Twenty-Five Village Sermons

Twenty-Five Village Sermons
Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley

Twenty-Five Village Sermons

SERMON I

GOD’S WORLD

Psalm civ. 24

“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches.”

When we read such psalms as the one from which this verse is taken, we cannot help, if we consider, feeling at once a great difference between them and any hymns or religious poetry which is commonly written or read in these days.  The hymns which are most liked now, and the psalms which people most willingly choose out of the Bible, are those which speak, or seem to speak, about God’s dealings with people’s own souls, while such psalms as this are overlooked.  People do not care really about psalms of this kind when they find them in the Bible, and they do not expect or wish nowadays any one to write poetry like them.  For these psalms of which I speak praise and honour God, not for what He has done to our souls, but for what He has done and is doing in the world around us.  This very 104th psalm, for instance, speaks entirely about things which we hardly care or even think proper to mention in church now.  It speaks of this earth entirely, and the things on it.  Of the light, the clouds, and wind—of hills and valleys, and the springs on the hill-sides—of wild beasts and birds—of grass and corn, and wine and oil—of the sun and moon, night and day—the great sea, the ships, and the fishes, and all the wonderful and nameless creatures which people the waters—the very birds’ nests in the high trees, and the rabbits burrowing among the rocks,—nothing on the earth but this psalm thinks it worth mentioning.  And all this, which one would expect to find only in a book of natural history, is in the Bible, in one of the psalms, written to be sung in the temple at Jerusalem, before the throne of the living God and His glory which used to be seen in that temple,—inspired, as we all believe, by God’s Spirit,—God’s own word, in short: that is worth thinking of.  Surely the man who wrote this must have thought very differently about this world, with its fields and woods, and beasts and birds, from what we think.  Suppose, now, that we had been old Jews in the temple, standing before the holy house, and that we believed, as the Jews believed, that there was only one thin wall and one curtain of linen between us and the glory of the living God, that unspeakable brightness and majesty which no one could look at for fear of instant death, except the high-priest in fear and trembling once a-year—that inside that small holy house, He, God Almighty, appeared visibly—God who made heaven and earth.  Suppose we had been there in the temple, and known all this, should we have liked to be singing about beasts and birds, with God Himself close to us?  We should not have liked it—we should have been terrified, thinking perhaps about our own sinfulness, perhaps about that wonderful majesty which dwelt inside.  We should have wished to say or sing something spiritual, as we call it; at all events, something very different from the 104th psalm about woods, and rivers, and dumb beasts.  We do not like the thought of such a thing: it seems almost irreverent, almost impertinent to God to be talking of such things in His presence.  Now does this shew us that we think about this earth, and the things in it, in a very different way from those old Jews?  They thought it a fit and proper thing to talk about corn and wine and oil, and cattle and fishes, in the presence of Almighty God, and we do not think it fit and proper.  We read this psalm when it comes in the Church-service as a matter of course, mainly because we do not believe that God is here among us.  We should not be so ready to read it if we thought that Almighty God was so near us.

That is a great difference between us and the old Jews.  Whether it shews that we are better or not than they were in the main, I cannot tell; perhaps some of them had such thoughts too, and said, ‘It is not respectful to God to talk about such commonplace earthly things in His presence;’ perhaps some of them thought themselves spiritual and pure-minded for looking down on this psalm, and on David for writing it.  Very likely, for men have had such thoughts in all ages, and will have them.  But the man who wrote this psalm had no such thoughts.  He said himself, in this same psalm, that his words would please God.  Nay, he is not speaking and preaching about God in this psalm, as I am now in my sermon, but he is doing more; he is speaking to God—a much more solemn thing if you will think of it.  He says, “O Lord my God, Thou art become exceeding glorious.  Thou deckest Thyself with light as with a garment.  All the beasts wait on Thee; when Thou givest them meat they gather it.  Thou renewest the face of the earth.”  When he turns and speaks of God as “He,” saying, “He appointed the moon,” and so on, he cannot help going back to God, and pouring out his wonder, and delight, and awe, to God Himself, as we would sooner speak to any one we love and honour than merely speak about them.  He cannot take his mind off God.  And just at the last, when he does turn and speak to himself, it is to say, “Praise thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord,” as if rebuking and stirring up himself for being too cold-hearted and slow, for not admiring and honouring enough the infinite wisdom, and power, and love, and glorious majesty of God, which to him shines out in every hedge-side bird and every blade of grass.  Truly I said that man had a very different way of looking at God’s earth from what we have!

