All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

St John xvi. 16.  “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.”

Divines differ, and, perhaps, have always differed, about the meaning of these words.  Some think that our Lord speaks in them of His death and resurrection.  Others that He speaks of His ascension and coming again in glory.  I cannot decide which is right.  I dare not decide.  It is a very solemn thing—too solemn for me—to say of any words of our Lord’s they mean exactly this or that, and no more.  For if wise men’s words have (as they often have) more meanings than one, and yet all true, then surely the words of Jesus, the Son of God, who spake as never man spake—His words, I say, may have many meanings; yea, meanings without end, meanings which we shall never fully understand, perhaps even in heaven, and yet all alike true.

But I think it is certain that most of the early Christians understood these words of our Lord’s ascension and coming again in glory.  They believed that He was coming again in a very little while during their own life-time, in a few months or years, to make an end of the world and to judge the quick and the dead.  And as they waited for His coming, one generation after another, and yet He did not come, a sadness fell upon them.  Christ seemed to have left the world.  The little while that He had promised to be away seemed to have become a very long while.  Hundreds of years passed, and yet Christ did not come in glory.  And, as I said, a sadness fell on all the Church.  Surely, they said, this is the time of which Christ said we were to weep and lament till we saw Him again—this is the time of which He said that the bridegroom should be taken from us, and we should fast in those days.  And they did fast, and weep, and lament; and their religion became a very sad and melancholy one—most sad in those who were most holy, and loved their Lord best, and longed most for His coming in glory.

What happened after that again I could tell you, but we have nothing to do with it to-day.  We will rather go back, and see what the Lord’s disciples thought He meant when He said,—“A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.”  One would think, surely, that they must have taken those words to mean His death and resurrection.  They heard Him speak them on the very night that He was betrayed.  They saw Him taken from them that very night.  In horror and agony they saw Him mocked and scourged, crucified, dead, and buried, as they thought for ever, and the world around rejoicing over His death.  Surely they wept and lamented then.  Surely they thought that He had gone away and left them then.

And the third day, beyond all hope or expectation, they beheld Him alive again, unchanged, perfect, and glorious—as near them and as faithful to them as ever.  Surely that was seeing Him again after a little while.  Surely then their sorrow was turned to joy.  Surely then a man, the man of all men, was born into the world a second time, and in them was fulfilled our Lord’s most exquisite parable—most human and yet most divine—of the mother remembering no more her anguish for joy that a man is born into the world.

I think, too, that we may see, by the disciples’ conduct, that they took these words of the text to speak of Christ’s death and resurrection.  For when He ascended to heaven out of their sight, did they consider that was seeing Him no more?  Did they think that He had gone away and left them?  Did they, therefore, as would have been natural, weep and lament?  On the contrary, we are told expressly by St Luke that they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and were continually in the temple,” not weeping and lamenting, but praising and blessing God.  Plainly they did not consider that Christ was parted from them when He ascended into heaven.  He had been training them during the forty days between Easter Day and Ascension Day to think of Him as continually near them, whether they saw Him or not.  Suddenly He came and went again.  Mysteriously He appeared and disappeared.  He showed them that though they saw not Him, He saw them, heard their words, knew the thoughts and intents of their hearts.  He was always near them they felt; with them to the end of the world, whether in sight or out of sight.  And when they saw Him ascend into heaven, it seemed to them no separation, no calamity, no change in His relation to them.  He was gone to heaven.  Surely He had been in heaven during those forty days, whenever they had not seen Him.  He had gone to the Father.  Might He not have been with the Father during those forty days, whenever they had not seen Him?  Nay; was He not always in heaven?  Was not heaven very near them?  Did not Christ bring heaven with Him whithersoever He went?  Was He not always with the Father, the Father who fills all things, in whom all created things live, and move, and have their being?  How could they have thought otherwise about our Lord, when almost His last words to them were not, Lo, I leave you alone, but, “Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.”

