Part 12 (1/2)
To say--I am a person; and that I may be a right kind of person, I must know and believe certain things concerning G.o.d Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I am a person; and that I may be a right kind of person, I must keep certain commandments and do certain duties toward G.o.d, and my parents, and my Queen, and my country, and my neighbour, and all toward whom I am responsible for right behaviour.
And then, and only then, after it has made the child say all this for itself and about itself, the Catechism does begin to teach; and in a few very short words, tell the child about that which is not itself--
”My good child, know this, that thou art not able to do these things of thyself, nor to walk in the Commandments of G.o.d, and to serve Him, without His special grace; which thou must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer.”
Now consider these words. There is comfort and strength in them; comfort for the child; comfort for you, and me, and every human being who has awakened to the sense of his own personal responsibility, and finds it too often a burden heavier than he--and, alas, often, she--can bear.
The Catechism tells the child that it must not merely know doctrines about G.o.d, or do duties to G.o.d; but more: that it is alone with G.o.d Himself, face to face with G.o.d Himself day and night. But that therefore it is to dread G.o.d, and look up to G.o.d as a taskmaster and tyrant, and try to hide from G.o.d's awful eye, and forget G.o.d, and forget itself--if it can?--G.o.d forbid; G.o.d forbid. The Catechism leaves such teaching for those Pharisees who tell little children that unless they are converted, and become as them, they shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Catechism says, My good child--not, My bad child--know this.
Know that thou art weak: but know that G.o.d is strong; and look up to Him as the Father of all fathers, the Teacher of all teachers, the Helper of all helpers, the Friend of all friends, who has I called thee unto His kingdom of grace, that He might shew thee graciousness; and make thee gracious and graceful in all thy thoughts, and works, and ways: and, therefore, far from trying to hide from Him, call on Him with diligent prayer. For the Father of all fathers is the Father of thy soul, the Son of all sons died for thee upon the Cross, the Holy Spirit of all holy spirits will make thee a holy spirit and person, even as He is a Holy Spirit and Person Himself.
Believing those words, no one will dare to forget to say his prayers. For when he prays, he is indeed a person. He is himself; and not ashamed, however sinful, to be himself; and to tell G.o.d about himself. Oh, think of that. You, each of you, have a right, as G.o.d's children, to speak to the G.o.d who made the universe. Therefore be sure, that when you dislike to say your prayers, it is because you do not like to be what you are, a person; and prefer--ah foolish soul--to be a thing, and an animal.
Believing those words, no man need long to forget himself, to escape from himself. He can lift up himself to G.o.d who made him, with reverence, and fear, and yet with grat.i.tude and trust, and say--
I, Lord, am I; and what I am--a very poor, pitiful, sinful person. But Thou, Lord, art Thou; and what Thou art--happily for me, and for the whole universe--Perfect. Thou art what Thou oughtest to be--Goodness itself. And therefore Thou canst, and Thou wilt, make me what I ought to be at last, a good person. To thee, O Lord, I can bring the burden of this undying I, which I carry with me, too often in shame and sadness, and ask Thee to help me to bear it; saying--”Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts. Shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayers: but spare us, O Lord most Holy, O G.o.d most Mighty, Thou worthy Judge Eternal, and suffer us not, for any temptation of the world, the flesh or the devil, to fall from Thee.” Guide me, teach me, strengthen me, till I become such a person as Thou wouldst have me be; pure and gentle, truthful and high-minded, brave and able, courteous and generous, dutiful and useful, like Thy Son Jesus Christ when He increased not only in stature, but in favour with G.o.d and man.
To which may G.o.d in His mercy bring us all! Amen.
SERMON XVI. THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.
PSALM CIV. 16.
The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which He hath planted.
Let me say a few words this afternoon about the n.o.ble 104th Psalm, which was read this afternoon, as it is now in many churches, and most wisely and rightly, as the Harvest Psalm. It is a fit psalm for a service in which we thank G.o.d for such harvest as He has thought best to send us, whether it be above or below the average. But it is also a fit psalm to be thought earnestly over just now, considering the turn which men's minds are taking more and more in these times in which it has pleased G.o.d that we should live. For we have lost, all of us, unlearned as well as learned, the old superst.i.tious notions about this world around us which our forefathers held for many hundred years. No rational person now believes that witches can blight crops or cattle, or that evil spirits cause storms. No one now believes that nymphs and fairies live in fountains or in trees; or that the spirits of the planets rule the fates of men. That old belief is gone, for good and for evil, and it was good that it should go; for it was false: and falsehoods can do no good, but only harm, to any man, in body and in soul alike. It has died out quickly and strangely. Some say that modern science has destroyed it. I can hardly agree to that: for it has died out--and that almost since my own recollection and under my own eyes--in the minds of country people, who know nothing of science. I had rather say--as I presume the man who wrote the 104th Psalm would have said--The Lord has taken the belief out of men's hearts and minds. And I cannot but hope that He has taken it away, and allows us to believe no more in demons and fairies ruling the world around us, in order that we may believe in Him, and nothing but Him, the true Ruler of the world; in Him of whom it is written, ”Him shalt thou wors.h.i.+p, and Him only shalt thou serve;” even G.o.d the Father, of whom are all things, and G.o.d the Son, by whom are all things, and G.o.d the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of life, alike to sun and stars over our heads, and to the meanest weed and insect under our feet; the Lord and Giver of life alike to matter and spirit, soul and body, worm and man, and angel and archangel before the throne of G.o.d. I hope it is so. I trust it is so. For we never had more need than now to believe with all our hearts in the living G.o.d; to take into all our hearts the teaching of the 104th Psalm. For now that we have given up believing in superst.i.tions, we are in danger of going to the other extreme, and believing in nothing at all which we cannot see with our eyes, and handle with our hands. Now that we have given up believing in the fabled supernatural; in ghosts, fairies, demons, witches, and such- like: we are in danger of giving up believing in the true and eternal supernatural, which is the Holy Spirit of G.o.d, by whom the whole creation is kept alive and sound. We are in danger of falling into a low, stupid, brutish view of this wonderful world of G.o.d in which we live; in danger of thinking of nature--that is, of the things which we can see and handle--only as something of which we can make use--till we fall as low as that poor ruffian, of whom the poet says:
A primrose on the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.
