Chapter I: PREACHED some time ago a sermon on the whole of these most deep and (2)

You all know what life and power a man’s own spirit will often give him. You may have heard of “spirited” men in great danger, or “spirited” soldiers in battle; when faint, wounded, having suffered enough, apparently, to kill them twice over, still struggling or fighting on, and doing the most desperate deeds to the last, from the strength and courage of their spirits conquering pain and weakness, and keeping off, for a time, death itself. We all know how madmen, diseased in their spirits, will, when the fit is on them, have, for a few minutes, ten men’s strength. Well, just think, if a man’s own spirit, when it is powerful, can give his body such life and force, what must it have been with Christ, who was filled full of _the_ Spirit—God’s Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. The Lord could not _help_ rising. All the disease, and poison, and rottenness in the world, could not have made His body decay; mountains on mountains could not have kept it down. His body!—the Prince of Life!—He that was the life itself! It was impossible that death could hold Him.

And does not this shew us _why_ He rose, that we might rise with Him? What did He say about His own death? “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” He was the grain which fell into the ground and died, and from His dead body sprung up another body—His glorified body; and we His Church, His people, fed with that body—His members, however strange it may sound—St. Paul said it, and therefore I dare to say it, little as I know what it means—members of His flesh and of His bones.

But think! Remember what St. Paul tells you about this very matter in that glorious chapter which is read in the burial-service, “how when thou sowest seed, thou sowest not that body which it will have, but bare grain; but God gives it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its own body.” For the wheat-plant is in reality the same thing as the wheat-seed, and its life the same life, different as the outside of it may look. Dig it up just at this time of year, and you will find the seed-corn all gone, sucked dry; the life of the wheat-seed has formed it into a wheat-plant—yet it is the same individual thing. The substance of the seed has gone into the root and the young blade; but it is the same individual substance. You know it is, and though you cannot tell why, yet you say “What a fine plant that seed has grown into,” because you feel it is so, that the seed is the very same thing as the plant which springs up from it, though its shape is changed, and its size, and its colour, and the very stuff of which it was made is changed, since it was a mere seed. And yet it is at bottom the same individual thing as the seed was, with a new body and shape.

So with Christ’s body. It was changed after He rose. It had gone through pain, and weakness, and death, gone down to the lowest depth of them, and conquered them, and passed triumphant through them and far beyond their power. His body was now a nobler, a more beautiful, a glorified body, a spiritual body, one which could do whatever His Spirit chose to make it do, one which could never die again, one which could come through closed doors, appear and vanish as He liked, instead of being bound to walk the earth, and stand cold and heat, sickness and weariness.

Yet it was the very same body, just as the wheat-plant is the same as the wheat-seed—the very same body. Every one knew His face again after His resurrection. There was the very print of the nails to be seen in His hands and feet, the spear-wound in His blessed side. So shall it be with us, my friends. We shall rise again, and we shall be the same as we are now, and yet not the same; our bodies shall be the same bodies, and yet nobler, purer, spiritual bodies, which can know neither death, nor pain, nor weariness. Then, never care, my friends, if we drop like ripe grain into the bosom of mother earth,—if we are to spring up again as seedling plants, after death’s long winter, on the resurrection morn. Truly says the poet, {187} how

“Mother earth, she gathers all
Into her bosom, great and small:
Oh could we look into her face,
We should not shrink from her embrace.”

No, indeed! for if we look steadily with the wise, searching eye of faith into the face of mother earth, we shall see how death is but the gate of life, and this narrow churchyard, with its corpses close-packed underneath the sod, would not seem to us a frightful charnel-house of corruption. No! it would seem like what it is—a blessed, quiet, seed-filled God’s garden, in which our forefathers, after their long-life labour, lay sown by God’s friendly hand, waiting peaceful, one and all, to spring up into leaf, and flower, and everlasting paradise-fruit, beneath the breath of God’s Spirit at the last great day, when the Sun of Righteousness arises in glory, and the summer begins which shall never end.

One and all, did I say? Alas! would God it were so! We cannot hope as for all, but they are dead and gone, and we are not here to judge the dead. They have another Judge, and all shall be as He wills.

