True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries

And do not your own hearts echo these thoughts at moments when they are quietest and purest and most happy too?  Have you not said to yourselves—“Those Bible words are good words.  After all, if I were like that, I should be happier than I am now.”  Ah! my friends, listen to those thoughts when they come into your hearts—they are not your own thoughts—they are the voice of One holier than you—wiser than you—One who loves you better than you love yourselves—One pleading with you, stirring you up by His Spirit, if it be but for a moment, to see the things which belong to your peace.

But what can you say for yourselves, if having once had these thoughts, having once settled in your own minds that the Gospel of God is right and you are wrong, if you persist in disobeying that gospel—if you agree one minute with the inner voice, which says, “Do this and live, do this and be at peace with God and man, and your own conscience”—and then fall back the next moment into the same worldly, selfish, peevish, sense-bound, miserable life-in-death as ever?

The reason, my friends, I am afraid, with most of us is, sheer folly—not want of cunning and cleverness, but want of heart—want of feeling—what Solomon calls folly (Prov. i. 22-27), stupidity of soul, when he calls on the simple souls, How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity or silliness, and the scorners delight in their scorning (delight in laughing at what is good), and fools hate knowledge—hate to think earnestly or steadily about anything—the stupidity of the ass, who is too stubborn and thick-skinned to turn out of his way for any one—or the stupidity of the swine, who cares for his food and nothing further—or worse than all, the stupidity of the ape, who cares for nothing but play and curiosity, and the vain and frivolous amusements of the moment.

All these tempers are common enough, and they may be joined with cleverness enough.  What beast so clever as an ape? yet what beast so foolish, so mean, so useless?  But this is the fault of stupidity—it blinds our eyes to the world of spirits; it makes us forget God; it makes us see first what we can lay our hands on, and nothing more; it makes us forget that we have souls.  Our glorious minds and thoughts, which should be stretching on through all eternity, are cramped down to thinking of nothing further than this little hour of earthly life.  Our glorious hearts, which should be delighting in everything which is lovely, and generous, and pure, and beautiful, and God-like—ay, delighting in God Himself—are turned in upon themselves, and set upon our own gain, our own ease, our own credit.  In short, our immortal souls, made in God’s image, become no use to us by this stupidity—they seem for mere salt to keep our bodies from decaying.

Whose work is that?  The devil’s.  But whose fault is it?  Do you suppose that the devil has any right in you, any power in you, who have been washed in the waters of baptism and redeemed by Christ from the service of the devil, and signed with His Cross on your foreheads, unless you give him power?  Not he.  Men’s sins open the door to the devil, and when he is in, he will soon trample down the good seed that is springing up, and stamp the mellow soil as hard as iron, so that nothing but his own seeds can grow there, and so keep off the dews of God’s spirit, and the working of God’s own gospel from making any impression on that hardened stupified soil.

Alas! poor soul.  And thy misery is double, because thou knowest not that thou art miserable; and thy misery is treble, because thou hast brought it on thyself!

My friends—there is an ancient fable of the Jews, which, though it is not true, yet has a deep and holy meaning, and teaches an awful lesson.

There lived, says an ancient Jewish Scribe, by the shores of the Dead Sea, a certain tribe of men, utterly given up to pleasure and covetousness, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.  To them the prophet Moses was sent, and preached to them, warning them of repentance and of judgment to come—trying to awaken their souls to high and holy thoughts, and bring them back to the thought of God and heaven.  And they, poor fools, listened to Him, admired his preaching, agreed that it all sounded very good—but that he went too far—that it was too difficult—that their present way of life was very pleasant—that they saw no such great need of change, and so on, one excuse after another, till they began to be tired of Moses, and gave him to understand that he was impertinent, troublesome—that they could see nothing wise in him—nothing great; how could they?  So Moses went his way, and left them to go theirs.  And long after, when some travellers came by, says the fable, they found these foolish people were all changed into dumb beasts; what they had tried to be, now they really were.  They had made no use of their souls, and now they had lost them; they had given themselves up to folly, and now folly had taken to her own; they had fancied, as people do every day, that this world is a great play-ground, wherein every one has to amuse himself as he likes best, or at all events a great shop and gambling-house, where the most cunning wins most of his neighbour’s money; and now according to their faith it was to them.  They had forgotten God and spiritual things, and now they were hid from their eyes.  And these travellers found them sitting, playing antics, quarrelling for the fruits of the field—mere beasts—reaping as they had sown, and filled full with the fruit of their own devices.

Only every Sabbath day, says the fable, there came over these poor wretches an awful sense of a piercing Eye watching them from above—a dim feeling that they had been something better and nobler once—a faint recollection of heavenly things which they once knew when they were little children—a blind dread of some awful unseen ruin, into which their miserable empty beast-life was swiftly and steadily sweeping them down;—and then they tried to think and could not—and tried to remember and could not—and so they sat there every Sabbath day, cowering with fear, uneasy and moaning, and half-remembered that they once had souls!

