Twenty-Five Village Sermons

Now, consider again that parable of the wheat-plant.  After it has sprung up, what does it next, but tiller?—and every new shoot that tillers out bears its own ear, ripens its own grain, twenty, thirty, or forty stems, and yet they are all the same plant, living with the life of that one original seed.  So with Christ’s Church—His body the Church.  As soon as he rose, that new plant began to tiller.  He did not keep His Spirit to Himself, but poured it out on the apostles, and from them it spread and spread—Each generation of Christians ripening, and bearing fruit, and dying, a fresh generation of fruit springing up from them, and so on, as we are now at this day.  And yet all these plants, these millions and millions of Christian men and women, who have lived since Christ’s blessed resurrection, all are parts of that one original seed, the body of Christ, whose members they are, and all owe their life to that one spirit of Christ, which is in them all and through them all, as the life of the original grain is in the whole crop which springs from it.

And what can you learn from this?  Learn this, that in Christ you are safe, out of Christ you are lost.  But really in Christ, I mean—not like the dead and dying grains, mildewed and worm-eaten, which you find here and there on the finest wheat-plant.  Their end is to be burned, and so will ours be, for all our springing out of Christ’s root, if the angel reapers find us not good wheat, but chaff and mildew.  Every branch in Christ which beareth not fruit, His heavenly Father taketh away.  Therefore, never pride yourself on having been baptised into Christ, never pride yourself on shewing some signs of God’s Spirit, on being really good, right in this and right in that,—the question is, not so much, Are you in Christ at all, are you part of His tree, a member of His body? but, Are you ripening there?  If you are not ripening, you are decaying, and your end will be as God has said.  And do you wish to know whether you are in Christ, safe, ripening? see whether you are like Him.  If the young grain does not shew like the seed grain, you may be sure it is making no progress; and as surely as a wheat-plant never brought forth rye, or a grape-tree thistles, so surely, if you are not like Christ in your character, in patience, in meekness, in courage, truth, purity, piety, and love, you may be of His planting, but you are none of His ripening, and you will not be raised with Him at the last day, to flower anew in the gardens of Paradise, world without end.

SERMON XVIII

IMPROVEMENT

Psalm xcii. 12

“The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like the cedar in Lebanon.  Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.  They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”

The Bible is always telling Christian people to go forwards—to grow—to become wiser and stronger, better and better day by day; that they ought to become better, and better, because they can, if they choose, improve.  This text tells us so; it says that we shall bring forth more fruit in our old age.  Another text tells us that “those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;” another tells us that we “shall go from strength to strength.”  Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but talks of growing in grace and in the knowledge of God, of being filled with God’s Spirit, of having our eyes more and more open to understand God’s truth.  Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul that the men to whom he writes may become holier and wiser.  And St. Paul says that he himself needed to go forward—that he wanted fresh strength—that he had to forget what was past, and consider all he had done and felt as nothing, and press forward to the prize of his high calling; that he needed to be daily conquering himself more and more, keeping down his bad feelings, hunting out one bad habit after another, lest, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself should become a castaway.  Therefore, I said rightly, that the Bible is always bidding us go forwards.  You cannot read your Bibles without seeing this.  What else was the use of St. Paul’s Epistles?  They were written to Christian men, redeemed men, converted men, most of them better I fear than ever we shall be; and for what? to tell them not be content to remain as they were, to tell them to go forwards, to improve, to be sure that they were only just inside the gate of God’s kingdom, and that if they would go on to perfection, they would find strength, and holiness, and blessing, and honour, and happiness, which they as yet did not dream of.  “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,” said our blessed Lord to all men.  “Be ye perfect,” says St. Paul to the Corinthians, and the Ephesians, and all to whom he wrote; and so say I to you now in God’s name, for Christ’s sake, as citizens of God’s kingdom, as heirs of everlasting glory, “Be you perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Now I ask you, my friends, is not this reasonable?  It is reasonable, for the Bible always speaks of our souls as living things.  It compares them to limbs of a body, to branches of a tree, often to separate plants—as in our Lord’s parable of the tares and the wheat.  Again, St. Paul tells us that we have been planted in baptism in the likeness of Christ’s death; and again, in the first Psalm, which says that the good man shall be like a tree planted by the waterside; and again, in the text of my sermon, which says “that those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.  They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”

Now what does all this mean?  It means that the life of our souls is in some respects like the life of a plant; and, therefore, that as plants grow, so our souls are to grow.  Why do you plant anything, but in order that it may grow and become larger, stronger, bear flower and fruit?  Be sure God has planted us in His garden, Christ’s Church, for no other reason.  Consider, again—What is life but a continual growing, or a continual decaying?  If a tree does not get larger and stronger, year by year, is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, and that decay has begun in it, that it is unsound at heart?  And what happens then?  It begins to become weaker and smaller, and cankered and choked with scurf and moss till it dies.  If a tree is not growing, it is sure in the long run to be dying; and so are our souls.  If they are not growing they are dying; if they are not getting better they are getting worse.  This is why the Bible compares our souls to trees—not out of a mere pretty fancy of poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, world-wide lesson, that every tree in the fields may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless men, that as that tree is meant to grow, so our souls are meant to grow.  As that tree dies unless it grows, so our souls must die unless they grow.  Consider that!

