Truly this was a healthy-minded man; as all will be, and only they, who have full faith in the one good God, of whom are all things, both in earth and heaven.
Then he goes further still. He has looked into the face of life innumerable. Now he looks into the face of innumerable death; and sees there too the Spirit and the work of God.
Thou givest to them; they gather:Thou openest thy hand; they are filled with good:Thou hidest thy face; they are troubled:Thou takest away their breath; they die, and are turned again to their dust.
Thou givest to them; they gather:Thou openest thy hand; they are filled with good:Thou hidest thy face; they are troubled:Thou takest away their breath; they die, and are turned again to their dust.
Poetry? Yes: but, like all highest poetry, highest philosophy; and soundest truth likewise. Nay, he goes further still—further, it may be, than most of us would dare to go, had he not gone before us in the courage of his faith. He dares to say, of such a world as this—“The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever. The Lord shall rejoice in His works.”
The glory of the Lord, then, is shewn forth, and endures for ever, in these animals of whom the Psalmist has been speaking, though they devour each other day and night. The Lord rejoices in His works, even though His works live by each other’s death. The Lord shall rejoice in His works—says this great poet and philosopher.
But what Lord, and what God? Ah, my friends, all depends on the answer to that question. “There be,” says St Paul, “lords many, and gods many:” and since his time, men have made fresh lords and gods for themselves,and believed in them, and worshipped them, while they fancied that they were believing in the one true God, in the same God in whom the man believed who wrote the 104th Psalm.
Do we truly believe in that one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Let me beg you to consider that question earnestly. The Psalmist, when he talked of the Lord, did not mean merely what some people call the Deity, or the Supreme Being, or the Creator. You will remark that I said—What. I do not care to say, Whom, of such a notion; that is, of a God who made the world, and set it going once for all, but has never meddled with it; never, so to speak, looked at it since: so that the world would go on just the same, and just as well, if God thenceforth had ceased to be. No: that is a dead God; an absentee God—as one said bitterly once. But the Psalmist believed in the living God, and a present God, in whom we live and move and have our being; in a God who does not leave the world alone for a moment, nor in the smallest matter, but is always interested in it, attending to it, enforcing His own laws, working—if I may so speak in all reverence—and using the most pitifully insufficient analogy—working—I say—His own machinery; making all things work together for good, at least to those who love God; a God without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and in whose sight all the hairs of our heads are numbered.
In one word, he believed in a living God. If anyone had said to the Psalmist, as I have heard men say now-a-days—Ofcourse we believe, with you, in a general Providence of God over the whole universe. But you do not surely believe in special Providences? That would be superstition. God governs the world by law, and not by special Providences. Then I believe that the Psalmist would have answered—Laws? I believe in them as much as you, and perhaps more than you. But as for special Providences, I believe in them so much, that I believe that the whole universe, and all that has ever happened in it from the beginning, has happened by special Providences; that not an organic being has assumed its present form, after long ages and generations, save by a continuous series of special Providences; that not a weed grows in a particular spot, without a special Providence of God that it should grow there, and nowhere else; then, and nowhen else. I believe that every step I take, every person I meet, every thought which comes into my mind—which is not sinful—comes and happens by the perpetual special Providence of God, watching for ever with Fatherly care over me, and each separate thing that He has made.
And if a modern philosopher—or one so called—had said to him,—‘This is unthinkable and inconceivable, and therefore cannot be. I cannot “think of”—I cannot conceive a mind—or as I call it—“a series of states of consciousness,” as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in all the millions of animals which roam among them, and the millions of millions of insectswhich buzz among them:’—Then the Psalmist would have answered him, I believe,—‘If you cannot, my friend, I can. And you must not make your power of thought and conception the measure of the universe, or even of other men’s intellects; or say—“Because I cannot conceive a thing, therefore no man can conceive it, and therefore it does not exist.” But pray, O philosopher, if you cannot think and conceive of the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, what can you think and conceive?’
Then if that philosopher had answered him—as some would now-a-days—‘I can conceive that the properties of very different elements,—and therefore the infinite variety and richness of nature which I cannot conceive as caused by a God—that the properties—I say—of different elements result from differences of arrangement arising by the compounding and recompounding of ultimate homogeneous units’—Then, I think, the Psalmist would have replied, as soon as he had—like Socrates of old in a like case—recovered from the ‘dizziness’ caused by an eloquence so unlike his own—‘Why, this proposition is far more “unthinkable” to me, and will be to 999 of 1000 of the human race, than mine about a God and a Providence. Alas! for the vagaries of the mind of man. When it wants to prove a pet theory of its own, it will strain at any gnat, and swallow any camel.’
But again—if a philosopher of more reasonable mood had said to him—as he very likely would say—‘This is a grand conception of God: but what proof have you of it? How do you know that God does interfere, by specialProvidences, in the world around us; not only, as you say, perpetually: but even now and then, and at all?’
Then the Psalmist, like all true Jews, would have gone back to a certain old story which is to me the most precious story, save one, that ever was written on earth; and have taken his stand on that. He would have gone back—as the Scripture always goes back—to the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, and have said—‘Whatever I know or do not know about the Laws of nature, this I know—That God can use them as He chooses, to punish the wicked, and to help the miserable. For He did so by my forefathers. When we Jews were a poor, small, despised tribe of slaves in Egypt, The God who made heaven and earth shewed Himself at once the God of nature, and the God of grace. For He took the powers of nature; and fought with them against proud Pharaoh and all his hosts; and shewed that they belonged to Him; and that He could handle them all to do His work. He shewed that He was Lord, not only of the powers of nature which give life and health, but of those which give death and disease. Nothing was too grand, nor too mean, for Him to use. He took the lightning and the hail, and the pestilence, and the darkness, and the East wind, and the springtides of the Red sea; and He took also the locust-swarms, and the frogs, and the lice, and the loathsome skin-diseases of Egypt, and the microscopic atomies which turn whole rivers into blood, and kill the fish; and with them He fought against Pharaoh the man-God,the tyrant ruling at his own will in the name of his father the sun-God and of the powers of nature; till Egypt was destroyed, and Pharaoh’s host drowned in the sea; And He brought out my forefathers with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, because He had heard their cry in Egypt, and saw their oppression under cruel taskmasters, and pitied them, and had mercy on them in their slavery and degradation.’ That is my God—the old Psalmist would have said. Not merely a strong God, or a wise God; but a good God, and a gracious God, and a just God likewise; a God who not only made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that therein is, but who keepeth His promise for ever; who helpeth them to right who suffer wrong, and feedeth the hungry.
