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SERMON XIV.  THE COMFORTER

Eversley.  Sunday after Ascension Day. 1868.

St John xv. 26.  “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.”

Some writers, especially when they are writing hymns, have fallen now-a-days into a habit of writing of the Holy Spirit of God, in a tone of which I dare not say that it is wrong or untrue; but of which I must say, that it is one-sided.  And if there are two sides to a matter, it must do us harm to look at only one of them.  And I think that it does people harm to hear the Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, spoken of in terms, not of reverence, but of endearment.  For consider: He is the

 
“Creator-Spirit, by whose aid
The world’s foundations first were laid,”
 

the life-giving Spirit of whom it is written, Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, and things live, and Thou renewest the face of the earth.

But He is the destroying Spirit too; who can, when He will, produce not merely life, but death; who can, and does send earthquakes, storm, and pestilence; of whom Isaiah writes—“All flesh is as grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.  The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it.”  I think it does people harm to hear this awful and almighty being, I say, spoken of merely as the “sweet Spirit,” and “gentle dove”—words which are true, but only true, if we remember other truths, equally true of Him, concerning whom they are spoken.  The Spirit of God, it seems to me, is too majestic a being to be talked of hastily as “sweet.”  Words may be true, and yet it may not be always quite reverent to use them.  An earthly sovereign may be full of all human sweetness and tenderness, yet we should not dare to address him as “sweet.”

But, indeed, some of this talk about the Holy Spirit is not warranted by Scripture at all.  In one of the hymns, for instance, in our hymn-book—an excellent hymn in other respects, there is a line which speaks of the Holy Spirit as possessing “The brooding of the gentle dove.”

Now, this line is really little but pretty sentiment, made up of false uses of Scripture.  The Scripture speaks once of the Holy Spirit of God brooding like a bird over its nest.  But where?  In one of the most mysterious, awful, and important of all texts.  “And the earth was without form and void.  And the Spirit of God moved (brooded) over the face of the deep.”  What has this—the magnificent picture of the Life-giving Spirit brooding over the dead world, to bring it into life again, and create from it sea and land, heat and fire, and cattle and creeping things after their kind, and at last man himself, the flower and crown of things;—what has that to do with the brooding of a gentle dove?

But the Holy Spirit is spoken of in Scripture under the likeness of a dove?  True, and here is another confusion.  The Dove is not the emblem of gentleness in the Bible: but the Lamb.  The dove is the emblem of something else, pure and holy, but not of gentleness; and therefore the Holy Spirit is not spoken of in Scripture as brooding as a gentle dove; but very differently, as it seems to me.  St Matthew and St John say, that at our Lord’s baptism the Holy Spirit was seen, not brooding, but descending from heaven as a dove.  To any one who knows anything of doves, who will merely go out into the field or the farm-yard and look at them, and who will use his own eyes, that figure is striking enough, and grand enough.  It is the swiftness of the dove, and not its fancied gentleness that is spoken of.  The dove appearing, as you may see it again and again, like a speck in the far off sky, rushing down with a swiftness which outstrips the very eagle; returning surely to the very spot from which it set forth, though it may have flown over hundreds of miles of land, and through the very clouds of heaven.  It is the sky-cleaving force and swiftness, the unerring instinct of the dove, and not a sentimental gentleness to which Scripture likens that Holy Spirit, which like the rushing mighty wind bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth;—that Holy Spirit who, when He fell on the apostles, fell in tongues of fire, and shook all the house where they were sitting; that Holy Spirit of whom one of the wisest Christians who ever lived, who knew well enough the work of the Spirit, arguing just as I am now against the fancy of associating the Holy Spirit merely with pretty thoughts of our own, and pleasant feelings of our own, and sentimental raptures of our own, said, “Wouldst thou know the manner of spiritual converse?  Of the way in which the Spirit of God works in man?  Then it is this: He hath taken me up and dashed me down.  Like a lion, I look, that He will break all my bones.  From morning till evening, Thou wilt make an end of me.”

