Twenty-Five Village Sermons
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The man says to Him, or rather the devils make the man say to Him, “If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine, and drive us not out into the deep.” What did Christ answer him? Christ did not answer him as our so-called wise men in these days would, ‘My good man, this is all a delusion and a fancy of your own, about your having evil spirits in you—more persons than one in you—for you are wrong in saying we of yourself. You ought to say “I,” as every one else does; and as for spirits going out of you, or going into a herd of swine, or anything else, that is all a superstition and a fancy. There is nothing to come out of you, there is nothing in you except yourself. All the evil in you is your own, the disease of your own brain, and the violent passions of your own heart. Your brain must be cured by medicine, and your violent passions tamed down by care and kindness, and then you will get rid of this foolish notion that you have evil spirits in you, and calling yourself a multitude, as if you had other persons in you besides yourself.’
Any one who spoke in this manner nowadays would be thought very reasonable and very kind. Why did not our Lord speak so to this man, for there was no outward difference between this man’s conduct and that of many violent mad people whom we see continually in England? We read, that this man possessed with devils would wear no clothes; that he had extraordinary strength; that he would not keep company with other men, but abode day and night in the tombs, exceeding fierce, crying and cutting himself with stones, trying in blind rage, which he could not explain to himself, to hurt himself and all who came near him. And, above all, he had this notion, that evil spirits had got possession of him. Now every one of these habits and fancies you may see in many raging maniacs at this day.
But did our Lord treat this man as we treat such maniacs in these days? He took the man at his word, and more; the man could not distinguish clearly between himself and the evil spirits, but our Lord did. When the devils besought Him, saying, “If thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine,” our Lord answers “Go;” and “when they were cast out, they went into the herd of swine; and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.”
It was as if our Lord had meant to say to the bystanders,—ay and to us, and to all people in all times and in all countries, ‘This poor possessed maniac’s notion was a true one. There were other persons in him besides himself, tormenting him, body and soul: and, behold, I can drive these out of him and send them into something else, and leave the man uninjured, himself, and only himself, again in an instant, without any need of long education to cure him of his bad habits.’ It will be but reasonable, then, for us to take this story of the man possessed by devils, as written for our example, as an instance of what might, and perhaps would, happen to any one of us, were it not for God’s mercy.
St. Peter tells us to be sober and watchful, because “the devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour;” and when we look at the world around, we may surely see that that stands as true now as it did in St. Peter’s time. Why, again, did St. James tells us to resist the devil if the devil be not near us to resist? Why did St. Paul take for granted, as he did, that Christian men were, of course, not ignorant of Satan’s devices, if it be quite a proof of enlightenment and superior knowledge to be ignorant of his devices,—if any dread, any thought even, about evil spirits, be beneath the attention of reasonable men? My friends, I say fairly, once for all, that that common notion, that there are no men now possessed by evil spirits, and that all those stories of the devil’s power over men are only old, worn-out superstitions has come from this, that men do not like to retain God in their knowledge, and therefore, as a necessary consequence, do not like to retain the devil in their knowledge; because they would be very glad to believe in nothing but what they can see, and taste, and handle; and, therefore, the thought of unseen evil spirits, or good spirits either, is a painful thing to them. First, they do not really believe in angels—ministering spirits sent out to minister to the heirs of salvation; then they begin not to believe in evil spirits. The Bible plainly describes their vast numbers; but these people are wiser than the Bible, and only talk of one—of the devil, as if there were not, as the text tells us, legions and armies of devils. Then they get rid of that one devil in their real desire to believe in as few spirits as possible. I am afraid many of them have gone on to the next step, and got rid of the one God out of their thoughts and their belief. I said I am afraid, I ought to have said I know, that they have done so, and that thousands in this day who began by saying evil spirits only mean certain diseases and bad habits in men, have ended by saying, “God only means certain good habits in man. God is no more a person than the evil spirits are persons.”
