All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

And so, as Easter day has given us strength to live, let Easter day, too, give us strength to die.

SERMON XI.  EASTER DAY

Chester Cathedral. 1870.

St John xii. 24, 25.  “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.  He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

This is our Lord’s own parable.  In it He tells us that His death, His resurrection, His ascension, is a mystery which we may believe, not only because the Bible tells us of it, but because it is reasonable, and according to the laws of His universe; a fulfilment, rather say the highest fulfilment, of one of those laws which runs through the world of nature, and through the spiritual and heavenly world likewise.  “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone;”—barren, useless, and truly dead to the rest of the world around it, because it is shut up in itself, and its hidden life, with all its wondrous powers of growth and fertility, remains undeveloped, and will remain so, till it decays away, a worthless thing, into worthless dust.  But if it be buried in the earth a while, then the rich life which lay hid in it is called out by that seeming death, and it sprouts, tillers, and flowers, and ripens its grain—forty-fold, sixty-fold, an hundred-fold; and so it shows God’s mind and will concerning it.  It shows what is really in it, and develops the full capabilities of its being.  Even so, says our Lord, would His death, His resurrection, His ascension be.

He speaks of His own resurrection and ascension; yes, but He speaks first of His own death.  Before the corn can bring forth fruit, and show what is in it, fulfilling the law of its being, it must fall into the ground and die.  Before our Lord could fulfil the prophecy, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption,” He must fulfil the darker prophecy of that awful 88th Psalm, the only one of all the psalms which ends in sorrow, in all but despair, “My soul is full of trouble, and my life draweth nigh unto hell.  I am counted as one of them that go down into the pit: and I have been even as a man that hath no strength.  Free among the dead, like unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, who are out of remembrance, and are cut away from thy hand.”  So it was to be.  So, we may believe, it needed to be.  Christ must suffer before He entered into His glory.  He must die, before He could rise.  He must descend into hell, before He ascended into heaven.  For this is the law of God’s kingdom.  Without a Good Friday, there can be no Easter Day.  Without self-sacrifice, there can be no blessedness, neither in earth nor in heaven.  He that loveth his life will lose it.  He that hateth his life in this paltry, selfish, luxurious, hypocritical world, shall keep it to life eternal.  Our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled that law; because it is the law, the law not of Moses, but of the kingdom of heaven, and must be fulfilled by him who would fulfil all righteousness, and be perfect, even as his Father in heaven is perfect.

Bear this in mind, I pray you, and whenever you think of our Lord’s resurrection and ascension, remember always that the background to His triumph is—a tomb.  Remember that it is the triumph over suffering; a triumph of One who still bears the prints of the nails in His hands and in His feet, and the wound of the spear in His side; like many a poor soul who has followed Him triumphant at last, and yet scarred, and only not maimed in the hard battle of life.  Remember for ever the adorable wounds of Christ.  Remember for ever that St John saw in the midst of the throne of God the likeness of a lamb, as it had been slain.  For so alone you will learn what our Lord’s resurrection and ascension are to all who have to suffer and to toil on earth.  For if our Lord’s triumph had had no suffering before it,—if He had conquered as the Hindoos represent their gods as conquering their enemies, without effort, without pain, destroying them, with careless ease, by lightnings, hurled by a hundred hands and aided by innumerable armies of spirits,—what would such a triumph have been to us?  What comfort, what example to us here struggling, often sinning, in this piecemeal world?  We want—and blessed be God, we have—a Captain of our salvation, who has been made perfect by sufferings.  We want—and blessed be God, we have—an High Priest 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.  We want—and blessed be God, we have—a King who was glorified by suffering, that, if we are ever called on to sacrifice ourselves, we may hope, by suffering, to share His glory.  And when we have remembered this, and fixed it in our minds, we may go on safely to think of His glory, and see that (as I said at first) His resurrection and ascension satisfy our consciences,—satisfy that highest reason and moral sense within us, which is none other than the voice of the Holy Spirit of God.

For see.  Our Lord proved Himself to be the perfectly righteous Being, by His very passion.  He proved it by being righteous utterly against His own interest; by enduring shame, torment, death, for righteousness’ sake.  But we feel that our Lord’s history could not, must not, end there.  Our conscience, which is our highest reason, shrinks from that thought.  If our Lord had died and never risen, then would His history be full of nothing but despair to all who long to copy Him and do right at all costs.  Our consciences demand that God should be just.  We say with Abraham, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”  Shall not He, who suffered without hope of reward, have His reward nevertheless?  Shall not He who cried, “My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” be justified by having it proved to all the world that God had not forsaken Him?  But we surely cannot be more just than God.  If we expect God to do right, we shall surely “find that He has done right, and more right than we could expect or dream.  Therefore we may believe—I say that we must believe, if we be truly reasonable beings—what the Bible tells us; that Christ, who suffered more than all, was rewarded more than all; that Christ, who humbled Himself more than all, was exalted more than all; and that His resurrection and ascension, as St Paul tells us again and again, was meant to show men this,—to show them that God the Father has been infinitely just to the infinite merits of God the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,—to justify our Lord to all mankind by His triumph over death and hell, and in justifying Him to justify His Father and our Father, his God and our God.

