True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries

Oh! choose my friends, especially you who are young and entering into life.  Remember the parable of the old heathen, about the two horses who draw your soul.  Choose in time whether the better horse shall win, or the worse; whether your better self, or your worse, the Spirit of God or your own flesh, shall be your master—whether you will rise step by step to heaven, or sink step by step to death and hell?  And let no one tell you.  That is not the question.  That is not what we care about.  We know we shall do a great many wrong things before we die.  Every one does that; but we hope we shall be able to make our peace with God before we die, and so be forgiven at last.

My dear friends, that kind of religion has done more harm than most kinds of irreligion.  It tells you to take your chance of beginning at the end—that is just before you die.  Common sense tells you that the only way to get to the end, is by beginning at the beginning, which is now.  Now is the accepted time.  Now is the day of salvation, and you are accepted now, already, long ago.

What do you or any man want with making your peace with God?  You are at peace with God already.  He has made His peace with you.  An infinitely better peace than any priest or preacher can make for you.  You are God’s child.  He looks down on you with boundless love.  The great heart of Christ, your King, your Redeemer, your elder brother, yearns over you with boundless longing to draw you up to Him, that you may be noble as He is noble, pure as He is pure, loving as He is loving, just as He is just.  Try to be that.  God will at the last day take you as He finds you.  Let Him find you such as that—walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; and then, and then only, there will be no condemnation for you, for you will be in Christ Jesus.  Do not—do not talk about making your peace with God some day—like a naughty child playing truant till the last moment, and hoping that the schoolmaster may forget to punish it.  No, I trust you have received the Spirit.  If you have, then look facts in the face.  I trust that none of you have received the Spirit of bondage, which is slavery again unto fear.  If you have God’s Spirit you will see who you are, and where you are, and act accordingly—you will see that you are God’s children, who are meant to be educated by the Son of God, and led by the Spirit of God, and raised day by day, year by year, from the death of sin, to the life of righteousness, from the likeness of the brute animal, to the likeness of Christ, the Son of Man!

VIII. ST. PETER; OR, TRUE COURAGE

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.  And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.  But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.”

    —Acts iv. 13, 18, 19.

I think that the quality, the grace of God, which St. Peter’s character and story specially forces on our notice is courage—the true courage which comes by faith.  The courage which comes by faith, I say.  There is a courage which does not come by faith.  There is a brute courage which comes from hardness of heart; from obstinacy, or anger, or stupidity, which does not see danger, or does not feel pain.  That is the courage of the brute.  One does not blame it or call it wrong.  It is good in its place, as all natural things are which God has made.  It is good enough for the brute; but it is not good enough for man.  You cannot trust it in man.  And the more a man is what a man should be, the less he can trust it.  The more mind and understanding a man has, so as to be able to foresee danger and measure it, the more chance there is of his brute courage giving way.  The more feeling a man has, the more keen he is to feel pain of body, or pain of mind, such as shame, loneliness, the dislike of ridicule, and the contempt of his fellow-men; in a word, the more of a man he is, the more chance there is of his brute courage breaking down, just when he wants it more to keep him up, and leaving him to play the coward and come to shame.

Yes; to go through with a difficult or dangerous undertaking a man wants more than brute courage.  He wants spiritual courage, the courage which comes by faith.  He needs to have faith in what he is doing to be certain that he is doing his duty—to be certain that he is in the right.  To give one example.  Look at the class of men who in all England in times of peace undergo the most fearful dangers; who know not at what hour of any night they may not be called up to the most serious and hard labour and responsibility, with the chance of a horrible and torturing death.  I mean the firemen of our great cities, than whom there are no steadier, braver, nobler-hearted men.  Not a week passes without one or more of those firemen, in trying to save life and property, doing things which are altogether heroic.  What do you fancy keeps them up to their work?  High pay?  The amusement and excitement of the fires?  The vanity of being praised for their courage?  My friends, those would be but weak and paltry motives, which would not keep a man’s heart calm and his head clear under such responsibility and danger as theirs.

