All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

We are met to pray, in a National Church, for the whole nation of England, that all orders and degrees therein may, each in his place and station, help forward the hallowing of God’s name, the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will on earth.  We are met to pray for the Queen and all that are in authority, that these Advent collects may be fulfilled in them, and by them, for the good of the whole people; for the ministers and stewards of Christ’s mysteries, that the same collects may be fulfilled by them and in them, till they turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; for the Commons of this nation, that each man may he delivered, by God’s grace and mercy, from the special sin which besets him in this faithless and worldly generation and hinders him from running the race of duty which is set before him, and get strength from God so to live that in that dread day he may meet his Judge and King, not in tenor and in shame, but in loyalty and in humble hope.

But more—we are here to worship God in Christ, both God and man.  To confess that without Him we can do nothing, that unless He enlighten our understandings we are dark, unless He stir up our wills we are powerless for good.  To confess that though we have forgotten Him, yet He has not forgotten us.  That He is the same gracious and generous Giver and Saviour.  That though we deny Him He cannot deny Himself.  That He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever as when He came to visit this earth in great humility.  That the Lord is King, though the earth be moved.  He sitteth upon His throne, be the nations never so unquiet.  We are here to declare to ourselves and all men, and the whole universe, that we at least believe that the heavens and earth are full of His glory.  We are here to declare that, whether or not the kings of the earth are wise enough, or the judges of it learned enough, to acknowledge Christ for their king, we at least will worship the Son lest He be angry, and so we perish from the right way; for if His wrath be kindled, yea but a little, then blessed are they, and they only, who put their trust in Him.  We are here to join our songs with angels round the throne, and with those pure and mighty beings who, in some central sanctuary of the universe, cry for ever, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”

We do so in ancient words, ancient music, ancient ceremonies, for a token that Christ’s rule and glory is an ancient rule and an eternal glory; that it is no new discovery of our own, and depends not on our own passing notions and feelings about it, but is like Christ, the same now as in the days of our forefathers, the same as it was fifteen hundred years ago, the same as it has been since the day that He stooped to be born of the Virgin Mary, the same that it will be till He shall come in His glory to judge the quick and the dead.  Therefore we delight in the ancient ceremonial, as like as we can make it, to that of the earlier and purer ages of the Church, when Christianity was still, as it were, fresh from the hand of its Creator, ere yet it had been debased and defiled by the idolatrous innovations of the Church of Rome.  For so we confess ourselves bound by links of gratitude to the Apostles, and the successors of the Apostles, and to all which has been best, purest, and truest in the ages since.  So we confess that we worship the same God-man of whom Apostles preached, of whom fathers philosophised, and for whom martyrs died.  That we believe, like them, that He alone is King of kings and Lord of lords; that there is no progress, civilization, or salvation in this life or the life to come, but through His undeserved mercy and His strengthening grace; that He has reigned from the creation of the world, reigns now, and will reign unto that last dread day, when He shall have put all enemies under His feet, and delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all.  Unto which day may He in His mercy bring us all through faith and good works: Amen.

SERMON VI.  CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Eversley.  Quinquagesima Sunday, 1872.

Genesis ix. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6.  “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. . . .  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you . . .  But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.  And surely your blood of your lives will I require: at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.  Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”

This is God’s blessing on mankind.  This is our charter from God, who made and rules this earth.  This is the end and duty of our mortal life:—to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it.  But is that all?  Is there no hint in this blessing of God of something more than our mortal life—something beyond our mortal life?  Surely there is.  Those words—“in the image of God made He man,” must mean, if they mean anything, that man can, if he will but be a true man, share the eternal life of God.  But I will not speak of that to-day, but rather of a question about his mortal life in this world, which is this:—What is the reason why man has a right over the lives of animals? why he may use them for his food? and at the same time, what is the reason why he has not the same right over the lives of his fellow-men? why he may not use them for food?

It is this—that “in the image of God made He man.”  Man is made in the image and likeness of God, therefore he is a sacred creature; a creature, not merely an animal, and the highest of all animals, only cunninger than all animals, more highly organised, more delicately formed than all animals; but something beyond an animal.  He is in the likeness of God, therefore he is consecrated to God.  He is the one creature on earth whom God, so far as we know, is trying to make like Himself.  Therefore, whosoever kills a man, sins not only against that man, nor against society: he sins against God.  And God will require that man’s blood at the hand of him who slays him.  But how?  At the hand of every beast will He require it, and at the hand of every man.

