Matthew xvi. 3. Oh ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
It will need, I think, some careful thought thoroughly to understand this text. Our Lord in it calls the Pharisees and Sadducees hypocrites; because, though they could use their common sense and experience to judge of the weather they would not use them to judge of the signs of the times; of what was going to happen to the Jewish nation.
But how was their conduct hypocritical? Stupid we might call it, or unreasonable: but how hypocritical? That, I think, we may see better, by considering what the word hypocrite means.
We mean now, generally, by a hypocrite, a man who pretends to be one thing, while he is another; who pretends to be pious and good, while he is leading a profligate life in secret; who pretends to believe certain doctrines, while at heart he disbelieves them; a man, in short, who is a scoundrel, and knows it; but who does not intend others to know it: who deceives others, but does not deceive himself.
My friends, such a man is a hypocrite: but there is another kind of hypocrite, and a more common one by far; and that is, the hypocrite who not only deceives others, but deceives himself likewise; the hypocrite who (as one of the wisest living men puts it) is astonished that you should think him hypocritical.
I do not say which of these two kinds is the worse. My duty is to judge no man. I only say that there are such people, and too many of them; that we ourselves are often in danger of becoming such hypocrites; and that this was the sort of people which the Pharisees for the most part were. Hypocrites who had not only deceived others, but themselves also; who thought themselves perfectly right, honest, and pious; who were therefore astonished and indignant at Christ’s calling them hypocrites.
How did they get into this strange state of mind? How may we get into it?
Consider first what a hypocrite means. It means strictly neither more nor less than a play-actor; one who personates different characters on the stage. That is the one original meaning of the word hypocrite.
Now recollect that a man may personate characters, like a play-actor, and pretend to be what he is not, for two different objects. He may do it for other people’s sake, or for his own.
1. For other people’s sake. As the Pharisees did, when they did all their works to be seen of men; and therefore, naturally, gave their attention as much as possible to outward forms and ceremonies, which could be seen by men.
Now, understand me, before I go a step further, I am not going to speak against forms and ceremonies. No man less: and, above all, not against the Church forms and ceremonies, which have grown up, gradually and naturally, out of the piety, and experience, and practical common sense of many generations of God’s saints. Men must have forms and ceremonies to put them in mind of the spiritual truths which they cannot see or handle. Men cannot get on without them; and those who throw away the Church forms have to invent fresh ones, and less good ones, for themselves.
All, I say, have their forms and ceremonies; and all are in danger, as we churchmen are, of making those forms stand instead of true religion. In the Church or out of the Church, men are all tempted to have, like the Pharisees, their traditions of the elders, their little rules as to conduct, over and above what the Bible and the Prayer-book have commanded; and all are tempted to be more shocked if those rules are broken, than if really wrong and wicked things are done; and like the Pharisees of old, to be careful in paying tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, the commonest garden herbs, and yet forget the weighty matters of the law, justice, mercy, and judgment. I have known those who would be really more shocked at seeing a religious man dance or sing, than at hearing him tell a lie. But I will give no examples, lest I should set you on judging others. Or rather, the only example which I will give is that of these Pharisees, who have become, by our Lord’s words about them, famous to all time, as hypocrites.
Now you must bear in mind that these Pharisees were not villains and profligates. Many people, feeling, perhaps, how much of what the Lord had said against the Pharisees would apply to them, have tried to escape from that ugly thought, by making out the Pharisees worse men than our Lord does. But the fact is, that they cannot be proved to be worse than too many religious people now-a-days. There were adulterers, secret loose-livers among them. Are there none now-a-days? They were covetous. Are no religious professors covetous now-a-days? They crept into widows’ houses, and, for a pretence made long prayers. Does no one do so now? There would, of course, be among them, as there is among all large religious parties, as there is now, a great deal of inconsistent and bad conduct. But, on the whole, there is no reason to suppose that the greater number of them were what we should call ill-livers. In that terrible twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew, in which our Lord denounces the sins of the Scribes and Pharisees, he nowhere accuses them of profligate living; and the Pharisee of whom he tells us in his parable, who went into the Temple to pray, no doubt spoke truth when he boasted of not being as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers. He trusted in himself that he was righteous. True. But whatever that means, it means that he thought that he was righteous, after a fashion, though it proved to be a wrong one. What our Lord complains of in them is, first, their hardness of heart; their pride in themselves, and their contempt for their fellowmen. Their very name Pharisee meant that. It meant separate—they were separate from mankind; a peculiar people; who alone knew the law, with whom alone God was pleased: while the rest of mankind, even of their own countrymen, knew not the law, and were accursed, and doomed to hell. Ah God, who are we to cast stones at the Pharisees of old, when this is the very thing which you may hear said in England from hundreds of pulpits every Sunday, with the mere difference, that instead of the word law, men put the word gospel.
