Sermons for the Times

My friends, I never could find that we have a right to take liberties with the Bible and the Prayer Book which we dare not take with any other book, and to put meanings into the words of them which, in the case of any other book, would be contrary to plain grammar and the English tongue, if not to common sense and honesty.

If you say of a man, ‘he is in a state of happiness,’ you mean, do you not, that he is happy now, not that he may perhaps be happy some day?  If you came to me and told me that you were in a state of hunger, you would think it a very strange answer to receive if I say, ‘Very well then, if you become hungry, come to me, and I will feed you?’  You all know that a man’s being in a state of poverty, or of misery, means that he is poor or miserable now, here, at this very time; that if a man is in a state of sickness, he is sick; if he is in a state of health, he is healthy.  Then what can a man’s being in a state of salvation mean, by all rules of English, but that he is saved?  If I were to say to any one of the good people who do not think so, ‘My friend, you are in a state of damnation,’ he would answer me quickly enough, ‘I am not, for I am not damned.’  He would agree that a man’s being in a state of damnation means that the man is damned; why will he not agree that a man’s being in a state of salvation means that he is saved?  Because, my friends, God’s grace is too full for fallen man’s notions; and therefore there is an evil fashion abroad in the world, that where a text speaks of wrath, and misery and punishment, you are to interpret it exactly, and to the very letter: but where it speaks of love, and mercy, and forgiveness, you are to do no such thing, but narrow it, and fence it, and explain it away, for fear you should make sinners too comfortable,—a plan which seems wise enough, but which, like other plans of man’s wisdom, has not succeeded too well, to judge by the number of sinners who are already too comfortable though they hear the Bible misused, and God’s grace narrowed in this way every Sunday of their lives.

But, my friends, we call ourselves Englishmen and churchmen; let us be honest Englishmen and plain churchmen, and take our Catechism as it stands.  For rightly or wrongly, truly or falsely, it does teach every christened child to thank God, not merely that it has some chance of being saved, when it dies, but that it is saved already, now, here on earth.

Whether that is true or false is another question.  I believe it to be true.  I believe the text to be true; I believe that why people shrink from it is, that they have got into their minds a wrong, unscriptural, superstitious notion of what being saved, and saving one’s soul alive, and salvation mean.  And I beg all of you who read your Bibles to search the Scriptures from beginning to end, and try to find out what these words mean, and whether the Catechism has not kept close, after all, to the words of Scripture.  It will be better for you, my friends; it will be worth your while, to know exactly what being saved means; for to judge by the signs of the times, there are, very probably, days coming in which it will be as needful for you and for your children to save your souls alive lest you die, as ever it was for the Jews in Isaiah’s or Jeremiah’s time, or for the Romans in St. Paul’s time; and that in that day you will find the Catechism wider, and deeper, and sounder than you have ever suspected it to be, and see, I trust, that in these very words it preaches to you, and me, and our children after us, the one true Gospel and good news, which will stand, and grow, and shine brighter and brighter for ever, when all the paltry, narrow, counterfeit gospels which man invents in its place have been burnt up by the unquenchable fire with which the merciful Lord purges the chaff from His floor.

I told you this morning what I believe that salvation was,—to know God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent.  To know God’s likeness, God’s character, what God has shown of His own character, what He has done for us.  To know His boundless love, and mercy, and knowing that, to trust in Him utterly, and submit to Him utterly, and obey Him utterly, sure that He loves us, that His will to us is goodwill, that His commandments must be life.  To know God, and therefore to love Him and to serve Him, that is salvation.

Now what hinders a little child, from the very moment that it can think or speak, from entering into that salvation?  Not the child’s own heart.  There is evil in the child—true.  Is there none in you and me?  There is a corrupt nature in the child—true.  Is there not in you and me?  Woe to us if we have not found it out: woe to us if we dare to think that we are in ourselves—or out of ourselves either—one whit better than our own children.  What should hinder any child whom you or I ever saw from knowing God, and His Name, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Has he not an earthly father, through whom he may know The Father?  Is he not an earthly son; and through that may he not know The Son?  Has he not a conscience, a spirit in him which knows good from evil? holiness from wickedness—far more clearly and tenderly than the souls of most grown people do? and can he not, therefore, understand you when you speak of a Holy Spirit, a Spirit which puts good desires into his heart, and can enable him to bring those good desires into practice?

