The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A Set of Parish Sermons

We cannot understand now, in these happier days, all that that meant; all the strength and comfort, all the godly fear, the feeling of solemn responsibility which that thought ought to have given, and did give to the Jews—that they were the people of Jehovah, the one true God.

For you must remember that all the nations round them then, and all the great heathen nations afterwards, were, as far as we know, the people of some god or other.  Religion and politics were with them one and the same thing.  They had some god, or gods, whom they looked to as the head or king of their nation, who had a special favour to them, and would bless and prosper them according as they showed him special reverence, and after that god the whole nation was often named.

The Ammonites’ god was Ammon, the hidden god, the lord of their sheep and cattle.  The Zidonians had Ashtoreth, the moon.  The Phœnicians worshipped Moloch, the fire.  Many of the Canaanites worshipped Baal, the lord, or Baalim, the lords—the sun, moon, and stars.  The Philistines afterwards (for we read nothing of Philistines in Moses’ time) worshipped Dagon, the fish-god, and so forth.  The Egyptians had gods without number—gods invented out of beasts, and birds, and the fruits of the earth, and the season, and the weather, and the sun and moon and stars.  Each class and trade, from the highest to the lowest, and each city and town throughout the land seems to have had its special god, who was worshipped there, and expected to take care of that particular class of men or that particular place.

What a thought it must have been for the Jews—all these people have their gods, but they are all wrong.  We have the right God; the only true God.  They are the people of this god, or of that; we are the people of the one true God.  They look to many gods; we look to the one God, who made all things, and beside whom there is none else.  They look to one god to bless them in one thing, and another in another; one to send them sunshine, one to send them fruitful seasons, one to prosper their crops, another their flocks and herds, and so forth.  We look to one God to do all these things for us, because he is Lord of all at once, and has made all.

Therefore we need not fear the gods of the heathen, or cry to any of them, even in our utmost distress; for we belong to him who is before all gods, the God of gods, of whom it is written, ‘Worship him, all ye gods;’ and ‘It is the Lord who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that therein is.  Him only shalt thou worship, and him only shalt thou serve.’  If we obey him, and keep his commandments; if we trust in him, utterly, through good fortune and through bad—then we must prosper in peace and war, we and our children after us; because our prosperity is grounded on the real truth, and that of the heathen on a lie; and all that the heathen expect their false gods to do for them, one here and another there, all that, the one real God will do for us, himself alone.

Do you not see what a power and courage that thought must have given to the Jews?  Do you not see how worshipping God, and loving God, and serving God, must have been a very different, a much deeper, and a truly holier matter to them than the miserable selfish thing which is miscalled religion by too many people now-a-days, by which a man hopes to creep out of this world into heaven all by himself, without any real care or love for his fellow-creatures, or those he leaves behind him?

No.  An old Jew’s faith in God, and obedience to God, was part of his family life, part of his politics, part of his patriotism.  If he obeyed God, and clave earnestly to God, then a blessing would come on him in the field and in the house, on his crops and on his cattle, going out and coming in; and on his children and his children’s children to a thousand generations.  He would be helping, if he obeyed and trusted God, to advance his country’s prosperity; to insure her success in war and peace, to raise the name and fame of the Jewish people among all the nations round, that all might say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and an understanding people.’

Thus the duty he owed to God was not merely a duty which he owed his own conscience or his own soul; it was a duty which he owed to his family, to his kindred, to his country.  It was not merely an opinion that there was one God and not two; it was a belief that the one and only true God was protecting him, teaching him, inspiring him and all his nation.  That the true God would teach their hands to war and their fingers to fight.  That the true God would cause their folds to be full of sheep.  That their valleys should stand rich with corn, that they should laugh and sing.  That the true God would enable them to sit every man under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and eat the labour of his hands, he and his children after him to perpetual generations.

This was the message and teaching which God gave these Jews.  It is very different from what many people now-a-days would have given them, if they had had the ordering of the matter, and the making of those slaves into a free nation.  But perhaps there is one proof that God did give it them, and that the Bible speaks truth, when it says that not man, but God gave them their law.

No doubt man would have done it differently.  But God’s ways are not as man’s ways, nor God’s thoughts as man’s thoughts.

And God’s ways have proved themselves to be the right ways.  His purpose has come to pass.  This little nation of the Jews, inhabiting a country not as large as Wales, without sea-port towns and commerce, without colonies or conquests—and at last, for its own sins, conquered itself, and scattered abroad over the whole civilized world—has taught the whole civilized world, has converted the whole civilized world, has influenced all the good and all the wise unto this day so enormously, that the world has actually gone beyond them, and become Christian by fully understanding their teaching and their Bible, while they have remained mere Jews by not fully understanding it.  Truly, if that is not a proof that God revealed something to the Jews which they never found out for themselves, which was too great for them to understand, which was God’s boundless message and not any narrow message of man’s invention—if that does not prove it, I say—I know not what proof men would have.

