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SERMON XXI
HEAVEN ON EARTH
1 Cor. x. 31
“Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”
This is a command from God, my friends, which well worth a few minutes’ consideration this day;—well worth considering, because, though it was spoken eighteen hundred years ago, yet God has not changed since that time;—He is just as glorious as ever; and Christian men’s relation to God has not changed since that time; they still live, and move, and have their being in God; they are still His children—His beloved; Christ, who died for us, is still our King; God’s Spirit is still with us, God’s mercy still saves us: we owe God as much as any people ever did. If it was ever any one’s duty to shew forth God’s glory, surely it is our duty too.
Worth considering, indeed, is this command, for though it is in the Bible, and has been there for eighteen hundred years, it is seldom read, seldomer understood, and still more seldom put into practice. Men eat and drink, and do all manner of things, with all their might and main; but how many of them do they do to the glory of God? No; this is the fault—the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean any longer, as it used, the service of God—the being like God, and shewing forth God’s glory. No; religion means, nowadays, the art of getting to heaven when we die, and saving our own miserable, worthless souls, and getting God’s wages without doing God’s work—as if that was godliness,—as if that was any thing but selfishness; as if selfishness was any the better for being everlasting selfishness! If selfishness is evil, my friends, the sooner we get rid of it the better, instead of mixing it up as we do with all our thoughts of heaven, and making our own enjoyment and our own safety the vile root of our hopes for all eternity. And therefore it is that people have forgotten what God’s glory is. They seem to think, that God’s highest glory is saving them from hell-fire. And they talk not of God and of the wondrous majesty of God, but only of the wonder of God’s having saved them—looking at themselves all the time, and not at God. We must get rid of this sort of religion, my friends, at all risks, in order to get rid of all sorts of irreligion, for one is the father of the other.
It is a wonder, indeed, that we are saved from hell, much more raised to heaven, such peevish, cowardly, pitiful creatures as the best of us are: and yet the more we think of it, the less wonder we shall find it. The more we think of the wonder of all wonders,—God Himself, His majesty, His power, His wisdom, His love, His pity, His infinite condescension, the less reason we shall have to be surprised that He has stooped to save us. Yes, do not be startled—for it is true, that He has done for sinful men nothing contrary to Himself, but just what was to be expected from such unutterable condescension, and pity, and generosity, as God’s is. And so recollecting this, we shall begin to forget ourselves, and look at God; and in thinking of Him we shall get beyond mere wondering at Him, and rise to something higher—to worshipping Him.
Yes, my friends, this is what we must try at if we would be really godly—to find out what God is—to find out His likeness, His character, as He is: and has He not shewn us what He is? He who has earnestly read Christ’s story—he who has understood, and admired, and loved Christ’s character, and its nobleness and beauty—he who can believe that Jesus Christ is now, at this minute, raising up his heart to good, guiding his thoughts to good, he has seen God; for he has seen the Son, who is the exact likeness of the Father’s glory, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead in a bodily shape. Remember, he who knows Christ knows God,—and that knowledge will help us up a noble step farther—it will help us to shew forth God’s glory. For when we once know what God’s glory is, we shall see how to make others know it too. We shall know how to do God justice, to set men right as to their notions of God, to give them, at all events, in our own lives and characters, a pattern of Christ, who is the Pattern of God; and whatsoever we do we shall be able to do all to God’s glory.
For what is doing every thing to the glory of God? It is this;—we have seen what God’s glory is: He is His own glory. As you say of any very excellent man, you have but to know him to honour him; or of any very beautiful woman, you have but to see her to love her; so I say of God, men have but to see and know Him to love and honour Him.
