Westminster Sermons

Looking at history in this light, we may justify God for many a heavy blow, and fearful judgment, which seems to the unbeliever a wanton cruelty of chance or fate; while at the same time we may feel deep sympathy with—often deep admiration for—many a noble spirit, who has been defeated, and justly defeated, by those irreversible laws of God’s kingdom, of which it is written—“On whomsoever that stone shall fall, it will grind him to powder.”  We may look with reverence, as well as pity, on many figures in history, such as Sir Thomas More’s; on persons who, placed by no fault of their own in some unnatural and unrighteous position; involved in some decaying and unworkable system; conscious more or less of their false position; conscious, too, of coming danger, have done their best, according to their light, to work like men, before the night came in which no man could work; to do what of their duty seemed still plain and possible; and to set right that which would never come right more: forgetting that, alas, the crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered; till the flood came and swept them away, standing bravely to the last at a post long since untenable, but still—all honour to them—standing at their post.

When we consider such sad figures on the page of history, we may have, I say, all respect for their private virtues.  We may accept every excuse for their public mistakes.  And yet we may feel a solemn satisfaction at their downfall, when we see it to have been necessary for the progress of mankind, and according to those laws and that will of God and of Christ, by which alone the human race is ruled.  We may look back on old orders of things with admiration; even with a touch of pardonable, though sentimental, regret.  But we shall not forget that the old order changes, giving place to the new;

And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

And we shall believe, too, if we be wise, that all these things were written for our example, that we may see, and fear, and be turned to the Lord, each asking himself solemnly, What is the system on which I am governing my actions?  Is it according to the laws and will of God, as revealed in facts?  Let me discover that in time: lest, when it becomes bankrupt in God’s books, I be involved—I cannot guess how far—in the common ruin of my compeers.

What is my duty?  Let me go and work at it, lest a night come, in which I cannot work.  What fruit am I expected to bring forth?  Let me train and cultivate my mind, heart, whole humanity to bring it forth, lest the great Husbandman come seeking fruit on me, and find none.  And if I see a man who falls in the battle of life, let me not count him a worse sinner than myself; but let me judge myself in fear and trembling; lest God judge me, and I perish in like wise.

SERMON XXI.  THE WAR IN HEAVEN

Rev. xix. 11-16

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.  His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.  And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.  And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.  And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.  And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of kings, and Lord of lords.

Let me ask you to consider seriously this noble passage.  It was never more worth men’s while to consider it than now, when various selfish and sentimental religions—call them rather superstitions—have made men altogether forget the awful reality of Christ’s kingdom; the awful fact that Christ reigns, and will reign, till He has put all enemies under His feet.

Who, then, is He of whom the text speaks?  Who is this personage, who appears eternally in heaven as a warrior, with His garments stained with blood, the leader of armies, smiting the nations, and ruling them with a rod of iron?

St John tells us that He had one name which none knew save Himself.  But he tells us that He was called Faithful and True; and he tells us, too, that He had another name which St John did know; and that is, “The Word of God.”

Now who the Word of God is, all are bound to know who call themselves Christians; even Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God.

He it is who makes everlasting war as King of kings and Lord of lords.  But against what does He make war?  His name tells us that.  For it is—Faithful and True; and therefore He makes war against all things and beings who are unfaithful and false.  He Himself is full of chivalry, full of fidelity; and therefore all that is unchivalrous and treacherous is hateful in His eyes; and that which He hates, He is both able and willing to destroy.

Moreover, He makes war in righteousness.  And therefore all men and things which are unrighteous and unjust are on the opposite side to Him; His enemies, which He will trample under His feet.  The only hope for them, and indeed for all mankind, is that He does make war in righteousness, and that He Himself is faithful and true, whoever else is not; that He is always just, always fair, always honourable and courteous; that He always keeps His word; and governs according to fixed and certain laws, which men may observe and calculate upon, and shape their conduct accordingly, sure that Christ’s laws will not change for any soul on earth or in heaven.  But, within those honourable and courteous conditions, He will, as often as He sees fit, smite the nations, and rule them with a rod of iron; and tread the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

And if any say—as too many in these luxurious unbelieving days will say—What words are these?  Threatening, terrible, cruel?  My answer is,—The words are not mine.  I did not put them into the Bible.  I find them there, and thousands like them, in the New Testament as well as in the Old, in the Gospels and Epistles as well as in the Revelation of St John.  If you do not like them, your quarrel must be, not with me, but with the whole Bible, and especially with St John the Apostle, who said—“Little children, love one another;” and who therefore was likely to have as much love and pity in his heart as any philanthropic, or sentimental, or superstitious, or bigoted, personage of modern days.

