. M SERMONS PREACHED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY WITH TWO SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH AT THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT EPHPHATHA. EPHPHATHA OR amelioration of tfje SERMONS PREACHED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY WITH TWO SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH AT THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT BY F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. CANON OF WESTMINSTER, AND RECTOR OF ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER iiontion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1892 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY. First Edition, 1880; Reprinted, 1891. TO THE VERY REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., THAN WHOM FEW LIVING MEN HAVE SHOWN A DEEPER INTEREST IN EVERY GOOD WORK WHICH CAN HELP FORWARD THE HAPPINESS OF ALL CLASSES, WHETHER RICH OR POOR, fjcst Sermons ate WITH SINCERE AFFECTION AND RESPECT. 2015302 PREFACE. THE seven Sermons which give their title to this little volume were preached in the ordi- nary course of my duties at Westminster Abbey during the months of December 1879 and January 1880. I publish them partly in obedience to the requests of many who desired to possess them in a permanent form, but chiefly because they carry out one con- secutive line of thought, and deal with some topics which are not frequently touched upon in pulpit exhortations. " Pauperism," it has been said, is national dishonour ; so is drunkenness ; so is pre- ventible disease ; so is the miserable squalor in which our poorest classes in the large towns live, even when they escape the workhouse. viii PREFACE. These are the most real and formidable ene- mies we have (as a nation) to contend with, and if we attack them sincerely, we shall have fighting enough to last our time. 1 If these Sermons be even in a very slight degree effectual in diverting the thoughts of Chris- tians from controversies about things doubtful or non-essential, if they tend to deepen the feeling of mutual charity among all who earnestly desire to carry on the work of Christ in the world, they will have fulfilled the object which has mainly induced me to let them see the light. If the main thoughts here urged be true and right, perhaps others may pursue them with greater power and more advantage to the general good. We are told by Bishop Burnett that it was the noble study of the Cambridge Platonists " to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being in parties, or from narrow notions, superstitious conceits, and fierceness 1 Speech of Lord Derby at the Mansion House, March 1st, 1880. PREFACE. about opinions." They endeavoured to achieve these aims by their large catholicity of spirit in dealing with questions of theology ; but the same end may perhaps be also furthered by the humble endeavour to call attention to those vast fields of labour in which all sects and classes oi' Christians may strenuously and joyfully take a common part. The eighth and ninth Sermons were preached at my own church at the opening of two ses- sions of Parliament. They may perhaps serve to show that it is possible for a clergyman without offence to deal with questions which may be fairly called political. They were kindly received by many members of Parlia- ment who differ in their political views, and their publication was even requested by some of these, as well as by one whose high rank and office might well entitle him to regard his request almost in the light of a command. The last Sermon was preached in the Abbey in June 1879. This Sermon also touches more or less on political considera- x PREFACE. tions, and is added to the rest in obedience to a wish which I could not disregard. Perhaps it is superfluous to say even thus much about these few Sermons. Apart from the living voice, and such interest as may have been derived from the places and circum- stances in which they were spoken, they can but be regarded as dead leaves. Yet even dead leaves may have their use. " They will reach the hands of the reader chill and dis- coloured ; but when, in the autumn evenings, the leaves fall and lie on the ground, more than one glance may still fall on them, more than one hand still gather them. And even if they were despised of all alike, the wind may sweep them away, and prepare with them a couch for some poor man, on whom Pro- vidence looks down with love from the height of heaven." F. W. FARRAR. ST. MARGARET'S RECTORY, WESTMINSTER CONTENTS. SERMON I. PAGE WHY JESUS SIGHED I SERMON II. SINCERITY OF HEART AS THE FIRST CONDITION OF SERVICE 41 SERMON III. ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE 79 SERMON IV. THE WINGS OF A DOVE 1 19 SERMON V. WORK IN THL GROANING CREATION 153 SERMON VI. THE MENDING AND MARRING OF HUMAN LIKE . . igi xii CONTENTS. SERMON VII. PAGE LAST LESSONS FROM THE SIGH OF CHRIST 22$ SERMON VIII. LEGISLATIVE DUTIES 259 SERMON IX. THE AIMS OF CHRISTIAN STATESMANSHIP . SERMON X. MANY FOLDS : ONE FLOCK 315 SERMON I. WHY JESUS SIGHED: THE SIGH OF PITY A STIMULUS TO ACTION, WHY JESUS SIGHED. ' Almighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life ; give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that His inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. "Pereant commenta philosophorum qui negant in sapientem cadere perturbationes animorum." AUG. in Joann, xiii. 21. Sight so deform what heart of rock could long Dry-eyed behold ? Adam could not, but wept, Though not of woman born : compassion quell'd His best of man, and gave him up to tears A space, till firmer thoughts restrained excess, And scarce recovering words, his plaint renew'd : ' O miserable Mankind, to what fall Degraded, to what wretched state reserv'd ! ' " MILTON, Paradise Lost, xi. 494 510. " Ahi quanto a dir quel era e cosa dura Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte, Che nel pensier rinnova la paura ! Tanto e arnara, che poco e piu morte. '' DANTE, Inferno, \. 4 7. '*' SERMON I. WHY JESUS SIGHED. MARK vn. 34. "And looking up to heaven, He sighed, and saith unto hini t Ephphatha! that is, 'Be opened.'" ' THE incident to which this verse alludes happened during that period of wandering we might almost say of flight in foreign and half- heathen countries, which was forced upon our 1 Kai dyo/SA./4'os fls rbv otipavbi', eff-rfva^f, Kal Xe'-yfj aury, 'E4>a0a, g (ff-ri, AiwofxtojTi. In the English version of the text we may notice (a) that a more definite sense would be given to the word StavolxdijTi by rendering it " Be thou opened." The miraculous command seems to be addressed to the sufferer himself, whose whole existence is, as it were, closed by his being deaf and dumb. Further, the aorist implies that the result was instantaneous ; and the compound verb that it was complete. (8) The heavenward glance was doubtless a glance of prayer 6 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. Lord by the hatred and jealousy of the religious authorities of His nation, after the brief year (John xi. 41), and served incidentally to refute those who attri- buted the Lord's miracles to evil powers (Matt. ix. 34 ; Mark iii. 22 ; Luke xi. 15), which was a favourite slander of the Pharisees. (y) The word effreva^f might equally well be rendered "He groaned," as the same verb is rendered in Rom. viii. 23, "even we ourselves groan within ourselves" ; 2 Cor. v. 2, "for in this we groan," and verse 4. In Heb. xiii. 17, ^ arfva^ovres is ren- dered "not with grief;" and in James v. 9, jilj ffTtva(rre/'a|as Ttf irvev^an aiiro?. 3 John xi. 33, eVeptjui7v et's noia.v Tairtlvuffiv ftya-ytv ravrr^v 8 rf fj.iroir\a.arv airpo v arc very powerful. But c 1 8 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. enough in this rapine and fury to make Jesus look up to Heaven and sigh ? 4. And alas, it is not only the unintelligent creation which groans and travails. We our- selves, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we ourselves also groan within ourselves, wait- ing for the adoption, to wit the redemption of the body. We are apt to be very proud of ourselves and of our marvellous discoveries and scientific achievements ; but, after all, what a feeble creature is man ! what a little breed his race ! what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue ! We fade as the grass, and are crushed before the moth. If we knew no more than Nature can tell us, and had no help but what Science can give to us, what sigh would be too deep for beings born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards ? " Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery ; " so we say at the solemn truthful moment when we drop the body the universal groan is full of hopefulness, for it is represented as being called forth by the travail-pangs of a new birth. SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 19 into the grave, and man is full of misery indeed ! i. Look, for instance, at the world of disease and pain. You need not go far to look. One house will suffice you to see the wretchedness of the human race. 1 We are met in this great Abbey close beside the Palaces of the Legis- lature, and on one side of us is Westminster Hospital, and on the other St. Thomas's Hos- pital, as though to bear their solemn witness how vast is the task before us, how dread is the necessity for religion and for government, to battle against human sin and human pain. Go into either of these great hospitals, and what will you see ? Oh, what varied evidences of human anguish ! On that bed lies a strong workman, crippled for life by an accident, and forgetting his own pain as the tears rush into his eyes to think of his worn wife and starving little ones. That little child, trained on gin, 1 " Humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti, Sufficit una domus ; paucos consume dies et Dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris aude." Juv. Sat. xiii. 159. C 2 20 EPHPHATHA. and screaming for every bottle which it thinks must contain gin, is dying of atrophy, the re- sult of vile neglect. That poor