Part 1 (2/2)

for the Lord Himself, who came to lay the axe to the root of the tree, said of such, 'If any man cause one of these little ones to offend, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.'

So it is too often now-a-days, and so it will be, until people condescend to learn over again that simple old Church Catechism which they were taught when they were little, and to teach it to their children, not only with their lips but in their lives.

'The Church Catechism!' some here will say to themselves with a smile, 'that is but a paltry medicine for so great a disease--a pitiful ending, forsooth, to such a severe sermon as this, to recommend just the Church Catechism!' Let those laugh who will, my friends. If you think you can bring up your children to be blessings to you,--if you think you can live so as to be blessings to your children, without the Church Catechism, you can but try. I think that you will fail. More and more, year by year, I find that those who try do fail. More and more, year by year, I find that even religious people's education of their children fails, and that pious men's sons now-a-days are becoming more and more apt to be scandals to their parents and to religion. If any choose to say that the reason is, that the pious men's sons were not of the number of the elect, though their fathers were, I can only answer, that G.o.d is no respecter of persons, and that they say that He is; that G.o.d is not the author of the evil, and that they say that He is. If a child of mine turns out ill, I am bound to lay the fault first on myself, and certainly never on G.o.d,--and so is every man, unless the inspired Scripture is wrong where it says, 'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.'

And the fault _is_ in ourselves. Very few people really teach their children now-a-days the Church Catechism; very few really believe the Church Catechism; very few really believe that G.o.d is such an one as the Church Catechism declares to us; very few believe in the Lord, in whose image and likeness man is made, whose way John the Baptist prepared by turning the hearts of the fathers to the children. They put, perhaps, religious books into their children's hands, and talk to them a great deal about their souls: but they do not tell their children what the Church Catechism tells them, because they do not believe what the Church Catechism tells them.

What that is; what the Church Catechism does tell us, which the favourite religious books now-a-days do not tell us; and what that has to do with turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, I must tell you hereafter. G.o.d grant that my words may sink into all hearts, as far as they are right and true; if sooner or later we are not all brought to understand the meaning of those two simple words, Father and Son, neither Baptism, nor Confirmation, nor Schools, nor this Church, nor the very body and blood of Him who died for us, to share which you are all called this day, will be of avail for the well-being of this parish, or of this country, or any other country upon earth. For where the root is corrupt, the fruit will be also; and where family life and family ties, which are the root and foundation of society, are out of joint, there the Nation and the Church will decay also; as it is written, 'If the foundations be cast down, what can the righteous do?'

And whensoever, in any family, or nation and church, the root of the tree (which is the conduct of parents to children, and of children to parents) grows corrupt and rotten, then 'last days,' as St. Paul calls them, are indeed come to it, and evil times therewith; for the Lord will surely lay the axe to the root of it, and cut it down and cast it into the fire: neither will the days of that family, or that people, or that Church, be long in the land which the Lord their G.o.d has given them. So it has been as yet, in all ages and in all countries on the face of G.o.d's earth, and so it will be until the end. Wheresoever the hearts of the fathers are not turned to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, there will a great and terrible day of the Lord come; and that nation, like Judaea of old, like many a fair country in Europe at this moment, will be smitten with a curse.

SERMON II. SALVATION

John xvii. 3. This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.

Before I can explain what this text has to do with the Church Catechism, I must say to you a little about what it means.

Now if I asked any of you what 'salvation' was, you would probably answer, 'Eternal life.'

And you would answer rightly. That is exactly what salvation is, and neither more nor less. No more than that; for nothing greater than that can belong to any created being. No less than that; for G.o.d's love and mercy are eternal and without bound.

But what is eternal life?

Some will answer, 'Going to heaven when we die.' But what before you die? You do not know? cannot tell?

Let us listen to what G.o.d Himself says. Let us listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of G.o.d, says. Let us listen to what He who spake as man never spake, says. Surely His words must be the clearest, the simplest, the most exact, the deepest, the widest; the exactly fit and true words, the complete words, the perfect words, which cannot be improved on by adding to them or taking away one jot or t.i.ttle. What did the Lord Jesus Christ say that eternal life was?

'This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.'

To know G.o.d and Jesus Christ; that is eternal life. That is all the eternal life which any of us will ever have, my friends. Unless our Lord's words are not complete and perfect, and do not tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about eternal life, that is all the eternal life any one will ever have; and we must make up our minds to be content therewith.

To which some will answer, almost angrily, 'Of course. The way to obtain eternal life is to know G.o.d and Jesus Christ; for if we do not, we cannot obtain it.'

