To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be not far from the kingdom of God. But what, then, must be their state actually? A hopeful one, according to many standards of judgment; a state that promises well, it may be, for a healthy and prosperous life, with many friends, perhaps with much distinction. We know that all this prospect may be blighted; still it exists at present;—the healthy constitution, the easy fortune, the cheerful and good-humoured temper, the quickness and power of understanding; all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a period of forty, or fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. But what is to come then? what is the prospect for the next period, not of fifty, or sixty, not of a hundred, not of a thousand, years; not of any number that can be numbered, but of time everlasting? Is their actual state one of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death shall terminate? Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any chance at all? Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body, full of the seeds of hereditary disease, poor, friendless, irritable in temper, low in understanding; suppose such an one just entering upon youth, and ask yourselves, for what would you consent that his prospects should be yours? What should you think would be your chance of happiness in life, if you were beginning in such a condition? Yet, I tell you that poor, diseased, irritable, friendless cripple has a far better prospect of passing his fifty, or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not begun to turn towards God have of a tolerable eternity. Much more wretched is the promise of their life; much more justly should we be tempted, concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were good for them if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle, that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we, for a moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought that a promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance? And may not this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of confidence for their well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom of God, when we consider how utter is the misery, how hopeless the condition of those who do not appear to have, as yet, stirred one single step towards it?



LECTURE XIV.

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MATTHEW xxii. 14.

For many are called, but few are chosen.

The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world, and would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not, in a manner, blunted our painful perception of it. There is contained in it matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and deeper than we could ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to enter. I will rather take that view of the text which concerns us here; I will see in how many senses it is true, and with what feeling we should regard it.

"Many are called, but few are chosen." The direct application of this was to the parable of those invited to the supper; in which it had been related, how a great multitude had been invited, but how one among them—and the application as well as the fact in human life, require that this one should be taken only as a specimen of a great number—had been found unworthy to enjoy the feast prepared for them. They had not on the wedding garment; they had not done their part to fit themselves for the offered blessing: therefore they were called, but not chosen. God had willed to do them good, but they would not; and therefore, though he had called them at the beginning, he, in the end, cast them out.

We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary choice, as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of them only a few, and making his choice independently of any exertion of theirs. The picture is very different; it is a gracious call to us all, to come and receive the blessing; it is a reluctant casting out the greatest part of us, because we would not try to render ourselves fit for it.

I said, that we would take the words of the text in reference to ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many are called, but few are chosen. It is a large number of you, which I see before me; and if we add to it all those who, within my memory, have sat in the same places before you, we shall have a number very considerable indeed. All these have been called; they have been sent here to enjoy the same advantages with each other; and those advantages have been put within their reach. They have entered into a great society which, on the one hand, might raise them forward, or, on the other, depress them. There has been a sufficient field for emulation: there have been examples and instructions for good; there have been results of credit and of real improvement made attainable to them, which might have lasted all their lives long. To this, they have been all, in their turns, called; and out of those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen? I am not speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very small number, to whom the trial has failed utterly, who could look back on their stay here with no feelings but those of shame. But would there not be a very large number, to whom their stay here has been a loss, compared with what it might have been; who have reaped but a very small part of those advantages to which they had been at first called? Are there not too many who must look back on a part, at least, of their time here as wasted; on the seeds of bad habits sown, which, if conquered by after-care, yet, for a long time, were injurious to them? Are there not too many who carry away from here, instead of good notions, to be ripened and improved, evil notions, to be weeded out and destroyed? Are there not, in short, a great number who, after having had a great advantage put within their reach, and purchased for them by their friends, at a great expense, have made such insufficient use of their opportunities, to say nothing stronger, as to make it a question afterwards, whether it might not have been better for them had they never come here at all?

Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the advantages of this place in our common language. That argument, which Butler has so nobly handled, in one of the greatest works in our language, the resemblance, namely, between the course of things earthly and that of things spiritual, is one which we should never fail to notice. We can discern the type, as it were, of the highest truth of our Lord's sayings in the experience of our common life in worldly things. When he tells us, speaking of things spiritual, that "many are called, but few are chosen;" that "whoso hath, to him shall be given; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath,"—although the highest truth contained in these words be yet, in part, matter of faith, for we have not yet seen the end of God's dealings with us: yet what we do see, the evident truth of the words, that is, in respect to God's dealings with us in the course of his earthly providence, may reasonably assure us of their truth no less in respect to those dealings of God which as yet are future. I began, therefore, with reminding you of the truth of the words of the text with regard to worldly advantages; that even here, on this small scale, the general law holds good; that more things are provided for us than we will consent to use; that, in short, "many are called, but few are chosen."

But it were ill done to limit our view to this: we are called to much more than worldly advantages; and what if here, too, we add one more example to confirm our Lord's words, that "many are called, but few chosen?" Now here, as I said, it is very true that God's choice is as yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us; we cannot yet say of ourselves, or of any other set of living men, that "few are chosen." But though the full truth is not yet revealed, still, as there is a type of it in our worldly experience, so there is also a higher type, an earnest, of it in our spiritual experience: there is a sense, and that a very true and a very important one, in which we can say already, say now, actually, in the life that now is; say, even in the early stage of it, that some are, and some are not, "chosen."

We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch as we have been all introduced into Christ's church by Baptism; and a very large proportion of us have been called again, many of us not very long since, at our Confirmation. We have been thus called to enter into Christ's kingdom: we have been called to lead a life of holiness and happiness from this time forth even for ever. Nothing can be stronger than the language in which the Scripture speaks of the nature of our high calling: "All things," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Now, if this be the prize to which we are called, who are they who are also chosen to it? In the first and most complete sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest; who are in no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is altogether past, and the victory securely won. These are entered within the veil, whither we can as yet penetrate only in hope. But hope, in its highest degree, differs little from assurance; and even, as we descend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly predominant, there is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement; and the Scripture, which delights to carry encouragement to the highest pitch to those who are following God, allows of our saying of even these that they are God's chosen. It gives them, as it were, the title beforehand, to make them feel how doubly miserable it must be not only not to obtain it, but to forfeit it after it had been already ours. So then, there are senses in which we may say that some are chosen now; although, strictly speaking, the term can by us be applied, in its full sense, to those only who are passed beyond the reach of evil.

Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard their call, have turned to obey it, and have gone on following it. Those we may call chosen,—I do not say chosen irrevocably, but chosen now; chosen so that we may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and they thankful for themselves,—who, since their Confirmation, or since a period more remote, have kept God before their face, and tried to do His will. Those are, in the same way, chosen, who having found in themselves the sin which did most easily beset them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or in a great measure, have overcome it. Thus, they are chosen, who, having lived either in the frequent practice of selfish, extravagance, or of falsehood, or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have turned away from these things, and, for Christ's sake, have renounced them. They are chosen, I think, in yet a higher sense, who, having found their besetting sin to be, not so much any one particular fault, as a general ungodly carelessness, a lightness which for ever hindered them from serving God, have struggled with this most fatal enemy; and, even in youth, and health, and happiness, have learnt what it is to be sober-minded, what it is to think. Now, such as these have, in a manner, entered into their inheritance; they are not merely called, but chosen. God and spiritual things are not mere names to them, they are a reality. Such persons have tasted of the promises; they have known the pleasure—and what pleasure is comparable to it?—of feeling the bonds of evil passion or evil habit unwound from about their spirit; they have learnt what is that glorious liberty of being able to abstain from the things which we condemn, to do the things which we approve. They have felt true sense of power succeed to that of weakness. It is a delightful thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness, when our legs have been unable to support our weight, when our arms could lift nothing, our hands grasp nothing, when it was an effort to raise our head from the pillow, and it tired us even to speak in a whisper,—it is a delightful thing to feel every member restored to its proper strength; to find that exercise of limb, of voice, of body, which had been so long a pain, become now a source of perpetual pleasure. This is delightful; it pays for many an hour of previous weakness. But it is infinitely more delightful to feel the change from weakness to strength in our souls; to feel the languor of selfishness changed for the vigour of benevolence; to feel thought, hope, faith, love, which before were lying, as it were, in helplessness, now bounding in vigorous activity; to find the soul, which had been so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this earth, now able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily towards heaven.