half-witted old woman ends here, in the anguish of some in- ward complaint, her harmless life of unbroken struggle with affliction. The muttering lips, the clutching hands of yonder man are the signs of the fell disease which is the Nemesis of drunkenness. The bones of that other, the victim of dissolute courses, are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust. And Jesus had seen such things. He had healed the impotent man at Bethesda, and the frenzied boy at Hermon, and the poor wretch who was deaf and dumb, and blind and mad at Capernaum ; and the ten lepers at En Gaunim ; and had seen "All Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs ; " ' and many more which I dare not dwell upon, 1 Milton, Par. Lost, xi. 480. SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 21 and can you wonder that He looked up to heaven and sighed ? ii. We have been glancing at some of the con- ditions which affect the physical world of man ; the anguish which, in one form or another, by sickness or by accident, seizes ere we die the poor mortal bodies of most of us ; but ah ! that is not the worst. In the terrible picture of the " Last Judgment," by Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, where the great painter's conception of Him who sighed for human sorrow, is an awful avenging figure, with hand wrathfully uplifted, grasping ten thousand thunders, and hurling down men's souls by millions into the abyss, he has painted one lost spirit who is being dragged down by a horrible fiend. This fiend has driven his fangs into the flesh of the doomed victim ; but the poor wretch is wholly uncon- scious of the agony ; he is looking up in mental anguish, thinking only of the lost heaven. Even so it is that the sorrows of the body are swal- lowed up in the keener anguish of the soul, 22 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. and the wounded affection aches more painfully than the throbbing nerve. Look, then, at the world of man's heart. How sweet is the un- broken home ; how happy ! Ah, but of what brittle glass is this our home-happiness made ! How many of our homes are unbroken ? into how many has the silent shadow never glided ? how many have not been overshadowed by the icy hand ? Ye who have reached middle age, has not your path in life been marked by the gravestones of your earlier friends ? Has the light of your eyes been taken from none of you at a stroke ? Fathers, have none of you followed to the tomb the dear youth who should have been the prop of your old age ? Mothers, have you never seen the dust strewn on the little flower-like face ? Will there be no vacant chairs this Christmas by your firesides ? Weep not ; we shall go to them, though they shall not return to us. " Oh Ibrahim, Ibrahim," ex- claimed Mahomet over the body of his dead child "if it were not that the promise is faith- ful, and the hope of resurrection sure ; if it SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 23 were not that this is the way to be trodden by all, and the last of us shall join the first ; I would grieve for thee with a grief deeper even than this," and with uncontrollable sob- bings the strong man put the little body back into the nurse's arms. " I am torn up by the roots and lie prostrate on the earth," wrote Edmund Burke on the loss of his only son. " I arn now old, feeble, bent, and miserable," said Sir William Napier, "and my eyes are dim, very dim, with weeping for my lost child." How many millions of the nameless have had to utter the same bitter wail! But this has been going on for ever, and Jesus had seen it all. He had seen, laid stark upon the bier, the widow's only son. He had seen the little maid of Jairus lying pale and cold. He had seen Mary weeping for Lazarus dead. And, as He looked out upon a world of death, can you wonder, I ask again, if. looking up to heaven, He sighed? iii. For even this, alas, was not all, and not the worst. Sickness may be cured ; and pain 24 EPHPHATHA. assuaged ; and Time lays his healing hand on the wounds of death. And again sickness may be as the fire purging the gold ; and when we think of the death of the righteous, we hardly dare to wish them back again. In all these things there may be a soul of goodness in things evil. But oh, the ravages of sin ! there is mischief, and unmingled mischief, there. It is told of Queen Blanche of Navarre, mother of St. Louis of France, that she often said she would rather see her son a corpse at her feet, than know that he had committed a deadly sin. It is told of another sad queen, Queen Marie Antoinette of France, that to her the sorrow which, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up all other sorrows, was to know what vile hands would have the train- ing of her princely boy. 1 But is that sorrow of 1 " This fear it was a fear like this I have often thought which must among her other woes have been the Aaron-woe that swallowed up all the rest to the unhappy Marie Antoinette. This must have been the sting of death to her maternal heart, the grief paramount, the crowning grief, the