What words are these, my friends? what rash words are these, which men thrust into Scripture out of their own carnal conceits, as if they could improve upon the speech of the Son of Man Himself? He says, not that to know G.o.d is the way to eternal life: but rather that eternal life is the way to know G.o.d. He does not say, This is to know G.o.d and Jesus Christ, _in order that_ they may have eternal life. Whatever He says, He does not say that. Nay, more, if we are to be very exact (and can we be too exact?) with the Lord's words, He says, that 'This is eternal life, _in order that_ they may know G.o.d and Jesus Christ.' Not that we are to know G.o.d that we may obtain eternal life, but that we must have eternal life in order that we may know G.o.d; that eternal life is the means, and the knowledge of G.o.d the end and purpose for which eternal life is given us. However this may be, at least He says what the n.o.ble collect which we repeat every Sunday says, 'That our eternal life stands in the knowledge of G.o.d,' depends on it, and will fall without it.

'That we may know G.o.d.' Not merely that we may know doctrines about salvation, and the ways of winning G.o.d's favour, and turning away His vengeance; not merely to know what G.o.d has done ages ago, or may do ages hence, for us: but to know G.o.d Himself; to know His person, His likeness, His character; and what He is, and what He does, now and always; to know His righteousness, His goodness, His truth, His love, His mercy, His strength, His willingness and mightiness to save; in a word, what the Bible calls His glory; and therefore to admire and delight in Him utterly. That is what our eternal life stands in; that is why G.o.d has given to us eternal life in His Son, that we may know that. Oh, believe your Saviour simply, like little children, and enter into the joy of your Lord. Acquaint yourselves with G.o.d, and be at peace.

To know G.o.d; and also to know Jesus Christ whom He has sent. For St. John, when he tells us that G.o.d has already given to us eternal life, says also, that this life is in His Son. To know the Son of G.o.d, in whom the Father is well pleased, because He is His perfect Son; His exact likeness, the likeness of that glory of His, and the express image of that person and character of His, which I described to you just now; One whose life was and is and ever will be eternally all love, and mercy, and self-sacrifice, and labour, for lost and sinful men; all trust and obedience to His Father. To know Him and His life, and to come to Him, and receive from Him an eternal life, which this world did not give us, and cannot take away from us; which neither man, devil, nor angel, nor the death of our bodies, the ruin of empires, the destruction of the whole universe, and of time, and s.p.a.ce, and all things whereof man can conceive or dream, can alter in the slightest, because it is a life of goodness, and righteousness, and love, which are eternal as the G.o.d from whom they spring; eternal as Christ, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and nothing but our own sinful wills can rob us of them.

This is eternal life, and therefore this is salvation. A very different account of it (though it is the Bible account) from that narrow and paltry one which too many have in their minds now-a-days; a narrow and paltry notion that it means only being saved from the punishment of our sins after we die; and a very unbelieving, and G.o.dless, and atheistical notion too; which, like all unbelief hurts and spoils men's lives.

For too many say to themselves, 'G.o.d must save me after I am dead, of course, for no one else can: but as long as I am alive I must save myself. G.o.d must save me from h.e.l.l; but I must save myself from poverty, from trouble, from what the world may say of me or do to me, if I offend it.' And so salvation seems to have to do altogether with the next life, and not at all with this; and people lose entirely the belief that G.o.d is our deliverer, our protector, our guide, our friend, now, here, in this life; and do not really think that they can get on better in this world by knowing G.o.d and Jesus Christ; and so they set to work to help themselves by cunning, by covetousness, by cowardly truckling to the wicked ways of the very world which they renounced at baptism, by following after a mult.i.tude to do evil, and standing by, saying, 'I saw it not,' when they see wrong and cruelty done upon the earth; afraid to fight G.o.d's battles like men of G.o.d, because they say it is 'dangerous.'

And so, in these evil days, thousands who call themselves Christians live on, worldly and selfish, _without G.o.d in the world_; while they talk busily enough of 'preparing to meet G.o.d,' in the world to come; dreaming, poor souls, of arriving at what they call 'salvation'

after they die, while they are too often, I fear, deep enough in what the Scripture calls 'd.a.m.nation,' before they die.

'But,' say some, 'is not salvation going to a place called heaven?'

My friends, let the Bible speak. It tells us that salvation is not in a place at all, but in a person, a living, moving, acting person, who is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Let the Psalmists speak, and shame us, who ought to know (being Christians) even better than they, that The Lord Himself is Salvation. The whole Book of Psalms, what is it but the blessed discovery that salvation is not merely in a place, or a state, not even in some 'beatific vision' after men die; but in the Lord Himself all day long in this world; that salvation is a life in G.o.d and with G.o.d? 'The Lord is my light, and my salvation, of whom then shall I be afraid? The Lord is the strength of my life, and my portion for ever.' This is their key-note. Shame on us Christians, that we should have forgotten it for one so much lower. 'The name of the Lord,' says Solomon, 'is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.' Into it: not merely into some pleasant place after he dies, but all day long; and is safe: not merely after he dies, but in every chance and change of this mortal life. My friends, I am ashamed to have to put Christian men in mind of these things.

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