Sermons on National Subjects

But I do not think that God meant it to be so with these Psalms.  He meant the Bible for a poor man’s book: and therefore the men who wrote the Bible were almost all of them poor men, at least at one time or other of their life; and therefore we may expect that they would write as poor men would write, and such things as poor men may understand, if they are fairly and simply explained.  Therefore I do not think you need be puzzled long to find out why these Psalms are read every Sunday.  For the men who wrote them had God’s spirit with them; and God’s spirit is the spirit in which God made and governs this world, and just as God cannot change, so God’s spirit cannot change; and therefore the rules and laws according to which the world runs on cannot change; and therefore these rules about God’s government of the world, which God’s spirit taught the old Hebrew Psalmists, are the very same rules by which He governs it now; and therefore all the rules in these Psalms, making allowance for the difference of circumstances, have just as much to do with France, and Germany, and England now, as they had with the Jews, and the Canaanites, and the Babylonians then.

St. Paul tells us so.  He tells us that all that happened to the old Jews was written as an example to Christians, to the intent that they might not sin as the Jews did, and so (God’s laws and ways being the same now as then) be punished as the Jews were.  Moreover, St. Paul says, that Christians now are just as much God’s chosen people as the Jews were.  God told the Jews that they were to be a nation of kings and priests to Him.  And St. John opens the Revelations by saying: “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father, to Him be glory.”  St. Paul tells the Ephesians, who had not a drop of Jewish blood in their veins, that through Jesus Christ both Jews and Gentiles had “access by one Spirit unto the Father.  Now, therefore,” he goes on, “ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”  In fact, he tells the Christians of every country to which he writes, that all the promises which God made to the Jews belonged to them just as much, that there was no more any difference between Jew and Gentile, that the Lord Jesus Christ was just as really among them, and with them, ruling and helping each people in their own country, as He was in Jerusalem when Isaiah saw His glory filling the Temple, and when Zion was called the place of His inheritance.  Indeed, the Lord Jesus said the same thing Himself, for He said that all power was given to Him in heaven and earth; that He was with His churches (that is, with all companies of Christian people, such as England) even to the end of the world; that wherever two or three were gathered together in His name, He would be in the midst of them; and if those blessed words and good news be true, we Englishmen have a right to believe firmly that we belong to Him just as much as the old Jews did; and when we read these Psalms, to take every word of their good news—and their warnings also—to ourselves, and to our own land of England.  And when we read in the text, that the Lord chose Jacob unto Himself and Israel for His own possession, we have a right to say: “And the Lord has chosen also England unto himself, and this favoured land of Britain for his own possession.”  When we say in the Psalm: “The Lord did what He pleased in heaven, and earth, and sea,” to educate and deliver the people of the Jews, we have a right to say just as boldly: “And so He has done for England, for us, and for our forefathers.”

This then is the reason, the chief reason, why these Psalms are appointed to be read every Sunday in church, and every morning and evening where there is daily service—to teach us that the Lord takes care not only of one man’s soul here, and another woman’s soul there, but of the whole country of England; of its wars and its peace; of its laws and government, its progress and its afflictions; of all, in short, that happens to it as a nation, as one body of men, which it is.  It must be so, my good friends, else we should be worse off than the old Jews, and not better off, as all the New Testament solemnly assures us a thousand times over that we are.

For in the covenant which God made with the Jews, and in the strange events, good and bad, which He caused to happen to their nation, not only the great saints among them were taken care of, but all classes, and all characters, good and bad, even those who had not wisdom or spiritual life enough to seek God for themselves, still had their share in the good laws, in the teaching and guiding, and in the national blessings which He sent on the whole nation.  They had a chance given them of rising, and improving, and prospering, as the rest of their countrymen rose, and improved, and prospered.  And when the Lord came to visit Judæa in flesh and blood, we find that He went on the same method.  He did not merely go to such men as Philip and Nathaniel, to the holy and elect ones among the Jews, but to the whole people; to the lost sheep, as well as to those who were not lost.  He did not part the good from the bad before he healed their sicknesses, and fed them with the loaves and fishes.  It was enough for Him that they were Jews, citizens of the Jewish nation.  God’s promises belonged not to one Jew or another, but to the Jewish nation; and even the ignorant and the sinful had a share in the blessings of the covenant, great or small in proportion as they chose to live as Jews ought, or to forget and deny that they belonged to God’s people.

Now, surely the Lord cannot be less merciful now than He was then.  He cannot care less for poor orphans, and paupers, and wild untaught creatures, in England now, than he cared for them in Judæa of old.  And we see that in fact He does not.  For as the wealth of England improves, and the laws improve, and the knowledge of God improves, the condition of all sorts of poor creatures improves too, though they had no share in bringing about the good change.  But we are all members of one body, from the Queen on her throne to the tramper under the hedge; and as St. Paul says: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, and if one member rejoices, all the others” sooner or later “rejoice with it.”  For we, too, are one of the Lord’s nations.  He has made us one body, with one common language, common laws, common interest, common religion for all; and what He does for one of us He does for all.  He orders all that happens to us; whether it be war or peace, prosperity or dearth, He orders it all; and He orders things so that they shall work for the good, not merely of a few, but of as many as possible—not merely for His elect, but for those who know Him not.  As He has been from the beginning, when He heaped blessings on the stiff-necked and backsliding Israelites—as He was when He endured the cross for a world lying not in obedience, but in wickedness; so is He now; the perfect likeness of His father, who is no respecter of persons, but causes “His sun to shine alike on the evil on the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust.”

