UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 X-
 
 TWENTY-FIVE 
 
 VILLAGE SERMONS, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY, JUN., 
 
 RECTOR OF EVERSLET, HANTS, CANON OF MIDDLEHAM, YORKSHIRE, AND ACTHOR 
 OF "ALTON LOCKE," ETC. 
 
 FROM THE I,A3T LONDON EDITION. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 H. HOOKER, CORNER OF CHESTNUT AND EIGHTH STS. 
 1854.
 
 W. S. TOUNG, PRINTEr
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 GOD'S WORLD. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast 
 Thou made them all : the earth is full of Thy riches. 
 (Psalm civ. 24.) ..... 9 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. 
 
 He watereth the hills from His chambers : the earth is 
 satisfied with the fruit of Thy works. He causeth the 
 grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service 
 of man : that he may bring forth food out of the earth ; 
 and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil 
 to make his face to shine, and bread which strength- 
 eneth man's heart. (Psalm civ. 13 15.) . .21
 
 IV CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Lord, how manifold are Thy works ! in wisdom hast 
 Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches. 
 That Thou givest them they gather: Thou openest 
 Thine hand, they are filled with good: Thou hidest 
 Thy face, they are troubled : Thou takest away their 
 breath, they die, and return to their dust: Thou 
 sendest forth Thy Spirit, and they are created: and 
 Thou renewest the face of the earth. (Psalm civ. 
 
 24, 2830.) -i- . . .33 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 THE WORK OF GOD's SPIRIT. 
 
 Do not err, my beloved brethren : every good gift and 
 every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down 
 from the Father of lights. (James, i. 16, 17.) . 43 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 FAITH. 
 
 The just shall live by faith. (Habakkuk, ii. 4.) . 55 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 
 
 1 say, then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil 
 
 the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against 
 the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these 
 are contrary the one to the other. (Galatians, v. 16.) 68
 
 CONTENTS. V 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 RETRIBUTION. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Be sure your sin will find you out. (Numbers, xxxii. 
 23.) ...".. -80 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 SELF-DESTRUCTION. 
 
 The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these 
 
 Thy Prophets. (1 Kings, xxii. 23.) . . .90 
 
 SERMON 'IX. 
 
 HELL ON EARTH. 
 
 And, behold, the evil spirits cried out, saying, What 
 have \ve to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? 
 Art thou come hither to torment us before the time 1 ? 
 (Matthew, viii. 29.) . . . . .99 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 NOAH'S JUSTICE. 
 
 Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, 
 and Noah walked with God. (Genesis, vi. 9.) . 112 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 THE NOACHIC COVENANT. 
 
 And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, say- 
 ing, And I, behold I, establish my covenant with 
 you, and with your seed after you. (Genesis, ix. 
 8, 9.) . . . . . . .115
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as 
 in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with 
 Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same pro- 
 mise. For he looked for a city, which hath founda- 
 tions, whose builder and maker is God. (Hebrews, 
 xi. 9, 10.) . . . . . .133 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. 
 
 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; 
 and he that had received the promises offered up his 
 only-begotten son, of whom it was said, that in Isaac 
 shall thy seed be called; accounting that God was 
 able to raise him up, even from the dead; from 
 whence also he received him in a figure. (Hebrews, 
 xi. 1719.) . . . . . .147 
 
 SERMON XIV. * 
 
 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 
 
 I write unto you, little children, because ye have known 
 the Father. (1 John, ii. 13.) . . .157 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth 
 them up into a high mountain apart, and was trans- 
 figured before them. (Mark, ix. 2.) . . 168 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. (Isaiah, 
 liii. 7.) '.."' 'V. : . I . 181
 
 CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 He is not here He is risen; (Luke, xxiv. 6.) . 187 
 
 SERMON XVIII. 
 
 IMPROVEMENT. 
 
 The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree : he shall 
 grow like the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be 
 planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the 
 courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in 
 old age; they shall be fat and flourishing. (Psalm 
 xcii. 12.) . . . . . .199 
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 
 MAN'S WORKING DAY. 
 
 Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? 
 If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, be- 
 cause he seeth the light of this world. But if a man 
 walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no 
 light in him. (John, xi. 9, 10.) . . . 208 
 
 SERMON XX. 
 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
 Christ. (Galatians, vi. 2.) . . . .218 
 
 SERMON XXI. 
 
 HEAVEN ON EARTH. 
 
 Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all 
 to the glory of God. (1 Cor., x. 31.) . . 228
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON XXII. 
 
 NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye 
 see: for I tell you, that many prophets and kings 
 have desired to see those things which ye see, and 
 have not seen them; and to hear those things which 
 ye hear, and have not heard them. (Luke, x. 23.) . 236 
 
 SERMON XXIII. 
 
 LENTEN THOUGHTS. 
 
 Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Consider 
 your ways. (Haggai, i. 5.) . . . . 247 
 
 SERMON XXIV. 
 
 ON BOOKS. 
 
 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God. (John, i. 1.) . . 256 
 
 SERMON XXV. 
 
 THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. 
 
 Then after that saith He to His disciples, Let us go into 
 Judea again. His disciples say to Him, Master, the 
 Jews of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou 
 thither again] (John, xi. 7, 8.) . . . 267
 
 VILLAGE SERMONS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 GOD'S WORLD. 
 
 "0 Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou 
 made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches." Ps. civ. 24. 
 
 WHEN we read such psalms as the one from which 
 this verse is taken, we cannot help, if we consider, 
 feeling at once a great difference between them and 
 any hymns or religious poetry which is commonly 
 written or read in these days. The hymns which 
 are most liked now, and the psalms which people 
 most willingly choose out of the Bible, are those 
 which speak, or seem to speak, about God's deal- 
 ings with people's own souls, while such psalms as 
 this are overlooked. People do not care really 
 about psalms of this kind when they find them in 
 the Bible, and they do not expect or wish nowa- 
 days any one to write poetry like them. For these 
 psalms of which I speak praise and honour God, not 
 2
 
 10 GOD'S WORLD. [SERM. 
 
 for what He has done to our souls, but for what He 
 has done and is doing in the world around us. This 
 very 104th psalm, for instance, speaks entirely about 
 things which we hardly care or even think proper 
 to mention in church now. It speaks of this earth 
 entirely, and the things on it. Of the light, the 
 clouds, and wind of hills and valleys, and the 
 springs on the hill-sides of wild beasts and birds 
 of grass and corn, and wine and oil of the sun and 
 moon, night and day the great sea, the ships, and 
 the fishes, and all the wonderful and nameless crea- 
 tures which people the waters the very birds' nests 
 in the high trees, and the rabbits burrowing among 
 the rocks nothing on the earth but this psalm 
 thinks it worth mentioning. And all this, which one 
 would expect to find only in a book of natural his- 
 tory, is in the Bible, in one of the psalms, written 
 to be sung in the temple at Jerusalem, before the 
 throne of the living God and His Glory which used 
 to be seen in that temple, inspired, as we all believe, 
 by God's Spirit, God's own word, in short: that is 
 worth thinking of. Surely the man who wrote this 
 must have thought very differently about this world, 
 with its fields and woods, and beasts and birds, from 
 what we think. Suppose, now, that we had been 
 old Jews in the temple, standing before the holy 
 house, and that we believed, as the Jews believed, 
 that there was only one thin wall and one curtain of 
 linen between us and the glory of the living God,
 
 I.] GOD'S WORLD. 11 
 
 that unspeakable brightness and majesty which no 
 one could look at for fear of instant death, except 
 the high-priest in fear and trembling once a year 
 that inside that small holy house, He, God Almighty, 
 appeared visibly God who made heaven and earth. 
 Suppose we had been there in the temple, and known 
 all this, should we have liked to be singing about 
 beasts and birds, with God Himself close to us ? We 
 should not have liked it we should have been ter- 
 rified, thinking perhaps about our own sinfulness, 
 perhaps about that wonderful majesty which dwelt 
 inside. We should have wished to say or sing 
 something spiritual, as we call it; at all events, 
 something very different from the 104th psalm about 
 woods, and rivers, and dumb beasts. We do not 
 like the thought of such a thing: it seems almost 
 irreverent, almost impertinent to God to be talking 
 of such things in His presence. Now does this 
 show us that we think about this earth, and the 
 things in it, in a very different way from those old 
 Jews ? They thought it a fit and proper thing to 
 talk about corn and wine and oil, and cattle and 
 fishes, in the presence of Almighty God, and we do 
 not think it fit and proper. We read this psalm 
 when it comes in the Church-service as a matter f 
 course, mainly because we do not believe that God 
 is here among us. We should not be so ready to 
 read it if we thought that Almighty God was so 
 near us.
 
 12 GOD'S WORLD. [SERM. 
 
 That is a great difference between us and the old 
 Jews. Whether it shows that we are better or not 
 than they were in the main, I cannot tell; perhaps 
 some of them had such thoughts too, and said, "It 
 is not respectful to God to talk about such com- 
 monplace earthly things in His presence; " perhaps 
 some of them thought themselves spiritual and pure- 
 minded for looking down on this psalm, and on 
 David for writing it. Very likely, for men have 
 had such thoughts in all ages, and will have them. 
 But the man who wrote this psalm had no such 
 thoughts. He said himself, in this same psalm, 
 that his words would please God. Nay, he is not 
 speaking and preaching about God in this psalm, as 
 I am now in my sermon, but he is doing more ; he 
 is speaking to God a much more solemn thing if 
 you will think of it. He says, "0 Lord my God, 
 Thou art become exceeding glorious. Thou deckest 
 Thyself with light as with a garment. All the beasts 
 wait on Thee; when Thou givest them meat they 
 gather it. Thou renewest the face of the earth." 
 When he turns "and speaks of God as "lie." say- 
 ing, "He appointed the moon," and so on, he can- 
 not help going back to God, and pouring out his 
 wonder, and delight, and awe, to God Himself, as 
 we would sooner speak to any one we love and ho- 
 nour than merely speak about them. He cannot 
 take his mind off God. And just at the last, when 
 he does turn and speak to himself, it is to say,
 
 I.] GOD'S WOULD. 13 
 
 " Praise thou the Lord, my soul, praise the Lord," 
 as if rebuking and stirring up himself for being too 
 cold-hearted and slow, for not admiring and honour- 
 ing enough the infinite wisdom, and power, and 
 love, and glorious majesty of God, which to him 
 shines out in every hedge-side bird and every blade 
 of grass. Truly I said that man had a very dif- 
 ferent way of lopking at God's earth from what we 
 have! 
 
 Now, in what did that difference lie ? What was 
 it? We need not look far to see. It was this, 
 David looked on the earth as God's earth; we look 
 on it as man's earth, or nobody's earth. We know 
 that we are here, with trees and grass, and beasts 
 and birds, round us. And we know that we did 
 not put them here ; and that, after we are dead and 
 gone, they will go on just as they went on before 
 we were born, each tree, and flower, and animal, 
 after its kind, but we know nothing more. The 
 earth is here, and we on it; but who put it there, 
 and why it is there, and why we are on it, instead 
 of being anywhere else, few ever think. But to 
 David the earth looked very different ; it had quite 
 another meaning; it spoke to him of God who made 
 it. By seeing what this earth is like: he saw what 
 God who made it is like; and we see no such thing. 
 The earth? we can eat the corn and cattle on it, we 
 can earn money by farming it, and ploughing and 
 digging it; and that is all most men know about it, 
 2*
 
 14 GOD'S WORLD. [SERM. 
 
 But David knew something more something which 
 made him i'eel himself very weak, and yet very safe; 
 very ignorant and stupid, and yet honoured with 
 glorious knowledge from God, something which 
 made him feel that he belonged to this world, and 
 must not forget it or neglect it, that this earth was 
 his lesson-book this earth Avas his work-field; and 
 yet those same thoughts which showed him how he 
 was made for the land round him, and the land round 
 him was made for him, showed him also that he be- 
 longed to another world a spirit-world; showed him 
 that when this world passed away he should live for 
 ever; showed him that while he had a mortal body 
 he had an immortal soul too; showed him that 
 though his home and business were here on earth, 
 yet that, for that very reason, his home and business 
 were in heaven, with God who made the earth, with 
 that blessed One of whom he said, " Thou, Lord, 
 in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the 
 earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. 
 They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all 
 shall' fade as a garment, and like a vesture shalt 
 Thou change them, and they shall be changed; but 
 Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail. 
 The children of Thy servants shall continue, and 
 their seed shall stand fast in Thy sight." "As a 
 garment shalt Thou change them," ay, there was 
 David's secret! He saw that this earth and skies 
 are God's garment the garment by which we see
 
 I.] GOD'S WORLD. 15 
 
 God; and that is what our forefathers saw too, and 
 just what we have forgotten; but David had not for- 
 gotten it. Look at this very 104th psalm again, 
 how he refers every thing to God. We say, "The 
 light shines : " David says something more ; he says, 
 "Thou, God, adornest Thyself with light as with 
 a curtain." Light is a picture of God. "God, "says 
 St. John, "is light, and in Him is no darkness at 
 all." We say, 'The clouds fly and the wind blows,' as 
 if they went of themselves ; David says, " God makes 
 the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of 
 the wind." We talk of the rich airs of spring, of the 
 flashing lightning of summer, as dead things ; and 
 men who call themselves wise say, that lightning 
 is only matter, 'We can grind the like of it 
 out of glass and silk, and make lightning for our- 
 selves in a small way;' and so they can in a small 
 way, and in a very small one: David does not deny 
 that, but he puts us in mind of something in that 
 lightning and those breezes which we cannot make. 
 He says, God makes the winds His angels, and 
 flaming fire his ministers; and St. Paul takes the 
 same text, and turns it round to suit his purpose, 
 when he is talking of the blessed angels, saying, 
 'That text in the 104th Psalm means something 
 more; it means that God makes His angels spirits, 
 (that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire.' 
 So showing us that in those breezes there are 
 Jiving spirits, that God's angels guide those thunder-
 
 16 GOD'S WORLD. [SERM. 
 
 clouds ; that the roaring thunderclap is a shock 
 in the air truly, but that it is something more 
 that it is the voice of God, which shakes the cedar- 
 trees of Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, 
 and makes the wild deer slip their young. So 
 we read in the psalms in church; that is David's 
 account of the thunder. I take it for a true account; 
 you may or not as you like. See again. Those 
 springs in the hill-sides, how do they come there? 
 ' Rain-water soaking and flowing out, ' we say. True, 
 but David says something more; he says, God sends 
 the springs, and He sends them into the rivers too. 
 You may say, 'Why, water must run down hill, what 
 need of God?' But suppose God had chosen that 
 water should run wp-hill and not down, how would 
 it have been then ? Very different, I think. No ; 
 He sends them ; He sends all things. Wherever there 
 is any thing useful, His Spirit has settled it. The 
 help that is done on earth He doeth it all Himself. 
 Loving and merciful, caring for the poor dumb 
 beasts ! He sends the springs, and David says, "All 
 the beasts of the field drink thereof." The wild 
 animals in the night, He cares for them too, He, 
 the Almighty God. We hear the foxes bark by 
 night, and we think the fox is hungry, and there it 
 ends with us; but not with David: he says, "The 
 lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from 
 God," God, who feedeth the young ravens who 
 call upon Him. He is a God! "He did not make the
 
 I.] GOD'S WORLD. 17 
 
 world," says a wise man, " and then let it spin round 
 His finger," as we wind up a watch, and then leave it 
 to go of itself. No; "His mercy is over all His 
 works." Loving and merciful, the God of nature is 
 the God of grace. The same love which chose us and 
 our forefathers for His people while we were yet dead 
 in trespasses and sins; the same only-begotten Son, 
 who came down on earth to die for us poor wretches 
 on the cross, that same love, that same power, that 
 same Word of God, who made heaven and earth, looks 
 after the poor gnats in the winter time, that they may 
 have a chance of coming out of the ground when the 
 day stirs the little life in them, and dance in the sun- 
 beam for a short hour of gay life, before they return 
 to the dust whence they were made, to feed creatures 
 nobler and more precious than themselves. That is 
 all God's doing, all the doing of Christ, the King of 
 the earth. "They wait on Him," says David. The 
 beasts, and birds, and insects, the strange fish, and 
 shells, and the nameless corals too, in the deep, deep 
 sea, who build and build below the waters for years 
 and thousands of years, every little, tiny creature 
 bringing his atom of lime to add to the great heap, 
 till their heap stands out of the water and becomes 
 dry land ; and seeds float thither over the wide waste 
 sea, and trees grow up, and birds are driven thither 
 by storms ; and men come by accident in stray ships, 
 and build, and sow, and multiply, and raise churches, 
 and worship the God of heaven, and Christ, the
 
 18 001/8 WORLD. [SEEM. 
 
 blessed One, on that new land which the little 
 coral worms have built up from the deep. Consider 
 that. Who sent them there? Who contrived that 
 those particular men should light on that new island 
 at that especial time ? Who guided thither those 
 seeds those birds? Who gave those insects that 
 strange longing and power to build and build on 
 continually? Christ, by whom all things are made, 
 to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; 
 He and His Spirit, and none else. It is when He 
 opens His hand, they are filled with good. It is 
 when He takes away their breath, they die, and turn 
 again to their dust. He lets His breath, His spirit, 
 go forth, and out of that dead dust grow plants 
 and herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews 
 the face of the earth. For, says the wise man, "all 
 things are God's garment" outward and visible 
 signs of His unseen and unapproachable glory; and 
 when they are worn out, He changes them, says the 
 Psalmist, as a garment, and they shall be changed. 
 
 The old order changes, giving place to the new, 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways. 
 
 But He is the same. He is there all the time all 
 things are His work. In all things we may see 
 Him, if our souls have eyes. All things, be they 
 what they may, which live and grow on this earth, 
 or happen on land or in the sky, will tell us a tale 
 of God, show forth some one feature, at least, of 
 our blessed Saviour's countenance and character,
 
 I.] GOD'S WORLD. 19 
 
 cither His foresight, or His wisdom, or His order, or 
 His power, or His love, or His condescension, or 
 His long-suffering, or his slow, sure vengeance on 
 those who break His laws. It is all written there 
 outside in the great green book, which God hath 
 given to labouring men, and which neither taxes nor 
 tyrants can take from them. The man who is no 
 scholar in letters may read of God as he follows 
 the plough, for the earth he ploughs is his Father's : 
 there is God's mark and seal on it, His name, 
 which though it is written on the dust, yet neither 
 man nor fiend can wipe it out ! 
 
 The poor, solitary, untaught boy, who keeps the 
 sheep, or minds the birds, long lonely days, far from 
 his mother and his playmates, may keep alive in him 
 all purifying thoughts, if he will but open his eyes 
 and look at the green earth around him. 
 
 Think now, my boys, when you are at your work, 
 how all things may put you in mind of God, if you 
 do but choose. The trees which shelter you from the 
 wind, God planted them there for your sakes, in His 
 love. There is a lesson about God. The birds 
 which you drive off the corn, who gave them the 
 sense to keep together and profit by each other's 
 wit and keen eyesight? Who but God, who feeds 
 the young birds when they call on Him? There is 
 another lesson about God. The sheep whom you 
 follow, who ordered the warm wool to grow on them, 
 from which your clothes are made? Who but the
 
 20 GOD'S WORLD. [SER.M. i. 
 
 Spirit of God above, who clothes the grass of the 
 field, the silly sheep, and who clothes you, too, and 
 thinks of you when you don't think of yourselves? 
 There is another lesson about God. The feeble 
 lambs in spring, they ought to remind you surely of 
 your blessed Saviour, the Lamb of God, who died for 
 you upon the cruel cross, who was led as a lamb to 
 the slaughter; and like a sheep that lies dumb and 
 patient under the shearer's hand, so he opened not 
 his mouth. Are not these lambs, then, a lesson from 
 God? And these are but one or two examples out of 
 thousands and thousands. Oh, that I could make 
 you, young and old, all feel these things ! Oh, that 
 I could make you see God in every thing, and every 
 thing in God ! Oh, that I could make you look on 
 this earth, not as a mere dull, dreary prison, and 
 workhouse for your mortal bodies, but as a living 
 book, to speak to you at every time of the living 
 God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ! Sure I am that 
 that would be a heavenly life for you, sure I am 
 that it would keep you from many a sin, and stir 
 you up to many a holy thought and deed, if you 
 could learn to find in every thing around you, how- 
 ever small or mean, the work of God's hand, the 
 likeness of God's countenance, the shadow of God's 
 glory.
 
 SERMON II, 
 
 KELIGION XOT GODLINESS. 
 
 "He watereth the hills from his chambers; the earth is satisfied 
 with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow 
 for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may 
 bring forth food oitt of the earth; and wine that maketh glad 
 the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread 
 which strengthened man's heart." PSALM civ. 13 15. 
 
 DID you ever remark, my friends, that the Bible 
 says hardly any thing about religion that it never 
 praises religious people? This is very curious. 
 Would to God we would all remember it ! The Bible 
 speaks of a religious man only once, and of religion 
 only twice, except where it speaks of the Jew's re- 
 ligion to condemn it, and shows what an empty, 
 blind, useless thing it was. 
 
 What does this Bible talk of, then? It talks of 
 God ; not of religion, but of God. It tells us not to 
 be religious, but to be godly. You may think there 
 is no difference, or that it is but a difference of words. 
 I tell you that a difference in words is a very awful, 
 important difference. A difference in -words is a 
 3
 
 22 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. [SERM. 
 
 difference in things. Words are very awful and 
 wonderful things, for they come from the most awful 
 and wonderful of all beings, Jesus Christ, the. Word. 
 He puts words into men's minds He made all 
 things, and He makes all words to express those 
 things with. And wo to those who use the wrong 
 words about things ! For if a man calls any thing 
 by its wrong name, it is a sure sign that he under- 
 stands that thing wrongly, or feels about it wrongly ; 
 and therefore a man's words are oftener honester 
 than he thinks; for as a man's words are, so is a 
 man's heart; out of the abundance of our hearts 
 our mouths speak; and, therefore, by right words, 
 by the right names which we call things, we shall 
 be justified, and by our words, by the wrong names 
 we call things, we shall be condemned. 
 
 Therefore a difference in words is a difference 
 in the things which those words mean, and there 
 is a difference between religion and godliness; and 
 we show it by our words. Now these are religious 
 times, but they are very ungodly times; and we 
 show that also by our words. Because we think that 
 people ought to be religious, we talk a great deal 
 about religion ; because we hardly think at all that 
 a man ought to be godly, we talk very little about 
 God, and that good old Bible word "godliness" 
 does not pass our lips once a month. For a man 
 may be very religious, my friends, and yet very 
 ungodly. The heathens were very religious at
 
 II.] RELIGIOX XOT GODLINESS. 23 
 
 the very time that, as St. Paul tells us, they would 
 not keep God in their knowledge. The Jews were 
 the most religious people on the earth, they hardly 
 talked or thought about anything but religion, at 
 the very time that they knew so little of God that 
 they crucified Him when He came down among 
 them. St. Paul says that he was living after the 
 strictest sect of the Jews' religion, at the very time 
 that he was fighting against God, persecuting God's 
 people and God's Son, and dead in trespasses and 
 sins. These are ugly facts, my friends, but they 
 are true, and well worth our laying to heart in tliese 
 religious, ungodly days. I am afraid if Jesus Christ 
 came down into England this day as a carpenter's 
 son He would get a better hearing, perhaps, than 
 the Jews gave him, but still a very bad hearing 
 one dare hardly think of it. 
 
 And yet I believe we ought to think of it, and, 
 by God's help, I will one day preach you a sermon, 
 asking you all around this fair question : If Jesus 
 Christ came to you in the shape of a poor man, 
 whom nobody knew, should you know him? should 
 you admire him, fall at his feet and give yourself up 
 to him body and soul ? I am afraid that I, for one, 
 should not I am afraid that too many of us here 
 would not. That comes of thinking more of reli- 
 gion than we do of godliness in plain words, more 
 of our own souls than we do of Jesus Christ. But 
 you will want to know what is, after all, the difference
 
 24 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. [SERM. 
 
 between religion and godliness? Just the difference, 
 my friends, that there is between always thinking of 
 self and always forgetting self between the terror 
 of a slave and the affection of a child between the 
 fear of hell and the love of God.' For, tell me, what 
 you mean by being religious? Do you not mean 
 thinking a great deal about your own souls, and 
 praying and reading about your own souls, and try- 
 ing by all possible means to get your own souls 
 saved? Is not that the meaning of religion ? And 
 yet I have never mentioned God's name in describing 
 it ! This sort of religion must have very little to 
 do with God. You may be surprised at my words, 
 and say in your hearts almost angrily, 'Why, who 
 saves our souls but God? therefore religion must 
 have to do with God.' But, my friends, for your 
 souls' sake, and for God's sake, ask yourselves this 
 question on your knees this day: If you could get 
 your souls saved without God's help, would it make 
 much difference to you? Suppose an angel from 
 heaven, as they say, was to come down and prove to 
 you clearly that there was no God, no blessed Jesus 
 in heaven, that the world made itself, and went on 
 of itself, and that the Bible was all a mistake, but 
 that you need not mind, for your gardens and crops 
 would grow just as well, and your souls be saved 
 just as well when you died. 
 
 To how many of you would it make any differ- 
 ence? To some of you, thank God, I believe
 
 II.] RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. 25 
 
 it would make a difference. There are some here, 
 I believe, who would feel that news the worst news 
 they ever heard, worse than if they were told 
 that their souls were lost for ever; there are some 
 here, I do believe, who, at that news, would cry 
 aloud in agony, like little children who had lost their 
 father, and say, 'No Father in heaven to love? No 
 blessed Jesus in heaven to work for, and die for, and 
 glory and delight in ? No God to rule and manage 
 this poor, miserable, quarrelsome world, bringing 
 good out of evil, blessing and guiding all things and 
 people on earth? What do I care what becomes of 
 my soul if there is no God for my soul to glory 
 in? What is heaven worth without God? God is 
 heaven ! ' 
 
 Yes, indeed, what would heaven be worth without 
 God ! But how many people feel that the curse of 
 this day is, that most people have forgotten that ? 
 They are selfishly anxious enough about their own 
 souls, but they have forgotten God. They are reli- 
 gious, for fear of hell; but they are not godly, for 
 they do not love God, or see God's hand in every 
 thing. They forget that they have a Father in hea- 
 ven ; that He sends rain, and sunshine, and fruitful 
 seasons; that He gives them all things richly to 
 enjoy in spite of all their sins. His mercies are far 
 above, out of their sight, and therefore His judg- 
 ments are far away out of their sight too ; and so they 
 talk of the "Visitation of God," as if it was some- 
 3*
 
 26 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. [SERM. 
 
 thing that was very extraordinary, and happened 
 very seldom ; and when it came, only brought evil, 
 'harm, and sorrow. If a man lives on in health, they 
 say he lives hy the strength of his own constitution; 
 if he drops down dead, they say he died by "the visi- 
 tation of God." If the corn-crops go on all right and 
 safe, they think that quite natural the effect of the 
 soil, and the weather, and their own skill in farming 
 and gardening. But if there comes a hailstorm or a 
 blight, and spoils it all, and brings on a famine, they 
 call it at once "a visitation of God." My friends ! 
 do you think God "visits" the earth or you only 
 to harm you ? I tell you that every blade of grass 
 grows by "the visitation of God." I tell you that 
 every'healthy breath you ever drew, every cheerful 
 hour you ever spent, every good crop you ever 
 housed safely, came to you by "the visitation of 
 God." I tell you that every sensible thought or 
 plan that ever came into your heads, every lov- 
 ing, honest, manly, womanly feeling that ever rose 
 in your hearts, God "visited" you to put it there. 
 If God's Spirit had not given it you, you would 
 never have got it of yourselves. 
 
 But people forget this, and therefore they have 
 so little real love to God so little real, loyal, child- 
 like trust in God. Q^hey do not think much about 
 God, because they find no pleasure in thinking about 
 Him ; they look on God as a taskmaster, gathering 
 where He has not strewed, reaping where He has not
 
 II.] RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. 27 
 
 sown, a task-master who has put them, very mise- 
 rable, sinful creatures, to struggle on in a very 
 miserable, sinful world, and, though He tells them 
 in His Bible that they cannot keep His command- 
 ments, expects them to keep them just the same, 
 and will at the last send them all into everlasting 
 fire, unless they take a great deal of care, and give 
 up a great many natural and pleasant things, and 
 beseech and entreat Him very hard to excuse them, 
 after all. This is the thought which most people 
 have of God, even religious people ; they look on 
 God as a stern tyrant, who, when man sinned and 
 fell, could not satisfy his own justice His own ven- 
 geance, in plain words, without killing some one, 
 and who would have certainly killed all mankind, if 
 Jesus Christ had not interfered, and said, "If thou 
 must slay some one, slay me, though I am innocent. " 
 Oh, my friends, does not this all sound horrible 
 and irreverent? And yet if you will but look into- 
 your own hearts, will you not find some such 
 thoughts there? I am sure you will. I believe 
 every man finds such thoughts in his heart now and 
 then. I find them in my own heart: I know that 
 they must be in the hearts of others, because I see 
 them producing their natural fruits in people's ac- 
 tions a selfish, slavish view of religion, with little 
 or no real love to God, or real trust in Him ; but a 
 great deal of uneasy dread of Him ; for this is just 
 the dark, false view of God, and of the good news
 
 28 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. [SERM. 
 
 of salvation and the kingdom of heaven, which the 
 devil is always trying to make men take. The Evil 
 One tries to make us forget that God is love; he 
 tries to make us forget that God gives us all things 
 richly to enjoy ; he tries to make us forget that God 
 gives at all, and to make us think that we take, not 
 that He gives; to make us look at God as a task- 
 master, not as a father; in one word, to make us 
 mistake the devil for God, and God for the devil. 
 
 And, therefore, it is that we ought to bless God 
 for such scriptures as this 104th Psalm, which He 
 seems to have preserved in the Bible just to contra- 
 dict these dark, slavish notions, -^-just to testify that 
 God is a giver, and knows our necessities "before we 
 ask and gives us all things, even as He gave us His 
 Blessed Son freely, long before we wanted them, 
 from the foundation of all things, before ever the 
 earth and the world was made from all eternity, 
 perpetual love, perpetual bounty. 
 
 What does this text teach us? To look at God 
 as Him who gives to all freely and upbraideth not. 
 It says to us, Do not suppose that your crops grow 
 of themselves. God waters the hills from above. 
 He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and the 
 green herb for the service of man. Do not sup- 
 pose that He cares nothing about seeing you com- 
 fortable and happy. It is He, He only who sends 
 all Avhich strengthens man's body, and makes glad 
 his heart, and makes him of a cheerful countenance.
 
 II.] RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. 29 
 
 His Avill is that you should be cheerful. Ah, my 
 friends, if we would but believe all this ! we are too 
 apt to say to ourselves, ( Our earthly comforts here 
 have nothing to do with godliness or God, God must 
 save our souls, but our bodies we must save our- 
 selves. God gives us spiritual blessings, but earth- 
 ly blessings, the good things of this life, for them 
 we must scramble and drudge ourselves, and get, 
 as much of them as we can without offending God;' 
 as if God grudged us our comforts ! as if godliness 
 had not the promise of this life, as well as the life 
 to come! If we would but believe that God knows 
 our necessities before we ask that He gives us 
 daily more than we can ever get by working for it! 
 if we would but seek first the kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness, all other things would be 
 added to us ; and we should find that he who loses 
 his life should save it. And this way of looking at 
 God's earth would 1 not make us idle ; it would not 
 tempt us to sit with folded hands for God's blessings 
 to drop into our mouths. No ! I believe it would 
 make men far more industrious than ever mere self- 
 interest can make them; they would say, 'God is 
 our Father, He gave us His own Son, He gives us 
 all things freely, we owe Him not slavish service, 
 but a boundless debt of cheerful gratitude. There-, 
 fore we must do His will, and we are sure His will 
 must be our happiness and comfort therefore we 
 must do His will, and His will is that we should
 
 30 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. [SERM. 
 
 work, and therefore we must work. lie has bid- 
 den us labour on this earth He has bidden us dress 
 it and keep it, conquer it and fill it for Him. We 
 are His stewards here on earth, and therefore it is 
 a glory and an honour to be allowed to work here 
 in God's own land iu our loving Father's own 
 garden. We do not know why lie wishes us to 
 labour and till the ground, for lie could have fed 
 us with manna from heaven if He liked, as He fed 
 the Jews of old, without our working at all. But 
 His will is that we should work ; and work we will, 
 not for our own sakes merely, but for His sake be- 
 cause we know He likes it, and for the sake of our 
 brothers, our countrymen, for whom Christ died. 
 
 Oh, my friends, why is it that so many till the 
 ground industriously, and yet grow poorer and 
 poorer for all their drudging and working? It is 
 their own fault. They till the ground for their 
 own sakes, and not for God's sake and for their 
 countrymen's sake; and so, as the Prophet says, 
 they sow much and bring in little, and he who earns 
 Avages, earns them, to put in a bag full of holes. 
 Suppose you try the opposite plan. Suppose you 
 say to yourself, 'I will work henceforward because 
 God wishes me to work. I will work henceforward 
 for my country's sake, because I feel that God has 
 given me a noble and a holy calling when He set 
 me to grow food for His children, the people of 
 England. As for my wages and my profit, God will
 
 II.] RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. 31 
 
 take care of them if they are just ; and if they are 
 unjust, He will take care of them too. He, at all 
 events, makes the garden and the field grow, and 
 not I. My land is filled, not with the fruit of my 
 work, but with the fruit of His work. He will see 
 that I lose nothing by my labour. If I till the soil 
 for God and for God's children, I may trust God to 
 pay me my wages.' Oh, my friends, He who feeds 
 the young birds when they call upon Him; and far, 
 far more, He who gave you His only-begotten Son, 
 will He not with Him freely give you all things? 
 For, after all done, He must give to you, or you will 
 not get. You may fret and stint, and scrape and 
 puzzle; one man may sow, and another man may 
 water ; but, after all, who can give the increase but 
 God? Can you make a load of hay, unless He has 
 first grown it for you, and then dried, it for you ? 
 If you would but think a little more about Him, if 
 you would believe that your crops were His gifts, 
 and in your hearts offer them up to Him as thank- 
 offerings, see if He would not help you to sell your 
 crops as well as to house them. He would put you 
 in a way of an honest profit for your labour, just 
 as surely as He only put you in the way of labouring 
 at all. "Trust in the Lord, and be doing good; 
 dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed;" 
 for "without me," says our Lord, "you can do 
 nothing." No: these are His own words nothing. 
 To Him all power is given in heaven and earth ; He
 
 32 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS. [SERM. II. 
 
 knows eVery root and every leaf, and feeds it. Will 
 lie not much more feed you, oh ye of little faith? 
 Do you think that He has made His world so ill that 
 a man cannot get on in it unless he is a rogue? 
 No. Cast all your care on Him, and see if you do 
 not find out ere long that He cares for you, and has 
 cared for you from all eternity.
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 "0 Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou 
 made them all : the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou 
 givest them they gather.: Thou openest Thine hand, they are 
 filled with good. Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled : 
 Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their 
 dust. Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created : and 
 Thou renewest the face of the earth." PSALM civ. 24, 28 30. 
 
 I had intended to go through this psalm with 
 you in regular order; but things have happened 
 in this parish awful and sad, during the last week, 
 which I was bound not to let slip without trying 
 to brrng them home to your hearts, if by any means 
 I could persuade the thoughtless ones among you 
 to be wise and consider your latter' end: I mean 
 the sad deaths of various of our acquaintances. 
 The death-bell has been tolled in this parish three 
 times, I believe, in one day a thing which has 
 seldom happened before, and which God grant may 
 never happen again. Within two miles of this 
 church there are now five lying dead. Five human 
 beings, young as well as old, to whom the awful 
 4
 
 34 LIFE AND DEATH. [SERM. 
 
 words of the text have been fulfilled: "Thou takest 
 away their breath, they die, and return to their 
 dust." And the very day on which three of these 
 deaths happened was Ascension-day the day on 
 which Jesus, the Lord of life, the Conqueror of 
 death, ascended upon high, having led captivity cap- 
 tive, and became the first-fruits of the grave, to 
 send down from the heaven of eternal life the Spirit 
 who is the Giver of life. That was a strange mix- 
 ture, death seemingly triumphant over Christ's 
 people on the very day on which life triumphed in 
 Jesus Christ Himself. Let us see, though, whether 
 death has not something to do with Ascension-day. 
 Let us see, whether a sermon about death is not a 
 fit sermon for the Sunday after Ascension-day. 
 Let us see whether the text has not a message about 
 life and death too a message which may make us 
 feel that in the midst of life we are in death, and 
 that yet in the midst of death we are in life; that 
 however things may seem, yet death has not con- 
 quere.l life, but life has conquered and will con- 
 quer death, arid conquer it most completely at the 
 very moment that we die, and our bodies return 
 to their dust. 
 
 Do I speak riddles? I think the text will ex- 
 plain my riddles, for it tells us how life comes, how 
 death comes. Life comes from God: He sends 
 forth His Spirit, and things are made, and He re- 
 news the face of the earth. We read in the very
 
 III.] LIFE AND DEATH. 35 
 
 first two verses of the book of Genesis how the 
 Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters 
 at the creation, and woke all things into life. 
 Therefore the Creed well calls the Holy Ghost, the 
 "Spirit of God, that is the Lord and Giver of life. 
 And the text tells us that He gives life, not only 
 to us who have immortal souls, but to every thing 
 on the face of the earth ; for the psalm has been 
 talking all through, not only of men, but of beasts, 
 fishes, trees, and rivers, and rocks, sun and moon. 
 Now, all these things have a life in them. Not a 
 life like ours ; but still you speak rightly and wisely 
 when you say, 'That tree is alive, and, That tree 
 is dead. That running water is live water it is 
 sweet and fresh, but if it is kept standing it begins 
 to putrefy, its life is gone from it, and a sort of 
 death comes over it, and makes it foul, and unwhole- 
 some, and unfit to drink.' This is a deep matter, 
 this, how there is a sort of life in every thing, even 
 to the stones under our feet. I do not mean, of 
 course, that stones can think as our life makes us 
 do, or feel as the beasts' life makes them do, or even 
 grow as the trees' life makes them do; but I mean 
 that their life keeps them as they are, without 
 changing or decaying. You hear miners and quar- 
 rymen talk very truly of the live rock. That stone, 
 they say, was cut out of the live rock, meaning 
 the rock as it is under ground, sound and hard 
 as it would be, for aught we know, to the end of
 
 36 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 time, unless it was taken out of the ground, out of 
 the place where God's Spirit meant it to be, and 
 brought up to the open air and the rain, in which it 
 is not its nature to be. And then you will see that 
 the life of the stone begins to pass from it bit by 
 bit, that it crumbles and peels away, and, in short, 
 decays and is turned again to its dust. Its organi- 
 zation, as it is called, or life, ends, and then what? 
 does the stone lie for ever useless? No! And 
 there is the great blessed mystery of how God's 
 Spirit is always bringing life out of death. When 
 the stone is decayed and crumbled down to dust 
 and clay, it makes soil this very soil here, which 
 you plough, is the decayed ruins of ancient hills; 
 the clay which you dig up in the fields was once part 
 of some slate or granite mountains which were worn 
 away by weather and water, that they might become 
 fruitful earth. Wonderful ! but any one who has 
 studied these things can tell you they are true. Any 
 one who has ever lived in mountainous countries 
 ought to have seen the thing happen, ought to know 
 that the land in the mountain valleys- is made at 
 first, and kept rich year by year, by the washings 
 from the hills above; and this is the reason why land 
 left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich. 
 Then what becomes of the soil ? It begins a new 
 life. The roots of the plants take it up; the salts 
 which they find in it the staple, as we call them 
 go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its
 
 III.] LIFE AND DEATH. 37 
 
 use, it feeds the stalks of corn and grass, and makes 
 them stiff. The corn-stalks would never stand up- 
 right if they could not get sand from the soil. So 
 what a thousand years ago made part of a mountain, 
 now makes part of a wheat plant; and in a year 
 more the wheat grain will have been eaten, and the 
 wheat straw perhaps eaten too, and they will have 
 died decayed in the bodies of the animals who have 
 eaten them, and then they will begin a third new 
 life they will be turned into parts of the animal's 
 body of a man's body. So that what is now your 
 bone and flesh, may have been once a rock on some 
 hill-side a hundred miles away. 
 
 Strange, but true! all learned men know that it 
 is true. You, if you think over my words, may see 
 that they are at least reasonable. But still most 
 wonderful ! This word works right well, surely. It 
 obeys God's Spirit. Oh, my friends, if we fulfilled 
 our life and our duty as well as the clay which we 
 tread on does, if we obeyed God's Spirit as surely 
 as the flint does, we should have many a heartache 
 spared us, and many a headache too ! To be 
 what God wants us! to be men, to be women, 
 and therefore to live as children of God, members 
 of Christ, fulfilling our duty in that state to which 
 God has called us, that would be our bliss and glory. 
 Nothing can live in a state in which God did 
 not intend it to live. Suppose a tree could move 
 itself about like an animal, and chose to do so ? 
 4*
 
 38 LIFE AND DEATH. [SERM. 
 
 the tree would wither and die ; it would be trying 
 to act contrary to the law which God has given it. 
 Suppose the ox chose to eat meat like the lion, 
 it would fall sick and die; for it would be acting 
 contrary to the law which God's Spirit had made 
 for it going out of the calling to which God's 
 Word has called it, to eat grass and not flesh, and 
 live thereby. And so with us: if we will do wicked- 
 ly, when the will of God, as the Scripture tells 
 us, is our sanctification, our holiness; if we will 
 speak lies, when God's law for us is that we should 
 speak truth; if we will bear hatred and ill-will, 
 when God's law for us is, Love as brothers, you 
 all sprang from one father, Adam, you were all 
 redeemed by one brother, Jesus Christ; if we will 
 try to live as if there was no God, when God's 
 law for us is, that a man can live like a man only by 
 faith and trust in God; then we shall die, if we 
 break God's laws according to which he intended 
 man to live. Thus it was with Adam ; God intended 
 him to obey God, to learn every thing from God. 
 He chose to disobey God, to try and know some- 
 thing of himself, by getting the knowledge of good 
 and evil; and so death passed on him. He became 
 an unnatural man, a bad man, more or less, and so 
 lie became a dead man ; and death came into the 
 world, that time at least, by sin, by breaking the 
 law by which man was meant to be a man. As the 
 beasts will die if you give them unnatural food, or
 
 III.] LIFE AND DEATH. 39 
 
 in any way prevent their following the laws which 
 God has made for them, so man dies, of necessity, 
 all the world cannot help his dying because he 
 breaks the laws which God has made for him. 
 
