The Good News of God

I tell you frankly, my friends, if you were to see through the microscope a few of the wonderful things which are going on round you now in every leaf, and every gnat which dances in the sunbeam; if you were to learn even the very little which is known about them, you would see wonders which would surpass your powers of reasoning, just as much as that far greater wonder of the ever-blessed Trinity; things which you would not believe, if your own eyes did not show them you.

And what if it be strange?  What is there to surprise us in that?  If the world be so wonderful, how much more wonderful must that great God be who made the world, and keeps it always living?  If the smallest blade of grass be past our understanding, how much more past our understanding must be the Absolute, Eternal, Almighty God?  Do you not see that common sense and reason lead us to expect that God should be the most wonderful of all beings and things; that there must be some mystery and wonder in him which is greater than all mysteries and wonders upon earth, just as much as he is greater than all heaven and earth?  Which must be most wonderful, the maker or the thing made?  Thou art man, made in the likeness of God.  Thou canst not understand thyself.  How much less canst thou understand God, in whose likeness thou art made!

For my part, instead of keeping people from learning, lest they should grow proud, and despise the mysteries of faith, I would make them learn, and entreat them to learn, and look seriously and patiently at all the wonderful things which are going on round them all day long; for I am sure that they would be so much astonished with what they saw on earth, that they would not be astonished, much less staggered, at anything they heard of in heaven; and least of all astonished at being told that the name of Almighty God was too deep for the little brain of mortal man; and that they would learn more and more to take humbly, like little children, every hint which the experience of wise and good men of old time gives us of the everlasting mystery of mysteries, the glory of the Triune God, which St. John saw in the spirit.

And what did St. John see?  Something beyond even an apostle’s understanding.  Something which he could only see himself dimly, and describe to us in figures and pictures, as it were, to help us to imagine that great wonder.

He was in the spirit, he says, when he saw it.  That is, he did not see it with his bodily eyes, but with his soul, his heart and mind.  Not with his bodily eyes (for no man hath seen God at any time), but with his mind’s eye, which God had enlightened by his Holy Spirit.

He sees a throne in heaven, and one sitting on it, bright and pure as richest precious stone; and round his throne a rainbow like an emerald, the sign to us of hope, and faithfulness, mercy and truth, which he himself appointed after the flood, to comfort the fearful hearts of men.  Around him are elders crowned; men like ourselves, but men who have fought the good fight, and conquered, and are now at rest; pure, as their white garments tell us; and victorious, as their golden crowns tell us.  And from the throne come thunderings, and lightnings, and voices, as they did when he spoke to the Jews of old—signs of his terrible power, as judge, and lawgiver, and avenger of all the wrong which is done on earth.  And there are there, too, seven burning lamps, the seven spirits of God, which give light and life to all created things, and most of all to righteous hearts.  And before the throne is a sea of glass; the same sea which St. John saw in another vision, with us human beings standing on it, and behold it was mingled with fire;—the sea of time, and space, and mortal life, on which we all have our little day; the brittle and dangerous sea of earthly life; for it may crack any moment beneath our feet, and drop us into eternity, and the nether fire, unless we have his hand holding us, who conquered time, and life, and death, and hell itself.

It seems to us to be a great thing now, time, and space, and the world; and yet it looked small enough to St. John, as it lies in heaven, before the throne of Christ; and he passes it by in a few words.  For what are all suns and stars, and what are all ages and generations, and millions and millions of years, compared with eternity; with God’s eternal heaven, and God whom not even heaven can contain?—One drop of water in comparison with all the rain clouds of the western sea.

But there is one comfort for us in St. John’s vision; that brittle, and uncertain, and dangerous as life may be, yet it is before the throne of God, and before the feet of Christ.  St. John saw it lying there in heaven, for a sign that in God we live, and move, and have our being.  Let us be content, and hope on, and trust on; for God is with us, and we with God.

