THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
1
Conflict of Cferisi in
piritual Sittt
ts
n
SERMONS
PREACHED DURING
THE SEASON OF LENT, 1866,
IN
OXFORD.
THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.
REV. PROFESSOR MANSEL.
REV. J. R. WOODFORD, M.A.
THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY.
REV. DR. PUSEY.
ARCHDEACON GRANT.
REV. J. F. MACKARNESS, M.A.
REV. T. T. CARTER, M.A.
REV. T. L. CLAUGHTON, M.A.
REV. E. C. WICKHAM, M.A.
REV. DR. PAYNE SMITH.
THE DEAN OF CORK.
WITH A PREFACE
BY
SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.
AND 377, STRAND, LONDON:
JAMES PARKER AND CO.
1866.
|)rinteb bn |ames $arher anb Co., (frofam-garb, rforb.
V
PREFACE.
again in this volume Sermons preached
during Lent (1866) by preachers of my ap-
pointment are presented to the Church. The sub-
ject of these Sermons continues the series of last
year. That series dealt with the struggle of the
Church with the evils and corruptions around it
in the world. This series traces up the conflict
higher still ; following it into the strife with those
bands of spiritual beings whose existence, and
many of whose actings, God's Word reveals to
us. Greater interest than was ever manifested
before, attached to these Sermons during their
delivery. Once again it is my earnest prayer to
God that by His grace He would make them
effectual for His glory, arid the good of souls.
S. OXON.
CUDDESDON PALACE,
May, 1866.
1236179
CONTENTS.
SEEMON I.
( P . i.)
Our Spiritual Adversaries.
EPHESIANS vi. 12.
BY THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.
SEEMON H,
, - (P- I9-)
The Conflict and Defeat in Eden.
i ST. JOHN iii. 8.
BY H. L. M ANSEL, B.D.
SEEMON III.
(P- 33-)
The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing.
JOB i. 7.
BY J. R. WOODFORD, M.A.
SEEMON IV.
(p- 47-)
The Coming in of the Son of Man. His Conflict and Victory.
ST. JOHN xiL 31.
By THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY.
VI CONTENTS.
SERMON V,
(p. 61.)
The Kingdom of Light set up. The Conflict and Victory
of its Faithful Children.
ST. LUKE xxiv. 49.
BY E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
SEBMON VI,
(p. 81.)
The Powers of Darkness Prevailing over the Disobedient.
ST. JOHN iii. 19.
BY ARCHDEACON GRANT.
SEBMON VH.
(P- 93-)
Aids in the Conflict: God's Gifts of Grace.
HEBREWS iv. 16.
BY J. F. MACKARNESS, M.A.
SEBMON
(p. 105.)
Aids in the Conflict : God's Heavenly Host.
PSALM xci. 12.
BY T. T. CARTER, M.A.
SEBMON IX.
(p- 123.)
The Communion of Saints.
ST. JOHN vi. 57.
BY T. L. CLAUGHTON, M.A.
CONTENTS. vii
SEBMON X.
(p- I35-)
The Weapons of our Warfare.
2 COR. x. 4 ; ROM. xii. 21.
BY E. C. WICKHAM, M.A.
SEEMOIf XI,
(P- I45-)
The Crisis of the Conflict.
ST. JOHN xvii. 3.
By R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D.
SEEMON XH,
(p. 161.)
The Great Overthrow.
PSALM ix. 6.
BY THE DEAN OF CORK.
SERMON I.
ur .Spiritual
EPHESIANS vi, 12.
" For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against princi-
palities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
T N the course of Lenten Sermons which was preached
last year in this place, we sought to set before you
as many particulars as could be gathered within such
limits, of the strife between Christ, in His Church, and
the evil which is in this world.
This aspect of the conflict, even if it were complete
in itself, would be but a partial and inadequate view
of the whole mighty contention which through the ages
is maintained between the Captain of our Salvation
and the powers of evil. Not in this remote district of \
God's measureless kingdom the battle-field though it
be of an especial combat, but not in it only or chiefly,
is that warfare waged. Not with beings of our race only,
the newest born, as it would seem, of the reasonable
creation, did the strife begin ; nor can we rightly under-
stand its character, or duly measure its greatness, unless
we take into our calculations those higher and earlier
struggles, of which these in which we here bear part are
the echo and the prolongation.
To set this, then, in some measure before you, is the xs
object of this present course. We would shew you that
not with flesh and blood alone is even here the struggle :
B
2 Our Spiritual Adversaries. [SERM.
3?
that around us, with us, through us, the mightier forms
of more ancient wickedness are still maintaining their
long warfare with the God of purity and love. Such
a view of this present life, if we succeed in setting it at
all duly before you, must be most full of practical sug-
gestions. The greatness of our risk, the fierce and deadly
character of the strife in which we must mingle, its past
history, its present circumstances, its onslaughts and its
helps, the weapons which must be wielded, the dark
crisis yet to be encountered, and the measureless issues
into which the final overthrow will run out through all
eternity, these, if they indeed sink into our hearts,
must affect deeply our whole character, must add earn-
estness to our prayers, reality to our conceptions of
the spiritual kingdom in which we are, and wariness,
and courage, and undying resolution to the life we daily
lead amidst such unseen but most present powers of
good and of evil.
Our first enquiry in such a course must lead us to the
questions who these, our enemies and God's, are ; what
is their nature ; what the causes of their enmity to
us; what the modes of their assaults, and the limits
of their powers ; questions, many of them doubtless
difficult, some perhaps incapable of complete answer,
and yet among them some greatly concerning us, which
may have much light thrown upon them by reason, when
informed and guided by revelation. It is as to these
that I desire, by God's help, to speak to you to-night.
First, then, note the fact that there ARE spiritual
beings, greater than ourselves in nature and power.
To this the belief of man in all ages bears a remark-
ably consentient witness. The universal extent of this
belief seems to base it upon the traditions of a pri-
maeval revelation. But even without such revelation,
I.] Our Spiritual Adversaries. 3
reason undoubtedly supports the view. For creation
round us exhibits, wherever we examine it, an orderly
gradation of e'xistences. There are in all its vast ex-
tent no abrupt transitions. Inert matter is first raised
into the shadowy vitality of vegetable life ; thence, by
links so subtle that we can scarcely ascertain the actual
point of transition, it passes into the living animal ;
through the graduated series of irrational animal ex-
istence it mounts, by measurable steps, from the almost
vegetable zoophyte up to the highly organized quadru-
mana. Then intervenes a measureless yet not unnatural
transition into the reasonable creation, which we see
and feel and know around ourselves. To suppose that
here the series stopped abruptly, that between ourselves
and the immaterial, self-existent, necessary Creator were
interposed no higher order of created beings, would be
to contradict all our precedent experience of the laws of
gradation in His world. At this point, indeed, as at
the transition from inanimate matter to animate being,
and from irrational to rational life, the actual steps
of the ascent are hidden from us, but our experience
not only suggests to us that such steps exist, but,
even further, indicate the direction in which they lead.
We have already seen matter refined and exalted when-
ever the mystery of life, even in its lowest measure, is
linked to it ; we see it almost mastered by reason in
man ; and further, we see it in humanity knit into
personal union with spirit, and so exalted, by the gifts
to that humanity of reason and faith, that it can exer-
cise a sovereign and wellnigh absolute command over
all simpler elemental being. To conceive of it as carried
on in higher creatures, into a far greater refinement, and
endowed in them with a proportionate increase of power,
is but to follow the intimations given clearly by the
B 2
4 Our Spiritual Adversaries. [SERM.
past. Moreover, the same experience leads us to ex-
pect that amongst these higher beings we should find
Ui I the most intense variance in moral character. For if
the denizens of that spirit-world exhibit in themselves
the prolongation of the lines of being which are round
us now, this divergence with which we are so familiar
here must widen almost infinitely there.
So much we might reasonably look for from our
actual knowledge. And at the point where the lack
of experience stays the further enquiries of reason, reve-
lation comes in and takes up in clearer tones its faltering
accents. It tells us that there are in God's world all
these expected gradations of existences ; that ten thou-
sand times ten thousand angels carry up the interrupted
chain of reasonable personalities from men through all
the ranks of shining ones, through spirits, dominations
and thrones, through cherubim and seraphim, through
angels and archangels, up to those created beings
who stand nearest to the still unapproachable Jehovah.
Further, it tells us distinctly of a mighty moral variance
amongst these forms of power ; of angels which kept not
their first estate, who through choosing sin instead of God
lost the blessedness for which they were created ; whose
marred proportions exhibit, even through their remain-
ing majesty and power, the blackness of rebellion and
the thunder-stricken scars of righteous vengeance. These
fallen ones revelation pourtrays to us as a countless mul-
titude, which, like the hosts_of light, exhibit all grada-
tions of power ; which have gathered round one mightier
tharTthemselves in evil, and having rebelled against the
God of light, yield themselves to the evil will of the
prince of darkness. Over against the King of Heaven,
and the hosts of His spirits of glory, scowl in van-
quished, yet hating defiance, the devil and his angels ;
I.] Our Spiritual Adversaries. 5
who are further shewn to us in active opposition to
the will of God. Here, then, the conflict, as we see
and know it in this world, is distinctly revealed to us /
as existing in this higher region above us. The battle
of the earth is the shadow and the echo of the strife
on high.
But, beyond this, God's Word distinctly tells us, in
a multitude of passages, that the evil spirits take a pre-
sent and active part in our own conflict. " Your adver-
sary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking
whom he may devour a ." To such a degree, indeed, is
this true, that our conflict, as it is spoken of in Scripture,
becomes a struggle against these evil ones. "Resist
the devil, and he will flee from you b ;" " Neither give
place to the devil c ;" " That ye may be able to stand
against the wiles of the devil d ;" " Lest he fall into the
snare of the devil e ." This is the very description of our
conflict, and pre-eminently in this verse which I have
already read to you, does this great spiritual fact come
out with a really terrible clearness. " Be strong," says
the Apostle, "in the Lord, and in the power of His
might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may
be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against princi-
palities, against powers, against the rulers of the dark-
ness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places.'' Every word is emphatic. The more emphatic
as you look the closer into them. The wrestling, the
irakf], is the close, deathlike struggle ; the limb to limb,
the muscle to muscle embrace of agonizing strife ; the
whole man, the whole devil, is in that desperate anguish
of encounter. And this is the very heart of our conflict ;
I St. Pet. v. 8. b St. James iv. 7. c Ephes. iv. 27.
d Ephes. vi. ii. ' i Tim. iii. 7.
6 Our Spirittial Adversaries. [SERM.
it is not only irakt], but fj rraXtj, the wrestling, as if it
were the only struggle worth the name.
Mark, too, that it is not said that our wrestling is not
only with flesh and blood, but absolutely, that it is
not with them. They disappear, as it were, from the
sight of the purged eye, for they are but the weapons
and the instruments of the mightier enemy ; " they are
vessels, another uses them ; they are organs, another
handles them." And fearful is the description of these
greater foes. They are so many that they fill the air
over us, seeking to cut us off from God. TKey are
spiritual armies of wickedness, not limited, as we are,
to this lower earth, but piled up in their subtle essences
we know not to what extent, throughout this whole
universe. And, fallen as they are, their might is great.
They are ras a/^a?, ras e^ovcrias, rovs KocrfMOfcpaTopas,
the governments, the powers, the world-rulers, in this
time of ItscTarkliess. Which description involves a
deeply mysterious subject, but one not to be passed
wholly over; I mean, in what sense it is that these
Evil ones are spoken of as world-rulers in this world
of our God. In many passages of the New Testament
the idea re-appears. The devil is " the prince of the power
of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children
of disobedience f ." In the record of our Lord's temp-
tation in the wilderness, a wonderful aspect of the same
spiritual fact is set before us, when the Evil One asserts,
"All this power will I give THEE, and the glory of
these kingdoms of the world : for that is delivered
unto me ; and to whomsoever I will I give it." For
simply to deny his power of doing that which he offers
to do, is to empty the temptation of that reality which
the Word of God plainly attributes to it. For if it
{ Ephes. ii. 2.
I.] Our Spiritual Adversaries. 7
were a simple lie, how could it try the fidelity of the '
Incarnate Son ? No doubt it did address itself to the
nature He had assumed into oneness with the Godhead.
No doubt it was a suggestion that man might, by the
co-operation of the enemy, be redeemed without the
Cross ; that humanity might be delivered by the Son
of Man receiving from the God of this world what he
would yield voluntarily, so only that it should be held of
him. It is hard for us, from the centre of Christendom,
to see to how great a degree the boast was then literally
true. It is only as we thoroughly remember what the old
heathendom was, with its lust and its blood, its oracles,
its idolatry, and its atheism, that we can see how much
it was indeed the kingdom of the prince of darkness.
As we muse on these things, we can see the dark forms ,^_
of the Philistine host crowning every hill-top, and filling f r
every valley with their array, before the arm of God had
driven them out and cleared the land for the dwelling
of His elect. The claim to dominion, moreover, which
was thus asserted by the Tempter, agrees with our Lord's
own thrice g repeated designation of him as " the prince
of this world." Whether that title refer only to the do-
minion he establishes over those who, leaving God's
side, join themselves to the great rebel, and become
his slaves ; or whether, beside and beyond this, it im-
plies, as so many of the wisest have gathered, that in
the economy of God's wide government this earth had
been, before the great archangel fell, the special place
of his vice-royalty, from which he is not yet cast abso-
lutely out, it is perhaps impossible for us to say. It
may well be so : and if it be, what a terrible force does
it give to the picture of this wrestling of ours with this /
fallen, but not yet altogether subjugated power.
* St. John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. n.
c>
8 Our Spirittial Adversaries. [SERM.
Nor is this all ; for the same thought throws much
light also on the causes of the bitter hatred to us of
these spirits of evil ; and the terror of contest is increased
by the extremity of their malignity with whom we have
to strive. Doubtless they hated man in his innocence,
^>/ because he was innocent ; as impurity always hates
purity ; as unbelief hates faith ; as the evil ones hate
God and the holy angels ; and so, raging against holi-
ness, they desired to destroy its existence in God's crea-
ture. The Enemy "was a murderer from the beginning,"
because " he abode not in the truth V But beyond this :
if, as seems to be intimated in the Word of God, man
was created to fill the places left void in the heavenly
hierarchy by the angels' fall ; if he was planted here as
God's new vicegerent over all the new creation of this
world, then there were added fresh reasons for the
special hatred of the fallen angel to the race which
had supplanted him in this his old dominion 1 . Thus,
too, it followed that the rebellion of the new viceroy
restored to a great degree the old dominion of the ac-
cursed one. For, in Adam, man yielded up his own
commission and went over to the side of the enemy.
And so we may pass naturally on to see how these
enemies can now_assault us; and this sight, again, will add
to the terror of the conflict. For though, doubtless, their
uttermost malignity is restrained by God's over-master-
ing hand, yet have they still, as the very titles of " prin-
cipalities, and powers, and world-rulers" intimate, a
mighty remaining sway. And first, plainly, they can
suggest evil in alluring forms to our apprehensions.
Satan could put it into the heart of Judas to betray his
Lord. He could " fill the hearts of Ananias and Sap-
h St. John viii. 44. ' "Diabolus cadens, stanti invidet." S. Aug.,
torn. vi. 992, 6.
I.] Our Spirittial Adversaries. 9
phira to lie unto the Holy Ghost k ." He could desire ,
to have St. Peter, and actually did lead him into circum-
stances of temptation which were too strong for him,
and then infuse into his mind the sudden thought of
shame and fear under the sway of which his mighty
spirit fainted. The subtle essences of these enemies,
their intellectual vigour, their unperceived presence,
their close neighbourhood, their spiritual powers, all
doubtless enable them to suggest with their poisonous
whisper to the too receptive spirit of fallen man, the
pleasantness of a sensual indulgence, or the boldness
of an unbelieving_scoff, or the falsehood of a cqiv-
venient lie, or the cowardice of an unlawful compliance,
or assent to an angry feeling, or the treason of har-
boured and encouraged doubt. These are the fiery
darts they can cast into the too open soul. Amidst
their special powers seems to be that of presenting the
<f>avracria of pleasure, of fear, and the like, before the
mind, and so acting upon the lower faculty^crfthe fancy
as to mislead the higher spiritual mind. And as any
one yields to them, their pqweiMncreases. He passes
from under the pierced Hand which has been shelter- ^
ing him ; he goes forth from the tent of God's guarded
ones to see the daughters of the land, and the enemies
crowd round him as in the daring of his folly he wanders
idly into their abodes ; and be he never so strong he is
close to an overthrow. He sleeps upon the knees of his
Delilah while there are lyers in wait in the chamber
of whom he never dreams, and his locks are shorn by
some carnal indulgence ; and at once the Philistines, who
trembled before the champion of the Lord, are upon
him, and when he would go forth as at other times,
lo, the strength of the Nazarite has departed from him.
k Act* v. 3.
VI
io Our Spiritual Adversaries. [SERM.
Upon such an one the enemies crowd in ; sensual, im-
pure, dark, unbelieving imaginations multiply upon him
like the swarms of flies in the plague-time of Egypt,
until the very dust which floats in the air breeds them
in countless multitude, and he cannot escape ; he has
invited the enemies and they are come. It is an awful
end. Perhaps we may find its clearest exhibition in the
miserable demoniac, in whom the devil has been suffered
to seize upon the bodily organs of his slave and make
them do his evil bidding. Wonderful, as we gaze into
it, is that miserable state ; two personalities, in their
tangled windings, seem inextricably interwoven ; the
consciousness of the man still lingering on in the midst
of his vanquished self-command ; his vain struggles to
withhold the use of his bodily organs from the grasp
of the overruling hand ; the trouble of his astonished
mind, now scarcely knowing which is his own utter-
ance, which the devil's ; the dark, inner whirlwind which
hurries him on, casting him into the fire and into the
water ; which leads him to blaspheme when a faintly
struggling desire of freedom would make him pray ;
which forces him into closer and yet closer union with
one whom, because he is not himself a devil, he must
hate, and yet from whom, because he has yielded him-
self up to him, he can no more escape here, indeed,
we may see what, even as to the body, is the fruit
of opening the soul to the suggestions of the adversary.
Nor ought we, I believe, to confine the power of our
enemies merely to these secret suggestions to our
spirits. Cunning men can so_arrange circumstances as
to bring about their own plans without in the least de-
gree trenching upon the entire freewill of others. Why,
with their wider experience, should not these craftier
spirits do the like ? How, otherwise than by such power
I.] Our Spiritual Adversaries. n
over circumstance, could Satan once and again have ,
hindered * St. Paul visiting his Thessalonian converts ?
In many ways this working of the Evil One becomes
almost_alpable. For does he not suggest to one the V
evil thoughts and deeds which make him the tempter ; \S
and destroyer of another ? How often does there leave
some holy home a young man, nurtured carefully, and
with all the bloom of early promise rich upon him. He
comes up, it may be, to this very place. He is thrown,
as we say, into bad company ; the enemy, doubtless, is
permitted to assail him in order to test and mature his
better principles, thereupon the Evil One stirs up to
a flame the sinful hearts of those who are already his
victims. The new comer is attractive ; he is worth the
winning ; iniquity puts forth all its powers of pleasing
in order to seduce him ; he is led into unwatchful-
ness ; into sinful indulgence ; into vice of some sort or
another ; his innocence is lost ; step by step he is lured
on by his visible tempters, who are doing the evil work
of the invisible Enemy. It may be, the work is done
thoroughly. The pure soul is soiled ; sin has eaten
deep into the life of one more redeemed man ; he has
become fit to be the tempter of others ; and so the /
race of those who learn to serve evil, and at last,
to hate God, is handed on amongst us through genera-
tions of iniquity. Surely, if human craft, with fitting
instruments, can hold the skein of wicked counsel with
so discerning an intelligence and successful a hand, the
numbers, the might, the cunning, and the hatred of the
Evil ones must give them tenfold power against those I
who yield to them. If we can, by science and by art,
obtain such a mastery over the elements around us,
why should not their greater capacities, and wider ex-
1 I Thess. ii. 18.
\v
1 2 Our Spiritual A dversaries. [SERM.
perience, enable them, with no power of working real
miracles, yet to practise lying wonders ; and with no
power of altering the uniform acting of the laws of
nature, yet to vent their hatred in stirring up the storm
from the wilderness which smites the four corners m of
the reveller's house, which guides the lightning's shaft
to the frightened flock, or sinks beneath the waves the
doomed ship ? It is not, I believe, possible for us to
ascertain absolutely the bounds which God has fixed
to their exerting these powers of working harm. Such
passages as that in which St. Paul speaks of the thorn
in his own flesh as the messenger of Satan, surely im-
plies that the limits are wide. Perhaps they are left
uncertain to teach us, on the one hand, the difficult
lesson of perpetual watchfulness ; to make us feel the
blessedness of being always" under the shelter of the
Cross of Christ ; perhaps, on the other, we are not suf-
fered to know all, lest it should drive some of us to
cower before the foe, and lose all in absolute despair.
Enough is told us for our instruction. Certainly these
enemies can approach our souls ; if their power be now
restrained from directly harming with their evil works
the bodies which Christ has redeemed, and which have
been signed with His Cross, they can, through our
souls, seduce us into excess, debauchery, sensuality, and
drunkenness, and so work out their full purposes of hatred
even against the bodies of those who yield to them.
Of how many bodily sufferings might this exercise of
their power be seen to be the cause, if the hidden secrets
of all lives were disclosed ! How many a man bears
with him, through a saddened life to a painful death,
the bitter memorial of early sin ! How often, and often,
is it still the history of such transgressions and their
m Job i. 19.
I.] Our Spiritual Adversaries. 13
punishment, that the suffering man is groaning under
the evil inheritance of the sins of his youth ! Of how
many sufferers might He who reads all hearts still say,
" Whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years n !"
One other mode in which the devil's hatred acts
against us is too clearly revealed to be passed over,
though the subject may be too mysterious for our full
comprehension. Satan not only stirs up man against
God, but he seeks in his malignity to stir up God
against us. He is "the accuser of our brethren, which
accused them before our Go3 day and night ." So
we read that he accused Job before his Maker : " Doth
Job serve God for nought p ?" From which words of
Holy Writ it would seem as if all along the course
of the conflict, which is to be ended by the utter over-
throw of the enemy, he appeals to the justice of the
All Just against the new race. The Evil One cannot
comprehend good ; he notes all our sins, marks all our
haltings. In his keen envy he searches out our every
failing. " Diabolus," says St. Augustin, " omnia nostra
peccata rimatur diligentia invidentiae q ." He cannot ap-
preciate the struggles of that blessed principle of faith
which God sees in the weakest believer ; the all-hating |
cannot bear, as can the infinite sympathy of Christ,
with the infirmities of the elect ; and so in his) rage he
cries even to our God to vindicate His justice by the i
destruction of the fallen though redeemed creation.
Here then, brethren, is this mighty conflict, now that
we have followed it into the world of spirits. Here are
our adversaries, in their nature, number, hatred, power,
and means of assault. Surely the practical lessons which
such a sight should teach lie open before .us.
* St. Luke xiil. 16. Rev. xii. 10. p Job i. 9.
i St. Aug., torn. vii. 820, <1.
14 Our Spiritual Adversaries. [SERM.
I. How great must be the severity of such a conflict !
Can you not, as you gaze upon it, enter more into the
depths of the Apostle's meaning, when he says that
this, our death-struggle, is not " against flesh and blood,
but against principalities and powers ?" And as time
advances there is doubtless increased vehemence in his
assaults, and augmented subtlety in his wiles. Ages of
\ experience have taught him every weakness and wind-
ing of the heart of man. More or less he has succeeded
\ in harming every one born of- woman save the King of
Saints. His temptations, as might be expected, grow
in subtlety as his experience ripens. The dangers of
these present times bear all the marks of his perfected
cunning and enduring malignity. As his short-lived
triumph draws nearer, we may look to see more and
more of the perfection of his work of evil. And this
conflict every one who lives to the perfect development
of his reason must pass through. It cannot be escaped.
By day and by night, in company and alone, in the
world and in church, in your business and on your
knees, the adversary is beside you, to resist, and if he
can prevail, to destroy you. Specially should this
thought guard us against secret sins, against the im-
purity, the anger, the sullenness in which we are
tempted to indulge when, as we think, no eye is on
us, no one marking us. Then, in that lonely chamber,
if the darkness revealed him, you might see the Evil
One close beside you, working his will upon you ; you
might see the light which floated round your angel
guardian passing, as you drove him from you, into the
blackness which is round about the enemy. Oh, trifle
not with such perils ; oh, slumber not upon your watch ;
oh, yield not, for to yield is destruction ; oh, " resist
the devil, and he shall flee from you."
I.] Our Spiritual Adversaries. 15
For, II. none can resist to the end, as Christ's soldiers, \
and not conquer.
The strongest of these enemies is God's creature.
" Diabolus," says the great Augustin, " nihil facit, nihil
potest, nisi missus aut permissus r ." The Almighty Will
suffers them to be ; to tempt, to harass, to vex us for
purposes of His own love and wisdom, which one day
we shall understand, as we cannot now. We can, in-
deed, now see that temptation is overruled so as to be J
God's instrument fprmir sanctification. "Diaboli ten-
tationes," again says St. Augustin ; " ad utilitatem sanc-
torum convertit Deus 8 ;" "Diabolo utitur Deus ad sa-
lutem fidelium * ;" " Diabolus affligendo exercet non
nocet : saeviendo prodest ad coronam u ." Thus Satan
is ever outwitting himself ; by afflicting he trains us, by /
raging against us he secures and brightens the crown /
of which he would rob us. " Happy is the man that
gets to heaven at last, though the devil himself hath
a hand unwillingly in driving him thither." It is a noble
expression of the holy apostolic bishop and martyr Ig-
natius to this purpose, in his Epistle to the Romans :
" Let the punishment, stripes (oXa<u?) of the devil come
upon me, provided only I may obtain Jesus Christ x ." l
But we may go even beyond this ; we may see that it (2
is God's high will that the enemy should be cast down
not by mere force, but by moral conquest And this we
may well believe is shewn specially to all the reasonable
creation when the justice of God is vindicated against 1
the false accuser by the faith and obedience of the \
saints. Their very weakness jexalts-their victory and the
triumph of God.'s grace in them. And thus, therefore,
do the saints conquer, not by any other might than by
' St Aug. iv. 456, d. Ibid., torn. ix. 374, b. * Ibid., torn. ii. 87, a.
11 Ibid., 185, c. * Bishop Bull's Sermon "On the Holy Angels."
1 6 Our Spiritual Adversaries, [SERM.
j-" the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their tes-
timony, and by not loving their life unto the death?."
Rejoice, then, thou tempted one, even in the sight of
<y this champion of the evil host. God's honour is at
I stake in thy overcoming ; the sling and the stone shall
x yet bring down the uncircumcised Philistine. Thy Lord,
in thy nature, met the Evil One in all his power, and
\ overcame him utterly ; and He shall bruise Satan under
thy feet shortly.
Only, III. see that you fight as His servant. Fight
in His Church, under the shadow of His Cross ; claim
and hold thy place in the host over which floats ever-
more that blood-red standard. Go not out of it, lest
thou deliver thyself unto Satan. Remember that though
he is no ruler in Christ's regenerate world, he is yet
the ruler of the darkness of this world. Walk, then,
in the light, with the children of the light. Forsake
not the assembling of yourselves together ; hold fast
the form of sound words j keep within the new Jeru-
salem. Let not the host of the uncircumcised find thee
wandering, for idleness or vaunt, or curiosity or lust, into
the land of the Philistines ; hold thyself, for thy safety,
in the city of thy God. There is the great Captain of
thy salvation ; there are the sacraments of His grace ;
there the prayers and blessings, and examples, and fel-
lowship of His elect ; there the fiery squadrons of His
unseen army filling the mountain round about His
prophet. Abide thou there, and be faithful in thy
post, and thou art safe for ever. But do thy own
work in that thy post. Take unto thee all the armour
of Goo; mortify thy lusts ; use thy Lenten aids of
prayer, watching, and fasting with Christ. Remember
the Master's word: "This kind goeth not out but by
y Rev. xii. n.
I.] Our Spiritual Adversaries. 17
prayer and fasting 2 ." A life of sloth, or ease, or in-
dulgence, is not His life. Follow Him indeed, and the
enemy shall not harm thee. His grace shall not fail
thee, His love shall not forget thee, His arm shall not
cease to shelter thee. He is at thy right hand, thou
shalt not be moved. Yea, and soon thou shalt see the
blessed end. The tarrying ages have almost passed ;
the eastern sky burns beneath the coming footsteps ;
the army of the saints is massing ; this very Easter
may, for aught we know, see the Lord amongst us in
all His manifested glory. And then comes the mighty
overthrow ; then shall the accuser be cast down ; then,
beside the Master, shalt thou judge angels ; then shall
be the victory which thou hast expected ; then shall
the dark forms for ever vanish from thine eyes ; then
shall evil, driven in upon itself, be for thee a terror
of the night that is over, remembered only to exalt
the triumph of His might and of His love, who hath
by the blood of His Cross lifted thee above it. Then
shalt thou have reached the bright, the blessed, the
eternal rest ; when He hath " put all enemies under
His feet a ," and when, through His almighty grace, for
each one who hath endured unto the end, " this cor-
ruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal
shall have put on immortality, and death shall be swal-
lowed up in victory."
* St. Matt. xvii. 21. r Cor. xv. 25.
SERMON II.
Conflict antr Befeat in
1 ST. JOHN iii. 8.
" He that committeth sin is of the devil ; for the devil sinneth
from the beginning,"
"\ 7ERY simple, yet very sublime in their simplicity,
are the words which commence the record of
the creation of the visible world : " In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth
was without form and void ; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there
be light : and there was light." Yet how much is the
import of these words enhanced, even beyond the sub-
limity of their first and most obvious signification, when
we come to elicit the deeper and more secret meaning
which lies hidden under that pregnant sentence, " The
earth was without form and void ;" and interpret it
according to the meaning suggested by the only two
other passages of Holy Scripture in which the same
expressions occur. When Isaiah, foretelling the future
destruction of the land of God's enemies, declares, (using
in the original the very words of Genesis,) " He shall
stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones
(or rather, the plummet) of emptiness"?" or when, still
more closely, Jeremiah, foreseeing the approaching de-
solation of his own country, announces his vision in
Isaiah xxxiv. 1 1.
C 2
2O The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. [SERM.
the words, " I beheld the earth, and lo, it was with-
out form and void b ," our thoughts naturally revert
to the' language which describes the chaos preceding
the six days of creation ; and we learn to interpret
this also as indicating the effect of destruction, not
the condition of formation ; not as asserting, what in-
deed of itself it would be hard to believe, that con-
fusion and emptiness was the primitive state of the
world under the first effort of its Maker's hand, still
less as lapsing into the heathen dream of a chaotic
matter, moulded and formed, but not created, by the
Almighty Mind ; but as telling us, briefly and ob-
scurely, yet not the less certainly, of God's power
to destroy as well as to create ; as pointing dimly and
darkly to that whose details concern not us as a lesson
of religion, and therefore have not been revealed to
us, that interval, how long we know not and how oc-
cupied we know not, from " the Beginning," when finite
existence first came into being and the successive mo-
ments of time first broke forth from the unchanging
now of eternity, to the day when He who made all
things very good, was pleased for His own good pur-
poses to bring destruction upon His own work ; and
then once more to renew it as a habitation for the
children of men.