My friends, these may seem deep words to some—doubtless they are, for they are the words of the Bible—so deep that plain, unlearned people can make no use of them, and draw no lesson from them.  I do not think so.  I think it is of endless use and endless importance to you how you think about Christ; and, therefore, how you think about these forty days between our Lord’s resurrection and ascension.  You may think of our Lord in two ways.  You may think of Him as having gone very far away, millions of millions of miles into the sky, and not to return till the last day,—and then, I do not say that you will weep and lament.  There are not many who have that notion about our Lord, and yet love Him enough to weep and lament at the thought of His having gone away.  But your religion, when it wakes up in you, will be a melancholy and terrifying one.  I say, when it wakes up in you—for you will be tempted continually to let it go to sleep.  There will come over you the feeling—God forgive us, does it not come over us all but too often?—Christ is far away.  Does He see me?  Does He hear me?  Will He find me out?  Does it matter very much what I say and do now, provided I make my peace with Him before I die?  And so will come over you not merely a carelessness about religious duties, about prayer, reading, church-going, but worse still, a carelessness about right and wrong.  You will be in danger of caring little about controlling your passions, about speaking the truth, about being just and merciful to your fellow-men.  And then, when your conscience wakes you up at times, and cries, Prepare to meet thy God! you will be terrified and anxious at the thought of judgment, and shrink from the thought of Christ’s seeing you.  My friends, that is a fearful state, though a very common one.  What is it but a foretaste of that dreadful terror in which those who would not see in Christ their Lord and Saviour will call on the mountains to fall on them, and the hills to cover them, from Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the anger of the Lamb?

But, again: you may think of Christ as His truest servants, though they might have been long in darkness, in all ages and countries have thought of Him, sooner or later.  And they thought of Him, as the disciples did; as of One who was about their path and about their bed, and spying out all their ways; as One who was in heaven, but who, for that very reason, was bringing heaven down to earth continually in the gracious inspirations of His Holy Spirit; as One who brought heaven down to them as often as He visited their hearts and comforted them with sweet assurance of His love, His faithfulness, His power—as God grant that He may comfort those of you who need comfort.  And that thought, that Christ was always with them, even to the end of the world, sobered and steadied them, and yet refreshed and comforted them.  It sobered them.  What else could it do?  Does it not sober us to see even a picture of Christ crucified?  How must it have sobered them to carry, as good St Ignatius used to say of himself, Christ crucified in his heart.  A man to whom Christ, as it were, showed perpetually His most blessed wounds, and said, Behold what I have endured—how dare he give way to his passion?  How dare he be covetous, ambitious, revengeful, false?  And yet it cheered and comforted them.  How could it do otherwise, to know all day long that He who was wounded for their iniquities, and by whose stripes they were healed, was near them day and night, watching over them as a father over his child, saying to them,—“Fear not, I am He that was dead, and am alive for evermore, and I hold the keys of death and hell.  Though thou walkest through the fires, I will be with thee.  I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”  Yes, my friends, if you wish your life—and therefore your religion, which ought to be the very life of your life—to be at once sober and cheerful, full of earnestness and full of hope, believe our Lord’s words which He spoke during these very forty days,—“Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.”  Believe that heaven has not taken Him away from you, but brought Him nearer to you; and that He has ascended up on high, not that He, in whom alone is life, might empty this earth of His presence, but that He might fill all things, not this earth only, but all worlds, past, present, and to come.  Believe that wherever two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, there He is in the midst of them; that the holy communion is the sign of His perpetual presence; and that when you kneel to receive the bread and wine, Christ is as near you—spiritually, indeed, and invisibly, but really and truly—as near you as those who are kneeling by your side.

