Sermons on National Subjects Part 13

And all the while they knew that it was wrong, did those poor foolish lads. If you had asked one of them openly, "Do you not know that G.o.d has forbidden you to do this?" they would have either been forced to say, "Yes," or else they would have tried to laugh the matter off, or perhaps held their tongues and looked silly, or perhaps again answered insolently; showing by each and all of these ways of taking it, that the Lord's message had come home to their consciences, and convinced them of their sin, though they were determined not to own it or obey it. And the way they would have put the matter by and excused themselves to themselves would have been just the way in which Pharaoh did it. They would have tried to forget that the Lord had warned them, and tried to make out to themselves that it was all the preacher's doing, and to make it a personal quarrel between him and them. Just so Pharaoh did when he hardened his heart. He made the Lord's message a ground for hating and threatening Moses and Aaron, as if it was any fault of theirs. He knew in his heart that the Lord had sent them; but he tried to forget that, and drove them out from his presence, and told them that if they dared to appear before him again they should surely die. And just so, my friends, people will be angry with the preacher for telling them unpleasant truths, as if it was any more pleasure to him to speak than for them to hear. Oh, why will you forget that the words which I speak from this pulpit are not my words, but G.o.d's? It is not I who warn you of what you are bringing on yourselves by your sins, it is G.o.d Himself.

There it is written in His Bible--judge for yourselves. Read your Bibles for yourselves, and you will see that I am not speaking my own thoughts and words. And as for being angry with me for telling you truth, read the ordination service which is read whenever a clergyman is ordained, and judge for yourselves. What is a clergyman sent into the world for at all, but to say to you what I am saying now? What should I be but a hypocrite and a traitor to the blessed Lord who died for me, and saved me from my sins, and ordained me to preach to sinners, that they too may be saved from their sins,--what should I be but a traitor to Him, if I did not say to you, whenever I see you going wrong:

"O come, let us wors.h.i.+p, and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker.

"For He is the Lord our G.o.d; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.

"To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts,

"Lest He sware in His wrath that you shall not enter into His rest!"

And now, my friends, I will tell you what will happen to you. You see that I know something, without having been told of what has been going on in your hearts. I beseech you, believe me when I tell you what will go on in them. G.o.d will chastise you for your sins. He will; just because He loves you, and does not hate you; just because you are His children, and not dumb animals born to perish. Troubles will come upon you as you grow older. Of what sort they will be I cannot tell; but that they will come, I can tell full well. And when the Lord sends trouble to you, shall it harden your hearts or soften them? It depends on you, altogether on you, whether the Lord hardens your hearts by sending those sorrows, or whether He softens and turns them and brings them back to the only right place for them--home to Him. But your trouble may only harden your heart all the more. The sorrows and sore judgments which the Lord sent Pharaoh only hardened his heart. It all depends upon the way in which you take these troubles, my friends. And that not so much when they come as after they come. Almost all, let their hearts be right with G.o.d or not, seem to take sorrow as they ought, while the sorrow is on them.

Pharaoh did so too. He said to Moses and Aaron: "I have sinned this time. The Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.

Entreat the Lord that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go." What could be more right or better spoken?

Was not Pharaoh in a proper state of mind then? Was not his heart humbled, and his will resigned to G.o.d? Moses thought not. For while he promised Pharaoh to pray that the storm might pa.s.s over, yet he warned him: "But as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord your G.o.d." And so it happened; for, "when Pharaoh saw that the rain, and hail, and thunder had ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants.

Neither would he let the children of Israel go." ... And so, alas!

it happens to many a man and woman nowadays. They find themselves on a sick-bed. They are in fear of death, in fear of poverty, in fear of shame and punishment for their misdeeds. And then they say: "It is G.o.d's judgment. I have been very wicked. I know G.o.d is punis.h.i.+ng me. Oh, if G.o.d will but raise me up off this sick-bed; if He will but help me out of this trouble, I will give up all my wicked ways.

