Sermons for the Times

Just think for yourselves; consider, you who are grown up, and have had experience of life, the harm you have known one bad man do, the sorrow he will cause, even to people who never saw him; and the good which you have seen one good man, not merely do with his own hands, but put into other people’s hearts by his example.  Is not both the good and the harm which is done on earth like the ripple of a stone dropt into water, which spreads and spreads for a vast distance round, however small the stone may be?  Indeed, bold as it may seem to say it, I believe that, if we could behold all hearts as the Lord Jesus does, we should find that there never was a good man but that the whole of Christendom, perhaps all mankind, was sooner or later, more or less, the better for him; and that there never was a bad man but that all Christendom, perhaps all mankind, was the worse for him.  So fully and really true it is in everyday practice, that we are members one of another.

Now this is the principle on which the Church acts.  For the little unconscious infant is treated as what it is, a most solemn and important person, who has other relations beside its father and mother, as a person who is the brother of all the people round it, and of all the Church of God, and who, too, may hereafter do to them boundless good or harm, and they to it.

Therefore we must have some persons to bear witness of that, to remind the child himself, and the whole Church, that he is not merely a soul by itself to be saved, but that he is a brother, a member of a family; that he is bound to that family henceforth, for good and for evil.  And this the godfathers and godmothers do: they represent and stand in the place of the whole Church.  In one sense, every Christian who meets that child through life, or hears of it, ought to behave, as far as he can, as its godfather; ought to help and improve it if he can.  But what is everybody’s business, says the proverb, is nobody’s business; and therefore these godfathers and godmothers are called out from the rest, as examples to the rest, to watch over the child, and to help and advise its father and mother in guiding and training it: but not by interfering with a parent’s rights, God forbid! or by drawing away the child’s affections from its own flesh and blood; for if a child be not taught first to honour its father and mother, there is little use in teaching it anything else whatsoever; and a godfather’s first duty is to see that his godchild obeys its earthly parents for the Lord’s sake, for that is right, and God’s will, whatever else is not.

Now just conceive—I am sure that you easily may—what a blessing to this parish, or this part of the country, it would be, were the duties of godfathers really carried out and practised.  Every child, beside his father and mother, would have some two or three elder friends at least, whom he had known from his childhood, whom he could trust, to whom he could go in trouble as to his own flesh and blood.  The orphan would have, if not relations, still godparents, to comfort and protect him.  No one could go abroad without meeting, if not a godparent, yet the godparent or godchild of a friend or a relation; someone, in short, who had an interest in him, and he in them.  All would be bound together in threefold cords of interest and affection.  How many spites, family quarrels, mistakes, and ignorances about each other would be done away, if people would but thus simply enter into that communion of saints to which, by right, they belong, and bear each other’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.—Unless you think that men are such ill-conditioned creatures that the less they mix with each other the better.  I do not.  I believe that the more we mix with each other, and the better we know each other, the more we shall feel for each other: that the more we help people, the more we shall find that they are worth helping; that the more, in a word, we try to live, not after the likeness of the beasts, selfish and apart, but after the order and constitution of God’s Church, to which we belong, and which is, that we are all fellow-members of one body, then the more we shall find that God’s order is the right, good, blessed order, by obeying which we enter into comfort of which we never dream as long as we lead selfish, separate, worldly lives; as it is written, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’

This may seem a fanciful dream, too fair to be possible; but what prevents it from being possible, save and except our own selfishness and laziness?

And as for what fruit will spring from it, I have seen, by experience, the blessing of godfathership and godmothership, where it is really carried out; how it will knit together, in sacred bonds of friendship, not merely the children, but the grown persons of different families, and give them a fellow-feeling, a mutual interest, which will prevent a hundred quarrels and coldnesses among frail human creatures.  And to those who are childless themselves, what a blessing to have their love and self-sacrifice called out, by being bound in holy bonds, if not to children of their own, at least to children of God!—to have young people to care for, to teach, to guide, and so to win for themselves in the Church of God a name better than that of sons and daughters.  And have no fear that by bringing your kindness to bear especially upon your godchildren you will narrow your love, and care less for children in general.  Not so, my friends; you will find that your love to your godchildren, like love to your own children, will make all children lovable in your eyes: you will learn how worthy of your love children are, what capacities of good there are in them, how truly of such are the kingdom of heaven; and their simplicity will often teach you more than you can teach them.  Their God-given instincts of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, which come from the indwelling Word of God, Jesus the Lord, will often enough shame us, will teach us more and more the depth of that great saying, ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, Thou, O God, hast perfected Thy praise.’

Now try, I entreat you, all godfathers and godmothers, to carry out these hints of mine, and so fulfil your duty to your godchildren, sure that you will find it a blessing to yourselves as well as to them.