Well, then, my friends, if we call ourselves Christian men, if we believe that God is our Father, and delight, as on the grounds of common feeling we ought, to honour our Father, we should try to make every one honour Him as He deserves. In short, whatever we do we should make it tend to His glory—make it a lesson to our neighbours, our friends, and our families. We should preach God’s glory to them day by day, not by words only, often not by words at all, but by our conduct. Ay, there is the secret.—If you wish other men to believe a thing, just behave as if you believed it yourself. Nothing is so infectious as example. If you wish your neighbours to see what Jesus Christ is like, let them see what He can make you like. If you wish them to know how God’s love is ready to save them from their sins, let them see His love save you from your sins. If you wish them to see God’s tender care in every blessing and every sorrow they have, why let them see you thanking God for every sorrow and every blessing you have. I tell you, friends, example is every thing. One good man,—one man who does not put his religion on once a-week with his Sunday coat, but wears it for his working dress, and lets the thought of God grow into him, and through and through him, till every thing he says and does becomes religious, that man is worth a ton of sermons—he is a living Gospel—he comes in the spirit and power of Elias—he is the image of God. And men see his good works, and admire them in spite of themselves, and see that they are Godlike, and that God’s grace is no dream, but that the Holy Spirit is still among men, and that all nobleness and manliness is His gift, His stamp, His picture; and so they get a glimpse of God again in His saints and heroes, and glorify their Father who is in heaven.
Would not such a life be a heavenly life? Ay, it would be more, it would be heaven—heaven on earth: not in versemongering cant, but really. We should then be sitting, as St. Paul tells us, in heavenly places with Jesus Christ, and having our conversation in heaven. All the while we were doing our daily work, following our business, or serving our country, or sitting at our own firesides with wife and child, we should be all that time in heaven. Why not? we are in heaven now—if we had but faith to see it. Oh, get rid of those carnal, heathen notions about heaven, which tempt men to fancy that, after having misused this place—God’s earth—for a whole life, they are to fly away when they die, like swallows in autumn, to another place—they know not where—where they are to be very happy—they know not why or how, nor do I know either. Heaven is not a mere place, my friends. All places are heaven, if you will be heavenly in them. Heaven is where God is and Christ is. And hell is where God is not and Christ is not. The Bible says, no doubt, there is a place now—somewhere beyond the skies—where Christ especially shews forth His glory—a heaven of heavens: and for reasons which I cannot explain, there must be such a place. But, at all events, here is heaven; for Christ is here and God is here, if we will open our eyes and see them. And how?—How? Did not Christ Himself say, ‘If a man will love Me, My Father will love him; and we, My Father and I, will come to him, and make our abode with him, and we will shew ourselves to him?’ Do those words mean nothing or something? If they have any meaning, do they not mean this, that in this life, we can see God—in this life we can have God and Christ abiding with us? And is not that heaven? Yes, heaven is where God is. You are in heaven if God is with you, you are in hell if God is not with you; for where God is not, darkness and a devil are sure to be.
There was a great poet once—Dante by name—who described most truly and wonderfully, in his own way, heaven and hell, for, indeed, he had been in both. He had known sin and shame, and doubt and darkness and despair, which is hell. And after long years of misery, he had got to know love and hope, and holiness and nobleness, and the love of Christ and the peace of God, which is heaven. And so well did he speak of them, that the ignorant people used to point after him with awe in the streets, and whisper, There is the man who has been in hell. Whereon some one made these lines on him:—
“Thou hast seen hell and heaven? Why not? since heaven and hell
Within the struggling soul of every mortal dwell.”
Think of that!—thou—and thou—and thou!—for in thee, at this moment, is either heaven or hell: and which of them? Ask thyself—ask thyself, friend. If thou art not in heaven in this life, thou wilt never be in heaven in the life to come. At death, says the wise man, each thing returns into its own element, into the ground of its life; the light into the light, and the darkness into the darkness. As the tree falls so it lies. My friends, who call yourselves enlightened Christian folk, do you suppose that you can lead a mean, worldly, covetous, spiteful life here, and then the moment your soul leaves the body that you are to be changed into the very opposite character, into angels and saints, as fairy tales tell of beasts changed into men? If a beast can be changed into a man, then death can change the sinner into a saint,—but not else. If a beast would enjoy being a man, then a sinner would enjoy being in heaven, but not else. A sinful, worldly man enjoy being in heaven? Does a fish enjoy being on dry land? The sinner would long to be back in this world again. Why, what is the employment of spirits in heaven, according to the Bible (for that is the point to which I have been trying to lead you round again)? What but glorifying God? Not trying only to do every thing to God’s glory, but actually succeeding in doing it—basking in the sunshine of His smile, delighting to feel themselves as nothing before His glorious majesty, meditating on the beauty of His love, filling themselves with the sight of His power, searching out the treasures of His wisdom, and finding God in all and all in God—their whole eternity one act of worship, one hymn of praise. Are there not some among us who will have had but little practice at that work? Those who have done nothing for God’s glory here, how do they expect to be able to do every thing for God’s glory hereafter? (Those who will not take the trouble of merely standing up at the psalms, like the rest of their neighbours, even if they cannot sing with their voices God’s praises in this church, how will they like singing God’s praises through eternity?) No; be sure that the only people who will be fit for heaven, who will like heaven even, are those who have been in heaven in this life,—the only people who will be able to do every thing to God’s glory in the new heavens and new earth, are those who have been trying honestly to do all to His glory in this heaven and this earth.