But now I have told you that God bade these Jews to look for blessings in this life, and blessings on their whole nation, and on their children after them, if they obeyed and served him.  Does God not bid us to look for any such blessings?  The Jews were to be blessed in this world.  Are we only to be blessed in the next?

To that the Seventh Article of our Church gives a plain and positive answer.  For it says that those are not to be heard who pretend that the old Fathers, i.e. Moses and the Prophets, looked only for transitory promises—i.e. for promises which would pass away.  No.  They looked for eternal promises which could not pass away, because they were according to the eternal laws of God, which stand good both for this world and for all worlds for this life and for the life everlasting.

Yes, my friends, settle in your hearts that the book of Deuteronomy is meant for you, and for all the nations upon earth, as much as for the old Jews.  That its promises and warnings are to you and to your children as surely as they were to the old Jews.  Ay, that they are meant for every nation that is, or ever was, or ever will be upon earth.  If you would prosper on the earth, fear God and keep his commandments; and know and consider it in your heart that the Lord Jesus Christ he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath: there is none else.  He it is who gives grace and honour.  He it is who delivers us out of the hands of our enemies.  He it is who blesses the fruit of the womb, and the fruit of the flock, and the fruit of the garden and the field.  He is the living God, in whom this world, as well as the world to come, lives and moves and has its being; and only by obeying his laws can man prosper, he and his children after him, upon this earth of God.

SERMON XVI.  NATIONAL WEALTH

(Fifth Sunday after Easter.)

Deut. viii. 11-18.  Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end: and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.  But thou shall remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

I told you before that the book of Deuteronomy was the foundation of all sound politics—as one would expect it to be, if its author were Moses, the greatest lawgiver whom the world ever saw.  But here, in this lesson, is a proof of the truth of what I said.  For here, in the text, is Moses’ answer to the first great question in politics, What makes a nation prosperous?

To that wise men have always answered, as Moses answered, ‘Good government; government according to the laws of God.’  That alone makes a nation prosperous.

But the multitude—who are not wise men, nor likely to be for some time to come—give a different answer.  They say, ‘What makes a nation prosperous is its wealth.  If Britain be only rich, then she must be safe and right.’

To which Moses, being a wise lawgiver, and having, moreover, in him the Spirit of the Lord who knoweth what is in man, makes a reasonable, liberal, humane answer.

Moses does not deny that wealth is a good thing.  He does not bid them not try to be rich.  He takes for granted that they will grow rich; that the national fruit of their good government will be that they will increase in cattle and in crops and in money, and in all which makes an agricultural people rich.

He takes for granted, I say, that these Jews will grow very rich; but he warns them that their riches, like all other earthly things, may be a curse or a blessing to them.  Nay, that they are not good in themselves, but mere tools which may be used for good or for evil.  He warns them of a very great danger that riches will bring on them.  And herein he shows his knowledge of the human heart; for it is a certain fact that whenever any nation has prospered, and their flocks and herds, and silver and gold, all that they had, have multiplied, then they have, as Moses warned the Jews, forgotten the Lord their God, and said, ‘My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth.’

And it is true, also, that whenever any nation has begun to say that, they have fallen into confusion and misery, and sometimes into utter ruin, till they repented, and turned and remembered the Lord their God, and found out that the strength of a nation did not consist in riches, but in virtue.  For it is he that giveth the power to get wealth.  He gives it in two ways: First, God gives the raw material; secondly, he gives the wit to use it.

You will all agree that God gives the first; that he gives the soil, the timber, the fisheries, the coal, the iron.

Do you believe it?  I hope and trust that you do.  But I fear that now-a-days many do not; for they boast of the resources of Britain as if we ourselves had made Britain, and not Almighty God; as if we had put the coal and the iron into the rocks, and not Almighty God ages before we were born.

And if they will not say that openly, at least they will say, ‘But the coal, and iron, and all other raw material would have been useless, if it had not been for the genius and energy of the British race.’

Of course not.  But who gave them that genius and energy?  Who gave them the wit to find the coal and iron?

God; and God gave it to us when we needed it, and not before.

Think of this, I beseech you; for it is true, and wonderful, and a thing of which I may say, ‘Come, and I will reason with you of the righteous acts of the Lord.’

Men say, ‘As long as England is ahead of the world in coal and iron she may defy the world.’  I do not believe it; for if she became a wicked nation all the coal and iron in the universe would not keep her from being ruined.

But even if it were true, which it is not, that the strength of Britain lies in coal and iron, and not in British hearts, what right have we to boast of coal and iron?

Did our forefathers know of them when they came into this land?  Did they come after coal and iron?