As it is with the natural, so it is with the moral
world : the record of man's fall runs parallel with the
record of his creation. The history of the six days'
work closes with the words, " And God saw every thing
that He had made, and, behold, it was very good :" the
history of the temptation begins, " Now the serpent was
more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord
God had made." Whence came this evil subtlety into
b Jeremiah iv. 23. See Pusey's Lectures on Daniel, Preface, p. xix.
II.] The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. 2 1
a world which God had made very good, even, as we
read, down to "every thing that creepeth upon the
earth ?" Here again there is a blank between a blank
whose solemn silence is more eloquent than speech,
pointing darkly and dimly to another mystery of de-
struction, to something which came not in the beginning
from the hand of God, but which came nevertheless,
we know not when, and we know not how. If we turn
to other passages of Scripture, the mystery is not ex-
plained probably to our present faculties it could not
be explained it is but thrust back to a yet earlier
world, and to beings of a nature different from ours.
We read of "that old serpent, called the Devil, and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world," and of "his
angels," who are " cast out with him c ;" we read, in the
words of my text, that " the devil sinneth from the be-
ginning," and .again, that " he was a murderer from the
beginning d ;" yet, as if expressly to confine these words
within the boundaries of finite time, to preclude the
possibility of any Manichean fiction of an evil power
coeternal with good, we read also of "the angels which
kept not their first estate 6 ;" we are told that "God
spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down
to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to
be reserved unto judgment f ." The mystery of iniquity
becomes deeper yet, when we return to other scenes of
the holy record, in which the powers of good and of
evil are shewn in direct conflict with each other. The
Son of God is manifested on earth, with a twofold
purpose in relation to two different orders of beings,
" that He might destroy the works of the devil, and
make us the sons of God, and heirs of eternal life*."
e Rev. xii. 9. d St. John viii. 44. e St. Jude, 6.
' 2 St Peter ii. 4. * Collect for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany.
22 The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. [SERM.
During His ministry on earth, we see Him brought
into contact with evil in two very different forms, as it
exists in sinful man, and as it exists in the unclean
spirits whose permitted visitations, as recorded in the
Gospels, bring so vividly before us the true nature
of that conflict, which He came among us to wage.
Towards sinful humanity, He who was without sin
Himself is ever drawn by the bonds of love and com-
passion. He is the friend of publicans and sinners ; He
comes not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent-
ance ; He tells us of the joy that is in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth ; He comforts the paralytic with
the assurance " Thy sins are forgiven thee," and receives
the weeping penitent with the words " Her sins, which
are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much." Behold
Him, on the other hand, in the presence of that mys-
terious and terrible twofold existence, wherein the hu-
man form and the human organs of speech do but hide
the presence and utter the words of the evil spirit pos-
sessing them. Mark the frightful shriek h and the words
of horror and hatred, " What have we to do with Thee,
Thou Jesus of Nazareth ? art Thou come to destroy us * ?"
telling of the repugnance and recoil of the spirit of evil
in the presence of the Holy One of God, and the stern
answering rebuke, "Hold thy peace, and come out of
him " note the brief but fearfully expressive language
of that graphic picture of another Evangelist, "And
when he saw Him, straightway the spirit tare him ; and
he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming V Ob-
serve the demoniac of Gadara, seemingly under the in-
fluence of a double consciousness k , as the suffering man,
and as the instrument of the evil spirit possessing him,
h la. See Bp. Ellicott in " Aids to Faith," p. 437. ' St. Luke iv. 34.
J St. Mark ix. 20. k See Abp. Trench, "Notes on the Miracles," p. 171.
II.] The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. 23
how first, "when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and wor- \
shipped Him ;" and then, as the words of power were
uttered, "Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit,"
changing suddenly from the gesture of submission to
the language of fear and abhorrence, " What have I to
do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the most high God ?
I adjure Thee by God that Thou torment me not l ;"
and then observe the same man, when the devils had
gone out of him, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and
in his right mind, and beseeching that he might be with
Him ; do not all these pictures tell a fearful tale of that
evil which' existed before the first Adam fell, and for
which the second Adam brought no redemption m ? Do
they not warn us how little we really know of the nature
and origin of that sin which is in us and among us, with
which we have walked hand in hand, till familiarity has
half divested it of its horrors ? May they not serve to
assure or to rebuke us, if ever we feel disposed to doubt
or cavil at the means which God has appointed for our
redemption, by suggesting a deeper significance than
lies on the surface, a significance in relation to the whole
spiritual creation, evil as well as good, in those words of
the Apostle concerning the Incarnation of the Son of
God, "Verily, He took not on Him the nature of an-
gels ; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham n ?"
How little we know, how little probably could be
made known to our human apprehensions, of the real
nature and spiritual sources of that conflict between
good and evil, whose first earthly manifestation is re-
vealed to us in the history of Adam's fall, may perhaps
be faintly indicated, if we turn for a moment to that
great poem in which human genius of the highest order
1 St. Mark v. 6 8. m See "The Restoration of Belief," p. 358.
" Heh. ii. 16.
24 The Confiict and Defeat in Eden. [SERM.
has striven to fill up the blank which divine revelation
had left in the record of man's first disobedience. The
tempter, who in the book of Genesis is simply described
as the serpent who was more subtle than any beast
of the field which the Lord God had made, appears in
the poem of Milton with all the vivid personality of the
apostate angel. His rebellion and fall from heaven ;
his bold defiance of God ; his secret thoughts and de-
clared purposes ; his counsels to seduce the newly
created race of man ; his intrusion into Paradise ; the
details of his previous wiles and final temptation, are
all minutely described with the combined power of poetic
genius and religious zeal. Yet the effect of the picture,
after all, is not that of the vice "which to be hated, needs
but to be seen ;" the author of evil, plotting, acting, suf-
fering, never entirely forfeits the interest we might
almost say the sympathy of the reader. And why ?
Because we feel that the materials with which the blank
is filled up are, after all, borrowed from human nature
and human impulses depraved indeed, exaggerated,
gigantic in their proportions, but still human. His
pride, his envy, his revenge, his obstinacy, his despair,
are but our own passions and our own vices on a mag-
nified scale ; our abhorrence of them is only that which
would be called forth by great abilities, coupled with
great wickedness, in one of our fellow-men. Contrast
with this the portrait drawn, in a far less religious spirit,
by a great poet of another country , the portrait of
the mocking fiend, ever dogging the steps of his victim
with the ready temptation, yet with no share in the
feelings which give temptation its power, that calm,
passionless, subtle, scoffing intellect, with a sneer for
all, and a sympathy for none in the presence of such
Goethe.
II.] The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. 25
a being, we shrink and shudder instinctively, as though
brought face to face with one of a different order from
ourselves : we are just able faintly to apprehend the pos-
sibility that in a purely spiritual nature, apart from the
appetites and desires and passions of humanity, there
may be more of unmixed evil, more of the wholly
devilish, than in all the pride of a Satan, and all the
cruelty of a Moloch, and all the lust of a Belial, and
all the covetousness of a Mammon.
But if this be so, what lesson does it teach us ? Is it
to find in the passions of fallen man an excuse for the
sins to which they lead ; to look lightly on our own
^evil nature, because it is not wholly evil; to confound
the boundaries of virtue and vice, because the same
human feelings may be subservient to the one or the
other ? God forbid ! Is it not rather the lesson taught
by the words of the Apostle, " Know ye not, that to
whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants
ye are to whom ye obey ; whether of sin unto death,
or of obedience unto righteousness p ?" The conflict in
which the first man fell, the conflict in which all his
posterity are involved, is not merely a conflict between
different principles in ourselves ; it is not merely a strug- (
gle of our own lusts and appetites against our own
reason and conscience ; it is not merely a question of
^//"-control or j^-indulgence ; it is the continuation
of a conflict which began before Adam was, which had
its source in a spiritual mystery before the human body
was framed, or human passions had their birth, a con-
flict, not between good and evil principles, but between
good and evil beings, one or other of whom we must
serve and obey in time and in eternity. Our human
nature, in shrinking back from this thought of unmixed
f Rom. vi. 16.
26 The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. [SERM.
unembodied spiritual evil, does but obey an impulse
which God has implanted in it for good does but testify
that, whatever we may know, or whatever we may tole-
rate, of evil in this world in its human form, there is
a depth and a mystery of evil, aye, and of misery, be-
hind the veil of human thoughts and actions, which we
cannot know now, but which we may know hereafter;
that our human excuses and extenuations are but the
disguises which serve to give an unreal appearance to
that malignity which, unveiled, no human eye could
bear to look upon.
Alienated as man is from God by sin, he is yet more
alienated from the devil by humanity, that humanity of
which He partakes who has no concord with Belial.
As the servant of Christ, he obeys One who shares his
nature, who has partaken of his feelings, his sufferings,
his sorrows, his temptations ; who " learned obedience by
the things which He suffered, and, being made perfect,
became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them
that obey Him q ." As the servant of Satan, he becomes
enslaved to one of an alien and a hostile kind ; a being
whose nature we cannot conceive while the human con-
sciousness still moulds our thoughts and furnishes our
type of personality ; whose malignity we cannot fathom
while the human passion is still working within us, to
disguise sin under the allurements of pleasure, to fix
our thoughts on the sensual enjoyment, and to avert
them from the spiritual evil ; but which hereafter, when
enjoyment, even - sinful enjoyment, exists no more,
when passion can no longer rush to the objects of its
gratification, when remorse cannot be drowned for a
moment in the oblivion of passing pleasure, may be
manifested in its true features to the clear perception of
i Heb. v. 8, 9.
II.] The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. 27
evil affinity, like to like, the devil to the children of
the devil.
The same conviction of the mysterious and inscrutable
nature of evil, which is forced upon us when we would
follow the poet in his attempt to soar on the wings of
fancy to the supernatural world, is forced upon us no less,
when we turn to the speculations of the philosopher, rea-
soning from what he knows, and within the limits of what
he knows, concerning the triumph of sin in the natural
world. " How it comes to pass that creatures made up-
right fall," says Bishop Butler, "... seems distinctly con-
ceivable from the very nature of particular affections or
propensions. For suppose creatures intended for such
a particular state of life, for which such propensions
were necessary : suppose them endued with such pro-
pensions, together with moral understanding, as well
including a practical sense of virtue, as a speculative
perception of it ; and that all these several principles,
both natural and moral, forming an inward constitution
of mind, were in the most exact proportion possible, i.e.
in a proportion the most exactly adapted to their in-
tended state of life ; such creatures would be made
upright or finitely perfect. Now particular propensions,
from their very nature, must be felt, the objects of them
being present ; though they cannot be gratified at all, or
not with the allowance of the moral principle. But if
they can be gratified without its allowance, or by con-
tradicting it, then they must be conceived to have some
tendency, in how low a degree soever, yet some tendency,
to induce persons to such forbidden gratification. . . .
And thus it is plainly conceivable that creatures with-
out blemish, as they came out of the hands of God, may
be in danger of going wrong r ." There is truth and wis-
' Analogy, pt. i. ch. v.
28 The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. [SERM.
dom in this passage, as applied to human things from
a human point of view. The needs of man's life, the
constitution of man's mind, the working of man's mo-
tives and affections and appetites, are so analysed as
to offer a reasonable explanation of the fall of a being
such as man, even from a state of primitive innocence ;
but it is the fall of man alone, or of beings like man,
that is thus explicable : where the likeness to human na-
ture ceases, the explanation ceases to be applicable. Our
thoughts may be sometimes tempted to dwell on the
history of the transgression of our first parents from this
human point of view exclusively. We picture to our-
selves the apparent lightness of the one positive precept
which they were bidden to keep, the apparent weak-
ness of the temptation by which they were induced
to transgress. Simple indeed, and plain, and unadorned,
and unaided by one word of philosophic theory or ex-
planation, is that unpretending narrative of facts in
which is recounted the temptation under which the first
Adam fell as simple, as plain, as unpretending, as that
other narrative of that other temptation over which the
second Adam triumphed. Yet both alike have one
feature in common : the simple tale may be enhanced to
what height the imagination may reach, by the thought
of the presence of that subtle malignant spirit, bringing
every power of evil to bear secretly and invisibly in aid
of those suggestions and proffers whose outward expres-
sion alone we see. But go back in thought beyond
the temptation and fall of Adam, to that earlier fall in
which there was no temptation what imagination can
depict the conditions of the first transgression of a pure
Spirit by the unsolicited resolve of his own will ? Surely
in the existence of this spiritual wickedness in high
places, there is a mystery of lawlessness which no effort
II.] The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. 29
of human thought is able to explain, or even to conceive
something not to be accounted for by that freedom
of the will which is but the condition of the possibility,
not the cause of the reality, of sin ; not to be ac-
counted for by those passions and propensions through
which in man the flesh lusteth contrary to the spirit ;
something wherein the palliations and excuses with
which men seek to gloss over human sin have no place ;
something which is not merely a wavering service, a
lukewarm love, a will thwarted in the performance,
a heart seduced from the allegiance which still it acknow-
ledges ; but a settled, implacable malignity, a constant
unchanging resolve of defiance, a calm, steady, purposed
hatred of good, of which all that human imagination
can conceive of evil and misery is but as the flickering
passing shadow to the fixed abiding substance.
Yet, God be thanked, over against this mystery of
evil is that other surpassing mystery of godliness,
" God manifest in the flesh." There is not merely
enmity between God and Satan, between the spirit of
good and the spirit of evil, but human nature also is
permitted to take part in that contest yea, is taken
up into God, to be the means of carrying on His war-
fare and accomplishing His victory. " I will put enmity
between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed : it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel." On one side of this prediction, the
ever-brightening morn of advancing prophecy, the broad
daylight of fulfilment, have in turn shed their rays ; we
know how much more is meant in these words than
their first import conveyed to their first hearers ; how
"God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh "." But is
Rom. viii. 3.
30 The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. [SERM.
there not an unknown depth of significance on the
other side also? And may not the mystery of that
which we do not know, serve to guide our thoughts
aright with regard to that which in part we know ?
Are we disposed to doubt or cavil at the mystery of
our redemption ? Are we tempted to ask why it should
be necessary that He by whom all things were made
should assume the nature of His creature, and die for
the sins of men ? Let us first ask ourselves to declare,
if we can, what is the origin and nature of that sin for
which He died ; what is the character of that conflict
which it needed such a sacrifice to complete. Beyond
the mystery of sin in the flesh, lies the mystery of sin
in the spirit. Above the evil from which we are re-
deemed, frowns the black shadow of that for which
there is no redemption. The sin of man is atoned for,
because man is not wholly evil ; because that which
taints and corrupts his nature is in it, but not of it ;
because humanity itself is not sin, nay, rather, is that
through which Christ could destroy sin. But could we
strip off this veil of humanity, and stand face to face
with sin in its pure unmixed spiritual malignity ; could
we behold naked and open the real nature of that evil
which has become the very form and essence of the
Evil One's being, that evil which, as thus existing, even
infinite power cannot restore, even infinite love cannot
pardon ; could we see the spiritual antecedents and
conditions of that great conflict which to our mortal
eyes begins with man's fall and terminates with his
redemption ; could we estimate the value of our sal-
vation by the full knowledge of that from which we
are saved, well may we believe that, in the presence of
that fearful sight, the voice of doubt would be hushed
for ever, the anxious questioning would no longer shape
II.] The Conflict and Defeat in Eden. 3 1
itself to consciousness ; one only thought could have
place, one only voice could find an utterance. On
this side, the Redeemer, Perfect God and Perfect Man ;
on that, the arch-enemy, perfect evil. On one side, the
triumphant hymn, "Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain ;" on the other, the despairing cry of those who
" shall seek death and shall not find it ; and shall desire
to die, and death shall flee from them." Pray we then,
believing in the reality of this conflict of good and evil,
looking forward surely to the final consummation pray
we while it is time, in this our season of penitence, to
Him who was wounded for our offences and smitten
for our wickedness, that He " will deliver us from the
curse of the law, and from the extreme malediction
which shall light upon them that shall be set upon the
left hand ; and that He will set us on His right hand,
and give us the gracious benediction of His Father,
commanding us to take possession of His glorious
kingdom : unto which may He vouchsafe to bring us
all, for His infinite mercy. Amen."
SERMON III
Itmgliom of JBarfcneis*
JOB i. 7,
"And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then
Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in
the earth, and from walking up and down in it,"
T T is important to note the exact point in the sequence
of these Lent Sermons at which to-night we have
arrived. You have had your thoughts drawn to the
personality and active malignity of our spiritual adver-
saries ; you have seen those spiritual adversaries mani-
festing themselves out of their thick darkness in the
first encounter with Adam and Eve, and obtaining a
victory over the man and the woman whom the Lord
had made.
Upon the success of the tempter in Paradise followed
the erection of a kingdom. Of that kingdom we are
to speak to-night. It is a kingdom, under whose bale-
ful shadow the race of men sank lower and lower from
the mount of light, into an ever -deepening abyss of
impurity and superstition, a kingdom lasting in un-
broken force from the sin of Adam, until the coming
of Christ.
We may fitly go for a text to the Book of Job.
That book occupies a very remarkable position in the
Bible with reference to this subject. It is the one Book
whose scenery and action lie outside the visible Church
of God. There is in it no mention of the covenant
D
34 The Ki)igdom of Darkness Prevailing. [SERM.
people, no reference to any institutions of revealed re-
ligion. The Book was doubtless written for the edifi-
cation of the Jewish Church, but the edification was to
consist in the exhibition of the utter inability of good
men by their own wisdom to- find out God, and to
justify His ways to His creatures. All the dialogues
between Job and his friends are successive pictures of
human reason struggling vainly to unravel the per-
plexities of a world which is but the wreck of what
God made it. The whole Book is a voice as it were
from without the ark, crying to those within of the dark-
ness that may be felt, which, independent of revelation,
encircles every dispensation.
And so the sublime vision with which the Book
opens, is to be viewed not only as the substructure of
the after afflictions of the Patriarch Job. Far deeper
is its significance. It is the laying bare of the secret
power to which all the perplexities, all the ignorance,
all the sin of the great old world of heathenism owed
their origin. " There was a day when the sons of God
came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan
came also among them. And the Lord said unto
Satan, Whence comest thou ? Then Satan answered
the Lord." The reply of the fallen archangel is elo-
quent of the profoundest of all mysteries, the mystery
which philosophy ever stumbles at, but without which
it vainly attempts to solve the hundred riddles of hu-
man life ; the mystery of a power in the world which is
not God's power ; of a presence among mankind which
is not the presence of man or of God ; of the dwelling
amongst us of another being of a real and true per-
sonality, who is not sin, but the author of sin, of whom
all that we call abstract evil, is but the creation and
the shadow. " Whence comest thou ? And Satan an-
III.] The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. 35
swered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in
the earth, and from walking up and down in it."
Here, then, we are face to face with the subject of
to-night. Satan walking abroad upon the earth ; it is
the Scripture account of the kingdom of darkness
prevailing.
Now our object this evening must be to enquire into
the constituent elements of this kingdom. The Bible
appears to intimate two such elements ; let us consider
each.
I. The- first element, then, of the kingdom of dark-
ness prevailing between Adam and Christ, would seem
to be the gradual withdrawal of the manifested presence
of God.
Amongst the few verses in which the Holy Ghost
has communicated to us all that we are permitted
to know of the state of man in Paradise, there is no-
thing which more seizes upon the imagination than
the record, "And they heard the voice of the Lord
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,"
"the sound of the Majestic Presence approaching
nearer and nearer 3 ." All that the words mean we
may perhaps never fathom ; but thus much they cer-
tainly teach, a sensible manifestation of God's presence,
not then new to our first parents. Adam heard God
before he saw God. He knew God's voice, i.e. re-
cognised the sound of the manifested Presence, from
having been familiar with it before.
Again, after the Fall and the expulsion from the
garden of Eden, there are still traces of the same mani-
fested Presence. It was the source of Cain's despair,
" From Thy Presence shall I be hid." The burden of
his sentence was that he must go far away from the
Patrick.
D 2
36 The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. [SERM.
spot where the Shechinah of the divine majesty yet
appeared, and to which, by the ordinance of sacrifice,
the creature, until excommunicated like Cain, was still
privileged to draw near.
And there is reason to believe that this sensible mani-
festation of God lasted until the Deluge. So perhaps
is to be understood the decree, " My Spirit shall not
always strive with man," (or rather, shall not always
abide among men,) " seeing that he also is flesh ;" as
though, in consequence of the determined sin of the
creature, his utter abandonment to the lusts of the flesh,
there should be thenceforward a further deprivation of
the abiding Spirit. It is moreover to be noted that
amid all the desperate wickedness of the antedilu-
vian world, there is no mention of idolatry ; whilst
immediately after the Deluge we find it commencing.
Perhaps the tower of Babel itself is rightly conceived by
some expositors 11 to have been designed as a temple,
the substitute of a material point of unity and worship
in place of the lost Presence.
This then seems to be the Scriptural "account of the
first period of man's sojourn upon the earth. The world
before the Flood !^ dimly through the mist of years it
rises up, a world in which the strength of man and the
vitality of man were amazingly developed, for the life
of seven or eight hundred years was but one feature of
a life far exceeding our own in all physical powers. It
was a world, too, which preserved still a relic of the
lost Paradise in a visible Presence of the Holy One,
yea it may be an intercourse (hence the trespass of
the sons of God with the daughters of men) such as we
vainly strive to realize with the angels of heaven. But
it was a world whose increasing corruption drove that
b Patrick.
III.] The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. 37
Presence finally away from this lower creation, in
mingled judgment and mercy ; so that when the
cleansed earth emerged from the baptism of waters,
and the race of Adam started upon the second stage of
their probation, it was with diminished powers, and
a shortened tenure of existence, and the face of the
Lord God hidden from them. And hence, first, we may
trace the deep darkness which fell upon the nations.
Hence, too, we may see the force of the words in which
it is said at the beginning of his wanderings, " The Lord f
appeared unto Abraham." That was the earliest mani- !
festation of the Presence since its withdrawal from the
antediluvian world ; the beginning of the re-establish-
ment of true religion upon the earth. And so you find
that in the chosen family, where alone the worship of
the one God was preserved, where alone the profound \
darkness was broken, there was from time to time, to |
the patriarchs in their travels, to Moses in the wilder- ^
ness, upon the mercy-seat in the tabernacle, a mani--7
festation of the Divine Majesty vouchsafed ; while the
voice of the heathen world, in its vague speculations, in
its disquietude and unrest, was still that of those who
seek vainly for a something lost : " I go forward but He
is not there, and backward but I cannot perceive Him.
On the left hand where He doth work, but I cannot
behold Him. He hideth Himself on the right hand,
but I cannot see Him."
We may not answer the question wherefore, if this
withdrawal of the manifested Presence was the begin-
ning of the kingdom of darkness, God still age after age
held back the face of His throne. It may be that in the
mystery of the Divine nature lie hidden necessities for
these veilings of the Lord God from a fallen creation ;
that even as now by the Church is made known to the
38 The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. [SERM.
.f principalities and powers in heavenly places the manifold
wisdom of God, so in that hiding of the Lord God during
long ages from the great mass of the race of the apostate,
lessons may have been learnt, lessons about sin and
holiness, which were a guard and a warning to angels
and archangels on their thrones of light. It may be that
these hidings of God were essential even for man, to
make him value aright, and be thankful enough for the
great epiphany of Deity in the face of Jesus Christ. The
utter incapacity of man to create for himself God out of
his own inner consciousness was never more demon-
strated than when it was seen that left to himself man
invariably conceived of God in ways the most sensual
and degrading, not clothing the divinity of his own
imagination in whatever might seem most reverend and
august, but shaping Him (as St. Paul says) like to birds
and beasts and creeping things. The hiding of God
it was the perpetuating for long ages the kingdom of
. darkness, but it was the laying deep for ever and for
ever the foundations of the kingdom of light.
II. The second element of the kingdom of darkness
is an increasing development of Satanic influence. As
. the face of God was withdrawn, the infernal presence
! waxed more and more oppressive. It is necessary here
to observe how unmistakeably and how uniformly the
New Testament speaks of the heathen world not as
merely practising evil, but as lying under the dominion
of evil spirits, and of the Incarnation of Christ as the
undermining and shattering that dominion. Thus our
Lord Himself, upon the return of the Seventy with
the report of their success, at once points out the true
nature of their victory : " I beheld Satan as lightning
fall from heaven ." That first mission had struck at
c St. Luke x. 1 8.
III.] The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. 39
the heart of his power. So again, just before His own
Passion, He announces while yet the voice from heaven
thrilled on the ear of the startled multitude, " Now is
the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this
world be cast out d ." So, a little later, He speaks of His
sufferings as an encounter with the great adversary :
" The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in
Me e ." The title "PRINCE OF THIS WORLD" points to
a dominion once, it may be, lawfully exercised by Satan
as God's vicegerent over this planet, and still attempted
to be asserted in spite of his apostasy. And the same
idea is taken up by St. Paul, " It is the God of this world
who blinds the minds of those who refuse to believe f ;"
" It is the prince of the power of the air who worketh
in the children of disobedience g ." They are the rulers
of the darkness of this world with whom the Christian
conflict is waged. And there is another class of texts,
not to be passed by, which speak of physical suffering
as the result of Satan's usurped mastery of the earth.
The woman with the spirit of infirmity is the woman
whom Satan hath bound. The ability to tread upon
serpents and scorpions is the grant of a capacity to
tread upon all the power of the enemy. And in the
Epistle to the Hebrews we have the devil spoken of as
holding even the power of death.
Now the question is not whether this or that passage
may be got rid of, as expressed in compliance with the
notions of the day, but whether these passages all toge-
ther (and they might be multiplied) do not point uni-
formly to one truth as taught by Christ and the Apo-
stles, of a veritable supremacy obtained by evil spirits
over mankind, a kingdom of darkness set up by them
* St. John xii. 31. Ibid. xiv. 30. ' 2 Cor. iv. 4.
* Kphes. ii. 2 ; vi. 12.
40 The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. [SERM.
not growing out of man's corrupt nature alone, which
the Cross of Christ was to shake and finally cast down.
And when we proceed with the clue which Scripture
thus gives, to thread the labyrinths of that old world,
it is remarkable how all holds together, how this
theory of a kingdom set up by Satan and his angels is
the key which unlocks a thousand dark places in the
records of humanity. We are to recollect that when
the posterity of__Noah started forth from their first
settlements to people the void earth, they carried every-
where with them their belief in the Unseen. From the
plains of Shinar they went out, the fathers of mankind,
through the silence of primeval forests, into solitudes
where the human voice had never sounded. There was
no manifested Presence of the Holy One in their new
resting-places to give life and light, but the tradition of
that Presence had not died out, and the deep instincts
of the human soul responded to the tradition. So that
never, we may believe, did man sink to the level of the
beasts, having no belief in, no fear of, the Invisible and
the Eternal. And upon this profound conviction of the
human soul, the great adversary forthwith began to
work. He could not obliterate the innate consciousness
of God's existence, but he could distort the true instinct,
and draw men to the worship of false gods. Man could
not live without God. He must by the very constitu-
tion of his being have gods to go before him ; but he
might be satisfied with a lie. Hence the rise of idolatry.
For what was idolatry in its deepest, truest sense ? It
was Satan thrusting himself into the place of God, and
diverting to himself the homage of the creature. " The
fall of angels," says Hooker, "was pride. And these
wicked spirits the heathen honoured instead of gods,
some in oracles, some in idols, some as household gods ;
III.] The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. 41
in a word, no foul and wicked spirit which was not in
one way or other honoured of men as god, till such time
as light appeared in the world and dissolved the works
of darkness V This is the essence of the sin of idolatry.
It is not as Scripture views it, as the early Church,
which was confronted with it, considered it, the faulty
worship through unworthy similitudes of the true God,
but the bowing down of the worshipper to rebel spirits
whom God had cast out. Accordingly, every vicious
lust was not so much personified in some idol. This is a
shallow way of regarding the fact. The truer conception
is, that one seducing spirit and another procured them-
selves to be served each according to his own nature,
until bolder and bolder waxed the prince of the kingdom,
and in the confessed worship of the naked evil principle
the triumph of the great rebel angel was complete.
To this same Satanic agency likewise are we in all
probability to refer that strange mixture of truth and
deceit which are found in the ancient oracles, the practice \
of magic and witchcraft, against which not as mere im-
posture God thought it not unworthy to speak to Moses ;
His sternest laws of prohibition. It is not necessary, on the
one hand, to endorse the vulgar notions of the manner in
which the agency of Satan was herein exhibited ; nei-
ther, on the other hand, if we believe (and Scripture is
plain as to this) that there are undefmable ways of com-
munication between the human soul and the spirits of
evil, that surely as the Holy One can breathe into us
His promptings, no less can the Enemy whisper unto
us his temptations ; if we believe this, then there is no
difficulty in tracing to the same dark agency that entire
system of mingled truth and fraud, and lying wonders,
by which as in an inextricable web the souls of men
b Hooker, bk. i. ch. 4.
42 The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. [SERM.
were for centuries held captive, so as to be unable to
shake off the terrible bondage, even when the light of
heaven broke into their prison-house.
And hence too it appears, why the religion of the old
, world was ever accompanied with viciousness of morals.
This is the great fact of heathenism its temples, its
sacrifices, its priesthood, did nothing to raise the stand-
ard of moral goodness. Call to mind for a moment
the utter disregard of human life. I speak not of the
licence of war. The horrors of the amphitheatre, the
slave slain for the fish-pond, are the fairer index of an
utter forgetfulness of the origin, nature, and destiny of
man. Look, again, at the entire disruption of domestic
ties ; the lusts (of which it is a shame to speak) not merely
indulged in by the bad, but countenanced by philoso-
phers and teachers ; the pollution which the streets of
buried cities, exhumed from the sepulchre of ages, tes-
tify unto us, not as shrinking from observation, but as
boasted before the sun. Look, yet again, at the stains
which defile the noblest literature which human genius
has created. Is it only the infirmity of our nature which
these things demonstrate, and not rather, as Scripture
intimates, the presence of fouler spirits wresting to their
will the noblest spirits among men.
And observe, lastly, how the difficult subject of dia-
bolical possession squares with this. It cannot, I believe,
be ascertained at what precise period we first find men-
tion of the possessed with devils. The Book of Xpbit
contains an early instance. But if it be true that the
power of Satan increased step by step, idolatry be-
coming more gross and the worship of evil more con-
fessed, it is in harmony with this that his power over
the bodies oL men should likewise augment, until at
the close, when the night was far spent and the dawn
III.] The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. 43
at hand, it manifested itself in fiercer visible convulsions
of flesh and spirit, and so, when the Stronger than the
strong came down, ministered unwittingly to Him an
additional means of demonstrating His supremacy.
Here, then, are some of the features of the kingdom
of darkness as it prevailed from the fall of the first
Adam to the birth of the second. On the one hand, ,
we have the Presence of the Lord, retiring as it were :
from His dishonoured temple; and on the other hand,
the fallen archangel offering himself to the creature's
instinct of worship, and gradually drawing to himself and
to his host the homage of the nations, making worship
the instrument of vice, until the adoration of the evil I
principle in its nakedness, and the corporal possession '
of men's bodies, marks the culmination of the power
of the kingdom. Oh, as I contemplate that old world
in its greatness and its littleness, its Teachings forth after }
truth, its prostration to evil, its occasional perceptions
of a holier, purer life, its incapacity to live it, what }
does it resemble so much as some grand intelligence no
longer master of itself, but while yet retaining a dim
consciousness of its own terrible malady, under the
fierce impulse of madness going greedily after every
deed of violence and of shame. "And the Lord said
unto Satan, Whence comest thou ?" And the answer
is the answer which revelation and reason alike re-echo.
" Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to \
and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down
in it."
