{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_10325/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_10325","id":"gutenberg_10325","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10325","summary":null,"tags":["Bible. Pentateuch -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.","Bible. Pentateuch -- Sermons","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Church of England -- Sermons","Sermons, English -- 19th century"],"text":"Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk\n\n\n\n\nThe Gospel of the Pentateuch:  A set of Parish Sermons\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH\nTO THE REV. CANON STANLEY.\n\n\n\nMy Dear Stanley,\n\nI dedicate these Sermons to you, not that I may make you responsible\nfor any doctrine or statement contained in them, but as the simplest\nmethod of telling you how much they owe to your book on the Jewish\nChurch, and of expressing my deep gratitude to you for publishing\nthat book at such a time as this.\n\nIt has given to me (and I doubt not to many other clergymen) a fresh\nconfidence and energy in preaching to my people the Gospel of the\nOld Testament as the same with that of the New; and without it, many\nof these Sermons would have been very different from, and I am\ncertain very inferior to, what they are now, by the help of your\nadmirable book.\n\nBrought up, like all Cambridge men of the last generation, upon\nPaley's Evidences, I had accepted as a matter of course, and as the\nauthoritative teaching of my University, Paley's opinions as to the\nlimits of Biblical criticism, {0a} quoted at large in Dean Milman's\nnoble preface to his last edition of the History of the Jews; and\nespecially that great dictum of his, 'that it is an unwarrantable,\nas well as unsafe rule to lay down concerning the Jewish history,\nthat which was never laid down concerning any other, that either\nevery particular of it must be true, or the whole false.'\n\nI do not quote the rest of the passage; first, because you, I doubt\nnot, know it as well as I; and next, in order that if any one shall\nread these lines who has not read Paley's Evidences, he may be\nstirred up to look the passage out for himself, and so become\nacquainted with a great book and a great mind.\n\nA reverent and rational liberty in criticism (within the limits of\northodoxy) is, I have always supposed, the right of every Cambridge\nman; and I was therefore the more shocked, for the sake of free\nthought in my University, at the appearance of a book which claimed\nand exercised a licence in such questions, which I must (after\ncareful study of it) call anything but rational and reverent.  Of\nthe orthodoxy of the book it is not, of course, a private\nclergyman's place to judge.  That book seemed dangerous to the\nUniversity of Cambridge itself, because it was likely to stir up\nfrom without attempts to abridge her ancient liberty of thought; but\nit seemed still more dangerous to the hundreds of thousands without\nthe University, who, being no scholars, must take on trust the\nhistoric truth of the Bible.\n\nFor I found that book, if not always read, yet still talked and\nthought of on every side, among persons whom I should have fancied\ncareless of its subject, and even ignorant of its existence, but to\nwhom I was personally bound to give some answer as to the book and\nits worth.  It was making many unsettled and unhappy; it was (even\nworse) pandering to the cynicism and frivolity of many who were\nalready too cynical and frivolous; and, much as I shrank from\ndescending into the arena of religious controversy, I felt bound to\nsay a few plain words on it, at least to my own parishioners.\n\nBut how to do so, without putting into their heads thoughts which\nneed be in no man's head, and perhaps shaking the very faith which I\nwas trying to build up, was difficult to me, and I think would have\nbeen impossible to me, but for the opportune appearance of your\nadmirable book.\n\nI could not but see that the book to which I have alluded, like most\nother modern books on Biblical criticism, was altogether negative;\nwas possessed too often by that fanaticism of disbelief which is\njust as dangerous as the fanaticism of belief; was picking the body\nof the Scripture to pieces so earnestly, that it seemed to forget\nthat Scripture had a spirit as well as a body; or, if it confessed\nthat it had a spirit, asserting that spirit to be one utterly\ndifferent from the spirit which the Scripture asserts that it\npossesses.\n\nFor the Scripture asserts that those who wrote it were moved by the\nSpirit of God; that it is a record of God's dealings with men, which\ncertain men were inspired to perceive and to write down:  whereas\nthe tendency of modern criticism is, without doubt, to assert that\nScripture is inspired by the spirit of man; that it contains the\nthoughts and discoveries of men concerning God, which they wrote\ndown without the inspiration of God; which difference seems to me\n(and I hope to others) utterly infinite and incalculable, and to\ninvolve the question of the whole character, honour, and glory of\nGod.\n\nThere is, without a doubt, something in the Old Testament, as well\nas in the New, quite different in kind, as well as in degree, from\nthe sacred books of any other people:  an unique element, which has\nhad an unique effect upon the human heart, life and civilization.\nThis remains, after all possible deductions for 'ignorance of\nphysical science,' 'errors in numbers and chronology,'\n'interpolations' 'mistakes of transcribers' and so forth, whereof we\nhave read of late a great deal too much, and ought to care for them\nand for their existence, or non-existence, simply nothing at all;\nbecause, granting them all--though the greater part of them I do not\ngrant, as far as I can trust my critical faculty--there remains that\nunique element, beside which all these accidents are but as the\nspots on the sun compared to the great glory of his life-giving\nlight.  The unique element is there; and I cannot but still believe,\nafter much thought, that it--the powerful and working element, the\ninspired and Divine element which has converted and still converts\nmillions of souls--is just that which Christendom in all ages has\nheld it to be:  the account of certain 'noble acts' of God's, and\nnot of certain noble thoughts of man--in a word, not merely the\nmoral, but the historic element; and that, therefore, the value of\nthe Bible teaching depends on the truth of the Bible story.  That is\nmy belief.  Any criticism which tries to rob me of that I shall look\nat fairly, but very severely indeed.\n\nIf all that a man wants is a 'religion,' he ought to be able to make\na very pretty one for himself, and a fresh one as often as he is\ntired of the old.  But the heart and soul of man wants more than\nthat, as it is written, 'My soul is athirst for God, even for the\nliving God.'  Those whom I have to teach want a living God, who\ncares for men, works for men, teaches men, punishes men, forgives\nmen, saves men from their sins; and Him I have found in the Bible,\nand nowhere else, save in the facts of life which the Bible alone\ninterprets.\n\nIn the power of man to find out God I will never believe.  The\n'religious sentiment,' or 'God-consciousness,' so much talked of\nnow-a-days, seems to me (as I believe it will to all practical\ncommon-sense Englishmen), a faculty not to be depended on; as\nfallible and corrupt as any other part of human nature; apt (to\njudge from history) to develop itself into ugly forms, not only\nwithout a revelation from God, but too often in spite of one--into\npolytheisms, idolatries, witchcrafts, Buddhist asceticisms,\nPhoenician Moloch-sacrifices, Popish inquisitions, American spirit-\nrappings, and what not.  The hearts and minds of the sick, the poor,\nthe sorrowing, the truly human, all demand a living God, who has\nrevealed himself in living acts; a God who has taught mankind by\nfacts, not left them to discover him by theories and sentiments; a\nJudge, a Father, a Saviour, and an Inspirer; in a word, their hearts\nand minds demand the historic truth of the Bible--of the Old\nTestament no less than of the New.\n\nWhat I needed therefore, for my guidance, was a book which should\nbelieve and confess all this, without condemning or ignoring free\ncriticism and its results; which should make use of that criticism\nnot to destroy but to build up; which employed a thorough knowledge\nof the Old Testament history, the manners of the Jews, the\nlocalities of the sacred events, to teach men not what might not be\nin the Bible, but what was certainly therein; which dealt with the\nBible after the only fair and trustful method; that is, to consider\nit at first according to the theory which it sets forth concerning\nitself, before trying quite another theory of the commentator's own\ninvention; and which combined with a courageous determination to\ntell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that\nChristian spirit of trust, reverence and piety, without which all\nintellectual acuteness is but blindness and folly.\n\nAll this, and more, I found in your book, enforced with a genius\nwhich needs no poor praise of mine; and I hailed its appearance at\nsuch a crisis as a happy Providence, certain that it would be, what\nI now know by experience it has been, a balm to many a wounded\nspirit, and a check to many a wandering intellect, inclined, in the\nrashness of youth, to throw away the truth it already had, for the\nsake of theories which it hoped that it might possibly verify\nhereafter.\n\nWith your book in my hand, I have tried to write a few plain\nSermons, telling plain people what they will find in the Pentateuch,\nin spite of all present doubts, as their fathers found it before\nthem, and as (I trust) their children will find it after them, when\nall this present whirlwind of controversy has past,\n\n\n'As dust that lightly rises up,\nAnd is lightly laid again.'\n\n\nI have told them that they will find in the Bible, and in no other\nancient book, that living working God, whom their reason and\nconscience demand; and that they will find that he is none other\nthan Jesus Christ our Lord.  I have not apologised for or explained\naway the so-called 'Anthropomorphism' of the Old Testament.  On the\ncontrary, I have frankly accepted it, and even gloried in it as an\nintegral, and I believe invaluable element of Scripture.  I have\ndeliberately ignored many questions of great interest and\ndifficulty, because I had no satisfactory solution of them to offer;\nbut I have said at the same time that those questions were\naltogether unimportant, compared with those salient and fundamental\npoints of the Bible history on which I was preaching.  And therefore\nI have dared to bid my people relinquish Biblical criticism to those\nwho have time for it; and to say of it with me, as Abraham of the\nplanets, 'O my people, I am clear of all these things!  I turn\nmyself to him who made heaven and earth.'\n\nI do not wish, believe me, to make you responsible for any statement\nor opinion of mine.  I am painfully conscious, on reviewing for the\nPress Sermons which would never have been published save by special\nrequest, how imperfect, poor, and weak they seem to me--how much\nworse, then, they will appear to other people; how much more may be\nsaid which I have not the wit to say!  But the Bible can take care\nof itself, I presume, without my help.  All I can do is, to speak\nwhat I think, as far as I see my way; to record the obligation\ntoward you under which I, with thousands more, now lie; and to\nexpress my hope that we shall be always found together fellow-\nworkers in the cause of Truth, and that to you and in you may be\nfulfilled those noble and tender words, in which you have spoken of\nSamuel, and of those who work in Samuel's spirit:\n\n'In later times, even in our own, many names spring to our\nrecollection of those who have trodden or (in different degrees,\nsome known, and some unknown) are treading the same thankless path\nin the Church of Germany, in the Church of France, in the Church of\nRussia, in the Church of England.  Wherever they are, and whosoever\nthey may be, and howsoever they may be neglected or assailed, or\ndespised, they, like their great prototype and likeness in the\nJewish Church, are the silent healers who bind up the wounds of\ntheir age in spite of itself; they are the good physicians who bind\ntogether the dislocated bones of a disjointed time; they are the\nreconcilers who turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, or\nof the fathers to the children.  They have but little praise and\nreward from the partisans who are loud in indiscriminate censure and\napplause.  But, like Samuel, they have a far higher reward, in the\nDavids who are silently strengthened and nurtured by them in Naioth\nof Ramah--in the glories of a new age which shall be ushered in\npeacefully and happily after they have been laid in the grave.' {0b}\n\nThat such, my dear Stanley, may be your work and your destiny, is\nthe earnest hope of\n\nYours affectionately,\nC. KINGSLEY.\nEVERSLEY RECTORY,\nJuly 1, 1863.\n\n\n\nSERMON I.  GOD IN CHRIST\n\n\n\n(Septuagesima Sunday.)\n\nGENESIS i.  I.  In the beginning God created the heaven and the\nearth.\n\nWe have begun this Sunday to read the book of Genesis.  I trust that\nyou will listen to it as you ought--with peculiar respect and awe,\nas the oldest part of the Bible, and therefore the oldest of all\nknown works--the earliest human thought which has been handed down\nto us.\n\nAnd what is the first written thought which has been handed down to\nus by the Providence of Almighty God?\n\n'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'\n\nHow many other things, how many hundred other things, men might have\nthought fit to write down for those who should come after; and say--\nThis is the first knowledge which a man should have; this is the\nroot of all wisdom, all power, all wealth.\n\nBut God inspired Moses and the Prophets to write as they have\nwritten.  They were not to tell men that the first thing to be\nlearnt was how to be rich; nor how to be strong; nor even how to be\nhappy:  but that the first thing to be learnt was that God created\nthe heaven and the earth.\n\nAnd why first?\n\nBecause the first question which man asks--the question which shows\nhe is a man and not a brute--always has been, and always will be--\nWhere am I?  How did I get into this world; and how did this world\nget here likewise?  And if man takes up with a wrong answer to that\nquestion, then the man himself is certain to go wrong in all manner\nof ways.  For a lie can never do anything but harm, or breed\nanything but harm; and lies do breed, as fast as the blight on the\ntrees, or the smut on the corn:  only being not according to nature,\nor the laws of God, they do not breed as natural things do, after\ntheir kind:  but, belonging to chaos, the kingdom of disorder and\nmisrule, they breed fresh lies unlike themselves, of all strange and\nunexpected shapes; so that when a man takes up with one lie, there\nis no saying what other lie he may not take up with beside.\n\nWherefore the first thing man has to learn is truth concerning the\nfirst human question, Where am I?  How did I come here; and how did\nthis world come here?  To which the Bible answers in its first line-\n-\n\n'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'\n\nHow God created, the Bible does not tell us.  Whether he created (as\ndoubtless he could have done if he chose) this world suddenly out of\nnothing, full grown and complete; or whether he created it (as he\ncreates you and me, and all living and growing things now) out of\nthings which had been before it--that the Bible does not tell us.\n\nPerhaps if it had told us, it would have drawn away our minds to\nthink of natural things, and what we now call science, instead of\nkeeping our minds fixed, as it now does, on spiritual things, and\nabove all on the Spirit of all spirits; Him of whom it is written,\n'God is a Spirit'\n\nFor the Bible is simply the revelation, or unveiling of God.  It is\nnot a book of natural science.  It is not merely a book of holy and\nvirtuous precepts.  It is not merely a book wherein we may find a\nscheme of salvation for our souls.  It is the book of the\nrevelation, or unveiling of the Lord God, Jesus Christ; what he was,\nwhat he is, and what he will be for ever.\n\nOf Jesus Christ?  How is he revealed in the text, 'In the beginning\nGod created the heaven and the earth?'\n\nThus:--If you look at the first chapter of Genesis and the beginning\nof the second, you will see that God is called therein by a\ndifferent name from what he is called afterwards.  He is called God,\nElohim, The High or Mighty One or Ones.  After that he is called the\nLord God, Jehovah Elohim, which means properly, The High or Mighty I\nAm, or Jehovah, a word which I will explain to you afterwards.  That\nword is generally translated in our Bible, as it was in the Greek,\n'The Lord;' because the later Jews had such a deep reverence for the\nname Jehovah, that they did not like to write it or speak it:  but\ncalled God simply Adonai, the Lord.\n\nSo that we have three names for God in the Old Testament.\n\nFirst El, or Elohim, the Mighty One:  by which, so Moses says, God\nwas known to the Jews before his time, and which sets forth God's\npower and majesty--the first thing of which men would think in\nthinking of God.\n\nNext Jehovah.  The I Am, the Eternal, and Self-existent Being, by\nwhich name God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush--a\ndeeper and wider name than the former.\n\nAnd lastly, Adonai, the Lord, the living Ruler and Master of the\nworld and men, by which he revealed himself to the later Jews, and\nat last to all mankind in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.\n\nNow I need not to trouble your mind or my own with arguments as to\nhow these three different names got into the Bible.\n\nThat is a matter of criticism, of scholarship, with which you have\nnothing to do:  and you may thank God that you have not, in such\ndays as these.  Your business is, not how the names got there, which\nis a matter of criticism, but why they have been left there by the\nprovidence of God, which is a matter of simple religion; and you may\nthank God, I say again, that it is so.  For scholarship is Martha's\npart, which must be done, and yet which cumbers a man with much\nserving:  but simple heart religion is the better part which Mary\nchose; and of which the Lord has said, that it shall not be taken\nfrom her, nor from those who, like her, sit humbly at the feet of\nthe Lord, and hear his voice, without troubling their souls with\nquestions of words, and endless genealogies, which eat out the\nhearts of men.\n\nTherefore all I shall say about the matter is that the first chapter\nof Genesis, and the first three verses of the second, may be the\nwriting of a prophet older than Moses, because they call God Elohim,\nwhich was his name before Moses' time; and that Moses may have used\nthem, and worked them into a book of Genesis; while he, in the part\nwhich he wrote himself, called God at first by the name Jehovah\nElohim, The Lord God, in order to show that Jehovah and El were the\nsame God, and not two different ones; and after he had made the Jews\nunderstand that, went on to call God simply Jehovah, and to use the\ntwo names, as they are used through the rest of the Old Testament,\ninterchangeably:  as we say sometimes God, sometimes the Lord,\nsometimes the Deity, and so forth; meaning of course always the same\nBeing.\n\nThat, I think, is the probable and simple account which tallies most\nexactly with the Bible.\n\nAs for the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, having\nbeen written by Moses, or at least by far the greater part of them,\nI cannot see the least reason to doubt it.\n\nThe Bible itself does not say so; and therefore it is not a matter\nof faith, and men may have their own opinions on the matter, without\nsin or false doctrine.  But that Moses wrote part at least of them,\nour Lord and his Apostles say expressly.  The tradition of the Jews\n(who really ought to know best) has always been that Moses wrote\neither the whole or the greater part.  Moses is by far the most\nlikely man to have written them, of all of whom we read in\nScripture.  We have not the least proof, and, what is more, never\nshall or can have, that he did not write them.  And therefore, I\nadvise you to believe, as I do, that the universal tradition of both\nJews and Christians is right, when it calls these books, the books\nof Moses. {7}\n\nBut now no more of these matters:  we will think of a matter quite\ninfinitely more important, and that is, WHO is this God whom the\nBible reveals to us, from the very first verse of Genesis?\n\nAt least, he is one and the same Being.  Whether he be called El,\nJehovah, or Adonai, he is the same Lord.\n\nIt is the Lord who makes the heaven and the earth, the Lord who puts\nman in a Paradise, lays on him a commandment, and appears to him in\nvisible shape.\n\nIt is the Lord who speaks to Abraham:  though Abraham knew him only\nas El-Shaddai, the Almighty God.  It is the Lord who brings the\nIsraelites out of Egypt, who gives them the law on Sinai.  It is the\nLord who speaks to Samuel, to David, to all the Prophets, and\nappears to Isaiah, while his glory fills the Temple.  In whatever\n'divers manners' and 'many portions,' as St. Paul says in the\nEpistle to the Hebrews, he speaks to them, he is the same Being.\n\nAnd Psalmists and Prophets are most careful to tell us that he is\nthe God, not of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles; of all mankind--\nas indeed, he must be, being Jehovah, the I Am, the one Self-\nexistent and Eternal Being; that from his throne he is watching and\njudging all the nations upon earth, fashioning the hearts of all,\nappointing them their bounds, and the times of their habitation, if\nhaply they may seek after him and find him, though he be not far\nfrom any one of them; for in him they live and move and have their\nbeing.\n\nThis is the message of Moses, of the Psalmists and the Prophets,\njust as much as of St. Paul on Mars' Hill at Athens.\n\nSo begins and so ends the Old Testament, revealing throughout The\nLord.\n\nAnd how does the New Testament begin?\n\nBy telling us that a Babe was born at Bethlehem, and called Jesus,\nthe Saviour.\n\nBut who is this blessed Babe?  He, too, is The Lord.\n\n'A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.'  And from thence, through the\nGospels, the Acts, the Epistles, the Revelation of St. John, he is\nthe Lord.  There is no manner of doubt of it.  The Apostles and\nEvangelists take no trouble to prove it.  They take it for granted.\nThey call Jesus Christ by the name by which the Jews had for\nhundreds of years called the El of Abraham, the Jehovah of Moses.\nThe Babe who is born at Bethlehem, who grows up as other human\nbeings grow, into the man Christ Jesus, is none other than the Lord\nGod who created the universe, who made a covenant with Abraham, who\nbrought the Israelites out of Egypt, who inspired the Prophets, who\nhas been from the beginning governing all the earth.\n\nIt is very awful.  But you must believe that, or put your Bibles\naway as a dream--New Testament and Old alike.  Not to believe that\nfully and utterly, is not to believe the Bible at all.  For that is\nwhat the Bible says, and has been sent into the world to say.  It\nis, from beginning to end, the book of the revelation, or unveiling\nof Jesus Christ, very God of very God.\n\nBut some may say, 'Why tell us that?  Of course we believe it.  We\nshould not be Christians if we did not.'\n\nBe it so.  I hope it is so.  But I think that it is not so easy to\nbelieve it as we fancy.\n\nWe believe it, I think, more firmly than our forefathers did five\nhundred years ago, on some points; and therefore we have got rid of\nmany dark and blasphemous superstitions about witches and devils,\nabout the evil of the earth and of our own bodies, of marriage, and\nof the common duties and bonds of humanity, which tormented them,\nbecause they could not believe fully that Jesus Christ had created,\nand still ruled the world and all therein.\n\nBut we are all too apt still to think of Jesus Christ merely as some\none who can save our souls when we die, and to forget that he is the\nLord, who is and has been always ruling the world and all mankind.\n\nAnd from this come two bad consequences.  People are apt to speak of\nthe Lord Jesus--or at least to admire preachers who speak of him--as\nif he belonged to them, and not they to him; and, therefore, to\nspeak of him with an irreverence and a familiarity which they dared\nnot use, if they really believed that this same Jesus, whose name\nthey take in vain, is none other than the Living God himself, their\nCreator, by whom every blade of grass grows beneath their feet,\nevery planet and star rolls above their heads.\n\nAnd next--they fancy that the Old Testament speaks of our Lord Jesus\nChrist only in a few mysterious prophecies--some of which there is\nreason to suspect they quite misinterpret.  They are slow of heart\nto believe all that the Scriptures have spoken of him of whom Moses\nand the Prophets did write, not in a few scattered texts, but in\nevery line of the Old Testament, from the first of Genesis to the\nlast of Malachi.\n\nAnd therefore they believe less and less, that Jesus Christ is still\nthe Lord in any real practical sense--not merely the Lord of a few\nelect or saints, but the Lord of man and of the earth, and of the\nwhole universe.  They think of him as a Lord who will come again to\njudgment--which is true, and awfully true, in the very deepest\nsense:  but they do not think of him--in spite of what he himself\nand his apostles declared of him--as The Living, Working Lord, to\nwhom all power is given in heaven and earth, and not merely over the\nsouls of a few regenerate; as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the\nlast, of whom St. Paul says, 'that the mystery of Christ has been\nhid from the beginning of the world in God, who created all things\nby Jesus Christ.' * * * 'That, in the dispensation of the fulness of\ntimes, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both\nwhich are in heaven, and which are in earth.'  They fill their minds\nwith fancies about the book of Revelation, most of which, there is\nreason to fear, are little else but fancies:  while they overlook\nwhat that book really does say, and what is the best news that the\nworld ever heard, that he is the Prince of the kings of the earth.\n\nTherefore they have fears for Christ's Bible, fears for Christ's\nChurch, fears for the fate of the world, which they could not have\nif they would recollect who Christ is, and believe that he is able\nto take care of his own kingdom and power and glory, better than man\ncan take care of it for him.  Surely, surely, faith in the living\nLord who rules the world in righteousness is fast dying out among\nus; and many who call themselves Christians seem to know less of\nChrist, and of the work which he is carrying on in the world, than\ndid the old Psalmist, who said of him, 'The Lord shall endure for\never; he hath also prepared his seat for judgment.  For he shall\njudge the world in righteousness, and minister true judgment among\nthe people.'  He fashioneth 'the hearts of all of them, and\nunderstandeth all their works.'\n\nWho can say that he believes that, who holds that this world is the\ndevil's world, and that sinful man and evil spirits are having it\nall their own way till the day of judgment?\n\nWho can say that he believes that, who falls into pitiable terror at\nevery new discovery of science or of scholarship, for fear it should\ndestroy the Bible and the Christian faith, instead of believing that\nall which makes manifest is light, and that all light comes from the\nFather of lights, by the providence of Jesus Christ his only-\nbegotten Son, who is the light of men, and the inspiration of his\nSpirit, who leadeth into all truth?\n\nAnd how, lastly, can those say that they believe that, who will lie,\nand slander, and have recourse to base intrigues, in order to defend\nthat truth, and that Church, of which the Lord himself has said that\nhe has founded it upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not\nprevail against it?\n\nBut if you believe indeed the message of the Bible, that Jesus\nChrist is the Lord who made heaven and earth, then it shall be said\nof you, as it was of St. Peter, 'Blessed art thou:  for flesh and\nblood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in\nheaven.'\n\nYes.  Blessed indeed is he who believes that; who believes that the\nsame person who was born in a stable, had not where to lay his head,\nwent about healing the sick and binding up the broken heart,\nsuffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and\nrose again the third day, and ascended into heaven--ascended thither\nthat he might fill all things; and is none other than the Lord of\nthe earth and of men, the Creator, the Teacher, the Saviour, the\nGuide, the King, the Judge, of all the world, and of all worlds\npast, present, and to come.\n\nFor to him who thus believes shall be fulfilled the promise of his\nLord, 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I\nwill give you rest.'\n\nHe will find rest unto his soul.  Rest from that first and last\nquestion, of which I said that all men, down to the lowest savage,\nask it, simply because they are men, and not beasts.  Where am I?\nHow came I here?  How came this world here likewise?  For he can\nanswer--\n\n'I am in the kingdom of the Babe of Bethlehem.  He put me here.  And\nhe put this world here likewise:  and that is enough for me.  He\ncreated all I see or can see--I care little how, provided that HE\ncreated it; for then I am sure that it must be very good.  He\nredeemed me and all mankind, when we were lost, at the price of his\nmost precious blood.  He the Lord is King, therefore will I not be\nmoved, though the earth be shaken, and the hills be carried into the\nmidst of the sea.  Yea, though the sun were turned to darkness, and\nthe moon to blood, and the stars fell from heaven, and all power and\norder, all belief and custom of mankind, were turned upside down,\nyet there would still be One above who rules the world in\nrighteousness, whose eye is on them that fear him and put their\ntrust in his mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to feed\nthem in the time of dearth.  Darkness may cover the land for awhile,\nand gross darkness the people.  But while I sit in darkness, the\nLord shall be my light, till the day when he shall say once more,\n\"Let there be light,\" and light shall be.'\n\nYes.  To the man who is a good man and true; who has any hearty\nChristian feeling for his fellow-men, and is not merely a selfish\nsuperstitious person, caring for nothing but what he calls the\nsafety of his own soul; to the man, I say, who has anything of the\nloving spirit of Christ in him, what question can be more important\nthan this, Is the world well made or ill?  Is it well governed or\nill?  Is it on the whole going right or going wrong?  And what can\nbe more comforting to such a man, than the answer which the Bible\ngives him at the outset?--\n\nThis world is well made, in love and care; for Christ the Lord made\nit, and behold it was very good.\n\nThis world is going right and not wrong, in spite of all appearances\nto the contrary; for Christ the Lord is King.  He sitteth between\nthe cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet.  He is too strong and\ntoo loving to let the world go any way but the right.  Parts of it\nwill often go wrong here, and go wrong there.  The sin and ignorance\nof men will disturb his order, and rebel against his laws; and\nstrange and mad things, terrible and pitiable things will happen, as\nthey have happened ever since the day when the first man disobeyed\nthe commandment of the Lord.  But man cannot conquer the Lord; the\nLord will conquer man.  He will teach men by their neighbours' sins.\nHe will teach them by their own sins.  He will chastise them by sore\njudgments.  He will make fearful examples of wilful and conceited\nsinners; and those who seem to escape him in this life, shall not\nescape him in the life to come.  But he is trying for ever every\nman's work by fire; and against that fire no lie will stand.  He\nwill burn up the stubble and chaff, and leave only the pure wheat\nfor the use of future generations.  His purpose will stand.  His\nword will never return to him void, but will prosper always where he\nsends it.  He has made the round world so sure that it cannot be\nmoved either by man or by worse than man.  His everlasting laws will\ntake effect in spite of all opposition, and bring the world and man\nalong the path, and to the end, which he purposed for them in the\nday when God made the heavens and the earth, and in that even\ngreater day, when he said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our\nlikeness,' and man arose upright, and knew that he was not as the\nbeasts, and asked who he was, and where? feeling with the hardly\nopened eyes of his spirit after that Lord from whom he came, and to\nwhom he shall return, as many as have eternal life, in the day when\nChrist the Lord of life shall have destroyed death, and put all\nenemies under his feet, and given up the kingdom to God, even the\nFather, that God may be all in all.\n\n\n\nSERMON II.  THE LIKENESS OF GOD\n\n\n\n(Trinity Sunday.)\n\nGENESIS i. 26.  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after\nour likeness.\n\nThis is a hard saying.  It is difficult at times to believe it to be\ntrue.\n\nIf one looks not at what God has made man, but at what man has made\nhimself, one will never believe it to be true.\n\nWhen one looks at what man has made himself; at the back streets of\nsome of our great cities; at the thousands of poor Germans and Irish\nacross the ocean bribed to kill and to be killed, they know not why;\nat the abominable wrongs and cruelties going on in Poland at this\nmoment--the cry whereof is going up to the ears of the God of Hosts,\nand surely not in vain; when one thinks of all the cries which have\ngone up in all ages from the victims of man's greed, lust, cruelty,\ntyranny, and shrillest of all from the tortured victims of his\nsuperstition and fanaticism, it is difficult to answer the sneer,\n'Believe, if you can, that this foolish, unjust, cruel being called\nman, is made in the likeness of God.  Man was never made in the\nimage of God at all.  He is only a cunninger sort of animal, for\nbetter for worse--and for worse as often as for better.'\n\nAnother says, not quite that.  Man was in the likeness of God once,\nbut he lost that by Adam's fall, and now is only an animal with an\nimmortal soul in him, to be lost or saved.\n\nThere is more truth in that latter notion than in the former:  but\nif it be quite right; if we did lose the likeness of God at Adam's\nfall, how comes the Bible never to say so?  How comes the Bible\nnever to say one word on what must have been the most important\nthing which ever happened to mankind before the coming of our Lord\nJesus Christ?\n\nAnd how comes it also that the New Testament says distinctly that\nman is still made in the likeness of God?  For St. Paul speaks of\nman as 'the likeness and glory of God.'  And St. James says of the\ntongue, 'Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith' (to\nour shame) 'curse we men, which are made in the likeness of God.'\n\nBut the great proof that man is made in the image and likeness of\nGod is the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ; for if human nature\nhad been, as some think, something utterly brutish and devilish, and\nutterly unlike God, how could God have become man without ceasing to\nbe God?  Christ was man of the substance of his mother.  That\nsubstance had the same human nature as we have.  Then if that human\nnature be evil, what follows?  Something which I shall not utter,\nfor it is blasphemy.  Christ has taken the manhood into God.  Then\nif manhood be evil, what follows again?  Something more which I\nshall not utter, for it is blasphemy.\n\nBut man is made in the image of God; and therefore God, in whose\nimage he is made, could take on himself his own image and likeness,\nand become perfect man, without ceasing to be perfect God.\n\nTherefore, my friends, it is a comfortable and wholesome doctrine,\nthat man is made in the image of God, and one for which we must\nthank the Bible.  For it is the Bible which has revealed that truth\nto us, in its very beginning and outset, that we might have, from\nthe first, clear and sound notions concerning man and God.  The\nBible, I say; for the sacred books of the heathen say, most of them,\nnothing thereof.\n\nMan has, in all ages, been tempted, when he looks at his own\nwickedness and folly, not only to despise himself--which he has good\nreason enough to do--but to despise his own human nature, and to cry\nto God, 'Why hast thou made me thus?'  He has cursed his own human\nnature.  He has said, 'Surely man is most miserable of all the\nbeasts of the field.'  He has said, 'I must get rid of my human\nnature--I must give up wife, family, human life of all kinds, I must\ngo into the deserts and the forests, and there try to forget that I\nam a man, and become a mere spirit or angel.'  So said the Buddhists\nof Asia, the deepest thinkers concerning man and God of all the\nheathens, and so have many said since their time.  But so does the\nBible not say.  It starts by telling us that man is made in God's\nlikeness, and that therefore his human nature is originally and in\nitself not a bad, but a perfectly good thing.  All that has to be\ndone to it is to be cured of its diseases; and the Bible declares\nthat it can be cured.  Howsoever man may have fallen, he may rise.\nHowsoever the likeness may be blotted and corrupted, it can be\ncleansed and renewed.  