I will repent and amend." So said Pharaoh; and yet, as soon as he was safe out of his distress, he hardened his heart. And so does many a man and woman, who, when they get safe through their troubles, never give up one of their sins, any more than Pharaoh did. They really believe that G.o.d has punished them. They really intend to amend, while they are in the trouble: but as soon as they are out of it, they try to persuade themselves that it was not G.o.d who sent the sorrow, that it came "by accident," or that "people must have trouble in this life," or that "if they had taken better care, they might have prevented it."--All of them excuses to themselves for forgetting G.o.d in the matter, and, therefore, for forgetting what they promised to G.o.d in trouble; and so, after all, they go on just as they went on before. And yet not as they went on before. For every such sin hardens their hearts; every such sin makes them less able to see G.o.d's hand in what happens to them; every such sin makes them more bold and confident in disobeying G.o.d, and saying to themselves: "After all, why should I be so frightened when I am in trouble, and make such promises to amend my life? For the trouble goes away, whether I mend my life or not; and nothing happens to me; G.o.d does not punish me for not keeping my promises to Him. I may as well go on in my own way, for I seem not the worse off in body or in purse for so doing." Thus do people harden their hearts after each trouble, as Pharaoh did; so that you will see people, by one affliction after another, one loss after another, all their lives through, warned by G.o.d that sin will not prosper them; and confessing that their sins have brought G.o.d's punishment on them: and yet going on steadily in the very sins which have brought on their troubles, and gaining besides, as time runs on, a heart more and more hardened.

And why?

Because they, like Pharaoh, love to have their own way. They will not submit to G.o.d, and do what He bids them, and believe that what He bids them must be right--good for them, and for all around them.

They promised to mend. But they promised as Pharaoh did. "If G.o.d will take away this trouble, then I will mend"--meaning, though they do not dare to say it: "And if G.o.d will not take away this trouble, of course He cannot expect me to mend." In plain English--If G.o.d will not act toward them as they like, then they will not act toward Him as He likes. My friends, G.o.d does not need us to bargain with Him. We must obey Him whether we like it or not; whether it seems to pay us or not; whether He takes our trouble off us or not; we must obey, for He is the Lord; and if we will not obey, He will prove His power on us, as He did on Pharaoh, by showing plainly what is the end of those who resist His will.

What, then, are we to do when our sins bring us, as they certainly will some day bring us, into trouble?

What we ought to have done at first, my friends. What we ought to have done in the wild days of youth, and so have saved ourselves many a dark day, many a sleepless night, many a bitter shame and heartache. To open our eyes, and see that the only thing for men and women, whom G.o.d has made, is to obey the G.o.d who has made them. He is the Lord. He has made us. He will have us do one thing. How can we hope to prosper by doing anything else? It is ill fighting against G.o.d. Which is the stronger, my friends, you or G.o.d? Make up your minds on that. It surely will not take you long.

But someone may say: "I do wish and long to obey G.o.d; but I am so weak, and my sins have so entangled me with bad company, or debts, or--, or--." We all know, alas! into what a net everyone who gives way to sin gets his feet: "And therefore I cannot obey G.o.d. I long to do so. I feel, I know, when I look back, that all my sin, and shame, and unhappiness, come from being proud and self-willed, and determined to have my own way, and do what I choose. But I cannot mend." Do not despair, poor soul! I had a thousand times sooner hear you say you cannot mend, than that you can. For those who say they can mend, are apt to say: "I can mend; and therefore I shall mend when I choose, and no sooner." But those who really feel they cannot mend--those who are really weary and worn out with the burden of their sins--those who are really tired out with their own wilfulness, and feel ready to lie down and die, like a spent horse, and say: "G.o.d, take me away, no matter to what place; I am not fit to live here on earth, a shame and a torment to myself day and night"--those who are in that state of mind, are very near--very near finding out glorious news.