Two great lessons flow from what has been said.
First we may learn the vanity of all attempts to get
rid of the mysteries of religion. The foundations of
our most holy faith lie deep in the profoundcst secrets
of eternity. They touch upon truths wholly outside this
44 The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. [SERM.
world of time ; the ineffable relationships of the Only
Begotten Son to the Almighty Father ; His first mani-
festation to the heavenly hierarchy ; Satan's refusal to
worship ; the fall of a third part of the angelic host ; the
consequent hostility of the apostate spirit to the new
creature man, issuing in a temporary triumph. And
you do not grasp the whole truth unless you take into
view all these more hidden verities. To pass them by
in a vain attempt to conciliate modern rationalism is
only to isolate the central truth of the Incarnation from
those other cognate truths which give it its due propor-
tion in the chain of divine providences. We cannot
estimate aright the work of Christ unless we connect it
as Scripture does with other agencies. We cannot sym-
pathize with His triumphs, unless we realize the true
character of His foe. The mystery of godliness stands
in a strange correlation to the mystery of iniquity. The
divine personality and mission of the Son, can scarcely
be viewed apart from the personality and reign of Satan.
You weaken rather than strengthen the cause of Chris-
tianity, by trying to sever between it and these darker
things of God.
The second lesson is this the utter incapacity of
anything short of the faith of Christ, and the grace
of Christ, to cleanse and lift up man's life. It is some-
times asked, " What has the Gospel done ?" Why, the
Gospel alone has purified society, as (thank God) in
spite of our unworthiness, it has been purified. Civil-
ization could not do it ; philosophy tried, and failed ;
aye, and confessed its failure. " No one," said Seneca,
"is of himself sufficiently strong to emerge from the
slough. Some other must stretch forth a hand ; some
other must draw him out 1 ." What is this but crea-
1 Sen., Ep. 52.
III.] The Kingdom of Darkness Prevailing. 45
tion groaning for its deliverance, the wisest of this
world crying out for a wisdom loftier than itself? It
failed, that old civilization, with all its intellectual
resources. It had no motive, no hope, no faith ade- \
quate to the task, above all, no superhuman power
working in it to do for man what he could not do for
himself; so even when it saw the road, it could not walk
in it ; when it enunciated rules of virtue, it could not
practise them. " It is one thing," (says St. Augustine,
contrasting the Church and the world,) " from a wooded
steep to see one's country of peace, and not to find the
path into it ; and another thing to pursue the road
which leads there under the guardian care of a heavenly
master."
And if this be true of the entire race, so (oh, believe
ye it ! ) is it true of each separate man. What all its \
intellect could not accomplish for that old world, its
exaltation and its cleansing, neither can science or re-
finement or intellectual pre-eminence do for the indi-
vidual soul. " The ancient learning," again says St. Au-
gustine, " had no tears of confession to tell of, no broken
spirit, no contrite heart, no sanctifying Spirit, no Cross
of redemption k ." And by these things alone does man
live ; by these alone can the individual soul be rescued,
as the world was rescued, from the dominion of dark- j
ness, and made fit for the inheritance of the saints in
light.
k Confessions, lib. vii. 21.
SERMON IV.
Efje Coming in of tije <Son of fHan. l&te Conflict
anti Fictorgu
ST. JOHN aril. 31.
"Now shall the prince of this world be cast out."
TF a person of ordinary intelligence and of candid
mind had the Gospel narratives for the first time
brought to his notice, he would observe one central
character, round whom the rest are grouped, moving
onward through a variety of incidents with the sim-
plicity and reality of historical fact. Wonders, so to
speak, play around Him ; but miracle is not His ordinary
element, nor the material out of which His biography
is constructed. Plain truth, calmness and solemnity,
compassion and charity, these are His characteristics.
From time to time, He gives, in His converse, indica-
tions of familiarity with things other than those with
which human experience deals. His heavenly Father
who has sent Him, the holy angels of God, the hostile
powers of evil, with these He seems acquainted as we
are not acquainted. He speaks with authoritative know-
ledge of God's will and God's acts. He declares abso-
lutely what is done round God's throne in heaven. He
deals with the unseen world not as the inheritor, but as
the corrector, of common belief. And all this, as we
say, de suo. No one revealed aught to Him, of no one
has He learnt anything ; " Verily I say unto you " is
48 TJte Coming in of the Son of Man. [SERM.
His preface, when He has to speak of things unknown
to man.
Now I imagine our observer would at once see that
there is no possibility of divaricating the sayings and
testimonies of this Speaker, so that we may accept
some of them and reject others. Either all is matter
of fact, or else all is romance. If He has this autho-
ritative knowledge of His heavenly Father who sent
Him, then it would be unfair to suppose that when He
couples together His Father and the holy angels, He
is in the same breath speaking of the living God and
of the creations of a fictitious mythology ; it would be
as unfair to suppose that when He in moments of equal
solemnity speaks of spiritual foes, of the devil and his
angels, He is dealing with unrealities. It would be plain
to our observer, as I hope also it is plain to us, that
he who should assert this might indeed must, if he
follow his system up to completeness maintain that the
Father who sent Him, indeed that every thing and
person of which He spoke, except those which were
palpable to human sense, were the creatures of His
own imagination, and have for us no reality.
I make these prefatory remarks, to shew you how
entirely impossible I believe it for one who is a Chris-
tian in any sense to regard our Lord's conflict with
the powers of darkness otherwise than as an objective
reality ; and that I may shew that our simple Chris-
tian faith on this matter is a wiser and more consistent
and more rational thing, than the current half-belief of
the day.
And now, entering on our main subject, let us first
notice where we take it up. Darkness covers the earth,
and gross darkness the nations. The powers of evil
seem to the eye of sense to have prevailed. God's
IV.] His Conflict and Victory. 49
fair creation has been desolated by them. The moral
state of the heathen world is too fearful to contemplate.
The intellectual energies have either been perverted to
subserve that moral degradation, or where they have
been striving for good, have been baffled, and have
sunk down in despair. The people of the living God,
who possess His covenant and His ordinances, have
indeed had the demon of idolatry cast out of them by
the sharp discipline of the captivity, but have become
the prey of the more malignant demons of hypocrisy
and worldliness, and their last state is worse than their
first. Nor was this unhappy age without more positive
inroads from the unseen powers of darkness. The facts
of demoniacal possession, as brought before us in the
Gospels, are distinct and undeniable, on the supposition I
of any basis of truth at all underlying the personal his- 1
tory in those narratives. They are accurately distin-
guished from mere disease of a cognate form ; the
phaenomena of casting out evil spirits in no particulars
resemble those of miraculous healing. We have in the
wretched victims all the symptoms of an oppressed, and
in some cases of a redoubled consciousness ; and the
usurper of their personality quits them reluctantly, and
even in some cases not without the infliction of agonized
cruel suffering.
Such was the age ; the Augustan age of man's pride,
and pomp, and power, and skill ; the darkest age and
climax of misery of all that man was made for as an
immortal being. Spiritually, we seem to have arrived
at a period in the history of creation resembling that
when the earth was without form and void, and dark-
ness was upon the face of the deep.
But upon the darkness there arose a great light,
shining in it, but not comprehended by it; hated by
E
5o The Coming in of the Son of Man. [SERM.
the darkness, persecuted by the darkness, eventually
extinguished by the darkness, but springing up again
in renewed splendour, and passed on from hand to hand
by the children of light, and yet to be passed on, even
till all be light and no dark place remaining.
It is to trace this conflict of light with darkness in
the person of Him who is the light of the world, that we
are to address ourselves this evening. May He Him-
self shine among us and within us. while we are so
employed.
Without accepting the view held by some of the
ancient fathers, that the great adversary was kept in
ignorance of the nativity of our Lord, we may at all
events take it as meaning for us thus much that except
in the one particular of the malignant agency of Herod,
no details have reached us of the conflict between Him
and the powers of darkness during His infancy and
youth. For us that conflict begins at the decisive and
mysterious period of His temptation in the wilderness.
And observe how entirely that temptation, in the form
in which it is related to us, bears out all that we know
and believe respecting Him. In Him was no sin, not
any even the least motion towards sin. It was quite
impossible then that He, when He was tempted, should
be "drawn away of His own lust and enticed." That
temptation was not and could not be any struggle
between the better and the worse mind within Himself.
Whatever analogy in point of time it may have borne
with those seasons of choice and decision which usher
in the young man's active life, in this respect it had
none ; it was no deliberation between the worse and the
better path, no hesitation between enjoyment and self-
denial, no wavering between present ambition and the
fulfilment of the prescribed course. Throughout the
IV.] His Conflict and Victory. 5 1
whole, the tempter came to Him in person, came to
Him from without. Evil did not arise within Him,
but was presented to Him, presented through the out-
ward senses, which in Him, as in ourselves, were avenues
open for the impression of ideas on the mind within.
And in that we read that He suffered, being tempted,
we must conceive of that suffering not as an inward
conflict with inclination to evil, not as a warring of the
law of sin within the members against the law of God,
but as the deep anguish and loathing of the holy soul
at the contact and intrusion of evil, as the grief and
revulsion of the pure spotless life and heart at the
withering poison of selfish and unhallowed suggestions
made to Him by the foe. In Him was an absolute
barrier, beyond which the turbid waves of evil could not
pass ; but against it they chafed and raged, disquieting
and troubling His spirit, and driving the human will
within the shelter of the divine purpose.
It has perhaps not enough been noticed, that in our
Lord's conquest over the foe at His temptation, there
is the hiding rather than the putting forth of His power.
The temptations come upon Him with all the acces-
sions of the unusual and the wonderful ; the forty days'
fast, the giddy pinnacle of danger, the mountain vision
of pomp ; but His weapons are far other in character.
He steps not out of the rank in God's army which the
humblest Jew might have occupied ; His defensive
weapons are the words of the law under which He was
born into the world, " It is written," " It is written \
again ;" and to the final presumptuous attempt of the
enemy to turn His life into treason, and His obedience
into" rebellion, He opposes that one central command,
by loyalty to which the three in Babylon had foiled
Nebuchadnezzar, and the seven and their mother had
E 2
52 The Coming in of the Son of Man. [SERM.
resisted Antiochus, " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and Him only shalt thou serve." And hereby is
the Lord's conflict with Satan in the wilderness distin-
guished from others that follow, that His resistance was
purely human ; that all the display of power was on the
side of the foe ; that what He did is no more than we
may do when tempted to sin ; no more than the holy
youth did when he said, " How can I do this great
wickedness, and sin against God ?" And hence it is
that in this battle and victory has rightly been seen
Paradise regained ; that it has been felt that, although
much was yet to be done before the powers of darkness
were finally bruised under foot, yet here, where the Lord
as man vanquished man's ancient enemy, was the true
counterpart of Eden, where our first father was tempted
and fell.
. The narrative of the temptation in St. Luke ends with
a notice of especial importance in this view of the subject
that when the devil had ended all the temptations, he
departed from Him for a season. The explanation of
this has been usually, and I believe rightly, found in
the words which our Lord used to those who came to
take Him in the garden, words be it remembered also
found in St. Luke's Gospel " Now is your hour, and
the power of darkness."
In passing to our Lord's public ministry, and there
tracing the conflict, we are at once struck with the new
phase into which it seems to have entered. Now the
wicked spirits know Him as the Holy One of God, come
forth out of the possessed at His bidding, are subject
to His appointed heralds, the twelve and the seventy,
commanding them in His name. We have His Divine
power here prominently displayed : "Thou dumb and deaf
spirit, eyw eVireXXw <roi, it is I who say unto thee, come
IV.] His Conflict and Victory. 53
out of him, and enter no more into him ;" and, we read,
the " unclean spirits when they saw Him, fell down be-
fore Him, and cried saying, Thou art the Son of God.
And He straitly charged them that they should not
make Him known." So that during the public exercise
of His ministry, His divine glory and power seem to
have overawed and overborne the hosts of evil. But we
are hardly therefore justified in supposing that His own
soul, and His private hours were free from the harassing
of the subtle foe. He Himself gives a name to the traitor
Judas, which seems to point to the fact that the enemy
was from the first contriving, by means of that wicked
instrument, the betrayal of Jesus to death. And in St.
John's Gospel, the several stages of the dark treachery
are distinctly ascribed, first to Satan having put it into
his heart, at a certain time, and then, as it proceeded, to
Satan entering into him, i.e. fully possessing him for evil.
Again, from certain other expressions of our Lord we
gather the continued watchfulness and subtlety of the
malignant foe. When St. Peter, having but newly received
praise for his confession of Jesus as the Son of God, igno-
rantly and over-boldly ventured to rebuke the Lord for
the expressed anticipation of His sufferings, the very
same words by which the tempter was formerly defeated
are again uttered, and a significant reason added : " Get
thee behind Me, Satan ; thou art an offence unto Me,
for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but
the things that be of men." The carnal selfish view
which would shrink from suffering this is again pre-
sented in all its loathsomeness before our Lord's sight,
and He recoils back from it again with horror. Under
the same head we may also number two other of His
sayings. When He was charged with casting out devils
by a league with the prince of the devils, He laid down
54 The Coming in of the Son of Man. [SERM.
clearly and carefully that ineffaceable distinction which
i there was between His work and Satan's work, His
/ kingdom and Satan's kingdom. It is impossible that
light can be partly darkness, or darkness partly light.
Satan, in the possession of men's souls and the glory of
this world, is represented as the strong man armed,
keeping his goods in peace ; the Lord is the stronger
// ) than he, taking from him his armour wherein he trusted,
and spoiling his goods. The other saying is the argu-
ment, not altogether dissimilar, by which, in the Gospel
of St. John, He turns upon His enemies the charge that
He had a devil, and turns their malignity against Him-
self to their father the devil, who was a murderer from
the beginning. By these, and by sayings and incidents
like these, we may see how close the conflict always lay
to our Redeemer's soul, even during that time when it
, was not personally and prominently renewed ; how it
appeared in the contradiction of sinners against Him,
in the treachery of His friends, in the conspiracies of
His enemies. We know nothing indeed of the secrets
of His inner life ; but we may presume to say that
when He continued whole nights in prayer to God, the
inward conflict was not unfelt by Him, but rather that
He was waging it from time to time in deep places far
removed from human sight, and that on each occasion
faith and resolve gained the victory over human in-
firmity, new dangers were braved, and new difficulties
encountered.
One, and certainly the chief of such wrestlings of
spirit, has been recorded for our instruction ; one,
respecting which Jesus Himself said, " the prince of
this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me ;" one, too,
bearing a certain analogy with the former scene of
temptation. The weakness and the exhausted frame,
f
IV.] His Conflict and Victory. 5 5
crushed down with the horror of the bitter cup of
suffering, now close at His lips, prompted at the first
moment the prayer that it might depart from Him.
Three times does the temptation come on Him. After
each He seeks for sympathy in the affection of His
disciples. All the while the human will is waning,
the holy resolve is waxing onwards. The human will
was not^n, was not inclining to sin; but while the
spirit wa^ willing, the flesh was weak, was open to \
the tempter, was keenly watched by the malignity of
the foe. At this point the real victory was gained.
Never were words sublimer in their simplicity than
these of St. John, " Jesus therefore knowing all things
that should come upon Him, went forth unto them."
And now we come to that with respect to which
the saying in our text was uttered, "Now shall the
prince of this world be cast out," which was the ad-
versary's triumph, and yet the Lord's glorification ;
the culminating point of the foe's enmity, and the /
greatest victory of the Saviour's love. The Cross of
Calvary is the centre of the world's history ; to it all
before converges ; from it all that follows shall radiate.
There the Saviour triumphed openly over the powers
of evil. " Through death He vanquished him that had
the power of death, that is, the devil ;" through the blood
of His Cross He abolished the ancient enmity between
God and man, brought in by the evil one ; and by His
divine power He came up out of death with that na-
ture of ours which He had taken upon Him triumphant
over death ; and with it upon Him He ascended up
where He was before, carrying that nature of ours into
the presence, and upon the very throne of God. And
now all things are subject to Him, in heaven and in
earth, and under the earth, i.e. in the realms of darkness
*
56 The Coming in of the Son of Man. [SERM.
and the lost ; and all this lapse of the ages, and all these
changes of empires, and all this progress of man, are
but the steps whereby all things are being put under
His feet, that He may reign with His saints in that
kingdom which is the one promise of the world, and for
which all creation groans.
And meantime, my brethren, how stands the conflict ?
where is now the foe ? what are we to think of him and
of ourselves ? The Cross of Christ hath passed ; the Son
of Man is at the right hand of God. The foe is not
as he was. His power is broken broken as respects
man in general, broken especially as respects the Church
and people of Christ. From the day when the Lord
was taken up from us even till this day, has the king-
dom of evil been crumbling away before the grace of
Christ's Gospel. Slowly indeed, and, as far as we ought
to be fellow- workers with that grace, unworthily of Him
who hath founded it, does this blessed progress go on
towards the final triumph ; still are the dark corners of
the earth full of cruelty, still in vast unevangelized tracts
does the strong man armed seem to be keeping his goods
in peace ; but age after age abundant grace is given in
answer to the devout prayers and missionary efforts of
the Church, and the dark spaces are narrowing before ad-
vancing light. Where the Church in her fulness has been
set up, in Christendom itself, we witness more advanced
stages of the great conflict, and the kingdom of light in
further development. Age by age the maxims and
practices of selfishness and cruelty are giving way, and
the leaven is gradually spreading through the lump of
human society. And in the advance of the great Chris-
tian body, the individual Christian doubtless also gains
advantage for his share of the great conflict. But the
laws of spiritual being are not altered. Man has not
IV.] His Confiict and Victory. 57
ceased to be, under redemption, what he was in himself \
and his personal attributes before redemption. We are
still responsible, open to solicitation from evil, open to
influence for good. The soul of man is drawn upward
by God's grace, is drawn downward to ruin by God's
enemy. About ourselves, as once about our Lord, are
the hosts of darkness leagued together against every
one of us ; not yet is the abyss sealed, or the foe chained
down. Each one, by himself and for himself, must
maintain the conflict with the spiritual enemy. It is
the first law of our moral being, that by temptation,
by suffering, and resolve, by power exerted, and rebut-
ting the enemy, each one of us is to rise to good and
to God ; each one of us is to win his way to the ever-
lasting reward. Where then is the difference ? What
is it to us that the Son of Man was brought in ? What
to us is His conflict and victory ? In our inner hearts, '
when we are assailed by divers temptations, of what
import to us is that portion of the world's history in
which He lived and died, any more than any other
portion ? What is He to us, any more than any other
great and pure person who has fought the good fight
and won the glittering crown ? Let our answer to this
be clear and definite, or it is no answer for us : or it will
not speak peace to our hearts in the hour of our trial.
What He is to us in that hour, what we feel Him to
be to us in every hour of failing strength, of agonized
prayer, of wrestling and yearning with God, He is, not
because He has set us an example, not because we
wonder at Him, not because we love Him merely, but
because on Him in that conflict, on Him in that victory,
on Him as He bled on the cross, on Him as He burst
the tomb, on Him as He rose through the cloud that
received Him, on Him as He now sits on the throne of
58 The Coming in of the Son of Man. [SERM.
God, He bears our human nature entire, summed up in
i Him ; so that His conflict is our conflict, His victory our
] victory, His acceptance before God's throne our ac-
ce ptance, so that we are more than conquerors through
Him that loved us. And thus, when I am harassed by
the foe, when temptation oppresses and weak nature is
giving way, there is One to look to, there is One to lean
upon, there is One to commune with, there is One to get
strength from, who is mine ; mine for all I can need in
all the depths of my nature, because He is in, and lives
through, all that nature in His Deity ; God with me :
mine, not because I have won Him, but because He has
won me and bought me, and paid His blood for me, by
an everlasting covenant, firm as the covenant of the earth
and the sea ; so that out of weakness I can stretch out my
hand and His hand shall grasp it, and out of faintness
I can utter my feeble cry, and He shall answer ; and for
all my wants there comes supply, and for all my sins
there comes pardon, and in all my troubles there comes
peace, and in all my struggles there comes victory, out
of His fulness, for in Him all fulness dwells.
You will hear, my brethren, from those Who shall
come after me in this Lent season, how He has pro-
vided for this conflict to be carried on during these ages
of waiting in the body of which He is the Head. You
shall hear how the promise of the Father, won by Him,
came down on His people, the oil of His anointing de-
scending to the skirts of His raiment ; and you shall
hear who were set up to dispense and to carry on that
grace, and what are the aids and the weapons of the
conflict, and what the ciisis and final event.
Meantime, and that seems especially the matter to be
pressed upon us to-night, whatever be the means and
appliances appointed for our warfare, and none of them
IV.] His Conflict and Victory. 59
may be safely neglected by us, let us in them all, let us
through them all, be ever, each one for himself, looking
to Him the Captain, who is gone up before us the Son
of God, the righteous Head of our common nature.
This, my brethren, is for each one of us the one thing
above all others needful, that we should know Him for
ourselves. We may hear of Him by the hearing of the
ear ; we may be sound in the faith respecting Him we
may love His ordinances, and rejoice to meet round
His holy Table ; but in all these, and above all things, it
is Himself that we must seek and find ; Himself that
we must know and commune with, and walk about with
in our common life. In temptation here, in trial and
conflict anywhere and at any time, there is but one
sure safeguard, binding together the affections, knitting
up the resolves with everlasting strength, and that safe-
guard is the abiding consciousness in the soul, of that
glorified Human Form on the right hand of God, the
living lustre of His eye, the sight of His hand pointing
our way, the blessed sound of His voice cheering and
commanding us : " To him that overcometh will I give
to sit down with Me on My throne, even as I also over-
came and am set down with My Father on His throne."
With this assurance, the weakest among us may become
strong, and the feeble one m^y vanquish a thousand.
"If God be for us, who can be against us ?"
SERMON V.
Cfje Ifcinfltrom of 3Ltg{jt set up. Efje Conflict ano
Fictorg of its JFaitfjfui Cjjitoren.
ST. LUKE xxiv. 49.
"Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry
ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from
on high."
TV/TAN'S power had been weighed in the balance, and
had been found wanting. Minds, as acute, as rich,
as varied in their gifts, as any which God had created,
had done whatever could be done in the way of in-
tellect. The intrinsic beauty of goodness, its fitting-
ness, the moral duty of seeking it for its own sake, and
as the end of man, had been taught with all the power
of Greek intelligence. The schools of philosophy had
decayed. Their lessons had become mostly powerless
on those who taught in them*. Socrates, Plato, Aris-
totle, were to use a world-wide influence within their
own province, the human intellect. Their instantaneous
failure, and three centuries of decay, had shewn that
they were not to be the moral teachers, or the regene-
rators of mankind.
Rome had tried what man could do on the moral
side. The stern, unloving warriors, strict with them-
"230." Plutarch. Comparat. Thesei c. Rom. c. 7. "520." Val.
Max. Hist. v. 6. I. "521." A. Cell. Noct. Att xvii. 21.
62 The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM.
selves as with others, had stamped on their polity and
their people a rigid morality. It is a marvel to us, how
at least fidelity on the wife's side could become to such
an extent a heathen virtue. Contrast with the miseries
and iniquities revealed and fostered by the English
Divorce Court, Roman faithfulness, through which, in
a hot climate, divorce was unknown for two hundred
and thirty, some say, for five hundred and twenty years.
But the hard, icy virtues of the republic, frost-bound by
the necessity of discipline, had, under the warm glow
of prosperity, melted into one stream of universal dis-
soluteness. The failure of a mighty effort leaves the
greater hopelessness. It is a calm historian, who turned
away sickened from his own times, (about our Lord's
birth,) in which, by a rapid but complete declension,
" we can bear," he says, " neither our vices nor remedies 15 ."
Another, who could speak freely of iniquity at which he
afterwards connived, says, " Will the wise ever cease to
be angry, if once he begins ? All is full of guilt and
vice ; more is committed than can be constrained. A
great war of wickedness is waged ; daily the lust for
sin is greater, the shame less. Casting out all regard
for aught good or just, lust fastens where it will. Guilt
is no longer stealthy; it parades itself. Iniquity is so
sent abroad, has such might in the hearts of all, that
innocence is not rare only ; it is not*" A wide-spread
nature-worship, whose centre was the mystery of re-
produced life, consecrated sensuality ; the philosophy
of Stoics or Epicureans, the most rigid or the most lax,
alike justified degrading sin d ; human nature cast itself
b Liv. Prsef. ad Hist. v. fin.
c Seneca de Ira, ii. 8. It is thought to have been one of his earliest
works.
d See Dollinger Heidenthum und Judenthum, b. v. c. ii. p. 328.
V.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 63
willingly into the black pool, to whose edge its gods
beckoned it on.
Even Jewish life had decayed. Its most esteemed
sect was rigid in externals, in love heartless, in inward
life reprobate. Ambition and hatred of their masters
had desecrated the prophetic promises of spiritual victo-
ries into temporal hopes. An Epicurean sensuality had
bound down the hopes of a third class to the things
of this life.
It seems as though God had waited until there could
be no hope of the moral regeneration of man from man,
to work His own marvellous work. As He employed
the poor, the illiterate, " unlearned and ignorant men,"
" the foolish things of the world, and the weak things of
the world, and base things of the world, and things de-
spised, yea, things " accounted as if they " were not "
to confound the wise and the mighty, and that which
held that it alone was, in order "that no flesh should
glory in His Presence," so He allowed man's keenest
intelligence, and strongest moral power, the instruments
which He had Himself formed in the natural order of
things, to try their utmost and fail, that the Divinity
of Jesus and His revelation might stand out the more
clearly, after the recognition of the impotence of what
was grand, powerful, beautiful, perfect in its way, but
human.
What was lacking, was not so much understanding,
or motives, as power. The unwritten law, written in
men's consciences (however, here or there, it was ob-
scured even in its primal laws), was clear. " I see what
is better, and approve it ; I follow what is worse," is
a confession of human nature, just as our Lord was
coming. Dissoluteness had not yet quite eaten out
among the people the old beliefs in a sort of heaven
64 The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM.
and hell, the Elysian fields and Tartarus ; but it was
the powerless echo of a mighty truth, whose dying
sounds moved neither heart nor intellect.
Not, then, the inherent might of truth was wanting to
the soul ; man had already more truth than he availed
himself of. Not persuasive motives ; what man had
already, were powerless. Motives will not enable one
paralyzed to move. The Gospel has constraining mo-
tives, stronger than hope and fear, love for Him who
so loved us. Yet love, too, has its constraining power
to those alive, not to one dead. And human nature
was dead to good, in its trespasses and sins.
What then was needed, besides all revealed truth,
was " power." Our blessed Lord came to give us that
power, being Himself " the wisdom of God, and the
power of God e ." He came to give a new beginning
to our nature, by Himself taking it. He took our hu-
man weakness, to impart to it His Divine might. The
power which He was and had, He, by His manhood,
lodged in it. Mankind was redeemed by weakness ; it
was converted by power. The power had been hidden
in His humiliation, for the suffering of His atoning
Death. The reason for shrouding it was removed on
His resurrection. Then He who "was of the seed of
David according to the flesh," was, "according to the
Spirit of holiness," i.e. according to His holy and Divine
Nature, " defined" or marked out to be "the Son of God
in power by the resurrection of the dead f ." This power
He laid as the groundwork of the apostles' mission ;
"All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and disciple all nations ; I am with
you alway, unto the end of the world g ." This power,
which was His, He bade His Apostles wait until they
' I Cor. i. 24. ' Rom. i. 3. * St. Matt, xxviii. 18 20.
V.J The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 65
should be invested with it. " I send the promise of
My Father upon you ; but tarry ye in the city of Jeru-
salem, until ye be endowed with power from on high h ."
And this power was the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
In Him they were to be baptized, immersed, flooded.
" Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many
days hence 1 ." "Ye shall receive power, after that the
Holy Ghost is come upon you-"."
Doubtless this power included the gifts of superhuman
works wrought by the Apostles, as St. Peter speaks of
our Lord Himself: "Ye know, how God anointed Jesus
of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: Who
went about doing good, and healing all that were op-
pressed with the devil ; for God was with HimV
Its first expression was in the gift of tongues ; but
the gift of tongues was only the vehicle of the Divine
power. " We do hear them speak in our own tongues
the wonderful works of God." St. Paul, in speaking of
what "Christ" had "wrought by" him "to the obe-
dience of the Gentiles, by word or deed," distinguishes
these two ; " in the power of signs and wonders," " in
the power of the Holy Spirit * ;" an o.utward and super-
natural power of miracles, and an inward transforming
power of the Spirit.
But the outward miracles were the body, not the
soul. They were God's glorious works of Divine love
attesting His Presence ; the rending of the rocks, the
earthquake, the fire, were but the forerunners of the
Lord ; He was not in them ; God manifested Himself
in the still small voice m . The mighty works in the
Gospel accredited God's messengers, as come from Him ;
they disposed men's hearts to listen ; but the might
h St. Luke xxiv. 49. ' Acts i. 5. ^ Ibid. 8. k Ibid. x. 38,
1 Rom. xv. 1 8. m I Kings xix. n, 12.
F
66 The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM-
which converted the heart, was the Gospel itself, spoken
in the words of God to hearts which He opened to re-
ceive it. The Gospel itself was "the power of God
unto salvation n ." " The preaching of the cross was to
them who perish foolishness ; but to us who are saved
it is the power of God ." " My word and my preaching
were not in persuasive words of man's wisdom, but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power." It was not
"persuasion," but "demonstration;" not demonstration
of human reasoning, but a divine power and energy
of heavenly grace p . It was an Almighty and ever-
present power, working in and through them. " I be-
came a minister of the Gospel," says St. Paul, " accord-
ing to the gift of the grace of God, which was given to
me, according to the inworking of His power V And
this power they bore about with them in this our de-
caying frame, " in earthen vessels, that the transcending-
ness of the power," they say, " may be of God, and not
from us r ."
Yet they were but great eminent instruments of
Divine power. "The Spirit of the Lord spake by"
them, "and His word was on" their "tongue 8 ." Speak-
ing with Divine power, they brought over the world to
God ; savages they persuaded to learn wisdom ; all the
whole order of the world they altered. But they were
only triumphant captains in the war of the Lord, under
the great Captain of our salvation, chiefs of the Church,
lights of the world. They who so bare Christ upon their
n Rom. i. 16. i Cor. i. 18.
P " The Divine word (i Cor. ii. 4) saith, that what is spoken (although
in itself true and most persuasive) is not self-sufficing to reach the human
soul, unless some power from God be also given to the speaker, and grace
engerminate in what is spoken ; this too being, not without God, infused
in those who speak profitably." (Orig. c. Cels. vi. 2.)
> Eph. iii. 7. ' 2 Cor. iv. 7. 2 Sam. xxiii. 2.
V.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 67
tongues, who had that seraphic love, doubtless have
their thrones with cherubim and seraphim. But the
"power" itself they speak of, as the common possession
of the Church. For it was one and the same Spirit
which, having been given without measure to our Lord,
was thenceforth to be poured forth fully upon His
Church, giving to the whole Church (when acting as
a whole) that inerrancy which He gave to His Apostles,
streaming, in its sanctifying powers, upon all its mem-
bers ; in all, supernatural, lifting up the soul above
nature, uniting it to God, and restoring His likeness
in it. In the Apostles, above all, were those gifts of
the Spirit, which were for the benefit of others. Yet
these, too, all but infallibility, continued on in indivi-
duals too in the Church since ; nay, even in its lesser
members ; for if any one speaks so as to reach a bro-
ther's soul, our Lord's words still come true of him ;
" It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of My Father
who speaketh in you."
