LXIII.
_THANKFULNESS TO G.o.d._
Harvest
S. Matthew xxii., 21.
"Render--unto G.o.d, the things that are G.o.d"s."
INTRODUCTION.--David says in the 8th Psalm, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him: and the son of man that Thou visitest him? Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of Thy hands; and Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet, all sheep and oxen; yea, and the beast of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea."
I. The mastery of man is even more extensive than this; he controls the elements. The earth he tills and makes it bring forth fruit and corn, as he wills. He will not suffer it to run wild, but schools and disciplines it. He hedges it about, and ploughs, and sows, and reaps.
He burrows into it for fuel and for metals, he cuts roads over its face.
The air he makes use of also, it is his servant to turn the sails of his wind-mills, to grind his corn, it fills out the sails of his ships to carry his merchandise from one land to another.
Fire, that most terrible of elements, he dominates and makes into a slave, it smelts the ore for him, it raises the steam that drives the engines, it heats his house, it lights it, it cooks his food.
Water is also under control, he leads it where he will in ca.n.a.ls and pipes, he makes it turn the wheels of water-mills, it is used for drinking, and for washing. And yet even that is not all. Man controls the lightning, he makes of that a slave to carry messages round the world, and he carries it into globes, and lights streets and railway stations, and shop windows with it.
When man was innocent in Eden, the beast and birds were his familiar friends, but when he sinned they fled from him. G.o.d said to Noah, "The fear of you, and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea, into your hand are they delivered."
See how the animals have been subjected to man; the horse, the useful cow, the dog, and the sheep have been tamed, the horse which once roved wild submits to have a saddle on his back, and a bit in his mouth. The cow gives her milk and her meat, and the sheep both wool and meat, for the nourishment and the clothing of man; the dog, which, when wild, was fierce as his brother the wolf, has become the friend and companion of man; even the gigantic elephant has become docile, and the Indian mother leaves her babe under its charge, that the monster may brush away the flies from the sleeping infant with a branch.
We have dominion over the birds in the air, we have tamed the domestic fowls and make them yield us their eggs, and we keep the pigeons about our homes that we may kill their young; we snare and shoot them as we will, their high flight and rapid wings are no protection for them.
We have dominion over the fishes of the sea, we strew the net and bring them in for our food; we hunt the whale for his oil and for the fringe of bone in his mouth; we dive into the sea after the oyster that we may extract from it the pearl, and we strip the sh.e.l.l of its rainbow-coloured scales to inlay therewith our furniture.
II. What follows from all this? Is not this enough to make man proud, to exalt him in his own conceit? unfortunately it would seem so, but the lesson I would draw from all this is, Render unto G.o.d that service which is due to G.o.d, as all inferior creatures render unto you the service you demand of them.
An old writer (Hugo Victorinus) beautifully says--"It is as though the earth appealed to man, and said to him, See how He loved thee who made me for thee. I serve thee because I was made for thee, and do thou serve Him who made thee and me."
Suppose a king were to take you by the hand and lead you into a beautiful estate, and say to you, "Here, I give you this mansion, with the park and the fields, and the woods and the river, you may do what you will with it, hunt, and shoot, and fish, and till the soil, and pasture sheep, and cattle, I give it you all freely and entirely, I ask of you nothing but that you will recognise me as your king and not join my enemies in fighting against me." Then, I think, you would embrace the offer with the greatest eagerness. Now this is just what G.o.d has done to you; He has brought you into the world, and has given you power over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, He has given you the earth to grow your corn, and on which to pasture your cattle, He has given you dominion over the elements, and all He asks in return is that you will recognise Him as the Giver, and not join His enemies. "Render unto G.o.d that honour and homage that be G.o.d"s."
III. Balaam, the prophet and seer, rode on his a.s.s to go to Balak, king of Moab. G.o.d had forbidden him to go and curse the chosen people of G.o.d, but Balaam, moved by covetousness, and eager for honours from the king, started on his way to go. Then an angel stood in the way with a drawn sword to stop him. Balaam did not see the angel, but the a.s.s did, and fell down under Balaam. Then he cried out in a rage, "I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee," and he beat the a.s.s savagely with his stick. Do you see! Balaam expects the a.s.s to obey him blindly, to go where he chooses; but he himself will not obey G.o.d, and refrain from going whither he is forbidden.