Howsoever it may be perverted and turned\nright round and away from God and goodness to selfishness and evil,\nit can be converted, and turned back again to God.  Howsoever\nutterly far gone man may be from original righteousness, still to\noriginal righteousness he can return, by the grace of baptism and\nthe renewing of the Holy Spirit.  And what in us is the likeness of\nGod?  That is a deep question.\n\nOnly one answer will I make to it to-day.  Whatever in us is, or is\nnot, the likeness of God, at least the sense of right and wrong is;\nto know right and wrong.  So says the Bible itself:  'Behold the man\nis become as one of us, to know good and evil.'  Not that he got the\nlikeness of God by his fall--of course not; but that he became aware\nof his likeness, and that in a very painful and common way--by\nsinning against it; as St. Paul says in one of his deepest\nutterances, 'By sin is the knowledge of the law.'\n\nAnd you may see for yourselves how human nature can have God's\nlikeness in that respect, and yet be utterly fallen and corrupt.\n\nFor a man may--and indeed every man does--know good and yet be\nunable to do it, and know evil, and yet be a slave to it, tied and\nbound with the chains of his sins till the grace of God release him\nfrom them.\n\nTo know good and evil, right and wrong--to have a conscience, a\nmoral sense--that is the likeness of God of which I wish to preach\nto-day.  Because it is through THAT knowledge of good and evil, and\nthrough it alone, that we can know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has\nsent.  It is through our moral sense that God speaks to us; through\nour sense of right and wrong; through that I say, God speaks to us,\nwhether in reproof or encouragement, in wrath or in love; to teach\nus what he is like, and to teach us what he is not like.\n\nTo know God.  That is the side on which we must look at this text on\nTrinity Sunday.  If man be made in the image of God, then we may be\nable to know something at least of God, and of the character of God.\nIf we have the copy, we can guess at least at what the original is\nlike.\n\nFrom the character, therefore, of every good man, we may guess at\nsomething of the character of God.  But from the character of Jesus\nChrist our Lord, who is the very brightness of his Father's glory\nand the express image of his person, we may see perfectly--at least\nperfectly enough for all our needs in this life, and in the life to\ncome--what is the character of God, who made heaven and earth.\n\nI beseech you to remember this--I beseech you to believe this, with\nyour whole hearts, and minds, and souls, and especially just now.\n\nFor there are many abroad now who will tell you, man can know\nnothing of God.\n\nAnswer them:  'If your God be a God of whom I can know nothing, then\nhe is not my God, the God of the Bible.  For he is the God who has\nsaid of old, \"They shall not teach each man his brother, saying,\nKnow the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least unto the\ngreatest.\"  He is the God, who, through Jesus Christ our Lord,\naccused and blamed the Jews because they did NOT know him, which if\nthey COULD NOT know him would have been no fault of theirs.  Of\ndoctrines, and notions, and systems, it is written, and most truly,\n\"I know in part, and I prophesy in part,\" and again, \"If a man\nthinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he\nought to know.\"  But of God it is written, \"This is life eternal, to\nknow thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast\nsent.\"'\n\nBut they will say, man is finite and limited, God is infinite and\nabsolute, and how can the finite comprehend the infinite?\n\nAnswer:  'Those are fine words:  I do not understand them; and I do\nnot care to understand them; I do not deny that God is infinite and\nabsolute, though what that means I do not know.  But I find nothing\nabout his being infinite and absolute in the Bible.  I find there\nthat he is righteous, just, loving, merciful, and forgiving; and\nthat he is angry too, and that his wrath is a consuming fire, and I\nknow well enough what those words mean, though I do not know what\ninfinite and absolute mean.  So that is what I have to think of, for\nmy own sake and the sake of all mankind.'\n\nBut, they will say, you must not take these words to the letter; man\nis so unlike God, and God so unlike man, that God's attributes must\nbe quite different from man's.  When you read of God's love,\njustice, anger, and so forth, you must not think that they are\nanything like man's love, man's justice, man's anger; but something\nquite different, not only in degree, but in kind:  so that what\nmight be unjust and cruel in man, would not be so in God.\n\nMy dear friends, beware of that doctrine; for out of it have sprung\nhalf the fanaticism and superstition which has disgraced and\ntormented the earth.  Beware of ever thinking that a wrong thing\nwould be right if God did it, and not you.  And mind, that is flatly\ncontrary to the letter of the Bible.  In that grand text where\nAbraham pleads with God, what does he say?  Not, 'Of course if Thou\nchoosest to do it, it must be right,' but 'Shall not the Judge of\nall the earth do RIGHT?'  Abraham actually refers the Almighty God\nto his own law; and asserts an eternal rule of right and wrong\ncommon to man and to God, which God will surely never break.\n\nAnswer:  'If that doctrine be true, which I will never believe, then\nthe Bible mocks and deceives poor miserable sinful man, instead of\nteaching him.  If God's love does not mean real actual love,--God's\nanger, actual anger,--God's forgiveness, real forgiveness,--God's\njustice, real justice,--God's truth, real truth,--God's\nfaithfulness, real faithfulness, what do they mean?  Nothing which I\ncan understand, nothing which I can trust in.  How can I trust in a\nGod whom I cannot understand or know?  How can I trust in a love or\na justice which is not what _I_ call love or justice, or anything\nlike them?\n\n'The saints of old said, _I_ KNOW in whom I have believed.  And how\ncan I believe in him, if there is nothing in him which I can know;\nnothing which is like man--nothing, to speak plainly, like Christ,\nwho was perfect man as well as perfect God?  If that be so, if man\ncan know nothing really of God, he is indeed most miserable of all\nthe beasts of the field, for I will warrant that he can know nothing\nreally of anything else.  And what is left for him, but to remain\nfor this life, and the life to come, in the outer darkness of\nignorance and confusion, misrule and misery, wherein is most\nliterally--as one may see in the history of every heathen nation\nupon earth--wailing and gnashing of teeth.\n\n'If God's goodness be not like man's goodness, there is no rule of\nmorality left, no eternal standard of right and wrong.  How can I\ntell what I ought to do; or what God expects of me; or when I am\nright and when I am wrong, if you take from me the good, plain, old\nBible rule, that man CAN be, and MUST be, like God?  The Bible rule\nis, that everything good in man must be exactly like something good\nin God, because it is inspired into him by the Spirit of God\nhimself.  Our Lord Jesus, who spoke, not to philosophers or Scribes\nand Pharisees, but to plain human beings, weeping and sorrowing,\nsuffering and sinning, like us,--told them to be perfect, as our\nFather in heaven is perfect, by being good to the unthankful and the\nevil.  And if man is to be perfect, as his Father in heaven is\nperfect, then his Father in heaven is perfect as man ought to be\nperfect.  He told us to be merciful as our Father in heaven is\nmerciful.  Then our Father in heaven is merciful with the same sort\nof mercy as we ought to show.  We are bidden to forgive others, even\nas God for Christ's sake has forgiven us:  then if our forgiveness\nis to be like God's, God's forgiveness is like ours.  We are to be\ntrue, because God is true:  just, because God is just.  How can we\nbe that, if God's truth is not like what men call truth, God's\njustice not like what men call justice?\n\n'If I give up that rule of right and wrong, I give up all rules of\nright and wrong whatsoever.'\n\nNo, my friends; if we will seek for God where he may be found, then\nwe shall know God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.  But we\nmust not seek for him where he is not, in long words and notions of\nphilosophy spun out of men's brains, and set up as if they were real\nthings, when words and notions they are, and words and notions they\nwill remain.  We must look for God where he is to be found, in the\ncharacter of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who alone has\nrevealed and unveiled God's character, because he is the brightness\nof God's glory, and the express image of his person.\n\nWhat Christ's character was we can find in the Holy Gospels; and we\ncan find it too, scattered and in parts, in all the good, the holy,\nthe noble, who have aught of Christ's spirit and likeness in them.\n\nWhatsoever is good and beautiful in any human soul, that is the\nlikeness of Christ.  Whatsoever thoughts, words, or deeds are true,\nhonest, just, pure, lovely, of good report; whatsoever is true\nvirtue, whatsoever is truly worthy of praise, that is the likeness\nof Christ; the likeness of him who was full of all purity, all\ntenderness, all mercy, all self-sacrifice, all benevolence, all\nhelpfulness; full of all just and noble indignation also against\noppressors and hypocrites who bound heavy burdens and grievous to be\nborne, but touched them not themselves with one of their fingers;\nwho kept the key of knowledge, and neither entered in themselves, or\nlet those who were trying enter in either.\n\nThe likeness of an all-noble, all-just, all-gracious, all-wise, all-\ngood human being; that is the likeness of Christ, and that,\ntherefore, is the likeness of God who made heaven and earth.\n\nAll-good; utterly and perfectly good, in every kind of goodness\nwhich we have ever seen, or can ever imagine--that, thank God, is\nthe likeness and character of Almighty God, in whom we live and\nmove, and have our being.  To know that he is that--all-good, is to\nknow his character as far as sinful and sorrowful man need know; and\nis not that to know enough?\n\nThe mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity, as set forth so admirably\nin the Athanasian Creed, is a mystery; and it we cannot KNOW--we can\nonly believe it, and take it on trust:  but the CHARACTER of the\never-blessed Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--we can know:\nwhile by keeping the words of the Athanasian Creed carefully in\nmind, we may be kept from many grievous and hurtful mistakes which\nwill hinder our knowing it.  We can know that they are all good, for\nsuch as the Father is such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.\nThat goodness is their one and eternal substance, and majesty, and\nglory, which we must not divide by fancying with some, that the\nFather is good in one way and the Son in another.  That their\ngoodness is eternal and unchangeable; for they themselves are\neternal, and have neither parts nor passions.  That their goodness\nis incomprehensible, that is, cannot be bounded or limited by time\nor space, or by any notions or doctrines of ours, for they\nthemselves are incomprehensible, and able to do abundantly more than\nwe can ask or think.\n\nThis is our God, the God of the Bible, the God of the Church, the\nGod who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ our Lord.  And him we\ncan believe utterly, for we know that he is faithful and true; and\nwe know what THAT means, if there is any truth or faithfulness in\nus.  We know that he is just and righteous; and we know what THAT\nmeans, if there is any justice and uprightness in ourselves.  Him we\ncan trust utterly; to him we can take all our cares, all our\nsorrows, all our doubts, all our sins, and pour them out to him,\nbecause he is condescending; and we know what THAT means, if there\nbe any condescension and real high-mindedness in ourselves.  We can\nbe certain too that he will hear us, just because he is so great, so\nmajestic, so glorious; because his greatness, and majesty, and glory\nis a moral and spiritual greatness, which shows itself by stooping\nto the meanest, by listening to the most foolish, helping the\nweakest, pitying the worst, even while it is bound to punish.  Him\nwe can trust, I say, because him we can know, and can say of him,\nLet the Infinite and the Absolute mean what they may, I know in whom\nI have believed--God the Good.  Whatever else I cannot understand, I\ncan at least 'understand the lovingkindness of the Lord;' however\nhigh his dwelling may be, I know that he humbleth himself to behold\nthe things in heaven and earth, to take the simple out of the dust,\nand the poor out of the mire.  Whatever else God may or may not be,\nI know that gracious is the Lord, and righteous, yea, our God is\nmerciful.  The Lord preserveth the simple, for _I_ was in misery,\nand he helped ME.  Whatsoever fine theories or new discoveries I\ncannot trust, I can trust him, for with him is mercy, and with the\nLord is plenteous redemption; and he shall redeem his people from\nall their sins.  However dark and ignorant I may be, I can go to him\nfor teaching, and say, Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth thee,\nfor thou art my God; let thy loving Spirit lead me forth into the\nland of righteousness.\n\nThe land of righteousness.  The one true heavenly land, wherein God\nthe righteous dwelleth from eternity to eternity, righteous in all\nhis ways, and holy in all his works, and therefore adorable in all\nhis ways, and glorious in all his works, with a glory even greater\nthan the glory of his Almighty power.  On that glory of his goodness\nwe can gaze, though afar off in degree, yet near in kind, while the\nglory of his wisdom and power is far, far beyond my understanding.\nOf the intellect of God we can know nothing; but we can know what is\nbetter, the heart of God.  For THAT glory of goodness we can\nunderstand, and KNOW, and sympathize with in our heart of hearts,\nand say, If THIS be the likeness of God, he is indeed worthy to be\nworshipped, and had in honour.  Praise the Lord, O my soul, for the\nLord is GOOD.  Kings and all people, princes and all judges of the\nworld, young men and maidens, old men and children, praise the name\nof the Lord, for his name only is excellent, because his name is\nGOOD.  Lift up your eyes, and look upon the face of Christ the God-\nman, crucified for you; and behold therein the truth of all truths,\nthe doctrine of all doctrines, the gospel of all gospels, that the\n'Unknown,' and 'Infinite,' and 'Absolute' God, who made the\nuniverse, bids you know him, and know this of him, that he is GOOD,\nand that his express image and likeness is--Jesus Christ, his Son,\nour Lord.\n\n\n\nSERMON III.  THE VOICE OF THE LORD GOD\n\n\n\n(Preached also at the Chapel Royal, St. James, Sexagesima Sunday.)\n\nGENESIS iii. 8.  And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in\nthe garden in the cool of the day.\n\nThese words would startle us, if we heard them for the first time.\nI do not know but that they may startle us now, often as we have\nheard them, if we think seriously over them.  That God should appear\nto mortal man, and speak with mortal man.  It is most wonderful.  It\nis utterly unlike anything that we have ever seen, or that any\nperson on earth has seen, for many hundred years.  It is a miracle,\nin every sense of the word.\n\nWhen one compares man as he was then, weak and ignorant, and yet\nseemingly so favoured by God, so near to God, with man as he is now,\nstrong and cunning, spreading over the earth and replenishing it;\nsubduing it with railroads and steamships, with agriculture and\nscience, and all strange and crafty inventions, and all the while\nnever visited by any Divine or heavenly appearance, but seemingly\nleft utterly to himself by God, to go his own way and do his own\nwill upon the earth, one asks with wonder, Can we be Adam's\nchildren?  Can the God who appeared to Adam, be our God likewise, or\nhas God's plan and rule for teaching man changed utterly?\n\nNo.  He is one God; the same God yesterday, to-day, and for ever.\nHis will and purpose, his care and rule over man, have not changed.\n\nThat is a matter of faith.  Of the faith which the holy Church\ncommands us to have.  But it need not be a blind or unreasonable\nfaith.  That our God is the God of Adam; that the same Lord God who\ntaught him teaches us likewise, need not be a mere matter of faith:\nit may be a matter of reason likewise; a thing which seems\nreasonable to us, and recommends itself to our mind and conscience\nas true.\n\nConsider, my friends, a babe when it comes into the world.  The\nfirst thing of which it is aware is its mother's bosom.  The first\nthing which it does, as its eyes and ears are gradually opened to\nthis world, is to cling to its parents.  It holds fast by their\nhand, it will not leave their side.  It is afraid to sleep alone, to\ngo alone.  To them it looks up for food and help.  Of them it asks\nquestions, and tries to learn from them, to copy them, to do what it\nsees them doing, even in play; and the parents in return lavish care\nand tenderness on it, and will not let it out of their sight.  But\nafter a while, as the child grows, the parents will not let it be so\nperpetually with them.  It must go to school.  It must see its\nparents only very seldom, perhaps it must be away from them weeks or\nmonths.  And why?  Not that the parents love it less:  but that it\nmust learn to take care of itself, to act for itself, to think for\nitself, or it will never grow up to be a rational human being.\n\nAnd the parting of the child from the parents does not break the\nbond of love between them.  It learns to love them even better.\nNeither does it break the bond of obedience.  The child is away from\nits parents' eye.  But it learns to obey them behind their back; to\ndo their will of its own will; to ask itself, What would my parents\nwish me to do, were they here? and so learns, if it will think of\nit, a more true, deep, honourable and spiritual obedience, than it\never would if its parents were perpetually standing over it, saying,\nDo this, and do that.\n\nIn after life, that child may settle far away from his father's\nhome.  He may go up into the temptations and bustle of some great\ncity.  He may cross to far lands beyond the sea.  But need he love\nhis parents less? need the bond between them be broken, though he\nmay never set eyes on them again?  God forbid.  He may be settled\nfar away, with children, business, interests of his own; and yet he\nmay be doing all the while his father's will.  The lessons of God\nwhich he learnt at his mother's knee may be still a lamp to his feet\nand a light to his path.  Amid all the bustle and labour of\nbusiness, his father's face may still be before his eyes, his\nfather's voice still sound in his ears, bidding him be a worthy son\nto him still; bidding him not to leave that way wherein he should\ngo, in which his parents trained him long, long since.  He may feel\nthat his parents are near him in the spirit, though absent in the\nflesh.  Yes, though they may have passed altogether out of this\nworld, they may be to him present and near at hand; and he may be\nkept from doing many a wrong thing and encouraged to do many a right\none, by the ennobling thought, My father would have had it so, my\nmother would have had it so, had they been here on earth.  And\nthough in this world he may never see them again, he may look\nforward steadily and longingly to the day when, this life's battle\nover, he shall meet again in heaven those who gave him life on\nearth.\n\nMy friends, if this be the education which is natural and necessary\nfrom our earthly parents, made in God's image, appointed by God's\neternal laws for each of us, why should it not be the education\nwhich God himself has appointed for mankind?  All which is truly\nhuman (not sinful or fallen) is an image and pattern of something\nDivine.  May not therefore the training which we find, by the very\nfacts of nature, fit and necessary for our children, be the same as\nGod's training, by which he fashioneth the hearts of the children of\nmen?  Therefore we can believe the Bible when it tells us that so it\nis.  That God began the education of man by appearing to him\ndirectly, keeping him, as it were, close to his hand, and teaching\nhim by direct and open revelation.  That as time went on, God left\nmen more and more to themselves outwardly:  but only that he might\nraise their minds to higher notions of religion--that he might make\nthem live by faith, and not merely by sight; and obey him of their\nown hearty free will, and not merely from fear or wonder.  And\ntherefore, in these days, when miraculous appearances have, as far\nas we know, entirely ceased, yet God is not changed.  He is still as\nnear as ever to men; still caring for them, still teaching them; and\nhis very stopping of all miracles, so far from being a sign of God's\nanger or neglect, is a part of his gracious plan for the training of\nhis Church.\n\nFor consider--Man was first put upon this earth, with all things\nround him new and strange to him; seeing himself weak and unarmed\nbefore the wild beasts of the forest, not even sheltered from the\ncold, as they are; and yet feeling in himself a power of mind, a\ncunning, a courage, which made him the lord of all the beasts by\nvirtue of his MIND, though they were stronger than he in body.  All\nthat we read of Adam and Eve in the Bible is, as we should expect,\nthe history of CHILDREN--children in mind, even when they were full-\ngrown in stature.  Innocent as children, but, like children, greedy,\nfanciful, ready to disobey at the first temptation, for the very\nsilliest of reasons; and disobeying accordingly.  Such creatures--\nwith such wonderful powers lying hid in them, such a glorious future\nbefore them; and yet so weak, so wilful, so ignorant, so unable to\ntake care of themselves, liable to be destroyed off the face of the\nearth by their own folly, or even by the wild beasts around--surely\nthey needed some special and tender care from God to keep them from\nperishing at the very outset, till they had learned somewhat how to\ntake care of themselves, what their business and duty were upon this\nearth.  They needed it before they fell; they needed it still more,\nand their children likewise, after they fell:  and if they needed\nit, we may trust God that he afforded it to them.\n\nBut again.  Whence came this strange notion, which man alone has of\nall the living things which we see, of RELIGION?  What put into the\nmind of man that strange imagination of beings greater than himself,\nwhom he could not always see, but who might appear to him?  What put\ninto his mind the strange imagination that these unseen beings were\nmore or less his masters?  That they had made laws for him which he\nmust obey?  That he must honour and worship them, and do them\nservice, in order that they might be favourable to him, and help,\nand bless, and teach him?  All nations except a very few savages\n(and we do not know but that their forefathers had it like the rest\nof mankind) have had some such notion as this; some idea of\nreligion, and of a moral law of right and wrong.\n\nWhere did they get it?\n\nWhere, I ask again, did they get it?\n\nMy friends, after much thought I answer, there is no explanation of\nthat question so simple, so rational, so probable, as the one which\nthe text gives.\n\n\"And they heard the voice of the Lord God.\"\n\nSome, I know, say that man thought out for himself, in his own\nreason, the notion of God; that he by searching found out God.  But\nsurely that is contrary to all experience.  Our experience is, that\nmen left to themselves forget God; lose more and more all thought of\nGod, and the unseen world; believe more and more in nothing but what\nthey can see and taste and handle, and become as the beasts that\nperish.  How then did man, who now is continually forgetting God,\ncontrive to remember God for himself at first?  How, unless God\nhimself showed himself to man?  I know some will say, that mankind\ninvented for themselves false gods at first, and afterwards cleared\nand purified their own notions, till they discovered the true God.\nMy friends, there is a homely old proverb which will well apply\nhere.  If there had been no gold guineas, there would be no brass\nones.  If men had not first had a notion of a true God, and then\ngradually lost it, they would not have invented false gods to supply\nhis place.  And whence did they get, I ask again, the notion of gods\nat all?  The simplest answer is in the Bible:  God taught them.  I\ncan find no better.  I do not believe a better will ever be found.\n\nAnd why not?\n\nWhy not?  I ask.  To say that God cannot appear to men is simply\nsilly; for it is limiting God's Almighty power.  He that made man\nand all heaven and earth, cannot he show himself to man, if he shall\nso please?  To say that God will not appear to man because man is so\ninsignificant, and this earth such a paltry little speck in the\nheavens, is to limit God's goodness; nay, it is to show that a man\nknows not what goodness means.  What grace, what virtue is there\nhigher than condescension?  Then if God be, as he is, perfectly\ngood, must he not be perfectly condescending--ready and willing to\nstoop to man, and all the more ready and the more willing, the more\nweak, ignorant, and sinful this man is?  In fact, the greater need\nman has of God, the more certain is it that God will help him in\nthat need.\n\nYes, my friends, the Bible is the revelation of a God who\ncondescends to men, and therefore descends to men.  And the more a\nman's reason is spiritually enlightened to know the meaning of\ngoodness and holiness and justice and love, the more simple,\nreasonable, and credible will it seem to him that God at first\ntaught men in the days of their early ignorance, by the only method\nby which (as far as we can conceive) he could have taught them about\nhimself; namely, by appearing in visible shape, or speaking with\naudible voice; and just as reasonable and credible, awful and\nunfathomable mystery though it is, will be the greater news, that\nthat same Lord at last so condescended to man that he was conceived\nby the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius\nPilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; and rose the third day, and\nascended into heaven.  Credible and reasonable, not indeed to the\nnatural man who looks only at nature, which he can see and hear and\nhandle; but credible and reasonable enough to the spiritual man,\nwhose mind has been enlightened by the Spirit of God, to see that\nthe things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not\nseen are eternal; even justice and love, mercy and condescension,\nthe divine order, and the kingdom of the Living God.\n\nAnd now one word on a matter which is tormenting the minds of many\njust now.  It is often said that all that I have been saying is\ncontrary to science.  That this science and understanding of the\nworld around us, which has improved so marvellously in our days,\nproves that the apparitions and miracles spoken of in the Bible\ncannot be true; that God, or the angels of God, can never have\nwalked with man in visible shape.\n\nNow, my friends, I do not believe this.  I believe the very\ncontrary.  I entreat you to set your minds at rest on this point;\nand to believe (what is certainly true) there is nothing in this new\nscience to contradict the good old creed, that the Lord God of old\nappeared to his human children.  It would take too much time, of\ncourse, to give you my reasons for saying this:  and I must\ntherefore ask you to take on trust from me when I tell you solemnly\nand earnestly that there is nothing in modern science which can, if\nrightly understood, contradict the glorious words of St. Paul, that\nGod at sundry times and in divers manners spake to the fathers by\nthe prophets, and hath at last spoken unto us by a Son, whom he hath\nappointed heir of all things:  by whom also he made the worlds, who\nis the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,\nand upholdeth all things by the word of his power:  even Jesus\nChrist, God blessed for ever.  Amen.\n\nWhat then shall we think of these things?  Shall we say, 'How much\nbetter off were our forefathers than we!  Ah, that we were not left\nto ourselves!  Ah, that we lived in the good old times when God and\nhis angels walked with men!'\n\nMy friends, what says Solomon the Wise?--'Inquire not why the former\ntimes were better than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely\nconcerning this.'\n\nIt is very natural for us to think that we could become more easily\ngood men, more certain of going to heaven, if we saw divine\napparitions and heard divine voices.  A very natural thought.  But\nnatural things are not always the best or wisest things.  Spiritual\nthings are surely higher and deeper than natural things.  It is\nnatural to wish to see Christ, or some heavenly being, with our\nnatural eyes and senses.  But it is spiritual and therefore better\nfor our souls, to be content to see him by faith, with the spiritual\neyes of our heart and mind, to love him with all our heart and mind\nand soul, to worship him, to put our whole trust in him, to call\nupon him, to honour his holy name and his word, and to serve him\ntruly all the days of our life.\n\nNatural, indeed, to wish that we were back again in the old times.\nBut we must recollect that these old times were not good times, but\nbad times, and for that very reason the Lord took pity on them.\nThat they were times of darkness, and therefore it was that the\npeople who sat in great darkness, and in the valley of the shadow of\ndeath, were allowed to see a great light.  And that after that, the\nfulness of time, the very time which the Lord chose that he might be\nincarnate of the Virgin Mary, and came down upon this earth in human\nform, was not a good time.  On the contrary, the fulness of time,\n1863 years ago, was the very wickedest, most faithless, most unjust\ntime that the world had ever seen--a time of which St. Paul said\nthat there were none who did good, no, not one; that adders' poison\nwas under all lips, and all feet swift to shed blood, and that the\nway of peace none had known.\n\nBetter, far better, to live in times like these, in which there is\n(among Christian nations at least) no great darkness, even though\nthere be no great light; times in which the knowledge of the true\nGod and his Son Jesus Christ is spreading, slowly but surely, over\nall the earth; and with it, the fruit of the knowledge of the Lord,\njustice, mercy, charity, fellow-feeling, and a desire to teach and\nimprove all mankind, such as the world never saw before.  These are\nthe fruits of the Scriptures of the Lord, and the Sacraments of the\nLord, and of the Holy Spirit of the Lord; and if that Holy Spirit be\nin our hearts, and we yield our hearts to his gracious motions and\nobey them, then we are really nearer to the Lord Jesus Christ than\nif we saw him, as Adam did, with our bodily eyes, and yet rebelled\nagainst him, as Adam did, in our hearts, and disobeyed him in our\nactions.  Of old the Lord treated men as babes, and showed himself\nto their bodily eyes, that so they might learn that he was, and that\nhe was near them.  But us he treats as grown men, who know that he\nis, and that he is with us to the end of the world.  And if he\ntreats us as men, my friends, let us behave ourselves like men, and\nnot like silly children, who cannot be trusted by themselves for a\nmoment lest they do wrong or come to harm.  Let us obey God, not\nwith eye-service, just as long as we fancy that his eye is on us,\nbut with the deeper, more spiritual, more honourable obedience of\nfaith.  Let us obey him for obedience' sake, and honour him for very\nhonour's sake, as the young emigrant in foreign lands obeys and\nhonours the parents whom he will never see again on earth; and let\nus look forward, like him, to the day when him whom we cannot see on\nearth we may, perhaps, be permitted to see in heaven, as the reward-\n-and for what higher reward can man wish?--of faith and obedience.\n\n\n\nSERMON IV.  NOAH'S FLOOD\n\n\n\n(Quinquagesima Sunday.)\n\nGENESIS ix. 13.  I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a\ntoken of a covenant between me and the earth.\n\nWe all know the history of Noah's flood.  What have we learnt from\nthat history?  What were we intended to learn from it?  What\nthoughts should we have about it?\n\nThere are many thoughts which we may have.  We may think how the\nflood came to pass; what means God used to make it rain forty days;\nwhat is meant by breaking up the fountains of the great deep.  We\nmay calculate how large the ark was; and whether the Bible really\nmeans that it held all kinds of living things in the world, or only\nthose of Noah's own country, or the animals which had been tamed and\nmade useful to man.  We may read long arguments as to whether the\nflood spread over the whole world, or only over the country where\nNoah and the rest of the sons of Adam then lived.  We may puzzle\nourselves concerning the rainbow of which the text speaks.  How it\nwas to be a sign of a covenant from God.  Whether man had ever seen\na rainbow before.  Whether there had ever been rain before in Noah's\ncountry; or whether he did not live in that land of which the second\nchapter of Genesis says that the Lord had not caused it to rain upon\nthe earth, but there went up a mist from the earth and watered the\nface of the ground, as it does still in that high land in the centre\nof Asia, in which old traditions put the garden of Eden, and from\nwhich, as far as we yet know, mankind came at the beginning.\n\nWe may puzzle our minds with these and a hundred more curious\nquestions, as learned men have done in all ages.  But--shall we\nbecome really the wiser by so doing?  More learned we may become.\nBut being learned and being wise are two different things.  True\nwisdom is that which makes a man a better man.  And will such\npuzzling questions and calculations as these, settle them how we\nmay, make us BETTER men?  Will they make us more honest and just,\nmore generous and loving, more able to keep our tempers and control\nour appetites?  I cannot see that.  Will it make us better men\nmerely to know that there was once a flood of waters on the earth?\nI cannot see that.  If we look at the hills of sand and gravel round\nus, a little common sense will show us that there have been many\nfloods of waters on the earth, long, long before the one of which\nthe Bible speaks:  but shall we be better men for knowing that\neither?  I cannot see why we should.  Now the Bible was sent to make\nus better men.  How then will the history of the flood do that?\n\nEasily enough, my friends, if we will listen to the Bible, and\nthinking less about the flood itself, think more about him who, so\nthe Bible tells us, sent the flood.\n\nThe Bible, I have told you, is the revelation of the living Lord\nGod, even Jesus Christ; who, in his turn, reveals to us the Father.\nAnd what we have to think of is, how does this story of the flood\nreveal, unveil to us the living Lord of the world, and his living\ngovernment thereof?  Let us look at the matter in that way, instead\nof puzzling ourselves with questions of words and endless\ngenealogies which minister strife.  Let us look at the matter in\nthat way, instead of (like too many men now, and too many men in all\nages) being so busy in picking to pieces the shell of the Bible,\nthat we forget that the Bible has any kernel, and so let it slip\nthrough our hands.  Let us look at the matter in that way, as a\nrevelation of the living God, and then we shall find the history of\nthe flood full of godly doctrine, and profitable for these times,\nand for all times whatsoever.\n\nGod sent a flood on the earth.\n\nTrue; but the important matter is that GOD sent it.\n\nGod set the rainbow in the cloud, for a token.\n\nTrue; but the important matter is that GOD set it there.\n\nImportant?  Yes.  What more important than to know that the flood\ndid not come of itself, that the rainbow did not come of itself, and\ntherefore that no flood comes of itself, no rainbow comes of itself;\nnothing comes of itself, but all comes straight and immediately from\nthe one Living Lord God?\n\nA man may say, But the flood must have been caused by clouds and\nrain; and there must have been some special natural cause for their\nfalling at that place and that time?\n\nWhat of that?\n\nOr that the fountains of the great deep must have been broken up by\nnatural earthquakes, such as break up the crust of the earth now.\nWhat of that?\n\nOr that the rainbow must have been caused by the sun's rays shining\nthrough rain-drops at a certain angle, as all rainbows are now.\nWhat of that?  Very probably it was:  but if not, What of that?\nWhat we ought to know, and what we ought to care for is, what the\nBible tells us without a doubt, that however they came, God sent\nthem.  However they were made, God made them.  Their manner, their\nplace, their time was appointed exactly by God for a MORAL purpose.\nTo do something for the immortal souls of men; to punish sinners; to\npreserve the righteous; to teach Noah and his children after him a\nmoral lesson, concerning righteousness and sin; concerning the wrath\nof God against sin; concerning God, that he governs the world and\nall in it, and does not leave the world, or mankind, to go on of\nthemselves and by themselves.\n\nYou see, I trust, what a message this was, and is, and ever will be\nfor men; what a message and good news it must have been especially\nfor the heathen of old time.\n\nFor what would the heathen, what actually did the heathen think\nabout such sights as a flood, or a rainbow?