No; it is the sense of duty.  The knowledge that they are doing a good and a noble work in saving the lives of human beings and the wealth of the nation—the knowledge that they are in God’s hands, and that no evil can happen to him who is doing right—that to him even death at his post is not a loss, but a gain.  In short, faith in God, more or less clear, is what gives those men their strong and quiet courage.  God grant that you and I, if ever we have dangerous work to do, may get true courage from the same fountain of ghostly strength.

Yes; it is the courage which comes by faith which makes truly brave men, men like St. Peter and St. John, who can say, “If I am right, God is on my side, I will not fear what men can do unto me.”  “I will not fear,” said David, “though the earth be moved, and the mountains carried into the midst of the sea.”  The just man who holds firm to his duty will not, says a wise old writer, “be shaken from his solid mind by the rage of the mob bidding him do base things, or the frown of the tyrant who persecutes him.  Though the world were to crumble to pieces round him, its ruins would strike him without making him tremble.”

Such courage has made men, shut up in prison for long weary years for doing what was right, endure manfully for the sake of some great cause, and say—

“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage.
If I have freedom in my thought,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.”

Yes; settle it in your hearts, all of you.  There is but one thing you have to fear in heaven or earth—being untrue to your better selves, and therefore untrue to God.  If you will not do the thing you know to be right, and say the thing you know to be true, then indeed you are weak.  You are a coward, and sin against God.  And you will suffer the penalty of your cowardice.  You desert God, and therefore you cannot expect Him to stand by you.  But who will harm you if you be followers of that which is right?

What does David say:—“Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?  He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.  He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.  In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord.  He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.  He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent.  He that doeth these things shall never be moved.”—Psalm xv. 1-5.  Yes, my friends, there is a tabernacle of God in which, even in this life, He will hide us from strife.  There is a hill of God in which, even in the midst of danger, and labour, and anxiety, we may rest both day and night—even Jesus Christ, the Rock of Ages—He who is the righteousness itself, the truth itself.  And whosoever does righteousness and speaks truth, dwells in Christ in this life, as well as in the life to come.  And Christ will give him courage to strengthen him by His Holy Spirit, to stand in the evil day, the day of danger, if it shall come—and having done all to stand.

Pray you then for the Spirit of Faith to believe really in God, and for the spirit of ghostly strength to obey God honestly.  No man ever asked honestly for that Spirit but what he gained it at last.  And no man ever gained it but what he found the truth of St. Peter’s own words—“Who will harm you, if you be followers of what is good?”

IX. THE STORY OF JOSEPH

“I fear God.”

     Genesis xlii. 18.

Did it ever seem remarkable to you, as it has seemed to me, how many chapters of the Bible are taken up with the history of Joseph—a young man who, on the most memorable occasion in his life, said “I fear God,” and had no other argument to use?

Thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis are mainly devoted to the tale of this one young man.  Doubtless his father Jacob’s going down into Egypt, was one of the most important events in the history of the Jews: we might expect, therefore, to hear much about it.  But what need was there to spend four chapters at least in detailing Joseph’s meeting with his brethren, even to minute accounts of the speeches on both sides?

Those who will may suppose that this is the effect of mere chance.  Let us have no such fancy.  If we believe that a Divine Providence watched over the composition of those old Scriptures; if we believe that they were meant to teach, not only the Jews but all mankind; if we believe that they reveal, not merely some special God in whom the Jews believed, but the true and only God, Maker of heaven and earth; if we believe, with St. Paul, that every book of the Old Testament is inspired by God, and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works—if we believe this, I say, it must be worth our while to look carefully and reverently at a story which takes up so large a part of the Bible, and expect to find in it something which may help to make us perfect, and thoroughly furnish us unto all good works.

Now, surely when we look at this history of Joseph, we ought to see at the first glance that it is not merely a story about a young man, but about the common human relations—the ties which bind any and every man to other human beings round him.  For is it not a story about a brother and brothers? about a son and a father, about a master and a servant? about a husband and a wife? about a subject and a sovereign? and how they all behaved to each other—some well and some ill—in these relations?