For this our Lord denounced them; and next, for their hypocrisy, their play-acting, the outward show of religion in which they delighted; trying to dress, and look, and behave differently from other men; doing all their good works to be seen of men; sounding a trumpet before them when they gave away alms; praying standing at the corners of the streets; going in long clothing, making broad their phylacteries, the written texts of Scripture which they sewed to their garments; washing perpetually when they came from the market, or any public place, lest they should have been defiled by the touch of an unclean thing, or person; loving the chief seats in their religious meetings, and the highest places at feasts; and so forth,—full of affectation, vanity, and pride.
I could tell you other stories of their ridiculous affectations: but I shall not. They would only make you smile: and we could not judge them fairly, not being able to make full allowance for the difference of customs between the Jews and ourselves. Many of the things which our Lord blames them for, were not nearly so absurd in Judea of old, as they seem to us in England now. Indeed, no one but our Lord seems to have thought them absurd, or seen through the hollowness and emptiness of them:—as he perhaps sees through, my friends, a great deal which is thought very right in England now. Making allowance for the difference of the country, and of the times, the Pharisees were perhaps no more affected, for Jews, than many people are now, for Englishmen. And if it be answered, that though our religious fashions now-a-days are not commanded expressly by the Bible or the Prayer Book, yet they carry out their spirit:—remember, in God’s name, that that was exactly what the Pharisees said, and their excuse for being righteous above what was written; and that they could, and did, quote texts of Scripture for their phylacteries, their washings, and all their other affectations.
Another reason I have for not dwelling too much on these affectations; and it is this. Because a man may be a play-actor and a self-deceiver in religion, without any of these tricks at all, and without much of the vanity and pride which cause them. For recollect that a man may act for his own amusement, as well as for other people’s. Children do so perpetually, and especially when no one is by to listen to them. They delight in playing at being this person and that, and in living for a while in a day-dream. Oh let us take care that we do not do the same in our religion! It is but too easy to do so. Too easy; and too common. For is it not play-acting, like any child, to come to this church, and here to feel repentance, feel forgiveness, feel gratitude, feel reverence; and then to go out of church and awake as from a dream, and become our natural selves for the rest of the week, till Sunday comes round again; comforting ourselves meanwhile with the fancy that we had been very religious last Sunday, and intended to be very religious next Sunday likewise?
Would there not be hypocrisy and play-acting in that, my friends?
Now, my dear friends, if we give way to this sort of hypocrisy, we shall get, as too many do, into the habit of living two lives at once, without knowing it. Outside us will be our religious life of praying, and reading, and talking of good things, and doing good work (as, thank God, many do whose hearts are not altogether right with God, or their eyes single in his sight) good work, which I trust God will not forget in the last day, in spite of all our inconsistencies. Outside us, I say, will be our religious life: and inside us our own actual life, our own natural character, too often very little changed or improved at all. So by continually playing at religion, we shall deceive ourselves. We shall make an entirely wrong estimate of the state of our souls. We shall fancy that this outward religion of ours is the state of our soul. And then, if any one tells us that we are play-acting, and hypocrites, we shall be as astonished and indignant as the Pharisees were of old. We shall make the same mistake as a man would, who because he always wore clothes, should fancy at last that his clothes were himself, part of his own body. So, I say, many deceive themselves, and are more or less hypocrites to themselves. They do not, in general, deceive others; they are not, on the whole, hypocrites to their neighbours. For their neighbours, after a time, see what they cannot see themselves, that they are play-acting; that they are two different people without knowing it: that their religion is a thing apart from their real character. A hundred signs shew that. How many there are, for instance, who are, or seem tolerably earnest about religion, and doing good, as long as they are actually in church, or actually talking about religion. But all the rest of their time, what are they doing? What are they thinking of? Mere frivolity and empty amusement. Idle butterflies, pretending to be industrious bees once in the week.