thought, namely, that her royal boy would not be dismissed from the honours of royalty to peace and humble innocence ; but that his fair cheek would be ravaged by vice as well as by sorrow ; that he would SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 25 watching the degeneracy of a bright life, the cor- ruption of an innocent spirit, is it a strange, abnormal sorrow ? Has no parent among you had to send a child to start for life in some great school, or in some great city, and watched with an aching heart " the fine gradations of vice or intemperance by which the clear-browed boy has grown into the sullen, troubled, dissatis- fied youth " ? Would the story of the Prodigal have touched as it has touched the heart of the world if it were rare ? Does the world offer at this moment an exhilarating spectacle? Wars costing so many precious lives ; sedition trying to rear its head ; reckless, murderous conspiracies ; widespread distress ; the sinful- ness of waste ; the baseness of dishonesty ; the adulteration of food ; selfish luxury ; mad greed of gain ; houses where, because of bad passions, the fires of hell mix with the hearth ; the be tempted into brutal orgies and every mode of moral pollution, until, like poor Constance with her young Arthur, but for a sadder reason, even if it were possible that the royal mother should see her son in the courts of heaven, she would not know again one so fearfully transfigured." DE QUINCEY, Autobiog. Sketches. 26 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. reeling army of drunkards ; the miserable victims of man's most degraded selfishness doomed by thousands to loathly lives and loathlier deaths; rancours in the political world, rancours yet more deadly in the so- called religious world ; slander, and lies, and libels never more infamously rampant ; the hearts of good men made sad which God hath not made sad ; men hateful and hating one another ; is it altogether a glad spectacle, a happy spectacle ? And all this too had Jesus seen. He had seen the petty tyranny of the Herods. He had seen angry and unscrupulous religionists hating each other for differences of opinion, dealing in plausible disparage- ments and base insinuations, scheming and plotting to veil deadly hatreds under decent forms. He had seen Pharisees raging at Sadducees, and Sadducees sneering at Phari- sees, and both alike conspiring, in the interests of a sham religion, to murder Him ; and He had seen the riot of the prodigal, and the anguish of the adulteress ; and the shame SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. of the publican had moved his compassion ; and the tears of the penitent harlot had fallen on His feet. And once more, I ask, can you wonder if, as Jesus thus looked on the world of Sickness, the world of Death, the world of Sin, He looked up to Heaven, and sighed ? 5. But why, my brethren, have I thus set before you this sad picture as it is ? Not, be assured, with no object, although I think that the mere recognition of such facts is most needful sometimes for our callous selfish- ness and fastidious sensibility. It is good, it is right, to startle, if possible, the hard indifference of that vulgar English comfort and domesticity, which does nothing, and gives so shamefully little, for the sorrow around it. And the reason why it is right and useful is because there is a remedy for many of those evils ; and the sigh for all the misery around us is but the passing expression of a sym- pathy which may find instant relief in bene- ficent action. If there were no remedy for any of these things, to sigh would be a useless 28 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i sentimentality. Scripture has nothing but rough scorn for mere fantastic melancholy, Human sorrow is a field too sacred to be abandoned to fine people, . " The sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe, Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched, Nursing, in some delicious solitude, Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies." No ! if Scripture ever forces us, amid our idle chorus, to pause and listen to the sad music of humanity, it is only that it may stir us up the next moment as with a trumpet-blast to active service. In one sense, indeed, there is no remedy against these disturbing elements in the life of man ; no armour against fate. No toil of ours can make of this world a safe or perfect place. It is not the hand of man that can ever wipe all tears from off all faces. This fatal flaw in the world that now is, has been recognised by the earliest ages of mankind. It is the Tree of the knowledge of evil which casts its dark shadow even in the Paradise of God. The oldest Epics recognised the SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 29 truth. Achilles cannot be quite invulnerable in the Iliad, nor Siegfried in the Nibelungen, nor Balder in the Eddas. No stately plea- sure house will exclude the gliding phantoms. The arrows of calamity fly in ten thousand different directions, and the air is full of them, and they