Sermons for the Times

Yes, I can have hope for England; and hope for those mighty nations across the seas, whose earthly mother God has ordained that she should be, as long as the Catechism is taught to her children.

For see.  This Catechism does not begin with telling children that they are sinners: they will find that out soon enough for themselves, poor little things, from their own wayward and self-willed hearts.  Nor by telling them that man is fallen and corrupt: they will find out that also soon enough, from the way in which they see people go on around them.  It does not even begin by telling them that they ought to be good, or what goodness and righteousness is; because it takes for granted that they know that already; it takes for granted that The Light who lights every man who comes into the world is in them; even the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, stirring up in their hearts, as He does in the heart of every child, the knowledge of good and the love of good.  But it begins at once by teaching the child the name of God.  It goes at once to the root of the matter; to the fountain of goodness itself; even to God, the Father of lights.  It is so careful of God’s honour, so careful that the child should learn from the first to look up to God with love and trust, that it dare not tell the child that God can destroy and punish, before it has told him that God is a Father and a Maker; the Father of spirits, who has made him and all the world.  It dare not tell him that mankind is fallen, before it has told him that all the world is redeemed.  It dare not talk to him of unholiness, before it has taught him that the Holy Spirit of God is with him, to make him holy.  It tells him of a world, a flesh, and a devil: but he has renounced them.  He has neither part nor lot in them; and he is not to think of them yet.  He is to think of that in which he has part and lot, of which he is an inheritor.  He is to know where he is and ought to be, before he knows where he is not and ought not to be: he is to think of the name of God, by which he can trample world, flesh, and devil under foot, if they dare hereafter meddle with his soul.  In its God-inspired tenderness and prudence, it dare not darken the heart of one little child, or tempt him to hard thoughts of God, or to cry, ‘Why hast thou made me thus?’ lest it put a stumbling-block in the way of Christ’s little ones, and dishonour the name and glory of God.  It tells him of the love, before it tells him of the wrath; of the order, before it tells him of the disorder; of the right, before the wrong; of the health, before the disease; of the freedom, before the bondage; of the truth, before the lies; of the light, before the darkness; in one word, it tells him first of the eternal and good God, who was, and is, and shall be to all eternity, before and above the evil devil.  It tells him of the name of God; and tells him that God is with him, and he with God, and bids him believe that, and be saved, from his birth-hour, to endless ages.  It does not tell him to pray that he may become God’s child; but to pray, because he is God’s child already.  It does not tell him to love God, in order that he may make God love him; but to love God because God loves him already, and has loved him from all eternity.  It does not tell him to obey Jesus Christ, in order that Christ may save him; but to obey Christ because Christ has saved him, and bought him with his own blood.  It does not tell him to do good works, in order that God’s Spirit may be pleased with him, and come to him, and make him one of the elect; neither does it tell him, that some day or other, if he is converted, and feels certain religious experiences, he will have a right to consider himself one of God’s elect: but it tells him to look man and devil in the face, he, the poor little ignorant village child, and say boldly in the name of God, ‘I am one of God’s elect.  The Holy Spirit of God is sanctifying me, and making me holy.  God has saved me; and I heartily thank my Heavenly Father, who has called me to this state of salvation.’  It tells him to believe that he is safe—safe in the ark of Christ’s Church, as Noah was safe in the ark at the deluge; and that the one way to keep himself within that ark is to obey Him to whom it belongs, who judges it and will guide it for ever, Jesus Christ, the likeness of God; and that as long as he does that, neither world, flesh, nor devil, can harm him; even as Noah was safe in the ark, and nothing could drown him but his own wilful casting himself out of the ark, and trying to free the flood of waters by his own strength and cunning.

It tells him, I say, that he is safe, and saved, even as David, and Isaiah, and all holy men who ever lived have been, as long as he trusts in God, and clings to God, and obeys God; and that only when he forsakes God, and follows his own selfishness and pride, can anything or being in earth or hell harm him.

And do not fancy, my friends, that this is a mere unimportant question of words and doctrines, because a baptized and educated child may be lost after all, and fall from his state of salvation into a state of damnation.  Still more, do not fancy that if a child is taught that he is already a child of God, regenerated in baptism, and elect by God’s Spirit, that therefore he will neglect either vital faith or good works—heaven forbid!

