Sermons for the Times

Then think, my friends, think what words we have said.  We confess that the great, absolute, almighty, eternal God, in whose hand suns and stars, ages and generations, hell and heaven, and all which is and has been, and ever will be, are but as a grain of sand; who has but to take away His breath, and the whole universe would become nothing and nowhere; the utterly holy and righteous God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, who charges His angels with folly, and the heavens are not clean in His sight—we confess, I say, that this great God has condescended to visit that man’s soul, and cherish it, and teach it, and shape it (be it ever so little) into His own likeness: and shall we dare to stand aloof from him from whom God does not stand aloof?  Shall we refuse to walk with one who walks with God?  Shall we refuse to work with one who is a fellow-worker with God, to love one whom God loves, to take by the hand one whose guest God has become?  Shall we be more dainty than God? more fastidious than God? more righteous than God? more separate from sinners than God?  Oh, my friends, let us pray that we may love God better, and know His likeness more clearly; that we may be more ready to recognise, and admire, and welcome every, even the smallest trace of that likeness in any human being, remembering that it is the likeness of Christ, who was not merely The Teacher of all in every nation who fear God and work righteousness, but the Saviour who ate and drank with publicans and sinners: and then we shall be more careful how we call unclean what God Himself has cleansed with His own presence, His own grace, His own quickening and renewing and sanctifying Spirit.

Be sure, be sure, my friends, that in proportion as we really love the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall love those who love Him, be it in never so clumsy or mistaken a fashion; and love those too whom He loved enough to die for them, and whom He loves now enough to teach and strengthen.  We shall say to them, not ‘Wherein do we differ?’ but ‘Wherein do we agree?’  Not, ‘Because I cannot worship with you, therefore I will not work with you;’ but rather, ‘I wish that I could worship with you; I will whenever and wherever I can, as far as you allow me, as far as the law allows me, as far as your worship is not in my eyes an actually sinful thing: but, be that as it may, we can at least do together something better even than worshipping, and that is, working.  We can surely do good together.  Together, let our denomination or party be what it may, we can feed the hungry, clothe the naked, reform the prisoner, humanize the degraded, save yearly the lives of thousands by labouring for the public health, and educate the minds and morals of the masses, though our religious differences (shame on us that it should be so!) force us to part when we begin to talk to them about the world to come.’

For are we not brothers after all?  Has not God made us of one blood, English men, with English hearts?  Has not Christ redeemed us with one and the same sacrifice?  Has not the Holy Spirit given us one and the same desire of doing good?  And shall we not use that spirit hand in hand?  Look, look at the opportunities of doing good which are around you; look at God’s field of good works, white already to the harvest; and the labourers are few.  Shall these few, instead of going manfully to work, stand idly quarrelling about the shape of their instruments, and their favourite modes of using them?  God forbid!  True, there are errors against which we are bound to protest to the uttermost; but how few?  The one real enemy we have all to fight is sin—evil-doing.  If any man or doctrine makes men worse—makes men do worse deeds, protest then, if you will, and spare not, and shrink not: for sin must be of the Devil, whatever else is not.  And therefore we are bound to protest against any doctrine which parts man from God, and, under whatsoever pretence of reverence or purity, draws again the veil between him and his Heavenly Father, and denies him free access to the Throne of Grace, and the feet of Jesus, that he may carry thither his own sins, his own doubts, his own sorrows, and speak (wondrous condescension of redeeming grace!) speak with God face to face, and yet live.  For this we must protest; for this we must die, if needs be; for if we lose this, we lose all which our reforming forefathers won for us at the stake, ay, we lose our own souls; for we lose righteousness and strength, and the power to do the will of God.

For to shut a man out from free access to God and Christ is to make him certainly false, dishonest, cowardly, degraded, slavish, and sinful; as modern Popery has made, and always will make, those over whom it really gains power.  This is the root of our hereditary protest against Popery; not merely because we do not agree with certain of its doctrines, but because we know from experience, that as now taught by the Jesuits, with whom it has identified itself, its general tendency is to make men bad men, ignorant, dishonest, rebellious; unworthy citizens of a free and loyal state.