After all it is your duty.  But do not let the slandering Devil slander to you that blessed word, Duty, and make you afraid of it, and shrink from it, as if it meant something burdensome, and troublesome, and thankless, which you suppose you must do for fear of punishment, while you have a right to see how little of it you can do, and try to be let off as cheaply as possible.  Beware of that evil spirit, my friends, for he is very near you, and me, and every man, whenever we think of our duty.  Very near us he is, that evil Jesuit spirit, that spirit of bondage unto fear, which is continually setting us on to find out with how little service God will be contented, how human slaves may make the cheapest bargain with some stern taskmaster above, of whom they dream.  And from that temptation there is no escape, save into the blessed name of God Himself—our Father.

Our Father!—whenever you think of your duty to God or man, think but of those two words.  Remember that all duty is duty to a Father; your Father; and such a Father!  Who gave His only begotten Son to die for you, who showed what He was in that Son—full of goodness, perfectly loving, perfectly merciful, perfectly just; and then you will not be inclined to ask how little obedience, how little love, how little service, He will allow you to pay to Him; but how much He will help you to pay to Him.  Then you will feel that His service is perfect freedom, because it is service to a Father who loves you, and will help you to do His will.  Then you will feel that His commandments are not grievous, because they are a Father’s commandments, because you are bound to do them, not by dread and superstition, but by gratitude, honour, affection, respect, trust.  Then you will not be thinking of what punishment will come if you disobey—no, nor of what reward will come if you obey—but you will be thinking of the commandment itself, and how to carry it out most perfectly, and let the consequences take care of themselves, because you know that your Father takes care of them; that He loves you, and therefore what He commands must be good for you, utterly the best thing for you; that He only gives you a commandment because it is good for you; that you are made in God’s image, and therefore God’s will must be for you the path of life, the only rule by which you can prosper now and for ever.

Do try, now, all you who are godfathers and godmothers, and for once look on your duty in this light.  Be sure that in trying to do your duty you will bring a blessing on yourselves, because your duty is to a Father in heaven.  Be sure that, in trying to better your godchildren, you will better yourselves; in trying to teach them, you will teach yourselves; in trying to bring them to confirmation, you will indeed confirm, root, and strengthen yourselves the more deeply in all that is good; because your godchildren are indeed God’s children, and whatsoever you do for them you do for His only begotten Son Jesus Christ, as He Himself says, ‘Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye did it unto Me.’  Do not be afraid of trying; you will have a hundred reasons for not trying rise in your mind, the Devil will find you a hundred lying excuses: ‘It will be so difficult; and you do not like to interfere with other people’s children; and you have never cared about your godchildren yet, and it will seem so odd to begin now; and the children may not listen to you; and besides, you do not know enough to teach them; you are not good scholar enough, good liver enough, you can’t preach where you don’t practice.’  Oh, how ready the Devil is to help a man to excuses for not doing his duty; how careful he is to keep out of a man’s mind the one thought which would sweep all those excuses to the wind—the thought that this same duty, which he is trying to make look so ugly, is duty to a loving Father.  Do not listen to his lies; look up to your good Father in heaven; and try.  It is God’s will that these children should be confirmed; it is His will that you should help to bring them to confirmation; and if it is His will, He will help you to do that will of His.  It may seem difficult: but try, and the difficulty will vanish, for God will make it easy for you.  You may be afraid of interfering: believe that God’s Spirit is working in the hearts of your godchildren, and of their parents also; and trust to God’s Spirit to make them kindly and thankful to you about the matter, and glad to see that you take an interest in their children.  You may seem not to know enough: O, my friends, you know enough, every one of you, if you have courage to confess how much you know.  Ask God for courage to speak out, and He will give it you.  And even if you are no scholar, be sure that, as the old proverb says, ‘Teaching is the best way of learning.’  Any parent, or godfather, or godmother, who will try to teach their children God’s truth and their duty, will find that in so doing they will teach themselves even more than they teach the children.  I say it because I know it from my own experience.  And for the rest, again I say, is not God your Father?  Therefore, if any man be in want of wisdom, or courage, or any other heavenly gift, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally and upbraideth not, and he shall receive it.  For after all, when you ask God to teach you, and strengthen you to do your duty, you do but ask Him for a part of that very inheritance which He has already given you; a part of your inheritance in that kingdom of heaven which is a kingdom of spiritual gifts and graces, into which you were baptized as well as your godchildren.

Try then, each of you, what you can do to bring your own godchildren to confirmation, and what you can do to make them fit for confirmation; for you are members one of another, and if you will act as such, you will find strength to do your duty, and a blessing in your day from that heavenly Father from whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth, and yours among the rest, is named.

SERMON VI.  JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH

Ephesians ii. 5.  By grace ye are saved.