But we—we in whose limbs the breath of life still boils—we who can still work, let us never forget all grain ripens not. There is some falls out of the ear unripe, and perishes; some is picked out by birds; some withers and decays in the ear, and yet gets into the barn with it, and is sown too with the wheat, of which I never heard that any sprang up again—ploughed up again it may be—a withered, dead husk of chaff as it died, ploughed up to the resurrection of damnation to burn as chaff in unquenchable fire; but the good seed alone, ripe, and safe with the wheat-plant till it is ripe, that only will _spring up_ to the resurrection of eternal life.

Now, consider again that parable of the wheat-plant. After it has sprung up, what does it next, but _tiller_?—and every new shoot that tillers out bears its own ear, ripens its own grain, twenty, thirty, or forty stems, and yet they are all the same plant, living with the life of that one original seed. So with Christ’s Church—His body the Church. As soon as he rose, that new plant began to tiller. He did not keep His Spirit to Himself, but poured it out on the apostles, and from them it spread and spread—Each generation of Christians ripening, and bearing fruit, and dying, a fresh generation of fruit springing up from them, and so on, as we are now at this day. And yet all these plants, these millions and millions of Christian men and women, who have lived since Christ’s blessed resurrection, all are parts of that one original seed, the body of Christ, whose members they are, and all owe their life to that one spirit of Christ, which is in them all and through them all, as the life of the original grain is in the whole crop which springs from it.

And what can you learn from this? Learn this, that in Christ you are safe, out of Christ you are lost. But _really_ in Christ, I mean—not like the dead and dying grains, mildewed and worm-eaten, which you find here and there on the finest wheat-plant. Their end is to be burned, and so will ours be, for all our springing out of Christ’s root, if the angel reapers find us not good wheat, but chaff and mildew. Every branch in Christ which beareth not fruit, His heavenly Father taketh away. Therefore, never pride yourself on having been baptised into Christ, never pride yourself on shewing some signs of God’s Spirit, on being really good, right in this and right in that,—the question is, not so much, Are you _in Christ_ at all, are you part of His tree, a member of His body? but, Are you ripening there? If you are not ripening, you are decaying, and your end will be as God has said. And do you wish to know whether you are in Christ, safe, ripening? see whether you are like Him. If the young grain does not shew like the seed grain, you may be sure it is making no progress; and as surely as a wheat-plant never brought forth rye, or a grape-tree thistles, so surely, if you are not like Christ in your character, in patience, in meekness, in courage, truth, purity, piety, and love, you may be of His planting, but you are none of His ripening, and you will not be raised with Him at the last day, to flower anew in the gardens of Paradise, world without end.

SERMON XVIII. IMPROVEMENT.

PSALM xcii. 12.

“The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like
the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord
shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring
forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”

THE Bible is always telling Christian people to _go forwards_—to grow—to become wiser and stronger, better and better day by day; that they ought to become better, and better, because they can, if they choose, improve. This text tells us so; it says that we shall bring forth more fruit in our old age. Another text tells us that “those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;” another tells us that we “shall go from strength to strength.” Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but talks of growing in grace and in the knowledge of God, of being _filled_ with God’s Spirit, of having our eyes more and more open to understand God’s truth. Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul that the men to whom he writes may become holier and wiser. And St. Paul says that he himself needed to go forward—that he wanted fresh strength—that he had to forget what was past, and consider all he had done and felt as nothing, and press forward to the prize of his high calling; that he needed to be daily conquering himself more and more, keeping down his bad feelings, hunting out one bad habit after another, lest, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself should become a castaway. Therefore, I said rightly, that the Bible is always bidding us go forwards. You cannot read your Bibles without seeing this. What else was the use of St. Paul’s Epistles? They were written to Christian men, redeemed men, converted men, most of them better I fear than ever we shall be; and for what? to tell them not be content to remain as they were, to tell them to go forwards, to improve, to be sure that they were only just inside the gate of God’s kingdom, and that if they would go on to perfection, they would find strength, and holiness, and blessing, and honour, and happiness, which they as yet did not dream of. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,” said our blessed Lord to all men. “Be ye perfect,” says St. Paul to the Corinthians, and the Ephesians, and all to whom he wrote; and so say I to you now in God’s name, for Christ’s sake, as citizens of God’s kingdom, as heirs of everlasting glory, “Be you perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Now I ask you, my friends, is not this reasonable? It is reasonable, for the Bible always speaks of our souls as living things. It compares them to limbs of a body, to branches of a tree, often to separate plants—as in our Lord’s parable of the tares and the wheat. Again, St. Paul tells us that we have been planted in baptism in the likeness of Christ’s death; and again, in the first Psalm, which says that the good man shall be like a tree planted by the waterside; and again, in the text of my sermon, which says “that those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”

