Sermons on National Subjects

But we may fall from grace; and then what good will our baptism be to us?  We shall be lost, just as if we had never been baptized.

My friends, if, though the sun was shining in the sky, you shut your eyes close, and kept out the light, what use would the sunlight be to you?  You would stumble, and fall, and come to harm, as certainly as in the darkest night.  But would the sun go out of the sky, my friends, because you were unwise enough to shut your eyes to it?  The sun would still be there, shining as bright as ever.  You would have only to be reasonable and to open your eyes, and you would see your way again as well as ever.

So it is with holy baptism.  In it we were made members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.  God’s love is above us and around us, like a warm, bright, life-giving sun.  We may shut our eyes to it, but it is there still.  We may disbelieve our baptism covenant, but it is true still.  We are children of God; and nothing that we can do, no sin, no unfaithfulness of ours, can make us anything else.  We can no more become not God’s children, than a child can become not his own father’s son.  But this we can do by sinning, by disbelieving that we are God’s children, by behaving as the devil’s children when we are God’s; we can believe ourselves not God’s children when we are; we can try to be what we are not; we can enter into a lie, and into the misery to which all lies lead; we can walk in darkness, and stumble, and fall, when all the while we are children of the light, and have only to open our eyes to walk in the light.  Ay, we can shut our eyes to the light so long, that at last we forget that there is any light at all; and that is the gate of hell.  We may wrap ourselves up in our selfishness, in selfish pleasures, selfish cunning, selfish covetousness, and selfish pride, till we forget that there is anything better for us than selfishness, till we forget that God is love, and that we His children are meant to be loving even as He is loving; and that also is the gate of hell.  And worst and darkest of all, when in that stupid, sinful, loveless state of mind, God’s loving Spirit still strives and pleads with us, and tries to awaken us, and terrify us with the sight of the everlasting misery and ruin into which we have thrown ourselves, we may turn those pleadings of God’s Spirit, by our own evil wills, into a darker curse than all which have gone before.  We may refuse to believe that God is love, and fancy Him as hard, and cruel, and proud, and spiteful, and unloving as we ourselves are.  We may refuse, though Scripture, Prayer-book, sacraments, preachers, assure us of it, that God is our Father still; and deny His covenant of baptism, and blaspheme His holy name, by fancying Him our tyrant and taskmaster, who hates us, and willeth the death of a sinner, and has pleasure in the death of him that dieth.  And then we may behave according to the lie which we ourselves have invented, and all sorts of inventions of our own to escape God’s wrath, when, in reality, it is He who is wishing to turn His wrath away from us; and to win back His favour, when, in reality, it is not we who are out of favour with Him, but He who is out of favour with us, who dread Him and shrink from Him; we may try to deliver ourselves from Him, when all the while it is He, the very God whom we are dreading and flying from, who alone is able and willing to deliver us; and with all our fears, and self-tormentings, and faithless terrors, and blasphemings of God by fancying Him the very opposite to what He has declared Himself, we shall get no peace of conscience, no deliverance from sins, or from the fear of punishment, but only a fearful and fiery looking forward to judgment, which is hell.  That is superstition; hell on earth; when men have so utterly forgotten the likeness of God, which He manifested in His Son Jesus Christ, that they look on Him as a stern and dreadful taskmaster, a tyrant, and not a deliverer.  Hell on earth, which may and must lead to hell hereafter; a hell of fear, and doubt, and hatred of Him who is all lovely; the hell whereof it is written, that its worst torment is being cast out from the sight of God: unless the hapless sinner opens his eye and believes the covenant of his baptism, and sees that God cannot lie, God cannot change, cannot break His covenant, cannot alter His love; that though he have left his Father’s house, and wandered into far countries, and wasted his Father’s substance in riotous living, he is still his Father’s son, his Father’s house is still where it was from the beginning, his Father’s heart still what it was from the beginning; and so arises and goes back to his Father’s house, confessing that he is no more worthy to be called His son, willing to be only as one of His hired servants; and then—sees not the stern countenance, the cruel punishments which he dreaded: but—“While he was yet afar off, his Father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him!”