I know one hindrance at least; and that is his parents’ sins; when the parents’ harshness or neglect tempts the child to fancy that God The Father is such a Father to him as his parents are, and that to be a child of God is to look up to his heavenly Father with dread and suspicion as to a hard taskmaster whose anger has to be turned away, and not with that perfect love, and trust, and respect, and self-sacrifice, with which the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled His Father’s will and proclaimed His Father’s glory: or when the parents’ unholiness and lip-religion teach the child to fancy that the Holy Spirit means only certain religious fancies and feelings, or the learning by heart of certain words and doctrines, or, worst of all, a spirit of bondage unto fear; instead of knowing Him to be, as He is, the Spirit of righteousness, and love, and joy, and peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance: or when, again, parents by their own teaching, do despite to the Spirit of Grace in their own child, and destroy their child’s good conscience toward God, by telling the child that it does not really love God, when it loves Him, perhaps, far better than they do; by telling the child that its sins have parted it from God, when its sins are light, yea, are as nothing in the balance compared to the sins they themselves commit every day, while they claim for themselves clearer light and knowledge than the child, and thereby condemn themselves rather than the child; when they darken and defile the pure and beautiful trust and admiration for its Heavenly Father, which God’s Spirit puts into the child’s heart, by telling it that it is doomed to I know-not-what horrible misery and torture when it dies; but that it can escape from that wretched end by thinking certain thoughts, and feeling certain feelings; and so (after stirring up in the child all manner of dreadful doubts of God’s love and justice, and perhaps driving it away from religion altogether by making it believe that it has committed sins which it has not committed, and deserves horrible tortures which it has not deserved), do perhaps at last awaken in it a new love for God, but one which is not like that first love, that childlike love; one which, I fear, is hardly a love for God at all, but principally a selfish joy and delight at having escaped from coming torments.  This is the reason, my friends; and this hindrance, at least, I know.  I will not copy those parents, my friends, and tell them, as they tell their children, that they are bringing on themselves endless torture; but I must tell them, for the Lord Christ has told them, that they are bringing on themselves something—I know not what—of which it is written, that it were better for them that a millstone were hanged about their necks, and that they were drowned in the depth of the sea.  Oh, my friends, if I speak sternly, almost bitterly, when I speak of parents’ sins, it is because I speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.  I plead for Christ’s little ones: I plead for the souls and consciences of those little children of whom Christ said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me;’ not that they might become His, but because they were His already; not that they might win His love, but because He loved them from all eternity: not that they might enter into the kingdom of heaven, but, because they were in the kingdom of heaven already; because the kingdom of heaven was made up of such as them, and the angels who ministered unto them always beheld the face of our Father who is in heaven.  Yes; I plead for those children, of whom the Lord said, ‘Except ye be converted,’ that is, utterly turned and changed, ‘and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’  Deep and blessed words, which are the root-rule of all true righteousness; which so few really believe at heart, any more than the Pharisees, and Sadducees, and Herodians of old did.  Up and down, all over England, I hear men of all denominations saying, not, ‘Except we grown people be converted and become as little children;’ but, ‘except the little children be converted, and become like us, grown people.’  God grant that the little children may not become like too many grown people!  God grant it, I say.  God grant that our children may not become like us!  God grant that they may keep through youth and manhood, and through the grave, and through all worlds to come, the tender and childlike heart, which we too often have hardened in ourselves by bigotry and superstition, and dead faith, and lip-worship!  And I can have good hope that God will grant it.  I can have hope that God will teach our children and our children’s children truly to know Him whose name is Love and Righteousness, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as long as I see His providence preserving for us this old Church Catechism, to teach our children what we forget to teach them, or what we have not faith enough to teach them.

Yes, I can have hope for England; and hope for those mighty nations across the seas, whose earthly mother God has ordained that she should be, as long as the Catechism is taught to her children.

