SERMON IX. GOOD FRIDAY
Eversley, 1856.
St. Luke xxiv. 5, 6. "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen."
This is a very solemn day; for on this day the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. The question for us is, how ought we to keep it? that is, what sort of thoughts ought to be in our minds upon this day? Now, many most excellent and pious persons, and most pious books, seem to think that we ought to-day to think as much as possible of the sufferings of our Blessed Lord; and because we cannot, of course, understand or imagine the sufferings of His Spirit, to think of what we can, that is, His bodily sufferings. They, therefore, seem to wish to fill our minds with the most painful pictures of agony, and shame, and death, and sorrow; and not only with our Lord"s sorrows, but with those of His Blessed Mother, and of the disciples, and the holy women who stood by His cross; they wish to stir us up to pity and horror, and to bring before us the saddest parts of Holy Scripture, such as the Lamentations of Jeremiah; as well as dwell at great length upon very painful details, which may be all quite true, but of which Scripture says nothing; as so to make this day a day of darkness, and sorrow, and horror, just such as it would have been to us if we had stood by Christ"s cross, like these holy women, without expecting Him to rise again, and believing that all was over--that all hope of Israel"s being redeemed was gone, and that the wicked Jews had really conquered that perfectly good, and admirable Saviour, and put Him out of the world for ever.
Now, I judge no man; to his own master he standeth or falleth; yea, and he shall stand, for G.o.d is able to make him stand. But it does seem to me that these good people are seeking the living among the dead, and forgetting that Christ is neither on the cross nor in the tomb, but that He is risen; and it seems to me better to bid you follow to-day the Bible and the Church Service, and to think of what they tell you to think of.
Now the Bible, it is most remarkable, never enlarges anywhere upon even the bodily sufferings of our dear and blessed Lord. The evangelists keep a silence on that point which is most lofty, dignified, and delicate.
What sad and dreadful things might not St. John, the beloved apostle as he was, have said, if he had chosen, about what he saw and what he felt, as he stood by that cross on Calvary--words which would have stirred to pity the most cruel, and drawn tears from a heart of stone? And yet all he says is, "They crucified Him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst." He pa.s.ses it over, as it were, as a thing which he ought not to dwell on; and why should we put words into St.
John"s mouth which he did not think fit to put into his own? He wrote by the Spirit of G.o.d; and therefore he knew best what to say, and what not to say. Why should we try and say anything more for him? Scripture is perfect. Let us be content with it. The apostles, too, in their Epistles, never dwell on Christ"s sufferings. I entreat you to remark this. They never mention His death except in words of cheerfulness and triumph. They seem so full of the glorious fruits of His death, that they have, as it were, no time to speak of the death itself. "Who, for the joy which was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d." That is the apostles" key-note. For G.o.d"s sake let it be ours too, unless we fancy that we can improve on Scripture, or that we can feel more for our Lord than St. Paul did. In the Lessons, the Psalms, the Epistle, and Gospel for this day, you find just the same spirit. All except one Psalm are songs of hope, joy, deliverance, triumph. The Collects for this day, which are particularly remarkable, being three in number, and evidently meant to teach us the key-note of Good Friday, make no mention of our Lord"s sufferings, save to say that He was CONTENTED, "contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross," but are full of prayers that the glorious fruits of His death may be fulfilled, not only in us and all Christians, but in the very heathen who have not known Him; drawing us away, as it were, from looking too closely upon the cross itself, lest we should forget what the cross meant, what the cross conquered, what the cross gained, for us and mankind.