And if any one say,—But you must mistake the meaning of the text.  It must be understood spiritually.  The meek and gentle Jesus, who is nothing but love and mercy, cannot be such an awful and destroying being as you would make Him out to be.  Then I must answer—That our Lord was meek and gentle when on earth, and therefore is meek and gentle for ever and ever, there can be no doubt.  “I am meek and lowly of heart,” He said of Himself.  But with that meekness and lowliness, and not in contradiction to it, there was, when He was upon earth, and therefore there is now and for ever, a burning indignation against all wrong and falsehood; and especially against that worst form of falsehood—hypocrisy; and that worst form of hypocrisy—covetousness which shelters itself under religion.

When our Lord saw men buying and selling in the temple, He made a scourge of cords, and drove them out, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and said,—“It is written, my Father’s house is a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

When He faced the Pharisees, who were covetous, He had no meek and gentle words for them: but, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”

And because His character is perfect and eternal: because He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, we are bound by the Christian faith to believe that He has now, and will have for ever, the same Divine indignation against wrong, the same determination to put it down: and to cast out of His kingdom, which is simply the whole universe, all that offends, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

And if any say, as some say now-a-days—“Ah, but you cannot suppose that our Lord would propagate His Gospel by the sword, or wish Christians to do so.”  My friends, this chapter and this sermon has nothing to do with the propagation of the Gospel, in the popular sense; nothing to do with converting heathens or others to Christianity.  It has to do with that awful government of the world, of which the Bible preaches from beginning to end; that moral and providential kingdom of God, which rules over the destiny of every kingdom, every nation, every tribe, every family, nay, over the destiny of each human being; ay, of each horde of Tartars on the furthest Siberian steppe, and each group of savages in the furthest island of the Pacific; rendering to each man according to his works, rewarding the good, punishing the bad, and exterminating evildoers, even wholesale and seemingly without discrimination, when the measure of their iniquity is full.  Christ’s herald in this noble chapter calls men, not to repentance, but to inevitable doom.  His angel—His messenger—stands in the sun, the source of light and life; above this petty planet, its fashions, its politics, its sentimentalities, its notions of how the universe ought to have been made and managed; and calls to whom?—to all the fowl that fly in the firmament of heaven—“Come and gather yourselves together, to the feast of the great God, that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and of captains, and of mighty men; and the flesh of horses and of them that sit on them; and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.”

What those awful words may mean I cannot say.  But this I say, that the Apostle would never have used such words, conveying so plain and so terrible a meaning to anyone who has ever seen or heard of a battle-field, if he had really meant by them nothing like a battle-field at all.

It may be that these words have fulfilled themselves many times—at the fall of Jerusalem—at the wars which convulsed the Roman empire during the first century after Christ—at the final fall of the Roman empire before the lances of our German ancestors—in many another great war, and national calamity, in many a land since then.  It may be, too, that, as learned divines have thought, they will have their complete fulfilment in some war of all wars, some battle of all battles; in which all the powers of evil, and all those who love a lie, shall be arrayed against all the powers of good, and all those who fear God and keep His commandments: to fight it out, if the controversy can be settled by no reason, no persuasion; a battle in which the whole world shall discover that, even in an appeal to brute force, the good are stronger than the bad; because they have moral force also on their side; because God and the laws of His whole universe are fighting for them, against those who transgress law, and outrage reason.