Think over, in the meantime, what I have said this day; consider it, and you will have enough to think of, and pray over too, till we meet here again.
SERMON XXII
NATIONAL PRIVILEGES
Luke, x. 23
“Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see: for I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.”
This is a noble text, my friends—and yet an awful one, for if it does not increase our religion, it will certainly increase our condemnation. It tells us that we, even the meanest among us, are more favoured by God than the kings, and judges, and conquerors of the old world, of whom we read this afternoon in the first lesson; that we have more light and knowledge of God than even the prophets David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to whom God’s glory appeared in visible shape. It tells us that we see things which they longed to see, and could not; that words are spoken to us for which their ears longed in vain; that they, though they died in hope, yet received not the promises, God having provided some better things for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
Now, what was this which they longed for, and had not, and yet we have? It was this,—a Saviour and a Saviour’s kingdom. All wise and holy hearts for ages—as well heathens as Jews—had had this longing. They wanted a Saviour,—one who should free them from sin and conquer evil,—one who should explain to them all the doubt and contradiction and misery of the world, and give them some means of being freed from it,—one who should set them the perfect pattern of what a man should be, and join earth and heaven, and make godliness part of man’s daily life. They longed for a Saviour, and for a heavenly kingdom also. They saw that all the laws in the world could never make men good; that one half of men broke them, and the other half only obeyed them unwillingly through slavish fear, loving the sin they dared not do. That men got worse and worse as time rolled on. That kings, instead of being shepherds of their people, were only wolves and tyrants to keep them in ignorance and misery. That priests only taught the people lies, and fattened themselves at their expense. That, in short, as David said, men would not learn, or understand, and all the foundations of the earth, the grounds and principles of society, politics and religion, were out of course, and the devil very truly the king of this lower world; so they longed for a heavenly kingdom—a kingdom of God, one in which men should obey God for love, and not for fear, and man for God’s sake; a spiritual kingdom—a kingdom whose laws should be written in men’s hearts and spirits, and be their delight and glory, not their dread. They longed for a King of kings, who should teach all kings and magistrates to rule in love and wisdom. They longed for a High-priest, who should teach all priests to explain the wonder and the glory that there is in every living man, and in heaven and earth, and all that therein lies, and lead men’s hearts into love, and purity, and noble thoughts and deeds. They longed, in short, for a kingdom of God, a golden age, a regeneration of the world, as they called it, and rightly. Of course, the Jewish prophets saw most clearly how this would be brought about, and how utterly necessary a Saviour and His kingdom was to save mankind from utter ruin. They, I say, saw this best. But still all the wise and pious heathens, each according to his measure of light, saw the same necessity, or else were restless and miserable, because they could not see it. So that in all ages of the world, in a thousand different shapes, there was rising up to heaven a mournful, earnest prayer,—“Thy kingdom come!”