And there are practices against which congregations have a right to protest, not only as Christians, but as free Englishmen.  Congregations have a right to protest against any minister who introduces obsolete ceremonies which empty his church and drive away his people.  Those ceremonies may be quite harmless in themselves, as I really believe most of them are; many of them may be beautiful, and, if properly understood, useful, as I think they are; but a thing may be good in itself, and yet become bad by being used at a wrong time, and in a way which produces harm.  And it is shocking, to say the least, to see churches emptied and parishes thrown into war for the sake of such matters.  The lightest word which can be used for such conduct is, pedantry; but I fear at times lest the Lord in heaven should be using a far more awful word, and when He sees weak brethren driven from the fold of the Church by the self-will and obstinacy of the very men who profess to desire to bring all into the Church, as the only place where salvation is to be found,—I fear, I say, when I see such deeds, lest the Lord should repeat against them His own awful words: ‘If any man scandalize one of these little ones who believeth on Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.’  What sadder mistake?  Those who have sworn to seek out Christ’s lambs scattered up and down this wicked world, shall they be the very ones to frighten those lambs out of the fold, instead of alluring them back into it?  Shall the shepherd play the part, not even of the hireling who flees and leaves the sheep to themselves, but of the very wolf who scatters the flock?  God forbid!  The Church, like the Sabbath, was made for man, my friends: not man for the Church; and the Son of Man, as He is Lord of the Sabbath, is Lord of the Church, and will have mercy in its dealings rather than sacrifice.  The minister, my friends, was made for the people: and not the people for the minister.  What else does the very name ‘minister’ mean?  Not a lord who has dominion, but a servant, a servant to all, who must give up again and again his private notions of what he thinks best in itself for the sake of what will be best for his flock; who must be, like St. Paul, a Jew to the Jews; under the law to those who are still under the law; and yet again without law to those who are without law (though not without law to God, but under the law to Christ); weak with the weak; strong with the strong; that he may gain men of all sorts of opinions and characters by agreeing with them as far as he honestly can, and showing his sympathy with each as much as he can; and so become all things to all men, that he may by all means save some.  Oh, my friends, who can read honestly that glorious First Epistle to the Corinthians and not see how a man may have the most intense earnestness, the strongest doctrinal certainty, and yet at the same time the greatest freedom, and charity, and liberality about minor matters of ceremonies and Church arrangements, and practical methods of usefulness; glad even that Christ be preached by his enemies, and out of spite to him, because any way Christ is preached?

But, my friends, if it is the right of free Englishmen to protest against such doings, how shall it be done?  Surely in gentleness, calmness, reverence, as by men who know that they are standing on holy ground, and dealing with sacred things, before the Throne of God, and beneath the eye of Jesus Christ.  Not surely, as it has been too often done, in bitterness, and wrath, and clamour, and evil-speaking, with really unjust suspicions, exaggerations, slanders, (and those, too, anonymous,) in the columns of the public prints.  My friends, these are not God’s weapons.  Not such is Ithuriel’s magic spear, the very touch of which unmasks falsehood.  This is to try to cast out Satan by Satan, to make evil worse by fighting it with fresh evil.  Oh, my friends, if there is one counsel which I would press on all here more earnestly than another, it is this—never, never, howsoever great may be the temptation, to indulge in anonymous attacks on any human being.  No man has a right to do it who prays daily to his Father in heaven, Lead us not into temptation.  For it is to lead oneself into temptation, and that too sore to resist; into the temptation to say something which one dare not say, and ought not to say, were one’s name known; the temptation to forget not only the charity of Christians, but even the courtesies of civilized life; and to shoot, from behind the safe hedge of anonymousness, coward and envenomed shafts, of which we should be ashamed, did the world know that they were ours; of which we shall surely be ashamed in that great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.  I speak strongly: but only because I know by bitter experience the terrible truth of my own words.

And consider, my friends, can any good result come from handling sacred matters with such harsh and fierce hands as they have been handled of late?  For ourselves, such evil tempers only excite, irritate, blind us: they prevent our doing justice to the opposite side—(I speak of all parties)—they put us into an unwholesome state of suspicion, and tempt us to pass harsh judgments upon men as righteous, and perhaps far more righteous, than ourselves: they stir up our pride to special plead our case, to make the best of our own side, and the worst of our opponents’: they defile our very prayers; till, when we ought to be praying God to bless all mankind, we catch ourselves unawares calling on Him to curse our enemies.

For those who are without—for the infidel, the profligate, the careless—oh, what a scandal to them!  What an excuse for them to blaspheme the holy name whereby we are called, and ask, as of old, ‘Is this then the Gospel of Peace?  See how these Christians hate one another!’

