RECON • 1 nil University of California. Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. ■ Received October, i8g4. ^(Cc.^^n'tis No.S~yC 3JL- CLn^ No.^,:: -/ 1^ ^ / SERMONS TREACHED BEFORE €\)t 2Hm'ber6iti) of d^vforti K I \' I N G T O N S lionlion Waterloo Place ©iforti High Street CTambriDgc Trinity Street SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE Cfte sanfber^ite of ©jrforti^ BY H. P. LIDDON, M.A. STUDENT OF CHRIST CHL'RCH, AND CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF SALISBUKY. THIRD EDITION, REVISED. RIVINGTONS, ItonKon, ^forU, aniJ Cainbiitise. JAMES PARKER & C^*^» 1869. .^~J0 3 2^ Das eigentliche, einzige und tic/stc Thcma der M'elt- und Mcnschcngeschichte, dent alle tibrigen untcrgeordiut stud, bleibt dcr Conflict des Unglaubens und G^ubots.— Goethe. Dies vetiit, dies Tiia In qu& rejlorent omnia : Ltxiemur et nos iti %'iam TuAreducti de.rierd.—HvMN smc. X>". TO The Rev. WILLIAM. BRIGHT, M.A. SENIOR FELLOW AND TUTOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD, IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE MANY BLESSINGS WHICH ARE INSEPARABLY CONNECTED WITH HIS FRIENDSHIP AND EXAMPLE. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. T^HE Sermons contained in this volume have little in common with each other beyond a certain apologetic character, such as is suggested by the title ^. At one time the writer had intended to employ the opportunities afforded to him during the course of the last two years, in an attempt to show that some prominent ideas, which, in their application to secular and material interests, form the strength and staple of the system or com- plexion of thought vaguely described as " Liberal- ism," are originally traceable, directly or indirectly, to a Christian source, and are realized by none so completely as by the faithful children of the Church. This intention is here alluded to, in the hope that some one else may be led to consider the subject, and, if expedient, to discuss it in the University pulpit or elsewhere. The Sermons which stand as second and third in this publica- ^ " Some Words for God/' prefixed to the First Edition. y'm Preface to the First Edition. tioii are a partial, but only a partial attempt to follow it out. Tlie plan of attempting any thing- like a course of Sermons was abandoned in de- ference to what seemed to be a higher duty in a Christian Preacher, that, namely, of dealing as well as he can with such misapprehensions re- specting truths of faith or morals as he knows to be actually cm'rent among those whom he has to address. The reader will bear m mind that this is a volume of Sermons. It makes no pretension to be a volume of Essays. An Essay belongs to general literature : a Sermon is the language of the Church. A Sermon is confined within narrow limits; and its necessarily rhetorical character renders an economical use of its scanty oppor- tunities impossible. Each Sermon must suggest many topics which it cannot afford to discuss. And so far are any Sermons in this volume from professing to deal exhaustively with the subjects of which they treat, that they are purposely restricted to those particular points which hap- pened at the time of their delivery to excite interest or to cause difficulties among persons witli Avhom XSw Preacher was more or less ac- (piainted. Some great omissions will at once occur to every reader. For instance, the real office and capacity of the Moral Sense — as on the Preface to the First Edition. ix one hand predisposing us to faitli in Our Lord, from its perception of the Beauty of His Charac- ter, and as being, on the other, itself educated and controlled by the truths which He authorita- tively discloses to it — is not entered upon in those Sermons which insist upon the claims of dogmatic truth. Again, the connexion between the Atonement and the Eucharist is not men- tioned in the Sermon for Good Friday : although the text of that Sermon might naturally have suggested it, and so precious a truth was by no means forgotten. Among sources to which the writer owes ideas or illustrations, for which his obligations are not already acknowledged, he desires to mention the Bishop of Oxford, two or three volumes of Felix's Conferences^ and Schleiermacher's Fredigten. Of the Sermons themselves two have already ap- peared in a separate form ; and the few alterations which have been made in them before republica- tion are confined to points of taste or expression. One indeed of these was not, strictly speaking, "preached before the University''." Moreover, it repeats, to a certain extent, considerations which are urged more fully in two others. But, as it was addressed to an audience consisting for the most part of University men, it may be allowed to ^ Sermon VII. Preface to the First Edition. appear in tliis volume. Of the opportunities for preaching those Sermons which did not fall to the writer's turn as Select Preacher, two are due to the kindness of the present Yice-Chancellor of Oxford, and three to that of the Dean of Christ Church. It only remains for the writer to express his fervent hope that by God's grace this volume may be of service to those who have desired its publi- cation, and that, whatever its crudities or minor errors, it may be found to contain nothing incon- sistent with simple submission to the mind of Holy Scripture as set forth in the teaching of the Church. Christ CnuRcn, Michaelmas, 1865. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. rriHIS volume was originally published under the title " Some Words for God/^ In the present Edition that title is dropped^ as being open to misconstruction, and in deference to the opinion of critics for whose advice and indulgence the writer has every reason to be grateful. Christ Chuech, Master, 1866. PREFACE rO THE THIRD EDITION. rilHH present Edition contains three additional Sermons which have been preached within the last two years, and pubHshed separately. The subjects appear to suggest that one should be inserted as third in the series, and the two others at the end. Christ CirimcH, Advent, 1868. CONTENTS. SERMON I. GOD AND THE SOUL. Psalm Ixiii. i. O God, Thou art my God .... ^rcacljrti at St. iHara's on tljc ^fa3rntg=fir3t SunUnn aftfr STrinito, ©ct. 25, 1868. SERMON II. THE LAW OF PROGRESS. Phil. iii. 13, 14, Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are hehind, and reaching forth unto those things ichich are before, I press toioard the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus . . .25 IPrradjcU at St. fHarg's on ©lunciungrsima SunSag, jFcb. 7, 1864. SERMON III. THE HONOUR OF HUMANITY. I St. Peter ii. 1 7. Honour all men 54 JPrcadjcD at St. fSlavg'g on tlje JFirst SunUau in ILrnt, 1868. xiv Contents. SERMON IV. THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT. 2 COE. iii. 17. PAGE Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Ubertif .... 79 i.Breaci)cI) at Ssi. ^ar^'g on i£@i)itgun Qag, iiBag 15, 1864. SERMON V. I M M R T A L I T Y . Psalm Ixxiii. 26. Ml/ flesh and my heart faileth : hut God is the strength of my heart, and my portionfor ever . . . . . . . .107 i9rtact)clj at St. ifltarg's on tijc S'tconli Sunfian after (Ppipbans. 3an- '5. j8<^3- SERMON VI. HUMILITY AND ACTION. PitOV. iii. 6. In all thy ways acknowledye Him, and He shall direct thy paths . 1J9 ^rtatJjcIi at St. fflnro's on Ouiuciuaocsima Suutiag, JTrb. :;6, 1863. SERMON VII. THE CONFLICT OF FAITH AVITH UNDUE EXALTATION • OF INTELLECT. 2 Cott. X. 5. Cdsting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to ilie obedience of Christ 16;; }3nach(U at St. fBaro'B (in the ©ifort Ecntnx Sfrirs) on J)tiUai) GrfanunD, iflarcl) 17, 1S65. Contents. xv SERMON VIII. LESSONS OF THE HOLY MANGER. St. Luke ii. 12. PAGE And this shall he a sign unto you ; Ye shall find the Bahe ivrapped in sivaddling-clothes, and lying in a manger .... 189 JPtcactrt at ffl:|)riat ffifjutcJ) on Cljtiahnas Sag, 1863. SERMON IX. THE DIVINE VICTIM. Gal. ii. 20. The Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me . . 220 ^rcact)cl3 at Cfjrtst Cfjurc'j o" " Dciin MiliTian's well-known estimate of this work almost socms to lose sight of its real object, which is, not to insist upon the whole cycle of Christian duties, but to strenfjtheu ami intensify, in view of our Lord's example, the sense of our individual relationship to the Father of Sj irits. Lat. Christ, vi. ji. 4S4. 1 C'n:« I] God and the Soid. form implies permanency. In 'Ell ^, tlie second word em- ployed^ the etymological idea is that of mighty strength. We might paraphrase, " Thou Ever-awful One, my Strength, or my Strong-God art Thou.^' But the second word mi, is in itself nothing less than a separate revela- tion of an entire aspect of the Being of God. It is indeed used as a proper and distinct Name of God. The pronominal suffixes for the second and third persons are, as Gesenius has remarked, never once found with this name W ; whereas Wi, the first person, occurs very fre- quently in the Psalter alone. Every one will remember it in the words actually uttered by our Lord upon the cross, and which He took from a Syriacized version of Ps. xxii.P The word unveils a truth unknown beyond the precincts of revelation. It teaches us that the Almighty and Eternal gives Himself in the fulness of His Being to the soul that seeks Him. Heathenism indeed in its cultus of domestic and local deities, of its Penates, of its 6eo\ lirLywp'ioi, bore witness by these superstitions to the deep yearning of the human heart for the individualizing love of a higher power. To know the true God was to know that such a craving was satisfied. "My God.'