Romans viii. 12, 13. Brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
Does it seem strange to you that St. Paul should warn you, that you are not debtors to your own flesh? It is not strange, when you come to understand him; certainly not unnecessary: for as in his time, so now, most people do live as if they were debtors to their own flesh, as if their great duty, their one duty in life, was to please their own bodies, and brains, and tempers, and fancies, and feelings. Poor people have not much time to indulge their brains; and no time at all, happily for them, to indulge their fancies and feelings, as rich people do when they grow idle, and dainty, and luxurious. But still, too many of them live as if they were debtors to their own flesh; as if their own bodies and their own tempers were the masters of them, and ought to be their masters. Young men, for instance, how often they do things in secret of which it is a shame even to speak, just because it is pleasant. Young women, how often do they sell themselves and their own modesty, just for the pleasure of being flattered and courted, and of getting a few fine clothes. How often do men, just for the pleasure of drink, besot their souls and bodies, madden their tempers, neglect their families, make themselves every Sat.u.r.day night, and often half the week, too, lower than the beasts which perish. And then, when a clergyman complains of them, they think him unreasonable; and by so thinking, show that he is right, and St. Paul right: for if I say to you, My dear young people (and I do say it), if you give way to filthy living and filthy talking, and to drunkenness, and to vanity about fine clothes, you will surely die--do you not say in your hearts, "How unreasonable: how hard on us! If we can enjoy ourselves a little, why should we not? It is our right, and do it we will; and if it is wrong, it ought not to be wrong." Why, what is that but saying, that you ought to do just what your body likes: that you are debtors to your flesh; and that your flesh, and not G.o.d"s law, is your master. So again, when people grow older, perhaps they are more prudent about bad living, and more careful of their money: but still they live after the flesh. One man sets his heart on making money, and cares for nothing but that; breaks G.o.d"s law for that, as if that was the thing to which he was a debtor, bound by some law which he could not avoid to sc.r.a.pe and sc.r.a.pe money together for ever. Another (and how often we see that) is a slave to his own pride and temper, which are just as much bred in his flesh: if he has been injured by any one, if he has taken a dislike against any one, he cannot forget and forgive: the man may be upright and kindly on many other points; prudent, too, and sober, and thoroughly master of himself on most matters; and yet you will find that when he gets on that one point, he is not master of himself; for his flesh is master of him: he may be a strong-minded, shrewd man upon most matters but just that one point: some old quarrel, or grudge, or suspicion, is, as we say, his weak point: and if you touch on that, the man"s eye will kindle, and his face redden, and his lip tremble, and he will show that he is not master of himself: but that he is over-mastered by his fleshly pa.s.sion, by the suspiciousness, or revengefulness, or touchiness, which every dumb animal has as well as he, which is not part of his man"s nature, not part of G.o.d"s image in him, but which is like the beasts which perish.
Now, my friends, suppose I said to you, "If you give way to such tempers; if you give way to pride, suspicion, sullen spite, settled dislike of any human being, you will surely die;" should you not, some of you, be inclined to think me very unreasonable, and to say in your hearts, "Have I not a right to be angry? Have I not a right to give a man as good as he brings?" so confessing that I am right, after all, and that some of you think that you are debtors to your flesh, and its tempers, and do not see that you are meant to be masters, and not slaves, of your tempers and feelings.
Again. Among poor women, as well as among rich ones, as they grow older, how much gossiping, tale-bearing, slandering, there is, and that too among people who call themselves religious. Yes, I say slandering; I put that in too; for I am certain that where the first two grow, the third is not far off. If gossiping is the root, tale- bearing and harsh judgment is the stem, and plain lying and slandering, and bearing false witness against one"s neighbour, is the fruit.
Now I say, because St. Paul says it, "that those who do such things shall surely die." And do not some of you think me unreasonable in that, and say in your heart, "What! are we to be tongue-tied? Shall we not speak our minds?" Be it so, my good women, only remember this: that as long as you say that, you confess that you are not masters of your tongues, but your tongues are masters of you, and that you freely confess you owe service to your tongue, and not to G.o.d. Do not therefore complain of me for saying the very same thing, namely, that you think you are debtors to your flesh--to the tongues in your mouths, and must needs do what those same little unruly members choose, of which St James has said, "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, and it sets on fire the whole course of nature, and is set on fire of h.e.l.l." And again: "If any person among you seem to be religious, and bridles not his tongue, but deceives himself, that person"s religion is vain."