Yes, my friends, it is this magnificent conception of God’s living and actual goodness and justice, which the Psalmist had, which made him trust God about all the strange and painful things which he saw in the world—about, for instance, the suffering and death of animals; and say—‘If the lion roaring after his prey seeks his meat, he seeks his meat from God: and therefore he ought to seek it, and he will find it. It is all well: I know not why: but well it is, for it is the law and will of the good and righteous and gracious God, who brought His people out of the land of Egypt. And that is enough for me.’
Enough for him? and should it not be enough for us, and more than enough?—We know what the Psalmist knew not. We know God to be more good, more righteous, more gracious than any Prophet or Psalmist couldknow. We know that God so loved the world, that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. We know that the only-begotten Son Jesus Christ so loved the world that He stooped to be born and suffer as mortal man, and to die on the cross, even while He was telling men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without the knowledge of their heavenly Father, and bidding them see how God fed the birds and clothed the lilies of the field. Ah, my friends, in this case, as in all cases, rest and comfort for our doubts and fears is to be found in one and the same place—at the foot of the Cross of Christ. If we believe that He who hung upon that Cross is—as He is—the maker and ruler of the universe, the same from day to day and for ever: then we can trust Him in darkness as well as in light; in doubt as well as in certainty; in the face of pain, disease, and death, as well as in the face of joy, health, and life; and say—Lord, we know not, but Thou knowest. Lord, we believe, help Thou our unbelief. Make us sure that Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast. For great are Thy mercies, O Lord; and the children of men shall put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.
Yes, my friends, this is, after all, a strange world, a solemn world, a world full of sad mysteries, past our understanding. As was said once by the holiest of modern Englishmen, now gone home to his rest—whose bust stands worthily in yonder chapel—This is a world in which men must be sometimes sad who love God, and care for their fellow-men.
But it is not over the dumb animals that we must mourn. For they fulfil the laws of their being; and whatever meat they seek, they seek their meat from God.
Rather must we mourn over those human beings who, being made in the likeness of God, and redeemed again into that likeness by our Lord Jesus Christ, and baptized into that likeness by the Holy Spirit, put on again of their own will the likeness of the beasts which perish; and find too often, alas! too late, that the wages of sin are death.
Rather must we mourn for those human beings who do not fulfil the laws of their being: but break those laws by sin; till they are ground by them to powder.
Rather must we mourn for those who seek their meat, not from God, but from the world and the flesh; and neglect the bread which cometh down from heaven, and the meat which endureth to eternal life, whereof the Lord who gives it said—Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you.
Rather must we pray for ourselves, and for all we love, that God’s Spirit of eternal life would raise us up, more and more day by day, out of the likeness of the old Adam, who was of the earth, earthy; of whom it is written that—like the animals—dust he was, and unto dust he must return; and would mould us into the likeness of the new Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, into the likeness of which it is written, that it is created after God’s image, in righteousness and true holiness;the end of which is not death, but everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And so will be fulfilled in us the saying of the Psalmist; and the Lord shall rejoice in His works: for we too, not only body and soul, but spirit also, shall be the work of God; and God will rejoice in us, and we in God.
John iv. 48-50.
Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth.
Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth.
These words of our Lord are found in the Gospel for this day. They are a rebuke, though a gentle one. He reproved the nobleman, seemingly, for his want of faith: but He worked the miracle, and saved the life of the child.
We do not know enough of the circumstances of this case, to know exactly why our Lord reproved the nobleman; and what want of faith He saw in him. Some think that the man’s fault was his mean notion of our Lord’s power; his wish that He should come down the hills to Capernaum, and see the boy Himself, in order to cure him; whereas he ought to have known that our Lord could cure him—as He did—at a distance, and by a mere wish, which was no less than a command to nature, and to that universe which He had made.
I cannot tell how this may be: but of one thing I think we may be sure—That this saying of our Lord’s is very deep, and very wide; and applies to many people, in many times—perhaps to us in these modern times.
We must recollect one thing—That our Lord did not put forward the mere power of His miracles as the chief sign of His being the Son of God. Not so: He declared His almighty power most chiefly by shewing mercy and pity. Twice He refused to give the Scribes and Pharisees a sign from heaven. “An evil and adulterous generation,” He said, “seeketh after a sign: but there shall be no sign given them, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” And what was that,—but a warning to repent, and mend their ways, ere it was too late?
Now the slightest use of our common sense must tell us, that our Lord could have given a sign of His almighty power if He had chosen; and such a sign as no man, even the dullest, could have mistaken. What prodigy could He not have performed, before Scribes and Pharisees, Herod, and Pontius Pilate? “Thinkest thou,” He said Himself, “that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will send Me presently more than twelve legions of angels?” Yet how did our Lord use that miraculous and almighty power of His? Sparingly, and secretly. Sparingly; for He used it almost entirely in curing the diseases of poor people; and secretly; for He used it almost entirely in remote places. Jerusalem itself, recollect, was at best a remote city compared with any of the great cities of the Roman empire. And even there He refused to cast Himself down from a pinnacleof the temple, for a sign and wonder to the Jews. If He, the Lord of the world, had meant to convert the world by prodigious miracles, He would surely have gone to Rome itself, the very heart and centre of the civilized world, and have shewn such signs and wonders therein, as would have made the Cæsar himself come down from his throne, and worship Him, the Lord of all.
But no. Our Lord wished for the obedience, not of men’s lips, but of their hearts. It was their hearts which He wished to win, that they might love Him—and be loyal to Him—for the sake of His goodness; and not fear and tremble before Him for the sake of His power. And therefore He kept, so to speak, His power in the background, and put His goodness foremost; only shewing His power in miracles of healing and mercy; that so poor neglected, oppressed, hardworked souls might understand that whoever did not care for them, Christ their Lord did; and that their disease and misery were not His will; nor the will of His Father and their Father in heaven.
But because, also, Christ was Lord of heaven and earth; therefore—if I may make so bold as to guess at the reason for anything which He did—He seems to have interfered as little as possible with those regular rules and customs of this world about us, which we now call the Laws of Nature. He did not offer—as the magicians of His time did offer—and as too many have pretended since to do—to change the courses of the elements, to bring down tempests or thunderbolts, to shew prodigies in the heaven above, and in the earthbeneath. Why should He? Heaven and earth, moon and stars, fire and tempest, and all the physical forces in the universe, were fulfilling His will already; doing their work right well according to the law which He had given them from the beginning. He had no need to disturb them, no need to disturb the growth of a single flower at His feet.
