Chapter VI: Preface (6)

If, therefore, in the Revision of the Prayer Book now pending, or in official forms of intercession now under consideration, it is contemplated to add anything to the language of the Prayer Book, what we have to ask is that such additions may be kept within these scriptural and primitive limits, and may not introduce petitions which imply suppositions respecting the condition of the soul in the intermediate state, of which Scripture tells us nothing. Even the Archbishop’s language might give some encouragement to such suppositions, when he speaks of praying “for him ... who still lives and, as we may surely believe, still grows from strength to strength, in truer purity and in deepened reverence and love.” Whoever believes that does so without warrant of Scripture, and prayer based on such a belief has no authority in revelation. The hope of the Christian is not that his soul will be gradually purified after death, but that, in the words of the commendatory prayer in the Service of the Visitation of the Sick, it may, in death itself, be washed in the blood of that immaculate Lamb, and presented, when it leaves the body, “pure and without spot” unto God. Prayers, in short, which have any tinge of a purgatorial view are unauthorized by Scripture, and inconsistent with a most blessed element of Evangelical hope and faith. Short of this, I could wish, for my own part, that we might imitate the purer forms of prayer in the early Church by more specific mention of the departed, as in what seems to me the beautiful expressions of the earlier Burial Service. “We commend into Thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the soul of this our brother departed, and his body we commit to the earth, beseeching Thine infinite goodness to give us grace to live in Thy fear and love, and to die in Thy favour; that when the judgment shall come, which Thou hast committed to Thy wellbeloved Son, both this our brother and we may be found acceptable in Thy sight.” After all, in presence of the mysteries of death, and of the condition of those we have lost, what prayer can be more comforting than one which simply commends to our Father’s gracious hands, through our Saviour’s merits and grace, the beloved soul after which we yearn? That is a Prayer for the Dead which may be offered without scruple and without cessation, and in which we may find, day by day, and in every moment of sorrow and distress, our refuge and our consolation.

CHRIST AND THE SOLDIER.

ADDRESS AT THE CHURCH PARADE, IN THE NAVE OF THE CATHEDRAL, SEPT. 27, 1914.

“_Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me._”--St. John xiv. 1.

My brethren, when your Commanding Officer did me the honour to ask me to address you, I thought I would try to bring before you, in the simplest and briefest form, the special message which is brought by the Gospel of Christ to men in such a position as that in which you now stand--a position of great anxiety and solemn responsibility. You will meet that responsibility, of course, in the manly and cheerful spirit which has marked soldiers of great races at all times, from the Jews, Greeks, and Romans to our own days. But the Gospel of Christ has the characteristic privilege of bringing good news to human nature in all circumstances. It sheds a new and blessed light on life and all its duties, on death and all its fears, and I would fain impress on you, in one sentence of our Saviour, what is the supreme blessing and guidance which it affords, especially to soldiers.

That blessing is contained in the few words of my text: _Ye believe in God; believe also in Me_. They are the first words of our Saviour’s address to His disciples, at the moment when they were in great trouble and anxiety, on account of His having told them that He was about to be violently taken from them. It was no ordinary trouble that they were about to encounter, but one of the greatest and bitterest that ever befell human beings. Yet He begins, at once, by bidding them not be troubled. _Let not your hearts be troubled_, He said. But how were they to avoid it? He gives them a short and sufficient reason: _Ye believe in God; believe also in Me_. Remember who they were. They were Jews, full of the faith of the old Covenant; familiar with the psalms which we sing every day, believing in God as Abraham did, as David did, as Isaiah did, and as He Himself had taught them to believe. That was and is, a grand faith to live in. But our Lord brought an addition to it, which made it, and makes it, infinitely better. _Ye believe in God_, He said; _believe also in Me_. He uses the same word of belief in Himself which He had used of belief in God. “You put your trust in God,” He seems to say; “You give yourselves up to Him, to obey His will for life and for death. Do the same for Me. Give yourselves up also to Me, to obey Me, to trust Me and to love Me.” The privilege of doing that is the reason He gives them for not letting their heart be troubled. If they would obey and trust Him with the same faith which they gave to God, they would have still surer ground for comfort and strength than if they only believed in the God of their fathers.

