Sermons for the Times

In one word, while the spirit of the world thinks of itself, and helps itself, Charity, which is the Spirit of God, thinks of other people, and helps other people.  And now:—to be always thinking of other people’s feelings, and always caring for other people’s comfort, what is that but the mark, and the only mark, of a true gentleman, and a true lady?  There is none other, my friends, and there never will be.  But the poorest man or woman can do that; the poorest man or woman can be courteous and tender, careful not to pain people, ready and willing to help every one to the best of their power; and therefore, the poorest man or woman can be a true gentleman or a true lady in the sight of God, by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, whose name is Charity.

They can be.  And thanks be to the grace of God, they often are.  I can say that I have seen among plain sailors and labouring men as perfect gentlemen (of God’s sort) as man need see; but then they were always pious and God-fearing men; and so the Spirit of God had made up to them for any want of scholarship and rank.  They were gentlemen, because God’s Spirit had made them gentle.  For recollect all, both rich and poor, what that word gentleman means.  It is simply a man who is gentle; who, let him be as brave or as wise as he will, yet, as St. Paul says, ‘suffers long and is kind; does not boast, does not behave himself unseemly; is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.’

And recollect, too, what that word lady means.  Most of you perhaps do not know.  I will tell you.  It means, in the ancient English tongue, a person who gives away bread; who deals out loaves to the poor.  I have often thought that most beautiful, and full of meaning, a very message from God to all ladies, to tell them what they ought to be; and not to them only, but to the poorest woman in the parish; for who is too poor to help her neighbours?

You see there is a difference between a Christian man’s duty in this and a Christian woman’s duty, though they both spring from the same spirit.  The man, unless he be a clergyman, has not so much time as a woman for actually helping his neighbours by acts of charity.  He must till the ground, sail the seas, attend to his business, fight the Queen’s enemies; and the way in which the Holy Spirit of Charity will show in him will be more in his temper and his language; by making him patient, cheerful, respectful, condescending, courteous, reasonable, with every one whom he has to do with: but the woman has time to show acts of charity which the man has not.  She can teach in the schools, sit by the sick bed, work with her hands for the suffering and the helpless, even though she cannot with her head.  Above all, she can give those kind looks and kind words which comfort the broken heart better than money and bodily comforts can do.  And she does do it, thank God!  I do not merely mean in such noble instances of divine charity and self-sacrifice as those ladies who have gone out to nurse the wounded soldiers in the East—true ladies, indeed, of whom I fear more than one, ere they return, will be added to the noble army of martyrs, to receive in return for the great love which they have shown on earth, the full enjoyment of God’s love in heaven:—not these only, but poor women—women who could not write their own names—women who had hardly clothes wherewith to keep themselves warm—women who were toiling all day long to feed and clothe their own children, till one wondered when in the twenty-four hours they could find five spare minutes for helping their neighbours;—such poor women have I seen, who in the midst of their own daily work and daily care, had still a heart open to hear every one’s troubles; a head always planning little comforts and pleasures for others; and hands always busy in doing good.  Instead of being made hard and selfish by their own troubles, they had been taught by them, as the Lord Jesus was, to feel for the troubles of all around them, and went about like ministering angels in the Spirit of God, which is peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

Oh, my friends, such poor women seemed to me most glorious, most honourable, most venerable!  What was all rank or fashion, beauty or accomplishments, when compared with the great honour which the Lord Jesus Christ was putting upon those poor women, by transforming them thus into His own most blessed likeness, and giving them grace to go about, as He the Lord Jesus did, doing good, because God was with them!

Then I felt that such women, poor, and worn, and hard-handed as they were, were ladies in the sight of that Heavenly Father, who is no respecter of persons; and felt how truly a wise ancient has said,—‘It is virtue, yea, virtue, gentlemen, which maketh gentlemen; which maketh the poor rich, the strong weak, the simple wise, the base-born noble.  This rank neither the whirling wheel of Fortune can destroy, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate; neither sickness abate, nor time abolish.’  No; for it is written, that though prophecies shall fail, tongues cease, knowledge vanish away, and all that we now know is but in part, yet charity shall never fail those who are full of the Spirit of Love, but abide with them for ever and ever, bringing forth fruit through all eternity to everlasting life.

