Sermons on National Subjects

But why with the unbelievers?  The man had not disbelieved that he had any Lord at all; he had only believed that his Lord delayed his coming.  And why was he to be put with those who do not believe in him at all?  This is a very fearful question, friends, for us, when we think how it is the fashion among us now, to believe that our Lord delays His coming.—And surely most of us do believe that?  For is it not our notion that, when the Lord Jesus ascended up to heaven, He went away a great distance off, perhaps millions of miles beyond the stars; and that He will not come back again till the last—which, for aught we know, and as we rather expect, may not happen for hundreds or thousands of years to come?  Is not that most people’s notion, rich as well as poor?  And if that is not believing that our Lord delays His coming, what is?

But, you may answer, the Creed says plainly, that He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God.  Ah! my friends, those great words of the Creed which you take into your lips every Sunday, mean the very opposite to what most people fancy.  They do not say, “The Lord Jesus has left this poor earth to itself and its misery:” but they say, “Lo, He is with you, even to the end of the world.”  True, He is ascended into heaven.  And how far off is heaven?—for so far off is the Lord Jesus, and no farther.  Not so far off, my friends, after all, if you knew where to find it.  Truly said the great and good poet, now gone home to his reward:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

And if we lose sight of it as we grow up to be men and women, it is not because heaven goes farther off, but because we grow less heavenly.  Even now, so close is heaven to us, that any one of us might enter into heaven this moment, without stirring from his seat.  One real cry from the depths of your heart—“Father, forgive thy sinful child!”—one real feeling of your own worthlessness, and weakness, and emptiness, and of God’s righteousness, and love, and mercy, ready for you—and you are in heaven there and then, as near the feet of the blessed Lord Jesus, as Mary Magdalen was, when she tried to clasp them in the garden.  I am serious, my friends; I am not given to talk fine figures of poetry; I am talking sober, straightforward, literal truth.  And the Lord sits at God’s right hand too? you believe that?  Then how far off is God?—for as far off as God is, so far off is the Lord Jesus, and no farther.  What says St. Paul?  That “God is not far off from any one of us—for in Him we live, and move, and have our being” . . . IN Him . . . .  How far off is that?  And is not God everywhere, if indeed we can say that He is any where?  Then the Lord Jesus, who is at God’s right hand, is everywhere also—here, now, with us this day.  One would have thought that there was no need to prove that by argument, considering that His own blessed lips told us: “Lo, I am with you, even to the end of the world;” and again: “Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”  And this is the Lord whom people fancy is gone away far above the stars, till the end of time!  Oh, my friends, rather bow your heads before Him here this moment.  For here He is among us now, listening to every thought of our poor sinful hearts. . . .  He is where God is—God in whom we live, and move, and have our being—and that is everywhere.  Do you wish Him to be any nearer, my friends?  Or do you—do you—take care what your hearts answer, for He is watching them—do you in the depth of your hearts wish that He were a little farther off?  Does the notion of His being here on this earth, watching and interfering (as we call it nowadays in our atheism) with us and everything, seem unpleasant and burdensome?  Is it more comfortable to you to think that He is away far up beyond the stars?  Do you feel the lighter and freer for fancying that He will not visit the earth for many a year to come?  In short, is it in your hearts that you are saying, The Lord delays His coming?

That is a very important question.  For mind, a pious man might be, as many a pious man has been in these days, deceived by bad teaching into the notion that Jesus Christ was gone far away.  But if he were a truly pious man, if he truly loved the Lord, that would be a painful thought—as I should have fancied, an unbearable thought—to him, when he looked out upon this poor miserable, confused world.  He would be crying night and day: “Oh, that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down!”  He would be in an agony of pity for this poor deserted earth, and of longing for the Saviour of it to come back and save it.  He would never have a moment’s peace of mind till he had either seen the Lord come back again in His glory, or till he had found out—what I am sure the blessed Lord would teach him as a reward for his love—that it was all a dream and a nightmare, and that the Lord of the earth was in the earth, and close to him, all along; only that his weak eyes were held so that he did not know the Lord and the Lord’s works when he saw them.

But that was not the temper of this servant in the Lord’s parable.  I am afraid it is by no means the temper of many of us nowadays.  The servant said in his heart, that his master would be long away.  It was his heart put the thought into his head.  He took to the notion heartily, as we say, because he was glad to believe it was true; glad to think that his master would not come to “interfere” with him; and that in the meantime he might be lord and master himself, and treat everyone in the house as if he himself was the owner of it, and tyrannise over his fellow-servants, and enjoy himself in luxury and good living.  So says David of the fool: “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God;” his heart puts that thought into his head.  He wishes to believe that there is no God; and when there is a will there is a way; and he soon finds out reasons and arguments enough to prove what he is so very anxious to prove.