Those who cannot mend themselves and know it, G.o.d will mend. G.o.d will mend your lives for you. He knows as well as you what you have to struggle against; ay, a thousand times better. He knows--what does He not know? Pray to Him, and try what He does not know. Cry to Him to rid you of your bad companions; He will find a way of doing it. Cry to Him to bring you out of the temptations you feel too strong for you; He will find a way for doing it. Cry to Him to teach you what you ought to do, and He will send someone, and that the right person, doubt it not, to teach you in His own good time. Above all, cry and pray to Him to conquer the pride, and self-conceit, and wilfulness in your heart; to take the hard proud heart of stone out of you, and give you instead a heart of flesh, loving, and tender, and kindly to every human creature; and He will do it. Cry to Him to make your will like His own will, that you may love what He loves, and hate what He hates, and do what He wishes you to do. And then you will surely find my words come true: "Those who long to mend, and yet know that they cannot mend themselves, let them but pray, and G.o.d will mend them."

x.x.xIII--THE RED SEA TRIUMPH

Preached Easter-day Morning, 1852.

This is a night to be much observed unto the Lord, for bringing the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.--EXODUS xii. 42.

You all, my friends, know what is the meaning of Easter-day--that it is the Day on which The Lord rose again from the dead. You must have seen that most of the special services for this day, the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, and the second lessons, both morning and evening, reminded you of Christ's rising again; and so did the proper Psalms for this day, though it may seem at first sight more difficult to see what they have to do with the Lord's rising again.

Now the first lessons, both for the morning and evening services, were also meant to remind us of the very same thing, though it may seem even more difficult still, at first sight, to understand how they do so.

Let us see what these two first lessons are about. The morning one was from the twelfth chapter of Exodus, and told us what the Pa.s.sover was, and what it meant. The first lesson for this afternoon was the fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Surely you must remember it. Surely the most careless of you must have listened to that glorious story, how the Jews went through the Red Sea as if it had been dry land, while Pharaoh and the Egyptian army, trying to follow them, were overwhelmed in the water. Surely you cannot have heard how the poor Jews looked back from the farther sh.o.r.e, and hardly believed their own eyes for joy and wonder, when they saw their proud masters swept away for ever, and themselves safe and free out of the hateful land where they had been slaves for hundreds of years. You cannot surely, my friends, have heard that glorious story, and forgotten it again already. I hope not; for G.o.d knows, that tale of the Jews coming safe through the Red Sea has a deep and blessed meaning enough for you, if you could but see it.

But some of you may be saying to yourselves: "No doubt it is a very n.o.ble story; and a man cannot help rejoicing at the poor Jews'

escape, and at the downfall of those cruel Egyptians. It is a pleasant thought, no doubt, that if it were but for that once, G.o.d interfered to help poor suffering creatures, and rid them of their tyrants. But what has that to do with Easter Day and Christ's rising again?"

I will try to show you, my friends. The Jews' Pa.s.sover is the same as our Easter-day, as you know already. But they are not merely alike in being kept on the same day. They are alike because they are both of them remembrances and tokens of the Lord Jesus Christ's delivering men out of misery and slavery. For never forget--though, indeed, in these strange times, I ought rather to say, I beseech you to read your Bibles and see--that it was Jesus Christ Himself who brought the Jews out of Egypt. St. Paul tells us so positively, again and again. In 1 Cor. x. 4 he tells us that it was Christ who followed them through the wilderness. In verse 9 of the same chapter, he says that it was Christ Himself whom they tempted in the wilderness. He was the Angel of the Covenant who went with them. He was the G.o.d of Israel whom the elders of the Jews saw, a few weeks afterwards, on Mount Sinai, and under His feet a pavement like a sapphire stone. True, the Lord did not take flesh upon Him till nearly two thousand years after. But from the very beginning of all things, while He was in the bosom of the Father, He was the King of men. Man was made in His image, and therefore in the image of the Father, whose perfect likeness He is--"the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person." It was He who took care of men, guided and taught them, and delivered them out of misery, from the very beginning of the world. St. Paul says the same thing, in many different ways, all through the epistle to the Hebrews. He says, for instance, that Moses, when he fled from Pharaoh's court in Egypt, esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

The Lord said the same thing of Himself. He said openly that He was the person who is called, all through the Old Testament, "The Lord."