These are chosen; and they to whom this description does in no degree apply, they are not chosen. They are not chosen in any sense, they are called only. And, now, what is the proportion between the one and the other; are there as many chosen as there have been many called? Or do Christ's words apply in our case no less than in others; that though they who are called are many, yet they who are chosen are few?

This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which is unseen to the world at large, unseen even by all but those who watch us most nearly and most narrowly. All we can say is, that there are too many, who we must fear are not chosen; there are too few, of whom we can feel sure that they are. Yet hope is a wiser feeling than its opposite; it were as wrong as it would be miserable to abandon it. How gladly would we hope the best things of all those whom we saw this morning at Christ's holy table! How gladly would we believe of all such, that they were more than called merely; that they had listened to the call: that they had obeyed it; that they had already gained some Christian victories; that they were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen. But this we may say; that hope which we so long to entertain, that hope too happy to be at once indulged in, you may authorize us to feel it; you may convert it into confidence. Do you ask how? By going on steadily in good, by advancing from good to better, by not letting impressions fade with time. Now, with many of you, your confirmation is little more than three months distant; when we next meet at Christ's table, it will have passed by nearly half-a-year. It may be, that, in that added interval, it will have lost much of its force; that, from various causes, evil may have abounded in you more than good; that then shame, or a willing surrender of yourselves to carelessness, will keep away from Christ's Communion, many who have this day joined in it. But, if this were not to be so; if those, whom we have seen with joy this day communicating with us in the pledges of Christian fellowship, should continue to do so steadily; if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in you in other things that our hope was well founded; if the hatred of evil and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in you; if by signs not to be mistaken by those who watch earnestly for them, we might be assured that your part was taken, that you were striving with us in that service of our common Master, in which we would fain live and die; if evil was clearly lessened among us—not laughed at, but discouraged and put down; if instead of those turning away, who have now been with us at Christ's table, others, who have now turned away, should then be added to the number; then we should say, not doubtingly, that you were chosen: that you had tasted of the good things of Christ; that the good work of God was clearly begun in you. We might not, indeed, be without care, either for you or for ourselves: God forbid, that, in that sense, any of us should deem that we were chosen, until the grave has put us beyond temptation. But how happy were it to think of you as Christ's chosen, in that sense which should be a constant encouragement to us all: to think of you as going on towards God; to think of you as living to him daily; to think of you as on his side against all his enemies; to think of you as led by his Spirit, as living members of his holy and glorious Church,—militant now, in heaven triumphant!



LECTURE XV.

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LUKE xi. 25.

When he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.

JOHN v. 42.

I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.

These passages, of which the first is taken from the gospel of this morning's service, the other from the second lesson, differ in words, but their meaning is very nearly the same. The house which was empty, swept and garnished, was especially one empty of the love of God. Whatever evil there may not have been in it; whatever good there may have been in those of whom Christ spoke in the second passage: yet it and they agreed in this; one thing they had not, which alone was worth, all the rest besides; they had not the love of God.

And so it is still; many are the faults which we have not; many are the good qualities which we have; but the life is wanting. What is so rare as to find one who is not indifferent to God? What so rare, even rarer than the other, as to find one who actually loves him?

Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of destruction are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of life are few. For destruction and life are but other terms for indifference to God on the one hand, and love to him on the other. All who are indifferent to him, die; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute creation, they have never been made capable of loving him; or a living death of perpetual misery, if, like evil spirits and evil men, they might have loved him and would not. And so all who love him, live a life, from first to last, without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they have loved him always; a life partaking at first of death, but brightening more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians, they were born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to righteousness.

Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the old, must be well aware of the truth of this: he will know that the value of any character is in proportion to the existence or to the absence of this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle. An exception may, perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number of fanatics; an apparent exception likewise exists in the case of many who seem to be religious, but who really are not so. The few exceptions of the former case are so very few, that we need not now stop to consider them, nor to inquire how far even these would be exceptions if we could read the heart as God reads it. The seeming exceptions being cases either of hypocrisy, or of very common self-deceit, we need not regard either; for they are, of course, no real objection to the truth of the general statement. It remains true, then, generally, that the value of any character is in proportion to the existence, or to the absence, in it of the love of God.

But is there not another exception to be made for the case of children, and of very young persons? Are they capable of loving God? and are not their earthly relations, their parents especially, put to them, as it were, in the place of God, as objects of trust, of love, of honour, of obedience, till their minds can open to comprehend the love of their Father who is in heaven? And does not the Scripture itself, in the few places in which it seems directly to address children, content itself with directing them to obey and honour their parents? Some notions of this sort are allowed, I believe, to serve sometimes as an excuse, when young persons are blamed for being utterly wanting in a sense of duty to God.

The passages which direct children to obey their parents, are of the same kind with those, directing slaves to obey their masters, and masters to be kind to their slaves; like those, also, which John the Baptist addressed to the soldiers and publicans: in none of all which there is any command to love God, but merely a command to fulfil that particular duty which most arose out of the particular relation, or calling of the persons addressed. In fact, when parents are addressed, they are directed only to do their duties to their children, just as children are directed to do theirs to their parents; in both cases alike, the common duty of parents and children to God is not dwelt upon, because that is a duty which does not belong to them as parents, or as children, but as human beings; and as such, it belongs to all alike. In fact, the very language of St. Paul's command to children implies this; for he says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right:" right, that is, in the sight of God: so that the very reason for which children are to discharge their earthly duties is, because that earthly duty is commanded by, or involved in, their heavenly duty; if they do not do it, they will not please God. But it is manifest that, in this respect, there is for all of us one only law, so soon as we are able to understand it. The moment that a child becomes capable of understanding anything about God and Christ,—and how early that is, every parent can testify,—that moment the duty to love God and Christ begins. It were absurd to say, that this duty has not begun at the age of boyhood. A boy is able to understand the force of religious motives, as well as he can that of earthly motives: he cannot understand either, perhaps, so well as he will hereafter; but he understands both enough, for the purposes of his salvation; enough, to condemn him before God, if he neglects them; enough to make him derive the greatest benefit from faithfully observing them.

And what can have been the purpose with which the only particular of our Lord's early life has been handed down to us, if it were not to direct our attention to this special truth, that our youth, no less than our riper age, belongs to God? "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" were words spoken by our Lord when he was no more than twelve years old. At twelve years old, he thought of preparing himself for the duties of his after-life; and of preparing himself for them, because they were God's will. He was to be about his Father's business. This is Christ's example for the young; this, and scarcely anything more than this, is recorded of his early years. Those are not like Christ who, at that same age, or even older, never think at all of the business of their future lives, still less would think of it, not as the means of their own maintenance or advancement, but as the duty which they owe to God.