Others again, will be gentle and generous enough about everything but religion; and as soon as they get upon that, will become fierce, and hard, and narrow at once. Others again (and this is most common) commit the very same fault as the Pharisees in the text, who could use their common sense to discern the signs of the weather, and yet could not use it to discern the signs of the time, because they were afraid of looking honestly at the true state of public feeling and conscience, and at the danger and ruin into which their religion and their party were sinking. For about all worldly matters, these men will be as sound-headed and reasonable as they need be: but as soon as they get on religious matters, they become utterly silly and unreasonable; and will talk nonsense, listen to nonsense, and be satisfied with nonsense, such as they would not endure a moment if their own worldly interest, or worldly character, were in question.
But most of all do these poor souls not deceive their neighbours when a time of temptation comes upon them. For then, alas! it comes out too often that they are of those whom our Lord spoke of, who heard the word gladly, but had no root in themselves, and in time of temptation fell away. For then, before the storm of some trying temptation, away goes all the play-acting religion; and the man’s true self rises up from underneath into ugly life. Up rise, perhaps, pride, and self-will, and passion; up rise, perhaps, meanness and love of money; up rise, perhaps, cowardice and falsehood; or up rises foul and gross sin, causing some horrible scandal to religion, and to the name of Christ; while fools look on, and, laughing an evil laugh, cry,—‘These are your high professors. These are your Pharisees, who were so much better than everybody else. When they are really tried, it seems they behave no better than we sinners.’
Oh, these are the things which make a clergyman’s heart truly sad. These are the things which make him long that all were over; that Christ would shortly accomplish the number of his elect, and hasten his kingdom, that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of his holy name, may rest in peace for ever from sin and sinners.
Not that I mean that some of these very people, in spite of all their inconsistency, will not be among that number. God forbid! How do we know that? How do we know that they are one whit worse than we should be in their place? How do we know, above all, that to have been found out may not be the very best thing that has happened to them since the day that they were born? How do we know that it may not be God’s gracious medicine to enable them to find themselves out; to make them see themselves in their true colours; to purge them of all their play-acting; and begin all over again, crying to God, not with the lips only, but out of the depth of an honest and a noble shame, as David did of old—Behold I was shapen in wickedness, conceived in sin, and I have found it out at last. But thou requirest truth in the inward parts, in the very root and ground of the heart, and not merely truth in the head, in the lips, and in the outward behaviour. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee: but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit, as mine is now. A broken and a contrite heart, ground down by the shame of its own sin, that, O God, thou wilt not despise.
And then—when that prayer has gone up in earnest, and has been answered by the gift of a clean heart, and of a right spirit, which desires nothing but to be made clean and made right, to learn its duty and to do it—then, I say, that man may go back safely and freely, to such forms and ceremonies, as he has been accustomed to, and have been consecrated by the piety and wisdom of his forefathers. For, says David, though forms and ceremonies, sacrifice and burnt-offering cannot make any peace with God, yet I am not going to give up forms and ceremonies, sacrifice and burnt-offerings. No. When my peace is made, when the broken and the contrite heart has put me in my true place again, and my heart is clean, and my spirit right once more; then, he says, will God be pleased with my sacrifices, with my burnt-offerings and oblations; because they will be the sacrifice of righteousness, of a righteous man desiring to shew honour to that God from whom his righteousness comes, and gratitude to that God to whom he owes his pardon.
And so with us, my friends, if ever we have fallen, and been pardoned, and risen again to a new, a truer, a more honest, a more righteous life. Our forms of devotion ought then to become not a snare and a hypocrisy, but honest outward signs of the spiritual grace which is within us; as honest and as rational as the shake of the hand to the friend whom we truly love, as the bowing of the knee before the Queen for whom we would gladly die.
