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Title: The War and the Gospel
       Sermons & Addresses During the Present War

Author: Henry Wace

Release Date: July 20, 2017 [EBook #55160]

Language: English

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PREFACE.

As is usual in Cathedrals, it is the duty of the Dean of Canterbury to preach on the chief Festivals of the Christian year; and most of the following Addresses have been delivered in the discharge of this office. My comfort in the performance of this duty, especially to an audience of soldiers, in these solemn days, has been the sense that I was commissioned to deliver the message of a Gospel which has “brought Life and Immortality to light,” and which proclaims the good news of the presence of a Saviour in all the circumstances Of life or death. I have simply endeavoured, therefore, to bring some of the light of this Gospel to bear on the distressing and perplexing experiences which this War has forced upon us all, and especially upon those who have borne its chief sacrifices. I am sure that, if only believed and realized, the message of this[vi] Gospel is sufficient to support and to strengthen us under all such trials and strains; and I hope I am not presumptuous in offering these slight contributions towards that purpose to a wider audience than my Cathedral congregations.

H. Wace.

Canterbury, January 1917.

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CONTENTS

[1]

The Christmas Message.

A SERMON PREACHED ON CHRISTMAS DAY A.D. 1914.

If Christmas this sad year is to be a real comfort and help to us, we must realize very clearly what it is that was the cause of the joy of the Angels, and has been always the source of the true joy of Christmas, during the nineteen hundred years or more since that first outburst of heavenly praise and song. The reason had been announced by one Angel to the shepherds abiding in the fields in the words, “Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” The Jewish people were looking and longing for the Christ Who would come, as is expressed in Zacharias’ song,[2] to deliver them from the hand of their enemies, and to grant unto them that they “might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of their life.” This was the promise which, as Zacharias said, had been given by the mouth of God’s prophets since the world began, for which they had craved through long suffering, and captivity, and disappointment; and it is this promise which the angel declared was now fulfilled. A Saviour had been born to them, One Who was able to realize for them the great hopes of blessing which the prophets had held out. He would be able, in the words of another angel, “to save them from their sins,” and by saving them from their sins to save them from the sufferings and sorrows which those sins had entailed upon them. By the birth of our Lord that had become an accomplished fact. There existed from that moment One Who stood between heaven and earth, between God and man, and united both—the Son of God and the Son of Man, with power “to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him,” and able, first by[3] His sacrifice for our sins, and then by His exercise of the royal authority and power which are entrusted to Him, to put down all enemies under His feet, and to deliver up the Kingdom to God the Father, “that God may be all in all.”

That is the grand consummation which, to the vision of the Angels, was comprehended in this simple saying, “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Let us clearly observe that it is not merely the future hope, but the present fact, which causes the Angels’ rejoicing. The Saviour is born, the King is revealed, the work of redemption is actually commenced. “Glory to God,” they exclaimed, “in the highest, and on earth peace; goodwill toward men.” The goodwill of God toward men is now embodied in the Babe Who is Christ the Lord; or, as it is translated in the Revised Version (in different words, but with the same meaning), God’s goodwill is manifested “to men in whom He is well pleased.” It is much more than a general declaration of peace and goodwill. It is a grand revelation, a revelation which opened the[4] heavens and evoked from a host of Angels, such as had never before nor has since been seen, a burst of glory to God for the blessing that from that moment there was a living Saviour in human form in the world.

Now I wish to urge this fact upon you this morning in all its glorious reality, because it is in that fact alone that we can find comfort and help amidst the dark distress of such a Christmas as this, and because it affords us the one supreme guidance in our deep perplexity. The feeling is in all our hearts, and the phrase on many lips, “What a contrast is exhibited by this tremendous and cruel war to the words of hope and peace in the angels’ song,” and the old complaint is uttered, Where is the promise of His coming—the coming of the Prince of Peace? But we have only to consider the immediate sequel of the first Christmas Day, to realize that the assurance given by the angels, and their joy, involved no such facile creation of a time of peace and righteousness as the eager hopes of men imagine. The first result of the Saviour’s coming to His people, and claiming their trust and allegiance, was that they rejected Him and[5] crucified Him. He rose from the dead and sent His Apostles to proclaim His resurrection and His full assumption of His power as a King and Saviour, but they continued to reject Him; and the result was that, instead of entering on that Kingdom of righteousness and peace and glory of which their prophets had spoken, their nation was crushed in scenes of “blood and fire and vapour of smoke,” and all the bright hopes of Zacharias were apparently extinguished. So the world went on, Christmas after Christmas, and century after century, through successive scenes of war and destruction and desolation, of which the spectacles of which we read day by day afford us a horribly vivid example. If the angels’ song had meant simply to promise peace on earth, it was contradicted by the experience, not merely of bitter times like the present, but by every year and every century which followed.

But where, then, is the fulfilment of the promise? You have the record and the evidence of it in your New Testament. There, in the history of the Apostles and disciples of our Lord, and in their Epistles,[6] you behold a body of men whose souls are filled with peace, and with the sense of the goodwill of God, and who are living the life described and enjoined by our Lord in the Gospels—the life of the Sermon on the Mount, and of His parting discourses to His disciples recorded by St. John. They are living in the midst of that world of passion and violence and tyrannical domination of which I have spoken, and yet they speak to us in tones of the most profound peace, and joy, and hope, and even exultation. The reason is that, through faith in our Lord, in His sacrifice, and in the promise of His spirit, they have found peace with God—the peace of which the angels spoke; they live in the blessed assurance of His goodwill, and they look forward with infinite rejoicing to His return, to establish, as He promised, a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

That spiritual Kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost has subsisted continuously from that time to this. It is here in the midst of us. There are souls whom we are privileged to know, who are visibly living in that kingdom[7] of Divine peace and goodwill, and who, when they leave us here, pass, as we and they are assured, into fuller realization of that kingdom, looking forward to its complete establishment and revelation at the Day of the general Resurrection. That is the kingdom Of the Lord’s elect, of the Saviour’s followers, of the saints—perfect or imperfect, but still saints, of all ages, the Church of Christ and the Kingdom of God. It is a kingdom within which every Christian soul is admitted by baptism to his place and his privilege, and it rests only with him to claim its blessings by his faith and his life. In a word: the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles are the record of the fulfilment of the angels’ promise of peace and love and Divine goodwill, for all who would submit to the King and Saviour whose advent they proclaimed, and who would receive His blessings in the way in which He offered them. To all whom would “repent and believe and be baptised in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,” the promises of the angelic song were fulfilled, and they have been fulfilled similarly to this hour.

