And so we shall find it, I believe, in our religion.
We may say with a sigh, "Ah, that I could see my Lord and Saviour. I should be safe then. I dare not sin then."
It may be so. I am the last to deny that our Lord Jesus Christ has (as he certainly could, if he chose) shown himself bodily to certain of his saints (as he showed himself to St. Paul and to St. Stephen) in order to strengthen their faith in some great trial. But if it had been good for us in general to see the Lord in this life, doubt not that we should have seen him. And because we do not see him, be sure that it is not good.
We may say, again, "Ah that the Lord Jesus had but remained on earth, what just laws, what peace and prosperity would the world have enjoyed! Wars would have ceased long ago; oppression and injustice would be unknown."
It may be so. And yet again it may not. Perhaps our Lord"s staying on earth would have had some quite different effect, of which we cannot even dream; and done, not good, but harm. Let us have faith in him. Let us believe in his perfect wisdom, and in his perfect love. Let us believe that he is educating us, as he educated the apostles, by going away. That he is by his absence helping men to help themselves, teaching men to teach themselves, guiding and governing men to guide and govern themselves by that law of liberty which is the law of his Spirit; to love the right, and to do the right, not from fear of punishment, but of their own heart and will.
For remember, he has not left us comfortless. He has not merely given us commands; he has given us the power of understanding, valuing, obeying these commands. For his Spirit is with us; the Spirit of Whitsuntide; the Comforter, the Encourager, the Strengthener, by whom we may both perceive and know what we ought to do, and also have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.
Come to yonder holy table this day, and there claim your share in Christ, who is absent from you in the body, but ever present in the spirit. Come to that table, that you may live by Christ"s life, and learn to love what he commandeth, and desire what he doth promise, that so your hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; namely, in the gracious motions and heavenly inspirations of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son.
SERMON XXI.--ENDURANCE
I PETER ii. 19.
This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward G.o.d endure grief, suffering wrongfully.
This is a great epistle, this epistle for the day, and full of deep lessons. Let us try to learn some of them.
"What glory is it," St. Peter says, "if, when ye be beaten for your faults, ye take it patiently?" What credit is it to a man, if, having broken the law, he submits to be punished? The man who will not do that, the man who resists punishment, is not a civilized man, but a savage and a mere animal. If he will not live under discipline, if he expects to break the law with impunity, he makes himself an outlaw; he puts himself by his rebellion outside the law, and becomes unfit for society, a public enemy of his fellow-men. The first lesson which men have to learn, which even the heathen have learnt, as soon as they have risen above mere savages, is the sacredness of law--the necessity of punishment for those who break the law.
The Jews had this feeling of the sacredness of law. Moses" divine law had taught it them. The Romans, heathen though they were, had the same feeling--that law was sacred; that men must obey law. And the good thing which they did for the world (though they did it at the expense of bloodshed and cruelty without end) was the bringing all the lawless nations and wild tribes about them under strict law, and drilling them into order and obedience. That it was, which gave the Roman power strength and success for many centuries.
But above the kingdom of law, which says to a man merely, "Thou shalt not do wrong: and if thou dost, thou shalt be punished," there is another kingdom, far deeper, wider, n.o.bler; even the kingdom of grace, which says to a man, not merely, "Do not do wrong," but "Do right;" and not only "Do right for fear of being punished," but "Do right because it is right; do right because thou hast grace in thy heart; even the grace of G.o.d, and the Spirit of G.o.d, which makes thee love what is right, and see how right it is, and how beautiful; so that thou must follow after the right, not from fear of punishment, but in spite of fear of punishment; follow after the right, not when it is safe only, but when it is dangerous; not when it is honourable only in the eyes of men, but when it is despised. If thou hast G.o.d"s grace in thy heart; if thou lovest what is right with the true love, which is the Spirit of G.o.d, then thou wilt never stop to ask, "Will it pay me to do right?" Thou wilt feel that the right thou must do, whether it pays thee or not; still loving the right, and cleaving steadfastly to the right, through disappointment, poverty, shame, trouble, death itself, if need be: if only thou canst keep a conscience void of offence toward G.o.d and man."