And if it be so with Christ, then it is so with those who are Christ’s, with those whom we love.  It is the Christ in them which we love; and that Christ in them is their hope of glory; and that glory is the glory of Christ.  They are partakers of His death, therefore they are partakers of His resurrection.  Let us believe that blessed news in all its fulness, and be at peace.  A little while and we see them; and again a little while and we do not see them.  But why?  Because they are gone to the Father, to the source and fount of all life and power, all light and love, that they may gain life from His life, power from His power, light from His light, love from His love—and surely not for nought?

Surely not for nought, my friends.  For if they were like Christ on earth, and did not use their powers for themselves alone, if they are to be like Christ when they shall see Him as He is, then, more surely, will they not use their powers for themselves, but, as Christ uses His, for those they love.

Surely, like Christ, they may come and go, even now, unseen.  Like Christ, they may breathe upon our restless hearts and say, Peace be unto you—and not in vain.  For what they did for us when they were on earth they can more fully do now that they are in heaven.  They may seem to have left us, and we, like the disciples, may weep and lament.  But the day will come when the veil shall be taken from our eyes, and we shall see them as they are, with Christ, and in Christ for ever; and remember no more our anguish for joy that a man is born into the world, that another human being has entered that one true, real, and eternal world, wherein is neither disease, disorder, change, decay, nor death, for it is none other than the Bosom of the Father.

SERMON XIII.  ASCENSION DAY

Eversley.  Chester Cathedral. 1872.

St John viii. 58.  “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Let us consider these words awhile.  They are most fit for our thoughts on this glorious day, on which the Lord Jesus ascended to His Father, and to our Father, to His God, and to our God, that He might be glorified with the glory which He had with the Father before the making of the world.  For it is clear that we shall better understand Ascension Day, just as we shall better understand Christmas or Eastertide, the better we understand Who it was who was born at Christmas, suffered and rose at Eastertide, and, as on this day, ascended into heaven.  Who, then, was He whose ascent we celebrate?  What was that glory which, as far as we can judge of divine things, He resumed as on this day?

Let us think a few minutes, with all humility, not rashly intruding ourselves into the things we have not seen, or meddling with divine matters which are too hard for us, but taking our Lord’s words simply as they stand, and where we do not understand them, believing them nevertheless.

Now it is clear that the book of Exodus and our Lord’s words speak of the same person.  The Old Testament tells of a personage who appeared to Moses in the wilderness, and who called Himself “the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”  But this personage also calls Himself “I AM.”  “I AM THAT I AM:” “and He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”

In the New Testament we read of a personage who calls Himself the Son of God, is continually called the Lord, and who tells His disciples to call Him by that name without reproving them, though they and He knew well what it meant—that it meant no less than this, that He, Jesus of Nazareth, poor mortal man as He seemed, was still the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I do not say that the disciples saw that at first, clearly or fully, till after our Lord’s resurrection.  But there was one moment shortly before His death, when they could have had no doubt who He assumed Himself to be.  For the unbelieving Jews had no doubt, and considered Him a blasphemer; and these were His awful and wonderful words,—I do not pretend to understand them—I take them simply as I find them, and believe and adore.  “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.  Then said the Jews unto Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?”  One cannot blame them for asking that question, for Abraham had been dead then nearly two thousand years.  But what is our Lord’s solemn answer?  “Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.”

“I Am.”  The same name by which our Lord God had revealed Himself to Moses in the wilderness, some sixteen hundred years before.  If these words were true,—and the Lord prefaces them with Verily, verily, Amen, Amen, which was as solemn an asseveration as any oath could be—then the Lord Jesus Christ is none other than the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of the Jews, the God of the whole universe, past, present, and to come.

Let us think awhile over this wonder of all wonders.  The more we think over it, we shall find it not only the wonder of all wonders, but the good news of all good news.