But people are apt to forget this.  And therefore they fall into two mistakes.  They think of the Holy Spirit as only a gentle, and what they call a dove-like being; and they forget what a powerful, awful, literally formidable being He is.  They lose respect for the Holy Spirit.  They trifle with Him; and while they sing hymns about His gentleness and sweetness, they do things which grieve and shock Him; forgetting the awful warning which He, at the very outset of the Christian Church, gave against such taking of liberties with God the Holy Ghost:—how Ananias and Sapphira thought that the Holy Spirit was One whom they might honour with their lips, and more, with their outward actions, but who did not require truth in the inward parts, and did not care for their telling a slight falsehood that they might appear more generous than they really were in the eyes of men; and how the answer of the Holy Spirit of God was that He struck them both dead there and then for a warning to all such triflers, till the end of time.

Another mistake which really pious and good people commit, is, that they think the Holy Spirit of God to be merely, or little beside, certain pleasant frames, and feelings, and comfortable assurances, in their own minds.  They do not know that these pleasant frames and feelings really depend principally on their own health: and, then, when they get out of health, or when their brain is overworked, and the pleasant feelings go, they are terrified and disheartened, and complain of spiritual dryness, and cry out that God’s Spirit has deserted them, and are afraid that God is angry with them, or even that they have committed the unpardonable sin: not knowing that God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent; that God is as near them in the darkness as in the light; that whatever their own health, or their own feelings may be, yet still in God they live, and move, and have their being; that to God’s Spirit they owe all which raises them above the dumb animals; that nothing can separate them from the love of Him who promised that He would not leave us comfortless, but send to us His Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us to the same place whither He has gone before.

Now, why do I say all this?  To take away comfort from you?  To make you fear and dread the Spirit of God?  God forbid!  Who am I, to take away comfort from any human being!  I say it to give yon true comfort, to make you trust and love the Holy Spirit utterly, to know Him—His strength and His wisdom as well as His tenderness and gentleness.

You know that afflictions do come—terrible bereavements, sorrows sad and strange.  My sermon does not make them come.  There they are, God help us all, and too many of them, in this world.  But from whom do they come?  Who is Lord of life and death?  Who is Lord of joy and sorrow?  Is not that the question of all questions?  And is not the answer the most essential of all answers?  It is the Holy Spirit of God; the Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; the Spirit of the Father who so loved the world that He spared not His only begotten Son; the Spirit of the Son who so loved the world, that He stooped to die for it upon the Cross; the Spirit who is promised to lead you into all truth, that you may know God, and in the knowledge of Him find everlasting life; the Spirit who is the Comforter, and says, I have seen thy ways and will heal thee, I will lead thee also, and restore comforts to thee and to thy mourners.  I speak peace to him that is near, and to him that is far off, saith the Lord; and I will heal him.  Is it not the most blessed news, that He who takes away, is the very same as He who gives?  That He who afflicts is the very same as He who comforts?  That He of whom it is written that, “as a lion, so will He break all my bones; from day even to night wilt Thou make an end of me;” is the same as He of whom it is written, “He shall gather the lambs in His arms, and carry them, and shall gently lead those that are with young;” and, again, “as a beast goeth down into the valley, so the Spirit of the Lord caused him to rest?”  That He of whom it is written, “Our God is a consuming fire,” is the same as He who has said, “When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned?”  That He who brings us into “the valley of the shadow of death,” is the same as He of whom it is said, “Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me?”  Is not that blessed news?  Is it not the news of the Gospel; and the only good news which people will really care for, when they are tormented, not with superstitious fears and doctrines of devils which man’s diseased conscience has originated, but tormented with the real sorrows, the rational fears of this stormy human life.