Again:--and, my good women, you must not think me hard on you, for you know in your hearts that I am not hard on you; but I must speak a word on a sin which I am afraid is growing in this parish, and in too many parishes in England; and that is deceiving kind and charitable persons, in order to get more help from them. G.o.d knows the temptation must be sore to poor people at times. And yet you will surely find in the long run, that "honesty is the best policy."
Deceit is always a losing game. A lie is sure to be found out; as the Lord Jesus Himself says, "There is nothing hid which shall not be made manifest;" and what we do in secret, is sure, unless we repent and amend it, to be proclaimed on the housetop: and many a poor soul, in her haste and greediness to get much, ends by getting nothing at all. And if it were not so;--if you were able to deceive any human being out of the riches of the world: yet know, that a man"s life does _not_ consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses. And know that if you will not believe that,--if you will fancy that your business is to get all you can for your mortal bodies, by fair means or foul,--if you will fancy that you are thus debtors to your own flesh, you will surely die: but if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.
And by this time some of you are asking, "Live? Die? What does all this mean? When we die we shall die, good or bad; and in the meantime we shall live till we die. And you do not mean to tell us that we shall shorten our lives by our own tempers, or our tale- bearing, though we might, perhaps, by drunkenness?"
My friends, if such a question rises in your mind, be sure that it, too, is a hint that you think yourself a debtor to the flesh--to live according to the flesh. For tell me, tell yourselves fairly, is your flesh, your body, the part of yourself which you can see and handle, _You_?--You know that it is not. When a neighbour"s body dies, you say, perhaps, "_He_ is dead," but you say it carelessly; and when one whom you know well, and love, dies,--when a parent, a wife, a child, dies, you feel very differently about them, even if you do not speak differently. You feel and know that he, the person whom you loved and understood, and felt with, and felt for, here on earth, is not dead at all; you feel (and in proportion as the friend you have lost was loving, and good, and full of feeling for you, you feel it all the more strongly) that your friend, or your child, or the wife of your bosom, is alive still--where you know not, but you feel they are alive; that they are very near you;--that they are thinking of you, watching you, caring for you,--perhaps grieving over you when you go wrong--perhaps rejoicing over you when you go right,--perhaps helping you, though you cannot see them, in some wonderful way. You know that only their mortal flesh is dead. That their mortal flesh was all you put into the grave; but that _they_ themselves, their souls and spirits, which were their very and real selves, are alive for evermore; and you trust and hope to meet them when you die;--ay, to meet them body and soul too, at the last day, the very same persons whom you knew here on earth, though the flesh which they wore here in this life has crumbled into dust years and ages before.
Is not this true? Is not this a blessed life-giving thought--I had almost said the most blessed and life-giving thought man can have-- that those whom we have loved and lost are not dead, but only gone before; that they live still to G.o.d and with G.o.d; that only their flesh has perished, and they themselves are alive for evermore?
Now believe me, my friends, as surely as a man"s flesh can die and be buried, while he himself, his soul, lives for ever, just so a man"s self, his soul, can die, while his flesh lives on upon earth.
You do not think so, but the Bible thinks so. The Bible talks of men being _dead_ in trespa.s.ses and sins, while their flesh and body is alive and walking this earth. It talks, too, of a worse state, of men twice dead; of men, who, after G.o.d has brought their souls to life, let those souls of theirs die down again within them, and rot away, as far as we can see, hopelessly and for ever. And what is it which kills a man"s soul within him on this side the grave, and makes him dead while he has a name to live? _Sin_, evil-doing, the disease of the soul, the death of the soul, yea, the death of the man himself. And what is sin but living according to the flesh, and not according to the spirit? What is sin but living as the dumb animals do, as if we were debtors to our own flesh, to fulfil its l.u.s.ts, and to please our own appet.i.tes, fancies, and tempers, instead of remembering that we are debtors to G.o.d, who made us, and blesses us all day long;--debtors to our Lord Jesus Christ, who bought us with His own blood, that we might please Him and obey Him;--debtors to G.o.d"s Holy Spirit, who puts into our minds good desires;--debtors to our baptism vows, in which we were consecrated to G.o.d, that He, and not this flesh of ours, might be our Master for ever?
This is sin; to give way to those selfish and evil tempers, against which I warned you in the beginning of my sermon, and which, if any man indulges in them, will surely and steadily, bit by bit, kill that man"s soul within him, and leave the man dead in trespa.s.ses and sins, while his body walks this earth.