Such as these are the very persons whose hearts are like the house in the parable, empty, swept, and garnished. The house so described in the parable is one out of which an evil spirit has just departed. In case of the young, the evil spirit in this sense, that is, as representing some one particular favourite sin, may perhaps have never entered it. That empty, swept, and garnished house, how like is it to what I have seen, to what I am seeing so continually, when a boy comes here with much still remaining of the innocence of childhood! Evil spirit, in the sense of any one particular vice, there is none to be found in that heart, nor has there been any ever. It is empty, swept, and garnished: there is the absence of evil; there are the various faculties, the furniture, as they may be called, of the house of our spirits, which the spirit uses either for evil or for good. There is innocence, then; there is, also, the promise of power. God hath richly endowed the earthly house of our tabernacle: various and wonderful is the furniture of body and mind with which it is supplied. How can we help admiring that open and cheerful brow which, as yet, no care or sin has furrowed; those light and active limbs, full of health and vigour; the eye so quick; the ear so undulled; the memory so ready; the young curiosity so eager to take in new knowledge; the young feelings, not yet spoiled by over-excitement, ready to admire, ready to love? There is the house, the house of God's building, the house which must abide for ever; but where is the spirit to inhabit it? Evil spirit there is none: is it, then, possessed by the Spirit of God? Has the fire from heaven as yet descended upon that house,—the living sign of God's presence, which alone can convert the house of perishable clay into the everlasting temple?

Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet no sign of his presence be manifest? It may be so, or to speak more truly, it might have been supposed to be so, if God's word had not declared the contrary. What God's secret workings are; in how many ways, to us inscrutable, he may pervade all nature; in how many cases he may be near us, and we know it not; may, perhaps, be amongst those real mysteries, those truths revealed to none, nor to be revealed; those yet uncleared forests, so to speak, of the world of nature, into which the light of grace has not been permitted to penetrate. But all such mysteries are to us as if they did not exist at all: we have nothing to do with them. God has told us nothing of his unseen and undiscernible presence; when and where he is so present, he is to us as if he were not present at all. God was in the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled; but he was not there for Moses. God, in some sense discernible, it may be, to other beings, may be in that house which, to us is empty; but God, our own God, the Holy Spirit, into whose service we were baptized, where he is, the house is not empty to us, but full of light. Invisible in himself, the signs of his presence are most visible: where no works, no fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be discerned, there, according to our Lord's express declaration, there the Holy Spirit is not.

But the light which declares his presence may indeed be a little spark; just to be seen, and no more. It may show that he has not abandoned all his right to the house of our tabernacle as yet; that he would desire to possess us fully. Such a little spark, such an evidence of the Holy Spirit's presence, is to be found in the outward profession of Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it by the Holy Ghost; and, therefore, it is quite true in this sense, that in every baptized Christian, who has not utterly apostatized, there is that faint sign of the Holy Spirit's still having a claim upon him; he is not yet utterly cast off. This is true; but it is not to our present purpose; such a feeble sign is a sign of God's yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our salvation. The presence with which the parable is concerned, is a far more effectual presence than this; the house in which there is no more than such a faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of the parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that he has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been pleased to make it his temple.

In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural, Christian sense, those many young minds, which we have seen so often, may truly be called empty. But will they remain so long? How often have I seen the early innocence of boyhood overcast; the natural simplicity of boyhood, its open truth, its confident affection, its honest shame, perverted, blunted, hardened! How often have I seen the seven evil spirits enter in and dwell there,—I know not, and never may know, whether to be cast out again, or to abide for ever. But I have seen them enter, and, whilst the person was yet within my view, I have not seen them depart. And why have they entered; why have they marred that which was so beautiful? For one only reason,—because the house was empty, because the Spirit of God was not there: there was no love of God, no thought of God. Mere innocence taints and spoils as surely before the influence of the world, as true principle flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, too, I have seen, not once only: I have seen the innocence of early boyhood sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise of abiding. I have seen, in other words, that the house was not empty; that the Spirit of God was there. I have watched the effect of those influences, which you know so well: the second half-year came, a period when mere innocence is sure to be worn away, greatly tainted, if not utterly gone; but still, in the cases which I am now alluding to, the promise of good was not less, but greater, there was a more tried, and, therefore, a stronger goodness. I have watched this, too, till it passed on, out of my sight. I never saw the blessed Spirit of God depart from the house which he had chosen: I well believe that he abides in it still, and will abide in it even to the day of Jesus Christ.

This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see; for still the great work of evil and of good is going on; still the house, at first empty, is possessed by the spirits of evil, or by the Spirit of God. And if we do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are but too sure that the evil spirit is there. We know him by the manifold signs of folly, coarseness, carelessness; even when we see not, as yet, his worse fruits of falsehood and profligacy. We know him by the sign of an increased, and increasing selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions of our nature, all for ever calling out, "Give, give;" all for ever impatient, complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the call of duty is set before them. We know him by pride and self-importance, as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own opinions, judgment, feelings were to be consulted in all things. We know him by the deep ungodliness which he occasions—no thought of God, much less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or, at least, whilst health and prosperity continue. These are the fatal signs which show that the house is no longer empty; that the evil spirits have entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs, as too often happens, for time and for eternity.



LECTURE XVI.

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MATHEW xi. 10.

I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee.

If it was part of God's dispensation, that there should be one to prepare the way before Christ's first coming, it may be expected much more, that there should be some to prepare the way before his second. And so it is expressed in the collect for the third Sunday in Advent: "O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee; grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen." NOW, in what does this preparing for him consist; and what is its object? The Scripture will inform us as to both. The object is, "Lest he come and smite the earth with a curse;" lest, when he shall come, his coming, which should be our greatest joy and happiness, should be our everlasting destruction; for there can abide before him nothing that is evil. This is the object of preparing for Christ's coming. Next, in what does the preparation consist? It consists in teaching men to live above the common notions of their age and country; to raise their standard higher; to live after what is right in God's judgment, which often casts away, as faulty and bad, what men were accustomed to think good. And as the people of Israel, although they had God's revelation among them, had yet let their standard of good and evil become low, even so it has been in the Christian Israel. We have God's will in our hands, yet our judgments are not formed upon it; and, therefore, they who would prepare us for Christ's coming, must set before us a commandment which is new, although old: in one sense old, in every generation, inasmuch as it is the same which we had from the beginning; in another sense, in every generation more new, inasmuch, as the habits opposed to it have become the more confirmed; and the longer the night has lasted, the more strange to our eyes is the burst of the returning light.

But when we thus speak of the common notions of our age and country being deficient, and thus, in effect, commend notions which would be singular, do we not hold a language inconsistent with our common language and practice? Do we not commonly regard singularity as a fault, and attach a considerable authority to the consent of men in general? Nay, do we not often appeal to this consent as to a proof which a sane mind must admit as decisive? Even in speaking of good and evil, have not the very words gained their present sense because the common consent of mankind has agreed to combine notions of self-satisfaction, of honour, and of love, with what we call good, and the contrary with what we call evil?

A short time may, perhaps, not be misapplied in endeavouring to explain this matter; in showing where, and for what reasons, the common opinion of our society is to be followed, where it is to be suspected, and where it is absolutely to be shunned or trampled under foot, as clearly and certainly evil.

