Chapter I: DO not pretend to understand these words. I preach on them because the (2)

Oh, my friends, think of this. Think of what you say when you say, ‘I am a man.’ Remember that you are claiming for yourselves the very highest honour—an honour too great to make you proud; an honour so great that, if you understand it rightly, it must fill you with awe, and trembling, and the spirit of godly fear, lest, when God has put you up so high, you should fall shamefully again. For the higher the place, the deeper the fall; and the greater the honour, the greater the shame of losing it. But be sure that it was an honour before Adam fell. That ever since Christ has taken the manhood into God, it is an honour now to be a man. Do not let the devil or bad men ever tempt you to say, I am only a man, and therefore you cannot expect me to do right. I am but a man, and therefore I cannot help being mean, and sinful, and covetous, and quarrelsome, and foul: for that is the devil’s doctrine, though it is common enough. I have heard a story of a man in America—where very few, I am sorry to say, have heard the true doctrine of the Catholic Church, and therefore do not know really that God made man in his own image, and redeemed him again into his own image by Jesus Christ—and this man was rebuked for being a drunkard; and what do you fancy his excuse was? ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you should remember that there is a great deal of human nature in a man.’ That was his excuse. He had been so ill-taught by his Calvinist preachers, that he had learnt to look on human nature as actually a bad thing; as if the devil, and not God, had made human nature, and as if Christ had not redeemed human nature. Because he was a man, he thought he was excused in being a bad man; because he had a human nature in him, he was to be a drunkard and a brute.

My friends, I trust that you have not so learned Christ. And if you have, it is from no teaching of your Bible, of your Catechism, or your Prayer-book; and, I say boldly, from no teaching of mine. The Church bids you say, Yes; I have a human nature in me; and what nature is that but the nature which the Son of God took on himself, and redeemed, and justified it, and glorified it, sitting for ever now in his human nature at the right hand of God, the Son of man who is in heaven? Yes, I am a man; and what is it to be a man, but to be the image and glory of God? What is it to be a man? To belong to that race whose Head is the co-equal and co-eternal Son of God. True, it is not enough to have only a human nature which may sin, will sin, must sin, if left to itself a moment. But you have, unless the Holy Spirit has left you, and your baptism is of none effect, more than human nature in you: you have divine grace—that supernatural grace and Spirit of God by which man stood in Paradise, and by neglecting which he fell.

Obey that Spirit; from him comes every right judgment of your minds, every good desire of your hearts, every thought and feeling in you which raises you up, instead of dragging you down; which bids you do your duty, and live the life of God and Christ, instead of living the mere death-in-life of selfish pleasure and covetousness. Obey that Spirit, and be men: men indeed, that you may not come to shame in the day when Christ the Son of Man shall take account of you, how you have used your manhood, body, soul, and spirit.

SERMON XXIV. THE CHARITY OF GOD.

(_Quinquagesima Sunday_.)

LUKE xviii. 31, 32, 33.

All things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man
shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles,
and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and
they shall scourge him and put him to death; and the third day he
shall rise again.

THIS is a solemn text, a solemn Gospel; but it is not its solemnity which I wish to speak of this morning, but this—What has it to do with the Epistle, and with the Collect? The Epistle speaks of Charity; the Collect bids us pray for the Holy Spirit of Charity. What have they to do with the Gospel?

Let me try to show you.

The Epistle speaks of God’s eternal charity. The Gospel tells us how that eternal charity was revealed, and shown plainly in flesh and blood on earth, in the life and death of Jesus Christ our Lord.

But you may ask, How does the Epistle talk of God’s charity? It bids men be charitable; but the name of God is never mentioned in it. Not so, my friends. Look again at the Epistle, and you will see one word which shows us that this charity, which St. Paul says we must have, is God’s charity.

For, he says, Charity never faileth; that though prophecies shall fail, tongues cease, knowledge vanish away, charity shall never fail. Now, if a thing never fail, it must be eternal. And if it be eternal, it must be in God. For, as I have reminded you before about other things, the Athanasian Creed tells us (and never was truer or wiser word written) there is but one eternal.

