True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries

And then we are ready to say to ourselves, “It must be a mistake, a dream.  He cannot be dead.  He will wake.  We shall meet him to-morrow in his old place, about his old work.  He dead?  Impossible!  Impossible to believe that we shall never see him again—never any more till we too die!”

And then when such thoughts come over us, we cannot help going on to say, “What is this death? this horrible thing which takes husbands from their wives, and children from their parents, and those who love from those who love them?  What is it?  How came this same death loose in the world?  What right has it here, under the bright sun, among the pleasant fields, this cruel, pitiless death, destroying God’s handi-work, God’s likeness, just as it is growing to its prime of beauty and usefulness?”

And then—there—by the bedside of the young at least, we do feel that death must be God’s enemy—that it is a hateful, cruel, evil thing—accursed in the sight of a loving, life-giving God, as much as it is hated by poor mortal man.

And then, we feel, there must be something wrong between man and God.  Man must be fallen and corrupt, must be out of his right place and state in some way or other, or this horrible death would not have got power over us!  What right has death in the world, if man has not sinned or fallen?

And then we cannot help going further and saying, “This cruel death! it may come to me, young, strong, and healthy as I am.  It may come to-morrow; it may come this minute; it may come by a hundred diseases, by a hundred accidents, which I cannot foresee or escape, and carry me off to-morrow, away from all I know and all I love, and all I like to see and to do.  And where would it take me to, if it did take me?  What should I be?  What should I see?  What should I know, after they had put this body of mine into that narrow house in the church-yard, and covered it out of sight till the judgment day?”  Oh, my friends, what a thought for you, and me, and every human being!  We might die to-night, even as those whom we know of died!

But perhaps some of you young people are saying to yourselves, “You are trying to frighten us, but you shall not frighten us.  We know very well that it is not a common thing for a young person to die—not one in a hundred (except in a war time) dies in the prime of his years; and therefore the chances are that we shall not die young either.  The chances are that we shall live to be old men and women, and we are not going to be frightened about dying forty years before our death.  So in the meanwhile we will go our own way and enjoy ourselves.  It will be time enough to think of death when death draws near.”

Well then, if you have these thoughts, I will ask you, what do you mean by chance?  You say, the chances are against your dying young.  Pray what are these wonderful things called chances, which are to keep you alive for thirty or forty or fifty years more?  Did you ever hear a chance, or see a chance?  Or did you ever meet with any one who had?  Did any one ever see a great angel called Chance flying about keeping people from dying?  What is chance on which you depend as you say for your life?  What is chance which you fancy so much stronger than God?  For as long as the chance is against your dying, you are not afraid of neglecting God and disobeying God, and therefore you must suppose that chance is stronger than God, and quite able to keep God’s anger off from you for thirty or forty years, till you choose to repent and amend.  What sort of thing is this wonderful chance, which is going to keep you alive?

Perhaps you will say, “All we meant when we said that the chances were against our dying was that God’s will was against our dying.”

Did you only mean that?  Then why put the thought of God away by foolish words about chance?  For you know that it is God and God only who keeps you alive.  You must look at that, you must face that.  If you are alive now, God keeps you so.  If you live forty years more, God will make you live that time.  And He who can make you live, can also let you not live; and then you will die.  God can withdraw the breath of life from you or me or any one at any moment.  And then where would our chances of not dying be?  We should die here and now, and know that God is the Lord and not chance . . .

But think again.  If God makes you alive He must have some reason for making you alive.  For mind—it is not as you fancy, that when God leaves you alone you live, and when He puts forth His power and visits you, you die.  Not that, but the very opposite.  For in Adam all die.  Our bodies are dead by reason of sin, and in the midst of life we are in death.  There is a seed of death in you and me and every little child.  While we are eating and drinking and going about our business, fancying that we cannot help living, we carry the seeds of disease in our own bodies, which will surely kill us some day, even if we are not cut off before by some sudden accident.  That is true, physicians know that it is true.  Our bodies carry in them from the very cradle the seeds of death; and therefore it is not because God leaves us alone that we live.  We live because God, our merciful heavenly Father, does not leave us alone, but keeps down those seeds of disease and death by His Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of Life.

