Sermons: Selected from the Papers of the Late Rev. Clement Bailhache

4. Our unconscious influence is the more powerful because it excites no suspicion. It is intuitively felt to represent our inner self in the direction, and within the range, of its present meaning. Many of our direct efforts put men upon their guard. If they are hostile to our intentions, they resist our formal endeavours; if they are indifferent, they become impatient of our zeal. But direct efforts, moreover, are often thought to be mainly professional, and this impression concerning them places them at a disadvantage. On the other hand, our unconscious influence wins men unconsciously to themselves – wins them when they are off their guard – and thus wins them in spite of themselves.

II. How, then, does this fact of our unconscious influence touch the question of our responsibility? In what sense, and on what grounds, are we accountable for it?

1. It is conditioned by our character. It reproduces outwardly what we are within. If our character, or, as the Divine Master terms it, our “heart” be good, then our unconscious influence must be good likewise; if our character – our “heart” – be evil, our unconscious influence must also be evil. As we are responsible for the motives which actuate us, so are we responsible for every form of conduct that proceeds therefrom. It must, of course, be admitted that even in a fundamentally holy character there are ever and anon exceptional mistakes, inconsistencies, and flaws. How many of these, He only knows who forgives all. But we are speaking of great moral tendencies; and concerning these we are in no doubt. They reveal character, and they share the responsibility, in regard to their influence, which belongs to character.

2. It is by this unconscious influence that we act most on those who are nearest to us. Children, members of our families, fellow-workmen, and acquaintances – all these are much more affected by the general tenour of our conduct, and the so-thought trivial indications of our character, than by our more formal efforts. Alas, it often happens that these latter are made ineffectual by the operation of the former. A practical inconsistency in a parent’s life at home will drive away from the mind and conscience of a child the force of the best and most frequently repeated precept. Even when direct and well-meant effort is put forth, it is often comparatively powerless apart from the help it derives from the unconscious influence that accompanies it. A smile, a look, a sigh, a tear, will often put life into an argument which may be sound enough in itself, but which, without such an auxiliary, would be dry, uninteresting, and therefore ineffective. Is all this influence outside the range of our responsibility?

3. Our indirect influence is our truest. It best represents us. In formal effort, there is room for a more or less transient enthusiasm, love of excitement, love of applause, self-seeking, hypocrisy. But our unconscious influence belongs to us at all times – follows us, and is as true to us as the shadow follows, and is true to, the substance. We cannot escape from it. It proceeds from us spontaneously, without our volition; and it mirrors externally what we are radically and in the recesses of our real being. If we be responsible for what we really are, we must be responsible for the influence we thus spontaneously and inevitably exert.

4. Another ground of this responsibility is that, on reflection, we know that it is by these unconscious exhibitions of character that the world is constantly judging us. Often the judgment of the world is harsh, and commonly uncharitable; but it is shrewd, and generally there is a rough justice about it which marks its worth.

These considerations, and many more that might be adduced, show how solemn is our responsibility with respect to the impressions we are constantly and unconsciously producing on those around us. As in nature, so in human life, the most unobtrusive and silent forces are the strongest. The nightly dew effects more good than the occasional storm-shower, and light works more wonders than lightning.

III. From all this we learn some weighty lessons. It teaches us —

1. The importance of each act in our life. The text before us is no exaggeration. Everything tells, because there is character in everything, and consequently power for good or ill. It is impossible for any one of us to be in the world without responsibility. There is no escape for us. Simply to be in the world, whatever we may be, is to exert an influence, subtle, quiet, powerful – an influence compared with which argument and expostulation and entreaty are feeble. We say we mean well; we think that at least we are injuring nobody and doing no harm; but is it so? It cannot be so, unless our influence be always on the side of God and of goodness. By looks, glances, unpremeditated words and deeds, we are perpetually exerting an influence which may turn the scale of some man’s eternal destiny!

2. The necessity of conversion. If our unconscious influence is to be of a wholesome kind, we must undergo a radical moral change, out of which will proceed an all-pervading sanctification. Blessed be God for the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Up to this point, the consideration of our subject may have prompted some to ask: “Are we, then, to be anxiously, feverishly, incessantly watching ourselves in order that we may make no mistakes, and do no evil? Such vigilance – would it not take all our time, and absorb all our strength? Such a life – would it not be a terrible bondage? Is it necessary?” We reply, “Yes, and no.” That is to say, there will always be the necessity for watchfulness and prayer; but the true secret of doing good lies in being good. The path of the just is as a shining light; he shines because he is luminous. The tree is known by its fruit; not by the fruit which is tacked on, as in the case of a Christmas tree, but by the fruit which is the produce of the tree’s own interior life. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things, and an evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.” Before a man can impart the higher order of blessing to his fellow men, he himself must receive the blessing of a new nature from God.