wound us in the one weak place. Our strength must fail. Our youth must vanish like the morning dew. Our joys must make themselves wings and fly away. Our intellect must grow feebler, our mortal powers decay, our dearest die. " To each his suffer- ing ; all are men condemned alike to groan." But what is the lesson ? Not unmanly com- plaining ; not idle speculation ; not the selfish attempt to secure ourselves alone ; No ! but help ; no ! but sympathy. Not ignorant of misery, we learn, or ought to learn, to help the miserable. Our Lord looked up to Heaven indeed and sighed, because He was a High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but the sorrow which wrung that sigh from Him did but make Him more 30 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. earnest day by day in doing good. " The spirit of the Lord is upon me," He said, "because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; He has sent me to heal the broken- hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." His was no feeble sympathy, but an active ministration. "/ will, be thou clean" "Fear not; only be- lieve." " Take up thy bed, and walk'' " Courage, daughter''' " Go in peace." " Young man, arise.'' "Little maid, arise." " Lazarus, come forth" '' Go, and sin no more'.' Such were the arrows of lightnings which He was ever hurling into the mirky air, such the mighty words that expelled the demon ; that cleansed the leper ; that nerved the paralytic ; that cheered the trembling woman ; that gave hope to the de- spairing sinner; that thrilled into the awful gloom of death. Think of that Sabbath even- ing at Capernaum, when, as the sunset dyed the silver lake, the people came to Him, bringing with them their demoniacs and their SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 31 diseased, and far into the deepening dusk, hushing the screams of madness, laying on each tortured sufferer His pure and healing hand, He moved among them ; and, though the sighs and groans of all that collective misery smote so sadly upon His heart, yet " He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows," longing only to heal, and save, and bless. My brethren, what a divine example, what a stimulus, what an encouragement, have we here ! Our Lord saw all the sorrow ; He did not ignore it ; He sighed for it ; He wept for it ; He prayed for it ; but not for one moment did He despair of it ; nay, He worked to lighten it, leaving us thereby, as in all things, an ensample that we should follow His steps. 6. And, thank God, since then, some, in all ages, have followed His steps. Some who seem born to it great souls, like Moses, Samuel, Paul, Francis of Assisi, Xavier, Howard who from the first choose rather to suffer afflic- tion with the people of God than enjoy the 32 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. riches and pleasures of Egypt ; others, who, like many of the Apostles, and philanthro- pists, and missionaries, are called from the fisher's net, or the receipt of customs, or the shop, or the workman's stall, and who obey the calling. Thank God, in spite of all the cal- lousness that does not help, and all the mean- ness which will not give, the general heart of the world is, I do think, growing more tender. You know the poem about that " woman of a thousand summers back," wife to the grim earl who so taxed his town that the mothers brought their children, clamouring, " If we pay, we starve ! " how " She sought her lord .... She told him of their tears, And prayed him, ' If they pay this tax, they starve.' Whereat he stared, replying, half amazed, ' You would not let your little finger ache For such as these?' 'But I would die,' said she. He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul : Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear ; ' O ay, ay, ay, you talk ! ' ' Alas ! ' she said, ' But prove me what it is I would not do.' " Aye and many (and perhaps especially women) have been ready gladly to sacrifice everything SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 33 to do some good ; to heal, were it ever so little of the world's sorrow. My friends, we have just lost such a one among us here. Mary Stanley was one who delighted to spend and be spent in the service of others. In the days of the Crimean War she was one of that de- voted band of ladies who not afraid of fever or hardship, braving the black Euxine and the bitter cold went to nurse the sick soldiers in the hospital at Koulalee. But even from her early youth she had devoted herself to teach the children of the poor, and the efforts of her later days to feed the hungry, and warm the shivering, and clothe the naked, and brighten squalid cellars and garrets with the poetry of God's flowers, will long be remembered. And, my friends, the kindly deeds of this life, of every life which has trodden in the warm footsteps of our Saviour through this world's dinted snow, have had their mainspring in that sympathy which was expressed by the sigh of Jesus. We cannot all do as He did in the brief years of His Ministry, "go