God’s Spirit of Life is fighting against death in our bodies from the moment we are born.  And then, as Moses says, when He withdraws that Spirit of His, then it is that we die and are turned again to our dust.  So that our living a long time or a short time, does not depend on Chance, or on our own health or constitution, but entirely on how long God may choose to keep down the death which is lying in us, ready to kill us at any moment, and certain to kill us sooner or later.

And yet people fancy that they live because they cannot help living, unless God interferes with them and makes them die.  They fancy, thoughtless and ignorant as they are, that when they are in health, God leaves them alone, and that therefore when they are in health they may leave God alone.

My friends, I tell you that it is God, and not our constitution or chance either which keeps you alive; as you will surely find out the moment after the last breath has left your body.  And therefore I ask you solemnly the plain question, “For what does God keep you alive?”  For what?  Will a man keep plants in his garden which bear neither fruit nor flowers?  Will a man keep stock on his farm which will only eat and never make profit; or a servant in his house who will not work?  Much more, will a man keep a servant who will not only be idle himself, but quarrel with his fellow servants, lead them into sin and shame, and teach them to disobey their master?  What man in his senses would keep such plants, such stock, such servants?  And yet God keeps hundreds and thousands in His garden and in His house for years and years, while they are doing no good to Him, and doing harm to those around them.

How many are there who never yet did one thing to make their companions better, and yet have done many a thing to make their companions worse!  Then why are they alive still?  Why does not God rid Himself of them at once and let them die, instead of cumbering the ground?  I know but one reason.  If they were only God’s plants, or His stock, or His servants, He might rid Himself of them.  But they are something far nearer and dearer to Him than that.  They are His children, and therefore He has mercy on them.  They are redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world; and therefore for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, God looks on them with long-suffering and tender loving-kindness.  Man was made in God’s likeness at first, and was the son of God.  And therefore howsoever fallen and corrupt man’s nature is now, yet God loves him still, even though he be a heathen or an infidel.  How much more for you, my friends, who know that you are God’s children, who have been declared to be His children by Holy Baptism, and grafted into Christ’s church.  You at least are bound to believe that God preserves you from death, because He loves you.  He protects you every day and every hour, as a father takes care of His children, and keeps them out of dangers which they cannot see or understand.

Yes! this is plain truth—your heavenly Father is keeping you alive!  Oh, do not make that truth an excuse for forgetting and disobeying your heavenly Father!

Why does He keep you alive?  Surely because He expects something of you.  And what does He expect of you?  What does any good father expect of his children?  Why does he help and protect them?  Not from mere brute instinct, as beasts take care of their young when they are little, and then as soon as they are grown up cast them off and forget them.  No.  He takes care of his children because he wishes them to grow up like himself, to be a comfort and a help and a pride to him.

And God takes care of you and keeps you from death, for the very same reason.  God desires that you should grow up like Himself, godly and pure, leading lives like His Son Jesus Christ.  God desires that you should grow up to the stature of perfect men and women, which is the likeness of Jesus Christ your Lord.

But if you turn God’s grace in keeping you alive into a cloak for licentiousness and an excuse for sinning—if, when God keeps you alive that you may lead good lives, you take advantage of His fatherly love to lead bad lives—if you go on returning God evil for good, and ungratefully and basely presume on His patience and love to do the things which He hates, what must you expect?  God loves you, and you make that an excuse for not loving Him; God does everything for you, and you make that an excuse for doing nothing for God; God gives you health and strength, and you make that an excuse for using your health and strength just in the way He has forbidden.  What can be more ungrateful?  What can be more foolish?  Oh, my friends, if one of our children behaved to us in return for our care and love a hundredth part as shamefully as most of us behave to God our Father, what should we think of them?  What should we say of them?