Now, in what did that difference lie?  What was it?  We need not look far to see.  It was this,—David looked on the earth as God’s earth; we look on it as man’s earth, or nobody’s earth.  We know that we are here, with trees and grass, and beasts and birds, round us.  And we know that we did not put them here; and that, after we are dead and gone, they will go on just as they went on before we were born,—each tree, and flower, and animal, after its kind, but we know nothing more.  The earth is here, and we on it; but who put it there, and why it is there, and why we are on it, instead of being anywhere else, few ever think.  But to David the earth looked very different; it had quite another meaning; it spoke to him of God who made it.  By seeing what this earth is like, he saw what God who made it is like: and we see no such thing.  The earth?—we can eat the corn and cattle on it, we can earn money by farming it, and ploughing and digging it; and that is all most men know about it.  But David knew something more—something which made him feel himself very weak, and yet very safe; very ignorant and stupid, and yet honoured with glorious knowledge from God,—something which made him feel that he belonged to this world, and must not forget it or neglect it, that this earth was his lesson-book—this earth was his work-field; and yet those same thoughts which shewed him how he was made for the land round him, and the land round him was made for him, shewed him also that he belonged to another world—a spirit-world; shewed him that when this world passed away, he should live for ever; shewed him that while he had a mortal body, he had an immortal soul too; shewed him that though his home and business were here on earth, yet that, for that very reason, his home and business were in heaven, with God who made the earth, with that blessed One of whom he said, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands.  They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall fade as a garment, and like a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.  The children of Thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall stand fast in Thy sight.”  “As a garment shalt Thou change them,”—ay, there was David’s secret!  He saw that this earth and skies are God’s garment—the garment by which we see God; and that is what our forefathers saw too, and just what we have forgotten; but David had not forgotten it.  Look at this very 104th psalm again, how he refers every thing to God.  We say, ‘The light shines:’ David says something more; he says, “Thou, O God, adornest Thyself with light as with a curtain.”  Light is a picture of God.  “God,” says St. John, “is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”  We say, ‘The clouds fly and the wind blows,’ as if they went of themselves; David says, “God makes the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of the wind.”  We talk of the rich airs of spring, of the flashing lightning of summer, as dead things; and men who call themselves wise say, that lightning is only matter,—‘We can grind the like of it out of glass and silk, and make lightning for ourselves in a small way;’ and so they can in a small way, and in a very small one: David does not deny that, but he puts us in mind of something in that lightning and those breezes which we cannot make.  He says, God makes the winds His angels, and flaming fire his ministers; and St. Paul takes the same text, and turns it round to suit his purpose, when he is talking of the blessed angels, saying, ‘That text in the 104th Psalm means something more; it means that God makes His angels spirits, (that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire.’  So shewing us that in those breezes there are living spirits, that God’s angels guide those thunder-clouds; that the roaring thunderclap is a shock in the air truly, but that it is something more—that it is the voice of God, which shakes the cedar-trees of Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes the wild deer slip their young.  So we read in the psalms in church; that is David’s account of the thunder.  I take it for a true account; you may or not as you like.  See again.  Those springs in the hill-sides, how do they come there?  ‘Rain-water soaking and flowing out,’ we say.  True, but David says something more; he says, God sends the springs, and He sends them into the rivers too.  You may say, ‘Why, water must run down-hill, what need of God?’  But suppose God had chosen that water should run up-hill and not down, how would it have been then?—Very different, I think.  No; He sends them; He sends all things.  Wherever there is any thing useful, His Spirit has settled it.  The help that is done on earth He doeth it all Himself.—Loving and merciful,—caring for the poor dumb beasts!—He sends the springs, and David says, “All the beasts of the field drink thereof.”  The wild animals in the night, He cares for them too,—He, the Almighty God.  We hear the foxes bark by night, and we think the fox is hungry, and there it ends with us; but not with David: he says, “The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from God,”—God, who feedeth the young ravens who call upon Him.  He is a God!  “He did not make the world,” says a wise man, “and then let it spin round His finger,” as we wind up a watch, and then leave it to go of itself.  No; “His mercy is over all His works.”  Loving and merciful, the God of nature is the God of grace.  The same love which chose us and our forefathers for His people while we were yet dead in trespasses and sins; the same only-begotten Son, who came down on earth to die for us poor wretches on the cross,—that same love, that same power, that same Word of God, who made heaven and earth, looks after the poor gnats in the winter time, that they may have a chance of coming out of the ground when the day stirs the little life in them, and dance in the sunbeam for a short hour of gay life, before they return to the dust whence they were made, to feed creatures nobler and more precious than themselves.  That is all God’s doing, all the doing of Christ, the King of the earth.  “They wait on Him,” says David.  The beasts, and birds, and insects, the strange fish, and shells, and the nameless corals too, in the deep, deep sea, who build and build below the water for years and thousands of years, every little, tiny creature bringing his atom of lime to add to the great heap, till their heap stands out of the water and becomes dry land; and seeds float thither over the wide waste sea, and trees grow up, and birds are driven thither by storms; and men come by accident in stray ships, and build, and sow, and multiply, and raise churches, and worship the God of heaven, and Christ, the blessed One,—on that new land which the little coral worms have built up from the deep.  Consider that.  Who sent them there?  Who contrived that those particular men should light on that new island at that especial time?  Who guided thither those seeds—those birds?  Who gave those insects that strange longing and power to build and build on continually?—Christ, by whom all things are made, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; He and His Spirit, and none else.  It is when He opens His hand, they are filled with good.  It is when He takes away their breath, they die, and turn again to their dust.  He lets His breath, His spirit, go forth, and out of that dead dust grow plants and herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews the face of the earth.  For, says the wise man, “all things are God’s garment”—outward and visible signs of His unseen and unapproachable glory; and when they are worn out, He changes them, says the Psalmist, as a garment, and they shall be changed.