While for the young, oh, my friends, what a scandal, again, to them!  If you had seen (as I have) pious parents destroying in their own childrens’ minds all faith, all reverence for holy things, by mixing themselves up in religious controversies, and indulging by their own firesides in fierce denunciations of men no worse than themselves;—if you will watch (as you may) young people taking refuge, some in utter frivolity, saying, ‘What am I to believe?  When religionists have settled what religion is, it will be time enough for me to think of it: meanwhile, let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die;’—and others, the children of strong Protestant parents, taking refuge in the apostate Church of Rome, and saying, ‘If Englishmen do not know what to believe, Rome does; if I cannot find certainty in Protestantism, I can in Popery;’—if you will consider honestly and earnestly these sad tragedies, you will look on it as a sacred duty to the children whom God has given you, to keep aloof as much as possible from all those points on which Christians differ, and make your children feel from their earliest years that there are points, and those the great, vital root points, on which all more or less agree, which many members of the Romish Church have held, and, I doubt not, now hold, as firmly as Protestants,—adoption by one common Father, justification by the blood of one common Saviour, sanctification by one common Holy Spirit.

And believe me, my friends, that just in proportion as you delight in, and live by, these great doctrines, all controversies will become less and less important in your eyes.  The more you value the living body of Christianity, the less you will think of its temporary garments; the more you feel the power of God’s Spirit, the less scrupulous will you be about the peculiar form in which He may manifest Himself.  Personal trust in Christ Jesus, personal love to Christ Jesus, personal belief that He and He only, is governing this poor diseased and confused world; that He is really fighting against all evil in it; that He really rules all nations, and fashions the hearts of all of them, and understands all their works, and has appointed them their times and the bounds of their habitation, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him: personal and living belief that the just and loving Lord Christ reigneth, be the peoples never so unquiet;—this, this will keep your minds clear, and sober, and charitable, and will make you turn with disgust from platform squabbles and newspaper controversies, to do the duty which lies nearest you; to walk soberly and righteously with your God, and train up your children in His faith and fear, not merely to be scholars, not merely to be devotees, but to be Christian Englishmen; courteous and gentle, and yet manful and self-restraining; fearing God and regarding man; growing up healthy under that solemn sense of national duty which is the only safeguard of national freedom.

And, meanwhile, you will leave all who differ from you in the hands of a God who wills their salvation far more than you can do; who accepts, in every nation, those who fear Him and work righteousness; who is merciful in this—that He rewards every man according to his work; and who, if our brothers be otherwise minded from us, will reveal even that to them, if we be right: or, again, to us, if they be right.  For we may have to learn from them, as well as they from us; and both have to learn much from God, in the day when all controversies and doubts shall vanish like a cloud; when we shall see no longer in part, and through a glass darkly, but face to face; while all things shall be bright in the sunshine of God’s presence and of the countenance of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

SERMON XXII.  PUBLIC SPIRIT

(Preached at Bideford, 1855.)

1 Corinthians xii. 25, 26.  That there should be no division in the body; but that the members should have the same care, one of another.  And whether one member suffer, all suffer with it; or whether one member be honoured, all rejoice with it.

I have been asked to preach in behalf of the Provident Society of this town.  I shall begin by asking you to think over with me a matter which may seem at first sight to have very little to do with you or with a provident society, but which, nevertheless, I believe has very much to do with both, and is full of wholesome spiritual instruction for us all.

Did it ever happen to any of you, to see a mob of several thousands put to instant flight by a mere handful of soldiers?  And did you ever ask yourself how that apparent miracle could come to pass?  The first answer which occurred to you, perhaps, was, that the soldiers were well armed, and the mob was not: but soon, I am sure, you felt that you were doing the soldiers an injustice; that they would have behaved just as bravely if every man in that mob had been as well armed as they, and have resisted till they were overpowered by mere numbers.  You felt, I am sure, that there was something in the hearts and spirits of those soldiers which there was not in the hearts of the mob; that though the mob might be boiling over with the greediest passions, the fiercest fury, while the soldiers were calm, cheerful, and caring for nothing but doing their duty, yet that there was a thought within them which was stronger than all the rage and greediness of the thousands whom they faced; that, in short, the seeming miracle was a moral and a spiritual miracle.

What, then, is this wonder-working thought which makes the soldier strong?

