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SERMON XXX.  THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Chapel Royal, St James’. 1873.

St. Matt. xxii. 2-7.  “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.  Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.  But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.  But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.”

This parable, if we understand it aright, will help to teach us theology—that is, the knowledge of God, and of the character of God.  For it is a parable concerning the kingdom of heaven, and the laws and customs of the kingdom of heaven—that is, the spiritual and eternal laws by which God governs men.

Now, what any kingdom or government is like must needs depend on what the king or governor of it is like; at least if that king is all-powerful, and can do what he likes.  His laws will be like his character.  If he be good, he will make good laws.  If he be bad, he will make bad laws.  If he be harsh and cruel—if he be careless and indulgent—so will his laws be.  If he be loving and generous, delighting in seeing his subjects happy, then his laws will be so shaped that his subjects will be happy, if they obey those laws.  But also—and this is a very serious matter, and one to which foolish people in all ages have tried to shut their eyes, and false preachers in all ages have tried to blind men’s eyes—also, I say, if his laws be good, and bountiful, and sure to make men happy, then the good king will have those laws obeyed.  He will not be an indulgent king, for in his case to be indulgent will be cruelty, and nothing less.  The good king will not say,—I have given you laws by which you may live happy; but I do not care whether you obey them or not.  I have, as it were, set you up, in life, and given you advantages by which you may prosper if you use them; but I do not care whether you use them or not.  For to say that would be as much as to say that I do not care if you make yourselves miserable, and make others miserable likewise.  The good king will say,—You shall obey my laws, for they are for your good.  You shall use my gifts, for they are for your good.  And if you do not, I will punish you.  You shall respect my authority.  And if you do not—if you go too far, if you become wanton and cruel, and destroy your fellow-subjects unjustly off the face of the earth; then I will destroy you off the face of he earth, and burn up your city.  I will destroy any government or system of society which you set up in opposition to my good and just laws.  And if you merely despise the gifts, and refuse to use them—then I will cast you out of my kingdom, inside which is freedom and happiness, and light and knowledge, into the darkness outside, bound hand and foot, into the ignorance and brutal slavery which you have chosen, where you may reconsider yourself, weeping and gnashing your teeth as you discover what a fool you have been.

Our Lord’s parable has fulfilled itself again and again in history, and will fulfil itself as long as foolish and rebellious persons exist on earth.  This is one of the laws of the kingdom of heaven.  It must be so, for it arises by necessity out of the character of Christ, the king of heaven.—Infinite bounty and generosity; but if that bounty be despised and insulted, or still more, if it be outraged by wanton tyranny or cruelty, then—for the benefit of the rest of mankind—awful severity.  So it is, and so it must be; simply because God is good.

At least, this is the kind of king which the parable shows to us.  The king in it begins, not by asking his subjects to pay him taxes, or even to do him service, but to come to a great feast—a high court ceremonial—the marriage of his son.  Whatsoever else that may mean, it certainly means this—that the king intended to treat these men, not as his slaves, but as his guests and friends.  They will not come.  They are too busy; one over his farm, another over his merchandise.  They owe, remember, safe possession of their farm, and safe transit for their merchandise, to the king, who governs and guards the land.  But they forget that, and refuse his invitation.  Some of them, seemingly out of mere insolence, and the spirit of rebellion against authority, just because it is authority, go a step too far.  To show that they are their own masters, and intend to do what they like, they take the king’s messengers, and treat them spitefully, and kill them.

Then there arises in that king a noble indignation.  We do not read that the king sentimentalised over these rebels, and said,—“After all, their evil, like all evil, is only a lower form of good.  They had a fine instinct of freedom and independence latent in them, only it was in this case somewhat perverted.  They are really only to be pitied for knowing no better; but I trust, by careful education, to bring them to a clearer sense of their own interests.  I shall therefore send them to a reformatory, where, in consideration of the depressing circumstances of their imprisonment, they will be better looked after, and have lighter work, than the average of my honest and peaceable subjects.”  If the king had spoken thus, he would have won high applause in these days; at least till the farms and the merchandise, the property and the profits of the rest of his subjects, were endangered by these favoured objects of his philanthropy; who, having found that rebellion and even murder was pardonable in one case, would naturally try whether it was not pardonable in other cases likewise.  But what we read of the king—and we must really remember, in fear and trembling, who spoke this parable, even our Lord Himself,—is this—He sent forth his armies, soldiers, men disciplined to do their duty at all risks, and sworn to carry out the law, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