^ The word does not represent a human impression, or desire, or conceit, but an aspect, a truth, a necessity of the Divine Nature. Man can indeed give himself by halves ; he can bestow a little of his thought, of his heart, of his endeavour, vipou his brother man. In other words, man can be imperfect in his acts, as he is imperfect and finite in his nature. But when God, the Perfect Being, loves the creature of His Hand, He cannot thus divide His love. He must perforce love with the whole directness, and strength, and intensity of His Being ; for He is God, and therefore incapable of partial and imperfect action. He must give Himself to the o '"jN P Ts. xxii. I. 6 God and the Soid. [Seem. single soul with as absolute 'a completeness as if there were no other being besides the soul which He loves. And, on his side, man knows that this gift of Himself by God is thus entire ; and in no narrow spirit of ambitious egotism, but as grasping and representing the literal fact, he cries, "My God." Therefore does this single word enter so largely into the composition of Hebrew names. Men loved to dwell upon that wondrous relation of the Creator to their personal life which it so vi\*idly expressed. Tlierefore when God had " so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believed in Him should not perish but have everlasting life," Ave find St. Paul writing to the Galatians as if his own soul, in its solitary anguish, had alone been redeemed by the sacrifice of Calvary : " He loved me, and gave Himself for me i." But here let us observe that there are two causes within the soul which might indispose us for looking more truly and closely at the truth before us. Of these causes, the first is onoral : it is the state of unrepented wilful sin. Tlie gravest mischief of sin does not lie in the outward material act, especially when estimated from a merely legal or social point of view. It consists rather in the introduction of a permanent habit or attitude of the will. Of this attitude each outward act of sin is at once the symptom and the aggravation. The foul eruption is less serious in itself than as evidencing the hold which has been laid upon the moral constitution by the invisible disease. The principle and spirit of rebellion has its seat in the will. Thence it penetrates, as the case may be, either into the sphere of thought, or into that of outward actions. ]5ut whether it be weakened, or warped, or enslaved, the will which is deliberately tolerant of the presence of sin is necessarily hostile to a sincere assertion 1 Gal. ii. 20. I] God and the Soul. 7 no less of the love tlian of the rights of Grod. It is averse from Him. It has other ends in view which are so many denials of His supreme claims upon created life. It cowers with involuntary dread at the sound of His voice among- the trees of the garden. If the depraved and sinful willj still clinging to its sin^ could conceivably attain to a spiritual embrace of the All-Holy God, so intimate, so endearing as is that of the Psalmist; such nearness would be to it nothing less than repulsive ; it would be scarcely less than an agony. The other cause is intellectual. It may, without offence, be described as the subjective spirit, which is so charac- teristic and predominant an influence in the thought of ovir day. In plain English, this spirit is an intellectual selfish- ness, which makes man, and not God, the monarch and centre of the world of thought. Man is again to be, as of old with the Greek Sophist, the measure of all things. God is as but a point on the extreme circumference of His creature's thought. Nay more, in its more developed form, this temper makes God Himself a pure creation of the thought of His creature ; and, by doing so, it at length denies His real existence. But even where it stops very far short of this fatal and culminating wrong, it accustoms men to see in religious truth the colouring or the produc- tions of the human mind so exclusively, as to eat out the very heart of true religious life. For we men can no more worship that which we deem to be a creation of our o-vsti or of another man's mind, than we can knowingly worship the carved and painted workmanship of human hands. If God has spoken to us through human souls and in human language, it is when He has assured us independently, that while the instrument was human, the truth which it conveyed was Divine. But when in Christian doctrine we have learned to see nothing but successive evolutions or incrustations of human thought, and in the Christian 8 God and the Soul. [Sekm. Scriptures notliiiif^ but a history which represents man's successive and increasingly successful efforts after know- ledge of and communion with the Infinite and Eternal Being, then we never can once bring ourselves to say of any one truth that comes before us, What does this truth say to me ? We hold no one truth with sufficient tenacity to make a practical application of it to our own case, to do or to suffer something at its bidding. For the truth is to us false, or imperfect, or provisional, as the case may be. Even if we cannot mistrust the clear intuition whereby we apprehend its reality and force, we still stand outside it ; we contemplate it from a distance, we do not close with it ; we do not sui'render ourselves to it ; we do not submit to it. And until this — the viruKor] iriaTedi'; of which St, Paul speaks once and again*" — be the attitude of the soul towards the Word of God, it is strictly impossible that the life of worship and of love in which the soul's true per- fection consists, and in which its highest capacities have their play, can even be said to begin. We cannot worship some hypothesis or