What answer the Lord would make to the modest misgivings of that sweet soul, I cannot say; for again, who am I, that I should put words into the mouth of my Creator and my God? But this I know, that I had rather be— what I am not, and never shall be—such a soul as that in the last day, than own all the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof. Still, it is plain that such persons, however holy, however loving, are not those of whom our Lord speaks in this parable. For they, too, know, and must know, that inasmuch as they showed mercy unto one of the least of the Lord's brethren, they showed it unto Him. But the special peculiarity of the persons of whom our Lord speaks, is that they did not know, that they had no suspicion, that in showing kindness to men, they were showing kindness to Christ. "Lord," they answer, "when saw we Thee?"

It is a revelation to them, in the strictest and deepest sense of the word. A revelation, that is an unveiling, a drawing away of a veil which was before their eyes and hiding from them a divine and most blessed fact, of which they had been unaware. But who are they? I think we must agree with some of the best commentators, among others with that excellent divine and excellent man, now lost to the Church on earth, the late Dean of Canterbury, that they are persons who, till the day of judgment, have never heard of Christ; but who then, for the first time, as Dean Alford says, "are overwhelmed with the sight of the grace which has been working in and for them, and the glory which is now their blessed portion." Such persons, perhaps, as those two poor negresses—to remind you of a story which was famous in our fathers' time—those two poor negresses, I say, who found the African traveller, Mungo Park, dying of fever and starvation, and saved his life, simply from human love—as they sung to themselves by his bedside—

"Let us pity the poor white man; He has no mother to make his bed, No wife to grind his corn."

Perhaps it is such as those, who have succoured human beings they knew not why, simply from a divine instinct, from the voice of Christ within their hearts, which they felt they must obey, though they knew not whose voice it was. Perhaps, I say, it is such as those, that Christ will astonish at the last day by the words, "Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

If this be the true meaning of our Lord's words, what comfort and hope they may give us, when we think, as we are bound to think, if we have a true humanity in us, of the hundreds of millions of heathen now alive, and of the thousands of millions of heathen who have lived and died. Sinful they are as a whole. Sinning, it may be, without law, but perishing without law. For the wages of sin are death, and can be nothing else. But may not Christ have His elect among them? May not His Spirit be working in some of them? May He not have His sheep among them, who hear His voice though they know not that it is His voice? They hear a voice within their hearts whispering to them, "Be loving, be merciful, be humane, in one word be just, and do to others as you would they should do to you." And whose voice can that be but the voice of Christ, and the Spirit of God? Those loving instincts come not from the fleshly fallen nature, or natural man. That says to us, "Be selfish; do not be loving. Do to others not what you would they should do to you, but do to others whatever is pleasant and profitable to yourselves." And alas! the heathen, and too many who call themselves Christians, listen to that carnal voice, and live the life of selfishness and pleasure, of anger and revenge, of tyranny and cruelty—the end of which is death.

But if any among those heathen—hearing within their hearts the other voice, the gracious voice which says, "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you,"—feel that that voice is a good voice and a right command, which must be obeyed, and which it is beautiful and delightful to obey, and so obey it; may we not hope then, that Christ, who has called them, will perfect His own work; and in His own good way, and His own good time, deliver them from their sin and ignorance, and vouchsafe to them at last that knowledge of the true and holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whom truly to know is everlasting life? They are Christ's lost sheep: but they are still His sheep who hear His voice. May He not fulfil His own words to them, and go forth and seek such souls, and lay them on His shoulder, and bring them home; saying to His Church on earth, and to His Church in heaven, "Rejoice with Me: for I have found my sheep which was lost?"

Now if we can thus have hope for some among the heathen abroad, shall we not have hope, too, for some among the heathen at home? for some among that mass of human corruption which welters around the walls of so many of our cities? I am not going to make vain excuses for them; and say they are but the victims of circumstance. The great majority of them are the victims of their own low instincts. They have chosen the broad and easy road of animalism, which leads to destruction. They have sown to the flesh, and they will of the flesh reap corruption. For the laws of God are inexorable; and the curse of the law is sure, namely, "The wages of sin are death." Neither dare I encourage too vast hopes and say, If we had money enough, if we had machinery enough, if we had zeal enough, we might convert them all, and save them all. I dare not believe it. The many, I fear, will always go the broad road; the few the narrow one. And all we dare say is, if we have faith enough, we can convert some. We can at least fulfil our ordination vow. We can seek out Christ's sheep scattered abroad about this naughty world, and tell them of His fold, and try to bring them home.

But how shall we know Christ's sheep when we see them? How, but by the very test which Christ has laid down, it seems to me, in this very parable? Is there in one of them the high instincts—even the desire to do a merciful act? Let us watch for that: and when in the most brutal man, and—alas that I should have to use the words—in the most brutal woman, we see any touch of nobleness, justice, benevolence, pity, tenderness—in one word, any touch, however momentary, of unselfishness,- -let us spring at that, knowing that there is the soul we seek; there is a lost sheep of Christ; there is Christ Himself, working unknown upon a human soul; there is a soul ready for the gospel, and not far from the kingdom of God. But what shall we say to that lost sheep? Shall we terrify it by threats of hell? Shall we even allure it by promises of heaven? Not so—not so at least at first—for that would be to appeal to bodily fear and bodily pleasure, to the very selfishness from which Christ is trying to deliver it; and to neglect the very prevenient grace, the very hold on the soul which Christ Himself offers us. Let us determine with St. Paul to know nothing among our fellow-men but Christ crucified. Let us appeal just to that in the soul which is unselfish; not to the instincts of loss and gain, but to those nobler instincts of justice and mercy; just because they are not the man's or the woman's instincts; but Christ's within them, the light of Christ and the Spirit of Christ, the spirit of love and justice saying, "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you." Do you doubt that? I trust not. For to doubt that is to doubt whether God be truly the Giver of all good things. To doubt that is to begin to disbelieve St. Paul's great saying, "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." To doubt that is to lay our hearts and minds open to the insidious poison of that Pelagian heresy which, received under new shapes and names, is becoming the cardinal heresy of modern disbelief. No; we will have faith in Christ, faith in our creeds, faith in catholic doctrine; and will say to that man or that woman, even as they wallow still in the darkness and the mire, "Behold your God! That cup of cold water which you gave, you knew not why,— Christ told you to give it, and to Him you gave. That night watch beside the bed of a woman as fallen as yourself,—Christ bade you watch, and you watched by Him. For that drunken ruffian, whom you, a drunken ruffian yourself, leaped into the sea to save, Christ bade you leap, and like St. Christopher of old, you bore, though you knew it not, your Saviour and your God to land." And if they shall make answer, "And who is He that I did not know Him? who is He that I should know Him now?" Let us point them—and whither else should we point them in heaven or earth?—to Christ upon the cross, and say, "Behold your God! This He did, this He condescended, this He dared, this He suffered for you, and such as you. This is what He, the Maker of the universe, is like. This is what He has been trying to make you like, in your small degree, every time a noble, a generous, a pitiful, a merciful emotion crossed your heart; every time you forgot yourself, even for a moment, and thought of the welfare of a fellow-man."

If that tale, if that sight, if that revelation and unveiling of Christ to the poor sinful soul does not work in it an abhorrence of past sin, a craving after future holiness, an admiration and a reverence for Christ Himself, which is, ipso facto, saving faith; if that soul does not reply- -it may not be in words, but in feelings too deep for words,—"Yes; this is indeed noble, indeed Godlike, worthy of a God, and worthy therefore to be at once imitated and adored:" then, indeed, the Cross of Christ must have lost that miraculous power which it has possessed, for more than eighteen hundred years, as the highest "moral ideal" which ever was seen, or ever can be seen, by the reason and the heart of man.



SERMON XXXVIII. THE LORD'S PRAYER



Windsor Castle, 1867. Chester Cathedral, 1870.

Matthew vi. 9, 10. "After this manner, therefore, pray ye, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Let us think for a while on these great words. Let us remember that some day or other they will certainly be fulfilled. Let us remember that Christ would not have bidden us use them, unless He intended that they should be fulfilled. And let us remember, likewise, that we must help to fulfil them. We need to be reminded of this from time to time, for we are all inclined to forget it. We are inclined to forget that mankind has a Father in heaven, who is ruling, and guiding, and educating us, His human children, to

"One far off divine event, Toward which the whole creation moves."

