Twenty-Five Village Sermons

SERMON XXIV.

ON BOOKS

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I do not pretend to be able to explain this text to you, for no man can comprehend it but He of whom it speaks, Jesus Christ, the Word of God.  But I can, by God’s grace, put before you some of the awful and glorious truths of which it gives us a sight, and may Christ direct you, who is the Word, and grant me words to bring the matter home to you, so as to make some of you, at least, ask yourselves the golden question, ‘If this is true, what must we do to be saved?’

The text says that the Word was from the beginning with God,—ay, God Himself: who the Word is, there is no doubt from the rest of the chapter, which you heard read this morning.  But why is Christ called the Word of all words—the Word of God?  Let us look at this.  Is not Christ the man, the head and pattern of all men who are what men ought to be?  And did He not tell men that He is the Life?  That all life is given by Him and out of Him?  And does not St. John tell us that Christ the Life is the light of men,—the true light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world?

Remember this, and then think again,—what is it which makes men different from all other living things we know of?  Is it not speech—the power of words?  The beasts may make each other understand many things, but they have no speech.  These glorious things—words—are man’s right alone, part of the image of the Son of God—the Word of God, in which man was created.  If men would but think what a noble thing it is merely to be able to speak in words, to think in words, to write in words!  Without words, we should know no more of each other’s hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog;—without words to think in; for if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand our own selves.  Without words to write in, we could not know what our forefathers did;—we could not let our children after us know what to do.  But, now, books—the written word of man—are precious heirlooms from one generation to another, training us, encouraging us, teaching us, by the words and thoughts of men, whose bodies are crumbled into dust ages ago, but whose words—the power of uttering themselves, which they got from the Son of God—still live, and bear fruit in our hearts, and in the hearts of our children after us, till the last day!

But where did these words—this power of uttering our thoughts, come from?  Do you fancy that men first, began like brute beasts or babies, with strange cries and mutterings, and so gradually found out words for themselves?  Not they; the beasts have been on the earth as long as man; and yet they can no more speak than they could when God created Adam: but Adam, we find, could speak at once.  God spoke to Adam the moment he was made, and Adam understood Him; so he knew the power and the meaning of words.  Who gave him that power?  Who but Jehovah—Jesus—the Word of God, who imparted to him the word of speech and the light of reason?  Without them what use would there have been in saying to him, “Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge?”  Without them what would there have been in God’s bringing to him all the animals to see what he would call them, unless He had first given Adam the power of understanding words, and thinking of words, and speaking words?  This was the glorious gift of Christ—the Voice or Word of the Lord God, as we read in the second chapter of Genesis, whom Adam heard another time with fear and terror,—“The voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”—A text and a story strange enough, till we find in the first chapter of St. John the explanation of it, telling us that the Word was in the beginning with God—very God, and that He was the light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world.  So Christ is the light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world.  How are we to understand that, when there are so many who live and die heathens or reprobates,—some who never hear of Christ,—some, alas! in Christian lands, who are dead to every doctrine or motive of Christianity? yet the Bible says that Christ lights every man who comes into the world.  Difficult to understand at first sight, yet most true, and simple too, at bottom.

For how is every one, whether heathen or Christian, child or man, enlightened or taught, to live and behave?  Is it not by the words of those round him, by the words he reads in books, by the thoughts which he thinks out and puts into shape for himself?  All this is the light which every human being has his share of.  And has not every man, too, the light of reason and good feeling, more or less, to tell him whether each thing is right or wrong, noble or mean, ugly or beautiful?  This is another way by which the light which lighteth every man works.  And St. John tells us in the text, that he who works in this way,—he who gives us the power of understanding, and thinking, and judging, and speaking, is the very same Word of God who was made flesh, and dwelt among men, and died on the Cross for us; “the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world!”