But now, there is one thing against which I have to warn you most solemnly, and especially in such days as these.  You may believe my words to your own ruin, or to your own salvation.  They are “the Gospel,” “the good news of the Kingdom of God”—that is, the good news that God has condescended to become our King, to govern and guide us, to order all things for our good.  But as St. Paul says, the Gospel may be a savour of death unto death, as well as a savour of life unto life.  And I will tell you now; that you have only to do what the Jews just before the coming of our Lord did, and give way to the same thoughts as they, and then, like them, it were better for you that you had never heard of God, and been like the savages, to whom little or no sin is imputed, because they are all but without law.  How is this?

As I said before—take your covenant privileges as the Pharisees took theirs, and they will turn you into devils while you are fancying yourselves God’s especial favourites.  Now this was what happened to the Pharisees: they could not help knowing that God had shown especial favour to them; and that He had taught them more about God than He had taught the heathen.  But instead of feeling all the more humble and thankful for this, and of remembering day and night that because much had been given to them much would be required of them, they thought more about the honour and glory which God had put on them.  They forgot what God had declared, namely, that it was not for their own goodness that He had taught them, for that they were in themselves not a whit better than the heathen around them.  They forgot that the reason why He taught them was, that they were to do His work on earth, by witnessing for His name, and telling the heathen that God was their Lord, as well as Lord of the Jews.  Now David, and the old Psalmists and Prophets, did not forget this.  Their cry is: “Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King.”  “Worship the Son of God, ye kings of the earth, and make your peace with Him lest He be angry.”  “It was in vain,” he told the heathen kings, “to try to cast away God’s government from them, and break His bonds from off them,” for “the Lord was King, let the nations be never so unquiet.”

But the Jews gradually forgot this, and their daily boast was, that God had nothing to do with the heathen; that He did not care for them, and actually hated them; that they, as it were, had the true God all to themselves for their own private property; and that He had neither love nor mercy, except for them and their proselytes, that is, the few heathens whom they could persuade and entice not to worship the true God after the customs of their own country—that would not have suited the Jews’ bigotry and pride—but to turn Jews, and forget their own people among whom they were born, and ape them in everything.  And so, as our Lord told them, after compassing sea and land to make one of these proselytes, they only made him after all twice as much the child of hell as themselves.  For they could not teach the heathen anything worth knowing about God, when they had forgotten themselves what God was like.  They could tell them that there was one God, and not two—but what was the use of that?  As St. James says, the devils believe as much as that, and yet the knowledge does not make them holy, but only increases their fear and despair.  And so with these Pharisees.  They had forgotten that God was love.  They had forgotten that God was merciful.  They had forgotten that God was just.  And therefore, while they were talking of God and pretending to worship God, they knew nothing of God, and they did not do God’s will, and act like God; for (as we find from the Gospels) they were unjust, tyrannous, proud, conceited, covetous themselves; and while they were looking down on the poor heathens, these very heathens, the Lord told them, would rise up in judgment against them: for they, knowing little, acted up to the light which they had, better than the Pharisees who knew so much.  And so it will be with us, my friends, if we fancy that God’s great favours to us are a reason for our priding ourselves on them, and despising papists and foreigners instead of remembering that just because God has given us so much, He will require more of us.  It is true, we do know more of the Gospel than the papists, how, though they believe in Jesus Christ, worship the Virgin Mary and the Saints, and idols of wood and stone.  But if they, who know so little of God’s will, yet act faithfully up to what they do know, will they not rise up in judgment against us, who know so much more, if we act worse than they?  Instead of despising them, we had better despise ourselves.  Instead of fancying that God’s love is not over them, and so sinning against God’s Holy Spirit by denying and despising the fruits of God’s Holy Spirit in them, we had much better, we Protestants, be repenting of our own sins.  We had better pray God to open our eyes to our own want of faith, and want of love, and want of honesty, and want of cleanly and chaste lives; lest God in His anger should let us go on in our evil path, till we fall into the deep darkness of mind of the Pharisees of old.  For then while we were boasting of England as the most Christian nation in the world, we might become the most unchristian, because the most unlike Christ; the most wanting in love and fellow-feeling, and self-sacrifice, and honour, and justice, and honesty; wanting, in short, in the fruits of the Spirit.  And without them there is no use crying: “We are God’s chosen people, He Has put His name among us, we alone hate idols, we alone have the pure word of God, and the pure sacraments, and the pure doctrine;” for God may answer us, as he answered the Jews of old: “Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father: Verily, I say unto you, God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”  . . .  “The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”  Oh! my friends, let us pray, one and all, that God will come and help us, and with great might succour us, “that whereas through our sins and wickedness we are sore let and hindered in running the race set before us, God’s bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us,” and enable us to live faithfully up to the glorious privileges which He has bestowed on us, in calling us “members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven;” in giving us His Bible, in allowing us to be born into this favoured land of England, in preserving us to this day, in spite of all that we have thought, and said, and done, unworthy of the name of Christians and Englishmen.

And then we may be certain that God will also fulfil to us the glorious promises which we find in another Psalm: “If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimonies, which I shall learn them, this land shall be my rest for ever.  Here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein.  I will bless her victuals with increase, and satisfy her poor with bread.  I will deck her priests with health, and her holy people shall rejoice and sing.”

XVIII.

NATIONAL REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS

And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all; that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.  As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you. . . .  And ye shall know that I am the Lord.—Ezekiel xx. 32, 33, 38.