The question is often asked why the triumphs of Christianity are not more marked in the world, and why spiritual growth is not more marked in the Church. The answer is found partly, no doubt, in the imperfections of the direct efforts which are put forth with these ends in view; but not in these alone. No small portion of it is to be traced to the deleterious elements which mingle with the undesigned influences which emanate from many of the professors of Christ’s religion. When Moses was on the Mount with God, his face became luminous. Was he conscious of its shining? Not until the people were “afraid to come nigh him.” Then he had to cover his face with a vail! How few are “luminous” enough to need “vailing” now!

X.

SECULAR ANXIETY

“Take no thought for your life.” – Matthew vi. 25.

“Take no thought for the morrow.” – Matthew vi. 31.

Let us survey the entire passage of which the first of these texts is the commencement, and of which the second is the close. It brings before us a common evil, and for this evil it proposes a sovereign remedy.

The evil is secular anxiety. Perhaps we need not be greatly surprised at its prevalence, when we consider what the life-experience of most of us is. Think of the uncertainty of almost everything we know – life, health, friendship, domestic relationships and affections, riches, commerce. Life has many sad surprises and disappointments. Our own day is especially full of care. The age is mad with speculation – thousands making haste to be rich, and so bringing upon themselves many temptations. For many others, the time is full of hard necessities, and the outlook is one of possible or even probable poverty. The admonitions given by our Lord in the verses before us are needed now more than ever.

There are persons who, under the influence of pride and false notions of manliness, consider careworn Christians – Christians labouring and struggling amid the difficulties of the way – undeserving of sympathy. “After all,” they say, “what are the ills of life, that we should make so much ado? Be men!” Sometimes we meet with superficial Christians who profess that this life is really so insignificant, that it shows a low state of piety to be painfully affected by common ills. As to the first, nothing but stoicism, or the hard-heartedness which is sometimes the result of prosperity, can make the soul unsusceptible to the ordinary troubles of life, or independent of the antidote which the religion of Christ supplies. As to the second, do not let them talk in a way which implies that they are wiser than their Lord. He knew how heavily care pressed upon the hearts He loved, and condescended to offer them the appropriate and all-sufficient relief.

And how does the great Teacher speak to the careworn in these verses? Is it not unspiritual to take arguments for the comfort of our Christian life from lower things? Must we go to the irrational and inanimate creation for gospels of blessing for our spiritual need? Christ drew His arguments from the birds and the flowers; clearly showing that we should accustom ourselves to see God’s hand, His love, His teaching, in all things. Let Him not be excluded from the least part of His creation. Every part of it may subserve the purposes of His grace. “Consider” the fowls of the air and the flowers of the fields; make them objects of study. To the thoughtful they often suggest “thoughts that lie too deep for tears;” to the Christian they may well suggest thoughts which shall inspire thanksgiving and prayer.

Note the condescension, the simplicity, and the power of our Lord’s argument. His appeals are homely. He seeks no far-fetched reasonings or facts from antiquity. He points to birds and flowers; an argument for simple people, but equally effective for the learned and the refined. We have no need to go far for lessons of comfort.

We must not overlook the necessary limitations of our Lord’s teaching in these verses. Those limitations are found in the nature of things. Observe, then,

I. Christ does not forbid all anticipations of the future. He cannot mean so much as this when He says, “Take no thought for the morrow.” Man is an inhabitant of two worlds – one material, the other spiritual. This being so, two distinct sets or classes of wants press upon him – the wants of the body, and those of the soul. The wants of the soul point to a future state of existence, for which we must prepare. In relation to these, carelessness – the absence of forethought – would be fatal. According to the state of our souls, the thought of the future gives us terror or joy. To the Christian, the future is the scene of his perfected spiritual growth, and of his consummated happiness. Every aspiration of his soul bounds joyfully towards it, and he instinctively leaves the things that are behind to press forward. In the words before us, Christ does not touch such matters as these. It is not fore-thought which is condemned, but fore-boding.