We are apt to fancy that the world will always go on very much as it goes on now; that it will be guided, not by the will of God, but by the will of man; by man's craft; by man's ambition; by man's self-interest; by man's cravings after the luxuries, and even after the mere necessities of this life. In a word, we are apt to fancy that man, not God, is the master of this earth on which we live, and that men have no king over them in heaven.

The Lord's Prayer tells us that men HAVE a king over them in heaven, and that that king is a Father likewise—a Father whose name will one day be hallowed above all names. That the world will not always go on as it goes on now, but that the Father's kingdom will come. That above the will of man, there is a will of God, which must be done, and therefore will be done some day. In a word, the Lord's Prayer tells us that this world is under a Divine government; that the Lord, even Jesus Christ our Saviour, is King, be the people never so impatient. That He sitteth between the cherubim, master of all the powers of nature, be the earth never so unquiet. That His power loves justice. That He has prepared equity. That He has executed, and therefore will execute to the end, judgment and righteousness in the earth. That Christ reigns in justice and in love. That He has for those who disobey His laws the most terrible penalties; for those who obey them blessings such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. That He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet and delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father. That on that great day He will prove His royalty, and His Father's royalty, in the sight of all heaven and earth, and make every soul of man aware, in a fashion which none shall mistake, that He is Lord and King. This is the message which the Lord's Prayer brings—a message of mingled fear and joy.

But a message of more joy than fear. Else why does our Lord bid us pray for it that it may come to pass?—pray daily, before we even pray for our daily bread, or the forgiveness of our sins—that His Father's name may be hallowed, His Father's kingdom come, His Father's will be done?

He bids us pray for that because it will bring blessings. Blessings to every soul of man who desires to be good and true. Because it will satisfy every aspiration which has ever risen up from the heart of man after what is noble, what is generous, what is just, what is useful, what is pure. Surely it is so. Consider but these short words of my text, and think what the world would be like if they were fulfilled; what the next world will actually be like when they are fulfilled.

"Hallowed be thy name." But what name? The name of Father. If that name were hallowed by men, there would be an end of all superstitions. The root of all superstitions, fanaticisms, and false religions is this— that they do not hallow the name of Father. They do not see that it is a Holy name, a beautiful and tender as well as an awful and venerable name. They think of fathers, like too many among themselves, proud, and arbitrary, selfish and cruel. They say in their hearts, even such fathers as we are, such is God. Therefore, they shrink from God, and turn from Him to idols, to the Virgin Mary, or Saints, or any other beings who can deliver them (as they fancy) out of the hands of their Father in heaven. If men once learnt to hallow the name of Father, to think of a father as one who not only possessed power but felt love, who not only had rights which he would enforce, and issued commands which must be obeyed, but who felt yearning sympathy for his children's weakness, an active interest in their education, and was ready to labour for, to sacrifice himself for, his family—That would be truly to hallow the name of Father, and look on it as a holy thing, whether in heaven above or in earth beneath.

To hallow the Father's name would abolish all the superstition of the world. And so the coming of the Father's kingdom would abolish all the misrule and anarchy of the world. For the kingdom of God the Father is a kingdom of perfect order, perfect justice, perfect usefulness. Surely the first consequences of that kingdom's coming would be, that every one would be exactly in his right place, and that every one would get his exact deserts. That would indeed be the kingdom of God on earth. The prospect of such a kingdom would be painful enough to those who were in their wrong place, to those who were undeserving. All who were useless, taking wages either from man or from God, without doing any work in return, all these would have but too good reason to dread the coming of the kingdom of God.

But those who were trying earnestly to do their work, though amid many mistakes and failures, why should they dread the coming of the kingdom of God? Why should they shrink from remembering that, though God's kingdom is not come in perfection and fulness, it is here already, and they are in it? Why should they shrink from that thought? They will find it full of comfort, of strength, and hope, if they will but hallow their Father's name, and remember the fact of all facts—that they have a Father in heaven. There are thousands on earth, from the highest to the lowest, who can say honestly—to take the commonest instance—every parent can say it—"I have a heavy work to do, a heavy responsibility to fulfil. God knows I did not seek it, thrust myself into it; it was thrust upon me. It came to me in the course of nature or of society, and circumstances over which I had no control. In one word it was MY DUTY. But now that I have my duty to do, behold I cannot do it. I try my best, but I fail. I come short daily of my own low standard of duty. How much more of God's perfect standard of it! And the burden of responsibility, the regret for failure, is more than I can bear.

To such we may answer, hallow your Father's name, and be of good cheer. YOUR FATHER has given you your work. Because He is a Father, He is surely educating you for your work. Because He is a Father, He will surely set you no task which you are unable to fulfil. Because He is a Father, He will help you to fulfil your task. Your station and calling is His will; and because it is a Father's will it is a good will.

And the Judge of your work—He is no stern taskmaster, no unfeeling tyrant, but Jesus Christ, your Lord, who died for you on the Cross. He knows what is in man. He remembereth that we are but dust. Else the spirit would fail before Him and the souls which He has made. He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, seeing that He was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin. He can sympathise utterly; He can make all just allowances; He will judge not by outward results, but by the inward will and desire. He will judge not by the hearing of the ear, nor the seeing of the eye, as the shallow cruel world judges, but He will judge righteous judgment. Trust your cause to Him, and trust yourself to Him. Believe that if He can sympathise, He can also help; for from Him, as well as from His Father, proceeds the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of power and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and He will inspire you to see your duty, and do your duty, and rejoice in your duty, in spite of weariness and failure, and all the burdens of the flesh and of the spirit.

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." If that were done, it would abolish all the vice of the world, and therefore the misery which springs from vice. Ah, that God's will were but done on earth as it is in the material heaven overhead, in perfect order and obedience, as the stars roll in their courses, without rest, yet without haste; as all created things, even the most awful, fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfil God's word, who hath made them sure for ever and ever, and given them a law which shall not be broken. But above them; above the divine and wonderful order of the material universe, and the winds which are God's angels, and the flames of fire which are His messengers; above all, the prophets and apostles have caught sight of another divine and wonderful order of RATIONAL beings, of races, loftier and purer than man—angels and archangels, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, fulfilling God's will in heaven as it is not alas! fulfilled on earth.

And beside them, beside the innumerable company of angels, are there not the spirits of just men made perfect, freed from the fetters of the gross animal body, and now somewhere in that boundless universe in which this earth is but a tiny speck, doing God's will, as they longed to do it on earth, with clearer light, fuller faith, deeper love, mightier powers of usefulness? Ah, that we were like to them! Ah, that we could perform the least part of our day's work on earth as it is performed by saints and angels for ever in heaven! When we think of what this poor confused world is, and then what it might be, were God's will done therein as it is done in heaven; what it might be if even the little of God's will which we already know, the little of God's laws which are proved already to be certain, were carried out with any earnestness by the majority of mankind, or even of one civilized nation—when we think—to take the very lowest ground—of the health and wealth, the peace and happiness, which would cover this earth did men only do the will of God; then, if we have human hearts within us—if we care at all for the welfare of our fellow- men—ought not this to be the prayer of all our prayers, and ought we not to welcome any event, however awful, which would bring mankind to reason and to virtue, and to God, and abolish the sin and misery of this unhappy world?

To abolish the superstition, the misrule, the vice, the misery of this world. That is what Christ will do in the day when He has put all enemies under His feet. That is what Christ has been doing, step by step, ever since that day when first He came to do His Father's will on earth in great humility. Therefore, that is what we must do, each in our place and station, if we be indeed His subjects, fellow-workers with Him in the improvement of the human race, fellow-soldiers with Him in the battle against evil.

But what we wish to do for our fellow-creatures, we must do first for ourselves. We can give them nothing save what God has already given us. We must become good before we can make them good, and wise before we can make them wise. Let us pray, then, the Lord's Prayer in spirit and in truth. Let us pray that we may hallow the name of God, our Father. Let us pray that His kingdom may come in our own hearts. Let us pray that we may do His will on earth as those whom we love and honour do it in heaven. Let us keep that before us, day and night, as the aim and purpose of our lives. Let us pray for forgiveness of our failures in that; for help to do that better as our years run on. So we shall be ready for the day in which Christ shall have accomplished the number of His elect, and hastened His kingdom. So we shall be found in that dread day, not on the side of evil, but of God; not on the side of darkness, anarchy, and vice, but on the side of light, of justice, and of virtue, which is the side of Christ and of God. And so we, with all those that are departed in the faith of His holy name, shall have our perfect consummation and bliss in His eternal and everlasting glory, to which may He, of His great mercy, bring us all. Amen.