Surely, this was not done without a reason. And I cannot but think the reason was to keep us from seeking the living among the dead; to keep us from knowing Christ any longer after the flesh, and spending tears and emotions over His bodily sufferings; to keep us from thinking and sorrowing too much over the dead Christ, lest we should forget, as some do, that He is alive for evermore; and while they weep over the dead Christ or the crucifix, go to the blessed Virgin and the saints to do for them all that the living Christ is longing to do for them, if they would but go straight to Him to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; whom St John saw, no longer hanging on the accursed tree, but with His hair as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire, and His voice like the sound of many waters, and His countenance as the sun when he shineth in his strength, saying unto him, "Fear not, I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore." This is what Christ is now. In this shape He is looking at us now. In this shape He is hearing me speak. In this shape He is watching every feeling of your hearts, discerning your most secret intents, seeing through and through the thoughts which you would confess to no human being, hardly even to yourselves. This is He, a living Christ, an almighty Christ, an all-seeing Christ, and yet a most patient and loving Christ. He needs not our pity; but our grat.i.tude, our obedience, our worship. Why seek Him among the dead? He is not there, He is risen! He is not there, He is here! Bow yourselves before Him now; for He is in the midst of you; and those eyes of His, more piercing than the mid-day sunbeams, are upon you, and your hearts, and your thoughts, and upon mine also. G.o.d have mercy upon me a sinner.
Yes, my friends, why seek the living among the dead? He is not there, but here. We may try to put ourselves in the place of the disciples and the Virgin Mary, as they stood by Jesus" cross; but we cannot do it, for they saw Him on the cross, and thought that He was lost to them for ever; they saw Him die, and gave up all hope of His rising again. And we know that Christ is not lost to us for ever. We know Christ is not on the cross, but at the right hand of G.o.d in bliss and glory unspeakable. We may be told to watch with the three Maries at the tomb of Christ: but we cannot do as they did, for they thought that all was over, and brought sweet spices to embalm His body, which they thought was in the tomb; and we know that all was not over, that His body is not in the tomb, that the grave could not hold Him, that His body is ascended into heaven; that instead of His body needing spices to embalm it, it is His body which embalms all heaven and earth, and is the very life of the world, and food which preserves our souls and bodies to everlasting life. We are not in the place of those blessed women; G.o.d has not put us in their place, and we cannot put ourselves into their place; and if we could and did, by any imaginations of our own, we should only tell ourselves a lie. Good Friday was to them indeed a day of darkness, horror, disappointment, all but despair; because Easter Day had not yet come, and Christ had not yet risen. But Good Friday cannot be a day of darkness to us, because Christ has risen, and we know it, and cannot forget it; we cannot forget that Easter dawn, when the Sun of Righteousness arose, never to set again.
Has not the light of that Resurrection morning filled with glory the cross and the grave, yea the very agony in the Garden, and h.e.l.l itself, which Christ harrowed for us? Has it not risen a light to lighten the Gentiles, a joy to angels and archangels, and saints, and all the elect of G.o.d; ay, to the whole universe of G.o.d, so that the very stars in their courses, the trees as they bud each spring, yea, the very birds upon the bough, are singing for ever, in the ears of those who have ears to hear, "Christ is risen?" And shall we, under pretence of honouring Christ and of bestowing on Him a pity which He needs least of all, try to spend Good Friday and Pa.s.sion Week in forgetting Easter Day; try to think of Christ"s death as we should if He had not risen, and try to make out ourselves and the world infinitely worse off than we really know that we are? Christ has died, but He has risen again; and we must not think of one without the other. Heavenly things are too important, too true, too real--Christ is too near us, and too loving to us, too earnest about our salvation, for us to spend our thoughts on any such attempts (however reverently meant) at imaginative play-acting in our own minds about His hanging on His cross, while we know that He is not on His cross; and about watching by His tomb, when we know that He is not in His tomb. Let us thank Him, bless Him, serve Him, die for Him, if need be, in return for all He endured for us: but let us keep our sorrow and our pity, and our tears, for our own daily sins--we have enough of them to employ all our sorrow, and more;--and not in voluntary humility and will-worship, against which St Paul warns us, lose sight of our real Christ, of Him who was dead and is alive for evermore, and dwells in us by faith; now and for ever, amen; and hath the keys of death and h.e.l.l, and has opened them for us, and for our fathers before us, and for our children after us, and for nations yet unborn.