But has the promise, then, no bearing[8] on the ordinary secular life of mankind? Are the instincts of men wrong in looking eagerly to it, as they have done from generation to generation, for the prophetic assurance of peace between men, as well as of peace between men and God—of goodwill from man to man, as well as from God to man and man to God. Most certainly they have not been wrong in that eager hope and expectation; but where they have been wrong, and still are wrong, is in their conception of the methods and means by which that secular peace and those purely human blessings and happiness are to be realized. If Christ is, as the angels said, the Saviour, the Saviour of the world; if He is the King Who alone can save His people from their sins; and if war and all the miseries of the world are, in one form or another, the consequences of those sins, then the only way of obtaining salvation from those sins, and deliverance from those miseries which are God’s judgments upon them, is by submitting ourselves entirely to Him, repenting of our failure in obedience to Him, living only by His laws, and seeking His grace and His Spirit for our guidance and inspiration.[9] Have we done that? Has Europe at large been doing it these last fifty years?

People ask how such a war as this can be possible after nineteen centuries of Christianity. What do you mean by Christianity? If you only mean that, during the greater part of those centuries, there has been a general and nominal acknowledgment of the authority of Christ and of His laws, such a description of the condition of the world during that time may be allowed. But if you mean a real submission of the mass of men and women, in heart and life, to the will, the love, and the Spirit of Christ, then we have not really had nineteen centuries of Christianity, and the state of the modern world, out of which this war has arisen, has not been a Christian state. It is notorious for instance, and not impugned anywhere, that the spirit of Germany, which has provoked this war, has not only not been a Christian spirit, but has been violently anti-Christian. The Divine authority of Christ as the King and Saviour of the world has been openly and vehemently impugned for at least a generation or two, especially in the public and authoritative teaching in the Universities,[10] which have such immense influence in German life. Christ to them has not been the King of kings and Lord of Lords, the very incarnation of God, “the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.”

If we are honest, we must also acknowledge that in far too great a degree the same failure has prevailed among ourselves. It has, to say the least of it, not been sufficiently recognized in our literature of late years, or in our public life, that “all form is formless, order orderless,” which is not entirely subject to Christ and informed by His Spirit. The very vice with which we now charge the Germans has been more than a temptation among ourselves. We have had great writers among us exalting statesmen and kings of the past on the ground of their mere strength. It was a great English writer of the last century who glorified Frederick the Great of Prussia as an example of a really strong king; and it is not a long step from that glorification to the worship which has been paid on the Continent of late to the supremacy of strength and self-assertion. That is not the Christian spirit, and the “red[11] ruin and the breaking up of laws,” into which Europe is now plunged, is to be charged, not to any weakness in Christianity, but to a grievous neglect, and in some degree to the very negation, of Christianity.

The peace and goodwill which the message of the angels promised is, in fact, within the scope of Christianity, and might be realized in the world at large, but solely on the condition of the true methods being observed—on condition, that is, of Christ, and the law of Christ, being acknowledged from the heart as the true and only source of peace and truth and goodwill, and on the condition of penitent, humble, and earnest devotion to Him. That is the one supreme condition on which peace to the world is promised by the Gospel. When emperors, and kings, and statesmen, and soldiers, and men and women in general believe the angels’ proclamation that Christ is their only Saviour, their only King, that He alone, by His sacrifice, His laws, and His grace can save His people from their sins, then, but then only, may they hope in the life of the State, as well as in that of the Church, to realize the angels’ promise of peace and goodwill.[12] In a word: it is not by strength, nor by liberty, nor even by law, that the blessings of which Christmas holds out the promise can be realized. It is only by Christian liberty, Christian law, and Christian strength—that is to say, liberty and law, and strength exerted in obedience to the will of Christ—that these blessings can be obtained. It is not Christianity that has failed; it is not the angelic song that has disappointed us. It is nominal Christians who have failed, from not being Christians in reality. And the angelic song has proved its truth by the very disasters which have fallen upon men who have not lived as though Christ were their Saviour and their King.

But, thank God, if these considerations point to our weakness, they also point to our hope, and to the means for our deliverance. We have still as much reason to rejoice as the angels had when they sang this song, because the great joy of it lies in the eternal fact that there is a Saviour and there is a King, Who, if His people will trust Him, will save them from their sins and all the miseries that their sins involve. If our own lives and[13] the life of our nation and the life of Europe can be made truly Christian, if we can bring more of the love of Christ and the life of Christ into our daily existence, we have the assurance that He will save us, and will extirpate the abuses and the falsehoods which have brought the nations of Europe to this terrible pass.

In a few days we are to have a Day of Humble Prayer and Intercession to Almighty God. Let it be, above all, a day of humble acknowledgment of our failure as individuals and as a nation in His true faith and obedience. I would fain it had been called by the good old Christian and English name of a Day of Humiliation. We ought to be humiliated. We have, in such ways as I have indicated, been contented with a half-Christian life in public affairs and in society. We and our men of letters, and men of learning, and men of affairs, have been affected with the same half-heartedness in our allegiance to Christ, which shocks us when we see it displayed in all its nakedness in other countries, and especially in the one which is chiefly opposed to us. Let us be humiliated for it before God, not caring, in comparison[14] with our true relation to Him, what interpretation the world may put on our repentance.