II. Nor does He discountenance earnest activity in the duties of the present. Work is God’s oldest law. It is only in wilful blindness or in unaccountable delusion that men can plead this teaching as an excuse for indolence. “If any man will not work, neither shall he eat.” Work is often spoken of as a curse; but it is a blessing. With a Christian spirit, it may be gloriously consecrated. It links us in our activity with God who “worketh hitherto,” and with Christ who worked His full day.

III. Christ does not even condemn a legitimate forethought in connection with secular interests. There is a legitimate forethought such as this. Nature teaches it. We must sow in order to reap. We must toil to-day for results which cannot come till to-morrow. “If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.” The faith to live by is that which prompts not to sitting down and doing nothing, but to trustful and persevering enterprise. Keep in mind the distinction between forethought and foreboding. It is forethought in a man which leads him to sow for a future harvest; it is foreboding that would fill his heart with fears that the harvest will be a bad one. Forethought is the grand distinction between the civilized and the savage; foreboding is the weakness of distrust.

What the Lord bids us guard against, then, is conjectural brooding over the possible necessities of the future, and our possible lack of the resources required for their supply. “Taking thought” means giving way to anxiety – the constant occupation and worry of the heart in looking forward, gazing into, and dreading the possibilities of the days and years yet to come. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Be warned against forebodings of evil to-morrow. The lesson is, “Do the day’s work as it is appointed by God; accept the day’s mercy, bear the day’s evil; and be not anxious about the evil which to-morrow may bring.”

How common a weakness – nay, rather let us say, how common a sin – this taking anxious thought for the morrow is! We see the lines of care in thousands of faces every day. Anxiety has marked its furrows round lips which every morning say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It is a calamity as well as a sin. It disturbs the heart, so that there can be no enjoyment of present mercies. It adds to the present the weight of an unknown but dreaded future. It paralyses religious feeling, and checks religious activity. It defeats its end by shortening the life it would fain prolong.

Now Christ shows that this kind of anxiety reckons falsely, because it is founded on a false estimate of life; and He further shows that to gauge our position aright we must reckon according to the Divine thought respecting it. The whole of the teaching before us on this subject is perfectly plain, consisting of a few simple and obvious points. We cannot hope, indeed, to bring it within the understanding of the mere worldling. The man who has no filial confidence in God has no antidote for care. Anxiety can only be subdued in the heart of him who can look upward, and say, “Father, I trust in Thee!”

What, then, is the first point? It is this, that God – the Author of our life, the Creator of our bodies – will surely give that which, however necessary, is yet less important and less valuable. In bringing us into existence, He has done more than He can do in giving to us any secular blessing which we can need. “Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” We have our life from Him; our bodies are His handiwork. Why should we suspect that He will be indisposed to give us whatever may be needful for the existence thus created? Will He, by neglect, frustrate His own purpose? The greater gift can only be sustained and made valid by the lesser ones. Without food and raiment the body must decay, and its life must perish. God does not give imperfectly.

Another point is this, that anxious care answers no good purpose. It is useless. If we could by means of it gain an exemption from future evil, common prudence would dictate it as a wise expedient. But it is not so. Christ puts this consideration very strongly. No amount of foreboding can add a single moment to our life, for the boundaries of our life have been fixed by God. The future is utterly unknown to us; and foreboding will not help us in the least degree to forecast its difficulties and its trials, though it may unfit us for the endurance of them. Whether we are cognizant of it or not, God will take His plan with us, and will carry it out. If we could not believe in the love that He hath towards us, the thought of this would be a dark sorrow; but, assured of His love as we may be, we can also be assured that He will do all things well. At any rate, no over-anxiety of ours will facilitate the order of life we long for. “The morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” It will have anxieties enough of its own in spite of every effort of ours to set it free from them. Every day, to the end, will have its own “evil,” and the “evil” of each day will require all our strength for coping with it. So that anxiety for the morrow will not remove care from the morrow; it will only take strength and joy from to-day. Trust in God, and all that He gives you of trouble for to-day will be accompanied by the gift of the strength necessary to enable you to bear it. But do not expect Him to give you strength to bear unnecessary sorrows – sorrows of your own making – the sorrows which spring from worldliness and unbelief. “As thy day” – the day that now is – “so thy strength shall be.”

