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THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

(Good Friday.)

HEBREWS ii. 9, 50.

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

What are we met together to think of this day? God in pain: God sorrowing; God dying for man, as far as God could die. Now it is this; - the blessed news that God suffered pain, God sorrowed, God died, as far as God could die - which makes the Gospel different from all other religions in the world; and it is this, too, which makes the Gospel so strong to conquer men’s hearts, and soften them, and bring them back to God and righteousness in a way no other religion ever has done. It is the good news of this good day, well called Good Friday, which wins souls to Christ, and will win them as long as men are men.

The heathen, you will find, always thought of their gods as happy. The gods, they thought, always abide in bliss, far above all the chances and changes of mortal life; always young, strong, beautiful, needing no help, needing no pity; and therefore, my friends, never calling out our love. The heathens never loved their gods: they admired them, thanked them when they thought they helped them; or they were afraid of them when they thought they were offended.

But as far as I can find, they never really loved their gods. Love to God was a new feeling, which first came into the world with the good news that God had suffered and that God had died upon the cross. That was a God to be loved, indeed; and all good hearts loved him, and will love him still.

For you cannot really love any one who is quite different from you; who has never been through what you have. You do not think that he can understand you; you expect him to despise you, laugh at you. You say, as I have heard a poor woman say of a rich one, ‘How can she feel for me? She does not know what poor people go through.’

Now it is just that feeling which mankind had about God till Christ died.

God, or the gods, were beautiful, strong, happy, self-sufficient, up in the skies; and men on earth were full of sorrow and trouble, disease, accidents, death; and sin, too; quarrelling and killing, hateful and hating each other. How could the gods love men? And then men had a sense of sin; they felt they were doing wrong. Surely the gods hated them for doing wrong. Surely all the sorrows and troubles which came on them were punishments for doing wrong. How miserable they were! But the gods sat happy up in heaven, and cared not for them. Or, if the gods did care, they cared only for special favourites. If any man was very good, or strong, or handsome, or clever, or rich, or prosperous, the gods cared for him - he was a favourite. But what did they care for poor, ugly, deformed, unfortunate, foolish wretches? Surely the gods despised them, and had sent them into the world to be miserable. There was no sympathy, no fellow-feeling between gods and men. The gods did not love men as men. Why should men love them? And so men did not love them.

And as there was no love to God before Good Friday, so there was no love to men.

If God despised the poor, the deformed, the helpless, the ignorant, the crazy, why should not man? If God was hard on them, why should not man oppress and ill-use them? And so you will find that there was no charity in the world.

Among some of the Eastern nations - the Hindoos, for instance - when they were much better men than now, charity did spring up for a while here and there, in a very beautiful shape; but among Greeks and Romans there was simply no charity; and you will find little or none among the Jews themselves.

The Pharisees gave alms to save their own souls, and feed their own pride of being good; but had no charity - ‘This people, who knoweth not the law, is accursed.’ As for poor, diseased people, they were born in sin: either they or their parents had sinned. We may see that the poor of Judea, as well as Galilee, were in a miserable, neglected, despised state; and the worst thing that the Pharisees could say of our Lord Jesus was, that he ate and drank with publicans and sinners. Because there was no love to God, there was no love to man. There was a great gulf fixed between every man and his neighbour.

But Christ came; God came; and became man. And with the blood of his cross was bridged over for ever the gulf between God and man, and the gulf between man and man.

Good Friday showed that there was sympathy, there was fellow-feeling between God and man; that God would do all for man, endure all for man; that God so desired to make man like God, that he would stoop to be made like man. There was nothing God would not do to justify himself to man, to show men that he did care for them, that he did love the creatures whom he had made. Yes; God had not forgotten man; God had not made man in vain. God had not sent man into the world to be wicked and miserable here, and to perish for ever hereafter. Wickedness and misery were here; but God had not put them here, and he would not leave them here. He would conquer them by enduring them. Sin and misery tormented men; then they should torment the Son of God too. Sin and misery killed men; then they should kill the Son of God, too: he would taste death for every man, that men might live by him. He would be made perfect by sufferings: not made perfectly good (for that he was already), but perfectly able to feel for men, to understand them, to help them; because he had been tempted in all things like as they.

And so on Good Friday did God bridge over the gulf between God and men. No man can say now, Why has God sent man into the world to be miserable, while he is happy? For God in Christ was miserable once. No man can say, God makes me go through pain, and torture, and death, while he goes through none of such things: for God in Christ endured pain, torture, death, to the uttermost. And so God is a being which man can love, admire, have fellow-feeling for; cling to God with all the noble feelings of his heart, with admiration, gratitude, and tenderness, even on this day with pity. - As Christ himself said, ‘When I am lifted up, I will draw all men to me.’

And no man can say now, What has God to do with sufferers - sick, weak, deformed wretches? If he had cared for them, would he have made them thus? For we can answer, However sick, or weak they may be, God in Christ has been as weak as they. God has shared their sufferings, and has been made perfect by sufferings, that they might be made perfect also. God has sanctified suffering, pain, and sorrow upon his cross, and made them holy; as holy as health, and strength, and happiness are. And so on Good Friday God bridged over the gulf between man and man. He has shown that God is charity and love; and that the way to live for ever in God is to live for ever in that charity and love to all mankind which God showed this day upon the cross.

And, therefore, all charity is rightly called Christian charity; for it is Christ, and the news of Good Friday, which first taught men to have charity; to look on the poor, the afflicted, the weak, the orphan, with love, pity, respect. By the sight of a suffering and dying God, God has touched the hearts of men, that they might learn to love and respect suffering and dying men; and in the face of every mourner, see the face of Christ, who died for them. Because Christ the sufferer is their elder brother, all sufferers are their brothers likewise. Because Christ tasted pain, shame, misery, death for all men, therefore we are bound this day to pray for all men, that they may have their share in the blessings of Christ’s death; not to look on them any longer as aliens, strangers, enemies, parted from us and each other and God; but whether wise or foolish, sick or well, happy or unhappy, alive or dead, as brothers. We are bound to pray for his Holy Church as one family of brothers; for all ranks of men in it, that each of them may learn to give up their own will and pleasure for the sake of doing their duty in their calling, as Christ did; to pray for Jews, Turks, Heathens, and Infidels; as for God’s lost children, and our lost brothers, that God would bring them home to his flock, and touch their hearts by the news of his sufferings for them; that they may taste the inestimable comfort of knowing that God so loved them as to suffer, to groan, to die for them and all mankind.

(Sexagesima Sunday.)

GENESIS iii. 12.

And the man said, The woman, whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

This morning we read the history of Adam’s fall in the first Lesson. Now does this story seem strange to you, my friends? Do you say to yourselves, If I had been in Adam’s place, I should never have been so foolish as Adam was? If you do say so, you cannot have looked at the story carefully enough. For if you do look at it carefully, I believe you will find enough in it to show you that it is a very natural story, that we have the same nature in us that Adam had; that we are indeed Adam’s children; and that the Bible speaks truth when it says, ‘Adam begat a son after his own likeness.’

Now, let us see how Adam fell, and what he did when he fell.

Adam, we find, was not content to be in the image of God. He wanted, he and his wife, to be as gods, knowing good and evil. Now do, I beseech you, think a moment carefully, and see what that means.

Adam was not content to be in the likeness of God; to copy God by obeying God. He wanted to be a little god himself; to know what was good for him, and what was evil for him; whereas God had told him, as it were, You do not know what is good for you, and what is evil for you. I know; and I tell you to obey me; not to eat of a certain tree in the garden.

But pride and self-will rose up in Adam’s heart. He wanted to show that he did know what was good for him. He wanted to be independent, and show that he could do what he liked, and take care of himself; and so he ate the fruit which he was forbidden to eat, partly because it was fair and well-tasted, but still more to show his own independence.

Now, surely this is natural enough. Have we not all done the very same thing in our time, nay, over and over again? When we were children, were we never forbidden to do something which we wished to do? Were we never forbidden, just as Adam was, to take an apple - something pleasant to the eye, and good for food? And did we not long for it, and determine to have it all the more, because it was forbidden, just as Adam and Eve did; so that we wished for it much more than we should if our parents had given it to us? Did we not in our hearts accuse our parents of grudging it to us, and listen to the voice of the tempter, as Eve did, when the serpent tried to make out that God was niggardly to her, and envious of her, and did not want her to be wise, lest she should be too like God?

Have we not said in our heart, Why should my father grudge me that nice thing when he takes it himself?

He wants to keep it all to himself. Why should not I have a share of it? He says it will hurt me. How does he know that? It does not hurt him. I must be the best judge of whether it will hurt me. I do not believe that it will: but at least it is but fair that I should try. I will try for myself. I will run the chance. Why should I be kept like a baby, as if I had no sense or will of my own? I will know the right and the wrong of it for myself. I will know the good and evil of it myself.

Have we not said that, every one of us, in our hearts, when we were young? - And is not that just what the Bible says Adam and Eve said?

And then, because we were Adam’s children, with his fallen nature in us, and original sin, which we inherited from him, we could not help longing more and more after what our parents had forbidden; we could think, perhaps, of nothing else; cared for no pleasure, no pay, because we could not get that one thing which our parents had told us not to touch. And at last we fell, and sinned, and took the thing on the sly.

And then?

Did it not happen to us, as it did to Adam, that a feeling of shame and guiltiness came over us at once? Yes; of shame. We intended to feed our own pride: but instead of pride came shame and fear too; so instead of rising, we had fallen and felt that we had fallen. Just so it was with Adam. Instead of feeling all the prouder and grander when he had sinned, he became ashamed of himself at once, he hardly knew why. We had intended to set ourselves up against our parents; but instead, we became afraid of them. We were always fancying that they would find us out. We were afraid of looking them in the face. Just so it was with Adam. He heard the word of the Lord God, Jesus Christ, walking in the garden. Did he go to meet him; thank him for that pleasant life, pleasant earth, for the mere blessing of existence? No. He hid himself among the trees of the garden. But why hide himself? Even if he had given up being thankful to God; even if he had learned from the devil to believe that God grudged him, envied him, had deceived him, about that fruit, why run away and hide? He wanted to be as God, wise, knowing good and evil for himself. Why did he not stand out boldly when he heard the voice of the Lord God and say, I am wise now; I am as a God now, knowing good and evil; I am no longer to be led like a child, and kept strictly by rules which I do not understand; I have a right to judge for myself, and choose for myself; and I have done it, and you have no right to complain of me?

Perhaps Adam had intended, when he ate the fruit, to stand up for himself, with some such fine words; as children intend when they disobey.

But when it came to the point, away went all Adam’s self-confidence, all Adam’s pride, all Adam’s fine notions of what he had a right to do; and he hides himself miserably, like a naughty and disobedient child. And then, like a mean and cowardly one, when he is called out and forced to answer for himself, he begins to make pitiful excuses. He has not a word to say for himself. He throws the blame on his wife; it was all the woman’s fault now - indeed, God’s fault. ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’

My dear friends, if we want a proof that the Bible is a true, divine, inspired book, we need go no further than this one story. For, my friends, have we never said the same? When we felt that we had done wrong; when the voice of God and of Christ in our hearts was rebuking us and convincing us of sin, have we never tried to shift the blame off our own shoulders, and lay it on God himself, and the blessings which he has given us? on one’s wife - on one’s family - on money - on one’s youth, and health, and high spirits? - in a word, on the good things which God has given us?

Ah, my friends, we are indeed Adam’s children; and have learned his lesson, and inherited his nature only too fearfully well. For what Adam did but once, we have done a hundred times; and the mean excuse which Adam made but once, we make again and again.

But the loving Lord has patience with us, as he had with Adam, and does not take us at our word. He did not say to Adam, You lay the blame upon your wife; then I will take her from you, and you shall see then where the blame lies. Ungrateful to me! you shall live henceforth alone. And he does not say to us, You make all the blessings which I have given you an excuse for sinning! Then I will take them from you, and leave you miserable, and pour out my wrath upon you to the uttermost!

Not so. Our God is not such a God as that. He is full of compassion and long-suffering, and of tender mercy. He knows our frame, and remembers that we are but dust. He sends us out into the world, as he sent Adam, to learn experience by hard lessons; to eat our bread in the sweat of our brow, till we have found out our own weakness and ignorance, and have learned that we cannot stand alone, that pride and self-dependence will only lead us to guilt, and misery, and shame, and meanness; and that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved from them, but only the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the woman’s seed, who, so God promised, was to bruise the head of the serpent. And he has bruised it. He is the woman’s seed - a man, as we are men, with a human nature, but one without spot of sin, to make us free from sin.

Let us look up to him as often as we find our nature dragging us down, making us proud and self-willed, greedy and discontented, longing after this and that. Let us trust in him, ask him, for his grace day by day; ask him to shape and change us into his likeness, that we may become daily more and more free; free from sin; free from this miserable longing after one thing and another; free from our bad habits, and the sin which does so easily beset us; free from guilty fear, and coward dread of God. Let us ask him, I say, to change, and purify, and renew us day by day, till we come to his likeness; to the stature of perfect men, free men, men who are not slaves to their own nature, slaves to their own pride, slaves to their own vanity, slaves of their own bad tempers, slaves to their own greediness and foul lusts: but free, as the Lord Christ was free; able to keep their bodies in subjection, and rise above nature by the eternal grace of God; able to use this world without abusing it; able to thank God for all the blessings of this life, and learn from them precious lessons; able to thank God for all the sorrows of this life, and learn from them wholesome discipline: but yet able to rise above them all, and say, ‘As long as I hold fast to Christ the King of men, this world cannot harm me. My life, my real human life, does not depend on my being comfortable or uncomfortable here below for a few short years. My real life is hid in God with Jesus Christ, who, after he had redeemed human nature by his perfect obedience, and washed it pure again in the blood of his cross, for ever sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; that so, being lifted up, he might draw all men unto himself - even as many as will come to him, that they may have eternal life.

LUKE xviii. 14.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

Which of these two men was the more fit to come to the Communion? Most of you will answer, The publican: for he was more justified, our Lord himself says, than the Pharisee. True: but would you have said so of your own accord, if the Lord had not said so? Which of the two men do you really think was the better man, the Pharisee or the publican? Which of the two do you think had his soul in the safer state? Which of the two would you rather be, if you were going to die? Which of the two would you rather be, if you were going to the Communion? For mind, one could not have refused the Pharisee, if he had come to the Communion. He was in no open sin: I may say, no outward sin at all. You must not fancy that he was a hypocrite, in the sense in which we usually employ that word. I mean, he was not a man who was leading a wicked life secretly, while he kept up a show of religion. He was really a religious man in his own way, scrupulous, and over-scrupulous to perform every duty to the letter. He went to his church to worship; and he was no lip-worshipper, repeating a form of words by rote, but prayed there honestly, concerning the things which were in his heart. He did not say, either, that he had made himself good. If he was wrong on some points, he was not on that. He knew where his goodness, such as it was, came from. ‘God, I thank thee,’ he says, ‘that I am what I am.’ What have we in this man? one would ask at first sight. What reason for him to stay away from the Sacrament? He would not have thought himself that there was any reason. He would, probably, have thought - ‘If I am not fit, who is? Repent me truly of my former sins? Certainly. If I have done the least harm to any one, I shall be happy to restore it fourfold. If I have neglected one, the least of God’s services, I shall be only too glad to keep it all the more strictly for the future.

‘Intend to lead a new life? I am leading one, and trying to lead one more and more every day. I shall be thankful to any one who will show me any new service which I can offer to God, any new act of reverence, any new duty.

‘I must go in love and charity with all men? I do so. I have not a grudge against any human being. Of course, I know the world too well to be satisfied with it. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that millions are living very sinful, shocking lives - extortioners, unjust, adulterers; and that three people out of four are going straight to hell. I pity them, and forgive them any wrong which they have done to me. What more can I do?’

This is what the Pharisee would have said. Is this man fit to come to the Communion? At least he himself thinks so.

On the other hand, was the publican fit? That is a serious question; one which we cannot answer, without knowing more about him than our Lord has chosen to tell us. Many a person is ready enough, in these days, to cry ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ who is fit, I fear, neither to come to the Communion, nor to stay away either.

It was not so, I suppose, with the old Jews in our Lord’s time. The Pharisees then were hard legalists, who stood all on works; and, therefore, if a man broke off from them, and threw himself on God’s grace and mercy, he did it in a simple, honest, effectual way, like this publican.

But now, I am sorry to say, our Pharisees have contrived to make themselves as proud and self-righteous about their own faith and repentance, as the Jewish Pharisees did about their own works and observances; and there has risen up in England and elsewhere a very ugly new hypocrisy. People now-a-days are too apt to pride themselves on their own convictions of sin, and their own repentance, till they trust in their repentance to save them, and not in Christ, just as the Pharisee trusted in his works to save him, and not in Christ; and when they pray, I cannot help fearing (for I am sure many of their religious books teach them it) that they pray very much like that Pharisee, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, carnal, unconverted, unconvinced of sin, nor even as that plain, moral, respectable man. I am convinced of sin; I am converted; I have the right frames, and the right feelings, and the right experiences.’ Oh, of all the cunning snares of the devil, that I think is the cunningest. Well says the old proverb - ‘The devil is old, and therefore he knows many things.’

In old times he made men trust in their own righteousness: and that was snare enough; now he has learnt how to make men actually trust in their own sinfulness, and so turn the grace of God into a cloak of pride, and contempt of their fellow-creatures

My friends, do you think that if the publican, after he had said, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ had said to himself, ‘There - how beautifully I have repented - how honest I have been to God - I am all right now’ - he would have gone down to his house justified at all? Not he. No more will you and I, my friends. If we have sinned, what should we be but ashamed of it? Ay, utterly ashamed. And if we really know what sin is - if we really see the sinfulness of sin - if we really see ourselves as God sees us - we shall be too much shocked at the sight of our own hearts to have time to boast of our being able to see our own hearts. We shall be too full of loathing and hatred for our sins, too full of longing to get rid of our sins, and to become righteous and holy, even as God is righteous and holy, to give way to any pride in our own frames and feelings; and, instead of thinking ourselves better men than our neighbours because we see our sins, and fancy they do not see theirs, we shall be almost ready to think ourselves worse than our neighbours, to think that they cannot have so much to repent of as we; and as we grow in grace, we shall see more and more sin in ourselves, till we actually fancy at times that no one can be as bad as we are, and in lowliness of mind esteem others better than ourselves. We may carry that too far, too. Certainly there is no use in accusing ourselves of sins which we have not committed; we have all quite enough real sins to answer for without inventing more. But still that is a better frame of mind than the other; for no man can be too humble, while any man can be too proud.

But let us all ask God to open our eyes, that we may see ourselves just as we are, let our sins be many or few. Let us ask God to convince us really of sin by his Holy Spirit, and show us what sin is, and its exceeding sinfulness; how ugly and foul sin is, how foolish and absurd, how mean and ungrateful toward that good God who wishes us nothing but good, and wishes us, therefore, to be good, because goodness is the only path to life and happiness; and then we shall be so ashamed of ourselves, so afraid of our own weakness, so shocked at the difference between ourselves and the spotless Lord Jesus, that we shall have no time to despise others, no time to admire our own frames, and feelings, and repentances. All we shall think of is our own sinfulness, and God’s mercy; and we shall come eagerly, if not boldly, to the throne of grace, to find grace and mercy to help us in the time of need; crying, ‘Purge thou me, O Lord, or I shall never be pure; wash thou me, and then alone shall I be clean. For thou requirest, not frames or feelings, not pride and self-conceit, but truth in the inward parts; and wilt make me to understand wisdom secretly.’

Then, indeed, we shall be fit to come to the Holy Communion; for then we shall be so ashamed of ourselves that we shall truly repent of our sins - so ashamed of ourselves that we shall long and determine to lead a new life - so ashamed of ourselves that we shall have no heart to look down on any of our neighbours, or pass hard judgments on them, but be in love and charity with all men; and so, in spite of all our past sins, come to partake worthily of the body and blood of Him who died for our sins, whose blood will wash them out of our hearts, whose body will strengthen and refresh us, body and soul, to a new and everlasting life of humbleness and thankfulness, honesty and justice, usefulness and love.

THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

LUKE xxiii. 42, 43.