He asked the Pharisees: "What think ye of Christ? whose son is He?

They say unto Him, David's son. Christ answered, How then does David in spirit call him Lord, saying, the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool?" So did Christ declare, that He Himself, who was standing there before them, was the Lord of David, who had died hundreds of years before. He told them again that their father Abraham rejoiced to see His day, and saw it and was glad; and when they answered, in anger and astonishment, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?"

Jesus said, "Verily I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." I am.

The Jews had no doubt whom He meant; and we ought to have none either. For that was the very name by which G.o.d had told Moses to call Him, when he was sent to the Jews: "Thou shalt say unto them, I AM hath sent me to you." The Jews, I say, had no doubt who Jesus said that He was; that He meant them to understand, once and for all, that He whom they called the carpenter's son of Nazareth, was the Lord G.o.d who brought their forefathers up out of the land of Egypt, on the night of the first Pa.s.sover. So they, to show how reverent and orthodox they were, and how they honoured the name of G.o.d, took up stones to stone Him--as many a man, who fancies himself orthodox and reverent, would now, if he dared, stone the preachers who declare that the Lord Jesus Christ is not changed since then; that He is as able and as willing as ever to deliver the poor from those who grind them down, and that He will deliver them, whenever they cry to Him, with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm, and that Easter-day is as much a sign of that to us as the Pa.s.sover was for the Jews of old.

But, my friends, if Christ the Lord showed His love and power in behalf of poor oppressed wretches on that first Pa.s.sover, surely He showed it a thousand times more on that first Easter-day. His great love helped the Jews out of slavery; and that same great love of His at this Easter-tide, moved Him to die and rise again for the sins of the whole world. In that first Pa.s.sover He delivered only one people. On the first Easter He delivered all mankind. The Jews were under cruel tyrants in the land of Egypt. So were all mankind over the world, when Jesus came. The Jews in Egypt were slaves to worse things than the whip of their task-masters; they had slaves' hearts, as well as slaves' bodies. They were kept down not only by the Egyptians, but by their own ignorance, and idolatry, and selfish division, and foul sins. They were spiritually dead--without a n.o.ble, pure, manful feeling left in them. Their history makes no secret of that. The Bible seems to take every care to let us see into what a miserable and brutal state they had fallen. Christ sent Moses to raise them out of that death; to take them through the Red Sea, as a sign that all that was washed away, to be forgiven of G.o.d and forgotten by them, and that from the moment they landed, a free people, on the farther sh.o.r.e, they were to consider all their old life past and a new one begun. So they were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, as St. Paul says. And now all was to be new. They had been fancying that they belonged to the Egyptians.

Now they had found out, and had it proved to them by signs and wonders which they could not mistake, that they belonged to the Lord.

They had been brutal sinners. The Lord began to teach them that they were to rise above their own appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions. They had been wors.h.i.+pping only what they could see and handle. The Lord began to teach them to wors.h.i.+p Him--a person whom they could not see, though He was always near them, and watching over them. They had been living without independence, fellow-feeling, the sense of duty, or love of order. The Lord began to teach them to care for each other, to help each other, to know that they had a duty to perform towards each other, for which they were accountable to Him. They had owned no master except the Egyptians, whom they feared and obeyed unwillingly. The Lord began to teach them to obey Him loyally, from trust, and grat.i.tude, and love. They had been willing to remain sinners, and brutes, and slaves, provided they could get enough to eat and drink. The Lord began to teach them that His favour, His protection, were better than the flesh-pots of Egypt, and that He was able to feed them where it seemed impossible to men; to teach them that "man does not live by bread alone--cheap or dear, my friends-- not by bread alone, but by EVERY word that proceeds out of the mouth of G.o.d, does man live." That was the meaning of their being baptized in the cloud and in the sea. That was the meaning, and only a very small part of the meaning, of their Pa.s.sover. Would you not think, my friends, that I had been speaking rather of our own Baptism, and of our own Supper of the Lord, to which you have been all called to- day, and that I had been telling you the meaning of them?

