Part 13 (2/2)
And now to conclude all this, there are but two things which remain to say. In the first place, brethren, if we would be conquerors, we must realize G.o.d's love in Christ. Take care not to be under the law.
Constraint never yet made a conqueror: the utmost it can do is to make either a rebel or a slave. Believe that G.o.d loves you. He gave a triumphant demonstration of it in the Cross. Never shall we conquer self till we have learned _to love_. My Christian brethren, let us remember our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it deserves the name, is victory. We are not going forth to mere battle--we are going forth to conquer. To gain mastery over self, and sin, and doubt, and fear: till the last coldness, coming across the brow, tells us that all is over, and our warfare accomplished--that we are safe, the everlasting arms beneath us--_that_ is our calling. Brethren beloved, do not be content with a slothful, dreamy, uncertain struggle. You are to conquer, and the banner under which we are to win is not Fear, but Love. ”The strength of sin is the law;” the victory is by keeping before us G.o.d in Christ.
Lastly, there is need of encouragement for those of us whose faith is not of the conquering, but the timid kind. There are some whose hearts will reply to all this, Surely victory is not always a Christian's portion. Is there no cold dark watching in Christian life--no struggle when victory seems a mockery to speak of--no times when light and life seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a reality?
”Perfect love casteth out fear,” but who has it? Victory is by faith, but, oh G.o.d, who will tell us what this faith _is_ that men speak of as a thing so easy; and how we are to get it! You tell us to pray for faith, but how shall we pray in earnest unless we first have the very faith we pray for?
My Christian brethren, it is just to this deepest cry of the human heart that it is impossible to return a full answer. All that is true. To feel Faith is the grand difficulty of life. Faith is a deep impression of G.o.d and G.o.d's love, and personal trust in it. It is easy to say ”Believe and thou shalt be saved,” but well we know it is easier said than done. We cannot say how men are to _get_ faith. It is G.o.d's gift, almost in the same way that genius is. You cannot work _for_ faith; you must have it first, and then work _from_ it.
But brethren beloved, we can say, Look up, though we know not how the mechanism of the will which directs the eye is to be put in motion; we can say, Look to G.o.d in Christ, though we know not how men are to obtain faith to do it. Let us be in earnest. Our polar star is the love of the Cross. Take the eye off that, and you are in darkness and bewilderment at once. Let us not mind what is past. Perhaps it is all failure, and useless struggle, and broken resolves. What then? Settle this first, brethren, Are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be weak and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of triumph _now_, for victory is pledged. ”Thanks be to G.o.d, which” not _shall_ give, but ”_giveth_ us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
XVIII.
_Preached June 20, 1852._
MAN'S GREATNESS AND G.o.d'S GREATNESS.
”For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place--with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.”--Isaiah lvii. 15.
The origin of this announcement seems to have been the state of contempt in which religion found itself in the days of Isaiah. One of the most profligate monarchs that ever disgraced the page of sacred history, sat upon the throne of Judah. His court was filled with men who recommended themselves chiefly by their licentiousness. The altar was forsaken. Sacrilegious hands had placed the abominations of heathenism in the Holy Place; and Piety, banished from the State, the Church, and the Royal court, was once more as she had been before, and will be again, a wanderer on the face of the earth.
Now, however easy it may be to contemplate such a state of things at a distance, it never takes place in a man's own day and time, without suggesting painful perplexities of a twofold nature. In the first place suspicions respecting G.o.d's character; and, in the second place, misgivings as to his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it worth while to suffer for a sinking cause? Honour, preferment, grandeur, follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To be strict in goodness, is to be pointed at and shunned. To be no better than one's neighbours is the only way of being at peace. It seems to have been to such a state as this that Isaiah was commissioned to bring light. He vindicated G.o.d's character by saying that He is ”the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity.” He encouraged those who were trodden down, to perseverance, by reminding them that real dignity is something very different from present success. G.o.d dwells with him, ”that is of a contrite and humble spirit” We consider
I. That in which the greatness of G.o.d consists.
II. That in which man's greatness consists.
The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of G.o.d's greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth Eternity. There are some subjects on which it would be good to dwell, if it were only for the sake of that enlargement of mind which is produced by their contemplation. And eternity is one of these, so that you cannot steadily fix the thoughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar kind of elevation, at the same time that you are humbled by a personal feeling of utter insignificance. You have come in contact with something so immeasurable--beyond the narrow range of our common speculations--that you are exalted by the very conception of it. Now the only way we have of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step by step, up to the largest measures of time we know of, and so ascending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We cannot grasp eternity, but we can learn something of it by perceiving, that, rise to what portion of time we will, eternity is vaster than the vastest.
We take up for instance, the history of our own country, and then, when we have spent months in mastering the mere outline of those great events which, in the slow course of revolving centuries, have made England what she is, her earlier ages seem so far removed from our own times that they appear to belong to a h.o.a.ry and most remote antiquity.
But then, when you compare those times with even the existing works of man, and when you remember that, when England was yet young in civilization, the pyramids of Egypt were already grey with 1500 years, you have got another step which impresses you with a doubled amount of vastness. Double that period, and you come to the far distant moment when the present aspect of this world was called, by creation, out of the formless void in which it was before.
Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought beyond even this. It has commanded us to think of countless ages in which that formless void existed before it put on the aspect of its present creation. Millions of years before G.o.d called the light day, and the darkness night, there was, if science speaks true, creation after creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins upon the surface of this earth. And then, there was a time beyond even this--there was a moment when this earth itself, with all its countless creations and innumerable ages, did not exist. And, again, in that far back distance it is more than conceivable, it seems by the a.n.a.logy of G.o.d's dealings next to certain, that ten thousand worlds may have been called into existence, and lasted their unnumbered ages, and then perished in succession. Compared with these stupendous figures, 6,000 years of _our_ planet sink into nothingness. The mind is lost in dwelling on such thoughts as these. When you have penetrated far, far back, by successive approximations, and still see the illimitable distance receding before you as distant as before, imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel dizzy and bewildered with new strange thoughts, that have not a name.
But this is only one aspect of the case. It looks only to time past.
The same overpowering calculations wait us when we bend our eyes on that which is to come. Time stretches back immeasurably, but it also stretches on and on for ever. Now it is by such a conception as this that the inspired prophet attempts to measure the immeasurable of G.o.d.
All that eternity, magnificent as it is, never was without an Inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. It merely expresses the existence of the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth it. We make a fanciful distinction between eternity and time--there is no real distinction. We are in eternity at this moment. That has begun to be with us which never began with G.o.d. Our only measure of time is by the succession of ideas. If ideas flow fast, and many sights and many thoughts pa.s.s by us, time seems lengthened. If we have the simple routine of a few engagements, the same every day, with little variety, the years roll by us so fast that we cannot mark them. It is not so with G.o.d. There is no succession of ideas with Him. Every possible idea is present with Him now. It was present with Him ten thousand years ago. G.o.d's dwelling-place is that eternity which has neither past nor future, but one vast, immeasurable present.
There is a second measure given us of G.o.d in this verse. It is in respect of s.p.a.ce. He dwelleth in the High and Lofty place. He dwelleth moreover, in the most insignificant place--even the heart of man. And the idea by which the prophet would here exhibit to us the greatness of G.o.d is that of His eternal Omnipresence. It is difficult to say which conception carries with it the greatest exaltation--that of boundless s.p.a.ce or that of unbounded time. When we pa.s.s from the tame and narrow scenery of our own country, and stand on those spots of earth in which nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, we are conscious of something of the grandeur which belongs to the thought of s.p.a.ce. Go where the strong foundations of the earth lie around you in their ma.s.sive majesty, and mountain after mountain rears its snow to heaven in a giant chain, and then, when this bursts upon you for the first time in life, there is that peculiar feeling which we call, in common language, an enlargement of ideas. But when we are told that the sublimity of those dizzy heights is but a nameless speck in comparison with the globe of which they form the girdle; and when we pa.s.s on to think of that globe itself as a minute spot in the mighty system to which it belongs, so that our world might be annihilated, and its loss would not be felt; and when we are told that eighty millions of such systems roll in the world of s.p.a.ce, to which our own system again is as nothing; and when we are again pressed with the recollection that beyond those furthest limits creative power is exerted immeasurably further than eye can reach, or thought can penetrate; then, brethren, the awe which comes upon the heart is only, after all, a tribute to a _portion_ of G.o.d's greatness.
Yet we need not science to teach us this. It is the thought which oppresses very childhood--the overpowering thought of s.p.a.ce. A child can put his head upon his hands, and think and think till it reaches in imagination some far distant barrier of the universe, and still the difficulty presents itself to his young mind, ”And what is beyond that barrier?” and the only answer is ”The high and lofty place.” And this brethren, is the inward seal with which G.o.d has stamped Himself upon man's heart. If every other trace of Deity has been expunged by the fall, these two at least defy destruction--the thought of Eternal Time, and the thought of Immeasurable s.p.a.ce.
The third measure which is given us of G.o.d respects His character.
His name is Holy. The chief idea which this would convey to us is separation from evil. Brethren, there is perhaps a time drawing near when those of us who shall stand at His right hand, purified from all evil taint, shall be able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by the Holiness of G.o.d. At present, with hearts cleaving down to earth, and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy pa.s.sion, we can only form a dim conception _relatively_ of that which it implies. None but the pure can understand purity. The chief knowledge which we have of G.o.d's holiness comes from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what impurity is--G.o.d is _not_ that. We know what injustice is--G.o.d is _not_ that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, and pa.s.sion are, and deceitfulness, and pride, and waywardness--all these we know. G.o.d is none of these. And this is our chief acquaintance with His character.
We know what G.o.d is _not_. We scarcely can be rightly said to know, that is to feel, what G.o.d _is_. And therefore, this is implied in the very name of holiness. Holiness in the Jewish sense means simply separateness. From all that is wrong, and mean, and base, our G.o.d is for ever separate.
There is another way in which G.o.d gives to us a conception of what this holiness implies. Tell us of His justice, His truth, His loving-kindness. All these are cold abstractions. They convey no distinct idea of themselves to our hearts. What we wanted was, that these should be exhibited to us in tangible reality. And it is just this which G.o.d has done. He has exhibited all these attributes, not in the light of _speculation_, but in the light of _facts_. He has given us His own character in all its delicacy of colouring in the history of Christ. Love, Mercy, Tenderness, Purity--these are no mere names when we see them brought out in the human actions of our Master.
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