Sermons on National Subjects Part 16

What was it now which made this speech of the Pharisees so terrible a sin, past all forgiveness?

Of course we all feel that they were very sinful; we shrink with horror from their words as we read them. But why ought they to have done the same? We know, thank G.o.d, who Jesus Christ was. But they did not; at that time, when He was first beginning to preach, they hardly could have known. And mind, we must not say: "They ought to have known that He was the Son of G.o.d by His having the POWER of casting out devils;" for the Lord Himself says that the sons of these Pharisees used to cast them out also, or that the Pharisees believed that they did; and only asks them: "Why do you say of my casting out devils, what you will not say of your sons' casting them out?" Pray bear this in mind; for if you do not--if you keep in your mind the vulgar and unscriptural notion that the Pharisees' sin was not being convinced by the great power of Christ's miracles, you will never understand this story, and you will be very likely to get rid of it altogether as speaking of a sin which does not concern you, and a sin which you cannot commit. Now, if the Pharisees did not know that Jesus was the Son of G.o.d, the Maker and King of the world, as we do, why were they so awfully wicked in saying that He cast out devils by the prince of the devils? Was it anything more than a mistake of theirs? Was it as wicked as crucifying the Lord? Could it be a worse sin to make that one mistake, than to murder the Lord Himself?

And yet it must have been a worse sin. For the Lord prayed for his murderers: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

And these Pharisees, they knew not what they did: and yet the Lord, far from praying for them, told them that even He did not see how such serpents, such a generation of vipers, could escape the d.a.m.nation of h.e.l.l.

It is worth our while to think over this question, and try and find out what made the Pharisees' sin so great. And to do that, it will be wiser for us, first, to find out what the Pharisees' sin was; lest we should sit here this morning, and think them the most wicked wretches who ever trod the earth; and then go away, and before a week is over, commit ourselves the very same sin, or one so fearfully like it, that if other people can see a difference between them, I confess I cannot. And to commit such a sin, my good friends, is a far easier thing to do than some people fancy, especially here in England now.

Now, the worst part of the Pharisees' sin was not, as we are too apt to fancy, their insulting the Lord: but their insulting the Holy Spirit. For what does the Lord Himself say? That all manner of blasphemy as well as sin should be forgiven; that whosever spoke a word against Him, the Son of Man, should be forgiven: but that the unpardonable part of their offence was, that they had blasphemed the Holy Spirit.

And who is the Holy Spirit? The Spirit of holiness. And what is holiness? What are the fruits of holiness? For, as the Lord told the Pharisees on this very occasion, the tree is known by its fruit.

What says St. Paul? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance. Those who do not show these fruits have not G.o.d's Spirit in them. Those who are hard, unloving, proud, quarrelsome, peevish, suspicious, ready to impute bad motives to their neighbours, have not G.o.d's Spirit in them. Those who do show these fruits; who are gentle, forgiving, kind-hearted, ready to do good to others, and believe good of others, have G.o.d's Spirit in them. For these are good fruits, which, as our Lord tells us, can only spring from a good root. Those who have the fruit must have the root, let their doctrines be what they may. Those who have not the fruit cannot have the root, let their doctrines be what they may.

That is the plain truth; and it is high time for preachers to proclaim it boldly, and take the consequences from the Scribes and Pharisees of this generation. That is the plain truth. Let doctrines be what they will, the tree is known by its fruit. The man who does wrong things is bad, and the man who does right things is good. It is a simple thing to have to say, but very few believe it in these days. Most fancy that the men who can talk most neatly and correctly about certain religious doctrines are good, and that those who cannot are bad. That is no new notion. Some people thought so in St. John's time; and what did he say of them? "Little children, let no man deceive you; it is he that doeth righteousness who is righteous, even as G.o.d is righteous." And again: "He who says, I know G.o.d, and keeps not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." St. John was the apostle of love. He was always preaching the love of G.o.d to men, and entreating men to love one another. His own heart was overflowing with love. Yet when it came to such a question as that; when it came to people's pretending to be religious and orthodox, and yet neither obeying G.o.d nor loving their neighbours, he could speak sternly and plainly enough. He does not say: "My dear friends, I am sorry to have to differ from you, but I am afraid you are mistaken;" he says: "You are liars, and there is no truth in you."