But how does a tree grow?  How are our souls to grow?  Now here, again, we shall understand heavenly things best by taking and considering the pattern from among earthly things which the Bible gives us—the tree, I mean.  A tree grows in two ways.  Its roots take up food from the ground, its leaves take up food from the air.  Its roots are its mouth, we may say, and its leaves are its lungs.  Thus the tree draws nourishment from the earth beneath and from the heaven above; and so must our souls, my friends, if they are to live and grow, they must have food both from earth and from heaven.  And this is what I mean—Why has God given us senses, eyes, and ears, and understanding?  That by them we may feed our souls with things which we see and hear, things which are going on in the world round us.  We must read, and we must listen, and we must watch people and their sayings and doings, and what becomes of them, and we must try and act, and practise what is right for ourselves; and so we shall, by using our eyes and ears and our bodies, get practice, and experience, and knowledge, from the world round us—such as Solomon gives us in his Proverbs—and so our eyes, and ears, and understandings, are to be to us like roots, by which we may feed our souls with earthly learning and experience.  But is this enough?  No, surely.  Consider, again, God’s example which He has given us—a tree.  If you keep stripping all the leaves off a tree, as fast as they grow, what becomes of it?  It dies, because without leaves it cannot get nourishment from the air, and the rain, and the sunlight.  Again, if you shut up a tree where it can get neither rain, air, nor light, what happens? the tree certainly dies, though it may be planted in the very richest soil, and have the very strongest roots; and why? because it can get no food from the sky above.  So with our souls, my friends.  If we get no food from above, our souls will die, though we have all the wit, and learning, and experience, in the world.  We must be fed, and strengthened, and satisfied, with the grace of God from above—with the Spirit of God.  Consider how the Bible speaks of God’s Spirit as the breath of God; for the very word spirit means, originally, breath, or air, or gas, or a breeze of wind, shewing us that as without the airs of heaven the tree would become stunted and cankered, so our souls will without the fresh, purifying breath of God’s Spirit.  Again, God’s Spirit is often spoken of in Scripture as dew and rain.  His grace or favour, we read, is as dew on the grass; and again, that God shall come unto us as the rain, as the first and latter rain upon the earth; and again, speaking of the outpourings of God’s Spirit on His Church, the Psalmist says that “He shall come down as the rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth;” and to shew us that as the tree puts forth buds, and leaves, and tender wood, when it drinks in the dew and rains, so our hearts will become tender, and bud out into good thoughts and wise resolves, when God’s Spirit fills them with His grace.