\n\nThey thought of course that some one sent the flood.  Common sense\ntaught them that.\n\nBut what kind of person must he be, thought they, who sent the\nflood?  Surely a very dark, terrible, angry God, who was easily and\nsuddenly provoked to drown their cattle and flood their lands.\n\nBut the rainbow, so bright and gay, the sign of coming fine weather,\ncould not belong to the same God who made the flood.  What the\nfancies of the heathen about the rainbow were matters little to us:\nbut they fancied, at least, that it belonged to some cheerful,\nbright and kind God.  And so with other things.  Whatever was\nbright, and beautiful, and wholesome in the world, like the rainbow,\nbelonged to kind gods; whatever was dark, ugly, and destroying, like\nthe flood, belonged to angry gods.\n\nTherefore those of the heathen who were religious never felt\nthemselves safe.  They were always afraid of having offended some\ngod, they knew not how; always afraid of some god turning against\nthem, and bringing diseases against their bodies; floods, drought,\nblight against their crops; storms against their ships, in revenge\nfor some slight or neglect of theirs.\n\nAnd all the while they had no clear notion that these gods made the\nworld; they thought that the gods were parts of the world, just as\nmen are, and that beyond the gods there was the some sort of Fate,\nor necessity, which even gods must obey.\n\nDo you not see now what a comfort--what a spring of hope, and\ncourage, and peace of mind, and patient industry--it must have been\nto the men of old time to be told, by this story of the flood, that\nthe God who sends the flood sends the rainbow also?  There are not\ntwo gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things.  Light\nand darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike\nfrom him.  Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there\nis in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be--a power of\ndestroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine,\nfruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy,\nbeauty and order, are just as much attributes of his essence as\nawfulness and anger.\n\nThey tell us he is a God whose will is to love, to bless, to make\nhis creatures happy, if they will allow him.  They tell us that his\nanger is not a capricious, revengeful, proud, selfish anger, such as\nthat of the heathen gods:  but that it is an orderly anger, a just\nanger, a loving anger, and therefore an anger which in its wrath can\nremember mercy.  Out of God's wrath shineth love, as the rainbow out\nof the storm; if it repenteth him that he hath made man, it is only\nbecause man is spoiling and ruining himself, and wasting the gifts\nof the good world by his wickedness.  If he see fit to destroy man\nout of the earth, he will destroy none but those who deserve and\nneed destroying.  He will save those whom, like Noah, he can trust\nto begin afresh, and raise up a better race of men to do his work in\nthe world.  If God send a flood to destroy all living things, any\nwhen or anywhere, he will show, by putting the rainbow in the cloud,\nthat floods and destruction and anger are not his rule; that his\nrule is sunshine, and peace, and order; that though he found it\nnecessary once to curse the ground, once to sweep away a wicked race\nof men, yet that even that was, if one dare use the words of God,\nagainst his gracious will; that his will was from the beginning,\npeace on earth, and not floods, and good will to men, and not\ndestruction; and that in his HEART, in the abyss of his essence, and\nof which it is written, that God is Love--in his heart I say, he\nsaid, 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake,\neven though the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.\nNeither will I again smite everything living, as I have done.  While\nthe earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, and\nday and night, shall not cease.'\n\nThis is the God which the book of Genesis goes on revealing and\nunveiling to us more and more--a God in whom men may TRUST.\n\nThe heathen could not trust their gods.  The Bible tells men of a\nGod whom they can trust.  That is just the difference between the\nBible and all other books in the world.  But what a difference!\nDifference enough to make us say, Sooner that every other book in\nthe world were lost, and the Bible preserved, than that we should\nlose the Bible, and with the Bible lose faith in God.\n\nAnd now, my friends, what shall we learn from this?\n\nWhat shall we learn?  Have we not learnt enough already?  If we have\nlearnt something more of who God is; if we have learnt that he is a\nGod in whom we can trust through joy and sorrow, through light and\ndarkness, through life and death, have we not learnt enough for\nourselves?  Yes, if even those poor and weak words about God which I\nhave just spoken, could go home into all your hearts, and take root,\nand bear fruit there, they would give you a peace of mind, a\ncomfort, a courage among all the chances and changes of this mortal\nlife, and a hope for the life to come, such as no other news which\nman can tell you will ever give.  But there is one special lesson\nwhich we may learn from the history of the flood, of which I may as\nwell tell you at once.  The Bible account of the flood will teach us\nhow to look at the many terrible accidents, as we foolishly call\nthem, which happen still upon this earth.  There are floods still,\nhere and there, earthquakes, fires, fearful disasters, like that\ngreat colliery disaster of last year, which bring death, misery and\nruin to thousands.  The Bible tells us what to think of them, when\nit tells us of the flood.\n\nDo I mean that these disasters come as punishments to the people who\nare killed by them?  That is exactly what I do not mean.  It was\ntrue of the flood.  It is true, no doubt, in many other cases.  But\nour blessed Lord has specially forbidden us to settle when it is\ntrue to say that any particular set of people are destroyed for\ntheir sins:  forbidden us to say that the poor creatures who perish\nin this way are worse than their neighbours.\n\n'Thinkest thou,' he says, 'that those Galilaeans whose blood Pilate\nmingled with their sacrifices, were sinners above all the\nGalilaeans?  Or those eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell,\nand killed them; think you that they were sinners above all who\ndwelt in Jerusalem?  I tell you nay.'\n\n'Judge not,' he says, 'and ye shall not be judged,' and therefore we\nmust not judge.  We have no right to say, for instance, that the\nterrible earthquake in Italy, two years ago, came as a punishment\nfor the sins of the people.  We have no right to say that the twenty\nor thirty thousand human beings, with innocent children among them\nby hundreds, who were crushed or swallowed up by that earthquake in\na few hours, were sinners above all that dwelt in Italy.  We must\nnot say that, for the Lord God himself has forbidden it.\n\nBut this we may say (for God himself has said it in the Bible), that\nthese earthquakes, and all other disasters, great or small, do not\ncome of themselves--do not come by accident, or chance, or blind\nnecessity; but that he sends them, and that they fulfil his will and\nword.  He sends them, and therefore they do not come in vain.  They\nfulfil his will, and his will is a good will.  They carry out his\npurpose, but his purpose is a gracious purpose.  God may send them\nin anger; but in his anger he remembers mercy, and his very wrath to\nsome is part and parcel of his love to the rest.  Therefore these\ndisasters must be meant to do good, and will do good to mankind.\nThey may be meant to teach men, to warn them, to make them more wise\nand prudent for the future, more humble and aware of their own\nignorance and weakness, more mindful of the frailty of human life,\nthat remembering that in the midst of life we are in death, they may\nseek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is\nnear.  They may be meant to do that, and to do a thousand things\nmore.  For God's ways are not as our ways, or his thoughts as our\nthoughts.  His ways are unsearchable, and his paths past finding\nout.  Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him,\nor even settle what the Lord means by doing this or that?\n\nAll we can say is--and that is a truly blessed thing to be able to\nsay--that floods and earthquakes, fire and storms, come from the\nLord whose name is Love; the same Lord who walked with Adam in the\ngarden, who brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, who was\nborn on earth of the Virgin Mary, who shed his life-blood for sinful\nman, who wept over Jerusalem even when he was about to destroy it so\nthat not one stone was left on another, and who, when he looked on\nthe poor little children of Judaea, untaught or mistaught, enslaved\nby the Romans, and but too likely to perish or be carried away\ncaptive in the fearful war which was coming on their land, said of\nthem, 'It is not the will of your Father in heaven, that one of\nthese little ones shall perish.'  Him at least we can trust, in the\ndark and dreadful things of this world, as well as in the bright and\ncheerful ones; and say with Job, 'Though he slay me, yet will I\ntrust in him.  I have received good from the hands of the Lord, and\nshall I not receive evil?'\n\n\n\nSERMON V.  ABRAHAM\n\n\n\n(First Sunday in Lent)\n\nGENESIS xvii.  1, 2.  And when Abram was ninety years old and nine,\nthe Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty\nGod; walk before me, and be thou perfect.\n\nI have told you that the Bible reveals, that is, unveils the Lord\nGod, Jesus Christ our Lord, and through him God the Father Almighty.\nI have tried to show you how the Bible does so, step by step.  I go\non to show you another step which the Bible takes, and which\nexplains much that has gone before.\n\nFrom whom did Moses and the holy men of old whom Moses taught get\ntheir knowledge of God, the true God?\n\nThe answer seems to be--from Abraham.\n\nGod taught Moses more, much more than he taught Abraham.  It was\nMoses who bade men call God Jehovah, the I AM; but who, hundreds of\nyears before, taught them to call him the Almighty God?\n\nThe answer seems to be, Abraham.  God, we read, appeared to Abraham,\nand said to him, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy father's\nhouse, unto a land that I shall show thee, and I will make of thee a\ngreat nation.'  And again the Lord said to him, 'I am the Almighty\nGod, walk before me and be thou perfect, and thou shalt be a father\nof many nations.'\n\n'And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for\nrighteousness.  And he was called the friend of God.'\n\nBut from what did Abraham turn to worship the living God?  From\nidols?  We are not certain.  There is little or no mention of idols\nin Abraham's time.  He worshipped, more probably, the host of\nheaven, the sun and moon and stars.  So say the old traditions of\nthe Arabs, who are descended from Abraham through Ishmael, and so it\nis most likely to have been.  That was the temptation in the East.\nYou read again and again how his children, the Jews, turned back\nfrom God to worship the host of heaven; and that false worship seems\nto have crept in at some very early time.  The sun, you must\nremember, and the moon are far more brilliant and powerful in the\nEast than here; their power of doing harm or good to human beings\nand to the crops of the land is far greater; while the stars shine\nin the East with a brightness of which we here have no notion.  We\ndo not know, in this cloudy climate, what St. Paul calls the glory\nof the stars; nor see how much one star differs from another star in\nglory; and therefore here in the North we have never been tempted to\nworship them as the Easterns were.  The sun, the moon, the stars,\nwere the old gods of the East, the Elohim, the high and mighty ones,\nwho ruled over men, over their good and bad fortunes, over the\nweather, the cattle, the crops, sending burning drought, pestilence,\nsun-strokes, and those moon-strokes which we never have here; but of\nwhich the Psalmist speaks when he says, 'The sun shall not smite\nthee by day, neither the moon by night.'  And them the old Easterns\nworshipped in some wild confused way.\n\nBut to Abraham it was revealed that the sun, the moon, and the stars\nwere not Elohim--the high and mighty Ones.  That there was but one\nElohim, one high and mighty One, the Almighty maker of them all.  He\ndid not learn that, perhaps, at once.  Indeed the Bible tells us how\nGod taught him step by step, as he teaches all men, and revealed\nhimself to him again and again, till he had taught Abraham all that\nhe was to know.  But he did teach him this; as a beautiful old story\nof the Arabs sets forth.  They say how (whether before or after God\ncalled him, we cannot tell) Abraham at night saw a star:  and he\nsaid, 'This is my Lord.'  But when the star set, he said, 'I like\nnot those who vanish away.'  And when he saw the moon rising, he\nsaid, 'This is my Lord.'  But when the moon too set, he said,\n'Verily, if my Lord direct me not in the right way, I shall be as\none who goeth astray.'  But when he saw the sun rising, he said,\n'This is my Lord:  this is greater than star or moon.'  But the sun\nwent down likewise.  Then said Abraham, 'O my people, I am clear of\nthese things.  I turn my face to him who hath made the heaven and\nthe earth.'\n\nAnd was this all that Abraham believed--that the sun and moon and\nstars were not gods, but that there was a God besides, who had made\nthem all?  My friends, there have been thousands and tens of\nthousands since, I fear, who have believed as much as that, and yet\nwho cannot call Abraham their spiritual father, who are not\njustified by faith with faithful Abraham.\n\nFor merely to believe that, is a dead faith, which will never be\ncounted for righteousness, because it will never make man a\nrighteous man doing righteous and good deeds as Abraham did.\n\nOf Abraham it is written, that what he knew, he did.  That his faith\nwrought with his works.  And by his works his faith was made\nperfect.  That when he gained faith in God, he went and acted on his\nfaith.  When God called him he went out, not knowing whither he\nwent.\n\nHis faith is only shown by his works.  Because he believed in God he\nwent and did things which he would not have done if he had not\nbelieved in God.  Of him it is written, that he obeyed the voice of\nthe Lord, and kept his charge, his commandments, his statutes, and\nhis laws.\n\nIn a word, he had not merely found out that there was one God, but\nthat that one God was a good God, a God whom he must obey, and obey\nby being a good man.  Therefore his faith was counted to him for\nrighteousness, because it was righteousness, and made him do\nrighteous deeds.\n\nHe believed that God was helping him; therefore he had no need to\noppress or overreach any man.  He believed that God's eye was on\nhim; therefore he dared not oppress or overreach any man.\n\nHis faith in God made him brave.  He went forth he knew not whither;\nbut he had put his trust in God, and he did not fear.  He and his\nthree hundred slaves, born in his house, were not afraid to set out\nagainst the four Arab kings who had just conquered the five kings of\nthe vale of Jordan, and plundered the whole land.  Abraham and his\nlittle party of faithful slaves follow them for miles, and fall on\nthem and defeat them utterly, setting the captives free, and\nbringing back all the plunder; and then, in return for all that he\nhas done, Abraham will take nothing--not even, he says, 'a thread or\na shoe-latchet--lest men should say, We have made Abraham rich.'\nAnd why?\n\nBecause his faith in God made him high-minded, generous, and\ncourteous; as when he bids Lot go whither he will with his flocks\nand herds.  'Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between thee and\nme.  If thou wilt take the left hand, I will go to the right.'  He\nis then, as again with the king of Sodom, and with the three\nstrangers at the tent door, and with the children of Heth, when he\nis buying the cave of Machpelah for a burying-place for Sarah--\nalways and everywhere the same courteous, self-restrained, high-\nbred, high-minded man.\n\nIt has been said that true religion will make a man a more thorough\ngentleman than all the courts in Europe.  And it is true:  you may\nsee simple labouring men as thorough gentlemen as any duke, simply\nbecause they have learned to fear God; and fearing him, to restrain\nthemselves, and to think of other people more than of themselves,\nwhich is the very root and essence of all good breeding.  And such a\nman was Abraham of old--a plain man, dwelling in tents, helping to\ntend his own cattle, fetching in the calf from the field himself,\nand dressing it for his guests with his own hand; but still, as the\nchildren of Heth said of him, a mighty prince--not merely in wealth\nof flocks and herds, but a prince in manners and a prince in heart.\n\nBut faith in God did more for Abraham than this:  it made him a\ntruly pious man--it made him the friend of God.\n\nThere were others in Abraham's days who had some knowledge of the\none true God.  Lot his nephew, Abimelech, Aner, Eshcol, Mamre, and\nothers, seem to have known whom Abraham meant when he spoke of the\nAlmighty God.  But of Abraham alone it is said that he believed God;\nthat he trusted in God, and rested on him; was built up on God;\nrested on God as a child in the mother's arms--for this we are told,\nis the full meaning of the word in the Bible--and looked to God as\nhis shield and his exceeding great reward.  He trusted in God\nutterly, and it was counted to him for righteousness.\n\nAnd of Abraham alone it is said that he was the friend of God; that\nGod spoke with him, and he with God.  He first of all men of whom we\nread, at least since the time of Adam, knew what communion with God\nmeant; knew that God spoke to him as a friend, a benefactor, a\npreserver, who was teaching and training him with a father's love\nand care; and felt that he in return could answer God, could open\nhis heart to him, tell him not only of his wants, but of his doubts\nand fears.\n\nYes, we may almost say, on the strength of the Bible, that Abraham\nwas the first human being, as far as we know, who prayed with his\nheart and soul; who knew what true prayer means--the prayer of the\nheart, by which man draws near to God, and finds that God is near to\nhim.  This--this communion with God, is the especial glory of\nAbraham's character.  This it is which has given him his name\nthrough all generations, The friend of God.  Or, as his descendants\nthe Arabs call him to this day, simply, 'The Friend.'\n\nThis it is which gained him the name of the Father of the Faithful;\nthe father of all who believe, whether they be descended from him,\nor whether they be, like us, of a different nation.  This it is\nwhich has made a wise man say of Abraham, that if we will consider\nwhat he knew and did, and in what a dark age he lived, we shall see\nthat Abraham may be (unless we except Moses) the greatest of mere\nhuman beings--that the human race may owe more to him than to any\nmortal man.\n\nBut why need we learn from Abraham? we who, being Christians, know\nand believe the true faith so much more clearly than Abraham could\ndo.\n\nAh, my friends, it is easier to know than to believe, and easier to\nknow than to do.  Easier to talk of Abraham's faith than to have\nAbraham's faith.  Easier to preach learned and orthodox sermons\nabout how Abraham was justified by his faith, than to be justified\nourselves by our own faith.\n\nAnd say not in your hearts, 'It was easy for Abraham to believe God.\nI should have believed of course in his place.  If God spoke to me,\nof course I should obey him.'  My friends, there is no greater and\nno easier mistake.  God has spoken to many a man who has not\nbelieved him, neither obeyed him, and so he may to you.  God spoke\nto Abraham, and he believed him and obeyed him.  And why?  Because\nthere was in Abraham's heart something which there is not in all\nmen's hearts--something which ANSWERED to God's call, and made him\ncertain that the call was from God--even the Holy Spirit of God.\n\nSo God may call you, and you may obey him, if only the Spirit of God\nbe in you; but not else.  MAY call you, did I say?  God DOES call\nyou and me, does speak to us, does command us, far more clearly than\nhe did Abraham.  We know the mystery of Christ, which in other ages\nwas NOT made known to the sons of men as it is now revealed to his\nholy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.  God, who at sundry times\nand in divers manners spoke to the fathers by the prophets, hath in\nthese last days spoken to us by his SON, Jesus Christ our Lord, and\ntold us our duty, and the reward which doing our duty will surely\nbring, far more clearly than ever he did to Abraham.\n\nBut do we listen to him?  Do we say with Abraham, 'O my people, I am\nclear of all these things which rise and set, which are born and\ndie, which begin and end in time, and turn my face to him that made\nheaven and earth!'  If so, how is it that we see people everywhere\nworshipping not idols of wood and stone, but other things, all\nmanner of things beside God, and saying, 'These are my Elohim.\nThese are the high and mighty ones whom I must obey.  These are the\nstrong things on which depend my fortune and my happiness.  I must\nobey THEM first, and let plain doing right and avoiding wrong come\nafter as it can.'\n\nOne worships the laws of trade, and says, 'I know this and that is\nhardly right; but it is in the way of business, and therefore I must\ndo it.'\n\nOne worships public opinion, and follows after the multitude to do\nevil, doing what he knows is wrong, simply because others do it, and\nit is the way of the world.\n\nOne worships the interest of his party, whether in religion or in\npolitics; and does for their sake mean and false, cruel and unjust\nthings, which he would not do for his own private interest.\n\nToo many, even in a free country, worship great people, and put\ntheir trust in princes, saying, 'I am sorry to have to do this.  I\nknow it is rather mean; but I must, or I shall lose such and such a\ngreat man's interest and favour.'  Or, 'I know I cannot afford this\nexpense; but if I do not I shall not get into good society, and this\nperson and that will not ask me to his house.'\n\nAll, meanwhile, except a few, rich or poor, worship money; and\nbelieve more or less, in spite of the Lord's solemn warning to the\ncontrary, that a man's life does consist in the abundance of the\nthings which he possesses.\n\nThese are the Elohim of this world, the high and mighty things to\nwhich men turn for help instead of to the living God, who was before\nall things, and will be after them; and behold they vanish away, and\nwhere then are those that have put their trust in them?\n\nBut blessed is he whose trust is in God the Almighty, and whose hope\nis in the Lord Jehovah, the eternal I Am.  Blessed is he who, like\nfaithful Abraham, says to his family, 'My people, I am clear of all\nthese things.  I turn my face from them to him who hath made earth\nand heaven.  I go through this world like Abraham, not knowing\nwhither I go; but like Abraham, I fear not, for I go whither God\nsends me.  I rest on God; he is my defence, and my exceeding great\nreward.  To have known him, loved him, obeyed him, is reward enough,\neven if I do not, as the world would say, succeed in life.\nTherefore I long not for power and honour, riches and pleasure.  I\nam content to do my duty faithfully in that station of life to which\nGod has called me, and to be forgiven for all my failings and\nshortcomings for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that is\nenough for me; for I believe in my Father in heaven, and believe\nthat he knows best for me and for my children.  He has not promised\nme, as he promised Abraham, to make of me a great nation; but he has\npromised that the righteous man shall never be deserted, or his\nchildren beg their bread.  He has promised to keep his covenant and\nmercy to a thousand generations with those who keep his commandments\nand do them; and that is enough for me.  In God have I put my trust,\nand I will not fear what man, or earth, or heaven, or any created\nthing can do unto me.'\n\nBlessed is that man, whether he inherit honourably great estates\nfrom his ancestors, or whether he make honourably great wealth and\nstation for himself; whether he spend his life quietly and honestly\nin the country farm or in the village shop, or whether he simply\nearn his bread from week to week by plough and spade.  Blessed is\nhe, and blessed are his children after him.  For he is a son of\nAbraham; and of him God hath said, as of Abraham, 'I know him that\nhe will command his children and household after him, and they shall\nkeep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord\nmay bring on him the blessing which he has spoken.'\n\nYes; blessed is that man.  He has chosen his share of Abraham's\nfaith; and he and his children after him shall have their share of\nAbraham's blessing.\n\n\n\nSERMON VI.  JACOB AND ESAU\n\n\n\n(Second Sunday in Lent.)\n\nGENESIS xxv. 29-34.  And Jacob sod pottage:  and Esau came from the\nfield, and he was faint:  And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray\nthee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint:  therefore was his\nname called Edom.  And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.\nAnd Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die:  and what profit\nshall this birthright do to me?  And Jacob said, Swear to me this\nday; and he sware unto him:  and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.\nThen Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat\nand drink, and rose up, and went his way:  thus Esau despised his\nbirthright.\n\nI have been telling you of late that the Bible is the revelation of\nGod.  But how does the story of Jacob and Esau reveal God to us?\nWhat further lesson concerning God do we learn therefrom?\n\nI think that if we will take the story simply as it stands we shall\nsee easily enough.  For it is all simple and natural enough.  Jacob\nand Esau, we shall see, were men of like passions with ourselves;\nmen as we are, mixed up of good and evil, sometimes right and\nsometimes wrong:  and God rewarded them when they did right, and\npunished them when they did wrong, just as he does with us now.\n\nThey were men, though, of very different characters:  we may see men\nlike them now every day round us.  Esau, we read, was a hunter--a\nman of the field; a bold, fierce, active man; generous, brave, and\nkind-hearted, as the end of his story shows:  but with just the\nfaults which such a man would have.  He was hasty, reckless, and\nfond of pleasure; passionate too, and violent.  Have we not seen\njust such men again and again, and liked them for what was good in\nthem, and been sorry too that they were not more sober and\nreasonable, and true to themselves?\n\nJacob was the very opposite kind of man.  He was a plain man--what\nwe call a still, solid, prudent, quiet man--and a dweller in tents:\nhe lived peaceably, looking after his father's flocks and herds;\nwhile Esau liked better the sport and danger of hunting wild beasts,\nand bringing home venison to his father.\n\nNow Jacob, we see, was of course a more thoughtful man than Esau.\nHe kept more quiet, and so had more time to think:  and he had\nplainly thought a great deal over God's promise to his grandfather\nAbraham.  He believed that God had promised Abraham that he would\nmake his seed as the sand of the sea for multitude, and give them\nthat fair land of Canaan, and that in his seed all the families of\nthe earth should be blessed; and that seemed to him, and rightly, a\nvery grand and noble thing.  And he set his heart on getting that\nblessing for himself, and supplanting his elder brother Esau, and\nbeing the heir of the promises in his stead.  Well--that was mean\nand base and selfish perhaps:  but there is somewhat of an excuse\nfor Jacob's conduct, in the fact that he and Esau were twins; that\nin one sense neither of them was older than the other.  And you must\nrecollect, that it was not at all a regular custom in the East for\nthe eldest son to be his father's heir, as it is in England.  You\nfind that few or none of the great kings of the Jews were eldest\nsons.  The custom was not kept up as it is here.  So Jacob may have\nsaid to himself, and not have been very wrong in saying it:\n\n'I have as good a right to the birthright as Esau.  My father loves\nhim best because he brings him in venison; but I know the value of\nthe honour which is before my family.  Surely the one of us who\ncares most about the birthright will be most fit to have it, and\nought to have it; and Esau cares nothing for it, while I do.'\n\nSo Jacob, in his cunning, bargaining way, took advantage of his\nbrother's weak, hasty temper, and bought his birthright of him, as\nthe text tells.\n\nThat story shows us what sort of a man Esau was:  hasty, careless,\nfond of the good things of this life.  He had no reason to complain\nif he lost his birthright.  He did not care for it, and so he had\nthrown it away.  Perhaps he forgot what he had done; but his sin\nfound him out, as our sins are sure to find each of us out.  The day\ncame when he wanted his birthright and could not have it, and found\nno place for repentance--that is, no chance of undoing what he had\ndone--though he sought it carefully with tears.  He had sown, and he\nmust reap; he had made his bed, and he must lie on it.  And so must\nJacob in his turn.\n\nNow this, I think, is just what the story teaches us concerning God.\nGod chooses Abraham's family to grow into a great nation, and to be\na peculiar people.  The next question will be:  If God favours that\nfamily, will he do unjust things to help them?--will he let them do\nunjust things to help themselves?  The Bible answers positively, No.\nGod will not be unjust or arbitrary in choosing one man and\nrejecting another.  If he chooses Jacob, it is because Jacob is fit\nfor the work which God wants done.  If he rejects Esau, it is\nbecause Esau is not fit.\n\nIt is natural, I know, to pity poor Esau; but one has no right to do\nmore.  One has no right to fancy for a moment that God was arbitrary\nor hard upon him.  Esau is not the sort of man to be the father of a\ngreat nation, or of anything else great.  Greedy, passionate,\nreckless people like him, without due feeling of religion or of the\nunseen world, are not the men to govern the world, or help it\nforward, or be of use to mankind, or train up their families in\njustice and wisdom and piety.  If there had been no people in the\nworld but people like Esau, we should be savages at this day,\nwithout religion or civilization of any kind.  They are of the\nearth, earthy; dust they are, and unto dust they will return.  It is\nmen like Jacob whom God chooses--men who have a feeling of religion\nand the unseen world; men who can look forward, and live by faith,\nand form plans for the future--and carry them out too, against\ndisappointment and difficulty, till they succeed.\n\nLook at one side of Jacob's character--his perseverance.  He serves\nseven years for Rachel, because he loves her.  Then when he is\ncheated, and Leah given him instead, he serves seven years more for\nRachel--'and they seemed to him a short time, for the love he bore\nto her;' and then he serves seven years more for the flocks and\nherds.  A slave, or little better than a slave, of his own free\nwill, for one-and-twenty years, to get what he wanted.  Those are\nthe men whom God uses, and whom God prospers.  Men with deep hearts\nand strong wills, who set their minds on something which they cannot\nsee, and work steadfastly for it, till they get it; for God gives it\nto them in good time--when patience has had her perfect work upon\ntheir characters, and made them fit for success.\n\nEsau, we find, got some blessing--the sort of blessing he was fit\nfor.  He loved his father, and he was rewarded.  'And Isaac his\nfather answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the\nfatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by\nthy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall\ncome to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt\nbreak his yoke from off thy neck.'\n\nHe was a brave, generous-hearted man, in spite of his faults.  He\nwas to live the free hunter's life which he loved; and we find that\nhe soon became the head of a wild powerful tribe, and his sons after\nhim.  Dukes of Edom they were called for several generations; but\nthey never rose to any solid and lasting power; they never became a\ngreat nation, as Jacob's children did.  They were just what one\nwould expect--wild, unruly, violent people.  They have long since\nperished utterly off the face of the earth.\n\nAnd what did Jacob get, who so meanly bought the birthright, and\ncheated his father out of the blessing?  Trouble in the flesh;\nvanity and vexation of spirit.  He had to flee from his father's\nhouse; never to see his mother again; to wander over the deserts to\nkinsmen who cheated him as he had cheated others; to serve Laban for\ntwenty-one years; to crouch miserably in fear and trembling, as a\npetitioner for his life before Esau whom he had wronged, and to be\nmade more ashamed than ever, by finding that generous Esau had\nforgiven and forgotten all.  Then to see his daughter brought to\nshame, his sons murderers, plotting against their own brother, his\nfavourite son; to see his grey hairs going down with sorrow to the\ngrave; to confess to Pharaoh, after one hundred and twenty years of\nlife, that few and evil had been the days of his pilgrimage.\n\nThen did his faith in God win no reward?  Not so.  That was his\nreward, to be chastened and punished, till his meanness was purged\nout of him.  He had taken God for his guide; and God did guide him\naccordingly; though along a very different path from what he\nexpected.  God accepted his faith, delivered his soul, gave him rest\nand peace at last in his old age in Egypt, let him find his son\nJoseph again in power and honour:  but all along God punished his\nown inventions--as he will punish yours and mine, my friends, all\nthe while that he may be accepting our faith and delivering our\nsouls, because we trust in him.  So God rewarded Jacob by giving him\nmore light:  by not leaving him to himself, and his own darkness and\nmeanness, but opening his eyes to understand the wondrous things of\nGod's law, and showing him how God's law is everlasting, righteous,\nnot to be escaped by any man; how every action brings forth its\nappointed fruit; how those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.\nJacob's first notion was like the notion of the heathen in all\ntimes, 'My God has a special favour for me, therefore I may do what\nI like.  He will prosper me in doing wrong; he will help me to cheat\nmy father.'  But God showed him that that was just not what he would\ndo for him.  He would help and protect him; but only while he was\ndoing RIGHT.  God would not alter his moral laws for him or any man.\nGod would be just and righteous; and Jacob must be so likewise, till\nhe learnt to trust not merely in a God who happened to have a\nspecial favour to him, but in the righteous God who loves justice,\nand wishes to make men righteous even as he is righteous, and will\nmake them righteous, if they trust in him.\n\nThat was the reward of Jacob's faith--the best reward which any man\ncan have.  He was taught to know God, whom truly to know is\neverlasting life.  And this, it seems to me, is the great revelation\nconcerning God which we learn from the history of Jacob and Esau.\nThat God, how much soever favour he may show to certain persons, is\nstill, essentially and always, a just God.\n\nAnd now, my friends, if any of you are tempted to follow Jacob's\nexample, take warning betimes.  You will be tempted.  There are men\namong you--there are in every congregation--who are, like Jacob,\nsober, industrious, careful, prudent men, and fairly religious too;\nmen who have the good sense to see that Solomon's proverbs are true,\nand that the way to wealth and prosperity is to fear God, and keep\nhis commandments.\n\nMay you prosper; may God's blessing be upon your labour; may you\nsucceed in life, and see your children well settled and thriving\nround you, and go down to the grave in peace.\n\nBut never forget, my good friends, that you will be tempted as Jacob\nwas--to be dishonest.  I cannot tell why; but professedly religious\nmen, in all countries, in all religions, are, and always have been,\ntempted in that way--to be mean and cunning and false at times.  It\nis so, and there is no denying it:  when all other sins are shut out\nfrom them by their religious profession, and their care for their\nown character, and their fear of hell, the sin of lying, for some\nstrange reason, is left open to them; and to it they are tempted to\ngive way.  For God's sake--for the sake of Christ, who was full of\ngrace and truth--for your own sakes--struggle against that.  Unless\nyou wish to say at last with poor old Jacob, 'Few and evil have been\nthe days of my pilgrimage;' struggle against that.  If you fear God\nand believe that he is with you, God will prosper your plans and\nlabour; but never make that an excuse for saying in your hearts,\nlike Jacob, 'God intends that I should have these good things;\ntherefore I may take them for myself by unfair means.'  The\nbirthright is yours.  It is you, the steady, prudent, God-fearing\nones, who will prosper on the earth, and not poor wild, hot-headed\nEsau.  But do not make that an excuse for robbing and cheating Esau,\nbecause he is not as thoughtful as you are.  The Lord made him as\nwell as you; and died for him as well as for you; and wills his\nsalvation as well as yours; and if you cheat him the Lord will\navenge him speedily.  