■5ter='
•^■^^
'tir
k^ - ^'
>^ >''j**J
^^
1^
SG^
.-'kK-
^-.
K
^S'+^
tm.
4-.
^
J This book is DUE on the last date stamped below
Fcirm Iv-9-5i//-7.'2"2
SOUTHERN BRANCH
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LIBRARY
LOS ANGELES. CALIP.
THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH.
[7'Ae Author reserves the right of Translation']
THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH.
A SET OF PARISH SER3MS,
BY THE
EEV. C. KINGSLEY, F.L.S., F.a.S.,
ETC.
WITH A PREFACE.
29931
PUBLISHED BT REQUEST.
A Gift FROM
J, ACKERMAN COLES, M. D., L.L. D.
IN MEMORY OF HIS SISTER
MISSEMILIE S. COLES
LONDON:
PARKER, SON, AND BOURN, WEST STRAND.
1863.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AKD SONS, SrAlirORD STREET
AND CHAEING CEOSS.
/.
t^ R
IS
PREFACE.
TO THE KEY. CANON STANLEY.
My dear Stanley,
I dedicate tliese sermons to you, not tliat I
may make you responsible for any doctrine or
statement contained in them, but as the sim-
plest method of telling you how much they owe
to your book on the Jewish Church, and of ex-
pressing my deep gratitude to you for publishing
that book at such a time as this.
It has given to me (and I doubt not to many
other clergymen) a fresh confidence and energy
in preaching to my people the Gospel of the Old
Testament as the same with that of the New;
and without it, many of these sermons would
have been very different from, and I am certain
vi PEEFACE.
very inferior to, what tliey are now, by tlie help of
your admirable book.
Brought up, like all Cambridge men of the
last generation, upon Paley's * Evidences,' I had
accepted as a matter of course, and as the
authoritative teaching of my University, Paley's
opinions as to the limits of Biblical criticism,*
quoted at large in Dean Milman's noble preface
to his last edition of the ' History of the Jews ;'
and especially that great dictum of his, 'that
' it is an unwarrantable, as well as unsafe rule,
' to lay down concerning the Jewish history, that
' which was never laid down concerning any other,
' that either every particular of it must be true,
' or the whole false.'
I do not quote the rest of the passage ; first
because you, I doubt not, know it as well as I ;
and next, in order that if any one shall read these
lines who has not read Paley's 'Evidences,' he
may be stirred up to look the passage out for
himself, and so become acquainted with a great
book and a great mind.
A reverent and rational liberty in criticism
(within the limits of orthodoxy) is, I have al-
* 'Evidences,' Part III., Cap. iii. .
PREFACE. vii
ways supposed, the right of every Cambridge
man : and I was therefore the more shocked, for
the sake of free thought in my University, at the
appearance of a book which chiimed and exer-
cised a licence in such questions, which I must
(after careful study of it) call anything but
rational and reverent. Of the orthodoxy of the
book it is not, of course, a private clergyman's
place to judge. That book seemed dangerous to
the University of Cambridge itself, because it was
likely to stir up from without attempts to abridge
her ancient liberty of thought; but it seemed still
more dangerous to the hundreds of thousands
without the University, who, being no scholars,
must take on trust the historic truth of the
Bible.
For I found that book, if not always read, yet
still talked and thought of on every side, among
persons whom I should have fancied careless of its
subject and even ignorant of its existence, but
to whom I was personally bound to give some
answer as to the book and its worth. It was
making many unsettled and unhappy; it was
(even worse) pandering to the cynicism and
frivolity of many who were already too cynical
viii PEEFACE.
and frivolous ; and, much as I shrank from de-
scending into the arena of religious controversy, I
felt bound to say a few plain words on it, at least
t
to my own parishioners.
But how to do so, without putting into their
lieads thoughts which need be in no man's head,
and perhaps shaking the very faith which I was
trying to build up, was difficult to me, and, I
think, would have been impossible to me, but
for the opportune appearance of your admii-able
book.
I could not but see that the book to which I
have alluded, like most other modern books on
biblical criticism, was altogether negative ; was
possessed too often by that fanaticism of disbelief,
which is just as dangerous as the fanaticism of
belief ; was picking the body of the Scripture to
pieces so earnestly, that it seemed to forget that
Scripture had a spirit as weU as a body ; or, if it
confessed that it had a spirit, asserting that spirit
to be one utterly different from the spurit which
the Scripture asserts that it possesses.
For the Scripture asserts that those who wrote
it were moved by the Spirit of God ; that it is a
record of God's dealings with men, which certain
PREFACE. ix
men were inspired to perceive and to write down :
whereas tlie tendency of modern criticism is,
without doubt, to assert that Scripture is in-
spired by the spirit of man ; that it contains the
thoudits and discoveries of men concerning God,
which they wrote down without the inspiration of
Grod; which difference seems to me (and I hope
to others), utterly infinite and incalculable, and to
involve the question of the whole character, honour,
and glory of God.
There is, without a doubt, something in the
Old Testament, as well as in the New, quite differ-
ent in kind, as well as in degree, from the sacred
books of any other people ; an unique element,
which has had an imique effect upon the human
heart, life, and civilization. This remains, after
all possible deductions for ' ignorance of physical
' science,' ' errors in numbers and chronology,' ' in-
' terpolations,' 'mistakes of transcribers,' and so
forth, whereof we have read of late a great
deal too much, and ought to care for them and
for their existence, or non-existence, simply no-
thing at all; because, granting them all — (though
the greater part of them I do not grant, as
far as I can trust my critical faculty) — there
X PKEFACE.
remains that unique element, beside which all
these accidents are but as the spots on the sun,
compared to the great glory of his life-giving light.
The unique element is there ; and I cannot but
still believe, after much thought, that it — the power-
ful and working element, the inspired and Divine
element, wliich has converted, and still converts
millions of souls— is just that which Christendom
in all ages has held it to be — the account of
certain ' noble acts ' of God's, and not of certain
noble thoughts of man : in a word, not merely the
moral, but the historic element ; and that, there-
fore, the value of the Bible teaching depends
on the truth of the Bible story. That is my belief.
Any criticism which tries to rob me of that, I
shall look at fairly, but very severely indeed.
If all that a man wants is a 'religion,' he
ought to be able to make a very pretty one for
himself, and a fresh one as often as he is tired of the
old. But the heart and soul of man wants more
than that, as it is written, ' My soul is athirst for
' God, even for the living God.' Those whom I
have to teach want a living God, who cares for men,
works for men, teaches men, punishes men, for-
gives men, saves men from their sins ; — and Him
PREFACE. xi
I liave found in the Bible, and nowliere else,
save in the facts of life whicli the Bible alone
interprets.
In the power of man to find out God I will
never believe. The ' religious sentiment,' or ' God-
consciousness,' so much talked of now-a-days,
seems to me (as I believe it will to all prac-
tical common-sense Englishmen), a faculty not
to be depended on ; as fallible and corrupt as any
other part of human nature ; apt (to judge from
history) to develop itself into ugly forms, not only
without a revelation from (xod, but too often in
spite of one, — into pol}i;heisms, idolatries, witch-
crafts, Buddhist asceticisms, Phoenician Moloch-
sacrifices, Popish inquisitions, American spirit-
rappings, and what not. The hearts and minds
of the sick, the poor, the sorrowing, the truly
human, all demand a living God, who has re-
vealed himself in living acts ; a God w^ho has
taught mankind by facts, not left them to discover
him by theories and sentiments; a Judge, a
Father, a Saviom-, an Inspirer ; in a word, their
hearts and minds demand the historic truth of the
Bible, — of the Old Testament no less than of the
New.
xii PEEFACE.
. What I needed, therefore, for my guidance was
a book which should believe and confess all this,
"without condemning or ignoring free criticism and
its results ; which should make use of that criti-
cism not to destroy but to build up ; which em-
ployed a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament
liistory, the manners of the Jews, the localities of
the sacred events, to teach men not what might
not be in the Bible, but what was certainly therein ;
which dealt with the Bible after the only fan* and
trustful method ; that is, to consider it at first ac-
cording to the theory which it sets forth concerning
itself, before trying quite another theory of the
commentator's own invention ; and which combined
with a courageous determination to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that
Christian sjDirit of trust, reverence, and piety,
without which all intellectual acuteness is but
blindness and folly.
All this, and more, I found in your book, en-
forced with a genius which needs no poor praise
of mine ; and I hailed its appearance at such a
crisis as a happy Providence, certain that it would
be, what I now know by experience it has been, a
balm to many a wounded spirit, and a check to
PEEFACE. xiii
many a wandering intellect, inclined, in the
rashness of youth, to throw away the truth it
already had, for the sake of theories which it hoped
that it might possibly verify hereafter.
With your book in my hand, I have tried to
write a few plain sermons, telling plain people
what they wdll find in the Pentateuch, in spite of
all present doubts, as their fathers found it before
them, and as (I trust) their children will find it
after them, when all this present wliirlwind of
controversy has past,
' As dust that lightly rises up,
' And is lightly laid again.'
I have told them that they will find in the
Bible, and in no other ancient book, that living
working God, w^hom their reason and conscience
demand ; and that they will find that he is none
other than Jesus Christ our Lord. I have not
apologized for, or explained away, the so-called
' Anthropomorphism ' of the Old Testament. On
the contrary, I have frankly accepted it, and even
gloried in it, as an integral, and I believe invalu-
able, element of Scripture. I have deliberately
ignored many questions of great interest and dif-
ficulty, because I had no satisfactory solution of
xiv PKEFACE.
them to ofifer: but I have said at the same
time that those questions were altogether unim-
portant, compared with those salient and funda-
mental points of the Bible history on which I was
preaching. And therefore I have dared to bid
my people relinquish biblical criticism to those
who have time for it ; and to say of it with me,
as Abraham of the planets, ' Oh, my people, I am
' clear of all these tilings ! I turn myself to him
* who made heaven and earth.'
I do not wish, believe me, to make you respon-
sible for any statement or opinion of mine. I am
painfully conscious, on reviewing for the press
sermons which would never have been published
save by special request, how imperfect, poor, and
weak they seem to me — how much worse, then,
they will appear to other people ; how much
more may be said which I have not the wit
to say ! But the Bible can take care of itself,
I presume, without my help : all I can do is, to
speak what I think, as far as I see my way ; to
record the obligation toward you under which
I, with thousands more, now lie ; and to express
my hope that we shall bp always found to-
gether fellow-workers in the cause of Truth,
and that to you and in you may be fulfilled those
PEEFACE. XV
noble and tender words, in whicli you have spoken
of Samuel, and of those who work in Samuel's
spirit : —
* In later times, even in our own, many names
* spring to our recollection, of those who have
' trodden or (in different degrees, some known,
' and some unknown) are treading the same
' thankless path in the Church of Germany, in the
' Church of France, in the Church of Russia, in
' the Church of England. Wherever they are,
* and whosoever they may be, and howsoever they
' may be neglected, or assailed, or despised, they,
' like their great prototype and likeness in the
' Jewish Church, are the silent healers, who bind
' up the wounds of their age in spite of itself ;
' they are the good physicians who bind together
* the dislocated bones of a disjointed time ; they
' are the reconcilers who turn the hearts of the
' children to the fathers, or of the fathers to the
' children. They have but little praise and re-
* ward from the partisans who are loud in indis-
' discriminate censure and aj)plause. But, like
' Samuel, they have a far higher reward, in the
' Davids who are silently strengthened and nur-
* tured by them in Naioth of Eamah, — in the
xvi PKEFACE.
' glories of a new age, wliich shall be ushered in
' peacefully and happily, after they have been
' laid in the grave.'*
That such, my dear Stanley, may be your work
and your destiny, is the earnest hope of
Yours affectionately,
0. KINGSLEY.
Eversley Bedory,
July 1, 1863.
♦ Lectures on the Jewish Church, Lect. xviii. p. 401.
CONTENTS.
SKRMOS ' fACE
I. GOD IN CHRIST I
II. THE LIKENESS OF GOD 1 8
III. THE VOICE OP THE LOED GOD .. .. 33
IV. NOAH's FLOOD 47
V. ABRAHAM 59
VI. JACOB AND ESAU 72
VIL JOSEPH 84
VIII. THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZER .. 96
IX. MOSES IC9
X. THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT 1 23
XI. THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
IS THE GOD OF THE NEW .. .. 1 37
XII. THE BIRTHNIGHT OF FREEDOM .. 1 49
h
xviii CONTENTS.
SERMON PACK
XIII. KORAN, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM .. .. 1 59
XIV. BALAAM 1/2
XV. DEUTERONOMY 1 84
XVI. NATIONAL WEALTH 1 97
XVn. THE GOD OF THE RAIN 2IO
XVIII. THE DEATH OF MOSES 222
SERMOX I.
GOD IN CHEIST.
{Septuagesima Sunday.)
Genesis i. i.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
TTTE have begun this Sunday to read the book
' '^ of Genesis. I trust that you ^Yill listen to
it as you ought — with peculiar respect and awe,
as the oldest part of the Bible, and therefore the
oldest of all known works — the earliest human
thought which has been handed dow^n to us.
And what is the first written thought which has
been handed down to us by the Providence of
Almighty God?
' In the beginning God created the heaven and
* the earth.'
How many other things, how many hundred
other things, men might have thought fit to write
down for those who should come after ; and say —
This is the first knowdedge which a man should
B
2 GOD IN CHRIST. [SEUM.
have ; this is the root of all wisdom, all power, all
wealth.
But God inspired Moses and the Prophets to
write as they have written. They were not to
tell men that the first thing to be learnt was, how
to be rich ; nor how to be strong ; nor even how
to be happy : but that the fii'st thing to be learnt
was, that God created the heaven and the earth.
And why iirst ?
Because the first question which man asks — the
question which shows he is a man and not a brute
— always has been, and always will be — Where am
I ? How did I get into this world ; and how did
this world get here likewise ? And if man takes
up with a wrong answer to that question, then the
man himself is certain to go wrong, in all manner
of ways. For a lie can never do anything but harm,
or breed anything but harm ; and lies do breed, as
fast as the blight on the trees, or the smut on the
corn : only being not according to nature, or the
laws of God, they do not breed as natural things do,
after their kind : but, belonging to chaos, the king-
dom of disorder and misrule, they breed fresh lies
unlike themselves, of all strange and unexpected
shapes ; so that when a man takes up Avith one
lie, there is no saying what other lie he may not
take up with beside.
Wherefore the fh'st thing man has to learn is
1.] GOD IN CHRIST. 3
truth concerning tlie first human question, Where
am I? How did I come here; and how did this
world come here? To which the Bible answers
in its first line —
' In the beginning God created the heaven and
' the earth.'
How God created, the Bible does not tell us.
Whether he created (as doubtless he could have
done if he chose) this world suddenly out of no-
thing, full grown and complete ; or Avhether he
created it (as he creates you and me, and all living
and growing things now) out of things which had
been before it — that the Bible does not tell us.
Perhaps if it had told us, it would have drawn
away our minds to think of natural things, and
what we now call science, instead of keeping our
minds fixed, as it now does, on spiritual things, and
above all on tlie Spirit of all Spirits ; Him of
whom it is written ' God is a Spirit.'
For the Bible is simf)ly the revelation, or un-
veiling, of God. It is not a book of natural
science. It is not merely a book of holy and
virtuous precepts. It is not merely a book wherein
we may find a scheme of salvation for our souls.
It is the book of the revelation, or unveiling, of
the Lord God, Jesus Christ; what he was, what
he is, and what ho Avill be for ever.
Of Jesus Christ ? How is he revealed in the
4 GOD IN CHRIST. [seem.
text, 'In tlie beginning God created the heaven
* and the earth ?'
Thus: — If you look at the first chapter of
Genesis and the beginning of the second, you
will see that God is called therein by a different
name from what he is called afterwards. He is
called God, Elohim, The High or Mighty One or
Ones. After that he is called the Lord God,
Jehovah Elohim, which means properly. The
High or Mighty I Am, or Jehovah, a word which I
will explain to you afterwards. That word is
generally translated in our Bible, as it was in
the Greek, ' The Lord ; ' because the later Jews
had such a deep reverence for the name Jehovah,
that they did not like to wi'ite it or speak it ; but
called God simply Adonai, the Lord.
So that we have three names for God in the
Old Testament.
First El, or Elohim, the Mighty One : by which,
so Moses says, God was known to the Jews before
his time, and wliich sets forth God's power and
majesty^ — the first thing of which men would think
in thinking of God.
Next, Jehovah. The I Am, the Eternal, and
Self-existent Being, by which name God revealed
himself to Moses in the burning bush — a deeper
and wider name than the former.
And lastly, Adonai, the Lord, the living Euler
I.] GOD IN CHEIST. 5
and Master of the ^vorld and men, by whicli lie re-
vealed himself to the later Jews, and at last to all
mankind in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now I need not to trouble your mind, or my
own, with arguments as to how these three differ-
ent names got into the Bible.
That is a matter of criticism, of scholarship, with
which you have nothing to do : and you may
thank God that you have not, in such days as
these. Your busmess is, not how the names got
there, which is a matter of criticism, but why they
have been left there by the providence of God,
which is a matter of simple religion; and you
may 'thank God, I say again, that it is so. For
scholarship is Martha's part, which must be done,
and yet which cumbers a man with much serving :
but simple heart religion is the better part which
Mary chose ; and of which the Lord has said, that
it shall not be taken from her, nor from those who,
like her, sit humbly at the feet of the Lord, and
hear his voice, without troubling their souls with
questions of words, and endless genealogies, which
eat out the hearts of men.
Therefore all I shall say about the matter is,
that the first chapter of Genesis, and the three
first verses of the second, may be the writing of a
prophet older than Moses, because they call God
Elohim, which was his name before Moses's time ;
6 GOD IN CHEIST. [seem.
aud til at Moses may have used tliem, and worked
them into tlie book of Genesis ; while lie, in the
part which he wrote himself, called God at first by
the name Jehovah Elohim, The Lord God, in
order to show that Jehovah and El were the same
God, and not two different ones ; aud after he had
made the Jews understand that, went on to call
God simply Jehovah, and to use the two names,
as they are used through the rest of the Old
Testament, interchangeably : as we say sometimes
God, sometimes the Lord, sometimes the Deity,
and so forth ; meaning of course always the same
Being.
That, I think, is the probable and simple ac-
count which tallies most exactly with the Bible.
As for tlie five first books of the Bible, the
Pentateuch, having been written by Moses, or at
least by far the greater part of them, I cannot see
the least reason to doubt it.
The Bible itself does not say so ; and therefore
it is not a matter of faith, and men may have
their own opinions on the matter, without sin or
false doctrine. But that JMoses wrote part at least
of them, our Lord and his Apostles say expressly.
The tradition of the Jews (who really ought to
know best) has always been that Moses wrote
either the whole or tlie gi'eater part. Moses is
by far the most likely man to have written
I.] GOD IN CHRIST. 7
tliem, of all of wlioni we read in Scriptui-e. We
have not the least proof, and, what is more, never
shall or can have, that he did not write them.
And, therefore, I advise you to believe, as I do,
that the universal tradition of both Jews and
Christians is right, when it calls these books, the
books of Moses.*
But now no more of these matters: we will
think of a matter quite infinitely more important,
and that is, Who is this God whom the Bible
reveals to us, from the very fii-st verse of Genesis?
At least, he is one and the same Being. Whether
he be called El, Jehovah, or Adonai, he is the
same Lord.
It is the Lord who makes the heavens and the
earth, the Lord who puts man in a Paradise, lays
on him a commandment, and appears to him in
visible shape.
It is the Lord who speaks to Abraham : though
Abraham knew him only as El-Shaddai, the Al-
mighty God. It is the Lord who brings the
Israelites out of Egypt, who gives them the law
* I must say that all attempts to put a later date on these
books seem to me to fail simply from want of evidence. I must
say, also, that all attempts to distinguish between 'Jehovistic'
and ' Elohistic ' documents (witli the exception, perhaps, of the
first chapter of Genesis) seem to me to fail likewise ; and that
the theory of an Elohistic and a Jehovistic sect has received its
reductionem ad absurdum in a certain recent criticism of the
Psalms.
8 GOD IN CHRIST. [seem.
on Sinai. It is the Lord wlio speaks to Samuel,
to David, to all the prophets, and appears to
Isaiah, while his glory fills the Temple. In what-
ever 'divers manners' and 'many portions,' as
St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Hebrews, he
speaks to tliem, he is the same Being-.
And Psalmists and Prophets are most careful to
tell us that he is the God, not of the Jews only,
but of the Gentiles ; of all mankind — as, indeed,
he must be, being Jehovah, the I Am, the one
Self-existent and Eternal Being; that from his
throne he is watching and judging all the nations
upon earth, fashioning the hearts of all, appointing
them their bounds, and the times of their habita-
tion, if haply they may seek after him and find
him, though he be not far from any one of them ;
for in him they live and move and have their
being.
This is the message of Moses, of the Psalmists
and the Prophets, just as much as of St. Paul on
Mars' Hill at Athens.
So begins and so ends the Old Testament, reveal-
ing throughout The Lord.
And how does the New Testament begin ?
By telling us that a Babe was born at Bethlehem,
and called Jesus, the Saviour.
But who is this blessed Babe ? He, too, is The
Lord.
I.] GOD IN CHRIST. 9
'A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.' And
from thence, through the Gospels, the Acts, the
Epistles, the Revelation of St. John, he is the Lord.
There is no manner of doubt of it. The Apostles
and Evangelists take no trouble to prove it. They
take it for granted. They call Jesus Christ by
the name by which the Jews had for hundreds of
years called the El of Abraham, the Jehovah of
Moses. The Babe who is born at Bethlehem, who
grows up as other^ human beings grow, into the
man Christ Jesus, is none other than the Lord
God who created the universe, who made a
covenant with Abraham, who brought the Israelites
out of Egypt, who inspired the prophets, who has
■ been from the beginning governing all the earth.
It is very awful. But you must believe that,
or put your Bibles away as a dream — New Testa-
ment and Old alike. Not to believe that fully
and utterly, is not to believe the Bible at all.
For that is what the Bible says, and has been sent
into the world to say. It is, from beginning to end,
the book of the revelation, or unveiling, of Jesus
Christ, very God of very God.
But some may say, ' Why tell us that ? Of
' course we believe it. We should not be Christians
' if we did not.'
Be it so. I hope it is so. But I think that it
is not so easy to believe it as we fancy.
io GOD IN CHRIST. [SERM.
We believe it, I tliiiik, more firmly than our
forefatliers did five hundred years ago, on some
points ; and therefore we have got rid of many
dark and blasphemous superstitions about Avitches
and devils, about the evil of the earth and of our
own bodies, of marriage, and of the common
duties and bonds of humanity, which tormented
them, because they could not believe fully that
Jesus Christ had created, and still ruled, the world
and all therein.
But we are all too apt still to think of Jesus Christ
merely as some one who can save our souls when
we die, and to forget that he is the Lord, who is
and has been always ruling the world and all man-
kind.
And from this come two bad consequences.
People are apt to speak of the Lord Jesus — or at
least to admire preachers who speak of him — as if
he belonged to them, and not they to him ; and,
therefore, to speak of him with an irreverence
and a familiarity which they dared not use, if they
really believed that this same Jesus, whose name
they take in vain, is none other than the Living
God himself, their Creator, by whom every blade
of grass groAvs beneath their feet, every planet
and star rolls above their heads.
And next — they fancy that the Old Testament
speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ, only in a few
I.] GOD IX CHRIST.
II
mysterious prophecies — some of wliicli there is
reason to suspect they quite misinterpret. They
are slow of heart to beheve all that the Scriptures
have spoken, of him of whom Moses and the
Prophets did -vmte, not in a few scattered texts,
but in every line of the Old Testament, from the
first of Genesis to the last of Malachi.
And therefore they believe less and less,
that Jesus Christ is still the Lord in any real
practical sense— not merely the liOrd of a few
elect or saints, but the Lord of man and of the
earth, and of the whole universe. They think
of him as a Lord who will come again to judg-
ment—which is true, and awfully true, in the
very deepest sense : but they do not think of him
— in spite of what he himself and his apostles
declared of him — as The Living ^Yorking Lord, to
whom all power is given in heaven and earth,
and not merely over the souls of a few regenerate ;
as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,
of whom St. Paul says, that ' the mystery of Christ
' has been liid from the beginning of the world in
' God, who created all things by Jesus Christ ' * * *
* That, in the dispensation of the fulness of times,
'he might gather together in one all things in
' Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are in
' earth.' They fill their minds with fancies about
the book of Eevelation, most of which there is
12 GOD IN CHRIST. [seem.
reason to fear, are little else but fancies : while
they overlook what that book really does say,
and what is the best news that the world ever
heard, that he is the Prince of the kings of the
earth.
Therefore they have fears for Christ's Bible,
fears for Christ's Church, fears for the fate of the
world, which they could not have if they would
recollect who" Christ is, and believe that he is able
to take care of his own kingdom, and power, and
glory, better than man can take care of it for him.
Surely, surely, faith in the living Lord who rules
the world in righteousness is fast dying out among
us ; and many who call themselves Christians
seem to know less of Christ, and of the work
which he is carrying on in the world, than did
the old Psalmist, who said of him, 'The Lord
' shall endure for ever; he hath also prepared
' his seat for judgment. For he shall judge the
' world in righteousness, and minister true judg-
' ment among the people.' He fashioneth ' the
' hearts of all of them, and understandeth all
* their works.'
Who can say that he believes that, who holds
that this world is the devil's world, and that sinful
man and evil spirits are having it all their own
way till the day of judgment?
Who can say that he believes that, wlio falls
I.] GOD IN CHRIST. 13
into pitiable terror at every new discovery of
science or of scholarship, for fear it should destroy
the Bible and the Christian faith, instead of believ-
ing that all which makes manifest is light, and that
all light comes from tlie Father of lights, by the
providence of Jesus Christ his only begotten Son,
who is the light of men, and the inspiration of
his Spirit, who leadeth into all truth ?
And how, lastly, can those say that they believe
that, wlio will lie, and slander, and have re-
course to base intrigues, in order to defend that
truth, and that Chm-ch, of which the Lord himself
has said that he has founded it upon a rock, and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it ?
But if you believe indeed the message of the
Bible, that Jesus Christ is the Lord who made
heaven and earth, then it shall be said of you, as
it was of St. Peter, 'Blessed art thou: for flesh
'and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my
' Father which is in heaven.'
Yes. Blessed indeed is he who believes that ;
who believes that the same person who was born
in a stable, had not where to lay his head, went
about healing the sick and binding up the broken
heart, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
dead, and buried, and rose again the third day,
and ascended into heaven — ascended thither that
he midit fill all things ; and is none other
14 GOD IN CHKIST. [seem.
tlian tlie Lord of the eartli and of men, the
Creator, the Teacher, the Saviour, the Guide, the
King, the Judge, of all the world, and of all worlds
past, present, and to come.
For to him who thus believes shall be fulfilled
the promise of his Lord : ' Come unto me, all ye
' that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give
' you rest.'
He will find rest unto his soul. Kest from
that first and last question, of which I said that
all men, down to the lowest savage, ask it, simply
because they are men, and not beasts. Where
am I ? How came I here ? How came this Avorld
here likewise ?
For he can answer :
' I am in the kingdom of the Babe of Bethlehem.
'He put me here. And he put this world here
' likewise : and that is enough for me. He created
' all I see or can see — I care little how, provided
' that He created it ; for then I am sure that it must
' be very good. He redeemed me and all mankind,
'when we were lost, at the price of his most
' precious blood. He the Lord is King, therefore
' will I not be moved, though the earth be shaken,
' and the hills be carried into the midst of the sea.
' Yea, though the sun were turned to darkness, and
' the moon to blood, and the stars fell from heaven,
' and all power and order, all belief and custom of
I.] GOD IN CHRIST. 15
'mankind, were turned upside down, yet tliere
' would still be One above who rules tlie world in
'righteousness, whose eye is on them that fear
' him and put their trust in his mercy, to deliver
' their soul from death, and to feed them in the
' time of dearth. Darkness may cover the land for
' awhile, and gross darkness the people. But while
' I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be my light, till
' the day when he shall say once more, " Let there
' be light," and light shall be.'
Yes. To the man who is a good man and true ;
who has any hearty Christian feeling for his
fellow-men, and is not merely a selfish superstitious
person, caring for nothing but what he calls the
safety of his own soul, — to the man, I say, who
has anything of the loving spirit of Christ in
him, what question can be more important than
this. Is the world Avell made or ill? Is it well
governed or ill ? Is it on the whole going right,
or going wrong? And what can be more com-
forting to such a man, than the answer which the
Bible gives him at the outset ? —
This world is well made, in love and care ; for
Christ the Lord made it, and behold it was very good.
This world is going right, and not WTong, in
spite of all appearances to the contrary ; for Christ
the Lord is King. He sitteth between the cheru-
bim, be the earth never so unquiet. He is too
1 6 GOD IN CHKIST. [serm.
strong, and too loving, to let the ^yorld go any-
way but right. Parts of it will often go wrong
here, and go wrong there. The sin and igno-
rance of men will disturb his order, and rebel
against his laws; and strange and mad things,
terrible and pitiable things will happen, as they
have happened ever since the day when the first
man disobeyed the commandment of the Lord.
But man cannot conquer the Lord ; the Lord will
conquer man. He will teach men by their neigh-
bours' sins. He will teach them by their own
sins. He will chastise them by sore judgments.
He will make fearful examples of wilful and con-
ceited sinners ; and those who seem to escape him
in this life, shall not escape him in the life to
come. But he is trying for ever every man's
work by fire; and against that fire no lie will
stand. He will burn up the stubble and chaff,
and leave only the pure wheat for the use of future
generations. His pm-pose will stand. His word
will never return to him void, but will prosper
always where he sends it. He has made the
round world so sure that it cannot be moved,
either by man or by worse than man. His everlast-
ing laws will take effect in spite of all opposition,
and bring the world and man along the jjatli, and
to the end, which he purposed for them in the
day when God made the heavens and the earth.
I.] GOD IN CHRIST. 17
and in that even greater day, when he said, ' Let
' us make man in our image, after our likeness,'
and man arose upright, and knew that he was not
as the beasts, and asked who he was, and where ?
feeling with the hardly opened eyes of his spirit
after that Lord from whom he came, and to whom
he shall return, as many as have eternal life, in
the "day when Christ the Lord of life shall have
destroyed death, and put all enemies under his
feet, and given up the kingdom to God, even the
Father, that God may be all in all.
SERMON n.
THE LIKENESS OF GOD.
{Trinity Sunday.)
Genesis i. 26.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness.
^HIS is a Lard saying. It is difficult at times to
-*- believe it to be true.
If one looks not at what God has made man,
but at what man has made himself, one will never
believe it to be true.
When one looks at what man has made himself;
at the back streets of some of our great cities ; at
the thousands of poor Germans and Irish across
the ocean bribed to kill and to be killed, they
know not why ; at the abominable wrongs and
cruelties going on in Poland at this moment — the
cry whereof is going up to the ears of the God of
Hosts, and surely not in vain ; when one thinks of
all the cries which have gone up in all ages from
the victims of man's greed, lust, cruelty, tyranny,
and shrillest of all from the tortured victims of his
superstition and fanaticism, it is difficult to answer
THE LIKENESS OF GOD. 19
the sneer — ' Believe, if you can, that this foolish,
* unjust, cruel being called man, is made in the
' likeness of God. Man was never made in the
' image of God at all. He is only a cunuinger sort
* of animal, for better for worse — and for worse as
* often as for better.'
Another says, not quite that. Man was in the
likeness of God once ; but he lost that by Adam's
fall, and now he is only an animal with an immor-
tal soul in him, to be lost or saved.
There is more truth in that latter notion than
in the former : but if it be quite right ; if we did
lose the hkeness of God at Adam's fall, how comes
the Bible never to say so ? How comes the Bible
never to say one word on what must have been the
most important thing which ever happened to man-
kind before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ ?
And how comes it also, that the New Testa-
ment says distinctly, that man is still made in the
likeness of God ? For St. Paid speaks of man, as
* the likeness and glory of God.' And St. James
says of the tongue : ' Therewith bless we God, even
' the Father ; and therewith ' (to om* shame) ' curse
' we men, which are made in the likeness of God.'