But St. John saw another wonder.  Four beasts—one like a man, one like a calf, one like an eagle, one like a lion, with six wings each.

What those living creatures mean, I can hardly tell you.  Some wise and learned men say they mean the four Evangelists: but, though there is much to be said for it, I hardly think that; for St. John, who saw them, was one of the four Evangelists himself.  Others think they mean great and glorious archangels; and that may be so.  But certainly the Bible always speaks of angels as shaped like men, like human beings, only more beautiful and glorious.  The two angels, for instance, who appeared to the three men at our Lord’s tomb, are plainly called in one place, young men.  I think, rather, that these four living creatures mean the powers and talents which God has given to men, that they may replenish the earth, and subdue it.  For we read of these same living creatures in the book of the prophet Ezekiel; and we see them also on those ancient Assyrian sculptures which are now in the British Museum; and we have good reason to think that is what they mean there.  The creature with the man’s head means reason; the beast with the lion’s head, kingly power and government; with the eagle’s head, and his piercing eye, prudence and foresight; with the ox’s head, labour, and cultivation of the earth, and successful industry.  But whatsoever those living creatures mean, it is more important to see what they do.  They give glory, and honour, and thanks to him who sits upon the throne.  They confess that all power, all wisdom, all prudence, all success in men or angels, in earth or heaven, comes from God, and is God’s gift, of which he will require a strict account; for he is Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty; and all things are of him, and by him, and for him, for ever and ever.

But who is he who sits upon the throne?  Who but the Lord Jesus Christ?  Who but the Babe of Bethlehem?  Who but the Friend of publicans and sinners?  Who but he who went about doing good to suffering mortal man?  Who but he who died on the cross?  Who but he on whose bosom St. John leaned at supper, and now saw him highly exalted, having a name above every name?

Oh, blest St. John, to see that sight!  To see his dear Master in his glory, after having seen him in his humiliation!  God grant us so to follow in St. John’s steps, that we may see the same sight, unworthy though we are, in God’s good time.

And where is God the Father?  Yes, where?  The heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain him, whom no man hath seen, or can see; who dwells in the light, whom no man can approach unto.  Only the only begotten Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him, and shown to men in his own perfect loveliness and goodness, what their heavenly Father is.  That was enough for St. John; let it be enough for us.  He who has seen Christ has seen the Father, as far as any created being can see him.  The Son Christ is merciful: therefore the Father is merciful.  The Son is just: therefore the Father is just.  The Son is faithful and true: therefore the Father is faithful and true.  The Son is almighty to save: therefore the Father is almighty to save.  Let that be enough for you and me.

But where is the Holy Spirit?  There is no where for spirits.  All that we can say is, that the Holy Spirit is proceeding for ever from the Father and the Son; going forth for ever, to bring light and life, righteousness and love, to all worlds, and to all hearts who will receive him.  The lamps of fire which St. John saw, the dove which came down at Christ’s baptism, the cloven tongues of fire which sat on the Apostles—these were signs and tokens of the Spirit; but they were not the Spirit itself.  Of him it is written, ‘He bloweth where he listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence he cometh or whither he goeth.’

It is enough for us that he is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Holy Father, and of the Holy Son; like them eternal, like them incomprehensible, like them almighty, like them all-wise, all-just, all-loving, merciful, faithful, and true for ever.

This is what St. John saw—Christ the crucified, Christ the Babe of Bethlehem, in the glory which he had before all worlds, and shall have for ever; with all the powers of this wondrous world crying to him for ever, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come; and the souls of just men made perfect answering those mystic animals, and joining their hymns of praise to the hymn which goes up for ever from sun and stars, from earth and sea,—when they find out the deepest of all wisdom—the lesson which all the wonders of this earth, and all which ever has happened, or will happen, in space and time, is meant to teach us:—

‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.’

