Therefore let each and all of us, high and low, take the warning of the last verse, and worship the Son of God. Bow low before Him—for that is the true meaning of the words—as subjects before an absolute monarch, who can dispose of us, body and soul, according to His will: but who can be trusted to dispose of us well: because His will is a good will, and the only reason why He is angry when we break His laws, is, that His laws are the Eternal Laws of God, wherein alone is life for all rational beings; and to break them is to injure our fellow-creatures, and to ruin ourselves, and perish from that right way, to bring us back to which He condescended, of His boundless love, to die on the Cross for all mankind.
SERMON XI. GOD THE TEACHER
Psalm cxix. 33, 34
Teach me, O Lord, the way of Thy statutes, and I shall keep it unto the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep Thy Law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart.
This 119th Psalm has been valued for many centuries, by the wisest and most devout Christians, as one of the most instructive in the Bible; as the experimental psalm. And it is that, and more. It is specially a psalm about education. That is on the face of the text. Teach me, O Lord, Thy statutes, and I shall keep them to the end. These are the words of a man who wishes to be taught, and therefore to learn; and to learn not mere book-learning and instruction, but to acquire a practical education, which he can keep to the end, and carry out in his whole life.
But it is more. It is, to my mind, as much a theological psalm as it is an experimental psalm; and it is just as valuable for what it tells us concerning the changeless and serene essence of God, as for what it tells us concerning the changing and struggling soul of man.
Let us think a little this morning—and, please God, hereafter also—of the Psalm, and what it says. For it is just as true now as ever it was, and just as precious to those who long to educate themselves with the true education, which makes a man perfect, even as his Father in heaven is perfect.
The Psalm is a prayer, or collection of short prayers, written by some one who had two thoughts in his mind, and who was so full of those two thoughts that he repeated them over and over again, in many different forms, like one who, having an air of music in his head, repeats it in different keys, with variation after variation; yet keeps true always to the original air, and returns to it always at the last.
Now what two thoughts were in the Psalmist’s mind?
First: that there was something in the world which he must learn, and would learn; for everything in this life and the next depended on his learning it. And this thing which he wants to learn he calls God’s statutes, God’s law, God’s testimonies, God’s commandments, God’s everlasting judgments. That is what he feels he must learn, or else come to utter grief, both body and soul.
Secondly: that if he is to learn them, God Himself must teach them to him. I beg you not to overlook this side of the Psalm. That is what makes it not only a psalm, but a prayer also. The man wants to know something. But beside that, he prays God to teach it to him.
He was not like too many now-a-days, who look on prayer, and on inspiration, as old-fashioned superstitions; who believe that a man can find out all he needs to know by his own unassisted intellect, and then do it by his own unassisted will. Where they get their proofs of that theory, I know not; certainly not from the history of mankind, and certainly not from their own experience, unless it be very different from mine. Be that as it may, this old Psalmist would not have agreed with them; for he held an utterly opposite belief. He held that a man could see nothing, unless God shewed it to him. He held that a man could learn nothing unless God taught him; and taught him, moreover, in two ways. First taught him what he ought to do, and then taught him how to do it.
Surely this man was, at least, a reasonable and prudent man, and shewed his common-sense. I say—common-sense.
For suppose that you were set adrift in a ship at sea, to shift for yourself, would it not be mere common-sense to try and learn how to manage that ship, that you might keep her afloat and get her safe to land? You would try to learn the statutes, laws, and commandments, and testimonies, and judgments concerning the ship, lest by your own ignorance you should sink her, and be drowned. You would try to learn the laws about the ship; namely the laws of floatation, by fulfilling which vessels swim, and by breaking which vessels sink.
You would try to learn the commandments about her. They would be any books which you could find of rules of navigation, and instruction in seamanship.
You would try to learn the testimonies about the ship. And what would they be? The witness, of course, which the ship bore to herself. The experience which you or others got, from seeing how she behaved—as they say—at sea.