How is it with you? Is it not with you as with Balaam? You expect the earth to yield you what you choose, and are wroth if it withholds the crop; but you do not yield to G.o.d what He desires, and show a harvest of good fruit unto life everlasting from the seed of Grace He has sown in you. You expect your sheep to give their wool, and your cows their milk, and to obey you, and come into the fold, or go out into the pasture, docile to your will. But do you act thus to G.o.d? Are you docile to His will? Do you eat that heavenly food He has prepared for you in the pastures of his Church? You expect your orchard to yield you apples. Do you show any fruit of the Spirit? When Christ comes and searches among the leaves of your profession, does He find any fruit of good works there?
CONCLUSION.--Then, Brethren, in your farm-work, bear this ever in mind, that as you expect the fields and the cattle to yield to you what is your due, so render also yourselves unto G.o.d that honour, that worship, that grat.i.tude, which are G.o.d"s.
LXIV.
_THE FORMATION OF HABITS._
School Sermon.
Proverbs xxii. 6.
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."
INTRODUCTION.--There is a district, high up in the Black Forest, where the ground is full of springs. It is a plain some nine hundred feet above the sea. Thousands upon thousands of little springs gush out of the soil; you seem to be on the rose of a vast watering-can. Now, from this great source flow a good many rivers, and they flow in very different, nay, opposite directions. There rises the Danube, which runs East and dies in the Black Sea, and also the Neckar and a hundred other tributaries of the Rhine, which flows West, and falls into the North Sea. A very little thing on that plain--a slight rise or fall in the ground, this way or that--decides the direction in which a river shall run. You can easily make a little stream run this way and feed the Rhine, or that way and swell the Danube; but after a few miles all control over the stream is gone. It runs on, and will run on to the end in the direction you have given it, or which it took by chance when it started.
It is the same with children. All these little springs of vigorous life are bubbling up round us, and whither shall they flow? To the right or to the left? To Life or to Death? We can give them their direction now. A few years hence, and all power over them will be gone.
SUBJECT.--As a habit is formed in early youth, so it remains to old years.
I. We take our children and we train them for G.o.d. G.o.d has given them to us for this, to train them as citizens of His kingdom. We neglect our duty if we neglect this. He placed the flexible little characters in our hands to bend this way or that, expecting us to make them grow upright and not crooked, to look to Heaven, instead of trailing on earth. They are a solemn trust for which we must give account.
It would have been one of the chief woes of h.e.l.l to Dives, if he had his five brethren there to reproach him for having set them a bad, selfish, luxurious example. Think how bitter your future state would be, if your children in the outer darkness were to be for ever reproaching you, "You brought us up to the world and not to G.o.d, you fed our bodies but not our souls, you set before us the transitory life as the one thing to care for, and did not teach us to lay up treasure and toil for the life eternal!" Think, also, how it will increase your happiness to have your children in Life Eternal, and to receive their blessing, and experience their grat.i.tude for having so taught them, by word and example, that they have through life walked in the narrow path that leads to the gates of Heaven.
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." You teach your children obedience, in order that when young they may form the habit of submitting to rule. When they are old they will not depart from it. G.o.d has His laws. G.o.d exacts their obedience. They learn now to bow to the commands of a teacher whom they can see, they will obey afterwards the invisible Divine Teacher. You teach your children order and method when young, that they may live an orderly life when they grow older. You teach them self-control now, that they may be able to exercise it in greater matters hereafter.
II. Habits of obedience, and order, and self-control, acquired in childhood will be confirmed in manhood, and will remain to the end of life. A man of business, who has spent his youth and manhood in looking after his shop, or attending to his office, is miserable in old age when he gives up his business and retires; he misses the old routine, he would be happier if he could go on in the accustomed round till he drops. The days hang heavy on his hands. The relaxation to which he had looked forward, and for which he had worked, palls on him.