And what is true of Christ must be true of us, the members of Christ.  He is entered into His rest, and you desire to enter into it likewise.  You have a right to desire it, for it is written, “There remaineth a rest for the people of God.”  Remember, then, that true rest can only be attained as He attained it, through labour.  You desire to be glorified with Christ.  Remember that true glory can only be attained in earth or heaven through self-sacrifice.  Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; whosoever will lose his life shall save it.  If that eternal moral law held good enough for the sinless Christ, who, though He were a son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered, how much more must it hold good of you and me and all moral and rational beings,—yea, for the very angels in heaven.  They have not sinned.  That we know; and we do not know; and I presume cannot know, that they have ever suffered.  But this at least we know, that they have submitted.  They have obeyed and have given up their own wills to be the ministers of God’s will.  In them is neither self-will nor selfishness; and therefore by faith, that is, by trust and loyalty, they stand.  And so, by consenting to lose their individual life of selfishness, they have saved their eternal life in God, the life of blessedness and holiness; just as all evil spirits have lost their eternal life by trying to save their selfish life, and be something in themselves and of themselves without respect to God.

This is a great mystery; indeed, it is the mystery of the eternal, divine, and blessed life, to which God of His mercy bring us all.  And therefore Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, are set as great lights in the firmament of the spiritual year,—to remind us that we are not animals, born to do what we like, and fulfil the sinful lusts of the flesh, the ways whereof are death; but that we are moral and rational beings, members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven; and that, therefore, I say it again, like Christ our Lord, we must die in order to live, stoop in order to conquer.  They remind us that honour must grow out of humility; that freedom must grow out of discipline; that sure conquest must be born of heavy struggles; righteous joy out of righteous sorrow; pure laughter out of pure tears; true strength out of the true knowledge of our own weakness; sound peace of mind out of sound contrition; and that the heart which has a right to cry, “The Lord is on my side, I will not fear what man doeth unto me,” must be born out of the heart which has cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” They remind us that in all things, as says our Lord, there cannot be joy, because a man is born into the world, unless there first be sorrow, because the hour of birth is come; and that he who would be planted into the likeness of Christ’s resurrection, must, like the corn of wheat, be first planted into the likeness of His death, and die to sin and self, that he may live to righteousness and to God; and, like the corn of wheat, become truly living, truly strong, truly rich, truly useful, and develop the hidden capabilities of his being, fulfilling the mind and will of God concerning him.  Again, I say, this is a great mystery.  But again, I say, this is the law, not Moses’ law, but the Gospel law;—the law of liberty, by which a man becomes truly free, because he has trampled under foot the passions of his own selfish flesh, till his immortal spirit can ascend free into the light of God, and into the love of God, and into the beneficence of God.  My dear friends, remember these words, for they are true.  Remember that St Paul always couples with the resurrection and ascension of our bodies in the next life the resurrection and ascension of our souls in this life; for without that, the resurrection of our bodies would be but a resurrection to fresh sin, and therefore to fresh misery and ruin.  Remember his great words about that moral resurrection and ascension of our wills, our hearts, our characters, our actions.  “God,” he says, “who is rich in mercy, for His great love, wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are ye saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

And what are those heavenly places?  And what is our duty in them?  Let St Paul himself answer.  “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.”

And what are they?  Let St Paul answer once more; who should know better than he, save Christ alone?  “Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report.  If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Yes, think of these things,—and, thinking of them, ask the Holy Spirit of God to inspire you, and make a Whitsuntide in your hearts, even as He has made, I trust, a Good Friday and an Eastertide and an Ascension Day; that so, knowing these things, you may be blessed in doing them; that so—and so only—may be fulfilled in you and me or any rational being, those blessed promises which were fulfilled in Christ our Lord.  “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”  “He that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him.”  “Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are Thy ways; who going through the vale of misery, use it for a well, and the pools are filled with water.  They will go from strength to strength: and unto the God of gods appeareth every one of them in Sion.”  To which may God in His great mercy bring us all.  Amen.

SERMON XII.  PRESENCE IN ABSENCE

Eversley, third Sunday after Easter. 1862.

St John xvi. 16.  “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.”

