It has been said that true religion will make a man a more thorough gentleman than all the courts in Europe. And it is true: you may see simple labouring men as thorough gentlemen as any duke, simply because they have learned to fear God; and fearing him, to restrain themselves, and to think of other people more than of themselves, which is the very root and essence of all good breeding. And such a man was Abraham of old—a plain man, dwelling in tents, helping to tend his own cattle, fetching in the calf from the field himself, and dressing it for his guests with his own hand; but still, as the children of Heth said of him, a mighty prince—not merely in wealth of flocks and herds, but a prince in manners and a prince in heart.

But faith in God did more for Abraham than this: it made him a truly pious man—it made him the friend of God.

There were others in Abraham's days who had some knowledge of the one true God. Lot his nephew, Abimelech, Aner, Eshcol, Mamre, and others, seem to have known whom Abraham meant when he spoke of the Almighty God. But of Abraham alone it is said that he believed God; that he trusted in God, and rested on him; was built up on God; rested on God as a child in the mother's arms—for this we are told, is the full meaning of the word in the Bible—and looked to God as his shield and his exceeding great reward. He trusted in God utterly, and it was counted to him for righteousness.

And of Abraham alone it is said that he was the friend of God; that God spoke with him, and he with God. He first of all men of whom we read, at least since the time of Adam, knew what communion with God meant; knew that God spoke to him as a friend, a benefactor, a preserver, who was teaching and training him with a father's love and care; and felt that he in return could answer God, could open his heart to him, tell him not only of his wants, but of his doubts and fears.

Yes, we may almost say, on the strength of the Bible, that Abraham was the first human being, as far as we know, who prayed with his heart and soul; who knew what true prayer means—the prayer of the heart, by which man draws near to God, and finds that God is near to him. This—this communion with God, is the especial glory of Abraham's character. This it is which has given him his name through all generations, The friend of God. Or, as his descendants the Arabs call him to this day, simply, 'The Friend.'

This it is which gained him the name of the Father of the Faithful; the father of all who believe, whether they be descended from him, or whether they be, like us, of a different nation. This it is which has made a wise man say of Abraham, that if we will consider what he knew and did, and in what a dark age he lived, we shall see that Abraham may be (unless we except Moses) the greatest of mere human beings—that the human race may owe more to him than to any mortal man.

But why need we learn from Abraham? we who, being Christians, know and believe the true faith so much more clearly than Abraham could do.

Ah, my friends, it is easier to know than to believe, and easier to know than to do. Easier to talk of Abraham's faith than to have Abraham's faith. Easier to preach learned and orthodox sermons about how Abraham was justified by his faith, than to be justified ourselves by our own faith.

And say not in your hearts, 'It was easy for Abraham to believe God. I should have believed of course in his place. If God spoke to me, of course I should obey him.' My friends, there is no greater and no easier mistake. God has spoken to many a man who has not believed him, neither obeyed him, and so he may to you. God spoke to Abraham, and he believed him and obeyed him. And why? Because there was in Abraham's heart something which there is not in all men's hearts—something which ANSWERED to God's call, and made him certain that the call was from God—even the Holy Spirit of God.

So God may call you, and you may obey him, if only the Spirit of God be in you; but not else. MAY call you, did I say? God DOES call you and me, does speak to us, does command us, far more clearly than he did Abraham. We know the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was NOT made known to the sons of men as it is now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his SON, Jesus Christ our Lord, and told us our duty, and the reward which doing our duty will surely bring, far more clearly than ever he did to Abraham.

But do we listen to him? Do we say with Abraham, 'O my people, I am clear of all these things which rise and set, which are born and die, which begin and end in time, and turn my face to him that made heaven and earth!' If so, how is it that we see people everywhere worshipping not idols of wood and stone, but other things, all manner of things beside God, and saying, 'These are my Elohim. These are the high and mighty ones whom I must obey. These are the strong things on which depend my fortune and my happiness. I must obey THEM first, and let plain doing right and avoiding wrong come after as it can.'

One worships the laws of trade, and says, 'I know this and that is hardly right; but it is in the way of business, and therefore I must do it.'

One worships public opinion, and follows after the multitude to do evil, doing what he knows is wrong, simply because others do it, and it is the way of the world.

One worships the interest of his party, whether in religion or in politics; and does for their sake mean and false, cruel and unjust things, which he would not do for his own private interest.

Too many, even in a free country, worship great people, and put their trust in princes, saying, 'I am sorry to have to do this. I know it is rather mean; but I must, or I shall lose such and such a great man's interest and favour.' Or, 'I know I cannot afford this expense; but if I do not I shall not get into good society, and this person and that will not ask me to his house.'

All, meanwhile, except a few, rich or poor, worship money; and believe more or less, in spite of the Lord's solemn warning to the contrary, that a man's life does consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses.

These are the Elohim of this world, the high and mighty things to which men turn for help instead of to the living God, who was before all things, and will be after them; and behold they vanish away, and where then are those that have put their trust in them?

But blessed is he whose trust is in God the Almighty, and whose hope is in the Lord Jehovah, the eternal I Am. Blessed is he who, like faithful Abraham, says to his family, 'My people, I am clear of all these things. I turn my face from them to him who hath made earth and heaven. I go through this world like Abraham, not knowing whither I go; but like Abraham, I fear not, for I go whither God sends me. I rest on God; he is my defence, and my exceeding great reward. To have known him, loved him, obeyed him, is reward enough, even if I do not, as the world would say, succeed in life. Therefore I long not for power and honour, riches and pleasure. I am content to do my duty faithfully in that station of life to which God has called me, and to be forgiven for all my failings and shortcomings for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that is enough for me; for I believe in my Father in heaven, and believe that he knows best for me and for my children. He has not promised me, as he promised Abraham, to make of me a great nation; but he has promised that the righteous man shall never be deserted, or his children beg their bread. He has promised to keep his covenant and mercy to a thousand generations with those who keep his commandments and do them; and that is enough for me. In God have I put my trust, and I will not fear what man, or earth, or heaven, or any created thing can do unto me.'

Blessed is that man, whether he inherit honourably great estates from his ancestors, or whether he make honourably great wealth and station for himself; whether he spend his life quietly and honestly in the country farm or in the village shop, or whether he simply earn his bread from week to week by plough and spade. Blessed is he, and blessed are his children after him. For he is a son of Abraham; and of him God hath said, as of Abraham, 'I know him that he will command his children and household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring on him the blessing which he has spoken.'

Yes; blessed is that man. He has chosen his share of Abraham's faith; and he and his children after him shall have their share of Abraham's blessing.



SERMON VI. JACOB AND ESAU



(Second Sunday in Lent.)

GENESIS xxv. 29-34. And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

I have been telling you of late that the Bible is the revelation of God. But how does the story of Jacob and Esau reveal God to us? What further lesson concerning God do we learn therefrom?

I think that if we will take the story simply as it stands we shall see easily enough. For it is all simple and natural enough. Jacob and Esau, we shall see, were men of like passions with ourselves; men as we are, mixed up of good and evil, sometimes right and sometimes wrong: and God rewarded them when they did right, and punished them when they did wrong, just as he does with us now.