A father has two ways of showing his love to his child—by caressing it and by punishing it.  His very anger may be a sign of his love, and ought to be.  Just because he loves his child, just because the thing he longs most to see is that his child should grow up good, therefore he must be, and ought to be, angry with it when it does wrong.  Therefore anger against sin is a part of God’s likeness in us; and he who does not hate sin is not like God.  For if sin is the worst evil—perhaps the only real evil in the world—and the end of all sin is death and misery, then to indulge people in sin is to show them the very worst of cruelty.

To sit by and see iniquity going on without trying to stop it, is mere laziness.  The parent, when his child does wrong, does not show his love to the child by indulging it, all he shows is, that he himself is carnal and fleshly; that he does not like to take the trouble of punishing it, or does not like to give himself the pain of punishing it; that, in short, he had sooner let his child grow up in bad habits, which must lead to its misery and ruin for years and years, if not for ever, than make himself uncomfortable by seeing it uncomfortable for a few minutes.  That is not love, but selfishness.  True love is as determined to punish the sin as it is to forgive the sinner.  Therefore, St. Paul tells us, that we can be angry without sinning; that is that there is an anger which comes from hatred of sin and love to the sinner.  Therefore, Solomon tells us to punish our children when they do wrong, and not to hold our hands for their crying.  It is better for them that they should cry a little now, than have long years of shame and sorrow hereafter.  Therefore, in all countries which are properly governed, the law punishes in the name of God those who break the laws of God, and punishes them even with death, for certain crimes; because it is expedient that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

And this is God’s way of dealing with each and every one of us.  This is God’s way of dealing with Christian nations, just as it was His way of dealing with the Jews of old.  He never allowed the Jews to prosper in sin.  He punished them at once, and sternly, whenever they rebelled against Him; not because He hated them, but because He loved them.  His love to them showed itself whenever they went well with Him, in triumphs and blessings; and when they rebelled against Him, and broke His laws, He showed that very same love to them in plague, and war, and famine, and a mighty hand, and fury poured out.  His love had not changed—they had changed; and now the best and only way of showing His love to them, was by making them feel His anger; and the best and only way of being merciful to them, was to show them no indulgence.

Now the wish of the Jews all along, and especially in Ezekiel’s time, was to be like the heathen—like the nations round them.  They said to themselves: “These heathen worship idols, and yet prosper very well.  Their having gods of wood and stone, and their indulging their passions, and being profligate and filthy, covetous, unjust, and tyrannical, does not prevent their being just as happy as we are—ay, and a great deal happier.  They have no strict law of Moses, as we have threatening us and keeping us in awe, and making us uncomfortable, and telling us at every turn, ‘Thou shalt not do this pleasant thing, and thou shalt not do that pleasant thing.’  And yet God does not punish them, as Moses’ law says He will punish us.  These Assyrians and Babylonians above all—they are stronger than we, and richer, and better clothed, and cleverer; they have horses and chariots, and all sorts of luxuries and comforts which we Jews cannot get.  Instead of being like us, in continual trouble from earthquakes, and drought, and famine, and war, attacked, plundered by all the nations round us, one after another, they go on conquering, and spreading, and succeeding in all they lay their hand to.  Look at Babylon,” said these foolish Jews, perhaps, to themselves; “a few generations ago it was nothing of a city, and now it is the greatest, richest, and strongest nation in the whole world.  God has not punished it for worshipping gods of wood and stone, why should He punish us?  These Babylonians have prospered well enough with their gods, why should not we?  Perhaps it is these very gods of wood and stone who have helped them to become so great.  Why should they not help us?  We will worship them, then, and pray to them.  We will not give up worshipping our own God, of course, lest we should offend Him; but we will worship Him and the Babylonian idols at the same time; then we shall be sure to be right if we have Jehovah and the idols both on our side.”  So said the Jews to themselves.  But what did Ezekiel answer them?  “Not so, my foolish countrymen,” said he, “God will not have it so.  He has taught you that these Babylonian idols are nothing and cannot help you; He has taught you that He can and will help you, that He can and will be everything to you; He has taught you that He alone is God, who made heaven and earth, who orders all things therein, who alone gives any people power to get wealth; and He will not have you go back and fall from that for any appearances or arguments whatsoever, because it is true.  He has chosen you to witness to these heathen about Him, to declare His name to them, that they may give up their idols and serve the true God, in whom alone is strength.  He chose you to be these heathens’ teachers, and He will not let you become their scholars.  He meant the heathen to copy you, and He will not let you copy them.  If He does, in His love and mercy, let these poor heathen prosper in spite of their idols, what is that to you?  It is still the Lord who makes them prosper, and not the idols, whether they know it or not.  They know no better, and He will not impute sin to them where He has given them no law.  But you do know better; by a thousand mighty signs and wonders and deliverances, the Lord has been teaching you ever since you came up through the Red Sea, that He is all-sufficient for you, that all power is His in heaven and earth.  He has promised to you, and sworn to you by Himself, that if you keep His law and walk in His commandments, you shall want no manner of good thing; that you shall have no cause to envy these heathen their riches and prosperity, for the Lord will bless you in house and land, by day and night, at home and abroad, with every blessing that a nation can desire.  Moses’ law tells you this, God’s prophets have been telling you this, God’s wonderful dealings with you have been telling you this, that the Lord God is enough for you.  And if you, who are meant to be a nation of kings and priests to God, to teach all nations and serve solely Him, fancy that you will be allowed to throw away the high honour which God has put upon you, and lower yourselves to the follies and sins of these heathen round you, you are mistaken.  You were meant to be above such folly, you can be above it; and you shall not prosper by serving God and idols at once; you shall not even prosper by serving idols alone.  God will visit you with a mighty hand, and with fury poured out, and you shall know that He is the Lord.”

