Chapter I: SPOKE last Sunday morning of the wonderful way in which the Lord (1)

delivered the Jews from the Assyrian army, and I promised to try and explain to you this morning, the reason why the Lord allowed the Assyrians to come into Judæa, and ravage the whole country except the one small city of Jerusalem.

My text is taken from the first lesson, from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. And it, I think, will explain the reason to us.

For though Jeremiah lived more than a hundred years after Isaiah, yet he had much the same message from God to give, and much the same sins round him to rebuke. For the Jews were always, as the Bible calls them, “a backsliding people;” and, as the years ran on, and they began to forget their great deliverance from the Assyrians, they slid back into the very same wrong state of mind in which they were in Isaiah’s time, and for which God punished them by that terrible invasion.

Now, what was this?

One very remarkable thing strikes us at once. That when the Assyrians came into Judæa, the Jews were _not_ given up to worshipping false gods. On the contrary, we find, both from the book of Kings and the book of Chronicles, that a great reform in religion had taken place among them a few years before. Their king Hezekiah, in the very first year of his reign, removed the high places, and cut down the groves (which are said to have been carved idols meant to represent the stars of heaven), and even broke in pieces the brazen serpent which Moses had made, because the Jews had begun to worship it for an idol. He trusted in the Lord God, and obeyed Him, more than any king of Judah. He restored the worship of the true God in the temple, according to the law of Moses, with such pomp and glory as had never been seen since Solomon’s time. And not only did he turn to the true God, but his people also. From the account which we find in Chronicles, they seemed to have joined him in the good work. They offered sin-offerings as a token of the wickedness of which they have been guilty, in leaving the true God for idols; and all other kinds of offerings freely and willingly. “And Hezekiah rejoiced, and all the people that God had prepared the people. Moreover, Hezekiah called all the men in Judæa up to Jerusalem, to keep the passover according to the law of Moses,” which they had neglected to do for many years, and the people answered his call and “came, and kept the feast at Jerusalem seven days, with joy and great gladness, offering peace-offerings, and making confession to the God of their fathers. So there was great joy in Jerusalem; for since the time of Solomon there was not the like in Jerusalem. Then the priests and the Levites arose, and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to the Lord’s holy dwelling, even to heaven.” And when it was all finished, the people went out of their own accord, and destroyed utterly all the idols, and high places, and altars throughout the land, and returned to their houses in peace.

Now does not all this sound very satisfactory and excellent? What better state of mind could people be in? What a wonderful reform, and spread of true religion! The only thing like it, that we know, is the wonderful reform and spread of religion in England in the last sixty years, after all the ungodliness and wickedness that went on from the year 1660 to the time of the French war; the building of churches, the founding of schools, the spread of Bibles, and tracts, and the wonderful increase of gospel preachers, so that every old man will tell you, that religion is talked about and written about now, a thousand times more than when he was a boy. Indeed, unless a man makes a profession of some sort of religion or other, nowadays, he can hardly hope to rise in the world, so religious are we English become.

Now let us hear what Isaiah thought of all that wonderful spread of true religion in his time; and then, perhaps, we may see what he would think of ours now, if he were alive. His opinion is sure to be the right one. His rules can never fail, for he was an inspired prophet, and saw things as they are, as God sees them; and therefore his rules will hold good for ever. Let us see what they were.

The first chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah is called “The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.” Now this is one prophecy by itself, in the shape of a poem; for in the old Hebrew it is written in regular verses. The second chapter begins with another heading, and is the beginning of a different poem; so that this first chapter is, as it were, a summing up of all that he is going to say afterwards; a short account of the state of the Jews for more than forty years. And what is more, this first chapter of Isaiah must have been written in the reign of Hezekiah, in those very religious days of which I was just speaking; for it says that the country was desolate, and Jerusalem alone left. And this never happened during Isaiah’s lifetime, till the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, that is, till this great spread of the true religion had been going on for thirteen years. Now what was Isaiah’s vision? What did he, being taught by God’s Spirit, _see_ was God’s opinion of these religious Jews? Listen, my friends, and take it solemnly to heart!

“Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts: and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. . . . How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water; thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. Therefore, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies.” . . .