Courage, you answer, and the sense of duty.  True; but what has called out the sense of duty?  What has inspired the courage?  There was a time, perhaps, when each of those soldiers was no braver or more steady than the mob in front of them.  Has it never happened to you to know some young country lad, both before and after he has become a soldier?  Look at him in his native village (if you will let me draw for you the sketch of a history, which, alas! is the history of thousands), perhaps one of the worst and idlest lads in it—unwilling to work steadily, haunting the public-house and the worst of company; wandering out at night to poach and caring for nothing but satisfying his gross animal appetites; afraid to look you in the face, hardly able to give an intelligible, certainly not a civil answer; his countenance expressing only vacancy, sensuality, cunning, suspicion, utter want of self-respect.

It is a sad sight, but how common a sight, even in this favoured land!

At last he vanishes; he has been engaged in some drunken affray, or in some low intrigue, and has fled for fear of the law, and enlisted as a soldier.

A year or two passes, and you meet the same lad again—if indeed he is the same.  For a strange change has come over him: he walks erect, he speaks clearly, he looks you boldly in the face, with eyes full of intelligence and self-respect; he is become civil and courteous now; he touches his cap to you ‘like a soldier;’ he can afford now to be respectful to others, because he respects himself, and expects you to respect him.  You talk to him, and find that the change is not merely outward, but inward; not owing to mere mechanical drill but to something which has been going on in his heart; and ten to one, the first thing that he begins to talk to you about, with honest pride, is his regiment.  His regiment.  Yes, there is the secret which has worked these wonders; there is the talisman which has humanized and civilized and raised from the mire the once savage boor.  He belongs to a regiment; in one word, he has become the member of a body.

The member of a body, in which if one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one member be honoured, all rejoice with it.  A body, which has a life of its own, and a government of its own, a duty of its own, a history of its own, an allegiance to a sovereign, all which are now his life, his duty, his history, his allegiance; he does not now merely serve himself and his own selfish lusts: he serves the Queen.  His nature is not changed, but the thought that he is the member of an honourable body has raised him above his nature.  If he forgets that, and thinks only of himself, he will become selfish sluttish, drunken, cowardly, a bad soldier; as long as he remembers it, he is a hero.  He can face mobs now, and worse than mobs: he can face hunger and thirst, fatigue, danger, death itself, because he is the member of a body.  For those know little, little of human nature and its weakness, who fancy that mere brute courage, as of an angry lion, will ever avail, or availed a few short weeks ago, to spur our thousands up the steeps of Alma, or across the fatal plain of Balaklava, athwart the corpses of their comrades, upon the deadly throats of Russian guns.  A nobler feeling, a more heavenly thought was needed (and when needed, thanks to God, it came!) to keep each raw lad, nursed in the lap of peace, true to his country and his Queen through the valley of the shadow of death.  Not mere animal fierceness: but that tattered rag which floated above his head, inscribed with the glorious names of Egypt or Corunna, Toulouse or Waterloo, that it was which raised him into a hero: he had seen those victories; the men who conquered there were dead long since: but the regiment still lived, its history still lived, its honour lived, and that history, that honour were his, as well as those old dead warriors’: he had fought side by side with them in spirit, though not in the flesh; and now his turn was come, and he must do as they did, and for their sakes, and count his own life a worthless thing for the sake of the body which he belonged to: he, but two years ago the idle, selfish country lad, now stumbling cheerful on in the teeth of the iron hail, across ground slippery with his comrades’ blood, not knowing whether the next moment his own blood might not swell the ghastly stream.  What matter?  They might kill him, but they could not kill the regiment: it would live on and conquer; ay, and should conquer, if his life could help on its victory; and then its honour would be his, its reward be his, even when his corpse lay pierced with wounds, stiffening beneath a foreign sky.

Here, my friends, is one example of the blessed power of fellow feeling, public spirit, the sense of belonging to a body whose members have not merely a common interest, but a common duty, a common honour.

This Christian country, thank God! gives daily many another example of the same: and every place, and every station affords to each one of us opportunities,—more, alas, I fear, than we shall ever take full advantage of: but I have chosen the case of the soldier, not merely because it is perhaps the most striking and affecting, but because I wish to see, and trust in God that I shall see, those who remain at home in safety emulating the public spirit and self-sacrifice which our soldiers are showing abroad; and by sacrifices more peaceful and easy, but still well-pleasing unto God, showing that they too have been raised above selfishness, by the glorious thought that they are members of a body.