The old order changes, giving place to the new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways.

But He is the same.  He is there all the time.  All things are His work.  In all things we may see Him, if our souls have eyes.  All things, be they what they may, which live and grow on this earth, or happen on land or in the sky, will tell us a tale of God,—shew forth some one feature, at least, of our blessed Saviour’s countenance and character,—either His foresight, or His wisdom, or His order, or His power, or His love, or His condescension, or His long-suffering, or His slow, sure vengeance on those who break His laws.  It is all written there outside in the great green book, which God has given to labouring men, and which neither taxes nor tyrants can take from them.  The man who is no scholar in letters may read of God as he follows the plough, for the earth he ploughs is his Father’s: there is God’s mark and seal on it,—His name, which though it is written on the dust, yet neither man nor fiend can wipe it out!

The poor, solitary, untaught boy, who keeps the sheep, or minds the birds, long lonely days, far from his mother and his playmates, may keep alive in him all purifying thoughts, if he will but open his eyes and look at the green earth around him.

Think now, my boys, when you are at your work, how all things may put you in mind of God, if you do but choose.  The trees which shelter you from the wind, God planted them there for your sakes, in His love.—There is a lesson about God.  The birds which you drive off the corn, who gave them the sense to keep together and profit by each other’s wit and keen eyesight?  Who but God, who feeds the young birds when they call on Him?—There is another lesson about God.  The sheep whom you follow, who ordered the warm wool to grow on them, from which your clothes are made?  Who but the Spirit of God above, who clothes the grass of the field, the silly sheep, and who clothes you, too, and thinks of you when you don’t think of yourselves?—There is another lesson about God.  The feeble lambs in spring, they ought to remind you surely of your blessed Saviour, the Lamb of God, who died for you upon the cruel cross, who was led as a lamb to the slaughter; and like a sheep that lies dumb and patient under the shearer’s hand, so he opened not his mouth.  Are not these lambs, then, a lesson from God?  And these are but one or two examples out of thousands and thousands.  Oh, that I could make you, young and old, all feel these things!  Oh, that I could make you see God in every thing, and every thing in God!  Oh, that I could make you look on this earth, not as a mere dull, dreary prison, and workhouse for your mortal bodies, but as a living book, to speak to you at every time of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!  Sure I am that that would be a heavenly life for you,—sure I am that it would keep you from many a sin, and stir you up to many a holy thought and deed, if you could learn to find in every thing around you, however small or mean, the work of God’s hand, the likeness of God’s countenance, the shadow of God’s glory.

SERMON II

RELIGION NOT GODLINESS

Psalm civ. 13–15

“He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.  He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart.”

Did you ever remark, my friends, that the Bible says hardly any thing about religion—that it never praises religious people?  This is very curious.  Would to God we would all remember it!  The Bible speaks of a religious man only once, and of religion only twice, except where it speaks of the Jews’ religion to condemn it, and shews what an empty, blind, useless thing it was.

What does this Bible talk of, then?  It talks of God; not of religion, but of God.  It tells us not to be religious, but to be godly.  You may think there is no difference, or that it is but a difference of words.  I tell you that a difference in words is a very awful, important difference.  A difference in words is a difference in things.  Words are very awful and wonderful things, for they come from the most awful and wonderful of all beings, Jesus Christ, the Word.  He puts words into men’s minds—He made all things, and He makes all words to express those things with.  And woe to those who use the wrong words about things!—For if a man calls any thing by its wrong name, it is a sure sign that he understands that thing wrongly, or feels about it wrongly; and therefore a man’s words are oftener honester than he thinks; for as a man’s words are, so is a man’s heart; out of the abundance of our hearts our mouths speak; and, therefore, by right words, by the right names which we call things, we shall be justified, and by our words, by the wrong names we call things, we shall be condemned.