But if charity be not in God, there must be two eternals; God must be one eternal, and charity another eternal; which cannot be. Therefore charity must be in God, and of God, part of God’s essence and being; and not only God’s saints, but God himself—suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, is not puffed up, seeketh not his own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

So St. Augustine believed, and the greatest fathers of old time. They believed, and they have taught us to believe, that before all things, above all things, beneath all things, is the divine charity, the love of God, infinite as God is infinite, everlasting as God is everlasting; the charity by which God made all worlds, all men, and all things, that they might be blest as he is blest, perfect as he is perfect, useful as he is useful; the charity which is God’s essence and Holy Spirit, which might be content in itself, because it is perfectly at peace in itself; and yet _cannot_ be content in itself, just because it is charity and love, and therefore must be going forth and proceeding everlastingly from the Father and the Son, upon errands of charity, love, and mercy, rewarding those whom it finds doing their work in their proper place, and seeking and saving those who are lost, and out of their proper place.

But what has this to do with the Gospel? Surely, my friends, it is not difficult to see. In Jesus Christ our Lord, the eternal charity of God was fully revealed. The veil was taken off it once for all, that men might see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and know that the glory of God is charity, and the Spirit of God is love.

There was a veil over that in old times; and the veil comes over it often enough now. It was difficult in old times to believe that God was charity; it is difficult sometimes now.

Sad and terrible things happen—Plague and famine, earthquake and war. All these things have happened in our times. Not two months ago, in Italy, an earthquake destroyed many thousands of people; and in India, this summer, things have happened of which I dare not speak, which have turned the hearts of women to water, and the hearts of men to fire: and when such things happen, it is difficult for the moment to believe that God is love, and that he is full of eternal, boundless, untiring charity toward the creatures whom he has made, and who yet perish so terribly, suddenly, strangely.

Well, then, we must fall back on the Gospel. We must not be afraid of the terror of such awful events, but sanctify the Lord God, in our hearts, and say, Whatever may happen I know that God is love; I know that his glory is charity; I know that his mercy is over all his works; for I know that Jesus Christ, who was full of perfect charity, is the express image of his Father’s person, and the brightness of his Father’s glory. I know (for the Gospel tells me), that he dared all things, endured all things, in the depth of his great love, for the sake of sinful men. I know that when he knew what was going to happen to him; when he knew that he should be mocked, scourged, crucified, he deliberately, calmly, faced all that shame, horror, agony, and went up willingly to Jerusalem to suffer and to die there; because he was full of the Spirit of God, the spirit of charity and love. I know that he was _so_ full of it, that as he went up on his fatal journey, with a horrible death staring him in the face, still, instead of thinking of himself, he was thinking of others, and could find time to stop and heal the poor blind man by the way side, who called ‘Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.’ And in him and his love will I trust, when there seems nothing else left to trust on earth.

Oh, my friends, believe this with your whole heart. Whatever happens to you or to your friends, happens out of the eternal charity of God, who cannot change, who cannot hate, who can be nothing but what he is and was, and ever will be—love.

And when St. Paul tells you, as he told you in the Epistle to-day, to have charity, to try for charity, because it is the most excellent way to please God, and the eternal virtue, which will abide for ever in heaven, when all wisdom and learning, even about spiritual things, which men have had on earth, shall seem to us when we look back such as a child’s lessons do to a grown man;—when, I say, St. Paul tells you to try after charity, he tells you to be like God himself; to be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect; to bear and forbear because God does so: to give and forgive because God does so; to love all because God loves all, and willeth that none should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth.

How he will fulfil that; how he fulfilled it last summer with those poor souls in India, we know not, and never shall know in this life. Let it be enough for us that known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world, and that his charity embraces the whole universe.

SERMON XXV. THE DAYS OF THE WEEK.

JAMES i. 17.

Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
down from the Father of lights, with whom is neither variableness,
nor shadow of turning.

IT seems an easy thing for us here to say, ‘I believe in God.’ We have learnt from our childhood that there is but one God. It seems to us strange and ridiculous that people anywhere should believe in more gods than one. We never heard of any other doctrine, except in books about the heathen; and there are perhaps not three people in this church who ever saw a heathen man, or talked to him.