Well, my friends, and what has this to do with us?  This it has to do with us—that if God taught the Jews about Himself, He has taught us still more.  If he has shown signs and wonders of His love, and wrought mightily for the Jews, He has wrought far more mightily for us; for He spared not His own Son, but gave Him freely for us.  If He promised to teach the Jews, He has promised still more to teach us; for He has promised His Holy Spirit freely to young and old, rich and poor, to as many as ask Him, to guide us into all truth.  If he expected the Jews to set an example to all the nations around, He expects us to do so still more.  And if He punished the Jews, and drove them back again by shame, and affliction, and disappointment, whenever they went after other gods, and tried to be like the heathen around, and despised their high calling, and their high privileges, He will punish us, and drive us back again still more fiercely, and still more swiftly.  God has called us to be a nation of Christians, and He will not let us be a nation of heathens.  We are longing to do in these days very much as the Jews did of old; we are all too apt to say to ourselves: “Of course we must love God, or He might be angry with us; and besides, how else should we get our souls saved?  But the old heathen nations, and a great many nations now, and a great many rich and comfortable people in England now, too, get on very well without God, by just worshipping selfishness, and money, and worldly cunning, and why should not we do the same?—why should we not worship God and Mammon at once, and serve God on Sundays, and the selfish ways of the world all the week?  Surely then we should be doubly safe; we should have God and the world on our side both at once.”

Now, my friends, God will not allow us to succeed on that plan.  We are members of His Church, whose head is Jesus, who gave Himself for sinners; whose members are all brothers of His Church, which is held together by self-sacrifice and fellow-help.  If we try to be like the heathens, and fancy that we can succeed by selfishness, and cunning, and covetousness, God will not let us fall from the honour which He has put on us, and trample our blessings under foot.  He will bring our plans to nought.  Whomsoever he may let prosper in sin, He will not let those who have heard the message prosper in it.  Whatever nation He may let become great by covetousness, and selfish competing and struggling of man against man, He will not let England grow great by it.  He loves her too well to let her fall so, and cast away her high honour of being a Christian nation.  By great and sore afflictions, by bringing our cleverest plans to nothing, He will teach us that we cannot worship God and Mammon at once; that the sure riches, either for a man or for a nation, are not money, but righteousness love, justice, wisdom; that this new idol of selfish competition which men worship nowadays, and fancy that it is the secret cause of all plenty, and cheapness, and civilisation, has no place in the church of Jesus Christ, who gave up His own life for those who hated Him, and came not to do His own will, but the will of His Father; not to enable men to go to heaven after a life of selfishness here; but by the power of His Spirit—the spirit of love and fellowship to sweep all selfishness off the face of God’s good earth.  By sore trials and afflictions will God in His mercy teach this to England, and to every man in England who is deluded into fancying that he can serve God, and selfishness at once, till we learn once more, as our forefathers did of old, that He is the Lord.  Because we are His children God will chasten us; because He receives us, He will scourge us back to Him; because He has prepared for us things such as eye hath not seen, He will not let us fill our bellies with the husks which the swine eat, and like the dumb beasts, snarl and struggle one against the other for a place at His table, as if it were not wide enough for all His creatures, and for ten times as many more, forgetting that He is the giver, and fancying that we are to be the takers, and spoiling the gift itself in our hurry to snatch it out of our neighbours’ hands.  In one word, God will not give us false prosperity, as the children of the world, the flesh, and the devil, because he wishes to give us real prosperity as the sons of God, in the kingdom of his Son Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for us.

XIX.

THE DELIVERANCE OF JERUSALEM

And it came to pass that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and eighty five thousand: and when they arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.—2 Kings xix. 35.

You heard read in the first lesson last Sunday afternoon, the threats of the king of Assyria against Jerusalem, and his defiance of the true Lord whose temple stood there.  In the first lesson for this morning’s service, you heard of king Hezekiah’s fear and perplexity; of the Lord’s answer to him by Isaiah, and of the great and wonderful destruction of the Assyrian army, of which my text tells you.  Of course you have a right to ask: “This which happened in a foreign country more than two thousand years ago, what has it to do with us?”  And, of course, my preaching about it will be of no use whatsoever, unless I can show you what it has to do with us; what lesson we English here, in the year 1851, are to draw, from the help which God sent the Jews.

But to find out that, we must hear the whole story.  Before we can find out why God drove the Assyrians out of Judæa, we must find out, it seems to me, why He sent them, or allowed them to come into Judæa; and to find out that, we must first see how the Jews were behaving in those times, and what sort of state their country was in; and we must find out, too, what sort of a man this great king of Assyria was, and what sort of thoughts were in his heart.

Now, by the favour of God, we can find out this.  You will see, in the first thirty-seven chapters of Isaiah’s prophecies, a full account of the ways of the Jews in that time, and the reasons why God allowed so fearful a danger to come upon them.  The whole first thirty-five chapters belong to each other, and are, so to speak, a spiritual history of the Jews, and the Assyrians, and all the nations round them, for many years.  A spiritual history—that is, not merely a history of what they did, but of what they were, what was in their inmost hearts, and thoughts, and spirits; a spiritual history—that is, not merely of what they thought they were doing, but of what God saw that they were doing—a history of God’s mind about them all.  Isaiah had God’s spirit on him; and so he saw what was going on round him in the same light in which God saw it, and hated it, or praised it, only according as it was good, and according to the good Spirit of God, or bad, and contrary to that Spirit.  So Isaiah’s history of his own nation, and the nations around him, was very unlike what they would have written for themselves; just as I am afraid he would write a very different history of England now, from what we should write, if we were set to do it.  Now what Isaiah thought of the doings of his countrymen, the Jews, I must tell you in another sermon, next Sunday.  It will be enough this morning to speak of the king of Assyria.