My friends, my friends, are there not too many now-a-days like these poor dwellers by the Dead Sea, who seem to have lost all of God’s image except their bodies? who all the week dote on the business and the pleasures of this life, going on very comfortably till they seem to have quite hardened their own souls; and now and then on Sabbath days when they come to church, and pretend to pray and worship, sit all vacant, stupid, their hearts far away, or with a sort of passing uneasiness and dim feeling that all is not right—try to think and cannot—try to pray and cannot—and, like those dwellers by the Dead Sea, once a week on Sabbath day half remember that they once had souls?

So true it is, that from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.  So true it is, that the wages of sin is death; death to the soul even in this life.  So true it is that why men do not believe Christ, is because they cannot hear His word.  So true it is, that only the pure in heart shall see God, or love god-like men and god-like words.  So true it is, that he that soweth the wind shall reap the whirlwind, and that he who will not hear Christ’s words, shall soon not be able to hear them; that he who will not have Christ for his master, must soon be content to have the devil for his master, and for his wages, spiritual death.  From which sad fate of spiritual death may the blessed Saviour, in His infinite mercy, deliver us.

IV. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE TREE OF LIFE; OR, THE FALL

“Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.  And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?  And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.  And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”

—Genesis iii. 1-6.

Here is a lesson for us all.  You and I, and all men brought into the world with us a nature which fell in Adam; and, as it fell before we were born, it is certain enough to fall, again and again, after we are born, in this life; ay, and unless we take care, to fall lower and lower, every day, acting Adam’s sin over again, until we surely die.  This is what I mean—What God said to Adam and Eve, He says to every one of us.  And what the devil said to Adam and Eve, he will say to every one of us.

First.  God says to us, “Of all the trees of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat, lest thou die.”

Of all the trees of the garden thou mayest freely eat.  God grudges you nothing good for you.  He has put you into this good and pleasant world, where you will find pleasures enough, and comforts enough, to satisfy you, if you are wise; but there are things which God has forbidden you, not out of any spite or arbitrariness, but because they are bad for you; because they will hurt you if you indulge in them, and sooner or later, kill both body and soul.

Now, many of those wrong things look pleasant enough, and reasonable enough, as the forbidden fruit did.  Pleasant to the eyes and good for food—and to be desired to make you wise.  As people grow up and go out into life, they are tempted to do many things which their parents forbid, which the Bible forbids, which the law of the land forbids, and they do not understand at first why they are forbidden any more than Adam and Eve understood why they were not to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Then the devil (who is always trying to slander God to us) whispers to them, as he did to Eve, “How unreasonable! how hard on you.  People say that this is wrong, and you must not do it, and yet how pleasant it must be!  How much money you might get by it—how much wiser, and cleverer, and more able to help yourself you would become, if you went your own way, and did what you like.  Surely God is hard on you, and grudges you pleasure.  Never mind—don’t be afraid.  Surely you can judge best what is good for you.  Surely you know your own business best.  Use your own common sense and do what you like, and what you think will profit you.  Are you to be a slave to old rules which your parents or the clergyman taught you?”

So says the devil to every young man as he goes out in life.  And to many, alas!—to many, the devil’s words sound reasonable enough; they flatter our fallen nature, they flatter our pride and our self-will, and make us fancy we are going up hill, and becoming very fine and manly, and independent and knowing.  “Knowing”!  How many a young man have I seen run into sin just that he might be knowing; and say, “Why should I not see life for myself?  Why should I not know the world, and try what is good, and how I like that, and what is bad too, and how I like that—and then choose for myself like a man, instead of being kept in like a baby?”

So he says exactly what Adam and Eve said in their hearts—“I will eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”  He says in his heart, too, just what Solomon the wise said, when he, too, determined to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Ay, young people, who love to see the world, and to choose for yourselves, read that Book of Ecclesiastes, the saddest book on earth, and get a golden lesson in every verse of it.  See how Solomon determined to see life, from the top to the bottom of it.  How he “gave his heart to know, seek, and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven.  I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit,” (Eccles. i. 13).

And then, how he turned round and gave his heart to know mirth, and madness, and folly, and see whether that was good for him, and, “I said of laughter, it is mad: and of mirth, what doeth it?” (Eccles. ii. 2-26).  And then he gave himself to wine and revelling, and after that to riches, and pomp, and glory, and music, and the “fine arts,” as we call them.  “I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.  So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me.”  And what was the end?  “Then I looked on all the works that my hand had done, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”  Therefore, he says, that he hated all the labour he had taken under the sun, because he must leave it to the men who came after him, and found out at last, after years of labour and sorrow, trying to make himself happy with this and that, and finding no rest with any of them, that the conclusion of the whole matter was to “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.  For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil” (Eccles. xii. 13).