We all hold that we are justified by faith, that is, by believing; and that unless we are justified we cannot be saved.  And of all men who ever believed this, perhaps those who gave us the Church Catechism believed it most strongly.  Nay, some of them suffered for it; endured persecution, banishment, and a cruel death, because they would persist in holding, contrary to the Romanists, that men were justified by faith only, and not by the works of the law; and that this was one of the root-doctrines of Christianity, which if a man did not believe, he would believe nothing else rightly.  Does it not seem, then, something strange that they should never in this Catechism of theirs mention one word about justifying or justification?  They do not ask the child, ‘How is a man justified?’ that he may answer, ‘By faith alone;’ they do not even teach him to say, ‘I am justified already.  I am in a state of justification;’ but not saying one word about that, they teach him to say much more—they teach him to say that he is in a state of salvation, and to thank God boldly because he is so; and then go on at once to ask him the articles of his belief.  And even more strange still, they teach him to answer that question, not by repeating any doctrines, but by repeating the simple old Apostles’ Creed.  They do not teach him to say, as some would now-a-days, ‘I believe in original sin, I believe in redemption through Christ’s death, I believe in justification by faith, I believe in sanctification by the Holy Spirit,’—true as these doctrines are; still less do they bid the child say, ‘I believe in predestination, and election, and effectual calling, and irresistible grace, and vicarious satisfaction, and forensic justification, and vital faith, and the three assurances.’

Whether these things be true or false, it seemed to the ancient worthies who gave us our Catechism that children had no business with them.  They had their own opinions on these matters, and spoke their opinions moderately and wisely, and the sum of their opinions we have in the Thirty-nine Articles, which are not meant for children, not even for grown persons, excepting scholars and clergymen.  Of course every grown person is at liberty to study them; but no one in the Church of England is required to agree to them, and to swear that they are true, except scholars at our old Universities, and clergymen, who are bound to have studied such questions.  But for the rest of Englishmen all the necessary articles of belief (so the old divines considered) were contained in the simple old Apostles’ Creed.

And why?  Because, it seems to me, they were what Englishmen ought to be—what too many Englishmen are too apt to boast of being in these days, while they are not so, or anything like it—and that is, honest men and practical men.  They had taught the children to say that they were members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven; and they had taught the children, when they said that, to mean what they said; for they had no notion that ‘I am,’ meant ‘I may possibly be;’ or that ‘I was made,’ meant ‘There is a chance of my being made some time or other.’  They would not have dared to teach children to say things which were most probably not true.  So believing really what they taught, they believed also that the children were justified.  For if a child is not justified in being a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, what is he justified in being?  Is not that exactly the just, right, and proper state for him, and for every man?—the very state in which all men were meant originally to be, in which all men ought to have been?  So they looked on these children as being in the just, right, and proper way, on which God looks with satisfaction and pleasure, and in which alone a man can do just, right, and proper things, by the Spirit of Christ, which He gives daily and hourly to those who belong to Him and trust in Him and in His Father.

But they knew that the children could only keep in this just, and right, and proper state by trusting in God, and looking up to Him daily in faith, and love, and obedience.  They knew that if the children, whether for one hour or for their whole lives, lost trust in God, and began trusting in themselves, they would that very moment, then and there, become not justified at all, because they would be doing a thing which no man is justified in doing, and fall into a state into which no man is justified in remaining for one hour—that is, into an unjustifiable state of self-will, and lawlessness, and forgetfulness of who and of what they were, and of what God was to them; in one word, into a sinful state, which is not a righteous, or just, or good, or proper state for any man, but an utterly unrighteous, unjust, wrong, improper, mistaken, diseased state, which is certain to breed unrighteous, unjust, improper actions in a man, as a limb is certain to corrupt if it be cut off from the body, as a little child is certain to come to harm if it runs away from its parents, and does just what it likes, and eats whatsoever pleases its fancy.  So these old divines, being practical men, said to themselves, ‘These children are justified and right in being what they are, therefore our business is to keep them what they are, and we can only do that as long as they have faith in God and in His Christ.’

Now, if they had been mere men of books, they would have said to themselves, ‘Then we must teach the children very exactly what faith is, that they may know how to tell true faith from false, and may be able to judge every day and hour whether they have the right sort of faith which will justify them, or some wrong sort which will not.’  And many wise and good men in those times did say so, and tormented their own minds, and the minds of weak brethren, with long arguments and dry doctrines about faith, till, in their eagerness to make out what sort of thing faith ought to be, they seemed quite to forget that it must be faith in God, and so seemed to forget too who God was, and what He was like.  Therefore, they ended by making people believe (as too many, I fear, do now-a-days) not that they were justified freely by the grace of God, shown forth in the life, and death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ; no: but that they were justified by believing in justification by faith, and that their salvation depended not on being faithful to God and trusting in Him, but in standing up fiercely for the doctrine of justification by faith.  And so they destroyed the doctrine of free grace, while they thought they were fighting for it; for they taught men not to look to God for salvation, so much as to their own faith, their own frames, and feelings, and experiences; and these, as common sense will show you, are just as much something in a man, as acts of his own, and part of him, as his good works would be; and so by making people fancy that it was having the right sort of feelings which justified them, they fell back into the very same mistake as the Papists against whom they were so bitter, namely, that it is something in a man’s self which justifies him, and not simply Christ’s merits and God’s free grace.

