Discipline and Other Sermons

But there arose, in that wicked old world in which St. Paul lived, an entirely new sort of people—people who did not wish to be successful; did not wish to be rich; did not wish to be powerful; did not wish for pleasures and luxuries which this world could give: who only wished to be good; to do right, and to teach others to do right.  Christians, they were called; after Christ their Lord and God.  Weak old men, poor women, slaves, even children, were among them.  Not many mighty, not many rich, not many noble, were called.  They were mostly weak and oppressed people, who had been taught by suffering and sorrow.

One would have thought that the world would have despised these Christians, and let them go their own way in peace.  But it was not so.  The mighty of this world, and those who lived by pandering to their vices, so far from despising the Christians, saw at once how important they were.  They saw that, if people went about the world determined to speak nothing but what they believed to be true, and to do nothing but what was right, then the wicked world would be indeed turned upside down, and, as they complained against St. Paul more than once, the hope of their gains would be gone.  Therefore they conceived the most bitter hatred against these Christians, and rose against them, for the same simple reason that Cain rose up against Abel and slew him, because his works were wicked, and his brother’s righteous.  They argued with them; they threatened them; they tried to terrify them: but they found to their astonishment that the Christians would not change their minds for any terror.  Then their hatred became rage and fury.  They could not understand how such poor ignorant contemptible people as the Christians seemed to be, dared to have an opinion of their own, and to stand to it; how they dared to think themselves right, and all the world wrong; and in their fury they inflicted on them tortures to read of which should make the blood run cold.  And their rage and fury increased to madness, when they found that these Christians, instead of complaining, instead of rebelling, instead of trying to avenge themselves, submitted to all their sufferings, not only patiently and uncomplaining, but joyfully, and as an honour and a glory.  Some, no doubt, they conquered by torture, agony, and terror; and so made them deny Christ, and return to the wickedness of the heathen.  But those renegades were always miserable.  Their own consciences condemned them.  They felt they had sold their own souls for a lie; and many of them, in their agony of mind, repented again, like St. Peter after he had denied his Lord through fear, proclaimed themselves Christians after all, went through all their tortures a second time, and died triumphant over death and hell.

But there were those—to be counted by hundreds, if not thousands—who dared all, and endured all; and won (as it was rightly called) the crown of martyrdom.  Feeble old men, weak women, poor slaves, even little children, sealed their testimony with their blood, and conquered, not by fighting, but by suffering.

They conquered.  They conquered for themselves in the next world; for they went to heaven and bliss, and their light affliction, which was but for a moment, worked out for them an exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

They conquered in this world also.  For the very world which had scourged them, racked them, crucified them, burned them alive, when they were dead turned round and worshipped them as heroes, almost as divine beings.  And they were divine; for they had in them the Divine Spirit, the Spirit of God and of Christ.  Therefore the foolish world was awed, conscience-stricken, pricked to the heart, when it looked on those whom it had pierced, as it had pierced Christ the Lord, and cried, as the centurion cried on Calvary, ‘Surely these were the sons and daughters of God.  Surely there was some thing more divine, more noble, more beautiful in these poor creatures dying in torture, than in all the tyrants and conquerors and rich men of the earth.  This is the true greatness, this is the true heroism—to do well and suffer for it patiently.’

And thenceforth men began to get, slowly but surely, a quite new idea of true greatness; they learnt to see that not revenge, but forgiveness; not violence, but resignation; not success, but holiness, are the perfection of humanity.  They began to have a reverence for those who were weak in body, and simple in heart,—a reverence for women, for children, for slaves, for all whom the world despises, such as the old Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, had never had.  They began to see that God could make strong the weak things of this world, and glorify himself in the courage and honesty of the poorest and the meanest.  They began to see that in Christ Jesus was neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but that all were one in Christ Jesus, all alike capable of receiving the Spirit of God, all alike children of the one Father, who was above all, and in all, and with them all.

And so the endurance and the sufferings of the early martyrs was the triumph of good over evil; the triumph of honesty and truth; of purity and virtue; of gentleness and patience; of faith in a just and loving God: because it was the triumph of the Spirit of Christ, by which he died, and rose again, and conquered shame and pain, and death and hell.

SERMON XXII

TOLERATION

(Preached at Christ Church, Marylebone, 1867, for the Bishop of London’s Fund.)