And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

The story of the penitent thief is a most beautiful and affecting one. Christians’ hearts, in all times, have clung to it for comfort, not only for themselves, but for those whom they loved. Indeed, some people think that we are likely to be too fond of the story. They have been afraid lest people should build too much on it; lest they should fancy that it gives them licence to sin, and lead bad lives, all their days, provided only they repent at last; lest it should countenance too much what is called a death-bed repentance.

Now, God forbid that I should try to narrow Christ’s Gospel. Who am I, to settle who shall be saved, and who shall not? When the disciples asked the Lord Jesus, ‘Are there few that be saved?’ he would not tell them. And what Christ did not choose to tell, I am not likely to know.

But I must say openly, that I cannot see what the story of the penitent thief has to do with a death-bed repentance; and for this plain reason, that the penitent thief did not die in his bed.

On the contrary, he received the due reward of his deeds. He was crucified; publicly executed, by the most shameful, painful, and lingering torture; and confessed that it was no more than he deserved.

Therefore, if any man say to himself - and I am afraid that some do say to themselves - ‘I know I am leading a bad life; and I have no mind to mend it yet; the penitent thief repented at the last, and was forgiven; so I dare say that I shall be;’ one has a right to answer him - ‘Very well; but you must first put yourself in the penitent thief’s place. Are you willing to be hanged, or worse than hanged, as a punishment for your sins in this world? For, till then, the penitent thief would certainly not be on the same footing as you.’

If a man says to himself, I will go on sinning now, on the chance of repenting at last, and ‘making my peace with God,’ he is not like the penitent thief, he is much more like a famous Emperor of Rome, who, though a Christian in name, put off his baptism till his death-bed, fancying that by it his sins would be washed away, once and for all, and made use of the meantime in murdering his eldest son and his nephew, and committing a thousand follies and cruelties. Whether his death-bed repentance, purposely put off in order to give him time to sin, was of any use to him, let your own consciences judge.

Has, then, this story of the penitent thief no comfort for us? God forbid! Why else was it put into Christ’s Gospel of good news? Surely, there is comfort in it.

Only let us take the story honestly, and word for word as it stands. So we may hope to be taught by it what it was meant to teach us.

He was a robber. The word means, not a petty thief, but a robber; and his being put to such a terrible death shows the same thing. Most probably he had belonged to one of the bands of robbers which haunted the mountains of Judea in those days, as they used in old times to haunt the forests in England, and as they do now in Italy and Spain, and other waste and wild countries. Some of these robbers would, of course, be shameless and hardened ruffians; as that robber seems to have been who insulted our Lord upon the very cross. Others among them would not be lost to all sense of good. Young men who got into trouble ran away from home, and joined these robber-bands, and found pleasure in the wild and dangerous life.

There is a beautiful story told of such a young robber in the life of the blessed Apostle St. John. A young man at Ephesus who had become a Christian, and of whom St. John was very fond, got into trouble while St. John was away, and had to flee for his life into the mountains. There he joined a band of robbers, and was so daring and desperate that they soon chose him as their captain. St. John came back, and found the poor lad gone. St. John had stood at the foot of the cross years before, and heard his Lord pardon the penitent thief; and he knew how to deal with such wild souls. And what did he do? Give him up for lost? No! He set off, old as he was, by himself, straight for the mountains, in spite of the warnings of his friends that he would be murdered, and that this young man was the most desperate and bloodthirsty of all the robbers. At last he found the young robber. And what did the robber do? As soon as he saw St. John coming - before St. John could speak a word to him, he turned, and ran away for shame; and old St. John followed him, never saying a harsh word to him, but only crying after him, ‘My son, my son, come back to your father!’ and at last he found him, where he was hidden, and held him by his clothes, and embraced him, and pleaded with him so, that the poor fellow burst into tears, and let St. John lead him away; and so that blessed St. John went down again to Ephesus in joy and triumph, bringing his lost lamb with him.

Now, such a man one can well believe this penitent thief to have been. A man who, however bad he had been, had never lost the feeling that he was meant for better things; whose conscience had never died out in him. He may have been such a man. He must have been such a man. For such faith as he showed on the cross does not grow up in an hour or a day. I do not mean the feeling that he deserved his punishment (that might come to a man very suddenly) but the feeling that Christ was the Lord, and the King of the Jews. He must have bought that by terrible struggles of mind, by bitter shame and self-reproach. He had heard, I suppose, of Christ’s miracles and mercy, of his teaching, of his being the friend of publicans and sinners, had admired the Lord Jesus, and thought him excellent and noble. But he could not have done that without the Holy Spirit of God. It was the Holy Spirit striving with his sinful heart, which convinced him of Christ’s righteousness. But the Holy Spirit would have convinced him, too, of his own sin. The more he admired our Lord, the more he must have despised himself for being unlike our Lord; and, doubt it not, he had passed many bitter hours, perhaps bitter years, seeing what was right, and yet doing what was wrong from bad habits or bad company, before he came to his end upon the gallows-tree. And there while he hung in torture on the cross, the whole truth came to him at last. God’s Spirit shone truly on him at last, and divided the light from the darkness in his poor wretched heart. All the good which had been in him came out once and for all. Christ’s light had been shining in the darkness of his heart, and the darkness had been trying to take it in, and close over it, but it could not; and now the light had conquered the darkness, and all was clear to him at last. He never despised himself so much, he never admired Christ so much, as when they hung side by side in the same condemnation. Side by side they hung, scorned alike, crucified alike, seemingly come alike to open shame and ruin. And yet he could see that though he deserved all his misery, that the man who hung by him not only did not deserve it, but was his Lord, the Lord, the King of the Jews, and that - of course he knew not how - the cross would not destroy him; that he would come in his kingdom. How he found out that, no man can tell; the Spirit of God taught him, the Spirit of God alone, to see in that crucified man the Lord of glory, and to cast himself humbly before his love and power, in hope that there might be mercy even for him - ‘Lord, remember me when thou comest to thy kingdom.’ There was faith indeed, and humility indeed; royal faith and royal humility coming out in that dying robber. And so, if you ask - How was that robber justified by his works? How could his going into Paradise be the receiving of the due reward of the deeds done in his body whether they be good or evil. I say he was justified by his works. He did receive the due reward of his deeds. One great and noble deed, even that saying of his in his dying agony, - that showed that whatever his heart had been, it was now right with God. He could not only confess God’s justice against sin in his own punishment, but he could see God’s beauty, God’s glory, yea, God himself in that man who hung by him, helpless like himself, scourged like himself, crucified like himself, like himself a scorn to men. He could know that Christ was Christ, even on the cross, and know that Christ would conquer yet, and come to his kingdom. That was indeed a faith in the merits of Christ enough to justify him or any man alive.

Now what has all this to do with you or me living an easy, comfortable life in sin here, and hoping to die an easy, comfortable death after all, and get to heaven by having in a clergyman to read and pray a little with us; and saying a few words of formal repentance, when perhaps our body and our mind are so worn out and dulled by illness that we hardly know what we say? No, my friends, if our hearts be right, we shall not think of the penitent thief to give us comfort about our own souls; but we shall think of it and love it, to give us comfort about the souls of many a man or woman for whom we care.

How many men there are who are going wrong, very wrong; and yet whom we cannot help liking, even loving! In the midst of all their sins, there is something in them which will not let us give them up. Perhaps, kind-heartedness. Perhaps, an honest respect for good men, and for good and right conduct; loving the better, while they choose the worse. Perhaps, a real shame and sorrow when they have broken out and done wrong; and even though we know that they will go and do wrong again, we cannot help liking them, cannot give them up. Then let us believe that God will not give them up, any more than he gave up the penitent thief. If there be something in them that we love, let us believe that God loves it also; and what is more, that God put it into them, as he did into the penitent thief; and let us hope (we cannot of course be certain, but we may hope) that God will take care of it, and make it conquer, as he did in the penitent thief. Let us hope that God’s light will conquer their darkness; God’s strength conquer their weakness; God’s peace, their violence; God’s heavenly grace their earthly passions. Let us hope for them, I say.

When we hear, as we often hear, people say, ‘What a noble-hearted man that is after all, and yet he is going to the devil!’ let us remember the penitent thief and have hope. Who would have seemed to have gone to the devil more hopelessly than that poor thief when he hung upon the cross? And yet the devil did not have him. There was in him a seed of good, and of eternal life, which the devil had not trampled out; and that seed flowered and bore fruit upon the very cross in noble thoughts and words and deeds. Why may it not be so with others? True, they may receive the due reward of their deeds. They may end in shame and misery, like the penitent thief. Perhaps it may be good for them to do so. If a man will sow the wind, it may be good for him to reap the whirlwind, and so find out that sowing the wind will not prosper. The penitent thief did so. As the proverb is, he sowed the gallows-acorn, poor wretch, and he reaped the gallows-tree; but that gallows-tree taught him to confess God’s justice, and his own sin, and so it may teach others.

Yes, let us hope; and when we see some one whom we love, and cannot help loving, bringing misery on himself by his own folly, let us hope and pray that the day may come to him when, in the midst of his misery, all that better nature in him shall come out once and for all, and he shall cry out of the deep to Christ, ‘I only receive the due reward of my deeds; I have earned my shame; I have earned my sorrow. Lord, I have deserved it all. I look back on wasted time and wasted powers. I look round on ruined health, ruined fortune, ruined hopes, and confess that I deserve it all. But thou hast endured more than this for me, though thou hast deserved nothing, and hast done nothing amiss. Thou hast done nothing amiss by me. Thou hast been fair to me, and given me a fair chance; and more than that, thou hast endured all for me. For me thou didst suffer; for me thou hast been crucified; and me thou hast been trying to seek and to save all through the years of my vanity. Perhaps I have not wearied out thy love; perhaps I have not conquered thy patience. I will take the blessed chance. I will still cast myself upon thy love. Lord, I have deserved all my misery; yet, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

Oh, my friends, let us hope that that prayer will go up, even out of the wildest heart, in God’s good time; and that it will not go up in vain.

PHILIPPIANS ii. 4.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

What mind? What sort of mind and temper ought to be in us? St. Paul tells us in this chapter, very plainly and at length, what sort of temper he means; and how it showed itself in Christ; and how it ought to show itself in us.

‘All of you,’ he tells us, ‘be like-minded, having the same love; being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory: but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.’

First, be like-minded, having the same love. Men cannot all be of exactly the same opinion on every point, simply because their characters are different; and the old proverb, ‘Many men, many minds,’ will stand true in one sense to the end of the world. But in another sense it need not. People may differ in little matters of opinion, without hating and despising, and speaking ill of each other on these points; they may agree to differ, and yet keep the same love toward God and toward each other; they may keep up a kindly feeling toward each other; and they will do so, if they have in their hearts the same love of God. If we really love God, and long to do good, and to work for God; if we really love our neighbours, and wish to help them, then we shall have no heart to quarrel - indeed, we shall have no time to quarrel - about how the good is to be done, provided it is done; and we shall remember our Lord’s own words to St. John, when St. John said, ‘Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: wilt thou therefore that we forbid him?’

And Jesus said, ‘Forbid him not.’

‘Forbid him not,’ said Jesus himself. He that hath ears to hear his Saviour’s words, let him hear.

‘Therefore,’ St. Paul says, ‘let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory.’ It is a very sad thing to think that the human heart is so corrupt, that we should be tempted to do good, and to show our piety, through strife or vain-glory. But so it is. Party spirit, pride, the wish to show the world how pious we are, the wish to make ourselves out better and more reverent than our neighbours, too often creep into our prayers and our worship, and turn our feasts of charity into feasts of uncharitableness, vanity, ambition.

So it was in St. Paul’s time. Some, he says, preached Christ out of contention, hoping to add affliction to his bonds. Not that he hated them for it, or tried to stop them. Any way, he said, Christ was preached, whether out of party-spirit against him, or out of love to Christ; any way Christ was preached: and he would and did rejoice in that thought. Again I say, ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’

‘Esteem others better than ourselves?’ God forgive us! which of us does that? Is not one’s first feeling not ‘Others are better than me,’ but ‘I am as good as my neighbour, and perhaps better too?’ People say it, and act up to it also, every day. If we would but take St. Paul’s advice, and be humble; if we would take more for granted that our neighbours have common sense as well as we, experience as well as we, the wish to do right as well as we - and perhaps more than we have; and therefore listen humbly (that is St. Paul’s word, bitter though it may be to our carnal pride), listen humbly to every one who is in earnest, or speaks of what he knows and feels! People are better than we fancy, and have more in them than we fancy; and if they do not show that they have, it is three times out of four our own fault. Instead of esteeming them better than ourselves, and asking their advice, and calling out their experience, we are too in such a hurry to show them that we are better than they, and to thrust our advice upon them, that we give them no encouragement to speak, often no time to speak; and so they are silent and think the more, and remain shut up in themselves, and often pass for stupider people and worse people than they really are. Because we will not begin by doing justice to our neighbours, we prevent them doing justice to themselves.

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Ah, my friends, if we could but do that heartily and always, what a different world it would be, and what different people we should be! If, instead of saying to ourselves, as one is so apt to do, ‘Will this suit my interest? will this help me?’ we would recollect to say too, ‘Will this suit my neighbours’ interest? Will this harm my neighbours, though it may help me? For if it hurts them, I will have nothing to do with it.’

If, again, instead of saying to ourselves, as we are too apt to do, ‘This is what I like, and done it shall be,’ we would generously and courteously think more of what other people like; what will please them, instruct them, comfort them, soften for them the cares of life, and lighten the burden of mortality - how much happier would not only they be, but we also!

For this, my friends, is the very likeness of Christ, who pleased not himself; the very likeness of Christ, who sacrificed himself.

And for this very reason St. Paul puts it the last of all his advices, because it is the greatest; the summing up of all; the fulfilment of the whole law, which says, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;’ and therefore after it he can give no more advice, for there is none better left to give: but he goes on at once to speak of Christ, who fulfilled that whole law of love, and more than fulfilled it; for instead of merely loving his neighbours as he loved himself (which is all God asks of us), Christ loved his enemies better than himself, and died for them.

So says St. Paul. - ‘Look not every man on his own things, but on other people’s interest and comfort also. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ What mind? The mind which looks not merely on its own things, its own interest, its own reputation, its own opinions, likes, and dislikes, but on those of others, and has learnt to live and let live.

Yes, this, he says, is the mind of Christ. And this mind, and spirit, and temper, he showed before all heaven and earth, when, though he was in the form of God, and therefore, (as some interpret the text) would have done no robbery, no injustice, by remaining for ever equal with God (that is, in the co-equal and co-eternal glory which he had with the Father), yet made himself of no reputation, and took on him the form of a slave, and was obedient to death, even the death of the cross.

My friends, I beseech you, young and old, rich and poor, remember the full meaning of these glorious words, and of those which follow them.

‘Wherefore God hath highly exalted him.’ Why? What was it in Christ which was so precious, so glorious, in the eyes of the Almighty Father, that no reward seemed too great for him? What but this very spirit of fellow-feeling and tenderness, charity, self-sacrifice - even the Holy Spirit of God himself, with which Christ was filled without measure?

Because Christ utterly and perfectly looked not on his own things, but on the things of others: because he was pity itself, patience itself, love itself, in the soul and body of a human being; therefore his Father declared of him, ‘This, this is my well-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ Therefore it was that he highly exalted him; therefore it was that he proclaimed him to be worthy of all honour and worship, the most perfect, lovely, admirable, and adorable of all beings in heaven and earth; not merely because he showed himself to be light of light, or wisdom of wisdom, or power of power; but because he showed himself to be love of love, and therefore very God of very God begotten, whom men and angels could not reverence, admire, adore, imitate too much, but were to see in him the perfection of all beauty, all virtue, all greatness, the likeness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person.

And therefore it is a very good and beautiful old custom to bow when the name of Jesus is mentioned; at least, when it is mentioned for the first time, or under any very solemn circumstances. It helps to remind us that he is really our King and Lord. It helps, too, to remind us that he is actually and really near us, standing by us, looking at us face to face, though we see him not; and I am willing to say for myself that whenever I recollect that he is looking at me (alas! that is not a hundredth part often enough), I cannot help bowing almost without any will of my own. But, remember, there is no commandment for it. It is just one of those things on which a Christian is free to do what he likes, and for which every Christian is forbidden to judge or blame another, according to St. Paul’s rule, He that observeth the day, to the Lord he observeth it; and he that observeth it not, to the Lord he observeth it not. Who art thou that judgest another? To his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, and he shall stand, for God is able to make him stand. Beside, the text says, if we are to take it literally, as we always ought with Scripture, not that every head shall bow at the name of Jesus, but every knee. And to kneel down every time we repeat that holy name would be impossible. While, on the other hand, we do bow our knees, literally and in earnest, at the name of Jesus every time we kneel down in church, every time we kneel down to say our prayers. And if any man is content with that, no one has the least right to blame him.

Besides, my friends, there is, I know too well, a great danger in making too much of these little outward ceremonies, especially with children and young people. For the heart of man is just as fond as it ever was of idolatry, and superstition, and will-worship, and voluntary humility, and paying tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, while it neglects the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and judgment: and, therefore, there is very great danger, if we make too much of these ceremonies, harmless and even good as many of them may be, of getting to rest in them, and thinking that God is pleased with them themselves. Whereas, what God looks at is the heart, the spirit, the soul; and whether it is right or wrong, proud or humble, hard or loving: and if we think so much of the outward and visible form, that we forget the inward and spiritual grace, for which it ought to stand, then we lay a snare for our own souls to turn them away from the worship of the living God, and break the second commandment. Much more, if we pride ourselves on being more reverent than our neighbours in these outward forms, and look down on, and grudge at, those who do not practise them; for then we turn our humility into pride, and our reverence to Christ into an insult to him; for the true way to honour Christ is to copy Christ. No one really honours and admires Christ’s character who does not copy him; and to esteem ourselves better than others, to say in our hearts, ‘Stand by, for I am holier than thou,’ to offend and drive away Christ’s little ones, and wound the consciences of weak brethren by insisting on things against which they have a prejudice, is to run exactly counter to Christ and the mind of Christ, and to be more like the Pharisees than the Lord Jesus. That is not surely esteeming others better than ourselves: that is not surely looking not merely on our own things, but also on the things of others; that is not fulfilling the law of love; that is not following St. Paul’s example, who gave up, he says, doing many things which he thought right, because they offended weaker spirits than his own. ‘All things,’ he says, ‘are lawful to me, but all things are not expedient.’ ‘Ay,’ says he, ‘I would eat no meat while the world standeth, if it cause my brother to offend.’

No, my dear friends, let us rather, in this coming Passion week, take the lesson which the services of the Church give us in this Epistle. Let us keep Passion week really and in spirit, by remembering that it means the week of suffering, in which Christ, instead of pleasing himself, conquered himself, and gave up himself, and let wicked men do with him whatsoever they would. Let us honour the holy name of Jesus in spirit and in truth, and bend not merely our necks or our knees, when we hear his name, but bend those stiff necks of our souls, and those stubborn knees of our hearts; let us conquer our self-will, self-opinion, self-conceit, self-interest, and take his yoke upon us, for he is meek and lowly of heart. This is the Passion week which he has chosen; - to distrust ourselves, and our own opinions, likings and fancies. This is the repentance, and this is the humiliation which he has chosen; - to entreat him (now and at once, lest by pride we give place to the devil, and fall while we think we stand) to forgive us every hard, and proud, and conceited, and self-willed thought, and word, and deed, to which we have given way since we were born; to pray to him for really new hearts, really tender hearts, really humble hearts, really broken and contrite hearts; to look at his beautiful tenderness, patience, sympathy, understanding, generosity, self-sacrifice; and then to look at ourselves, and be shocked, and ashamed, and confounded, at the difference between ourselves and him; and so really to honour the name of Jesus, who humbled himself, even to the death upon the cross.

I am not judging you, my friends; I am judging myself lest God judge me; and telling you how to judge yourselves, lest God judge you. Believe me, if you will but take his yoke on you, you will find it an easy yoke and a light burden; you will find yourselves happier, your duty simpler, your prospects clearer, your path through life smoother, your character higher and more amiable in the eyes of all, and you yourselves holy and fit to share on Easter day in the precious body and blood of him who gave himself up to death that he might draw all men to himself; and so draw them all to each other, as children of one common Father, and brothers of Jesus Christ your Lord.

(Preached in London.)

MARK ii. 15, 16.

And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners they said onto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?