But let us also rejoice more than ever in the assurance of Christmas that a Saviour has been born to us, that we have an eternal King in our Lord Jesus Christ, Who can save us from our sins, and our ruin, and ourselves, if we will but give ourselves up to Him absolutely. Let us realize with infinite thankfulness that the souls of those who are now sacrificing their lives for us are in His saving and merciful hands. Let us be reminded by the angelic vision that we ourselves, and the souls of those who have passed and are passing away, are not brought merely into contact with the “blackness and darkness and tempest” of war, but are come unto “Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, and to an innumerable company of Angels, and to the general assembly of the Church of the Firstborn and to Christ the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.” Let us realize this more than we have yet done. Let us realize the truth of the Angels’ proclamation that Christ and Christ alone is our Saviour and our King, that He alone can[15] save us, individuals and nations alike, from our sins; and then, in spite of all the distress and anxiety which surrounds us, this may prove the most blessed Christmas of our lives, and it may bring us a happiness which will last unto life eternal.

[16]

Christmas and the War.

A SERMON PREACHED ON CHRISTMAS DAY A.D. 1915.

There has never been an occasion in our own lives, and there have been few occasions in the world’s history, on which we have had more reason for unbounded thankfulness for the blessed message of Christmas. We are celebrating this Festival to-day in a sadder and darker world than any of us can remember, amid scenes of bloodshed and desolation, of which an adequate description can only be found in the lurid pictures of the Book of Revelation, with war and hatred all around us instead of peace and good will, and with death and destruction raging over a great part both of Europe and of Asia. If we had to confine our vision to the present world, and to the prospects[17] it offers, men’s hearts might well, in our Lord’s words, be “failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth”; but Christmas breaks upon this dark scene with a message and a promise, which enable us to lift our hearts and hopes above this present world and this earthly scene. The heavens are opened; a great illumination bursts upon the world; and an innumerable multitude of the heavenly host are heard singing, in tones of rejoicing and thankfulness, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.” They are good tidings of great joy, proclaiming peace and good will from God towards men—good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people, that unto us was born that day in the City of David “a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord!” Such tidings of great joy are the very things for which our hearts are yearning amid the distresses, bereavements and sorrows, and the overwhelming anxieties of the moment, and such are the tidings which Christmas brings. Let us beware of allowing the heavy burdens and sorrows of the hour to obscure, or to muffle, to[18] our hearts these tidings of great joy. On the contrary, the darker the hour, the heavier the burden; let us open our hearts the more to this glory of God shining round about us, as on this day, and to the tidings of great joy which are proclaimed to us by the Angelic Choir.

It is well we should remember, in the first place, that, even though to ourselves this hour is peculiarly dark, it is but an aggravation, and we may hope a comparatively brief one, of human experience throughout all history. That history has been from the first marked by two aspects, in the sharpest contrast to one another. In the first place, from century to century it has been one of incessant struggle, of war, of the rising of nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom; and the Book of Revelation depicts the world as ending in scenes of greater struggle and desolation than have ever gone before. That has been the terrible reality of human experience from the commencement to the present time. But, on the other hand, throughout these distressing scenes there has always been heard a moral and spiritual Voice, assuring men that God was controlling[19] all these sufferings and struggles, and that all was working for good, alike to the world at large and to the individual.

You have the representation of the experience of every generation of men in the pages of the Bible, and especially of the Prophet Isaiah. He is known as the Evangelical Prophet, because he depicts in deeper and nobler tones than any other inspired voice that blessed promise of good will, of which the final proclamation was uttered to-day. But let us bear in mind the circumstances under which the glorious promises which we recite and sing at this season were uttered. Let us listen to Isaiah’s own description of them in the twenty-fourth chapter: “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.... The land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word.... All joy is darkened; the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction.” These were the visible realities around him, but he is inspired to look over them and[20] through them; and he ends that passage by declaring that “it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth;” and that, at the last, “the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously.” Isaiah and his fellow-Prophets were surrounded by scenes of war and bloodshed and desolation as terrible as any we have around us in our own day, and it was over these fields of battle and destruction that the glorious songs were heard which are our delight and encouragement at this season. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received at the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” There is nothing more amazing in the experience of the human heart, and more inspiring to ourselves, than that these grand songs of hope and deliverance and comfort should have echoed over the desolate[21] fields of Judea, and lived in the hearts of a people who were as crushed, and all but destroyed, as any of the ruined nations of Europe of the present day.

It has been the same all through history. Even where there was not the inspired voice of Revelation, there was still among the Greeks and Romans the ineradicable hope of a Golden Age; and an inner witness of God’s Spirit kept alive in the whole human race a firm belief in His justice and His ultimate deliverance, both for the world and for individuals, from age to age. Let us not think, therefore, that in the strain and distress and suffering of the present hour we are undergoing any novel or special experience; and if we should be tempted to be out of heart, let us be shamed by the faith of the past, by the inspiration of the Prophets, and even by the uninspired faith and courage of mankind at large. Let us believe, through all, as they did, that the Lord reigneth, and that though “clouds and darkness are round about Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.” The birth of our Lord, which we celebrate to-day, and the Divine Voice which spoke[22] in Him through human lips, have given us a final assurance that He is reigning, and that He will judge the world in righteousness.