He is the Word of God—by Him God has spoken to man in all ages.  He taught Adam,—He spoke to Abraham as a man speaketh with his friend.  It was He Jehovah, whom we call Jesus, whom Moses and the seventy elders saw—saw with their bodily eyes on Mount Sinai, who spoke to them with human voice from amid the lightning and the rainbow.  It must have been only He, the Word, by whom God the Father utters Himself to man, for no man hath seen God at any time; only the Word, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.  And who put into the mouth of David those glorious Psalms—the songs in which all true men for three thousand years have found the very things they longed to speak themselves and could not?  Who but Christ the Word of God, the Lord, as David calls Him, put a new song into the mouth of His holy poet,—the sweet singer of Israel?  Who spake by the prophets, again?  What do they say themselves?—“The Word of the Lord came to me, saying.”  And then, when the Spirit of God stirred them up, the Word of God gave them speech, and they said the sayings which shall never pass away till all be fulfilled.  And who was it who, when He was upon earth, spake as never man spake,—whose words were the simplest, and yet the deepest,—the tenderest, and yet the most awful, which ever broke the blessed silence upon this earth,—whose words, now to this day, come home to men’s hearts, stirring them up to the very roots, piercing through the marrow of men’s souls,—whose but Christ’s, the Word, who was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth?  And who since then, do you think, has it been who has given to all wise and holy poets, philosophers, and preachers, the power to speak and write the wonderful truths which, by God’s grace, they thought out for themselves and for all mankind,—who gave them utterance?—who but Christ, the Lord of men’s spirits, the Word of God, who promised to give to all His true disciples a mouth and wisdom, which their enemies should not be able to gainsay or resist?

Well, my friends, ought not the knowledge of this to make us better and wiser?  Ought it not to make us esteem, and reverence, and use many things of which we are apt to think too lightly?  How it should make us reverence the Bible, the written word of God’s saints and prophets, of God’s apostles, of Christ, the Word Himself?  Oh, that men would use that treasure of the Bible as it deserves;—oh, that they would believe from their hearts, that whatever is said there is truly said, that whatever is said there is said to them, that whatever names things are called there are called by their right names.  Then men would no longer call the vile person beautiful, or call pride and vanity honour, or covetousness respectability, or call sin worldly wisdom; but they would call things as Christ calls them—they would try to copy Christ’s thoughts and Christ’s teaching; and instead of looking for instruction and comfort to lying opinions and false worldly cunning, they would find their only advice in the blessed teaching, and their only comfort in the gracious promises, of the word of the Book of Life.

Again, how these thoughts ought to make us reverence all books.  Consider! except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!—a message to us from the dead—from human souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Why is it that neither angels, nor saints, nor evil spirits, appear to men now to speak to them as they did of old?  Why, but because we have books, by which Christ’s messengers, and the devil’s messengers too, can tell what they will to thousands of human beings at the same moment, year after year, all the world over!  I say, we ought to reverence books, to look at them as awful and mighty things.  If they are good and true, whether they are about religion or politics, farming, trade, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the Maker of all things, the Teacher of all truth, which He has put into the heart of some man to speak, that he may tell us what is good for our spirits, for our bodies, and for our country.

And at the last day, be sure of it, we shall have to render an account—a strict account, of the books which we have read, and of the way in which we have obeyed what we read, just as if we had had so many prophets or angels sent to us.

If, on the other hand, books are false and wicked, we ought to fear them as evil spirits loose among us, as messages from the father of lies, who deceives the hearts of evil men, that they may spread abroad the poison of his false and foul messages, putting good for evil, and evil for good, sweet for bitter, and bitter for sweet, saying to all men, ‘I, too, have a tree of knowledge, and you may eat of the fruit thereof, and not die.’  But believe him not.  When you see a wicked book, when you find in a book any thing which contradicts God’s book, cast it away, trample it under foot, believe that it is the devil tempting you by his cunning, alluring words, as he tempted Eve, your mother.  Would to God all here would make that rule,—never to look into an evil book, a filthy ballad, a nonsensical, frivolous story!  Can a man take a snake into his bosom and not be bitten?—can we play with fire and not be burnt?—can we open our ears and eyes to the devil’s message, whether of covetousness, or filth, or folly, and not be haunted afterwards by its wicked words, rising up in our thoughts like evil spirits, between us and our pure and noble duty—our baptism-vows?