But our old Reformers were of a different mind; and everlasting thanks be to Almighty God that they were so.  For by being so they have made the Church of England (as I always have said, and always will say) almost the only Church in Europe, Protestant or other, which thoroughly and fully stands up for free grace, and justification by faith alone.  For these old Reformers were practical men, and took the practical way.  They knew, perhaps, the old proverb, ‘A man need not be a builder to live in a house.’  At least they acted on it, and instead of trying to make the children understand what faith was made up of, they tried to make them live in faith itself.  Instead of saying, ‘How shall we make the children have faith in God by telling them what faith is?’ they said, ‘How shall we make them have faith in God by telling them what God is?’  And therefore, instead of puzzling and fretting the children’s minds with any of the controversies which were then going on between Papists and Protestants, or afterwards between Calvinists and Arminians, they taught the children simply about God; who He was, and what He had done for them and all mankind; that so they might learn to love Him, and look up to Him in faith, and trust utterly to Him, and so remain justified and right, saved and safe for ever.

By doing which, my friends, they showed that they knew more about faith and about God than if they had written books on books of doctrinal arguments (though they wrote those too, and wrote them nobly and well); they showed that they had true faith in God, such trust in Him, and in the beauty and goodness, justice and love, which He had shown, that they only needed to tell the children of it, and they would trust Him too, and at once have faith in so good a God.  They showed that they had such trust in the excellencies, and reasonableness, and fitness of His Gospel, that they were sure that it would come home at once to the children’s hearts.  They showed that they had such trust in the power of His grace, in His love for the children, in the working of His Spirit in the children, that He would bring His Gospel home to their hearts, and stir them up by the spirit of adoption to feel that they were indeed the children of God, to whom they might freely cry, ‘My Father!’

And I say that they were not deceived.  I say that experience has shown that they were right; that the Church Catechism, where it is really and honestly taught, gives the children an honest, frank, sober, English temper of mind which no other training which I have seen gives.  I have seen, alas!  Church schools fail, ere now, in training good children; but as far as I have seen, they have failed either because the Catechism was neglected for the sake of cramming the children’s brains with scholarship, or because the Catechism was not honestly taught: because the words were taught by rote, but the explanations which were given of it were no explanations at all, but another doctrine, which our forefathers knew not: either Dissenting or Popish; either a religion of fancies, and feelings, and experiences, or one of superstitious notions and superstitious ceremonies which have been borrowed from the Church of Rome, and which, I trust in God, will be soon returned to their proper owner, if the free, truthful, God-trusting English spirit is to remain in our children.  I know that there are good men among Dissenters, my friends; good men among Romanists.  I have met with them, and I thank God for them; and what may not be good for English children may be good for foreign ones.  I judge not; to his own master each man stands or falls.  But I warn you frankly, from experience (not of my own merely—Heaven forbid!—but from the experience of centuries past), that if you expect to make the average of English children good children on any other ground than the Church Catechism takes, you will fail.  Of course there will be some chosen ones here and there, whose hearts God will touch; but you will find that the greater part of the children will not be made better at all; you will find that the cleverer, and more tender-hearted will be made conceited, Pharisaical, self-deceiving (for children are as ready to deceive themselves, and play the hypocrite to their own consciences, as grown people are); they will catch up cant words and phrases, or little outward forms of reverence, and make a religion for themselves out of them to drug their own consciences withal; while, when they go out into the world, and meet temptation, they will have no real safeguard against it, because whatsoever they have been taught, they have not been taught that God is really and practically their Father, and they His children.

I have seen many examples of this kind.  Perhaps those who have eyes to see may have seen one or two in this very parish.  Be that as it may, I tell you, my friends, that your children shall be taught the Church Catechism, with the plain, honest meaning of the words as they stand.  No less: but as God shall give me grace, no more.  If it be not enough for them to know that God, He who made heaven and earth, is their Father; that His Son Jesus Christ redeemed them and all mankind by being born of the Virgin Mary, suffering under Pontius Pilate, being crucified, dead, and buried, descending into hell, rising again the third day from the dead, ascending into Heaven, and sitting on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, in the intent of coming from thence to judge the living and the dead; to believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy universal Church in which He keeps us, in the fellowship of all Saints in which He knits us together; in the forgiveness of our sins which He proclaims to us, in the resurrection of our body which He will quicken at the last day, in the life everlasting which is His life,—if, I say, this be not enough for them to believe, and on the strength thereof to trust God utterly, and so be justified and saved from this evil world, and from the doom and punishment thereof, then they must go elsewhere; for I have nothing more to offer them, and trust in God that I never shall have.

SERMON VII.  DUTY AND SUPERSTITION

Micah vi. 6-8.  Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the most High God?  Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? . . .  Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? . . .  Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression; the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

There are many now-a-days who complain of that part of the Church Catechism which speaks of our duty to God and to our neighbour; and many more, I fear, who shrink from complaining of the Church Catechism, because it is part of the Prayer-book, yet wish in their secret hearts that it had said something different about Duty.

Some wonder why it does not say more about what are called ‘religious duties,’ and ‘acts of worship,’ ‘mortification,’ ‘penitence,’ and ‘good works.’  Others wonder no less why it says nothing about what are called ‘Christian frames and feelings,’ and ‘inward experiences.’