But the gTcat proof that man is made in the
image and Hkeness of God, is the incarnation of
our Lord Jesus Christ ; for if human nature had
been, as some think, something utterly brutish and
20 THE LIKENESS OF GOD. [SERM.
devilish, and utterly nnlike God, liow could God
have become man without ceasing to be God?
Christ was man of the substance of his mother.
That substance had the same human nature as we
have. Then if that human nature be evil, what
follows ? Sometliing which I shall not utter, for
it is blasphemy. Christ has taken the manhood
into God. Then if manhood be evil, what follows
again ? Something more which I shall not utter,
for it is blasphemy.
But man is made in the image of God ; and
therefore God, in whose image he is made, could take
on himself his own image and likeness, and become
perfect man, without ceasing to be perfect God.
Therefore, my friends, it is a comfortable and
wholesome doctrine, that man is made in the
image of God, and one for which we must thank
the Bible. For it is the Bible which has revealed
that truth to us, in its very beginning and outset,
that we might have, from the first, clear and sound
notions concerning man and God. The Bible, I
say ; for the sacred books of the heathen say most
of them nothing thereof.
Man has, in all ages, been tempted, when he
looks at his own wickedness and folly, not only
to despise himself — which he has good reason
enough to do — but to despise his own human
nature, and to cry to God, ' Why hast thou made
n.] THE LIKENESS OF GOD. 21
' me thus ?' He lias cursed his own human nature.
He has said, ' Surely man is most miserable
'of all the beasts of the field.' He has said, 'I
' must get rid of my human nature — I must give
'up wife, family, human life of all kinds, I
'must go into the deserts and the forests, and
' there try to forget that I am a man, and become
' a 'mere spuit or angel.' So said the Buddhists of
Asia, the deepest thinkers concerning man and
God of all the heathens, and so have many said
since their time. But so does the Bible not say.
It starts by telling us that man is made in God's
likeness, and that therefore his human nature is
originally and in itself not a bad, but a perfectly
good thing. All that has to be done to it, is to be
cured of its diseases ; and the Bible declares that
it can be cured. Howsoever man may have fallen,
he may rise. Howsoever the likeness may be
blotted and corrupted, it can be cleansed and re-
newed. Howsoever it may be perverted and
turned right round and away from God and good-
ness to selfishness and evil, it can be converted, and
turned back again to God. Howsoever utterly far
gone man may be from original righteousness, still
to original righteousness he can return, l)y the grace
of baptism, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit.
And what in us is the likeness of God ? That
is a deep question.
22 THE LIKENESS OF GOD. [seem.
Only one answer will I make to it to-day.
Whatever in us is, or is not, the likeness of God,
at least the sense of right and ^vrong is ; to know
right and wrong. So says the Bible itself : ' Behold
' the man is become as one of us, to know good and
* evil.' Not that he got the likeness of God by his
fall, of course not, but that he became aware of
his likeness, and that in a very painful and common
way — by sinning against it ; as St. Paul says in
one of his deepest utterances, ' By sin is the know-
' ledge of the law.'
And you may see for yourselves how human
nature can have God's likeness in that respect, and
yet be utterly fallen and corrupt.
For a man may — and indeed every man does —
know good and yet be unable to do it, and know
evil, and yet be a slave to it, tied and bound with
the chains of his sins till the grace of God release
him from them.
To know good and evil, right and wrong — to
have a conscience, a moral sense — that is the like-
ness of God of which I wish to preach to-day.
Because it is through that knowledge of good and
evil, and through it alone, that we can know God,
and Jesus Cluist whom he has sent. It is through
our moral sense that God speaks to us ; through
our sense of right and wrong ; througli that I say,
God sj)eaks to us, whether in reproof or encourage-
n.] THE LIKENESS OF GOD. 23
ment, in wrath or in love ; to teacli us what he is
like, and to teach us what he is not like.
To know God. — That is the side on which we
must look at this text on Trinity Sunday. If
man be made in the image of God, then we may
be able to know something at least of God, and
of the character of God. If we have the copy,
we can guess at least at what the original is like.
From the character, therefore, of every good
man, we may guess at something of the character
of God. But from the character of Jesus Christ
our Lord, who is the very brightness of his Father's
glory and the express image of his person, we
may see perfectly — at least perfectly enough for
all our needs in this life, and in the life to come
— what is the character of God, who made heaven
and earth.
I beseech you to remember this — I beseech you
to believe this, with your whole hearts, and minds,
and souls, and especially just now.
For there are many abroad now, who will tell
you, man can know nothing of God.
Answer them : ' If your God be a God of whom
' I can know nothing, then he is not my God,
* the God of the Bible. For he is the God who
' has said of old, " They shall not teach each man
' his brother, saying. Know the Lord, for all shall
' know Me, from the least unto the greatest." He
•24 THE LIKENESS OF GOD. [SERM.
' is the God, who, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
' accused and blamed the Jews because they did
' not know him, which if they could not know him
' would have been no fault of theirs. Of doctrines,
' and notions, and systems, it is written, and most
' truly, '* I know in part, and I prophesy in part," and
' again, " If a man thinketh that he knoweth any-
' thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to
' know." But of God it is written, " This is life
' eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and
' Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.' "
But they will say, man is finite and limited,
God is infinite and absolute, and how can the
finite comprehend the infinite ?
Answer : ' Those are fine words : I do not under-
' stand them ; and I do not care to understand them.
' I do not deny that God is infinite and absolute,
' though what that means I do not know. But I
' find nothing about his being infinite and absolute
' in the Bible. I find there that he is righteous,
' just, loving, merciful, and forgiving ; and that he
' is angry, too, and that his wrath is a consuming
' fire, and I know well enough what those words
' mean, though I do not know what infinite and
' absolute mean. So that is what I have to think
* of, for my own sake and the sake of all mankind.'
But, they will say, you must not take these words
to the letter ; man is so unlike God, and God so
II.] THE LIKENESS OF GOD. 25
unlike man, that God's attributes must be quite
different from man's. When you read of God's
love, justice, anger, and so forth, you must not
think that they are anything like man's love,
man'g justice, man's anger ; but something quite
different, not only in degree, but in kind : so that
what might be unjust and cruel in man, would not
be so in God.
My dear friends, beware of that doctrine ; for
out of it have sprung half the fanaticism and su-
perstition which has disgraced and tormented the
earth. Beware of ever thinking that a wrong
thing would be right if God did it, and not you.
And mind, that is flatly contrary to the letter of
the Bible. In that grand text where Abraham
pleads with God, what does he say ? Not, ' Of
' course if Thou choosest to do it, it must be right,'
but 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
' EIGHT ?' Abraham actually refers the Almighty
God to his own law ; and asserts an eternal rule of
right and wrong common to man and to God,
which God will surely never break.
Answer : ' If that doctrine be true, which I will
' never beKeve, then the Bible mocks and deceives
' poor miserable sinful man, instead of teaching
* him. If God's love does not mean real actual love,
' — God's anger, actual anger, — God's forgiveness,
* real forgiveness, — God's justice, real justice, —
26 THE LIKENESS OF GOD. [SEBM.
' God's truth, real trutli, — God's faitlifuluess, real
' faithfulness, what do they mean ? Nothing which
' I can understand, nothing which I can trust in.
' How can I trust in a God w'hom I cannot under-
' stand or know ? How can I trust in a love or a
' justice which is not what / call love or justice,
' or anything like them ?
* The saints of old said, I know in M'hom I have
' believed. And how can I believe in hira, if there
' is nothing in him which I can know ; nothing
' which is like man, — ^nothing, to speak plainly,
' like Christ, who was perfect man as well as
' perfect God ? If that be so, — if man can know
' nothing really of God, he is indeed most miserable
' of all the beasts of the field, for I will warrant
' that he can know nothing really of anything else.
' And what is left for him, but to remain for this
' life, and the life to come, in the outer darkness of
' ignorance and confusion, misrule and misery,
' wherein is most literally — as one may see in the
' history of every lieathen nation upon earth —
' wailing and gnashing of teeth.
* If God's goodness be not like man's goodness,
' there is no rule of morality left, no eternal
' standard of right and wrong. How can I teU
' what I ought to do ; or what God expects of me ;
' or when I am right and when I am wrong, if you
' take from me the good, plain, old Bible rule, that
II.] THE LIKENESS OF GOD. 27
' man can be, and must be, like God ? The Bible
' rule is, that everything good in man must be ex-
' actly like something good in God, because it is in-
' spired into him by the Spirit of God himself. Our
' Lord Jesus, who spoke, not to pliilosophers or
' Scribes and Pharisees, but to plain human beings,
' weeping and sorrowing, suffering and sinning, like
' us,i— told them to be perfect, as our Father in
' heaven is perfect, by being good to the unthankful
' and the evil. And if man is to be perfect, as his
' Father in heaven is perfect, then his Father in
' heaven is perfect as man ought to be perfect. He
' told us to be merciful as our Father in heaven is
' merciful. Then our Father in heaven is merciful
' with the same sort of mercy as we' ought to show.
' We are bidden to forgive others, even as God for
' Christ's sake has forgiven us : then if our forgive-
' ness is to be like God's, God's forgiveness is like
' ours. We are to be true, because God is true :
' just, because God is just. How can we be that, if
' God's truth is not like what men call truth,
' God's justice not like what men call justice ?
' If I give up that rule of right and wrong, I
' give up all rules of right and wrong whatsoever.'
No, my friends ; if we will seek for God where
he may be found, then we shall know God, whom
truly to know is everlasting life. But we must
not seek for him where he is not, in long words
2 8 THE LIKENESS OF GOD. [seem.
and notions of pliilosopby spun out of men's brains,
and set up as if they were real tilings, Ayhen words
and notions they are, and words and notions they
will remain. We must look for God where he is
to be found, in the character of his only begotten
Son, Jesus Christ, who alone has revealed and
unveiled God's character, because he is the bright-
ness of God's glory, and the express image of his
person.
What Christ's character was we can find in the
Holy Gospels ; and we can find it too, scattered and
in parts, in all the good, the holy, the noble, who
have aught of Christ's spirit and likeness in them.
"\ATiatsoever is good and beautiful in any
human soul, that is the likeness of Christ. WTiat-
soever thoughts, words, or deeds are true, honest,
just, pure, lovely, of good report ; whatsoever is true
virtue, whatsoever is truly worthy of praise, that is
the likeness of Christ ; — the likeness of him who was
full of all purity, all tenderness, all mercy, all self-
sacrifice, all benevolence, all helpfulness ; full of
all just and noble indignation, also, against ojDpres-
sors and hypocrites who bound heavy burdens and
grievous to be borne, but touched them not them-
selves with one of their fingers ; who kept the key
of knowledge, and neither entered in themselves,
or let those who were trying enter in either.
The likeness of an all-noble, all-just, all-gracious,
11.] THE LIKENESS OF GOD. 29
all-wise, all-good human being ; that is the likeness
of Christ, and that, therefore, is the likeness of God
who made heaven and earth.
All-good ; utterly and perfectly good, in every
kind of goodness which we have ever seen, or can
ever imagine — that, thank God, is the likeness and
character of Almighty God, in whom we live and
move, and have our being. To know that he is
that — all-good, is to know his cliaracter as far as
sinfid and sorrowful man need know ; and is not
that to know enough ?
The mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity, as set
forth so admirablv in the Athanasian Creed, is a
mystery ; and it we cannot know : we can only
believe it, and take it on trust : but the character
of the ever-blessed Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, we can know : while by keeping the words
of the Athanasian Creed carefully in mind, we may
be kept from many grievous and hurtful mistakes
which will hinder our knowing it. We can know
that they are all good, for such as the Father is
such is the Son, and such the Holy Ghost. That
goodness is their one and eternal substance, and
majesty, and glory, whiich we must not divide by
fancying, with some, that the Father is good in one
way and the Son in another. That theii- goodness
is eternal and unchangeable ; for they themselves
are eternal, and have neither parts nor passions.
30 THE LIKENESS OF GOD. [seem.
That their goodness is incomprehensible, that is,
cannot be bounded or limited by time or space^ or
by any notions or doctrines of ours, for they them-
selves are incomprehensible, and able to do abun-
dantly more than we can ask or think.
This is our God, the God of the Bible, the God
of the Church, the God who has revealed himself
in Jesus Christ our Lord. And him we can
beKeve utterly, for we know that he is faithful and
true ; and we know what that means, if there is any
truth or faithfulness in us. We know that he is
just and righteous ; and we know what tJiat means,
if there is any justice and uprightness in ourselves.
Him we can trust utterly ; to him we can take all
our cares, all our sorrows, all our doubts, all our
sins, and pour them out to him, because he is
condescending ; and we know what that means, if
there be any condescension and real high-minded-
ness in ourselves. We can be certain, too, that he
will hear us, just because he is so great, so
majestic, so glorious; because his greatness, and
majesty, and glory is a moral and spiritual great-
ness, whic]i shows itself by stooping to the meanest,
by listening to the most foolish, helping the
weakest, pitying the worst, even while it is bound
to punish. Him we can trust, I say, because
him we can know, and can say of him, Let the
Infinite and the Absolute mean what they may,
11.] THE LIKENESS OF GOD. 3 1
I know in whom I have believed — God tlie Good.
Whatever else I cannot understand, I can at
least ' understand the lovingkindness of the Lord ;'
however high his dwelling may be, I know that
he humbleth himself to behold the things in
heaven and earth, to take the simple out of the
dust, and the poor out of the mire. Whatever
else God may or may not be, I know that gracious
is the Lord, and righteous, yea, our God is merciful.
The Lord preserveth the simple, for / was in
misery, and He helped me. Whatsoever fine
theories, or new discoveries, I cannot trust, I
can trust him, for with him is mercy, and with
the Lord is plenteous redemption ; and he shall
redeem his people from all then- sins. However
dark and ignorant I may be, I can go to him for
teaching, and say, Teach me to do the thing that
pleaseth thee, for thou art my God ; let thy loving
Spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness.
The land of righteousness. — The one true
heavenly land, wherein God the righteous dwelleth
from eternity to eternity, righteous in all his ways,
and holy in all his works, and therefore adorable in
all his ways, and glorious in all his works, with a
glory even greater than the glory of his Almighty
power. On that glory of his goodness we can gaze,
though afar off in degree, yet near in kind, while
the glory of his wisdom and power is far, far beyond
32 THE LIKENESS OF GOD.
my understanding. Of the intellect of God we can
know notliing; but we can know what is better,
the heart of God. For that glory of goodness we
can understand, and Tcnorv, and sympathize with in
our heart of hearts, and say, If this be the likeness
of God, he is indeed worthy to be worshipped, and
had in honour. Praise the Lord, oh my soul, for
the Lord is good. Kings and all people, princes
and all judges of the world, young men and maidens,
old men and children, praise the name of the Lord,
for his name only is excellent, because his name is
good. Lift up your eyes, and look upon the face of
Christ the God-man, crucified for you ; and behold
therein the truth of all truths, the doctrine of all
doctrines, the gospel of all gospels, that the
' Unknown,' and ' Infinite,' and ' Absolute * God,
who made the universe, bids you know him, and
know this of him, that he is good, and that his
express image and likeness is — Jesus Christ, his
Son, our Lord.
SERMOX III.
THE VOICE OF THE LORD GOD.
{Preached also at the Chapel Boyal, St. James. Sexagesima
Sunday.)
Genesis iii. 9.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day.
npHESE words would startle us, if we heard
-*- them for the first time. I do not know but
that they may startle us now, often as we have
heard them, if we think seriously over them.
That God should appear to mortal man, and speak
with mortal man. It is most wonderful. It is utterly
unlike anything that we have ever seen, or that any
person on earth has seen, for many hundred years.
It is a miracle, in every sense of the word.
When one compares man as he was then, weak
and ignorant, and yet seemingly so favoured by
God, so near to God, with man as he is now, strong
and cunning, spreading over the earth, and re-
plenishing it; subduing it with railroads and
steamships, with agriculture and science, and all
strange and crafty inventions, and all the while
never visited by any Divine or heavenly appear-
ance, but seemingly left utterly to himself by
D
34 THE VOICE OF THE LOED GOD. [seem.
God, to go his own way and do his own will upon
the earth, one asks with wonder, Can we be
Adam's children? Can the God who appeared
to Adam, be our God likewise, or has God's plan
and rule for teaching man changed utterly ?
No. He is one God; the same God yesterday,
to-day, and for ever. His will and purpose, his
care and rule over man, have not changed.
That is a matter of faith. Of the faith which
the holy Church commands us to have. But it
need not be a blind or unreasonable faith. That
our God is the God of Adam ; that the same
Lord God who taught him teaches us likewise,
need not be a mere matter of faith : it may be a
matter of reason likewise ; a thing which seems
reasonable to us, and recommends itself to our
mind and conscience as true.
Consider, my friends, a babe when it comes into
the world. The fii-st thing of w'liich it is aAvare
is its mother's bosom. The first thing which it
does, as its eyes and ears are gradually opened to
this world, is to cling to its parents. It holds fast
by their hand, it will not leave their side. It is
afraid to sleep alone, to go alone. To tliem it
looks up for food and help. Of them it asks
questions, and tries to learn from them, to copy
them, to do what it sees them doing, even in
play ; and the parents in return lavish care and
m.] THE VOICE OF THE LORD GOD. 35
tenderness on it, and will not let it out of their
sight. But after a while, as the child grows, the
parents will not let it be so perpetually with them.
It must go to school. It must see its parents
only very seldom, perhaps it must be away from
them weeks or months. And why ? Not that
the parents love it less : but that it must learn to
take care of itself, to act for itself, to think for
itself, or it will never grow up to be a rational
human being.
And the parting of the child from the parents
does not break the bond of love between them.
It learns to love them even better. Neither does
it break the bond of obedience. The child is
away from its parents' eye. But it learns to obey
them behind their back ; to do their will of its
own will ; to ask itself — What would my parents
wish me to do, were they here? and so learns, if
it will think of it, a more true, deep, honourable
spiritual obedience, than it ever would if its
parents were perpetually standing over it, saying
do this, and do that.
In after life that cliild may settle far away from
his father's home. He may go up into the
temptations and bustle of some great city. He may
cross to far lands beyond the sea. But need he
love his parents less ? need the bond between them
be broken, though he may never set eyes on them
3 6 THE VOICE OF THE LOKD GOD. [seem.
again ? God forbid. He may be settled far
away, with children, business, interests of his
own ; and yet he may be doing all the while his
father's will. The lessons of God which he learnt
at his mother's knee may be still a lamp to his
feet and a light to his path. Amid all the bustle
and labour of business, his father's face may still
be before his eyes, his father's voice still sound
in liis ears, bidding liim be a wortliy son to him
still ; bidding him not to leave that way wherein
he should go, in which his parents trained liim
long, long since. He may feel that his parents
are near him in the spirit, though absent in
the flesh. Yes, though they may have passed
altogether out of this world, they may be to him
present and near at hand ; and he may be kept from
doing many a wrong thmg and encouraged to do
many a right one, by the ennobling thought,
My father would have had it so, my mother would
have had it so, had they been here on earth.
And though in this world he may never see them
again, he may look forward steadily and long-
ingly to the day when, this life's battle over, he
shall meet again in heaven those wlio gave liim
life on earth.
My friends, if this be the education which is
natural and necessary from our earthly parents,
made In God's image, appointed by God's eternal
III.] THE VOICE OF THE LOED GOD. 37
laws for each of us, why should it not be the
education which God himself has appointed for
mankind ? All which is truly human (not sinful
or fallen) is an image and pattern of something
Divine. May not therefore the training Avhich
we find, by the very facts of nature, fit and
necessary for our children, be the same as God's
training, by which he fashioneth the hearts of the
children of men ?
Therefore we can believe the Bible when it tells
us that so it is. That God began the education
of man by appearing to him directly, keeping him,
as it were, close to his hand, and teaching him by
direct and open revelation. That as time went
on, God left men more and more to themselves
outwardly : but only that he might raise their
minds to higher notions of religion, — that he
might make them live by faith, and not merely
by sight ; and obey him of their own hearty free
will, and not merely from fear or wonder. And
therefore, in these days, when miraculous appear-
ances have, as far as we know, entirely ceased, yet
God is not changed. He is still as near as ever
to men ; still caring for them, still teaching them ;
and this very stopping of all miracles, so far from
being a sign of God's anger or neglect, is a part of
his gracious plan for the training of his Church.
For consider — Man was first put upon this earth,
38 THE VOICE OF THE LOED GOD. [sEEM-
with all things round liim new and strange to him ;
seeing himself weak and unarmed before the wild
beasts of the forest, not even sheltered from the
cold, as they are; and yet feeling in himself a
power of mind, a cunning, a courage, which
made him the lord of all the beasts by virtue of
his mind, though they were stronger than he
in body. All that we read of Adam and Eve in
the Bible is, as we should expect, the history of
cMldren, — children in mind, even when they were
full-grown in stature. Innocent as children, but,
like children, greedy, fanciful, ready to disobey at
the first temptation, for the very silliest of reasons ;
and disobeying accordingly. Such creatures —
with such wonderful powers lying hid in them,
such a glorious future before them ; and yet so
weak, so wilful, so ignorant, so unable to take
care of themselves, liable to be destroyed off the
face of the earth by their own folly, or even by
the wild beasts around, — surely they needed some
special and tender care from God to keep them
from perishing at the very outset, till they had
learned somewhat how to take care of themselves,
what their business and duty were upon this earth.
They needed it before they fell ; they needed it
still more, and their children likewise, after they
fell : and if they needed it, we may trust God
that he afforded it to them.
III.] THE VOICE OF THE LOKD GOD. 39
But again. Whence came this strange notion,
which man alone has of all the living things which
we see, of Religion ? What put into the mind of
man that strange imagination of beings greater
than himself, whom he could not always see ; but
who might appear to him? What put into his
mind the strange imagination that these unseen
beings were more or less his masters ? That they
had made laws for him which he must obey ?
That he must honour and worship them, and do
them service, in order that they might be favour-
able to him, and help, and bless, and teach him ?
All nations, except a very few savages, (and we
do not know but that their forefathers had it like
the rest of mankind,) have had some such notion
as this ; some idea of religion, and of a moral law
of right and wrong.
Where did they get it ?
Where, I ask again, did they get it ?
My friends, after much thought I answer, there
is no explanation of that question so simjile, so
rational, so probable, as the one which the text
gives.
' And they heard the voice of the Lord God.'
Some, I know, say that man thought out for
himself, in his own reason, the notion of God ;
that he by searching found out God. But surely
that is contrary to all experience. Our experience
40 THE VOICE OF THE LOED GOD. [sERM.
is, that men left to tliemselves forget God ; lose
more and more all tlioiio-ht of God, and the
unseen world ; believe more and more in nothing
but what they can see and taste and handle, and
become as the beasts that perish. How then did
man, who now is continually forgetting God,
contrive to remember God for himself at first ?
How, unless God himself showed himself to man ?
I know some will say, that mankind invented for
themselves false gods at first, and afterwards
cleared and piu-ified their ovm notions, till they
discovered the true God. My friends, there is a
homely old proverb which will well apply here.
If there had been no gold guineas, there would
be no brass ones. K men had not first had a
notion of a true God, and then gradually lost it,
they would not have invented false gods to sup-
ply his place. And whence did they get, I ask
again, the notion of gods at all? The simplest
answer is in the Bible ; — God taught them. I can
find no better. I do not believe a better will ever
be found.
And why not ?
Why not? I ask. To say that God cannot
appear to men is simply silly ; for it is limiting
God's almiglity power. He that made man and all
heaven and earth, cannot he show himself to man,
if he shall so please ? To say that God will not
III.] THE VOICE OF THE LOKD GOD. 41
appear to man because man is so 'insignificant,
and this earth such a paltry little speck in the
heavens, is to limit God's goodness ; nay, it is to
show that a man knows not what goodness means.
What gi*ace, wliat virtue is there higher than con-
descension ? Then if God be, as he is, perfectly
good, must he not be perfectly condescending —
ready and wilKng to stoop to man, and all the
more ready and the more willing, the more weak,
ignorant, and sinful this man is? In fact, the
greater need man has of God, the more certain
is it that God will help him in that need.
Yes, my friends, the Bible is the revelation of
a God who condescends to men, and therefore
descends to men. And the more a man's reason
is spiritually enlightened to know the meaning of
goodness, and holiness, and justice, and love, the
more simple, reasonable, and credible will it seem
to him that God at first taught men in the days
of their early ignorance, by the only method by
which (as far as we can conceive) he could have
taught them about himself; namely, by appearing
in visible shape, or speaking with audible voice ;
and just as reasonable and credible, awful and
unfathomable mystery though it is, will be the
greater news, that that same Lord at last so con-
descended to man that he was conceived by the
Holy Ghost ; born of the Virgin Mary ; suffered
42 THE VOICE OF THE LOKD GOD. [seem.
under Pontius Pilate ; was crucified, dead, and
buried ; and rose the third day, and ascended
into heaven. Credible and reasonable, not indeed
to the natural man, who looks only at nature,
which he can see, and hear, and handle ; but
credible and reasonable enough to the spiritual
man, whose mind has been enlightened by the
Spirit of God, to see that the things which are
seen are temporal, but the things Avhich are not
seen are eternal ; even justice and love, mercy and
condescension, the divine order, and the kingdom
of the Living God.
And now one word on a matter which is tor-
menting the minds of many just now. It is often
said that all that I have been saying is contrary
to science. That this science and understanding
of the world around us, which has improved so
marvellously in our days, proves that the appari-
tions and miracles spoken of in the Bible cannot
be true; that God, or the angels of God, can
never have walked mth man in visible shape.
Now, my friends, I do not believe this. I
believe the very contrary. I entreat you to set
your minds at rest on this point ; and to beheve
(what is certainly true) there is nothing in this
new science to contradict the good old creed, that
the Lord God of old appeared to his human
children. It would take too much time, of
HI.] THE VOICE OF THE LOED GOD. 43
course, to give you my reasons for saying tliis :
and I must therefore ask you to take on trust
from me when I tell you solemnly and earnestly
that there is nothing in modern science which
can, if rightly understood, contradict the glo-
rious words of St. Paul, that God at sundry
times and in divers manners spake to the fathers
by the prophets, and hath at last spoken unto
us by a Son, whom he hath appointed heir
of all things : by whom also he made the worlds,
who is the brightness of his glory, and the express
image of his person, and upholdeth all things by
the word of his power : even Jesus Christ, God
blessed for ever. Amen.
What, then, shall we think of these things ?
Shall we say — 'How much better off were our
' forefathers than we ! Ah, that we were not left
' to ourselves ! Ah, that we lived in the good old
' times when God and his angels walked with men !'
My friends, what says Solomon the Wise? —
' Inquire not why the former times were better
' than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely
' concerning this.'
It is very natural for us to think that we could
become more easily good men, more certain of
going to heaven, if we saw divine ajjparitions and
heard divine voices. A very natural thouglit. But
natural things are not always the best or wisest
44 THE VOICE OF THE LOKD GOD. [SERM.
tilings. Spiritual things are surely higher and
deeper than natural things. It is natural to wish
to see Christ, or some heavenly being, v/ith our
natural eyes and senses. But it is spiritual, and
therefore better for our souls, to be content to see
him by faith, with the spiritual eyes of our heart
and mind, to love him with all our heart and
mind and soul, to worship him, to put our
whole trust in him, to call upon him, to honour
his holy name and his word, and to serve him truly
all the days of our life.
Natural, indeed, to wish that we were back
again in the old times. But we must recollect
that these old times were not good times, but
bad times, and for that very reason the Lord took
pity on them. That they were times of dark-
ness, and therefore it was that the people who
sat in great darkness, and in the valley of the
shadow of death, were allowed to see a great light.
And that after that, the fulness of time, the very
time which the Lord chose that he might be in-
carnate of the Virgin Mary, and came down upon
this earth in human form, was not a good time.
On the contrary, the fulness of time, 1863 years
ago, was the very wickedest, most faithless, most
unjust time that the world had ever seen, — a time
of which St. Paul said that there were none
who did good, no, not one ; that adders' poison
III.] THE VOICE OF THE LOKD GOD. 45
was under all lips, and all feet swift to slied blood,
and that tlie way of peace none had known.
Better, far better, to live in times like these, in
which there is (among Christian nations at least)
no great darkness, even though there be no great
light; times in which the knowledge of the
true God and his Son Jesus Christ is spreading,
slowly but surely, over all the earth ; and with
it, the fruit of the knowledge of the Lord, justice,
mercy, charity, fellow-feeling, and a desire to
teach and improve all mankind, such as the world
never saw before. These are the fruits of the
Scrip tm-es of the Lord, and the Sacraments of
the Lord, and of the Holy Spirit of the Lord ; and if
that Holy Spirit be in our hearts, and we yield
our hearts to his gracious motions and obey them,
then we are really nearer to the Lord Jesus
Christ than if we saw him, as Adam did, vfiih our
bodily eyes, and yet rebelled against him, as xldaui
did, in our hearts, and disobeyed him in our
actions. Of old the Lord treated men as babes,
and showed himself to their bodily eyes, that so they
mioht learn that he was, and that he was near
them. But us he treats as grown men, who know
that he is, and that he is with us to the end of
the world. And if he treats us as men, my
friends, let us behave ourselves like men, and
not like silly children, w^ho cannot be trusted by
4^ THE VOICE OF THE LOED GOD.
themselves for a moment lest they do wrong or
come to harm. Let us obey God, not with eye-
service, just as long as we fancy that his eye is on
us, but with the deeper, more spiritual, more
honourable obedience of faith. Let us obey him
for obedience' sake, and honour him for very
honour's sake, as the young emigrant in foreign
lands obeys and honours the parents whom he will
never see again on earth ; and let us look forward,
like him, to the day when him whom we cannot
see on earth we may, perhaps, be permitted to see
in heaven, as the reward — and for what higher
reward can man wish ? — of faith and obedience.
SERMON IV.
NOAH'S FLOOD.
{Quinquagesima Sunday.)
Genesis ix. 13.
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a
covenant between me and the earth.
TT7E all know the history of Noah's flood.
* ' What have we learnt from that history ?
What were we intended to learn from it ? What
thoughts should we have about it ?
There are many thoughts which we may have.
We may think how the flood came to j)ass ; what
means God used to make it rain forty days ;
what is meant by breaking up the fountains of the
great deep. We may calculate how large the ark
was ; and whether the Bible really means that it
held all kinds of living things in the world, or
only those of Noah's own country, or the animals
which had been tamed and made useful to man.
We may read long arguments as to whether
the flood spread over the whole Avorld, or only
over the country where Noah, and the rest of the
sons of Adam, then lived. We may puzzle ourselves
48 NOAHS FLOOD. [seem.
concerning tlie rainbow of wliich the text speaks.
How it was to be a sign of a covenant from God.
Whether man had ever seen a rainbow before.
Whether there had ever been rain before in Noah's
country. Or whether he did not live in that land
of which the second chapter of Genesis says, that
the Lord had not caused it to rain upon the earth,
but there went up a mist from the earth and
watered the face of the ground, as it does still in
that high land in the centre of Asia, in which old
traditions put the garden of Eden, and from which,
as far as we yet know, mankind came at the be-
ginning.
We may puzzle our minds with these and a
hundred more curious questions, as learned men
have done in all ages. But — shall we become
really the wiser by so doing? More learned we
may become. But being learned and being wise
are two different things. True wisdom is that
which makes a man a better man. And will such
puzzling questions and calculations as these, settle
them how we may, make us better men ? Will
they make us more honest and just, more generous
and loving, more able to keep our tempers and
control our appetites ? I cannot see that. Will
it make us better men merely to know that there
was once a flood of Avaters on the earth ? I can-
not see that. If we look at the hills of sand
IV.] NOAH'S FLOOD. 49
and gravel round us, a little common sense will
show us that there have been many floods of
waters on the earth, long, long before the one of
which the Bible speaks: but shall we be better
men for knowing that either ? I cannot see why
we should. Now the Bible was sent to make us
better men. How then will the history of the
flood do that ?
Easily enough, my friends, if we will listen
to the Bible, and thinking less about the flood
itself, think more about him who, so the Bible
tells us, sent the flood.