SERMON XXXIX. THE DISTRACTED MIND



Eversley. 1871.

Matthew vi. 34. "Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Scholars will tell you that the words "take no thought" do not exactly express our Lord's meaning in this text. That they should rather stand, "Be not anxious about to-morrow." And doubtless they are right on the whole. But the truth is, that we have no word in English which exactly expresses the Greek word which St Matthew uses in his gospel, and which we are bound to believe exactly expresses our Lord's meaning, in whatever language He spoke. The nearest English word, I believe, is—distracted. Be ye not distracted about to-morrow. I do not mean the vulgar sense of the word—which is losing one's senses. But the old and true sense, which is still used by those who speak good English.

To distract, means literally to pull a thing two different ways—even to pull it asunder. We speak of distracting a man's attention, when we call him off from looking at one thing to make him look at something else, and we call anything which interrupts us in our business, or puts a thought suddenly out of our heads, a distraction. Now the Greek word which St Matthew uses, means very nearly this—Be not divided in your thoughts—do not think of two things at once—do not distract your attention from to- day's work, by fearing and hoping about to-morrow. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof; and you will have quite trouble enough to get through to-day honestly and well, without troubling yourself with to- morrow—which may turn out very unlike anything which you can dream. This, I think, is the true meaning of the text; and with it, I think, agrees another word of our Lord's which St Luke gives—And be ye not of doubtful mind. Literally, Do not be up in the air—blown helpless hither and thither, by every gust of wind, instead of keeping on the firm ground, and walking straight on about your business, stoutly and patiently, step after step. Have no vain fears or vain hopes about the future; but do your duty here and now. That is our Lord's command, and in it lies the secret of success in life.

For do we not find, do we not find, my friends, in practice, that our Lord's words are true? Who are the people who get through most work in their lives, with the least wear and tear, not merely to their bodily health, but to their tempers and their characters? Are they the anxious people? Those who imagine to themselves possible misfortunes, and ask continually—What if this happened—or that? What would become of me then? How should I be able to pull through such a trouble? Where shall I find friends? How shall I make myself safe against the chances and changes of life? Do we not know that those people are the very ones who do little work, and often less than none, by thus distracting their attention and their strength from their daily duty, daily business? That while they are looking anxiously for future opportunities, they are neglecting the opportunities which they have already. While they are making interest with others to help them, they forget to help themselves. That in proportion as they lose faith in God and His goodness, they lose courage and lose cheerfulness; and have too often to find a false courage and a false cheerfulness, by drowning their cares in drink, or in mean cunning and plotting and planning, which usually ends in failure and in shame?

Are those who do most work, either the plotting or intriguing people? I do not mean base false people. Of them I do not speak here. But really good and kind people, honest at heart, who yet are full of distractions of another sort; who are of double mind—look two ways at once, and are afraid to be quite open, quite straightforward—who like to COMPASS their ends, as the old saying is, that is to go round about, towards what they want, instead of going boldly up to it; who like to try two or more ways of getting the same thing done; and, as the proverb has it, have many irons in the fire; who love little schemes, and plots, and mysteries, even when there is no need for them. Do such people get most work done? Far, far from it. They take more trouble about getting a little matter done, than simpler and braver men take about getting great matters done. They fret themselves, they weary themselves, they waste their brains and hearts—and sometimes their honesty besides—and if they fail, as in the chances and changes of this mortal life they must too often fail, have nothing for all their schemings save vanity and vexation of spirit.

But the man who will get most work done, and done with the least trouble, whether for himself, for his family, or in the calling and duty to which God has called him, will be the man who takes our Lord's advice. Who takes no thought for the morrow, and leaves the morrow to take thought for itself. That man will believe that this world is a well-ordered world, as it needs must be, seeing that God made it, God redeemed it, God governs it; and that God is merciful in this—that He rewardeth every man according to his works. That man will take thought for to-day, earnestly and diligently, even at times anxiously and in fear and trembling; but he will not distract, and divide, and weaken his mind by taking thought for to-morrow also. Each day he will set about the duty which lies nearest him, with a whole heart and with a single eye, giving himself to it for the time, as if there was nothing else to be done in the world. As for what he is to do next, he will think little of that. Little, even, will he think of whether his work will succeed or not. That must be as God shall will. All that he is bound to do is to do his best; and his best he can only do by throwing his whole soul into his work. As his day, he trusts his strength will be; and he must not waste the strength which God has given him for to-day on vain fears or vain dreams about to-morrow. To-day is quite full enough of anxiety, of care, of toil, of ignorance. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Yes; and sufficient for the day is the good thereof likewise. To-day, and to-morrow, too, may end very differently from what he hoped. Yes; but they may end, too, very differently from what he feared. Let him throw his whole soul into the thing which he is about, and leave the rest to God.

For so only will he come to the day's end in that wholesome and manful temper, contented if not cheerful, satisfied with the work he has had to do, if not satisfied with the way in which he has done it, which will leave his mind free to remember all his comforts, all his blessings, even to those commonest of all blessings, which we are all too apt to forget, just because they are as necessary as the air we breathe; which will show him how much light there is, even on the darkest day.

He has not got this or that fine thing, it may be, for which he longed: but he has at least his life, at least his reason, at least his conscience, at least his God. Are not they enough to possess? Are not they enough wherewith to lie down at night in peace, and rise to-morrow to take what comes to-morrow, even as he took what came to-day? And will he not be most fit to take what comes to-morrow like a Christian man, whether it be good or evil, with his spirit braced and yet chastened, by honest and patient labour, instead of being weakened and irritated by idling over to-day, while he dreamed and fretted about to-morrow?

Ah! I fancy that I hear some one say—perhaps a woman—"So easy to preach, but so difficult to practise. So difficult to think of one thing at a time. So difficult not to plot, not to fret, with a whole family of children dependent on you! What does the preacher know of a woman's troubles? How many things she has to think of, day by day, not one of which she dares forget—and yet can seldom or never, for all her recollecting, contrive to get them all done? How can she help being distracted by the thought of to-morrow? Can he feel for frail me? Does he know what I go through?" Yes. I do know; and I wonder, and admire. To me the sight of any poor woman managing her family respectably and thriftily, is one of the most surprising sights on earth, as it is one of the most beautiful sights on earth. How she finds time for it, wit for it, patience for it, courage for it, I cannot conceive. I have wondered often why many a woman does not lie down and die, for sheer weariness of body and soul. I have fancied often that God must give some special grace to all good mothers, to enable them to do all that they do, and bear all they bear. But still, the women who do most, who bring up their families best, are surely those who obey their Lord's command, who give their whole souls to each day's work, and think as little as they can of to-morrow. With them, surely, the true wisdom is, not to fret, not to plot, to do the duty which lies nearest them, and leave the rest to God; to get each week's bill paid, trusting to God to send money for the week to come; to get their children every day to school; to correct in them each fault as it shews itself, without looking forward too much to how the child will turn out at last. For them, and for parents of all ranks, the wisest plan, I believe, is to make no far-fetched plans for their children's future, certainly no ambitious intrigues for their marriage: but simply to educate them—that is, to bring out in them, day by day, all that is purest and best, wisest and ablest, and leave the rest to God; sure that if they are worth anything, their Father in heaven will find them work to do, and a place at His table, in this life and in the life to come.

Yes, my dear friends, this is the true philosophy, the philosophy which Christ preaches to us all—to old and young, rich and poor, ploughman and scholar, maid, wife, and widow, all alike.

Fret not. Plot not. Look not too far ahead.

Fret not—lest you lose temper, and be moved to do evil. Plot not—lest you lose faith in God, and be moved to be dishonest. Look not too far ahead—So far only, as to keep yourselves out of open and certain danger- -lest you see what is coming before you are ready for the sight. If we foresaw the troubles which may be coming, perhaps it would break our hearts; and if we foresaw the happiness which is coming, perhaps it would turn our heads. Let us not meddle with the future, and matters which are too high for us, but refrain our souls, and keep them low, like little children, content with the day's food, and the day's schooling, and the day's play-hours, sure that the Divine Master knows that all is right, and how to train us, and whither to lead us, though we know not, and need not know, save this—that the path by which He is leading each of us—if we will but obey and follow, step by step—leads up to Everlasting Life.



SERMON XL. THE LESSON OF LIFE



Fifth Sunday in Lent.

Chester Training College, 1870. Windsor Castle, 1871.

Hebrews v. 7, 8. "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared; though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered."