Now, my friends, I am afraid that there is not so much difference as people fancy, between the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God,” and the fool who says in his heart, “My master delays His coming.”—“God has left the world to us, and we must shift for ourselves in it.”  The man who likes to be what St. Paul calls “without God in the world,” is he so very much wiser than the man who likes to have no God at all?  St. James did not think so; for what does he say: “Thou believest that there is one God?  Thou doest well—the devils also believe and tremble.”  They know as much as that; but it does them no good—only increases their fear.  “But wilt thou know, oh! vain man, that faith without works,” believing without doing, “is dead?”  And are not too many, as I said just now, afraid of the thought of God; so afraid of it that they wish to allow the Son of God as little share as possible in the management of this world?  Have not too many a belief without works; a mere belief that there is one God and not two, which hardly, from one year’s end to another, makes them do one single thing which they would not have done if they had believed that there was no God at all?  Fear of the law, fear of the policeman, fear of losing their work or their custom; fear of losing their neighbour’s good word—that is what keeps most people from breaking loose.  There is not much of the fear of God in that, or the love of God either as far as I can see.  They go through life as if they had made a covenant with God, that He should have his own way in the world to come, if He would only let them have their way in this world.  Oh! my friends, my friends, do you think God is God of the next world and not of this also?  Do you think the kingdom, and the power, and the glory will be His a great many hundreds of years hence, in what you call heaven; and will not see what every page of Scripture tells you, what you yourself say every time you repeat the Lord’s Prayer, that the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory are His now, here in this life, and that He has committed all things to His Son Jesus Christ and given the power into His hand, that He may rule this earth in righteousness now, here, in this life, and conquer back for God one by one, if it be possible, every creature upon earth?  So says the Bible—and people profess nowadays to believe their Bibles.  My friends, too many, nowadays, while they profess very loudly to believe what the Bible says, only believe what their favourite teachers tell them that the Bible says.  If they really read their Bibles for themselves, and took God at His word, there would be less tyrannising of one man over another, less grinding down of men by masters, and of men by each other—for the poor are often very hard on each other in England, now, my friends—very envious and spiteful, and slanderous about each other.  They say that dog won’t eat dog—yet how many a poor man grudges and supplants his neighbour, and tries to get into his place and beat him down in his wages?  And there are those who call themselves learned men, who tell the poor that that is God’s will, and the way by which God intends them to prosper.  If those men believed their Bibles, they would be repenting in sackcloth and ashes for having preached such a devil’s sermon to God’s children.  If men really read their Bibles, there would be less eating and drinking with the drunken; less idleness and luxury among the rich; less fancying that a man has a right to do what he likes with his own, because all men would know that they were only the Lord’s stewards, bound to give an account to him of the good which they had done with what he has lent them.  There would be fewer parents fancying that they can tyrannise over their children, bringing them up as heathens for the sake of the few pence they earn; using bad language, and doing shameful things before them, which they dared not do if they recollected that the Lord was looking on; beating and scolding them as if they were brutes or slaves, to save themselves the trouble of teaching them gently what the poor little creatures cannot know without being taught: and most shameful of all, robbing the poor children of their little earnings to spend it themselves in drunkenness.  Ah, blessed Lord! if people did but know how near Thou wert to them, all that would vanish out of England, as the night clouds vanish away before the sun!

And He is near, my friends: He is watching; He is governing; He is at hand: and in this life or in the life to come, forget Him as we choose, He will make us know plain enough, and without any doubt whatsoever, that He is the Lord.

He has fulfilled this awful parable of his about the unfaithful servant already; many a time, against many a man, many a great king, and prince, and nation; and he will fulfil it against each and every man, from the nobleman in his castle to the labourer in his cottage, who says in his heart, “My Lord delays his coming,” and begins to tyrannise over those who are weaker than himself, and to enjoy himself as he likes, and forget that he is not his own, but bought with the price of Christ’s blood, and bound to work for Christ’s kingdom and glory.

So he punished the popes of Rome, three hundred years ago.  When all the nations in Europe were listening to them and obeying them, and they had put into their hands by God a greater power of doing good than He ever gave to any human being before or since, what did they do?  Instead of using their power for Christ, they used it for themselves.  Instead of preaching to all nations the good news that Christ the Son of God was their King, they said: “I, the pope, am your king.  Christ is gone far away into heaven, and has committed all power on earth to us; we are Christ’s vicars; we are in Christ’s place; He has entrusted to our keeping all the treasures of His merits and His grace, and no one can get any blessing from Christ, unless we choose to give it him.”  So they said in their hearts just what the foolish servant in the parable said: and fancying that they were lords and masters, naturally enough went on to behave as such; to beat the men-servants and maid-servants, that is, to oppress and tyrannise over the bodies and minds and consciences of men, and women too, God knows; and to eat and drink with the drunken, to live in riot and debauchery.  But the Lord was not so far off as those foolish popes fancied.  And in an hour when they were not aware, He came and cut them asunder.  He snatched from them one-half of the nations of Europe, and England among the rest; He punished them by doubt, ignorance, confusion, and utter blindness, and appointed them their portion among the unbelievers in such terrible earnest, that to this very day, to judge by the things which they say and do, it is difficult to persuade ourselves that the popes really believe in any God at all.

So He did, only three years ago, to many kings and princes on the Continent.[1 - In 1848–49.]  They professed to be Christians; but they had forgotten that they were Christ’s stewards, that all their power came from Him, and that he had given it them only to use for the good of their subjects.  And they too went on saying:  “The Lord delays His coming, we are rulers in this world, and God is ruler in the world to come.”  So they, too, oppressed their subjects, and lived in ease on what they wrung out of the poor wretches below them.  But the Lord was nearer them, too, than they fancied; and all at once—as they were fancying themselves all safe and prosperous, and saying, “We are those who ought to speak, who is Lord over us?”—their fool’s paradise crumbled from under their feet.  A few paltry mobs of foolish starving people, without weapons, without leaders, without good counsel to guide them, rose against them.  And what did they do?  They might have crushed down the rebels most of them, in a week, if they had had courage.  And in the only country where the rebels were really strong, that is, in Austria, all might have been quiet again at once, if the king had only had the heart to do common justice, and keep his own solemn oaths.  But no—the terror of the Lord came upon them.  He most truly cut them in sunder.  They were every man of a different mind, and none of them in the same mind a day together; they became utterly conscience-stricken, terrified, perplexed, at their wit’s end, not having courage or determination to do anything, or even to do nothing, and fled shamefully away one after another, to their everlasting disgrace.  And those of them who have got back their power since are showing sadly enough, by their obstinate folly and wickedness, that the Lord has appointed them their portion with the unbelievers, and left them to fill up the measure of their iniquity, and drink deep the cup of wrath which is in His hand, full and mixed for those who forget God.