They were men, though, of very different characters: we may see men like them now every day round us. Esau, we read, was a hunter—a man of the field; a bold, fierce, active man; generous, brave, and kind-hearted, as the end of his story shows: but with just the faults which such a man would have. He was hasty, reckless, and fond of pleasure; passionate too, and violent. Have we not seen just such men again and again, and liked them for what was good in them, and been sorry too that they were not more sober and reasonable, and true to themselves?

Jacob was the very opposite kind of man. He was a plain man—what we call a still, solid, prudent, quiet man—and a dweller in tents: he lived peaceably, looking after his father's flocks and herds; while Esau liked better the sport and danger of hunting wild beasts, and bringing home venison to his father.

Now Jacob, we see, was of course a more thoughtful man than Esau. He kept more quiet, and so had more time to think: and he had plainly thought a great deal over God's promise to his grandfather Abraham. He believed that God had promised Abraham that he would make his seed as the sand of the sea for multitude, and give them that fair land of Canaan, and that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed; and that seemed to him, and rightly, a very grand and noble thing. And he set his heart on getting that blessing for himself, and supplanting his elder brother Esau, and being the heir of the promises in his stead. Well—that was mean and base and selfish perhaps: but there is somewhat of an excuse for Jacob's conduct, in the fact that he and Esau were twins; that in one sense neither of them was older than the other. And you must recollect, that it was not at all a regular custom in the East for the eldest son to be his father's heir, as it is in England. You find that few or none of the great kings of the Jews were eldest sons. The custom was not kept up as it is here. So Jacob may have said to himself, and not have been very wrong in saying it:

'I have as good a right to the birthright as Esau. My father loves him best because he brings him in venison; but I know the value of the honour which is before my family. Surely the one of us who cares most about the birthright will be most fit to have it, and ought to have it; and Esau cares nothing for it, while I do.'

So Jacob, in his cunning, bargaining way, took advantage of his brother's weak, hasty temper, and bought his birthright of him, as the text tells.

That story shows us what sort of a man Esau was: hasty, careless, fond of the good things of this life. He had no reason to complain if he lost his birthright. He did not care for it, and so he had thrown it away. Perhaps he forgot what he had done; but his sin found him out, as our sins are sure to find each of us out. The day came when he wanted his birthright and could not have it, and found no place for repentance—that is, no chance of undoing what he had done—though he sought it carefully with tears. He had sown, and he must reap; he had made his bed, and he must lie on it. And so must Jacob in his turn.

Now this, I think, is just what the story teaches us concerning God. God chooses Abraham's family to grow into a great nation, and to be a peculiar people. The next question will be: If God favours that family, will he do unjust things to help them?—will he let them do unjust things to help themselves? The Bible answers positively, No. God will not be unjust or arbitrary in choosing one man and rejecting another. If he chooses Jacob, it is because Jacob is fit for the work which God wants done. If he rejects Esau, it is because Esau is not fit.

It is natural, I know, to pity poor Esau; but one has no right to do more. One has no right to fancy for a moment that God was arbitrary or hard upon him. Esau is not the sort of man to be the father of a great nation, or of anything else great. Greedy, passionate, reckless people like him, without due feeling of religion or of the unseen world, are not the men to govern the world, or help it forward, or be of use to mankind, or train up their families in justice and wisdom and piety. If there had been no people in the world but people like Esau, we should be savages at this day, without religion or civilization of any kind. They are of the earth, earthy; dust they are, and unto dust they will return. It is men like Jacob whom God chooses—men who have a feeling of religion and the unseen world; men who can look forward, and live by faith, and form plans for the future—and carry them out too, against disappointment and difficulty, till they succeed.

Look at one side of Jacob's character—his perseverance. He serves seven years for Rachel, because he loves her. Then when he is cheated, and Leah given him instead, he serves seven years more for Rachel—'and they seemed to him a short time, for the love he bore to her;' and then he serves seven years more for the flocks and herds. A slave, or little better than a slave, of his own free will, for one-and-twenty years, to get what he wanted. Those are the men whom God uses, and whom God prospers. Men with deep hearts and strong wills, who set their minds on something which they cannot see, and work steadfastly for it, till they get it; for God gives it to them in good time—when patience has had her perfect work upon their characters, and made them fit for success.

Esau, we find, got some blessing—the sort of blessing he was fit for. He loved his father, and he was rewarded. 'And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.'

He was a brave, generous-hearted man, in spite of his faults. He was to live the free hunter's life which he loved; and we find that he soon became the head of a wild powerful tribe, and his sons after him. Dukes of Edom they were called for several generations; but they never rose to any solid and lasting power; they never became a great nation, as Jacob's children did. They were just what one would expect—wild, unruly, violent people. They have long since perished utterly off the face of the earth.

And what did Jacob get, who so meanly bought the birthright, and cheated his father out of the blessing? Trouble in the flesh; vanity and vexation of spirit. He had to flee from his father's house; never to see his mother again; to wander over the deserts to kinsmen who cheated him as he had cheated others; to serve Laban for twenty-one years; to crouch miserably in fear and trembling, as a petitioner for his life before Esau whom he had wronged, and to be made more ashamed than ever, by finding that generous Esau had forgiven and forgotten all. Then to see his daughter brought to shame, his sons murderers, plotting against their own brother, his favourite son; to see his grey hairs going down with sorrow to the grave; to confess to Pharaoh, after one hundred and twenty years of life, that few and evil had been the days of his pilgrimage.

Then did his faith in God win no reward? Not so. That was his reward, to be chastened and punished, till his meanness was purged out of him. He had taken God for his guide; and God did guide him accordingly; though along a very different path from what he expected. God accepted his faith, delivered his soul, gave him rest and peace at last in his old age in Egypt, let him find his son Joseph again in power and honour: but all along God punished his own inventions—as he will punish yours and mine, my friends, all the while that he may be accepting our faith and delivering our souls, because we trust in him. So God rewarded Jacob by giving him more light: by not leaving him to himself, and his own darkness and meanness, but opening his eyes to understand the wondrous things of God's law, and showing him how God's law is everlasting, righteous, not to be escaped by any man; how every action brings forth its appointed fruit; how those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. Jacob's first notion was like the notion of the heathen in all times, 'My God has a special favour for me, therefore I may do what I like. He will prosper me in doing wrong; he will help me to cheat my father.' But God showed him that that was just not what he would do for him. He would help and protect him; but only while he was doing RIGHT. God would not alter his moral laws for him or any man. God would be just and righteous; and Jacob must be so likewise, till he learnt to trust not merely in a God who happened to have a special favour to him, but in the righteous God who loves justice, and wishes to make men righteous even as he is righteous, and will make them righteous, if they trust in him.

That was the reward of Jacob's faith—the best reward which any man can have. He was taught to know God, whom truly to know is everlasting life. And this, it seems to me, is the great revelation concerning God which we learn from the history of Jacob and Esau. That God, how much soever favour he may show to certain persons, is still, essentially and always, a just God.

And now, my friends, if any of you are tempted to follow Jacob's example, take warning betimes. You will be tempted. There are men among you—there are in every congregation—who are, like Jacob, sober, industrious, careful, prudent men, and fairly religious too; men who have the good sense to see that Solomon's proverbs are true, and that the way to wealth and prosperity is to fear God, and keep his commandments.

