Town and Country Sermons

Yes, my friends, this was the secret of Elijah’s power.  This is the lesson which Elijah has to teach us.  Not to halt between two opinions.  If a thing be true, to stand up for it; if a thing be right, to do it, whatsoever it may cost us.  Make up your minds then, my friends, to be honest men like Elijah the prophet of old.

For your own sake, for your neighbour’s sake, and for God’s sake, be honest men.

For your own sake.  If you want to be respected; if you want to be powerful—and it is good to be powerful sometimes—if God has set you to govern people, whether it be your children and household, your own farm, your own shop, your own estate, your own country or neighbourhood—Do you want to know the great secret of success?—Be honest and brave.  Let your word be as good as your thought, and your deed as good as your word.  Who is the man who is respected?  Who is the man who has influence?  The complaisant man—the cringing man—the man who cannot say No, or dare not say No?  Not he.  The passionate man who loses his temper when anything goes wrong, who swears and scolds, and instead of making others do right, himself does wrong, and lowers himself just when he ought to command respect?  My experience is—not he: but the man who says honestly and quietly what he thinks, and does fearlessly and quietly what he knows.  People who differ from him will respect him, because he acts up to his principles.  When they are in difficulty or trouble, they will go and ask his advice, just because they know they will get an honest answer.  They will overlook a little roughness in him; they will excuse his speaking unpleasant truths: because they can trust him, even though he is plain-spoken.

For your neighbour’s sake, I say; and again, for your children’s sake; for the sake of all with whom you have to do, be honest and brave.  For our children—O my friends, we cannot do a crueller thing by them than to let them see that we are inconsistent.  If they hear us say one thing and do another—if, while we preach to them we do not practice ourselves, they will never respect us, and never obey us from love and principle.  If they do obey us, it will be only before our faces, and from fear.  If they see us doing only what we like, when our backs are turned they will do what they like.

And worse will come than their not respecting us—they will learn not to respect God.  If they see that we do not respect truth and honesty, they will not respect truth and honesty; and he who does not respect them, does not respect God.  They will learn to look on religion as a sham.  If we are inconsistent, they will be profane.

But some may say—‘I have no power; and I want none.  I have no people under me for whom I am responsible.’

Then, if you think that you need not be honest and brave for your own sake, or for other peoples’ sake, be honest and brave for God’s sake.

Do you ask what I mean?  I mean this.  Recollect that truth belongs to God.  That if a thing is true, it is true because God made it so, and not otherwise; and therefore, if you deny truth, you fight against God.  If you are honest, and stand up for truth, you stand up for God, and what God has done.

And recollect this, too.  If a thing be right for you to do, God has made it right, and God wills you to do it; and, therefore, if you do not do your duty, you are fighting against God; and if you do your duty, you are a fellow-worker with God, fulfilling God’s will.  Therefore, I say, Be honest and brave for God’s sake.  And in this way, my friends, all may be brave, all may be noble.  Speak the truth, and do your duty, because it is the will of God.  Poor, weak women, people without scholarship, cleverness, power, may live glorious lives, and die glorious deaths, and God’s strength may be made perfect in their weakness.  They may live, did I say?  I may say they have lived, and have died, already, by thousands.  When we read the stories of the old martyrs who, in the heathen persecution, died like heroes rather than deny Christ, and scorned to save themselves by telling what they knew to be a lie, but preferred truth to all that makes life worth having:—how many of them—I may say the greater part of them—were poor creatures enough in the eyes of man, though they were rich enough, noble enough, in the eyes of God who inspired them.  ‘Few rich and few noble,’ as the apostle says, ‘were called.’  It was to poor people, old people, weak women, ill-used and untaught slaves, that God gave grace to defy all the torments which the heathen could heap on them, and to defy the scourge and the rack, the wild beasts and the fire, sooner than foul their lips and their souls by denying Christ, and worshipping the idols which they knew were nothing, and worth nothing.