I might say much more about these things, and, by God’s help, in another sermon I will go on, and speak to you of the awful importance of spoken words, of the sermons and the conversation to which you listen, the awful importance of every word which comes out of your own mouth.  But I have spoken only of books this morning, for this is the age of books, the time, one would think, of which Daniel prophesied that many should run to and fro, and knowledge should be increased.  A flood of books, newspapers, writings of all sorts, good and bad, is spreading over the whole land, and young and old will read them.  We cannot stop that—we ought not: it is God’s ordinance.  It is more: it is God’s grace and mercy, that we have a free press in England—liberty for every man, that if he have any of God’s truth to tell he may tell it out boldly, in books or otherwise.  A blessing from God! one which we should reverence, for God knows it was dearly bought.  Before our forefathers could buy it for us, many an honoured man left house and home to die in the battle-field or on the scaffold, fighting and witnessing for the right of every man to whom God’s Word comes, to speak God’s Word openly to his countrymen.  A blessing, and an awful one! for the same gate which lets in good lets in evil.  The law dare not silence bad books.  It dare not root up the tares lest it root up the wheat also.  The men who died to buy us liberty knew that it was better to let in a thousand bad books than shut out one good one; for a grain of God’s truth will ever outweigh a ton of the devil’s lies.  We cannot then silence evil books, but we can turn away our eyes from them—we can take care that what we read, and what we let others read, shall be good and wholesome.  Now, if ever, are we bound to remember that books are words, and that words come either from Christ or the devil,—now, if ever, we are bound to try all books by the Word of God,—now, if ever, are we bound to put holy and wise books, both religious and worldly, into the hands of all around us, that if, poor souls! they must need eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they may also eat of the tree of life,—and now, if ever, are we bound to pray to Christ the Word of God, that He will raise up among us wise and holy writers, and give them words and utterance, to speak to the hearts of all Englishmen the message of God’s covenant, and that he may confound the devil and his lies, and all that swarm of vile writers who are filling England with trash, filth, blasphemy, and covetousness, with books which teach men that our wise forefathers, who built our churches and founded our constitution, and made England the queen of nations, were but ignorant knaves and fanatics, and that selfish money-making and godless licentiousness are the only true wisdom; and so turn the divine power of words, and the inestimable blessing of a free press, into the devil’s engine, and not Christ’s the Word of God.  But their words shall be brought to nought.

May God preserve us and all our friends from that defilement, and may He give you all grace, in these strange times, to take care what you read and how you read, and to hold fast by the Book of all books, and Christ the Word of God.  Try by them all books and men; for if they speak not according to God’s law and testimony, it is because there is no truth in them.

SERMON XXV

THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR

“Then after that saith He to His disciples, Let us go into Judea again.  His disciples say to Him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?”

We all admire a brave man.  And we are right.  To be brave is God’s gift.  To be brave is to be like Jesus Christ.  Cowardice is only the devil’s likeness.  But we must take care what we mean by being brave.  Now, there are two sorts of bravery—courage and fortitude.  And they are very different: courage is of the flesh,—fortitude is of the spirit.  Courage is good, but dumb animals have it just as much as we.  A dog, a tiger, and a horse, have courage, but they have no fortitude,—because fortitude is a spiritual thing, and beasts have no spirits like ours.

What is fortitude?  It is the courage which will make us not only fight in a good cause, but suffer in a good cause.  Courage will help us only to give others pain; fortitude will help us to bear pain ourselves.  And more, fortitude will make a fearful person brave, and very often the more brave the more fearful they are.  And thus it is that women are so often braver than men.  We, men, are made of coarser stuff; we do not feel pain as keenly as women; and if we do feel, we are rightly ashamed to shew it.  But a tender woman, who feels pain and sorrow infinitely more than we do, who need not be ashamed of being frightened, who perhaps is terrified at every mouse and spider,—to see her bearing patiently pain, and sorrow, and shame, in spite of all her fearfulness, because she knows it is her duty—that is Christ’s likeness—that is true fortitude—that is a sight nobler than all the “bull-dog courage” in the world.  For what is the courage of the bull-dog after all, or of the strong quarrelsome man?  He is confident in his own strength, he is rough and hard, and does not care for pain; and when he thrusts his head into a fight, like a surly dog, he does it not because it is his duty, but because he likes it, because he is angry, and then every blow and every wound makes him more angry, and he fights on, forgetting his pain from blind rage.

That is not altogether bad; men ought to be courageous.  But, oh! my friends, is there not a more excellent way to be brave? and which is nobler, to suffer bravely for God’s sake, or to beat men made in God’s image bravely for one’s own sake?  Think of any fight you ever saw, and then compare with that the stories of those old martyrs who died rather than speak a word against their Saviour.  If you want to see true fortitude, think of what has happened thousands of times when the heathen used to persecute the Christians.—How delicate women, who would not venture to set the sole of their foot to the ground for tenderness, would submit, rather than give up their religion and deny the Lord who died for them, to be torn from husband and family, and endure nakedness, and insult, and tortures which make one’s blood run cold to read of, till they were torn slowly piecemeal, or roasted in burning flames, without a murmur or an angry word,—knowing that Christ, who had borne all things for them, would give them strength to bear all things for Him, trusting that if they were faithful unto death, He would give them a crown of life.  There was true fortitude—there was true faith—there was God’s strength made perfect in woman’s weakness!  Do you not see, my friends, that such a death was truly brave?  How does bull-dog courage shew beside that courage—the courage which conquers grief and pain for duty’s-sake, instead of merely forgetting them in rage and obstinacy?