The Bible, I have told you, is the revelation of
the living Lord God, even Jesus Christ ; wlio, in
his tm-n, reveals to us The Father. And what we
have to think of is, how does this story of the
flood reveal, unveil, to us, the living Lord of the
world, and his Hving government thereof? Let us
look at the matter in that way, instead of puzzling
ourselves with questions of words and endless
genealogies which minister strife. Let us look at
the matter in that way, instead of (like too many
men now, and too many men in all ages) being so
busy in picking to pieces the shell of the Bible,
that we forget that the Bible has any kernel, and
so let it slip through our hands. Let us look at
the matter in that way, as a revelation of the
living God, and then we shall find the history of
E
5o NOAH'S FLOOD. [seem.
the flood full of godly doctrine, and profitable for
these times, and for all times whatsoever.
God sent a flood on the earth.
True; but the important matter is, that God
sent it.
God set the rainbow in the cloud, for a token.
True. But the important matter is that God
set it there.
Important ? Yes. What more imjjortant than
to know that the flood did not come of itself, that
the rainbow did not come of itself, and therefore
that no flood comes of itself, no rainbow comes
of itself; nothing comes of itseK, but all comes
straight and immediately from the one Living
Lord God?
A man may say — But the flood must have been
caused by clouds and rain ; and there must have
been some special natural cause for their falling
at that place and that time ?
What of that ?
Or that the fountains of the great deep must
have been broken up by natural earthquakes, such
as break up the crust of the earth now.
What of that ?
Or that the rainbow must have been caused by
the Sim's rays shining through rain-drops at a certain
angle, as all rainbows are now. What of that ?
Very probably it was : but if not — What of that ?
IV.] NOAHS FLOOD. 51
AVliat we ought to know, and wliat we ought to
care for is, what tlie Bible tells us without a doubt,
that however they came, God sent them. However
they were made, God made them. Their manner,
their place, theii' time was appointed exactly by
God for a moral purpose. To do something for
the immortal souls of men ; to punish sinners ;
to preserve the righteous ; to teach Noah and his
children after him a moral lesson, concerning
righteousness and sin — concerning the wrath of
God against sin — concerning God, that he governs
the world and all in it, and does not leave the
world, or mankind, to go on of themselves and
bv themselves.
You see, I trust, what a message this was, and
is, and ever will be for men ; what a message
and good news it must have been especially for
the heathen of old time.
For what would the heathen, what actually did
the heathen think about such sights as a flood, or
a rainbow ?
They thought of course that some one sent
the flood. Common sense taught them that.
But what kind of person must he be, thought
they, who sent the flood ? Surely a very dark,
terrible, angry God, who was easily and suddenly
provoked to drown their cattle and flood their lands.
But the rainbow, so bright and gay, the sign of
52 NOAH'S FLOOD. [sermC.
coming fine weatlier, could not belong to tlie same
God who made the flood. What the fancies of the
heathen about the rainbow were, matters little to
us : but they fancied, at least, that it belonged to
some cheerful, bright, and kind God. And so with
other things. Whatever was bright, and beautiful,
and wholesome in the world, like the rainbow, be-
longed to kind gods ; whatever was dark, ugly,
and destroying, like the flood, belonged to angry
gods.
Therefore, those of the heathen who were
religious, never felt themselves safe. They were
always afraid of having offended some god, they
knew not how ; always afraid of some god turning
against them, and bringing diseases against their
bodies ; floods, drought, blight, against their crops ;
storms against their ships, in revenge for some
slight or neo-lect of theirs.
And all the while they had no clear notion that
these gods made the world ; they thought that
the gods were parts of the world, just as men are,
and that beyond the gods there was some sort of
Fate, or necessity, which even the gods must obey.
Do you not see now what a comfort — what a
sprmg of hope, and courage, and peace of mind,
and patient industry — it must have been to the men
of old time to be told, by this story of the flood,
that the God who sends the flood sends the rain-
IV.] NOAHS FLOOD. 53
bow also ? There are not two gods, nor many gods,
but one God, of whom are all things. Light and
darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth,
come alike from him. Diseases, storm, flood,
blight, all these show that there is in God an
awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be — a
power of destroying his own work, of altering his
own order ; but sunshine, fruitfulness, peace, and
comfort, all show that love and mercy, beauty and
order, are just as much attributes of his essence
as awfulness and anger.
They tell us he is a God whose will is to love, to
bless, to make his creatures happy, if they will allow
him. They tell us that his anger is not a capri-
cious, revengeful, proud, selfish anger, such as that
of the heathen gods: but that it is an orderly
anger, a just anger, a loving anger, and therefore
an anger which in its wrath can remember mercy.
Out of God's wrath shinetli love, as the rainbow out
of the storm; if it repenteth him that he hath
made man, it is only because man is spoiling and
ruining himself, and wasting the gifts of the good
world by his wickedness. If he see fit to destroy
man out of the earth, he will destroy none but
those who deserve and need destroying. He
will save those whom, like Noah, he can trust to
begin afresh, and raise up a better race of men
to do his work in the world. If God send a
54 NOAHS FLOOD. [sebm.
flood to destroy all living things, any ^lien or
anywliere, he will show, by putting the rainbow
in the cloud, that floods and destruction and
anger are not his rule ; that his rule is sunshine,
and peace, and order ; that though he found it
necessary once to curse the ground, once to sweep
away a wicked race of men, yet that even that
was, if one dare use the words of God, against
his gracious will; that his will was from the be-
ginning peace on earth, and not floods, and good
will to men, and not destruction ; and that in his
heart, in the abyss of his essence, and of which
it is written, that God is Love — in his heart
I say, he said, ' I will not again curse the ground
' any more for man's sake, even though the imagi-
' nation of man's heart is evil from his youth.
' Neither will I again smite everything living, as I
' have done. While the earth remaineth, seed-
' time and harvest, summer and winter, and day
' and night, shall not cease.'
This is the God which the book of Genesis goes
on revealing and unveiling to us more and more,
— a God in whom men may trust.
The heathen could not trust their gods. The
Bible tells men of a God whom they can trust.
That is just the difierence between the Bible and
all other books in the world. But what a differ-
ence ! Difference enough to make us say — Sooner
IV.] NOAHS FLOOD. 55
that every otlier book in the world were lost, and
the Bible preserved, than that we should lose the
Bible, and with the Bible lose faith in God.
And now, my friends, what shall we learn from
this?
What shall we learn? Have we not learnt
enough already? If we have learnt something
more' of who God is — if we have learnt that he is
a God in whom we can trust through joy and
sorrow, through light and darkness, tlirough life and
death — have we not learnt enough for ourselves ?
Yes, if even those poor and weak words about
God which I have just spoken, could go home
into all yom- hearts, and take root, and bear fruit
there, they would give you a peace of mind, a com-
fort, a courage among all the chances and changes
of this mortal life, and a hope for the life to come,
such as no other news which man can tell you
■will ever give. But there is one special lesson
■which we may learn from the history of the flood,
of which I may as well tell you at once. The
Bible account of the flood will teach us how to
look at the many terrible accidents, as we fool-
ishly call them, Avliich happen still upon this
earth. There are floods still, here aud there,
earthquakes, fires, fearful disasters, like that great
colliery disaster of last year, which brhjg death,
misery, and ruin to thousands. The Bible tells us
5 6 NOAHS FLOOD. [serm.
Avliat to think of them, when it tells us of the
flood.
Do I mean that these disasters come as punish-
ments to the people who are killed by them?
That is exactly what I do 7iot mean. It was
true of the flood. It is true, no doubt, in many
other cases. But our blessed Lord has specially
forbidden us to settle when it is true to say that
any particular set of people are destroyed for their
sins : forbidden us to say that the poor creatures who
perish in this way are worse than their neighbours.
' Thinkest thou,' he says, ' that those Galilseans
' whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices,
' were simiers above all the Galilaeans ? Or those
' eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell, and
' killed them ; think you that they were sinners
' above all who dwelt in Jerusalem ? I tell you nay.'
' Judge not,' he says, ' and ye shall not be
' judged,' and therefore we must not judge. We
have no right to say, for instance, that the terrible
earthquake in Italy, two years ago, came as a
punishment for the sins of the people. We have
no right to say that the twenty or thirty thousand
human beings, with innocent children among
them by hundreds, who were crushed or swallowed
up by that earthquake in a few hours, were sinners
above all that dwelt in Italy. We must not say
that, for the Lord God himself has forbidden it.
IV.] NOAH'S FLOOD. 57
But this we may say (for God himself has said it
in the Bible), that these earthquakes, and all
other disasters, great or small, do not come of
themselves — do not come by accident, or chance,
or blind necessity; but that he sends them, and
that they fulfil his will and word. He sends them,
and therefore they do not come in vain. They
fulfil his will, and his will is a good will. They
carry out his purpose, but his purpose is a gracious
purpose. God may send them in anger ; but in his
anger he remembers mercy, and his very wrath to
some, is part and parcel of his love to the rest.
Therefore these disasters must be meant to do
good, and will do good, to mankind. They may
be meant to teach men, to warn them, to make
them more wise and prudent for the future, more
humble and aware of then- own ignorance and
weakness, more mindful of the frailty of human
life, that remembering that in the midst of life we
are in death, they may seek the Lord while he may
be found, and call upon him while he is near.
They may be meant to do that, and to do a
thousand things more. For God's ways are not as
our ways, or his thoughts as our thoughts. His
ways are unsearchable, and his paths past finding
out. Who hath known the mind of the Lord,
that he may instruct him, or even settle what the
Lord means by doing this or that ?
58 NOAH'S FLOOD.
All we can say is, — and that is a truly blessed
thing to be able to say, — that floods and earth-
quakes, fire and storms, come from the Lord whose
name is Love ; the same Lord who walked with
Adam in the garden, who brought the children of
Israel out of Egypt, who was born on earth of the
Virgin Mary, who shed his lifeblood for sinful
man, who wept over Jerusalem even when he was
about to destroy it so that not one stone was left
on another, and who, when he looked on the poor
little children of Judaea, untaught or mistaught,
enslaved by the Romans, and but too likely to
perish or be carried away captive in the fearful
war which was coming on their land, said of
them, 'It is not the will of your Father in
' heaven, that one of these little ones shall perish.'
Him at least we can trust, in the dark and dread-
ful things of this world, as well as in the bright
and cheerful ones ; and say with Job, ' Though
' he slay me, yet will I trust in him. I have
' received good from the hands of the Lord, and
' shall I not receive evil ?'
SEPaiox V.
ABKAHAM.
{First Sunday in Lent.)
Genesis xvii. i, 2.
And when Abram was ninety years old tad nine, the Lord ap-
peared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God ;
walk before me, and be thou perfect.
T HAVE told you that the Bible reveals, that is,
-*- unveils, the Lord Grod, Jesus Christ our Lord,
and through him God the Father Almighty. I
have tried to show you how the Bible does so, step
by step. I go on to show you another step
which the Bible takes, and which explains much
that has gone before.
From whom did Moses and the holy men of old
whom Moses taught get their knowledge of God,
the true God ?
The answer seems to be — from Abraham.
God taught Moses more, much more than he
taught Abraham. It was Moses who bade men
So A BE AH AM. [seem.
call God Jeliovah, tlie I Am : but who hundreds
of years before taught them to call him the
Almighty God ?
The answer seems to be — Abraham. God, we
read, appeared to Abraham, and said to him, ' Get
* thee out of thy country, and from thy father's
* house, unto a land that I shall show thee, and I will
' make of thee a great nation.' And again the Lord
said to him, ' I am the Almighty God, walk before
*me and be thou perfect, and thou shalt be a
' father of many nations.'
' And Abraham believed God, and it was counted
* to him for righteousness. And he was called the
* friend of God.'
But from what did Abraham turn to worship
the hvino' God ? From idols ? We are not certain.
There is little or no mention of idols in Abraham's
time. He worshipped, more probably, the host of
heaven, the sun and moon and stars. So say the
old traditions of the Arabs, who are descended
from Abraham through Ishmael, and so it is most
likely to have been. That was the temptation in
the East. You read again and again how his
children, the Jews, turned back from God to
worship the host of heaven ; and that false worship
seems to have crept in at some very early time.
The sun, you must remember, and the moon are
far more brilliant and powerful in the East than
v.] ABRAHAM. 6l
liere, — tlieir power of doing harm or good to human
beings and to the crops of the land is far greater ;
while the stars shine in the East with a brightness
of which we here have no notion. We do not
know, in this cloudy climate, what St. Paul calls
the glory of the stars ; nor see how much one star
differs from another star in glory ; and therefore
here in the North we have never been tempted to
worship them as the Easterns were. The sun,
the moon, the stars, were the old gods of the
East, the Elohim, the high and mighty ones, Avho
ruled over men, over their good or bad fortunes,
over the weather, the cattle, the crops, sending
burning di-ought, pestilence, sun-strokes, and those
moon-strokes which we never have here; but of
which the Psalmist speaks when he says ' The sun
' shall not smite thee by day, neither the moon
' by night.' And them the old Easterns wor-
shipped in some wild confused way.
But to Abraham it was revealed that the sun,
the moon, and the stars were not Elohim: the
high and mighty Ones. That there was but one
Elohim, one high and mighty One, the Almighty
maker of them all. He did not learn that, perhaps,
at once. Lideed the Bible tells us how God
taught him step by step, as he teaches all men, and
revealed himself to him again and again, till he
had taught Abraham all that he was to know.
62 ABRAHAM. [sERM.
But lie did teacli him tliis ; as a beautiful old
story of the Arabs sets forth. They say how
(whether before or after God called him, we
cannot tell) Abraham at night saw a star : and
he said, 'This is my Lord.' But when the
star set, he said, 'I like not those who vanish
*awav.' And when he saw the moon risincj, he
said, * This is my Lord.' But when the moon too
set, he said, ' Verily, if my Lord direct me not in
' the right way, I shall be as one who goeth astray.'
But when he saw the sun rising, he said, ' This is
* my Lord : this is greater than star or moon.' But
the sun went down likewise. Then said Abraham,
' Oh my people, I am clear of these things. I
* turn my face to him who hath made the heaven
' and the earth.'
And was this all that Abraham believed — that
the sun, and moon, and stars were not gods,
but that there was a God besides, w^ho had made
them all ? My friends, there have been thousands,
and tens of tliousauds, I fear, since, who have
believed as much as that, and yet who cannot call
Abraham their spiritual father, who are not
justified by faith with faithful Abraham.
For merely to believe that, is a dead faith,
which will never be counted for righteousness,
because it will never make man a righteous man,
doing righteous and good deeds as Abraham did.
v.] ABEAHAM. 63
Of Abraham it is written, that what he knew he
did. That his faith wrought with his works. And
by his works his faith was made perfect. That
when he gained faith in God, he went and acted
on his faith. When God called him he went out,
not knowing wliither he went.
His faith is only shown by his works. Because
he believed in God he went and did things which
he would not have done if he had not believed in
God, Of him it is written, that he obeyed the
voice of the Lord, and kejDt his charge, his com-
mandments, his statutes, and his laws.
In a word, he had not merely found out that
there was one God, but that that one God was a
good God, a God whom he must obey, and obey
by being a good man. Therefore his faith was
counted to him for righteousness, because it was
righteousness, and made him do righteous deeds.
He believed that God was helping him ; there-
fore he had no need to oppress or overreach any
man. He believed that (Jod's eye M^as on him ;
therefore he dared not oppress or overreach any
man.
His faith in God made him brave. He went
forth he knew not whither: but he had put his
trust in God, and he did not fear. He, and his
three hundred slaves, born in his house, were
not afraid to set out against the four Arab
64 ABKAHAM. [SERM.
kings wlio had just conquered the five kings
of the vale of Jordan, and plundered the whole
land. Abraham and his little party of faithful
slaves follow them for miles, and fall on them, and
defeat them utterly, setting the captives free, and
bringing back all the plunder ; and then, in return
for all that he has done, Abraham will take
nothing — not even, he says, ' a thread or a shoe-
' latchet — lest men should say we have made
' Abraham rich.' And why ?
Because his faith in God made him high-minded,
generous, and courteous ; as when he bids Lot go
whither he will with his flocks and herds. ' Let
' there be no strife, I pray thee, between thee and
* me. If thou wilt lake the left hand, I will go to
' the right.' He is then, as again with the king of
Sodom, and with the three strangers at the tent
door, and with the children of Heth, when he is
buying the cave of Machpelah for a burying-place
for Sarah — always and everywhere the same cour-
teous, self-restrained, high-bred, high-minded man.
It has been said that true religion will make a
man a more thorough gentleman than all the
courts in Europe. And it is true : you may see
simple labouring men as thorough gentlemen as
any duke, simply because they have learned to fear
God ; and fearing him, to restrain themselves, and
to think of other people more than of themselves,
v.] ABRAHAM. 65
wliicli is tlie very root and essence of all good breed-
ing. And such a man was Abraham of old — a
plain man, dwelling in tents, helping to tend his
own cattle, fetching in the calf from the field him-
self, and dressing it for his guests Avith his own
hand ; but still, as the children of Heth said of
Iiim, a mighty prince — not merely in wealth of
flocks and herds, but a prince in manners and a
prince in heart.
But faith in God did more for Abraham than
this : it made him a truly pious man — it made
him the friend of God.
There were others in Abraham's days who
had some knowledge of the one true God. Lot
his nephew, Abimelech, Aner, Eshcol, Mamre,
and others, seem to have known whom Abra-
ham meant when he spoke of the Almighty God.
But of Abraham alone it is said that he believed
God ; that he trusted in God, and rested on liim ;
was built up on God ; rested on God as a child in
the mother's arms — for this, we are told, is the full
meaning of the word in the Bible — and looked to
God as his shield and his exceeding great reward.
He trusted in God utterly, and it was counted to
him for righteousness.
And of Abraham alone it is said that he was
the friend of God ; that God spoke with him, and
he with God. He first of all men of whom we
P
66 ABEAHAM. [SEKM.
read, at least since the time of Adam, knew
wliat communion with God meant ; knew that
God spoke to him as a friend, a benefactor, a pre-
server, who was teaching and training him with a
father's love and care ; and felt that he in return
could answer God, could open his heart to him,
tell him not only of his wants, but of his doubts
and fears.
Yes, we may almost say, on the strength of the
Bible, that Abraham was the first human being,
as far as we know, who prayed with his heart and
soul ; who knew what true prayer means — the
prayer of the heart, by which man draws near to
God, and finds that God is near to him. This —
this communion with God, is the especial glory of
Abraham's character. This it is which has given
him his name through all generations, The friend
of God. Or, as his descendants the Arabs call him
to this day, simply, " The Friend."
This it is which gained him the name of the
Father of the Faithful ; the father of all who
believe, whether they be descended from him, or
whether they be, like us, of a different nation.
This it is which has made a wise man say of
Abraham, that if we will consider what he knew
and did, and in what a dark age he lived, we
shall see that Abraham may be (unless we except
Moses) the greatest of mere human beings — that
v.] ABRAHAM. 67
the human race may owe more to him than to
any mortal man.
But why need we learn from Abraham ? ^ye who,
being Christians, know and believe the true faith
so much more clearly than Abraham could do.
Ah, my friends, it is easier to know than to
believe, and easier to know than to do. Easier to
talk (5f Abraham's faith than to have Abraham's
faith. Easier to preach learned and orthodox
sermons about how Abraham was justified by his
faith, than to be justified om'selves by our own
faith.
And say not in your hearts, ' It was easy for
' Abraham to believe God. I should have believed
* of course in his place. If God spoke to me, of
' course I should obey him,' My friends, there
is no greater and no easier mistake. God has
spoken to many a man who has not believed him,
neither obeyed him, and so he may to you. God
spoke to Abraham, and he believed him and
obeyed him. And why ? Because there was in
Abraham's heart something which there is not in
aU men's hearts — something which answered to
God's call, and made him certain that the call was
from God — even the Holy Spirit of God.
So God may call you, and you may obey him,
if only the Spirit of God be in you ; but not else.
Ma?/ caU you, did I say ? God does caU you and
68 ABRAHAM. [sERM.
me, does speak to us, does command us, far more
clearly than he did Abraham. We know the mys-
tery of Christ, which in other ages was not made
known to the sons of men as it is now revealed to his
holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. God, who
at sundry times and in divers manners spoke to
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days
spoken to us by his Scm, Jesus Christ our Lord,
and told us om- duty, and the reward which doing
our duty will surely bring, far more clearly than
ever he did to Abraham.
But do we listen to him ? Do we say with
Abraham, ' Oh, my people, I am clear of all these
' things which rise and set, which are born and die,
' which beijin and end in time, and turn mv face to
' him that made heaven and earth !' If so, how is
it that we see people everywhere worshipping not
idols of wood and stone, but other things, all man-
ner of things beside God, and saying, ' These are
' my Elohim. These are the high and mighty ones
' whom I must obey. These are the strong things
' on which depend my fortune and my happiness.
' I must obey them first, and let plain doing right
' and avoiding wrong come after as it can.'
One worships the laws of trade, and says, 'I
' know this and that is hardly right : but it is in
' the way of business, and therefore 1 must do it.'
One worships pubKc opinion, and follows after
v.] ABRAHAM. 69
the multitude to do evil, doing what he knows is
wrong, simply because others do it, and it is the
way of the world.
One worships the interest of his party, whether
in religion or in politics ; and does for their sake
mean and false, cruel and unjust things, which he
would not do for his own private interest.
To5 many, even in a free country, worship great
people, and put their trust in princes, saying, ' I
* am sorry to have to do this. I know it is rather
' mean ; but I must, or I shall lose such and such
' a gi-eat man's interest and favour.' Or, ' I know
' I cannot afford this expense ; but if I do not I
' shall not get into good society, and this person
' and that will not ask me to his house.'
All, meanwhile, except a few, rich or poor, wor-
ship money ; and believe more or less, in spite of
the Lord's solemn warning to the contrary, that a
man's life does consist in the abundance of the
things which he possesses.
These are the Eloliim of this world, the high
and mighty things to which men turn for help
instead of to the living God, who was before all
things, and will be after them ; and behold they
vanish awav, and where then are those that have
put their trust in them ?
But blessed is he whose trust is in God the
Almighty, and whose hope is in the Lord Jehovah,
70 ABRAHAM. [sERM.
tlie eternal I Am. Blessed is lie who, like faithful
Abraham, says to his family, 'My people, I am
' clear of all these things. I turn my face from
' them to him who hath made eartli and heaven.
'I go through this world, like Abraham, not
' knowing whither I go ; but, like Abraham, I fear
'not, for I go whither God sends me. I rest on
' God ; he is my defence, and my exceeding great
'reward. To have known him, loved him, obeyed
'him, is reward enough, even if I do not, as the
' world would say, succeed in life. Therefore I
' long not for power and honour, riches and plea-
' sure. I am content to do my duty faithfully in
' that station of life to which God has called me,
' and to be forgiven for all my failings and short-
' comings for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord, and
' that is enough for me ; for I believe in my Father in
' heaven, and believe that he knows best for me and
' for my children. He has not promised me, as he
' promised Abraham, to make of me a great nation ;
'but he has promised that the righteous man shall
'never be deserted, or his children beg their bread.
' He has promised to keep his covenant and mercy
' to a thousand generations with those who keep his
' commandments and do them : and that is enouo-h
'for me. In God have I put my trust, and I will
' not fear what man, or eartli, or heaven, or any
' created thing, can do unto me.'
v.] ABRAHAM. 7 1
Blessed is that man, whether he inherit honour-
ably great estates from his ancestors, or whether he
make honourably great wealth and station for
himself; whether he spend his life quietly and
honestly in the country farm or in the village shop,
or whether he sim2)ly earn his bread from week to
week by plough and spade. Blessed is he, and
blessed are his children after him. For he is a
son of Abraham ; and of him God hath said, as of
Abraham, ' I know him that he will command liis
' childi'en and household after him, and they sliall
' keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judg-
' ment, that the Lord may bring on him the bless-
* ing which he has spoken.'
Yes ; blessed is that man. He has chosen his
share of Abraham's faith ; and he, and his children
after him, shall have their share of Abraham's
blessing.
SERMON VL
JACOB AND ESAU.
{Second Sunday in Lent?)
Genesis xxv. 29 — 34.
And Jacob sod pottage : and Esau came from the field and he
was faint. And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee,
with that same red pottage ; for I am faint : therefore was his
name called Edom. And Jacob said. Sell me this day thy
birthright. And Esau said. Behold, I am at the point to die :
and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob
said, Swear to me this day ; and he sware unto him : and he
sold his birthright vmto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread
and pottage of lentiles ; and he did eat and drink, and rose up,
and went his way : thus Esau despised his birthright,
T HAVE been telling you of late that the Bible
-^ is the revelation of God. But how does the
story of Jacob and Esau reveal God to us ? "What
further lesson concerning God do we leam there-
from ?
I think that, if we will take the story simply
as it stands, we shall see easily enough. For
it is all simple and natural enough. Jacob and
Esau, we shall see, were men of like passions witL
JACOB AND ESAU. 73
ourselves ; men as we are, mixed up of good and
evil, sometimes right and sometimes wrong : and
God rewarded them when thev did rioht, and
punished them when they did wrong, just as he
does with us now.
They were men, though, of very different cha-
racters : we may see men like them now every day
round us. Esau, we read, was a hunter — a man of
the field; a bold, fierce, active man; generous,
brave, and kind-hearted, as the end of his story
shows : but with just the faults which such a man
would have. He was hasty, reckless, and fond of
pleasure ; passionate, too, and violent. Have we
not seen just such men again and again, and liked
them for what was good in them, and been sorry,
too, that they were not more sober and reasonable,
and true to themselves ?
Jacob was the very opposite kind of man. He
was a plain man — what we call a still, solid, pru-
dent, quiet man — and a dweller in tents : he Kved
peaceably, looking after his father's flocks and
herds ; while Esau liked better the sport and
danger of hunting wild beasts, and bringing home
venison to his father.
Now Jacob, we see, was of course a more
thoughtful man than Esau. He kept more quiet ;
and so had more time to think : and he had plainly
thought a great deal over God's promise to his
74 JACOB AND ESAU. [seem.
grandfather Abraham. He believed that God
had promised Abraham that he would make his
seed as the sand of the sea for multitude, and
give them that fair land of Canaan, and that in
his seed all the families of the earth should be
blessed ; and that seemed to him, and rightly, a
very grand and noble thing. And he set his heart
on getting that blessing for himself, and supplant-
ing his elder brother Esau, and being the heir of
the promises in his stead. Well, — that was mean,
and base, and selfish perhaps : but there is some-
what of an excuse for Jacob's conduct, in the fact
that he and Esau were twins ; that in one sense
neither of them was older than the other. And
you must recollect, that it was not at all a
reomlar custom in the East for the eldest son to
be his father's heir, as it is in England. You find
that few or none of the great kings of the Jews
were eldest sons, Tlie custom was not kept up as
it is here. So Jacob may have said to himself,
and not have been very wrong in saying it : —
'I have as good a right to the birtlu-ight as
' Esau. My ftither loves him best because he brings
* him in venison ; but I know the value of the
' honour which is before my family. Surely the
' one of us who cares most about the birtliright
* will be most fit to have it, and ought to have it ;
' and Esau cares nothing for it, while I do.'
VI.] JACOB AND ESAU. 75
So Jacob, in his cunning bargaining way, took ad-
vantage of liis brother's weak liasty temper, and
bought his birthright of him, as the text tells.
That story shows us what sort of a man Esau
was; hasty, careless, fond of the good things of
this life. He had no reason to complain if he lost
his birthright. He did not care for it, and so he
had thrown it away. Perhaps he forgot what he
had done ; but his sin found him out — as our sins
are sure to find each of us out. The day came
when he wanted his birthright, and could not have
it, and found no place for repentance — that is, no
chance of undoing what he had done — thous-h he
sought it carefully with tears. He had sown, and
he must reap : he had made his bed, and he must
lie on it. And so must Jacob, in his turn.
Now tliis, I think, is just what the story teaches
us concerning God. God chooses Abraham's family
to groAv into a great nation, and to be a peculiar
people. The next question will be : If God favours
that family, will he do unjust things to help them ?
— will he let them do unjust things to help tliem-
selves ? The Bible answers positively, No, God
will not be unjust, or arbitrary in choosing one
man and rejecting another. If he chooses Jacob,
it is because Jacob is fit for the work which God
wants done. If he rejects Esau, it is because
Esau is not fit.
7 5 JACOB AND ESAU. [serm.
It is natural, I know, to pity poor Esau ; but one
has no right to do more. One has no right to fancy
for a moment that God was arbitrary or hard upon
him. Esau is not the sort of man to be the father
of a great nation, or of anything else great.
Greedy, passionate, reckless people like him, with-
out due feeling of religion or of the unseen world,
are not the men to govern the world, or help it
forward, or be of use to mankind, or train uj? their
families in justice, and wisdom, and piety. If there
had been no people in the world but people like
Esau, we should be savages at this da)^, without
religion or civilization of any kind. They are of
the earth, earthy; dust they are, and unto dust
they will return. It is men like Jacob whom
God chooses, — men who have a feeling of religion
and the unseen world ; men Avho can loolc for-
ward, and live by faith, and form plans for the
future, — and carry them out, too, against disap-
pointment and difficulty, till they succeed.
Look at one side of Jacob's character — his per-
severance. He serves seven years for Kachel, be-
cause he loves her. Then when he is cheated, and
Leah given him instead, he serves seven years
more for Kachel, — 'and they seemed to him a
' short time, for the love he bore to her ;' and then
he serves seven years more for the flocks and
herds. A slave, or little better than a slave, of his
VI.] JACOB AND ESAU. 77
own free will, for one-and-twenty years, to get what
he wanted. Those are the men whom God uses,
and whom God prospers. Men with deep hearts
and strong wills, who set their minds on something
which they cannot see, and work steadfastly for it
— till they get it ; for God gives it to them in good
time — when patience has had her perfect work upon
their characters, and made them fit for success.
Esau, Ave find, got some blessing — the sort of
blessing he was fit for. He loved his father, and
he was rewarded. * And Isaac his father answ ered
' and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be
* the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven
' from above ; and by thy sword shalt thou live,
' and shalt serve thy brother ; and it shall come to
* pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that
' thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.'
He was a brave, generous-hearted man, in spite
of his faults. He was to live the free hunter's life
which he loved ; and we find that he soon became
the head of a wild powerful tribe, and his sons
after him. Dukes of Edom they were called for
several generations; but they never rose to any
solid and lasting power ; they never became a great
nation, as Jacob's children did. They were just
what one would expect — wild, unruly, violent peo-
ple. They have long since perished utterly off the
face of the earth.
78 JACOB AND ESAU. [sekm.
And what did Jacob get, wlio so meanly
bought the birthright, and cheated his father out
of the blessing ? Trouble in the flesh ; vanity
and vexation of spirit. He had to flee from his
father's house ; never to see his mother again ;
to wander over the deserts to kinsmen, who
cheated him as he had cheated others; to serve
Laban for twenty-one years; to crouch misera-
bly, in fear and trembling, as a petitioner for
his life before Esau whom he had wrono:ed — and
to be made more ashamed than ever, by finding
that generous Esau had forgiven and forgotten
all. Then to see his daughter brought to shame,
his sons murderers, plotting against their own
brother, his favourite son ; to see his grey hairs
going do^Ti with sorrow to the gi-ave ; to confess
to Pharaoh, after 120 years of life, that few and
evil had been the days of his pilgrimage.
Then did his faith in God win no reward ?
Not so. That was his reward, to be chastened
and punished, till his meanness was purged out of
him. He had taken God for his guide ; and God
did guide him accordingly ; though along a very
different path from what he expected. God ac-
cepted his faith, delivered his soul, gave him rest
and peace at last in his old age in Egypt, let him
find his son Joseph again in power and honour :
but all along God punished his own inventions —
VI.] JACOB AND ESAU. 79
as lie will punish yours and mine, my friends,
all the while that he may be accepting our faith
and delivering our souls, because we trust in liim.
So God rewarded Jacob by giving him more
light : by not leaving him to himself, and his own
darkness and meanness, but opening his eyes to
understand the wondrous things of God's law, and
showing him how God's law is everlasting, rie'ht-
eous, not to be escaped by any man ; how every
action brings forth its appointed fruit ; how those
who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.
Jacob's first notion was, like the notion of the
heathen in all times, ' My God has a special
' favour for me, therefore I may do what I like.
' He will prosper me in doing wrong ; he will help
* me to cheat my father.' But God showed him
that that was just not what he would do for liim.
He would help and protect him ; but only while
he was doing EIGHT. God would not alter his
moral laws for him or any man. God would be
just and righteous ; and Jacob must be so like-
wise, till he learnt to trust, not merely in a God
who happened to have a special favom- to him, but
in the righteous God who loves justice, and wishes
to make men righteous even as he is righteous,
and will make them righteous, if they trust in him.