These kings of Assyria thought themselves the greatest and strongest beings in the world; they thought that their might was right, and that they might conquer, and ravage, and plunder and oppress every country round them for thousands of miles, without being punished.  They thought that they could overcome the true God of Judæa, as they had conquered the empty idols and false gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Iva.  But Isaiah saw that they were wrong.  He told his countrymen: “These Assyrian kings are strong, but there is a stronger King than they, Jehovah the Lord of all the earth.  It is He who sent them to punish nation after nation, Sennacherib is the rod of Jehovah’s anger; but he is a fool after all; for all his cunning, for all his armies, he is a fool rushing on his ruin.  He may take Tyre, Damascus, Babylon, Egypt itself, and cast their gods into the fire, for they are no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone; but let him once try his strength against the real living God; let the axe once begin to boast itself against Him that hews therewith; and he will find out that there is one stronger than he, one who has been using him as a ‘tool, and who will crush him like a moth the moment he rebels.  His father destroyed Samaria and her idols, but he shall not destroy Jerusalem.  He may ravage Ephraim, and punish the gluttony and drunkenness, and oppression of the great landlords of Bashan; he may bring misery and desolation through the length and breadth of the land: there is reason, and reason but too good for that: but Jerusalem, the place where God’s honour dwells, the temple without idols, which is the sign that Jehovah is a living God, against it he shall not cast up a bank, or shoot an arrow into it.”  “I know,” said Isaiah, “what he is saying of himself, this proud king of Assyria: but this is what God says of him, that he is only a puppet, a tool in the hand of God, to punish these wicked nations whom he is conquering one by one, and us Jews among the rest.  He, this proud king of Assyria, thinks that he is the chosen favourite of the sun, and the moon, and the stars, whom, in his folly, he worships as gods.  He will find out who is the real Lord of the earth; he will find out that this great world is ruled by that very God of Israel whom he despises.  He will find that there is something in this earth, of which he fancies himself lord and master, which is too strong for him, which will obey God, and not him.  God rules the earth, and God rules Tophet, and the great fire-kingdoms which boil and blaze for ever in the bowels of the earth, and burst up from time to time in earthquakes and burning mountains; and God has ordained that they shall conquer this proud king of Assyria, though we Jews are too weak and cowardly, and split up into parties by our wickedness, to make a stand against him.” . . .

This great eruption or breaking out of burning mountains, which would destroy the king of Assyria’s army, was to happen, Isaiah says, close to Jerusalem, nay, it was to shake Jerusalem itself.  Jerusalem was to be brought to great misery by everlasting burnings, as well as by being besieged by the Assyrians; and yet the very shaking of the earth and eruption of fire which was nearly to destroy it, was to be the cause of its deliverance.  So Isaiah prophesied, and we cannot doubt his words came true.  For this may explain to us the way in which the king of Assyria’s army was destroyed.  The text says, that when they encamped near Jerusalem the messenger of the Lord went out, and slew in one night one hundred and eighty thousand of them, who were all found dead in the morning.  How they were killed we cannot exactly tell, most likely by a stream of poisonous vapour, such as often comes forth out of the ground during earthquakes and eruptions of burning mountains, and kills all men and animals who breathe it.  That this was the way that this great army was destroyed, I have little doubt, not only on account of what Isaiah says in his prophecies of God’s “sending a blast” upon the king of Assyria, but because it was just like the old lesson which God had been teaching the Jews all along, that the earth and all in it was His property, and obeyed Him.  For what could teach them that more strongly than to see that the earthquakes and burning mountains, of all things on earth the most awful and most murderous, the very things against which man has no defence, obeyed God; burst forth when He chose, and did His work as He willed?  For man can conquer almost everything in the world except these burning mountains and earthquakes.  He can sail over the raging sea in his ships; he can till the most barren soils; he can provide against famine, rain, and cold, ay, against the thunder itself: but the earthquakes alone are too strong for him.  Against them no cunning or strength of man is of any use.  Without warning, they make the solid ground under his feet heave, and reel, and sink, hurling down whole towns in a moment, and burying the inhabitants under the ruins, as an earthquake did in Italy only a month ago.  Or they pour forth streams of fire, clouds of dust, brimstone, and poisonous vapour, destroying for miles around the woods and crops, farms and cities, and burying them deep in ashes, as they have done again and again, both in Italy and Iceland, and in South America, even during the last few years.  How can man stand against them?  What greater warning or lesson to him than they, that God is stronger than man; that the earth is not man’s property, and will not obey him, but only the God who made it?  Now that was just what God intended to teach the Jews all along; that the earth and heaven belonged to Him and obeyed Him; that they were not to worship the sun and stars, as the Assyrians and Canaanites did, nor the earth and the rivers as the Egyptians did: but to worship the God who made sun and stars, earth and rivers, and to put their trust in Him to guide all heaven and earth aright; and to make all things, sun, earth, and weather, ay, and the very burning mountains and earthquakes, work together for good for them if they loved God.  Therefore it was that God gave His law to Moses on the burning mountain of Sinai, amid thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, to show them that the lightnings and the mountains obeyed Him.  Therefore it was that the earthquake opened the ground and swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who rebelled against Moses.  Therefore it was that God once used an earthquake and eruption to preserve David from his enemies, as we read in the eighteenth Psalm.  And all through David’s Psalms we find how well he had learnt this great lesson which God had taught him.  Again and again we find verses which show that he knew well enough who was the Lord of all the earth.