True, this is a solemn day, for on it the Son of G.o.d fought such a fight, that He could only win it at the price of His own life"s blood; and a humiliating day, for our sins helped to nail Him on the cross--and therefore a day of humiliation and of humility. Proud, self-willed thoughts are surely out of place to-day (and what day are they in place?) On this day G.o.d agonised for man: but it is a day of triumph and deliverance; and we must go home as men who have stood by and seen a fearful fight--a fight which makes the blood of him who watches it run cold; but we have seen, too, a glorious victory--such a victory as never was won on earth before or since; and we therefore must think cheerfully of the battle, for the sake of the victory that was won; and remember that on this day death was indeed swallowed up in victory--because death was the victory itself.
The question on which the fate of the whole world depended was, whether Christ dare die; and He dared die. Whether Christ would endure to the end; and He did endure. Whether He would utterly drink the cup which His Father had given Him; and He drank it to the dregs; and so by His very agony He showed Himself n.o.ble, beautiful, glorious, adorable, beyond all that words can express. And so the cross was His throne of glory; the prints of the nails in His hands and feet were the very tokens of His triumph; His very sorrows were His bliss; and those last words, "It is finished," were no cry of despair, but a trumpet-call of triumph, which rang from the highest heaven to the lowest h.e.l.l, proclaiming to all created things, that the very fountain of life, by dying, had conquered death, that good had conquered evil, love had conquered selfishness, G.o.d had conquered man, and all the enemies of man; and that He who died was the first begotten from the dead, and the King of all the princes of the earth, who was going to fulfil, more and more, as the years and the ages rolled on, the glorious prayer which we have prayed this day, graciously to behold that family for whom He had been contented to die; and wisely and orderly to call each man to a vocation and a ministry, in which he might duly serve G.o.d and be a blessing to all around him, by the inspiration of Christ"s Holy Spirit; and to have mercy, in His own good time, upon all Jews, Turks, heathens, and infidels, and bring them home to His flock, that they may be saved, and made one fold under one Shepherd--Him who was dead and is alive for evermore.
Therefore, my dear friends, if we wish to keep Good Friday in spirit and in truth, we cannot do so better than by trying to carry out the very end for which Christ died on this day; and doing our part, small though it be, toward bringing those poor heathens home into Christ"s fold, and teaching them the gospel and good news that for them, too, Christ died, and over them, too, Christ reigns alive for evermore; and bringing them home into His flock, that they, too, may find a place in His great family, and have their calling and ministry appointed to them among the nations of those who are saved and walk in the light of G.o.d and of the Lamb.
I have refrained till now from speaking to you much about missionaries, and the duty which lies on us all of helping missions. It seemed to me that I must first teach you to understand these first and second collects before I went on. to the third; that I must first teach you that you belonged to Christ"s family, and that He had called each of you, and appointed each of you to some order and degree in His Holy Church. But now, if indeed you have learnt that--if my preaching here for fourteen years has had any effect to teach you who and what you are, and what your duty is, let me entreat you to go on, and take the lesson of that third collect, and think of those poor Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, who still--many a million of them--sit, or rather wander, and fall, and lie, miserably wallowing in darkness and the shadow of death, and think whether you cannot do something toward helping them. What you can do, and how it is to be done, I will tell you hereafter; and, by G.o.d"s grace, I hope to see men of G.o.d in this pulpit, who having been missionaries themselves, can tell you better than I, what remains to be done, and how you can help to do it. But take home this one thought with you, this Good Friday,--Christ, who liveth and was dead, and behold He is alive for evermore, if He be indeed precious to you, if you indeed feel for His sufferings, if you indeed believe that what He bought by those sufferings was a right to all the souls on earth, then do what you can toward repaying Him for His sufferings, by seeing of the travail of His soul, and being satisfied. All the reward He asks, or ever asked, is the hearts of sinners, that He may convert them; the souls of sinners, that He may save them; and they belong to Him already, for He bought them this day with His own most precious blood. Do something, then, toward helping Christ to His own.
SERMON X. THE IMAGE OF THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY
Eversley, Easter Day, 1871.