Yet it is not so easy to learn that there is but one God. Were it not for the church, and the missionaries who were sent into this part of the world by the church, now 1200 years ago, we should not know it now. Our forefathers once worshipped many gods, and not one only God. I do not mean when they were savages; for I do not believe that they ever were savages at all: but after they were settled here in England, living in a simple way, very much as country people live now, and dressing very much as country people do now, they worshipped many gods.

Now what put that mistake into their minds? It seems so ridiculous to us now, that we cannot understand at first how it ever arose.

But if we will consider the names of their old gods, we shall understand it a little better. Now the names of the old English gods you all know. They are in your mouths every day. The days of the week are named after them. The old English kept time by weeks, as the old Jews did, and they named their days after their gods. Why, would take me too much time to tell: but so it is.

Why, then, did they worship these gods?

First, because man must worship something. Before man fell, he was created in Christ the image and likeness of God the Father; and therefore he was created that he might hear his Father’s voice, and do his Father’s will, as Christ does everlastingly; and after man fell, and lost Christ and Christ’s likeness, still there was left in his heart some remembrance of the child’s feeling which the first man had; he felt that he ought to look up to some one greater than himself, obey some one greater than himself; that some one greater than himself was watching over him, doing him good, and perhaps, too, doing him harm and punishing him.

Then these simple men looked up to the heaven above, and round on the earth beneath, and asked, Who is it who is calling for us? Who is it we ought to obey and please; who gives us good things? Who may hurt us if we make him angry?

Then the first thing they saw was the sun. What more beautiful than the sun? What more beneficent? From the sun came light and heat, the growth of all living things, ay, the growth of life itself.

The sun, they thought, must surely be a god; so they worshipped the sun, and called the first day of the week after him—Sunday.

Next the moon. Nothing, except the sun, seemed so grand and beautiful to them as the moon, and she was their next god, and Monday was named after her.

Then the wind—what a mysterious, awful, miraculous thing the wind seemed, always moving, yet no one knew how; with immense power and force, and yet not to be seen; as our blessed Lord himself said, ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.’ Then—and this is very curious—they fancied that the wind was a sort of pattern, or type of the spirit of man. With them, as with the old Jews and Greeks, the same word which meant wind, meant also a man’s soul, his spirit; and so they grew to think that the wind was inhabited by some great spirit, who gave men spirit, and inspired them to be brave, and to prophesy, and say and do noble things; and they called him Wodin the Mover, the Inspirer; and named Wednesday after him.

Next the thunder—what more awful and terrible, and yet so full of good, than the summer heat and the thunder cloud? So they fancied that the thunder was a god, and called him Thor—and the dark thunder cloud was Thor’s frowning eyebrow; and the lightning flash Thor’s hammer, with which he split the rocks, and melted the winter-ice and drove away the cold of winter, and made the land ready for tillage. So they worshipped Thor, and loved him; for they fancied him a brave, kindly, useful god, who loved to see men working in their fields, and tilling the land honestly.

Then the spring. That was a wonder to them again—and is it not a wonder to see all things grow fresh and fair, after the dreary winter cold? So the spring was a goddess, and they called her Freya, the Free One, the Cheerful One, and named Friday after her; and she it was, they thought, who gave them the pleasant spring time, and youth, and love, and cheerfulness, and rejoiced to see the flowers blossom, and the birds build their nests, and all young creatures enjoy the life which God had given them in the pleasant days of spring. And after her Friday is named.

Then the harvest. The ripening of the grain, that too was a wonder to them—and should it not be to us?—how the corn and wheat which is put into the ground and dies should rise again, and then ripen into golden corn? That too must be the work of some kindly spirit, who loved men; and they called him Seator, the Setter, the Planter, the God of the seed field and the harvest, and after him Saturday is named.

And so, instead of worshipping him who made all heaven and earth, they turned to worship the heaven and the earth itself, like the foolish Canaanites.

But some may say, ‘This was all very mistaken and foolish: but what harm was there in it? How did it make them worse men?’

My friends, among these very woodlands here, some thirteen hundred years ago, you might have come upon one of the places where your forefathers worshipped Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind, beneath the shade of ancient oaks, in the darkest heart of the forest. And there you would have seen an ugly sight enough.

