Westminster Sermons

Enough for him? and should it not be enough for us, and more than enough?—We know what the Psalmist knew not.  We know God to be more good, more righteous, more gracious than any Prophet or Psalmist could know.  We know that God so loved the world, that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us.  We know that the only-begotten Son Jesus Christ so loved the world that He stooped to be born and suffer as mortal man, and to die on the cross, even while He was telling men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without the knowledge of their heavenly Father, and bidding them see how God fed the birds and clothed the lilies of the field.  Ah, my friends, in this case, as in all cases, rest and comfort for our doubts and fears is to be found in one and the same place—at the foot of the Cross of Christ.  If we believe that He who hung upon that Cross is—as He is—the maker and ruler of the universe, the same from day to day and for ever: then we can trust Him in darkness as well as in light; in doubt as well as in certainty; in the face of pain, disease, and death, as well as in the face of joy, health, and life; and say—Lord, we know not, but Thou knowest.  Lord, we believe, help Thou our unbelief.  Make us sure that Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast.  For great are Thy mercies, O Lord; and the children of men shall put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.

Yes, my friends, this is, after all, a strange world, a solemn world, a world full of sad mysteries, past our understanding.  As was said once by the holiest of modern Englishmen, now gone home to his rest—whose bust stands worthily in yonder chapel—This is a world in which men must be sometimes sad who love God, and care for their fellow-men.

But it is not over the dumb animals that we must mourn.  For they fulfil the laws of their being; and whatever meat they seek, they seek their meat from God.

Rather must we mourn over those human beings who, being made in the likeness of God, and redeemed again into that likeness by our Lord Jesus Christ, and baptized into that likeness by the Holy Spirit, put on again of their own will the likeness of the beasts which perish; and find too often, alas! too late, that the wages of sin are death.

Rather must we mourn for those human beings who do not fulfil the laws of their being: but break those laws by sin; till they are ground by them to powder.

Rather must we mourn for those who seek their meat, not from God, but from the world and the flesh; and neglect the bread which cometh down from heaven, and the meat which endureth to eternal life, whereof the Lord who gives it said—Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you.

Rather must we pray for ourselves, and for all we love, that God’s Spirit of eternal life would raise us up, more and more day by day, out of the likeness of the old Adam, who was of the earth, earthy; of whom it is written that—like the animals—dust he was, and unto dust he must return; and would mould us into the likeness of the new Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, into the likeness of which it is written, that it is created after God’s image, in righteousness and true holiness; the end of which is not death, but everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And so will be fulfilled in us the saying of the Psalmist; and the Lord shall rejoice in His works: for we too, not only body and soul, but spirit also, shall be the work of God; and God will rejoice in us, and we in God.

SERMON XIX.  SIGNS AND WONDERS

John iv. 48-50

Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.  The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die.  Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth.

These words of our Lord are found in the Gospel for this day.  They are a rebuke, though a gentle one.  He reproved the nobleman, seemingly, for his want of faith: but He worked the miracle, and saved the life of the child.

We do not know enough of the circumstances of this case, to know exactly why our Lord reproved the nobleman; and what want of faith He saw in him.  Some think that the man’s fault was his mean notion of our Lord’s power; his wish that He should come down the hills to Capernaum, and see the boy Himself, in order to cure him; whereas he ought to have known that our Lord could cure him—as He did—at a distance, and by a mere wish, which was no less than a command to nature, and to that universe which He had made.

I cannot tell how this may be: but of one thing I think we may be sure—That this saying of our Lord’s is very deep, and very wide; and applies to many people, in many times—perhaps to us in these modern times.

We must recollect one thing—That our Lord did not put forward the mere power of His miracles as the chief sign of His being the Son of God.  Not so: He declared His almighty power most chiefly by shewing mercy and pity.  Twice He refused to give the Scribes and Pharisees a sign from heaven.  “An evil and adulterous generation,” He said, “seeketh after a sign: but there shall be no sign given them, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.”  And what was that,—but a warning to repent, and mend their ways, ere it was too late?

Now the slightest use of our common sense must tell us, that our Lord could have given a sign of His almighty power if He had chosen; and such a sign as no man, even the dullest, could have mistaken.  What prodigy could He not have performed, before Scribes and Pharisees, Herod, and Pontius Pilate?  “Thinkest thou,” He said Himself, “that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will send Me presently more than twelve legions of angels?”  Yet how did our Lord use that miraculous and almighty power of His?  Sparingly, and secretly.  Sparingly; for He used it almost entirely in curing the diseases of poor people; and secretly; for He used it almost entirely in remote places.  Jerusalem itself, recollect, was at best a remote city compared with any of the great cities of the Roman empire.  And even there He refused to cast Himself down from a pinnacle of the temple, for a sign and wonder to the Jews.  If He, the Lord of the world, had meant to convert the world by prodigious miracles, He would surely have gone to Rome itself, the very heart and centre of the civilized world, and have shewn such signs and wonders therein, as would have made the Cæsar himself come down from his throne, and worship Him, the Lord of all.