Oh! my friends, let us lay these things solemnly to heart.  Do not fancy that the Lord will punish the wicked great, and forget the wicked small.  In His sight there is neither great nor small; all are small enough for Him to crush like the moth; and all are too great to be overlooked, or forgotten by Him, without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground.  Again I say, my friends, let us lay His parable to heart.  Let us who have property, and station, and education, never forget who has given it us, and for whom we must use it.  Let us never forget that to whom much is given, of them will much be required.  Let us pray to the Lord daily to write upon our inmost hearts those solemn words: “Who made thee to differ from another; and what hast thou which thou didst not receive?”  Let us look on our servants, our labourers, on every human being over whom we have any influence, as weaker brothers whom God has commanded us to help, teach, and guide in body, mind, and spirit, not that we may make them our slaves, but make them free, manful, self-helping, and in due time independent of us and of everyone except God.

And you young people, who have no authority over anyone, but over your own bodies; to whom the Lord has given little or nothing to manage and take care of except your own health and strength—do not let the devil tempt you to believe that that health and strength is your own property, to do what you like with.  It belongs to the Lord who died for you, and He will require an account from you how you have used it.  Do not let the devil tempt you to believe that the Lord delays His coming to you—that you may do what you like now, in the prime of your years, and that it will be time enough to think about God and religion when God visits you with cares, and sickness, and old age.  That is the fancy of too many; but it will surely turn out to be a mistake.  Those who misuse their youth, and health, and strength, in tyrannising over those who are weaker than themselves, and laughing at those who are not as clever as themselves, and eating and drinking with the drunken—the Lord will come to them in an hour when they are not aware, and cut them asunder, in some way or other, by loss of work, or poverty, or sickness, or doubt and confusion, and bitter shame and perplexity of mind; till they find out, poor things, that they have been living like the unbelievers all their youth, without God in the world, while God’s love and God’s teaching, and God’s happiness was ready for them; and have to go back again to their Father and their Lord, and cry: “Father, we have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and are no more worthy to be called Thy children!”  Oh, you who have been fancying that the Lord was gone far away, and that you had a right to do what you liked with the powers which He has given you, go back to Him, now at once, and confess that you, and all belonging to you, belong to Him, and ask Him to teach you how to use it aright.  Ask Him to teach you how to please Him with it, and not yourselves only.  Ask Him to teach you how to do good to all around you, and not merely to do what you like.  Ask Him to show you how to do your duty to Him, and to your neighbours, for whom He died on the cross, in that station of life to which He has called you.  Ask Him to show you how to use your property, your knowledge, your business, your strength, your health, so that you may be a blessing and a help to those whom He blesses and helps, and who, He wishes, should bless and help each other.  Go back to Him at once, my friends.  You will not have far to go, seeing that He is now even among us here hearing my clumsy words; and I do hope, and trust, and pray, bringing them home to some of your hearts with that spirit and power of His, which is like a two-edged sword, piercing to the very depths of a man’s heart, and showing him how ugly it is—and how noble the Lord will make it, if he will but repent and pray to Him who never cast out any that came to Him.

XXII.

THE WAY TO WEALTH

Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.—Isaiah lv. 6, 7.

Some of you, surely, while the first lesson was being read this morning, must have felt the beauty of it; and if you were thoughtful, perplexed, weary, sad at heart, perhaps you felt that it was more than beautiful—that it was full of comfort.  And so it should be full of comfort to you, my friends.  God meant it to give you comfort.  For though it was written and spoken by a man of like passions with ourselves, it was just as truly written and spoken by God, who made heaven and earth.  It is true and everlasting, the message which it brings, and like all true and everlasting words, it is the voice of God who cannot change; who makes no difference between Jew and Gentile, between us in England here, and nations which perished hundreds of years ago.

And what is its message?  What was God’s word to the old Jews, among all their sin, and sorrow, and labour?

Is it the message of a stern judge, saying: “Pay me that thou owest, to the uttermost farthing; and if you cannot do that, fret and torment yourselves in shame and terror here on earth, for all your sins, if, possibly, you may chance to change my mind, and find forgiveness at the last day?”

Is it the message of a proud tyrant, saying: “If you are miserable, and fallen, and sinful, what is that to me?  I am perfect, blest, contented with myself, alone in my glory, far away beyond the sight of men, beyond the sun and stars—what are you worms of earth to me?”

Or is it the voice of a loving Father, calling to his self-willed children who have gone proudly and boldly away from their Father’s house, and thrown off their Father’s government, and said in their conceit: “We are men.  Do not we know good and evil?  Do we not know what is our interest?  Cannot we judge for ourselves, and shift for ourselves, and take care of ourselves?  Why are we to be barred from pleasant things here, and profitable things there?  We will be our own masters.”