Therefore a difference in words is a difference in the things which those words mean, and there is a difference between religion and godliness; and we shew it by our words.  Now these are religious times, but they are very ungodly times; and we shew that also by our words.  Because we think that people ought to be religious, we talk a great deal about religion; because we hardly think at all that a man ought to be godly, we talk very little about God, and that good old Bible word “godliness” does not pass our lips once a-month.  For a man may be very religious, my friends, and yet very ungodly.  The heathens were very religious at the very time that, as St. Paul tells us, they would not keep God in their knowledge.  The Jews were the most religious people on the earth, they hardly talked or thought about anything but religion, at the very time that they knew so little of God that they crucified Him when He came down among them.  St. Paul says that he was living after the strictest sect of the Jews’ religion, at the very time that he was fighting against God, persecuting God’s people and God’s Son, and dead in trespasses and sins.  These are ugly facts, my friends, but they are true, and well worth our laying to heart in these religious, ungodly days.  I am afraid if Jesus Christ came down into England this day as a carpenter’s son, He would get—a better hearing, perhaps, than the Jews gave him, but still a very bad hearing—one dare hardly think of it.

And yet I believe we ought to think of it, and, by God’s help, I will one day preach you a sermon, asking you all round this fair question:—If Jesus Christ came to you in the shape of a poor man, whom nobody knew, should you know him? should you admire him, fall at his feet and give yourself up to him body and soul?  I am afraid that I, for one, should not—I am afraid that too many of us here would not.  That comes of thinking more of religion than we do of godliness—in plain words, more of our own souls than we do of Jesus Christ.  But you will want to know what is, after all, the difference between religion and godliness?  Just the difference, my friends, that there is between always thinking of self and always forgetting self—between the terror of a slave and the affection of a child—between the fear of hell and the love of God.  For, tell me, what you mean by being religious?  Do you not mean thinking a great deal about your own souls, and praying and reading about your own souls, and trying by all possible means to get your own souls saved?  Is not that the meaning of religion?  And yet I have never mentioned God’s name in describing it!  This sort of religion must have very little to do with God.  You may be surprised at my words, and say in your hearts almost angrily, ‘Why who saves our souls but God? therefore religion must have to do with God.’  But, my friends, for your souls’ sake, and for God’s sake, ask yourselves this question on your knees this day:—If you could get your souls saved without God’s help, would it make much difference to you?  Suppose an angel from heaven, as they say, was to come down and prove to you clearly that there was no God, no blessed Jesus in heaven, that the world made itself, and went on of itself, and that the Bible was all a mistake, but that you need not mind, for your gardens and crops would grow just as well, and your souls be saved just as well when you died.

To how many of you would it make any difference?  To some of you, thank God, I believe it would make a difference.  Here are some here, I believe, who would feel that news the worst news they ever heard,—worse than if they were told that their souls were lost for ever; there are some here, I do believe, who, at that news, would cry aloud in agony, like little children who had lost their father, and say, ‘No Father in heaven to love?  No blessed Jesus in heaven to work for, and die for, and glory and delight in?  No God to rule and manage this poor, miserable, quarrelsome world, bringing good out of evil, blessing and guiding all things and people on earth?  What do I care what becomes of my soul if there is no God for my soul to glory in?  What is heaven worth without God?  God is Heaven!’

Yes, indeed, what would heaven be worth without God?  But how many people feel that the curse of this day is, that most people have forgotten that?  They are selfishly anxious enough about their own souls, but they have forgotten God.  They are religious, for fear of hell; but they are not godly, for they do not love God, or see God’s hand in every thing.  They forget that they have a Father in heaven; that He sends rain, and sunshine, and fruitful seasons; that He gives them all things richly to enjoy in spite of all their sins.  His mercies are far above, out of their sight, and therefore His judgments are far away out of their sight too; and so they talk of the “Visitation of God,” as if it was something that was very extraordinary, and happened very seldom; and when it came, only brought evil, harm, and sorrow.  If a man lives on in health, they say he lives by the strength of his own constitution; if he drops down dead, they say he died by “the visitation of God.”  If the corn-crops go on all right and safe, they think that quite natural—the effect of the soil, and the weather, and their own skill in farming and gardening.  But if there comes a hailstorm or a blight, and spoils it all, and brings on a famine, they call it at once “a visitation of God.”  My friends! do you think God “visits” the earth or you only to harm you?  I tell you that every blade of grass grows by “the visitation of God.”  I tell you that every healthy breath you ever drew, every cheerful hour you ever spent, every good crop you ever housed safely, came to you by “the visitation of God.”  I tell you that every sensible thought or plan that ever came into your heads,—every loving, honest, manly, womanly feeling that ever rose in your hearts, God “visited” you to put it there.  If God’s Spirit had not given it you, you would never have got it of yourselves.