And these are habits of industry. Bad habits retain a stronger hold on man. A bad youth and a bad manhood make a vicious old age. Many an old man who had led a disorderly life retains his wicked habits, though they afford him no pleasure. He goes on in vice merely because vice has become habitual, not because it is pleasurable.
Eli, as we read in the 4th chap. I Sam., when aged ninety and eight years, and his eyes were dim, that he could not see, "sat upon a seat by the wayside watching." What is the meaning of this? The old man of nearly a hundred has his chair brought outside the temple, and sits there looking up the street, and that although his eyes are so covered with a mist that he can see nothing. The sacred writer does not say that Eli sat on the seat by the wayside seeing what went on, but only straining his sightless eyeb.a.l.l.s up the street. If we turn back to the first chapter, we shall see that this was a habit with Eli. When he was many years younger, some thirty years before, when Hannah came up to Shiloh to entreat the Lord to have mercy on her and take away her reproach, we read "Now Eli, the priest, sat upon a seat by the post of the temple of the Lord." And his eyes, then sharp and clear, were peering about and watching all that was going on, and examining the faces of the people who were coming in and going out, and were engaged in prayer. One would have thought that common decency would have kept him from watching the face of the poor woman who was engaged in prayer, but Eli had not acquired control over his eyes--indeed, his great amus.e.m.e.nt was peering into people"s faces and guessing what was going on in their minds. Hannah wept as she prayed, "And it came to pa.s.s, as she continued praying to the Lord, that Eli marked her mouth. Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard,"--then with that want of charity, and tendency to think evil which so commonly goes with peeping and prying--"Eli thought she had been drunk." He saw what was not--drunkenness--in the weeping, sorrowful-hearted woman, but he saw not the wickedness which was in his disorderly sons. Here is an ill.u.s.tration of how habits last. Eli had acquired this habit of sitting in the gate and watching what went on, when he was a man in the vigour of his days, and when he was a very old man and blind, the habit continued. He had his chair brought out into the street that he might look up and down it, though his eyes were dim and he could see nought.
III. Now the great advantage of a school to a child is that therein the child is taught good habits. The child has got certain talents, but cannot turn these talents to any good account without application.
In school he is given the habit of application; that is, of keeping his attention fixed on one subject.
But application is not all; to that must be added perseverance. No advance will be made in anything, unless a man first applies his mind to his task, and then perseveres in it till he has fulfilled what he undertook. Nothing is more common than to begin a thing and to be disheartened at the first difficulty, and to throw it up. At school the child is given the habit of perseverance.
That is not all. No work will be carried out thoroughly without order and system. You see people who work all day and work hard, but never make any way, because they work in a muddle, and with no regular plan.
At school the child is given the habit of orderliness.
I have instanced only a few of those necessary habits which we try to impress on children at school. We endeavour to impress them on the young, because then they are open to instruction, their characters are soft and take impressions, as warm wax does from a seal. We train them up in the way in which they should go, trusting that when they are old they will not depart from it. We teach what is good, that good may become a habit with them, and when anything has become a habit, it sticks. It is not shaken off.
LXV.
_RELIGIOUS ZEAL._
Dedication Festival
Ps. lxix., 9.
"The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up."
INTRODUCTION.--David spoke the truth. The one great desire of his heart was the glorification of G.o.d by the erection of a temple befitting His worship at Jerusalem. Although he had plenty of cares to distract him, yet he never had this out of his heart. "I will not come within the tabernacle of mine house; nor climb up into my bed; I will not suffer mine eyes to sleep, nor mine eyelids to slumber; neither the temples of my head to take any rest; until I find out a place for the temple of the Lord; an habitation for the mighty G.o.d of Jacob."
One of the first things he did after he was anointed King over Israel, was to go to Kirjath-jearim, and bring up thence the ark of G.o.d from the house of Abinadab in which it had lodged. And David went before the ark playing his harp, and his heart was so full of joy that he danced before the ark, singing and striking the strings of his harp.