For see.  This Catechism does not begin with telling children that they are sinners: they will find that out soon enough for themselves, poor little things, from their own wayward and self-willed hearts.  Nor by telling them that man is fallen and corrupt: they will find out that also soon enough, from the way in which they see people go on around them.  It does not even begin by telling them that they ought to be good, or what goodness and righteousness is; because it takes for granted that they know that already; it takes for granted that The Light who lights every man who comes into the world is in them; even the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, stirring up in their hearts, as He does in the heart of every child, the knowledge of good and the love of good.  But it begins at once by teaching the child the name of God.  It goes at once to the root of the matter; to the fountain of goodness itself; even to God, the Father of lights.  It is so careful of God’s honour, so careful that the child should learn from the first to look up to God with love and trust, that it dare not tell the child that God can destroy and punish, before it has told him that God is a Father and a Maker; the Father of spirits, who has made him and all the world.  It dare not tell him that mankind is fallen, before it has told him that all the world is redeemed.  It dare not talk to him of unholiness, before it has taught him that the Holy Spirit of God is with him, to make him holy.  It tells him of a world, a flesh, and a devil: but he has renounced them.  He has neither part nor lot in them; and he is not to think of them yet.  He is to think of that in which he has part and lot, of which he is an inheritor.  He is to know where he is and ought to be, before he knows where he is not and ought not to be: he is to think of the name of God, by which he can trample world, flesh, and devil under foot, if they dare hereafter meddle with his soul.  In its God-inspired tenderness and prudence, it dare not darken the heart of one little child, or tempt him to hard thoughts of God, or to cry, ‘Why hast thou made me thus?’ lest it put a stumbling-block in the way of Christ’s little ones, and dishonour the name and glory of God.  It tells him of the love, before it tells him of the wrath; of the order, before it tells him of the disorder; of the right, before the wrong; of the health, before the disease; of the freedom, before the bondage; of the truth, before the lies; of the light, before the darkness; in one word, it tells him first of the eternal and good God, who was, and is, and shall be to all eternity, before and above the evil devil.  It tells him of the name of God; and tells him that God is with him, and he with God, and bids him believe that, and be saved, from his birth-hour, to endless ages.  It does not tell him to pray that he may become God’s child; but to pray, because he is God’s child already.  It does not tell him to love God, in order that he may make God love him; but to love God because God loves him already, and has loved him from all eternity.  It does not tell him to obey Jesus Christ, in order that Christ may save him; but to obey Christ because Christ has saved him, and bought him with his own blood.  It does not tell him to do good works, in order that God’s Spirit may be pleased with him, and come to him, and make him one of the elect; neither does it tell him, that some day or other, if he is converted, and feels certain religious experiences, he will have a right to consider himself one of God’s elect: but it tells him to look man and devil in the face, he, the poor little ignorant village child, and say boldly in the name of God, ‘I am one of God’s elect.  The Holy Spirit of God is sanctifying me, and making me holy.  God has saved me; and I heartily thank my Heavenly Father, who has called me to this state of salvation.’  It tells him to believe that he is safe—safe in the ark of Christ’s Church, as Noah was safe in the ark at the deluge; and that the one way to keep himself within that ark is to obey Him to whom it belongs, who judges it and will guide it for ever, Jesus Christ, the likeness of God; and that as long as he does that, neither world, flesh, nor devil, can harm him; even as Noah was safe in the ark, and nothing could drown him but his own wilful casting himself out of the ark, and trying to free the flood of waters by his own strength and cunning.

It tells him, I say, that he is safe, and saved, even as David, and Isaiah, and all holy men who ever lived have been, as long as he trusts in God, and clings to God, and obeys God; and that only when he forsakes God, and follows his own selfishness and pride, can anything or being in earth or hell harm him.

And do not fancy, my friends, that this is a mere unimportant question of words and doctrines, because a baptized and educated child may be lost after all, and fall from his state of salvation into a state of damnation.  Still more, do not fancy that if a child is taught that he is already a child of God, regenerated in baptism, and elect by God’s Spirit, that therefore he will neglect either vital faith or good works—heaven forbid!

Is it likely to make a child careless, and inclined to neglect vital truth, to tell him that God is his Father and loves him utterly, and has given His only begotten Son to die for him?  Is it not the very way, the only way, to stir up in him faith, and real hearty trust and affection towards God?  How can you teach him to trust God, but by telling him that God has shown himself boundlessly and perfectly worthy to be trusted by every soul of man; or to love God, but by showing him that God loves him already?  Is it likely to make a child careless of good works, to tell him that God has elected and chosen him, and all his brothers and schoolfellows, to be conformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ, and that every good, and honourable, and gentle thought or feeling which ever crosses his little heart, does not come from himself, is not part of his own nature or character, but is nothing less than the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, nothing less than the voice of Almighty God Himself, speaking to the child’s heart, that he may answer with Samuel—‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth?’  Is it likely to make a child careless about losing eternal life, to tell him that God has already given to him eternal life, and that that life is in His Son Jesus Christ, to whom the child belongs, body, soul, and spirit?

Judge for yourselves, my friends.  Think what awe, what reverence, purity, dread of sin, would grow up in a child who was really taught all this, and yet what faith and love to God, what freedom, and joyfulness, and good courage about his own duty and calling in life.

And then look at the fruits which in general follow a religious education, as it is miscalled; and take warning.  For if you really train up your children in the way in which they should go, be sure that when they are old they will not depart from it—a promise which is not fulfilled to most religious education which we see around us now-a-days; from which sad fact, if Scripture be inspired and infallible, we can only judge that such is not the way in which the children should go; and that because it is a wrong way, therefore God will not, and man cannot, keep them in it.

SERMON IV.  NAMES

Matthew i. 21.  And thou shall call his name Jesus.

Did it ever seem to you a curious thing that the Catechism begins by asking the child its name?  ‘What is your name?’  ‘Who gave you this name?’  I think that if you were not all of you accustomed to the Church Catechism from your childhood, that would seem a strange way of beginning to teach a child about religion.

But the more I consider, the more sure I am that it is the right way to begin teaching a child what the Catechism wishes to teach.

Do not fancy that it begins by asking the child’s name just because it must begin somehow, and then go on to religion afterwards.  Do not fancy that it merely supposes that the clergyman does not know the child’s name, and must ask it; for this Catechism is intended to be taught by parents to their children, and masters to their apprentices and servants; by people, therefore, who know the child’s name perfectly well already, and yet they are to begin by asking the child his name.