There was an altar there, with an everlasting fire burning on it; but why should that altar, and all the ground around be crusted and black with blood; why should that dark place be like a charnel house or a butcher’s shambles; why, from all the trees around, should there be hanging the rotting carcases, not of goats and horses merely, but of _men_, sacrificed to Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind? Why that butchery, why those works of darkness in the dark places of the world?

Because that was the way of pleasing Thor and Odin. To that our forefathers came. To that all heathens have come, sooner or later. They fancy gods in their own likeness; and then they make out those gods no better than, and at last as bad as themselves.

The old English and Danes were fond of Thor and Odin; they fancied them, as I told you, brave gods, very like themselves: but they themselves were not always what they ought to be; they had fierce passions, were proud, revengeful, blood-thirsty; and they thought Thor and Odin must be so too.

And when they looked round them, that seemed too true. The thunder storm did not merely melt the snow, cool the air, bring refreshing rain; it sometimes blasted trees, houses, men; that they thought was Thor’s anger.

So of the wind. Sometimes it blew down trees and buildings, sank ships in the sea. That was Odin’s anger. Sometimes, too, they were not brave enough; or they were defeated in battle. That was because Thor and Odin were angry with them, and would not give them courage. How were they to appease Thor and Odin, and put them into good humour again? By giving them their revenge, by letting them taste blood; by offering them sheep, goats, horses in sacrifice: and if that would not do, by offering them something more precious still, living men.

And so, too often, when the weather was unfavourable, and crops were blasted by tempest or they were defeated in battle by their enemies, Thor’s and Odin’s altars were turned into slaughter-places for wretched human beings—captives taken in war, and sometimes, if the need was very great, their own children. That was what came of worshipping the heaven above and the earth around, instead of the true God. Human sacrifices, butchery, and murder.

English and Danes alike. It went on among them both; across the seas in their old country, and here in England, till they were made Christians. There is no doubt about it. I could give you tale on tale which would make your blood run cold. Then they learnt to throw away those false gods who quarrelled among themselves, and quarrelled with mankind; gods who were proud, revengeful, changeable, spiteful; who had variableness in them, and turned round as their passions led them. Then they learnt to believe in the one true God, the Father of lights, in whom is neither variableness nor shadow of turning. Then they learnt that from one God came every good and perfect gift; that God filled the sun with light; that God guided the changes of the moon; that God, and not Thor, gave to men industry and courage; God, and not Wodin, inspired them with the spirit which bloweth where it listeth, and raised them up above themselves to speak noble words and do noble deeds; that God, and not Friga, sent spring time and cheerfulness, and youth and love, and all that makes earth pleasant; that God, and not Satur, sent the yearly wonder of the harvest crops, sent rain and fruitful seasons, filling the earth with food and gladness.

But what was there about this new God, even the true God, which the old missionaries preached, which won the hearts of our forefathers?

This, my friends, not merely that he was one God and not many, but that he was a Father of lights, from whom came good gifts, in whom was neither variableness nor shadow of turning.

Not merely a master, but a Father, who gave good gifts, because he was good himself; a God whom they could love, because he loved them; a God whom they could trust and depend on, because there was no variableness in him, and he could not lose his temper as Thor and Odin did. That was the God whom their wild, passionate hearts wanted, and they believed in him.

And when they doubted, and asked, ‘How can we be sure that God is altogether good?—how can we be sure that he is always trustworthy, always the same?’—Then the missionaries used to point them to the crucifix, the image of Christ upon his cross, and say, ‘There is the token; there is what God is to you, what God suffered for you; there is the everlasting sign that he gives good gifts, even to the best of all gifts, even to his own self, when it was needed; there is the everlasting sign that in him is neither darkness, passion, nor change, but that he wills all men to be saved from their own darkness and passions, and from the ruin which they bring, and to come to the knowledge of the truth, that they have a Father in heaven.’

SERMON XXVI. THE HEAVENLY FATHER.

ACTS xvi. 24–28.

God that made the world, and all that therein is, seeing that he is
Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands . . .
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also
of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.