But in the conflict which belongs to all, the Apostles
needed the same armoury as we ; we are gifted with that
same endowment whereby they trampled upon Satan,
subdued the flesh, despised the world. To them, too,
weakness was Divine might. It is one of the few per-
sonal revelations to himself which St. Paul records,
" My grace sufficeth for thee, for My power is perfected
in weakness V " Therefore," he subjoins, " most sweetly
will 1 rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of
Christ may reside upon me." Apostles had the same
weaknesses as we, save those which any of us entail on
ourselves by evil habits ; we have, for victory, for eter-
nal life, for glory, for that which is the glory and the
joy of eternal life, the love of God, the same helps as
1 2 Cor. xii. 9.
F 2
68 The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM.
they. " The least grace," it is a dogmatic saying u , " is
able to resist any concupiscence, and to gain eternal
life."
But St. Paul, who glories in his own weakness, exults
in the superabundant might of grace deposited in the
Church for each of us by virtue of its union, and ours
in it, with Christ, its Head. Inspiration itself (since it
must needs use our human words) does not seem to
suffice him, as he piles up words upon words to utter as
he may, that which is unutterable the transcendentness
of the might of the grace of God to usward. It is not
to be uttered in words. As
"He who loveth, knoweth well
What Jesus 'tis to love,"
so he who has used grace, knows something of the
power of grace. Its fullest power that- saint alone can
know, who here below used it most, and whom it has
uplifted nearest to the throne of God. The Ephesians
knew it. They were a source of unceasing thanksgiving
to St. Paul for " the faith in the Lord Jesus, which was
among them, and the love to all the saints V And
therefore he prayed for them, that God would reveal to
them by an inward illumining of the eyes of the heart,
what ? Some fresh truth ? Some larger knowledge
of Himself? No : but what is the transcendent greatness
of the power of His grace which they knew already.
" That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of glory, would give you the spirit of wisdom and reve-
lation in the full knowledge * of Him ; having the eyes
of your heart enlightened, so that you may know, what
is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the
glory of His inheritance in the saints" (this relates to
a S. Thorn. 3 p. q. 62, art. 6, fin. comp. q. 70, art. 4, cone. T Eph.
i. 15, 1 6. x tiriyvoxrtt, v. 17.
V.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 69
what eye hath not seen nor ear heard, the glory of those
already perfected, but he adds, as equally an object of
revelation, the might of grace which God puts forth here
below) "and what the transcending greatness of His
power to usward the believing, according to the working
of the strength of His might, which He worked in Christ,
in that He raised Him from the dead, and placed Him
on His Right Hand in the heavenly places, far above all
principality and power and dominion, and every name
which is named, not only in this world but in that
which is to come, and hath subjected all things under
His feet." And Him, Who is thus above all might, He
has given to be the Source of the might lodged in all of
us who from that time to the end are " the believers."
"And Him He gave to be Head over all to the Church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who filleth all
things in all."
He parallels "working" with "working;" the great-
ness of His power to usward who believe, with the
might of His power whereby He raised Christ from the
dead. The might of grace operating in us was involved
in the might which gave life to the dead Body of Jesus.
" According to/' he says ; as the effect is in the cause.
And what might ? The might of Him Who is above
all might which can be named or conceived. And why
should this might, shewed forth in our Lord, redound
to us ? Because we belong to Him. He is our Head,
we are His members; and He vouchsafes to account
something to be lacking to Himself, until the last re-
deemed sinner, the price of His Precious Blood, shall be
gathered unto Him, because the Church, i.e. the whole
multitude of His redeemed, is, as being the body of Him
Who is our Head, the fullness, or filling up, of Him,
Who, in His Godhead, filleth all things in all.
7o The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM.
We have seen the height, look now at the breadth of
this power, how he prays for those of another Church ?,
who had the same faith in Jesus, the same love towards
all saints, in whom the Gospel had been not only fruit-
bearing but growing since they first heard of it. He
prayed unceasingly, that the grace and the knowledge
of the will of God should spread through' their whole
spiritual being, and that, with power. " That ye should
be filled with the thorough knowledge of His will in all
wisdom and spiritual understanding, to walk worthily
of the Lord to all pleasing, fruit-bearing and increasing
in all good work, empowered in all power according to
the might of His glory, to all endurance and long-
suffering with joy z ." The glory of the might of Christ
is manifested in being put forth to strengthen us ; the
power, wherewith we are empowered, is in conformity
with the might of Christ, and universal.
And this he prays even for his most recent converts a ,
that "our God would count them worthy of His calling,
and fulfil all good pleasure in goodness, and all work
of faith in power." And this power, lodged in us, stands
opposed to our mute shrinking from exertion. " God
did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but of power, and
love, and of correction V
This power they had, having been once powerless.
The Epistles embody spiritual facts. They appeal to
people's souls, what they had been, what God had done
for them, what they had become. They had been, for
the most part, like others. Heathens, they had lived
in heathen sins. They had been dead to all spiritual
things, in trespasses and sins c ; sold under sin d ; slaves
y Col. i. 4, 6. ' Ib. 9 II. a 2 Thess. i. 11. b 2 Tim. i. 7.
c Eph. ii. i, 5 ; Col. ii. 13. d Rom. vii. 14.
V.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 7 1
of sin e ; sin ruled over them by a law to which they
were captive f .
They all, St. Paul says emphatically, " we all," i. e.
all alike, Jews and Gentiles, "were occupied in the lusts
of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and of our
minds, and we were, by nature, children of wrath, like
the rest g ." Nay, they had not only their inherent
powerlessness. As they had now the powerful inworking
of God the Holy Ghost for good, so aforetime they had
the inworking of an evil spirit for evil. As the patri-
archs walked to and fro with God, so now people
" walked according to the course of this world, accord-
ing to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit, who
now worketh h ," not in them who had been freed from
him but, " in the children of disobedience."
And so St. Paul bids them be tender to the heathen,
as having once been what these still were, " shewing all
meekness towards all men ; for we too were formerly
without understanding, disobedient, erring, slaves to
divers lusts and passions, passing our whole lives in
malice and envy, hateful and hating one another 1 ."
Men were amazed, St. Peter attests, at the change, as
they are now too at the conversion of one, Christian in
name only ; and, as they do now also, they calumniated
them. " Sufficient is the past time, to have worked out
the will of the heathen, by walking, as ye did, in lascivi-
ousnesses, lusts, drunkennesses, revellings, carousals ;
wherein they are amazed, that you rush not with them
into the same slough of profligacy, speaking evil of
youV
But from all this Christians had been set free, and
free they remained. Their two conditions, their past
Rom. vi. 17, 20. ' Ib. vii. 23, 25. Eph. ii. 3. b Ih. 2.
1 Tit. ill 3. k I Pet. iv. 3, 4.
72 The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM.
and their present, were as different as darkness and
light, death and life, utter slavery and perfect freedom,
prostrate weakness and superhuman strength, degrada-
tion below man and elevation above man. And be-
tween those two states there had been an act. Were
there no history besides the Epistles, these would be
records of the marvellous transformation of countless
multitudes at one and the same time. They had been
what we should shrink to think of; they became what
we should long to be. And one act had passed between.
Holy Scripture says not only, " Ye were ungodly, ye are
now godly ; ye ^vere profane, ye are now devout ; ye
were sensual, ye are now spiritual." It says that their
past and their present were severed by a great act, in
which they had only been recipients, with their own
free-will accepting the free gift of God.
"God shone in our hearts," they say, "called us,
wrought and moulded us for this very thing, Who also
is He who gave us the earnest of the Spirit 1 ; He loved
us and made us acceptable to Himself in the Beloved ;
co-quickened us in Christ, anointed us, sealed us." " The
law of the Spirit of Christ freed me from the law of sin
and death." On the other hand, they say of themselves :
' we were compassionated, were made free from sins and
from the law, and were made servants to righteousness ;
we were reconciled, were justified, were washed, were
sanctified, were saved ; we received the atonement, an
anointing, the spirit of adoption, access to His grace ;
their old man had been crucified with Christ, co-interred ;
with Him they had been co-interred, with Him co-
raised ; in Him they had been re-created unto good
works ; with Him they had been clothed ; in Him made
rich ; in Him they had been all baptized into one body,
1 2 Cor. v. 5.
v.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 73
all had been made to drink into One Spirit ; by His
Spirit they had been sealed to the day of redemption m .'
And what was their condition now ? You know the deep
expression of intimate love and union they were " in
Christ." To Him they were united by His Spirit dwell-
ing in them, because they had been made members of
Christ, closely united to Him as members to their Head,
of His flesh and of His bones, because, as He says,
"Whoso eateth My Flesh, and drinketh My Blood,
dwelleth in Me, and I in him. . . He that eateth Me,
shall liv,e by Me n ."
Of all this, the poor world could, of course, know
nothing, as neither can the natural man now. But it
saw the change, and then it scorned, reproached, ridi-
culed (as it does now), counted Christians as madmen,
or it was converted. While some were moved by mi-
racles or the fulfilment of prophecy , and others, "yea,
oftentimes were drawn by an over-mastering power of
the Spirit against their will changing their ruling mind
suddenly from hatred of the Word to willingness to die
for it p ," others were moved by the superhuman life or
superhuman change, which they saw. "Why mention
the countless multitude of those who changed from
profligacy, and who learned continence ? For Christ
called not the righteous, nor the sober to repentance ;
but the ungodly, and profligate, and unrighteous. But
that we should be endurant of evil and subservient to
all, He saith on this wise, 'To him who smiteth thee
on the one cheek, turn to him the other also.' Nor doth
m See the fuller development of the bearing of these statements in
Holy Scripture, in Pusey's " Scriptural Doctrine of Holy Baptism,"
pp. 155 175, " Passages which speak of Christian gifts, as having
been bestowed in the past."
11 St. John vi. 56, 7. St. Aug. in Ps. cxlix. 13. < Orig.
c. Cels. i. 46.
74 The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM.
He will that we should be imitators of the bad, but
He bade us through patience and meekness to lead all
from shame and lust of evil things ; which, moreover,
we can shew in the case of many who have come among
us, who changed from violent and oppressive men,
having been conquered, either when they traced the
endurance of their neighbour's life, or the strange pa-
tience of fellow-travellers when defrauded, or when
they made trial of those with whom they were en-
gaged in business V
Celsus mocked at the Gospel for receiving sinners ;
" Perfectly to change nature," he said truly, " is all-
difficult r ." Truly, for man it is impossible. But, then,
on that very ground, the change, when it did exist,
was Divine. "When we see those words which he
saith are uninstructed, (as if they were charms,) to
be filled with power, impelling whole multitudes at
once from profligacy to a life wholly well-ordered,
from injustice to goodness, from a recreant unman-
liness to a mind striving to despise even death for
the sake of the godliness revealed among. them, how
can we fail to admire the power lodged therein ? For
the word of those who first ministered and toiled to
found the Churches of God ; yea, their preaching was
with persuasiveness, not such as is the persuasiveness of
those who proclaim the wisdom of Plato or any other
philosopher who had nothing but human nature. But
the demonstration in the Apostles of Jesus, having been
given by God, was persuasive from the Spirit and power.
Wherefore their word, or rather the Word of God, ran
most swiftly and most forcibly, changing through them
many of those to whom sin was nature and custom ;
whom man could not have changed even by punishing,
St. Justin, Apol. i. 15, 16. r In Orig. iii. 69.
V.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 75
but the Word transmade, forming and fashioning them
after its own will 8 ."
Even persecution was the harvest-seed of the Church,
not by enlisting sympathies, (which were none, in a peo-
ple brutalized the more by the exhibition of Christian
suffering, except when an executioner here and there
came in nearer contact with a sufferer,) but because the
superhuman fortitude drew people's thoughts. "Every
man who beholdeth so much endurance," is an appeal to
a Roman governor, cognizant of facts, "being struck
with some misgiving, is kindled with the desire of en-
quiring, what is the cause of this ? and so soon as he
discovereth the truth, himself also immediately follow-
ethitV
That change which passed over each converted soul, so
that it hated what it before craved ; had serene mastery
over the passions, to which it was before enslaved ; loved
to be without what was before the miserable solace of
its misery ; loved what it before had no taste for ; this
was a spiritual fact which could be known only by ex-
perience. The experience of the senses tells us the
things of sense ; the experience of the soul tells us the
things which pass in the soul. Beforehand they seem
impossible ; experienced they are known. " I," says St.
Cyprian, of his heathen state", "when I yet lay in dark-
ness and blind night, and tottering and uncertain with
erring steps reeled on the sea of this tossing world,
ignorant of my life, alien from truth and light ; according
to my then ways, I thought what the Divine mercy
promised for my salvation, altogether difficult and hard,
that one could be new-born, that, quickened to a new
In Orig. iii. 68. Tertull. ad Scap. end, p. 150, Oxf. Tr. ;
comp. his Apol. end ; and others quoted there, p. 105, note a, Oxf. Tr.
Ad Donat., 2, 3, pp. 2, 3, Oxf. Tr.
76 The Kingdom of Light set up. [SERM.
life by the laver of healing water, one should lay aside
what he had been before, and, while the frame of the
body still remained, should be changed himself in heart
and mind. How is so great a conversion possible, that
suddenly and rapidly that should be put off which, either
being part of our natural selves, has hardened in the
neglected soil, or, if acquired, has long been engrained,
inveterate through age ? These things hold secure by
deep, far-penetrating roots. While allurements still cling
tenaciously, love of wine must needs invite, pride inflate,
anger inflame, rapacity disquiet, cruelty stimulate, am-
bition delight, lust cast headlong. These things said I
ofttimes with myself; for, being held entangled with
very many errors of my former life, whereof I did not
believe that I could be freed, I humoured the vices
which clung to me, and, in despair of aught better, nur-
tured my own evils, as being now my own offspring,
born in my house."
The method of his conversion St. Cyprian does not
relate. For he relates only his own evils, and the re-cre-
ating good of God. But see the contrast of power-
lessness and power. "But after that, the stain of the
former life having been wiped away by the aid of the
life-giving water, a light from above, serene and pure,
poured itself into my forgiven breast, after that the
second birth re-formed me into a new man, drinking in
the Spirit from heaven, then forthwith, in a marvellous
manner, things doubtful assumed steadfastness, things
closed lay open, things dark shone with light ; what
seemed aforetime difficulties offered facilities ; what was
thought impossible seemed now achieveable, as it was
to own, that that which, being born after the flesh, lived
subject to guilt, was of earth, that which the Holy Ghost
was now quickening had begun to be of God. Thou
V.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 77
knowest and ownest with me, what that death of crimes,
that life of virtues, took from me, what it gave me. Now,
by the gift of God, not to sin has begun to be the work
of faith, as, before, to sin belonged to human error. Of
God, of God, is all my power. From Him I live, from
Him I have strength, from Him, in that vigour which I
have received and ingathered, I have, even while placed
here below, some foretokens of what is to be hereafter."
Such are two pictures of powerlessness in his hea-
then state, of self-power as a Christian, which St. Cyprian
gives of himself. Ask yourselves, my sons, " which of
the twain belongs to me ?" I do not mean to ask as to
any of the coarser outbreaks of sin. Deadly sin is com-
patible with a decent exterior, deserving in some things
to be thought well of, a general wish to save the soul,
a hope that it will be saved, a wish to be on God's side
somehow, a doing some things for God, a vague yearn-
ing after Him. And yet some one unmastered, ever-
mastering sin, makes the heart not whole with God,
defiles perhaps the temple of the Holy Ghost, the body ;
it wounds the conscience, cripples the soul, withdraws
it from intercourse with God, its Life, chases away the
Holy Spirit, scares from Communions, the great pre-
servative against deadly sin, or makes the soul go to
them faithlessly, hopelessly, unprofitably.
But whether it be some one sin, bodily or even spiri-
tual, which holds you back, whether it be a general
torpor, a predominance of sense, a personal ambition
which dulls you as to things spiritual, or a general self-
complacency which stunts your growth, if your religion
is not one of power, it must be that you have not, gene-
rously and without reserve, admitted Christianity as
a whole into your souls. For " the Gospel is the power
of God unto salvation." Christ, of Whom men boast in
78 The Kingdom of Light set ttp. [SERM.
name, is the Power of God ; and "might" is one of the
seven-fold gifts of the Spirit, and God clothes His own
with the whole panoply of the Divine armoury. Con-
trariwise, it is to be part of the self-deceit of the last
days, to own religion as something which should form
the soul, " having or holding," St. Paul says, a " for-
mativeness* of godliness, but having" practically denied
or repudiated " its power." Perhaps it may be some
eclecticism out of Christianity, some new-modelling of
the old truths, giving new, unmeaning, alien meanings
to the old doctrines. Perhaps it will think that it
renders homage to our Lord, because it owns, while it
criticises as a superior, some of the virtues of His Hu-
manity, and will deem that it shews Him reverence in
pronouncing " Ecce Homo?," while it has less of awe of
Him than Pontius Pilate who crucified Him, and puts
Him to more deliberate shame. But whatever that
would-be " formativeness of godliness" may be, which
the times of Antichrist may invent, be sure that a power-
less religiosity is a sign of belonging not to Christ, but
of being still under the power of the evil one. " His
servants ye are, whom ye obey." There is a strong one
who was bound and spoiled, and there is a Stronger than
he, Who overcame him by His Death, and bound him.
But bound though he be, while he has no power to hurt
thee without thy will, he still masters those who place
themselves within his grasp. Flee him, and he cannot
follow thee. Betake thyself to Jesus, and the blasted
one crouches at the presence of his Conqueror and his
Judge. Mistrust thyself, but mistrust not God's Al-
* n&p$u>ffiv. ' My ground for thus warning the young as to the
character of one single book, was, that even respectable journalists had
been misled, and were misleading them. My words apply to the book
only, not to the author, of whom and whose motives I know nothing.
V.] The Conflict and Victory of its Faithful Children. 79
mightiness. Look well whether there is any part of the
Divine armoury which thou hast neglected? Hast thou
mistrusted the omnipotence of prayer, or forgotten me-
ditation on the love of God for thee, or thoughts on the
four last things, which close and must close this fleeting
life, Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell ; or on God's aweful
holiness, trifling irreverently with His sacred attributes,
and neglecting His inward calls ; or forgetting Him from
morning to evening, all the more confidently because
thou rememberest Him a little then, and this thou
thinkest must needs be enough, and God could not ask
for more ; or going to a monthly slovenly Sacrament,
forgetting almost beforehand, but most certainly after-
wards, Whose Presence was to be and was vouchsafed
to thee ; or holding on a little while by strength from
God, and then, through unwatchfulness or tampering
with evil imaginations, falling into the same sins as be-
fore ? Or hast thou secretly thought that the real remedy
for thy relapses would be, as others have done, to con-
fess thy sins, and interpose thy Lord's absolving Voice,
" Thy sins be forgiven thee," between the living and the
dead, thy heap of dead putrefying sins and thy future
of life, and hast held back for some shame or awkward-
ness, or secret pride ?
It is a hard thing to say, (God grant that it may not
be so !) but I more and more fear that what is wanted in
so many, amid this powerless religiousness, is an entire
conversion of heart. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy strength ; and thy neigh-
bour as thyself." Where is this whole-hearted, loyal
obedience, when self is stealthily enshrined in so many
hearts, and God seems to be made for man, not man for
God? A "weak Christian" were a contradiction in
8o The Kingdom of Light set ^^p. [SERM. V.
terms. For to be a Christian at all is to be a member
of Christ, Who is Almighty God ; it is to have a claim
to His might, Who has all power in heaven and earth ;
it is to have Him for your indweller, Who is all-holiness,
all-hallowing. To be a weak Christian is to have but
a weak will to be a Christian, to have been made a
Christian, yet half to repent of the love of God towards
thee in making thee a Christian. Lean on Him, look to
Him, watch unto Him, Whose strength is made perfect
in weakness, and past weakness shall not hinder thee.
He beholdeth thy conflict Who willeth to crown thee ;
He Who upheld the martyrs in their sufferings will up-
hold thee. Only be thou strong in the Lord and in the
power of His might ; He will overcome in thee Who bid
thee " Be of good cheer ; I have overcome the world."
He saith to thee, " To him that overcometh will I grant
to sit down with Me in My throne, even as I also over-
came, and am set down with My Father in His throne."
Only be earnest now, at once, as if the yawning gulf
of hell were open before thee, and thou couldest only
cross it on that narrow wood, thy Saviour's Cross. He
holds forth His nail-pierced Hands unto thee ; He bids
thee "come, and I will uphold thee." Only remember
Him ; and now, for His love's sake, remember those the
wearied victims of their own weak will and of man's
lusts, who long to be freed from their sickening exist-
ence, and who may yet be His, Who died for them
and for us z .
z There was to be a collection for a Penitentiary.
SERMON VI.
$ofoers of JBarJmess ^bailing ober tfje
ST. JOHN iii, 19.
" And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light."
T^HIS language will at once be recognised as spe-
cially belonging to the beloved disciple, by whom
in a peculiar manner our Lord Jesus Christ is set forth
under the title of "the Light," "the true Light," "the
Light of the world ;" and His kingdom, as the kingdom
of light. And in this respect he seems, as in so many
other points, in his fervour, his tenderness, and deep
prophetic insight, to have resembled and caught the
spirit of Isaiah, who in passage after passage, kindled
the gaze of Israel of old, to look towards the coming
Light, as if he himself saw its orb still lingering below
the distant hills.
And yet in this comparison of the Lord of Life with
the material light of this world, there are involved both
a contrast and a mystery.
When the sun is up, the whole hemisphere acknow-
ledges its presence, and is irradiated by its beams.
Darkness and night flee away. The birds go forth to
meet the day with songs ; the flowers expand them-
selves to drink in the light ; the unreasoning creatures
welcome the glad influence, for these have long learnt
G
82 The Powers of Darkness Prevailing 1 [SERM.
to obey the law of God. But with man, and in the
moral and spiritual world, it is otherwise. Though the
sky be radiant with the manifestation of the Lord of Life,
and earth lit up with the beauty of salvation, yet many
dark places remain unvisited ; in many a soul the light
does not enter, or if it enter, is again expelled ; there is
an active power of resistance which opposes itself, and
claims a divided empire, and contests the heavenly in-
fluence, as though it were invading a territory within
which it could claim no authority, and no allegiance.
Scripture, as we know, recognises throughout its re-
cord this power of moral resistance to the divine light ;
nay, more than this, it even seems to assert that when
the light does not irradiate, it rouses the spirit of ill
to intenser activity, and renders the darkness more
deep. The evil spirits cried out, and vented their rage
more fiercely at the presence of Jesus. Our Lord re-
cognised the presence of the prince of darkness, as
bearing rule for a season, when He told the Jews who
came to arrest Him, " This is your hour, and the power
of darkness." St. Paul told the Thessalonians of "the
mystery of iniquity already working." The same apo-
stle, seeing the effect of the gift of more abundant light,
announces that " By the law is the knowledge of sin ;"
and that while to some the Gospel was "a savour of
life unto life," to others it proved "a savour of death
unto death ;" just as, in the analogy of nature, the same
warmth and moisture that endue with fresh vigour and
fertility the living plant, only hasten corruption and
decay in the dead and withered branch.
We see, then, the contrast between the material and
spiritual light, as they severally shine on this dark
world ; we see, too, the mystery that is inherent in the
permitted resistance to the latter. A mystery indeed
VI.] over the Disobedient. 83
it is, yet not peculiar to the Christian faith and the laws
of Christ's kingdom, but inseparable from the condition
of man as in a state of probation in this world, and in-
volved in the fact of the very existence of evil ; and
therefore though it be insoluble by the reason, is not
to be disputed, not to be cavilled at.
Rather let us recognise it ; for in recognising it we
learn our real condition and danger ; and may find
a safeguard even in contemplating the sad examples
which exhibit the subtle power and deadly triumph
of that evil which, as it wrought and prevailed in Para-
dise, still lurketh in the Church of Christ, and as a beast
of prey, goeth about seeking whom it may destroy.
I. See then, shortly, how this power of darkness,
ever since the Sun of righteousness hath appeared, has
struggled to quench the light, and to retain its old do-
minion. We may notice it in the Church at large.
When viewed on this side, its history presents but a
dreary retrospect ; and some too fondly looking for
a reign of peace and glory as the token of any real reign
of Christ, have been led to doubt whether the kingdom
of God has indeed really come. But when our Lord
declared, "For judgment am I come into the world,"
He pointed to those struggles and contests, those sift-
ings of the spirit of evil, those strivings of the spirit
of grace and life, which would mark the progress of
His kingdom, and try and test the character and faith
of every age, and of every soul. And so it has been
that, age after age, Satan and his angels have tried to
subvert the power and the truth of God ; sometimes
from without, and sometimes from within. At one
time the light of truth has been assailed by a philo-
sophic mysticism, seeking to corrupt the faith it could
not gainsay or overthrow. At another, it has been
G 2
84 The Powers of Darkness Prevailing [SERM.
overlaid by superstition, or almost extinguished by
brute ignorance. Then has ensued a period of licen-
tiousness and violence doing despite to the spirit of
grace and purity ; or one of cold indifference, when
faith in the life-giving truths of the Gospel has been
scorned as fanaticism ; or again another, when a false
light of reason and of science has claimed to itself to
be the true and the sole light that lighteth every man.
These have prevailed, and do prevail ; and some souls
have yielded to their seductive power, and surrendered
their birthright.
But over the Church at large, and the faith once
given, they have not prevailed, and will not prevail.
These are indestructible ; the gates of hell cannot pre-
vail against them. And in such conflicts as these, we
witness the unwearied assaults of those spirits of anti-
christ that are in the world, striving against the power
of the Spirit of God, trying, testing, and judging the
Church, or special portions of it, or individual souls
within it ; proving the wheat and tares, and preparing
all for that great day of judgment and of separation,
when " righteousness shall be brought forth as the light,
and judgment as the noon-day."
II. But now to bring the subject home to ourselves
as individuals. This same conflict between darkness
and light is going on in each ; in each, sin is lurking
and allying itself with the powers of evil without, and
thus aiding them to draw us back to slavery and per-
dition ; in some alas, how successfully, how fatally !
Let us note, then, this perilous and downward course ;
let us, for our warning, and to fill us with godly fear,
mark the power of evil as it makes its assaults, and
seeks to enslave the. soul which Christ has purchased,
and to which the Holy Spirit hath been given. And
VI.] over the Disobedient. 85
in order to give direction to our thoughts, let us trace
it shortly in those three principal faculties of the soul
of man, the affections, the reason, and the will.
i. And first in regard to the affections. It is here
commonly that evil places its first footing, for here is
the inner sanctuary of man's being, here the secret
power that colours his thoughts, and excites the desire,
and prompts the will. And here accordingly, especially
in the ardent and imaginative, the forms of evil are
ever ready to array themselves in their most seductive
hues. The lust of pleasure, the lust of praise, the lust
of ease, the lust of envy, the lust of unsanctified affec-
tions, these are some of the forms in which the spirit of
evil seeks to seduce the heart and the affections from
what is holy, and pure, and just, and of good report.
And when any one of these has seized the imagination,
and bribed the affections, what remains but that passion
go foward to its end over the ruins of better resolutions.
The soul, as of Demas, forsakes Christ, " having loved
this present world ;" the things unseen are lost sight of
in the glare of things seen ; future hope is given up
for present enjoyment ; the birthright is sold for a mess
of pottage ; the grapes of Eshcol are despised for the
cucumbers and melons of Egypt ; and the soul drifts
away from the anchor within the veil, and its light and
its love die away within, till he who once knew how to
approach the High God, and looked to die the death of
the righteous, fights and falls, like Balaam, in the ranks
of the enemies of God.
To remind you that this downward course is one of
increasing swiftness, that the sluice once opened, the
waters swell till desolation spreads around, is but to
repeat a truth so common as to IfJse all its force. But
if you would make an effort to persevere at all, and
86 The Powers of Darkness Prevailing [SERM.
not yield yourselves at once to the wiles of the tempter,
beware of the first opening of temptation, watch the
first shootings of the root of bitterness, guard the imagi-
nation from what is false, dreamy, self-indulgent, im-
pure. Any one unresisted sin, whether it be of outward
and positive transgression, or the indulgence of an un-
sanctified temper, the desire of ease, or favour, or plea-
sure, be it the active purpose that goes out after for-
bidden enjoyments, or the weak indulgence which yields
to the seduction of the moment, and waxes slack in
prayer or in public devotion, is a surrender to the
enemy. How easy, alas, is this to us all ! How often
has prayer seemed to be thrown back upon us un-
answered, and watchings to be fruitless, and better re-
solutions powerless, and hopes disappointed, till we
have been tempted to lay down our arms in very weari-
ness ! Who of us have not seen instances of this fall-
ing away amongst their acquaintance, or felt it in a de-
gree in themselves, till looking back on the faith and
fervour of early youth, they feel that they are further
off from God than they once were.
2. Then there is also the yielding and the enslave-
ment of the reason. Let it be firmly impressed on our
minds that reason is not naturally antagonistic to faith.
In children it seems to be identified with faith, or, as
far as it is exercised, to impart to it only strength and
support. In them, the unwarped instinct testifies of
God. Nature to them is (as has been said) " the living
garment of Deity." With David, they hear His voice
in the storm, and own His footsteps in the wind, and
His tabernacle in the " pavilioned plains" of the sky.
This harmony of the two it is of the last importance to
maintain. It may $e that subsequent investigation
may tell the more instructed mind that God is not so
VI.] over the Disobedient. 87
near in these phenomena as faith once deemed ; that
certain physical laws intervene ; still that He is behind
and above them all, that these are but manifestations of
His will, and tokens of His presence, this, for our soul's
health let us ever hold fast. And it is one great aim of
the power of evil, the arch-deceiver, to separate what
should be one ; to divorce reason from faith, and to
declare its independence.
It is no part of ours to deny or speak lightly of that
great gift of reason, one of the guiding lights of the
soul, which God hath imparted. But if it be dissociated
from other gifts and other instincts, faith, consciousness,
imagination, intuition, it becomes at once a tyrant and
a slave. " While it promises liberty, itself is the ser-
vant of corruption a ." It is then tied down to the nar-
now circle of its own conclusions ; it sees nothing super-
natural in the world ; is deaf to those voiceless words,
and blind to those invisible shapes which throng this
universe. It disbelieves God's providence; doubts the
truth of His holy Word ; denies the personality, and
with the personality, the personal and eternal love
of God ; nay, it even assails the being of the Deity, re-
fining it away into an influence, a force, a law. And
so one who was full of God in his youth, becomes
pantheistic in his manhood ; and having lost his hold
on a Being in whom he may trust, satisfied with no-
thing, and doubting everything, becomes atheistic in
his old age.
Who can speak without awe of a soul that has thus
drifted from the anchor of its hopes, and has lost the clue
to its high destiny ? It roams aimlessly about the world,
the prey of fate, or the sport of chance, making either
a god of itself, or of the things o sense ; with no certain
2 Pet. ii. I, 9.
88 The Powers of Darkness Prevailing [SERM.
light on its present, no hope on its future. And para-
doxical as it may seem, the mind that has thus " made
shipwreck of faith," is apt, in order to satisfy its still
yearning spiritual longings, to embrace the wildest de-
lusions, and to become the prey of distempered ima-
ginings, the profanities of spiritualism, or even the de-
grading arts of sorcery. And so it falls under the so-
.lemn condemnation of those who are abandoned to
themselves : " Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that
compass yourselves about with sparks : walk in the
light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kin-
dled. This shall ye have at mine hand ; ye shall lie
down in sorrow b ."
3. And there remains the third and last state in this
decline and fall of the soul, when the will is gained over
and overpowered, and enslaved by the same spirit of ill.