And so it may be with any of you here; whosoever you may be, however poor, however humble.  Though your opportunities may be small, your station lowly, your knowledge little; though you may be stupid in mind, slow of speech, weakly of body, yet if you but make up your mind to say the thing which is true, and to do the thing which is right, you may be strong with the strength of God, and glorious with the glory of Christ.

It is a grand thing, no doubt, to be like Elijah, a stern and bold prophet, standing up alone against a tyrant king and a sinful people; but it is even a greater thing to be like that famous martyr in old time, St. Blandina, who, though she was but a slave, and so weakly, and mean, and fearful in body, that her mistress and all her friends feared that she would deny Christ at the very sight of the torments prepared for her, and save herself by sacrificing to the idols, yet endured, day after day, tortures too horrible to speak of, without cry or groan, or any word, save ‘I am a Christian;’ and, having outlived all her fellow-martyrs, died at last victorious over pain and temptation, so that the very heathen who tortured her broke out in admiration of her courage, and confessed that no woman had ever endured so many and so grievous torments.  So may God’s strength be made perfect in woman’s weakness.

You are not called to endure such things.  No: but you, and I, and every Christian soul are called on to do what we know to be right.  Not to halt between two opinions: but if God be God, to follow Him.  If we make up our minds to do that, we shall be sure to have our trials: but we shall be safe, because we are on God’s side, and God on ours.  And if God be with us, what matter if the whole world be against us?  For which is the stronger of the two, the whole world, or God who made it, and rules it, and will rule it for ever?

SERMON XX. THE LOFTINESS OF HUMILITY

1 Peter v. 5.  Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.

This is St. Peter’s command.  Are we really inclined to obey it?  For, if we are, there is nothing more easy.  There is no vice so easy to get rid of as pride: if one wishes.  Nothing so easy as to be humble: if one wishes.

That may seem a strange saying, considering that self-conceit is the vice of all others to which man is most given; the first sin, and the last sin, and that which is said to be the most difficult to cure.  But what I say is true nevertheless.

Whosoever wishes to get rid of pride may do so.  Whosoever wishes to be humble need not go far to humble himself.

But how?  Simply by being honest with himself, and looking at himself as he is.

Let a man recollect honestly and faithfully his past life; let him recollect his sayings and doings for the past week; even for the past twenty-four hours: and I will warrant that man that he will recollect something, or, perhaps, many things which will not raise him in his own eyes; something which he had sooner not have said or done; something which, if he is a foolish man, he will try to forget, because it makes him ashamed of himself; something which, if he is a wise man, he will not try to forget, just because it makes him ashamed of himself; and a very good thing for him that he should be so.  I know that it is so for me; and therefore I suppose it is so for every man and woman in this Church.

I am not going to give any examples.  I am not going to say,—‘Suppose you thought this and this about yourself, and were proud of it; and then suppose that you recollected that you had done that and that: would you not feel very much taken down in your own conceit?’

I like that personal kind of preaching less and less.  Those random shots are dangerous and cruel; likely to hit the wrong person, and hurt their feelings unnecessarily.  It is very easy to say a hard thing: but not so easy to say it to the right person and at the right time.

No.  The heart knoweth its own bitterness.  Almost every one has something to be ashamed of, more or less, which no one but himself and God knows of; and which, perhaps, it is better that no one but he and God should know.

I do not mean any great sin, or great shame—God forbid; but some weak point, as we call it.  Something which he had better not say or do; and yet which he is in the habit of saying and doing.  I do not ask what it is.  With some it may be a mere pardonable weakness; with others it may be a very serious and dangerous fault.  All I ask now is, that each and every one of us should try and find it out, and feel it, and keep it in mind; that we may be of a humble spirit with the lowly, which is better than dividing the spoil with the proud.

But why better?

The world and human nature look up to the proud successful man.  One is apt to say, ‘Happy is the man who has plenty to be proud of.  Happy is the man who can divide the spoil of this world with the successful of this world.  Happy is the man who can look down on his fellow-men, and stand over them, and manage them, and make use of them, and get his profit out of them.’