"But shall I have no reward?" asks a man, "for doing right? Am I to give up a hundred pleasant things for conscience" sake, and get nothing in return?" Yes: there is a reward for righteousness, even in this life. G.o.d repays those who make sacrifices for conscience"
sake, I verily believe, in most cases, a hundred fold in this life.
In this life it stands true, that he who loses his life shall save it; that he who goes through the world with a single eye to duty, without selfishness, without vanity, without ambition, careless whether he be laughed at, careless whether he be ill-used, provided only his conscience acquits him, and G.o.d"s approving smile is on him- -in this life it stands true that that man is the happiest man after all; that that man is the most prosperous man after all; that, like Christ, when he was doing his Father"s work, he has meat to eat and strengthen him in his life"s journey, which the world knows not of.
But if not; if it seem good to G.o.d to let him taste the bitters, and not the sweets, of doing right, in this life; if it seem good to G.o.d that he should suffer--as many a man and woman too has suffered for doing right--nothing but contempt, neglect, prison, and death; is he worse off than Jesus Christ, his Lord, was before him? Shall the disciple be above his master? What if he have to drink of the cup of sorrow of which Christ drank, and be baptized with the baptism of martyrdom with which Christ was baptized? Where is he, but where the Son of G.o.d has been already? What is he doing, but treading in the steps of Christ crucified; that he may share in the blessing and glory and honour without end which G.o.d the Father heaped upon Christ his Son, because he was perfect in duty, perfect in love of right, perfect in resignation, perfect in submission under injustice, perfect in forgiveness of his murderers, perfect in faith in the justice and mercy of G.o.d: who did no sin--that is, never injured his own cause by anger or revenge; and had no guile in his mouth--that is, never prevaricated, lied, concealed his opinions, for fear of the consequences, however terrible; but before the chief priests and Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, though he knew that it would bring on him a dreadful death; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again, but committed himself to him who judgeth righteously--the meekest of all beings, and in that very meekness the strongest of all beings; the most utterly resigned, and by that very resignation the most heroic--the being who seemed, on the cross of Calvary, most utterly conquered by injustice and violence: but who, by that very cross, conquered the whole world.
This is a great mystery, and hard to learn. Flesh and blood, our animal nature, will never compa.s.s it all; for it belongs, not to the flesh, but to the spirit. But our spirits, our immortal souls, may learn the lesson at last, if we feed them continually with the thought of Christ; if we meditate upon whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Then we may learn, at last, after many failures, and many sorrows of heart, that the spirit is stronger than the flesh; that meekness is stronger than wrath, silence stronger than shouting, peace stronger than war, forgiveness stronger than vengeance, just as Christ hanging on his cross was stronger--exercising a more vast and miraculous effect on the hearts of men--than if he had called whole armies of angels to destroy his enemies, like one of the old kings and conquerors of the earth, whose works have perished with themselves.
Yes, gradually we must learn that our strength is to sit still; that to do well and suffer for it, instead of returning evil for evil, and railing for railing, is to show forth the spirit of Christ, and to enter into the joy of our Lord.
The statesman debating in Parliament; the conqueror changing the fate of nations on b.l.o.o.d.y battle-fields; these all do their work; and are needful, doubtless, in a sinful, piecemeal world like this. But there are those of whom the noisy world never hears, who have chosen the better part which shall not be taken from them; who enter into a higher glory than that of statesmen, or conquerors, or the successful and famous of the earth. Many a man--clergyman or layman--struggling in poverty and obscurity, with daily toil of body and mind, to make his fellow-creatures better and happier; many a poor woman, bearing children in pain and sorrow, and bringing them up with pain and sorrow, but in industry, too, and piety; or submitting without complaint to a brutal husband; or sacrificing all her own hopes in life to feed and educate her brothers and sisters; or enduring for years the peevishness and troublesomeness of some relation;--all these (and the world which G.o.d sees is full of such, though the world which man sees takes no note of them)--gentle souls, humble souls, uncomplaining souls, suffering souls, pious souls--these are G.o.d"s elect; these are Christ"s sheep; these are the salt of the earth, who, by doing each their little duty as unto G.o.d, not unto men, keep society from decaying more than do all the const.i.tutions and acts of parliament which statesmen ever invented. These are they--though they little dream of any such honour--who copy the likeness of the old martyrs, who did well and suffered for it; and the likeness of Christ, of whom it was said, "He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall his voice be heard in the streets."