But it has done other things, of which my text more particularly speaks, which are a source of still greater joy and assurance to us individually. By the message which our Lord brought us, an infinite and blessed light has been thrown over the great mystery which darkened the minds, and dimmed the faith, of men before His time. The Apostle says that our Saviour “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” Though looking first, as we may and ought, with the Prophets, to the ultimate vindication of righteousness and justice throughout the world, by the fulfilment of God’s judgments in the struggles of mankind, there still remained, and there remains at this moment, to many hearts among us, the mystery of the sacrifice of life which such judgments involve—the mystery of the destruction of thousands of lives precious in themselves, and infinitely dear to those who loved them, and who lived with them and for them[23] here. Before the Gospel, men’s hearts strained at the burden of that mystery, and it is wonderful that human nature endured it with such courage and patience; but now, says the Apostle, God’s purpose and grace in this bitter experience “is made manifest by the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.”

It would be rather truer to the original, and more closely corresponding with the facts, to say—not that our Lord hath abolished death, for, alas! that still remains around us—but that He hath brought death to nought, annihilated its power, and destroyed its strength. “The last enemy,” we are told, “which shall be destroyed is death”; but meanwhile, for every Christian soul, its greatest distress and terror is gone because our Lord has thrown a glorious illumination upon it, and has “brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” He has enabled us to see beyond the grave, beyond those dreadful battlefields, strewn with the bodies of those whom we had loved and honoured, and has made manifest to us[24] that they still live on in a new life, and a glorious immortality. Who can estimate the mercy to sad and sorrowing hearts of the establishment of that blessed hope on the firm assurance of our Lord Himself, who, after suffering an agonizing death here, appeared to His Apostles and declared, “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death”? The pain of bereavement remains—that is like the loss of a limb, which time alone can soften—but the definite assurance, from the Saviour’s lips, that those who have died in His faith and obedience have entered on a new and blessed life, must be of infinite comfort to those who loved them. We are not left any longer to hopes and to future expectations; but can grasp the assurance of present realities which are vouched for by the Saviour who took our nature upon Him, who lived our life, and died our death, and showed Himself alive beyond the grave. This is what we owe to the Saviour’s birth, with all the gracious revelation of which it was the commencement.

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The Apostle’s assurance goes, indeed, beyond this illumination of our present experience, and seems to throw a glorious light upon the whole history of mankind. “God,” he says, “hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus, before the world began.” It is now made manifest by the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it existed from all eternity “before the world began.” If so, then through those long ages which preceded our Lord’s birth, this life and immortality were given to the millions to whom His Name had not been manifested, but who died in the discharge of their duty, and who faithfully made the sacrifices which were involved in His government and just judgment of the world. Christ revealed the wars and sufferings of this world as the inevitable consequence of the operation of God’s righteousness and justice upon the evil, the sin, and the Godlessness of mankind. Sooner or later those sins and evils gather to a head, in some great corruption of society and political life, in some enormous[26] crime of ambition or pride; and the righteousness and justice of God, working through the ordinary laws of human nature, evokes some tremendous reaction against them; and we behold the overthrow of a great Empire, or a European Revolution, or a world-wide clash of the forces of right and wrong. That is the course of history, as determined before the world began by the inscrutable righteousness and wisdom of God.

That is the condition under which the world now exists, and people who talk of abolishing war are like people standing on the crater of a great volcano, and trying to persuade themselves that there will be no more eruptions. As long as there is evil in the world and God’s righteousness in the world, you will have the moral reactions between the two bursting from time to time into some awful conflagration like the present. That is the revelation of the whole Bible, brought to its culmination in the Book of Revelation. But what was manifested to-day, and proclaimed by the Heavenly Hosts, was God’s love and mercy to the individual souls who have been the victims of these convulsions, and who might seem to have been treated as[27] mere passing elements in the temporal scene. At the Birth of Christ, and by means of it, were manifested and assured God’s peace and good will to every soul of man who passes through this brief scene of struggle and, it may be, of death. It proclaims that for each individual soul death may be said to have been in effect abolished, that for every one of them, according to the eternal purpose of God, “life and immortality” have been prepared and assured; and that the struggles and sufferings of this mortal life, terrible as they may be, are not worthy to be compared with the glory that was designed, before the world began, for those who do the will of God. This is the blessed revelation of Christmas, and it is our privilege to fix our eyes and our hearts upon it, amid the sorrows and troubles of the moment; and in proportion as we do so, we shall respond with our whole hearts and souls to the exhortation of the same Apostle. “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

[28]

The Things Seen and the Things Not Seen.

PREACHED IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, EASTER DAY, 1915.

These touching words of St. Paul are based upon the grand truth to which Easter Day is a standing witness. “Therefore,” he says, or “for which cause, we faint not.” That cause is stated in the verse just before, “Knowing that He Which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus, and shall present us with you.” The Apostle had just been giving a vivid description of the extreme strain, and almost mortal struggle, in which the work of his ministry involved him. “We are troubled,” he says, “on every side ... always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made[29] manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” The Apostle was undergoing a strain which was draining the very life of his body, in order to preach the Gospel which was bringing life to the souls of others; but he endured it in the knowledge that, even if it involved the sacrifice of his life, He Who raised up the Lord Jesus would raise him up also by Jesus, and present him in a new life at the day of the Resurrection. In this knowledge, his experience that his outward man was perishing did not make him faint, for he knew that his inward man was being renewed day by day. If he was daily dying, he was but experiencing the dying of the Lord Jesus; and thus, by entering into closer sympathy with his Lord, he was becoming united also with His life. Christ’s resurrection in glory was an assurance to him of his own resurrection, and the sufferings of the moment were as nothing to him in comparison with that glory. That affliction was, after all, light and momentary, when it was realized that it was working out for him, more and more exceedingly, an eternal weight of glory. The things which[30] he saw and felt at the moment were, after all, but temporary, whereas the things which were not then visible were eternal. If the earthly frame, which was his present tabernacle, were dissolved by death, he knew that there was ready for him “a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.”