May you prosper; may God's blessing be upon your labour; may you succeed in life, and see your children well settled and thriving round you, and go down to the grave in peace.

But never forget, my good friends, that you will be tempted as Jacob was—to be dishonest. I cannot tell why; but professedly religious men, in all countries, in all religions, are, and always have been, tempted in that way—to be mean and cunning and false at times. It is so, and there is no denying it: when all other sins are shut out from them by their religious profession, and their care for their own character, and their fear of hell, the sin of lying, for some strange reason, is left open to them; and to it they are tempted to give way. For God's sake—for the sake of Christ, who was full of grace and truth—for your own sakes—struggle against that. Unless you wish to say at last with poor old Jacob, 'Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage;' struggle against that. If you fear God and believe that he is with you, God will prosper your plans and labour; but never make that an excuse for saying in your hearts, like Jacob, 'God intends that I should have these good things; therefore I may take them for myself by unfair means.' The birthright is yours. It is you, the steady, prudent, God-fearing ones, who will prosper on the earth, and not poor wild, hot-headed Esau. But do not make that an excuse for robbing and cheating Esau, because he is not as thoughtful as you are. The Lord made him as well as you; and died for him as well as for you; and wills his salvation as well as yours; and if you cheat him the Lord will avenge him speedily. If you give way to meanness, covetousness, falsehood, as Jacob did, you will rue it; the Lord will enter into judgment with you quickly, and all the more quickly because he loves you. Because there is some right in you—because you are on the whole on the right road—the Lord will visit you with disappointment and affliction, and make your own sins your punishment.

If you deceive other people, other people shall deceive you, as they did Jacob. If you lay traps, you shall fall into them yourselves, as Jacob did. If you fancy that because you trust in God, God will overlook any sin in you, as Jacob did, you shall see, as Jacob did, that your sin shall surely find you out. The Lord will be more sharp and severe with you than with Esau. And why? Because he has given you more, and requires more of you; and therefore he will chastise you, and sift you like wheat, till he has parted the wheat from the tares. The wheat is your faith, your belief that if you trust in God he will prosper you, body and soul. That is God's good seed, which he has sown in you. The tares are your fancies that you may do wrong and mean things to help yourselves, because God has an especial favour for you. That is the devil's sowing, which God will burn out of you by the fire of affliction, as he did out of Jacob, and keep your faith safe, as good seed in his garner, for the use of your children after you, that you may teach them to walk in God's commandments and serve him in spirit and in truth. For God is a God of truth, and no liar shall stand in his sight, let him be never so religious; he requires truth in the inward parts, and truth he will have; and whom he loves he will chasten, as he chastened Jacob of old, till he has made him understand that honesty is the best policy; and that whatever false prophets may tell you, there is not one law for the believer and another for the unbeliever; but whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap, and receive the due reward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil.



SERMON VII. JOSEPH



(Preached on the Sunday before the Wedding of the Prince of Wales. March 8th, third Sunday in Lent.)

GENESIS xxxix. 9. How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?

The story of Joseph is one which will go home to all healthy hearts. Every child can understand, every child can feel with it. It is a story for all men and all times. Even if it had not been true, and not real fact, but a romance of man's invention, it would have been loved and admired by men; far more then, when we know that it is true, that it actually did so happen; that is part and parcel of the Holy Scriptures.

We all, surely, know the story—How Joseph's brethren envy him and sell him for a slave into Egypt—how there for a while he prospers— how his master's wife tempts him—how he is thrown into prison on her slander—how there again he prospers—how he explains the dreams of Pharaoh's servants—how he lies long forgotten in the prison—how at last Pharaoh sends for him to interpret a dream for him, and how he rises to power and great glory—how his brothers come down to Egypt to buy corn, and how they find him lord of all the land—how subtilly he tries them to see if they have repented of their old sin—how his heart yearns over them in spite of all their wickedness to him—how at last he reveals himself, and forgives them utterly, and sends for his poor old father Jacob down into Egypt. Whosoever does not delight in that story, simply as a story, whenever he hears it read, cannot have a wholesome human heart in him.

But why was this story of Joseph put into Holy Scripture, and at such length, too? It seems, at first sight, to be simply a family history—the story of brothers and their father; it seems, at first sight, to teach us nothing concerning our redemption and salvation; it seems, at first sight, not to reveal anything fresh to us concerning God; it seems, at first sight, not to be needed for the general plan of the Bible history. It tells us, of course, how the Israelites first came into Egypt; and that was necessary for us to know. But the Bible might have told us that in ten verses. Why has it spent upon the story of Joseph and his brethren, not ten verses, but ten chapters?

Now we have a right to ask such questions as these, if we do not ask them out of any carping, fault-finding spirit, trying to pick holes in the Bible, from which God defend us and all Christian men. If we ask such questions in faith and reverence—that is, believing and taking for granted that the Bible is right, and respecting it, as the Book of books, in which our own forefathers and all Christian nations upon earth for many ages have found all things necessary for their salvation—if, I say, we question over the Bible in that child-like, simple, respectful spirit, which is the true spirit of wisdom and understanding, by which our eyes will be truly opened to see the wondrous things of God's law: then we may not only seek as our Lord bade us, but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that we should. We shall find some good reason for this story of Joseph being so long, and find that the story of Joseph, like all the rest of the Bible, reveals a new lesson to us concerning God and the character of God.

I said that the story of Joseph looks, at first sight, to be merely a family history. But suppose that that were the very reason why it is in the Bible, because it is a family history. Suppose that families were very sacred things in the eyes of God. That the ties of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were appointed, not by man, but by God. Then would not Joseph's story be worthy of being in the Bible? Would it not, as I said it would, reveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of God?

Consider now, my friends: Is it not one great difference—one of the very greatest—between men and beasts, that men live in families, and beasts do not? That men have the sacred family feeling, and beasts have not? They have the beginnings of it, no doubt. The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but only for a while. God has implanted in her something of that deepest, holiest, purest of all feelings—a mother's love. But as soon as her young ones are able to take care of themselves, they are nothing to her—among the lower animals, less than nothing. The fish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs jealously, and as soon as they are hatched, turn round and devour her own young.

The feeling of a FATHER to his child, again, you find is fainter still among beasts. The father, as you all know, not only cares little for his offspring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them at first, but is often jealous of them, hates them, will try to kill them when they grow up.

Husband and wife, again: there is no sacredness between them among dumb animals. A lasting and an unselfish attachment, not merely in youth, but through old age and beyond the grave—what is there like this among the animals, except in the case of certain birds, like the dove and the eagle, who keep the same mate year after year, and have been always looked on with a sort of affection and respect by men for that very reason?

But where, among beasts, do you ever find any trace of those two sacred human feelings—the love of brother to brother, or of child to father? Where do you find the notion that the tie between husband and wife is a sacred thing, to be broken at no temptation, but in man?

These are THE feelings which man has alone of all living animals.

These then, remember, are the very family feelings which come out in the story of Joseph. He honours holy wedlock when he tells his master's wife, 'How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?' He honours his father, when he is not ashamed of him, wild shepherd out of the desert though he might be, and an abomination to the Egyptians, while he himself is now in power and wealth and glory, as a prince in a civilized country. He honours the tie of brother to brother, by forgiving and weeping over the very brothers who have sold him into slavery.