1 Cor. xv. 49. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."
This season of Easter is the most joyful of all the year. It is the most comfortable time, in the true old sense of that word; for it is the season which ought to comfort us most--that is, it gives us strength; strength to live like men, and strength to die like men, when our time comes. Strength to live like men. Strength to fight against the temptation which Solomon felt when he said: "I have seen all the works which are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit. For what has a man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he has laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrow, and his travail grief. Yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This also is vanity. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts: as the one dieth, so dieth the other: yea, they have all one breath: so that a man has no pre-eminence over a beast; for all is vanity. All go to one place: all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that it goeth downward to the earth?" So thought Solomon in his temptation, and made up his mind that there was nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labour.
So thought Solomon, in spite of all his wisdom, because he had not heard the good news of Easter day. And so think many now, who are called wise men and philosophers; because they, alas! for them, will not believe the good news of Easter day.
But what says Easter day? Easter day says, Man has pre-eminence over a beast. The man is redeemed from the death of the beasts by Christ, who rose on Easter day. Easter day says, Wherever the spirit of the beast goes, wherever the spirit of the brutal and the wicked man goes, the spirit of the true Christian goes upward, to Christ, who bought it with His precious blood. Easter day says, The body may turn to the dust from which it was taken, but the spirit lives for ever before G.o.d, who shall give it another body, as it shall please Him, as He gives to every seed its own body. And, therefore, Easter day says, There is something better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy himself, for to-morrow he may die, and all be over; and that something is, to labour not merely for the meat which perishes with the perishing body, but to labour after the fruits of the spirit--love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. These the life of the body does not give us; and these the death of the body not take away from us; for they are spiritual and heavenly, eternal and divine; and he who has them cannot die for ever. And therefore, we may comfort ourselves in all our labour, if only we labour at the one useful work on earth, to be good, and to do good, and to make others good likewise.
True it is, as St. Paul says, that if in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable. For we do not care to be of the earth, earthy: we long to be of the heaven, heavenly. We do not care to spend our time in eating and drinking, mean covetousness, ambition, and the base pleasures of the flesh: we long after high and n.o.ble things, which we cannot get on earth, or at best only in fragments, and at rare moments; after the holiness and the blessedness of ourselves and our fellow-creatures. But we have hope in Christ for the next life as well as for this. Hope that in the next life He will give us power to succeed, where we failed here; that He will enable us to be good and to do good, and, if not to make others good (for there, we trust, all will be good together), to enjoy the fulness of that pleasure for which we have been longing on earth--the pleasure of seeing others good, as Christ is good and perfect, as their Father in heaven is perfect.
To be good ourselves, and to live for ever in good company--ah my friends, that is true bliss. If we cannot reach that after death, it were better for us that death should make an end of us, and that when our body decays in the grave we should be annihilated, and become nothing for ever.
But Easter day says to us, If you labour to create good company in this life, by trying to make other people round you good, you shall enjoy for ever in the next world the good company which you have helped to make.
If you labour to make yourself good in this life, you shall enjoy the fruit of your labour in the next life by being good, and, therefore, blessed for ever. Easter day says, Your labour is not vanity and vexation of spirit. It is solid work, which shall receive solid pay from G.o.d hereafter. Easter day is a pledge--I may say a sacrament--from G.o.d to us, that He will righteously reward all righteous work; and that, therefore, it is worth any man"s while to labour, to suffer, if need be even to die, in trying to be good, n.o.ble, useful, self-sacrificing, as Christ toiled and suffered and died and sacrificed Himself to do good.
For then he will share Christ"s reward, as he has shared Christ"s labour, and be rewarded, as Christ was, by resurrection to eternal life.
And so Easter day should give us strength to live like men--the only truly manly, truly human life; the life of being good and doing good.
And strength to die. Men are afraid of dying, princ.i.p.ally, I believe, because they fear the unknown. It is not that they are afraid of the pain of dying. It is not that they are afraid of going to h.e.l.l; for in all my experience, at least, I have met with but one person who thought that he was going to h.e.l.l. Neither is it that they are afraid of not going to heaven. Their expectation almost always is, that they are going thither. But they do not care much to go to heaven. They are willing enough to go there, because they know that they must go somewhere. But their notions of what heaven will be like are by no means clear. They have sung rapturous hymns in church or chapel about the heavenly Jerusalem, and pa.s.sing Jordan safe to Canaan"s sh.o.r.e, with no very clear notion of what the words meant--and small blame to them.