Is not this application of the great message of the Resurrection peculiarly opportune and welcome to us at the present moment? We are living through a time when the things that are seen are distressing and painful beyond anything in our experience—we might perhaps say, in the experience of Christian Europe. We seem to have gone back, on a sudden, to the days before the flood, when “the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence”; and we seem to need a re-issue of the Divine proclamation, after that world of violence had been swept away: “Surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man.” The curse[31] of this violence and bloodshed is being inflicted, day by day, upon innumerable homes; and day by day we each apprehend it for our own families. In order to stay the curse, the blood of our own brothers and sons is being poured out like water, and the desolation of our homes is becoming more and more appalling. The blood-stained fields of Belgium, France and Poland, the engulfing of the innocent lives of women and children in the ocean—these are the things that are seen; and we need some supreme assurance—nay we need some Divine revelation—if we are to live through such experiences in faith, and hope, and in Christian charity. We mourn, day by day, the loss of precious lives, and we are appalled at the thought of the further sacrifices of such lives, young and mature, which we fear must be required; and so far as we look only on the things thus seen, our hearts might well fail us. Like St. Paul, as he describes himself in the context, “we are troubled on every side ... we are smitten down, though not destroyed.”

Let us then observe the manner in which the Apostle meets this overwhelming[32] oppression. He looks off from the things which are seen to the things which are not seen; “for,” he says, “the things which are seen are temporal (or temporary), but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Perhaps that is the first condition for our seeing things in their true light. It is very difficult for us not to have our vision almost wholly occupied by the visible things around us, which are also the things of which we are the most immediately sensible, and which naturally absorb our ordinary thoughts, feelings and energies. Yet, as a matter of fact, as St. Paul reminds us, they are a very small part indeed of the realities with which we are surrounded. “The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Eternal as compared with temporary! Do we often realize sufficiently what that comparison means? What is the longest life here? Call it one hundred years, and what is that compared with life eternal, everlasting, never ending? That is the ultimate reality with which we are all concerned. Our hearts are filled, first, with the thoughts of youth, then with those of[33] manhood, then with those of old age; but there lies before us, before each one of us, an interminable existence, in which we are destined to experience profounder happiness, or profounder unhappiness, than any we have experienced here. All that has exercised our thoughts and feelings here will indeed leave its mark upon us, but it will all pass away; it is essentially temporal, and there lies before us an unending existence for weal or woe.

So far, therefore, as any individual life is concerned, so far as those young lives are concerned, whose premature loss is so bitter to their nearest and dearest, and seems so sad to all of us, it is well we should clearly realize that to the individual life itself, a few years more or less—nay, half a life-time more or less—is practically insignificant. Are there fifty, or forty, or thirty years behind it? There is all eternity in front of it. There is a fulness of life and joy, and even glory, before it, which can never end. To one who has lived, and who dies, in the true faith and love of Christ, all the gracious and glorious promises of our Lord and His Apostles are fully assured; and even if, in any particular[34] case, we may not have the full evidence of that entire Christian devotion, we may surely apply to every life which is willingly sacrificed at the call of duty, for a righteous cause, and with a generous self-surrender, the assurance of St. Paul, that God will render “to every man according to his deeds. To them who by patience in well-doing seek for glory, honour, and immortality, eternal life”; or, as he says again, “Glory, honour, and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.” Or, as we may surely paraphrase it, to the Christian first, and also to every human soul. If, in fact, our vision were merely confined to this world, and we did but catch a doubtful glimpse of what is beyond it, the spectacle of the sacrifice of human life, and particularly of young human life in a war like this, would be scarcely endurable. But let us have, not merely that “gleam beyond it,” of which the Christian poet speaks, but that clear vision beyond it, of an eternal life of which our Saviour assures us, and of “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,” in the[35] peace of which that eternal life will be spent, and we may be able to feel, like St. Paul, that the affliction of the moment is light, in comparison with the eternal abundance of glory which awaits the soul in the future.

We are too apt, in a word, to take our stand within the horizon of this life, and to judge of all things as they are reflected in this world’s mirror; but if we would see them in their true perspective and so measure their real values, we must take our stand in the life beyond the grave. We must look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. In some degree, though not to the same extent, we may apply a similar consideration to the sufferings of nations, and of the world as a whole, in a great war. It is revealed to us in the Book of the Revelation of St. John that, at the consummation of all things, after scenes of carnage which are at least equal in their horror to the dreadful spectacle now before our eyes, a new heaven and a new earth will be created, by Him Who sits[36] upon the throne making all things new. Even so far as the present world is concerned, the sufferings and sacrifices involved in great wars have doubtless won for future generations the greatest blessings of true Christian civilization—liberty, order, peace, and justice. It might, indeed, be thought that the price of such blessings was too high, if we judged of the sacrifices of individual lives in the light only of the things that are seen; but when we can feel that every life thus sacrificed, that every suffering thus unselfishly endured, works out for the sufferer himself an exceeding and eternal reward, we can look to the things which are not seen, and can again realize that, in comparison with them, it is not too much to speak, with St. Paul, of “our light affliction which is but for a moment.” That is the grand comfort, also, of the mourners who are left behind, who may be similarly assured that, in their patient acceptance of their bitter share of these sacrifices, they will be united with those they have loved and lost, in the eternal blessedness to which St. Paul looks forward.