My friends, do not fancy these are merely farfetched words out of a book, made to sound difficult and terrible in order to frighten you.
G.o.d forbid! When Scripture says this, it speaks a plain and simple truth, and one which I know to be a truth from experience. I speak that which I know, and testify that which I have seen. I have seen (and what sadder or more fearful sight?) dead men and dying walk this earth in flesh and blood; men busy enough, shrewd enough upon some points, priding themselves, perhaps, upon their cleverness and knowledge of the world, of whom all one could say was, The man is dead; the man is lost, unless G.o.d brings him to life again by His quickening Spirit: for goodness is dead in him; the powers of his soul are dead in him; the hope of being a better man is dead in him; all that G.o.d wishes to see him be and do, is dead; G.o.d"s likeness and glory in him is dead: he thinks himself wise, and he is a fool in G.o.d"s sight; for he sees not G.o.d"s law, which is the only wisdom: he thinks himself strong, but he is utterly weak and helpless; for he is the slave of his own tempers, the slave of his own foul l.u.s.t, the slave of his own pride and vanity, the slave of his own covetousness. Oh, my friends, people are apt to be afraid of what they call seeing a ghost--that is, a spirit without a body: they fancy that it would be a very shocking thing to meet one; but as for me, I know a far more dreadful sight; and that is, a careless and a hardened sinner--a body without a spirit. Which is uglier and ghastlier--a spirit without a body, or a body without a spirit? And yet such one meets, I dare not think how often.
What sadder sight, if you recollect that men need not be thus; that G.o.d hates seeing them thus; that they become thus, and die down in sin, in spite of G.o.d, with all heaven above, and G.o.d the Lord thereof, crying to them, Why wilt thou die? What sadder sight? How many have I seen, living, to all intents and purposes, as if they had no souls; as if there were no G.o.d, no Law of G.o.d, no Right, no Wrong; caring for nothing, perhaps, but drink and bad women; or caring for nothing but sc.r.a.ping together a little more money than their neighbours; or caring for nothing but dress, and vanity, and gossiping, and tale-bearing; and yet, when one came to know them, one saw that _that_ was not what G.o.d intended them to be; that He had given them hearts which they had hardened, good feelings which they had crushed, sound brains which they had left idle, till one was ready to weep over them, as over something beautiful and n.o.ble ruined and lost; and looked on them as one would on a grand tree struck by lightning, decayed and dead, useless, and only fit to be burned, with just enough of its proper shape to show what a tree it ought to have been. And so it is with men and women: hardly a day pa.s.ses but one sees some one of whom one says, with a sigh, "What a worthy, loveable, useful person, that might have been! what a blessing to himself and all around him! and now, by following his fallen nature, and indulging it, he is neither worthy, nor loveable, nor useful; neither a blessing to himself nor to any human being: he might have been good for so much, and now he is good for nothing; for the spirit, the immortal soul which G.o.d gave him, is dead within him."
My friends, I would not say this, unless I could say more. I would not say sad words, if I could not follow them up by joyful and hopeful ones. It is written, "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die;" but it is written also, "If ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." It is promised--promised, my friends, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."
Through the Spirit, through G.o.d"s Spirit, every soul here can live, now and for ever. Through G.o.d"s Spirit, Christ not only can, but will, give you light. And that Spirit is near you, with you. Your baptism is the blessed sign, the everlasting pledge, that G.o.d"s Spirit is with you. Oh, believe that, and take heart. I will not say, you do not know how much good there is in you; for in us dwells no good thing, and every good thought and feeling comes only from the Spirit of G.o.d: but I will say boldly to every one of you, you do not know how much good there may be in you, if you will listen to those good thoughts of G.o.d"s Spirit; you do not know how wise, how right, how strong, how happy, how useful, you may become; you do not know what a blessing each of you may become to yourselves, and to all around you. Only make up your mind to live by G.o.d"s law; only make up your mind, in all things, small and great, to go G.o.d"s way, and not your own. Only make up your mind to listen, not to your own flesh, temper, and brain, which say this and that is pleasant, but to listen to G.o.d"s Spirit, which says this is right, and that is wrong: this is your duty, do it. Search out your own besetting sins; and if you cannot find them out for yourself, ask G.o.d to show you them; ask Him to give you truth in the inward parts, and make you to understand wisdom in the secret places of your heart. Pray G.o.d"s Spirit to quicken your soul, and bring it to life, that it may see and love what is good, and see and hate what is wrong; and instead of being most hard on your neighbour"s sin, to which you are not tempted, be most hard on your own sin, on the sin to which you are most tempted, whatsoever that may be. You have your besetting sin, doubt it not; every one has. I know that I have. I know that I have inclinations, tempers, longings, to which if I gave way, my soul would rot and die within me, and make me a curse to myself, and you, and every one I came near; and all I can do is to pray G.o.d"s Spirit to help me to fight those besetting sins of mine, and crush them, and stamp them down, whenever they rise and try to master me, and make me live after the flesh. It is a hard fight; and may G.o.d forgive me, for I fight it ill enough: but it is my only hope for my soul"s life, my only hope of remaining a man worth being called a man, or doing my duty at all by myself and you, and all mankind.