The deepest and soundest philosophers will tell us that there must be an “I Am.”  That is, as they would say, a self-existent Being; neither made nor created, but who has made and created all things; who is without parts and passions, and is incomprehensible, that is cannot be comprehended, limited, made smaller or weaker, or acted on in any way by any of the things that He has made.  So that this self-existing Being whom we call God, would be exactly what He is now, if the whole universe, sun, moon, and stars, were destroyed this moment; and would be exactly what He is now, if there had never been any universe at all, or any thing or being except His own perfect and self-existent Self.  For He lives and moves and has His being in nothing.  But all things live and move and have their being in Him.  He was before all things, and by Him all things consist.  And this is the Catholic Faith; and not only that, this is according to sound and right reason.  But more: the soundest philosophers will tell you that God must be not merely a self-existent Being, but the “I Am:” that if God is a Spirit, and not merely a name for some powers and laws of brute nature and matter, He must be able to say to Himself, “I Am:” that He must know Himself, that He must be conscious of Himself, of who and what He is, as you and I are conscious of ourselves, and more or less of who and what we are.  And this, also, I believe to be true, and rational, and necessary to the Catholic Faith.

But they will tell you again—and this, too, is surely true—that I Am must be the very name of God, because God alone can say perfectly, “I Am,” and no more.  You and I dare not, if we think accurately, say of ourselves, “I am.”  We may say, I am this or that; I am a man; I am an Englishman; but we must not say, “I am;” that is, “I exist of myself.”  We must say—not I am; but I become, or have become; I was made; I was created; I am growing, changing; I depend for my very existence on God and God’s will, and if He willed, I should be nothing and nowhere in a moment.  God alone can say, I Am, and there is none beside Me, and never has, nor can be.  I exist, absolutely, and simply; because I choose to exist, and get life from nothing; for I Am the Life, and give life to all things.  But you may say, What is all this to us?  It is very difficult to understand, and dreary, and even awful.  Why should we care for it, even if it be true?  Yes, my friends; philosophy may be true, and yet be dreary, and awful, and have no gospel and good news in it at all.  I believe it never can have; that only in Revelation, and in the Revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, can poor human beings find any gospel and good news at all.  And sure I am, that that is an awful thought, a dreary thought, a crushing thought, which makes a man feel as small, and worthless, and helpless, and hopeless, as a grain of dust, or a mote in the sunbeam—that thought of God for ever contained in Himself, and saying for ever to Himself, “I Am, and there is none beside Me.”

But the Gospel, the good news of the Old Testament, the Gospel, the good news of the New Testament, is the Revelation of God and God’s ways, which began on Christmas Day, and finished on Ascension Day: and what is that?  What but this?  That God does not merely say to Himself in Majesty, “I Am;” but that He goes out of Himself in Love, and says to men, “I Am.”  That He is a God who has spoken to poor human beings, and told them who He was; and that He, the I Am, the self-existent One, the Cause of life, of all things, even the Maker and Ruler of the Universe, can stoop to man—and not merely to perfect men, righteous men, holy men, wise men, but to the enslaved, the sinful, the brutish—that He may deliver them, and teach them, and raise them from the death of sin, to His own life of righteousness.

Do you not see the difference, the infinite difference, and the good news in that?  Do you not see a whole heaven of new hope and new duty is opened to mankind in that one fact—God has spoken to man.  He, the I Am, the Self-Existent, who needs no one, and no thing, has turned aside, as it were, and stooped from the throne of heaven, again and again, during thousands of years, to say to you, and me, and millions of mankind, I Am your God.  How do you prosper?—what do you need?—what are you doing?—for if you are doing justice to yourself and your fellow-men, then fear not that I shall be just to you.