This is the lesson of life. This is God's way of educating us, of making us men and women worthy of the name of men and women, worthy of the name of children of God. As Christ learnt, so must we. If it was necessary for Him who know no sin, how much more for us who have sins enough and to spare. Though He was the eternal Son of God, yet He learnt obedience by the things which He suffered. Though we are God's adopted children, we must learn obedience by what we suffer. He had to offer up prayer with strong crying. So shall we have to do again and again before we die. He was heard in that He feared God, and said, "Father not my will, but Thine be done." And so shall we. He was perfected by sufferings. God grant that we may be so likewise. He had to do like us. God grant that we may do like Him.

God grant it. That is all I can say. I cannot be sure of it, for myself or for any of you. I can only hope, and trust in God. Life is hard work—any life at least which is worth being called life, which is not the life of a swine, who thinks of nothing but feeding himself, or of a butterfly which thinks of nothing but enjoying itself. Those are easy lives enough: but the end thereof is death. The swine goes to the slaughter. The butterfly dies of the frost—and there is an end of them. But the manly life, the life of good deeds and noble thoughts, and usefulness, and purity, the life which is discontented with itself, and which the better it is, longs the more to be better still; the life which will endure through this world into the world to come, and on and upward for ever and for ever.—That life is not an easy life to live; it is very often not a pleasant life; very often a sad life—so sad that that is true of it which the great poet says—

"Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, Who never in the midnight hours Sat weeping on his lonely bed, He knows you not, you Heavenly Powers."

You may say this is bad news. I do not believe it is. I believe it is good news, and the very best of news: but if it is bad news, I cannot help it. I did not make it so. God made it so. And God must know best. God is love. And we are His children, and He loves us. And therefore His ways with us must be good and loving ways, and any news about them must be good news, and a gospel, though we cannot see it so at first.

In any case, if it is so, it is better to remember that it is so. And Lent, and Passion Week, and Good Friday are meant to put us in mind of it year by year, because we are all of us only too ready to forget it, and shut our eyes to it. Lent and Passion Week, I say, are meant to put us in mind. And the preacher is bound to put you in mind of it now and then. He is bound, not too often perhaps, lest he should discourage young hearts, but now and then, to put you in mind of the old Greek proverb, the very words of which St. Paul uses in the text, that ta pa??ata a??ata—sorrows are lessons; and that the most truly pitiable people often are those who have no sorrows, and ask for no man's pity.

For so it is. The very worst calamity, I should say, which could befall any human being would be this—To have his own way from his cradle to his grave; to have everything he liked for the asking, or even for the buying; never to be forced to say, "I should like that: but I cannot afford it. I should like this: but I must not do it"—Never to deny himself, never to exert himself, never to work, and never to want. That man's soul would be in as great danger as if he were committing great crimes. Indeed, he would very probably before he died commit great crimes—like certain negroes whom I have seen abroad, who live a life of such lazy comfort and safety, and superabundance of food, that they are beginning more and more to live the life of animals rather than men. They are like those of whom the Psalmist says, "Their eyes swell out with fatness, and they do even what they lust." So do they, and indulge in gross vices, which, if not checked in some way, will end in destroying them off the face of the earth in a few generations more. I had rather, for the sake of my character, my manhood, my immortal soul, I had rather, I say, a hundred times over, be an English labourer, struggling on on twelve shillings a week, and learning obedience, self-denial, self- respect, and trust in God, by the things suffered in that hard life here at home, than be a Negro in Tropic islands, fattening himself in sloth under that perpetual sunshine, and thinking nought of God, because, poor fool, he can get all he wants without God's help.

No, my dear young friends, this is good for a man. It is necessary for a man, if he is to be a man and a child of God, and not a mere animal, to have to work hard whether he likes or not. It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth, as Jeremiah told the Jews, when, because they would not bear God's light yoke in their youth, but ran riot into luxury and wantonness, and superstition and idolatry which come thereof, they had to bear the heavy yoke of the Babylonish captivity in their old age. It is good for a man to be checked, crossed, disappointed, made to feel his own ignorance, weakness, folly; made to feel his need of God; to feel that, in spite of all his cunning and self-confidence, he is no better off in this world than a lost child in a dark forest, unless he has a Father in Heaven, who loves him with an eternal love, and a Holy Spirit in Heaven, who will give him a right judgment in all things; who will put into his mind good desires, and enable him to bring those desires to good effect; and a Saviour in Heaven who can be touched with the feeling of his infirmities, because He too was made perfect by sufferings; He too was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.

And, therefore, my dear friends, those words which we read in the Visitation of the Sick about this matter are not mere kind words, meant to give comfort for the moment. They are truth and fact and sound philosophy. They are as true for the young lad in health and spirits as for the old folk crawling towards their graves. It is true, and you will find it true, that sickness and all sorts of troubles, are sent to correct and amend in us whatever doth offend the eyes of our Heavenly Father. It is true, and you will find it true, that whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. It is true, and you will find it true (though God knows it is a difficult lesson enough to learn), that there should be no greater comfort to Christian persons, than to be made like Christ, by suffering patiently not only the hard work of every-day life, but adversities, troubles, and sicknesses, and our Heavenly Father's correction, whensoever, by any manner of adversity, it shall please His gracious goodness to visit them. For Christ Himself went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain; He entered not into His glory, before He was crucified.

So truly our way to eternal joy is to labour and to suffer here with Christ. It is true, and you will find it true, when years hence you look back, as I trust you all will, calmly and intelligently, on the events of your own lives—you will find, I say, that the very events in your lives which seemed at the time most trying, most vexing, most disastrous, have been those which wore most necessary for you, to call out what was good in you, and to purge out what was bad; that by those very troubles your Lord, who knows the value of suffering, because He has suffered Himself, was making true men, true women of you; hardening your heads, while He softened your hearts; teaching you to obey Him, while He taught you not to obey your own fancies and your own passions; refining and tempering your characters in the furnace of trial, as the smith refines soft iron into trusty steel; teaching you, as the great poet says—

"That life is not as idle ore, But heated hot with burning fears, And bathed in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the strokes of doom, To shape and use."

Yes, you will learn that, and more than that, and say in peace—"Before I was troubled I went wrong, but now have I kept thy commandments." And to such an old age may our Lord Jesus Christ bring you and me and all we love. Amen.



SERMON XLI. SACRIFICE TO CAESAR OR TO GOD



Eversley, 1869. Chester Cathedral, 1872.

Matthew xxii. 21. "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."

Many a sermon has been preached, and many a pamphlet written, on this text, and (as too often has happened to Holy Scripture), it has been made to mean the most opposite doctrines, and twisted in every direction, to suit men's opinions and superstitions. Some have found in it a command to obey tyrants, invaders, any and every government, just or unjust. Others have found in it rules for drawing a line between the authority of the State and of the Church, i.e., between what the Government have a right to command, and what the Clergy have a right to demand; and many more matters have they fancied that they discovered in the text which I do not believe are in it at all.

For to understand the original question—Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or no? we must imagine to ourselves a state of things in Judea utterly different, thank God, from anything which has been in these realms for now eight hundred years. The Caesar, or Emperor of Rome, had obtained by conquest an authority over the Jews very like that which we have over the Hindoos in India. And what was working in the mind of the Jews was very like that which was working in the minds of the Hindoos in the Sepoy Rebellion—whether it was not a sacred and religious duty to rise against their conquerors and drive them out. We know from the New Testament that both our Lord and His apostles again and again warned them not to rebel, warned them that they would not succeed: but ruin themselves thereby; for that those who took the sword would perish by the sword. And we know, too, that the Jews would not take our Lord's advice, nor the apostles', but did rise again and again, both in Judea and elsewhere, gallantly and desperately enough, poor creatures, in mad useless rebellion, till the Romans all but destroyed them off the face of the earth. But what has that to do with us, free self-governed Englishmen, in this peaceful and prosperous land? In the early middle age, when the clergy represented and defended Roman pure Christianity and civilization against the half-heathen and half-barbaric Teutons who had conquered the Roman Empire, then doubtless the text became once more full of meaning, and the clergy had again and again to defend the things which belonged to God against the rapacity or the wilfulness of many a barbaric Caesar. But what has that, again, to do with us? Those who apply the text to any questions which can at present arise between the Church and the State, mistake alike, it seems to me, the nature and functions of an Established Church, and the nature and functions of a free Government.