And it is your only hope, too. Pray for G.o.d"s Spirit, G.o.d"s strength, G.o.d"s life, to give your souls life, day by day, that you may fight against your sins, whatsoever they are, lest they kill your souls, long before disease and old age kill your bodies. Make up your minds to it. Make up your minds to mortify the deeds of the body; to say to your own bodies, tempers, longings, fancies, "I will not go your way: you shall go G.o.d"s way. I am not your debtor; I owe you nothing; I am G.o.d"s debtor, and owe Him everything, and I will pay Him honestly with the service of my body, soul, and spirit.
I will do my duty, and you, my flesh, must and shall do it also, whether it is pleasant at first, or not:" and be sure it will be pleasant at last, if not at first. Keep G.o.d always before your eyes. Ask yourself in every action, "What is right, what is my duty, what would G.o.d have me do?" And so far from finding it unpleasant, you will find that you are saving yourself a thousand troubles, and sorrows, and petty anxieties which now torment you; you will find that in G.o.d"s presence is life, the only life worth having, and that at His right hand are pleasures for evermore. Oh, be sure, my friends, that in real happiness you will not lose, but gain without end. If to have a clear conscience, and a quiet mind; if to be free from anxiety and discontent, free from fear and shame; if to be loved, respected, looked up to, by all whose good word is worth having, and to know that G.o.d approves of you, that all day long G.o.d is with you, and you with G.o.d, that His loving and mighty arms are under you, that He has promised to keep you in all your ways, to prosper all you do, and reward you for ever,--if this be not happiness, my friends, what is?
SERMON XVIII. SHAME
Romans x. 11. For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.
My friends, what this text really means is one thing; what we may choose to think it means is another thing--perhaps a very different thing. I will try and show you what I believe it really means.
"Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed." It seems as if St. Paul thought, that not being ashamed had to do with salvation, and being saved; ay, that they were almost the same thing: for he says just before, if thou doest so and so, thou shalt be saved; for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation; _for_ the Scripture saith, "Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed;" as if being ashamed was the very thing from which we were to be saved. And certainly that wise and great man, whoever he was (some say he was St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in Italy), who wrote the Te Deum, thought the same; for how does he end the Te Deum? "O Lord, in Thee have I trusted: let me never be confounded," that is, brought to shame. You see, after he has spoken of G.o.d, and the everlasting glory of G.o.d, of Cherubim and Seraphim, that is, all the powers of the earth and the powers of the heavens, of Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, the Holy Church, all praising G.o.d, and crying "Holy, holy, holy. Lord G.o.d of Hosts, Heaven and Earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory;" after he has spoken of the mystery of the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Ghost, of Christ"s redemption and incarnation, and ascension and glory; of His judging the world; of His government, and His lifting up His people for ever; after he has prayed G.o.d to keep them this day without sin, and to let His mercy lighten upon them; after all this, at the end of this glorious hymn, all that he has to say is, "O Lord, in Thee have I trusted: let me never be confounded."--All he has to say: but that is a great deal: he does not say that merely because he wants to say something more, and has nothing else to say. Not so. In all great hymns and writings like this, the end is almost sure to be the strongest part of all, to have the very pith and marrow of the whole matter in it, as I believe this end of the Te Deum has; and I believe that whoever wrote it thought that being confounded, and brought to shame, was just the most horrible and wretched thing which could happen to him, or any man, and the thing above all others from which he was most bound to pray G.o.d to save him and every human being.
Now, how is this? First, let us look at what coming to shame is; and next, how believing in Christ will save us from it.