But that is a mistake.  That is the high-mindedness which goes before a fall, which comes not from above, but is always earthly, often sensual, and sometimes devilish.  The true and safe high-mindedness, which comes from above, is none other than humility.  For, if you will look at it aright, the humble man is really more high-minded than the proud man.  Think.  Suppose two men equal in understanding, in rank, in wealth, in what else you like, one of them proud, the other humble.  The proud man thinks—‘How much better, wiser, richer, more highly born, more religious, more orthodox, am I than other people round me.’  Not, of course, than all round him, but than those whom he thinks beneath him.  Therefore he is always comparing himself with those below himself; always watching those things in them in which he thinks them worse, meaner than himself; he is always looking down on his neighbours.

Now, which is more high-minded; which is nobler; which is more fit for a man; to look down, or to look up?  At all events the humble man looks up.  He thinks, ‘How much worse, not how much better, am I than other people.’  He looks at their good points, and compares them with his own bad ones.  He admires them for those things in which they surpass him.  He thinks of—perhaps he loves to read of—men superior to himself in goodness, wisdom, courage.  He pleases himself with the example of brave and righteous deeds, even though he fears that he cannot copy them; and so he is always looking up.  His mind is filled with high thoughts, though they be about others, not about himself.  If he be a truly Christian man, his thoughts rise higher still.  He thinks of Christ and of God, and compares his weakness, ignorance, and sinfulness with their perfect power, wisdom, goodness.  Do you not see that this man’s mind is full of higher, nobler thoughts than that of the proud man?  Is he not more high-minded who is looking up, up to God himself, for what is good, noble, heavenly?  Even though it makes him feel small, poor, weak, and sinful in comparison, still his mind is full of grace, and wisdom, and glory.  The proud man, meanwhile, for the sake of feeding his own self-conceit at other men’s expense, is filling his mind with low, mean, earthly thoughts about the weaknesses, sins, and follies, of the world around him.  Is not he truly low-minded, thinking about low things?

Now, I tell you, my friends, that both have their reward.  That the humble man, as years roll on, becomes more and more noble, and the proud man becomes more and more low-minded; and finds that pride goes before a fall in more senses than one.  Yes.  There is nothing more hurtful to our own minds and hearts than a domineering, contemptuous frame of mind.  It may be pleasant to our own self-conceit: but it is only a sweet poison.  A man lowers his own character by it.  He takes the shape of what he is always looking at; and, if he looks at base and low things, he becomes base and low himself; just as slave-owners, all over the world, and in all time, sooner and later, by living among slaves, learn to copy their own slaves’ vices; and, while they oppress and look down on their fellow-man, become passionate and brutal, false and greedy, like the poor wretches whom they oppress.

Better, better to be of a lowly spirit.  Better to think of those who are nobler than ourselves, even though by so doing we are ashamed of ourselves all day long.  What loftier thoughts can man have?  What higher and purer air can a man’s soul breathe?  Yes, my friends; believe it, and be sure of it.  The truly high-minded man is not the proud man, who tries to get a little pitiful satisfaction from finding his brother men, as he chooses to fancy, a little weaker, a little more ignorant, a little more foolish, a little more ridiculous, than his own weak, ignorant, foolish, and, perhaps, ridiculous self.  Not he; but the man who is always looking upwards to goodness, to good men, and to the all-good God: filling his soul with the sight of an excellence to which he thinks he can never attain; and saying, with David, ‘All my delight is in the saints that dwell in the earth, and in those who excel in virtue.’

But I do not say that he cannot attain to that excellence.  To the goodness of God, of course, no man can; but to the goodness of man he may.  For what man has done, man may do; and the grace of God which gave power to one man to rise above sin, and weakness, and ignorance, will give power to others also.  But only to those who look upward, at better men than themselves: not to those who look down, like the Pharisee, but to those who look up like the Publican; for, as the text says, ‘God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.’

