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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Gospel of the Pentateuch, by Charles
+Kingsley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Gospel of the Pentateuch
+
+Author: Charles Kingsley
+
+Release Date: November 27, 2003  [eBook #10325]
+
+Language: English
+
+Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH***
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+The Gospel of the Pentateuch:  A set of Parish Sermons
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH
+TO THE REV. CANON STANLEY.
+
+
+
+My Dear Stanley,
+
+I dedicate these Sermons to you, not that I may make you responsible
+for any doctrine or statement contained in them, but as the simplest
+method of telling you how much they owe to your book on the Jewish
+Church, and of expressing my deep gratitude to you for publishing
+that book at such a time as this.
+
+It has given to me (and I doubt not to many other clergymen) a fresh
+confidence and energy in preaching to my people the Gospel of the
+Old Testament as the same with that of the New; and without it, many
+of these Sermons would have been very different from, and I am
+certain very inferior to, what they are now, by the help of your
+admirable book.
+
+Brought up, like all Cambridge men of the last generation, upon
+Paley's Evidences, I had accepted as a matter of course, and as the
+authoritative teaching of my University, Paley's opinions as to the
+limits of Biblical criticism, {0a} quoted at large in Dean Milman's
+noble preface to his last edition of the History of the Jews; and
+especially that great dictum of his, 'that it is an unwarrantable,
+as well as unsafe rule to lay down concerning the Jewish history,
+that which was never laid down concerning any other, that either
+every particular of it must be true, or the whole false.'
+
+I do not quote the rest of the passage; first, because you, I doubt
+not, know it as well as I; and next, in order that if any one shall
+read these lines who has not read Paley's Evidences, he may be
+stirred up to look the passage out for himself, and so become
+acquainted with a great book and a great mind.
+
+A reverent and rational liberty in criticism (within the limits of
+orthodoxy) is, I have always supposed, the right of every Cambridge
+man; and I was therefore the more shocked, for the sake of free
+thought in my University, at the appearance of a book which claimed
+and exercised a licence in such questions, which I must (after
+careful study of it) call anything but rational and reverent.  Of
+the orthodoxy of the book it is not, of course, a private
+clergyman's place to judge.  That book seemed dangerous to the
+University of Cambridge itself, because it was likely to stir up
+from without attempts to abridge her ancient liberty of thought; but
+it seemed still more dangerous to the hundreds of thousands without
+the University, who, being no scholars, must take on trust the
+historic truth of the Bible.
+
+For I found that book, if not always read, yet still talked and
+thought of on every side, among persons whom I should have fancied
+careless of its subject, and even ignorant of its existence, but to
+whom I was personally bound to give some answer as to the book and
+its worth.  It was making many unsettled and unhappy; it was (even
+worse) pandering to the cynicism and frivolity of many who were
+already too cynical and frivolous; and, much as I shrank from
+descending into the arena of religious controversy, I felt bound to
+say a few plain words on it, at least to my own parishioners.
+
+But how to do so, without putting into their heads thoughts which
+need be in no man's head, and perhaps shaking the very faith which I
+was trying to build up, was difficult to me, and I think would have
+been impossible to me, but for the opportune appearance of your
+admirable book.
+
+I could not but see that the book to which I have alluded, like most
+other modern books on Biblical criticism, was altogether negative;
+was possessed too often by that fanaticism of disbelief which is
+just as dangerous as the fanaticism of belief; was picking the body
+of the Scripture to pieces so earnestly, that it seemed to forget
+that Scripture had a spirit as well as a body; or, if it confessed
+that it had a spirit, asserting that spirit to be one utterly
+different from the spirit which the Scripture asserts that it
+possesses.
+
+For the Scripture asserts that those who wrote it were moved by the
+Spirit of God; that it is a record of God's dealings with men, which
+certain men were inspired to perceive and to write down:  whereas
+the tendency of modern criticism is, without doubt, to assert that
+Scripture is inspired by the spirit of man; that it contains the
+thoughts and discoveries of men concerning God, which they wrote
+down without the inspiration of God; which difference seems to me
+(and I hope to others) utterly infinite and incalculable, and to
+involve the question of the whole character, honour, and glory of
+God.
+
+There is, without a doubt, something in the Old Testament, as well
+as in the New, quite different in kind, as well as in degree, from
+the sacred books of any other people:  an unique element, which has
+had an unique effect upon the human heart, life and civilization.
+This remains, after all possible deductions for 'ignorance of
+physical science,' 'errors in numbers and chronology,'
+'interpolations' 'mistakes of transcribers' and so forth, whereof we
+have read of late a great deal too much, and ought to care for them
+and for their existence, or non-existence, simply nothing at all;
+because, granting them all--though the greater part of them I do not
+grant, as far as I can trust my critical faculty--there remains that
+unique element, beside which all these accidents are but as the
+spots on the sun compared to the great glory of his life-giving
+light.  The unique element is there; and I cannot but still believe,
+after much thought, that it--the powerful and working element, the
+inspired and Divine element which has converted and still converts
+millions of souls--is just that which Christendom in all ages has
+held it to be:  the account of certain 'noble acts' of God's, and
+not of certain noble thoughts of man--in a word, not merely the
+moral, but the historic element; and that, therefore, the value of
+the Bible teaching depends on the truth of the Bible story.  That is
+my belief.  Any criticism which tries to rob me of that I shall look
+at fairly, but very severely indeed.
+
+If all that a man wants is a 'religion,' he ought to be able to make
+a very pretty one for himself, and a fresh one as often as he is
+tired of the old.  But the heart and soul of man wants more than
+that, as it is written, 'My soul is athirst for God, even for the
+living God.'  Those whom I have to teach want a living God, who
+cares for men, works for men, teaches men, punishes men, forgives
+men, saves men from their sins; and Him I have found in the Bible,
+and nowhere else, save in the facts of life which the Bible alone
+interprets.
+
+In the power of man to find out God I will never believe.  The
+'religious sentiment,' or 'God-consciousness,' so much talked of
+now-a-days, seems to me (as I believe it will to all practical
+common-sense Englishmen), a faculty not to be depended on; as
+fallible and corrupt as any other part of human nature; apt (to
+judge from history) to develop itself into ugly forms, not only
+without a revelation from God, but too often in spite of one--into
+polytheisms, idolatries, witchcrafts, Buddhist asceticisms,
+Phoenician Moloch-sacrifices, Popish inquisitions, American spirit-
+rappings, and what not.  The hearts and minds of the sick, the poor,
+the sorrowing, the truly human, all demand a living God, who has
+revealed himself in living acts; a God who has taught mankind by
+facts, not left them to discover him by theories and sentiments; a
+Judge, a Father, a Saviour, and an Inspirer; in a word, their hearts
+and minds demand the historic truth of the Bible--of the Old
+Testament no less than of the New.
+
+What I needed therefore, for my guidance, was a book which should
+believe and confess all this, without condemning or ignoring free
+criticism and its results; which should make use of that criticism
+not to destroy but to build up; which employed a thorough knowledge
+of the Old Testament history, the manners of the Jews, the
+localities of the sacred events, to teach men not what might not be
+in the Bible, but what was certainly therein; which dealt with the
+Bible after the only fair and trustful method; that is, to consider
+it at first according to the theory which it sets forth concerning
+itself, before trying quite another theory of the commentator's own
+invention; and which combined with a courageous determination to
+tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that
+Christian spirit of trust, reverence and piety, without which all
+intellectual acuteness is but blindness and folly.
+
+All this, and more, I found in your book, enforced with a genius
+which needs no poor praise of mine; and I hailed its appearance at
+such a crisis as a happy Providence, certain that it would be, what
+I now know by experience it has been, a balm to many a wounded
+spirit, and a check to many a wandering intellect, inclined, in the
+rashness of youth, to throw away the truth it already had, for the
+sake of theories which it hoped that it might possibly verify
+hereafter.
+
+With your book in my hand, I have tried to write a few plain
+Sermons, telling plain people what they will find in the Pentateuch,
+in spite of all present doubts, as their fathers found it before
+them, and as (I trust) their children will find it after them, when
+all this present whirlwind of controversy has past,
+
+
+'As dust that lightly rises up,
+And is lightly laid again.'
+
+
+I have told them that they will find in the Bible, and in no other
+ancient book, that living working God, whom their reason and
+conscience demand; and that they will find that he is none other
+than Jesus Christ our Lord.  I have not apologised for or explained
+away the so-called 'Anthropomorphism' of the Old Testament.  On the
+contrary, I have frankly accepted it, and even gloried in it as an
+integral, and I believe invaluable element of Scripture.  I have
+deliberately ignored many questions of great interest and
+difficulty, because I had no satisfactory solution of them to offer;
+but I have said at the same time that those questions were
+altogether unimportant, compared with those salient and fundamental
+points of the Bible history on which I was preaching.  And therefore
+I have dared to bid my people relinquish Biblical criticism to those
+who have time for it; and to say of it with me, as Abraham of the
+planets, 'O my people, I am clear of all these things!  I turn
+myself to him who made heaven and earth.'
+
+I do not wish, believe me, to make you responsible for any statement
+or opinion of mine.  I am painfully conscious, on reviewing for the
+Press Sermons which would never have been published save by special
+request, how imperfect, poor, and weak they seem to me--how much
+worse, then, they will appear to other people; how much more may be
+said which I have not the wit to say!  But the Bible can take care
+of itself, I presume, without my help.  All I can do is, to speak
+what I think, as far as I see my way; to record the obligation
+toward you under which I, with thousands more, now lie; and to
+express my hope that we shall be always found together fellow-
+workers in the cause of Truth, and that to you and in you may be
+fulfilled those noble and tender words, in which you have spoken of
+Samuel, and of those who work in Samuel's spirit:
+
+'In later times, even in our own, many names spring to our
+recollection of those who have trodden or (in different degrees,
+some known, and some unknown) are treading the same thankless path
+in the Church of Germany, in the Church of France, in the Church of
+Russia, in the Church of England.  Wherever they are, and whosoever
+they may be, and howsoever they may be neglected or assailed, or
+despised, they, like their great prototype and likeness in the
+Jewish Church, are the silent healers who bind up the wounds of
+their age in spite of itself; they are the good physicians who bind
+together the dislocated bones of a disjointed time; they are the
+reconcilers who turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, or
+of the fathers to the children.  They have but little praise and
+reward from the partisans who are loud in indiscriminate censure and
+applause.  But, like Samuel, they have a far higher reward, in the
+Davids who are silently strengthened and nurtured by them in Naioth
+of Ramah--in the glories of a new age which shall be ushered in
+peacefully and happily after they have been laid in the grave.' {0b}
+
+That such, my dear Stanley, may be your work and your destiny, is
+the earnest hope of
+
+Yours affectionately,
+C. KINGSLEY.
+EVERSLEY RECTORY,
+July 1, 1863.
+
+
+
+SERMON I.  GOD IN CHRIST
+
+
+
+(Septuagesima Sunday.)
+
+GENESIS i.  I.  In the beginning God created the heaven and the
+earth.
+
+We have begun this Sunday to read the book of Genesis.  I trust that
+you will listen to it as you ought--with peculiar respect and awe,
+as the oldest part of the Bible, and therefore the oldest of all
+known works--the earliest human thought which has been handed down
+to us.
+
+And what is the first written thought which has been handed down to
+us by the Providence of Almighty God?
+
+'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'
+
+How many other things, how many hundred other things, men might have
+thought fit to write down for those who should come after; and say--
+This is the first knowledge which a man should have; this is the
+root of all wisdom, all power, all wealth.
+
+But God inspired Moses and the Prophets to write as they have
+written.  They were not to tell men that the first thing to be
+learnt was how to be rich; nor how to be strong; nor even how to be
+happy:  but that the first thing to be learnt was that God created
+the heaven and the earth.
+
+And why first?
+
+Because the first question which man asks--the question which shows
+he is a man and not a brute--always has been, and always will be--
+Where am I?  How did I get into this world; and how did this world
+get here likewise?  And if man takes up with a wrong answer to that
+question, then the man himself is certain to go wrong in all manner
+of ways.  For a lie can never do anything but harm, or breed
+anything but harm; and lies do breed, as fast as the blight on the
+trees, or the smut on the corn:  only being not according to nature,
+or the laws of God, they do not breed as natural things do, after
+their kind:  but, belonging to chaos, the kingdom of disorder and
+misrule, they breed fresh lies unlike themselves, of all strange and
+unexpected shapes; so that when a man takes up with one lie, there
+is no saying what other lie he may not take up with beside.
+
+Wherefore the first thing man has to learn is truth concerning the
+first human question, Where am I?  How did I come here; and how did
+this world come here?  To which the Bible answers in its first line-
+-
+
+'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'
+
+How God created, the Bible does not tell us.  Whether he created (as
+doubtless he could have done if he chose) this world suddenly out of
+nothing, full grown and complete; or whether he created it (as he
+creates you and me, and all living and growing things now) out of
+things which had been before it--that the Bible does not tell us.
+
+Perhaps if it had told us, it would have drawn away our minds to
+think of natural things, and what we now call science, instead of
+keeping our minds fixed, as it now does, on spiritual things, and
+above all on the Spirit of all spirits; Him of whom it is written,
+'God is a Spirit'
+
+For the Bible is simply the revelation, or unveiling of God.  It is
+not a book of natural science.  It is not merely a book of holy and
+virtuous precepts.  It is not merely a book wherein we may find a
+scheme of salvation for our souls.  It is the book of the
+revelation, or unveiling of the Lord God, Jesus Christ; what he was,
+what he is, and what he will be for ever.
+
+Of Jesus Christ?  How is he revealed in the text, 'In the beginning
+God created the heaven and the earth?'
+
+Thus:--If you look at the first chapter of Genesis and the beginning
+of the second, you will see that God is called therein by a
+different name from what he is called afterwards.  He is called God,
+Elohim, The High or Mighty One or Ones.  After that he is called the
+Lord God, Jehovah Elohim, which means properly, The High or Mighty I
+Am, or Jehovah, a word which I will explain to you afterwards.  That
+word is generally translated in our Bible, as it was in the Greek,
+'The Lord;' because the later Jews had such a deep reverence for the
+name Jehovah, that they did not like to write it or speak it:  but
+called God simply Adonai, the Lord.
+
+So that we have three names for God in the Old Testament.
+
+First El, or Elohim, the Mighty One:  by which, so Moses says, God
+was known to the Jews before his time, and which sets forth God's
+power and majesty--the first thing of which men would think in
+thinking of God.
+
+Next Jehovah.  The I Am, the Eternal, and Self-existent Being, by
+which name God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush--a
+deeper and wider name than the former.
+
+And lastly, Adonai, the Lord, the living Ruler and Master of the
+world and men, by which he revealed himself to the later Jews, and
+at last to all mankind in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+Now I need not to trouble your mind or my own with arguments as to
+how these three different names got into the Bible.
+
+That is a matter of criticism, of scholarship, with which you have
+nothing to do:  and you may thank God that you have not, in such
+days as these.  Your business is, not how the names got there, which
+is a matter of criticism, but why they have been left there by the
+providence of God, which is a matter of simple religion; and you may
+thank God, I say again, that it is so.  For scholarship is Martha's
+part, which must be done, and yet which cumbers a man with much
+serving:  but simple heart religion is the better part which Mary
+chose; and of which the Lord has said, that it shall not be taken
+from her, nor from those who, like her, sit humbly at the feet of
+the Lord, and hear his voice, without troubling their souls with
+questions of words, and endless genealogies, which eat out the
+hearts of men.
+
+Therefore all I shall say about the matter is that the first chapter
+of Genesis, and the first three verses of the second, may be the
+writing of a prophet older than Moses, because they call God Elohim,
+which was his name before Moses' time; and that Moses may have used
+them, and worked them into a book of Genesis; while he, in the part
+which he wrote himself, called God at first by the name Jehovah
+Elohim, The Lord God, in order to show that Jehovah and El were the
+same God, and not two different ones; and after he had made the Jews
+understand that, went on to call God simply Jehovah, and to use the
+two names, as they are used through the rest of the Old Testament,
+interchangeably:  as we say sometimes God, sometimes the Lord,
+sometimes the Deity, and so forth; meaning of course always the same
+Being.
+
+That, I think, is the probable and simple account which tallies most
+exactly with the Bible.
+
+As for the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, having
+been written by Moses, or at least by far the greater part of them,
+I cannot see the least reason to doubt it.
+
+The Bible itself does not say so; and therefore it is not a matter
+of faith, and men may have their own opinions on the matter, without
+sin or false doctrine.  But that Moses wrote part at least of them,
+our Lord and his Apostles say expressly.  The tradition of the Jews
+(who really ought to know best) has always been that Moses wrote
+either the whole or the greater part.  Moses is by far the most
+likely man to have written them, of all of whom we read in
+Scripture.  We have not the least proof, and, what is more, never
+shall or can have, that he did not write them.  And therefore, I
+advise you to believe, as I do, that the universal tradition of both
+Jews and Christians is right, when it calls these books, the books
+of Moses. {7}
+
+But now no more of these matters:  we will think of a matter quite
+infinitely more important, and that is, WHO is this God whom the
+Bible reveals to us, from the very first verse of Genesis?
+
+At least, he is one and the same Being.  Whether he be called El,
+Jehovah, or Adonai, he is the same Lord.
+
+It is the Lord who makes the heaven and the earth, the Lord who puts
+man in a Paradise, lays on him a commandment, and appears to him in
+visible shape.
+
+It is the Lord who speaks to Abraham:  though Abraham knew him only
+as El-Shaddai, the Almighty God.  It is the Lord who brings the
+Israelites out of Egypt, who gives them the law on Sinai.  It is the
+Lord who speaks to Samuel, to David, to all the Prophets, and
+appears to Isaiah, while his glory fills the Temple.  In whatever
+'divers manners' and 'many portions,' as St. Paul says in the
+Epistle to the Hebrews, he speaks to them, he is the same Being.
+
+And Psalmists and Prophets are most careful to tell us that he is
+the God, not of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles; of all mankind--
+as indeed, he must be, being Jehovah, the I Am, the one Self-
+existent and Eternal Being; that from his throne he is watching and
+judging all the nations upon earth, fashioning the hearts of all,
+appointing them their bounds, and the times of their habitation, if
+haply they may seek after him and find him, though he be not far
+from any one of them; for in him they live and move and have their
+being.
+
+This is the message of Moses, of the Psalmists and the Prophets,
+just as much as of St. Paul on Mars' Hill at Athens.
+
+So begins and so ends the Old Testament, revealing throughout The
+Lord.
+
+And how does the New Testament begin?
+
+By telling us that a Babe was born at Bethlehem, and called Jesus,
+the Saviour.
+
+But who is this blessed Babe?  He, too, is The Lord.
+
+'A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.'  And from thence, through the
+Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, the Revelation of St. John, he is
+the Lord.  There is no manner of doubt of it.  The Apostles and
+Evangelists take no trouble to prove it.  They take it for granted.
+They call Jesus Christ by the name by which the Jews had for
+hundreds of years called the El of Abraham, the Jehovah of Moses.
+The Babe who is born at Bethlehem, who grows up as other human
+beings grow, into the man Christ Jesus, is none other than the Lord
+God who created the universe, who made a covenant with Abraham, who
+brought the Israelites out of Egypt, who inspired the Prophets, who
+has been from the beginning governing all the earth.
+
+It is very awful.  But you must believe that, or put your Bibles
+away as a dream--New Testament and Old alike.  Not to believe that
+fully and utterly, is not to believe the Bible at all.  For that is
+what the Bible says, and has been sent into the world to say.  It
+is, from beginning to end, the book of the revelation, or unveiling
+of Jesus Christ, very God of very God.
+
+But some may say, 'Why tell us that?  Of course we believe it.  We
+should not be Christians if we did not.'
+
+Be it so.  I hope it is so.  But I think that it is not so easy to
+believe it as we fancy.
+
+We believe it, I think, more firmly than our forefathers did five
+hundred years ago, on some points; and therefore we have got rid of
+many dark and blasphemous superstitions about witches and devils,
+about the evil of the earth and of our own bodies, of marriage, and
+of the common duties and bonds of humanity, which tormented them,
+because they could not believe fully that Jesus Christ had created,
+and still ruled the world and all therein.
+
+But we are all too apt still to think of Jesus Christ merely as some
+one who can save our souls when we die, and to forget that he is the
+Lord, who is and has been always ruling the world and all mankind.
+
+And from this come two bad consequences.  People are apt to speak of
+the Lord Jesus--or at least to admire preachers who speak of him--as
+if he belonged to them, and not they to him; and, therefore, to
+speak of him with an irreverence and a familiarity which they dared
+not use, if they really believed that this same Jesus, whose name
+they take in vain, is none other than the Living God himself, their
+Creator, by whom every blade of grass grows beneath their feet,
+every planet and star rolls above their heads.
+
+And next--they fancy that the Old Testament speaks of our Lord Jesus
+Christ only in a few mysterious prophecies--some of which there is
+reason to suspect they quite misinterpret.  They are slow of heart
+to believe all that the Scriptures have spoken of him of whom Moses
+and the Prophets did write, not in a few scattered texts, but in
+every line of the Old Testament, from the first of Genesis to the
+last of Malachi.
+
+And therefore they believe less and less, that Jesus Christ is still
+the Lord in any real practical sense--not merely the Lord of a few
+elect or saints, but the Lord of man and of the earth, and of the
+whole universe.  They think of him as a Lord who will come again to
+judgment--which is true, and awfully true, in the very deepest
+sense:  but they do not think of him--in spite of what he himself
+and his apostles declared of him--as The Living, Working Lord, to
+whom all power is given in heaven and earth, and not merely over the
+souls of a few regenerate; as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the
+last, of whom St. Paul says, 'that the mystery of Christ has been
+hid from the beginning of the world in God, who created all things
+by Jesus Christ.' * * * 'That, in the dispensation of the fulness of
+times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both
+which are in heaven, and which are in earth.'  They fill their minds
+with fancies about the book of Revelation, most of which, there is
+reason to fear, are little else but fancies:  while they overlook
+what that book really does say, and what is the best news that the
+world ever heard, that he is the Prince of the kings of the earth.
+
+Therefore they have fears for Christ's Bible, fears for Christ's
+Church, fears for the fate of the world, which they could not have
+if they would recollect who Christ is, and believe that he is able
+to take care of his own kingdom and power and glory, better than man
+can take care of it for him.  Surely, surely, faith in the living
+Lord who rules the world in righteousness is fast dying out among
+us; and many who call themselves Christians seem to know less of
+Christ, and of the work which he is carrying on in the world, than
+did the old Psalmist, who said of him, 'The Lord shall endure for
+ever; he hath also prepared his seat for judgment.  For he shall
+judge the world in righteousness, and minister true judgment among
+the people.'  He fashioneth 'the hearts of all of them, and
+understandeth all their works.'
+
+Who can say that he believes that, who holds that this world is the
+devil's world, and that sinful man and evil spirits are having it
+all their own way till the day of judgment?
+
+Who can say that he believes that, who falls into pitiable terror at
+every new discovery of science or of scholarship, for fear it should
+destroy the Bible and the Christian faith, instead of believing that
+all which makes manifest is light, and that all light comes from the
+Father of lights, by the providence of Jesus Christ his only-
+begotten Son, who is the light of men, and the inspiration of his
+Spirit, who leadeth into all truth?
+
+And how, lastly, can those say that they believe that, who will lie,
+and slander, and have recourse to base intrigues, in order to defend
+that truth, and that Church, of which the Lord himself has said that
+he has founded it upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not
+prevail against it?
+
+But if you believe indeed the message of the Bible, that Jesus
+Christ is the Lord who made heaven and earth, then it shall be said
+of you, as it was of St. Peter, 'Blessed art thou:  for flesh and
+blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in
+heaven.'
+
+Yes.  Blessed indeed is he who believes that; who believes that the
+same person who was born in a stable, had not where to lay his head,
+went about healing the sick and binding up the broken heart,
+suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and
+rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven--ascended thither
+that he might fill all things; and is none other than the Lord of
+the earth and of men, the Creator, the Teacher, the Saviour, the
+Guide, the King, the Judge, of all the world, and of all worlds
+past, present, and to come.
+
+For to him who thus believes shall be fulfilled the promise of his
+Lord, 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I
+will give you rest.'
+
+He will find rest unto his soul.  Rest from that first and last
+question, of which I said that all men, down to the lowest savage,
+ask it, simply because they are men, and not beasts.  Where am I?
+How came I here?  How came this world here likewise?  For he can
+answer--
+
+'I am in the kingdom of the Babe of Bethlehem.  He put me here.  And
+he put this world here likewise:  and that is enough for me.  He
+created all I see or can see--I care little how, provided that HE
+created it; for then I am sure that it must be very good.  He
+redeemed me and all mankind, when we were lost, at the price of his
+most precious blood.  He the Lord is King, therefore will I not be
+moved, though the earth be shaken, and the hills be carried into the
+midst of the sea.  Yea, though the sun were turned to darkness, and
+the moon to blood, and the stars fell from heaven, and all power and
+order, all belief and custom of mankind, were turned upside down,
+yet there would still be One above who rules the world in
+righteousness, whose eye is on them that fear him and put their
+trust in his mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to feed
+them in the time of dearth.  Darkness may cover the land for awhile,
+and gross darkness the people.  But while I sit in darkness, the
+Lord shall be my light, till the day when he shall say once more,
+"Let there be light," and light shall be.'
+
+Yes.  To the man who is a good man and true; who has any hearty
+Christian feeling for his fellow-men, and is not merely a selfish
+superstitious person, caring for nothing but what he calls the
+safety of his own soul; to the man, I say, who has anything of the
+loving spirit of Christ in him, what question can be more important
+than this, Is the world well made or ill?  Is it well governed or
+ill?  Is it on the whole going right or going wrong?  And what can
+be more comforting to such a man, than the answer which the Bible
+gives him at the outset?--
+
+This world is well made, in love and care; for Christ the Lord made
+it, and behold it was very good.
+
+This world is going right and not wrong, in spite of all appearances
+to the contrary; for Christ the Lord is King.  He sitteth between
+the cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet.  He is too strong and
+too loving to let the world go any way but the right.  Parts of it
+will often go wrong here, and go wrong there.  The sin and ignorance
+of men will disturb his order, and rebel against his laws; and
+strange and mad things, terrible and pitiable things will happen, as
+they have happened ever since the day when the first man disobeyed
+the commandment of the Lord.  But man cannot conquer the Lord; the
+Lord will conquer man.  He will teach men by their neighbours' sins.
+He will teach them by their own sins.  He will chastise them by sore
+judgments.  He will make fearful examples of wilful and conceited
+sinners; and those who seem to escape him in this life, shall not
+escape him in the life to come.  But he is trying for ever every
+man's work by fire; and against that fire no lie will stand.  He
+will burn up the stubble and chaff, and leave only the pure wheat
+for the use of future generations.  His purpose will stand.  His
+word will never return to him void, but will prosper always where he
+sends it.  He has made the round world so sure that it cannot be
+moved either by man or by worse than man.  His everlasting laws will
+take effect in spite of all opposition, and bring the world and man
+along the path, and to the end, which he purposed for them in the
+day when God made the heavens and the earth, and in that even
+greater day, when he said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our
+likeness,' and man arose upright, and knew that he was not as the
+beasts, and asked who he was, and where? feeling with the hardly
+opened eyes of his spirit after that Lord from whom he came, and to
+whom he shall return, as many as have eternal life, in the day when
+Christ the Lord of life shall have destroyed death, and put all
+enemies under his feet, and given up the kingdom to God, even the
+Father, that God may be all in all.
+
+
+
+SERMON II.  THE LIKENESS OF GOD
+
+
+
+(Trinity Sunday.)
+
+GENESIS i. 26.  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after
+our likeness.
+
+This is a hard saying.  It is difficult at times to believe it to be
+true.
+
+If one looks not at what God has made man, but at what man has made
+himself, one will never believe it to be true.
+
+When one looks at what man has made himself; at the back streets of
+some of our great cities; at the thousands of poor Germans and Irish
+across the ocean bribed to kill and to be killed, they know not why;
+at the abominable wrongs and cruelties going on in Poland at this
+moment--the cry whereof is going up to the ears of the God of Hosts,
+and surely not in vain; when one thinks of all the cries which have
+gone up in all ages from the victims of man's greed, lust, cruelty,
+tyranny, and shrillest of all from the tortured victims of his
+superstition and fanaticism, it is difficult to answer the sneer,
+'Believe, if you can, that this foolish, unjust, cruel being called
+man, is made in the likeness of God.  Man was never made in the
+image of God at all.  He is only a cunninger sort of animal, for
+better for worse--and for worse as often as for better.'
+
+Another says, not quite that.  Man was in the likeness of God once,
+but he lost that by Adam's fall, and now is only an animal with an
+immortal soul in him, to be lost or saved.
+
+There is more truth in that latter notion than in the former:  but
+if it be quite right; if we did lose the likeness of God at Adam's
+fall, how comes the Bible never to say so?  How comes the Bible
+never to say one word on what must have been the most important
+thing which ever happened to mankind before the coming of our Lord
+Jesus Christ?
+
+And how comes it also that the New Testament says distinctly that
+man is still made in the likeness of God?  For St. Paul speaks of
+man as 'the likeness and glory of God.'  And St. James says of the
+tongue, 'Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith' (to
+our shame) 'curse we men, which are made in the likeness of God.'
+
+But the great proof that man is made in the image and likeness of
+God is the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ; for if human nature
+had been, as some think, something utterly brutish and devilish, and
+utterly unlike God, how could God have become man without ceasing to
+be God?  Christ was man of the substance of his mother.  That
+substance had the same human nature as we have.  Then if that human
+nature be evil, what follows?  Something which I shall not utter,
+for it is blasphemy.  Christ has taken the manhood into God.  Then
+if manhood be evil, what follows again?  Something more which I
+shall not utter, for it is blasphemy.
+
+But man is made in the image of God; and therefore God, in whose
+image he is made, could take on himself his own image and likeness,
+and become perfect man, without ceasing to be perfect God.
+
+Therefore, my friends, it is a comfortable and wholesome doctrine,
+that man is made in the image of God, and one for which we must
+thank the Bible.  For it is the Bible which has revealed that truth
+to us, in its very beginning and outset, that we might have, from
+the first, clear and sound notions concerning man and God.  The
+Bible, I say; for the sacred books of the heathen say, most of them,
+nothing thereof.