We cannot wonder at the scribes and Pharisees asking this question. I think that we should most of us ask the same question now, if we saw the Lord Jesus, or even if we saw any very good or venerable man, going out of his way to eat and drink with publicans and sinners. We should be inclined to say, as the scribes and Pharisees no doubt said, Why go out of his way to make fellowship with them? to eat and drink with them? He might have taught them, preached to them, warned them of God’s wrath against their sins when he could find them out in the street. Or, even if he could not do that, if he could not find them all together without going into their house, why sit down and eat and drink? Why not say, No - I am not going to join with you in that? I am come on a much more solemn and important errand than eating. I have no time to eat. I must preach to you, ere it be too late. And you would have no appetite to eat, if you knew the terrible danger in which your souls are. Besides, however anxious for your souls I am, you cannot expect me to treat you as friends, to make companions of you, and accept your hospitality, while you are living these bad lives. I shall always feel pity and sorrow for you: but I cannot be a table companion with you, till you begin to lead very different lives.

Now if the scribes and Pharisees had said that, should we have thought them very unreasonable? For whatsoever kinds of sinners the sinners were, these publicans were the very worst and lowest of company. They were not innkeepers, as the word means now; they were a kind of tax-gatherers: but not like ours in England. For first, these taxes were not taken by the Jewish government, but by the Romans - heathen foreigners who had conquered them, and kept them down by soldiery quartered in their country. So that these publicans, who gathered taxes and tribute for the heathen Cæsar of Rome from their own countrymen, were traitors to their country, in league with their foreign tyrants, as it were devouring their own flesh and blood; and all the Jews looked on them (and really no wonder) with hatred and contempt. Beside, these publicans did not merely gather the taxes, as they do in free England; they farmed them, compounded for them with the Roman emperor; that is, they had each to bring in to the Romans a stated sum of money, each out of his own district, and to make their own profit out of the bargain by grinding out of the poor Jews all they could over and above; and most probably calling in the soldiery to help them if people would not pay. So this was a trade, as you may easily see, which could only prosper by all kinds of petty extortion, cruelty, and meanness; and, no doubt, these publicans were devourers of the poor, and as unjust and hard-hearted men as one could be. As for those ‘sinners’ who are so often mentioned with them, I suppose this is what the word means. These publicans making their money ill, spent it ill also, in a low profligate way, with the worst of women and of men. Moreover, all the other Jews shunned them, and would not eat or keep company with them; so they hung all together, and made company for themselves with bad people, who were fallen too low to be ashamed of them. The publicans and harlots are often mentioned together; and, I doubt not, they were often eating and drinking together, God help them!

And God did help them. The Son of God came and ate and drank with them. No doubt, he heard many words among them which pained his ears, saw many faces which shocked his eyes; faces of women who had lost all shame; faces of men hardened by cruelty, and greediness, and cunning, till God’s image had been changed into the likeness of the fox and the serpent; and, worst of all, the greatest pain to him of all, he could see into their hearts, their immortal souls, and see all the foulness within them, all the meanness, all the hardness, all the unbelief in anything good or true. And yet he ate and drank with them. Make merry with them he could not: who could be merry in such company? but he certainly so behaved to them that they were glad to have him among them, though he was so unlike them in thought, and word, and look, and action.

And why? Because, though he was so unlike them in many things, he was like them at least in one thing. If he could do nothing else in common with them, he could at least eat and drink as they did, and eat and drink with them too. Yes. He was the Son of man, the man of all men, and what he wanted to make them understand was, that, fallen as low as they were, they were men and women still, who were made at first in God’s likeness, and who could be redeemed back into God’s likeness again.

The only way to do that was to begin with them in the very simplest way; to meet them on common human ground; to make them feel that, simply because they were men and women, he felt for them; that, simply because they were men and women, he loved them; that, simply because they were men and women, he could not turn his back upon them, for the sake of his Father and their Father in heaven. If he had left those poor wretches to themselves; if he had even merely kept apart from their common every-day life, and preached to them, they would never have felt that there was still hope for them, simply because they were men and women. They would have said in their hearts, ‘See; he will talk to us: but he looks down on us all the time. We are fallen so low, we cannot rise; we cannot mend. What is there in us that can mend? We are nothing but brutes, perhaps; then brutes we must remain. Heaven is for people like him, perhaps; but not for such as us. We are cut off from men. We have no brothers upon earth, no Father in heaven.’ ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’

Yes; they would have said this; for people like them will say it too often now, here in Christian England.

But when our Lord came to them, ate and drank with them, talked with them in a homely and simple way (for our Lord’s words are always simple and homely, grand and deep and wonderful as they are), then do you not see how self-respect would begin to rise in those poor sinners’ hearts? Not that they would say, ‘We are better men than we thought we were.’ No; perhaps his kindness would make them all the more ashamed of themselves, and convince them of sin all the more deeply; for nothing, nothing melts the sinner’s hard, proud heart, like a few unexpected words of kindness - ay, even a cordial shake of the hand from any one who he fancies looks down on him. To find a loving brother, where he expected only a threatening schoolmaster - that breaks the sinner’s heart; and most of all when he finds that brother in Jesus his Saviour. That - the sight of God’s boundless love to sinners, as it is revealed in the loving face of Jesus Christ our Lord - that, and that alone, breeds in the sinner the broken and the contrite heart which is in the sight of God of great price. And so, those publicans and sinners would not have begun to say, We are better than we thought: but, We can become better than we thought. He must see something in us which makes him care for us. Perhaps God may see something in us to care for. He does not turn his back on us. Perhaps God may not. He must have some hope of us. May we not have hope of ourselves? Surely there is a chance for us yet. Oh! if there were! We are miserable now in the midst of our drunkenness, and our covetousness, and our riotous pleasures. We are ashamed of ourselves: and our countrymen are ashamed of us: and though we try to brazen it off by impudence, we carry heavy hearts under bold foreheads. Oh, that we could be different! Oh, that we could be even like what we were when we were little children! Perhaps we may be yet. For he treats us as if we were men and women still, his brothers and sisters still. He thinks that we are not quite brute animals yet, it seems. Perhaps we are not; perhaps there is life in us yet, which may grow up to a new and better way of living. What shall we do to be saved?

O blessed charity, bond of peace and of all virtues; of brotherhood and fellow-feeling between man and man, as children of one common Father. Ay, bond of all virtues - of generosity and of justice, of counsel and of understanding. Charity, unknown on earth before the coming of the Son of man, who was content to be called gluttonous and a wine-bibber, because he was the friend of publicans and sinners!

My friends, let us try to follow his steps; let us remember all day long what it is to be men; that it is to have every one whom we meet for our brother in the sight of God; that it is this, never to meet any one, however bad he may be, for whom we cannot say, ‘Christ died for that man, and Christ cares for him still. He is precious in God’s eyes; he shall be precious in mine also.’ Let us take the counsel of the Gospel for this day, and love one another, not in word merely - in doctrine, but in deed and in truth, really and actually; in our every-day lives and behaviour, words, looks - in all of them let us be cordial, feeling, pitiful, patient, courteous. Masters with your workmen, teachers with your pupils, parents with your children, be cordial, and kind, and patient; respect every one, whether below you or not in the world’s eyes. Never do a thing to any human being which may lessen his self-respect; which may make him think that you look down upon him, and so make him look down upon himself in awkwardness and shyness; or else may make him start off from you, angry and proud, saying, ‘I am as good as you; and if you keep apart from me, I will from you; if you can do without me, I can do without you. I want none of your condescension.’ It is not so. You cannot do without each other. We can none of us do without the other; do not let us make any one fancy that he can, and tempt him to wrap himself up in pride and surliness, cutting himself off from the communion of saints, and the blessing of being a man among men.

And if any of you have a neighbour, or a relation fallen into sin, even into utter shame; - oh, for the sake of Him who ate and drank with publicans and sinners, never cast them off, never trample on them, never turn your back upon them. They are miserable enough already, doubt it not. Do not add one drop to their cup of bitterness. They are ashamed of themselves already, doubt it not. Do not you destroy in them what small grain of self-respect still remains. You fancy they are not so. They seem to you brazen-faced, proud, impenitent. So did the publicans and harlots seem to those proud, blind Pharisees. Those pompous, self-righteous fools did not know what terrible struggles were going on in those poor sin-tormented hearts. Their pride had blinded them, while they were saying all along, ‘It is we alone who see. This people, which knoweth not the law, is accursed.’ Then came the Lord Jesus, the Son of man, who knew what was in man; and he spoke to them gently, cordially, humanly; and they heard him, and justified God, and were baptized, confessing their sins; and so, as he said himself, the publicans and harlots went into the kingdom of God before those proud, self-conceited Pharisees.

Therefore, I say, never hurt any one’s self-respect. Never trample on any soul, though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is as its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life; the voice of God which still whispers to it, ‘You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God’s child, still an immortal soul: you may rise yet, and fight a good fight yet, and conquer yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you!’ Oh, why crush that voice in any heart? If you do, the poor creature is lost, and lies where he or she falls, and never tries to rise again. Rather bear and forbear; hope all things, believe all things, endure all things; so you will, as St. John tells you in the Epistle, know that you are of the truth, in the true and right road, and will assure your hearts before God. For this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and believe really that he is now what he always was, the friend of publicans and sinners, and love one another as he gave us commandment. That was Christ’s spirit; the fairest, the noblest spirit upon earth; the spirit of God whose mercy is over all his works; and hereby shall we know that Christ abideth in us, by his having given us the same spirit of pity, charity, fellow-feeling and love for every human being round us.

And now, I will also give you one lesson to carry home with you - a lesson which if we all could really believe and obey, the world would begin to mend from to-morrow, and every other good work on earth would prosper and multiply tenfold, a hundredfold - ay, beyond all our fairest dreams. And my lesson is this. When you go out from this church into those crowded streets, remember that there is not a soul in them who is not as precious in God’s eyes as you are; not a little dirty ragged child whom Jesus, were he again on earth, would not take up in his arms and bless; not a publican or a harlot with whom, if they but asked him, he would not eat and drink - now, here, in London on this Sunday, the 8th of June, 1856, as certainly as he did in Jewry beyond the seas, eighteen hundred years ago. Therefore do to all who are in want of your help as Jesus would do to them if he were here; as Jesus is doing to them already: for he is here among us now, and for ever seeking and saving that which was lost; and all we have to do is to believe that, and work on, sure that he is working at our head, and that though we cannot see him, he sees us; and then all will prosper at last, for this brave old earth whereon we are living now, and for that far braver new heaven and new earth whereon we shall live hereafter.

(Trinity Sunday.)

REVELATION iv. 9, 10, 11.

And when those beasts give glory, and honour, and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

The Church bids us read this morning the first chapter of Genesis, which tells us of the creation of the world. Not merely on account of that most important text, which, according to some divines, seems to speak of the ever-blessed Trinity, and brings in God as saying, ‘Let us make man in our image;’ not, Let me make man in my image; but, Let us, in our image. - Not merely for this reason is Gen. i. a fit lesson for Trinity Sunday: but because it tells us of the whole world, and all that is therein, and who made it, and how. It does not tell us why God made the world; but the Revelations do, and the text does. And therefore perhaps it is a good thing for us that Trinity Sunday comes always in the sweet spring time, when all nature is breaking out into new life, when leaves are budding, flowers blossoming, birds building, and countless insects springing up to their short and happy life. This wonderful world in which we live has awakened again from its winter’s sleep. How are we to think of it, and of all the strange and beautiful things in it? Trinity Sunday tells us; for Trinity Sunday bids us think of and believe a matter which we cannot understand - a glorious and unspeakable God, who is at the same time One and Three. We cannot understand that. No more can we understand anything else. We cannot understand how the grass grows beneath our feet. We cannot understand how the egg becomes a bird. We cannot understand how the butterfly is the very same creature which last autumn was a crawling caterpillar. We cannot understand how an atom of our food is changed within our bodies into a drop of living blood. We cannot understand how this mortal life of ours depends on that same blood. We do not know even what life is. We do not know what our own souls are. We do not know what our own bodies are. We know nothing. We know no more about ourselves and this wonderful world than we do of the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity. That, of course, is the greatest wonder of all. For, as I shall try to show you presently, God himself must be more wonderful than all things which he has made. But all that he has made is wonderful; and all that we can say of it is, to take up the heavenly hymn which this chapter in the Revelations puts into our mouths, and join with the elders of heaven, and all the powers of nature, in saying, ‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.’

Let us do this. Let us open our eyes, and see honestly what a wonderful world we live in; and go about all our days in wonder and humbleness of heart, confessing that we know nothing, and that we cannot know; confessing that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that our soul knows right well; but that beyond we know nothing; though God knows all; for in his book were all our members written, which day by day were fashioned, while as yet there were none of them. ‘How great are thy counsels, O God! they are more than I am able to express,’ said David of old, who knew not a tenth part of the natural wonders which we know; ‘more in number than the hairs of my head, if I were to speak of them.’

This will keep us from that proud and yet shallow temper of mind which people are apt to fall into, especially young men who are clever and self-educated, and those who live in great towns, and so lose the sight of the wonderful works of God in the fields and woods, and see hardly anything but what man has made; and therefore forget how weak and ignorant even the wisest man is, and how little he understands of this great and glorious world.

Such people are apt to fancy men are clever enough to understand anything. Then they say, ‘Why am I to believe anything I cannot understand?’ And then they laugh at the mysteries of faith, and say, ‘Three Persons in one God! I cannot understand that! Why am I expected to believe it?’

Now, here is the plain answer to such unwise speech (for unwise it is, let it be dressed up in all fine long words, and show of wisdom), whether the doctrine be true or not, your not understanding the matter is no reason against it. Here is the answer: ‘You do believe all day long a hundred things which you do not understand; which quite surpass your reason. You believe that you are alive: but you do not understand how you live. You believe that, though you are made up of so many different faculties and powers, you are one person: but you cannot understand how. You believe that though your body and your mind too have gone through so many changes since you were born, yet you are still one and the same person, and nobody else but yourself; but you cannot understand that either. You know it is so; but how and why it is so, you cannot explain; and the greatest philosopher would not be foolish enough to try to explain; because, if he is a really great scholar, he knows that it cannot be explained. You lift your hand to your head: but how you do it, neither you nor any mortal man knows; and true philosophers tell you that we shall probably never know. True philosophers tell you that in the simplest movement of your body, in the growth of the meanest blade of grass, let them examine it with the microscope, let them think over it till their brains are weary, there is always some mystery, some wonder over and above, which neither their glasses nor their brains can explain, or even find and see, much less give a name to. They know that there is more in the matter, in the simplest matter, than man can find out; and they are content to leave the wonder in the hands of God who made it; and when they have found out all they can, confess, that the more they know, the less they find they know.

I tell you frankly, my friends, if you were to see through the microscope a few of the wonderful things which are going on round you now in every leaf, and every gnat which dances in the sunbeam; if you were to learn even the very little which is known about them, you would see wonders which would surpass your powers of reasoning, just as much as that far greater wonder of the ever-blessed Trinity; things which you would not believe, if your own eyes did not show them you.

And what if it be strange? What is there to surprise us in that? If the world be so wonderful, how much more wonderful must that great God be who made the world, and keeps it always living? If the smallest blade of grass be past our understanding, how much more past our understanding must be the Absolute, Eternal, Almighty God? Do you not see that common sense and reason lead us to expect that God should be the most wonderful of all beings and things; that there must be some mystery and wonder in him which is greater than all mysteries and wonders upon earth, just as much as he is greater than all heaven and earth? Which must be most wonderful, the maker or the thing made? Thou art man, made in the likeness of God. Thou canst not understand thyself. How much less canst thou understand God, in whose likeness thou art made!

For my part, instead of keeping people from learning, lest they should grow proud, and despise the mysteries of faith, I would make them learn, and entreat them to learn, and look seriously and patiently at all the wonderful things which are going on round them all day long; for I am sure that they would be so much astonished with what they saw on earth, that they would not be astonished, much less staggered, at anything they heard of in heaven; and least of all astonished at being told that the name of Almighty God was too deep for the little brain of mortal man; and that they would learn more and more to take humbly, like little children, every hint which the experience of wise and good men of old time gives us of the everlasting mystery of mysteries, the glory of the Triune God, which St. John saw in the spirit.

And what did St. John see? Something beyond even an apostle’s understanding. Something which he could only see himself dimly, and describe to us in figures and pictures, as it were, to help us to imagine that great wonder.

He was in the spirit, he says, when he saw it. That is, he did not see it with his bodily eyes, but with his soul, his heart and mind. Not with his bodily eyes (for no man hath seen God at any time), but with his mind’s eye, which God had enlightened by his Holy Spirit.

He sees a throne in heaven, and one sitting on it, bright and pure as richest precious stone; and round his throne a rainbow like an emerald, the sign to us of hope, and faithfulness, mercy and truth, which he himself appointed after the flood, to comfort the fearful hearts of men. Around him are elders crowned; men like ourselves, but men who have fought the good fight, and conquered, and are now at rest; pure, as their white garments tell us; and victorious, as their golden crowns tell us. And from the throne come thunderings, and lightnings, and voices, as they did when he spoke to the Jews of old - signs of his terrible power, as judge, and lawgiver, and avenger of all the wrong which is done on earth. And there are there, too, seven burning lamps, the seven spirits of God, which give light and life to all created things, and most of all to righteous hearts. And before the throne is a sea of glass; the same sea which St. John saw in another vision, with us human beings standing on it, and behold it was mingled with fire; - the sea of time, and space, and mortal life, on which we all have our little day; the brittle and dangerous sea of earthly life; for it may crack any moment beneath our feet, and drop us into eternity, and the nether fire, unless we have his hand holding us, who conquered time, and life, and death, and hell itself.

It seems to us to be a great thing now, time, and space, and the world; and yet it looked small enough to St. John, as it lies in heaven, before the throne of Christ; and he passes it by in a few words. For what are all suns and stars, and what are all ages and generations, and millions and millions of years, compared with eternity; with God’s eternal heaven, and God whom not even heaven can contain? - One drop of water in comparison with all the rain clouds of the western sea.

But there is one comfort for us in St. John’s vision; that brittle, and uncertain, and dangerous as life may be, yet it is before the throne of God, and before the feet of Christ. St. John saw it lying there in heaven, for a sign that in God we live, and move, and have our being. Let us be content, and hope on, and trust on; for God is with us, and we with God.

But St. John saw another wonder. Four beasts - one like a man, one like a calf, one like an eagle, one like a lion, with six wings each.

What those living creatures mean, I can hardly tell you. Some wise and learned men say they mean the four Evangelists: but, though there is much to be said for it, I hardly think that; for St. John, who saw them, was one of the four Evangelists himself. Others think they mean great and glorious archangels; and that may be so. But certainly the Bible always speaks of angels as shaped like men, like human beings, only more beautiful and glorious. The two angels, for instance, who appeared to the three men at our Lord’s tomb, are plainly called in one place, young men. I think, rather, that these four living creatures mean the powers and talents which God has given to men, that they may replenish the earth, and subdue it. For we read of these same living creatures in the book of the prophet Ezekiel; and we see them also on those ancient Assyrian sculptures which are now in the British Museum; and we have good reason to think that is what they mean there. The creature with the man’s head means reason; the beast with the lion’s head, kingly power and government; with the eagle’s head, and his piercing eye, prudence and foresight; with the ox’s head, labour, and cultivation of the earth, and successful industry. But whatsoever those living creatures mean, it is more important to see what they do. They give glory, and honour, and thanks to him who sits upon the throne. They confess that all power, all wisdom, all prudence, all success in men or angels, in earth or heaven, comes from God, and is God’s gift, of which he will require a strict account; for he is Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty; and all things are of him, and by him, and for him, for ever and ever.

But who is he who sits upon the throne? Who but the Lord Jesus Christ? Who but the Babe of Bethlehem? Who but the Friend of publicans and sinners? Who but he who went about doing good to suffering mortal man? Who but he who died on the cross? Who but he on whose bosom St. John leaned at supper, and now saw him highly exalted, having a name above every name?

Oh, blest St. John, to see that sight! To see his dear Master in his glory, after having seen him in his humiliation! God grant us so to follow in St. John’s steps, that we may see the same sight, unworthy though we are, in God’s good time.