And from whom would you try to learn all this? from yourself? Out of your own brain and fancy? Would you invent theories of navigation and shipbuilding for yourself, without practice or experience? I trust not. You would go to the shipbuilder and the shipmaster for your information. Just as—if you be a reasonable man—you will go for your information about this world to the builder and maker of the world—God himself.
And lastly; you would try to learn the judgments about the ship: and what would they be? The results of good or bad seamanship; what happens to ships, when they are well-managed or ill-managed.
It would be too hard to have to learn that by experience; for the price which you would have to pay would be, probably, that you would be wrecked and drowned. But if you saw other ships wrecked near you, you would form judgments from their fate of what you ought to do. If you could find accounts of shipwrecks, you would study them with the most intense interest; lest you too should be wrecked, and so judgment overtake you for your bad seamanship.
For God’s judgment of any matter is not, as superstitious people fancy, that God grows suddenly angry, and goes out of His way to punish those who do wrong, as by a miracle. God judges all things in heaven and earth without anger—ay, with boundless pity: but with no indulgence. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The ship that cannot swim, it must sink. That is the law of the judgments of God. But He is merciful in this; that He rewardeth every man according to his work. His judgment may be favourable, as well as unfavourable. He may acquit, or He may condemn. But whether He acquits or condemns, we can only know by the event; by the result. If a ship sinks, for want of good sailing or other defect, that is a judgment of God about the ship. He has condemned her. She is not seaworthy. But if the ship arrives safe in port, that too is God’s judgment. He has tried her and acquitted her. She is seaworthy; and she has her reward.
How simple this is. And yet men will not believe it, will not understand it, and therefore they wreck so often each man his own ship—his own life and immortal soul, and sink and perish, for lack of knowledge.
For each one of us is at sea, each in his own ship; and each must sail her and steer her, as best he can, or sink and drown for ever.
For the sea which each of us is sailing over is this world, and the ship in which each of us sails, is our own nature and character; what St Paul, like a truly scientific man, calls our flesh; and what modern scientific men, and rightly, call our organisation. And the land to which we are sailing is eternal Life. Shall we make a prosperous voyage? Shall we fail, or shall we succeed? Shall we founder and drown at sea, and sink to eternal death? Or shall we, as the clergyman prayed for us when we were baptized, so pass through the waves of this troublesome world, that finally we may come to the land of everlasting life? Which shall it be, my friends? Shall we sink, or shall we swim? Certain is one thing—that we shall sink, and not swim, if we do not learn and keep the law, and commandments, and testimonies, and judgments of God, concerning this our mortal life. If we do not, then we shall go through life, without knowing how to go through life, ignorantly and blindly; and the end of that will be failure, and ruin, and death to our souls. If we do not know and keep the Laws of God, the Laws of God will keep themselves, in spite of us, and grind us to powder. Do not fancy that you may do wrong without being punished; and break God’s Law, because you are not under the law, but under grace. You are only under grace, as long as you keep clear of God’s Law. The moment you do wrong you put yourself under the Law, and the Law will punish you. Suppose that you went into a mill; and that the owner of that mill was your best friend, even your father. Would that prevent your being crushed by the machinery, if you got entangled in it through ignorance or heedlessness? I think not. Even so, though God be your best of friends, ay, your Father in heaven, that will not prevent your being injured, it may be ruined, not only by wilful sins, but by mere folly and ignorance. Therefore your only chance for safety in this life and for ever, is to learn God’s laws and statutes about your life, that you may pass through it justly, honourably, virtuously, successfully. And the man who wrote the 119th Psalm knew that, and said, “Oh that my ways were made so direct, that I might keep thy statutes.”
But moreover, you must learn God’s commandments. He has laid down certain commands, certain positive rules which must be kept if you do not intend to die the eternal death. So says our Lord. “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbour as thyself.” There the ten commandments are, and kept they must be; and if you break one of them, it will punish you, and you cannot escape. And the man who wrote the 119th Psalm knew that, and said, “With my whole heart have I sought thee: oh let me not go wrong out of Thy commandments.”