This was a great claim for our Lord Jesus Christ to make. But He went on to shed His blood on the Cross in attestation of it; and, according to His promise, He rose again after being put to death, to assure us that He was the living Son of God He claimed to be; and that is our sufficient reason for believing it. For that reason we take His word for it, and trust everything He said. But why does this assurance bring that special comfort to His disciples, and to ourselves, which He promises? There are many reasons; but on this occasion I will mention only the one which He Himself proceeds to state. He goes on to declare at once what is perhaps the greatest of all the comforts which He brings. He tells us what is our eternal Home, whither He was Himself going, and where we are meant to go. He says at once: _In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also._ Every one of us must ask himself, sooner or later, where he is going; what is his eternal Home? More especially must we ask ourselves this question when we are brought face to face, in any way, with the great issues of life and death. When nations are marching in their millions to conflicts which must mean an early death to many of them, we must crave for an answer, more than ever, to the question, What is beyond death? What is the life into which we shall pass from this world?

Now, in these few words, our Saviour gives us an assurance on this question which is more than sufficient. We shall go into a world in which He is ready to meet us, and in which He is preparing mansions for us. Without the Gospel, there is a complete veil over the future life. But to the Christian that veil is lifted by the Saviour and His Apostles in some glorious details, and above all--far above all--in this: that the Lord Jesus Christ, that living Man of whom you read in the Gospels, Whose character stands out so clearly there, in all graciousness, justice, love, and power, is preparing homes for us, and will be there to receive us unto Himself. David was inspired to sing, _When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me_. It was a great height of inspired faith to be able to utter that prayer of trust in the great God of his fathers, surrounded, as he then was, by clouds and darkness. But what a vastly greater blessing it is to be able to say it of the Lord Jesus Christ, Whom we are privileged to know, not only as God, but as Man in flesh and blood, and to be assured that in death, as in life, we have with us all the sympathy, all the tenderness, as well as all the righteousness and justice, which He showed during His life on earth. Had He not reason to say: _Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in Me_?

But if it is to be a comfort to us to know that we shall be received by the Lord Jesus Christ when we pass from this world, and that, whether we pass suddenly or slowly, we shall find ourselves in His hands, we cannot fail to realize that one condition on our own part is essential. We must come to Him with a character, and in a condition, which He can approve. He will meet us in two capacities; first, as our Saviour and friend, but also as our Judge. Without waiting for that ultimate judgment which He has announced, the thought of our closer approach to Him at death must make us deeply apprehensive of His personal judgment on our character and our lives. If we desire to meet Him in happiness, we must be preparing ourselves, while we are here, so as to be at least in general harmony with His will and His character. In consequence of those inveterate sins of mankind, which bring about wars and all other such miseries, He Himself, with His own deliberate consent, was brought to death, and sacrificed His life as an atonement for our evil; and by that sacrifice He has won from God the Father, His Father and our Father, the right to forgive us and to judge us mercifully. We may be sure accordingly that He will receive us into the arms of His mercy, and pardon our innumerable failures and offences, if we truly repent of them. But if we are to be at peace with Him hereafter, in His mansions, He must needs expect us, while we are here, to be trying to grow like Him, and to be doing His will. This accordingly is the second main point which follows from this assurance of our Lord. It places us under the strongest possible obligation to live here as Christ would have us, in order that we may look forward with full hope to living with Him hereafter.

Consequently, this promise of Christ obliges us to Christen, as it were, or to Christianize, the work of our lives, and every duty or profession in which we are engaged. This is a principle which has innumerable applications; and I will only apply it this morning to one aspect of the profession of a soldier. Men had great ideals before Christ came. Few things are nobler, in the profession of arms, than the examples of self-sacrifice, of bravery, of generosity, exhibited by the ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans, and, in our own days, by the Japanese. But the history of the Christian world has shown that it is possible to raise those ideals, if not to a higher, yet to a more gracious, height by adding a Christian touch or colour to them. The knighthood of the Middle Ages, for instance, exhibited the highest qualities of a manly soldiery, elevated, purified, and illuminated by the supreme graces of gentleness, of mercy, of tenderness for the weak, of that impulse to save the suffering and the crushed, which is embodied in our Lord’s character as “the Saviour.” The knight of the Middle Ages was essentially the saviour of the weak, the champion of women, bound by oath to uphold all right and righteousness, to avenge wrong, to maintain, in the midst of his stern duties, the mercies and graces of Christian feeling. One of them, as he stood at the bier of the most famous knight of his day, is described in the old romance as exclaiming: _And now, I daresay, that Sir Lancelot, there thou liest: thou wert never matched of none earthly knight’s hands; and thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever stroke with sword; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou wert the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest_. Can we fail to be sensible that, even in such an imperfect example, something of the grace of Christian tenderness has been shed over the character--an essence of Christian feeling, which would make impossible in such a soldier any brutal violence or wilful injustice? It was, in fact, the conscious example of Christ which controlled them. They all, more or less, resembled the knight of our own noble poet Spenser:

For on his breast a bloody cross he bore,
The dear remembrance of his dying Lord:
For Whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living ever, Him adored;
Upon his shield the like was also scored,
For sovran hope which in his help he had.