Oh, beware, beware!  God is a righteous God, strong and patient, and God is provoked every day, and bears it according to His boundless love and patience.  But “if a man will not turn,” says the same text, “He will whet His sword.”  And then—woe to the careless and ungrateful sinner.  God will cut him down and bring him low.  God will take from him his health, or his money, or his blind peace of mind; and by affliction after affliction, and shame after shame, and disappointment after disappointment, teach him that his youth, and his health, and his money, and all that he has, are his Father’s gifts and not his own property—and that His Father will take them away from him, till he feels his own weakness, till he sees that he is really not his own but God’s property, body and soul, and goes back to his heavenly Father and cries, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.  I have taken Thy gifts and gone away with them from Thy house unto the far country of sin, and wasted them in riotous living, till I have had to fill my belly with the husks which the swine did eat.  I have had no profit out of all my sins, of which I am now ashamed.  I have robbed Thee and abused Thy gifts and Thy love.  Father, take me back, for I have sinned, and am not worthy to be called Thy child.”

XVIII.  EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY WISDOM; OR, STOOP TO CONQUER

“The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.”

—Prov. iii. 19.

Did it ever strike you as a very remarkable and important thing, that after saying in Proverbs iii. that Wisdom is this precious treasure, and bidding his son seek for her because (verse 16) “Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour: Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,”—Solomon goes on immediately to say (verses 19, 20), “The Lord by Wisdom hath founded the earth, and established the heavens?”

By Wisdom: by the very same Wisdom, Solomon says, which is to give men length of days, and riches, and honour.  Is not this curious at least?  That there is but one wisdom for God and man?  That man’s true wisdom is a pattern of God’s wisdom?  That a man to prosper in the world must get the very same wisdom by which God made and rules the world?  Curious.  But most blessed news, my friends, if we will think over what it means.  I will try to explain it to you: first, as to this world which we see; next, as to the heavenly world of spirits which we do not see.

You have, many of you, heard the word “Science.”  Many of you of course know what it means.  That it means wisdom and learning about this earth and all things in it.  Many more of you of course know that in the last hundred years science has improved in a most wonderful way, and is improving every day; that we have now gas-lights, steam-engines, cotton-mills, railroads, electric telegraphs, iron ships, and a hundred curious and useful machines and manufactures of which our great-grandfathers never dreamed; that our knowledge of different countries, of medicines, of the laws of health and disease, and of all in short which has to do with man’s bodily life, is increasing day by day; and that all these discoveries are very great blessings; they give employment and food to millions who would otherwise have had nothing to do; they bring vast wealth into this country, and all the countries which trade with us.  They enable this land of England to support four times as many human beings as it did two hundred years ago; they make many of the necessaries of life cheaper, so that in many cases a poor man may now have comforts which his grandfather never heard of.

I know that there is a dark side to this picture; that with all this increase of wisdom, there has come conceit, and trust in deceitful riches, and want of trust in God, and obedience to His law.  I know that in some things we are not better, but worse than our forefathers; God forgive us for it!  But the good came from God; and that man is very unwise and unthankful too, who despises God’s great gift of science, because fallen man has defiled His gift as it passed through his unclean hands.

Look only at this one thing, as I said just now, that by all these wonderful discoveries and improvements, England is able to support four times as many Englishmen as it used of old, and that, if we feared God, and sought His kingdom better, I believe, England would support many more people yet—and see if that be not a thing to thank Almighty God for every day of our lives.

Now how did this wonderful change and improvement take place—suddenly, and, as it were, in the course of the last hundred years?  Simply by mankind understanding the text (Prov. iii. 19), and by obeying it.  I tell you a real truth, my friends, and it happened thus.

For more than sixteen hundred years after our Lord’s time, mankind seem to have become hardly any wiser about earthly things, nay, even to have gone back.  The land was no better tilled; goods were no more easily made; diseases were no better cured, than they had been sixteen hundred years before.  And if any learned men longed to become very wise and cunning, and to get power over this world and the things in it, they flew off to witchcraft, charms, and magic, deceived by the devil’s old lie, that the kingdom and the power and the glory of this world belonged to him and not to God.