+
+Man has, in all ages, been tempted, when he looks at his own
+wickedness and folly, not only to despise himself--which he has good
+reason enough to do--but to despise his own human nature, and to cry
+to God, 'Why hast thou made me thus?'  He has cursed his own human
+nature.  He has said, 'Surely man is most miserable of all the
+beasts of the field.'  He has said, 'I must get rid of my human
+nature--I must give up wife, family, human life of all kinds, I must
+go into the deserts and the forests, and there try to forget that I
+am a man, and become a mere spirit or angel.'  So said the Buddhists
+of Asia, the deepest thinkers concerning man and God of all the
+heathens, and so have many said since their time.  But so does the
+Bible not say.  It starts by telling us that man is made in God's
+likeness, and that therefore his human nature is originally and in
+itself not a bad, but a perfectly good thing.  All that has to be
+done to it is to be cured of its diseases; and the Bible declares
+that it can be cured.  Howsoever man may have fallen, he may rise.
+Howsoever the likeness may be blotted and corrupted, it can be
+cleansed and renewed.  Howsoever it may be perverted and turned
+right round and away from God and goodness to selfishness and evil,
+it can be converted, and turned back again to God.  Howsoever
+utterly far gone man may be from original righteousness, still to
+original righteousness he can return, by the grace of baptism and
+the renewing of the Holy Spirit.  And what in us is the likeness of
+God?  That is a deep question.
+
+Only one answer will I make to it to-day.  Whatever in us is, or is
+not, the likeness of God, at least the sense of right and wrong is;
+to know right and wrong.  So says the Bible itself:  'Behold the man
+is become as one of us, to know good and evil.'  Not that he got the
+likeness of God by his fall--of course not; but that he became aware
+of his likeness, and that in a very painful and common way--by
+sinning against it; as St. Paul says in one of his deepest
+utterances, 'By sin is the knowledge of the law.'
+
+And you may see for yourselves how human nature can have God's
+likeness in that respect, and yet be utterly fallen and corrupt.
+
+For a man may--and indeed every man does--know good and yet be
+unable to do it, and know evil, and yet be a slave to it, tied and
+bound with the chains of his sins till the grace of God release him
+from them.
+
+To know good and evil, right and wrong--to have a conscience, a
+moral sense--that is the likeness of God of which I wish to preach
+to-day.  Because it is through THAT knowledge of good and evil, and
+through it alone, that we can know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has
+sent.  It is through our moral sense that God speaks to us; through
+our sense of right and wrong; through that I say, God speaks to us,
+whether in reproof or encouragement, in wrath or in love; to teach
+us what he is like, and to teach us what he is not like.
+
+To know God.  That is the side on which we must look at this text on
+Trinity Sunday.  If man be made in the image of God, then we may be
+able to know something at least of God, and of the character of God.
+If we have the copy, we can guess at least at what the original is
+like.
+
+From the character, therefore, of every good man, we may guess at
+something of the character of God.  But from the character of Jesus
+Christ our Lord, who is the very brightness of his Father's glory
+and the express image of his person, we may see perfectly--at least
+perfectly enough for all our needs in this life, and in the life to
+come--what is the character of God, who made heaven and earth.
+
+I beseech you to remember this--I beseech you to believe this, with
+your whole hearts, and minds, and souls, and especially just now.
+
+For there are many abroad now who will tell you, man can know
+nothing of God.
+
+Answer them:  'If your God be a God of whom I can know nothing, then
+he is not my God, the God of the Bible.  For he is the God who has
+said of old, "They shall not teach each man his brother, saying,
+Know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least unto the
+greatest."  He is the God, who, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
+accused and blamed the Jews because they did NOT know him, which if
+they COULD NOT know him would have been no fault of theirs.  Of
+doctrines, and notions, and systems, it is written, and most truly,
+"I know in part, and I prophesy in part," and again, "If a man
+thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he
+ought to know."  But of God it is written, "This is life eternal, to
+know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast
+sent."'
+
+But they will say, man is finite and limited, God is infinite and
+absolute, and how can the finite comprehend the infinite?
+
+Answer:  'Those are fine words:  I do not understand them; and I do
+not care to understand them; I do not deny that God is infinite and
+absolute, though what that means I do not know.  But I find nothing
+about his being infinite and absolute in the Bible.  I find there
+that he is righteous, just, loving, merciful, and forgiving; and
+that he is angry too, and that his wrath is a consuming fire, and I
+know well enough what those words mean, though I do not know what
+infinite and absolute mean.  So that is what I have to think of, for
+my own sake and the sake of all mankind.'
+
+But, they will say, you must not take these words to the letter; man
+is so unlike God, and God so unlike man, that God's attributes must
+be quite different from man's.  When you read of God's love,
+justice, anger, and so forth, you must not think that they are
+anything like man's love, man's justice, man's anger; but something
+quite different, not only in degree, but in kind:  so that what
+might be unjust and cruel in man, would not be so in God.
+
+My dear friends, beware of that doctrine; for out of it have sprung
+half the fanaticism and superstition which has disgraced and
+tormented the earth.  Beware of ever thinking that a wrong thing
+would be right if God did it, and not you.  And mind, that is flatly
+contrary to the letter of the Bible.  In that grand text where
+Abraham pleads with God, what does he say?  Not, 'Of course if Thou
+choosest to do it, it must be right,' but 'Shall not the Judge of
+all the earth do RIGHT?'  Abraham actually refers the Almighty God
+to his own law; and asserts an eternal rule of right and wrong
+common to man and to God, which God will surely never break.
+
+Answer:  'If that doctrine be true, which I will never believe, then
+the Bible mocks and deceives poor miserable sinful man, instead of
+teaching him.  If God's love does not mean real actual love,--God's
+anger, actual anger,--God's forgiveness, real forgiveness,--God's
+justice, real justice,--God's truth, real truth,--God's
+faithfulness, real faithfulness, what do they mean?  Nothing which I
+can understand, nothing which I can trust in.  How can I trust in a
+God whom I cannot understand or know?  How can I trust in a love or
+a justice which is not what _I_ call love or justice, or anything
+like them?
+
+'The saints of old said, _I_ KNOW in whom I have believed.  And how
+can I believe in him, if there is nothing in him which I can know;
+nothing which is like man--nothing, to speak plainly, like Christ,
+who was perfect man as well as perfect God?  If that be so, if man
+can know nothing really of God, he is indeed most miserable of all
+the beasts of the field, for I will warrant that he can know nothing
+really of anything else.  And what is left for him, but to remain
+for this life, and the life to come, in the outer darkness of
+ignorance and confusion, misrule and misery, wherein is most
+literally--as one may see in the history of every heathen nation
+upon earth--wailing and gnashing of teeth.
+
+'If God's goodness be not like man's goodness, there is no rule of
+morality left, no eternal standard of right and wrong.  How can I
+tell what I ought to do; or what God expects of me; or when I am
+right and when I am wrong, if you take from me the good, plain, old
+Bible rule, that man CAN be, and MUST be, like God?  The Bible rule
+is, that everything good in man must be exactly like something good
+in God, because it is inspired into him by the Spirit of God
+himself.  Our Lord Jesus, who spoke, not to philosophers or Scribes
+and Pharisees, but to plain human beings, weeping and sorrowing,
+suffering and sinning, like us,--told them to be perfect, as our
+Father in heaven is perfect, by being good to the unthankful and the
+evil.  And if man is to be perfect, as his Father in heaven is
+perfect, then his Father in heaven is perfect as man ought to be
+perfect.  He told us to be merciful as our Father in heaven is
+merciful.  Then our Father in heaven is merciful with the same sort
+of mercy as we ought to show.  We are bidden to forgive others, even
+as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us:  then if our forgiveness
+is to be like God's, God's forgiveness is like ours.  We are to be
+true, because God is true:  just, because God is just.  How can we
+be that, if God's truth is not like what men call truth, God's
+justice not like what men call justice?
+
+'If I give up that rule of right and wrong, I give up all rules of
+right and wrong whatsoever.'
+
+No, my friends; if we will seek for God where he may be found, then
+we shall know God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.  But we
+must not seek for him where he is not, in long words and notions of
+philosophy spun out of men's brains, and set up as if they were real
+things, when words and notions they are, and words and notions they
+will remain.  We must look for God where he is to be found, in the
+character of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who alone has
+revealed and unveiled God's character, because he is the brightness
+of God's glory, and the express image of his person.
+
+What Christ's character was we can find in the Holy Gospels; and we
+can find it too, scattered and in parts, in all the good, the holy,
+the noble, who have aught of Christ's spirit and likeness in them.
+
+Whatsoever is good and beautiful in any human soul, that is the
+likeness of Christ.  Whatsoever thoughts, words, or deeds are true,
+honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report; whatsoever is true
+virtue, whatsoever is truly worthy of praise, that is the likeness
+of Christ; the likeness of him who was full of all purity, all
+tenderness, all mercy, all self-sacrifice, all benevolence, all
+helpfulness; full of all just and noble indignation also against
+oppressors and hypocrites who bound heavy burdens and grievous to be
+borne, but touched them not themselves with one of their fingers;
+who kept the key of knowledge, and neither entered in themselves, or
+let those who were trying enter in either.
+
+The likeness of an all-noble, all-just, all-gracious, all-wise, all-
+good human being; that is the likeness of Christ, and that,
+therefore, is the likeness of God who made heaven and earth.
+
+All-good; utterly and perfectly good, in every kind of goodness
+which we have ever seen, or can ever imagine--that, thank God, is
+the likeness and character of Almighty God, in whom we live and
+move, and have our being.  To know that he is that--all-good, is to
+know his character as far as sinful and sorrowful man need know; and
+is not that to know enough?
+
+The mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity, as set forth so admirably
+in the Athanasian Creed, is a mystery; and it we cannot KNOW--we can
+only believe it, and take it on trust:  but the CHARACTER of the
+ever-blessed Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--we can know:
+while by keeping the words of the Athanasian Creed carefully in
+mind, we may be kept from many grievous and hurtful mistakes which
+will hinder our knowing it.  We can know that they are all good, for
+such as the Father is such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.
+That goodness is their one and eternal substance, and majesty, and
+glory, which we must not divide by fancying with some, that the
+Father is good in one way and the Son in another.  That their
+goodness is eternal and unchangeable; for they themselves are
+eternal, and have neither parts nor passions.  That their goodness
+is incomprehensible, that is, cannot be bounded or limited by time
+or space, or by any notions or doctrines of ours, for they
+themselves are incomprehensible, and able to do abundantly more than
+we can ask or think.
+
+This is our God, the God of the Bible, the God of the Church, the
+God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ our Lord.  And him we
+can believe utterly, for we know that he is faithful and true; and
+we know what THAT means, if there is any truth or faithfulness in
+us.  We know that he is just and righteous; and we know what THAT
+means, if there is any justice and uprightness in ourselves.  Him we
+can trust utterly; to him we can take all our cares, all our
+sorrows, all our doubts, all our sins, and pour them out to him,
+because he is condescending; and we know what THAT means, if there
+be any condescension and real high-mindedness in ourselves.  We can
+be certain too that he will hear us, just because he is so great, so
+majestic, so glorious; because his greatness, and majesty, and glory
+is a moral and spiritual greatness, which shows itself by stooping
+to the meanest, by listening to the most foolish, helping the
+weakest, pitying the worst, even while it is bound to punish.  Him
+we can trust, I say, because him we can know, and can say of him,
+Let the Infinite and the Absolute mean what they may, I know in whom
+I have believed--God the Good.  Whatever else I cannot understand, I
+can at least 'understand the lovingkindness of the Lord;' however
+high his dwelling may be, I know that he humbleth himself to behold
+the things in heaven and earth, to take the simple out of the dust,
+and the poor out of the mire.  Whatever else God may or may not be,
+I know that gracious is the Lord, and righteous, yea, our God is
+merciful.  The Lord preserveth the simple, for _I_ was in misery,
+and he helped ME.  Whatsoever fine theories or new discoveries I
+cannot trust, I can trust him, for with him is mercy, and with the
+Lord is plenteous redemption; and he shall redeem his people from
+all their sins.  However dark and ignorant I may be, I can go to him
+for teaching, and say, Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth thee,
+for thou art my God; let thy loving Spirit lead me forth into the
+land of righteousness.
+
+The land of righteousness.  The one true heavenly land, wherein God
+the righteous dwelleth from eternity to eternity, righteous in all
+his ways, and holy in all his works, and therefore adorable in all
+his ways, and glorious in all his works, with a glory even greater
+than the glory of his Almighty power.  On that glory of his goodness
+we can gaze, though afar off in degree, yet near in kind, while the
+glory of his wisdom and power is far, far beyond my understanding.
+Of the intellect of God we can know nothing; but we can know what is
+better, the heart of God.  For THAT glory of goodness we can
+understand, and KNOW, and sympathize with in our heart of hearts,
+and say, If THIS be the likeness of God, he is indeed worthy to be
+worshipped, and had in honour.  Praise the Lord, O my soul, for the
+Lord is GOOD.  Kings and all people, princes and all judges of the
+world, young men and maidens, old men and children, praise the name
+of the Lord, for his name only is excellent, because his name is
+GOOD.  Lift up your eyes, and look upon the face of Christ the God-
+man, crucified for you; and behold therein the truth of all truths,
+the doctrine of all doctrines, the gospel of all gospels, that the
+'Unknown,' and 'Infinite,' and 'Absolute' God, who made the
+universe, bids you know him, and know this of him, that he is GOOD,
+and that his express image and likeness is--Jesus Christ, his Son,
+our Lord.
+
+
+
+SERMON III.  THE VOICE OF THE LORD GOD
+
+
+
+(Preached also at the Chapel Royal, St. James, Sexagesima Sunday.)
+
+GENESIS iii. 8.  And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in
+the garden in the cool of the day.
+
+These words would startle us, if we heard them for the first time.
+I do not know but that they may startle us now, often as we have
+heard them, if we think seriously over them.  That God should appear
+to mortal man, and speak with mortal man.  It is most wonderful.  It
+is utterly unlike anything that we have ever seen, or that any
+person on earth has seen, for many hundred years.  It is a miracle,
+in every sense of the word.
+
+When one compares man as he was then, weak and ignorant, and yet
+seemingly so favoured by God, so near to God, with man as he is now,
+strong and cunning, spreading over the earth and replenishing it;
+subduing it with railroads and steamships, with agriculture and
+science, and all strange and crafty inventions, and all the while
+never visited by any Divine or heavenly appearance, but seemingly
+left utterly to himself by God, to go his own way and do his own
+will upon the earth, one asks with wonder, Can we be Adam's
+children?  Can the God who appeared to Adam, be our God likewise, or
+has God's plan and rule for teaching man changed utterly?
+
+No.  He is one God; the same God yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
+His will and purpose, his care and rule over man, have not changed.
+
+That is a matter of faith.  Of the faith which the holy Church
+commands us to have.  But it need not be a blind or unreasonable
+faith.  That our God is the God of Adam; that the same Lord God who
+taught him teaches us likewise, need not be a mere matter of faith:
+it may be a matter of reason likewise; a thing which seems
+reasonable to us, and recommends itself to our mind and conscience
+as true.
+
+Consider, my friends, a babe when it comes into the world.  The
+first thing of which it is aware is its mother's bosom.  The first
+thing which it does, as its eyes and ears are gradually opened to
+this world, is to cling to its parents.  It holds fast by their
+hand, it will not leave their side.  It is afraid to sleep alone, to
+go alone.  To them it looks up for food and help.  Of them it asks
+questions, and tries to learn from them, to copy them, to do what it
+sees them doing, even in play; and the parents in return lavish care
+and tenderness on it, and will not let it out of their sight.  But
+after a while, as the child grows, the parents will not let it be so
+perpetually with them.  It must go to school.  It must see its
+parents only very seldom, perhaps it must be away from them weeks or
+months.  And why?  Not that the parents love it less:  but that it
+must learn to take care of itself, to act for itself, to think for
+itself, or it will never grow up to be a rational human being.
+
+And the parting of the child from the parents does not break the
+bond of love between them.  It learns to love them even better.
+Neither does it break the bond of obedience.  The child is away from
+its parents' eye.  But it learns to obey them behind their back; to
+do their will of its own will; to ask itself, What would my parents
+wish me to do, were they here? and so learns, if it will think of
+it, a more true, deep, honourable and spiritual obedience, than it
+ever would if its parents were perpetually standing over it, saying,
+Do this, and do that.
+
+In after life, that child may settle far away from his father's
+home.  He may go up into the temptations and bustle of some great
+city.  He may cross to far lands beyond the sea.  But need he love
+his parents less? need the bond between them be broken, though he
+may never set eyes on them again?  God forbid.  He may be settled
+far away, with children, business, interests of his own; and yet he
+may be doing all the while his father's will.  The lessons of God
+which he learnt at his mother's knee may be still a lamp to his feet
+and a light to his path.  Amid all the bustle and labour of
+business, his father's face may still be before his eyes, his
+father's voice still sound in his ears, bidding him be a worthy son
+to him still; bidding him not to leave that way wherein he should
+go, in which his parents trained him long, long since.  He may feel
+that his parents are near him in the spirit, though absent in the
+flesh.  Yes, though they may have passed altogether out of this
+world, they may be to him present and near at hand; and he may be
+kept from doing many a wrong thing and encouraged to do many a right
+one, by the ennobling thought, My father would have had it so, my
+mother would have had it so, had they been here on earth.  And
+though in this world he may never see them again, he may look
+forward steadily and longingly to the day when, this life's battle
+over, he shall meet again in heaven those who gave him life on
+earth.
+
+My friends, if this be the education which is natural and necessary
+from our earthly parents, made in God's image, appointed by God's
+eternal laws for each of us, why should it not be the education
+which God himself has appointed for mankind?  All which is truly
+human (not sinful or fallen) is an image and pattern of something
+Divine.  May not therefore the training which we find, by the very
+facts of nature, fit and necessary for our children, be the same as
+God's training, by which he fashioneth the hearts of the children of
+men?  Therefore we can believe the Bible when it tells us that so it
+is.  That God began the education of man by appearing to him
+directly, keeping him, as it were, close to his hand, and teaching
+him by direct and open revelation.  That as time went on, God left
+men more and more to themselves outwardly:  but only that he might
+raise their minds to higher notions of religion--that he might make
+them live by faith, and not merely by sight; and obey him of their
+own hearty free will, and not merely from fear or wonder.  And
+therefore, in these days, when miraculous appearances have, as far
+as we know, entirely ceased, yet God is not changed.  He is still as
+near as ever to men; still caring for them, still teaching them; and
+his very stopping of all miracles, so far from being a sign of God's
+anger or neglect, is a part of his gracious plan for the training of
+his Church.
+
+For consider--Man was first put upon this earth, with all things
+round him new and strange to him; seeing himself weak and unarmed
+before the wild beasts of the forest, not even sheltered from the
+cold, as they are; and yet feeling in himself a power of mind, a
+cunning, a courage, which made him the lord of all the beasts by
+virtue of his MIND, though they were stronger than he in body.  All
+that we read of Adam and Eve in the Bible is, as we should expect,
+the history of CHILDREN--children in mind, even when they were full-
+grown in stature.  Innocent as children, but, like children, greedy,
+fanciful, ready to disobey at the first temptation, for the very
+silliest of reasons; and disobeying accordingly.  Such creatures--
+with such wonderful powers lying hid in them, such a glorious future
+before them; and yet so weak, so wilful, so ignorant, so unable to
+take care of themselves, liable to be destroyed off the face of the
+earth by their own folly, or even by the wild beasts around--surely
+they needed some special and tender care from God to keep them from
+perishing at the very outset, till they had learned somewhat how to
+take care of themselves, what their business and duty were upon this
+earth.  They needed it before they fell; they needed it still more,
+and their children likewise, after they fell:  and if they needed
+it, we may trust God that he afforded it to them.
+
+But again.  Whence came this strange notion, which man alone has of
+all the living things which we see, of RELIGION?  What put into the
+mind of man that strange imagination of beings greater than himself,
+whom he could not always see, but who might appear to him?  What put
+into his mind the strange imagination that these unseen beings were
+more or less his masters?  That they had made laws for him which he
+must obey?  That he must honour and worship them, and do them
+service, in order that they might be favourable to him, and help,
+and bless, and teach him?  All nations except a very few savages
+(and we do not know but that their forefathers had it like the rest
+of mankind) have had some such notion as this; some idea of
+religion, and of a moral law of right and wrong.
+
+Where did they get it?
+
+Where, I ask again, did they get it?
+
+My friends, after much thought I answer, there is no explanation of
+that question so simple, so rational, so probable, as the one which
+the text gives.
+
+"And they heard the voice of the Lord God."
+
+Some, I know, say that man thought out for himself, in his own
+reason, the notion of God; that he by searching found out God.  But
+surely that is contrary to all experience.  Our experience is, that
+men left to themselves forget God; lose more and more all thought of
+God, and the unseen world; believe more and more in nothing but what
+they can see and taste and handle, and become as the beasts that
+perish.  How then did man, who now is continually forgetting God,
+contrive to remember God for himself at first?  How, unless God
+himself showed himself to man?  I know some will say, that mankind
+invented for themselves false gods at first, and afterwards cleared
+and purified their own notions, till they discovered the true God.
+My friends, there is a homely old proverb which will well apply
+here.  If there had been no gold guineas, there would be no brass
+ones.  If men had not first had a notion of a true God, and then
+gradually lost it, they would not have invented false gods to supply
+his place.  And whence did they get, I ask again, the notion of gods
+at all?  The simplest answer is in the Bible:  God taught them.  I
+can find no better.  I do not believe a better will ever be found.
+
+And why not?
+
+Why not?  I ask.  To say that God cannot appear to men is simply
+silly; for it is limiting God's Almighty power.  He that made man
+and all heaven and earth, cannot he show himself to man, if he shall
+so please?  To say that God will not appear to man because man is so
+insignificant, and this earth such a paltry little speck in the
+heavens, is to limit God's goodness; nay, it is to show that a man
+knows not what goodness means.  What grace, what virtue is there
+higher than condescension?  Then if God be, as he is, perfectly
+good, must he not be perfectly condescending--ready and willing to
+stoop to man, and all the more ready and the more willing, the more
+weak, ignorant, and sinful this man is?  In fact, the greater need
+man has of God, the more certain is it that God will help him in
+that need.
+
+Yes, my friends, the Bible is the revelation of a God who
+condescends to men, and therefore descends to men.  And the more a
+man's reason is spiritually enlightened to know the meaning of
+goodness and holiness and justice and love, the more simple,
+reasonable, and credible will it seem to him that God at first
+taught men in the days of their early ignorance, by the only method
+by which (as far as we can conceive) he could have taught them about
+himself; namely, by appearing in visible shape, or speaking with
+audible voice; and just as reasonable and credible, awful and
+unfathomable mystery though it is, will be the greater news, that
+that same Lord at last so condescended to man that he was conceived
+by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius
+Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; and rose the third day, and
+ascended into heaven.  Credible and reasonable, not indeed to the
+natural man who looks only at nature, which he can see and hear and
+handle; but credible and reasonable enough to the spiritual man,
+whose mind has been enlightened by the Spirit of God, to see that
+the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not
+seen are eternal; even justice and love, mercy and condescension,
+the divine order, and the kingdom of the Living God.
+
+And now one word on a matter which is tormenting the minds of many
+just now.  It is often said that all that I have been saying is
+contrary to science.  That this science and understanding of the
+world around us, which has improved so marvellously in our days,
+proves that the apparitions and miracles spoken of in the Bible
+cannot be true; that God, or the angels of God, can never have
+walked with man in visible shape.
+
+Now, my friends, I do not believe this.  I believe the very
+contrary.  I entreat you to set your minds at rest on this point;
+and to believe (what is certainly true) there is nothing in this new
+science to contradict the good old creed, that the Lord God of old
+appeared to his human children.  It would take too much time, of
+course, to give you my reasons for saying this:  and I must
+therefore ask you to take on trust from me when I tell you solemnly
+and earnestly that there is nothing in modern science which can, if
+rightly understood, contradict the glorious words of St. Paul, that
+God at sundry times and in divers manners spake to the fathers by
+the prophets, and hath at last spoken unto us by a Son, whom he hath
+appointed heir of all things:  by whom also he made the worlds, who
+is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,
+and upholdeth all things by the word of his power:  even Jesus
+Christ, God blessed for ever.  Amen.
+
+What then shall we think of these things?  Shall we say, 'How much
+better off were our forefathers than we!  Ah, that we were not left
+to ourselves!  Ah, that we lived in the good old times when God and
+his angels walked with men!'
+
+My friends, what says Solomon the Wise?--'Inquire not why the former
+times were better than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely
+concerning this.'
+
+It is very natural for us to think that we could become more easily
+good men, more certain of going to heaven, if we saw divine
+apparitions and heard divine voices.  A very natural thought.  But
+natural things are not always the best or wisest things.  Spiritual
+things are surely higher and deeper than natural things.  It is
+natural to wish to see Christ, or some heavenly being, with our
+natural eyes and senses.  But it is spiritual and therefore better
+for our souls, to be content to see him by faith, with the spiritual
+eyes of our heart and mind, to love him with all our heart and mind
+and soul, to worship him, to put our whole trust in him, to call
+upon him, to honour his holy name and his word, and to serve him
+truly all the days of our life.
+
+Natural, indeed, to wish that we were back again in the old times.
+But we must recollect that these old times were not good times, but
+bad times, and for that very reason the Lord took pity on them.
+That they were times of darkness, and therefore it was that the
+people who sat in great darkness, and in the valley of the shadow of
+death, were allowed to see a great light.  And that after that, the
+fulness of time, the very time which the Lord chose that he might be
+incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and came down upon this earth in human
+form, was not a good time.  On the contrary, the fulness of time,
+1863 years ago, was the very wickedest, most faithless, most unjust
+time that the world had ever seen--a time of which St. Paul said
+that there were none who did good, no, not one; that adders' poison
+was under all lips, and all feet swift to shed blood, and that the
+way of peace none had known.
+
+Better, far better, to live in times like these, in which there is
+(among Christian nations at least) no great darkness, even though
+there be no great light; times in which the knowledge of the true
+God and his Son Jesus Christ is spreading, slowly but surely, over
+all the earth; and with it, the fruit of the knowledge of the Lord,
+justice, mercy, charity, fellow-feeling, and a desire to teach and
+improve all mankind, such as the world never saw before.  These are
+the fruits of the Scriptures of the Lord, and the Sacraments of the
+Lord, and of the Holy Spirit of the Lord; and if that Holy Spirit be
+in our hearts, and we yield our hearts to his gracious motions and
+obey them, then we are really nearer to the Lord Jesus Christ than
+if we saw him, as Adam did, with our bodily eyes, and yet rebelled
+against him, as Adam did, in our hearts, and disobeyed him in our
+actions.  Of old the Lord treated men as babes, and showed himself
+to their bodily eyes, that so they might learn that he was, and that
+he was near them.  But us he treats as grown men, who know that he
+is, and that he is with us to the end of the world.  And if he
+treats us as men, my friends, let us behave ourselves like men, and
+not like silly children, who cannot be trusted by themselves for a
+moment lest they do wrong or come to harm.  Let us obey God, not
+with eye-service, just as long as we fancy that his eye is on us,
+but with the deeper, more spiritual, more honourable obedience of
+faith.  Let us obey him for obedience' sake, and honour him for very
+honour's sake, as the young emigrant in foreign lands obeys and
+honours the parents whom he will never see again on earth; and let
+us look forward, like him, to the day when him whom we cannot see on
+earth we may, perhaps, be permitted to see in heaven, as the reward-
+-and for what higher reward can man wish?--of faith and obedience.
+
+
+
+SERMON IV.  NOAH'S FLOOD
+
+
+
+(Quinquagesima Sunday.)
+
+GENESIS ix. 13.  I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a
+token of a covenant between me and the earth.
+
+We all know the history of Noah's flood.  What have we learnt from
+that history?  What were we intended to learn from it?  What
+thoughts should we have about it?
+
+There are many thoughts which we may have.  We may think how the
+flood came to pass; what means God used to make it rain forty days;
+what is meant by breaking up the fountains of the great deep.  We
+may calculate how large the ark was; and whether the Bible really
+means that it held all kinds of living things in the world, or only
+those of Noah's own country, or the animals which had been tamed and
+made useful to man.  We may read long arguments as to whether the
+flood spread over the whole world, or only over the country where
+Noah and the rest of the sons of Adam then lived.  We may puzzle
+ourselves concerning the rainbow of which the text speaks.  How it
+was to be a sign of a covenant from God.  Whether man had ever seen
+a rainbow before.  Whether there had ever been rain before in Noah's
+country; or whether he did not live in that land of which the second
+chapter of Genesis says that the Lord had not caused it to rain upon
+the earth, but there went up a mist from the earth and watered the
+face of the ground, as it does still in that high land in the centre
+of Asia, in which old traditions put the garden of Eden, and from
+which, as far as we yet know, mankind came at the beginning.
+
+We may puzzle our minds with these and a hundred more curious
+questions, as learned men have done in all ages.  But--shall we
+become really the wiser by so doing?  More learned we may become.
+But being learned and being wise are two different things.  True
+wisdom is that which makes a man a better man.  And will such
+puzzling questions and calculations as these, settle them how we
+may, make us BETTER men?  Will they make us more honest and just,
+more generous and loving, more able to keep our tempers and control
+our appetites?  I cannot see that.  Will it make us better men
+merely to know that there was once a flood of waters on the earth?
+I cannot see that.  If we look at the hills of sand and gravel round
+us, a little common sense will show us that there have been many
+floods of waters on the earth, long, long before the one of which
+the Bible speaks:  but shall we be better men for knowing that
+either?  I cannot see why we should.  Now the Bible was sent to make
+us better men.  How then will the history of the flood do that?
+
+Easily enough, my friends, if we will listen to the Bible, and
+thinking less about the flood itself, think more about him who, so
+the Bible tells us, sent the flood.
+
+The Bible, I have told you, is the revelation of the living Lord
+God, even Jesus Christ; who, in his turn, reveals to us the Father.
+And what we have to think of is, how does this story of the flood
+reveal, unveil to us the living Lord of the world, and his living
+government thereof?  Let us look at the matter in that way, instead
+of puzzling ourselves with questions of words and endless
+genealogies which minister strife.  Let us look at the matter in
+that way, instead of (like too many men now, and too many men in all
+ages) being so busy in picking to pieces the shell of the Bible,
+that we forget that the Bible has any kernel, and so let it slip
+through our hands.  Let us look at the matter in that way, as a
+revelation of the living God, and then we shall find the history of
+the flood full of godly doctrine, and profitable for these times,
+and for all times whatsoever.
+
+God sent a flood on the earth.
+
+True; but the important matter is that GOD sent it.
+
+God set the rainbow in the cloud, for a token.
+
+True; but the important matter is that GOD set it there.
+
+Important?  Yes.  What more important than to know that the flood
+did not come of itself, that the rainbow did not come of itself, and
+therefore that no flood comes of itself, no rainbow comes of itself;
+nothing comes of itself, but all comes straight and immediately from
+the one Living Lord God?