But what has all this to do with God?

Now man, as we know, is an animal with an immortal spirit in him. He has, as St. Paul so carefully explains to us, a flesh and a spirit—a flesh like the beasts which perish; a spirit which comes from God.

Now the Bible teaches us that man did not get these family feelings from his flesh, from the animal, brute part of him. They are not carnal, but spiritual. He gets them from his spirit, and they are inspired into him by the Spirit of God. They come not from the earth below, but from the heaven above; from the image of God, in which man alone of all living things was made.

For if it were not so, we should surely see some family feeling in the beasts which are most like men. But we do not. In the apes, which are, in their shape and fleshly nature, so strangely and shockingly like human beings, there is not as much family feeling as there is in many birds, or even insects. Nay, the wild negroes, among whom they live, hold them in abhorrence, and believe that they were once men like themselves, who were gradually changed into brute beasts, by giving way to detestable sins; while these very negroes themselves, heathens and savages as they are, HAVE the family feeling—the feeling of husband for wife, father for child, brother for brother; not, indeed, as strongly and purely as we, or at least those of us who are really Christian and civilized, but still they have it; and that makes between the lowest man and the highest brute a difference which I hold is as wide as the space between heaven and earth.

It is man alone, I say, who has the idea of family; and who has, too, the strange, but most true belief that these family ties are appointed by God—that they are a part of his religion—that in breaking them, by being an unfaithful husband, a dishonest servant, an unnatural son, a selfish brother, he sins, not only against man, and man's order and laws, but against God.

Parent and child, brother and sister—those ties are not of the earth earthy, but of the heaven of God, eternal. They may begin in time; of what happened before we came into this world we know nought. But having begun, they cannot end. Of what will happen after we leave this world, that at least we know in part.

Parent and child; brother and sister; husband and wife likewise; these are no ties of man's invention. They are ties of God's binding; they are patterns and likenesses of his substance, and of his being. Of the eternal Father, who says for ever to the eternal Son, 'This day have I begotten THEE.' Of the Son who says for ever to the Father, 'I come to do thy will, O God.' Of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is not ashamed to call us his brethren; but like a greater Joseph, was sent before by God to save our lives with a great deliverance when our forefathers were but savages and heathens. Husband and wife likewise—are not they two divine words- -not human words at all? Has not God consecrated the state of matrimony to such an excellent mystery, that in it is signified and represented the mystical union between Christ and his Church? Are not husbands to love their wives, and give themselves for them as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it? That, indeed, was not revealed in the Old Testament, but it is revealed in the New; and marriage, like all other human ties, is holy and divine, and comes from God down to men.

Yes. These family ties are of God. It was to show us how sacred, how Godlike they are—how eternal and necessary for all mankind— that Joseph's story was written in Holy Scripture.

They are of God, I say. And he who despises them, despises not man but God; who hath also given us his Holy Spirit to make us know how sacred these bonds are.

He who looks lightly on the love of child to parent, or brother to brother, or husband to wife, and bids each man please himself, each man help himself, and shift for himself, would take away from men the very thing which raises them above the beasts which perish, and lower them again to the likeness of the flesh, that they may of the flesh reap corruption.

They who, under whatever pretence of religion part asunder families; or tell children, like the wicked Pharisees of old, that they may say to their parents, Corban—'I have given to God the service and help which, as your child, I should have given to you'—shall be called, if not by men, at least by God himself, hypocrites, who draw near to God with their mouths, and honour him with their lips, while their heart is far from him.

I think now we may see that I was right when I said—Perhaps the history of Joseph is in the Bible because it IS a family history. For see, it is the history of a man who loved his family, who felt that family life was holy and God-appointed; whom God rewarded with honour and wealth, because he honoured family ties; because he refused his master's wife; because he rewarded his brothers good for evil; because he was not ashamed of his father, but succoured him in his old age.

It is the history of a man who—more than four hundred years before God gave the ten commandments on Sinai, saying,

Honour thy father and mother,

Thou shalt not commit adultery,

Thou shalt not kill in revenge,

Thou shalt not covet aught of thy neighbours—It is the history, I say, of a man who had those laws of God written in his heart by the Holy Spirit of God; and felt that to break them was to sin against God. It is the history of a man who, sorely tempted and unjustly persecuted, kept himself pure and true; who, while all around him, beginning with his own brothers, were trampling under foot the laws of family, felt that the laws were still there round him, girding him in with everlasting bands, and saying to him, Thou shalt and Thou shalt not; that he was not sent into the world to do just what was pleasant for the moment, to indulge his own passions or his own revenge; but that if he was indeed a man, he must prove himself a man, by obeying Almighty God. It is the history of a man who kept his heart pure and tender, and who thereby gained strange and deep wisdom; that wisdom which comes only to the pure in heart; that wisdom by which truly good men are enabled to see farther, and to be of more use to their fellow-creatures than many a cunning and crooked politician, whose eyes are blinded, because his heart is defiled with sin.

And now, my friends, if we pray—as we are bound to pray—for that great Prince who is just entering on the cares and the duties, as well as the joys and blessings of family life—what better prayer can we offer up for him, than that God would put into his heart that spirit which he put into the heart of Joseph of old—the spirit to see how divine and God-appointed is family life? God grant that that spirit may dwell in him, and possess him more and more day by day. That it may keep him true to his wife, true to his mother, true to his family, true, like Joseph, to all with whom he has to deal. That it may deliver him, as it delivered Joseph, from the snares of wicked women, from selfish politicians, if they ever try to sow distrust and opposition between him and his kindred, and from all those temptations which can only be kept down by the Spirit of God working in men's hearts, as he worked in the heart of Joseph.

For if that spirit be in the Prince—and I doubt not that that spirit is in him already—then will his fate be that of Joseph; then will he indeed be a blessing to us, and to our children after us; then will he have riches more real, and power more vast, than any which our English laws can give; then will he gain, like Joseph, that moral wisdom, better than all worldly craft, which cometh from above—first pure, then gentle, easy to be entreated, without partiality, and without hypocrisy; then will he be able, like Joseph, to deliver his people in times of perplexity and distress; then will he by his example, as his noble mother has done before him, keep healthy, pure, and strong, our English family life—and as long as THAT endures, Old England will endure likewise.



SERMON VIII. THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZER



(Fourth Sunday in Lent.)

PHILIPPIANS iv. 8. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

It may not be easy to see what this text has to do with the story of Joseph, which we have just been reading, or with the meaning of the Bible of which I have been speaking to you of late.

Nevertheless, I think it has to do with them; as you will see if you will look at the text with me.

Now the text does not say 'Do these things.' It only says 'THINK of these things.'

Of course St. Paul wished us to do them also; but he says first THINK of them; not once in a way, but often and continually. Fill your mind with good and pure and noble thoughts; and then you will do good and pure and noble things.

For out of the abundance of a man's heart, not only does his mouth speak, but his whole body and soul behave. The man whose mind is filled with low and bad thoughts will be sure, when he is tempted, to do low and bad things. The man whose mind is filled with lofty and good thoughts will do lofty and good things.

For thoughts are the food of a man's mind; and as the mind feeds, so will it grow. If it feeds on coarse and foul food, coarse and foul it will grow. If it feeds on pure and refined food, pure and refined it will grow.