Again, I say, my friends, listen to it, and take it solemnly to heart! That is God’s opinion of religion, even the truest and soundest in worship and doctrine, when it is without godliness, without holiness; when it goes in hand with injustice, and covetousness, and falsehood, and cheating, and oppression, and neglect of the poor, and keeping company with the wicked, because it is profitable; in short, when it is like too much of the religion which we see around us in the world at this day.

Yes—it was of no use holding to the letter of the law while they forgot its spirit. God had commanded church-going, and woe to those, then or now, who neglect it. Yet the Lord asks, “Who hath required this at your hands, to tread my courts?”. . . He had commanded the Sabbath-day to be kept holy; and woe to those, then or now, who neglect it. Yet He says, “Your Sabbaths I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.” The Lord had appointed feasts: and yet He says that His soul hated them; they were a trouble to Him; He was weary to bear them. The Lord had commanded prayer; and woe to those, then or now, in England, as in Judæa, who neglect to pray. And yet He says: “When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear.” And why?—He himself condescends to tell them the reason, which they ought to have known for themselves: “Because,” He says, “your hands are full of blood.” This was the reason why all their religiousness, and orthodoxy, and church-going, and praying, was only disgusting to God; because there was no righteousness with it. Their faith was only a dead, rotten, sham faith, for it brought forth no fruits of justice and love; and their religion was only hypocrisy, for it did not make them holy. No doubt they thought themselves pious and sincere enough; no doubt they thought that they were pleasing God perfectly, and giving Him all that He could fairly ask of them; no doubt they were fiercely offended at Isaiah’s message to them; no doubt they could not understand what he meant by calling them a hypocritical nation, a second Sodom and Gomorrah, while they were destroying idols, and keeping the law of Moses, and worshipping God more earnestly than He had been worshipped since Solomon’s time. But so it was. That was the message of God to them; that was the vision of Isaiah concerning them; that there was no soundness in the whole of the nation, “from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores”—that is, that the whole heart and conscience, and ways of thinking, were utterly rotten, and abominable in the sight of God, even while they were holding the true doctrines about them, and keeping up the pure worship of Him. This, says the Lord, is not the way to please me. “He hath showed thee, oh man, what is good. And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” To do justly, to love mercy, and then to walk humbly, sure that when you seem to have done all your duty, you have left only too much of it undone; even as St. Paul felt when he said, that though he knew nothing against himself; though he could not recollect a single thing in which he had failed of his duty to the Corinthians, yet that did not justify him. “For he that judgeth me,” he says, “is the Lord.” He sees deeper than I can; and He, alas! may take a very different view of my conduct from what I do; and this life of mine, which looks to me, from my ignorance, so spotless and perfect, may be, in His eyes, full of sins, and weakness, and neglects, and shameful follies. “To walk humbly with God.” Not to believe that because you read the Bible, and have heard the gospel, and are sharp at finding out false doctrine in preachers, and belong to the Church of England, that therefore you know all about God, and can look down upon poor papists, and heathens, and say: “This people, which knoweth not the law, is accursed: but _we_ are enlightened, we understand the whole Bible, we know everything about God’s will, and man’s duty; and whosoever differs from us, or pretends to teach us anything new about God, must be wrong.” Not to do so, my friends, but to believe what St. Paul tells us solemnly, “That if any man think that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know”—to believe that the Great God, and the will of God, and the love of God, and the mystery of Redemption, and the treasures of wisdom which are in His Bible, are, as St. Paul told you, boundless, like a living well, which can never be fathomed, or drawn dry, but fills again with fresh water as fast as you draw from it. That is walking humbly with God; and those who do not do so, but like the Pharisees of old, believe that they have all knowledge, and can understand all the mysteries of the Bible, and go through the world, despising and cursing all parties but their own—let them beware, lest the Lord be saying of them, as He said of the church of Sardis, of old: “Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

How is this? What is this strange thing, without which even the true knowledge of doctrine is of no use; which, if a man, or a nation has not, he is poor, and blind, and wretched, and naked in soul, in spite of all his religion? Isaiah will tell us—What did he say to the Jews in his day?

“Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Do justice to the fatherless, and relieve the widow!” “Do that,” says the Lord, “and then your repentance will be sincere. Church building and church going are well—but they are not repentance—churches are not souls. I ask you for your hearts, and you give me fine stones and fine words. I want souls—I want _your_ souls—I want you to turn to me. And what am I? saith the Lord. I am justice, I am love, I am the God of the oppressed, the fatherless, the widow.—That is my character. Turn to justice, turn to love, turn to mercy; long to be made just, and loving, and merciful; see that your sin has been just this, and nothing else, that you have been unjust, unloving, unmerciful. Repent for your neglect and cruelty, and repent in dust and ashes, when you see what wretched hypocrites you really are. And then, my boundless mercy and pardon shall be open to you. As you wish to be to me, so will I be to you; if you wish to become merciful, you shall taste my mercy; if you wish to become loving to others, you shall find that I love you; if you wish to become just, you shall find that I am just, just to deal by you as you deal by others; faithful and just to forgive you your sins, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And then, all shall be forgiven and forgotten; “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

Surely, my friends, these things are worth taking to heart; for this is the sin which most destroys all men and nations—high religious profession with an ungodly, covetous, and selfish life. It is the worst and most dangerous of all sins; for it is like a disease which eats out the heart and life without giving pain; so that the sick man never suspects that anything is the matter with him, till he finds himself, to his astonishment, at the point of death. So it was with the Jews, three times in their history. In the time of Isaiah, under King Hezekiah; in the time of Jeremiah, under King Josiah; and last and worst of all, in the time of Jesus Christ. At each of these three times the Jews were high religious professors, and yet at each of these three times they were abominable before God, and on the brink of ruin. In Isaiah’s time their eyes seemed to have been opened at last to their own sins. Their fearful danger, and wonderful deliverance from the Assyrians of which you heard last Sunday, seem to have done that for them; as God intended it should. During the latter part of Hezekiah’s reign they seemed to have turned to God with their hearts, and not with their lips only; and Isaiah can find no words to express the delight which the blessed change gives him. Nevertheless, they soon fell back again into idolatry; and then there was another outward lip-reformation under the good King Josiah; and Jeremiah had to give them exactly the same warning which Isaiah had given them nearly a hundred years before. But that time, alas! they would not take the warning; and then all the evil which had been prophesied against them came on them. From hypocritical profession, they fell back again into their old idolatry; their covetousness, selfishness, party-quarrels, and profligate lives made them too weak and rotten to stand against Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, when he attacked them; and Jerusalem was miserably destroyed, the temple burnt, and the Jews carried captives to Babylon. There they repented in bitter sorrow and slavery; and God allowed them after seventy years to return to their own land. Then at first they seemed to be a really converted people, and to be worshipping God in spirit and in truth. They never again fell back into the idolatry of the heathen. So far from it, they became the greatest possible haters of it; they went on keeping the law of God with the utmost possible strictness, even to the day when the Lord Jesus appeared among them. Their religious people, the Scribes and Pharisees, were the most strict, moral, devout people of the whole world. They worshipped the very words and letters of the Bible; their thoughts seemed filled with nothing but God and the service of God: and yet the Lord Jesus told them that they were in a worse state, greater sinners in the sight of God, than they had ever been; that they, who hated idolatry, were filling up the measure of their idolatrous forefathers’ iniquity; that the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth was to fall on them; that they were a race of serpents, a generation of vipers; and that even He did not see how they could escape the damnation of hell. And they proved how true His words were, by crucifying the very Lord of whom their much-prized Scriptures bore witness, whom they pretended to worship day and night continually; and received the just reward of their deeds in forty years of sedition, bloodshed, and misery, which ended by the Romans coming and sweeping the nation of the Jews from off the face of the earth.

So much for profession without practice. So much for true doctrine with dishonest and unholy lives. So much for outward respectability with inward sinfulness. So much for hating idolatry, while all the while men’s hearts are far from God!

Oh! my friends, let us all search our hearts carefully in these times of high profession and low practice; lest we be adding our drop of hypocrisy to the great flood of it which now stifles this land of England, and so fall into the same condemnation as the Jews of old, in spite of far nobler examples, brighter and wider light, and more wonderful and bounteous blessings.

XXI. THE UNFAITHFUL SERVANT.

But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his
coming; and shall begin to beat the men servants and the maid
servants, and to eat and drink and to be drunken; the lord of that
servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an
hour when he is not aware, and will cut him asunder, and will appoint
him his portion with the unbelievers.—LUKE xii. 45, 46.

