Part 2 (1/2)
Do not despair, poor soul! I had a thousand times sooner hear you say that you cannot mend than that you can. For those who really feel they cannot mend--those who are really weary and worn out with the burden of their sins--those who are tired out with their own wilfulness, and feel ready to lie down and die, like a spent horse, and say, ”G.o.d take me away, no matter to what place; I am not fit to live here on earth, a shame and a torment to myself day and night”--those who are in that state of mind are very near--very near--finding out glorious news.
G.o.d knows as well as you what you have to struggle against; ay, a thousand times better. He knows--What does He not know? Therefore pray to Him. Cry to Him to make your will like His own will, that you may love what He loves, hate what He hates, and do what He wishes you to do; and you will surely find it come true that those who try to mend, and yet know that they cannot mend themselves, G.o.d will mend them.
_National Sermons_.
Sin, [Greek text], is literally, as it signifies, the missing of a mark; and that each miss brings a penalty, or rather is itself the penalty, is to me the best of news, and gives me hope for myself and for every human being, past, present, and future, for it makes me look on them all as children under a paternal education, who are being taught to become aware of, and use their own powers in G.o.d's house, the universe, and for G.o.d's work in it; and in proportion as they learn to do that, they attain salvation, [Greek text], literally _health_ and _wholeness_ of spirit, which is, like the health of the body, its own reward.
_Letters and Memories_.
If in sorrow the thought strikes you that you are punished for your sins, mourn for them, but not for the happiness they have prevented. Rather thank G.o.d that He has stopped you in time, and remember His promises of restoring us if we profit by His chastis.e.m.e.nt.
_Letters and Memories_.
Ah! how many a poor, foolish creature, in misery and shame, with guilty conscience and sad heart, tries to forget his sin, to forget his sorrow; but he cannot. He is sick and tired of sin. He is miserable, and he hardly knows why. There is a longing, and craving, and hunger at his heart after something better. Then he begins to remember his Heavenly Father's house. Old words, which he learnt in childhood; good old words out of his Catechism and Bible, start up strangely in his mind. He had forgotten them, laughed at them perhaps in his wild days. But now they come up, he does not know where from, like beautiful ghosts gliding in.
And he is ashamed of them. They reproach him, the dear old lessons; and at last he says, ”Would G.o.d that I were a little child again; once more an innocent little child at my mother's knee! Perhaps I have been a fool; and the old Sunday books were right after all. At least, I am miserable! I thought I was my own master, but perhaps He about whom I used to read in the old Sunday books is my Master after all. At least, I am not my own master; _I am a slave_. Perhaps I have been fighting against Him, against the Lord G.o.d, all this time, and now He has shown me that He is the stronger of the two.”
And when the Lord has drawn a man thus far, does He stop? Not so. He does not leave His work half done. If the work is half done, it is that _we_ stop, not that He stops. Whoever comes to Him, however confusedly, or clumsily, or even lazily they may come, He will in no wise cast out.
He may afflict them still more to cure that confusion and laziness; but He is a physician who never sends a patient away, or keeps him waiting for a single hour.
_National Sermons_.
The blessed St. Augustine found he could never conquer his own sins by arguing with himself, or by any other means, till he got to know G.o.d, and to see that G.o.d was the Lord. And when his spirit was utterly broken, when he saw himself to have been a fool and blind all along--then the old words which he learned at his mother's knee came up to his mind, and he knew that G.o.d had been watching, guiding him, letting him go wrong only to show him the folly of going wrong, caring for him, bearing with him, pleading with his conscience, alluring him back to the only true happiness, as a loving father will a rebellious and self-willed child; and he became a changed man. To that blessed state may G.o.d of His great mercy bring us in His own good time. And if He does bring us to it, it is little matter whether He brings us to it through joy or through sorrow, through honour or through shame, through the Garden of Eden or through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. For what matter how bitter the medicine is if it does but save our lives?
_National Sermons_.
. . . Your sense of sin is not fanaticism; it is, I suppose, simple consciousness of fact. As for helping you to Christ, I do not believe I can one inch. I can see no hope but in prayer, in going to Him yourself, and saying: ”Lord, if Thou art there, if Thou art at all, if this be not all a lie, fulfil Thy reputed promises, and give me peace and the sense of forgiveness, and the feeling that, bad as I may be, Thou lovest me still, seeing all, understanding all, and therefore making allowance for all!”
I have had to do that in past days; to challenge Him through outer darkness and the silence of night, till I almost expected that He would vindicate His own honour by appearing visibly, as He did to St. Paul and St. John; but He answered in the still, small voice only; yet that was enough.
_Letters and Memories_.
. . . Dear friend, the secret of life for you and for me is to lay our purposes and our characters continually before Him who made them, and cry, ”Do _Thou_ purge me, and so alone shall I be clean. Thou requirest truth in the inward parts. Thou wilt make me to understand wisdom secretly.” What more rational belief? For surely if there be any G.o.d, and He made us at first, He who makes can also mend His own work if it gets out of gear. What more miraculous in the doctrines of regeneration and renewal than in the mere fact of creation?
_Letters and Memories_.
As for the sins of youth, what says the 130th Psalm? If Thou, Lord, were extreme to mark what is done amiss, who could abide it? But there is mercy with Him, therefore shall He be feared. And how to fear G.o.d I know not better than by working on at the special work which He has given us, trusting to Him to make it of use to His creatures, if He needs us.
Therefore fret not nor be of doubtful mind, but just do the duty which lies nearest.
_Letters and Memories_.
Yes; this is our comfort, this is our hope; Christ, the Great Healer, the Great Physician, can deliver us, and will deliver us from the remains of our old sins, the consequences of our own follies. Not, indeed, at once or by miracles, but by slow education. Better, indeed, for us perhaps that He should not cure us at once, lest we should fancy that sin was a light thing which we could throw off whenever we chose; and not that it is an inward disease, corroding and corrupting, the wages whereof are death. And so it is that because Christ loves us He hates our sins, and cannot abide or endure them, but will punish them, and is merciful and loving in punis.h.i.+ng as long as a tincture or remnant of sin is left in us. Therefore let us put ourselves into the hands of Christ, the Great Physician, and ask Him to heal our wounded souls, and purge our corrupted souls, and leave to Him the choice of how He will do it. Let us be content to be punished and chastised. Let Him deal with us, if He sees fit, as He dealt with David of old, when He forgave the sin, and yet punished it by the death of his child. Let Him do what He will by us, provided He does--what He will do--make us good men.
_All Saints-Day Sermons_.
My belief is that G.o.d will punish (has He not punished already somewhat?) every wrong thing I ever did unless I repent--that is, change my behaviour therein; and that His lightest blow is hard enough to break bone and marrow. But as for saying of any human being whom I ever saw on earth that there is no hope for them; that if ever, under the bitter smart of just punishment, they opened their eyes to their folly and altered their mind, even then G.o.d would not forgive them; as for saying that, I will not for all the world and the rulers thereof. I never saw a man in whom there was not some good, and I believe that G.o.d sees that good far more clearly, and loves it far more deeply, than I can, because He Himself put it there, and therefore it is reasonable to believe that He will educate and strengthen that good, and chastise the holder of it till he obeys it, and loves it, and gives himself up to it; and that the said holder will find such chastis.e.m.e.nt terrible enough if he is unruly and stubborn I doubt not, and so much the better for him. Beyond this I cannot say.
_Letters and Memories_.