That is the true badge not only of Christian service to the wounded, but of Christian warfare itself.

Such, my brethren, is the spirit in which you can apply to your present duties the exhortation of our Saviour in this gracious and cardinal text. It bids you to add the belief in the presence of Christ, the obligation of obedience to Christ, trust in Christ and love towards Him, to all the other principles by which you are animated. The fact that you are here, that you are making great sacrifices, that you are ready to make the greatest sacrifice of all, for your country, is proof enough that you are animated by high and generous motives, that you wish to live and die for the greatest of all causes, for righteousness and justice, for your King and your country. But if you would do the best you can, do one thing more. Take care to add the spirit of Christ to these motives and impulses; strive to enter more deeply, day by day, into His heart and will, to realize more and more, even in the midst of war, that “new commandment” which He gave us, _that we should love one another_; and so prepare yourselves to meet Him whenever you have to do so, as we all have, soon or late, in such a character that He may be able to say to you: _Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord_. In a word: You believe in God, and in all that the Name of God stands for--righteousness, truth, goodness of all kinds: believe also in Christ, and let His love, His mercy, His purity, His absolute self-sacrifice, add His own peculiar grace to all your words and deeds, and then you may cherish the confident hope that _where He is there you will be also_.

THE ETERNAL LIFE OF THE SOUL.

PREACHED IN THE NAVE OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, AT THE MILITARY CHURCH PARADE, OCTOBER 15, 1916.

“_O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee._”--Psalm lxiii. 1.

These words ought to be in the heart and the mouth of every soul in this congregation. They are the first words of a Psalm, which has been used as a morning Psalm by many generations of Christians, and it is the privilege of all of us to echo them. But let us consider carefully what they mean. Who is the God to Whom they speak? We are in the House of God, to worship God; and we open our worship, every Sunday, with a Psalm which tells us who He is. “The Lord,” it says, “is a great God, a great King above all Gods. In His hand are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it: and His hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.” That is the God to whom the Christian speaks. He is the God Who made heaven and earth, and whose will and power upholds them from hour to hour. He is our maker, “and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.” In other words, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

The word “God” is too often used lightly in common conversation among us, but without due remembrance that it is the Name of the Most awful and supreme reality that can be thought of. We do not use lightly the name of our King, but God is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Our lives and our souls are in the hollow of His hand every moment; and if we considered only His supreme Majesty and our weak and passing frames, we are perfectly insignificant beings before Him. But it is to this Being that the Psalmist addresses the words “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” We may all say that, as well as the Psalmist. It is our privilege to speak to the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, as our own; we may call Him our God, our own God, we may tell Him that we seek Him, that we seek Him above all things, and we may say, as the Psalmist goes on to say, “My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh also longeth after Thee: in a barren and dry land where no water is. Thus have I looked for Thee in the sanctuary (in a Cathedral like this) that I might behold Thy power and glory.” How is it that humble and feeble creatures like ourselves can thus call the God of heaven and earth our own, and speak to Him, and tell Him, in this earnest language, that we cannot do without Him? Where, above all, can we find Him and approach Him?

The Psalmist used these words, and we may use them too, because this God is the nearest of all things in the world to us, and because we are in daily contact with Him in our hearts and souls. It is true He is so great and infinite, that He has made the world, and all its marvels and glories; but we are more concerned to realize that He has made our own selves, and our minds and hearts and consciences, and when we look into those hearts, and listen to those consciences, we are only experiencing, in ourselves, the work of His hands, and listening to His voice. Above all other things, God made right and wrong, He made us to realize the difference between right and wrong; He made the truth, and enabled us to love it, and to hate what is false; in a word, He made our consciences and our minds; and He lives and works in them, as much as He does in the world at large. It is very well for us to look up to the heavens, to think of Him as the Creator of all those stars and worlds, or to look into the infinite mysteries of this world’s life, its minute elements and atoms; but it is more important for us to think of Him as the Giver, and Ruler, and Guide of our very souls and bodies, Who determined what we were made for, and what we ought to do, what sort of a life we ought to live, putting into our hearts the knowledge of our duty, warning us of it by the constant voice of our consciences, and bidding us realize that He will judge us, for our obedience or disobedience to His will and His commands. Think of God, by all means, in His greatness and His Majesty, and His awful powers, but then think of Him as actually in contact with you in your own souls, teaching you and speaking to you in your consciences, and calling to you, by your sense of right and wrong, to remember that He is your judge, and that your very life and happiness depend upon your union with Him. That is the thought of God that should be incessantly in our minds. As the Scripture says more than once, you need not go to the heavens to seek Him there, you need not go into the depths of the earth to seek Him there, but He is near you, nearer to you than anything else, in your very souls and consciences; you hear His voice there, you feel the influence of His Spirit; there you can always find Him, you can turn to Him at any moment and say “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.”

