Part 16 (1/2)
G.o.d grant that that spirit may remain alive among us. For without it we shall not long be a strong nation; not indeed long a nation at all. And it is alive among us. Not that we, any of us, have enough of it--G.o.d forgive us for all our shortcomings. And G.o.d grant it may remain alive among us; for it is, as far as it goes, the likeness of Christ, the Maker and Ruler of the world.
”Christian,” said a great genius and a great divine,
”If thou wouldst learn to love, Thou first must learn to hate.”
And if any one answer--”Hate? Even G.o.d hateth nothing that He has made.”
The rejoinder is,--And for that very reason G.o.d hates evil; because He has not made it, and it is ruinous to all that He has made.
Go you and do likewise. Hate what is wrong with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. For so, and so only, you will shew that you love G.o.d with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, likewise.
Oh pray--and that not once for all merely, but day by day, ay, almost hour by hour--Strengthen me, O Lord, to hate what Thou hatest, and love what Thou lovest; and therefore, whenever I see an opportunity, to put down what Thou hatest, and to help what Thou lovest--That so, at the last dread day, when every man shall be rewarded according to his works, you may have some answer to give to the awful question--On whose side wert thou in the battle of life? On the side of good men and of G.o.d, or on the side of bad men and the devil? Lest you find yourselves forced to reply--as too many will be forced--with surprise, and something like shame and confusion of face--I really do not know. I never thought about the matter at all. I never knew that there was any battle of life.
Never knew that there was any battle of life? And yet you were christened, and signed with the sign of the Cross, in token that you should fight manfully under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant to your life's end. Did it never occur to you that those words might possibly mean something? And you used to sing hymns, too, on earth, about ”Soldiers of Christ, arise, And put your armour on.” What prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors meant by those words, you should know well enough. Did it never occur to you that they might possibly mean something to you? That as long as the world was no better than it is, there was still a battle of life; and that you too were sworn to fight in it? How many will answer--Yes--Yes--But I thought that these words only meant having my soul saved, and going to heaven when I died.
And how did you expect to do that? By believing certain doctrines which you were told were true; and leading a tolerably respectable life, without which you would not have been received into society? Was that all which was needed to go to heaven? And was that all that was meant by fighting manfully under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and the devil? Why, Cyrus and his old Persians, 2,400 years ago, were nearer to the kingdom of G.o.d than that. They had a clearer notion of what the battle of life meant than that, when they said that not only the man who did a merciful or just deed, but the man who drained a swamp, tilled a field, made any little corner of the earth somewhat better than he found it, was fighting against Ahriman the evil spirit of darkness, on the side of Ormuzd the good G.o.d of light; and that as he had taken his part in Ormuzd's battle, he should share in Ormuzd's triumph.
Oh be at least able to say in that day,--Lord, I am no hero. I have been careless, cowardly, sometimes all but mutinous. Punishment I have deserved, I deny it not. But a traitor I have never been; a deserter I have never been. I have tried to fight on Thy side in Thy battle against evil. I have tried to do the duty which lay nearest me; and to leave whatever Thou didst commit to my charge a little better than I found it.
I have not been good: but I have at least tried to be good. I have not done good, it may be, either: but I have at least tried to do good. Take the will for the deed, good Lord. Accept the partial self-sacrifice which Thou didst inspire, for the sake of the one perfect self-sacrifice which Thou didst fulfil upon the Cross. Pardon my faults, out of Thine own boundless pity for human weakness. Strike not my unworthy name off the roll-call of the n.o.ble and victorious army, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and let me, too, be found written in the Book of Life: even though I stand the lowest and last upon its list.
Amen.
SERMON XXII. n.o.bLE COMPANY.
HEBREWS XII. 22, 23.
Ye are come to the city of the living G.o.d, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
I have quoted only part of the pa.s.sage of Scripture in which these words occur. If you want a good employment for All Saints' Day, read the whole pa.s.sage, the whole chapter; and no less, the 11th chapter, which comes before it: so will you understand better the meaning of All Saints' Day.
But sufficient for the day is the good thereof, as well as the evil; and the good which I have to say this morning is--You are come to the spirits of just men made perfect; for this is All Saints' Day.