I warn you of all this, my friends, because if you go to live in large towns, as many of you will, you will hear talk enough of this sort before your hairs are grey, put cleverly and eloquently enough; for, as a wise man said, “The devil does not send fools on his errands.” I pray God, that if you ever do hear doctrines of that kind, some of my words may rise in your mind and help to shew to you the evil path down which they lead.
We may believe, then, from the plain words of Scriptures, that there are vast numbers of evil spirits continually tempting men, each of them to some particular sin; to worldliness, for instance, for we read of the spirit of the evil world; to filthiness, for we read of unclean spirits; to falsehood, for we read of lying spirits and a spirit of lies; to pride, for we read of a spirit of pride;—in short, to all sins which a man can commit, to all evil passions to which a man can give way. We have a right to believe, from the plain words of Scripture, that these spirits are continually wandering up and down tempting men to sin. That wonderful story of Job’s temptation, which you may all read for yourselves in the first chapter of the book of Job, is, I think, proof enough for any one.
But next, and I wish you to pay special attention to this point: We have no right to believe,—we have every right not to believe, that these evil spirits can make us sin in the smallest matter against our own wills. The devil cannot put a single sin into us; he can only flatter the sinfulness which is already in us. For, see; this pride, lust, covetousness, falsehood, and so on, to which the Bible tells us they tempt us, have roots already in our nature. Our fallen nature of itself is inclined to pride, to worldliness, and so on. These devils tempt us by putting in our way the occasion to sin, by suggesting to us tempting thoughts and arguments which lead to sin; so the serpent tempted Eve, not by making her ambitious and self-willed, but by using arguments to her which stirred up the ambition and self-will in her: “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” the devil said to her.
So Satan, the prince of the evil spirits, tempted our Lord. And as the prince of the devils tempted Christ, so do his servants tempt us, Christ’s servants. Our tempers, our longings, our fancies, are not evil spirits; they are, as old divines well describe them, like greedy and foolish fish, who rise at the baits which evil spirits hold out to us. If we resist those baits—if we put ourselves under God’s protection—if we claim strength from Him who conquered the devil and all His temptations, then we shall be able to turn our wills away from those tempting baits, and to resign our wills into our Father’s hand, and He will take care of them, and strengthen them with His will; and we shall find out that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. But if we yield to temptations whenever they come in our way, we shall find ourselves less and less able to resist them, for we shall learn to hate the evil spirits less and less; I mean we shall shrink less from the evil thoughts they hold out to us. We shall give place to the devil, as the Scripture tells us we shall; for instance, by indulging in habitual passionate tempers, or rooted spite and malice, letting the sun go down upon our wrath: and so a man may become more and more the slave of his own nature, of his own lusts and passions, and therefore of the devils, who are continually pampering and maddening those lusts and passions, till a man may end in complete possession; not in common madness, which may be mere disease, but as a savage and a raging maniac, such as, thank God, are rare in Christian countries, though they were common among our own forefathers before they were converted to Christianity,—men like the demoniac of whom the text speaks, tormented by devils, given up to blind rage and malice against himself and all around, to lust and blasphemy, to confusion of mind and misery of body, God’s image gone, and the image of the devil, the destroyer and the corrupter, arisen in its place. Few men can arrive at this pitch of wretchedness in a civilised country. It would not answer the evil spirit’s purpose to let them do so. It suits his spirits best in such a land as this to walk about dressed up as angels of light. Few men in England would be fools enough to indulge the gross and fierce part of their nature till they became mere savages, like the demoniac whom Christ cured; so it is to respectable vices that the devil mostly tempts us,—to covetousness, to party spirit, to a hard heart and a narrow mind; to cruelty, that shall clothe itself under the name of law; to filthiness, which excuses itself by saying, “It is a man’s nature, he