But people forget this, and therefore they have so little real love to God—so little real, loyal, childlike trust in God.  They do not think much about God, because they find no pleasure in thinking about Him; they look on God as a task-master, gathering where He has not strewed, reaping where He has not sown,—a task-master who has put them, very miserable, sinful creatures, to struggle on in a very miserable, sinful world, and, though He tells them in His Bible that they cannot keep His commandments, expects them to keep them just the same, and will at the last send them all into everlasting fire, unless they take a great deal of care, and give up a great many natural and pleasant things, and beseech and entreat Him very hard to excuse them, after all.  This is the thought which most people have of God, even religious people; they look on God as a stern tyrant, who, when man sinned and fell, could not satisfy His own justice—His own vengeance in plain words, without killing some one, and who would have certainly killed all mankind, if Jesus Christ had not interfered, and said, “If Thou must slay some one, slay me, though I am innocent!”

Oh, my friends, does not this all sound horrible and irreverent?  And yet if you will but look into your own hearts, will you not find some such thoughts there?  I am sure you will.  I believe every man finds such thoughts in his heart now and then.  I find them in my own heart: I know that they must be in the hearts of others, because I see them producing their natural fruits in people’s actions—a selfish, slavish view of religion, with little or no real love to God, or real trust in Him; but a great deal of uneasy dread of Him: for this is just the dark, false view of God, and of the good news of salvation and the kingdom of heaven, which the devil is always trying to make men take.  The Evil One tries to make us forget that God is love; he tries to make us forget that God gives us all things richly to enjoy; he tries to make us forget that God gives at all, and to make us think that we take, not that He gives; to make us look at God as a task-master, not as a father; in one word, to make us mistake the devil for God, and God for the devil.

And, therefore, it is that we ought to bless God for such Scriptures as this 104th Psalm, which He seems to have preserved in the Bible just to contradict these dark, slavish notions,—just to testify that God is a giver, and knows our necessities before we ask and gives us all things, even as He gave us His Blessed Son—freely, long before we wanted them,—from the foundation of all things, before ever the earth and the world was made—from all eternity, perpetual love, perpetual bounty.

What does this text teach us?  To look at God as Him who gives to all freely and upbraideth not.  It says to us,—Do not suppose that your crops grow of themselves.  God waters the hills from above.  He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and the green herb for the service of man.  Do not suppose that He cares nothing about seeing you comfortable and happy.  It is He, He only who sends all which strengthens man’s body, and makes glad his heart, and makes him of a cheerful countenance.  His will is that you should be cheerful.  Ah, my friends, if we would but believe all this!—we are too apt to say to ourselves, ‘Our earthly comforts here have nothing to do with godliness or God, God must save our souls, but our bodies we must save ourselves.  God gives us spiritual blessings, but earthly blessings, the good things of this life, for them we must scramble and drudge ourselves, and get as much of them as we can without offending God;’—as if God grudged us our comforts! as if godliness had not the promise of this life as well as the life to come!  If we would but believe that God knows our necessities before we ask—that He gives us daily more than we can ever get by working for it!—if we would but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things would be added to us; and we should find that he who loses his life should save it.  And this way of looking at God’s earth would not make us idle; it would not tempt us to sit with folded hands for God’s blessings to drop into our mouths.  No! I believe it would make men far more industrious than ever mere self-interest can make them; they would say, ‘God is our Father, He gave us His own Son, He gives us all things freely, we owe Him not slavish service, but a boundless debt of cheerful gratitude.  Therefore we must do His will, and we are sure His will must be our happiness and comfort—therefore we must do His will, and His will is that we should work, and therefore we must work.  He has bidden us labour on this earth—He has bidden us dress it and keep it, conquer it and fill it for Him.  We are His stewards here on earth, and therefore it is a glory and an honour to be allowed to work here in God’s own land—in our loving Father’s own garden.  We do not know why He wishes us to labour and till the ground, for He could have fed us with manna from heaven if He liked, as He fed the Jews of old, without our working at all.  But His will is that we should work; and work we will, not for our own sakes merely, but for His sake, because we know He likes it, and for the sake of our brothers, our countrymen, for whom Christ died.’