Yes, the king was very angry, as he had a right to be.  Yes, let us lay that to heart, and tremble, from the very worst of us all to the very best of us all.  There is an anger in God.  There is indignation in God.  Our highest reason ought to tell us that there must be anger in God, as long as sin and wrong exist in any corner of the universe.  For all that is good in man is of the likeness of God.  And is it not a good feeling, a noble feeling, in man, to be indignant, or to cry for vengeance on the offender, whenever we hear of cruelty, injustice, or violence?  Is that not noble?  I say it is.  I say that the man whose heart does not burn within him at the sight of tyranny and cruelty, of baseness and deceit, who is not ready to say, Take him, and do to him as he has done to others; that man’s heart is not right with God, or with man either.  His moral sense is stunted.  He is on the way to become, first, if he can, a tyrant, and then a slave.

And shall there be no noble indignation in God when He beholds all the wrong which is done on earth?  Shall the just and holy God look on carelessly and satisfied at injustice and unholiness which vexes even poor sinful man?  God forbid!  To think that, would, to my mind, be to fancy God less just, less merciful, than man.  And if any one says, Anger is a passion, a suffering from something outside oneself, and God can have no passions; God cannot be moved by the sins and follies of such paltry atoms as we human beings are: the answer is, Man’s anger—even just anger—is, too often, a passion; weak-minded persons, ill-educated persons, especially when they get together in mobs, and excite each other, are carried away when they hear even a false report of cruelty or injustice, by their really wholesome indignation, and say and do foolish, and cruel, and unjust things, the victims of their own passion.  But even among men, the wiser a man is, the purer, the stronger-minded, so much the more can he control his indignation, and not let it rise into passion, but punish the offender calmly, though sternly, according to law.  Even so, our reason bids us believe, does God, who does all things by law.  His eternal laws punish of themselves, just as they reward of themselves.  The same law of God may be the messenger of His anger to the bad, while it is the messenger of His love to the good.  For God has not only no passions, but no parts; and therefore His anger and His love are not different, but the same.  And His love is His anger, and His anger is His love.

An awful thought and yet a blessed thought.  Think of it, my friends—think of it day and night.  Under God’s anger, or under God’s love, we must be, whether we will or not.  We cannot flee from His presence.  We cannot go from His spirit.  If we are loving, and so rise up to heaven, God is there—in love.  If we are cruel, and wrathful, and so go down to hell, God is there also—in wrath: with the clean He will be clean, with the froward man He will be froward.  In God we live and move, and have our being.  On us, and on us alone, it depends, what sort of a life we shall live, and whether our being shall be happy or miserable.  On us, and on us alone, it depends, whether we shall live under God’s anger, or live under God’s love.  On us, and on us alone, it depends whether the eternal and unchangeable God shall be to us a consuming fire, or light, and life, and bliss for evermore.