To self-willed children who have said thus, and done thus in their foolish hearts, and have found all their conceit, and shrewdness, only lead them into sorrow, and perplexity, and distress.—Who have found that with all their cleverness they could not get the very good things for which they left their Father’s house; or if they get them, find no enjoyment in them, but only discontent, and shame, and danger, and a sad self-accusing heart—spending their money for that which does not feed them after all, and labouring hard for things which do not satisfy them; always longing for something more—always finding the pleasure, or the profit, or the honour which a little way off looked so fine, looked quite ugly and worthless, when they come up to it and get hold of it—finding all things full of labour; the eye never satisfied with seeing, or the ear with hearing; the same thing coming over and over again.  Each young man starting with gay hopes, as if he were the first man that ever was born, and he was going to do out of hand such fine things as man never did before, and make his own fortune, and set the world to right at once; and then as he grows older, falling into the same weary ruts as his forefathers went dragging on it, every fresh year bringing its own labour and its own sorrow; and dying like them, taking nothing away with him of all he has earned, and crying with his last breath: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.  What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun, for all is vanity and vexation of spirit?”

To self-willed children, who have tried their own way ever since they were born, they and their fathers before them, and found it go round in a ring and leave them just where they started in heart and soul, and, on their death-beds, in purse and power also—

To such struggling, dissatisfied beings—such as nine-tenths of the men and women on this earth, alas! are still—comes the word of this loving Father:

“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters! and he that hath no money, come, buy and eat.  Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money, and without price.”  Why do you fancy that money can give you all you want?  Why this labouring and straining after money, as if it was God, as if it made heaven and earth, and all therein?  Is money a God? or money’s worth? “I am God,” saith the Lord, “and beside me there is none else.  It is I who give, and not money.  It is I who save men, and not money.  And I do save, and I do give freely to all.  Come, and try my mercy, and see if my word be not true.”

This struggling and snarling, like dogs over a bone—what profit comes of it? are you happier? are you wiser? are you better? are you more at peace with your neighbours; more at peace with your own hearts and consciences?  If you are, money has not made you so, nor plotting, and scraping, and struggling, and pushing your neighbour down, that you may rise a few inches on his shoulders.  No.  Hear what the voice of your Father says is the true way to wealth and comfort, after which you all struggle and labour so hard in vain.—“Hearken diligently unto me, and you shall eat that which is good, and your soul shall delight itself in fatness.  Incline your ear and come unto me.  Hear, and your soul shall live.  And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies,” or rather “the faithful oath which I sware unto David?”  And what is this faithful oath which God sware to David.—“Of the fruit of thy body, I will set on thy seat.”  A promise of a righteous king who should arise in David’s family.  How far David understood the full meaning of that glorious promise we cannot tell.  He thought most probably, at first, that Solomon, his son, was to be the king who would fulfil it.  But all through many of his psalms, there are deep and great words about some nobler and more perfect king than Solomon—about one who, as Isaiah says here, would perfectly witness to the people that God was their King; one who would be a perfect leader and commander of the people; a holy one of Israel, who would sit on God’s right hand; to hear the good news of whom, the Jews would call nations whom they then did not know of, and for whose sake nations who did not know them would run to them.  And dimly David did see this, that God would raise up a true Christ, that is, one truly anointed by God, chosen and sent out by God, to sit on his throne, and be perfectly what David was only in part; a King made perfect by suffering, a King of poor men, a King who bore the sins and carried the iniquities of all His people, from the highest to the lowest.  We know who that was.  We know clearly what David only knew dimly, what Isaiah only knew a little more clearly.  We know who was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, ascended into heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God, ever praying for us, ruling the world in righteousness, Jesus the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth.

But Isaiah, though he knew Him only dimly, still knew Him.  He did not know that the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, would take on Himself the form of a poor man, and be called the son of the carpenter.  Such boundless love and condescension in the Son of God he never could have fancied for himself, and God had not chosen to reveal it to him; or to anyone else in those days.  But this he did see, that the Lord Jesus, He whom he calls the Holy One of Israel, was near the Jews in his time; that He was watching over them, mourning over their sins, arguing with them, and calling them to return to Him with most human love and tenderness, as a husband to the woman whom he loves in spite of her unfaithfulness to him.  As he says to his sinful and distressed country in the chapter before this: “Thy Maker is thy husband: the Lord of Hosts is His name, and thy Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, the Lord of the whole earth shall He be called.  For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit.  For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.  In a little anger I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.”

This, then, Isaiah knew—that the heart of the Holy Lord pitied and yearned after those poor sinful Jews, as a husband’s after a foolish and sinful wife.  And how much more should we believe the same, how much more should we believe that His heart pities and yearns for all foolish and sinful people here in England now!  We who know a thousand times more than Isaiah knew of His love, His pity, His condescension, which led Him to sacrifice Himself upon the cross for us?  Surely, surely, if Isaiah had a right to say to those Jews, “Seek the Lord while He may be found,” I have a thousand times as much right to say it to you.  If Isaiah had a right to say to those Jews, “Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon,” then I have a right to say it to you.

Free mercy, utter pardon, pardon for all, even for the worst.  And what is the argument which Isaiah uses to make his countrymen repent?  Is it “Repent, or you shall be damned: Repent because God’s wrath and curse is against you.  The Lord hates you and despises you, and you must crawl to His feet like beaten hounds, and entreat Him not to strike you into hell as He intends”?  Not so; it was because God loved the Jews, that they were to repent.  It is because God loves you that you must repent.  “Incline your ear,” saith the Lord, “and come unto me, hear, and your soul shall live; and you shall eat that which is good, and your soul shall delight itself in fatness.”  Yes, God is love.  God’s delight and glory is to give; in spite of all our sins He gives and gives, sending rain and fruitful seasons to just and unjust, to fill their hearts with joy and gladness; and all the while men fancy that it is not God that gives, but they who take.  God has not left Himself, as St. Paul says, without a witness; every fruitful shower and quickening gleam of sunshine cries to us—See! God is love: He is the giver.  And men will not hear that voice.  They say in their hearts, “The Lord is far away above the skies; He does not care for us: we must help ourselves, each man to what he can get off this earth; nay, even, when we are hard put to it for a living, we must break God’s laws to keep ourselves alive, and so steal from God’s table the very good things which He offers us freely.”