Now what does all this mean? It means that the life of our souls is in some respects like the life of a plant; and, therefore, that as plants grow, so our souls are to grow. Why do you plant anything, but in order that it may _grow_ and become larger, stronger, bear flower and fruit? Be sure God has planted us in His garden, Christ’s Church, for no other reason. Consider, again—What is life but a continual growing, or a continual decaying? If a tree does not get larger and stronger, year by year, is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, and that decay has begun in it, that it is unsound at heart? And what happens then? It begins to become weaker and smaller, and cankered and choked with scurf and moss till it dies. If a tree is not growing, it is sure in the long run to be dying; and so are our souls. If they are not growing they are dying; if they are not getting better they are getting worse. This is why the Bible compares our souls to trees—not out of a mere pretty fancy of poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, world-wide lesson, that every tree in the fields may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless men, that as that tree is meant to grow, so our souls are meant to grow. As that tree dies unless it grows, so our souls must die unless they grow. Consider that!

But how does a tree grow? How are our souls to grow? Now here, again, we shall understand heavenly things best by taking and considering the pattern from among earthly things which the Bible gives us—the tree, I mean. A tree grows in two ways. Its roots take up food from the ground, its leaves take up food from the air. Its roots are its mouth, we may say, and its leaves are its lungs. Thus the tree draws nourishment from the earth beneath and from the heaven above; and so must our souls, my friends, if they are to live and grow, they must have food both from earth and from heaven. And this is what I mean—Why has God given us senses, eyes, and ears, and understanding? That by them we may feed our souls with things which we see and hear, things which are going on in the world round us. We must read, and we must listen, and we must watch people and their sayings and doings, and what becomes of them, and we must try and act, and practise what is right for ourselves; and so we shall, by using our eyes and ears and our bodies, get practice, and experience, and knowledge, from the world round us—such as Solomon gives us in his Proverbs—and so our eyes, and ears, and understandings, are to be to us like roots, by which we may feed our souls with earthly learning and experience. But is this enough? No, surely. Consider, again, God’s example which He has given us—a tree. If you keep stripping all the leaves off a tree, as fast as they grow, what becomes of it? It dies, because without leaves it cannot get nourishment from the air, and the rain, and the sunlight. Again, if you shut up a tree where it can get neither rain, air, nor light, what happens? the tree certainly dies, though it may be planted in the very richest soil, and have the very strongest roots; and why? because it can get no food from the sky above. So with our souls, my friends. If we get no food from above, our souls will die, though we have all the wit, and learning, and experience, in the world. We must be fed, and strengthened, and satisfied, with the grace of God from above—with the Spirit of God. Consider how the Bible speaks of God’s Spirit as the breath of God; for the very word _spirit_ means, originally, breath, or air, or gas, or a breeze of wind, shewing us that as without the airs of heaven the tree would become stunted and cankered, so our souls will without the fresh, purifying breath of God’s Spirit. Again, God’s Spirit is often spoken of in Scripture as dew and rain. His grace or favour, we read, is as dew on the grass; and again, that God shall come unto us as the rain, as the first and latter rain upon the earth; and again, speaking of the outpourings of God’s Spirit on His Church, the Psalmist says that “He shall come down as the rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth;” and to shew us that as the tree puts forth buds, and leaves, and tender wood, when it drinks in the dew and rains, so our hearts will become tender, and bud out into good thoughts and wise resolves, when God’s Spirit fills them with His grace.