The wisest of living Britons has said,—“Infinite Pity, yet infinite rigour of Law.  It is so that the world is made.”  I should add, It is so the world must be made, because it is made by Jesus Christ our Lord, and its laws are the likeness of His character; pitiful, because Christ is pitiful; and rigorous, because He is rigorous.  So pitiful is Christ, that He did not hesitate to be slain for men, that mankind through Him might be saved.  But so rigorous is Christ, that He does not hesitate to slay men, if needful, that mankind thereby may be saved.  War and bloodshed, pestilence and famine, earthquake and tempest—all of them, as sure as there is a God, are the servants of God, doing His awful but necessary work, for the final benefit of the whole human race.

It may be difficult to believe this: at least to believe it with the same intense faith with which prophets and apostles of old believed it, and cried—“When Thy judgments, O Lord, are abroad in the earth, then shall the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.”  But we must believe it: or we shall be driven to believe in no God at all; and that will be worse for us than all the evil that has happened to us from our youth up until now.

But most people find it very difficult to believe in such a God as the Scripture sets forth—a God of boundless tenderness; and yet a God of boundless indignation.

The covetous and luxurious find it very difficult to understand such a being.  Their usual notion of tenderness is a selfish dislike of seeing any one else uncomfortable, because it makes them uncomfortable likewise.  Their usual notion of indignation is a selfish desire of revenge against anyone who interferes with their comfort.  And therefore they have no wholesome indignation against wrong and wrong-doers, and a great deal of unwholesome tenderness for them.  They are afraid of any one’s being punished; probably from a fellow-feeling; a suspicion that they deserve to be punished themselves.  They hate and dread honest severity, and stern exercise of lawful power.  They are indulgent to the bad, severe upon the good; till, as has been bitterly but too truly said,—“Public opinion will allow a man to do anything, except his duty.”

Now this is a humour which cannot last.  It breeds weakness, anarchy, and at last ruin to society.  And then the effeminate and luxurious, terrified for their money and their comfort, fly from an unwholesome tenderness to an unwholesome indignation; break out into a panic of selfish rage; and become, as cowards are apt to do, blindly and wantonly cruel; and those who fancied God too indulgent to punish His enemies, will be the very first to punish their own.

But there are those left, I thank God, in this land, who have a clear understanding of what they ought to be, and an honest desire to be it; who know that a manful indignation against wrong-doing, a hearty hatred of falsehood and meanness, a rigorous determination to do their duty at all risks, and to repress evil with all severity, may dwell in the same heart with gentleness, forgiveness, tenderness to women and children; active pity to the weak, the sick, the homeless; and courtesy to all mankind, even to their enemies.

God grant that that spirit may remain alive among us.  For without it we shall not long be a strong nation; not indeed long a nation at all.  And it is alive among us.  Not that we, any of us, have enough of it—God forgive us for all our shortcomings.  And God grant it may remain alive among us; for it is, as far as it goes, the likeness of Christ, the Maker and Ruler of the world.

“Christian,” said a great genius and a great divine,

“If thou wouldst learn to love,
Thou first must learn to hate.”

And if any one answer—“Hate?  Even God hateth nothing that He has made.”  The rejoinder is,—And for that very reason God hates evil; because He has not made it, and it is ruinous to all that He has made.

Go you and do likewise.  Hate what is wrong with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength.  For so, and so only, you will shew that you love God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, likewise.

Oh pray—and that not once for all merely, but day by day, ay, almost hour by hour—Strengthen me, O Lord, to hate what Thou hatest, and love what Thou lovest; and therefore, whenever I see an opportunity, to put down what Thou hatest, and to help what Thou lovest—That so, at the last dread day, when every man shall be rewarded according to his works, you may have some answer to give to the awful question—On whose side wert thou in the battle of life?  On the side of good men and of God, or on the side of bad men and the devil?  Lest you find yourselves forced to reply—as too many will be forced—with surprise, and something like shame and confusion of face—I really do not know.  I never thought about the matter at all.  I never knew that there was any battle of life.