O may God give us all grace to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. To seek first the kingdom of God; to work earnestly, each in his place, to do God’s will, and to teach and help others to do it likewise. To seek his righteousness, which is the righteousness of the heart and spirit: and then all other things will be added to us. All outward forms and ceremonies, ways of speaking, ways of behaving, which are good and right for us, will come to us as a matter of course; growing up in us naturally and honestly, without any affectation or hypocrisy, and the purity and soberness, the reverence and earnestness of our outward conversation, will be a pattern of the purity and soberness, the reverence and earnestness, which dwells in our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God.
Ephesians iii. 3-6. How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel.
This day is the feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany, as many of you know, means ‘shewing,’ because on this day the Lord Jesus Christ was first shewn to the Gentiles; to the Gentile wise men who, as you heard in the Gospel, saw his star in the east, and came to worship him. And the part of Scripture from which I have taken my text, is used for the Epistle this day, because in it St. Paul explains to us the meaning of the Epiphany. The meaning of those wise men being shewn our Lord, and worshipping him, though they were not Jews as he was, but Gentiles. He says that it means this, that the Gentiles were fellow-heirs with the Jews, and of the same body as them, and partakers of God’s promise in Christ by the Gospel.
This does not seem so very wonderful to us; and why? Because we, though we are Gentiles like those wise men, have lived so long, we and our forefathers before us, in the light of the Gospel, that we are inclined to take it as a matter of course; forgetting what a wonderful, unspeakable, condescension it was of God, not to spare his only begotten Son, but freely to give him for us. God forgive us! We are so heaped with blessings that we neglect them, forget them, take them as our right, instead of remembering our sins and ungratefulness, and saying, Thy mercies are new every morning; it is only of thy mercies that we are not consumed.
But to St. Paul it was very wonderful news. A mystery, as he said; quite a new and astonishing thought, that heathens had any share in God’s love and Christ’s salvation.
And so it was to St. Peter. God had to teach it him by that wonderful vision, in which he saw coming down from heaven all sorts of animals, and God bade him kill and eat; and when he refused, because they were common and unclean, God forbade him to call anything common or unclean, now that God had cleansed all things by the precious blood of his dear Son. Then Peter was bidden to go to the Gentile Roman soldier Cornelius. And he went, though, he said, he had been used to think it unlawful for a Jew even to eat with a Gentile. And when he went, he found, to his astonishment, that God’s love was over that Gentile soldier and his family, because they were good men, as far as they had light and knowledge, just as much as if they had been good Jews. And God gave St. Peter a sign which there was no mistaking, that he really did care for those Gentile Romans, just as much as if they had been Jews; for, as he was preaching Christ to them, the Holy Ghost fell on them, not after, but before they were baptised. So that St. Peter, astonished as he was, was forced by his own conscience and reason to say, ‘Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptised, who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we’ (Jews)? Then he commanded them to be baptised in the name of the Lord.
And what was the lesson which God taught St. Peter by this? St. Peter himself tells us; for he opened his mouth and said, ‘Of a truth I see that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted by him.’
Now, my dear friends, this is (as the Lord Jesus Christ tells us) God’s everlasting law, ‘That he that hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he seems to have.’
So it was, as I have just shewn you, with Cornelius; and so it was with those wise men. They were worshippers (as is supposed) of the one true God, though in a dim confused way: but they had learnt enough of what true faith was, and of what true greatness was, too, not to be staggered and fall into unbelief, when they saw the King of the Jews, whom they had come so many hundred miles to see, laid, not in a palace, but in a manger; and attended not by princesses and noblewomen, but by a poor maiden, espoused to a carpenter. Therefore God bestowed on them that great honour, that they, first of all the Gentiles, should see the glory and the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ, his Son.
And so it was with our forefathers, my friends. And I think that on this Epiphany, we ought to thank God, among all his other blessings, for having given us such forefathers, and letting us be born of that noble stock, to whom he gave the kingdom of God, after he took it away from the faithless and rebellious Jews, and afterwards from the false and profligate Greeks and Romans, to whom the epistles of the apostles were written. I will tell you what I mean.