Matthew xiii. 24–30

The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.  But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.  So the servants of the household came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?  He said unto them, An enemy hath done this.  The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?  But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye toot up also the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest and in the time of harvest: I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

The thoughtful man who wishes well to the Gospel of Christ will hardly hear this parable without a feeling of humiliation.  None of our Lord’s parables are more clear and simple in their meaning; none have a more direct and practical command appended to them; none have been less regarded during the last fifteen hundred years.  Toleration, solemnly enjoined, has been the exception.  Persecution, solemnly forbidden, has been the rule.  Men, as usual, have fancied themselves wiser than God; for they have believed themselves wise enough to do what he had told them that they were not wise enough to do, and so have tried to root the tares from among the wheat.  Men have, as usual, lacked faith in Christ; they did not believe that he was actually governing the earth which belonged to him; that he was actually cultivating his field, the world: they therefore believed themselves bound to do for him what he neglected, or at least did not see fit, to do for himself; and they tried to root up the tares from among the wheat.  They have tried to repress free thought, and to silence novel opinions, forgetful that Christ must have been right after all, and that in silencing opinions which startled them, they might be quenching the Spirit, and despising prophecies.  But they found it more difficult to quench the Spirit than they fancied, when they began the policy of repression.  They have found that the Spirit blew where it listed, and they heard the sound of it, but knew not whence it came, or whither it went; that the utterances which startled them, the tones of feeling and thought which terrified them, reappeared, though crushed in one place, suddenly in another; that the whole atmosphere was charged with them, as with electricity; and that it was impossible to say where the unseen force might not concentrate itself at any moment, and flash out in a lightning stroke.  Then their fear has turned to a rage.  They have thought no more of putting down opinions: but of putting down men.  They have found it more difficult than they fancied to separate the man from his opinions; to hate the sin and love the sinner: and so they have begun to persecute; and, finding brute force, or at least the chichane of law, far more easy than either convincing their opponents or allowing themselves to be convinced by them, they have fined, imprisoned, tortured, burnt, exterminated; and, like the Roman conquerors of old, ‘made a desert, and called that peace.’

And all the while the words stood written in the Scriptures which they professed to believe: ‘Nay: lest while ye root up the tares, ye root up the wheat also.’

They had been told, if ever men were told, that the work was beyond their powers of discernment: that, whatever the tares were, or however they came into God’s field the world, they were either too like the wheat, or too intimately entangled with them, for any mortal man to part them.  God would part them in his own good time.  If they trusted God, they would let them be; certain that he hated what was false, what was hurtful, infinitely more than they; certain that he would some day cast out of his kingdom all things which offend, and all that work injustice, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie; and that, therefore, if he suffered such things to abide awhile, it was for them to submit, and to believe that God loved the world better than they, and knew better how to govern it.  But if, on the contrary, they did not believe God, then they would set to work, in their disobedient self-conceit, to do that which he had forbidden them; and the certain result would be that, with the tares, they would root up the wheat likewise.

Note here two things.  First, it is not said that there were no tares among the wheat; nor that the servants would fail in rooting some of them up.  They would succeed probably in doing some good: but they would succeed certainly in doing more harm.  In their short-sighted, blind, erring, hasty zeal, they would destroy the good with the evil.  Their knowledge of this complex and miraculous universe was too shallow, their canons of criticism were too narrow, to decide on what ought, or ought not, to grow in the field of him whose ways and thoughts were as much higher than theirs as the heaven is higher than the earth.

Note also, that the Lord does not blame them for their purpose.  He merely points out to them its danger; and forbids it because it is dangerous; for their wish to root out the tares was not ‘natural.’  We shall libel it by calling it that.  It was distinctly spiritual, the first impulse of spiritual men, who love right, and hate wrong, and desire to cultivate the one, and exterminate the other.  To root out the tares; to put down bad men and wrong thoughts by force, is one of the earliest religious instincts.  It is the child’s instinct—pardonable though mistaken.  The natural man—whether the heathen savage at one end of the scale, or the epicurean man of the world at the other—has no such instinct.  He will feel no anger against falsehood, because he has no love for truth; he will be liberal enough, tolerant enough, of all which does not touch his own self-interest; but that once threatened, he too may join the ranks of the bigots, and persecute, not like them, in the name of God and truth, but in those of society and order; and so the chief priests and Pontius Pilate may make common cause.  And yet the chief priests, with their sense of duty, of truth, and of right, however blundering, concealed, perverted, may be a whole moral heaven higher than Pilate with no sense of aught beyond present expediency.  But nevertheless what have been the consequences to both?  That the chief priests have failed as utterly as the Pilates.  As God forewarned them, they have rooted up the wheat with the tares; they have made the blood of martyrs the seed of the Church; and more, they have made martyrs of those who never deserved to be martyrs, by wholesale and indiscriminate condemnation.  They have forgotten that the wheat and the tares grow together, not merely in separate men, but in each man’s own heart and thoughts; that light and darkness, wisdom and folly, duty and ambition, self-sacrifice and self-conceit, are fighting in every soul of man in whom there is even the germ of spiritual life.  Therefore they have made men offenders for a word.  They have despised noble aspirations, ignored deep and sound insights, because they came in questionable shapes, mingled with errors or eccentricities.  They have cried in their haste, ‘Here are tares, and tares alone.’