What that first part of the law means I cannot tell.  How God will require from the lion, or the crocodile, or the shark, who eats a human being, the blood of their victims, is more than I can say.  But this I can say—that the feeling, not only of horror and pity, but of real rage and indignation, with which men see (what God grant you never may see) a wild beast kill a man, is a witness in man’s conscience that the text is true somehow, though how we know not.  I received a letter a few weeks since from an officer, a very remarkable person, in which he described his horror and indignation at seeing a friend of his struck down and eaten by a tiger, and how, when next day he stood over what had been but the day before a human being, he looked up to heaven, and kept repeating the words of the text, “in the image of God made He man,” in rage and shame, and almost accusing God for allowing His image to be eaten by a brute beast.  It shook, for the moment, his faith in God’s justice and goodness.  That man was young then, and has grown calmer and wiser now, and has regained a deeper and sounder faith in God.  But the shock, he said, was dreadful to him.  He felt that the matter was not merely painful and pitiable, but that it was a wrong and a crime; and on the faith of this very text, a wrong and a crime I believe it to be, and one which God knows how to avenge and to correct when man cannot.  Somehow—for He has ways of which we poor mortals do not dream—at the hand of every beast will He require the blood of man.

But more; at the hand of every man will He require it.  And how?  The text tells us, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man.”  Now, I do not doubt but that the all-seeing God, looking back on what had most probably happened on this earth already, and looking forward to what would happen, and happens, alas! too often now, meant to warn men against the awful crime of cannibalism, of eating their fellow-men as they would eat an animal.  By so doing, they not only treated their fellow-men as beasts, but they behaved like beasts themselves.  They denied that their victim was made in the likeness of God; they denied that they were made in the likeness of God; they willingly and deliberately put on the likeness of beasts, and as beasts they were to perish.  Now, this is certain, that savages who eat men—and alas! there are thousands even now who do so—usually know in their hearts that they are doing wrong.  As soon as their consciences are the least awakened, they are ashamed of their cannibalism; they lie about it, try to conceal it; and as soon as God’s grace begins to work on them, it is the very first sin that they give up.  And next, this is certain, that there is a curse upon it.  No cannibal people, so far as I can find, have ever risen or prospered in the world; and the cannibal peoples now-a-days, and for the last three hundred years, have been dying out.  By their own vices, diseases, and wars, they perish off the face of the earth, in the midst of comfort and plenty; and, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries, even their children and grand-children, after giving up the horrid crime, and becoming Christians, seem to have no power of living and increasing, but dwindle away, and perish off the earth.  Yes, God’s laws work in strange and subtle ways; so darkly, so slowly, that the ungodly and sinners often believe that there are no laws of God, and say—“Tush, how should God perceive it?  Is there knowledge in the Most High?”  But the laws work, nevertheless, whether men are aware of them or not.  “The mills of God grind slowly,” but sooner or later they grind the sinner to powder.

And now I will leave this hateful subject and go on to another, on which I am moved to speak once and for all, because it is much in men’s minds just now—I mean what is vulgarly called “capital punishment,” the punishing of murder by death.  Now the text, which is the ancient covenant of God with man, speaks very clearly on this point.  “Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”  Man is made in the likeness of God.  That is the ground of our law about murder, as it is the ground of all just and merciful law; that gives man his right to slay the murderer; that makes it his duty to slay the murderer.  He has to be jealous of God’s likeness, and to slay, in the name of God, the man who, by murder, outrages the likeness of God in himself and in his victim.

You all know that there is now-a-days a strong feeling among some persons about capital punishment; that there are those who will move heaven and earth to interfere with the course of justice, and beg off the worst of murderers, on any grounds, however unreasonable, fanciful, even unfair; simply because they have a dislike to human beings being hanged.  I believe, from long consideration, that these persons’ strange dislike proceeds from their not believing sufficiently that man is made in the image of God.  And, alas! it proceeds, I fear, in some of them, from not believing in a God at all—believing, perhaps, in some mere maker of the world, but not in the living God which Scripture sets forth.  For how else can they say, as I have known some say, that capital punishment is wrong, because “we have no right to usher a man into the presence of his Maker.”

