PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, MARGATE, NOVEMBER 7, 1915.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”—St. James i. 17.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”—St. James i. 17.
In these words a singularly vivid picture is set before us. God is represented to us as the Sun in the Heavens, from Whom light and warmth are perpetually streaming. The text does not merely say that all good gifts come from above and that none but good gifts come from thence. It means also that those good gifts are perpetually being poured upon us, just as light and heat are perpetually flowing from the sun. But it points out one great difference between the physical sun and this Divine source of grace and glory. The sun and the other lights of the heavens which are dependent upon it are all liable to be obscured or eclipsed. They are “subject to variableness and shadow ofturning,” that is, to the shadows occasioned by their turning in their daily revolutions, so that daylight is succeeded by the darkness of night, and the moon waxes and wanes. But the light of the Divine glory and grace is never thus obscured from us. It is perpetually shining, and we can enjoy its blessed influence at every moment. God is the Father of Lights—the Father of Light of all kinds; and all grace and truth are perpetually proceeding from Him. “Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above,” coming down continually from “the Father of Lights with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” This is the great truth which is embodied in the beautiful words of the Collect just used, “Lord of all power and might Who art the Author and Giver of all good things.”
This is the first grand truth which is revealed to us by our Christian faith. It is involved in the revelation of God to us as our Father in Heaven, and it is impressed on us in the Sermon on the Mount, when our Lord bids us live as “the children of our Father which is in Heaven: Who maketh the sun to rise on the evil and onthe good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” It would be well for us to realize this more fully and constantly. We see the sun in the Heavens; we are sensible of its lifegiving influences day by day; but we do not always have so vividly before us the Supreme Sun of the spiritual Heavens, and we are tempted to live without the constant realization of His presence. There are, indeed, experiences which are a great trial to our faith in this constant Presence, and which even make men and women ask themselves in perplexity whether there can be, in reality, any such perpetually Divine source of all good things—whether any Divine Power is really at all times pouring the best blessing upon mankind. What is the meaning, for instance, many anxious hearts have asked themselves at a time like this—what is the meaning and the explanation of such fearful miseries as the world is now suffering through the present war? Can it be a God from Whom all good things are perpetually coming Who permits half the world to fall into such distresses and agonies as we have heard of lately, and are daily hearing? The evilin the world has at all times been a perplexity to faith, and when manifested on such a tremendous scale, when it rises before us in the monstrous form of an awful war, the question presses upon our hearts and minds with painful force. But the privilege of the Christian is to maintain through all these distresses the proclamation that the love of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God, the blessing of God are still at work, notwithstanding the clouds with which they seem obscured. Clouds and darkness may be round about Him, but righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne.
The general explanation of this great mystery is that these sufferings are the means by which God asserts the supremacy of righteousness and truth. He has so ordered the world that unrighteousness, ungodliness, untruth, immorality of all kinds inevitably punish themselves by leading to appeals to force, and so provoke the wars and fightings of which St. James speaks in this Epistle. “From whence,” he says, “come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts, that war in your members? Yelust and have not; ye kill, and desire to have and cannot obtain”—can there be a truer description, in brief, of the origin of the present war? These are God’s judgments, in which He so orders the world that nations and individuals punish themselves for their indulgence in covetous and unbridled passions. They will not submit to be checked by conscience or by reason, and therefore God leaves them to the natural consequences of their mutual lusts and violences. In fact, the miseries of war are a conspicuous instance of the great truth that good things are always coming from God. Vengeance for evil is a good thing; and the punishment, even the bitter punishment, of selfishness, whether in individuals or in national life, the severest punishments of covetousness, arrogance, forgetfulness of God, disobedience to Christ—these punishments are good things; and if God is chastising Europe for such sins, and ourselves in no small measure, He is doing it at once in judgment and in mercy. It is a warning to every nation, and to every man and woman, to consider in what respect they have been failing in their duty to God andto Christ, to their neighbour, and even to themselves, and to pray God to open their eyes and enable them to repent and amend. What we see before us in a convulsion like this, is the outburst of the lightnings and thunders of righteous judgment, and if it brings men to their knees in penitence and amendment of life, it may prove one of God’s greatest blessings to the world.