When the Lord Jesus came on earth; our forefathers did not live here in England, but in countries across the sea, in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, which did not belong to the Roman Empire; for the Romans, who had conquered all the world beside, could never conquer our forefathers. It was God’s will, that whenever they tried they were beaten back with shame and slaughter; and our forefathers, almost alone of all, remained free men, even as we are at this day. But for that very reason, the apostles could never come among us to preach the Gospel to us; for they could not pass the bounds of the Roman empire; and that was so large, that they had enough to do to preach the Gospel in it; so that it was not till at least 400 years after the apostles’ death, that their successors, zealous missionaries, priests and bishops, came and preached to our forefathers; and when they came, they found us a people prepared for the Lord, who heard the word gladly, and turned, thousands sometimes in one day, from vain idols to serve the living God, and were baptised into that holy church in which we now stand. And it has been among us, and the nations who are our kinsmen, that the light of the gospel has shone ever since, while all through the East, where the apostles preached most and earliest, it has died out. So that our Lord’s words have been fulfilled, that many that are last shall be first, and those that are first shall be last. God grant that it may not always be so. God grant that his kingdom may return to its ancient seat at Jerusalem, and that all nations may go up to the mountain of the Lord’s house, in the day of which St. Paul prophesies, when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, and all Israel shall be saved, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. But it is not so now; and cannot be so, as far as we can see, for many a year to come.
But in the meanwhile, why were our forefathers—heathens though they were, and sinners in many things, being truly children of wrath, fierce, bloodthirsty, revengeful, without the grace of Christ, which is Love and Charity—nevertheless a people prepared for the Lord? How was it true of them that to him that hath shall be given?
I will tell you. There is an old book, written in Latin by a heathen gentleman of Rome, who lived in St. Paul’s time, and wrote this book about twenty years after St. Paul’s death. It is a little book; but it is a very precious one: and I think it is a great mercy of God that, while so many famous old books have been lost, this little book should have been preserved: for this Roman gentleman had travelled among our forefathers; and when he returned he wrote this book to shame his countrymen at Rome. In it he calls us ‘Germans;’ but that was the Roman fashion. By Germans they meant not only the people who now live in Germany, but the English and the Danes, and the Swedes, and the Franks, who afterwards conquered France. In fact he meant our own forefathers. And he said to the Romans,—
‘Look at these wild Germans. You despise them because they go half-naked, and cannot read or write, and live in mud cottages; while you go in silk and gold, and have all sorts of learning, and live in great cities, palaces, and temples, in worldly pomp and glory. But I tell you,’ he said, ‘that these wild Germans are better men than you; for, while you are living in sin, in cheating and falsehood, in covetousness, adultery, murder, and every horrible iniquity, they are honest, chaste, truthful; they honour their fathers and mothers; they are obedient and loyal to their kings and their laws; they shew hospitality to strangers; they do not commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, covet their neighbours’ goods. And therefore,’ this Roman felt (and really it seems as if a spirit of prophecy from God had come on him), ‘something great and glorious will come out of these wild Germans, while the Romans will rot away and perish in their sins.’ That was true enough. We see it true at this day.
For what happened? That great Roman empire, Babylon the great, as St. John calls it in the Revelations, perished miserably and horribly by its own sins; while our forefathers rose and conquered it all, and live and thrive till this day. But it is curious that they never throve really, though they made great conquests, and did many wonderful deeds, till they became Christians: but as soon as they became Christians, they began to thrive at once, and settled down, and became that great family of nations, and kingdom of God, which we call Christendom; England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and the other countries of Christian Europe; which God has so prospered for his Son Jesus Christ’s sake, in spite of many sins and shortcomings, with wealth and numbers, skill, and learning, and strength, that now the empire of the whole world depends upon these few small Christian nations, which in our Lord’s time were only tribes of heathen savages: so that here again our Lord’s great parable was fulfilled.
The gospel seed which the apostle sowed in those rich, luxurious, clever, learned, Romans, was like the seed which fell on thorny ground; and the cares and pleasures of this life, and the deceitfulness or riches, sprang up, and choked the word, and it remained unfruitful. But the gospel seed which was sown among our poor, wild, simple, ignorant forefathers, was the seed which fell on an honest and good heart, and took root, and brought forth fruit, some thirty, some fifty, and some one hundred fold. Epiphany came late to us—not for three hundred years after our Lord’s birth: but, when it came, the light which it brought remained with us, and lights us even now from our cradle to our grave: and so again was fulfilled the Scripture, which says, that God chooses the weak things of this world to confound the strong; the foolish to confound the wise; yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought the things which are, that no flesh should glory in his presence.