But about two hundred and fifty years ago, it pleased God to open the eyes of one of the wisest men who ever lived, who was called Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Lord Chancellor of England, and to show him the real and right way of learning by which men can fulfil God’s command to replenish the earth and subdue it.  And Francis Bacon told all the learned men boldly that they had all been wrong together, and that their wisdom was no better than a sort of madness, as it is written, “The wisdom of man is foolishness with God;” that the only way for man to be wise was to get God’s wisdom, the wisdom with which He had founded the earth, and find out God’s laws by which He had made this world.

“And then,” he said, “if you can do that, you will be able to imitate God in your own small way.  If you learn the laws by which God made all things, you will be able to invent new things for yourselves.  For you can only subdue nature by obeying her.”  That was one of his greatest sayings, and by it he meant, that you can only subdue a thing and make it useful to you, by finding out the rules by which God made that thing, and by obeying them.

For instance, you cannot subdue and till a barren field, and make it useful, without knowing and obeying the laws and rules of that soil; and then you can subdue and conquer that field, and change and train it, as I may say, to grow what you like.  You cannot conquer diseases without knowing and obeying the laws by which God has made man’s body, and the laws by which fever and cholera and other plagues come.

Let me give you another instance.  You all have seen lightning conductors, which prevent tall chimneys and steeples from being struck by storms, so that the lightning runs harmless downward.  Now we can all see how this is conquering the force of lightning in a wonderful and beautiful way.  But before you can conquer the lightning by a conductor, you must obey the lightning and its laws most carefully.  If you make the conductor out of your own head and fancy, it will be of no use.  You must observe and follow humbly the laws which God has given to the lightning.  You must make the conductor of metal wire, or it will be useless.  You must make it run through glazed rings, or it will be only more dangerous than no conductor at all; for God who made the lightning chose that it should be so, and you must obey if you wish to conquer.

Man could not conquer steam, and make it drive his engines and carry his ships across the seas, till he found out and obeyed the laws which God had given to steam; and so without breaking the laws, man turned them to his own use, and set the force of steam to turn his machines, instead of rushing idly out into the empty air.

So it is with all things, whether in heaven or earth.  If you want to rule, you must obey.  If you want to rise to be a master, you must stoop to be a servant.  If you want to be master of anything in earth or heaven, you must, as that great Lord Verulam used to say, obey God’s will revealed in that thing; and the man who will go his own way, and follow his own fancy, will understand nothing, and master nothing, and get comfort out of nothing in earth or heaven.

Well—when Lord Verulam told men his new wisdom, they laughed and scoffed, as fools always will at anything new.  But one by one, wise men tried his plan, and found him right, and went on; and from that time those who followed Lord Verulam began discovering wonders of which they had never dreamed, and those who did not, but kept to the old way of witchcraft and magic, found out nothing, and made themselves a laughing stock.  And after a while witchcraft vanished out of all civilised countries, and in its place came all the wonderful comforts and discoveries which we have now, and which under God, we owe to the wisdom of the great Lord Verulam.  Cotton mills, steam engines, railroads, electric telegraphs, sanitary reforms, cheap books, penny postage, good medicine and surgery, and a thousand blessings more.  That great Lord Chancellor has been the father of them all.

And a noble thought it is for us Church people, and a glorious testimony to the good training which the Church of England gives, that the three men, who more than any others laid the foundation of all our wonderful discoveries, I mean Lord Verulam, Mr. Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton, were all of them heart and soul members of the Church of England.

I said just now that the man who will not obey, will never rule; that the man who will not stoop to be a servant, will never rise to be a master; that the man who neglects God’s will and mind about things, and will follow his own will and fancy, will understand nothing, and master nothing, and get comfort out of nothing, either in earth or heaven.