And if, in our sins, our only hope of comfort, and peace, and strength, lies in remembering our baptismal covenant, and being sure and certain that though we have changed, God has not; that though we are dark, God’s love shines bright and clear for ever, how much more when the dark day of affliction comes?  Why should I speak of this and that affliction?  Each heart knows its own bitterness; each soul has its own sorrow; each man’s life has its dark days of storm and tempest, when all his joys seem flown away by some sudden blast of ill-fortune, and the desire of his eyes is taken from him, and all his hopes and plans, all which he intended to do or to enjoy, are hid with blinding mist, so that he cannot see his way before him, and knows not whither to go, and whither to flee for help; when faith in God seems broken up for the moment, when he feels no strength, no will, no purpose, and knows not what to determine, what to do, what to believe, what to care for; when the very earth seems reeling under his feet, and the fountains of the abyss are broken up: then let him think of God’s covenant, and take heart; let him think of his baptism, and be at peace.  Is the sun’s warmth perished out of the sky, because the storm is cold with hail and bitter winds?  Is God’s love changed, because we cannot feel it in our trouble?  Is the sun’s light perished out of the sky, because the world is black with cloud and mist?  Has God forgotten to give light to suffering souls, because we cannot see our way for a few short days of perplexity?

For this is the gospel, this is the message which we have received from God, to preach to every sad and desolate heart on earth, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.  That God is love, and in Him there is no cruelty at all.  That God is one, and in Him there is no change at all.  And therefore, we all, the most ignorant of us as well as the wisest, the most sinful of us as well as the holiest, the saddest and most wretched of us as well as the happiest, have a right to join in that Litany which is offered up here thrice every week during the time of Lent, and to call upon God to deliver us and all mankind, not merely because we wish to be delivered from evil, but because God wishes to deliver us from evil.  If we pray that Litany in any dark dread of God, in doubt of His love and goodwill towards us, like terrified slaves crying out to a hard taskmaster, and entreating him not to torment them, we do not pray that Litany aright; we do not pray it at all.  For it asks God not to leave us alone, but to come to us; not to stop punishing us, but actually Himself to deliver us, to defend us, to set us free.  Therefore it begins by calling on God the Father, because He is our Father; on God the Son, because He has already redeemed and bought us for His own; on God the Holy Spirit, because He has been striving with our wilful hearts from our youth up till now, lovingly desiring to teach us, to change us, to sanctify us.  Therefore it calls on the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three Persons and one God, because the Son does not love us better than the Father does, or than the Holy Spirit does, but in the life and death of the Man Christ Jesus, whom we call on to deliver us by His birth, His baptism, His death, His resurrection, by all that His manhood did and suffered here on earth, in His life and death, I say, were shown forth bodily the glory, and condescension, and love, and goodwill of the fulness of the Godhead, of all three Persons of the one and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Therefore we may pray boldly to Him to spare us, because we know that we are already His people, already redeemed with his most precious blood, already declared by holy baptism to be bound to Him in an everlasting covenant.  Therefore we may pray boldly to Him not to be angry with us for ever, because we know that He desires to bless us for ever, if we will only let Him; if we will only let His love have free course, and not shut our hearts to it, and turn our backs upon it.  Therefore we can ask Him to deliver us in all time of our tribulation and misery; in all time of the still more dangerous temptations which wealth and prosperity bring with them; in the hour of death, whether of our own death or the death of those we love; in the day of judgment, whereof it is written: “It is God who justifieth us, who is he that condemneth?  It is Christ who died, yea rather who is risen again, who even now maketh intercession for us.”  To that boundless love of God which He showed forth in the life of Christ Jesus; to that utter and perfect will to deliver us, which God showed forth in the death of Christ Jesus, when the Father spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us; to that boundless love we may trust ourselves, our fortunes, our families, our bodies, our souls, the souls of those we love.  Trusting in that great love, we may pray in that Litany for deliverance; to be delivered from distress and accidents, from all sins which drag us down, and make us miserable, ashamed, confused, terrified, selfish, hateful, and hating each other.  We may pray to be delivered from evil, because God is righteousness, and hates evil.  We may pray to be delivered from our sins, because God is righteousness, and hates our sins.  We may pray for the Queen, her ministers, her parliament, because God’s love and care is over them; for all orders and ranks of men, whether laymen or clergymen, high or low, in God’s holy church; for all who are afflicted and desolate; for all who are wandering in ignorance, and mistakes, and sin; ay, for all mankind, for God loves them all, the Son of God has bought them all with His most precious blood.  And however dark, and sad, and sinful the world may seem around us; however dark, and sad, and sinful our own hearts may be within us, we may find comfort in that Litany, and pour out in it our sorrows and our fears, if we begin only as it begins, with the thought of God who is righteousness, God who is love, God who is the Deliverer.  And then, as the rainbow reflects the sunbeams for a sign and token that the sun is shining, though we see it not; so will that blessed Litany, with its sacred name of God, its calls to Him who was born of the Virgin Mary, and crucified under Pontius Pilate; its entreaties to God to deliver us, because He is a deliverer; to hear us, and send us good, because He is a good Lord Himself; its remembrances of the noble works which God did in our fathers’ days, and in the old time before them; its noble declaration that God does not despise the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of a humble spirit, and that it is the very glory of His name to turn from us those evils which we most justly have deserved—that Litany, I say, will be like a rainbow declaring to our dark and stormy hearts that the sun is shining still above the clouds; that over and above us, and all mankind, and all the changes and chances of this mortal life, is the still bright sunshine, the life-giving warmth of the Sun of Righteousness, the absolute eternal love of our Father who is in heaven, who, as he has declared by the mouth of His only-begotten Son, is perfect in this, that He does not deal with us after our sins, nor reward us according to our iniquities, but is good to the unthankful and the evil, sending His rain alike upon the just and on the unjust, and making His sun to shine alike upon the evil and the good.