That no flesh should glory in his presence. For mind, my friends, our business is not to be high-minded but to fear. And we English are too apt to be high-minded now. We pride ourselves on our English character, English cleverness, English courage, English wealth. My friends, be not high-minded but fear. We have no right to pride ourselves on being Englishmen, if we do the very things which our forefathers were ashamed to do even when they were heathens. They honoured their fathers and mothers. Do we? They were loyal and obedient to law. Are we? They were chaste and clean livers: adultery was seldom heard of among them; and, when it was, they punished it in the most fearful way: while what astonished that old Roman gentleman, of whom I spoke, most of all, was the pure and respectable lives of the young men and women. Is it so now-a-days among us, my friends? They were honest, too, and just in all their dealings. Are we? They were true to their word; no men on earth more true. Are we? They hated covetousness and overreaching. Do we? They were generous, open-handed, hospitable. Are we? My friends, this was the old English spirit, which God accepted in our forefathers. Is it in us now? We must not pride ourselves on it, unless we have it. Nay, more, what is it but a shame to us, if, while our forefathers were good heathens, we are bad Christians? They had but a small spark, a dim ray, as it were, of the light which lighteth every man who comes into the world: but they were more faithful to that little than many are now, who live in the full sunshine of God’s gospel, in the free dispensation of God’s spirit, with Christ’s sacraments, Christ’s Churches, means of grace and hopes of glory, of which they never dreamed. May they not rise up against some of us in the day of judgment, and condemn us, and say,—‘Are you our children? Do you boast of knowing God better than we did, while you did things which we dared not do? We knew that God hated such sins, and therefore we kept from them. You should know that better than we; for you had seen God’s horror of sin in the death of his own Son Jesus Christ; and yet you went on committing the very sins which crucified the Lord of Glory.’
My friends, I speak sober earnest. God grant that our old heathen forefathers may not rise up against us in the day of judgment, and condemn us. Let us turn to the Lord this day with all our hearts, and come to this holy table, confessing all our sins and unfaithfulness, and backslidings, that we may get there cleansing from his most precious blood, strength from his most precious body, life from his life, and spirit from his spirit; that so we may go away to lead new lives, following the commandments of God, and living up to our great light and knowledge, at least as well as our forefathers lived up to their little light. And so we shall really keep the feast of Epiphany in spirit and in truth: for Epiphany means the shewing of Jesus Christ to us Gentiles; and the way to prove that Jesus Christ has been shewn to us, and that we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, is to keep his commandments, and live lives like his.
Psalm cvii. 6. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.
If I were asked to give a reason why I believed the Old Testament to be an inspired and divine book, as well as the New, I could not do better, I think, than to lay my hand on this 107th psalm, and say,—This is my reason for believing the Old Testament to be inspired. I have hundreds of others: but this one is enough—this one psalm. It contains an account of God’s dealings with men, such as the world never heard before, and very seldom since, save from a very few men, who really saw what the Bible meant, and honestly followed its teaching. It gives a notion of the justice of God, and an explanation of the chances and changes of this mortal life, such as you will find nowhere else save in the Bible, and in the books of Christian men who have been taught by the Bible. The man who wrote that psalm knew so much more than other men, that he must have been indeed inspired by the Spirit of Truth, and the Holy Ghost of God.
And, I should say, I have come to this opinion mainly by comparing this psalm with the writings of heathens, even the wisest and the best of them. For the heathens, like all men, used to have their troubles, and to ask themselves, Who has sent this trouble? And why has he sent it? And their answers remain to us in their writings, some worse, some better, some very foolish, some tolerably wise. But when one compares the heathen writings with this psalm, or with any psalms or passages of the Old Testament which talk of God’s dealings with man, then we shall be altogether astonished at the superiority of the Bible. The Bible will seem to us quite infinitely wiser than heathen books, on this matter, as on others—so much more simple, and yet so much more deep; so much more rational also, and so much more true: agreeing so much more with the facts which we see happen round us: agreeing so much more with our own reason, experience, inward conscience, about what is just and unjust:—that we shall begin to see as much difference between heathen books and the Old Testament, as there is between the dim dawn of morning, and the full blaze of noonday light.