Rather He loved to tell men to look at them, and see how they went well, because His Father in heaven cared for them. To tell people to look, not at prodigies, comets, earthquakes, and the seeming exceptions of God’s rule: but at the common, regular, simple, peaceful work of God, which is going on around us all day long in every blade of grass, and flower, and singing bird, and sunbeam, and shower. To consider the lilies of the field how they grow: which 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.—And the birds of the air: They sow not, neither reap, nor gather into barns; and yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. How much more will He feed you, who can sow, and reap, and gather into barns?—O ye of little faith, who fancy always that besides sowing and reaping honestly, you must covet, and cheat, and lie, and break God’s laws instead of obeying them; or else, forsooth, you cannot earn your living? To see that the signs of God’s Kingdom are not astonishing convulsions, terrible catastrophes and disorders: but order, and peace, and usefulness, in creatures which are happy, because they live according to the law which God has given them,and do their duty—that duty, of which the great poet of the English Church has sung—
Stern Lawgiver! Thou yet dost wearThe Godhead’s most benignant graceNor know we anything so fairAs is the smile upon thy face.Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,And fragrance in thy footing treads;Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
Stern Lawgiver! Thou yet dost wearThe Godhead’s most benignant graceNor know we anything so fairAs is the smile upon thy face.Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,And fragrance in thy footing treads;Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
But men would not believe that in our Lord’s time; neither would they believe it after His time. Will they believe it even now? They craved after signs and wonders; they saw God’s hand, not in the common sights of this beautiful world; not in seed-time and harvest, summer and winter; not in the blossoming of flowers, and the song of birds: but only in strange portents, absurd and lying miracles, which they pretended had happened, because they fancied that they ought to have happened: and so built up a whole literature ofunreason, which remains to this day, a doleful monument of human folly and superstition.
But is not this too true of some at least of us in this very day? Must not people now see signs and wonders before they believe in God?
Do they not consider whatever is strange and inexplicable, as coming immediately from God? While whatever they are accustomed to, or fancy that they can explain, they consider comes in what they call the courseof nature, without God’s having anything to do with it?
If a man drops down dead, they say he died “by the hand of God,” or “by the visitation of God:” as if any created thing or being could die, or live either, save by the will and presence of God: as if a sparrow could fall to the ground without our Father’s knowledge. But so it is; because men’s hearts are far from God.
If an earthquake swallowed up half London this very day, how many would be ready to cry, “Here is a visitation of God. Here is the immediate hand of God. Perhaps Christ is coming, and the end of the world at hand.” And yet they will not see the true visitation, the immediate hand of God, in every drop of rain which comes down from heaven; and returneth not again void, but gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater. But so it always has been. Men used to see God and His power and glory almost exclusively in comets, auroras, earthquakes. It was not so very long ago, that the birth of monstrous or misshapen animals, and all other prodigies, as they were called, were carefully noted down, and talked of far and wide, as signs of God’s anger, presages of some coming calamity.—Atheists while they are in safety, superstitious when they are in danger—Requiring signs and wonders to make them believe—Interested only in what is uncommon and seems to break God’s laws—Careless about what is common, and far more wonderful, because it fulfils God’s laws—Such have most men been for ages, and will be, perhaps, to the end;shewing themselves, in that respect, carnal and no wiser than dumb animals.
For it is carnal, animal and brutish, and a sign of want of true civilization, as well as of true faith, only to be interested and surprised by what is strange; like dumb beasts, who, if they see anything new, are attracted by it and frightened by it, at the same time: but who, when once they are accustomed to it, and have found out that it will do them no harm, are too stupid to feel any curiosity or interest about it, though it were the most beautiful or the most wonderful object on earth.
But I will tell you of a man after God’s own heart, who was not like the dumb animals, nor like the ungodly and superstitious; because he was taught by the Spirit of God, and spoke by the Spirit of God. One who saw no signs and wonders, and yet believed in God—namely, the man who wrote the 139th Psalm. He needed no prodigies to make him believe. The thought of his own body, how fearfully and wonderfully it was made, was enough to make him do that. He looked on the perfect order and law which ruled over the development of his own organization, and said—“I will praise Thee. For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvellous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Thy Book were all my members written, which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How dear are Thy counsels unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!”
And I will tell you of another man who needed nosigns and wonders to make him believe—the man, namely, who wrote the 19th Psalm. He looked upon the perfect order and law of the heavens over his head, and the mere sight of the sun and moon and stars was enough for him; and he said—“The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament sheweth His handy-work. One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another. There is neither speech nor language, where their voice is not heard among them.”
And I will tell you of yet another man who needed no signs and wonders to make him believe—namely, the man who wrote the 104th Psalm. He looked on the perfect order and law of the world about his feet; and said,—“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works. In wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches. So is the great and wide sea also, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. These all wait upon Thee, that Thou mayest give them their meat in due season. Thou givest to them; they gather. Thou openest Thy hand; they are filled with good. Thou hidest Thy face; they are troubled. Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy breath, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever. The Lord shall rejoice in His works.”
My friends, let us all pray to God and to Christ, that They will put into our hearts the Spirit by which those psalms were written: that They will take from us the evil heart of unbelief, which must needs have signs andwonders, and forgets that in God we live and move and have our being. For are we not all—even the very best of us—apt to tempt our Lord in this very matter?
When all things go on in a common-place way with us—that is, in this well-made world, comfortably, easily, prosperously—how apt we all are—God forgive us—to forget God. How we forget that on Him we depend for every breath we draw; that Christ is guarding us daily from a hundred dangers, a hundred sorrows, it may be from a hundred disgraces, of which we, in our own self-satisfied blindness, never dream. How dull our prayers become, and how short. We almost think, at times, that there is no use in praying, for we get all we want without asking for it, in what we choose to call the course of circumstances and nature.—God forgive us, indeed.
But when sorrow comes, anxiety, danger, how changed we are all of a sudden. How gracious we are when pangs come upon us—like the wicked queen-mother in Jerusalem of old, when the invaders drove her out of her cedar palace. How we cry to the Lord then, and get us to our God right humbly. Then, indeed, we feel the need of prayer. Then we try to wrestle with God, and cry to Him—and what else can we do?—like children lost in the dark; entreat Him, if there be mercy in Him—as there is, in spite of all our folly—to grant some special providence, to give us some answer to our bitter entreaties. If He will but do for us this one thing, then we will believe indeed. Then we will trust Him, obey Him, serve Him, as we never did before.