There is no reality in the world which can be compared, in its momentous importance, to this. It must be brought home to us, by the experience which is thrust upon us by the Great War, that everything else with which we have to do, everything else in the world, passes away from us. So it does indeed from everybody, at all times, whether times of war or of peace. There comes a time to every soul when it has to leave the body, and, with the body, everything else with which it has been associated in this world. We all know it when we think seriously about it; but the misfortune is that, in ordinary life, men do not think seriously about it. All their thoughts and interests are engaged in the business and the pleasures and the interests of this life, and they seldom look beyond. But in days like the present we are forced to look beyond them. You, above all, who, at the call of duty, have laid behind you, for the present, all the ordinary interests of life, and are offering yourselves to all the risks of the battlefield--you have reason to ask, with supreme earnestness, what is the reality for which you are making this sacrifice, and what will remain to you if the full sacrifice should be exacted from you.

It is the grand answer of our religion, to say that, whatever happens, God remains to you. This God, moreover, is not a distant God, not merely the Maker of the heavens and the earth, but your God, the God of your inmost soul, the God of your conscience, the God whose eye sees into your hearts, and Whose hand has been with you from your childhood, to help you, to guide you, and to inspire you with all the thoughts of truth, of manliness, of faithfulness, of purity, which you have felt working in you. Whenever the outward clothing of our souls drops off from us, whether in the death of old age, or the death of sickness, or the death of the battlefield, our souls will certainly be in the immediate presence of One Supreme Reality; and that is the God with Whom, in our conscience, our souls have been in contact day by day, and night by night, throughout our lives. That is why we come to worship Him here, that is why we pray to Him day by day, and I hope hour by hour, and minute by minute. That is why we should say to Him like the Psalmist “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” Nothing else is of permanent and everlasting consequence to us, but our relation to Him, and our union with Him--His relation to us, and His love of us. While everything is shaking around us, while the kingdoms are moved, and lives seem thrown away as things of small value, let us remember that one great Living Being remains to all of us, to those whose lives are lost on earth, and to those who remain, and that is the Eternal God, the Giver of all truth, and righteousness and love; and the greater the strain and stress of life and death, the more may we confidently exclaim, in the tumult of the battlefield as much as in the peace of this sanctuary, “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.”

But when and where are you to seek Him? The question has been answered in the truths of which I have reminded you. Seek Him in obedience to that Voice of His, which you hear in your consciences, seek Him in obedience to those principles of right, as against wrong, which He has implanted in you, and which His Spirit is continually reviving in you; seek Him in trying, day by day, to do His Will as He has revealed it to you in His word, especially as He has revealed it to you in the life and teaching of His Own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Seek Him in those sacraments and ordinances of His Church which he has instituted for our comfort. If you obey our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to follow His life, His Spirit will speak to you continually in your consciences, will help you to know your duty and to do it, and you will be saying in practice what you say in words: “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” Our Lord has told you that if you are true hearted in trying to do this, He will forgive you your failures and weaknesses, that He has died to make atonement for them, that He will take you by the hand as you pass from this life to the next, and will be your advocate and sponsor before the face of the righteous and Almighty God. Let us bring this spirit into all we do and all we think, and we shall then be able to join in the succeeding words of this Psalm, “Have I not remembered Thee in my bed: and thought upon Thee when I was waking? Because Thou hast been my helper: therefore under the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice. My soul hangeth upon Thee: Thy right hand hath upholden me.” May God grant us all this faith and this eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hunt, Barnard & Co., Ltd., Printers, London and Aylesbury.

WORKS BY HENRY WACE, D.D.,

Dean of Canterbury.

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Transcriber’s Note

Minor punctuation errors have been corrected (i.e. missing periods). Original spellings and variations (i.e. civilization and civilisation) have been retained, except for the following apparent typographical errors:

Page 35, “temporaly” changed to “temporal.” (for the things which are seen are temporal)

Page 89, “eleswhere” changed to “elsewhere.” (a picture not adequately described elsewhere)

Page 94, “idolators” changed to “idolaters.” (whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters)

Page 106, “thoughout” changed to “throughout.” (gracious throughout their vast Empire)

Page 223, “repecting” changed to “respecting.” (respecting which very various opinions have)