And more.  When that I Am, the self-existent God, could not set sinful men right by saying this, then did He stoop once more from the throne of the heavens to do that infinite deed of love, of which it is written, that He who called Himself “I Am,” the God of Abraham, was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven,—that He might send down the Spirit of the “I Am,” the Holy Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, upon all who ask Him; that they may be holy as God is holy, and perfect as God is perfect.  Yes, my dear friends, remember that, and live in the light of that; the gospel of good news of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, very God of very God begotten.  Know that God has spoken to you as He spoke to Abraham, and said,—I am the Almighty God, walk before Me, and be thou perfect.  Know that He has spoken to you as He spoke to Moses, saying,—I am the Lord thy God, who have brought you, and your fathers before you, out of the spiritual Egypt of heathendom, and ignorance, sin, and wickedness, into the knowledge of the one, true, and righteous God.  But know more, that He has spoken to you by the mouth of Jesus Christ, saying,—I am He that died in the form of mortal man upon the cross for you.  And, behold, I am alive for evermore; and to me all power is given in heaven and earth.

Yes, my friends, let us lay to heart, even upon this joyful day, the awful warnings of the Epistle to the Hebrews,—God, the I Am, has spoken to us; God, the I Am, is speaking to us now.  See that you refuse not Him that speaketh; for if they escaped not who refused Moses that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven; wherefore follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord, and have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear.  For our God is a consuming fire.  To those who disobey Him, eternal wrath; to those who love Him, eternal love.

Yes, my friends.  Let us believe that, and live in the light of that, with reverence and godly fear, all the year round.  But let us specially to-day, as far as our dull feelings and poor imaginations will allow us; let us, I say, adore the ascended Saviour, who rules for ever, a Man in the midst of the throne of the universe, and that Man—oh, wonder of wonders!—slain for us; and let us say with St Paul of old, with all our hearts and minds and souls:—Now to the King of the Ages, immortal, invisible, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, for ever and ever.  Amen!

SERMON XIV.  THE COMFORTER

Eversley.  Sunday after Ascension Day. 1868.

St John xv. 26.  “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.”

Some writers, especially when they are writing hymns, have fallen now-a-days into a habit of writing of the Holy Spirit of God, in a tone of which I dare not say that it is wrong or untrue; but of which I must say, that it is one-sided.  And if there are two sides to a matter, it must do us harm to look at only one of them.  And I think that it does people harm to hear the Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, spoken of in terms, not of reverence, but of endearment.  For consider: He is the

“Creator-Spirit, by whose aid
The world’s foundations first were laid,”

the life-giving Spirit of whom it is written, Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, and things live, and Thou renewest the face of the earth.

But He is the destroying Spirit too; who can, when He will, produce not merely life, but death; who can, and does send earthquakes, storm, and pestilence; of whom Isaiah writes—“All flesh is as grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.  The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it.”  I think it does people harm to hear this awful and almighty being, I say, spoken of merely as the “sweet Spirit,” and “gentle dove”—words which are true, but only true, if we remember other truths, equally true of Him, concerning whom they are spoken.  The Spirit of God, it seems to me, is too majestic a being to be talked of hastily as “sweet.”  Words may be true, and yet it may not be always quite reverent to use them.  An earthly sovereign may be full of all human sweetness and tenderness, yet we should not dare to address him as “sweet.”

But, indeed, some of this talk about the Holy Spirit is not warranted by Scripture at all.  In one of the hymns, for instance, in our hymn-book—an excellent hymn in other respects, there is a line which speaks of the Holy Spirit as possessing “The brooding of the gentle dove.”

Now, this line is really little but pretty sentiment, made up of false uses of Scripture.  The Scripture speaks once of the Holy Spirit of God brooding like a bird over its nest.  But where?  In one of the most mysterious, awful, and important of all texts.  “And the earth was without form and void.  And the Spirit of God moved (brooded) over the face of the deep.”  What has this—the magnificent picture of the Life-giving Spirit brooding over the dead world, to bring it into life again, and create from it sea and land, heat and fire, and cattle and creeping things after their kind, and at last man himself, the flower and crown of things;—what has that to do with the brooding of a gentle dove?