But what sort of virtue?  Do not mistake that.  Not what the world calls virtue; not mere legal respectability, which says, I do unto others as they do unto me; which is often merely the whitening outside the sepulchre, and leaves the heart within unrenewed, unrighteous, full of pride and ambition, conceit, cunning, and envy, and unbelief in God: not that virtue, but the virtue which the Apostle tells us to add to our faith, the virtue from above, which is the same as the wisdom from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated; in one word, the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of Divine Love and Charity, which seeketh not its own, which St. Paul has described to us in this epistle; the Holy Spirit of God, with which the Lord Jesus was filled without measure, and which He manifested to all the world in His most blessed life and death.

Ah, my friends, this is not an easy lesson to learn.  Christ’s disciples and apostles could not learn it all at once.  They tried to hinder little children from coming to Him.  They rebuked the blind man who called after Him.  How could the great Prophet of Nazareth stoop to trouble Himself about such poor insignificant people?  They could not conceive, either, why the Lord Jesus should choose to die shamefully, when He might have lived in honour: it seemed unworthy of Him.  They were shocked at His words. ‘That be far from Thee, Lord,’ said Peter.  Afterwards, when they really understood what that word ‘Lord,’ meant, and what sort of a man a true and perfect Lord ought to be, then they saw how fit, and proper, and glorious, Christ’s self-sacrifice was.  When, too, they learnt to look on Him, not merely as a great prophet, but as the Son of the Living God, then they understood His conduct, and saw that it behoved an only-begotten Son of God to suffer all these things before He entered into His glory.

But the Scribes and Pharisees never understood it.  To the last they were puzzled and angered by that very self-sacrifice of His: He must be a bad man, they thought, or He would not care so much for bad men.  ‘A friend of publicans and sinners,’ they called Him, thinking that a shameful blame to Him, while it was really the very highest praise.  But if they could not see the beauty of His conduct, can we?  It is very difficult, I do not deny it, my friends, for the selfishness and pride of fallen man: it is difficult to see that the Cross was the most glorious throne that was even set up on earth, and that the crown of thorns was worth all the crowns of czars and emperors: difficult, indeed, not to stumble at the stumbling-block of the Cross, and to say, ‘It cannot surely be more blessed to give than to receive:’ difficult, not to say in our hearts, ‘The way to be great is surely to rise above other men, not to stoop below them; to make use of them, and not to make ourselves slaves to them.’  And yet the Lord Jesus Christ did so; He took on Himself the form of a slave, and made Himself of no reputation: and what was fit and good for Him, must surely be fit and good for us.  But it is a hard lesson to the pride of fallen creatures: very hard.  And nothing, I believe, but sorrow will teach it us: sorrow is teaching it some of us now.  We surely are beginning to see, that to suffer patiently for conscience sake, is the most beautiful thing on earth or in heaven: we begin to see that those poor soldiers, dying by inches of cold and weariness, without a murmur, because it was their Duty, were doing a nobler work even than they did when they fought at Alma and Inkermann; and that those ladies who are drudging in the hospitals, far away from home, amid filth and pestilence, are doing, if possible, a nobler work still, a nobler work than if they were queens or empresses, because they have taken up the Cross and followed Christ; because they are not seeking their own good, but the good of others.  And if we will not learn it from those glorious examples, God will force us to learn it, I trust, every one of us, by sorrow and disappointment.  Ah, my friends, might one not learn it at once, if one would but open one’s eyes and look at things as they are?  Every one is longing for something; each has his little plan for himself, of what he would like to be, and like to do, and says to himself all day long, ‘If I could but get that one thing, I should be happy: If I could but get that, then I should want no more!’  Foolish man, self-deceived by his own lusts!  Perhaps he cannot get what he wants, and therefore he cannot enjoy what he has, and is moody, discontented, peevish, a torment to himself, and perhaps a torment to his family.  Or perhaps he does get what he wants: and is he happy after all?  Not he.  He is like the greedy Israelites of old, when they longed for the quails; and God sent the quails: but while the meat was yet in their mouths, they loathed it.  So it is with a man’s fancy.  He gets what he fancies; and he plays with it for a day, as a child with a new toy, and most probably spoils it, and next day throws it away to run after some new pleasure, which will cheat him in just the same way as the last did; and so happiness flits away ahead before him; and he is like the simple boy in the parable, who was to find a crock of gold where the rainbow touched the ground: but as he moved on, the rainbow moved on too, and kept always a field off from him.  You may smile: but just as foolish is every soul of us, who fancies that he will become happy by making himself great; admired, rich, comfortable, in short, by making himself anything whatsoever, or getting anything whatsoever for himself.  Just as foolish is every poor soul, and just as unhappy, as long as he will go on thinking about himself, instead of copying the Lord Jesus Christ, and thinking about others; as long as he will keep to the pattern of the old selfish Adam, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, the longings and fancies which deceive a man into expecting to be happy when he will not be happy; instead of putting on the new man, which after God’s likeness is created in righteousness and true holiness: and what is true holiness but that very charity of which St. Paul has been preaching to us, the spirit of love, and mercy, and gentleness, and condescension, and patience, and active benevolence?