Surely it is so, and surely this is why the story of Joseph has been always so popular among innocent children and plain honest folk of all kinds; because it is so simply human and humane; and therefore it taught them far more than they could learn from many a lofty, or seemingly lofty, book of devotion, when it spoke to them of the very duties they had to fulfil, and the very temptations they had to fight against, as members of a family or as members of society.  “One touch of Nature (says the poet) makes the whole world kin;” and the touches of nature in this story of Joseph make us feel that he and his brethren, and all with whom he had to do, are indeed kin to us; that their duty is our duty too—their temptations ours—that where they fell, we may fall—where they conquered we may conquer.

For what is the story?  A young lad is thrown into every temptation possible for him.  Joseph is very handsome.  The Bible says so expressly; so we may believe it.  He has every gift of body and mind.  He is, as his story proves plainly, a very clever person, with a strange power of making every one whom he deals with love him and obey him—a terrible temptation, as all God’s gifts are, if abused by a man’s vanity, or covetousness or ambition.  He is an injured man too.  He has been basely betrayed by his brothers; he is under a terrible temptation, to which ninety-nine men out of one hundred would have yielded—do yield, alas! to this day, to revenge himself if he ever has an opportunity.  He is an injured man in Egypt, for he is a slave to a foreigner who has no legal or moral right over him.  If ever there was a man who might be excused for cherishing a burning indignation against his oppressors, for brooding over his own wrongs, for despairing of God’s providence, it is Joseph in Egypt.  What could we do but pity him if he had said to himself, as thousands in his place have said since, “There is no God, or if there is, He does not care for me—He does not care what men do.  He looks on unmoved at wrong and cruelty, and lets man do even as he will.  Then why should not I do as I will?  What are these laws of God of which men talk?  What are these sacred bonds of family and society?  Every one for himself is the rule of the world, and it shall be my rule.  Every man’s hand has been against me; why should not my hand be against every man?  I have been betrayed; why should not I betray?  I have been opprest; why should not I oppress?  I have a lucky chance, too, of enjoying and revenging myself at the same time; why should I not take my good luck, and listen to the words of the tempter?”

My dear friends, this is the way in which thousands have talked, in which thousands talk to this day.  This is the spirit which ends in breaking up society, as happened in France eighty years ago, in the inward corruption of a nation, and at last, in outward revolution and anarchy, from which may God in His mercy deliver us and our fellow-countrymen, and the generations yet to come.  But any nation or any man, will only be delivered from it, as Joseph was delivered from it, by saying, “I fear God.”  No doubt it is most natural for a man who is injured and opprest to think in that way.  Most natural—just as it is most natural for the trapped dog to struggle vainly, and, in his blind rage, bite at everything around him, even at his own master’s hand when it offers to set him free.  And if men are to be mere children of nature, like the animals, and not children of grace and sons of God, like Joseph, and like one greater than Joseph, then I suppose they must needs tear each other to pieces in envy and revenge, for there is nought better to be done.  But if they wish to escape from the misery and ruin which envy and revenge bring with them, then they had better recollect that they are not children of nature, but children of God—they had best follow Joseph’s example, and say, “I fear God.”

For this poor, betrayed, enslaved lad had got into his heart something above Nature—something which Nature cannot give, but only the inspiration of the Spirit of God gives.  He had got into his heart the belief that God’s laws were sacred things and must not be broken, and that whatever befel him he must fear God.  However unjust and lawless the world looked, God’s laws were still in it, and over it, and would avenge themselves, and he must obey them at all risks.  And what were God’s laws in Joseph’s opinion?

These—the common relations of humanity between master to servant, and servant to master; between parent to child, and child to parent; brother to brother and sister to sister, and between the man who is trusted and the man who trusts him.  These laws were sacred; and if all the rest of the world broke them, he (Joseph) must not.  He was bound to his master, not only by any law of man, but by the Law of God.  His master trusted him, and left all that he had in his hand, and to Joseph the law of honour was the law of God.  Then he must be justly faithful to his master.  A sacred trust was laid on him, and to be true to it was to fear God.