Oh, my friends, why is it that so many till the ground industriously, and yet grow poorer and poorer for all their drudging and working?  It is their own fault.  They till the ground for their own sakes, and not for God’s sake and for their countrymen’s sake; and so, as the Prophet says, they sow much and bring in little, and he who earns wages earns them to put in a bag full of holes.  Suppose you try the opposite plan.  Suppose you say to yourself, ‘I will work henceforward because God wishes me to work.  I will work henceforward for my country’s sake, because I feel that God has given me a noble and a holy calling when He set me to grow food for His children, the people of England.  As for my wages and my profit, God will take care of them if they are just; and if they are unjust, He will take care of them too.  He, at all events, makes the garden and the field grow, and not I.  My land is filled, not with the fruit of my work, but with the fruit of His work.  He will see that I lose nothing by my labour.  If I till the soil for God and for God’s children, I may trust God to pay me my wages.’  Oh, my friends, He who feeds the young birds when they call upon Him; and far, far more, He who gave you His only-begotten Son, will He not with Him freely give you all things?  For, after all done, He must give to you, or you will not get.  You may fret and stint, and scrape and puzzle; one man may sow, and another man may water; but, after all, who can give the increase but God?  Can you make a load of hay, unless He has first grown it for you, and then dried it for you?  If you would but think a little more about Him, if you would believe that your crops were His gifts, and in your hearts offer them up to Him as thank-offerings, see if He would not help you to sell your crops as well as to house them.  He would put you in the way of an honest profit for your labour, just as surely as He only put you in the way of labouring at all.  “Trust in the Lord, and be doing good; dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed;” for “without me,” says our Lord, “you can do nothing.”  No: these are His own words—nothing.  To Him all power is given in heaven and earth; He knows every root and every leaf, and feeds it.  Will He not much more feed you, oh ye of little faith?  Do you think that He has made His world so ill that a man cannot get on in it unless he is a rogue?  No.  Cast all your care on Him, and see if you do not find out ere long that He cares for you, and has cared for you from all eternity.

SERMON III

LIFE AND DEATH

Psalm civ. 24, 28–30

“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches.  That Thou givest them they gather: Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good.  Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.  Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”

I had intended to go through this psalm with you in regular order; but things have happened this parish, awful and sad, during the last week, which I was bound not to let slip without trying to bring them home to your hearts, if by any means I could persuade the thoughtless ones among you to be wise and consider your latter end:—I mean the sad deaths of various of our acquaintances.  The death-bell has been tolled in this parish three times, I believe, in one day—a thing which has seldom happened before, and which God grant may never happen again.  Within two miles of this church there are now five lying dead.  Five human beings, young as well as old, to whom the awful words of the text have been fulfilled: “Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.”  And the very day on which three of these deaths happened was Ascension-day—the day on which Jesus, the Lord of life, the Conqueror of death, ascended upon high, having led captivity captive, and became the first-fruits of the grave, to send down from the heaven of eternal life the Spirit who is the Giver of life.  That was a strange mixture, death seemingly triumphant over Christ’s people on the very day on which life triumphed in Jesus Christ Himself.  Let us see, though, whether death has not something to do with Ascension-day.  Let us see whether a sermon about death is not a fit sermon for the Sunday after Ascension-day.  Let us see whether the text has not a message about life and death too—a message which may make us feel that in the midst of life we are in death, and that yet in the midst of death we are in life; that however things may seem, yet death has not conquered life, but life has conquered and will conquer death, and conquer it most completely at the very moment that we die, and our bodies return to their dust.

Do I speak riddles?  I think the text will explain my riddles, for it tells us how life comes, how death comes.  Life comes from God: He sends forth His spirit, and things are made, and He renews the face of the earth.  We read in the very two verses of the book of Genesis how the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters the creation, and woke all things into life.  Therefore the Creed well calls the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, that is—the Lord and Giver of life.  And the text tells us that He gives life, not only to us who have immortal souls, but to every thing on the face of the earth; for the psalm has been talking all through, not only of men, but of beasts, fishes, trees, and rivers, and rocks, sun and moon.  Now, all these things have a life in them.  Not a life like ours; but still you speak rightly and wisely when you say, ‘That tree is alive, and, That tree is dead.  That running water is live water—it is sweet and fresh, but if it is kept standing it begins to putrefy, its life is gone from it, and a sort of death comes over it, and makes it foul, and unwholesome, and unfit to drink.’  This is a deep matter, this, how there is a sort of life in every thing, even to the stones under our feet.  I do not mean, of course, that stones can think as our life makes us do, or feel as the beasts’ life makes them do, or even grow as the trees’ life makes them do; but I mean that their life keeps them as they are, without changing or decaying.  You hear miners and quarrymen talk very truly of the live rock.  That stone, they say, was cut out of the live rock, meaning the rock as it is under ground, sound and hard—as it would be, for aught we know, to the end of time, unless it was taken out of the ground, out of the place where God’s Spirit meant it to be, and brought up to the open air and the rain, in which it is not its nature to be.  And then you will see that the life of the stone begins to pass from it bit by bit, that it crumbles and peels away, and, in short, decays and is turned again to its dust.  Its organisation, as it is called, or life, ends, and then—what? does the stone lie for ever useless?  No!  And there is the great blessed mystery of how God’s Spirit is always bringing life out of death.  When the stone is decayed and crumbled down to dust and clay, it makes soil—this very soil here, which you plough, is the decayed ruins of ancient hills; the clay which you dig up in the fields was once part of some slate or granite mountains, which were worn away by weather and water, that they might become fruitful earth.  Wonderful! but any one who has studied these things can tell you they are true.  Any one who has ever lived in mountainous countries ought to have seen the thing happen, ought to know that the land in the mountain valleys is made at first, and kept rich year by year, by the washings from the hills above; and this is the reason why land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich.  Then what becomes of the soil?  It begins a new life.  The roots of the plants take it up; the salts which they find in it—the staple, as we call them—go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use, it feeds the stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff.  The corn-stalks would never stand upright if they could not get sand from the soil.  So what a thousand years ago made part of a mountain, now makes part of a wheat-plant; and in a year more the wheat grain will have been eaten, and the wheat straw perhaps eaten too, and they will have died—decayed in the bodies of the animals who have eaten them, and then they will begin a third new life—they will be turned into parts of the animal’s body—of a man’s body.  So that what is now your bone and flesh, may have been once a rock on some hillside a hundred miles away.