Never knew that there was any battle of life?  And yet you were christened, and signed with the sign of the Cross, in token that you should fight manfully under Christ’s banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant to your life’s end.  Did it never occur to you that those words might possibly mean something?  And you used to sing hymns, too, on earth, about “Soldiers of Christ, arise, And put your armour on.”  What prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors meant by those words, you should know well enough.  Did it never occur to you that they might possibly mean something to you?  That as long as the world was no better than it is, there was still a battle of life; and that you too were sworn to fight in it?  How many will answer—Yes—Yes—But I thought that these words only meant having my soul saved, and going to heaven when I died.  And how did you expect to do that?  By believing certain doctrines which you were told were true; and leading a tolerably respectable life, without which you would not have been received into society?  Was that all which was needed to go to heaven?  And was that all that was meant by fighting manfully under Christ’s banner against sin, the world, and the devil?  Why, Cyrus and his old Persians, 2,400 years ago, were nearer to the kingdom of God than that.  They had a clearer notion of what the battle of life meant than that, when they said that not only the man who did a merciful or just deed, but the man who drained a swamp, tilled a field, made any little corner of the earth somewhat better than he found it, was fighting against Ahriman the evil spirit of darkness, on the side of Ormuzd the good god of light; and that as he had taken his part in Ormuzd’s battle, he should share in Ormuzd’s triumph.

Oh be at least able to say in that day,—Lord, I am no hero.  I have been careless, cowardly, sometimes all but mutinous.  Punishment I have deserved, I deny it not.  But a traitor I have never been; a deserter I have never been.  I have tried to fight on Thy side in Thy battle against evil.  I have tried to do the duty which lay nearest me; and to leave whatever Thou didst commit to my charge a little better than I found it.  I have not been good: but I have at least tried to be good.  I have not done good, it may be, either: but I have at least tried to do good.  Take the will for the deed, good Lord.  Accept the partial self-sacrifice which Thou didst inspire, for the sake of the one perfect self-sacrifice which Thou didst fulfil upon the Cross.  Pardon my faults, out of Thine own boundless pity for human weakness.  Strike not my unworthy name off the roll-call of the noble and victorious army, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and let me, too, be found written in the Book of Life: even though I stand the lowest and last upon its list.  Amen.

SERMON XXII.  NOBLE COMPANY

Hebrews xii. 22, 23

Ye are come to the city of the living God, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.

I have quoted only part of the passage of Scripture in which these words occur.  If you want a good employment for All Saints’ Day, read the whole passage, the whole chapter; and no less, the 11th chapter, which comes before it: so will you understand better the meaning of All Saints’ Day.  But sufficient for the day is the good thereof, as well as the evil; and the good which I have to say this morning is—You are come to the spirits of just men made perfect; for this is All Saints’ Day.

Into the presence of this noble company we have come: even nobler company, remember, than that which was spoken of in the text.  For more than 1800 years have passed since the Epistle to the Hebrews was written: and how many thousands of just men and women, pure, noble, tender, wise, beneficent, have graced the earth since then, and left their mark upon mankind, and helped forward the hallowing of our heavenly Father’s name, the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will on earth as it is done in heaven; and helped therefore to abolish the superstition, the misrule, the vice, and therefore the misery of this struggling, moaning world.  How many such has Christ sent on this earth during the last 1800 years.  How many before that; before His own coming, for many a century and age.  We know not, and we need not know.  The records of Holy Scripture and of history strike with light an isolated mountain peak, or group of peaks, here and here through the ages; but between and beyond all is dark to us now.  But it may not have been dark always.  Scripture and history likewise hint to us of great hills far away, once brilliant in the one true sunshine which comes from God, now shrouded in the mist of ages, or literally turned away beyond our horizon by the revolution of our planet: and of lesser hills, too, once bright and green and fair, giving pasture to lonely flocks, sending down fertilizing streams into now forgotten valleys; themselves all but forgotten now, save by the God who made and blessed them.

Yes: many a holy soul, many a useful soul, many a saint who is now at God’s right hand, has lived and worked, and been a blessing, himself blest, of whom the world, and even the Church, has never heard, who will never be seen or known again, till the day in which the Lord counteth up His jewels.