Again and again have religious men done this, for many a hundred years; and again and again the Nemesis has fallen on them.  A generation or two has passed, and the world has revolted from their unjust judgments.  It has perceived, among the evil, good which it had overlooked in an indignant haste and passionateness, learnt from those who should have taught it wisdom, patience, and charity.  It has made heroes of those who had been branded as heretics; and has cried, ‘There was wheat, and wheat alone;’ and so religious men have hindered the very cause for which they fancied that they were fighting; and have gained nothing by disobeying God’s command, save to weaken their own moral influence, to increase the divisions of the Church, and to put a fresh stumbling-block in the path of the ignorant and the young.

And what have been the consequences to Christ’s Church?  Have not her enemies—and her friends too—for centuries past, cried in vain:—

‘For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight,
His can’t he wrong, whose life is in the right.’

Of Christian morals her enemies have not complained: but that these morals have been postponed, neglected, forgotten, in the disputes over abstruse doctrines, over ceremonies, and over no-ceremonies; that men who were all fully agreed in their definition of goodness, and what a good man should be and do, have denounced each other concerning matters which had no influence whatsoever to practical morality, till the ungodly cried, ‘See how these Christians hate one another!  See how they waste their time in disputing concerning the accidents of the bread of life, forgetful that thousands were perishing round them for want of any bread of life at all!’

My friends, these things are true; and have been true for centuries.  Let us not try to forget them by denouncing them as the utterances of the malevolent and the unbelieving.  Let us rather imitate the wise man who said, that he was always grateful to his critics, for, however unjust their attacks, they were certain to attack, and therefore to show him, his weakest points.  And here is our weakest point; namely, in our unhappy divisions—which are the fruits of self-will and self-conceit, and of the vain attempt to do that which God incarnate has told us we cannot do—to part the wheat from the tares.

We cannot part them.  Man could never do it, even in the simpler Middle Age.  Far less can he do it now in an age full of such strange, such complex influences; at once so progressive and conservative; an age in which the same man is often craving after some new prospect of the future, and craving at the same moment after the seemingly obsolete past; longing for fresh truth, and yet dreading to lose the old; with hope struggling against fear, courage against modesty, scorn of imbecility against reverence for authority in the same man’s heart, while the mystery of the new world around him strives with the mystery of the old world which lies behind him; while the belief that man is the same being now as he was five thousand years ago strives with the plain fact that he is assuming round us utterly novel habits, opinions, politics; while the belief that Christ is the same now as he was in Judæa of old—yea, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—strives with the plain fact that his field, the world, is in a state in which it never has been since the making of the world; while it is often most difficult, though (as I believe) certainly possible, to see those divine laws at work with which God governed the nations in old time.  May God forgive us all, both laity and clergy, every cruel word, every uncharitable thought, every hasty judgment.  Have we not need, in such a time as this, of that divine humility which is the elder sister of divine charity?  Have we not need of some of that God-inspired modesty of St. Paul’s: ‘I think as a child, I speak as a child.  I see through a glass darkly’?  Have we not need to listen to his warning: ‘he that regardeth the day, to the Lord he regardeth it; and he that regardeth it not, to the Lord he regardeth it not.  Who art thou that judgest another?  To his own master he standeth or falleth.  Yea, and he shall stand; for God is able to make him stand’?  Have we not need to hear our Lord’s solemn rebuke, when St. John boasted how he saw one casting out devils in Christ’s name, and he forbade him, because he followed not them—‘Forbid him not’?  Have we not need to believe St. James, when he tells us that every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from above, from the Father of lights, and not (as we have too often fancied) sometimes from below, from darkness and the pit?  Have we not need to keep in mind the canon of the wise Gamaliel?—‘If this counsel or this work be of man, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, we cannot overthrow it, lest haply we too be found fighting even against God.’  Have we not need to keep in mind that ‘every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God;’ and ‘no man saith that Jesus is the Christ, save by the Spirit of God;’ lest haply we, too, be found more fastidious than Almighty God himself?  Have we not need to beware lest we, like the Scribes and Pharisees, should be found keeping the key of knowledge, and yet not entering in ourselves, and hindering those who would enter in?  Have we not need to beware lest, while we are settling which is the right gate to the kingdom of heaven, the publicans and harlots should press into it before us; and lest, while we are boasting that we are the children of Abraham, God should, without our help, raise up children to Abraham of those stones outside; those hard hearts, dull brains, natures ground down by the drudgery of daily life till they are as the pavement of the streets; those so-called ‘heathen masses’ of whom we are bid to think this day.