There are those who do not believe this. Provided they are tolerably attentive to the duties of religion, it does not matter much, they fancy, what they think of out of church. Their souls will be saved at last, they suppose, and that is all that they need care for. Saved? They do not see that by giving way to foul, mean, foolish thoughts all the week they are losing their souls, destroying their souls, defiling their souls, lowering their souls, and making them so coarse and mean and poor that they are not worth saving, and are no loss to heaven or earth, whatever loss they may be to the man himself. One man thinks of nothing but money—how he shall save a penny here and a penny there. I do not mean men of business; for them there are great excuses; for it is by continual saving here and there that their profits are made. I speak rather of people who have no excuse, people of fixed incomes—people often wealthy and comfortable, who yet will lower their minds by continually thinking over their money. But this I say, and this I am sure that you will find, that when a man in business or out of business accustoms himself, as very many do, to think of nothing but money, money, money from Monday morning to Saturday night, he thinks of money a great part of Sunday likewise. And so, after a while, the man lowers his soul, and makes it mean and covetous. He forgets all that is lovely and of good report. He forgets virtue—that is manliness; and praise—that is the just respect and admiration of his fellow-men; and so he forgets at last things true, honest, and just likewise. He lowers his soul; and therefore when he is tempted, he does things mean and false and unjust, for the sake of money, which he has made his idol.

Take another case, too common among men and women of all ranks, high and low.

How many there are who love gossip and scandal; who always talk about people, and never about things—certainly not about things pure and lovely and of good report, but rather about things foul and ugly and of bad report; who do not talk, because they do not think of virtue, but of vice; or of praise either, because they are always finding fault with their neighbours. The man who loves a foul story, or a coarse jest—the woman who gossips over every tittle tattle of scandal which she can pick up against her neighbour—what do these people do but defile their own souls afresh, after they have been washed clean in the blood of Christ? Foul their souls are, and therefore their thoughts are foul likewise, and the foulness of them is evident to all men by their tongues. Out of their hearts proceed evil thoughts about their neighbours, out of the abundance of their hearts their mouths speak them. Now let such people, if there be any such here, seriously consider the harm which they are doing to their own characters. They may give way to the habits of scandal, or of coarse talk, without any serious bad intention; but they will surely lower their own souls thereby. They will grow to the colour of what they feed on and become foul and cruel, from talking cruelly and foully, till they lose all purity and all charity, all faith and trust in their fellow-men, all power of seeing good in any one, or doing anything but think evil; and so lose the likeness of God and of Christ, for the likeness of some foul carrion bird, which cares nothing for the perfume of all the roses in the world, but if there be a carcase within miles of it, will scent it out eagerly and fly to it ravenously.

The truth is, my friends, that these souls of ours instead of being pure and strong, are the very opposite; and the article speaks plain truth when it says, that we are every one of us of our own nature inclined to evil. That may seem a hard saying; but if we look at our own thoughts we shall find it true. Are we NOT inclined to take, at first, the worst view of everybody and of everything? Are we NOT inclined to suspect harm of this person and of that? Are we NOT inclined too often to be mean and cowardly? to be hard and covetous? to be coarse and vulgar? to be silly and frivolous? Do we not need to cool down, to think a second time, and a third time likewise; to remember our duty, to remember Christ's example, before we can take a just and kind and charitable view? Do we not want all the help which we can get from every quarter, to keep ourselves high-minded and refined; to keep ourselves from bad thoughts, mean thoughts, silly thoughts, violent thoughts, cruel and hard thoughts? If we have not found out that, we must have looked a very little way into ourselves, and know little more about ourselves than a dumb animal does of itself.

How then shall we keep off coarseness of soul? How shall we keep our souls REFINED? that is, true and honest, pure, amiable, full of virtue, that is, true manliness; and deserve praise, that is, the respect and admiration of our fellow-men? By thinking of those very things, says St. Paul. And in order to be able to think of them, by reading of them.

There are very few who can easily think of these things of themselves. Their daily business, the words and notions of the people with whom they have to do, will run in their minds, and draw them off from higher and better thoughts; that cannot be helped. The only thing that most men can do, is to take care that they are not drawn off entirely from high and good thoughts, by reading, were it but for five minutes every day, something really worth thinking of, something which will lift them above themselves.

Above all, it is wise, at night, after the care and bustle of the day is over, to read, but for a few minutes, some book which will compose and soothe the mind; which will bring us face to face with the true facts of life, death, and eternity; which will make us remember that man doth not live by bread alone; which will give us, before we sleep, a few thoughts worthy of a Christian man, with an immortal soul in him.

And, thank God, no one need go far to look for such books. I do not mean merely religious books, excellent as they are in these days: I mean any books which help to make us better and wiser and soberer, and more charitable persons; any books which will teach us to despise what is vulgar and mean, foul and cruel, and to love what is noble and high-minded, pure and just. We need not go far for them. In our own noble English language we may read by hundreds, books which will tell us of all virtue and of all praise. The stories of good and brave men and women; of gallant and heroic actions; of deeds which we ourselves should be proud of doing; of persons whom we feel, to be better, wiser, nobler than we are ourselves.

In our own language we may read the history of our own nation, and whatsoever is just, honest and true. We may read of God's gracious providences toward this land. How he has punished our sins and rewarded our right and brave endeavours. How he put into our forefathers the spirit of courage and freedom, the spirit of truth and justice, the spirit of loyalty and order; and how, following the leading of that spirit, in spite of many mistakes and failings, we have risen to be the freest, the happiest, the most powerful people on earth, a blessing and not a curse to the nations around.

In our own English tongue, too, we may read such poetry as there is in no other language in the world; poetry which will make us indeed see the beauty of whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. Some people have still a dislike of what they call foolish poetry books. If books are foolish, let us have nothing to do with them. But poetry ought not to be foolish; for God sent it into the world to teach men not foolishness, but the highest wisdom. He gave man alone, of all living creatures, the power of writing poetry, that by poetry he might understand, not only how necessary it was to do right, but how beautiful and noble it was to do right. He sent it into the world to soften men's rough hearts, and quiet their angry passions, and make them love all which is tender and gentle, loving and merciful, and yet to rouse them up to love all which is gallant and honourable, loyal and patriotic, devout and heavenly. Therefore whole books of the Bible—Job, for example, Isaiah, and the Psalms— are neither more nor less than actual poetry, written in actual verse, that their words might the better sink down into the ears and hearts of the old Jews, and of us Christians after them. And therefore also, we keep up still the good old custom of teaching children in school as much as possible by poetry, that they may learn not only to know, but to love and remember whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.

Lastly, for those who cannot read, or have really no time to read, there is one means left of putting themselves in mind of what every one must remember, lest he sink back into an animal and a savage. I mean by pictures; which, as St. Augustine said 1400 years ago, are the books of the unlearned. I do not mean grand and expensive pictures; I mean the very simplest prints, provided they represent something holy, or noble, or tender, or lovely. A few such prints upon a cottage-wall may teach the people who live therein much, without their being aware of it. They see the prints, even when they are not thinking of them; and so they have before their eyes a continual remembrancer of something better and more beautiful than what they are apt to find in their own daily life and thoughts.