XLIII.

THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS

Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.—1 Timothy iii. 16.

St. Paul here sums up in one verse the whole of Christian truth.  He gives us in a few words what he says is the great mystery of godliness.

Now, men had been inventing for themselves all kinds of mysteries of godliness; all sorts of mysterious and wonderful notions about God; all sorts of mysterious and strange ceremonies, and ways of pleasing God, or turning away His anger.

And Christian men are apt to do so also, as well as those old heathens.  They feel that they are very mysterious and wonderful beings themselves, simply because they are men.  They say to themselves: “How strange that I should have a body of flesh and blood, and appetites and passions, like the animals, and yet that I should have an immortal spirit in me.  How strange this notion of duty which I have, and which the other animals have not; this notion of its being right to do some things, and wrong to do others!  From whence did that notion come?  And again, this strange notion which I have, and cannot help having, that I ought to be like God: and yet I do not know what God is like.  From whence did that notion come?”

Again: “I fancy that God ought to be good.  But how do I know that He really is good?  I see the world full of injustice, and misery, and death.  How do I know that this is not God’s doing, God’s fault in some way?”

Again, says a man to himself: “I have a fair right to believe that mankind are not the only persons in the universe—that there are other beings beside God whom I cannot see.  I call them angels.  I hardly know what I mean by that.  The really important question about them to me is: Will they do me harm?  Can they do me good?  Are they stronger than I?—Ought I not to fear them, to try to please them, to keep them favourable to me?”

Again, he asks: “Does God care whether I know what is right?  Does God care to teach me about Himself?  Is God desirous that I should do my duty?  For if He does not care about my being good, why should I care about it?”

Again, he asks: “But if I knew my duty, might I not find it something too far-fetched, too difficult, for poor simple folk to do: so that I should be forced to leave a right life to great scholars, and to rich people, or to people of a very devout delicate temper of mind, who have a natural turn that way?”

And last of all: “Even if I did struggle to do right; even if I gave up everything for the sake of doing right; how do I know that it will profit me to do so?  I shall die as every man dies, and then what will become of me?  Shall I be a man still, or only—horrible thought!—some sort of empty ghost, a spirit without body, of which I dream, and shudder while I dream of it?”

Men in all ages, heathens and Christians, have been puzzled by such thoughts as these, as soon as they began to feel that there was a world which they could not see, as well as a world which they could see; a spiritual world, wherein God the Spirit, and their own spirits, and spiritual things, such as right, wrong, duty, reason, love, dwell for ever; and a strange hidden duty on all men to obey that unseen God, and the laws of that spiritual world; in short a mystery of godliness.