Now, why is this?  What has a child’s name to do with his Faith and duty as a Christian?

You may answer, Because his Christian name is given him when he is baptized.

But why is his Christian name given him when he is baptized?  Why then rather than at any other time?

Because it is the old custom of the Church.  No doubt it is: and a most wise and blessed custom it is; and one which shows us how much more about God and man the churchmen in old times knew, than most of our religious teachers now-a-days.  But how did that old custom arise?  What put into the minds of church people, for the last sixteen hundred years at least, that being baptized and being named had anything to do with each other?  Men had names of their own long before the Lord Jesus came, long before His Baptism was heard of on earth;—the heathens of old had their names—the heathens have names still;—why, then, did church people feel it right to mix a new thing like baptism with a world-old thing like giving a name?

My friends, I feel and say honestly, that there is more in this matter than I understand; and what little I do understand, I could not explain fully in one sermon, or in many either.  But let this be enough for to-day.  God grant that I may be able to make you understand me.

Any one’s having a name—a name of his own, a Christian name, as we rightly call it—signifies that he is a person; that is, that he has a character of his own, and a responsibility, and a calling and duty of his own, given him by God; in one word, that he has an immortal soul in him, for which he, and he alone, must answer, and receive the rewards of the deeds which it does in the body, whether they be good or evil.  But names are not given at random, without cause or meaning.  When Adam named all the beasts, we read that whatsoever he called any beast, that was the name of it.  The names which he gave described each beast, were taken from something in its appearance, or its ways and habits, and so each was its right name, the name which expressed its nature.  And so now, when learned men discover animals or plants in foreign countries, they do not give them names at random, but take care to invent names for them which may describe their natures, and make people understand what they are like, as Adam did for the beasts of old.  And much more, in old times, had the names of men each of them a meaning.  If it was reasonable to give names full of meaning to each kind of dumb animal, which are mere things, and not persons at all, how much more to each man separately, for each man is a person of himself; each man has a character different from all others, a calling different from all others, and therefore he ought to have his own name separate from all others: and therefore in old times it was the custom to give each child a separate name, which had a meaning in it, was, as it were, a description of the child, or of something particular about the child.

Now, we may see this, above all, in The adorable Name of Jesus.  That name, above all others, ought to show us what a name means; for it is the name of the Son of Man, the one perfect and sinless man, the pattern of all men; and therefore it must be a perfect name, and a pattern for all names; and it was given to the Lord not by man, but by God; not after He was born, but before He was conceived in the womb of the blessed Virgin.  And therefore, it must show and mean not merely some outward accident about Him, something which He seemed to be, or looked like, in men’s eyes: no, the Name of Jesus must mean what the Lord was in the sight of His Father in Heaven; what He was in the eternal purpose of God the Father; what He was, really and absolutely, in Himself; it must mean and declare the very substance of His being.  And so, indeed, it does; for The adorable Name of Jesus means nothing else but God the Saviour—God who saves.  This is His name, and was, and ever will be.  This Name He fulfilled on earth, and proved it to be His character, His exact description, His very Name, in short, which made Him different from all other beings in heaven or earth, create or uncreate; and therefore, He bears His name to all eternity, for a mark of what He has been, and is, and will be for ever—God the Saviour; and this is the perfect name, the pattern of all other names of men.

Now though the Christian names which we give our children here in England, have no especial meaning to them, and have nothing to do with what we expect or wish the children to be when they grow up, yet the names of people in most other countries in the world have.  The Jewish names which we find in the Bible have almost all of them a meaning.  So Simeon, I believe, means ‘Obedient’; Jehoshaphat means, ‘The Lord will judge’; Daniel, ‘God is my judge’; Isaiah means, ‘The Salvation of the Lord’; Isaac means, ‘She laughs,’ as a memorial of Sarah’s laughing, when she heard that she was to have a child; Ishmael means, ‘The Lord hears,’ in remembrance of God’s hearing Hagar’s cry in the wilderness, when Ishmael was dying of thirst.

Especially those names of which we read that God commanded them to be given, have meanings, and to tell the persons who bore those names what God expected of them, or would do for them.  So Abraham means, ‘The father of many nations.’  So the children of both Isaiah and Hosea had names given them by God, each of them meaning something which God was going to do to the nation of the Jews.  And so John means, ‘Given by the Lord,’ which name was given to John the Baptist by the Angel, before his strange birth, in his mother’s old age.

But we must remember that the heathens also gave names to their children, though they did not know that their children owed any duty to God, or belonged to God, and therefore we cannot call their names Christian names.  Yes, the heathens did give their children names; some of them give their children names still.  And there is to me something most sad and painful in those heathen names, and yet most full of meaning.  A solemn lesson to us, to show us what the fall means; what man becomes, when he gives way to his fallen nature, and is parted from Christ, the Head of man.