True, to whom little is given, of them is little required. But it must be said, that more—far more—is given to labouring men and women now than was given to their forefathers. A hundred, or even fifty years ago, when there was very little schooling; when the books which were put even into the hands of noblemen's children were far below what you will find now in any village school; when the only pictures which a poor woman could buy to lay on her cottage- wall were equally silly and ugly: then there were great excuses for the poor, if they forgot whatsoever things were lovely and of good report; if they were often coarse and brutal in their manners, and cruel and profligate in their amusements.

But even in the rough old times there always were a few at least, men and women, who were above the rest; who, though poor people like the rest, were still true gentlemen and ladies of God's making. People who kept themselves more or less unspotted from the world; who thought of what was honest and pure and lovely and of good report; and who lived a life of simple, manful, Christian virtue, and received the praise and respect of their neighbours, even although their neighbours did not copy them. There were always such people, and there always will be—thank God for it, for they are the salt of the earth.

But why have there always been such people? and why do I say confidently, that there always will be?

Because they have had the Bible; and because, once having got the Bible in a free country, no man can take it from them.

The Bible it is which has made gentlemen and ladies of many a poor man and woman.

The Bible it is which has filled their minds with pure and noble, ay, with heavenly and divine thoughts.

The Bible has been their whole library. The Bible has been their only counsellor. The Bible has taught them all they know. But it has taught them enough.

It has taught them what God is, and what Christ is. It has taught them what man is, and what a Christian man should be. It has taught them what a family means, and what a nation means. It has taught them the meaning of law and duty, of loyalty and patriotism. It has filled their minds with things honest and just and lovely and of good report; with the histories of men and women like themselves, who sinned and sorrowed and struggled like them in this hard battle of life, but who conquered at last, by trusting and obeying God.

This one story of Joseph, which we have been reading again this Sunday, I do not doubt that it has taught thousands who had no other story-book to read—who could not even read themselves, but had to listen to others' reading; that it has taught them to be good sons, to be good brothers; that it has taught them to keep pure in temptation, and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that it has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life; and taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has really done more to civilize and refine them—to make them truly civilized men and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages—than if they had known a smattering of a dozen sciences. I say that the Bible is the book which civilizes and refines, and ennobles rich and poor, high and low, and has been doing so for fifteen hundred years; and that any man who tries to shake our faith in the Bible, is doing what he can—though, thank God, he will not succeed—to make such rough and coarse heathens of us again as our forefathers were five hundred years ago.

And I tell you, labouring people, that if you want something which will make up to you for the want of all the advantages which the rich have—go to your Bibles and you will find it there.

There you will find, in the history of men like ourselves—and, above all, in the history of a man unlike ourselves, the perfect Man—perfect Man and perfect God together—whatsoever is true, whatsoever is honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; every virtue, and every just cause of praise which mortal man can desire. Read of them in your Bible, think of them in your hearts, feed on them with your souls, that your souls may grow like what they feed on; and above all, read and study the story and character of Jesus Christ himself, our Lord, that beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, you may be changed into his likeness, from grace to grace, and virtue to virtue, and glory to glory.

And that change and that growth are as easy for the poor as for the rich, and as necessary for the rich as for the poor.



SERMON IX. MOSES



(Fifth Sunday in Lent.)

EXODUS iii. 14. And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.

And now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most beautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible— excepting of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ—the story of how a family grew to be a great nation. You remember that I told you that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history of a family.

Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of people, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own worship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes as the gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.

Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being weak I suppose because they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of their own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.

Then it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and made them free men. And how God did that (for God in general works by means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great, wise, and good man of their race—Moses.

It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange education, to be the fit man to deliver his people.

Let us go through the history of Moses; and we shall see how God trained him to do the work for which God wanted him.

Let us read from the account of the Bible itself. I should be sorry to spoil its noble simplicity by any words of my own: 'And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithon and Raamses. . . . And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive. And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein: and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.'

Moses, the child of the water. St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews says that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; that is, adopted by her. We read elsewhere that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there can be no doubt from his own writings, especially that part called Moses' law.

So that Moses had from his youth vast advantages. Brought up in the court of the greatest king of the world, in one of the greatest cities of the world, among the most learned priesthood in the world, he had learned, probably, all statesmanship, all religion, which man could teach him in those old times.

But that would have been little for him. He might have become merely an officer in Pharaoh's household, and we might never have heard his name, and he might never have done any good to his own people and to all mankind after them, as he has done, if there had not been something better and nobler in him than all the learning and statesmanship of the Egyptians.

For there was in Moses the spirit of God; the spirit which makes a man believe in God, and trust God. 'And therefore,' says St. Paul, 'he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; esteeming the reproach of CHRIST better than all the treasures in Egypt.'

And how did he do that? In this wise.

The spirit of God and of Christ is also the spirit of justice, the spirit of freedom; the spirit which hates oppression and wrong; which is moved with a noble and Divine indignation at seeing any human being abused and trampled on.

And that spirit broke forth in Moses. 'And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.'

If he cannot get justice for his people, he will do some sort of rough justice for them himself, when he has an opportunity.

But he will see fair play among his people themselves. They are, as slaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome among themselves.

'And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian'—the wild desert between Egypt and the Holy Land.

So he bore the reproach of Christ; the reproach which is apt to fall on men in bad times, when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver the captive, and let the oppressed go free, and execute righteous judgment in the earth. He had lost all, by trying to do right. He had been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh's court. Now he was an outcast and wanderer in the desert. He had made his first trial, and failed. As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed that his brethren would have understood how God would deliver them by his hand; but they understood not. Slavish, base, and stupid, they were not fit yet for Moses and his deliverance.

And so forty years went on, and Moses was an old man of eighty years of age. Yet God had not had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.

It must have been a strange life for him, the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter; brought up in the court of the most powerful and highly civilized country of the old world; learned in all the learning of the Egyptians; and now married into a tribe of wild Arabs, keeping flocks in the lonely desert, year after year: but, no doubt, thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his flocks alone. Thinking over all the learning which he had gained in Egypt, and wondering whether it would ever be of any use to him. Thinking over the misery of his people in Egypt, and wondering whether he should ever be able to help them. Thinking, too, and more than all, of God—of God's promise to Abraham and his children. Would that ever come true? Would GOD help these wretched Jews, even if HE could not? Was God faithful and true, just and merciful?

That Moses thought of God, that he never lost faith in God for that forty years, there can be no doubt.

If he had not thought of God, God would not have revealed himself to him. If he had lost faith in God, he would not have known that it was God who spoke to him. If he had lost faith in God, he would not have obeyed God at the risk of his life, and have gone on an errand as desperate, dangerous, hopeless—and, humanly speaking, as wild as ever man went upon.

But Moses never lost faith or patience. He believed, and he did not make haste. He waited for God; and he did not wait in vain. No man will wait in vain. When the time was ready; when the Jews were ready; when Pharaoh was ready; when Moses himself, trained by forty years' patient thought, was ready; then God came in his own good time.

And Moses led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And there he saw a bush—probably one of the low copses of acacia—burning with fire; and behold the bush was not consumed. Then out of the bush God spoke to Moses with an audible voice as of a man; so the Bible says plainly, and I see no reason to doubt that it is literally true.

'Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.'