Then they have tried to answer these questions for themselves; and have run thereby into all manner of follies and superstitions, and often, too, into devilish cruelties, in the hope of pleasing God according to some mystery of godliness of their own invention.

But to each of these puzzles St. Paul gives an answer in the text.  Let us take them each in its order, and you will see what I mean.

The first puzzle was: How is it that while I am like the animals in some things, and yet feel as if I ought to be, and can be, like God in other things?  How is it that I feel two powers in me; one dragging me downward to make me lower than the beasts, the other lifting me upwards—I dare not think whither?  It seems to me to be my body, my bodily appetites and tempers which drag me down.  Is my body me, part of me, or a thing I should be ashamed of, and long to be rid of?  I fancy that I can be like God.  But can my body be like God?  Must I not crush it, neglect it, get rid of it before I can follow the good instinct which draws me upward?

To which St. Paul told Timothy to answer: God was manifest in the flesh.  God sent down His only-begotten Son, co-equal and co-eternal with Himself, very God of very God, the very same person who had been putting into men’s minds those two notions of which we spoke, that there is a right and a wrong, and that men ought to be like God; Him the Father sent into the world that He might be born, and live, and die, and rise again, as a man; that so men might see from His example, manifestly and plainly, what God was like, and what man ought to be like.  And so Jesus Christ was God, manifested in the flesh.

Now we do know what God is like.  We know that He is so like man, that He can take upon Him man’s flesh and blood without changing, or lowering, or defiling Himself.  That proves that man must have been originally made in God’s likeness; that man’s being fallen, means man’s falling from the likeness of God, and taking up instead with the likeness of the brutes which perish; that the fault cannot be in our bodies, but in our spirits which have yielded to our bodies, and become their slaves instead of their masters, as Christ’s Spirit was master of His body.  But the Son of God, by being born and living as a man, showed us that we are not fallen past hope, not fallen so low that we cannot rise again.  He showed that though mankind are sinful, yet they need not be sinful; for He was a man as exactly, and perfectly, and entirely as we are, and yet in Him was no sin.  So He showed that brutishness and sinfulness is not our proper state, but our disease and our fall; and a disease of which we can be cured, a fall out of which we can rise and be renewed into the true and real pattern of mankind, the new Adam, Jesus the sinless Son of Man and Son of God.

The next question, I said, that rose in men’s mind was: “How do I know that God is good, as I fancy sometimes that He must be?  I see the world full of sin, and injustice, and misery, and death.  Perhaps that is God’s doing, God’s fault.”  That is a common puzzle enough, and a sad and fearful one.  The sin and the misery and the death are here.  If God did not bring it here, yet why did He let it come here?  He could have stopped if He would, and kept out all this wretchedness: why did He not?  Was He just or loving in letting sin into the world?

To all which St. Paul answers: “God was justified in the Spirit.”

You do not see what that has to do with it?  Then let me show you.

To be justified means to be shown and proved to be just, righteous.  Now what justified God to man was the Spirit of God, as He showed Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ.  For when God became man and dwelt among men, what sort of works were His?  What was His conduct, His character; of what sort of spirit did He show Himself to be?  He went, we read, doing good, for God was with Him.  Not of His own will, but to do His Father’s will, and because He was filled without measure by the Spirit of God, He did good, He healed the sick, He rebuked the proud and self-conceited hypocrite, He proclaimed pardon and mercy to the broken-hearted sinner, wearied and worn out by the burden of his sins.  Thus, in every action of His life, He was fighting against evil and misery, and conquering it; and so showing that God hates evil and misery, and that the evil and the misery in the world are here against God’s will.  Strange as it may seem to have to say it, so it is.  Jesus Christ showed that howsoever sin and sorrow came into the world, it is God’s will and purpose to root them out of the world, and that He is righteous, He is loving, He is merciful, He does and will fight against evil, for those who are crushed by it; and help poor sufferers always when they call upon Him, and often, often, of His most undeserved condescension and free grace, when they are forgetting and disobeying Him.  And so by the good, and loving, and just spirit which Jesus showed, God was justified before men, and showed to be a God of goodness and justice.