That was the reward of Jacob's faith — the best
reward which any man can have. He was taught
8o JACOB AND ESAU. [seem.
to know God, wliom truly to know is everlasting
life. And this, it seems to me, is the great reve-
lation concerning God which we learn from the
history of Jacob and Esau. That God, how much
soever favour he may show to certain persons, is
still, essentially and always, a just God.
And now, my friends, if any of you are temj)ted
to follow Jacob's example, take warning betimes.
You will be tempted. There are men among
you — there are in every congregation — who are,
like Jacob, sober, industrious, careful, prudent
men, and fairly religious too ; men who have the
good sense to see that Solomon's proverbs are
true, and that the way to wealth and prosperity
is to fear God, and keep his commandments.
May you prosper ; may God's blessing be upon
your labour ; may you succeed in life, and see
your children well settled, and thriving round
you, and go down to the grave in peace.
But never forget, my good friends, that you will
be tempted as Jacob was — to be dishonest. I cannot
tell why ; but professedly religious men, in all coun-
tries, in all religions, are, and always have been,
tempted in that way — to be mean, and cunning, and
false at times. It is so, and there is no denying it :
when all other sins are shut out from them by their
religious profession, and their care for their own
character, and their fear of hell, the sin of lying,
VI.] JACOB AND ESAU. 8 1
for some strange reason, is left open to them ; and
to it they are tempted to give way. For God's
sake — for the sake of Christ, who was full of grace
and truth — for your OAvn sakes — struggle against
that. Unless you wish to say at last, with poor old
Jacob, ' Few and evil have been the days of my
'pilgrimage;' struggle against that. If you fear
God, and believe that he is with you, God will
prosper your plans and labour : but never make
that an excuse for saying in your hearts, like
Jacob, 'God intends that I should have these
' good things ; tlierefore I may take them for my-
*self by unfair means.' The birthright is yours.
It is you, the steady, prudent, godfearing ones,
who will prosper on the earth, and not poor wild
hotheaded Esau. But do not make that an excuse
for robbing and cheating Esau, because he is not
as thoughtful as you are. The Lord made him
as well as you ; and died for him as well as for
you ; and wills his salvation as well as yours ;
and if you cheat him the Lord will avenge him
speedily. If you give way to meanness, covetous-
ness, falsehood, as Jacob did, you will rue it ; the
Lord will enter into judgment \Nith you quickly,
and all the more quickly because he loves you.
Because there is some right in you — because you
are on the whole on the right road — the Lord will
visit you with disappointment and afiliction, and
G
82 JACOB AND ESAU. [sEEM.
make your own sins your punishment. If you
deceive other people, other people shall deceive
you, as they did Jacob. If you lay traps, you
shall fall into them yourselves, as Jacob did. If
you fancy that because you trust in God, God
will overlook any sin in you, as Jacob did, you
shall see, as Jacob did, that your sin shall surely
find you out. The Lord will be more sharp and
severe with you than Avith Esau. And why ?
Because he has given you more, and requires
more of you ; and therefore he will chastise you,
and sift you like wheat, till he has parted the
wheat from the tares. The wheat is your faith,
your belief that if you trust in God he will pros-
per you, body and soul. That is God's good seed,
which he has sown in you. The tares are your
fancies that you may do wrong and mean things
to help yourselves, because God has an especial
favour for you. That is the devil's sowing, which
God will burn out of you by the fire of aiSiction,
as he did out of Jacob, and keep your faith safe,
as good seed in his garner, for the use of your
children after you, that you may teach them to
walk in God's commandments, and serve him in
spirit and in truth. For God is a God of truth,
and no liar shall stand in liis sight, let him be
never so religious; he requires truth in the
inward parts, and truth ho will have ; and whom
VI.] JACOB AND ESAU. 83
he loves he will chasten, as he chastened Jacob
of old, till he has made him understand that
honesty is the best policy; and that whatever
false prophets may tell you, there is not one law
for the believer and another for the unbeliever ;
but whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap, and
receive the due reward of the deeds done in the
body;- whether they be good or evil.
SERMON YJI.
JOSEPH.
{Preached on the Snnday lefore the Weddinri of the Frince of
Wales.) March Hth, Oiird Sunday in Lent.
Genesis xxxix. 9.
How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God ?
THE story of Joseph is one which will go home
to all healthy hearts. Every child can under-
stand, every child can feel with it. It is a story
for all men, and all times. Even if it had not
been true — and not real fact, but a romance of
man's invention, it would have been loved and
admired by men ; far more then, when we know
that it is true, that it actually did so happen ; that
it is part and parcel of the Holy Scriptures.
AVe all, surely, know the story — How Joseph's
brethren envy him, and sell him for a slave into
Egypt — how there for a while he prospers — how
his master's wife tempts him — how he is thrown
into prison on her slander — how there again he
prospers — how he explains the dreams of Pharaoh's
servants — how he lies long forgotten in the prison
— liow at last Pharaoh sends for him to interpret
JOSEPH. 85
a dream for him, and how he rises to power and
great glory — how his brothers come down to
Egj'pt to buy corn, and how they find him lord
of all the land — how subtilly he tries them to see
if they have repented of their old sin — how hia
heart yearns over them in spite of all their
wickedness to him — how at last he reveals him-
self, and forgives them utterly, and sends for his
poor old father Jacob down into Egypt. Who-
soever does not delight in that story, simply as a
story, whenever he hears it read, cannot have a
wholesome human heart in him.
But why was this story of Joseph put into Holy
Scripture, and at such length, too ? It seems, at
first sight, to be simply a family history — the
story of brothers and their father ; it seems, at
first sight, to teach us nothing concerning our
redemption and salvation ; it seems, at first sight,
not to reveal anything fresh to us concerning
God ; it seems, at first sight, not to be needed for
the general plan of the Bible history. It tells
us, of course, how the Israelites fii'st came into
Egypt, and that was necessary for us to know.
But the Bible might have told us that in ten
verses. Why has it spent upon the story of
Joseph and his brethren, not ten verses, but ten
chapters ?
Now we have a riglit to ask such questions as
86 JOSEPH. [SERM.
these, if we do not ask them out of any carping,
fault-finding spirit, trying to pick holes in the
Bible, from which God defend us and all Chris-
tian men. If we ask such questions in faith and
reverence ; that is, believing and taking for
granted that the Bible is right, and respecting it,
as the Book of books, in which our own fore-
fathers, and all Christian nations upon earth for
many ages, have found all things necessary for
their salvation — if, I say, we question over the
Bible in that childlike, simple, respectful spirit,
which is the true spirit of wisdom and under-
standing, by which our eyes will be truly opened
to see the wondrous things of God's law, —
then we may not only seek as our Lord bade us,
but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that
we should. We shall find some good reason for
this story of Joseph being so long, and find that
the story of Joseph, like all the rest of the Bible,
reveals a new lesson to us concerning God, and
the character of God.
I said that the story of Joseph looks, at first
sight, to be merely a family history. But suppose
that that were the very reason why it is in the
]jible, because it is a family history. Suppose
that families were very sacred things in the eyes
of God. That the ties of husband and wife,
parent aud child, brother and sister, were ap-
VII.] JOSEPH. 87
pointed, not by man, but by God. Then would
not Joseph's story be worthy of being in the
Bible ? Would it not, as I said it would, reveal
something fresh to us concerning God, and the
character of God ?
Consider now, my friends. Is it not one great
difference — one of the very greatest — between men
andn. beasts, that men live in families, and beasts
do not ? That men have the sacred family feeling,
and beasts have not ? They have the beginnings
of it, no doubt. The mother, among beasts, feels
love to her children, but only for a while. God
has implanted in her something of that deepest,
holiest, purest of all feelings — a mother's love.
But as soon as her young ones are able to take
care of themselves, they are nothing to her —
among the lower animals, less than nothing. The
fish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs
jealously, and as soon as they are hatched, turn
round and devour her own young.
The feeling of a father to his child, again, you
find is fainter still among beasts. The father,
as you all know, not only cares little for his off-
spring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them
at first, but is often jealous of them, hates them,
will try to kill them when they grow up.
Husband and wife, again : there is no sacredness
between them among dumb animals. A lasting
88 JOSEPH. [seem.
and an nnselfish attachment, not merely in youth,
but through old age, and beyond the grave — what
is there like tliis among the animals, except in the
case of certain birds, like the dove and the eagle,
who keep the same mate year after year, and have
been always looked on with a sort of affection and
respect by men for that very reason.
But where, among beasts, do you ever find any
trace of those two sacred human feelings — the
love of brother to brother, or of child to father?
Where do you find the notion that the tie between
husband and wife is a sacred thing, to be broken
at no temptation, but in man ?
These are the feelings which man has alone of
all living animals.
These then, remember, are the very family
feelings which come out in the story of Joseph.
He honoui-s holy wedlock when he tells his
master's wife, ' How can I do this great wicked-
' ness, and sin against God?' He honours his
father, when he is not ashamed of him, wild shep-
herd out of the desert though he might be, and an
abomination to tlie Egyptians, while he himself is
now in power, and wealth, and glory, as a prince
in a civilized country. He honoui's the tie of
brother to brother, by foi^iving and weeping over
the very brothers who have sold him into slavery.
But what has all this to do with God ?
VII.] JOSEPH. 89
Now man, as we know, is an animal with an
immortal spirit in liim. He has, as St. Paul so
carefully explains to us, a flesh and a spirit — a
flesh like the beasts which perish ; a spirit which
comes from God.
Now the Bible teaches us that man did not
get these family feelings from his flesh, from the
animal, brute part of him. They are not carnal,
but spiritual. He gets them from liis spirit, and
they are inspired into him by the Spirit of God.
They come not from the earth below, but from
the heaven above; from the image of God, in
wliich man alone of all living things was made.
For if it were not so, we should surely see some
family feeling in the beasts which are most like
men. But we do not. In the apes, which are, in
their shape and fleshly nature, so strangely and
shockingly hke human beings, there is not as
much family feeling as there is in many birds, or
even insects. Nay, the wild negroes, among whom
they live, hold them in abhorrence, and believe
that they were once men like themselves, wlio
were gradually changed into brute beasts, by giving
way to detestable sins ; while these very negroes
themselves, heathens and savages as they are, have
the family feeling — the feeling of husband for
wife, father for child, brother for brother ; not,
indeed, as strongly and purely as we, or at least
90 JOSEPH. [SERM.
those of us who are really Christian and civilized,
but still they have it ; and that makes between
the lowest man and the highest brute a difference
which I hold is as wide as the space between
heaven and earth.
It is man alone, I say, who has the idea of
family ; and who has, too, the strange, but most
true belief, that these family ties are appointed
by God — that they are a part of his religion —
that in breaking them, by being an unfaithful
husband, a dishonest servant, an unnatural son, a
selfish brother, he sins, not only against man, and
man's order and laws, but against God.
Parent and child, brother and sister. — Those
ties are not of the earth earthy, but of the heaven
of God, eternal. They may begin in time ; of
what happened before we came into this world we
know nought. But ^having begun, they cannot
end. Of what will happen after we leave this
world, that at least we know in part.
Parent and child ; brother and sister ; husband
and wife likewise ; these are no ties of man's
invention. They are ties of God's binding ; they
are patterns and likenesses of his substance, and of
his being. — Of the eternal Father, who says for
ever to the eternal Son, ' This day have I begotten
* thee.' Of the Son who says for ever to the Father,
' 1 come to do thy will, 0 God.' Of the Son of God,
vn.] JOSEPH. 91
Jesus Christ, wlio is not asliamed to call us liis
brethren ; but like a greater Joseph, was sent
before by God to save our lives with a great deli-
verance when our forefathers were but savages
and heathens. Husband and Avife likewise — are
not they two divine words — not human words
at all ? Has not God consecrated the state of
matrimony to such an excellent mystery, that in
it is signified and represented the mystical union
between Christ and his church ? Are not husbands
to love their wives, and give themselves for them
as Christ loved the church and gave himself for
it? That, indeed, Avas not revealed in the Old
Testament, but it is revealed in the New ; and
marriage, like all other human ties, is holy and
divine, and comes from God down to men.
Yes. These familv ties are of God. It was to
show us how sacred, how Godlike they are — how
eternal and necessary for all mankind — that
Joseph's story was written in Holy Scripture.
They are of God, I say. And he who despises
them, despises not man but God ; who hath also
given us his Holy Spirit to make us know how
sacred these bonds are.
He who looks lightly on the love of child to
parent, or brother to brother, or husband to wife,
and bids each man please liimself, each man help
himself, and shift for himself, would take away
92 JOSEPH. [seem.
from men the very thing which raises them above
the beasts which perish, and lower them again to
the likeness of the flesh, that they may of the flesh
reap corruption.
They who, under whatever pretence of religion, -
part asunder families ; or tell children, like the
wicked Pharisees of old, that they may say to
their parents Corban — ' I have given to God the
' service and help which, as your child, I should
'have given to you,' shall be called, if not by
men, at least by God himself, — hypocrites, who
draw near to God with their mouths, and honour
him with their lips, while their heart is far from
him.
I think now we may see that I was right when I
said — Perhaps the history of Joseph is in the Bible
because it is a family history. For see — it is the
history of a man who loved his family, who felt
that family life was holy and God-appointed ;
whom God rewarded with honour and wealth,
because he honoured family ties ; because he re-
fused his master's wife ; because he rewarded his
brothers good for evil; because he was not
ashamed of his father, but succoured him in his
old age.
It is the history of a man who — more than four
liundred years before God gave the ten command-
ments on Sinai, saying.
VII.] jose;ph. 93
Honour thy father and mother,
Thou shalt not commit adultery,
Thou shalt not kill in revenge,
Thou shalt not covet aught of thy neighbours —
It is the history, I say, of a man who had those
laws of God written in his heart by the Holy Spirit
of God ; and felt that to break them was to sin
against God. It is the history of a man who,
sorely tempted and unjustly persecuted, kept him-
self pure and true ; who, while all around him,
beginning with his own brothers, were trampling
under foot the laws of family, felt that the laws
were still there round him, girding him in Avith
everlasting bands, and saying to him, Thou shalt
and thou shalt not ; that he wa^ not sent into
the world to do just what was pleasant for the
moment, to indulge liis own passions or his
own revenge ; but that if he was indeed a man, he
must prove himself a man, by obeying Almighty
God. It is the history of a man who kept his
heart pure and tender, and who thereby gained
strange and deep wisdom ; that wisdom which
comes only to the pure in heart ; that wisdom by
which truly good men are enabled to see farther,
and to be of more use to their fellow-creatures
than many a cunning and crooked politician,
whose eyes are blinded, because his heart is defiled
with sin.
94 JOSEPH, [seem.
And now, my friends, if we pray — as we are
bound to pray — for that great Prince who is just
entering on the cares and the duties, as well as
the joys and blessings of family life — what better
prayer can we offer up for him, than that God
would put into his heart that spirit which he put
into the heart of Joseph of old — the spirit to see
how divine and God-appointed is family life ? God
grant that that sphit may dwell in him, and
possess him more and more day by day. That it
may keep him true to his wife, true to his mother,
time to his family, true, like Joseph, to all with
whom he has to deal. That it may deliver him,
as it delivered Joseph, from the snares of wicked
women, from selfish politicians, if they ever try to
sow distrust and opposition between him and his
kindred, and from all those temptations which
can only be kept down by the Spirit of God,
working in men's hearts, as he worked in the
heart of Joseph.
For if that spirit be in the Prince — and I doubt
not that that spirit is in him already — then will
his fate be that of Joseph ; then will he indeed be
a blessing to us, and to our children after us;
then will he have riches more real, and power
more vast, than any which our English laws can
give ; then will he gain, like Joseph, that moral
wisdom, better than all worldly craft, which cometh
VII.] JOSEPH. 95
from above — first pure, tlien gentle, easy to be en-
treated, without partiality, and without hypocrisy ;
then will he be able, like Joseph, to deliver his
people in times of perplexity and distress ; then
will he bv his example, as his noble mother has
done before him, keep healthy, pure, and strong,
our English family life — and as long as that en-
dure% Old Eu gland will endure likewise.
SERMON Vni.
THE BIBLE THE GREA.T CIVILIZER.
{Fourth Sunday in Lent\
Philippians iv. 8.
Fiimlly, brethren, whatsoever things are true, -whatsoever things
are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of
good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise, think of these things.
IT may not be easy to see what this text has to
do with the story of Joseph, which we have
just been reading, or vnth. the meaning of the Bible
of which I have been speaking to you of late.
Nevertheless, I think it has to do with them ;
as you will see if you will look at the text with
ma
Now the text does not say 'Do these things.'
It only says * think of these things.'
Of course St. Paul wished us to do them also :
but he says first thhik of tliem ; not once in a
way, but often and continually. Fill your mind
with good and pure and noble thoughts ; and
then you will do good and pure and noble things.
THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZEE. 97
For out of the abundance of a man's heart, not
only does his mouth sjDeak, but his whole body
and soul behave. The man whose mind is filled
with low and bad thoughts will be sure when he
is tempted to do low and bad things. The man
whose mind is filled with lofty and good thoughts
will do lofty and good things.
For thoughts are the food of a man's mind ; and
as the mind feeds, so will it grow. If it feeds on
coarse and foul food, coarse and foul it will gi'ow.
If it feeds on pure and refined food, pure and
refined it will grow.
There are those who do not believe this. Pro-
vided they are tolerably attentive to the duties of
religion, it does not matter much, they fancy,
what they think of out of church. Their souls
will be saved at last, they suppose, and that is all
that they need care for. Saved? They do not
see that by giving way to foul, mean, foolish
thoughts all the week they are losing their souls,
destroying their souls, defiling their souls, lowering
their souls, and making them so coarse and mean
and poor that they are not worth saving, and are
no loss to heaven or earth, whatever loss they may
be to the man himself. One man tliinks of nothine:
but money — how he shall save a penny here and a
penny there. I do not mean men of business ; for
them there are great excuses ; for it is by continual
H
98 THE BIBLE THE GKEAT CIVH^IZEE. [SEUM.
saving liere and there that their profits are made.
I speak rather of people who have no excuse,
people of fixed incomes — people often wealthy and
comfortable, who yet will lower their minds by
continually thinking over their money. But this I
say, and this I am sure that you will find, that
when a man in business or out of business accustoms
himself, as very many do, to think of nothing but
money, money, money from Monday morning to
Saturday night, he thinks of money a great part
of Sunday likewise. And so, after a while, the
man lowers his soul, and makes it mean and
covetous. He forgets all that is lovelv and of
good report. He forgets virtue — that is manliness ;
and praise — that is the just respect and admiration
of his fellow-men ; and so he forgets at last tilings
true, honest, and just likewise. He lowers his
soul ; and therefore when he is tempted, he does
things mean, and false, and unjust, for the sake of
money, which he has made his idol.
Take another case, too common among men and
women of all ranks, high and low.
How many there are who love gossip and
scandal ; who always talk about people, and never
about things — certainly not about things pure,
and lovely, and of good report, but rather about
things foul, and ugly, and of bad report ; who do
not talk, because they do not think, of virtue,
VIII.] THE BIBLE THE GEEAT CIVILIZEE. 99
but of vice ; or of praise eitlier, because they are
always finding fault with their neighbours. The
man who loves a foul story, or a coarse jest, —
the woman who gossips over every tittle tattle of
scandal which she can pick up against her neigh-
bour,— what do these people do, but defile their
own souls afresh, after they have been washed
cleatL in the blood of Christ? Foul their souls
are, and therefore their thoughts are foul like-
wise, and the foulness of them is evident to all
men by their tongues. Out of their hearts pro-
ceed evil tlioughts about their neighbours, out of
the abundance of their hearts their mouths speak
them.
Now let such people, if there be any such here,
seriously consider the harm wliich they are doing
to their own characters. They may give way to
the habits of scandal, or of coarse talk, without
any serious bad intention ; but they will surely
lower their own souls thereby. They will grow to
the colour of what they feed on ; and become foul
and cruel, from talking cruelly and foully ; till they
lose all purity and all charity, all faith and trust
in their fellow-men, all power of seeing good in
any one, or doing anything but think evil ; and so
lose the likeness of God and of Christ, for the
likeness of some foul carrion bird, Avliich cares
nothing for the perfume of all the roses in the
lOO THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZEIl. [SEBM.
world, but if there be a carcase Tvitbin miles of it,
will scent it out eagerly and fly to it ravenously.
The truth is, my friends, that these souls of ours,
instead of being pure and strong, are the very
opposite ; and the article speaks plain truth when
it says, that we are every one of us of our own
nature inclined to evil. That may seem a hard
saying; but if we look at our own thoughts we
shall find it true. Are we not inclined to take,
at first, the worst view of everybody and of every-
thing? Are we not inclined to suspect harm of
this person and of that ? Are we 7iot inclined too
often to be mean and cowardly ? to be hard and
covetous ? to be coarse and vulgar ? to be silly and
frivolous ? Do we not need to cool down, to think
a second time, and a third time likewise ; to re-
member our duty, to remember Christ's example,
before we can take a just, and kind, and charitable
view ? Do we not want all the help which we can
get from every quarter, to keep ourselves high-
minded and refined ; to keep ourselves from bad
thoughts, mean thoughts, silly thoughts, violent
thoughts, cruel and hard thoughts ? If we have
not found out that, we must have looked a very
little way into ourselves, and know little more
about ourselves than a dumb animal does of
itself.
- How then shall we keep off coarseness of soul ?
Viri.] THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZEE. 1 01
How sliall we keep our souls refined ? that is, true
and honest, pure, amiable, full of virtue, that is,
true manliness ; and deserve praise, that is, the
respect and admiration of our fellow-men? By
thinking of those very things, says St. Paul. And
in order to be able to think of them, by reading
of them.
There are very few who can easily think of
these things of themselves. Their daily business,
the words and notions of the people with whom
they have to do, will run in their minds, and draw
them off from higher and better thoughts ; that
cannot be helped. The only thing that most men
can do, is to take care that they are not drawn off
entirely from high and good thoughts, by reading,
were it but for five minutes every day, some-
thing really worth thinking of, something which
will lift them above themselves.
Above all, it is wise, at night, after the care and
bustle of the day is over, to read, but for a few
minutes, some book which will compose and
soothe the mind ; which will bring us face to face
with the true facts of life, death, and eternity ;
which will make us remember that man doth not
live by bread alone ; which will give us, before we
sleep, a few thoughts worthy of a Christian man,
with an immortal soul in him.
And, thank God, no one need go far to look for
102 THE BIBLE THE GEEAT CIVILIZER. [seem.
such books : — I do not mean merely religious
books, excellent as they are in these days : I mean
any books which help to make us better, and
wiser, and soberer, and more charitable persons ;
any books which will teach us to despise what is
vulgar and mean, foul and cruel, and to love what
is noble and high-minded, pure and just. We
need not go far for them. In our own noble
English language we may read by hundreds, books
which will tell us of all virtue and of all praise.
The stories of good and brave men and women ; of
gallant and heroic actions ; of deeds which we our-
selves should be proud of doing ; of persons whom
we feel to be better, wiser, nobler than we are
ourselves.
In our own language we may read the history
of our own nation, and whatsoever is just, honest,
and true. We may read of God's gracious provi-
dences toward this land. How he has punished
our sins, and rewarded om' right and brave endea-
vours. How he put into our forefathers the spirit
of courage and freedom, the spirit of truth and
justice, the spirit of loyalty and order ; and how,
following the leading of tliat spirit, in spite of many
mistakes and failings, we have risen to be the
freest, the happiest, the most powerful people on
eartli, a blessing and not a curse to the nations
around.
VIII.] THE BIBLE THE GKEAT CIVILIZEE. 103
In our own English tongue, too, we may read
sucli poetry as there is in no other language in
the world; — poetry which will make us indeed
see the beauty of whatsoever thmgs are lovely
and of good report. Some people have still a dis-
like of what they call foolish poetry books. If
books are foolish, let us have nothing to do with
them. But poetry ought not to be foolish; for
God sent it into the world to teach men not fool-
ishness, but the highest wisdom. He gave man
alone, of all living creatures, the power of writing
poetry, that by poetry he might understand, not
only how necessary it was to do right, but how
beautiful and noble it was to do right. He sent it
into the world to soften men's rough hearts, and
quiet their angry passions, and make them love
all which is tender and gentle, loving and merci-
ful, and yet to rouse them up to love all which is
gallant and honourable, loyal and patriotic, de-
vout and heavenly. Therefore whole books of the
Bible — Job, for example, Isaiah, and the Psalms,
are neither more nor less than actual poetry,
written in actual verse, that their words might the
better sink down into the ears and hearts of the
old Jews, and of us Christians after them. And
therefore also, we keep up still the good old custom
of teaching children in school as much as possible
by poetry, that they may learn not only to know,
I04 THE BIBLE THE GEEAT CIVn^IZEK. [SERM.
but to love and remember, whatsoever tbings are
lovely and of good report.
Lastly, for those who cannot read, or have
really no time to read, there is one means left of
putting themselves in mind of what every one must
remember, lest he sink back into an animal and a
savage. I mean by pictures ; which, as St. Augus-
tine said 1500 years ago, are the books of the un-
learned. I do not mean grand and expensive pic-
tures ; I mean the very simplest prints, provided
they represent something holy, or noble, or tender,
or lovely. A few such prints upon a cottage-wall
may teach the people who live therein much, with-
out their being aware of it. They see the prints,
even when they are not thinking of them ; and so
they have before their eyes a continual remem-
brancer of something better and more beautiful
than what they are apt to find in then- own daily
life and thoughts.
True, — to whom little is given, of them is little
required. But it must be said, that more — far
more, — is given to labouring men and women now,
than was given to their forefathers. A hundred,
or even fifty years ago, when there Avas very little
schooling; when the books which were put even
into the hands of noblemen's children, were far
below what you will find now in any village school ;
when the only pictures which a poor woman
vm.] THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZER. 105
could buy to lay on her cottage-wall were equally
silly and ugly; — then there were great excuses
for the poor, if they forgot whatsoever things were
lovely and of good report; if they were often
coarse and brutal in their manners, and cruel and
profligate in then amusements.
But even in the rough old times, there always
were -a few at least, men and women, who were
ahove the rest ; who, though poor people like the
rest, were still true gentlemen and ladies, of God's
making. Peo])le who kept themselves more or
less unspotted from the world ; who thought of
what was honest and pure, and lovely and of good
report; and who lived a life of simple, manful,
Christian virtue, and received the praise and
respect of their neighbours, even although their
neighbours did not copy them. There were always
such people, and there always will be — thank
God for it, for they are the salt of the earth.
But why have there always been such people ?
— and why do I say, confidently, that there always
will be?
Because they have had the Bible ; and because,
once having got the Bible in a free country, no
man can take it from them.
The Bible it is which has made gentlemen and
ladies of many a poor man and woman.
The Bible it is which has filled their minds
I06 THE BIBLE THE GKEAT CIVILIZER. [seem.
with pure and noble, ay, with heavenly and divine
thoughts.
The Bible has been their whole library. The
Bible has been their only counsellor. The Bible
has taught them all they know. But it has taught
them enough.
It has taught them what God is, and what Christ
is. It has taught them what man is, and what a
Christian man should be. It has taught them
what a family means, and what a nation means^
It has taught them the meaning of law and duty,
of loyalty and patriotism. It has filled their minds
with things honest, and just, and lovely, and of
good report ; with the histories of men and women
like themselves, who sinned, and sorrowed, and
struggled Hke them in this hard battle of life, but
who conquered at last, by trusting and obeying God.
This one story of Joseph, which we have been
reading again this Sunday, I do not doubt that it has
taught thousands who had no other story-book to
read; who could not even read themselves, but
had to listen to others' reading ; — that it has taught
them to be good sons, to be good brothers ; that
it has taught them to keep pure in temptation, and
patient and honest under oppression and wrong;
that it has stirred in them a noble ambition to
raise themselves in life ; and taught them at the
same time, that the only safe and sure way of
Vin.] THE BIBLE THE GKEAT CIVILIZEE. 107
rising is to fear God and keep liis commandments ;
and so has really done more to civilize and
refine them — to make them truly civilized men
and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages — than if
they had known a smattering of a dozen sciences.
I say that the Bible is the book which civilizes
and refines, and ennobles, rich and poor, high and
low, and has been doing so for 1500 years ; and
that any man who tries to shake our faith in the
Bible, is doing what he can — though, thank God,
he will not succeed — to make such rough and
coarse heathens of us again as our forefathers were
five hundred years go.
And I tell you, labouring people, that if you
want something which will make up to you for the
want of all the advantages which the rich have,
— go to your Bibles and you will find it there.
There you will find, in the history (5f men like
ourselves — and, above all, in the history of a man
unKke ourselves, the perfect Man — perfect Man
and perfect God together — whatsoever is true,
whatsoever is honest, just, pm*e, lovely, and of
good report ; every virtue, and every just cause of
praise which mortal man can desire. Read of them
in your Bible, think of them in your hearts, feed
on them with yom- souls, that your souls may grow
like what they feed on ; and above all, read and
study the story and character of Jesus Chiist him-
I08 THE BIBLE THE GEEAT CIVILIZEK.
self, our Lord, that, beholding as in a glass the
glory of the Lord, you may be changed into his
lOveness, from grace to grace, and virtue to virtue,
and glory to glory.
And that change and that growth are as easy for
the poor as for the rich, and as necessary for the
rich as for the poor.
SERMON IX.
MOSES.
{Fifth Sunday in Lent).
Exodus iii. 14.
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.
4 ND now, my friends, we are come, on this
-^^ Sunday, to the most beautiful, and the most
important story of the whole Bible; excepting,
of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ ; the
story of how a family grew to be a great nation.
You remember that I told you that the history
of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history
of a family.
Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a
great herd of people, but not yet a nation ; one
people, with its own God, its own worship, its own
laws ; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes, as
tlie gipsies arc amorg us now ; a herd, but not a
nation.
Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being
no MOSES. [seem.
weak, I suppose because they bad no laws, nor
patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of their own, became
slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under
crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.
Then it tells us how Grod delivered them out of
their slavery, and made them free men. And
how God did that (for God, in general, works by
means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a
hero, one great, wise, and good man of their race
— Moses.
It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by
a very strange education, to be the fit man to de-
liver liis people.
Let us go through the history of Moses ; and we
shall see how God trained him to do the work
for which God wanted him.
Let us read from the account of the Bible itself.
I sliould be sorry to spoil its noble simplicity, by
any words of my own: — 'And the children of
' Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly,
'and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty;
' and the land was filled with them. Now there
' arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew
' not Joseph. And he said unto his people. Behold,
' the people of the children of Israel are more and
' miglitior than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with
' them ; lest they multiply, and it come to pass,
' that, Avhen there falleth out any war, they join
IX.] MOSES.
Ill
' also unto our enemies, and figlit against us, and
' so get them up out of tlie land. Therefore they did
' set over them taskmasters to afflict them ^yith
' their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh trea-
' sui'e cities, Pithon and Eaamses. . . , And
' Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every
' son that is born ye shall cast into the river,
' and every daughter ye shall save alive. And
' there went a man of the house of Levi, and
' took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the
* woman conceived, and bare a son : and when
* she saw him that he was a goodly child, she
' hid him three months. And when she could
* no longer hide him, she took for liim an
' ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime
* and with pitch, and put the child therein ;
* and she laid it in the flags by the river's
' brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit
' what would be done to him. And the daugh-
* ter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself
* at the river ; and her maidens Avalked along by
* the river's side ; and when she saw the ark
' among the flags ; she sent her maid to fetch it.
* And when she had opened it, she saw the child :
' and behold, the babe wept. And she had com-
' passion on him, and said, This is one of the
' Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to
' Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee
1 1 2 MOSES. [SEBM.
* a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may
* nurse the chikl for thee ? And Pharaoh's
' daughter said to her, Go. And the maid
' went and called the child's mother. And
* Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this
* child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give
* thee thy wages. And the woman took the child,
' and nursed it. And the child grew, and she
' brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he
' became her son. And she called his name
' Moses : and she said, Because I drew him out
' of the water.'
Moses, — the child of the water. St. Paul in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, says that Moses was called
the son of Pharaoh's daughter ; that is, adopted by
her. We read elsewhere that he was learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there
can be no doubt from his oAvn writings, especially
that part called Moses' law.