Into the presence of his Maker!  Why, where else is every man, you and I, heathen and Christian, bad and good, save in the presence of his Maker already?  Do we not live and move and have our being in God?  Whither can we go from His spirit, or whither can we flee from His presence?  If we ascend into heaven, He is there.  If we go down to hell He is there also.  And if the law puts a man to death, it does not usher him into the presence of his Maker, for he is there already.  It simply says to him, “God has judged you on earth, not we.  God will judge you in the next world, not we.  All we know is, that you are not fit to live in this world.  All our duty is to send you out of it.  Where you will go in the other world is God’s matter, not ours, and the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

And this want of faith in a living God lies at the bottom of another objection.  We are to keep murderers alive in order to convert and instruct and amend them.  The answer is, We shall be most happy to amend anybody of any fault, however great: but the experience of ages is that murderers are past mending; that the fact of a man’s murdering another is a plain proof that he has no moral sense, and has become simply a brute animal Our duty is to punish not to amend, and to say to the murderer, “If you can be amended; God will amend you, and so have mercy on your soul.  God must amend you, if you are to be amended.  If God cannot amend you, we cannot.  If God will not amend you, certainly we cannot force Him to do so, if we kept you alive for a thousand years.”  That would seem reasonable, as well as reverent and faithful to God.  But men now-a-days fancy that they love their fellow creatures far better than God loves them, and can deal far more wisely and lovingly with them than God is willing to deal.  Of these objections I take little heed.  I look on them as merely loose cant, which does not quite understand the meaning of its own words, and I trust to sound, hard, English common sense to put them aside.

But there is another objection to capital punishment, which we must deal with much more respectfully and tenderly; for it is made by certain good people, people whom we must honour, though we differ from them, for no set of people have done more (according to their numbers) for education, for active charity, and for benevolence, and for peace and good will among the nations of the earth.  And they say, you must not take the life of a murderer, just because he is made in God’s image.  Well, I should have thought that God Himself was the best judge of that.  That, if God truly said that man was made in His image, and said, moreover, as it were at the same moment, that, therefore, whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed—our duty was to trust God, to obey God, and to do our duty against the murderer, however painful to our feelings it might be.  But I believe these good people make their mistake from forgetting this; that if the murderer be made in God’s image and likeness, so is the man whom he murders; and so also is the jury who convict him, the judge who condemns him, and the nation (the society of men) for whom they act.

And this, my dear friends, brings us to the very root of the meaning of law.  Man has sense to make laws (which animals cannot do), just because he is made in the likeness of God, and has the sense of right and wrong.  Man has the right to enforce laws, to see right done and wrong punished, just because he is made in the likeness of God.  The laws of a country, as far as they are just and righteous, are the copy of what the men of that country have found out about right and wrong, and about how much right they can get done, and how much wrong punished.  So, just as the men of a country are (in spite of all their sins) made in the likeness of God, so the laws of a country (in spite of all their defects) are a copy of God’s will, as to what men should or should not do.  And that, and no other, is the true reason why the judge or magistrate has authority over either property, liberty, or life.  He is God’s servant, the servant of Christ, who is King of this land and of all lands, and of all governments, and all kings and rulers of the earth.  He sits there in God’s name, to see God’s will done, as far as poor fallible human beings can get it done.  And, because he is, not merely as a man, but, by his special authority, in the likeness of God, who has power over life and death, therefore he also, as far as his authority goes, has power over life and death.  That is my opinion, and that was the opinion of St. Paul.  For what does he say—and say not (remember always) of Christian magistrates in a Christian country, but actually of heathen Roman magistrates?  “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.  For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”  Thus spoke out the tenderest-hearted, most Christ-like human being, perhaps, who ever trod this earth, who, in his intense longing to save sinners, endured a life of misery and danger, and finished it by martyrdom.  But there was no sentimentality, no soft indulgence in him.  He knew right from wrong; common sense from cant; duty from public opinion; and divine charity from the mere cowardly dislike of witnessing pain, not so much because it pains the person punished, as because it pains the spectator.  He knew that Christ was King of kings, and what Christ’s kingdom was like.  He had discovered the divine and wonderful order of men and angels.  He saw that one part of that order was—“the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”