For there is a notion abroad in the world, as there is in all evil times, that a man’s chief duty is to save his own soul after he is dead; that his business in this world is merely to see how he can get out of it again, without suffering endless torture after his body dies.  This is called superstition: anxiety about what will happen to us after we die.

Now if you look at the greater number of religious books, whether Popish or Protestant, you will find that in practice the main thing, almost the one thing, which they are meant to do, is to show the reader how he may escape Hell-torments, and reach Heaven’s pleasures after he dies: not how he may do his Duty to God and his neighbour.  They speak of that latter, of course: they could not be Christian books at all, thank God, without doing so; but they seem to me to tell men to do their Duty, not simply because it is right, and a blessing in itself, and worth doing for its own sake, but because a man may gain something by it after he dies.  Therefore, to help their readers to gain as much as possible after they die, they are not content with the plain Duty laid down in the Bible and in the Catechism, but require of men new duties over and above; which may be all very good if they help men to do their real Duty, but are simply worth nothing if they do not.

Let me explain myself.  I said just now that superstition means anxiety about what will happen to us after we die.  But people commonly understand by superstition, religious ceremonies, like the Popish ones, which God has not commanded.  And that is not a wrong meaning either; for people take to these ceremonies from over-anxiety about the next life.  The one springs out of the other; the outward conduct out of the inward fear; and both spring alike out of a false notion of God, which the Devil (whose great aim is to hinder us from knowing our Father in Heaven) puts into men’s minds.  Man feels that he is sinful and unrighteous; the light of Christ in his heart shows him that, and it shows him at the same time that God is sinless and righteous.  ‘Then,’ he says, ‘God must hate sin;’ and there he says true.  Then steps in the slanderer, Satan, and whispers, ‘But you are sinful; therefore God hates you, and wills you harm, and torture, and ruin.’  And the poor man believes that lying voice, and will believe it to the end, whether he be Christian or heathen, until he believes the Bible and the Sacraments, which tell him, ‘God does not hate you: He hates your sins, and loves you; He wills not your misery but your happiness; and therefore God’s will, yea, God’s earnest endeavour, is to raise you out of those sins of yours, which make you miserable now, and which, if you go on in them, must bring of themselves everlasting misery to you.’  Of themselves; not by any arbitrary decree of God (whereof the Bible says not one single word from beginning to end), that He will inflict on you so much pain for so much sin: but by the very nature of sin; for to sin is to be parted from God, in whose presence alone is life, and therefore sin is, to be in death.  Sin is, to be at war with God, who is love and peace; and therefore to be in lovelessness, hatred, war, and misery.  Sin is, to act contrary to the constitution which God gave man, when He said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;’ and therefore sin is a disease in human nature, and like all other diseases, must, unless it is checked, go on everlastingly and perpetually breeding weakness, pain and torment.  And out of that God is so desirous to raise you, that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for you, if by any means He might raise you out of that death of sin to the life of righteousness—to a righteous life; to a life of Duty—to a dutiful life, like His Son Jesus Christ’s life; for that must go on, if you go on in it, producing in you everlastingly and perpetually all health and strength, usefulness and happiness in this world and all worlds to come.

But men will not hear that voice.  The fact is, that simply to do right is too difficult for them, and too humbling also.  They are too proud to like being righteous only with Christ’s righteousness, and too slothful also; and so they go about like the old Pharisees, to establish a righteousness of their own; one which will pamper their self-conceit by seeming very strange, and farfetched, and difficult, so as to enable them to thank God every day that they are not as other men are; and yet one which shall really not be as difficult as the plain homely work of being good sons, good fathers, good husbands, good masters, good servants, good subjects, good rulers.  And so they go about to establish a righteousness of their own (which can be no righteousness at all, for God’s righteousness is the only righteousness, and Christ’s righteousness is the only pattern of it), and teach men that God does not merely require of men to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God, but requires of them something more.  But by this they deny the righteousness of God; for they make out that he has not behaved righteously and justly to men, nor showed them what is good, but has left them to find it out or invent it for themselves.  For is it not establishing a righteousness of one’s own, to tell people that God only requires these Ten Commandments of Christians in general, but that if any one chooses to go further, and do certain things which are not contained in the Ten Commandments, ‘counsels of perfection,’ as they are called, and ‘good works’ (as if there were no other good works in the world), and so do more than it is one’s duty to do, and lead a sort of life which is called (I know not why) ‘saintly’ and ‘angelic,’ then one will obtain a ‘peculiar crown,’ and a higher place in Heaven than poor commonplace Christian people, who only do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God?