Ah, my friends, do not forget what I said just now; that a man could not become happy by making himself anything.  No.  Not by making himself anything: but he may by letting God make him something.  If he will let God make him a new creature in Jesus Christ, then he will be more than happy—he will be blessed: then he will be a blessing to himself, and a blessing to every one whom he meets: then all vain longing, and selfishness, and pride, and ambition, and covetousness, and peevishness and disappointment, will vanish out of his heart, and he will work manfully and contentedly where God has placed him—cheerful and open-hearted, civil and patient, always thinking about others, and not about himself; trying to be about his Master’s business, which is doing good; and always finding too, that his Master Christ sets him some good work to do day by day, and gives him strength to do it.  And how can a man get that blessed and noble state of mind?  By prayer and practice.  You must ask for strength from God: but then you must believe that He answers your prayer, and gives you that strength; and therefore you must try and use it.  There is no more use in praying without practising than there is in practising without praying.  You cannot learn to walk without walking: no more can you learn to do good without trying to do good.

Ask, then, of God, grace and help to do good: Pray to Him this very day to take all selfishness and meanness out of your hearts, and to give you instead His Holy Spirit of Love and Charity, which alone can make you noble in His sight; and try this day, try every day of your lives, to do some good to those around you.  Oh make a rule, and pray to God to help you to keep it, never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say, ‘I have made one human being at least a little wiser, or a little happier, or a little better this day.’  You will find it easier than you think, and pleasanter: easier, because if you wish to do God’s work, God will surely find you work to do; and pleasanter, because in return for the little trouble it may cost you, or the little choking of foolish vulgar pride it may cost you, you will have a peace of mind, a quiet of temper, a cheerfulness and hopefulness about yourself and all around you, such as you never felt before; and over and above that, if you look for a reward in the life to come, recollect this—what we have to hope for in the life to come is, to enter into the joy of our Lord.  And how did He fulfil that joy, but by humbling Himself, and taking the form of a slave, and coming not to be ministered to but to minister, and to give His whole life, even to the death upon the cross, a ransom for many?  Be sure, that unless you take up His cross, you will not share His crown.  Be sure, that unless you follow in His footsteps, you will never reach the place where He is.  If you wish to enter into the joy of your Lord, be sure that His joy is now, as it was in Judæa of old, over every sinner that repenteth, every mourner that is comforted, every hungry mouth that is fed, every poor soul, sick or in prison, who is visited.