We all like comfort.  But what kind of comfort do we not merely like but need?  Merely to be comfortable?—To be free from pain, anxiety, sorrow?—To have only pleasant faces round us, and pleasant things said to us?  If we want that comfort, we shall very seldom have it.  It will be very seldom good for us to have it.  The comfort which poor human beings want in such a world as this, is not the comfort of ease, but the comfort of strength.  The comforter whom we need is not one who will merely say kind things, but give help—help to the weary and heavy laden heart which has no time to rest.  We need not the sunny and smiling face, but the strong and helping arm.  For we may be in that state that smiles are shocking to us, and mere kindness,—though we may be grateful for it—of no more comfort to us than sweet music to a drowning man.  We may be miserable, and unable to help being miserable, and unwilling to help it too.  We do not wish to flee from our sorrow, we do not wish to forget our sorrow.  We dare not; it is so awful, so heartrending, so plain spoken, that God, the master and tutor of our hearts must wish us to face it and endure it.  Our Father has given us the cup—shall we not drink it?  But who will help us to drink the bitter cup?  Who will be the comforter, and give us not mere kind words, but strength?  Who will give us the faith to say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him?”  Who will give us the firm reason to look steadily at our grief, and learn the lesson it was meant to teach?  Who will give us the temperate will, to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life?  Above all, I may say—Who will lead us into all truth?  How much is our sorrow increased—how much of it is caused by simple ignorance!  Why has our anxiety come?  How are we to look at it?  What are we to do?  Oh, that we had a comforter who would lead us into all truth:—not make us infallible, or all knowing, but lead us into truth; at least put us in the way of truth, put things in their true light to us, and give us sound and rational views of life and duty.  Oh, for a comforter who would give us the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and fill us with that spirit of God’s holy fear, which would make us not superstitious, not slavish, not anxious, but simply obedient, loyal and resigned.

If we had such a Comforter as that, could we not take evil from his hands, as well as good?  We have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence.  They chastised us, but we loved and trusted them, because we knew that they loved and trusted us—chastised us to make us better—chastised us because they trusted us to become better.  But if we can find a Father of our spirits, of our souls, shall we not rather be in subjection to Him and live?  If He sent us a Comforter, to comfort and guide, and inspire, and strengthen us, shall we not say of that Comforter—“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

If we had such a Comforter as that, we should not care, if He seemed at times stern, as well as kind; we could endure rebuke and chastisement from Him, if we could only get from Him wisdom to understand the rebuke, and courage to bear the chastisement.  Where is that Comforter?  God answers:—That Comforter am I, the God of heaven and earth.  There are comforters on earth who can help thee with wise words and noble counsel, can be strong as man, and tender as woman.  Then God can be more strong than man, and more tender than woman likewise.  And when the strong arm of man supports thee no longer, yet under thee are the everlasting arms of God.

Oh, blessed news, that God Himself is the Comforter.  Blessed news, that He who strikes will also heal: that He who gives the cup of sorrow, will also give the strength to drink it.  Blessed news, that chastisement is not punishment, but the education of a Father.  Blessed news, that our whole duty is the duty of a child—of the Son who said in His own agony, “Father, not my will, but thine be done.”  Blessed news, that our Comforter is the Spirit who comforted Christ the Son Himself; who proceeds both from the Father and from the Son; and who will therefore testify to us both of the Father and the Son, and tell us that in Christ we are indeed, really and literally, the children of God who may cry to Him, “Father,” with full understanding of all that that royal word contains.  Blessed, too, to find that in the power of the Divine Majesty, we can acknowledge the unity, and know and feel that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all one in love to the creatures whom they have made—their glory equal, for the glory of each and all is perfect charity, and their majesty co-eternal, because it is a perfect majesty; whose justice is mercy, whose power is goodness, its very sternness love, love which gives hope and counsel, and help and strength, and the true life which this world’s death cannot destroy.

SERMON XV.  THOU ART WORTHY

Eversley, 1869.  Chester Cathedral, 1870.  Trinity Sunday.

Revelation iv. 11.  “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”

I am going to speak to you on a deep matter, the deepest and most important of all matters, and yet I hope to speak simply.  I shall say nothing which you cannot understand, if you will attend.  I shall say nothing, indeed, which you could not find out for yourselves, if you will think, and use your own common sense.  I wish to speak to you of Theology—of God Himself.  For this Trinity Sunday of all the Sundays of the year, is set apart for thinking of God Himself—not merely of our own souls, though we must never forget them, nor of what God has done for our souls, though we must never forget that—but of what God is Himself, what He would be if we had no souls—if there were, and had been from the beginning, no human beings at all upon the earth.