I must begin with little things, in order to show the whole question plainly. Take those tastes in us which most resemble the instincts of a brute; and you will find that in these, as with instinct, common consent becomes a sure rule. When I speak of those tastes which most resemble instincts, I mean those in which nature, doing most for us at first, leaves least for us to learn for ourselves. This seems the character of instinct: it is far more complete than reason in its first stage, but it admits of no after improvement; the brute in the thousandth generation is no way advanced beyond the brute in the first. Of our tastes, even of those belonging to our bodily senses, that which belongs to what are called particularly our organs of taste is the one most resembling an instinct: we have less to do for its improvement than in any other instance. Men being here, then, upon an equality, with a faculty given to all by nature, and improved particularly by none, those who differ from the majority are likely to differ not from excellence but from defect: not because they have a more advanced reason, but because they have a less healthy instinct, than their neighbours. Thus, in those matters which relate to the sense of taste—I am obliged to take this almost trivial instance, because it so well illustrates the principle of the whole question—we hold the consent of men in general to be a good rule. If any one were to choose to feed upon what this common taste had pronounced to be disgusting, we should not hesitate to say that such an appetite was diseased and monstrous.

Now, let us take our senses of sight and hearing, and we shall find that just in the proportion in which these less resemble instincts than the sense of taste, so is common consent a less certain rule. Up to a certain point they are instincts: there are certain sounds which, I suppose, are naturally disagreeable to the ear; while, on the other hand, bright and rich colours are, perhaps, naturally attractive to the eye. But, then, sight and hearing are so connected with our minds that they are susceptible of very great cultivation, and thus differ greatly from instincts. As the mind opens, outward sights and sounds become connected with a great number of associations, and thus we learn to think the one or the other beautiful, for reasons which really depend very much on the range of our own ideas. Consider, for a moment, the beautiful in architecture. If the model of the leaning tower of Pisa were generally adopted in our public buildings, all men's common sense would cry out against it as a deformity, because a leaning wall would convey to every mind the notion of insecurity, and every body would feel that it was unpleasant to see a building look exactly as if it were going to fall down. Now, what I have called common sense is, in a manner, the instinct of our reason: it is that uniform level of reason which all sane persons reach to, and the wisest in matters within its province do not surpass. But go beyond this, and architecture is no longer a matter of mere common sense, but of science, and of cultivated taste. Here the standard of beauty is not fixed by common consent; but, in the first instance, devised or discovered by the few: and, so far as it is received by the many, received by them on the authority of the few, and sanctioned, so to speak, not so much from real sympathy and understanding, as from a reasonable trust and deference to those who are believed the best judges.

Here, then, we suppose that the common judgment is right; but we perceive a difference between this case and the one mentioned before, inasmuch as in the first instance the right judgment of the mass of mankind is their own; in the second instance, they have adopted it out of deference to others. Not only, then, will men's common judgment be right in matters of instinct and of common sense, but also in higher matters, where, although they could not have discovered what was right, yet they were perfectly willing to adopt it, when discovered by others. And this opens a very wide field. For in all matters which come under the dominion of fashion, where the avowed object is the convenience or gratification of society, men listen to those who profess to teach them with almost an excess of docility: they will adopt sometimes fashions which are not convenient. But yet, as men can tell well enough by experience whether they do find a thing convenient and agreeable or not, so it is most likely that fashions which continue long and generally prevalent are founded upon sound principles; because else men, being well capable of knowing what convenience is, and being also well disposed to follow it, would neither have been very long or very generally mistaken in this matter; nor would have acquiesced in their mistake contentedly.

We do perfectly right, then, to regard the common opinion as a rule in all points of dress, in our houses and furniture, in those lighter usages of society which come under the denomination of manners, as distinguished from morals. In all these, if the mass of mankind could not find out what would best suit them, yet they are quite ready to adopt it when it is found out; and so they equally arrive at truth. But take away this readiness, and the whole case is altered. If there be any point in which men are not ready to adopt what is best for them; if they are either indifferent, or still more, if they are averse to it; if they thus have neither the power of discovering it for themselves, nor the will to avail themselves of it, when discovered for them; then it is clear that, in such a point, the common judgment will be of no value, nay, there will even be a presumption that it is wrong.

Now as the common consent of mankind was most sure in matters where their sense most resembled instinct, that is, where nature had done most for them, and left them least to do for themselves; as here, therefore, they who are sound are the great majority, and the exceptions are no better than disease; so if there be any part of us which is the direct opposite to instinct, a part in which nature has done next to nothing for us, and all is to be done by ourselves; then, here the common consent of mankind will be of the least value; here the majority will be helpless and worthless; and they who are happy enough to be exceptions to this majority, will be no other than Christ's redeemed.

Now, again, if this deficient part of our nature could be seen purely distinct from every other; if it alone dictated our language, and inspired our actions, then it would follow, that language which must ever be fixed by the majority, would be, in fact, the language of the world of infinite evil; and our actions those of mere devils. Then, whoever of us would be saved, must needs begin by forswearing, altogether, both the language and the actions of his fellow-men. But this is not so; in almost every instance this deficient part of our nature acts along with others that are not so corrupted; it mars their work, undoubtedly; it often confuses and perverts our language; it always taints our actions; but it does not wholly usurp either the one or the other; and thus, by God's blessing, man's language yet affords a high witness to divine truth, and even men's judgments and actions testify, though with infinite imperfection, to the existence and excellence of goodness.

And this it is which forms one of the great perplexities of life; for as there is enough of what is right in men's judgments and conduct to forbid us from saying, that we must take the very rule of contraries, and think and do just the opposite to the opinions and practice of men in general; so, on the other hand, there is always so much wrong in them, that we may never dare to follow them as a standard, but shall find, that if trusted to as such, they will inevitably betray us. So that in points of greater moment than mere manners and fashion, it will ever be true, that if we would be prepared for Christ's coming, we must rise to a far higher standard than that of society in general; that in the greatest concerns of human life, the practice of the majority, though always containing something of good, is yet in its prevailing character, as regards God, so evil, that they who are content to follow it cannot be saved.

This is the explanation of the apparent difficulty in the general, and thus, while acknowledging that there are points in which men, by common consent, make out what is best; and others in which, although they do not make it out, nor at first appreciate it, yet they are very willing to adopt it upon trust, and so come by experience to value it; while, therefore, there are a great many things in which singularity is either a disease or a foolishness; so again there are other points in which men in general have not the power to make out what is good, nor yet the docility to adopt it; and, therefore, in these points, which relate to the great matters of life, singularity is wisdom and salvation, and he who does as others do, perishes. That is what is called the corruption of human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, to go into some further details, and show, by common examples, how strangely our judgment and practice contain, with much that is right, just that one taint or defect which, as a whole, spoils them. And this one defect will be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect in our sense of our relation towards God.



LECTURE XVII.

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1 CORINTHIANS ii. 12.

We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God.

And, therefore, he goes on to say, our language is different from that of others, and not always understood by them; the natural man receiveth not the things of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. That is, they are discerned only by a faculty which he has not, namely, by the Spirit; and, therefore, as beings devoid of reason cannot understand the truths of science, or of man's wisdom, for they are without the faculty which can discern them; so beings devoid of God's Spirit cannot understand the truths of God.

Now, in order to turn this passage to our profit, we need not consider those who are wholly without God's Spirit, or inquire whether, indeed, there be any such; it is not that there are two broadly marked divisions of all men, those who have not the Spirit of God at all, and those who have it abundantly: if it were so, the separation of the great day of judgment would be begun already, nor would it require, in order to effect it rightly, the wisdom of Him who trieth the very hearts and reins. No doubt there will be at last but two divisions of us all, the saved and the lost; but now the divisions are infinite; so much so that the great body of us offer much matter for hope as well as for fear. We cannot say, that they are without the Spirit of God; yet neither can we say that they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's true servants. We cannot say, that the things of God's are absolutely to them as foolishness; yet certainly, we cannot say either, that they are to them as the divinest wisdom.