And why does God resist and set himself against the proud?  To turn him out of his evil way, of course, if by any means he may be converted (that is, turned round) and live.  For the proud man has put himself into a wrong position; where no immortal soul ought to be.  He is looking away from God, and down upon men; and so he has turned his face and thoughts away from God, the fountain of light and life; and is trying to do without God, and to stand in his own strength, and not in God’s grace, and to be somebody in himself, instead of being only in God, in whom we live and move and have our being.  So he has set himself against God; and God will, in mercy to that foolish man’s soul, set himself against him.  God will humble him; God will overthrow him; God will bring his plans to nought; if by any means he may make that man ashamed of himself, and empty him of his self-conceit, that he may turn and repent in dust and ashes, when he finds out what those proud Laodicæan Christians of old had to find out—that all the while that they were saying, ‘I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,’ they did not know that they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.

And how does God give grace to the humble?  My friends, even the wise heathen knew that.  Listen to a heathen;1 a good and a wise man, though; and one who was not far from the kingdom of God, or he would not have written such words as these,—

‘It is our duty,’ he says, ‘to turn our minds to the best of everything; so as not merely to enjoy what we read, but to be improved by it.  And we shall do that, by reading the histories of good and great men, which will, in our minds, produce an emulation and eagerness, which may stir us up to imitation.  We may be pleased with the work of a man’s hands, and yet set little store by the workman.  Perfumes and fine colours we may like well enough: but that will not make us wish to be perfumers, or painters: but goodness, which is the work, not of a man’s hands, but of his soul, makes us not only admire what is done, but long to do the like.  And therefore,’ he says, he thought it good to write the lives ‘of famous and good men, and to set their examples before his countrymen.  And having begun to do this,’ he says in another place, ‘for the sake of others, he found himself going on, and liking his labour, for his own sake: for the virtues of those great men served him as a looking-glass, in which he might see how, more or less, to order and adorn his own life.  Indeed, it could be compared,’ he says, ‘to nothing less than living with the great souls who were dead and gone, and choosing out of their actions all that was noblest and worthiest to know.  What greater pleasure could there be than that,’ he asks, ‘or what better means to improve his soul?  By filling his mind with pictures of the best and worthiest characters, he was able to free himself from any low, malicious, mean thoughts, which he might catch from bad company.  If he was forced to mix at times with base men, he could wash out the stains of their bad thoughts and words, by training himself in a calm and happy temper to view those noble examples.’  So says the wise heathen.  Was not he happier, wiser, better, a thousand times, thus keeping himself humble by looking upwards, than if he had been feeding his petty pride by looking down, and saying, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are?’

If you wish, then, to be truly high-minded, by being truly humble, read of, and think of, better men, wiser men, braver men, more useful men than you are.  Above all, if you be Christians, think of Christ himself.  That good old heathen took the best patterns which he could find: but after all, they were but imperfect, sinful men: but you have an example such as he never dreamed of; a perfect man, and perfect God in one.  Let the thought of Christ keep you always humble: and yet let it lift you up to the highest, noblest, purest thoughts which man can have, as it will.

For all that this old heathen says of the use of examples of good men, all that, and far more, St. Paul says, almost in the same words.  By looking at Christ, he says, we rise and sit with him in heavenly places, and enjoy the sight of His perfect goodness; ashamed of ourselves, indeed, and bowed to the very dust by the feeling of our own unworthiness; and yet filled with the thought of his worthiness, till, by looking we begin to admire, and, by admiring, we begin to love; and so are drawn and lifted up to him, till, by beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, and the perfect beauty of his character, we become changed into the same image, from glory to glory: and thus, instead of receiving the just punishment of pride and contempt, which is lowering our characters to the level of those on whom we look down, we shall receive the just reward of true humility, which is having our characters raised to the level of him up to whom we look.