We never had more need to think of this than now; for there has spread over the greater part of the civilised world a strong spirit of disbelief in the living God.  Men do not believe that God punishes sin and wrong-doing, either in this world or in the world to come.  And it is not confined to those who are called infidels, who disbelieve in the incarnation and kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Would to God it were so!  Everywhere we find Christians of all creeds and denominations alike, holding the very same ruinous notion, and saying to themselves, God does not govern this present world.  God does not punish or reward in this present life.  This world is all wrong, and the devil’s world, and therefore I cannot prosper in the world unless I am a little wrong likewise, and do a little of the devil’s work.  So one lies, another cheats, another oppresses, another neglects his plainest social duties, another defiles himself with base political or religious intrigues, another breaks the seventh commandment, or, indeed, any and every one of the commandments which he finds troublesome.  And when one asks in astonishment—You call yourselves Christians?  You believe in God, and the Bible, and Christianity?  Do you not think that God will punish you for all this?  Do you not hear from the psalmists, and prophets, and apostles, of a God who judges and punishes such generations as this?  Of a wrath of God which is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men, who, like you, hold down the truth in unrighteousness, knowing what is right and yet doing what is wrong?  Then they answer, at least in their hearts, Oh dear no!  God does not govern men now, or judge men now.  He only did so, our preachers tell us, under the old Jewish dispensation; and such words as you quote from our Lord, or St Paul, have only to do with the day of judgment, and the next life, and we have made it all right for the next life.  I, says one, regularly perform my religious duties; and I, says another, build churches and chapels, and give large sums in charity; and I, says another, am converted, and a member of a church; and I, says another, am elect, and predestined to everlasting life—and so forth, and so forth.  Each man turning the grace of God into a cloak for licentiousness, and deluding himself into the notion that he may break the eternal laws of God, and yet go to heaven, as he calls it, when he dies: not knowing, poor foolish man, that as the noble commination service well says, the dreadful judgments of God are not waiting for certain people at the last day, thousands of years hence, but hanging over all our heads already, and always ready to fall on us.  Not knowing that it is as true now as it was two thousand years ago, that “God is a righteous judge, strong and patient.”  “If a man will not turn, He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow, and made it ready,” against those who travail with mischief, who conceive sorrow, and bring forth ungodliness.  They dig up pits for their neighbours, and fall themselves into the destruction which they have made for others; not knowing that it is as true now as it was two thousand years ago, that God is for ever saying to the ungodly, “Why dost thou preach my laws, and takest my covenant in thy mouth; whereas thou hatest to be reformed, and hast cast my words behind thee?  Thou hast let thy mouth speak wickedness, and with thy tongue thou hast set forth deceit.  These things hast thou done, and I held my tongue, and thou thoughtest, wickedly, that I am even such a one as thyself.  But I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things which thou hast done.  O consider this, ye that forget God: lest I pluck you away, and there be none to deliver you.”

Let us lay this to heart, and say, there can be no doubt—I at least have none—that there is growing up among us a serious divorce between faith and practice; a serious disbelief that the kingdom of heaven is about us, and that Christ is ruling us, as He told us plainly enough in His parables, by the laws of the kingdom of heaven; and that He does, and will punish and reward each man according to those laws, and according to nothing else.

We pride ourselves on our superior light, and our improved civilisation, and look down on the old Roman Catholic missionaries, who converted our forefathers from heathendom in the Middle Ages.  Now, I am a Protestant, if ever there was one, and I know well that these men had their superstitions and false doctrines.  They made mistakes, and often worse than mistakes, for they were but men.  But this I tell you, that if they had not had a deep and sound belief that they were in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven; and that they and all men must obey the laws of the kingdom of heaven; and that the first law of it was, that wrongdoing would be punished, and rightdoing rewarded, in this life, every day, and all day long, as sure as Christ the living Lord reigned in righteousness over all the earth; if they had not believed that, I say, and acted on it, we should probably have been heathen at this day.  As it is, unless we Protestants get back the old belief, that God is a living God, and that His judgments are abroad in the earth, and that only in keeping His commandments can we get life, and not perish, we shall be seriously in danger of sinking at last into that hopeless state of popular feeling, into which more than one nation in our own time has fallen,—that, as the prophet of old says, a wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets—that is, the preachers and teachers—prophesy falsely; and the priests—the ministers of religion—bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so—love to have their consciences drugged by the news that they may live bad lives, and yet die good deaths.

“And what will ye do in the end thereof?” asks Jeremiah.  What indeed!  What the Jews did in the end thereof you may read in the book of the prophet Jeremiah.  They did nothing, and could do nothing—with their morality their manhood was gone.  Sin had borne its certain fruit of anarchy and decrepitude.  The wrath of God revealed itself as usual, by no miracle, but through inscrutable social laws.  They had to submit, cowardly and broken-hearted, to an invasion, a siege, and an utter ruin.  I do not say, God forbid, that we shall ever sink so low, and have to endure so terrible a chastisement: but this I say, that the only way in which any nation of which I ever read in history, can escape, sooner or later, from such a fate, is to remember every day, and all day long, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ill-doing of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, knowing what is true and what is right, yet telling lies, and doing wrong.