Strange, but true! all learned men know that it is true.  You, if you think over my words, may see that they are at least reasonable.  But still most wonderful!  This world works right well, surely.  It obeys God’s Spirit.  Oh, my friends, if we fulfilled our life and our duty as well as the clay which we tread on does,—if we obeyed God’s Spirit as surely as the flint does, we should have many a heartache spared us, and many a headache too!  To be what God wants us!—to be men, to be women, and therefore to live as children of God, members of Christ, fulfilling our duty in that state to which God has called us, that would be our bliss and glory.  Nothing can live in a state in which God did not intend it to live.  Suppose a tree could move itself about like an animal, and chose to do so, the tree would wither and die; it would be trying to act contrary to the law which God has given it.  Suppose the ox chose to eat meat like the lion, it would fall sick and die; for it would be acting contrary to the law which God’s Spirit had made for it—going out of the calling to which God’s Word has called it, to eat grass and not flesh, and live thereby.  And so with us: if we will do wickedly, when the will of God, as the Scripture tells us, is our sanctification, our holiness; if we will speak lies, when God’s law for us is that we should speak truth; if we will bear hatred and ill-will, when God’s law for us is, Love as brothers,—you all sprang from one father, Adam,—you were all redeemed by one brother, Jesus Christ; if we will try to live as if there was no God, when God’s law for us is, that a man can live like a man only by faith and trust in God;—then we shall die, if we break God’s laws according to which he intended man to live.  Thus it was with Adam; God intended him to obey God, to learn every thing from God.  He chose to disobey God, to try and know something of himself, by getting the knowledge of good and evil; and so death passed on him.  He became an unnatural man, a bad man, more or less, and so he became a dead man; and death came into the world, that time at least, by sin, by breaking the law by which man was meant to be a man.  As the beasts will die if you give them unnatural food, or in any way prevent their following the laws which God has made for them, so man dies, of necessity.  All the world cannot help his dying, because he breaks the laws which God has made for him.

And how does he die?  The text tells us, God takes away his breath, and turns His face from him.  In His presence, it is written, is life.  The moment He withdraws his Spirit, the Spirit of life, from any thing, body or soul, then it dies.  It was by sin came death—by man’s becoming unfit for the Spirit of God.

Therefore the body is dead because of sin, says St. Paul, doomed to die, carrying about in it the seeds of death from the very moment it is born.  Death has truly passed upon all men!

Most sad; and yet there is hope, and more than hope, there is certain assurance, for us, that though we die, yet shall we live!  I have shewn you, in the beginning of my sermon, how nothing that dies perishes to nothing, but begins a new and a higher life.  How the stone becomes a plant,—something better and more useful than it was before; the plant passes into an animal—a step higher still.  And, therefore, we may be sure that the same rule will hold good about us men and women, that when we die, we shall begin a new and a nobler life, that is, if we have been true men; if we have lived fulfilling the law of our kind.  St. Paul tells us so positively.  He says that nothing comes to life except it first die, then God gives it a new body.  He says that even so is the resurrection of the dead,—that we gain a step by dying; that we are sown in corruption, and are raised in incorruption; we are sown in dishonour, and are raised in glory; we are sown in weakness, and are raised in power; we are sown a natural body, and are raised a spiritual body; that as we now are of the earth earthy, after death and the resurrection our new and nobler body will be of the heavens heavenly; so that “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then death shall be swallowed up in victory.”  Therefore, I say, Sorrow not for those who sleep as if you had no hope for the dead; for “Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

