Part 17 (1/2)

Now, the Bible tells us, that he fell from G.o.d's grace to nature.

What is nature? Nature means what is born, and lives, and dies, and is parted and broken up, that the parts of it may go into some new shape, and be born and live, and die again. So the plants, trees, beasts, are a part of nature. They are born, live, die; and then that which was them goes into the earth, or into the stomachs of other animals, and becomes in time part of that animal, or part of the tree or flower, which grows in the soil into which it has fallen.

So the flesh of a dead animal may become a grain of wheat, and that grain of wheat again may become part of the body of an animal. You all see this every time you manure a field, or grow a crop. Nature is, then, that which lives to die, and dies to live again in some fresh shape. And, in the first chapter of Genesis, you read of G.o.d creating nature--earth, and water, and light, and the heavens, and the plants and animals each after their kind, born to die and change, made of dust, and returning to the dust again. But after that we read very different words; we read that when G.o.d created man, He said:

”Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” He was made in G.o.d's likeness; therefore he could only be right in as far as he was like G.o.d. And he could not be like G.o.d if he did not will what G.o.d willed, and wish what G.o.d wished. He was to live by faith in G.o.d; he was justified by faith in G.o.d, and by that only.

Never fancy that Adam had any righteousness of his own, any goodness of which he could say: ”This is mine, part of me; I may pride myself on it.” G.o.d forbid. His righteousness consisted, as ours must, in looking up to G.o.d, trusting Him utterly, believing that he was to do G.o.d's will, and not his own. His spirit, his soul, as we call it, was given to him for that purpose, and for none other, that it might trust in G.o.d and obey G.o.d, as a child does his father. He had a free will; but he was to use that will as we must use our wills, by giving up our will to G.o.d's will, by clinging with our whole hearts and souls to G.o.d.

Adam fell. He let himself be tempted by a beast, by the serpent.

How, we cannot tell: but so we read. He took the counsel of a brute animal, and not of G.o.d. He chose between G.o.d and the serpent, and he chose wrong. He wanted to be something in himself; to have a knowledge and power of his own, to use it as he chose. He was not content to be in G.o.d's likeness; he wanted to be as a G.o.d himself.

And so he threw away his faith in G.o.d, and disobeyed Him. And instead of becoming a G.o.d, as he expected, he became an animal; he put on the likeness of the brutes, who cannot look up to G.o.d in trust and love, who do not know G.o.d, do not obey Him, but follow their own l.u.s.ts and fancies, as they may happen to take them. Whether the change came on him all at once, the Bible does not say: but it did come on him; for from him it has been handed down to all his children even to this day. Then was fulfilled against him the sentence, In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Not that he died that moment; but death began to work in him. He became like the branch of a tree cut off from the stem, which may not wither at the instant it is cut off, but it is yet dead, as we find out by its soon decaying. He had come down from being a son of G.o.d, and he had taken his place in nature, among the things which grow only to die; and death began to work in him, and in his children after him. He handed down his nature to his children as the animals do; his children inherited his faults, his weaknesses, his diseases, the seed of death which was in him, just as the animals pa.s.s down to their breed, their defects, and diseases, and certainty of dying after their appointed life is past.

For this, my friends, is the lesson which Adam's fall teaches us, that in G.o.d alone is the life of immortal souls, whether of men, or of angels, or of archangels; and in G.o.d alone is righteousness; in G.o.d alone is every good thing, and all good in men or angels comes from Him, and is only His pattern, His likeness; and that the moment either man or angel sets up his will against G.o.d's, he falls into sin, a lie, and death. That He has given us reasonable souls for that one purpose, that with our souls we may look up to Him, with our souls we may cling to Him, with our souls we may trust in Him, with our souls we may understand His will, and see that it is a good, and a right, and a loving will, and delight in it, and obey it, and find all our delight and glory, even as the Lord Jesus, the Son of Man, the New Adam, did, in doing not our own will, but the will of our Father.

For, as St. Augustine says, man may live in two ways, either according to himself, or according to G.o.d; by self-will or by faith.