Now this was just what the Pharisees had forgotten. They had got to think, as too many have nowadays, that the sign of a man's having G.o.d's Spirit in him, was his agreeing with them in doctrine. But if he did not agree with them; if he would not say the words which they said, and did not belong to their party, and side with them in despising every one who differed from them, it was no matter to them, as they proved by their opinion of Jesus Himself, how good he might be, or how much good he might do; how loving, gentle, patient, benevolent, helping, and caring for poor people; in short, how like G.o.d he was; all that went for nothing if he was not of their party.

For they had forgotten what G.o.d was like. They forgot that G.o.d was love and mercy itself, and that all love and mercy must come from G.o.d; and, that, therefore, no one, let his creed or his doctrine be what it might, could possibly do a loving or merciful thing, but by the grace and inspiration of G.o.d, the Father of mercies. And yet their own prophets of the Old Testament had told them so, when they ascribed the good deeds of heathens to the inspiration of G.o.d, just as much as the good deeds of Jews, and agreed, as they do in many a text, with what St. James, himself a Jew, said afterwards: "Be not deceived; every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." But the Pharisees, like too many nowadays, did not think so. They thought that good and perfect gifts might some of them very well come from below, from the father of darkness and cruelty. They saw the Lord Jesus Christ doing good things; driving out evil, and delivering men from the power of it; healing the sick, cleansing the leper, curing the mad, preaching the gospel to the poor: and yet they saw in that no proof that G.o.d's Spirit was working in Him. Of course, if He had been one of their own party, and had held the same doctrines as they held, they would have praised Him loudly enough, and held Him up as a great saint of their school, and boasted of all His good deeds as proofs of how good their party was, and how its doctrines came from G.o.d. But as long as He was not one of them, His good works went for nothing. They could not see G.o.d's likeness in that loving and merciful character. All His charity and benevolence made them only hate Him the more, because it made them the more afraid that He would draw the people away from them. "And of course," they said to themselves, "whosoever draws people away from us, must be on the devil's side. We know all G.o.d's law and will. No one on earth has anything to teach us. And therefore, as for any one who differs from us, if he cast out devils, it must be because the devil is helping him, for his own purposes, to do it."

In one word, then, the sin of these Pharisees, the unpardonable sin, which ruins all who give themselves up to it, was bigotry; calling right wrong, because it did not suit their party prejudices to call it right. They were fancying themselves very religious and pious, and all the while they did not know right when they saw it; and when the Lord came doing right, they called it wrong, because He did not agree with their doctrines. They fancied they were the only people on earth who knew how to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d perfectly; and yet while they pretended to wors.h.i.+p Him, they did not know what He was like. The Lord Jesus came down, the perfect likeness of G.o.d's glory, and the express pattern of His character, helping, and healing, and delivering the souls and bodies of all poor wretches whom He met; and these Pharisees could not see G.o.d's Spirit in that; and because it was certainly not their own spirit, called it the spirit of a devil, and blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Right and Love.

This was bigotry, the flower and crown of all sins into which man can fall; the worst of all sins, because a man may keep from every other sin with all his might and main, as the Pharisees did, and yet be led by bigotry into almost every one of them without knowing it; into harsh and uncharitable judgment; into anger, clamour, and railing; into misrepresentation and slander; and fancying that the G.o.d of truth needs the help of their lying; perhaps, as has often happened, alas! already, into devilish cruelty to the souls and bodies of men.

The worst of all sins; because a man who has given up his heart to bigotry can have no forgiveness. He cannot; for how can a man be forgiven unless he repent? and how can a bigot repent? how can he confess himself in the wrong, while he fancies himself infallibly in the right? As the Lord said to these very Pharisees: "If ye had been blind, ye had had no sin: but now ye say We see; therefore your sin remaineth."

How can the bigot repent? for repenting is turning to G.o.d; and how can a man turn to G.o.d who does not know where to look for G.o.d, who does not know who G.o.d is, who mistakes the devil for G.o.d, and fancies the all-loving Father to be a taskmaster, and a tyrant, and an accuser, and a respecter of persons, without mercy or care for ninety-nine hundredths of the souls which He has made? How can he find G.o.d? He does not know whom to look for.