In that mysterious element of our being the will, lies
the root of character ; it is that movement of the soul
that precedes act, and is inseparable from it ; it is the
parent of presumptuous sins, and when opposed to the
Divine will, it sets the man in opposition to his Maker.
It is the centre, therefore, of each man's active life, upon
which all the future issues of his conduct depend, and
by which the character of each act is determined. When
that is corrupted, bribed, and perverted, the case seems
to be hopeless. The heinousness of Saul's transgression,
though seemingly of no flagrant type, lay in this ; the
guilt of Balaam, though he professed a readiness to
obey the word of the Lord, lay in this ; for he " loved
the wages of unrighteousness," and would not be stopped
in the pursuit of them ; while the active energy towards
ill which it implies, is the very characteristic of the
apostate angels. This perversion, then, and subjuga-
b Isa. 1. n.
VI.] over tlie Disobedient. 89
tion of the will demands our most careful, prayerful con-
cern. Watch it in its first spring and earliest activities.
The choosing for oneself, where God has set a way be-
fore us ; the neglect of some duties because homely or
irksome, and choosing others ; the selection of our own
creed, because more agreeable to our own sentiments ;
the resistance of authority whether human or divine,
because distasteful ; every deliberate act of ill against
the rebuke of conscience, and the remonstrances of
friends, these betoken that wilfulness of soul which is
doing despite to the spirit of grace, and is gradually
binding round it the fetters of Satan.
For we must observe in passing, two things ; first, that
this making our own will our rule and our master, is
not a simple isolated act, but it is, more than this, re-
sistance to a higher will, to the Spirit of God, which
has been given to the Christian and is his rightful
master, and which is thus done despite to, and driven
away ; and, secondly, that in thus choosing, we choose
not freedom but bondage. How long is it ere we re-
ceive and embrace that divine lesson, that as each crea-
ture is only then free when it acts in accordance with
the true laws of its existence, so the soul when led and
guided by the Spirit who made it, is free, for " where the
Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty ;" that in resisting
or shaking off this we but invoke upon ourselves and
from within ourselves a force foreign to our true lives
and highest interests, and become the slaves of self, the
slaves of evil. How late alas ! is this frequently learned,
how hardly is that divine help which can unloose the
bonds we have fastened upon ourselves regained ! And
when the downward course is fully run, and in addition
to perverted affections, and darkened and deceived
reason, there is joined the perversity of a rebellious will,
QO The Powers of Darkness Prevailing [SERM.
Sacred Scripture testifies over and over again, not
merely to the possibility of a judicial reprobation, but
to the unutterable misery of a soul thus abandoned of
God, thus given over to perdition. It may be that the
unhappy transgressor may be all unconscious of this ;
it may be that he congratulates himself on being his
own master, and has no dread anticipations to harass
him ; but if it be so, it can only be because blindness
has come upon him, the light that was within him is
dark, the great transgression is close to him, if it have
not already been consummated. Or, on the other hand,
it may be that he is made to feel the misery that is
gathering upon him, some lingering convictions tor-
ment him, and "a fearful looking for judgment" haunts
him, but he is powerless to make an effort against it,
and can only resist it in stubborn recklessness or gloomy
despair ; but in both cases, we cannot but recognise the
reality of that state of reprobation which God's Word
not unfrequently and not obscurely indicates as pos-
sible, whether or not it be denoted by the " unpardon-
able sin," or "the sin unto death," and as characterizing
those who ere their earthly sun has set, have plunged
themselves into the darkness and slavery of spiritual
abandonment.
This is indeed a sad and painful subject. Yet it is
well to contemplate it at times, to know the suscepti-
bilities of the soul, and the subtlety and power of its
adversaries, and thus to arrest the careless, even at the
risk of alarming the timid and the anxious.
Not for a moment do I suppose that any one here
present has reached or is reaching this fatal end to his
career. Nor can we ever cease to tell each living soul
that there is no sin so deep but that the blood of our
redeeming Lord can blot it out for the penitent, no con-
VI.] over the Disobedient. gi
scious state of spiritual infirmity which the Holy Spirit
cannot and will not repair and fortify. But it is to pre-
vent such a state, to deter from these sins that bring it
on ; to awaken self-examination ; to save from coldness,
indifference, and a creeping spirit of unbelief; to lay
bare in some way " the powers of the world to come,"
to pluck back those (if there be such) who haply may
be setting their foot within the shadow of that fatal tree,
beneath whose branches those who slumber, slumber
the sleep of death, that Lent and its exercises are or-
dained. For this end may they be blest to us. May
the Lord strengthen and preserve us ; if falling, may
He restore us ere we have fallen far ; and call us back,
while yet within hearing of His gracious voice, to the
light we are forsaking, and to the Shepherd from whom
we have gone astray.
SERMON VII.
in tfje Conflict : (Soft's <ifte of ffirace.
HEBEEWS iv. 16.
" Let us come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain
mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."
TN the order of subjects which has guided your
thoughts through the special sermons of this sea-
son, you have already passed over what is most dif-
ficult : it is the easier part of our meditation which
lies before us now. What seemed most hard, and most
urgent too, was to believe the presence of the enemy,
the greatness of the peril ; once thoroughly alarmed,
we cannot but seek for help. It is when men doubt of
Satan's power, or hold it cheap, that their spiritual state
is worst. I have heard of a rich man who was enter-
taining his friends at a banquet, when one of his at-
tendants whispered to him, that the house was on fire.
" Put it out," was the careless reply ; the guests were
unconscious of their danger, and the feast went on.
After a time the servant returned with the tidings that
still the fire increased, but only to hear from his master
the same command, repeated with more impatience at
what he deemed a needless interruption of his pleasure.
And so the wine- cup passed, and the mirth of the
banquet grew higher ; until the third warning came,
and the affrighted guests could but just escape with
their lives from the conflagration around them : the
94 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
house was destroyed. There are souls so deeply en-
grossed with the enjoyment of the world's good things,
that no testimony will convince them of their danger ;
you cannot persuade them to resist the devil, for they
have never seriously regarded him as their foe.
To you, however, I am speaking to-night, as to those
who have known their peril, and have understood the
malice and subtlety of the enemy that assails their
souls. You ask, ' How shall we resist ? Who will give
us aid in the conflict ? We feel that we are weak ; we
know that our foe is strong : how can our weakness be
made strong enough for the contest we have to wage ?'
It is well with you, Christian brethren, if your hearts
have really asked such questions as these ; if you have
cried for help, because you knew that you were helpless
in yourselves. The kingdom of heaven is for the poor
in spirit, for those who have so deeply felt the feeble-
ness of their unaided power, and the failure of their best
efforts, that they have formed a lowly estimate of them-
selves, and have learned humility from defeat. It is
well with you, if you smart under the abiding memory
of the wounds which sin and Satan have given you ;
well with you, if you "go softly all your years in the
bitterness of your souls," remembering that you have
been close to the gates of the grave, and that your own
struggles were powerless to raise you in that time of
distress. Anything is better than the false confidence
which cheats a foolish heart with praise, and flatters
only to betray.
Yet neither is this the state in which a Christian is
to abide. The remembrance of past sins and failures
is a condition of being restored, not restoration itself.
To be for ever dwelling on past errors and present
weakness, if it leads to nothing better, is but a distor-
VII.] God's Gifts of Grace. 95
tion of the Christian character. A life all tears and
sad confessions ill agrees with the portrait of the sol-
dier fighting his good fight of faith, the runner wiining
his race, the husbandman toiling heartily in the vine-
yard with well-grounded hope of reward. The peni-
tential sadness of Lent is, as many of you know, a
blessed privilege ; but Lent, after all, is only one short
portion of the year : our annual round brings festivals,
as well as fasts, to be observed. And even in this
Lenten season it is well for you to be reminded that
there are fruits of penitence, not in themselves of a sad
complexion, which ought to spring from its due observ-
ance. If we are keeping it rightly, it is teaching us that
we cannot do without a Saviour's help ; and in the very
process of teaching us, is disclosing to us something
of that Saviour's love, and of our own well-grounded
interest in its priceless gifts. The joy of finding deliver-
ance, after we have known our danger and our need,
is greater far than the happiness, such as it was, of vain
security and ignorant guilt.
But have we found deliverance ? Let the question be
answered by a surer word than mine : " The Father . . .
hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath
translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son." This
is the Gospel of Christ, the burden of all preaching, the
message so full of gladness and joy to us, that we forget
its difficulties and its strictness, and in one comprehen-
sive word call it all " good news." It is no mere hope
or promise that it declared to us ; the ambassadors of
Christ proclaim an accomplished fact. St. Peter speaks
indeed of one who has " forgotten that he was purged
from his old sins ;" but his thankless forgetfulness can-
not alter the fact that he was purged once. We have
passed into a new state, entered on another condition
96 A ids in the Conflict : [SERM.
of spiritual life ; rather, we have now begun to live,
having before been as good as dead. I need not tell
you with what earnest repetition, with what abounding
thankfulness, the Scriptures speak of this new life ; how
they say that God hath quickened us, when we were
dead, hath made us sit in heavenly places, hath created
us anew, hath built us up for an habitation of God.
With every variety of illustration, with accumulated
force of assertion, they assure us that Satan hath been
conquered, that the people of Christ are free.
But they will not suffer us to forget that it is only
because we are Chrisfs people that this freedom is ours.
Our life and liberty, our gifts and graces, all are traced
to Him. "I am come," He said Himself, "that they
might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly." And in the Epistle from which the text
comes, the whole teaching of the Apostle leads us to
dwell on the thought that far above us, at the right
hand of the Majesty on high, we have a glorified High
Priest, by one nature our brother, by another our God ;
and that from that great High Priest, in virtue of His
one sacrifice and of His perpetual mediation, all our
strength and all our support are drawn. These are not
the fancies of dreamy philosophers ; they are the sober
statements of men who lived by that faith of the Son
of God which they professed, aye, and died for it too.
They were not deceived they have not deceived us
when they testified of a power from above which they
felt and exercised, of a strength that was stronger than
all the might of their spiritual foe, of a presence which
did not fail them in the fiery hour of persecution, which
did not desert them in the stormy conflict with worse
enemies within.
Whatever this help was, no one, I suppose, will con-
VIL] God 's Gifts of Grace. 97
tend that we need it less than it was needed by apo*
sties and saints. If they could not trust themselves,
much more would it be presumptuous folly in us to
lean on an arm of flesh. The graces which have been
purchased for poor human nature by its union with
the divine nature in the Person of Christ, are all we
have to rely on in our conflict with those powers of
darkness, who, though quelled, are not (we know too
well) destroyed. Of our personal interest in that pur-
chase, thanks be to God, there is no doubt. We are
"every one members in particular" of Christ. From
Him, as' the Head, " all the body by joints and bands
having nourishment ministered, and knit together, in-
creaseth with the increase of God." Specially in the
Sacraments, which make us partakers of Him, is that
nourishment ministered, that union with Him cemented
and maintained. The acts of faith in Him which we
make, when we receive them, have promises of special
returns of grace : their gifts and consolations are at-
tested by the blessed experience of the people of
Christ, who have been numbered with His saints, gene-
ration after generation, these eighteen hundred years.
The Church has no richer treasures entrusted to her
keeping than these.
Is it necessary to state these things to Christians of
full age ? If it is, does not the very necessity convey
a reproach ? It was right indeed that the Apostles
should preach to Jews and heathens the unsearchable
riches of Christ, of which they had never heard ; but
surely the tradition of Christian education must be
weak, and the apprehension of Christian faith be fee-
ble, if it is really needful to state again and again
what great things our Master has done for us, what
wealth of grace He has assigned for our use. "Let
H
98 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
jis come boldly," saith the Scripture ; we come like
timid strangers, doubting of our welcome, or uncer-
tain of the nature of the prize we hope to win. We
do not take in the extent of the mercy we have re-
ceived, nor assure ourselves that it is really ours. It
is one sad instance of this feeble faith, that thousands
of Christian people are afraid, or profess to be afraid,
to communicate at Christ's holy Feast. They cannot
persuade themselves that they are really bidden, that
grace is there pledged to them, that comfort, peace,
and strength, are absolutely assured to them in the
right receiving of that Holy Communion. It is another
mournful instance, that so many doubt Christ's love
to little children, and cannot persuade themselves that
when He calls them to Him, He really means to adopt
them as His own. So it is again with Confirmation,
from which parents hold back their children, as doubt-
ing whether it can be true that God will really bless
the young with His high gifts of grace. And in general,
of our use of what are called the " means of grace," it
may be too truly affirmed, that few come to them
with the glad confidence of men who know their
Master and His gifts. "Whatsoever we ask," says
the Apostle, "we know that we have the petitions we
desired of Him ;" and this assurance, strong in every
act of prayer, should be stronger still in the reception
of those Sacraments which have their own special grace
annexed to the receiving of them in faith. But we
seem to regard the ordinances of Christ -as David re-
garded the armour of Saul, when he was going forth
to meet the Philistine champion in fight. We put
them aside with misgivings, and say " we have not
proved them ; we cannot go with these." David was
right, for he had no warrant from God for believing
VII.] God's Gifts of Grace. 99
that success should wait upon the use of royal wea-
pons ; past experience and inward inspirations told
him that he might depend, by the mercy of God, on
his shepherd's sling. We have a panoply, "the whole
armour of God," ready for our wearing, blessed by its
divine Giver ; what defence can we hope to find, if we
cast this away ? I do not deny that there is a tempta-
tion to seek other defences ; it is natural to rely on
resources that seem to be within our own control.
The stedfast purpose of a resolute will, the energy
of a well-trained mind, manly courage, dignified self-
respect, a lofty sense of honour, or a daring love of
unselfish enterprise, are not these great qualities ?
Can we not succeed by using such helps as these ?
Nay, brethren, but these are not helps at all ; they are
no additions to our resources ; they are but parts of
ourselves. And this is the very reason why we take
delight in them. It pleases us to draw the picture
of a self-reliant, self-supporting character, complete in
itself, overcoming evil by its stern determination to do
right. But it is a picture, and nothing more ; it is
founded on no reality, has no basis of fact whereon
to rest. For our real condition, at all events since
the Fall, has been one of dependence on a power
above us. Something external to our own tainted
nature, distinct from us, and separate from our sin,
was needed to raise us when we had fallen. There-
fore was the Son of God incarnate, that He might
bestow on our nature what it could not gain for itself.
He came to save sinners, because they could not save
themselves. And, as man could not raise himself when
he was fallen, so neither can he sustain himself in
strength and spiritual health without grace. They
have tried to do it, the wise, the learned, and the
H 2
ioo Aids in the Conflict : [SERM.
great, the foremost nations, and the brightest ages in
the world's history ; and defeat, absolute defeat, is writ-
ten on the memory of their attempts. We must have,
the noblest and meanest alike, constant corres-
pondence with the Author of that good which we can-
not create ; we must be in perpetual communication
with One who bestows upon us from without what
from within we cannot obtain. Does this seem a disap-
pointing and disparaging estimate of life ? The enemy
of our souls would willingly have us think so. He
would persuade us that it is better to be independent
and sufficient for our own wants, that it is unworthy
to be always looking to another for help. Men of high
intellect and of powerful minds are not unfrequently
taken by his snare. But surely, brethren, dependence
is a noble thing, if it links us to a nature higher than
our own. It was never thought unworthy, even amongst
ourselves, to own submission to a worthy leader; the
soldier follows an heroic chief, the student sits at the
feet of a revered teacher, and it does but add to their
reputation that they have stood in close relationship
to the great and good. How much more when it is
a question of communion with a higher nature than
our own.
And this it is, which we mean by the dependence
of the Christian soul on its God. It is a perpetual
converse with the high and holy One, who is by that
converse changing the soul more and more into His
own likeness. It is a power of coming to Him at all
times of need, and finding the very grace required for
each conflict or distress. It is the privilege of admis-
sion to a presence-chamber, where the golden sceptre
is always held out, and no prayer sent back unan-
swered or unobserved. Feelings and aspirations go
VII.] God 's Gifts of Grace. 101
up from the child of God perpetually to his Father
in heaven, to be blessed with returns of grace that
quicken those feelings into a new and still more
blessed energy of love. But especially in acts of sa-
cramental communion with his Lord does the Chris-
tian gather up and concentrate the powers of his life-
long communion with heaven. Then it is that he has
most vivid impressions of the nearness of God to his
soul, most comfortable assurance of strength for his
need. At no time, indeed, is the mercy-seat with-
drawn from his approach ; but then it has a glory not
granted to his ordinary gaze ; the cloud from heaven
rests upon it, and the faithful worshipper seems almost
to pass behind the cloud, and exchange the weariness
of earth for heaven itself.
There are some, I know, who would not speak of
sacraments thus. To them they are weak and beggarly
elements, too visible and material for the pure, spiritual
life. If it were so, yet the humble penitent might per-
haps deem that weak and beggarly elements best suited
poor weak suppliants, such as he feels himself to be.
But what right have we to use such words as these ?
Surely this is a thankless and unfilial criticism of our
merciful Father's gifts. In the beginning our life was
linked to heaven by a golden chain : man in his folly
and self-will severed that bond of union ; and God,
of His dear love, has taken the shattered fragments and
re-united us to Himself. If in restoring the bond be-
tween heaven and earth, He has left some visible pledges
and tokens of His favour, if He has given us not words
and thoughts only, but acts of devotion and outward
sacraments of grace, should not our hearts see here
a fresh proof of His wondrous pity for our infirmities,
a new argument of His boundless love ?
1 02 Aids in the' Conflict : [SERM.
Alas ! we do not reflect how much He has done for
us, we do not see what great things He has put within
our reach. Just consider what a story of triumph and
success the Christian's life might be, if he were faithful
to the grace bestowed on him. What an epitaph might
be written on his tomb ! It would tell indeed of temp-
tations, but of temptations baffled and overcome ; of
sorrows, but of sorrows borne with meek patience and
loving trust ; of doubts and difficulties, but of difficulties
that were habitually laid open in prayer to a heavenly
Guide who never failed to resolve them ; of infirmities,
but of infirmities which in the very struggle to subdue
them, brought new strength and hope to the faithful
heart. What deeds of charity, what words of thought-
ful wisdom, what services to Christ and His Church,
would such a chronicle record ! Turn and see what
Christian biographies are now. I do not mean what
they are as written by the hand of partial friendship,
bound by its own amiable, but worthless, rule to say
nothing but good of those whom it describes : I mean
the biography contained in the pages of the unerring
book, that faithfully records each word, and thought,
and deed, as they have passed before the all-seeing eye
of God. Such a biography there will 'be, nay there is,
of each one among us. What, think you, if you could
read it, would it say of you ? It might speak perhaps
of broken resolutions, and purposes that came to nought,
of opportunities idly wasted, of foolish companions and
misspent time, of prayers omitted or spoiled by distrac-
tion of thought, of unworthy communions, and of graces
thrown away. It might describe a life that bore small
tokens of usefulness on earth, few signs of earnest pre-
paration for heaven. How grievous to reflect that, side
by side with v the record of such failure in the spiritual
VII.]
God's Gifts of Grace.
103
life, it must be declared that there was abundant pro-
vision for better things, divine resources that, if used in
faith, must have ensured success.
I have brought you back to penitential thoughts, as
perhaps on such a day as this it was meet to do. We
have been meditating on the mercy of God, His cease-
less guidance of our lives, His never-failing gifts of
grace for help in tjme of need. Let us go home, and
think over them yet again. God forgive us, that we
have thought of them so little, and used them so ill !
ic/W C**
JlA^t *"
\ 4-
rCAM^ 1
SERMON VIII.
in tfje Conflict : 0oti's jjeabenljj
PSALM xci, 12.
" He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways,"
TT would be an inadequate description of the Holy
Scriptures, to say that they are a revelation con-
cerning God and man. They are as truly a revelation
concerning the Angels. And this not merely indirectly,
as the Angels are connected with us, but directly as to
themselves, irrespectively of us. The original contest
between the good and evil angels, the difference as to
the present condition of the one portion of the heavenly
host, who " kept their first estate," and of the others
who fell, the consequent future destiny of Satan and
his angels who were cast out, and are reserved for ever-
lasting punishment in the Judgment of the Great Day ;
and on the other hand, of the faithful, who now glorious
in bliss, will hereafter be raised together with redeemed
man to a yet higher state, through the glory of the
Incarnate Son, because it is the purpose of God, "in
Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether they
be things on earth, or things in heaven a ;" these main
facts of their history are clearly revealed to us.
It has been attempted to resolve angelic appearances
into mere subjective visions of the mind itself, illusory
forms projected by the heated and devout imagination,
Coloss i. 20.
io6 A ids in the Conflict : [SERM.
through its own creative agency ; or to account for
them objectively, by the supposition of the Divine power
giving mere temporary visible shapes to a Divine mes-
sage, forming a kind of phantasmagoria of an inner
world, produced for the occasion, in order to impress
the outward sense more vividly than by mere words.
That we are indeed entirely unable to explain how
the Angels' spiritual bodies (for bodies of some refined
subtlety they have ever been supposed to possess) can
be adapted to human organs of sight ; that we can form
no real idea even of such a possibility, is evident But
it would be unreasonable to doubt the possibility of
God causing them, as He will, to appear to whom He
will ; or to give power to human eyes to discern their
more subtle forms ; imparting temporary visibility to
what ordinarily would be invisible. And surely the at-
tempt to explain these mysterious appearances on the
theory of subjective ideas, or temporary phantom shapes,
is wholly forced, is simply to take Holy Scripture in
a nonnatural sense, and is unphilosophical, as being
manifestly inadequate to account for the undeniable
phenomena of the case.
For it is not merely the appearance of Angels to
prophets and seers in ecstasy ; not merely the occur-
rence of their presence in the poetical books of Scrip-
ture ; not merely communications from God to the mind
of lonely watchers and meditative hermits, such as the
forms arrayed in gorgeous light and awful grandeur,
which appeared to Daniel when he prostrated himself,
and fell as one dead, on the banks of " the river Ulai,"
for which we have to account The visits of Angels
are described equally in prosaic historical books. No-
thing can be more naturally interwoven with the ordi-
nary narrative of common events, than a great pro-
VIII. ] God's heavenly Host. 107
portion of the angelic appearances recorded in the Old
Scriptures, such as the angel that appeared to Hagar
in the wilderness, or the two who went down to Sodom
to rescue Lot, and destroy those doomed cities, or the
angel that met Balaam by the way.
Nor were these appearances visible merely at parti-
cular crises, as e.g. times of religious excitement, when
men are specially open to dream dreams, and indulge
in exaggerations of idea, and visionary conceptions ; or
periods of darker intelligence, when men are more spe-
cially subject to hallucinations and superstitious belief
as to invisible presences. The appearances of angels
extend throughout the Scriptures. They people the
scenes of the sacred history, indeed, more fully at one
period of man's history than another ; but only with
such differences as are readily accounted for by the
more or less urgent call for Divine interpositions, or
the greater or less prominence with which the designs
of God required to be impressed on the minds of His
people. With such exceptions there is little difference
to be discerned. Angels are not more clearly seen
around the gates of Paradise, at the beginning of man's
history, than they are represented as about to be pre-
sent at its close, on the day of the final resurrection and
universal judgment. They -are as fully concerned with
the events of the Revelations of St. John, as they are
with the events of the Book of Genesis. The Scripture
history of mankind opens with the Angels already on
the stage of this lower world, actively engaged. It is
revealed that they will be as actively at work, when it
has run out its predestined course. The Angels indeed
group themselves in greater apparent numbers, and
seem more intensely employed at certain great crises
of our history, as e.g. on Mount Sinai, during the de-
io8 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
livery of the Law, or during the earthly life of the Incar-
nate God. But the simplest view of Scripture assures
us, that from the earliest to the latest epoch of man's
destiny, these blessed and glorious beings have a co-or-
dinate and co-extensive part to play on the same stage
of life, in which our own lot and probation are cast.
Moreover, this connexion between the Angels and men
is not a mere casual or extraordinary interposition with
human affairs, but is evidently an uniform appointment
ordered and maintained on a settled plan. Their move-
ments are not mere accidents of our state. To take
first the lowest form of their ministration, they are
represented as the active agents of the laws of matter,
which so closely affect us. They inflict or save from
death, as in Egypt during the Exodus. They cause
or remove pestilences, as in David's history. They bind
or unloose the winds, as in the Revelations. They have
even yet more intimate and closer relation with the
bodies of men. The " thorn in the flesh," of St. Paul,
was " a messenger of Satan to buffet him V The whole
case of demoniacs is a familiar instance of this most
mysterious intermingling of angelic powers with the
secret constitution of man's physical nature. They act
of course only under the guiding and restraining Will
of God. They are subject wholly to His law. But
they are as truly personal agents in the disposition of
the subtle organizations and operations of His material
kingdoms, within their sphere of power, and are as
energetically at work around and within us, as we can
be in our own sphere.
The Angels enter, which is still more important to
us, into the moral order of the government of mankind.
They direct and overrule with their powerful influences
b 2 Cor. xii. 7.
VIII.] God's heavenly Host. 109
the life of nations. There was the prince or Angel of
the kingdom of Persia c , equally as the chief of all the
good angels, St. Michael, was the watchful guardian of
the chosen people of Israel. They entered also into
family life ; directing its most private concerns. In-
stances of this latter kind of interposition of Angels is
seen in the history of the patriarchs, as in the marriage
of Abraham's son, and in the protection of Jacob from
his brother's anger.
Consider, then, at how many points of our merely
natural state the angelic natures and powers affect us,
in the operations of material nature, in the moral go-
vernment of the world, in our home life. These are
what may be called the natural and ordinary intertwin-
ings of the angelic order of being with that of man.
But what touches us more deeply, more closely far,
is the energy of angelic ministrations in our super-
natural state. This necessarily affects them as it affects
us, in the more intense and momentous issues of life.
Throughout the Old Testament there are indications of
a constant struggle being maintained on behalf of God's
elect by the good Angels, who are in constant conflict
with the evil angels. On the one side, the side of the
evil, there is the constant effort not merely to turn the
forces of nature against man, and thus bring calamities
upon him, but also to assault him in his inner life, to
ruin his spiritual hopes, and mar for ever his glorious
destiny. On the other side, the side of the good Angels,
there is equally a constant counter-plotting, and earnest
antagonistic strife, to maintain the struggling faithful
among men, to ward off evil from them, to direct all
events to their good, to guide, console, empower, ani-
mate them, never leaving them, till their mission of
c Dan. x. 13.
no Aids in the Conflict : [SERM.
loving sympathy and constant interposition has ful-
filled its predestined end.
The indications which the Book of Job gives in regard
to the malice of Satan, and the watchful love of St. Mi-
chael in preserving the body of Moses, as an instance
of similar zeal on the part of the good, these can hardly
be understood but as instances of a law, revelations
coming out to view because of special circumstances,
but really an interpretation of the inner history of the
progress of events in the unseen world, which must from
its very nature be going on unceasingly.
For the history of Job is manifestly intended as an
encouragement to every one struggling under the op-
pression of trials of which he cannot perceive the jus-
tice, or the motive, though resolved to cling in trust
upon God alone. It interprets for such sufferers the
causes and forces at work in the supernatural world,
with the assurance that they are all subject to the im-
mediate direction and control of God, and can issue
only in confusion to the ministers of evil, and the
greater glory of those who abide faithful in the trial.
It has an universal application, and consequently the
agencies at work must equally be supposed to be uni-
versal. Similarly with the history of Moses. He was
a representative person ; representative of the elect
people of Israel. His life was to be an example of
a like faith with his own, to all who followed him. The
tokens of God's love to him were assurances to them
of His protection ; the care which watched over him
a sign of like care for them. The Guardian Angel of
their leader, was to be the watchful ministrant also
of God's love to the people whom he led.
But more especially we can discern, through the out-
ward veil, the thrill and glow which has ever pervaded
VIII.] Gods heavenly Host. 1 1 1
the holy Angels in fulfilling the charge committed to
them in the gradual developing of the Incarnation of
God. Their intense watchfulness to penetrate the se-
cret ; their earnest care of those more favoured ones who
were preparing the way, as types or forerunners of the
Advent of Jesus, as specially shewn in the family life
of Abraham and Jacob ; and then the ecstasy of angelic
song which heralded the Nativity of Christ, and their
composed, reverent eagerness as they watched around
the Sepulchre ; and ever afterwards the fervent action
of the Angels moving with and around our Lord, in the
heavenly order of His life subsequent to His Ascension,
of which the visions of St. John speak ; and on earth
their "joy over one sinner that repenteth," their care
of "the little ones" of Christ, and their last office of
love to the departing souls of the elect " carried by the
Angels" into Paradise, these revealed representations
of their concern in man, thus more constantly and more
energetically stirred, prove that a new spring of life and
love toward man had been imparted to the angelic na-
tures in union with the Incarnation of God. They are
quickened in themselves to a more vivid joy, a more
glowing adoration, a more fervent charity towards man
as the object of Divine care in Christ ; bound to a dearer,
more absorbing care, because of the tabernacling of God
in human flesh.
The promise given to Nathanael, as the type of the
true Israelite, that he should see "the Angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man d ,"
seems to speak of this new order of angelic agency ; so
new, that language is used by our Lord which at first
sight implies that not till then had the interposition of
Angels really commenced ; that only then the heavens
d St. John i. 51.
1 12 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
would be opened, and the descent and ascent of Angels
begin. In using the term, " Son of Man," in connexion
with that promise a term which always implies our
Lord's human relation to His elect He includes His
elect of all times with Himself, as being thus destined
to be more nearly related to the angel host, more
specially objects of a fresh development of their care
and love.
And certainly a very marked difference is to be dis-
cerned between the angelic ministrations of the older
time, and those of the new dispensation. During the
olden time the action of Angels, as revealed to us, was
on a large scale, affecting the concerns of nations and
kingdoms, and of families only inasmuch as the elect
race was confined to a family, the patriarchal line through
which the Messiah was to come. But nothing is said in
the Old Testament of the individuality of the Angels'
care ; of it extending to all the elect ; of a special rela-
tion of Angels to individuals, because of their individual
relation to God ; of such an extent of angelic ministra-
tions, as would bring them home to every man's private
and personal consciousness, as his own special support
and joy. There were indications, no doubt, partial illus-
trations, of such a law in the Old Testament, but they
are rare and exceptional. To look at the Old Testa-
ment only, one would have said that angel guardian-
ship, and angels' secret communion, was reserved as the
privilege of great typical personages, as patriarchs or
prophets, or of great collective hosts of the elect people,
but not of an elect soul as such ; nor, if an Angel were
an occasional visitant in any case, that he could, so to
speak, be depended on as a constant companion, a sure
ministrant of divine love and care at all times, "in all
our ways."
VIII.] God's heavenly Host. 113
This new and most eventful truth is one great dis-
tinguishing feature of the revelations of angel life in the
New, as contrasted with those of the Old Testament.
There for the first time we hear our Blessed Lord speak-
ing of all His members, all His little ones, and saying
that their "Angels do always behold the face of" His
" Father, which is in heaven e ." The words assert this
great truth of one equally as of another. His Apostle
unfolds yet further this great revelation, when he says
that the Angels are " ministering spirits, sent forth to
minister - for them who shall be heirs of salvation f ;"
language which equally includes all alike, all as " heirs,"
therefore without personal distinction. And the same
Apostle asserts the same universality of individual pri-
vilege, when, speaking alike to all to whom his epistles
are addressed, he says, " Ye are come unto Mount Sion,
and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jeru-
salem, and to an innumerable company of Angels *."