One of the earliest heathen notions why troubles came was, it seems, that the gods were offended with men, because they had not shown them due honour, flattered them enough, or offered sacrifices enough to them: or else they fancied that the gods envied men: grudged their prosperity, did not like to see them too happy.
That dark and base notion gradually faded away, as men got higher notions of right and wrong, and of the gods, as the judges and avengers of wrong. Then they began to think these troubles were punishments for doing wrong. The Gods, or God, punished sin; inflicting so much pain for so much sin, very much as the heathens are apt to punish their criminals still, and as Christian nations used to punish theirs, namely, with shameful and horrible tortures; before they began to find out that the end of punishment is not to torment, but to reform, the criminal, wherever it is possible.
But then the thought would come—Why, after all, should God, if he be just and merciful, punish my sin by pain and misery? How can it profit God, how can it please God, to give me pain? Because it satisfies his justice? How can it do that? It would not satisfy mine. Suppose my child, or even my dog, disobeyed me, would it satisfy my sense of justice to beat him? It might satisfy my passion: but God has no passions. It would be base, blasphemous to fancy that he takes pleasure in hurting me, as I take pleasure in beating my dog when I lose my temper with it. God forbid! The old prophets saw that, and cried—‘Have I any pleasure in the death of him, saith the Lord, and not rather that he should turn from his wickedness, and live?’
Then, naturally, the thought would come into the mind of a wise and serious man—I punish my child, or my dog, and God punishes me. May he not punish me for the same reason that I punish them? I punish them to correct them and make them better. Surely God punishes me, to correct me, and make me better. I punish my child, because I love him, and wish him good. God punishes me because he loves me and desires that I may be a partaker of his holiness.
And as soon as that blessed thought had risen up in any man’s mind, by the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, all the world would begin to look bright and clear and full of hope. This earth, with all its sorrows and sufferings, would look no longer to him as God’s prison house, where poor sinners sat tortured and wailing, fast bound in misery and iron, till they should pay the uttermost farthing, which they never could pay. No. It would look to him as God’s school-house, God’s reformatory, in which he is training and chastening and correcting the souls of men, that he may deliver them from the ruin and misery which sin brings on them, both the original sin which is born in them and the actual sin which they commit. Then God appears to him a gracious and merciful father. He can see a blessed meaning and a wholesome use in all human suffering; and he can break out, as the Psalmist does in this glorious psalm, into praise and thanksgiving, and call on mankind to give thanks to the Lord; for he is gracious, and his mercy endureth for ever.
In every kind of human suffering, I say, he sees now a meaning and a use.
First, he takes, it seems, his own countrymen, the Jews, coming back from Babylon into their own country after the seventy years’ captivity. They had been punished for their sins. But for what purpose? That they might know (as Ezekiel said), that God was the Lord. And when they cried unto him in their trouble, he delivered them out of their distress.
Then he goes on to those who have brought themselves into poverty and shame, and sit fast bound in misery and iron. It is their own fault. They have brought it on themselves by rebelling against the word of the Lord, and lightly regarding the counsel of the Most Highest. But God does not hate them. God is not going to leave them to the net which they have spread for their own feet. When they cry unto the Lord in their troubles, he delivers them out of their distress. God himself, by strange and unexpected ways, will deliver them from their darkness of ignorance and sin, and from the danger and misery which they have brought upon themselves.
Then he goes on to those who have injured their health by their own folly, till their soul abhors all manner of food, and they are even hard at death’s door. Neither does God hate them. They, too, are in God’s school-house. And when they cry to the Lord in their trouble, he will deliver them, too, out of their distress, and send his word, and heal them, and save them from destruction.
Then he goes on to men who are exposed to danger, and terror, and death in their lawful calling; and his instance is the seamen—those who go on to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters.