In Isaiah’s time, it seems, God taught the Jews once more the same thing.  He taught them, and the proud king of Assyria, once and for all, that He was indeed the Lord—Lord of all nations, and King of kings, and also Lord of the earth, and all that therein is.  He taught it to the poor oppressed Jews by that miraculous deliverance.  He taught it to the cruel invading king by that miraculous destruction.  Just in the height of his glory, after he had conquered almost every nation in the east, and overcome the whole of Judæa, except that one small city of Jerusalem, Sennacherib’s great army was swept away, he neither knew how nor why, in a single night, and utterly disheartened and abashed, he returned to his own land; and even there he found that the God of Israel had followed him—that the idols whom he worshipped could not save him from the wrath of that God to whom Assyria, just as much as Jerusalem, belonged.  For as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, his two sons smote him with the sword, and there was an end of all his pride and conquests. . . . Now Nisroch was the name of a star—the star which we call the planet Saturn; and the Assyrians fancied in their folly, that whosoever worshipped any particular star, that star would protect and help him. . . .  But, alas for the king of Assyria, there was One above who had made the stars, and from whose vengeance the stars could not save him; and so even while he was worshipping, and praying to, this favourite star of his which could not hear him, he fell dead, a murdered man, and found out too late how true were the great words of Isaiah when he prophesied against him.

Yes, my friends, this is the lesson which the Jews had to learn, and which the king of Assyria had to learn, and which we have to learn also; and which God will, in His great mercy, teach us over and over again by bitter trials whensoever we forget it; that The Lord is King; that He is near us, living for ever, all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving; that those who really trust in Him shall never be confounded; that those who trust in themselves are trying their paltry strength against the God who made heaven and earth, and will surely find out their own weakness, just when they fancy themselves most successful.  So it was in Hezekiah’s time; so it is now, hard as it may be to us to believe it.  The Lord Jehovah, Jesus Christ, who saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians, He still is King, let the earth be never so unquiet.  And all men, or governments, or doctrines, or ways of thinking and behaving, which are contrary to His will, or even pretend that they can do without Him, will as surely come to nought as that great and terrible king of Assyria.  Though man be too weak to put them down, Christ is not.  Though man neglect to put them down, Christ will not.  If man dare not fight on the Lord’s side against sin and evil, the Lord’s earth will fight for Him.  Storm and tempest, blight and famine, earthquakes and burning mountains, will do His work, if nothing else will.  As He said Himself, if man stops praising Him, the very stones will cry out, and own Him as their King.  Not that the blessed Lord is proud, or selfish, or revengeful; God forbid!  He is boundless pity, and love, and mercy.  But it is just because He is perfect love and pity that He hates sin, which makes all the misery upon earth.  He hates it, and he fights against it for ever; lovingly at first, that He may lead sinners to repentance; for He wills the death of none, but rather that all should come to repentance.  But if a man will not turn, He will whet his sword; and then woe to the sinner.  Let him be as great as the king of Assyria, he must down.  For the Lord will have none guide His world but Himself, because none but He will ever guide it on the right path.  Yes—but what a glorious thought, that He will guide it, and us, on that right path.  Oh blessed news for all who are in sorrow and perplexity!  Whatsoever it is that ails you—and who is there, young or old, rich or poor, who has not their secret ailments at heart?—whatsoever ails you, whatsoever terrifies you, whatsoever tempts you, trust in the same Lord who delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians, and He will deliver you.  He will never suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way for you to escape, that you may be able to bear it.  This has been His loving way from the beginning, and this will be His way until the day when He wipes away tears from all eyes.

XX.

PROFESSION AND PRACTICE

Though they say, “The Lord liveth,” surely they swear falsely.—Jeremiah v. 2.

I spoke last Sunday morning of the wonderful way in which the Lord delivered the Jews from the Assyrian army, and I promised to try and explain to you this morning, the reason why the Lord allowed the Assyrians to come into Judæa, and ravage the whole country except the one small city of Jerusalem.

My text is taken from the first lesson, from the book of the prophet Jeremiah.  And it, I think, will explain the reason to us.

For though Jeremiah lived more than a hundred years after Isaiah, yet he had much the same message from God to give, and much the same sins round him to rebuke.  For the Jews were always, as the Bible calls them, “a backsliding people;” and, as the years ran on, and they began to forget their great deliverance from the Assyrians, they slid back into the very same wrong state of mind in which they were in Isaiah’s time, and for which God punished them by that terrible invasion.

Now, what was this?

One very remarkable thing strikes us at once.  That when the Assyrians came into Judæa, the Jews were not given up to worshipping false gods.  On the contrary, we find, both from the book of Kings and the book of Chronicles, that a great reform in religion had taken place among them a few years before.  Their king Hezekiah, in the very first year of his reign, removed the high places, and cut down the groves (which are said to have been carved idols meant to represent the stars of heaven), and even broke in pieces the brazen serpent which Moses had made, because the Jews had begun to worship it for an idol.  He trusted in the Lord God, and obeyed Him, more than any king of Judah.  He restored the worship of the true God in the temple, according to the law of Moses, with such pomp and glory as had never been seen since Solomon’s time.  And not only did he turn to the true God, but his people also.  From the account which we find in Chronicles, they seemed to have joined him in the good work.  They offered sin-offerings as a token of the wickedness of which they have been guilty, in leaving the true God for idols; and all other kinds of offerings freely and willingly.  “And Hezekiah rejoiced, and all the people that God had prepared the people.  Moreover, Hezekiah called all the men in Judæa up to Jerusalem, to keep the passover according to the law of Moses,” which they had neglected to do for many years, and the people answered his call and “came, and kept the feast at Jerusalem seven days, with joy and great gladness, offering peace-offerings, and making confession to the God of their fathers.  So there was great joy in Jerusalem; for since the time of Solomon there was not the like in Jerusalem.  Then the priests and the Levites arose, and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to the Lord’s holy dwelling, even to heaven.”  And when it was all finished, the people went out of their own accord, and destroyed utterly all the idols, and high places, and altars throughout the land, and returned to their houses in peace.