Ah, if there were in Christ any touch of pride ormalice! Ah, if there were in Christ aught but a magnanimity and a generosity altogether boundless! Ah, if He were to deal with us as we have dealt with Him! Ah, if He were to deal with us after our sins, and reward us according to our iniquities!
If He refused to hear us; if He said to us,—You forgot me in your prosperity, why should I not forget you in your adversity?—What could we answer? Would that answer not be just? Would it not be deserved, however terrible? But our hope and trust is, that He will not answer us so; because He is not our God only, but our Saviour; that He will deal with us as one who seeks and saves that which is lost, whether it knows that it is lost or not.
Our hope is, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy; that because He is man, as well as God, He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; that He knoweth our frame, He remembereth of what we are made: else the spirit would fail before Him, and the souls which He has made. So we can have hope, that, though Christ rebuke us, He will yet hear us, if our prayers are reasonable, and therefore according to His will. And surely, surely, surely, if our prayers are for the improvement of any human being; if we are praying that we, or any human being, may be made better men and truer Christians at last, and saved from the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil—oh then, then shall we not be heard? The Lord may keep us long waiting, as He kept St Monica of old, when she wept over St Augustine’s youthful sins and follies. ButHe may answer us, as He answered her by the good bishop—“Be of good cheer. It is impossible that the son of so many prayers should perish.” And so, though He may shame us, in our inmost heart, by the rebuke—“Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe”—He will in the same breath grant our prayer, undeserved though His condescension be, and say—“Go in peace, thy son liveth.”
Luke xiii. 1-5.
There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilæans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilæans were sinners above all the Galilæans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilæans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilæans were sinners above all the Galilæans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
This story is often used, it seems to me, for a purpose exactly opposite to that for which it is told. It is said that because these Galilæans, whom Pilate slew, and these eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell, were no worse than the people round them, that therefore similar calamities must not be considered judgments and punishments of God; that it is an offence against Christian charity to say that such sufferers are the objects of God’s anger; that it is an offence against good manners to introduce the name of God, or the theory of a Divine Providence, in speaking of historical events. They mustbe ascribed to certain brute forces of nature; to certain inevitable laws of history; to the passions of men, to chance, to fate, to anything and everything: rather than to the will of God.
No man disagrees more utterly than I do with the latter part of this language. But I cannot be astonished at its popularity. It cannot be denied that the theory of a Divine Providence has been much misstated; that the doctrine of final causes has been much abused; that, in plain English, God’s name has been too often taken in vain, about calamities, private and public. Rational men of the world, therefore, may be excused for begging at times not to hear any more of Divine Providence; excused for doubting the existence of final causes; excused for shrinking, whenever they hear a preacher begin to interpret the will of God about this event or that. They dread a repetition of the mistake—to call it by the very gentlest term—which priests, in all ages, have been but too ready to commit. For all priesthoods—whether heathen or Christian, whether calling themselves priests, or merely ministers and preachers—have been in all ages tempted to talk as if Divine Providence was exercised solely on their behalf; in favour of their class, their needs, their health and comfort; as if the thunders of Jove never fell save when the priesthood needed, I had almost said commanded, them. Thus they have too often arrogated to themselves a right to define who was cursed by God, which has too soon, again and again, degenerated into a right to curse men in God’s name; while they have too often taught men to believe onlyin a Providence who interfered now and then on behalf of certain favoured persons, instead of a Providence who rules, always and everywhere, over all mankind. But men have again and again reversed their judgments. They have had to say—The facts are against you. You prophesied destruction to such and such persons; and behold: they have not been destroyed, but live and thrive. You said that such and such persons’ calamities were a proof of God’s anger for their sins. We find them, on the contrary, to have been innocent and virtuous persons; often martyrs for truth, for humanity, for God. The facts, we say, are against you. If there be a Providence, it is not such as you describe. If there be judgments of God, you have not found out the laws by which He judges: and rather than believe in your theory of Providence, your theory of judgments, we will believe in none.
Thus, in age after age, in land after land, has fanaticism and bigotry brought forth, by a natural revulsion, its usual fruit of unbelief.
But—let men believe or disbelieve as they choose—the warning of the Psalmist still stands true—“Be wise. Take heed, ye unwise among the people. He that nurtureth the heathen; it is He that teacheth man knowledge, shall He not punish?” For as surely as there is a God, so surely does that God judge the earth; and every individual, family, institution, and nation on the face thereof; and judge them all in righteousness by His Son Jesus Christ, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, and given Him all power in heaven and earth;who reigns and will reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet.
This is the good news of Advent. And therefore it is well that in Advent, if we believe that Christ is ruling us, we should look somewhat into the laws of His kingdom, as far as He has revealed them to us; and among others, into the law which—as I think—He laid down in the text.
Now I beg you to remark that the text, taken fully and fairly, means the very opposite to that popular notion of which I spoke in the beginning of my sermon.
Our Lord does not say—Those Galilæans were not sinners at all. Their sins had nothing to do with their death. Those on whom the tower fell were innocent men. He rather implies the very opposite.
We know nothing of the circumstances of either calamity: but this we know—That our Lord warned the rest of the Jews, that unless they repented—that is, changed their mind, and therefore their conduct, they would all perish in the same way. And we know that that warning was fulfilled, within forty years, so hideously, and so awfully, that the destruction of Jerusalem remains, as one of the most terrible cases of wholesale ruin and horror recorded in history; and—as I believe—a key to many a calamity before and since. Like the taking of Babylon, the fall of Rome, and the French Revolution, it stands out in lurid splendour, as of the nether pit itself, forcing all who believe to say in fear and trembling—Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth—and awarning to every man, class, institution, and nation on earth, to set their houses in order betimes, and bear fruit meet for repentance, lest the day come when they too shall be weighed in the balance of God’s eternal justice, and found wanting.
But another lesson we may learn from the text, which I wish to impress earnestly on your minds. These Galilæans, it seems, were no worse than the other Galilæans: yet they were singled out as examples: as warnings to the rest.