Now, every man and woman of us here, who has one spark of good feeling in them, will surely agree, that coming to shame is dreadful; and that there is no pain or torment on earth like the pain of being ashamed of oneself: nothing so painful. And I will prove it to you. You call a man a brave man, if he is afraid of nothing: but there is one thing the very bravest man is afraid of, and that is of disgrace, of coming to shame. Ay, my friends, so terrible is the torment of shame, that you may see brave men,--men who would face death in battle, men who would have a limb cut off without a groan, you may see such, in spite of all their courage, gnash their teeth, and writhe in agony, and weep bitter tears, simply because they are ashamed of themselves, so terrible and unbearable is the torment of shame. It may drive a man to do good or evil: it may drive him to do good; as when, rather than come to shame, and be disgraced, soldiers will face death in battle willingly and cheerfully, and do deeds of daring beyond belief: or it may drive him to do evil; rather than come to shame, men have killed themselves, choosing, unhappy and mistaken men, rather to face the torment of h.e.l.l than the torment of disgrace. They are mistaken enough, G.o.d knows. But shame, like all powerful things, will work for harm as well as for good; and just as a wholesome and G.o.dly shame may be the beginning of a man"s repentance and righteousness, so may an unwholesome and unG.o.dly shame be the cause of his despair and ruin. But judge for yourselves; think over your past lives. Were you ever once--were it but for five minutes-- utterly ashamed of yourself? If you were, did you ever feel any torment like _that_? In all other misery and torment one feels hope; one says, "Still life is worth having, and when the sorrow wears away I shall be cheerful and enjoy myself again:" but when one has come to shame, when one is not only disgraced in the eyes of other people, but disgraced (which is a thousand times worse) in one"s own eyes; when one feels that people have real reason to despise one, then one feels for the time as if life was _not_ worth having; as if one did not care whether one died or not, or what became of one: and yet as if dying would do one no good, change of place would do one no good, time"s running on would do one no good; as if what was done could not be undone, and the shame would be with one still, and torment one still, wherever one was, and if one was to live a million years: ay, that it would be everlasting: one feels, in a word, that real shame and deserved disgrace is verily and indeed an everlasting torment. And it is this, and the feeling of this, which explains why poor wretches will kill themselves, as Judas Iscariot did, and rush into h.e.l.l itself, under the horror and pain of shame and disgrace. They feel a h.e.l.l within them so hot, that they actually fancy that they can be no worse off beyond the grave than they are on this side of it. They are mistaken: but that is the reason; the misery of disgrace is so intolerable, that they are willing, like that wretched Judas, to try any mad and desperate chance to escape it.
So much for shame"s being a dreadful and horrible thing. But again, it is a spiritual thing: it grows and works not in our fleshly bodies, but in our spirits, our consciences, our immortal souls.
You may see this by thinking of people who are not afraid of shame.
You do not respect them, or think them the better for that. Not at all. If a man is not afraid of shame; if a man, when he is found out, and exposed, and comes to shame, does not care for it, but "brazens out his own shame," as we say, we do not call him brave; we call him what he is, a base impudent person, lost to all good feeling. Why, what harder name can we call any man or woman, than to say that they are "shameless," dead to shame? We know that it is the very sign of their being dead in sin, the very sign of G.o.d"s Spirit having left them; that till they are made to feel shame there is no hope of their mending or repenting, or of any good being put into them, or coming out of them. So that this feeling of shame is a spiritual feeling, which has to do with a man"s immortal soul, with his conscience, and the voice of G.o.d in his heart.
Now, consider this: that there will surely come to you and me, and every living soul, a day of judgment; a day in which we shall be judged. Think honestly of those two words. First, a day, not a mere time, much less a night. Now, in a day there is light, by which men can see, and a sun in heaven which shows all things clearly. In that day, that brightest and clearest of all days, we shall see what we really have been, and what we really have done; and for aught we know, every one round us, every one with whom we have ever had to do, will see it also. The secrets of all our hearts will be disclosed; and we shall stand before heaven and earth simply for what we are, and neither more nor less. That is a fearful thought! Shall we come to shame in that day? And it will be a day of judgment: in it we shall be judged. I do not mean merely condemned, for we may be acquitted: or punished, for we may be rewarded; those things come after being judged. First, let us think of what being judged is. A judge"s business is to decide on what we have done, or whether we have broken the law or not; to hear witnesses for us and against us, to sum up the evidence, and set forth the evidence for us and the evidence against us. And our judge will be the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing through the very joints and marrow, and discerning the secret intents of the heart; neither is anything hid from Him, for all things are naked and open in the sight of Him with whom we have to do. With whom we _have_ to do, mind: not merely with whom we _shall_ have to do; for He sees all _now_, He knows all now. Ever since we were born, there has not been a thought in our heart but He has known it altogether. And He is utterly just--no respecter of persons; like His own wisdom, without partiality and without hypocrisy. O Lord! who shall stand in that day? O Lord! if thou be extreme to mark what is done amiss, who shall abide it? O Lord! in thee have I trusted: let me never be confounded!