And now this kingdom is come, and the King of it, the Saviour of men, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Long men prayed, and long men waited, and at last, in the fulness of God’s good time, just when the night seemed darkest, and under the abominations of the Roman Empire, religion, honesty, and common decency, seemed to have died out, the Sun of Righteousness rose on the dead and rotten world, to bring life and immortality to light. God sent forth His Son made of a woman, not to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. He sent Him to be our Saviour, to die on the cross for our sins and our children’s, that all our guilt might be washed away, and we might come boldly to the throne of grace, with our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed in the waters of baptism. He sent Him to be our Teacher in the perfect law of love, our pattern in every thing which a man should be, and is not. He sent Him to conquer death by rising from the dead, that He might have power to raise us also to life and immortality. He sent Him to fill men with His Spirit, the Spirit of reason and truth, the Spirit of love and courage, that he might know the will of God, and do it as our Saviour did before us. He sent Him to found a Church, to join all men into one brotherhood, one kingdom of God, whose rulers are kings and parliaments, whose ministers are the clergy, whose prophets are all poets and philosophers, authors and preachers, who are true to their own calling; whose signs and tokens are the sacraments; a kingdom which should never be moved, but should go on for ever, drawing into all honest and true hearts, and preserving them ever for Christ their Lord.
And that we might not doubt that we, too, belonged to this kingdom, He has placed in this land His ministers and teachers, Christ’s sacraments, Christ’s churches in every parish in the land, Christ’s Bible, or the means of attaining the Bible, in every house and every cottage; that from our cradle to our grave we might see that we belonged, as sworn servants and faithful children, to the great Father in heaven and Jesus Christ, the King of the earth.
Thus, my friends, all that all men have longed for we possess; we want no more, and we shall have no more. If, under the present state of things, we cannot be holy, we shall never be holy. If we cannot use our right in this kingdom of Christ, how can we become citizens of God’s everlasting kingdom, when Christ shall have delivered up the dominion to His Father, and God shall be all in all? God has done all for us that God will do. He has given us His Son for a Saviour, and a Church in which and by which to worship that Saviour; and what more would we have? Alas! my friends, have we yet used fairly what God has given us? and if not, how terrible will be our guilt! “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” And yet how many do neglect—how few live as if they were citizens of Christ’s kingdom! It seems as if God had been too good to us, and heaped us so heavily with blessings, that we were tired of them, and despised them as common things. Common things? They are the very things, as I said, which the great and the wise in all ages have longed for and prayed for, and yet never found! Surely, surely, God may well say to us, “What could have been done unto my vineyard which has not been done to it?” What, indeed? I wish I could take some of you into a heathen country for a single week, that you might see what it is not to know of a Saviour—not to be members of His Church, as we are. Why, we here in England are in the very garden of the Lord. We have but to stretch out our hand to the tree of life, and eat and live for ever. From our cradle to our grave, Christ the King is ready to guide, to teach, to comfort, to deliver us. When we are born, we are christened in His name, made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors by hope of the kingdom of heaven. Is that nothing? It is, alas! nothing in the eyes of most parents! As we grow older, are we not taught who we are—taught call God our Father—taught about Jesus Christ, who He is, and what He is? Is that, too, nothing? Alas! that knowledge is generally a mere meaningless school-lesson, cared for neither by child nor by man. At confirmation, again, we solemnly declare that we belong to Christ’s kingdom, and that we will live as His subjects, and His alone. And we are brought to His bishops, to be received as free, reasonable, Christian people, to claim our citizenship in the kingdom of God. Is that nothing? Yet that, too, is nothing with three-fourths of us. Nothing? Hear me, young people—as I have often told you—you are ready enough to excuse yourselves from your confirmation vows, by saying you were not taught to understand them—were not taught how to put them into practice. That may be true, or it may not; your sin is just the same. No one with any common honesty or common sense could answer as you have to the bishop’s questions at confirmation, without knowing that you did make a promise, and knowing well enough what you promised—and you who carried to confirmation a careless heart and a lying tongue, have only yourselves to blame for it!—But to proceed. Is not Christ present, or ready to be present, with us? Sunday after Sunday, for years, have not the churches been opened all around us, inviting us to enter and worship Christ, knowing that where two or three are gathered together, there is Christ in the midst of them. Is that nothing? This Creed—these Lessons—these prayers, which Sunday after Sunday you have used;—are they nothing? Are they not all proofs that the kingdom of God is come to you, and means whereby you can behave like children of the kingdom? And not on Sundays alone. Have we not been taught daily, in our own houses, in our own hearts, in all danger, and trouble, and temptation, to pray to Jesus Christ, our King, knowing that He will hear and save all them that put their trust in Him?