But again; the Scripture tells us again and again that our souls want light from above; and we all know by experience that the trees and plants which grow on earth want the light of the sun to make them grow.  So, doubtless, here again the Scripture example of a tree will hold good.  Now what does the sunlight do for the tree?  It does every thing, for without light, the soil, and air, and rain, are all useless.  It stirs up the sap, it hardens the wood, it brings out the blossom, it colours the leaves and the flowers, it ripens the fruit.  The light is the life of the tree;—and is there not one, my friends, of whom these words are written—that He is the Life, and that He is the Light—that He is the Sun of Righteousness and the bright and morning Star—that He is the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world—that in Him was life, and the life was the light of men?  Do you not know of whom I speak?  Even of Him that was born at Bethlehem and died on the cross, who now sits at God’s right hand, praying for us, offering to us His body and His blood;—Jesus the Son of God, He is the Light and the Life.  From Him alone our light must come, from Him alone our life must come, now and for ever.  Oh, think seriously of this—and think, too, how a short time before He died on earth He spoke of Himself as the Bread of life—the living Bread which comes down from heaven; how He declared to men, that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood, they have no life in them.  And, lastly, consider this, how the same night that He was betrayed, He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me.”  And how, likewise, He took the cup, and when He had blessed it, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink ye all of this, for this is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins; this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.”  Oh, consider these words, my friends—to you all and every one they were spoken.  “Drink ye all of this,” said the Blessed One; and will you refuse to drink it?  He offers you the bread of life, the sign and the pledge of His body, which shall feed your souls with everlasting strength and life; and will you refuse what the Son of God offers you, what He bought for you with His death?  God forbid, my friends!  This is your blessed right and privilege—the right and the privilege of every one of you—to come freely and boldly to that holy table, and there to remember your Saviour.  At that table to confess your Saviour before men—at that table to shew that you really believe that Jesus Christ died for you—at that table to claim your share in the strength of His body, in the pardon of His blood, which cleanses from all sin—and at that table to receive what you claim, to receive at that table the wine, as a sign from Christ Himself, that His blood has washed away your sins; and the bread, as a sign that His body and His spirit are really feeding your spirits, that your souls are strengthened and refreshed by the body and blood of Christ, as your bodies are with the bread and wine.  I have shewn you that your souls must be fed from heaven,—that the Lord’s Supper is a sign to you that they are fed from heaven.  You pray to God, I hope, many of you, that He would give you His Holy Spirit, that He would change, and renew, and strengthen your souls—you pray God to do this, I hope—Well, then, there is the answer to your prayers.  There your souls will be renewed and strengthened—there you will claim your share in Christ, who alone can renew and strengthen them.  The bread which is there broken is the communion, the sharing, of the body of Christ; the cup which is there blessed is the communion of the blood of Christ: to that heavenly treat, to that spiritual food of your souls, Jesus Himself invites you, He who is the life of men.  Do not let it be said at the last day of any one of you, that when the Son of God Himself invites you, you would not come to Him that you might have life.

SERMON XIX

MAN’S WORKING DAY

John, xi. 9, 10

“Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day?  If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.  But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”

This was our blessed Lord’s answer to His disciples when they said to Him, “Master, the Jews of late tried to stone Thee, and goest Thou among them again?”  And “Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day?  If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.  But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”

Now, at first sight, one does not see what this has to do with the disciples’ question—it seems no answer at all to it.  But we must remember who it was who gave that answer.  The Son of God, from whom all words come, who came to do good, and only good, every minute of His life.  And, therefore, we may be sure that He never threw away a single word.  And we must remember, too, to whom He spoke—to His disciples, whom He was training to be apostles to the whole world, teaching them in every thing some deep lesson, to fit them for their glorious calling, as preachers of the good news of His coming.  So we may be sure that He would never put off any question of theirs; we may be certain, that whatever they asked Him, He would give them the best possible answer; not, perhaps, just the answer for which they wished, but the answer which would teach them most.  Therefore I say, we must believe that there is some deep, wonderful lesson in this text—that it is the very best and fullest answer which our Lord could have made to His disciples when they asked Him why He was going again to Judea, where He stood in danger of His life.

Let us think a little about this text in faith, that is, sure that there is a deep, blessed meaning in it, if we can but find it out.  Let us take it piece by piece; we shall never get to the bottom of it, of course, but we may get deep enough into it to set us thinking a little between now and next Sunday.

“Are there not twelve hours in the day?” said our Lord.  We know there are, and we know, too, that if any man walks in the day, and keeps his eyes open, he does not stumble, because he has the light of this world to guide him.  Twelve hours for business, and twelve for food, and sleep, and rest, is our rule for working men, or, indeed, not our rule, but God’s.  He has set the sun for the light of this world, to rule the day, to settle for us how long we are to work.  In this country days vary.  In summer they are more than twelve hours, and then men work early and late; but that is made up to us by winter, when the days are less than twelve hours, and men work short time.  In the very cold countries again, far away in the frozen north, the sun never sets all the summer, and never rises all the winter, and there is six months day and six months night.  Wonderful!  But even there God has fitted the land and men’s lives to that strange climate, and they can gather in enough meat in the summer to keep them all the winter, that they may be able to spend the long six months’ night of winter warm in their houses, sleeping and resting, with plenty of food.  So that even to them there are twelve hours in the day, though their hours are each a fortnight long,—I mean a certain fixed time in which to walk, and do the business which they have to do before the long frozen night comes, wherein no man can work, because the sun, the light of this world, is hid from them below the ice for six whole months.  So that our Lord’s words hold true of all men, even of those people in the icy north.  But in by far the most parts of the world, and especially in the hot countries, where our Lord lived, there are twelve common hours in every day, wherein men may and ought to work.

Now what did our Lord mean by reminding His disciples of this, which they all knew already?  He meant this,—that God His Father had appointed Him a certain work to do, and a certain time to do it in; that though His day was short, only thirty-three years in all, while we have, many of us, seventy years given us, yet that there were twelve hours in His day in which He must work—that God would take care that He lived out His appointed time, provided He was ready and earnest in doing God’s work in it—and that He must work in that time which God had given Him, whatever came of it, and do His appointed work before the night of death came in which no man can work.