The storms come up, they know not when or how: but they are not the sport of a blind chance; they are not the victims of the wrath of God. The wild sea, too, is his school-house, where they are to see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep; and so, by strange dangers and strange deliverances, learn, as I have seen many a seaman learn, a courage and endurance, a faith, a resignation, which puts us comfortable landsmen to shame.
Then he goes on to even a deeper matter—to those terrible changes in nature, so common in the East, in which whole districts, by earthquake or drought, are rendered worthless and barren. They too, he says, are God’s lessons, though sharp ones enough. ‘He turneth the rivers into a wilderness, and the water-springs into dry ground; a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. Again, he turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into water-springs. And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation; and sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase.’
Lastly, he goes on to political changes, which bring a whole nation low, into oppression and misery. ‘They are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction and sorrow. He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way. Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and maketh him families like a flock. The righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop her mouth. Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.’
And so, in all the changes of this mortal life, he sees no real chance, no real change, but the orderly education of a just and loving Father, whose mercy endureth for ever; who chastens men as a father chastens his children, for their profit, that they may be partakers of his holiness, in which alone is life and joy, health and wealth.
Surely, here is a Gospel, and good news;—news so good, that it turns what seems to the superstitious the worst of news, into the very best. For it seems at first sight the worst of news that which the ninth Article tells us, that our original sin, in every person born into this world, deserves God’s wrath and damnation. And so it would be the worst of news, if God were merely a judge, inflicting so much pain and misery for so much sin, without any wish to mend us and save us. But if we remember only the blessed message of this psalm; if we will remember that God is our Father; that God is educating us; that God hath neither parts nor passions; and that, therefore, God’s wrath is not different or contrary to his love, but that God’s wrath is his love in another shape, punishing men just because he loves men;—then the ninth Article will bring us the very best of news. We shall see that it is the best thing that can possibly befall us, that our sin deserves God’s wrath and damnation, and that it would have been the worst thing which could possibly have befallen us, if our sin had not deserved God’s wrath and damnation. For if our sin had not deserved God’s anger, then he would not have been angry with it; and then he would have left it alone, instead of condemning it, and dooming it to everlasting destruction as he has done; and then, if our sin had been left alone, we should have been left alone to sin and sin on, growing continually more wicked, till our sin became our ruin. But now God hates our sin, and loves us; and therefore he desires above all things to deliver us from sin, and burn our sin up in his unquenchable fire, that we ourselves may not be burned up therein. For if our sins live, we shall surely die: but if our sins die, then, and then only, shall we live.
Do these words seem strange to some of you? I doubt not that they will: but if they do, that will be only a fresh proof to me, that the Bible is inspired by the Holy Ghost. Yes, nothing shews me how wide, how deep, how wise, how heavenly the Bible is, as to see how far average Christians are behind the Bible in their way of thinking; how the salvation which it offers is too free for them, the love which it proclaims too wide for them, the God whom it reveals too good for them: so that they shrink from taking the Bible and trusting the Bible, in its fulness; and are perpetually falling back on heathen notions—the very old heathen notions from which this psalm delivers us—concerning what God’s anger means, and what God’s punishment means; because they are afraid of taking the words of Scripture literally and fully, and believing honestly the blessed news, that God is Love.
They try to make God’s ways as their ways, and God’s thoughts as their thoughts. But do not you do so. Receive the Bible in its fulness. Believe that it tells you infinitely more of God’s character and dealings, than you can ever tell yourselves; that God’s ways are not as your ways, nor God’s thoughts as your thoughts, even at their best: but that God’s ways are always wider and deeper than yours, were you the most learned of men; God’s thoughts are always more loving and just than yours, were you the most holy of men, and that when you have learned all that you can learn, or that any man can learn, out of the Bible, there will be still left behind treasures beside, which you have not yet found out. For the riches of Christ are unsearchable; like the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose only-begotten son, and perfect likeness, he is; and the man who reads the Scripture with a single eye, and an humble heart, will see that the more he finds in the Bible, the more he has yet to find; and that if he studied it to all eternity, he would have fresh and fresh cause for ever to cry with the Psalmist, ‘Oh give thanks to the Lord; for he is gracious, and his mercy endureth for ever!’
Footnotes:
{328} Plutarch.