But when they think of actually dying, they feel as if to go into the next world was to be turned out into the dark night, into an unknown land, away from house and home, and all they have known, and all they have loved; and they are ready to say with the good old heathen emperor, when he lay a-dying--
"Little soul of mine, wandering, kindly, Companion and guest of my body; Into what place art thou now departing, Shivering, naked, and pale?"
And so they shrink from death. They must shrink from death, unless they will believe with their whole hearts the good news of Easter day. The more thoughtful and clever they are, the more they will shrink from death, and dread the thought of losing their bodies. They have always had bodies here on earth. They only know themselves as souls embodied, living in bodies; and they cannot think of themselves in the next world with any comfort, if they may not think of themselves as having bodies.
And the more loving and affectionate they are, the more they will shrink from death, unless they believe with their whole hearts the good news of Easter day. For those whom they have loved on earth have bodies.
Through their bodies--through their voices, their looks, their actions, they have known them, and thus they have loved them; and if their beloved ones are to have no bodies in the world to come, how shall they see them?
how shall they know them? how shall they converse with them? It seems to them in that case neither they, nor those they love, would be the same persons in the world to come they are here; and that thought is lonely and dreadful, till they accept the good news of Easter day, the thrice blessed words of St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, which they hear at the burial of those whom they love and lose. Oh, blessed news for us, and for those we love; those without whose company the world to come would be lonely and cheerless to us. For now we can say, Tell me not that as the beast dies, so dies the man. Tell me not that as Adam died because of sin, so must I die, and all I love. Tell me not that it is the universal law of nature that all things born in time must die in time; and that every human being, animal, and plant carries in itself from its beginning to its end a law of death, the seed of its own destruction. I know all that; but I care little for it, because I know more than that. I know that the man"s body dies as the beast"s body dies; but I know that the body is not the man, but only the husk, the sh.e.l.l of the man; that the true man, the true woman, lives on after the loss of his mortal body; and that there is an eternal law of life, which conquers the law of death; and by that law a fresh body will grow up round the true man, the immortal spirit, and will be as fit--ay, far fitter--to do his work, than this poor mortal body which has turned to death on earth. Tell me not that because I am descended from a mortal and sinful old Adam, of whom it is written that he was of the earth, earthly, therefore my soul is a part of my body, and dies when my body dies. I belong not to the old Adam, but to the new Adam--the new Head of men, who is the Lord from heaven, the author of eternal life to all who obey Him. Do not tell me that I have nothing in me but the likeness of the old Adam, for that seems to me and to St. Paul nothing but the likeness of the fallen savage and the brute in human form. I know I have more in me--infinitely more--than that. What may be in store for the savage, the brutal, the wicked, is G.o.d"s concern, not mine. But what is in store for me I know--that as I have borne the image of the earthly, so shall I bear the image of the heavenly, if only the Spirit of Christ, the new Adam, be in me. For if Christ be in us, "the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." And if the Spirit of Him which raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in us, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in us. How He will do it I know not; neither do I care to know. When He will do it I know not; but it will be when it ought to be; and that is enough for me. That He can do it I know, for He is the Maker of the universe, and to Him all power is given in heaven and earth; and as for its being strange, wonderful, past understanding, that matters little to me. That will be but one wonder more in a world where all is wonderful--one more mystery in an utterly mysterious universe.
And so, as Easter day has given us strength to live, let Easter day, too, give us strength to die.
SERMON XI. EASTER DAY
Chester Cathedral. 1870.
St John xii. 24, 25. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
This is our Lord"s own parable. In it He tells us that His death, His resurrection, His ascension, is a mystery which we may believe, not only because the Bible tells us of it, but because it is reasonable, and according to the laws of His universe; a fulfilment, rather say the highest fulfilment, of one of those laws which runs through the world of nature, and through the spiritual and heavenly world likewise. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone;"--barren, useless, and truly dead to the rest of the world around it, because it is shut up in itself, and its hidden life, with all its wondrous powers of growth and fertility, remains undeveloped, and will remain so, till it decays away, a worthless thing, into worthless dust. But if it be buried in the earth a while, then the rich life which lay hid in it is called out by that seeming death, and it sprouts, tillers, and flowers, and ripens its grain--forty-fold, sixty-fold, an hundred-fold; and so it shows G.o.d"s mind and will concerning it. It shows what is really in it, and develops the full capabilities of its being. Even so, says our Lord, would His death, His resurrection, His ascension be.