+
+A man may say, But the flood must have been caused by clouds and
+rain; and there must have been some special natural cause for their
+falling at that place and that time?
+
+What of that?
+
+Or that the fountains of the great deep must have been broken up by
+natural earthquakes, such as break up the crust of the earth now.
+What of that?
+
+Or that the rainbow must have been caused by the sun's rays shining
+through rain-drops at a certain angle, as all rainbows are now.
+What of that?  Very probably it was:  but if not, What of that?
+What we ought to know, and what we ought to care for is, what the
+Bible tells us without a doubt, that however they came, God sent
+them.  However they were made, God made them.  Their manner, their
+place, their time was appointed exactly by God for a MORAL purpose.
+To do something for the immortal souls of men; to punish sinners; to
+preserve the righteous; to teach Noah and his children after him a
+moral lesson, concerning righteousness and sin; concerning the wrath
+of God against sin; concerning God, that he governs the world and
+all in it, and does not leave the world, or mankind, to go on of
+themselves and by themselves.
+
+You see, I trust, what a message this was, and is, and ever will be
+for men; what a message and good news it must have been especially
+for the heathen of old time.
+
+For what would the heathen, what actually did the heathen think
+about such sights as a flood, or a rainbow?
+
+They thought of course that some one sent the flood.  Common sense
+taught them that.
+
+But what kind of person must he be, thought they, who sent the
+flood?  Surely a very dark, terrible, angry God, who was easily and
+suddenly provoked to drown their cattle and flood their lands.
+
+But the rainbow, so bright and gay, the sign of coming fine weather,
+could not belong to the same God who made the flood.  What the
+fancies of the heathen about the rainbow were matters little to us:
+but they fancied, at least, that it belonged to some cheerful,
+bright and kind God.  And so with other things.  Whatever was
+bright, and beautiful, and wholesome in the world, like the rainbow,
+belonged to kind gods; whatever was dark, ugly, and destroying, like
+the flood, belonged to angry gods.
+
+Therefore those of the heathen who were religious never felt
+themselves safe.  They were always afraid of having offended some
+god, they knew not how; always afraid of some god turning against
+them, and bringing diseases against their bodies; floods, drought,
+blight against their crops; storms against their ships, in revenge
+for some slight or neglect of theirs.
+
+And all the while they had no clear notion that these gods made the
+world; they thought that the gods were parts of the world, just as
+men are, and that beyond the gods there was the some sort of Fate,
+or necessity, which even gods must obey.
+
+Do you not see now what a comfort--what a spring of hope, and
+courage, and peace of mind, and patient industry--it must have been
+to the men of old time to be told, by this story of the flood, that
+the God who sends the flood sends the rainbow also?  There are not
+two gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things.  Light
+and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike
+from him.  Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there
+is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be--a power of
+destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine,
+fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy,
+beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his essence as
+awfulness and anger.
+
+They tell us he is a God whose will is to love, to bless, to make
+his creatures happy, if they will allow him.  They tell us that his
+anger is not a capricious, revengeful, proud, selfish anger, such as
+that of the heathen gods:  but that it is an orderly anger, a just
+anger, a loving anger, and therefore an anger which in its wrath can
+remember mercy.  Out of God's wrath shineth love, as the rainbow out
+of the storm; if it repenteth him that he hath made man, it is only
+because man is spoiling and ruining himself, and wasting the gifts
+of the good world by his wickedness.  If he see fit to destroy man
+out of the earth, he will destroy none but those who deserve and
+need destroying.  He will save those whom, like Noah, he can trust
+to begin afresh, and raise up a better race of men to do his work in
+the world.  If God send a flood to destroy all living things, any
+when or anywhere, he will show, by putting the rainbow in the cloud,
+that floods and destruction and anger are not his rule; that his
+rule is sunshine, and peace, and order; that though he found it
+necessary once to curse the ground, once to sweep away a wicked race
+of men, yet that even that was, if one dare use the words of God,
+against his gracious will; that his will was from the beginning,
+peace on earth, and not floods, and good will to men, and not
+destruction; and that in his HEART, in the abyss of his essence, and
+of which it is written, that God is Love--in his heart I say, he
+said, 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake,
+even though the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.
+Neither will I again smite everything living, as I have done.  While
+the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, and
+day and night, shall not cease.'
+
+This is the God which the book of Genesis goes on revealing and
+unveiling to us more and more--a God in whom men may TRUST.
+
+The heathen could not trust their gods.  The Bible tells men of a
+God whom they can trust.  That is just the difference between the
+Bible and all other books in the world.  But what a difference!
+Difference enough to make us say, Sooner that every other book in
+the world were lost, and the Bible preserved, than that we should
+lose the Bible, and with the Bible lose faith in God.
+
+And now, my friends, what shall we learn from this?
+
+What shall we learn?  Have we not learnt enough already?  If we have
+learnt something more of who God is; if we have learnt that he is a
+God in whom we can trust through joy and sorrow, through light and
+darkness, through life and death, have we not learnt enough for
+ourselves?  Yes, if even those poor and weak words about God which I
+have just spoken, could go home into all your hearts, and take root,
+and bear fruit there, they would give you a peace of mind, a
+comfort, a courage among all the chances and changes of this mortal
+life, and a hope for the life to come, such as no other news which
+man can tell you will ever give.  But there is one special lesson
+which we may learn from the history of the flood, of which I may as
+well tell you at once.  The Bible account of the flood will teach us
+how to look at the many terrible accidents, as we foolishly call
+them, which happen still upon this earth.  There are floods still,
+here and there, earthquakes, fires, fearful disasters, like that
+great colliery disaster of last year, which bring death, misery and
+ruin to thousands.  The Bible tells us what to think of them, when
+it tells us of the flood.
+
+Do I mean that these disasters come as punishments to the people who
+are killed by them?  That is exactly what I do not mean.  It was
+true of the flood.  It is true, no doubt, in many other cases.  But
+our blessed Lord has specially forbidden us to settle when it is
+true to say that any particular set of people are destroyed for
+their sins:  forbidden us to say that the poor creatures who perish
+in this way are worse than their neighbours.
+
+'Thinkest thou,' he says, 'that those Galilaeans whose blood Pilate
+mingled with their sacrifices, were sinners above all the
+Galilaeans?  Or those eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell,
+and killed them; think you that they were sinners above all who
+dwelt in Jerusalem?  I tell you nay.'
+
+'Judge not,' he says, 'and ye shall not be judged,' and therefore we
+must not judge.  We have no right to say, for instance, that the
+terrible earthquake in Italy, two years ago, came as a punishment
+for the sins of the people.  We have no right to say that the twenty
+or thirty thousand human beings, with innocent children among them
+by hundreds, who were crushed or swallowed up by that earthquake in
+a few hours, were sinners above all that dwelt in Italy.  We must
+not say that, for the Lord God himself has forbidden it.
+
+But this we may say (for God himself has said it in the Bible), that
+these earthquakes, and all other disasters, great or small, do not
+come of themselves--do not come by accident, or chance, or blind
+necessity; but that he sends them, and that they fulfil his will and
+word.  He sends them, and therefore they do not come in vain.  They
+fulfil his will, and his will is a good will.  They carry out his
+purpose, but his purpose is a gracious purpose.  God may send them
+in anger; but in his anger he remembers mercy, and his very wrath to
+some is part and parcel of his love to the rest.  Therefore these
+disasters must be meant to do good, and will do good to mankind.
+They may be meant to teach men, to warn them, to make them more wise
+and prudent for the future, more humble and aware of their own
+ignorance and weakness, more mindful of the frailty of human life,
+that remembering that in the midst of life we are in death, they may
+seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is
+near.  They may be meant to do that, and to do a thousand things
+more.  For God's ways are not as our ways, or his thoughts as our
+thoughts.  His ways are unsearchable, and his paths past finding
+out.  Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him,
+or even settle what the Lord means by doing this or that?
+
+All we can say is--and that is a truly blessed thing to be able to
+say--that floods and earthquakes, fire and storms, come from the
+Lord whose name is Love; the same Lord who walked with Adam in the
+garden, who brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, who was
+born on earth of the Virgin Mary, who shed his life-blood for sinful
+man, who wept over Jerusalem even when he was about to destroy it so
+that not one stone was left on another, and who, when he looked on
+the poor little children of Judaea, untaught or mistaught, enslaved
+by the Romans, and but too likely to perish or be carried away
+captive in the fearful war which was coming on their land, said of
+them, 'It is not the will of your Father in heaven, that one of
+these little ones shall perish.'  Him at least we can trust, in the
+dark and dreadful things of this world, as well as in the bright and
+cheerful ones; and say with Job, 'Though he slay me, yet will I
+trust in him.  I have received good from the hands of the Lord, and
+shall I not receive evil?'
+
+
+
+SERMON V.  ABRAHAM
+
+
+
+(First Sunday in Lent)
+
+GENESIS xvii.  1, 2.  And when Abram was ninety years old and nine,
+the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty
+God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.
+
+I have told you that the Bible reveals, that is, unveils the Lord
+God, Jesus Christ our Lord, and through him God the Father Almighty.
+I have tried to show you how the Bible does so, step by step.  I go
+on to show you another step which the Bible takes, and which
+explains much that has gone before.
+
+From whom did Moses and the holy men of old whom Moses taught get
+their knowledge of God, the true God?
+
+The answer seems to be--from Abraham.
+
+God taught Moses more, much more than he taught Abraham.  It was
+Moses who bade men call God Jehovah, the I AM; but who, hundreds of
+years before, taught them to call him the Almighty God?
+
+The answer seems to be, Abraham.  God, we read, appeared to Abraham,
+and said to him, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy father's
+house, unto a land that I shall show thee, and I will make of thee a
+great nation.'  And again the Lord said to him, 'I am the Almighty
+God, walk before me and be thou perfect, and thou shalt be a father
+of many nations.'
+
+'And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for
+righteousness.  And he was called the friend of God.'
+
+But from what did Abraham turn to worship the living God?  From
+idols?  We are not certain.  There is little or no mention of idols
+in Abraham's time.  He worshipped, more probably, the host of
+heaven, the sun and moon and stars.  So say the old traditions of
+the Arabs, who are descended from Abraham through Ishmael, and so it
+is most likely to have been.  That was the temptation in the East.
+You read again and again how his children, the Jews, turned back
+from God to worship the host of heaven; and that false worship seems
+to have crept in at some very early time.  The sun, you must
+remember, and the moon are far more brilliant and powerful in the
+East than here; their power of doing harm or good to human beings
+and to the crops of the land is far greater; while the stars shine
+in the East with a brightness of which we here have no notion.  We
+do not know, in this cloudy climate, what St. Paul calls the glory
+of the stars; nor see how much one star differs from another star in
+glory; and therefore here in the North we have never been tempted to
+worship them as the Easterns were.  The sun, the moon, the stars,
+were the old gods of the East, the Elohim, the high and mighty ones,
+who ruled over men, over their good and bad fortunes, over the
+weather, the cattle, the crops, sending burning drought, pestilence,
+sun-strokes, and those moon-strokes which we never have here; but of
+which the Psalmist speaks when he says, 'The sun shall not smite
+thee by day, neither the moon by night.'  And them the old Easterns
+worshipped in some wild confused way.
+
+But to Abraham it was revealed that the sun, the moon, and the stars
+were not Elohim--the high and mighty Ones.  That there was but one
+Elohim, one high and mighty One, the Almighty maker of them all.  He
+did not learn that, perhaps, at once.  Indeed the Bible tells us how
+God taught him step by step, as he teaches all men, and revealed
+himself to him again and again, till he had taught Abraham all that
+he was to know.  But he did teach him this; as a beautiful old story
+of the Arabs sets forth.  They say how (whether before or after God
+called him, we cannot tell) Abraham at night saw a star:  and he
+said, 'This is my Lord.'  But when the star set, he said, 'I like
+not those who vanish away.'  And when he saw the moon rising, he
+said, 'This is my Lord.'  But when the moon too set, he said,
+'Verily, if my Lord direct me not in the right way, I shall be as
+one who goeth astray.'  But when he saw the sun rising, he said,
+'This is my Lord:  this is greater than star or moon.'  But the sun
+went down likewise.  Then said Abraham, 'O my people, I am clear of
+these things.  I turn my face to him who hath made the heaven and
+the earth.'
+
+And was this all that Abraham believed--that the sun and moon and
+stars were not gods, but that there was a God besides, who had made
+them all?  My friends, there have been thousands and tens of
+thousands since, I fear, who have believed as much as that, and yet
+who cannot call Abraham their spiritual father, who are not
+justified by faith with faithful Abraham.
+
+For merely to believe that, is a dead faith, which will never be
+counted for righteousness, because it will never make man a
+righteous man doing righteous and good deeds as Abraham did.
+
+Of Abraham it is written, that what he knew, he did.  That his faith
+wrought with his works.  And by his works his faith was made
+perfect.  That when he gained faith in God, he went and acted on his
+faith.  When God called him he went out, not knowing whither he
+went.
+
+His faith is only shown by his works.  Because he believed in God he
+went and did things which he would not have done if he had not
+believed in God.  Of him it is written, that he obeyed the voice of
+the Lord, and kept his charge, his commandments, his statutes, and
+his laws.
+
+In a word, he had not merely found out that there was one God, but
+that that one God was a good God, a God whom he must obey, and obey
+by being a good man.  Therefore his faith was counted to him for
+righteousness, because it was righteousness, and made him do
+righteous deeds.
+
+He believed that God was helping him; therefore he had no need to
+oppress or overreach any man.  He believed that God's eye was on
+him; therefore he dared not oppress or overreach any man.
+
+His faith in God made him brave.  He went forth he knew not whither;
+but he had put his trust in God, and he did not fear.  He and his
+three hundred slaves, born in his house, were not afraid to set out
+against the four Arab kings who had just conquered the five kings of
+the vale of Jordan, and plundered the whole land.  Abraham and his
+little party of faithful slaves follow them for miles, and fall on
+them and defeat them utterly, setting the captives free, and
+bringing back all the plunder; and then, in return for all that he
+has done, Abraham will take nothing--not even, he says, 'a thread or
+a shoe-latchet--lest men should say, We have made Abraham rich.'
+And why?
+
+Because his faith in God made him high-minded, generous, and
+courteous; as when he bids Lot go whither he will with his flocks
+and herds.  'Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between thee and
+me.  If thou wilt take the left hand, I will go to the right.'  He
+is then, as again with the king of Sodom, and with the three
+strangers at the tent door, and with the children of Heth, when he
+is buying the cave of Machpelah for a burying-place for Sarah--
+always and everywhere the same courteous, self-restrained, high-
+bred, high-minded man.
+
+It has been said that true religion will make a man a more thorough
+gentleman than all the courts in Europe.  And it is true:  you may
+see simple labouring men as thorough gentlemen as any duke, simply
+because they have learned to fear God; and fearing him, to restrain
+themselves, and to think of other people more than of themselves,
+which is the very root and essence of all good breeding.  And such a
+man was Abraham of old--a plain man, dwelling in tents, helping to
+tend his own cattle, fetching in the calf from the field himself,
+and dressing it for his guests with his own hand; but still, as the
+children of Heth said of him, a mighty prince--not merely in wealth
+of flocks and herds, but a prince in manners and a prince in heart.
+
+But faith in God did more for Abraham than this:  it made him a
+truly pious man--it made him the friend of God.
+
+There were others in Abraham's days who had some knowledge of the
+one true God.  Lot his nephew, Abimelech, Aner, Eshcol, Mamre, and
+others, seem to have known whom Abraham meant when he spoke of the
+Almighty God.  But of Abraham alone it is said that he believed God;
+that he trusted in God, and rested on him; was built up on God;
+rested on God as a child in the mother's arms--for this we are told,
+is the full meaning of the word in the Bible--and looked to God as
+his shield and his exceeding great reward.  He trusted in God
+utterly, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
+
+And of Abraham alone it is said that he was the friend of God; that
+God spoke with him, and he with God.  He first of all men of whom we
+read, at least since the time of Adam, knew what communion with God
+meant; knew that God spoke to him as a friend, a benefactor, a
+preserver, who was teaching and training him with a father's love
+and care; and felt that he in return could answer God, could open
+his heart to him, tell him not only of his wants, but of his doubts
+and fears.
+
+Yes, we may almost say, on the strength of the Bible, that Abraham
+was the first human being, as far as we know, who prayed with his
+heart and soul; who knew what true prayer means--the prayer of the
+heart, by which man draws near to God, and finds that God is near to
+him.  This--this communion with God, is the especial glory of
+Abraham's character.  This it is which has given him his name
+through all generations, The friend of God.  Or, as his descendants
+the Arabs call him to this day, simply, 'The Friend.'
+
+This it is which gained him the name of the Father of the Faithful;
+the father of all who believe, whether they be descended from him,
+or whether they be, like us, of a different nation.  This it is
+which has made a wise man say of Abraham, that if we will consider
+what he knew and did, and in what a dark age he lived, we shall see
+that Abraham may be (unless we except Moses) the greatest of mere
+human beings--that the human race may owe more to him than to any
+mortal man.
+
+But why need we learn from Abraham? we who, being Christians, know
+and believe the true faith so much more clearly than Abraham could
+do.
+
+Ah, my friends, it is easier to know than to believe, and easier to
+know than to do.  Easier to talk of Abraham's faith than to have
+Abraham's faith.  Easier to preach learned and orthodox sermons
+about how Abraham was justified by his faith, than to be justified
+ourselves by our own faith.
+
+And say not in your hearts, 'It was easy for Abraham to believe God.
+I should have believed of course in his place.  If God spoke to me,
+of course I should obey him.'  My friends, there is no greater and
+no easier mistake.  God has spoken to many a man who has not
+believed him, neither obeyed him, and so he may to you.  God spoke
+to Abraham, and he believed him and obeyed him.  And why?  Because
+there was in Abraham's heart something which there is not in all
+men's hearts--something which ANSWERED to God's call, and made him
+certain that the call was from God--even the Holy Spirit of God.
+
+So God may call you, and you may obey him, if only the Spirit of God
+be in you; but not else.  MAY call you, did I say?  God DOES call
+you and me, does speak to us, does command us, far more clearly than
+he did Abraham.  We know the mystery of Christ, which in other ages
+was NOT made known to the sons of men as it is now revealed to his
+holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.  God, who at sundry times
+and in divers manners spoke to the fathers by the prophets, hath in
+these last days spoken to us by his SON, Jesus Christ our Lord, and
+told us our duty, and the reward which doing our duty will surely
+bring, far more clearly than ever he did to Abraham.
+
+But do we listen to him?  Do we say with Abraham, 'O my people, I am
+clear of all these things which rise and set, which are born and
+die, which begin and end in time, and turn my face to him that made
+heaven and earth!'  If so, how is it that we see people everywhere
+worshipping not idols of wood and stone, but other things, all
+manner of things beside God, and saying, 'These are my Elohim.
+These are the high and mighty ones whom I must obey.  These are the
+strong things on which depend my fortune and my happiness.  I must
+obey THEM first, and let plain doing right and avoiding wrong come
+after as it can.'
+
+One worships the laws of trade, and says, 'I know this and that is
+hardly right; but it is in the way of business, and therefore I must
+do it.'
+
+One worships public opinion, and follows after the multitude to do
+evil, doing what he knows is wrong, simply because others do it, and
+it is the way of the world.
+
+One worships the interest of his party, whether in religion or in
+politics; and does for their sake mean and false, cruel and unjust
+things, which he would not do for his own private interest.
+
+Too many, even in a free country, worship great people, and put
+their trust in princes, saying, 'I am sorry to have to do this.  I
+know it is rather mean; but I must, or I shall lose such and such a
+great man's interest and favour.'  Or, 'I know I cannot afford this
+expense; but if I do not I shall not get into good society, and this
+person and that will not ask me to his house.'
+
+All, meanwhile, except a few, rich or poor, worship money; and
+believe more or less, in spite of the Lord's solemn warning to the
+contrary, that a man's life does consist in the abundance of the
+things which he possesses.
+
+These are the Elohim of this world, the high and mighty things to
+which men turn for help instead of to the living God, who was before
+all things, and will be after them; and behold they vanish away, and
+where then are those that have put their trust in them?
+
+But blessed is he whose trust is in God the Almighty, and whose hope
+is in the Lord Jehovah, the eternal I Am.  Blessed is he who, like
+faithful Abraham, says to his family, 'My people, I am clear of all
+these things.  I turn my face from them to him who hath made earth
+and heaven.  I go through this world like Abraham, not knowing
+whither I go; but like Abraham, I fear not, for I go whither God
+sends me.  I rest on God; he is my defence, and my exceeding great
+reward.  To have known him, loved him, obeyed him, is reward enough,
+even if I do not, as the world would say, succeed in life.
+Therefore I long not for power and honour, riches and pleasure.  I
+am content to do my duty faithfully in that station of life to which
+God has called me, and to be forgiven for all my failings and
+shortcomings for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that is
+enough for me; for I believe in my Father in heaven, and believe
+that he knows best for me and for my children.  He has not promised
+me, as he promised Abraham, to make of me a great nation; but he has
+promised that the righteous man shall never be deserted, or his
+children beg their bread.  He has promised to keep his covenant and
+mercy to a thousand generations with those who keep his commandments
+and do them; and that is enough for me.  In God have I put my trust,
+and I will not fear what man, or earth, or heaven, or any created
+thing can do unto me.'
+
+Blessed is that man, whether he inherit honourably great estates
+from his ancestors, or whether he make honourably great wealth and
+station for himself; whether he spend his life quietly and honestly
+in the country farm or in the village shop, or whether he simply
+earn his bread from week to week by plough and spade.  Blessed is
+he, and blessed are his children after him.  For he is a son of
+Abraham; and of him God hath said, as of Abraham, 'I know him that
+he will command his children and household after him, and they shall
+keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord
+may bring on him the blessing which he has spoken.'
+
+Yes; blessed is that man.  He has chosen his share of Abraham's
+faith; and he and his children after him shall have their share of
+Abraham's blessing.
+
+
+
+SERMON VI.  JACOB AND ESAU
+
+
+
+(Second Sunday in Lent.)
+
+GENESIS xxv. 29-34.  And Jacob sod pottage:  and Esau came from the
+field, and he was faint:  And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray
+thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint:  therefore was his
+name called Edom.  And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
+And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die:  and what profit
+shall this birthright do to me?  And Jacob said, Swear to me this
+day; and he sware unto him:  and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
+Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat
+and drink, and rose up, and went his way:  thus Esau despised his
+birthright.
+
+I have been telling you of late that the Bible is the revelation of
+God.  But how does the story of Jacob and Esau reveal God to us?
+What further lesson concerning God do we learn therefrom?
+
+I think that if we will take the story simply as it stands we shall
+see easily enough.  For it is all simple and natural enough.  Jacob
+and Esau, we shall see, were men of like passions with ourselves;
+men as we are, mixed up of good and evil, sometimes right and
+sometimes wrong:  and God rewarded them when they did right, and
+punished them when they did wrong, just as he does with us now.
+
+They were men, though, of very different characters:  we may see men
+like them now every day round us.  Esau, we read, was a hunter--a
+man of the field; a bold, fierce, active man; generous, brave, and
+kind-hearted, as the end of his story shows:  but with just the
+faults which such a man would have.  He was hasty, reckless, and
+fond of pleasure; passionate too, and violent.  Have we not seen
+just such men again and again, and liked them for what was good in
+them, and been sorry too that they were not more sober and
+reasonable, and true to themselves?
+
+Jacob was the very opposite kind of man.  He was a plain man--what
+we call a still, solid, prudent, quiet man--and a dweller in tents:
+he lived peaceably, looking after his father's flocks and herds;
+while Esau liked better the sport and danger of hunting wild beasts,
+and bringing home venison to his father.
+
+Now Jacob, we see, was of course a more thoughtful man than Esau.
+He kept more quiet, and so had more time to think:  and he had
+plainly thought a great deal over God's promise to his grandfather
+Abraham.  He believed that God had promised Abraham that he would
+make his seed as the sand of the sea for multitude, and give them
+that fair land of Canaan, and that in his seed all the families of
+the earth should be blessed; and that seemed to him, and rightly, a
+very grand and noble thing.  And he set his heart on getting that
+blessing for himself, and supplanting his elder brother Esau, and
+being the heir of the promises in his stead.  Well--that was mean
+and base and selfish perhaps:  but there is somewhat of an excuse
+for Jacob's conduct, in the fact that he and Esau were twins; that
+in one sense neither of them was older than the other.  And you must
+recollect, that it was not at all a regular custom in the East for
+the eldest son to be his father's heir, as it is in England.  You
+find that few or none of the great kings of the Jews were eldest
+sons.  The custom was not kept up as it is here.  So Jacob may have
+said to himself, and not have been very wrong in saying it:
+
+'I have as good a right to the birthright as Esau.  My father loves
+him best because he brings him in venison; but I know the value of
+the honour which is before my family.  Surely the one of us who
+cares most about the birthright will be most fit to have it, and
+ought to have it; and Esau cares nothing for it, while I do.'
+
+So Jacob, in his cunning, bargaining way, took advantage of his
+brother's weak, hasty temper, and bought his birthright of him, as
+the text tells.
+
+That story shows us what sort of a man Esau was:  hasty, careless,
+fond of the good things of this life.  He had no reason to complain
+if he lost his birthright.  He did not care for it, and so he had
+thrown it away.  Perhaps he forgot what he had done; but his sin
+found him out, as our sins are sure to find each of us out.  The day
+came when he wanted his birthright and could not have it, and found
+no place for repentance--that is, no chance of undoing what he had
+done--though he sought it carefully with tears.  He had sown, and he
+must reap; he had made his bed, and he must lie on it.  And so must
+Jacob in his turn.
+
+Now this, I think, is just what the story teaches us concerning God.
+God chooses Abraham's family to grow into a great nation, and to be
+a peculiar people.  The next question will be:  If God favours that
+family, will he do unjust things to help them?--will he let them do
+unjust things to help themselves?  The Bible answers positively, No.
+God will not be unjust or arbitrary in choosing one man and
+rejecting another.  If he chooses Jacob, it is because Jacob is fit
+for the work which God wants done.  If he rejects Esau, it is
+because Esau is not fit.
+
+It is natural, I know, to pity poor Esau; but one has no right to do
+more.  One has no right to fancy for a moment that God was arbitrary
+or hard upon him.  Esau is not the sort of man to be the father of a
+great nation, or of anything else great.  Greedy, passionate,
+reckless people like him, without due feeling of religion or of the
+unseen world, are not the men to govern the world, or help it
+forward, or be of use to mankind, or train up their families in
+justice and wisdom and piety.  If there had been no people in the
+world but people like Esau, we should be savages at this day,
+without religion or civilization of any kind.  They are of the
+earth, earthy; dust they are, and unto dust they will return.  It is
+men like Jacob whom God chooses--men who have a feeling of religion
+and the unseen world; men who can look forward, and live by faith,
+and form plans for the future--and carry them out too, against
+disappointment and difficulty, till they succeed.
+
+Look at one side of Jacob's character--his perseverance.  He serves
+seven years for Rachel, because he loves her.  Then when he is
+cheated, and Leah given him instead, he serves seven years more for
+Rachel--'and they seemed to him a short time, for the love he bore
+to her;' and then he serves seven years more for the flocks and
+herds.  A slave, or little better than a slave, of his own free
+will, for one-and-twenty years, to get what he wanted.  Those are
+the men whom God uses, and whom God prospers.  Men with deep hearts
+and strong wills, who set their minds on something which they cannot
+see, and work steadfastly for it, till they get it; for God gives it
+to them in good time--when patience has had her perfect work upon
+their characters, and made them fit for success.
+
+Esau, we find, got some blessing--the sort of blessing he was fit
+for.  He loved his father, and he was rewarded.  'And Isaac his
+father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the
+fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by
+thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall
+come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt
+break his yoke from off thy neck.'
+
+He was a brave, generous-hearted man, in spite of his faults.  He
+was to live the free hunter's life which he loved; and we find that
+he soon became the head of a wild powerful tribe, and his sons after
+him.  Dukes of Edom they were called for several generations; but
+they never rose to any solid and lasting power; they never became a
+great nation, as Jacob's children did.  They were just what one
+would expect--wild, unruly, violent people.  They have long since
+perished utterly off the face of the earth.
+
+And what did Jacob get, who so meanly bought the birthright, and
+cheated his father out of the blessing?  Trouble in the flesh;
+vanity and vexation of spirit.  He had to flee from his father's
+house; never to see his mother again; to wander over the deserts to
+kinsmen who cheated him as he had cheated others; to serve Laban for
+twenty-one years; to crouch miserably in fear and trembling, as a
+petitioner for his life before Esau whom he had wronged, and to be
+made more ashamed than ever, by finding that generous Esau had
+forgiven and forgotten all.  Then to see his daughter brought to
+shame, his sons murderers, plotting against their own brother, his
+favourite son; to see his grey hairs going down with sorrow to the
+grave; to confess to Pharaoh, after one hundred and twenty years of
+life, that few and evil had been the days of his pilgrimage.
+
+Then did his faith in God win no reward?  Not so.  That was his
+reward, to be chastened and punished, till his meanness was purged
+out of him.  He had taken God for his guide; and God did guide him
+accordingly; though along a very different path from what he
+expected.  God accepted his faith, delivered his soul, gave him rest
+and peace at last in his old age in Egypt, let him find his son
+Joseph again in power and honour:  but all along God punished his
+own inventions--as he will punish yours and mine, my friends, all
+the while that he may be accepting our faith and delivering our
+souls, because we trust in him.  So God rewarded Jacob by giving him
+more light:  by not leaving him to himself, and his own darkness and
+meanness, but opening his eyes to understand the wondrous things of
+God's law, and showing him how God's law is everlasting, righteous,
+not to be escaped by any man; how every action brings forth its
+appointed fruit; how those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.
+Jacob's first notion was like the notion of the heathen in all
+times, 'My God has a special favour for me, therefore I may do what
+I like.  He will prosper me in doing wrong; he will help me to cheat
+my father.'  But God showed him that that was just not what he would
+do for him.  He would help and protect him; but only while he was
+doing RIGHT.  God would not alter his moral laws for him or any man.
+God would be just and righteous; and Jacob must be so likewise, till
+he learnt to trust not merely in a God who happened to have a
+special favour to him, but in the righteous God who loves justice,
+and wishes to make men righteous even as he is righteous, and will
+make them righteous, if they trust in him.
+
+That was the reward of Jacob's faith--the best reward which any man
+can have.  He was taught to know God, whom truly to know is
+everlasting life.  And this, it seems to me, is the great revelation
+concerning God which we learn from the history of Jacob and Esau.
