All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

SERMON XL.  THE LESSON OF LIFE

Fifth Sunday in Lent.

Chester Training College, 1870.  Windsor Castle, 1871.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SERMON XLI.  SACRIFICE TO CÆSAR OR TO GOD

Eversley, 1869.  Chester Cathedral, 1872.

Matthew xxii. 21.  “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now what are these spiritual sacrifices?

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

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

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