So that Moses had from his youth vast advan-
tages. Brought up in the court of the greatest
king of the world, in one of the greatest cities of
the world, among the most learned priesthood in
the world, he had learned, probably, all states-
manship, all religion, which man could teach him
in those old times.
But that would have been little for liim. He
might have become merely an ofScer in Pharaoh's
IX.] MOSES. 113
liouseliold, and we might never have heard his
name, and he might never have done any good
to his own people, and to all mankind after them,
as he has done, if there had not been something
better and nobler in him than all the learning
and statesmanship of the Egyptians.
For there was in Moses the spirit of God ; the
spirit which makes a man believe in God, and
trust God. 'And therefore,' says St. Paul,
' he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
' daughter ; esteeming the reproach of Christ
* better than all the treasures in Egypt'
And how did he do that ? In this wise.
The spu-it of God and of Christ is also the
spirit of justice ; the spirit of freedom ; the
spu-it which hates oppression and wrong; which
is moved with a noble and Divine indignation
at seeing any human being abused and tram-
pled on.
And that spirit broke forth in Moses. — 'And
' it came to pass in those days, when Moses was
' grown, that he went out unto his brethren,
' and looked on their burdens : and he spied an
' Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.
' And he looked this way and that way, and when
' he saw that there was no man, lie slew the
' Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.'
If he cannot get justice for his people, he will
I
114 MOSES. [SEBM.
do some sort of rougli justice for tbein liimself,
when he has. an opportunity.
But he will see fair play among his people
themselves. They are, as slaves are likely to be,
fallen and base; mijust and quarrelsome among
themselves.
* And when he went out the second day, behold,
' two men of the Hebrews strove together : and he
' said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore
' smitest thou thy fellow ? And he said, Who made
' thee a prince and a judge over us ? intendest
' thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian ?
' And Moses feared, and said. Surely this thing
' is known. Now when Pharaoh heard this thing,
' he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from
* the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of
' Midian ' — the wild desert between Egypt and the
Holy Land.
So he bore the reproach of Christ ; the re-
proach which is apt to fall on men in bad times,
when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to de-
liver the captive, and let the oppressed go free,
and execute righteous judgment in the earth.
He had lost all, by trying to do right. He had
been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh's court.
Now he was an outcast and wanderer in the
desert. He had made his first trial, and failed.
As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed
IX.J MOSES. 115
that his brethren would have understood how
God would deliver them by his hand ; but
they understood not. Slavish, base, and stupid,
they were not fit yet for Moses and his deliver-
ance.
And so forty years went on, and Moses was an
old man eighty years of age. Yet God had not
had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.
It must have been a strange life for him. The
adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter ; brought
up in the court of the most powerful and highly
civilized country of the old world ; learned in all
the learning of the Egyptians ; and now married
into a tribe of wild Arabs, keeping flocks in the
lonely desert, year after year: but, no doubt,
thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his
flocks alone. Thinking over all the learning
which he had gained in Egypt, and Avondering
whether it would ever be of any use to him.
Thinking over the misery of his people in
Egypt, and wondering whether he should ever
be able to help them. Thinking, too, and
more than all, of God, — of God's promise to
Abraham and his children. Would that ever
come true ? Would God help these wretched
Jews, even if he could not? Was God faithful
and true, just and merciful ?
That Moses thought of God, that he never lost
I ] 6 MOSES. [SERM.
faitli in God for that forty years, there can be no
doubt.
If he had not thought of God, God would not
have revealed himself to him. If he had lost
faith in God, he would not have known that it was
God who spoke to him. If he had lost faith in
God, he would not have obeyed God at the risk
of his life, and have gone on an errand as despe-
rate, dangerous, hopeless — and, humanly speaking,
as wild as ever man went upon.
But Moses never lost faith or patience. He
believed, and he did not make haste. He waited
for God ; and he did not wait in vain. No man
will wait in vain. When the time was ready;
when the Jews were ready; when Pharaoh was
ready ; when Moses himself, trained by forty years'
patient thought, was ready ; then God came in his
own good time.
And Moses led the flock to the back of the
desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to
Horeb. And there he saw a bush — probably one
of the low copses of acacia — burning with fire ;
and behold the bush was not consumed. Then
out of the bush God spoke to Moses with an
audible voice as of a man; so the Bible says,
plainly, and I see no reason to doubt that it is
literally true.
' Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father,
E.] MOSES. 117
' the God of Abraliam, the God of Isaac, and the
' God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face ; for he
' was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord
' said, I have sui-ely seen the affliction of my
' people wliich are in Egj^pt, and have heard their
' cry by reason of their task-masters ; for I know
' their sorrows ; and I am come down to deliver
' them out of the hand of the Egj^ptians, and to
* bring them up out of that land unto a good land
* and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and
' honey ; unto the place of the Canaanites, and
* the Hittites, and tlie Amorites, and the Periz-
' zites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.'
Then followed a strange conversation. Moses
was terrified at the thought of what he had to
do, and reasonably : moreover, the IsraeHtes iu
Egypt had forgotten God. ' And Moses said unto
* God, Behold, when I come unto the children of
' Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your
' fathers hath sent me unto you ; and they shall
' say to me. What is his name ? what shall I say
* unto them ? And God said unto Moses, I Am
' that I Am : and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto
' the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto
' you.'
I Am ; that was the new name by which
God revealed himself to Moses. That message
of God to Moses was the greatest gospel, and
Ii8 MOSES. [seem.
good news wliicli was spoken to men, before the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ay, we are
feeling now, in our daily life, in our laws and our
liberty, our religion and our morals, our peace
and prosperity, in the happiness of our homes,
and I trust that of our consciences, the blessed
effects of that message, which God revealed
to Moses in the wilderness thousands of years
ago.
And Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set
them upon an ass, and returned into the land of
Egypt, to say to Pharaoh, * Thus saith the Lord,
' Israel is my son, even my first-born. Let my son
*■ go that he may serve me, and if thou let not my
' first-born go, then I will slay thy first-born.'
A strange man ; on a strange errand. A poor
man eighty years old, carrying all that he had in
the world upon an ass's back, going down to the
great Pharaoh, the greatest king of the old world,
the great conqueror, the Child of the Sun (as his
name means), one of the greatest Pharaohs who
ever sat on the throne of Egypt ; in the midst of
all liis princes and priests, and armies, with which
he had conquered the nations far and wide ; and
his great cities, temples, and palaces, on which
men may see at this day (so we are told) the
face of that very Pharaoh painted again and
again, as fresh, in that rainless air, as on the day
IX.] MOSES. 119
when tlie paint was laid on ; witli the features of
a man terrible, proud, and cruel, puffed up by
power till he thought himself, and till his people
thought him, a god on earth.
And to that man was Moses going, to bid him
set the children of Israel free ; while he himself
was one of that very slave-race of the Israelites,
which was an abomination to the Egyptians, who
held them all as lepers and unclean, and would
not eat with them ; and an outcast too, Avho had
fled out of Egypt for his life, and who might be
killed on the spot, as Pharaoh's only answer to his
bold request. Certainly, if Moses had not had
faith in God, his errand would have seemed that
of a madman. But Moses had faith in God ; and
of faith it is said, that it can remove mountains,
for all things are possible to them who believe.
So by faith Moses went back into Eg}^pt ; how
he fared there we shall hear next Sunday.
And what sort of man was this great and won-
derful Moses, whose name will last as long as
man is man ? We know very little. We know
from the Bible, and from the old traditions of the
Jews, that he was a very handsome man ; a man of
a noble presence, as one can well believe ; a man
of great bodily vigour ; so that when he died at
the age of one hundred and twenty, liis eye was
not dim, nor his natural force abated. We know.
I20
MOSES. [SEKM.
from his own words, that he was slow of speech ;
that he had more thought in him than he could
find words for — very different from a good many-
loud talkers, who have more words than thoughts,
and who get a great character as politicians, and
demagogues, simply because they have the art
of stringing fine words together, which Moses, the
true demagogue, the leader of the people, who led
them indeed out of Egypt, had not. Beyond
that we know little. Of his character one thing
only is said : but that is most important. ' Now
* the man Moses was very meek.'
Meek : we know that that cannot mea,n that
he was meek in the sense that he was a poor,
cowardly, abject sort of man, who dared not speak
his mind, dared not face the truth, and say the
truth. We have seen that that was just "what he
was not ; brave, determined, outspoken, he seems
to have been from his youth. Indeed, if his had
been that base sort of meekness, he never would
have dared to come before the great King Pharaoh.
If he had been that sort of man he never Avould
have dared to lead the Jews through the Red
Sea by night, or out of Egypt at all. If he had
been that sort of man, indeed, the Jews would
never have listened to him. No ; he had — the
Bible tells us that he had — to say and do stern
things again and again ; to act like the general
IX.] MOSES.
121
of an army, or tlie commander of a sliip of war,
who must be obeyed, even thongli men's lives be
the forfeit of disobedience.
But the man Moses was very meek. He had
learned to keep his temper. Indeed, the story
seems to say that he never lost his temper really
but once ; and for that God punished him. Never
man was so tried, save One, even our Lord Jesus
Christ, as was Moses. And yet by patience he
conquered. Eighty years had he spent in learn-
ing to keep his temper ; and when he had learnt
to keep liis temper, then, and not till then, was he
worthy to bring his people out of Egypt. That
was a long schooling, but it was a schooling worth
having.
And if we, my friends, spend our whole lives,
be they eighty years long, in learning to keep our
tempers, then will our lives have been well spent.
For meekness and calmness of temper need not
interfere with a man's courage or justice, or honest
indignation against wrong, or power of helping
his fellow-men. Moses' meekness did not make
him a coward or a sluggard. It helped him to
do his work rightly instead of wrongly ; it helped
him to conquer the pride of Pharaoh, and the faith-
lessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his brethren,
those miserable slavish Jews. And so meekness,
an even temper, and a gracious tongue, will help us
122 MOSES.
to keep onr place among our fellow-men with true
dignity and independence, and to govern our
households, and train our children in such a way
that Avhile they obey us, they will love and respect
us at the same time.
SERMON X.
THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.
(Palm Sunday.)
Exodus ix. 13, 14.
Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that
they may serve me. For I will at this time send all my
plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy
people ; that thou mayest know that there is none Kke me in
all the earth.
YOU will understand, I think, the meaning of
the ten plagues of Egypt better, if I explain
to you in a few words what kind of a country
Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians
were. Some of you, doubtless, know as well
as I, but some here may not: it is for them I
speak.
Egypt is one of the strangest countries in the
world; and yet one which can be most simply
described. One long straight strip of rich flat
land, many hundred miles long, but only a very
few miles broad. On either side of it, barren
rocks and deserts of sand, and running through
it from end to end, the great river Nile — ' The
124 THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. [sEEM.
Eiver ' of wliich tlie Bible speaks. This river the
Egyptians looked on as divine : they worshipped
it as a god ; for on it depended the whole wealth
of Egypt. Every year it overflows the whole
country, leaving behind it a rich coat of mud,
which makes Egypt the most inexhaustibly fertile
land in the world ; and made the Egyptians, from
very ancient times, the best farmers of the Avorld,
the fathers of agriculture. Meanwhile, when not
in flood, the river water is of the purest in the
world ; the most delightful to drink ; and was
supposed in old times to be a cure for all manner
of diseases.
To worship' this sacred river, the pride of their
land,' to drink it, to bathe in it, to catch tlie fish
which abound in it, and which formed then, and
forms still, the staple food of the Egyptians, was
their delight. And now I have told you enough
to show you why the plagues which God sent on
Egypt, began first by striking tlie river.
The river, we read, was turned into blood.
What that means — whether it was actual animal
blood — what means God emj)loyed to work the
miracle — are just the questions about which we
need not trouble our minds. We never shall
know : and we need not know. The plain fact is,
that the sacred river, pure and life-giving, be-
came a detestable mass of rottenness — and with
X.] THE PLAGUES OP EGYPT. 1 25
it all tlieir streams and pools, and drinking water
in vessels of wood and stone — for all, remember,
came from the Nile, carried by canals and dykes
over the whole land. ' And the fish that were m
' the river died, and the river stunk, and there
* was blood through all the land of Egypt.'
The slightest thought will show us what horror,
confusion, and actual want and misery, the loss
of the river water, even for a few days or even
hours, would cause.
But there is more still in this miracle. These
plagues are a battle between Jehovah, the one
true and only God Almighty, and the false gods
of Egypt, to prove which of them is master.
Pharaoh answers : ' Who is Jehovah (the Lord)
' that I shoidd let Israel go ?' I know not the
Jehovah. I have my own god, whom I worship.
He is my father, and I his chUd, and he will pro-
tect me. If I obey any one it will be him.
Be it so, says Moses in the name of God.
Thou shalt know that the idols of Egypt are no-
thing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy
people. Thus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know
which is master, I or they. ' Thou shalt know
' that I am the Lord.'
So the river was turned into blood. The sacred
river was no god, as they thought. Jehovah was
the Lord and Master of the river on which tlie
126 THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. [sERM.
very life of Egypt depended. He could turn it
into blood. All Egypt was at liis mercy.
' But Pharaoh would not believe that. ' The magi-
cians did likewise with their enchantments ' — made
we may suppose water seem to turn to blood
by some juggling trick at which the priests in
Egypt were but too well practised ; and Pharaoh
seemed to have made up his mind that Moses'
miracle was only a juggling trick too. For men
will make up their minds to anything, however
absurd, when they choose to do so: when their
pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness,
draw them one vvay, no reason will draw them
the other way. They will find reasons, and make
reasons, to prove, if need be, that there is no sun
in the sky.
Then followed a series of plagues, of which we
have all often heard.
Learned men have disputed how far these
plagues were miracles. Some of them are said
not to be uncommon in Egj^pt, others to be almost
unknown. But whether they — whetlier the frogs,
for instance, were not produced by natural causes,
just as other frogs are ; and the lice and the flies
likewise ; that I know not, my friends, neither
need I know. If they were not, — they were mi-
raculous, and if they were, they were miraculous
still. If they came as other vermin come, they
X.] THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. 1 27
would have still been mii-aculous : God would
still have sent them ; and it would be a miracle
that God should make them come at that par-
ticular time in that particular country, to work
a truly miraculous effect upon the souls of Pha-
raoh and the Egyptians, on the one hand, and of
Moses and the Israelites on the other. But if
they came by some strange means, as no vermin
ever came before or since, all I can say is —
Why not ?
And the Lord said unto Moses, ' Say unto
* Aaron, Stretch out thy rod and smite the dust
' of the land, that it may become lice throughout
' all the land of Egypt.'
Whether that was meant only as a sign to the
Egyi^tians, or whether the dust did literally turn
into lice, we do not know, and what is more, we
need not know; if God chose that it should be
so, so it would be. If you believe at all that
God made the world, it is folly to pretend to set
any bounds to his power. As a wise man has said
' If you believe in any real God at all, you must
'believe that miracles can happen.' He makes
you and me and millions of living things, out of
the dust of the ground continually by certain
means. Why can he not make lice, or an}i;hing
else out of the dust of the ground, without those
128 THE PLAGUES OP EGYPT. [serm.
means ? I can give no reason, nor any one else
eitlier.
We know that God lias given all things a law
which they cannot break. We know, too, that God
avlU never break his own laws. But what are
God's laws by which he makes things ? We do
not know.
Mii-acles may be — indeed must be — only the
effect of some higher and deeper laws of God.
We cannot prove that he breaks his law, or dis-
turbs his order by them. They may seem contrary
to some of the very very few laws of God's
earth which we do know. But they need not be
contrary to the very many laws which we do not
know. In fact, we know nothing about the
matter, and had best not talk of things that we
do not understand. As for these things being too
wonderful to be true, — that is an argument which
only deserves a smile. There are so many won-
ders in the world round us already, all day long,
that the man of sense wiU feel that nothing is too
wonderful to be true.
The truth is, that, as a wise man says, custom
is the great enemy of Faith, and of Eeason like-
wise ; and one of the worst tricks which custom
plays us is, making us fancy that miraculous things
cease to be miraculous by becoming common.
X.] THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. 1 29
What do I mean ?
This: which eveiy child in this church can
understand.
You tliink it very wonderful that God should
cause frogs to come upon the whole land of Egypt
in one day. But that God should cause frogs to
come up every spring . in the ditches, does not
seem wonderful to you at all. It happens every
year ; therefore, forsooth, there is nothing won-
derfid in it.
Ah, my dear friends, it is custom whicli blinds
our eyes to the wisdom of God, and the wonders
of God, and the power of God, and the glory of
God, and hinders us from believing the message
with which he speaks to us from every sunbeam
and every shower, every blade of grass and every
standing pool. 'Is anything too hard for the
Lord?'
If any man here says that anything is too
hard for the Lord, let him go this day to the
nearest standing pool, and look at the frog-spawn
therein, and consider it till he confesses his blind-
ness and foolishness. That spawn seems to you a
foul thing, the produce of mean, ugly, contempti-
ble creatures. Be it so. Yet it is to the eyes
of the wise man a yearly miracle ; a thing past
understanding, past explaining; one which will
make him feel the truth of that great 139th
K
130 THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. [sERM.
Psalm : ' Thou Last beset me beliind and before,
* and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge
' is too wonderful for me ; it is high, I cannot
' attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy
' spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
' If I ascend up into heayen, thou art there :
' if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art
' there also.'
That every one of those little black spots
should have in it life — What is life ? How did
it get into that black spot ? — or, to speak more
carefully, is the life in the black spot at all ? Is
not the life in the Spirit of God, w^ho is working
on that spot, as I beheve ? How has that black
spot the power of growing, and of growing on a
certain and fixed plan, merely by the quickening
power of the sun's heat, and then of feeding itself,
and of changing its shape, as you all know, again
and again, tiU — and if that is not wonderful,
what is ? — it turns into a frog, exactly like its
parent, utterly unlike the black dot at which it
began ? Is that no miracle ? Is it no miracle that
not one of those black spots ever turns into any-
thing save a frog? Why should not some of
them turn into toads or efts? Whv not even
into fishes or serpents ? Why not ? The eggs of
all those animals, in their fii'st and earliest stage,
are exactly alike ; the microscope shows no differ-
X.] THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. 1 31
eace. Ay, even the mere animal aud the human
being, strange and awful as it may be, seem, under
the microscope, to have the same beginning. And
yet one becomes a mere animal, and the other
a member of Christ, a child of God, and an in-
heritor of the kingdom of heaven. What causes
this but the power of (^od, making of the same
clay one vessel to honour and another to dis-
honour? And yet people will not believe in
miracles ! Why does each kind turn into its kind?
Answer that. Because it is a law of nature?
Not so ! There are no laws of nature. God is a
law to nature. It is his will that thino;s so should
be ; and when it is his will they will not be so,
but otherwise.
Not laws of natm-e, but the Spirit of God, as the
Psalms truly say, gives life and breath to all
things. Of him and by him is all. As the gTcat-
est chemist of our time says, ' Causes are the acts
' of God — creation is the will of God,'
And he that is wise and strong enough to create
frogs in one way in every ditch at this moment, is
he not wise and strong enough to create frogs by
some other way, if he should choose, whether in
Egypt of old, or now, here, this very day ?
Whatsoever means, or no means at all, God
used to produce those vermin, the miracle remains
the same. He sent them to do a work, and they
132 THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. [seem.
did it. He sent tbem to teacli Egyptian and
Israelite alike that he was the Maker, and Lord,
and Euler of the world, and all that therein is ;
that he would have his way, and that he could
have his way.
Intensely painful and disgusting these plagues
must have been to the Egyptians, for this reason,
that they were the most cleanly of all people.
They had a dislike of dirt, which had become
quite a superstition to them. Their priests (magi-
cians as the Bible calls them) never wore any
garments but linen, for fear of their harbouring
vermin of any kind. And this extreme cleanliness
of theirs the next plague struck at ; they were
covered with boils and diseases of the skin, and
the magicians could not stand before Pharaoh by
reason of the boils. They became unclean and
unfit for their office; they could perform no
religious ceremonies, and had to flee away in
disgrace.
After plagues of thunder, hail, and rain, which
seldom or never haj)pen in that rainless land of
Egypt ; after a plague of locusts, which are very
rare there, and have to come many hundred
miles if they come at all ; of darkness, seemingly
impossible in a land where the sun always shines ;
then came the last and most terrible plague of
all. After solemn warnings of what was coming.
X.] THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. 1 33
the angel of the Lord passed through the Land of
Egypt, and smote all the first-born in Egy^Dt,
from the first-born of Pliaraoh upon his throne to
the first-born of the captive in the dungeon ; and
there arose a great cry in Egypt, for there was
not a house in which there was not one dead. A
terrible and heart-rending calamity in any case,
enough to break the heart of all Egypt ; and it
did break the heart of Egypt, and the proud
heart of Pharaoh himself, and they let the
people go.
But this was a religious affliction too. Most of
these first-born children, probably all the first-
born of the priests and nobles, and of Pharaoli him-
self, were consecrated to some god. They bore the
name of the god to whom they belonged ; that
god was to prosper and protect them, and behold
he could not. The Lord Jehovah, the God of the
Hebrews, was stronger than all the gods of Eg)^3t ;
none of them could deliver their servants out of
his hand. He was the only Lord of life and
death ; he had given them Hfe, and he could take
it away, in spite of all and every one of the gods
of the Egyptians.
So the Lord God showed himself to be the
Master and Lord of all things. The Lord of the
sacred river Nile; the Lord of the meanest
vermin \Yhich crept on the earth ; the Lord of the
134 THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. [sEKM.
weatlier — able to bring thunder and hail into a
land where thnnder and hail was never seen
before; the Lord of the locust swarms — able to
bring them over the desert, and over the sea, to
devour up every green thing in the land ; and then
to send a wind off the Mediterranean Sea, and
drive the locusts away to the eastward ; the Lord
of light, who could darken even in that cloudless
land the very sun, whom Pharaoh worshipped as
his god and his ancestor ; and lastly, the Lord of
human life and death, able to kill whom he chose,
when he chose, and as he chose. The Lord of the
earth, and all that therein is ; before whom all
men, even proud Pharaoh, must bow and confess,
' Is anything too hard for the Lord ?'
And now, I always tell you that each fresh
portion of the Old Testament reveals to men
something fresh concerning the character of God.
You may say — These plagues of Egypt reveal
God's mighty power, but what do they reveal of
his character ? They reveal this : that there is
in God that which, for want of a better word,
we must call anger ; a quite awful sternness, and
severity ; not only a power to punish, but a deter-
mination to punish, if men will not take his
warnings — if men will not obey his will.
There is no use trying to hide from ourselves
that awful truth — God is not weakly indulgent.
X.] THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. 135
Our God can be, if he will, a consuming fire.
Upon the sinner he will surely rain fire and brim-
stone, storm and tempest, of some kind or other.
This shall be their portion too surely. Vengeance
is his, and vengeance he will take. But upon
whom ? On the proud and the tyrannical, on the
cruel, the false, the unjust. So say the Psalms
again and again, and so says the history of these
plagues of Egypt. Therefore his anger is a loviug
anger, a just anger, a merciful anger, a useful
anger, an anger exercised for the good of mankind.
See in this case why did God destroy the crops of
Egypt — even the first-born of Egypt ? Merely for
the pleasure of destroying ? God forbid. It was
to deliver the poor Israelites from their cruel task-
masters ; to force these Egyptians, by terrible
lessons, since they were deaf to the voice of
justice and humanity — to force them, I say — to
have mercy on their fellow-creatures, and let the
oppressed go free. Therefore God was, even in
Egypt, a God of love, who desired the good of
man, who would do justice for those who were
unjustly treated, even though it cost his love a
pang ; for none can believe that God is pleased
at having to punish, pleased at having to destroy
the works of his own hands, or the creatures
which he has made. No ; the Lord was a God of
love even when he sent his sore plagues on Egypt
136 THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.
and therefore we may believe what the Bible tells
us, that that same Lord showed, as on this day,
a still greater proof of his love, when, as on tliis
day, he entered into Jerusalem, meek and lowly,
sitting on an ass, and going, as he well knew, to
certain death. Before the week was over he
would be betrayed, mocked, scourged, crucified,
by the very people whom he came to save ; and
yet he did it, he endured it. Instead of pouring
out on them, as on the Egyptians of old, the cup
of wrath and misery, he put out his hand, took the
cup of wrath and misery to himself, and drank it
to its very dregs. Was not that, too, a miracle ?
Ay, a greater miracle than all the plagues of Egypt.
They were physical miracles ; this a moral miracle.
They were miracles of nature ; this of grace. They
were miracles of the Lord's power, these of the
Lord's love. Think of that miracle of miracles
which was worked in this Passion Week, — the
miracle of the Lord Jehovah stooping to die for
sinful man, and say after that there is anything
too hard for the Lord.
SERMON XL
THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IS THE GOD
OF THE NEW.
(Palm Sunday.)
Exodus ix. 14.
I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and
upon thy servants, and upon thy people, that thou mayest
know that there is none like me id all the earth.
IITE are now beginning Passion Week, the
* ' week of the whole year which ouglit to
teach us most theology ; that is, most concerning
God, his character and his spirit.
For in this Passion Week God did that which
utterly and perfectly sho^^"ed forth his glory, as
it never has been sho^vn forth before or since. In
this week Jesus Clirist, the incarnate God, died
on the cross for man, and showed that his name,
his character, his glory, was love — love without
bound or end.
It was to teach us this that the special services,
lessons, collects, epistles, and gospels of this week
were chosen.
138 THE GOD OF THE OI-D TESTAJIENT [SERM.
The second lesson, tlie collects, the epistles,
the gospel for to-day, all set before us the pa-
tience of Cln-ist, the humility of Christ, the love
of Christ, the self-sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb
without spot, enduring all things that he might
save sinful man.
But if so, what does this first lesson — the chap-
ter of Exodus from Avhich my text is taken — what
does it teach us concerning God ? Does it teach
us that his name is love ?
At first sight you would think that it did
not. At first sight you Avould fancy that it spoke
of God in quite a different tone from the second
lesson.
In the second lesson, the words of Jesus the
Son of God are all gentleness, patience, tender-
ness. A quiet sadness hangs over them all.
They are the words of one who is come (as he
said himself), not to destroy men's lives, but to
save them ; not to punish sins, but to wash them
away by his own most precious blood.
But in the first lesson how differently he seems
to speak. His words there are the Avords of a
stern and awful judge, who can, and who will
destroy, whatsoever interferes with his will and
his purpose.
' I will at this time send all my plagues upon
* thine heart, and on thy servants, and all thy
XI.] IS THE GOD OF THE NEW. 1 39
* people, tliat tliou may est know that there is none
' like me in all the earth.' The cattle and sheep
shall be destroyed with murrain ; man and beast
shall be tormented with boils and blains ; the crops
shall be smitten with hail ; the locusts shall eat up
every green thing in the land ; and at last all the
first-born of Egypt sliall die in one night, and the
land be filled with mourning, horror, and desola-
tion, before the anger of this terrible God, who
will destroy and destroy till he makes himself
obeyed.
Can this be he who rode into Jerusalem, as on
this day, meek and lowly, upon an ass's colt ;
who on the night that he was betrayed washed
his disciples' feet, even the feet of Judas who
betrayed him ? Who prayed for his murderers as
he hung upon the cross, 'Father, forgive them,
' for they know not what they do ?'
Can these two be the same ?
Is the Lord Jehovah of the Old Testament the
Lord Jesus of the New ?
They are the same, my friends. He who laid
waste the land of Egypt is he who came to seek
and to save that which was lost.
He who slew the children in Egypt is he who
took little children up in his arms and blessed
them.
He who spoke the awful Avords of the text is he
140 THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAJVIENT [serm.
who was brought as a lamb to the slaughter ; and
as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he
opened not his mouth.
This is very wonderful. But why should it not
be wonderful ? What can God be but wonder-
ful? His character, just because it is perfect,
must contain in itself all other characters, all
forms of spiritual life which are without sin. And
yet agam it is not so very wonderful. Have we
not seen — I have often — in the same mortal man
these two different characters at once? Have
we not seen soldiers and sailors, brave men, stern
men, men who have fought in many a bloody
battle, to whom it is a light thing to kill their
fellow-men, or to be killed themselves, in the
cause of duty ; and yet most full of tenderness,
as gentle as lambs to little children, and to weak
women ; nursing the sick lovingly and carefully
with the same hand which would not shrink
from firing the fatal cannon, to blast a whole
company into eternity, or sink a ship witli all its
crew ? I have seen such men, brave as the lion
and gentle as the lamb, and I saw in them the
likeness of Christ — The Lion of Judah ; and yet
the Lamb of God.
Christ is the Lamb of God ; and in him there are
the innocence of the lamb, the gentleness of the
lamb, the patience of the lamb : but there is more.
XI.] IS THE GOD OF THE NEW. 141
What words are these which St. John speaks in
the Spirit ? — •
' And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is
' rolled together, and every mountain and island
' were moved out of their places ; and the kings
' of the earth, and the great, and the rich, and the
' chief captains, and the mighty men, and every
'bondman, and every freeman hid themselves in
' the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and
' said to the mountains and to the rocks, fall on us,
' and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on
' the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb ;
' for the great day of his wrath is come, and who
' shall be able to stand ?'
Yes, look at that awful book of Eevelation with
which the Bible ends, and see if the Bible does
not end as it begim, by revealing a God who,
however loving and merciful, longsuffering, and
of great goodness, still wages war eternally against
all sin and umighteousness of man, and who will
by no means clear the guilty ; a God of whom the
apostle St. Paul, who knew most of his mercy
and forgiveness to sinners, could nevertheless say,
just as Moses had said ages before him, ' Om* God
' is a consuming fire.'
Now I think it most necessary to recollect this
in Passion Week ; ay, and to do more — to remem-
ber it all our lives long.
142 THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT [sERM.
For it is too miicli the fasliion now, and has
often been so before, to think only of one side of
our Lord's character, of the side which seems
more pleasant and less awful. People please
themselves in hymns which talk of the meek
and lowly Jesus, and in pictures which represent
him with a sad, weary, delicate, almost feminine
face. Now I do not say that this is wrong. He
is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; as
tender, as compassionate now as when he was on
earth ; and it is good that little children and inno-
cent young people should think of him as an
altogether gentle, gracious, loveable being; for
with the meek he will be meek : but again, with
the froward, the violent, and self-willed, he will
be froward. He will show the violent that
he is the stronger of the two, and the self-
willed that he wdl have his will, and not theirs,
done.
So it is good that the Avidow and the orplian,
the weary and the distressed, should think of Jesus
as utterly tender and true, compassionate and
merciful, and rest their broken hearts upon him,
the everlasting rock. But wliile it is written, that
whosoever shall fall on that rock he shall be
broken, it is written too, that on whomsoever that
rock shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
It is good that those who wish to be gi-acious
XI.] IS THE GOD OF THE NEW. 1 43
tliemselves, loving themselves, should remember
that Christ is gracious, Christ is loviug. But it
is good, also, that those who do not wish to be
gracious and loving themselves, but to be proud
and self-willed, unjust and cruel, should remember
that the gracious and loving Christ is also the
most terrible and awful of all beings ; sharper
than a two-edged sword, piercing asunder the
very joints and marrow, discerning the most secret
thoughts and intents of the heart ; a righteous
judge, strong and patient, who is provoked every
day : but if a man ivill not turn, he will whet
his sword. He hath bent his bow and made it
ready, and laid his arrows in order against the per-
secutors. What Christ's countenance, my friends,
was like when on earth, we do not know ; but
what his countenance is like now, we all may
know ; for what says St. John, and how did Christ
appear to him, who had been on earth his private
and beloved friend ? —
' His head and his hair were white as snow, and
' his eyes were like a flame of fire, and his voice
' like the sound of many waters ; and out of his
' mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his
' countenance was as the sun when he shineth in
' his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at
' his feet as dead/
That is the likeness of Christ, my friends ; and
144 THE GOD OF THE OLD TEST ANIENT [serm.
we must remember that it is liis likeness, and fall
at liis feet, and humble ourselves before his un-
speakable majesty, if we wish that he should do
to us at the last day as he did to St. John — lay
his hand upon us, saying, ' Fear not, I am the
' fii'st and the last, and behold, I am alive for
' evermore, amen. I have the keys of death and
' hell.'