Lower, that is, than even our own children, whom G.o.d has at least taught to admire and love the primroses for their beauty--as something precious and divine, quite independent of their own emotions about them. Men in these days are but too likely to fall into the humour of those poor savages, of whom one who knows them well said to me once--bitterly but truly--that when a savage sees anything new, however wonderful or beautiful, he has but two thoughts about it; first--Will it hurt me? and next--Can I eat it? And from that truly brutish view of G.o.d's world, we shall be delivered, I believe, only by taking in with our whole hearts the teaching of the 104th Psalm; which is indeed the teaching of all Holy Scripture throughout.
The Psalmist, in the pa.s.sage which I have chosen, is talking of the circulation of water on the earth; how wisely and well it is ordered; how the vapours rise off the sea, till the waters stand above the mountain- tops, to be brought down in thunder-storms--for in his country, as in many hot ones, thunder was generally needed, at the end of the dry season, to bring down the rain; how it forms springs in the highland, and flows down from thence in brooks and rivers, making the whole lowland green and fertile. Well--all very true, you may say. But that is simply a matter of science, or indeed of common observation and common sense. It is not a subject for a psalm or for a sermon.
True: in the words in which I have purposely put it. But not in the words in which the Psalmist puts it; and which I purposely left out, to shew you just the difference between even the soundest science, and faith. He brings in another element, which is the true cause of the circulation of water; and that is, none other but Almighty G.o.d.
This is the way in which the inspired Psalmist puts it; and this is the truth of it all; this is the very kernel and marrow and life and soul of it all: while the facts which I told you just now are the mere sh.e.l.l and dead skeleton of it--”_Thou_ sendest the springs into the rivers.”
Thou art the Lord of the lightning and of the clouds, the Lord of the highlands and of the lowlands, and the Lord of the rainfall and of the drought, the Lord of good seasons and of bad, of rich harvests and of scanty. They, like all things, obey Thine everlasting laws; and of them, whatever may befal, poor purblind man can say in faith and hope--”It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good.”
Yes. He was not of course a man of science, in the modern sense of the word, this old Psalmist. But this I know, that he was a man of science in the soundest and deepest sense; an inspired philosopher, as well as an inspired poet; and had the highest of all sciences, which is the science and knowledge of the living G.o.d. For he saw G.o.d in everything and everything in G.o.d.
But--he says--the trees of the Lord are full of sap; even the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted. Why should he say that specially of the cedars? Did not G.o.d make all trees? Does He not plant all wild trees, and every flower and seed? My dear friends, happy are you if you believe that in spirit and in truth. But let me tell you that I think you would not have believed that, unless the Psalmist, and others who wrote the Holy Scriptures, had told you about trees of G.o.d, and rivers of G.o.d, and winds of G.o.d, and had taught you that the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. You do not know--none of us can know--how much we owe to the Bible for just and rational, as well as orthodox and Christian, notions of the world around us. We, and--thank G.o.d--our forefathers for hundreds of years, have drunk in Bible thoughts, as it were, with our mother's milk; till much that we have really learnt from the Bible we take as a matter of course, as self-evident truths which we have found out for ourselves by common sense.
And yet, so far from that being the case, if it had not been for the Bible, we might be believing at this moment, that one G.o.d made one tree, and another another; that one tree was sacred to one G.o.d, and another flower to another G.o.ddess, as the old Greeks believed; and that the wheat and barley were the gift, and therefore the property, of some special deity; and be crying now in fear and trembling to the sun-G.o.d, or the rain-G.o.d, or some other deified power of nature, because we fancied that they were angry with us, and had therefore sent us too much rain and a short harvest.
It is difficult, now-a-days, to make even cultivated people understand the follies of those who, like the heathen round the Jews, wors.h.i.+pped many G.o.ds: and all the more because our modern folly runs in a different channel; because we are tempted, not to believe in many G.o.ds, but in no G.o.d at all; to believe not that one G.o.d made one thing and another another, but that all things have made themselves.
When Hiram, king of Tyre, sent down timber cut from the cedars of Lebanon, to build the temple of G.o.d for Solomon; his heathen workmen, probably, were angry and terrified at what they were doing. They said among themselves--”These cedars belong to Baal, or to Melkart, the G.o.ds of Tyre. Our king has no right to send them to build the temple of Jehovah, the G.o.d of the Jews. It is a robbery, and a sacrilege; and Baal will be angry with us; and curse us with drought and blight.”