We may understand this the better if we consider, more particularly, the means by which God is always pouring upon the world those blessed influences of goodness and righteousness of which the text and the Collect speak. They tell us that He is like the sun in the heavens pouring His bright beams upon us and the world at large. Where is that Sun? It is in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, in all His words and deeds, and in those Scriptures which, as He said, testify of Him. The answer is contained in the truth that “God, Who, at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers, by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, Who is the brightness of His glory and theexpress image of His Person.” “No man,” we are told, “hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” He declares Him in various ways. In the first place, the grace and truth and glory of God are seen in the Face of Jesus Christ, in His life as recorded in the Gospels, and in His words. “He that hath seen me,” said our Saviour Himself, “hath seen the Father.” It is God Himself Who is seen in every act and word of Jesus Christ, and if we want to know God, to realize His character and His will, we have only to study the life and words of our Lord, and we see it all in vivid human features. God in Christ is as visible to the eyes of our hearts and minds as the sun in the heavens. As the physical sun is visible to every human eye, so the sun of the spiritual world—God Himself—is visible to every human mind in the person of our Lord. This comparison is as old as the Psalms. “The heavens,” says the 19th Psalm, “declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork,” and then it proceeds, “the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, the testimonyof the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” The law of the Lord of which the Psalmist spoke was that revelation of the Will of God which was given to the Jews at sundry times and in divers manners, and is recorded in the ancient Scriptures. But that law is now summed up, explained, enlarged, and perfected in the face of Jesus Christ, and in His words. In Him is God to be seen. In Him is the source of the highest moral and spiritual goodness.
The Collect goes on to pray “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness.” The Name of God means the character of God, and if we are to love character we must see it, and we can see it in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. If you wish to love God, you must learn to love Jesus Christ. To love God is to love righteousness, truth, and goodness, and in Jesus Christ we see them in life and in human reality. Righteousness, goodness, truth, purity, grace, may be loved, indeed, in the abstract; but the love for them must be infinitely deepened if we see them concentrated in a living person, so that the love of them is identified with the loveof Him. If, in fact, we would keep the love of these great things alive in our hearts, if we would continually deepen it, if we would have the eyes of our minds and hearts opened more and more, the supreme necessity is that we should learn more and more of Jesus Christ, live with Him by constant study of His deeds and words, and so open our souls to the impress of His grace and truth. The history of the world since He lived and died is the sufficient proof of this fact. The Christian Church, which is charged with the duty and the privilege of living in His spirit and working in His name, has, notwithstanding many failures and faults, held up before the world the highest standard of goodness and truth. There is no more conspicuous illustration of this influence of Christ and His Church than the fact that the noble Societies which, by their devoted care of the wounded, now mitigate the horrors of war, are called “Red Cross” Societies, and were founded and maintained in obedience to the spirit of Christ. Since Christ came, it is through Him that all these good things do come, and if we would enjoy them we must live and work in His light.
But this is far from being the sole means by which Christ is the source of all good things. He promised His disciples before He died, that He would send the Holy Spirit into the world Who should bring to their remembrance all things that He had told them, and should be to them and to their followers an adviser and comforter, such as He had Himself been while He was with them—Who should convince them of sin, of righteousness and judgment—teach them, that is, what sin is, and what righteousness is, and bring home to them the nature of the judgment of God. He formed them into a Society, to be a perpetual witness of Him to the world; and He established two ceremonies (which we call Sacraments) to be a perpetual pledge to His followers of His love and of His grace, and to be a special means by which that grace should be bestowed on them; so that the source of this Divine illumination and bounty is not merely Christ in the past, in His life on earth, as we read of Him in the words of the New Testament, but Christ living and working in His Church by means of those words, and by means of the Sacraments which testify of them andbring them home to every individual soul. The words of Christ and the Sacraments of Christ are means which can be seen and handled, by which the grace of God is manifested and conveyed to us.