Oh young people, think of this; and remember why God has given you the advantage of scholarship and education.  Not that you may be proud of the very little you know; not that you may look down on those who are not as well instructed as you are; not that you may waste your time over silly books, which teach you only to laugh at the follies and ignorance of some of your fellow-men, to whom God has not given as much as to you; but that you may learn what great and good men have lived, and still live, in the world; what wise, and good, and useful things have been, and are being, done all around you; and to copy them: above all, that you may look up to Christ, and through Christ, to God, and learn to copy him; till you come, as St. Paul says, to be perfect men; to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.  To which may he bring you all of his mercy.  Amen.

SERMON XXI. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

(Trinity Sunday.)

John v. 19.  Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

This is Trinity Sunday; and on this day we are especially to think of the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity, and on the Athanasian Creed, which was read this morning.  Now there is much in this Athanasian Creed, which simple country people, however good their natural abilities may be, cannot be expected to understand.  The Creed was written by scholars, and for scholars; and for very deep scholars, too, far deeper than I pretend to be; and the reasonable way for most men to think of the Athanasian Creed, will be to take it very much upon trust, as a child takes on trust what his father tells him, even though he cannot understand it himself; or, as we all believe, that the earth moves round the sun, and not the sun round the earth, though we cannot prove it; but only believe it, because wiser men than we have proved it.  So we must think of the Athanasian Creed, and say to ourselves—‘Wiser men than I can ever hope to be have settled that this is the true doctrine, and the true meaning of Holy Scripture, and I will believe them.  They must know best.’  Still, one is bound to understand as much as one can; one is bound to be able to give some reason for the faith which is in us; and, above all, one is bound not to hold false doctrines, which are contrary to the Athanasian Creed and to the Bible.

Some people are too apt to say now-a-days, ‘But what matter if one does hold false doctrine?  That is a mistake of the head and not of the heart.  Provided a man lives a good life, what matter what his doctrines are?’  No doubt, my friends, if a man lives a good life, all is well: but do people live good lives?  I am not speaking of infidels.  Thank God, there are none here; to God let us leave them, trusting in the Good Friday collect, and the goodwill of God, which is, that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

But, as for Christian people, this I will tell you, that unless you hold true doctrines, you will not lead good lives.  My experience is, that people are often wrong, when they say false doctrine is a mistake of the head and not of the heart.  I believe false doctrine is very often not bred in the head at all, but in the heart, in the very bottom of a man’s soul; that it rises out of his heart into his head; and that if his heart was right with God, he would begin at once to have clearer and truer notions of the true Christian faith.  I do not say that it is always so; God forbid!  But I do say that it is often so, because I see it so; because I see every day false doctrines about God making men lead bad lives, and commit actual sins; take God’s name in vain, dishonour their fathers and mothers, lie, cheat, bear false witness against their neighbours, and covet other men’s goods.  I say, I see it, and I must believe my own eyes and ears; and when I do see it, I begin to understand the text which says, ‘This is eternal life, to know thee, the only God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent;’ and I begin to understand the Athanasian Creed, which says, that if a ‘man does not believe rightly the name of God, and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, he will perish everlastingly; his soul will decay more and more, become more and more weak, unhealthy and corrupt, till he perishes everlastingly.  And whatsoever that may mean, it must mean something most awful and terrible, worse than all the evil which ever happened to us since we were born.

There is a very serious example of this, to my mind, in what is called the Greek Church; the Greeks and Russians.  They split off from the rest of Christ’s Catholic Church, many hundred years ago, because they would not hold with the rest of the Church that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father.  They said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone.  Now that may seem a slight matter of words: but I cannot help thinking that it has been a very solemn matter of practice with them.  It seems to me—God forgive me if I am judging them hardly!—that because they denied that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son, they forgot that he was the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, by whom he says for ever, ‘Father, not my will but thine be done!’ and so they forgot that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Sonship, the Spirit of adoption, which must proceed and come from Christ to us, that we may call God our Father, and say with Christ, ‘Father, I come to do thy will;’ and so, in course of time, they seem to have forgotten that Christian men were in any real practical sense, God’s children; and when people forget that they are God’s children, they forget soon enough to behave like God’s children, and to live righteous and Godlike lives.