And is it not, on the other hand, establishing a righteousness of one’s own, to say that God requires of us belief in certain doctrines about election, and ‘forensic justification,’ and ‘sensible conversion,’ and certain ‘frames and feelings and experiences;’ and that without all these a man has no right to expect anything but endless torture; and all the while to say little or nothing about God’s requiring of men the Ten Commandments?  For my part, I am equally shocked and astonished at the doctrine which I have heard round us here—openly from some few, and in practice from more than a few—that because the Ten Commandments are part of the Law, they are done away with, because we are not now under the Law but under Grace.  What do they mean?  Is it not written, that not one jot or tittle of the Law shall fail; and that Christ came, not to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it?  What do they mean?  That it was harm to break the Ten Commandments before Christ came, but no harm to break them now?  Do they mean that Jews were forbid to murder, steal, and commit adultery, but that Christians are not forbidden?  One thing I am afraid they do mean, for I see them act up to it steadily enough.  That Jews were forbidden to covet, but that Christians are not; that Jews might not commit fornication, but Christians may; that Jews might not lie, but Christians may; that Jews might not use false weights and measures, or adulterate goods for sale, but that Christians may.  My friends, if I am asked the reason of the hypocrisy which seems the besetting sin of England, in this day;—if I am asked why rich men, even high religious professors, dare speak untruths at public meetings, bribe at elections, and go into parliament each man with a lie in his right hand, to serve neither God nor his country, but his political party and his religious sect, by conduct which he would be ashamed to employ in private life;—if I am asked why the middle classes (and the high religious professors among them, just as much as any) are given over to cheating, coveting, puffing their own goods by shameless and unmanly boasting, undermining each other by the dirtiest means, while the sons of religious professors, both among the higher and the middle classes, seem just as liable as any other young men to fall into unmanly profligacy;—if I am asked why the poor profess God’s gospel and practise the Devil’s works; and why, in this very parish now, there are women who, while they are drunkards, swearers, and adulteresses, will run anywhere to hear a sermon, and like nothing better, saving sin, than high-flown religious books;—if I am asked, I say, why the old English honesty which used to be our glory and our strength, has decayed so much of late years, and a hideous and shameful hypocrisy has taken the place of it, I can only answer by pointing to the good old Church Catechism, and what it says about our duty to God and to our neighbour, and declaring boldly, ‘It is because you have forgotten that.  Because you have despised that.  Because you have fancied that it was beneath you to keep God’s plain human commandments.  You have been wanting to “save your souls,” while you did not care whether your souls were saved alive, or whether they were dead, and rotten, and damned within you; you have dreamed that you could be what you called “spiritual,” while you were the slaves of sin; you have dreamed that you could become what you call “saints,” while you were not yet even decent men and women.’

And so all this superstition has had the same effect as the false preaching in Ezekiel’s time had.  It has strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not turn from his wicked way, by promising him life; and it has made the heart of the righteous sad, whom God has not made sad.  Plain, respectable, God-fearing men and women, who have wished simply to do their duty where God has put them, have been told that they are still unconverted, still carnal—that they have no share in Christ—that God’s Spirit is not with them—that they are in the way to endless torture: till they have been ready one minute to say, ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die’—‘Surely I have cleansed my hands in vain, and washed my heart in innocency;’ and the next minute to say, with Job, angrily, ‘Though I die, thou shalt not take my righteousness from me!  You preachers may call me what names you will; but I know that I love what is right, and wish to do my duty;’ and so they have been made perplexed and unhappy, one day fancying themselves worse than they really were, and the next fancying themselves better than they really were; and by both tempers of mind tempted to disbelieve God’s Gospel, and throw away the thought of vital religion in disgust.

And now people are raising the cry that Popery is about to overrun England.  It may be so, my friends.  If it is so, I cannot wonder at it; if it is so, Englishmen have no one to blame but themselves.  And whether Popery conquers us or not, some other base superstition surely will conquer us if we go on upon our present course, and set up any new-fangled, self-invented righteousness of our own, instead of the plain Ten Commandments of God.  For I tell you plainly they are God’s everlasting law, the very law of liberty, wherewith Christ has made us free; and only by fulfilling them, as Christ did, can we be free—free from sin, the world, the flesh, and the Devil.  For to break them is to sin: and whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin; and whosoever despises these commandments will never enjoy that freedom, but be entangled again in the yoke of bondage, and become a slave, if not to open and profligate sins, still surely to an evil and tormenting conscience, to superstitious anxieties as to whether he shall be saved or damned, which make him at last ask, ‘Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord?  Will the Lord be pleased with this, that and the other fantastical action, or great sacrifice of mine?’ or at last, perhaps, the old question, ‘Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?  Shall I cheat my own family, leave my property away from my children, desert them to shut myself up in a convent, or to attempt some great religious enterprise?’—Things which have happened a thousand times already, and worse, far worse, than them; things which will happen again, and worse, far worse than them, as soon as a hypocritical generation is seized with that dread and terror of God which is sure to arise in the hearts of men who try to invent a righteousness of their own, and who forget what God’s righteousness is like, and who therefore forget what God is like, and who therefore forget what God’s name is, and who therefore forget that Jesus Christ is God’s likeness, and that the name of God is ‘Love.’

Now, I say that the Church Catechism, from beginning to end, is the cure for this poison, and in no part more than where it tells us our duty to God and our neighbour; and that it does carry out the meaning of the text as no other writing does, which I know of, save the Bible only.

For what says the text?

‘He hath showed thee, O man, what is good.’