cannot help it;” to idleness, which excuses itself on the score of wealth; to meanness and unfairness in trade, and in political and religious disputes—these are the devils which haunt us Englishmen—sleek, prim, respectable fiends enough; and, truly, their name is Legion! And the man who gives himself up to them, though he may not become a raving savage, is just as truly possessed by devils, to his own misery and ruin, that he may sow the wind and reap the whirlwind; that though men may speak well of him, and posterity praise his saying, and speak good of the covetous whom God abhorreth, yet he may go for ever unto his own, to the evil spirits to whom his own wicked will gave him up for a prey. I beseech you, my friends, consider my words; they are not mine, but the Bible’s. Think of them with fear;—and yet with confidence, for we are baptised into the name of Him who conquered all devils; you may claim a share in that Spirit which is opposite to all evil spirits,—whose presence makes the agony and misery of evil spirits, and drives them out as water drives out fire. If He is on your side, why should you be afraid of any spirit? Greater is He that is in you than he that is against you; and He, Christ Himself, is with every man, every child, who struggles, however blindly and weakly, against temptation. When temptation comes, when evil looks pleasant, and arguments rise up in your mind, that seem to make it look right and reasonable, as well as pleasant, then, out of the very depths of your hearts, cry after Him who died for you. Say to yourselves, ‘How can I do this thing, and offend against Him who bought me with His blood?’ Say to Him, ‘I am weak, I am confused; I do not see right from wrong; I cannot find my way; I cannot answer the devil; I cannot conquer these cunning thoughts; I know in the bottom of my heart that they are wrong, mere temptations, and yet they look so reasonable. Blessed Saviour, Thou must shew me where they are wrong. Thou didst answer the devil Thyself out of God’s Word, put into my mind some answer out of God’s Word to these temptations; or, at least, give me spirit to toss them off—strength of will to thrust the whole temptation out of my head, and say, I will parley no longer with the devil; I will put the whole matter out of my head for a time. I don’t know whether it is right or wrong for me to do this particular thing, but there are twenty other things which I do know are right. I’ll go and do them, and let this wait awhile.’
Believe me, my friends, you can do this—you can resist these evil spirits which tempt us all; else why did our Lord bid us pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?” Why? Because our Father in heaven, if we ask Him, will not lead us into temptation, but through it safe. Tempted we must be, else we should not be men; but here is our comfort and our strength—that we have a King in heaven, who has fought out and conquered all temptations, and a Father in heaven, who has promised that He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able, but will, with the temptation, make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it.
Again, I say, draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
SERMON X
NOAH’S JUSTICE
Genesis, vi. 9“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.”
I intend, my friends, according as God shall help me, to preach to you, between this time and Christmas, a few sermons on some of the saints and worthies of the Old Testament; and I will begin this day with Noah.
Now you must bear in mind that the histories of these ancient men were, as St. Paul says, written for our example. If these men in old times had been different from us, they would not be examples to us; but they were like us—men of like passions, says St. James, as ourselves; they had each of them in them a corrupt nature, which was continually ready to drag them down, and make beasts of them, and make them slaves to their own lusts—slaves to eating and drinking, and covetousness, and cowardice, and laziness, and love for the things which they could see and handle—just such a nature, in short, as we have. And they had also a spirit in each of them which was longing to be free, and strong, and holy, and wise—such a spirit as we have. And to them, just as to us, God was revealing himself; God was saying to their consciences, as He does to ours, ‘This is right, that is wrong; do this, and be free and clear-hearted; do that, and be dark and discontented, and afraid of thy own thoughts.’ And they too, like us, had to live by faith, by continual belief that they owed a duty to the great God whom they could not see, by continual belief that He loved them, and was guiding and leading them through every thing which happened, good or ill.