+That God, how much soever favour he may show to certain persons, is
+still, essentially and always, a just God.
+
+And now, my friends, if any of you are tempted to follow Jacob's
+example, take warning betimes.  You will be tempted.  There are men
+among you--there are in every congregation--who are, like Jacob,
+sober, industrious, careful, prudent men, and fairly religious too;
+men who have the good sense to see that Solomon's proverbs are true,
+and that the way to wealth and prosperity is to fear God, and keep
+his commandments.
+
+May you prosper; may God's blessing be upon your labour; may you
+succeed in life, and see your children well settled and thriving
+round you, and go down to the grave in peace.
+
+But never forget, my good friends, that you will be tempted as Jacob
+was--to be dishonest.  I cannot tell why; but professedly religious
+men, in all countries, in all religions, are, and always have been,
+tempted in that way--to be mean and cunning and false at times.  It
+is so, and there is no denying it:  when all other sins are shut out
+from them by their religious profession, and their care for their
+own character, and their fear of hell, the sin of lying, for some
+strange reason, is left open to them; and to it they are tempted to
+give way.  For God's sake--for the sake of Christ, who was full of
+grace and truth--for your own sakes--struggle against that.  Unless
+you wish to say at last with poor old Jacob, 'Few and evil have been
+the days of my pilgrimage;' struggle against that.  If you fear God
+and believe that he is with you, God will prosper your plans and
+labour; but never make that an excuse for saying in your hearts,
+like Jacob, 'God intends that I should have these good things;
+therefore I may take them for myself by unfair means.'  The
+birthright is yours.  It is you, the steady, prudent, God-fearing
+ones, who will prosper on the earth, and not poor wild, hot-headed
+Esau.  But do not make that an excuse for robbing and cheating Esau,
+because he is not as thoughtful as you are.  The Lord made him as
+well as you; and died for him as well as for you; and wills his
+salvation as well as yours; and if you cheat him the Lord will
+avenge him speedily.  If you give way to meanness, covetousness,
+falsehood, as Jacob did, you will rue it; the Lord will enter into
+judgment with you quickly, and all the more quickly because he loves
+you.  Because there is some right in you--because you are on the
+whole on the right road--the Lord will visit you with disappointment
+and affliction, and make your own sins your punishment.
+
+If you deceive other people, other people shall deceive you, as they
+did Jacob.  If you lay traps, you shall fall into them yourselves,
+as Jacob did.  If you fancy that because you trust in God, God will
+overlook any sin in you, as Jacob did, you shall see, as Jacob did,
+that your sin shall surely find you out.  The Lord will be more
+sharp and severe with you than with Esau.  And why?  Because he has
+given you more, and requires more of you; and therefore he will
+chastise you, and sift you like wheat, till he has parted the wheat
+from the tares.  The wheat is your faith, your belief that if you
+trust in God he will prosper you, body and soul.  That is God's good
+seed, which he has sown in you.  The tares are your fancies that you
+may do wrong and mean things to help yourselves, because God has an
+especial favour for you.  That is the devil's sowing, which God will
+burn out of you by the fire of affliction, as he did out of Jacob,
+and keep your faith safe, as good seed in his garner, for the use of
+your children after you, that you may teach them to walk in God's
+commandments and serve him in spirit and in truth.  For God is a God
+of truth, and no liar shall stand in his sight, let him be never so
+religious; he requires truth in the inward parts, and truth he will
+have; and whom he loves he will chasten, as he chastened Jacob of
+old, till he has made him understand that honesty is the best
+policy; and that whatever false prophets may tell you, there is not
+one law for the believer and another for the unbeliever; but
+whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap, and receive the due
+reward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil.
+
+
+
+SERMON VII.  JOSEPH
+
+
+
+(Preached on the Sunday before the Wedding of the Prince of Wales.
+March 8th, third Sunday in Lent.)
+
+GENESIS xxxix. 9.  How can I do this great wickedness, and sin
+against God?
+
+The story of Joseph is one which will go home to all healthy hearts.
+Every child can understand, every child can feel with it.  It is a
+story for all men and all times.  Even if it had not been true, and
+not real fact, but a romance of man's invention, it would have been
+loved and admired by men; far more then, when we know that it is
+true, that it actually did so happen; that is part and parcel of the
+Holy Scriptures.
+
+We all, surely, know the story--How Joseph's brethren envy him and
+sell him for a slave into Egypt--how there for a while he prospers--
+how his master's wife tempts him--how he is thrown into prison on
+her slander--how there again he prospers--how he explains the dreams
+of Pharaoh's servants--how he lies long forgotten in the prison--how
+at last Pharaoh sends for him to interpret a dream for him, and how
+he rises to power and great glory--how his brothers come down to
+Egypt to buy corn, and how they find him lord of all the land--how
+subtilly he tries them to see if they have repented of their old
+sin--how his heart yearns over them in spite of all their wickedness
+to him--how at last he reveals himself, and forgives them utterly,
+and sends for his poor old father Jacob down into Egypt.  Whosoever
+does not delight in that story, simply as a story, whenever he hears
+it read, cannot have a wholesome human heart in him.
+
+But why was this story of Joseph put into Holy Scripture, and at
+such length, too?  It seems, at first sight, to be simply a family
+history--the story of brothers and their father; it seems, at first
+sight, to teach us nothing concerning our redemption and salvation;
+it seems, at first sight, not to reveal anything fresh to us
+concerning God; it seems, at first sight, not to be needed for the
+general plan of the Bible history.  It tells us, of course, how the
+Israelites first came into Egypt; and that was necessary for us to
+know.  But the Bible might have told us that in ten verses.  Why has
+it spent upon the story of Joseph and his brethren, not ten verses,
+but ten chapters?
+
+Now we have a right to ask such questions as these, if we do not ask
+them out of any carping, fault-finding spirit, trying to pick holes
+in the Bible, from which God defend us and all Christian men.  If we
+ask such questions in faith and reverence--that is, believing and
+taking for granted that the Bible is right, and respecting it, as
+the Book of books, in which our own forefathers and all Christian
+nations upon earth for many ages have found all things necessary for
+their salvation--if, I say, we question over the Bible in that
+child-like, simple, respectful spirit, which is the true spirit of
+wisdom and understanding, by which our eyes will be truly opened to
+see the wondrous things of God's law:  then we may not only seek as
+our Lord bade us, but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that we
+should.  We shall find some good reason for this story of Joseph
+being so long, and find that the story of Joseph, like all the rest
+of the Bible, reveals a new lesson to us concerning God and the
+character of God.
+
+I said that the story of Joseph looks, at first sight, to be merely
+a family history.  But suppose that that were the very reason why it
+is in the Bible, because it is a family history.  Suppose that
+families were very sacred things in the eyes of God.  That the ties
+of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were
+appointed, not by man, but by God.  Then would not Joseph's story be
+worthy of being in the Bible?  Would it not, as I said it would,
+reveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of
+God?
+
+Consider now, my friends:  Is it not one great difference--one of
+the very greatest--between men and beasts, that men live in
+families, and beasts do not?  That men have the sacred family
+feeling, and beasts have not?  They have the beginnings of it, no
+doubt.  The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but
+only for a while.  God has implanted in her something of that
+deepest, holiest, purest of all feelings--a mother's love.  But as
+soon as her young ones are able to take care of themselves, they are
+nothing to her--among the lower animals, less than nothing.  The
+fish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs jealously, and as
+soon as they are hatched, turn round and devour her own young.
+
+The feeling of a FATHER to his child, again, you find is fainter
+still among beasts.  The father, as you all know, not only cares
+little for his offspring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them at
+first, but is often jealous of them, hates them, will try to kill
+them when they grow up.
+
+Husband and wife, again:  there is no sacredness between them among
+dumb animals.  A lasting and an unselfish attachment, not merely in
+youth, but through old age and beyond the grave--what is there like
+this among the animals, except in the case of certain birds, like
+the dove and the eagle, who keep the same mate year after year, and
+have been always looked on with a sort of affection and respect by
+men for that very reason?
+
+But where, among beasts, do you ever find any trace of those two
+sacred human feelings--the love of brother to brother, or of child
+to father?  Where do you find the notion that the tie between
+husband and wife is a sacred thing, to be broken at no temptation,
+but in man?
+
+These are THE feelings which man has alone of all living animals.
+
+These then, remember, are the very family feelings which come out in
+the story of Joseph.  He honours holy wedlock when he tells his
+master's wife, 'How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against
+God?'  He honours his father, when he is not ashamed of him, wild
+shepherd out of the desert though he might be, and an abomination to
+the Egyptians, while he himself is now in power and wealth and
+glory, as a prince in a civilized country.  He honours the tie of
+brother to brother, by forgiving and weeping over the very brothers
+who have sold him into slavery.
+
+But what has all this to do with God?
+
+Now man, as we know, is an animal with an immortal spirit in him.
+He has, as St. Paul so carefully explains to us, a flesh and a
+spirit--a flesh like the beasts which perish; a spirit which comes
+from God.
+
+Now the Bible teaches us that man did not get these family feelings
+from his flesh, from the animal, brute part of him.  They are not
+carnal, but spiritual.  He gets them from his spirit, and they are
+inspired into him by the Spirit of God.  They come not from the
+earth below, but from the heaven above; from the image of God, in
+which man alone of all living things was made.
+
+For if it were not so, we should surely see some family feeling in
+the beasts which are most like men.  But we do not.  In the apes,
+which are, in their shape and fleshly nature, so strangely and
+shockingly like human beings, there is not as much family feeling as
+there is in many birds, or even insects.  Nay, the wild negroes,
+among whom they live, hold them in abhorrence, and believe that they
+were once men like themselves, who were gradually changed into brute
+beasts, by giving way to detestable sins; while these very negroes
+themselves, heathens and savages as they are, HAVE the family
+feeling--the feeling of husband for wife, father for child, brother
+for brother; not, indeed, as strongly and purely as we, or at least
+those of us who are really Christian and civilized, but still they
+have it; and that makes between the lowest man and the highest brute
+a difference which I hold is as wide as the space between heaven and
+earth.
+
+It is man alone, I say, who has the idea of family; and who has,
+too, the strange, but most true belief that these family ties are
+appointed by God--that they are a part of his religion--that in
+breaking them, by being an unfaithful husband, a dishonest servant,
+an unnatural son, a selfish brother, he sins, not only against man,
+and man's order and laws, but against God.
+
+Parent and child, brother and sister--those ties are not of the
+earth earthy, but of the heaven of God, eternal.  They may begin in
+time; of what happened before we came into this world we know
+nought.  But having begun, they cannot end.  Of what will happen
+after we leave this world, that at least we know in part.
+
+Parent and child; brother and sister; husband and wife likewise;
+these are no ties of man's invention.  They are ties of God's
+binding; they are patterns and likenesses of his substance, and of
+his being.  Of the eternal Father, who says for ever to the eternal
+Son, 'This day have I begotten THEE.'  Of the Son who says for ever
+to the Father, 'I come to do thy will, O God.'  Of the Son of God,
+Jesus Christ, who is not ashamed to call us his brethren; but like a
+greater Joseph, was sent before by God to save our lives with a
+great deliverance when our forefathers were but savages and
+heathens.  Husband and wife likewise--are not they two divine words-
+-not human words at all?  Has not God consecrated the state of
+matrimony to such an excellent mystery, that in it is signified and
+represented the mystical union between Christ and his Church?  Are
+not husbands to love their wives, and give themselves for them as
+Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it?  That, indeed, was
+not revealed in the Old Testament, but it is revealed in the New;
+and marriage, like all other human ties, is holy and divine, and
+comes from God down to men.
+
+Yes.  These family ties are of God.  It was to show us how sacred,
+how Godlike they are--how eternal and necessary for all mankind--
+that Joseph's story was written in Holy Scripture.
+
+They are of God, I say.  And he who despises them, despises not man
+but God; who hath also given us his Holy Spirit to make us know how
+sacred these bonds are.
+
+He who looks lightly on the love of child to parent, or brother to
+brother, or husband to wife, and bids each man please himself, each
+man help himself, and shift for himself, would take away from men
+the very thing which raises them above the beasts which perish, and
+lower them again to the likeness of the flesh, that they may of the
+flesh reap corruption.
+
+They who, under whatever pretence of religion part asunder families;
+or tell children, like the wicked Pharisees of old, that they may
+say to their parents, Corban--'I have given to God the service and
+help which, as your child, I should have given to you'--shall be
+called, if not by men, at least by God himself, hypocrites, who draw
+near to God with their mouths, and honour him with their lips, while
+their heart is far from him.
+
+I think now we may see that I was right when I said--Perhaps the
+history of Joseph is in the Bible because it IS a family history.
+For see, it is the history of a man who loved his family, who felt
+that family life was holy and God-appointed; whom God rewarded with
+honour and wealth, because he honoured family ties; because he
+refused his master's wife; because he rewarded his brothers good for
+evil; because he was not ashamed of his father, but succoured him in
+his old age.
+
+It is the history of a man who--more than four hundred years before
+God gave the ten commandments on Sinai, saying,
+
+Honour thy father and mother,
+
+Thou shalt not commit adultery,
+
+Thou shalt not kill in revenge,
+
+Thou shalt not covet aught of thy neighbours--It is the history, I
+say, of a man who had those laws of God written in his heart by the
+Holy Spirit of God; and felt that to break them was to sin against
+God.  It is the history of a man who, sorely tempted and unjustly
+persecuted, kept himself pure and true; who, while all around him,
+beginning with his own brothers, were trampling under foot the laws
+of family, felt that the laws were still there round him, girding
+him in with everlasting bands, and saying to him, Thou shalt and
+Thou shalt not; that he was not sent into the world to do just what
+was pleasant for the moment, to indulge his own passions or his own
+revenge; but that if he was indeed a man, he must prove himself a
+man, by obeying Almighty God.  It is the history of a man who kept
+his heart pure and tender, and who thereby gained strange and deep
+wisdom; that wisdom which comes only to the pure in heart; that
+wisdom by which truly good men are enabled to see farther, and to be
+of more use to their fellow-creatures than many a cunning and
+crooked politician, whose eyes are blinded, because his heart is
+defiled with sin.
+
+And now, my friends, if we pray--as we are bound to pray--for that
+great Prince who is just entering on the cares and the duties, as
+well as the joys and blessings of family life--what better prayer
+can we offer up for him, than that God would put into his heart that
+spirit which he put into the heart of Joseph of old--the spirit to
+see how divine and God-appointed is family life?  God grant that
+that spirit may dwell in him, and possess him more and more day by
+day.  That it may keep him true to his wife, true to his mother,
+true to his family, true, like Joseph, to all with whom he has to
+deal.  That it may deliver him, as it delivered Joseph, from the
+snares of wicked women, from selfish politicians, if they ever try
+to sow distrust and opposition between him and his kindred, and from
+all those temptations which can only be kept down by the Spirit of
+God working in men's hearts, as he worked in the heart of Joseph.
+
+For if that spirit be in the Prince--and I doubt not that that
+spirit is in him already--then will his fate be that of Joseph; then
+will he indeed be a blessing to us, and to our children after us;
+then will he have riches more real, and power more vast, than any
+which our English laws can give; then will he gain, like Joseph,
+that moral wisdom, better than all worldly craft, which cometh from
+above--first pure, then gentle, easy to be entreated, without
+partiality, and without hypocrisy; then will he be able, like
+Joseph, to deliver his people in times of perplexity and distress;
+then will he by his example, as his noble mother has done before
+him, keep healthy, pure, and strong, our English family life--and as
+long as THAT endures, Old England will endure likewise.
+
+
+
+SERMON VIII.  THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZER
+
+
+
+(Fourth Sunday in Lent.)
+
+PHILIPPIANS iv. 8.  Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,
+whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
+things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are
+of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
+think on these things.
+
+It may not be easy to see what this text has to do with the story of
+Joseph, which we have just been reading, or with the meaning of the
+Bible of which I have been speaking to you of late.
+
+Nevertheless, I think it has to do with them; as you will see if you
+will look at the text with me.
+
+Now the text does not say 'Do these things.'  It only says 'THINK of
+these things.'
+
+Of course St. Paul wished us to do them also; but he says first
+THINK of them; not once in a way, but often and continually.  Fill
+your mind with good and pure and noble thoughts; and then you will
+do good and pure and noble things.
+
+For out of the abundance of a man's heart, not only does his mouth
+speak, but his whole body and soul behave.  The man whose mind is
+filled with low and bad thoughts will be sure, when he is tempted,
+to do low and bad things.  The man whose mind is filled with lofty
+and good thoughts will do lofty and good things.
+
+For thoughts are the food of a man's mind; and as the mind feeds, so
+will it grow.  If it feeds on coarse and foul food, coarse and foul
+it will grow.  If it feeds on pure and refined food, pure and
+refined it will grow.
+
+There are those who do not believe this.  Provided they are
+tolerably attentive to the duties of religion, it does not matter
+much, they fancy, what they think of out of church.  Their souls
+will be saved at last, they suppose, and that is all that they need
+care for.  Saved?  They do not see that by giving way to foul, mean,
+foolish thoughts all the week they are losing their souls,
+destroying their souls, defiling their souls, lowering their souls,
+and making them so coarse and mean and poor that they are not worth
+saving, and are no loss to heaven or earth, whatever loss they may
+be to the man himself.  One man thinks of nothing but money--how he
+shall save a penny here and a penny there.  I do not mean men of
+business; for them there are great excuses; for it is by continual
+saving here and there that their profits are made.  I speak rather
+of people who have no excuse, people of fixed incomes--people often
+wealthy and comfortable, who yet will lower their minds by
+continually thinking over their money.  But this I say, and this I
+am sure that you will find, that when a man in business or out of
+business accustoms himself, as very many do, to think of nothing but
+money, money, money from Monday morning to Saturday night, he thinks
+of money a great part of Sunday likewise.  And so, after a while,
+the man lowers his soul, and makes it mean and covetous.  He forgets
+all that is lovely and of good report.  He forgets virtue--that is
+manliness; and praise--that is the just respect and admiration of
+his fellow-men; and so he forgets at last things true, honest, and
+just likewise.  He lowers his soul; and therefore when he is
+tempted, he does things mean and false and unjust, for the sake of
+money, which he has made his idol.
+
+Take another case, too common among men and women of all ranks, high
+and low.
+
+How many there are who love gossip and scandal; who always talk
+about people, and never about things--certainly not about things
+pure and lovely and of good report, but rather about things foul and
+ugly and of bad report; who do not talk, because they do not think
+of virtue, but of vice; or of praise either, because they are always
+finding fault with their neighbours.  The man who loves a foul
+story, or a coarse jest--the woman who gossips over every tittle
+tattle of scandal which she can pick up against her neighbour--what
+do these people do but defile their own souls afresh, after they
+have been washed clean in the blood of Christ?  Foul their souls
+are, and therefore their thoughts are foul likewise, and the
+foulness of them is evident to all men by their tongues.  Out of
+their hearts proceed evil thoughts about their neighbours, out of
+the abundance of their hearts their mouths speak them.  Now let such
+people, if there be any such here, seriously consider the harm which
+they are doing to their own characters.  They may give way to the
+habits of scandal, or of coarse talk, without any serious bad
+intention; but they will surely lower their own souls thereby.  They
+will grow to the colour of what they feed on and become foul and
+cruel, from talking cruelly and foully, till they lose all purity
+and all charity, all faith and trust in their fellow-men, all power
+of seeing good in any one, or doing anything but think evil; and so
+lose the likeness of God and of Christ, for the likeness of some
+foul carrion bird, which cares nothing for the perfume of all the
+roses in the world, but if there be a carcase within miles of it,
+will scent it out eagerly and fly to it ravenously.
+
+The truth is, my friends, that these souls of ours instead of being
+pure and strong, are the very opposite; and the article speaks plain
+truth when it says, that we are every one of us of our own nature
+inclined to evil.  That may seem a hard saying; but if we look at
+our own thoughts we shall find it true.  Are we NOT inclined to
+take, at first, the worst view of everybody and of everything?  Are
+we NOT inclined to suspect harm of this person and of that?  Are we
+NOT inclined too often to be mean and cowardly? to be hard and
+covetous? to be coarse and vulgar? to be silly and frivolous?  Do we
+not need to cool down, to think a second time, and a third time
+likewise; to remember our duty, to remember Christ's example, before
+we can take a just and kind and charitable view?  Do we not want all
+the help which we can get from every quarter, to keep ourselves
+high-minded and refined; to keep ourselves from bad thoughts, mean
+thoughts, silly thoughts, violent thoughts, cruel and hard thoughts?
+If we have not found out that, we must have looked a very little way
+into ourselves, and know little more about ourselves than a dumb
+animal does of itself.
+
+How then shall we keep off coarseness of soul?  How shall we keep
+our souls REFINED? that is, true and honest, pure, amiable, full of
+virtue, that is, true manliness; and deserve praise, that is, the
+respect and admiration of our fellow-men?  By thinking of those very
+things, says St. Paul.  And in order to be able to think of them, by
+reading of them.
+
+There are very few who can easily think of these things of
+themselves.  Their daily business, the words and notions of the
+people with whom they have to do, will run in their minds, and draw
+them off from higher and better thoughts; that cannot be helped.
+The only thing that most men can do, is to take care that they are
+not drawn off entirely from high and good thoughts, by reading, were
+it but for five minutes every day, something really worth thinking
+of, something which will lift them above themselves.
+
+Above all, it is wise, at night, after the care and bustle of the
+day is over, to read, but for a few minutes, some book which will
+compose and soothe the mind; which will bring us face to face with
+the true facts of life, death, and eternity; which will make us
+remember that man doth not live by bread alone; which will give us,
+before we sleep, a few thoughts worthy of a Christian man, with an
+immortal soul in him.
+
+And, thank God, no one need go far to look for such books.  I do not
+mean merely religious books, excellent as they are in these days:  I
+mean any books which help to make us better and wiser and soberer,
+and more charitable persons; any books which will teach us to
+despise what is vulgar and mean, foul and cruel, and to love what is
+noble and high-minded, pure and just.  We need not go far for them.
+In our own noble English language we may read by hundreds, books
+which will tell us of all virtue and of all praise.  The stories of
+good and brave men and women; of gallant and heroic actions; of
+deeds which we ourselves should be proud of doing; of persons whom
+we feel, to be better, wiser, nobler than we are ourselves.
+
+In our own language we may read the history of our own nation, and
+whatsoever is just, honest and true.  We may read of God's gracious
+providences toward this land.  How he has punished our sins and
+rewarded our right and brave endeavours.  How he put into our
+forefathers the spirit of courage and freedom, the spirit of truth
+and justice, the spirit of loyalty and order; and how, following the
+leading of that spirit, in spite of many mistakes and failings, we
+have risen to be the freest, the happiest, the most powerful people
+on earth, a blessing and not a curse to the nations around.
+
+In our own English tongue, too, we may read such poetry as there is
+in no other language in the world; poetry which will make us indeed
+see the beauty of whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.
+Some people have still a dislike of what they call foolish poetry
+books.  If books are foolish, let us have nothing to do with them.
+But poetry ought not to be foolish; for God sent it into the world
+to teach men not foolishness, but the highest wisdom.  He gave man
+alone, of all living creatures, the power of writing poetry, that by
+poetry he might understand, not only how necessary it was to do
+right, but how beautiful and noble it was to do right.  He sent it
+into the world to soften men's rough hearts, and quiet their angry
+passions, and make them love all which is tender and gentle, loving
+and merciful, and yet to rouse them up to love all which is gallant
+and honourable, loyal and patriotic, devout and heavenly.  Therefore
+whole books of the Bible--Job, for example, Isaiah, and the Psalms--
+are neither more nor less than actual poetry, written in actual
+verse, that their words might the better sink down into the ears and
+hearts of the old Jews, and of us Christians after them.  And
+therefore also, we keep up still the good old custom of teaching
+children in school as much as possible by poetry, that they may
+learn not only to know, but to love and remember whatsoever things
+are lovely and of good report.
+
+Lastly, for those who cannot read, or have really no time to read,
+there is one means left of putting themselves in mind of what every
+one must remember, lest he sink back into an animal and a savage.  I
+mean by pictures; which, as St. Augustine said 1400 years ago, are
+the books of the unlearned.  I do not mean grand and expensive
+pictures; I mean the very simplest prints, provided they represent
+something holy, or noble, or tender, or lovely.  A few such prints
+upon a cottage-wall may teach the people who live therein much,
+without their being aware of it.  They see the prints, even when
+they are not thinking of them; and so they have before their eyes a
+continual remembrancer of something better and more beautiful than
+what they are apt to find in their own daily life and thoughts.
+
+True, to whom little is given, of them is little required.  But it
+must be said, that more--far more--is given to labouring men and
+women now than was given to their forefathers.  A hundred, or even
+fifty years ago, when there was very little schooling; when the
+books which were put even into the hands of noblemen's children were
+far below what you will find now in any village school; when the
+only pictures which a poor woman could buy to lay on her cottage-
+wall were equally silly and ugly:  then there were great excuses for
+the poor, if they forgot whatsoever things were lovely and of good
+report; if they were often coarse and brutal in their manners, and
+cruel and profligate in their amusements.
+
+But even in the rough old times there always were a few at least,
+men and women, who were above the rest; who, though poor people like
+the rest, were still true gentlemen and ladies of God's making.
+People who kept themselves more or less unspotted from the world;
+who thought of what was honest and pure and lovely and of good
+report; and who lived a life of simple, manful, Christian virtue,
+and received the praise and respect of their neighbours, even
+although their neighbours did not copy them.  There were always such
+people, and there always will be--thank God for it, for they are the
+salt of the earth.
+
+But why have there always been such people? and why do I say
+confidently, that there always will be?
+
+Because they have had the Bible; and because, once having got the
+Bible in a free country, no man can take it from them.
+
+The Bible it is which has made gentlemen and ladies of many a poor
+man and woman.
+
+The Bible it is which has filled their minds with pure and noble,
+ay, with heavenly and divine thoughts.
+
+The Bible has been their whole library.  The Bible has been their
+only counsellor.  The Bible has taught them all they know.  But it
+has taught them enough.
+
+It has taught them what God is, and what Christ is.  It has taught
+them what man is, and what a Christian man should be.  It has taught
+them what a family means, and what a nation means.  It has taught
+them the meaning of law and duty, of loyalty and patriotism.  It has
+filled their minds with things honest and just and lovely and of
+good report; with the histories of men and women like themselves,
+who sinned and sorrowed and struggled like them in this hard battle
+of life, but who conquered at last, by trusting and obeying God.
+
+This one story of Joseph, which we have been reading again this
+Sunday, I do not doubt that it has taught thousands who had no other
+story-book to read--who could not even read themselves, but had to
+listen to others' reading; that it has taught them to be good sons,
+to be good brothers; that it has taught them to keep pure in
+temptation, and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that
+it has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life;
+and taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way
+of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has
+really done more to civilize and refine them--to make them truly
+civilized men and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages--than if they
+had known a smattering of a dozen sciences.  I say that the Bible is
+the book which civilizes and refines, and ennobles rich and poor,
+high and low, and has been doing so for fifteen hundred years; and
+that any man who tries to shake our faith in the Bible, is doing
+what he can--though, thank God, he will not succeed--to make such
+rough and coarse heathens of us again as our forefathers were five
+hundred years ago.
+
+And I tell you, labouring people, that if you want something which
+will make up to you for the want of all the advantages which the
+rich have--go to your Bibles and you will find it there.
+
+There you will find, in the history of men like ourselves--and,
+above all, in the history of a man unlike ourselves, the perfect
+Man--perfect Man and perfect God together--whatsoever is true,
+whatsoever is honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; every
+virtue, and every just cause of praise which mortal man can desire.
+Read of them in your Bible, think of them in your hearts, feed on
+them with your souls, that your souls may grow like what they feed
+on; and above all, read and study the story and character of Jesus
+Christ himself, our Lord, that beholding, as in a glass, the glory
+of the Lord, you may be changed into his likeness, from grace to
+grace, and virtue to virtue, and glory to glory.
+
+And that change and that growth are as easy for the poor as for the
+rich, and as necessary for the rich as for the poor.
+
+
+
+SERMON IX.  MOSES
+
+
+
+(Fifth Sunday in Lent.)
+
+EXODUS iii. 14.  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.
+
+And now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most
+beautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible--
+excepting of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ--the story
+of how a family grew to be a great nation.  You remember that I told
+you that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history
+of a family.
+
+Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of
+people, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own
+worship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes as
+the gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.
+
+Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being weak I suppose
+because they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of
+their own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under
+crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.
+
+Then it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and
+made them free men.  And how God did that (for God in general works
+by means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great,
+wise, and good man of their race--Moses.
+
+It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange
+education, to be the fit man to deliver his people.
+
+Let us go through the history of Moses; and we shall see how God
+trained him to do the work for which God wanted him.
+
+Let us read from the account of the Bible itself.  I should be sorry
+to spoil its noble simplicity by any words of my own:  'And the
+children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and
+multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with
+them.  Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not
+Joseph.  And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the
+children of Israel are more and mightier than we:  Come on, let us
+deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass,
+that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our
+enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.
+Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with
+their burdens.  And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithon
+and Raamses. . . .  And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying,
+Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every
+daughter ye shall save alive.  And there went a man of the house of
+Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.  And the woman conceived
+and bare a son:  and when she saw him that he was a goodly child,
+she hid him three months.  And when she could no longer hide him,
+she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and
+with pitch, and put the child therein:  and she laid it in the flags
+by the river's brink.  And his sister stood afar off, to wit what
+would be done to him.  And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash
+herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's
+side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to
+fetch it.  And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold
+the babe wept.  And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one
+of the Hebrews' children.  Then said his sister to Pharaoh's
+daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,
+that she may nurse the child for thee?  And Pharaoh's daughter said
+to her, Go.  And the maid went and called the child's mother.  And
+Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it
+for me, and I will give thee thy wages.  And the woman took the
+child, and nursed it.  And the child grew, and she brought him unto
+Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.  And she called his name
+Moses:  and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.'
+
+Moses, the child of the water.  St. Paul in the Epistle to the
+Hebrews says that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh's daughter;
+that is, adopted by her.  We read elsewhere that he was learned in
+all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there can be no doubt from
+his own writings, especially that part called Moses' law.
+
+So that Moses had from his youth vast advantages.  Brought up in the
+court of the greatest king of the world, in one of the greatest
+cities of the world, among the most learned priesthood in the world,
+he had learned, probably, all statesmanship, all religion, which man
+could teach him in those old times.
+
+But that would have been little for him.  He might have become
+merely an officer in Pharaoh's household, and we might never have
+heard his name, and he might never have done any good to his own
+people and to all mankind after them, as he has done, if there had
+not been something better and nobler in him than all the learning
+and statesmanship of the Egyptians.