The Church's traditionary faith has been grounded on
these pregnant passages. On these momentous words
rests the belief of the guardian Angels of baptized souls,
of the daily care, the watchful protection, the cease-
less countless ministries of love and power, which are
around every child of God's eternal adoption. This faith
has grown out of these preckms words of Jesus and His
Apostles. They involved, therefore, a very marked change
as to the faith regarding Angels ; for there was revealed
not merely a greater intenseness of interest and care,
because of the greater momentousness of the charge of
souls in whom God dwells, for whom God suffered and
died, for whom the unceasing Sacrifice and intercession
of the Lamb of God are being offered, but the indi-
viduality of it, the like care extended to each, and its
* St. Matt, xviii. 10. ' Heb. i. 14. ' Ibid. xii. 22.
I
114 Aids in the Conflict : [SERM.
unceasingness from the font to the grave, through the
grave to Paradise, and beyond Paradise to heaven. The
Fathers drew out this great truth, always implying its
intimate connexion with the Incarnation of God.
Thus Origen, addressing one of the elect, says, "Yes-
terday thou wast under a demon, to-day thou art under
an angel. ' Do not/ says the Lord, ' despise one of these
little ones who are in the Church ; for verily I say unto
you, their angels do always behold the face of My Father
Which is in heaven.' Angels minister to their salvation ;
the sons of God have been granted to serve, and say
unto each other, ' If He has descended with a body, if
He hath been clothed in mortal flesh, and borne the
cross, and died for men, why are we quiescent ? Why
spare we ourselves ? Come, all ye angels, let us de-
scend from heaven." Then, speaking of their individual
care : " Come, O Angel ! receive him who has been con-
verted by the Word from former error, from the doctrine
of demons, from iniquity speaking on high, and receiving
him, like a good physician, cherish and instruct him V "
And St. Hilary says of their help to us in our prayers :
" The authority is absolute, that Angels preside over the
prayers of the faithful. Wherefore Angels daily offer
up to God the prayers of those who are saved through
Christ. Therefore is it dangerous to despise him, whose
desire and supplications are borne to the eternal and
invisible God by the holy service or ministry of Angels V
And again St. Ambrose speaks of their guarding even
our inner hearts from the watchful foe : " Thus did
Eliseus the prophet shew that armies of angels were
around him as a defence ; thus did Joshua recognise
the leader of the heavenly host. They therefore who
are able to fight for us, are able to guard the fruit that
h Horn. i. in Ezek. ' Tract, in Ps. cxxxiv.
VIII.] God's heavenly Host. 115
is within usJ." And again, St. Chrysostom connecting
their ministering to us with that of our Blessed Lord's :
" What marvel is it, if they (the Angels) minister to the
Son, whenever they minister to our salvation ? . . . Yea,
rather it is the work of Christ Himself, for He indeed
saves as a Master, but they as servants k ."
It is clear, then, that the belief has ever been a very
practical one ; and indeed how can we for a moment
suppose that such an array of heavenly beings, so
powerful, so ardent, so intense in action and love, can
be, as they are sometimes regarded, the mere decora-
tive features of a poetic religion, the beautiful imagery
of the rapt moods of the devout mind ?
Nor is it less sure that their aid is of the most intimate
personal kind, although much mystery still hangs around
the kind of communion which they are permitted to hold
with us, and we have reverently to gather it by inference,
rather than by direct revelation. It would seem that as
a tendency "to the worshipping of Angels 1 " developed
itself even in the apostolic age, possibly on this account
a reserve was kept as to the greatness of our obligations
to these blessed guardians, lest in the instruments and
agents of the Divine care we should lose the constant
sense of the supreme Author both of their and our life.
Even St. John needed a warning to preserve in his mind
the clear assurance, that notwithstanding all their great-
ness and their power to aid, they are but " fellow-ser-
vants." But, if careful to take heed to such warnings,
we may safely cherish for our stay and comfort, and in
reverent regard to them for their kindness towards us,
profound and earnest thoughts of their succour and
defence which, according to the will of God, they never
J De Virgini, c. 8. k Horn. iii. in Ep. ad Heb. ' Col. ii. 18.
10 Rev. xxii. 9.
I 2
n6 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
cease to supply to us in our need. Nor surely ought
we to scruple to do so, when we see how our Lord
Himself, compassed with our flesh, was behoven to an
Angel's care, when creation saw the Eternal Son pros-
trate in His agony, and "an Angel strengthening Him ;"
or when, after the temptation was past, Angels "came
and ministered unto Him."
Or again, can we attribute to the holy Angels a less
power to aid us, than is permitted to the evil angels to
hurt us ? Must not angelic instrumentality be at least
equal on either side ? We know indeed little of the laws
which determine the action of spirit upon spirit ; or of
the communion and strengthening influence which one
being can interchange with another ; or how one soul
can stay itself on another soul, and thought mingle with
thought, love with love, desire with desire ; or how the
higher mind and more powerful will of one creature may
rule and direct the mind and will of the less powerful
creature. But the later books of Holy Scripture reveal
to us startling facts as to the powers of evil spirits in
exercising the most intimate control over, and holding
closest communion with, the inner life of man. There
we read of Satan establishing himself within the very
soul of man, thus to sway and rule him. There we learn,
that the evil angel is "the strong man armed keeping
his palace" within man's innermost nature, spirit within
spirit directing the faculties of the possessed soul to
devilish purposes. These fearful descriptions imply
varied modes of influencing the soul. They shew the
possession of some secret subtle power in the evil spirit
to suggest sin, inflame the imagination, excite the will,
cloud the understanding, overrule and direct the ener-
gies, gradually leading captive the whole man, and im-
pressing upon him his own likeness, so that men thus
viii.] God's heavenly Host. 117
possessed become the very " children of the wicked
one ;" although wholly unlike the power of God in this,
that the evil angels can do nothing within the man
except with his own free compliance.
And is not this in all probability the perversion of
a power intended to have been used for a true end ;
the fallen angels perverting to their own bad purposes
a commission given to them, when they were in union
with God, to use for God, and for the good of the other
creatures of God ?
And with this certain knowledge thus revealed to us
of the influence of the evil angels, may we not conclude
that no less power is being exercised by the unfallen
Angels, who still delight to use it as God gave, and de-
signed it ; that the good Angels not merely surround us
to contend for us against the assaults of the evil "prin-
cipalities and powers," who would destroy us ; not
merely that they succour and defend us with their
countless services of loving and watchful care to aid
our weakness, or supply our need ; but that also, in
union with God, they influence our inner life, suggest
holy thoughts, captivate our imaginations, stir our wills,
illumine our understandings, aid our efforts, direct our
energies, and holding secret communion of spirit with
spirit, within our spirits, minister to us the gracious gifts
of God ? How such subordinate ministries are com-
bined with the working of the All-holy Spirit Himself,
we know not ; yet in acknowledging the instrumentality
of the lower agency we are not excluding Himself, the
Source of power. We are rather the more reverencing
our own manifold joys and assurances of support, even
as in natural things we can delight in the lower instru-
mentalities of pleasant food, and sweet flowers, and
genial light, while their beauty and pleasantness en-
ii8 A ids in the Conflict : [SERM.
hance the more, do not exclude, the blessed thought
of God, Who gives and orders through their means all
these good things of His natural providence. The in-
visible Angels are to us in the spiritual world, what the
thousandfold ten thousand ministrations of visible crea-
tures around us are in the natural world. We cannot
indeed interchange sensible intercourse with the Angels
that aid and defend us, but when their charge is ful-
filled in bearing our souls to the Lord, we shall rejoice
the more that we have believed the truth and love of
God in ordaining for us their unseen agencies, even as
we trusted to His innumerable visible agencies. Being
made one with Christ, we share in and through Him
what was His earthly joy, what cheered Him when the
temptation was over, and sustained Him in His agony
when He was weak, and Who meant the promise to be
our blessing, as it was His own : " There shall no evil
happen unto thee, neither shall any plague come nigh
thy dwelling. For He shall give His angels charge
over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways n ."
Let us in conclusion lay to heart some practical
lessons, which we may apply to our personal life.
Here first we may see the greatness and dignity of
our position, our intended lot. Our mission in the world
is, together with the holy Angels, and through their aid,
to uphold the cause of God against the evil powers
which oppose Him ; to contend earnestly against what-
ever He has condemned ; to be jealous of His honour ;
to be zealous of His commands. This was man's ori-
ginal call when, taken from the earth, he was placed,
not as his first position, but by grace, in the garden of
n Ps. xci. 10, ii.
VIII.] God's heavenly Host. 119
Eden , with Angels as his companions, to "keep it"
for God, against the evil which then assailed it. Man
failed, and fell. But the call, and the power to fulfil the
call, was without repentance, and is revived again in
Christ. In our blessed Lord, our true representative,
in the wilderness of temptation, ministered to by Angels,
and assaulted by Satan, we see the renewed man, we
see our own present lot. Surrounded on all sides by
what tempts the eye, deceives the heart, captivates the
senses, bewilders the understanding, shakes the faith,
the loyalty, the allegiance, the stedfastness, of our frail
nature, we are subjected to our course of trial. But
Angels are at our side, and God above, around, be-
neath, within us, to uphold, to fortify, to preserve us,
if only with His words in our lips, and His will in our
hearts, we stand firm, and " resist the devil," till he
" flee from us." Placed thus we are in this lower world,
as having dominion over the creatures, and as the repre-
sentative of the God-Man, to keep ourselves pure ; to
be strong for the truth and love, the beauty and the
glory of a higher world ; to resist " the lust of the flesh,
and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, which are
not of the Father, but which are of the world p ." While
we have the confidence, as we trust to our Lord, that
He will sustain us, as He sustained Himself, because
we are His, we have the assurance also that we are not
merely surrounded by visible objects, but that we dwell
in the midst of an invisible world, a world of most ener-
getic and glorious life, a world of spiritual beings, in
comparison with whom we are " made a little lower "
"The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground And
the Lord God planted a garden in Eden ; and there He put the man whom
He had formed And the Lord God took the man, and put him in
the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." (Gen. ii. 7, 8, 15.)
T i St. John ii. 16.
1 20 A ids in the Conflict : [SERM.
for awhile, that at last we may be raised above them,
when all things shall be put under our feet, because
Christ is so raised, and we are of Him, and in Him,
nearest to His throne, fellow-heirs of His glory.
Thus girt about with Angels, we are set to keep the
charge of God. They are with us by our altars in the
Mysteries. They are with us as we kneel in prayer.
They are with us in the dangers of our way to keep
us. They are by our beds to watch near us as we sleep,
continuing by our side the adoration of the ever-pre-
sent God in which we fell asleep. While we bear in
our heart the consciousness of the Presence in which
" we live, and move, and have our being," and of the
heavenly hosts around us, shall we not be strong to
resist temptation ? Shall we do deeds from which good
Angels must turn away in horror? Shall we speak
words which they will repeat in heaven, and write down
against us ? Shall we bear on our countenances a look
of malice, or impurity, or scorn, at which they must
stand aghast ? Shall we nourish in our hearts a thought
from which they will turn away and weep ? Shall we
continue in sin, till our life's destiny is reversed, and
we are again become more fit to be under a demon's,
than an Angel's, care ?
Or if after sin we return to God, when we fear again
the power of Satan over us, and tremble at his tempta-
tions, and the return of his assaults, and the subtlety of
his approach ; or even doubt anxiously whether it may
even yet be, that " after the sop," the love of Christ again
rejected, we should be doomed and given up, reprobate ;
and Satan entering into oneself as his merited prey, we
be cast out to be with him for ever, we may derive com-
fort and assurance from the thought that a greater spi-
ritual power in the strength of God, ever at war with
VIII.] God's heavenly Host. 121
the rebel angels, and sent specially to minister to those
who trust in Christ, are encamped around us, are guard-
ing us, and will fight for us, driving away the tempter.
Or if we feel shame before our brethren because of our
past sins, and think that all eyes look on us with re-
proach, and that we can scarce venture into the pre-
sence of the pure, that none can believe our conversion ;
and we are weak, because of this sense of distrust or
degradation which haunts us, we may turn away and
take refuge in the fellowship of Angels who are all the
while rejoicing over the "one sinner that repenteth,"
with whom all thought is absorbed in the one deep
love and thanksgiving, which is being breathed into
them out of the Heart of Jesus, Whose grace has at last
won the victory.
We are on our probation ; and the history of the
Angels is a warning which leaves no hope, if the hour
of our probation pass, and we are found unfaithful. Of
kindred natures with our own, the first-born of the crea-
tion of God, free to stand, or free to fall, they were
subjected to trial, and by trial their everlasting state
has been fixed. This law, ordained for the higher orders
of the creatures of God, has found its sure fulfilment in
their destinies. If they who fell from their high estate,
escaped not, and all their greatness and endowments
of grace availed not to exempt them from the conse-
quences of the law of their creation, how can we look
to escape a similar fate, if we fail by a like faithlessness ?
If we miss the day of our probation, faithless found
among the faithful, unconformed to the will of God, not
having served Him acceptably according to His purpose,
if our salvation is the hard-won purchase of the amaz-
ing Sacrifice of the cross, the passion, and death of the
122 Aids in the Conflict. [SERM. viil.
Son of God, and to carry on and complete His work
of love, His Spirit's abiding Presence has been merci-
fully shed forth into our hearts, and, as our guard and
aid in our warfare, the Angel host is sent to minister to
us, and yet we fail to work out this great salvation,
and so great love and care be all in vain, what must
be reserved for us in the Great Day, when God shall
arise to judgment, and he only that hath endured faithful
unto the end, shall be saved ?
As the Angels who kept their first estate, are our
sure aids in our conflict, even so the fallen angels, who
are reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, are
a sure warning, that the condemnation which has already
been visited upon them, will reach us also ; and this the
more certainly if, with their example before us, we con-
tinue in sin, sharing their disobedience, which may
God in His infinite mercy avert for His dear Son's sake,
Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom, with the Father, and
the Holy Ghost, be all glory and thanksgiving for ever.
Amen.
SERMON IX.
in tfje Conflict : Efje Communion of .Saints.
ST. JOHN vi. 57.
" He tliat eateth Me, even he shall live by Me."
'""PHERE can be no doubt that we have fallen back in
many things from the simplicity of the primitive
type, in our Christian course. But in nothing, perhaps,
more manifestly than in our general view of the neces-
sity of receiving the Holy Communion ; of its place in
our worship ; of its effectual help to us in our conflict
with the adversary ; of its comfort under bereavements,
trials, losses ; of its sanctifying effect and power in all
the passages of life ; and above all, of its intimate con-
nection with that holy doctrine which, but for the ex-
press mention of it in the Creed, must have faded out
of the remembrance of many, the doctrine of the com-
munion of saints. The receiving of the Lord's Supper
has become I might say it has degenerated into an
occasional effort to recover ourselves out of the snare of
sin. Every now and then, by preparation for the Holy
Communion, men think to alter their course, which is
setting too much towards the world, in a direction
heavenward. If you well consider the matter, for I do
not wish to overstate anything, (that would frustrate
my speaking to you,) it has come to this with many, if
not most professing Christians, that they receive the
Lord's Supper more frequently out of its due time as
it were if there be a predisposing sorrow, and when
124 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
that is past, return to the ordinary infrequency; and
with most, the infrequency is very great ; so that the
words we are considering, as regards any actual appli-
cation to our daily life, lose all that force which they
would plainly have if our partaking of the Body and
Blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper was of the nature
of a habit. That our Lord designed it to be a habitual
receiving, no man can possibly doubt who considers His
own words in the institution, as they were understood
by those who heard them. They certainly continued
as stedfastly in the breaking of bread as they did in
prayers. The shadowing out of the mystery in the
words of the text points in the same direction. In
fact, nothing but the practice of men whom we know,
and live and converse with, and whose whole life and
conversation has necessarily an effect upon our own,
nothing but stern fact, and the preconception which
custom brings with it, could possibly make us think for
one moment that a matj was in any kind of safety who
gathered himself up at Easter to perform the annual
commemorative act sacramental, and then gave it up
for a year as a thing above his ordinary life, too high
for the temptations incident to his calling. This arises
out of a total misconception of the thing, of the insti-
tution, and the doctrine contained in it. The doctrine
contained in it is precisely what our Lord meant when
He said, " He that eateth Me, even he shall live by
Me." He^ that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit
with the Lord. But how shall we be joined unto Him ?
It is written, " By one Spirit we are all baptized into
one Body, and have been all made to drink into one
Spirit." And again, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we
are bidden to " draw near with a true heart, in full assu-
rance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil
IX.] The Communion of Saints. 125
conscience," (surely by His Blood, in whatever way He
was pleased to communicate to us the benefits of His
most precious blood shedding,) " and our bodies washed
with pure water." This means, it can mean nothing else,
that our union with Him is by these effectual sacra-
mental signs of His own appointment, as it is expressed
in our own Communion Service : " If with a true penitent
heart and lively faith we receive that holy Sacrament,
then we spiritually eat the Flesh of Christ and drink
His Blood ; then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us ;
we are one with Christ, and Christ with us."
All this is brought to nought by an infrequent, un-
willing reception. The spirit of it is absolutely taken
away. Our Church has afforded the utmost possible
latitude in that rubric, " Every parishioner shall com-
municate at least three times in a year ;" meaning, as
Bishop Beveridge justly observed, that unless a person
communicate three times in the year the Church doth
not judge him to be in a state to receive that holy mys-
tery. To shrink from closeness of union with Christ is,
if you will consider it, a sign either of indifference or of
conscious wilful unfitness, through some sin committed
knowingly, or state of sinfulness permitted, or omission
of felt and acknowledged duty. To turn the receiving
of the Holy Communion into an occasional effort to
recover ourselves out of a state of worldliness in which
we know we ought not to live, is entirely an imagina-
tion of our own concerning it. And however common
it be (so common that a man might almost express sur-
prise at such a received opinion being spoken against),
however much it be the practice of men to use it thus,
it is contrary, as I have shewn you, to the doctrine and
spirit of our services, to the words of the Lord Himself,
" He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me."
126 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
Suffer me now, in confirmation of what has been said,
to draw your attention to the place which the receiving
of the Holy Communion occupies in our worship. After
the Commandments read, in order that on hearing each
part of God's law we may search our hearts and see if
we are living by it, after a prayer and reading of two
short passages of Holy Scripture, the Epistle and
Gospel, and saying with united voice one of our con-
fessions of faith, after an act of love or charity done
during the reading of sentences from Scripture ex-
horting to that grace, the priest is directed to lay on
the holy table the alms for the poor, and other devotions
of the people, and when there is a Communion, so much
bread and wine as he shall think sufficient. How often
there shall be a Communion the Church doth not order,
except that in cathedral churches and colleges, where
there are many priests and deacons, all shall receive
Communion every Sunday at the least. Every Sunday
at the least.
Therefore in large parishes, where there are many
communicants (which are increased at every Confirma-
tion by 200 or 300 more, capable at least of receiving),
it may be right to provide for some to receive com-
munion every Sunday, using the discretion which the
Church places in our hands ; for no word of monthly, or
any other stated number of communions, is so much as
named, except that if a parishioner doth not com-
municate thrice in a year he is under censure, as a
priest or deacon in a cathedral is under censure who
doth not communicate every Sunday. Now, brethren,
how often soever, or how seldom soever, you commu-
nicate, you must remember that the whole of the Com-
munion Service to which you listen every Lord's Day
to the end of the offertory sentences, is your prepara-
IX.] The Communion of Saints. 127
tion for the receiving of the Lord's Supper. Whenever
you hear those commandments you must try and mea-
sure your conscience by them. What swearer doth not
inwardly tremble when he heareth " The Lord will not
hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain ?"
What man who doeth nought for his father or mother,
or setteth light by them, heareth the fifth command-
ment without a thought in his heart, " Am I free from
blame here ?" Doth not the prohibition to kill, to do
uncleanness, to thieve, ever strike on some conscience ?
And so when it comes to the act of faith, especially
its last solemn words, " I look for the resurrection of
the dead, and the life of the world to come," have we
not often thought within ourselves, as we uttered the
words with our lips, " Alas, do I live, am I now living,
as one who looks for such things ?" All is to the same
effect, to the purifying of the heart by faith as a pre-
paration for that union with Christ in the Holy Sacra-
ment. And then the sentences, exhorting us to re-
member the poor, and the preachers of the gospel, and
the whole household of faith, are still designed to prepare
us for the more pious, and loving, and cheerful partak-
ing together of the Lord's Supper, whether then imme-
diately or on some future day. For I do not mean that
all are expected to partake always. I am only attempt-
ing to shew you that sometimes all should, and that
the whole service is with a view to that one act of
worship. I am only protesting against this grievous
neglect that has crept in, this deadening doctrine of
the world, that you live in Christ by the act of coming
together to pray, and sing praises, and hear the Word,
when He Himself hath said, " He that eateth Me, even
he shall live by Me," and, breaking bread, bade His
disciples do that thing in remembrance of Him. So that
128 Aids in the Conflict: [SERM.
this became the practice of the first converts, to break
bread together, even as they prayed together, so shew-
ing forth their Lord's death in the cities where they
dwelt. Now see how we have fallen back from the
primitive type, as I said.
We have a conflict with an adversary of such power
as the besieger of a city hath, when he hath in the city
a strong party on his side. So is Satan with regard to
every one of us. He besets us alway, and in every
man's heart he hath some evil inclination, or affection,
or desire on his side, and, if it were not for the help of
One greater than he, he should utterly destroy every
soul which he proceedeth to assault. Not one of us
can stand against him, but by the help of our God.
No man ever did vanquish him outright but one, and He
was both God and man. But all His faithful followers
He did so incorporate into Himself, by a mystical but
real union, that they need not fear the tempter's power
to kill. " He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me."
"The thief cometh not," He said, speaking of Satan,
" but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come
that they might have life, and that they might have
it more abundantly :" that they might eat and live ; as
their first parents ate and died, so they might eat of
Me, the true Tree of Life, and live. Yes : over them
that are in Christ by spiritual partaking of Him, Satan
hath no power no power, at least, to kill. Now you
see, brethren, that in proportion to the closeness of the
union with the Saviour, must be the safety from the
assaults of the enemy. None of you can doubt that.
And if the union with Him be in partaking of His
Body and Blood, with a true penitent heart and lively
faith, it being a spiritual act, then to partake often must
be what is needful unto more assurance of help. The
X.] The Communion of Saints. 129
rule is, the oftener the better, if in faith, and penitence,
and charity. We forfeit so much help in our conflict
with the adversary, as we do communicate either less
frequently, or more coldly and backwardly. But I said
also that we had lost sight of its sanctifying effect and
power in all the passages of life. So it is indeed. Not
only is He, on whom we feed by faith, the strength,
and joy, and salvation, of every individual soul, coming
to Him in this holy ordinance as He hath commanded,
but the communion of His Body and Blood is the
strongest and holiest link which binds us together in
Him. " For we being many are one bread and one
body, for we are all partakers of that one bread." This,
was to be in the place of those earthly relationships
which Christ declared His coming should rather have
a tendency at first to weaken and to dissolve, than to
cement and strengthen. When father and mother should
forsake a child, the Lord should take him up ; hence-
forth he should be adopted into another family, another
should be his father, even Christ. "That which we
have seen and heard," writes St. John, i.e. the mystery
of God and the Father, and of Christ, " that which we
have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also
may have fellowship with us : and truly," he adds, "our
fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus
Christ." The Evangelist who wrote these words, was
the same who records the last prayer of our Blessed
Lord, in which He prayed " not for these alone, but for
them also which should believe on Him through their
word. That they all may be one, as Thou Father
art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in
Us." That prayer never faded from St. John's memory
while he lived, and while he taught. " Little children,
love one another," was his favourite precept to those
K
130 The Communion of Saints. [SERM
who came to inquire of Christ at his mouth. He
has been called the Apostle of love from that circum-
stance ; the loving, and the beloved. To him, as filled
with the spirit of the new commandment, did our Lord
on the cross commit the charge of His mother, when the
sword of grief had pierced through her soul, " and from
that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." In
that household, from that very day, may have been
seen the true type of the communion of saints. What
a home that must have been, where every meal was con-
secrated by the remembrance of His last meal on earth
with His disciples, and by the mystical words He spake,
and the sign He instituted, and the commandment He
gave, " This do in remembrance of Me." What if they
ate often in haste, with their loins girded for some work
of charity, or to escape for their life ; what if they ate it
with bitter herbs, in sorrow of heart for all the suffering
they had witnessed, and which they could never forget ;
yet what a home of love, and what a sanctifying effect
and power must their communion have had on all the
passages of their life ever afterward. We are not told
how the love which reigned in that house surpassed in
breadth, and depth, and height the ordinary love of
parent, children, brethren, friends ; our eyes have not
been permitted to gaze upon such a holy privacy ; but
we are sure that if ever the grace of God did overshadow
any home, so that every thought, and word, and action
reflected His image, into whose likeness they grew and
were transformed day by day, it must have been there, in
that house. There truly, if anywhere on earth, must
the love of God have been perfected. And the nearest
to this must be the house where every member of
a Christian family, as one by one they come to years
of discretion, becomes a communicant, and each, com-
IX.] The Communion of Saints. 131
prehending by degrees the mystery of Christ's indwell-
ing by the force of an inward experience, fashions his
daily life accordingly. Brethren, there are many such
houses. We need not here say in our heart, " Who shall
ascend into heaven" (that is, to bring down Christ from
above), "or who shall descend into the deep?" (i.e. to bring
up Christ again from the dead). " For the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
family in heaven and earth is named, hath granted
unto many, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man ;
so that Christ dwelleth in their hearts by faith ; and they,
being rooted and grounded in love, have been able to
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and
length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of
Christ, which passeth knowledge, so that they are filled,
verily, with all the fulness of God."
In the great conflict which is raging, which is at our
doors, which hath in it the verification of some of our
Divine Master's and His Apostles' prophetic sayings, so
that we know it to be the beginning of that very con-
flict which we are taught to expect, in which a mans'
foes should be they of his own household, in which
members of the same family should take opposite sides,
which should be known by pride and selfishness, dis-
obedience to parents, ingratitude, unholiness, want of
natural affection, love of pleasure, in fine, by a form of
godliness without the power; in the conflict in which the
subtilty of this world's wisdom shall corrupt many minds
from the simplicity that is in Christ, shall there be no
refuges, whither a man may flee for help and comfort in
the fiery trial ; if one falleth, shall there be no one to
lift him up ? Oh yes ! He said our Divine Lord said-
He would not leave us comfortless ; He would come to us.
K 2
132 The Communion of Saints. [SERM.
And surely He hath fulfilled His word. Wherever two
or three are gathered together in His name, there is He
in the midst of them. The glory which God gave Him
in His human nature, He hath given them. What was
that glory ? " That they may be one, even as We are one,
I in them and they in Me ; that they may be made
perfect in Me." This is that communion of saints, which
is nourished and sustained by the Holy Communion of
His Body and Blood. These refuges of which I spake
are the homes and houses of God's saints ; those helpers
at hand and ready to succour us are men like-minded,
having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind,
such men as Epaphras,Onesimus, Timothy, Tychichus, and
others, who were St. Paul's fellow-workers unto the king-
dom of God, which were a comfort to him in the dangers
and distresses and necessities which he endured, such
persons as Priscilla and Aquila, who for his life laid down
their own necks. Such men and such women there are
yet in the world. And if our heart should ever fail us
for the multitude of the adversaries, think, brethren, if
our eyes were opened, and we saw the great cloud of
witnesses who have gone before, the saints that are at
rest, the spirits of the just made perfect, the glorious
city where they and we shall dwell for ever and ever !
But enough for us, that in us and our fellow-pilgrims,
who are journeying at our side to the heavenly country,
Christ dwelleth. Enough that He has said, "He that
eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." Enough that,
assembled together with our brethren, we feed, in a hea-
venly and spiritual manner, on the Body of the Lord,
and drink His precious Blood. Enough that, so doing,
we find ourselves strengthened for the trials of the day,
and guided safely through the darkness of the night ;
and see far on before us the shining pinnacles of the
IX.] The Communion of Saints. 133
holy city, whither He, whom we have adored and trusted
in, and loved with all our hearts, is gone to prepare
a place for us ; not a mere refuge, as one thinks of the
grave, where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the
weary are at rest," but a place of joy and gladness, and
unfading light for ever, and for evermore.
SERMON X.
SEeapons of our flEarfare.
2 OOE, x. 4,
" The weapons of our warfare are not carnal."
EOM, xii. 21.
t
" Overcome evil with good."
T F St. Paul is fond of reminding us of the militant
character of the Christian life, it is he also who warns
us oftenest of the danger of allowing the metaphor to
lead us astray. He knew that there is that in our nature
which responds readily to the trumpet-call. " To resist
even unto blood," " to fight the good fight," " to quit our-
selves like men," " to wrestle against principalities and
powers ;" these, and suchlike figures, have a ring which
carries them straight home to generous hearts. The
poet surely has not painted falsely the chivalrous dreams
of youth,
" Waiting to strive a happy strife,
To war with falsehood to the knife."
Life seems to very many of us indeed a battle. We see
selfishness and cowardice, and our blood boils at the
sight of them. We see evil all about us, evil that might
be prevented. We imagine ourselves in our day-dreams
of the future, even in some small measure in our actual
experience, to be bearing a part in the world-old con-
flict, in the war which " was in heaven." We are on the
side of good. Does it not follow that what opposes us
is on the side of ill ? We know, indeed, and feel keenly,
136 The Weapons of our Warfare. [SERM.
that the very evil which we are combating is in our own
hearts also ; the very frivolity, the very narrowness, the
indolence that clings to what is, the deep irreverence of
the heart, even in its germ and possibility the saddest
moral corruption. We are conscious that the enemy is
very near us, and our attitude towards it constrains us
in some sort to live as becomes a knight of God. It
lifts, and strengthens, and purifies us.
And yet there is a danger in all this. We need to
hear often the Apostle's warning voice, " The weapons
of our warfare are not carnal." Life is too complicated
to be comprehended in one metaphor. It is a battle, in
which one side must conquer and one must yield ; it is
a race, in which all may be crowned ; it is a field, where
good and bad grow together, and the tares may not be
rooted up lest the wheat be rooted up with them. It
is a battle, but how subtle, how unearthly is the conflict ;
how different from the coarse semblances which are all
that meet our eyes ! What a sad medley, what a strange
inexplicable maze must any struggle between man and
man, between two human causes, even between the
visible Church and any cognisable power without her,
appear to one who can read the spiritual issues of the
strife ! How often Trojan bears Greek arms, and the
patriot's sword strikes to a brother's heart !
To make mistakes in history is a small matter. To
reverence as the sole depositories of truth or goodness
one person or one party in some bygone strife, may not
inflict serious damage on our moral nature, for the ob-
jects of our reverence will have been first idealized. But
it is no imaginary danger, especially in days of more
than usual earnestness and difference, that we may be
tempted to identify the cause of good, that cause which
demands our love and our life, with the cause of some
X.] The Weapons of our Warfare. 137
particular party, or of some particular movement, which
we are at the moment supporting. For the good, for
the truth, we may fight, we must fight, absolutely ; there
is no reserve, no doubt on the question. But this is
a spiritual warfare. The enemy is no visible one, the
weapons of no mortal forging. We wrestle not against
flesh and blood, not against men like ourselves, with
mixed natures, with minds which at the best but know
in part, which at the worst are temples which the truth-
revealing Spirit has not yet forsaken, but against spiri-
tual powers, against that spirit of falsehood and un-
belief which is within us as well as without us. But the
questions on which we shall do battle with our fellow
men seldom or never raise the issue simply between
good and ill. They are questions of fact. " Is this
good ?" " Is this the truth ?" " Is this a part and parcel
of the faith once delivered ?" There must be a right
and a wrong on such questions ; but if good and wise
men differ, the probability is that neither of the con-
tending parties has all the truth or all the error.