BUT why with the unbelievers? The man had not disbelieved that he had any Lord at all; he had only believed that his Lord delayed his coming. And why was he to be put with those who do not believe in him at all? This is a very fearful question, friends, for us, when we think how it is the fashion among us now, to believe that our Lord delays His coming.—And surely most of us do believe that? For is it not our notion that, when the Lord Jesus ascended up to heaven, He went away a great distance off, perhaps millions of miles beyond the stars; and that He will not come back again till the last—which, for aught we know, and as we rather expect, may not happen for hundreds or thousands of years to come? Is not that most people’s notion, rich as well as poor? And if that is not believing that our Lord delays His coming, what is?

But, you may answer, the Creed says plainly, that He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. Ah! my friends, those great words of the Creed which you take into your lips every Sunday, mean the very opposite to what most people fancy. They do not say, “The Lord Jesus has left this poor earth to itself and its misery:” but they say, “Lo, He is with you, even to the end of the world.” True, He is ascended into heaven. And how far off is heaven?—for so far off is the Lord Jesus, and no farther. Not so far off, my friends, after all, if you knew where to find it. Truly said the great and good poet, now gone home to his reward:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

And if we lose sight of it as we grow up to be men and women, it is not because heaven goes farther off, but because we grow less heavenly. Even now, so close is heaven to us, that any one of us might enter into heaven this moment, without stirring from his seat. One real cry from the depths of your heart—“Father, forgive thy sinful child!”—one real feeling of your own worthlessness, and weakness, and emptiness, and of God’s righteousness, and love, and mercy, ready for you—and you are in heaven there and then, as near the feet of the blessed Lord Jesus, as Mary Magdalen was, when she tried to clasp them in the garden. I am serious, my friends; I am not given to talk fine figures of poetry; I am talking sober, straightforward, literal truth. And the Lord sits at God’s right hand too? you believe that? Then how far off is God?—for as far off as God is, so far off is the Lord Jesus, and no farther. What says St. Paul? That “God is not far off from any one of us—for in Him we live, and move, and have our being” . . . IN Him . . . . How far off is that? And is not God everywhere, if indeed we can say that He is any where? Then the Lord Jesus, who is at God’s right hand, is everywhere also—here, now, with us this day. One would have thought that there was no need to prove that by argument, considering that His own blessed lips told us: “Lo, I am with you, even to the end of the world;” and again: “Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” And this is the Lord whom people fancy is gone away far above the stars, till the end of time! Oh, my friends, rather bow your heads before Him here this moment. For here He is among us now, listening to every thought of our poor sinful hearts. . . . He is where God is—God _in_ whom we live, and move, and have our being—and that is everywhere. Do you wish Him to be any nearer, my friends? Or do you—do you—take care what your hearts answer, for He is watching them—do you in the depth of your hearts wish that He were a little farther off? Does the notion of His being here on this earth, watching and interfering (as we call it nowadays in our atheism) with us and everything, seem unpleasant and burdensome? Is it more comfortable to you to think that He is away far up beyond the stars? Do you feel the lighter and freer for fancying that He will not visit the earth for many a year to come? In short, is it in your _hearts_ that you are saying, The Lord delays His coming?

That is a very important question. For mind, a pious man might be, as many a pious man has been in these days, deceived by bad teaching into the notion that Jesus Christ was gone far away. But if he were a truly pious man, if he truly loved the Lord, that would be a painful thought—as I should have fancied, an unbearable thought—to him, when he looked out upon this poor miserable, confused world. He would be crying night and day: “Oh, that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down!” He would be in an agony of pity for this poor deserted earth, and of longing for the Saviour of it to come back and save it. He would never have a moment’s peace of mind till he had either seen the Lord come back again in His glory, or till he had found out—what I am sure the blessed Lord would teach him as a reward for his love—that it was all a dream and a nightmare, and that the Lord of the earth was in the earth, and close to him, all along; only that his weak eyes were held so that he did not know the Lord and the Lord’s works when he saw them.