For what was it in the old martyrs which made men look up to them, as persons infinitely better than themselves, with quite unmeasurable admiration; so that they worshipped them after their deaths, as if they had been G.o.ds rather than men?
It was this. The world in old times had been admiring successful people, just as it does at this day. Was a man powerful, rich? Had he slaves by the hundred? Was his table loaded with the richest meats and wines? Could he indulge every pleasure and fancy of his own? Could he heap his friends with benefits? Could he ruin or destroy any one who thwarted him? In one word, was he a mighty and successful tyrant? Then that was the man to honour and worship; that was the sort of man to become, if anyone had the chance, by fair means or foul. Just as the world worships now the successful man; and--if you will but make a million of money--will flatter you and court you, and never ask either how you made your money, or how you spend your money; or whether you are a good man or a bad one: for money in man"s eyes, as charity in G.o.d"s eyes, covereth a mult.i.tude of sins; and as long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak well of thee.
But there arose, in that wicked old world in which St. Paul lived, an entirely new sort of people--people who did not wish to be successful; did not wish to be rich; did not wish to be powerful; did not wish for pleasures and luxuries which this world could give: who only wished to be good; to do right, and to teach others to do right.
Christians, they were called; after Christ their Lord and G.o.d. Weak old men, poor women, slaves, even children, were among them. Not many mighty, not many rich, not many n.o.ble, were called. They were mostly weak and oppressed people, who had been taught by suffering and sorrow.
One would have thought that the world would have despised these Christians, and let them go their own way in peace. But it was not so. The mighty of this world, and those who lived by pandering to their vices, so far from despising the Christians, saw at once how important they were. They saw that, if people went about the world determined to speak nothing but what they believed to be true, and to do nothing but what was right, then the wicked world would be indeed turned upside down, and, as they complained against St. Paul more than once, the hope of their gains would be gone. Therefore they conceived the most bitter hatred against these Christians, and rose against them, for the same simple reason that Cain rose up against Abel and slew him, because his works were wicked, and his brother"s righteous. They argued with them; they threatened them; they tried to terrify them: but they found to their astonishment that the Christians would not change their minds for any terror. Then their hatred became rage and fury. They could not understand how such poor ignorant contemptible people as the Christians seemed to be, dared to have an opinion of their own, and to stand to it; how they dared to think themselves right, and all the world wrong; and in their fury they inflicted on them tortures to read of which should make the blood run cold. And their rage and fury increased to madness, when they found that these Christians, instead of complaining, instead of rebelling, instead of trying to avenge themselves, submitted to all their sufferings, not only patiently and uncomplaining, but joyfully, and as an honour and a glory. Some, no doubt, they conquered by torture, agony, and terror; and so made them deny Christ, and return to the wickedness of the heathen. But those renegades were always miserable. Their own consciences condemned them. They felt they had sold their own souls for a lie; and many of them, in their agony of mind, repented again, like St. Peter after he had denied his Lord through fear, proclaimed themselves Christians after all, went through all their tortures a second time, and died triumphant over death and h.e.l.l.
But there were those--to be counted by hundreds, if not thousands-- who dared all, and endured all; and won (as it was rightly called) the crown of martyrdom. Feeble old men, weak women, poor slaves, even little children, sealed their testimony with their blood, and conquered, not by fighting, but by suffering.
