The Good News of God Part 4

And nothing more?

Certainly much more. Also to ask him to make us good. That, too, must be a part of wors.h.i.+pping a good G.o.d. For the very property of goodness is, that it wishes to make others good. And if G.o.d be good, he must wish to make us good also.

To adore G.o.d, then, for his goodness, and to pray to him to make us good, is the sum and substance of all wholesome wors.h.i.+p.

And for that purpose a man may come to church, and wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in spirit and in truth, though he be dissatisfied with himself, and ashamed of himself; and knows that he is wrong in many things:- provided always that he wishes to be set right, and made good.

For he may come saying, 'O G.o.d, thou art good, and I am bad; and for that very reason I come. I come to be made good. I admire thy goodness, and I long to copy it; but I cannot unless thou help me.

Purge me; make me clean. Cleanse thou me from my secret faults, and give me truth in the inward parts. Do what thou wilt with me. Train me as thou wilt. Punish me if it be necessary. Only make me good.'

Then is the man fit indeed to come to church, sins and all:- if he carry his sins into church not to carry them out again safely and carefully, as we are all too apt to do, but to cast them down at the foot of Christ's cross, in the hope (and no man ever hoped that hope in vain)--that he will be lightened of that burden, and leave some of them at least behind him. Ay, no man, I say, ever hoped that in vain. No man ever yet felt the burden of his sins really intolerable and unbearable, but what the burden of his sins was taken off him before all was over, and Christ's righteousness given to him instead.

Then a man is fit, not only to come to church, but to come to Holy Communion on Christmas-day, and all days. For then and there he will find put into words for him the very deepest sorrows and longings of his heart. There he may say as heartily as he can (and the more heartily the better), 'I acknowledge and bewail my manifold sins and wickedness. The remembrance of them is grievous unto me; the burden of them is intolerable:' but there he will hear Christ promising in return to pardon and deliver him from all his sins, to confirm and strengthen him in all goodness. That last is what he ought to want; and if he wants it, he will surely find it.

He may join there with the whole universe of G.o.d in crying, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord G.o.d of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of Thy glory:' and still in the same breath he may confess again his unworthiness so much as to gather up the crumbs under G.o.d's table, and cast himself simply and utterly upon the eternal property of G.o.d's eternal essence, which is--always to have mercy. But he will hear forthwith Christ's own answer--'If thou art bad, I can and will make thee good. My blood shall wash away thy sin: my body shall preserve thee, body, soul, and spirit, to the everlasting life of goodness.'

And so G.o.d will bless that man's communion to him; and bless to him his keeping of Christmas-day; because out of a true penitent heart and lively faith he will be offering to the good G.o.d the sacrifice of his own bad self, that G.o.d may take it, and make it good; and so will be wors.h.i.+pping the everlasting and infinite Goodness, in spirit and in truth.

SERMON VII. G.o.d'S INHERITANCE

GAL. iv. 6, 7.

Because ye are sons, G.o.d hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of G.o.d through Christ.

This is the second good news of Christmas-day.

The first is, that the Son of G.o.d became man.

The second is, why he became man. That men might become the sons of G.o.d through him.

Therefore St. Paul says, You are the sons of G.o.d. Not--you may be, if you are very good: but you are, in order that you may become very good. Your being good does not tell you that you are the sons of G.o.d: your baptism tells you so. Your baptism gives you a right to say, I am the child of G.o.d. How shall I behave then? What ought a child of G.o.d to be like? Now St. Paul, you see, knew well that we could not make ourselves G.o.d's children by any feelings, fancies, or experiences of our own. But he knew just as well that we cannot make ourselves behave as G.o.d's children should, by any thoughts and trying of our own.

G.o.d alone made us His children; G.o.d alone can make us behave like his children.

And therefore St. Paul says, G.o.d has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: by which we cry to G.o.d, Our Father.

But some will say, Have we that Spirit?

St. Paul says that you have: and surely he speaks truth.

Let us search, then, and see where that Spirit is in us. It is a great and awful honour for sinful men: but I do believe that if we seek, we shall find that He is not far from any one of us, for in Him we live and move, and have our being; and all in us which is not ignorance, falsehood, folly, and filth, comes from Him.

Now the Bible says that this Spirit is the Spirit of G.o.d's Son, the Spirit of Christ:- and what sort of Spirit is that?

We may see by remembering what sort of a Spirit Christ had when on earth; for He certainly has the same Spirit now--the Spirit which proceedeth everlastingly from the Father and from the Son.