But some will say: “He does not give freely; we must work and struggle.  Why do you mock poor hard-worked creatures with such words as these?”

Ask that question of God, my friends, and not of me.  Isaiah said that those who hearkened to God diligently should eat what is good.  The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said the same—that if we seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, all other things should be added to them.  He did not mean us to be idle, God forbid! but this He meant, that if we, each in his business and calling, put steadily before ourselves what is right, what God would wish us, His subjects, to be in His Kingdom—if instead of making our first thought in every business we take in hand, “What will suit my interest best, what will raise most money, what will give me most pleasure?” we said to ourselves all day long, “What will be most right, and just, and merciful for us to do; what will be most pleasing to a God who is love and justice itself? what will do most good to my neighbour as well as myself?” then all things would go well with us.  Then we should be prosperous and joyful.  Then our plans would succeed and our labour bring forth real profit to us, because they would be according to the will of God: we should be fellow-workers with Jesus Christ in the great work of doing good to this poor distracted world, and His help and blessing would be with us.

And if you ask me, how can this come to pass, I must answer, as Isaiah does in this same chapter: “The Lord’s ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, but higher than ours, as the heavens are above the earth.”  But if we do turn to God, and repent each man of us of his selfishness, his unfaithfulness, his hard-heartedness, his covetousness, his self-will, his ungodliness—then God’s blessing, as Isaiah says, will come down on us, and spring up among us, we know not how or whence, like the rain and snow, which comes down from heaven and waters the earth, and makes it bud and bring forth to give seed to the sower and bread to the eater.  So shall be the Lord’s word, which goes out of His mouth; it will not return to Him void, but will accomplish what He pleases, and prosper in that whereto He sends it.  He will teach us and guide us in the right way.  He will put His word into the mouths of true teachers to show us our duty.  He will pour out His spirit upon us, to make us love our duty.  In one way and another, we know not how, we shall be taught what is good for England, good for each parish, good for each family.  And wealth, peace, and prosperity for rich and poor will be the fruit of obeying the word of God, and giving up our hearts to be led by His spirit.  As it was to be in Judæa, of old, if they repented, so will it be with us.  They should go forth with joy and do their work in peace.  The hills should break before them into singing, and all the trees of the field should clap their hands; instead of thorns should come up timber-trees: instead of briers, garden-shrubs.  The whole cultivation of the country was to improve, and be to the Lord for a name, and a sign for ever that the true way to wealth and prosperity is the way of God, justice, mercy to each other, and obedience to the will of Him who made heaven and earth, trees and fruitful fields, rain and sunshine, and gives the blessings of them freely to His children of mankind, in proportion as they look up to Him as a loving Father, and return to him day by day, with childlike repentance, and full desire to amend their lives according to His holy word.

XXIII.

THE LOVE OF CHRIST

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead.  And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.—2 Cor. v. 14, 15.

What is the use of sermons?—what is the use of books?  Here are hundreds and thousands of people hearing weekly and daily what is right, and how many do what is right?—much less love what is right?  What can be the reason of this, that men should know the better and choose the worse?  What motive can one find out?—what reason or argument can one put before people, to make them do their duty?  How can one stir them up to conquer themselves; to conquer their own love of pleasure, laziness, cowardice, conceit, above all their own selfishness, and do simply what is right, morning, noon, and night?  That is a question worth asking and considering, for there ought to be some use in sermons and in books; and there ought to be some use in every one of us too.  Woe to the man who is of no use!  The Lord have mercy on his soul; for he needs it!  It is, indeed, worth his while to take any trouble which will teach him a motive for being useful; in plain words, stir him up to do his duty, to do his rights; for a man’s rights are not, as the world thinks, what is right others should do to him, but what is right he should do to others.  Our duty is our right, the only thing which is right for us.  What motive will constrain us, that is, bind us, and force us to do that?

Will self-interest?  Will a man do right because you tell him it is his interest, it will pay him to do it?  Look round you and see.—The drunkard knows that drinking will ruin him, and yet he gets drunk.  The spendthrift knows that extravagance will ruin him, and yet he throws away his money still.  The idler knows that he is wasting his only chance for all eternity, and yet he puts the thought out of his head, and goes on idling.  The cheat knows that he is in danger of being almost certainly found out sooner or later; he knows too that he is burdening his own conscience with the curse of inward shame and self-contempt; and yet he goes on cheating.  The hard master knows, or ought to know (for there is quite enough to prove it to him) that it would pay him better in the long run to be more merciful, and less covetous; that by grinding those whom he employs down to the last farthing, he degrades them till they become burdens on him and curses to him; that what he gains by high prices, he will lose in the long run by bad debts; that what he saves in low wages, he will pay in extra poor-rates; and that even if he does make money out of the flesh and bones of those beneath him, that money ill gotten is sure to be ill spent, that there is a curse on it, that it brings a curse in the gnawing of a man’s own conscience, and a curse too in the way it flows away from his family as fast as it flowed to them.  “He that by usury and unjust gain increases his wealth, shall gather for him that will pity the poor.”  So said Solomon of old.  And men who worship Mammon find it come true daily, and see that, taking all things together, a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses, and that those who make such haste to be rich, fall, as the apostle says, “into temptation and a snare, and pierce themselves through with many sorrows.”  Such a man sees his neighbours making money, and making themselves more unhappy, anxious, discontented by it; he sees, in short, that it is not his interest to do nothing but make money and save money: and yet in spite of that, he thinks of nothing else.  Self-interest cannot keep him from that sin.  I do not believe that self-interest ever kept any man from any sin, though it may keep him from many an imprudence.  Self-interest may make many a man respectable, but whom did it ever make good?  You may as well make house-walls of paper, or take a rush for a walking-stick, as take self-interest to keep you upright, or even prudent.  The first shake—and the rush bends, and the paper wall breaks, and a man’s selfish prudence is blown to the winds.  Let pleasure tempt him, or ambition, or the lust of making money by speculation; let him take a spite against anyone; let him get into a passion; let his pride be hurt; and he will do the maddest things, which he knows to be entirely contrary to his own interest, just to gratify the fancy of the moment.  Those who call themselves philosophers, and fancy that men’s self-interest, if they can only feel it strong enough, would make all men just and merciful to each other, know as little of human nature as they do of God or the devil.