But who does not realize that we need[37] very strong evidence, and the firmest assurances, to sustain flesh and blood amid such bitter trials as men and women are now experiencing—fathers and mothers, wives and sisters, lovers and friends? It is not, perhaps, even a St. Paul whose word alone would be sufficient to bear that strain. If we had only that to depend on we could but speak of hope and trust; we could hardly say, as he goes on to say, that “we know” that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved we have a building of God, a house eternal in the heavens. But the ground of his knowledge was the reality of our Lord’s resurrection, and the assurances which our Lord, when so raised, had given him. We know, he says, “that He Who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus.” The great certainty from which St. Paul’s Gospel starts is that our Lord, Who had undoubtedly suffered death in its most agonizing form, had not less undoubtedly risen from the dead, and appeared again and again to St. Paul, as to many others, and had given him the personal assurances on which we are invited to rely. That is the cardinal fact of the[38] Christian Faith. Had our Saviour not risen, had He not appeared in such a form as to prove that He had completely overcome death, then we should still, at the best, have been in the region of hopes and imperfect beliefs, and of a yearning trust. We could not have said, with the Apostle, that we know that Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. But now it is no mere prophet or Apostle, but the risen Saviour Himself, Who stands in the midst of human life, as He stood in the midst of His disciples on the morrow of His resurrection, and Who said Himself, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” Those were His own words; that is the conviction He stamped upon the mind and heart of such men as St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John; and that is the sure foundation on which we stand in believing that, if we suffer and die with Christ, we shall also live with Him.

Let me only add that this blessed revelation can only bring its full blessing and comfort in proportion as we realize, for[39] our own souls, and for all who are dear to us, that union with Christ in spirit which is essential to our union with Him in life, here and hereafter. “If any man,” says St. Paul, “have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” There are, no doubt, degrees in which men can possess that spirit of Christ; and even if we possess it in but a feeble degree, we may humbly trust that He will not disown it, and that He will grant us some portion of His grace and of His life. But if this eternal life, this life of abundant glory, is open to us all provided we are in union with Him, which of us will not be moved by the afflictions of the present, and the eternal promise of the future, to seek for ever closer union with that Lord of Life, looking less and less at the things that are seen, and more and more at the things that are not seen, and knowing that our life is hid with Christ in God?

[40]

The Easter Message.

PREACHED IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, EASTER DAY, 1916.

Easter Day brings us the most blessed message that could possibly be proclaimed at any time; but at present it is perhaps more blessed and more appropriate than at any other time in our experience. It tells us, in the first place, that Christ was raised from the dead after His crucifixion, and now sits at the right hand of God, Who has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name. But it tells us, also, that the blessedness of that resurrection is open to all of us, and that we are admitted to share in the glory which Christ won for Himself; so that when Christ, Who is our life, shall[41] appear we also shall appear with Him in glory. If we appreciate what these assurances mean, we shall be lifted up by them into the apprehension of realities which transform our whole life in this world, and enable us to look beyond it, to an eternal existence of the highest spiritual bliss hereafter.

There are two ways in which men may think of their position in life. The realities of this life may be predominant in their thoughts, so as almost to absorb their whole minds. That, I fear, is the natural tendency of most of us. The claim which the things of this world make upon us is so incessant, and often so intense, that we have too often neither the energy nor the inclination to look beyond it. There have, indeed, been good and brave men, who have said that we should not look beyond it; that we should concentrate all our energies on the work and the duties imposed upon us, and leave the future to take care of itself, even though it be that vast, and, as we believe, eternal future, on which we shall enter at death. That was necessarily the attitude of good men before the revelation of the Gospel. There have[42] been, unhappily, some good men among us in recent times who practically live a similar life, not realizing or believing the truths that are opened to them by the Gospel, but content to do their duty to the best of their power. I fear a similar life is practically lived by too many Christians. Their interest and their thoughts are mainly absorbed in this present visible world, in their duties, their pleasures, and their worldly happiness; and they do not, for the most part, think of much beyond. One consequence of this attitude of mind is that they judge of all occurrences by their effect on this life; and particularly they are apt to consider all the dispensations of God’s providence, all His judgments and all His mercies, with reference to their effect on this world. How is it possible, for instance, they ask, that a God of perfect goodness and love can permit such an awful dispensation to fall upon men as a great war like the present, that He can allow the sufferings, and the bereavements, and the miseries which such a war involves? I think, if we are candid with ourselves, we shall find that when that question is acutely felt, it is practically[43] with reference to this life that it is urged. Why should there be all this suffering in the world in which we are now living? Why should so many young and precious lives be sacrificed? Why should so many homes be darkened, and so many hearts all but broken, in this present time? It is the present suffering and the present time that are uppermost in our thoughts. We are apt to speak and think as if the life in the present world of those who are lost had been the matter of greatest consequence for them, and as if we were without any positive compensation, to them and to ourselves, except the victory of the cause for which they laid down their lives.

Now the great blessing of the Easter message is that it entirely reverses this aspect of life. It reveals to us, on the assurance of Christ and His Apostles, that this world and this life are a very small thing indeed compared with the realities which Christ has revealed to us by His resurrection. He has revealed to us, first for Himself and in His own person, and secondly for ourselves, that the world in which we really live is an eternal and spiritual realm, in which we are privileged[44] to be in the company of Christ Himself, and of all the souls who, from the commencement of the world, have lived and died in harmony with the spirit of Christ and the will of God. That is the real life into which every one in this congregation is admitted, if he will. One of those great men in the past, to whom I have referred, imagined the case of men having lived all their lives in a cave to which only broken beams of sunlight penetrated, and who had no idea of the splendid vision of the sun, and of the earth with all its beauties, which would burst upon their vision the moment they stepped outside their cave. That, as his marvellous wisdom perceived, is the case of too many among us, even among Christians. We have our caves, created by the temporal interests and obligations around us; and broken gleams, from the truths of the Gospel which we imperfectly realize, afford a dim religious light to our condition. But, in reality, there is a spiritual, a glorious, and an eternal world around us, which will burst upon us with overpowering splendour when, after death, we step out of the cave of this flesh. The problems of God’s dispensations, both to[45] the world at large and to ourselves, are beyond our comprehension and solution, because they have reference not merely to this world, in which most of us live for no more than three score years and ten, but to that eternal and infinite world of spirits, which will endure for ever, and which is beyond our ken. To each individual soul, young or old, the question of chief importance is not what happens to them in this world, whether their life be short or long, whether it be a happy life or a sad one, but what happens to them afterwards, in that eternal career, which opens to them all at death. The only true Christian attitude, as the Apostle says elsewhere, is to “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