Moreover, you must learn God’s testimonies: what He has witnessed and declared about Himself, and His own character, His power and His goodness, His severity and His love. And where will you learn that, as in the Bible? The Bible is full of testimonies of God in Christ about Himself; who He is, what He does, what He requires; and of testimonies of holy men of old, concerning God and concerning duty; concerning God’s dealings with their souls, and with other men, and with all the nations of the old world, and with all nations likewise to the end of time. And if people will not read and study their Bibles, they cannot expect to know the way to eternal life. That too the man who wrote the 119th Psalm knew, and said, “I have had as great delight in Thy testimonies, as in all manner of riches.”
Moreover, you must learn God’s judgments; the way in which He rewards and punishes men. And those too you will learn in the Bible, which is full of accounts of the just and merciful judgments of God. And you may learn them too from your own experience in life; from seeing what actually happens to those whom you know, when they do right things; and what happens again, when they do wrong things. If any man will open his eyes to what is going on around him in a single city, or in the mere private circle of his own kinsfolk and acquaintance; if he will but use his common sense, and look how righteousness is rewarded, and sin is punished, all day long, then he might learn enough and to spare about God’s judgments: but men will not. A man will see his neighbour do wrong, and suffer for it: and then go and do exactly the same thing himself; as if there were no living God; no judgments of God; as if all was accident and chance; as if he was to escape scot-free, while his neighbour next door has brought shame and misery on himself by doing the same thing. For it was well written of old, “The fool hath said in his heart—though he is afraid to say it with his lips—There is no God.” And the man who wrote the 119th Psalm knew that, and said, “I remembered Thine everlasting judgments, O Lord, and received comfort; for I was horribly afraid for the ungodly who forsake Thy law.”
I say again: that the only way to attain eternal life is to know, and keep, and profit by God’s laws, God’s commandments, God’s testimonies, God’s judgments; and therefore it is that the Psalmists say so often, that these laws and commandments are Life. Not merely the way to eternal life; but the Life itself, as it is written in the Prayer-Book, “O God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.”
But some will say, How shall I learn? I am very stupid, and I confess that freely. And when I have learnt, how shall I act up to my lesson? For I am very weak; and that I confess freely likewise.
How indeed, my friends? Stupid we are, the cleverest of us; and weak we are, the strongest of us. And if God left us to find out for ourselves, and to take care of ourselves, we should not sail far on the voyage of life without being wrecked; and going down body and soul to hell.
But, blessed be God, He has not left us to ourselves. He has not only commanded us to learn: He has promised to teach. And—as I said in the beginning of my Sermon—he who wrote the 119th Psalm knew that well. He knew that God would teach him and strengthen him; enlightening his dull understanding, and quickening his dull will; and therefore his Psalm, as I said, is a prayer, a prayer for teaching, and a prayer for light; and he cries to God—My soul cleaveth to the dust. I am low-minded, stupid, and earthly at the best. Oh quicken Thou me; that is—Oh give me life—more life—according to Thy word.
Thy Word. The Word of God, of whom the Psalmist says—O Lord, Thy Word endureth for ever in heaven. Even the Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Son of Man who is in heaven; and who, because He is in heaven, both God and man, can and will give us light and life, now and for ever.
And now take home with you this one thought. There is one education which we must all get; one thing which we must all learn, and learn to obey, or come to utter shame and ruin, either in this world or the world to come; and that is the laws, and commandments, and testimonies of God,—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit; for only by keeping them can we enter into eternal life. And if we wish to know them, God himself will teach us them. And if we wish, to keep them, God himself will give us strength to keep them. Amen.
SERMON XII. THE REASONABLE PRAYER
Psalm cxix. 33, 94
O Lord, teach me Thy statutes, and I shall keep them to the end. I am Thine, O save me; for I have kept Thy commandments.