That is the joy of your Lord—to show mercy; and that must be your joy too, if you wish to enter into His joy.  Surely that is plain.  You must rejoice in doing the same work that He rejoices in, and then His joy and yours will be the same; then you will enter into His joy, and He will enter into yours; then, as St. John says, you will dwell in Christ, and Christ in you, because you love the brethren; and you will hear through all eternity the blessed words, ‘Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye did it unto Me.’

SERMON XXI.  TOLERATION

[Preached at Bideford, 1854]

Philippians iii. 15, 16.  And if in any thing ye shall be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this to you.  Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.

My friends, allow me to speak a few plain and honest words, ere we part, on a matter which is near to, and probably important to, many of us here.  We all know how the Christian Church has in all ages been torn in pieces by religious quarrels; we all know too well how painfully these religious quarrels have been brought home to our very doors and hearts of late.

Now, we all deplore, or profess to deplore, these differences and controversies.  But we may do that in two ways: we may say, ‘I am very sorry that all Christians do not think alike,’ when all we mean is, ‘I am very sorry that all Christians do not think just as I do, for I am right and infallible, whosoever else is wrong.’  The fallen heart of man is too apt to say that, my friends, in its pride and narrowness, and while it cries out against the Pope of Rome, sets itself up as Pope in his stead.

But there is surely another and a better way of deploring these differences: and that is, to say to oneself, ‘I am sorry, bitterly sorry, that Christians cannot differ without quarrelling and hating one another over and above.’  And then comes the deeper home-thought, ‘And how much more sorry I am that I myself cannot differ from my fellow-Christians without growing angry with them, suspecting them, despising them, treating them as if they were not my fellow-Christians at all.’  Yes, my friends, this is what we have to do first when we think of religious controversies, to examine our own hearts and deeds and words; to see whether we too have not been making bitterness more bitter, and, as the old proverb says, ‘stirring the fire with a sword;’ and to repent humbly and utterly of every harsh word, hasty judgment, ungenerous suspicion, as sins, not only against men, but against God the Father of Lights, who worketh in each of His children to will and to do of His good pleasure.

But some will say, ‘We cannot give up what we believe to be right and true.’  God forbid that you should try to do so, my friends; for if you really believe it, you cannot, even if you try; and by trying you will only make yourselves dishonest.  But does not that hold as good of the man who differs from you?  God will not surely lay down one law for you, and another for him?  ‘But we are right, and he is wrong.’  Be it so.  You do not surely mean that you are quite right; perfect and infallible?  You mean that you are right on the whole, and as far as you see.  And how can you tell but that he is right on the whole, and as far as he sees?  You will answer that both cannot be right; that yes and no cannot be both true; that a thing cannot be black and white also.

My friends, my friends—but where is the religious controversy, the two sides whereof are as clearly opposite to each other as yes and no, black and white?  I know none now; I have hardly found one in the records of the Protestant Church since first Luther and our Reformers protested against Romish idolatry.  On that last matter there should be no doubt, as long as the first two commandments stand in the Decalogue; but, with that exception, it would be difficult to find a dispute in which the truth lay altogether with one party.  The truth rather lies, in general, not so much halfway between the two combatants, as in some third place, which neither of them sees; which perhaps God does not intend them to see in this life, while He leaves his servants each to work out some one side of Christian truth, dividing to every man severally as He will, according to the powers of each mind, and the needs of each situation.