But that was not the temper of this servant in the Lord’s parable. I am afraid it is by no means the temper of many of us nowadays. The servant said _in his heart_, that his master would be long away. It was his heart put the thought into his head. He took to the notion _heartily_, as we say, because he was glad to believe it was true; glad to think that his master would not come to “interfere” with him; and that in the meantime he might be lord and master himself, and treat everyone in the house as if he himself was the owner of it, and tyrannise over his fellow-servants, and enjoy himself in luxury and good living. So says David of the fool: “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God;” his heart puts that thought into his head. He wishes to believe that there is no God; and when there is a will there is a way; and he soon finds out reasons and arguments enough to prove what he is so very anxious to prove.

Now, my friends, I am afraid that there is not so much difference as people fancy, between the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God,” and the fool who says in his heart, “My master delays His coming.”—“God has left the world to us, and we must shift for ourselves in it.” The man who likes to be what St. Paul calls “without God in the world,” is he so very much wiser than the man who likes to have no God at all? St. James did not think so; for what does he say: “Thou believest that there is one God? Thou doest well—the devils also believe and tremble.” They know as much as that; but it does them no good—only increases their fear. “But wilt thou know, oh! vain man, that faith without works,” believing without doing, “is dead?” And are not too many, as I said just now, afraid of the thought of God; so afraid of it that they wish to allow the Son of God as little share as possible in the management of this world? Have not too many a belief without works; a mere belief that there is one God and not two, which hardly, from one year’s end to another, makes them do one single thing which they would not have done if they had believed that there was no God at all? Fear of the law, fear of the policeman, fear of losing their work or their custom; fear of losing their neighbour’s good word—that is what keeps most people from breaking loose. There is not much of the fear of God in that, or the love of God either as far as I can see. They go through life as if they had made a covenant with God, that He should have his own way in the world to come, if He would only let them have their way in this world. Oh! my friends, my friends, do you think God is God of the next world and not of this also? Do you think the kingdom, and the power, and the glory will be His a great many hundreds of years hence, in what you call heaven; and will not see what every page of Scripture tells you, what you yourself say every time you repeat the Lord’s Prayer, that the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory are His now, here in this life, and that He has committed all things to His Son Jesus Christ and given the power into His hand, that He may rule this earth in righteousness now, here, in this life, and conquer back for God one by one, if it be possible, every creature upon earth? So says the Bible—and people profess nowadays to believe their Bibles. My friends, too many, nowadays, while they profess very loudly to believe what the Bible says, only believe what their favourite teachers tell them that the Bible says. If they really read their Bibles for themselves, and took God at His word, there would be less tyrannising of one man over another, less grinding down of men by masters, and of men by each other—for the poor are often very hard on each other in England, now, my friends—very envious and spiteful, and slanderous about each other. They say that dog won’t eat dog—yet how many a poor man grudges and supplants his neighbour, and tries to get into his place and beat him down in his wages? And there are those who call themselves learned men, who tell the poor that that is God’s will, and the way by which God intends them to prosper. If those men believed their Bibles, they would be repenting in sackcloth and ashes for having preached such a devil’s sermon to God’s children. If men really read their Bibles, there would be less eating and drinking with the drunken; less idleness and luxury among the rich; less fancying that a man has a right to do what he likes with his own, because all men would know that they were only the Lord’s stewards, bound to give an account to him of the good which they had done with what he has lent them. There would be fewer parents fancying that they can tyrannise over their children, bringing them up as heathens for the sake of the few pence they earn; using bad language, and doing shameful things before them, which they dared not do if they recollected that the Lord was looking on; beating and scolding them as if they were brutes or slaves, to save themselves the trouble of teaching them gently what the poor little creatures cannot know without being taught: and most shameful of all, robbing the poor children of their little earnings to spend it themselves in drunkenness. Ah, blessed Lord! if people did but know how near Thou wert to them, all that would vanish out of England, as the night clouds vanish away before the sun!

And He is near, my friends: He is watching; He is governing; He is at hand: and in this life or in the life to come, forget Him as we choose, He will make us know plain enough, and without any doubt whatsoever, that He is the Lord.

He has fulfilled this awful parable of his about the unfaithful servant already; many a time, against many a man, many a great king, and prince, and nation; and he will fulfil it against each and every man, from the nobleman in his castle to the labourer in his cottage, who says in his heart, “My Lord delays his coming,” and begins to tyrannise over those who are weaker than himself, and to enjoy himself as he likes, and forget that he is not his own, but bought with the price of Christ’s blood, and bound to work for Christ’s kingdom and glory.