He may determine to do his own will or to do G.o.d's will, to be his own master or to let G.o.d be his master, to seek his own glory, and try to be something fine and grand in himself: or he may seek G.o.d's glory and obey Him, believing that what G.o.d commands is the only good for him, what makes G.o.d to be honoured in the eyes of his neighbours is the only real honour for him.

But, says St. Augustine, if he tries to live according to himself, he falls into misery, because he was meant to live according to G.o.d. So he puts himself into a lie, into a false and wrong state; and because he has cut himself off from G.o.d he falls below what a man should be; and puts on more and more of the likeness of the beast, and is more and more the slave of his own l.u.s.ts, and pa.s.sions, and fancies, as the dumb animals are. And, as St. Paul says, the animal man, the carnal man, understands not the things of G.o.d. And we need no one to tell us that this is the state of nature which we bring into the world with us. We feel it; from our very childhood, from the earliest time we can recollect, have we not had the longing to do what we liked? to please ourselves, to pride ourselves on ourselves, to set up our own wills against our parents, against what we learnt out of the Bible? Ay, has not this wilful will of ours been so strong, that often we would long after a thing, we would determine to have it, only because we were forbidden to have it; we might not care about the thing when we had it, but we would have our own way just because it was our own way. In short, like Adam, we would be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil, and choosing for ourselves what we should call good and what we shall call evil. And, my dear friends, consider: did not every wrong that we ever did come from this one root of all sin--determining to have our own way? That root-sin of self-will first brought death and misery among mankind; that sin of self-will keeps it up still: that sin of self-will it is which hinders sinners from giving themselves up to G.o.d; and that sin must be broken through, or religion is a mockery and a dream.

Oh my friends, say to yourselves once for all, I was made in G.o.d's likeness; and therefore His will, and not my own, I must do. I have no wisdom of my own, no strength of mind of my own, no goodness of my own, no lovingness of my own. G.o.d has them all; G.o.d, who is wisdom, strength, goodness, love; and I have none. And then, when the fearful thought comes over you: ”I have no goodness, and I cannot have any. I cannot do right. There is no use struggling and trying to be better. My pa.s.sions, my l.u.s.ts, my fancies are too strong for me. If I am brutish and low, brutish and low I must remain. If I have fallen in Adam, I must lie in the mire till I die--”

Then, then, my friends, answer yourselves: ”No! Not so. Man fell in the first Adam: but man rose again in the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. I belong no more to the old Adam, who fell in Paradise. I belong to the New Adam, who was conceived without sin, and born of a pure virgin, who lived by perfect faith, in perfect obedience, doing His Father's will only, even to the death upon the cross, wherein He took away the sins of the whole world. And now for His sake my original sin, my fallen, brutish nature, is forgiven me.

G.o.d does not hate me for it. He loves me, because I belong to His Son. My baptism is a witness and a warrant, a sign and a covenant between me and G.o.d, that I belong not to old Adam of Paradise, but to the Lord Jesus Christ, who sits at G.o.d's right hand. The cross which was signed on my forehead when I was baptised is G.o.d's sign to me that I am to sacrifice myself and give up my own will to do G.o.d's will, even as the Lord Jesus did when He gave Himself to die, because it was His Father's will. And because I belong to Jesus Christ, because G.o.d has called me to be His child, therefore He will help me.

He will help me to conquer this low, brutish nature of mine. He will put His Spirit into me, the Spirit of His Son Jesus Christ, that I may trust Him, cry to Him, My Father! that I may love Him; understand His will, and see how good, and n.o.ble, and beautiful, and full of peace and comfort it is; delight in obeying Him; glory in sacrificing my own fancies and pleasures for His sake; and find my only honour, my only happiness, in doing His will on earth as saints and angels do it in heaven.

XLII--G.o.d'S COVENANTS

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.--GENESIS ix. 13.