For when Jesus, the Lord, and King, and Head of mankind, died and rose again, He took away the sin of the world. He was the true Pa.s.sover, the Lamb without spot, slain, as the scripture tells us, for the sins of the whole world. In the Jews' Pa.s.sover, when the angel saw the lamb's blood on the door of the house, he pa.s.sed by, and spared everyone in it. So now. The blood of Jesus, the Lamb of G.o.d, is upon us; and for His sake, G.o.d is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

But the Lord rose again this day. And when He, the Lord, the King, and Head of all men, rose, all men rose in Him. "As in Adam all die," says St. Paul, "even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

Baptism is a sign of that to us, as the going through the Red Sea, and being baptized to Moses in it, was to the Jews. The pa.s.sing of the Red Sea said to the Jews: "You have pa.s.sed now out of your old miserable state of slavery into freedom. The sins which you committed there are blotted out. You are taken into covenant with G.o.d. You are now G.o.d's people, and nothing can lose you this love and care, except your own sins, your own unfaithfulness to Him, your own wilful falling back into the slavish and brutal state from which He has delivered you."

And just so, baptism says to us: "Your sins are forgiven you. You are taken into covenant with G.o.d. You are G.o.d's people, G.o.d's family. You must forget and cast away the old Adam, the old slavish and savage pattern of man, which your Lord died to abolish, the guilt of which He bore for you on His cross; and you must rise to the new Adam, the new pattern of man, which is created after G.o.d in righteousness and true holiness, which the Lord showed forth in His life, and death, and rising again. For now G.o.d looks on you not as a guilty and condemned race of beings, but as a redeemed race, His children, for the sake of Jesus Christ the Lamb of G.o.d, who takes away the sins of the world. You have a right to believe that, as human beings, you are dead with Christ to the old Adam, the old sinful, brutal pattern of man. Baptism is the sign of it to you.

Every child, let it or its parents be who they may, is freely baptized as a sign that all that old pattern of man is washed away, that they can and must have nothing to do with it hence-forward, that it is dead and buried, and they must flee from it and forget it, as they would a corpse.

And the Lord's Supper also is a sign to us that, as human beings, we are risen with Christ, to a new life. A new life is our birthright.

We have a right to live a new life. We have a duty to live a new life. We have a power, if we will, to live a new life; such a life as we never could live if we were left to ourselves; a n.o.ble, just, G.o.dly, manful, Christlike, G.o.dlike life, bred and nourished in us by the Spirit of Christ. That is our right; for we belong to Him who lived that life Himself, and bought us our share in it with His own death and resurrection. That is our duty; for if we share the Lord's blessings, it can only be in order that we may become like the Lord.

Do you fancy that He died to leave us all no better than we are? His death would have had very little effect if that was all. No, says St. Paul; if you have a share in Christ, prove that you believe in your own share by becoming like Christ. You belong to His kingdom, and you must live as His subjects. He has bought for you a new and eternal life, and you must use that life. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above." ... And what are they?

Love, peace, gentleness, mercy, pity, truth, faithfulness, justice, patience, courage, order, industry, duty, obedience... . All, in short, which is like Jesus Christ. For these are heavenly things.

These are above, where Christ sits at G.o.d's right hand. These are the likeness of G.o.d. That is G.o.d's character. Let it be your character likewise.