Into the presence of this n.o.ble company we have come: even n.o.bler company, remember, than that which was spoken of in the text. For more than 1800 years have pa.s.sed since the Epistle to the Hebrews was written: and how many thousands of just men and women, pure, n.o.ble, tender, wise, beneficent, have graced the earth since then, and left their mark upon mankind, and helped forward the hallowing of our heavenly Father's name, the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will on earth as it is done in heaven; and helped therefore to abolish the superst.i.tion, the misrule, the vice, and therefore the misery of this struggling, moaning world. How many such has Christ sent on this earth during the last 1800 years. How many before that; before His own coming, for many a century and age. We know not, and we need not know. The records of Holy Scripture and of history strike with light an isolated mountain peak, or group of peaks, here and here through the ages; but between and beyond all is dark to us now. But it may not have been dark always. Scripture and history likewise hint to us of great hills far away, once brilliant in the one true suns.h.i.+ne which comes from G.o.d, now shrouded in the mist of ages, or literally turned away beyond our horizon by the revolution of our planet: and of lesser hills, too, once bright and green and fair, giving pasture to lonely flocks, sending down fertilizing streams into now forgotten valleys; themselves all but forgotten now, save by the G.o.d who made and blessed them.
Yes: many a holy soul, many a useful soul, many a saint who is now at G.o.d's right hand, has lived and worked, and been a blessing, himself blest, of whom the world, and even the Church, has never heard, who will never be seen or known again, till the day in which the Lord counteth up His jewels.
Let us rejoice in that thought on this day, above all days in the year.
On this day we give special thanks to G.o.d for all His servants departed this life in His faith and fear. Let us rejoice in the thought that we know not how many they are; only that they are an innumerable company, out of all tongues and nations, whom no man can number. Let us rejoice that Christ's grace is richer, and not poorer, than our weak imaginations can conceive, or our narrow systems account for. Let us rejoice that the goodly company in whose presence we stand, can be limited and defined by no mortal man, or school of men: but only by Him from whom, with the Father, proceeds for ever the Holy Spirit, the inspirer of all good; and who said of that Spirit--”The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is every one who is born of the Spirit”--and who said again, ”John came neither eating nor drinking, and ye said, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But I say unto you, Verily wisdom is justified of all her children”--and who said again--when John said to Him, ”Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us”--”Forbid him not. For I say to you, that he that doeth a miracle in My name will not lightly speak evil of Me”--and who said, lastly--and most awfully--that the unpardonable sin, either in this life or the life to come, was to attribute beneficent deeds to a bad origin, because they were performed by one who differed from us in opinion; and to say, ”He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, prince of the devils.”
These are words of our Lord, which we are specially bound to keep in our minds, with reverence and G.o.dly fear, on All Saints' Day, lest by arranging our calendar of saints according to our own notions of who ought to be a saint, and who ought not--that is, who agrees with our notions of perfection, and who does not--we exclude ourselves, by fastidiousness, from much unquestionably good company; and possibly mix ourselves up with not a little which is, to say the least, questionable.
Men in all ages, Churchmen or others, have fallen into this mistake. They have been but too ready to limit their calendar of saints; to narrow the thanksgivings which they offer to G.o.d on All Saints' Day.
The Romish Church has been especially faulty on this point. It has a.s.sumed, as necessary preliminaries for saints.h.i.+p--at least after the Christian era--the practice of, or at least the longing after, celibacy; and after the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches, unconditional submission to the Church of Rome. But how has this injured, if not spoiled, their exclusive calendar of saints. Amid apostles, martyrs, divines, who must be always looked on as among the very heroes and heroines of humanity, we find more than one fanatic persecutor; more than two or three clearly insane personages; and too many who all but justify the terrible sneer--that the Romish Calendar is the ”Pantheon of Hysteria.”
And Protestants, too--How have they narrowed the number of the spirits of just men made perfect; and confined the Paean which should go up from the human race on All Saints' Day, till a ”saint” has too often meant with them only a person who has gone through certain emotional experiences, and a.s.sented to certain subjective formulas, neither of which, according to the opinion of some of the soundest divines, both of the Romish, Greek, and Anglican communions, are to be found in the letter of Scripture as necessary to salvation; and who have, moreover, finished their course--doubtless often a holy, beneficent, and beautiful course--by a rapturous death-bed scene, which is more rare in the actual experience of clergymen, and, indeed, in the conscience and experience of human beings in general, than in the imaginations of the writers of religious romances.
But we of the Church of England, as by law established--and I recognize and obey, and shall hereafter recognize and obey, no other--have no need so to narrow our All Saints' Day; our joy in all that is n.o.ble and good which man has said or done in any age or clime. We have no need to define where formularies have not defined; to shut where they have opened; to curse where they either bless, or are humbly, charitably, and therefore divinely, silent. With a magnificent faith in the justice of the Father, and in the grace of Christ, and in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, our Church bids us--Judge not the dead, lest ye be judged.
Condemn not the dead, lest ye be condemned. For she bids us commit to the earth the corpses of all who die not ”unbaptized,” ”excommunicate,”