So said Solomon—and God knows, my dear friends, God knows, he said truly.  Ay, and I know it to be true; and I entreat you this day, in God’s name, to hear the conclusion of the whole matter.  All this you will find out by eating of the tree of knowledge, and “seeing life,” and going your own way, and falling into sin, and smarting for it, for weary years, in anxiety and perplexity, and shame, and sorrow of heart.

All that you will find out thereby—all that Solomon found out thereby,—is just what you know already, and nothing more—just what you have been taught ever since you could speak.  “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”  Why buy your own experience dear, when you can get it gratis, for nothing already?

Yes; a simple, godly, industrious life, doing the duty which lies nearest you, avoiding sin as you would an adder, because it is sure sooner or later to sting you, if you touch it, is the straight road, and the only road, to happiness, either in this life, or in the life to come.  Pleasure and amusement, drinking and jollity, will not make you happy.  Money will not make you happy.  Cleverness, and cunning, and knowledge of the world will not make you happy.  Scholarship and learning will not.  But plain, simple righteousness, simply doing right, will.

Do right then and be happy.  Obey God’s commandments, and you will find that His commandments are Life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death.

Make up your minds to do right, to be right, to keep right by the help of God’s Right and Holy Spirit, in the right road.  Make up your minds whether you will go through the world in God’s way, or your own way—whether you will taste what God has forbidden, and so destroy yourselves, or obey Him and live with Him in bliss.  The longer you delay, the more difficult you will find it.  Make up your minds now, and ask God to teach you His own heavenly wisdom which is a Tree of Life to all that lay hold on it.

V. I AM

“I AM hath sent me into you.”

—Exodus iii. 10.

Every day I find it more and more true, that the Bible is full of good news from beginning to end.  The Gospel—that is good news—and the best of all good news, is to be found in every book of it; perhaps if we knew how to search the Scriptures, in every chapter and verse of it, from beginning to end.  For from beginning to end, from Genesis to Malachi—from the Gospel of St. Matthew to the end of the Revelation—what our Lord said of the Bible stands true: “They (the Scriptures) are they which testify of ME” (John v. 39).  The whole Bible testifies, bears witness of Him, the One Unchangeable Christ, who said to Moses, “Say unto the people, I AM hath sent me unto you.”

Now let us think a while what that text means; for it has not to do with Moses only, but with all God’s prophets, evangelists, preachers.  David might have said the same to the Jews in his time, “I AM hath sent me unto you.”  Elijah, Isaiah, St. Matthew, St. John, St. Paul, might have said the same.  And so may God’s ministers now.  And I, however sinful, or ignorant, or unfaithful to my duty I may be, have still a right to say, as I do now say solemnly and earnestly to you, “I AM hath sent me unto you” this day.

But what do I mean by that?  That ought to depend on what Moses meant by it.  Moses meant what God meant, and unless I mean the same thing I must mean something wrong.  And this is what I think it does mean:

First.  I AM—the Lord Jesus Christ told Moses that his name was I AM.  Now you perhaps think that this is but a very common place name, for every one can say of himself—I am—and it may seem strange that God should have chosen for His own especial name, words which you and I might have chosen for ourselves just as well.  I daresay you think that you may fairly say “you are,” and that I can say fairly that “I am.”

And yet it is not so.  If I say “I am,” I say what is not true of me.  I must say “I am something—I am a man, I am bad, or I am good, or I am an Englishman, I am a soldier, I am a sailor, I am a clergyman”—and then I shall say what is true of me.  But God alone can say “I AM” without saying anything more.

And why?  Because God alone is.  Everybody and everything else in the world becomes: but God is.  We are all becoming something from our birth to our death—changing continually and becoming something different from what we were a minute before; first of all we were created and made, and so became men; and since that we have been every moment changing, becoming older, becoming wiser, or alas! foolisher; becoming stronger or weaker; becoming better or worse.  Even our bodies are changing and becoming different day by day.

But God never changes or becomes anything different from what He is now.  What He is, that He was, and ever will be.  God does not even become older.  This may seem very strange, but it is true: for God made Time, God made the years; and once there were no years to count by, no years at all.  Remember how long had God Himself been, before He made Time, when there was no Time to pass over?  Remember always that God must have created Time.  If God did not create Time, no one else did; for there is, as the Athanasian Creed says, “One uncreated and One eternal,” even God who made Time as well as all things else.