And do you not see how this bears on my text?  How it bears on our Lord’s whole life?  Was he not indeed the perfectly brave man—the man who endured more than all living men put together, at the very time that he had the most intense fear of what he was going to suffer?  And stranger still, endured it all of His own will, while He had it in His power to shake it all off any instant, and free Himself utterly from pain and suffering.

Now, this speech of our Lord’s in the text is just a case of true fortitude.  He was beyond Jordan.  He had been forced to escape thither to save His life from the mad, blinded Jews.  He had no foolhardiness; He knew that He had no more right than we have to put His life in danger when there was no good to be done by it.  But now there was good to be done by it.  Lazarus was dead, and He wanted to raise him to life.  Therefore He said to His disciples, “Let us go into Judea again.”  They knew the danger; they said, “Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again?”  But He would go; He had a work to do, and He dared bear anything to do His work.  Ay, here is the secret, this is the feeling which gives a man true courage—the feeling that he has a work to do at all costs, the sense of duty.  Oh! my friends, let men, women, or children, once feel that they have a duty to perform, let them once say to themselves, ‘I am bound to do this thing—it is right for me to do this thing; I owe it as a duty to my family, I owe it as a duty to my country, I owe it as a duty to God, who called me into this station of life; I owe it as a duty to Jesus Christ, who bought me with His blood, that I might do His will and not my own pleasure.’—When a man has once said that honestly to himself, when that glorious heavenly thought, ‘It is my duty,’ has risen upon his soul, like the sun upon the earth, warming his heart and enlightening it and making it bring forth all good and noble fruits, then that man will feel a strength come to him, and a courage from God above, which will conquer all his fears and his selfish love of ease and pleasure, and enable him to bear insults, and pain, and poverty, and death itself, provided he can but do what is right, and be found by God, whatever happens to him, working God’s will where God has put him.  This is fortitude—this is true courage—this is Christ’s likeness—this is the courage which weak women on sick beds may have as well as strong men on the battle-field.  Even when they shrink most from suffering, God’s Spirit will whisper to them, ‘It is thy duty, it is thy Father’s will,’ and then they will find His strength made perfect in their weakness, and when their human weakness fails most God will give them heavenly fortitude, and they will be able, like St. Paul, to say, “When I am weak, then I am strong, for I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me.”