 And how does he die? The text tells us, God 
 takes away his breath, and turns His face from him. 
 In his presence, it is written, is life. The moment 
 He withdraws his Spirit, the Spirit of life, from 
 any thing, body or soul, then it dies. It was by 
 sin came death by man's becoming unfit for the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 Therefore the body is dead because of sin, says 
 St. Paul, doomed to die, carrying about in it the 
 seeds of death from the very moment it is born. 
 Death has truly passed upon all men ! 
 
 Most sad; and yet there is hope, and more than 
 hope, there is certain assurance, for us, that though 
 we die, yet shall we live ! I have shown you, in the 
 beginning of my sermon, how nothing that dies 
 perishes to nothing, but begins a new and a higher 
 life. How the stone becomes a plant, something 
 better and more useful than it was before ; the plant 
 passes into an animal a step higher still. And, 
 therefore, we may be sure that the same rule will 
 hold good about us men and women, that when we 
 die, we shall begin a new and a nobler life, that is, 
 if we have been true men; if we have lived fulfilling 
 the law of our kind. St. Paul tells us so positively. 
 He says that nothing comes to life except it first
 
 40 LIFE AND DEATH. [SERM. 
 
 die, then God gives it a new body. He says that 
 even so is the resurrection of the dead, that we 
 gain a step by dying; that we are sown in corrup- 
 tion, and are raised in incorruption ; we are sown 
 in dishonour, and are raised in glory; we are sown 
 in weakness, and are raised in power; we are sown 
 a natural body, and are raised a spiritual body; 
 that as we now are of the earth earthly, after death 
 and the resurrection our new and nobler body will 
 be of the heavens heavenly; so that "when this 
 corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal shall have put on immortality, then death 
 shall be swallowed up in victory." Therefore, I say, 
 Sorrow not for those who sleep as if you had no 
 hope for the dead; for "Christ is risen from the 
 dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. 
 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all 
 be made alive." 
 
 And I say that this has to do with the text it 
 has to do with Ascension-day. For if we claim our 
 share in Christ, if we claim our share of our 
 heavenly Father's promise, "to give the Holy Spirit 
 to those who ask Him;" then we may certainly hope 
 for our share in Christ's resurrection, our share in 
 Christ's ascension. For says St. Paul (Rom. viii. 
 10, 11,) "if Christ be in you, the body is dead 
 because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of 
 righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised, 
 up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised
 
 III.] LIFE AND DEATH. 41 
 
 up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your 
 mortal bodies, by His Spirit that dwelleth in you!" 
 There is a blessed promise ! that in that, as in every 
 thing, we shall be made like Christ our Master, the 
 new Adam, who is a life-giving Spirit, that as He 
 was brought to life again by the Spirit of God, so 
 we shall be. And so will be fulfilled in us the glo- 
 rious rule which the text lays down, "Thou, God, 
 sendest forth Thy Spirit, and they are created, and 
 Thou dost renew the face of the earth." Fulfilled? 
 yes, but far more gloriously than ever the old 
 Psalmist expected. Read the Revelation of St. 
 John, chapters xxi. and xxii. for the glory of the 
 renewed earth; read the first Epistle of Paul to the 
 Thessalonians, chap iv. 16-18, for the glorious resur- 
 rection and ascension of those who have died trust- 
 ing in the blessed Lord, who died for them ; and then 
 see what a glorious future lies before us see how 
 death is but the gate of life see how what holds true 
 of every thing on this earth, down to the flint be- 
 neath our feet, holds true ten thousand times of men 
 that to die and to decay is only to pass into a 
 nobler state of life. But remember, that just as we 
 are better than the stone, we may be also worse than 
 the stone. It cannot disobey God's laws, therefore 
 it can enjoy no reward, any more than suffer any 
 punishment. We can disobey we can fall from 
 our calling we can cast God's law behind us 
 we can refuse to do His will, to work out our own
 
 42 LIFE AXD DEATH. [SERM. III. 
 
 salvation ; and just because our reward in the life 
 to come will be so glorious, if we fulfil our life and 
 law, the life of faith and the law of love, therefore 
 will our punishment be so horrible, if we neglect the 
 life of faith and trample under foot the law of love. 
 Oh, my friends, choose! Death is before you all. 
 Shall it be the gate of everlasting life and glory, or 
 the gate of everlasting death and misery ? Will you 
 claim your glorious inheritance, and be for ever 
 equal to the angels, doing God's will on earth as 
 they in heaven ; or will you fall lower than the 
 stones, who, at all events, must do their duty as 
 stones, and not do God's will at all, but only suffer 
 it in eternal wo? You must do one or the other. 
 You cannot be like the stones, without feeling 
 without joy or sorrow, just because you are immortal 
 spirits, every one of you. You must be either happy 
 or miserable, blessed or disgraced, for ever. I know 
 of no middle path; do you? Choose before the 
 night comes, in which no man can work. Our life is 
 but a vapour which appears for a little time, then 
 vanishes away. "0 Lord, how manifold are Thy 
 works ! in wisdom hast Thou made them all : the earth 
 is full of Thy riches. That thou givest them they 
 gather : Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with 
 good. Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled : 
 Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to 
 their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are 
 created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth."
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. 
 
 "Do not err, my beloved brethren ; every good gift and every 
 perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father 
 of lights." JAMES, i. 16, 17. 
 
 This text, I believe more and more every day, is 
 one of the most important ones in the whole Bible; 
 and just at this time it is more important for us 
 than ever, because people have forgotten it more 
 than ever. 
 
 And, according as you firmly believe this text, 
 according as you firmly believe that every good gift 
 you have in body and soul comes down from above, 
 from God the Father of lights according, I say, 
 as you believe this, and live upon that belief, just 
 so far will you be able to do your duty to God and 
 man worthily of your blessed Saviour's calling and 
 redemption, and of the high honour which He has 
 given you of being free and christened men, re- 
 deemed by His most precious blood, and led by 
 His most noble Spirit.
 
 44 THE AVORK OF GOD*S SPIRIT. [SERM. 
 
 Now, just because this text is so important, the 
 devil is particularly busy in trying to make people 
 forget it. For what is his plan ? Is it not to make 
 us forget God, to put God out of all our thoughts, 
 to make us acknowledge God in none of our ways, 
 to make us look at ourselves and not at God, that 
 so we may become first earthly and sensual, and then 
 devilish, like Satan himself? Therefore he tries to 
 make us disbelieve this text. He puts into our 
 hearts such thoughts as these: Ay, all good gifts 
 may come from God ; but that only means all spi- 
 ritual gifts. All those fine, deep doctrines and 
 wonderful feelings that some very religious people 
 talk of, about conversion, and regeneration, and 
 santification, and assurance, and the witness of the 
 indwelling Spirit, all those gifts come from God, 
 no doubt, but they are quite above us. We are 
 straightforward, simple people, Ayho cannot feel 
 fine fancies; if we can be honest, arid industrious, 
 and good-natured, and sober, and strong, and 
 healthy, that is enough for us, and all that has 
 nothing to do with religion. Those are not gifts 
 which come from God. A man is strong and 
 healthy by birth, and honest and good-natured by 
 nature. Those are very good things; but they are 
 not gifts they are not (/races they are not spi- 
 ritual blessings they have nothing to do with the 
 state of a man's soul. Ungodly p.eople are honest, 
 and good-tempered, and industrious, and healthy,
 
 IV.] THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. 45 
 
 as well as your saints and your methodists; so what 
 is the use of praying for spiritual gifts to God, when 
 we can have all we want by nature ? ' 
 
 Did such thoughts never come into your head, 
 my friends? Are they not often in your heads, more 
 or less? Perhaps not in these very words, but some- 
 thing like them. 
 
 I do not say it to blame you, for I believe that 
 every man, each according to his station, is tempted 
 to such thoughts ; I believe that such thoughts are 
 not yours or any man's; I believe they are the 
 devil's, who tempts all men, who tempted even 
 the Son of God Himself with thoughts like these at 
 their root. Such thoughts are not yours or mine, 
 though they may come into our heads. They 
 are part of the evil which besets us which is not 
 us which has no right or share in us which we 
 pray God to drive away from us when we say, 
 "Deliver us from evil. " Have you not all had such 
 thoughts? But have you not all had very different 
 thoughts? have you not, every one of you, at times, 
 felt in the bottom of your hearts, after all, * This 
 strength and industry, this courage, and honesty, 
 and good-nature of mine, must come from God; I 
 did not get them myself? If I was born honest, 
 and strong, and gentle, and brave, some one must 
 have made me so when I was born, or before ? The 
 devil certainly did not make me so, therefore God 
 must? These, too, are His gifts.' 
 5
 
 46 THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. [SERM. 
 
 Did you ever think such thoughts as these? If 
 you did not, not much matter, for you have all 
 acted, more or less, in your better moments as if 
 you had them. There are more things in a man's 
 heart, thank God, than ever come into his head. 
 Many a man does a noble thing by instinct, a* we 
 say, without ever thinking whether it is a noble 
 thing or not without thinking about it at all. 
 Many a man, thank God, is led at times, by God's 
 Spirit without ever knowing whose Spirit it is that 
 leads him. 
 
 But he ought to know it, for it is willing, reason- 
 able service which God wants of us. He does not 
 care to use us like tools and puppets. And why? 
 He is not merely, our Maker, He is our Father, 
 and He wishes us to know and feel that we are His 
 children to know and feel that we all have come 
 from Him; to acknowledge Him in all our ways, 
 to thank Him for all, to look up lovingly and con- 
 fidently to Him for more, as His reasonable child- 
 ren; day by day, and hour by hour. Every good 
 gift we have comes from Him; but He will have 
 us know where they all come from. 
 
 Let us go through now a few of these good gifts, 
 which we call natural, and see what the Bible says 
 of them, and from whom they come. 
 
 First, now, that common gift of strength and cou- 
 rage. Who gives you that? who gave it David ? For 
 He that gives it to one is most likely to be He that
 
 IV.] THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. 47 
 
 gives it to another. David says to God, " Thou teach- 
 est my hands to war, and my fingers to fight ; by the 
 help of God I ean leap over a wall: He makes me 
 strong, that my arms can break even a bow of steel :" 
 that is plain-spoken enough, I think. Who gave 
 Samson his strength, again? What says the Bible? 
 How Samson met a young lion which roared against 
 him, and he had nothing in his hand, and the Spirit 
 of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore 
 the lion as he would have torn a kid. And, again, 
 how when traitors had bound him with two new 
 cords, the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon 
 him, and the cords which were on his arms became 
 as flax that WPS burnt with fire, and fell from off 
 his hands. And, for God's sake, do not give in to 
 that miserable fancy that because these stories are 
 what you call miraculous, therefore they have no- 
 thing to do with you that Samson's strength 
 came to him miraculously by God's Spirit, and yet 
 yours comes to you a different way. The Bible is 
 written to tell you how all that happens really 
 happens what all things really are; God is working 
 among us always, but we do not see Him ; and the 
 Bible just lifts up, once and for all, the veil which 
 hides Him from us, and lets us see, in one instance, 
 who it is that does all the wonderful things which go 
 on round us to this day, that when we see any thing 
 like it happen we may know whom to thank for it. 
 The Great Physician healed- the blind and the
 
 48 THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. [SERM. 
 
 lame in Judea; and why? to show us who heals 
 the blind and the lame now to show us that the 
 good gift of medicine and surgery, and the physi- 
 cian's art, comes down from Him who cured the 
 paralytic and cleansed the lepers in Judea to 
 whom all power is given in heaven and earth. 
 
 So, again, with skill in farming and agriculture. 
 From whom does that come ? The very heathens can 
 tell us that, for it is curious, that among the heathen, 
 in all ages and countries, those men who have found 
 out great improvements in tilling the ground have 
 been honoured and often worshipped as divine men 
 as gods, thereby showing that the heathen, among 
 all their idolatries, had a true and just notion about 
 man's practical skill and knowledge that it could 
 only come from Heaven, that it was by the inspi- 
 ration and guidance of God above, that skill in agri- 
 culture arose. What says Isaiah of that to the very 
 same purpose ? "Doth the ploughman plough all day 
 to sow ? Doth he open and break the clods of his 
 ground? When he hath made plain the face 
 thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and 
 cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley 
 and the rye in their place? For his God doth in- 
 struct him to discretion, and doth teach him." "This 
 also," says Isaiah, "cometh from the Lord of Hosts, 
 who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in work- 
 ing." Would to God you would all believe it ! 
 
 Again; wisdom and prudence, and a clear, power-
 
 IV.] THE WORK OF GOD** SPIRIT. 49 
 
 ful rnind, are not they parts of God's likeness ? 
 How is God's Spirit described in Scripture? It is 
 called the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the 
 Spirit of prudence and might. Therefore, surely, 
 all wisdom and understanding, all prudence and 
 strength of mind, are, like that Spirit, part of God's 
 image; and where did we get God's image? Can we 
 make ourselves like God? If we are like him, He 
 must have formed that likeness, and He alone. 
 The Spirit of God, says the Scripture, giveth us 
 understanding. 
 
 Or, again ; good-nature and affection, love, gene- 
 rosity, pity, whose likeness are they? What is 
 God's name but love? God is love. Has not He 
 revealed Himself as the God of mercy, full of long- 
 suffering, compassion, and free forgiveness; and 
 must not, then, all love and affection, all compassion 
 and generosity, be His gift? Yes. As the rays come 
 from the sun, and yet are not the sun, even so our 
 love and pity, though they are not God, but merely 
 a poor, weak image and reflection of Him, yet from 
 Him alone they come. If there is mercy in our 
 hearts, it comes from the Fountain of mercy. If 
 there is the light of love in us, it is a ray from the 
 full sum of His love. 
 
 Or honesty, again, and justice, whose image 
 
 are they but God's? Is He not THE Just One the 
 
 righteous God? Is not what is just for man just for 
 
 God? Are not the laws of justice and honesty, by 
 
 5*
 
 50 THE WORK OP GOD'S SPIRIT. [SERM. 
 
 which man deals fairly with man, His laws the 
 laws by which God deals with us? Does not every 
 book I had almost said every page in the Bible 
 show us that all our justice is but the pattern and 
 copy of God's justice, the working out of those 
 six latter commandments of His, which are summed 
 up in that one command, "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bour as thyself?" 
 
 Now here, again, I ask: If justice and honesty 
 be God's likeness, who made us like God in this 
 who put into us this sense of justice which all have, 
 though so few obey it? Can man make himself 
 like God? Can a worm ape his Maker? No. From 
 God's Spirit, the Spirit of right, came this inborn 
 feeling of justice, this knowledge of right and wrong, 
 to us part of the image of God in which He 
 created man part of the breath or spirit of life 
 which He breathed into Adam. Do not mistake 
 me. I do not say that the sense, and honesty, and 
 love in us, are God's Spirit they are the spirit of 
 man, but that they are like God's Spirit, and there- 
 fore they must be given us by God's Spirit to be 
 used as God's Spirit. Himself uses them. How a 
 man shall have his share of God's Spirit, and live in 
 and by God's Spirit, is another question, and a 
 higher and more blessed one; but we must master 
 thisquestion first we must believe that our spirits 
 come from God, then, perhaps, we shall begin to 
 see that our spirits never can work well unless they
 
 IV.] THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. 51 
 
 are joined to the Spirit of God, from whom they 
 came. From whom else, I ask again, can they come ? 
 Can they come from our bodies? Our bodies! 
 What are they ? Flesh and bones, made up of air 
 and water and earth, out of the dead bodies of the 
 animals, the dead roots and fruits of plants which 
 we eat. They are earth matter. Can matter be 
 courageous? Did you ever hear of a good-natured 
 plant, or an honest stone ? Then this good-nature, 
 and honesty, and courage of ours, must belong to 
 our souls our spirits. Who put them there? Did 
 we? Does a child make its own character? Does 
 its body make its character first? Can its father 
 and mother make its character? No. Our charac- 
 ters must come from some spirit above us either 
 from God or from the devil. And is the devil 
 likely to make us honest, or brave, or kindly? I 
 leave you to answer that. God God alone, my 
 friends, is the author of good the help that is done 
 on earth, He doeth it all Himself: every good gift 
 and every perfect gift cometh from Him. 
 
 Now some of you may think this a strange sort 
 of sermon, because I have said little or nothing 
 about Jesus Christ and His redemption in it, but I 
 say No. 
 
 You must believe this much about yourselves 
 before you can believe more. You must fairly and 
 really believe that God made you one thing before 
 you can believe that you have made yourselves ano-
 
 52 THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. [SERM. 
 
 ther thing. You must really believe that you are not 
 mere machines and animals, but immortal souls, 
 before you can really believe that you have sinned; 
 for animals cannot sin only reasonable souls can 
 sin. We must really believe that God made us at 
 bottom in His likeness, before we can begin to find 
 out that there is another likeness in us besides God's 
 a selfish, brutish, too often a devilish likeness 
 which must be repented of, and fought against, and 
 cast out, that God's likeness in us may get the up- 
 per hand, and we may be what God expects us to be. 
 We must know our dignity before we can feel our 
 shame. We must see how high we have a right to 
 stand, that we may see how low, alas ! we have 
 fallen. 
 
 Now you I know many such here, thank God 
 to whom God has given clear, powerful heads for 
 business, and honest, kindly hearts, I do beseech 
 you consider my words, Who has given you these 
 but God? They are talents which He has com- 
 mitted to your charge; and will He not require an 
 account of them ? He only, and His free mercy, has 
 made you to differ from others; if you are better 
 than the fools and profligates round you, He, and 
 not yourselves, has made you better. ' What have 
 you that you have not received ? By the grace of 
 God alone you are what you are. If good comes 
 easier to you than to others, He alone has made 
 it easier to you; and if you have done wrong,
 
 IV.] THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. 53 
 
 if you have fallen short of your duty, as all fall 
 short, is not your sin greater than others? for unto 
 whom much is given of them much shall be re- 
 quired. Consider that, for God's sake, and see 
 if you, too, have not something to be ashamed of, 
 between yourselves and God. See if you, too, have 
 not need of Jesus Christ and his precious blood, 
 and God's free forgiveness, who have had so much 
 light and power given you, and still have fallen 
 short of what you might have been, and what, by 
 God's grace you still may be, and, as I hope and 
 earnestly pray, still will be. 
 
 And you, young men and women consider; if 
 God has given you manly courage and high spirits, 
 and strength and beauty think Grod, your Fa- 
 ther, has given them to you, and of them He will 
 surely require an account; therefore, "Rejoice, 
 young people," says Solomon, "in your youth, and 
 let your hearts cheer you in the days of your youth, 
 and walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight 
 of your eyes. But remember," continues the wisest 
 of men, "remember, that for all these things God 
 shall bring you into judgment." Now do not mis- 
 understand that. It does not mean that there is a 
 sin in being happy. It does not mean that if God 
 has given to a young man a bold spirit and power- 
 ful limbs, or to a young woman a handsome face 
 and a merry loving heart, that he will punish them 
 for these God forbid ! what He gives He means to
 
 54 THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT. [sERM. IV. 
 
 be used: but this it moans, that according as you 
 use those blessings so will you be judged at the 
 last day: that for them, too, you will be brought to 
 judgment, and tried at the bar of God. As you 
 have used them for industry, and innocent happi- 
 ness, and holy married love, or for riot and quar- 
 relling, and idleness, and vanity, and filthy lusts, 
 so shall you be judged. And if any of you have 
 sinned in any of these ways, God forbid that you 
 should have sinned in all these ways; but surely, 
 surely, some of you have been idle some of you 
 have been riotous some of you have been vain 
 some of you have been quarrelsome some of you, 
 alas ! have been that which I shall not name here. 
 Think, if you have sinned in any one of these ways, 
 how can you answer it to God. Have you not need 
 of the blessed Saviour's blood to wash you clean ? 
 Young people! God has given you much. As a 
 young man, I speak to you. Youth is an inestima- 
 ble blessing or an inestimable curse, according as 
 you use it; and if you have abused your spring- 
 time of youth, as all I am afraid, have as I have 
 as almost all do, alas ! in this fallen world, where 
 can you get forgiveness but from Him that died on 
 the cross to take away the sins of the world?
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 FAITH. 
 
 "The just shall live by faith." HABAKKUK, ii. 4. 
 
 THIS is one of those texts of which there are so 
 many in the Bible, which though they were spoken 
 originally to one particular man, yet are meant for 
 every man. These words were spoken to Habak- 
 kuk, a Jewish prophet, to check him for his impa- 
 tience under God's hand; but they are just as true 
 for every man that ever was and ever will be as 
 they were for him. They are world-wide and 
 world-old; they are the law by which all goodness, 
 and strength, and safety, stand either in men or 
 angels, for it always was true, and always must be 
 true, that if reasonable beings are to live at all, it 
 is by faith. 
 
 And why? Because every thing that is, heaven 
 and earth, men and angels, are all the work of God 
 of one God, infinite, almighty, all-wise, all-loving, 
 unutterably glorious. My friends, we do not think
 
 56 FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 enough of this, not that all the thinking in the 
 world can ever m&ke us comprehend the majesty 
 of our Heavenly Father; but we do not remember 
 enough what we do know of God. We think of 
 God, watching the world and all things in it, and 
 keeping them in order as a shepherd does his sheep, 
 and so far so good ; but we forget that God does 
 more than this, we forget that this earth, sun, arid 
 moon, and all the thousand thousand stars which 
 cover the midnight sky, many of them suns larger 
 than the sun we see, and worlds larger than the 
 world on which we stand, that all these, stretching 
 away millions of millions of miles into boundless 
 space, all are lying, like one little grain of dust, in 
 the hollow of God's hand, and that if He were to shut 
 His hand upon them, He could crush them into no- 
 thing, and God would be alone in the universe again, 
 as he was before heaven and earth were made. 
 
 Think of that ! that if God was 'but to will it, we 
 and this earth on which we stand, and the heaven 
 above us, and the sun that shines on us, would vanish 
 away, and be no-w&ere and no-thing. Think of the 
 infinite power of God, and then think how is it pos- 
 sible to live, except by faith in Him, by trusting to 
 Him utterly. If you accustom yourselves to think in 
 the same way of the infinite wisdom of God, and the 
 infinite love of God, they will both teach you the 
 same lesson ; they will show you that if you were the 
 greatest, the wisest, the holiest man that ever lived,
 
 V.] FAITH. 57 
 
 you would still be such a speck by the side of the 
 Almighty and Everlasting God that it would be 
 madness to depend upon yourselves for any thing 
 while you lived in God's world. For, after all, what 
 can we do without God? In him we live, and 
 move, and have our being. He made us, He gave 
 us our bodies, He gave us our life; what we do He 
 lets us do, what we say He lets us say ; we all live on 
 sufferance. What is it but God's infinite mercy that 
 ever brought us here or keeps us here an instant ? 
 We may pretend to act without God's leave or help, 
 but it is impossible for us to do so; the strength we 
 put forth, the wit we use, are all His gifts. We 
 cannot draw a breath of air without his leave. And 
 yet men fancy they can do without God in the 
 world ! My friends, these are but few words, and 
 poor words, about the glorious majesty of God and 
 our littleness when compared with Him ; but I have 
 said quite enough, at least, to show you all how ab- 
 surd it is to depend upon ourselves for any thing. 
 If we are mere creatures of God, if God alone has 
 every blessing both of this world and the next, and 
 the will to give them away, whom are we to go to 
 but to Him for all we want? It is so in the life of 
 our bodies, and it is so in the life of our spirits. If 
 we wish for God's blessings, from God we must ask 
 them. That is our duty, even though God in His 
 mercy and long-suffering does pour down many a 
 blessing upon men who never trust in Him for them. 
 6
 
 58 FAITH. [SEKM. 
 
 To us all, indeed, God gives blessings before we are 
 old enough to trust in Him for them, and to many 
 He continues those blessings in after-life in spite 
 of their blindness and want of faith. " He maketh 
 His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and 
 sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." He 
 gives gives it is His glory to give. Yet, strange ! 
 that men will go on year after year, using the 
 limbs, and eating the food, which God gives them, 
 without ever believing so much as that God has 
 given them, without so much as looking up to 
 heaven once and saying, "God, I thank Thee!" 
 But we must remember that those blessings will 
 not last for ever. Unless a man has lived by faith 
 in God with regard to Hs earthly comforts, death 
 will come and put an end to them at once ; and then 
 it is only those who have trusted in God for all good 
 things and thanked Him accordingly in this life, 
 who shall have their part in the new heavens and 
 the new earth, which will so immeasurably surpass 
 all that this earth can give. 
 
 And it is the same with the life of our spirits; in 
 it, too, we must live by 'faith. The life of our 
 spirits is a gift from God the father of spirits, and 
 He has chosen to declare that, unless we trust to 
 Him for life, and ask him for life, He will not be- 
 stow it upon us. The life of our bodies He in His 
 mercy keeps up, although we forget Him ; the life 
 of our souls He will not keep up : therefore, for
 
 V.] FAITH. 59 
 
 the sake of our spirits, even more than of our bo- 
 dies, we must live by faith. If we wish to be loving, 
 pure, wise, manly, noble, we must ask those excel- 
 lent gifts of God, who is Himself infinite love, and 
 purity, wisdom and nobleness. If we wish for ever- 
 lasting life, from whom can we obtain it but from 
 God, who is the boundless, eternal life itself? If 
 we wish for forgiveness for our faults and failings, 
 where are we to get it but from God, who is bound- 
 less love and pity, and who has revealed to us His 
 boundless love and pity in the form of a man, Jesus 
 Christ, the Saviour of the world? 
 
 And to go a step further ; it is by faith in Christ 
 we must live in Christ, a man like ourselves, yet 
 God blessed for ever. For it is a certain truth, that 
 men cannot believe in God or trust in Him unless 
 they can think of Him as a man. This was the 
 reason why the poor heathen made themselves idols 
 in the form of men, that they might have some- 
 thing like themselves to worship; and those among 
 them who would not worship idols almost always 
 ended in fancying that God was either a mere no- 
 tion, or else a mere part of this world, or else that 
 He sat up in heaven, neither knowing nor caring 
 what happened upon earth. But we, to whom God 
 has given the glorious news of His Gospel, have the 
 very Person to worship whom all the heathen were 
 searching after and could not find, one who is 
 " very God," infinite in love, wisdom, and strength,
 
 60 FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 and yet "very man," made in all points like our- 
 selves, but without sin; so that we have not a high 
 Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of 
 our infirmities, but one who is able to help those 
 who are tempted, because He was tempted Himself 
 like us, and overcame by the strength of His own 
 perfect will, of His own perfect faith. By trust- 
 ing in Him, and acknowledging Him in every 
 thought and action of our lives, we shall be safe; 
 for it is written, "The just shall live by faith." 
 
 These things are true, and always were true. 
 All that men ever did well, or nobly, or lovingly, 
 in this world, was done by faith by faith in God 
 of some sort ; or other; even in the man who 
 thinks" least about religion, it is so. Every time 
 a man means to do, and really does, a just or ge- 
 nerous action, he does it because he believes, more 
 or less clearly, that there is a just and loving God 
 above him, and that justice and love are the right 
 things for a man the law by which God intend- 
 ed him to walk: so that this small, dim faith still 
 shows itself in practice ; and the more faith a man 
 has in God and fa . God's laws, the more it will 
 show itself in every action of his daily life ; and the 
 more this faith works in his life and conduct, the 
 better man he is ; -the more he is like God's image, 
 in which man was originally 1 made; and the more 
 he is like Christ, the new pattern of God's image, 
 whom all men must copy.
 
 V.] FAITH. 61 
 
 So that the sum of the matter is this: without 
 Christ we can do nothing, by trusting in Christ we 
 can do every thing. See, then, how true the verse 
 before my text must be, that he whose soul is lifted 
 up in him is not upright ; for if a man fancies that 
 his body and soul are his own, to do what he pleases 
 with them, when all the time they are God's gift ; 
 if a man fancies that he can take perfect care of 
 himself, while all the time it is God that is keeping 
 him out of a thousand sins and dangers ; if a man 
 fancies that he can do right of himself, when all 
 the time the little good that he does is the work of 
 God's Spirit, which has not yet left him; if a man 
 fancies, in short, that he can do without God, when 
 all the time it is in God that he lives, and moves, 
 and has his being, how can such a man be called 
 upright ? Upright ! he is utterly wrong ; he is 
 believing a lie and walking accordingly; and, there- 
 fore, instead of keeping upright, he is going where 
 all lies lead, into all kinds of low and crooked ways,, 
 mistakes, absurdities, and at last to ruin of body 
 mid soul. Nothing but truth can keep a man up- 
 right and straight, can keep a man where God has 
 put him, and where he ought to be; and the man 
 whose heart is puffe'd up by pride and self-conceit, 
 who is looking at himself and not at God, that 
 man has begun upon a falsehood, and will soon 
 get out of tune with heaven and earth. For 
 consider, my friends: suppose some rich and
 
 62 FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 mighty prince went out and collected a number of 
 children, and of sick and infirm people, and said 
 to them, "You cannot work now, but I will give 
 you food, medicine, every thing that you require, 
 and then you must help me to work; and I, though, 
 you have no right to expect it of me, will pay you 
 for the little work you can do on the strength of 
 my food and medicine." Is it not plain that all 
 those persons could only live by faith in their 
 prince, by trusting in him for food and medicine, 
 and by acknowledging that food and medicine 
 came from him, and thanking him accordingly? 
 If they wished to be true men, if they wished him 
 to continue his bounty, they would confess that all 
 the health and strength they had belonged to him 
 of right, because his generosity had given it to 
 them. Just in this position we stand with Christ 
 the Lord. When tKe- whole world lay in wicked- 
 ness, He came and choso us, of His free grace and 
 .mercy, to be one of His peculiar nations, to work 
 for Him and with him ; and from the time He 
 came, all that, we and our forefathers have done 
 well has beyri- done by the strength and wisdom 
 which Christ has given us. Now suppose, again, 
 that one of the persons of whom I spoke was 
 seized with a fit of pride suppose he said to him- 
 self, " My health and strength do not come from 
 the food and medicine which the prince gave me, 
 they come from the goodness of my own constitution ;
 
 V.] FAITH. 63 
 
 the wages which I am paid are my just due; I am 
 a free man, and may choose what master I like." 
 Suppose any one of your servants treated you so, 
 would you not be inclined to answer, "You are a 
 faithless, ungrateful fellow; go your ways, then, 
 and see how little you can do without my bounty?" 
 But the blessed King in heaven, though he is pro- 
 voked every day, is more long-suffering than man. 
 All He does is to withdraw His bounty for a 
 moment, to take this world's blessings from a man, 
 and let him find out how impossible it is for him to 
 keep himself out of affliction to take away His 
 Holy Spirit for a moment from a man, and let him 
 see how straight he rushes astray, and every way 
 but the right; and then, if the man is humbled by 
 his fall or his affliction, and comes back to his Lord, 
 confessing how weak he is, and promising to trust 
 in Christ and thank Christ only for the future, 
 then our Lord will restore His blessings to him, and 
 there will be joy among the angels of God over one 
 sinner that repents. This -was the way in which 
 God treated Job when, in spite of all his excellence, 
 his heart was lifted up. And then, when he saw 
 his own folly, and abhorred himself, and repented 
 in dust and ashes, God restored to him sevenfold 
 what He had taken from him honour, wisdom, 
 riches, home, and children. This is the way, too, 
 in which God treated David. "In my prosperity," 
 he tells us, "I said, I shall never be move,d; thou,
 
 04 FAITH. [SEJIM. 
 
 Lord, of Thy goodness hast made my hill so strong " 
 forgetting that he must be kept safe every mo- 
 ment of his life, as well as made safe once for all. 
 "Thou didst turn Thy face from me, and I was 
 troubled. Then cried I unto Thee, Lord, and 
 gat me to my Lord right humbly. And THEN," he 
 adds, "God turned my heaviness into joy, and girded 
 me with gladness." (Psalm xxx.) And, again, he 
 says, "Before I was troubled I went wrong, but now 
 I have kept Thy word." (Psalm cxix.) And this is 
 the way in which Christ the Lord treated St. Peter 
 and St. Paul, and treats, in his great mercy, every 
 Christian man when He sees him puffed up, to bring 
 him to his senses, and make him live by faith in 
 God. If he takes the warning, well ; if he does not, 
 he remains in a lie, and must go where all lies lead. 
 So perfectly does it hold throughout a man's whole 
 life, that he whose soul is lifted up within him is 
 not upright; but that the just must live by faith. 
 
 Now there is one objection apt to rise in men's 
 minds when they hear such words as these, which 
 is, that they take such a "low view of human na- 
 ture; " it is so galling to our pride to be told that 
 we can do nothing for ourselves : but if we think 
 of the matter more closely, and, above all, if we try 
 to put it into practice and live by faith, we shall 
 find that there is no real reason for thus objecting. 
 This is not a doctrine which ought to make us de- 
 spise men; any doctrine that does, does not come
 
 V.] FAITH. 65 
 
 of Grod. Men are not contemptible creatures they 
 are glorious creatures they were created in the 
 image of God; God has put such honour upon 
 them that He has given them dominion over the 
 whole earth, and made them partakers of His eter- 
 nal reason; and His Spirit gives them understanding 
 to enable them to conquer this earth, and make the 
 beasts, ay, and the very winds and seas, and fire 
 and steam, their obedient servants ; and human 
 nature, too, when it is what God made it, and what 
 it ought to be, is not a contemptible thing; it was 
 noble enough for the Son of God to take it upon Him- 
 self to become man, without sinning or defiling 
 Himself; and what was good enough for Him is 
 surely good enough for us. Wickedness consists in 
 unmanliness, in being unlike a man, in becoming 
 like an evil spirit or a beast. Holiness consists in 
 becoming a true man, in becoming more and more 
 like the likeness of Jesus Christ. And when the 
 Bible tells us that we can do nothing of ourselves, 
 but can live only by faith, the Bible puts the highest 
 honour upon us which any created thing can have. 
 What are the things which cannot live by faith? 
 The trees and plants, the beasts and birds, which, 
 though they live and grow by God's providence, yet 
 do not know it, do not thank Him, cannot ask 
 Him for more strength and life as we can, are mere 
 dead tools in God's hands, instead of living, reason- 
 able beings as we are. It is only reasonable beings,
 
 66 FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 like men and angels, with immortal spirits in 
 them, who can live by faith; and it is the greatest 
 glory and honour to us, I say again, that we can 
 do so that the glorious, infinite God, Maker of 
 heaven and earth, should condescend to ask us to 
 be loyal to Him, to love Him, should encourage us to 
 pray to him boldly, and then should condescend to 
 hear our prayers we, who in comparison of Him 
 are smaller than the gnats in the sunbeam in com- 
 parison of men! And then, when we remember 
 that He has sent His only Son into the world to 
 take our nature upon Him, and join us all together 
 into one great and everlasting family, the body of 
 Christ the Lord, and that He has actually given us 
 a share in His own Almighty Holy Spirit, that we 
 may be able to love Him, and to serve Him, and 
 to be joined to Him, the Almighty Father, do we 
 not see that all this is infinitely more honourable 
 to us than if we were each to go on his own way 
 here without God without knowing any thing of 
 the everlasting world of spirits to which we now 
 belong? My friends, instead of being ashamed 
 of being able to do nothing for ourselves, we ought 
 to rejoice at having God for our Father and our 
 Friend, to enable us to "do all things through Him 
 who strengthens us" to do whatever is noble, and 
 loving, and worthy of true men. Instead, then, of 
 dreaming conceitedly that God will accept us for our 
 own sakes, let us just be content to be accepted for
 
 V.] FAITH. 67 
 
 the sake of Jesus Christ our King. Instead of 
 trying to walk through this world without God's 
 help, let us ask God to help and guide us in every 
 action of our lives, and then go manfully forward, 
 doing with all our might whatsoever our hands or 
 our hearts see right to do, trusting to God to put us 
 in the right path, and to fill our heads with right 
 thoughts and our hearts with right feeling; and so 
 our faith will show itself in our works, and we shall 
 be justified at the last day, as all good men have 
 ever been, by trusting to our Heavenly Father and 
 to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the guidance of His 
 Holy Spirit.
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 
 
 " I say, then, Walk in the Spirit, arid ye shall not fulfil the lusts 
 of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 
 Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the 
 other." GALATIANS, v. 16. 
 
 THE more we think seriously, my friends, the 
 more we shall see what wonderful and awful things 
 words are, how much more they mean than we 
 fancy, how we do not make words, but words are 
 given to us by one higher than ourselves. Wise 
 men say that you can tell the character of any 
 nation by its language, by watching the words they 
 use, the names they give to .things, for out of the 
 abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and by 
 our words, our Lord tells us, we shall be justified and 
 condemned. 
 
 It is God, and Christ, the Word of God, who 
 gives words to men, who puts it into the hearts of 
 men to call certain things by certain names; and, 
 according to a nation's godliness, and wisdom, and 
 purity of heart, will be its power of using words
 
 SEB.M. VI.] THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 69 
 
 discreetly and reverently. That miracle of the gift 
 of tongues, of which we read in the New Testament, 
 would have been still most precious and full of 
 meaning if it had had no other use than this to 
 teach men from whom words come. When men 
 found themselves all of a sudden inspired to talk in 
 foreign languages which they had never learnt, to 
 utter words of which they themselves did not know 
 the meaning, do you not see how it must have made 
 them feel that all language is God's making and 
 God's giving? Do you not see how it must have 
 made them feel what awful, mysterious things words 
 were, like those cloven tongues of fire which fell on 
 the apostles? The tongues of fire signified the dif- 
 ficult foreign languages which they suddenly began 
 to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. And 
 where did the tongues of fire come from? Not out 
 of themselves, not out of the earth beneath, but 
 down from the heaven above, to signify that it is 
 not from man, from man's flesh or brain, or the 
 earthly part of him, that words are bred, but that 
 they come down from Christ the Word of God, and 
 are breathed into the minds of men by the Spirit of 
 God. Why did I speak of all this? To make you 
 feel what awful, wonderful things words are; how, 
 when you want to understand the meaning of a 
 word, you must set to work with reverence and 
 godly fear not in self-conceit and prejudice, taking 
 the word to mean just what suits your own notions 
 7
 
 70 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. [SERM. 
 
 of things, but trying humbly to find out what the 
 word really does mean of itself, what God meant it 
 to mean when He put it into the hearts of wise men 
 to use that word and bring it into our English lan- 
 guage. A man ought to read a newspaper or a 
 story-book in that spirit; how much more, when he 
 takes up the Bible ! How reverently he ought to 
 examine every word in the New Testament this 
 very text, for instance. "We ought to be sure that 
 St. Paul, just because he was an inspired apostle, 
 used the very best possible words to express what he 
 meant on so important a matter; and what are the 
 best words? The clearest and the simplest words 
 are the best words; else how is the Bible to be the 
 poor man's book ? How, unless the wayfaring man, 
 though simple, shall not err therein? Therefore we 
 may be sure the words in Scripture are certain to 
 be used in their simplest, most natural, most every- 
 day meaning, such as the simplest man can under- 
 stand. And therefore we may be sure, that these 
 two words, "flesh" and "spirit," in my text, are 
 used in their very simplest, straightforward sense ; 
 and that St. Paul meant by them what working-men 
 mean by them in the affairs of daily life. No doubt 
 St. Peter says that there are many things in St. 
 Paul's writings difficult to be understood, which those 
 who are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own 
 destruction; and, most true it is, so they do daily. 
 But what does "wresting" a thing mean? It means
 
 VT.] THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 71 
 
 twisting it, bending it, turning it out of its original, 
 straight-forward, natural meaning, into some new, 
 crooked meaning of their own. This is the way 
 we are all of us too apt, I am afraid, to come to St. 
 Paul's Epistles. We find him difficult because we 
 won't take him at his word, because we tear a text 
 out of its right place in the chapter the place 
 where St. Paul put it and make it stand by itself, 
 instead of letting the rest of the chapter explain its 
 meaning. And then, again, people use the words 
 in the text as unfairly and unreasonably as they use 
 the text itself; they won't let the words have their 
 common-sense English meaning they must stick 
 a new meaning on them of their own. "Oh," they 
 say, " that text must not be taken literally ; that word 
 has a spiritual signification here. Flesh does not 
 mean flesh, it means men's corrupt nature;" little 
 thinking all the while that perhaps they understand 
 those words, spiritual, and corrupt, and nature, just 
 as ill as they do the rest of the text. 
 
 How much better, my friends, to let the Bible tell 
 its own story ; not to be so exceeding wise above 
 what is written ; just to believe that St. Paul knew 
 better how to use words than we are likely to do; 
 just to believe that when he says flesh he means 
 flesh. Every body agrees that when he says spirit 
 lie means spirit : why, in the name of common sense, 
 when lie says flesh should he not mean flesh ? For 
 my own part, I believe that when St. Paul talks of 

 
 72 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. [SEIIM. 
 
 man's flesh, he means by it man's body, man's 
 heart and brain, and all his bodily appetites and 
 powers what we call a man's constitution ; in a 
 word, the animal part of man, just what a man has 
 in common with the beasts who perish. 
 