Is that nothing? On our happy marriage morn, too, was it not in God’s house, before Christ’s minister, in Christ’s name, that we were married? Surely the kingdom of God is come to us, when our wedlock, as well as our souls and bodies, is holy to the Lord. Is that nothing? How few think of their marriage-joys as holy things—an ordinance of Christ’s kingdom, which He delights in and blesses with His presence and His special smile, seeing that it is the noblest and the purest of all things on earth—the picture of the great mystery which shall be the bridal of all bridals, the marriage of Christ and His Church! People do not, nowadays, believe in marriage as a part of their religion; and so, according to their want of faith it happens to them; their marriage is not holy, and the love and joy of their youth wither into a peevish, careless, lonely old age;—and yet over their heads these words were said, “They are man and wife together, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost!” comes of not believing in Christ’s presence and Christ’s favour; of not believing, in short, in what the Creed truly calls the Holy Catholic Church. Neither after that does Christ leave us. Every time a woman is churched, is not that meant to be a sign of thankfulness to Christ, the great Physician, to whom she owes her life and health once more? Then, season after season, is the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood offered you. Is that no sign that Christ is here among us? Ah! blessed are the eyes which see that—blessed are the ears which hear those words, “Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you.” Truly, if that honour—that blessing—is so vast, the love and the condescension of Christ, the Lamb of God, so unutterable, that prophets and kings, whatever they believed, never could have desired, never could have imagined, that the Son of God should offer to the sons of men, year after year, in their little parish churches, His most precious body, His most precious blood. And another thing, too, those prophets and kings would never have imagined,—that when Christ, in those churches, offers His body and His blood, nine-tenths of the congregation, calling themselves Christians, should quietly walk out, and go home, and leave the sacraments of Christ’s body and Christ’s blood behind as a useless and unnecessary matter! That, indeed, the old prophets and kings never saw, and never expected to see—but so it is. Christ is among us, and our eyes are holden, and we know Him not.
And then at last, after all these blessed privileges, these tokens of God’s kingdom have been neglected through a long life, does Christ neglect us in the hour of death? Ah, no! He is at the grave, as He was at the font, at the marriage-bed, at His own holy table in God’s house; and the body is laid in the ground by Christ’s minister, in the certain hope of a joyful resurrection. But what—a sure and certain hope for each and all? The resurrection is a joyful hope—but is it so for all? Only, too often, a faint, dim longing that clings to the last chance, and dares not confess to itself how hopeless must be the death of that man or woman whose life was spent in the kingdom of God, in the midst of blessings which kings said prophets desired in vain to see, and yet who neglected them all, never entered into the spirit of them—never loved them—never lived according to them, but despised and trampled under foot the kingdom of God from their childhood to their grave, as three-fourths of us do. Christ came to judge no man, and therefore Christ’s ministers judge no man, and read the Christian funeral service over all, and pray Christ to be there, and to remember His blessed promise of raising up the body and soul to everlasting life. But how can they help fearing that Christ will not hear them—that after all His offers and gifts in this life have been despised, He will give nothing after death but death; and that it were better for the sinful, worldly sham Christian, when lying in his coffin, if he had never been born? How can those escape who neglect such great salvation?
Ah, my friends—my friends, take this to heart! Blessed, indeed, are the eyes which see what you see, and hear what you hear; prophets and kings have desired to see and hear them, and have not seen or heard! But if you, cradled among all these despised honours and means of grace, bring forth no fruit in your lives—shut out from yourselves the thought of your high calling in Jesus Christ; what shall be your end but ruin? He that despises Christ, Christ will despise him; and say not to yourselves, as many do, We are church-goers—we are all safe. I say to you, God is able, from among the Negro and the wild Irishman—ay, God is able of these stones to raise up children to the Church of England, while those of you, the children of the kingdom, who lived in the Church of your fathers, and never used or loved her, or Christ, her King, shall be cast into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