How can the bigot repent? for to repent means to turn from wrong to right; and he has lost the very notion of right and wrong, in the midst of all his religion and his fine doctrines. He fancies that right does not mean love, mercy, goodness, patience, but notions like his own; and that wrong does not mean hatred, and evil-speaking, and suspicion, and uncharitableness, and slander, and lying, but notions unlike his own. What he agrees with he thinks is heavenly, and what he disagrees with is of h.e.l.l. He has made his own G.o.d for himself out of himself. His own prejudices are his G.o.d, and he wors.h.i.+ps them right worthily; and if the Lord were to come down on earth again, and would not say the words which he is accustomed to say, it would go hard but he would crucify the Lord again, as the Pharisees did of old.

My friends, there is too much of this bigotry, this blasphemy against G.o.d's Spirit, abroad in England now. May G.o.d keep us all from it!

Pray to Him night and day, to give you His Spirit, that you may not only be loving, charitable, full of good works yourselves, but may be ready to praise and enjoy a good, and loving, and merciful action, whosoever does it, whether he be of your religion or not; for nothing good is done by any living man without the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of the Spirit of G.o.d, the Father of lights, from whom comes down every good and perfect gift. And whosoever tries to escape from that great truth, when he sees a man whose doctrines are wrong doing a right act, by imputing bad motives to him, or saying: "His actions must be evil, however good they may look, because his doctrines are wrong,"--that man is running the risk of committing the very same sin as the Pharisees, and blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, by calling good evil. And be sure, my friends, that whosoever indulges, even in little matters, in hard judgments, and suspicions, and hasty sneers, and loud railing, against men who differ from him in religion, or politics, or in anything else, is deadening his own sense of right and wrong, and sowing the seeds of that same state of mind, which, as the Lord told the Pharisees, is utterly the worst into which any human being can fall.

XL--THE SPIRIT OF BONDAGE

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.-- ROMANS viii. 15.

Some of you here may not understand this text at all. Some of you, perhaps, may misunderstand it; for it is not an easy one. Let us, then, begin, by finding out the meaning of each word in it; and, let us first see what is the meaning of the spirit of bondage unto fear.

Bondage means slavery; and the spirit of bondage means the spirit which makes men look up to G.o.d as slaves do to their taskmaster.

Now, a slave obeys his master from fear only; not from love or grat.i.tude. He knows that his master is stronger than he is, and he dreads being beaten and punished by him; and therefore, he obeys him only by compulsion, not of his own good will. This is the spirit of bondage; the slavish, superst.i.tious spirit in religion, into which all men fall, in proportion as they are mean, and sinful, and carnal, fond of indulging themselves, and bearing no love to G.o.d or right things. They know that G.o.d is stronger than they; they are afraid that G.o.d will take away comforts from them if they offend Him; they have been taught that He will cast them into endless torment if they offend Him; and, therefore, they are afraid to do wrong. They love what is wrong, and would like to do it; but they dare not, for fear of G.o.d's punishment. They do not really fear G.o.d; they only fear punishment, misfortune, death, and h.e.l.l. That is better, perhaps, than no religion at all. But it is not the faith which WE ought to have.

In this way the old heathens lived: loving sin and not holiness, and yet continually tormented with the fear of being punished for the very sins which they loved; looking up to G.o.d as a stern taskmaster; fancying Him as proud, and selfish, and revengeful as themselves; trying one day to quiet that wrath of His which they knew they deserved, by all sorts of flatteries and sacrifices to Him; and the next day trying to fancy that He was as sinful as themselves, and was well-pleased to see them sinful too. And yet they could not keep that lie in their hearts; G.o.d's light, which lights every man who comes into the world, was too bright for them, and shone into their consciences, and showed them that the wages of sin was death. The law of G.o.d, St. Paul tells us, was written in their hearts; and how much soever, poor creatures, they might try to blot it out and forget it, yet it would rise up in judgment against them, day by day, night by night, convincing them of sin. So they in their terror sold themselves to false priests, who pretended to know of plans for helping them to escape from this angry G.o.d, and gave themselves up to superst.i.tions, till they even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to devils, in some sort of confused hope of buying themselves off from misery and ruin.