And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last Sunday. It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have within us much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of right and wrong are so faulty; and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our faint sense of our relations to God. These relations seem continually foolishness to us, because they are spiritually discerned, and we have so little of God's Spirit to enable us to discern them. And our blindness here affects our whole souls; we have, in consequence of it, a much fainter perception even of those truths which reason can discern by herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us much less influence.

Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of the Spirit of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is fair to see and to allow what there is of right in our language and sentiments, as well as to note what is wrong. Reason influences thus much, that we not only commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, in particular cases, we commend, I think, each separate virtue, and we blame each separate vice. I never heard of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, &c., being other than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice, and selfishness being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God influences at least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be living sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our death near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from this life under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right in our minds towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but from the Spirit of God.

Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually makes our practical judgments quite wrong; which makes us, in fact, so often countenance and support evil, and discountenance and discourage good? First, it is owing to the spirit of carelessness. One of the most emphatic terms by which a good man is expressed in the language of the Greek philosophers, is that of [Greek: opdouiaos], "one who is in earnest." To be in earnest is, indeed, with, most of us, the same as to be good; it is not that we love evil, but that we are indifferent both to it and to good. Now, many of us are very seldom in earnest. By this I mean, that the highest part of our minds, and that which judges of the highest things, is generally slumbering or but half awake. We may go through, a very busy day, and yet not be, in this true sense, in earnest at all; our best faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or playing. It is notorious how much this is so in the common intercourse of society in the world. Light anecdotes; playful remarks; discussions, it may be, about the affairs of the neighbourhood, or, in some companies, on questions of science or party politics; all these may be often heard; but we may talk on all these brilliantly and well, and yet our best nature may not once be called to exert itself. So again, in mere routine business, it is the same: the body may toil; the pen move swiftly; the thoughts act in the particular matter before them vigorously; and yet we our proper selves, beings understanding and choosing between good and evil, have never bestirred ourselves at all. It has been but a skirmishing at the outposts; not a sword had been drawn in the main battle. Take younger persons, and the same thing is the case even more palpably. Here there is less of business in the common sense of the term; the mind is almost always unbraced and resting. We pass through the good and evil of our daily life, and our proper self scarcely ever is aroused to notice either the one or the other.

But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not altogether accidental: it is a carelessness which we do not wish to break. So long as it lasts, we manage to get the activity and interest of life, without a sense of its responsibility. We like exceedingly to lay the reins, as it were, upon the neck of our inclinations, to go where they take us, and to ask no questions whether we are in the right road or no. Inclination is never slumbering: this gives us excitement enough to save us from weariness, without the effort of awakening our conscience too. Therefore society, expressing in its rules the feelings of its individual members, prescribes exactly such a style of conversation as may keep in exercise all other parts of our nature except that one which should be sovereign of all, and whose exercise is employed on things eternal.

Not being, then, properly in earnest,—that is, our conscience and our choice of moral good and evil being in a state of repose,—our language is happily contrived so as that it shall contain nothing to startle our sleeping conscience, if her ears catch any of its sounds. We still commend good and dispraise evil, both in the general and in the particular. But as good and evil are mixed in every man, and in various proportions, he who commends, the little good of a bad man, saying nothing of his evil,—or he who condemns the little evil of a good man, saying nothing of his good,—leads us evidently to a false practical conclusion; he leads us to like the bad man and to dislike the good. Again, the lesser good becomes an evil if it keeps out a greater good; and, in the same way, the lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no thought of comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature be asleep, then we shall most estimate the good to which we are most inclined; and where we find this we shall praise it, not observing that it is taking up the place of a greater good which the case requires, and, therefore, that it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments may lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men and despise good; we may approve of qualities which, are, in fact, ruining a man; and despise others which, in the particular case, are virtues; without ever in plain words condemning virtue or approving vice.

But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest greatly lowers the strength of our feelings even towards the good which we praise and towards the evil which we condemn. It was an admirable definition of that which excites laughter, that it was that which is out of rule, that which is amiss, that which is unsightly, (these three ideas, and other similar ones, are alike contained in the single Greek word [Greek: aischron],) provided that it was unaccompanied by pain. This definition accounts for the otherwise extraordinary fact, that there is something in moral evil which, in some instances, affects the mind ludicrously. That is to say, if moral evil affects us with no pain; if we see in it nothing, so to speak, but its irregularity, its strange contrast with what is beautiful, its jarring with the harmony of the system around us; then it does acquire that character which is well defined as being ridiculous. Thus it is notorious that trifling follies, and even gross vices, are often so represented in works of fiction as to be exceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what I mean, to name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the notions of vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral pain; get rid also of those points in it which awaken physical disgust; retain merely the notion of the incoherent language, and the strange capricious gait of intoxication; and we have then an image merely ridiculous, as much, so as the rambling talk and absurd gestures of the old buffoons.

Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laughable; and of things which are really wicked, disgusting, hateful, being expressed by names purely ludicrous. Where no great physical pain or distress is occasioned by what is evil, our sense of its ludicrousness will be exactly in proportion to the faintness of our sense of moral evil; or, in other words, to our want of being in earnest. The evil that does not seriously pain or inconvenience man, is very apt to be regarded with feelings approaching to laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of its being an offence against God.

Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being in earnest, from the habitual slumber of conscience, or that sovereign part of us which looks upon our whole state with reference to its highest interests, and passes judgment upon all our actions,—how, from the practical absence of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and be indifferent to the good; to admire qualities which, from usurping the place of better ones, are actually ruinous; and, finally, to regard all common evil not so much with deep abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And thus the practical judgment and influence of the society around us may be fatally evil; while the society all the time shall contain, even in its very perversion, various elements of truth and of good.

I have kept to general language, to general views, perhaps too much; but all the time my mind has been fixed on the particular application of this, which lies scarcely beneath the surface, but which I cannot well bear more fully to unveil. But whoever has attended to what I have been saying, will be able, I should trust, to make the application, for himself, to those points in our society which most need correction. He will be able to understand how it is that the influence of the place is not better, while it undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the public opinion of a Christian school may yet be, in many respects, very unchristian. If he has attended at all to what I have said about our so rarely being in earnest, he will see something of the mischief of some of those publications, of those books, of that tone of conversation, which, I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly impossible is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters: to say this book is too light, or this is an excess of light reading, or this laugh was too unrestrained, or that tone of trifling too perpetual. But, in these things, we should all judge ourselves; and remember that you are so little under outward restraint, your choice of reading is so free, your intercourse with one another so wholly uncontrolled, that, enjoying thus the full liberty of more advanced years, you incur also their responsibility. There is, doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in kind and in quantity; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation and manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And you must be quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to indulge such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness have no necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed one of the greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the most earnest thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more grace than when they are united with the shallowness and hardness of him who is, in the sight of God, a fool. It were a strange notion, that we could never be merry without intoxication, yet not stranger than to think that mirth is the companion only of folly or of sin. But, setting God in Christ before us, then the conscience is awake; then we are in earnest; then we measure things rightly; then we feel them strongly; then we love those that are good, and shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is no matter of laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a ludicrous name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so miscall, is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever.



LECTURE XVIII.

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GENESIS xxvii. 38.

And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.

MATTHEW xv. 27.

And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table.

Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remember, is taken from the first lesson of this morning's service; the second is from the morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and point out, I think, that particular view of the story of Jacob obtaining the blessing which is most capable of being turned to account; for, as to the conduct of Jacob and his mother, it is manifestly no more capable of affording us benefit, as a matter of example, than the conduct, in some respects similar, of the unjust steward in our Lord's parable. The example, indeed, is of the same kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about his future worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the one by dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be anxious about the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to us, which no such unworthy means can be required to gain. But the point of the story to which the text refers, and which is illustrated also by the words of the Syrophoenician woman, is one which very directly concerns us all, being no other than this,—what should be the effect upon our own minds of witnessing others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves, whether obtained by the immediate gift of God, through the course of his ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or unlawful act of those who are in possession of them?

Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule either of nature or of human society, there must be many in every congregation who are so far in the condition of Esau and of the Syrophoenician woman, as to be inferior to others around them in some one or more advantages. The inferiority may consist in what are called worldly advantages, or in natural advantages, or in spiritual advantages, or in some or all of these united. And it is not to be doubted that the sense of this inferiority is a hard trial, both as respects our feelings towards God and towards men. It is a hard trial; but yet, no trial overtakes us but such as is common to man: and here, as in all other cases, God will, with the trial, also make a way for us to escape, that we may be able to bear it.

Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases in which this inferiority exists amongst us. With regard to worldly advantages, the peculiar nature of this congregation makes it less necessary than it generally would be, to dwell upon inequality in these: in fact, speaking generally, we are a very unusual example of equality in these respects; the advantages of station and fortune are enjoyed not, literally, in an equal degree by all of us, but equally as compared with, the lot of the great mass of society; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the comforts of life. What differences there are would, probably, appear in instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, any thing were really trifling by which the temper and feelings, and through them the principles, of any amongst us may be affected for good or for evil. It may possibly happen that, in the indulgences, or means of indulgence, given to you by your friends at home, there may be sometimes, such a difference as to excite discontent or jealousy. It may be, that some are apt to exult over others, by talking of the pleasures, or the liberty, which they enjoy; and which the friends of others, either from necessity or from a sense of duty, are obliged to withhold. If this be ever felt by any of you as a trial; if it gall your pride, as well as restrict your enjoyments; then remember, that here, even in this seemingly little thing, the inferiority of which you complain may be either increased ten-fold, or changed into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold, even as from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath, if by discontent, and evil passions towards God and man, you make yourselves a hundred times more inferior spiritually than you were in outward circumstances; but changed into a blessed superiority, if it be borne with meekness, and patience, and thankfulness, even as it was said of the Gentile centurion, that there had not been found faith equal to his, no, not in Israel.

But turning from worldly advantages to those which are called natural, and the inequality here is at once as great as elsewhere. In all faculties of body and mind; in the vigour of the senses, of the limbs, of the general constitution; in the greater or less liability to disease generally, or to any particular form of it; or, again, in powers of mind, in quickness, in memory, in imagination, in judgment; the differences between different persons in this congregation must be exceedingly wide. But, with regard to bodily powers, the trial is little felt, till the inferiority is shown in actual suffering from pain or from disease. So long as we are in health, our enjoyments are so many, and we so easily accommodate our habits to our powers, that a mere inferiority of strength, whether it be of limb or of constitution, is not apt to make us dissatisfied. But if it comes to actual illness or to pain, if we are deprived of the common enjoyments and occupations of our age, then perhaps the trial begins to be severe; and when we look at others who have taken the same liberties with their health as we have done, and see them notwithstanding perfectly well and strong, while we are disabled or suffering, we may think that God has dealt hardly with us, and may be inclined to ask with Esau, "Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father!" Now this language, according to the sense in which we use it, is either blameable or innocent. If we mean to say, "Hast thou health to give to others only and not to me? give me this blessing also, as thou hast given it to my brethren:" then it has in it somewhat of discontent and murmuring; it implies a claim to which God never listens. But if we mean, "Hast thou only one kind of blessing, my father? If thou hast blest others in one way, I murmur not nor complain: but out of thine infinite store, give me also such a blessing as may be convenient for me;" then God hears the prayer, then he gives the blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it bear so evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are become first; if others have health, and we have sickness, yet the spirit of patience and cheerful submission which God gives with it is so great a blessing, and makes us so certainly happy, that the strongest and healthiest of our friends have often far more reason to wish to change places with us, than we with them.

Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And here, undoubtedly, the difference is apt to be a trial. Not that, probably, it excites discontent or murmuring against God; nor jealousy against those whose faculties are better than our own: the trial is of another kind; we are tempted to make our inferiority an excuse for neglect; because we cannot do so much nor so easily as others, we do far less than we might do. But the parable shows us plainly, that if one talent only has been given us, while others have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, must be made to yield its increase. Here is the feeling expressed so earnestly by the woman entreating Christ to heal her daughter. "The dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Small as may be the portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty vouchsafed to others, still it is capable of nourishing us if we make use of it; still it shows that we too have our blessing. And if using it with thankfulness, if doing our very best with it, knowing that "a man is accepted according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath not," we labour humbly and diligently; then, not only does the talent itself become increased, so that our Lord, when he comes to reckon with us, may receive his own with usury: but a blessing of another kind is added to our labours, again, as in the former case, making those who were last to become first. For if there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly, humbly, and zealously cultivated. From how many pains are they delivered, to which great natural talents are continually exposed; irritation, jealousy, a morbid and nervous activity, bearing fruits not of peace, but of gall! With what blessings are they crowned, to which, the most powerful natural understanding is a stranger! the love of truth gratified, without the fear that truth will demand the sacrifice of personal vanity; the line of duty clearly discerned, because those mists of passion and selfishness which obscure it so often from the view of the keenest natural perception, have been dispersed by the spirit of humility and love; imperfect knowledge patiently endured, because whatever knowledge is enjoyed is known to be God's gift, and what he gives, or what he withholds, is alike welcome. This is the blessing of those who having had inferior natural powers, have so laboured to improve them according to God's will, that on all there has been grafted, as it were, some better power of grace, to yield a fruit most precious both for earth and heaven.

But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and this is perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great is this inequality in truth, when it seems to be so little! All of you, the children of Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church; all partaking here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same word of God, the same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of God, and not, like Esau, or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the covenant of blessing? Yet your real condition is, notwithstanding, very unequal. How unlike are your friends at home; how, unlike, also, are your friends here! Are there not some to whom their homes, both by direct precept and by example, are a far greater help than to others? Are there not some, whose immediate companions here may encourage them in all good far more than may be the case with, others? So, then, there may be some to whom this great blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. What then? Shall we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to our Father's house; that we will not walk as our brother walks, unless we have his advantages? Then must we remain cast out; vessels fashioned to dishonour; rejected of God, and cursed. Nay rather let us put a Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry, "'Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father.' If thou hast given to others earthly helps, which thou hast denied to me, give me thyself and thy own Spirit the more! If father and mother forsake my most precious interest, do thou take me up. If my nearest friends will not walk with me in the house of God, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always, making my house as thine. Outward and earthly means thou givest or takest away at thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that I yet may not lose thee."

How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer! How earnestly do we wish to help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried and so enduring! And think we that God cares for it less than we do? or have we not already the record of his love towards it, when Christ answered the Syrophoenician woman, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt?" He may not, indeed, see fit to give the very same blessing which was in the first instance denied: we may still have fewer spiritual advantages than others, as far as human helps are concerned; fewer good and earnest friends; fewer examples of holiness around us; fewer to join with us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil. But though this particular blessing may be denied,—as Esau could not gain that blessing which had been given to Jacob,—yet there is a blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than our brother's. He who serves God steadily, amidst many disadvantages, enjoys the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier faith; he has gone through trials, and been found conqueror; and for him that overcometh is reserved a more abundant measure of glory.