Let us lay this to heart, with seriousness and godly fear.  For so we shall look up with reverence, and yet with hope, to Christ the ascended king, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; for ever asking Him for His Holy Spirit, to put into our minds good desires, and to enable us to bring these desires to good effect.  And so we shall live for ever under our great taskmaster’s eye, and find out that that eye is not merely the eye of a just judge, not merely the eye of a bountiful king, but more the eye of a loving and merciful Saviour, in whose presence is life even here on earth; and at whose right hand, even in this sinful world, are pleasures for evermore.

SERMON XXXI.  THE UNCHANGEABLE CHRIST

Eversley. 1845.

Hebrews xiii. 8.  “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”

Let me first briefly remind you, as the truth upon which my whole explanation of this text is built, that man is not meant either for solitude or independence.  He is meant to live with his fellow-men, to live by them, and to live for them.  He is healthy and godly, only when he knows all men for his brothers; and himself, in some way or other, as the servant of all, and bound in ties of love and duty to every one around him.

It is not, however, my intention to dwell upon this truth, deep and necessary as it is, but to turn your attention to one of its consequences; I mean to the disappointment and regret of which so many complain, who try, more or less healthily, to keep that truth before them, and shew it forth in their daily life.

It has been, and is now, a common complaint with many who interest themselves about their fellow-creatures, and the welfare of the human race, that nothing in this world is sure,—nothing is permanent; a continual ebb and flow seems to be the only law of human life.  Men change, they say; their friendships are fickle; their minds, like their bodies, alter from day to day.  The heart whom you trust to-day, to-morrow may deceive; the friend for whom you have sacrificed so much, will not in his turn endure the trial of his friendship.  The child on whom you may have reposed your whole affection for years, grows up and goes forth into the world, and forms new ties, and you are left alone.  Why then love man?  Why care for any born of woman, if the happiness which depends on them is exposed to a thousand chances—a thousand changes?  Again; we hear the complaint that not only men, but circumstances change.  Why knit myself, people will ask, to one who to-morrow may be whirled away from me by some eddy of circumstances, and so go on his way, while I see him no more?  Why relieve distress which fresh accidents may bring back again to-morrow, with all its miseries?  Why attach ourselves to a home which we may leave to-morrow,—to pursuits which fortune may force us to relinquish,—to bright hopes which the rolling clouds may shut out from us,—to opinions which the next generation may find to have been utterly mistaken,—to a circle of acquaintances who must in a few years be lying silent and solitary, each in his grave?  Why, in short, set our affections on anything in this earth, or struggle to improve or settle aught in a world where all seems so temporary, changeful, and uncertain, that “nought doth endure but mutability?”

Such is and has been the complaint, mixed up of truth and falsehood, poured out for ages by thousands who have loved (as the world would say) “too well”—who have tried to build up for themselves homes in this world; forgetting that they were strangers and pilgrims in it; and so, when the floods came, and swept away that small fool’s paradise of theirs, repined, and were astonished, as though some strange thing had happened to them.

The time would fail me did I try fully to lay before you how this dread and terror of change, and this unsatisfied craving after an eternal home and an unchanging friendship embittered the minds of all the more thoughtful heathens before the coming of Christ, who, as the apostle says, all their lives were in bondage to the fear of death.  How all their schemes and conceptions of the course of this world, resolved themselves into one dark picture of the terrible river of time, restless, pitiless, devouring all life and beauty as fast as it arose, ready to overwhelm the speakers themselves also with the coming wave, as it had done all they loved before them, and then roll onward for ever, none knew whither!  The time would fail me, too, did I try to explain how after He had appeared, Who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, men have still found the same disappointment in all the paths of life.  Many, not seeing that the manifestation of an incarnate God was the answer to all such doubts, the healer of all such wounds, have sickened at this same change and uncertainty, and attempted self-deliverance by all kinds of uncouth and most useless methods.  Some have shielded themselves, or tried to shield themselves, in an armour of stoical indifference—of utter selfishness, being sure that at all events there was one friendship in the world which could neither change nor fade—Self-love.

Others, again, have withdrawn themselves in disgust, not indeed from their God and Saviour, but from their fellow-men, and buried themselves in deserts, hoping thereby to escape what they despaired of conquering, the chances and changes of this mortal life.  Thus they, alas, threw away the gold of human affections among the dross of this world’s comfort and honour.  Wiser they were, indeed, than those last mentioned; but yet shew I you a more excellent way.