Some who heard me last Sunday, both morning and afternoon, may have remarked an apparent contradiction between my two sermons. I hope they have done so. For then I shall hope that they are facing one of the most difficult, and yet most necessary, of all problems; namely the difference between the Law and the Gospel. In my morning sermon I spoke of the eternal law of God—how it was unchangeable even as God its author, rigid, awful, inevitable by every soul of man, and certain, if he kept it, to lead him into all good, for body, soul, and spirit: but certain, too, if he broke it, to grind him to powder.
And in the afternoon, I spoke of the Gospel and Free Grace of God—how that too was unchangeable, even as God its author; full of compassion and tender mercy, and forgiveness of sins; willing not the death of a sinner; but rather that he should be converted, and live.
But how are these two statements, both scriptural; both—as I hold from practical experience, true to the uttermost, and not to be compromised or explained away—how are they to be reconciled, I say? By these two texts. By taking them both together, and never one without the other; and by taking them, also, in the order in which you find them, and never—as too many do—the second before the first. At least this was the opinion of the Psalmist. He first seeks God’s commandments and statutes, and prays—Give me understanding and I shall keep Thy law, yea, I shall keep it with my whole heart. Make me to go in the path of Thy commandments; for therein is my desire. And then, only then, finding himself in trouble, anxiety, even in danger of death, he feels he has a sort of right to cry to God to help him out of his trouble, and prays—I am Thine, oh save me!
And why? What reason can he give why God should save him? Because, he says, I have sought Thy commandments.
Now let all rational persons lay this to heart; and consider it well. There are very few, heathens and savages, as well as Christians, who will not cry, when they find themselves in trouble—Oh save me. The instinct of every man is, to cry to some unseen persons or powers to help him. If he does not cry to the true and good God, he will cry to some false or bad God; or to some idol, material or intellectual, of his own invention. But that is no reason why his prayers should be heard. We read of old heathens at Rome, who prayed to Mercury, the god of money-making—“Da mihi fallere,”—Help me to cheat my neighbours: while the philosophers, heathen though they were, laughed, with just contempt, at such men and their prayers, and asked—Do you suppose that any God, if he be worth calling a God, will answer such a request as that? Nay, in our own times, have not the brigands of Naples been in the habit of carrying a leaden image of St Januarius in their hats, and praying to it to protect them in their trade of robbery and murder? I leave you to guess what answer good St Januarius, and much more He who made St Januarius, and all heaven and earth, was likely to give to such a prayer as that.
So it is not all prayers for help that are heard, or deserve to be heard. And indeed—I do not wish to be hard, but the truth must be spoken—there are too many people in the world who pray to God to help them, when they are in difficulties or in danger, or in fear of death and of hell, but never pray at any other time, or for any other thing. They pray to be helped out of what is disagreeable. But they never pray to be made good. They are not good, and they do not care to become good. All they care for, is to escape death, or pain, or poverty, or shame, when they see it staring them in the face: and God knows I do not blame them. We are all children, and, like children, we cry out when we are hurt; and that is no sin to us. But that is no part of godliness, not even of mere religion.
But worse—it is still more sad to have to say it, but it is true—most people’s notions of the next world, and of salvation, as they call it, are just as childish, material, selfish as their notions of this world.
They all wish and pray to be “saved.” What do they mean? To be saved from bodily pain in the next life, and to have bodily pleasure instead. Pain and pleasure are the only gods which they really worship. They call the former—hell. They call the latter—heaven. But they know as little of one as of the other; and their notions of both are equally worthy of—Shall I say it? Must I say it?—equally worthy of the savage in the forest. They believe that they must either go to heaven or to hell. They have, of course, no wish to go to the latter place; for whatever else there is likely to be there—some of which might not be quite unpleasant or new to them, such as evil-speaking, lying, and slandering, envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, bigotry included—there will be certainly there—they have reason to believe—bodily pain; the thing which they, being mostly comfortable people, dread most, and avoid most: contrary, you will remember, to the opinion of the blessed martyrs, who dreaded bodily pain least, and avoided it least, of all the ills which could befal them. Wherefore they are, in the sight of God, and of all true men unto this day—the blessed martyrs.