This is all that I can tell you.  It may be a very little: but is it not enough?  What says Solomon the wise?  ‘Knowest thou how the bones grow in the womb?’  Not thou.  How, then, wilt thou know God, who made all things?  Thou art fearfully and wonderfully made, though thou art but a poor mortal man.  And is not God more fearfully and wonderfully made than thou art?  It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world: a stranger thing still to me, how we shall ever get out of this world again.  Yet they are common things enough—birth and death.  ‘Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born:’ and yet you do not know what is the meaning of birth or death either: and I do not know; and no man knows.  How, then, can we know the mystery of God, in whose hand are the issues of life and death?—God to whom all live for ever, living and dead, born and unborn, in heaven and in hell?

So it is in small things as well as great, in great as well as small; and so it ever will be.  ‘All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder all things end,’ said Saint Augustine, wisest in his day of all mortal men; and all that great scholars have discovered since prove more and more that Saint Augustine’s words were true, and that the wisest are only, as a great philosopher once said, and one, too, who discovered more of God’s works than any man for many a hundred years, even Sir Isaac Newton himself: ‘The wisest of us is but like a child picking up a few shells and pebbles on the shore of a boundless sea.’

The shells and pebbles are the little scraps of knowledge which God vouchsafes to us, his sinful children; knowledge, of which at best St. Paul says, that we know only in part, and prophesy in part, and think as children; and that knowledge shall vanish away, and tongues shall cease, and prophecies shall fail.

And the boundless sea is the great ocean of time—of God’s created universe, above which his Spirit broods over, perfect in love, and wisdom, and almighty power, as at the beginning, moving above the face of the waters of time, giving life to all things, for ever blessing, and for ever blest.

God grant us all to see the day when we shall have passed safely across that sea of time, up to the sure land of eternity; and shall no more think as children, or know in part; but shall see God face to face, and know him even as we are known; and find him, the nearer we draw to him, more wonderful, and more glorious, and more good than ever;—‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.’  And meanwhile, take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows: he knows himself, and you, and me, and all things; and his mercy is over all his works.

SERMON XXXV

A GOD IN PAIN

(Good Friday.)Hebrews ii. 9, 50

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.  For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

What are we met together to think of this day?  God in pain: God sorrowing; God dying for man, as far as God could die.  Now it is this;—the blessed news that God suffered pain, God sorrowed, God died, as far as God could die—which makes the Gospel different from all other religions in the world; and it is this, too, which makes the Gospel so strong to conquer men’s hearts, and soften them, and bring them back to God and righteousness in a way no other religion ever has done.  It is the good news of this good day, well called Good Friday, which wins souls to Christ, and will win them as long as men are men.

The heathen, you will find, always thought of their gods as happy.  The gods, they thought, always abide in bliss, far above all the chances and changes of mortal life; always young, strong, beautiful, needing no help, needing no pity; and therefore, my friends, never calling out our love.  The heathens never loved their gods: they admired them, thanked them when they thought they helped them; or they were afraid of them when they thought they were offended.

But as far as I can find, they never really loved their gods.  Love to God was a new feeling, which first came into the world with the good news that God had suffered and that God had died upon the cross.  That was a God to be loved, indeed; and all good hearts loved him, and will love him still.

For you cannot really love any one who is quite different from you; who has never been through what you have.  You do not think that he can understand you; you expect him to despise you, laugh at you.  You say, as I have heard a poor woman say of a rich one, ‘How can she feel for me?  She does not know what poor people go through.’

Now it is just that feeling which mankind had about God till Christ died.