And now, remember that there was no pride, no want of feeling to keep up our Lord’s courage.  He has tasted sorrow for every man, woman, and child, and therefore He has tasted fear also; tempted in all things, like as we are, that in all things He might be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,—that there might be no poor soul terrified at the thought of pain or sorrow, but could comfort themselves with the thought, Well, the Son of God knows what fear is.  He who said that His soul was troubled—He who at the thought of death was in such agony of terror, that His sweat ran down to the ground like great drops of blood,—He who cried in His agony, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,”—He understands my pain,—He tells me not to be ashamed of crying in my pain like Him, “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”—for He will give me the strength to finish that prayer of His, and in the midst of my trouble say, “Nevertheless, Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”  Remember, again, that our Lord was not like the martyrs of old, forced to undergo His sufferings whether He liked them or not.  We are too apt to forget that, and therefore we misunderstand our Lord’s example; and therefore we misunderstand what true fortitude is.  Jesus Christ was the Son of God; He had made the very men who were tormenting Him; He had made the very wood of the cross on which He hung, the iron which pierced His blessed hands; and, for aught we know, one wish of His, and they would all have crumbled into dust, and He have been safe in a moment.  But He would not; He endured the cross.  He was the only man who ever really endured anything at all, because He alone of all men had perfect power to save Himself, even when He was nailed to the tree, fainting, bleeding, dying.  It was never too late for Him to stop.  As He said to Peter when he wanted to fight for Christ, “Thinkest thou that I cannot pray to my Father, and He will send me instantly more than twelve legions of angels?”  But He would not.  He had to save the world, and He was determined to do it, whatever agony or fear it cost Him.  St. Peter was a brave man.  He drew his sword in the garden, and attacked, single-handed, that great body of armed soldiers; cutting down a servant of the high-priest’s.  But he was only brave, our Lord was more.  The blessed Jesus had true fortitude; He could bear patiently, while Peter could only rage and fight uselessly.  And see how Christ’s fortitude lasted Him, while Peter’s mere courage failed him.  While our Lord was witnessing that glorious confession of His before Pilate, bearing on through, without shrinking, even to the cross itself, where was Peter?  He had denied his Master, and ran shamefully away.  He had a long lesson to learn before he was perfect, had Peter.  He had to learn not how to fight, but how to suffer—and he learnt it; and in his old age that strong, fierce St. Peter had true fortitude to give himself up to be crucified, like his Lord, without a murmur, and preach Christ’s gospel as he hung for three whole days upon the torturing cross.  There was fortitude; that violence of his in the garden was only courage as of a brute animal,—courage of the flesh, not the true courage of the spirit.  Oh, my friends, that we could all learn this lesson, that it is better to suffer than to revenge, better to be killed than to kill.  There are times when a man must fight—for his country, for just laws, for his family, but for himself it is very seldom that he must fight.  He who returns good for evil,—he who when he is cursed, blesses those who curse him,—he, who takes joyfully the spoiling of his goods, who submits to be cheated in little matters, and sometimes in great ones, sooner than ruin the poor sinful wretch who has ill-used him; that man has really put on Christ’s likeness, that man is really going on to perfection, and fulfilling the law of love; and for everything he gives up for the sake of peace and mercy, which is for God’s sake, God will reward him sevenfold into his bosom.  There are times when a man is bound to go to law, bound to expose and punish evil-doers, lest they should, being unpunished, become confident and go on from bad to worse, and hurt others as well as him.  A man sometimes is bound by his duty to his neighbours and to society to defend himself, to go to law with those who injure him,—sometimes; but never bound to revenge himself, never bound to say, ‘He has hurt me, and I will pay him off for it at law;’ that is abusing law, which is God’s ordinance, for mere selfish revenge.  You may say, it is difficult to know which is which, when to defend oneself, and when not.  It is difficult; without the light of God’s Spirit, I think no man will know.  But let a man live by God’s Spirit, let him pray for kindliness, mercifulness, manliness, and patience, for true fortitude to bear and to forbear, and God will surely open his eyes to see when he is called on to avenge an injury, and when he is called on to suffer patiently.  God will shew him—if a man wishes to be like Christ, and to work like Christ, at doing good, God will teach him and guide him in all puzzling matters like this.  And do not be afraid of being called cowards and milksops for bearing injuries patiently—those who call you so will be likely to be the greatest cowards themselves.  Patience is the truest sign of courage.  Ask old soldiers, who have seen real war, and they will tell you that the bravest men, the men who endured best, not in mere fighting, but in standing still for hours to be mowed down by cannon-shot; who were most cheerful and patient in shipwreck, and starvation and defeat,—all things ten times worse than fighting,—ask old soldiers, I say, and they will tell you that the men who shewed best in such miseries, were generally the stillest and meekest men in the whole regiment: that is true fortitude; that is Christ’s image—the meekest of men, and the bravest too.  And so books say, and seem to prove it, by many strange stories, that the lion, while he is the strongest and bravest of beasts of prey, is also the most patient and merciful.  He knows his own strength and courage, and therefore he does not care to be shewing it off.  He can afford to endure an affront.  It is only the cowardly cur who flies out and barks at every passer-by.  And so with our blessed Lord.  The Bible calls Him the Lion of Judah; but it also calls Him the Lamb dumb before the shearers.  Ah, my friends, we must come back to Him, for all the little that is great and noble in man or woman, or dumb beast even, is perfected in Him; He only is perfectly great, perfectly noble, brave, meek.  He who to save us sinful men, endured the cross, despising the shame, till He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, perfectly brave He is, and perfectly gentle, and will be so for ever; for even at His second coming, when He shall appear the Conqueror of hell, with tens of thousands of angels, to take vengeance on those who know not God, and destroy the wicked with the breath of His mouth, even then in His fiercest anger, the Scripture tells us, His anger shall be “the anger of the Lamb.”  Almighty vengeance and just anger, and yet perfect gentleness and love all the while.—Mystery of mysteries!—The wrath of the Lamb!  May God give us all to feel in that day, not the wrath, but the love of the Lamb who was slain for us!