And in the same way the Jews lived, for the most part, before the Lord Jesus came in the flesh of man. Not so viciously and wickedly, of course, because the law of Moses was holy, and just, and good; the law which the Lord Himself had given them, because it was the best for them then; because they were too sinful, and slavish, and stupid, for anything better. But, as St. Paul says, Moses's law could not give them life, any more than any other law can. That is, it could not make them righteous and good; it could not change their hearts and lives; it could only keep them from outward wrong-doing by threats and promises, saying: "Thou shalt not." It could, at best, only show them how sinful their own hearts were; how little they loved what G.o.d commanded; how little they desired what He promised; and so it made them feel more and more that they were guilty, unworthy to look up to a holy G.o.d, deserving His anger and punishment, worthy to die for their sins; and thus by the law came the knowledge of sin, a deeper feeling of guilt, and shame, and slavish dread of G.o.d, as St. Paul sets forth, with wonderful wisdom, in the seventh chapter of Romans.

Now, let us consider the latter half of the text. "But ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father."

What is this adoption? St. Paul tells us in the beginning of the fourth chapter of his epistle to the Galatians. He says: As long as a man's heir is a child, and under age, there is no difference in law between him and a slave. He is his father's property. He must obey his father, whether he chooses or not; and he is under tutors and governors, until the time appointed by his father; that is, until he comes of age, as we call it. Then he becomes his own master. He can inherit and possess property of his own after that. And from that time forth the law does not bind him to obey his father; if he obeys him it is of his own free will, because he loves, and trusts, and reverences his father.

Now, St. Paul says, this is the case with us. When we were infants, we were in bondage under the elements of the world; kept straight, as children are, by rules which they cannot understand, by the fear of punishment which they cannot escape, with no more power to resist their father than slaves have to resist their master. But when the fulness of time was come, G.o.d sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under a law, that He might redeem those who were under a law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

As much as to say: You were G.o.d's CHILDREN all along: but now you are more; you are G.o.d's sons. You have arrived at man's estate; you are men in body and in mind; you are to be men in spirit, men in life. You are to look up to the great G.o.d who made heaven and earth, and know, glorious thought! that He is as truly your Father as the men whose earthly sons you call yourselves. And if you do this, He will give you the Spirit of adoption, and you shall be able to call Him Father with your hearts, as well as with your lips; you shall know and feel that He is your Father; that He has been loving, watching, educating, leading you home to Him all the while that you were wandering in ignorance of Him, in childish self-will, and greediness after pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt. He will give you His Spirit to make you behave like His sons, to obey Him of your own free will, from love, and grat.i.tude, and honour, and filial reverence. He will make you love what He loves, and hate what He hates. He will give you clear consciences and free hearts, to fear nothing on earth or in heaven, but the shame and ingrat.i.tude of disobeying your Father.

The Spirit of adoption, by which you look up to G.o.d as your Father, is your right. He has given it to you, and nothing but your own want of faith, and wilful turning back to cowardly superst.i.tion, and to the wilful sins which go before superst.i.tion, and come after it, can take it from you. So said St. Paul to the Romans and the Galatians, and so I have a right, ay, and a bounden duty, to say to every man and woman in this church this day.

For, my dear friends, if you ask me, what has this to do with us?

Has it not everything to do with us? Whether we are leading good lives, or middling lives, or utterly bad worthless lives, has it not everything to do with us? Who is there here who has not at times said to himself: "G.o.d so holy, and pure, and glorious; while I am so unjust, and unclean, and mean! And G.o.d so great and powerful; while I am so small and weak! What shall I do? Does not G.o.d hate and despise me? Will He not take from me all which I love best? Will He not hurl me into endless torment when I die? How can I escape from Him? Wretched man that I am, I cannot escape from Him! How, then, can I turn away His hate? How can I make Him change His mind? How can I soothe Him and appease Him? What shall I do to escape h.e.l.l- fire?"