A third point is, that, reasoning from analogy, we may be sure that God will provide for us. He feeds the birds, and He clothes the lilies. They can do nothing for themselves; yet how well are they provided for! “Are not ye much better than they?” A wonderfully simple, beautiful, and effective argument this! How grand the view it gives us of God’s position in His universe! What knowledge must be His! What power! What vastness – what variety of resource! What minuteness of kindly, loving interest! Who would not gladly entertain such a conception of God and of His Providence as this, in preference to the atheism and the materialism which have intruded so grievously into the science of our times? “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?.. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” Thus, God is not content with giving what is simply necessary for life; He gives for beauty also. Showing His goodness in such a manner to objects inferior to man, why should man suspect that the same goodness will be denied to him? Observe, that Christ does not teach that birds and flowers are better than men because of their immunity from toil. His meaning is, that creatures which do not and cannot toil – creatures which do not and cannot forecast the future – are clothed and fed; will God neglect the nobler creatures to whom He has given the power of thought, and whom He has put under the obligation to labour? Even with these higher powers, man is still as dependent as any of the inferior creatures around him. Will his needs be overlooked, while theirs are supplied? Such a question is all the more pertinent when we remember, that whilst they live for a day, he was created for eternity, and needs the special gifts which can shape his present life into a preparation and a discipline.

An additional point is, that unholy anxiety is essentially ungodly, irreligious, unworthy of the position and the professions of a Christian man. “Take no thought,” no anxious thought, “saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.” Anxious thought, therefore, is the characteristic of heathenism, and must be excluded from the religion which is true. It is the spirit of the world, not the spirit which is of God. We see this clearly enough when we compare the amount of thought and care which we bestow upon our earthly interests with that which we devote to the interests which are spiritual and eternal. What anxiety we give ourselves about the future of our health, the future of our business, the future of our worldly position, the future of our children’s secular education, the future of their rank in society! Is it not ten times as great as that which we bestow upon our Christian consistency, our religious usefulness, our growth in grace? If we could hold the balance steadily, which would prove to be the preponderating scale? Our Lord puts the case in an indirect manner, no doubt; nevertheless, it is impossible to avoid the implied conclusion. That conclusion is this: “If you suffer yourself to be anxiously absorbed in earthly things, you rank yourself with ‘the Gentiles,’ to whom this world is all.” – Besides, such anxiety is ungodly because it is untrustful. Heathens, who cannot blind themselves to the fact that their gods leave them for the most part, if not entirely, to themselves, may be excused if they feel that there is room, yea even necessity, for anxious foreboding. But how different should it be with those who know the one living and true God, and who can recognize Him as their Father! Surely He may be trusted as knowing His children, recognizing their needs, loving them, and tenderly caring for them. Taking anxious thought implies the weakness, if not the extinction, of faith. – Moreover, its impiety is seen in the fact that it is a practical subordination of the spiritual to the secular. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Let the most important things have the first attention. Give due scope to the higher aspirations of the soul, and the lower ones will shrink into their due proportions, and will take their proper place. God will give the earthly as it is needed to those who first seek the heavenly, and the true spirit of religion will make us rich by making us content.

To Christians this teaching, taking it as a whole, covers the entire ground of their secular life, and much more than that. Look at two or three samples of the cases to which it applies.

1. To personal secular positions. “What will the future be? Shall I live to be old? When I am old, shall I be provided for? Will health and strength be continued to me according to my years?” Leave that! Do your work to-day. For this you may have the needful strength from God. Do not trouble about anything further. Use prudently the means which God has put into your hands for providing for the future, and then commit their safe keeping to Him. If you have no such means, still trust. There are many promises on which you may implicitly and calmly rely.

2. “How about my children? Will they grow up to be manful, good, godly; a seed to serve the Lord, and a generation to call Him blessed; my comfort, my pride? Or will they take evil ways; prove, like so many more, vicious, ungodly, and bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave?” Leave that! Do your duty to your children to-day. Train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Use a wise and godly forethought on their behalf. Pray for them. Instruct them. Set before them a Christian example. You may trust the rest with God, calmly and thankfully expecting the fulfilment of the words: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

3. “What about my religious future? If I make a Christian profession, shall I be able to live consistently with it? Shall I have strength to resist temptation? What if I should fall? Can I so live as not to dishonour the Church and the cause of Christ?” Leave that! Nurse your Christian graces to-day. Lay up spiritual strength in reserve. That is required by a wise forethought. But having done so, leave the rest. God will take care of it all. You may stedfastly trust that He will gloriously complete the work which He has graciously begun.