Is it likely to make a child careless, and inclined to neglect vital truth, to tell him that God is his Father and loves him utterly, and has given His only begotten Son to die for him?  Is it not the very way, the only way, to stir up in him faith, and real hearty trust and affection towards God?  How can you teach him to trust God, but by telling him that God has shown himself boundlessly and perfectly worthy to be trusted by every soul of man; or to love God, but by showing him that God loves him already?  Is it likely to make a child careless of good works, to tell him that God has elected and chosen him, and all his brothers and schoolfellows, to be conformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ, and that every good, and honourable, and gentle thought or feeling which ever crosses his little heart, does not come from himself, is not part of his own nature or character, but is nothing less than the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, nothing less than the voice of Almighty God Himself, speaking to the child’s heart, that he may answer with Samuel—‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth?’  Is it likely to make a child careless about losing eternal life, to tell him that God has already given to him eternal life, and that that life is in His Son Jesus Christ, to whom the child belongs, body, soul, and spirit?

Judge for yourselves, my friends.  Think what awe, what reverence, purity, dread of sin, would grow up in a child who was really taught all this, and yet what faith and love to God, what freedom, and joyfulness, and good courage about his own duty and calling in life.

And then look at the fruits which in general follow a religious education, as it is miscalled; and take warning.  For if you really train up your children in the way in which they should go, be sure that when they are old they will not depart from it—a promise which is not fulfilled to most religious education which we see around us now-a-days; from which sad fact, if Scripture be inspired and infallible, we can only judge that such is not the way in which the children should go; and that because it is a wrong way, therefore God will not, and man cannot, keep them in it.

SERMON IV.  NAMES

Matthew i. 21.  And thou shall call his name Jesus.

Did it ever seem to you a curious thing that the Catechism begins by asking the child its name?  ‘What is your name?’  ‘Who gave you this name?’  I think that if you were not all of you accustomed to the Church Catechism from your childhood, that would seem a strange way of beginning to teach a child about religion.

But the more I consider, the more sure I am that it is the right way to begin teaching a child what the Catechism wishes to teach.

Do not fancy that it begins by asking the child’s name just because it must begin somehow, and then go on to religion afterwards.  Do not fancy that it merely supposes that the clergyman does not know the child’s name, and must ask it; for this Catechism is intended to be taught by parents to their children, and masters to their apprentices and servants; by people, therefore, who know the child’s name perfectly well already, and yet they are to begin by asking the child his name.

Now, why is this?  What has a child’s name to do with his Faith and duty as a Christian?

You may answer, Because his Christian name is given him when he is baptized.

But why is his Christian name given him when he is baptized?  Why then rather than at any other time?

Because it is the old custom of the Church.  No doubt it is: and a most wise and blessed custom it is; and one which shows us how much more about God and man the churchmen in old times knew, than most of our religious teachers now-a-days.  But how did that old custom arise?  What put into the minds of church people, for the last sixteen hundred years at least, that being baptized and being named had anything to do with each other?  Men had names of their own long before the Lord Jesus came, long before His Baptism was heard of on earth;—the heathens of old had their names—the heathens have names still;—why, then, did church people feel it right to mix a new thing like baptism with a world-old thing like giving a name?

My friends, I feel and say honestly, that there is more in this matter than I understand; and what little I do understand, I could not explain fully in one sermon, or in many either.  But let this be enough for to-day.  God grant that I may be able to make you understand me.

Any one’s having a name—a name of his own, a Christian name, as we rightly call it—signifies that he is a person; that is, that he has a character of his own, and a responsibility, and a calling and duty of his own, given him by God; in one word, that he has an immortal soul in him, for which he, and he alone, must answer, and receive the rewards of the deeds which it does in the body, whether they be good or evil.  But names are not given at random, without cause or meaning.  When Adam named all the beasts, we read that whatsoever he called any beast, that was the name of it.  The names which he gave described each beast, were taken from something in its appearance, or its ways and habits, and so each was its right name, the name which expressed its nature.  And so now, when learned men discover animals or plants in foreign countries, they do not give them names at random, but take care to invent names for them which may describe their natures, and make people understand what they are like, as Adam did for the beasts of old.  And much more, in old times, had the names of men each of them a meaning.  If it was reasonable to give names full of meaning to each kind of dumb animal, which are mere things, and not persons at all, how much more to each man separately, for each man is a person of himself; each man has a character different from all others, a calling different from all others, and therefore he ought to have his own name separate from all others: and therefore in old times it was the custom to give each child a separate name, which had a meaning in it, was, as it were, a description of the child, or of something particular about the child.

Now, we may see this, above all, in The adorable Name of Jesus.  That name, above all others, ought to show us what a name means; for it is the name of the Son of Man, the one perfect and sinless man, the pattern of all men; and therefore it must be a perfect name, and a pattern for all names; and it was given to the Lord not by man, but by God; not after He was born, but before He was conceived in the womb of the blessed Virgin.  And therefore, it must show and mean not merely some outward accident about Him, something which He seemed to be, or looked like, in men’s eyes: no, the Name of Jesus must mean what the Lord was in the sight of His Father in Heaven; what He was in the eternal purpose of God the Father; what He was, really and absolutely, in Himself; it must mean and declare the very substance of His being.  And so, indeed, it does; for The adorable Name of Jesus means nothing else but God the Saviour—God who saves.  This is His name, and was, and ever will be.  This Name He fulfilled on earth, and proved it to be His character, His exact description, His very Name, in short, which made Him different from all other beings in heaven or earth, create or uncreate; and therefore, He bears His name to all eternity, for a mark of what He has been, and is, and will be for ever—God the Saviour; and this is the perfect name, the pattern of all other names of men.

Now though the Christian names which we give our children here in England, have no especial meaning to them, and have nothing to do with what we expect or wish the children to be when they grow up, yet the names of people in most other countries in the world have.  The Jewish names which we find in the Bible have almost all of them a meaning.  So Simeon, I believe, means ‘Obedient’; Jehoshaphat means, ‘The Lord will judge’; Daniel, ‘God is my judge’; Isaiah means, ‘The Salvation of the Lord’; Isaac means, ‘She laughs,’ as a memorial of Sarah’s laughing, when she heard that she was to have a child; Ishmael means, ‘The Lord hears,’ in remembrance of God’s hearing Hagar’s cry in the wilderness, when Ishmael was dying of thirst.

Especially those names of which we read that God commanded them to be given, have meanings, and to tell the persons who bore those names what God expected of them, or would do for them.  So Abraham means, ‘The father of many nations.’  So the children of both Isaiah and Hosea had names given them by God, each of them meaning something which God was going to do to the nation of the Jews.  And so John means, ‘Given by the Lord,’ which name was given to John the Baptist by the Angel, before his strange birth, in his mother’s old age.

But we must remember that the heathens also gave names to their children, though they did not know that their children owed any duty to God, or belonged to God, and therefore we cannot call their names Christian names.  Yes, the heathens did give their children names; some of them give their children names still.  And there is to me something most sad and painful in those heathen names, and yet most full of meaning.  A solemn lesson to us, to show us what the fall means; what man becomes, when he gives way to his fallen nature, and is parted from Christ, the Head of man.

First, these heathens had a dim remembrance that man was made in the likeness of God, and lived by Faith in God, and therefore that men’s names were to express that, as indeed many of their old names do.  But, alas! the likeness of God in fallen man is like a tree without roots, or rather a tree without soil to grow in.  God’s likeness in man can only flourish as long as he is joined to Christ, the perfect likeness of God, the true life and the true light of men, the foundation which is already laid, and the soil in which man was meant to grow and flourish for ever, and as long as he is fed by the Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds—never forget that, or you will lose the understanding both of who God is and what man is—proceeds not only from God the Father, but also from God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  And therefore, in the heathen, God’s likeness withered and decayed, as a tree withers and decays when torn up from the soil.  And first, they began to call themselves after the names of false gods, which they had invented out of their own carnal fancies.  Then they called themselves after the names of their dumb animal’s.  So, Pharaoh means, ‘The Sun-God’; the Ammonites mean, ‘The people who worshipped the ram as a god’; Potiphar means, ‘A fat bull,’ which the Egyptians used to worship; and I could tell you of hundreds of heathen names more, like these, which are ridiculous enough to make one smile, if we did not keep in mind what tokens they are of sin and ignorance, and the likeness not of God, but of the beasts which perish.

Then comes another set of names, showing a lower fall still, when heathens have quite forgotten that man was originally made in God’s likeness, and are not only content to live after the likeness of the beasts which perish, but pride themselves on being like beasts, and therefore name their children after dumb animals,—the girls after the gentler and fairer animals, and the boys after ravenous and cruel beasts of prey.  That has been the custom among many heathen nations; perhaps among almost all of them, at some time or other.  It is the custom now among the Red Indians in North America, where you will find one man in a tribe called ‘The Bull,’ another ‘The Panther,’ and another ‘The Serpent,’ and so on; showing that they would like to be, if they could, as strong as the bull, as cruel as the panther, as venomous as the serpent.  What wonder that those Red Indians, who have so put on the likeness of the beasts, are now dying off the face of the earth like the beasts whom they admire and imitate?

And this was the way with our own heathen forefathers before the blessed Gospel was preached to them.  It is frightful, in reading old histories, to find how many Englishmen, our own forefathers, were named after fierce wild beasts, and tried, alas! to be like their names—children of wrath, whose feet were swift to shed blood, under whose lips was the poison of adders, and destruction and bloodshed following in their paths, not knowing the way of peace.  The wolf was the common wild beast of England then; and there are, I should say, twenty common old English names ending in wolf, besides as many more ending in bear, and eagle, and raven.  Fearful sign! that men of our own flesh and blood should have gloried in being like the wolf, the cruellest, the greediest, the most mean of savage beasts!  How shall we thank God enough, who sent to them the knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ, and called them to be new men in Christ Jesus, and called them to holy baptism, to receive new names, and begin new lives in the righteous likeness of God Himself?—that as by nature they had been the children of wrath, so in baptism they might become the children of grace; that as from their forefathers they had inherited a corrupt nature, original sin, and the likeness of the foul and ravenous beasts which perish, they might have power from the Spirit of God to become the sons of God, conformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ, in peace, and love, and righteousness, and all holiness.

And yet, in names there is a lower depth still among fallen and heathen men; when they lose utterly the last dim notion that God intends men to be persons, even as God the Father is a person, and God the Son a person, and God the Holy Spirit is a person, and so lose the custom of giving their children personal names at all; either giving them, after they grow up, mere nicknames, taken from some peculiarity of their bodies, or something which they have done, or some place where they happen to live; or else, like many tribes of heathen negroes, just name them after the day of the week on which they were born, as some way of knowing them apart; or, last and most shocking of all, give them no names at all, and have no names themselves, knowing each other apart as the dumb animals do, only by sight.  I can conceive no deeper fall into utter brutishness than that; and yet some few of the most savage tribes, both in Africa and in the Indian islands, are said—God help them!—to live in that way, and to have no names;—blotted, indeed, out of the book of life!

But is this the right state for men?  No; it is the wrong state.  It is a disease into which men are fallen; a disease out of which Christ came to raise men; and out of which He does raise us in Holy Baptism.  Baptism puts the child into its right state—into the right state for a human being, a human soul, a human person.  And baptism declares what that right state is—a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.  A member of Christ, and therefore a person, because Christ is a person.  A child of God, and therefore a person, because a child’s duty is to love and trust and obey his father—and only a person can do that, not an animal or a thing.  An inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore bound to cherish all heavenly thoughts and feelings, all righteousness, love, and obedience, which only spirits and persons, not animals or things, can feel.

Now can you not see why baptism is the proper time for giving the child a name?  Because then Christ claims the child for His own;—because having a name shows that the child is a person who has a soul, a will, a conscience, a duty; a person who must answer himself for himself alone for what he does in the body, whether it be good or evil.  And that will, and soul, and conscience were given the child by Christ, by whom all things are made, who is the Light which lights every man who comes into the world.

Thus in holy baptism God adopts the child for His own in Jesus Christ.  He declares that the child is regenerate, and has a new life, a life from above, a seed of eternal personal life which he himself has not by nature.  And that seed of eternal life is none other but the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the Lord and Giver of Life, who does verily and indeed regenerate the child in holy baptism, and dwells with his soul, his person, his very self, that He may educate the child’s character, and raise his affections, and subdue his will, and raise him up daily from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.

Therefore, when in the Catechism you solemnly ask the child its name, you ask it no light question.  You speak as a spirit, a person, to its spirit, to its very self, which God wills should never perish, but live for ever.  You single the child out from all its schoolfellows, from all the millions of human beings who have ever lived, or ever will live; and you make the child, by answering to his name, confess that he is a person, an immortal soul, who must stand alone before the judgment seat of God; a person who has a duty and a calling upon God’s earth, which he must fulfil or pay the forfeit.  And then you ask the child who gave him his name, and make him declare that his name was given him in baptism, wherein he was made a member of Christ and a child of God.  You make the child confess that he is a person in Jesus Christ, that Christ has redeemed him, his very self, and taken him to Himself, and made him not merely God’s creature, or God’s slave, but God’s child.  You make the child confess that his duty as a person is not towards himself, to do what he likes, and follow his own carnal lusts; but toward God and toward his neighbours, who are in God’s kingdom of heaven as well as he.  And then you go on in the rest of the Catechism to teach him how he himself, the person to whom you are speaking, may live for ever and ever as a person, by faith in other Persons beside himself, even in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as you teach him in the Creed; by doing his duty to other persons beside himself, even to God and man, as you teach him in the Ten Commandments; and by diligent prayer to another Person beside himself, even to God his heavenly Father, to feed and strengthen him day by day with that eternal life which was given to him in baptism.  Thus the whole Catechism turns upon the very first question in it—‘What is thy name?’  It explains to the child what is really meant, in the sight of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the whole Church in earth and heaven, by the child’s having a name of his own, and being a person, and having that name given to him in holy baptism.

And if this is true of our children, my friends, it is equally true of us.  You and I are persons, and persons in Christ; each stands alone day and night before the judgment-seat of Christ.  Each must answer for himself.  None can deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him.  Each of us has his calling from his heavenly Father; his duty to do which none can do instead of him.  Each has his own sins, his own temptations, his own sorrows, which he must bring single-handed and alone to God his Father, as it is written, ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.’  There is a world, a flesh, and a devil, near to us, ready to drag us down, and destroy our personal and spiritual life, which God has given us in Christ; a flesh which tempts us to follow our own appetites and passions, blindly and lawlessly, like the beasts which perish; a world which tempts us to become mere things, without free-wills of our own, or consciences of our own, without personal faith and personal holiness; the puppets of the circumstances and the customs which happen to be round us; blown about like the dead leaf, and swept helplessly down the stream of time.  And there is a devil, too, near us, tempting us to the deepest lie of all,—to set up ourselves apart from God, and to try, as the devil tries, to be persons in our own strength, each doing what he chooses, each being his own law, and his own master; that is, his own lawlessness, and his own tyrant: and if we listen to that devil, that spirit of lawlessness and self-will, we shall become his slaves, persons in him, doing his work, and finding torment and misery and slavery in it.  Awful thought, that so many enemies should be against us; yea, that we ourselves should be our own enemies!  But here baptism gives us hope, baptism gives us courage; we are in Christ; God is our Father, and He can and will give us power to have victory, and to triumph against the world, the flesh, and the devil.  His Spirit is given to us in baptism—that Spirit of God who is not merely a force or an influence, but a person, a living, loving, holy Person.  He is with us, to give our persons, our souls, eternal life from His life, eternal holiness from His holiness; that so, not merely some part of us, but we our very selves and souls—we the very same persons who were christened, and had a name given us in holy baptism, and have been answering to that name all our life, and were reminded, whenever we heard that name, that we had a duty of our own, a history of our own, hopes, fears, joys, sorrows of our own, which none could share with us,—that we, I say, our own persons, our very selves, may be raised up again at the last day, free, pure, strong, filled with the life of God, which is eternal life.