And where is God the Father? Yes, where? The heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain him, whom no man hath seen, or can see; who dwells in the light, whom no man can approach unto. Only the only begotten Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him, and shown to men in his own perfect loveliness and goodness, what their heavenly Father is. That was enough for St. John; let it be enough for us. He who has seen Christ has seen the Father, as far as any created being can see him. The Son Christ is merciful: therefore the Father is merciful. The Son is just: therefore the Father is just. The Son is faithful and true: therefore the Father is faithful and true. The Son is almighty to save: therefore the Father is almighty to save. Let that be enough for you and me.

But where is the Holy Spirit? There is no where for spirits. All that we can say is, that the Holy Spirit is proceeding for ever from the Father and the Son; going forth for ever, to bring light and life, righteousness and love, to all worlds, and to all hearts who will receive him. The lamps of fire which St. John saw, the dove which came down at Christ’s baptism, the cloven tongues of fire which sat on the Apostles - these were signs and tokens of the Spirit; but they were not the Spirit itself. Of him it is written, ‘He bloweth where he listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence he cometh or whither he goeth.’

It is enough for us that he is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Holy Father, and of the Holy Son; like them eternal, like them incomprehensible, like them almighty, like them all-wise, all-just, all-loving, merciful, faithful, and true for ever.

This is what St. John saw - Christ the crucified, Christ the Babe of Bethlehem, in the glory which he had before all worlds, and shall have for ever; with all the powers of this wondrous world crying to him for ever, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come; and the souls of just men made perfect answering those mystic animals, and joining their hymns of praise to the hymn which goes up for ever from sun and stars, from earth and sea, - when they find out the deepest of all wisdom - the lesson which all the wonders of this earth, and all which ever has happened, or will happen, in space and time, is meant to teach us

‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.’

This is all that I can tell you. It may be a very little: but is it not enough? What says Solomon the wise? ‘Knowest thou how the bones grow in the womb?’ Not thou. How, then, wilt thou know God, who made all things? Thou art fearfully and wonderfully made, though thou art but a poor mortal man. And is not God more fearfully and wonderfully made than thou art? It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world: a stranger thing still to me, how we shall ever get out of this world again. Yet they are common things enough - birth and death. ‘Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born:’ and yet you do not know what is the meaning of birth or death either: and I do not know; and no man knows. How, then, can we know the mystery of God, in whose hand are the issues of life and death? - God to whom all live for ever, living and dead, born and unborn, in heaven and in hell?

So it is in small things as well as great, in great as well as small; and so it ever will be. ‘All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder all things end,’ said Saint Augustine, wisest in his day of all mortal men; and all that great scholars have discovered since prove more and more that Saint Augustine’s words were true, and that the wisest are only, as a great philosopher once said, and one, too, who discovered more of God’s works than any man for many a hundred years, even Sir Isaac Newton himself: ‘The wisest of us is but like a child picking up a few shells and pebbles on the shore of a boundless sea.’

The shells and pebbles are the little scraps of knowledge which God vouchsafes to us, his sinful children; knowledge, of which at best St. Paul says, that we know only in part, and prophesy in part, and think as children; and that knowledge shall vanish away, and tongues shall cease, and prophecies shall fail.

And the boundless sea is the great ocean of time - of God’s created universe, above which his Spirit broods over, perfect in love, and wisdom, and almighty power, as at the beginning, moving above the face of the waters of time, giving life to all things, for ever blessing, and for ever blest.

God grant us all to see the day when we shall have passed safely across that sea of time, up to the sure land of eternity; and shall no more think as children, or know in part; but shall see God face to face, and know him even as we are known; and find him, the nearer we draw to him, more wonderful, and more glorious, and more good than ever; - ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.’ And meanwhile, take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows: he knows himself, and you, and me, and all things; and his mercy is over all his works.

THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

JOHN x. 11.

I am the good shepherd.

Here are blessed words. They are not new words. You find words like these often in the Bible, and even in ancient heathen books. Kings, priests, prophets, judges, are called shepherds of the people. David is called the shepherd of Israel. A prophet complains of the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves, and will not feed the flock.

But the old Hebrew prophets had a vision of a greater and better shepherd than David, or any earthly king or priest - of a heavenly and almighty shepherd. ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ says one; ‘therefore I shall not want.’ And another says, ‘He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather his lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those who are with young.’

This was blessed news; good news for all mankind, if there had been no more than this. But there is more blessed news still in the text. In the text, the Lord of whom those old prophets spoke, spoke for himself, with human voice, upon this earth of ours; and declared that all they had said was true; and that more still was true.

I am the good shepherd, he says. And then he adds, The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

Oh, my friends, consider these words. Think what endless depths of wonder there are in them. Is it not wonderful enough that God should care for men; should lead them, guide them, feed them, condescend to call himself their shepherd? Wonderful, indeed; so wonderful, that the old prophets would never have found it out but by the inspiration of Almighty God. But what a wider, deeper, nobler, more wonderful blessing, and more blessed wonder, that the shepherd should give his life for the sheep; - that the master should give his life for the servant, the good for the bad, the wise one for the fools, the pure one for the foul, the loving one for the spiteful, the king for those who had rebelled against him, the Creator for his creatures. That God should give his life for man! Truly, says St. John, ‘Herein is love. Not that we loved him: but that he loved us.’ Herein, indeed, is love. Herein is the beauty of God, and the glory of God; that he spared nothing, shrank from nothing, that he might save man. Because the sheep were lost, the good shepherd would go forth into the rough and dark places of the earth to seek and to save that which was lost. That was enough. That was a thousand times more than we had a right to expect. Had he done only that he would have been for ever glorious, for ever adorable, for ever worthy of the praises and thanks of heaven and earth, and all that therein is. But that seemed little in the eyes of Jesus, little to the greatness of his divine love. He would understand the weakness of his sheep by being weak himself; understand the sorrows of his sheep, by sorrowing himself; understand the sins of his sheep, by bearing all their sins; the temptations of his sheep, by conquering them himself; and lastly, he would understand and conquer the death of his sheep, by dying himself. Because the sheep must die, he would die too, that in all things, and to the uttermost, he might show himself the good shepherd, who shared all sorrow, danger and misery with his sheep, as if they had been his children, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. In all things he would show himself the good shepherd, and no hireling, who cared for himself and his own wages. If the wolf came, he would face the wolf, and though the wolf killed him, yet would he kill the wolf, that by his death he might destroy death, and him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. He would go where the sheep went. He would enter into the sheepfold by the same gate as they did, and not climb over into the fold some other way, like a thief and a robber. He would lead them into the fold by the same gate. They had to go into God’s fold through the gate of death; and therefore he would go in through it also, and die with his sheep; that he might claim the gate of death for his own, and declare that it did not belong to the devil, but to him and his heavenly Father; and then having led his sheep in through the gate of death, he would lead them out again by the gate of resurrection, that they might find pasture in the redeemed land of everlasting life, where can enter neither devil, nor wolf, nor robber, evil spirit, evil man, or evil thing. This, and more than this, he would do in the greatness of his love. He would become in all things like his sheep, that he might show himself the good shepherd. Because they died, he would die; that so, because he rose, they might rise also.

Oh, my friends, who is sufficient for these things? Not men, not saints, not angels or archangels can comprehend the love of Christ. How can they? For Christ is God, and God is love; the root and fountain of all love which is in you and me, and angels, and all created beings. And therefore his love is as much greater than ours, or than the love of angels and archangels, as the whole sun is greater than one ray of sun-light. Say rather, as much greater and more glorious as the sun is greater and more glorious than the light which sparkles in the dew-drop on the grass. The love and goodness and holiness of a saint or an angel is the light in that dew-drop, borrowed from the sun. The love of God is the sun himself, which shineth from one part of heaven to the other, and there is nothing hid from the life-giving heat and light thereof. When the dew-drop can take in the sun, then can we take in the love of God, which fills all heaven and earth.

But there is, if possible, better news still behind - ‘I am the good shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine.’

‘I know my sheep.’ Surely some of the words which I have just spoken may help to explain that to you. ‘I know my sheep.’ Not merely, I know who are my sheep, and who are not. Of course, the Lord does that. We might have guessed that for ourselves. What comfort is there in that? No, he does not say merely, ‘I know who my sheep are; but I know what my sheep are. I know them; their inmost hearts. I know their sins and their follies: but I know, too, their longing after good. I know their temptations, their excuses, their natural weaknesses, their infirmities, which they brought into the world with them. I know their inmost hearts for good and for evil. True, I think some of them often miserable, and poor, and blind, when they fancy themselves strong, and wise, and rich in grace, and having need of nothing. But I know some of them, too, to be longing after what is good, to be hungering and thirsting after righteousness, when they can see nothing but their own sin and weakness, and are utterly ashamed and tired of themselves, and are ready to lie down in despair, and give up all struggling after God. I know their weakness - and of me it is written, ‘I will carry the lambs in mine arms.’ Those who are innocent and inexperienced in the ways of this world, I will see that they are not led into temptation; and I will gently lead those that are with young: those who are weary with the burden of their own thoughts, those who are yearning and labouring after some higher, better, more free, more orderly, more useful life; those who long to find out the truth, and to speak it, and give birth to the noble thoughts and the good plans which they have conceived: I have inspired their good desires, and I will bring them to good effect; I will gently lead them,’ says the Lord, ‘for I know them better than they know themselves.’

Yes. Christ knows us better than we know ourselves: and better, too, than we know him. Thanks be to God that it is so. Or the last words of the text would crush us into despair - ‘I know my sheep, and am known of mine.’

Is it so? We trust that we are Christ’s sheep. We trust that he knows us: but do we know him? What answer shall we make to that question, Do you know Christ? I do not mean, Do you know about Christ? You may know about a person without knowing the person himself when you see him. I do not mean, Do you know doctrines about Christ? though that is good and necessary. Nor, Do you know what Christ has done for your soul? though that is good and necessary also. But, Do you know Christ himself? You have never seen him. True: but have you never seen any one like him - even in part? Do you know his likeness when you see it in any of your neighbours? That is a question worth thinking over. Again - Do you know what Christ is like? What his character is - what his way of dealing with your soul, and all souls, is? Are you accustomed to speak to him in your prayers as to one who can and will hear you; and do you know his voice when he speaks to you, and puts into your heart good desires, and longings after what is right and true, and fair and noble, and loving and patient, as he himself is? Do you know Christ?

Alas! my friends, what a poor answer we can make to that question? How little do we know Christ?

What would become of us, if he were like us? - If he were one who bargained with us, and said - ‘Unless you know me, I will not take the trouble to know you. Unless you care for me, you cannot expect me to care for you.’ What would become of us, if God said, ‘As you do to me, so will I do to you?’

But our only hope lies in this, that in Christ the Lord is no spirit of bargaining, no pride, no spite, no rendering evil for evil. In this is our hope; that he is the likeness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person; perfect as his Father is perfect; that like his Father, he causeth his rain to fall on the evil and the good; and his sun to shine on the just and on the unjust; and is good to the unthankful and the evil - to you and me - and knows us, though we know him not; and cares for us, though we care not for him; and leads us his way, like a good shepherd, when we fancy in our conceit that we are going in our own way. This is our hope, that his love is greater than our stupidity; that he will not tire of us, and our fancies, and our self-will, and our laziness, in spite of all our peevish tempers, and our mean and fruitless suspicions of his goodness. No! He will not tire of us, but will seek us, and save us when we go astray. And some day, somewhere, somehow, he will open our eyes, and let us see him as he is, and thank him as he deserves. Some day, when the veil is taken off our eyes, we shall see like those disciples at Emmaus, that Jesus has been walking with us, and breaking our bread for us, and blessing us, all our lives long; and that when our hearts burned within us at noble thoughts, and stories of noble and righteous men and women, and at the hope that some day good would conquer evil, and heaven come down on earth, then - so we shall find - God had been dwelling among men all along - even Jesus, who was dead, and is alive for evermore, and has the keys of death and hell, and knows his sheep in this world, and in all worlds, past, present, and to come, and leads them, and will lead them for ever, and none can pluck them out of his hand. Amen.

1 JOHN iv. 16-18.

We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Have we learnt this lesson? Our reading, and thinking, and praying, have been in vain, unless they have helped us to believe and know the love which God has to us. But, indeed, no reading, or thinking, or praying will teach us that perfectly. God must teach it us himself. It is easy to say that God is love; easy to say that Christ died for us; easy to say that God’s Spirit is with us; easy to say all manner of true doctrines, and run them off our tongues at second-hand; easy for me to stand up here and preach them to you, just as I find them written in a book. But do I believe what I say? Do you believe what you say? There is an awful question. We believe it all now, or think we believe it, while we are easy and comfortable: but should we have boldness in the day of judgment? - Should we believe it all, if God visited us, to judge us, and try us, and pierce asunder the very joints and marrow of our heart with fearful sorrow and temptation? O Lord, who shall stand in that day?

Suppose, for instance, God were to take away the desire of our eyes, with a stroke. Suppose we were to lose a wife, a darling child; suppose we were struck blind, or paralytic; suppose some unspeakable, unbearable shame fell on us to-morrow: could we say then, God is love, and this horrible misery is a sign of it? He loves me, for he chastens me? Or should we say, like Job’s wife, and one of the foolish women, ‘Curse God and die?’ God knows.

Ah, when that dark day seems coming on us, and bringing some misery which looks to us beforehand quite unbearable - then how our lip-belief and book-faith is tried, and burnt up in the fire of God, and in the fire of our own proud, angry hearts, too! How we struggle and rage at first at the very thought of the coming misery; and are ready to say, God will not do this! He cannot - cannot be so unjust, so cruel, as to bring this misery on me. What have I done to deserve it? Or, if I have deserved it, what have these innocents done? Why should they be punished for my sins? After all my prayers, too, and my church-goings, and my tryings to be good. Is this God’s reward for all my trouble to please him? Then how vain all our old prayers seem; how empty and dry all ordinances. We cry, I have cleansed my hands in vain, and in vain washed my heart in innocency. We have no heart to pray to God. If he has not heard our past prayers, why should we pray anymore? Let us lie down and die; let us bear his heavy hand, if we must bear it, sullenly, desperately: but, as for saying that God is love, or to say that we know the love which God has for us, we say in our hearts, Let the clergyman talk of that; it is his business to speak about it; or comfortable, easy people, who are not watering their pillow with bitter tears all night long. But if they were in my place (says the unhappy man), they would know a little more of what poor souls have to go through: they would talk somewhat less freely about its being a sin to doubt God’s love. He has sent this great misery on me. How can I tell what more he may not send? How can I help being afraid of God, and looking up to him with tormenting fear?

Yes, my friends. These are very terrible thoughts - very wrong thoughts some of them, very foolish thoughts some of them, though pardonable enough; for God pardons them, as we shall see. But they are real thoughts. They are what really come into people’s minds every day; and I am here to talk to you about what is really going on in your soul, and mine; not to repeat to you doctrines at second-hand out of a book, and say, There, that is what you have to believe and do; and, if you do not, you will go to hell: but to speak to you as men of like passions with myself; as sinning, sorrowing, doubting, struggling human beings; and to talk to you of what is in my own heart, and will be in your hearts too, some day, if it has not been already. This is the experience of all real men, all honest men, who ever struggled to know and to do what is right. David felt it all. You find it all through those glorious Psalms of his. He was no comfortable, book-read, second-hand Christian, who had an answer ready for every trouble, because he had never had any real trouble at all. David was not one of them. He had to go through a very rough training - very terrible and fiery trials, year after year; and had to say, again and again, ‘I am weary of crying; my heart is dry; my heart faileth me for waiting so long upon my God. All thy billows and storms are gone over me. Thou hast laid me in a place of darkness, and in the lowest deep.’ -

Not by sitting comfortably reading his book, but by such terrible trials as that, was David taught to trust God to the uttermost; and to learn that God’s love was so perfect that he need never dread him, or torment himself with anxiety lest God should leave him to perish.

Hezekiah felt it, too, good man as he was, when he was sick, and like to die. And it was not for many a day that he found out the truth about these dark hours of misery, that by all these things men live, and in all these things is the life of the Spirit.

And this was Jacob’s experience, too, on that most fearful night of all his life, when he waited by the ford of Jabbok, expecting that with the morning light the punishment of his past sins would come on him; and not only on him, but on all his family, and his innocent children; when he stood there alone by the dark river, not knowing whether Esau and his wild Arabs would not sweep off the earth all he had and all he loved; and knowing, too, that it was his own fault, that he had brought it all upon them by his own deceit and treachery. Then, when his sins stared him in the face, and God rose up to judgment against him, he learnt to pray as he had never prayed before - a prayer too deep for words.

‘And Jacob was left alone: and there wrestled a man with him till the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh; and the hollow of his thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, till thou bless me. And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of that place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.’

So it may be with us. So it must be with us, in the dark day when our faith is really tried by terrible affliction.

We must begin as Jacob did. Plead God’s promises, confess the mercies we have received already. ‘I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies which thou hast showed to thy servant.’

Ask for God’s help, as Jacob did: ‘Deliver me, I pray thee, out of the hand of Esau my brother.’ Plead his written promises, and the covenant of our baptism, which tell us that we are God’s children, and God our Father, as Jacob did according to his light - ‘And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good.’

So the proud angry heart will perhaps pass out of us, and we shall set ourselves more calmly to face the worst, and to try if God’s promises be indeed true, and God be indeed as he has said, ‘Love.’

But do not be astonished, do not be disheartened, if, when the trouble comes, there comes with it, as to Jacob, a more terrible struggle far, a struggle too deep for words; if you find out that fine words and set prayers are nothing in the hour of need, and that you will not be heard for your much speaking. Ah! the darkness of that time, which perhaps goes on for days, for months, all alone between you and God himself. Clergymen and good people may come in with kind words and true words: but they give no comfort; your heart is still dark, still full of doubt; you want God himself to speak to your heart, and tell you that he is love. And you have no words to pray with at last; you have used them all up; and you can only cling humbly to God, and hold fast. One moment you feel like a poor slave clinging to his stern master’s arm, and entreating him not to kill him outright. The next you feel like a child clinging to its father, and entreating him to save him from some horrible monster which is going to devour it: but you have no words to pray with, only sighs, and tears, and groans; you feel that you know not what to pray for as you ought, know not what is good for you; dare ask for nothing, lest it should be the wrong thing. And the longer you struggle, the weaker you become, as Jacob did, till your very bones seem out of joint, your very heart broken within you, and life seems not worth having, or death either.

Only hold fast by God. Only do not despair. Only be sure that God cannot lie; be sure that he who cared for you from your birth hour cares for you still; that he who loved you enough to give his own Son for you hundreds of years before you were born, cannot but love you still; do not despair, I say; and at last, when you are fallen so low that you can fall no lower, and so weak that you are past struggling, you may hear through the darkness of your heart the still small voice of God. Only hold fast, and let him not go until he bless you, and you shall find with Jacob of old, that as a prince you have power with God and with man, and have prevailed. And so God will answer you, as he answered Elijah, at first out of the whirlwind and the blinding storm: but at last, doubt it not, with the still small voice which cannot be mistaken, which no earthly ear can hear, but which is more precious to the broken heart than all which this world gives, the peace which passes understanding, and yet is the surest and the only lasting peace.

But what is the secret of this strange awful struggle? Can you or I change God’s will by any prayers of ours? God forbid that we should, my friends, even if we could; for his will is a good will to us, and his name is Love.

Do not be afraid of him. If you do, you are not made perfect in love; you have not yet learnt perfect the lesson of his great love to you. But what is the secret of this struggle? Why has any poor soul to wrestle thus with God who made him, before he can get peace and hope? Why is the trouble sent him at all? It looks at first sight a strange sort of token of God’s love, to bring the creatures whom he has made into utter misery.