Did you ever have such thoughts? But, did you find those thoughts, that slavish terror of G.o.d's wrath, that dread of h.e.l.l, made you any BETTER men? I never did. I never saw them make any human being better. Unless you go beyond them--as far beyond them as heaven is beyond h.e.l.l, as far above them as a free son is above a miserable crouching slave, they will do you more harm than good. For this is all that I have seen come of them: That all this spirit of bondage, this slavish terror, instead of bringing a man nearer to G.o.d, only drove him further from G.o.d. It did not make him hate what was wrong; it only made him dread the punishment of it. And then, when the first burst of fear cooled down, he began to say to himself: "I can never atone for my sins. I can never win back G.o.d to love me. What is done, is done. If I cannot escape punishment, let me be at least as happy as I can while it lasts. If it does not come to-day, it will come to-morrow. Let me alone, thou tormenting conscience. Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die!" And so back rushed the poor creature into all his wrong-doing again, and fell most probably deeper than ever into the mire, because a certain feeling of desperation and defiance rose up in him, till he began to fancy that his terror was all a dream--a foolish accidental rising up of old superst.i.tious words which he learnt from his mother or his nurse; and he tried to forget it all, and did forget it--G.o.d help him!--and his latter end was worse than his first.

How then shall a man escape shame and misery, and an evil conscience, and rise out of these sins of his? For do it he must. The wages of sin is death--death to body and soul; and from sin he must escape.

There is but one way, my friends. There never was but one way.

Believe the text, and therefore believe the warrant of your Baptism.

Believe the message of your Confirmation.

Your baptism says to you, G.o.d does NOT hate you, be you the greatest sinner on earth. He does not hate you. He loves you; for you are His child. He hateth nothing that He hath made. He willeth not the death of a sinner, but that ALL should come to be saved. And your baptism is the sign of that to you. But G.o.d hates everything that He has not made; for everything which He has not made is bad; and He has made all things but sin; and therefore He hates sin, and, loving you, wishes to raise you out of sin; and baptism is the sign of that also.

Man was made originally in the image and likeness of G.o.d, and of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, the express image of G.o.d the Father; and therefore everything which is sinful is unmanly, and everything which is truly manful, and worthy of a man, is like Jesus Christ; and G.o.d's will is, that you should rise out of all these unmanly sins, to a truly manful life--a life like the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. And baptism is G.o.d's sign of this also. That is the meaning of the words in the Baptism Service which tell you that you were baptised into Jesus Christ, that you might put off the old man--the sinful, slavish, selfish, unmanly pattern of life, which we all lead by nature; and put on the new man--the holy and n.o.ble, righteous and loving pattern of life, which is the likeness of the Lord Jesus.

That is the message of your baptism to you; that you are G.o.d's children, and that G.o.d's will and wish is that you should grow up to become His SONS, to serve Him lovingly, trustingly, manfully; and that He can and will give you power to do so--ay, that He has given you that power already, if you will but claim it and use it. But you must claim it and use it, because you are meant not merely to be G.o.d's wilful, ignorant, selfish children, obeying Him from mere fear of the rod; but to be His willing, loving, loyal sons. And that is the message which Confirmation brings you. Baptism says: You are G.o.d's child, whether you know it or not. Confirmation says: Yes; but now you are to know it, and to claim your rights as His sons, of full age, reasonable and self-governing.

Baptism says: You are regenerated and born from above, by water and the Holy Spirit. Confirmation answers: True, most true; but there is no use in a child's being born, if it never comes to man's estate, but remains a stunted idiot.

Baptism says: You may and ought to become more or less such a man as the Lord Jesus was. Confirmation says: You can become such; for you are no longer children; you are grown to man's estate in body, you can grow to man's estate in soul if you will. G.o.d's Spirit is with you, to show you all things in their true light; to teach you to value them or despise them as you ought; to teach you to love what He loves, and hate what He hates. G.o.d wishes you no longer to be merely His children, obeying Him you know not why; still less His slaves, obeying Him from mere brute coward fear, and then breaking loose the moment that you forget Him, and fancy that His eye is not on you: but He wishes you to be His sons; to claim the right and the power which He has given you to trample your sins under foot; to rise up by the strength which G.o.d your Father will surely give to those who ask Him; and so to be new men, free men, true men, who do look boldly up to G.o.d, knowing that, however wicked they may have been, and however weak they are still, G.o.d's love belongs to them, G.o.d's help belongs to them, and that those who trust in Him shall never be confounded, but shall go on from strength to strength to the measure of the stature of a perfect man, to the n.o.ble likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