If you give way to meanness, covetousness,\nfalsehood, as Jacob did, you will rue it; the Lord will enter into\njudgment with you quickly, and all the more quickly because he loves\nyou.  Because there is some right in you--because you are on the\nwhole on the right road--the Lord will visit you with disappointment\nand affliction, and make your own sins your punishment.\n\nIf you deceive other people, other people shall deceive you, as they\ndid Jacob.  If you lay traps, you shall fall into them yourselves,\nas Jacob did.  If you fancy that because you trust in God, God will\noverlook any sin in you, as Jacob did, you shall see, as Jacob did,\nthat your sin shall surely find you out.  The Lord will be more\nsharp and severe with you than with Esau.  And why?  Because he has\ngiven you more, and requires more of you; and therefore he will\nchastise you, and sift you like wheat, till he has parted the wheat\nfrom the tares.  The wheat is your faith, your belief that if you\ntrust in God he will prosper you, body and soul.  That is God's good\nseed, which he has sown in you.  The tares are your fancies that you\nmay do wrong and mean things to help yourselves, because God has an\nespecial favour for you.  That is the devil's sowing, which God will\nburn out of you by the fire of affliction, as he did out of Jacob,\nand keep your faith safe, as good seed in his garner, for the use of\nyour children after you, that you may teach them to walk in God's\ncommandments and serve him in spirit and in truth.  For God is a God\nof truth, and no liar shall stand in his sight, let him be never so\nreligious; he requires truth in the inward parts, and truth he will\nhave; and whom he loves he will chasten, as he chastened Jacob of\nold, till he has made him understand that honesty is the best\npolicy; and that whatever false prophets may tell you, there is not\none law for the believer and another for the unbeliever; but\nwhatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap, and receive the due\nreward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil.\n\n\n\nSERMON VII.  JOSEPH\n\n\n\n(Preached on the Sunday before the Wedding of the Prince of Wales.\nMarch 8th, third Sunday in Lent.)\n\nGENESIS xxxix. 9.  How can I do this great wickedness, and sin\nagainst God?\n\nThe story of Joseph is one which will go home to all healthy hearts.\nEvery child can understand, every child can feel with it.  It is a\nstory for all men and all times.  Even if it had not been true, and\nnot real fact, but a romance of man's invention, it would have been\nloved and admired by men; far more then, when we know that it is\ntrue, that it actually did so happen; that is part and parcel of the\nHoly Scriptures.\n\nWe all, surely, know the story--How Joseph's brethren envy him and\nsell him for a slave into Egypt--how there for a while he prospers--\nhow his master's wife tempts him--how he is thrown into prison on\nher slander--how there again he prospers--how he explains the dreams\nof Pharaoh's servants--how he lies long forgotten in the prison--how\nat last Pharaoh sends for him to interpret a dream for him, and how\nhe rises to power and great glory--how his brothers come down to\nEgypt to buy corn, and how they find him lord of all the land--how\nsubtilly he tries them to see if they have repented of their old\nsin--how his heart yearns over them in spite of all their wickedness\nto him--how at last he reveals himself, and forgives them utterly,\nand sends for his poor old father Jacob down into Egypt.  Whosoever\ndoes not delight in that story, simply as a story, whenever he hears\nit read, cannot have a wholesome human heart in him.\n\nBut why was this story of Joseph put into Holy Scripture, and at\nsuch length, too?  It seems, at first sight, to be simply a family\nhistory--the story of brothers and their father; it seems, at first\nsight, to teach us nothing concerning our redemption and salvation;\nit seems, at first sight, not to reveal anything fresh to us\nconcerning God; it seems, at first sight, not to be needed for the\ngeneral plan of the Bible history.  It tells us, of course, how the\nIsraelites first came into Egypt; and that was necessary for us to\nknow.  But the Bible might have told us that in ten verses.  Why has\nit spent upon the story of Joseph and his brethren, not ten verses,\nbut ten chapters?\n\nNow we have a right to ask such questions as these, if we do not ask\nthem out of any carping, fault-finding spirit, trying to pick holes\nin the Bible, from which God defend us and all Christian men.  If we\nask such questions in faith and reverence--that is, believing and\ntaking for granted that the Bible is right, and respecting it, as\nthe Book of books, in which our own forefathers and all Christian\nnations upon earth for many ages have found all things necessary for\ntheir salvation--if, I say, we question over the Bible in that\nchild-like, simple, respectful spirit, which is the true spirit of\nwisdom and understanding, by which our eyes will be truly opened to\nsee the wondrous things of God's law:  then we may not only seek as\nour Lord bade us, but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that we\nshould.  We shall find some good reason for this story of Joseph\nbeing so long, and find that the story of Joseph, like all the rest\nof the Bible, reveals a new lesson to us concerning God and the\ncharacter of God.\n\nI said that the story of Joseph looks, at first sight, to be merely\na family history.  But suppose that that were the very reason why it\nis in the Bible, because it is a family history.  Suppose that\nfamilies were very sacred things in the eyes of God.  That the ties\nof husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were\nappointed, not by man, but by God.  Then would not Joseph's story be\nworthy of being in the Bible?  Would it not, as I said it would,\nreveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of\nGod?\n\nConsider now, my friends:  Is it not one great difference--one of\nthe very greatest--between men and beasts, that men live in\nfamilies, and beasts do not?  That men have the sacred family\nfeeling, and beasts have not?  They have the beginnings of it, no\ndoubt.  The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but\nonly for a while.  God has implanted in her something of that\ndeepest, holiest, purest of all feelings--a mother's love.  But as\nsoon as her young ones are able to take care of themselves, they are\nnothing to her--among the lower animals, less than nothing.  The\nfish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs jealously, and as\nsoon as they are hatched, turn round and devour her own young.\n\nThe feeling of a FATHER to his child, again, you find is fainter\nstill among beasts.  The father, as you all know, not only cares\nlittle for his offspring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them at\nfirst, but is often jealous of them, hates them, will try to kill\nthem when they grow up.\n\nHusband and wife, again:  there is no sacredness between them among\ndumb animals.  A lasting and an unselfish attachment, not merely in\nyouth, but through old age and beyond the grave--what is there like\nthis among the animals, except in the case of certain birds, like\nthe dove and the eagle, who keep the same mate year after year, and\nhave been always looked on with a sort of affection and respect by\nmen for that very reason?\n\nBut where, among beasts, do you ever find any trace of those two\nsacred human feelings--the love of brother to brother, or of child\nto father?  Where do you find the notion that the tie between\nhusband and wife is a sacred thing, to be broken at no temptation,\nbut in man?\n\nThese are THE feelings which man has alone of all living animals.\n\nThese then, remember, are the very family feelings which come out in\nthe story of Joseph.  He honours holy wedlock when he tells his\nmaster's wife, 'How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against\nGod?'  He honours his father, when he is not ashamed of him, wild\nshepherd out of the desert though he might be, and an abomination to\nthe Egyptians, while he himself is now in power and wealth and\nglory, as a prince in a civilized country.  He honours the tie of\nbrother to brother, by forgiving and weeping over the very brothers\nwho have sold him into slavery.\n\nBut what has all this to do with God?\n\nNow man, as we know, is an animal with an immortal spirit in him.\nHe has, as St. Paul so carefully explains to us, a flesh and a\nspirit--a flesh like the beasts which perish; a spirit which comes\nfrom God.\n\nNow the Bible teaches us that man did not get these family feelings\nfrom his flesh, from the animal, brute part of him.  They are not\ncarnal, but spiritual.  He gets them from his spirit, and they are\ninspired into him by the Spirit of God.  They come not from the\nearth below, but from the heaven above; from the image of God, in\nwhich man alone of all living things was made.\n\nFor if it were not so, we should surely see some family feeling in\nthe beasts which are most like men.  But we do not.  In the apes,\nwhich are, in their shape and fleshly nature, so strangely and\nshockingly like human beings, there is not as much family feeling as\nthere is in many birds, or even insects.  Nay, the wild negroes,\namong whom they live, hold them in abhorrence, and believe that they\nwere once men like themselves, who were gradually changed into brute\nbeasts, by giving way to detestable sins; while these very negroes\nthemselves, heathens and savages as they are, HAVE the family\nfeeling--the feeling of husband for wife, father for child, brother\nfor brother; not, indeed, as strongly and purely as we, or at least\nthose of us who are really Christian and civilized, but still they\nhave it; and that makes between the lowest man and the highest brute\na difference which I hold is as wide as the space between heaven and\nearth.\n\nIt is man alone, I say, who has the idea of family; and who has,\ntoo, the strange, but most true belief that these family ties are\nappointed by God--that they are a part of his religion--that in\nbreaking them, by being an unfaithful husband, a dishonest servant,\nan unnatural son, a selfish brother, he sins, not only against man,\nand man's order and laws, but against God.\n\nParent and child, brother and sister--those ties are not of the\nearth earthy, but of the heaven of God, eternal.  They may begin in\ntime; of what happened before we came into this world we know\nnought.  But having begun, they cannot end.  Of what will happen\nafter we leave this world, that at least we know in part.\n\nParent and child; brother and sister; husband and wife likewise;\nthese are no ties of man's invention.  They are ties of God's\nbinding; they are patterns and likenesses of his substance, and of\nhis being.  Of the eternal Father, who says for ever to the eternal\nSon, 'This day have I begotten THEE.'  Of the Son who says for ever\nto the Father, 'I come to do thy will, O God.'  Of the Son of God,\nJesus Christ, who is not ashamed to call us his brethren; but like a\ngreater Joseph, was sent before by God to save our lives with a\ngreat deliverance when our forefathers were but savages and\nheathens.  Husband and wife likewise--are not they two divine words-\n-not human words at all?  Has not God consecrated the state of\nmatrimony to such an excellent mystery, that in it is signified and\nrepresented the mystical union between Christ and his Church?  Are\nnot husbands to love their wives, and give themselves for them as\nChrist loved the Church and gave himself for it?  That, indeed, was\nnot revealed in the Old Testament, but it is revealed in the New;\nand marriage, like all other human ties, is holy and divine, and\ncomes from God down to men.\n\nYes.  These family ties are of God.  It was to show us how sacred,\nhow Godlike they are--how eternal and necessary for all mankind--\nthat Joseph's story was written in Holy Scripture.\n\nThey are of God, I say.  And he who despises them, despises not man\nbut God; who hath also given us his Holy Spirit to make us know how\nsacred these bonds are.\n\nHe who looks lightly on the love of child to parent, or brother to\nbrother, or husband to wife, and bids each man please himself, each\nman help himself, and shift for himself, would take away from men\nthe very thing which raises them above the beasts which perish, and\nlower them again to the likeness of the flesh, that they may of the\nflesh reap corruption.\n\nThey who, under whatever pretence of religion part asunder families;\nor tell children, like the wicked Pharisees of old, that they may\nsay to their parents, Corban--'I have given to God the service and\nhelp which, as your child, I should have given to you'--shall be\ncalled, if not by men, at least by God himself, hypocrites, who draw\nnear to God with their mouths, and honour him with their lips, while\ntheir heart is far from him.\n\nI think now we may see that I was right when I said--Perhaps the\nhistory of Joseph is in the Bible because it IS a family history.\nFor see, it is the history of a man who loved his family, who felt\nthat family life was holy and God-appointed; whom God rewarded with\nhonour and wealth, because he honoured family ties; because he\nrefused his master's wife; because he rewarded his brothers good for\nevil; because he was not ashamed of his father, but succoured him in\nhis old age.\n\nIt is the history of a man who--more than four hundred years before\nGod gave the ten commandments on Sinai, saying,\n\nHonour thy father and mother,\n\nThou shalt not commit adultery,\n\nThou shalt not kill in revenge,\n\nThou shalt not covet aught of thy neighbours--It is the history, I\nsay, of a man who had those laws of God written in his heart by the\nHoly Spirit of God; and felt that to break them was to sin against\nGod.  It is the history of a man who, sorely tempted and unjustly\npersecuted, kept himself pure and true; who, while all around him,\nbeginning with his own brothers, were trampling under foot the laws\nof family, felt that the laws were still there round him, girding\nhim in with everlasting bands, and saying to him, Thou shalt and\nThou shalt not; that he was not sent into the world to do just what\nwas pleasant for the moment, to indulge his own passions or his own\nrevenge; but that if he was indeed a man, he must prove himself a\nman, by obeying Almighty God.  It is the history of a man who kept\nhis heart pure and tender, and who thereby gained strange and deep\nwisdom; that wisdom which comes only to the pure in heart; that\nwisdom by which truly good men are enabled to see farther, and to be\nof more use to their fellow-creatures than many a cunning and\ncrooked politician, whose eyes are blinded, because his heart is\ndefiled with sin.\n\nAnd now, my friends, if we pray--as we are bound to pray--for that\ngreat Prince who is just entering on the cares and the duties, as\nwell as the joys and blessings of family life--what better prayer\ncan we offer up for him, than that God would put into his heart that\nspirit which he put into the heart of Joseph of old--the spirit to\nsee how divine and God-appointed is family life?  God grant that\nthat spirit may dwell in him, and possess him more and more day by\nday.  That it may keep him true to his wife, true to his mother,\ntrue to his family, true, like Joseph, to all with whom he has to\ndeal.  That it may deliver him, as it delivered Joseph, from the\nsnares of wicked women, from selfish politicians, if they ever try\nto sow distrust and opposition between him and his kindred, and from\nall those temptations which can only be kept down by the Spirit of\nGod working in men's hearts, as he worked in the heart of Joseph.\n\nFor if that spirit be in the Prince--and I doubt not that that\nspirit is in him already--then will his fate be that of Joseph; then\nwill he indeed be a blessing to us, and to our children after us;\nthen will he have riches more real, and power more vast, than any\nwhich our English laws can give; then will he gain, like Joseph,\nthat moral wisdom, better than all worldly craft, which cometh from\nabove--first pure, then gentle, easy to be entreated, without\npartiality, and without hypocrisy; then will he be able, like\nJoseph, to deliver his people in times of perplexity and distress;\nthen will he by his example, as his noble mother has done before\nhim, keep healthy, pure, and strong, our English family life--and as\nlong as THAT endures, Old England will endure likewise.\n\n\n\nSERMON VIII.  THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZER\n\n\n\n(Fourth Sunday in Lent.)\n\nPHILIPPIANS iv. 8.  Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,\nwhatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever\nthings are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are\nof good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,\nthink on these things.\n\nIt may not be easy to see what this text has to do with the story of\nJoseph, which we have just been reading, or with the meaning of the\nBible of which I have been speaking to you of late.\n\nNevertheless, I think it has to do with them; as you will see if you\nwill look at the text with me.\n\nNow the text does not say 'Do these things.'  It only says 'THINK of\nthese things.'\n\nOf course St. Paul wished us to do them also; but he says first\nTHINK of them; not once in a way, but often and continually.  Fill\nyour mind with good and pure and noble thoughts; and then you will\ndo good and pure and noble things.\n\nFor out of the abundance of a man's heart, not only does his mouth\nspeak, but his whole body and soul behave.  The man whose mind is\nfilled with low and bad thoughts will be sure, when he is tempted,\nto do low and bad things.  The man whose mind is filled with lofty\nand good thoughts will do lofty and good things.\n\nFor thoughts are the food of a man's mind; and as the mind feeds, so\nwill it grow.  If it feeds on coarse and foul food, coarse and foul\nit will grow.  If it feeds on pure and refined food, pure and\nrefined it will grow.\n\nThere are those who do not believe this.  Provided they are\ntolerably attentive to the duties of religion, it does not matter\nmuch, they fancy, what they think of out of church.  Their souls\nwill be saved at last, they suppose, and that is all that they need\ncare for.  Saved?  They do not see that by giving way to foul, mean,\nfoolish thoughts all the week they are losing their souls,\ndestroying their souls, defiling their souls, lowering their souls,\nand making them so coarse and mean and poor that they are not worth\nsaving, and are no loss to heaven or earth, whatever loss they may\nbe to the man himself.  One man thinks of nothing but money--how he\nshall save a penny here and a penny there.  I do not mean men of\nbusiness; for them there are great excuses; for it is by continual\nsaving here and there that their profits are made.  I speak rather\nof people who have no excuse, people of fixed incomes--people often\nwealthy and comfortable, who yet will lower their minds by\ncontinually thinking over their money.  But this I say, and this I\nam sure that you will find, that when a man in business or out of\nbusiness accustoms himself, as very many do, to think of nothing but\nmoney, money, money from Monday morning to Saturday night, he thinks\nof money a great part of Sunday likewise.  And so, after a while,\nthe man lowers his soul, and makes it mean and covetous.  He forgets\nall that is lovely and of good report.  He forgets virtue--that is\nmanliness; and praise--that is the just respect and admiration of\nhis fellow-men; and so he forgets at last things true, honest, and\njust likewise.  He lowers his soul; and therefore when he is\ntempted, he does things mean and false and unjust, for the sake of\nmoney, which he has made his idol.\n\nTake another case, too common among men and women of all ranks, high\nand low.\n\nHow many there are who love gossip and scandal; who always talk\nabout people, and never about things--certainly not about things\npure and lovely and of good report, but rather about things foul and\nugly and of bad report; who do not talk, because they do not think\nof virtue, but of vice; or of praise either, because they are always\nfinding fault with their neighbours.  The man who loves a foul\nstory, or a coarse jest--the woman who gossips over every tittle\ntattle of scandal which she can pick up against her neighbour--what\ndo these people do but defile their own souls afresh, after they\nhave been washed clean in the blood of Christ?  Foul their souls\nare, and therefore their thoughts are foul likewise, and the\nfoulness of them is evident to all men by their tongues.  Out of\ntheir hearts proceed evil thoughts about their neighbours, out of\nthe abundance of their hearts their mouths speak them.  Now let such\npeople, if there be any such here, seriously consider the harm which\nthey are doing to their own characters.  They may give way to the\nhabits of scandal, or of coarse talk, without any serious bad\nintention; but they will surely lower their own souls thereby.  They\nwill grow to the colour of what they feed on and become foul and\ncruel, from talking cruelly and foully, till they lose all purity\nand all charity, all faith and trust in their fellow-men, all power\nof seeing good in any one, or doing anything but think evil; and so\nlose the likeness of God and of Christ, for the likeness of some\nfoul carrion bird, which cares nothing for the perfume of all the\nroses in the world, but if there be a carcase within miles of it,\nwill scent it out eagerly and fly to it ravenously.\n\nThe truth is, my friends, that these souls of ours instead of being\npure and strong, are the very opposite; and the article speaks plain\ntruth when it says, that we are every one of us of our own nature\ninclined to evil.  That may seem a hard saying; but if we look at\nour own thoughts we shall find it true.  Are we NOT inclined to\ntake, at first, the worst view of everybody and of everything?  Are\nwe NOT inclined to suspect harm of this person and of that?  Are we\nNOT inclined too often to be mean and cowardly? to be hard and\ncovetous? to be coarse and vulgar? to be silly and frivolous?  Do we\nnot need to cool down, to think a second time, and a third time\nlikewise; to remember our duty, to remember Christ's example, before\nwe can take a just and kind and charitable view?  Do we not want all\nthe help which we can get from every quarter, to keep ourselves\nhigh-minded and refined; to keep ourselves from bad thoughts, mean\nthoughts, silly thoughts, violent thoughts, cruel and hard thoughts?\nIf we have not found out that, we must have looked a very little way\ninto ourselves, and know little more about ourselves than a dumb\nanimal does of itself.\n\nHow then shall we keep off coarseness of soul?  How shall we keep\nour souls REFINED? that is, true and honest, pure, amiable, full of\nvirtue, that is, true manliness; and deserve praise, that is, the\nrespect and admiration of our fellow-men?  By thinking of those very\nthings, says St. Paul.  And in order to be able to think of them, by\nreading of them.\n\nThere are very few who can easily think of these things of\nthemselves.  Their daily business, the words and notions of the\npeople with whom they have to do, will run in their minds, and draw\nthem off from higher and better thoughts; that cannot be helped.\nThe only thing that most men can do, is to take care that they are\nnot drawn off entirely from high and good thoughts, by reading, were\nit but for five minutes every day, something really worth thinking\nof, something which will lift them above themselves.\n\nAbove all, it is wise, at night, after the care and bustle of the\nday is over, to read, but for a few minutes, some book which will\ncompose and soothe the mind; which will bring us face to face with\nthe true facts of life, death, and eternity; which will make us\nremember that man doth not live by bread alone; which will give us,\nbefore we sleep, a few thoughts worthy of a Christian man, with an\nimmortal soul in him.\n\nAnd, thank God, no one need go far to look for such books.  I do not\nmean merely religious books, excellent as they are in these days:  I\nmean any books which help to make us better and wiser and soberer,\nand more charitable persons; any books which will teach us to\ndespise what is vulgar and mean, foul and cruel, and to love what is\nnoble and high-minded, pure and just.  We need not go far for them.\nIn our own noble English language we may read by hundreds, books\nwhich will tell us of all virtue and of all praise.  The stories of\ngood and brave men and women; of gallant and heroic actions; of\ndeeds which we ourselves should be proud of doing; of persons whom\nwe feel, to be better, wiser, nobler than we are ourselves.\n\nIn our own language we may read the history of our own nation, and\nwhatsoever is just, honest and true.  We may read of God's gracious\nprovidences toward this land.  How he has punished our sins and\nrewarded our right and brave endeavours.  How he put into our\nforefathers the spirit of courage and freedom, the spirit of truth\nand justice, the spirit of loyalty and order; and how, following the\nleading of that spirit, in spite of many mistakes and failings, we\nhave risen to be the freest, the happiest, the most powerful people\non earth, a blessing and not a curse to the nations around.\n\nIn our own English tongue, too, we may read such poetry as there is\nin no other language in the world; poetry which will make us indeed\nsee the beauty of whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.\nSome people have still a dislike of what they call foolish poetry\nbooks.  If books are foolish, let us have nothing to do with them.\nBut poetry ought not to be foolish; for God sent it into the world\nto teach men not foolishness, but the highest wisdom.  He gave man\nalone, of all living creatures, the power of writing poetry, that by\npoetry he might understand, not only how necessary it was to do\nright, but how beautiful and noble it was to do right.  He sent it\ninto the world to soften men's rough hearts, and quiet their angry\npassions, and make them love all which is tender and gentle, loving\nand merciful, and yet to rouse them up to love all which is gallant\nand honourable, loyal and patriotic, devout and heavenly.  Therefore\nwhole books of the Bible--Job, for example, Isaiah, and the Psalms--\nare neither more nor less than actual poetry, written in actual\nverse, that their words might the better sink down into the ears and\nhearts of the old Jews, and of us Christians after them.  And\ntherefore also, we keep up still the good old custom of teaching\nchildren in school as much as possible by poetry, that they may\nlearn not only to know, but to love and remember whatsoever things\nare lovely and of good report.\n\nLastly, for those who cannot read, or have really no time to read,\nthere is one means left of putting themselves in mind of what every\none must remember, lest he sink back into an animal and a savage.  I\nmean by pictures; which, as St. Augustine said 1400 years ago, are\nthe books of the unlearned.  I do not mean grand and expensive\npictures; I mean the very simplest prints, provided they represent\nsomething holy, or noble, or tender, or lovely.  A few such prints\nupon a cottage-wall may teach the people who live therein much,\nwithout their being aware of it.  They see the prints, even when\nthey are not thinking of them; and so they have before their eyes a\ncontinual remembrancer of something better and more beautiful than\nwhat they are apt to find in their own daily life and thoughts.\n\nTrue, to whom little is given, of them is little required.  But it\nmust be said, that more--far more--is given to labouring men and\nwomen now than was given to their forefathers.  A hundred, or even\nfifty years ago, when there was very little schooling; when the\nbooks which were put even into the hands of noblemen's children were\nfar below what you will find now in any village school; when the\nonly pictures which a poor woman could buy to lay on her cottage-\nwall were equally silly and ugly:  then there were great excuses for\nthe poor, if they forgot whatsoever things were lovely and of good\nreport; if they were often coarse and brutal in their manners, and\ncruel and profligate in their amusements.\n\nBut even in the rough old times there always were a few at least,\nmen and women, who were above the rest; who, though poor people like\nthe rest, were still true gentlemen and ladies of God's making.\nPeople who kept themselves more or less unspotted from the world;\nwho thought of what was honest and pure and lovely and of good\nreport; and who lived a life of simple, manful, Christian virtue,\nand received the praise and respect of their neighbours, even\nalthough their neighbours did not copy them.  There were always such\npeople, and there always will be--thank God for it, for they are the\nsalt of the earth.\n\nBut why have there always been such people? and why do I say\nconfidently, that there always will be?\n\nBecause they have had the Bible; and because, once having got the\nBible in a free country, no man can take it from them.\n\nThe Bible it is which has made gentlemen and ladies of many a poor\nman and woman.\n\nThe Bible it is which has filled their minds with pure and noble,\nay, with heavenly and divine thoughts.\n\nThe Bible has been their whole library.  The Bible has been their\nonly counsellor.  The Bible has taught them all they know.  But it\nhas taught them enough.\n\nIt has taught them what God is, and what Christ is.  It has taught\nthem what man is, and what a Christian man should be.  It has taught\nthem what a family means, and what a nation means.  It has taught\nthem the meaning of law and duty, of loyalty and patriotism.  It has\nfilled their minds with things honest and just and lovely and of\ngood report; with the histories of men and women like themselves,\nwho sinned and sorrowed and struggled like them in this hard battle\nof life, but who conquered at last, by trusting and obeying God.\n\nThis one story of Joseph, which we have been reading again this\nSunday, I do not doubt that it has taught thousands who had no other\nstory-book to read--who could not even read themselves, but had to\nlisten to others' reading; that it has taught them to be good sons,\nto be good brothers; that it has taught them to keep pure in\ntemptation, and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that\nit has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life;\nand taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way\nof rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has\nreally done more to civilize and refine them--to make them truly\ncivilized men and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages--than if they\nhad known a smattering of a dozen sciences.  I say that the Bible is\nthe book which civilizes and refines, and ennobles rich and poor,\nhigh and low, and has been doing so for fifteen hundred years; and\nthat any man who tries to shake our faith in the Bible, is doing\nwhat he can--though, thank God, he will not succeed--to make such\nrough and coarse heathens of us again as our forefathers were five\nhundred years ago.\n\nAnd I tell you, labouring people, that if you want something which\nwill make up to you for the want of all the advantages which the\nrich have--go to your Bibles and you will find it there.\n\nThere you will find, in the history of men like ourselves--and,\nabove all, in the history of a man unlike ourselves, the perfect\nMan--perfect Man and perfect God together--whatsoever is true,\nwhatsoever is honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; every\nvirtue, and every just cause of praise which mortal man can desire.\nRead of them in your Bible, think of them in your hearts, feed on\nthem with your souls, that your souls may grow like what they feed\non; and above all, read and study the story and character of Jesus\nChrist himself, our Lord, that beholding, as in a glass, the glory\nof the Lord, you may be changed into his likeness, from grace to\ngrace, and virtue to virtue, and glory to glory.\n\nAnd that change and that growth are as easy for the poor as for the\nrich, and as necessary for the rich as for the poor.\n\n\n\nSERMON IX.  MOSES\n\n\n\n(Fifth Sunday in Lent.)\n\nEXODUS iii. 14.  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.\n\nAnd now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most\nbeautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible--\nexcepting of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ--the story\nof how a family grew to be a great nation.  You remember that I told\nyou that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history\nof a family.\n\nNow that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of\npeople, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own\nworship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes as\nthe gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.\n\nThen the Bible tells us how these tribes, being weak I suppose\nbecause they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of\ntheir own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under\ncrafty kings and cruel taskmasters.\n\nThen it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and\nmade them free men.  And how God did that (for God in general works\nby means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great,\nwise, and good man of their race--Moses.\n\nIt tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange\neducation, to be the fit man to deliver his people.\n\nLet us go through the history of Moses; and we shall see how God\ntrained him to do the work for which God wanted him.\n\nLet us read from the account of the Bible itself.  I should be sorry\nto spoil its noble simplicity by any words of my own:  'And the\nchildren of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and\nmultiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with\nthem.  Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not\nJoseph.  And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the\nchildren of Israel are more and mightier than we:  Come on, let us\ndeal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass,\nthat, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our\nenemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.\nTherefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with\ntheir burdens.  And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithon\nand Raamses. . . .  And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying,\nEvery son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every\ndaughter ye shall save alive.  And there went a man of the house of\nLevi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.  And the woman conceived\nand bare a son:  and when she saw him that he was a goodly child,\nshe hid him three months.  And when she could no longer hide him,\nshe took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and\nwith pitch, and put the child therein:  and she laid it in the flags\nby the river's brink.  And his sister stood afar off, to wit what\nwould be done to him.  And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash\nherself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's\nside; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to\nfetch it.  And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold\nthe babe wept.  And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one\nof the Hebrews' children.  Then said his sister to Pharaoh's\ndaughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,\nthat she may nurse the child for thee?  And Pharaoh's daughter said\nto her, Go.  And the maid went and called the child's mother.  And\nPharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it\nfor me, and I will give thee thy wages.  And the woman took the\nchild, and nursed it.  And the child grew, and she brought him unto\nPharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.  And she called his name\nMoses:  and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.'\n\nMoses, the child of the water.  St. Paul in the Epistle to the\nHebrews says that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh's daughter;\nthat is, adopted by her.  We read elsewhere that he was learned in\nall the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there can be no doubt from\nhis own writings, especially that part called Moses' law.\n\nSo that Moses had from his youth vast advantages.  Brought up in the\ncourt of the greatest king of the world, in one of the greatest\ncities of the world, among the most learned priesthood in the world,\nhe had learned, probably, all statesmanship, all religion, which man\ncould teach him in those old times.\n\nBut that would have been little for him.  He might have become\nmerely an officer in Pharaoh's household, and we might never have\nheard his name, and he might never have done any good to his own\npeople and to all mankind after them, as he has done, if there had\nnot been something better and nobler in him than all the learning\nand statesmanship of the Egyptians.\n\nFor there was in Moses the spirit of God; the spirit which makes a\nman believe in God, and trust God.  'And therefore,' says St. Paul,\n'he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; esteeming\nthe reproach of CHRIST better than all the treasures in Egypt.'\n\nAnd how did he do that?  In this wise.\n\nThe spirit of God and of Christ is also the spirit of justice, the\nspirit of freedom; the spirit which hates oppression and wrong;\nwhich is moved with a noble and Divine indignation at seeing any\nhuman being abused and trampled on.\n\nAnd that spirit broke forth in Moses.  'And it came to pass in those\ndays, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and\nlooked on their burdens:  and he spied an Egyptian smiting an\nHebrew, one of his brethren.  