But no.  Our Lord wished for the obedience, not of men’s lips, but of their hearts.  It was their hearts which He wished to win, that they might love Him—and be loyal to Him—for the sake of His goodness; and not fear and tremble before Him for the sake of His power.  And therefore He kept, so to speak, His power in the background, and put His goodness foremost; only shewing His power in miracles of healing and mercy; that so poor neglected, oppressed, hardworked souls might understand that whoever did not care for them, Christ their Lord did; and that their disease and misery were not His will; nor the will of His Father and their Father in heaven.

But because, also, Christ was Lord of heaven and earth; therefore—if I may make so bold as to guess at the reason for anything which He did—He seems to have interfered as little as possible with those regular rules and customs of this world about us, which we now call the Laws of Nature.  He did not offer—as the magicians of His time did offer—and as too many have pretended since to do—to change the courses of the elements, to bring down tempests or thunderbolts, to shew prodigies in the heaven above, and in the earth beneath.  Why should He?  Heaven and earth, moon and stars, fire and tempest, and all the physical forces in the universe, were fulfilling His will already; doing their work right well according to the law which He had given them from the beginning.  He had no need to disturb them, no need to disturb the growth of a single flower at His feet.

Rather He loved to tell men to look at them, and see how they went well, because His Father in heaven cared for them.  To tell people to look, not at prodigies, comets, earthquakes, and the seeming exceptions of God’s rule: but at the common, regular, simple, peaceful work of God, which is going on around us all day long in every blade of grass, and flower, and singing bird, and sunbeam, and shower.  To consider the lilies of the field how they grow: which toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.—And the birds of the air: They sow not, neither reap, nor gather into barns; and yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.  How much more will He feed you, who can sow, and reap, and gather into barns?—O ye of little faith, who fancy always that besides sowing and reaping honestly, you must covet, and cheat, and lie, and break God’s laws instead of obeying them; or else, forsooth, you cannot earn your living?  To see that the signs of God’s Kingdom are not astonishing convulsions, terrible catastrophes and disorders: but order, and peace, and usefulness, in creatures which are happy, because they live according to the law which God has given them, and do their duty—that duty, of which the great poet of the English Church has sung—

      Stern Lawgiver!  Thou yet dost wear         The Godhead’s most benignant grace      Nor know we anything so fair         As is the smile upon thy face.      Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,      And fragrance in thy footing treads;   Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

But men would not believe that in our Lord’s time; neither would they believe it after His time.  Will they believe it even now?  They craved after signs and wonders; they saw God’s hand, not in the common sights of this beautiful world; not in seed-time and harvest, summer and winter; not in the blossoming of flowers, and the song of birds: but only in strange portents, absurd and lying miracles, which they pretended had happened, because they fancied that they ought to have happened: and so built up a whole literature of unreason, which remains to this day, a doleful monument of human folly and superstition.

But is not this too true of some at least of us in this very day?  Must not people now see signs and wonders before they believe in God?

Do they not consider whatever is strange and inexplicable, as coming immediately from God?  While whatever they are accustomed to, or fancy that they can explain, they consider comes in what they call the course of nature, without God’s having anything to do with it?

If a man drops down dead, they say he died “by the hand of God,” or “by the visitation of God:” as if any created thing or being could die, or live either, save by the will and presence of God: as if a sparrow could fall to the ground without our Father’s knowledge.  But so it is; because men’s hearts are far from God.

If an earthquake swallowed up half London this very day, how many would be ready to cry, “Here is a visitation of God.  Here is the immediate hand of God.  Perhaps Christ is coming, and the end of the world at hand.”  And yet they will not see the true visitation, the immediate hand of God, in every drop of rain which comes down from heaven; and returneth not again void, but gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater.  But so it always has been.  Men used to see God and His power and glory almost exclusively in comets, auroras, earthquakes.  It was not so very long ago, that the birth of monstrous or misshapen animals, and all other prodigies, as they were called, were carefully noted down, and talked of far and wide, as signs of God’s anger, presages of some coming calamity.—Atheists while they are in safety, superstitious when they are in danger—Requiring signs and wonders to make them believe—Interested only in what is uncommon and seems to break God’s laws—Careless about what is common, and far more wonderful, because it fulfils God’s laws—Such have most men been for ages, and will be, perhaps, to the end; shewing themselves, in that respect, carnal and no wiser than dumb animals.