Shall we, then, stand aside and look on as with the
irony of Epicurean gods, while men debate the great
problems of God's nature and man's destiny ? Shall we
care nothing whether the doctrine in which our own
soul has found peace and cleansing is offered to others
in all its strength and purity ? Nay, surely that would
be to be false to the good we know, to the truth which
we believe. But yet the thought of human fallibility, of
the many-sidedness of truth, will soften and humble our
bearing in controversy ; it will make us ready and eager
to recognise the good on our opponent's side. We shall
drop at times the fierce metaphor, which at the best has
something in it that hardens, that narrows, that injures
the bloom and modesty of a Christian soul. We shall
138 The Weapons of our Warfare. [SERM.
no longer be fighting against our brethren for the truth,
but following after, even as they, if that we may appre-
hend that which we have not yet apprehended; still
seeking for the truth, even as they, though it may be
from a different side.
" The weapons of our warfare are not carnal." Let
us feel this really, and we may safely use the image
which the Apostle thus completes and guards. It is
indeed a noble image of the Christian life, the image
of the faery knight, " too simple and too true" to pass
unscathed through the treachery of the world, but tri-
umphant at the last, because he "strives for the right,"
and "the good is God's," the image of the "happy
warrior," such as even in earthly warfare the Christian
poet paints him,
" The generous spirit who when brought
Among the real tasks of life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought ;"
who has kept his first love, and striven for the chivalrous
ideal of his youth ; who has loved truth and goodness
with a passion so intense that they have become in him
a new force, subduing, constraining, sanctifying the
world about him ; who for his very devotion to truth
has dared to face doubts, for his very faith has dared
to examine what he believes, " more brave for this,
that he hath much to love ;" who from that familiarity
with struggle and suffering which make other souls
abate their feeling, has drawn a more compassionate
tenderness ; who, if he be called to mix in party strife,
is able to " turn his necessity to glorious gain," winning
modesty from the very temptation to self-assertion,
large-hearted sympathies from the very contact of nar-
rowness ; who in the heat of conflict never loses " the
law in calmness made," in the tumult of voices yet hears,
X.] The Weapons of our Warfare. 139
and reverences as king, his own conscience ; who never
used a base weapon, never drew sword in his own cause ;
who, because a life of conflict tends to bind his thoughts
to earth, to make outward, energy the substitute for
depth of saintly devotion, lives therefore most in hea-
ven, learns the lesson of quietness and confidence at
Jesus' feet.
Brethren, have we not seen or known of such cha-
racters, such great and gentle souls ? If so, we have
seen the whole of the Apostle's mind. He does not
call us to a philosophic indifference, nor to a dream of
selfish asceticism. He would have us resist evil unto
blood. He would that every base and cowardly thing
done in our sight should go home as the stab of a
dagger to our hearts. He would doubtless have us re-
buke vice boldly, and refute error uncompromisingly,
as he did himself. But yet he shews us a more ex-
cellent way : " Overcome evil with good." It is a lesson
for our polemics. But surely it is also a suggestion of
comfort and of strength. He who strives most to main-
tain the conflict against the evil of the world must feel
most often the weakness of human weapons. It is
a small and scattered band that seems at any parti-
cular moment to be waging war against established ill,
and those who fight in it know best the feeble arms
and half-traitorous hearts that are to be found in its
ranks. And what a serried phalanx seems to be ar-
rayed against them ! not always the baseness only of
the world, its interest and timidity and prejudice, but
some too of its best and noblest, men of high self-devo-
tion and pure and spotless lives. So it seems, but so
it is not really. Look again in a little, and the mighty
host is broken up, the ten have chased a thousand.
What we had seen was but a shadow of the true combat.
140 The Weapons of our Wat fare. [SERM.
Could our eyes have been opened, we should have
seen that so far as our cause was really good, " those
that were for us were more than those that were against
us." That very nobleness of our opponents, which we
may have thought our worst enemy, was in truth but
the vanguard of our own army.
Good is not only the cause for which we strive, it
is the very weapon of the strife itself. It is in itself
aggressive ; it is stronger than evil, and it draws men
to itself by its own beauty and dignity. It is so in the
world of thought and belief. Men do not love error,
though they may be careless or obstinate. And it is so
in the moral world also. Passion blinds men, the will
fails, but they have not yet said " evil, be thou my
good." They reverence good when they see it ; if they
saw it oftener they might be drawn closer to it. And
so, brethren, in our strife with ill, whether it be false
opinions, or evil practices, it matters more what we are,
than what we say, or do. A truth that rules a character,
goodness embodied in a noble and a gentle life, these
are the powers that move the world. It is a fallacy to
bid men perfect themselves before they try to reform
the world about them, but it is not a fallacy to say that
the two processes can only go on together.
So we are brought back to the government of our
own hearts and lives, not as though the one duty of
man were as modern paganism tells us, to develope
each for himself his own nature as if it were a work of
art ; nor, as the religious counterpart of this view bids
us, to save each for himself his own soul ; but because
there at least we can recognise and defy our Lord's
enemy, because by conquering him there we are earn-
ing the right and the power to meet and conquer him
upon a larger field.
X.] The Weapons of our Warfare. 141
What, then, are the weapons of our warfare at home
in our own hearts ? What other than those which in
the world are " mighty to the" pulling down of strong-
holds, to the bringing into captivity of every thought to
the obedience of Christ."
" Overcome evil with good." Brethren, can we use
these words and not feel how they describe God's deal-
ings with us ? Take them in the simplest sense of
their original context, and how well do they pourtray
even the God of natural religion, " the strong and pa-
tient Judge, provoked every day," who yet " leaves not
Himself without witness in that He does good, and
sends us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons," how
much more Him in whom we believe, who died for
us when we were yet sinners, who came unto His own
though they received Him not, who intercedes for those
that crucify Him yet, and put Him to an open shame !
And then, take the words in the larger sense in which
we cannot doubt St. Paul intended them. They de-
scribe that characteristic of Christianity as a moral
system which has lately been so eloquently set before
us. It does not bind men by minute laws, touch not,
taste not, handle not, but it inspires a motive which
supersedes the need of law, a passion which can con-
trol all baser passions, can lift a man not only out of
sin, but out of the desire and temptation of sin. Let
us have the faith to apply that remedy to our own
shortcomings which God has provided for the short-
comings of our nature. Good is a wide word, but it is
not wider than the Apostle's precept. Let me bring
down the principle to a few practical suggestions.
Young men, you know each of you the plague of your
own lives ; you have resolved against it, you have striven
against it, you have prayed against it. Have you tried
142 The Weapons of our Warfare. [SERM.
to conquer it in the way which St. Paul advises ? The
evil spirit has not yet made his home with you, he
comes only at intervals. Fill up the empty house
against the time that he shall next return. Avoid bad
companions by joining yourselves to good ones. Break
down the bridge that connects you with your past fol-
lies. Throw your whole soul first into the plain duties of
your daily calling, and then into all the healthy, bracing,
manly interests which the life of young English citizens
offers to you. You are men; think nothing that con-
cerns humanity alien to you. Widen the circle of your
thoughts. Force yourselves to take an interest in the
great questions that are stirred, in the great subjects
of knowledge that are opened, in the hopes and desti-
nies of mankind that unfold themselves before you.
Map out your time, and fill it up with work and with
healthy amusements of mind and body. It is the
empty listless mind that gives the sacred hours of
leisure to day-dreams of folly, and suggestions of sin.
It is the frivolous conversation that needs seasoning
with hateful jests, and words that poison the memory.
Parents, do you too remember your responsibility in
this matter. Remember that weeds grow apace in un-
cultivated ground, and the quicker for the goodness of
the generous soil. Your sons may perhaps find whole-
some interests and occupations elsewhere, but your
daughters generally must find them at home, or no-
where. Do not leave them to seek their only relief
from the tediousness of a flavourless home-life in foolish
and mischievous novels, or still more foolish and mis-
chievous gossip. Do not think that even religion by
itself will supply the need. Such as the mind is, such is
the religion. The religion of a trivial and selfish mind
is trivial and selfish ; it is only another and a sadder
X.] The Weapons of our Warfare. 143
subject for gossip, another field for vanity and for ma-
levolence. Give them a real interest in life, something
which may raise their self-respect, which may freshen
and give a tone to those tedious hours which after all
make so large a part of most people's lives. We have
not all high intellectual tastes, though we have far more
than we usually gratify or even discover, but we all
have hearts to feel for human nobleness and human
suffering, and we all have, till it is stifled, a taste for
simple and unselfish pleasures. Give them an interest
in life ; a care for something beyond the circle of their
home and the details of daily life ; an ideal that may
lift and purify them. We come back to the old ques-
tion, How shall you implant such interest, or raise
them to such an ideal, unless that interest and that
ideal are your own ? Enthusiasm is catching. One
cannot live long with a friend of large heart and active
charity without kindling, if it be but a spark, at his fire.
But enthusiasm is not to be made to order.
Lastly, brethren, I have bidden you to apply to the
evil of your own hearts the same kind of remedy as that
which God has provided for the evil of our nature ; may
I not bid you apply the very remedy itself? Let us
think how God has dealt with the sin of His rebellious
creatures.
He has not been content to warn, to threaten, to set
before them a strict and righteous law, which to break
were death, but yet which all had broken ; He has con-
descended to our weakness, He has given us not a law
but an Example, not a perfect code but a perfect Man,
not one who should say, " There is the path, walk ye in
it," but One who says, " Come, follow Me."
And He has not only given us an example, He has
found us a human motive. Few of us can rise to high
144 Th e Weapons of our Warfare. [SERM. X.
abstract arguments, but few can feel that the good of
the race or the perfection of their own nature is an
adequate motive for self-denial. But all can feel love
and gratitude to a person, all know that to deny them-
selves for one they love is a pleasure, not a pain.
Brethren, let us seek the inspiration of the Christian
life, where apostles and martyrs found it, in the life and
person of Christ. For His sake, and in His strength,
let us fight our battle against sin, the world, and the
devil ; for His sake, who loved us before we loved Him,
in whom our fathers believed and were not confounded,
who is very near us, who will never leave nor forsake us ;
and in His strength, in the strength of His love, in the
strength of His example, in the strength of those who
know that they are following One who has all power
in heaven and earth, who is ever with them, to uphold,
to pardon, to crown them.
SERMON XL
Crisis of tfje Conflict.
ST. JOHN xvii. 3.
' ' And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent,"
PHE intercessory prayer of our Lord for His disciples
first, and then for His whole future Church, has
ever been regarded by believers as one of the most
precious passages of Holy Writ. Certainly it is one
of the most solemn, and few we may hope can read
this chapter without a sense of deep and heart-con-
trolling awe stealing over them. It was spoken upon
the evening preceding our Lord's passion, when now
His earthly ministry was fast hastening to its close, and
withdrawn from that world which had made His life
a pathway of thorns, the Saviour gave His faithful
followers His parting words of love and tenderness.
They were spoken probably standing ; " Arise," He had
said, "and let us go hence." The paschal lamb had
been eaten ; the sacrament of the Saviour's broken body
and blood, which was to take its place, had been insti-
tuted ; the Psalms which ever followed that supper had
been sung ; the traitor had gone from their company
upon his accursed errand : and left alone with the
loving and the true, the Saviour spake to them as He
had never spoken before ; spake to them as friends, and
gave them words of divine comfort. And they were
L
146 The Crisis of the Conflict. [SERM.
His last words to them till after His resurrection. When
His prayer was over He went with them to the garden,
and thence was hurried to the High Priest's hall, and
the tribunal of the heathen governor, and to the cross.
When the time came round again at which Christ had
thus talked with them, His holy body, rent with the
soldier's spear, lay in the rich man's tomb ; and His
soul was in the abode of the spirits of the dead. The
true Paschal Lamb, whose blood can save from the
destroying angel, had been sacrificed for the sins of
mankind?
St. John does not expressly mention the institution
of the Lord's Supper, which was to set forth that sacri-
fice to all generations of the faithful. The other three
Evangelists had given so detailed an account of it, that
all Christians fully knew every particular, and St. John
seldom repeats again what they have told. But there
is a constant reference to it in his narrative, as that
which was to knit all believers together in the bond of
love. He makes, however, a very significant addition
to what we know of that eventful evening, for he alone
tells us of Christ washing His disciples' feet. Strange
that it should be so ; for it was John's especial office to
magnify his Lord. He it is who sets Him forth to us
as the Word who was with God and was God ; as the
Bread whereof he that eateth shall never die ; as the
Water which springs up in the faithful to everlasting
life ; as the good Shepherd who lays down His life for
the sheep ; as the Way, the Truth, and the Life of His
people ; as the Vine who sustains them, and gives them
their strength and sweetness. But while thus he mag-
nifies Him, he also sets Him before us in this act of
the deepest self-humiliation. The Lord of all lays
aside His garments, and girds Himself with a towel,
XI.] The Crisis of the Conflict. 147
and as a slave washes His disciples' feet. Could love
give a stronger proof of its earnestness ? Could hu-
mility more plainly set the lesson of example? But
was this all ? The words to Peter, " If I wash thee not,
thou hast no part with Me," tell us of a spiritual mean-
ing to the act. Doubtless it symbolized the cleansing
virtues of Christ's blood, of which the Christian daily
stands in need ; and withal reminds us how great was
the humiliation of the Son of God, when He emptied
Himself of His glory, and took upon Him the form of
a servant that He might shed that blood whereby our
sins are washed away.
Among those whose feet He washed was Judas Isca-
riot; and he, too, was partaker of His broken body,
and of His poured out blood. But the presence of the
traitor troubled our Lord ; perhaps the thought sad-
dened Him that so many in all ages would by their
obduracy and hardness of heart make all His love un-
availing ; would join even in shewing forth His death,
and yet crucify Him afresh by their sins. He grieved,
too, for Judas himself. He had followed Him at first
with the same professions of love as the rest, and had
had committed to his charge whatever of earthly means
the Saviour and His followers possessed ; but he loved
the world more than he loved his Master, and was plot-
ting to deliver Him to His enemies. Jesus, therefore,
was troubled in spirit, and testified that one of them
should betray Him ; and having pointed out who it
was, as if eager to be free from the pollution of his
presence, He sent him away. " That thou doest do
quickly." He then having received " the sop, went im-
mediately out ; and it was night"
Night to Judas : he went forth into the outer dark-
ness, but behind him he left light. For there was the
L 2
148 The Crisis of the Conflict. [SERM.
Saviour, who is the Light of the world, and now there
were with Him only those who truly loved Him. They
were still frail and erring : not long, and all for the
time forsook Him and fled. But it was but human
infirmity, and soon they gathered round Him again,
and learnt from His cross the martyr spirit. As to
loving and true friends, therefore, He spake to them,
and His heart seemed as it were to overflow with
thoughts, too deep even now, after men have for eigh-
teen centuries meditated upon them, for us fully to
comprehend them. For these last words of Christ
refer almost exclusively to the profounder mysteries
of the faith.
It is of the relation of God the Son to God the
Father, and God the Holy Ghost, that the Saviour
speaks ; it is of His own mystical union with His
people, and of their oneness with Him and with one
another, and of the relation of His Church to the
world. .And as if feeling that neither His disciples
then, nor believers afterwards, could easily attain to
that spirituality which would enable them to under-
stand these themes, He repeats again and again the
most important principles of His discourse, as if He
would rivet them on our memories ; while He warns
us, as He warned them, that it is only by the gift of
the Holy Ghost that the Church can be led into all
the truth. And the disciples as they clustered round
Him listened in awe. They understood not as yet
much of what He was saying ; they knew not what
great events would happen before the next night came
round. But they knew that they were upon the very
eve of great events. There was that in their Master's
words which bade them be ready for scenes of danger.
Like men in a trance, they moved forward from event
XI.] The Crisis of the Conflict. 149
to event, marking all that happened, with eyes open
to observe, noting all in their memories ; but not seeing
the connection of events, understanding them not, know-
ing not what to do, or what to advise. This was the
secret of their irresolution when the traitor and his
band seized their Lord ; it was as when in some great
battle the general falls, and the army is paralyzed by
his loss. The guiding mind which connected all their
different movements and positions, and gave them unity,
is no more ; and they have become a crowd only, a mul-
titude without a purpose. So with the Apostles, they
understood not the purpose, the plan, the object of
those events, in which they were taking part ; and
therefore their own wills were powerless. And no won-
der. They were standing upon the dividing line be-
tween the Jewish and the Christian Church. The pro-
mises to which all believers hitherto had looked forward
were now being fulfilled. It was the very crisis of the
world's history ; the battle of mankind lost by the first
Adam in Paradise, was by the second Adam, as on
that day, to be won upon Calvary. Yet a few hours,
and the serpent would bruise the feet of the woman's
Seed ; but in the struggle, the woman's Seed would
crush Satan's head beneath the cross : and having
achieved the victory, with loud voice would cry, " It is
finished." The sacrifice has been offered, man is saved,
and sins can be forgiven.
We, brethren, are preparing in this Lenten season
for thoughtful meditation upon our Lord's sufferings.
On Sunday next we begin that solemn course, in which
chapter by chapter, gospel after gospel, we follow Him
in all that He did or bore for us. And no portion of
the Bible at such a time can be more fit for our study
than these His own last words with His Apostles. But
150 The Crisis of the Conflict. [SERM.
they belong only to those who are truly His. You
notice yourselves how carefully in the fourteenth chap-
ter, when Judas asked how our Lord would manifest
Himself unto them, but not unto the world, it is told you,
that it was not Iscariot Our Lord could not so have
spoken of the Christian's holiest relations with his Savi-
our and his God, had the traitor been present ; and so
before we can feel that these words belong to us, we
must have the joyful hope that we are true branches of
the Vine, true members of Christ's Church, waiting here
for the return of Christ our risen Head, that He may
take us with Him to those many mansions which He is
preparing in His Father's House. But to such as are
Christ's people in very truth, this their Lord's last
prayer for His Church is beyond measure precious.
For where shall we find more plain directions as to what
we ought to pray for, and what we ought to endeavour
to become ? For here we read what were the wishes of
Christ's own heart, what the petitions which He Him-
self offered to the Father for His people. Surely that
which He prayed we might become, should be the aim
of our lives that which we too should pray for, and
strive to attain to. And in that small portion of it
especially chosen for our meditation this evening, we
have no light matter set before us, but are told the
very secret of eternal life : " This is life eternal, to know
Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent."
Now in these words we must first observe that the
word know is used by St. John in a very strong way.
It does not mean with him what we call knowledge
the merely being acquainted with what has been said
or written upon any subject, and understanding it. When
he wrote his Gospel there was a heresy prevalent which
XL] The Crisis of the Conflict. 151
put knowledge in the place of holiness. It was a strange
system, chiefly drawn from oriental philosophy, and
dealing very little with the practical duties of life, but
trying rather to explain the method of creation, and
whence evil was derived, and by what steps the soul
could move upwards ; and St. John repeatedly alludes
to this heresy, and uses its terms, but always so as to
correct its errors. And thus, as it made knowledge to
be man's chief good, he shews us what true knowledge
really is. It had dwelt in his memory how his Lord
had used the word, and he had felt how in Christ is
contained all that truth which men seek in vain in
philosophy. He tells therefore how Christ had spoken
of His Apostles knowing the truth ; of those who do
God's will knowing the doctrine ; of His knowing His
sheep, and of their knowing His voice ; and of the Fa-
ther knowing Him ; and of His knowing the Father.
Now this last phrase may help in explaining to us
something of the Apostle's meaning : God the Father
knows the Son, and the Son knows the Father, by rea-
son of the Divine unity. They are partakers of the
same nature, the same attributes, and so united that
whatsoever the Father doeth, that doeth the Son like-
wise. And so, then, with the believer ; to know God
is the effect of being made like unto Him. Infinite as
is the distance between God and man in nature, it is
not so in the realm of grace. There they are brought
near to one another ; for the Christian's growth in grace
is the gradual formation in him of Christ's image, and
as bearing that image, and thereby becoming one with
Christ, he is united also to God the Father : and thus
St. Peter even speaks of Christians as being made par-
takers of the Divine nature. In Christ, therefore, the
believer is brought near unto God. As in Him the two
152 The Crisis of the Conflict, [SERM.
natures were united in one Person, so those who are
engrafted into Him by a living faith, are admitted into
union with God. To use St. Paul's words, " Now in
Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off, are made
nigh by the blood of Christ." And upon this nighness
follows the privilege which the Apostle proceeds to de-
scribe, that " through Christ we both," i.e. (both Jew and
Gentile) " have access by one spirit unto the Father."
It was a privilege which the Jew had ever possessed,
as living under a covenant with God, which was a fore-
shadowing of the Christian Church, and therefore anti-
cipated some of its blessings ; but the Gentile world
had been left to the dimness of natural religion, until
Christ came.
It is, then, to this close relation between God and
man which is now made possible by the blood of Christ,
that the Saviour refers in speaking of His disciples as
knowing the Father. Eternal life is to be found only
in God, who is the sole source of life and light. Even
the word used of Him in the Greek, "the true God,"
expresses this. It does not signify true, as of one
speaking truth, or as one whose promises are true, but
refers to the reality of His existence ; and thus in the
Creed we translate it by the word very, itself a Latin
word signifying 'true,' but referring to the truth and
reality of Christ's divine nature. Christ we affirm to be
Very God of Very God, God really, truly, essentially,
and substantially. And this is the word used here.
Eternal life is to know the Father as the only very
God.
And with this knowledge is joined the knowledge of
Christ, because it is by Him only that we can know the
Father. So St. Paul tells us, " Being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
XI.] The Crisis of the Conflict,
by whom also we have access unto this grace wherein
we stand." It is not the God of nature to whom the
Christian draws nigh. The attributes of the Deity
which nature proves to us, are, as the same Apostle
teaches us, His eternal power and Godhead. But in
Jesus Christ we learn His love ; learn the purposes of
mercy for which we were created and placed upon this
earth ; learn, too, the means provided for our restoration
to more than that first glory of human nature which
Adam bore when he walked with God in Paradise.
But this is but a small part of the meaning of this
clause of the text. It speaks of the person of our Sa-
viour as co-ordinate with God the Father in being the
object of that knowledge, the effect of which is eternal
life. And yet there is a contrast between the Saviour
and the Father, who is described as the only very God.
For the revelation of God in Christ Jesus is made to us,
not by the Godhead of the Son, but by the union of
the human nature with the Divine in His one person.
And thus St. John says, " No man hath seen God at
any time : the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom
of the Father, He hath declared Him." But how ?
Because " the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us, full of grace and truth ; and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father." Even
more plainly St. Paul describes this office of our Lord,
where he says to Timothy, " There is one God, and one
Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
The text, therefore, teaches us that this saving know-
ledge of God is possible only by a knowledge of
Jesus Christ as the revealer of God to mankind. God
in His abstract essence man cannot know. The attri-
butes which creation reveals to us fill us with wonder
and awe, as we contemplate God's universal sove-
1 54 Tlie Crisis of the Conflict. [SERM.
reignty, His infinite wisdom, His omnipotence. But
however deep and true our feeling of the magnificence
and beauty of God's works in creation, it produces no
such spiritual effect upon the soul as to be in it a well-
spring of eternal life. The Psalmist teaches us this,
where, in the nineteenth Psalm, he contrasts the teach-
ing of nature with that of revelation. " The heavens,"
he says, " declare the glory of God ;" but it is " the law
of God which is perfect, and converts the soul." We
gaze in astonishment at God's handiwork in the firma-
ment of heaven, but it is " the statutes of Jehovah which
rejoice the heart and enlighten the eyes." And if David
could so speak of old, when he had but types and sha-
dows of the Saviour, how much more true must it be of
us who have the substance ! To know Jesus Christ, as
sent by God, to know Him in those offices in which as
the Mediator He brings us near to the Father, this is
life eternal ; and to this declaration of our Lord St. John
in his Epistle refers, where he says, " This is the re-
cord, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life
is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he
that hath not the Son of God hath not life."
Such, then, were the Saviour's last words to His
Apostles, as they gathered round Him in awe during
the few peaceful moments that remained before the
agony in the garden. Already the shadow of the
Passion was darkening upon Him, but He could not
part from His loving followers without prayer for them.
And in that prayer He told them the true nature of
eternal life, that it consists in unity with the Son of
God, whereby we know Him, and in Him God the
Father. It is an awful theme, suiting the dread hour
at which it was spoken ; but St. Paul explains to us its
meaning, such as we have set forth above, in his words
XI.] The Crisis of the Conflict. 155
to the Philippians, when he thus describes the struggle
of 'his own life : " Yea, doubtless, I count all things
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of
all things, and do count them but dung that I may
win Christ, .... that I may know Him, and the power
of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His suffer-
ings, being made conformable unto His death, if by
any means I might attain unto the resurrection of
the dead."
Thus did St. Paul, though not present himself when
Christ in His last prayer set forth before His Apostles
the great object of His ministry, and of the office of
the Church in all ages, yet shew how fully he had ever
acted upon, and shaped his life by his Saviour's words.
And by these words the Saviour still testifies to us
what should be our great endeavour, and what it is
which decides whether or not we belong to Him. In
the lifelong struggle which, as the soldiers of Jesus
Christ, we here maintain, that which wins for us the
victory is the growing union with our Master wrought
in the hearts of His believing people by His own gifts
of grace. As we learn thus to know Him by growing
like Him, we feel that we have passed from death unto
life. If Christ be not formed in us, then, though we
be outwardly members of the Church, it is only as
Iscariot was in the company of the Apostles, and sooner
or later the day will come when, as on the evening
when Christ spake these words, the separation must
be made between the false professor and the true be-
liever. Up to this time Iscariot had walked with the
Twelve ; but he saw nothing in Christ but His human
nature, and desired nothing from Him, but place, and
power, and wealth, in a temporal kingdom. The other
156 The Crisis of the Conflict. [SERM.
Apostles, we know, had also shared these ambitious
hopes : that very evening they had disputed who should
be greatest. But they were gradually learning that
there was more in Christ ; the feeling which Peter had
once expressed, and which had stilled his doubts when
many were abandoning their profession, " Lord, to whom
shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life ;"
this love to Christ as the Giver of eternal life was fast
overcoming all other feelings in their minds. That
night, then, was the crisis of their lives. Hitherto they
had followed our Lord with mixed motives, but now
our Lord set forth before them His coming humilia-
tion, and shame, and death ; and that though for a
short season they would see Him again, yet soon He
would depart, and the Comforter who would come in
His place, would be the Holy Spirit present in their
hearts. He had long been preparing them for this,
and now they must decide. Even after His words,
which seem so plain to us, and after His long pre-
paration, the crisis came upon them suddenly ; and at
the first moment they failed. But the Eleven rose
bravely from their fall, and from that day earth had
lost its power over them. Their prayer now was to
be made conformable to Christ's sufferings ; their eyes
now were turned to Jesus as to one who had endured
the cross for them, and despised the shame. Their hap-
piness was to suffer. " I take pleasure," says St. Paul,
" in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecu-
tions, in distresses, for Christ's sake."
So did they pass from death unto life ; and their
pathway is also ours. We, like them, have to choose
between earth and heaven, between things temporal
and things eternal. And that which gave them strength
to win the victory must also strengthen us. We can
XL] The Crisis of the Conflict. 157
never hope to overcome the world by our unaided
efforts ; it is possible only through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Let us then, brethren, seek to know Him ; let
us seek it in prayer. In this very discourse He tells
us, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall
ask the Father in My Name, He will give it you." And
as we pray, so let us try to live, endeavouring to follow
our Saviour's example, seeking to become conformable
to His death ; so will earth lose its power over us, and
spiritual blessings be more prized, and we shall daily
more and more feel the truth of our Saviour's words,
that life eternal is to be found in Him alone.
It is a noble hope that is set before us, to know
Christ by growing like Him. It may seem almost
more than we dare aspire to while we are still en-
compassed by the weakness of human nature. And
yet we ought to aspire after nothing less ; and, as if
to encourage us, we see the Apostles failing in their
first attempt. But how grandly did they arise from
their fall! How different were those courageous men,
who in the presence of the whole council said by the
mouths of Peter and John, " Whether it be right in
the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto
God, judge ye," from the timid band who all forsook
the Master whom they loved, and fled. But the reason
is plain. In the intervening time they had passed the
crisis. They had taken their side with Christ for ever.
During the rest of their lives, good and evil, pleasure
and pain, prosperity and adversity, were things judged
of simply with reference to Christ. To know Him was
their sole object of desire ; and through evil report and
good report they stedfastly " looked unto Jesus as the
Author and Finisher of faith."
So with us. If we have taken our part finally with
158 The Crisis of the Conflict. [SERM.
Christ, we shall not fear lest the hope set before us be
beyond our powers, and more than we dare aspire to.
One thought will fill our hearts, one longing desire will
animate our whole lives, the desire so to know Christ
here as to dwell with Him for ever hereafter. And
as thus we ever look to Him for help, for guidance,
for instruction, for comfort, we gradually shall grow
more like Him, and the beginning, the first prepara-
tion be made for that full perfection of which St. John
speaks in those inspiring words, ".We know that when
Christ shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall
see Him as He is."
We have examined then, brethren, the crisis in the
lives of the Apostles ; we have seen how they passed
through it, and how faith won in them the victory. And
what happened in them is recorded for our example.
One caution, however, is needed. The crisis took place
in them under the pressure of great events, and in
a short space of time. Yet be sure that it only dis-
closed what had long been in preparation. Eleven of
the Apostles had long been gradually drawing nearer
Christ, one had been slowly separating from Him. Still
they walked together, and except in small matters pro-
bably none marked the vast change which was surely
growing up between them. But the events of the cruci-
fixion suddenly brought it to light, and the one has
throughout all ages since been held accursed as the
traitor to his Lord, the rest have been reverenced as
the founders of the Christian faith.
There may be those here who can look back to some
one event in their lives as the turning-point, the dividing
line in their own spiritual history. More, probably,
cannot so look back. The Christian life has grown up
so gradually within them, that like Samuel of old they
XL] The Crisis of the Conflict. 159
have ever belonged to God from their first dedication to
Him ; or they may still be altogether uncertain whe-
ther they belong to God or to the world. To these lat-
ter some crisis may come, some trial, or sore sickness, or
other event which may disclose to them what they are.
But what I would earnestly press upon you is, that the
crisis does not make the difference, but only reveals
it. Iscariot had long been growing conformed to the
world before his betrayal of his Master proved it to
himself and others. Peter long before had made his
choice, wlien at a time of general unbelief he felt that
Christ had the words of eternal life, and Christ alone.
Depend upon it that in your daily ordinary actions, and
in the common round of your usual duties you make
your choice between life eternal in your Saviour, and
death in the world. Strive, therefore, and pray that in
your daily duties you may choose Christ. Strive in
your allotted place and sphere to grow like Christ, and
know His life-giving power ; then if the crisis come of
some great and trying event, you will be yourselves
surprised to feel how true your faith is ; and if no such
event come, to disclose what you are to yourself, you
will learn it even more certainly upon the morning of
the Resurrection. But if you wait for some crisis to
make you repent, and seek a Saviour, there are the
boding words of Christ to warn you of your error, that
those who hear not Moses and the prophets, those, that
is, for whom the Bible and the ordinary means of grace
do not suffice, such would not be converted though one
rose from the dead.
SERMON XII.
&reat bcrtfjroto.
PSALM ix. 6.
"0 thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end."