He speaks of His own resurrection and ascension; yes, but He speaks first of His own death. Before the corn can bring forth fruit, and show what is in it, fulfilling the law of its being, it must fall into the ground and die. Before our Lord could fulfil the prophecy, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in h.e.l.l, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption," He must fulfil the darker prophecy of that awful 88th Psalm, the only one of all the psalms which ends in sorrow, in all but despair, "My soul is full of trouble, and my life draweth nigh unto h.e.l.l. I am counted as one of them that go down into the pit: and I have been even as a man that hath no strength. Free among the dead, like unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, who are out of remembrance, and are cut away from thy hand." So it was to be. So, we may believe, it needed to be. Christ must suffer before He entered into His glory. He must die, before He could rise. He must descend into h.e.l.l, before He ascended into heaven. For this is the law of G.o.d"s kingdom. Without a Good Friday, there can be no Easter Day. Without self-sacrifice, there can be no blessedness, neither in earth nor in heaven. He that loveth his life will lose it. He that hateth his life in this paltry, selfish, luxurious, hypocritical world, shall keep it to life eternal. Our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled that law; because it is the law, the law not of Moses, but of the kingdom of heaven, and must be fulfilled by him who would fulfil all righteousness, and be perfect, even as his Father in heaven is perfect.
Bear this in mind, I pray you, and whenever you think of our Lord"s resurrection and ascension, remember always that the background to His triumph is--a tomb. Remember that it is the triumph over suffering; a triumph of One who still bears the prints of the nails in His hands and in His feet, and the wound of the spear in His side; like many a poor soul who has followed Him triumphant at last, and yet scarred, and only not maimed in the hard battle of life. Remember for ever the adorable wounds of Christ. Remember for ever that St John saw in the midst of the throne of G.o.d the likeness of a lamb, as it had been slain. For so alone you will learn what our Lord"s resurrection and ascension are to all who have to suffer and to toil on earth. For if our Lord"s triumph had had no suffering before it,--if He had conquered as the Hindoos represent their G.o.ds as conquering their enemies, without effort, without pain, destroying them, with careless ease, by lightnings, hurled by a hundred hands and aided by innumerable armies of spirits,--what would such a triumph have been to us? What comfort, what example to us here struggling, often sinning, in this piecemeal world? We want--and blessed be G.o.d, we have--a Captain of our salvation, who has been made perfect by sufferings. We want--and blessed be G.o.d, we have--an High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because He has been tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin. We want--and blessed be G.o.d, we have--a King who was glorified by suffering, that, if we are ever called on to sacrifice ourselves, we may hope, by suffering, to share His glory. And when we have remembered this, and fixed it in our minds, we may go on safely to think of His glory, and see that (as I said at first) His resurrection and ascension satisfy our consciences,-- satisfy that highest reason and moral sense within us, which is none other than the voice of the Holy Spirit of G.o.d.
For see. Our Lord proved Himself to be the perfectly righteous Being, by His very pa.s.sion. He proved it by being righteous utterly against His own interest; by enduring shame, torment, death, for righteousness" sake.