But again; the Scripture tells us again and again that our souls want light from above; and we all know by experience that the trees and plants which grow on earth want the light of the sun to make them grow. So, doubtless, here again the Scripture example of a tree will hold good. Now what does the sunlight do for the tree? It does every thing, for without light, the soil, and air, and rain, are all useless. It stirs up the sap, it hardens the wood, it brings out the blossom, it colours the leaves and the flowers, it ripens the fruit. The light is the life of the tree;—and is there not one, my friends, of whom these words are written—that He is the Life, and that He is the Light—that He is the Sun of Righteousness and the bright and morning Star—that He is the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world—that in Him was life, and the life was the light of men? Do you not know of whom I speak? Even of Him that was born at Bethlehem and died on the cross, who now sits at God’s right hand, praying for us, offering to us His body and His blood;—Jesus the Son of God, He is the Light and the Life. From Him alone our light must come, from Him alone our life must come, now and for ever. Oh, think seriously of this—and think, too, how a short time before He died on earth He spoke of Himself as the Bread of life—the living Bread which comes down from heaven; how He declared to men, that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood, they have no life in them. And, lastly, consider this, how the same night that He was betrayed, He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me.” And how, likewise, He took the cup, and when He had blessed it, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink ye all of this, for this is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins; this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” Oh, consider these words, my friends—to you all and every one they were spoken. “Drink ye _all_ of this,” said the Blessed One; and will you refuse to drink it? He offers you the bread of life, the sign and the pledge of His body, which shall feed your souls with everlasting strength and life; and will you refuse what the Son of God offers you, what He bought for you with His death? God forbid, my friends! This is your blessed right and privilege—the right and the privilege of every one of you—to come freely and boldly to that holy table, and there to remember your Saviour. At that table to confess your Saviour before men—at that table to shew that you really believe that Jesus Christ died for you—at that table to claim your share in the strength of His body, in the pardon of His blood, which cleanses from all sin—and at that table to receive what you claim, to receive at that table the wine, as a sign from Christ Himself, that His blood has washed away your sins; and the bread, as a sign that His body and His spirit are really feeding your spirits, that your souls are strengthened and refreshed by the body and blood of Christ, as your bodies are with the bread and wine. I have shewn you that your souls must be fed from heaven,—that the Lord’s Supper is a sign to you that they _are_ fed from heaven. You pray to God, I hope, many of you, that He would give you His Holy Spirit, that He would change, and renew, and strengthen your souls—you pray God to do this, I hope—Well, then, there is the answer to your prayers. There your souls _will_ be renewed and strengthened—there you will claim your share in Christ, who alone can renew and strengthen them. The bread which is there broken is the communion, the sharing, of the body of Christ; the cup which is there blessed is the communion of the blood of Christ: to that heavenly treat, to that spiritual food of your souls, Jesus Himself invites you, He who is the life of men. Do not let it be said at the last day of any one of you, that when the Son of God Himself invites you, you would not come to Him that you might have life.

SERMON XIX. MAN’S WORKING DAY.

JOHN, xi. 9, 10.

“Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man
walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this
world. But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, because there is
no light in him.”

THIS was our blessed Lord’s answer to His disciples when they said to Him, “Master, the Jews of late tried to stone Thee, and goest Thou among them again?” And “Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”

Now, at first sight, one does not see what this has to do with the disciples’ question—it seems no answer at all to it. But we must remember who it was who gave that answer. The Son of God, from whom all words come, who came to do good, and only good, every minute of His life. And, therefore, we may be sure that He never threw away a single word. And we must remember, too, to whom He spoke—to His disciples, whom He was training to be apostles to the whole world, teaching them in every thing some deep lesson, to fit them for their glorious calling, as preachers of the good news of His coming. So we may be sure that He would never put off any question of theirs; we may be certain, that whatever they asked Him, He would give them the best possible answer; not, perhaps, just the answer for which they wished, but the answer which would teach them most. Therefore I say, we must believe that there is some deep, wonderful lesson in this text—that it is the very best and fullest answer which our Lord could have made to His disciples when they asked Him why He was going again to Judea, where He stood in danger of His life.

Let us think a little about this text in faith, that is, sure that there is a deep, blessed meaning in it, if we can but find it out. Let us take it piece by piece; we shall never get to the bottom of it, of course, but we may get deep enough into it to set us thinking a little between now and next Sunday.

“Are there not twelve hours in the day?” said our Lord. We know there are, and we know, too, that if any man walks in the day, and keeps his eyes open, he does not stumble, because he has the light of this world to guide him. Twelve hours for business, and twelve for food, and sleep, and rest, is our rule for working men, or, indeed, not our rule, but God’s. He has set the sun for the light of this world, to rule the day, to settle for us how long we are to work. In this country days vary. In summer they are more than twelve hours, and then men work early and late; but that is made up to us by winter, when the days are less than twelve hours, and men work short time. In the very cold countries again, far away in the frozen north, the sun never sets all the summer, and never rises all the winter, and there is six months day and six months night. Wonderful! But even there God has fitted the land and men’s lives to that strange climate, and they can gather in enough meat in the summer to keep them all the winter, that they may be able to spend the long six months’ night of winter warm in their houses, sleeping and resting, with plenty of food. So that even to them there are twelve hours in the day, though their hours are each a fortnight long,—I mean a certain fixed time in which to walk, and do the business which they have to do before the long frozen night comes, wherein no man can work, because the sun, the light of this world, is hid from them below the ice for six whole months. So that our Lord’s words hold true of all men, even of those people in the icy north. But in by far the most parts of the world, and especially in the hot countries, where our Lord lived, there are twelve common hours in every day, wherein men may and ought to work.