4. “My Christian work – what about that? Shall I be permitted to go on with it for a few years longer, and thus to have some opportunity of realizing my ambition as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ? Or shall I be called away comparatively early? And if so, what will become of all the plans and projects upon which I have expended so much thought and prayer and toil?” Leave that! Do your work to-day, and be not anxious about the rest. When to-day merges into to-morrow let the new to-day bring its own work with it, to be done in the day. Nothing more of solicitude than that is needful. You are not indispensable to God; nor are you essential to the work which by His will you are doing. If it be worth doing, and you be separated from it, He will find a suitable successor, or as many successors as the accomplishment of the work may require.

5. “How about the prosperity of the cause of Christ in the world? Will it go steadily forward, or will new and fiercer foes rise up against it?” Leave that! Do all you can for it whilst you are here, and entrust the rest, as you entrust your own work, to God. Do not hinder it by wasting time in forebodings which ought to be spent in service.

6. “What of death – my own death? Shall I have grace enough to support me when the time comes?” Leave that! No doubt you will; but do not be anxious about it. To-day you are “the living;” be “the living to praise the Lord,” and trust the needs of your dying hour to Him.

The words of Christ recorded in these verses must have startled His hearers. They taught new truth concerning life, and, beautiful as they were, the truth they taught was strange. It would have been so strange as to be without weight, if He had not first taught equally new and equally beautiful truth concerning God. How does Christ here speak of God? “Your heavenly Father.” The heathen instructors had not taught that! Pharisees and Sadducees had not taught that! But Christ was now in the world; He had come forth from the Father, and He could say to men: “Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.” Thus the whole teaching of these verses on the subject of Providence and of Faith becomes plain and demonstrative. The great requirement is for us to love Him filially as He loves us paternally; and then, from that point, all is clear. We are dependent, but He will provide. There are present difficulties, and probably there will be future trials; but all takes the form of wise and holy discipline under His guiding and beneficent hand.

How do we arrive at the conviction of the Fatherhood of God? Sin stands in the way, and conscience craves something more than a mere authoritative announcement. Sin is the forfeiture of all claim to the Divine favour. What right have we to expect that His providence will be to us a providence of love? There is but one answer: to trust a God of providence, we must believe in a God of grace. Paul puts the whole philosophy of this in a single sentence: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Our present subject, therefore, calls for the gospel, and cannot be completed without it. “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” And, “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” But let us ever remember that we have higher wants than those of the body. The soul needs food, and God has supplied “the bread of life”; it needs raiment, and God has given to us the robe of righteousness wrought by Christ; it needs a home, and we have “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” With these provisions, then, shall we forecast the future with fear, or with hope? Which shall it be?

O holy trust! O endless sense of rest,
Like the beloved John,
To lay my head upon the Saviour’s breast,
And thus to Journey on!

XI.

CONTENTMENT

“Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.” – Philippians iv. 11-14.

My purpose is to define and to recommend the Christian virtue of contentment. I shall endeavour to show that its acquirement is a duty, and that its possession is a joy; but I shall also have to show that as a duty it is not practicable, and that as a joy it is not attainable, except on Christian grounds. I trust that all this will be made abundantly clear by the following observations.

I. Let us glance at the character of the man whose words are now before us. There is in the words the ring of a high moral tone which is irresistibly attractive. Yet the effect they produce upon us must depend very much upon the kind of man who wrote them, and the condition or conditions of life through which he had to pass.

We should be pained by such words as these if they came from the lips of a man whom the world would consider prosperous. When the conditions of a man’s life are easy and comfortable, to make a profession of contentment would be an abuse both of language and of sentiment. Such a case is not one for content, but for devout and hearty gratitude mingled with a sense of humiliation under the thought, which ought to be present to every such man, that he deserves no more than others, though God gives him more than many others possess.

We should think sadly of these words if they came from a stoical man. Contentment is not the listlessness of indifference. It is self-conscious, and finds in itself its own joy. Indifference is loss – deterioration. It implies the blunting of sensibility. The heart that is callous to grief is closed against gladness also.

We should pity the man who uttered these words from mere weakness of character, devoid of aspiration, enthusiasm, or resolve. In his case, content would be mere good-for-nothingness. The world is full of uncomplaining men and women who do not cry, not because they are content, but because they are spiritless, and consequently because they are crushed down and hopeless.