But again; if it is our right and our duty to be like that, it is also in our power. G.o.d would not have commanded us to be, what He had not given us the power to be. He would not have told us to seek those things which are above, if He had not intended us to find them.

Wherefore it is written: "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; for if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

This is the meaning of that text; namely, that G.o.d will give us the power of living this new and risen life, which we are bound to live.

This is one of the gifts for men, which the scripture tells us that Christ received when He rose from the dead, and ascended up on high.

This is one of the powers of which He spoke, when after His resurrection He said, "That all power was given to Him in heaven and earth." The Lord's Supper is at once a sign of who will give us that gift, and a sign that He will indeed give it us. The Lord's Supper is the pledge and token to us that we all have a share in the likeness of Christ, the true pattern of man; and that if we come and claim our share, He will surely bestow it on us. He will renew, and change, and purify our hearts and characters in us, day by day, into the likeness of Himself. He who is the eternal life of men will nourish us, body, soul, and spirit, with that everlasting life of His, even as our bodies are nourished by that bread and wine. And if you ask me how? When you can tell me why a wheat grain cannot produce an oak, or an acorn a wheat plant; when you can tell me why our bodies are, each of them, the very same bodies which they were ten years ago, though every atom of flesh, and blood, and bone in them has been changed; when, in short, you, or any other living man, can tell me the meaning of those three words, body, life, and growth, then it will be time to ask that question. In the meantime let us believe that He who does such wonders in the life and growth of every blade of gra.s.s, can and will do far greater wonders for the life and growth of us, immortal beings, made in His own likeness, redeemed by His blood, and so believe, and thank, and obey, and wait till another and a n.o.bler life to understand. And if we never understand at all-- what matter, provided the thing be true?

x.x.xIV--CHRISTMAS-DAY

For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be on His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty G.o.d, The Father of an Everlasting age, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice henceforth even forever.--ISAIAH ix. 6, 7.

In the time when the prophet Isaiah wrote this prophecy, everything round him was exactly opposite to his words. The king of Judaea, the prophet's country, was not reigning in righteousness. He was an unrighteous and wicked governor. The princes and great men were not ruling in judgment. They were unjust and covetous; they took bribes, and sold justice for money. They were oppressors, grinding down the poor, and defrauding those below them. So that the weak, and poor, and needy had no one to right them, no one to take their part. There was no man to feel for them, and defend them, and be a hiding-place and a covert for them from their cruel tyrants; no man to comfort and refresh them as rivers of water refresh a dry place, or the shadow of a great rock comforts the sunburnt traveller in the weary deserts.

Neither were these very poor oppressed people of the Jews in a right state of mind. They were ignorant and stupid, given to wors.h.i.+p false G.o.ds. They had eyes, and yet could not use them to see that, as the psalm told us this morning, the heavens declared the glory of G.o.d, and the firmament showed His handiwork. They were wors.h.i.+pping the sun, and moon, and stars, in stead of the Lord G.o.d who made them.

They were brutish too, and would not listen to teaching. They had ears, and yet would not hearken with them to G.o.d's prophets. They were rash, too, living from hand to mouth, discontented, and violent, as ignorant poor people will be in evil times. And they were stammerers--not with their tongue, but with their minds and thoughts.

They were miserable; but they could not tell why. They were full of discontent and longings; but they could not put them into words.

They did not know how to pray, how to open their hearts to G.o.d or to man. They knew of no one who could understand them and their sorrows; they could not understand them themselves, much less put them into words. They were altogether confused and stupefied; just in the same state, in a word, as the poor negro slaves in America, and the heathens ay, and the Christians too, are in, in all the countries of the world which do not know the good news of Christmas- day or have forgotten it and disobeyed it.

But Isaiah had G.o.d's Spirit with him; the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of holiness, righteousness, justice. And that Holy Spirit convinced him of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment, as He convinces every man who gives himself up humbly to G.o.d's teaching.