart, and peace of mind, and clear, quiet, pure thoughts, such as a man or woman ought to have who considers that the great God, who made the sky and stars above their heads, is their Father.  But, perhaps, there are some of you, young people, who do not wish to be confirmed.  And why?  Now, look honestly into your own hearts and see the reason.  Is it not, after all, because you don’t like the trouble?  Because you are afraid that being confirmed will force you to think seriously and be religious; and you had rather not take all that trouble yet?  Is it not because you do not like to look your ownselves in the face, and see how foolishly you have been living, and how many bad habits you will have to give up, and what a thorough conversion and change you must make, if you are to be confirmed in earnest?  Is not this why you do not wish to be confirmed?  And what does that all come to?  That though you know you are God’s children, you do not like to tell people publicly that you are God’s children, lest they should expect you to behave like God’s children—that is it.  Now, young men and young women, think seriously once for all—if you have any common sense—I do not say grace, left in you—think!  Are you not playing a fearful game?  You would not dare to deny your fathers on earth—to refuse to obey them, because you know well enough that they would punish you—that if you were too old for punishment, your neighbours, at least, would despise you for mean, ungrateful, and rebellious children!  But because you cannot see God your Father, because you have not some sign or wonder hanging in the sky to frighten you into good behaviour, therefore you are not afraid to turn your backs on him.  My friends, it is ill mocking the living God.  Mark my words!  If a man will not turn He will whet His sword, and make us feel it.  You who can be confirmed, and know in your hearts that you ought to be confirmed, and ought to be really converted and confirmed in soul, and make no mockery of it,—mark my words!  If you will not be converted and confirmed of your own good will, God, if He has any love left for you, will convert and confirm you against your will.  He will let you go your own ways till you find out your own folly.  He will bring you low with affliction perhaps, with sickness, with ill-luck, with shame.  Some way or other, He will chastise you, again and again, till you are forced to come back to Him, and take His service on you.  If He loves you, He will drive you home to your Father’s house.  You may laugh at my words now, see if you laugh at them when your hairs are grey.  Oh, young people, if you wish in after-life to save yourselves shame and sorrow, and perhaps, in the world to come eternal death, come to confirmation, acknowledge God for your Father, promise to come and serve Him faithfully, make those blessed words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father in heaven,” your glory and your honour, your guide and guard through life, your title-deeds to heaven.  You who know that the Great God is your Father, will you be ashamed to own yourselves His sons?