This is faith in God, by which alone we, or any man, can live worthily,—by which these old heroes lived. We read, in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, that it was by faith these elders obtained a good report; and the whole history of the Old-Testament saints is the history of God speaking to the hearts of one man after another, teaching them each more and more about Himself, and the history also of these men listening to the voice of God in their hearts, and believing that voice, and acting faithfully upon it, into whatever strange circumstances or deeds it might lead them. “By faith,” we read in this same chapter,—“by faith Noah, being warned of God, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”
Now, to understand this last sentence, you must remember that Noah was not under the law of Moses. St. Paul has a whole chapter (the third chapter of Galatians) to shew that these old saints had nothing to do with Moses’ law any more than we have, that it was given to the Jews many hundred years afterwards. So these histories of the Old-Testament saints are, in fact, histories of men who conquered by faith—histories of the power which faith in God has to conquer temptation, and doubt, and false appearances, and fear, and danger, and all which besets us and keeps us down from being free and holy, and children of the day, walking cheerfully forward on our heavenward road in the light of our Father’s loving smile.
Noah, we read, “was a just man, and perfect in his generations;” and why? Because he was a faithful man—faithful to God, as it is written, “The just shall live by his faith;” not by trusting in what he does himself, in his own works or deservings, but trusting in God who made him, believing that God is perfectly righteous, perfectly wise, perfectly loving; and that, because He is perfectly loving, He will accept and save sinful man when He sees in sinful man the earnest wish to be His faithful, obedient servant, and to give himself up to the rule and guidance of God. This, then, was Noah’s justice in God’s sight, as it was Abraham’s. They believed God, and so became heirs of the righteousness which is by faith; not their own righteousness, not growing out of their own character, but given them by God, who puts His righteous Spirit into those who trust in Him.
But, moreover, we read that Noah “was perfect in his generations;” that is, he was perfect in all the relations and duties of life,—a good son, a good husband, a good father: these were the fruits of his faith. He believed that the unseen God had given him these ties, had given him his parents, his children, and that to love them was to love God, to do his duty to them was to do his duty to God. This was part of his walking with God, continually under his great Taskmaster’s eye,—walking about his daily business with the belief that a great loving Father was above him, whatever he did; ready to strengthen, and guide, and bless him if he did well, ready to avenge Himself on him if he did ill. These were the fruits of Noah’s faith.
But you may think this nothing very wonderful. Many a man in England does this every day, and yet no one ever hears of him; he attends to all his family ties, doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, like one who knows he is redeemed by Christ’s blood; he lives, he dies, he is buried, and out of his own parish his name is never known; while Noah has earned for himself a worldwide fame; for four thousand years his name has been spreading over the whole earth as one of the greatest men who ever lived. Mighty nations have worshipped Noah as a God; many heathen nations worship him under strange and confused names and traditions to this day; and the wisest and holiest men among Christians now reverence Noah, write of him, preach on him, thank God for him, look up to him as, next to Abraham, their greatest example in the Old Testament.
Well, my friends, to understand what made Noah so great, we must understand in what times Noah lived. “The wickedness of men was great in the earth in those days, and every imagination of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually, and the earth was filled with violence through them.” And we must remember that the wickedness of men before the flood was not outwardly like wickedness now; it was not petty, mean, contemptible wickedness of silly and stupid men, such as could be despised and laughed down; it was like the wickedness of fallen angels. Men were then strong and beautiful, cunning and active, to a degree of which we can form no conception. Their enormous length of life (six, seven, and eight hundred years commonly) must have given them an experience and daring far beyond any man in these days. Their bodily size and strength were in many cases enormous. We read that “there were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Their powers of invention seem to have been proportionably great. We read, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, how, within a few years after Adam was driven out of Paradise, they had learned to build cities, to tame the wild beasts, and live upon their milk and flesh; that they had invented all sorts of music and musical instruments; that they had discovered the art of working in metals. We read among them of Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every workman in brass and iron; and the old traditions in the East, where these men dwelt, are full of strange and awful tales of their power.
Again, we must remember that there was no law in Noah’s days before the flood, no Bible to guide them, no constitutions and acts of parliament to bind men in the beaten track by the awful majesty of law, whether they will or no, as we have.