My friends, these are deep questions. There are plenty of answers for them ready written: but no answers like the Bible ones, which tell us that ‘whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; that these sorrows come on us, and heaviness, and manifold temptations, in order that the trial of our faith, being much more precious than that of gold, which perishes though it be tried with fire, may be found to praise, and honour, and glory at the appearance of Jesus Christ.’ This is the only answer but it does not explain the reason. It only gives us hope under it. We do not know that these dreadful troubles come from God. The Bible tells us ‘that God tempts no man; that he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.’ The Bible speaks at times as if these dark troubles came from the devil himself; and as if God turned them into good for us by making them part of our training, part of our education; and so making some devil’s attempt to ruin us only a great means of our improvement. I do not know: but this I do know, the troubles are here, and God is love. At least this is comfortable, that God will let no man be tempted beyond what he is able: but will with the temptation make a way for us to escape, that we may be able to bear it. At least this is comfortable, that our prayers are not needed to change God’s will, because his will is already that we should be saved; because we are on his side in the battle against the devil, or the flesh, or the world, or whatever it is which makes poor souls and bodies miserable, and he on ours: and all we have to do in our prayers, is to ask advice and orders and strength and courage from the great Captain of our salvation; that we may fight his battle and ours aright and to the end. And, my friends, if you be in trouble, if your heart be brought low within you, remember, only remember, who the Captain of our salvation is. Who but Jesus who died on the cross - Jesus who was made perfect by sufferings, Jesus who cried out, ‘My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?’

If Christ had to be made perfect by sufferings, much more must we. If he needed to learn obedience by sorrow, much more must we. If he needed in the days of his flesh, to make supplication to God his Father with strong crying and tears, so do we. And if he was heard in that he feared, so, I trust, we shall be heard likewise. If he needed to taste even the most horrible misery of all; to feel for a moment that God had forsaken him; surely we must expect, if we are to be made like him, to have to drink at least one drop out of his bitter cup. It is very wonderful: but yet it is full of hope and comfort. Full of hope and comfort to be able, in our darkest and bitterest sorrow, to look up to heaven, and say, At least there is one who has been through all this. As Christ was, so are we in this world; and the disciple cannot be above his master. Yes, we are in this world as he was, and he was once in this world as we are, he has been through all this, and more. He knows all this and more. ‘We have a High Priest above us who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because he has been tempted in all things like as we are. yet without sin.’

Yes, my friends. Nothing like one honest look, one honest thought, of Christ upon his cross. That tells us how much he has been through, how much he endured, how much he conquered, how much God loved us, who spared not his only-begotten Son, but freely gave him for us. Dare we doubt such a God? Dare we murmur against such a God? Dare we lay the blame of our sorrows on such a God - our Father? No; let us believe the blessed message of our confirmation, which tells us that it is his Fatherly hand which is ever over us, and that even though that hand may seem heavy for awhile, it is the hand of him whose very being and substance is love, who made the world by love, by love redeemed man, by love sustains him still. Though we went down into hell, says David, he is there; though we took the wings of the morning, and fled into the uttermost part of the sea, yet there his hand would hold us, and his right hand guide us still. It is holding and guiding every one of us now, through storm as well as through sunshine, through grief as well as through joy; let us humble ourselves under that mighty hand, and it will exalt us in due time. He knows, and must know, when that due time is, and, till then, he is still love, and his mercy is over all his works.

GENESIS i. 31.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.

This is good news, and a gospel. The Bible was written to bring good news, and therefore with good news it begins, and with good news it ends.

But it is not so easy to believe. We want faith to believe; and that faith will be sometimes sorely tried.

Yes; we want faith. As St. Paul says: ‘Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God; so that things which are seen were not made of things which appear.’

No one can prove to us that God made the world; yet we must believe it; and what is more, we do believe it, and are certain of it. But all the proving and arguments in the world will not make us certain that God made the world; they will only make us feel that it is probable, that it is reasonable to think so. What, then, does make us certain that God made the world? - as certain as if we had seen him make it? Faith, which is stronger than all arguments. Faith, which comes down from heaven to our hearts, and is the gift of God. Faith, which is the light with which Jesus Christ lights us. Faith, which comes by the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit.

So, again, when we have to believe not only that God made the world, but that all things which he has made are very good.

So it is, and you must believe it. God is good, the absolute and perfect good; and from good nothing can come but good: and therefore all which God has made is good, as he is; and therefore if anything in the world seems to be bad, one of two things must be true of it.

1. Either it is not bad, though it seems so to us; and God will bring good out of it in his good time, and justify himself to men, and show us that he is holy in all his works, and righteous in all his ways.

Or else - If the thing be really bad, then God did not make it. It must be a disease, a mistake, a failure, of man’s making, or some person’s making, but not of God’s making. For all that he has made he sees eternally; and behold, it is very good.

Now, I can say that; and I believe it; and God grant I may never say anything else. And yet I cannot prove it to you by any argument. But I believe it; and I dare say many of you believe it (you all must believe it, before all is over), by something better than any argument. By faith - faith, which speaks to the very core and root of a man’s heart and reason, and teaches him things surer and deeper than all sermons and books, all proofs and arguments.

May God, our Heavenly Father, fill our hearts with his Holy Spirit of faith, that we may believe utterly in his goodness, and therefore believe in the goodness of all that he has made.

For at times we shall need that faith very much indeed, not only about our neighbours, but about ourselves. We shall find it hard to believe that there is goodness in some of our neighbours; and the better we know ourselves, we shall find it very difficult to believe that there is goodness in us.

For surely this is a great puzzle.

‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.’ And God made you and me. Are we therefore very good? Or were we ever very good? Here is a great mystery. It would seem as if we must have been very good if God made us. For God can make nothing bad. Surely not. For he who makes bad things is a bad maker; he who makes bad houses is a bad builder; and he who makes bad men is a bad maker of men. But God cannot be a bad maker; for he is perfect and without fault in all his works. Yet men are bad.

Yet, on the other hand, if God made us, and the Bible be true, there must be good in us. When God said, Let that man be; when God first thought of us, if I may so speak, before the foundation of the world - he thought of us as good. He created each of us good in his own mind, else he would not have created us at all. But why were we not good when we came on earth? Why do we come into this world sinful? Why does God’s thought of us, God’s purpose about us, seem to have failed? We do not know, and we need not know. St. Paul tells us that it came by Adam’s fall; that by Adam’s fall sin entered into the world, and each man, as he came into it, became sinful. How that was we cannot understand - we need not understand. Let us believe, and be silent; but let us believe this also, that St. Paul speaks truth not in this only but in that blessed and glorious news with which he follows up his sad and bad news. ‘As by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men to justification of life.’

Yes; we may say boldly now, Whatever has been; whatever sin I inherited from Adam; however sinful I came into this world, God looks on me now, not as I am in Adam, but as I am in Christ. I am in Christ now, baptized into Christ, a new creature in Christ; to Christ I belong, and not to Adam at all; and God looks now, not on the old corrupt nature which I inherited from Adam, but on the new and good grace which God meant for me from all eternity, which Christ has given me now. It is that good and new grace in me which God cares for; it is that good and new grace which God is working on, to strengthen and perfect it, that I may grow in grace, and in the likeness of Christ, and become at last what God intended me to be, when he thought of me first before the foundation of all worlds, and said, ‘Let us make man [not one man, but all men, male and female] in our image, after our likeness.’

This, again, is a great mystery. Yet our own hearts will tell us, if we will look at them, that it is true. Are there not, as it were, two different persons in us, fighting for the mastery? Are we not so different at different times, that we seem to ourselves, and to our neighbours, perhaps, to be two different people, according as we give way to the better nature or to the worse? Even as David - one year living a heroic and noble life by faith in God, writing Psalms which will live to the world’s end, and the next committing adultery and murder. Were those two Davids the same David? Yes; and yet No. The good and noble David was David when he obeyed the grace of God. The base and foul David was David when he gave way to his fallen and corrupt nature.

Even so might we be. Even so, in a less degree, are we sometimes so unlike ourselves, so ashamed of ourselves, so torn asunder with passions and lusts, delighting in God’s law and all that is good in our hearts, and yet finding another law in us which makes us slaves at moments to our basest passions - to anger, fear, spite, covetousness - that when we think of it we are ready to cry with St. Paul, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’

Who? Who but he of whom St. Paul tells us, gives the answer in the very next verse, ‘I thank God, that God himself will, through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

Oh, my friends, whosoever of you have ever felt angry with yourselves, discontented with yourselves, ashamed of yourselves (and he that has not felt so knows no more about himself than a dumb animal does) - you that have felt so, listen to St. Paul’s glorious news and take comfort. Do you wish to be right? Do you wish to be what God intended you to be before all worlds? Do you wish that of you the glorious words may come true, ‘And God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good?’

Then believe this. That all which is good in you God has made; and that he will take care of what he has made, for he loves it; that all which is bad in you, God has not made, and therefore he will destroy it; for he hates all that he has not made, and will not suffer it in his world; and that if you, your heart, your will, are enlisted on the good side, if you are wishing and trying that the good nature in you should conquer the bad, then you are on the side of God himself, and God himself is on your side; and ‘if God be for you, who shall be against you?’ Before all worlds, from eternity itself, God said, ‘Let us make man in our own likeness;’ and nothing can hinder God’s word but the man himself. The word of God comes down, says the prophet, as the rain and the dew from heaven, and, like the rain and dew, returns not to him void, but prospers in the thing whereto he sends it; only if the ground be hard and barren, and determined to bring forth thorns and briars, rather than corn and fruit, is it cursed, and near to burning; and only if a man loves his fallen nature better than the noble, just, loving, generous grace of God, and gives himself willingly up to the likeness of the beasts which perish, can God’s purpose towards him become of none effect.

Take courage, then. If thou dislikest thy sins, so does God. If thou art fighting against thy worse feelings, so is God. On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all, and the Holy Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, nobleness. How canst thou fail when he is on thy side? On thy side are all spirits of just men made perfect, all wise and good souls and persons in earth and heaven, all good and wholesome influences, whether of nature or of grace, of matter or of mind. How canst thou fail if they are on thy side? God, I say, and all that God has made, are working together to bring true of thee the word of God - ‘And God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good.’ Believe, and endure to the end, and thou shalt be found in Christ at the last day; and, being in Christ, have thy share at last in the blessing which the Father pronounces everlastingly on Christ, and on the members of Christ, ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.’ Amen.

MATTHEW vi. 34.

Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Let me say a few words to you on this text. Be not anxious, it tells you. And why? Because you have to be prudent. In practice, fretting and anxiety help no man towards prudence. We must all be as prudent and industrious as we can; agreed. But does fretting make us the least more prudent? Does anxiety make us the least more industrious? On the contrary, I know nothing which cripples a man more, and hinders him working manfully, than anxiety. Look at the worst case of all - at a man who is melancholy, and fancies that all is going wrong with him, and that he must be ruined, and has a mind full of all sorts of dark, hopeless, fancies. Does he work any the more, or try to escape one of these dangers which he fancies are hanging over him? So far from it, he gives himself up to them without a struggle; he sits moping, helpless, and useless, and says, ‘There is no use in struggling. If it will come, it must come.’ He has lost spirit for work, and lost the mind for work, too. His mind is so full of these dark fears that he cannot turn it to laying any prudent plan to escape from the very things which he dreads.

And so, in a less degree, with people who fret and are anxious. They may be in a great bustle, but they do not get their work done. They run hither and thither, trying this and that, but leaving everything half done, to fly off to something else. Or else they spend time unprofitably in dreaming, and expecting, and complaining, which might be spent profitably in working. And they are always apt to lose their heads, and their tempers, just when they need them most; to do in their hurry the very last things which they ought to have done; to try so many roads that they choose the wrong road after all, from mere confusion, and run with open eyes into the very pit which they have been afraid of falling into. As we say here, they will go all through the wood to cut a straight stick, and bring out a crooked one at last. My friends, even in a mere worldly way, the men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the old proverb, that ‘Good times, and bad times, and all times pass over.’ Of all men, perhaps, who have lived in our days, the most truly successful was the great Duke of Wellington; and one thing, I believe, which helped him most to become great, was that he was so wonderfully free from vain fretting and complaining, free from useless regrets about the past, from useless anxieties for the future. Though he had for years on his shoulders a responsibility which might have well broken down the spirit of any man; though the lives of thousands of brave men, and the welfare of great kingdoms - ay, humanly speaking, the fate of all Europe - depended on his using his wisdom in the right place, and one mistake might have brought ruin and shame on him and on tens of thousands; yet no one ever saw him anxious, confused, terrified. Though for many years he was much tried and hampered, and unjustly and foolishly kept from doing his work as he knew it ought to be down, yet when the time came for work, his head was always clear, his spirit was always ready; and therefore he succeeded in the most marvellous way. Solomon says, ‘Better is he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.’ Now the Great Duke had learnt in most things to rule his spirit, and therefore he was able not only to take cities, but to do better still, to deliver cities, - ay, and whole countries - out of the hand of armies often far stronger, humanly speaking, than his own.

And for an example of what I mean I will tell you a story of him which I know to be true. Some one once asked him what his secret was for winning battles. And he said that he had no secret; that he did not know how to win battles, and that no man knew. For all, he said, that man could do, was to look beforehand steadily at all the chances, and lay all possible plans beforehand: but from the moment the battle began, he said, no mortal prudence was of use, and no mortal man could know what the end would be. A thousand new accidents might spring up every hour, and scatter all his plaits to the winds; and all that man could do was to comfort himself with the thought that he had done his best, and to trust in God.

Now, my friends, learn a lesson from this, a lesson for the battle of life, which every one of us has to fight from our cradle to our grave - the battle against misery, poverty, misfortune, sickness; the battle against worse enemies even than they - the battle against our own weak hearts, and the sins which so easily beset us against laziness, dishonesty, profligacy, bad tempers, hard-heartedness, deserved disgrace, the contempt of our neighbours, and just punishment from Almighty God. Take a lesson, I say, from the Great Duke for the battle of life. Be not fretful and anxious about the morrow. Face things like men; count the chances like men; lay your plans like men: but remember, like men, that a fresh chance may any moment spoil all your plans; remember that there are thousand dangers round you from which your prudence cannot save you. Do your best; and then like the Great Duke, comfort yourselves with the thought that you have done your best; and like him, trust in God. Remember that God is really and in very truth your Father, and that without him not a sparrow falls to the ground; and are ye not of more value than many sparrows, O ye of little faith? Remember that he knows what you have need of before you ask him; that he gives you all day long of his own free generosity a thousand things for which you never dream of asking him; and believe that in all the chances and changes of this life, in bad luck as well as in good, in failure as well as success, in poverty as well as wealth, in sickness as well as health, he is giving you and me, and all mankind good gifts, which we in our ignorance, and our natural dread of what is unpleasant, should never dream of asking him for: but which are good for us nevertheless; like him from whom they come, the Father of lights, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who is neither neglectful, capricious, or spiteful, for in him is neither variableness, nor shadow of turning, but who is always loving unto every man, and his mercy is over all his works.

Bear this in mind, my friends, in all the troubles of life - that you have a Father in heaven who knows what you have need of before you ask him, and your infirmity in asking, and who is wont - is regularly accustomed all day long - to give you more than either you desire or deserve. And bear it in mind even more carefully, if you ever become anxious and troubled about your own soul, and the life to come.

Many people are troubled with such anxieties, and are continually asking, ‘Shall I be saved or not?’ In some this anxiety comes from bad teaching, and the hearing of false, cruel, and superstitious doctrine. In others it seems to be mere bodily disease, constitutional weakness and fearfulness, which prevents their fighting against dark and sad thoughts when they arise; but in both cases I think that it is the devil himself who tempts them, the devil himself who takes advantage of their bodily weakness, or of the false doctrines which they have heard, and begins whispering in their ears, ‘You have no Father in heaven. God does not love you. His promises are not meant for you. He does not will your salvation, but your damnation, and there is no hope for you;’ till the poor soul falls into what is called religious melancholy, and moping madness, and despair, and dread of the devil; and often believes that the devil has got complete power over him, and that he is the slave of Satan for ever, till, in some cases, the man is even driven to kill himself in the agony of his despair.

Now, my friends, the true answer to all such dark thoughts is, ‘Your Heavenly Father knows what you have need of before you ask him; therefore be not anxious about the morrow, for the morrow shall take care for the things of itself; sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’

For in the first place, my friends, the devil was a liar from the beginning, and therefore the chances are a million to one against his speaking the truth in any case; and if he tells you that you are going to be damned, I should take that for a fair sign that you were not going to be damned, simply because the devil says it, and therefore it cannot be true. No, my friends, the people who have real reason to be afraid are just those who are not afraid - the self-conceited, self-satisfied souls; for the devil attacks them too, as he does every one, by their weakest point, and has his lie ready for them, and whispers, ‘You are all right; you are safe; you cannot fall; your salvation is sure.’ Or else, ‘You hold the right doctrine; you are orthodox, and perfectly right, and whoever differs from you must be wrong;’ and so tempts them to vain confidence and unclean living, or else into pride, hardness of heart, self-willed and self-conceited quarrelling and slandering and lying for the sake of their own party in the Church. It is the self-confident ones who have reason to fear and tremble; for after pride comes a fall. They have reason to fear, lest while they are crying peace and safety, and thanking God that they are not as other men are, sudden destruction come on them; but you anxious, trembling souls, who are terrified at the sight of your own sins you who feel how weak you are, and ignorant, and confused, and unworthy to do aught but cry, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ you are the very ones who have least reason to be afraid, just because you are most afraid: you are the true penitents over whom your Father in heaven rejoices; you are those of whom he has said, ‘I am the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity; yet I dwell with him that is of an humble and contrite heart, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to comfort the soul of the contrite ones;’ as he will revive and comfort you, if you will only have faith in God, and take your stand on your baptism, and from that safe ground defy the devil and all his dark imaginations, saying, ‘I am God’s child, and God is my father, and Christ’s blood was shed for me, and the Holy Spirit of God is with me; and in the strength of my baptism, I will hope against hope; I trust in the Lord my God, who has called me into this state of salvation, that he will keep to the end the soul which I have committed to him through Jesus Christ my Lord.’

Yes. Be not anxious for the morrow, and much more, be not anxious for the life to come. Your Heavenly Father knew that you had need of salvation long before you asked him. Eighteen hundred years before you were born, he sent his Son into the world to die for you; when you were but an infant he called you to be baptized into his Church, and receive your share of his Spirit. Long before you thought of him, he thought of you; long before you loved him, he loved you; and if he so loved you, that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for you, will he not with that Son freely give you all things? Therefore, fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

And be not anxious about the morrow; for the morrow shall be anxious about the things of itself. Be anxious about to-day, if you will; and ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling;’ for it is God who works in you to will and to do of his good pleasure; and therefore you can do right; and therefore, again, it is your own fault if you do not do right. And yet, for that very reason, be not over anxious; for ‘if God be with you, who can be against you?’ If God, who is so mighty that he made all heaven and earth, be on our side, surely stronger is he that is with you than he that is against you. If God, who so loved you that he gave his only begotten Son for you, be on your side, surely you have a friend whom you can trust. ‘What can part you from his love?’ St. Paul asks you; from God’s love, which is as boundless and eternal as God himself; nothing can part you from it, but your own sin.

‘But I do sin,’ you say, ‘again and again, and that is what makes me fearful. I try to do better, but I fall and I fail all day long. I try not to be covetous and worldly, but poverty tempts me, and I fall; I try to keep my temper, but people upset me, and I say things of which I am bitterly ashamed the next minute. Can God love such a one as me?’ My answer is, If God loved the whole world when it was dead in trespasses and sins, and not trying to be better, much more will he love you who are not dead in trespasses and sins, and are trying to be better. If he were not still helping you; if his Spirit were not with you, you would care no more to become better than a dog or an ox cares. And if you fall - why, arise again. Get up, and go on. You may be sorely bruised, and soiled with your fall, but is that any reason for lying still, and giving up the struggle cowardly? In the name of Jesus Christ, arise and walk. He will wash you, and you shall be clean. He will heal you, and you shall be strong again. What else can a traveller expect who is going over rough ground in the dark, but to fall and bruise himself, and to miss his way too many a time: but is that any reason for his sitting down in the middle of the moor, and saying, ‘I shall never get to my journey’s end?’ What else can a soldier expect, but wounds, and defeat, too, often; but is that any reason for his running away, and crying, ‘We shall never take the place?’ If our brave men at Sebastopol had done so, and lost heart each time they were beaten back, not only would they have never taken the place, but the Russians would have driven them long ago into the sea, and perhaps not a man of them would have escaped. And, be sure of it, your battle is like theirs. Every one of us has to fight for the everlasting life of his soul against all the devils of hell, and there is no use in running away from them; they will come after us stronger than ever, unless we go to face them. As with our men at Sebastopol, unless we beat the enemy, the enemy will destroy us; and our only hope is to fight to-day’s battle like men, in the strength which God gives us, and trust him to give us strength to fight to-morrow’s battle too, when it comes. For here again, as it was at Sebastopol, so it is with our souls. Let our men be as prudent as they might, they never knew what to-morrow’s battle would be like, or where the enemy might come upon them; and no more do we. They in general could not see the very enemy who was close on them; and no more can we see our enemy, near to us though he is. To-morrow’s temptations may be quite different from to-day’s. To-day we may be tempted to be dishonest, to-morrow to lose our tempers, the day afterwards to be vain and conceited, and a hundred other things. Let the morrow be anxious about the things of itself, then; and face to-day’s enemy, and do the duty which lies nearest you. Our brave men did so. They kept themselves watchful, and took all the precautions they could in a general way, just as we ought to do each in his own habits and temper; but the great business was, to go steadily on at their work, and do each day what they could do, instead of giving way to vain fears and fancies about what they might have to do some day, which would have only put them out of heart, and confused and distracted them. And so it came to pass, that as their day so their strength was; that each day they got forward somewhat, and had strength and courage left besides to drive back each new assault as it came; and so at last, after many mistakes and many failures, through sickness and weakness, thirst and hunger, and every misery except fear which can fall on man, they conquered suddenly, and beyond their highest hopes:- as every one will conquer suddenly, and beyond his highest hope, who fights on manfully under Christ’s banner against sin; against the sin in himself, and in his neighbours, and in his parish, and faces the devil and his works wheresoever he may meet them, sure that the devil and his works must be conquered at the last, because God’s wrath is gone out against them, and Christ, who executes God’s wrath, will never sheath his sword till he has put all enemies under his feet, and death be swallowed up in victory.