If there be any truth, any reason, in what I have said—or rather in what Christ and his apostles have said—let us lay it to heart upon this day, on which the clergy of this great metropolis have found a common cause for which to plead, whatever may be their minor differences of opinion.  Let us wish success to every argument by which this great cause may be enforced, to every scheme of good which may be built up by its funds.  Let us remember that, however much the sermons preached this day differ in details, they will all agree, thank God, in the root and ground of their pleading—duty to Christ, and to those for whom Christ died.  Let us remember that, to whatever outwardly different purposes the money collected may be applied, it will after all be applied to one purpose—to Christian civilization, Christian teaching, Christian discipline; and that any Christianity, any Christian civilization, any Christian discipline, is infinitely better than none; that, though all man’s systems and methods must be imperfect, faulty, yet they are infinitely better than anarchy and heathendom, just as the wheat, however much mixed with weeds, is infinitely better than the weeds alone.  But above all, let us wish well to all schemes of education, of whatever kind, certain that any education is better than none.  And, therefore, let me entreat you to subscribe bountifully to that scheme for which I specially plead this day.

Let me remind you, very solemnly, that the present dearth of education in these realms is owing mainly to our unhappy religious dissensions; that it is the disputes, not of unbelievers, but of Christians, which have made it impossible for our government to fulfil one of the first rights, one of the first duties, of any government in a civilized country; namely, to command, and to compel, every child in the realm to receive a proper education.  Strange and sad that so it should be: yet so it is.  We have been letting, we are letting still, year by year, thousands sink and drown in the slough of heathendom and brutality, while we are debating learnedly whether a raft, or a boat, or a rope, or a life-buoy, is the legitimate instrument for saving them; and future historians will record with sorrow and wonder a fact which will be patent to them, though the dust of controversy hides it from our eyes—even the fact that the hinderers of education in these realms were to be found, not among the so-called sceptics, not among the so-called infidels; but among those who believed that God came down from heaven, and became man, and died on the cross, for every savage child in London streets.  Compulsory government education is, by our own choice and determination, impossible.  The more solemn is the duty laid on us, on laity and clergy alike, to supply that want by voluntary education.  The clergy will do their duty, each in his own way.  Let the laity do theirs likewise, in fear and trembling, as men who have voluntarily and deliberately undertaken to educate the lower classes; and who must do it, or bear the shame for ever.  For in the last day, when we shall all appear before Him whose ways are not as our ways, or his thoughts as our thoughts—in that day, the question will not be, whether the compulsory system, or the denominational system, or any other system, satisfied best our sectarian ways and our narrow thoughts: but whether they satisfied the ways of that Father in heaven who willeth not that one little child should perish.

SERMON XXIII

THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST

Luke xix. 41

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it.

Let us think awhile what was meant by our Lord’s weeping over Jerusalem.  We ought to learn thereby somewhat more of our Lord’s character, and of our Lord’s government.

Why did he weep over that city whose people would, in a few days, mock him, scourge him, crucify him, and so fill up the measure of their own iniquity?  Had Jesus been like too many, who since his time have fancied themselves saints and prophets, would he not have rather cursed the city than wept over it with tenderness, regret, sorrow, most human and most divine, for that horrible destruction which before forty years were past would sweep it off the face of the earth, and leave not one stone of those glorious buildings on another?