For this is the message of the blessed sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, to which you have been all called this day. That sacrament tells you that in spite of all your daily sins and failings, you can still look up to G.o.d as your Father; to the Lord Jesus Christ as your life; to the Holy Spirit as your guide and your inspirer; that though you be prodigal sons, your Father's house is still open to you, your Father's eternal love ready to meet you afar off, the moment that you cry from your heart: "Father, I have sinned;" and that you must be converted and turn back to G.o.d your Father, not merely once for all at Confirmation, or at any other time, but weekly, daily, hourly, as often as you forget and disobey Him; and that he will receive you. This is the message of the blessed sacrament, that though you cannot come there trusting in your own righteousness, you can come trusting in His manifold and great mercies; that though you are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under His table, yet He is the same Lord whose property is ever to have mercy; that He will, as surely as He has appointed that sign of the bread and wine, grant you so to eat and drink that spiritual flesh and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the life of the world, that your sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, and your souls washed in His most precious blood, and that you may dwell in Him, and He in you, for ever.

XLI--THE FALL

As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death pa.s.sed on all men, for that all have sinned.--ROMANS v. 12.

We have been reading the history of Adam's fall. With that fall we have all to do; for we all feel the fruits of it in the sinful corruptions which we bring into the world with us. And more, every fall which we have is like Adam's fall: every time we fall into wilful sin, we do what Adam did, and act over again, each of us many times in our lives, that which he first acted in the garden of Paradise. At least, all mankind suffer for something. Look at the sickness, death, bloodshed, oppression, spite, and cruelty, with which the world is so full now, of which it has been full, as we know but too well from history, ever since Adam's time. The world is full of misery, there is no denying that. How did that come? It must have come somehow. There must be some reason for all this sorrow.

The Bible tells us a reason for it. If anyone does not like the Bible reason, he is bound to find a better reason. But what if the Bible reason, the story of Adam's fall, be the only rational and sensible explanation which ever has been, or ever will be given, of the way in which death and misery came among men?

Some people will say: What puzzle is there in it? All animals die, why should not man? All animals fight and devour each other, why should not man do so too? But why need we suppose that man is fallen? Why should he not have been meant by nature to be just what he is? Some scholars who fancy themselves wise, and think that they know better than the Bible, will say that now, and pride themselves on having said a very fine thing; ignorant men, too, often are led into the same mistake, and are willing enough to say: "What if we are brutish, and savage, and ignorant, and spiteful, indulging ourselves, hating and quarrelling with each other? G.o.d made us what we are, and we cannot help it." But there is a voice in the heart of every man, and just in proportion as a man is a man, and not a beast and a savage, that voice cries in his heart more loudly: No; G.o.d did not make you what you are. You are not meant to be what you are, but something better. You are not meant to fight and devour each other as the animals do; for you are meant to be better than they. You are not meant to die as the animals do; for you feel something in you which cannot die, which hates death. You may try to be a mere savage and a beast, but you cannot be content to be so. And yet you feel ready to fall lower, and get more and more brutish. What can be the reason? There must be something wrong about men, something diseased and corrupt in them, or they would not have this continual discontent with themselves for being no better than they are; this continual hankering and longing after some happiness, some knowledge, some good and n.o.ble state which they do not see round them, and never have felt in themselves. Man must have fallen, fallen from some good and right state into which he was put at first, and for which he is hankering and craving now. There must be an original sin in him; that is, a sin belonging to his origin, his race, his breed, as we say, which has been handed down from father to son; an original sin as the church calls it. And I believe firmly that the heart of man, even among savages, bears witness to the truth of that doctrine, and confesses that we are fallen beings, let false philosophers try as they will to persuade us that we are not.