And he looked this way and that way,\nand when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid\nhim in the sand.'\n\nIf he cannot get justice for his people, he will do some sort of\nrough justice for them himself, when he has an opportunity.\n\nBut he will see fair play among his people themselves.  They are, as\nslaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome\namong themselves.\n\n'And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews\nstrove together:  and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore\nsmitest thou thy fellow?  And he said, Who made thee a prince and a\njudge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the\nEgyptian?  And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.\nNow when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses.  But\nMoses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of\nMidian'--the wild desert between Egypt and the Holy Land.\n\nSo he bore the reproach of Christ; the reproach which is apt to fall\non men in bad times, when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to\ndeliver the captive, and let the oppressed go free, and execute\nrighteous judgment in the earth.  He had lost all, by trying to do\nright.  He had been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh's court.  Now\nhe was an outcast and wanderer in the desert.  He had made his first\ntrial, and failed.  As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed\nthat his brethren would have understood how God would deliver them\nby his hand; but they understood not.  Slavish, base, and stupid,\nthey were not fit yet for Moses and his deliverance.\n\nAnd so forty years went on, and Moses was an old man of eighty years\nof age.  Yet God had not had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.\n\nIt must have been a strange life for him, the adopted son of\nPharaoh's daughter; brought up in the court of the most powerful and\nhighly civilized country of the old world; learned in all the\nlearning of the Egyptians; and now married into a tribe of wild\nArabs, keeping flocks in the lonely desert, year after year:  but,\nno doubt, thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his flocks\nalone.  Thinking over all the learning which he had gained in Egypt,\nand wondering whether it would ever be of any use to him.  Thinking\nover the misery of his people in Egypt, and wondering whether he\nshould ever be able to help them.  Thinking, too, and more than all,\nof God--of God's promise to Abraham and his children.  Would that\never come true?  Would GOD help these wretched Jews, even if HE\ncould not?  Was God faithful and true, just and merciful?\n\nThat Moses thought of God, that he never lost faith in God for that\nforty years, there can be no doubt.\n\nIf he had not thought of God, God would not have revealed himself to\nhim.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not have known that it\nwas God who spoke to him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not\nhave obeyed God at the risk of his life, and have gone on an errand\nas desperate, dangerous, hopeless--and, humanly speaking, as wild as\never man went upon.\n\nBut Moses never lost faith or patience.  He believed, and he did not\nmake haste.  He waited for God; and he did not wait in vain.  No man\nwill wait in vain.  When the time was ready; when the Jews were\nready; when Pharaoh was ready; when Moses himself, trained by forty\nyears' patient thought, was ready; then God came in his own good\ntime.\n\nAnd Moses led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to the\nmountain of God, even to Horeb.  And there he saw a bush--probably\none of the low copses of acacia--burning with fire; and behold the\nbush was not consumed.  Then out of the bush God spoke to Moses with\nan audible voice as of a man; so the Bible says plainly, and I see\nno reason to doubt that it is literally true.\n\n'Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham,\nthe God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  And Moses hid his face; for\nhe was afraid to look upon God.  And the Lord said, I have surely\nseen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard\ntheir cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;\nand I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians,\nand to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large,\nunto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the\nCanaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites,\nand the Hivites, and the Jebusites.'\n\nThen followed a strange conversation.  Moses was terrified at the\nthought of what he had to do, and reasonably:  moreover, the\nIsraelites in Egypt had forgotten God.  'And Moses said unto God,\nBehold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto\nthem, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall\nsay to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?  And God\nsaid unto Moses, I Am that I Am:  and he said, Thus shalt thou say\nunto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.'\n\nI Am; that was the new name by which God revealed himself to Moses.\nThat message of God to Moses was the greatest Gospel, and good news\nwhich was spoken to men, before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.\nAy, we are feeling now, in our daily life, in our laws and our\nliberty, our religion and our morals, our peace and prosperity, in\nthe happiness of our homes, and I trust that of our consciences, the\nblessed effects of that message, which God revealed to Moses in the\nwilderness thousands of years ago.\n\nAnd Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and\nreturned into the land of Egypt, to say to Pharaoh, 'Thus saith the\nLord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn, Let my son go that he may\nserve me, and if thou let not my firstborn go, then I will slay thy\nfirstborn.'\n\nA strange man, on a strange errand.  A poor man, eighty years old,\ncarrying all that he had in the world upon an ass's back, going down\nto the great Pharaoh, the greatest king of the old world, the great\nconqueror, the Child of the Sun (as his name means), one of the\ngreatest Pharaohs who ever sat on the throne of Egypt; in the midst\nof all his princes and priests, and armies with which he had\nconquered the nations far and wide; and his great cities, temples,\nand palaces, on which men may see at this day (so we are told) the\nface of that very Pharaoh painted again and again, as fresh, in that\nrainless air, as on the day when the paint was laid on; with the\nfeatures of a man terrible, proud, and cruel, puffed up by power\ntill he thought himself, and till his people thought him a god on\nearth.\n\nAnd to that man was Moses going, to bid him set the children of\nIsrael free; while he himself was one of that very slave-race of the\nIsraelites, which was an abomination to the Egyptians, who held them\nall as lepers and unclean, and would not eat with them; and an\noutcast too, who had fled out of Egypt for his life, and who might\nbe killed on the spot, as Pharaoh's only answer to his bold request.\nCertainly, if Moses had not had faith in God, his errand would have\nseemed that of a madman.  But Moses HAD faith in God; and of faith\nit is said, that it can remove mountains, for all things are\npossible to them who believe.\n\nSo by faith Moses went back into Egypt; how he fared there we shall\nhear next Sunday.\n\nAnd what sort of man was this great and wonderful Moses, whose name\nwill last as long as man is man?  We know very little.  We know from\nthe Bible and from the old traditions of the Jews that he was a very\nhandsome man; a man of a noble presence, as one can well believe; a\nman of great bodily vigour; so that when he died at the age of one\nhundred and twenty, his eye was not dim, nor his natural force\nabated.  We know, from his own words, that he was slow of speech;\nthat he had more thought in him than he could find words for--very\ndifferent from a good many loud talkers, who have more words than\nthoughts, and who get a great character as politicians and\ndemagogues, simply because they have the art of stringing fine words\ntogether, which Moses, the true demagogue, the leader of the people,\nwho led them indeed out of Egypt, had not.  Beyond that we know\nlittle.  Of his character one thing only is said:  but that is most\nimportant.  'Now the man Moses was very meek.'\n\nMeek:  we know that that cannot mean that he was meek in the sense\nthat he was a poor, cowardly, abject sort of man, who dared not\nspeak his mind, dared not face the truth, and say the truth.  We\nhave seen that that was just what he was not; brave, determined,\nout-spoken, he seems to have been from his youth.  Indeed, if his\nhad been that base sort of meekness, he never would have dared to\ncome before the great king Pharaoh.  If he had been that sort of man\nhe never would have dared to lead the Jews through the Red Sea by\nnight, or out of Egypt at all.  If he had been that sort of man,\nindeed, the Jews would never have listened to him.  No; he had--the\nBible tells us that he had--to say and do stern things again and\nagain; to act like the general of an army, or the commander of a\nship of war, who must be obeyed, even though men's lives be the\nforfeit of disobedience.\n\nBut the man Moses was very meek.  He had learned to keep his temper.\nIndeed, the story seems to say that he never lost his temper really\nbut once; and for that God punished him.  Never man was so tried,\nsave One, even our Lord Jesus Christ, as was Moses.  And yet by\npatience he conquered.  Eighty years had he spent in learning to\nkeep his temper; and when he had learned to keep his temper, then,\nand not till then, was he worthy to bring his people out of Egypt.\nThat was a long schooling, but it was a schooling worth having.\n\nAnd if we, my friends, spend our whole lives, be they eighty years\nlong, in learning to keep our tempers, then will our lives have been\nwell spent.  For meekness and calmness of temper need not interfere\nwith a man's courage or justice, or honest indignation against\nwrong, or power of helping his fellow-men.  Moses' meekness did not\nmake him a coward or a sluggard.  It helped him to do his work\nrightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of\nPharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his\nbrethren, those miserable slavish Jews.  And so meekness, an even\ntemper, and a gracious tongue, will help us to keep our place among\nour fellow-men with true dignity and independence, and to govern our\nhouseholds, and train our children in such a way that while they\nobey us they will love and respect us at the same time.\n\n\n\nSERMON X.  THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT\n\n\n\n(Palm Sunday.)\n\nEXODUS ix. 13, 14.  Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my\npeople go, that they may serve me.  For I will at this time send all\nmy plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy\npeople; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the\nearth.\n\nYou will understand, I think, the meaning of the ten plagues of\nEgypt better, if I explain to you in a few words what kind of a\ncountry Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians were.  Some of\nyou, doubtless, know as well as I, but some here may not:  it is for\nthem I speak.\n\nEgypt is one of the strangest countries in the world; and yet one\nwhich can be most simply described.  One long straight strip of rich\nflat land, many hundred miles long, but only a very few miles broad.\nOn either side of it, barren rocks and deserts of sand, and running\nthrough it from end to end, the great river Nile--'The River' of\nwhich the Bible speaks.  This river the Egyptians looked on as\ndivine:  they worshipped it as a god; for on it depended the whole\nwealth of Egypt.  Every year it overflows the whole country, leaving\nbehind it a rich coat of mud, which makes Egypt the most\ninexhaustibly fertile land in the world; and made the Egyptians,\nfrom very ancient times, the best farmers of the world, the fathers\nof agriculture.  Meanwhile, when not in flood, the river water is of\nthe purest in the world; the most delightful to drink; and was\nsupposed in old times to be a cure for all manner of diseases.\n\nTo worship this sacred river, the pride of their land, to drink it,\nto bathe in it, to catch the fish which abound in it, and which\nformed then, and forms still, the staple food of the Egyptians, was\ntheir delight.  And now I have told you enough to show you why the\nplagues which God sent on Egypt began first by striking the river.\n\nThe river, we read, was turned into blood.  What that means--whether\nit was actual animal blood--what means God employed to work the\nmiracle--are just the questions about which we need not trouble our\nminds.  We never shall know:  and we need not know.  The plain fact\nis, that the sacred river, pure and life-giving, became a detestable\nmass of rottenness--and with it all their streams and pools, and\ndrinking water in vessels of wood and stone--for all, remember, came\nfrom the Nile, carried by canals and dykes over the whole land.\n'And the fish that were in the river died, and the river stunk, and\nthere was blood through all the land of Egypt.'\n\nThe slightest thought will show us what horror, confusion, and\nactual want and misery, the loss of the river water, even for a few\ndays or even hours, would cause.\n\nBut there is more still in this miracle.  These plagues are a battle\nbetween Jehovah, the one true and only God Almighty, and the false\ngods of Egypt, to prove which of them is master.\n\nPharaoh answers:  'Who is Jehovah (the Lord) that I should let\nIsrael go?'  I know not the Jehovah.  I have my own god, whom I\nworship.  He is my father, and I his child, and he will protect me.\nIf I obey any one it will be him.\n\nBe it so, says Moses in the name of God.  Thou shalt know that the\nidols of Egypt are nothing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy\npeople.\n\nThus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know which is master, I or they.\n'Thou shalt know that I am the Lord.'\n\nSo the river was turned into blood.  The sacred river was no god, as\nthey thought.  Jehovah was the Lord and Master of the river on which\nthe very life of Egypt depended.  He could turn it into blood.  All\nEgypt was at his mercy.\n\nBut Pharaoh would not believe that.  'The magicians did likewise\nwith their enchantments'--made, we may suppose, water seem to turn\nto blood by some juggling trick at which the priests in Egypt were\nbut too well practised; and Pharaoh seemed to have made up his mind\nthat Moses' miracle was only a juggling trick too.  For men will\nmake up their minds to anything, however absurd, when they choose to\ndo so:  when their pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness,\ndraw them one way, no reason will draw them the other way.  They\nwill find reasons, and make reasons to prove, if need be, that there\nis no sun in the sky.\n\nThen followed a series of plagues, of which we have all often heard.\n\nLearned men have disputed how far these plagues were miracles.  Some\nof them are said not to be uncommon in Egypt, others to be almost\nunknown.  But whether they--whether the frogs, for instance, were\nnot produced by natural causes, just as other frogs are; and the\nlice and the flies likewise; that I know not, my friends, neither\nneed I know.  If they were not, they were miraculous; and if they\nwere, they were miraculous still.  If they came as other vermin\ncome, they would have still been miraculous:  God would still have\nsent them; and it would be a miracle that God should make them come\nat that particular time in that particular country, to work a truly\nmiraculous effect upon the souls of Pharaoh and the Egyptians on the\none hand, and of Moses and the Israelites on the other.  But if they\ncame by some strange means as no vermin ever came before or since,\nall I can say is--Why not?\n\nAnd the Lord said unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod\nand smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout\nall the land of Egypt.'\n\nWhether that was meant only as a sign to the Egyptians, or whether\nthe dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is\nmore, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it\nwould be.  If you believe at all that God made the world, it is\nfolly to pretend to set any bounds to his power.  As a wise man has\nsaid, 'If you believe in any real God at all, you must believe that\nmiracles can happen.'  He makes you and me and millions of living\nthings out of the dust of the ground continually by certain means.\nWhy can he not make lice, or anything else out of the dust of the\nground, without those means?  I can give no reason, nor any one else\neither.\n\nWe know that God has given all things a law which they cannot break.\nWe know, too, that God will never break his own laws.  But what are\nGod's laws by which he makes things?  We do not know.\n\nMiracles may be--indeed must be--only the effect of some higher and\ndeeper laws of God.  We cannot prove that he breaks his law, or\ndisturbs his order by them.  They may seem contrary to some of the\nvery very few laws of God's earth which we do know.  But they need\nnot be contrary to the very many laws which we do not know.  In\nfact, we know nothing about the matter, and had best not talk of\nthings that we do not understand.  As for these things being too\nwonderful to be true--that is an argument which only deserves a\nsmile.  There are so many wonders in the world round us already, all\nday long, that the man of sense will feel that nothing is too\nwonderful to be true.\n\nThe truth is, that, as a wise man says, CUSTOM is the great enemy of\nFaith, and of Reason likewise; and one of the worst tricks which\ncustom plays us is, making us fancy that miraculous things cease to\nbe miraculous by becoming common.\n\nWhat do I mean?\n\nThis:  which every child in this church can understand.\n\nYou think it very wonderful that God should cause frogs to come upon\nthe whole land of Egypt in one day.  But that God should cause frogs\nto come up every spring in the ditches does not seem wonderful to\nyou at all.  It happens every year; therefore, forsooth, there is\nnothing wonderful in it.\n\nAh, my dear friends, it is custom which blinds our eyes to the\nwisdom of God, and the wonders of God, and the power of God, and the\nglory of God, and hinders us from believing the message with which\nhe speaks to us from every sunbeam and every shower, every blade of\ngrass and every standing pool.  'Is anything too hard for the Lord?'\n\nIf any man here says that anything is too hard for the Lord, let him\ngo this day to the nearest standing pool, and look at the frog-spawn\ntherein, and consider it till he confesses his blindness and\nfoolishness.  That spawn seems to you a foul thing, the produce of\nmean, ugly, contemptible creatures.  Be it so.  Yet it is to the\neyes of the wise man a yearly MIRACLE; a thing past understanding,\npast explaining; one which will make him feel the truth of that\ngreat 139th Psalm:  'Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid\nthine hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is\nhigh, I cannot attain unto it.  Whither shall I go from thy spirit?\nor whither shall I flee from thy presence?  If I ascend up into\nheaven, thou art there:  if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art\nthere also.'\n\nThat every one of those little black spots should have in it LIFE--\nWhat is life?  How did it get into that black spot? or, to speak\nmore carefully, is the life IN the black spot at all?  Is not the\nlife in the Spirit of God, who is working on that spot, as I\nbelieve?  How has that black spot the power of GROWING, and of\ngrowing on a certain and fixed plan, merely by the quickening power\nof the sun's heat, and then of feeding itself, and of changing its\nshape, as you all know, again and again, till--and if that is not\nwonderful, what is?--it turns into a frog, exactly like its parent,\nutterly unlike the black dot at which it began?  Is that no miracle?\nIs it no miracle that not one of those black spots ever turns into\nanything save a frog?  Why should not some of them turn into toads\nor efts?  Why not even into fishes or serpents?  Why not?  The eggs\nof all those animals, in their first and earliest stages are exactly\nalike; the microscope shows no difference.  Ay, even the mere animal\nand the human being, strange and awful as it may be, SEEM, under the\nmicroscope, to have the same beginning.  And yet one becomes a mere\nanimal, and the other a member of Christ, a child of God, and an\ninheritor of the kingdom of heaven.  What causes this but the power\nof God, making of the same clay one vessel to honour and another to\ndishonour?  And yet people will not believe in miracles!  Why does\neach kind turn into its kind?  Answer that.  Because it is a law of\nnature?  Not so!  There are no laws OF nature.  God is a law TO\nnature.  It is his WILL that things so should be; and when it is his\nwill they will not be so, but otherwise.\n\nNot LAWS of nature, but the SPIRIT of God, as the Psalms truly say,\ngives life and breath to all things.  Of him and by him is all.  As\nthe greatest chemist of our time says, 'Causes are the acts of God--\ncreation is the will of God.'\n\nAnd he that is wise and strong enough to create frogs in one way in\nevery ditch at this moment, is he not wise and strong enough to\ncreate frogs by some other way, if he should choose, whether in\nEgypt of old, or now, here, this very day?\n\nWhatsoever means, or no means at all, God used to produce those\nvermin, the miracle remains the same.  He sent them to do a work,\nand they did it.  He sent them to teach Egyptian and Israelite alike\nthat he was the Maker, and Lord, and Ruler of the world, and all\nthat therein is; that he would have his way, and that he COULD have\nhis way.\n\nIntensely painful and disgusting these plagues must have been to the\nEgyptians, for this reason, that they were the most cleanly of all\npeople.  They had a dislike of dirt, which had become quite a\nsuperstition to them.  Their priests (magicians as the Bible calls\nthem) never wore any garments but linen, for fear of their\nharbouring vermin of any kind.  And this extreme cleanliness of\ntheirs the next plague struck at; they were covered with boils and\ndiseases of skin, and the magicians could not stand before Pharaoh\nby reason of the boils.  They became unclean and unfit for their\noffice; they could perform no religious ceremonies, and had to flee\naway in disgrace.\n\nAfter plagues of thunder, hail, and rain, which seldom or never\nhappen in that rainless land of Egypt; after a plague of locusts,\nwhich are very rare there, and have to come many hundred miles if\nthey come at all; of darkness, seemingly impossible in a land where\nthe sun always shines:  then came the last and most terrible plague\nof all.  After solemn warnings of what was coming, the angel of the\nLord passed through the land of Egypt, and smote all the first-born\nin Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh upon his throne to the\nfirst-born of the captive in the dungeon; and there arose a great\ncry in Egypt, for there was not a house in which there was not one\ndead.  A terrible and heart-rending calamity in any case, enough to\nbreak the heart of all Egypt; and it did break the heart of Egypt,\nand the proud heart of Pharaoh himself, and they let the people go.\n\nBut this was a RELIGIOUS affliction too.  Most of these first-born\nchildren--probably all the first-born of the priests and nobles, and\nof Pharaoh himself--were consecrated to some god.  They bore the\nname of the god to whom they belonged; that god was to prosper and\nprotect them, and behold, he could not.  The Lord Jehovah, the God\nof the Hebrews, was stronger than all the gods of Egypt; none of\nthem could deliver their servants out of his hand.  He was the only\nLord of life and death; he had given them life, and he could take it\naway, in spite of all and every one of the gods of the Egyptians.\n\nSo the Lord God showed himself to be the Master and Lord of all\nthings.  The Lord of the sacred river Nile; the Lord of the meanest\nvermin which crept on the earth; the Lord of the weather--able to\nbring thunder and hail into a land where thunder and hail was never\nseen before; the Lord of the locust swarms--able to bring them over\nthe desert and over the sea to devour up every green thing in the\nland, and then to send a wind off the Mediterranean Sea, and drive\nthe locusts away to the eastward; the Lord of light--who could\ndarken, even in that cloudless land, the very sun, whom Pharaoh\nworshipped as his god and his ancestor; and lastly, the Lord of\nhuman life and death--able to kill whom he chose, when he chose, and\nas he chose.  The Lord of the earth and all that therein is; before\nwhom all men, even proud Pharaoh, must bow and confess, 'Is anything\ntoo hard for the Lord?'\n\nAnd now, I always tell you that each fresh portion of the Old\nTestament reveals to men something fresh concerning the character of\nGod.  You may say, These plagues of Egypt reveal God's mighty power,\nbut what do they reveal of his character?  They reveal this:  that\nthere is in God that which, for want of a better word, we must call\nanger; a quite awful sternness and severity; not only a power to\npunish, but a determination to punish, if men will not take his\nwarnings--if men will not obey his will.\n\nThere is no use trying to hide from ourselves that awful truth--God\nis not weakly indulgent.  Our God can be, if he will, a consuming\nfire.  Upon the sinner he will surely rain fire and brimstone, storm\nand tempest of some kind or other.  This shall be their portion too\nsurely.  Vengeance is his, and vengeance he will take.  But upon\nwhom?  On the proud and the tyrannical, on the cruel, the false, the\nunjust.  So say the Psalms again and again, and so says the history\nof these plagues of Egypt.  Therefore his anger is a loving anger, a\njust auger, a merciful anger, a useful anger, an anger exercised for\nthe good of mankind.  See in this case why did God destroy the crops\nof Egypt--even the first-born of Egypt?  Merely for the pleasure of\ndestroying?  God forbid.  It was to deliver the poor Israelites from\ntheir cruel taskmasters; to force these Egyptians by terrible\nlessons, since they were deaf to the voice of justice and humanity--\nto force them, I say--to have mercy on their fellow-creatures, and\nlet the oppressed go free.  Therefore God was, even in Egypt, a God\nof love, who desired the good of man, who would do justice for those\nwho were unjustly treated, even though it cost his love a pang; for\nnone can believe that God is pleased at having to punish, pleased at\nhaving to destroy the works of his own hands, or the creatures which\nhe has made.  No; the Lord was a God of love even when he sent his\nsore plagues on Egypt, and therefore we may believe what the Bible\ntells us, that that same Lord showed, as on this day, a still\ngreater proof of his love, when, as on this day, he entered into\nJerusalem, meek and lowly, sitting on an ass, and going, as he well\nknew, to certain death.  Before the week was over he would be\nbetrayed, mocked, scourged, crucified by the very people whom he\ncame to save; and yet he did it, he endured it.  Instead of pouring\nout on them, as on the Egyptians of old, the cup of wrath and\nmisery, he put out his hand, took the cup of wrath and misery to\nhimself, and drank it to its very dregs.  Was not that, too, a\nmiracle?  Ay, a greater miracle than all the plagues of Egypt.  They\nwere physical miracles; this a moral miracle.  They were miracles of\nnature; this of grace.  They were miracles of the Lord's power;\nthese of the Lord's love.  Think of that miracle of miracles which\nwas worked in this Passion Week--the miracle of the Lord Jehovah\nstooping to die for sinful man, and say after that there is anything\ntoo hard for the Lord.\n\n\n\nSERMON XI.  THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IS THE GOD OF THE NEW\n\n\n\n(Palm Sunday.)\n\nExodus ix. 14.  I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine\nheart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, that thou mayest\nknow that there is none like me in all the earth.\n\nWe are now beginning Passion Week, the week of the whole year which\nought to teach us most theology; that is, most concerning God, his\ncharacter and his spirit.\n\nFor in this Passion Week God did that which utterly and perfectly\nshowed forth his glory, as it never has been shown forth before or\nsince.  In this week Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, died on the\ncross for man, and showed that his name, his character, his glory\nwas love--love without bound or end.\n\nIt was to teach us this that the special services, lessons,\ncollects, epistles, and gospels of this week were chosen.\n\nThe second lesson, the collects, the epistles, the gospel for to-\nday, all set before us the patience of Christ, the humility of\nChrist, the love of Christ, the self-sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb\nwithout spot, enduring all things that he might save sinful man.\n\nBut if so, what does this first lesson--the chapter of Exodus from\nwhich my text is taken--what does it teach us concerning God?  Does\nit teach us that his name is love?\n\nAt first sight you would think that it did not.  At first sight you\nwould fancy that it spoke of God in quite a different tone from the\nsecond lesson.\n\nIn the second lesson, the words of Jesus the Son of God are all\ngentleness, patience, tenderness.  A quiet sadness hangs over them\nall.  They are the words of one who is come (as he said himself),\nnot to destroy men's lives, but to save them; not to punish sins,\nbut to wash them away by his own most precious blood.\n\nBut in the first lesson how differently he seems to speak.  His\nwords there are the words of a stern and awful judge, who can, and\nwho will destroy whatsoever interferes with his will and his\npurpose.\n\n'I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and on\nthy servants, and all thy people, that thou mayest know that there\nis none like me in all the earth.'  The cattle and sheep shall be\ndestroyed with murrain; man and beast shall be tormented with boils\nand blains; the crops shall be smitten with hail; the locusts shall\neat up every green thing in the land; and at last all the first-born\nof Egypt shall die in one night, and the land be filled with\nmourning, horror, and desolation, before the anger of this terrible\nGod, who will destroy and destroy till he makes himself obeyed.\n\nCan this be he who rode into Jerusalem, as on this day, meek and\nlowly, upon an ass's colt; who on the night that he was betrayed\nwashed his disciples' feet, even the feet of Judas who betrayed him?\nWho prayed for his murderers as he hung upon the cross, 'Father,\nforgive them, for they know not what they do?'\n\nCan these two be the same?\n\nIs the Lord Jehovah of the Old Testament the Lord Jesus of the New?\n\nThey are the same, my friends.  He who laid waste the land of Egypt\nis he who came to seek and to save that which was lost.\n\nHe who slew the children in Egypt is he who took little children up\nin his arms and blessed them.\n\nHe who spoke the awful words of the text is he who was brought as a\nlamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb,\nso he opened not his mouth.\n\nThis is very wonderful.  But why should it NOT be wonderful?  What\ncan God be but wonderful?  His character, just because it is\nperfect, must contain in itself all other characters, all forms of\nspiritual life which are without sin.  And yet again it is not so\nvery wonderful.  Have we not seen--I have often--in the same mortal\nman these two different characters at once?  Have we not seen\nsoldiers and sailors, brave men, stern men, men who have fought in\nmany a bloody battle, to whom it is a light thing to kill their\nfellow-men, or to be killed themselves in the cause of duty; and yet\nmost full of tenderness, as gentle as lambs to little children and\nto weak women; nursing the sick lovingly and carefully with the same\nhand which would not shrink from firing the fatal cannon to blast a\nwhole company into eternity, or sink a ship with all its crew?  I\nhave seen such men, brave as the lion and gentle as the lamb, and I\nsaw in them the likeness of Christ--the Lion of Judah; and yet the\nLamb of God.\n\nChrist is the Lamb of God; and in him there are the innocence of the\nlamb, the gentleness of the lamb, the patience of the lamb:  but\nthere is more.  What words are these which St. John speaks in the\nspirit?--\n\n'And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and\nevery mountain and island were moved out of their places; and the\nkings of the earth, and the great, and the rich, and the chief\ncaptains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman\nhid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and\nsaid to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from\nthe face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of\nthe Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be\nable to stand?'\n\nYes, look at that awful book of Revelation with which the Bible\nends, and see if the Bible does not end as it began, by revealing a\nGod who, however loving and merciful, long-suffering, and of great\ngoodness, still wages war eternally against all sin and\nunrighteousness of man, and who will by no means clear the guilty; a\nGod of whom the apostle St. Paul, who knew most of his mercy and\nforgiveness to sinners, could nevertheless say, just as Moses had\nsaid ages before him, 'Our God is a consuming fire.'\n\nNow I think it most necessary to recollect this in Passion Week; ay,\nand to do more--to remember it all our lives long.\n\nFor it is too much the fashion now, and has often been so before, to\nthink only of one side of our Lord's character, of the side which\nseems more pleasant and less awful.  People please themselves in\nhymns which talk of the meek and lowly Jesus, and in pictures which\nrepresent him with a sad, weary, delicate, almost feminine face.\nNow I do not say that this is wrong.  He is the same yesterday, to-\nday, and for ever; as tender, as compassionate now as when he was on\nearth; and it is good that little children and innocent young people\nshould think of him as an altogether gentle, gracious, loveable\nbeing; for with the meek he will be meek; but again, with the\nfroward, the violent, and self-willed, he will be froward.  He will\nshow the violent that he is the stronger of the two, and the self-\nwilled that he will have his will and not theirs done.\n\nSo it is good that the widow and the orphan, the weary and the\ndistressed, should think of Jesus as utterly tender and true,\ncompassionate and merciful, and rest their broken hearts upon him,\nthe everlasting rock.  But while it is written, that whosoever shall\nfall on that rock he shall be broken, it is written too, that on\nwhomsoever that rock shall fall, it will grind him to powder.\n\nIt is good that those who wish to be gracious themselves, loving\nthemselves, should remember that Christ is gracious, Christ is\nloving.  But it is good also, that those who do NOT wish to be\ngracious and loving themselves, but to be proud and self-willed,\nunjust and cruel, should remember that the gracious and loving\nChrist is also the most terrible and awful of all beings; sharper\nthan a two-edged sword, piercing asunder the very joints and marrow,\ndiscerning the most secret thoughts and intents of the heart; a\nrighteous judge, strong and patient, who is provoked every day:  but\nif a man WILL not turn he will whet his sword.  He hath bent his bow\nand made it ready, and laid his arrows in order against the\npersecutors.  What Christ's countenance, my friends, was like when\non earth, we do NOT know; but what his countenance is like now, we\nall may know; for what says St. John, and how did Christ appear to\nhim, who had been on earth his private and beloved friend?\n\n'His head and his hair were white as snow, and his eyes were like a\nflame of fire, and his voice like the sound of many waters; and out\nof his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was\nas the sun when he shineth in his strength.  And when I saw him, I\nfell at his feet as dead.'\n\nThat is the likeness of Christ, my friends; and we must remember\nthat it is his likeness, and fall at his feet, and humble ourselves\nbefore his unspeakable majesty, if we wish that he should do to us\nat the last day as he did to St. John--lay his hand upon us, saying,\n'Fear not, I am the first and the last, and behold, I am alive for\nevermore, Amen.  I have the keys of death and hell.'\n\nYes, it is good that we should all remember this.  For if we do not,\nwe may fall, as thousands fall, into a very unwholesome and immoral\nnotion about religion.  We may get to fancy, as thousands do, rich\nand poor, that because Christ the Lord is meek and gentle, patient\nand long-suffering, that he is therefore easy, indulgent, careless\nabout our doing wrong; and that we can, in plain English, trifle\nwith Christ, and take liberties with his everlasting laws of right\nand wrong; and so fancy, that provided we talk of the meek and lowly\nJesus, and of his blood washing away all our sins, that we are free\nto behave very much as if Jesus had never come into the world to\nteach men their duty, and free to commit almost any sin which does\nnot disgrace us among our neighbours, or render us punishable by the\nlaw.\n\nMy friends, it is NOT SO.  And those who fancy that it is so, will\nfind out their mistake bitterly enough.  Infinite love and\nforgiveness to those who repent and amend and do right; but infinite\nrigour and punishment to those who will not amend and do right.