For it is carnal, animal and brutish, and a sign of want of true civilization, as well as of true faith, only to be interested and surprised by what is strange; like dumb beasts, who, if they see anything new, are attracted by it and frightened by it, at the same time: but who, when once they are accustomed to it, and have found out that it will do them no harm, are too stupid to feel any curiosity or interest about it, though it were the most beautiful or the most wonderful object on earth.

But I will tell you of a man after God’s own heart, who was not like the dumb animals, nor like the ungodly and superstitious; because he was taught by the Spirit of God, and spoke by the Spirit of God.  One who saw no signs and wonders, and yet believed in God—namely, the man who wrote the 139th Psalm.  He needed no prodigies to make him believe.  The thought of his own body, how fearfully and wonderfully it was made, was enough to make him do that.  He looked on the perfect order and law which ruled over the development of his own organization, and said—“I will praise Thee.  For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Marvellous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well.  Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Thy Book were all my members written, which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.  How dear are Thy counsels unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!”

And I will tell you of another man who needed no signs and wonders to make him believe—the man, namely, who wrote the 19th Psalm.  He looked upon the perfect order and law of the heavens over his head, and the mere sight of the sun and moon and stars was enough for him; and he said—“The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament sheweth His handy-work.  One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another.  There is neither speech nor language, where their voice is not heard among them.”

And I will tell you of yet another man who needed no signs and wonders to make him believe—namely, the man who wrote the 104th Psalm.  He looked on the perfect order and law of the world about his feet; and said,—“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works.  In wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches.  So is the great and wide sea also, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.  These all wait upon Thee, that Thou mayest give them their meat in due season.  Thou givest to them; they gather.  Thou openest Thy hand; they are filled with good.  Thou hidest Thy face; they are troubled.  Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.  Thou sendest forth Thy breath, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth.  The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.  The Lord shall rejoice in His works.”

My friends, let us all pray to God and to Christ, that They will put into our hearts the Spirit by which those psalms were written: that They will take from us the evil heart of unbelief, which must needs have signs and wonders, and forgets that in God we live and move and have our being.  For are we not all—even the very best of us—apt to tempt our Lord in this very matter?

When all things go on in a common-place way with us—that is, in this well-made world, comfortably, easily, prosperously—how apt we all are—God forgive us—to forget God.  How we forget that on Him we depend for every breath we draw; that Christ is guarding us daily from a hundred dangers, a hundred sorrows, it may be from a hundred disgraces, of which we, in our own self-satisfied blindness, never dream.  How dull our prayers become, and how short.  We almost think, at times, that there is no use in praying, for we get all we want without asking for it, in what we choose to call the course of circumstances and nature.—God forgive us, indeed.

But when sorrow comes, anxiety, danger, how changed we are all of a sudden.  How gracious we are when pangs come upon us—like the wicked queen-mother in Jerusalem of old, when the invaders drove her out of her cedar palace.  How we cry to the Lord then, and get us to our God right humbly.  Then, indeed, we feel the need of prayer.  Then we try to wrestle with God, and cry to Him—and what else can we do?—like children lost in the dark; entreat Him, if there be mercy in Him—as there is, in spite of all our folly—to grant some special providence, to give us some answer to our bitter entreaties.  If He will but do for us this one thing, then we will believe indeed.  Then we will trust Him, obey Him, serve Him, as we never did before.

Ah, if there were in Christ any touch of pride or malice!  Ah, if there were in Christ aught but a magnanimity and a generosity altogether boundless!  Ah, if He were to deal with us as we have dealt with Him!  Ah, if He were to deal with us after our sins, and reward us according to our iniquities!

If He refused to hear us; if He said to us,—You forgot me in your prosperity, why should I not forget you in your adversity?—What could we answer?  Would that answer not be just?  Would it not be deserved, however terrible?  But our hope and trust is, that He will not answer us so; because He is not our God only, but our Saviour; that He will deal with us as one who seeks and saves that which is lost, whether it knows that it is lost or not.

Our hope is, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy; that because He is man, as well as God, He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; that He knoweth our frame, He remembereth of what we are made: else the spirit would fail before Him, and the souls which He has made.  So we can have hope, that, though Christ rebuke us, He will yet hear us, if our prayers are reasonable, and therefore according to His will.  And surely, surely, surely, if our prayers are for the improvement of any human being; if we are praying that we, or any human being, may be made better men and truer Christians at last, and saved from the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil—oh then, then shall we not be heard?  The Lord may keep us long waiting, as He kept St Monica of old, when she wept over St Augustine’s youthful sins and follies.  But He may answer us, as He answered her by the good bishop—“Be of good cheer.  It is impossible that the son of so many prayers should perish.”  And so, though He may shame us, in our inmost heart, by the rebuke—“Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe”—He will in the same breath grant our prayer, undeserved though His condescension be, and say—“Go in peace, thy son liveth.”