After a while his master’s wife tempts him.  He refuses; not merely out of honour to his master, but from fear of God.  “How can I do this great wickedness,” says Joseph, “and sin against God?”  His master and his mistress are heathen, but their marriage is of God nevertheless; the vow is sacred, and he must deny himself anything, endure anything, dare any danger of a dreadful death, and a prison almost as horrible probably as death itself, rather than break it.

So again, in the prison.  If ever man had excuse for despairing of God’s providence, for believing that right-doing did not pay, it was poor Joseph in that prison.  But no.  God is with him still.  He believes still in the justice of God, the providence of God, and therefore he is cheerful, active—he can make the best even of a dungeon.  He can find a duty to do even there; he can make himself useful, helpful, till the keeper of the prison too leaves everything in his hand.

What a gallant man! you say.  Yes, my friends, but what makes him gallant?  That which St. Paul says (in Hebrews xi.) made all the old Jewish heroes gallant—faith in God; real and living belief that God is—and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

At last Joseph’s triumph comes.  He has his reward.  God helps him—because he will help himself.  He is made a great officer of state, married to a woman of high rank, probably a princess, and he sees his brothers who betrayed him at his mercy.  Their lives are in his hand at last.  What will he do?  Will he be a bad brother because they were bad?  Or will he keep to his old watchword, “I fear God?”  If he is tempted to revenge himself, he crushes the temptation down.  He will bring his brothers to repentance.  He will touch their inward witness, and make them feel that they have been wicked men.  That is for their good.  And strangely, but most naturally, their guilty consciences go back to the great sin of their lives—to Joseph’s wrong, though they have no notion that Joseph is alive, much less near them.  “Did I not tell you,” says Reuben, “sin not against the lad, and ye would not hearken?  Therefore is this distress come upon us.”

Joseph punishes Simeon by imprisonment.  It may be that he had reasons for it which we are not told.  But when his brothers have endured the trial, and he finds that Benjamin is safe, he has nothing left but forgiveness.  They are his brethren still—his own flesh and blood.  And he “fears God.”  He dare not do anything but forgive them.  He forgives them utterly, and welcomes them with an agony of happy tears.  He will even put out of their minds the very memory of their baseness.  “Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, he says; for God sent me before you, to save your lives with a great deliverance.”

Is not that Divine?  Is not that the Spirit of God and of Christ?  I say it is.  For what is it but the likeness of Christ, who says for ever, out of heaven, to all mankind, “Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye crucified me.  For God, my Father, sent me to save your souls by a great salvation.”

My friends, learn from this story of Joseph, and the prominent place in the Bible which it occupies—learn, I say, how hateful to God are family quarrels; how pleasant to God are family unity and peace, and mutual trust, and duty, and helpfulness.  And if you think that I speak too strongly on this point, recollect that I do no more than St. Paul does, when he sums up the most lofty and mystical of all his Epistles, the Epistle to the Ephesians, by simple commands to husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, as if he should say,—You wish to be holy? you wish to be spiritual?  Then fulfil these plain family duties, for they, too, are sacred and divine, and he who despises them, despises the ordinances of God.  And if you despise the laws of God, they will surely avenge themselves on you.  If you are bad husbands or bad wives, bad parents or bad children, bad brothers or sisters, bad masters or servants, you will smart for it, according to the eternal laws of God, which are at work around you all day long, making the sinner punish himself whether he likes or not.

Examine yourselves—ask yourselves, each of you, Have I been a good brother? have I been a good son? have I been a good husband? have I been a good father? have I been a good servant?  If not, all professions of religion will avail me nothing.  If not, let me confess my sins to God, and repent and amend at once, whatever it may cost me.  The fulfilling these plain duties is the true test of my faith, the true sign and test whether I really believe in God and in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Do I believe that the world is Christ’s making? and that Christ is governing it?  Do I believe that these plain family relationships are Christ’s sacred appointments?  Do I believe that our Lord Jesus was made very man of the substance of His mother, to sanctify these family relationships, and claim them as the ordinances of God His Father?

In one word—copy Joseph; and when you are tempted say with Joseph, “Can I do this great wickedness, and sin—not against this man or this woman, but against—God.”