So he punished the popes of Rome, three hundred years ago. When all the nations in Europe were listening to them and obeying them, and they had put into their hands by God a greater power of doing good than He ever gave to any human being before or since, what did they do? Instead of using their power for Christ, they used it for themselves. Instead of preaching to all nations the good news that Christ the Son of God was their King, they said: “I, the pope, am your king. Christ is gone far away into heaven, and has committed all power on earth to us; we are Christ’s vicars; we are in Christ’s place; He has entrusted to our keeping all the treasures of His merits and His grace, and no one can get any blessing from Christ, unless we choose to give it him.” So they said in their hearts just what the foolish servant in the parable said: and fancying that they were lords and masters, naturally enough went on to behave as such; to beat the men-servants and maid-servants, that is, to oppress and tyrannise over the bodies and minds and consciences of men, and women too, God knows; and to eat and drink with the drunken, to live in riot and debauchery. But the Lord was not so far off as those foolish popes fancied. And in an hour when they were not aware, He came and cut them asunder. He snatched from them one-half of the nations of Europe, and England among the rest; He punished them by doubt, ignorance, confusion, and utter blindness, and appointed them their portion among the unbelievers in such terrible earnest, that to this very day, to judge by the things which they say and do, it is difficult to persuade ourselves that the popes really believe in any God at all.

So He did, only three years ago, to many kings and princes on the Continent. {217} They professed to be Christians; but they had forgotten that they were Christ’s stewards, that all their power came from Him, and that he had given it them only to use for the good of their subjects. And they too went on saying: “The Lord delays His coming, we are rulers in this world, and God is ruler in the world to come.” So they, too, oppressed their subjects, and lived in ease on what they wrung out of the poor wretches below them. But the Lord was nearer them, too, than they fancied; and all at once—as they were fancying themselves all safe and prosperous, and saying, “We are those who ought to speak, who is Lord over us?”—their fool’s paradise crumbled from under their feet. A few paltry mobs of foolish starving people, without weapons, without leaders, without good counsel to guide them, rose against them. And what did they do? They might have crushed down the rebels most of them, in a week, if they had had courage. And in the only country where the rebels were really strong, that is, in Austria, all might have been quiet again at once, if the king had only had the heart to do common justice, and keep his own solemn oaths. But no—the terror of the Lord came upon them. He most truly cut them in sunder. They were every man of a different mind, and none of them in the same mind a day together; they became utterly conscience-stricken, terrified, perplexed, at their wit’s end, not having courage or determination to do anything, or even to do nothing, and fled shamefully away one after another, to their everlasting disgrace. And those of them who have got back their power since are showing sadly enough, by their obstinate folly and wickedness, that the Lord has appointed them their portion with the unbelievers, and left them to fill up the measure of their iniquity, and drink deep the cup of wrath which is in His hand, full and mixed for those who forget God.

Oh! my friends, let us lay these things solemnly to heart. Do not fancy that the Lord will punish the wicked great, and forget the wicked small. In His sight there is neither great nor small; all are small enough for Him to crush like the moth; and all are too great to be overlooked, or forgotten by Him, without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground. Again I say, my friends, let us lay His parable to heart. Let us who have property, and station, and education, never forget who has given it us, and for whom we must use it. Let us never forget that to whom much is given, of them will much be required. Let us pray to the Lord daily to write upon our inmost hearts those solemn words: “Who made thee to differ from another; and what hast thou which thou didst not receive?” Let us look on our servants, our labourers, on every human being over whom we have any influence, as weaker brothers whom God has commanded us to help, teach, and guide in body, mind, and spirit, not that we may make them our slaves, but make them free, manful, self-helping, and in due time independent of us and of everyone except God.