+
+For there was in Moses the spirit of God; the spirit which makes a
+man believe in God, and trust God.  'And therefore,' says St. Paul,
+'he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; esteeming
+the reproach of CHRIST better than all the treasures in Egypt.'
+
+And how did he do that?  In this wise.
+
+The spirit of God and of Christ is also the spirit of justice, the
+spirit of freedom; the spirit which hates oppression and wrong;
+which is moved with a noble and Divine indignation at seeing any
+human being abused and trampled on.
+
+And that spirit broke forth in Moses.  'And it came to pass in those
+days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and
+looked on their burdens:  and he spied an Egyptian smiting an
+Hebrew, one of his brethren.  And he looked this way and that way,
+and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid
+him in the sand.'
+
+If he cannot get justice for his people, he will do some sort of
+rough justice for them himself, when he has an opportunity.
+
+But he will see fair play among his people themselves.  They are, as
+slaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome
+among themselves.
+
+'And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews
+strove together:  and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore
+smitest thou thy fellow?  And he said, Who made thee a prince and a
+judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the
+Egyptian?  And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.
+Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses.  But
+Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of
+Midian'--the wild desert between Egypt and the Holy Land.
+
+So he bore the reproach of Christ; the reproach which is apt to fall
+on men in bad times, when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to
+deliver the captive, and let the oppressed go free, and execute
+righteous judgment in the earth.  He had lost all, by trying to do
+right.  He had been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh's court.  Now
+he was an outcast and wanderer in the desert.  He had made his first
+trial, and failed.  As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed
+that his brethren would have understood how God would deliver them
+by his hand; but they understood not.  Slavish, base, and stupid,
+they were not fit yet for Moses and his deliverance.
+
+And so forty years went on, and Moses was an old man of eighty years
+of age.  Yet God had not had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.
+
+It must have been a strange life for him, the adopted son of
+Pharaoh's daughter; brought up in the court of the most powerful and
+highly civilized country of the old world; learned in all the
+learning of the Egyptians; and now married into a tribe of wild
+Arabs, keeping flocks in the lonely desert, year after year:  but,
+no doubt, thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his flocks
+alone.  Thinking over all the learning which he had gained in Egypt,
+and wondering whether it would ever be of any use to him.  Thinking
+over the misery of his people in Egypt, and wondering whether he
+should ever be able to help them.  Thinking, too, and more than all,
+of God--of God's promise to Abraham and his children.  Would that
+ever come true?  Would GOD help these wretched Jews, even if HE
+could not?  Was God faithful and true, just and merciful?
+
+That Moses thought of God, that he never lost faith in God for that
+forty years, there can be no doubt.
+
+If he had not thought of God, God would not have revealed himself to
+him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not have known that it
+was God who spoke to him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not
+have obeyed God at the risk of his life, and have gone on an errand
+as desperate, dangerous, hopeless--and, humanly speaking, as wild as
+ever man went upon.
+
+But Moses never lost faith or patience.  He believed, and he did not
+make haste.  He waited for God; and he did not wait in vain.  No man
+will wait in vain.  When the time was ready; when the Jews were
+ready; when Pharaoh was ready; when Moses himself, trained by forty
+years' patient thought, was ready; then God came in his own good
+time.
+
+And Moses led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to the
+mountain of God, even to Horeb.  And there he saw a bush--probably
+one of the low copses of acacia--burning with fire; and behold the
+bush was not consumed.  Then out of the bush God spoke to Moses with
+an audible voice as of a man; so the Bible says plainly, and I see
+no reason to doubt that it is literally true.
+
+'Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham,
+the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  And Moses hid his face; for
+he was afraid to look upon God.  And the Lord said, I have surely
+seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard
+their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
+and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians,
+and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large,
+unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the
+Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites,
+and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.'
+
+Then followed a strange conversation.  Moses was terrified at the
+thought of what he had to do, and reasonably:  moreover, the
+Israelites in Egypt had forgotten God.  'And Moses said unto God,
+Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto
+them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall
+say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?  And God
+said unto Moses, I Am that I Am:  and he said, Thus shalt thou say
+unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.'
+
+I Am; that was the new name by which God revealed himself to Moses.
+That message of God to Moses was the greatest Gospel, and good news
+which was spoken to men, before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
+Ay, we are feeling now, in our daily life, in our laws and our
+liberty, our religion and our morals, our peace and prosperity, in
+the happiness of our homes, and I trust that of our consciences, the
+blessed effects of that message, which God revealed to Moses in the
+wilderness thousands of years ago.
+
+And Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and
+returned into the land of Egypt, to say to Pharaoh, 'Thus saith the
+Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn, Let my son go that he may
+serve me, and if thou let not my firstborn go, then I will slay thy
+firstborn.'
+
+A strange man, on a strange errand.  A poor man, eighty years old,
+carrying all that he had in the world upon an ass's back, going down
+to the great Pharaoh, the greatest king of the old world, the great
+conqueror, the Child of the Sun (as his name means), one of the
+greatest Pharaohs who ever sat on the throne of Egypt; in the midst
+of all his princes and priests, and armies with which he had
+conquered the nations far and wide; and his great cities, temples,
+and palaces, on which men may see at this day (so we are told) the
+face of that very Pharaoh painted again and again, as fresh, in that
+rainless air, as on the day when the paint was laid on; with the
+features of a man terrible, proud, and cruel, puffed up by power
+till he thought himself, and till his people thought him a god on
+earth.
+
+And to that man was Moses going, to bid him set the children of
+Israel free; while he himself was one of that very slave-race of the
+Israelites, which was an abomination to the Egyptians, who held them
+all as lepers and unclean, and would not eat with them; and an
+outcast too, who had fled out of Egypt for his life, and who might
+be killed on the spot, as Pharaoh's only answer to his bold request.
+Certainly, if Moses had not had faith in God, his errand would have
+seemed that of a madman.  But Moses HAD faith in God; and of faith
+it is said, that it can remove mountains, for all things are
+possible to them who believe.
+
+So by faith Moses went back into Egypt; how he fared there we shall
+hear next Sunday.
+
+And what sort of man was this great and wonderful Moses, whose name
+will last as long as man is man?  We know very little.  We know from
+the Bible and from the old traditions of the Jews that he was a very
+handsome man; a man of a noble presence, as one can well believe; a
+man of great bodily vigour; so that when he died at the age of one
+hundred and twenty, his eye was not dim, nor his natural force
+abated.  We know, from his own words, that he was slow of speech;
+that he had more thought in him than he could find words for--very
+different from a good many loud talkers, who have more words than
+thoughts, and who get a great character as politicians and
+demagogues, simply because they have the art of stringing fine words
+together, which Moses, the true demagogue, the leader of the people,
+who led them indeed out of Egypt, had not.  Beyond that we know
+little.  Of his character one thing only is said:  but that is most
+important.  'Now the man Moses was very meek.'
+
+Meek:  we know that that cannot mean that he was meek in the sense
+that he was a poor, cowardly, abject sort of man, who dared not
+speak his mind, dared not face the truth, and say the truth.  We
+have seen that that was just what he was not; brave, determined,
+out-spoken, he seems to have been from his youth.  Indeed, if his
+had been that base sort of meekness, he never would have dared to
+come before the great king Pharaoh.  If he had been that sort of man
+he never would have dared to lead the Jews through the Red Sea by
+night, or out of Egypt at all.  If he had been that sort of man,
+indeed, the Jews would never have listened to him.  No; he had--the
+Bible tells us that he had--to say and do stern things again and
+again; to act like the general of an army, or the commander of a
+ship of war, who must be obeyed, even though men's lives be the
+forfeit of disobedience.
+
+But the man Moses was very meek.  He had learned to keep his temper.
+Indeed, the story seems to say that he never lost his temper really
+but once; and for that God punished him.  Never man was so tried,
+save One, even our Lord Jesus Christ, as was Moses.  And yet by
+patience he conquered.  Eighty years had he spent in learning to
+keep his temper; and when he had learned to keep his temper, then,
+and not till then, was he worthy to bring his people out of Egypt.
+That was a long schooling, but it was a schooling worth having.
+
+And if we, my friends, spend our whole lives, be they eighty years
+long, in learning to keep our tempers, then will our lives have been
+well spent.  For meekness and calmness of temper need not interfere
+with a man's courage or justice, or honest indignation against
+wrong, or power of helping his fellow-men.  Moses' meekness did not
+make him a coward or a sluggard.  It helped him to do his work
+rightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of
+Pharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his
+brethren, those miserable slavish Jews.  And so meekness, an even
+temper, and a gracious tongue, will help us to keep our place among
+our fellow-men with true dignity and independence, and to govern our
+households, and train our children in such a way that while they
+obey us they will love and respect us at the same time.
+
+
+
+SERMON X.  THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT
+
+
+
+(Palm Sunday.)
+
+EXODUS ix. 13, 14.  Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my
+people go, that they may serve me.  For I will at this time send all
+my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy
+people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the
+earth.
+
+You will understand, I think, the meaning of the ten plagues of
+Egypt better, if I explain to you in a few words what kind of a
+country Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians were.  Some of
+you, doubtless, know as well as I, but some here may not:  it is for
+them I speak.
+
+Egypt is one of the strangest countries in the world; and yet one
+which can be most simply described.  One long straight strip of rich
+flat land, many hundred miles long, but only a very few miles broad.
+On either side of it, barren rocks and deserts of sand, and running
+through it from end to end, the great river Nile--'The River' of
+which the Bible speaks.  This river the Egyptians looked on as
+divine:  they worshipped it as a god; for on it depended the whole
+wealth of Egypt.  Every year it overflows the whole country, leaving
+behind it a rich coat of mud, which makes Egypt the most
+inexhaustibly fertile land in the world; and made the Egyptians,
+from very ancient times, the best farmers of the world, the fathers
+of agriculture.  Meanwhile, when not in flood, the river water is of
+the purest in the world; the most delightful to drink; and was
+supposed in old times to be a cure for all manner of diseases.
+
+To worship this sacred river, the pride of their land, to drink it,
+to bathe in it, to catch the fish which abound in it, and which
+formed then, and forms still, the staple food of the Egyptians, was
+their delight.  And now I have told you enough to show you why the
+plagues which God sent on Egypt began first by striking the river.
+
+The river, we read, was turned into blood.  What that means--whether
+it was actual animal blood--what means God employed to work the
+miracle--are just the questions about which we need not trouble our
+minds.  We never shall know:  and we need not know.  The plain fact
+is, that the sacred river, pure and life-giving, became a detestable
+mass of rottenness--and with it all their streams and pools, and
+drinking water in vessels of wood and stone--for all, remember, came
+from the Nile, carried by canals and dykes over the whole land.
+'And the fish that were in the river died, and the river stunk, and
+there was blood through all the land of Egypt.'
+
+The slightest thought will show us what horror, confusion, and
+actual want and misery, the loss of the river water, even for a few
+days or even hours, would cause.
+
+But there is more still in this miracle.  These plagues are a battle
+between Jehovah, the one true and only God Almighty, and the false
+gods of Egypt, to prove which of them is master.
+
+Pharaoh answers:  'Who is Jehovah (the Lord) that I should let
+Israel go?'  I know not the Jehovah.  I have my own god, whom I
+worship.  He is my father, and I his child, and he will protect me.
+If I obey any one it will be him.
+
+Be it so, says Moses in the name of God.  Thou shalt know that the
+idols of Egypt are nothing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy
+people.
+
+Thus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know which is master, I or they.
+'Thou shalt know that I am the Lord.'
+
+So the river was turned into blood.  The sacred river was no god, as
+they thought.  Jehovah was the Lord and Master of the river on which
+the very life of Egypt depended.  He could turn it into blood.  All
+Egypt was at his mercy.
+
+But Pharaoh would not believe that.  'The magicians did likewise
+with their enchantments'--made, we may suppose, water seem to turn
+to blood by some juggling trick at which the priests in Egypt were
+but too well practised; and Pharaoh seemed to have made up his mind
+that Moses' miracle was only a juggling trick too.  For men will
+make up their minds to anything, however absurd, when they choose to
+do so:  when their pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness,
+draw them one way, no reason will draw them the other way.  They
+will find reasons, and make reasons to prove, if need be, that there
+is no sun in the sky.
+
+Then followed a series of plagues, of which we have all often heard.
+
+Learned men have disputed how far these plagues were miracles.  Some
+of them are said not to be uncommon in Egypt, others to be almost
+unknown.  But whether they--whether the frogs, for instance, were
+not produced by natural causes, just as other frogs are; and the
+lice and the flies likewise; that I know not, my friends, neither
+need I know.  If they were not, they were miraculous; and if they
+were, they were miraculous still.  If they came as other vermin
+come, they would have still been miraculous:  God would still have
+sent them; and it would be a miracle that God should make them come
+at that particular time in that particular country, to work a truly
+miraculous effect upon the souls of Pharaoh and the Egyptians on the
+one hand, and of Moses and the Israelites on the other.  But if they
+came by some strange means as no vermin ever came before or since,
+all I can say is--Why not?
+
+And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod
+and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout
+all the land of Egypt.'
+
+Whether that was meant only as a sign to the Egyptians, or whether
+the dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is
+more, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it
+would be.  If you believe at all that God made the world, it is
+folly to pretend to set any bounds to his power.  As a wise man has
+said, 'If you believe in any real God at all, you must believe that
+miracles can happen.'  He makes you and me and millions of living
+things out of the dust of the ground continually by certain means.
+Why can he not make lice, or anything else out of the dust of the
+ground, without those means?  I can give no reason, nor any one else
+either.
+
+We know that God has given all things a law which they cannot break.
+We know, too, that God will never break his own laws.  But what are
+God's laws by which he makes things?  We do not know.
+
+Miracles may be--indeed must be--only the effect of some higher and
+deeper laws of God.  We cannot prove that he breaks his law, or
+disturbs his order by them.  They may seem contrary to some of the
+very very few laws of God's earth which we do know.  But they need
+not be contrary to the very many laws which we do not know.  In
+fact, we know nothing about the matter, and had best not talk of
+things that we do not understand.  As for these things being too
+wonderful to be true--that is an argument which only deserves a
+smile.  There are so many wonders in the world round us already, all
+day long, that the man of sense will feel that nothing is too
+wonderful to be true.
+
+The truth is, that, as a wise man says, CUSTOM is the great enemy of
+Faith, and of Reason likewise; and one of the worst tricks which
+custom plays us is, making us fancy that miraculous things cease to
+be miraculous by becoming common.
+
+What do I mean?
+
+This:  which every child in this church can understand.
+
+You think it very wonderful that God should cause frogs to come upon
+the whole land of Egypt in one day.  But that God should cause frogs
+to come up every spring in the ditches does not seem wonderful to
+you at all.  It happens every year; therefore, forsooth, there is
+nothing wonderful in it.
+
+Ah, my dear friends, it is custom which blinds our eyes to the
+wisdom of God, and the wonders of God, and the power of God, and the
+glory of God, and hinders us from believing the message with which
+he speaks to us from every sunbeam and every shower, every blade of
+grass and every standing pool.  'Is anything too hard for the Lord?'
+
+If any man here says that anything is too hard for the Lord, let him
+go this day to the nearest standing pool, and look at the frog-spawn
+therein, and consider it till he confesses his blindness and
+foolishness.  That spawn seems to you a foul thing, the produce of
+mean, ugly, contemptible creatures.  Be it so.  Yet it is to the
+eyes of the wise man a yearly MIRACLE; a thing past understanding,
+past explaining; one which will make him feel the truth of that
+great 139th Psalm:  'Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid
+thine hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is
+high, I cannot attain unto it.  Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
+or whither shall I flee from thy presence?  If I ascend up into
+heaven, thou art there:  if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art
+there also.'
+
+That every one of those little black spots should have in it LIFE--
+What is life?  How did it get into that black spot? or, to speak
+more carefully, is the life IN the black spot at all?  Is not the
+life in the Spirit of God, who is working on that spot, as I
+believe?  How has that black spot the power of GROWING, and of
+growing on a certain and fixed plan, merely by the quickening power
+of the sun's heat, and then of feeding itself, and of changing its
+shape, as you all know, again and again, till--and if that is not
+wonderful, what is?--it turns into a frog, exactly like its parent,
+utterly unlike the black dot at which it began?  Is that no miracle?
+Is it no miracle that not one of those black spots ever turns into
+anything save a frog?  Why should not some of them turn into toads
+or efts?  Why not even into fishes or serpents?  Why not?  The eggs
+of all those animals, in their first and earliest stages are exactly
+alike; the microscope shows no difference.  Ay, even the mere animal
+and the human being, strange and awful as it may be, SEEM, under the
+microscope, to have the same beginning.  And yet one becomes a mere
+animal, and the other a member of Christ, a child of God, and an
+inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.  What causes this but the power
+of God, making of the same clay one vessel to honour and another to
+dishonour?  And yet people will not believe in miracles!  Why does
+each kind turn into its kind?  Answer that.  Because it is a law of
+nature?  Not so!  There are no laws OF nature.  God is a law TO
+nature.  It is his WILL that things so should be; and when it is his
+will they will not be so, but otherwise.
+
+Not LAWS of nature, but the SPIRIT of God, as the Psalms truly say,
+gives life and breath to all things.  Of him and by him is all.  As
+the greatest chemist of our time says, 'Causes are the acts of God--
+creation is the will of God.'
+
+And he that is wise and strong enough to create frogs in one way in
+every ditch at this moment, is he not wise and strong enough to
+create frogs by some other way, if he should choose, whether in
+Egypt of old, or now, here, this very day?
+
+Whatsoever means, or no means at all, God used to produce those
+vermin, the miracle remains the same.  He sent them to do a work,
+and they did it.  He sent them to teach Egyptian and Israelite alike
+that he was the Maker, and Lord, and Ruler of the world, and all
+that therein is; that he would have his way, and that he COULD have
+his way.
+
+Intensely painful and disgusting these plagues must have been to the
+Egyptians, for this reason, that they were the most cleanly of all
+people.  They had a dislike of dirt, which had become quite a
+superstition to them.  Their priests (magicians as the Bible calls
+them) never wore any garments but linen, for fear of their
+harbouring vermin of any kind.  And this extreme cleanliness of
+theirs the next plague struck at; they were covered with boils and
+diseases of skin, and the magicians could not stand before Pharaoh
+by reason of the boils.  They became unclean and unfit for their
+office; they could perform no religious ceremonies, and had to flee
+away in disgrace.
+
+After plagues of thunder, hail, and rain, which seldom or never
+happen in that rainless land of Egypt; after a plague of locusts,
+which are very rare there, and have to come many hundred miles if
+they come at all; of darkness, seemingly impossible in a land where
+the sun always shines:  then came the last and most terrible plague
+of all.  After solemn warnings of what was coming, the angel of the
+Lord passed through the land of Egypt, and smote all the first-born
+in Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh upon his throne to the
+first-born of the captive in the dungeon; and there arose a great
+cry in Egypt, for there was not a house in which there was not one
+dead.  A terrible and heart-rending calamity in any case, enough to
+break the heart of all Egypt; and it did break the heart of Egypt,
+and the proud heart of Pharaoh himself, and they let the people go.
+
+But this was a RELIGIOUS affliction too.  Most of these first-born
+children--probably all the first-born of the priests and nobles, and
+of Pharaoh himself--were consecrated to some god.  They bore the
+name of the god to whom they belonged; that god was to prosper and
+protect them, and behold, he could not.  The Lord Jehovah, the God
+of the Hebrews, was stronger than all the gods of Egypt; none of
+them could deliver their servants out of his hand.  He was the only
+Lord of life and death; he had given them life, and he could take it
+away, in spite of all and every one of the gods of the Egyptians.
+
+So the Lord God showed himself to be the Master and Lord of all
+things.  The Lord of the sacred river Nile; the Lord of the meanest
+vermin which crept on the earth; the Lord of the weather--able to
+bring thunder and hail into a land where thunder and hail was never
+seen before; the Lord of the locust swarms--able to bring them over
+the desert and over the sea to devour up every green thing in the
+land, and then to send a wind off the Mediterranean Sea, and drive
+the locusts away to the eastward; the Lord of light--who could
+darken, even in that cloudless land, the very sun, whom Pharaoh
+worshipped as his god and his ancestor; and lastly, the Lord of
+human life and death--able to kill whom he chose, when he chose, and
+as he chose.  The Lord of the earth and all that therein is; before
+whom all men, even proud Pharaoh, must bow and confess, 'Is anything
+too hard for the Lord?'
+
+And now, I always tell you that each fresh portion of the Old
+Testament reveals to men something fresh concerning the character of
+God.  You may say, These plagues of Egypt reveal God's mighty power,
+but what do they reveal of his character?  They reveal this:  that
+there is in God that which, for want of a better word, we must call
+anger; a quite awful sternness and severity; not only a power to
+punish, but a determination to punish, if men will not take his
+warnings--if men will not obey his will.
+
+There is no use trying to hide from ourselves that awful truth--God
+is not weakly indulgent.  Our God can be, if he will, a consuming
+fire.  Upon the sinner he will surely rain fire and brimstone, storm
+and tempest of some kind or other.  This shall be their portion too
+surely.  Vengeance is his, and vengeance he will take.  But upon
+whom?  On the proud and the tyrannical, on the cruel, the false, the
+unjust.  So say the Psalms again and again, and so says the history
+of these plagues of Egypt.  Therefore his anger is a loving anger, a
+just auger, a merciful anger, a useful anger, an anger exercised for
+the good of mankind.  See in this case why did God destroy the crops
+of Egypt--even the first-born of Egypt?  Merely for the pleasure of
+destroying?  God forbid.  It was to deliver the poor Israelites from
+their cruel taskmasters; to force these Egyptians by terrible
+lessons, since they were deaf to the voice of justice and humanity--
+to force them, I say--to have mercy on their fellow-creatures, and
+let the oppressed go free.  Therefore God was, even in Egypt, a God
+of love, who desired the good of man, who would do justice for those
+who were unjustly treated, even though it cost his love a pang; for
+none can believe that God is pleased at having to punish, pleased at
+having to destroy the works of his own hands, or the creatures which
+he has made.  No; the Lord was a God of love even when he sent his
+sore plagues on Egypt, and therefore we may believe what the Bible
+tells us, that that same Lord showed, as on this day, a still
+greater proof of his love, when, as on this day, he entered into
+Jerusalem, meek and lowly, sitting on an ass, and going, as he well
+knew, to certain death.  Before the week was over he would be
+betrayed, mocked, scourged, crucified by the very people whom he
+came to save; and yet he did it, he endured it.  Instead of pouring
+out on them, as on the Egyptians of old, the cup of wrath and
+misery, he put out his hand, took the cup of wrath and misery to
+himself, and drank it to its very dregs.  Was not that, too, a
+miracle?  Ay, a greater miracle than all the plagues of Egypt.  They
+were physical miracles; this a moral miracle.  They were miracles of
+nature; this of grace.  They were miracles of the Lord's power;
+these of the Lord's love.  Think of that miracle of miracles which
+was worked in this Passion Week--the miracle of the Lord Jehovah
+stooping to die for sinful man, and say after that there is anything
+too hard for the Lord.
+
+
+
+SERMON XI.  THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IS THE GOD OF THE NEW
+
+
+
+(Palm Sunday.)
+
+Exodus ix. 14.  I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine
+heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, that thou mayest
+know that there is none like me in all the earth.
+
+We are now beginning Passion Week, the week of the whole year which
+ought to teach us most theology; that is, most concerning God, his
+character and his spirit.
+
+For in this Passion Week God did that which utterly and perfectly
+showed forth his glory, as it never has been shown forth before or
+since.  In this week Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, died on the
+cross for man, and showed that his name, his character, his glory
+was love--love without bound or end.
+
+It was to teach us this that the special services, lessons,
+collects, epistles, and gospels of this week were chosen.
+
+The second lesson, the collects, the epistles, the gospel for to-
+day, all set before us the patience of Christ, the humility of
+Christ, the love of Christ, the self-sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb
+without spot, enduring all things that he might save sinful man.
+
+But if so, what does this first lesson--the chapter of Exodus from
+which my text is taken--what does it teach us concerning God?  Does
+it teach us that his name is love?
+
+At first sight you would think that it did not.  At first sight you
+would fancy that it spoke of God in quite a different tone from the
+second lesson.
+
+In the second lesson, the words of Jesus the Son of God are all
+gentleness, patience, tenderness.  A quiet sadness hangs over them
+all.  They are the words of one who is come (as he said himself),
+not to destroy men's lives, but to save them; not to punish sins,
+but to wash them away by his own most precious blood.
+
+But in the first lesson how differently he seems to speak.  His
+words there are the words of a stern and awful judge, who can, and
+who will destroy whatsoever interferes with his will and his
+purpose.
+
+'I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and on
+thy servants, and all thy people, that thou mayest know that there
+is none like me in all the earth.'  The cattle and sheep shall be
+destroyed with murrain; man and beast shall be tormented with boils
+and blains; the crops shall be smitten with hail; the locusts shall
+eat up every green thing in the land; and at last all the first-born
+of Egypt shall die in one night, and the land be filled with
+mourning, horror, and desolation, before the anger of this terrible
+God, who will destroy and destroy till he makes himself obeyed.
+
+Can this be he who rode into Jerusalem, as on this day, meek and
+lowly, upon an ass's colt; who on the night that he was betrayed
+washed his disciples' feet, even the feet of Judas who betrayed him?
+Who prayed for his murderers as he hung upon the cross, 'Father,
+forgive them, for they know not what they do?'
+
+Can these two be the same?
+
+Is the Lord Jehovah of the Old Testament the Lord Jesus of the New?
+
+They are the same, my friends.  He who laid waste the land of Egypt
+is he who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
+
+He who slew the children in Egypt is he who took little children up
+in his arms and blessed them.
+
+He who spoke the awful words of the text is he who was brought as a
+lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb,
+so he opened not his mouth.
+
+This is very wonderful.  But why should it NOT be wonderful?  What
+can God be but wonderful?  His character, just because it is
+perfect, must contain in itself all other characters, all forms of
+spiritual life which are without sin.  And yet again it is not so
+very wonderful.  Have we not seen--I have often--in the same mortal
+man these two different characters at once?  Have we not seen
+soldiers and sailors, brave men, stern men, men who have fought in
+many a bloody battle, to whom it is a light thing to kill their
+fellow-men, or to be killed themselves in the cause of duty; and yet
+most full of tenderness, as gentle as lambs to little children and
+to weak women; nursing the sick lovingly and carefully with the same
+hand which would not shrink from firing the fatal cannon to blast a
+whole company into eternity, or sink a ship with all its crew?  I
+have seen such men, brave as the lion and gentle as the lamb, and I
+saw in them the likeness of Christ--the Lion of Judah; and yet the
+Lamb of God.
+
+Christ is the Lamb of God; and in him there are the innocence of the
+lamb, the gentleness of the lamb, the patience of the lamb:  but
+there is more.  What words are these which St. John speaks in the
+spirit?--
+
+'And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and
+every mountain and island were moved out of their places; and the
+kings of the earth, and the great, and the rich, and the chief
+captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman
+hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and
+said to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from
+the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of
+the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be
+able to stand?'
+
+Yes, look at that awful book of Revelation with which the Bible
+ends, and see if the Bible does not end as it began, by revealing a
+God who, however loving and merciful, long-suffering, and of great
+goodness, still wages war eternally against all sin and
+unrighteousness of man, and who will by no means clear the guilty; a
+God of whom the apostle St. Paul, who knew most of his mercy and
+forgiveness to sinners, could nevertheless say, just as Moses had
+said ages before him, 'Our God is a consuming fire.'
+
+Now I think it most necessary to recollect this in Passion Week; ay,
+and to do more--to remember it all our lives long.
+
+For it is too much the fashion now, and has often been so before, to
+think only of one side of our Lord's character, of the side which
+seems more pleasant and less awful.  People please themselves in
+hymns which talk of the meek and lowly Jesus, and in pictures which
+represent him with a sad, weary, delicate, almost feminine face.
+Now I do not say that this is wrong.  He is the same yesterday, to-
+day, and for ever; as tender, as compassionate now as when he was on
+earth; and it is good that little children and innocent young people
+should think of him as an altogether gentle, gracious, loveable
+being; for with the meek he will be meek; but again, with the
+froward, the violent, and self-willed, he will be froward.  He will
+show the violent that he is the stronger of the two, and the self-
+willed that he will have his will and not theirs done.
+
+So it is good that the widow and the orphan, the weary and the
+distressed, should think of Jesus as utterly tender and true,
+compassionate and merciful, and rest their broken hearts upon him,
+the everlasting rock.  But while it is written, that whosoever shall
+fall on that rock he shall be broken, it is written too, that on
+whomsoever that rock shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
+
+It is good that those who wish to be gracious themselves, loving
+themselves, should remember that Christ is gracious, Christ is
+loving.  But it is good also, that those who do NOT wish to be
+gracious and loving themselves, but to be proud and self-willed,
+unjust and cruel, should remember that the gracious and loving
+Christ is also the most terrible and awful of all beings; sharper
+than a two-edged sword, piercing asunder the very joints and marrow,
+discerning the most secret thoughts and intents of the heart; a
+righteous judge, strong and patient, who is provoked every day:  but
+if a man WILL not turn he will whet his sword.  He hath bent his bow
+and made it ready, and laid his arrows in order against the
+persecutors.  What Christ's countenance, my friends, was like when
+on earth, we do NOT know; but what his countenance is like now, we
+all may know; for what says St. John, and how did Christ appear to
+him, who had been on earth his private and beloved friend?
+
+'His head and his hair were white as snow, and his eyes were like a
+flame of fire, and his voice like the sound of many waters; and out
+of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was
+as the sun when he shineth in his strength.  And when I saw him, I
+fell at his feet as dead.'
+
+That is the likeness of Christ, my friends; and we must remember
+that it is his likeness, and fall at his feet, and humble ourselves
+before his unspeakable majesty, if we wish that he should do to us
+at the last day as he did to St. John--lay his hand upon us, saying,
+'Fear not, I am the first and the last, and behold, I am alive for
+evermore, Amen.  I have the keys of death and hell.'
+
+Yes, it is good that we should all remember this.  For if we do not,
+we may fall, as thousands fall, into a very unwholesome and immoral
+notion about religion.  We may get to fancy, as thousands do, rich
+and poor, that because Christ the Lord is meek and gentle, patient
+and long-suffering, that he is therefore easy, indulgent, careless
+about our doing wrong; and that we can, in plain English, trifle
+with Christ, and take liberties with his everlasting laws of right
+and wrong; and so fancy, that provided we talk of the meek and lowly
+Jesus, and of his blood washing away all our sins, that we are free
+to behave very much as if Jesus had never come into the world to
+teach men their duty, and free to commit almost any sin which does
+not disgrace us among our neighbours, or render us punishable by the
+law.