But the Holy Spirit is spoken of in Scripture under the likeness of a dove?  True, and here is another confusion.  The Dove is not the emblem of gentleness in the Bible: but the Lamb.  The dove is the emblem of something else, pure and holy, but not of gentleness; and therefore the Holy Spirit is not spoken of in Scripture as brooding as a gentle dove; but very differently, as it seems to me.  St Matthew and St John say, that at our Lord’s baptism the Holy Spirit was seen, not brooding, but descending from heaven as a dove.  To any one who knows anything of doves, who will merely go out into the field or the farm-yard and look at them, and who will use his own eyes, that figure is striking enough, and grand enough.  It is the swiftness of the dove, and not its fancied gentleness that is spoken of.  The dove appearing, as you may see it again and again, like a speck in the far off sky, rushing down with a swiftness which outstrips the very eagle; returning surely to the very spot from which it set forth, though it may have flown over hundreds of miles of land, and through the very clouds of heaven.  It is the sky-cleaving force and swiftness, the unerring instinct of the dove, and not a sentimental gentleness to which Scripture likens that Holy Spirit, which like the rushing mighty wind bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth;—that Holy Spirit who, when He fell on the apostles, fell in tongues of fire, and shook all the house where they were sitting; that Holy Spirit of whom one of the wisest Christians who ever lived, who knew well enough the work of the Spirit, arguing just as I am now against the fancy of associating the Holy Spirit merely with pretty thoughts of our own, and pleasant feelings of our own, and sentimental raptures of our own, said, “Wouldst thou know the manner of spiritual converse?  Of the way in which the Spirit of God works in man?  Then it is this: He hath taken me up and dashed me down.  Like a lion, I look, that He will break all my bones.  From morning till evening, Thou wilt make an end of me.”

But people are apt to forget this.  And therefore they fall into two mistakes.  They think of the Holy Spirit as only a gentle, and what they call a dove-like being; and they forget what a powerful, awful, literally formidable being He is.  They lose respect for the Holy Spirit.  They trifle with Him; and while they sing hymns about His gentleness and sweetness, they do things which grieve and shock Him; forgetting the awful warning which He, at the very outset of the Christian Church, gave against such taking of liberties with God the Holy Ghost:—how Ananias and Sapphira thought that the Holy Spirit was One whom they might honour with their lips, and more, with their outward actions, but who did not require truth in the inward parts, and did not care for their telling a slight falsehood that they might appear more generous than they really were in the eyes of men; and how the answer of the Holy Spirit of God was that He struck them both dead there and then for a warning to all such triflers, till the end of time.

Another mistake which really pious and good people commit, is, that they think the Holy Spirit of God to be merely, or little beside, certain pleasant frames, and feelings, and comfortable assurances, in their own minds.  They do not know that these pleasant frames and feelings really depend principally on their own health: and, then, when they get out of health, or when their brain is overworked, and the pleasant feelings go, they are terrified and disheartened, and complain of spiritual dryness, and cry out that God’s Spirit has deserted them, and are afraid that God is angry with them, or even that they have committed the unpardonable sin: not knowing that God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent; that God is as near them in the darkness as in the light; that whatever their own health, or their own feelings may be, yet still in God they live, and move, and have their being; that to God’s Spirit they owe all which raises them above the dumb animals; that nothing can separate them from the love of Him who promised that He would not leave us comfortless, but send to us His Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us to the same place whither He has gone before.

Now, why do I say all this?  To take away comfort from you?  To make you fear and dread the Spirit of God?  God forbid!  Who am I, to take away comfort from any human being!  I say it to give yon true comfort, to make you trust and love the Holy Spirit utterly, to know Him—His strength and His wisdom as well as His tenderness and gentleness.