\nThis is the everlasting law of God's universe; and every soul of man\nwill find it out at last, and find that the Lord Jesus Christ is not\na Being to be trifled with, and that the precious blood which he\nshed on the cross is of no avail to those who are not minded to be\nrighteous even as he is righteous.\n\n'But Christ is so loving, so tender-hearted that he surely will not\npunish us for our sins.'  This is the confused notion that too many\npeople have about him.  And the answer to it is, that just BECAUSE\nChrist is so loving, so tender-hearted, therefore he MUST punish us\nfor our sins, unless we utterly give up our sins, and do right\ninstead of wrong.\n\nThat false notion springs out of men's selfishness.  They think of\nsin as something which only hurts themselves; when they do wrong\nthey think merely, 'What punishment will God inflict on ME for doing\nwrong?'  They are wrapt up in themselves.  They forget that their\nsins are not merely a matter between them and Christ, but between\nthem and their neighbours; that every wrong action they commit,\nevery wrong word they speak, every wrong habit in which they indulge\nthemselves, sooner or later, more or less hurts their neighbours--\nay, hurts all mankind.\n\nAnd does Christ care only for THEM?  Does he not care for their\nneighbours?  Has he not all mankind to provide for, and govern and\nguide?  And can he allow bad men to go on making this world worse,\nwithout punishing them, any more than a gardener can allow weeds to\nhurt his flowers, and not root them up?  What would you say of a man\nwho was so merciful to the weeds that he let them choke the flowers?\nWhat would you say of a shepherd who was so merciful to the wolves\nthat he let them eat his sheep?  What would you say of a magistrate\nwho was so merciful to thieves that he let them rob the honest men?\nAnd do you fancy that Christ is a less careful and just governor of\nthe world than the magistrate who punishes the thief that honest men\nmay live in safety?\n\nNot so.  Not only will Christ punish the wolves who devour his\nsheep, but he will punish his sheep themselves if they hurt each\nother, torment each other, lead each other astray, or in any way\ninterfere with the just and equal rule of his kingdom; and this, not\nout of spite or cruelty, but simply because he is perfect love.\n\nGo, therefore, and think of Christ this Passion Week as he was, and\nis, and ever will be.  Think of the whole Christ, and not of some\npart of his character which may specially please your fancy.  Think\nof him as the patient and forgiving Christ, who prayed for his\nmurderers, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'\nBut remember that, in this very Passion Week, there came out of\nthose most gentle lips--the lips which blessed little children, and\ncried to all who were weary and heavy laden, to come to him and he\nwould give them rest--that out of those most gentle lips, I say, in\nthis very Passion Week, there went forth the most awful threats\nwhich ever were uttered, 'Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees,\nhypocrites.  Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape\nthe damnation of hell?'  Think of him as the Lamb who offered\nhimself freely on the cross for sinners.  But think of him, too, as\nthe Lamb who shall one day come in glory to judge all men according\nto their works.  Think of him as full of boundless tenderness and\nhumanity, boundless long-suffering and mercy.  But remember that\nbeneath that boundless sweetness and tenderness there burns a\nconsuming fire; a fire of divine scorn and indignation against all\nwho sin, like Pharaoh, out of cruelty and pride; against all which\nis foul and brutal, mean and base, false and hypocritical, cruel and\nunjust; a fire which burns, and will burn against all the wickedness\nwhich is done on earth, and all the misery and sorrow which is\nsuffered on earth, till the Lord has burned it up for ever, and\nthere is nothing but love and justice, order and usefulness, peace\nand happiness, left in the universe of God.\n\nOh, think of these things, and cast away your sins betimes, at the\nfoot of his everlasting cross, lest you be consumed with your sins\nin his everlasting fire!\n\n\n\nSERMON XII.  THE BIRTHNIGHT OF FREEDOM\n\n\n\n(Easter Day.)\n\nExodus xii. 42.  This is a night to be much observed unto the Lord,\nfor bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt.\n\nTo be much observed unto the Lord by the children of Israel.  And by\nus, too, my friends; and by all nations who call themselves FREE.\n\nThere are many and good ways of looking at Easter Day.  Let us look\nat it in this way for once.\n\nIt is the day on which God himself set men FREE.\n\nConsider the story.  These Israelites, the children of Abraham, the\nbrave, wild patriarch of the desert, have been settled for hundreds\nof years in the rich lowlands of Egypt.  There they have been eating\nand drinking their fill, and growing more weak, slavish, luxurious,\nfonder and fonder of the flesh-pots of Egypt; fattening literally\nfor the slaughter, like beasts in a stall.  They are spiritually\ndead--dead in trespasses and sins.  They do not want to be free, to\nbe a nation.  They are content to be slaves and idolaters, if they\ncan only fill their stomachs.  This is the spiritual death of a\nnation.\n\nI say, they do not want to be free.  When they are oppressed, they\ncry out--as an animal cries when you beat him.  But after they are\nfree, when they get into danger, or miss their meat, they cry out\ntoo, and are willing enough to return to slavery; as the dog which\nhas run away for fear of the whip, will go back to his kennel for\nthe sake of his food.  'Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast\nthou taken us away to die in the wilderness?  Wherefore hast thou\ndealt thus with us to carry us out of Egypt?'  And again, 'Would God\nwe had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, where we\ndid sit by the flesh-pots, and eat meat to the full!'  BRUTALIZED,\nin one word, were these poor children of Israel.\n\nThen God took their cause into his own hand; I say emphatically into\nhis own hand.  If that part of the story be not true, I care nothing\nfor the rest.  If God did not personally and actually interfere on\nbehalf of those poor slaves; if the plagues of Egypt are not TRUE--\nthe passage of the Red Sea be not TRUE--the story tells me and you\nnothing; gives us no hope for ourselves, no hope for mankind.\n\nFor see.  One says, and truly, God is good; God is love; God is\njust; God hates oppression and wrong.\n\nBUT if God be love, he must surely show his love by doing loving\nthings.\n\nIf God be just, he must show his justice by doing just things.\n\nIf God hates oppression, then he must free the oppressed.\n\nIf God hates wrong, then he must set the wrong right.\n\nFor what would you think of a man who professed to be loving and\njust, and to hate oppression and wrong, and yet never took the\ntrouble to do a good action, or to put down wrong, when he had the\npower?  You would call him a hypocrite; you would think his love and\njustice very much on his tongue, and not in his heart.\n\nAnd will you believe that God is like that man?  God forbid!\n\nComfortable scholars and luxurious ladies may content themselves\nwith a DEAD God, who does not interfere to help the oppressed, to\nright the wrong, to bind up the broken-hearted; but men and women\nwho work, who sorrow, who suffer, who partake of all the ills which\nflesh is heir to--they want a LIVING God, an acting God, a God who\nWILL interfere to right the wrong.  Yes--they want a living God.\nAnd they have a living God--even the God who interfered to bring the\nIsraelites out of Egypt with signs and wonders, and a mighty hand\nand an outstretched arm, and executed judgment upon Pharaoh and his\nproud and cruel hosts.  And when they read in the Bible of that God,\nwhen they read in their Bibles the story of the Exodus, their hearts\nanswer, THIS is right.  This is the God whom we need.  This is what\nought to have happened.  This is true:  for it must be true.  Let\ncomfortable folks who know no sorrow trouble their brains as to\nwhether sixty or six hundred thousand fighting men came out of Egypt\nwith Moses.  We care not for numbers.  What we care for is, not how\nmany came out, but who brought them out, and that he who brought\nthem out was GOD.  And the book which tells us that, we will cling\nto, will love, will reverence above all the books on earth, because\nit tells of a living God, who works and acts and interferes for men;\nwho not only hates wrong, but rights wrong; not only hates\noppression, but puts oppressors down; not only pities the oppressed,\nbut sets the oppressed free; a God who not only wills that man\nshould have freedom, but sent freedom down to him from heaven.\n\nScholars have said that the old Greeks were the fathers of freedom;\nand there have been other peoples in the world's history who have\nmade glorious and successful struggles to throw off their tyrants\nand be free.  And they have said, We are the fathers of freedom;\nliberty was born with us.  Not so, my friends!  Liberty is of a far\nolder and far nobler house; Liberty was born, if you will receive\nit, on the first Easter night, on the night to be much remembered\namong the children of Israel--ay, among all mankind--when God\nhimself stooped from heaven to set the oppressed free.  Then was\nfreedom born.  Not in the counsels of men, however wise; or in the\nbattles of men, however brave:  but in the counsels of God, and the\nbattle of God--amid human agony and terror, and the shaking of the\nheaven and the earth; amid the great cry throughout Egypt when a\nfirst-born son lay dead in every house; and the tempest which swept\naside the Red Sea waves; and the pillar of cloud by day, and the\npillar of fire by night; and the Red Sea shore covered with the\ncorpses of the Egyptians; and the thunderings and lightnings and\nearthquakes of Sinai; and the sound as of a trumpet waxing loud and\nlong; and the voice, most human and most divine, which spake from\noff the lonely mountain peak to that vast horde of coward and\ndegenerate slaves, and said, 'I am the Lord thy God who brought thee\nout of the land of Egypt.  Thou shalt obey my laws, and keep my\ncommandments to do them.'  Oh! the man who would rob his suffering\nfellow-creatures of that story--he knows not how deep and bitter are\nthe needs of man.\n\nThen was freedom born:  but not of man; not of the will of the\nflesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God, from whom all\ngood things come; and of Christ, who is the life and the light of\nmen and of nations, and of the whole world, and of all worlds, past,\npresent, and to come.\n\nFrom God came freedom.  To be used as his gift, according to his\nlaws; for he gave, and he can take away; as it is written, 'He shall\ntake the kingdom of God from you, and give it to a people bringing\nforth the fruits thereof.'  'For there be many first that shall be\nlast; and last that shall be first.'  It is this which makes the\nJews indeed a peculiar people:  the thought that the living God had\nactually and really done for them what they could not do for\nthemselves; that he had made them a nation, and not they themselves.\nIt is this which makes the Old Testament an utterly different book,\nwith an utterly different lesson, to the written history of any\nother nation in the world.\n\nAnd yet it is this which makes the history of the Jews the key to\nevery other history in the world.  For in it Jesus Christ our Lord,\nthe living God who makes history, who governs all nations, reveals\nand unveils himself, and teaches not the Jews only, but us and all\nnations, that it is he who hath made us, and not we ourselves; that\nwe got not the land in possession by our own sword, nor was it our\nown strength that helped us, but thou, O Lord, because thou hadst a\nfavour unto us; that not to us, not to us is the praise of any\nnational greatness or glory, but to God, from whom it comes as\nsurely a free gift as the gift of liberty to the Jews of old.\n\nI say, the history of the Jews is the history of the whole Church,\nand of every nation in Christendom.\n\nAs with the Jews, so with the nations of Europe; whenever they have\ntrusted in themselves, their own power and wisdom, they have ended\nin weakness and folly.  Whenever they have trusted in Christ the\nliving God, and said, 'It is he that hath made us, and not we\nourselves,' they have risen to strength and wisdom.  When they have\nforgotten the living God, national life and patriotism have died in\nthem, as they died in the Jews.  When they have remembered that the\nmost high God was their Redeemer, then in them, as in the Jews, have\nnational life and patriotism revived.\n\nAnd as it was with the Jews in the wilderness, so it has been with\nthem since Christ's resurrection.  They fancied that they were going\nat once into the promised land.  So did the first Christians.  But\nthe Jews had to wander forty years in the wilderness; and\nChristendom has had to wander too, in strange and bloodstained\npaths, for one thousand eight hundred years and more.  For why?  The\nIsraelites were not worthy to enter at once into rest; no more have\nthe nation of Christ's Church been worthy.  The Israelites brought\nout of Egypt base and slavish passions, which had to be purged out\nof them; so have we out of heathendom.  They brought out, too,\nheathen superstitions, and mixed them up with the worship of God,\nbearing about in the wilderness the tabernacle of Moloch and the\nimage of their god Remphan, and making the calf in Horeb; and so,\nalas! again and again, has the Church of Christ.\n\nNay, the whole generation, save two, who came out of Egypt, had to\ndie in the wilderness, and leave their bones scattered far and wide.\nAnd so has mankind been dying, by war and by disease, and by many\nfearful scourges besides what is called now-a-days, natural decay.\n\nBut all the while a new generation was springing up, trained in the\nwilderness to be bold and hardy; trained, too, under Moses' stern\nlaw, to the fear of God; to reverence, and discipline, and\nobedience, without which freedom is merely brutal license, and a\nnation is no nation, but a mere flock of sheep or a herd of wolves.\n\nAnd so, for these one thousand eight hundred years have the\ngenerations of Christendom, by the training of the Church and the\nlight of the Gospel, been growing in wisdom and knowledge; growing\nin morality and humanity, in that true discipline and loyalty which\nare the yoke-fellows of freedom and independence, to make them fit\nfor that higher state, that heavenly Canaan, of which we know not\nWHEN it will come, nor whether its place will be on this earth or\nelsewhere; but of which it is written, 'And I John saw the holy\ncity, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as\na bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a great voice out of\nheaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he\nwill dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself\nshall be with them, and be their God.  And God shall wipe away all\ntears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither\nsorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:  for the\nformer things are passed away.  And he that sat upon the throne\nsaid, Behold, I make all things new.\n\n'And I saw no temple therein:  for the Lord God Almighty and the\nLamb are the temple of it.  And the city had no need of the sun,\nneither of the moon to shine in it:  for the glory of God did\nlighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.  And the nations of\nthem which are saved shall walk in the light of it; and the kings of\nthe earth do bring their glory and honour into it.  And the gates of\nit shall not be shut at all by day:  for there shall be no night\nthere.  And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations\ninto it.  And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that\ndefileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie:\nbut they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.'\n\nThat, the perfect Easter Day, seems far enough off as yet; but it\nwill come.  As the Lord liveth, it will come; and to it may Christ\nin his mercy bring us all, and our children's children after us.\nAmen.\n\n\n\nSERMON XIII.  KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM\n\n\n\n(First Sunday after Easter, 1863.)\n\nNumbers xvi. 32-35.  And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed\nthem up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto\nKorah, and all their goods.  They, and all that appertained to them,\nwent down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them:  and\nthey perished from among the congregation.  And all Israel that were\nround about them fled at the cry of them:  for they said, Lest the\nearth swallow us up also.  And there came out a fire from the Lord,\nand consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.\n\nI will begin by saying that there are several things in this chapter\nwhich I do not understand, and cannot explain to you.  Be it so.\nThat is no reason why we should not look at the parts of the chapter\nwhich we can understand and can explain.\n\nThere are matters without end in the world round us, and in our own\nhearts, and in the life of every one, which we cannot explain; and\ntherefore we need not be surprised to find things which we cannot\nexplain in the life and history of the most remarkable nation upon\nearth--the nation whose business it has been to teach all other\nnations the knowledge of the true God, and who was specially and\ncuriously trained for that work.\n\nBut the one broad common-sense lesson of this chapter, it seems to\nme, is one which is on the very surface of it; one which every true\nEnglishman at least will see, and see to be true, when he hears the\nchapter read; and that is, the necessity of DISCIPLINE.\n\nGod has brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and set them free.  One\nof the first lessons which they have to learn is, that freedom does\nnot mean license and discord--does not mean every one doing that\nwhich is right in the sight of his own eyes.  From that springs\nself-will, division, quarrels, revolt, civil war, weakness,\nprofligacy, and ruin to the whole people.  Without order,\ndiscipline, obedience to law, there can be no true and lasting\nfreedom; and, therefore, order must be kept at all risks, the law\nobeyed, and rebellion punished.\n\nNow rebellion may be and ought to be punished far more severely in\nsome cases than in others.  If men rebel here, in Great Britain or\nIreland, we smile at them, and let them off with a slight\nimprisonment, because we are not afraid of them.  They can do no\nharm.\n\nBut there are cases in which rebellion must be punished with a swift\nand sharp hand.  On board a ship at sea, for instance, where the\nsafety of the whole ship, the lives of the whole crew, depend on\ninstant obedience, mutiny may be punished by death on the spot.\nMany a commander has ere now, and rightly too, struck down the rebel\nwithout trial or argument, and ended him and his mutiny on the spot;\nby the sound rule that it is expedient that one man die for the\npeople, and that the whole nation perish not.\n\nAnd so it was with the Israelites in the desert.  All depended on\ntheir obedience.  God had given them a law--a constitution, as we\nshould say now--perfectly fitted, no doubt, for them.  If they once\nbegan to rebel and mutiny against that law, all was over with them.\nThat great, foolish, ignorant multitude would have broken up,\nprobably fought among themselves--certainly parted company, and\neither starved in the desert, or have been destroyed piecemeal by\nthe wild warlike tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites--who were\nready enough for slaughter and plunder.  They would never have\nreached Canaan.  They would never have become a great nation.  So\nthey had to be, by necessity, under martial law.  The word must be,\nObey or die.  As for any cruelty in putting Korah, Dathan, and\nAbiram to death, it was worth the death of a hundred such--or a\nthousand--to preserve the great and glorious nation of the Jews to\nbe the teachers of the world.\n\nNow this Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel.  They rebel against Moses\nabout a question of the priesthood.  It really matters little to us\nwhat that question was--it was a question of Moses' law, which, of\ncourse, is now done away.  Only remember this, that these men were\nprinces--great feudal noblemen, as we should say; and that they\nrebelled on the strength of their rank and their rights as noblemen\nto make laws for themselves and for the people; and that the mob of\ntheir dependents seem to have been inclined to support them.\n\nSurely if Moses had executed martial law on them with his own hand,\nhe would have been as perfectly justified as a captain of a ship of\nwar or a general of an army would be now.\n\nBut he did not do so.  And why?  Because MOSES did not bring the\npeople out of Egypt.  Moses was not their king.  GOD brought them\nout of Egypt.  God was their king.  That was the lesson which they\nhad to learn, and to teach other nations also.  They have rebelled,\nnot against Moses, but against God; and not Moses, but God must\npunish, and show that he is not a dead God, but a living God, one\nwho can defend himself, and enforce his own laws, and execute\njudgment--and, if need be, vengeance--without needing any man to\nfight his battles for him.\n\nAnd God does so.  The powers of Nature--the earthquake and the\nnether fire--shall punish these rebels; and so they do.\n\n'And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me to\ndo all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind.  If\nthese men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited\nafter the visitation of all men; then the Lord hath not sent me.\nBut if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth and\nswallow them up, with all that appertain to them and they go down\nquick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have\nprovoked the Lord.'\n\nMen have thought differently of the story; but I call it a righteous\nstory, and a noble story, and one which agrees with my conscience,\nand my reason, and my notion of what ought to be, and my experience\nalso of what is--of the way in which God's world is governed unto\nthis day.\n\nWhat then are we to think of the earth opening and swallowing them\nup?  What are we to think of a fire coming out from the Lord, and\nconsuming two hundred and fifty men that offered incense?\n\nThis first.  That discipline and order are so absolutely necessary\nfor the well-being of a nation that they must be kept at all risks,\nand enforced by the most terrible punishments.\n\nIt seems to me (to speak with all reverence) as if God had said to\nthe Jews, 'I have set you free.  I will make of you a great nation;\nI will lead you into a good land and large.  But if you are to be a\ngreat nation, if you are to conquer that good land and large, you\nmust obey:  and you shall obey.  The earthquake and the fire shall\nteach you to obey, and make you an example to the rest of the\nIsraelites, and to all nations after you.'  But how hard, some may\nthink, that the wives and the children should suffer for their\nparents' sins.\n\nMy friends, we do not know that a single woman or child died then\nfor whom it was not better that he or she should die.  That is one\nof the deep things which we must leave to the perfect justice and\nmercy of God.\n\nAnd next--what is it after all, but what we see going on round us\nall the day long?  God does visit the sins of the fathers on the\nchildren.  There is no denying it.  Wives do suffer for their\nhusbands' sins; children and children's children for whole\ngenerations after generations suffer for their parents' sins, and\nbecome unhealthy, or superstitious, or profligate, or poor, or\nslavish, because their parents sinned, and dragged down their\nchildren with them in their fall.  It is a law of the world; and\ntherefore it is a law of God.  And it is reasonable to be believed\nthat God might choose to teach the Israelites, once and for all,\nthat it WAS a law of his world.  For by swallowing up those women\nand children with the men, God said to the Israelites, it seems to\nme in a way which could not be mistaken, 'This is the consequence of\nlawlessness and disorder--that you not only injure yourselves, but\nyour children after you, and involve your families in the same ruin\nas yourselves.'\n\nBut there was another lesson, and a deep lesson, in the earthquake\nand in the fire.  And what was this? that the earthquake and the\nfire came out from the Lord.\n\nEarthquakes have swallowed up not hundreds merely, but many\nthousands, in many countries, and at many times.\n\nFire has come forth, and still comes forth from the ground, from the\nclouds, from the consequences of man's own carelessness, and\ndestroys beast and man, and the works of man's hands.  Then men ask\nin terror and doubt, 'Who sends the earthquake and the fire?  Do\nthey come from the devil--the destroyer?  Do they come by chance,\nfrom some brute and blind powers of nature?'\n\nThis chapter answers, 'No.  They come from the Lord, from whom all\ngood things do come; from the Lord who delivered the Israelites out\nof Egypt; who so loved the world that he spared not his only\nbegotten Son, but freely gave him for us.'\n\nNow I say that is a gospel, and good news, which we want now as much\nas ever men did; which the children of Israel wanted then, though\nnot one whit more than we.\n\nMany hundreds of years had these Israelites been in Egypt.  Storm,\nlightning, earthquake, the fires of the burning mountains, were\nthings unknown to them.  They were going into Canaan--a good land\nand fruitful, but a land of storms and thunders; a land, too, of\nearthquakes and subterranean fires.  The deepest earthquake-crack in\nthe world is the valley of the Jordan, ending in the Dead Sea--a\nlong valley, through which at different points the nether fires of\nthe earth even now burst up at times.  In Abraham's time they had\ndestroyed the five cities of the plain.  The prophets mention them,\nespecially Isaiah and Micah, as breaking out again in their own\ntimes; and in our own lifetime earthquake and fire have done fearful\ndestruction in the north part of the Holy Land.\n\nNow what was to prevent the Israelites worshipping the earthquake\nand the fire as gods?\n\nNothing.  Conceive the terror and horror of the Jews coming out of\nthat quiet land of Egypt, the first time they felt the ground\nrocking and rolling; the first time they heard the roar of the\nearthquake beneath their feet; the first time they saw, in the\nmagnificent words of Micah, the mountains molten and the valleys\ncleft as wax before the fire, like water poured down a steep place;\nand discovered that beneath their very feet was Tophet, the pit of\nfire and brimstone, ready to burst up and overwhelm them they knew\nnot when.\n\nWhat could they do, but what the Canaanites did who dwelt already in\nthat land?  What but to say, 'The fire is king.  The fire is the\ngreat and dreadful God, and to him we must pray, lest he devour us\nup.'  For so did the Canaanites.  They called the fire Moloch, which\nmeans simply the king; and they worshipped this fire-king, and made\nidols of him, and offered human sacrifices to him.  They had idols\nof metal, before which an everlasting fire burned; and on the arms\nof the idol the priests laid the children who were to be sacrificed,\nthat they might roll down into the fire and be burnt alive.  That is\nactual fact.  In one case, which we know of well, hundreds of years\nafter Moses' time, the Carthaginians offered two hundred boys of\ntheir best families to Moloch in one day.  This is that making the\nchildren pass through the fire to Moloch--burning them in the fire\nto Moloch--of which we read several times in the Old Testament; as\nugly and accursed a superstition as men ever invented.\n\nWhat deliverance was there for them from these abominable\nsuperstitions, except to know that the fire-kingdom was God's\nkingdom, and not Moloch's at all; to know with Micah and with David\nthat the hills were molten like wax BEFORE THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD;\nthat it was the blast of his breath which discovered the foundations\nof the world; that it was HE who made the sea flee and drove back\nthe Jordan stream; that it was before HIM that the mountains skipped\nlike rams and the little hills like young sheep; that the battles of\nshaking were God's battles, with which he could fight for his\npeople; that it was he who ordained Tophet, and whose spirit kindled\nit.  That it was he--and that too in mercy as well as anger--who\nvisited the land in Isaiah's time with thunder and earthquake, and\ngreat noise, and storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.\nThat the earth opened and swallowed up those whom God chose, and no\nothers.  That if fire came forth, it came forth from the Lord, and\nburned where and what God chose, and nothing else.  Yes.  If you\nwill only understand, once and for all, that the history of the Jews\nis the history of the Lord's turning a people from the cowardly,\nslavish worship of sun and stars, of earthquakes and burning\nmountains, and all the brute powers of nature which the heathen\nworshipped, and teaching them to trust and obey him, the living God,\nthe Lord and Master of all, then the Old Testament will be clear to\nyou throughout; but if not, then not.\n\nYou cannot read your Bibles without seeing how that great lesson was\nstamped into the very hearts of the Hebrew prophets; how they are\ncontinually speaking of the fire and the earthquake, and yet\ncontinually declaring that they too obey God and do God's will, and\nthat the man who fears God need not fear them--that God was their\nhope and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore would\nthey not fear, though the earth was moved, and though the mountains\nbe carried into the midst of the sea.\n\nAnd we, too, need the same lesson in these scientific days.  We too\nneed to fix it in our hearts, that the powers of nature are the\npowers of God; that he orders them by his providence to do what he\nwill, and when and where he will; that, as the Psalmist says, the\nwinds are his messengers and the flames of fire his ministers.  And\nthis we shall learn from the Bible, and from no other book\nwhatsoever.\n\nGod taught the Jews this, by a strange and miraculous education,\nthat they might teach it in their turn to all mankind.  And they\nhave taught it.  For the Bible bids us--as no other book does--not\nto be afraid of the world on which we live; not to be afraid of\nearthquake or tempest, or any of the powers of nature which seem to\nus terrible and cruel, and destroying; for they are the powers of\nthe good and just and loving God.  They obey our Father in heaven,\nwithout whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and our Lord Jesus\nChrist, who came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them.  And\ntherefore we need not fear them, or look on them with any blind\nsuperstition, as things too awful for us to search into.  We may\nsearch into their causes; find out, if we can, the laws which they\nobey, because those laws are given them by God our Father; try, by\nusing those laws, to escape them, as we are learning now to escape\ntempests; or to prevent them, as we are learning now to prevent\npestilences:  and where we cannot do that, face them manfully,\nsaying, 'It is my Father's will.  These terrible events must be\ndoing God's work.  They may be punishing the guilty; they may be\ntaking the righteous away from the evil to come; they may be\nteaching wise men lessons which will enable them years hence to save\nlives without number; they may be preparing the face of the earth\nfor the use of generations yet unborn.  Whatever they are doing they\nare and must be doing good; for they are doing the will of the\nliving Father, who willeth that none should perish, and hateth\nnothing that he hath made.'\n\nThis, my friends, is the lesson which the Bible teaches; and because\nit teaches that lesson it is the Book of books, and the inspired\nword or message, not of men concerning God, but of God himself,\nconcerning himself, his kingdom over this world and over all worlds,\nand his good will to men.\n\n\n\nSERMON XIV.  BALAAM\n\n\n\nNUMBERS xxiii. 19.  God is not a man, that he should lie; neither\nthe son of man, that he should repent:  hath he said, and shall he\nnot do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?\n\nIf I was asked for any proof that the story of Balaam, as I find it\nin the Bible, is a true story, I should lay my hand on this one\nonly--and that is, the deep knowledge of human nature which is shown\nin it.\n\nThe character of Balaam is so perfectly natural, and yet of a kind\nso very difficult to unravel and explain, that if the story was\ninvented by man, as poems or novels are, it must have been invented\nvery late indeed in the history of the Jews; at a time when they had\ngrown to be a far more civilised people, far more experienced in the\ncunning tricks of the human heart than they were, as far as we can\nsee from the Bible, before the Babylonish captivity.  But it was NOT\ninvented late; for no Jew in these later times would have thought of\nmaking Balaam a heathen, to be a prophet of God, or a believer in\nthe true God at all.  The later Jews took up the notion that God\nspoke to and cared for the Jews only, and that all other nations\nwere accursed.\n\nThere is no reason, therefore, against simply believing the story as\nit stands.  It seems a very ancient story indeed, suiting exactly in\nits smallest details the place where Moses, or whoever wrote the\nBook of Numbers, has put it.\n\nWe, in these days, are accustomed to draw a sharp line between the\ngood and the bad, the converted and the unconverted, the children of\nGod and the children of this world, those who have God's Spirit and\nthose who have not, which we find nowhere in Scripture; and\ntherefore when we read of such a man as Balaam we cannot understand\nhim.  He is a bad man, but yet he is a prophet.  How can that be?\nHe knows the true God.  More, he has the Spirit of God in him, and\nthereby utters deep and wonderful prophecies; and yet he is a bad\nman and a rogue.  How can that be?\n\nThe puzzle, my friends, is one of our own making.  If, instead of\ntaking up doctrines out of books, we will use our own eyes and ears\nand common sense, and look honestly at this world as it is, and men\nand women as they are, we shall find nothing unnatural or strange in\nBalaam; we shall find him very like a good many people whom we know;\nvery like--nay, probably, too like--ourselves in some particulars.\n\nNow bear in mind, first, that Balaam is no impostor or magician.  He\nis a wise man, and a prophet of God.  God really speaks to him, and\nreally inspires him.\n\nAnd bear in mind, too, that Balaam's inspiration did not merely open\nhis mouth to say wonderful words which he did not understand, but\nopened his heart to say righteous and wise things which he did\nunderstand.\n\n'Remember,' says the prophet Micah, 'O my people, what Balak, king\nof Moab, consulted, and what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him\nfrom Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may know the righteousness of the\nLord.  Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before\nthe high God?  Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with\ncalves of a year old?  Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of\nrams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?  Shall I give my\nfirstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of\nmy soul?  He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth\nthe Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and\nto walk humbly with thy God.'  Why, what deeper or wiser words are\nthere in the whole Old Testament?  This man Balaam had seen down\ninto the deepest depths of all morality, unto the deepest depths of\nall religion.  The man who knew that, knew more than ninety-nine in\na hundred do even in a Christian country now, and more than nine\nhundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine in a\nmillion knew in those days.  Let no one, after that speech, doubt\nthat Balaam was indeed a prophet of the Lord; and yet he was a bad\nman, and came deservedly to a bad end.\n\nSo much easier, my friends, is it to know what is right than to do\nwhat is right.\n\nWhat then was wrong in Balaam?\n\nThis, that he was double-minded.  He wished to serve God.  True.\nBut he wished to serve himself by serving God, as too many do in all\ntimes.\n\nThat was what was wrong with him--self-seeking; and the Bible story\nbrings out that self-seeking with a delicacy, a keenness, and a\nperfect knowledge of human nature, which ought to teach us some of\nthe secrets of our own hearts.  Watch how Balaam, as a matter of\ncourse, inquires of the Lord whether he may go, and refuses,\nseemingly at first honestly.\n\nThen how the temptation grows on him; how, when he feels tempted, he\nfights against it in fine-sounding professions, just because he\nfeels that he is going to yield to it.  Then how he begins to tempt\nGod, by asking him again, in hopes that God may have changed his\nmind.  Then when he has his foolish wish granted he goes.  Then when\nthe terrible warning comes to him that he is on the wrong road, that\nGod's wrath is gone out against him, and his angel ready to destroy\nhim, he is full still of hollow professions of obedience, instead of\ncasting himself utterly upon God's mercy, and confessing his sin,\nand entreating pardon.