Yes, it is good that we should all remember
this. For if we do not, we may fall, as thousands
fall, into a very unwholesome and immoral notion
about religion. We may get to fancy, as thousands
do, rich and poor, that because Christ the Lord is
meek and gentle, patient and long-suffering, that
he is therefore easy, indulgent, careless about our
doing vrrong, and that we can, in plain English,
trifle with Christ, and take liberties with his ever-
lasting laws of right and wi'ong ; and so fancy,
that provided we talk of the meek and lowly
Jesus, and of his blood washing away all our
sins, that we are free to behave very much as if
Jesus had never come into the world to teach
men their duty, and free to commit almost any
sin which does not disgrace us among our neigh-
bours, or render us punishable by the law.
My friends, it is not so. And those who fancy
that it is so, will find out their mistake bitterly
enough. — Infinite love and forgiveness to those
XI.] IS THE GOD OF THE NEW. 1 45
who repent and amend, and do right ; but infinite
rigour and punishment to those who will not
amend and do right. This is the everlasting law
of Grod's universe ; and every soul of man will find
it out at last, and find that the Lord Jesus Christ
is not a Being to be trifled with, and that the
precious blood which he shed on the cross is of no
avail to those who are not minded to be righteous,
even as he is righteous.
* But Christ is so loving, so tender-hearted that
' he surely will not punish us for our sins.' This
is the confused notion that too many people have
about him. And the answer to it is, that just
because Christ is so loving, so tender-hearted, there-
fore he must punish us for our sins, unless we utterly
give up our sins, and do right instead of wrong.
That false notion springs out of men's selfish-
ness. They think of sin as something which only
hurts themselves ; when they do wrong they think
merely, ' What punishment will God inflict on me
' for doing wrong ?' They are wrapt up in them-
selves. They forget that then- sins are not merely
a matter between them and Christ, but between
them and their neighhbours ; that every wrong
action they commit, every wrong word they speak,
every wrong habit in which they indulge them-
selves, sooner or later, more or less, hurts their
neighbours — ay, hurts all mankind.
L
146 THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT [sEEM.
And does Clu-ist care only for them ? Does he
not care for their neighbours ? Has he not all
mankind to provide for, and govern, and guide ?
And can he allow bad men to go on making this
world worse, without punishing them, any more
than a gardener can allow weeds to hurt his
flowers, and not root them up ? What would you
say of a man who was so merciful to the weeds,
that he let them choke the flowers ? What would
you say of a shepherd who was so merciful to the
wolves, that he let them eat his sheep ? What
would you say of a magistrate who was so merciful
to thieves, that he let them rob the honest men ?
And do you fancy that Christ is a less careful
and just governor of the world than the magistrate
who punishes the thief that honest men may live
in safety ?
Not so. Not only will Christ punish the wolves
who devoui- his sheep, but he will punish his
sheep themselves if they hui't each other, torment
each other, lead each other astray, or in any way
interfere Avith the just and equal rule of his king-
dom ; and this, not out of spite or cruelty, but
simply because he is perfect love.
Go, therefore, and think of Christ this Passion-
Week as he was, and is, and ever will be. Think
of the whole Christ, and not of some part of his
character which may specially please your fancy.
XI.] IS THE GOD OF THE NEW. 1 47
Think of him as the patient and forgiving Christ,
who prayed for liis murderers — ' Father, forgive
* them, for they know not what they do.' But re-
member that, in this very Passion- Week, there
came out of those most gentle lips — the lips which
blessed little children, and cried to all who were
weary and heavy laden to come to him and he
would give them rest — that out of those most
gentle lips, I say, in this very Passion-Week, there
went forth the most awful threats which ever
were uttered — * Woe unto you, Scribes and Pha-
' risees, hypocrites. Ye serpents, ye generation of
' vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
' hell 7 Think of him as the Lamb who offered
himself freely on the cross for sinners. But think
of him, too, as the Lamb who shall one day come
in glory, to judge all men according to their
works. Think of him as full of boundless tender-
ness and humam'ty, boundless long-suifering and
mercy. But remember that beneath that bound-
less sweetness and tenderness there burns a con-
suming fire ; a fire of divine scorn and indignation
against all who sin, like Pharaoh, out of cruelty and
pride ; against all which is foul and brutal, mean
and base, false and hypocritical, cruel and unjust ;
a fire which burns, and will burn, against all the
wickedness which is done on earth, and all the
misery and sorrow which is suffered on earth, till
148 THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
tlie Lord has burned it np for ever, and there is
nothing but love and justice, order and usefulness,
peace and happiness, left in the universe of God.
Oh, think of these things, and cast away your
sins betimes, at the foot of his everlasting cross,
lest you be consumed with your sins in Ms ever-
lasting fire !
SERMON xn.
THE BIETHNIGHT OF FREEDOM.
{Easter Day.)
Exodus xii. 42,
This is a night to be much observed unto the Lord, for bringing
the chilcken of Israel out of Egypt.
TO be inucli observed unto tlie Lord by tlie
children of Israel.
And by us, too, my friends ; and by aU nations
wlio call themselves free.
There are many, and good ways of looking at
Easter Day. Let us look at it in this way for once.
It is the day on which God himself set men free.
Consider the story. These Israelites, the chil-
dren of Abraham, the brave wild patriarch of the
desert, have been settled for hundreds of years in
the rich lowlands of Egypt. There they have been
eating and diinking then- fiU, and growing more
weak, slavish, luxurious, fonder and fonder of the
flesh-pots of Egypt; fattenmg literally for the
slaughter, like beasts in a stall. They are
spiritually dead — dead in trespasses and sins.
They do not want to be free, to be a nation.
150 THE BIETHNIGHT OF FREEDOM. [SEKM.
They are content to be slaves and idolaters, if
they can only fill their stomachs. This is the
spmtual death of a nation.
I say, they do not want to be free. When they
are oppressed, they cry out — as an animal cries
when you beat him. But after they are free, when
they get into danger, or miss their meat, they
cry out too, and are willing enough to return to
slavery ; as the dog which has run away for fear
of the whip, will go back to his kennel for the sake
of his food. ' Because there were no graves in
* Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wil-
' derness ? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us
'to carry us out of Egypt?' And again: 'Would
' God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the
' land of Egypt, where we did sit by the flesh-pots,
' and eat meat to the full !' Brutalized, in one
word, were these poor children of Israel.
Then God took their cause into his own hand.
I say, emphatically, into his own hand. If that
part of the story be not true, I care nothing for
the rest. If God did not personally and actually,
interfere on behalf of those poor slaves; if the
plagues of Egypt are not true — if the passage of
the Eed Sea be not true — the story tells me and
you nothing ; gives us no hope for ourselves, no
hope for mankind.
For see. One says, and truly, God is good ; God
xir.] THE BIRTHNIGHT OF FKEEDOM. I 51
is love; God is just; God liates oppression and
wrong.
But if God be love, lie must surely show his
love by doing loving things.
If God be just, he must show his justice by doing
just things.
If God hates oppression, then he must free the
oppressed.
If God hates wrong, then he must set the wrong
right.
For what would you think of a man who pro-
fessed to be loving and just, and to hate oppression
and wrong, and yet never took the trouble to do a
good action, or to put down vrrong, when he had
the power ?
You would call him a hj^oocrite ; you would
think his love and justice very much on his tongue,
and not in his heart.
And will you believe that God is like that man ?
God forbid !
Comfortable scholars, and luxurious ladies, may
content themselves with a dead God, who does
not interfere to help the oppressed, to right the
wrong, to bind up the broken-hearted : but men
and women who work, who sorrow, who suffer,
who partake of all the ills wliich flesh is heir to —
they want a living God, an acting God, a God who
will interfere to right the wrong. Yes — they want
152 THE BIRTHNIGHT OF FKEEDOM. [SEEM.
a living God. And they have a living God — even
the God who interfered to bring the Israelites out of
Egj'pt with signs and wonders, and a mighty hand,
and an outstretched arm, and executed judgment
upon Pharaoh and his proud and cruel hosts. And
when they read in the Bible of that God, when
they read in their Bibles the story of the Exodus,
theii' hearts answer : Tliis is right. This is the
God whom we need. This is what ought to have
happened. This is true : for it must be true. Let
comfortable folks who know no sorrow, trouble
their brains as to whether 60 or 600,000 fighting
men came out of Egypt with Moses. We care not
for numbers. What we care for is, not how many
came out, but who brought them out, and that he
who brought them out was God. And the book
which tells us that, we will cling to, will love,
will reverence, above all the books on earth,
because it tells of a living God, who works, and
acts, and interferes for men ; who not only hates
wrong, but riglits wrong ; not only hates oj^pres-
sion, but puts oppressors down; not only pities
the oppressed, but sets the oppressed free. A God
who not only wills that man should have freedom,
but sent freedom down to liim fi'om heaven.
Scholars have said, that tlie old Greeks were the
fathers of freedom ; and there have been other
peoples in the world's history, who have made
XII.] THE BIETHNIGHT OF FKEEDOM. 1^3
glorious and successful struggles to throw off their
tyrants, and be free. And they have said, we
are the fathers of freedom ; liberty was born
with us. Not so, my friends ! Liberty is of a far
older, and far nobler house ; Liberty was born, if
you will receive it, on the first Easter night, on
the night to be much remembered among the
children of Israel — ay, among all mankind — when
God himself stooped from heaven to set the
oppressed free. Then was freedom born. — Not in
the counsels of men, how^ever wise ; or in the
battles of men, however brave : but in the counsels
of God, and the battle of God — amid human agony
and terror, and the shaking of the heaven and the
earth ; amid the great cry throughout Egypt, when
a first-born son lay dead in every house ; and the
tempest which swept aside the Ked Sea waves ;
and the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire
by night ; and the Ked Sea shore covered with the
corpses of the Egyptians ; and the thunderings
and lightnings and earthquakes of Sinai ; and
the sound as of a trumpet waxing loud and long ;
and the voice, most human and most divine, which
spake from off the lonely mountain peak to that
vast horde of coward and degenerate slaves, and
said, ' I am the Lord thy God who brought thee
' out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt obey my
' laws, and keep my commandments to do them.'
154 THE BIETHNIGHT OF FEEEDOM. [sERM.
Oil ! tte man who would rob his suffering fellow-
creatures of that story— he knows not how deep
and bitter are the needs of man.
Then was Freedom born : but not of man ; not
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man :
but of the will of God, from whom all good things
come ; and of Christ, who is the life and the
light of men and of nations, and of the whole
world, and of all worlds, past, present, and to
come.
From God came freedom. To be used as his
gift, according to his laws ; for he gave, and he
can take away ; as it is written, ' He shall take
' the kingdom of God from you, and give it to a
* people bringing forth the fruits thereof.' ' For
* there be many first that shall be last ; and last
' that shall be first.' It is this which makes the
Jews indeed a peculiar people : the thought that
the living God had actually and really done for
them what they could not do for themselves ; that
he had made them a nation ; and not they them-
selves. It is this which makes the Old Testa-
ment an utterly different book, with an utterly
different lesson, to the written history of any other
nation in the world.
And yet it is this which makes the history of
the Jews the key to every other history in the
world. For in it Jesus Christ our Lord, the living
XU.] THE BIETHNIGHT OF FREEDOM. 1 55
God who makes history, who governs all nations,
reveals and unveils himself, and teaches not the
Jews only, but us and all nations, that it is he
who hath made us, and not we ourselves ; that we
got not the land in possession by our own sword,
nor was it our own strength that helped us, but
thou, 0 Lord, because thou hadst a favom- unto
us ; that not to us, not to us, is the praise of any
national greatness or glory, but to God, from
whom it comes 'as surely a free gift as the gift of
liberty to the Jews of old.
I "say, the history of the Jews is the history
of the whole church, and of every nation in Chris-
tendom.
As with the Jews, so with the nations of Europe ;
whenever they have trusted in themselves, their
own power and wisdom, they have ended in weak-
ness and folly. Whenever they have trusted in
Christ the living God, and said, ' It is he that hath
' made us, and not we ourselves,' they have risen to
strength and msdom. When they have forgotten
the living God, national life and patriotism have
died in them, as they died in the Jews, \yhen
they have remembered that the most high God
was their Eedeemer, then in them, as in the Jews,
have national life and patriotism revived.
And as it was ^ith the Jews in the wilderness,
so it has been with them since Chi-ist's resurrec-
1^6 THE BIRTHNIGHT OF FREEDOM. [sEEM.
tion. They fancied that they were going at once
into the promised hind. So did the fii'st Chris-
tians. But the Jews had to wander forty years in
the wilderness; and Christendom has had to
wander too, in strange and bloodstained paths, for
1800 years, and more. For why ? The Israelites
were not worthy to enter at once into rest ; no
more have the nation of Christ's church been
worthy. The Israelites brought out of Egypt
base and slavish passions, which had to be purged
out of them ; so have we out of heathendom.
They brought out, too, heathen superstitions, and
mixed them up with the worship of God, bearing
about in the wilderness the tabernacle of Moloch,
and the image of their god Eemphan, and making
the calf in Horeb ; and so, alas ! again and again,
has the church of Christ.
Nay, the whole generation, save two, who came
out of Egypt, had to die in the wilderness, and
leave their bones scattered far and wide. And so
has mankind been dying, by war and by disease,
and by many fearful scourges, beside what is called
now-a-days natural decay.
But all the while a new generation was spring-
ing up, trained in the wilderness to be bold and
hardy ; trained, too, under Moses' stern law, to the
fear of God ; to reverence, and discipline, and
obedience, without which freedom is merely brutal
XII.] THE BIRTHNIGHT OF FEEEDOM. 157
licence, and a nation is no nation, but a mere
flock of sheep, or a herd of wolves.
And so, for these 1800 years, have the genera-
tions of Christendom, by the training of the
Church, and the light of the Gospel, been growing
in wisdom and knowledge ; growing in morality and
humanity, in that true discipline and loyalty which
are the yokefellows of freedom and independence,
to make them fit for that higher state, that heavenly
Canaan, of which we know not when it will come,
nor w^hether its place will be on this earth or else-
where ; but of which it is written, ' And I John
'saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down
'from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride
'adorned for her husband. And I heard a great
* voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle
' of God is with men, and he will dwell with them,
'and they shall be his people, and God himself
' shall be with them, and be their God. And God
' shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and
' there shall be no more death, neitlier sorrow, nor
' crying, neither shall there be any more pain : for
' the former things are passed away. And he that
'sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all
' things new.
'And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord
' God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of
' it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither
t58 THE BIRTHXIGHT OF FREEDOM.
' of the moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God
* did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
'And the nations of them which are saved shall
'walk in the light of it: and the kings of the
'eartli do bring their glory and honour into it.
' And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by
'day: for there shall be no night there. And
'they shall bring the gloiy and honour of the
' nations into it. And there shall in nowise enter
' into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever
' worketh abomination, or maketh a lie : but they
' which are written in the Lamb's book of life.'
That, the perfect Easter Day, seems far enough
oif as yet : but it will come. As the Lord liveth,
it will come : and to it may Christ in his mercy
bring us all, and our childi'en's children after us.
Amen.
SERMOX XIII.
KOEAH, DATHAN, AND ABIEAM.
(^First Sunday after Easter, 1863.)
Numbers xvi. 32 — 35.
And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and
theu- houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and
all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went
down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them : and
they perished from among the congregation. And all Israel
that were roimd about them fled at the cry of them : for they
said, Lest the earth swallow us up also. And there came out a
fire from the Lord, and consumed the two huudi-ed and fifty
men that offered incense.
I WILL begin by saying that there are several
things in this chapter which I do not under-
stand, and cannot explain to you. Be it so. That
is no reason why we should not look at the parts
of the chapter which we can understand and can
explain.
There are matters without end in the world
round us, and in our own hearts, and in the life of
every one, which we cannot explain, and there-
fore we need not be surprised to find things which
we cannot explain in the life and history of
the most remarkable nation upon earth, — the na-
l6o KOKAH, DATHAN, AND ABIEAM. [sEKM.
tion whose business it has been to teach all other
nations the knowledge of the true God, and who
was specially and curiously trained for that work.
But the one broad common-sense lesson of this
chapter, it seems to me, is one which is on the
very surface of it ; one which every true English-
man, at least, will see, and see to be true, when he
hears the chapter read ; and that is, the necessity
of discipline.
God has brought the Israelites out of Egypt,
and set them free. One of the first lessons which
they have to learn is, that freedom does not mean
licence and discord, — does not mean every one
doing that which is right in the sight of his own
eyes. From that springs self-will, division,
quarrels, revolt, civil war, weakness, profligacy,
and ruin to the whole people. Without order,
discipline, obedience to law, there can be no true
and lasting freedom ; and, therefore, order must be
kept at all risks, the law obeyed, and rebellion
punished.
Now rebellion may be — and ought to be —
punislied far more severely in some cases than in
others. If men rebel here, in Great Britain or
Ireland, we smile at them, and let them off with
a slight imprisonment, because we are not afraid
of them. They can do no harm.
But there are cases in which rebellion must be
XIII.] KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIKAM. l6i
punished with a swift and sharp hand. On board
a ship at sea, for instance, where the safety of the
whole ship, the lives of the whole crew, depend
on instant obedience, mutiny may be punished by
death on the spot. Many a commander has, ere
now, and rightly too, struck down the rebel without
trial or argument, and ended him and his mutiny on
the spot ; by the sound rule, that it is expedient
that one man die for the people, and that the
whole nation perish not.
And so it was with the Israelites in the desert.
All depended on their obedience. God had given
them a law — a constitution, as we should say now
— perfectly fitted, no doubt, for them. If they
once began to rebel and mutiny against that law,
all was over with them. That great foolish igno-
rant multitude would have broken up, probably
fought among themselves — certainly parted com-
pany, and either starved in the desert, or have
been destroyed piecemeal by the wild warlike
tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites, — who
were ready enough for slaughter and plunder.
They would never have reached Canaan. They
would never have become a gi-eat nation. So they
had to be, by necessity, under martial law. The
word must be, Obey or die. As for any cruelty
in putting Korah, Dathan, and Abham to death,
it was worth the death of a hundred such — or
M
1 62 KOKAH, DATHAN, AND ABIE AM. [SEKJI.
a tliousand — to preserve the great and glorious
nation of the Jews, to be the teachers of the world.
Now this Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel.
They rebel against Moses about a question of the
priesthood. It really matters little to us what that
question was, — it was a question of Moses' law,
which, of course, is now done away. Only re-
member this, that these men were princes — great
feudal noblemen, as we should say ; and that they
rebelled on the strength of their rank, and their
rights as noblemen to make laws for themselves
and for the people ; and that the mob of their de-
pendents seem to have been incKned to support
them.
Surely if Moses had executed martial law on
them with his own hand, he would have been as
perfectly justified as a captain of a ship of war,
or a general of an army would be now.
But he did not do so. And why? Because
Moses did not bring the people out of Egypt.
Moses was not then- king. God brought them out
of Egypt. God was their king. That was the
lesson which they had to learn, — and to teach
other nations also. They have rebelled, not against
Moses, but against God ; and not Moses, but God
must punish, and show that he is not a dead God,
but a living God, one who can defend himself, and
enforce his own laws, and execute judgment, — and,
xin.] KOEAH, DATHAN, AND ABIEAM. 1 63
if need be, vengeance, — without needing any man
to figlit his battles for liim.
And God does so. The powers of Nature, — the
earthquake and the nether fire — shall punish these
rebels ; and so they do.
*And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that
* the Lord hath sent me to do all these works ; for
' I have not done them of mine own mind. If
' these men die the common death of all men, or
* if they be visited after the visitation of all men ;
' then the Lord hath not sent me. But if the
* Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her
' mouth, and swallow them up, with all that ap-
' pertain to them, and they go down quick into
' the pit ; then ye shall understand that these
' men have provoked the Lord.'
Men have thought differently of the story : but
I call it a righteous story, and a noble story, and
one which agrees with my conscience, and my
reason, and my notion of what ought to be, and
my experience, also, of wliat is, — of the way in
which God's world is governed unto this day.
What then are we to think of the earth opening
and swallowing them up ? What are we to tliink
of a fire coming out from the Lord, and consuming
two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.
This first. That discipline and order are so
absolutely necessary for the well-being of a nation
164 KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIEA3I. [SEBM.
that tliey must be kept at all risks, and enforced by
tJie most terrible punishments.
It seems to me (to sjieak AA'ith all reverence) as
if God had said to the Jews, — ' I have set you
' free. I will make of you a great nation ; I will
' lead you into a good land and large. But if you
' are to be a great nation, if you are to conquer
* that "good land and large, you must obey : and
' you shall obey. The eai-thquake and the fire
' shall teach you to obey, and make you an ex-
' ample to the rest of the IsraeKtes, and to all
' nations after you.'
But how hard, some may think, that the wives
and the children should suffer for their parents' sins.
My friends, we do not know that a single woman
or child died then, for whom it was not better that
he or she should die. That is one of the deep
things which we must leave to the perfect justice
and mercy of God.
And next, — what is it after all, but what we see
going on round us all day long ? God does visit
the sins of the fathers on the children. There is
no denying it. Wives do suffer for their husbands'
sins ; childi-en, and cliildi-en's children, for whole
generations after generations, suffer for their pa-
rents' sins, and become unhealthy, or superstitious,
or profligate, or poor, or slavish, because their
parents sinned, and dragged down their children
xni.] KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM. 165
with them in their fall. It is a law of the world ;
and therefore it is a law of God. And it is reason-
able to be believed, that God might choose to teach
the Israelites once and for all, that it was a law of
his world. For by swallowing up those women and
children with the men, God said to the Israelites,
it seems to me, in a way which could not be mis-
taken, ' This is the consequence of lawlessness and
* disorder — that you not only injure yourselves,
* but your children after you, and involve your
* families in the same ruin as yourselves.'
But there was another lesson, and a deep lesson,
in the earthquake and in the tire.
And that was this : that the earthquake and the
fire came out from the Lord.
Earthquakes have swallowed up not hundreds
merely, but many thousands, in many countries,
and at many times.
Fire has come forth, and still comes forth, from
the gi'ound, from the clouds, from the conse-
quences of man's own carelessness, and destroys
beast and man, and the works of man's hands.
Then men ask in terror and doubt, — ' Who sends
* the earthquake and the fire ? Do they come from
* the devil — the destroyer ? Do they come by
' chance, from some brute and blind powers of
* nature ?'
This chapter answers, * No. They come from the
l66 KOIIAH, DATHAN, AND ABIEAM- [sERM.
' Lord, from whom all good things do come ; from
' the Lord who delivered the Israelites out of
' Egypt ; who so loved the world, that he spared
* not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him
' for us.'
Now, I say that is a gospel, and good news,
which we want now as much as ever men did;
which the children of Israel wanted then, though
not one whit more than we.
Many hundreds of years had these Israelites
been in Egypt. Storm, lightning, earthquake,
the fires of the burning mountains, were things
unknown to them. They were going into Ca-
naan— a good land and fruitful, but a land of
storms and thunders — a land, too, of earthquakes
and subterranean fii-es. The deepest earthquake
crack m the world is the valley of the Jordan, end-
ing in the Dead Sea — a long valley, through which
at different points the nether fires of the earth even
now burst up at times. In Abraham's time they
had destroyed the five cities of the plain. The
prophets mention them, especially Isaiah and
Micah, as breaking out again in their own times ;
and in our own lifetime, earthquake and fire have
done fearful destruction in the north part of the
Holy Land.
Now, what were to prevent the Israelites wor-
shipping the earthquake and the fire as gods ?
Nothing. Conceive the terror and horror of
Xin.] KOEAH, DATHAN, AXD ABIEAM. 1 67
the Jews coming out of tliat quiet land of Egypt
the first time they felt the ground rocking and
rolling ; the first time they heard the roar of the
earthquake beneath their feet ; the first time they
saw, in the magnificent words of Micah, the moun-
tains molten and the valleys cleft as wax before
the fire, like water poured dowa a steep place ;
and discovered that beneath their very feet was
Tophet, the pit of fire and brimstone, ready to
bm-st up and overwhelm them they knew not
when.
WTiat could they do, but what the Canaanites
did Mho dwelt already in that land ? What but
to say, * The fire is king. The fire is the great and
' dreadful God, and to him we must pray, lest he
' devour us up.' For so did the Canaanites. They
called the fire 3Ioloch, which means simply the
king; and they worshipped this fire king, and
made idols of him, and offered human sacrifices to
him. They had idols of metal, before which an
everlasting fire burned ; and on the arms of the idol
the priests laid the children who were to be sacri-
ficed, that they might roll down into the fire, and
be burnt alive. That is actual fact. In one case,
which we know of well, hundreds of years after
Moses' time, the Carthaginians ofiered two hundred
boys of their best families to Moloch in one day.
This is that making the children pass through
the fire to Moloch, — burning them in the fire to
1 68 KOEAH, DATHAN, AND ABIEAM. [seem.
Moloch, — of which we read several times in the
Old Testament ; as ugly and accursed a supersti-
tion as men ever invented.
What deliverance was there for them from
these abominable superstitions, except to know
that the fire-kingdom was God's kingdom, and not
Moloch's at all ; to know with Micah and with
David that the hills were molten like wax before
the presence of the. Lord ; that it was the blast of his
breath which discovered the foundations of the'
world ; that it was he who made the sea flee, and
drove back the Jordan stream ; that it was before
him that the mountains skipt like rams, and the
little hills like young sheep ; that the battles of
shaking were God's battles, with which he could
fight for his people ; that it was he who ordained
Tophet, and whose spirit Idndled it. That it was
he — and that too in mercy as well as anger — who
visited the land in Isaiah's time with thunder and
earthquake, and great noise, and storm and tem-
pest, and the flame of devouring fire. That the
earth opened and swallowed up those whom God
chose, and no others. That if fire came forth, it
came forth from the Lord, and burned where and
what God chose, and nothing else. Yes. If you
will only understand once and for all that the
history of the Jews is the history of the Lord's
turning a people from the cowardly slavish wor-
Xiii.] KORAH, DATHAN. AND ABIRAM. 1 69
ship of sun and stars, of earthquakes and burning
mountains, and all the brute powers of nature
which the heathen worshipped, and teaching them
to trust and obey him, the living God, tlie Lord
and Master of all, then the Old Testament will be
clear to you throughout ; but if not, then not.
You cannot read your Bibles without seeing
how that great lesson was stamped into the very
hearts of the Hebrew prophets; how they are
continually speaking of the fire and the earth-
quake, and yet continually declaring that they too
obey God, and do God's wlQ, and that the man
who fears God need not fear them — that God
was their hope and strength, a very present help
in trouble. Therefore would they not fear, though
the earth was moved, and though the moimtains
be carried into the midst of the sea.
And we, too, need the same lesson in these
scientific days. We too need to fix it in our
hearts, that the powers of nature are the powers of
God ; that he orders them by his providence to do
what he ^vill and when and where he will ; that, as
the Psalmist says, the ^vinds are his messengers,
and the flames of fire his ministers. And this we
shall learn from the Bible, and from no other
book whatsoever.
God taught the Jews this, by a strange and
miraculous education, that they might teach it in
170 KOEAH, DATHAN, AND ABIEAM. [Sekm.
their turn to all mankind. And they have taught
it. For the Bible bids us — as no other book
does — not to be afraid of the world on which we
live — not to be afraid of earthquake or tempest,
or any of the powers of nature which seem to us
terrible and cruel, and destroying; for they are
the powers of the good, and just, and loving God.
They obey our Father in heaven, without whom
not a sparrow falls to the ground, and our Lord
Jesus Christ, who came not to destroy men's lives
but to save them. And therefore we need not
fear them, or look on them with any blind supersti-
tion, as things too awful for us to search into. AVe
may search into their causes ; find out if we can
the laws which they obey, because those laws are
given them by God our Father; try, by using
those laws, to escape them, as we are learning now
to escape tempests ; or to prevent them, as we are
learning now to prevent pestilences : and where we
cannot do that, face them manfully, saying, ' It is
' my Father's will. These terrible events must be
* doing God's work. They may be punishing the
* guilty ; they may be taking the righteous away
' from the evil to come ; they may be teaching
' wise men lessons Avhich will enable them, years
* hence, to save lives without number ; they may
' be preparing the face of the earth for the use of
'generations yet unborn. Whatever they are
Slll.] KOEAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM. j-ji
' doing tliey are and must be doing good ; for they
'are doing the will of the living Father, who
' wiUeth that none should perish, and hateth no-
' thing that he hath made.'
This, my friends, is the lesson which the Bible
teaches ; and because it teaches that lesson it is
the book of books, and the inspu-ed word or
message, not of men concerning God, but of God
himself, concerning himself, his kingdom over this
world and over all worlds, and his good will to
men.
SERMON XIV.
BALAAM.
NuMBEES xxiii. 19.
God is not a man, that lie sliould lie ; neither the son of man,
that he should repent : hath he said, and shall he not do it ? or
hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good ?
TF I was asked for any proof that the story of
-■- Balaam as I find it in the Bible is a true story,
I should lay my hand upon this one only — and
that is the deep knowledge of human nature which
is shown in it.
The character of Balaam is so perfectly natural,
and yet of a kind so very difficult to unravel and
explain, that if the story was invented by man, as
poems or novels are, it must have been invented
very late indeed in the history of the Jews; at
a time, when they had grown to be a far more
civilized people, far more experienced in the cun-
ning tricks of the human heart, than they were, as
far as we can see from the Bible, before the Baby-
lonish captivity. But it was not invented late ; for
no Jew in these later times would have thought of
BALAAM. 173
making Balaam, a heatlien, to be a prophet of
God, or a believer in the true God at all. The
later Jews took up the notion that God spoke to,
and cared for, the Jews only, and that all other
nations were accursed.
There is no reason, therefore, against simply
believing the story as it stands. It seems a very
ancient story indeed, suiting exactly, in its smallest
details, the place where Moses, or whoever wrote
the Book of Numbers, has put it.
We, in these days, are accustomed to draw a
sharp line between the good and the bad, the con-
verted and the unconverted, the children of God
and the children of this world, those who have God's
Spirit and those who have not, which we find no-
where in Scripture ; and therefore when we read of
such a man as Balaam we cannot understand him.
He is a bad man, but yet he is a prophet. How
can that be ? He knows the true God. More, he
has the Spirit of God in him, and thereby utters
deep and wonderful prophecies ; and yet he is a
bad man and a rogue. How can that be ?
The puzzle, my friends, is one of our o^^l
making. If, instead of taking up doctrines out of
books we will use our own eyes, and ears, and
common sense, and look honestly at this world as it
is, and men and women as they are, we shall find
nothing unnatm'al or strange in Balaam ; we shall
174 BALAAM. [SEEM.
find him very like a good many people whom we
know, very like — nay, probably, too like, ourselves
in some particulars.
Now bear in mind, first, that Balaam is no
impostor or magician. He is a wise man and a
prophet of God. God really speaks to him, and
really inspires him.
And bear in mind, too, that Balaam's inspira-
tion did not merely open his mouth to say won-
derful words which he did not understand, but
opened his heart to say righteous and wise things
which he did understand.
' Kemember,' says the prophet Micah, * 0 my
* people, what Balak king of Moab consulted,
* and what Balaam the son of Beor answered
* him from Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may
' know the righteousness of the Lord. Where-
* with shall I come before the Lord, and bow
* myself before the high God ? shall I come be-
' fore him with burnt offerings, with calves of a
* year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thou-
' sands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of
' oil ? shall I give my firstborn for my transgres-
* sions, tlie fruit of my body for the sin of my
* soul ? He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is
' good, and what dotli the Lord require of thee,
' but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk
* humbly with thy God.' Why, what deeper or
xrv.] BALAAM. 175
wiser words are there in the whole Old Testa-
ment ? This man Balaam had seen down into the
deepest depths of all morality, unto the deepest
depths of all religion. The man who knew that,
knew more than 99 in 100 do even in a Chi-istian
country now, and more than 999,999 in a mil-
lion knew in those days. Let no one, after that
speech, doubt that Balaam was indeed a prophet
of the Lord : and yet he was a bad man, and came
deservedly to a bad end.
So much easier, my friends, is it to know what
is right than to do what is rio^ht.
What then was wrong in Balaam ?
This, that he was double-minded. He wished
to serve Grod. True. But he wished to serve
himself by serving God, as too many do in all
times.