They conquered. They conquered for themselves in the next world; for they went to heaven and bliss, and their light affliction, which was but for a moment, worked out for them an exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
They conquered in this world also. For the very world which had scourged them, racked them, crucified them, burned them alive, when they were dead turned round and worshipped them as heroes, almost as divine beings. And they were divine; for they had in them the Divine Spirit, the Spirit of G.o.d and of Christ. Therefore the foolish world was awed, conscience-stricken, p.r.i.c.ked to the heart, when it looked on those whom it had pierced, as it had pierced Christ the Lord, and cried, as the centurion cried on Calvary, "Surely these were the sons and daughters of G.o.d. Surely there was some thing more divine, more n.o.ble, more beautiful in these poor creatures dying in torture, than in all the tyrants and conquerors and rich men of the earth. This is the true greatness, this is the true heroism--to do well and suffer for it patiently."
And thenceforth men began to get, slowly but surely, a quite new idea of true greatness; they learnt to see that not revenge, but forgiveness; not violence, but resignation; not success, but holiness, are the perfection of humanity. They began to have a reverence for those who were weak in body, and simple in heart,--a reverence for women, for children, for slaves, for all whom the world despises, such as the old Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, had never had.
They began to see that G.o.d could make strong the weak things of this world, and glorify himself in the courage and honesty of the poorest and the meanest. They began to see that in Christ Jesus was neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but that all were one in Christ Jesus, all alike capable of receiving the Spirit of G.o.d, all alike children of the one Father, who was above all, and in all, and with them all.
And so the endurance and the sufferings of the early martyrs was the triumph of good over evil; the triumph of honesty and truth; of purity and virtue; of gentleness and patience; of faith in a just and loving G.o.d: because it was the triumph of the Spirit of Christ, by which he died, and rose again, and conquered shame and pain, and death and h.e.l.l.
SERMON XXII.--TOLERATION
(Preached at Christ Church, Marylebone, 1867, for the Bishop of London"s Fund.)
MATTHEW xiii. 24-30.
The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the household came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye toot up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest and in the time of harvest: I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
The thoughtful man who wishes well to the Gospel of Christ will hardly hear this parable without a feeling of humiliation. None of our Lord"s parables are more clear and simple in their meaning; none have a more direct and practical command appended to them; none have been less regarded during the last fifteen hundred years.
Toleration, solemnly enjoined, has been the exception. Persecution, solemnly forbidden, has been the rule. Men, as usual, have fancied themselves wiser than G.o.d; for they have believed themselves wise enough to do what he had told them that they were not wise enough to do, and so have tried to root the tares from among the wheat. Men have, as usual, lacked faith in Christ; they did not believe that he was actually governing the earth which belonged to him; that he was actually cultivating his field, the world: they therefore believed themselves bound to do for him what he neglected, or at least did not see fit, to do for himself; and they tried to root up the tares from among the wheat. They have tried to repress free thought, and to silence novel opinions, forgetful that Christ must have been right after all, and that in silencing opinions which startled them, they might be quenching the Spirit, and despising prophecies. But they found it more difficult to quench the Spirit than they fancied, when they began the policy of repression. They have found that the Spirit blew where it listed, and they heard the sound of it, but knew not whence it came, or whither it went; that the utterances which startled them, the tones of feeling and thought which terrified them, reappeared, though crushed in one place, suddenly in another; that the whole atmosphere was charged with them, as with electricity; and that it was impossible to say where the unseen force might not concentrate itself at any moment, and flash out in a lightning stroke. Then their fear has turned to a rage. They have thought no more of putting down opinions: but of putting down men. They have found it more difficult than they fancied to separate the man from his opinions; to hate the sin and love the sinner: and so they have begun to persecute; and, finding brute force, or at least the chichane of law, far more easy than either convincing their opponents or allowing themselves to be convinced by them, they have fined, imprisoned, tortured, burnt, exterminated; and, like the Roman conquerors of old, "made a desert, and called that peace."
And all the while the words stood written in the Scriptures which they professed to believe: "Nay: lest while ye root up the tares, ye root up the wheat also."