\n\nThen how, instead of being frightened at God's letting him have his\nway, he is emboldened by it to tempt God more and more, and begins\noffering bullocks and rams on altars, first in this place and then\nin that, in hopes still that GOD may change his mind, and let him\ncurse Israel; in hopes that God may be like one of the idols of the\nheathen, who could (so the heathen thought) be coaxed and flattered\nround by sacrifices to do whatever their worshippers wished.\n\nThen, when he finds that all is of no use; that he must not curse\nIsrael, and must not earn Balak's silver and gold, he is forced to\nbe an honest man in spite of himself; and therefore he makes the\nbest of his disappointment by taking mighty credit to himself for\nbeing honest, while he wishes all the while he might have been\nallowed to have been dishonest.  Oh, if all this is not poor human\nnature, drawn by the pen of a truly inspired writer, what is it?\n\nMoreover, it is curious to watch how as Balaam is forced step by\nstep to be an honest man, so step by step he rises.  A weight falls\noff his mind and heart, and the Spirit of God comes upon him.\n\nHe feels for once that he must speak his mind, that he must obey\nGod.  As he looks down from off the mountain top, and sees the vast\nencampment of the Israelites spread over the vale below, for miles\nand miles, as far as the eye can see, all ordered, disciplined,\narranged according to their tribes, the Spirit of God comes upon\nhim, and he gives way to it and speaks.\n\nThe sight of that magnificent array wakens up in him the thought of\nhow divine is older, how strong is order, how order is the life and\nroot of a nation, and how much more, when that order is the order of\nGod.\n\n'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!\nAs the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's\nside, as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as\ncedar trees beside the waters.  His king shall be higher than Agag,'\nand all his wild Amalekite hordes.  He will be a true nation,\ncivilized, ordered, loyal and united, for God is teaching him.\n\nWho can resist such a nation as that?  'God has brought him out of\nEgypt.  He has the strength of an unicorn.'  'I shall see him,' he\nsays, 'but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh:  there shall\ncome a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel,\nand shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of\nSheth.'  And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and\nsaid, 'Amalek was the first of the nation; but his latter end shall\nbe that he perish for ever.'  And he looked on the Kenites, and took\nup his parable, and said, 'Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou\nputtest thy nest in a rock.  Nevertheless, the Kenite shall be\nwasted, till Asshur shall carry thee away captive.'  'Alas, who\nshall live when God doeth this!'\n\nAnd then, beyond all, after all the Canaanites and other Syrian\nraces have been destroyed, he sees, dimly and afar off, another\ndestruction still.\n\nIn his home in the far east the fame of the ships of Chittim has\nreached him; the fame of the new people, the sea-roving heroes of\nthe Greeks, of whom old Homer sang; the handsomest, cunningest, most\ndaring of mankind, who are spreading their little trading colonies\nalong all the isles and shores, as we now are spreading ours over\nthe world.  Those ships of Chittim, too, have a great and glorious\nfuture before them.  Some day or other they will come and afflict\nAsshur, the great empire of the East, out of which Balaam probably\ncame; and afflict Eber too, the kingdom of the Jews, and they too\nshall perish for ever.\n\nDimly he sees it, for it is very far away.  But that it will come he\nsees; and beyond that all is dark.  He has said his say; he has\nspoken the whole truth for once.  Balak's house full of silver and\ngold would not have bought him off and stopped his mouth when such\nawful thoughts crowded on his mind.  So he returns to his place--to\ndo what?\n\nIf he cannot earn Balak's gold by cursing Israel, he can do it by\ngiving him cunning and politic advice.  He advises Balak to make\nfriends with the Israelites and mix them up with his people by\nenticing them to the feasts of his idols, at which the women threw\nthemselves away in shameful profligacy, after the custom of the\nheathens of these parts.\n\nIn the next chapter we read how Moses, and Phinehas, Aaron's\ngrandson, put down those filthy abominations with a high hand; and\nhow Balaam's detestable plot, instead of making peace, makes war;\nand in chapter xxxi. you read the terrible destruction of the whole\nnation of the Midianites, and among it this one short and terrible\nhint:  'Balaam also, the son of Beor, they slew with the sword.'\n\nBut what may we learn from this ugly story?\n\nRecollect what I said at first, that we should find Balaam too like\nmany people now-a-days; perhaps too like ourselves.\n\nToo like indeed.  For never were men more tempted to sin as Balaam\ndid than in these days, when religion is all the fashion, and pays a\nman, and helps him on in life; when, indeed, a man cannot expect to\nsucceed without professing some sort of religion or other.\n\nThereby comes a terrible temptation to many men.  I do not mean to\nhypocrites, but to really well-meaning men.  They like religion.\nThey wish to be good; they have the feeling of devotion.  They pray,\nthey read their Bibles, they are attentive to services and to\nsermons, and are more or less pious people.  But soon--too soon--\nthey find that their piety is profitable.  Their business increases.\nTheir credit increases.  They are trusted and respected; their\nadvice is asked and taken.  They gain power over their fellow-men.\nWhat a fine thing it is, they think, to be pious!\n\nThen creeps in the love of the world; the love of money, or power,\nor admiration; and they begin to value religion because it helps\nthem to get on in the world.  They begin more and more to love Piety\nnot for its own sake, but for the sake of what it brings; not\nbecause it pleases God, but because it pleases the world; not\nbecause it enables them to help their fellow-men, but because it\nenables them to help themselves.\n\nSo they get double-minded, unstable, inconsistent, as St. James\nsays, in all their ways; trying to serve God and Mammon at once.\nTrying to do good--as long as doing good does not hurt them in the\nworld's eyes; but longing oftener and oftener to do wrong, if only\nGod would not be angry.  Then comes on Balaam's frame of mind, 'If\nBalak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go\nbeyond the commandment of the Lord.'\n\nOh no.  They would not do a wrong thing for the world--only they\nmust be quite sure first that it is wrong.  Has God really forbidden\nit?  Why should they not take care of their interest?  Why should\nthey not get on in the world?  So they begin, like Balaam, to tempt\nGod, to see how far they can go; to see if God has forbidden this\nand that mean, or cowardly, or covetous, or ambitious deed.  So they\nsoon settle for themselves what God has forbidden and what he has\nnot; and their rule of life becomes this--that whatsoever is safe\nand whatsoever is profitable is pretty sure to be right; and after\nthat no wonder if, like Balaam, they indulge themselves in every\nsort of sin, provided only it is respectable, and does not hurt them\nin the world's eyes.\n\nAnd all the while they keep up their religion.  Ay, they are often\nmore attentive than ever to religion, because their consciences\npinch them at times, and have to be silenced and drugged by\ncontinual church-goings and chapel-goings, and readings and\nprayings, in order that they may be able to say to themselves with\nBalaam, 'Thus saith Balaam, he who heard the word of God, and had\nthe knowledge of the Most High.'\n\nSo they say to themselves, 'I must be right.  How religious I am;\nhow fond of sermons, and of church services, and church\nrestorations, and missionary meetings, and charitable institutions,\nand everything that is good and pious.  I MUST be right with God.'\nDeceiving their ownselves, and saying to themselves, 'I am rich and\nincreased with goods, I have need of nothing,' and not knowing that\nthey are wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked.\n\nWould God that such people, of whom there are too many, would take\nSt. John's warning and buy of the Lord gold tried in the fire--the\ntrue gold of honesty--that they may be truly rich, and anoint their\neyes with eye-salve that they may see themselves for once as they\nare.\n\nBut what does this story teach us concerning God?  For remember, as\nI tell you every Sunday, that each fresh story in the Pentateuch\nreveals to us something fresh about the character of God.  What does\nBalaam's story reveal?  Balaam himself tells us in the text, 'God is\nnot a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should\nrepent.  Hath he said, and shall he not do it?'\n\nYes.  Fancy not that any wishes or prayers of yours can persuade God\nto alter his everlasting laws of right and wrong.  If he has\ncommanded a thing, he has commanded it because it is according to\nhis everlasting laws, which cannot change, because they are made in\nhis eternal image and likeness.  Therefore if God has commanded you\na thing, DO IT heartily, fully, without arguing or complaining.  If\nyou begin arguing with God's law, excusing yourself from it,\ninventing reasons why YOU need not obey it in this particular\ninstance, though every one else ought, then you will end, like\nBalaam, in disobeying the law, and it will grind you to powder.\n\nBut if you obey God's law honestly, with a single eye and a whole\nheart, you will find in it a blessing, and peace, and strength, and\neverlasting life.\n\n\n\nSERMON XV.  DEUTERONOMY\n\n\n\n(Third Sunday after Easter.)\n\nDeut. iv. 39, 40.  Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine\nheart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth\nbeneath:  there is none else.  Thou shall keep therefore his\nstatutes and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that\nit may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that\nthou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God\ngiveth thee, for ever.\n\nLearned men have argued much of late as to who wrote the book of\nDeuteronomy.  After having read a good deal on the subject, I can\nonly say that I see no reason why we should not believe the ancient\naccount which the Jews give, that it was written, or at least spoken\nby Moses.\n\nNo doubt there are difficulties in the book.  If there had not been,\nthere would never have been any dispute about the matter; but the\nplain, broad, common-sense case is this:\n\nThe book of Deuteronomy is made up of several great orations or\nsermons, delivered, says the work itself, by Moses, to the whole\npeople of the Jews, before they left the wilderness and entered into\nthe land of Canaan; wherefore it is called Deuteronomy, or the\nsecond law.  In it some small matters of the law are altered, as was\nto be expected, when the Jews were going to change their place and\ntheir whole way of life.  But the whole teaching and meaning of the\nbook is exactly that of Exodus and Leviticus.  Moreover, it is, if\npossible, the grandest and deepest book of the Old Testament.  Its\ndepth and wisdom are unequalled.  I hold it to be the sum and\nsubstance of all political philosophy and morality of the true life\nof a nation.  The books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, grand as\nthey are, are, as it were, its children; growths out of the root\nwhich Deuteronomy reveals.\n\nNow if Moses did not write it, who did?\n\nAs for the style of it being different from that of Exodus and\nLeviticus, the simple answer is, Why not?  They are books of history\nand of laws.  This is a book of sermons or orations, spoken first,\nand not written, which, of course, would be in a different style.\nBesides, why should not Moses have spoken differently at the end of\nforty years' such experience as never man had before or since?\nEvery one who thinks, writes, or speaks in public, knows how his\nstyle alters, as fresh knowledge and experience come to him.  Are\nyou to suppose that Moses gained nothing by HIS experience?\n\nAs for a few texts in it being like Isaiah or Jeremiah, they are\nlikely enough to be so; for if (as I believe) Deuteronomy was\nwritten long before those books, what more likely than that Isaiah\nand Jeremiah should have studied it, and taken some of its words to\nthemselves when they were preaching to the Jews just what\nDeuteronomy preaches?\n\nAs for any one else having written it in Moses' name, hundreds of\nyears after his death, I cannot believe it.  If there had been in\nIsrael a prophet great and wise enough to write Deuteronomy, we must\nhave heard more about him, for he must have been famous at the time\nwhen he did live; while, if he were great enough to write\nDeuteronomy, he would have surely written in his own name, as Isaiah\nand all the other prophets wrote, instead of writing under a feigned\nname, and putting words into Moses' mouth which he did not speak,\nand laws he did not give.  Good men are not in the habit of telling\nlies:  much less prophets of God.  Men do not begin to play cowardly\ntricks of that kind till after they have lost faith in the LIVING\nGod, and got to believe that God was with their forefathers, but is\nnot with them.  A Jew of the time of the Apocrypha, or of the time\nof our Lord, might have done such a thing, because he had lost faith\nin the living God; but then his work would have been of a very\ndifferent kind from this noble and heart-stirring book.  For the\npith and marrow, the essence and life of Deuteronomy is, that it is\nfull of faith in the living God; and for that very reason I am going\nto speak to you to-day.\n\nFor the rest, whether Moses wrote the book down, and put it together\nin the shape in which we now have it, we shall never be able to\ntell.  The several orations may have been put together into one\nbook.  Alterations may have crept in by the carelessness of copiers;\nsentences may have been added to it by later prophets--as, of\ncourse, the grand account of Moses' death, which probably was at\nfirst the beginning of the book of Joshua.  And beyond that we need\nknow nothing--even if we need know that.\n\nThere the book is; and people, if they be wise, will, instead of\ntrying to pick it to pieces, read and study it in fear and\ntrembling, that the curses pronounced in it may NOT come, and the\nblessings pronounced in it may come upon this English land.\n\nNow these Jews were to worship and obey Jehovah, the one true God,\nand him only.  And why?\n\nWhy, indeed?  You MUST understand why, or you will never understand\nthis book of Deuteronomy or any part of the Old Testament, and if\nyou do not, then you will understand very little, if anything, of\nthe New.\n\nYou must understand that this was not to be a mere matter of\nRELIGION with the old Jews, this trusting and obeying the true God.\nIndeed, the word religion, so far as I know, is never mentioned once\nin the Old Testament at all.  By religion we now mean some plan of\nbelieving and obeying God, which will save our souls after we die.\nBut Moses said nothing to the Jews about that.  He never even\nanywhere told them that they would live again after this life.  We\ndo not know the reason of that.  But we may suppose that he knew\nbest.  And as we believe that God sent him, we must believe that God\nknew best also; and that he thought it good for these Jews not to be\ntold too much about the next life; perhaps for fear that they should\nforget that God was the living God; the God of now, as well as of\nhereafter; the God of this life, as well as of the life to come.  My\nfriends, I sometimes think we need putting in mind of that in these\ndays as much as those old Jews did.\n\nHowever that may be, what Moses promised these Jews, if they trusted\nin the living God, was that they should be a great nation, they and\ntheir children after them; that they should drive out the Canaanites\nbefore them; that they should conquer their enemies, and that a\nthousand should flee before one of them; that they should be blessed\nin their crops, their orchards, their gardens; that they should have\nnone of the evil diseases of Egypt; that there should be none barren\namong them, or among their cattle.  In a word, that they should be\nthoroughly and always a strong, happy, prosperous people.\n\nThis is what God promised them by Moses, and nothing else; and\ntherefore this is what we must think about, and see whether it has\nanything to do with us, when we read the book of Deuteronomy, and\nnothing else.\n\nOn the other hand, God warned them by the mouth of Moses that if\nthey forgot the Lord God, and went and worshipped the things round\nthem, men or beasts, or sun and moon and stars, then poverty,\nmisery, and ruin of every kind would surely fall upon them.\n\nAnd that this last was no empty threat is proved by the plain facts\nof their sacred history.  For they DID forget God, and worshipped\nBaalim, the sun, moon, and stars; and ruin of every kind DID come\nupon them, till they were carried away captive to Babylon.  And this\nwe must think of when we read the book of Deuteronomy, and nothing\nelse.  If they wished to prosper, they were to know and consider in\ntheir hearts that Jehovah was God, and there was none else.  Yes--\nthis was the continual thought which a true Jew was to have.  The\nthought of a God who was HIS God; the God of his fathers before him,\nand the God of his children after him; the God of the whole nation\nof the Jews, throughout all their generations.\n\nBut not their God only.  No.  The God of the Gentiles also, of all\nthe nations upon the earth.  He was to believe that his God alone,\nof all the gods of the nations, was the true and only God, who had\nmade all nations, and appointed them their times and the bounds of\ntheir habitations.\n\nWe cannot understand now, in these happier days, all that that\nmeant; all the strength and comfort, all the godly fear, the feeling\nof solemn responsibility which that thought ought to have given, and\ndid give to the Jews--that they were the people of Jehovah, the one\ntrue God.\n\nFor you must remember that all the nations round them then, and all\nthe great heathen nations afterwards, were, as far as we know, the\npeople of some god or other.  Religion and politics were with them\none and the same thing.  They had some god, or gods, whom they\nlooked to as the head or king of their nation, who had a special\nfavour to them, and would bless and prosper them according as they\nshowed him special reverence, and after that god the whole nation\nwas often named.\n\nThe Ammonites' god was Ammon, the hidden god, the lord of their\nsheep and cattle.  The Zidonians had Ashtoreth, the moon.  The\nPhoenicians worshipped Moloch, the fire.  Many of the Canaanites\nworshipped Baal, the lord, or Baalim, the lords--the sun, moon, and\nstars.  The Philistines afterwards (for we read nothing of\nPhilistines in Moses' time) worshipped Dagon, the fish-god, and so\nforth.  The Egyptians had gods without number--gods invented out of\nbeasts, and birds, and the fruits of the earth, and the season, and\nthe weather, and the sun and moon and stars.  Each class and trade,\nfrom the highest to the lowest, and each city and town throughout\nthe land seems to have had its special god, who was worshipped\nthere, and expected to take care of that particular class of men or\nthat particular place.\n\nWhat a thought it must have been for the Jews--all these people have\ntheir gods, but they are all wrong.  We have the RIGHT God; the only\ntrue God.  They are the people of this god, or of that; we are the\npeople of the one true God.  They look to many gods; we look to the\none God, who made all things, and beside whom there is none else.\nThey look to one god to bless them in one thing, and another in\nanother; one to send them sunshine, one to send them fruitful\nseasons, one to prosper their crops, another their flocks and herds,\nand so forth.  We look to one God to do all these things for us,\nbecause he is Lord of all at once, and has made all.\n\nTherefore we need not fear the gods of the heathen, or cry to any of\nthem, even in our utmost distress; for we belong to him who is\nbefore all gods, the God of gods, of whom it is written, 'Worship\nhim, all ye gods;' and 'It is the Lord who made the heaven and the\nearth, the sea and all that therein is.  Him only shalt thou\nworship, and him only shalt thou serve.'  If we obey him, and keep\nhis commandments; if we trust in him, utterly, through good fortune\nand through bad--then we must prosper in peace and war, we and our\nchildren after us; because our prosperity is grounded on the real\ntruth, and that of the heathen on a lie; and all that the heathen\nexpect their false gods to do for them, one here and another there,\nall that, the one real God will do for us, himself alone.\n\nDo you not see what a power and courage that thought must have given\nto the Jews?  Do you not see how worshipping God, and loving God,\nand serving God, must have been a very different, a much deeper, and\na truly holier matter to them than the miserable selfish thing which\nis miscalled religion by too many people now-a-days, by which a man\nhopes to creep out of this world into heaven all by himself, without\nany real care or love for his fellow-creatures, or those he leaves\nbehind him?\n\nNo.  An old Jew's faith in God, and obedience to God, was part of\nhis family life, part of his politics, part of his patriotism.  If\nhe obeyed God, and clave earnestly to God, then a blessing would\ncome on him in the field and in the house, on his crops and on his\ncattle, going out and coming in; and on his children and his\nchildren's children to a thousand generations.  He would be helping,\nif he obeyed and trusted God, to advance his country's prosperity;\nto insure her success in war and peace, to raise the name and fame\nof the Jewish people among all the nations round, that all might\nsay, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and an understanding\npeople.'\n\nThus the duty he owed to God was not merely a duty which he owed his\nown conscience or his own soul; it was a duty which he owed to his\nfamily, to his kindred, to his country.  It was not merely an\nopinion that there was one God and not two; it was a belief that the\none and only true God was protecting him, teaching him, inspiring\nhim and all his nation.  That the true God would teach their hands\nto war and their fingers to fight.  That the true God would cause\ntheir folds to be full of sheep.  That their valleys should stand\nrich with corn, that they should laugh and sing.  That the true God\nwould enable them to sit every man under his own vine and his own\nfig-tree, and eat the labour of his hands, he and his children after\nhim to perpetual generations.\n\nThis was the message and teaching which God gave these Jews.  It is\nvery different from what many people now-a-days would have given\nthem, if they had had the ordering of the matter, and the making of\nthose slaves into a free nation.  But perhaps there is one proof\nthat God DID give it them, and that the Bible speaks truth, when it\nsays that not man, but God gave them their law.\n\nNo doubt man would have done it differently.  But God's ways are not\nas man's ways, nor God's thoughts as man's thoughts.\n\nAnd God's ways have proved themselves to be the right ways.  His\npurpose has come to pass.  This little nation of the Jews,\ninhabiting a country not as large as Wales, without sea-port towns\nand commerce, without colonies or conquests--and at last, for its\nown sins, conquered itself, and scattered abroad over the whole\ncivilized world--has taught the whole civilized world, has converted\nthe whole civilized world, has influenced all the good and all the\nwise unto this day so enormously, that the world has actually gone\nbeyond them, and become Christian by fully understanding their\nteaching and their Bible, while they have remained mere Jews by not\nfully understanding it.  Truly, if that is not a proof that God\nrevealed something to the Jews which they never found out for\nthemselves, which was too great for them to understand, which was\nGod's boundless message and not any narrow message of man's\ninvention--if that does not prove it, I say--I know not what proof\nmen would have.\n\nBut now I have told you that God bade these Jews to look for\nblessings in THIS life, and blessings on their whole nation, and on\ntheir children after them, if they obeyed and served him.  Does God\nNOT bid us to look for any such blessings?  The Jews were to be\nblessed in THIS world.  Are we only to be blessed in the next?\n\nTo that the Seventh Article of our Church gives a plain and positive\nanswer.  For it says that those are not to be heard who pretend that\nthe old Fathers, i.e. Moses and the Prophets, looked only for\ntransitory promises--i.e. for promises which would pass away.  No.\nThey looked for eternal promises which could not pass away, because\nthey were according to the eternal laws of God, which stand good\nboth for this world and for all worlds for this life and for the\nlife everlasting.\n\nYes, my friends, settle in your hearts that the book of Deuteronomy\nis meant for you, and for all the nations upon earth, as much as for\nthe old Jews.  That its promises and warnings are to you and to your\nchildren as surely as they were to the old Jews.  Ay, that they are\nmeant for every nation that is, or ever was, or ever will be upon\nearth.  If you would prosper on the earth, fear God and keep his\ncommandments; and know and consider it in your heart that the Lord\nJesus Christ he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath:\nthere is none else.  He it is who gives grace and honour.  He it is\nwho delivers us out of the hands of our enemies.  He it is who\nblesses the fruit of the womb, and the fruit of the flock, and the\nfruit of the garden and the field.  He is the living God, in whom\nthis world, as well as the world to come, lives and moves and has\nits being; and only by obeying his laws can man prosper, he and his\nchildren after him, upon this earth of God.\n\n\n\nSERMON XVI.  NATIONAL WEALTH\n\n\n\n(Fifth Sunday after Easter.)\n\nDeut. viii. 11-18.  Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in\nnot keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes,\nwhich I command thee this day:  lest when thou hast eaten and art\nfull, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy\nherds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is\nmultiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart\nbe lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee\nforth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led\nthee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery\nserpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who\nbrought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in\nthe wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might\nhumble thee and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy\nlatter end:  and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of\nmine hand hath gotten me this wealth.  But thou shall remember the\nLord thy God:  for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth,\nthat he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers,\nas it is this day.\n\nI told you before that the book of Deuteronomy was the foundation of\nall sound politics--as one would expect it to be, if its author were\nMoses, the greatest lawgiver whom the world ever saw.  But here, in\nthis lesson, is a proof of the truth of what I said.  For here, in\nthe text, is Moses' answer to the first great question in politics,\nWhat makes a nation prosperous?\n\nTo that wise men have always answered, as Moses answered, 'Good\ngovernment; government according to the laws of God.'  That alone\nmakes a nation prosperous.\n\nBut the multitude--who are not wise men, nor likely to be for some\ntime to come--give a different answer.  They say, 'What makes a\nnation prosperous is its wealth.  If Britain be only RICH, then she\nmust be safe and right.'\n\nTo which Moses, being a wise lawgiver, and having, moreover, in him\nthe Spirit of the Lord who knoweth what is in man, makes a\nreasonable, liberal, humane answer.\n\nMoses does not deny that wealth is a good thing.  He does not bid\nthem not try to be rich.  He takes for granted that they will grow\nrich; that the national fruit of their good government will be that\nthey will increase in cattle and in crops and in money, and in all\nwhich makes an agricultural people rich.\n\nHe takes for granted, I say, that these Jews will grow very rich;\nbut he warns them that their riches, like all other earthly things,\nmay be a curse or a blessing to them.  Nay, that they are not good\nin themselves, but mere tools which may be used for good or for\nevil.  He warns them of a very great danger that riches will bring\non them.  And herein he shows his knowledge of the human heart; for\nit is a certain fact that whenever any nation has prospered, and\ntheir flocks and herds, and silver and gold, all that they had, have\nmultiplied, then they have, as Moses warned the Jews, forgotten the\nLord their God, and said, 'My power and the might of my hand hath\ngotten me this wealth.'\n\nAnd it is true, also, that whenever any nation has begun to say\nthat, they have fallen into confusion and misery, and sometimes into\nutter ruin, till they repented, and turned and remembered the Lord\ntheir God, and found out that the strength of a nation did not\nconsist in riches, but in VIRTUE.  For it is he that giveth the\npower to get wealth.  He gives it in two ways:  First, God gives the\nraw material; secondly, he gives the wit to use it.\n\nYou will all agree that God gives the first; that he gives the soil,\nthe timber, the fisheries, the coal, the iron.\n\nDo you believe it?  I hope and trust that you do.  But I fear that\nnow-a-days many do not; for they boast of the resources of Britain\nas if we ourselves had made Britain, and not Almighty God; as if we\nhad put the coal and the iron into the rocks, and not Almighty God\nages before we were born.\n\nAnd if they will not say that openly, at least they will say, 'But\nthe coal, and iron, and all other raw material would have been\nuseless, if it had not been for the genius and energy of the British\nrace.'\n\nOf course not.  But who gave them that genius and energy?  Who gave\nthem the wit to find the coal and iron?\n\nGod; and God gave it to us when we needed it, and not before.\n\nThink of this, I beseech you; for it is true, and wonderful, and a\nthing of which I may say, 'Come, and I will reason with you of the\nrighteous acts of the Lord.'\n\nMen say, 'As long as England is ahead of the world in coal and iron\nshe may defy the world.'  I do not believe it; for if she became a\nwicked nation all the coal and iron in the universe would not keep\nher from being ruined.\n\nBut even if it were true, which it is not, that the strength of\nBritain lies in coal and iron, and not in British hearts, what right\nhave we to boast of coal and iron?\n\nDid our forefathers know of them when they came into this land?  Did\nthey come after coal and iron?\n\nNot they.  They came here to settle as small yeomen; to till\nmiserable little patches of corn, of which we should be now ashamed,\nand to feed cattle on the moors, and swine in the forests--and that\nwas all they looked to.  Then they found that there was iron,\nprincipally down south, in Sussex and Surrey; and they worked it,\nclumsily enough, with charcoal; and for more than twelve hundred\nyears they were here in England, with no notion of the boundless\nwealth in iron and coal lying together in the same rocks which God\nhad provided for them; or if they did guess at it, they could not\nuse it, because they could not work deep mines, being unable to pump\nout the water; for God had not opened their eyes and shown them how\nto do it.\n\nBut just when it was wanted, God did show them.  About the middle of\nthe last century the iron in the Weald was all but worked out; the\ncharcoal wood was getting scarcer and scarcer, and there was every\nchance that England, instead of being ahead of all nations in iron,\nwould have fallen behind other nations; and then where should we\nhave been now?\n\nBut, just about one hundred years ago, it pleased God to open the\neyes of certain men, and they invented steam-engines.  Then they\ncould pump the mines, then they could discover and use the vast\nriches of our coal-mines.  Then, too, sprung up a thousand useful\narts and manufactures; while the land, not being wanted for charcoal\nand firewood, as of old, could be cleared of wood, and thousands of\nacres set free to grow corn.  Population, which had been all but\nstanding still, without increasing, has now more than doubled, and\nwealth inestimable has come to this generation, of which our\nforefathers never dreamed.\n\nNow what have we to boast of in that?  What, save to confess\nourselves a very stupid race, who for twelve hundred years could not\ndiscover, or at least use the boundless wealth which God had given\nus, because we had not wit enough to invent so simple a thing as a\nsteam-engine.\n\nAll we should do, instead of boasting, is to bless God that he\nrevealed to us just what we needed, and at the very time at which we\nneeded it, and confess that it is HE that giveth us power to get\nwealth.  It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.\n\nLook again at another case, even more extraordinary, which has\nhappened during our own times--indeed within the last ten years--the\ndiscovery of gold in Australia.\n\nThere had been rumours and whispers of gold for years before; and\nyet no one looked for gold, cared for it, hardly believed in it.\nGod had dulled their understanding and blinded their eyes for some\ngood purpose of his own.  That is what the Bible would have said of\nsuch a matter, and that is what we should say.\n\nAnd at last some man finds lying out upon the downs a huge lump of\ngold--by accident (as men call it; by the special providence of God,\nas they ought to call it); and at that every one starts up and\nawakes, and begins looking for gold.  And now that their eyes are\nopened, behold! the gold is everywhere.  Not merely in lonely\nforests and unexplored mountains, but on farms where the sheep have\nbeen pastured for years past; ay, even Melbourne streets were full\nof gold, under the feet of the passengers and the wheels of the\ncarriages; there had the gold been all along, but men could not see\nit till God opened their eyes.  Verily, verily, God is great, and\nman is small.  I do not say that this was a miracle in the common\nmeaning of the word; but I do say that this was a striking instance\nof that everlasting and special providence of the living God, who\nordereth all things in heaven and earth, from the rise of a nation\nto the fall of a sparrow; and does so, not by breaking his own laws,\nbut by making his laws work exactly as he will, when he will, and\nwhere he will; and I say that it is a fresh proof of the great\nsaying, that no man can see a thing unless God shows it to him.  For\nit is the Lord who gives us power to get wealth.  It is he that hath\nmade us, and not we ourselves; and in him we live and move, and have\nour being.\n\nThis, then, was what Moses commanded--to remember that they owed all\nto God.  What they had, they had of God's free gift.  What they\nwere, they were by God's free grace.  Therefore they were not to\nboast of themselves, their numbers, their wealth, their armies,\ntheir fair and fertile land.  They were to make their boast of God,\nand of God's goodness.\n\nHe that gloried was to glory in the Lord, and confess that a Syrian\nready to perish was their father Jacob, when the Lord had mercy on\nhim, and made him the head of a great tribe, and the father of a\ngreat nation; that not themselves, but God had brought them out of\nEgypt with signs and wonders; that they got not the land in\npossession by their own bow, neither was it their own sword that\nhelped them, but that God had driven out before them nations greater\nand mightier than they.\n\nThis they were to remember, because it was true.  And this we are to\nremember, because it is more or less true of us.  God has put us\nwhere we are.  God has made of us a great nation; God has discovered\nto us the immense riches of this land.  It is he that hath made us,\nand not we ourselves.\n\nBut more.  You will see that Moses warns them that if they forget\nGod, the Lord who brought them out of the land of Egypt, they would\ngo after other gods.\n\nHe cannot part the two things.  If they forget that God brought them\nout of Egypt, they will turn to idolatry, and so end in ruin.\n\nNow why was this?\n\nWhy should not the Jews have gone on worshipping one God, even if\nthey had forgotten that he brought them out of the land of Egypt?\n\nSome people now-a-days think that they would, and that they might\nhave very well been what is called Monotheists, without believing\nall the story of the signs and wonders in Egypt, and the passage of\nthe Red Sea, and the giving of the law to Moses.\n\nSuch men may be very learned; but there is one thing of which they\nknow very little, and that is, human nature.  Moses knew human\nnature; and he knew that if men forgot that God was the living God,\nthe acting God, who had helped them once, and was helping them\nalways, and only believed about there being one God far away in\nheaven, and not two, that THAT sort of dead faith in a dead God\nwould never keep them from idols.  They would want gods who WOULD\nhelp them, who WOULD hear their prayers, to whom they could feel\ngratitude and trust; and they would invent them for themselves, and\nbegin to worship things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath,\nbecause they had forgotten their true friend and helper, the living\nGod.\n\nAnd so shall we.  