But some say that capital punishment is inconsistent with the mild religion of Christ—the religion of mercy and love.  “The mild religion of Christ!”  Do these men know of Whom they talk?  Do they know that, if the Bible be true, the God who said, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” is the very same Being, the very same God, who was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate—the very same Christ who took little children up in His arms and blessed them, the very same Word of God, too, of whom it is written, that out of His mouth goeth a two-edged sword, that He may smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and He treadeth the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God?  These are awful words, but, my dear friends, I can only ask you if you think them too awful to be true?  Do you believe the Christian religion?  Do you believe the Creeds?  Do you believe the Bible?  For if you do, then you believe that the Lord Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, and crucified under Pontius Pilate, is the Maker, the Master, the Ruler of this world, and of all worlds.  By what laws He rules other worlds we know not, save that they are, because they must be—just and merciful laws.  But of the laws by which He rules this world we do know, by experience, that His laws are of most terrible and unbending severity, as I have warned you again and again, and shall warn you, as long as there is a liar or an idler, a drunkard or an adulteress in this parish.

And if this be so—if Christ be a God of severity as well as a God of love, a God who punishes sinners as well as a God who forgives penitents—what then?  We are, He tells us, made in His likeness.  Then, according to His likeness we must behave.  We must copy His love, by helping the poor and afflicted, the weak and the oppressed.  But we must copy His severity, by punishing whenever we have the power, without cowardice or indulgence, all wilful offenders; and, above all, the man who destroys God’s image in himself, by murdering and destroying the mortal life of a man made in the image of God.  And more; if we be made in the likeness of God and of Christ, we must remember, morning and night, and all day long, that most awful and most blessed fact.  We must say to ourselves, again and again, “I am not a mere animal, and like a mere animal I must not behave; I dare not behave like a mere animal, for I was made in the likeness of God; and when I was baptised the Spirit of God took possession of me to restore me to God’s likeness, and to call out and perfect God’s likeness in me all my life long.  Therefore, I am no mere animal; and never was intended to be.  I am the temple of God; my body and soul belong to God, and not to my own fancies and passions and lusts, and whosoever defiles the temple of God, him will God destroy.”

Therefore, this is our duty, this is our only hope or safety—to do our best to keep alive and strong the likeness of God in ourselves; to try to grow, not more and more mean, and brutal, and carnal, but more and more noble, and human, and spiritual; to crush down our base passions, our selfish inclinations, by the help of the Spirit of God, and to think of and to pray for, whatsoever is like Christ and like God; to pray for a noble love of what is good and noble, for a noble hate of what is bad; and whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report to think of these things.  And to pray, too, for forgiveness from Christ, and for the sake of Christ, whenever we have yielded to our low passions, and defiled the likeness of God in us, and grieved His Spirit, lest at the last day it be said to us, if not in words yet in acts, which there will be no mistaking, no escaping,—“I made thee in My likeness in the beginning of the creation, I redeemed thee into My likeness on the cross, I baptised thee into My likeness by my Holy Spirit; and what hast thou hast done with My likeness?  Thou hast cast it away, thou hast let it die out in thee, thou hast lived after the flesh and not after the spirit, and hast put on the likeness of the carnal man, the likeness of the brute.  Thou hast copied the vanity of the peacock, the silliness of the ape, the cunning of the fox, the rapacity of the tiger, the sensuality of the swine; but thou hast not copied God, thy God, who died that thou mightest live, and be a man.  Then, thou hast destroyed God’s likeness, for thou hast destroyed it in thyself.  Thou hast slain a man, for thou hast slain thy own manhood, and art thine own murderer, and thine own blood shall be required at thy hand.  That which thou hast done to God’s likeness in thee, shall be done to that which remains of thee in a second death.”

And from that may Christ in His mercy deliver us all.  Amen.

SERMON VII.  TEMPTATION

Eversley, 1872.  Chester Cathedral, 1872.

St Matt. iv. 3.  “And when the tempter came to Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”

Let me say a few words to-day about a solemn subject, namely, Temptation.  I do not mean the temptations of the flesh—the temptations which all men have to yield to the low animal nature in them, and behave like brutes.  I mean those deeper and more terrible temptations, which our Lord conquered in that great struggle with evil which is commonly called His temptation in the wilderness.  These were temptations of an evil spirit—the temptations which entice some men, at least, to behave like devils.