Either in earth or heaven, I say.  For the same rule which holds good in this earthly world, which we do see, holds good in the heavenly world which we do not see.  Solomon does not part the two worlds, and I cannot.  Solomon says the same rules which hold good about men’s bodies, hold good about their souls.  The great Lord Verulam used always to say the same, and we must believe the same.  For see, Solomon says, that this same wisdom by which God made the worlds, will help our souls as well as our bodies; that it is not merely the earthly wisdom which brings a man length of life and riches, but heavenly wisdom, which is a tree of life to every one who lays hold of her (Prov. iii. 18).  The heavenly wisdom which begins in trusting in the Lord with all our heart, the heavenly wisdom which is learnt by chastenings and afflictions, and teaches us that we are the sons of God, is the very same wisdom by which God founded the earth, and makes the clouds drop down dew!  Strange at first sight; but not strange if we remember the Athanasian creed, and believe that God is one God, who has no parts or passions, and therefore cannot change or be divided.

Yes, my friends, God’s wisdom is one—unchangeable, everlasting, and always like itself; and by the same wisdom by which He made the earth and the heavens, by the same wisdom by which He made our bodies, has He made our souls; and therefore we can, and are bound to, glorify Him alike in our bodies and our spirits, for both are His.

It may not seem easy to understand this; but I will explain what I mean by an example.  I just told you, that in earthly matters we must stoop to conquer; we must obey the laws which God has given to anything, before we can master and use that thing.  And in matters about our own soul—about our behaviour to God—about our behaviour to our fellow-men, believe me there is no rule like the golden one of Lord Verulam’s—stoop to conquer—obey if you wish to rule.  For see now.  What is there more common than this?  It happens to each of us every day.  We meet a fellow-man our equal, neither better nor worse than ourselves, and we want to make him do something.  Now there are two ways in which we may set about that.  We may drive our man, or we may lead him.  You know well enough which of those two ways is likely to succeed best.  If you try to drive the man, you say to yourself, “I know I am right.  I see the thing in this light, and he is a fool if he does not see it in the same light.  I choose to have the thing done, and done it shall be, and if he is stupid enough not to take my view of it, I will let him know who I am, and we will see which of us is the stronger!”  So says many a man in his heart.  But what comes of it?  Nothing.  For the other man gets angry, and determines to have his way in his turn.  There is a quarrel and a great deal of noise; and most probably the thing is not done.  Instead of the man getting what he wants, he has a fresh quarrel on his hands, and nothing more.  So his blustering is no sign that he is really strong.  For the strong man is the man who can get what he wants done.  Is he not?  Surely we shall all agree to that.  And the proud, hot, positive, dictatorial, self-willed man is just the man, in a free country like this, who does not get what he wants done.  He will not stoop—therefore he will not conquer.

But suppose we take another plan.  Suppose instead of trying to drive, we try to lead.  Suppose if we want a man to do anything, we begin by obeying him, and serving him, that we may afterwards lead him, and afterwards make use of him.  There is a base, mean way of doing that, by flattering, and fawning, and cringing, which are certainly the devil’s works.  For the devil can put on the form of an angel of light; but we need not do that.  We may serve and obey a man honestly and honourably, in order to get him to do what he ought to do.  I will tell you what I mean.

Suppose when we have dealings with any man, we begin with him, as I was saying we ought to begin with earthly things—with a field for instance—we should say, before I begin to make this field bear the crop I want I must look it through and understand it.  I must see what state it is in—what its soil is—what has been taken off it already—what the weather is—what state of drainage it is in, and so forth; and I must obey the rules of all these things, or my crop will come to nothing.  So with this man.  First of all, before I get anything out of the man, I must understand the man.  I must find out what sort of temper and character he has, what his opinions are, how he has been brought up, how he has been accustomed to look at things—so as to be able to make allowance for all, else I shall never be able to understand how he looks at this one matter, or to make him understand my way of looking at it.  And to do that—to understand the man, or make him understand me, I must begin by making a friend of him.