But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's posterity, have the blessing,—whether it be natural, worldly, or spiritual,—let us consider what became of it when it was not improved. What was the sin of Esau,—speaking not of the individual, but of the less favoured people of Edom,—compared with the sin of Jacob? Nay, not of Edom only; but it shall be more tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for the unbelieving cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the literal, but with the Christian Israel; so it is, not only with the Church as a whole compared with heathens, but with all those individuals amongst us, who enjoy in any larger measure than others any of God's blessings. They are blessings; but they may be made fatal curses. This holds true with blessings of every kind: with station and wealth, with bodily health and vigour, with, great powers of mind, with large means of spiritual improvement. To whom much is given, of him shall be much, required. It is required of us to enjoy our blessings by using them: so will they be blessings indeed. So it is with money and influence, with health, with talents, with spiritual knowledge, and good friends and parents. There are first who shall be last; that is, those who began their course with advantages which set them before their brethren, if they do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them: for the blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given; and the blessing given, in like manner, becomes too often a blessing taken away.



LECTURE XIX.

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MATTHEW xxii. 32.

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees; and, as their question was put in evident profaneness, and the answer to it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural, so we are apt to think that in this particular story there is less than usual that particularly concerns us. But it so happens, that our Lord, in answering the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most universal and most solemn of all truths,—which is indeed implied in many parts of the Old Testament, but which the Gospel has revealed to us in all its fulness,—the truth contained in the words of the text, that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words, which we often hear even, perhaps, without quite understanding them; and many times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may take them, first, in their first part, where they say that "God is not the God of the dead."

The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a double sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as those who are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are alike applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."

God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that they who are without him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are also without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior animals, they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to us to have no knowledge of God; and we are not told that they have any other life than the short one of which our senses inform us. I am well aware that our ignorance of their condition is so great that, we may not dare to say anything of them positively; there may be a hundred things true respecting them which we neither know nor imagine. I would only say that, according to that most imperfect light in which we see them, the two points of which I have been speaking appear to meet in them: we believe that they have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they will die. And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the agreement, if I may so speak, between these two points; and were intended, perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had far better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God is not the God of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and if we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of death and absence from God are in fact synonymous.

Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death and of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares the description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects how especially it is there said, that God dwells in the midst of it, and is its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment from the first Eden means a banishment from the presence of God. And thus, in the day that Adam sinned, he died; for he was cast out of Eden immediately, however long he may have moved about afterwards upon the earth where God was not. And how very strong to the same point are the words of Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words which express completely the feeling that God is not the God of the dead. This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression used in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so many words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always implies a separation from God, and the being—whatever the notion may extend to—the being dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin, and had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die:" which means, most expressively, thou shalt not die to God. In one sense, David died, as all men die; nor was he, by any means, freed from the punishment of his sin: he was not, in that sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to regard God as his God; and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly chastisements from God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be partaker of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose his kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa, yet I do not think that we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God had ceased to be his God, although be visited him with severe chastisements, and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the crown of Israel. Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where the expressions occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall surely die." We have no right to refer these to a mere extension, on the one hand, or a cutting short, on the other, of the term of earthly existence. The promise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's case, of adding to his days fifteen years, is very different from the full and unreserved blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know, undoubtedly, that both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died alike the natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of the promise, and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt belong to God; in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him; although the veil was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of those terms, "belonging to God," and "ceasing to belong to him:" nay, can we venture to affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now?

I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to place the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a light which is exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the Scripture implies, that to be dead, and to be without God, are precisely the same thing, then can it be denied, that the symptoms of death are strongly marked upon many of us? Are there not many who never think of God, or care about his service? Are there not many who live, to all appearance, as unconscious of his existence as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And is it not quite clear, that to such persons, God cannot be said to be their God? He may be the God of heaven and earth, the God of the universe, the God of Christ's church; but he is not their God, for they feel to have nothing at all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not their God, they are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned among the dead.

But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who are alive, live unto him; all who live unto him, are alive. "God said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;" and, therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are not and cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because God owns them: he is not ashamed to be called their God; therefore, they are not cast out from him; therefore, by necessity, they live. Wonderful, indeed, is the truth here implied, in exact agreement, as we have seen, with the general language of Scripture; that, as she who but touched the hem of Christ's garment was, in a moment, relieved from her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out from him; so they who are not cast out from God, but have any thing whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of his gracious presence penetrating their whole nature; because he lives, they must live also.

Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote, (if a few years be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even now present before us; even now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive unto God, or dead unto God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that highest possible sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been revealed to us, that we know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means a conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in those little words, life and death. They are far higher, and far deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this moral state, even to you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey, life and death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to be alive to him, are things perceptibly different.

For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most separate from him, and most without him, whether there is not now actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness, the loneliness, the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether they are made unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they are not: for they who fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them. The thought of him gives them no disquiet at all; this is the very point we start from. But I would ask them whether they know what it is to feel God's blessing. For instance: we all of us have our troubles of some sort or other, our disappointments, if not our sorrows. In these troubles, in these disappointments,—I care not how small they may be,—have they known what it is to feel that God's hand is over them; that these little annoyances are but his fatherly correction; that he is all the time loving us, and supporting us? In seasons of joy, such, as they taste very often, have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from his hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love? Sickness, danger,—I know that they come to many of us but rarely; but if we have known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in its graver,—have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's hands, that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing can hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us, to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in this vast world,—there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and whenever we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own hearts alone, the coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But consider that the things which, we see around us cannot remain with us, nor we with them. The coldness and loneliness of the world, without God, must be felt more and more as life wears on: in every change of our own state, in every separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels,—the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly: we shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us that "God is not the God of the dead."

And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the living" grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far from every one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who live unto him, that he is their God, and that they are his children. On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the warmth of his love is spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere of their lives: they for ever feel his blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even now, when they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure that they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal: God is the God of the living, and all who are with him must live.

Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the minds of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of the dead that they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that, even whilst writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news reached me that one, who two months ago was one of your number, who this very half-year has shared in all the business and amusements of this place, is passed already into that state where the meanings of the terms life and death are become fully revealed. He knows what it is to live unto God, and what it is to die to him. Those things which are to us unfathomable mysteries, are to him all plain: and yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as far from attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it is clear, that these things, life and death, may hurry their lesson upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to God, and yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us, and we should find then that to be dead to God was death, indeed, a death from which there is no waking, and in which there is no sleeping for ever.



LECTURE XX.

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EZEKIEL xiii. 22.

With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.