And what was that Like? What was Christ Like? What was his Spirit Like? It was a Spirit of Love, mercy, pity, generosity, usefulness, unselfishness. A spirit of truth, honour, fearless love of what was right: a spirit of duty and willing obedience, which made Him rejoice in doing His Father's will. In all things the spirit of a perfect SON, in all things a lovely, n.o.ble, holy spirit.

And now, my dear friends, is there nothing in you like that? You may forget it at times, you may disobey it very often: but is there not something in all your hearts more or less, which makes you love and admire what is right?

When you hear of a n.o.ble action, is there nothing in you which makes you approve and admire it? Is there nothing in your hearts which makes you pity those who are in sorrow and long to help them?

Nothing which stirs your heart up when you hear of a man's n.o.bly doing his duty, and dying rather than desert his post, or do a wrong or mean thing? Surely there is--surely there is.

Then, O my dear friends, when those feelings come into your hearts, rejoice with trembling, as men to whom G.o.d has given a great and precious gift. For they are none other than the Spirit of the Son of G.o.d, striving with your hearts that He may form Christ in you, and raise up your hearts to cry with full faith to G.o.d, 'My Father which art in heaven!'

'Ah but,' you will say, 'we like what is right, but we do not always do it. We like to see pity and mercy: but we are very often proud and selfish and tyrannical. We like to see justice and honour: but we are too apt to be mean and unjust ourselves. We like to see other people doing their duty: but we very often do not do ours.'

Well, my dear friends, perhaps that is true. If it be, confess your sins like honest men, and they shall be forgiven you. If you can so complain of yourselves, I am sure I can of myself, ten times more.

But do you not see that this very thing is a sign to you that the good and n.o.ble thoughts in you are not your own but G.o.d's? If they came out of your own spirits, then you would have no difficulty in obeying them. But they came out of G.o.d's Spirit; and our sinful and self-willed spirits are striving against his, and trying to turn away from G.o.d's light. What can we do then? We can cherish those n.o.ble thoughts, those pure and higher feelings, when they arise. We can welcome them as heavenly medicine from our heavenly Father. We can resolve not to turn away from them, even though they make us ashamed.

Not to grieve the Spirit of the Son of G.o.d, even though he grieves us (as he ought to do and will do more and more), by showing us our own weakness and meanness, and how unlike we are to Christ, the only begotten Son.

If we shut our hearts to those good feelings, they will go away and leave us. And if they do, we shall neither respect our neighbours, nor respect ourselves. We shall see no good in our neighbours, but become scornful and suspicious to them; and if we do that, we shall soon see no good in ourselves. We shall become discontented with ourselves, more and more given up to angry thoughts and mean ways, which we hate and despise, all the while that we go on in them.

And then--mark my words--we shall lose all real feeling of G.o.d being our Father, and we his sons. We shall begin to fancy ourselves his slaves, and not his children; and G.o.d our taskmaster, and not our Father. We shall dislike the thought of G.o.d. We shall long to hide from G.o.d. We shall fall back into slavish terror, and a fearful looking forward to of judgment and fiery indignation, because we have trampled under foot the grace of G.o.d, the n.o.ble, pure, tender, and truly graceful feelings which G.o.d's Spirit bestowed on us, to fill us with the grace of Christ.

Therefore, my dear friends, never check any good or right feelings in yourselves, or in your children; for they come from the spirit of the Son of G.o.d himself. But, as St. Paul says, Phil. iv. 3, 'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, what soever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things', . . . 'and the G.o.d of peace shall be with you.' Avoid all which can make you mean, low, selfish, cruel. Cling to all which can fill your mind with lofty, kindly, generous, loyal thoughts; and so, in G.o.d's good time, you will enter into the meaning of those great words--Abba, Father. The more you give up your hearts to such good feelings, the more you will understand of G.o.d; the more n.o.bleness there is in you, the more you will see G.o.d's n.o.bleness, G.o.d's justice, G.o.d's love, G.o.d's true glory. The more you become like G.o.d's Son, the more you will understand how G.o.d can stoop to call himself your Father; and the more you will understand what a Father, what a perfect Father G.o.d is.

And in the world to come, I trust, you will enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of G.o.d--that liberty which comes, as I told you last Sunday, not from doing your own will, but the will of G.o.d; that glory which comes, not from having anything of your own to pride yourselves upon, but from being filled with the Spirit of G.o.d, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, by which you shall for ever look up freely, and yet reverently, to the Almighty G.o.d of heaven and earth, and say, 'Impossible as the honour seems for man, yet thou, O G.o.d, hast said it, and it is true. Thou, even thou art my Father, and I thy son in Jesus Christ, who became awhile the Son of man on earth, that I might become for ever the son of G.o.d in heaven.'