God, or the gods, were beautiful, strong, happy, self-sufficient, up in the skies; and men on earth were full of sorrow and trouble, disease, accidents, death; and sin, too; quarrelling and killing, hateful and hating each other.  How could the gods love men?  And then men had a sense of sin; they felt they were doing wrong.  Surely the gods hated them for doing wrong.  Surely all the sorrows and troubles which came on them were punishments for doing wrong.  How miserable they were!  But the gods sat happy up in heaven, and cared not for them.  Or, if the gods did care, they cared only for special favourites.  If any man was very good, or strong, or handsome, or clever, or rich, or prosperous, the gods cared for him—he was a favourite.  But what did they care for poor, ugly, deformed, unfortunate, foolish wretches?  Surely the gods despised them, and had sent them into the world to be miserable.  There was no sympathy, no fellow-feeling between gods and men.  The gods did not love men as men.  Why should men love them?  And so men did not love them.

And as there was no love to God before Good Friday, so there was no love to men.

If God despised the poor, the deformed, the helpless, the ignorant, the crazy, why should not man?  If God was hard on them, why should not man oppress and ill-use them?  And so you will find that there was no charity in the world.

Among some of the Eastern nations—the Hindoos, for instance—when they were much better men than now, charity did spring up for a while here and there, in a very beautiful shape; but among Greeks and Romans there was simply no charity; and you will find little or none among the Jews themselves.

The Pharisees gave alms to save their own souls, and feed their own pride of being good; but had no charity—‘This people, who knoweth not the law, is accursed.’  As for poor, diseased people, they were born in sin: either they or their parents had sinned.  We may see that the poor of Judea, as well as Galilee, were in a miserable, neglected, despised state; and the worst thing that the Pharisees could say of our Lord Jesus was, that he ate and drank with publicans and sinners.  Because there was no love to God, there was no love to man.  There was a great gulf fixed between every man and his neighbour.

But Christ came; God came; and became man.  And with the blood of his cross was bridged over for ever the gulf between God and man, and the gulf between man and man.

Good Friday showed that there was sympathy, there was fellow-feeling between God and man; that God would do all for man, endure all for man; that God so desired to make man like God, that he would stoop to be made like man.  There was nothing God would not do to justify himself to man, to show men that he did care for them, that he did love the creatures whom he had made.  Yes; God had not forgotten man; God had not made man in vain.  God had not sent man into the world to be wicked and miserable here, and to perish for ever hereafter.  Wickedness and misery were here; but God had not put them here, and he would not leave them here.  He would conquer them by enduring them.  Sin and misery tormented men; then they should torment the Son of God too.  Sin and misery killed men; then they should kill the Son of God, too: he would taste death for every man, that men might live by him.  He would be made perfect by sufferings: not made perfectly good (for that he was already), but perfectly able to feel for men, to understand them, to help them; because he had been tempted in all things like as they.

And so on Good Friday did God bridge over the gulf between God and men.  No man can say now, Why has God sent man into the world to be miserable, while he is happy?  For God in Christ was miserable once.  No man can say, God makes me go through pain, and torture, and death, while he goes through none of such things: for God in Christ endured pain, torture, death, to the uttermost.  And so God is a being which man can love, admire, have fellow-feeling for; cling to God with all the noble feelings of his heart, with admiration, gratitude, and tenderness, even on this day with pity.—As Christ himself said, ‘When I am lifted up, I will draw all men to me.’

And no man can say now, What has God to do with sufferers—sick, weak, deformed wretches?  If he had cared for them, would he have made them thus?  For we can answer, However sick, or weak they may be, God in Christ has been as weak as they.  God has shared their sufferings, and has been made perfect by sufferings, that they might be made perfect also.  God has sanctified suffering, pain, and sorrow upon his cross, and made them holy; as holy as health, and strength, and happiness are.  And so on Good Friday God bridged over the gulf between man and man.  He has shown that God is charity and love; and that the way to live for ever in God is to live for ever in that charity and love to all mankind which God showed this day upon the cross.