The verses which immediately precede this, require explanation, but perhaps our knowledge is hardly sufficient to enable us to give it fully. There are allusions to customs,—to fashions rather,—common amongst the Israelites at the time, which we can now scarcely do more than guess at; but we may observe, that there was a general practice, which even God's own prophets were directed often to comply with, of enforcing what was said in word by some corresponding outward action, in which the speaker made himself, as it were, a living image of the idea which he meant to convey. Thus, when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, was assuring Ahab, that he should drive the Syrians before him, he made himself horns of iron, and said, "With these shalt thou push the Syrians, until thou have consumed them." In the same way, it is imagined that the false prophetesses spoken of in the text were in the habit of wearing pillows, or cushions, fastened to their arms, and directed those who came to consult them to do the same, as a sign of rest and peace; that they who trusted to them had nothing to fear, but might lie down and enjoy themselves at their feasts, or in sleep, with entire security. Or, again, if we connect what is said of the pillows with what immediately follows about the kerchiefs put upon the head, we may suppose that both are but parts of a fantastic dress, such as was often worn by pretended prophets and fortune-tellers, and which they may have made those wear, also, who came before them. We know that the covering on the head was, for instance, a part of the ceremonial law of the Roman augurs, when they began their divinations. But, however this be, the exact understanding of these particular points is not necessary to our deriving the lesson of the passage in general. I know that there is something naturally painful to an active mind in being obliged to content itself with an indistinct notion, or still more, with no notion at all, of the meaning of any words presented to it. But, whilst we should highly value this sensitiveness, as, indeed, few qualities are more essential in the pursuit of truth, yet we must be careful not to let our disappointment carry us too far, so as to pass over a whole passage, or portion, of Scripture, as if in despair, because we cannot understand every part of it. Much of the supposed obscurity of the prophets arises from this cause—that we find in them particular expressions and allusions, which, whether from a, fault in the translation, or from our imperfect knowledge of the times of which the prophets speak, and of the language in which they wrote, are certainly quite unintelligible. But these are only a few expressions, occurring here and there; and it is a great evil to fancy that their writings, in general, are not to be understood, because of the difficulty of particular passages in them. Thus, with the very chapter of which we are now speaking, the expression to which I have alluded can only be uncertainly interpreted, yet the lesson of the chapter, as a whole, is perfectly clear, notwithstanding. The dress, or fashions, or particular rites, of the false prophets of Jerusalem and their votaries, may offer no distinct image to our minds; but the evil of their doings, how they deceived others, and were themselves deceived; the points, that is, which alone concern us practically, these are set before us plainly. "With their lies they made the heart of the righteous sad, whom God had not made sad; and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life." Where the way of life was broad, they strove to make it narrow; and where it was narrow, they strove to make it broad: by their solemn and superstitious lies, they frightened and perplexed the good, while, by their lives of ungodliness, they emboldened and encouraged the wicked.

It may not, at first sight, seem necessary that these two things should go together; there might be, it seems, either the fault of making the heart of the righteous sad, without that of strengthening the hands of the wicked: or there might be the strengthening of the hands of the wicked, without making sad the heart of the righteous. And so it sometimes has been: there has been a wickedness which has not tried to keep up superstition: there has been a superstition, the supporters of which have not wilfully encouraged wickedness. Yet, although this has been so, with respect to the intention of the parties concerned, yet in their own nature, the tendency of either evil to produce the other is sure and universal. We cannot exist without some influences of fear and restraint, on the one hand, and without some indulgence of freedom, on the other. God has provided for both these wants, so to speak, of our nature; he has told us whom we should fear, and where we should be restrained, and where, also, we may be safely in freedom: there is the fruit forbidden, and the fruit which we may eat freely. But if the restraint and the liberty be either of them put in the wrong place, the double evil is sure to follow. Restrained in his lawful liberty, debarred from the good and wholesome fruit of the garden, man breaks out into a liberty which is unlawful; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose taste is death; or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run wild in a space far too vast for his strength to compass, he turns cravingly for that support to his weariness which a narrowed range would afford him; and he limits himself on that very quarter in which alone he might expatiate freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest of wickedness, and wickedness is the breaking loose of superstition.

But, however true this may be, are we concerned in it? First of all, when we find an evil dwelt upon often in the Prophets, and find it dwelt upon again by our Lord and his Apostles with no less earnestness, there is, at least, a strong presumption, that an evil of this sort is nothing local or passing, but that it is fixed in man's nature, and is apt to grow up in all times, and in all countries. Now, the double evil spoken of in the text, occurs again in the gospel; there we find men spoken of, who, in like manner, insisted upon what was trifling, and were careless of what was important; and in the epistles, we find, again, the same characters holding up as righteous others than those who worked righteousness: men, who spoke lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. We may presume, therefore, that this evil is of an enduring character; but if we look back to the history of the Christian Church, or look around us, the presumption becomes the sad conviction of experience.

Nor is the evil merely one which exists in the country at large; a thing which might be fully dwelt upon any where but here. On the contrary, I hardly know of an age more exposed to it than youth. There exist in youth, in a very high degree, those opposite feelings of our nature, which I have before spoken of; a tendency to respect, to follow, to be led, on the one hand; and on the other, a lively desire for independence and freedom. These feelings often exist in the greatest strength in the same individual; and when they are not each turned in their proper direction, ruin is the consequence. Nothing is more common than to see great narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to see the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own, and supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the same time utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn the enlightening, the purifying, and the loving influences of Christ's Spirit.

The idols of various minds are infinitely various, some seducing the loftiest natures and some the vilest. But of this we may be sure, that every one of us has a tendency to some one idol or other, if not to many; and our business is especially each to watch, ourselves, lest we be enslaved to our peculiar idol. I will now, however, speak of those which, tempt the highest minds; which, by their show of sacredness and excellence, make us fancy, that while following them we are following Christ. And let none be surprised, if I rank among idols many things, which, in themselves and in their proper use and order, are indeed to be loved and reverenced. It was most right to respect the Apostle Peter, and listen to his word; but that great Apostle would have been ruin to Cornelius, and not salvation, if he had suffered him, without reproof, to fall down before him, and render to him the service due to Christ alone. How many good and pious feelings must have been awakened from age to age in many minds, at the sight of the brazen serpent on the pole, the memorial of their fathers' deliverance in the wilderness! But when this awakening, this solemn memorial was corrupted into an idol, when men bowed down before it in superstition, it was the part of true piety to do as Hezekiah did, to dash it, notwithstanding all its solemn associations, into a thousand pieces.

Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become idols. To some minds truth is an idol, to others justice, to others charity or benevolence; and others are beguiled by objects of a different sort of sacredness: some have made Christ's mother their idol; some, Christ's servants; some, again, Christ's sacraments, and Christ's own body, the Church. If these may all be idols, where can we find a name so holy, as that we may surrender up our whole souls to it; before which obedience, reverence, without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adoration, may all be duly rendered. One name there is, and one only; one alone in heaven and in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not Christ's mother, not his holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments, not his very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man.

He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love; he gives his grace to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to his Church; whoever hath him hath all things; but if we do not take heed, whenever we turn our mind to any other object, we shall make it an idol and lose him. Take him in all his fulness, not as God merely, not as man merely; not in his life on earth only, not in his death only, not in his exaltation at God's right hand only; but in all his fulness, the Christ of God, God and Man, our Prophet, our Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his blood, sanctifying us by his Spirit; and then worship him and love him with all the heart, and with, all the soul, and with all the strength; and we shall see how all evil will be barred, and all good will abound. No man who worships Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor yet can be a more philosopher; he cannot be bigoted, nor yet can he be indifferent; he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable feelings as to cast truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so pursue truth and justice as to lose sight of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement, reverence, devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any one of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of Christ our Saviour. Let us look into our hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we indolent, or are we active; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold; zealous or indifferent, devout or reasonable; whatever the inclination, or bias of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it will be magnified and grow on to our ruin; if we worship Christ, it will be pruned and chastened, and made to grow up with opposite tendencies, all alike tempered, none destroyed; none overgrowing the garden, but all filling it with their several fruits; so that it shall be, indeed, the garden of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall dwell in the midst of it.