And you young people, who have no authority over anyone, but over your own bodies; to whom the Lord has given little or nothing to manage and take care of except your own health and strength—do not let the devil tempt you to believe that that health and strength is your own property, to do what you like with. It belongs to the Lord who died for you, and He will require an account from you how you have used it. Do not let the devil tempt you to believe that the Lord delays His coming to you—that you may do what you like now, in the prime of your years, and that it will be time enough to think about God and religion when God visits you with cares, and sickness, and old age. That is the fancy of too many; but it will surely turn out to be a mistake. Those who misuse their youth, and health, and strength, in tyrannising over those who are weaker than themselves, and laughing at those who are not as clever as themselves, and eating and drinking with the drunken—the Lord will come to them in an hour when they are not aware, and cut them asunder, in some way or other, by loss of work, or poverty, or sickness, or doubt and confusion, and bitter shame and perplexity of mind; till they find out, poor things, that they have been living like the unbelievers all their youth, without God in the world, while God’s love and God’s teaching, and God’s happiness was ready for them; and have to go back again to their Father and their Lord, and cry: “Father, we have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and are no more worthy to be called Thy children!” Oh, you who have been fancying that the Lord was gone far away, and that you had a right to do what you liked with the powers which He has given you, go back to Him, now at once, and confess that you, and all belonging to you, belong to Him, and ask Him to teach you how to use it aright. Ask Him to teach you how to please Him with it, and not yourselves only. Ask Him to teach you how to do good to all around you, and not merely to do what you like. Ask Him to show you how to do your duty to Him, and to your neighbours, for whom He died on the cross, in that station of life to which He has called you. Ask Him to show you how to use your property, your knowledge, your business, your strength, your health, so that you may be a blessing and a help to those whom He blesses and helps, and who, He wishes, should bless and help each other. Go back to Him at once, my friends. You will not have far to go, seeing that He is now even among us here hearing my clumsy words; and I do hope, and trust, and pray, bringing them home to some of your hearts with that spirit and power of His, which is like a two-edged sword, piercing to the very depths of a man’s heart, and showing him how ugly it is—and how noble the Lord will make it, if he will but repent and pray to Him who never cast out any that came to Him.

XXII. THE WAY TO WEALTH.

Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is
near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
thoughts and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy
upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.—ISAIAH lv.
6, 7.

SOME of you, surely, while the first lesson was being read this morning, must have felt the beauty of it; and if you were thoughtful, perplexed, weary, sad at heart, perhaps you felt that it was more than beautiful—that it was full of comfort. And so it should be full of comfort to you, my friends. God meant it to give you comfort. For though it was written and spoken by a man of like passions with ourselves, it was just as truly written and spoken by God, who made heaven and earth. It is true and everlasting, the message which it brings, and like all true and everlasting words, it is the voice of God who cannot change; who makes no difference between Jew and Gentile, between us in England here, and nations which perished hundreds of years ago.

And what is its message? What was God’s word to the old Jews, among all their sin, and sorrow, and labour?

Is it the message of a stern judge, saying: “Pay me that thou owest, to the uttermost farthing; and if you cannot do that, fret and torment yourselves in shame and terror here on earth, for all your sins, if, possibly, you may chance to change my mind, and find forgiveness at the last day?”

Is it the message of a proud tyrant, saying: “If you are miserable, and fallen, and sinful, what is that to me? I am perfect, blest, contented with myself, alone in my glory, far away beyond the sight of men, beyond the sun and stars—what are you worms of earth to me?”

Or is it the voice of a loving Father, calling to his self-willed children who have gone proudly and boldly away from their Father’s house, and thrown off their Father’s government, and said in their conceit: “We are men. Do not we know good and evil? Do we not know what is our interest? Cannot we judge for ourselves, and shift for ourselves, and take care of ourselves? Why are we to be barred from pleasant things here, and profitable things there? We will be our own masters.”

To self-willed children who have said thus, and done thus in their foolish hearts, and have found all their conceit, and shrewdness, only lead them into sorrow, and perplexity, and distress.—Who have found that with all their cleverness they could not get the very good things for which they left their Father’s house; or if they get them, find no enjoyment in them, but only discontent, and shame, and danger, and a sad self-accusing heart—spending their money for that which does not feed them after all, and labouring hard for things which do not satisfy them; always longing for something more—always finding the pleasure, or the profit, or the honour which a little way off looked so fine, looked quite ugly and worthless, when they come up to it and get hold of it—finding all things full of labour; the eye never satisfied with seeing, or the ear with hearing; the same thing coming over and over again. Each young man starting with gay hopes, as if he were the first man that ever was born, and he was going to do out of hand such fine things as man never did before, and make his own fortune, and set the world to right at once; and then as he grows older, falling into the same weary ruts as his forefathers went dragging on it, every fresh year bringing its own labour and its own sorrow; and dying like them, taking nothing away with him of all he has earned, and crying with his last breath: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun, for all is vanity and vexation of spirit?”