For this is being confounded; this is shame itself. This is the intolerable, horrible, h.e.l.lish shame and torment, wherein is weeping and gnashing of teeth; this is the everlasting shame and contempt to which, as Daniel prophesied, too many should awake in that day--to be found guilty in that day before G.o.d and Christ, before our neighbours and our relations, and worst of all, before ourselves.
Worst of all, I say, before ourselves. It would be dreadful enough to have all the bad things we ever did or thought told openly against us to all our neighbours and friends, and to see them turn away from us;--dreadful to find out at last (what we forget all day long) that G.o.d knows them already; but more dreadful to know them all ourselves, and see our sins in all their shamefulness, in the light of G.o.d, as G.o.d Himself sees them;--more dreadful still to see the loving G.o.d and the loving Christ turn away from us;--but most dreadful of all to turn away from ourselves; to be utterly discontented with ourselves; ashamed of ourselves; to see that all our misery is our own fault, that we have been our own enemies; to despise ourselves, and hate ourselves for ever; to try for ever to get rid of ourselves, and escape from ourselves as from some ugly and foul place in which we were ashamed to be seen for a moment: and yet not to be able to get rid of ourselves. Yes, that will be the true misery of a lost soul, to be ashamed of itself, and hate itself. Who shall deliver a man from the body of that death?
I thank G.o.d, through Jesus Christ our Lord. I thank G.o.d, that at least now, here, in this life, we can be delivered. There is but one hope for us all; one way for us all, not to come to utter shame.
And this is in the Lord Jesus Christ, who has said, "Though your sins be red as scarlet they shall be white as wool; and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." One hope, to cast ourselves utterly on His boundless love and mercy, and cry to Him, "Blot these sins of mine out of Thy book, by Thy most precious blood, which is a full atonement for the sins of the whole world; and blot them out of my heart by Thy Holy Spirit, that I may hate them and renounce them, and flee from them, and give them up, and be Thy servant, and do Thy work, and have Thy righteousness, and do righteous things like Thee." And then, my friends, how or why we cannot understand; but it is G.o.d"s own promise, who cannot lie, that He will really and actually forgive these sins of ours, and blot them out as if we had never done them, and give us clean hearts and right spirits, to live new lives, right lives, lives like His own life; so that our past sinful lives shall be behind us like a dream, and we shall find them forgotten and forgiven in the day of judgment;--wonderful mercy! but listen to it--it is G.o.d"s own promise--"If the wicked man turneth away from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned to him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live."
They shall not be mentioned to him. My friends, if, as I have been showing, the great misery, the great horror of all, is having our sins mentioned to us in That Day, and being made utterly ashamed by them, what greater mercy can we want than this--not to have them mentioned to us, and not to come to shame; not to be plagued for ever with the hideous ghosts of our past bad thoughts, bad words, bad deeds, coming all day long to stare us in the face, and cry to us while the accusing Devil holds them up to us, as if in a looking- gla.s.s--"Look at your own picture. This is what you are. This fool, this idler, this mean, covetous, hard-hearted man, who cared only for himself;--this stupid man, who never cared to know his duty or do his duty;--this proud, pa.s.sionate, revengeful man, who returned evil for evil, took his brothers by the throat, and exacted from them the uttermost farthing;--this ridiculous, foolish, useless, disagreeable, unlovely, unlovable person, who went through the world neither knowing what he ought to do, nor whither he was going, but was utterly blind and in a dream; this person is you yourself. Look at your own likeness, and be confounded, and utterly ashamed for ever!" What greater misery than that? What greater blessing than to escape that? What greater blessing than to be able to answer the accusing Devil, "Not so, liar! This is not my likeness. This ugly, ridiculous, hateful person is not I. I was such a one once, but I am not now. I am another man now; and G.o.d knows that I am, though you may try to shame me by telling me that I am the same man. I was wrong, but I am right now; I was as a sheep going astray, but now I am returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of my soul, to whom I belonged all the while; and now I am right, in the right road; for with the heart I have believed G.o.d unto righteousness, and He has given me a clean heart, and a right spirit, and has purged me, and will purge me, till I am clean, and washed me till I am whiter than snow; I do not deny one of my old sins; I did them, I know that; I confess them to thee now, oh accusing Devil; but I confessed them to G.o.d, ay, and to man too, long ago, and by confessing them to Him I was saved from them; for with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. And what is more; I have not only confessed my own sins, but I have confessed Christ"s righteousness; and I confess it now.