The only answer is—that, in spite of all its sins, he loved Jerusalem.  For more than a thousand years, he had put his name there.  It was to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set on a hill, which could not be hid.  From Jerusalem was to go forth to all nations the knowledge of the one true God, as a light to lighten the Gentiles, as well as a glory to his people Israel.

This was our Lord’s purpose; this had been his purpose for one thousand years and more: and behold, man’s sin and folly had frustrated for a time the gracious will of God.  That glorious city, with its temple, its worship, its religion, true as far as it went, and, in spite of all the traditions with which the Scribes and Pharisees had overlaid it, infinitely better than the creed or religion of any other people in the old world—all this, instead of being a blessing to the world, had become a curse.  The Jews, who had the key of the knowledge of God, neither entered in themselves, nor let the Gentiles enter in.  They who were to have taught all the world were hating and cursing all the world, and being hated and cursed by them in return.  Jerusalem, the Holy City set on a hill, instead of being a light to the world, was become a nuisance to the world.  Jerusalem was the salt of the world, meant to help it all from decay; but the salt had lost its savour, and in another generation it would be cast out and trodden under foot, and become a byword among the Gentiles.

Our Lord, The Lord, the hereditary King of the Jews according to the flesh, as well as the God of the Jews according to the Spirit, foresaw the destruction of the work of his own hands, of the spot on earth which was most precious to him.  The ruin would be awful, the suffering horrible.  The daughters of Jerusalem were to weep, not for him, but for themselves.  Blessed would be the barren, and those that never nursed a child.  They would call on the mountains to cover them, and on the hills to hide them, and call in vain.  Such tribulation would fall on them as never had been since the making of the world.  Mothers would eat their own children for famine.  Three thousand crosses would stand at one time in the valley below with a living man writhing on each.  Eleven hundred thousand souls would perish, or be sold as slaves.  It must be.  The eternal laws of retribution, according to which God governs the world, must have their way now.  It was too late.  It must happen now.  But it need not have happened: and at that thought our Lord’s infinite heart burst forth in human tenderness, human pity, human love, as he looked on that magnificent city, those gorgeous temples, castles, palaces, that mighty multitude which dreamt so little of the awful doom which they were bringing on themselves.

And now, where is he that wept over Jerusalem?  Has he left this world to itself?  Does he care no longer for the rise and fall of nations, the struggles and hopes, the successes and the failures of mankind?

Not so, my friends.  He has ascended up on high, and sat down at the right hand of God: but he has done so, that he might fill all things.  To him all power is given in heaven and earth.  He reigneth over the nations.  He sitteth on that throne whereof the eternal Father hath said to him, ‘Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool;’ and again, ‘Desire of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utmost ends of the earth for thy possession.’  He is set upon his throne (as St. John saw him in his Revelation) judging right, and ministering true judgment unto the people.  The nations may furiously rage together, and the people may imagine a vain thing.  The kings of the earth may stand up, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bonds’—that is their laws,—‘asunder, and cast away their cords’—that is, their Gospel—‘from us.’  They may say, ‘Tush, God doth not see, neither doth God regard it.  We are they that ought to speak.  Who is Lord over us?’  Nevertheless Christ is King of kings, and Lord of lords; he reigns, and will reign.  And kings must be wise, and the judges of the earth must be learned; they must serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice before him with reverence.  They must worship the Son, lest he be angry, and so they perish from the right way.  All the nations of the world, with their kings and their people, their war, their trade, their politics, and their arts and sciences, are in his hands as clay in the hands of the potter, fulfilling his will and not their own, going his way and not their own.  It is he who speaks concerning a nation or a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it.  And it is he again who speaks concerning a nation or kingdom, to build and to plant it.  For the Lord is king, be the world never so much moved.  He sitteth between the cherubim, though the earth be never so unquiet.

But while we recollect this—which in these days almost all forget—that Christ the Lord is the ruler, and he alone; we must recollect likewise that he is not only a divine, but a human ruler.  We must recollect—oh, blessed thought!—that there is a Man in the midst of the throne of heaven; that Christ has taken for ever the manhood into God; and that all judgment is committed to him because he is the Son of man, who can feel for men, and with men.

Yes, Christ’s humanity is no less now than when he wept over Jerusalem; and therefore we may believe, we must believe, that while Jesus is very God of very God, yet his sacred heart is touched with a divine compassion for the follies of men, a divine regret for their failures, a divine pity for the ruin which they bring so often on themselves.  We must believe that even when he destroys, he does so with regret; that when he cuts down the tree which cumbers the ground, he grieves over it; as he grieved over his chosen vine, the nation of the Jews.