What will make a man to do his duty?  Will the hope of heaven?  That depends very much upon what you mean by heaven.  But what people commonly mean by going to heaven, is—not going to hell.  They believe that they must go to either one place or the other.  They would much sooner of course stay on earth for ever, because their treasure is here, and their heart too.  But that cannot be, and as they have no wish to go to hell, they take up with heaven instead, by way of making the best of a bad matter.

I ask you solemnly, my friends, each one of you, which would you sooner do—stay here on earth, or go to heaven?  You need not answer me.  I am afraid many of you would not dare answer me as you really felt, because you would be ashamed of not liking to go to heaven.  But answer God.  Answer yourselves in the sight of God.  When you keep yourselves back from doing a wrong thing, because you know it is wrong, is it for love of heaven, or for mere fear of being punished in hell?  Some of you will answer boldly at once: “For neither one nor the other; when we keep from wrong, it is because we hate and despise what is wrong: when we do right it is because it is right and we ought to do it.  We can’t explain it, but there is something in us which tells us we ought to do right.”  Very good, my friends, I shall have a word to say to you presently; but in the meantime there are some others who have been saying to themselves: “Well, I know we do right because we are afraid of being punished if we do not do it, but what of that? at all events we get the right thing done, and leave the wrong thing undone, and what more do you want?  Why torment us with disagreeable questions as to why we do it?”

Now, my friends, to make the matter simpler, I will take you at your words, for the sake of argument.  Suppose you do avoid sin from the fear of hell, does that make what you do right?  Does that make you right?  Does that make your heart right?  It is a great blessing to a man’s neighbours, certainly, if he is kept from doing wrong any how—by the fear of hell, or fear of jail, or fear of shame, or fear of ghosts if you like, or any other cowardly and foolish motive—a great blessing to a man’s neighbours: but no blessing, that I can see, to the man himself.  He is just the same; his heart is not changed; his heart is no more right in the sight of God, or in the sight of any man of common sense either, than it would be if he did the wrong thing, which he loves and dare not do.  You feel that yourselves about other people.  You will say “That man has a bad heart, for all his respectable outside.  He would be a rogue if he dared, and therefore he is a rogue.”  Just so, I say, my friends, take care lest God should say of you, “He would be a sinner if he dared, and therefore he is a sinner.”

How can the hope of heaven, or the fear of hell, make a man do right?  The right thing, the true thing for a man, is to be loving, and do loving things; and can fear of hell do that, or hope of heaven either?  Can a man make himself affectionate to his children because he fancies he shall be punished if he is not so, and rewarded if he is so?  Will the hope of heaven send men out to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, visit the sick, preach the gospel to the poor?—The Papists say it will.  I say it will not.  I believe that even in those who do these things from hope of heaven and fear of hell, there is some holier, nobler, more spiritual motive, than such everlasting selfishness, such perfect hypocrisy, as to do loving works for others, for the sake of one’s own self-love.

What feeling then is there left which will bind a man to do good, not once in a way, but always and habitually? to do good, not only to himself, but to all around him?  I know but of one, my friends, and that is Love.  There are many sides to love—admiration, reverence, gratitude, pity, affection—they are all different shapes of that one great spirit of love.  Surely all of you have felt its power more or less; how wonderfully it can conquer a man’s whole heart, change his whole conduct.  For love of a woman; for pity to those in distress; for admiration for anyone who is nobler and wiser than himself; for gratitude to one who has done him kindness; for loyalty to one to whom he feels he owes a service—a man will dare to do things, and suffer things, which no self-interest or fear in the world could have brought him to.  Do you not know it yourselves?  Is it not fondness for your wives and children, that will make you slave and stint yourselves of pleasure more than any hope of gain could ever do?  But there is no one human being, my friends, whom we can meet among us now, for whom we can feel all these different sorts of love?  Surely not: and yet there must be One Person somewhere for whom God intends us to feel them all at once; or else He would not have given all these powers to us, and made them all different branches of one great root of love.  There must be One Person somewhere, who can call out the whole love in us—all our gratitude; all our pity; all our admiration; all our loyalty; all our brotherly affection.  And there is One, my friends.  One who has done for us more than ever husband or father, wife or brother, can do to call out our gratitude.  One who has suffered for us more than the saddest wretch upon this earth can suffer, to call out our pity.  One who is nobler, purer, more lovely in character than all others who ever trod this earth, to call out our admiration.  One who is wiser, mightier than all rulers and philosophers, to call out all our reverence.  One who is tenderer, more gentle, more feeling-hearted, than the kindest woman who ever sat by a sick bed, to call out all our love.  Of whom can I be speaking?  Of whom but of Jesus; He who for us stooped out of the heaven of heavens; for us left His eternal glory in the bosom of the Father; for us took upon Him the form of a servant, and was born of a village maiden, and was called the son of a carpenter; for us wandered this earth for thirty years in sorrow and shame; for us gave His back to the scourge, and His face to shameful spitting; for us hung upon the cross and died the death of the felon and the slave.  Oh! my friends, if that story will not call out our love, what will?  If we cannot admire Christ, whom can we admire?  If we cannot be grateful to Christ, to whom can we be grateful?  If we cannot pity Christ, whom can we pity?  If we cannot feel bound in honour to live for Christ, to work for Christ, to delight in talking of Christ, thinking of Christ, to glory in doing Christ’s commandments to the very smallest point, to feel no sacrifice too great, no trouble too petty, if we can please Christ by it and help forward Christ’s kingdom upon earth—if we cannot feel bound in honour to do that for Christ, what honour is there in us?  Again, I say, if we cannot love Christ, whom can we love?  If the remembrance of what He has worked for us will not stir us up to work for Him, what will stir us up?