I confess, I say, that Christ is perfectly righteous and good, the Perfect Pattern of what I ought to be; and because He is perfectly good, He does not wish to see me remain bad and sinful, that He may taunt me and torment me with my sins, as thou the accusing Devil dost: but He wishes to make me and every man good like Himself, blest like Himself; and He can do it, and will do it, if we will but give up our hearts to Him; and I have given up my heart to Him. All I ask of Him is to be made good and kept good, set right and kept right; and I can trust in Him utterly to do that; for He is faithful and just to forgive me my sins, and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Therefore, accuse me not, Devil! for thou hast no share in me: I belong to Christ, and not to thee. And set not my old sins before my face; for G.o.d has set them behind His back, because I have renounced them, and sworn an oath against them, and Christ has nailed them to His cross, and now they are none of mine and none of thine, but are cast long ago into the everlasting fire of G.o.d, and burnt up and done with for ever; and I am a new man, and G.o.d"s man; and He has justified me, and will justify me, and make me just and right; and neither thou, nor any man, has a right to impute to me my past sins, for G.o.d does not impute them to me; and neither thou, nor any man, has a right to condemn me, for G.o.d has justified me. And if it please G.o.d to humble me more (for I know I want humbling every day), and to show me more how much I owe to Him--if it please Him, I say, to bring to light any of my past sins, I shall take it patiently as a wholesome chastening of my Heavenly Father"s; and I trust to all G.o.d"s people, and to angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, that they will look on my past sins as G.o.d looks on them, mercifully and lovingly, as things past and dead, forgiven and blotted out of G.o.d"s book, by the precious blood of Christ, and look on me as I am in Christ, not having any righteousness of my own, but Christ"s righteousness, which comes by the inspiration of His own Holy Spirit."
Thus, my friends, we may answer the Devil, when he stands up to accuse us, and confound us in the Day of Judgment. Thus we may answer him now, when, in melancholy moments, he sets our sins before our face, and begins taunting us, and crying, "See what a wretch you are, what a hypocrite, too. What would all the world think of you, if they knew as much against you as I do? What would the world think of you, if they saw into that dirty heart of yours?" For we can answer him--"Whatever the world would think, I know what G.o.d Himself thinks: He thinks of me as of a son who, after wasting his substance, and feeding on husks with the swine, has come home to his Father"s house, and cried, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; and I know that that same good Heavenly Father, instead of shaming me, reproaching me, shutting His doors against me, has seen me afar off, and taken me home again without one harsh word, and called to all the angels in heaven, saying, "It is meet that we rejoice and be glad, for this My son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." And while Almighty G.o.d, who made heaven and earth, is saying that of me, it matters little what the lying Devil may say."
Only, only, if you be wandering from your Father"s house, come home; if you be wrong, entreat to be made right. If you are in your Father"s house, stay there; if you are right, pray and struggle to keep right; if the old account is blotted out, then, for your soul"s sake, run up no fresh account to stand against you after all in the Day of Judgment; if you have the hope in you of not coming to shame, you must purify yourselves, even as G.o.d is pure; if you believe really with your heart, you must believe unto righteousness; that is, you must trust G.o.d to make you righteous and good: there is no use trusting Him to make you anything else, for He will make you nothing else; being good Himself, He will only make you good: but as for trusting in Him to leave you bad, to leave you quiet in your sins, and then to save you after all, that is trusting that G.o.d will do a most unjust, and what is more, a most cruel thing to you; that is trusting G.o.d to do the Devil"s work; that is a blasphemous false trust, which will be utterly confounded in the Day of Judgment, and will cover you with double shame. The whole question for each of us is, "Do we believe unto righteousness?" Is righteousness what we want? Is to be made good men what we want? If not, no confessing with the mouth will be unto salvation, for how can a man be saved in his sins? If an animal is diseased can it be saved from dying without curing the disease? If a tree be decayed, can it be saved from dying without curing the decay? If a man be bad and sinful, can he be saved from eternal death without curing his badness and sinfulness? How can a man be saved from his sins but by becoming sinless? As well ask, Can a man be saved from his sins without being saved from his sins? But if you wish really to be saved from your sins, and taken out of them, and cured of them, that you may be made good men, righteous men, useful men, just men, loving men, G.o.dlike men;--then trust in G.o.d for that, and you will find that your trust will be unto righteousness, for you will become righteous men; and confess G.o.d with your mouth for that, saying, "I believe in G.o.d my Father; I believe in Jesus Christ His Son, who died, and rose, and ascended on high for me; I believe in G.o.d"s Holy Spirit, which is with me, to make me right;" and your confession will be unto salvation, for you will be saved from your sins.