If we forget that God is the living God, who\nbrought our forefathers into this land; who has revealed to us the\nwealth of it step by step, as we needed it; who is helping and\nblessing us now, every day and all the year round--then we shall\nbegin worshipping other gods.\n\nI do not mean that we shall worship idols, though I do not see why\nour children's children should not do so a few hundred years hence\nif we teach them to forget the living God.  There are too many\nChristians at this day who worship saints, and idols of wood and\nstone; and so may our descendants do--or do even worse.\n\nBut we ourselves shall begin--indeed we are doing it too much\nalready--worshipping the so-called laws of nature, instead of God\nwho made the laws, and so honouring the creature above the creator;\nor else we shall worship the pomps and vanities of this world, pride\nand power, money and pleasure, and say in our hearts, 'These are our\nonly gods which can help us--these must we obey.'  Which if we do,\nthis land of England will come to ruin and shame, as surely as did\nthe land of Israel in old time.\n\nIf we do not believe in the living God, we shall believe in\nsomething worse than even a dead god.\n\nFor in a dead god--a god who does nothing, but lets mankind and the\nworld go their own way--no man nor nation ever will care to believe.\n\nAnd now, nay dear friends, remember that a nation is, after all,\nonly the people in that nation:  you, and I, and our neighbours, and\nour neighbours' neighbours, and so forth; and that therefore, in as\nfar as we are wrong, we do our worst to make the British nation\nwrong.  If we give way to ungodly pride and self-sufficiency, then\nwe are injuring ourselves; and not only that, but injuring our\nneighbours and our children after us, as far as we can.  And\ntherefore our duty is, if we wish well to our nation, not to judge\nour neighbour, nor our neighbour's neighbour, but to judge\nourselves.\n\nIf we go on trusting in ourselves rather than God; if we keep within\nus the hard self-sufficient spirit, and boast to ourselves (though\nwe may be ashamed to boast to our neighbours), 'My power and the\nstrength of my hands have got me this and that;' and in fact live\nunder the notion, which too many have, that we could do very well\nwithout God's help if God would let us alone--then we are heaping up\nruin and shame for ourselves and for our children after us.  Ruin\nand shame, I say.  We are apt to forget how easy and common it is\nfor God to turn the wisdom of men into folly; to frustrate the\ntokens of the liars, and make the prophets mad.  How men blow great\nbubbles, and God bursts them with the slightest touch.  How, when\nall seems well, and men cry peace and safety, sudden destruction\ncomes upon them unawares.  How, when men say, 'Soul, take thine\nease, eat, drink, and be merry; thou hast much goods laid up for\nmany years,' God answers, 'Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be\nrequired of thee.'\n\nMy friends, we see God doing thus in these very days by great\nnations, by great branches of industry.  Look at the American war,\nlook at the Manchester cotton famine, and see how God can confound\nthe strong and cunning, and blind their eyes to the ruin which is\ncoming till it is come in all its might.  And then think, If it be\nso easy for him to confound such as them, is it less easy for him to\nconfound you and me, if we begin to fancy that we can do without\nhim, and ask, 'Doth God perceive it?  Or is there knowledge in the\nMost High?  We are they that ought to speak.  Who is Lord over us?'\n\nYes, in this sense God is indeed a jealous God, who will not give\nhis honour to another.  And a blessed thing for men it is that God\nIS a jealous God, that he WILL punish us for trusting in anything\nbut him--will punish us for trusting in ourselves, or in our wisdom,\nor in wealth, or in science, or in armies and navies, or in\nconstitutions and laws; in anything, in short, save the living God.\n\nFor if he left us alone to go our own way without trusting or\nfearing him, we should surely go down and down (as the Chinese seem\nto have gone down), generation after generation, till we became only\na mere cunning and spiteful sort of animals, hateful and hating one\nanother.  But when we are chastened for our folly, we are chastened\nby him that we may be partakers of his holiness; that we may be his\nchildren, looking up to him as our father, from whom comes every\ngood and perfect gift; the Father of Lights, with whom is no\nvariableness or shadow of turning; and who therefore will and can\ngive us, his children, light, more and more to understand those his\ninvariable and eternal laws, by which he has made earth and heaven;\nwho has given us his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and will with him\nlikewise freely give us all things.\n\n\n\nSERMON XVII.  THE GOD OF THE RAIN\n\n\n\n(Fifth Sunday after Easter.)\n\nDEUT. xi.  11, 12.  The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land\nof hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.  A\nland which the Lord thy God careth for:  the eyes of the Lord thy\nGod are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto\nthe end of the year.\n\nI told you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of the Holy Land, that\nit seems as if God had meant specially to train that strange people\nthe Jews, by putting them into a country where they MUST trust him,\nor become cowards and helpless; that so they might learn not to fear\nthe powers of Nature which the heathen worshipped, but to fear him\nthe living God.\n\nIn this chapter is another instance of the same.  They were to be an\nagricultural people.  Their very worship was (if you can understand\nsuch a thing now-a-days) to be agricultural.  Pentecost was a feast\nof the first-fruits of the harvest.  The Feast of Tabernacles was a\ngreat national harvest home.  The Passover itself, though not at\nfirst an agricultural festival, became one by the waving of the\nPaschal sheaf, which gave permission to the people to begin their\nspring-harvest--so thoroughly were they to be an agricultural and\ncattle-feeding people.  They were going into a good land, a land of\nmilk and honey and oil olive; a land of vines and figs and\npomegranates; a rich land; but a most uncertain land--a land which\nmight yield a splendid crop one year, and be almost barren the next.\n\nIt was not as the land of Egypt--a land which was, humanly speaking,\nsure to be fertile, because always supplied with water, brought out\nof the Nile by dykes and channels which spread in a network over\nevery field, and where--as I believe is done now--the labourer\nturned the water from one land to the other simply by moving the\nearth with his foot.\n\nIt was a mountain land, a land of hills and valleys, and drank water\nof the rain of heaven; a land of fountains of water, which required\nto be fed continually by the rain.  In that hot climate it depended\nentirely on God's providence from week to week whether a crop could\ngrow.\n\nTherefore it was a land which the Lord cared for--a land which\nneeded his special help, and it had it.  'The eyes of the Lord God\nwere always upon it, from the beginning of the year unto the end of\nthe year.'\n\nBeautiful, simple, noble, true words--deeper than all the learned\nwords, however true they may be (and true they are, and to be\nlistened to with respect), which men talk about the laws of Nature\nand of weather.  Who would change them for all the scientific\nphrases in the world?  The eyes of the Lord were upon the land.  It\nneeded his care; and therefore his care it had.\n\nTherefore the Jew was to understand from his first entry into the\nland, that his prosperity depended utterly on God.  The laws of\nweather, by which the rain comes up off the sea, were unknown to\nhim.  They are all but unknown to us now.  But they were known to\nGod.  Not a drop could fall without his providence and will; and\ntherefore they were utterly in his power.\n\n'And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my\ncommandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your\nGod, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,\nthat I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the\nfirst rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn,\nand thy wine, and thine oil.  And I will send grass in thy fields\nfor thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.  Take heed to\nyourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside and\nserve other gods, and worship them; and then the Lord's wrath be\nkindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no\nrain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish\nquickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you.'\n\nNow the Bible story is, that this warning came true.  More than once\nwe read of drought--long, and severe, and ruinous.  In one famous\ncase, there was no rain for three years; and Ahab has to go out to\nsearch through the land for a scrap of pasture.  'Peradventure we\nshall find grass enough to save the horses and mules alive.'\n\nAnd most distinctly does the Bible say that these droughts came at\ntimes when the Jews had fallen into idolatry, and profligacy\ntherewith.  That is the Scripture account.  And if you believe in\nthe living God, whose providence ordereth all things in heaven and\nearth, that account will seem reasonable and credible to you.\n\nWhat special means God used to bring about these great droughts we\ncannot know, any more than we can know why a storm or a shower\nshould come one week and not another.  And we need not know.  God\nmade the world, and God governs the world, and that is enough for\nus.\n\nBe that as it may, Moses goes down to the very root and ground and\ntrue cause of the riches of the land, and of the rainfall, and of\nthe prosperity of the Jews, and of the prosperity of any living\nnation on earth, when he says, 'Therefore shall ye lay up these my\nwords in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon\nyour hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.'\n\n'Ye shall lay up these my words in your heart and your soul, and\nteach them your children when thou sittest in thine house and when\nthou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest\nup.'  That is, thou shalt believe continually in a living God--a God\nwho is working everywhere at every moment, about thy path and about\nthy bed, and spying out all thy ways; and not only about thee, but\nabout all that thou seest.  From him comes alike rain and sunshine;\nfrom him comes the life of man; from him comes all which makes it\npossible for man to live upon the earth.\n\nAnd it is a plain fact that the Jews for a long time did believe\nthis--at least the prophets, psalmists and good men among them--to\nthe most intense degree; to a degree in which perhaps no nation has\nbelieved it since.  With them God is everything, and man nothing.\nMan finds out nothing:  God reveals it to him.  Man's intellect does\nnothing:  the Spirit of God gives him understanding to do it--even,\nsays Isaiah, understanding to plough, and to sow, and to reap his\ncrops in due season.  It is the Spirit of God, according to the\nprophets and psalmists, which makes the difference between a man and\na beast.  But upon the beasts too, and the green things of the\nearth, and on all nature, the Spirit of God works.  He is the Lord\nand giver of life.  Take only those four Psalms, the 8th, 18th,\n29th, 104th, and learn from them what the old Jews thought of this\nwonderful world in which we live.\n\n'These all wait upon thee'--all living things by land and sea--'that\nthou mayest give them meat in due season.  When thou givest it them\nthey gather it.  When thou openest thy hand they are filled with\ngood.  When thou hidest thy face they are troubled.  When thou\ntakest away their breath they die, and are turned again to their\ndust.  When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made, and\nthou shalt renew the face of the earth.'\n\nSo again, in the world of man, God is the living Judge, the living\noverlooker, rewarder, punisher of every man, not only in the life to\ncome, but in this life.  His providence is a special providence.\nBut not such a poor special providence as men are too apt to dream\nof now-a-days, which interferes only now and then on some great\noccasion, or on behalf of some very favoured persons, but a special\nprovidence looking after every special act of man, and of the whole\nuniverse, from the fall of a sparrow to the fall of an empire.\n\nAnd it is this intense faith in the living God, which can only come\nby the inspiration of the Spirit of God, which proves the old\nTestament to be truly inspired.  This it is which makes it different\nfrom all books in the world.  This it is, I hold, which marks the\ncanon of Scripture.  For in the Apocrypha--true, noble, and good as\nmost of it is--you do not find the same intense faith in the living\nGod, or anything to be compared therewith; and that for the simple\nreason that the Jews, at the time the Apocrypha was written, were\nlosing that faith very fast.  They felt themselves that there was an\nimmense difference between anything that they could write and what\nthe old psalmists and prophets had written.  They felt that they\ncould not write Scripture.  All they could do was to write\ncommentaries about it, and to carry out in their own fashion Moses'\ncommand, 'Thou shalt bind my words for a sign upon your hands, and\nthey shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and thou shalt write\nthem upon the doorposts of thine house.'  They were right in that;\nbut as they lost faith in the living God, they began to observe the\ncommand in the letter, and neglect it in the spirit.\n\nYou know--some of you, at least--how these words were misused\nafterwards; how the scribes and the Pharisees, in their zeal to\ncarry out the letter of the law, went about with texts of Scripture\non their foreheads, and wrists, and the hems of their robes,\nenlarging their phylacteries, as our Lord said of them.  But all the\ntime they did not understand the texts, or love them, or get any\ngood from them; but only made them excuses for hating and scoffing\nat the rest of the world.  They had them written only on their\nforeheads, not on their hearts--an outside and not an inside\nreligion.  They had lost all faith in the living God.  God had\nspoken, of course, to their forefathers; but they could not believe\nthat he was speaking to them--not even when he spoke by his only\nbegotten Son, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of\nhis person.  God, so they held, had finished his teaching when\nMalachi uttered his last prophecy.  And now it was for them to\nteach, and expound the law at secondhand.  There could be no more\nprophets, no more revelation; and when one came and spoke with\nauthority, at first hand, out of the depth of his own heart, he was\nto be persecuted, stoned, crucified.  No.  They had the key of\nknowledge; and no man could enter in, unless they chose to open the\ndoor.  Nothing new could be true.  John the Baptist came neither\neating nor drinking, and they said, 'He hath a devil.'  The Son of\nMan came eating and drinking, and they said, 'Behold a gluttonous\nman and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.'  And\nmeanwhile the poor, the ignorant, those whose hearts were really in\nearnest, were looking out for a prophet and a deliverer--often going\nafter false prophets, with Theudas and Barcochab, into the\nwilderness; but going, too, to be baptized with the baptism of John,\nand crowding in thousands to hear our Lord preach to them of the\nliving God of whom Moses had preached of old; while the scribes and\nPharisees sat at home, wrapped up in their narrow, shallow book-\ndivinity, and said, 'This people, who knoweth not the law, is\naccursed.'  Nothing new could be true.  It must be put down,\npersecuted down, lest the Romans should come and take away their\nplace and nation.\n\nBut they did not succeed.  Our Lord and his truth, whom they\ncrucified and buried, rose again the third day and conquered; and\nthe Romans came after all, and took away their place and nation.\nAnd so they failed, as all will fail, who will not believe in the\nliving God.\n\nMy friends, all these things were written for our example.  As it\nwas then, so may it be again.\n\nThere may come a time in this land when people shall profess to\nworship the word of God; and yet, like those old scribes, make it of\nnone effect by their own commandments and traditions.  When they\nshall command men, like the scribes, to honour every word and letter\nof the Bible, and yet forbid them to take the Bible simply and\nliterally as it stands, but only their interpretation of the Bible;\nwhen they shall say, with the scribes, 'Nothing new can be true.\nGod taught the Apostles, and therefore he is not teaching us.  God\nworked miracles of old; but whosoever thinks that God is working\nmiracles now is a Pantheist and a blasphemer.  God taught men of old\nthe thing which they knew not; but whosoever dares to say that he\ndoes so now is bringing heresy and false doctrine, and undermining\nthe Christian faith by science falsely so called.'\n\nAnd all because they have lost all faith in the living God--the\never-working, ever-teaching, ever-inspiring, ever-governing God whom\nour Lord Jesus Christ revealed to men; in whom the Apostles, and the\nFathers, and the great middle-age Schoolmen, and the Reformers\nbelieved, and therefore learned more and more, and taught men more\nand more concerning God and the dealings of God, as time went on.\n\nAnd then, when they see ignorant people running after quacks and\nimpostors, spirit-rappers and table-turners, St. Simonians and\nMormons, and false prophets of every kind, they will have nothing to\nsay but 'This people which knoweth not the law is accursed.'  While\nwhen they see anything like new truth, or new teaching from God\nappear, instead of welcoming the light, and going to meet the light,\nand accepting the light, they will say, 'What shall we do?  For all\nmen will believe on him, and then the powers of this world will come\nand take away our station and our order?'  As if Christ could not\ntake better care of his Church for which he died than they can in\nhis stead!  And so they will persecute God's servants, in the name\nof God, and call upon the law to put down by force the men whom they\ncannot put down by reason.\n\nFrom ever falling into that state of stupid lip-belief, and outward\nreligion, and loss of faith in the living God:  Good Lord, deliver\nus.\n\nFrom all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy;\nfrom envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness:  Good Lord,\ndeliver us.\n\nFrom all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart\nand contempt of thy word and commandment:  Good Lord, deliver us.\n\nFor if people ever fall into that frame of mind (as did the scribes\nand Pharisees), and the good Lord do not deliver them from it, it\nwill surely happen to them as it is written in the Bible.\n\nThe powers of this world will come and take away their place, and\ntheir power, and their station:  but meanwhile the truth which they\nthink that they have stifled will rise again, for Christ, who is the\ntruth, will raise it again; and it shall conquer and leaven the\nhearts of men till all be leavened; and while the scribes and\nPharisees shall be cast into the outer darkness of discontented and\nhopeless bigotry, the kingdoms of the world, which they fancied were\nthe devil's dominion, shall become the kingdoms of God and of his\nChrist, and be adopted into that holy and ever-growing Church, of\nwhich it is written, that the gates of hell shall not prevail\nagainst it, for in it is the Spirit of God to lead it into all\ntruth.\n\nTo which blessed end may God bring us, and our children after us.\nAmen.\n\n\n\nSERMON XVIII.  THE DEATH OF MOSES\n\n\n\n(First Sunday after Trinity.)\n\nDEUT. xxxiv. 5, 6.  So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in\nthe land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.  And he buried\nhim in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no\nman knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.\n\nSome might regret that the last three chapters of Deuteronomy are\nnot read among our Sunday lessons.  There was not, however, room for\nthem; and I do not doubt that those who chose our lessons knew\nbetter than I what chapters they ought to choose.  We may, however,\nread them for ourselves, not only in the daily lessons, but as often\nas we choose.  And well worth reading they are.\n\nFor I know of no stronger proof of the truth of the book of\nDeuteronomy, and of the whole Pentateuch, than its ending so\ndifferently from what we should have expected, or indeed wished.  If\nthings went in this world, as they do in novels and fables,\naccording to man's notion of what is right and good, then Moses and\nhis history would have had a very different ending.\n\nAnd if the story of Moses had been of man's invention, we should\nhave heard--I think, from what we know of the fables, 'myths' as\nthey call them now, which nations have invented about themselves,\nand their own early history, we may guess fairly what we should have\nheard--how Moses brought the Jews into the land of Canaan, and\nestablished his laws, and reigned over them, and died in honour and\ngreat glory--if he died at all, and was not taken up into the skies,\nand changed into a star, or into a god; and how he was buried with\ngreat pomp; and how his sepulchre did remain among the Jews until\nthat day; and probably how men worshipped at it, and miracles were\nworked at it, and so forth.\n\nAlso, we should have heard how, as soon as the Israelites came into\nthe land of Canaan, they began forthwith to serve the Lord with all\ntheir heart and soul, as they never did afterwards, and to keep\nMoses' law, while it was yet fresh in their minds, more exactly than\never they did afterwards; and in short, we should have had one of\nthose stories of a 'golden age,' a 'good old time,' a pattern-time\nof early purity and devotion, of which nations and Churches, of all\ntongues and all creeds, have been so ready to dream in their own\ncase; and which they have used, not altogether ill, to rebuke vice\nin their own day, by saying, 'Look how perfect your forefathers\nwere.  Look how you, their unworthy children, have fallen from their\nfaith and their virtue.'\n\nThis, I think, is what we should have been told if the Pentateuch\nhad been the invention of man.  This is exactly what we are NOT\ntold; but, on the contrary, the very opposite.\n\nWhat we are told is disappointing, sad, gloomy, full of dark fears\nand warnings about what the Jews will be and what they will have to\nendure.  But it is far more true to human nature, and to the facts\nwhich we see in the world about us, than any story of a good old\ntime would have been.\n\nThey are still wandering in the land of Moab, when the time draws\nnear when Moses must die.  He is a hundred and twenty years old, but\nhale and vigorous still.  His eye is not dim, nor his natural force\nabated.  But the Lord has told him that his death is near.  He gives\nthe command of the army of Israel to Joshua the son of Nun, and then\nhe speaks his last words.\n\nSongs they are, dark and rugged, like all the higher Hebrew poetry;\nbut, like it, full of the very Spirit of God--the Spirit of wisdom\nand understanding, the Spirit of faith and of the fear of the Lord.\n\nThere are three of these songs which seem to belong to those last\ndays of his.\n\nThe Prayer of Moses the man of God--which is our 90th Psalm, our\nburial Psalm.  We all know the sadness of that Psalm; its weariness,\nas of one who had laboured long, and would fain be at rest; its\nconfession of man's frailty--fading away suddenly like the grass;\nits confession of God's strength, God from everlasting, before the\nmountains were brought forth; its eternal gospel of hope and\ncomfort, that the strength of God takes pity on the weakness of man,\n'Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.'\n\nThen comes the Song of the Rock--the song of which (it seems) the\nLord said to him, 'Write this song, and teach it the children of\nIsrael, that it may be a witness for me against them.'\n\nAnd so Moses writes; and seemingly before all the congregation of\nIsrael, according to the custom of those times, he chants his death-\nsong, the Song of the Rock.  It is such a song as we should expect\nfrom him.  God is the Rock.  He was thinking, it may be, of the\neverlasting rocks of Sinai, where God had appeared to him of old.\nBut God is the true, everlasting Rock, on which all things rest; the\nEternal, the Self-existent, the I Am, whom he was sent to preach to\nmen.  But he is a good and righteous God likewise.  His work is\nperfect.  'A God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is\nhe.'\n\nIn him Moses can trust, but not in the children of Israel; they are\na perverse and crooked generation, who have waxen fat and kicked.\nGod has done all for them, but they will not obey him.  Even in the\nwilderness they have worshipped strange gods, and sacrificed to\ndevils, not to God; and so they will do after Moses is gone; and\nthen on them will come all the curses of which he has so often\nwarned them.  'The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy\nboth the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of\ngray hairs.  O that they were wise, that they understood this, that\nthey would consider their latter end!  How should one chase a\nthousand; and two put ten thousand to flight?'  What a people they\nmight be, and what a future there is before them, if they would but\nbe true to God!  But they will not.  And so Moses' death-song, like\nhis life's wish, ends in disappointment and sadness, and dread of\nthe evils which are coming upon his beloved countrymen.\n\nLastly, he blesses them, tribe by tribe, in strange and grand words,\nsuch as dying men utter, who, looking earnestly across the dark\nriver of death, see further than they ever saw amid the cares and\ntemptations of life.  And he blesses them.  He will say nothing of\nthem but good.  He will speak not of what they will be, but of what\nthey ought to be and can be.  But not in their own strength--only in\nthe strength of God.  Man is to be nothing to the last; and God is\nall in all.\n\n'There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the\nheaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky.  The eternal\nGod is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.\n\n'Happy art thou, O Israel:  who is like unto thee, O people saved by\nthe Lord, the shield of thy help and who is the sword of thy\nexcellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and\nthou shalt tread upon their high places.'\n\nThose are the last words of Moses.  Then he goes up into the\nmountain top, never to return; and the children of Israel are left\nalone with God and their own souls, to obey and prosper, or disobey\nand die.\n\nThe time of their schooling is past, and their schoolmaster is gone\nfor ever.  They are no more to be under a human tutor.  They are\ncome to man's estate and man's responsibility, and they are to work\nout their own fortunes by their own deeds, like every other soul of\nman.\n\nFor Moses himself must not enter into the promised land.  In spite\nof all his faith, his courage, his endurance, his patriotism, he has\nsinned against God, and he must be punished; and punished, too, in\nkind--in the very thing which he will feel most deeply, in being\nshut out from the very happiness on which he has set his heart all\nalong.\n\nHe who has brought the Jews to the edge of the promised land must\nnot have the honour and glory of taking them into it.  He must have\nno honour and glory.  That must be God's alone.  Man must be\nnothing, and God all in all.  Moses must die in faith, not having\nreceived the promises, as many another saint of God has died.\n\nAnd why?  To teach him and the Jews and us that man IS nothing, and\nGod is all in all.\n\nMoses had given way to the very temptation which would beset such a\nman.  He had spoken unadvisedly with his lips, and said, 'Hear now,\nye rebels, or ye fools, must WE bring you water out of this rock?'\nWE, and not God.  He had claimed for himself the power and glory of\nworking miracles.  The miracles, he thought for a moment, were his,\nand not God's.  And it may be that this was not the only time that\nhe had so sinned.  He may naturally have thought that he had some\nspecial power and influence with God.  But be that as it may, the\nJews were trained to believe that the miracles were God's, God's\nimmediate work, and not performed by the wisdom or sanctity or\nsupernatural power of any saint or prophet whatsoever.  Let the Jews\nonce learn to give the honour and glory to Moses, and not to God,\nand the whole of their strange education went for nothing.  Instead\nof worshipping God they would begin to worship saints.  Instead of\ntrusting in God, they would begin to trust in men; whether on earth\nor in heaven matters not.  If Moses was to have the honour and\nglory, the Jews would surely grow into a superstitious, saint-\nworshipping, miracle-mongering people, and come to ruin and slavery\nthereby.  They were to fear God and nought else.  To trust in God\nand nought else.\n\nSo Moses must vanish out of their sight, sadly and mysteriously.\nAll they know of him is, that he is punished for a sin which he\ncommitted long ago, as you and I may be.  All they know of his death\nand burial is, that his body was not left foully to the birds of the\nair and the beasts of the field; for the Lord buried him.  They know\nnot how, and did not need to know.  And we need not know.  Enough\nfor them and for us to know that no dishonour was done to the grand\nold man; that as he died far away on the lonely mountain top without\na child to close his eyes, his last look fixed upon the good land\nand large which lay spread out below, of entering which he had been\ndreaming for forty--it may be for more than forty--years.  Enough\nfor us to know that the kindly earth received his body again into\nher bosom, and that the true Moses--the immortal spirit of the man--\nreturned to God who created him, and inspired him, and sustained him\nto be perhaps the greatest man--save One who was more than man--who\never trod this earth.\n\nSo our human feelings, like those of the Jews, are satisfied.  But\nMoses is not to be worshipped by them or by us; no splendid temple\nis to rise over his bones; no lamps are to burn, or priest to chant\nround his shrine; no miracles are to be worked by his relics; no man\nis to invoke his patronage and intercession in their prayers.  The\npeople whom he has brought out of Egypt are to be free--free from\nthe slavery of the body, free from the more degrading slavery of the\nsoul.\n\nAnd so they go on over Jordan to fulfil their strange destiny, to\nfight their way into the promised land, to root out the Canaanite\ntribes, whose iniquity was full, whose sins had made them a nuisance\nnot to be suffered on the earth of God.  But do they go to establish\na golden age; to become a perfect people?\n\nNothing less.  To become, according to the book of Judges, just what\nMoses foretold--an ignorant, selfish, often profligate and\ndisorderly people, doing each what is right in his own eyes, falling\ncontinually into idolatry, civil war, and slavery to the heathens\nround about.  Nothing more shows the truth of this history than its\nhumility, its continual confession of sin, its readiness to confess\nthe ugly truth that the Jews are a foolish, ignorant, unmanageable,\nlawless, sensual race, stiffnecked and rebellious, always resisting\nthe Holy Spirit.  The immense difference between the Old Testament\nhistory and that of all other nations is, that it is a history not\nof their virtues, but of their sins; and a history, on the other\nhand, of God's punishments and mercies.  God in the Old Testament is\nall, and the Jews are nothing; and one may say that it differs from\nall other histories in this, that it is not a history of the Jews\nthemselves at all, but a history of God's dealings with them.\n\nIf any man chooses to explain that, by saying that the story was all\ninvented by priests and prophets afterwards, to rebuke the people\nfor falling into idolatry, he must have his fancy.  Thought is free-\n-for the present, at least--though it is written that for every idle\nword that men speak, they shall give account at the day of judgment.\nBut one question I must ask, and I am sure that British common sense\nand British honesty will ask it too:  If these prophets were really\ngood men, fearing God, and wishing to make their countrymen fear him\nlikewise, would it not have been a rather strange way of showing\nthat they feared God to tell their countrymen a set of fables and\nlies?  Good men are not in the habit of telling lies now, and never\nhave been; for no lie is of the truth, or can possibly help the\ntruth in any way; and all liars have their portion in the lake which\nburneth with fire and brimstone.  And that such men as the prophets\nof whom we read in the Old Testament did not know that, and\ntherefore invented this history, or invented anything else, is a\nthing incredible and absurd.\n\nHere we have the Old Testament, an infinitely good book, giving us\ninfinitely good advice and good news, and news too concerning God--\nGod's laws, God's providence, God's dealings, such as we get nowhere\nelse.  And shall we believe that this infinitely good book is\nfounded upon falsehood? or that the good men who wrote it could\nfancy it necessary to stoop to falsehood, and take the devil's tools\nwherewith to do God's work?  That they may have been imperfectly\ninformed on some points there is no doubt; for the Bible tells us\nthat they were men of like passions with ourselves, and they may not\nalways have been true to the Spirit of God who was teaching them,\neven as we are not, though he teaches us.  They only knew in part\nand prophesied in part; and now that which is perfect is come, that\nwhich is in part is done away; the mystery of Christ was not\nrevealed to them as it has been to us by the holy apostles and\nprophets of the new dispensation, of which St. Paul says, comparing\nit with the knowledge which the old Jews had when the gospel came,\nThat the glory of the law had no glory, by reason of the more\nexcellent glory of the gospel.  They may, I say, have made slight\nerrors in unimportant matters, though it is far more probable that\nthose errors have crept into the text, as the Scriptures were copied\nagain and again through many centuries by different scribes, of\nwhose perfect good sense and honesty we cannot be certain.  But who\nthat really values his Bible cares for them any more than he cares\nfor the spots on the sun which he can find through a telescope?  The\nsun still shines, and gives light to the whole earth, and the Bible\nstill shines, and gives light to every soul of man who will read it\nin reverence and faith.  But that the prophets ever invented, or\never dared to tamper with truth, is a thing not to be believed of\nmen whose writings are plainly, by their own meaning and end,\ninspired by the Holy Spirit of God.\n\nOne more reason--and a reason which to me is unanswerable--for\nbelieving, like our forefathers, that the Old Testament is true.\nThe Old Testament, as well as the New, tells us of the 'noble acts'\nof the Lord--of certain gracious and merciful and just things which\nthe Lord did to the children of Israel.  But if that be not true,\nwhat follows?  That God has not done the noble acts which men\nthought he had, and therefore that God is not as noble as men\nthought he was; that men have actually fancied for themselves a\nbetter God than the God who exists already.\n\nAbsurd.\n\nAbsurd, truly; and if you choose to call it by a harder name still,\nyou have a right to do so.\n\nDo not you think that God must be better, not worse; more generous,\nnot less; more condescending, not less; more just, not less; more\nhelpful, not less, than man can fancy or describe?  Are not the\nriches of Christ unsearchable, and the mercies of the Lord\nboundless?  Is he not able and willing to do exceeding abundantly\nbeyond all that we can ask or think?  Did not even St. Paul say that\nhe only knew in part and prophesied in part?  And must it not be\ntrue of the whole Bible what the beloved apostle St. John says of\nhis own Gospel, 'And there are many other things which Jesus did,\nthe which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even\nthe world itself could not contain the books that should be\nwritten?'\n\nBear that in mind, remembering always that the God of the Old\nTestament is the God of the New likewise; and whenever you read,\neither in the Old or New Testament, of the noble acts of the Lord,\nsay boldly, as millions of hearts have said already, when the good\nnews of the Bible came to them, 'This is so beautiful that it must\nbe true.  The Spirit of God in the Bible, and the judgment of the\nChurch in all ages, bears witness with my spirit that this is true.\nSo ought God to have done, and therefore surely so hath God done.\nShall not the Judge of all the earth do RIGHT?'\n\n\n\nFootnotes:\n\n{0a}  Evidences, Part III.  Cap. iii.\n\n{0b}  Lectures on the Jewish Church, Lect. xviii. p. 401.\n\n{7}  I must say that all attempts to put a later date on these books\nseems to me to fail simply from want of evidence.  I must say, also,\nthat all attempts to distinguish between 'Jehovistic' and\n'Elohistic' documents (with the exception, perhaps, of the first\nchapter of Genesis) seem to me to fail likewise; and that the theory\nof an Elohistic and a Jehovistic sect has received its reductionem\nad absurdum in a certain recent criticism of the Psalms.","title":"The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A Set of Parish Sermons","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":56206}