 To understand what I mean, consider any animal 
 a dog, for instance how much every animal has 
 in it what men have, a body, and brain, and heart ; 
 it hungers and thirsts as we do ; it can feel pleasure 
 and pain, anger and loneliness, or fear and mad- 
 ness: it likes freedom, company, and exercise, praise 
 and petting, play and ease; it uses a great deal of 
 cunning, and thought, and courage, to get itself food 
 and shelter, just as human beings do: in short, it 
 has a fleshly nature, just as we have, and yet, after 
 all, it is but an animal, and so, in one sense, we are 
 all animals, only more delicately made than the other 
 animals; but we are something more; we have a 
 spirit as well as a flesh, an immortal soul. If any one 
 asks, what is a man? the true answer is, an animal 
 with an immortal spirit in it; and this spirit can 
 feel more than pleasure and pain, which are mere 
 carnal, that is, fleshly things; it can feel trust, and 
 hope, and peace, and love, and purity, and noble- 
 ness, and independence, and, above all, it can feel 
 right and wrong. There is the infinite difference 
 between an animal and a man, between our flesh 
 and our spirit ; an animal has no sense of right and 
 wrong; a dog who has done wrong is often terrified,
 
 VI.J THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 73 
 
 but not because he feels it wrong and wicked, but 
 because he knows from experience that he will be 
 punished for doing it: just so with a man's fleshly 
 nature; a carnal, fleshly man, a man whose spirit 
 is dead within him, whose spiritual sense of right 
 and wrong, and honour and purity, is gone, when 
 he has done a wrong thing, is often enough 
 afraid; but why? Not for any spiritual reason, 
 not because he feels it a wicked and abominable 
 thing, a sin, but because he is afraid of being 
 punished for it, because he is afraid that his body, 
 his flesh, will be punished by the laws of the land, or 
 by public opinion, or because he has some dim belief 
 that this same body and flesh of his will be burnt 
 in hell-fire ; and fire, he knows by experience, is a 
 painful thing and so he is afraid of it; there is no- 
 thing spiritual in all that, that is all fleshly, carnal; 
 the heathen in all ages have been afraid of hell- 
 fire ; but a man's spirit, on the other hand, if it be 
 in hell, is in a very different hell from mere fire,- 
 a spiritual hell, such as torments the evil spirits, at 
 this very moment, although they are going to and 
 fro on this very earth. This earth is hell to them ; 
 they carry about hell in them, they are their own 
 hell. Everlasting shame, discontent, doubt, despair, 
 rage, disgust at themselves, feeling that they are out 
 of favour with God, out of tune with heaven and earth, 
 loving nothing, believing nothing, ever hating, hating 
 each other, hating themselves most of all there is 
 7*
 
 74 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. [SERM. 
 
 their hell! There is the hell in which the soul of 
 every wicked man is, ay, is now while he is in 
 tJiis life, though he will only awake to the perfect 
 misery of it after death, when his body and fleshly 
 nature have mouldered away in the grave, and can 
 no longer pamper and stupify him and make him 
 forget his own misery. Ay, there has been many 
 a man in this life who had every fleshly enjoyment 
 which this world can give, riches and pleasure, ban- 
 quets and palaces, every sense and every appetite 
 pampered, his pride and his vanity flattered; who 
 never knew what want, or trouble, or contradic- 
 tion was on the smallest point; a man, I say, 
 who had every carnal enjoyment which this earth 
 can give to a man's selfish flesh, and yet whose 
 spirit was in hell all the while, and who knew it; 
 hating and despising himself for a mean, selfish 
 villain, while all the world round was bowing down 
 to him and envying him as the luckiest of men. 
 I am trying to make you understand the infinite 
 difference between a man's flesh and his spirit; 
 how a man's flesh can take no pleasure in spiritual 
 things, while man's spirit of itself can take no 
 pleasure in fleshly things. Now, the spirit and 
 the flesh, body and soul, in every man, are at war 
 with each other, they have quarrelled; that is 
 the corruption of our nature, the fruit of Adam's 
 fall. And as the Article says, and as every man who 
 has ever tried to live godly well knows, from ex-
 
 VI.] TTIE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 75 
 
 perience, "that infection of nature does remain to the 
 last, even in those who are regenerate." So that, as 
 St. Paul says, the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and 
 the flesh against the spirit; and it continually hap- 
 pens that a man cannot do the things which he would ; 
 he cannot do what he knows to be right: thus, as 
 St. Paul says again, a man may delight in the law of 
 God in his inward man, that is, in his spirit, and 
 yet all the while he shall find another law in his 
 members, i. e. in his body, in his flesh, in his brain 
 which thinks, and his heart which feels, and his 
 senses which are fond of pleasure; and this law 
 of the flesh, these appetites and passions which 
 he has, like other animals, fight against the law 
 of his mind, and when he wishes to do good, 
 make him do evil. Now how is this ? The flesh 
 is not evil; a man's body can be no more wicked 
 than a dumb beast can be wicked. St. Paul calls 
 man's flesh sinful flesh; not because our flesh can 
 sin of itself, but because our sinful souls make our 
 flesh do sinful things; for, he says, Christ came in 
 the likeness of sinful flesh, and yet in him was no 
 sin. The pure and spotless Saviour could not have 
 taken man's flesh upon him if there was any sinful- 
 ness in it. The body knows nothing of right and 
 wrong; it is not subject to the law of God, neither, 
 indeed, can be, says St. Paul. And why? Because 
 God's law is spiritual; deals with right and wrong. 
 Wickedness, like righteousness, is a spiritual thing.
 
 76 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH, [SERM. 
 
 If a man sins, his body is not in fault; it is his 
 spirit ; his weak, perverse will, which Avill sooner 
 listen to what his flesh tells him is pleasant than to 
 what God tells him is right ; for this, my friends, is 
 the secret of the battle of life. We stand between 
 heaven and earth. Above is God's Spirit striving 
 with our spirits, speaking to them in the depths of 
 our soul, showing us what is right, putting into our 
 hearts good desires, making us long to be honest 
 and just, pure and manful, loving and charitable; 
 for who is there who has not at times longed after 
 these things, and felt that it would be a blessed 
 thing for him if he were such a man as Jesus Christ 
 was and is ? Above us, I say, is God's Spirit speak- 
 ing to our spirits; below us is the world speaking 
 to our flesh, as it spoke to Eve's, saying to us, 
 " This thing is pleasant to the eyes this thing is 
 good for food that thing is to be desired to make 
 you wise, and to flatter your vanity and self-conceit." 
 Below us, I say, is this world, tempting us to ease, 
 and pleasure, and vanity; and in the middle, betwixt 
 the two, stands up the third part of man his soul 
 and will, set to choose between the voice of God's 
 Spirit and the temptations of this world to choose 
 between what is right and what is pleasant to choose 
 whether he will obey the desires of the spirit, or obey 
 the desires of the flesh. He must choose. If he lets 
 his flesh conquer his spirit, he falls; if he lets his 
 spirit conquer his flesh, he rises; if he lets his flesh
 
 VI.] THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 77 
 
 conquer his spirit, he becomes what he was not 
 meant to be a slave to fleshly lust ; and then he 
 will find his flesh set up for itself, and work for 
 itself. And where man's flesh gets the upper hand, 
 and takes possession of him, it can do nothing but 
 evil not that it is evil in itself, but that it has no 
 rule, no law to go by; it does not know right from 
 wrong; and therefore it does simply what it likes, 
 as a dumb beast or an idiot might; and therefore 
 the works of the flesh are adulteries, drunkenness, 
 murders, fornications, envyings, backbitings, strife. 
 When a man's body, which God intended to be 
 the servant of his spirit, has become the tyrant of 
 his spirit, it is like an idiot on a king's throne, 
 doing all manner of harm and folly without know- 
 ing that it is harm and folly. That is not its fault. 
 "\Vhose fault is it, then? Our fault the fault of 
 our wills and our souls. Our souls were intended 
 to be the masters of our flesh, to conquer all the 
 weaknesses, defilements of our constitution our 
 tempers, our cowardice, our laziness, our hastiness, 
 our nervousness, our vanity, our love of pleasure 
 to listen to our spirits, because our spirits learn 
 from God's Spirit what is right and noble. But if 
 we let our flesh master us, and obey its own blind 
 lusts, we sin against God; and we sin against God 
 doubly; for we not only sin against God's com- 
 mandments, but we sin against ourselves, who are 
 the image and glory of God.
 
 78 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 
 
 Believe this, my friends; believe that, because 
 you are all fallen human creatures, there must go 
 on in you this sore life-long battle between your 
 spirit and your flesh your spirit trying to be mas- 
 ter and guide, as it ought to be, and your flesh rebel- 
 ling and trying to conquer your spirit and make you 
 a mere animal, like a fox in cunning, a peacock in 
 vanity, or a hog in greedy sloth. But believe, too, 
 that it is your sin and your shame if your spirit does 
 not conquer your flesh for God has promised to help 
 your spirits. Ask Him, and His Spirit will teach 
 them fill them with pure, noble hopes, with calm, 
 clear thoughts, and with deep, unselfish love to God 
 and man. lie will strengthen your wills, that they 
 may be able to refuse the evil and choose the good. 
 Ask Him, and He will join them to His own Spirit 
 to the Spirit of Christ, your Master: for he that 
 is joined unto the Lord is one spirit with Him. Ask 
 him, and He will give you the mind of Christ teach 
 you to see and feel all matters as Christ sees and feels 
 them. Ask Him, and He will give you wisdom to 
 listen to His Spirit when it teaches your spirit, and 
 then you will be able to walk after the Spirit, and 
 not obey the lusts of the flesh; and you will be able 
 to* crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts, that 
 is, to make it, what it ought to be, a dead thing 
 a dead tool for your spirit to work with manfully and 
 godly, and not a live tyrant to lead you into brutish- 
 ness and folly; and then you will find that the fruit
 
 VI.] THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 79 
 
 of the spirit, of your spirit led by God's Spirit, is 
 really, as St. Paul says, "love, joy, peace, long-suf- 
 fering, gentleness, honesty" "whatsoever things 
 are true, whatsoever things are honourable and of 
 good report;" and instead of being the miserable 
 slaves of your own passions, and of the opinions 
 of your neighbours, you will find that, where the 
 Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, true freedom, 
 not only from your neighbours' sins, but, what is far 
 better, freedom from your own. 
 
 These are large words, my friends, and promise 
 mighty things. But I dare speak them to you, 
 for God has spoken to you. These promises God 
 made you at your baptism; these promises I, on 
 the warrant of your baptism, dare make to you 
 again. At your baptism, God gave you the right 
 to call Him your loving Father, to call His Son your 
 Saviour, His Spirit your Sanctifier. And He is not 
 a man, that He should lie; nor the son of man, that 
 He should repent. Try Him, and see whether He 
 will not fulfil His word. Claim His promise, and 
 though you have fallen lower than the brutes, He 
 will make men and women of you. He will be faith- 
 ful and just to forgive you your sins, and to cleanse 
 you from all unrighteousness.
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 RETRIBUTION. 
 
 "Be sure your sin will find you out." NUMBERS xxxii. 23. 
 
 THE full meaning of this text is, that every sin 
 which a man commits is certain, sooner or later, 
 to come home to him with fearful interest. 
 
 Moses gave this warning to two tribes of the 
 Israelites, to the Reubenites and Gadites, who had 
 promised to go over Jordan, and help their country- 
 men in war against the heathen, on condition of 
 being allowed to return and settle on the east bank 
 of Jordan, where they then were ; but if they broke 
 their promise, and returned before the end of the 
 war, they were to be certain that their sin would 
 find them out; that God would avenge their false- 
 hood on them in some way in their lifetime : in 
 their lifetime, I say, for there is no mention made 
 in this chapter, or in any part of the story, of hea- 
 ven or hell, or any world to come. And the text has 
 been always taken as a fair warning to all gene-
 
 SERM. VII.] RETRIBUTION. 81 
 
 rations of men, that their sin also, even in their 
 lifetimes, will be visited upon them. 
 
 Now, it is strange, at first sight, that these texts, 
 which warn men that their sins will be punished in 
 this life, are just the most unpleasant texts in the 
 whole Bible ; that men shrink from them more,, and 
 shut their eyes to them more than they do to those 
 texts which threaten them with hell-fire and ever- 
 lasting death. Strange !^-that men should be more 
 afraid of being punished in this life for a few years 
 than in the life to come for ever and ever; and yet 
 not strange if we consider; for to worldly and sinful 
 souls, that life after death and the flames of hell 
 seem quite distant and dim things of which they 
 know little and believe less, while this world they 
 do know, they are quite certain that its good things 
 are pleasant and its bad things unpleasant, and they 
 are thoroughly afraid of losing them. Their hearts 
 are where their treasure is, in this world; and a 
 punishment which deprives them of this world's 
 good things hits them home : but their treasure is 
 not in heaven, and, therefore, about losing heaven 
 they are by no means so much concerned. And thus 
 they can face the dreadful news that "the wicked 
 shall be turned into hell, and all the people that 
 forget God;" while, as for the news that the wicked 
 shall be recompensed on the earth, that their sins 
 will surely find them out in this life, they cannot face 
 that, they shut their ears to it, they try to per- 
 8
 
 82 RETRIBUTION. [SERM. 
 
 suade themselves that sin will pay them here, at all 
 events; and as for hereafter, they shall get off some- 
 how, they neither know nor care much how. 
 
 Yet God's truth remains, and God's truth must 
 be heard; and those who love this world so well 
 must be told, whether they like or not, that every 
 sin which they commit, every mean, every selfish, 
 every foul deed, loses them so much enjoyment in 
 this very present world of which they are so mighty 
 fond. That is God's truth ; and I will prove it true 
 from common sense, from Holy Scripture, and/n>w 
 the witness of men's own hearts. 
 
 Take common sense. Does not common sense tell 
 us that if God made this world, and governs it by 
 righteous and God-like laws, this must be a world in 
 which evil-doing cannot thrive ? God made the world 
 better than that, surely ! He would be a bad law- 
 giver who made such laws, that it was as well to 
 break them as to keep them. You would call them 
 bad laws, surely ! No; God 'made the world, and not 
 the devil; and the world works by God's laws, and 
 not the devil's; and it inclines towards good, and 
 not towards evil; and he who sins, even in the least, 
 breaks God's laws, acts contrary to the rule and 
 constitution of the world, and will surely find that 
 God's laws will go on in spite of him, and grind him 
 to powder, if he by sinning gets in the way of them. 
 God has no need to go out of His way to punish our 
 evil deeds. Let them alone, and they will punish
 
 VII.] RETRIBUTION. 83 
 
 themselves. Is it not so in every thing? If a 
 tradesman trades badly, or a farmer farms badly, 
 there is no need of lawyers to punish him ; he will 
 punish himself. Every mistake he makes will take 
 money out of his pocket; every time he offends 
 against the established rules of trade or agriculture, 
 which are God's laws, he injures himself; and so, be 
 sure, it is in the world at large, in the world in 
 which men and the souls of men live, and move, and 
 have their being. 
 
 Next, to speak of Scripture. I might quote texts 
 innumerable to prove that what I say Scripture says 
 also. Consider but this one thing, that there is a 
 whole book in the Bible written to prove this one 
 thing, that our good and bad deeds are repaid us 
 with interest in this life the Proverbs of Solomon 
 I mean in which there is little or no mention of 
 heaven or hell, or any world to come. It is all one 
 noble, and awful, and yet cheering sermon on that 
 one text, "The righteous shall be recompensed in 
 the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner," 
 put in a thousand different lights; brought home to 
 us a thousand different roads, comes the same ever- 
 lasting doom, "Vain man, who thinkest that thou 
 canst live in God's world and yet despise His will, 
 know that, in every smiling, comfortable sin, thou art 
 hatching an adder to sting thee in the days of old 
 age, to poison thy cup of sinful joy, even when 
 it is at thy lips; to haunt thy restless thoughts,
 
 84 RETRIBUTION. [SERM. 
 
 and dog thee day and night; to rise up before thee, 
 in the silent, sleepless hours of night, like an angry 
 ghost ? An awful foretaste of the doom that is to 
 come ; and yet a merciful foretaste, if thou wilt be 
 but taught by the disappointment, the unsatisfied 
 craving, the gnawing shame of a guilty conscience, 
 to see the heinousness of sin, and would turn 
 before it be too late." 
 
 What, my friends, what will you make of such 
 texts as this: that "he who soweth to the flesh 
 shall of the flesh reap corruption?" Do you not see 
 that comes true far too often ? Can it help always 
 coming true, seeing that God's apostle spoke it? 
 What will you make of this, too: that "the wicked 
 is snared by the working of his own hands;" 
 that "evil'' the evil which we do of its own self 
 "shall slay the wicked?" What says the whole 
 noble 37th Psalm of David, but that same awful truth 
 of God, that sin is its own punishment? 
 
 Why should I go on quoting texts? Look for 
 yourselves, you who fancy that it is only on the 
 other side of the gravelhat God will trouble Himself 
 about you and your meanness, your profligacy, your 
 falsehood. Look for yourselves in the book of God, 
 and see if there be any writer there, lawgiver, pro- 
 phet, psalmist, apostle, up to Christ the Lord Him- 
 self, who does not warn men again and again, that 
 here, on earth, their sins will find them out. Our 
 Saviour, indeed, when on earth, said less about this
 
 VII.] RETRIBUTION. 85 
 
 subject than any of the prophets before Him, or the 
 apostles after him, and for the best of reasons. 
 The Jews had got rooted in their minds a super- 
 stitious notion, that all disease, all sorrow, was the 
 punishment in each case of some particular sin ; and 
 thus, instead of looking with pity and loving awe 
 upon the sick and the afflicted, they were accus- 
 tomed, too often, to turn from them as sinners, 
 smitten of God, bearing in their distress the token 
 of His anger. The blessed One, He who came to 
 heal the sick and save the lost, reproved that error 
 more than once. When the disciples fancied a cer- 
 tain poor man's blindness to be a judgment from 
 God, "Neither did he sin," said the Lord, "nor 
 his parents, but that the glory of God might be 
 made manifest in him." And yet, on the other 
 hand, when He healed a certain man of an old in- 
 firmity at the pool of Bethesda, what were His 
 words to him? "Go thy way; sin no more, lest a 
 worse thing come unto thee ;" a clear and weighty 
 warning that all his long misery of eight-and-thirty 
 years had been the punishment of some sin of his, 
 and that the sin repeated would bring on him a still 
 severer judgment. 
 
 What, again, does the apostle mean, in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, when he tells us how God scourges 
 every son whom he receives, and talks of His chas- 
 tisements, whereof all are partakers. Why do we 
 need chastising if we have nothing which needs 
 8*
 
 86 RETRIBUTION. [SERM. 
 
 mending? And though the innocent may sometimes 
 be afflicted to make them strong as well as innocent, 
 and the holy chastened to make them humble as well 
 as holy, yet if the good cannot escape their share of 
 affliction, how will the bad get off? " If the righteous 
 scarcely be saved, where will the ungodly and the 
 sinner appear?" But what use in arguing when 
 you know that my words are true? You know that 
 your sins will find you out. Look boldly and ho- 
 nestly into your own hearts. Look through the 
 history of your past lives, and confess to God, at 
 least, that the far greater number of your sorrows 
 have been your own fault ; that there is hardly a 
 day's misery which you ever endured in your life 
 of which you might not say, 'If I had listened to 
 the voice of God in my conscience if I had ear- 
 nestly considered what my duty was if I had prayed 
 to God to determine my judgment aright, I should 
 have been spared this sorrow now?' Am I not 
 right? Those who know most of God and their 
 own souls will agree most with me; those who know 
 little about God and their own souls will agree but 
 hardly with me, for they provoke God's chastise- 
 ments, and writhe under them for the time, and 
 then go and do the same wrong again, as the wild 
 beast will turn and bite the stone thrown at him 
 without having the sense to see why it was thrown. 
 Think, again, of your past lives, and answer in 
 God's sight, how many wrong things have you ever
 
 VII.] RETRIBUTION. 87 
 
 done which have succeeded, that is, ho.w many sins 
 which you would not be right glad were undone if you 
 could but put back the wheels of Time ? They may 
 have succeeded outwardly ; meanness will succeed 
 so lies oppression theft adultery drunken- 
 ness godlessness they are all pleasant enough 
 while they last, I suppose; and a man may reap 
 what he calls substantial benefits from them in 
 money, and such like, and keep that safe enough; 
 but has his sin succeeded? lias it not found him 
 out? found him out never to lose him again? 
 Is he the happier for it? Does he feel freer for it? 
 Does he respect himself the more for it ? No ! And 
 even though he may prosper now, yet does there not 
 run through all his selfish pleasure a certain fearful 
 looking forward to a fiery judgment to which he 
 would gladly shut his eyes, but cannot? 
 
 Cunning, fair-spoken oppressor of the poor, has 
 not thy sin found thee out? Then be sure it will. 
 In the shame of thine own heart it will find thee 
 out; in the curses of the poor it will find thee out; 
 in a friendless, restless, hopeless death-bed, thy 
 covetousness and thy cruelty will glare before thee 
 in their true colours, and thy sin will find thee out! 
 
 Profligate woman, who art now casting away thy 
 honest name, thy self-respect, thy womanhood, thy 
 baptism-vows, that thou mayest enjoy the foul plea- 
 sures of sin for a season, has not thy sin found thee 
 out? Then be sure it will hereafter, when thou
 
 88 RETRIBUTION. [SERM. 
 
 hast become disgusted at thyself and thine own 
 infamy, and youth, and health, and friends, are 
 gone, and a shameful and despised old age creeps 
 over thee, and death stalks nearer and nearer, and 
 God vanishes farther and farther off, then thy sin 
 will find thee out ! 
 
 Foolish, improvident young man, who art wast- 
 ing the noble strength of youth, and manly spirits 
 which God has given thee on sin and folly, throw- 
 ing away thine honest earnings in cards and 
 drunkenness, instead of laying them by against a 
 time of need has not thy sin found thee out? 
 Then be sure it will some day, when thou hast to 
 bring home thy bride to a cheerless, unfurnished 
 house, and there to live from hand to mouth, with- 
 out money to provide for her sickness, without 
 money to give her the means of keeping things 
 neat and comfortable when she is well, without a 
 farthing laid by against distress, and illness, and old 
 age ; then your sin will find you out : then, perhaps, 
 my text, my words may come across you as you 
 sigh in vain in your comfortless home, in your im- 
 poverished old age, for the money which you wasted 
 in your youth ! My friends, my friends, for your 
 own sakes consider, and mend ere that day come, as 
 else it surely will ! 
 
 And, lastly, you who, without running into any 
 especial sins, as those which the world calls sins, still 
 live careless about religion, without loyalty to Christ
 
 VII.] RETRIBUTION. 89 
 
 the Lord, without any honest attempt, or even wish, 
 to serve the God above you, or to rejoice in remem- 
 bering that you are His children, working for Him 
 and under Him, be sure your sin will find you out. 
 When affliction, or sickness, or disappointment come, 
 as come they will, if God has not cast you off; 
 when the dark day dawns, and your fool's paradise 
 of worldly prosperity is cut away from under your 
 feet, then you will find out your folly you will find 
 that you have insulted the only Friend who can bring 
 you out of affliction cast off the only comfort which 
 can strengthen you to bear affliction forgotten the 
 only knowledge which will enable you to be the wiser 
 for affliction. Then, I say, the sin of your godless- 
 ness will find you out; if you do not intend to fall, 
 soured and sickened merely by God's chastisements, 
 either into stupid despair or peevish discontent, you 
 will have to go back, to go back to God and cry, 
 "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before 
 Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy 
 son." 
 
 Go back at once before it be too late. Find out 
 your sins and mend them before they find you out, 
 and break your hearts.
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 SELF-DESTRUCTION. 
 
 The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy 
 prophets." 1 KINGS, xxii. 23. 
 
 THE chapter from which my text is taken, which 
 is the first lesson for this evening's service, is a 
 very awful chapter, for it gives us an insight into the 
 meaning of that most awful and terrible word 
 temptation. And yet it is a most comforting chap- 
 ter, for it shows us how God is long-suffering and 
 merciful, even to the most hardened sinner; how to 
 the last He puts before him good and evil, to choose 
 between them, and warns him to the last of his path, 
 and the ruin to which it leads. 
 
 We read of Ahab in the first lesson this morning 
 as a thoroughly wicked man, mean and weak, cruel 
 and ungodly, governed by his wife Jezebel, a heathen 
 woman, in marrying whom he had broken God's law, 
 a woman so famous for cruelty and fierceness, vanity 
 and wickedness, that her name is a by-word even
 
 SERM. VIII.] SELF-DESTRUCTION. 91 
 
 here in England now "as bad as Jezebel," we 
 say to this day. We heard of Ahab in this morn- 
 ing's lesson letting Jezebel murder the righteous 
 Naboth, by perjury and slander, to get possession of 
 his vineyard; and then, instead of shrinking with 
 abhorrence from his wife's iniquity, going down and 
 taking possession of the land which he had gained 
 by her sin. We read of God's curse on him, and 
 yet of God's long-suffering and pardon to him on his 
 repentance. Yet, neither God's curses nor God's 
 mercy seem to have moved him. But he had been 
 always the same. "He did evil," the Bible tells, "in 
 the sight of the Lord above all that were before him." 
 He deserted the true God for his wife's idols and 
 false gods: and in spite of Elijah's miracle at Carmel 
 of which you heard last Sunday by which he 
 proved by fire which was the true God, and in spite 
 of the wonderful victory which God had given him, 
 by means of one of God's prophets, over the Syrians, 
 he still remained an idolater. He would not be 
 taught, nor understand; neither God's threats nor 
 mercies could move him; he went on sinning against 
 light and knowledge ; and now his cup was full 
 his days were numbered, and God's vengeance was 
 ready at the door. 
 
 He consulted all his false prophets as to whether 
 or not he should go to attack the Syrians at Ramoth- 
 Gilead. They knew what to say they knew that 
 their business was to prophesy what would pay them
 
 92 SELF-DESTRUCTION. [SERM. 
 
 what would be pleasant to him. They did not care 
 whether what they said was true or not they lied 
 for the sake of gain, for the Lord had put a lying 
 spirit into their mouths. They were rogues and vil- 
 lains from the first. They had turned prophets, not 
 to speak God's truth, but to make money, to flatter 
 King Ahab, to get themselves a reputation. We do 
 not hear that they were all heathens. Many of them 
 may have believed in the true God. But they were 
 cheats and liars, and so they had given place to the 
 devil, the father of lies : and now he had taken pos- 
 session of them in spite of themselves, and they lied 
 to Ahab, and told him that he would prosper in the 
 battle at Ramoth-Gilead. It was a dangerous thing 
 for them to say; for if he had been defeated, and 
 returned disappointed, his rage would have most pro- 
 bably fallen on them for deceiving him. And as in 
 those Eastern countries kings do whatever they like 
 without laws or parliaments, Ahab would have most 
 likely put them all to a miserable death on the 
 spot. But however dangerous it might be for them 
 to lie, they could not help lying. A spirit of lies had 
 seized them, and they who began by lying, because 
 it paid them, now could not help doing so whether 
 it paid them or not. 
 
 But the good king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, had no 
 faith in these flattering villains. He asked whether 
 there was not another prophet of the Lord to inquire 
 of? Ahab told him that there was one, Micaiah
 
 VIII.] SELF-DESTRUCTION. 93 
 
 the son of Imlah, but that he hated him, because he 
 only prophesied evil of him. What a thorough pic- 
 ture of a hardened sinner a man who has become 
 a slave to his own lusts, till he cares nothing for a 
 thing being true, provided only it is pleasant ! 
 Thus the wilful sinner, like Ahab, becomes both fool 
 and coward, afraid to look at things as they are; 
 and when God's judgments stare him in the face, 
 the wretched man shuts his eyes tight, and swears 
 that the evil is not there, just because he does not 
 choose to see it. 
 
 But the evil was there, ready for Ahab, and it 
 found him. When he forced Micaiah to speak, 
 Micaiah told him the whole truth. He told him a 
 vision, or dream, which he had seen. "Hear thou 
 therefore the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord 
 sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven 
 standing by Him. And the Lord said, Who shall 
 persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ra- 
 moth-Gilead? And there came forth a spirit, and 
 said, I will go forth, and be a lying spirit in the 
 mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou 
 shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and 
 do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a 
 lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, 
 and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee." 
 
 What warning could be more awful, and yet more 
 plain ? Ahab was told that he was listening to a 
 lie. He had free choice to follow that lie or not, 
 9
 
 1)4 SELF-DESTRUCTION. [SERM. 
 
 arid ho did follow it. After having put Micaiah into 
 prison for speaking the truth to him, he went up to 
 Ramoth-Gilead; and yet he felt he was not safe. 
 He had his doubts and his fears. lie would not go 
 openly into the battle, but disguised himself, hoping 
 that by this means he should keep himself safe from 
 evil. Fool! God's vengeance could not be stopped 
 by his paltry cunning. In spite of all his disguises, 
 a chance shot struck him down between the joints 
 of his armour. His chariot-driver carried him out 
 of the battle, and " he was stayed up in his chariot 
 against the Syrians, and died at even: and the 
 blood ran out of his wound into the midst of the 
 chariot. And one washed the chariot in the pool of 
 Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood there," 
 according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke 
 by the mouth of His prophet Elijah, saying, "In the 
 place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, whom 
 thou slewest, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine." 
 And do not fancy, my friends, that because this 
 is a miraculous story of ancient times, it has no- 
 thing to do with us. All these things were written 
 for our example. This chapter tells us not merely 
 how Ahab was tempted, but it tells us how we are 
 tempted, every one of us, here in England, in these 
 very days. As it was with Ahab, so it is with us. 
 Every wilful sin that we commit we give room to the 
 devil. Every wrong step that we take knowingly, 
 we give a handle to some evil spirit to lead us seven
 
 VITT.] SELF-DESTRUCTION. 95 
 
 steps further wrong. And yet in every temptation 
 God gives us a fair chance. He is no cruel tyrant 
 who will deliver us over to the devil, to be led help- 
 less and blindfold to our ruin. He did not give 
 Ahab over to him so. He sent a lying spirit to 
 deceive Ahab's prophets, that Ahab might go up and 
 fall at Ramoth-Gilead; but at the very same time, 
 see, he sends a holy and a true man, a man whom 
 Ahab could trust, and did trust at the bottom of his 
 heart, to tell him that the lie was a lie, to warn him 
 of his rum, so that he might have no excuse for lis- 
 tening to those false prophets no excuse for follow- 
 ing his own pride, his own ambition, to his destruc- 
 tion. So you see, "Let no man say, when he is 
 tempted, I am tempted of God, for God tempteth no 
 man, but every one is tempted when he is drawn away 
 by his own lust, and enticed." Ahab was led away by 
 his own lust ; his cowardly love of hearing what was 
 pleasant and flattering to him, rather than what was 
 true rather than what he knew he deserved ; that 
 was what enticed him to listen to Zedekiah and the 
 false prophets, rather than to Micaiah the son of 
 Imlah. That is what entices us to sin the lust of 
 believing what is pleasant to us, what suits our own 
 self-will what is pleasant to our bodies pleasant 
 to our purses pleasant to our pride and self-conceit. 
 Then, when the lying spirit comes and whispers to us, 
 by bad thoughts, by bad books, by bad men, that we 
 shall prosper in our wickedness, does God leave us
 
 96 SELF-DESTRUCTION. [SERM 
 
 alone to listen to those evil voices without warning 
 No ! He sends His prophets to us, as He sent 
 Micaiah to Ahab, to tell us that the wages of sin is 
 death to tell us that those who sow the wind shall 
 reap the whirlwind to set before us at every turn 
 good or evil, that we may choose between them, and 
 live or die according to our choice. For do not 
 fancy that there are no prophets in our days, unless 
 the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is promised to all 
 who believe, be a dream and a lie. There are pro- 
 phets nowadays, yea, I say unto you, and more 
 than prophets. Is not the Bible a prophet? Is not 
 every page in it a prophecy to us, foretelling God's 
 mercies and God's punishment towards men. Is 
 not every holy and wise book, every holy and wise 
 preacher and writer, a prophet expounding to us 
 God's laws, foretelling to us God's opinion of our 
 deeds, both good and evil? Ay, is not every man a 
 prophet to himself? That "still small voice" in a 
 man's heart, which warns him of what is evil that 
 feeling which makes him cheerful and free when he 
 has done right, sad and ashamed when he has 
 done wrong is not that a prophecy in a man's 
 own heart ? Truly it is. It is the voice of God 
 within us it is the Spirit of God striving with our 
 spirits, whether we will hear, or whether we will for- 
 bear setting before us what is righteous, and noble, 
 and pure, and what is manly and God-like to see 
 whether we will obey that voice, or whether we will
 
 VIII.] SELF-DESTKUCTIOX. 97 
 
 obey our own selfish lusts, which tempt us to 
 please ourselves to pamper ourselves, our greedi- 
 ness, covetousness, ambition, or gelf-conceit. And 
 again, I say, we have our prophets. Every preacher 
 of righteousness is a prophet. Every good tract is 
 a prophet. The Prayer-book, those Psalms, those 
 Creeds, those Collects, which you take into your 
 mouths every Sunday, what are they but written 
 prophecies, crying unto us with the words of holy 
 men of old, greater than Micaiah, or David, or Eli- 
 jah, " Hear thou the word of the Lord?" The spirits 
 of those who wrote that Prayer-book the spirits of 
 just men made perfect, filled with the Spirit of the 
 Lord they call to us to learn the wisdom which 
 they knew, to avoid the temptations which they 
 conquered, that we may share in the glory in which 
 they shared round the throne of Christ for evermore. 
 And if you ask me how to try the spirits, how to 
 know whether your own thoughts, whether the ser- 
 mons which you hear, the books which you read, are 
 speaking to you God's truth, or some lying spirit's 
 falsehood, I can only answer you, "To the law and 
 to the testimony" to the Bible; if they speak not 
 according to that word, there is no truth in them. 
 But how to understand the Bible? for the fleshly 
 man understands not the things of God. The fleshly 
 man, he who cares only about pleasing himself, he 
 who goes to the Bible full of self-conceit and selfish- 
 ness, wanting the Bible to tell him only just what he 
 9*
 
 98 SELF-DESTRUCTION. [SERM. VIII. 
 
 likes to hear, will only find it a sealed book to him, 
 and will very likely wrest the Scriptures to his own 
 destruction. Take up your Bible humbly, praying 
 to God to show you its meaning, whether it be plea- 
 sant to you or not, and then you will find that God 
 will show you a blessed meaning in it ; He will open 
 your eyes, that you may understand the wondrous 
 things of His law ; He will show you how to try the 
 spirit of all you are taught, and to find out whether 
 it comes from God.
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 HELL ON EARTH. 
 
 "And behold the evil spirits cried out, saying, What have we to do 
 with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God ? Art Thou come hither 
 to torment us before the time?" MATTHEW, vm. 29. - 
 
 THIS account of the man possessed with devils, 
 and of his language to our Lord, of our Lord's 
 casting the devils out of the poor sufferer, and His 
 allowing them to enter into a herd of swine, is one 
 that is well worth serious thought; and I think a 
 few words on it will follow fitly after my last Sun- 
 day's sermon on Ahab and his temptations by evil 
 spirits. In that sermon I showed you what temper 
 of mind it was which laid a man open to the -cun- 
 ning of evil spirits; I wish now to show you some- 
 thing of what those evil spirits are. It is very little 
 that we can know about them. "We were intended 
 to know very little, just as much as would enable us 
 to guard against them, and no more. The accounts 
 of them in the Scriptures are for our use, not to 
 satisfy our curiosity. But we may find out a great
 
 100 HELL ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 deal about them from this very chapter, from this 
 very story, which is repeated almost word for word 
 in three different Gospels, as if to make us more 
 certain of so curious and important a matter, by 
 having three distinct and independent writers to 
 witness for its truth. I advise all those who have 
 Bibles to look for this story in the 8th chapter of 
 St. Matthew, and follow me as I explain it.* 
 
 Now, first, we may learn from this account, tjiat 
 evil spirits are real persons. There is a notion got 
 abroad that it is only a figure of speech to talk of 
 evil spirits, that all the Bible means by them are 
 certain bad habits, or bad qualities, or diseases. 
 There are many who will say when they read this 
 Btory, "This poor man was only a madman. It 
 was the fashion of the old Jews when a man was 
 mad to say that he was possessed by evil spirits. 
 All they meant was that the man's own spirit was 
 
 * "And when 'He was come to the other side, into the coimtry 
 of the Gergesenes, there met Him two possessed with devils, 
 coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might 
 pass by that way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What 
 have we do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou 
 come hither to torment us before the time ? And there was a 
 good way off from them a herd of many swine feeding. So 
 the devils besought him, saying, If Thou cast us out, suffer us 
 to go away into the herd of swine. And He said unto them, Go. 
 And when they were come out, they went into the herd of 
 swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down 
 a steep place into the' sea, and perished in the waters."
 
 IX.] HELL ON EARTH. 101 
 
 in an evil diseased state, or that his brain and mind 
 were out of order." 
 
 When I hear such language and it is very com- 
 mon I cannot help thinking how pleased the devil 
 must be to hear people talk in such a way. How 
 can people help him better than by saying that there 
 is no devil ? A thief would be very glad to hear you 
 say, "There are no such things as thieves; it is all 
 an old superstition, so I may leave my house open at 
 night without danger;" and I believe, my friends, 
 from the very bottom of my heart, that this new- 
 fangled disbelief in evil spirits is put into men's hearts 
 by the evil spirits themselves. As it was once said, 
 " The devil had tried every plan to catch men's souls, 
 and now, as the last and most cunning trick of all, 
 he is shamming dead." These may seem homely 
 words, but the homeliest words are very often the 
 deepest. I advise you all to think seriously on them. 
 
 But it is impossible surely to read this story 
 without seeing that the Bible considers evil spirits 
 as distinct persons, just as much as each one of us 
 is a person, and that' our Lord spoke to them and 
 treated them as persons. "What have we to do 
 with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art thou 
 come hither to torment us before the time?" And 
 again, " If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the 
 herd of swine?" What can show more plainly that 
 there were some persons in that poor man, besides
 
 102 HELL ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 himself, his own spirit, his own person ? and that 
 he knew it, and Jesus knew it too? and that He 
 spoke to these spirits, these persons, who possessed 
 that man, and not to the man himself? No doubt 
 there was a terrible confusion in the poor madman's 
 mind about these evil spirits, who were tormenting 
 him, making him miserable, foul, and savage, in 
 mind and body a terrible confusion! We find, 
 when Jesus asked him his name, he answers, "Le- 
 gion" that is an army, a multitude, "for we are 
 many," he says. Again, one gospel tells us that he 
 says, " What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou 
 Son of God?" While in another Gospel we are 
 told that he said, "What have we to do with Thee? " 
 He seems not to have been able to distinguish be- 
 tween his own spirit, and these spirits who possessed 
 him. They put the furious and despairing thoughts 
 into his heart; they spoke through his mouth; they 
 made a slave and a puppet of him. But though he 
 could not distinguish between his own soul and the 
 devils who were in it, Christ could and Christ did. 
 The man says to Him, or rather the devils make the 
 man say to Him, "If Thou cast us out, suffer us to 
 go into the herd of swine, and drive us not out into 
 the deep." What did Christ answer him? Christ 
 did not answer him as our so-called wise men in these 
 days would, " My good man, this is all a delusion, and 
 a fancy of your own, about your having evil spirits in
 
 IX.] HELL OX EARTH. 103 
 
 you more persons than one in you for you are 
 wrong in saying we of yourself. You ought to say 
 *!,' as every one else does; and as for spirits go- 
 ing out of you, or going into a herd of swine, or 
 any thing pise, that is all a superstition and a 
 fancy. There is nothing to come out of you, there 
 is nothing in you except yourself. All the evil in 
 you is your own, the disease of your own brain, 
 and the violent passions of your own heart. Your 
 brain must be cured by medicine, and your violent 
 passions tamed down -by care and kindness, and 
 then you will get rid of this foolish notion, that 
 you have evil spirits in you, and calling yourself a 
 multitude, as if you had other persons in you be- 
 sides yourself." 
 
 Any one who spoke in this manner nowadays 
 would be thought very reasonable and very kind. 
 Why did not our Lord speak, so to this man, for 
 there was no outward difference between this man's 
 conduct and that of many violent mad people whom 
 we see continually in our land? We read, thaj; this 
 man possessed with devils would wear no clothes; 
 that he had extraordinary strength; that he would 
 not keep company with other men, but abode 
 day and night in the tombs, exceedingly fierce, 
 crying and cutting himself with stones, trying, in 
 blind rage, which he could not explain to himself, 
 to hurt himself and all who came near him. And, 
 above all, he had this notion, that evil spirits had
 
 104 HELL ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 got possession of him. Now every one of these 
 habits and fancies you may see in many raging 
 maniacs at this day. 
 
 But did our Lord treat this man as we treat such 
 maniacs in these days? He took the man at his 
 word, and more; the man could not distinguish 
 clearly between, himself and the evil spirits, but 
 our Lord did. When the devils besought him, say- 
 ing, "If thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the 
 herd of "swine," our Lord answers "Go;" and 
 "when they were cast out, they went into the herd 
 of swine; and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran 
 violently down a steep place into the sea, and pe- 
 rished in the waters." 
 
 It was as if our Lord had meant to say to the 
 bystanders, ay and to us, and to all people in all 
 times and in all countries, "This poor possessed 
 maniac's notion was a true one. There were other 
 persons in him besides himself, tormenting him, 
 body and soul: and, behold, I can drive these out 
 of him and send them into something else, and 
 leave the man uninjured, himself, and only himself, 
 again in an instant, without any need of long edu- 
 cation to cure him of his bad habits." It will be but 
 reasonable, then, for us to take this story of the man 
 possessed by devils, as written for our example, as 
 an instance of what might, and perhaps would, hap- 
 pen to any one of us, were it not for God's mercy. 
 
 St. Peter tells us to be sober and watchful, because
 
 IX.] HELL ON EARTH. 105 
 
 " the devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking 
 whom he may devour;" and when we look at the 
 world around, we may surely see that that stands as 
 true now as it did in St. Peter's time. Why, again, 
 did St. James tell us to resist the devil if the devil 
 be not near us to resist? Why did St. Paul take 
 for granted, as he did, that Christian men were of 
 course not ignorant of Satan's devices, if it be quite 
 a proof of enlightenment and superior knowledge 
 to be ignorant of his devices if any dread, any 
 thought, even, about evil spirits, be beneath the 
 attention of reasonable men? My friends, I say 
 fairly, once for all, that that common notion, that 
 there are no men now possessed by evil spirits, and 
 that all those stories of the devil's power over men, 
 are only old, worn-out superstitions, has come from 
 this, that men do not like to retain God in their 
 knowledge, and therefore, as a necessary conse- 
 quence, do not like to retain the devil in their know- 
 ledge, because they would be very glad to believe in 
 nothing but what they can see, and taste, and han- 
 dle; and therefore the thought of unseen evil spirits, 
 or good spirits either, is a painful thing to them. 
 First, they do not really believe in angels, minister- 
 ing spirits, sent out to minister to the heirs of sal- 
 vation; then they begin not to believe in evil spirits. 
 The Bible plainly describes their vast numbers; but 
 these people are wiser than the Bible, and only talk 
 of one of the devil, as if there were not, as the text 
 10
 
 m IIKLL ox I;AHTII. [SEUM. 
 
 tells us, legions and armies of devils. Then they 
 get rid of that one devil in their real desire to be- 
 lieve in as few spirits as possible. I am afraid many 
 of them have gone on to the next step, and got rid 
 of the one God out of their thoughts and their be- 
 lief. I said I am afraid ; I ought to have said I know 
 that they have done so, and that thousands in this 
 day, who began by saying evil spirits only mean cer- 
 tain diseases and bad habits in men, have ended by 
 saying, " God only means certain good habits in man. 
 God is no more a person than the evil spirits are 
 persons." I warn you of all this, my friends, be- 
 cause, if you go to live in large towns, as many of 
 you will, you will hear talk enough of this sort be- 
 fore your hairs are gray, put cleverly and eloquently 
 enough: for, as a wise man said, "The devil does 
 not send fools on his errands." I pray God that if 
 you ever do hear doctrines of that kind, some of my 
 words may rise in your mind and help to show to 
 you the evil path down which they lead. 
 