+
+My friends, it is NOT SO.  And those who fancy that it is so, will
+find out their mistake bitterly enough.  Infinite love and
+forgiveness to those who repent and amend and do right; but infinite
+rigour and punishment to those who will not amend and do right.
+This is the everlasting law of God's universe; and every soul of man
+will find it out at last, and find that the Lord Jesus Christ is not
+a Being to be trifled with, and that the precious blood which he
+shed on the cross is of no avail to those who are not minded to be
+righteous even as he is righteous.
+
+'But Christ is so loving, so tender-hearted that he surely will not
+punish us for our sins.'  This is the confused notion that too many
+people have about him.  And the answer to it is, that just BECAUSE
+Christ is so loving, so tender-hearted, therefore he MUST punish us
+for our sins, unless we utterly give up our sins, and do right
+instead of wrong.
+
+That false notion springs out of men's selfishness.  They think of
+sin as something which only hurts themselves; when they do wrong
+they think merely, 'What punishment will God inflict on ME for doing
+wrong?'  They are wrapt up in themselves.  They forget that their
+sins are not merely a matter between them and Christ, but between
+them and their neighbours; that every wrong action they commit,
+every wrong word they speak, every wrong habit in which they indulge
+themselves, sooner or later, more or less hurts their neighbours--
+ay, hurts all mankind.
+
+And does Christ care only for THEM?  Does he not care for their
+neighbours?  Has he not all mankind to provide for, and govern and
+guide?  And can he allow bad men to go on making this world worse,
+without punishing them, any more than a gardener can allow weeds to
+hurt his flowers, and not root them up?  What would you say of a man
+who was so merciful to the weeds that he let them choke the flowers?
+What would you say of a shepherd who was so merciful to the wolves
+that he let them eat his sheep?  What would you say of a magistrate
+who was so merciful to thieves that he let them rob the honest men?
+And do you fancy that Christ is a less careful and just governor of
+the world than the magistrate who punishes the thief that honest men
+may live in safety?
+
+Not so.  Not only will Christ punish the wolves who devour his
+sheep, but he will punish his sheep themselves if they hurt each
+other, torment each other, lead each other astray, or in any way
+interfere with the just and equal rule of his kingdom; and this, not
+out of spite or cruelty, but simply because he is perfect love.
+
+Go, therefore, and think of Christ this Passion Week as he was, and
+is, and ever will be.  Think of the whole Christ, and not of some
+part of his character which may specially please your fancy.  Think
+of him as the patient and forgiving Christ, who prayed for his
+murderers, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
+But remember that, in this very Passion Week, there came out of
+those most gentle lips--the lips which blessed little children, and
+cried to all who were weary and heavy laden, to come to him and he
+would give them rest--that out of those most gentle lips, I say, in
+this very Passion Week, there went forth the most awful threats
+which ever were uttered, 'Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees,
+hypocrites.  Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape
+the damnation of hell?'  Think of him as the Lamb who offered
+himself freely on the cross for sinners.  But think of him, too, as
+the Lamb who shall one day come in glory to judge all men according
+to their works.  Think of him as full of boundless tenderness and
+humanity, boundless long-suffering and mercy.  But remember that
+beneath that boundless sweetness and tenderness there burns a
+consuming fire; a fire of divine scorn and indignation against all
+who sin, like Pharaoh, out of cruelty and pride; against all which
+is foul and brutal, mean and base, false and hypocritical, cruel and
+unjust; a fire which burns, and will burn against all the wickedness
+which is done on earth, and all the misery and sorrow which is
+suffered on earth, till the Lord has burned it up for ever, and
+there is nothing but love and justice, order and usefulness, peace
+and happiness, left in the universe of God.
+
+Oh, think of these things, and cast away your sins betimes, at the
+foot of his everlasting cross, lest you be consumed with your sins
+in his everlasting fire!
+
+
+
+SERMON XII.  THE BIRTHNIGHT OF FREEDOM
+
+
+
+(Easter Day.)
+
+Exodus xii. 42.  This is a night to be much observed unto the Lord,
+for bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt.
+
+To be much observed unto the Lord by the children of Israel.  And by
+us, too, my friends; and by all nations who call themselves FREE.
+
+There are many and good ways of looking at Easter Day.  Let us look
+at it in this way for once.
+
+It is the day on which God himself set men FREE.
+
+Consider the story.  These Israelites, the children of Abraham, the
+brave, wild patriarch of the desert, have been settled for hundreds
+of years in the rich lowlands of Egypt.  There they have been eating
+and drinking their fill, and growing more weak, slavish, luxurious,
+fonder and fonder of the flesh-pots of Egypt; fattening literally
+for the slaughter, like beasts in a stall.  They are spiritually
+dead--dead in trespasses and sins.  They do not want to be free, to
+be a nation.  They are content to be slaves and idolaters, if they
+can only fill their stomachs.  This is the spiritual death of a
+nation.
+
+I say, they do not want to be free.  When they are oppressed, they
+cry out--as an animal cries when you beat him.  But after they are
+free, when they get into danger, or miss their meat, they cry out
+too, and are willing enough to return to slavery; as the dog which
+has run away for fear of the whip, will go back to his kennel for
+the sake of his food.  'Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast
+thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?  Wherefore hast thou
+dealt thus with us to carry us out of Egypt?'  And again, 'Would God
+we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, where we
+did sit by the flesh-pots, and eat meat to the full!'  BRUTALIZED,
+in one word, were these poor children of Israel.
+
+Then God took their cause into his own hand; I say emphatically into
+his own hand.  If that part of the story be not true, I care nothing
+for the rest.  If God did not personally and actually interfere on
+behalf of those poor slaves; if the plagues of Egypt are not TRUE--
+the passage of the Red Sea be not TRUE--the story tells me and you
+nothing; gives us no hope for ourselves, no hope for mankind.
+
+For see.  One says, and truly, God is good; God is love; God is
+just; God hates oppression and wrong.
+
+BUT if God be love, he must surely show his love by doing loving
+things.
+
+If God be just, he must show his justice by doing just things.
+
+If God hates oppression, then he must free the oppressed.
+
+If God hates wrong, then he must set the wrong right.
+
+For what would you think of a man who professed to be loving and
+just, and to hate oppression and wrong, and yet never took the
+trouble to do a good action, or to put down wrong, when he had the
+power?  You would call him a hypocrite; you would think his love and
+justice very much on his tongue, and not in his heart.
+
+And will you believe that God is like that man?  God forbid!
+
+Comfortable scholars and luxurious ladies may content themselves
+with a DEAD God, who does not interfere to help the oppressed, to
+right the wrong, to bind up the broken-hearted; but men and women
+who work, who sorrow, who suffer, who partake of all the ills which
+flesh is heir to--they want a LIVING God, an acting God, a God who
+WILL interfere to right the wrong.  Yes--they want a living God.
+And they have a living God--even the God who interfered to bring the
+Israelites out of Egypt with signs and wonders, and a mighty hand
+and an outstretched arm, and executed judgment upon Pharaoh and his
+proud and cruel hosts.  And when they read in the Bible of that God,
+when they read in their Bibles the story of the Exodus, their hearts
+answer, THIS is right.  This is the God whom we need.  This is what
+ought to have happened.  This is true:  for it must be true.  Let
+comfortable folks who know no sorrow trouble their brains as to
+whether sixty or six hundred thousand fighting men came out of Egypt
+with Moses.  We care not for numbers.  What we care for is, not how
+many came out, but who brought them out, and that he who brought
+them out was GOD.  And the book which tells us that, we will cling
+to, will love, will reverence above all the books on earth, because
+it tells of a living God, who works and acts and interferes for men;
+who not only hates wrong, but rights wrong; not only hates
+oppression, but puts oppressors down; not only pities the oppressed,
+but sets the oppressed free; a God who not only wills that man
+should have freedom, but sent freedom down to him from heaven.
+
+Scholars have said that the old Greeks were the fathers of freedom;
+and there have been other peoples in the world's history who have
+made glorious and successful struggles to throw off their tyrants
+and be free.  And they have said, We are the fathers of freedom;
+liberty was born with us.  Not so, my friends!  Liberty is of a far
+older and far nobler house; Liberty was born, if you will receive
+it, on the first Easter night, on the night to be much remembered
+among the children of Israel--ay, among all mankind--when God
+himself stooped from heaven to set the oppressed free.  Then was
+freedom born.  Not in the counsels of men, however wise; or in the
+battles of men, however brave:  but in the counsels of God, and the
+battle of God--amid human agony and terror, and the shaking of the
+heaven and the earth; amid the great cry throughout Egypt when a
+first-born son lay dead in every house; and the tempest which swept
+aside the Red Sea waves; and the pillar of cloud by day, and the
+pillar of fire by night; and the Red Sea shore covered with the
+corpses of the Egyptians; and the thunderings and lightnings and
+earthquakes of Sinai; and the sound as of a trumpet waxing loud and
+long; and the voice, most human and most divine, which spake from
+off the lonely mountain peak to that vast horde of coward and
+degenerate slaves, and said, 'I am the Lord thy God who brought thee
+out of the land of Egypt.  Thou shalt obey my laws, and keep my
+commandments to do them.'  Oh! the man who would rob his suffering
+fellow-creatures of that story--he knows not how deep and bitter are
+the needs of man.
+
+Then was freedom born:  but not of man; not of the will of the
+flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God, from whom all
+good things come; and of Christ, who is the life and the light of
+men and of nations, and of the whole world, and of all worlds, past,
+present, and to come.
+
+From God came freedom.  To be used as his gift, according to his
+laws; for he gave, and he can take away; as it is written, 'He shall
+take the kingdom of God from you, and give it to a people bringing
+forth the fruits thereof.'  'For there be many first that shall be
+last; and last that shall be first.'  It is this which makes the
+Jews indeed a peculiar people:  the thought that the living God had
+actually and really done for them what they could not do for
+themselves; that he had made them a nation, and not they themselves.
+It is this which makes the Old Testament an utterly different book,
+with an utterly different lesson, to the written history of any
+other nation in the world.
+
+And yet it is this which makes the history of the Jews the key to
+every other history in the world.  For in it Jesus Christ our Lord,
+the living God who makes history, who governs all nations, reveals
+and unveils himself, and teaches not the Jews only, but us and all
+nations, that it is he who hath made us, and not we ourselves; that
+we got not the land in possession by our own sword, nor was it our
+own strength that helped us, but thou, O Lord, because thou hadst a
+favour unto us; that not to us, not to us is the praise of any
+national greatness or glory, but to God, from whom it comes as
+surely a free gift as the gift of liberty to the Jews of old.
+
+I say, the history of the Jews is the history of the whole Church,
+and of every nation in Christendom.
+
+As with the Jews, so with the nations of Europe; whenever they have
+trusted in themselves, their own power and wisdom, they have ended
+in weakness and folly.  Whenever they have trusted in Christ the
+living God, and said, 'It is he that hath made us, and not we
+ourselves,' they have risen to strength and wisdom.  When they have
+forgotten the living God, national life and patriotism have died in
+them, as they died in the Jews.  When they have remembered that the
+most high God was their Redeemer, then in them, as in the Jews, have
+national life and patriotism revived.
+
+And as it was with the Jews in the wilderness, so it has been with
+them since Christ's resurrection.  They fancied that they were going
+at once into the promised land.  So did the first Christians.  But
+the Jews had to wander forty years in the wilderness; and
+Christendom has had to wander too, in strange and bloodstained
+paths, for one thousand eight hundred years and more.  For why?  The
+Israelites were not worthy to enter at once into rest; no more have
+the nation of Christ's Church been worthy.  The Israelites brought
+out of Egypt base and slavish passions, which had to be purged out
+of them; so have we out of heathendom.  They brought out, too,
+heathen superstitions, and mixed them up with the worship of God,
+bearing about in the wilderness the tabernacle of Moloch and the
+image of their god Remphan, and making the calf in Horeb; and so,
+alas! again and again, has the Church of Christ.
+
+Nay, the whole generation, save two, who came out of Egypt, had to
+die in the wilderness, and leave their bones scattered far and wide.
+And so has mankind been dying, by war and by disease, and by many
+fearful scourges besides what is called now-a-days, natural decay.
+
+But all the while a new generation was springing up, trained in the
+wilderness to be bold and hardy; trained, too, under Moses' stern
+law, to the fear of God; to reverence, and discipline, and
+obedience, without which freedom is merely brutal license, and a
+nation is no nation, but a mere flock of sheep or a herd of wolves.
+
+And so, for these one thousand eight hundred years have the
+generations of Christendom, by the training of the Church and the
+light of the Gospel, been growing in wisdom and knowledge; growing
+in morality and humanity, in that true discipline and loyalty which
+are the yoke-fellows of freedom and independence, to make them fit
+for that higher state, that heavenly Canaan, of which we know not
+WHEN it will come, nor whether its place will be on this earth or
+elsewhere; but of which it is written, 'And I John saw the holy
+city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as
+a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a great voice out of
+heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he
+will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself
+shall be with them, and be their God.  And God shall wipe away all
+tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
+sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:  for the
+former things are passed away.  And he that sat upon the throne
+said, Behold, I make all things new.
+
+'And I saw no temple therein:  for the Lord God Almighty and the
+Lamb are the temple of it.  And the city had no need of the sun,
+neither of the moon to shine in it:  for the glory of God did
+lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.  And the nations of
+them which are saved shall walk in the light of it; and the kings of
+the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.  And the gates of
+it shall not be shut at all by day:  for there shall be no night
+there.  And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations
+into it.  And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that
+defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie:
+but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.'
+
+That, the perfect Easter Day, seems far enough off as yet; but it
+will come.  As the Lord liveth, it will come; and to it may Christ
+in his mercy bring us all, and our children's children after us.
+Amen.
+
+
+
+SERMON XIII.  KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM
+
+
+
+(First Sunday after Easter, 1863.)
+
+Numbers xvi. 32-35.  And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed
+them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto
+Korah, and all their goods.  They, and all that appertained to them,
+went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them:  and
+they perished from among the congregation.  And all Israel that were
+round about them fled at the cry of them:  for they said, Lest the
+earth swallow us up also.  And there came out a fire from the Lord,
+and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.
+
+I will begin by saying that there are several things in this chapter
+which I do not understand, and cannot explain to you.  Be it so.
+That is no reason why we should not look at the parts of the chapter
+which we can understand and can explain.
+
+There are matters without end in the world round us, and in our own
+hearts, and in the life of every one, which we cannot explain; and
+therefore we need not be surprised to find things which we cannot
+explain in the life and history of the most remarkable nation upon
+earth--the nation whose business it has been to teach all other
+nations the knowledge of the true God, and who was specially and
+curiously trained for that work.
+
+But the one broad common-sense lesson of this chapter, it seems to
+me, is one which is on the very surface of it; one which every true
+Englishman at least will see, and see to be true, when he hears the
+chapter read; and that is, the necessity of DISCIPLINE.
+
+God has brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and set them free.  One
+of the first lessons which they have to learn is, that freedom does
+not mean license and discord--does not mean every one doing that
+which is right in the sight of his own eyes.  From that springs
+self-will, division, quarrels, revolt, civil war, weakness,
+profligacy, and ruin to the whole people.  Without order,
+discipline, obedience to law, there can be no true and lasting
+freedom; and, therefore, order must be kept at all risks, the law
+obeyed, and rebellion punished.
+
+Now rebellion may be and ought to be punished far more severely in
+some cases than in others.  If men rebel here, in Great Britain or
+Ireland, we smile at them, and let them off with a slight
+imprisonment, because we are not afraid of them.  They can do no
+harm.
+
+But there are cases in which rebellion must be punished with a swift
+and sharp hand.  On board a ship at sea, for instance, where the
+safety of the whole ship, the lives of the whole crew, depend on
+instant obedience, mutiny may be punished by death on the spot.
+Many a commander has ere now, and rightly too, struck down the rebel
+without trial or argument, and ended him and his mutiny on the spot;
+by the sound rule that it is expedient that one man die for the
+people, and that the whole nation perish not.
+
+And so it was with the Israelites in the desert.  All depended on
+their obedience.  God had given them a law--a constitution, as we
+should say now--perfectly fitted, no doubt, for them.  If they once
+began to rebel and mutiny against that law, all was over with them.
+That great, foolish, ignorant multitude would have broken up,
+probably fought among themselves--certainly parted company, and
+either starved in the desert, or have been destroyed piecemeal by
+the wild warlike tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites--who were
+ready enough for slaughter and plunder.  They would never have
+reached Canaan.  They would never have become a great nation.  So
+they had to be, by necessity, under martial law.  The word must be,
+Obey or die.  As for any cruelty in putting Korah, Dathan, and
+Abiram to death, it was worth the death of a hundred such--or a
+thousand--to preserve the great and glorious nation of the Jews to
+be the teachers of the world.
+
+Now this Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel.  They rebel against Moses
+about a question of the priesthood.  It really matters little to us
+what that question was--it was a question of Moses' law, which, of
+course, is now done away.  Only remember this, that these men were
+princes--great feudal noblemen, as we should say; and that they
+rebelled on the strength of their rank and their rights as noblemen
+to make laws for themselves and for the people; and that the mob of
+their dependents seem to have been inclined to support them.
+
+Surely if Moses had executed martial law on them with his own hand,
+he would have been as perfectly justified as a captain of a ship of
+war or a general of an army would be now.
+
+But he did not do so.  And why?  Because MOSES did not bring the
+people out of Egypt.  Moses was not their king.  GOD brought them
+out of Egypt.  God was their king.  That was the lesson which they
+had to learn, and to teach other nations also.  They have rebelled,
+not against Moses, but against God; and not Moses, but God must
+punish, and show that he is not a dead God, but a living God, one
+who can defend himself, and enforce his own laws, and execute
+judgment--and, if need be, vengeance--without needing any man to
+fight his battles for him.
+
+And God does so.  The powers of Nature--the earthquake and the
+nether fire--shall punish these rebels; and so they do.
+
+'And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me to
+do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind.  If
+these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited
+after the visitation of all men; then the Lord hath not sent me.
+But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth and
+swallow them up, with all that appertain to them and they go down
+quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have
+provoked the Lord.'
+
+Men have thought differently of the story; but I call it a righteous
+story, and a noble story, and one which agrees with my conscience,
+and my reason, and my notion of what ought to be, and my experience
+also of what is--of the way in which God's world is governed unto
+this day.
+
+What then are we to think of the earth opening and swallowing them
+up?  What are we to think of a fire coming out from the Lord, and
+consuming two hundred and fifty men that offered incense?
+
+This first.  That discipline and order are so absolutely necessary
+for the well-being of a nation that they must be kept at all risks,
+and enforced by the most terrible punishments.
+
+It seems to me (to speak with all reverence) as if God had said to
+the Jews, 'I have set you free.  I will make of you a great nation;
+I will lead you into a good land and large.  But if you are to be a
+great nation, if you are to conquer that good land and large, you
+must obey:  and you shall obey.  The earthquake and the fire shall
+teach you to obey, and make you an example to the rest of the
+Israelites, and to all nations after you.'  But how hard, some may
+think, that the wives and the children should suffer for their
+parents' sins.
+
+My friends, we do not know that a single woman or child died then
+for whom it was not better that he or she should die.  That is one
+of the deep things which we must leave to the perfect justice and
+mercy of God.
+
+And next--what is it after all, but what we see going on round us
+all the day long?  God does visit the sins of the fathers on the
+children.  There is no denying it.  Wives do suffer for their
+husbands' sins; children and children's children for whole
+generations after generations suffer for their parents' sins, and
+become unhealthy, or superstitious, or profligate, or poor, or
+slavish, because their parents sinned, and dragged down their
+children with them in their fall.  It is a law of the world; and
+therefore it is a law of God.  And it is reasonable to be believed
+that God might choose to teach the Israelites, once and for all,
+that it WAS a law of his world.  For by swallowing up those women
+and children with the men, God said to the Israelites, it seems to
+me in a way which could not be mistaken, 'This is the consequence of
+lawlessness and disorder--that you not only injure yourselves, but
+your children after you, and involve your families in the same ruin
+as yourselves.'
+
+But there was another lesson, and a deep lesson, in the earthquake
+and in the fire.  And what was this? that the earthquake and the
+fire came out from the Lord.
+
+Earthquakes have swallowed up not hundreds merely, but many
+thousands, in many countries, and at many times.
+
+Fire has come forth, and still comes forth from the ground, from the
+clouds, from the consequences of man's own carelessness, and
+destroys beast and man, and the works of man's hands.  Then men ask
+in terror and doubt, 'Who sends the earthquake and the fire?  Do
+they come from the devil--the destroyer?  Do they come by chance,
+from some brute and blind powers of nature?'
+
+This chapter answers, 'No.  They come from the Lord, from whom all
+good things do come; from the Lord who delivered the Israelites out
+of Egypt; who so loved the world that he spared not his only
+begotten Son, but freely gave him for us.'
+
+Now I say that is a gospel, and good news, which we want now as much
+as ever men did; which the children of Israel wanted then, though
+not one whit more than we.
+
+Many hundreds of years had these Israelites been in Egypt.  Storm,
+lightning, earthquake, the fires of the burning mountains, were
+things unknown to them.  They were going into Canaan--a good land
+and fruitful, but a land of storms and thunders; a land, too, of
+earthquakes and subterranean fires.  The deepest earthquake-crack in
+the world is the valley of the Jordan, ending in the Dead Sea--a
+long valley, through which at different points the nether fires of
+the earth even now burst up at times.  In Abraham's time they had
+destroyed the five cities of the plain.  The prophets mention them,
+especially Isaiah and Micah, as breaking out again in their own
+times; and in our own lifetime earthquake and fire have done fearful
+destruction in the north part of the Holy Land.
+
+Now what was to prevent the Israelites worshipping the earthquake
+and the fire as gods?
+
+Nothing.  Conceive the terror and horror of the Jews coming out of
+that quiet land of Egypt, the first time they felt the ground
+rocking and rolling; the first time they heard the roar of the
+earthquake beneath their feet; the first time they saw, in the
+magnificent words of Micah, the mountains molten and the valleys
+cleft as wax before the fire, like water poured down a steep place;
+and discovered that beneath their very feet was Tophet, the pit of
+fire and brimstone, ready to burst up and overwhelm them they knew
+not when.
+
+What could they do, but what the Canaanites did who dwelt already in
+that land?  What but to say, 'The fire is king.  The fire is the
+great and dreadful God, and to him we must pray, lest he devour us
+up.'  For so did the Canaanites.  They called the fire Moloch, which
+means simply the king; and they worshipped this fire-king, and made
+idols of him, and offered human sacrifices to him.  They had idols
+of metal, before which an everlasting fire burned; and on the arms
+of the idol the priests laid the children who were to be sacrificed,
+that they might roll down into the fire and be burnt alive.  That is
+actual fact.  In one case, which we know of well, hundreds of years
+after Moses' time, the Carthaginians offered two hundred boys of
+their best families to Moloch in one day.  This is that making the
+children pass through the fire to Moloch--burning them in the fire
+to Moloch--of which we read several times in the Old Testament; as
+ugly and accursed a superstition as men ever invented.
+
+What deliverance was there for them from these abominable
+superstitions, except to know that the fire-kingdom was God's
+kingdom, and not Moloch's at all; to know with Micah and with David
+that the hills were molten like wax BEFORE THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD;
+that it was the blast of his breath which discovered the foundations
+of the world; that it was HE who made the sea flee and drove back
+the Jordan stream; that it was before HIM that the mountains skipped
+like rams and the little hills like young sheep; that the battles of
+shaking were God's battles, with which he could fight for his
+people; that it was he who ordained Tophet, and whose spirit kindled
+it.  That it was he--and that too in mercy as well as anger--who
+visited the land in Isaiah's time with thunder and earthquake, and
+great noise, and storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.
+That the earth opened and swallowed up those whom God chose, and no
+others.  That if fire came forth, it came forth from the Lord, and
+burned where and what God chose, and nothing else.  Yes.  If you
+will only understand, once and for all, that the history of the Jews
+is the history of the Lord's turning a people from the cowardly,
+slavish worship of sun and stars, of earthquakes and burning
+mountains, and all the brute powers of nature which the heathen
+worshipped, and teaching them to trust and obey him, the living God,
+the Lord and Master of all, then the Old Testament will be clear to
+you throughout; but if not, then not.
+
+You cannot read your Bibles without seeing how that great lesson was
+stamped into the very hearts of the Hebrew prophets; how they are
+continually speaking of the fire and the earthquake, and yet
+continually declaring that they too obey God and do God's will, and
+that the man who fears God need not fear them--that God was their
+hope and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore would
+they not fear, though the earth was moved, and though the mountains
+be carried into the midst of the sea.
+
+And we, too, need the same lesson in these scientific days.  We too
+need to fix it in our hearts, that the powers of nature are the
+powers of God; that he orders them by his providence to do what he
+will, and when and where he will; that, as the Psalmist says, the
+winds are his messengers and the flames of fire his ministers.  And
+this we shall learn from the Bible, and from no other book
+whatsoever.
+
+God taught the Jews this, by a strange and miraculous education,
+that they might teach it in their turn to all mankind.  And they
+have taught it.  For the Bible bids us--as no other book does--not
+to be afraid of the world on which we live; not to be afraid of
+earthquake or tempest, or any of the powers of nature which seem to
+us terrible and cruel, and destroying; for they are the powers of
+the good and just and loving God.  They obey our Father in heaven,
+without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and our Lord Jesus
+Christ, who came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them.  And
+therefore we need not fear them, or look on them with any blind
+superstition, as things too awful for us to search into.  We may
+search into their causes; find out, if we can, the laws which they
+obey, because those laws are given them by God our Father; try, by
+using those laws, to escape them, as we are learning now to escape
+tempests; or to prevent them, as we are learning now to prevent
+pestilences:  and where we cannot do that, face them manfully,
+saying, 'It is my Father's will.  These terrible events must be
+doing God's work.  They may be punishing the guilty; they may be
+taking the righteous away from the evil to come; they may be
+teaching wise men lessons which will enable them years hence to save
+lives without number; they may be preparing the face of the earth
+for the use of generations yet unborn.  Whatever they are doing they
+are and must be doing good; for they are doing the will of the
+living Father, who willeth that none should perish, and hateth
+nothing that he hath made.'
+
+This, my friends, is the lesson which the Bible teaches; and because
+it teaches that lesson it is the Book of books, and the inspired
+word or message, not of men concerning God, but of God himself,
+concerning himself, his kingdom over this world and over all worlds,
+and his good will to men.
+
+
+
+SERMON XIV.  BALAAM
+
+
+
+NUMBERS xxiii. 19.  God is not a man, that he should lie; neither
+the son of man, that he should repent:  hath he said, and shall he
+not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
+
+If I was asked for any proof that the story of Balaam, as I find it
+in the Bible, is a true story, I should lay my hand on this one
+only--and that is, the deep knowledge of human nature which is shown
+in it.
+
+The character of Balaam is so perfectly natural, and yet of a kind
+so very difficult to unravel and explain, that if the story was
+invented by man, as poems or novels are, it must have been invented
+very late indeed in the history of the Jews; at a time when they had
+grown to be a far more civilised people, far more experienced in the
+cunning tricks of the human heart than they were, as far as we can
+see from the Bible, before the Babylonish captivity.  But it was NOT
+invented late; for no Jew in these later times would have thought of
+making Balaam a heathen, to be a prophet of God, or a believer in
+the true God at all.  The later Jews took up the notion that God
+spoke to and cared for the Jews only, and that all other nations
+were accursed.
+
+There is no reason, therefore, against simply believing the story as
+it stands.  It seems a very ancient story indeed, suiting exactly in
+its smallest details the place where Moses, or whoever wrote the
+Book of Numbers, has put it.
+
+We, in these days, are accustomed to draw a sharp line between the
+good and the bad, the converted and the unconverted, the children of
+God and the children of this world, those who have God's Spirit and
+those who have not, which we find nowhere in Scripture; and
+therefore when we read of such a man as Balaam we cannot understand
+him.  He is a bad man, but yet he is a prophet.  How can that be?
+He knows the true God.  More, he has the Spirit of God in him, and
+thereby utters deep and wonderful prophecies; and yet he is a bad
+man and a rogue.  How can that be?
+
+The puzzle, my friends, is one of our own making.  If, instead of
+taking up doctrines out of books, we will use our own eyes and ears
+and common sense, and look honestly at this world as it is, and men
+and women as they are, we shall find nothing unnatural or strange in
+Balaam; we shall find him very like a good many people whom we know;
+very like--nay, probably, too like--ourselves in some particulars.
+
+Now bear in mind, first, that Balaam is no impostor or magician.  He
+is a wise man, and a prophet of God.  God really speaks to him, and
+really inspires him.
+
+And bear in mind, too, that Balaam's inspiration did not merely open
+his mouth to say wonderful words which he did not understand, but
+opened his heart to say righteous and wise things which he did
+understand.
+
+'Remember,' says the prophet Micah, 'O my people, what Balak, king
+of Moab, consulted, and what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him
+from Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may know the righteousness of the
+Lord.  Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before
+the high God?  Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with
+calves of a year old?  Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of
+rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?  Shall I give my
+firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of
+my soul?  He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth
+the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and
+to walk humbly with thy God.'  Why, what deeper or wiser words are
+there in the whole Old Testament?  This man Balaam had seen down
+into the deepest depths of all morality, unto the deepest depths of
+all religion.  The man who knew that, knew more than ninety-nine in
+a hundred do even in a Christian country now, and more than nine
+hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine in a
+million knew in those days.  Let no one, after that speech, doubt
+that Balaam was indeed a prophet of the Lord; and yet he was a bad
+man, and came deservedly to a bad end.
+
+So much easier, my friends, is it to know what is right than to do
+what is right.
+
+What then was wrong in Balaam?
+
+This, that he was double-minded.  He wished to serve God.  True.
+But he wished to serve himself by serving God, as too many do in all
+times.
+
+That was what was wrong with him--self-seeking; and the Bible story
+brings out that self-seeking with a delicacy, a keenness, and a
+perfect knowledge of human nature, which ought to teach us some of
+the secrets of our own hearts.  Watch how Balaam, as a matter of
+course, inquires of the Lord whether he may go, and refuses,
+seemingly at first honestly.
+
+Then how the temptation grows on him; how, when he feels tempted, he
+fights against it in fine-sounding professions, just because he
+feels that he is going to yield to it.  Then how he begins to tempt
+God, by asking him again, in hopes that God may have changed his
+mind.  Then when he has his foolish wish granted he goes.  Then when
+the terrible warning comes to him that he is on the wrong road, that
+God's wrath is gone out against him, and his angel ready to destroy
+him, he is full still of hollow professions of obedience, instead of
+casting himself utterly upon God's mercy, and confessing his sin,
+and entreating pardon.