Now does not all this sound very satisfactory and excellent?  What better state of mind could people be in?  What a wonderful reform, and spread of true religion!  The only thing like it, that we know, is the wonderful reform and spread of religion in England in the last sixty years, after all the ungodliness and wickedness that went on from the year 1660 to the time of the French war; the building of churches, the founding of schools, the spread of Bibles, and tracts, and the wonderful increase of gospel preachers, so that every old man will tell you, that religion is talked about and written about now, a thousand times more than when he was a boy.  Indeed, unless a man makes a profession of some sort of religion or other, nowadays, he can hardly hope to rise in the world, so religious are we English become.

Now let us hear what Isaiah thought of all that wonderful spread of true religion in his time; and then, perhaps, we may see what he would think of ours now, if he were alive.  His opinion is sure to be the right one.  His rules can never fail, for he was an inspired prophet, and saw things as they are, as God sees them; and therefore his rules will hold good for ever.  Let us see what they were.

The first chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah is called “The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.”  Now this is one prophecy by itself, in the shape of a poem; for in the old Hebrew it is written in regular verses.  The second chapter begins with another heading, and is the beginning of a different poem; so that this first chapter is, as it were, a summing up of all that he is going to say afterwards; a short account of the state of the Jews for more than forty years.  And what is more, this first chapter of Isaiah must have been written in the reign of Hezekiah, in those very religious days of which I was just speaking; for it says that the country was desolate, and Jerusalem alone left.  And this never happened during Isaiah’s lifetime, till the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, that is, till this great spread of the true religion had been going on for thirteen years.  Now what was Isaiah’s vision?  What did he, being taught by God’s Spirit, see was God’s opinion of these religious Jews?  Listen, my friends, and take it solemnly to heart!

“Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.  To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts: and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.  When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?  Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.  Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.  And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.  Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. . . .  How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.  Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water; thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.  Therefore, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies.” . . .

Again, I say, my friends, listen to it, and take it solemnly to heart!  That is God’s opinion of religion, even the truest and soundest in worship and doctrine, when it is without godliness, without holiness; when it goes in hand with injustice, and covetousness, and falsehood, and cheating, and oppression, and neglect of the poor, and keeping company with the wicked, because it is profitable; in short, when it is like too much of the religion which we see around us in the world at this day.

Yes—it was of no use holding to the letter of the law while they forgot its spirit.  God had commanded church-going, and woe to those, then or now, who neglect it.  Yet the Lord asks, “Who hath required this at your hands, to tread my courts?”. . .  He had commanded the Sabbath-day to be kept holy; and woe to those, then or now, who neglect it.  Yet He says, “Your Sabbaths I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.”  The Lord had appointed feasts: and yet He says that His soul hated them; they were a trouble to Him; He was weary to bear them.  The Lord had commanded prayer; and woe to those, then or now, in England, as in Judæa, who neglect to pray.  And yet He says: “When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear.”  And why?—He himself condescends to tell them the reason, which they ought to have known for themselves: “Because,” He says, “your hands are full of blood.”  This was the reason why all their religiousness, and orthodoxy, and church-going, and praying, was only disgusting to God; because there was no righteousness with it.  Their faith was only a dead, rotten, sham faith, for it brought forth no fruits of justice and love; and their religion was only hypocrisy, for it did not make them holy.  No doubt they thought themselves pious and sincere enough; no doubt they thought that they were pleasing God perfectly, and giving Him all that He could fairly ask of them; no doubt they were fiercely offended at Isaiah’s message to them; no doubt they could not understand what he meant by calling them a hypocritical nation, a second Sodom and Gomorrah, while they were destroying idols, and keeping the law of Moses, and worshipping God more earnestly than He had been worshipped since Solomon’s time.  But so it was.  That was the message of God to them; that was the vision of Isaiah concerning them; that there was no soundness in the whole of the nation, “from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores”—that is, that the whole heart and conscience, and ways of thinking, were utterly rotten, and abominable in the sight of God, even while they were holding the true doctrines about them, and keeping up the pure worship of Him.  This, says the Lord, is not the way to please me.  “He hath showed thee, oh 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?”  To do justly, to love mercy, and then to walk humbly, sure that when you seem to have done all your duty, you have left only too much of it undone; even as St. Paul felt when he said, that though he knew nothing against himself; though he could not recollect a single thing in which he had failed of his duty to the Corinthians, yet that did not justify him.  “For he that judgeth me,” he says, “is the Lord.”  He sees deeper than I can; and He, alas! may take a very different view of my conduct from what I do; and this life of mine, which looks to me, from my ignorance, so spotless and perfect, may be, in His eyes, full of sins, and weakness, and neglects, and shameful follies.  “To walk humbly with God.”  Not to believe that because you read the Bible, and have heard the gospel, and are sharp at finding out false doctrine in preachers, and belong to the Church of England, that therefore you know all about God, and can look down upon poor papists, and heathens, and say: “This people, which knoweth not the law, is accursed: but we are enlightened, we understand the whole Bible, we know everything about God’s will, and man’s duty; and whosoever differs from us, or pretends to teach us anything new about God, must be wrong.”  Not to do so, my friends, but to believe what St. Paul tells us solemnly, “That if any man think that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know”—to believe that the Great God, and the will of God, and the love of God, and the mystery of Redemption, and the treasures of wisdom which are in His Bible, are, as St. Paul told you, boundless, like a living well, which can never be fathomed, or drawn dry, but fills again with fresh water as fast as you draw from it.  That is walking humbly with God; and those who do not do so, but like the Pharisees of old, believe that they have all knowledge, and can understand all the mysteries of the Bible, and go through the world, despising and cursing all parties but their own—let them beware, lest the Lord be saying of them, as He said of the church of Sardis, of old: “Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