And I say that this has to do with the text—it has to do with Ascension-day.  For if we claim our share in Christ,—if we claim our share of our heavenly Father’s promise, “to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him;” then we may certainly hope for our share in Christ’s resurrection, our share in Christ’s ascension.  For, says St. Paul (Rom. viii. 10, 11), “if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by His Spirit that dwelleth in you!”  There is a blessed promise! that in that, as in every thing, we shall be made like Christ our Master, the new Adam, who is a life-giving Spirit, that as He was brought to life again by the Spirit of God, so we shall be.  And so will be fulfilled in us the glorious rule which the text lays down, “Thou, O God, sendest forth Thy Spirit, and they are created, and Thou dost renew the face of the earth.”  Fulfilled?—yes, but far more gloriously than ever the old Psalmist expected.  Read the Revelations of St. John, chapters xxi. and xxii. for the glory of the renewed earth read the first Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, chap. iv. 16–18, for the glorious resurrection and ascension of those who have died trusting in the blessed Lord, who died for them; and then see what a glorious future lies before us—see how death is but the gate of life—see how what holds true of every thing on this earth, down to the flint beneath our feet, holds true ten thousand times of men that to die and to decay is only to pass into a nobler state of life.  But remember, that just as we are better than the stone, we may be also worse than the stone.  It cannot disobey God’s laws, therefore it can enjoy no reward, any more than suffer any punishment.  We can disobey—we can fall from our calling—we can cast God’s law behind us—we can refuse to do His will, to work out our own salvation; and just because our reward in the life to come will be so glorious, if we fulfil our life and law, the life of faith and the law of love, therefore will our punishment be so horrible, if we neglect the life of faith and trample under foot the law of love.  Oh, my friends, choose!  Death is before you all.  Shall it be the gate of everlasting life and glory, or the gate of everlasting death and misery?  Will you claim your glorious inheritance, and be for ever equal to the angels, doing God’s will on earth as they in heaven; or will you fall lower than the stones, who, at all events, must do their duty as stones, and not do God’s will at all, but only suffer it in eternal woe?  You must do one or the other.  You cannot be like the stones, without feeling—without joy or sorrow, just because you are immortal spirits, every one of you.  You must be either happy or miserable, blessed or disgraced, for ever.  I know of no middle path;—do you?  Choose before the night comes, in which no man can work.  Our life is but a vapour which appears for a little time, then vanishes away.  “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches.  That Thou givest them they gather: Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good.  Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.  Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”

SERMON IV

THE WORK OF GOD’S SPIRIT

James, i. 16, 17

“Do not err, my beloved brethren; every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.”

This text, I believe more and more every day, is one of the most important ones in the whole Bible; and just at this time it is more important for us than ever, because people have forgotten it more than ever.

And, according as you firmly believe this text, according as you firmly believe that every good gift you have in body and soul comes down from above, from God the Father of lights—according, I say, as you believe this, and live upon that belief, just so far will you be able to do your duty to God and man, worthily of your blessed Saviour’s calling and redemption, and of the high honour which He has given you of being free and christened men, redeemed by His most precious blood, and led by His most noble Spirit.

Now, just because this text is so important, the devil is particularly busy in trying to make people forget it.  For what is his plan?  Is it not to make us forget God, to put God out of all our thoughts, to make us acknowledge God in none of our ways, to make us look at ourselves and not at God, that so we may become first earthly and sensual, and then devilish, like Satan himself?  Therefore he tries to make us disbelieve this text.  He puts into our hearts such thoughts as these:—‘Ay, all good gifts may come from God; but that only means all spiritual gifts.  All those fine, deep doctrines and wonderful feelings that some very religious people talk of, about conversion, and regeneration, and sanctification, and assurance, and the witness of the indwelling Spirit,—all those gifts come from God, no doubt, but they are quite above us.  We are straightforward, simple people, who cannot feel fine fancies; if we can be honest, and industrious, and good-natured, and sober, and strong, and healthy, that is enough for us,—and all that has nothing to do with religion.  Those are not gifts which come from God.  A man is strong and healthy by birth, and honest and good-natured by nature.  Those are very good things; but they are not gifts—they are not graces—they are not spiritual blessings—they have nothing to do with the state of a man’s soul.  Ungodly people are honest, and good-tempered, and industrious, and healthy, as well as your saints and your methodists; so what is the use of praying for spiritual gifts to God, when we can have all we want by nature?’

Did such thoughts never come into your head, my friends?  Are they not often in your heads, more or less?  Perhaps not in these very words, but something like them.

I do not say it to blame you, for I believe that every man, each according to his station, is tempted to such thoughts; I believe that such thoughts are not yours or any man’s; I believe they are the devil’s, who tempts all men, who tempted even the Son of God Himself with thoughts like these at their root.  Such thoughts are not yours or mine, though they may come into our heads.  They are part of the evil which besets us—which is not us—which has no right or share in us—which we pray God to drive away from us when we say, “Deliver us from evil.”  Have you not all had such thoughts?  But have you not all had very different thoughts? have you not, every one of you, at times, felt in the bottom of your hearts, after all, ‘This strength and industry, this courage, and honesty, and good-nature of mine, must come from God; I did not get them myself?  If I was born honest, and strong, and gentle, and brave, some one must have made me so when I was born, or before?  The devil certainly did not make me so, therefore God must?  These, too, are His gifts?’