But what are these things that are eternal? That is one of the most precious parts of the Christian revelation. In some respects, of course, they must remain unknown to us while we are in the flesh, for “eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,[46] the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” But though we do not know what the external circumstances of that life will be, we do know, because Christ Himself, and His Apostles on His authority, have revealed it to us, what the essential part of them will be so far as our spiritual nature is concerned. They will be simply and precisely the spiritual things which are the highest and best in this world. They will be perfect truth, and peace, and love, and, in a word, all those graces and perfections which were manifested in Christ Himself. The Apostle bids us “seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”; and then he proceeds to explain what those things are. “Put on,” he says, a few verses further, “as the elect of God a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another; ... even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye; and above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness ... and whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” That is[47] the character of the future world, the future society, to which we have the privilege of being admitted at death: a world in which all the graces and glories of the Christian character exist, without any of the imperfections by which even the holiest lives are clouded here; a world of perpetual thanksgiving to God the Father for the love with which He has loved us; a world in short which is ablaze with the light and warmth of all love and truth.

One blessed consequence from this revelation of the nature of the spiritual world, in which the risen Christ reigns, is that we can enter it, and live for it, even in the present life, without any disregard of the obligatory claims which this world has upon us. However busy a man’s life, however absorbed he may necessarily be in the requirements and duties of his daily occupations, he can also be exerting his energies of thankfulness and prayer to God, of truth and love and compassion and meekness and peace, which make the life of the eternal world. There is no occupation or condition of life in which those blessed graces may not be exerted and cultivated; and men and women may[48] thus live in the spirit and light Of Heaven, even while they are confined within the cave of the flesh. In proportion as they are living in this light even here, they are being prepared for the eternal Heaven of the future; they are fulfilling, all the more completely, their duty to the society and the life of this world because they are guided by the illumination, both of the present Heaven which overshadows their souls, and of the future Heaven, of which the approaching gleams throw flashes of light across their path.

But what I would more particularly ask, at the present moment, amid the strain and distress of these months and years of war, is whether the promise of this eternal blessedness, the vision of this unseen and eternal world, does not justify the Apostle’s description of all the sorrows and sufferings which he and his fellows underwent, as “our light affliction, which is but for a moment.” If this world were the main scene of our life and of our hopes, there would be something appalling in the destruction, or mutilation, of so many of the best lives among us, and the cruel bereavement of those who are left behind.[49] But in the light of this revelation, is it not our privilege to regard it all as “a light affliction, which is but for a moment,” and which is working for us all, for those who are taken and for those who are left, a far more exceeding and eternal glory? What does it matter to a life, however young and bright, that it should be cut short in this world if, through death in the discharge of duty, it passes to the full enjoyment of those “things that are with Christ,” in that world where Christ will welcome it with the greeting: “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord?” It is, indeed, a hard fate for those whose life in this world is, for the future, maimed by injuries, or marred by bereavement. But for them, too, there is the assurance of Christ that if they suffer with Him, and in sympathy with Him, they shall also be glorified together, and that all they suffer, in obedience to His will here, will help them forward in the way that leads to everlasting life. These are not mere human hopes and imaginings; they are the express promises and assurances of the Lord, Who suffered and died upon the Cross, and of those[50] Apostles, whom He commissioned to bring His message to the world. This Heaven, of the present and the future, has been constituted by them the great reality, the greatest of all realities, the supreme reality, of our lives, here and hereafter; and in proportion as we look at everything here in the light of it, the sorrows and sacrifices of this life are reduced to comparatively small proportions, and the hope and the blessings of the eternal life become the great Heaven, the glorious vault of God’s light and love by which we are surrounded.

It is thus that Easter Day brings home to us a message which satisfies the deepest cravings and necessities of life, and affords a practical solution of the difficulties which, without such a revelation, are involved in the miseries of war. War itself, indeed, points to some such solution, and compels men in practice to embrace it. It has been said that war is the greatest of educators, and there are various senses in which this is true. It educates, it exercises, it manifests, as nothing else does, some of the highest excellences of human nature: self-sacrifice, endurance, mutual devotion,[51] faith and loyalty, and, in Tennyson’s pregnant phrase, “all that makes a man.” But perhaps its greatest educative influence consists in the fact that it compels men to act, without hesitation, on the instinct, which God has implanted in their hearts, that nothing in this world is of any importance in comparison with the maintenance and the assertion of righteousness, truth, justice, and mercy. The mass of a people may be living in comfort and luxury, with their minds and affections mainly engaged in the energies, the pleasures, and the interests of this life; but as soon as some great challenge is offered to those supreme principles of righteousness and mercy, on which the whole fabric of true human life depends, their hearts spring up with an instinct that everything they value in this world must be sacrificed in defence of those moral and spiritual causes. The moment the note is struck of a great war for righteousness, like the present, that moment men and women feel compelled, by their very nature, to “set their affection on the things above,” not on the things of this world; they realize, that to this world they must become practically dead, and[52] live for those high moral and spiritual causes which are the supreme treasures of mankind, and that, in this sense at all events, their “life is hid with Christ in God.” If, as we may confidently say, we are warring for right and truth, and for the maintenance of the will of God among men, we may then apply even to the war itself, and all the national and individual sacrifices it entails, the thankful conviction of the Apostle that “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” It is working out for our nation and Empire, and for the world at large, the establishment on a firmer basis than ever of true Christian civilization. Those whose lives are sacrificed are but brought by death into the nearer presence of Christ, where His love and His mercy, no less than His justice, will be still more to them than in the world they leave; and those who are left behind may learn to prize the privilege of suffering with their Saviour, that they may in time be glorified with Him.

[53]

The Need and the Means of Right Judgment.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, WHIT SUNDAY, 1915.