How is this?  What is this strange thing, without which even the true knowledge of doctrine is of no use; which, if a man, or a nation has not, he is poor, and blind, and wretched, and naked in soul, in spite of all his religion?  Isaiah will tell us—What did he say to the Jews in his day?

“Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes.  Do justice to the fatherless, and relieve the widow!”  “Do that,” says the Lord, “and then your repentance will be sincere.  Church building and church going are well—but they are not repentance—churches are not souls.  I ask you for your hearts, and you give me fine stones and fine words.  I want souls—I want your souls—I want you to turn to me.  And what am I? saith the Lord.  I am justice, I am love, I am the God of the oppressed, the fatherless, the widow.—That is my character.  Turn to justice, turn to love, turn to mercy; long to be made just, and loving, and merciful; see that your sin has been just this, and nothing else, that you have been unjust, unloving, unmerciful.  Repent for your neglect and cruelty, and repent in dust and ashes, when you see what wretched hypocrites you really are.  And then, my boundless mercy and pardon shall be open to you.  As you wish to be to me, so will I be to you; if you wish to become merciful, you shall taste my mercy; if you wish to become loving to others, you shall find that I love you; if you wish to become just, you shall find that I am just, just to deal by you as you deal by others; faithful and just to forgive you your sins, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.  And then, all shall be forgiven and forgotten; “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

Surely, my friends, these things are worth taking to heart; for this is the sin which most destroys all men and nations—high religious profession with an ungodly, covetous, and selfish life.  It is the worst and most dangerous of all sins; for it is like a disease which eats out the heart and life without giving pain; so that the sick man never suspects that anything is the matter with him, till he finds himself, to his astonishment, at the point of death.  So it was with the Jews, three times in their history.  In the time of Isaiah, under King Hezekiah; in the time of Jeremiah, under King Josiah; and last and worst of all, in the time of Jesus Christ.  At each of these three times the Jews were high religious professors, and yet at each of these three times they were abominable before God, and on the brink of ruin.  In Isaiah’s time their eyes seemed to have been opened at last to their own sins.  Their fearful danger, and wonderful deliverance from the Assyrians of which you heard last Sunday, seem to have done that for them; as God intended it should.  During the latter part of Hezekiah’s reign they seemed to have turned to God with their hearts, and not with their lips only; and Isaiah can find no words to express the delight which the blessed change gives him.  Nevertheless, they soon fell back again into idolatry; and then there was another outward lip-reformation under the good King Josiah; and Jeremiah had to give them exactly the same warning which Isaiah had given them nearly a hundred years before.  But that time, alas! they would not take the warning; and then all the evil which had been prophesied against them came on them.  From hypocritical profession, they fell back again into their old idolatry; their covetousness, selfishness, party-quarrels, and profligate lives made them too weak and rotten to stand against Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, when he attacked them; and Jerusalem was miserably destroyed, the temple burnt, and the Jews carried captives to Babylon.  There they repented in bitter sorrow and slavery; and God allowed them after seventy years to return to their own land.  Then at first they seemed to be a really converted people, and to be worshipping God in spirit and in truth.  They never again fell back into the idolatry of the heathen.  So far from it, they became the greatest possible haters of it; they went on keeping the law of God with the utmost possible strictness, even to the day when the Lord Jesus appeared among them.  Their religious people, the Scribes and Pharisees, were the most strict, moral, devout people of the whole world.  They worshipped the very words and letters of the Bible; their thoughts seemed filled with nothing but God and the service of God: and yet the Lord Jesus told them that they were in a worse state, greater sinners in the sight of God, than they had ever been; that they, who hated idolatry, were filling up the measure of their idolatrous forefathers’ iniquity; that the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth was to fall on them; that they were a race of serpents, a generation of vipers; and that even He did not see how they could escape the damnation of hell.  And they proved how true His words were, by crucifying the very Lord of whom their much-prized Scriptures bore witness, whom they pretended to worship day and night continually; and received the just reward of their deeds in forty years of sedition, bloodshed, and misery, which ended by the Romans coming and sweeping the nation of the Jews from off the face of the earth.

So much for profession without practice.  So much for true doctrine with dishonest and unholy lives.  So much for outward respectability with inward sinfulness.  So much for hating idolatry, while all the while men’s hearts are far from God!

Oh! my friends, let us all search our hearts carefully in these times of high profession and low practice; lest we be adding our drop of hypocrisy to the great flood of it which now stifles this land of England, and so fall into the same condemnation as the Jews of old, in spite of far nobler examples, brighter and wider light, and more wonderful and bounteous blessings.

XXI.

THE UNFAITHFUL SERVANT

But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the men servants and the maid servants, and to eat and drink and to be drunken; the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him asunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.—Luke xii. 45, 46.