There was a heathen king once, named Philip of Macedon, and a very wise king he was, though he was a heathen, and one of the wisest of his plans was this:—he had a slave, whom he ordered to come in to him every morning of his life, whatever he was doing, and say to him in a loud voice, “Philip, remember that thou must die!”

He was a heathen, but a great many who call themselves Christians are not half so wise as he, for they take all possible care, not to remember that they must die, but to forget that they must die; and yet every living man has a servant who, like King Philip’s, puts him in mind, whether he likes it or not, that his day will run out at last, and his twelve hours of life be over, and then die he must.  And who is that servant?  A man’s own body.  Lucky if his body is his servant, though—not his master and his tyrant.  But still, be that as it may, every finger-ache that one’s body has, every cough and cold one’s body catches, ought to be to us a warning like King Philip’s servant, “Remember that thou must die.”  Every little pain and illness is a warning, a kindly hint from our Father in heaven, that we are doomed to death; that we have but twelve hours in this short day of life, and that the twelve must end; and that we must get our work done and our accounts settled, and be ready for our long journey, to meet our Father and our King, before the night comes wherein no man can work, but only takes his wages; for them who have done good the wages of life eternal, and for them who have done evil—God help them! we know what is written—“the wages of sin is death!”

Now, observe next, that those who walk in the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world, and those who walk in the night stumble—they have no light in them.  If they are to see, it must be by the help of some light outside themselves, which is not part of themselves, or belonging to themselves at all.  We only see by the light which God has made; when that is gone, our eyes are useless.

So it is with our souls.  Our wits, however clever they may be, only understand things by the light which God throws on those things.  He must explain and enlighten all things to us.  Without His light—His Spirit, all the wit in the world is as useless as a pair of eyes in a dark night.

Now this earthly world which we do see is an exact picture and pattern of the spiritual, heavenly world which we do not see, as Solomon says in the Proverbs, “The things which are seen are the doubles of the things which are not seen.”  And as there is a light for us in this earth, which is not ourselves, namely the sun, so there is a light for us in the spirit-world, which is not ourselves.  And who is that?  The blessed Lord shall answer for Himself.  He says, “I am the light of the world;” and St. John bears witness to Him, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”  And does not St. Paul say the same thing, when he blessed God so often for having called him and his congregations out of darkness into that marvellous light?  If you read his Epistles you will find what he meant by the darkness, what he meant by the light.  The darkness was heathendom, knowing nothing of Christ.  The light was Christianity, knowing Christ the light; and, more, being in the light, belonging to Christ—being joined to Him, as the leaves are to the tree,—living by trust in Christ, being taught and made true men and true women of, by the Noble and Holy Spirit of Christ—seeing their way through this world by trust in Christ and His promises,—That was light.

And there is no other light.  If a man does not work trusting in Christ, whom God has set for the light of the world, he works in the night, where God never set or meant him to work; and stumble he will, and make a fool of himself, sooner or later, because he is walking in the night, and sees nothing plainly or in a right view.  For as our Lord says truly, “There is no light in him.”  No light in him?  In one sense there is no light in any one, be he the wisest or holiest man who ever lived.  But this is just what three people out of four will not believe.  They will not believe that the Spirit of God gives man understanding.  They fancy that they have light in themselves.  They try, conceitedly and godlessly, to walk by the light of their own eyes—to make their own way plain before their face for themselves.  They will not believe old David, a man who worked, and fought, and thought, and saw, far more than any one of us will ever do, when he tells them again and again in his Psalms, that the Lord is his light, that the Lord must guide a man, and inform him with His eye, and teach him in the way in which he should go.  And, therefore, they will not pray to God for light—therefore they will not look for light in God’s Word, and in the writings of godly men; and they are like a man in the broad sunshine, who should choose to shut his eyes close, and say, ‘I have light enough in my own head to do without the sun;’ and therefore they walk on still in darkness, and all the foundations of the earth are out of course, because men forget the first universal ground rules of common sense, and reason, and love, which God’s Spirit teaches.  I tell you, all the mistakes that you ever made—that ever were made since Adam fell, came from this, that men will not ask God for light and wisdom; they love darkness rather than light, and therefore, though God’s light is ready for every man, shining in the darkness to shew every man his way, yet the darkness will not comprehend it—will not take it in, and let God change its blindness into day.

Now, then, to gather all together, what better answer could our Lord have given to His disciples’ question than this, “Are there not twelve hours in the day?  If a man walk in the day he does not stumble, because he seeth the light of this world; but if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”