Therefore be not anxious about the morrow. Do to-day’s duty, fight to-day’s temptation; and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them. Enough for you that your Saviour for whom you fight is just and merciful; for he rewardeth every man according to his work. Enough for you that he has said, ‘He that is faithful unto death, I will give him a crown of life.’ Enough for you that if you be faithful over a few things, he will make you ruler over many things, and bring you into his joy for evermore.

But as for vain fears, leave them to those who will not believe God’s message concerning himself - that he is love, and his mercy over all his works. Leave them for those who deny God’s righteousness, by denying that he has had pity on this poor fallen world, but has left it to itself and its sins, without sending any one to save it. And for real fears, leave them for those who have no fears; for those who think they see, and yet are blind; who think themselves orthodox and infallible, and beyond making a mistake, every man his own Pope; who say that they see, and therefore their sin remaineth; for those who thank God that they are not as other men are, and who will find the publicans and harlots entering into the kingdom of heaven before them; and for those who continue in sin that grace may abound, and call themselves Christians, while they bring shame on the name of Christ by their own evil lives, by their worldliness and profligacy, or by their bitterness and quarrelsomeness; who make religious profession a by-word and a mockery in the mouths of the ungodly, and cause Christ’s little ones to stumble. Let them be afraid, if they will; for it were better for them that a millstone were hanged about their neck, and they were drowned in the midst of the sea. But those who hate their sins, and long to leave their sins behind; those who distrust themselves - let them not be anxious about the morrow; for to-morrow, and to-day, and for ever, the Almighty Father is watching over them, the Lord Jesus guiding them wisely and tenderly, and the Holy Spirit inspiring them more and more to do all those good works which God has prepared for them to walk in, and to conquer in the life-long battle against sin, the world, and the devil.

THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

GENESIS i. 27.

So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

On this Sunday the Church bids us to begin to read the book of Genesis, and hear how the world was made, and how man was made, and what the world is, and who man is.

And why?

To prepare us, I think, for Lent, and Passion week, Good Friday, and Easter day.

For you must know what a thing ought to be, before you can know what it ought not to be; you must know what health is, before you can know what disease is; you must know how and why a good man is good, before you can know how and why a bad man is bad. You must know what man fell from, before you can know what man has fallen to; and so you must hear of man's creation, before you can understand man's fall.

Now in Lent we lament and humble ourselves for man's fall. In Passion week we remember the death and suffering of our blessed Lord, by which he redeemed us from the fall. On Easter day we give him thanks and glory for having conquered death and sin, and rising up as the new Adam, of whom St. Paul writes, 'As in Adam all died, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.'

And therefore to prepare us for Lent and Passion week, and Easter day, we begin this Sunday to read who the first man was, and what he was like when he came into the world.

Now we all say that man was created good, righteous, innocent, holy. But do you fancy that man had any goodness or righteousness of his own, so that he could stand up and say, I am good; I can take care of myself; I can do what is right in my own strength?

If you fancy so, you fancy wrong. The book of Genesis, and the text, tell us that it was not so. It tells us that man could not be good by himself; that the Lord God had to tell him what to do, and what not to do; that the Lord God visited him and spoke to him: so that he could only do right by faith: by trusting the Lord, and believing him, and believing that what the Lord told him was the right thing for him; and it tells us that he fell for want of faith, by not believing the Lord and not believing that what the Lord told him was right for him. So he was holy, and stood safe, only as long as he did not stand alone: but the moment that he tried to stand alone he fell. So that it was with Adam as it is with you and me. The just man can only live by faith.

And St. John explains this more fully, when he tells us that the voice of the Lord, the Word of God whom Adam heard walking among the trees of the garden, was our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who was the life of Adam and all men, and the light of Adam and all men. All death and misery, and all ignorance and darkness, come at first from forgetting the Lord Jesus Christ, and forgetting that he is about our path and about our bed, and spying out all our ways; as St. John says, that Christ's light is always shining in the darkness of this world, but the darkness comprehendeth it not; that he came to his own, but his own received him not; but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, as he gave to man at first; for St. Luke says, that Adam was the Son of God. But a son must depend on his father; and therefore man was sent into the world to depend on God. So do not fancy that man before he fell could do without God's grace, though he cannot now. If man had never fallen, he would have been just as much in need of God's grace to keep him from falling. To deny that is the root of what is called the Pelagian heresy. Therefore the Church has generally said, and said most truly, that 'Adam stood by grace in Paradise;' and had a 'supernatural gift;' and that as long as he used that gift, he was safe, and only so long.

Now what does supernatural mean?

It means 'above nature.'

Adam had a human nature: but he wanted something to keep him above that nature, lest he should die, as all natural things on earth must. Trees and flowers, birds and beasts, yea, the great earth itself must die, and have an end in time, because it has had a beginning.

Man had and has still a human nature; the most beautiful, noble, and perfect nature in the world; high above the highest animals in rank, beauty, understanding, and feelings. Human nature is made, so the Bible tells us, in some mysterious way, after the likeness of God; of Christ, the eternal Son of man, who is in heaven; for the Bible speaks of the Word or Voice of God as appearing to man in something of a human voice: reasoning with him as man reasons with man; and feeling toward him human feelings. That is the doctrine of the Bible; of David and the prophets, just as much as of Genesis or of St. Paul.

That is a great mystery and a great glory: but that alone could not make man good, could not even keep him alive.

For God made man for something more noble and blessed than to follow even his own lofty human nature. God made the animals to follow their natures each after its kind, and to do each what it liked, without sin. But he made man to do more than that; to do more than what he likes; namely, to do what he ought. God made man to love him, to obey him, to copy him, by doing God's will, and living God's life, lovingly, joyfully, and of his own free will, as a son follows the father whose will he delights to do.

All animals God made to live and multiply, each after their kind: and man likewise: but the animals he made to die again, and fresh generations, ay, and fresh kinds of animals to take their place, and do their work, as we know has happened again and again, both before and since man came upon the earth. But of man the Bible says, that he was not meant to die: that into him God breathed the breath, or spirit, of life: of that life of men who is Jesus Christ the Lord; that in Christ man might be the Son of God. To man he gave the life of the soul, the moral and spiritual life, which is - to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God; the life which is always tending upward to the source from which it came, and longing to return to God who gave it, and to find rest in him. For in God alone, in the assurance of God's love to us, and in the knowledge that we are living the life of God, can a man's spirit find rest. So St. Augustine found, through so many bitter experiences, when (as he tells us) he tried to find rest and comfort in all God's creatures one after another, and yet never found them till he found God, or rather was found by God, and illuminated (so he says himself) with that grace which by the fall he lost.

What then does holy baptism mean? It means that God lifts us up again to that honour from whence Adam fell. That as Adam lost the honour of being God's son, so Jesus Christ restores to us that honour. That as Adam lost the supernatural grace in which he stood, so God for Christ's sake freely gives us back that grace, that we may stand by faith in that Christ, the Word of God, whom Adam disbelieved and fell away.

Baptism says, You are not true and right men by nature; you are only fallen men - men in your wrong place: but by grace you become men indeed, true men; men living as man was meant to live, by faith, which is the gift of God. For without grace man is like a stream when the fountain head is stopped; it stops too - lies in foul puddles, decays, and at last dries up: to keep the stream pure and living and flowing, the fountain above must flow, and feed it for ever.

And so it is with man. Man is the stream, Christ is the fountain of life. Parted from him mankind becomes foul and stagnant in sin and ignorance, and at last dries up and perishes, because there is no life in them. Joined to him in holy baptism, mankind lives, spreads, grows, becomes stronger, better, wiser year by year, each generation of his church teaching the one which comes after, as our Lord says, not only, 'If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink;' but also, 'He that believeth in me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water.'

Yes, my brethren, if you want to see what man is, you must not look at the heathens, who are in a state of fallen and corrupt nature, but at Christians, who are in a state of grace; for they only (those of them, I mean, who are true to God and themselves), give us any true notion of what man can be and should be.

Heathendom is the foul and stagnant pool, parted from Christ, the Fount of life. Christendom, in spite of all its sins and short-comings, is the stream always fed from the heavenly Fountain. And holy baptism is the river of the water of life, which St. John saw in the Revelations, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, the trees of which are for the healing of the nations. And when that river shall have spread over the world, there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in the city of God; and the nations of them that are saved shall grow to glory and blessedness, such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man to conceive, but God hath prepared for those who love him.

Oh, may God hasten that day! May he accomplish the number of his elect and hasten his kingdom, and the day when there shall not be a heathen soul on earth, but all shall know him from the least to the greatest, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea!

Then - when all men are brought into the fold of Christ's holy Church - then will they be men indeed; men not after nature, but after grace, and the likeness of Christ, and the stature of perfect men: and then what shall happen to this earth matters little; no, not if the earth and all the works therein, beautiful though they be, be burned up; for though this world perish, man would still have his portion sure in the city of God which is eternal in the heavens, and before the face of the Son of man who is in heaven.

Oh, my friends, think of this. Think of what you say when you say, 'I am a man.' Remember that you are claiming for yourselves the very highest honour - an honour too great to make you proud; an honour so great that, if you understand it rightly, it must fill you with awe, and trembling, and the spirit of godly fear, lest, when God has put you up so high, you should fall shamefully again. For the higher the place, the deeper the fall; and the greater the honour, the greater the shame of losing it. But be sure that it was an honour before Adam fell. That ever since Christ has taken the manhood into God, it is an honour now to be a man. Do not let the devil or bad men ever tempt you to say, I am only a man, and therefore you cannot expect me to do right. I am but a man, and therefore I cannot help being mean, and sinful, and covetous, and quarrelsome, and foul: for that is the devil's doctrine, though it is common enough. I have heard a story of a man in America - where very few, I am sorry to say, have heard the true doctrine of the Catholic Church, and therefore do not know really that God made man in his own image, and redeemed him again into his own image by Jesus Christ - and this man was rebuked for being a drunkard; and what do you fancy his excuse was? 'Ah,' he said, 'you should remember that there is a great deal of human nature in a man.' That was his excuse. He had been so ill-taught by his Calvinist preachers, that he had learnt to look on human nature as actually a bad thing; as if the devil, and not God, had made human nature, and as if Christ had not redeemed human nature. Because he was a man, he thought he was excused in being a bad man; because he had a human nature in him, he was to be a drunkard and a brute.

My friends, I trust that you have not so learned Christ. And if you have, it is from no teaching of your Bible, of your Catechism, or your Prayer-book; and, I say boldly, from no teaching of mine. The Church bids you say, Yes; I have a human nature in me; and what nature is that but the nature which the Son of God took on himself, and redeemed, and justified it, and glorified it, sitting for ever now in his human nature at the right hand of God, the Son of man who is in heaven? Yes, I am a man; and what is it to be a man, but to be the image and glory of God? What is it to be a man? To belong to that race whose Head is the co-equal and co-eternal Son of God. True, it is not enough to have only a human nature which may sin, will sin, must sin, if left to itself a moment. But you have, unless the Holy Spirit has left you, and your baptism is of none effect, more than human nature in you: you have divine grace - that supernatural grace and Spirit of God by which man stood in Paradise, and by neglecting which he fell.

Obey that Spirit; from him comes every right judgment of your minds, every good desire of your hearts, every thought and feeling in you which raises you up, instead of dragging you down; which bids you do your duty, and live the life of God and Christ, instead of living the mere death-in-life of selfish pleasure and covetousness. Obey that Spirit, and be men: men indeed, that you may not come to shame in the day when Christ the Son of Man shall take account of you, how you have used your manhood, body, soul, and spirit.

(Quinquagesima Sunday.)

LUKE xviii. 31, 32, 33.

All things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him and put him to death; and the third day he shall rise again.

This is a solemn text, a solemn Gospel; but it is not its solemnity which I wish to speak of this morning, but this - What has it to do with the Epistle, and with the Collect? The Epistle speaks of Charity; the Collect bids us pray for the Holy Spirit of Charity. What have they to do with the Gospel?

Let me try to show you.

The Epistle speaks of God's eternal charity. The Gospel tells us how that eternal charity was revealed, and shown plainly in flesh and blood on earth, in the life and death of Jesus Christ our Lord.

But you may ask, How does the Epistle talk of God's charity? It bids men be charitable; but the name of God is never mentioned in it. Not so, my friends. Look again at the Epistle, and you will see one word which shows us that this charity, which St. Paul says we must have, is God's charity.

For, he says, Charity never faileth; that though prophecies shall fail, tongues cease, knowledge vanish away, charity shall never fail. Now, if a thing never fail, it must be eternal. And if it be eternal, it must be in God. For, as I have reminded you before about other things, the Athanasian Creed tells us (and never was truer or wiser word written) there is but one eternal.

But if charity be not in God, there must be two eternals; God must be one eternal, and charity another eternal; which cannot be. Therefore charity must be in God, and of God, part of God's essence and being; and not only God's saints, but God himself - suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, is not puffed up, seeketh not his own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

So St. Augustine believed, and the greatest fathers of old time. They believed, and they have taught us to believe, that before all things, above all things, beneath all things, is the divine charity, the love of God, infinite as God is infinite, everlasting as God is everlasting; the charity by which God made all worlds, all men, and all things, that they might be blest as he is blest, perfect as he is perfect, useful as he is useful; the charity which is God's essence and Holy Spirit, which might be content in itself, because it is perfectly at peace in itself; and yet cannot be content in itself, just because it is charity and love, and therefore must be going forth and proceeding everlastingly from the Father and the Son, upon errands of charity, love, and mercy, rewarding those whom it finds doing their work in their proper place, and seeking and saving those who are lost, and out of their proper place.

But what has this to do with the Gospel? Surely, my friends, it is not difficult to see. In Jesus Christ our Lord, the eternal charity of God was fully revealed. The veil was taken off it once for all, that men might see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and know that the glory of God is charity, and the Spirit of God is love.

There was a veil over that in old times; and the veil comes over it often enough now. It was difficult in old times to believe that God was charity; it is difficult sometimes now.

Sad and terrible things happen - Plague and famine, earthquake and war. All these things have happened in our times. Not two months ago, in Italy, an earthquake destroyed many thousands of people; and in India, this summer, things have happened of which I dare not speak, which have turned the hearts of women to water, and the hearts of men to fire: and when such things happen, it is difficult for the moment to believe that God is love, and that he is full of eternal, boundless, untiring charity toward the creatures whom he has made, and who yet perish so terribly, suddenly, strangely.

Well, then, we must fall back on the Gospel. We must not be afraid of the terror of such awful events, but sanctify the Lord God, in our hearts, and say, Whatever may happen I know that God is love; I know that his glory is charity; I know that his mercy is over all his works; for I know that Jesus Christ, who was full of perfect charity, is the express image of his Father's person, and the brightness of his Father's glory. I know (for the Gospel tells me), that he dared all things, endured all things, in the depth of his great love, for the sake of sinful men. I know that when he knew what was going to happen to him; when he knew that he should be mocked, scourged, crucified, he deliberately, calmly, faced all that shame, horror, agony, and went up willingly to Jerusalem to suffer and to die there; because he was full of the Spirit of God, the spirit of charity and love. I know that he was so full of it, that as he went up on his fatal journey, with a horrible death staring him in the face, still, instead of thinking of himself, he was thinking of others, and could find time to stop and heal the poor blind man by the way side, who called 'Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.' And in him and his love will I trust, when there seems nothing else left to trust on earth.

Oh, my friends, believe this with your whole heart. Whatever happens to you or to your friends, happens out of the eternal charity of God, who cannot change, who cannot hate, who can be nothing but what he is and was, and ever will be - love.

And when St. Paul tells you, as he told you in the Epistle to-day, to have charity, to try for charity, because it is the most excellent way to please God, and the eternal virtue, which will abide for ever in heaven, when all wisdom and learning, even about spiritual things, which men have had on earth, shall seem to us when we look back such as a child's lessons do to a grown man; - when, I say, St. Paul tells you to try after charity, he tells you to be like God himself; to be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect; to bear and forbear because God does so: to give and forgive because God does so; to love all because God loves all, and willeth that none should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth.

How he will fulfil that; how he fulfilled it last summer with those poor souls in India, we know not, and never shall know in this life. Let it be enough for us that known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world, and that his charity embraces the whole universe.

JAMES i. 17.

Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is neither variableness, nor shadow of turning.

It seems an easy thing for us here to say, 'I believe in God.' We have learnt from our childhood that there is but one God. It seems to us strange and ridiculous that people anywhere should believe in more gods than one. We never heard of any other doctrine, except in books about the heathen; and there are perhaps not three people in this church who ever saw a heathen man, or talked to him.

Yet it is not so easy to learn that there is but one God. Were it not for the church, and the missionaries who were sent into this part of the world by the church, now 1200 years ago, we should not know it now. Our forefathers once worshipped many gods, and not one only God. I do not mean when they were savages; for I do not believe that they ever were savages at all: but after they were settled here in England, living in a simple way, very much as country people live now, and dressing very much as country people do now, they worshipped many gods.

Now what put that mistake into their minds? It seems so ridiculous to us now, that we cannot understand at first how it ever arose.

But if we will consider the names of their old gods, we shall understand it a little better. Now the names of the old English gods you all know. They are in your mouths every day. The days of the week are named after them. The old English kept time by weeks, as the old Jews did, and they named their days after their gods. Why, would take me too much time to tell: but so it is.

Why, then, did they worship these gods?

First, because man must worship something. Before man fell, he was created in Christ the image and likeness of God the Father; and therefore he was created that he might hear his Father's voice, and do his Father's will, as Christ does everlastingly; and after man fell, and lost Christ and Christ's likeness, still there was left in his heart some remembrance of the child's feeling which the first man had; he felt that he ought to look up to some one greater than himself, obey some one greater than himself; that some one greater than himself was watching over him, doing him good, and perhaps, too, doing him harm and punishing him.

Then these simple men looked up to the heaven above, and round on the earth beneath, and asked, Who is it who is calling for us? Who is it we ought to obey and please; who gives us good things? Who may hurt us if we make him angry?

Then the first thing they saw was the sun. What more beautiful than the sun? What more beneficent? From the sun came light and heat, the growth of all living things, ay, the growth of life itself.

The sun, they thought, must surely be a god; so they worshipped the sun, and called the first day of the week after him - Sunday.

Next the moon. Nothing, except the sun, seemed so grand and beautiful to them as the moon, and she was their next god, and Monday was named after her.

Then the wind - what a mysterious, awful, miraculous thing the wind seemed, always moving, yet no one knew how; with immense power and force, and yet not to be seen; as our blessed Lord himself said, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.' Then - and this is very curious - they fancied that the wind was a sort of pattern, or type of the spirit of man. With them, as with the old Jews and Greeks, the same word which meant wind, meant also a man's soul, his spirit; and so they grew to think that the wind was inhabited by some great spirit, who gave men spirit, and inspired them to be brave, and to prophesy, and say and do noble things; and they called him Wodin the Mover, the Inspirer; and named Wednesday after him.