Now these temptations specially beset religious men—men who are, or fancy themselves, superior to their fellow-men, more favoured by God, and with nobler powers, and grander work to do, than the common average of mankind.  But specially, I say, they beset those who are, or fancy themselves, the children of God.  And, therefore, I humbly suppose our Lord had to endure and to conquer these very temptations because He was not merely a child of God, but the Son of God—the perfect Man, made in the perfect likeness of His Father.  He had to endure these temptations, and to conquer them, that He might be able to succour us when we are tempted, seeing that He was tempted in like manner as we are, yet without sin.

Now it has been said, and, I think, well said, that what proves our Lord’s three temptations to have been very subtle and dangerous and terrible, is this—that we cannot see at first sight that they were temptations at all.  The first two do not look to us to be wrong.  If our Lord could make stones into bread to satisfy His hunger, why should He not do so?  If He could prove to the Jews that He was the Son of God, their divine King and Saviour, by casting Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, and being miraculously supported in the air by angels—if He could do that, why should He not do it?  And lastly, the third temptation looks at first sight so preposterous that it seems silly of the evil spirit to have hinted at it.  To ask any man of piety, much less the Son of God Himself, to fall down and worship the devil, seems perfectly absurd—a request not to be listened to for a moment, but put aside with contempt.

Well, my friends, and the very danger of these spiritual temptations is—that they do not look like temptations.  They do not look ugly, absurd, wrong, they look pleasant, reasonable, right.

The devil, says the apostle, transforms himself at times into an angel of light.  If so, then he is certainly far more dangerous than if he came as an angel of darkness and horror.  If you met some venomous snake, with loathsome spots upon his scales, his eyes full of rage and cunning, his head raised to strike at you, hissing and showing his fangs, there would be no temptation to have to do with him.  You would know that you had to deal with an evil beast, and must either kill him or escape from him at once.  But if, again, you met, as you may meet in the tropics, a lovely little coral snake, braided with red and white, its mouth so small that it seems impossible that it can bite, and so gentle that children may take it up and play with it, then you might be tempted, as many a poor child has been ere now, to admire it, fondle it, wreathe it round the neck for a necklace, or round the arm for a bracelet, till the play goes one step too far, the snake loses its temper, gives one tiny scratch upon the lip or finger, and that scratch is certain death.  That would be a temptation indeed; one all the more dangerous because there is, I am told, another sort of coral snake perfectly harmless, which is so exactly like the deadly one, that no child, and few grown people, can know them apart.

Even so it is with our worst temptations.  They look sometimes so exactly like what is good and noble and useful and religious, that we mistake the evil for the good, and play with it till it stings us, and we find out too late that the wages of sin are death.  Thus religious people, just because they are religious, are apt to be specially tempted to mistake evil for good, to do something specially wrong, when they think they are doing something specially right, and so give occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme; till, as a hard and experienced man of the world once said: “Whenever I hear a man talking of his conscience, I know that he is going to do something particularly foolish; whenever I hear of a man talking of his duty, I know that he is going to do something particularly cruel.”

Do I say this to frighten you away from being religious?  God forbid.  Better to be religious and to fear and love God, though you were tempted by all the devils out of the pit, than to be irreligious and a mere animal, and be tempted only by your own carnal nature, as the animals are.  Better to be tempted, like the hermits of old, and even to fall and rise again, singing, “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, when I fall I shall arise;” than to live the life of the flesh, “like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains.”  It is the price a man must pay for hungering and thirsting after righteousness, for longing to be a child of God in spirit and in truth.  “The devil,” says a wise man of old, “does not tempt bad men, because he has got them already; he tempts good men, because he has not got them, and wants to get them.”