Divines differ, and, perhaps, have always differed, about the meaning of these words.  Some think that our Lord speaks in them of His death and resurrection.  Others that He speaks of His ascension and coming again in glory.  I cannot decide which is right.  I dare not decide.  It is a very solemn thing—too solemn for me—to say of any words of our Lord’s they mean exactly this or that, and no more.  For if wise men’s words have (as they often have) more meanings than one, and yet all true, then surely the words of Jesus, the Son of God, who spake as never man spake—His words, I say, may have many meanings; yea, meanings without end, meanings which we shall never fully understand, perhaps even in heaven, and yet all alike true.

But I think it is certain that most of the early Christians understood these words of our Lord’s ascension and coming again in glory.  They believed that He was coming again in a very little while during their own life-time, in a few months or years, to make an end of the world and to judge the quick and the dead.  And as they waited for His coming, one generation after another, and yet He did not come, a sadness fell upon them.  Christ seemed to have left the world.  The little while that He had promised to be away seemed to have become a very long while.  Hundreds of years passed, and yet Christ did not come in glory.  And, as I said, a sadness fell on all the Church.  Surely, they said, this is the time of which Christ said we were to weep and lament till we saw Him again—this is the time of which He said that the bridegroom should be taken from us, and we should fast in those days.  And they did fast, and weep, and lament; and their religion became a very sad and melancholy one—most sad in those who were most holy, and loved their Lord best, and longed most for His coming in glory.

What happened after that again I could tell you, but we have nothing to do with it to-day.  We will rather go back, and see what the Lord’s disciples thought He meant when He said,—“A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.”  One would think, surely, that they must have taken those words to mean His death and resurrection.  They heard Him speak them on the very night that He was betrayed.  They saw Him taken from them that very night.  In horror and agony they saw Him mocked and scourged, crucified, dead, and buried, as they thought for ever, and the world around rejoicing over His death.  Surely they wept and lamented then.  Surely they thought that He had gone away and left them then.

And the third day, beyond all hope or expectation, they beheld Him alive again, unchanged, perfect, and glorious—as near them and as faithful to them as ever.  Surely that was seeing Him again after a little while.  Surely then their sorrow was turned to joy.  Surely then a man, the man of all men, was born into the world a second time, and in them was fulfilled our Lord’s most exquisite parable—most human and yet most divine—of the mother remembering no more her anguish for joy that a man is born into the world.

I think, too, that we may see, by the disciples’ conduct, that they took these words of the text to speak of Christ’s death and resurrection.  For when He ascended to heaven out of their sight, did they consider that was seeing Him no more?  Did they think that He had gone away and left them?  Did they, therefore, as would have been natural, weep and lament?  On the contrary, we are told expressly by St Luke that they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and were continually in the temple,” not weeping and lamenting, but praising and blessing God.  Plainly they did not consider that Christ was parted from them when He ascended into heaven.  He had been training them during the forty days between Easter Day and Ascension Day to think of Him as continually near them, whether they saw Him or not.  Suddenly He came and went again.  Mysteriously He appeared and disappeared.  He showed them that though they saw not Him, He saw them, heard their words, knew the thoughts and intents of their hearts.  He was always near them they felt; with them to the end of the world, whether in sight or out of sight.  And when they saw Him ascend into heaven, it seemed to them no separation, no calamity, no change in His relation to them.  He was gone to heaven.  Surely He had been in heaven during those forty days, whenever they had not seen Him.  He had gone to the Father.  Might He not have been with the Father during those forty days, whenever they had not seen Him?  Nay; was He not always in heaven?  Was not heaven very near them?  Did not Christ bring heaven with Him whithersoever He went?  Was He not always with the Father, the Father who fills all things, in whom all created things live, and move, and have their being?  How could they have thought otherwise about our Lord, when almost His last words to them were not, Lo, I leave you alone, but, “Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.”

My friends, these may seem deep words to some—doubtless they are, for they are the words of the Bible—so deep that plain, unlearned people can make no use of them, and draw no lesson from them.  I do not think so.  I think it is of endless use and endless importance to you how you think about Christ; and, therefore, how you think about these forty days between our Lord’s resurrection and ascension.  You may think of our Lord in two ways.  You may think of Him as having gone very far away, millions of millions of miles into the sky, and not to return till the last day,—and then, I do not say that you will weep and lament.  There are not many who have that notion about our Lord, and yet love Him enough to weep and lament at the thought of His having gone away.  But your religion, when it wakes up in you, will be a melancholy and terrifying one.  I say, when it wakes up in you—for you will be tempted continually to let it go to sleep.  There will come over you the feeling—God forgive us, does it not come over us all but too often?—Christ is far away.  Does He see me?  Does He hear me?  Will He find me out?  Does it matter very much what I say and do now, provided I make my peace with Him before I die?  And so will come over you not merely a carelessness about religious duties, about prayer, reading, church-going, but worse still, a carelessness about right and wrong.  You will be in danger of caring little about controlling your passions, about speaking the truth, about being just and merciful to your fellow-men.  And then, when your conscience wakes you up at times, and cries, Prepare to meet thy God! you will be terrified and anxious at the thought of judgment, and shrink from the thought of Christ’s seeing you.  My friends, that is a fearful state, though a very common one.  What is it but a foretaste of that dreadful terror in which those who would not see in Christ their Lord and Saviour will call on the mountains to fall on them, and the hills to cover them, from Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the anger of the Lamb?