This is the picture which the Bible gives us of the old world before the flood—a world of men mighty in body and mind, fierce and busy, conquering the world round them, in continual war and turmoil; with all the wild passions of youth, and yet all the cunning and experience of enormous old age; with the strength and the courage of young men to carry out the iniquity of old ones; every one guided only by self-will, having cast off God and conscience, and doing every man that which was right in the sight of his own eyes. And amidst all this, while men, as wise, as old, as strong, as great as himself, whirled away round him in this raging sea of sin, Noah was stedfast; he, at least, knew his way,—“he walked with God, a just man, and perfect in his generations.”
To Noah, living in such a world as this, among temptation, and violence, and insult, no doubt, there came this command from God: “The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and I will destroy them with the earth. And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life; but with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou shalt make thee an ark of wood after the fashion which I tell thee; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy family, and of every living thing, two of every sort, male and female, shalt thou bring into the ark, and keep them alive with thee; and take thou of all food that is eaten into the ark, for thee and for them.” What a message, my friends! If we wish to see a little of the greatness of Noah’s faith, conceive such a message coming from God to one of us! Should we believe it—much less act upon it? But Noah believed God, says the Scripture; and “according as God commanded him, so did he.” Now, in whatever way this command came from God to Noah, it is equally wonderful. Some of you, perhaps, will say in your hearts, ‘No! when God spoke to him, how could he help obeying Him?’ But, my friends, ask yourselves seriously,—for, believe me, it is a most important question for the soul and inner life of you and me, and every man—how did Noah know that it was God who spoke to him? It is easy to say God appeared to him; but no man hath seen God at any time. It is easy, again, to say that an angel appeared to him, or that God appeared to him in the form of a man; but still the same question is left to be answered, how did he know that this appearance came from God, and that its words were true? Why should not Noah have said, ‘This was an evil spirit which appeared to me, trying to frighten and ruin me, and stir up all my neighbours to mock me, perhaps to murder me?’ Or, again; suppose that you or I saw some glorious apparition this day, which told us on such and such a day such and such a town will be destroyed, what should we think of it? Should we not say, I must have been dreaming—I must have been ill, and so my brain and eyes must have been disordered, and treat the whole thing as a mere fancy of ill-health; now why did not Noah do the same?
Why do I say this? To shew you, my friends, that it is not apparitions and visions which can make a man believe. As it is written, “If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one rose from the dead.” No; a man must have faith in his heart already. A man must first be accustomed to discern right from wrong—to listen to and to obey the voice of God within him; that word of God of which it is said, “the word is nigh thee, in thy heart, and in thy mind,” before he can hear God’s word from without; else he will only explain away miracles, and call visions and apparitions sick men’s dreams.
But there was something yet more wonderful and divine in Noah’s faith,—I mean his patience. He knew that a flood was to come—he set to work in faith to build his ark—and that ark was in building for one hundred and twenty years,—one hundred and twenty years! It seems at first past all belief. For all that time he built; and all the while the world went on just as usual; and, before he had finished, old men had died, and children grown into years; and great cities had sprung up perhaps where there was not a cottage before; and trees which were but a yard high when that ark was begun had grown into mighty forest-timber; and men had multiplied and spread, and yet Noah built and built on stedfastly, believing that what God had said would surely one day or other come to pass. For one hundred and twenty years he saw the world go on as usual, and yet he never forgot that it was a doomed world. He endured the laughter and mockery of all his neighbours, and every fresh child who was born grew up to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toiling for a hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they thought it; and yet Noah never lost faith, and he never lost love either—for all those years, we read, he preached righteousness to the very men who mocked him, and preached in vain—one hundred and twenty years he warned those sinners of God’s wrath, of righteousness and judgment to come, and no man listened to him! That, I believe, must have been, after all, the hardest of all his trials.