Not they.  They came here to settle as small yeomen; to till miserable little patches of corn, of which we should be now ashamed, and to feed cattle on the moors, and swine in the forests—and that was all they looked to.  Then they found that there was iron, principally down south, in Sussex and Surrey; and they worked it, clumsily enough, with charcoal; and for more than twelve hundred years they were here in England, with no notion of the boundless wealth in iron and coal lying together in the same rocks which God had provided for them; or if they did guess at it, they could not use it, because they could not work deep mines, being unable to pump out the water; for God had not opened their eyes and shown them how to do it.

But just when it was wanted, God did show them.  About the middle of the last century the iron in the Weald was all but worked out; the charcoal wood was getting scarcer and scarcer, and there was every chance that England, instead of being ahead of all nations in iron, would have fallen behind other nations; and then where should we have been now?

But, just about one hundred years ago, it pleased God to open the eyes of certain men, and they invented steam-engines.  Then they could pump the mines, then they could discover and use the vast riches of our coal-mines.  Then, too, sprung up a thousand useful arts and manufactures; while the land, not being wanted for charcoal and firewood, as of old, could be cleared of wood, and thousands of acres set free to grow corn.  Population, which had been all but standing still, without increasing, has now more than doubled, and wealth inestimable has come to this generation, of which our forefathers never dreamed.

Now what have we to boast of in that?  What, save to confess ourselves a very stupid race, who for twelve hundred years could not discover, or at least use the boundless wealth which God had given us, because we had not wit enough to invent so simple a thing as a steam-engine.

All we should do, instead of boasting, is to bless God that he revealed to us just what we needed, and at the very time at which we needed it, and confess that it is he that giveth us power to get wealth.  It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.

Look again at another case, even more extraordinary, which has happened during our own times—indeed within the last ten years—the discovery of gold in Australia.

There had been rumours and whispers of gold for years before; and yet no one looked for gold, cared for it, hardly believed in it.  God had dulled their understanding and blinded their eyes for some good purpose of his own.  That is what the Bible would have said of such a matter, and that is what we should say.

And at last some man finds lying out upon the downs a huge lump of gold—by accident (as men call it; by the special providence of God, as they ought to call it); and at that every one starts up and awakes, and begins looking for gold.  And now that their eyes are opened, behold! the gold is everywhere.  Not merely in lonely forests and unexplored mountains, but on farms where the sheep have been pastured for years past; ay, even Melbourne streets were full of gold, under the feet of the passengers and the wheels of the carriages; there had the gold been all along, but men could not see it till God opened their eyes.  Verily, verily, God is great, and man is small.  I do not say that this was a miracle in the common meaning of the word; but I do say that this was a striking instance of that everlasting and special providence of the living God, who ordereth all things in heaven and earth, from the rise of a nation to the fall of a sparrow; and does so, not by breaking his own laws, but by making his laws work exactly as he will, when he will, and where he will; and I say that it is a fresh proof of the great saying, that no man can see a thing unless God shows it to him.  For it is the Lord who gives us power to get wealth.  It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; and in him we live and move, and have our being.

This, then, was what Moses commanded—to remember that they owed all to God.  What they had, they had of God’s free gift.  What they were, they were by God’s free grace.  Therefore they were not to boast of themselves, their numbers, their wealth, their armies, their fair and fertile land.  They were to make their boast of God, and of God’s goodness.

He that gloried was to glory in the Lord, and confess that a Syrian ready to perish was their father Jacob, when the Lord had mercy on him, and made him the head of a great tribe, and the father of a great nation; that not themselves, but God had brought them out of Egypt with signs and wonders; that they got not the land in possession by their own bow, neither was it their own sword that helped them, but that God had driven out before them nations greater and mightier than they.

This they were to remember, because it was true.  And this we are to remember, because it is more or less true of us.  God has put us where we are.  God has made of us a great nation; God has discovered to us the immense riches of this land.  It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.

But more.  You will see that Moses warns them that if they forget God, the Lord who brought them out of the land of Egypt, they would go after other gods.

He cannot part the two things.  If they forget that God brought them out of Egypt, they will turn to idolatry, and so end in ruin.

Now why was this?

Why should not the Jews have gone on worshipping one God, even if they had forgotten that he brought them out of the land of Egypt?

Some people now-a-days think that they would, and that they might have very well been what is called Monotheists, without believing all the story of the signs and wonders in Egypt, and the passage of the Red Sea, and the giving of the law to Moses.

Such men may be very learned; but there is one thing of which they know very little, and that is, human nature.  Moses knew human nature; and he knew that if men forgot that God was the living God, the acting God, who had helped them once, and was helping them always, and only believed about there being one God far away in heaven, and not two, that that sort of dead faith in a dead God would never keep them from idols.  They would want gods who would help them, who would hear their prayers, to whom they could feel gratitude and trust; and they would invent them for themselves, and begin to worship things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, because they had forgotten their true friend and helper, the living God.