That was what was wrong with him — self-seek-
ing; and the Bible story brings out that self-
seeking with a delicacy, a keenness, and a perfect
kno^Yledge of human nature, which ought to teach
us some of the secrets of our own hearts.
^ Watch how Balaam, as a matter of course, in-
quires of the Lord whether he may go, and refuses,
seemingly at first honestly.
Then how the temptation grows on him ; how,
when he feels tempted, he fights against it in fine-
sounding professions, just because he feels that he
I
76 BALAAM. [seem.
is going to yield to it. Then liow lie begins to
tempt God, by asking him again, in hopes that
God may have changed his mind. Then when he
has his foolish wish granted, he goes. Then
when the terrible warning comes to him that
he is on the wrong road, that God's wrath is
gone out against him, and his angel ready to
destroy him, he is full still of hollow professions
of obedience, instead of casting himself utterly
upon God's mercy, and confessing his sin, and
entreating pardon.
Then how, instead of being frightened at God's
letting him have his way, he is emboldened by it
to tempt God more and more, and begins offering
bullocks and rams on altars, fii-st in this place and
then in that, in hopes still that God may change
his mind, and let him curse Israel ; in hopes that
God may be Hke one of the idols of the heathen,
who could (so the heathen thought) be coaxed
and flattered round by sacrifices to do whatever
their worshippers wished.
Then, when he finds that all is of no use ; that
he must not curse Israel, and must not earn
Balak's silver and gold, he is forced to be an
honest man in spite of himseK; and therefore
he makes the best of his disappointment, by taking
mighty credit to himself for being honest, while
he wishes all the while he might have been allowed
XIV.] BALAAM. 177
to have been dishonest. Oh, if all this is not
poor human nature, drawn by the pen of a trujy
inspired writer, what is it ?
Moreover, it is curious to watch how as Balaam
is forced step by step to be an honest man, so
step by step he rises. A weight falls off his mind
and heart, and the Spirit of God comes upon
him.
He feels for once that he must speak his mind,
that he must obey God. As he looks down from
off the mountain top, and sees the vast encamp-
ment of the Israelites spread over the vale below,
for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, all
ordered, disciplined, arranged according to their
tribes, the Sphit of God comes upon him and he
gives way to it, and speaks.
The sight of that magnificent array wakens up
in him the thought of how divine is order, how
strong is order, how order is the life and root of a
nation, and how much more, when that order is
the order of God.
' How goodly are thy tents, 0 Jacob, and thy
* tabernacles, O Israel ! As the valleys are they
* spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as
* the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath
* planted, and as cedar trees beside the Avaters.
' His king shall be higher than Agag,' and all his
wild Amalekite hordes. He will be a true nation,
N
178 BALAAM. [seem.
civilized, ordered, loyal and united, for God is
teaching him.
Who can resist such a nation as that ? ' God
' has brought him out of Egypt. He has the
' strength of an unicorn.' ' I shall see him,' he
says, ' but not now : I shall behold him, but not
' nigh : there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and
' a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite
' the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children
' of Sheth.' . . And when he looked on Amalek,
lie took up his parable, and said, ' Anialek was the
' first of the nation ; but his latter end shall be
* that he perish for ever.' And he looked on the
Kenites, and took up his parable, and said,
' Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest
' thy nest in a rock. Nevertheless, the Kenite
' shall be wasted, till Asshur shall carry thee away
' captive.' ' Alas, who shall live when God doeth
' this !'
And then, beyond all, after all the Canaanites
and other Syrian races have been destroyed, he
sees, dimly and afar oif, anotlier destruction still.
In his home in the far east, the fame of the
ships of Chittim has reached him ; the fame of the
new people, the sea-roving lieroes of the Greeks,
of whom old Homer sang; the handsomest, cun-
ningest, most daring of mankind, who are spread-
ing their little trading colonies along all the isles
XIV.] BALAAM. 179
and shores, as we now are spreading ours over the
world. Those ships of Chittini, too, have a great
and o-lorious future before them. Some day or
other they will come and afiSict Asslmr, the great
empire of the East, out of which Balaam probably
came, and afflict Eber too, the kingdom of the
Jews, and they too shall perish for ever.
Dimly he sees it, for it is very far away. But
that it will come, he sees : and beyond that all is
dark. He has said his say ; he has spoken the
whole truth for once. Balak's house full of silver
and gold would not have bouglit him off, and
stopped his mouth, when such aNvful thoughts
crowded on his miud. So he returns to liis place
— to do what ?
If he cannot earn Balak's gold by cursing
Israel, he can do it by giving him cunning and
politic advice. He advises Balak to make fi lends
with the Israelites, and mix them up with his
people, by enticing them to the feasts of his idols,
at which the women threw themselves away in
shameful profligacy, after the custom of the
heathens of these parts.
In the next chapter we read how Moses,
and Phinehas, Aaron's grandson, put down those
filthy abominations with a high hand ; and how
Balaam's detestable plot, instead of making peace,
makes war ; and in chapter xxxi. you read, the
l8o BALAAM. [sERM.
terrible destruction of the whole nation of the
Midianites, and among it this one short and terrible
hint : ' Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with
'the sword/
But what may we learn from this ugly story ?
Eecollect what I said at first, that we should
find Balaam too like many people now-a-days;
perhaps too like ourselves.
Too like indeed. For never were men more
tempted to sin as Balaam did than in these days,
when religion is all the fashion, and pays a man,
and helps him on in life ; when, indeed, a man
cannot expect to succeed without professing some
sort of religion or other.
Thereby comes a terrible temptation to many
men. I do not mean to hypocrites ; but to really
well-meaning men. They like religion. They
wish to be good ; they have the feeling of devotion.
They pray, they read their Bibles, they are atten-
tive to services and to sermons, and are more or less
pious people. But soon — too soon — they find that
their piety is profitable. Their business increases.
Their credit increases. They are trusted and
respected ; their advice is asked and taken. They
gain power over their fellow-men. What a fine
thing it is, they think, to be pious !
Then creeps in the love of the world ; the
love.of money, or power, or admiration ; and they
XIV.] BALAAM. l8l
begin to value religion, because it helps them to
get on in the world. They begin more and more
to love piety not for its own sake, but for the sake
of what it brings ; not because it pleases God, but
because it pleases the world ; not because it
enables them to help their fellow-men, but because
it enables them to help themselves.
So they get double-minded, unstable, incon-
sistent, as St. James says, in all their ways ;
trying to serve God and Mammon at once.
Trying to do good — as long as doing good does
not hurt them in the world's eyes; but longing
oftener and oftener to do wrong, if only God
would not be angry. Then comes on Balaam's
frame of mind. * If Balak would give me his
' house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond
* the commandment of the Lord.'
Oh no. They would not do a wrong thing for
the world — only they must be quite sure first that
it is wrong. Has God really forbidden it ? Why
should they not take care of their own interest?
Why should they not get on in the world ? So they
begin like Balaam to tempt God, to see how far they
can go ; to see if God has forbidden this and that
mean, or cowardly, or covetous, or ambitious deed.
So they soon settle for themselves what God has
forbidden and what he has not ; and their rule of
life becomes this — that whatsoever is safe, and
1 82 BALAAM. [SERM.
whatsoever is profitable, is pretty sure to be rigbt ;
aud after that no wonder if, like Balaam, they
indulge themselves in every sort of sin, provided
only it is respectable, and does not hurt them in
the world's eyes.
And all the Avhile they keep up their religion.
Av, they are often more attentive than ever to
religion, because their consciences pinch them at
times, and have to be silenced and drugged, by
continual churchgoings and chapelgoings, and
readings and prayings, in order that they may be
able to say to themselves with Balaam : ' Thus saith
' Balaam, he who heard the word of God, and had
' the knowledge of the Most High.'
So they say to themselves, ' I must be right.
' How religious I am ; how fond of sermons, and of
' church services, aud church restorations, and
' missionary meetings, and charitable institutions,
' and everytiiing that is good and pious. I must be
' right with God.' — Deceiving their ownselves, and
saying to themselves, ' I am rich and increased
* with goods, I have need of nothing,' and not know-
ing that they are wretched and miserable, and
blind, and naked.
Would God that such people, of whom there
are too many, would take iSt. John's warnmg, and
buy of the Lord gold tried in the fire — the true
gold of honesty, that they may be truly rich, and
XIV.] BALAAM. 183
anoint their eyes with eye-salve, that they may
see themselves for once as they are.
But what does this story teach ns concerning
God ? For remember, as I tell you every Sunday,
that each fresh story in the Pentateuch reveals to
us something fresh about the character of God.
What does Balaam's story reveal ? Balaam him-
self tells us in the text : —
' God is not a man that he should lie, nor the
* son of man that he should repent. Hath he said,
' and shall he not do it ?'
Yes. Fancy not that any wishes or prayers of
yours can persuade God to alter his everlasting
laws of right and wrong. If he has commanded
a thing, he has commanded it because it is accord-
ing to his everlasting laws, which cannot change,
because they are made in his eternal image and
likeness. Therefore if God has commanded you
a thing, do it, heartily, fully, without arguing or
complaining. If you begin arguing with God's
law, excusing yourself from it, inventing reasons
why you need not obey it in this particular
instance, though every one else ought, then you
will end, like Balaam, in disobeying the law, and
it will grind you to powder.
But if you obey God's law honestly, with a single
eye and a whole heart, you will find in it a bless-
ing, and peace, and strength, and everlasting life.
SERMON XV.
DEUTERONOMY.
(Third Sunday after Easter.)
Deut. iv. 39, 40.
Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that
the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth be-
neath : there is none else. Thou shalt keep therefore his sta-
tutes anr] his conunandments, which I command thee this day,
that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after
thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth,
which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever.
LEAENED men have argued much of late as to
who wrote the book of Deuteronomy. After
having read a good deal on the subject, I can
only say that I see no reason why we should not
believe the ancient account which the Jews give,
that it was written, or at least spoken, by Moses.
No doubt, there are difficulties in the book.
If there had not been, there would never have
been any dispute about the matter ; but the plain,
broad, common-sense case is this — ■
The book of Deuteronomy is made up of several
great orations or sermons, delivered, says the
work itself, by Moses to the whole people of the
DEUTERONOMY. 185
Jews, before they left tlie wilderness and entered
into the land of Canaan ; wherefore it is called
Deuteronomy, or the second law. In it some
small matters of the law are altered, as was to be
expected, when the Jews were going to change
their place, and their whole way of life. But
the whole teaching and meaning of the book is
exactly that of Exodus and Leviticus. Moreover,
it is, if possible, the grandest and deepest book
of the whole Old Testament. Its depth and wis-
dom are unequalled. I hold it to be the sum and
substance of all political philosophy and morality,
of the true life of a nation. The books of Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, grand as they are, are, as
it were, its children ; growths out of the root
which Deuteronomy reveals.
Now, if Moses did not write it, who did ?
As for the style of it being different from that
of Exodus and Leviticus, the simple answer is —
Why not ? They are books of history and of laws.
This is a book of sermons or orations, spoken first,
and not written, which, of course, would be in a
different style. Besides, why should not Moses
have spoken differently at the end of forty years'
such experience as never man had before or
since ? Every one who thinks, writes, or speaks
in public, knows how his style alters, as fresh
knowledge and experience come to him. Are you
1 86 DEUTERONOMY. [seem.
to suppose that Moses gained nothing by his ex-
perience ?
As for a few texts in it being like Isaiah or
Jeremiah, they are likely enough to be so ; for if
(as I believe) Deuteronomy Avas written long
before those books, what more likely than that
Isaiah and Jeremiah should have studied it, and
taken some of its words to themselves when they
were preaching to the Jews just what Deuteronomy
preaches ?
As for any one else having written it in Moses'
name, hundreds of years after his death, I can-
not believe it. If there had been in Israel
a prophet great and wise enough to write Deuter-
onomy, we must have heard more about him ;
for he must have been famous at the time when
he did live ; while, if he were great enough to
write Deuteronomy, he would have surely written
in his own name, as Isaiah and all tlie other
prophets wrote, instead of writing under a feigned
name, and putting words into Moses' mouth which
he did not speak, and laws he did not give. Good
men are not in the habit of telling lies : much
less prophets of Grod. Men do not begin to play
cowardly tricks of that kind till after they have
lost faith in the liuing God, and got to believe
that God was with their forefathers, but is not
with them. A Jew of the time of the Apocrypha,
XV.] DEUTERONOMY. ^87
or of the time of our Lord, might have done
such a thing, because he had lost faith in the
living: God : but then his work would have been
of a very difterent kind from this noble and
heart-stirring book. For the pith and marrow, the
essence and life of Deuteronomy is, that it is full
of faith in the living God ; and for that very
reason I am going to speak of it to you to-day.
For the rest, whether Moses wi'ote the book
down, and put it together in the shape in which
we now have it, we shall never be able to tell.
The several orations may have been put together
into one book. Alterations may have crept in
by the carelessness of copiers ; sentences may
have been added to it by later prophets — as, of
course, the grand account of IMoses' death, which
probably was, at first, the beginning of the book
of Joshua. And bevond that we need know
nothing — even if we need know that.
There the book is ; and people, if they be wise,
will, instead of trying to pick it to pieces, read and
study it in fear and trembling, that the curses
pronounced in it may not come, and the blessings
pronounced in it may come, upon this English
land.
Now these Jews were to worship and obey
Jehovah, the one true God, and him only.
And why ?
l88 DEUTEEONOMY, [seem.
Why, indeed? You must understand why, or
you will never understand this book of Deuter-
onomy, or any part of the Old Testament, and if
you do not, then you will understand very little,
if anvthino' of the New.
You must understand that this was not to be a
mere matter of religion with the old Jews, this
trusting and obeying the true God. Lideed, the
word reHgion, as far as I know, is never mentioned
once in the Old Testament at all. By religion
we now mean some plan of believing and obeying
God, which will save our souls after we die. But
Moses said nothius: to the Jews about that. He
never even anywhere told them that they would
live again after this life. We do not know the reason
of that. But we may suppose that he knew best.
And as we believe that God sent him, we must
believe that God knew best also ; and that he
thought it good for these Jews not to be told too
much about the next life ; perhaps for fear that
they should forget that God was the living God";
the God of now, as well as of hereafter ; the God
of this life, as well as of the life to come. My
friends, I sometimes think we need putting in
mind of that in these days, as much as those old
Jews did.
However that may be, what Moses promised
these Jews, if they trusted in the living God, was
XV.] DEUTERONOMY. 1 89
that they should be a great nation, they and their
children after them ; that they should drive out
the Canaanites before them ; that they should
conquer their enemies, and that a thousand sliould
flee before one of them ; that they should be
blessed in their crops, their orchards, their gar-
dens ; that they should have none of the evil
diseases of Egypt; that there should be none
barren among them, or among their cattle. In
a word, that they should be thoroughly and always
a strong, happy, prosperous people.
This is what God promised them by Moses, and
nothing else ; and therefore this is what we must
think about, and see whether it has anvthino- to do
with us, when we read the book of Deuteronomy,
and nothing else.
On the other hand, God warned them bv the
mouth of Moses, that if they forgot the Lord God,
and went and worshipped the things round them,
men or beasts, or sun and moon and stars, then
poverty, misery, and ruin of every kind would
surely fall upon them.
And that this last was no empty threat, is
proved by the plain facts of their sacred history.
For they did forget God, and worshipped Baalim,
the sun, moon, and stars ; and ruin of every kind
did come upon them, till they were carried away
captive to Babylon. And this we must think of
190 DEUTEKONOMY. [skrm.
when we read the book of Deuteronomy, and
nothing else.
If they wished to prosper, they were to know
and consider in their hearts that Jehovah was
God, and there was none else. Yes — this was
the continual thought which a true Jew was to
have. The thought of a God who was his God ;
the God of his fathers before him, and the God of
his children after him ; the God of the whole
nation of the Jews, throughout all their gene-
rations.
But not their God only. No. The God of
the Gentiles also, of all the nations upon the
earth. He was to believe that his God alone,
of all the gods of the nations, was the true and
only God, who had made all nations, and ap-
pointed them their times and the bounds of their
habitations.
We cannot understand now, in these happier
days, all that that meant ; all the strength and
comfort, all the godly fear, the feeling of solemn
responsibility, which that thought ought to have
given, and did give, to the Jews — that they were
the people of Jehovah, the one true God.
For vou must remember that all the nations
round tliem then, and all the great heathen nations
afterwards, were, as far as we know, the people of
some god or other. Keligion and politics were
XV.] DEUTERONOMY. 191
with them one and the same thing. They had
some god, or gods, whom they looked to as the
head or king of their nation, who had a special
favour to them, and would bless and prosper them
according as they showed him special reverence,
and after that god tlie whole nation was often
named.
The Ammonites' god was Ammon, the hidden
god, the lord of their sheep and cattle. The Zi-
donians had Ashtoreth, the moon. The Phoeni-
cians worshipped Moloch, the fire. Many of the
Canaanites worshipped Baal, the lord, or Baalim,
the lords — the sun, moon, and stars. The
Philistines afterwards (for we read nothing of
Philistines in Moses' time) worshipped Dagon,
the fish-god ; and so forth. The Egyptians had
gods without number, — gods invented out of
beasts, and birds, and the fruits of the earth, and
the season, and the weather, and the sun and
moon and stars. Each class and trade, from tlie
highest to the lowest, and each city and town
throughout the land, seems to have had its special
god, who was worshipped there, and expected to
take care of that particular class of men, or that
particular place.
What a thought it must have been for the Jews
— all these people have their gods, but they are
all ^^Tong. We have the right God ; the only true
192 DEUTEEONOMY. [seem.
God. They are the people of this god, or of that ;
we are the people of the one true God. They look
to many gods ; we look to the one God, who
made all things, and beside whom there is none
else. They look to one god to bless them in one
thing, and another in another : one to send them
sunshine, one to send them fruitful seasons ; one
to prosper their crops, another their flocks and
herds, and so forth. We look to one God to do all
these things for us ; because he is Lord of all at
once, and has made all.
Therefore we need not fear the gods of the
heathen, or cry to any of them, even in our utmost
distress ; for we belong to him who is before all
gods, the God of gods, of whom it is written :
' Worship him all ye gods ;' and ' it is the Lord who
* made the heaven and the eartli, the sea and all
*that therein is. Him only shalt thou worship,
* and him only shalt thou serve.' If we obey him,
and keep his commandments ; — if we trust in him,
utterly, through good fortune and tlu'ough bad, —
then we must prosper in peace and war, we and
our children after us ; because our prosperity is
grounded on the real truth, and that of the
heathen on a lie ; and all that the heathen ex-
pect their false gods to do for them, one here and
another there, all that the one real God will do
for us, himself alone.
XV.] DEUTERONOMY. 1 93
Do you not see what a power and courage tliat
thought must have given to the Jews ? Do you
not see how worshipping God, and loving God,
and serving God, must have been a very different, a
much deeper, and a truly holier matter to them,
than the miserable selfish thing which is miscalled
religion by too many people now-a-days, by which
a man hopes to creep out of this world into heaven
all by himself, without any real care or love for
his fellow-creatures, or those he leaves behind
him ?
No. An old Jew's faith in God, and obedience
to God, was part of his family life, part of his
politics, part of his patriotism. If he obeyed God,
and clave earnestly to God, then a blessing would
come on him in the field and in the house, on his
crops and on his cattle, going out and coming in ;
and on his children and his children's children to
a thousand generations. He would be helping, if
he obeyed and trusted God, to advance his coun-
try's prosperity ; to insure her success in war and
peace, to raise the name and fame of the Jewish
people among all the nations round, that all might
say, 'Surely this gi-eat nation is a wise and an
' understanding people.'
Thus the duty he owed to God, was not merely
a duty which he owed his own conscience or his
own soul — it was a duty which he owed to his
0
194 DEUTEKONOMY, [sEEM.
family, to his kiiidred, to his country. It was not
merely an oj^inion that there was one God, and
not two ; it was a belief that the one and only
true God was protecting him, teaching him, in-
spiring him, and all his nation. That the true
God would teach their hands to war, and their
fingers to fight. That the true God would cause
their folds to be full of sheep. That their valleys
should stand rich with corn, that S they should
laugh and sing. That the true God would enable
them to sit every man under his own vine and his
own fig-tree, and eat the labour of his hands, he
and his children after him, to perpetual genera-
tions.
This was the message and teaching which God
gave these Jews. It is very different from what
many people now-a-days would have given them, if
they had had the ordering of the matter, and the
making of those slaves into a free nation. But
jDerhaps that is one proof that God did give it
them ; and that the Bible speaks truth when it
says that not man, but God, gave them their law.
No doubt man would have done it differently.
But God's ways are not as man's ways, nor God's
thoughts as man's thoughts.
And God's ways have proved themselves to be
the right ways. His purpose has come to pass.
This little nation of the Jews, inhabiting a country
XV.] DEUTEKONOMY. 195
not as large as Wales, without seaport towns and
commerce, without colonies or conquests — and at
last, for its own sins, conquered itself, and scattered
abroad over the whole civilized world — has taught
the whole civilized world, has converted the whole
civilized world, has influenced all the good and all
the wise unto this day so enormously, that the
world has actually gone beyond them, and become
Christian by fully understanding their teaching
and then- Bible, while they have remained mere
Jews by not fully understanding it. Truly, if that
is not a proof that God revealed something to the
Jews, which they never found out for themselves,
which was too great for them to understand, which
was Grod's boundless message, and not any narrow
message of man's invention — if that does not prove
it, I say, I know not what proof men would have.
But now, I have told you that God bade these
Jews to look for blessings in this hfe, and blessings
on their whole nation, and on their children after
them, if they obeyed and served him. Does God
not bid us to look for any such blessings ? The
Jews were to be blessed in tJds world. Are we
only to be blessed in the next ?
To that the Seventh Article of om- Churcli gives
a plain and positive answer. For it says that those
are not to be heard, who pretend that the old
Fathers, i. e., Moses and the Prophets, looked only
196 DEUTEKONOMY. [SERM.
for transitory promises, i. e., for promises which
would pass away. No. They looked for eternal
promises, which could not pass away, because they
were according to the eternal laws of God, which
stand good both for this world, and for all worlds ;
for this life, and for the life everlasting.
Yes, my friends, settle in your hearts that the
Book of Deuteronomy is meant for you, and for
all the nations upon earth, as much as for the
old Jews. That its promises and warnings are to
you and to your children, as surely as they were to
the old Jews. Ay, that they are meant for every
nation that is, or ever was, or ever will be upon
earth. If you would prosper on the earth, fear God
and keep his commandments ; and know, and con-
sider it in your heart, that the Lord Jesus Christ he
is God in heaven above, and on the earth beneath :
there is none else. He it is who gives grace and
honour. lie it is who delivers out of the hands of
our enemies. He it is who blesses the fruit of the
womb, and the fruit of the flock, and the fruit of
the garden and the field. He is the living God,
in whom this world, as well as the world to come,
lives, and moves, and has its being ; and only by
obeying his laws can man prosper, he and his
children after him, upon this earth of God.
SERMON XVI.
NATIONAL WEALTH.
(Fifth Sunday after Easter.)
De€T. viii. 11—18.
Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping
his commanckaents, and his judgments, and his statutes, whicli
I command thee this day : lest when thou hast eaten and art
full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and
when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and
thy gold is midtiplied, and all that thou hast is multipherl ;
then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy
God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, fi-om
the house of bondage ; who led thee through that great and
terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions,
and drought, where there was no water ; who brought thee
forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the
wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he
might humble thee and that he might prove thee, to do thee
good at thy latter end; and thou say in thine heart. My
power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.
But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God : for it is he that
giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his
c»venant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.
T TOLD you before that the Book of Deut-
-*- eronomy was the foundation of all sound
politics — as one would expect it to be, if its
author were Moses, the greatest lawgiver whom
the world ever saw. But here, in this lesson, is a
proof of the truth of what I said. For here, in
198 NATIONAL WEALTH. [SEKM.
the text, is Moses' answer to the fii'st great ques-
tion in politics — what makes a nation prosperous ?
To that wise men have always answered, as
Moses answered: 'Good government; govern-
' ment according to the laws of God.' That alone
makes a nation prosperous.
But the multitude — who are not wise men,
nor likely to be for some time to come — give a
different answer. They say, 'What makes a
'nation prosperous is its wealth. If Britain be
' only rich, then she must be safe and riglit.'
To which Moses, being a wise lawgiver, and
having, moreover, in him the Spirit of the Lord
who knoweth what is in man, makes a reasonable
liberal, humane answer.
Moses does not deny that wealth is a good
thing. He does not bid them not to try to be
rich. He takes for granted that they will grow
rich ; that the national fruit of their good govern-
ment will be, that they will increase, in cattle and
in crops and in money, and in all which makes an
agricultural people rich.
He takes for granted, I say, that these Jews
will grow very rich ; but he warns them that their
riches, like all other earthly things, may be a curse
or a blessing to them. Nay, that they are not good
in themselves, but mere tools which may be used
for good or for evil. He warns them of a very
XVI.] NATIONAL WEALTH. 199
great danger that riches will bring on them. And
herein he shows his knowledge of the human
heart ; for it is a certain fact, that whenever any
nation has prospered, and their flocks and herds,
and silver and gold, all that they had, have
multiplied, then they have, as Moses warned the
Jews, forgotten the Lord their Grod, and said,
*My power and the might of my hand hath
* gotten me this wealth.'
And it is true, also, that whenever any nation
has begun to say that, they have fallen into con-
fusion and misery, and sometimes into utter ruin,
till they repented, and turned and remembered
the Lord their God, and found out that the
strength of a nation did not consist in riches, but
in virtue.
For it is he that giveth the power to get wealth.
He gives it in two ways.
First, God gives the raw material ; secondly, he
gives the wit to use it.
You will all agree that God gives the first ; that
he gives the soil, the timber, the fisheries, the
coal, the iron.
Do you believe it ? I hope and trust that you
do. But I fear that now-a-days many do not ; for
they boast of the resources of Britain as if we
om'selves had made Britain, and not Almighty
God; as if we had put the coal and the u-on
200 NATIONAL WEALTH. [sERM.
into the rocks, and not Almighty God ages before
we were born.
And if they will not say that openly, at least
they will say, 'But the coal, and iron, and all
* other raw material would have been useless, if it
' had not been for the genius and energy of the
' British race.'
Of course not. But who gave them that genius
and energy ? Who gave them the wit to find the
coal and iron ?
God ; and God gave it to us when we needed
it, and not before.
Think of this, I beseech you ; for it is true, and
wonderful, and a thing of which I may say,
' Come, and I will reason with you of the right-
' eous acts of the Lord.'
Men say, ' As long as England is ahead of the
' world in coal and iron she may defy the world.'
I do not believe it ; for if she became a wicked
nation all the coal and iron in the universe would
not keep her from being ruined.
But even if it were true, which it is not, that
the strength of Britain lies in coal and ii'on,
and not in British hearts, what right have we to
boast of coal and iron ?
Did our forefathers know of them when they
came into this land ? Did they come after coal
and iron ?
XVI.] NATIONAL WEALTH. " 20I
Not they. They came here to settle as small
yeomen ; to till miserable little patches of corn,
of which we should be now ashamed, and to feed
cattle on the moors, and swine in the forests —
and that was all they looked to. Then they
found that there was iron, principally down south,
in Sussex and Surrey ; and they worked it, clum-
sily enough, with charcoal ; and for more than
1200 years they were here in England, with no
notion of the boundless wealth in iron and coal
lying together in the same rocks which God had
provided for them ; or if they did guess at it,
they could not use it, because they could not
work deep mines, being unable to pump out tlie
water; for God had not opened their eyes and
shown them how to do it.
But just when it was wanted, God did show
them. About the middle of the last century the
iron in the Weald was all but worked out ; the
charcoal wood was getting scarcer and scarcer ;
and there was every chance that England, instead
of being ahead of all nations in iron, would have
fallen behind other nations; and then where
should we have been now ?
But — just about 100 years ago — it pleased God
to open the eyes of certain men, and they in-
vented steam-engines. Then they could pump
the mines, then they could discover and use the
202 NATIONAL WEALTH. [SERM.
vast riches of our coal-mines. Then, too, sprung
up a thousand useful arts and manufactui-es ;
while the land, not being wanted for charcoal
and firewood, as of old, could be cleared of
wood, and thousands of acres set free to grow corn.
Population, which had been all but standing
still, without increasing, has now more than
doubled, and wealth inestimable has come to
this generation, of which our forefathers never
dreamed.
Now what have we to boast of in that ? What,
save to confess ourselves a very stupid race, who
for 1200 years could not discover, or at least use,
the boundless wealth which God had given us, be-
cause we had not wit enough to invent so simple
a thing as a steam-engine ?
All we should do, instead of boasting, is to
bless God that he revealed to us just what we
needed, and at the very time at which we needed
it, and confess that it is He that giveth us power
to get wealth. It is he that hath made us, and
not we ourselves.
Look, again, at anotlier case, even more extra-
ordinary, which has happened during our own
times — indeed, within the last ten years — the dis-
covery of gold in Australia.
There had been rumours and whispers of gold
for years before : and yet no one looked for gold,
XVI.] NATIONAL ^VTEALTH. 203
cared for it, hardly believed in it. God had
dulled their understanding and blinded their
eyes, for some good purpose of his own. That is
what the Bible would have said of such a matter ;
and that is what we should say.
And at last, some man finds lying out upon the
downs, a huge lump of gold — by accident (as men
call it — by the special providence of God, as they
ought to call it) ; and at that every one starts up
and awakes, and begins looking for gold. And
now that their eyes are opened, behold ! the gold
is everywhere. Not merely in lonely forests and
unexplored mountains, but on farms where the
sheep have been pastm-ed for years past ; ay, even
Melbourne streets were full of gold, under the feet
of the passengers, and the wheels of the carriages ;
there had the gold been all along : but men could
not see it, till God opened their ^eyes. Verily,
verily, God is great, and man is small. I do not
say that this was a miracle, in the common mean-
ing of the word; but I do say that this was a
striking instance of that everlasting and sj)ecial
providence of the living God, who ordereth all
things in heaven and earth, from the rise of a
nation to the fall of a sparrow ; and does so, not
by breaking his own laws, but by making his laws
work exactly as he will, when he will, and
where he will ; and I say that it, is a fresh proof
204 NATIONAL WEALTH. [sEEM.
of the gi'eat saying, tliat no man can see a thing
unless God shows it him. For it is the Lord who
gives us power to get wealth. It is he that hath
made us, and not we ourselves, and in him we
live, and move, and have our being.
This, then, was what Moses commanded — to
remember that they owed all to God. What they
had, they had of God's free gift. What they
were, they were by God's free grace. Therefore
they were not to boast of themselves, their num-
bers, their wealth, their armies, their fair and
fertile land. They were to make their boast of
God, and of God's goodness. He that gloried was
to glory in the Lord, and confess that a Syrian
ready to perish was their father Jacob, when the
Lord had mercy on him, and made him the head
of a great tribe, and the father of a great nation ;
that not themselves, but God, had brought them
out of Egypt with signs and wonders ; that they
got not the land in possession by their own bow,
neither was it their own sword that helped them,
but that God had driven out before them nations
greater and mightier than they.
This they were to remember, because it was
true. And this we are to remember, because it is
more or less true of us. God has put us where
we are. God has made of us a great nation ; God
has discovered to us the immense riches of this
XVI.] NATIONAL WEALTH. 205
land. It is lie that liatli made us, and not we
ourselves.
But more. You will see that Moses warns
them that if they forget God, the Lord who
brought them out of the land of Egypt, they
would go after other gods.
He cannot part the two things. If they forget
that God brought them out of Egypt, they will
turn to idolatry, and so end in ruin.
Now why was this ?
Why should not the Jews have gone on wor-
shipj)ing one God, even if they had forgotten that
he brought them out of the land of Egypt ?
Some people now-a-days think that they would,
and that they might have very well been what is
called monotheists, without believing all the
story of the signs and wonders in Egypt, and the
passage of the Eed Sea, and the giving of the law
to Moses.
Such men may be very learned ; but there is
one thing of which they know very little, and
that is, human nature. Moses knew human na-
ture ; and he knew that if men forgot that God
was the living God, the acting God, who had
helped them once, and was helping them always,
and only believed about there being one God far
away in heaven, and not two, that that sort of
dead faith in a dead God would never keep them
2o6 NATIONAL WEALTH. [SEBM.
from idols. Tliey would want gods who would
help them, who would hear their prayers, to
whom they could feel gratitude and trust ; and
they would invent them for themselves, and begin
to worship things in the heavens above, and the
earth beneath, because they had forgotten their
true friend and helper, the living God.