Always say to yourself this one thing, "Good I will become, whatever it cost me; and in G.o.d"s goodness I trust to make me good, for I am sure He wishes to see me good, more than I do myself; and you will find that because you have confessed, in that best and most honest of ways, that G.o.d is good, and have so given Him real glory, and real honour, and real praise, He will save you from the sins which torment you: and that because you have really trusted in Him, you shall never come, either in this world, or the world to come, to that worst misery, the being ashamed of yourself.
SERMON XIX. FORGIVENESS
Psalm li. 16, 17. Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
The sacrifice of G.o.d is a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O G.o.d, Thou wilt not despise.
You all heard just now the story of Nathan and David, and you must have all felt how beautiful, and n.o.ble, and just it was; how it declares that there is but one everlasting G.o.d"s law of justice, which is above all men, even the greatest; and that what is right for the poor man is right for the king upon his throne, for G.o.d is no respecter of persons.
And you must have admired, too, the frankness, and fulness, and humbleness of David"s repentance, and liked and loved the man still, in spite of his sins, as much almost as you did when you heard of him as a shepherd boy slaying the giant, or a wanderer and an outlaw among the hills and forests of Judaea.
But did it now seem strange to you that David"s repentance, which was so complete when it did come, should have come no sooner? Did he need Nathan to tell him that he had done wrong? He seduced another man"s wife, and that man one of his most faithful servants, one of the most brave and loyal generals of his army; and then, over and above his adultery, he had plotted the man"s death, and had had him killed and put out of the way in as base, and ungrateful, and treacherous a fashion as I ever heard of. His whole conduct in the matter had been simply villanous. There is no word too bad for it.
And do you fancy that he had to wait the greater part of a year before the thought came into his head that that was not the fashion in which a man ought to behave, much more a king?--that G.o.d"s blessing was not on such doings as those?--and after all not find out for himself that he was wrong, but have to be told of it by Nathan?
Surely, if he had any common sense, any feeling of right and wrong left in him, he must have known that he had done a bad thing; and his guilty conscience must have tormented him many a time and oft during those months, long before Nathan came to him. Now, that he had the feeling of right and wrong left in him, we cannot doubt; for when Nathan told him the parable of the rich man who spared all his own flocks and herds, and took the poor man"s one ewe lamb, his heart told him that _that_ was wrong and unjust, and he cried out, "The man who has done this thing shall surely die." And surely that feeling of right and wrong could not have been quite asleep in him all those months, and have been awakened then for the first time.
But more; if we look at two psalms which he wrote about that time, we shall find that his conscience had _not_ been dead in him, but had been tormenting him bitterly; and that he had been trying to escape from it, and afterwards to repent--only in a wrong way.
If we look at the Thirty-second Psalm, we shall see there he had begun, by trying to deceive himself, to excuse himself before G.o.d.
But that had only made him the more miserable. "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my daily complaining. For Thy hand was heavy on me night and day: my moisture was turned to the drought of summer." Then he had tried sacrifices. He had fancied, I suppose, that he could make G.o.d pleased with him again by showing great devoutness, by offering bullocks and goats without number, as sin-offerings and peace-offerings; but that made him no happier. At last he found out that G.o.d required no sacrifice but a broken heart.
That was what G.o.d wanted--a broken and a contrite heart; for David to be utterly ashamed of himself, utterly broken down and silenced, so that he had nothing left to plead--neither past good deeds, nor present devoutness, nor sacrifices: nothing but, "O G.o.d, I deserve all Thou canst lay on me, and more. Have mercy on me--mercy is all I ask."