But, again: you may think of Christ as His truest servants, though they might have been long in darkness, in all ages and countries have thought of Him, sooner or later.  And they thought of Him, as the disciples did; as of One who was about their path and about their bed, and spying out all their ways; as One who was in heaven, but who, for that very reason, was bringing heaven down to earth continually in the gracious inspirations of His Holy Spirit; as One who brought heaven down to them as often as He visited their hearts and comforted them with sweet assurance of His love, His faithfulness, His power—as God grant that He may comfort those of you who need comfort.  And that thought, that Christ was always with them, even to the end of the world, sobered and steadied them, and yet refreshed and comforted them.  It sobered them.  What else could it do?  Does it not sober us to see even a picture of Christ crucified?  How must it have sobered them to carry, as good St Ignatius used to say of himself, Christ crucified in his heart.  A man to whom Christ, as it were, showed perpetually His most blessed wounds, and said, Behold what I have endured—how dare he give way to his passion?  How dare he be covetous, ambitious, revengeful, false?  And yet it cheered and comforted them.  How could it do otherwise, to know all day long that He who was wounded for their iniquities, and by whose stripes they were healed, was near them day and night, watching over them as a father over his child, saying to them,—“Fear not, I am He that was dead, and am alive for evermore, and I hold the keys of death and hell.  Though thou walkest through the fires, I will be with thee.  I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”  Yes, my friends, if you wish your life—and therefore your religion, which ought to be the very life of your life—to be at once sober and cheerful, full of earnestness and full of hope, believe our Lord’s words which He spoke during these very forty days,—“Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.”  Believe that heaven has not taken Him away from you, but brought Him nearer to you; and that He has ascended up on high, not that He, in whom alone is life, might empty this earth of His presence, but that He might fill all things, not this earth only, but all worlds, past, present, and to come.  Believe that wherever two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, there He is in the midst of them; that the holy communion is the sign of His perpetual presence; and that when you kneel to receive the bread and wine, Christ is as near you—spiritually, indeed, and invisibly, but really and truly—as near you as those who are kneeling by your side.

And if it be so with Christ, then it is so with those who are Christ’s, with those whom we love.  It is the Christ in them which we love; and that Christ in them is their hope of glory; and that glory is the glory of Christ.  They are partakers of His death, therefore they are partakers of His resurrection.  Let us believe that blessed news in all its fulness, and be at peace.  A little while and we see them; and again a little while and we do not see them.  But why?  Because they are gone to the Father, to the source and fount of all life and power, all light and love, that they may gain life from His life, power from His power, light from His light, love from His love—and surely not for nought?

Surely not for nought, my friends.  For if they were like Christ on earth, and did not use their powers for themselves alone, if they are to be like Christ when they shall see Him as He is, then, more surely, will they not use their powers for themselves, but, as Christ uses His, for those they love.

Surely, like Christ, they may come and go, even now, unseen.  Like Christ, they may breathe upon our restless hearts and say, Peace be unto you—and not in vain.  For what they did for us when they were on earth they can more fully do now that they are in heaven.  They may seem to have left us, and we, like the disciples, may weep and lament.  But the day will come when the veil shall be taken from our eyes, and we shall see them as they are, with Christ, and in Christ for ever; and remember no more our anguish for joy that a man is born into the world, that another human being has entered that one true, real, and eternal world, wherein is neither disease, disorder, change, decay, nor death, for it is none other than the Bosom of the Father.

SERMON XIII.  ASCENSION DAY

Eversley.  Chester Cathedral. 1872.

St John viii. 58.  “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Let us consider these words awhile.  They are most fit for our thoughts on this glorious day, on which the Lord Jesus ascended to His Father, and to our Father, to His God, and to our God, that He might be glorified with the glory which He had with the Father before the making of the world.  For it is clear that we shall better understand Ascension Day, just as we shall better understand Christmas or Eastertide, the better we understand Who it was who was born at Christmas, suffered and rose at Eastertide, and, as on this day, ascended into heaven.  Who, then, was He whose ascent we celebrate?  What was that glory which, as far as we can judge of divine things, He resumed as on this day?