Believing—as I do—that our Lord was always teaching the universal through the particular, and in each parable, nay in each comment on passing events, laying down world-wide laws of His own kingdom, enduring through all time—I presume that this also is one of the laws of the kingdom of God. And I think that facts—to which after all is the only safe appeal—prove that it is so; that we see the same law at work around us every day. I think that pestilences, conflagrations, accidents of any kind which destroy life wholesale, even earthquakes and storms, are instances of this law; warnings from God; judgments of God, in the very strictest sense; by which He tells men, in a voice awful enough to the few, but merciful and beneficent to the many, to be prudent and wise; to learn henceforth either not to interfere with the physical laws of His universe, or to master and to wield them by reason and by science.
I would gladly say more on this point, did time allow: but I had rather now ask you to consider, whetherthis same law does not reveal itself throughout history; in many great national changes, or even calamities; and in the fall of many an ancient and time-honoured institution. I believe that the law does reveal itself; and in forms which, rightly studied, may at once teach us Christian charity, and give us faith and comfort, as we see that God, however severe, is still just.
I mean this—The more we read, in history, of the fall of great dynasties, or of the ruin of whole classes, or whole nations, the more we feel—however much we may acquiesce with the judgment as a whole—sympathy with the fallen. It is not the worst, but often the best, specimens of a class or of a system, who are swallowed up by the moral earthquake, which has been accumulating its forces, perhaps for centuries. Innocent and estimable on the whole, as persons, they are involved in the ruin which falls on the system to which they belong. So far from being sinners above all around them, they are often better people than those around them. It is as if they were punished, not for being who they were, but for being what they were.
History is full of such instances; instances of which we say and cannot help saying—What have they done above all others, that on them above all others the thunderbolt should fall?
Was Charles the First, for example, the worst, or the best, of the Stuarts; and Louis the Sixteenth, of the Bourbons? Look, again, at the fate of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the hapless monks of the Charterhouse. Were they sinners above all who upheldthe Romish system in England? Were they not rather among the righteous men who ought to have saved it, if it could have been saved? And yet on them—the purest and the holiest of their party—and not on hypocrites and profligates, fell the thunderbolt.
What is the meaning of these things?—for a meaning there must be; and we, I dare to believe, must be meant to discover it; for we are the children of God, into whose hearts, because we are human beings and not mere animals, He has implanted the inextinguishable longing to ascertain final causes; to seek not merely the means of things, but the reason of things; to ask not merely How? but Why?
May not the reason be—I speak with all timidity and reverence, as one who shrinks from pretending to thrust himself into the counsels of the Almighty—But may not the reason be that God has wished thereby to condemn not the persons, but the systems? That He has punished them, not for their private, but for their public faults? It is not the men who are judged, it is the state of things which they represent; and for that very reason may not God have made an example, a warning, not of the worst, but of the very best, specimens of a doomed class or system, which has been weighed in His balance, and found wanting?
Therefore we need not suppose that these sufferers themselves were the objects of God’s wrath. We may believe that of them, too, stands true the great Law, “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” We may believe thatof them, too, stands true St Paul’s great parable in 1 Cor. xii., which, though a parable, is the expression of a perpetually active law. They have built, it may be, on the true foundation: but they have built on it wood, hay, stubble, instead of gold and precious stone. And the fire of God, which burns for ever against the falsehoods and follies of the world, has tried their work, and it is burned and lost. But they themselves are saved; yet as through fire.
Looking at history in this light, we may justify God for many a heavy blow, and fearful judgment, which seems to the unbeliever a wanton cruelty of chance or fate; while at the same time we may feel deep sympathy with—often deep admiration for—many a noble spirit, who has been defeated, and justly defeated, by those irreversible laws of God’s kingdom, of which it is written—“On whomsoever that stone shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” We may look with reverence, as well as pity, on many figures in history, such as Sir Thomas More’s; on persons who, placed by no fault of their own in some unnatural and unrighteous position; involved in some decaying and unworkable system; conscious more or less of their false position; conscious, too, of coming danger, have done their best, according to their light, to work like men, before the night came in which no man could work; to do what of their duty seemed still plain and possible; and to set right that which would never come right more: forgetting that, alas, the crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered; till the flood came andswept them away, standing bravely to the last at a post long since untenable, but still—all honour to them—standing at their post.
When we consider such sad figures on the page of history, we may have, I say, all respect for their private virtues. We may accept every excuse for their public mistakes. And yet we may feel a solemn satisfaction at their downfall, when we see it to have been necessary for the progress of mankind, and according to those laws and that will of God and of Christ, by which alone the human race is ruled. We may look back on old orders of things with admiration; even with a touch of pardonable, though sentimental, regret. But we shall not forget that the old order changes, giving place to the new;
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
And we shall believe, too, if we be wise, that all these things were written for our example, that we may see, and fear, and be turned to the Lord, each asking himself solemnly, What is the system on which I am governing my actions? Is it according to the laws and will of God, as revealed in facts? Let me discover that in time: lest, when it becomes bankrupt in God’s books, I be involved—I cannot guess how far—in the common ruin of my compeers.
What is my duty? Let me go and work at it, lest a night come, in which I cannot work. What fruit am I expected to bring forth? Let me train and cultivatemy mind, heart, whole humanity to bring it forth, lest the great Husbandman come seeking fruit on me, and find none. And if I see a man who falls in the battle of life, let me not count him a worse sinner than myself; but let me judge myself in fear and trembling; lest God judge me, and I perish in like wise.
Rev. xix. 11-16.
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written,King of kings, and Lord of lords.
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written,King of kings, and Lord of lords.
Let me ask you to consider seriously this noble passage. It was never more worth men’s while to consider it than now, when various selfish and sentimental religions—call them rather superstitions—have made men altogether forget the awful reality of Christ’s kingdom; the awful fact that Christ reigns, and will reign, till He has put all enemies under His feet.
Who, then, is He of whom the text speaks? Who is this personage, who appears eternally in heaven as a warrior, with His garments stained with blood, the leader of armies, smiting the nations, and ruling them with a rod of iron?
St John tells us that He had one name which none knew save Himself. But he tells us that He was called Faithful and True; and he tells us, too, that He had another name which St John did know; and that is, “The Word of God.”
Now who the Word of God is, all are bound to know who call themselves Christians; even Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God.
He it is who makes everlasting war as King of kings and Lord of lords. But against what does He make war? His name tells us that. For it is—Faithful and True; and therefore He makes war against all things and beings who are unfaithful and false. He Himself is full of chivalry, full of fidelity; and therefore all that is unchivalrous and treacherous is hateful in His eyes; and that which He hates, He is both able and willing to destroy.