The next puzzle, I said, was about angels and spirits, whether we need to pray to them to help us, and not to hurt us.  St. Paul answers: God, when He was manifested in the flesh of a man, was seen by these angels.  And that is enough for us.  They saw the Lord God condescend to be born in a stable, to live as a poor man, to die on the cross.  They saw that His will to man was love.  And they do His will.  And therefore they love men, they help men, they minister to men, because they follow the Lord’s example, and do the will of their Father in Heaven, even as we ought to do it on earth.  Therefore we have no need to fear them, for they love us already.  And, on the other hand, we have no need to pray to them to help us, for they know already that it is their duty to help us.  They know that the Son of God has put on us a higher honour than He ever put on them; for He took not on Him the nature of angels, He took on Him the nature of man; and thus, though man was made a little lower than the angels, yet by Christ’s taking man’s nature, man is crowned with a glory and honour higher than the angels.  Know ye not, says St. Paul, that we shall judge angels?  And the angels, as they told St. John, are our fellow-servants, not our masters; and they know that; for they saw the Son of God doing utterly His Father’s will, and therefore they know that their duty is to do their Father’s will also; not to do their own wills, and set themselves up as our masters, to be pleaded with by us.  They saw the Son of God take our nature on Him, when they sang to the shepherds on the first Christmas night: “Peace on earth, and good-will toward men;” and therefore they look on us with love and honour, because we wear the human nature which Christ their Master wore, and are partakers of the Holy Spirit of God, even as they are.  For no angel or archangel could do a right thing, any more than we, except by the Holy Spirit of God.  And that Holy Spirit is bestowed on the poorest man who asks for it, as freely as upon the highest of the heavenly host.

And this leads us on to the next puzzle of which I spoke: Men were apt, and are apt now, to say to themselves: Does God care whether I know what is right?  Does God care to teach me about Himself?  Is God desirous that I should do my duty?  For if He does not care about my being good, why should I care about it?

To this St. Paul answers: “God, who was manifest in the flesh, was preached to the Gentiles.”

God does care that men should know about God; for He loves them.  He yearns after them as a father after his children, and He knows that to know God, to know the truth about God, is the beginning of all wisdom, the root of all safety and honour and happiness.  He willeth not that any should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth.  And, therefore, when the Son of God died for our sins, He did not stop at that great deed of love; but He ordained Apostles, and put upon them especially and above all men, His Holy Spirit, that they might go and preach to all nations the good news that God had become flesh, and dwelt among men, and borne their sorrows and infirmities, and to baptize them into the very name of God itself, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; that so, instead of fancying now that God did not care for them, they might be sure that God so longed to teach them, that He called every child, even from its cradle, to come into His kingdom, and be taught the whole mystery of godliness.

The next puzzle I mentioned was: “But this right life, this mystery of godliness, is it not something very strange and difficult, and past the understanding of simple men who are not extraordinarily clever and learned scholars or deep philosophers?”  To that St. Paul answers: No.  It is not past any man.  It is not too deep or too difficult for the simplest, the most unlearned countryman.  For, says St. Paul in the text, we Apostles have had proof of that; we have tried it; we Apostles preached the mystery of godliness, and it was believed on in the world.  People of the world, plain working men and women going about their worldly business, who had no time to be great readers, or great thinkers, or to shut themselves up in monasteries to meditate on heavenly things, but had to live and work in the commonplace, busy, workday world—they believed our message.  We Apostles told them that the Son of God had showed Himself in the likeness of man, and called on every man to repent, and to be such a man as He was.  And worldly people believed us, and tried, and found that without giving up their worldly work, or deserting the station in which God had put them, they could live godlike lives, and become the sons of God without rebuke.  They saw that scholarship was not wanted, leisure was not wanted, but only the humble heart which hungers and thirsts after righteousness.  About their daily work, by their cottage firesides, among their poor neighbours, the Spirit of Almighty God gave them strength to live as Jesus their pattern lived; He filled them with all holy, pure, noble, brave, loving thoughts and feelings, fit for angels and archangels.  He enabled them to rise out of their sins, to trample their temptations under foot, to leave their old low brutish sinful way of life behind them, and become new men, and persevere in every word, and thought, and action, in virtues such as the greatest heathen sages could not copy; ay, even to shed their life-blood freely and boldly in martyrdom, for the sake of God and the truth of God.  They, these plain simple people, living in the world, could still live the life of God, and die like heroes for the sake of God.