Who has showed thee?  Who but this very God, from whom thou art shrinking; to whom thou art looking up in terror, as at a hard taskmaster, reaping where He has not sown, who willeth the death of a sinner, and his endless and unspeakable torment?  The very God whom thou dreadest has stooped to save and teach thee.  He hath sent His only begotten Son to thee, to show thee, in the person of a man, Jesus Christ, what a perfect man is, and what He requires of thee to be.  This Lord Jesus is with thee, to teach thee to live by faith in thy heavenly Father, even as He lived, and to be justified thereby, even as He was justified by being declared to be God’s well-beloved Son, and by being raised from the dead.  He will show thee what is good; He has shown thee what is good, when He showed thee His own blessed self, His story and character written in the four Gospels.  This is thy God, and this is thy Lord and Master; not a silent God, not a careless God, but a revealer of secrets, a teacher, a guide, a ‘most merciful God, who showeth to man the thing which he knew not;’ that same Word of God who talked with Adam in the garden, and brought his wife to him; who called Abraham, and gave him a child; who sent Moses to make a nation of the Jews; who is the King of all the nations upon earth, and has appointed them their times and the bounds of their habitation, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him; who meanwhile is not far from any one of them, seeing that in Him they live, and move, and have their being, and are His offspring; who has not left Himself without witness, that they may know that He is one who loves, not one who hates, one who gives, not one who takes, one who has pity, not one who destroys, in that He gives them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness.  This is thy God, O man! from whose face thou desirest to flee away.

Next, ‘He hath showed thee, O man.’  Not merely, ‘He hath showed thee, O deep philosopher, or brilliant genius;’—not merely, ‘He hath showed thee, O eminent saint, or believer who hast been through many deep experiences:’ but, ‘He hath showed thee, O man.’  Whosoever thou art, if thou be a man, subsisting like Jesus Christ the Son of Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh; thou labourer at the plough, tradesman in thy shop, soldier in the battle-field, poor woman working in thy cottage, God hath showed thee, and thee, and thee, what is good, as surely and fully as He has shown it to scholars and divines, to kings and rulers, and the wise and prudent of the earth.

And He hath showed thee; not you.  Not merely to the whole of you together; not merely to some of you so that one will have to tell the other, and the greater part know only at second-hand and by hearsay: but He hath showed to thee, to each of you; to each man, woman, and child, in this Church, alone, privately, in the depths of thy own heart, He hath showed what is good.  He hath sent into thine heart a ray of The Light who lighteth every man who comes into the world.  He has given to thy soul an eye by which to see that Light, a conscience which can receive what is good, and shrink from what is evil; a spiritual sense, whereby thou canst discern good and evil.  That conscience, that soul’s eye of thine, God has regenerated, as He declares to thee in baptism, and He will day by day make it clearer and tenderer by the quickening power of His Holy Spirit; and that Spirit will renew Himself in thee day by day, if thou askest Him, and will quicken and soften thy soul more and more to love what is good, and strengthen it more and more to hate and fly from what is evil.

Next, ‘He hath showed thee, O man, what is GOOD.’  Not merely what will turn away God’s punishments, and buy God’s rewards; not merely what will be good for thee after thou diest: but what is good, good in itself, good for thee now, and good for thee for ever; good for thee in health and sickness, joy and sorrow, life and death; good for thee through all worlds, present and to come; yea, what would be good for thee in hell, if thou couldst be in hell and yet be good.  Not what is good enough for thy neighbours and not good enough for thee, good enough for sinners and not good enough for saints, good enough for stupid persons and not good enough for clever ones; but what is good in itself and of itself.  The one very eternal and absolute Good which was with God, and in God, and from God, before all worlds, and will be for ever, without changing or growing less or greater, eternally The Same Good.  The Good which would be just as good, and just, and right, and lovely, and glorious, if there were no world, no men, no angels, no heaven, no hell, and God were alone in his own abyss.  That very good which is the exact pattern of His Son Jesus Christ, in whose likeness man was made at the beginning, God hath showed thee, O man; and hath told thee that it is neither more nor less than thy Duty, thy Duty as a man; that thy duty is thy good, the good out of which, if thou doest it, all good things such as thou canst not now conceive to thyself, must necessarily spring up for thee for ever; but which if thou neglectest, thou wilt be in danger of getting no good things whatsoever, and of having all evil things, mishap, shame, and misery such as thou canst not now conceive of, spring up for thee necessarily for ever.

This seems to me the plain meaning of the text, interpreted by the plain teaching of the rest of Scripture.  Now see how the Catechism agrees with this.

It takes for granted that God has showed the child what is good: that God’s Spirit is sanctifying and making good, not only all the elect people of God, but him, that one particular child; and it makes the child say so.  Therefore, when it asks him, ‘What is thy duty to God and to thy neighbour?’ it asks him, ‘My child, thou sayest that God’s Spirit is with thee, sanctifying thee and showing thee what is good, tell me, therefore, what good the Holy Spirit has showed thee?—tell me what He has showed thee to be good, and therefore thy duty?’

But some may answer, ‘How can you say that the Holy Spirit teaches the children their Duty, when it is their schoolmaster, or their father, who teaches them the Ten Commandments and the Catechism?’