Do I mean, then, that the text has nothing to do with us? God forbid! I believe that every word of our Lord's has to do with us, and with every human being, for their meaning is infinite, eternal, and inexhaustible. And what the latter half of the text has to do with us, I will try to show you, while I tell you openly, that the first half of it, about rendering to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, has nothing to do with us, and never need, save through our own cowardice and effeminacy, or folly.

We have no Caesar over us in free England, and shall not have, while Queen Victoria, and her children after her reign; but if ever one, or many (which God forbid!), should arise and try to set themselves up as despots over us, I trust we shall know how to render them their due, be they native or foreigner, in the same coin in which our forefathers have always paid tyrants and invaders. No. The only Caesar which we have to fear—and he is a tyrant who seems ready, nowadays, to oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God, or is worshipped,—patronizing, of course, Religion, as a harmless sanction for order and respectability, but dictating morality, while telling us all day long, with a thousand voices and a thousand pens—"Right is not the eternal law of God. Whatever profits me, whatever I like, whatever I vote—that and that alone is right, and you must do it at your peril." Do you know who that Caesar is, my friends? He is called Public Opinion—the huge anonymous idol which we ourselves help to make, and then tremble before the creation of our own cowardice; whereas, if we will but face him, in the fear of God and the faith of Christ, determined to say the thing which is true, and do the thing which is right, we shall find the modern Caesar but a phantom of our own imagination; a tyrant, indeed, as long as he is feared, but a coward as soon as he is defied.

To that Caesar let us never bow the knee. Render to him all that he deserves—the homage of common courtesy, common respectability, common charity—not in reverence for his wisdom and strength, but in pity for his ignorance and weakness. But render always to God the things which are God's. That duty, my good friends, lies on us, as on all mankind still, from our cradle to our grave, and after that through all eternity. Let us go back, or rather, let us go home to the eternal laws of God, which were, ages before we were born, and will be, ages after we are dead—to the everlasting Rock on which we all stand, which is the will and mind of our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, to whom all power is given (as He said Himself) in heaven and on earth. And we have need to do so, for in such times of change as these are, there will always be too many who fancy that changes in society and government change their duty about religion, and are, some of them, sorely puzzled as to their duty to God: and others ready to take advantage of the change to throw off their duty to God, and run into licence and schism and fanaticism.

Now let all people clearly understand, and settle it in their hearts, that no change in Church or in State can change in the least their duty to God and to man. If the world were turned upside down, God would still be where He is, and we where we are—in His presence. Right would still be right, my friends, and wrong wrong, though all the loud voices in the world shouted that wrong is right and right wrong. No change of time, place, society, government, circumstance of any kind, can alter our duty to God, and our power of doing that duty. Whatever the Caesar of the hour may require us to render to him, what we are bound to render to God remains the same. The two things are different IN KIND, so different, that they never need interfere with each other.

Even if, which God forbid, the connection between Church and State were dissolved; even if, which God forbid, the Church of England were destroyed for a while—if all Churches were destroyed—yea, if not a place of worship were left for a while in this or any other land; yet even then, I say, we could still render to God the things which are God's, and offer to Him spiritual sacrifices, more pleasing to Him than the most gorgeous ceremonies which the devotion, and art, and wealth of man ever devised—sacrifices, by virtue of which the Church would arise out of her ruins, like the Jewish Church after the captivity, more pure, more glorious, and more triumphant than ever.

What do I mean? I mean this—that there are three sacrifices which every man, woman, and child can offer, and should offer, however lowly, however uneducated in what the world calls education nowadays. Those they can offer to God, and with them they can worship God, and render to God the things which are God's, wherever they are, whatever they are doing, whatever be the laws of their country, or the state of society round them. For of these sacrifices our Lord Himself said, The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.

Now what are these spiritual sacrifices?

First and foremost, surely, the sacrifice of repentance, of which it is written, "The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, oh God, Thou wilt not despise." Surely when we—even the best of us—look back on our past lives; when we recollect, if not great and positive sins and crimes, yet the opportunities which we have neglected; the time, and often the money which we have wasted; the meannesses, the tempers, the spite, the vanity, the selfishness, which we have too often indulged—When we think of what we have been, and what we might have been, what we are, and what we might be; when we measure ourselves, not by the paltry, low, and often impure standard of the world around us, but by the pure, lofty, truly heroical standard of our Lord Jesus Christ—what can we say, but that we are miserable—that is, pitiful and pitiable sinners, who have left undone what we ought to have done, and done that which we ought not to have done, till there is no health in us?

And if you ask me, How is it a sacrifice to God to confess to Him that we are sinners? the answer is simple. It is a sacrifice to God, and a sacrifice well-pleasing to Him, simply because it is The Truth. God wants nothing from us; we can give Him nothing. The wild beasts of the forest are His, and so are the cattle on a thousand hills. If He be hungry He will not tell us for the whole world is His and all that is therein. But what He asks is, that for our own sakes we should see the truth about ourselves, see what we really are, and sacrifice that self- conceit which prevents our seeing ourselves as God our Father sees us. And why does that please God? Simply because it puts us in our right state, and in our right place, where we can begin to become better men, let us be as bad as we may. If a man be a fool, the best possible thing for him is that he should find out that he is a fool, and confess that he is a fool, as the first, and the absolutely necessary first step to becoming wise. Therefore repentance, contrition, humility, is the very foundation-stone of all goodness, virtue, holiness, usefulness; and God desires to see us contrite, simply because He desires to see us good men and good women.

Next, the sacrifice of thankfulness, of which it is written, "I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord." And again—By Christ let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks unto His name. Ah! my friends, if we offered that sacrifice oftener, we should have more seldom need to offer the first sacrifice of repentance. I am astonished when I look at my own heart, by which alone I can judge the hearts of others, to see how unthankful one is. How one takes as a matter of course, without one aspiration of gratitude to our Father in heaven—how one takes, as a matter of course, I say, life, health, reason, freedom, education, comfort, safety, and all the blessings of humanity, and of this favoured land. How we never really feel that these are all God's undeserved and unearned mercies; and then, how, if we set our hearts on anything which we have not got, forget all that we have already, and begin entreating God to give us something which, if we had, we know not whether it would be good for us; like children crying peevishly for sweets, after their parents have given them all the wholesome food they need. Ah! that we would offer to God more frankly the sacrifice of thanksgiving! So we should do God justice, by confessing all we owe to Him; and so, we must believe, we should please God; for if God be indeed our Father in heaven, as surely as a parent is pleased with the affection and gratitude of his child, so will our Father in heaven be pleased when He sees us love Him, who first loved us.

Next—the sacrifice of righteousness, of which it is written, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." To be good and to do good, even to long to be good and to long to do good, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, is the best and highest sacrifice which any human being can offer to his Father in heaven. For so he honours his father most truly; for he longs and strives to be like that Father; to be good as God is good, holy as God is holy, beneficent and useful even as God is infinitely beneficent and useful; being, in one word, perfect, as his Father in heaven is perfect. This is the best and highest act of worship, the truest devotion. For pure worship (says St James), and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

Yes—every time we perform an act of kindness to any human being, aye, even to a dumb animal; every time we conquer our own worldliness, love of pleasure, ease, praise, ambition, money, for the sake of doing what our conscience tells us to be our duty, we are indeed worshipping God the Father in spirit and in truth, and offering him a sacrifice which He will surely accept, for the sake of His beloved Son, by whose spirit all good deeds and thoughts are inspired.

Think of these things, my friends, always, but, above all, think of them as often as you come—as would to God all would come—to the altar of the Lord, and the Holy Communion of His body and blood. For there, indeed, you render to God that which is God's—namely, yourselves; there you offer to God the true sacrifice, which is the sacrifice of yourselves— the sacrifice of repentance, the sacrifice of thanksgiving, the sacrifice of righteousness, or at least of hunger and thirst after righteousness; and there you receive in return your share of God's sacrifice, the sacrifice which you did not make for Him, but which He made for you, when He spared not His only-begotten Son but freely gave Him for us.

That is the sacrifice of all sacrifices, the wonder of all wonders, the mystery of all mysteries; and it is also the righteousness of all righteousness, the generosity of all generosity, the nobleness of all nobleness, the beauty of all beauty, the love of all love. Thinking of that, beholding in that bread and wine the tokens of the boundless love of God, then surely, surely, our repentance for past follies, our thankfulness for present blessings, our longing to be good, pure, useful, humane, generous, high-minded—in one word, to be holy—ought to rise up in us, into a passion, as it were, of noble shame at our own selfishness, and admiration of God's unselfishness, a longing to follow His divine example, and to live, not for ourselves, but for our fellow-men. If we could but once understand the full meaning of those awful yet glorious words, "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" then, indeed, we should understand that the one overpowering reason for being unselfish and doing good is this—that we are God's children, and that God our Father is utterly unselfish, and utterly does good, even at the sacrifice of Himself; and that therefore when we are unselfish, and do good, even at the sacrifice of ourselves, we do indeed, in spirit and in truth, "render unto God the things that are God's."