First, these heathens had a dim remembrance that man was made in the likeness of God, and lived by Faith in God, and therefore that men’s names were to express that, as indeed many of their old names do.  But, alas! the likeness of God in fallen man is like a tree without roots, or rather a tree without soil to grow in.  God’s likeness in man can only flourish as long as he is joined to Christ, the perfect likeness of God, the true life and the true light of men, the foundation which is already laid, and the soil in which man was meant to grow and flourish for ever, and as long as he is fed by the Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds—never forget that, or you will lose the understanding both of who God is and what man is—proceeds not only from God the Father, but also from God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  And therefore, in the heathen, God’s likeness withered and decayed, as a tree withers and decays when torn up from the soil.  And first, they began to call themselves after the names of false gods, which they had invented out of their own carnal fancies.  Then they called themselves after the names of their dumb animal’s.  So, Pharaoh means, ‘The Sun-God’; the Ammonites mean, ‘The people who worshipped the ram as a god’; Potiphar means, ‘A fat bull,’ which the Egyptians used to worship; and I could tell you of hundreds of heathen names more, like these, which are ridiculous enough to make one smile, if we did not keep in mind what tokens they are of sin and ignorance, and the likeness not of God, but of the beasts which perish.

Then comes another set of names, showing a lower fall still, when heathens have quite forgotten that man was originally made in God’s likeness, and are not only content to live after the likeness of the beasts which perish, but pride themselves on being like beasts, and therefore name their children after dumb animals,—the girls after the gentler and fairer animals, and the boys after ravenous and cruel beasts of prey.  That has been the custom among many heathen nations; perhaps among almost all of them, at some time or other.  It is the custom now among the Red Indians in North America, where you will find one man in a tribe called ‘The Bull,’ another ‘The Panther,’ and another ‘The Serpent,’ and so on; showing that they would like to be, if they could, as strong as the bull, as cruel as the panther, as venomous as the serpent.  What wonder that those Red Indians, who have so put on the likeness of the beasts, are now dying off the face of the earth like the beasts whom they admire and imitate?

And this was the way with our own heathen forefathers before the blessed Gospel was preached to them.  It is frightful, in reading old histories, to find how many Englishmen, our own forefathers, were named after fierce wild beasts, and tried, alas! to be like their names—children of wrath, whose feet were swift to shed blood, under whose lips was the poison of adders, and destruction and bloodshed following in their paths, not knowing the way of peace.  The wolf was the common wild beast of England then; and there are, I should say, twenty common old English names ending in wolf, besides as many more ending in bear, and eagle, and raven.  Fearful sign! that men of our own flesh and blood should have gloried in being like the wolf, the cruellest, the greediest, the most mean of savage beasts!  How shall we thank God enough, who sent to them the knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ, and called them to be new men in Christ Jesus, and called them to holy baptism, to receive new names, and begin new lives in the righteous likeness of God Himself?—that as by nature they had been the children of wrath, so in baptism they might become the children of grace; that as from their forefathers they had inherited a corrupt nature, original sin, and the likeness of the foul and ravenous beasts which perish, they might have power from the Spirit of God to become the sons of God, conformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ, in peace, and love, and righteousness, and all holiness.

And yet, in names there is a lower depth still among fallen and heathen men; when they lose utterly the last dim notion that God intends men to be persons, even as God the Father is a person, and God the Son a person, and God the Holy Spirit is a person, and so lose the custom of giving their children personal names at all; either giving them, after they grow up, mere nicknames, taken from some peculiarity of their bodies, or something which they have done, or some place where they happen to live; or else, like many tribes of heathen negroes, just name them after the day of the week on which they were born, as some way of knowing them apart; or, last and most shocking of all, give them no names at all, and have no names themselves, knowing each other apart as the dumb animals do, only by sight.  I can conceive no deeper fall into utter brutishness than that; and yet some few of the most savage tribes, both in Africa and in the Indian islands, are said—God help them!—to live in that way, and to have no names;—blotted, indeed, out of the book of life!

But is this the right state for men?  No; it is the wrong state.  It is a disease into which men are fallen; a disease out of which Christ came to raise men; and out of which He does raise us in Holy Baptism.  Baptism puts the child into its right state—into the right state for a human being, a human soul, a human person.  And baptism declares what that right state is—a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.  A member of Christ, and therefore a person, because Christ is a person.  A child of God, and therefore a person, because a child’s duty is to love and trust and obey his father—and only a person can do that, not an animal or a thing.  An inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore bound to cherish all heavenly thoughts and feelings, all righteousness, love, and obedience, which only spirits and persons, not animals or things, can feel.

Now can you not see why baptism is the proper time for giving the child a name?  Because then Christ claims the child for His own;—because having a name shows that the child is a person who has a soul, a will, a conscience, a duty; a person who must answer himself for himself alone for what he does in the body, whether it be good or evil.  And that will, and soul, and conscience were given the child by Christ, by whom all things are made, who is the Light which lights every man who comes into the world.