Then followed a strange conversation. Moses was terrified at the thought of what he had to do, and reasonably: moreover, the Israelites in Egypt had forgotten God. 'And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I Am that I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.'

I Am; that was the new name by which God revealed himself to Moses. That message of God to Moses was the greatest Gospel, and good news which was spoken to men, before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ay, we are feeling now, in our daily life, in our laws and our liberty, our religion and our morals, our peace and prosperity, in the happiness of our homes, and I trust that of our consciences, the blessed effects of that message, which God revealed to Moses in the wilderness thousands of years ago.

And Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and returned into the land of Egypt, to say to Pharaoh, 'Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn, Let my son go that he may serve me, and if thou let not my firstborn go, then I will slay thy firstborn.'

A strange man, on a strange errand. A poor man, eighty years old, carrying all that he had in the world upon an ass's back, going down to the great Pharaoh, the greatest king of the old world, the great conqueror, the Child of the Sun (as his name means), one of the greatest Pharaohs who ever sat on the throne of Egypt; in the midst of all his princes and priests, and armies with which he had conquered the nations far and wide; and his great cities, temples, and palaces, on which men may see at this day (so we are told) the face of that very Pharaoh painted again and again, as fresh, in that rainless air, as on the day when the paint was laid on; with the features of a man terrible, proud, and cruel, puffed up by power till he thought himself, and till his people thought him a god on earth.

And to that man was Moses going, to bid him set the children of Israel free; while he himself was one of that very slave-race of the Israelites, which was an abomination to the Egyptians, who held them all as lepers and unclean, and would not eat with them; and an outcast too, who had fled out of Egypt for his life, and who might be killed on the spot, as Pharaoh's only answer to his bold request. Certainly, if Moses had not had faith in God, his errand would have seemed that of a madman. But Moses HAD faith in God; and of faith it is said, that it can remove mountains, for all things are possible to them who believe.

So by faith Moses went back into Egypt; how he fared there we shall hear next Sunday.

And what sort of man was this great and wonderful Moses, whose name will last as long as man is man? We know very little. We know from the Bible and from the old traditions of the Jews that he was a very handsome man; a man of a noble presence, as one can well believe; a man of great bodily vigour; so that when he died at the age of one hundred and twenty, his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. We know, from his own words, that he was slow of speech; that he had more thought in him than he could find words for—very different from a good many loud talkers, who have more words than thoughts, and who get a great character as politicians and demagogues, simply because they have the art of stringing fine words together, which Moses, the true demagogue, the leader of the people, who led them indeed out of Egypt, had not. Beyond that we know little. Of his character one thing only is said: but that is most important. 'Now the man Moses was very meek.'

Meek: we know that that cannot mean that he was meek in the sense that he was a poor, cowardly, abject sort of man, who dared not speak his mind, dared not face the truth, and say the truth. We have seen that that was just what he was not; brave, determined, out-spoken, he seems to have been from his youth. Indeed, if his had been that base sort of meekness, he never would have dared to come before the great king Pharaoh. If he had been that sort of man he never would have dared to lead the Jews through the Red Sea by night, or out of Egypt at all. If he had been that sort of man, indeed, the Jews would never have listened to him. No; he had—the Bible tells us that he had—to say and do stern things again and again; to act like the general of an army, or the commander of a ship of war, who must be obeyed, even though men's lives be the forfeit of disobedience.

But the man Moses was very meek. He had learned to keep his temper. Indeed, the story seems to say that he never lost his temper really but once; and for that God punished him. Never man was so tried, save One, even our Lord Jesus Christ, as was Moses. And yet by patience he conquered. Eighty years had he spent in learning to keep his temper; and when he had learned to keep his temper, then, and not till then, was he worthy to bring his people out of Egypt. That was a long schooling, but it was a schooling worth having.

And if we, my friends, spend our whole lives, be they eighty years long, in learning to keep our tempers, then will our lives have been well spent. For meekness and calmness of temper need not interfere with a man's courage or justice, or honest indignation against wrong, or power of helping his fellow-men. Moses' meekness did not make him a coward or a sluggard. It helped him to do his work rightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of Pharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his brethren, those miserable slavish Jews. And so meekness, an even temper, and a gracious tongue, will help us to keep our place among our fellow-men with true dignity and independence, and to govern our households, and train our children in such a way that while they obey us they will love and respect us at the same time.



SERMON X. THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT



(Palm Sunday.)

EXODUS ix. 13, 14. Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me. For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.

You will understand, I think, the meaning of the ten plagues of Egypt better, if I explain to you in a few words what kind of a country Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians were. Some of you, doubtless, know as well as I, but some here may not: it is for them I speak.

Egypt is one of the strangest countries in the world; and yet one which can be most simply described. One long straight strip of rich flat land, many hundred miles long, but only a very few miles broad. On either side of it, barren rocks and deserts of sand, and running through it from end to end, the great river Nile—'The River' of which the Bible speaks. This river the Egyptians looked on as divine: they worshipped it as a god; for on it depended the whole wealth of Egypt. Every year it overflows the whole country, leaving behind it a rich coat of mud, which makes Egypt the most inexhaustibly fertile land in the world; and made the Egyptians, from very ancient times, the best farmers of the world, the fathers of agriculture. Meanwhile, when not in flood, the river water is of the purest in the world; the most delightful to drink; and was supposed in old times to be a cure for all manner of diseases.

To worship this sacred river, the pride of their land, to drink it, to bathe in it, to catch the fish which abound in it, and which formed then, and forms still, the staple food of the Egyptians, was their delight. And now I have told you enough to show you why the plagues which God sent on Egypt began first by striking the river.

The river, we read, was turned into blood. What that means—whether it was actual animal blood—what means God employed to work the miracle—are just the questions about which we need not trouble our minds. We never shall know: and we need not know. The plain fact is, that the sacred river, pure and life-giving, became a detestable mass of rottenness—and with it all their streams and pools, and drinking water in vessels of wood and stone—for all, remember, came from the Nile, carried by canals and dykes over the whole land. 'And the fish that were in the river died, and the river stunk, and there was blood through all the land of Egypt.'

The slightest thought will show us what horror, confusion, and actual want and misery, the loss of the river water, even for a few days or even hours, would cause.

But there is more still in this miracle. These plagues are a battle between Jehovah, the one true and only God Almighty, and the false gods of Egypt, to prove which of them is master.

Pharaoh answers: 'Who is Jehovah (the Lord) that I should let Israel go?' I know not the Jehovah. I have my own god, whom I worship. He is my father, and I his child, and he will protect me. If I obey any one it will be him.

Be it so, says Moses in the name of God. Thou shalt know that the idols of Egypt are nothing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy people.

Thus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know which is master, I or they. 'Thou shalt know that I am the Lord.'

So the river was turned into blood. The sacred river was no god, as they thought. Jehovah was the Lord and Master of the river on which the very life of Egypt depended. He could turn it into blood. All Egypt was at his mercy.

But Pharaoh would not believe that. 'The magicians did likewise with their enchantments'—made, we may suppose, water seem to turn to blood by some juggling trick at which the priests in Egypt were but too well practised; and Pharaoh seemed to have made up his mind that Moses' miracle was only a juggling trick too. For men will make up their minds to anything, however absurd, when they choose to do so: when their pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness, draw them one way, no reason will draw them the other way. They will find reasons, and make reasons to prove, if need be, that there is no sun in the sky.