SERMON XLII. THE UNJUST STEWARD



Eversley, 1866. NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

Luke xvi. 8. "And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely."

None of our Lord's parables has been as difficult to explain as this one. Learned and pious men have confessed freely, in all ages, that there is much in the parable which they cannot understand; and I am bound to confess the same. The puzzle is, plainly, why our Lord should SEEM to bid us to copy the conduct of a bad man and a cheat. For this is the usual interpretation. The steward has been cheating his master already. When he is found out and about to be dismissed, he cheats his master still further, by telling his debtors to cheat, and so wins favour with them.

But does our Lord bid us copy a cheat? I cannot believe that; and the text I should have said ought to give us a very different notion. We read that the lord—that is, the steward's master—commended the unjust steward. What? Commended him for cheating him a second time, and teaching his debtors to cheat him? He must have been a man of a strange character—very unlike any man whom we know, or, at all events, any man whom we should wish to know—to have done that. But it is said—he commended him for having acted wisely. Now that word "wisely" may merely mean prudently, sensibly, and with common sense. But if the master thought that to cheat, or to teach others to cheat, was acting either wisely or prudently, then he was a very foolish and short-sighted man, and altogether mistaken. For be sure and certain, and settle it in your minds, that neither falsehood or dishonesty is ever either wise or prudent, but short-sighted, foolish, certain to punish itself. Such teaching is totally contrary to our Lord's own teaching. Agree with thine adversary quickly, He says, while thou art in the way with him, lest he deliver thee to the Judge. If thou hast done wrong, right it again as soon as possible; for your sin will surely find you out, and avenge itself. Give the devil his due, says the good old proverb. Pay him at once and be done with him: but never think to escape out of his clutches, as too many wretched and foolish sinners do, by running up a fresh score with him, and trying to hide old sins by new ones. Be sure that if the steward cheated his master a second time, the master was foolish and mistaken, and as it were a partner in the steward's sin by commending him. But if so; why does our Lord mention it? What had our Lord to do, what have we to do, with the opinion of so foolish a man?

It seems to me that the only reason for our Lord's using the words of the text, must be, that the master was right, not wrong, in commending the steward. But it seems to me, also, that the master could be right only, if the steward was right also—if the steward had done the right and just thing at last, and, instead of cheating his master a second time, had done his best to make restitution for his own sins.

But how could that be? We know nothing of what these debtors were. All we know is that one believed that he owed the Lord a hundred measures of oil; and another believed that he owed him a hundred measures of wheat; and that the steward told one to put down in his bill eighty, and the other fifty. Now suppose that the steward had been cheating and oppressing these men, as was common enough in those days with stewards, and has been common enough since; suppose that he had been charging them more than they really owed, and, it may be, putting the surplus into his own pocket, and so wasting his master's goods—that the one really owed only eighty measures of oil, and the other really owed only fifty of wheat; what could be more simple, or more truly wise either, when he was found out, than to do this—to go round to the debtors and confess: I have been overcharging you; you do not owe what I have demanded of you; take your bill and write four-score, for that is what you really owe?

This is but a guess on my part. But all other explanations are only guesses likewise, because we do not know how business was transacted in those days and in that country. We do not know whether these debtors were tenants, paying rent in kind, or traders to whom goods had been advanced, or what they were. We do not know whether the steward was agent of the estate, or house steward, or what he was. But this we do know—that to mend one act of villainy by committing a fresh one, is not wisdom, but foolishness; and we may be sure that our Lord would never have held up the unjust steward as an example to us, or quoted his master's opinion of him, if all he did was to commit fraud on fraud, and make bad worse, thereby risking his own more utter ruin. And this view of the parable surely agrees with our Lord's own lesson, which He draws from it. "And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of righteousness." But what does that mean? Wise men have been puzzled by that text as much as by the parable; but surely our Lord Himself explains it in the verses which follow: "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in that which is least, is unjust also in much." He that is FAITHFUL. The unjust steward was commended for acting wisely. Now, it seems the way to act wisely is to act faithfully—that is honestly. Our Lord bids us copy the unjust steward, and make ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. Now, it seems, He tells us that the way to make friends of men by money transactions is to deal faithfully and honestly by them. This then was perhaps why the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had been converted in time, and seen his true interest; and for once at least in his life become just. He had found out that after all, honesty is the best policy; as God grant all of us may find out if any of us have not found it out already. Honesty is the best policy. Faithfulness, as our Lord calls it, is the true wisdom. And in that, as our Lord says, the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. The children of this world, the plain worldly men of business, find that to conduct their business they must be faithful, diligent, punctual, accurate, cautious, business-like. They must have practical common sense, which is itself a kind of honesty. They must be men of their word, just and true in their dealings, or sooner or later, they will fail. Their schemes, their money, their credit, their character, will fail them, and they will be overwhelmed by ruin.

And that is just what too often the children of light forget. The children of light have a higher light, a deeper teaching from God, than the children of the world. They have a great insight into what ought to be; they see that mankind might be far wiser, happier, better, holier than they are; they have noble and lofty hopes for the future; they desire the welfare and the holiness of mankind. But they are too apt to want practical common sense. And so they are laughed at (and deservedly) as dreamers, as fanatics, as foolish unpractical people, who are wasting their talents on impossible fancies. Often while their minds are full of really useful and noble schemes, they neglect their business, their families, their common duties, till they cause misery to those around them, and shame to themselves. Often, too, they are tempted to be actually dishonest, to fancy that the means sanctify the end; that it is lawful to do evil that good may come; and so, in order to carry out some fine scheme of theirs, to say false things, or do mean or cruel things, not for their own interest, but, as they fancy, for the cause of God: as if God, and God's cause, could ever be helped by the devil and his works. And so they cast a scandal on religion, and give the enemies of the Lord reason to blaspheme. So it was, it seems, in our Lord's time—so it has been too often since. The children of light—those who ought to be of most use to their own generation—are sometimes of least use to it, through their own weaknesses and follies. They will not remember that he that is not faithful in that which is least, in the every-day concerns of life, is not likely to be faithful in that which is greatest; that if they will not be faithful in the unrighteous mammon—that is, if they cannot resist the temptations to meanness and unfairness which come with all money transactions, God will not commit to them the true riches—the power of making their fellow creatures wiser, happier, better. If they will not be faithful in that which is another man's—in plain English, if they will not pay their debts honestly, who will give them that which is their own—the inspiration of God's indwelling Spirit? Would to God all high religious professors would recollect that, and be just and honest, before they pretend to higher graces and counsels of perfection.

This lesson, then, I think our Lord means to teach us. I do not say it is the only lesson in the parable; God forbid. But I think that our Lord's own words show us that this IS one lesson. That, however pious we are, however enlightened we are, however useful we wish to be; in one word, however much we are, or fancy ourselves to be, children of light, our first duty as Christian men is the duty which lies nearest us—that of which it is written: "If a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God?" And again, "If any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." Our first duty, I say, as Christian men, is to be just and honest in money matters and every-day business; and over and above that, to be generous and liberal therein. Not merely to pay—which the very publicans in our Lord's time did—but to give, generously, liberally; lending, if we can afford it, as our Lord bids us, hoping for nothing again; and remembering that he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, and whatsoever he layeth out, it shall be repaid him again.

Yes, my friends, we must all needs take our Lord's advice—make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. WHEN YE FAIL— literally, when you are eclipsed, as the sun is eclipsed. That must happen to all of us, to the best, the wisest, the most famous. Each must be eclipsed, and passed in the race of life, and forgotten for some younger man. Each in turn must fail. One may fail in money—the mammon for which he toiled may take to itself wings and fly away; or he may fail in his plans, noble plans, and useful though they seemed; and he may find, as he grows old, that the world has not gone HIS way, but quite another one; or he may fail in health, and be cut down and crippled, and laid by in the midst of his work. And even if he escapes all these disasters, he must needs fail at last, by mere old age, when the days come "when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;" when the sun and the light are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain, when the strong men bow themselves, and those who look out of the windows are dark; and he shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and fears shall be in the way, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. Think for yourselves. What would you wish your end to be— lonely, unhappy, without the love, the respect, the care of your fellow- men; or surrounded by friends who comfort your failing body and soul on earth, and receive you at last into everlasting habitations?