For, are we not members of a body, my friends?  Are we not members of the Body of bodies, members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven?  Members of Christ—we, and the poor for whom I plead, as well as we; perhaps, considering their many trials and our few trials, more faithfully and loyally by far than we are.  There are some here, I doubt not, to whom that word, that argument, is enough: to whom it is enough to say, Remember that the Lord whom you love loves that shivering, starving wretch as well as He loves you, to open and exhaust at once their heart, their purse, their labour of love.  God’s blessing be upon all such!  But it would be hypocrisy in me, my friends, to speak to this, or any congregation, as if all were of that temper of mind.  It is not one in ten, alas! in the present divided state of religious parties, who feels the mere name of Christ enough of a bond to make him sacrifice himself for his fellow Christians, as a soldier does for his fellow soldiers.  Not one in ten, alas! feels that he owes the same allegiance to Christ as the soldier does to his Queen; that the honour of Christianity is his honour, the history of Christianity his history, the life of Christianity his life.  Would that it were so: but it is not so.  And I must appeal to feelings in you less wide, honourable and righteous though they are: I must appeal to your public spirit as townsmen of this place.

I have a right as a clergyman to do so: I have a duty as a clergyman to do so.  For your being townsmen of this place is not a mere material accident depending on your living in one house instead of another.  It is a spiritual matter; it is a question of eternity.  Your souls and spirits influence each other; your tastes, opinions, tempers, habits, make those of your neighbours better or worse; you feel it in yourselves daily.  Look at it as a proof that, whether you will or not, you are one body, of which all the members must more or less suffer and rejoice together; that you have a common weal, a common interest; that God has knit you together; that you cannot part yourselves even if you will; and that you can be happy and prosperous only by acknowledging each other as brothers, and by doing to each other as you would they should do unto you.

It may be hard at times to bring this thought home to our minds: but it is none the less true because we forget it; and if we do not choose to bring it home to our own minds, it will be sooner or later brought home to them whether we choose or not.

For bear in mind, that St. Paul does not say, if one member suffers, all the rest ought to suffer with it: he says that they do suffer with it.  He does not say merely, that we ought to feel for our fellow townsmen; he says, that God has so tempered the body together as to force one member to have the same care of the others as of itself; that if we do not care to feel for them, we shall be made to feel with them.  One limb cannot choose whether or not it will feel the disease of another limb.  If one limb be in pain, the whole body must be uneasy, whether it will or not.  And if one class in a town, or parish, or county, be degraded, or in want, the whole town, or parish, or county, must be the worse for it.  St. Paul is not preaching up sentimental sympathy: he is telling you of a plain fact.  He is not saying, ‘It is a very fine and saintly thing, and will increase your chance of heaven, to help the poor.’  He is saying, ‘If you neglect the poor, you neglect yourself; if you degrade the poor, you degrade yourself.  His poverty, his carelessness, his immorality, his dirt, his ill-health, will punish you; for you and he are members of the same body, knit together inextricably for weal or woe, by the eternal laws according to which the Lord Jesus Christ has constituted human society; and if you break those laws, they will avenge themselves.’—My friends, do we not see them avenge themselves daily?  The slave-holder refuses to acknowledge that his slave is a member of the same body as himself; but he does not go unpunished: the degradation to which he has brought his slave degrades him, by throwing open to him. the downward path of lust, laziness, ungoverned and tyrannous tempers, and the other sins which have in all ages, slowly but surely, worked the just ruin of slave-holding states.  The sinner is his own tempter, and the sinner is his own executioner: he lies in wait for his own life (says Solomon) when he lies in wait for his brother’s.  Do you see the same law working in our own free country?  If you leave the poor careless and filthy, you can obtain no good servants: if you leave them profligate, they make your sons profligate also: if you leave them tempted by want, your property is unsafe: if you leave them uneducated, reckless, improvident, you cannot get your work properly done, and have to waste time and money in watching your workmen instead of trusting them.  Why, what are all poor-rates and county-rates, if you will consider, but God’s plain proof to us, that the poor are members of the same body as ourselves; and that if we will not help them of our own free will, we shall find it necessary to help them against our will: that if we will not pay a little to prevent them becoming pauperized or criminal, we must pay a great deal to keep them when they have become so?  We may draw a lesson—and a most instructive one it is—from the city of Liverpool, in which it was lately proved that crime—and especially the crime of uneducated boys and girls—had cost, in the last few years, the city many times more than it would cost to educate, civilize, and depauperize the whole rising generation of that city, and had been a tax upon the capital and industry of Liverpool, so enormous that they would have submitted to it from no Government on earth; and yet they had been blindly inflicting it upon themselves for years, simply because they chose to forget that they were their brothers’ keepers.