 We may believe, then, from the plain words of 
 scripture, that there are vast numbers of evil spirits 
 continually tempting men, each of them to some 
 particular sin to worldliness, for instance; for we 
 read of the spirit of the evil world : to filthiness ; 
 for we read of unclean spirits: to falsehood; for we 
 read of lying spirits and a spirit of lies: to pride; 
 for we read of a spirit of pride : in short, to all 
 sins which a man can commit, to all evil passions to
 
 IX.] HELL ON EARTH. 107 
 
 which a man can give way. We have a right to 
 believe, from the plain words of scripture, that these 
 spirits are continually wandering up and down, 
 tempting men to sin. That wonderful story of Job's 
 temptation, which you may all read for yourselves, 
 in the first chapter of the book of Job, is, I think, 
 proof enough for any one. 
 
 But next and I wish you to pay special attention 
 to this point we have no right to believe, we have 
 every right not to believe, that these evil spirits can 
 make us sin in the smallest matter against our own 
 wills. The devil cannot put a single sin into us; 
 he can only flatter the sinfulness which is already 
 in us. For, see! this pride, lust, covetousness, 
 falsehood, and so on, to which the Bible tells us 
 they tempt us, have roots already in our nature. 
 Our fallen nature of itself is inclined to pride, to 
 worldliness, and so on. These devils tempt us by 
 putting in our way the occasion to sin, by suggest- 
 ing to us tempting thoughts and arguments which 
 lead to sin ; so the serpent tempted Eve, not by 
 making her ambitious and self-willed, but by using 
 arguments to her which stirred up the ambition and 
 self-will in her: "Ye shall be as gods, knowing 
 good and evil," the devil said to her. 
 
 So Satan, the prince of the evil spirits, tempted 
 our Lord. And as the prince of the devils tempted 
 Christ, so do his servants tempt us, Christ's ser- 
 vants. Our tempers, our longings, our fancies,
 
 108 HELL ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 are not evil spirits; they are, as old divines well 
 describe them, like greedy and foolish fish, -who rise 
 at the baits which evil spirits hold out to us. If we 
 resist those baits if we put ourselves under God's 
 protection if we claim strength from Him who 
 conquered the devil and all his temptation, then we 
 shall be able to turn our wills away from those 
 tempting baits, and to resign our will into our Fa- 
 ther's hand, and He will take care of them, and 
 strengthen them with his will; and we shall find 
 out that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. 
 But if we yield to temptations whenever they come 
 in our way, we shall find ourselves less and less 
 able to resist them, for we shall learn to hate the 
 evil spirits less and less ; I mean we shall shrink 
 less from the evil thoughts they hold out to us. 
 We shall give place to the devil, as the Scripture 
 tells us we shall ; for instance, by indulging in ha- 
 bitual passionate tempers, or rooted spite and ma- 
 lice, letting the sun go down upon our wrath : and 
 so a man may become more and more the slave of 
 his own nature, of his own lusts and passions, and 
 therefore of the devils, who are continually pam- 
 pering and maddening those lusts and passions, 
 till a man may end in complete possession; not 
 in common madness, which may be mere disease, 
 but as a savage and a raging maniac, such as, 
 thank God, are rare in Christian countries, though 
 they were common among our own forefathers 
 before they were converted to Christianity,
 
 IX.] HELL OX KARTII. 109 
 
 men like the demoniac of whom the text speaks, tor- 
 mented by devils, given up to blind rage and malice 
 against himself and all around, to lust and blas- 
 phemy, to confusion of mind and misery of body, 
 God's image gone, "and the image of the devil, the 
 destroyer and the corrupter, arisen in its place. Few 
 men can arrive at this pitch of wretchedness in a ci- 
 vilized country. It would not answer the evil spirit's 
 purpose to let them do so. It suits his spirits best in 
 such a land as this to walk about dressed up as an- 
 gels of light. Few men in England would be fools 
 enough to indulge the gross and fierce part of their 
 nature till they .became mere savages, like the demo- 
 niac whom Christ cured: so it is'to respectable vices 
 that the devil mostly tempts us, to covetousness, to 
 party spirit, to a hard heart and a narrow mind; to 
 cruelty, that shall clothe itself under the name of law; 
 to filthiness, which excuses itself by saying, "It is a, 
 man's nature, he cannot help it;" to idleness, which 
 excuses itself on the score of wealth: to meanness 
 and unfairness in trade, and in political and religious 
 disputes these are the devils which haunt us Eng- 
 lishmen sleek, prim, respectable fiends enough; 
 and, truly, their name is Legion ! And the man who 
 gives himself up to them, though he may not become 
 a raving savage, is just as truly possessed by devils, to 
 his own misery and ruin, that he may sow the wind 
 and reap the whirlwind ; that though men may speak 
 well of him, and posterity praise his saying, 
 10*
 
 110 HELL ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 speak good of the covetous whom God abhorreth, 
 yet he may go for ever unto his own, to the evil 
 spirits to whom his own wicked will gave him up for 
 a prey. I beseech you, my friends, consider my 
 words; they are not mine, but the Bible's. Think 
 of them with fear, and yet with confidence; for we 
 are baptized into the name of Him who conquered 
 all devils; you may claim a share in that Spirit 
 which is opposite to all evil spirits, whose presence 
 makes the agony and misery of evil spirits, and 
 drives them out as water drives out fire. If He is on 
 your side why should you be afraid of any spirit? 
 Greater is He that is in you than he that is against 
 you; and He, Christ Himself, is with every man, 
 every child, who struggles, however blindly and 
 weakly, against temptation. When temptation comes, 
 when evil looks pleasant, and arguments rise up in 
 your mind, that seem to make it look right and rea- 
 sonable, as well as pleasant, then, out of the very 
 depths of your hearts, cry after Him who died for 
 you. Say to yourselves, ' How can I do this thing, 
 and offend against Him who bought me with His 
 blood?' Say to him, 'I am weak, I am confused; 
 I do not see right from wrong; I cannot find my 
 way; I cannot answer the devil; I cannot conquer 
 these cunning thoughts ; I know in the bottom of 
 my heart that they are wrong, mere temptations, 
 and yet they look so reasonable. Blessed Saviour, 
 Thou must show me where they are. wrong. Thou
 
 IX.] HELL ON EARTH. Ill 
 
 didst answer the devil Thyself out of God's Word; 
 put into my mind some answer out of God's Word to 
 these temptations; or, at least, give me spirit to toss 
 them off strength of will to thrust the whole 
 temptation out of my head, and say, I will parley no 
 longer with the devil ; I will put the whole matter 
 out of my head for a time. I don't know whether it 
 is right or wrong for me to do this particular thing, 
 but there are twenty other things which I do know 
 are right. I'll go and do thm, and let this wait 
 awhile.' 
 
 Believe me, my friends, you can do this you can 
 resist these evil spirits which tempt us all ; else why 
 did our Lord bid us pray, "Lead us not into temp- 
 tation, but deliver us from evil?" Why? Because 
 our Father in heaven, if we ask Him, will not lead 
 us into temptation, but tJirouc/h it safe. Tempted 
 we must be, else we should not be men ; but here is 
 our comfort and our strength that we have a King 
 in heaven, who has fought out and conquered all 
 temptations, and a Father in heaven, who has pro- 
 mised that lie will not suffer us to be tempted above 
 that we are able, but will, with the temptation, make 
 a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it. 
 
 Again, I say, draw near to God, and He will draw 
 near to you. Resist the devil, and he will flee from 
 you.
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 NOAH'S JUSTICE. 
 
 "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah 
 walked with God." GENESIS, vi. 9. . 
 
 I INTEND, my friends, according as God shall 
 help me, to preach to you, between this time and 
 Christmas, a few sermons on some of the saints 
 and worthies of the Old Testament; and I will begin 
 this day with Noah. 
 
 Now you must bear in mind that the histories 
 of these ancient men were, as St. Paul says, written 
 for our example. If these men in olden times had 
 been different from us, they would not be examples to 
 us; but they were like us -men of like passions, 
 says St. James, as ourselves; they had each of them 
 a corrupt nature, which was continually ready to 
 drag them down, and make beasts of them, and 
 make them slaves to their own lusts slaves to eat- 
 ing and drinking, and covetousness, and cowardice, 
 and laziness, and love for the things which they
 
 SEEM, x.] NOAH'S JUSTICE. 113 
 
 could sec and handle just such a nature, in short, 
 as we have. And they had also a spirit in each of 
 them which was longing to be free, and strong, and 
 holy, and wise such a spirit as we have. .- And to 
 them, just as to us, God was revealing himself; 
 God was saying to their consciences, as He does to 
 ours, "This is right, that is wrong.; do this, and be 
 free and clear-hearted; do that, arid be dark arid 
 discontented, and afraid of thy own thoughts." 
 And they too, like us, Had to live by faith, by con- 
 tinual belief that they owed a duty to the great God 
 whom they could not see,- by continual belief that 
 lie loved them, and was guiding and leading them 
 through every thing which happened, good or ill. 
 
 This is faith in God, by which alone we, or any 
 man, can live worthily, by which these old heroes 
 lived. We read, in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, 
 that it was by faith these elders obtained a good 
 report; and the whole history of the Old Testa- 
 ment saints is the history of God speaking to the 
 hearts of one man after another, teaching them each 
 more and more about himself, and the history also 
 of these men listening to the voice of God in their 
 hearts, and believing that voice, and acting faithfully 
 upon it, into whatever strange circumstances or deeds 
 it might lead them. "By faith," we read in this 
 same chapter, "by faith Noah, being warned of 
 God, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, and 
 became heir of the righteousness which is by faith."
 
 114 NOAIl'S JUSTICE. [SERM. 
 
 Now, to understand this last sentence, you must 
 remember that Noah was not under the law of 
 Moses. St. Paul has a whole chapter (the third 
 chapter of Galatians) to show that these old saints 
 had nothing to do with Moses' law any more than 
 we have ; that it was given to the Jews many hun- 
 dred years afterwards. So these histories of the 
 Old Testament saints are, in fact, histories of men 
 who conquered by faith histories of the power 
 which faith in God has to conquer temptation, and 
 doubt, and false appearances, and fear, and danger, 
 and all which besets us and keeps us down from 
 being free and holy, and children of the day, walk- 
 ing cheerfully forward on our heavenward road in 
 the light of our Father's loving smile. 
 
 Noah, we read, " was a just man, and perfect in 
 his generations ;" and why ? Because he was a faith- 
 ful man faithful to God, as it is written, " The just 
 shall live by his faith ;" not by trusting in what he 
 does himself, in his own works or deservihgs, but 
 trusting in God who made him, believing that God 
 is perfectly righteous, perfectly wise, perfectly 
 loving; and that, because he is perfectly loving, He 
 will accept and save sinful man when He sees in 
 sinful man the earnest wish to be His faithful, 
 obedient servant, and to give himself up to the rule 
 and guidance of God. This, then, was Noah's jus- 
 tice in God's sight, as it was Abraham's. They 
 believed God, and so became heirs of the righteous- 
 
 '
 
 X.] XOAIl'S JUSTICE. 115 
 
 ness which is by faith; not their own righteousness, 
 not growing out of their own character, but given 
 them by God, who puts His righteous Spirit into 
 those who trust in Him. 
 
 But, moreover, we read that Noah "was perfect 
 in his generations;" that is, he was per feet in all the 
 relations and duties of life; a good son, a good 
 husband, a good father: these were the fruits of his 
 faith. He believed that the unseen God had given 
 him these ties, had given him his parents, his chil- 
 dren, and that to love them was to love God, to do 
 his duty to them was to do his duty to God. This 
 was part of his walking with God, continually under 
 his great Taskmaster's eye walking about his daily 
 business with the belief that a great loving Father 
 was above him, whatever he did, ready to strengthen, 
 and guide, and bless him if he did well; ready to 
 avenge Himself on him if he did ill. These were the 
 fruits of Noah's faith. 
 
 But you may think this nothing very wonderful. 
 Many a man in England does this every day, and 
 yet no one ever hears of him; he attends to all his 
 family ties, doing justly, loving mercy, and walking 
 humbly with God, like one who knows he is re- 
 deemed by Christ's blood; he lives, he dies r he is 
 buried, and out of his own parish his name is never 
 known; while Noah has earned for himself a world- 
 wide fame; for four thousand years his name has 
 been spreading over the whole earth as one of the
 
 116 NOAH'S JUSTICE. [SE KM. 
 
 greatest men who ever lived. Mighty nations have 
 worshipped Noah as a God; many heathen nations 
 worship him under strange and confused names and 
 traditions to this day; and the wisest and holiest 
 men among Christians now reverence Noah, write of 
 him, preach on him, thank God for him, look up to 
 him as, next to Abraham, their greatest example in 
 the Old Testament. 
 
 Well, my friends, to understand what made Noah 
 so great, we must understand in what times Noah 
 lived. /'The wickedness of men was great in the 
 earth in those days, and every imagination of the 
 thoughtsof their heart was only evilcoritinually, and 
 the earth was filled with violence through them." 
 And we must rememher that the wickedness of men 
 before the flood was not outwardly like wickedness 
 now; it was not petty, mean, contemptible wicked- 
 ness of silly and stupid men, such as could be 
 despised and laughed down; it was like the wicked- 
 ness of fallen angels.,. Men were then strong and 
 beautiful, cunning and active, to a degree of which 
 we can form no conception. Their enormous length 
 of life (six, seven, and eight hundred years com- 
 monly) must have given them an experience and 
 daring far beyond any man in these. days. Their 
 bodily size and strength were in many cases enor- 
 mous. We read that " there were giants in the earth 
 in those days; and also after that, when the sons of 
 God came in unto the daughters of men, and they
 
 x.] NOAH'S JUSTICE. 117 
 
 bare children to them, the same became mighty 
 men which were of old, men of renown." Their 
 powers of invention seem to have been proportiona- 
 lly great. We read, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, 
 how, within a few years after Adam was driven out 
 of Paradise, they had learned to build cities, to tame 
 the wild beasts, and live upon their milk and flesh; 
 that they had invented all sorts of music and musical 
 instruments; that they had discovered the art of 
 working in metals. We read among them of Tubal- 
 Cain, an instructor of every workman in brass and 
 iron ; and the old traditions in the East, where these 
 men dwelt, are full of strange and awful tales of 
 their power. 
 
 Again, we must remember that there was no law 
 in Noah's days before the flood,- no Bible to guide 
 them, no constitutions and acts of parliament to 
 bind men in the beaten track by the awful ma- 
 jesty of law, whether they will or no, as we have. 
 
 This is the picture which the Bible gives us of 
 the old world before the flood a world of men 
 mighty in body and mind, fierce and busy, conquer- 
 ing the world round them, in continual war and 
 turmoil; -with all the wild passions of youth, and 
 yet all the cunning and experience of enormous old 
 age; with the strength and the courage of young 
 men to carry out the iniquity of old ones; every one 
 guided only by self-will, having cast off God and 
 conscience, and doing every man that which was 
 11
 
 118 NOAH'S JUSTICE. [SERM. 
 
 right in the sight of his own eyes. And amidst all 
 this, while men, as wise, as old, as strong, as great 
 as himself, whirled away round him in this raging 
 sea of sin, Noah was steadfast ; he, at least, knew his 
 way, "he walked with God, a just'man, and perfect 
 in his generations." 
 
 To Noah, living in such a world as this, among 
 temptation, and violence, and insult, no doubt, there 
 came this command from God : "The end of all 
 flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with 
 violence through them, and-I will destroy them with 
 the earth. And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of 
 waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is 
 the breath of life : but with thee will I establish my 
 covenant, and, thou shalt make thee an ark of wood 
 after the fashion which I tell thee; and thou shalt 
 come into the ark, thou and thy family,' and of every 
 living thing, two of every sort, male and female, 
 shalt thou bring into the ark, and keep them alive 
 with thee ; and take thou of all food that is eaten into 
 the ark, for thee and for them." What a message, 
 my friends! If we wish to see a little of the great- 
 ness of Noah's faith, conceive such a message coming 
 from God to one of us ! Should we believe it 
 much less act upon it? But Noah believed God, says 
 the Scripture; and "according as God commanded 
 him, so did he." Now, in whatever way this command 
 came from God to Noah, it is equally wonderful. 
 Some of you, perhaps, will say in your hearts, "No !
 
 X.] XOAIl'S JUSTICE. 119 
 
 when God spoke to him, how could he help obeying 
 Him ? ' But, my friends, ask yourselves seriously, 
 for, believe me, it is a most important question for the 
 soul and inner life of you and me, and every man 
 how did Noah know that it was God, who spoke to 
 .him? It is easy to say God appeared to him; but 
 no man hath seen God at any time. It is easy, again, 
 to say that an angel appeared to him, or that God 
 appeared to him in the form of a man; but still the 
 same question is left to be answered, how did he 
 know that this appearance came from God, and that 
 its words were true? Why should not Noah have 
 said, ' This was an evil spirit which appeared to me, 
 trying to frighten and ruin me, and stir up all my 
 neighbours to mock me, perhaps to murder me?' 
 Or, again : suppose that you or I saw same glorious 
 apparition this day, which told us on such and such 
 a day such and such, a town will be destroyed, what 
 should we think of it? Should we not say, I must 
 have been dreaming I must have been ill, and so 
 my brain and eyes must have been disordered, and 
 treat the whole thing as a mere fancy of ill health; 
 now why did not Noah do the same? 
 
 "\Yhy do I say this? To show you, my friends, 
 that it is not apparitions and visions which can make 
 a man believe. As it is written, " If they believe not 
 Moses and the prophets, neither will they be per- 
 suaded though one rose from the dead." No ; a man 
 must have faith in his heart already. A man must
 
 120 NOAH'S JUSTICE. [SERM. 
 
 first be accustomed to discern right from wrong to 
 listen to and to obey the voice of God within him; 
 that word of God of which it is said, "The word is 
 nigh thee, in thy heart, and in thy mind," before 
 he can hear God's word from without; else he will 
 only explain away miracles, and call visions and 
 apparitions sick men's dreams. 
 
 But there was something yet more wonderful and 
 divine in Noah's faith, I mean his patience. He 
 knew that a flood was to come he set, to work in 
 faith to build his ark and that ark was in building 
 for one hundred and twenty years: one hundred and 
 twenty years ! It seems at first past all belief. For 
 all that time he built; and all the while the world 
 went on just as usual; and, before he had finished, 
 old men had died, and children grown into years; 
 and great cities had sprung up perhaps where there 
 was not a cottage before ; and trees which were but a 
 yard high when the ark was begun had grown into 
 mighty forest-timber; and men had multiplied and 
 spread, and yet Noah built and built on steadfastly, 
 believing that what God had said would surely one 
 day or other come to pass. For one hundred and 
 twenty years he saw the world go on as usual, and 
 yet he never forgot that it was a doomed world. He 
 endured the laughter and mockery of all his neigh- 
 bours, and every fresh child who was born grew up 
 to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toiling 
 for a hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they
 
 x.] NOAH'S JUSTICE. 121 
 
 thought it; and yet Noah never lost faith, and he 
 never lost love cither for all those years, we read, 
 he preached righteousness to the very men who 
 mocked him, and preached in vain one hundred 
 and twenty years he warned those sinners of God's 
 wrath, of righteousness and judgment to come, and 
 no man listened to him ! That, I believe, must have 
 been, after all, the hardest of all his trials. 
 
 And, doubtless, Noah had his inward temptation 
 many a time ; no doubt he was ready now arid then to 
 believe God's message all a dream to laugh at him- 
 self for his fears of a flood which seemed never coming, 
 but in his heart was "the still small voice" of God, 
 warning him that God was not a man that he should 
 lie, or repent, or deceive those who walked faithfully 
 with him ; and around him he saw men growing and 
 growing in iniquity, filling up the cup of their own 
 damnation; and he said to himself, "Verily there is a 
 God who judgeth the earth for all this a reckoning 
 day will surely come ; " and he worked steadfastly on, 
 and the ark was finished. And then at last there 
 came a second call from God, " Come, thou and all 
 thy house, into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous 
 before me in this generation. Yet seven days, and 
 I will cause it to rain upon the earth, and every 
 living substance that I have made will I destroy from 
 off the earth." And Noah entered into the ark, and 
 seven days he waited ; and louder than ever laughed 
 the scoffers round him, at the old man and his family 
 11*
 
 122 NOAH'S JUSTICE. [SERM. x. 
 
 shut into his ark safe on dryland, while day and night 
 went on as quietly as ever, and the world ran its 
 usual round; for seven days more their mad game 
 lasted they ate, they drank, they married, they 
 gave in marriage, they planted, they builded; and on 
 the seventh day it came the rain fell day after day, 
 and week after week and the windows of heaven 
 were opened, and the fountains of the great deep 
 were broken up, and the flood arose, and swept them 
 all away !
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 THE NOACHIC COVENANT. 
 
 "And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And 
 I, behold I, establish my covenant with you, and with your 
 seed lifter you." GEN. ix.'S, 9. 
 
 Ix my last sermon on Noah, I spoke of the flood 
 and of Noah's faith before the flood; I now go on 
 to speak of th-e covenant which God made with Noah 
 after the flood. Now, Noah stood on that newly- 
 dried earth as the head of mankind: he and his 
 family, in all eight souls, saved by God's mercy from 
 the general ruin, were the only beings left alive, 
 and had laid on thdm the wonderful and glorious 
 duty of renewing the race of man, and replenish- 
 ing the vast world around them: from that little 
 knot of human beings were to spring all the nations 
 of the earth. 
 
 And because this calling and destiny of theirs was 
 a great and all-important one because so much 
 of the happiness or misery of the race of mankind 
 depended on the teaching which they would get from 
 their forefathers, the sons of Noah, therefore God
 
 124 THE NOACHIC COVENANT. [SERM. 
 
 thought fit to make with Noah and his sons a solemn 
 covenant, as soon as they came out of the ark. 
 
 Let us solemnly consider this covenant, for it 
 stands good now as much as ever. God made it 
 "with Noah, and his seed after him," for perpe- 
 tual generations. And we are the seed of Noah; 
 every man, woman, and child of us here were in the 
 loins of Noah when the great, absolute God gave 
 him that pledge and promise. We must earnestly 
 consider that covenant,~for in it lies the very ground 
 and meaning of-man's life and business on this earth. 
 
 "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said 
 unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish 
 the -earth; and the fear of you and the dread of 
 you shall be upon every living creature. Into your 
 hand they are delivered. ' Every, moving thing that 
 liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb 
 have I given you "all things. But flesh, with the 
 life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not 
 eat. Arid surely your blood of your lives will I re- 
 quire; at the hand of every beast will Irequireit, and 
 at the hand of men ; at the hand of every man's 
 brother will I require the life of man. Whoso 
 sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be 
 shed; for in the image of God made He man." 
 
 Now, to understand this covenant, consider what 
 thoughts would have been likely to grow up in the 
 mind^of Noah's children after the flood? Would 
 they not have been something of this kind : 'God
 
 XI.] THE XOACHIC COVENANT. 125 
 
 does not love men; lie has drowned all but us, and 
 we are men of like passions with the world who 
 perished; may we not expect the like ruin at any 
 moment? Then what use to plough and sow, and 
 build and plant, and work for those who shall come 
 after us ? " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die." 
 
 And, again, they would have been ready to say, 
 "This God, whom our forefather Noah said sent 
 floods, we cannot see Him; but the floods themselves 
 we can see. All these clouds and tempests, light- 
 ning, sun, and stars, are we stronger than they? 
 No! They may crush us, drown us, strike us dead 
 at any moment. They seem, too, to go by certain 
 wonderful rules and laws ; perhaps they have a will 
 and understanding in them. Instead of praying 
 to a God whom we never saw, why not pray to the 
 thunder-clouds not to strike us dead, and to the seas 
 and rivers not to sweep us away? For this great, 
 wonderful, awful world in which we are, however 
 beautiful may be its flowers, and its fruits, and its 
 sunshine, there is no trusting it; we are sitting 
 upon a painted sepulchre, a beautiful monster, a 
 gulf of flood and fire, which may burst up any mo- 
 ment, and sweep us away as it did our forefathers." 
 Again, Noah's children would have begun to say, 
 "These beasts here round us, they are so many of 
 them larger than we, stronger than we, able to tear
 
 126 THE NOACHIC COVENANT. [sERM. 
 
 us to atoms, eat us up as they would eat a larnb. 
 They are self-sufficient, too; they want no clothes, 
 nor houses, nor fire, like us poor, weak, naked, soft 
 human creatures. They can run faster than we, see 
 farther than we; their scent, too, what a wonderful, 
 mysterious power that is, like a miracle to us ! And, 
 besides all their cunning ways of getting food and 
 building nests, they never do wrong ; they never do 
 horrible things contrary to their nature; they all 
 abide as God has made them, obeying the law of their 
 kind. Are not these beasts, then, much wiser and 
 better than we ? We will honour them, and pray 
 to them not to devour us to make us cunning 
 and powerful as they are themselves. And if they 
 are no better, surely they are no worse than we 
 are. After, all, what difference is there between a 
 man and a beast? The flood which drowned the 
 beasts drowned the men too. A beast is flesh and 
 blood, what more is a man? If you kill him, he 
 dies, just as a beast dies; and why should not a 
 man's carcass be just as good to eat as a beast's, 
 and better?" And so there would have been a 
 free opening at once into all the horrors of canni- 
 balism ! 
 
 Again, Noah's descendants would have said, 
 " Our forefathers offered sacrifices to the unseen 
 God, as a sign that all they had belonged to Him, 
 and that they had forfeited their own souls by sin, 
 and were therefore ready to give up the most pre-
 
 XI.] THE NOACHIC COVENANT. 127 
 
 clous things they had their cattle, as a sign that 
 they owed all to that very God whom they had of- 
 fended. But are not human creatures much more 
 precious than cattle ? Will it not be a much greater 
 sign of repentance and willingness to give up all to 
 God if we offer Him the best things which we have 
 human creatures ? If we kill and sacrifice to Him 
 our most beautiful and innocent things little chil- 
 dren noble young men beautiful young girls ? ' 
 My friends, these are very strange and shocking 
 thoughts, but they have been in the hearts and 
 minds of all nations. The heathens do such things 
 now. Our own forefathers used to do such things 
 once; they were tempted to worship the sun and the 
 moon, and the rivers, and the thunder, and to look 
 with superstitious terror at the bears, and the wolves, 
 and the snakes, round them, and to kill their young 
 children and maidens, and offer them up as sacri- 
 fices to the dark powers of this world, which they 
 thought were ready to swallow them up. And God 
 is my witness, my friends, when one goes through 
 some parts of England now, and sees the mine- 
 children and factory-children, and all the sin and 
 misery, and the people wearying themselves in the 
 fire for very vanity, we seem not to be so very far 
 from the same dark superstition now, though we 
 may call it by a different name. England has been 
 sacrificing, her sons and her daughters to the devil 
 of covetousness of late years, just as much as our
 
 128 THE NOACIIIC COVENANT. [SERM. 
 
 forefathers offered theirs to the devil of selfish and 
 cowardly superstition. 
 
 But see, now, how this Covenant which God made 
 with Noah was intended just to remedy every one 
 of those temptations which I just mentioned, into 
 which Noah's children's children would have been 
 certain to fall, and into which so many of them did 
 fall. They might have become reckless, I said, from 
 fear of a flood at any moment. God promises them 
 and confirms it with the sign of the rainbow 
 never again to destroy the earth by water. They- 
 would have been likely to take to praying to the rain 
 and the thunder, the sun and- the stars; God declares 
 in this covenant that it is He alone who sends the 
 rain and thunder, that lie brings the clouds over 
 the earth, that He rules the great, awful world ; that 
 men are to look up and believe in God as a loving 
 and thinking person, who has a will of -His own, and 
 that a faithful, and true, and loving, and merciful 
 will; that their lives and safety depend not on blind 
 chance, or the stern necessity of certain laws of na- 
 ture, but on the covenant of an almighty and all- 
 loving person. 
 
 Again, I said, that Noah's sons would have been, 
 ready to fear, and, at last, to worship the dumb 
 beasts; God's covenant says, "No; these beasts are 
 not your equals they are your slaves you may 
 freely kill them for your food; the fear of you shall 
 be upon them. The huge elephant and the swift
 
 XI.] THE NOACHIC COVENANT. 129 
 
 horse shall become your obedient servants; the lion 
 and the tiger shall tremble and flee before you. 
 Only claim your rights as men ; believe that the in- 
 visible God who made the earth is your strength and 
 your protector, and that He to whom the earth be- 
 longs has made you lords of the earth and all that 
 therein k. But," said God's covenant to Noah's 
 sons, "you did not make these beasts you did not 
 give them life, therefore I forbid you to eat their 
 blood wherein their life lies, that you may never 
 forget that all the power you have over these beasts 
 was given you by God, who made and preserves that 
 wonderful, mysterious, holy thing called life, which 
 you can never imitate." Again, I said, that Noah's 
 children, having been accustomed to the violence and 
 bloodshed on the earth before the flood, might hold 
 man's life cheap ; that having seen in the flood men 
 perish just like the beasts around them, they might 
 have begun to think that man's life was not more 
 precious than the beasts.' They might have all gone 
 on at last, as some of them did, to those horrors of 
 cannibalism and human sacrifices of which I just now 
 spoke. Now here, again, comes in God's covenant, 
 ' : Surely the blood of your lives will I require. At the 
 hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand 
 of every man's brother will I require it. Whoso 
 sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be 
 shed, for in the image of God made He man." This, 
 thest r is the covenant which God made with Noah 
 12 

 
 130 THE JSOACHIC COVENANT. [bKliM. 
 
 for perpetual generations, and therefore with us, 
 the children of Noah. In this covenant you see 
 certain truths come out into light: some, of which 
 you read nothing before in the Bible, and other 
 truths which, though they were given to Adam, yet 
 had been utterly lost sight of before the flood. This 
 has been God's method, we find from the Bible, ever 
 since the creation, to lead man step by step up into 
 more and more light, up to this very day, and to 
 make each sin and each madness of men an occasion 
 for revealing to Him more and more of truth and of 
 the living God. And so each and every chapter in 
 the Bible is built upon all that has gone before it; 
 and he that neglects to understand what has gone 
 before will never come to the understanding of what 
 follows after. Why do I say this? Because men 
 are continually picking out those scraps of the Bible 
 which suit their own fancy, and pinning their whole 
 faith on them, and trying to make them serve to ex- 
 plain every thing in heaven and earth; whereas no 
 man can understand the Epistles unless he first un- 
 derstand the Gospels. No man will understand the 
 New Testament unless he first understands the pith 
 and marrow of the Old. No man will understand the 
 Psalms and the Prophets unless he first understands 
 the first ten chapters of Genesis; and, lastly, no one 
 will ever understand any thing about the Bible at all, 
 who, instead of taking it simply as it is written, is 
 always trying to twist it into proofs of his own
 
 XI.] THE NOACHIC COVENANT. 131 
 
 favourite doctrines, and make Abraham a high Cal- 
 vinist, or Noah a member of the Church of Eng- 
 land. Why do I say this? To make you all think 
 seriously that this covenant on which I have been 
 preaching is your covenant; that as sure as the rain- 
 bow stands in heaven, as sure as you and I are 
 sprung out of the loins of Noah, so surely this cove- 
 nant which binds us is part of our Christian cove- 
 nant, and wo to us if we break it ! 
 
 This covenant tells us that we are made in God's 
 likeness, and, therefore, that all sin is unworthy of 
 us and unnatural to us. It tells us that God means 
 us bravely and industriously to subdue the earth 
 and the living things upon it; that we are to be the 
 masters of the pleasant things about us, and not 
 their slaves, as sots and idlers are; that we are 
 stewards and tenants of this world for the great 
 God who made it, to whom we are to look up in 
 confidence for help and protection. It tells us that 
 our family relationships, the blessed duties of a hus- 
 band and a father, are sacred things; that God 
 has created them, that the great God of heaven 
 Himself respects them, that the covenant which He 
 makes with the father He makes with the children; 
 that He commands marriage, and that He blesses it 
 with fruitfulness ; that it is He who has told us, 
 "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth ;" 
 that the tie of brotherhood is His making also ; that 
 He will require the blood of the murdered man at
 
 132 THE NOACHIC COVENANT. [SERM. XI. 
 
 his brother's hand; that aman's brothers, his nearest 
 relations, are bound to protect and right him if he 
 is injured; so that we all are to be, in the deepest 
 sense of the word, what Cain refused to be, our 
 brothers' keepers, and each member -of a family 
 is more or less answerable for the welfare and 
 safety of all his relations. Herein lies the ground 
 of all religion and of all society in the covenant 
 which God made with Noah; and just as it is in vain 
 for a man to pretend to be a scholar when- he does 
 not even know his letters, so it is mockery for a man 
 to pretend to be a converted Christian man who 
 knows not even so much as was commanded to Noah 
 and his sons. He who has not learnt to love, honour, 
 and succour his own family he who has not learnt 
 to work" in honest and manful industry he who 
 has not learnt to look beyond this earth, and its 
 chance, and its customs, and its glittering outside, 
 and see and trust in a great, wise, loving God, by 
 whose will every tree grows and every shower falls, 
 what is Christianity to him? He has to learn the 
 first principles which were delivered to Noah, and 
 which not even the heathen and the savage have 
 utterly forgotten.
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 
 
 "By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a 
 strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, 
 the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a 
 city, which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is 
 God." HEBREWS, xi. 9, 10. 
 
 IN the last sermon "which I preached in this 
 church, I said that the Bible is the history of God's 
 ways with mankind, how He has schooled and 
 hrought them up until the coming of Christ; and 
 if we read the Bible histories, one after another, 
 in the same order in which God has put them in 
 the Bible, we shall see that they are all regular steps 
 in a line, that each fresh story depends on the story 
 which went before it; and yet, in each fresh his- 
 tory, we shall find God telling men something new 
 something which they did not know before. And 
 that so the whole Bible, from beginning to end, is 
 one glorious, methodic, and organic tree of life, every 
 part growing out of the others and depending on 
 the others, from the root that foundation, other 
 12*
 
 134 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 than which no man can lay, which is Christ, reveal- 
 ing Himself, though not by name, in that wonderful 
 first chapter of Genesis, up to the fruit, which is 
 the kingdom of Christ, and Gospel of Christ, and 
 the salvation in which we here now stand. I told 
 you that the lesson which God ha~s been teaching 
 men in all ages is faith in God that the saints of 
 old were just the men who learnt this lesson of 
 faith. Now this, as we all know, was the secret of 
 Abraham's greatness, that he had faith in God to 
 leave his own country at 'God's bidding, and be- 
 come a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth, wander- 
 ing on in full trust that God would give him another 
 country instead of that which he had left "a city 
 which hath foundations, whose builder and maker 
 is God." This was what Abraham looked for. Some- 
 thing of what it means we shall see presently. 
 
 You remember the story of the tower of Babel ? 
 How certain of Noah's family forgot the covenant 
 which God had made with Noah, forgot that God 
 had commanded them to go forth in every direction 
 and fill the earth with human beings, solemnly 
 promising to protect and bless them, and took on 
 themselves to do the very opposite set up a kingdom 
 of their own fashion, and herded together for selfish 
 safety, instead of going forth to all the quarters of the 
 world in a natural way, according to their families, 
 in their tribes, after their nations, as the eleventh 
 chapter of Genesis says they ought to have done.
 
 xii.] ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 135 
 
 " Let us build us a city and a tower, and make us 
 a name, lest," they said, "we be scattered abroad 
 over the face of the whole world." Here was one act 
 of disobedience to God's order. But besides this 
 they had fallen into a slavish dread of the powers of 
 nature they were afraid of another flood. They 
 set to tojbuild a tower, on which they might worship 
 the sun and stars, and the host of heaven, and pray 
 to them to send no more floods and tempests. They 
 thus fell into slavish fear of the powers of nature, 
 as well as into a selfish and artificial civilization. 
 In short, they utterly broke the covenant which 
 God had made with Noah. But by miraculously 
 confounding their language, God drove them forth 
 over the face of the whole earth, and so forced them 
 to do that which they ought to have done willingly 
 at first. 
 
 Now, -we must remember that all this happened 
 in the very country in which Abraham lived. He 
 must have 'heard of it all for aught we know he 
 had seen the tower of Babel. So that, for good 
 or for evil, the whole Babel event must have pro- 
 duced a strong effect on the mind of a thoughtful 
 man like Abraham, and raised many strange ques- 
 tionings in his heart, which God alone could answer 
 for him, or for us. Now, what did God mean to 
 teach Abraham by calling him out of his country, 
 and telling him, "I will make of thee a great 
 nation?" I think He meant to show him, for one
 
 136 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 thing, that that Babel plan of society was utterly 
 absurd and accursed, certain to come to naught, 
 and so to lead him on to hope for a city which had 
 foundations, and to see that its builder and maker 
 must be, not the selfishness or the ambition of men, 
 but the will, and the wisdom, and providence of God. 
 Let us see how God led Abraham on to under- 
 stand this to look for a city which had founda- 
 tions; in short, to understand what a state and a 
 nation means aird ought to be. First, God taught 
 him that he was not to cling coward-like to the place 
 where he was born, but to go out boldly to colonize 
 and subdue the earth, for the great God of heaven 
 would protect and guide him. "Get thee out of 
 thy country and from thy father's house unto a 
 land which I will show thee. And I will bless them 
 that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee." 
 Again ; God taught him what a nation was : "_Z 
 will make of thee a great nation." As much as to 
 say, "Never fancy, as those fools at Babel did, 
 that a nation only means a great crowd of people 
 never fancy that men can make themselves into a 
 nation justly feeding altogether, and breeding alto- 
 gether, and fighting altogether, as the herds of 
 wild cattle and sheep do, while there is no real 
 union between them." For what brought thos'e 
 Babel men together? Just what keeps a herd of 
 cattle together selfishness and fear. Each man 
 thought he would be safer, forsooth, in company.
 
 xii.] ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 137 
 
 Each man thought that if he was in company, he 
 could use his neighbours' wits as well as his own, 
 and have the benefit of his neighbours' strength as 
 well as his own. And that is all true enough; but 
 that does not make a nation. Selfishness can join 
 nothing; it may join a set of men for a time, each 
 for his own ends, just as a joint-stock company is 
 made up; but it will split them up again. Each 
 man, in a merely s-elfish community, will begin, after 
 a time, to play on his own account as well as work 
 on his own account' to oppress and overreach for 
 his own ends as well as.to be honest and benevolent 
 for his own ends, for he will find ill-doing far easier, 
 and more natural, in one sense, and a plan that 
 brings in quicker profits, than well-doing; and so 
 this godless, love-less, every-man-for-himself nation, 
 or sham nation rather, this joint-stock company, in 
 which fools expect that universal selfishness will do 
 the work of universal benevolence, will quarrel and 
 break up, crumble to dust again, as Babel did. 
 "But," says God to Abraham, " I will make of 
 thee a great nation. I make nations, and not they 
 themselves." So it is, my friends: this is the les- 
 son which God taught Abraham, the lesson which 
 we English must learn nowadays over again, or 
 smart for it bitterly that God makes nations. He 
 is King of kings ; " by Him kings reign and 
 princes decree judgment." He judges all nations: 
 He nurtureth the nations. This is throughout the
 
 138 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 teaching of the Psalms. " It is He that hath made 
 us, arid not we ourselves ; we are His people, and 
 the sheep of His pasture;" for this I take to be 
 the true bearing of that glorious national hymn, 
 the 100th Psalm, and not merely the old truism 
 that men did not create themselves, when it exhorts 
 all nations to praise God because it is he that made 
 them nations, and not they themselves. The 
 Psalms set forth the Son of God as the King of all 
 nations. In Him, my friends, in Him all the na- 
 tions of the earth are truty blessed. 
 
 He the Saviour of a few individual souls only? 
 God forbid! To him all power is given, in heaven 
 and earth; by Him were all things created, whether 
 in heaven or earth, visible and invisible, whether 
 they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or 
 powers; all national life f all forms of government, 
 whether hero-despotisms, republics, or monarchies, 
 aristocracies of birth, or of wealth, or of talent, 
 all were created by Him and for Him, and he is 
 before all things, and by Him all things consist and 
 hold together. Every thing/or institution on earth, 
 which has systematic and organic life in itby Him 
 it consists by Him, the Life and the Light who 
 lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. 
 From Him come law, and order, and spiritual energy, 
 and loving fellow-feeling, and patriotism, the spirit 
 of wisdom, and understanding, and prudence all, 
 in short, by which a nation consists and holds toge-
 
 xn.j ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 139 
 
 tlier. It is not constitutions, and acts of parliament, 
 and social contracts, and rights of the people, and 
 rights of kings, and so on, which make us a nation. 
 These are but the effects, and not the consequences, 
 of the national life. That is one spirit which is 
 shed abroad upon a country, whose builder and maker 
 is God, and which comes down from above comes 
 down from Christ 'the King of kings, who has given 
 each nation its peculiar work on' this earth, its pecu- 
 liar circumstances .and history to mould and educate 
 it for its work, and its peculiar spirit and national 
 character, -wherewith to fulfil the destiny which 
 Christ has appein-ted for it. 
 
 Believe me, my friends, it takes long years, too, 
 and much training from God and from Christ, the 
 King-of kings, to- make a nation. Every thing which 
 is most precious and great is. also most slow in 
 growing, and so is a nation. The Seripiure com- 
 pares it everywhere to a tree; and as the tree grows, 
 a people must grow, from small beginnings, perhaps 
 from a single family, increasing on, according to 
 the fixed laws of God's world, for years and hundreds 
 of years, till it becomes a-mighty nation, with one 
 Lord, one faith, one work, onje Spirit. 
 
 But again; God said to Abraham, when He had 
 led him into this far country, "Unto thy seed will 
 I give this land." This was a great and a new lesson 
 for Abraham, that the earth belonged to that same 
 great invisible God who had promised to guide and
 
 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. [SERM. 
 
 protect him, and make him into a nation that this 
 same God gave the earth to whomsoever He would, 
 and allotted to each people their proper portion of it. 
 "He (said St. Paul on the Areopagus) hath deter- 
 mined the times before appointed for all nations, and 
 the bounds of their habitation, that they may seek 
 after the Lord and find Him." Ah! this must have 
 been a strange and a new feeling to Abraham"; but," 
 stranger still, though God had -given him this land, 
 he was not to take possession of a single foot of it; 
 the laud was already in the hands of. a .different 
 nation, the people of Canaan; arid Abraham was to 
 go wandering about a sojourner, as the text says, in 
 this very land of promise which God had given him, 
 without ever taking possession of his own, simply 
 because it belonged to others already. How this 
 must have taught Abraham that the rights of pro- 
 perty were sacred things things appointed by God ; 
 that it was an awful and a heinous sin to make wan- 
 ton war en other people, to (drive* them out and take- 
 possession of their land; that it was not mere force 
 or mere fancy which gave men a right to a country, 
 but the providence of Almighty God ! Now Abraham 
 needed this warning, for th^inen of Babel seem from 
 the first to have gone on the plan of driving out and 
 conquering the tribes round them. They seem to 
 have set up their city partly from ambition. "Let 
 us make us a name," they said, meaning, 'Let us' 
 make ourselves famous and terrible to all the people 
 around us, that we may subdue them/ And we
 
 xii.] ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 141 
 
 read of Nimrod, who was their first king and the 
 founder of Babel, that he was a mighty hunter before 
 the Lord, that, as most learned men explain it, a 
 mighty conqueror and tyrant in defiance of God and 
 His laws, as the poet says of him, 
 
 / " A mighty hunter, and his game -was man." 
 
 The Jews, indeed, have an old tradition that 
 Xiinrod cast -Abraham into a fiery furnace for 
 refusing to worship the host of heaven with him. 
 The story is very likffjy untrue, .but still it is of 
 use in showing what sort of -reputation Nimrod 
 left behind him in his own part of the world. We 
 may thus see that Abraham would need warning 
 .against these luvbits-of violence, tyranny, and plun- 
 der, into which the men of Babel and other tribes 
 were falling. And this was what God meant to 
 teach him by keeping him a stranger and a pilgrim 
 in the very land which God had promised to him for 
 his own. Thus Abraham learnt respect for the rights 
 and properties of his neighbours; thus he learnt to 
 look up in faith to- God, not only as his patron and 
 protector, but as the lord and absolute owner of 
 the soil on which he stood. 
 
 Xow in the 14th ehapter of Genesis there is an 
 account of Abraham's being called on to put in prac- 
 tice what he had learnt, and, by doing so, learning a 
 fresh lesson. We read of four kings making war 
 against five kings, against Chedorlaomer, king of 
 13
 
 142 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. [,<EKM. 
 
 Elam or Persia, who had been following the ways of 
 Nimrodand the men of Babel, and conquering these 
 foreign kings and making them serve. We read 
 of Chedorlaomer and four other kings coming down 
 and wantonly ravaging and destroying, other coun- 
 tries, besides the five kings who had rebelled against 
 them, and at last carrying off captive the people of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot, Abraham's nephew. 
 We read then how Abraham armed his trained ser- 
 vants, born m his own house, three hundred and 
 eighteen men, and pursued after these tyrants and 
 plunderers, and with his small force completely over- 
 threw that great army. Now that was a sign arfd' 
 a lesson to Abraham, as much as to say, ' See the fruits 
 of having the great God of heaven and earth for your 
 protector and your guide, see the fruits of having 
 men round you, not hirelings, keeping in your com- 
 pany just to see what ,they can get by it, bat born 
 in your own house, who love and trust you, whom 
 you can love and trust, - see how the favour of God, 
 and reverence. for those family ties and duties which 
 He has appointed, make you 1 and your little band of 
 faithful men superior to these great'mobs of selfish, 
 godless, unjust robbers, see how hundreds of these 
 slaves ran away before one m'an, who feels that he is 
 a member of a family, and has a just cause for fight- 
 ing, and that God and his brethren are with him.' 
 
 Here, you see, was another hint to Abraham of 
 what it was and who it was that made a great nation.
 
 xir.] ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 148 
 
 And now some of you may say, 'This is a strange 
 sermon. You have as yet said nothing of Christ, 
 nothing of the Holy Spirit, nothing of grace, re- 
 demption, sanctification. What kind of sermon is 
 this ?' 
 
 My friends, do not. be too sure that I have not 
 been preaching Christ to you, and Christ's Spirit to 
 you, and Christ's redemption, too, most truly in this 
 sermon, although I have mentioned none of them by 
 name. There are times for ornamenting the house, 
 there are times for repairing the wall, there are 
 times, too, for thoroughly examining the foundation, 
 because, if that be not sound, it is little matter what 
 fine work is built upon it; and there are times when, 
 as David says, the foundations of the earth are out 
 of course, when men have forgotten sadly the very 
 first principles of society and religion. 
 
 And, surely, men are doing so in these days; men 
 are forgetting that other "foundation can no man lay 
 save that which is laid, which is Christ; they laugh 
 at the thought of a city, that is a state and form of 
 government, "not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens;" they have forgotten that St. Paul tells 
 them in the Hebrews that we have "a city which 
 hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," 
 a kingdom which cannot be moved. Yes, men who 
 call themselves learned and worldly wise, and good 
 men too, alas! who fancy that they are preaching 
 God's gospel, go about and tell men, 'The men of
 
 144 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. [SEHM. 
 
 Babel were right after all. What have nations to 
 do with God and religion ? Nations are merely 
 earthly, carnal things, that were only invented by 
 sinful men themselves, to preserve their bodies and 
 goods, and make trading easy. Religion has only 
 to do with a man's private opinions, his single soul; 
 the government has nothing to do with the Church: 
 a Christian has nothing to do with politics.' And 
 so these men -most unwittingly open a door to all 
 sorts of covetousness and meanness in the nation, 
 and all sorts of trickery and cowardice in the govern- 
 ment. Tell a man that his business has nothing to 
 do with God, and you cannot wonder if he acts 
 without thinking of God. If you tell a nation that 
 it is selfishness which makes it prosperous, of course 
 you must expect it, to be selfish. If you tell us 
 Englishmen that the duties of a citizen are not 
 duties to God, but only duties to the constable and 
 the tax-gatherer, what wonder if men believe you 
 and become un dutiful to God in their citizenship? 
 No, my friends ; once for all, as sure as God made 
 Abraham a great nation, so if we English are a 
 great nation, God has mad us so as sure as God 
 gave Abraham the land of Canaan for his possession, 
 so did lie give us this land of England, when He 
 brought our Saxon forefathers out of the wild bar- 
 ren north, and drove out before them nations greater 
 and mightier than they, and gave them great and 
 goodly cities which they builded not, and wells 

 
 xii.] ABRAHAM'S FAITH. 145 
 
 digged which they digged not, farms and gardens 
 which they planted not, that we too might fear the 
 Lord our God and serve Him, and swear by His 
 name ; as sure as He commanded Abraham to re- 
 spect the property of his neighbours, so has He 
 commanded us; as sure as God taught Abraham 
 that the nation which was to grow from him owed 
 a duty to God, and could be only strong by faith 
 in God, so. it is with us : we, English people, owe a 
 duty to God, and are to deal among ourselves, and 
 with foreign countries, by faith in jGod, and in the 
 fear of God, "seeking first the kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness," sure that then all other things 
 victory, health, commerce, art and science will 
 be added to us; as the first Lesson says. "For this 
 is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of 
 the nations, which shall say, Surely this great na- 
 tion is a wise and understanding people ! For what 
 nation is grown so great, that hath statutes and 
 judgments so righteous as these laws, this gospel, 
 which God sets before us day by day?" us, 
 Englishmen ! 
 
 And I say these are proper thoughts for this 
 place. This is not a mere preaching-house, where 
 you may learn every man to save his own soul; this 
 is a far nobler place; this building belongs to the 
 National Church of England, and we worship here, 
 not merely as men, but as men of England, citizens 
 of a Christian country, come here to learn, not 
 13*
 
 146 ABRAHAM'S FAITH. [SERM. xn. 
 
 merely how to save ourselves, but how to help to- 
 wards the saving of our families, our parish, and 
 our nation; and therefore we must know what a 
 country and a nation mean, and what is the mean- 
 ing of that glorious and divine word, "a citizen;" 
 that by learning what it is to be a citizen of Eng- 
 land, we may go on to learn fully what it is to be 
 a citizen of the kingdom of God. 
 
 For this is part of the whole counsel of God, 
 which He reveals in His Holy Bible; and this also 
 we must not, and dare not, shun declaring in these 
 days.
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. 
 
 "By faith Abraham, wjien he was tried, offered up Isaac; and 
 he that had received the promises effered up his only-begot- 
 ten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed 
 be called : accounting that God was ,able to raise him up, 
 even from the dead ; from whence also he received him in a 
 figure." HEBREWS, xi. 17 19. 
 
 IN this chapter we come to the crowning point 
 of Abraham's history, the highest step and perfec- 
 tion of his faith ; beyond which it seems as if man's 
 trust in God could no further go. 
 
 You know, most of you, doubtless, that Isaac, 
 Abraham's son, was come to him out of the common 
 course of nature when he and his wife, Sarah, 
 were of an age which seemed to make all chance of 
 a family utterly hopeless. You remember how God 
 promised Abraham that this boy should be born to 
 him at a certain time, when He, appeared to him on 
 the plains of Mamre, in that most solemn and deep- 
 meaning vision of which I spoke to you last Sunday. 
 You remember too, no doubt, most of you, how
 
 148 ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. [SERM. 
 
 God had promised Abraham again and again, that in 
 his seed, his children, all the nations of the earth 
 should be blessed; so that all Abraham's hopes were 
 wrapped up in this boy Isaac; he was his only son, 
 whom he loved; he was the child of his old age, his 
 glory and his joy; he was the child of God's pro- 
 mises. Every time Abraham looked at him he felt 
 that Isaac was a wonderful child; that God had a 
 great work for him to do; that from that single boy 
 a great nation was to spring, as many in multitude 
 as the stars in the sky, or the sand on the sea-shore, 
 for the great Almighty God had said it. And he 
 knew, too, that from that boy, who was growing up 
 by him in his tent, all the nations in the earth 
 should be blessed: so that Isaac, his son, was to 
 Abraham a daily sacrament, as I may say, a sign 
 and a pledge that God was with him, and would be 
 true to him; that as surely as God had wonderfully 
 and beyond all hope given him that son, so wonder- 
 fully and beyond all hope Pie would fulfil all His 
 other promises. Conceive, then, if you can, what 
 Abraham's astonishment, and doubt, and terror, and 
 misery, must have been at such a message as this 
 from the very God who had given Isaac to him: 
 "And it came to pass after these things that God 
 did tempt Abraham, and sai-d unto him, Abraham; 
 and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take 
 now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, 
 and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him
 
 XIIL] ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. 149 
 
 there for a burnt-offering upon one of the moun- 
 tains which I will tell thee of." 
 
 What a storm of doubt it must have raised in 
 Abraham's mind! How unable he must have been 
 to say whether that message came from a good or 
 bad spirit, or commanded him to do a good action 
 or a bad one; that the same God who had said, 
 "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
 blood be shed;" who had forbidden murder as the 
 very highest of crimes, should command him to shed 
 the blood of his own son; that the same God who 
 had promised him that in Isaac all the nations of 
 the earth should be blessed, should command him to 
 put to death that very son upon whom all his hopes 
 depended! Fearful, indeed, must have been the 
 struggle in Abraham's mind, but the good and the 
 right thought conquered at last. His feeling was, 
 no doubt, "This God who has blessed me so long, 
 who has guided me so long, whom I have obeyed 
 so long, shall I not trust Him a little further yet? 
 how can I believe that He will do wrong? how can 
 I believe that He will lead me wrong? If it is really 
 wrong that I should kill my son, He will not let me 
 do it : if it really is His will that I should kill my 
 son, I will do it. Whatever He says must be right; 
 it is agony and misery to me, but what of that ? Do 
 I not owe Him a thousand daily and hourly bless- 
 ings? Has He not led me hither, preserved me, 
 guided me, taught me the knowledge of Himself,
 
 150 ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. [SEISM. 
 
 chosen me to be the father of a great nation? Do 
 I not owe Him every thing? and shall I not bear 
 this sharp sorrow for His sake? I know, too, that 
 if Isaac dies, all my hope, all my joy, will die with 
 him; that I shall have nothing left to look for, 
 nothing left to work for in this world. Nothing! 
 shall I not have God left to me? When Isaac is 
 dead will the Lord die? will the Lord change? will 
 He grow weak ? Never ! Years ago did lie declare 
 to me that He was the Almighty God; I will believe 
 that He will be always Almighty; I will believe that, 
 though I kill my son, my son will be still in God's 
 hands, and I shall be still in God's hands, and that 
 God is able to raise him again, even from the dead. 
 God can give him back to me, and if He will not 
 give him back to me, He can fulfil His promises in 
 a thousand other ways. Ay, and He will fulfil 
 His promises, for in Him is neither deceit, nor 
 fickleness, nor weakness, nor unrighteousness of 
 any kind; and, come what will, I will believe His 
 promise and I will obey His will." 
 
 Some such thoughts as these, I suppose, passed 
 through Abraham's mind. He could not have had a 
 man's heart in him indeed, if not only these thoughts, 
 but ten thousand more, sadder, and stranger, and 
 more pitiful than my weak bra4n can imagine, did 
 not sweep like a storm through his soul at that 
 last and terrible temptation ; but the Bible tells us 
 nothing of them : why should the Bible tell us any
 
 XIIL] ABRAKAM'S^OBEDIEHCE. 151 
 
 thing of them ? The Bible sets forth Abraham as the 
 faithful man, and therefore it simply tells us of his 
 faith, without telling us of his doubts and struggles 
 before he settled down into faith. It tells us, as it 
 were, not how often the wind shifted and twisted 
 about during the tempest, but in what quarter the 
 wind settled when the tempest was over, and it 
 began to blow steadily, an'd fixedly, and gently, and 
 all was bright, and mild, and still in Abraham's 
 bosom again, just as a man's mind will be bright, 
 and gentle,- and calm, even at the moment he is going 
 to certain death or fearful misery, if he does but 
 know that his suffering is his duty, and th'at his 
 trial is his heavenly Father's will: and so all we 
 read in the Old Testament account is simply, "And 
 Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled 
 his ass, and took two of his young men with him, 
 and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt- 
 offering, and rose up^ and went unto the place of 
 which God had told him. Then on the third day 
 Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar 
 off. And Abraham said unta his young men, Abide 
 ye here with the ass ; and I and the lad will go 
 yonder and worship, and come again to you. And 
 Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and 
 laid it upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire in 
 his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them 
 together. And Isaac sp'ake unto Abraham his 
 father, and said, My father, and he said, Here am I,
 
 Io2 ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. [SERM. 
 
 my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the 
 wood, but -where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? 
 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide Himself 
 a lamb for a burnt-offering. So they went both of 
 them together. And they went to the place which 
 God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar 
 there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac 
 his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. 
 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took 
 the knife to slay his son." 
 
 Really, if one is to consider the whole circum- 
 stances of Abraham's trials, they seem to have been 
 infinite, more than mortal man could bear; more 
 than he could have borne, no doubt, if the same 
 God who tried had not rewarded his strength of 
 mind by strengthening him still more, and rewarded 
 his faith by increasing his faith; when we consider 
 the struggle he must have had to keep the dreadful 
 secret from the young man's mother, the tremendous 
 effort of controlling himself, the long and frightful 
 journey, the necessity, and yet the difficulty he 
 seems to have felt of keeping the truth from his 
 son, and yet of telling him the truth, which he did 
 in those wonderful words, " God shall provide Him- 
 self a lamb for a burnt-ofiering," (on which I shall 
 have occasion to speak presently;) and, last and 
 worst of all, the perfect obedience and submission 
 of his son; for Isaac was not a child then, he was 
 j> young man of nearly thirty years of age; strong
 
 xiii.] ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. 153 
 
 and able enough, no doubt, to have resisted his aged 
 father, if he had chosen. But the very excellence 
 of Isaac seems to have been, that he did not resist, 
 that he showed the same perfect trust and obedience 
 to Abraham that Abraham did towards God ; for he 
 was led " as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep 
 before her shearers is dumb; so he opened not his 
 mouth," for we read, "Abraham bound Isaac his 
 son and laid him on the wood." Surely that was 
 the bitterest pang of all, to see the excellence of his 
 son shine forth just when it was too late for him to 
 enjoy him to find out what a perfect child he had, 
 in simple trust and utter obedience, just at the very 
 moment when he was going to lose him; "And 
 Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the 
 knife to slay his son." 
 
 At that point Abraham's trial finished. He had 
 shown the completeness of his faith by the complete- 
 ness of his works, that is, by the completeness of his 
 obedience. -He had utterly given up all for God. 
 He had submitted his will completely to God's will. 
 He had said in heart, as our Blessed Lord said, 
 "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; 
 nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt;" and 
 thus I say, he was justified by his works, by his 
 actions; that is, by his faithful action he proved the 
 faithfulness of his heart, as the Angel said to him, 
 " Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast 
 not withheld thy son, thine only son from me:" for as 
 14
 
 154 ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. [SERM. 
 
 St. James says, "Was not Abraham our father jus- 
 tified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon 
 the altar? Seest thou," says he, "how his faith 
 wrought with his works?" how his works were the 
 tool or instrument which his faith used; and by his 
 works his faith was brought to perfection, as a tree 
 is brought to perfection when it bears fruit ? "And 
 so," St. James continues, "the scripture was ful- 
 filled, which says, Abraham believed God, and it 
 was imputed to him for righteousness ; and he was 
 called the friend of God, Yeseethen," hesays, "how 
 that by works a man is justified," or shown to be 
 righteous and faithful, "and not by faith only;" that 
 is, not by the mere feeling of faith, for, as he says, 
 "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith 
 without works is dead also." For what is the sign 
 of a body's being dead? It is its not being able to 
 do any thing, not being able to work, because there 
 is no living and moving spirit in it. And what is 
 the sign of a man's faith being dead? his faith not 
 being able to work, because there is no living spirit 
 in it, but it is a mere dead, empty shell and form of 
 words, a mere notion and thought about believing 
 in a man's head, but not a living trust and loyalty 
 to God in his heart. Therefore, says St. James, 
 "Show me thy faith without thy works," if thou 
 canst, " and I will show thee my faith by my works," 
 as Abraham did by offering up Isaac his son. 
 Oh! my friends, when people are talking about
 
 xiii.] ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. 155 
 
 faith and works, and trying to reconcile St. Paul 
 and St. James, as they call it, because St. Paul says 
 Abraham was justified by faith, and St. James says 
 Abraham was justified by works, if they would but 
 pray for the simple, childlike heart, and the head of 
 common sense, and look at their own children, who, 
 every time they go on a message for them, settle, 
 without knowing it, this mighty difference of man's 
 making between faith and works. You tell a little 
 child daily to do many things, the meaning and use 
 of which it cannot understand; and the child has 
 faith in what you tell it : and, therefore, it does what 
 you tell it, and so it shows its faith in jou by obedi- 
 ence in working for you. 
 
 But to go on with the verses: "And the angel of 
 the Lord called unto Abraham out ef heaven the 
 second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, 
 saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, 
 and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that 
 in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I 
 will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and 
 as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy 
 seed shall possess the gate of his enemies ; and in 
 thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, 
 because thou hast obeyed my voice." 
 
 Now, here remark two things ; first, that it was 
 Abraham's obedience in giving up all to God, which 
 called forth from God this confirmation of God's pro- 
 mises to him; and next, that God here promised
 
 156 ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE. [SRKM. XTTT. 
 
 him nothing new; God did not say to him, 'Because 
 thou hast obeyed me in this great matter, I will give 
 thee some great reward over and above what I pro- 
 mised thee.' No; God merely promises him over 
 again, but more solemnly than ever, what He had 
 promised him many years before. 
 
 And so it will be with us, my friends; we must 
 not expect to luy God's favour by obeying him, we 
 must not expect that the more we do for God, the 
 more God will be bound to do for us, as the Papists 
 do. No; God has done for us all that He will do. 
 He has promised us all that He will promise. He 
 has provided us, as He provided Abraham, a lamb for 
 the burnt- offering, the Lamb without blemish and 
 without spot, which taketh away the sins of the 
 world. We are His redeemed people we have a 
 share in His promises He bids us believe that, and 
 show that we believe it by living as redeemed men, 
 not our own, but bought with a price, and created 
 anew in Christ Jesus to do good works; not that we 
 may buy forgiveness by them, but that we may show 
 by them that we believe that God has forgiven us 
 already, and that when we have done all that is com- 
 manded us, we are still unprofitable servants ; for 
 though we should give up at God's bidding our 
 children, our wives, and our own limbs and lives, 
 and show as utter faith in God, and complete obe- 
 dience to God, as Abraham did, "we should only have 
 done just what it was already our duty to do.
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 
 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 
 
 ' ' I write unto you, little children, because you have known the 
 Father." 1 JOHN, u. 13. 
 
 I PKEACHED some time ago a sermon on the 
 whole of these most deep and blessed verses of St. 
 John. 
 
 I now wish to speak to those who are of an age to be 
 confirmed three separate sermons on three separate 
 parts of these verses. First, to those whom St. John 
 calls little children ; next, to those whom He calls 
 grown men. To the first I will speak to-day; to the 
 latter, by God's help, next Sunday. And may the 
 Blessed One bring home my weak words to all 
 your hearts ! 
 
 Now for the meaning of "little children." There 
 are those who will tell you that those words mean 
 merely "weak believers," "babes in grace," and so 
 on. They mean that, no doubt; but they mean 
 much more. They mean, first of all, to be sure, what 
 they say. St. John would not have said "little 
 14*
 
 158 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. [SERM. 
 
 children," if he had not meant little children. Sure- 
 ly God's apostle did not throw about his words at 
 random, so as to leave them open to mistakes, and 
 want some one to step in and tell us that they do 
 not mean their plain, common-sense meaning, but 
 something else. Holy Scripture is too wisely writ- 
 ten, and too awful a matter to be trifled with in that 
 way, and cut and squared to suit our own fancies, 
 and explained away, till its blessed promises are 
 made to mean any thing or nothing. 
 
 No ! By little children, St. John means here chil- 
 dren in age of course Christian children and young 
 people, for he was writing only to Christians. He 
 speaks to those who have been christened, and 
 brought up, more or less, as christened children 
 should be. But, no doubt, when he says little chil- 
 dren, he means also all Christian people, whether 
 they be young or old, whose souls are still young, 
 and weak, and unlearned. All, however old they 
 may be, who have not been confirmed I do not 
 merely mean confirmed by the bishop, but con- 
 firmed by God's grace all those who have not yet 
 come to a full knowledge of their own sins all 
 who have not yet been converted, and turned to God 
 with their whole hearts and wills, who have not yet 
 made their full choice between God and sin, all 
 who have not yet fought for themselves the battle 
 which no man or angel can fight for them I mean 
 the battle between their selfishness and their duty
 
 XIV.] OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 159 
 
 the battle between their love of pleasure and their 
 fear of sin the battle, in short, between the devil 
 and his temptations to darkness and shame, and 
 God and His promises of light, and strength, and 
 glory, all who have not been converted to God, 
 to them St. John speaks as little children people 
 who are not yet strong enough to stand alone, 
 and do their duty on God's side against sin, the 
 world, and the devil. And all of you here who 
 have not yet made up your minds, who have not 
 yet been confirmed in soul, whether you were 
 confirmed by the bishop or not, to you I speak 
 this day. 
 
 Xow, first of all, consider this, that though St. 
 John calls you "little children," because you are still 
 weak, and your souls are not grown to manhood, 
 yet he does not speak to you as if you were heathens 
 and knew nothing about God; he says, "I have 
 written unto you, little children, because ye have 
 known the Father." Consider that; that was his 
 reason for all that he had written to them before; 
 that they had known the Father, the God who made 
 heaven and earth the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ the Father of little children my Father 
 and your Father, my friends, little as we may be- 
 have like what we are, sons of the Almighty God. 
 That was St. John's reason for speaking to little 
 children, because they had already known the Father. 
 So he does not speak to them as if they were hea-
 
 160 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. [SERM. 
 
 thens; and I dare not speak to you, young people, 
 as if you were heathens, however foolish and sinful 
 some of you may be ; I dare not do it, whatever 
 many preachers may do nowadays ; not because I 
 should be unfair and hard upon you merely, but 
 because I should lie, and deny the great grace and 
 mercy which God has shown you, and count the 
 blood of the covenant, with which you were sprinkled 
 at baptism, an unholy thing; and do despite to the 
 Spirit of grace which has been struggling in your 
 hearts, trying to lead you out of sin into good, out 
 of light into darkness, ever since you were born. 
 Therefore, as St. John said, I say, I preach this 
 day to you, young people, because you have known 
 your Father in heaven. 
 
 But some of you may say to me, 'You put a great 
 honour on us; but we do not see that we have any 
 right to it. You tell us that we have a very noble 
 and awful knowledge that we know the Father. 
 We are afraid that we do not know Him; we do 
 not even rightly understand of whom or what you 
 preach.' 
 
 Well, my young friends, these are very awful 
 words of St. John; such blessed and wonderful 
 words, that if we did not find them in the Bible, it 
 would be madness and insolence to God of us to say 
 such a thing, not merely of little children, but even 
 of the greatest, and wisest, and holiest man who ever 
 lived; but there they are in the Bible the blessed
 
 XIV.] OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 161 
 
 Lord himself has told us all, "When ye pray, say, 
 Our Father in heaven ;" and I dare not keep them 
 back because they sound strange. They may &ound 
 strange, but they are not strange. Any one who 
 has ever watched a young child's heart, and seen 
 how naturally and at once the little innocent takes 
 in the thought of his Father which is in heaven, 
 knows that it is not a strange thought that it 
 comes to a little child almost by instinct that his 
 Father in heaven seems often to be just the thought 
 which fills his heart most completely, has most 
 power over him, the thought which has been lying 
 ready in his heart all the time, only waiting for 
 some one to awaken it, and put it into words for 
 him; that he will do right when you put him in 
 mind of his Father above the skies, sooner than he 
 will for a hundred punishments. For truly says 
 the poet, 
 
 " Heaven lies about us in our infancy, 
 Not in complete forgetfulness, 
 Nor yet in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come, 
 From God -who is our home ! " 
 
 And yet more truly said the Blessed One Himself, 
 "That children's angels always behold the face of 
 our Father which is in heaven ; " and that "of such 
 is the kingdom of heayen." Yet you say, some of 
 you, perhaps, "Whatever knowledge of our Father 
 in heaven we had, or ought to have had, when we
 
 162 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. [SERM. 
 
 were young, we have lost it now. We have for- 
 gotten what we learned at school. We have been 
 what you would call sinful; at all events, we have 
 been thinking all our time about a great many 
 things beside religion, and they have quite put out 
 of our head the thought that God is our Father. 
 So how have we known our Father in heaven? " 
 
 Well, then, to answer that, consider the case 
 of your earthly father, the men who begot you and 
 brought you up. Now there might be one of you 
 who had never seen his father since he was born, 
 but all he knows of him is, that his name is so and 
 so, and that he is such and such a sort of man, as 
 the case might be; and that he lives in such and 
 such a place, far away, and that now and then he 
 hears talk of his father, or receives letters or pre- 
 sents from him. Suppose I asked that young man, 
 Do you know your father ? would he not answer, 
 would he not have a right to answer, "Yes, I 
 know him. I never saw him, or was acquainted 
 with him, but I know him well enough ; I know who 
 lie is, and where to find him, and what sort of a man 
 he is." That young man might not know his father's 
 face, or love him, or care for him at all. He might 
 have been disobedient to his father; he might have 
 forgotten for years that he had a father at all, and 
 might have lived on his own way, just as if he had 
 no father. But when he was put in mind of it all, 
 would he not say at once, "Yes, I know my father
 
 XIV.] OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 163 
 
 well enough; his name is so and so, and he lives at 
 such and such a place. I know my father." 
 
 Well, my young friends, and if this would be true 
 of your fathers on earth, it is just as true of your 
 Father in heaven. You have never seen Him you 
 may have forgotten Him you may have disobeyed 
 Him you may have lived on your own way, as if 
 you had no Father in heaven; still you know that 
 you have a Father in heaven. You pray, surely, 
 sometimes. What do you say ? " Our Father which 
 art in heaven." So you have a Father in heaven, 
 else what right have you to use those words, what 
 right have you to say to God, " Our Father in hea- 
 ven," if you believe that you have no Father there? 
 That would be only blasphemy and mockery. I can 
 well understand that you have often said those 
 words without thinking of them without thinking 
 what a blessed, glorious, soul-saving meaning there 
 was in them; but I will not believe that you never 
 once in your whole lives said, " Our Father which 
 art in heaven," without believing them to be true 
 words. What I want is, for you always to believe 
 them to be true. Oh, young men and young women, 
 boys and girls believe those words, believe that 
 when you say, " Our Father which art in heaven," 
 you speak God's truth about yourselves ; that the evil 
 devil rages when he hears you speak those words, 
 because they are the words which prove that you do 
 not belong to him and to hell, but to God and the
 
 164 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 
 
 kingdom of heaven. Oh, believe those words be- 
 have as if you believed those words, and you shall 
 see what will come of them, through all eternity for 
 ever. 
 
 Well, but you will ask, What has all this to do 
 with confirmation ? It has all to do with confirma- 
 tion. Because you are God's children, and know 
 that you are God's children, you are to go and con- 
 firm before the bishop your right to be called God's 
 children. You are to go and claim your share in 
 God's kingdom. If you were heir to an estate, you 
 would go and claim your estate from those who held 
 it. You are heirs to an estate you are heirs to the 
 kingdom of heaven; go to confirmation, and claim 
 that kingdom; say, "I am a citizen of God's king- 
 dom. Before the bishop and the congregation, here 
 I proclaim the honour which God has put upon me." 
 If you have a father, you will surely not be ashamed 
 to own him ! How much more when the Almighty 
 God of heaven is your Father ! You will not be 
 ashamed to own Him? Then go to confirmation; 
 for by doing so you own God for your Father. If 
 you have an earthly father, you will not be ashamed 
 to say, "I know I ought to honour him and obey 
 him; " how much more when your father is the Al- 
 mighty God of heaven, who sent His own Son into 
 the world to die for you, who is daily heaping you 
 with blessings body and soul! You will not be 
 ashamed to confess that you ought to honour and
 
 XIV.] OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 1,65 
 
 obey him? Then go to confirmation, and say, "I 
 here take upon myself the vow and promise made 
 for me at my baptism. I am God's child, and there- 
 fore I will honour, love, and obey him. It is my 
 duty ; and it shall be my delight henceforward to 
 work for God, to do all the good I can to my life's 
 end, because my Father in heaven loves the good, 
 and has commanded me, poor, weak countryman 
 though I be, to work for Him in well-doing." So I 
 say, If God is your Father, go and own Him at 
 confirmation. If God is your Father, go and pro- 
 mise to love and obey Him at confirmation ; and see 
 if He does not, like a strong and loving Father as 
 He is, confirm you in return, see if he does not 
 give you strength of heart, and peace of mind, and 
 clear, quiet, pure thoughts, such as a man or woman 
 ought to have who considers that the great God, 
 who made the sky and stars above their heads, is 
 their Father. But perhaps there are some of you 
 young people who do not wish to be confirmed? 
 And why ? Now look honestly into your own hearts 
 and see the reason. Is it not, after all, because you 
 don't like the trouble ? Because you are afraid that 
 being confirmed will force you to think seriously 
 and be religious; and you had rather not take all 
 that trouble yet? Is it not because you do not like 
 to look your own selves in the face, and see how 
 foolishly you have been living, and how many bad 
 habits you will have to give up, and what a thorough 
 15
 
 166 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. [SEIUI. 
 
 conversion and change you must make if you are 
 to be confirmed in earnest? Is not this why you 
 do not wish to be confirmed? And what does that 
 all come to ? That though you know you arc God's 
 children, you do not like to tell people publicly that 
 you are God's children, lest they should expect you 
 to behave like God's children that is it. Now, 
 young men and young women, think seriously, once 
 for all; if you have any common sense I do not 
 say grace left in you, think. Are you not play- 
 ing a fearful game? You would not dare to deny 
 your fathers upon earth to refuse to obey them, 
 because you know well enough that they would 
 punish you that if you were too old for punish- 
 ment, your neighbours, at least, would despise you 
 for mean, ungrateful, and rebellious children. But 
 because you cannot see God, your Father because 
 you have not some sign or wonder hanging in the 
 sky to frighten you into good behaviour, therefore 
 you are not afraid to turn your backs on him. My 
 friends, it is ill mocking the living God. Mark my 
 words! if a man will not turn, He will whet His 
 sword and make us feel it. You who can be con- 
 firmed, and know in your hearts that you ought to 
 be confirmed, and ought to be really converted and 
 confirmed in soul, and make no mockery of it 
 mark my words ! if you will not be converted 
 and confirmed of your own good will, God, if He 
 has any love left for you, will convert and confirm
 
 XIV.] OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. 167 
 
 you against your will. He will let you go your own 
 ways till you find out your own folly. He will 
 bring you low with affliction perhaps, with sickness, 
 with ill success, with shame. Some way or other, He 
 will chastise you, again and again, till you are forced 
 to come back to Him, and take His service on you. 
 If He loves you, He will drive you home to your 
 Father's house. You may laugh at my words now; 
 see if you laugh at them when your hairs are gray. 
 Oh, young people, if you wish in after-life to save 
 yourselves shame and sorrow, and perhaps, in the 
 world to come, eternal death, come to confirmation, 
 acknowledge God for your Father, promise to come 
 and serve Him faithfully, make those blessed words 
 of the Lord's Prayer, " Our Father in heaven," 
 your glory and your honour, your guide and guard 
 through life, your title deeds to heaven. You who 
 know that the Great God is your Father, will you 
 be ashamed to own yourselves His sons ?
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 THE TBANSFIGURATION. 
 
 "Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John, and Icadeth them 
 up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before 
 them." Mark, ix. 2. 
 
 THE second lesson for this morning service brings 
 us to one of the most wonderful passages in our 
 blessed Saviour's whole stay on earth, namely, His 
 transfiguration. The story, as told by the different 
 Evangelists, is this, That our Lord took Peter, and 
 John, and James his brother, and led them up into 
 a high mountain apart, which mountain may be seen 
 to this very day. It is a high peaked hill, stand- 
 ing apart from all the hills around it, with a small 
 smooth space of ground upon the top, very fit, from 
 its height and its loneliness, for a transaction like the 
 transfiguration, which our Lord wished no one but 
 these three to behold. There the apostles fell asleep ; 
 while our blessed Lord, who had deeper thoughts in 
 His heart than they had, knelt down and prayed to 
 His Father and our Father, which is in heaven. 
 And as lie prayed, the form of His countenance was 
 changed, and His raiment became shining, white as
 
 SERM. XV.] THE TRANSFIGURATION. 169 
 
 the light; and there appeared Moses and Elijah 
 talking with Him. They talked of matters which 
 the angels desire to look into, of the greatest matters 
 that ever happened in this earth since it was made ; 
 of the redemption of the world, and of the death 
 which Christ was to undergo at Jerusalem. And as 
 they were talking, the apostles awoke, and found 
 into what glorious company they had fallen while 
 they slept. What they felt no mortal man can tell 
 that moment was worth to them all the years they 
 had lived before. When they had gone up with 
 Jesus into the mount, He was hut the poor car- 
 penter's son, wonderful enough to them, no doubt, 
 with His wise, searching words, and His gentle, 
 loving looks, that drew to Him all men who had 
 hearts left in them, and wonderful enough, too, from 
 all the mighty miracles which they had seen Him 
 do, but still he was merely a man like themselves, 
 poor, and young, and homeless, who felt the heat, 
 and the cold, and the rough roads as much as they 
 did. They could feel that he spake as never man 
 spake they could see that God's Spirit and power 
 was on Him as it had never been on any man in 
 their time. God had even enlightened their reason 
 by His Spirit, to know that he was the Christ, the 
 Son of the living God. But still it does seem they 
 did not fully understand who and what lie was; they 
 could not understand how the Son of God should 
 come in the form of a despised and humble man ; 
 15*
 
 170 THE TRANSFIGURATION. [SERM. 
 
 they did not understand that His glory was to be a 
 spiritual glory. They expected His kingdom to 
 be a kingdom of this world they expected His 
 glory to consist in palaces, and armies, and riches, 
 and jewels, and all the magnificence with which So- 
 lomon and the old Jewish kings were adorned ; they 
 thought that he was to conquer back again from 
 the Roman emperor all the inestimable treasures of 
 which the Romans had robbed the Jews, and that 
 He was to make the Jewish nation, like the Roman, 
 the conquerors and masters of all the nations of the 
 earth. So that it was a puzzling thing to their 
 minds why he should be King of the Jews at the 
 very time that he was but a poor tradesman's 
 son, living on charity. It was to show them that 
 His kingdom was the kingdom of heaven that He 
 was transfigured before them. 
 
 They saw His glory the glory as of the only- 
 begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 
 The form of His countenance was changed; all the 
 majesty, and courage, and wisdom, and love, and 
 resignation, and pity, that lay in His noble heart, 
 shone-out through His face, while He spoke of His 
 death which he should accomplish at Jerusalem 
 the Holy Ghost that was upon Him, the spirit of 
 wisdom, and love, and beauty the spirit which pro- 
 duces every thing that is lovely in heaven and earth, 
 in soul and body, blazed out through His eyes, and 
 all His glorious countenance, and made Him look
 
 XV.] THE TRANSFIGURATION. 171 
 
 like what He was a God. My friends, what a 
 sight! Would it not be worth while to journey 
 thousands of miles to go through all difficulties, 
 dangers, that man ever heard of, for one sight of 
 that glorious face, that we might fall down upon our 
 knees before it, and, if it were but for a moment, 
 give way to the delight of finding something that we 
 could utterly love and utterly adore? I say, the 
 delight of finding something to worship ; for if there 
 is a noble, if there is a holy, if there is a spiritual 
 feeling in man, it is the feeling which bows him 
 down before those who are greater, and wiser, and 
 holier than himself. I say, that feeling of respect 
 for what is noble is a heavenly feeling. The man 
 who has lost it the man who feels no respect for 
 those who are above him in age, above him in know- 
 ledge, above him in wisdom, above him in goodness, 
 that man shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven. It is only the man who is like a little 
 child, and feels the delight of having some one to 
 look up to, who will ever feel delight in looking up 
 to Jesus Christ, who is the Lord of lords and King 
 of kings. It was the want of respect, it was the 
 dislike of feeling any one superior to himself, which 
 made the devil rebel against God, and fall from 
 heaven. It will be the feeling of complete respect 
 the feeling of kneeling at the feet of one who is im- 
 measurably superior to ourselves in every thing, that 
 will make up the greatest happiness of heaven.
 
 
 172 THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 This is a hard saying, and no man can understand 
 it, save he to whom it is given by the Spirit of God. 
 That the apostles had this feeling of immeasura- 
 ble respect for Christ there is no doubt, else they 
 would never have been apostles. But they felt more 
 than this. There were other wonders in that glo- 
 rious vision besides the countenance of our Lord. 
 His raiment, too, was changed, and became all bril- 
 liant, white as the light itself. Was not that a 
 lesson to them? Was it not as if our Lord had 
 said to them, 'I am a king, and have put on glo- 
 rious apparel; but whence does the glory of my rai- 
 ment come? /have no need of fine linen, and pur- 
 ple, and embroidery, the work of men's hands; 1 
 have no need to send my subjects to mines and caves 
 to dig gold and jewels to adorn my crown: the 
 earth is mine and the fulness thereof. All this 
 glorious earth, with its trees and its flowers, its sun- 
 beams and its storms, is mine, /made it /can do 
 what I will with it. All the mysterious laws by 
 which the light and the heat flow out for ever from 
 God's throne, to lighten the sun, and the moon, and 
 the stars of heaven they are mine. Jam the light 
 of the world the light of men's bodies as well of 
 their souls ; and here is my proof of it. Look at 
 Me. I am He that " decketh Himself with light as it 
 were with a garment, who layeth the beams of His 
 chambers in the waters, and walketh upon the wings 
 of the wind." This was the message which Christ's
 
 XV.] THE TRANSFIGURATION. 173 
 
 glory brought the apostles a message which they 
 could never forget. The spiritual glory of His 
 countenance had shown them that he was a spiritual 
 king that His strength lay in the spirit of power, 
 and wisdom, and beauty, and love, which God had 
 given Him without measure ; and it showed them, 
 too, that there was such a thing as a spiritual body, 
 such a body as each of us some day shall have if 
 we be found in Christ at the resurrection of the just 
 a body which shall not hide a man's spirit when 
 it becomes subject to the wear and tear of life, and 
 disease, and decay; but a spiritual body a body 
 which shall be filled with our spirits, which shall 
 be perfectly obedient to our spirits a body through 
 which the glory of our spirits shall shine out, as 
 the glory of Christ's spirit shone out through His 
 body at the transfiguration. Brethren, we know 
 not yet what we shall be, but this we do know, that 
 when He shall appear, "we shall be like him, for 
 we shall see Him as He is." (1 John, iii. 2.) 
 
 Thus our Lord taught them by His appearance 
 that there is such a thing as a spiritual body, while, 
 by the glory of His raiment in addition to His 
 other miracles, He taught them that He had power 
 over the laws of nature, and could, in His own good 
 time, "change the bodies of their humiliation, that 
 they might be made like unto His glorious body, 
 according to the mighty working by which He is 
 able to subdue all things to Himself."
 
 174 TJIE TRANSFIGURATION. [SERM. 
 
 But there was yet another lesson which the apos- 
 tles learned from the transfiguration of our Lord. 
 They beheld Moses and Elijah talking with Him: 
 Moses the great lawgiver of their nation, Elijah 
 the chief of all the Jewish prophets. We must 
 consider this a little to find out the whole depth of 
 its meaning. YOU remember how Christ had spoken 
 of Himself as having come, not to destroy the Law 
 and the Prophets, but to fulfil them. You remem- 
 ber, too, how He had always said that He was the 
 person of whom the Law and the Prophets had 
 spoken. 
 
 Here was an actual sign and witness that His 
 words were true here was Moses, the giver of the 
 Law, and Elijah, the chief of the Prophets, talking 
 with Him, bearing witness to Him in their own per- 
 sons, and showing, too, that it was His death and 
 His perfect sacrifice that they had been shadowing 
 forth in the sacrifices of the law and in the dark 
 speeches of prophecy. For they talked with Him 
 of His death, which He was to accomplish at Jeru- 
 salem. What more perfect testimony could the 
 apostles have had to show them that Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, their Master, was He of whom the Law and 
 the Prophets spoke that He was indeed the Christ 
 for whom Moses and Elijah, and all the saints of 
 old, had looked ; and that He was come, not to de- 
 stroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them? 
 We can hardly understand the awe and the delight 
 with which the disciples must have beheld those
 
 XV.J THE TRANSFIGURATION. 175 
 
 blessed three Moses, and Elias, and Jesus Christ, 
 their Lord, talking together before their very eyes. 
 For of all men in the world, Moses and Elias were 
 to them the greatest. All true-hearted Israelites; 
 who knew the history of their nation, and understood 
 the promises of God, must have felt that Moses arid 
 Elias were the two greatest heroes and saviours of 
 their nation, whom God had ever yet raised up. And 
 the joy and the honour of thus seeing them face to 
 face, the very men whom they had loved and reve- 
 renced in their thoughts, whom they had heard and 
 read of fronTtheir childhood, as the greatest orna- 
 ments and glories of their nation the joy and the 
 honour, I say, of that unexpected sight, added to the 
 wonderful majesty which was suddenly revealed to 
 their transfigured Lord, seemed to have been too 
 much for them they knew not what to say. Such 
 company seemed to them for the moment heaven 
 enough ; and St. Peter, first finding words, ex- 
 claimed, " Lord, it is good for us to be here. If 
 thou wilt, let us build three tabernacles, one for 
 Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. .Not, 
 I fancy, that they intended to worship Moses and 
 Elias, but that they felt that Moses and Elias, as 
 well as Christ, had each a divine message, which 
 must be listened to; and therefore, they' wished that 
 each of them might have his own tabernacle, and 
 dwell among men, and each teach his own particular 
 doctrine and wisdom in his own school. It may
 
 176 THE TRANSFIGURATION. [SERM. 
 
 seem strange that they should put Moses and Elias 
 so on an equality with Christ, but the truth was, 
 that as yet they understood Moses and Elias better 
 than they did Christ. They had heard and read of 
 Moses and Elijah all their lives they were acquaint- 
 ed with all their actions and words they kaew tho- 
 roughly what great and noble men the Spirit of God 
 had made them, but they did not understand Christ 
 in like manner. They did not yet feel that God had 
 given Him the Spirit without measure they did not 
 understand that He was not only to be a lawgiver 
 and a prophet, but a sacrifice for sin, th.e conqueror 
 of death and hell, who was to lead captivity captive, 
 and receive inestimable gifts for men. Much less 
 did they think that Moses and Elijah were but His 
 servants that all their spirit and their power had 
 been given by Him. But this also they were taught 
 a moment afterwards ; for a bright cloud oversha- 
 dowed them, hiding from them the gloxy of God 
 the Father, whom no man hath seen or can see, who 
 dwells in the light which no man can approach unto; 
 and out of that cloud a voice, saying, " This is 
 my beloved Son; hear ye Him;" and then, hiding 
 their faces in fear and wonder, they fell to the 
 ground ; and when they looked up, the vision and 
 the voice had alike passed away, and they saw no 
 man but Christ alone. Was not that enough for 
 them? Must not the meaning of the vision have 
 been plain to them ? They surely understood from
 
 XV.] THE TRANSFIGURATION. 177 
 
 it that Moses and Elijah were, as they had ever be- 
 lieved them to be, great and good, true messengers 
 of the living God; but that their message arid their 
 work was done that Christ, whom they had looked 
 for, was come that all the types of the law were 
 realized, and all the prophecies fulfilled, and that 
 henceforward Christ, and Christ alone, was to be 
 their Prophet and their Lawgiver. Was not this 
 plainly the meaning of the Divine voice? For when 
 they wished to build three tabernacles, and to honour 
 Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, as se- 
 parate from Christ, that moment the heavenly voice 
 warned them: "This this is my beloved Son -hear 
 ye Him, and Him only, henceforward." And Moses 
 and Elijah, their work being done, forthwith vanished 
 away, leaving Christ alone to fulfil the Law and the 
 Prophets, and all other wisdom and righteousness 
 that ever was or shall be. This is another lesson 
 which Christ's transfiguration was meant to teach 
 them and us, that Christ alone is to be hencefor- 
 ward our guide ; that no philosophies or doctrines 
 of any sort which are not founded on a true -faith in 
 Jesus Christ, and His life and death, are Avorth lis- 
 tening to; that God has manifested forth His be- 
 loved Son, and that Him, and Him only, we are to 
 hear. I do not mean to say that Christ came into 
 the world to put down human learning. I do not mean 
 that we are to despise human learning, as so many 
 are apt to do nowadays ; for Christ came into the 
 16
 
 178 THE TRANSFIGURATION. [sERAI. 
 
 world not to destroy human learning, but to fulfil 
 it to sanctify it to make human learning true, 
 and strong, and useful, by giving it a sure founda- 
 tion to stand upon, which is the belief and knowledge 
 of His blessed self. Just as Christ came not to destroy 
 the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them to give 
 them a spirit and a depth in men's eyes which they 
 never had before just so He came to fulfil all true 
 philosophies, all the deep thoughts which men had 
 ever thought about this wonderful world and their own 
 souls, by giving them a spirit and a depth which t hey 
 never had before. Therefore let no man tempt you 
 to despise learning, for it is holy to the Lord. 
 
 There is one more lesson which we may learn from 
 our Lord's transfiguration : when St. Peter said, 
 "Lord! it is good for us to be here," he spoke a 
 truth. It was good for him to be there; never- 
 theless, Christ did not listen to his prayer. He and 
 his two companions were not allowed to stay in that 
 glorious company. And why? Because they had a 
 work to do. They had glad tidings of great joy to 
 proclaim to every creature, and it was, after all, but 
 a selfish prayer, to wish to be allowed to stay in 
 ease and glory on the mount while the whole world 
 was struggling in sin and wickedness below them ; 
 for there is no meaning in a man's calling himself a 
 Christian, or saying that he loves God, unless he is 
 ready to hate what God hates, and to fight against 
 that which Christ fought against, that is, sin. No
 
 XV.] THE TRANSFIGURATION. 179 
 
 one has any right to call himself a servant of God, 
 who is not trying to do away with some of the evil 
 in the world around him. And, therefore, Christ 
 was merciful when, instead of listening to St. 
 Peter's prayer, He led the apostles down again from 
 the mount, and sent them forth, as He did after- 
 wards, to preach the Gospel of the kingdom to all 
 nations. For Christ put a higher honour on St. 
 Peter by that than if he had let him stay on the 
 mount all his life, to behold His glory, and worship 
 and adore. And He made St. Peter more like Him- 
 self by doing so. For what was Christ's life ? Not 
 one of deep speculations, quiet thoughts, and bright 
 visions, such as St. Peter wished to lead, but a life 
 of fighting against evil; earnest, awful prayers and 
 struggles within, continual labour of body and mind 
 without, insult and danger, and confusion, and vio- 
 lent exertion, and bitter sorrow. This was Christ's 
 life this is the life of almost every good man I 
 ever heard of; this was St. Peter, and St. James, 
 and St. John's life afterwards. This was Christ's 
 cup, which they were to drink of as well as He; 
 this was the baptism of fire with which they were 
 to be baptized of as well as He; this was to be 
 their fight of faith ; this was the tribulation 
 through which they, like all other great saints, 
 were to enter into the kingdom of heaven ; for it 
 is certain that the harder a man fights against evil, 
 the harder erfl^riH fight against him in return:
 
 180 THE TRANSFIGURATION. [SERM. XV. 
 
 but it is certain, too, that the harder a man fights 
 against evil, the more he is like his Saviour Christ, 
 and the more glorious will be his reward in heaven. 
 It is certain, too, that what was good for St. Peter is 
 good for us. It is good for a man to have holy and 
 quiet thoughts, and at moments to see into the very 
 deepest meaning of God's word and God's earth, 
 and to have, as it were, heaven opened before his 
 eyes; and it is good for a man sometimes actually 
 to feel his heart overpowered with the glorious 
 majesty of God, and to feel it gushing out with love 
 to his blessed Saviour; but it is not good for him to 
 stop there, any more than it was for the apostles; 
 they had to leave that glorious vision and come 
 down from the mount, and do Christ's work; and 
 so have we; for, believe me, one word of warning 
 spoken to keep a little child out of sin, one crust 
 of bread given to a beggar-man, because he is your 
 brother, for whom Christ died, one angry word 
 checked, when it is on your lips, for the sake of 
 Him who was meek and lowly in heart; in short, 
 any, the smallest, endeavour of this kind to lessen 
 the quantity of evil which is in yourselves, and in 
 those around you, is worth all the speculations, and 
 raptures, and visions, and frames, and feelings in 
 the world; for those are the good fruits of faith, 
 whereby alone the tree shall be known, whether it 
 be good or evil.
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 THE OKUCIFIXION. 
 
 " He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter." ISAIAH, liii. 7. 
 
 ON this day, iny friends, was offered up upon the 
 cross the Lamb of God, slain in eternity and 
 heaven before the foundation of the world, but 
 slain in time and space upon this day. All the old 
 sacrifices, the lambs which were daily offered up to 
 God in the Jewish Temple, the lambs which Abel, 
 and after him the patriarchs offered up, the Paschal 
 Lamb slain at the Passover, our Eastertide, all these 
 were but figures of Christ tokens of the awful and 
 yet loving law of God, that without shedding of 
 blood there is no remission of sin. But the blood 
 of dumb animals could not take away sin. All 
 mankind had sinned, and it was, therefore, neces- 
 sary that all mankind should suffer. Therefore He 
 suffered, the new Adam, the Man of all men, in 
 whom all mankind were, as it were, collected into 
 one, and put on a new footing with God ; that hence- 
 forward to be a man might mean to be a holy being, 
 a forgiven being, a being joined to God, wearing the 
 likeness of the Son of God the human soul and 
 16*
 
 182 THE CRUCIFIXION. [SERM. 
 
 body in which He offered up all human souls and 
 bodies on the cross. For man was originally made 
 in Christ's likeness; He Avas the Word of God who 
 walked in the garden of Eden, who spoke to Adam 
 with a human voice; He was the Lord who ap- 
 peared to the patriarchs in a man's figure, and ate 
 and drank in Abraham's tent, and spoke to him with 
 a human voice ; He was the God of Israel, whom 
 the Jewish elders saw with their bodily eyes upon 
 Mount Sinai, and under his feet a pavement as of a 
 sapphire stone. From Him all man's powers came ; 
 man's speech, man's understanding. All that is 
 truly noble in man was a dim pattern of Him in 
 whose likeness man was originally made. And when 
 man had fallen and sinned, and Christ's image was 
 fading more and more out of him, and the likeness 
 of the brutes growing more and more in him year 
 by year, then came Christ, the head and the original 
 pattern of all men, to claim them for His own again, 
 to do in their name what they could never do for 
 themselves, to offer Himself up a sacrifice for the 
 sins of the whole world : so that He is the real sa- 
 crifice, the real lamb; as St. John said, when he 
 pointed Him out to his disciples, "Behold the Lamb 
 of God, which taketh away the sin of the world !" 
 
 Oh, think of that strong and patient Lamb, who 
 on this day showed Himself perfect in fortitude and 
 nobleness, perfect in meekness and resignation. 
 Think of Him who, in His utter love to us, endured
 
 XVI.] THE CRUCIFIXION. 183 
 
 the cross, despising the shame. And what a cross ! 
 Truly said the prophet, "His visage was more 
 marred than any man, and His form more than the 
 sons of men:" in hunger and thirst, in tears and 
 sighs, bruised and bleeding, His forehead crowned 
 with thorns, His sides torn with scourges, His hands 
 and feet gored with nails, His limbs stretched from 
 their sockets, naked upon the shameful cross, the 
 Son of God hung, lingering slowly towards the last 
 gasp, in the death of the felon and the slave! The 
 most shameful sight that this earth ever saw, and 
 yet the most glorious sight. The most shameful 
 sight, at which the sun in heaven veiled his face, as 
 if ashamed, and the skies grew black, as if to hide 
 those bleeding limbs from the foul eyes of men; 
 and yet the noblest sight, for in that death upon 
 the cross shone out the utter fulness of all holi- 
 ness, the utter fulness of all fortitude, the utter 
 fulness of that self-sacrificing love which had said, 
 "The Son of man came to seek and to save that 
 which was lost;" the utter fulness of obedient pa- 
 tience, which could say, "Father, not My will but 
 Thine be done;" the utter fulness of generous for- 
 giveness, which could pray, "Father, forgive them, 
 for they know not what they do;" the utter ful- 
 ness of noble fortitude and endurance, which could 
 say, at the very moment when a fearful death stared 
 Him in the face, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now 
 pray to my Father, and He will send me at once
 
 184 THE CRUCIFIXION. [SERM. 
 
 more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then 
 would the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be ?" 
 Oh, my friends, look to Him, the author and 
 perfecter of all faith, all trust, all loyal daring, for 
 the sake of duty and of God. Look at His patience. 
 See how He endured the cross, despising the shame. 
 See how lie endured how patience had her per- 
 fect work in Him how in all things He was more 
 than conqueror. What gentleness, what calmness, 
 what silence, what infinite depths of Divine love 
 within Him ! a heart which neither shame, nor 
 torture, nor insult, could stir from its godlike re- 
 solution. When looking down from that cross He 
 beheld none almost but enemies, heard no word but 
 mockery. When those who passed by reviled Him, 
 wagging their heads, and saying, " He saved others, 
 Himself he cannot save," His only answer was a 
 prayer for forgiveness for that besotted mob who 
 were yelling beneath Him like hounds about their 
 game. Consider Him, and then consider ourselves, 
 ruffled and put out of temper by the slightest cross 
 accident, the slightest harsh word, too often by the 
 slightest pain not to mention insults, for we pride 
 ourselves in not bearing them. Try, my friends, if 
 you can, even in the dimmest way, fancy yourselves 
 for one instant in His place this day 1815 years. 
 Fancy yourselves hanging on that cross fancy 
 that mocking mob below fancy but I dare not 
 go on with the picture. Only think think what
 
 XVI.] THE CRUCIFIXION. 185 
 
 would have been your temper there, and then you 
 may get .gome slight notion of the boundless love 
 and the boundless endurance of the Saviour whom 
 we love so little, for whose sake most of us will not 
 endure the trouble of giving up a single sin. 
 
 And then consider that it was all of his own free 
 will; that at any moment, even while He was hang- 
 ing upon the cross, He might have called to earth 
 and sun, to heaven and to hell, "Stop! thus far, 
 but no farther," and they would have obeyed Him ; 
 and all that cross, and agony, and the fierce faces 
 of those furious Jews, would have vanished away 
 like a hideous dream when one awakes. For they 
 lied in their mockery. Any moment He might 
 have been free, triumphant, again in his eternal 
 bliss, but lie would not. He Himself kept Himself 
 on that cross till His Father's will was fulfilled, 
 and the sacrifice was finished, and we were saved. 
 And then, at last, when there was no more human 
 nobleness, no more agony left for him to fulfil, no 
 gem in the crown of holiness which He had not 
 won as his own, no drop in the cup of misery which 
 He had not drained as His own ; when at last He 
 was made perfect through suffering, and His 
 strength had been made perfect in weakness, then 
 He bowed that bleeding, thorn-crowned head, and 
 said, " It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I 
 commend my spirit." And so He died. 
 
 How can our poor words, our poor deeds, thank
 
 186 THE CRUCIFIXION. [sERM. 
 
 Him ? How mean and paltry our deepest gratitude, 
 our highest loyalty, when compared with Him to 
 whom it is due that adorable victim, that perfect 
 sin-offering, who this day offered up Himself upon 
 the altar of the cross, in the fire of his own bound- 
 less zeal for the kingdom of God, His Father, and 
 of His boundless love for us, His sinful brothers ! 
 "Oh! thou blessed 'Jesus! Saviour agonizing for 
 us ! God Almighty, who did make Thyself weak 
 for the love of us ! oh, write that love upon our 
 hearts so deeply, that neither pleasure nor sorrow, 
 life nor death, may wipe it away! Thou hast 
 sacrificed Thyself for us, oh, give us the hearts to 
 sacrifice ourselves for Thee ! Thou art the Vine, 
 we are the branches. Let thy priceless blood, shed 
 for us on this day, flow like life-giving sap through 
 all our hearts and minds, and fill us with thy righ- 
 teousness, that we may be sacrifices fit for Thee. 
 Stir us up to offer to Thee, Lord, our bodies, 
 our souls, our spirits, in all we love and all we learn, 
 in all we plan and all we do, to offer our labours, 
 our pleasures, our sorrows, to Thee; to work for 
 Thy kingdom through them, to live as those who are 
 not their own, but bought with Thy blood, fed with 
 Thy body; and enable us now, in Thy most holy 
 Sacrament, to offer to Thee our repentance, our 
 faith, our prayers, our praises, living, reasonable, 
 and spiritual sacrifices, Thine from our birth- 
 hour, Thine now, arid Thine for ever!"
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 "He is not here He is risen." LUKE, xxiv. 6. 
 
 WE are assembled here to-day, my friends, to 
 celebrate the joyful memory of our blessed Sa- 
 viour's Resurrection. All Friday night, Saturday, 
 and Saturday night, His body lay in the grave ; His 
 soul was where, we cannot tell. St. Peter tells us 
 that He went and preached to the spirits in prison 
 the sinners of the old world, who are kept in the 
 place of departed souls most likely in the depths 
 of the earth, in the great fire-kingdom, which boils 
 and flames miles below our feet, and breaks out here 
 and there through "the earth's solid trust in burning 
 mountains and streams of fire. There, some say 
 and the Bible seems to say sinful souls are kept in 
 chains until the judgment-day ; and thither they say 
 Christ went to preach no doubt to save some of 
 those sinful souls who had never heard of Him. 
 However this may be, for those two nights and day 
 there was no sign, no stir in the grave where Christ 
 was laid. His body seemed dead the stone' lay
 
 188 THE RESURRECTION. [SEUM. 
 
 still over the mouth of the tomb where Joseph and 
 Nicodemus laid him; the seal which Pilate had 
 put on it was unbroken ; the soldiers watched and 
 watched, but no one stirred; the priests and Phari- 
 sees were keeping their sham Passover, thinking, no 
 doubt, that they were well rid of Christ and of His 
 rebukes for ever. 
 
 But early on the Sunday morn this day, as it 
 might be in the gray dawn of morning there came 
 a change a wondrous change. There was a great 
 earthquake; the solid ground and rocks were stirred 
 the angel of the Lord came down from heaven, 
 and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat 
 upon it, waiting for the King of- glory to arise 
 from His slumber, and go forth the conqueror of 
 Death. 
 
 His countenance was like lightning, and His rai- 
 ment white as snow; and for fear of Him those fierce, 
 hard soldiers, who feared neither God nor man, 
 shook, and became as dead men. And Christ arose 
 and went fortte How he rose how he looked 
 when he arose, no man can tell, for no man saw. 
 Only before the sun was risen came Mary Magda- 
 lene, and the other Mary, and found the stone rolled 
 away, and saw the angels sitting, clothed in white, 
 who said, "Fear not, for I know that ye seek Jesus, 
 who was crucified. He is not here, for He is risen. 
 Come, see the place where the Lord lay." 
 
 What must they have thought, poor, faithful
 
 XVII.] THE RESURRECTION. 189 
 
 souls, who came, lonely and broken-hearted, to see 
 the place where Jfe, their only hope, was, as they 
 thought, shut up and lost for ever, to hear that He 
 was risen and gone? Half terrified, half delighted, 
 they went back with other women who had come on 
 the same errand, with spices to anoint the blessed 
 body, and told the apostles. Peter and John ran to 
 the sepulchre, and saw the linen clothes, and the 
 napkin that was about his blessed head, wrapped 
 together by itself. They then believed. Then first 
 broke on them the meaning of His old saying, that 
 He must rise from the dead; and so, wondering and 
 doubting what to do, they went back home. 
 
 But Mary faithful, humble Mary stood with- 
 out, by the sepulchre, weeping. The angels called 
 to her, "Woman, why weepest thou?-" "They 
 have taken away my Lord," said she; "and I know 
 not where they have laid him." 
 
 Then, in a 'moment, out of the air, He appeared 
 behind her. His body had been changed; it was 
 now a glorified, spiritual body, which could appear 
 and disappear when and how he liked. She turned 
 back, and saw Him standing, but she knew Him not. 
 A wondrous change had come over Him since last 
 she saw Him hanging, bleeding, pale, and dying, on 
 the cross of shame. "Woman," said He, "why 
 weepest thou ? " She, fancying it was the gardener, 
 said to Him, " Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, 
 tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will 
 17
 
 190 THE RESURRECTION. [SERM. 
 
 take Him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary." At 
 the sound of that beloved voice His own voice 
 calling her by name, her recollection caine back to 
 her. She knew Him knew Him for her risen 
 Lord; and, falling at His feet, cried out, "My 
 Master ! " 
 
 So Jesus Christ, the Son of God, rose from the 
 dead! 
 
 Now come the questions, Why did Christ rise 
 from the dead ? and how did he rise ? And, first, I 
 will say a few words about how he rose from the 
 dead. And this the Bible will answer for us, as it 
 will every thing else about the spirit-world. Christ, 
 says the Bible, was put to death in the flesh; but 
 quickened, that is, brought to life, by the Spirit. 
 Now what is the Spirit but the Lord and Giver of 
 Life, life of all sorts^ life to the soul life to the 
 body life to the trees and plants around us ? With 
 that Spirit Christ is filled infinitely without measure; 
 it is His Spirit. He is the Prince of Life ; and the 
 Spirit which gives life is His Spirit, proceeding from 
 the Father and the Son. Therefore the gates of 
 hell could not prevail against Him therefore the 
 heavy grave-stone could not hold Him down there- 
 fore His flesh could not see corruption and decay as 
 other bodies do ; not because His lody was different 
 from other bodies in its substance, but because He 
 was filled, body and soul, with the great Spirit of 
 Life. For this is the great business of the Spirit of
 
 XVII.] THE RESURRECTION. 191 
 
 God, in all nature, to bring life out of death new 
 generations out of old. What says David ? "When 
 Thou, God, turnest away Thy face, things die and 
 return again to the dust ; when Thou lettest Thy 
 breatli (which is the same as Thy Spirit) go forth, 
 they are made, and Thou renewest the face of the 
 earth." This is the way that seeds, instead of rot- 
 ting and perishing, spring up and become new plants 
 God breathes His Spirit on them. The seeds must 
 have heat, and damp, and darkness, and electricity, 
 before they can sprout ; but the heat, and damp, and 
 darkness, do not make them sprout; they want 
 something more to do that. A philosopher can find 
 out exactly what a seed is made of, and he might 
 make a seed of the proper materials, and put it in the 
 ground, and electrify it but would it grow? Not 
 it. To grow it must have life life from the Foun- 
 tain of life from God's Spirit. All the philosophers 
 in the world have never yet been able, among all the 
 things which they have made, to make a single living 
 thing and say they never shall ; because, put toge- 
 ther all they will, still one thing is wanting life, 
 which God alone can give. Why do I say this ? To 
 show you what God's Spirit is ; to put you in mind 
 that it is near you, above you, and beneath you, 
 about your path in your daily walk. And also, to 
 explain to you how Christ rose by the Spirit, :how 
 your bodies, if you claim your share in Christ's 
 Spirit, may rise by it too.
 
 192 THE RESURRECTION. [*ERM. 
 
 You can see now how Christ, being filled with 
 God's Spirit, rose of himself. People had risen 
 from the dead before Christ's time, but they had 
 been either raised in answer to the prayers of holy 
 men, who had God's Spirit, or at some peculiar time 
 when heaven was opened, and God chose to alter 
 His laws (as we call it) for a moment. 
 
 But here was a Man who rose of Himself. He 
 was raised by God, and therefore He raised Him- 
 self, for He was God. 
 
 You all know what life and power a man's own 
 spirit will often give him. You may have heard of 
 "spirited" men in great danger, or "spirited" sol- 
 diers in battle, when, faint, wounded, having suf- 
 fered enough, apparently, to kill them twice over, 
 still struggling or fighting on, and doing the most 
 desperate deeds to the last, from the strength and 
 courage of their spirits conquering pain and weak- 
 ness, and keeping off for a time death itself. We 
 all know how madmen, diseased in their spirits, will, 
 when the fit is on them, have for a few minutes ten 
 men's strength. Well, just think, if a man's own 
 spirit, when it is powerful, can give his body such 
 life and force, what must it have been with Christ, 
 who was filled full of the Spirit God's Spirit, the 
 Lord and Giver of life. The Lord could not help 
 rising. All the disease, and poison, and rottenness in 
 the world could not have made His body decay; moun- 
 tains on mountains could not have kept it down. His
 
 XVII.] THE RESURRECTION. 193 
 
 body! the Prince of Life! He that was the life 
 itself! It was impossible that death could hold Him. 
 
 And does not this show us wliy He rose, that we 
 might rise with Him? What did He say about His 
 own death? " Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it 
 bringeth forth much fruit." He was the grain 
 which fell into the ground and died, and from His 
 dead body sprung up another body His glorified 
 body; and we, His Church, His people,- fed with 
 that body His members, however strange it may 
 sound St. Paul said it, and therefore I dare to 
 say it, little as I know what it means members of 
 His flesh and of His bones. 
 
 But think ! Remember what St. Paul tells you 
 about this very matter in that glorious chapter which 
 is read in the burial-service, "how when thou sowest 
 seed, thou sowest not that body which it will have, 
 but bare grain ; but God gives it a body as it hath 
 pleased Him, and to every seed its own body." For 
 the wheat-plant is in reality the same thing as the 
 wheat-seed, and its life the same life, different as 
 the outside of it may look. Dig it up just at this 
 time of year, and y^ou will find the seed-corn all 
 gooe, sucked dry ; the life of the wheat-seed has 
 formed it into a wheat-plant yet it is the same in- 
 dividual thing. The substance of the seed has gone 
 into the root and the young blade; but it is the 
 same individual substance. You know it is, and 
 17* -
 
 194 THE RESURRECTION. [SERM. 
 
 though you cannot tell why, yet you say, "What a fine 
 plant that seed has grown into!" because you feel it 
 is so, that the seed is the very same thing as the 
 plant which springs up from it, though its shape is 
 changed, and its size, and its colour, and the very 
 stuff of which it was made is changed, since it was 
 a mere seed. And yet it is at bottom the same 
 individual thing as the seed was, with a new body 
 and shape. 
 
 So with Christ's body. It was changed after He 
 rose. It had gone through pain, and weakness, and 
 death, gone down to the lowest depth of them, and 
 conquered them, and passed triumphant through 
 them and far beyond their power. His body was 
 now a nobler, a more beautiful, a glorified body, a 
 spiritual body; one which could do whatever His 
 Spirit chose to make it do; one which could never 
 die again; one which could come through closed 
 doors, appear and vanish as He liked, instead of 
 being bound to walk the earth, and stand cold and 
 heat, sickness and weariness. 
 
 Yet it was the very same body, just as the 
 wheat-plant is the same as the wheat-seed the 
 very same body. Every one knew His face again 
 after His resurrection. There was the very print of 
 the nails to be seen in His hands and feet, the spear- 
 wound in His blessed side. So shall it be with us, 
 my friends. We shall rise again, and we shall be 
 the same as we are now, and yet not the same; our
 
 XVII.] THE RESURRECTION. 195 
 
 bodies shall be the same bodies, and yet nobler, 
 purer spiritual bodies, which can know neither death, 
 nor pain, nor weariness. Then, never care, my 
 friends, if we drop like ripe grain into the bosom 
 of mother earth, if we are to spring up again as 
 seedling plants, after death's long winter, on the 
 resurrection morn. Truly saj's the poet,* how 
 
 "Mother earth, she gathers all 
 Into her bosom, great and small : 
 Oh ! could we' look into her face, 
 We should not shrink from her embrace." 
 
 No, indeed ! for if we look steadily with the wise, 
 searching eye of faith into the face of mother earth, 
 we shall see how death is but the gate of life, and 
 this narrow churchyard, with its corpses close- 
 packed underneath the sod, would not seem to us a 
 frightful charnel-house of corruption. No! it would 
 seem like what it is a blessed, quiet, seed-filled 
 God's garden, in which our forefathers, after their 
 long-life labour, lay sown by God's friendly hand, 
 waiting peaceful, one and all, to spring up into leaf, 
 and flower, and everlasting paradise-fruit, beneath 
 the breath of God's Spirit at the last great day, 
 when the Sun of Righteousness arises in glory, and 
 the summer begins which shall never end. 
 
 One and all, did I say? Alas ! would God it were 
 so ! We cannot hope as for all ; but they are dead 
 
 * Von Stolberg.
 
 196 THE RESURRECTION. [sERM. 
 
 and gone, and we are not here to judge the dead. 
 They have another Judge, and all shall be as He 
 wills. 
 
 But we we in whose limbs the breath of life still 
 boils we who can still work, let us never forget all 
 grain ripens not. There is some falls out of the ear 
 unripe, and perishes ;, some is picked out by birds; 
 some withers and decays in the ear, and yet gets 
 into the barn with it, and is sown, too, with the 
 wheat, of which I never heard that any sprang up 
 again ploughed up again it may be a withered, 
 dead husk of chaff as it died, ploughed up to the 
 resurrection of damnation, to burn as chaff in un- 
 quenchable fire; but the good seed alone, ripe, and 
 safe with the wheat-plant till it' is ripe, that only 
 will spring up to the resurrection of eternal life. 
 
 Now, consider again that parable of the wheat- 
 plant. After it has sprung up, what does it next, 
 but tiller? and every new shoot that tillers out, 
 bears its own ear, ripens its own grain, twenty, 
 thirty, or forty stems, and yet they are all the same 
 plant, living with the life of that one original seed. 
 So with Christ's Church His body the Church. 
 As soon as He rose, that new Plant began to tiller. 
 He did not keep His Spirit to Himself, but poured 
 it out on the apostles, and from them it spread and 
 spread each generation of Christians ripening, and 
 bearing fruit, and dying, a fresh generation of fruit 
 springing up from them, and so on, as we are now
 
 XVII.] THE- RESUBRECTIOX. 197 
 
 at this day. And yet all these plants, these millions 
 and millions of Christian men and women, who have 
 lived since Christ's blessed resurrection, all are 
 parts of that one original seed, the body of Christ, 
 whose members they are, and all owe their life to 
 that one Spirit of Christ, which is in them all and 
 through them all, as the life of the original grain 
 is in the whole crop which springs from it. 
 
 And what can you learn from this ? Learn this, 
 that in Christ you are safe, out of Christ you are 
 lost. But really in Christ, I mean not like the 
 dead and dying grains, mildewed and worm-eaten, 
 which you find here and there on the finest wheat- 
 plant. Their end is to be burned, and so will ours 
 be, for all our springing out of Christ's root, if the 
 angel reapers find us not good wheat, but chaff 
 and mildew. Every branch in Christ which beareth 
 not fruit, His heavenly Father taketh away. There- 
 fore, never pride yourself on having been baptized 
 into Christ, never pride yourself on showing some 
 signs of God's Spirit, on being really good, right 
 in this and right in that, the question is, not so 
 much, Are you in CJirist at all, are you part of His 
 tree, a member of His body? but, Are you ripening 
 there ? If you are not ripening, you are decaying, 
 and your end will be as God has said. And do you 
 wish to know whether you are in Christ, safe, ripen- 
 ing? see whether you are like Him. If the young 
 grain does not show like the seed grain, you may be
 
 198 THE RESURRECTION. [SERM. XVII. 
 
 sure it is making no progress ; and as surely as a 
 wheat-plant never brought forth rye, or a grape- 
 tree thistles, so surely, if you are not like Christ in 
 your character, in patience, in meekness, in courage, 
 truth, purity, piety, and love, you may be of His 
 planting, but you are none of His ripening, and 
 you will not be raised with Him at the last day, to 
 flower anew in the gardens of Paradise, world with- 
 out end.
 
 SERMON XVIII. 
 
 IMPROVEMENT. 
 
 "The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow 
 like the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the 
 house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. 
 They shall still bring forth fruit in old age ; they shall be 
 fat and flourishing." PSALM xcn. 12. 
 
 TIIE Bible is always- telling Christian people to 
 go forwards to grow to become wiser and 
 stronger, better and better day by day; that they 
 ought to become better, and better, because they can, 
 if they choose, improve. This text tells us so ; it says 
 that we shall bring forth more fruit in our old age. 
 Another text tells us that " those who wait on the 
 JLord shall renew their strength;" another tells us 
 that we "shall go from strength to strength." Not 
 one of St. Paul's Epistles but talks of growing in 
 grace and in the knowledge of God, of being filled 
 with God's Spirit, of having our eyes more and more 
 open to understand God's truth. Not one of St. 
 Paul's Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul
 
 200 IMPllOVEMENT. [SElUf. 
 
 that the men to whom he writes may become holier 
 and wiser. And St. Paul says that he himself 
 needed to go forward that he wanted fresh 
 strength that he had to forget what was past, 
 and consider all he had done and felt as nothing, 
 and press forward to the prize of his high calling; 
 that he needed to be daily conquering himself more 
 and more, keeping down his bad feelings, hunting 
 out one bad habit after another, lest, by any means, 
 when he had preached to others, he himself should 
 become a castaway. Therefore, I said rightly, that 
 the Bible is always bidding us go forwards. You 
 cannot read your Bibles without seeing this. What 
 else was the use of St. Paul's Epistles ? They were 
 written to Christian men, redeemed men, converted 
 men, most of them better I fear than ever we shall 
 be; and for what? to tell them not be content to 
 remain as they were, to tell tfeem to go forwards, 
 to improve, to be sure that they were only just 
 inside the gate of God's kingdom, and that if they 
 would go on to perfection, they would find strength, 
 and holiness, and blessing, and honour, and happi- 
 ness, which they as yet did not dream of. " Be ye 
 perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
 perfect," said our blessed Lord to all men. "Be ye 
 perfect," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, and the 
 Ephesians, and all to whom he wrote; and so say I 
 to you now in God's name, for Christ's sake, as
 
 XVIII.] IMPROVEMENT. 201 
 
 citizens of God's kingdom, as heirs of everlasting 
 glory, "Be you perfect, even as your Father in 
 heaven is perfect." 
 
 Now I ask you, my friends, is not this reasonable ? 
 It is reasonable, for the Bible always speaks of our 
 souls as living things. It compares them to limbs 
 of a body, to branches of a tree, often to separate 
 plants, as in our Lord's parable of the tares and 
 the wheat. Again, St. Paul tells us that we have 
 been planted in baptism in the likeness of Christ's 
 death; and, again, in the first Psalm, which says 
 that the good man shall be like a tree planted by the 
 water-side; and, again, in the text of my sermon, 
 which says that "those who arc planted in the 
 house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our 
 God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age ; 
 they shall be fat and flourishing." 
 
 Now what does all this mean ? It means that 
 the life of our souls is in some respects like the life 
 of a plant ; and, therefore, that as plants grow, so 
 our souls are to grow. Why do you plant any 
 thing, but in order that it may grow and become 
 larger, stronger, bear flower and fruit? Be sure 
 God has planted us in His garden, Christ's Church, 
 for no other reason. Consider again What is life 
 but a continual growing, or a continual decaying? 
 If a tree does not get larger and stronger, year by 
 year, is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, 
 and that decay has begun in it, that it is unsound 
 18
 
 202 IMPROVEMENT. [.SERM. 
 
 at heart? And what happens then? It begins 
 to become weaker and smaller, and cankered and 
 choked with serf and moss till it dies. If a tree 
 is not growing, it is sure in the long run to be 
 dying; and so are our souls. If they are not 
 growing, they are dying; if they are not getting 
 better they are getting worse. This is why the 
 Bible compares our souls to trees not out of a 
 mere petty fancy of poetry, but for a great, awful, 
 deep, world-wide lesson, that every tree in the fields 
 may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless 
 men, that as that tree is meant to grow, so our 
 souls are meant to grow ; as that tree dies, unless 
 it grows, so our souls must die unless they grow. 
 Consider that ! 
 
 But how does a tree grow? How are our souls 
 to grow? Now here, again, we shall understand 
 heavenly things best by taking and considering the 
 pattern from among earthly things which the Bible 
 gives us the tree, I mean. A tree grows in two 
 ways. Its roots jtake up food from the ground, its 
 leaves take up food from the air. Its roots are its 
 mouth, we may say, and its leaves are its lungs. 
 Thus the tree draws nourishment from the earth 
 beneath and from the heaven above ; and so must 
 our souls, my friends ; if they are to live and grow, 
 they must ha-ve food, both from earth and from hea- 
 ven. And this is what I mean: 
 
 Why has God given us senses, eyes, and ears, and
 
 XVIII.] IMPROVEMENT. 203 
 
 understanding? That by them -we may feed our 
 souls with things which we see and hear, things 
 which are going on in the world round us. We 
 must read, and we must listen, and we must watch 
 people and their sayings and doings, and what 
 becomes of them, and we must try and act, and 
 practise what is right for ourselves; and so we shall, 
 by using our eyes, and ears, and our bodies, get 
 practice, and experience, and knowledge, from the 
 world round us such as Solomon gives us in his 
 Proverbs and so our eyes, and ears, and under- 
 standings are to be to us like roots, by which we 
 may feed our souls with earthly learning and expe- 
 rience. But is this enough? No, surely. Con- 
 sider, again, God's example which He has given us 
 a tree. If you keep stripping all the leaves off a 
 tree, as fast as they grow, what becomes of it ? It 
 dies, because without leaves it cannot get nourish- 
 ment from the air, and the rain, and the sunlight. 
 Again, if you shut up a tree where it can get nei- 
 ther rain, air, nor light, what happens ? The tree cer- 
 tainly dies, though it may be planted in the very 
 richest soil, and have the very strongest roots; and 
 why? because it can get no food from the sky above. 
 So with our souls, my friends. If we get no food 
 from above, our souls will die 7 though we have all the 
 wit, and learning, and experience, in the world. We 
 must be fed, and strengthened, ad satisfied, with 
 the grace of God from above with the Spirit of
 
 204 IMPROVEMENT. [SERM. 
 
 God. Consider how the Bible speaks of God's 
 Spirit as the breath of God; for the very word 
 spirit means, originally, breath, or air, or gas, or a 
 breeze of wind, showing us that as without the airs 
 of heaven the tree would become stunted and can- 
 kered, so our souls will without the fresh, purifying 
 breath of God's Spirit. Again, God's Spirit is often 
 spoken of in Scripture as dew and rain. His grace 
 or favour, we read, is as dew on the grass; and 
 again, that God shall come unto us as the rain, as 
 the first and latter rain upon the earth; and again, 
 speaking of the outpourings of God's Spirit on His 
 Church, the Psalmist says that " He shall come down 
 as the rain upon the mown grass, as showers that 
 water the earth;" and to show us that as the tree 
 puts forth buds, and leaves, and tender wood, when 
 it drinks in the dew and rains, so our hearts will 
 become tender, and bud out into good thoughts 
 and wise resolves, when God's Spirit fills them with 
 His grace. 
 
 But, again, the Scripture tells us again and again 
 that our souls want light from above; and we all 
 know by experience that the trees and plants which 
 grow on earth want the light of the sun to make 
 them grow. So, doubtless, here again the Scripture 
 example of a tree will hold good. Now what does 
 the sunlight do for the tree? It does every thing, 
 for without light, the soil, and air, and rain, arc all 
 useless. It stirs up the sap, it hardens the wood,
 
 XVIII.] IMPROVEMENT. 205 
 
 it brings out the blossom, it colours the leaves and 
 the flowers, it ripens the fruit. The light is the 
 life of the tree ; and is there not one, my friends, of 
 whom these words are written that He is the Life, 
 and that He is the Light that He is the Sun of 
 Righteousness and the bright and morning Star 
 that He is the light which lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world that in him was life, and 
 the Life was the light of men ? Do you not know 
 of whom I speak? Even of Him that was born at 
 Bethlehem and died on the cross, who now sits at 
 God's right-hand, praying for us, offering to us 
 His body and His blood; Jesus the Son of God, 
 He is the Light and the Life. From Him alone 
 our light must come; from Him alone our life must 
 come, now and for ever. Oh, think seriously of 
 this and think, too, how a short time before He 
 died on earth He spoke of Himself as the Bread of 
 life the living Bread which comes down from hea- 
 ven ; how He declared to men, that unless they eat 
 His flesh and drink His blood, they have no life in 
 them. And, lastly, consider this, how "the same 
 night that He was betrayed, He took bread, and 
 when he had given thanks, He brake it, and said, 
 Take, eat ; this is my body, which is broken for you; 
 this do in remembrance of me." And how, likewise, 
 "He took the cup, and when he had blessed it, He 
 gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this ; for 
 this is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed 
 18*
 
 206 IMPROVEMENT. [SERM. 
 
 for you and for many, for the remission of sins: 
 this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of 
 me." Oh, consider these words, my friends to you 
 all and every one they were spoken. "Drink ye all 
 of this," said theBlessed One ; and will you refuse to 
 drink it? He offers you the bread of life, the sign 
 and the pledge of His body, which shall feed your 
 souls with everlasting strength and life; and will 
 you refuse what the Son of God offers you, what He 
 bought for you with His death ? God forbid, my 
 friends ! This is your blessed right and privilege 
 the right and the privilege of every one of you to 
 come freely and boldly to that holy table, and there 
 to remember your Saviour. At that table to confess 
 your Saviour before men at that table to show 
 that you really believe that Jesus Christ died for 
 you at that \able to claim your share in the 
 strength of His body, "in the pardon of His blood, 
 which cleanses from all sin and at that table to 
 receive what you claim; to receive at that table the 
 wine, as a sign from Christ Himself, that His blood 
 has washed away your sins; and the bread, as a 
 sign that HisTsody and His Spirit are really feeding 
 your spirits, that your souls are strengthened and 
 refreshed by the body and blood of Christ, as your 
 bodies are with the bread and wine. I have shown 
 you that your souls must be fed from heaven, 
 that the Lord's Supper is a sign to you that they 
 are fed from heaven. You pray to God, I hope,
 
 XVIII.] IMPROVEMENT. 207 
 
 many of you, that He would give you His Holy 
 Spirit, that He would change,- and renew, and 
 strengthen your souls yau pray God to do this, 
 I hope? Well, then, there is the answer to your 
 prayers. There your souls ivill be renewed and 
 strengthened there you will claim your share in 
 Christ, who alone can renew and strengthen them. 
 The bread which is there broken is the communion, 
 the sharing of the body of Christ; the cup which is 
 there blessed is the communion of the blood of 
 Christ: to that heavenly treat, to that spiritual 
 food of your souls, Jesus Himself invites you, He 
 who is the life of men. Do not let it be said at 
 the last day of any one of you, that when the Son 
 of God Himself invites you, you would not come to 
 Him that you might have hfe.
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 
 MAN'S WORKING DAY. 
 
 " Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day ? If 
 any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth 
 the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he 
 stumbleth, because there is no light in him." John, xi. 9, 10. 
 
 THIS was our blessed Lord's answer to His disci- 
 ples when they, said to Him, "Master, the Jews 
 of late tried to stone Thee, and goest Thou among 
 them again?" And "Jesus answered, Are there 
 not twelve hours in the day ? If any man walk in 
 the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the 
 light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, 
 he stumbleth, because there is no light in him." 
 
 Now, at first sight, one does not see what this has 
 to do with the disciples' question it seems no an- 
 swer at all to it. But we must remember who it 
 was who gave that answer the Son of God, from 
 whom all words come, who came to do good, and 
 only good, every minute of His life. And, therefore, 
 we may be sure that He never threw away a single 
 word. And we must remember, too, to whom He
 
 SERM. XIX.] MAX'S WORKING DAT. 209 
 
 spoke to His disciples, whom He was training to be 
 apostles to the whole world, teaching them in every 
 thing some deep lesson, to fit them for their glorious 
 calling, as preachers of the good news of His coming. 
 So we may be sure that He would never put off any 
 question of theirs; we may be certain that, whatever 
 they asked Him, He would give them the best possi- 
 ble answer; not, perhaps, just the answer for which 
 they wished, but the answer which would teach 
 them most. Therefore, I say, we must believe that 
 there is some deep, wonderful Jesson in this text 
 that it is the very best and fullest answer which our 
 Lord could have made to His disciples^when they 
 asked Him why He was going again to Judea, where 
 He stood in danger of His life. 
 
 Let us think a little about this text in faith, that 
 is, sure that there is a deep, blessed meaning in it, 
 if we can but find it out. Let us take it piece by 
 piece : we shall never get to the bottom of it, of 
 course, but we may get deep enough into it to set us 
 thinking a little between now and next Sunday. 
 
 "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" said 
 our Lord. We know there are, and we know, too, 
 that if any man walks in the day, and keeps his eyes 
 open, he does not stumble, because he has the light 
 of this world to guide him. Twelve hours for busi- 
 ness, and twelve for food, and sleep, and rest, is our 
 rule for working men, or, indeed, not our rule, but 
 God's. He has set the sun for the light of this world,
 
 210 MAN'S WORKING DAY [SERM. 
 
 to rule the day, to settle for us how long we are 
 to work. In this country days vary. In summer 
 they are more than twelve hours, and then men work 
 early and late ; but that is made up to us by winter, 
 when the days are less than twelve hours, and men 
 work short time. In the. very cold countries, again, 
 far away in the frozen north, the sun never sets all 
 the summer, and never rises all the winter, and there 
 are six months day and six months night. Wonder- 
 ful! But even there God has fitted the land and 
 men's lives to that strange climate, and they can ga- 
 ther in enough meat in the. summer to keep them 
 all the winter, that they may be able to spend the 
 long six months' night of winter warm in their 
 houses, sleeping and resting, with plenty of food. 
 So that even to them there are twelve hours in the 
 day, though their hours are each a fortnight long, 
 I mean a certain fixed time in which to walk, and do 
 the business which they have to do before the long 
 frozen night comes, wherein no man can work, be- 
 cause the sun, the light of this world, is hid from 
 them below the ice for six whole months. So that 
 our Lord's words hold true of all men, even of those 
 people in the icy north. But in by far the most 
 parts of the world, and especially in the hot countries, 
 where our Lord lived, there are twelve common hours 
 in every day, wherein men may and ought to work. 
 
 Now what did our Lord mean by reminding His 
 disciples of this, which they all knew already? He
 
 MAX'S WORKING- DAY. 211 
 
 meant this, that God His Father had appointed 
 Him a certain work to do, and a certain time to do 
 it in ; that though His day was short, only thirty- 
 three years in all, while we have, many of us, seventy 
 years given us, yet that there were twelve hours in 
 His day in which He must work that God would 
 take care that He lived out His appointed time, pro- 
 vided He was ready and earnest in doing God's work 
 in it and that He must work in that time which 
 God had given Him, whatever came of it, and do 
 His appointed work before the night of death came, 
 in which no man can work. 
 
 There was a heathen king once, named Philip, of 
 Macedon, and a very wise king he- was, though he 
 was a heathen, and one of the wisest of his plans 
 was this : he had a slave, whom he ordered to come 
 in to him every morning of his life, whatever he 
 was doing, and say to him in a loud voice, "Philip, 
 remember that thou must die!" 
 
 He was a heathen, but a great many who call 
 themselves Christians are not half so wise as he, for 
 they take all possible care, not to remember that 
 they must die, but to forget that they must die; and 
 yet every living man has a servant who, like King 
 Philip's, puts him in mind, whether he likes it or 
 not, that his day will run out at last, and his 
 twelve hours of life be over, and then die he must. 
 And who is that servant? A man's own body. 
 Happy if his body is his servant, though not his
 
 212 MAN'S WORKING DAY. [SERM. 
 
 master and his tyrant. But still, be that as it may, 
 every finger-ache that one's body has, every cough 
 and cold one's body catches, ought to be to us a 
 warning, like King Philip's servant, "Remember 
 that thou must die." Every little pain and illness 
 is a warning, a kindly hint from our Father in 
 heaven, that we are doomed to death; that we have 
 but twelve hours in this short day of life, and that 
 the twelve must end; "and that we must get our 
 work done and our accounts settled, and be ready 
 for our long journey, to meet our Father and our 
 King, before ,the night comes wherein no man can 
 work, but only takes his wages; for them who have 
 done good the wages of life eternal, and for them 
 who have done evil God help them ! we know what 
 is written "the wages of sin is death !" ' 
 
 Now, observe next, that those who walk in the 
 day do not stumble, because they see the light of 
 this world, and those who walk in the night stumble 
 they have no light in them. If they are to see, 
 it must be by the help of some light outside them- 
 selves, which is not part of themselves, or belonging 
 to themselves at all. We only see by the light 
 which God has made; when that is gone, our eyes 
 are useless. 
 
 So it is with our souls. Our wits, however clever 
 they may be, only understand things by the light 
 which God throws on those things. He must ex- 
 plain and enlighten all things to us. Without
 
 XIX.] MAN'S WORKING I) AY. 213 
 
 His light, His. Spirit, all the wit in the world is 
 as useless as a pair of eyes in a dark night. 
 
 Now this earthly world, which we. do sec, is an 
 exact picture and pattern of the spiritual, heavenly 
 world which we do not see, as Solomon says in the 
 Proverbs, " The things which are seen are the dou- 
 bles of the things which are not seen." And as 
 there is a light for us in this earth, which is not our- 
 selves, namely, the sun, so there is a light for us in 
 the spirit-wqrld, which is not ourselves. And who is 
 that? The blessed Lord shall answer for Himself. 
 He says, "I am the light of the world;" and St. 
 John bears witness to him: "In Him was life, and 
 the life was the light of men." And does not St. 
 Paul say the same thing, when he blessed God so 
 often for having called Jiirn and his congregations 
 out of darkness into that marvellous light ? If you 
 read his Epistles you will find what he meant by 
 the darkness, what he v meant by the light. The 
 darkness was heathendom, knowing nothing of 
 Christ; the light was Christianity, knowing Christ 
 the light and more; being in the light, belonging 
 to Christ; being joined to Him as the leaves are to 
 the tree; living by trust in Christ; being taught 
 and made true men and women of by the Noble and 
 Holy Spirit of Christ ; seeing their way through 
 this world by trust in Christ and His promises that 
 was light. 
 
 And there is no other light. If a man does not 
 19
 
 214 MAN'S WORKING DAY. [SEUM. 
 
 work, trusting in Christ, whom God has set for the 
 light of the world, he works in the night, where God 
 never set or meant him to work ; and stumble he will 
 and make a fool of himself sooner or later, because 
 he is walking in the night, and sees nothing plainly, 
 or in a right view. For, as our Lord says, truly, 
 " There is no light in him." No light in him? In 
 one ssnse there is no light hi any one, be he the 
 wisest or holiest man who ever lived. But this is 
 just what three people out of four will not believe. 
 They will not believe that the Spirit of God gives 
 man understanding. They fancy that they have 
 light in themselves. They try, conceitedly and god- 
 lessly, to walk by the light of their own eyes to 
 make their own way plain before their face for them- 
 selves. They will not believe old David, a man who 
 worked, and fought, and thought, and saw far more 
 than any one of us will ever do, when he tells them 
 again and again in his Psalms that the Lord is his 
 light that the Lord must guide a man, and inform 
 him with His eye, and teach him in the way in which 
 he should go. And therefore they will not pray to 
 God for light therefore they will not look for light 
 in God's Word, and in the writings of godly men; 
 and they are like a man in the broad sunshine, who 
 should choose to shut his eyes close, and say, " I 
 have light enough in my own head to do without 
 the sun;" and therefore they walk on still in dark- 
 ness, and all the foundations of the earth are out of
 
 XIX.] MAX'S WORKING DAY. 215 
 
 course, because men forged the first universal ground 
 rules of common sense, and reason, and love, which 
 God's Spirit teaches. I tell you, all the mistakes 
 that you ever made that ever, were made since 
 Adam fell, came from this, that men will not ask 
 God for light and wisdom ; they love darkness ra- 
 ther than light, and therefore, though God's light 
 is ready for every man, shining in the darkness to 
 show every man his way, yet the darkness will not 
 comprehend it will not take it in, and let God 
 change its blindness into day. 
 
 Now, then, to gather altogether, what better 
 answer could our Lord have given to His disciples' 
 question than this, "Are there not twelve hours in 
 the day? If a man walk in the day he does not 
 stumble, because he seeth the light of this world; 
 'but if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because 
 there is no light in him." 
 
 It was as if He had said, "However short my 
 day of life may be, there are twelve hours in it, of 
 my Father's numbering and measuring, not of mine. 
 My times are in His hand, as long as He pleases I 
 shall live. He has given me work to do, and He 
 will see that I live long enough to do it. Into His 
 hands I commend my spirit, for, living or dying, 
 He is with me. Though I walk through the valley 
 of the shadow of death, He will be with me. He 
 will keep me secretly in His tabernacle from the 
 strife of tongues, and will turn the furiousness of my
 
 216 MAN'S WOKKING DAY. [SERM. 
 
 enemies to His glory; and as. my day my strength 
 will be. And I have no fear of running into danger 
 needlessly. I have prayed to Him daily and nightly 
 for light, for His Spirit the spirit of wisdom and 
 understanding, of prudence and courage; arid His 
 word is pledged to keep me in all my ways, so that 
 I dash not my foot against a stone. Know ye not 
 that I must he about my Father's business ? While 
 I am about that I am safe. It is only if I go about 
 my own business my own pleasure, if I forget to 
 ask Him for His light and guidance, that I shall 
 put myself into the night, and stumble and fall." 
 
 Well, my friends, what is there in all this, which 
 we may not say as well as our-Lord? In this, as in 
 all things, Christ set Himself up as our pattern. Oh, 
 believe it believe that your time your measure 
 of life, is in God's hand. Believe that He is your 
 light, that He will teach and guide you Into all truth, 
 and that all your mistakes come froin "not asking 
 counsel^Df Him in prayer and thought, and reading 
 of His Holy Bible. Believe His blessed promise 
 that He will give His Holy Spirit to those who ask 
 Him. Believe, too, that He has given you a work 
 to do prepared good works all ready for you to 
 walk in. Be you labourer or gentleman, maid, wife, 
 or widow, God has given you a work to do; there is 
 good to be done lying all round you, ready for you. 
 And the blessed Jesus, who bought you, body and 
 soul, with His own blood, commands you to work
 
 XIX.] MAN'S WORKING DAY. 217 
 
 for Him : " Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it 
 with all your might." 
 
 "Work, ye manful, while ye may, 
 Work for God in this your day ; 
 Night must stop you, rich or poor, 
 Godly deeds alone endure." 
 
 And then, whether you live or die, your Father's 
 smile will be on you, and His everlasting arms be- 
 neath you ; and at your last hour you shall find that 
 "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for they 
 rest from their labour, and their works do follow 
 them."
 
 SERMON XX. 
 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 'Bear yc one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." 
 GALATIAXS, vi. 2. 
 
 IF I were to ask you, my friends, why you were 
 met together here to-day, you would tell me, I 
 suppose, that you were come to church as members 
 of a benefit club ; and quite right you are in coming 
 here as such, and God grant that we may meet 
 together here on this same errand many more Whit- 
 mondays. But this would be no answer to my ques- 
 tion ; I wish to know why you come to cliurcli to- 
 day sooner than to any" other place? what has the 
 church to do with the benefit club ? Now this is 
 a question which I do not think all of you could 
 answer very readily, and therefore I wish to make 
 you, especially the younger members of the club, 
 think a little seriously about the meaning of your 
 coming here to-day. You will be none the less 
 cheerful this evening for having had some deep and 
 godly thoughts in your heads this morning. 
 
 Now these benefit clubs are also called provident
 
 SERM. XX.] ASSOCIATION. 219 
 
 societies, and a very good name for them. You be- 
 come members of them because you are prudent, or 
 provident, that is, because you are careful, and look 
 forward to a rainy day. But why does not each of 
 you lay up his savings for himself, instead of putting 
 them into a common purse, and so forming a. club ? 
 Because you have found out what every one else in 
 the world, but madmen, ought to have found out, 
 that two are better than one; that if a great many 
 men join together in any matter, they are a great 
 deal stronger, when working together, than if they 
 each worked just as hard, but each by himself; that 
 the way to be safe is not to stand each of you alone, 
 but to help each other; in short, that there is no 
 getting on without bearing one another's burdens. 
 
 Xow this plan of bearing one another's burdens 
 is not only good in benefit clubs; it is good in 
 families, in parishes, in nations, in the church of 
 God, which is the elect of all mankind. Unless 
 men hold together, and help each other, there is 
 no safety for them. 
 
 Let us consider what there is bearing on this 
 matter of prudence, that makes one of the greatest 
 differences between a man and a brute beast. It 
 is not that the man is prudent, and the beast is 
 not. Many beasts have forethought enough : the 
 very sleepmouse hoards up acorns against the win- 
 ter ; a fox will hide the game he cannot eat. No ; 
 the great difference between man and beast is, that
 
 220 ASSOCIATION. [SERM. 
 
 the beast has forethought only for himself, but the 
 man has forethought for others also; beasts have 
 not reason enough to bear each other's burdens, as 
 men have. And what is it that makes us call the 
 ant and the bee the wisest of animals, except that 
 they do, in some degree, behave like men in help- 
 ing one another, and having some sort of family 
 feeling, and society, and government among them, 
 by which they can help bear each other's burdens ? 
 So that we all confess, by calling them wise, how 
 wise it is to help each other. Consider a family, 
 again. > In order that a family may be happy and 
 prosperous, all the members of it must bear each 
 other's burdens. If the father only thought of him- 
 self, and the mother of herself, and each of the chil- 
 dren did nothing but take care of themselves, would 
 not that family come to misery and ruin? But if 
 they all helped each other all thought of each 
 other more than themselves all were ready to give 
 up their own comfort to make each other comfort- 
 able, that family would be peaceful and prosperous, 
 and would be doing a great deal towards fulfilling 
 the law of Christ. 
 
 It is just the same in a parish. If the rich help 
 and defend the poor, and the poor respect and love 
 the rich, and are ready to serve them as far as they 
 can in short, if all ranks bear each other's burdens, 
 that parish is a happy one, and if they do not, it 
 is a miserable one.
 
 XX.] ASSOCIATION. 221 
 
 Just the same with a nation. If the king only 
 cares about making himself strong, and the noble- 
 men and gentlemen about their rank and riches, 
 and the poor people, again, only care for themselves, 
 and are trying to pull down the rich, and so get 
 what they can for themselves, -if a country i in 
 this state, what can be more wretched? Neither a 
 house, nor a country, divided against itself, can ever 
 stand. But if the king and the nobles give their 
 whole minds to making good laws, and seeing jus- 
 tice done to all, and workmen fairly paid, and if 
 the poor, in their turns, are loyal, and ready to fight 
 and work for their king and their nobles, then will 
 not that country be a happy and a great country? 
 Surely it will, because its people, instead of caring 
 every man for himself only, help each other and bear 
 one another's burdens. 
 
 And just in the same way with Christ's Church, 
 with the company of true Christian men. If the 
 clergymen thought only of themselves and neglected 
 the people, and forgot to labour among them, and 
 pray for them, and preach to them; and if the 
 people each cared -for himself, and never prayed to 
 God to give them a spirit of love and charity, and 
 never helped their neighbours, or did unto others 
 as they wished to be done by; and above all, if 
 Christ, our Head, left His Church, and cared no 
 more about us, what would become of Christ's 
 Church? "\Vhatwould happen to the whole race
 
 222 ASSOCIATION. [SERM. 
 
 of sinful man, but misery in this world, and ruin 
 in the next? But if the people love and help each 
 other, and obey their ministers, and pray for them; 
 and if the ministers labour earnestly after the souls 
 and bodies of their people; and Christ in heaven 
 helps both minister and people with His Spirit, and 
 His providence and protection; in short, if all in 
 the whole Church bear each other's burdens, then 
 Christ's Church will stand, and the gates of hell 
 will not prevail against it. 
 
 Thus you see that this text of bearing one ano- 
 ther's burdens is no new or strange commandment, 
 but the very state in which every man is meant to 
 live, both in his family, Tiis parish, his country, and 
 his Church all his life helping 1 others, and being 
 helped by them in turn. And because families and 
 nations, and the Church of Christ above all, are 
 good, and holy, and beautiful, therefore any society 
 which is formed upon the 'same plan I mean of 
 helping each other must be good also. And, 
 therefore, benefit societies are right and reasonable 
 things, and among all the good which they do, they 
 do this one gVeat good, that they teach men to re- 
 member that there is no use trying to stand alone, 
 but that the way to be safe and happy, is to bear 
 each other's burdens. 
 
 Thus benefit societies are patterns of Christ's 
 Church. But now, my friends, there is another 
 point for each of you to consider, which is this
 
 XX.] ASSOCIATION. 223 
 
 the benefit club is a good thing, but are you a 
 good member of the club ? Do you do your duty, 
 each of you, in the club as Christian men should? 
 I do not ask whether you pay your subscriptions 
 regularly or not that is quite right and necessary, 
 but there is something more than that wanted to 
 make a club go on rightly. Mere paying and re- 
 ceiving money will never keep men together any 
 more than any other outward business. A man may 
 pay his club-money regularly, and yet not be a 
 really good member. And how is this ? You re- 
 member that I trfed to show you that a family, and 
 a nation, and a church, all were kept together by 
 the same principle of bearing one another's bur- 
 dens, just as a benefit club is. Now, what makes a 
 man a good member of Christ's Church, a good 
 Christian, in short ? A man may pay his tithes to 
 the rector, and his church-rates to repair God's house, 
 and his poor-rates to maintain God's poor, all very 
 regularly, and yet be a very bad member of Christ's 
 Church. These payments are all right and good; 
 yet they are but the outside, the letter of what God 
 requires of him. What is wanted is, to serve God 
 in the Spirit, to have the spirit the will, of a 
 Christian in him ; that is, to do all these things for 
 Crod's sake not of constraint, but willingly, "not 
 grudgingly, for God loveth a cheerful giver." No ! 
 If a man i^ really good member of Christ's Church, 
 he lives; a life of faith in Jesus Christ, and of thank-
 
 224 ASSOCIATION. [SERM. 
 
 fulness to Him for His infinite love and mercy in 
 coming down to die for us; and thus the love of 
 God and man is shed abroad in his heart by God's 
 Spirit which is given to him. Therefore, that man 
 thinks it an honour to pay church-rates, and so 
 help towards keeping God's house in repair and 
 neatness. He pays his tithes 'cheerfully, because 
 he loves God's ministers, and feels their use and 
 worth to him. He pays his poor-rates with a will- 
 ing mind, for the sake of that God who has said, 
 that "He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord." 
 And so he obeys not only the letter but the spirit 
 of the law. 
 
 But the man does more than this. Besides obey- 
 ing not only the letter but the spirit of the law, he 
 helps his brethren in a thousand other ways. He 
 shows, in short, by every action, that he believes in 
 God and loves his neighbour. 
 
 ,. And why should it not be just the same in a 
 benefit club? There the good member is not the 
 man who pays his money merely to have a claim for 
 relief when he himself is sick, and yet grudges every 
 farthing that goes to help other members. That 
 man is not a good member. He has come into the 
 club merely to take care of himself, and not to bear 
 others' burdens. He may obey the letter of the 
 club-rules by paying in his subscriptions and by 
 granting relief to sick members, but he does not 
 obey the spk-it of them. If he did, he would be
 
 XX.] ASSOCIATION. 225 
 
 glad to bear his sick neighbour's burden with so 
 little trouble to himself. He would, therefore, grant 
 club relief willingly and cheerfully when it was 
 wanted, ay, he would thank God that he had an 
 opportunity of helping his neighbours. He would 
 feel that all the members of the society were his 
 brothers in a double sense ; first, because they had 
 joined with him to help and support each other in 
 the society; and next that they were his brothers 
 in Christ, who had been baptized into the same 
 Church of God with himself. And he would, there- 
 fore, delight in supporting them in their sickness, 
 and honouring them when they died, and in helping 
 their widows and orphans in their affliction; in 
 short, in bearing his neighbours' burdens, and so 
 fulfilling the law of Christ. And do you not see, 
 that if any of you subscribe to this benefit society 
 in such a spirit as this, that they are the men to 
 give an answer to the question I asked at first 
 "Why are you all here at church to-day?" They 
 come here for the same reason that you all ought to 
 come, to thank God for having kept them well, and 
 out of the want of relief for the past year, and to 
 thank Him, too, for having enabled them to tear 
 their sick neighbours' burdens. And they come, 
 also, to pray to God to keep them well and strong 
 for the year to come, and to raise up those members 
 who are in sickness and distress, that they may all 
 worship God here together another year, as a com- 
 20
 
 226 ASSOCIATION. [SEKM. XX. 
 
 pany of faithful friends, helping each other oh 
 through this life, and all on the way to the same 
 heavenly home, where there will be no more poverty, 
 nor sorrow, nor sickness, nor death, and God shall 
 wipe away tears from all widows and orphans' eyes. 
 And now, my friends, I have tried to put some 
 new and true thoughts into your head ahout your 
 club and your business in this church to-day. And 
 I pray, God grant that you may remember them, 
 and think of this whole matter as a much more 
 solemn and holy one than you ever did before.
 
 SERMON XXI. 
 
 HEAVEN ON EAKTH. 
 
 "Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the 
 glory of God." 1 "Con., x. 31. 
 
 THIS is a command from God, my friends, which 
 is well worth a few minutes' consideration this day; 
 well worth considering, because, though it was 
 spoken eighteen hundred years ago, yet God has not 
 changed since that time; He is just as glorious as 
 ever; and Christian men's relation to God has not 
 changed since that time ; they still live, and move, 
 and have their being in God; they are still His 
 children His beloved; Christ, who died for us, is 
 still our King; God's Spirit is still with us; God's 
 mercy still saves us: we owe God as much as any 
 people ever did. If it was ever any one's duty to 
 show forth God's glory, surely it is our duty too. 
 
 Worth considering, indeed, is this command, for 
 though it is in the Bible, and has been there for 
 eighteen hundred years, it is seldom read, seldomer 
 understood, and still more seldom put into prac- 
 tice. Men eat and drink, and do all manner of
 
 228 HEAVEN ON EARTH. 
 
 things, with all their might and main; but how 
 many of them do they do to the glory of God? 
 No; this is the fault the especial curse of our 
 day, that religion does not mean any longer, as 
 it used, the service of God the heing like God, 
 and showing forth God's glory. No; religion 
 means, nowadays, the art of getting to heaven 
 when we die, and saving our own miserable, worth- 
 less souls, and getting God's wages without doing 
 God's work as if that was godliness, as if that 
 was any thing but selfishness ; as if selfishness 
 was any the better for being everlasting selfishness! 
 If selfishness is evil, my friends, the sooner we get 
 rid of it the better, instead of mixing it up as we 
 do with all our thoughts of heaven, and making our 
 own enjoyment and our own safety the vile root of 
 our hopes for all eternity. And therefore it is that 
 people have forgotten what God's glory is. They 
 seem to think that God's- highest glory is saving 
 them from hell-fire. And they talk not of God and 
 of the wondrous majesty of God, but only of the 
 wonder of God's having saved them looking at 
 themselves all the. time, and not at God. We must 
 get rid of this sorfc. of religion, my friends, at all 
 risks, in order to '/get rid of all sorts of irreligion, 
 for one is the father of the other. 
 
 It is wonderful, indeed, that we are saved from 
 hell, much more raised to heaven, such peevish, 
 cowardly, pitiful creatures as the best of us are :
 
 XXI.] HEAVEN OX EAKTH. 229 
 
 and yet the more we think of it, the less wonder 
 we shall find it. The more we think of the wonder 
 of all wonders, God Himself, His majesty, His 
 power, His wisdom, His love, His pity, His infi- 
 nite condescension, the less reason we shall have 
 to be surprised that he has stooped to save us. 
 Yes, do not be startled for it is tr-ue, that He has 
 done for sinful men nothing contrary to Himself, 
 but just what was to be expected from such un- 
 utterable condescension, and pity, and generosity, 
 as God's is. And so, recollecting this, we shall 
 begin to forget ourselves, and look at God ; and in 
 thinking of Him we shall get beyond mere wonder- 
 ing at Him, and rise to something higher to wor- 
 shipping Him. 
 
 Yes, my friends, this is what we must try at if 
 we would be really godly to find out what God 
 is to find out His likeness, His character, as He 
 is: and has He not shown us .what He is? He 
 who has earnestly read Christ's story he who 
 has understood, and admired, and loved Christ's 
 character, and its nobleness and beauty he who 
 can believe that Jesus Christ is now, at this minute, 
 raising up his heart to good, guiding his thoughts 
 to good, he has seen God; for he has seen the Son, 
 who is the exact likeness of the Father's glory, in 
 whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead in a 
 bodily shape. Remember, he who knows Christ 
 knows God, and that knowledge will help us up a
 
 230 HEAVEN ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 noble step further it will help us to show forth 
 God's glory. For when we once know what God's 
 glory is, we shall see how to make others know it 
 too. We shall know how to do God justice, to 
 set men right as to their notions of God, to give 
 them, at all events, in our own lives and charac- 
 ters, a pattern of Christ, who is the Pattern of 
 God; and whatsoever we do we shall be able to do 
 all to God's glory. 
 
 For what is doing every thing to the glory of 
 God? It is this; we have -seen what God's glory 
 is: He is His own glory. As you say of any very 
 excellent man, you have but to know him to honour 
 him ; or of any very beautiful woman, you have but 
 to see her to admire her ; so I say of God, men have 
 but to see and know Him to love and honour Him. 
 
 Well, then, my friends, if we call ourselves 
 Christian men, if we believe that God is our 
 Father, and delight, as on the grounds of com- 
 mon feeling we ought, to honour our Father, we 
 should try to make every one honour Him as He 
 deserves. In short, whatever we do we should 
 make it tend to His glory make it a lesson 
 to our neighbours, our friends, and our families. 
 We should preach God's glory to them day by 
 day, not by words only, often not by words at 
 all, but by our conduct. Ay, there is the secret. 
 If you wish other men to believe a thing, just 
 behave as if you believed it yourself. Nothing
 
 XXI.] HEAVEN OX EARTH. 231 
 
 is so infectious as example. If you wish your 
 neighbours to see what Jesus Christ is like, let 
 them see what He can make you like. If you wish 
 them to know how God's love is ready to save them 
 from their sins, let them see his love save you from 
 your sins. If you wish them to see God's tender 
 cave in every blessing and every sorrow they have, 
 why let them see you thanking God for every sor- 
 row and every blessing you have. I tell you, 
 friends, example is every thing. One good man, 
 one man who does not put his religion on once 
 a week with his Sunday coat, but wears it for his 
 working dress, and lets the thought of God grow 
 into him, and through and through him. till every 
 thing he says and does becomes religious, that 
 man is worth a ton of sermons he is a living Gos- 
 pel he comes in the spirit and power of Elias 
 he is the image of God. And men .see his good 
 works and admire them in spite of themselves, and 
 see that they are Godlike, and that God's grace is no 
 dream, but that the Holy Spirit is still among men, 
 and that all nobleness and manliness is His gift, 
 His stamp, His picture ; and so they get a glimpse 
 of God again in His saints and heroes, and glorify 
 their Father who is in heaven. 
 
 Would not such a life be a heavenly life? Ay, 
 it would be more, it would be heaven heaven on 
 earth : not in verse-mongering cant, but really. We 
 should then be sitting, as St. Paul tells us, in
 
 232 HEAVEX ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 heavenly places with Jesus Christ, and having our 
 conversation in heaven. All the while we were doing 
 our daily work, following our business, or serving 
 our country, ,or sitting at our own firesides, with 
 wife and child, we should be all that time in heaven. 
 Why not? We are in heaven now, if we had but 
 faith to see it. Oh, get rid of those carnal, heathen 
 notions about heaven, which tempt men to fancy 
 that, after having misused this place God's earth 
 for a whole life, they are to fly away when they 
 die, like swallows in autumn, to another place 
 they know not where where they are to be very 
 happy they know not why or how, nor do I 
 know either. Heaven is not a mere place, my 
 friends. All places are Heaven, if you will be 
 heavenly in them. Heaven is where God is and 
 Christ is, and hell is where God is not and Christ 
 is not. The Bible says, no doubt, there is a place 
 now somewhere beyond the skies where Christ 
 especially shows forth His glory a heaven of hea- 
 vens : and for reasons which I cannot explain, 
 there must be such a place. But, at all events, here 
 is heaven ; for Christ is here and God is here, if 
 we will open our eyes and see them. And how ? 
 how? Did not Christ Himself say, "If a man will 
 love Me, My Father will love him; and we, My 
 Father and I, will come to him, and make our abode 
 with him, and we will show ourselves to him?" Do 
 these words mean nothing or something ? If they
 
 HEAVEN ON EARTH. 233 
 
 have any moaning, do they not mean this, that -in 
 this life, we can see God in this life we can have 
 God and Christ abiding with us? And is not that 
 heaven ? Yes, heaven is where God is. You are 
 in heaven if God is with you, you are in hell if 
 God is not with you; for where God is not, darkness 
 and a devil are sure to be. 
 
 There was a great poet once Dante by name 
 who described most truly and wonderfully, in his 
 own way, heaven and hell, for, indeed, he had been 
 in both. He had known sin and shame, and doubt, 
 and darkness, and despair, which is hell. And after 
 long years of misery, he had got to know love and 
 hope, and holiness and nobleness, and the love of 
 Christ and the peace of God, which is heaven. 
 And so well did he speak of them, that the ignorant 
 people used to point after him with awe in the 
 streets, and whisper, There is the man who has been 
 in hell. Whereon some one made these lines 
 on him:- 
 
 "Thou hast seen hell and heaven? Why not? since heaven 
 
 and hell 
 Within the struggling soul of every mortal dwell." 
 
 Think of that! thou and thou and thou! 
 for in thee, at this moment, is either heaven or hell : 
 and which of them ? Ask thyself ask thyself, friend. 
 If thou art not in heaven in this life, thou wilt never 
 be in heaven in the life to come. At death, says
 
 234 HEAVEN ON EARTH. [SERM. 
 
 the wise man, each thing returns into its own ele- 
 ment, into the ground of its life ; the light into the 
 light, and the darkness into the darkness. As the 
 tree falls so it lies. My friends, who call your- 
 selves enlightened Christian folk, do you suppose 
 that you can lead a mean, worldly, covetous, spiteful 
 life here, and then the moment your soul leaves 
 the body that you are to be changed into the very 
 opposite character, into angels and saints, as fairy 
 tales tell of beasts changed into men? If a beast 
 can be changed into a man, then death can change 
 the sinner into a saint, but not else. If a beast 
 would enjoy being a man, then a sinner would en- 
 joy being in heaven, but not else. A sinful, worldly 
 man enjoy being in heaven? Does a fish enjoy 
 being on dry land? The sinner would long to be 
 back in this world again. Why, what is the em- 
 ployment of spirits ix heaven, according to tte 
 Bible, (for .that is the point to which I have been 
 trying to lead you round again ?) What but glo- 
 rifying God? Not trying only to do every thing 
 to God's glory, but actually succeeding in doing it 
 basking in the sunshine of His smile, delighting 
 to feel themselves as nothing before His glorious 
 majesty, meditating on the beauty of His love, filling 
 themselves with the sight of His power, searching 
 out the treasures of His wisdom, and finding God 
 in all and all in God their whole eternity one act 
 of worship, one hymn of praise. Are there not
 
 XXI.] HEAVEN ON EARTH. 235 
 
 some among us who will have had but little practice 
 at that work? Those who have done nothing for 
 God's glory here, how do they expect to be able 
 to do every thing for God's glory hereafter ? Those 
 who will not take the trouble of merely standing up 
 at the psalms, like the rest of their neighbours, even 
 if they cannot sing with their voices God's praises 
 in this church, how will they like singing God's 
 praises through eternity? No; be sure that the 
 only people who will be fit for heaven, who will 
 like heaven even, are those who have been in hea- 
 ven in this life, the only people who will be able 
 to do every thing to God's glory in the new heavens 
 and new earth, are those who have been trying ho- 
 nestly to do all to His glory in this heaven and this 
 earth. 
 
 Think over, in the meantime, what I have said 
 this day; consider it, and you will have enough to 
 think of, and pray over too, till we meet here again.
 
 SERMON XXII. 
 
 NATIONAL PEIVILEGES. 
 
 "Blessed are the eyes -which see the things which ye see : fof 
 I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see 
 those things which ye see, and have not seen them ; and to 
 hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them." 
 LUKE, x. 23. 
 
 Tins is a noble text, my friends and yet an 
 awful one, for if it does not increase our religion, 
 it will certainly increase our condemnation. It 
 tells us that we, even the meanest among us, are 
 more favoured by God than the kings, and judges, 
 and conquerors pf the old wtfrld, of whom we read 
 this afternoon in the first lesson ; that we have more 
 light and knowledge of God than even the prophets 
 David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to whom God's 
 glory appeared in visible shape. It tells us that we 
 see things which they longed to see, and could not; 
 that words are spoken to us for which their ears 
 longed in vain ; that they, though they died in hope, 
 yet received not the promises, God having provided 
 some better things for us, that they without us 
 should not be made perfect.
 
 SERM. XXII.] NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. 237 
 
 Now, what was this which they longed for, and 
 had not, and yet we have? It was this a Saviour 
 and a Saviour's kingdom. A1J. wise and holy hearts 
 for ages, as well heathens as Jews, had had this 
 longing. They wanted a Saviour one who should 
 free them from sin and conquer evil one who should 
 explain to them all the doubt, and contradiction, 
 and misery of the world, and give them some means 
 of being freed from it one who should set them 
 the perfect pattern of what a man should be, and 
 join earth and heaven, and make godliness part of 
 man's daily life. They longed for a Saviour, and 
 for a heavenly kingdom also. They saw that all the 
 laws in the world could never make men good; that 
 one half of men broke them, and the other half only 
 obeyed them unwillingly through slavish fear, loving 
 the sin they dared not do. That men got worse 
 and worse as time rolled on ; that kings, instead of 
 being shepherds of their people, were only wolves 
 and tyrants to keep them in ignorance and misery; 
 that priests only taught the people lies,' and fat- 
 tened themselves at their expense; that, in short, 
 as David said, men would not learn or understand, 
 and all the foundations of the earth, the grounds 
 and principles of society, politics, and religion, were 
 out of course, and the devil very truly the king of 
 this lower world. So they longed for a heavenly 
 kingdom a kingdom of God, one in which men 
 should obey God for love, and not for fear, and 
 21 "
 
 238 NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. [SERM. 
 
 man for God's sake; a spiritual kingdom a king- 
 dom whose laws should be written in men's hearts 
 and spirits, and be their delight and glory, not their 
 dread. They longed for a King of kings, who should 
 teach all kings and magistrates to rule in love and 
 wisdom. They longed for a High-priest who should 
 teach all priests to explain the wonder and the glory 
 that there is in every living man, and in heaven and 
 earth, and all that therein lies, and lead men's 
 hearts into love, and purity, and noble thoughts and 
 deeds. They longed, in short, for a kingdom of 
 God, a golden age, a regeneration of the world, as 
 they called it, and rightly. Of course, the Jewish 
 prophets saw most clearly how this would be brought 
 about, and how utterly necessary a Saviour and His 
 kingdom was to save mankind from utter ruin. 
 They, I say, saw this best. But still all the wise 
 and pious heathens, each according to his measure 
 of light, saw the same necessity, or else were rest- 
 less and miserable because they could not see it. 
 So that in all ages of the world, in a thousand dif- 
 ferent shapes, there was rising up to heaven a 
 mournful, earnest prayer, "Thy kingdom come." 
 
 And now this kingdom is come, and the King of it, 
 the Saviour of men, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 
 Long men prayed, and long men waited, and at last, 
 in the fulness of God's good time, just when the 
 night seemed darkest, and under the abominations of 
 the Roman empire, religion, honesty and common de-
 
 XXII.] NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. 
 
 cency, seemed to have died out, the Sun of Right- 
 eousness rose on the dead and rotten world, to bring 
 life and immortality to light. God sent forth His 
 Son made of a woman, not to condemn the world, 
 but that the world, through Him, might be saved. 
 He sent Him to be our Saviour, to die on the cross 
 for our sins and our children's, that all our guilt 
 might be washed away, and we might come boldly to 
 the throne of grace, with our hearts sprinkled from 
 an evil conscience, and our bodies washed in the 
 waters of baptism. He sent Him to be our Teacher 
 in the perfect law of love, our pattern in every thing 
 which a man should be, and is not. He sent Him 
 to conquer^death by rising from the dead, that He 
 might have power to raise us also to life and im- 
 mortality. He sent Him to fill men with His 
 Spirit, the Spirit of reason and truth, the Spirit of 
 love and courage, that he might know the will of 
 God, and do it as our Saviour did before us. He 
 sent Him to found a Church, to join all men 
 into one brotherhood, one kingdom of God, whose 
 rulers are kings and parliaments, whose ministers 
 are the clergy, whose prophets are all poets and 
 philosophers, authors and preachers, who are true 
 to their own calling; whose signs and tokens are 
 the sacraments ; a kingdom which should never be 
 moved, but should go on for ever, drawing into it all 
 honest and true hearts, and preserving them ever 
 for Christ their Lord.
 
 240 NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. [sERM. 
 
 And that we might not doubt that we, too, be- 
 longed to this kingdom, He has placed in this land 
 His ministers and teachers, Christ's sacraments, 
 Christ's churches in every parish in the land, 
 Christ's Bible, or the means of attaining the Bible, in 
 every house and every cottage ; that from our cradle 
 to our grave we might see that we belonged, as sworn 
 servants and faithful children, to the great Father in 
 heaven, arid Jesus Christ, the King of the earth. 
 
 Thus, my friends, all that all men have longed for 
 we possess ; we want no more, and we shall have no 
 more. If, under the present state of things, we 
 cannot be holy, we shall never be holy. If we can- 
 not use our right in this kingdom of Christ, how 
 can we become citizens of God's everlasting king- 
 dom, when Christ shall have delivered up the domi- 
 nion to His Father, and God shall be all in all? God 
 has done all for us that God will do. He has given 
 us His Son for a Saviour, and a Church in which and 
 by which to worship that Saviour; and what more 
 would we have? Alas! my friends, have we yet 
 used fairly what God has given us ? and if not, how 
 terrible will be our guilt! "How shall we escape 
 if we neglect so great salvation?" And yet how 
 many do neglect how few live as if they were citi- 
 zens of Christ's kingdom! It seems as if God had 
 been too good to us, and heaped us so heavily with 
 blessings, that we were tired of them, and despised 
 them as common things. Common things? They
 
 XXII.] NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. 241 
 
 are the very things, as I said, which the great and 
 the wise in all ages have longed for and prayed for, 
 and yet never found ! Surely, surely, God may well 
 say to us, "What could have been done unto my 
 vineyard which has not been done to it?" What, in- 
 deed ! I wish I could take some of you into a hea- 
 then country for a single week, that you might see 
 what it is not to know of a Saviour not to be 
 members of His Church, as we are. Why, we here 
 in England are in the very garden of the Lord. 
 We have but to Stretch out our hand to the tree of 
 life, and eat and live for ever. From our cradle to 
 our grave, Christ the King is ready to guide, to 
 teach, to comfort, to deliver us. When we are born, 
 we are christened in His name, made members of 
 Christ, children of God, and inheritors by hope of 
 the kingdom of heaven. Is that nothing? It is, 
 alas! nothing in the eyes of most parents ! As we 
 grow older, are we not taught who we are taught 
 to call God our Father taught about Jesus Christ, 
 who He is, and what He is ? Is that, too, nothing ? 
 Alas! that knowledge is generally a mere meaning- 
 less school-lesson, cared for neither by child nor by 
 man. At confirmation, again, we solemnly declare 
 that we belong to Christ's kingdom, and that we 
 will live as His subjects, and His alone. And we 
 are brought to His bishops, to be received as free, 
 reasonable, Christian people, to claim our citizenship 
 in the kingdom of God. Is that nothing ? Yet that, 
 21*
 
 242 NATIONAL PKIVILEGES. [SERM. 
 
 too, is nothing with three-fourths of us. Nothing? 
 Hear me, young people; as I have often told you 
 you are ready enough to excuse yourselves from 
 your confirmation vows, by saying you were not 
 taught to understand them were not taught how 
 to put them into practice. That may be true, or it 
 may not; your sin is just the same. No one with 
 any common honesty or common sense could an- 
 swer as you have to the bishop's question at con- 
 firmation, without knowing that you did make a 
 promise, and knowing well enough what you pro- 
 mised and you who carried to confirmation a care- 
 less heart and a lying tongue, have only yourselves 
 to blame for it! But to proceed: Is not Christ pre- 
 sent, or ready to be present, with us ? Sunday after 
 Sunday, for years, have not the churches been 
 opened all around us, inviting us to enter and wor- 
 ship Christ, knowing that where two or three are 
 gathered together, there is Christ in the midst of 
 them. Is that nothing? This Creed these Lessons 
 these prayers, which Sunday after Sunday you 
 have used; are they nothing? Are they not all 
 proofs that the kingdom of God is come to you, and 
 means whereby you can behave like children of the 
 kingdom ? And not on Sundays alone. Have we not 
 been taught daily, in our own houses, in our own 
 hearts, in all danger, and trouble, and temptation, to 
 pray to Jesus Christ, our King, knowing that He will 
 hear and save all them that put their trust in Him ?
 