Moreover, He makes war in righteousness. And therefore all men and things which are unrighteous and unjust are on the opposite side to Him; His enemies, which He will trample under His feet. The only hope for them, and indeed for all mankind, is that He does make war in righteousness, and that He Himself is faithfuland true, whoever else is not; that He is always just, always fair, always honourable and courteous; that He always keeps His word; and governs according to fixed and certain laws, which men may observe and calculate upon, and shape their conduct accordingly, sure that Christ’s laws will not change for any soul on earth or in heaven. But, within those honourable and courteous conditions, He will, as often as He sees fit, smite the nations, and rule them with a rod of iron; and tread the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
And if any say—as too many in these luxurious unbelieving days will say—What words are these? Threatening, terrible, cruel? My answer is,—The words are not mine. I did not put them into the Bible. I find them there, and thousands like them, in the New Testament as well as in the Old, in the Gospels and Epistles as well as in the Revelation of St John. If you do not like them, your quarrel must be, not with me, but with the whole Bible, and especially with St John the Apostle, who said—“Little children, love one another;” and who therefore was likely to have as much love and pity in his heart as any philanthropic, or sentimental, or superstitious, or bigoted, personage of modern days.
And if any one say,—But you must mistake the meaning of the text. It must be understood spiritually. The meek and gentle Jesus, who is nothing but love and mercy, cannot be such an awful and destroying being as you would make Him out to be. Then I mustanswer—That our Lord was meek and gentle when on earth, and therefore is meek and gentle for ever and ever, there can be no doubt. “I am meek and lowly of heart,” He said of Himself. But with that meekness and lowliness, and not in contradiction to it, there was, when He was upon earth, and therefore there is now and for ever, a burning indignation against all wrong and falsehood; and especially against that worst form of falsehood—hypocrisy; and that worst form of hypocrisy—covetousness which shelters itself under religion.
When our Lord saw men buying and selling in the temple, He made a scourge of cords, and drove them out, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and said,—“It is written, my Father’s house is a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
When He faced the Pharisees, who were covetous, He had no meek and gentle words for them: but, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”
And because His character is perfect and eternal: because He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, we are bound by the Christian faith to believe that He has now, and will have for ever, the same Divine indignation against wrong, the same determination to put it down: and to cast out of His kingdom, which is simply the whole universe, all that offends, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
And if any say, as some say now-a-days—“Ah, but you cannot suppose that our Lord would propagate His Gospel by the sword, or wish Christians to do so.”My friends, this chapter and this sermon has nothing to do with the propagation of the Gospel, in the popular sense; nothing to do with converting heathens or others to Christianity. It has to do with that awful government of the world, of which the Bible preaches from beginning to end; that moral and providential kingdom of God, which rules over the destiny of every kingdom, every nation, every tribe, every family, nay, over the destiny of each human being; ay, of each horde of Tartars on the furthest Siberian steppe, and each group of savages in the furthest island of the Pacific; rendering to each man according to his works, rewarding the good, punishing the bad, and exterminating evildoers, even wholesale and seemingly without discrimination, when the measure of their iniquity is full. Christ’s herald in this noble chapter calls men, not to repentance, but to inevitable doom. His angel—His messenger—stands in the sun, the source of light and life; above this petty planet, its fashions, its politics, its sentimentalities, its notions of how the universe ought to have been made and managed; and calls to whom?—to all the fowl that fly in the firmament of heaven—“Come and gather yourselves together, to the feast of the great God, that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and of captains, and of mighty men; and the flesh of horses and of them that sit on them; and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.”
What those awful words may mean I cannot say. But this I say, that the Apostle would never have used such words, conveying so plain and so terrible a meaning toanyone who has ever seen or heard of a battle-field, if he had really meant by them nothing like a battle-field at all.
It may be that these words have fulfilled themselves many times—at the fall of Jerusalem—at the wars which convulsed the Roman empire during the first century after Christ—at the final fall of the Roman empire before the lances of our German ancestors—in many another great war, and national calamity, in many a land since then. It may be, too, that, as learned divines have thought, they will have their complete fulfilment in some war of all wars, some battle of all battles; in which all the powers of evil, and all those who love a lie, shall be arrayed against all the powers of good, and all those who fear God and keep His commandments: to fight it out, if the controversy can be settled by no reason, no persuasion; a battle in which the whole world shall discover that, even in an appeal to brute force, the good are stronger than the bad; because they have moral force also on their side; because God and the laws of His whole universe are fighting for them, against those who transgress law, and outrage reason.
The wisest of living Britons has said,—“Infinite Pity, yet infinite rigour of Law. It is so that the world is made.” I should add, It is so the world must be made, because it is made by Jesus Christ our Lord, and its laws are the likeness of His character; pitiful, because Christ is pitiful; and rigorous, because He is rigorous. So pitiful is Christ, that He did not hesitate to be slain for men, that mankind through Him might besaved. But so rigorous is Christ, that He does not hesitate to slay men, if needful, that mankind thereby may be saved. War and bloodshed, pestilence and famine, earthquake and tempest—all of them, as sure as there is a God, are the servants of God, doing His awful but necessary work, for the final benefit of the whole human race.
It may be difficult to believe this: at least to believe it with the same intense faith with which prophets and apostles of old believed it, and cried—“When Thy judgments, O Lord, are abroad in the earth, then shall the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.” But we must believe it: or we shall be driven to believe in no God at all; and that will be worse for us than all the evil that has happened to us from our youth up until now.
But most people find it very difficult to believe in such a God as the Scripture sets forth—a God of boundless tenderness; and yet a God of boundless indignation.
The covetous and luxurious find it very difficult to understand such a being. Their usual notion of tenderness is a selfish dislike of seeing any one else uncomfortable, because it makes them uncomfortable likewise. Their usual notion of indignation is a selfish desire of revenge against anyone who interferes with their comfort. And therefore they have no wholesome indignation against wrong and wrong-doers, and a great deal of unwholesome tenderness for them. They are afraid of any one’s being punished; probably from a fellow-feeling; asuspicion that they deserve to be punished themselves. They hate and dread honest severity, and stern exercise of lawful power. They are indulgent to the bad, severe upon the good; till, as has been bitterly but too truly said,—“Public opinion will allow a man to do anything, except his duty.”
Now this is a humour which cannot last. It breeds weakness, anarchy, and at last ruin to society. And then the effeminate and luxurious, terrified for their money and their comfort, fly from an unwholesome tenderness to an unwholesome indignation; break out into a panic of selfish rage; and become, as cowards are apt to do, blindly and wantonly cruel; and those who fancied God too indulgent to punish His enemies, will be the very first to punish their own.