But we feel that our Lord"s history could not, must not, end there. Our conscience, which is our highest reason, shrinks from that thought. If our Lord had died and never risen, then would His history be full of nothing but despair to all who long to copy Him and do right at all costs. Our consciences demand that G.o.d should be just. We say with Abraham, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Shall not He, who suffered without hope of reward, have His reward nevertheless? Shall not He who cried, "My G.o.d! my G.o.d! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" be justified by having it proved to all the world that G.o.d had not forsaken Him? But we surely cannot be more just than G.o.d. If we expect G.o.d to do right, we shall surely "find that He has done right, and more right than we could expect or dream. Therefore we may believe--I say that we must believe, if we be truly reasonable beings--what the Bible tells us; that Christ, who suffered more than all, was rewarded more than all; that Christ, who humbled Himself more than all, was exalted more than all; and that His resurrection and ascension, as St Paul tells us again and again, was meant to show men this,--to show them that G.o.d the Father has been infinitely just to the infinite merits of G.o.d the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,--to justify our Lord to all mankind by His triumph over death and h.e.l.l, and in justifying Him to justify His Father and our Father, his G.o.d and our G.o.d.
And what is true of Christ must be true of us, the members of Christ. He is entered into His rest, and you desire to enter into it likewise. You have a right to desire it, for it is written, "There remaineth a rest for the people of G.o.d." Remember, then, that true rest can only be attained as He attained it, through labour. You desire to be glorified with Christ. Remember that true glory can only be attained in earth or heaven through self-sacrifice. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; whosoever will lose his life shall save it. If that eternal moral law held good enough for the sinless Christ, who, though He were a son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered, how much more must it hold good of you and me and all moral and rational beings,--yea, for the very angels in heaven. They have not sinned. That we know; and we do not know; and I presume cannot know, that they have ever suffered. But this at least we know, that they have submitted. They have obeyed and have given up their own wills to be the ministers of G.o.d"s will. In them is neither self-will nor selfishness; and therefore by faith, that is, by trust and loyalty, they stand. And so, by consenting to lose their individual life of selfishness, they have saved their eternal life in G.o.d, the life of blessedness and holiness; just as all evil spirits have lost their eternal life by trying to save their selfish life, and be something in themselves and of themselves without respect to G.o.d.
This is a great mystery; indeed, it is the mystery of the eternal, divine, and blessed life, to which G.o.d of His mercy bring us all. And therefore Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, are set as great lights in the firmament of the spiritual year,--to remind us that we are not animals, born to do what we like, and fulfil the sinful l.u.s.ts of the flesh, the ways whereof are death; but that we are moral and rational beings, members of Christ, children of G.o.d, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven; and that, therefore, I say it again, like Christ our Lord, we must die in order to live, stoop in order to conquer. They remind us that honour must grow out of humility; that freedom must grow out of discipline; that sure conquest must be born of heavy struggles; righteous joy out of righteous sorrow; pure laughter out of pure tears; true strength out of the true knowledge of our own weakness; sound peace of mind out of sound contrition; and that the heart which has a right to cry, "The Lord is on my side, I will not fear what man doeth unto me,"
must be born out of the heart which has cried, "G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner!" They remind us that in all things, as says our Lord, there cannot be joy, because a man is born into the world, unless there first be sorrow, because the hour of birth is come; and that he who would be planted into the likeness of Christ"s resurrection, must, like the corn of wheat, be first planted into the likeness of His death, and die to sin and self, that he may live to righteousness and to G.o.d; and, like the corn of wheat, become truly living, truly strong, truly rich, truly useful, and develop the hidden capabilities of his being, fulfilling the mind and will of G.o.d concerning him. Again, I say, this is a great mystery. But again, I say, this is the law, not Moses" law, but the Gospel law;--the law of liberty, by which a man becomes truly free, because he has trampled under foot the pa.s.sions of his own selfish flesh, till his immortal spirit can ascend free into the light of G.o.d, and into the love of G.o.d, and into the beneficence of G.o.d. My dear friends, remember these words, for they are true. Remember that St Paul always couples with the resurrection and ascension of our bodies in the next life the resurrection and ascension of our souls in this life; for without that, the resurrection of our bodies would be but a resurrection to fresh sin, and therefore to fresh misery and ruin. Remember his great words about that moral resurrection and ascension of our wills, our hearts, our characters, our actions. "G.o.d," he says, "who is rich in mercy, for His great love, wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are ye saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."
And what are those heavenly places? And what is our duty in them? Let St Paul himself answer. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of G.o.d."
And what are they? Let St Paul answer once more; who should know better than he, save Christ alone? "Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report. If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."