Take home these plain, practical words.  Take them home, and fear God at your own firesides.  For at the last day, the Bible tells us, the Lord Jesus Christ will not reward you and me according to the opinions we held while in this mortal body, whether they were quite right or quite wrong, but according to the deeds which we did in the body, whether they were good or bad.

X. SLAVES OF FREE?

“Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you to-day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.  The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”

    —Exodus xiv. 13, 14.

Why did God bring the Jews out of Egypt?  God Himself told them why.  To fulfil the promise which He made to Abraham, their forefather, that of his children He would make a great nation.

Now the Jews in Egypt were not a nation at all.  A nation is free, governed by its own laws, one body of people, held together by one fellow feeling, one language, one blood, one religion; as we English are.  We are a nation.  The Jews were none in Egypt, no more than Negro slaves in America were a nation.  They served a people of a different blood, as the Jews did in Egypt.  They had no laws of their own; they had no fellow-feeling with each other, which enabled them to make common cause together, and help each other, and free each other.

Selfishness and cowardice make some men slaves.  Above all, ungodliness makes men slaves.  For when men do not fear and obey God, they are sure to obey their own lusts and passions, and become slaves to them.  They become ready to sell themselves soul and body for money, or pleasure, or food.  And their fleshly lusts, their animal appetites, keep them down, selfish, divided, greedy, and needy, at the mercy of those who are stronger and cunninger than themselves, just as the Jews were kept down by the strong and cunning Egyptians.

They had slavish hearts in them, and as long as they had, God could not make them into a nation.  The Jews had slaves’ hearts in them.  They were glad enough to get free out of Egypt, to escape from their heavy labour in brick and mortar, from being oppressed, beaten, killed at the will and fancy of the Egyptians, from having their male children thrown into the river as soon as they were born, to keep them from becoming too numerous.  They were glad enough, poor wretches, to escape from all their misery and oppression of which we read in the first three chapters of Exodus.  But if they could do that, that was all they cared for.  They did not want to be made wise, righteous, strong, free-hearted—they did not care about being made into a nation.  We read that when by the Red Sea shore (Exodus xiv.), they saw themselves in great danger, the army of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, following close upon them to attack them, they lost heart at once, and were sore afraid, and cried unto Moses, “Is not this the word which we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians?  For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Cowards and slaves!  The thing they feared above all, you see, was death.  If they could but keep the miserable life in their miserable bodies, they cared for nothing beyond.  They were willing to see their children taken from them and murdered, willing to be beaten, worked like dumb beasts for other men’s profit, willing to be idolaters, heathens, worshipping the false gods of Egypt, dumb beasts and stocks and stones, willing to be despised, wretched, helpless slaves—if they could but keep the dear life in them.  God knows there are plenty like them now-a-days—plenty who do not care how mean, helpless, wicked, contemptible they are, if they can but get their living by their meanness.

“But a man must live,” says some one.  How often one hears that made the excuse for all sorts of meanness, dishonesty, grasping tyranny.  “A man must live!”  Who told you that?  It is better to die like a man than to live like a slave, and a wretch, and a sinner.  Who told you that, I ask again?  Not God’s Bible, surely.  Not the example of great and good men.  If Moses had thought that, do you think he would have gone back from Midian, when he was in safety and comfort, with a wife and home, and children at his knee, and leave all he had on earth to face Pharaoh and the Egyptians, to face danger, perhaps a cruel death in shame and torture, and all to deliver his countrymen out of Egypt?  Moses would sooner die like a man helping his countrymen, than live on the fat of the land while they were slaves.  And forty years before he had shown the same spirit too, when though he was rich and prosperous, and high in the world, the adopted son of King Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus ii. 11), he disdained to be a slave and to see his countrymen slaves round him.  We read how he killed an Egyptian, who was ill-treating one of his brothers, the Jews—and how he then fled out of Egypt into Midian, houseless and friendless, esteeming as St. Paul says, “the reproach of Christ”—that is the affliction and ill-will which came on him for doing right, “better than all the treasures of Egypt” (Heb xi. 24-27).