But how shall we know these temptations?  God knows, my friends, better than I; and I trust that He will teach you to know, according to what each of you needs to know.  But as far as my small experience goes, the root of them all is pride and self-conceit.  Whatsoever thoughts or feelings tempt us to pride and self-conceit are of the devil, not of God.  The devil is specially the spirit of pride; and, therefore, whatever tempts you to fancy yourself something different from your fellow-men, superior to your fellow men, safer than them, more favoured by God than them, that is a temptation of the spirit of pride.  Whatever tempts you to think that you can do without God’s help and God’s providence; whatever tempts you to do anything extraordinary, and show yourself off, that you may make a figure in the world; and above all, whatever tempts you to antinomianism, that is, to fancy that God will overlook sins in you which He will not overlook in other men—all these are temptations from the spirit of pride.  They are temptations like our Lord’s temptations.  These temptations came on our Lord more terribly than they ever can on you and me, just because He was the Son of Man, the perfect Man, and, therefore, had more real reason for being proud (if such a thing could be) than any man, or than all men put together.  But He conquered the temptations because He was perfect Man, led by the Spirit of God; and, therefore, He knew that the only way to be a perfect man was not to be proud, however powerful, wise, and glorious He might be; but to submit Himself humbly and utterly, as every man should do, to the will of His Father in Heaven, from whom alone His greatness came.

Now the spirit of pride cannot understand the beauty of humility, and the spirit of self-will cannot understand the beauty of obedience; and, therefore, it is reasonable to suppose the devil could not understand our Lord.  If He be the Son of God, so might Satan argue, He has all the more reason to be proud; and, therefore, it is all the more easy to tempt Him into shewing His pride, into proving Himself a conceited, self-willed, rebellious being—in one word, an evil spirit.

And therefore (as you will see at first sight) the first two temptations were clearly meant to tempt our Lord to pride; for would they not tempt you and me to pride?  If we could feed ourselves by making bread of stones, would not that make us proud enough?  So proud, I fear, that we should soon fancy that we could do without God and His providence, and were masters of nature and all her secrets.  If you and I could make the whole city worship and obey us, by casting ourselves off this cathedral unhurt, would not that make us proud enough?  So proud, I fear, that we should end in committing some great folly, or great crime in our conceit and vainglory.

Now, whether our Lord could or could not have done these wonderful deeds, one thing is plain—that He would not do them; and, therefore, we may presume that He ought not to have done them.  It seems as if He did not wish to be a wonderful man: but only a perfectly good man, and He would do nothing to help Himself but what any other man could do.  He answered the evil spirit simply out of Scripture, as any other pious man might have done.  When He was bidden to make the stones into bread, He answers not as the Eternal Son of God, but simply as a man.  “It is written:”—it is the belief of Moses and the old prophets of my people that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God:—as much as to say, If I am to be delivered out of this need, God will deliver me by some means or other, just as He delivers other men out of their needs.  When He was bidden cast Himself from the temple, and so save Himself, probably from sorrow, poverty, persecution, and the death on the cross, He answers out of Scripture as any other Jew would have done.  “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”  He says nothing—this is most important—of His being the eternal Son of God.  He keeps that in the background.  There the fact was; but He veiled the glory of His godhead, that He might assert the rights of His manhood, and shew that mere man, by the help of the Spirit of God, could obey God, and keep His commandments.

I say these last words with all diffidence and humility, and trusting that the Lord will pardon any mistake which I may make about His Divine Words.  I only say them because wiser men than I have often taken the same view already.  Of course there is more, far more, in this wonderful saying than we can understand, or ever will understand.  But this I think is plain—that our Lord determined to behave as any and every other man ought to have done in His place; in order to shew all God’s children the example of perfect humility and perfect obedience to God.

But again, the devil asked our Lord to fall down and worship him.  Now how could that be a temptation to pride?  Surely that was asking our Lord to do anything but a proud action, rather the most humiliating and most base of all actions.  My friends, it seems to me that if our Lord had fallen down and worshipped the evil spirit, He would have given way to the spirit of pride utterly and boundlessly; and I will tell you why.

The devil wanted our Lord to do evil that good might come.  It would have been a blessing, that all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of man should be our Lord’s,—the very blessing for this poor earth which He came to buy, and which He bought with His own precious blood.  And here the devil offered Him the very prize for which He came down on earth, without struggle or difficulty, if He would but do, for one moment, one wrong thing.  What temptation that would be to our Lord as God, I dare not say.  But that to our Lord as Man, it must have been the most terrible of all temptations, I can well believe: because history shews us, and, alas! our own experience in modern times shews us, persons yielding to that temptation perpetually; pious people, benevolent people, people who long to spread the Bible, to convert sinners, to found charities, to amend laws, to set the world right in some way or other, and who fancy that therefore, in carrying out their fine projects, they have a right to do evil that good may come.