some compound of truth and error : so Ave refuse His rights to God, lest perchance we should be giving them to idols. Tlie whole energy of the soul passes off in a prior speculation as to the amount of truth which may possibly be contained in a doctrine assumed to be of human growth. Such a speculation may indeed be justifiable or necessary. Ikit it can of itself do nothing for the heart, the will, the central being, the truest excel- lence of the man who undertakes it. An educated man of the present day who would look God really in the face, has perhaps no greater intellectual difficulty to contend with, than the trammels and false points of view which strictly subjective habits of thought have imposed upon his understanding. While these habits are dominant in a man, God may be a portion, nay the most considerable r Kom. i. 5 ; xvi. 26. Cf. Acts vi. 7. I] God and the Soul. 9 portion, of the apparatus and embellisliment of liis thought : but God will not be in any true sense throned in the man's soul as the recognized Author and object of his being ; He will not really be the man's God, before Whose awful Presence he moves with deep reverence within the sanctuary of his secret life, and to the doing of Whose will he consecrates each inner faculty and each outward opportunity at his disposal. Among the many truths which the Supreme Being has disclosed to us men about Himself, there are two which, beyond others, are peculiarly calculated to enable u^s to realize our real relation towards Him. The first, the truth that God is our Creator. The second, the truth that He has made us for Himself, and is Himself the end and the explanation of our existence. The most simple and obvious truths are, as a rule, the most profound ; and no apology is needed for asking each one of you to reflect steadily on the answer to this ques- tion, Where was I one short century ago ? Most of us indeed, in putting to ourselves such a question, might name a much shorter period. The sun in the heavens, the face of the earth, the general conditions of human life, were then what they are at this hour. The civilized world with its great cities, and its leading ideas, and its general cur- rents of effort and movement, were then what they are now. England was here. Our neighbourhood, our family, it may be our home, were known. These very benches were filled by a generation which observed our Church formalities and used our devotional language. Others, it may be, were then living who bore the very names which distinguish us among men, and whose forms and faces might have almost seemed to antedate our own personal life. But we, each one of us, were as yet nothing. All the thought, and feeling, and passion, and effort which centres at this moment in, and is part of, our separate selves, did not lo God and the Soul. [Serm. tlien exist. The lowest and vilest creatures were more than we ; in that to them a being had been given, while as yet we Avere without one ^ But at this moment we arc in possession of that blessed and awful gift which we name ' life/ We find ourselves endowed with an understanding capable of knowledge, and with a heart formed for love. Our nature is active as well as affectionate and intelligent ; it possesses high capacities for service ; it is endued ^vith a power of shaping means to ends, and with an hereditary empire over the beings which live around us. But how comes it that we do thus exist, and under such conditions ? The idea of blind 'chance,' we know, is not less proscribed by science than by faith. Our parents were but the channels of vital forces which flowed from a Source beyond them. An intense homage paid to the productive powers of Nature, and issuing in a moral degradation of the idea of worship with- out a parallel in the history of the world, may have been natural to an Oriental imagination, and to the sensual ten- dencies of Phoenician blood *. But we, if we are true to our higher knowledge, cannot thus ascribe personal and self-dependent existence to those uniform modes of work- ing which we observe in the physical universe. If ■sA'ithin the narrow limits of our observation they seem to be in- variable, they witness not to any objective force resident in 'nature,' but merely to that presiding law of order which characterizes the action no less than the Being of the real Agent. Each of us is a separate product of the mystery of creation, ^Vfter the Being of God Himself, creation is perhaps the greatest, as it is in time th(> first of mysteries ; it is, it must be ever, the master-difficulty for « Cf. "Manrfese: Exercises Siiirituels," pp. 21, 22. On my mistake with respect to this and two similar references, see the Theological Sevieiv, Nos. xix. ami xx. I would here express my obligations to a writer iu that Maga- zine, for pointing it out. ' Compare Dr. Pusey's Preface to Hosea; Comm. Min. Prophets, pt. i. p. 2. I] God and the Soul. 1 1 tlie mind of man. Tliat innovation on what liad already been for an eternity, that new companionship of depen- dent beings thus welcomed, nay summoned, into His Pre- sence by the