Let us rejoice in that thought on this day, above all days in the year.  On this day we give special thanks to God for all His servants departed this life in His faith and fear.  Let us rejoice in the thought that we know not how many they are; only that they are an innumerable company, out of all tongues and nations, whom no man can number.  Let us rejoice that Christ’s grace is richer, and not poorer, than our weak imaginations can conceive, or our narrow systems account for.  Let us rejoice that the goodly company in whose presence we stand, can be limited and defined by no mortal man, or school of men: but only by Him from whom, with the Father, proceeds for ever the Holy Spirit, the inspirer of all good; and who said of that Spirit—“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.  So is every one who is born of the Spirit”—and who said again, “John came neither eating nor drinking, and ye said, He hath a devil.  The Son of man came eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.  But I say unto you, Verily wisdom is justified of all her children”—and who said again—when John said to Him, “Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us”—“Forbid him not.  For I say to you, that he that doeth a miracle in My name will not lightly speak evil of Me”—and who said, lastly—and most awfully—that the unpardonable sin, either in this life or the life to come, was to attribute beneficent deeds to a bad origin, because they were performed by one who differed from us in opinion; and to say, “He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, prince of the devils.”

These are words of our Lord, which we are specially bound to keep in our minds, with reverence and godly fear, on All Saints’ Day, lest by arranging our calendar of saints according to our own notions of who ought to be a saint, and who ought not—that is, who agrees with our notions of perfection, and who does not—we exclude ourselves, by fastidiousness, from much unquestionably good company; and possibly mix ourselves up with not a little which is, to say the least, questionable.

Men in all ages, Churchmen or others, have fallen into this mistake.  They have been but too ready to limit their calendar of saints; to narrow the thanksgivings which they offer to God on All Saints’ Day.

The Romish Church has been especially faulty on this point.  It has assumed, as necessary preliminaries for saintship—at least after the Christian era—the practice of, or at least the longing after, celibacy; and after the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches, unconditional submission to the Church of Rome.  But how has this injured, if not spoiled, their exclusive calendar of saints.  Amid apostles, martyrs, divines, who must be always looked on as among the very heroes and heroines of humanity, we find more than one fanatic persecutor; more than two or three clearly insane personages; and too many who all but justify the terrible sneer—that the Romish Calendar is the “Pantheon of Hysteria.”

And Protestants, too—How have they narrowed the number of the spirits of just men made perfect; and confined the Pæan which should go up from the human race on All Saints’ Day, till a “saint” has too often meant with them only a person who has gone through certain emotional experiences, and assented to certain subjective formulas, neither of which, according to the opinion of some of the soundest divines, both of the Romish, Greek, and Anglican communions, are to be found in the letter of Scripture as necessary to salvation; and who have, moreover, finished their course—doubtless often a holy, beneficent, and beautiful course—by a rapturous death-bed scene, which is more rare in the actual experience of clergymen, and, indeed, in the conscience and experience of human beings in general, than in the imaginations of the writers of religious romances.

But we of the Church of England, as by law established—and I recognize and obey, and shall hereafter recognize and obey, no other—have no need so to narrow our All Saints’ Day; our joy in all that is noble and good which man has said or done in any age or clime.  We have no need to define where formularies have not defined; to shut where they have opened; to curse where they either bless, or are humbly, charitably, and therefore divinely, silent.  With a magnificent faith in the justice of the Father, and in the grace of Christ, and in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, our Church bids us—Judge not the dead, lest ye be judged.  Condemn not the dead, lest ye be condemned.  For she bids us commit to the earth the corpses of all who die not “unbaptized,” “excommunicate,” or wilful suicides, and who are willing to lie in our consecrated ground; giving thanks to God that our dear brother has been delivered from the miseries of this sinful world, and in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.

At least: we of the Abbey of Westminster have a right to hold this; for we, thank God, act on it, and have acted on it for many a year.  We have a right to our wide, free, charitable, and truly catholic conception of All Saints’ Day.  Ay, if we did not use our right, these walls would use it for us; and in us would our Lord’s words be fulfilled—If we were silent, the very stones beneath our feet would cry out.