Now what did our Lord mean by reminding His disciples of this, which they all knew already? He meant this,—that God His Father had appointed Him a certain work to do, and a certain time to do it in; that though His day was short, only thirty-three years in all, while we have, many of us, seventy years given us, yet that there were twelve hours in His day in which He must work—that God would take care that He lived out His appointed time, provided He was ready and earnest in doing God’s work in it—and that He _must_ work in that time which God had given Him, whatever came of it, and do His appointed work before the night of death came in which no man can work.

There was a heathen king once, named Philip of Macedon, and a very wise king he was, though he was a heathen, and one of the wisest of his plans was this:—he had a slave, whom he ordered to come in to him every morning of his life, whatever he was doing, and say to him in a loud voice, “Philip, remember that thou must die!”

He was a heathen, but a great many who call themselves Christians are not half so wise as he, for they take all possible care, not to remember that they must die, but to _forget_ that they must die; and yet every living man has a servant who, like King Philip’s, puts him in mind, whether he likes it or not, that his day will run out at last, and his twelve hours of life be over, and then die he must. And who is that servant? A man’s own body. Lucky if his body is his servant, though—not his _master_ and his tyrant. But still, be that as it may, every finger-ache that one’s body has, every cough and cold one’s body catches, ought to be to us a warning like King Philip’s servant, “Remember that thou must die.” Every little pain and illness is a warning, a kindly hint from our Father in heaven, that we are doomed to death; that we have but twelve hours in this short day of life, and that the twelve must end; and that we must get our work done and our accounts settled, and be ready for our long journey, to meet our Father and our King, before the night comes wherein no man can work, but only takes his wages; for them who have done good the wages of life eternal, and for them who have done evil—God help them! we know what is written—“the wages of sin is death!”

Now, observe next, that those who walk in the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world, and those who walk in the night stumble—they have no light in them. If they are to see, it must be by the help of some light outside themselves, which is not part of themselves, or belonging to themselves at all. We only see by the light which God has made; when that is gone, our eyes are useless.

So it is with our souls. Our wits, however clever they may be, only understand things by the light which God throws on those things. He must explain and enlighten all things to us. Without His light—His Spirit, all the wit in the world is as useless as a pair of eyes in a dark night.

Now this earthly world which we do see is an exact picture and pattern of the spiritual, heavenly world which we do not see, as Solomon says in the Proverbs, “The things which are seen are the doubles of the things which are not seen.” And as there is a light for us in this earth, which is _not ourselves_, namely the sun, so there is a light for us in the spirit-world, which is _not ourselves_. And who is that? The blessed Lord shall answer for Himself. He says, “I am the light of the world;” and St. John bears witness to Him, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” And does not St. Paul say the same thing, when he blessed God so often for having called him and his congregations out of darkness into that marvellous light? If you read his Epistles you will find what he meant by the darkness, what he meant by the light. The darkness was heathendom, knowing nothing of Christ. The light was Christianity, knowing Christ the light; and, more, being _in_ the light, belonging to Christ—being joined to Him, as the leaves are to the tree,—living by trust in Christ, being taught and made true men and true women of, by the Noble and Holy Spirit of Christ—seeing their way through this world by trust in Christ and His promises,—That was light.