Am I puzzling you?  What I want to do is to make you understand that God’s life is quite utterly different from our life, or any way of living and being which we can fancy or think of; lest you make to yourselves the likeness of anything in heaven above or of the earth beneath, and think that God is like that and so worship it, and have other gods beside the true God, and so break the first and second commandments, as thousands do who fancy themselves good Protestants, and hate Popery and idolatry, and yet worship a very different sort of god from the “I AM,” who sent Moses to the children of Israel.  Remember then this at least, that God was before all things, and all worlds, and all Time; so that there was a time when there were no worlds, and a time when there was no Time—nothing but God alone, absolute, eternal, neither made nor created, the same that He is now and will be for ever.

When I say “God is,” that is a very different thing from God Himself saying, “I AM.”  A different thing?  Oh! my friends, here is the root of the whole Gospel, the root of all our hope for this world and for the world to come—for ourselves, for our own future, and the future of all the world.  Do you not see how?  Then I will try to explain.

Many heathen men have known that there was one eternal God, and that God is.  But they did not know that God Himself had said so; and that made them anxious, puzzled, almost desperate, so that the wiser they were, the unhappier they were.  For what use is it merely knowing that “God is”?  The question for poor human creatures is, “But what sort of a being is God?  Is He far off?  Millions of miles from this earth?  Does He care nothing about us?  Does He let the world go its own way right or wrong?  Is He proud and careless?  A self-glorifying Deity whose mercy is not over all His works, or even over any of them?  Or does He care for us?  Does He see us?  Will He speak to us?  Has He ever spoken to any one?  Has He ever told any one about Himself?”  There is the question—the question of all questions.  And if a man once begins thinking about his own soul, and this world, and God,—till he gets that question answered, he can have no comfort about himself or the world, or anything—till in fact he knows whether God has ever spoken to men or not.

And the glory of the Bible, the power of God revealed in the Bible, is, that it answers the question, and says, “God does care for men, God does see men, God is not far off from any one of us.”  Ay, God speaks to men—God spoke to Moses and said, not “God is” but “I AM.”  God in sundry times and in divers manners spoke to our fathers by the Prophets and said “I AM.”

But more—Moses said, “I AM hath sent me.”  God does not merely love us, and yet leave us to ourselves.  He sends after us.  He sends to us.  In old times He sent prophets and wise men one after the other to preach repentance and righteousness, and to teach men all that was good for them; and when men would not listen to them, but shut their ears to them and drove them out, killing some and beating some, God was so determined to send to men, so unwearied, so patient, so earnest, so loving still, that He said, “I will send now my own Son, surely they will hear Him.”

Yes, my friends, this is the I AM.  This is God—this is our God—this is our Heavenly Father; not a proud and selfish Being, who looks down haughtily from afar off on all the misery and ignorance of the world, but as a wise man of old said, “A most merciful God, a revealer of secrets, who showeth to man the things which he knew not.”  This is our God—not a tyrant, but a Deliverer—not a condemning God, but a saving God, who wills that none should perish, who sends to seek and to save those who are lost, who sends His sun to shine on the just and the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil.  A God who so loved the world which He had made, in spite of all its sin and follies, that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it.  A God who sits on His throne for ever judging right, and ministering true judgment among the people, who from His throne beholds all those who dwell upon the earth, and fashions the hearts of them, and understandeth all their works.  A God who comes out of His place to visit the wrong done on the earth, and be a refuge for the oppressed, and a help in time of trouble, to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that the men of this world be no more exalted against them.

This is our God.  This is our Father—always condescending, always patient, always loving, always just.  And always active, always working to do good to all his creatures, like that exact pattern and copy of Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”  (John v. 17).

But again: “I AM hath sent me unto you.”

Unto whom?  Who was Moses sent to?  To the Children of Israel in Egypt.  And what sort of people were they?  Were they wise and learned?  On the contrary they were stupid, ignorant, and brutish.  Were they pious and godly?  On the contrary they were worshipping the foolish idols of the Egyptians—so fond of idolatry that they must needs make a golden calf and worship it.  Were they respectable and cleanly livers?  Were they teachable and obedient?  On the contrary, they were profligate, stiff-necked, murmurers, disobedient, unwilling to trust God’s goodness, though He had shown them all those glorious signs and wonders for their sakes, and brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm.  Were they high-spirited and brave?  On the contrary, they were mean-spirited and cowards, murmuring against Moses and against God, if anything went wrong, for setting them free; ready to go back and be slaves to the Egyptians rather than face danger and fight; looking back and longing after the flesh-pots of Egypt, where they eat bread to the full, and willing to be slaves again and have all their men children drowned in the river, and themselves put to hard labour in the brick kilns, if they could only fill their stomachs.  And even at best when Moses had brought them to the very edge of that rich land of Canaan, which God had promised them, they were afraid to go into it, and win it for themselves; and God had to send them back again, to wander forty years in the wilderness, till all that cowardly, base, first generation, who came up out of Egypt was dead, and a new generation had grown up, made brave and hardy by their long training in the deserts, and taught to trust and obey God from their youth; and so able and willing to conquer the good land which God had promised them.