To self-willed children, who have tried their own way ever since they were born, they and their fathers before them, and found it go round in a ring and leave them just where they started in heart and soul, and, on their death-beds, in purse and power also—

To such struggling, dissatisfied beings—such as nine-tenths of the men and women on this earth, alas! are still—comes the word of this loving Father:

“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters! and he that hath no money, come, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money, and without price.” Why do you fancy that money can give you all you want? Why this labouring and straining after money, as if it was God, as if it made heaven and earth, and all therein? Is money a God? or money’s worth? “I am God,” saith the Lord, “and beside me there is none else. It is I who give, and not money. It is I who save men, and not money. And I do save, and I do give freely to all. Come, and try my mercy, and see if my word be not true.”

This struggling and snarling, like dogs over a bone—what profit comes of it? are you happier? are you wiser? are you better? are you more at peace with your neighbours; more at peace with your own hearts and consciences? If you are, money has not made you so, nor plotting, and scraping, and struggling, and pushing your neighbour down, that you may rise a few inches on his shoulders. No. Hear what the voice of your Father says is the true way to wealth and comfort, after which you all struggle and labour so hard in vain.—“Hearken diligently unto me, and you shall eat that which is good, and your soul shall delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto me. Hear, and your soul shall live. And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies,” or rather “the faithful oath which I sware unto David?” And what is this faithful oath which God sware to David.—“Of the fruit of thy body, I will set on thy seat.” A promise of a righteous king who should arise in David’s family. How far David understood the full meaning of that glorious promise we cannot tell. He thought most probably, at first, that Solomon, his son, was to be the king who would fulfil it. But all through many of his psalms, there are deep and great words about some nobler and more perfect king than Solomon—about one who, as Isaiah says here, would perfectly witness to the people that God was their King; one who would be a perfect leader and commander of the people; a holy one of Israel, who would sit on God’s right hand; to hear the good news of whom, the Jews would call nations whom they then did not know of, and for whose sake nations who did not know them would run to them. And dimly David did see this, that God would raise up a true Christ, that is, one truly anointed by God, chosen and sent out by God, to sit on his throne, and be perfectly what David was only in part; a King made perfect by suffering, a King of poor men, a King who bore the sins and carried the iniquities of all His people, from the highest to the lowest. We know who that was. We know clearly what David only knew dimly, what Isaiah only knew a little more clearly. We know who was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, ascended into heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God, ever praying for us, ruling the world in righteousness, Jesus the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth.

But Isaiah, though he knew Him only dimly, still knew Him. He did not know that the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, would take on Himself the form of a poor man, and be called the son of the carpenter. Such boundless love and condescension in the Son of God he never could have fancied for himself, and God had not chosen to reveal it to him; or to anyone else in those days. But this he did see, that the Lord Jesus, He whom he calls the Holy One of Israel, was near the Jews in his time; that He was watching over them, mourning over their sins, arguing with them, and calling them to return to Him with most human love and tenderness, as a husband to the woman whom he loves in spite of her unfaithfulness to him. As he says to his sinful and distressed country in the chapter before this: “Thy Maker is thy husband: the Lord of Hosts is His name, and thy Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, the Lord of the whole earth shall He be called. For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit. For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little anger I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.”

This, then, Isaiah knew—that the heart of the Holy Lord pitied and yearned after those poor sinful Jews, as a husband’s after a foolish and sinful wife. And how much more should we believe the same, how much more should we believe that His heart pities and yearns for all foolish and sinful people here in England now! We who know a thousand times more than Isaiah knew of His love, His pity, His condescension, which led Him to sacrifice Himself upon the cross for us? Surely, surely, if Isaiah had a right to say to those Jews, “Seek the Lord while He may be found,” I have a thousand times as much right to say it to you. If Isaiah had a right to say to those Jews, “Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon,” then I have a right to say it to you.