But these people—and there are too many of them by hundreds of thousands—do not want to be blessed. They only want to be comfortable in this world, and in the next. As for blessedness, they do not even know what it means; and our Lord’s seven beatitudes, which begin—“Blessed are the poor in spirit”—are not at all to their mind; even, alas! alas! to the mind of many who call themselves religious and orthodox; at least till they are so explained away, that they shall mean anything, or nothing, save—I trust I am poor in spirit: and nevertheless I am right, and everyone who differs from me is wrong.
The plain truth is—when all fine words, whether said in prayers or sung in hymns, are stript off—that they do not wish to go to hell and pain; and therefore prefer, very naturally, though not very spiritually, to go to heaven and pleasure; and so sing of “crossing over Jordan to Canaan’s shore,” or of “Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest,” and so forth, without any clear notion of what they mean thereby, save selfish comfort without end; they really know not what; they really care not where. And that they may arrive there or at a far better place; and have their wish, and more than their wish: I for one heartily desire. But whether they arrive there, or not; and indeed, whether they arrive at some place infinitely better or infinitely worse, depends on whether they will give up selfish calculations of loss and gain, selfish choosing between mere pain and pleasure: and choose this; choose, whatever it may cost them, between being good and being bad, or even being only half good; as little good as they can afford to be without the pains of hell into the bargain.
My friends—What if Christ should answer such people—I do not say that He does always answer them so, for He is very pitiful, and of tender mercy;—but what if He were to answer them, Save you? Help you? O presumptuous mortal, what have you done that Christ should save or help you? You are afraid of being ruined. Why should you not be ruined? What good will it be to your fellow-men if you keep your money, instead of losing it? You are making nothing but a bad use of your money. Why should Christ help you to keep it, and misuse it still more?
You are afraid of death. You do not wish to die. But why should you not die? Why should Christ save you from death? Of what use is your life to Christ, or to any human being? If you are living a bad life, your life is a bad thing, and does harm not only to yourself, but to your neighbours. Why should Christ keep you alive to hurt and corrupt your neighbours, and to set a bad example to your children? If you are not doing your duty where Christ has put you, you are of no use, a cumberer of the ground. What reason can you shew why He should not take you away, and put some one in your place who will do his duty? You are afraid of being lost—why should you not be lost? You are offensive, and an injury to the universe. You are an actual nuisance on Christ’s earth and in Christ’s Kingdom. Why should He not—as He has sworn—cast out of His Kingdom all things which offend, and you among the rest? Why should He not get rid of you, as you get rid of vermin, as you get rid of weeds; and cast you into the fire, to be burned up with all evil things? Answer that: before you ask Christ to save you, and deliver you from danger, and from death, and from the hell which you so much—and perhaps so justly—fear.
And how that question is to be answered, I cannot see.
Certainly the selfish man cannot answer it. The idle man cannot answer it. The profligate man cannot answer it. They are doing nothing for Christ; or for their neighbours, or for the human race; and they cannot expect Christ to do anything for them.
The only men who can answer it; the only men, it seems to me, who can have any hope of their prayers being heard, are those who, like the Psalmist, are trying to do something for Christ, and their neighbours, and the human race; who are, in a word, trying to be good. Those, I mean, who have already prayed, earnestly and often, the first prayer, “Teach me, O Lord, Thy statutes, and I shall keep them to the end.” They have—not a right: no one has a right against Christ, no, not the angels and archangels in heaven—not a right, but a hope, through Christ’s most precious and undeserved promises, that their prayers will be heard; and that Christ will save them from destruction, because they are, at least, likely to become worth saving; because they are likely to be of use in Christ’s world, and to do some little work in Christ’s kingdom.