Solitary, Self-sufl&cing-, Ever-blessed God, is a marvel which may well prepare the soul, even for belief in the Divine Incarnation. Yet if God did not create all that is not Himself, if in the essential simplicity of His Being He is not utterly distinct from His creation, if in creation He was not a free and conscious agent, if He did not at the first give being to that which before was nothing — mark it well, my brethren — He is not a Being Whom you can worship as your God. Belief in creation is an integral part of belief in God : and He Who made the universe made each one of us. " Thine Hands have made me and fashioned me Tliine Eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect ; and in Thy book were all my members written, which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them^." But there is a wide interval between admitting the dogma of the creation in the abstract, and realizing sharply and accurately that all and each of the faculties of our own souls and bodies have been created. You may read in the face of many a man whom you meet in the street that he has never faced the truth that he is a created thing, and that One Being exists to Whom he owes literally all that he has and is. The warning of the Psalmist, that it is God Who hath made us and not we ourselves, is not superfluous. For here, as elsewhere in religion, the truant action of the will interferes with the clear and direct intuitions of the intellect : and we un- consciously limit our range of view because we fear the practical consequences of too wide and perfect a vision. We cling io phrases which represent nothing, and to theories which must fade and vanish before one movement " Ps. cxix. 73; cxxxix. 16. 1 2 God and the Sotil. [Serm. of clear and earnest thoiif^lit ; because tlaese theories and plirases relieve ns for the time being of much that is implied in the direct and overwhelming sense of being simply creatures. We speak, and think, and form judg- ments, as if we were the authors of our own existence ; not as believing ourselves seriously to be so, but simply because we shrink from facing all that is involved in the alternative, namely, that we are jDroducts of the creative love and will of our God. Certainly God did not need any one of us : we were not indispensable to His happiness or His glory. He can have foreseen nothing in such as we are which forced Him to create us. "Wliy did He then draw us out of that abyss of nothing ? Why did He give us this existence which He has denied to so many possible beings, able better to herald His glory and to do justice to His love? A\liy did He place us at the summit of the visible creation rather than at its base ? "NVliy did He make us men instead of brutes, or trees, or stones ? Why did He give us a soul, made in His image, and a complex nature which every where bears the lively imprint of His attributes ? The answer is to be found in a revelation which was made, in the early years of his ministry, to the disappointed prophet of the falling kingdom of Judah, and upon which he fell back as the shadows of approaching ruin darkened around him. " I have loved thee," God had said of old to Israel, " with an everlasting love "." And St. Paul teaches that the Father hath chosen us Christians in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love >'. It was His infinite love which, when God was self-sufficing and all-blessed in His solitary eternity, poured around Himself the countless forms of created life. And to this self-same love alone we individually » Jer. xxxi. 3. y Epli. i. 4. I] God and the S021L 1 3 owe our existence. Wliile as yet we were not, and while on earth men knew as httle of us as we know of those who will take our places in this church a century hence, we each of us had a home and a recognition in the Thought and Heart of God. His purpose to give us life was, like Himself, eternal. And now that we live He preserves our life from moment to moment. He is, as the Psalmist says, the Strong God of each one of us. He sustains our life as a complex whole ; He upholds each one of its constitutive powers and faculties, so truly and so un- ceasingly, that did He for one moment withdi-aw His hand our being must dissolve, and fade away into that nothingness out of which He has taken it. This is one of the cardinal truths of that earlier revelation which was committed to the Jewish Church, and it is unnecessary to remind you how profoundly it interpenetrates the whole mind of the Old Testament. Sometimes it is stated directly : more frequently it under- lies the aspirations of psalmists or the warnings of prophets. We may fearlessly say that it was as certainly an integral part of the Psalmist^s thought in the words before us, as it is of ours when, in the General Thanks- giving, we Christians bless God " for our creation, pre- servation, and all the blessings of this life.^'' The text may be fairly paraphrased, " God, the Creator of all things. Thou hast created, Thou preservest me." But this involves an admission with the most direct bearing upon life and conduct. As the Creator, God must have rl