+
+Then how, instead of being frightened at God's letting him have his
+way, he is emboldened by it to tempt God more and more, and begins
+offering bullocks and rams on altars, first in this place and then
+in that, in hopes still that GOD may change his mind, and let him
+curse Israel; in hopes that God may be like one of the idols of the
+heathen, who could (so the heathen thought) be coaxed and flattered
+round by sacrifices to do whatever their worshippers wished.
+
+Then, when he finds that all is of no use; that he must not curse
+Israel, and must not earn Balak's silver and gold, he is forced to
+be an honest man in spite of himself; and therefore he makes the
+best of his disappointment by taking mighty credit to himself for
+being honest, while he wishes all the while he might have been
+allowed to have been dishonest.  Oh, if all this is not poor human
+nature, drawn by the pen of a truly inspired writer, what is it?
+
+Moreover, it is curious to watch how as Balaam is forced step by
+step to be an honest man, so step by step he rises.  A weight falls
+off his mind and heart, and the Spirit of God comes upon him.
+
+He feels for once that he must speak his mind, that he must obey
+God.  As he looks down from off the mountain top, and sees the vast
+encampment of the Israelites spread over the vale below, for miles
+and miles, as far as the eye can see, all ordered, disciplined,
+arranged according to their tribes, the Spirit of God comes upon
+him, and he gives way to it and speaks.
+
+The sight of that magnificent array wakens up in him the thought of
+how divine is older, how strong is order, how order is the life and
+root of a nation, and how much more, when that order is the order of
+God.
+
+'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!
+As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's
+side, as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as
+cedar trees beside the waters.  His king shall be higher than Agag,'
+and all his wild Amalekite hordes.  He will be a true nation,
+civilized, ordered, loyal and united, for God is teaching him.
+
+Who can resist such a nation as that?  'God has brought him out of
+Egypt.  He has the strength of an unicorn.'  'I shall see him,' he
+says, 'but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh:  there shall
+come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel,
+and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of
+Sheth.'  And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and
+said, 'Amalek was the first of the nation; but his latter end shall
+be that he perish for ever.'  And he looked on the Kenites, and took
+up his parable, and said, 'Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou
+puttest thy nest in a rock.  Nevertheless, the Kenite shall be
+wasted, till Asshur shall carry thee away captive.'  'Alas, who
+shall live when God doeth this!'
+
+And then, beyond all, after all the Canaanites and other Syrian
+races have been destroyed, he sees, dimly and afar off, another
+destruction still.
+
+In his home in the far east the fame of the ships of Chittim has
+reached him; the fame of the new people, the sea-roving heroes of
+the Greeks, of whom old Homer sang; the handsomest, cunningest, most
+daring of mankind, who are spreading their little trading colonies
+along all the isles and shores, as we now are spreading ours over
+the world.  Those ships of Chittim, too, have a great and glorious
+future before them.  Some day or other they will come and afflict
+Asshur, the great empire of the East, out of which Balaam probably
+came; and afflict Eber too, the kingdom of the Jews, and they too
+shall perish for ever.
+
+Dimly he sees it, for it is very far away.  But that it will come he
+sees; and beyond that all is dark.  He has said his say; he has
+spoken the whole truth for once.  Balak's house full of silver and
+gold would not have bought him off and stopped his mouth when such
+awful thoughts crowded on his mind.  So he returns to his place--to
+do what?
+
+If he cannot earn Balak's gold by cursing Israel, he can do it by
+giving him cunning and politic advice.  He advises Balak to make
+friends with the Israelites and mix them up with his people by
+enticing them to the feasts of his idols, at which the women threw
+themselves away in shameful profligacy, after the custom of the
+heathens of these parts.
+
+In the next chapter we read how Moses, and Phinehas, Aaron's
+grandson, put down those filthy abominations with a high hand; and
+how Balaam's detestable plot, instead of making peace, makes war;
+and in chapter xxxi. you read the terrible destruction of the whole
+nation of the Midianites, and among it this one short and terrible
+hint:  'Balaam also, the son of Beor, they slew with the sword.'
+
+But what may we learn from this ugly story?
+
+Recollect what I said at first, that we should find Balaam too like
+many people now-a-days; perhaps too like ourselves.
+
+Too like indeed.  For never were men more tempted to sin as Balaam
+did than in these days, when religion is all the fashion, and pays a
+man, and helps him on in life; when, indeed, a man cannot expect to
+succeed without professing some sort of religion or other.
+
+Thereby comes a terrible temptation to many men.  I do not mean to
+hypocrites, but to really well-meaning men.  They like religion.
+They wish to be good; they have the feeling of devotion.  They pray,
+they read their Bibles, they are attentive to services and to
+sermons, and are more or less pious people.  But soon--too soon--
+they find that their piety is profitable.  Their business increases.
+Their credit increases.  They are trusted and respected; their
+advice is asked and taken.  They gain power over their fellow-men.
+What a fine thing it is, they think, to be pious!
+
+Then creeps in the love of the world; the love of money, or power,
+or admiration; and they begin to value religion because it helps
+them to get on in the world.  They begin more and more to love Piety
+not for its own sake, but for the sake of what it brings; not
+because it pleases God, but because it pleases the world; not
+because it enables them to help their fellow-men, but because it
+enables them to help themselves.
+
+So they get double-minded, unstable, inconsistent, as St. James
+says, in all their ways; trying to serve God and Mammon at once.
+Trying to do good--as long as doing good does not hurt them in the
+world's eyes; but longing oftener and oftener to do wrong, if only
+God would not be angry.  Then comes on Balaam's frame of mind, 'If
+Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go
+beyond the commandment of the Lord.'
+
+Oh no.  They would not do a wrong thing for the world--only they
+must be quite sure first that it is wrong.  Has God really forbidden
+it?  Why should they not take care of their interest?  Why should
+they not get on in the world?  So they begin, like Balaam, to tempt
+God, to see how far they can go; to see if God has forbidden this
+and that mean, or cowardly, or covetous, or ambitious deed.  So they
+soon settle for themselves what God has forbidden and what he has
+not; and their rule of life becomes this--that whatsoever is safe
+and whatsoever is profitable is pretty sure to be right; and after
+that no wonder if, like Balaam, they indulge themselves in every
+sort of sin, provided only it is respectable, and does not hurt them
+in the world's eyes.
+
+And all the while they keep up their religion.  Ay, they are often
+more attentive than ever to religion, because their consciences
+pinch them at times, and have to be silenced and drugged by
+continual church-goings and chapel-goings, and readings and
+prayings, in order that they may be able to say to themselves with
+Balaam, 'Thus saith Balaam, he who heard the word of God, and had
+the knowledge of the Most High.'
+
+So they say to themselves, 'I must be right.  How religious I am;
+how fond of sermons, and of church services, and church
+restorations, and missionary meetings, and charitable institutions,
+and everything that is good and pious.  I MUST be right with God.'
+Deceiving their ownselves, and saying to themselves, 'I am rich and
+increased with goods, I have need of nothing,' and not knowing that
+they are wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked.
+
+Would God that such people, of whom there are too many, would take
+St. John's warning and buy of the Lord gold tried in the fire--the
+true gold of honesty--that they may be truly rich, and anoint their
+eyes with eye-salve that they may see themselves for once as they
+are.
+
+But what does this story teach us concerning God?  For remember, as
+I tell you every Sunday, that each fresh story in the Pentateuch
+reveals to us something fresh about the character of God.  What does
+Balaam's story reveal?  Balaam himself tells us in the text, 'God is
+not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should
+repent.  Hath he said, and shall he not do it?'
+
+Yes.  Fancy not that any wishes or prayers of yours can persuade God
+to alter his everlasting laws of right and wrong.  If he has
+commanded a thing, he has commanded it because it is according to
+his everlasting laws, which cannot change, because they are made in
+his eternal image and likeness.  Therefore if God has commanded you
+a thing, DO IT heartily, fully, without arguing or complaining.  If
+you begin arguing with God's law, excusing yourself from it,
+inventing reasons why YOU need not obey it in this particular
+instance, though every one else ought, then you will end, like
+Balaam, in disobeying the law, and it will grind you to powder.
+
+But if you obey God's law honestly, with a single eye and a whole
+heart, you will find in it a blessing, and peace, and strength, and
+everlasting life.
+
+
+
+SERMON XV.  DEUTERONOMY
+
+
+
+(Third Sunday after Easter.)
+
+Deut. iv. 39, 40.  Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine
+heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth
+beneath:  there is none else.  Thou shall keep therefore his
+statutes and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that
+it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that
+thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God
+giveth thee, for ever.
+
+Learned men have argued much of late as to who wrote the book of
+Deuteronomy.  After having read a good deal on the subject, I can
+only say that I see no reason why we should not believe the ancient
+account which the Jews give, that it was written, or at least spoken
+by Moses.
+
+No doubt there are difficulties in the book.  If there had not been,
+there would never have been any dispute about the matter; but the
+plain, broad, common-sense case is this:
+
+The book of Deuteronomy is made up of several great orations or
+sermons, delivered, says the work itself, by Moses, to the whole
+people of the Jews, before they left the wilderness and entered into
+the land of Canaan; wherefore it is called Deuteronomy, or the
+second law.  In it some small matters of the law are altered, as was
+to be expected, when the Jews were going to change their place and
+their whole way of life.  But the whole teaching and meaning of the
+book is exactly that of Exodus and Leviticus.  Moreover, it is, if
+possible, the grandest and deepest book of the Old Testament.  Its
+depth and wisdom are unequalled.  I hold it to be the sum and
+substance of all political philosophy and morality of the true life
+of a nation.  The books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, grand as
+they are, are, as it were, its children; growths out of the root
+which Deuteronomy reveals.
+
+Now if Moses did not write it, who did?
+
+As for the style of it being different from that of Exodus and
+Leviticus, the simple answer is, Why not?  They are books of history
+and of laws.  This is a book of sermons or orations, spoken first,
+and not written, which, of course, would be in a different style.
+Besides, why should not Moses have spoken differently at the end of
+forty years' such experience as never man had before or since?
+Every one who thinks, writes, or speaks in public, knows how his
+style alters, as fresh knowledge and experience come to him.  Are
+you to suppose that Moses gained nothing by HIS experience?
+
+As for a few texts in it being like Isaiah or Jeremiah, they are
+likely enough to be so; for if (as I believe) Deuteronomy was
+written long before those books, what more likely than that Isaiah
+and Jeremiah should have studied it, and taken some of its words to
+themselves when they were preaching to the Jews just what
+Deuteronomy preaches?
+
+As for any one else having written it in Moses' name, hundreds of
+years after his death, I cannot believe it.  If there had been in
+Israel a prophet great and wise enough to write Deuteronomy, we must
+have heard more about him, for he must have been famous at the time
+when he did live; while, if he were great enough to write
+Deuteronomy, he would have surely written in his own name, as Isaiah
+and all the other prophets wrote, instead of writing under a feigned
+name, and putting words into Moses' mouth which he did not speak,
+and laws he did not give.  Good men are not in the habit of telling
+lies:  much less prophets of God.  Men do not begin to play cowardly
+tricks of that kind till after they have lost faith in the LIVING
+God, and got to believe that God was with their forefathers, but is
+not with them.  A Jew of the time of the Apocrypha, or of the time
+of our Lord, might have done such a thing, because he had lost faith
+in the living God; but then his work would have been of a very
+different kind from this noble and heart-stirring book.  For the
+pith and marrow, the essence and life of Deuteronomy is, that it is
+full of faith in the living God; and for that very reason I am going
+to speak to you to-day.
+
+For the rest, whether Moses wrote the book down, and put it together
+in the shape in which we now have it, we shall never be able to
+tell.  The several orations may have been put together into one
+book.  Alterations may have crept in by the carelessness of copiers;
+sentences may have been added to it by later prophets--as, of
+course, the grand account of Moses' death, which probably was at
+first the beginning of the book of Joshua.  And beyond that we need
+know nothing--even if we need know that.
+
+There the book is; and people, if they be wise, will, instead of
+trying to pick it to pieces, read and study it in fear and
+trembling, that the curses pronounced in it may NOT come, and the
+blessings pronounced in it may come upon this English land.
+
+Now these Jews were to worship and obey Jehovah, the one true God,
+and him only.  And why?
+
+Why, indeed?  You MUST understand why, or you will never understand
+this book of Deuteronomy or any part of the Old Testament, and if
+you do not, then you will understand very little, if anything, of
+the New.
+
+You must understand that this was not to be a mere matter of
+RELIGION with the old Jews, this trusting and obeying the true God.
+Indeed, the word religion, so far as I know, is never mentioned once
+in the Old Testament at all.  By religion we now mean some plan of
+believing and obeying God, which will save our souls after we die.
+But Moses said nothing to the Jews about that.  He never even
+anywhere told them that they would live again after this life.  We
+do not know the reason of that.  But we may suppose that he knew
+best.  And as we believe that God sent him, we must believe that God
+knew best also; and that he thought it good for these Jews not to be
+told too much about the next life; perhaps for fear that they should
+forget that God was the living God; the God of now, as well as of
+hereafter; the God of this life, as well as of the life to come.  My
+friends, I sometimes think we need putting in mind of that in these
+days as much as those old Jews did.
+
+However that may be, what Moses promised these Jews, if they trusted
+in the living God, was that they should be a great nation, they and
+their children after them; that they should drive out the Canaanites
+before them; that they should conquer their enemies, and that a
+thousand should flee before one of them; that they should be blessed
+in their crops, their orchards, their gardens; that they should have
+none of the evil diseases of Egypt; that there should be none barren
+among them, or among their cattle.  In a word, that they should be
+thoroughly and always a strong, happy, prosperous people.
+
+This is what God promised them by Moses, and nothing else; and
+therefore this is what we must think about, and see whether it has
+anything to do with us, when we read the book of Deuteronomy, and
+nothing else.
+
+On the other hand, God warned them by the mouth of Moses that if
+they forgot the Lord God, and went and worshipped the things round
+them, men or beasts, or sun and moon and stars, then poverty,
+misery, and ruin of every kind would surely fall upon them.
+
+And that this last was no empty threat is proved by the plain facts
+of their sacred history.  For they DID forget God, and worshipped
+Baalim, the sun, moon, and stars; and ruin of every kind DID come
+upon them, till they were carried away captive to Babylon.  And this
+we must think of when we read the book of Deuteronomy, and nothing
+else.  If they wished to prosper, they were to know and consider in
+their hearts that Jehovah was God, and there was none else.  Yes--
+this was the continual thought which a true Jew was to have.  The
+thought of a God who was HIS God; the God of his fathers before him,
+and the God of his children after him; the God of the whole nation
+of the Jews, throughout all their generations.
+
+But not their God only.  No.  The God of the Gentiles also, of all
+the nations upon the earth.  He was to believe that his God alone,
+of all the gods of the nations, was the true and only God, who had
+made all nations, and appointed them their times and the bounds of
+their habitations.
+
+We cannot understand now, in these happier days, all that that
+meant; all the strength and comfort, all the godly fear, the feeling
+of solemn responsibility which that thought ought to have given, and
+did give to the Jews--that they were the people of Jehovah, the one
+true God.
+
+For you must remember that all the nations round them then, and all
+the great heathen nations afterwards, were, as far as we know, the
+people of some god or other.  Religion and politics were with them
+one and the same thing.  They had some god, or gods, whom they
+looked to as the head or king of their nation, who had a special
+favour to them, and would bless and prosper them according as they
+showed him special reverence, and after that god the whole nation
+was often named.
+
+The Ammonites' god was Ammon, the hidden god, the lord of their
+sheep and cattle.  The Zidonians had Ashtoreth, the moon.  The
+Phoenicians worshipped Moloch, the fire.  Many of the Canaanites
+worshipped Baal, the lord, or Baalim, the lords--the sun, moon, and
+stars.  The Philistines afterwards (for we read nothing of
+Philistines in Moses' time) worshipped Dagon, the fish-god, and so
+forth.  The Egyptians had gods without number--gods invented out of
+beasts, and birds, and the fruits of the earth, and the season, and
+the weather, and the sun and moon and stars.  Each class and trade,
+from the highest to the lowest, and each city and town throughout
+the land seems to have had its special god, who was worshipped
+there, and expected to take care of that particular class of men or
+that particular place.
+
+What a thought it must have been for the Jews--all these people have
+their gods, but they are all wrong.  We have the RIGHT God; the only
+true God.  They are the people of this god, or of that; we are the
+people of the one true God.  They look to many gods; we look to the
+one God, who made all things, and beside whom there is none else.
+They look to one god to bless them in one thing, and another in
+another; one to send them sunshine, one to send them fruitful
+seasons, one to prosper their crops, another their flocks and herds,
+and so forth.  We look to one God to do all these things for us,
+because he is Lord of all at once, and has made all.
+
+Therefore we need not fear the gods of the heathen, or cry to any of
+them, even in our utmost distress; for we belong to him who is
+before all gods, the God of gods, of whom it is written, 'Worship
+him, all ye gods;' and 'It is the Lord who made the heaven and the
+earth, the sea and all that therein is.  Him only shalt thou
+worship, and him only shalt thou serve.'  If we obey him, and keep
+his commandments; if we trust in him, utterly, through good fortune
+and through bad--then we must prosper in peace and war, we and our
+children after us; because our prosperity is grounded on the real
+truth, and that of the heathen on a lie; and all that the heathen
+expect their false gods to do for them, one here and another there,
+all that, the one real God will do for us, himself alone.
+
+Do you not see what a power and courage that thought must have given
+to the Jews?  Do you not see how worshipping God, and loving God,
+and serving God, must have been a very different, a much deeper, and
+a truly holier matter to them than the miserable selfish thing which
+is miscalled religion by too many people now-a-days, by which a man
+hopes to creep out of this world into heaven all by himself, without
+any real care or love for his fellow-creatures, or those he leaves
+behind him?
+
+No.  An old Jew's faith in God, and obedience to God, was part of
+his family life, part of his politics, part of his patriotism.  If
+he obeyed God, and clave earnestly to God, then a blessing would
+come on him in the field and in the house, on his crops and on his
+cattle, going out and coming in; and on his children and his
+children's children to a thousand generations.  He would be helping,
+if he obeyed and trusted God, to advance his country's prosperity;
+to insure her success in war and peace, to raise the name and fame
+of the Jewish people among all the nations round, that all might
+say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and an understanding
+people.'
+
+Thus the duty he owed to God was not merely a duty which he owed his
+own conscience or his own soul; it was a duty which he owed to his
+family, to his kindred, to his country.  It was not merely an
+opinion that there was one God and not two; it was a belief that the
+one and only true God was protecting him, teaching him, inspiring
+him and all his nation.  That the true God would teach their hands
+to war and their fingers to fight.  That the true God would cause
+their folds to be full of sheep.  That their valleys should stand
+rich with corn, that they should laugh and sing.  That the true God
+would enable them to sit every man under his own vine and his own
+fig-tree, and eat the labour of his hands, he and his children after
+him to perpetual generations.
+
+This was the message and teaching which God gave these Jews.  It is
+very different from what many people now-a-days would have given
+them, if they had had the ordering of the matter, and the making of
+those slaves into a free nation.  But perhaps there is one proof
+that God DID give it them, and that the Bible speaks truth, when it
+says that not man, but God gave them their law.
+
+No doubt man would have done it differently.  But God's ways are not
+as man's ways, nor God's thoughts as man's thoughts.
+
+And God's ways have proved themselves to be the right ways.  His
+purpose has come to pass.  This little nation of the Jews,
+inhabiting a country not as large as Wales, without sea-port towns
+and commerce, without colonies or conquests--and at last, for its
+own sins, conquered itself, and scattered abroad over the whole
+civilized world--has taught the whole civilized world, has converted
+the whole civilized world, has influenced all the good and all the
+wise unto this day so enormously, that the world has actually gone
+beyond them, and become Christian by fully understanding their
+teaching and their Bible, while they have remained mere Jews by not
+fully understanding it.  Truly, if that is not a proof that God
+revealed something to the Jews which they never found out for
+themselves, which was too great for them to understand, which was
+God's boundless message and not any narrow message of man's
+invention--if that does not prove it, I say--I know not what proof
+men would have.
+
+But now I have told you that God bade these Jews to look for
+blessings in THIS life, and blessings on their whole nation, and on
+their children after them, if they obeyed and served him.  Does God
+NOT bid us to look for any such blessings?  The Jews were to be
+blessed in THIS world.  Are we only to be blessed in the next?
+
+To that the Seventh Article of our Church gives a plain and positive
+answer.  For it says that those are not to be heard who pretend that
+the old Fathers, i.e. Moses and the Prophets, looked only for
+transitory promises--i.e. for promises which would pass away.  No.
+They looked for eternal promises which could not pass away, because
+they were according to the eternal laws of God, which stand good
+both for this world and for all worlds for this life and for the
+life everlasting.
+
+Yes, my friends, settle in your hearts that the book of Deuteronomy
+is meant for you, and for all the nations upon earth, as much as for
+the old Jews.  That its promises and warnings are to you and to your
+children as surely as they were to the old Jews.  Ay, that they are
+meant for every nation that is, or ever was, or ever will be upon
+earth.  If you would prosper on the earth, fear God and keep his
+commandments; and know and consider it in your heart that the Lord
+Jesus Christ he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath:
+there is none else.  He it is who gives grace and honour.  He it is
+who delivers us out of the hands of our enemies.  He it is who
+blesses the fruit of the womb, and the fruit of the flock, and the
+fruit of the garden and the field.  He is the living God, in whom
+this world, as well as the world to come, lives and moves and has
+its being; and only by obeying his laws can man prosper, he and his
+children after him, upon this earth of God.
+
+
+
+SERMON XVI.  NATIONAL WEALTH
+
+
+
+(Fifth Sunday after Easter.)
+
+Deut. viii. 11-18.  Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in
+not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes,
+which I command thee this day:  lest when thou hast eaten and art
+full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy
+herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is
+multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart
+be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee
+forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led
+thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery
+serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who
+brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in
+the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might
+humble thee and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy
+latter end:  and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of
+mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.  But thou shall remember the
+Lord thy God:  for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth,
+that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers,
+as it is this day.
+
+I told you before that the book of Deuteronomy was the foundation of
+all sound politics--as one would expect it to be, if its author were
+Moses, the greatest lawgiver whom the world ever saw.  But here, in
+this lesson, is a proof of the truth of what I said.  For here, in
+the text, is Moses' answer to the first great question in politics,
+What makes a nation prosperous?
+
+To that wise men have always answered, as Moses answered, 'Good
+government; government according to the laws of God.'  That alone
+makes a nation prosperous.
+
+But the multitude--who are not wise men, nor likely to be for some
+time to come--give a different answer.  They say, 'What makes a
+nation prosperous is its wealth.  If Britain be only RICH, then she
+must be safe and right.'
+
+To which Moses, being a wise lawgiver, and having, moreover, in him
+the Spirit of the Lord who knoweth what is in man, makes a
+reasonable, liberal, humane answer.
+
+Moses does not deny that wealth is a good thing.  He does not bid
+them not try to be rich.  He takes for granted that they will grow
+rich; that the national fruit of their good government will be that
+they will increase in cattle and in crops and in money, and in all
+which makes an agricultural people rich.
+
+He takes for granted, I say, that these Jews will grow very rich;
+but he warns them that their riches, like all other earthly things,
+may be a curse or a blessing to them.  Nay, that they are not good
+in themselves, but mere tools which may be used for good or for
+evil.  He warns them of a very great danger that riches will bring
+on them.  And herein he shows his knowledge of the human heart; for
+it is a certain fact that whenever any nation has prospered, and
+their flocks and herds, and silver and gold, all that they had, have
+multiplied, then they have, as Moses warned the Jews, forgotten the
+Lord their God, and said, 'My power and the might of my hand hath
+gotten me this wealth.'
+
+And it is true, also, that whenever any nation has begun to say
+that, they have fallen into confusion and misery, and sometimes into
+utter ruin, till they repented, and turned and remembered the Lord
+their God, and found out that the strength of a nation did not
+consist in riches, but in VIRTUE.  For it is he that giveth the
+power to get wealth.  He gives it in two ways:  First, God gives the
+raw material; secondly, he gives the wit to use it.
+
+You will all agree that God gives the first; that he gives the soil,
+the timber, the fisheries, the coal, the iron.
+
+Do you believe it?  I hope and trust that you do.  But I fear that
+now-a-days many do not; for they boast of the resources of Britain
+as if we ourselves had made Britain, and not Almighty God; as if we
+had put the coal and the iron into the rocks, and not Almighty God
+ages before we were born.
+
+And if they will not say that openly, at least they will say, 'But
+the coal, and iron, and all other raw material would have been
+useless, if it had not been for the genius and energy of the British
+race.'
+
+Of course not.  But who gave them that genius and energy?  Who gave
+them the wit to find the coal and iron?
+
+God; and God gave it to us when we needed it, and not before.
+
+Think of this, I beseech you; for it is true, and wonderful, and a
+thing of which I may say, 'Come, and I will reason with you of the
+righteous acts of the Lord.'
+
+Men say, 'As long as England is ahead of the world in coal and iron
+she may defy the world.'  I do not believe it; for if she became a
+wicked nation all the coal and iron in the universe would not keep
+her from being ruined.
+
+But even if it were true, which it is not, that the strength of
+Britain lies in coal and iron, and not in British hearts, what right
+have we to boast of coal and iron?
+
+Did our forefathers know of them when they came into this land?  Did
+they come after coal and iron?
+
+Not they.  They came here to settle as small yeomen; to till
+miserable little patches of corn, of which we should be now ashamed,
+and to feed cattle on the moors, and swine in the forests--and that
+was all they looked to.  Then they found that there was iron,
+principally down south, in Sussex and Surrey; and they worked it,
+clumsily enough, with charcoal; and for more than twelve hundred
+years they were here in England, with no notion of the boundless
+wealth in iron and coal lying together in the same rocks which God
+had provided for them; or if they did guess at it, they could not
+use it, because they could not work deep mines, being unable to pump
+out the water; for God had not opened their eyes and shown them how
+to do it.
+
+But just when it was wanted, God did show them.  About the middle of
+the last century the iron in the Weald was all but worked out; the
+charcoal wood was getting scarcer and scarcer, and there was every
+chance that England, instead of being ahead of all nations in iron,
+would have fallen behind other nations; and then where should we
+have been now?
+
+But, just about one hundred years ago, it pleased God to open the
+eyes of certain men, and they invented steam-engines.  Then they
+could pump the mines, then they could discover and use the vast
+riches of our coal-mines.  Then, too, sprung up a thousand useful
+arts and manufactures; while the land, not being wanted for charcoal
+and firewood, as of old, could be cleared of wood, and thousands of
+acres set free to grow corn.  Population, which had been all but
+standing still, without increasing, has now more than doubled, and
+wealth inestimable has come to this generation, of which our
+forefathers never dreamed.
+
+Now what have we to boast of in that?  What, save to confess
+ourselves a very stupid race, who for twelve hundred years could not
+discover, or at least use the boundless wealth which God had given
+us, because we had not wit enough to invent so simple a thing as a
+steam-engine.
+
+All we should do, instead of boasting, is to bless God that he
+revealed to us just what we needed, and at the very time at which we
+needed it, and confess that it is HE that giveth us power to get
+wealth.  It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.
+
+Look again at another case, even more extraordinary, which has
+happened during our own times--indeed within the last ten years--the
+discovery of gold in Australia.
+
+There had been rumours and whispers of gold for years before; and
+yet no one looked for gold, cared for it, hardly believed in it.
+God had dulled their understanding and blinded their eyes for some
+good purpose of his own.  That is what the Bible would have said of
+such a matter, and that is what we should say.
+
+And at last some man finds lying out upon the downs a huge lump of
+gold--by accident (as men call it; by the special providence of God,
+as they ought to call it); and at that every one starts up and
+awakes, and begins looking for gold.  And now that their eyes are
+opened, behold! the gold is everywhere.  Not merely in lonely
+forests and unexplored mountains, but on farms where the sheep have
+been pastured for years past; ay, even Melbourne streets were full
+of gold, under the feet of the passengers and the wheels of the
+carriages; there had the gold been all along, but men could not see
+it till God opened their eyes.  Verily, verily, God is great, and
+man is small.  I do not say that this was a miracle in the common
+meaning of the word; but I do say that this was a striking instance
+of that everlasting and special providence of the living God, who
+ordereth all things in heaven and earth, from the rise of a nation
+to the fall of a sparrow; and does so, not by breaking his own laws,
+but by making his laws work exactly as he will, when he will, and
+where he will; and I say that it is a fresh proof of the great
+saying, that no man can see a thing unless God shows it to him.  For
+it is the Lord who gives us power to get wealth.  It is he that hath
+made us, and not we ourselves; and in him we live and move, and have
+our being.
+
+This, then, was what Moses commanded--to remember that they owed all
+to God.  What they had, they had of God's free gift.  What they
+were, they were by God's free grace.  Therefore they were not to
+boast of themselves, their numbers, their wealth, their armies,
+their fair and fertile land.  They were to make their boast of God,
+and of God's goodness.
+
+He that gloried was to glory in the Lord, and confess that a Syrian
+ready to perish was their father Jacob, when the Lord had mercy on
+him, and made him the head of a great tribe, and the father of a
+great nation; that not themselves, but God had brought them out of
+Egypt with signs and wonders; that they got not the land in
+possession by their own bow, neither was it their own sword that
+helped them, but that God had driven out before them nations greater
+and mightier than they.
+
+This they were to remember, because it was true.  And this we are to
+remember, because it is more or less true of us.  God has put us
+where we are.  God has made of us a great nation; God has discovered
+to us the immense riches of this land.  It is he that hath made us,
+and not we ourselves.
+
+But more.  You will see that Moses warns them that if they forget
+God, the Lord who brought them out of the land of Egypt, they would
+go after other gods.
+
+He cannot part the two things.  If they forget that God brought them
+out of Egypt, they will turn to idolatry, and so end in ruin.
+
+Now why was this?
+
+Why should not the Jews have gone on worshipping one God, even if
+they had forgotten that he brought them out of the land of Egypt?
+
+Some people now-a-days think that they would, and that they might
+have very well been what is called Monotheists, without believing
+all the story of the signs and wonders in Egypt, and the passage of
+the Red Sea, and the giving of the law to Moses.
+
+Such men may be very learned; but there is one thing of which they
+know very little, and that is, human nature.  Moses knew human
+nature; and he knew that if men forgot that God was the living God,
+the acting God, who had helped them once, and was helping them
+always, and only believed about there being one God far away in
+heaven, and not two, that THAT sort of dead faith in a dead God
+would never keep them from idols.  They would want gods who WOULD
+help them, who WOULD hear their prayers, to whom they could feel
+gratitude and trust; and they would invent them for themselves, and
+begin to worship things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath,
+because they had forgotten their true friend and helper, the living
+God.