SERMON XX.  THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD

Luke xiii. 1-5

There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilæans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilæans were sinners above all the Galilæans, because they suffered such things?  I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.  Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?  I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

This story is often used, it seems to me, for a purpose exactly opposite to that for which it is told.  It is said that because these Galilæans, whom Pilate slew, and these eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell, were no worse than the people round them, that therefore similar calamities must not be considered judgments and punishments of God; that it is an offence against Christian charity to say that such sufferers are the objects of God’s anger; that it is an offence against good manners to introduce the name of God, or the theory of a Divine Providence, in speaking of historical events.  They must be ascribed to certain brute forces of nature; to certain inevitable laws of history; to the passions of men, to chance, to fate, to anything and everything: rather than to the will of God.

No man disagrees more utterly than I do with the latter part of this language.  But I cannot be astonished at its popularity.  It cannot be denied that the theory of a Divine Providence has been much misstated; that the doctrine of final causes has been much abused; that, in plain English, God’s name has been too often taken in vain, about calamities, private and public.  Rational men of the world, therefore, may be excused for begging at times not to hear any more of Divine Providence; excused for doubting the existence of final causes; excused for shrinking, whenever they hear a preacher begin to interpret the will of God about this event or that.  They dread a repetition of the mistake—to call it by the very gentlest term—which priests, in all ages, have been but too ready to commit.  For all priesthoods—whether heathen or Christian, whether calling themselves priests, or merely ministers and preachers—have been in all ages tempted to talk as if Divine Providence was exercised solely on their behalf; in favour of their class, their needs, their health and comfort; as if the thunders of Jove never fell save when the priesthood needed, I had almost said commanded, them.  Thus they have too often arrogated to themselves a right to define who was cursed by God, which has too soon, again and again, degenerated into a right to curse men in God’s name; while they have too often taught men to believe only in a Providence who interfered now and then on behalf of certain favoured persons, instead of a Providence who rules, always and everywhere, over all mankind.  But men have again and again reversed their judgments.  They have had to say—The facts are against you.  You prophesied destruction to such and such persons; and behold: they have not been destroyed, but live and thrive.  You said that such and such persons’ calamities were a proof of God’s anger for their sins.  We find them, on the contrary, to have been innocent and virtuous persons; often martyrs for truth, for humanity, for God.  The facts, we say, are against you.  If there be a Providence, it is not such as you describe.  If there be judgments of God, you have not found out the laws by which He judges: and rather than believe in your theory of Providence, your theory of judgments, we will believe in none.

Thus, in age after age, in land after land, has fanaticism and bigotry brought forth, by a natural revulsion, its usual fruit of unbelief.

But—let men believe or disbelieve as they choose—the warning of the Psalmist still stands true—“Be wise.  Take heed, ye unwise among the people.  He that nurtureth the heathen; it is He that teacheth man knowledge, shall He not punish?”  For as surely as there is a God, so surely does that God judge the earth; and every individual, family, institution, and nation on the face thereof; and judge them all in righteousness by His Son Jesus Christ, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, and given Him all power in heaven and earth; who reigns and will reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet.

This is the good news of Advent.  And therefore it is well that in Advent, if we believe that Christ is ruling us, we should look somewhat into the laws of His kingdom, as far as He has revealed them to us; and among others, into the law which—as I think—He laid down in the text.

Now I beg you to remark that the text, taken fully and fairly, means the very opposite to that popular notion of which I spoke in the beginning of my sermon.

Our Lord does not say—Those Galilæans were not sinners at all.  Their sins had nothing to do with their death.  Those on whom the tower fell were innocent men.  He rather implies the very opposite.

We know nothing of the circumstances of either calamity: but this we know—That our Lord warned the rest of the Jews, that unless they repented—that is, changed their mind, and therefore their conduct, they would all perish in the same way.  And we know that that warning was fulfilled, within forty years, so hideously, and so awfully, that the destruction of Jerusalem remains, as one of the most terrible cases of wholesale ruin and horror recorded in history; and—as I believe—a key to many a calamity before and since.  Like the taking of Babylon, the fall of Rome, and the French Revolution, it stands out in lurid splendour, as of the nether pit itself, forcing all who believe to say in fear and trembling—Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth—and a warning to every man, class, institution, and nation on earth, to set their houses in order betimes, and bear fruit meet for repentance, lest the day come when they too shall be weighed in the balance of God’s eternal justice, and found wanting.