 XXII.] NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. 243 
 
 Is that nothing ? On our happy marriage morn, too, 
 was it not in God's house, before Christ's minister, 
 in Christ's name that we were married ? Surely the 
 kingdom of God is come to us, when our wedlock, as 
 Avell as our souls and bodies, is holv to the Lord. Is 
 
 J 
 
 that nothing ? How few think of their marriage- 
 joys as holy things an ordinance of Christ's king- 
 dom, which He delights in and blesses with His 
 presence and Plis special smile, seeing that it is the 
 noblest and the purest' of all things on earth the 
 picture of the great mystery which shall be the 
 bridal of all bridals, the marriage of Christ and His 
 Church ! People do not, nowadays, believe in mar- 
 riage as a part of their religion ; and so, according 
 to their want of faith it happens to them ; their mar- 
 riage is not holy, and the love and joy of their youth 
 wither into a peevish, careless, lonely old age; 
 and yet over their heads thes.e words were said, 
 " They are man and wife together, in the Name of 
 the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost !" 
 This comes of not believing in Christ's presence and 
 Christ's favour; of pot believing, in short, in what 
 the Creed truly calls the Holy Catholic Church. 
 Neither after that does Christ leave us. Every time 
 a woman is churched, is not that meant to be a sign 
 of thankfulness to Christ, the great Physician, to 
 whom she owes her life and health once more ? 
 Then, season after season, is the sacrament of 
 Christ's body and blood offered you. Is that no
 
 244 NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. [SERM. 
 
 sign that Christ is here among us? Ah! blessed 
 are the eyes which see that, blessed are the ears 
 which hear those words, " Take, eat ; this is My 
 body, which is broken for you." Truly, if that ho- 
 nour, that blessing, is so vast, the love and the con- 
 descension of Christ, the Lamb of God, so unuttera- 
 ble, that prophets and kings, whatever they believed, 
 never could have desired, never could have imagined, 
 that the Son of God should offer to the sons of 
 men, year after year, in their little parish churches, 
 His most precious body, His most precious blood. 
 And another thing, too, those prophets and kings 
 would never have imagined, that when Christ, in 
 those churches, offers His body and His blood, 
 nine-tenths of the congregation, calling themselves 
 Christians, should quietly walk out, and go home, 
 and leave the sacraments of Christ's bcxly and 
 Christ's blood behind as a useless and unnecessary 
 matter ! That, indeed, the old prophets and kings 
 never saw, and never expected to see but so it is. 
 Christ is among us, and our eyes are holden, and 
 we know Him not. 
 
 And then at last, after all these blessed privileges, 
 these tokens of God's kingdom, have been neglected 
 through a long life, does Christ neglect us in the 
 hour of death ? Ah, no ! He is at the grave as He 
 was at the font, at the marriage-bed, at His own 
 holy table in God's house; and the body is laid in 
 the ground by Christ's minister in the certain hope
 
 XXII.] NATIONAL PRIVILEG : 245 
 
 of a joyful resurrection. But what a sure and 
 certain hope for each and all? The resurrection is 
 a joyful hope but is it so for all? Only, too often, 
 a faint, dim longing that clings to the last chance, 
 and dares not confess to itself how hopeless must 
 be the death of that man or woman whose life was 
 spent in the kingdom of God, in the midst of bless- 
 ings which kings and prophets desired in vain to 
 see, and yet who neglected them all, never entered 
 into the spirit of them never loved them never 
 lived according to them, but despised and trampled 
 under foot the kingdom of God from their childhood 
 to their grave, as three-fourths of us do. Christ 
 came to judge no man, and therefore Christ's mi- 
 nisters judge no man, and read the Christian funeral 
 service over all, and pray Christ to be there, and to 
 remember His blessed promise of raising tip the 
 body and soul to everlasting life. But how can they 
 help fearing that Christ will not hear, them- that 
 after all His offers and gifts in this life have been 
 despised, He will give nothing after death but death; 
 and that it were better for the sinful, worldly sham 
 Christian, when lying in his coffin, if he had never 
 been born ? How can those escape who neglect so 
 great salvation? 
 
 Ah, my friends my friends, take this to heart! 
 Blessed, indeed, are the eyes which see what you 
 see, and hear what you hear ; prophets and kings 
 have desired to see and hear them, and have not
 
 NATIONAL PRIVILEGES. [SERM. XXII. 
 
 seen or heard ! But if you, cradled among all these 
 despised honours and means of grace, bring forth 
 no fruit in your lives shut out from yourselves the 
 thought of your high calling in Jesus Christ what 
 shall be your end but ruin ? He that despises 
 Christ, Christ will despise him ; and say not to your- 
 selves, as many do, "We are church-goers we are 
 all safe. I say to you, God is able from among 
 the Negro and the wild Irishman ay, God is able 
 of these stones to raise up children to the Church of 
 England, while those of you, the children of the 
 kingdom, who lived in the Church of your fathers, 
 and never used or loved her, or Christ, her King, 
 shall be cast into outer darkness, where there shall 
 be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
 
 SERMON XXIII. 
 
 LEXTEN THOUGHTS. 
 
 "Now, therefore, thus saitli the Lord of Hosts, Consider your 
 ways." HAGGAI, i. 5. 
 
 NEXT Wednesday is Ash- Wednesday, the first 
 day of Lent, the season which our forefathers have 
 appointed for us to consider and mend our ways, 
 and return, year by year, heart and soul, to that 
 Lord and Heavenly Father from whom we are daily 
 wandering. Now, we all know that we ought to 
 have repented long ago ; we all know that sinning 
 in many things daily, as we do, we ought all to 
 repent daily. But that is not enough; we do want, 
 unless we are wonderfully better than the holy men 
 of old we do want, I say, a particular time in which 
 we may sit down deliberately and look our own souls 
 steadily in the face, and cast up our accounts with 
 God, and be thoroughly ashamed and terrified at 
 those accounts when we find, as we shall, that we 
 cannot answer God one thing in a thousand. It is 
 all very well to say, I confess and repent of my sins
 
 248 LENTEN THOUGHTS. [SEKM. 
 
 daily, why should I do it especially in Lent? Very 
 true. Let us see, then, by your altered life and 
 conduct, that you have repented during this Lent, 
 and then it will be time to talk of repenting every 
 day after Lent. But, in fact, a man might just as 
 well argue, I say my prayers every day, and God 
 hears them, why should I say them more on Sundays 
 than any other day? Why? not only because your 
 forefathers, and the Church of your forefathers, have 
 advised you, which, though not an imperative reason, 
 is still a strong one, surely, but because the thing 
 is good, and reasonable, and right in itself. Because, 
 as they found in their own case, and as you may find 
 in yours, if you will but think, the hurry and bustle 
 of business is daily putting repentance and self- 
 examination out of our heads. A man may think 
 much, and pray much, thank God, in the very midst 
 of his busiest work, but he is apt to be hurried; he 
 has not set his thoughts especially on the matters of 
 his soul, and so the soul's work is not thoroughly 
 done. Much for which he ought to pray he forgets 
 to pray for. Many sins and feelings of which he 
 ought to repent, slip past him out of sight in the 
 hurry of life. Much good that might be done is 
 put off and laid by, often till it is too late. But 
 now here is a regular season in which we may look 
 back and say to ourselves, " IIow^ have I been 
 getting on for this twelvemonth, not in pocket, 
 but in character? not in the appearance of character
 
 XXIII.] LEXTEN THOUGHTS. 249 
 
 in my neighbour's eyes, but in real character in 
 the eyes of God? Am I more manly, or more wo- 
 manly more godly, more true, more humble above 
 all, more loving, than I was this time last year? 
 What bad habits have I conquered? What good 
 habits have grown upon me ? What chances of doing 
 good have I let slip ? What foolish, unkind things 
 have I done? My duty to God and my neighbours 
 is so and so ; how have I done it ? Above all, this 
 Saviour and King in heaven, in whom I profess to 
 believe, to whom I have sworn to be loyal and true, 
 and to help his good cause, the cause of godliness, 
 manliness, and happiness among my neighbours, in 
 my family, in my own heart, how have I felt to- 
 wards Him ? Have I thought about Him more this 
 year than I did last ? Do I feel any more loyalty, 
 respect, love, gratitude to Him than I did? Ay, 
 more, do I think about Him at all as a living man, 
 much less as my King and Saviour ; or, is all I 
 really know about Him the sound of the words 
 Jesus Christ, and the story about Him in the 
 Apostles' Creed? Do I really believe and trust in 
 "Jesus Christ," or do I not? These are sharp, 
 searching questions, my friends, good Lenten food 
 for any man's soul, questions which it is much 
 more easy to ask soberly and answer fairly now, when 
 you look quietly back on the past year, than it is, 
 alas ! to answer them day by day amid all the bustle 
 of your business and your families. But you will 
 22
 
 250 LENTEN THOUGHTS. [SERM. 
 
 answer, "This bustle will go on just as much in 
 Lent as ever. Our time and thoughts will be just as 
 much occupied. We have our livings to get. We 
 are not fine gentlemen and ladies who can lie by for 
 forty days and do nothing but read and pray, while 
 their tradesmen and servants are working for them 
 from morning to night. How then can we give up 
 more time to religion now than at other times?" 
 
 This is all true enough; but there is a sound and 
 true answer to it. It is not so much more time which 
 you are asked to give up to your souls in Lent, as it 
 is more heart. What do I talk of? Griving up more 
 time to your souls ? And yet this is the way we all 
 talk, as if our time belonged to our bodies, and so we 
 had to rob them of it, to give it up to our souls, as if 
 our bodies were ourselves, and our souls were trouble- 
 some burdens, or peevish children hanging at our 
 backs, which would keep prating and fretting about 
 heaven and hell, and had to be quieted, and their 
 mouths stopped as quickly and easily as possible, that 
 we might be rid of them, and get about our true busi- 
 ness, our real duty, this mighty work of eating and 
 drinking, and amusing ourselves, and making money. 
 I am afraid afraid there are too many, who, if they 
 spoke out their whole hearts, would be quite as content 
 to have no souls, and no necessity to waste their pre- 
 cious time (as they think) upon religion. But, my 
 friends, my friends, the day will come when you will 
 see yourselves in a true light; when your soul will
 
 XXIII.] LENTEN THOUGHTS. 251 
 
 not seem a mere hanger-on to your body, but you "will 
 find outjhat you are your soul. Then there will be no 
 more forgetting that you have souls, and thrusting 
 them into the background, to be fed at odd minutes, or 
 left to starve, no more talk of giving up time to the 
 care of your souls ; your souls will take the time for 
 themselves then and the eternity, too; they will be 
 all in all to you then, perhaps, when it is too late! 
 Well, I want you, just for forty days, to let your 
 souls be all in all to you now; to make them your 
 first object your first thought in the morning, 
 the last thing at night, your thought at every odd 
 moment in the day. You need not neglect your 
 business ; only for one short forty days do not make 
 your business your god. We are all too apt to try 
 the heathen plan, of seeking first every thing else in 
 the world, and letting the kingdom of God and Hia 
 righteousness be added to us over and above or not 
 added, as it may happen. Try for once the plan 
 the Lord of heaven and earth advises, and seek first 
 the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and see 
 whether every thing else will not be added to you. 
 Again, you need not be idle a moment more in 
 Lent than at any other time. But I dare say, that 
 none of you are so full of business that you have not 
 a free ten minutes in the morning, and ten minutes 
 at night, of which the best of uses may be made. 
 What do I say? Why, of all men in the world, 
 farmers and labourers have most time, I think, to
 
 252 LENTEN THOUGHTS. [SEHM. 
 
 themselves ; working as they do, the greater part of 
 their day in silence and alone; what opportunities for 
 them to have their souls busy in heaven, while they 
 are pacing over the fields, ploughing and hoeing ! I 
 have read of many, many labouring men who had 
 found out their opportunities in this way, and used 
 them so well as to become holy, great and learned 
 men. One of the most learned scholars in England 
 at this day was once a village carpenter, who used, 
 when young, to keep a book open before him on his 
 bench while he worked, and thus contrived to teach 
 himself, one after the other, Latin, Greek, and He- 
 brew. So much time may a man find who looks for 
 time! 
 
 But after all, and above all, believe this that if 
 your business or your work does actually give you 
 no time to think about God and your own souls, if 
 in the midst of it all you cannot find leisure enough 
 night and morning to pray earnestly, to read your 
 Bible carefully, if it so swallows up your whole 
 thoughts during the day, that you have no oppor- 
 tunity to recollect yourself, to remember that you are 
 an immortal being, and that you have a Saviour in 
 heaven, whom you are serving faithfully, or unfaith- 
 fully, if this work or business of yours will not give 
 you time enough for that, then it is not God's busi- 
 ness, and ought not to be yours either. 
 
 But you have time, you have all time. When 
 there is a will there is a way. Make up your minds 
 that there shall be a will, and pray earnestly to God
 
 XXIII.] LENTEN THOUGHTS. 253 
 
 to give it to you, if it is but for forty days : and in 
 them think seriously, slowly, solemnly, over your 
 past lives. Examine yourselves and your doings. 
 Ask yourselves fairly, 'Am I going forward or back? 
 Am I living like a child of God, or like a mere ma- 
 chine for making food and wages ? Is my conduct 
 such as the Holy Scriptures tell me that it should 
 be?' You will not need to go far for a set of ques- 
 tions, my friends, or rules by which to examine 
 yourselves. You can hardly open a page of God's 
 blessed Book without finding something which stares 
 you in the face with the question, 'Do I do thus?' 
 or, 'Do I not do thus?' Take, for example, the 
 Epistle of this very day. What better test can we 
 have for trying and weighing our own souls ? 
 
 What says it ? That though we were wise, chari- 
 table, eloquent all that the greatest of men can be, 
 and yet had not charity love, we are nothing ! 
 nothing! And how does it describe this necessary, 
 indispensable, heavenly love ? Let us spend the last 
 few minutes of this sermon in seeing how. And if 
 that description does not prick all our hearts on 
 more points than one, they are harder than I take 
 them for; far harder, certainly, than they should be. 
 
 This charity, or love, we hear, which each of us 
 ought to have and must have, ' suffers long, and is 
 kind.' What shallwe say to that? How many hasty, 
 revengeful thoughts and feelings have risen in the 
 hearts of most of us in the last year? Here is one 
 22*
 
 L'54 LENTEN THOUGHTS. [SERM. 
 
 thought for Lent: "Charity envies not." Have 
 we envied any their riches, their happiness, their 
 good name, health, and youth ? Another thought 
 for Lent: "Charity boasts not herself." Alas! alas! 
 my friends, are not the best of us apt to make much 
 of the little good we do, to pride ourselves on the 
 petty kindnesses we -show, to be puffed up with 
 easy self-satisfaction, just as charity is not puffed up? 
 Another Lenten thought : " Charity does not behave 
 herself unseemly;" is never proud, noisy ,'conceited; 
 gives every man's opinion a fair, kindly hearing; 
 making allowances for all mistakes. Have we done 
 so? Then there is another thought for Lent: 
 " Charity seeks not her own ;" does not stand fiercely 
 and stiffly on her own rights, on the gratitude due 
 to her. While we are we not too apt, when we 
 have done a kindness, to fret and fume, and t]iink 
 ourselves deeply injured, if we do not get repaid at 
 once with all the humble gratitude we expected ? Of 
 this, also, we must think: " Charity thinks no evil," 
 sets down no bad motives for any one's conduct, but 
 takes for granted that he means well, whatever ap- 
 pearances may be; while we (I speak of myself just 
 as much as of any one,) are we not continually apt 
 to be suspicious, jealous, to take for granted that 
 people mean harm ; and even when we find ourselves 
 mistaken, and that we have cried out before we are 
 hurt, not to consider it as any sin against our neigh- 
 bour, whom in reality we have been silently slander-
 
 XXIII.] LEXTEX THOUGHTS. 255 
 
 ing to ourselves? " Charity rejoices not in iniquity," 
 but in the truth, whatever it may be; is never glad 
 to see a high professor prove a hypocrite, and fall 
 into sin, and show himself in his true foul colours ; 
 which we, alas ! are too apt to think a very pleasant 
 sight. Are not these wholesome meditations for 
 Lent? "Charity hopes all things" of every one, 
 "believes all things," all good that is told of every 
 one, "endures all things," instead of flying off and 
 giving up a person at the first fault. Are not all 
 these points, which our own hearts, consciences, 
 common sense, or whatever you like to call it (I 
 shall call it God's Spirit,) tell us are right, true, 
 necessary ? And is there one of us who can say that 
 he has not offended in many, if not in all these 
 points; and is not that unrighteousness going out 
 of the right straightforward, childlike, loving way of 
 looking at all people ? And is not all unrighteous- 
 ness sin ? And must not all sin be repented of, and 
 that as soon as we find it out? And can we not all 
 find time this Lent to throw over these sins of ours ? 
 to confess them with shame and sorrow? to try 
 like men to shake them off? Oh, my friends ! you 
 who are too busy for forty short days to make your 
 immortal souls your first business, take care take 
 care, lest the day shall come when sickness, and 
 pain, and the terror of death, shall keep you too 
 busy to prepare those unrcpenting, unforgiven, sin 
 besotted souls of yours for the kingdom of God.
 
 SERMON XXIV. 
 
 ON BOOKS. 
 
 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 
 and the Word was God." JOHN, i. 1. 
 
 I DO not pretend to be able to explain this text 
 to you, for no man can comprehend it but He of 
 whom it speaks, Jesus Christ, the Word of God. 
 But I can, by God's grace, put before you some of 
 the awful and glorious truths of which it gives us a 
 sight, and may Christ direct you, who is the Word, 
 and grant me words to bring the matter home to 
 you, so as to make some of you, at least, ask your- 
 selves the golden question, "If this is true, what 
 must we do to be saved ? " 
 
 The text says that the Word was from the begin- 
 ning with God, ay, God Himself: who the Word is, 
 there is no doubt from the rest of the chapter, 
 which you heard read this morning. But why is 
 Christ called the Word of all words the Word of 
 God? Let us look at this. Is not Christ tlte man, 
 the head and pattern of all men who are what men
 
 SERM. XXIV.] ON BOOKS. 257 
 
 ought to be? And did He not tell men that lie is 
 the Life? That all life is given by Him and out of 
 Him? And does not St. John tell us that Christ the 
 Life is the light of men, the true light which 
 lighteth every man who cometh into the world? 
 
 Remember this, and then think again, what is 
 it which makes men different from all other living 
 things we know of? Is it not speech the power 
 of words ? The beasts may make each other under- 
 stand many things, but they have no speech. These 
 glorious things words are man's right alone, part 
 of the image of the Son of God the Word of God, 
 in which man was created. If men would but think 
 what a noble thing it is merely to be able to speak 
 in words, to think in words, to write in words ! 
 Without words, we should know no more of each 
 other's hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of 
 his fellow dog, without words to think in ; for if 
 you will consider, you always think to yourself in 
 .words, though you do not speak them aloud; and 
 without them all our thoughts would be mere blind 
 longings, feelings which we could not understand 
 our own selves. Without words to write in, we 
 could not know what our forefathers did; we could 
 not let our children after us know what to do. 
 But, now. books the written word of man are 
 precious heir-looms from one generation to another, 
 training us, encouraging us, teaching us, by the 
 words and thoughts of men, whose bodies are cruui-
 
 258 ON BOOKS. [SERM. 
 
 bled into dust ages ago, but whose words the power 
 of uttering themselves, which they got from the Son 
 of God still live, and bear fruit in our hearts, and 
 in the hearts of our children after us, till the last 
 day. 
 
 But where did these words this power of uttering 
 our thoughts, come from? Do you fancy that men 
 first began, like brute beasts or babies, with strange 
 cries and mutterings, and so gradually found out 
 words for themselves ? Not they ; the beasts have 
 been on the earth as long as man; and yet they can 
 no more speak than they could when God created 
 Adam: but Adam, we find, could speak at once. 
 God spoke to Adam the moment he was made, and 
 Adam understood Him; so he knew the power and 
 the meaning of words. Who gave him that power? 
 Who but Jehovah Jesus the Word of God, who 
 imparted to him the word of speech and the light of 
 reason ? Without them what use would there have 
 been in saying to him, " Thou shalt not eat of the 
 tree of knowledge?" Without them what would 
 there have been in God's bringing to him all the 
 animals to see what he would call them, unless He 
 had first given Adam the power of understanding 
 words and thinking of words, and speaking words? 
 This was the glorious gift of Christ the Voice 
 or Word of the Lord God, as we read in the second 
 chapter of Genesis, whom Adam heard another time 
 with fear and terror, " The voice of the Lord walking
 
 XXIV.] ON BOOKS. 259, 
 
 in the garden in the cool of the day." A text and 
 a story strange enough, till we find in the first chap- 
 ter of St. John the explanation of it, telling us that 
 the Word was in the beginning with God very 
 God, and that He was the light which lighteth every 
 man who cometh into the Avorld. So Christ is the 
 light which lighteth every man who cometh into the 
 world. How are we to understand that, when there 
 are so many who live and die heathens or repro- 
 bates, some who never hear of Christ, some, alas ! 
 in Christian lands, who are dead to every doctrine 
 or motive of Christianity ? yet the Bible says that 
 Christ lights every man who comes into the world. 
 Difficult to understand at first sight, yet most true, 
 and simple, too, at bottom. 
 
 For how is every one, whether heathen or Chris- 
 tian, child or man, enlightened or taught to live 
 and behave ? Is it not by the words of those round 
 him, by the words he reads in books, by the thoughts 
 which he thinks out and puts into shape for him- 
 self? All this is the light which every human be- 
 ing has his share of. And has not every man, too, 
 the light of reason and good feeling, more or less, 
 to tell him whether each thing is right or wrong, no- 
 ble or mean, ugly or beautiful? This is another way 
 by which the light which lighteth every man works. 
 And St. John tells us in the text, that he who works 
 in this way, he who gives us the power of under- 
 standing, and thinking, and judging, and speaking,
 
 260 ON BOOKS. [SERM. 
 
 is the very same Word of God who was made flesh, 
 and dwelt among men, and died on the cross for 
 us ; "the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins 
 of the world!" 
 
 He is the Word of God by Him God has spoken 
 to man in all ages. He taught Adam, He spoke to 
 Abraham as a man speaketh with his friend. It 
 was He, Jehovah, whom we call Jesus, whom Moses 
 and the seventy elders saw saw with their bodily 
 eyes on Mount Sinai, who spoke to them with 
 human voice from amid the lightning and the 
 rainbow. It must have been only He, the Word, 
 by whom God the Father utters himself to man, 
 for no man hath seen God at any time ; only the 
 Word, the only-begotton Son, who is in the bosom 
 of the Father, He hath declared him. And who put 
 into the mouth of David those glorious Psalms 
 the songs in which all true men for three thousand 
 years have found the very things they longed to 
 speak themselves and could not? Who but Christ 
 the Word of God, the Lord, as David calls him, 
 put a new song into the mouth of His holy poet, 
 the sweet singer of Israel ? Who spake by the 
 prophets, again? What do they say themselves ? 
 " The Word of the Lord came to me, saying." And 
 then, when the Spirit of God stirred them up, the 
 Word of God gave them speech, and they said the say- 
 ings which shall never pass away till all be fulfilled. 
 And who was it who, when He was upon earth,
 
 XXIV.] ON BOOKS. 261 
 
 spake as never man spake whose words were the 
 simplest, and yet the deepest the tenderest, and 
 yet the most awful which ever broke the blessed si- 
 lence upon this earth whose words now to this day 
 come home to men's hearts, stirring them up to the 
 very roots, piercing through the marrow of men's 
 souls whose but Christ's, the Word, who was made 
 flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth ? 
 And who since then, do you think, has it been who 
 has given to all wise and holy poets, philosophers, 
 and preachers, the power to speak and write the 
 wonderful truths which, by God's grace, they 
 thought out for themselves and for all mankind ? 
 Who gave them utterance who but Christ, the 
 Lord of men's spirits the Word of God, who pro- 
 mised to give to all His true disciples a mouth and 
 wisdom which their enemies should not be able to 
 gainsay or resist. 
 
 Well, my friends, ought not the knowledge of 
 this to make us better and wiser? Ought it not to 
 make us esteem, and reverence, and use many things 
 of which we are apt to think too lightly ? How it 
 should make us reverence the Bible, the written 
 word of God's saints and prophets, of God's apostles, 
 of Christ, the Word himself? Oh, that men would 
 use that treasure of the Bible as it deserves : oh, 
 that they would believe from their hearts, that what- 
 ever is said there is truly said, that whatever is said 
 there is said to them, that whatever names things
 
 262 ON BOOKS. [SKRM. 
 
 are called there are called by their right names. 
 Then men would no longer call the vile person boun- 
 tiful, or call pride and vanity honour, or covetous- 
 ness respectability, or call sin worldly wisdom; but 
 they would call things as Christ calls them they 
 would try to copy Christ's thoughts and Christ's 
 teaching; and instead of looking for instruction and 
 comfort to lying opinions and false worldly cunning, 
 they would find their only advice in the blessed 
 teaching, and their only comfort in the gracious 
 promises of the word of the Book of Life. 
 
 Again, how these thoughts ought to make us 
 reverence all books. Consider! except a living 
 man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book ! 
 a message to us from the dead from human 
 souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thou- 
 sands of miles away; and yet these, in those little 
 sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, 
 teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as 
 brothers. 
 
 Why is it that neither angels, nor saints, nor evil 
 spirits, appear to men now to speak to them as they 
 did of old? Why, but because we have books, by 
 which Christ's messengers, and the devil's messen- 
 gers too, can tell what they will to thousands of 
 human beings at the same moment, year after year, 
 all the world over ! I say, we ought to reverence 
 books, to look at them as awful and mighty things. 
 If they arc good and true, whether they are about
 
 XXIV.] OX BOOKS. 
 
 religion or politics, farming, trade, or medicine, they 
 are the message of Christ, the Maker of all things, 
 the Teacher of all truth, which he has put into the 
 heart of some man to speak, that he may tell us 
 what is good for our spirits, for our bodies, and for 
 our country. 
 
 And at the last day, be sure of it, we shall have 
 to render an account a strict account, of the books 
 which we have read, and of the way in which we 
 have obeyed what we read, just as if we had had so 
 many prophets or angels sent to us. 
 
 If, on the other hand, books are false and wicked, 
 we ought to fear them as evil spirits loose among us, 
 as messages from the father of lies, who deceives the 
 hearts of evil men, that they may spread Abroad 
 the poison of his false and foul messages, putting 
 good for evil, and evil for good, sweet for bitter, and 
 bitter for sweet, saying to all men, " I, too, have a 
 tree of knowledge, and you may eat of tjie fruit 
 thereof, and not die." But believe him not. When 
 you see a wicked book, when you find in a book any 
 thing which contradicts God's book, cast it away, 
 trample it under foot, believe that it is the devil 
 tempting you by his cunning, alluring words, as he 
 tempted Eve, your mother. Would to God all here 
 would make that a rule, never to look into an evil 
 book, a filthy ballad, a nonsensical, frivolous story ! 
 Can a man take a snake into his bosom and not be 
 bitten? Can we play with fire, and not be burnt? Can
 
 264 ON BOOKS. [SERM. 
 
 we open our ears and eyes to the devil's message, 
 whether of covetousness, or filth, or folly, and not 
 be haunted afterwards by its wicked words, rising up 
 in our thoughts like evil spirits, between us and our 
 pure and noble duty our baptismal vows? 
 
 I might say much more about these things, and, 
 by God's help, in another sermon I will go on, and 
 speak to you of the awful importance of spoken 
 words, of the sermons and the conversation to which 
 you listen, the awful importance of every word which 
 comes out of your own mouth. But I have spoken 
 only of books this morning, for this is the age of 
 books, the time, one would think, of which Daniel pro- 
 phesied, that many should run to and fro, and know- 
 ledge should be increased. A flood of books, news- 
 papers, writings of all sorts, good and bad, is spread- 
 ing over the whole land, and young and old will read 
 them. We cannot stop that, we ought not : it is God's 
 ordinance. It is more : it is God's grace and mercy, 
 that we have a free press in England liberty for 
 every man, that if he have any of God's truth to tell 
 he may tell it out boldly, in books or otherwise. A 
 blessing from God ! one which we should reverence, 
 for God knows it was dearly bought. Before our 
 forefathers could buy it for us, many an honoured 
 man left house and home to die in the battle-field 
 or on the scaffold, fighting and witnessing for the 
 right of every man to whom God's Word comes, to 
 speak God's Word openly to his countrymen. A
 
 XXIV.] ON BOOKS. 265 
 
 blessing, and an awful one ! for the same gate which 
 lets in good lets in evil. The law dare not silence 
 bad books. It dare not root up the tares lest it 
 root up the wheat also. The men who died to buy 
 us liberty knew that it was better to let in a thousand 
 bad books than shut out one good one; for a grain of 
 God's truth will ever outweigh a ton of the devil's lies. 
 We cannot then silence evil books, but we can turn 
 away our eyes from them we can take care that 
 what we read, and what we let others read, shall be 
 good and wholesome. Now, if ever, are we bound 
 to remember that books are words, and that words 
 come either from Christ or the devil, now, if ever, 
 we are bound to try all books by the Word of God, 
 now, if ever, are we bound to put holy and wise 
 books, both religious and worldly, into the hands of 
 all around us, that if, poor souls ! they must need 
 eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they may 
 also eat of the tree of life, and now, if ever, are 
 we bound to pray to Christ the Word of God, that 
 He will raise up among us wise and holy writers, 
 and give them words and utterance, to speak to the 
 hearts of all Englishmen the message of God's cove- 
 nant, and that he may confound the devil and his 
 lies, and all that swarm of vile writers who are filling 
 England with trash, filth, blasphemy, and covet- 
 ousness, with books which teach men that our 
 wise forefathers, who built our churches and founded 
 our constitution, and made England the queen of 
 23*
 
 266 ON BOOKS. [SERM. XXIV. 
 
 nations, were but ignorant knaves and fanatics, and 
 that selfish money-making andgodless licentiousness 
 are the only true wisdom : and so turn the divine 
 power of words, and the inestimable blessing of a 
 free press, into the devil's engine, and not Christ's 
 the Word of God. But their words shall be brought 
 to naught. 
 
 May God preserve us and all our friends from that 
 defilement, and may He give you all grace, in these 
 strange times, to take care what you read and how 
 you read, and to hold fast by the Book of all books, 
 and Christ the Word of God. Try by them all 
 books and men; for if they speak not according to 
 God's law and testimony, it is because there is no 
 truth in them.
 
 SERMON XXV. 
 
 THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. 
 
 " Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let \is go into Judea 
 again. His disciples say to him,- Master, the Jews of late 
 sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again ?" John, 
 xi. 7, 8. 
 
 WE all admire a brave man. And we are right. 
 To be brave is God's gift. To be brave is to be 
 like Jesus Christ. Cowardice is only the devil's 
 likeness. But we must take care what we mean by 
 being brave. Now, there are two sorts of bravery, 
 courage and fortitude. And they are very different : 
 courage is of the flesh fortitude is of the spirit. 
 Courage is good, but dumb animals have it just as 
 much as we. A dog, a tiger, and a horse, have 
 courage, but they have no fortitude because forti- 
 tude is a spiritual thing, and beasts have no spirits 
 like ours. 
 
 What is fortitude ? It is the courage which will 
 make us not only fight in a good cause, but suffer in 
 a good oause. Courage will help us only to give 
 others pain ; fortitude will help us to bear pain our-
 
 268 THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. [SERM. 
 
 selves. And more, fortitude will make a fearful per- 
 son brave, and very often the more brave the more 
 fearful they are. And thus it is that -women are 
 so often braver than men. We, men, are made of 
 coarser stuff; we do not feel pain as keenly as wo- 
 men; and if we do feel, we are rightly ashamed to 
 show it. But a tender woman, who feels pain and 
 sorrow infinitely more than we do, who need not be 
 ashamed of being frightened, who perhaps is ter- 
 rified at every mouse and spider to see her bearing 
 patiently pain, and sorrow, and shame, in spite of all 
 her fearfulness, because she knows it is her duty 
 that is Christ's likeness that is true fortitude that 
 is a sight nobler than all the "bull-dog courage " in 
 the world. For what is the courage of the bull-dog 
 after all, or of the strong quarrelsome man ? He is 
 confident in his own strength, he is rough and hard, 
 and does not care for pain; and when he thrusts his 
 head into a fight, like a surly dog, he does it, not 
 because it is his duty, but because he likes it, be- 
 cause he is angry, and then every blow and every 
 wound makes him more angry, and he fights on, 
 forgetting his pain from blind rage. 
 
 That is not altogether bad; men ought to be 
 courageous. But, oh! my friends, is there not a 
 more excellent way to be brave ? and which is nobler, 
 to suffer bravely for God's sake, or to beat men 
 made in God's image bravely for one's own sake? 
 Think of any fight you ever saw, and then compare
 
 XXV.] TIIE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. 269 
 
 with that the stories of those old martyrs who died 
 rather than speak a word against their Saviour. If 
 you want to see true fortitude, think of what has 
 happened thousands of times when the heathen used 
 to persecute the Christians. How delicate women, 
 who would not venture to set the sole of their foot 
 to the ground for tenderness, would submit, rather 
 than give up their religion and deny the Lord who 
 died for them, to be torn from husband and family, 
 and endure nakedness, and insult, and tortures which 
 make one's blood run cold to read of, till they were 
 torn slowly piecemeal, or roasted in burning flames, 
 without a murmur or an angry word, knowing that 
 Christ, who had borne all things for them, would give 
 them strength to bear all things for Him, trusting 
 that if 'they were faithful unto death, He would give 
 them a crown of life. There was true fortitude 
 there was true faith there was God's strength made 
 perfect in woman's weakness ! Do you not see, my 
 friends, that such a death was truly brave? How 
 does bull- dog courage show beside that courage 
 the courage which conquers grief and pain for duty's 
 sake, instead of merely forgetting them in rage and 
 obstinacy? 
 
 And do you not see how this bears on my text ? 
 How it bears on our Lord's whole life ? Was he 
 not indeed the perfectly brave man the man who 
 endured more than all living men put together, at 
 the very time that ho had the most intense fear of
 
 270 THE COURAGE OF TI1E SAVIOUR. [SERM. 
 
 what he was going to suffer? And, stranger still, 
 endured it all of His own will, while He had it in 
 His power to shake it all off any instant, and free 
 Himself utterly from pain and suffering. 
 
 Now, this speech of our Lord's in the text is just 
 a case of true fortitude. He was beyond Jordan. 
 He had been forced to escape thither to save His 
 life from the mad, blinded Jews. lie had no fool- 
 hardiness ; He knew that He had no more right than 
 we have to put His life in danger when there was no 
 good to be done by it. But now there was good to 
 be done by it. Lazarus was dead, and He wanted 
 to raise him to life. Therefore He said to His dis- 
 ciples, "Let us go into Judea again." They knew 
 the danger; they said, "Master, the Jews of late 
 sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither 
 again?" But He would go; He had a work to do, 
 and He dared bear any thing to do His work. Ay, 
 here is the secret, this is the feeling which gives a 
 man true courage the feeling that he has a work to 
 do at all costs, the sense of duty. Oh ! my friends, 
 let men, women, or children, once feel that they have 
 a duty to perform, let 'them once say to themselves, 
 "I am bound to do this thing it is right for me to 
 do this thing; I owe it as a duty to my family, I 
 owe it as a duty to my country, I owe it as a duty to 
 God, who called me into this station of life; I owe it 
 as a duty to Jesus Christ, who bought me with His 
 blood, that I might do His will and not my own
 
 XXV.] THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. 271 
 
 pleasure.' When a man has once said that honestly 
 to himself, when that glorious, heavenly thought, 
 ' It is my duty,' has risen upon his soul, like the sun 
 upon the earth, warming his heart and enlightening it 
 and making it bring forth all good and noble fruits, 
 then that man will feel a strength come to him, and 
 a courage from God above, which will conquer all his 
 fears and his selfish love of ease and pleasure, and 
 enable him to bea'r insults, and pain and poverty, 
 and death itself, provided he can but do what is right, 
 and be found by God, whatever happens to him, 
 working God's will where God has put him. This 
 is fortitude this is true courage this is Christ's 
 likeness this is the courage which weak women on 
 sick beds may have as well as strong men on the 
 battle-field. Even when they shrink most from suf- 
 fering, God's Spirit will whisper to them, ' It is thy 
 duty, it is thy Father's will;' and then they will find 
 His strength made perfect in their weakness, and 
 when their human weakness fails most God will 
 give them heavenly fortitude, and they will be able, 
 like St. Paul, to say, " When I am weak, then I am 
 strong, for I can do all things through Christ, who 
 strengtheneth me." 
 
 And now, remember that there was no pride, 
 no want of feeling to keep up our Lord's courage. 
 He has tasted sorrow for every man, woman, and 
 child, and therefore He has tasted fear also; 
 tempted in all things, like as we are, that in all
 
 272 THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. [SERM. 
 
 things He might be touched with the feeling of our in- 
 firmities, that there might be no poor soul terrified at 
 the thought of pain or sorrow, but could comfort them- 
 selves with the thought, Well, the Son of God knows 
 what fear is. He who said that His soul was troubled 
 He who at the thought of death was in such agony 
 of terror, that His sweat ran down to the ground like 
 great drops of blood, He who cried in his agony, 
 "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," 
 He understands my pain; He tells me not to be 
 ashamed of crying in my pain, like Him, "Father, if 
 it be possible, let this cup pass from me," for He will 
 give me strength to finish that prayer of His, and 
 in the midst of my trouble say, "Nevertheless, Father, 
 not as I will, but as thou wilt." Remember, again, 
 that our Lord was not, like the martyrs of old, forced 
 to undergo His sufferings whether He liked them or 
 not. We are too apt to forget that, and therefore we 
 misunderstand our Lord's example, and therefore we 
 misunderstand what true fortitude is. Jesus Christ 
 was the Son of God; He had made the very men who 
 were tormenting Him ; He had made the very wood 
 of the cross on which He hung, the iron which pierced 
 His blessed hands; and, for aught we know, one wish 
 of Plis, and they would all have crumbled into dust, 
 and He have been safe in a moment. But he would 
 not; He endured the cross. He was the only man who 
 ever really endured anything at all, because He alone 
 of all men had perfect power to save Himself, even
 
 XXV.] THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. 273 
 
 when He was nailed to the tree, fainting, bleeding, 
 dying. It was never too late for Him to stop. As 
 He said to Peter when he wanted to fight for Christ, 
 " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, 
 and He shall presently give me more than twelve le- 
 gions of angels?" But-fiTe would not. He had to save 
 the world, and He was determined to do it, whatever 
 agony or fear it cost Him. St. Peter was a brave 
 man. He drew his swordin the garden, and attacked, 
 single-handed, that great body of armed soldiers; 
 cutting down a servant of the high-priest's. But he 
 was only brave, our Lord was more. The blessed 
 Jesus had true fortitude ; He could bear patiently, 
 while Peter could only rage and fight uselessly. And 
 see how Christ's fortitude lasted Him, while Peter's 
 mere courage failed him. While our Lord was wit- 
 nessing that glorious confession of His before Pilate, 
 bearing on through, without shrinking, even to the 
 cross itself, where was Peter? He had denied 
 his Master, and ran shamefully away. He had a 
 long lesson to learn before he was perfect, had 
 Peter. He had to learn not how to fight, but how 
 to suffer and he learnt it; and in his old age that 
 strong, fierce St. Peter had true fortitude to give 
 himself up to be crucified, like his Lord, without a 
 murmur, and preach Christ's gospel as he hung for 
 three whole days upon the torturing cross. There 
 was fortitude; that violence of his in the garden 
 was only courage as of a brute animal, courage of 
 24
 
 274 THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. [sERM. 
 
 the flesh, not the true courage of the spirit. Oh, 
 my friends, that we could all learn this lesson, that 
 it is better to suffer than to revenge, better to be 
 killed than to kill. There are times when a man 
 must fight for his country, for just laws, for his 
 family, but for himself it is very seldom that he 
 must fight. He who returns good for evil, he who 
 when he is cursed, blesses those who curse him, he 
 who takes joyfully the spoiling of his goods, who sub- 
 mits to be cheated in little matters, and sometimes 
 in great ones, sooner than ruin the poor sinful 
 wretch who has ill-used him; that man has really 
 put on Christ's likeness ; that man is really going on 
 to perfection, and fulfilling the law of love ; and for 
 every thing he gives up for the sake of peace and 
 mercy, which is for God's sake, God will reward 
 him sevenfold into his bosom. There are times 
 when a man is bound to go to law, bound to expose 
 arid punish evil-doers, lest they should, being un- 
 punished, become confident, and go on from bad to 
 worse, and hurt others as well as him. A man 
 sometimes is bound by his duty to his neighbours 
 and to society to defend himself, to go to law with 
 those who injure him, sometimes ; but never bound 
 to revenge himself, never bound to say, " He has hurt 
 me, and I will pay him off for it at law;" that is 
 abusing law, which is God's ordinance, for mere 
 selfish revenge. You maysay, it is difficult to know 
 which is which, when to defend one-self, and when
 
 XXV.] THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. 275 
 
 not. It is difficult; without the light of God's 
 Spirit, I think no man will know. But let a man 
 live by God's Spirit, let him pray for kindliness, 
 mercifulness, manliness, and patience, for true forti- 
 tude to bear and to forbear, and God will surely 
 open his eyes to see when he is called on to avenge 
 an injury, and when he is called on to suffer 
 patiently. God will show him if a man wishes to 
 be like Christ, and to work like Christ, at doing good, 
 God will teach him and guide him in all puzzling 
 matters like this. And do not be afraid of being 
 called cowards and milksops for bearing injuries 
 patiently those who call you so will be likely to 
 be the greatest cowards themselves. Patience is 
 the truest sign of courage. Ask old soldiers, who 
 have seen real war, and they will tell you that the 
 bravest men, the men who endured best, not in mere 
 fighting, but in standing still for hours to be mowed 
 down by cannon-shot; who were most cheerful and 
 patient in shipwreck, and starvation, and defeat, 
 all things ten times worse than fighting, ask old 
 soldiers, I say, and they will tell you that the men 
 who showed best in such miseries, were generally the 
 stillest and meekest men in the whole regiment: 
 that is true fortitude ; that is Christ's image the 
 meekest of men, and the bravest too. And so books 
 say, and seem to prove it, by many strange stories, 
 that the lion, while he is the strongest and bravest 
 of beasts of prey, is also the most patient and merci-
 
 276. THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR. [XXV. 
 
 ful. He knows his own strength and courage, and 
 therefore he does not care to be showing it off. He 
 can afford to endure an affront. It is only the 
 cowardly cur who flies out and barks at every passer- 
 by. And so with our blessed Lord. The Bible calls 
 Him the Lion of Judah ; but it also calls Him the 
 Lamb, dumb before the shearers. Ah, my friends, we 
 must come back to Him, for all the little that is great 
 and noble in man or woman, or dumb beast even, 
 is perfected in Him ; He only is perfectly great, per- 
 fectly noble, brave, meek. He who to save us sinful 
 men endured the cross, despising the shame, till He 
 sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 
 perfectly brave He is, and perfectly gentle, and will 
 be so for ever ; for even at His second coming, when 
 He shall appear the Conqueror of hell, with tens of 
 thousands of angels, to take vengeance on those 
 who know not God, and destroy the wicked with the 
 breath of His mouth, even then, in His fiercest 
 anger, the Scripture tells us, His anger shall be 
 "the wrath of the Lamb." Almighty vengeance 
 and just anger, and yet perfect gentleness and love 
 all the while. Mystery of mysteries ! The wrath of 
 the Lamb ! May God give us all to feel in that day, 
 not the wrath, but the love of the Lamb who was 
 slain for us ! 
 
 THE END.
 
 UCSB LIBRARY
 
 000604195