Now, if we look at any living thing—an animal, say, or a flower, and consider how curiously it is contrived, our common sense will tell us at once that some one has made it; and if any one answers—Oh! the flower was not made, it grew—our common sense would tell us that that was only a still more wonderful contrivance, and that there must be some one who gave it the power of growing, and who makes it grow.  And so our common sense would tell us, as it told the heathens of old, that there must be gods—beings whom we cannot see, who made the world.  But if we watch things more closely, we should find out that all things are made more or less upon the same plan; that (and I tell you that this is true, strange as it may seem) all animals, however different they may seem to our eyes, are made upon the same plan; all plants and flowers, however different they may seem, are made upon the same plan; all stones, and minerals, and earths, however different they may seem, are made upon the same plan.  Then common sense would surely tell us, one God made all the animals, one God made all the plants, one God made all the earths and stones.  But if we watch more closely still, we should find that the plants could not live without the animals, nor the animals without the plants, nor either of them without the soil beneath our feet, and the air and rain above our heads.  That everything in the world worked together on one plan, and each thing depended on everything else.  Then common sense would tell us, one God must have made the whole world.  But if we watched more closely again, or rather, if we asked the astronomers, who study the stars and heavens, they would tell us that all the worlds over our heads, all the stars that spangle the sky at night, were made upon the same plan as our earth—that sun and moon, and all the host of heaven, move according to the same laws by which our earth moves, and as far as we can find out, have been made in the same way as our earth has been made, and that these same laws must have been going on, making worlds after worlds, for hundreds of thousands of years, and ages beyond counting, and will, in all probability, go on for countless ages more.  Then common sense will tell us, the same God has made all worlds, past, present, and to come.  There is but one God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

So we should learn something of how all things were made; and then would come a second question, why all things were made?  Why did God make the worlds?

Let us begin with a very simple example.  Simple things will often teach us most.  You see a flower growing, not in a garden, but wild in a field or wood.  You admire its beautiful colours, or if it is fragrant, its sweet scent.  Now, why was that flower put there?  You may answer, “to please me.”  My dear friends, I should be the last person to deny that.  I can never see a child picking a nosegay, much less a little London child, born and bred and shut up among bricks and mortar, when it gets for the first time into a green field, and throws itself instinctively upon the buttercups and daisies, as if they were precious jewels and gold;—I never can see that sight, I say, without feeling that there are such things as final causes—I mean that the great Father in heaven put those flowers into that field on purpose to give pleasure to His human children.  But then comes the question, Of all the flowers in a single field, is one in ten thousand ever looked at by child or by men?  And yet they are just as beautiful as the rest; and God has, so to speak, taken just as much pains with the many beautiful things which men will never see, as with the few, very few, which men may see.  And when one thinks further about this—when one thinks of the vast forests in other lands which the foot of man has seldom or never trod, and which, when they are entered, are found to be full of trees, flowers, birds, butterflies, so beautiful and glorious, that anything which we see in these islands is poor and plain in comparison with them; and when we remember that these beautiful creatures have been going on generation after generation, age after age, unseen and unenjoyed by any human eyes, one must ask, Why has God been creating all that beauty? simply to let it all, as it were, run to waste, till after thousands of years one traveller comes, and has a hasty glimpse of it?  Impossible.  Or again—and this is an example still more strange, and yet it is true.  We used to think till within a very few years past, that at the bottom of the deep sea there were no living things—that miles below the surface of the ocean, in total darkness, and under such a weight of water as would crush us to a jelly, there could be nothing, except stones, and sand, and mud.  But now it is found out that the bottom of the deepest seas, and the utter darkness into which no ray of light can ever pierce, are alive and swarming with millions of creatures as cunningly and exquisitely formed, and in many cases as brilliantly coloured, as those which live in the sunlight along the shallow shores.