T N the vision of the Church in heaven, granted for the
encouragement of the Church on earth, the victors in
the strife in which we are engaged are described as
singing " the song of Moses the servant of God, and of
the Lamb." That is, they are described as keeping per-
petual remembrance of the conflict they have endured.
Their song is not of the future, but of the past. The
host of the redeemed are pictured as looking back, like
the host of Israel on the morning of their deliverance,
over the troublesome waters through which their long
night march has led them, and mingling with their
triumph over the utter destruction of their enemy the
memories of that night of weakness and weariness and
fear. They sing the song of ' the servant of God,' the
song of all good and faithful servants, no small portion
of whose joy it will be to remember that good fight in
which they were more than conquerors through Him
that loved them. They sing ' the song of the Lamb.' By
the power of sympathy they enter into the joy of their
Lord that deep joy He knew, when He, the true Moses,
passed before His people alone through the depths of
the grave and hell, and came forth leading captivity
captive, destroying by His death him that had the
power of death.
M
1 62 Ttie Great Overthrow. [SERM.
The whole history of the Church's pilgrimage here 6*h
earth, all the greatness and the mystery, all the weari-
ness and the agony, all the patience and faith of her
long warfare, as well as all the glory of her last crowning
victory, all find their utterance in the song of Moses
and the Lamb.
In that song it is our privilege even now to join. As
it will be the joy of the Church triumphant to remember
the trials of the Church militant, so it should be the joy
of the Church militant to anticipate the rest and the
peace of the Church triumphant. By faith the Church,
while yet on earth, can ascend and dwell in heavenly
places with her risen Lord ; can see her warfare accom-
plished, her enemy vanquished ; can take up her song of
victory over him, and say now, even in the hour of her
sorest and weariest strife, what she shall yet say in the
hour of her final triumph, " O thou enemy, destruc-
tions are come to a perpetual end."
It is this sure and certain hope of the future that
gives so peculiar a character both to the prophecy and
the history of Scripture. It turns its prophecy to his-
tory. The prophet, as in this Psalm, sees the future so
certainly accomplished, that he speaks of it as already
passed ; he does not say, thus and thus it shall be, but
thus it is, thus it has been. And on the other hand, this
certainty turns sacred history into prophecy. The nar-
rator of some partial victory, some local triumph of
God's people or judgment on God's enemies, exults
over it in strains of praise that take, ere he is aware,
a louder and a deeper tone than fits the occasion, and
swell into the notes of the last great song of the Church
triumphant: he sings the song of Moses and of the
Lamb.
And it is in this spirit that the Church of Christ
XII.] The Great Overthrow. 163
should ever seek to interpret all history ; not merely all
Scripture history, where the conflict between good and
evil is distinctly traced, but all history whatever. The
history of our own hearts where flesh and spirit wage
such deadly war ; the history of the Church of Christ,
from the first proclamation of enmity between the seed
of the woman and the serpent, down to the last good
word spoken or brave deed done for Christ, that proves
the Captain of our salvation with us still ; the history of
the kingdoms of the world, with all its strangely inter-
mingled good and evil, its terrible preponderance and
triumph of evil over good ; in all these, through all
these, one thought should still be present with us, one
clear, assured conviction sustain and guide us still, the
end of all this is fixed, certain, appointed from ever-
lasting ; evil shall be cast out of our world, good shall
triumph in it everywhere and for ever ; the destructions
of the enemy shall come to a perpetual end.
It is of this assured certainty, it is of this ever-present
vision of the final overthrow of all evil, which God has
given to His Church, I have to speak.
I. And firstly, I would remind you that this certainty
is God's gift to His Church, and to His Church alone.
The final overthrow of all evil is a truth of pure reve-
lation. From the written Word of God, and from it
alone, do we learn the fact that the conflict between
good and evil which we see and feel, is not eternal ;
that a time was when it was not, and a time is coming
when it shall no longer be. We are too apt to forget
this. Like other ideas which the Bible reveals to us,
this idea of a final, triumph has happily so leavened and
possessed the minds of men, it seems so natural now to
all of us to expect it, that we are really in danger of
forgetting how entirely it rests upon the authority of
M 2
164 The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
revelation, how utterly impossible it is that it ever could
have made a part of natural religion. So completely is
this the case, that those who are most loudly calling on
us to cast off our old superstitious belief in miraculous
prophecy, are loudest in their prophecies of the final
triumph of good, and the utter destruction of all evil.
They are for ever assuring us of ' the good time that
is coming,' when mankind shall have improved them-
selves by the aid of physical science, and political
economy and natural morality, into universal virtue,
wisdom, and peace.
But when turning away from this book which they
bid us reject, we look upon those other revelations of
God which still remain to us, the natural world ; human
society ; our own experience ; all that we may call na-
tural, as distinguished from supernatural, what ground
do we see of this hope ? What voice of God in all these
tells us that destructions are to have a perpetual end ?
Not the voice of nature ; for that, ever interpreted more
and more clearly by science, speaks of one great, awful,
all-embracing law of vicarious suffering, by which the
happiness, the progress of the race is purchased, by the
suffering, the destruction of the individual ; the law
by which the weak and the imperfect perish, that the
strong may grow stronger and more perfect ; the law
by which the death or the agony of one sentient being,
makes the life or the pleasure of another ; the law by
which an ever-wasting destruction is called in to check
an ever-needlessly multiplying life ; laws which with
one voice proclaim, that physical evil and pain must be
as lasting as physical good, that suffering must still
be the shadow of joy, and death still the condition of
life, and that destructions shall never, can never come
to an end.
XII.] The Great Overthrow. 165
Is it the constitution of human society, and the course
of human history ? More and more clearly are these
revealing the working of that law of vicarious suffering,
even in a more terrible form, the law by which the
happiness of the few is dependent upon the suffering of
the many. What is it that governs that high civilization
of which we boast ourselves ? The law which governs
all human society, and which is the necessary condition
of all civilization and progress, is the law of unequal
distribution. All cannot have an equal share of wealth,
and leisure, and learning ; all cannot be equally culti-
vated. An equal division would make all equally poor,
not equally rich ; it would arrest all progress. It is
the law, then, of society, that many must be poor to
allow of some being rich, many ignorant to allow of
some being learned, many overworked to allow of some
having leisure.
Civilization, then, and progress, mean just this the
refined, the graceful, peaceful lives of the few, purchased
by the toil, the temptation, the weariness, the shortened,
saddened lives of the many. Civilization has still, like
all things human, its darker as well as its brighter
side ; its law of degradation, as well as its law of pro-
gress ; and the one is still seen to be the necessary con-
dition of the other. You may endeavour to lessen the
pressure of this law, by enactments of human statesman-
ship, or the counteracting influences of Christian bene-
volence ; you may lessen these inequalities, war against
these evils, but you never can eradicate them.
And what is history, for the most part, but the record
of the efforts men have been making to shift from one
class or other of society the burthen of this law ? What
are the wisest or the wildest political movements, but
attempts to adjust its pressure ? None have ever perfectly
1 66 The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
succeeded : no social polity has ever been seen, so per-
fect as not to inflict some suffering or some wrong on
some one class, none so lasting as not to need perpetual
re-adjustment. There is a decay of institutions, as of
men. New births there are, too, for these, but they are
still preceded by the sickness and death of the old. Not
gently and peaceably, but with convulsions and agonies
does the old perish, and the new come to life. And
here, too, this law seems eternal ; these destructions
seem to know no end.
Are we to look into our own hearts ? Who ever there
saw evil finally overthrown, good finally triumphant ?
Who ever could say, At last the warfare within me is
over, and my will, in perfect accord with all the laws of
right, rules absolutely and without effort all my nature ?
Who does not know that it is still the wisest and holiest
of men who mourn most over the perpetual warfare they
must wage against evil within them ; how its destruc-
tions never cease, but threaten ever the wreck of their
virtue and the ruin of their peace ; how it compels for
its conquest, the severest self-denial, the most ruthless
sacrifice of many a joy and many even an innocent
delight. And after all this lifelong struggle there
awaits us, if in this life only we have hope, the undis-
tinguishing grave, that involves in one common anni-
hilation all alike ; the grave, beyond which the soul
untaught of God can but send a guess or a wish, but
never gains the vision of a sure and certain hope ; the
dark curtain, with its terrible inscription of "perhaps,"
that drops at last upon the stage of our conflict. Here is
no assurance of the final overthrow of evil, not here do
we learn that destructions come to a perpetual end.
Nor do we gain this assurance by resorting to a
general belief in the goodness and benevolence of God,
XIL] TJie Great Overthrow, 167
a persuasion that because He is good and loving, He
must at last end all evil. For although creation does
most largely testify to the goodness of God, yet it is
clear that the idea of God's goodness creation gives us,
can never rise beyond the amount of goodness revealed
in creation. If that be, as it clearly is, a goodness
which allows of evil, nay, which has interwoven it in
the whole plan of the universe, how can we argue
from the exhibition of such goodness, that evil is ever
to be destroyed ? If its existence is consistent with
God's perfect law now, why not for ever ? An instant
of unnecessary evil or pain, is as inconceivable as an
eternity of it ; an instant of necessary evil seems to
insure an eternity of it. And, therefore, if we are to
judge of the purposes of God only by what He has
done, and is doing in creation ; if we are to judge of
the future of the world only by the past, or the present,
we must believe in the eternity of evil. The stream can
rise no higher than its source. A natural religion can
never rise above the teachings of nature, and if these
declare one fact more clearly and uniformly than an-
other, it is that evil, whether moral or physical, is na-
tural, is an inherent, essential, inseparable element in
all forms of creature life ; and that to talk of final de-
liverance from it is not to believe, but to contradict
the Bible of nature.
No, the word which tells us of the deliverance of
nature from what seems an essential part of nature,
must be supernatural. Nature can tell us nothing of
her future, for she can tell us nothing of her beginning.
It must be another voice than hers that gives us
a Genesis and a Revelation. If we would know this,
we must listen in the spirit to the voice from heaven,
which calls to us, as we seek hopelessly and wearily
1 68 The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
amidst the desolate places of earth for a sign that de-
solation shall have an end ; or, in its pleasant places,
for a promise that joy shall endure : " Come up hither,
and I will shew thee things to come." " Ascend up above
the region of nature, that thou mayest learn the true
aim and destiny of nature ;" and the voice that calls to
us, is the voice which in the beginning said, " Let us
make heaven and earth."
That voice it is, and that alone, which tells us that
in the beginning evil was not ; that there was a time
when all was very good.
That voice alone can tell us that evil is not God's
work, formed no part of the original constitution of
things ; that it was no imperfection in the mate-
rial which He found to His hand, and which im-
posed itself upon Him as an indispensable necessity in
all His work, but that it was a foreign element in-
troduced into this world of ours, at least, from without ;
introduced by the evil will and power of a being, not of
this world, and, therefore, which may be removed by
a higher will, and by a mightier power. It is God
who tells us, and He alone can tell us, " an enemy hath
done this."
But He tells us more than this. The knowledge
that an enemy hath introduced evil into this world
gives us no certainty it shall ever be cast out ; for, as
we have seen, if God Almighty could for a moment
permit the existence of evil here, we have no right to
say that He could not permit it always. The reason
for His tolerance of it, for aught we can tell, might be
eternal, and so too would be the evil. We need, for
the certainty of its end, another revelation ; we need,
not only that God should say an enemy hath done
this, but that He should say, the destructions of that
Xll.] The Great Overthrow. 169
enemy shall come to an end. And this is the revela-
tion He has given us. He has given it, not only in
the express words of those prophecies which from the
first foretell this end, and which fix, though in mystic
dates and figures, the very date of this end. But He
has given us a still more certain assurance. To the
word of His prophets He has added a sign. He has
shewn us evil already overthrown, our great enemy
completely vanquished. This Book reveals just that
one fact of which all nature supplies no single instance,
one case, not of partial and temporary, but of complete
and final victory over evil.
Our Gospel, our good news for man, is this, that
humanity, represented in its great Head and Chief, has
encountered the Evil One, has foiled his temptation, en-
dured the worst his hatred can inflict, passed through his
prison-house of death ; has risen, has ascended to the
heaven from which he has fallen, and dwells there for
ever. The voice which speaks from heaven of the end
yet to come, is His voice the voice of Him who was
dead, and is alive for evermore ; of Him, whose pro-
mise to us is that, because He lives, we shall live also.
The voice of Him, who, in the crisis of His great strife,
saw the travail of His soul already accomplished ; saw
the world for which He died, given Him as His eternal
inheritance, purchased with His Blood ; saw the glori-
ous future of that reign which must continue till all
things are put under His feet ; and seeing it, exclaimed,
" It is finished ! " That word of His it is our right to
repeat. In the life, death, resurrection, and ascension
of Christ, we see the pledge of the resurrection, of the
ascension of humanity beyond the reach of the Evil
One ; we see the works of the Devil destroyed by
the manifestation of the Son of Man ; we say, " It is
170 TJie Great Overthrow. [SERM.
finished." " O thou enemy, destructions are come to
a perpetual end."
Viewed in the light of this revelation, nature, that
before could tell us nothing of the end, now gives us
a mighty assurance of it. For every proof she gives
of this enmity of the destroyer, becomes a pledge of
his destruction. The more pitiless the havoc, the
wider the desolation he has wrought, the deeper grows
our conviction that our Almighty and all-loving Father
will not, cannot leave the enemy to work this cruel
havoc, an instant beyond that time which He has
set wherein to work by evil a greater good. The
remainder of the wrath must be restrained, and re-
strained for ever. And thus, as we look upon each
scene of ruin that tells the destroyer has been there,
it tells us that the restorer is yet to come. The once
pleasant places, the gardens of our delight that he
makes desolate, foretell by their very barrenness the
hour when they shall blossom as the rose. The fenced
cities of our joy that he lays into ruinous heaps, pro-
claim the hour when they shall be replaced by the
city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, through whose
gates no evil thing shall ever enter. The thirst of our
souls, fevered by the poisonous wounds he has in-
flicted, foretells the cool and refreshing streams of the
water of life, beside whose banks grows the Tree whose
leaves are for the healing of the nations. The very
pains of creation become prophecies of rest : it groans,
but it groans in travail ; it travaileth with the birth of
the new creation, where destructions shall be unknown
for ever.
And so the old word of triumph of the warrior be-
comes ours, " Out of the eater comes forth meat, out of
the strong sweetness." We raise against our enemy
XII.] TJie Great Overthrow. 171
our song of triumph, though we sing it with quivering
lips ; and by the anguish with which they quiver, and
the sorrow that chokes our speech, we know that the
morning of joy shall succeed the night of weeping, and
we exclaim, "O thou enemy," because of the deadli-
ness of thine enmity, because of the cruel ingenuity of
thy torture, because of the fierceness and pitilessness
of thy wrath, we know that " destructions shall come"
aye, we can say in assured faith, are come " to an end"
for ever !
II. In the next place we observe that, while the
date of this overthrow is concealed, the manner of it is
largely revealed.
The date of it is concealed. " Of that day or hour
knoweth no man," because such knowledge would be
hurtful to the Church ; hurtful in her earlier days, by
shewing her deliverance so far off that faith and patience
would have been too sorely tried ; hurtful in her latter
days by bringing that hope so near that her faith and
patience would have scarcely any trial at all ; and mis-
chievous, therefore, at any time to seek for and guess
at. No spirit is more injurious to the real, earnest,
patient Christian life than a spirit of eager, impatient
curiosity, which is for ever peeping and prying behind
the veil which God has interposed between us and the
future ; writing perpetual supplements to the Apocalypse ;
announcing, with all the solemnity and precision of a
herald, the very day when the great procession of judg-
ment is to appear, and assigning to each personage his
exact place in it : announcements which the course of
events is sure to contradict, and which the author must
forthwith replace by new ones, given with just as much
confidence as if the old had not just proved a failure.
We say nothing of the mischief that such Christian
172 The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
soothsaying does to those without by the ridicule which
it casts upon the awful themes which it profanes ; but
we would earnestly impress on you the mischief it does
within the Church ; the spiritual dissipation, the love
of excitement, the distaste for sober, practical study of
God's Word, that it is sure to generate. We only remind
both those who indulge in it, and those who, because
of it, scoff at prophetical studies, that for such sen-
sational treatment of prophecy Scripture gives no war-
rant, and against it, it gives more than one express and
solemn warning.
But just as it is not good for us to know or to guess
at the precise date of the end, so it is good for us to
know and meditate on the manner of it ; and there-
fore He who will not tell us the time of the end, does
tell us that concerning the manner of it that is cal-
culated to help, and not to hinder, our Christian life
meanwhile.
Two things He more especially tells us. Firstly, that
it will not be brought about by the gradual wasting away
of evil, and the gradual growth and spread of good ;
that we are not to look to see our present Christendom
gradually conquering all heathendom, and growing the
while more and more perfect and Christ-like. On this
point our Lord's words seem decisive, making His
coming in judgment to Jerusalem the type of His last
final coming to judge the world. He tells us how that
coming is to be preceded, not only by manifestations of
the power of evil in the world of nature, by wars and
famines and earthquakes, but by manifestations of its
power within the Church, of which those outward ills
are but the shadow ; by apostacy and false prophets,
by wide-spreading heresies, by waxing iniquity and
waning love, by the dying out of living faith from the
XII.] The Great Overthrow. 173
earth, until the carcases the dead forms of dead re-
ligions and churches lie waiting and inviting the gather-
ing of the vultures of judgment to cleanse the earth of
them for ever.
So St. Paul foretells the " falling away" first, " the reve-
lation of the man of sin," " to be destroyed only with the
brightness of the Lord's coming ;" so in the vision of St.
John the shadows grow darker and the lights fainter as
the vision draws to a close. The forms that rise up out
of the abyss grow more bestial and horrible. So the
beast succeeds the dragon, and the mouth of the beast
speaks still fiercer blasphemies, and Babylon the great
grows still mightier, and she, whose name is Mystery,
drinks deep, even to drunkenness, of the blood of the
saints, and the witnesses lie slain in the streets of the
great city, and the woman flies into the wilderness ;
until at last heaven is opened, and He, who is faithful
and true, comes forth to judge and to make war in
righteousness, and to win His great victory that pro-
claims Him King of kings, and Lord of lords.
Of the meaning of all the details of these mystical
pictures there may be, and there is, great debate and
doubt ; but surely no doubt of this much at least, that
they all foreshadow, not a great growth of good and
decay of evil, but rather a great growth of evil and
decay of good, to be ended at last by a sudden final
overthrow of evil at the coming of the Lord.
It is good for us to remember this. It preserves us
from a false estimate of the Church's mission in this
dispensation. The Church must be known by her work,
but we must take care we understand what that work
is, or we shall be unreasonably expecting that from her
which she was not sent to do. Her work is warfare
against evil everywhere, complete conquest over evil
174 The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
nowhere. Not by the completeness of her conquest
over evil, but of her antagonism to all evil, are we to
judge how far she is true to her mission. To look for
more than this is sure to lead to disappointment, perhaps
to unbelief; to look for less than this is sure to lead to
carelessness and sloth. To look only for this ; to under-
stand that we are to contend against every possible
form of evil, and yet that we shall never succeed, in
this dispensation, in casting out any one form of evil ;
to work as if all were to be done by us, to wait as
if nothing were to be done by us ; to know that the
warfare is still to be ours, and the victory at last, not
ours, but our Lord's ; this is " the patience and the
faith of the saints."
2. Again we learn another truth concerning the
manner of this overthrow, and that is, that it will be
visibly and unmistakeably miraculous, that it will be
seen to be of such a nature as to be solely and ex-
clusively God's work, and not in any way man's work,
nor yet the result merely of an increase of what we call
the ordinary workings of His Spirit amongst us; but
rather such a manifestation of the Divine power in the
person of Christ as shall bring out distinctly before
us all the true character of this great conflict, that it is
a strife, not of force, or of laws, but of wills, of persons ;
a war, not of good against evil, as we might imagine it
to be now, but of the Evil One against God and His
*>
Christ.
Of the nature of the signs that usher in that last great
convulsion there may be doubt and debate. How far
all those physical signs and wonders in the heaven and
the earth that are to accompany it, the darkening
sun and the waning moon, and the falling stars, and the
heavens shrinking as a scroll, how far these are to be
XIL] The Great Overthrow. 175
regarded as strictly literal, how far symbolical, the end
alone will tell ; but of the general purport of them, so
far at least there can be no doubt, that such signs and
tokens shall accompany it as shall prove it to be the
work, not of nature or natural forces, but of nature's
God. Whatever other sign shall be revealed, one shall
be seen above all, the sign of the Son of Man in
heaven. The power that destroys all evil, the great
glory that restores all good, shall be seen to be His,
and His alone.
And it' is well for the Church that she does possess
this prophecy of the manner of the end. It helps to
keep alive her faith in God ; her faith, that is, in God in
the only sense in which the word God has any religious
meaning ; her faith in a will not a first cause, a per-
vading force, but a supreme, all-ruling, all-ordaining
personal will, in which we can trust, to which we can
pray a will, the thought of which delivers us from
the awful tyranny of soulless, unintelligent, mechanical
law. And it is this faith, the very ground of all reli-
gion, that needs in these latter days to be strengthened
against the ever-growing idolatry of law, which threat-
ens to supersede the worship of the lawgiver ; that
worship of the creature rather than of the Creator which
in one form or other has been the world's great temp-
tation to the Church : a temptation which is seducing
Christian men not only to misinterpret the phenomena
of the natural world, but even those of the spiritual
world, the kingdom of grace : a temptation to narrow
as far as possible the limits of the supernatural, and to
enlarge as much as possible the limits of the natural ;
to shew in how very low and merely natural a sense
we may say, the Bible is God's word to man, prayer is
man's speech to God, or the sacraments God's gift of
176 The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
supernatural grace ; to shew how all these doctrines
may be made ingeniously to fit in with a system of
laws and forces which may be seen and measured and
weighed and calculated ; to explain away, in short,
God out of the Bible and the Sacraments and the
Church, because it is the fashion now to explain Him
away out of the world.
Now against this idolatry of nature against this dread
and dislike of the supernatural even in the kingdom of
God this temptation to subordinate the Church, whose
laws are supernatural, to the world, whose laws are
natural, and to make the constitution of the physical
and material the rule by which to interpret the consti-
tution of the spiritual, against this, God has armed His
Church by revealing to her the great antagonistic truth
that it is not the world whose natural history conditions
and limits the history of the Church, but the Church
whose supernatural history shapes and rules the history
of the world ; that the destiny of man is not to be
learned by investigating the laws of nature, but the
destiny of the world to be learned by a knowledge of
the true history of man. He reveals this to us first, in
that great supernatural fact the central fact of the
world's and of the Church's history the Incarnation ;
reveals to us in it the transcendent importance of that
human history, in the course of which God became
man ; shews how the whole world nay, if needs were,
the whole universe were fitly regarded but as the tem-
porary platform on which this great fact were wrought
out ; how all its history, from all that infinity of ages
science tells us of, were sufficiently accounted for, if it
existed for this only ; how its utter annihilation were
but a small matter compared to the loss of one soul
for which Christ died.
XIL] The Great Overthrow. 177
He shews us, too, how the whole of that history of
man, which thus dominates the history of the world, is
altogether supernatural. That it is in some degree un-
natural we have already seen. It is unnatural that the
evil will of an enemy should introduce disorder into
God's order, lawlessness into His law. It is unnatural
that man's will should continue in rebellion against the
will of his Creator. But it is a supernatural thing that
the Divine will should suspend the operation of that
great natural law by which death should instantly have
followed sin, that Omnipotence should hold apart for a
time acts and their true consequences, crime and punish-
ment, desert and reward. Not judgment inflicted but
judgment delayed, not goodness triumphant but good-
ness suffering, not right and might miraculously united
for ever, but right and might miraculously separated
even for one moment, this is the real miracle, the
great mystery of mysteries.
This is the word of history ; and the word of prophecy
is like unto it. As history reveals to us disorder un-
naturally introduced and supernaturally restrained, so
prophecy reveals to us order supernaturally restored ;
shews us that Divine will which now overrules evil,
appearing to overthrow it ; shews us the true, the na-
tural moral order of the world restored, the law of
righteous government working the true unity between
right and might, purity and joy, on the one hand, and
between wrong and weakness, wickedness and death
on the other ; shews the whole history of our race on
earth to be one long supernatural pause and paren-
thesis in a far vaster history, whose deeper laws and
mightier forces embrace and girdle in from the first
our lawless unrest.
And these two great lessons mutually strengthen
N
i/8 The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
each other. Believe in the will that supernaturally over-
rules, and you have less difficulty in believing in the
will that shall supernaturally overthrow evil. Believe
in the will that is supernaturally to overthrow evil, and
you will have less difficulty in believing in a will that is
controlling and overruling it now.
III. And now of the result of that great overthrow
of the new heavens and new earth which is to come
forth at God's command from the ruins of the old,
what have we to say ? But little, for God has told
us but little. It doth not yet appear what we shall
be. It could not yet appear. The mortal cannot
comprehend immortality, the corruptible incorruption.
The language which foretells these becomes mystic
and symbolical. The city whose gates are precious
stones and whose streets are gold, that needs not the
light of the sun, or the moon, through whose streets
flows a mystic river, by whose banks grows a mystic
tree of life, what does it tell us, save that the lan-
guage which men speak on earth has no words in
which it were possible to reveal the joys of heaven ?
Nay, even those words which seem most intelligible,
those which tell us rather what we shall not be, than
what we shall be, that there shall be no sin, nought
that defileth, no curse ; how sorrow and sighing shall
flee away, and God Himself wipe away all tears From
all eyes, even these, when we ponder on them, seem
full of mystery; for with the vanishing away of all
that is evil, it seems to us as if there must also
vanish much that is good. There are many of the
noblest elements of goodness that seem impossible,
save as existing in antagonism to evil. To say there
shall be no evil in the world, seems to be equivalent
to saying, there shall be no pity, no mercy, no bene-
XII.] The Great Overthrow. 179
volence, no fortitude, no courage, no self-sacrifice ; that
is, it seems to say that, though this life be our prepara-
tion for another, yet that some of the very chief of
those lessons we shall have learned here, shall be use-
less there.
All this may serve to shew us that a condition of
pure and unmixed good, of which we talk so freely,
is really quite as inconceivable, perhaps more so than
one of unmixed evil ; and that heaven is quite as great
a mystery as hell.
One thought, however, we can with some distinct-
ness grasp ; it is the one suggested in our text. It is
this, that it must be a state of infinite progress ; a life,
not, as we too often think of it, of progress arrested,
a life in which humanity, at once perfected, has before
it only an eternity of virtuous repose ; but a life of in-
tense and glorious activity. The promise of eternal
life necessarily implies this, for life is something more
than existence. Life, in its truest meaning, is the
highest and happiest manner of being ; it is exist-
ence with every faculty, every power of our nature in
its fullest, freest exercise. Whatever falls short of this,
whatever checks or limits any one faculty, whatever of
weariness or weakness there be in us, comes from the
imperfection of our life, comes from its invasion in
some measure by its antagonist death. And so we
call it " this mortal life." This life, whose every breath,
whose every movement, is one half death, for such a
life rest is essential, because the destruction of it is in-
cessant. But the very idea of perfect life, a life that
knows no strife with death, that needs to defend it-
self against no destruction, to repair no waste, implies,
not eternal repose, but eternal activity, the life of a
spiritual, intelligent, immortal creature, whose whole
i8o The Great Overthrow. [SERM.
being, whose every power and faculty lives, intensely
lives, in the glorious activity in which perpetual ser-
vice and perpetual rest are one. " They rest, saith
the Spirit, from their labours." And yet "they cease
not day or night," proclaiming by all the unwearied
actings of their glorified natures, saying, with the
eternal hymn of an eternally happy life, " Glory, and
honour, and power, be unto the Lamb for ever ! "
For such a race there must be eternal progress, for
there must be eternal acquisition without the slightest
loss. How much of our life is lost in our perpetual
warfare against death ! How much in the labour for
the meat that perisheth ! How much in those low,
wearing, petty cares and anxieties that weigh down
to earth the noblest souls ! How much of each life,
how much of the sum of all lives, seems wasted in
our mere effort to live ! And, then, for the whole race
in any one age, what hindrances, what interruptions
to its progress in these destructions of the enemy !
How much of the experience of each life perishes
with it ! What glorious treasures of knowledge are
buried in each generation over and over again ! What
long, long ebbings of the tide of progress, what irre-
gularities and uncertainties in its flow ! What pre-
cious things it carries and sweeps away ! How small
a portion does each generation inherit of the wealth
of its predecessor, and how little does it leave to that
which succeeds it !
This is the great destruction of our enemy. A mortal
race can never be a perfect race. But think of the
infinite progress, in glory and honour, of the race that
possesses immortality ; a race, each individual of which
is for ever contributing, to the common inheritance of
knowledge and happiness, the imperishable gifts of
XIL] The Great Overthrow. 181
a spirit made perfect ! Think of the eternity of a race
to whose progress there is actually no limit, save that
which forbids the finite to become infinite, which leaves
therefore to the creature, who still adores and con-
templates and approaches to his Creator, still an eter-
nity of progress !
And this is the hope set before us in the Gospel :
the " inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not
away," of which nature gives no promise, science no pro-
phecy, history no hope ; the inheritance which the mi-
racle of redemption has purchased, and the miracle of
revelation made known, and the miracle of regeneration
conveys. These are the good things which God hath
hidden from the wise and prudent, too wise to believe
in the invisible, too prudent to trust in the undemon-
strated, but which He hath revealed to babes, to loving,
trusting hearts whose highest wisdom is to know their
Father's voice, and whose deepest prudence is to trust
their Father's word. To these, and these alone, it is
given here to sing this 'song of triumph and joy ; they,
and they alone, can say " O thou enemy, destructions
are come to a perpetual end !"
The song that shall fully utter all that hope implies,
cannot be sung on earth ; it is that " new song" which
those whose pilgrimage is still unaccomplished, whose
warfare is yet unended, cannot yet learn. Nay, even that
song of victory whose notes we have been trying to catch
to-night, we cannot often sing. It is our war-song here ;
we sing it at times as we enter into the battle ; but in
the strife the song of triumph is replaced by the sigh of
weariness, and the groan of pain, and the cry of warn-
ing. Into that strife each one of us, who lives for God,
enters as he leaves this place. The long narrow path
through the troublesome waters stretches out before us
1 82 The Great Overthrow. [SERM. XII.
again ; and for the safe shore, and the bright morning,
and the overthrown enemy, we see only the next step
before us, and that but dimly often, and the clouds
of doubt and perplexity above us, and behind us is
the voice of the pursuing enemy, and our hearts grow
faint and our feet weary, as we pass on slowly, un-
certainly, fearfully, often, no song of praise upon our
lips, happy if we are always able to speak the need-
ful prayer for help. Aye, and sadder than this, we
find it hard to remember that we are pilgrims at all.
The vision of glory grows dim, the song of victory faint,
not only in the night of spiritual trial and the weari-
ness of spiritual warfare, but in the broad glare of the
working-day world and the noise of the great battle
of life.
Let us bear away with us, then, as helps, to be
availed of at some future moment of temptation, these
two truths that we have been contemplating. Against
this overmastering tyranny of the visible which ever
wars against the power of the invisible, the thought
of the awful, the truly supernatural character of this
present life, the terrible strife of wills, in which our wills
are taking part, in a world in which Satan contends with
Christ for the souls of men. Against the weariness
and faintheartedness that feels the reality and the great-
ness of this life, but feels too its weariness and its risk,
the thought of the assured and promised victory revealed
in the Church's song of triumph, " O thou enemy, de-
structions are come to a perpetual end."
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