Next the thunder - what more awful and terrible, and yet so full of good, than the summer heat and the thunder cloud? So they fancied that the thunder was a god, and called him Thor - and the dark thunder cloud was Thor's frowning eyebrow; and the lightning flash Thor's hammer, with which he split the rocks, and melted the winter-ice and drove away the cold of winter, and made the land ready for tillage. So they worshipped Thor, and loved him; for they fancied him a brave, kindly, useful god, who loved to see men working in their fields, and tilling the land honestly.

Then the spring. That was a wonder to them again - and is it not a wonder to see all things grow fresh and fair, after the dreary winter cold? So the spring was a goddess, and they called her Freya, the Free One, the Cheerful One, and named Friday after her; and she it was, they thought, who gave them the pleasant spring time, and youth, and love, and cheerfulness, and rejoiced to see the flowers blossom, and the birds build their nests, and all young creatures enjoy the life which God had given them in the pleasant days of spring. And after her Friday is named.

Then the harvest. The ripening of the grain, that too was a wonder to them - and should it not be to us? - how the corn and wheat which is put into the ground and dies should rise again, and then ripen into golden corn? That too must be the work of some kindly spirit, who loved men; and they called him Seator, the Setter, the Planter, the God of the seed field and the harvest, and after him Saturday is named.

And so, instead of worshipping him who made all heaven and earth, they turned to worship the heaven and the earth itself, like the foolish Canaanites.

But some may say, 'This was all very mistaken and foolish: but what harm was there in it? How did it make them worse men?'

My friends, among these very woodlands here, some thirteen hundred years ago, you might have come upon one of the places where your forefathers worshipped Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind, beneath the shade of ancient oaks, in the darkest heart of the forest. And there you would have seen an ugly sight enough.

There was an altar there, with an everlasting fire burning on it; but why should that altar, and all the ground around be crusted and black with blood; why should that dark place be like a charnel house or a butcher's shambles; why, from all the trees around, should there be hanging the rotting carcases, not of goats and horses merely, but of men, sacrificed to Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind? Why that butchery, why those works of darkness in the dark places of the world?

Because that was the way of pleasing Thor and Odin. To that our forefathers came. To that all heathens have come, sooner or later. They fancy gods in their own likeness; and then they make out those gods no better than, and at last as bad as themselves.

The old English and Danes were fond of Thor and Odin; they fancied them, as I told you, brave gods, very like themselves: but they themselves were not always what they ought to be; they had fierce passions, were proud, revengeful, blood-thirsty; and they thought Thor and Odin must be so too.

And when they looked round them, that seemed too true. The thunder storm did not merely melt the snow, cool the air, bring refreshing rain; it sometimes blasted trees, houses, men; that they thought was Thor's anger.

So of the wind. Sometimes it blew down trees and buildings, sank ships in the sea. That was Odin's anger. Sometimes, too, they were not brave enough; or they were defeated in battle. That was because Thor and Odin were angry with them, and would not give them courage. How were they to appease Thor and Odin, and put them into good humour again? By giving them their revenge, by letting them taste blood; by offering them sheep, goats, horses in sacrifice: and if that would not do, by offering them something more precious still, living men.

And so, too often, when the weather was unfavourable, and crops were blasted by tempest or they were defeated in battle by their enemies, Thor's and Odin's altars were turned into slaughter-places for wretched human beings - captives taken in war, and sometimes, if the need was very great, their own children. That was what came of worshipping the heaven above and the earth around, instead of the true God. Human sacrifices, butchery, and murder.

English and Danes alike. It went on among them both; across the seas in their old country, and here in England, till they were made Christians. There is no doubt about it. I could give you tale on tale which would make your blood run cold. Then they learnt to throw away those false gods who quarrelled among themselves, and quarrelled with mankind; gods who were proud, revengeful, changeable, spiteful; who had variableness in them, and turned round as their passions led them. Then they learnt to believe in the one true God, the Father of lights, in whom is neither variableness nor shadow of turning. Then they learnt that from one God came every good and perfect gift; that God filled the sun with light; that God guided the changes of the moon; that God, and not Thor, gave to men industry and courage; God, and not Wodin, inspired them with the spirit which bloweth where it listeth, and raised them up above themselves to speak noble words and do noble deeds; that God, and not Friga, sent spring time and cheerfulness, and youth and love, and all that makes earth pleasant; that God, and not Satur, sent the yearly wonder of the harvest crops, sent rain and fruitful seasons, filling the earth with food and gladness.

But what was there about this new God, even the true God, which the old missionaries preached, which won the hearts of our forefathers?

This, my friends, not merely that he was one God and not many, but that he was a Father of lights, from whom came good gifts, in whom was neither variableness nor shadow of turning.

Not merely a master, but a Father, who gave good gifts, because he was good himself; a God whom they could love, because he loved them; a God whom they could trust and depend on, because there was no variableness in him, and he could not lose his temper as Thor and Odin did. That was the God whom their wild, passionate hearts wanted, and they believed in him.

And when they doubted, and asked, 'How can we be sure that God is altogether good? - how can we be sure that he is always trustworthy, always the same?' - Then the missionaries used to point them to the crucifix, the image of Christ upon his cross, and say, 'There is the token; there is what God is to you, what God suffered for you; there is the everlasting sign that he gives good gifts, even to the best of all gifts, even to his own self, when it was needed; there is the everlasting sign that in him is neither darkness, passion, nor change, but that he wills all men to be saved from their own darkness and passions, and from the ruin which they bring, and to come to the knowledge of the truth, that they have a Father in heaven.'

ACTS xvi. 24-28.

God that made the world, and all that therein is, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands . . . For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

I told you last Sunday of the meaning of the days of the week; but one day I left out - namely, Tuesday. I did so on purpose. I wish to speak of that day by itself in this sermon.

I told you how our forefathers worshipped many gods, by fancying that various things in the world round them were gods - sun and moon, wind and thunder, spring and harvest.

But if that seems to you at times wrong and absurd, it seemed so to them also. They, like all heathens, had at times dreams of one God.

They thought to themselves - All heaven and earth must have had a beginning, and they cannot have grown out of nothing, for out of nothing nothing comes. They must have been made in some way. Perhaps they were made by some One.

The more they saw of this wonderful world, and all the order and contrivance in it, the more sure they were that one mind must have planned it, one will created it.

But men - they thought - persons, living souls - are not merely made; they are begotten; they must have a Father, whose sons they are. Perhaps, they thought, there is somewhere a great Father; a Father of all persons, from whom all souls come, who was before all things, and all persons, however great, however ancient they may be. And so, like the Greeks and Romans, and many other heathen nations, they had dim thoughts of an All-Father, as they called him; Father of gods and men; the Father of spirits.

They looked round them too, in this world, and saw that everything in it must die. The tree, though it stood for a thousand years, must decay at last; the very rocks and mountains crumbled to dust at last: and so they thought - truly and wisely enough - Everything which we see near us, perishes at last: why should not everything which we can see, however far off, however great, perish? Why should not this earth come to an end? Why should not sun and moon, wind and thunder, spring and harvest, end at last? And then will not these gods, who are mixed up with the world, and live in it, and govern it, die too? If the sun perishes, the sun-god will perish too. If the thunder ceases for ever, then there will be no more thunder-god. Yes, they thought - and wisely and truly too - everything which has a beginning must have an end. Everything which is born, must die. The sun and the earth, wind and thunder, will perish some day; the gods of sun and earth, wind and thunder, will die some day. And then what will be left? Will there be nothing and nowhere? That thought was too horrible. God's voice in their hearts, the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, who lights every man who comes into the world, made them feel that it was horrible, unreasonable; that it could not be.

But it was all dim to them, and uncertain. Of one thing only they were certain, that death reigned, and that death had passed upon all men, and things, and even gods. Evil beasts, evil gods, evil passions, were gnawing at the root of all things. A time would come of nothing but rage and wickedness, fury and destruction; the gods would fight and be slain, and earth and heaven would be sent back again into shapeless ruin: and after that they knew no more, though they longed to know. They dreamed, I say, at moments of a new and a better world, new men, new gods: but how were they to come? Who would live when all things died? Was there not somewhere an All-Father, who had eternal life?

Then they looked round upon the earth, those simple-hearted forefathers of ours, and said within themselves, Where is the All-Father, if All-Father there be? Not in this earth; for it will perish. Not in the sun, moon, or stars, for they will perish too. Where is He who abideth for ever?

Then they lifted up their eyes and saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and moon, and stars and all which changes and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of heaven.

That never changed; that was always the same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The All-Father must be there, unchangeable in the unchanging heaven; bright, and pure, and boundless like the heavens; and like the heavens too, silent, and afar off.

So they named him after the heaven, Tuith, Tuisco, Divisco - The God who lives in the clear heaven; and after him Tuesday is called: the day of Tuisco, the heavenly Father. He was the Father of gods and men; and man was the son of Tuisco and Hertha - heaven and earth.

That was all they knew; and even that they did not know; they contradicted themselves and each other about it. After a time they began to think that Odin, and not Tuisco, was the All-Father; all was dim and far off to them. They were feeling after him, as St. Paul says he had intended them to do: but they did not find him. They did not know the Father, because they did not know Jesus Christ the Son; as it is written, 'No man cometh to the Father, but through me;' and, 'No man hath seen God at any time; only the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.'

Many other heathens had the same thought and the same word; the old Greeks and Romans, for instance, who many thousand years ago spoke the same tongue as we did then, called him Zeus or Deus Pater; Jupiter; the heavenly Father, Father of gods and men; using the same word as our Tuisco, a little altered. And that same word, changed slightly, means God now, in Welsh, French, and Italian, and many languages in Europe and in Asia; and will do so till the end of time.

That, I say, was all they knew of their Father in heaven, till missionaries came and preached the Gospel to them, and told them what St. Paul told the Greeks in my text.

Now, what did St. Paul tell the Greeks? He came, we read, to Athens in Greece, and found the city wholly given to idolatry, worshipping all manner of false gods, and images of them. And yet they were not content with their false gods. They felt, as our forefathers felt, that there must be a greater, better, more mighty, more faithful God than all: and they thought, 'We will worship him too: for we are sure that he is, though we know nothing about him.' So they set up, beside all the altars and temples of the false gods 'To the Unknown God.' And St. Paul passed by and saw it; and his heart was stirred within him with pity and compassion; and he rose up and preached them a sermon - the first and the best missionary sermon which ever was preached on earth, the model of all missionary sermons; and said, 'That God whom you ignorantly worship, Him I will declare unto you.'

Now, here was a Gospel; here was good news. St. Paul told them - as the missionaries afterwards told our forefathers - that one, at least, of their heathen fancies was not wrong. There was a heavenly Father. Mankind was not an orphan, come into the world he knew not whence, and going, when he died, he knew not whither. No, man was not an orphan. From God he came; to God, if he chose, he might return. The heathen poet had spoken truth when he said, 'For we are the offspring of God.'

But where was the heavenly Father? Far away in the clear sky, in the highest heaven beyond all suns and stars? Silent and idle, caring for no one on earth, content in himself, and leaving sinful man to himself to go to ruin as he chose?

'No,' says St. Paul, 'He is not far off from any one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our being.'

Wonderful words! Eighteen hundred years have past since then, and we have not spelt out half the meaning of them. It is such good news, such blessed news, and yet such awful news, that we are afraid to believe it fully. That the Almighty God should be so near us, sinful men; that we, in spite of all our sins, should live, and move, and have our being in God. How can it be true?

My friends, it would not be true, if something more was not true. We should have no right to say, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty,' unless we said also, 'I believe in Jesus Christ,. his only Son, our Lord.' St. Paul, after he had told them of a Father in heaven, went on to tell them of a man whom that Father had sent to judge the world, having raised him from the dead. - And there his sermon stopped. Those foolish Greeks laughed at him; they would not receive the news of Jesus Christ the Son; and therefore they lost the good news of their Father in heaven. We can guess from St. Paul's Epistle what he was going on to tell them. How, by believing in Jesus Christ the Son, and claiming their share in him, and being baptized into his name, they might become once more God's children, and take their place again as new men and true men in Jesus Christ. But they would not hear his message.

Our forefathers did hear that message, and believed it; they had been feeling after the heavenly Father, and at last they found him, and claimed their share in Christ as sons of the heavenly Father; and therefore we are Christian men this day, baptized into God's family, and thriving as God's family must thrive, as long as it remembers that God dwelleth not in temples made with hands, and needs nothing from man, seeing that he gives to all life and breath and all things; and is not far from any one of us, seeing that in him we live, and move, and have our being, and are the offspring, the children of God.

Bear that in mind. Bear it in mind, I say, that in God you live, and move, and have your being. Day and night, going out and coming in, say to yourselves, 'I am with God my Father, and God my Father is with me. There is not a good feeling in my heart, but my heavenly Father has put it there: ay, I have not a power which he has not given, a thought which he does not know; even the very hairs of my head are all numbered. Whither shall I go then from his presence? Whither shall I flee from his Spirit? For he filleth all things. If my eyes were opened, I should see at every moment God's love, God's power, God's wisdom, working alike in sun and moon, in every growing blade and ripening grain, and in the training and schooling of every human being, and every nation, to whom he has appointed their times, and the bounds of their habitation, if haply they may seek after the Lord, and find him in whom they live, and move, and have their being. Everywhere I should see life going forth to all created things from God the Father, of whom are all things, and God the Son, by whom are all things, and God the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of that life.'

A little of that glorious sight we may see in this life, if our hearts and reasons are purified by the Spirit of God, to see God in all things, and all things in God: and more in that life whereof it is written, 'Beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but this we know, that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.' To that life may he in his mercy bring us all. Amen.

THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

LUKE ii. 52.

And Jesus increased in wisdom, and in stature, and in favour both with God and man.

I do not pretend to understand these words. I preach on them because the Church has appointed them for this day. And most fitly. At Christmas we think of our Lord's birth. What more reasonable, than that we should go on to think of our Lord's boyhood? To think of this aright, even if we do not altogether understand it, ought to help us to understand rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ; the right faith about which is, that he was very man, of the substance of his mother. Now, if he were very and real man, he must have been also very and real babe, very and real boy, very and real youth, and then very and real full-grown man.

Now it is not so easy to believe that as it may seem. It is not so easy to believe.

I have heard many preachers preach (without knowing it), what used to be called the Apollinarian Heresy, which held that our Lord had not a real human soul, but only a human body; and that his Godhead served him instead of a human soul, and a man's reason, man's feelings.

About that the old fathers had great difficulty, before they could make people understand that our Lord had been a real babe. It seemed to people's unclean fancies something shocking that our Lord should have been born, as other children are born. They stumbled at the stumbling-block of the manger in Bethlehem, as they did at the stumbling-block of the cross on Calvary; and they wanted to make out that our Lord was born into the world in some strange way - I know not how; - I do not choose to talk of it here:- but they would fancy and invent anything, rather than believe that Jesus was really born of the Virgin Mary, made of the substance of his mother. So that it was hundreds of years before the fathers of the Church set people's minds thoroughly at rest about that.

In the same way, though not so much, people found it very hard to believe that our Lord grew up as a real human child. They would not believe that he went down to Nazareth, and was subject to his father and mother. People believe generally now - the Roman Catholics as well as we - that our Lord worked at his father's trade - that he himself handled the carpenter's tools. We have no certain proof of it: but it is so beautiful a thought, that one hopes it is true. At least our believing it is a sign that we do believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ more rightly than most people did fifteen hundred years ago. For then, too many of them would have been shocked at the notion.

They stumbled at the carpenter's shop, even as they did at the manger and at the cross. And they invented false gospels - one of which especially, had strange and fanciful stories about our Lord's childhood - which tried to make him out.

Most of these stories are so childish I do not like to repeat them. One of them may serve as a sample. Our Lord, it says, was playing with other children of his own age, and making little birds out of clay: but those which our Lord made became alive, and moved, and sang like real birds. - Stories put together just to give our Lord some magical power, different from other children, and pretending that he worked signs and wonders: which were just what he refused to work.

But the old fathers rejected these false gospels and their childish tales, and commanded Christian men only to believe what the Bible tells us about our Lord's childhood; for that is enough for us, and that will help us better than any magical stories and childish fairy tales of man's invention, to believe rightly that God was made man, and dwelt among us.

And what does the Bible tell us? Very little indeed. And it tells us very little, because we were meant to know very little. Trust your Bibles always, my friends, and be sure, if you were meant to know more, the Bible would tell you more.

It tells us that Jesus grew just as a human child grows, in body, soul, and spirit.

Then it tells us of one case - only one - in which he seemed to act without his parents' leave. And as the saying is, the exception proves the rule. It is plain that his rule was to obey, except in this case; that he was always subject to his parents, as other children are, except on this one occasion. And even in this case, he went back with them, it is expressly said, and was subject to them.

Now, I do not pretend to explain why our Lord stayed behind in the temple.

I cannot explain (who can?) the why and wherefore of what I see people do in common daily life.

How much less can one explain why our Lord did this and that, who was both man and God.

But one reason, and one which seems to me to be plain, on the very face of St. Luke's words - he stayed behind to learn; to learn all he could from the Scribes and Pharisees, the doctors of the law.

He told the people after, when grown up, 'The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All therefore which they command you, that observe and do.' And he was a Jew himself, and came to fulfil all righteousness; and therefore he fulfilled such righteousness as was customary among Jews according to their law and religion.

Therefore I do not like at all a great many pictures which I see in children's Sunday books, which set the child Jesus in the midst, as on a throne, holding up his hand as if he were laying down the law, and the Scribes and Pharisees looking angry and confounded. The Bible says not that they heard him, but that he heard them; that they were astonished at his understanding, not that they were confounded and angry. No. I must believe that even those hard, proud Pharisees, looked with wonder and admiration on the glorious Child; that they perhaps felt for the moment that a prophet, another Samuel, had risen up among them. And surely that is much more like the right notion of the child Jesus, full of meekness and humility; of Jesus, who, though 'he were a Son, learnt obedience by the things which he suffered;' of Jesus, who, while he increased in stature, increased in favour with man, as well as with God: and surely no child can increase in favour either with God or man, if he sets down his elders, and contradicts and despises the teachers whom God has set over him. No let us believe that when he said, 'Know ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' that a child's way of doing the work of his Father in heaven is to learn all that he can understand from his teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters, whom God the Father has set over him.

Therefore - and do listen to this, children and young people - if you wish really to think what Christ has to do with you, you must remember that he was once a real human child - not different outwardly from other children, except in being a perfectly good child, in all things like as you are, but without sin.

Then, whatever happens to you, you will have the comfort of feeling - Christ understands this; Christ has been through this. Child though I am, Christ can be touched with the feeling of my weakness, for he was once a child like me.

And then, if trouble, or sickness, or death come among you - and you all know how sickness and death have come among you of late - you may be cheerful and joyful still, if you will only try to be such children as Jesus was. Obey your parents, and be subject to them, as he was; try to learn from your teachers, pastors, and masters, as he did; try and pray to increase daily in favour both with God and man, as he did: and then, even if death should come and take you before your time, you need not be afraid, for Jesus Christ is with you.

Your childish faults shall be forgiven you for Jesus' sake; your childish good conduct shall be accepted for Jesus Christ's sake; and if you be trying to be good children, doing your little work well where God has put you, humble, obedient, and teachable, winning love from the people round you, and from God your Father in heaven, then, I say, you need not be afraid of sickness, not even afraid of death, for whenever it takes you, it will find you about your Father's business.

JOEL ii. 12, 13.

Therefore also now, saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

This is one of the grandest chapters in the whole Old Testament, and one which may teach us a great deal; and, above all, teach us to be thankful to God for the blessings which we have.

I think I can explain what it means best by going back to the chapter before it.