Now, my dear friends,—surely beautiful things were made to be seen by some one, else why were they made beautiful?  Common sense tells us that.  But who has seen those countless tribes, which have been living down, in utter darkness, since the making of the world?  Common sense, I think, can give but one answer—GOD.  He, and He only, to whom the night is as clear as the day, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike.  But more—God has not only made things beautiful; He has made things happy; whatever misery there may be in the world, there is no denying that.  However sorrow may have come into the world, there is a great deal more happiness than misery in it.  Misery is the exception; happiness is the rule.  No rational man ever heard a bird sing, without feeling that that bird was happy; and, if so, his common sense ought to tell him that if God made that bird, He made it to be happy; He intended it to be happy, and He takes pleasure in its happiness, though no human ear should ever hear its song, no human heart should ever share in its joy.  Yes, the world was not made for man; but man, like all the world, was made for God.  Not for man’s pleasure merely, not for man’s use, but for God’s pleasure all things are, and for God’s pleasure they were created.

And now, surely, common sense will tell us why God made all things.  For His own pleasure.  God is pleased to make them, and pleased with what He has made, because what He has made is worth being pleased with.  He has seen all things that He has made, and, behold, they are very good, and right, and wise, and beautiful, and happy, each after its kind.  So that, as the Psalmist says, “The Lord shall rejoice in His works.”  And Scripture tells that it must be so, if we only recollect and believe one word of St. John’s that “God is Love”—for it is the very essence of love, that it cannot be content to love itself.  It must have something which is not itself to love that it may go out of itself, and forget itself, and spend itself in the good and in the happiness of what it loves.  All true love of husband and wife, mother and child, sister and brother, friend and friend, man to his country,—what does it mean but this?  Forgetting one’s selfish happiness in doing good to others, and finding a deeper, higher happiness in that.  The man who only loves himself knows not what Love means.  In truth, he does not even love himself.  He is his own worst enemy: his selfishness torments him with discontent, disgust, pride, fear, and all evil passions and lusts; and in him is fulfilled our Lord’s saying, that he that will save his life shall lose it.  But the man who is full of love, as God is full of love, who forgets himself in making others happy, who lives the eternal life of God, which is alone worth living, he is the only truly happy man; and in him is fulfilled that other saying of our Lord, that he who loseth his life shall save it.

And the loving, unselfish man too is the only sound theologian, for he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.  He alone will understand the mystery of who God is, and why He made all things.  The loving man alone, I say, will understand the mystery—how because God is love He could not live alone in the abyss, but must create all things, all worlds and heavens, yea, and the heaven of heavens, that He might have something beside Himself, whereon to spend His boundless love.  And why?  Because love can only love what is somewhat like itself, He made all things according to the idea of His own eternal mind.  Because He is unchangeable, and a God of order and of law, He made all things according to one order, and gave them a law which cannot be broken, that they might continue this day as they were at the beginning, serving Him and fulfilling His word.  Because He is a God of justice, He made all things just, depending on each other, helping each other, and compelled to sacrifice themselves for each other, and minister to each other whether they will or not.  Because He is a God of beauty, He made all things beautiful, of a variety and a richness unspeakable, that He might rejoice in all His works, and find a divine delight in every moss which grows upon the moor, and every gnat which dances in the sun.  Because He is a God of love, He gave to every creature a power of happiness according to its kind, that He might rejoice in the happiness of His creatures.  And lastly, because God is a spirit—a moral and a rational Being—therefore He created rational beings to be more like Him than any other creatures, and constituted the services of men and angels in a most wonderful order, that they might reverence law as He does, and justice as He does—that they might love to be loving as He loves, and to be useful as He is useful—that they might rejoice in the beauty of His works as He rejoices in them Himself; and, catching from time to time fuller and fuller glimpses of that Divine and wonderful order according to which He has made all things and all worlds, may see more and more clearly, as the years roll on, that all things are just, and beautiful, and good; and join more and more heartily in the hymn which goes up for ever from every sun, and star, and world, and from the tiniest creature in these worlds: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Now, to God the Father, who, out of His boundless love, ordains the making of all things; and to God the Son, who, out of His boundless love, performs the making of all things; and to God the Holy Spirit, who, out of His boundless love, breathes law and kind, life and growth into all things, three Persons in one, ever-blessed Trinity, be all glory, and honour, and praise, for ever and ever.  Amen.