Thus in holy baptism God adopts the child for His own in Jesus Christ.  He declares that the child is regenerate, and has a new life, a life from above, a seed of eternal personal life which he himself has not by nature.  And that seed of eternal life is none other but the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the Lord and Giver of Life, who does verily and indeed regenerate the child in holy baptism, and dwells with his soul, his person, his very self, that He may educate the child’s character, and raise his affections, and subdue his will, and raise him up daily from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.

Therefore, when in the Catechism you solemnly ask the child its name, you ask it no light question.  You speak as a spirit, a person, to its spirit, to its very self, which God wills should never perish, but live for ever.  You single the child out from all its schoolfellows, from all the millions of human beings who have ever lived, or ever will live; and you make the child, by answering to his name, confess that he is a person, an immortal soul, who must stand alone before the judgment seat of God; a person who has a duty and a calling upon God’s earth, which he must fulfil or pay the forfeit.  And then you ask the child who gave him his name, and make him declare that his name was given him in baptism, wherein he was made a member of Christ and a child of God.  You make the child confess that he is a person in Jesus Christ, that Christ has redeemed him, his very self, and taken him to Himself, and made him not merely God’s creature, or God’s slave, but God’s child.  You make the child confess that his duty as a person is not towards himself, to do what he likes, and follow his own carnal lusts; but toward God and toward his neighbours, who are in God’s kingdom of heaven as well as he.  And then you go on in the rest of the Catechism to teach him how he himself, the person to whom you are speaking, may live for ever and ever as a person, by faith in other Persons beside himself, even in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as you teach him in the Creed; by doing his duty to other persons beside himself, even to God and man, as you teach him in the Ten Commandments; and by diligent prayer to another Person beside himself, even to God his heavenly Father, to feed and strengthen him day by day with that eternal life which was given to him in baptism.  Thus the whole Catechism turns upon the very first question in it—‘What is thy name?’  It explains to the child what is really meant, in the sight of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the whole Church in earth and heaven, by the child’s having a name of his own, and being a person, and having that name given to him in holy baptism.

And if this is true of our children, my friends, it is equally true of us.  You and I are persons, and persons in Christ; each stands alone day and night before the judgment-seat of Christ.  Each must answer for himself.  None can deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him.  Each of us has his calling from his heavenly Father; his duty to do which none can do instead of him.  Each has his own sins, his own temptations, his own sorrows, which he must bring single-handed and alone to God his Father, as it is written, ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.’  There is a world, a flesh, and a devil, near to us, ready to drag us down, and destroy our personal and spiritual life, which God has given us in Christ; a flesh which tempts us to follow our own appetites and passions, blindly and lawlessly, like the beasts which perish; a world which tempts us to become mere things, without free-wills of our own, or consciences of our own, without personal faith and personal holiness; the puppets of the circumstances and the customs which happen to be round us; blown about like the dead leaf, and swept helplessly down the stream of time.  And there is a devil, too, near us, tempting us to the deepest lie of all,—to set up ourselves apart from God, and to try, as the devil tries, to be persons in our own strength, each doing what he chooses, each being his own law, and his own master; that is, his own lawlessness, and his own tyrant: and if we listen to that devil, that spirit of lawlessness and self-will, we shall become his slaves, persons in him, doing his work, and finding torment and misery and slavery in it.  Awful thought, that so many enemies should be against us; yea, that we ourselves should be our own enemies!  But here baptism gives us hope, baptism gives us courage; we are in Christ; God is our Father, and He can and will give us power to have victory, and to triumph against the world, the flesh, and the devil.  His Spirit is given to us in baptism—that Spirit of God who is not merely a force or an influence, but a person, a living, loving, holy Person.  He is with us, to give our persons, our souls, eternal life from His life, eternal holiness from His holiness; that so, not merely some part of us, but we our very selves and souls—we the very same persons who were christened, and had a name given us in holy baptism, and have been answering to that name all our life, and were reminded, whenever we heard that name, that we had a duty of our own, a history of our own, hopes, fears, joys, sorrows of our own, which none could share with us,—that we, I say, our own persons, our very selves, may be raised up again at the last day, free, pure, strong, filled with the life of God, which is eternal life.