Make friends, make friends against that day, whether or not you make them out of the mammon of unrighteousness. If you have been unrighteous, bring friends back to you, as the steward did, by being just and fair, by confessing your faults freely, by doing your best to atone for them. And if you have no share in the mammon of unrighteousness, still make friends. Make them by truth and justice, make them by generosity and usefulness. To ease every burden, and let the oppressed go free, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and what the very poorest can do—comfort the mourner; to nurse the sick, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and so keep ourselves unspotted from the selfishness of the world—This is that true Religion, acceptable in the sight of God the Father—and happy he who has so served God. Happy for him, when he begins to fail, to see round him attached hearts, and grateful faces, hands ready to tend him, as he has tended others. And happier still to remember that on the other side of the dark river of death are other grateful faces, other loving hearts, ready to welcome him into everlasting habitations—and among them, and above them all, one whose form is as the Son of Man, full of all humanity Himself, and loving and rewarding all humanity in His creatures, saying, "Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."



SERMON XLIII. THE RICH AND THE POOR



Chapel Royal, Whitehall, 1871.

Proverbs xxii. 2. "The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all."

I have been asked to preach here this afternoon on behalf of the Parochial Mission Women's Fund. I may best describe the object for which I plead, as an attempt to civilise and Christianise the women of the lower classes in the poorer districts of London and other great towns, by means of women of their own class—women, who have gone through the same struggles as they have, and who will be trusted by them to understand and to sympathize with their needs and difficulties. These mission women are in communication with lady-superintendents in each ecclesiastical district. These are, I understand, usually the wives of small tradesmen, or of clerks. They, again, are in communication with ladies at the West End of London, who are willing to give personal help and money for certain objects, but not indiscriminate alms. And thus a series of links is established between the most prosperous and the least prosperous classes, by means of which the rich and the poor may meet together, and learn—to the infinite benefit of both—that the Lord is the maker of them all. Considering this excellent scheme, I could not help seeing as a background to it, a very different and a far darker scene. I could not help remembering that during these very days, the poorer classes of another great city had taken up an attitude full of awful lessons to us, and to every civilized country upon earth. We have been reading of a hundred thousand armed men encamped in the suburbs of Belleville and Montmartre, with cannon and mitrailleuses, uttering through their organs, threats which leave no doubt that the meaning of this movement is—as some of them boldly phrase it,—a war of the poor against the rich. There is no mistaking what that means. This madness has been stopped for the time, we are told, principally (as was to be expected), by the superior common sense of their wives. But only, I fear, for a time. Such men will go far, if not this time, then some other time. For they believe what they say, and know what they want. They have done with phrases, done with illusions. They are no longer deceived and hampered by party cries against this and that grievance, real or imaginary, the abolition of which the working classes demand so eagerly from time to time, in the vain belief that if it were only got rid of the millennium would be at hand. They have done long ago with remedial half-measures. Landed aristocracy, Established Church, military classes, privileged classes, restricted suffrage, and all the rest, have been abolished in their country for two generations and more: but behold, the poor man finds himself (or fancies himself, which is just as dangerous) no richer, safer, happier after all, and begins to see a far simpler remedy for all his ills. He has too little of this world's goods, while others have too much. What more fair, more simple, than that he should take some of the rich man's goods, and if he resists, kill him, crying, "Thou sayest, let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die. Then I too will eat and drink, for to-morrow I die?" And so will the rich and poor meet together with a vengeance, simply because neither of them has learnt that the Lord is the maker of them all.

This is a hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms.

I said a modicum of alms. I ought to have said, any amount of alms, any amount of charity. Throughout the great cities of Europe—in London as much as anywhere—hundreds of thousands are saying, "We want no alms. We intend to reconstitute society, even at the expense of blood, so that no man, woman, or child, shall need the rich man's alms. We do not choose, for it is not just, that he should take credit to himself for giving us a shilling when he owes us a pound, ten, a hundred pounds—owes us, in fact, all by which he and his class are richer than us and our class. And we will make him pay his debt."

I do not say that such words are wise. I believe them to be foolish— suicidal. I believe that it is those who patiently wait on the Lord, and not the discontented who fret themselves till they do evil, who will inherit the land, and be refreshed in peace. I believe that all those who take the sword will perish by the sword; that those who appeal to brute force will always find it—just because it is brute force—always strongest on the side of the rich, who can hire it for evil, as for good.

I only say, that so hundreds of thousands think; so they speak, and will speak more and more loudly, as long as the present tone of society endures,—good-natured and well meaning, but luxurious, covetous, ignoble, frivolous, ignorant; believing—all classes alike, not only that money makes the man, but worse far—that money makes the woman also; and all the while half-ashamed of itself, half-distrustful of itself, and trying to buy off man by alms, and God by superstition.

So long as the great mass of the poor of any city know nothing of the great mass of the rich of that city, save as folk who roll past them in their carriages, seemingly easy while they are struggling, seemingly happy while they are wretched, so long will the rich of that city be supposed, however falsely, to be what the French workmen used to call mangeurs d'hommes—exploiteurs d'hommes—to get their wealth by means of the poverty, their comfort by means of the misery of their fellow-men; and so long will they be exposed to that mere envy and hatred which pursues always the more prosperous, till, in some national crisis, when the rich and poor meet together, both parties will be but too apt to behave, through mutual fear and hate, as if not God, but the devil, was the maker of them all.

These words are strong. How can they be too strong, in face of what is now passing in a neighbouring land? Not too strong, either, in view of the actual state of vast masses of the poor in London itself, and indeed of any one of our great cities.

That matter has been reported on, preached on, spoken on, till all other civilized countries reproach Britain with the unique contrast between the exceeding wealth of some classes and the exceeding poverty of others; till we, instead of being startled by the reproach, take the present state of things as a matter of course, a physical necessity, a law of nature and society, that there should be, in the back streets of every great city, hordes of, must I say, savages? neither decently civilized nor decently Christianized, uncertain, most of them, of regular livelihood, and therefore shiftless and reckless, extravagant in prosperity, and in adversity falling at once into want and pauperism. You may ask any clergyman, any minister of religion of any denomination, whether the thing is not so. Or if you want to read the latest news about the degradation of your fellow-subjects, read a little book called "East and West," and judge for yourselves, whether such a population, numbered by hundreds of thousands, are in a state pleasing to God, or safe for those classes of whom they only know that they pay them wages, and that these wages are as small as they can be forced to take. Read that book; and then ask yourselves, is it wonderful that, in one district, before the mission of the society for which I plead was established, the poor used seriously to believe that it was the wish and endeavour of the rich to grind them down, and keep them poor. We, of course, know that the poor folk were mistaken but do we not know, too— some of us—that there are political economists in the world, who, though they would not willingly make the poor poorer than they are, are still of opinion that it is good for the nation, on the whole, that the present state of things should continue; that there should be always a reserve of labour, in plain English, a vast multitude who have not quite work enough to live on, ready to be called on in any emergency of business, and used, to beat down, by their competition, the wages of their fellow-workmen? Is this theory altogether novel and unheard of? Or this theory also, that for this very reason, Emigration, which looks the very simplest remedy for most of this want,—while nine-tenths of the bounteous earth is waiting to be subdued and replenished by the poor wretches who cannot get at it—that Emigration, I say, is an unnecessary movement—that the people are all wanted at home—to be such as the parson and the mission women find them?

And it may be that the poor folk have heard—for a bird of the air may carry the matter in these days of a free press—that some rich folk, at least, hold this opinion, and translate it freely out of the delicate language of political economy, into the more vigorous dialect used in the fever alleys and smallpox courts in which the poor are left to wait for work. But if there be any rich persons in this congregation who hold these peculiar economic doctrines, let me recommend to them, more than to any other persons present, that they would support a society which alleviates the hard pressure of their system; which helps to make it tolerable and prudent by teaching the poor to save; by teaching them, in London alone,—how to save 54,000 in the last eleven years. Let them help this society heartily.

The children of this world are—in their generation—wiser than the children of light. But how long their generation will last, depends mainly (we are told) on how far they make themselves friends out of the mammon of unrighteousness.