about doing 34 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. good" ; but we can all live as He lived for His first thirty years of quiet, holy, strenuous duty, deliberately striving each day to be good ; de- liberately striving each day to do good ; deli- berately striving each day to abstain from evil, in order, so far as in us lies, in His name, and for His sake, to assuage the sorrows of the wo/ld. 7. Do you ask me how ? If you ask me, you can hardly be in earnest. It is like the lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbour?" Solvitur ambulando. Your question will answer itself by action. They who are resolutely in earnest to do good do not go about asking, " What good can I do ? " they do it ; they hardly think of it as good ; they say " Lord, when did we comfort, when did we visit, when did we feed or clothe Thee ? " Why, even a little child at home, even a young boy at school, can do the work of Jesus, and for Jesus. The little child can make home brighter by sweet obedience and glad unselfishness ; the young boy can make school nobler by pure SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 35 words and faithful deeds. Ah, you cannot do it, if you too do not feel for all the sadness round you ; you cannot do it if, in greed, or lust, or selfishness, you are adding to that misery. You cannot make men's temptation less, if all your life long you are swelling the sum of them. You are a mere hypocrite if you pretend to sigh for human sin or human sorrow, while you are ruining souls by your impurity, or defrauding them for your gain. Of some ways in which we can show our share in the sympathy of our Saviour, I may speak hereafter ; but ah! if you be sincere, do not wait to have your philanthropy furbished up with appeals for Christmas charities, but go out and be kind, try to do good, try to make the world hap- pier at once : begin at once, and begin at the very lowest step. i. There is the animal world, for instance. A mystery it is, a mystery it will ever be. Yet there too we have our work for Jesus. We have abused, alas, too often to purposes of cruelty and tyranny the empire which God L> 2 36 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. granted us over the brutes. It is sad that man has thus made even the most beautiful and innocent part of the animal creation shun, and hate, and fear him. It is not naturally so. In the wilderness Jesus was with the wild beasts, and they harmed Him not. The timid things of the wilderness learnt to trust the ancient hermits. In desert islands the denizens of the forest and the fell shrink not from man until he has shown them his deadliness and treachery. The birds, it is said, and I can well believe it, fluttered without fear about St. Francis of Assisi. For Jesus' sake we have a plain duty to the dumb animals, to be considerate to them, to be gentle with them, to discourage and to abhor all needless cruelty towards them, to teach our boys and our ignorant men to be kind to them, to determine "Never to mix our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." We might learn in this respect even from those who had not heard the divine lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. " A calf destined SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. ^ for sacrifice," we are told in the Talmud, put its head, moaning, into the lap of Rabbi Judah the Holy, and he repelled it with the remark, "Go hence ; for this thou wast created." " Lo ! " said the Angels, " he is pitiless ; let affliction come upon him." Again, one day it happened that, in sweeping the room, his maidservant disturbed some young kittens. " Leave them alone," said Rabbi, 1 " for it is written, ' His tender mercies are over all His works.' " 2 Then said the Angels, " Let us have pity on him ; for lo ! he has learnt pity." 3 And how exquisite is the story which tells us that when Moses was a shepherd in Midian a little lamb left the flock and went frisking into the wilderness ; and Moses followed it over rocks and through briers till he had recovered it, and then laying it in his bosom he said, " Little 1 Rabi Judah Hakkodesh, the compiler of the Mishna, is called " Rabbi " par excellence. 2 P^. cxlv. 9. 3 Bava Metzia, f. 85. I. In the original it is not " the Anyels," but the indefinite " they ' (" They said, 1 ' nDK). Comp. Luke xii. 20 (Greek) and xvi. 9. 38 EPHPHATHA. lamb, thou knovvest not what is good for thee ; trust me, thy shepherd, and I will guide thee right." And when God saw his tenderness to the straying lamb, He said, " Thou shalt be the shepherd of my people Israel." Might not the old Rabbis teach us the lesson so exquisitely taught us by our own poet in the Ancient Mariner, that " He prayeth well who loveth well Both man, and bird, and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small, For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all." * ii. And there is the world of sickness and pain ; but how infinitely is it alleviated by human care, by human skill, by human sym- pathy, because everywhere, like white-winged 1 We .:c sometimes apt to flatter ourselves that such senti- ments as those illustrated by the Ancient Mariner and Wordsworth's Heart-leap Well are peculiarly modem ; but the Jews (e.g. Abarbanel) found them in many parts of the Pentateuch (e.g. Ex. xxiii. 