This is a very painful subject; all the more painful just now, because I sometimes think it is the special sin of this country and this generation, and that God will bring on us some heavy punishment for it.  But all who know the world in its various phases, and especially what are called the religious world, and the philanthropic world, and the political world, know too well that men, not otherwise bad men, will do things and say things, to carry out some favourite project or movement, or to support some party, religious or other, which they would (I hope) be ashamed to say and do for their own private gain.  Now what is this, but worshipping the evil spirit, in order to get power over this world, that they may (as they fancy) amend it?  And what is this but self-conceit—ruinous, I had almost said, blasphemous?  These people think themselves so certainly in the right, and their plans so absolutely necessary to the good of the world, that God has given them a special licence to do what they like in carrying them out; that He will excuse in them falsehoods and meannesses, even tyranny and violences which He will excuse in no one else.

Now, is not this self-conceit?  What would you think of a servant who disobeyed you, cheated you, and yet said to himself—No matter, my master dare not turn me off: I am so useful that he cannot do without me.  Even so in all ages, and now as much as, or more than ever, have men said, We are so necessary to God and God’s cause, that He cannot do without us; and therefore though He hates sin in everyone else, He will excuse sin in us, as long as we are about His business.

Therefore, my dear friends, whenever we are tempted to do or say anything rash, or vain, or mean, because we are the children of God; whenever we are inclined to be puffed up with spiritual pride, and to fancy that we may take liberties which other men must not take, because we are the children of God; let us remember the words of the text, and answer the tempter, when he says, If thou be the Son of God, do this and that, as our Lord answered him—“If I be the Child of God, what then?  This—that I must behave as if God were my Father.  I must trust my God utterly, and I must obey Him utterly.  I must do no rash or vain thing to tempt God, even though it looks as if I should have a great success, and do much good thereby.  I must do no mean or base thing, nor give way for a moment to the wicked ways of this wicked world, even though again it looks as if I should have a great success, and do much good thereby.  In one word, I must worship my Father in heaven, and Him only must I serve.  If He wants me, He will use me.  If He does not want me, He will use some one else.  Who am I, that God cannot govern the world without my help?  My business is to refrain my soul, and keep it low, even as a weaned child, and not to meddle with matters too high for me.  My business is to do the little, simple, everyday duties which lie nearest me, and be faithful in a few things; and then, if Christ will, He may make me some day ruler over many things, and I shall enter into the joy of my Lord, which is the joy of doing good to my fellow men.  But I shall never enter into that by thrusting myself into Christ’s way, with grand schemes and hasty projects, as if I knew better than He how to make His kingdom come.  If I do, my pride will have a fall.  Because I would not be faithful over a few things, I shall be tempted to be unfaithful over many things; and instead of entering into the joy of my Lord, I shall be in danger of the awful judgment pronounced on those who do evil that good may come, who shall say in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?  And then will He protest unto them—I never knew you.  Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Oh, my friends, in all your projects for good, as in all other matters which come before you in your mortal life, keep innocence and take heed to the thing that is right.  For that, and that alone, shall bring a man peace at the last.

To which, may God in His mercy bring us all.  Amen.

SERMON VIII.  MOTHER’S LOVE

Eversley, Second Sunday in Lent, 1872.

St Matthew xv. 22-28.  “And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.  But he answered her not a word.  And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.  But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.  But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.  And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.  Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.  And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.”

If you want a proof from Scripture that there are two sides to our blessed Lord’s character—that He is a Judge and an Avenger as well as a Saviour and a Pardoner—that He is infinitely severe as well as infinitely merciful—that, while we may come boldly to His throne of grace to find help and mercy in time of need, we must, at the same time, tremble before His throne of justice—if you want a proof of all this, I say, then look at the Epistle and the Gospel for this day.  Put them side by side, and compare them, and you will see how perfectly they shew, one after the other, the two sides.

The Epistle for the day tells men and women that they must lead moral, pure, and modest lives.  It does not advise them to do so.  It does not say, It will be better to do so, more proper and conducive to the good of society, more likely to bring you to heaven at last.  It says, You must, for it is the commandment of the Lord Jesus, and the will of God.  Let no man encroach on or defraud his brother in the matter, says St Paul; by which he means, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.  And why?  “Because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.”