My friends, we may teach our children the Ten Commandments, or anything else we like, but we cannot teach them that that is their duty.  They must first know what Duty means at all, before they can learn that any particular things are parts of their Duty.  And, believe me, neither you nor I, nor all the men in the world put together, no, nor angel, nor archangel, nor any created being, nor the whole universe, can teach one child, no, nor our own selves, the meaning of that plain word DUTY, nor the meaning of those two plain words, I OUGHT.  No; that simple thought, that thought which every one of us, even the most stupid, even the most sinful has more or less, comes straight to him from God the Father of Lights, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of Duty, Faith, and Obedience.

For mind—when you teach a child, ‘If you do this wrong thing—stealing, for instance—God will punish you: but if you are honest, God will reward you,’ you are not teaching the child that it is his Duty to be honest, and his Duty not to steal.  You are teaching him what is quite right and true; namely, that it is profitable for him to be honest, and hurtful to him to steal: but you are not teaching him as high a spiritual lesson as any soldier knows when he rushes upon certain death, knowing that he shall gain nothing, and may lose everything thereby, but simply because it is his Duty.  You are only enticing your child to do right, and frightening him from doing wrong; quite necessary and good to be done: but if he is to be spiritually honest, honest at heart, honest from a sense of honour, and not of fear; in one word, if he is to be really honest at all, or even to try to be really honest, something must be done to that child’s heart which nothing but the Spirit of God can do; he must be taught that it is his DUTY to be honest; that honesty is RIGHT, the perfectly right, and proper, and beautiful thing for him and for all beings, yea, for God Himself; he must be taught to love honesty, and whatsoever else is right, for its own sake, and therefore to feel it his Duty.

And I say that God does that by your children.  I say that we cannot watch our children without seeing that, though there is in them, as in us, a corrupt and wilful flesh, which tempts them downward to selfish and self-willed pleasures: yet there is in them generally, more than in us their parents, a Spirit which makes them love and admire what is right, and take pleasure in it, and feel that it is good to be good, and right to do right; which makes them delight in reading and hearing of loving, and right, and noble actions; which makes them shocked, they hardly know why, at bad words, and bad conduct, and bad people.  And woe to those who deaden that tenderness of conscience in their own children, by their bad examples, or by false doctrines which tell the children that they are still unregenerate, children of the Devil, not yet Christians; and who so put a stumbling-block in the way of Christ’s little ones, and do despite to the Spirit of Grace by which they are sealed to the day of redemption.  I see parents thinking that their children are to learn the deceitfulness of the human heart from themselves, and the working of God’s Spirit from their parents; but I often think that the teachers ought to be converted indeed, that is, turned right round and become the learners instead of the teachers, and learn the workings of God’s Spirit from their children, and the deceitfulness of the human heart from themselves; if at least the Lord Jesus’s words have any real force or meaning at all, when He said, not, ‘Except the little children be converted, and become as you,’ but, ‘Except ye be converted, and become as one of these little children, ye’ (and not they) ‘shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’

Believe me, my friends, that your children’s angels do indeed behold the face of their Father which is in heaven; that there is a direct communication between Him and them; and that the sign and proof of it is, the way in which they understand at once what you tell them of their duty, and take to it, as it were, only too readily and hopefully, and confidently, as if it were a thing natural and easy to them.  Alas! it is neither natural nor easy, and they will find out that too soon by sad experience: but still, the Divine Light is there, the sense of duty is in their minds, and the law of God is written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit of God, who is sanctifying them, not merely by teaching them to hope for heaven, or to dread hell, but by showing them what is good.

And herein, I say, the simple and noble old Church Catechism, by faith in God’s Spirit, does indeed perfect praise out of the mouths of babes.  Without one word about rewards or punishments, heaven or hell, it begins to talk to the child, like a true English Catechism as it is, about that glorious old English key word, DUTY.  It calls on the child to confess its own duty, and teaches it that its duty is something most human, simple, everyday, commonplace, if you will call it so.  I rejoice that it is commonplace; I rejoice that in what it says about our duty to God, and to our neighbour, it says not one word about those counsels of perfection, or those frames and feelings, which depend, believe me, principally on the state of people’s bodily health, on the constitution of their nerves, and the temper of their brain: but that it requires nothing except what a little child can do as well as a grown person, a labouring man as well as a divine, a plain farmer as well as the most refined, devout, imaginative lady.  May God bless them all; may God help them all to do their Duty in that station of life to which it has pleased God to call them; but may God grant to them never to forget that there is but one Duty for all, and that all of them can do that Duty equally well, whatever their constitution, or scholarship, or station of life may be, provided they will but remember that God has called them to that station, and not try to invent some new and finer one for themselves; provided they remember that they are to do in that station neither more nor less than every one else is to do in theirs, namely, to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God.

In a word, to be perfect, even as their Father in heaven is perfect.  To do justly, because God is just, faithful, and true, rewarding every man according to his works, and no partial accepter of persons; so that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted by Him.