Joel begins his prophecy by bitter lamentation over the mischief which the swarms of insects had done; such as had never been in his days, nor in the days of his fathers. What the palmer worm had left, the locust had eaten; what the locust had left, the cankerworm had eaten; and what the cankerworm had left, the caterpillar had eaten. Whether these names are rightly rendered, or whether they mean different sorts of locusts, or the locusts in their different stages of growth, crawling at first and flying at last, matters little. What mischief they had done was plain enough. They had come up 'a nation strong and without number, whose teeth were like the teeth of a lion, and his cheek-teeth like those of a strong lion. They had laid his vines waste, and barked his fig-tree, and made its branches white; and all drunkards were howling and lamenting, for the wine crop was utterly destroyed: and all other crops, it seems likewise; the corn was wasted, the olives destroyed; the seed was rotten under the clods, the granaries empty, the barns broken down, for the corn was withered; the vine and fig, pomegranate, palm, and apple, were all gone; the green grass was all gone; the beasts groaned, the herds were perplexed, because they had no pasture; the flocks of sheep were desolate.' There seems to have been a dry season also, to make matters worse; for Joel says the rivers of waters were dried up - likely enough, if then, as now, it is the dry seasons which bring the locust-swarms. Still the locusts had done the chief mischief. They came just as they come now (only in smaller strength, thank God) in many parts of the East and of Southern Russia, darkening the sky, and shutting out the very light of the sun; the noise of their innumerable jaws like the noise of flame devouring the stubble, as they settled upon every green thing, and gnawed away leaf and bark; and a fire devoured before them, and behind them a flame burned; the land was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; {162} till there was not enough left to supply the daily sacrifices, and the meat offering and the drink offering were withheld from the house of God.

But what has all this to do with us? There have never, as far as we know, been any locusts in England.

And what has this to do with God? Why does Joel tell these Jews that God sent the locusts, and bid them cry to God to take them away? For these locusts are natural things, and come by natural laws. And there is no need that there should be locusts anywhere. For where the wild grass plains are broken up and properly cultivated, there the locusts, which lay their countless eggs in the old turf, disappear, and must disappear. We know that now. We know that when the East is tilled (as God grant it may be some day) as thoroughly as England is, locusts will be as unknown there as here; and that is another comfortable proof to us that there is no real curse upon God's earth: but that just as far as man fulfils God's command to replenish the earth and subdue it, so far he gets rid of all manner of terrible scourges and curses, which seemed to him in the days of his ignorance, necessary and supernatural.

How, then, was Joel right in saying that God sent the locusts?

In this way, my friends.

Suppose you or I took cholera or fever. We know that cholera or fever is preventible; that man has no right to have these pestilences in a country, because they can be kept out and destroyed. But if you or I caught cholera or fever by no fault or folly of our own, we are bound to say, God sent me this sickness. It has some private lesson for me. It is part of my education, my schooling in God's school-house. It is meant to make me a wiser and better man; and that he can only do by teaching me more about himself. So with these locusts, and still more so; for Joel did not know, could not know, that these locusts could be prevented. But even if he had known that, it was not his fault or folly, or his countrymen's which had brought the locusts. Most probably they were tilling the ground to the best of their knowledge. Most probably, too, these locusts were not bred in Palestine at all; but came down upon the north-wind (as they are said to do now), from some land hundreds of miles away; and therefore Joel could say - Whatever I do not know about these locusts, this I know; that God, whose providence orders all things in heaven and earth, has sent them; that he means to teach you a lesson by them; that they are part of his schooling to us Jews; that he intends to make us wiser and better men by them: and that he can only do by teaching us more about himself.

What, then, does Joel say about the locusts, which he might say to you or me, if we were laid down by cholera or fever? He does not say, these troubles have come upon you from devils, or evil spirits, or by any blind chance of the world about you. He says, they have come on you from the Lord; from the same good, loving, merciful Lord who brought your fathers out of Egypt, and made a great nation of you, and has preserved you to this day. And do not fancy that he is changed. Do not fancy that he has forgotten you, or hates you, or has become cruel, or proud, or unlike himself. It is you who have forgotten him, and have shown that by living bad lives; and all he wishes is, to drive you back to him, that you may live good lives. Turn to him; and you will find him unchanged; the same loving, forgiving Lord as ever. He requires no sacrifices, no great offerings on your part to win him round. All he asks is, that you should confess yourselves in the wrong, and turn and repent. Turn therefore to the Lord with all your heart, and with weeping, and with fasting, and with mourning - (which was, and is still the Eastern fashion); and rend your heart, and not your garments. And why? Because the Lord is very dreadful, angry and dark, and has determined to destroy you all? Not so: but because he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

Yes, my friends: and this, you will find, is at the bottom of all true repentance and turning to God. If you believe that God is dark, and hard, and cruel, you may be afraid of him: but you cannot repent, cannot turn to him. The more you think of him the more you will be terrified at him, and turn from him. But if you believe that God is gracious and merciful, then you can turn to him; then you can repent with a true repentance, and a godly sorrow which breeds joy and peace of mind.

So Joel thought, at least; for he tells them, that if they will but turn to God, if they will but confess themselves in the wrong, all shall be well again, and better than before.

Now, if Joel had been a heathen, worshipping the false gods of the Canaanites, he would have spoken very differently; he would have said, perhaps - Baal, the true God, is angry with you, and he has sent the drought.

Or, Ashtoreth, the Queen of Heaven, by whose power all seeds grow and all creatures breed, is angry with you, and she has destroyed the seeds, and sent the locusts.

Or, Ammon, the Lord of the sheep, is angry, and he has destroyed your flocks and herds.

But one thing we know he would have said - These angry gods want blood. You cannot pacify them without human blood. You must give them the most dear and precious things you have - the most beautiful and pure. You must sacrifice boys and girls to them; and then, perhaps, they will be appeased.

We know this. We know that the heathen, whenever they were in trouble, took to human sacrifices.

The Canaanites - and the Jews when they fell into idolatry - used to burn their children in the fire to Moloch.

We know that the Carthaginians, who were of the same blood and language as the Canaanites, used human sacrifices; and that once when their city was in great danger, they sacrificed at one time two hundred boys of their highest families.

We know that the Greeks and Romans, who had much more humane and rational notions about their gods, were tempted, in times of great distress, to sacrifice human beings. It has always been so. The old Mexicans in America used to sacrifice many thousands of men and women every year to their idols; and when the Spaniards came and destroyed them off the face of the earth in the name of the Lord - as Joshua did the Canaanites of old - they found the walls of the idol temples crusted inches thick with human blood. Even to this day, the wild Khonds in the Indian mountains, and the Red men of America, sacrifice human beings at times, and, I fear, very often indeed; and believe that the gods will be the more pleased, and more certain to turn away their anger, the more horrible and lingering tortures they inflict upon their wretched victims. I say, these things were; and were it not for the light of the Gospel, these things would be still; and when we hear of them, we ought to bow our heads to our Father in heaven in thankfulness, and say - what Joel the prophet taught the Jews to say dimly and in part - what our Lord Jesus and his apostles taught us to say fully and perfectly -

It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, at all times and in all places - whether in joy or sorrow, in wealth or in want, to give thanks to thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, according to whose most true promise the Holy Ghost came down from heaven upon the apostles, to teach them and to lead them into all truth, and give them fervent zeal, constantly to preach the Gospel to all nations, by which we have been brought out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge of thee and of thy Son Jesus Christ.

Yes, my friends, this is the lesson which we have to learn from Joel's prophecy, and from all prophecies. This lesson the old prophets learnt for themselves, slowly and dimly, through many temptations and sorrows. This lesson our Lord Jesus Christ revealed fully, and left behind him to his apostles. This lesson men have been learning slowly but surely in all the hundreds of years which have past since; to know that there is one Father in heaven, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things; that they may, in all the chances and changes of this mortal life, in weal and in woe, in light and in darkness, in plenty and in want, look up to that heavenly Father who so loved them that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for them, and say, 'Father, not our will but thine be done. All things come from thy hand, and therefore all things come from thy love. We have received good from thy hand, and shall we not receive evil? Though thou slay us, yet will we trust in thee. For thou art gracious and merciful, long-suffering and of great goodness. Thou art loving to every man, and thy mercy is over all thy works. Thou art righteous in all thy ways, and holy in all thy doings. Thou art nigh to all that call on thee; thou wilt hear their cry, and wilt help them. For all thou desirest, when thou sendest trouble on them, is to make them wiser and better men. And that thou canst only make them by teaching them more about thyself.'

ISAIAH lix. 15, 16.

And the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteousness it sustained him.

This text is often held to be a prophecy of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I certainly believe that it is a prophecy of his coming, and of something better still; namely, his continual presence; and a very noble and deep one, and one from which we may learn a great deal.

We may learn from it what 'salvation' really is. What Christ came to save men from, and how he saves them.

The common notion of salvation now-a-days is this. That salvation is some arrangement or plan, by which people are to escape hell-fire by having Christ's righteousness imputed to them without their being righteous themselves.

Now, I have nothing to say about that this morning. It may be so; or, again, it may not; I read a good many things in books every week the sense of which I cannot understand. At all events it is not the salvation of which Isaiah speaks here.

For Isaiah tells us very plainly, from what God was going to save these Jews. Not from hell-fire - nothing is said about it: but simply from their sins. As it is written, 'Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.'

The case is very simple, if you will look at Isaiah's own words. These Jews had become thoroughly bad men. They were not ungodly men. They were very religious, orthodox, devout men. They 'sought God daily, and delighted to know his ways, like a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinances of their God: they asked of him the ordinances of justice; they took delight in approaching unto God.'

But unfortunately for them, and for all with whom they had to do, after they had asked of God the ordinances of justice, they never thought of doing them; and in spite of all their religion, they were, Isaiah tells them plainly, rogues and scoundrels, none of whom stood up for justice, or pleaded for truth, but trusted in vanity, and spoke lies. Their feet ran to evil, and they made haste to shed innocent blood; the way of peace they knew not, and they had made themselves crooked paths, speaking oppression and revolt, and conceiving and uttering words of falsehood; so that judgment was turned away backward, and justice stood afar off, for truth was fallen in the street, and equity could not enter. Yea, truth failed; and he that departed from evil made himself a prey (or as some render it) was accounted mad.

And this is in the face of all their religion and their church-going. Verily, my friends, fallen human beings were much the same then as now; and there are too many in England and elsewhere now who might sit for that portrait.

But how was the Lord going to save these hypocritical, false, unjust men? Was he going to say to them, Believe certain doctrines about me, and you shall escape all punishment for your sins, and my righteousness shall be imputed to you? We do not read a word of that. We read - not that the Lord's righteousness was imputed to these bad men, but that it sustained the Lord himself. - Ah! there is a depth, if you will receive it - a depth of hope and comfort - a well-spring of salvation for us and all mankind.

You may be false and dishonest, saith the Lord, but I am honest and true. Unjust, but I am just; unrighteous, but I am righteous. If men will not set the world right, then I will, saith the Lord. My righteousness shall sustain me, and keep me up to my duty, though man may forget his. To me all power is given in heaven and earth, and I will use my power aright.

If men are bringing themselves and their country, their religion, their church to ruin by hypocrisy, falsehood, and injustice, as those Jews were, then the Lord's arm will bring salvation. He will save them from their sins by the only possible way - namely, by taking their sins away, and making those of them who will take his lesson good and righteous men instead. It may be a very terrible lesson of vengeance and fury, as Isaiah says. It may unmask many a hypocrite, confound many a politic, and frustrate many a knavish trick, till the Lord's salvation may look at first sight much more like destruction and misery; for his fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather the wheat into his garner: but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.

But his purpose is, to save - to save his people from their sins, to purge out of them all hypocrisy, falsehood, injustice, and make of them honest men, true men, just men - men created anew after his likeness. And this is the meaning of his salvation; and is the only salvation worth having, for this life or the life to come.

Oh my friends, let us pray to God, whatsoever else he does for us, to make honest men of us. For if we be not honest men, we shall surely come to ruin, and bring all we touch to ruin, past hope of salvation. Whatsoever denomination or church we belong to, it will be all the same: we may call ourselves children of Abraham, of the Holy Catholic Church (which God preserve), or what we will: but when the axe is laid to the root of the tree, every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and is cast into the fire; and woe to the foolish fowl who have taken shelter under the branches of it.

And we who are coming to the holy communion this day - let us ask ourselves, What do we want there? Do we want to be made good men, true, honest, just? Do we want to be saved from our sins? or merely from the punishment of them after we die? Do we want to be made sharers in that everlasting righteousness of Christ, which sustains him, and sustains the whole world too, and prevents it from becoming a cage of wild beasts, tearing each other to pieces by war and oppression, falsehood and injustice? Then we shall get what we want; and more. But if not, then we shall not get what we want, not discerning that the Lord's body is a righteous and just and good body; and his blood a purifying blood, which purifies not merely from the punishment of our sins, but from our sins themselves.

And bear in mind, my friends, when times grow evil, and rogues and hypocrites abound, and all the world seems going wrong, there is one arm to fall back upon, and one righteousness to fall back upon, which can never fail you, or the world. -

The arm of the Lord, which brings salvation to him, that he may give it to all who are faithful and true; which cannot weaken or grow weary, till it has cast out of his kingdom all which offends, and whosoever loveth or maketh a lie. -

And the eternal righteousness of the Lord, which will do justice by every living soul of man, and which will never fail or fade away, because it is his own property, belonging to his own essence, which if he gave up for a moment he would give up being God. Yes, God is good, though every man were bad; God is just, though every man were a rogue; God is true, though every man were a liar; and as long as that is so, all is safe for you and me, and the whole world:- if we will.

PROVERBS ii. 2, 3, 5.

If thou incline thine ear to wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest after wisdom, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

We shall see something curious in the last of these verses, when we compare it with one in the chapter before. The chapter before says, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That if we wish to be wise at all, we must begin by fearing God. But this chapter says, that the fear of the Lord is the end of wisdom too; for it says, that if we seek earnestly after knowledge and understanding, then we shall understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

So, according to Solomon, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the end likewise. It is the starting point from which we are to set out, and the goal toward which we are to run.

How can that be?

If by wisdom Solomon meant high doctrines, what we call theology and divinity, it would seem more easy to understand: but he does not mean that, at least in our sense; for his rules and proverbs about wisdom are not about divinity and high doctrines, but about plain practical every-day life; shrewd maxims as to how to behave in this life, so as to thrive and prosper in it.

And yet again they must be about divinity and theology in some sense. For what does he say about wisdom in the text? 'If thou search after wisdom, thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord;' and is that all? No. He says more than that. Thou shalt find, he says, the knowledge of God. To know God. - What higher theology can there be than that? It is the end of all divinity, of all religion. It is eternal life itself, to know God. If a man knows God, he is in heaven there and then, though he be walking in flesh and blood upon this mortal earth.

How can all this be?

Let us consider the words once again.

Solomon does not say, To understand the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but simply the fear of the Lord is the beginning of it. But the end of wisdom, he says, is not merely to fear the Lord, but to understand the fear of the Lord.

This then, I suppose, is his meaning: We are to begin life by fearing God, without understanding it: as a child obeys his parents without understanding the reason of their commands.

Therefore, says Solomon to the young man, begin with that - with the solemn, earnest, industrious, God-fearing frame of mind - without that you will gain no wisdom. You may be as clever as you will, but if you are reckless and wild, you will gain no wisdom. If you are violent and impatient; if you are selfish and self-conceited; if you are weak and self-indulgent, given up to your own pleasures, your cleverness will be of no use to you. It will be only hurtful to you and to others. A clever fool is common enough, and dangerous enough. For he is one who never sees things as they really are, but as he would like them to be. A bad man, let him be as clever as he may, is like one in a fever, whose mind is wandering, who is continually seeing figures and visions, and mistaking them for actual and real things; and so with all his cleverness, he lives in a dream, and makes mistake upon mistake, because he knows not things as they are, and sees nothing by the light of Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom alone all true understanding comes.

Begin then with the fear of the Lord. Make up your mind to do what you are told is right, whether you know the reason of it or not. Take for granted that your elders know better than you, and have faith in them, in your teachers, in your Bible, in the words of wise men who have gone before you: and do right, whatever it costs you.

If you do not always know the reason at first, you will know it in due time, and get, so Solomon says, to understand the fear of the Lord. In due time you will see from experience that you are in the path of life. You will be able to say with St. Paul, I know in whom I have believed; and with Job, 'Before I heard of thee, O Lord, with the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.'

And why? Because, says Solomon, God himself will show you, and teach you by his Holy Spirit. As our Lord says, 'The Holy Spirit shall take of mine, and show it unto you, and lead you into all truth.' And therefore Solomon talks of wisdom, who is the Holy Ghost the Comforter, as a person who teaches men, whose delight is with the sons of men. He speaks of wisdom as calling to men. He speaks of her as a being who is seeking for those that seek her, who will teach those who seek after her.

Yes, this, my friends, is, I believe, the secret of life. At least it is the secret both of Solomon's teaching, and our Lord's, and St. Paul's, and St. John's, that true wisdom is not a thing which man finds out for himself, but which God teaches him. This is the secret of life - to believe that God is your Father, schooling and training you from your cradle to your grave; and then to please him and obey him in all things, lifting up daily your hands and thankful heart, entreating him to purge the eyes of your soul, and give you the true wisdom, which is to see all things as they really are, and as God himself sees them. If you do that, you may believe that God will teach you more and more how to do, in all the affairs of life, that which is right in his sight, and therefore good for you. He will teach you more and more to see in all which happens to you, all which goes on around you, his fatherly love, his patient mercy, his providential care for all his creatures. He will reward you by making you more and more partaker of his Holy Spirit and of truth, by which, seeing everything as it really is, you will at last - if not in this life, still in the life to come - grow to see God himself, who has made all things according to his own eternal mind, that they may be a pattern of his unspeakable glory; and beyond that, who needs to see? For to know God, and to see God, is eternal life itself.

And this true wisdom, which lies in knowing God, and understanding his laws, is within the reach of the simplest person here. As I told you, cleverness without godliness will not give it you; but godliness without cleverness may.

Therefore let no one say, 'We are no scholars, nor philosophers, and we never can be. Are we, then, shut out from this heavenly wisdom?' God forbid, my friends. God is no respecter of persons. Only remember one thing; and by it you, too, may attain to the heavenly wisdom. I said that the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. I said that the fear of the Lord was the end of wisdom. Now let the fear of the Lord be the middle of wisdom also, and walk in it from youth to old age, and all will be well.

That is the short way, the royal road to wisdom. To be good and to do good. To keep the single eye - the eye which does not look two ways at once, and want to go two ways at once, as too many do who want to serve God and mammon, and to be good people and bad people too both at once. But the single eye of the man, who looks straightforward at everything, and has made up his mind what it ought to do, and will do, so help him God. As stout old Joshua said, 'Choose ye whom ye will serve: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.' That is the single eye, which wants simply to know what is right, and do what is right.

And if a man has that he may be a very wise man indeed, though he can neither read nor write.

It is good for a man, of course, to be able to read, that he may know what wiser men than he have said: above all, that he may know what his Bible says. But, even if he cannot read, let him fear God, and set his heart earnestly to know and do his duty. Let him keep his soul pure, and his body also (for nothing hinders that heavenly wisdom like loose living), and he will be wise enough for this world, and for the world to come likewise.

I tell you, my friends, I have known women, who were neither clever women, nor learned women, nor anything except good women, whose souls were pure and full of the Holy Spirit, and who lived lives of prayer, and sat all day long with Mary at the feet of Jesus. - I have known such women to have at times a wisdom which all books and all sciences on earth cannot give. I have known them give opinions on deep matters which learned and experienced men were glad enough to take. I have known them have, in a wonderful degree, that wisdom which the Scripture calls discerning of spirits, being able to see into people's hearts; knowing at a glance what they were thinking of, what made them unhappy, how to manage and comfort them; knowing at a glance whether they were honest or not, pure-minded or not - a precious and heavenly wisdom, which comes, as I believe, from none other than the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ, who is the discerner of the secret thoughts of all hearts: and when I have seen such people, altogether simple and humble, and yet most wise and prudent, because they were full of the fear of the Lord, and of the knowledge of God, I could not but ask - Why should we not be all like them?

My friends, I believe that we may all be more or less like them, if we will make the fear of the Lord the beginning of our wisdom, and the middle of our wisdom, and the end of our wisdom.

Nine-tenths of the mistakes we make in life come from forgetting the fear of God and the law of God, and saying not, I will do what is right: but - I will do what will profit me; I will do what I like. If we would say to ourselves manfully instead all our lives through, I will learn the will of God, and do it, whatsoever it cost me; we should find in our old age that God's Holy Spirit was indeed a guide and a comforter, able and willing to lead us into all truth which was needful for us. We should find St. Paul had spoken truth, when he said that godliness has the promise of this life, as well as of that which is to come.