It is strange, and mournful, too, that this complaint, of unsatisfied hopes and longings should still be often heard from Christian lips!  Strange, indeed, when the object and founder of our religion, the king and head of all our race, the God whom we are bound to worship, the eldest brother whom we are bound to love, the Saviour who died upon the cross for us, is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever!”  Strange, indeed, when we remember that God was manifest in the flesh, that He might save humanity and its hopes from perpetual change and final destruction, and satisfy all those cravings after an immutable object of man’s loyalty and man’s love.

Yes, He has given us, in Himself, a king who can never misgovern, a teacher who can never mislead, a priest whose sacrifice can never be unaccepted, a protector who can never grow weary, a friend who can never betray.  And all that this earth has in it really worth loving,—the ties of family, of country, of universal brotherhood—the beauties and wonders of God’s mysterious universe—all true love, all useful labour, all innocent enjoyment—the marriage bed, and the fireside circle—the bounties of harvest, and the smiles of spring, and all that makes life bright and this earth dear—all these things He has restored to man, spiritual and holy, deep with new meaning, bright with purer enjoyment, rich with usefulness, not merely for time, but for eternity, after they had become, through the accumulated sin and folly of ages, foul, dead, and well nigh forgotten.  He has united these common duties and pleasures of man’s life to Himself, by taking them on Himself on earth; by giving us His spirit to understand and fulfil those duties; by making it a duty to Him to cultivate them to the uttermost.  He has sanctified them for ever, by shewing us that they are types and patterns of still higher relations to Himself, and to His Father and our Father, from whom they came.

Christ our Lord and Saviour is a witness to us of the enduring, the everlasting nature of all that human life contains of beauty and holiness, and real value.  He is a witness to us that Wisdom is eternal; that that all-embracing sight, that all-guiding counsel, which the Lord “possessed in the beginning of His way, before His works of old,” He who “was set up from everlasting,” who was with Him when He made the world, still exists, and ever shall exist, unchanged.  The word of the Lord standeth sure!  That Word which was “in the beginning,” and “was with God,” and “was God!”  Glorious truth! that, amid all the inventions which man has sought out, while every new philosopher has been starting some new method of happiness, some new theory of human life and its destinies, God has still been working onward, unchecked, unaltered, “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”  O, sons of men! perplexed by all the apparent contradictions and cross purposes and opposing powers and principles of this strange, dark, noisy time, remember to your comfort that your King, a man like you, yet very God, now sits above, seeing through all which you cannot see through; unravelling surely all this tangled web of time, while under His guiding eye all things are moving silently onward, like the stars in their courses above you, toward their appointed end, “when He shall have put down all rule and all authority, and power, for He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet.”  And then, at last, this cloudy sky shall be all clear and bright, for He, the Lamb, shall be the light thereof.

Christ is the witness to us also of the eternity of Love,—Of God’s love—the love of the Father who wills, of Himself who has purchased, of the Holy Ghost who works in us our salvation; and of the eternity of all love; that true love is not of the flesh, but of the spirit, and therefore hath its root in the spiritual world, above all change and accidents of time or circumstance.  Think, think, my friends.  For what is life that we should make such ado about it, and hug it so closely, and look to it to fill our hearts?  What is all earthly life with all its bad and good luck, its riches and its poverty, but a vapour that passes away?—noise and smoke overclouding the enduring light of heaven.  A man may be very happy and blest in this life; yet he may feel that, however pleasant it is, at root it is no reality, but only a shadow of realities which are eternal and infinite in the bosom of God, a piecemeal pattern, of the Light Kingdom—the city not made with hands—eternal in the heavens.  For all this time-world, as a wise man says, is but like an image, beautifully and fearfully emblematic, but still only an emblem, like an air image, which plays and flickers in the grand, still mirror of eternity.  Out of nothing, into time and space we all came into noisy day; and out of time and space into the silent night shall we all return into the spirit world—the everlasting twofold mystery—into the light-world of God’s love, or the fire-world of His anger—every like unto its like, and every man to his own place.

 
“Choose well, your choice is
Brief but yet endless;
From Heaven, eyes behold you
In eternity’s stillness.
There all is fullness,
Ye brave to reward you;
Work and despair not.”