And so shall we. If we forget that God is the
living God, who brought our forefathers into this
land ; who has revealed to us the wealth of it
step by step, as we needed it ; who is helping and
blessing us now, every day and all the year round,
— then we shall begin worshipping other gods. I
do not mean that we shall worship idols — though
I do not see why our childrens' children should
not do so a few hundred years hence, if we teach
them to forget the living God. There are too
many Cluistians at this day who worship saints,
and idols of wood and stone ; and so may our
descendants do — or do even worse.
But we ourselves shall begin — indeed we are
doing it too much already — worshipping the so-
called laws of nature, instead of God who made
the laws ; and so honouring the creature above
the creator ; or else we shall worsliip the pomps
and vanities of this world, pride and power, money
and pleasm-e, and say in our hearts, 'These are
' our only gods which can help us — these must we
XVI.] NATIONAL WEALTH. 207
obey.' Whicli if we do, this land of England will
come to ruin and shame, as sm-ely as did the land
of Israel in old time.
If we do not believe in the living God, we
shall believe in something worse than even a
dead god. For in a dead god — a god who does
nothing, but lets mankind and the world go their
own way — no man nor nation ever will care to
believe.
And now, my dear friends, remember that a
nation is, after all, only the people in that nation ;
you, and I, and our neighbours, and our neigh-
bours' neighbours, and so forth ; and that there-
fore, in as far as we are wrong, we do our worst
to make the British nation wrong. If we give
way to ungodly pride and self-sufficiency, then we
are injuring ourselves ; and not only that, but
injuring our neighbours and our children after us,
as far as we can. And therefore our duty is, if
we wish well to our nation, not to judge our neigh-
bour, nor our neighbour's neighbour, but to judge
ourselves.
If we go on trusting in ourselves, rather than
God ; if we keep within us the hard self-sufficient
spirit, and boast to om-selves (though we may be
ashamed to boast to our neighbours), ' My power
' and the strength of my hands have got me this
' and that ;' and in fact live under the notion, which
2o8 NATIONAL WEALTH. [sEEM.
too many have, that we could do very well without
God's help, if God would let us alone ; then we
are heaping up ruin and shame for ourselves and
for our children after us. Euin and shame, I say.
We are apt to forget how easy and common it is
for God to turn the wisdom of men into folly ; to
frustrate the tokens of the liars, and make the
prophets mad. How men blow great bubbles, and
God bursts them with the slightest touch. How,
when all seems well, and men cry peace and safety,
sudden destruction comes upon them unawares.
How, when men say, ' Soul, take thine ease, eat,
' drink, and be merry thou hast much goods laid
' up for many yeai's,' God answers, * Thou fool,
' this night shall thy soul be required of thee.'
My friends, we see God doing thus in these
very days, by great nations, by great branches of
industry. Look at the American war, look at the
Manchester cotton famine, and see how God can
confound the strong and cunning, and blind their
eyes to the ruin which is coming, till it is come
in all its might. And then think, if it be so
easy for him to confound such as them, is it less
easy for him to confound you and me, if we begin
to fancy that we can do without him, and ask,
' Doth God perceive it? Or is there knowledge
' in the Most High ? We are they that ought to
* speak. Who is Lord over us ?'
XVI.] NATIONAL WEALTH. 209
Yes, in this sense God is, indeed, a jealous God,
wlio will not give his honour to another. And a
blessed thing for men it is that God is a jealous
God, that he tvill punish us for trusting in
anything but him, — will punish us for trusting
in ourselves, or in our wisdom, or in wealth, or in
science, or in armies and navies, or in constitu-
tions and laws ; in anything, in short, save him
the living God.
For if he left us alone to go our own way with-
out trusting or fearing him, we should surely go
do^Ti and down (as the Chinese seem to have
gone down), generation after generation, till we
became only a mere cunning and spiteful sort of
animals, hateful and hating one another. But
when we are chastened for our folly, we are
chastened by him that we may be partakers of his
holiness ; that we may be his children, looking up
to him as our father, from whom comes every
good and perfect gift ; the Father of Lights^ with
whom is no variableness or shadow of tm-ning ; and
who therefore 'will and can give us his children
light, more and more to understand those his in-
variable and eternal laws, by which he has made
earth and heaven ; who has given us his Son
Jesus Clirist our Lord, and will with liim likewise
freely give us all things.
SER3I0X XVII.
THE GOD OF THE KAIK
(Fifth Suiulaij after Easter.)
Deut. xi. 11, 12.
The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and
Yalleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land
-which the Lord thy God careth for : the eyes of the Lord thy
God are alway.s upon it, from the beginning of the year even
unto the end of the year.
T TOLD you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of
-*- the Holy Land, that it seems as if God had
meant specially to train that strange people the
Jews, by putting them into a country where they
must trust Him, or become cowards and helpless ;
that so they might learn not to fear the powers of
Nature which the heathen worshipped, but to fear
him the livins: God.
In this chapter is another instance of the same.
They were to be an agricultural people. Their
very worship was (if you can understand such a
thing now-a-days) to be agricultural. Pentecost
was a feast of the first fruits of the harvest. The
Feast of Tabernacles was a 2:reat national harvest
THE GOD OF THE RAIN. 2ll
home. The Passover itself, thoagh not at first an
agricultural festival, became one by the waving of
the Paschal sheaf, which gave permission to the
people to begin their spring harvest ; — so tho-
roughly were they to be an agricultural and cattle-
feeding people. They were going into a good land,
a land of milk and honey and oil oKve ; a land of
vines and figs and pomegranates ; a rich land :
but a most uncertain land ; a land which might
yield a splendid crop one year, and be almost
barren the next.
It was not as the land of Egypt, — a land which
was, humanly speaking, sm-e to be fertUe, because
always supplied with water, brought out of the
Nile by dykes and channels which spread in a net-
work over every field, and where — as I believe is
done now — the labourer turned the water from
one land to the other simply by moving the earth
with his foot.
It was a mountain land, a land of hiDs and
valleys, and drank water of the rain, of heaven.
A land of fountains of water, which required to be
fed continually by the rain. In that hot climate, it
depended entirely on God's providence from week
to week, whether a crop could grow.
Therefore it was a land which the Lord cared
for — a land which needed his special help, and it
had it. ' The eyes of the Lord God were always
212 THE GOD OF THE EAIN. [sEEM.
' upon it, from the beginning of the year unto the
' end of the year.'
Beautiful, simple, noble, true words — deeper
than all the learned words, however true they
may be (and true they are, and to be listened to
with respect), which men talk about the laws of
Nature and of weather. Who would change
them for all the scientific phrases in the world ?
The eyes of the Lord were upon the land. It
needed his care ; and therefore his care it had.
Therefore the Jew was to understand from his
first entry into the land, that his prosperity
depended utterly on God. The laws of weather,
by which the rain comes up off the sea, were un-
known to him. They are all but unknown to us
now. But they were known to God. Not a drop
could fall without his providence and will ; and
therefore they were utterly in his power.
* And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken
* diligently unto my commandments which I com-
' mand you this day, to love the Lord your God,
* and to serve him with all your heart and with
* all your soul, that I will give you the rain of
* your land in his due season, the first rain and
' the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy
' corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will
* send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou
* mayest eat and be full. Take heed to your-
XVII.] THE GOD OF THE EAIN. 21 3
' selves, that your lieart be not deceived, and ye
' turn aside, and serve other gods, and worsliip
' tliem ; and then the Lord's wrath be kindled
' against you, and he shut up the heaven, that
' there be no rain, and that the land yield not
' her fruit ; and lest ye perish quickly from off the
' good land which the Lord giveth you.'
Now the Bible story is, that this warning came
true. More than once we read of drought — long,
and severe, and ruinous. Jn one famous case,
there was no ram for three years ; and Ahab has
to go out to search through the land for a scrap of
pasture, * Peradventure we shall find grass enough
' to save the horses and mules alive.'
And most distinctly does the Bible say, that
these droughts came at times when the Jews liad
fallen into idolatry, and profligacy therewith.
That is the Scripture account. And if you believe
in the living God, whose providence ordereth all
things in heaven and earth, that account will
seem reasonable and credible to you.
What special means God used to bring about
these great droughts, we cannot know, any more
than we can know why a storm or a shower should
come one week and not another. And we need
not know. God made the world, and God governs
the world, and that is enough for us.
Be that as it may, Moses goes down to the very
214 THE GOD OF THE KAIN. [sERM.
root and ground, and true cause of the riches of
the land, and of the rainfall, and of the prosperity
of the Jews, and of the prosperity of any living
nation on earth, when he says — Therefore shall ye
lay up these my words in your heart and in your
soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand,
that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
Ye shall lay up these my words in your heart
and your soul, and teach them your children, when
thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walk-
est by the way, when thou liest down, and when
thou risest up. That is, thou shalt believe con-
tinually in a living God — a God who is work-
ing everywhere at every moment, about thy path
and about thy bed, and spying out all thy ways ;
and not only about thee, but about all that thou
seest. From him comes alike rain and sunshine ;
from him comes the life of man ; from him comes
all which makes it possible for man to live upon
the earth.
And it is a plain fact, that the Jews for a long
time did believe this — at least the prophets, psalm-
ists, and good men among them — to the most in-
tense degree ; to a degree in which perhaps no
nation has believed it since. With them God is
everything, and man nothing. Man finds out
nothing: God reveals it to him. Man's intellect
does nothing : the Spirit of God gives him imder-
xvn.] THE GOD OF THE EAIN. 2 I 5
standing to do it — even, says Isaiah, understand-
ing to plough, and to sow, and to reap his crops
in due season. It is the Sj)irit of God, according
to the prophets and psalmists, which makes the
difference between a man and a beast. But upon
the beasts too, and the green things of the earth,
and on all nature, the Spirit of God works. He is
the Lord and giver of life. Take only those four
Psalms, viii., xviii., xxix., civ., and learn from them
what the old Jews thought of this wonderful world
in which we live. —
' There all wait upon thee' — all living things by
land and sea — ' that thou mayest give them meat
* in due season. When thou givest it them, they
* gather it. When thou openest thy hand, they
* are filled with food. When thou hidest thv face,
* they are troubled. When thou takest away their
* breath, they die, and are turned again to tlieir
' dust. When thou lettest thy breath go forth,
' they shall be made, and they shall renew the
' face of the earth.'
So again, in the world of man, God is the living
Judge, the living overlooker, re warder, punish er
of every man, not only in the life to come, but in
this life. His providence is a special providence.
But not such a poor special providence as men
are too apt to dream of now-a-days, which inter-
feres only now and then on some great occasion,
21 6 THE GOD OF THE KAIN. [sEEM.
or on behalf of some very favoured persons, but a
special providence looking after every special act
of man, and of the whole universe, from the fall of
a sparrow to the fall of an emphe.
And it is this intense faith in the living God,
which can only come by the inspiration of the
Spirit of God, which proves the Old Testament to
be truly inspired. This it is which makes it dif-
ferent from all books in the world. This it is, I
hold, wliich marks the canon of Scripture. For in
the Apocrypha — true, noble, and good as most of it
is — you do not find the same intense faith in the
living God, or anything to be compared there-
with; and that for the simple reason, that the
Jews, at the time the Apocrjqiha was written, were
losing that faith very fast. They felt themselves
that there was an immense difference between
anything that they could write and what the old
psalmists and prophets had written. They felt
that they could not Avrite Scripture. All they
could do was to wiite commentaries about it, and
to carry out in their own fashion Moses' com-
mand : ' Thou shalt bind my words for a sign
' upon your hands, and they shall be as
' frontlets between your eyes, and thou shalt
' write them upon the doorposts of thine house.'
They were right in that; but as they lost faith
in the living God, they began to observe the
XVII.] THE GOD OF THE EAIN. 217
command in the letter, and neglect it in the
spirit.
You know, some of you at least, how these words
were misused afterwards ; how the Scribes and
the Pharisees, in their zeal to carry out the letter
of the law, went about with texts of Scripture on
their foreheads, and wrists, and the hems of
their robes, enlarging then- phylacteries, as
our Lord said of them. But all the time they did
not understand the texts, or love them, or get any
good from them ; but only made them excuses for
hating and scoffing at the rest of the world. They
had them written only on their foreheads, not on
their hearts — an outside and not an inside reK-
gion. They had lost all faith in the living God.
God had spoken of course to their forefathers : but
they could not believe that he was speaking to
them — not even when he spoke by his only
begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, and the
express image of his person. God, so they held, had
finished his teaching when Malachi uttered his last
prophecy. And now it was for them to teach, and
expound the law at secondhand. There could be
no more prophets, no more revelation ; and when
one came and spoke with authority, at first hand,
out of the depth of his own heart, he was to
be persecuted, stoned, crucified. No. They had
the key of knowledge ; and no man could enter in.
2 1 8 THE GOD OF THE KAIN. [seem.
unless tliey cliose to open the door. Nothing new
could be true. John the Baptist came neither
eating nor drinking, and they said, He hath a
devil. The Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and they said. Behold a gluttonous man and a
wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.
And meanwhile the poor, the ignorant, those
whose hearts were reaUy in earnest, were looking
out for a prophet and a deliverer — often going
after false prophets, with Theudas and Barcochab
into the wilderness ; but going, too, to be baptized
with the baptism of John, and crowding in thou-
sands to hear our Lord preach to them of the
living God of whom Moses had preached of old ;
while the Scribes and Pharisees sat at home,
wrapped up in their narrow shallow book-divinity,
and said, ' This people who knoweth not the law
' is accursed.' Nothing new could be true. It must
be put do\ATi, persecuted down, lest the Romans
should come and take away their place and nation.
But they did not succeed. Om- Lord and his
truth, whom they crucified and buried, rose again
the thhd day, and conquered ; and the Romans
came, after all, and took away their place and
nation. And so they failed, as all will fail, who
will not believe in the living God.
My friends, all these things were written for
our example. As it was then, so may it be again.
xvri.] THE GOD OF THE EAIN, 219
There may come a time in this land when
people shall profess to worship the word of God ;
and yet, like those old scribes, make it of none
effect by their own commandments and traditions.
When they shall command men, like the scribes, to
honour every word and letter of the Bible, and yet
forbid them to take the Bible simply and literally
as it stands, but only their interpretation of the
Bible. When they shall say, with the scribes, ' No-
' thing new can be true. God taught the apostles,
* and therefore he is not teaching us. God
* worked miracles of old ; but whosoever thinks
' that God is working miracles now is a Pantheist
' and a blasphemer. God taught men of old the
* thing which they knew not ; but whosoever
* dares to say that he does so now is bringing
' heresy and false doctrine, and undermining the
' Christian faith by science falsely so called.'
And all because they have lost faith in the
living God — the ever- working, ever-teaching,
ever-inspiring, ever-governing God whom our
Lor Jesus Christ revealed to men ; in whom the
Apostles, and the Fathers, and the great middle-
age Schoolmen, and the Eeformers, believed, and
therefore learned more and more, and taught men
more and more, concerning God, and the dealings
of God, as time went on.
And then, when they see ignorant people run-
220 THE GOD OF THE EAIN. [sEEM.
ning after quacks and impostors, spirit-rappers
and table-turners, St. Simonians and Mormons,
and false prophets of every kind, tliey will liave
notMng to say but ' This people which knoweth not
' the law is accursed,' While when they see any-
thing like new truth, or new teaching from God
appear, instead of welcoming the light, and going
to meet the light, and accepting the light, they
will say, ' What shall we do ? For all men will
' believe on him, and then the powers of this world
* will come and take away our station and our
* order ?' As if Christ could not take better care
of his Church, for which he died, than they can in
his stead ! And so they will persecute God's ser-
vants, in the name of God, and call upon the law
to put down by force the men whom they cannot
put down by reason.
From ever falling into that state of stupid lip-
belief, and outward religion, and loss of faith in
the living God : good Lord deliver us !
From all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-
glory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and
malice, and all uncharitableness : good Lord de-
liver us !
From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism ;
from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy word
and commandment : good Lord deliver us !
For if people ever fall into that frame of mind
XVII.] THE GOD OF THE RADf. 221
(as did the Scribes and Pharisees), and the good
Lord do not deliver them from it, it will surely
happen to them as it is written in the Bible.
The powers of this world will come and take
away their place, and their power, and their station :
but meanwhile the truth which they think that
they have stifled will rise again, for Christ who is
the truth will raise it again ; and it shall conquer,
and leaven the hearts of men till all be leavened ;
and while the Scribes and Pharisees shall be cast
into the outer darkness of discontented and hope-
less bigotry, the kingdoms of the world, which they
fancied were the devil's dominion, shall become
the kingdoms of God and of his Christ, and be
adopted into that holy and ever-growing Church
of which it is written, that the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it, for in it is the Spirit of God,
to lead it into all truth.
To which blessed end may God bring us, and
our children after us. Amen.
SERMON xvni.
THE DEATH OF MOSES.
(First Sunday after Trinity.)
Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6.
So Moses the servant of tlie Lord died there in the land of
Moab, according to the -word of the Lord. And he buried
him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor :
but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.
Ct OME might regi'et that the last three chapters
^ of Deuteronomy are not read among our Sun-
day lessons. There was not, however, room for
them ; and I do not doubt that those who chose
our lessons knew better than I what chapters they
ought to choose. We may, however, read them
for ourselves, not only m the daily lessons, but as
often as we choose. And well worth reading they
are.
For I know no stronger proof of the truth of the
book of Deuteronomy, and of the whole Pentateuch,
than its ending so differently from what we should
have expected, or indeed wished. If things went
in this world, as they do in novels and fables,
according to man's notion of what is right and
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 223
good, then Moses and his history would have had
a very different ending.
And if the story of Moses had been of man's
invention, we should have heard — I think, from
what we know of the fables, ' myths,' as they call
them now, which nations have invented about
themselves, and their own early history, we may
guess fairly what we should have heard — how
Moses brought the Jews into the land of Canaan,
and estabhshed his laws, and reigned over them,
and died in honour and great glory — if he died at
all, and was not taken up into the skies, and
changed into a star, or into a god ; — and how he
was bm-ied with great pomp ; and how liis sepul-
chre did remain among the Jews until that day ;
and probably how men worshipped at it, and
miracles were worked at it, and so forth.
Also, we should have heard how, as soon as the
Israelites came into the land of Canaan, they
began forthwith to serve the Lord with all their
heart and soul, as they never did afterwards, and
to keep Moses' law, while it was yet fresh in their
minds, more exactly than ever they did after-
wards ; and, in short, we should have had one of
those stories of a 'golden age,' a 'good old time,'
a pattern -time of early pui'ity and devotion, of
which natious and chm-ches, of all tongues and all
creeds, have been so ready to di-eam in their
2 24 THE DEATH OF MOSES. [SEBM.
own case; and wliicli they have used, not alto-
gether ill, to rebuke vice in their own day, by
saying, ' Look how perfect your forefathers were.
' Look how you, their unworthy children, have
' fallen from their faith and their virtue.'
This, I thuik, is what we should have been told
if the Pentateuch had been the invention of man.
This is exactly what we are not told ; but, on the
contrary, the very opposite.
What we are told is disappointing, sad, gloomy,
full of dark fears and warnings about what the
Jews will be and what they will have to endure.
But it is far more true to human nature, and to
the facts wliich we see in the world about us,
than any story of a good old time would have been.
They are still wandering in the land of Moab,
when the time draws near when Moses must die.
He is a hundred and twenty years old, but hale
and vigorous still. His eye is not dim, nor his
natural force abated. But the Lord has told
him that his death is near. He gives the com-
mand of the army of Israel to Joshua the son of
Nun, and then he speaks his last words.
Songs they are, dark and rugged, like all the
higher Hebrew poetry; but, like it, full of the
very Spirit of God, — the Spirit of wisdom and un-
derstanding, the Spirit of faith and of the fear of
the Lord,
XVIII.] THE DEATH OF MOSES. 22$
There are three of these songs, which seem to
belong to those last days of his.
The Prayer of Moses the man of God — which is
our 90th Psalm, our burial Psalm. We all know
the sadness of that Psalm ; its weariness, as of one
who had laboured long and would fam be at rest. Its
confession of man's frailty — fading away suddenly
like the grass. Its confession of God's strength
— God from everlasting, before the mountains
were brought forth. Its eternal gospel of hope
and comfort, that the strength of God takes pity
on the weakness of man—' Lord, thou hast been
' our refuge, from one generation to another.'
Then comes the Song of the Ptock— the song
of which (it seems) the Lord said to him, ' Write
* this song, and teach it the children of Israel, that
' it may be a witness for me against them.'
And so, Moses writes ; and seemingly before all
the congregation of Israel, according to the cus-
tom of those times, he chants his death sont^, the
Song of the Piock. It is such a song as we should
expect from him. God is the Eock. He was
thinking, it may be, of the everlasting rocks of
Sinai, where God had appeared to him of old.
But God is the true, everlasting Eock, on which
all things rest; the Eternal, the Self-existent, the
I Am, whom he was sent to preach to men. But
he is a good and righteous God likewise. His
Q
225 THE DEATH OF MOSES. [sEKM.
"work is perfect. 'A God of truth, and without
* iniquity, just and right is he.'
In him Moses can trust : but not in the children
of Israel ; they are a perverse and crooked gene-
ration, who have waxen fat and kicked. God has
done all for them, but they wdll not obey him.
Even in the wilderness they have worshipped
strange gods, and sacrificed to devils, not to God,
— and so they will do after Moses is gone ; and
then on them will come all the curses of which he
has so often warned them. ' The sword without, and
* terror within, will destroy both the young man
* and the maiden, the suckling with the man of
' gi-ey hairs. Oh that they were wise, that they
' would understand this ! that they would consider
' their latter end ! How should one of them chase
' a thousand ; and two put ten thousand to flight.'
What a people they might be, and what a future
there is before them, if they would but be true to
God ! But they will not. And so Moses' death-
song, like his life's wish, ends in disappointment,
and sadness, and dread of the evils which are
coming upon his beloved countrymen.
Lastly, he blesses them, tribe by tribe, in
strange and grand words ; such as dying men
utter, who, looking earnestly across the dark river
of death, see fm-ther than they ever saw amid the
cares and temptations of life. And he blesses
xviu.] THE DEATH OF MOSES. 227
them. He will say nothing of them but good. He
will speak not of what they will be, but of what
they ought to be, and can be. But not in their
own strength, — only in the strength of God. Man
is to be nothing to the last ; and God is all in all.
' There is none like the God of Jeshurun, who
' rideth on the heavens, in thy help ; and his ex-
' cellency in the sky. The eternal God is thy
' refuge, and under thee are the everlasting arms.
' Happy art thou, oh Israel ! Who is like unto
' thee, oh people saved by the Lord ! — the shield
' of thy help, and the sword of thine excellency ;
' and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee,
' and thou slialt tread on their high places.'
Those are the last words of Moses. Then he
goes up into the mountain top, never to return ;
and tlie children of Israel are left alone with God
and their own souls, to obey and prosper, or dis-
obey and die.
The time of their schooling is past ; and their
schoolmaster is gone for ever. They are no more
to be under a human tutor. They are come to
man's estate, and man's responsibility, and they
are to work out their own fortunes by their own
deeds, like every other soul of man.
For Moses himself must not enter into the ])ro-
mised laud. In spite of all his faith, his courage,
his endurance, his patriotism, he has sinned against
228 THE DEATH OF MOSES. [sEEM.
Gocl, and he must be punished ; and punished, too,
in kind — in the very thing which he will feel most
deeply, in being shut out from the very haj^pi-
ness on which he has set his heart all along.
He who has brought the Jews to the edge of
the promised laud, must not have the honour and
glory of taking them into it. He must have no
lionour and glory. That must be God's alone.
Man must be nothing, and God all in all. Moses
must die in faith, not having received the pro-
mises, as many another saint of God has died.
And why? To teach him, and the Jews and
us, that man is nothing, and God is all in all.
Moses had given way to the very temptation
which would beset such a man. He had spoken
unadvisedly with his lips, and said, ' Hear now, ye
* rebels, or ye fools, must we bring you water out
* of this rock ?' We — and not God. He had claimed
for himself the power and glory of working
miracles. The miracles, he thought for a moment,
were his, and not God's. And it may be that this
was not the only time that he had so sinned. He
may naturally have thought that he had some
special power and influence with God. But be that
as it may, the Jews were trained to believe that the
miracles were God's, God's immediate work, and
not performed by the wisdom, or sanctity, or super-
natural povver, of any saint or prophet whatsoever*
XVIII.] THE DEATH OF MOSES. 229
Let tlie Jews once learn to give the lionour and
glory to Moses, and not to God, and the whole of
their strange education went for nothing. Instead
of worshipping God, they would begin to worship
saints. Instead of trusting in God,, they would
begin to trust in men ; whether on earth or in
heaven matters not. If Moses was to have the
honour and glory, the Jews would surely grow
into a superstitious, saint-worshipping, miracle-
mongering people, and come to ruin and slavery
thereby. They were to fear God and nought else.
To trust in God and nought else.
So Moses must vanish out of their sight, sadly
and mysteriously. All they know of him is, that
he is punished for a sin which he committed long
ago, as you and I may be. All they know of his
death and burial is, that his body was not left
foully to the birds of the air, and the beasts of the
field. For the Lord buried him. They know not
how, and did not need to know. And we need
not know. Enough for them and for us to
know, tliat no dishonour was done to the grand
old man ; that as he died far away on the lonely
mountain top, without a child to close his eyes,
his last look fixed upon the good land and large
which lay spread out below, of entering which he
had been dreaming, for forty — it may be for more
than forty years — enough for us to know that the
230 THE DEATH OF MOSES. [sERM.
kindly earth received liis body again into her
bosom, and that the true Moses, the immortal
spirit of the man, returned to God who created
him, and inspired him, and sustained him to be
perhaps the greatest man, save One who was
more than man, who ever trod this earth.
So our human feelings — like those of the Jews —
are satisfied. But Moses is not to be worshipped,
by them or by us. No splendid temple is to rise
over his bones. No lamps are to bum, or priests
to chant, round his shrine. No miracles are to
be worked by his relics. No man is to invoke his
patronage and intercession in their prayers. The
people whom he has brought out of Egypt are to
be free ; — free from the slavery of the body ; free
from the more degrading slavery of the soul.
And so they go on over Jordan to fulfil their
strange destiny ; to fight their way into the
promised land, to root out the Canaanite tribes,
whose iniquity was full, whose sins had made
them a nuisance not to be suffered on the earth of
God. But do they go to establish a golden age ;
to become a perfect people ?
Nothing less. To become, according to the
book of Judges, just Avhat Moses foretold, an igno-
rant, selfish, often profligate and disorderly people,
doing each what is right in his own eyes, falling
continually into idolatry, civil war, and slavery to
XVIII.] THE DEATH OF MOSES. 23 1
the heathens round about. Nothing more shows
the truth of this history than its humility, its
continual confession of sin, its readiness to confess
the ugly truth that the Jews are a foolish,
ignorant, unmanageable, lawless, sensual race,
stiffnecked and rebellious, always resisting the
Holy Spirit. The immense difference between
the Old Testament history and that of all other
nations is, that it is a history not of their virtues
but of their sins ; and a history, on the other
hand, of God's punishments and mercies. God
in the Old Testament is all, and the Jews are
nothing ; and one may say that it differs from
all other histories in this, that it is not a history
of the Jews themselves at all, but a history of
God's dealings with them.
If any man chooses to explain that by saying
that the story was all invented by priests and
prophets afterwards, to rebuke the people for
falling into idolatry, he must have his fancy.
Thought is free — for the present at least — though
it is written that for every idle word that men
speak, they shall give account at the day of judg-
ment. But one question I must ask, and I am
sure that British common sense and British honesty
will ask it too — If these prophets were really good
men, fearing God, and wishing to make their
countrvmen fear him likewise, would it not have
232 THE DEATH OF MOSES. [sERM.
been a rather strange way of showing that they
feared God to tell their countrymen a set of fables
and lies? Good men are not in the habit of
telling lies now, and never have been ; for no
lie is of the truth, or can possibly help the truth
in any way ; and all liars have their portion
in the lake Avhich burneth with fire and brimstone.
And that such men as the prophets of whom we
read in the Old Testament did not know that, and
therefore invented this history, or invented any-
thing else, is a thing incredible and absurd.
Here we have the Old Testament, an infinitely
good book, giving us infinitely good advice and
good news, and news too concerning God, — God's
laws, God's providence, God's dealings, such as we
get nowhere else. And shall we believe that
this infinitely good book is founded upon false-
hood ? or that the good men who wrote it could
fancy it necessary to stoop to falsehood, and take
the devil's tools, wherewith to do God's work?
That they may have been imperfectly informed
on some points there is no doubt ; for the Bible
tells us that they were men of like passions with
ourselves, and they may not always have been
true to the Spirit of God who was teaching them,
even as we are not, though he teaches us. They
only knew in part and prophesied in part ; and
now that which is perfect is come, that which is in
xvra.] THE DEATH OF MOSES. 233
part is done away ; the mystery of Christ was
not revealed to them as it has been to us by the
holy apostles and prophets of the new dispensa-
tion, of which St. Paul says, comparing it with the
knowledge which the old Jews had when the
gospel came, that the glory of the law had no
glory, by reason of the more excellent glory of
the gospel. They may, I say, have made slight
errors in unimportant matters, though it is far
more probable, that those errors have crept into
the text, as the Scriptures were copied again
and again through many centuries, by different
scribes, of whose perfect good sense and honesty
Ave cannot be certain. But who that really
values his Bible cares for them any more than he
cares for the spots on the sun which he can find
through a telescope? The sun still shines, and
gives light to the whole earth, and the Bible still
shines, and gives light to every soul of man who
will read it in reverence and faith. But that the
prophets ever invented, or ever dared to tamper
with truth, is a thing not to be believed of men,
whose writings are plainly, by their whole mean-
ing and end, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.
One more reason — and a reason which to me is
unanswerable — for believing, like our forefathers,
that the Old Testament is true. The Old Tes-
.tament, as well as the New, tells us of the ' noble
2 34 THE DEATH OF MOSES. [SERM.
tKits ' of tlie Lord — of certain gracious, and merci-
i'ul, and just things which the Lord did to the
children of Israel. But if that be not true, what
Ibllows ? That God has not done the noble acts
which men thought he had ; and therefore that
(rod is not as noble as men thought he was ; that
men have actually fancied for themselves a better
God than the God who exists already.
Absurd.
Absurd, truly ; and if you choose to call it by
a harder name still, you have a right to do so.
Do not you think that God must be better, not
worse ; more generous, not less ; more conde-
scending, not less ; more just, not less ; more
helpful, not less, than man can fancy or describe ?
Are not the riches of Clu:ist unsearchable, and
the mercies of the Lord boundless ? Is he not
able and willing to do exceeding abundantly be
yond all that we can ask or think? Did not
even St. Paul say that he only knew in part and
l»rophesied in part? And must it not be true of
the whole Bible, what the beloved apostle St. John
says of his own Gospel — 'And there are many
' other things which Jesus did, the which if they
* should be written every one, I suppose that even
' the world itself could not contain the books that
' should be written ?'
Bear that in mind, remembering always that
XVIII.] THE DEATH OF MOSES. 235
the God of the Old Testament is the God of the
New likewise ; and whenever you read, either in
the Old or New Testament, of the noble acts of
the Lord, say boldly, as millions of hearts have
said already, when the good news of the Bible
came to them, ' This is so beautiful that it must
' be true. The Spirit of God in the Bible, and
' the judgment of the Church in all ages, bears
' witness with my spirit that this is true. So
' ouofht God to have done, and therefore surelv so
' hath God done. Shall not the Judge of all the
• earth do EIGHT ?'
THE END.
LONDON: rRINTEU BT WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOUD STRi:liT
AND ca<UCINO CBOSS.
),'>"
SOUTHERN BRANCH
UOS AN<S1^\^ES. CALIF
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL
Y FACILITY
AA 000 378 318 o
^^^€(^xai^^^i3^^ll^^Wf^^^^^^itSS^^^^^^
Wm
'-.'■'i')-
-*
Pi.;
'■■'' v. •_
i««;&'
.'3f*'i;-
fc
SS5:S7Bt.!lL<tf.;??.,^^yi3l
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11