And then, what blessed words are these from the Lord Jesus, which we read in the book of Revelation?  ‘And I will give to him that overcometh, a new name.’  A new name for him that overcometh world, flesh, and devil; that shall be our portion in the world to come.  A new name, perfect like the name of the Lord Jesus, which shall express and mean all that we are to do hereafter, and all that we have done well on earth.  A name which shall declare to us our calling and work in God’s Church triumphant, throughout all ages and worlds to come: and yet a name which no man knoweth saving he who receiveth it.  Yes, if we may dare to guess at the meaning of those deep words, perhaps in that new name shall be recorded for each man all that went on, in the secret depths of the man’s own heart, between himself and his God, unknown and unnoticed even by the wife of his bosom.  The cup of cold water given in Christ’s name; the little private acts of love, and kindness, and self-sacrifice, of which none but God knew; the secret prayers, the secret acts of contrition, the secret hungerings and thirstings after righteousness, the secret struggles and agonies of heart, which he could not, dare not, ought not to tell to any human being.  All these, he shall find, will go to make up his character in the life to come, to determine what work he is to do for God in the world to come; as it is written, ‘Be thou faithful over a few things, and I will make thee ruler over many things.’  All these, perhaps, shall be expressed and declared in that new name, the full meaning of which none will know but the man himself, because none but he knows the secret experiences and struggles which went toward the making of it; none but he and God; for God will know all, He who is the Lord and Saviour of our souls, our persons, our very selves, and can preserve them utterly to the fulness of eternal life, because He knows them thoroughly and utterly; because He judges not according to appearance, but judges righteous judgment; because He sees us not merely as we seem to others to be, not even as we seem at times to ourselves to be;—but searches the heart, and can be touched with the feeling of its infirmities, seeing that He himself has been tempted even as we are, yet without sin; because, blessed thought! He can pierce through the very marrow of our being, and discern the thoughts and intents of our hearts, and see what we long to be, and what we ought to be; so that we can safely and hopefully commend our spirits to His hand, day by day and hour by hour, and can trust Him to cleanse us from our secret faults, and to renew and strengthen our very selves day by day with that eternal life which He gives to all who cast themselves utterly upon Him.

SERMON V.  SPONSORSHIP

1 Cor. xii. 26, 27.  Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or whether one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.  Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.

I have to tell you that there will be a confirmation held at . . . on the . . . All persons of fit age who have not yet been confirmed ought to be ready, and I hope and trust that most of them will be ready, on that day to profess publicly their faith and loyalty to the Lord who died for them.  I hope and trust that they will, as soon as possible, tell me that they intend to do so, and come to me to talk over the matter, and to learn what I can teach them about it.  They will find in me, I hope, nothing but kindness and fellow-feeling.

But I have not only to tell young persons of the Confirmation: I have to tell all godfathers and godmothers of it also.  Have any of you here ever stood godfather or godmother to any young person in this parish who is not yet confirmed?  If you have, now is the time for you to fulfil your parts as sponsors.  You must help me, and help the children’s parents, in bringing your godchildren to confirmation.  It really is your duty.  It will be better for you if you fulfil it.  Better for you, not merely by preventing a punishment, but by bringing a blessing.  Let me try to show you what I mean.

Now godparents must have some duty, some responsibility or other;—that is plain.  If you or I promise and vow things in another person’s name, we must be bound more or less to see that that other person fulfils the promise which we made for him: and so the baptism service warns the sponsors as soon as the child is christened, ‘Forasmuch as this child has promised,’ &c.; and then we have a plain explanation of what a godfather and godmother’s duties are.  ‘And that your godchild may know these things the better,’ &c.: and finally, ‘you shall take care that this child be brought to the bishop to be confirmed.’

That is the duty of godfathers and godmothers.  Those who stand for any child do it on that understanding, and take upon themselves knowingly that duty.

Now, I will not threaten you, my friends; I will not pretend to tell you how God will punish those godfathers and godmothers who do not do their duty; because I do not know how he will punish them.  He has not told us in the Bible; and who am I, to deal out God’s thunders as if they belonged to me, and judge people of whose real merits and dements in God’s sight I have no fair means of judging?  I always dread and dislike threatening any sinner out of this pulpit, except those who plainly break the plain laws which are written in those Ten Commandments, and hypocrites: because I stand in awe of our Lord’s own words—‘Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders, while you yourselves touch them not with one of your fingers.’  There is too much of that now-a-days, my friends, and I have no mind to add my share to it.  And sure I am, that any godfathers and godmothers who do their duty, only because they are afraid that God will punish them if they do not, will not do their duty at all.  But sure I am also, and thankful to God, that we cannot neglect any duty whatsoever without being punished in some way or other for our neglect of it.  That is not a curse, but a blessing: it is a blessing to us to be punished.  The only real curse of God in this life is to be left unpunished for our sins.  It is a blessing for us that our sins find us out.  For if our sins did not find us out, we should very often, I fear, not find our sins out.  And, therefore, when I tell godfathers and godmothers, not that God will perhaps punish them for their neglect, but that He does punish them for it already, I am telling them good news, if they will only open their hearts to that good news.

For God does punish people for neglecting their godchildren.  Those who have eyes to see may see it round us now, in this very parish, and in every parish in England, in the selfishness, distrust, divisions, and quarrels which prevail.  I do not mean that this parish is worse than others, or England worse than other countries.  That is no concern of ours: our own parish, and our own evils, are quite concern enough for us.