The text says that G.o.d made a covenant with Noah, and with his seed after him--that is, with all mankind; with us who sit here, and our children after us, and with all human beings who will ever live upon the face of the earth. G.o.d made a covenant with them. Now, what is a covenant? We say that two men make a covenant with each other when they make a bargain, an agreement; in this way: If you will do this thing, then I will do that; but if you will not do this thing, I will not do that. If you do not keep to our agreement, I am free of it.

If I do not do my part of the agreement, you are free. Is not that what we call a covenant--a bargain between two parties, which, if either party breaks it, becomes null and void, and binds neither?

Let us see whether G.o.d's covenants with man are of this kind.

Does G.o.d say to Noah: ”If you and your children are righteous, I will look upon the rainbow, and remember my covenant: but if you and your children are unrighteous, I will not look on the rainbow, and I will break my covenant because you have broken it?” We read no such words; G.o.d made no conditions with Noah and his sons. Whether they forgot the covenant or not, G.o.d would remember it. It was a covenant of free grace, even as all G.o.d's covenants are. Not a bargain, but a promise. ”By Myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, that I will not fail David.” By Himself He sware to Abraham: ”Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.” That is the form of G.o.d's covenants. G.o.d swears by Himself--by G.o.d who cannot change. If G.o.d can change, then His covenant can change. If G.o.d can fail Himself, then can He fail His covenant to which He has sworn by Himself. If it had been a mere bargain, like men's bargains, and not a promise out of His absolute love, His free grace, His boundless mercy, would He have sworn by Himself? Nay, rather, He would have sworn by Abraham: ”By thy obedience or disobedience I swear to bless thee or curse thee.” But He swore by Himself, the absolute, the unchangeable, the Giver whose name is Love.

Consider now the token of the covenant which G.o.d gave to Noah. It was the rainbow. What is the rainbow? Sunlight turned back to our eye, through drops of falling rain. What sign could be more simple?

And yet what sign could be more perfect? Noah's sons would fear that another flood was coming, perhaps flood after flood. The token of the rainbow said to them, No. Floods and rain are not to be the custom of this earth. Suns.h.i.+ne is to be the custom of it. Do not fear the clouds and storm and rain; look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is s.h.i.+ning still. That up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight, and warmth, and cloudless blue sky. Believe in G.o.d's covenant. Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the devouring floods; because G.o.d is light, G.o.d is love, G.o.d is life, G.o.d is peace and joy eternal and without change, and labours to give life, and joy, and peace, to man and beast and all created things. This was the meaning of the rainbow. Not a sudden or strange token, a miracle, as men call it, like as some voice out of the sky, or fiery comet, might have been; but a regular, orderly, and natural sign, to witness that G.o.d is a G.o.d of order. Whenever there was a rainy day there might be a rainbow. It came by the same laws by which everything else comes in the world. It was a witness that G.o.d who made the world is the friend and preserver of man; that His promises are like the everlasting suns.h.i.+ne which is above the clouds, without spot or fading, without variableness or shadow of turning.

And do you fancy, my friends, that the new covenant, the covenant which G.o.d made with all mankind in the blood of His only-begotten Son, is narrower or weaker than the covenant which He made with Noah, Abraham, and David? He asked no conditions from them. Do you think He asks them from us? He called them by free grace. Do you think He calls us by anything less? He swore by Himself to them. How much more has He sworn by Himself to us? He who was born, and died, and rose again for us, who now sits at the right hand of the Father, very Man of the substance of a human mother, yet very G.o.d of very G.o.d begotten.

His covenants of old stood true and faithful, however disobedient and unfaithful men might be; as it is written: ”I have sworn once for all by my holiness, that I will not fail David.” And those words, the New Testament declares to us, again and again, are true of the new covenant, and fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, into whose name we are baptized. Yes; into whose name we are baptized. There is the sign of the new covenant; of a covenant of free grace. Therefore we can bring our children to be baptized as we were baptized ourselves, before they have done either good or evil, for a sign that G.o.d's love is over them, G.o.d's kingdom is their inheritance, G.o.d's love their everlasting portion.

But we may fall from grace; and then what good will our baptism be to us? We shall be lost, just as if we had never been baptized.