They had been told, if ever men were told, that the work was beyond their powers of discernment: that, whatever the tares were, or however they came into G.o.d"s field the world, they were either too like the wheat, or too intimately entangled with them, for any mortal man to part them. G.o.d would part them in his own good time. If they trusted G.o.d, they would let them be; certain that he hated what was false, what was hurtful, infinitely more than they; certain that he would some day cast out of his kingdom all things which offend, and all that work injustice, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie; and that, therefore, if he suffered such things to abide awhile, it was for them to submit, and to believe that G.o.d loved the world better than they, and knew better how to govern it. But if, on the contrary, they did not believe G.o.d, then they would set to work, in their disobedient self-conceit, to do that which he had forbidden them; and the certain result would be that, with the tares, they would root up the wheat likewise.
Note here two things. First, it is not said that there were no tares among the wheat; nor that the servants would fail in rooting some of them up. They would succeed probably in doing some good: but they would succeed certainly in doing more harm. In their short-sighted, blind, erring, hasty zeal, they would destroy the good with the evil.
Their knowledge of this complex and miraculous universe was too shallow, their canons of criticism were too narrow, to decide on what ought, or ought not, to grow in the field of him whose ways and thoughts were as much higher than theirs as the heaven is higher than the earth.
Note also, that the Lord does not blame them for their purpose. He merely points out to them its danger; and forbids it because it is dangerous; for their wish to root out the tares was not "natural."
We shall libel it by calling it that. It was distinctly spiritual, the first impulse of spiritual men, who love right, and hate wrong, and desire to cultivate the one, and exterminate the other. To root out the tares; to put down bad men and wrong thoughts by force, is one of the earliest religious instincts. It is the child"s instinct- -pardonable though mistaken. The natural man--whether the heathen savage at one end of the scale, or the epicurean man of the world at the other--has no such instinct. He will feel no anger against falsehood, because he has no love for truth; he will be liberal enough, tolerant enough, of all which does not touch his own self- interest; but that once threatened, he too may join the ranks of the bigots, and persecute, not like them, in the name of G.o.d and truth, but in those of society and order; and so the chief priests and Pontius Pilate may make common cause. And yet the chief priests, with their sense of duty, of truth, and of right, however blundering, concealed, perverted, may be a whole moral heaven higher than Pilate with no sense of aught beyond present expediency. But nevertheless what have been the consequences to both? That the chief priests have failed as utterly as the Pilates. As G.o.d forewarned them, they have rooted up the wheat with the tares; they have made the blood of martyrs the seed of the Church; and more, they have made martyrs of those who never deserved to be martyrs, by wholesale and indiscriminate condemnation. They have forgotten that the wheat and the tares grow together, not merely in separate men, but in each man"s own heart and thoughts; that light and darkness, wisdom and folly, duty and ambition, self-sacrifice and self-conceit, are fighting in every soul of man in whom there is even the germ of spiritual life. Therefore they have made men offenders for a word.
They have despised n.o.ble aspirations, ignored deep and sound insights, because they came in questionable shapes, mingled with errors or eccentricities. They have cried in their haste, "Here are tares, and tares alone."
Again and again have religious men done this, for many a hundred years; and again and again the Nemesis has fallen on them. A generation or two has pa.s.sed, and the world has revolted from their unjust judgments. It has perceived, among the evil, good which it had overlooked in an indignant haste and pa.s.sionateness, learnt from those who should have taught it wisdom, patience, and charity. It has made heroes of those who had been branded as heretics; and has cried, "There was wheat, and wheat alone;" and so religious men have hindered the very cause for which they fancied that they were fighting; and have gained nothing by disobeying G.o.d"s command, save to weaken their own moral influence, to increase the divisions of the Church, and to put a fresh stumbling-block in the path of the ignorant and the young.
And what have been the consequences to Christ"s Church? Have not her enemies--and her friends too--for centuries past, cried in vain:-
"For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can"t he wrong, whose life is in the right."
Of Christian morals her enemies have not complained: but that these morals have been postponed, neglected, forgotten, in the disputes over abstruse doctrines, over ceremonies, and over no-ceremonies; that men who were all fully agreed in their definition of goodness, and what a good man should be and do, have denounced each other concerning matters which had no influence whatsoever to practical morality, till the unG.o.dly cried, "See how these Christians hate one another! See how they waste their time in disputing concerning the accidents of the bread of life, forgetful that thousands were perishing round them for want of any bread of life at all!"