It is a comfort to remember this as we watch the world change, and the fashions of it vanish away.  Great kingdoms, venerable institutions, gallant parties, which have done good work in their time upon God’s earth, grow old, wear out, lose their first love of what was just and true; and know not the things which belong to their peace, but grow, as the Jews grew in their latter years, more and more fanatical, quarrelsome, peevish, uncharitable; trying to make up by violence for the loss of strength and sincerity: till they come to an end, and die, often by unjust and unfair means, and by men worse than they.  Shall we not believe that Christ has pity on them; that he who wept over Jerusalem going to destruction by its own blindness, sorrows over the sins and follies which bring shame on countries once prosperous, authorities once venerable, causes once noble?

They, too, were thoughts of Christ.  Whatsoever good was in them, he inspired; whatsoever strength was in them, he gave; whatsoever truth was in them, he taught; whatsoever good work they did, he did through them.  Perhaps he looks on them, not with wrath and indignation, but with pity and sorrow, when he sees man’s weakness, folly, and sin, bringing to naught his gracious purposes, and falling short of his glorious will.

It is a comfort, I say, to believe this, in these times of change.  Places, manners, opinions, institutions, change around us more and more; and we are often sad, when we see good old fashions, in which we were brought up, which we have loved, revered, looked on as sacred things, dying out fast, and new fashions taking their places, which we cannot love because we do not trust them, or even understand.  The old ways were good enough for us: why should they not be good enough for our children after us?  Therefore, we are sad at times, and the young and the ambitious are apt to sneer at us, because we delight in what is old rather than what is new.

Let us remember, then, that whatsoever changes, still there is one who cannot change, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.  Surely he can feel for us, when he sees us regret old fashions and old times; surely he does not look on our sadness as foolish, weak, or sinful.  It is pardonable, for it is human; and he has condescended to feel it himself, when he wept over Jerusalem.

Only, he bids us not despair; not doubt his wisdom, his love, the justice and beneficence of his rule.  He ordereth all things in heaven and earth; and, therefore, all things must, at last, go well.

‘The old order changes, giving place to the new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’

We must believe that, and trust in Christ.  We must trust in him, that he will not cut down any tree in his garden until it actually cumbers the ground, altogether unfruitful, and taking up room which might be better used.  We must trust him, that he will cast nothing out of his kingdom till it actually offends, makes men stumble and fall to their destruction.  We must trust him, that he will do away with nothing that is old, without putting something better in its place.  Thus we shall keep up our hearts, though things do change round us, sometimes mournfully enough.  For Christ destroyed Jerusalem.  But, again, its destruction was, as St. Paul said, life to all nations.  He destroyed Moses’ law.  But he, by so doing, put in its place his own Gospel.  He scattered abroad the nations of the Jews, but he thereby called into his Church all nations of the earth.  He destroyed, with a fearful destruction, the Holy City and temple, over which he wept.  But he did so in order that the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, even his Church, should come down from heaven; needing no temple, for he himself is the temple thereof; that the nations of those which were saved should walk in the light of it; and that the river of the water of life should flow from the throne of God; and that the leaves of the trees which grew thereby should be for the healing of the nations.  In that magnificent imagery, St. John shows us how the most terrible destruction which the Lord ever brought upon a holy place and holy institutions was really a blessing to all the world.  Let us believe that it has been so often since; that it will be so often again.  Let us look forward to the future with hope and faith, even while we look back on the past with love and regret.  Let us leave unmanly and unchristian fears to those who fancy that Christ has deserted his kingdom, and has left them to govern it in his stead; and who naturally break out into peevishness and terrified lamentations, when they discover that the world will not go their way, or any man’s way, because it is going the way of God, whose ways are not as man’s ways nor his thoughts as man’s thoughts.  Let us have faith in God and in Christ, amid all the chances and changes of this mortal life; and believe that he is leading the world and mankind to

‘One far-off divine event
Toward which the whole creation moves;’

and possess our souls in patience, and in faith, and in hope for ourselves and for our children after; while we say, with the Psalmist of old: ‘Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands.  They shall perish, but thou shalt endure.  They all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be cleansed.  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.’  Amen.

SERMON XXIV