I say it again, we are bound by every tie, by every feeling that can bind man to man, to devote ourselves to Christ, the Man of all men.  I say this is no dream or fancy, it is an actual fact which thousands and hundreds of thousands on this earth have felt.  Nothing but love to Christ, nothing but loving Him because He first loved us, can constrain and force a man as with a mighty feeling which he cannot resist, to labour day and night for Christ’s sake, and therefore for the sake of God the Father of Christ.  What else do you suppose it was which could have stirred up the apostles—above all, that wise, learned, high-born, prosperous man, St. Paul, to leave house and home, and wander in daily danger of his life?  What does St. Paul say himself?  “The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, and if one died for all then were all dead, and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them.”  And what else could have kept St. Paul through all that labour and sorrow of his own choosing, of which he speaks in the chapter before?—“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body; for we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.”

We may say that St. Paul was an exceedingly benevolent man, and that made him do it; or that he had found out certain new truths and opinions which delighted him very much, and therefore he did it.  But St. Paul gives no such account of himself: and we have no right to take anyone’s account but his own.  He knew his own heart best.  He does not say that he came to preach a scheme of redemption, or opinions about Christ.  He says he came to preach nothing but Christ Himself—Christ crucified—to tell people about the Lord he loved, about the Lord who loved him, certain that when they had heard the plain story of Him, their hearts, if they were simple, and true, and loving, would leap up in answer to his words, and find out, as by instinct, what Christ had done for them, what they were to do for Christ.  Ay, I believe, my friends—indeed I am certain—from my own reading, that in every age and country, just in proportion as men have loved Christ personally as a man would love another man, just in that proportion have they loved their neighbours, worked for their neighbours, sacrificed their time, their pleasure, their money, to do good to all, for the sake of Him who commanded: “If ye love ME, keep my commandments; and my commandment is this, that ye should love one another as I have loved you.”  That is the only sure motive.  All other motives for doing good or being good, will fail in one case or another case, because they do not take possession of a man’s whole heart, but only of some part of his heart.  Love—love to Christ, can alone sweep away a man’s whole heart and soul with it, and renew it, and transfigure it, and make it strong instead of weak, pure instead of foul, gentle instead of fierce, brave instead of being vain and cowardly, and fearing what everyone will say of him.  Only love for Christ, who loved all men unto the death, will make us love all men too: not only one here and there who may agree with us or help us; but those who hate us, those who misunderstand us, those who thwart us, ay, even those who disobey and slight not only us, but Jesus Christ Himself.  That is the hardest lesson of all to learn; but thousands have learnt it; everyone ought to learn it.  In proportion as a man loves Christ, he will learn to love those who do not love Christ.  For Christ loves them whether they know it or not; Christ died for them whether they believe it or not; and we must love them because our Saviour loves them.