Moreover, He has told us, as I have mentioned, that the Old Testament throughout, the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, speak of Him, reveal His character and His Will. To the Jews, who had only the Old Testament, He said, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me.” Combined, these are the visible, tangible, and audible instruments by which the “Lord of all power and might, the Author and Giver of all good things,” shines into our hearts and speaks to our inmost souls. There are, indeed, and always have been, other influences in the world by which goodness and truth are impressed upon us; and there are, and always have been, many gracious human influences by which they are upheld in our hearts and in the world at large; but these are all imperfect, and liable to perversion, in comparison with the influence of Jesus Christ and His Church and theHoly Scriptures; and we can never be sure of their being kept true and unperverted, except so far as they are brought to the test, and subjected to the influences, through the Person of Jesus Christ and of His words in the Holy Scriptures, of that Lord of all power and might from whom all good things do come.
These considerations may help to explain to us the source of the evils which have plunged Europe into its present convulsions and they will be the best guide to ourselves for our own action in the present and the future. It is, unhappily, an unquestionable matter of fact that a great part of Europe, and especially of Germany, has lost sight for a generation or two of that Sun of Righteousness, Who is the Author and Giver of all good things. They have rejected the authority of Christ, and denied the Divine reality of the revelation of God’s will in the Old Testament. The consequence is that they have deprived themselves of the influences of that Divine light, and have been setting up standards of right and wrong in national and individual life, which are inconsistent with it. Some of the best instincts of astrong and manly nation have consequently been perverted. National ideals have been pursued which are inconsistent with Christian civilization, and men have been driven by these perverted instincts and passions into the hell of war. We may be sure that Europe will not again enjoy permanent peace until, by the merciful correction of that Lord from Whom all good things do come, the love of His Name has again been grafted in their hearts, and the true religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ revived and increased.
But it becomes us to apply to ourselves, very seriously, the same considerations. Must we not admit that among ourselves also a similar disregard of the only source from Whom all good things do come has been sadly and increasingly prevalent of late years, and perhaps for a generation or two past? What is the meaning of the acknowledged falling off in attendance at Divine Worship, of the increasing disuse of family Prayers, and of the daily reading of Scripture in the family, and of the less distinctively Christian tone of much of our literature and of our stage? Let usput it to our own consciences whether we live, as we ought, in the constant sense that it is only in the word of God and of Christ, as contained in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, in constant subjection to His word and to the influences of His Spirit, that we can be sure of finding the true light to our paths, and a rod and a staff to comfort us amidst the temptations and perplexities of the world? Do we live under the constant influences of the Scriptures, and of the ordinances and Sacraments of Christ? If not, it can only be because we do not believe the blessed assurances of this text, and of our Church’s Collect. Unless men and women are blinded for the time by the influence of some strong passions, or of some perverted teaching, could they fail to submit themselves day by day to the Lord, from Whom all good things do come, so that those good and gracious things may sink more and more deeply into their souls, mould their characters, and guide them more and more into the way that leadeth to everlasting life? Men will travel far to sunny lands for the healing influences of this world’s sun upon their bodily health.Can they fail, if they realize the blessing offered them day by day, to seek the companionship of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father, for the sake of their spiritual health in this world and in the next?
Let us then, in the first place, be led back by these present trials and agonies to the only source of all truth and light for this world and the next, to the words which God spake “in sundry times and in divers manners,” in ages past, and above all, to those which He spake by His Son, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His Person; and if we feel their supreme preciousness for ourselves, let us do everything in our power to promote and spread those sacred words and that divine light throughout the world, as you are asked to help in doing this morning. Here lies the only hope for ourselves, the only hope for our people at large, for our nation and empire. Let us henceforth join with a new earnestness in the prayer of the Collect: “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of Thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”