Then, again, there are another set of people, princ.i.p.ally easy, well- to-do, respectable people, who run into another mistake, the same into which the Pelagians did in old time. They think: "Man is not fallen. Every man is born into the world quite good enough, if he chose to remain good. Every man can keep G.o.d's laws if he likes, or at all events keep them well enough." As for his having a sinful nature which he got from Adam, they do not believe that really, though often they might not like to say so openly. They think: "Adam fell, and he was punished; and if I fall I shall be punished; but Adam's sin is nothing to me, and has not hurt me. I can be just as good and right as Adam was, if I like." That is a comfortable doctrine enough for easy-going well-to-do folks, who have but few trials, and few temptations, and who love little because little has been forgiven them. But what comfort is there in that for poor sinners, who feel sinful and base pa.s.sions dragging them down, and making them brutish and miserable, and yet feel that they cannot conquer their sins of themselves, cannot help doing wrong, all the while they know that it is wrong? They feel that they have something more in them than a will and power to do what they choose. They feel that they have a sinful nature which keeps their will and reason in slavery, and makes sin a hard bondage, a miserable prison-house, from which they cannot escape. In short, they feel and know that they are fallen. Small comfort, too, to every thinking man, who looks upon the great nations of savages, which have lived, and live still, upon G.o.d's earth, and sees how, so far from being able to do right if they choose, they go on from father to son, generation after generation, doing wrong, more and more, whether they like or not; how they become more and more children of wrath, given up to fierce wars, and cruel revenge, and violent pa.s.sions, all their thought, and talk, and study, being to kill and to fight; how they become more and more children of darkness, forgetting more and more the laws of right and wrong, becoming stupid and ignorant, until they lose the very knowledge of how to provide themselves with houses, clothes, fire, or even to till the ground, and end in feeding on roots and garbage, like the beasts which perish. And how, too, long before they fall into that state, death works in them. How, the lower they fall, and the more they yield to their original sin and their corrupt nature, they die out. By wars with each other; by murdering their own children, to avoid the trouble of rearing them; by diseases which they know not how to cure, and which they too often bring on themselves by their own brutishness; by bad food, and exposure to the weather, they die out, and perish off the face of the earth, fulfilling the Lord's words to Adam: "Thou shalt surely die." I do not say that their souls go to h.e.l.l. The Bible tells us nothing of where they go to. G.o.d's mercy is boundless. And the Bible tells us that sin is not imputed where there is no law, as there is none among them. So we may have hope for them, and leave them in G.o.d's hand.

But what can we hope for them who are utterly dead in trespa.s.ses and sins? Well for them, if, having fallen to the likeness of the brutes, they perish with the brutes. I fancy if you, as some may, ever go to Australia, and there see the wretched black people, who are dying out there, faster and faster, year by year, after having fallen lower than the brutes, then you will understand what original sin may bring a man to, what it would have brought us to, had not G.o.d in His mercy raised us and our forefathers up from that fearful down- hill course, when we were on it fifteen hundred years ago.

And another thing which shows that these poor savages are not as G.o.d intended them to be, but are falling, generation after generation, by the working of original sin, is, that they, almost all of them, show signs of having been better off long ago. Many, like the South Sea Islanders, have curious arts remaining among them in spite of their brutish ignorance, which they could only have learned when they were far more clever and civilised than they are now. And almost all of them have some sad remembrance, handed down from father to son, kept up in songs and foolish tales, of having been richer, and more prosperous, and more numerous, a long while ago. They will confess to you, if you ask them, that they are worse than their fathers--that they are going down, dying out--that the G.o.ds are angry with them, as they say. The Lord have mercy upon them! But what is, to my mind, the most awful part of the matter remains yet to be told--and it is this: That man may actually fall by original sin too low to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, and be recovered again by it. For the negroes of Africa and the West Indies, though they have fallen very low, have not fallen too low for the gospel. They have still understanding left to take it in, and conscience, and sense of right and wrong enough left to embrace it; thousands of them do embrace it, and are received unto righteousness, and lead such lives as would shame many a white Englishman, born and bred under the gospel.

But the black people in Australia, who are exactly of the same race as the African negroes, cannot take in the gospel. They seem to have become too stupid to understand it; they seem to have lost the sense of sin and of righteousness too completely to care about it. All attempts to bring them to a knowledge of the true G.o.d have as yet failed utterly. G.o.d's grace is all-powerful; He is no respecter of persons; and He may yet, by some great act of His wisdom, quicken the dead souls of these poor brutes in human shape. But, as far as we can see, there is no hope for them: but, like the Canaanites of old, they must perish off the face of the earth, as brute beasts.

I have said so much to show you that man is fallen; that there is original sin, an inclination to sin and fall, sink down lower and lower, in man. Now comes the question: What is this fall of man? I said that the Bible tells us rationally enough. And I have also made use several times of words, which may have hinted to some of you already what Adam's fall was. I have spoken of the likeness of the beasts, and of men becoming like beasts by original sin. And this is why I said it.

If you want to understand what Adam's fall was, you must understand what he fell from, and what he fell to. That is plain.