But there are those left, I thank God, in this land, who have a clear understanding of what they ought to be, and an honest desire to be it; who know that a manful indignation against wrong-doing, a hearty hatred of falsehood and meanness, a rigorous determination to do their duty at all risks, and to repress evil with all severity, may dwell in the same heart with gentleness, forgiveness, tenderness to women and children; active pity to the weak, the sick, the homeless; and courtesy to all mankind, even to their enemies.
God grant that that spirit may remain alive among us. For without it we shall not long be a strong nation; not indeed long a nation at all. And it is alive among us. Not that we, any of us, have enough of it—God forgive us for all our shortcomings. And God grant it mayremain alive among us; for it is, as far as it goes, the likeness of Christ, the Maker and Ruler of the world.
“Christian,” said a great genius and a great divine,
“If thou wouldst learn to love,Thou first must learn to hate.”
“If thou wouldst learn to love,Thou first must learn to hate.”
And if any one answer—“Hate? Even God hateth nothing that He has made.” The rejoinder is,—And for that very reason God hates evil; because He has not made it, and it is ruinous to all that He has made.
Go you and do likewise. Hate what is wrong with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. For so, and so only, you will shew that you love God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, likewise.
Oh pray—and that not once for all merely, but day by day, ay, almost hour by hour—Strengthen me, O Lord, to hate what Thou hatest, and love what Thou lovest; and therefore, whenever I see an opportunity, to put down what Thou hatest, and to help what Thou lovest—That so, at the last dread day, when every man shall be rewarded according to his works, you may have some answer to give to the awful question—On whose side wert thou in the battle of life? On the side of good men and of God, or on the side of bad men and the devil? Lest you find yourselves forced to reply—as too many will be forced—with surprise, and something like shame and confusion of face—I really do not know. I never thought about the matter at all. I never knew that there was any battle of life.
Never knew that there was any battle of life? And yetyou were christened, and signed with the sign of the Cross, in token that you should fight manfully under Christ’s banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant to your life’s end. Did it never occur to you that those words might possibly mean something? And you used to sing hymns, too, on earth, about “Soldiers of Christ, arise, And put your armour on.” What prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors meant by those words, you should know well enough. Did it never occur to you that they might possibly mean something to you? That as long as the world was no better than it is, there was still a battle of life; and that you too were sworn to fight in it? How many will answer—Yes—Yes—But I thought that these words only meant having my soul saved, and going to heaven when I died. And how did you expect to do that? By believing certain doctrines which you were told were true; and leading a tolerably respectable life, without which you would not have been received into society? Was that all which was needed to go to heaven? And was that all that was meant by fighting manfully under Christ’s banner against sin, the world, and the devil? Why, Cyrus and his old Persians, 2,400 years ago, were nearer to the kingdom of God than that. They had a clearer notion of what the battle of life meant than that, when they said that not only the man who did a merciful or just deed, but the man who drained a swamp, tilled a field, made any little corner of the earth somewhat better than he found it, was fighting against Ahriman the evil spirit of darkness, on the sideof Ormuzd the good god of light; and that as he had taken his part in Ormuzd’s battle, he should share in Ormuzd’s triumph.
Oh be at least able to say in that day,—Lord, I am no hero. I have been careless, cowardly, sometimes all but mutinous. Punishment I have deserved, I deny it not. But a traitor I have never been; a deserter I have never been. I have tried to fight on Thy side in Thy battle against evil. I have tried to do the duty which lay nearest me; and to leave whatever Thou didst commit to my charge a little better than I found it. I have not been good: but I have at least tried to be good. I have not done good, it may be, either: but I have at least tried to do good. Take the will for the deed, good Lord. Accept the partial self-sacrifice which Thou didst inspire, for the sake of the one perfect self-sacrifice which Thou didst fulfil upon the Cross. Pardon my faults, out of Thine own boundless pity for human weakness. Strike not my unworthy name off the roll-call of the noble and victorious army, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and let me, too, be found written in the Book of Life: even though I stand the lowest and last upon its list. Amen.
Hebrews xii. 22, 23.
Ye are come to the city of the living God, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
Ye are come to the city of the living God, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
I have quoted only part of the passage of Scripture in which these words occur. If you want a good employment for All Saints’ Day, read the whole passage, the whole chapter; and no less, the 11th chapter, which comes before it: so will you understand better the meaning of All Saints’ Day. But sufficient for the day is the good thereof, as well as the evil; and the good which I have to say this morning is—You are come to the spirits of just men made perfect; for this is All Saints’ Day.
Into the presence of this noble company we have come: even nobler company, remember, than that which was spoken of in the text. For more than 1800 years have passed since the Epistle to the Hebrews was written: and how many thousands of just men and women, pure, noble, tender, wise, beneficent, have graced the earth since then, and left their mark upon mankind, and helped forward the hallowing of our heavenly Father’sname, the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will on earth as it is done in heaven; and helped therefore to abolish the superstition, the misrule, the vice, and therefore the misery of this struggling, moaning world. How many such has Christ sent on this earth during the last 1800 years. How many before that; before His own coming, for many a century and age. We know not, and we need not know. The records of Holy Scripture and of history strike with light an isolated mountain peak, or group of peaks, here and here through the ages; but between and beyond all is dark to us now. But it may not have been dark always. Scripture and history likewise hint to us of great hills far away, once brilliant in the one true sunshine which comes from God, now shrouded in the mist of ages, or literally turned away beyond our horizon by the revolution of our planet: and of lesser hills, too, once bright and green and fair, giving pasture to lonely flocks, sending down fertilizing streams into now forgotten valleys; themselves all but forgotten now, save by the God who made and blessed them.
Yes: many a holy soul, many a useful soul, many a saint who is now at God’s right hand, has lived and worked, and been a blessing, himself blest, of whom the world, and even the Church, has never heard, who will never be seen or known again, till the day in which the Lord counteth up His jewels.