4, Lev. xxii. 28, Deut. xxv. 4, xxii. 10, v. 14), and especially in the thrice -repeated command, "Thou shall not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" (Ex. xxiii. ?9, xxxiv 26, Deut. xiv. 21). SERM. i.] WHY JESUS SIGHED. 39 ministers of mercy, the children of God move in and out in the midst of it, healing its ravages, smoothing the sleepless pillow, cooling the fevered brow, shining down upon the suffering with looks and smiles which are a healing in themselves. And we, if we cannot do all this, if we are not good enough to do it, not gifted enough to do it, too cold, too vulgar, too grasping, too impure to do it, yet we can help those who are doing it, and love to do it, and we can help at least by our poor gifts to render their efforts possible. iii. And there is the world of sorrow ; and though it must continue while time lasts, there is not one of us who cannot help to make it less sorrowful. We can do so passively by ab- staining from all churlish deeds and all false and cruel words. We can do so actively by the constant endeavour to cultivate every gentle and kindly feeling, to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. We can do so both actively and passively by the strenuous determination to be kind to many, 40 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. i. to wish to be kind to all, willingly to do injury to none. " Be ye kind one to another, tender- hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you." J Begin with this : of more we may speak another day, but begin with this. This we can all do. All this let us do, and, if often in doing it, we shall have to sigh as Jesus sighed, we shall find that, however the world may treat us, He will also grant to us to become " partakers of His vision and His Sabbath," to share in the infinitude of His peacefulness, to enter into His boundless joy. 1 6 0e2>s ft> XpiffToi txapiffaro v^iiv. The rendering of the English version "for Chrisfs sake" is here quite inde- fensible. Comp. 2 Cor. v. 19. SERMON II. SINCERITY OF HEART. THE CONDITION OF TRUE SERVICE FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE WORLD. " Nemo malus felix." Juv. Sat. \v..j. SINCERITY OF HEART AS THE FIRST CONDITION OF SERVICE. "My beloved are sinking in the sea, and thou art making long prayers," said the Holy One blessed be He to Moses. "What then shall I do? "he asked. The Lord said unto Moses, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward (Ex. xiv. 15)." Sotah, /. 37, I. ic eni'BACic QeoopiAC, GREG. NAZ. ZyNeproyNTec Ae, 2 Cor. vi. i. Oeoy r<*p ecMN cyNeproi', i Cor. iii. 9. TOY Kypi'oY cyNeproyNToc, Mark xvi. 20. Almighty and merciful God, of whose only gift it conieth that Thy faithful people do unto Thee true and laudable service, grant, we beseech Thee, that we may so faithfully serve Thee in this life that we fail not finally to attain Thy heavenly promises, through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. SERMON II. SINCERITY OF HEART AS THE FIRST CONDITION OF SERVICE. LUKE xxn. 32. " And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" ' WE spoke, my friends, last Sunday of the sigh of Jesus before He healed the blind man and said Ephphatha, " Be opened." We saw that it was a sigh heaved over the miseries of a world in ruins. We forced ourselves to notice the truth that there is a deep crack and flaw in ' A more literal rendering would be "when once thou hast turned again." Some commentators make the word itriffrptyas little more than an expletive (comp. Ps. Ixxxiv. 6 ; Acts vii. 42), "thou in thy turn " (vicissim). But the English version is cor- rect. The word is here used intransitively, as in Matt. xiii. 15 (in its physical sense), and in Acts xvi. 18, Rev. i. 12; it is used transitively in Luke i. 16, Acts xxvii. 18, James v. 19. 46 EPHPHATHA. [SERM. n. this material universe ; that in the unintelligent creation, in the animal kingdom, in the world of man, there has occurred some terrible disaster and convulsion, of which the effects are not wholly by us remediable ; but of which we hope that the traces will be finally obliterated at the restitution of all things, 1 and of which, by a mystery which we cannot understand, the amelioration is left in large measure in the hands of man. On the possibilities and methods of that amelioration we did but touch, because my object then was simply to bring before you a fact which, from the equable pressure of its universal incidence, we are often content to ignore, or which, to the best of our power, we energetically strive to avert from ourselves, while with fatal selfishness we acquiesce in it for others. But if this preva- lence of evil be the most awful fact of human life, it is one which we should keep constantly before us, not as a cause of depression, still 1 "Axpi \pl>v