They are God’s: they are soldiers in Christ’s army. They are labourers in Christ’s garden. They are on God’s side in the battle of life, which is the battle of Christ and of all good men, against evil, against sin and ignorance, and the numberless miseries which sin and ignorance produce. They are not the profligate; they are not the selfish, the idle; they are not the frivolous, the insolent; they are not the wilfully ignorant who do not care to learn, and do not even—so brutish are they—think that there is anything worth learning in the world, save how to turn sixpence into a shilling, and then spend it on themselves. Not such are those who may hope to have their prayers heard, because they are worth hearing, and worth helping. But they are the people who say to themselves, not once in their lives, not once a week on Sundays, but every day and all day long—I must be good; I will be good. I must be of use; I must be doing some work for God; and therefore I must learn. I must learn God’s laws, and statutes, and commandments, about my station, and calling, and business in life. Else how can I do it aright? I dare no more be ignorant, than I dare be idle. I must learn. But how shall I learn? Stupid I am, and ignorant, and the more I try to learn, the more I discover how stupid I am. The more I do actually learn, the more I discover how ignorant I am. There is so much to be learned; and how to learn it passes my understanding. Who will teach me? How shall I get understanding? How shall I get knowledge? And if I get them, how shall I be sure that they are true understanding, and true knowledge? Mad people have understanding enough; and so have some who are not mad, but merely fools. Wit enough they have, active and rapid brains: but their understanding is of no use, for it is only misunderstanding; and therefore the more clever they are, the more foolish they are, and the more dangerous to themselves and their fellow-creatures. Knowledge, too—how shall I be sure that my knowledge, if I get it, is true knowledge, and not false knowledge, knowledge which is not really according to facts? I see too many who have knowledge for which I care little enough. Some know a thousand things which are of no use to them, or to any human being. Others know a thousand things: but know them in a shallow, inaccurate fashion; and so cannot make use of them for any practical purpose. Others know a thousand things: but know them all in a prejudiced and one-sided fashion; till they see things not as things are, but as they are not, and as they never will be; and therefore their knowledge, instead of leading them, misleads them, and they misjudge facts, misjudge men, and earth, and heaven, just as much as the man who should misjudge the sunlight of heaven and fancy it to be green or blue, because he looked at it through a green or blue glass. How then shall I get true knowledge? Knowledge which will be really useful, really worth knowing? Knowledge which I shall know accurately, and practically too, so that I can use it in daily life, for myself and my fellow-men? Knowledge, too, which shall be clear knowledge, not warped or coloured by my own fancies, passions, prejudices, but pure, and calm, and sound; Siccum Lumen, “Dry Light,” as the greatest of English Philosophers called it of old?
To all such, who long for light, that by the light they may see to live the life, God answers, through His only-begotten Son, The Word who endureth for ever in heaven:—
“Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, much more will your heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.”
Yes, ask for that Holy Spirit of God, that He may lead you into all truth; into all truth, that is, which is necessary for you to know, in order to see your way through the world, and through your duty in the world. Ask for that Holy Spirit; that He may give you eyes to see things as they are, and courage to feel things as they are, and to do your work in them, and by them, whether they be pleasant or unpleasant, prosperous or adverse. Ask Him; and He will give you true knowledge to know what a serious position you are in, what a serious thing life is, death is, judgment is, eternity is; that you may be no trifler nor idler, nor mere scraper together of gain which you must leave behind you when you die: but a truly serious man, seriously intent on your duty; seriously intent on working God’s work in the place and station to which He has called you, before the night comes in which no man can work.
If a man is doing that; if he is earnestly trying to learn what is true, in order that he may do what is right; then he has—I do not say a right—but at least a reason, or a shadow of reason, when he cries to God in his trouble—
“I am Thine, oh save me, for I have sought thy commandments.”
“I am Thine.” Not merely God’s creature: the very birds, and bees, and flowers are that; and do their duty far better than I—God forgive me—do mine.
“I am Thine.” Not merely God’s child: the sinners and the thoughtless are that, though—God help them—they care not for Him, nor for His laws, nor for themselves and their glorious inheritance as children of God.