+
+And so shall we.  If we forget that God is the living God, who
+brought our forefathers into this land; who has revealed to us the
+wealth of it step by step, as we needed it; who is helping and
+blessing us now, every day and all the year round--then we shall
+begin worshipping other gods.
+
+I do not mean that we shall worship idols, though I do not see why
+our children's children should not do so a few hundred years hence
+if we teach them to forget the living God.  There are too many
+Christians at this day who worship saints, and idols of wood and
+stone; and so may our descendants do--or do even worse.
+
+But we ourselves shall begin--indeed we are doing it too much
+already--worshipping the so-called laws of nature, instead of God
+who made the laws, and so honouring the creature above the creator;
+or else we shall worship the pomps and vanities of this world, pride
+and power, money and pleasure, and say in our hearts, 'These are our
+only gods which can help us--these must we obey.'  Which if we do,
+this land of England will come to ruin and shame, as surely as did
+the land of Israel in old time.
+
+If we do not believe in the living God, we shall believe in
+something worse than even a dead god.
+
+For in a dead god--a god who does nothing, but lets mankind and the
+world go their own way--no man nor nation ever will care to believe.
+
+And now, nay dear friends, remember that a nation is, after all,
+only the people in that nation:  you, and I, and our neighbours, and
+our neighbours' neighbours, and so forth; and that therefore, in as
+far as we are wrong, we do our worst to make the British nation
+wrong.  If we give way to ungodly pride and self-sufficiency, then
+we are injuring ourselves; and not only that, but injuring our
+neighbours and our children after us, as far as we can.  And
+therefore our duty is, if we wish well to our nation, not to judge
+our neighbour, nor our neighbour's neighbour, but to judge
+ourselves.
+
+If we go on trusting in ourselves rather than God; if we keep within
+us the hard self-sufficient spirit, and boast to ourselves (though
+we may be ashamed to boast to our neighbours), 'My power and the
+strength of my hands have got me this and that;' and in fact live
+under the notion, which too many have, that we could do very well
+without God's help if God would let us alone--then we are heaping up
+ruin and shame for ourselves and for our children after us.  Ruin
+and shame, I say.  We are apt to forget how easy and common it is
+for God to turn the wisdom of men into folly; to frustrate the
+tokens of the liars, and make the prophets mad.  How men blow great
+bubbles, and God bursts them with the slightest touch.  How, when
+all seems well, and men cry peace and safety, sudden destruction
+comes upon them unawares.  How, when men say, 'Soul, take thine
+ease, eat, drink, and be merry; thou hast much goods laid up for
+many years,' God answers, 'Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be
+required of thee.'
+
+My friends, we see God doing thus in these very days by great
+nations, by great branches of industry.  Look at the American war,
+look at the Manchester cotton famine, and see how God can confound
+the strong and cunning, and blind their eyes to the ruin which is
+coming till it is come in all its might.  And then think, If it be
+so easy for him to confound such as them, is it less easy for him to
+confound you and me, if we begin to fancy that we can do without
+him, and ask, 'Doth God perceive it?  Or is there knowledge in the
+Most High?  We are they that ought to speak.  Who is Lord over us?'
+
+Yes, in this sense God is indeed a jealous God, who will not give
+his honour to another.  And a blessed thing for men it is that God
+IS a jealous God, that he WILL punish us for trusting in anything
+but him--will punish us for trusting in ourselves, or in our wisdom,
+or in wealth, or in science, or in armies and navies, or in
+constitutions and laws; in anything, in short, save the living God.
+
+For if he left us alone to go our own way without trusting or
+fearing him, we should surely go down and down (as the Chinese seem
+to have gone down), generation after generation, till we became only
+a mere cunning and spiteful sort of animals, hateful and hating one
+another.  But when we are chastened for our folly, we are chastened
+by him that we may be partakers of his holiness; that we may be his
+children, looking up to him as our father, from whom comes every
+good and perfect gift; the Father of Lights, with whom is no
+variableness or shadow of turning; and who therefore will and can
+give us, his children, light, more and more to understand those his
+invariable and eternal laws, by which he has made earth and heaven;
+who has given us his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and will with him
+likewise freely give us all things.
+
+
+
+SERMON XVII.  THE GOD OF THE RAIN
+
+
+
+(Fifth Sunday after Easter.)
+
+DEUT. xi.  11, 12.  The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land
+of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.  A
+land which the Lord thy God careth for:  the eyes of the Lord thy
+God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto
+the end of the year.
+
+I told you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of the Holy Land, that
+it seems as if God had meant specially to train that strange people
+the Jews, by putting them into a country where they MUST trust him,
+or become cowards and helpless; that so they might learn not to fear
+the powers of Nature which the heathen worshipped, but to fear him
+the living God.
+
+In this chapter is another instance of the same.  They were to be an
+agricultural people.  Their very worship was (if you can understand
+such a thing now-a-days) to be agricultural.  Pentecost was a feast
+of the first-fruits of the harvest.  The Feast of Tabernacles was a
+great national harvest home.  The Passover itself, though not at
+first an agricultural festival, became one by the waving of the
+Paschal sheaf, which gave permission to the people to begin their
+spring-harvest--so thoroughly were they to be an agricultural and
+cattle-feeding people.  They were going into a good land, a land of
+milk and honey and oil olive; a land of vines and figs and
+pomegranates; a rich land; but a most uncertain land--a land which
+might yield a splendid crop one year, and be almost barren the next.
+
+It was not as the land of Egypt--a land which was, humanly speaking,
+sure to be fertile, because always supplied with water, brought out
+of the Nile by dykes and channels which spread in a network over
+every field, and where--as I believe is done now--the labourer
+turned the water from one land to the other simply by moving the
+earth with his foot.
+
+It was a mountain land, a land of hills and valleys, and drank water
+of the rain of heaven; a land of fountains of water, which required
+to be fed continually by the rain.  In that hot climate it depended
+entirely on God's providence from week to week whether a crop could
+grow.
+
+Therefore it was a land which the Lord cared for--a land which
+needed his special help, and it had it.  'The eyes of the Lord God
+were always upon it, from the beginning of the year unto the end of
+the year.'
+
+Beautiful, simple, noble, true words--deeper than all the learned
+words, however true they may be (and true they are, and to be
+listened to with respect), which men talk about the laws of Nature
+and of weather.  Who would change them for all the scientific
+phrases in the world?  The eyes of the Lord were upon the land.  It
+needed his care; and therefore his care it had.
+
+Therefore the Jew was to understand from his first entry into the
+land, that his prosperity depended utterly on God.  The laws of
+weather, by which the rain comes up off the sea, were unknown to
+him.  They are all but unknown to us now.  But they were known to
+God.  Not a drop could fall without his providence and will; and
+therefore they were utterly in his power.
+
+'And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my
+commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your
+God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
+that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the
+first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn,
+and thy wine, and thine oil.  And I will send grass in thy fields
+for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.  Take heed to
+yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside and
+serve other gods, and worship them; and then the Lord's wrath be
+kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no
+rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish
+quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you.'
+
+Now the Bible story is, that this warning came true.  More than once
+we read of drought--long, and severe, and ruinous.  In one famous
+case, there was no rain for three years; and Ahab has to go out to
+search through the land for a scrap of pasture.  'Peradventure we
+shall find grass enough to save the horses and mules alive.'
+
+And most distinctly does the Bible say that these droughts came at
+times when the Jews had fallen into idolatry, and profligacy
+therewith.  That is the Scripture account.  And if you believe in
+the living God, whose providence ordereth all things in heaven and
+earth, that account will seem reasonable and credible to you.
+
+What special means God used to bring about these great droughts we
+cannot know, any more than we can know why a storm or a shower
+should come one week and not another.  And we need not know.  God
+made the world, and God governs the world, and that is enough for
+us.
+
+Be that as it may, Moses goes down to the very root and ground and
+true cause of the riches of the land, and of the rainfall, and of
+the prosperity of the Jews, and of the prosperity of any living
+nation on earth, when he says, 'Therefore shall ye lay up these my
+words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon
+your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.'
+
+'Ye shall lay up these my words in your heart and your soul, and
+teach them your children when thou sittest in thine house and when
+thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest
+up.'  That is, thou shalt believe continually in a living God--a God
+who is working everywhere at every moment, about thy path and about
+thy bed, and spying out all thy ways; and not only about thee, but
+about all that thou seest.  From him comes alike rain and sunshine;
+from him comes the life of man; from him comes all which makes it
+possible for man to live upon the earth.
+
+And it is a plain fact that the Jews for a long time did believe
+this--at least the prophets, psalmists and good men among them--to
+the most intense degree; to a degree in which perhaps no nation has
+believed it since.  With them God is everything, and man nothing.
+Man finds out nothing:  God reveals it to him.  Man's intellect does
+nothing:  the Spirit of God gives him understanding to do it--even,
+says Isaiah, understanding to plough, and to sow, and to reap his
+crops in due season.  It is the Spirit of God, according to the
+prophets and psalmists, which makes the difference between a man and
+a beast.  But upon the beasts too, and the green things of the
+earth, and on all nature, the Spirit of God works.  He is the Lord
+and giver of life.  Take only those four Psalms, the 8th, 18th,
+29th, 104th, and learn from them what the old Jews thought of this
+wonderful world in which we live.
+
+'These all wait upon thee'--all living things by land and sea--'that
+thou mayest give them meat in due season.  When thou givest it them
+they gather it.  When thou openest thy hand they are filled with
+good.  When thou hidest thy face they are troubled.  When thou
+takest away their breath they die, and are turned again to their
+dust.  When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made, and
+thou shalt renew the face of the earth.'
+
+So again, in the world of man, God is the living Judge, the living
+overlooker, rewarder, punisher of every man, not only in the life to
+come, but in this life.  His providence is a special providence.
+But not such a poor special providence as men are too apt to dream
+of now-a-days, which interferes only now and then on some great
+occasion, or on behalf of some very favoured persons, but a special
+providence looking after every special act of man, and of the whole
+universe, from the fall of a sparrow to the fall of an empire.
+
+And it is this intense faith in the living God, which can only come
+by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, which proves the old
+Testament to be truly inspired.  This it is which makes it different
+from all books in the world.  This it is, I hold, which marks the
+canon of Scripture.  For in the Apocrypha--true, noble, and good as
+most of it is--you do not find the same intense faith in the living
+God, or anything to be compared therewith; and that for the simple
+reason that the Jews, at the time the Apocrypha was written, were
+losing that faith very fast.  They felt themselves that there was an
+immense difference between anything that they could write and what
+the old psalmists and prophets had written.  They felt that they
+could not write Scripture.  All they could do was to write
+commentaries about it, and to carry out in their own fashion Moses'
+command, 'Thou shalt bind my words for a sign upon your hands, and
+they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and thou shalt write
+them upon the doorposts of thine house.'  They were right in that;
+but as they lost faith in the living God, they began to observe the
+command in the letter, and neglect it in the spirit.
+
+You know--some of you, at least--how these words were misused
+afterwards; how the scribes and the Pharisees, in their zeal to
+carry out the letter of the law, went about with texts of Scripture
+on their foreheads, and wrists, and the hems of their robes,
+enlarging their phylacteries, as our Lord said of them.  But all the
+time they did not understand the texts, or love them, or get any
+good from them; but only made them excuses for hating and scoffing
+at the rest of the world.  They had them written only on their
+foreheads, not on their hearts--an outside and not an inside
+religion.  They had lost all faith in the living God.  God had
+spoken, of course, to their forefathers; but they could not believe
+that he was speaking to them--not even when he spoke by his only
+begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of
+his person.  God, so they held, had finished his teaching when
+Malachi uttered his last prophecy.  And now it was for them to
+teach, and expound the law at secondhand.  There could be no more
+prophets, no more revelation; and when one came and spoke with
+authority, at first hand, out of the depth of his own heart, he was
+to be persecuted, stoned, crucified.  No.  They had the key of
+knowledge; and no man could enter in, unless they chose to open the
+door.  Nothing new could be true.  John the Baptist came neither
+eating nor drinking, and they said, 'He hath a devil.'  The Son of
+Man came eating and drinking, and they said, 'Behold a gluttonous
+man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.'  And
+meanwhile the poor, the ignorant, those whose hearts were really in
+earnest, were looking out for a prophet and a deliverer--often going
+after false prophets, with Theudas and Barcochab, into the
+wilderness; but going, too, to be baptized with the baptism of John,
+and crowding in thousands to hear our Lord preach to them of the
+living God of whom Moses had preached of old; while the scribes and
+Pharisees sat at home, wrapped up in their narrow, shallow book-
+divinity, and said, 'This people, who knoweth not the law, is
+accursed.'  Nothing new could be true.  It must be put down,
+persecuted down, lest the Romans should come and take away their
+place and nation.
+
+But they did not succeed.  Our Lord and his truth, whom they
+crucified and buried, rose again the third day and conquered; and
+the Romans came after all, and took away their place and nation.
+And so they failed, as all will fail, who will not believe in the
+living God.
+
+My friends, all these things were written for our example.  As it
+was then, so may it be again.
+
+There may come a time in this land when people shall profess to
+worship the word of God; and yet, like those old scribes, make it of
+none effect by their own commandments and traditions.  When they
+shall command men, like the scribes, to honour every word and letter
+of the Bible, and yet forbid them to take the Bible simply and
+literally as it stands, but only their interpretation of the Bible;
+when they shall say, with the scribes, 'Nothing new can be true.
+God taught the Apostles, and therefore he is not teaching us.  God
+worked miracles of old; but whosoever thinks that God is working
+miracles now is a Pantheist and a blasphemer.  God taught men of old
+the thing which they knew not; but whosoever dares to say that he
+does so now is bringing heresy and false doctrine, and undermining
+the Christian faith by science falsely so called.'
+
+And all because they have lost all faith in the living God--the
+ever-working, ever-teaching, ever-inspiring, ever-governing God whom
+our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to men; in whom the Apostles, and the
+Fathers, and the great middle-age Schoolmen, and the Reformers
+believed, and therefore learned more and more, and taught men more
+and more concerning God and the dealings of God, as time went on.
+
+And then, when they see ignorant people running after quacks and
+impostors, spirit-rappers and table-turners, St. Simonians and
+Mormons, and false prophets of every kind, they will have nothing to
+say but 'This people which knoweth not the law is accursed.'  While
+when they see anything like new truth, or new teaching from God
+appear, instead of welcoming the light, and going to meet the light,
+and accepting the light, they will say, 'What shall we do?  For all
+men will believe on him, and then the powers of this world will come
+and take away our station and our order?'  As if Christ could not
+take better care of his Church for which he died than they can in
+his stead!  And so they will persecute God's servants, in the name
+of God, and call upon the law to put down by force the men whom they
+cannot put down by reason.
+
+From ever falling into that state of stupid lip-belief, and outward
+religion, and loss of faith in the living God:  Good Lord, deliver
+us.
+
+From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy;
+from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness:  Good Lord,
+deliver us.
+
+From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart
+and contempt of thy word and commandment:  Good Lord, deliver us.
+
+For if people ever fall into that frame of mind (as did the scribes
+and Pharisees), and the good Lord do not deliver them from it, it
+will surely happen to them as it is written in the Bible.
+
+The powers of this world will come and take away their place, and
+their power, and their station:  but meanwhile the truth which they
+think that they have stifled will rise again, for Christ, who is the
+truth, will raise it again; and it shall conquer and leaven the
+hearts of men till all be leavened; and while the scribes and
+Pharisees shall be cast into the outer darkness of discontented and
+hopeless bigotry, the kingdoms of the world, which they fancied were
+the devil's dominion, shall become the kingdoms of God and of his
+Christ, and be adopted into that holy and ever-growing Church, of
+which it is written, that the gates of hell shall not prevail
+against it, for in it is the Spirit of God to lead it into all
+truth.
+
+To which blessed end may God bring us, and our children after us.
+Amen.
+
+
+
+SERMON XVIII.  THE DEATH OF MOSES
+
+
+
+(First Sunday after Trinity.)
+
+DEUT. xxxiv. 5, 6.  So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in
+the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.  And he buried
+him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no
+man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.
+
+Some might regret that the last three chapters of Deuteronomy are
+not read among our Sunday lessons.  There was not, however, room for
+them; and I do not doubt that those who chose our lessons knew
+better than I what chapters they ought to choose.  We may, however,
+read them for ourselves, not only in the daily lessons, but as often
+as we choose.  And well worth reading they are.
+
+For I know of no stronger proof of the truth of the book of
+Deuteronomy, and of the whole Pentateuch, than its ending so
+differently from what we should have expected, or indeed wished.  If
+things went in this world, as they do in novels and fables,
+according to man's notion of what is right and good, then Moses and
+his history would have had a very different ending.
+
+And if the story of Moses had been of man's invention, we should
+have heard--I think, from what we know of the fables, 'myths' as
+they call them now, which nations have invented about themselves,
+and their own early history, we may guess fairly what we should have
+heard--how Moses brought the Jews into the land of Canaan, and
+established his laws, and reigned over them, and died in honour and
+great glory--if he died at all, and was not taken up into the skies,
+and changed into a star, or into a god; and how he was buried with
+great pomp; and how his sepulchre did remain among the Jews until
+that day; and probably how men worshipped at it, and miracles were
+worked at it, and so forth.
+
+Also, we should have heard how, as soon as the Israelites came into
+the land of Canaan, they began forthwith to serve the Lord with all
+their heart and soul, as they never did afterwards, and to keep
+Moses' law, while it was yet fresh in their minds, more exactly than
+ever they did afterwards; and in short, we should have had one of
+those stories of a 'golden age,' a 'good old time,' a pattern-time
+of early purity and devotion, of which nations and Churches, of all
+tongues and all creeds, have been so ready to dream in their own
+case; and which they have used, not altogether ill, to rebuke vice
+in their own day, by saying, 'Look how perfect your forefathers
+were.  Look how you, their unworthy children, have fallen from their
+faith and their virtue.'
+
+This, I think, is what we should have been told if the Pentateuch
+had been the invention of man.  This is exactly what we are NOT
+told; but, on the contrary, the very opposite.
+
+What we are told is disappointing, sad, gloomy, full of dark fears
+and warnings about what the Jews will be and what they will have to
+endure.  But it is far more true to human nature, and to the facts
+which we see in the world about us, than any story of a good old
+time would have been.
+
+They are still wandering in the land of Moab, when the time draws
+near when Moses must die.  He is a hundred and twenty years old, but
+hale and vigorous still.  His eye is not dim, nor his natural force
+abated.  But the Lord has told him that his death is near.  He gives
+the command of the army of Israel to Joshua the son of Nun, and then
+he speaks his last words.
+
+Songs they are, dark and rugged, like all the higher Hebrew poetry;
+but, like it, full of the very Spirit of God--the Spirit of wisdom
+and understanding, the Spirit of faith and of the fear of the Lord.
+
+There are three of these songs which seem to belong to those last
+days of his.
+
+The Prayer of Moses the man of God--which is our 90th Psalm, our
+burial Psalm.  We all know the sadness of that Psalm; its weariness,
+as of one who had laboured long, and would fain be at rest; its
+confession of man's frailty--fading away suddenly like the grass;
+its confession of God's strength, God from everlasting, before the
+mountains were brought forth; its eternal gospel of hope and
+comfort, that the strength of God takes pity on the weakness of man,
+'Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.'
+
+Then comes the Song of the Rock--the song of which (it seems) the
+Lord said to him, 'Write this song, and teach it the children of
+Israel, that it may be a witness for me against them.'
+
+And so Moses writes; and seemingly before all the congregation of
+Israel, according to the custom of those times, he chants his death-
+song, the Song of the Rock.  It is such a song as we should expect
+from him.  God is the Rock.  He was thinking, it may be, of the
+everlasting rocks of Sinai, where God had appeared to him of old.
+But God is the true, everlasting Rock, on which all things rest; the
+Eternal, the Self-existent, the I Am, whom he was sent to preach to
+men.  But he is a good and righteous God likewise.  His work is
+perfect.  'A God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is
+he.'
+
+In him Moses can trust, but not in the children of Israel; they are
+a perverse and crooked generation, who have waxen fat and kicked.
+God has done all for them, but they will not obey him.  Even in the
+wilderness they have worshipped strange gods, and sacrificed to
+devils, not to God; and so they will do after Moses is gone; and
+then on them will come all the curses of which he has so often
+warned them.  'The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy
+both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of
+gray hairs.  O that they were wise, that they understood this, that
+they would consider their latter end!  How should one chase a
+thousand; and two put ten thousand to flight?'  What a people they
+might be, and what a future there is before them, if they would but
+be true to God!  But they will not.  And so Moses' death-song, like
+his life's wish, ends in disappointment and sadness, and dread of
+the evils which are coming upon his beloved countrymen.
+
+Lastly, he blesses them, tribe by tribe, in strange and grand words,
+such as dying men utter, who, looking earnestly across the dark
+river of death, see further than they ever saw amid the cares and
+temptations of life.  And he blesses them.  He will say nothing of
+them but good.  He will speak not of what they will be, but of what
+they ought to be and can be.  But not in their own strength--only in
+the strength of God.  Man is to be nothing to the last; and God is
+all in all.
+
+'There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the
+heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky.  The eternal
+God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
+
+'Happy art thou, O Israel:  who is like unto thee, O people saved by
+the Lord, the shield of thy help and who is the sword of thy
+excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and
+thou shalt tread upon their high places.'
+
+Those are the last words of Moses.  Then he goes up into the
+mountain top, never to return; and the children of Israel are left
+alone with God and their own souls, to obey and prosper, or disobey
+and die.
+
+The time of their schooling is past, and their schoolmaster is gone
+for ever.  They are no more to be under a human tutor.  They are
+come to man's estate and man's responsibility, and they are to work
+out their own fortunes by their own deeds, like every other soul of
+man.
+
+For Moses himself must not enter into the promised land.  In spite
+of all his faith, his courage, his endurance, his patriotism, he has
+sinned against God, and he must be punished; and punished, too, in
+kind--in the very thing which he will feel most deeply, in being
+shut out from the very happiness on which he has set his heart all
+along.
+
+He who has brought the Jews to the edge of the promised land must
+not have the honour and glory of taking them into it.  He must have
+no honour and glory.  That must be God's alone.  Man must be
+nothing, and God all in all.  Moses must die in faith, not having
+received the promises, as many another saint of God has died.
+
+And why?  To teach him and the Jews and us that man IS nothing, and
+God is all in all.
+
+Moses had given way to the very temptation which would beset such a
+man.  He had spoken unadvisedly with his lips, and said, 'Hear now,
+ye rebels, or ye fools, must WE bring you water out of this rock?'
+WE, and not God.  He had claimed for himself the power and glory of
+working miracles.  The miracles, he thought for a moment, were his,
+and not God's.  And it may be that this was not the only time that
+he had so sinned.  He may naturally have thought that he had some
+special power and influence with God.  But be that as it may, the
+Jews were trained to believe that the miracles were God's, God's
+immediate work, and not performed by the wisdom or sanctity or
+supernatural power of any saint or prophet whatsoever.  Let the Jews
+once learn to give the honour and glory to Moses, and not to God,
+and the whole of their strange education went for nothing.  Instead
+of worshipping God they would begin to worship saints.  Instead of
+trusting in God, they would begin to trust in men; whether on earth
+or in heaven matters not.  If Moses was to have the honour and
+glory, the Jews would surely grow into a superstitious, saint-
+worshipping, miracle-mongering people, and come to ruin and slavery
+thereby.  They were to fear God and nought else.  To trust in God
+and nought else.
+
+So Moses must vanish out of their sight, sadly and mysteriously.
+All they know of him is, that he is punished for a sin which he
+committed long ago, as you and I may be.  All they know of his death
+and burial is, that his body was not left foully to the birds of the
+air and the beasts of the field; for the Lord buried him.  They know
+not how, and did not need to know.  And we need not know.  Enough
+for them and for us to know that no dishonour was done to the grand
+old man; that as he died far away on the lonely mountain top without
+a child to close his eyes, his last look fixed upon the good land
+and large which lay spread out below, of entering which he had been
+dreaming for forty--it may be for more than forty--years.  Enough
+for us to know that the kindly earth received his body again into
+her bosom, and that the true Moses--the immortal spirit of the man--
+returned to God who created him, and inspired him, and sustained him
+to be perhaps the greatest man--save One who was more than man--who
+ever trod this earth.
+
+So our human feelings, like those of the Jews, are satisfied.  But
+Moses is not to be worshipped by them or by us; no splendid temple
+is to rise over his bones; no lamps are to burn, or priest to chant
+round his shrine; no miracles are to be worked by his relics; no man
+is to invoke his patronage and intercession in their prayers.  The
+people whom he has brought out of Egypt are to be free--free from
+the slavery of the body, free from the more degrading slavery of the
+soul.
+
+And so they go on over Jordan to fulfil their strange destiny, to
+fight their way into the promised land, to root out the Canaanite
+tribes, whose iniquity was full, whose sins had made them a nuisance
+not to be suffered on the earth of God.  But do they go to establish
+a golden age; to become a perfect people?
+
+Nothing less.  To become, according to the book of Judges, just what
+Moses foretold--an ignorant, selfish, often profligate and
+disorderly people, doing each what is right in his own eyes, falling
+continually into idolatry, civil war, and slavery to the heathens
+round about.  Nothing more shows the truth of this history than its
+humility, its continual confession of sin, its readiness to confess
+the ugly truth that the Jews are a foolish, ignorant, unmanageable,
+lawless, sensual race, stiffnecked and rebellious, always resisting
+the Holy Spirit.  The immense difference between the Old Testament
+history and that of all other nations is, that it is a history not
+of their virtues, but of their sins; and a history, on the other
+hand, of God's punishments and mercies.  God in the Old Testament is
+all, and the Jews are nothing; and one may say that it differs from
+all other histories in this, that it is not a history of the Jews
+themselves at all, but a history of God's dealings with them.
+
+If any man chooses to explain that, by saying that the story was all
+invented by priests and prophets afterwards, to rebuke the people
+for falling into idolatry, he must have his fancy.  Thought is free-
+-for the present, at least--though it is written that for every idle
+word that men speak, they shall give account at the day of judgment.
+But one question I must ask, and I am sure that British common sense
+and British honesty will ask it too:  If these prophets were really
+good men, fearing God, and wishing to make their countrymen fear him
+likewise, would it not have been a rather strange way of showing
+that they feared God to tell their countrymen a set of fables and
+lies?  Good men are not in the habit of telling lies now, and never
+have been; for no lie is of the truth, or can possibly help the
+truth in any way; and all liars have their portion in the lake which
+burneth with fire and brimstone.  And that such men as the prophets
+of whom we read in the Old Testament did not know that, and
+therefore invented this history, or invented anything else, is a
+thing incredible and absurd.
+
+Here we have the Old Testament, an infinitely good book, giving us
+infinitely good advice and good news, and news too concerning God--
+God's laws, God's providence, God's dealings, such as we get nowhere
+else.  And shall we believe that this infinitely good book is
+founded upon falsehood? or that the good men who wrote it could
+fancy it necessary to stoop to falsehood, and take the devil's tools
+wherewith to do God's work?  That they may have been imperfectly
+informed on some points there is no doubt; for the Bible tells us
+that they were men of like passions with ourselves, and they may not
+always have been true to the Spirit of God who was teaching them,
+even as we are not, though he teaches us.  They only knew in part
+and prophesied in part; and now that which is perfect is come, that
+which is in part is done away; the mystery of Christ was not
+revealed to them as it has been to us by the holy apostles and
+prophets of the new dispensation, of which St. Paul says, comparing
+it with the knowledge which the old Jews had when the gospel came,
+That the glory of the law had no glory, by reason of the more
+excellent glory of the gospel.  They may, I say, have made slight
+errors in unimportant matters, though it is far more probable that
+those errors have crept into the text, as the Scriptures were copied
+again and again through many centuries by different scribes, of
+whose perfect good sense and honesty we cannot be certain.  But who
+that really values his Bible cares for them any more than he cares
+for the spots on the sun which he can find through a telescope?  The
+sun still shines, and gives light to the whole earth, and the Bible
+still shines, and gives light to every soul of man who will read it
+in reverence and faith.  But that the prophets ever invented, or
+ever dared to tamper with truth, is a thing not to be believed of
+men whose writings are plainly, by their own meaning and end,
+inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.
+
+One more reason--and a reason which to me is unanswerable--for
+believing, like our forefathers, that the Old Testament is true.
+The Old Testament, as well as the New, tells us of the 'noble acts'
+of the Lord--of certain gracious and merciful and just things which
+the Lord did to the children of Israel.  But if that be not true,
+what follows?  That God has not done the noble acts which men
+thought he had, and therefore that God is not as noble as men
+thought he was; that men have actually fancied for themselves a
+better God than the God who exists already.
+
+Absurd.
+
+Absurd, truly; and if you choose to call it by a harder name still,
+you have a right to do so.
+
+Do not you think that God must be better, not worse; more generous,
+not less; more condescending, not less; more just, not less; more
+helpful, not less, than man can fancy or describe?  Are not the
+riches of Christ unsearchable, and the mercies of the Lord
+boundless?  Is he not able and willing to do exceeding abundantly
+beyond all that we can ask or think?  Did not even St. Paul say that
+he only knew in part and prophesied in part?  And must it not be
+true of the whole Bible what the beloved apostle St. John says of
+his own Gospel, 'And there are many other things which Jesus did,
+the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even
+the world itself could not contain the books that should be
+written?'
+
+Bear that in mind, remembering always that the God of the Old
+Testament is the God of the New likewise; and whenever you read,
+either in the Old or New Testament, of the noble acts of the Lord,
+say boldly, as millions of hearts have said already, when the good
+news of the Bible came to them, 'This is so beautiful that it must
+be true.  The Spirit of God in the Bible, and the judgment of the
+Church in all ages, bears witness with my spirit that this is true.
+So ought God to have done, and therefore surely so hath God done.
+Shall not the Judge of all the earth do RIGHT?'
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{0a}  Evidences, Part III.  Cap. iii.
+
+{0b}  Lectures on the Jewish Church, Lect. xviii. p. 401.
+
+{7}  I must say that all attempts to put a later date on these books
+seems to me to fail simply from want of evidence.  I must say, also,
+that all attempts to distinguish between 'Jehovistic' and
+'Elohistic' documents (with the exception, perhaps, of the first
+chapter of Genesis) seem to me to fail likewise; and that the theory
+of an Elohistic and a Jehovistic sect has received its reductionem
+ad absurdum in a certain recent criticism of the Psalms.
+
+
+
+
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