And there is no other light. If a man does not work trusting in Christ, whom God has set for the light of the world, he works in the night, where God never set or meant him to work; and stumble he will, and make a fool of himself, sooner or later, because he is walking in the night, and sees nothing plainly or in a right view. For as our Lord says truly, “There is no light in him.” No light in him? In one sense there is no light in any one, be he the wisest or holiest man who ever lived. But this is just what three people out of four will not believe. They will not believe that the Spirit of God gives man understanding. They fancy that they have light in themselves. They try, conceitedly and godlessly, to walk by the light of their own eyes—to make their own way plain before their face for themselves. They will not believe old David, a man who worked, and fought, and thought, and saw, far more than any one of us will ever do, when he tells them again and again in his Psalms, that the Lord is his light, that the Lord must guide a man, and inform him with His eye, and teach him in the way in which he should go. And, therefore, they will not pray to God for light—therefore they will not look for light in God’s Word, and in the writings of godly men; and they are like a man in the broad sunshine, who should choose to shut his eyes close, and say, ‘I have light enough in my own head to do without the sun;’ and therefore they walk on still in darkness, and all the foundations of the earth are out of course, because men forget the first universal ground rules of common sense, and reason, and love, which God’s Spirit teaches. I tell you, all the mistakes that you ever made—that ever were made since Adam fell, came from this, that men will not ask God for light and wisdom; they love darkness rather than light, and therefore, though God’s light is ready for every man, shining in the darkness to shew every man his way, yet the darkness will not comprehend it—will not take it in, and let God change its blindness into day.

Now, then, to gather all together, what better answer could our Lord have given to His disciples’ question than this, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If a man walk in the day he does not stumble, because he seeth the light of this world; but if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”

It was as if He had said, “However short my day of life may be, there are twelve hours in it, of my Father’s numbering and measuring, not of mine. My times are in His hand, as long as He pleases I shall live. He has given me a work to do, and He will see that I live long enough to do it. Into His hands I commend my spirit, for, living or dying, He is with me. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with me. He will keep me secretly in His tabernacle from the strife of tongues, and will turn the furiousness of my enemies to His glory; and as my day my strength will be. And I have no fear of running into danger needlessly. I have prayed to Him daily and nightly for light, for His Spirit—the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of prudence and courage; and His word is pledged to keep me in all my ways, so that I dash not my foot against a stone. Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? While I am about that I am safe. It is only if I go about my own business—my own pleasure; if I forget to ask Him for His light and guidance, that I shall put myself into the night, and stumble and fall.”

Well, my friends, what is there in all this, which we may not say as well as our Lord? In this, as in all things, Christ set Himself up as our pattern. Oh, believe it!—believe that your time—your measure of life, is in God’s hand. Believe that He is your light, that He will teach and guide you into all truth, and that all your mistakes come from not asking counsel of Him in prayer, and thought, and reading of His Holy Bible. Believe His blessed promise that He will give His Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. Believe, too, that He has given you a work to do—prepared good works all ready for you to walk in. Be you labourer or gentleman, maid, wife, or widow, God has given you a work to do; there is good to be done lying all round you, ready for you. And the blessed Jesus who bought you, body and soul, with His own blood, commands you to work for Him: “Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

“Work ye manful while ye may,
Work for God in this your day;
Night must stop you, rich or poor,
Godly deeds alone endure.”

And then, whether you live or die, your Father’s smile will be on you, and His everlasting arms beneath you, and at your last hour you shall find that “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for they rest from their labour, and their works do follow them.”

SERMON XX. ASSOCIATION.

GALATIANS, vi. 2.

“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

IF I were to ask you, my friends, why you were met together here to-day, you would tell me, I suppose, that you were come to church as members of a benefit club; and quite right you are in coming here as such, and God grant that we may meet together here on this same errand many more Whit-mondays. But this would be no answer to my question; I wish to know why you come to church to-day sooner than to any other place? what has the church to do with the benefit club? Now this is a question which I do not think all of you could answer very readily, and therefore I wish to make you, especially the younger members of the club, think a little seriously about the meaning of your coming here to-day. You will be none the less cheerful this evening for having had some deep and godly thoughts in your heads this morning.

Now these benefit clubs are also called provident societies, and a very good name for them. You become members of them, because you are prudent, or provident, that is, because you are careful, and look forward to a rainy day. But why does not each of you lay up his savings for himself, instead of putting them into a common purse, and so forming a club? Because you have found out, what every one else in the world, but madmen, ought to have found out, that two are better than one; that if a great many men join together in any matter, they are a great deal stronger when working together, than if they each worked just as hard, but each by himself; that the way to be safe is not to stand each of you alone, but to help each other; in short, that there is no getting on without bearing one another’s burdens.

Now this plan of bearing one another’s burdens is not only good in benefit clubs—it is good in families, in parishes, in nations, in the church of God, which is the elect of all mankind. Unless men hold together, and help each other, there is no safety for them.