You know that afflictions do come—terrible bereavements, sorrows sad and strange.  My sermon does not make them come.  There they are, God help us all, and too many of them, in this world.  But from whom do they come?  Who is Lord of life and death?  Who is Lord of joy and sorrow?  Is not that the question of all questions?  And is not the answer the most essential of all answers?  It is the Holy Spirit of God; the Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; the Spirit of the Father who so loved the world that He spared not His only begotten Son; the Spirit of the Son who so loved the world, that He stooped to die for it upon the Cross; the Spirit who is promised to lead you into all truth, that you may know God, and in the knowledge of Him find everlasting life; the Spirit who is the Comforter, and says, I have seen thy ways and will heal thee, I will lead thee also, and restore comforts to thee and to thy mourners.  I speak peace to him that is near, and to him that is far off, saith the Lord; and I will heal him.  Is it not the most blessed news, that He who takes away, is the very same as He who gives?  That He who afflicts is the very same as He who comforts?  That He of whom it is written that, “as a lion, so will He break all my bones; from day even to night wilt Thou make an end of me;” is the same as He of whom it is written, “He shall gather the lambs in His arms, and carry them, and shall gently lead those that are with young;” and, again, “as a beast goeth down into the valley, so the Spirit of the Lord caused him to rest?”  That He of whom it is written, “Our God is a consuming fire,” is the same as He who has said, “When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned?”  That He who brings us into “the valley of the shadow of death,” is the same as He of whom it is said, “Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me?”  Is not that blessed news?  Is it not the news of the Gospel; and the only good news which people will really care for, when they are tormented, not with superstitious fears and doctrines of devils which man’s diseased conscience has originated, but tormented with the real sorrows, the rational fears of this stormy human life.

We all like comfort.  But what kind of comfort do we not merely like but need?  Merely to be comfortable?—To be free from pain, anxiety, sorrow?—To have only pleasant faces round us, and pleasant things said to us?  If we want that comfort, we shall very seldom have it.  It will be very seldom good for us to have it.  The comfort which poor human beings want in such a world as this, is not the comfort of ease, but the comfort of strength.  The comforter whom we need is not one who will merely say kind things, but give help—help to the weary and heavy laden heart which has no time to rest.  We need not the sunny and smiling face, but the strong and helping arm.  For we may be in that state that smiles are shocking to us, and mere kindness,—though we may be grateful for it—of no more comfort to us than sweet music to a drowning man.  We may be miserable, and unable to help being miserable, and unwilling to help it too.  We do not wish to flee from our sorrow, we do not wish to forget our sorrow.  We dare not; it is so awful, so heartrending, so plain spoken, that God, the master and tutor of our hearts must wish us to face it and endure it.  Our Father has given us the cup—shall we not drink it?  But who will help us to drink the bitter cup?  Who will be the comforter, and give us not mere kind words, but strength?  Who will give us the faith to say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him?”  Who will give us the firm reason to look steadily at our grief, and learn the lesson it was meant to teach?  Who will give us the temperate will, to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life?  Above all, I may say—Who will lead us into all truth?  How much is our sorrow increased—how much of it is caused by simple ignorance!  Why has our anxiety come?  How are we to look at it?  What are we to do?  Oh, that we had a comforter who would lead us into all truth:—not make us infallible, or all knowing, but lead us into truth; at least put us in the way of truth, put things in their true light to us, and give us sound and rational views of life and duty.  Oh, for a comforter who would give us the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and fill us with that spirit of God’s holy fear, which would make us not superstitious, not slavish, not anxious, but simply obedient, loyal and resigned.

If we had such a Comforter as that, could we not take evil from his hands, as well as good?  We have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence.  They chastised us, but we loved and trusted them, because we knew that they loved and trusted us—chastised us to make us better—chastised us because they trusted us to become better.  But if we can find a Father of our spirits, of our souls, shall we not rather be in subjection to Him and live?  If He sent us a Comforter, to comfort and guide, and inspire, and strengthen us, shall we not say of that Comforter—“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

If we had such a Comforter as that, we should not care, if He seemed at times stern, as well as kind; we could endure rebuke and chastisement from Him, if we could only get from Him wisdom to understand the rebuke, and courage to bear the chastisement.  Where is that Comforter?  God answers:—That Comforter am I, the God of heaven and earth.  There are comforters on earth who can help thee with wise words and noble counsel, can be strong as man, and tender as woman.  Then God can be more strong than man, and more tender than woman likewise.  And when the strong arm of man supports thee no longer, yet under thee are the everlasting arms of God.