But if, again, there be rich people in this congregation, as I trust there are many and many, who start, indignant, at such an imputation, and utterly deny its truth—then,—if it be false, why in the name of God, and of humanity, and of common prudence, why do they not go to these people and tell them so? Why do they not prove that it is not so, by showing a little more human sympathy, not merely for them behind their backs, but sympathy with them face to face? If they wish to know how much can be done by only a little active kindness, they have only to read the pages of that painful, and yet pleasant, book—"East and West,"— which I have just quoted; and to read, also, an appendix to it—a Paper originally read at the Church Congress, Manchester, by the present Lord Chancellor—a document which it would be an impertinence in me to recommend or praise.

Bring yourselves then boldly into contact with these classes, and especially into contact with the women—with the wives and mothers. For it is through the women, through them mainly, if not altogether, that civilization and religion can be introduced among any degraded class. It was so in the Middle Age. The legends which tell us how woman was then the civilizer, the softener, the purifier, the perpetual witness to fierce and coarse men, that there were nobler aims in life than pleasure, and power, and the gratification of revenge; that not self-assertion, but self-sacrifice was the Divine ideal, toward which all must aspire. These old legends are immortal; for they speak of facts and laws which will endure as long as there are women upon earth. Through the woman, the civilizer and the Christianizer must reach the man. Through the wife, he must reach the husband. Through the mother, he must reach the children. I say he must. It is easy to complain that the clergy in every age and country have tried to obtain influence over women. They have been forced to do so, because otherwise they could obtain no influence at all. And if a priesthood should arise hereafter, whose calling was to teach not religion but irreligion, not the good news that there is a good God, and that we can know Him; but the bad news that there is no God, or, if there is, we cannot know Him; then would that priesthood find it necessary to appeal like all other priesthoods, to the women, and to teach them how to teach their children.

But more. It is not religion only which must be taught through the wives and mothers, but sound science also, and sound economy. If you intend (as I trust some here intend) to teach the labouring classes those laws of health and life, on which depend the comfort, the wholesomeness, often the decency and the morality of the poor man's home, then you must teach those laws first to the house-mother, who brings the children into the world, and brings them up, who puts them to bed at night, and prepares their food by day. If you wish to teach habits of thrift, and sound notions of economy to the labouring classes, you must teach them first to the housewife, who has to make the weekly earnings cover, if possible, the week's expenses. If you wish to soften and to purify the man, you must first soften and purify the woman, or at least encourage her not to lose what womanliness she has left, amid sights, and sounds, and habits which tend continually to destroy her womanhood. You must encourage her, I say, to remember always that she is a woman still, and let her teach— as none can teach like her—true manfulness to her husband and her sons.

And how can you best do that? Not by giving her shillings, not by preaching at her, not by scolding her: but by behaving to her as what she is—a woman and a sister—and cheering her heavy heart by simple human kindliness. What she wants amid all her poverty and toil, her child-bearing and child-rearing, what she wants, I say, to keep her brave and strong, is to know by actual sight and speech that she is still not an outcast; not alone; that she is still a member of the human family, that her fellow-woman has not forgotten her; and that, therefore, it may be, He that was born of woman has not forgotten her either. That she has, after all, a God in heaven, who can be touched with the feeling of her infirmities, and can help her and those she loves, to struggle through all their temptations, seeing that He too was tempted in all things like them, yet without sin.

It is only personal intercourse with them—only the meeting of the rich and poor together, in the belief that God is the maker of them all, that will do that. But it will do it.

Only personal intercourse will reconcile these people to their condition, in as far as they OUGHT to be reconciled to it. But personal intercourse will reconcile them to it, as far as it ought, but no further. And I think that the system of personal intercourse attempted by this Society is, on the whole, the best yet devised. It is imperfect, as all attempts to make that straight which is crooked, and to number that which is wanting—to patch, in a word, a radically vicious system of society,— must be imperfect; but it is the best plan which I have yet seen. I find no fault with other plans, God forbid! Wisdom is justified of all her children; and the amount of evil is so great, and (as I believe, so dangerous), that I must bid God-speed to any persons who will do anything, always saving and excepting indiscriminate almsgiving.

But it seems to me that the soothing and civilizing, and in due time Christianising, effect of personal intercourse cannot begin better than through a woman, herself of the working class, who has struggled as these poor souls have struggled, and conquered, more or less, where they are failing. That through her they should be brought in contact with women of the more comfortable and cultivated class, who are their immediate employers, if not their immediate neighbours; and through them, again, brought in contact with women of that class, of whom I shall only say, that if they were not meant for some such noble work as this—and not for mere pleasure and mere display, then for what purpose, in heaven or earth, were they made? and why has Providence taken the trouble (as it were) to elaborate, by long ages of civilization, that most exquisite of all products of nature and of art—A Lady?

Ah! what the ladies of England might do, and that without interfering in the least with their duties as wives and mothers, if they would work together, as a class! If they would work as well and humanly while they are in towns, as most of them do work while they are in the country; as some of them do, to their honour, in the towns already! But how many? what proportion do those who do good bear to those who do nothing? What a small amount of humanizing and civilizing intercourse with some women of the labouring class is there in the case of the wives of rich men who come up to town, merely for the season, and forget that it is their temporary and uncertain stay in London which causes much of the temporary and uncertain employment of the London poor, and their consequent temptation to unthrift and recklessness! How little humanizing and civilizing intercourse with the poor is carried on by the wives of those employers of labour who surely, surely owe something more to their husband's work people, than to be aware (by hearsay) that they are duly paid every Saturday night?

But I shall be told: We need not fear—we can justify ourselves before God and man. I shall be reminded of all that has been done, and done well too, for the poor during the last generation, and bidden not to calumniate my countrymen. True, much has been done; and done well. And true also it is that no effort to make the rich and poor meet together, to bring the different classes of society into contact with each other, but has succeeded—has sown good seed—which I trust may bring forth good fruit in the day when every tree shall be judged by its fruit. The events of 1830, startling and warning, and those of 1848, more pregnant, if possible, with warning than the former, awakened a spirit of humanity in England, which was also a spirit of prudence and of common sense.

But I cannot conceal from myself, or you, that the earnestness which was awakened in those days is dying out in these. The richer classes of every country are tempted from time to time to fits of laziness—fits of frivolity and luxury, surfeits, in which men say, with a shrug and a yawn—"Why be very much in earnest? Why take so much trouble? Somebody must always be rich, why should not I? Somebody must enjoy the money, why should not I? At all events, things will last my time." And that such a surfeit has fallen upon the rich of this land, is a fact; for that this is the tone of to-day, and that the tone increases, none can deny who knows that which calls itself the WORLD, and calls itself so only too truly; the world of which it is written, that all that is in the world— the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life— is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he who doeth the will of God, he alone abideth for ever.

God grant that we, who have just seen the most cunningly organized and daintily bedizened specimen of a world, which ever flaunted on the earth since men began to build their towers of Babel, collapse and crumble at a single blow, may take God's hint, that the fashion of this world passeth away. Let the idle, the frivolous, the sensual, and those who, like Figaro's Marquis, have earned all earthly happiness by only taking the trouble to be born—let them look back on this last awful Christmas-tide, and hear, speaking in fact unmistakeable, the voice of the Lord. Think ye that they whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, "Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

There are those who will hear such words with a smile, even with a sneer, and say, Such wholesale judgments of God, even granting that there are such things, are, after all, very rare: it is very seldom that a whole class, a whole system of society, is punished in mass—and why then need we trouble ourselves about so remote a probability?

Then know this—that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so surely is He always punishing in detail. By that infinite concatenation of moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of special Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably punish itself in kind. Are we selfish? We shall call out selfishness in others. Do we neglect our duty? Then others will neglect their duty to us. Do we indulge our passions? Then others, who depend on us, will indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery. Do we squander our money? Then our children and our servants will squander our money for us.

Do we?—but what use to go on reminding men of truths which no one believes, because they are too painful and searching to be believed in comfort? What use to tell men what they never will confess to be true— that by every crime, folly, even neglect of theirs, they drive a thorn into their own flesh, which will trouble them for years to come, it may be to their dying day? And yet so it is.

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.

As those who neglect their fellow-creatures will discover, by the most patent undeniable proofs, in that last great day, when the rich and poor shall meet together, and then, at least, discover that the Lord is the maker of them all.



Footnotes:

{1} These sermons by the Rev. Charles Kingsley M.A., late rector of Eversley and Canon of Westminster, were edited by the Rev. W. Harrison, M.A., rector of Brington.—DP.

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