Let us consider what there is bearing on this matter of prudence, that makes one of the greatest differences between a man and a brute beast. It is not that the man is prudent, and the beast is not. Many beasts have forethought enough; the very sleepmouse hoards up acorns against the winter; a fox will hide the game he cannot eat. No, the great difference between man and beast is, that the beast has forethought only for himself, but the man has forethought for others also; beasts have not reason enough to bear each others’ burdens, as men have. And what is it that makes us call the ant and the bee the wisest of animals, except that they do, in some degree, behave like men, in helping one another, and having some sort of family feeling, and society, and government among them, by which they can help bear each other’s burdens? So that we all confess, by calling them wise, how wise it is to help each other. Consider a family, again. In order that a family may be happy and prosperous, all the members of it must bear each other’s burdens. If the father only thought of himself, and the mother of herself, and each of the children did nothing but take care of themselves, would not that family come to misery and ruin? But if they all helped each other—all thought of each other more than of themselves—all were ready to give up their own comfort to make each other comfortable, that family would be peaceful and prosperous, and would be doing a great deal towards fulfilling the law of Christ.

It is just the same in a parish. If the rich help and defend the poor, and the poor respect and love the rich, and are ready to serve them as far as they can,—in short, if all ranks bear each other’s burdens, that parish is a happy one, and if they do not, it is a miserable one.

Just the same with a nation. If the king only cares about making himself strong, and the noblemen and gentlemen about their rank and riches, and the poor people, again, only care for themselves, and are trying to pull down the rich, and so get what they can for themselves,—if a country is in this state, what can be more wretched? Neither a house, nor a country, divided against itself, can ever stand. But if the king and the nobles give their whole minds to making good laws, and seeing justice done to all, and workmen fairly paid, and if the poor, in their turns, are loyal, and ready to fight and work for their king and their nobles, then will not that country be a happy and a great country? Surely it will, because its people, instead of caring every man for himself only, help each other and bear one another’s burdens.

And just in the same way with Christ’s Church, with the company of true Christian men. If the clergymen thought only of themselves, and neglected the people, and forgot to labour among them, and pray for them, and preach to them; and if the people each cared for himself, and never prayed to God to give them a spirit of love and charity, and never helped their neighbours, or did unto others as they wished to be done by; and above all, if Christ, our Head, left His Church, and cared no more about us, what would become of Christ’s Church? What would happen to the whole race of sinful man, but misery in this world, and ruin in the next? But if the people love and help each other, and obey their ministers, and pray for them; and if the ministers labour earnestly after the souls and bodies of their people; and Christ in heaven helps both minister and people with His Spirit, and His providence and protection; in short, if all in the whole Church bear each other’s burdens, then Christ’s Church will stand, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Thus you see that this text of bearing one another’s burdens is no new or strange commandment, but the very state in which every man is meant to live, both in his family, his parish, his country, and his Church—all his life helping others, and being helped by them in turn. And because families and nations, and the Church of Christ above all, are good, and holy, and beautiful, therefore any society which is formed upon the same plan—I mean of helping each other—must be good also. And, therefore, benefit societies are right and reasonable things, and among all the good which they do they do this one great good, that they teach men to remember that there is no use trying to stand alone, but that the way to be safe and happy is to bear each other’s burdens.

Thus benefit societies are patterns of Christ’s Church. But now, my friends, there is another point for each of you to consider, which is this—the benefit club is a good thing, but are you a good member of the club? Do you do your duty, each of you, in the club as Christian men should?

I do not ask whether you pay your subscriptions regularly or not—that is quite right and necessary, but there is something more than that wanted to make a club go on rightly. Mere paying and receiving money will never keep men together any more than any other outward business. A man may pay his club-money regularly and yet not be a really good member. And how is this? You remember that I tried to shew you that a family, and a nation, and a church, all were kept together by the same principle of bearing one another’s burdens, just as a benefit club is. Now, what makes a man a good member of Christ’s Church,—a good Christian, in short? A man may pay his tithes to the rector, and his church-rates to repair God’s house, and his poor-rates to maintain God’s poor, all very regularly, and yet be a very bad member of Christ’s Church. These payments are all right and good; but they are but the outside, the letter of what God requires of him. What is wanted is, to serve God in the _spirit_, to have the spirit—_the will_, of a Christian in him; that is, to do all these things for _God’s_ sake—not of constraint, but willingly—“not grudgingly, for God loveth a cheerful giver.” No! If a man is a really good member of Christ’s Church, he lives a life of faith in Jesus Christ, and of thankfulness to Him for His infinite love and mercy in coming down to die for us, and thus the love of God and man is shed abroad in his heart by God’s Spirit, which is given to him. Therefore, that man thinks it an honour to pay church-rates, and so help towards keeping God’s house in repair and neatness. He pays his tithes cheerfully, because he loves God’s ministers, and feels their use and worth to him. He pays his poor-rates with a willing mind, for the sake of that God who has said, “that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord.” And so he obeys not only the letter but the spirit of the law.