Are people happy together?  Do they pull well together?  Look at the old-standing quarrels, misunderstandings, grudges, prejudices, suspicions, which part one man from another, one family from another; every man for his own house, and very few for the kingdom of God;—no, not even for the general welfare of the parish!  Do not men try to better themselves at the expense of the parish—to the injury of the parish?  Do not men, when they try to raise their own family, seem to think that the simplest way to do it is to pull down their neighbour’s family; to draw away their custom; oust them from their places, or hurt their characters in order to rise upon their fall? so that though they are brothers, members of the same church, nation and parish, the greater part of them are, in practice, at war with each other—trying to live at each other’s expense.  Now, is this profitable?  So far from it, that if you will watch the history, either of the whole world, or of this country, or of this one parish, you will find that by far the greater part of the misery in it has sprung from this very selfishness and separateness—from the perpetual struggle between man and man, and between family and family: so that there have been men, and those learned, and thoughtful, and well-meaning men enough, who have said that the only cure for the world’s quarrelling and selfishness was to take all children away from their parents, and bring them up in large public schools; ay, and even to try plans which are sinful, foul, and wicked, all in order to prevent parents knowing which were their own children, that they might care for all the children in the parish as much as if they were their own.

A foolish plan, my friends, and for this one reason, that it is driving out one evil by a still greater one.  It destroys the root to get the fruit; by destroying family life, and love, and obedience, to get at the communion of saints, or rather at some ghost of it.  The real communion of saints is founded on the Fifth Commandment—‘Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother;’ and grows out of it, not by destroying it, but by fulfilling it, as the tree grows out of the root, without taking away from the life of the root, but rather by nourishing and increasing it.  Now, the ancient institution of godfathers and godmothers would, it seems to me, if it were carried out honestly and really, do for us what we certainly have not done for ourselves as yet, and bind us all together as one family.  It would do all the good which those fanciful philosophers of whom I first spoke, have dreamt, without any of the evil; and it would do it because it goes simply on the belief that the foundation is already laid, and that that foundation is Christ.  It says, because this child is not merely the child of his father and mother, but the child of God, the universal Father, therefore other people besides his parents have an interest in him: all who are children of God as well as he have an interest in him; for they are all his brothers, and have a brother’s interest in his welfare.  Because this child is not merely a member of the family whose surname he bears, but a member of Christ, a member of God’s great adopted family, in the hearts of every one of whom His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, is working; therefore this child ought to be an object of awe, and of interest, and love, and care to every other member of Christ’s Church.  Moreover, the child is an inheritor of a heavenly kingdom—a kingdom of grace—a kingdom of God,—which is love and justice, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit—all personal, spiritual, heavenly, God-given graces;—and he cannot have them without being a blessing to all around him; and he cannot be without them, without being a curse to all around him.  If, in after life, when he comes to be confirmed, he claims his inheritance in this heavenly kingdom, he will be full of love, justice, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit.  If he refuses to claim his inheritance, and despises his heavenly birthright, and lives as if he were a mere earthly creature, only to please himself, and help himself, he will not be full of those graces.  And what then?  That he will be full of their opposites, of course.  If he has not love, he will be unloving, selfish, hard, cold—to you and yours.  If he has not justice he will be unjust—to you and yours.  If he is not at peace he will be at war, quarrelling, grudging, envying, backbiting—you and yours.  If he has not joy in the Holy Spirit, he will have joy in an unholy spirit, for he must have joy in some spirit; he must take pleasure in some sort of way of thinking and feeling, and some sort of life—in short, in some sort of spirit; and whatsoever is not holy is unholy, whatsoever is not good is bad, whatsoever is not of God’s Holy Spirit is of the Devil;—and therefore, if the child as he grows up has not joy in the Holy Spirit, and does not enjoy doing right and pleasing God, and being like the Lord Jesus Christ, then he will enjoy doing wrong, and pleasing himself, and being unlike the Lord Jesus Christ; and so he will set a bad example, and be a temptation to all young people of his own age, ready to lead them into sin, and draw them away to those sinful and unholy pleasures in which he takes delight,—whether it be to rioting and drinking, or to uncleanness and unchastity, or to sneering and laughing at godliness, and at good people.  And that, as you know by experience, may be the worse for you and the worse for your children.  Is that the sort of young person with whom you would wish to see your children keeping company?  Is that the sort of young person next door to whom you would wish to live?  Is not such a person a curse, just because he is a person, a spiritual being with an evil spirit in him, which can harm you, and tempt you, and act on you for evil; just as if he had been a righteous person, with the holy and good Spirit in him, he would have helped you, and taught you, and worked on you for good?  But so it is: we are members one of another, and if one member goes wrong, and gets diseased, and suffers, all the other members are sure to suffer more or less with it, sooner or later: you feel it so in your bodies—be sure it is so in God’s church.  But if one member is sound and healthy, all the other members must and will be the better for its health, and rejoice with it, and be able to do their own work the more freely, and strongly, and heartily.