Let us rejoice in that thought on this day, above all days in the year. On this day we give special thanks to God for all His servants departed this life in His faithand fear. Let us rejoice in the thought that we know not how many they are; only that they are an innumerable company, out of all tongues and nations, whom no man can number. Let us rejoice that Christ’s grace is richer, and not poorer, than our weak imaginations can conceive, or our narrow systems account for. Let us rejoice that the goodly company in whose presence we stand, can be limited and defined by no mortal man, or school of men: but only by Him from whom, with the Father, proceeds for ever the Holy Spirit, the inspirer of all good; and who said of that Spirit—“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is every one who is born of the Spirit”—and who said again, “John came neither eating nor drinking, and ye said, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But I say unto you, Verily wisdom is justified of all her children”—and who said again—when John said to Him, “Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us”—“Forbid him not. For I say to you, that he that doeth a miracle in My name will not lightly speak evil of Me”—and who said, lastly—and most awfully—that the unpardonable sin, either in this life or the life to come, was to attribute beneficent deeds to a bad origin, because they were performed by one who differed from us in opinion; and to say, “He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, prince of the devils.”
These are words of our Lord, which we are specially bound to keep in our minds, with reverence and godly fear, on All Saints’ Day, lest by arranging our calendar of saints according to our own notions of who ought to be a saint, and who ought not—that is, who agrees with our notions of perfection, and who does not—we exclude ourselves, by fastidiousness, from much unquestionably good company; and possibly mix ourselves up with not a little which is, to say the least, questionable.
Men in all ages, Churchmen or others, have fallen into this mistake. They have been but too ready to limit their calendar of saints; to narrow the thanksgivings which they offer to God on All Saints’ Day.
The Romish Church has been especially faulty on this point. It has assumed, as necessary preliminaries for saintship—at least after the Christian era—the practice of, or at least the longing after, celibacy; and after the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches, unconditional submission to the Church of Rome. But how has this injured, if not spoiled, their exclusive calendar of saints. Amid apostles, martyrs, divines, who must be always looked on as among the very heroes and heroines of humanity, we find more than one fanatic persecutor; more than two or three clearly insane personages; and too many who all but justify the terrible sneer—that the Romish Calendar is the “Pantheon of Hysteria.”
And Protestants, too—How have they narrowed the number of the spirits of just men made perfect; and confined the Pæan which should go up from the human raceon All Saints’ Day, till a “saint” has too often meant with them only a person who has gone through certain emotional experiences, and assented to certain subjective formulas, neither of which, according to the opinion of some of the soundest divines, both of the Romish, Greek, and Anglican communions, are to be found in the letter of Scripture as necessary to salvation; and who have, moreover, finished their course—doubtless often a holy, beneficent, and beautiful course—by a rapturous death-bed scene, which is more rare in the actual experience of clergymen, and, indeed, in the conscience and experience of human beings in general, than in the imaginations of the writers of religious romances.
But we of the Church of England, as by law established—and I recognize and obey, and shall hereafter recognize and obey, no other—have no need so to narrow our All Saints’ Day; our joy in all that is noble and good which man has said or done in any age or clime. We have no need to define where formularies have not defined; to shut where they have opened; to curse where they either bless, or are humbly, charitably, and therefore divinely, silent. With a magnificent faith in the justice of the Father, and in the grace of Christ, and in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, our Church bids us—Judge not the dead, lest ye be judged. Condemn not the dead, lest ye be condemned. For she bids us commit to the earth the corpses of all who die not “unbaptized,” “excommunicate,” or wilful suicides, and who are willing to lie in our consecrated ground; giving thanks to God that our dear brother has been delivered from the miseries of this sinfulworld, and in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.
At least: we of the Abbey of Westminster have a right to hold this; for we, thank God, act on it, and have acted on it for many a year. We have a right to our wide, free, charitable, and truly catholic conception of All Saints’ Day. Ay, if we did not use our right, these walls would use it for us; and in us would our Lord’s words be fulfilled—If we were silent, the very stones beneath our feet would cry out.
For hither we gather, as far as is permitted us, and hither we gather proudly, the mortal dust of every noble soul who has done good work for the British nation; accepting each and all of them as gifts from the Father of lights, from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift, as sent to this nation by that Lord Jesus Christ who is the King of all the nations upon earth; and acknowledging—for fear of falling into that Pelagian heresy, which is too near the heart of every living man—that all wise words which they have spoken, all noble deeds which they have done, have come, must have come, from The One eternal source of wisdom, of nobleness, of every form of good; even from the Holy Spirit of God.
We make no severe or minute inquiries here. We leave them, if they must be made, to God the Judge of all things, and Christ who knows the secrets of the hearts; to Him who is merciful in this: that He rewardeth every man according to his works.
All we ask is—and all we dare ask—of divine or statesman, poet or warrior, musician or engineer—ofDryden or of Handel—of Isaac Watts or of Charles Dickens—but why go on with the splendid diversities of the splendid catalogue?—What was your work? Did we admire you for it? Did we love you for it? And why? Because you made us in some way or other better men. Because you helped us somewhat toward whatsoever things are pure, true, just, honourable, of good report. Because, if there was any virtue—that is, true valour and manhood; if there was any praise—that is, just honour in the sight of men, and therefore surely in the sight of the Son of man, who died for men; you helped us to think on such things. You, in one word, helped to make us better men.
Welcome then, friends unknown—and, alas! friends known, and loved, and lost—welcome into England’s Pantheon, not of superstitious and selfish hysteria, but of beneficent and healthy manhood.
Your words and your achievements have gone out into all lands, and your sound unto the ends of the world; and let them go, and prosper in that for which the Lord of man has sent them. Our duty is, to guard your sacred dust. Our duty is, to point out your busts, your monuments around these ancient walls, to all who come, of every race and creed; as proofs that the ancient spirit is not dead; that Christ has not deserted the nation of England, while He sends into it such men as you; that Christ has not deserted the Church of England, while He gives her grace to recognize and honour such men as you, and to pray Christ that He would keep up the sacred succession of virtue, talent, beneficence,patriotism; and make us, most unworthy, at last worthy, one at least here and there, of the noble dead, above whose dust we now serve God.
Yes, so ought we in Westminster to keep our All Saints’ Day; in giving thanks to God for the spirits of just men made perfect. Not only for those just men and women innumerable, who—as I said at first—have graced this earth during the long ages of the past: but specially for those who lie around us here; with whom we can enter, and have entered already, often, into spiritual communion closer than that, almost, of child with parent; whose writings we can read, whose deeds we can admire, whose virtues we can copy, and to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, we and our children after us, which never can be repaid.
And if ever the thought comes over us—But these men had their faults, mistakes—Oh, what of that?
Nothing is left of themNow, but pure manly.
Nothing is left of themNow, but pure manly.