But the man does more than this. Besides obeying not only the letter but the spirit of the law, he helps his brethren in a thousand other ways. He shews, in short, by every action that he believes in God and loves his neighbour.

And why should it not be just the same in a benefit club? There the good member is _not_ the man who pays his money merely to have a claim for relief when he himself is sick, and yet grudges every farthing that goes to help other members. That man is not a good member. He has come into the club merely to take care of himself, and not to bear others’ burdens. He may obey the letter of the club-rules by paying in his subscriptions and by granting relief to sick members, but he does not obey the spirit of them. If he did, he would be glad to bear his sick neighbour’s burden with so little trouble to himself. He would, therefore, grant club relief willingly and cheerfully when it was wanted,—ay, he would thank God that he had an opportunity of helping his neighbours. He would feel that all the members of the society were his brothers in a double sense; first, because they had joined with him to help and support each other in the society; and, next, that they were his brothers in Christ, who had been baptised into the same Church of God with himself. And he would, therefore, delight in supporting them in their sickness, and honouring them when they died, and in helping their widows and orphans in their affliction; in short, in bearing his neighbour’s burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ. And do you not see, that if any of you subscribe to this benefit society in such a spirit as this, that they are the men to give an answer to the question I asked at first, “Why are you all here at church to-day?” They come here for the same reason that you all ought to come, to thank God for having kept them well, and out of the want of relief for the past year, and to thank Him, too, for having enabled them to bear their sick neighbours’ burdens. And they come, also, to pray to God to keep them well and strong for the year to come, and to raise up those members who are in sickness and distress, that they may all worship God here together another year, as a company of faithful friends, helping each other on through this life, and all on the way to the same heavenly home, where there will be no more poverty, nor sorrow, nor sickness, nor death, and God shall wipe away tears from all widows and orphans’ eyes.

And now, my friends, I have tried to put some new and true thoughts into your head about your club and your business in this church to-day. And I pray, God grant that you may remember them, and think of this whole matter as a much more solemn and holy one than you ever did before.

SERMON XXI. HEAVEN ON EARTH.

1 COR. x. 31.

“Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory
of God.”

THIS is a command from God, my friends, which well worth a few minutes’ consideration this day;—well worth considering, because, though it was spoken eighteen hundred years ago, yet God has not changed since that time;—He is just as glorious as ever; and Christian men’s relation to God has not changed since that time; they still live, and move, and have their being in God; they are still His children—His beloved; Christ, who died for us, is still our King; God’s Spirit is still with us, God’s mercy still saves us: we owe God as much as any people ever did. If it was ever any one’s duty to shew forth God’s glory, surely it is our duty too.

Worth considering, indeed, is this command, for though it is in the Bible, and has been there for eighteen hundred years, it is seldom read, seldomer understood, and still more seldom put into practice. Men eat and drink, and do all manner of things, with all their might and main; but how many of them do they do to the glory of God? No; this is the fault—the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean any longer, as it used, the service of God—the being like God, and shewing forth God’s glory. No; religion means, nowadays, the art of getting to heaven when we die, and saving our own miserable, worthless souls, and getting God’s wages without doing God’s work—as if that was godliness,—as if that was any thing but selfishness; as if selfishness was any the better for being everlasting selfishness! If selfishness is evil, my friends, the sooner we get rid of it the better, instead of mixing it up as we do with all our thoughts of heaven, and making our own enjoyment and our own safety the vile root of our hopes for all eternity. And therefore it is that people have forgotten what God’s glory is. They seem to think, that God’s highest glory is saving them from hell-fire. And they talk not of God and of the wondrous majesty of God, but only of the wonder of God’s having saved them—looking at themselves all the time, and not at God. We must get rid of this sort of religion, my friends, at all risks, in order to get rid of all sorts of irreligion, for one is the father of the other.