True we have the infallible rule of Scripture: but are our own interpretations of it so sure to be infallible?  Inspired, infinite, inexhaustible as it is, can we pretend to have fathomed all its abysses, to have comprehended all its boundless treasures?  The pretence is folly.  True, again, it contains all things necessary to salvation; and those so plainly set forth, that he who runs may read, and the wayfaring man, though poor, shall not err therein.  And yet does it not contain things whereof even St. Paul himself said, that he only knew in part, and prophesied in part, and saw as through a glass darkly; and are we to suppose that they are among the truths necessary to salvation?  Now are not the points about which there has been, and is still, most dispute, just of this very number?  Do they belong to the simple fundamental truths of the Gospel?  No.  Are they such plain matters that the wayfaring man, though poor, can make up his mind on them for himself?  No.  Are they one of them laid down directly in Scripture, like the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, or the Creeds?  No.  They are every one, as it seems to me, whether they be right or wrong, abstruse deductions, delicate theories, built up on single and obscure texts.  Surely, if they had been necessary for salvation, the Lord would have spoken on them in a tone and in words about which there should be no more mistake than about the thunders of Sinai, and the tables of stone fresh from the finger-mark of God.  And He has spoken to us, my friends, on other matters, if not on these.  His promises are clear enough, and short enough, though high as heaven and wide as the universe.  There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God; and whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God; and if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins.  And again, ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally, and upbraideth not, and he shall receive it.’  ‘For if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, much more shall your Heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them who ask Him.’

These are God’s promises—simple and clear enough: and what are God’s demands?  Are they numerous, intricate, burdensome, a yoke which neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?  God forbid again!—‘He hath showed thee, oh man, what is good.  And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’  And lest thou shouldest mistake in the least the meaning of these words, He hath showed thee all this, and more, by a living example fairer than all the sons of men, and through lips full of grace, in the blessed life and blessed death of His Son Jesus Christ, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person.  To this, at least, we have already attained.  Let us walk by this rule, let us all mind this same thing, and if in anything else we are differently minded, God in His own good time will reveal even that to us.

Is not this enough, my friends?  Then why should we bite and tear each other about that which is over and above this?  If any man believes this, and acts on it, let us hail him as a brother.  After all, let our differences be what they will, have we not one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all?  If this is not bond enough between man and man, what bond would we have?  Oh, my friends, when we consider this our little life, how full of ignorance it is and darkness; within us, rebellion, inconstancy, confusion, daily sins and shortcomings; and without us, disappointment, fear of loneliness, loss of friends, loss of all which makes life worth having,—who are we that we should deny proudly one single tie which binds us to any other human being?  Who are we that we should refuse one hand stretched out to grasp our own?  Who are we that we should say, ‘Stand back, for I am holier than thou?’  Who are we that we should judge another? to his own master let him stand or fall—‘yea, and he shall stand,’ says the Apostle, ‘for God is able to make him stand.’

Think of those last words, my friends, they are strong and startling; but we must not shrink from them.  They tell us that God may be as near those whom we heap with hard names, as He is near to us; that He may intend that they should triumph, not over us, but with us over evil.  And if God be with them, who dare be against them?  Shall we be more dainty than God?  And therefore I have never been able to hear, without a shudder, words which I have heard, and from really Christian men too: ‘I can wish well to a pious man of a different denomination from mine; I can honour and admire the fruits of God’s Spirit in him; but I cannot co-operate with him.’  When I hear such language from really good men, I confess I am puzzled.  I have no doubt that their reasons seem to them very sound; but what they are I cannot conceive.  I cannot conceive why I should not hold out the right hand of fellowship and brotherhood to every man who fears God and works righteousness, of whatsoever denomination he may be.  We believe the Apostles’ Creed, surely?  Then think of the meaning of that one word, The Holy Spirit.  To whom are we to attribute any man’s good deeds, except to the Holy Spirit?  We dare not say that he does them by an innate and natural virtue of his own, for that would be to fall at once into the Pelagian heresy; neither dare we attribute his good deeds to an evil spirit, and say, ‘However good they may look, they must be bad, for he belongs to a denomination who cannot have God’s Spirit.’  We dare not; for that would be to approach fearfully near to the unpardonable sin itself, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the bigotry which says, ‘He casteth out devils by the Prince of the devils.’  Surely if we be Christians, and Churchmen, we confess (for the Bible and the Prayer-book declare) that every good deed of man comes down from the One Fountain of Good, from God, the Father of Lights, by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit.