Sermons on National Subjects

Yes.  Hezekiah failed to save the nation of the Jews.  Instead of being the “father of an everlasting age,” and having “no end of his family on the throne of David,” his great-grandchildren and the whole nation of the Jews were swept away into captivity by the Babylonians, and no man of his house, as Jeremiah prophesied, has ever since prospered or sat on the throne of David.  But still Isaiah’s prophecy was true.  True for us who are assembled here this day.

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; even the Babe of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ the Lord.  The government shall indeed be upon His shoulder; for it has been there always.  For the Father has committed all things to the Son, that he may be King of kings and Lord of lords for ever.  His name is indeed Wonderful; for what more wondrous thing was ever seen in heaven or in earth, than that great love with which He loved us?  He is not merely called “The might of God,” as Hezekiah was,—for a sign and a prophecy; for He is the mighty God Himself.  He is indeed the Counsellor; for He is the light who lighteth every man who comes into the world.  He is “the Father of an everlasting age.”  There were hopes that Hezekiah would be so; that he would raise the nation of the Jews again to a reform from which it would never fall away: but these hopes were disappointed; and the only one who fulfilled the prophecy is He who has founded His Church for ever on the rock of everlasting ages, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  Hezekiah was to be the prince of peace for a few short years only.  But the Child who is born to us, the Son who is given to us, is He who gave eternal peace to all who will accept it; peace which this world can neither give nor take away; and who will make that peace grow and spread over the whole earth, till men shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and the nations shall not learn war any more.  Of the increase of His government and of His peace there shall be no end, till the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea, and the spirit of God be poured out on all flesh, to teach kings to reign in righteousness, after the pattern of the King of kings, the Babe of Bethlehem; to make the rich and powerful do justice, to teach the ignorant, to give the rich wisdom, to free the oppressed, to comfort the afflicted, to proclaim to all mankind the good news of Christmas Day, the good news that there was a man born into the world on this day who will be a hiding-place from the storm, a covert from the tempest, like rivers of water in a dry place, like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land; even the man Christ Jesus, who is able and willing to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, seeing that he has been tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin.

Yes, my friends, on that holy table stands the everlasting sign that Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled to the uttermost.  That bread and that wine declare to us, that to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given.  They declare to us, in a word, that on this blessed day God was made man, and dwelt among men, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Oh, come to that table this day, and there claim your share in the most precious body and blood of the Divine Child of Bethlehem.  Come and ask Him to pour out on you His Spirit, the Spirit which He poured on Hezekiah of old, “that he might fulfil his own name and live in the might of God.”  So will you live in the might of God.  So you will be able to govern yourselves, and your own appetites, in righteousness and freedom, and rule your own households, or whatsoever God has set you to do, in judgment.  So you will see things in their true light, as God sees them, and be ready and willing to hear good advice, and understand your way in this life, and be able to speak your hearts out in prayer to God, as to a loving and merciful Father.  And in all your afflictions, let them be what they will, you will have a comfort, and a sure hope, and a wellspring of peace, and a hiding-place from the tempest, even The Man Christ Jesus, who said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you; let not your heart be troubled, neither be ye afraid.”  The Man Christ Jesus, at whose birth the angels sang: “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”

Now to Him who on this day was born of the blessed virgin, man of the substance of His mother, yet God the Son of God, be ascribed, with the Father and the Spirit, all power, glory, majesty, and dominion, both now and for ever.  Amen.

XXXV.

NEW YEAR’S DAY

(1853.)

But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.  When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.  For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.  Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and peoples for thy life.—Isaiah xliii. 1–4.

The New Year has now begun; and I am bound to wish you all a happy New Year.  But I am sent here to do more than that; to teach you how you may make your own New Year a happy one; or, if not altogether a happy one—for sorrows may and must come in their turn—yet still something better than a happy year, namely, a blessed year; a year on which you will be able to look back this day twelvemonths, and thank God for it; thank God for the tears which you have shed in it, as well as for the joy which you have felt; thank God for the dark days as well as for the light; thank God for what you have lost, as well as what you have found; and be able to say, “Well, this last year, if it has not been a happy year for me, at least it has been a blessed one for me.  It has left me a stronger, soberer, wiser, godlier, better man than it found me.”

How, then, can you make the New Year a blessed one for yourselves?  I know but one way, my friends.  The ancient way.  The Bible way.  The way by which Abraham, and Jacob, and David, and all the holy men of old, and all the saints, and martyrs, and righteous and godly among men, made their lives blessed among themselves, in spite of sorrow, and misfortune, and distress, and persecution, and torture, and death itself; the one only old way of being blessed, which was from the beginning, and will last for ever and ever, through all worlds and eternities; the way of the old saints, which St. Paul sets forth in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews; and that is, faith.  Faith, which is the substance of what we hope for, the evidence of things not seen.  Faith, of which it is written, that the just shall live by his faith.

But how can faith give you a blessed New Year?  In the same way in which it gave the old saints blessed years all their lives through, and is giving them a blessed eternity now and for ever before the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, to which may God in His mercy bring us all likewise.

They trusted in God.  They had faith, not in themselves, like too many; not in their own good works, like too many; not in their own faith, in their own frames, and feelings, and assurances, like too many; but they had faith in God.  It was faith in God which made one of them, the great prophet Isaiah, write the glorious words which I have chosen for my text this day, to show his countrymen the Jews, even while they were in the very lowest depths of shame, and poverty, and misfortune, that God had not forgotten them; that for those who trusted in Him, a blessed time was surely coming.

And it was faith in God, too, which put it into the minds of the good men who choose these Sunday lessons out of the Bible, to appoint such chapters as these to be read year by year, at the coming in of the new year, for ever.  Faith in God, I say, put that into their minds.  For those good men trusted in God, that He would not change; that hundreds and thousands of years would make no difference in His love; that the promises made by His Holy Spirit to Isaiah the prophet would stand true for ever and ever.  And they trusted in God, too, that what He had spoken by the mouth of His holy apostles was true; that after the blessed Lord came down on earth, there was to be no difference between Jews and Gentiles; that the great and precious promises made by God to the Jews were made also to all the nations of the earth; that all things written in the Old Testament, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of Malachi, were written not for the Jews only, but for English, French, Italians, Germans, Russians—for all the nations of the world; that we English were God’s people now, just as much, ay, far more, than the old Jews were, and that, therefore, the Old Testament promises, as well as the New Testament ones, were part of our inheritance as members of Christ’s Church.  And therefore they appointed Old Testament lessons to be read in church, to show us English what our privileges were, what God’s covenant and promise to us were.  We, as much as the Jews, are called by the name of the Lord who created us.  Were we not baptised into His name at that font?  Has He not loved us?  Has He not heaped us English, for hundreds of years past, with blessings such as He never bestowed on any nation?  Has He not given men for us, and nations for our life?  While all the nations of the world have been at war, slaying and being slain, has He not kept this fair land of England free and safe from foreign invaders for more than eight hundred years?  Since the world was made, perhaps, such a thing was never heard of, such a mercy shown to any nation; that a great and rich country like this should be preserved for eight hundred years from invasion of foreign armies, and all the horrors and miseries of war, which have swept, from time to time, every other nation in the world with the besom of desolation.

Ay, and but sixty years ago, in the time of the French war, when almost every other nation in Europe was made desolate with fire, and sword, and war, did not God preserve this land of England, as He never preserved country before, from all the miseries which were sweeping over other nations?  Oh, strange and wonderful mercy of God, that at the very time that the gospel was dying out all over Europe, it was being lighted again in England; and that while the knowledge of God was failing elsewhere, it was increasing here!  Oh, strange and wonderful mercy of God, who has given to us English, now for one hundred and sixty years and more, those very equal laws, and freedom, and rights of conscience, for which so many other nations of Europe are still crying and struggling in vain, amid slavery, and oppression, and injustice, and heavy burdens, such as we here in England should not endure a week!  Oh, strange and wonderful mercy of God, who but three years ago, when all the other nations of Europe were shaken with wars, and riots, and seditions, every man’s hand against his neighbour, kept this land of England in perfect peace and quiet by those just laws and government, proving to us the truth of His own promises, that those who seek peace by righteous dealings, shall find it, and that, as Isaiah says, the fruit of justice is quietness and assurance for ever!  And last, but not least, my friends, is it not a sign, a sign not to be mistaken, of God’s good-will and mercy to us, that now, at this very time of all others, when almost every country in Europe is going to wrack and ruin through the folly and wickedness of their kings and rulers, He should have given us here in England a Queen who is a pattern of goodness and purity, in ruling not only the nation, but her own household, to every wife and mother, from the highest to the lowest; and a Prince whose whole heart seems set on doing good, and on helping the poor, and improving the condition of the labourers?  My friends, I say that we are unthankful and unfaithful.  We do not thank God a hundredth part enough for the blessings which He has given us.  We do not trust Him a hundredth part enough for the blessings which He has in store for us.  If some of us here could but see and feel for a single month how people are off abroad; if they could change places with a French, an Italian, a Russian labourer, it would teach them a lesson about God’s goodness to England which they would not soon forget.  May God grant that we may never have to learn that lesson in that way!  God grant that we may never, to cure us of our unthankfulness and want of faith, and godless and unmanly grumbling and complaining, be brought, for a single week, into the same state as some hundred millions of our fellow-creatures are in foreign parts!  Oh, my friends, let us thank God for the mercies of the past year!  Most truly He has fulfilled to England his promise given by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.  For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One, thy Saviour.  Thou hast been precious in my sight, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and peoples for thy life.”

Away, then, with discontent and anxiety for the coming year.  Or rather, let us be only discontented with ourselves.  Let us only be anxious about our own conduct.  God cannot change.  If anything goes wrong, it will be not because He has left us, but because we have left Him.  Is it not written that all things work together for good to those who love God?  Then if things do not work together for good in this coming year, it will be because we do not love God.  Do not let us say, “I am righteous, but my neighbours are wicked, and therefore I must be miserable;” neither let us lay the blame of our misfortunes on our rulers; let us lay it on ourselves.

What was the word of the Lord to the Jews in a like case: “What means this proverb which you take up, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?  It is not so, O house of Israel.  The son shall not die for the iniquity of his father, nor the father for the iniquity of the son.  The soul that sinneth, it shall die, saith the Lord.”

Oh, my friends, take this to heart solemnly, in the year to come.  Our troubles, more of them at least than we fancy, are our own fault, and not our neighbours’, or the government’s, or anyone’s else.  And those which are not our own fault directly are so in this way, that they are sent as sharp and wholesome lessons to us; and if we were what we ought to be, we should not want those lessons.  Do not fancy that that is a sad and doleful thought to begin the new year with.  God forbid!  It would be doleful and sad indeed if any one of us, in spite of all his right-doing, might be plunged into any hopeless misery, through the fault of other people, over whom he has no control.  But thanks be to the Lord, it is not so.  We are His children, and He cares for each and every one of us separately.  Each and every one of us has to answer for himself alone, face to face with his God, day by day; every man must bear his own burden; and to every one of us who love God, all things will work together for good.  It is, and was, and always will be, as Abraham well knew, far from God to punish the righteous with the wicked.  The Judge of all the earth will do right.  None of us who repents and turns from the sins he sees round him and in him; none of us who prays for the light and guiding of God’s Spirit; none of us who struggles day by day to keep himself unspotted from this evil world, and live as God’s son, without scandal or ill-name in the midst of a sinful and perverse generation; none of us who does that, but God’s blessing will rest on him.  What ruins others will only teach and strengthen him; what brings others to shame, will only bring him to honour, and make his righteousness plain to be seen by all, that God may be glorified in His people.  Let the coming year be what it may; to the holy, the humble, the upright, the godly, it will be a blessed year, fulfilling the blessed promises of the Lord, that those who trust in Him shall never be confounded.

Oh, my friends, consider but this one thing, that the Almighty God, who made all heaven and earth, has bid us trust in Him.  And when He bids us, is it not a sin, an insult to Him, not to trust Him—not to believe His words to us?  “Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good; dwell in the land,” working where He has set thee, “and verily thou shalt be fed.”  “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day.  A thousand shall fall by thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee.  Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.  Because thou hast made the Lord thy refuge, no plague shall come nigh thy dwelling.  Thou shalt call upon me, I will answer thee.  Because thou hast set thy love on me, I will deliver thee; with long life will I satisfy thee, and show thee my salvation.”

My friends, these words are in the book of Psalms.  Either they are the most cruel words that ever were spoken on earth to tempt poor wretches into vain security and fearful disappointment, or they are—what are they?—the sure and everlasting promise of our Father in heaven to us His children.  We have only to ask for them, and we shall receive them; to claim them, and they will be fulfilled to us.  “For He who spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him for us, will He not with Him likewise freely give us all things,” and make, by His fatherly care, and providence, and education, all our new years blessed new years, whether or not they are happy ones?

XXXVI.

THE DELUGE

My spirit shall not always strive with man.—Genesis vi. 3.

Last Sunday we read in the first lesson of the fall.  This Sunday we read of the flood, the first-fruits of the fall.

It is an awful and a fearful story.  And yet, if we will look at it by faith in God, it is a most cheerful and hopeful story—a gospel—a good news of salvation—like every other word in the Bible, from beginning to end.  Ay, and to my mind, the most hopeful words of all in it, are the very ones which at first sight look most terrible, the words with which my text begins: “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man.”

For is it not good news—the good news of all news—the news which every poor soul who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness, longs to hear; and when they hear it, feel it to be the good news—the only news which can give comfort to fallen and sorrowful men, tied and bound with the chain of their sins, that God’s Spirit does strive at all with man?  That God is looking after men?  That God is yearning over sinners, as the heart of a father yearns over his rebellious child, as the heart of a faithful and loving husband yearns after an unfaithful wife?  That God does not take a disgust at us for all our unworthiness, but wills that none should perish, but that all should come to repentance?  Oh joyful news!  Man may be, as the text says that he was in the time of Noah, so low fallen that he is but flesh like the brutes that perish; the imaginations of his heart may be only evil continually; his spirit may be dead within him, given up to all low and fleshly appetites and passions, anger, and greediness, and filth; and yet the pure and holy Spirit of God condescends to strive and struggle with him, to convince him of sin, and make him discontented and ashamed at his own brutishness, and shake and terrify his soul with the wholesome thought: “I am a sinner—I am wrong—I am living such a life as God never meant me to live—I am not what I ought to be—I have fallen short of what God intended me to be.  Surely some evil will come to me from this.”  Then the Holy Spirit convinces man of righteousness.  He shows man that what he has fallen short of is the glory of God; that man was meant to be, as St. Paul says, the likeness and glory of God; to show forth God’s glory, and beauty, and righteousness, and love in his own daily life; as a looking-glass, though it is not the sun, still gives an image and likeness of the sun, when the sun shines on it, and shows forth the glory of the sunbeams which are reflected on it.

And then, the Holy Spirit convinces man of judgment.  He shows man that God cannot suffer men, or angels, or any other rational spirits and immortal souls, to be unlike Himself; that because He is the only and perfect good, whatsoever is unlike Him must be bad; because He is the only and perfect love, who wills blessings and good to all, whatsoever is unlike Him must be unloving, hating, and hateful—a curse and evil to all around it; because He is the only perfect Maker and Preserver, whatsoever is unlike Him must be in its very nature hurtful, destroying, deadly—a disease which injures this good world, and which He will therefore cut out, burn up, destroy in some way or other, if it will not submit to be cured.  For this, my friends, is the meaning of God’s judgments on sinners; this is why He sent a flood to drown the world of the ungodly; this is why He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; this is why He swept away the nations of Canaan; this is why He destroyed Jerusalem, His own beloved city, and scattered the Jews over the face of the whole earth unto this day; this is why He destroyed heathen Rome of old, and why He has destroyed, from time to time, in every age and country, great nations and mighty cities by earthquake, and famine, and pestilence, and the sword; because He knows that sin is ruin and misery to all; that it is a disease which spreads by infection among fallen men; and that He must cut off the corrupt nation for the sake of preserving mankind, as the surgeon cuts off a diseased limb, that his patient’s whole body may not die.  But the surgeon will not cut off the limb as long as there is a chance of saving it: he will not cut it off till it is mortified and dead, and certain to infect the whole body with the same death, or till it is so inflamed that it will inflame the whole body also, and burn up the patient’s life with fever.  Till then he tends it in hope; tries by all means to cure it.  And so does the Lord, the Lord Jesus, the great Physician, whom His Father has appointed to heal and cure this poor fallen world.  As long as there is hope of curing any man, any nation, any generation of men, so long will his Spirit strive lovingly and hopefully with man.  For see the blessed words of the text: “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.  This must end.  This must end at some time or other.  This battle between my Spirit and the wicked and perverse wills of these sinners; this battle between the love and the justice and the purity which I am trying to teach them, and the corruption and the violence with which they are filling the earth.”  But there is no passion in the Lord, no spite, no sudden rage, like the brute passionate anger of weak man.  Our anger, if we are not under the guiding of God’s Spirit, conquers our wills, carries us away, makes us say and do on the moment—God forgive us for it—whatsoever our passion prompts us.  The Lord’s anger does not conquer Him.  It does not conquer His patience, His love, His steadfast will for the good of all.  Even when it shows itself in the flood and the earthquake; even though it break up the fountains of the great deep, and destroy from off the earth both man and beast, yet it is, and was, and ever will be, the anger of The Lamb—a patient, a merciful, and a loving anger.

Therefore the Lord says: “Yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”  One hundred and twenty years more he would endure those corrupt and violent sinners, in the hope of correcting them.  One hundred and twenty years more would God’s Spirit strive with men.  One hundred and twenty years more the long-suffering of God, as St. Peter says, would wait, if by any means they would turn and repent.  Oh, wonderful love and condescension of God!  God waits for man!  The Holy One waits for the unholy!  The Creator waits for the work of His own hands!  The wrathful God, who repents that He has made man upon the earth, waits one hundred and twenty years for the very creatures whom He repents having made!  Does this seem strange to us—unlike our notions of God?  If it is strange to us, my friends, its being strange is only a proof of how far we have fallen from the likeness of God, wherein man was originally created.  If we were more like God, then the accounts of God’s long-suffering, and mercy, and repentance, which we read in the Bible, would not be so strange to us.  We should understand what God declares of Himself, by seeing the same feelings working in ourselves, which He declares to be working in Himself.  And if we were more righteous and more loving, we should understand more how God’s will was a loving and a righteous will; how His justice was His mercy, and His mercy His justice, instead of dividing His substance, who is one God, by fancying that His mercy and His justice are two different attributes, which are at times contrary the one to the other.