And so will come true to us St. Paul's great words: --If we be sons, then heirs of G.o.d, joint heirs with Christ.

Heirs of G.o.d: but what is our inheritance? The same as Christ's.

And what is Christ's inheritance? What but G.o.d himself?--The knowledge of our Father in heaven, of his love to us, and of his eternal beauty and glory, which fills all heavens and all worlds with light and life.

SERMON VIII. 'DE PROFUNDIS'

PSALM cx.x.x. 1.

Out of the deep have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.

What is this deep of which David speaks so often? He knew it well, for he had been in it often and long. He was just the sort of man to be in it often. A man with great good in him, and great evil; with very strong pa.s.sions and feelings, dragging him down into the deep, and great light and understanding to show him the dark secrets of that horrible pit when he was in it; and with great love of G.o.d too, and of order, and justice, and of all good and beautiful things, to make him feel the horribleness of that pit where he ought not to be, all the more from its difference, its contrast, with the beautiful world of light, and order, and righteousness where he ought to be.

Therefore he knew that deep well, and abhorred it, and he heaps together every ugly name, to try and express what no man can express, the horror of that place. It is a horrible pit, mire and clay, where he can find no footing, but sinks all the deeper for his struggling.

It is a place of darkness and of storms, a sh.o.r.eless and bottomless sea, where he is drowning, and drowning, while all G.o.d's waves and billows go over him. It is a place of utter loneliness, where he sits like a sparrow on the housetop, or a doleful bird in the desert, while G.o.d has put his lovers and friends away from him, and hid his acquaintance out of his sight, and no man cares for his soul, and all men seem to him liars, and G.o.d himself seems to have forgotten him and forgotten all the world. It is a dreadful net which has entangled his feet, a dark prison in which he is set so fast that he cannot get forth. It is a torturing disgusting disease, which gives his flesh no health, and his bones no rest, and his wounds are putrid and corrupt. It is a battle-field after the fight, where he seems to lie stript among the dead, like those who are wounded and cut away from G.o.d's hand, and lies groaning in the dust of death, seeing nothing round him but doleful shapes of destruction and misery, alone in the outer darkness, while a horrible dread overwhelms him. Yea, it is h.e.l.l itself, the pit of h.e.l.l, the nethermost h.e.l.l, he says, where G.o.d's wrath burns like fire, till his tongue cleaves to his gums, and his bones are burnt up like a firebrand, till he is weary of crying; his throat is dry, his heart fails him for waiting so long upon his G.o.d.

Yes. A dark and strange place is that same deep pit of G.o.d--if, indeed, it be G.o.d's and G.o.d made it. Perhaps G.o.d did not make it.

For G.o.d saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good: and that pit cannot be very good; for all good things are orderly, and in shape; and in that pit is no shape, no order, nothing but contradiction and confusion. When a man is in that pit, it will seem to him as if he were alone in the world, and longing above all things for company; and yet he will hate to have any one to speak to him, and wrap himself up in himself to brood over his own misery. When he is in that pit he shall be so blind that he can see nothing, though his eyes be open in broad noon-day. When he is in that pit he will hate the thing which he loves most, and love the thing which he hates most. When he is in that pit he will long to die, and yet cling to life desperately, and be horribly afraid of dying. When he is in that pit it will seem to him that G.o.d is awfully, horribly near him, and he will try to hide from G.o.d, try to escape from under G.o.d's hand: and yet all the while that G.o.d seems so dreadfully near him, G.o.d will seem further off from him than ever, millions and millions of miles away, parted from him by walls of iron, and a great gulf which he can never pa.s.s. There is nothing but contradiction in that pit: the man who is in it is of two minds about himself, and his kin and neighbours, and all heaven and earth; and knows not where to turn, or what to think, or even where he is at all.

For the food which he gets in that deep pit is very hunger of soul, and rage, and vain desires. And the ground which he stands on in that deep is a bottomless quagmire, and doubt, and change, and shapeless dread. And the air which he breathes in that deep is the very fire of G.o.d, which burns up everlastingly all the chalk and dross of the world.

I said that that deep was not merely the deep of affliction. No: for you may see men with every comfort which wealth and home can give, who are tormented day and night in that deep pit in the midst of all their prosperity, calling for a drop of water to cool their tongue, and finding none. And you may see poor creatures dying in agony on lonely sick beds, who are not in that pit at all, but in that better place whereof it is written, 'Blessed are they who, going through the vale of misery, use it for a well, and the pools are filled with water;' and again, 'If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink;' and 'the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up to everlasting life.'