My friends, people talk loosely of the Thunder of Sinai and the rigour of Moses’ law, and set them against what they call the gentle voice of the Gospel, and the mild religion of Christ.  Why, here are the Thunders of Sinai uttered as loud as ever, from the very foot of the Cross of Christ; and the terrible, “Thou shalt not,” of Moses’ law, with the curse of God for a penalty on the sinner, uttered by the Apostle of Faith, and Freedom, in the name of Christ and of God.  St Paul is not afraid to call Christ an Avenger.  How could he be?  He believed that it was Christ who spoke to Moses on Sinai—the very same Christ who prayed for His murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  And he knew that Christ was the eternal Son of God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; that He had not changed since Moses’ time, and could never change; that what He forbade in Moses’ time, hated in Moses’ time, and avenged in Moses’ time, He would forbid, and hate, and avenge for ever.  And that, therefore, he who despises the warnings of the Law despises not man merely, but God, who has also given to us His Holy Spirit to know what is unchangeable, the everlastingly right, from what is everlastingly wrong.  So much for that side of our Lord’s character; so much for sinners who, after their hardness and impenitent hearts, treasure up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to St Paul’s Gospel.

But, when we turn to the Gospel for the day, we see the other side of our Lord’s character, boundless condescension and boundless charity.  We see Him there still a Judge, as He always is and always will be, judging the secrets of a poor woman’s heart, and that woman a heathen.  He judges her openly, in public, before His disciples.  But He is a Judge who judges righteous judgment, and not according to appearances; who is no respecter of persons; who is perfectly fair, even though the woman be a heathen: and, instead of condemning her and driving her away, He acquits her, He grants her prayer, He heals her daughter, even though that daughter was also a heathen, and one who knew Him not.  I say our Lord judged the woman after He had tried her, as gold is tried in the fire.  Why He did so, we cannot tell.  Perhaps He wanted, by the trial, to make her a better woman, to bring out something noble which lay in her heart unknown to her, though not to Him who knew what was in man.  Perhaps He wished to shew his disciples, who looked down on her as a heathen dog, that a heathen, too, could have faith, humility, nobleness, and grace of heart.  Be that as it may, when the poor woman came crying to Him, He answered her not a word.  His disciples besought Him to send her away—and I am inclined to think that they wished Him to grant her what she asked, simply to be rid of her.  “Send her away,” they said, “for she crieth after us.”  Our Lord, we learn from St Mark, did not wish to be known in that place just then.  The poor woman, with her crying, was drawing attention to them, and, perhaps, gathering a crowd.  Somewhat noisy and troublesome, perhaps she was, in her motherly eagerness.  But our Lord was still seemingly stern.  He would not listen, it seemed, to His disciples any more than to the heathen woman.  “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  So our Lord said, and (what is worth remembering) if He said so, what He said was true.  He was the King of the people of Israel, the Royal Prince of David’s line; and, as a man, His duty was only to His own people.  And this woman was a Greek, a Syro-phenician by nation—of a mixed race of people, notoriously low and profligate, and old enemies of the Jews.

Then, it seems, He went into a house, and would have no man know it.  But, says St Mark, “He could not be hid.”  The mother’s wit found our Lord out, and the mother’s heart urged her on, and, in spite of all His rebuffs, she seems to have got into the house and worshipped Him.  She “fell at His feet,” says St Mark—doubtless bowing her forehead to the ground, in the fashion of those lands—an honour which was paid, I believe, only to persons who were royal or divine.  So she confessed that He was a king—perhaps a God come down on earth—and again she cried to Him.  “Lord, help me.”  And what was our Lord’s answer—seemingly more stern than ever?  “Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it unto the dogs.”  Hard words.  Yes: but all depends on how they were spoken.  All depends on our Lord’s look as He spoke them, and, even more, on the tone of His voice.  We all know that two men may use the very same words to us;—and the one shall speak sneeringly, brutally, and raise in us indignation or despair; another shall use the same words, but solemnly, tenderly, and raise in us confidence and hope.  And so it may have been—so, I fancy, it must have been—with the tone of our Lord’s voice, with the expression of His face.  Did He speak with a frown, or with something like a smile?  There must have been some tenderness, meaningness, pity in His voice which the quick woman’s wit caught instantly, and the quick mother’s heart interpreted as a sign of hope.