Oh! my friends, why do so few love Christ?  Why do so few live as those who are not their own, but bought with the price of His precious blood and bound to devote themselves, body and soul, to His cause?  Why do so many struggle against their sins, while yet they cannot break off those sins, but go struggling and sinning on, hating their sins and yet unable to break through their sins, like birds beating themselves to death against the wires of their cage?  Why?  Because they do not know Christ.  And how can they know Him, unless they read their Bibles with simple, childlike hearts, determined to let the Bible tell its own story: believing that those who walked with Christ on earth, must know best what He was like?  Why?  Because they will not ask Christ to come and show Himself to them, and make them see Him, and love Him, and admire Him, whether they will or not.  Oh! remember, if Christ be the Son of God, the Lord of heaven and earth, we cannot go to Him, poor, weak, ignorant creatures as we are.  We cannot ascend up into heaven to bring Christ down.  He must come down out of His own great love and condescension, and dwell in our hearts as He has promised to do, if we do but love Him.  He must come down and show Himself to us.  Oh! read your Bibles—read the story of Christ, and if that does not stir up in you some love for Him, you must have hearts of stone, not flesh and blood.  And then go to Him; pray to Him, whether you believe in Him altogether or not, upon the mere chance of His being able to hear you and help you.  You would not throw away a chance on earth; will you throw away such a chance in heaven as having the Son of God to help you?  Oh, cry to Him; say out of the depths of your heart: “Thou most blessed and glorious Being who ever walked this earth, who hast gone blameless through all sorrow and temptation that man can feel; if Thou dost love anyone, if Thou canst hear anyone, hear me!  If thou canst not help me, no one can.  I have a hundred puzzling questions which I cannot answer for myself, a hundred temptations which I cannot conquer for myself, a hundred bad habits which I cannot shake off of myself; and they tell me that Thou canst teach me, Thou canst guide me, Thou canst strengthen me, Thou canst take out of my heart this shame and gnawing of an evil conscience.  If Thou be the Son of God, make me clean!  If it be true that Thou lovest all men, show Thy love to me!  If it be true that Thou canst teach all men, teach me!  If it be true that Thou canst help all men, help my unbelief, for if Thou dost not, there is no help for me in heaven or earth!”  You, who are sinful, distracted, puzzled, broken-hearted, cry to Christ in that way, if you have no better way, and see if He does not hear you.  He is not one to break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax.  He will hear you, for He has heard all who have ever called on Him.  Cry to Him from the bottom of your hearts.  Tell Him that you do not love Him, and that yet you long to love Him.  And see if you do not find it true that those who come to Christ, He will in no wise cast out.  He may not seem to answer you the first time, or the tenth time, or for years; for Christ has His own deep, loving, wise ways of teaching each man, and for each man a different way.  But try to learn all you can of Him.  Try to know Him.  Pray to know, and understand Him, and love Him.  And sooner or later you will find His words come true, “If a man love me, I and my Father will come to him, and take up our abode with him.”  And then you will feel arise in you a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness, a spirit of love, and a desire of doing good, which will carry you up and on, above all that man can say or do against you—above all the laziness, and wilfulness, and selfishness, and cowardice which dwells in the heart of everyone.  You will be able to trample it all under foot for the sake of being good and doing good, in the strength of that one glorious thought, “Christ lived and died for me, and, so help me God, I will live and die for Christ.”

XXIV.

DAVID’S VICTORY

Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, whom thou hast defied.—1 Samuel xvii. 45.

We have been reading to-day the story of David’s victory over the Philistine giant, Goliath.  Now I think the whole history of David may teach us more about the meaning of the Old Testament, and how it applies to us, than the history of any other single character.  David was the great hero of the Jews; the greatest, in spite of great sins and follies, that has ever been among them; in every point the king after God’s own heart.  Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself did not disdain to be called especially the Son of David.  David was the author, too, of those wonderful psalms which are now in the mouths and the hearts of Christian people all over the world; and will last, as I believe, till the world’s end, giving out fresh depths of meaning and spiritual experience.

But to understand David’s history, we must go back a little through the lessons which have been read in church the last few Sundays.  We find in the eighth and in the twelfth chapters of this same book of Samuel, that the Jews asked Samuel for a king—for a king like the nations round them.  Samuel consulted God, and by God’s command chose Saul to be their king; at the same time warning them that in asking for a king they had committed a great and fearful sin, for “the Lord their God was their king.”  And the Lord said unto Samuel, that in asking for a king they had rejected God from reigning over them.  Now what was this sin which the Jews committed? for the mere having a king cannot be wrong in itself; else God would not have anointed Saul and David kings, and blessed David and Solomon; much less would He have allowed the greater number of Christian nations to remain governed by kings unto this day, if a king had been a wrong thing in itself.  I think if we look carefully at the words of the story we shall see what this great sin of the Jews was.  In the first place, they asked Samuel to give them a king—not God.  This was a sin, I think; but it was only the fruit of a deeper sin—a wrong way of looking at the whole question of kings and government.  And that deeper sin was this: they were a free people, and they wanted to become slaves.  God had made them a free people; He had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery to Pharaoh.  He had given them a free constitution.  He had given them laws to secure safety, and liberty, and equal justice to rich and poor, for themselves, their property, their children; to defend them from oppression, and over-taxation, and all the miseries of misgovernment.  And now they were going to trample under foot God’s inestimable gift of liberty.  They wanted a king like the nations round them, they said.  They did not see that it was just their glory not to be like the nations round them in that.  We who live in a free country do not see the vast and inestimable difference between the Jews and the other nations.  The Jews were then, perhaps, so far as I can make out, the only free people on the face of the earth.  The nations round them were like the nations in the East, now governed by tyrants, without law or parliament, at the mercy of the will, the fancy, the lust, the ambition, and the cruelty of their despotic kings.  In fact, they were as the Eastern people now are—slaves governed by tyrants.  Samuel warned the Jews that it would be just the same with them; that neither their property, their families, nor their liberty would be safe under the despots for whom they wished.  And yet, in spite of that warning, they would have a king.  And why?  Because they did not like the trouble of being free.  They did not like the responsibility and the labour of taking care of themselves, and asking counsel of God as to how they were to govern themselves.  So they were ready to sell themselves to a tyrant, that he might fight for them, and judge for them, and take care of them, while they just ate and drank, and made money, and lived like slaves, careless of what happened to them or their country, provided they could get food, and clothes, and money enough.  And as long as they got that, if you will remark, they were utterly careless as to what sort of king they had.  They said not one word to Samuel about how much power their king was to have.  They made not the slightest inquiry as to whether Saul was wise or foolish, good or bad.  They did not ask God’s counsel, or trouble themselves about God; so they proved themselves unworthy of being free.  They turned, like a dog to his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire, cowardly back again into slavery; and God gave them what they asked for.  He gave them the sort of king they wanted; and bitterly they found out their mistake during several hundred years of continually increasing slavery and misery.