And, therefore, all charity is rightly called Christian charity; for it is Christ, and the news of Good Friday, which first taught men to have charity; to look on the poor, the afflicted, the weak, the orphan, with love, pity, respect.  By the sight of a suffering and dying God, God has touched the hearts of men, that they might learn to love and respect suffering and dying men; and in the face of every mourner, see the face of Christ, who died for them.  Because Christ the sufferer is their elder brother, all sufferers are their brothers likewise.  Because Christ tasted pain, shame, misery, death for all men, therefore we are bound this day to pray for all men, that they may have their share in the blessings of Christ’s death; not to look on them any longer as aliens, strangers, enemies, parted from us and each other and God; but whether wise or foolish, sick or well, happy or unhappy, alive or dead, as brothers.  We are bound to pray for his Holy Church as one family of brothers; for all ranks of men in it, that each of them may learn to give up their own will and pleasure for the sake of doing their duty in their calling, as Christ did; to pray for Jews, Turks, Heathens, and Infidels; as for God’s lost children, and our lost brothers, that God would bring them home to his flock, and touch their hearts by the news of his sufferings for them; that they may taste the inestimable comfort of knowing that God so loved them as to suffer, to groan, to die for them and all mankind.

SERMON XXXVI

ON THE FALL

(Sexagesima Sunday.)Genesis iii. 12

And the man said, The woman, whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

This morning we read the history of Adam’s fall in the first Lesson.  Now does this story seem strange to you, my friends?  Do you say to yourselves, If I had been in Adam’s place, I should never have been so foolish as Adam was?  If you do say so, you cannot have looked at the story carefully enough.  For if you do look at it carefully, I believe you will find enough in it to show you that it is a very natural story, that we have the same nature in us that Adam had; that we are indeed Adam’s children; and that the Bible speaks truth when it says, ‘Adam begat a son after his own likeness.’

Now, let us see how Adam fell, and what he did when he fell.

Adam, we find, was not content to be in the image of God.  He wanted, he and his wife, to be as gods, knowing good and evil.  Now do, I beseech you, think a moment carefully, and see what that means.

Adam was not content to be in the likeness of God; to copy God by obeying God.  He wanted to be a little god himself; to know what was good for him, and what was evil for him; whereas God had told him, as it were, You do not know what is good for you, and what is evil for you.  I know; and I tell you to obey me; not to eat of a certain tree in the garden.

But pride and self-will rose up in Adam’s heart.  He wanted to show that he did know what was good for him.  He wanted to be independent, and show that he could do what he liked, and take care of himself; and so he ate the fruit which he was forbidden to eat, partly because it was fair and well-tasted, but still more to show his own independence.

Now, surely this is natural enough.  Have we not all done the very same thing in our time, nay, over and over again?  When we were children, were we never forbidden to do something which we wished to do?  Were we never forbidden, just as Adam was, to take an apple—something pleasant to the eye, and good for food?  And did we not long for it, and determine to have it all the more, because it was forbidden, just as Adam and Eve did; so that we wished for it much more than we should if our parents had given it to us?  Did we not in our hearts accuse our parents of grudging it to us, and listen to the voice of the tempter, as Eve did, when the serpent tried to make out that God was niggardly to her, and envious of her, and did not want her to be wise, lest she should be too like God?

Have we not said in our heart, Why should my father grudge me that nice thing when he takes it himself?

He wants to keep it all to himself.  Why should not I have a share of it?  He says it will hurt me.  How does he know that?  It does not hurt him.  I must be the best judge of whether it will hurt me.  I do not believe that it will: but at least it is but fair that I should try.  I will try for myself.  I will run the chance.  Why should I be kept like a baby, as if I had no sense or will of my own?  I will know the right and the wrong of it for myself.  I will know the good and evil of it myself.

Have we not said that, every one of us, in our hearts, when we were young?—And is not that just what the Bible says Adam and Eve said?

And then, because we were Adam’s children, with his fallen nature in us, and original sin, which we inherited from him, we could not help longing more and more after what our parents had forbidden; we could think, perhaps, of nothing else; cared for no pleasure, no pay, because we could not get that one thing which our parents had told us not to touch.  And at last we fell, and sinned, and took the thing on the sly.