Oh, blessed news, that God Himself is the Comforter.  Blessed news, that He who strikes will also heal: that He who gives the cup of sorrow, will also give the strength to drink it.  Blessed news, that chastisement is not punishment, but the education of a Father.  Blessed news, that our whole duty is the duty of a child—of the Son who said in His own agony, “Father, not my will, but thine be done.”  Blessed news, that our Comforter is the Spirit who comforted Christ the Son Himself; who proceeds both from the Father and from the Son; and who will therefore testify to us both of the Father and the Son, and tell us that in Christ we are indeed, really and literally, the children of God who may cry to Him, “Father,” with full understanding of all that that royal word contains.  Blessed, too, to find that in the power of the Divine Majesty, we can acknowledge the unity, and know and feel that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all one in love to the creatures whom they have made—their glory equal, for the glory of each and all is perfect charity, and their majesty co-eternal, because it is a perfect majesty; whose justice is mercy, whose power is goodness, its very sternness love, love which gives hope and counsel, and help and strength, and the true life which this world’s death cannot destroy.

SERMON XV.  THOU ART WORTHY

Eversley, 1869.  Chester Cathedral, 1870.  Trinity Sunday.

Revelation iv. 11.  “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.”

I am going to speak to you on a deep matter, the deepest and most important of all matters, and yet I hope to speak simply.  I shall say nothing which you cannot understand, if you will attend.  I shall say nothing, indeed, which you could not find out for yourselves, if you will think, and use your own common sense.  I wish to speak to you of Theology—of God Himself.  For this Trinity Sunday of all the Sundays of the year, is set apart for thinking of God Himself—not merely of our own souls, though we must never forget them, nor of what God has done for our souls, though we must never forget that—but of what God is Himself, what He would be if we had no souls—if there were, and had been from the beginning, no human beings at all upon the earth.

Now, if we look at any living thing—an animal, say, or a flower, and consider how curiously it is contrived, our common sense will tell us at once that some one has made it; and if any one answers—Oh! the flower was not made, it grew—our common sense would tell us that that was only a still more wonderful contrivance, and that there must be some one who gave it the power of growing, and who makes it grow.  And so our common sense would tell us, as it told the heathens of old, that there must be gods—beings whom we cannot see, who made the world.  But if we watch things more closely, we should find out that all things are made more or less upon the same plan; that (and I tell you that this is true, strange as it may seem) all animals, however different they may seem to our eyes, are made upon the same plan; all plants and flowers, however different they may seem, are made upon the same plan; all stones, and minerals, and earths, however different they may seem, are made upon the same plan.  Then common sense would surely tell us, one God made all the animals, one God made all the plants, one God made all the earths and stones.  But if we watch more closely still, we should find that the plants could not live without the animals, nor the animals without the plants, nor either of them without the soil beneath our feet, and the air and rain above our heads.  That everything in the world worked together on one plan, and each thing depended on everything else.  Then common sense would tell us, one God must have made the whole world.  But if we watched more closely again, or rather, if we asked the astronomers, who study the stars and heavens, they would tell us that all the worlds over our heads, all the stars that spangle the sky at night, were made upon the same plan as our earth—that sun and moon, and all the host of heaven, move according to the same laws by which our earth moves, and as far as we can find out, have been made in the same way as our earth has been made, and that these same laws must have been going on, making worlds after worlds, for hundreds of thousands of years, and ages beyond counting, and will, in all probability, go on for countless ages more.  Then common sense will tell us, the same God has made all worlds, past, present, and to come.  There is but one God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.