Then followed a series of plagues, of which we have all often heard.

Learned men have disputed how far these plagues were miracles. Some of them are said not to be uncommon in Egypt, others to be almost unknown. But whether they—whether the frogs, for instance, were not produced by natural causes, just as other frogs are; and the lice and the flies likewise; that I know not, my friends, neither need I know. If they were not, they were miraculous; and if they were, they were miraculous still. If they came as other vermin come, they would have still been miraculous: God would still have sent them; and it would be a miracle that God should make them come at that particular time in that particular country, to work a truly miraculous effect upon the souls of Pharaoh and the Egyptians on the one hand, and of Moses and the Israelites on the other. But if they came by some strange means as no vermin ever came before or since, all I can say is—Why not?

And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.'

Whether that was meant only as a sign to the Egyptians, or whether the dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is more, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it would be. If you believe at all that God made the world, it is folly to pretend to set any bounds to his power. As a wise man has said, 'If you believe in any real God at all, you must believe that miracles can happen.' He makes you and me and millions of living things out of the dust of the ground continually by certain means. Why can he not make lice, or anything else out of the dust of the ground, without those means? I can give no reason, nor any one else either.

We know that God has given all things a law which they cannot break. We know, too, that God will never break his own laws. But what are God's laws by which he makes things? We do not know.

Miracles may be—indeed must be—only the effect of some higher and deeper laws of God. We cannot prove that he breaks his law, or disturbs his order by them. They may seem contrary to some of the very very few laws of God's earth which we do know. But they need not be contrary to the very many laws which we do not know. In fact, we know nothing about the matter, and had best not talk of things that we do not understand. As for these things being too wonderful to be true—that is an argument which only deserves a smile. There are so many wonders in the world round us already, all day long, that the man of sense will feel that nothing is too wonderful to be true.

The truth is, that, as a wise man says, CUSTOM is the great enemy of Faith, and of Reason likewise; and one of the worst tricks which custom plays us is, making us fancy that miraculous things cease to be miraculous by becoming common.

What do I mean?

This: which every child in this church can understand.

You think it very wonderful that God should cause frogs to come upon the whole land of Egypt in one day. But that God should cause frogs to come up every spring in the ditches does not seem wonderful to you at all. It happens every year; therefore, forsooth, there is nothing wonderful in it.

Ah, my dear friends, it is custom which blinds our eyes to the wisdom of God, and the wonders of God, and the power of God, and the glory of God, and hinders us from believing the message with which he speaks to us from every sunbeam and every shower, every blade of grass and every standing pool. 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?'

If any man here says that anything is too hard for the Lord, let him go this day to the nearest standing pool, and look at the frog-spawn therein, and consider it till he confesses his blindness and foolishness. That spawn seems to you a foul thing, the produce of mean, ugly, contemptible creatures. Be it so. Yet it is to the eyes of the wise man a yearly MIRACLE; a thing past understanding, past explaining; one which will make him feel the truth of that great 139th Psalm: 'Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there also.'

That every one of those little black spots should have in it LIFE— What is life? How did it get into that black spot? or, to speak more carefully, is the life IN the black spot at all? Is not the life in the Spirit of God, who is working on that spot, as I believe? How has that black spot the power of GROWING, and of growing on a certain and fixed plan, merely by the quickening power of the sun's heat, and then of feeding itself, and of changing its shape, as you all know, again and again, till—and if that is not wonderful, what is?—it turns into a frog, exactly like its parent, utterly unlike the black dot at which it began? Is that no miracle? Is it no miracle that not one of those black spots ever turns into anything save a frog? Why should not some of them turn into toads or efts? Why not even into fishes or serpents? Why not? The eggs of all those animals, in their first and earliest stages are exactly alike; the microscope shows no difference. Ay, even the mere animal and the human being, strange and awful as it may be, SEEM, under the microscope, to have the same beginning. And yet one becomes a mere animal, and the other a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. What causes this but the power of God, making of the same clay one vessel to honour and another to dishonour? And yet people will not believe in miracles! Why does each kind turn into its kind? Answer that. Because it is a law of nature? Not so! There are no laws OF nature. God is a law TO nature. It is his WILL that things so should be; and when it is his will they will not be so, but otherwise.

Not LAWS of nature, but the SPIRIT of God, as the Psalms truly say, gives life and breath to all things. Of him and by him is all. As the greatest chemist of our time says, 'Causes are the acts of God— creation is the will of God.'

And he that is wise and strong enough to create frogs in one way in every ditch at this moment, is he not wise and strong enough to create frogs by some other way, if he should choose, whether in Egypt of old, or now, here, this very day?

Whatsoever means, or no means at all, God used to produce those vermin, the miracle remains the same. He sent them to do a work, and they did it. He sent them to teach Egyptian and Israelite alike that he was the Maker, and Lord, and Ruler of the world, and all that therein is; that he would have his way, and that he COULD have his way.

Intensely painful and disgusting these plagues must have been to the Egyptians, for this reason, that they were the most cleanly of all people. They had a dislike of dirt, which had become quite a superstition to them. Their priests (magicians as the Bible calls them) never wore any garments but linen, for fear of their harbouring vermin of any kind. And this extreme cleanliness of theirs the next plague struck at; they were covered with boils and diseases of skin, and the magicians could not stand before Pharaoh by reason of the boils. They became unclean and unfit for their office; they could perform no religious ceremonies, and had to flee away in disgrace.

After plagues of thunder, hail, and rain, which seldom or never happen in that rainless land of Egypt; after a plague of locusts, which are very rare there, and have to come many hundred miles if they come at all; of darkness, seemingly impossible in a land where the sun always shines: then came the last and most terrible plague of all. After solemn warnings of what was coming, the angel of the Lord passed through the land of Egypt, and smote all the first-born in Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh upon his throne to the first-born of the captive in the dungeon; and there arose a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house in which there was not one dead. A terrible and heart-rending calamity in any case, enough to break the heart of all Egypt; and it did break the heart of Egypt, and the proud heart of Pharaoh himself, and they let the people go.

But this was a RELIGIOUS affliction too. Most of these first-born children—probably all the first-born of the priests and nobles, and of Pharaoh himself—were consecrated to some god. They bore the name of the god to whom they belonged; that god was to prosper and protect them, and behold, he could not. The Lord Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, was stronger than all the gods of Egypt; none of them could deliver their servants out of his hand. He was the only Lord of life and death; he had given them life, and he could take it away, in spite of all and every one of the gods of the Egyptians.

So the Lord God showed himself to be the Master and Lord of all things. The Lord of the sacred river Nile; the Lord of the meanest vermin which crept on the earth; the Lord of the weather—able to bring thunder and hail into a land where thunder and hail was never seen before; the Lord of the locust swarms—able to bring them over the desert and over the sea to devour up every green thing in the land, and then to send a wind off the Mediterranean Sea, and drive the locusts away to the eastward; the Lord of light—who could darken, even in that cloudless land, the very sun, whom Pharaoh worshipped as his god and his ancestor; and lastly, the Lord of human life and death—able to kill whom he chose, when he chose, and as he chose. The Lord of the earth and all that therein is; before whom all men, even proud Pharaoh, must bow and confess, 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?'