Never in our time, perhaps never in the history of the world, has there been such urgent occasion as there is to-day for joining with all our hearts, in the prayer of the Whit Sunday Collect, that God will grant us, by the help of His Spirit, “to have a right judgment in all things.” We have before our eyes the most tremendous illustration ever afforded of the awful consequences which may ensue from the absence of such a right judgment, and the prevalence of a wrong judgment. In the first place, the war itself is entirely due to the exercise of a wrong judgment by some person or persons. Nothing but a great misjudgment, on one side or the other, of the circumstances which occasioned the war,[54] or of its consequences, could have precipitated all the nations of Europe into such a deadly and disastrous conflict.

Every statesman, of course, thinks that some other statesman has blundered, but the mutual recriminations form at least a general confession of wrong judgment somewhere. When we see such wrong judgment possible among the ablest and most powerful men in Europe, in a matter which involves the sacrifice of tens of thousands of lives, the desolation of thousands of homes, and the devastation of some of the fairest countries in Europe, have we not need to cry to God, with the most intense earnestness, that He will grant to us, and to all who act for us and with us, the help of His Spirit to give us a right judgment in all things? This gift of a right judgment may seem, perhaps, in ordinary times, a comparatively small matter to be treated as the culminating blessing won for us by the Death and Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord. This is the final festival of the series which commemorates the great events of His Life; for Trinity Sunday, which follows, does but sum up the whole substance[55] of the Christian revelation, as that of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Whit Sunday Collect embodies the final craving of the Christian life, for those gifts which, on our Lord’s Ascension, He became empowered to bestow upon His Church. But we may appreciate, at this time, better than ever before, why all those gifts are summed up in the prayer that we may be granted a right judgment in all things. Upon that right judgment in the leaders of the Christian nations depends the peace of the whole world, and the possibility of ourselves leading a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. It is demonstrated, by the most awful example ever given, that all the wisdom, all the experience, all the knowledge of human nature, accumulated for twenty centuries, are insufficient, of themselves, to ensure that right judgment; and we are driven to-day to act upon the exhortation of St. James, “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God” and “it shall be given him.”

But this failure of good judgment in the political management of the world is not the only, nor the most terrible,[56] exhibition which is afforded at the present time of the grievous liability of human nature to form wrong judgments. The worst and most distressing exhibition of all is seen in the moral perversion of one of the greatest of European nations. Unless our own judgment is absolutely perverted, Germany has become possessed by an utterly false, un-Christian, and even inhuman judgment in moral conduct. The case was justly summed up in a letter published the other day by an eminent member of our Church, the Dean of Exeter—“Women outraged, treaties broken, inoffensive citizens, women and babes, murdered wholesale by land and sea, wells poisoned, deadly gases taking the place of manly conflict, Houses of God ruthlessly destroyed, fair lands desolated, noble cities destroyed without provocation, without reasonable object or purpose, the world filled with abominable lies, the hymn of hate chosen as a national anthem, and a baleful curse placed, as a nation’s prayer, on the lips of children, and placarded in the streets, a fit sequel to the hymn of hate”—this is the moral and religious spectacle which Germany now exhibits,[57] and its rulers and guides not only allow these things to be done, but have pleasure in them that do them. It is not merely that these un-Christian and inhuman things are done, but that they are justified, that they are treated as lawful and meritorious, that the spirit which promotes them is recognized and applauded as the right spirit—this is the amazing and appalling exhibition of wrong judgment which Germany now offers to the world.

Let us, moreover, if we would duly appreciate the lesson to be derived from such a spectacle, bear in mind the character and capacities of the nation by which it is exhibited. We should bear in mind that Germany is probably the most highly educated country in Europe; its science, its literature, its arts, its industry have been among the finest that the world has seen. In religion it gave Europe the Reformation; and the great Protestant nations of the world, alike in Europe and America, recognize the immense spiritual debt they have owed to it in the past. Our own theological literature, during the last century, has acknowledged an immense debt to it, and German scholars have, in[58] our own time, been in the front rank of the learning of the world. It is a country which was proud of its culture, and, in such matters as I have mentioned, with full justice. No thoughtful man can treat the Germans, as a nation, as inferior to any other in Europe, in all the externals of such culture. All the achievements of past history, all the acquisitions of Christian civilisation, lay open before them, as much as before ourselves, and they are bound to us by intimate ties of blood and of common interests. It is a nation, in short, with every equipment which human intellect, and art, and Nature can bestow; and yet, notwithstanding all this, the nation, as a whole, has formed a judgment so false and inhuman, on the very elements of moral duty, that we are forced to recognize that in fighting it we are fighting not merely a political foe, but a moral outlaw from Christian civilisation.

If such an awful perversion of judgment is possible, have we not reason to tremble at the possibilities of human error? The horrors I have recalled are a disgrace to Germany; but let us not disguise from ourselves the lamentable fact that they[59] are also a disgrace to human nature. To this, we must realize, human nature can come, in spite of literature, and science, and art, and the traditions of generations, and profound religious capacities. One cannot divide the Germans from all other human races, or even from ourselves, and say that they have a human nature of their own. It is our common human nature which, in this case, has succumbed to such a degraded judgment, and which has become false to the inherited principles of Christian civilization. What we ought to learn from so distressing a spectacle is the absolute need of some influence higher than any that mere human nature, when left to itself, can exert, if the moral judgment, the moral sense, the moral character of nations and races, and of ourselves among them, are to be kept true to the ideals towards which human nature, at its best, has always been striving, and which our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed as the eternal standard established by God. I am afraid there can be no doubt respecting one cause, at all events, of this terrible degradation. For the last generation or two, in consequence of the[60] prevalence in Germany of a false philosophy and an extravagant criticism, the minds of the educated classes in that country have been imbued with a complete distrust of the Scriptures, and of the revelation of God in Christ; and, in consequence, they have abandoned all deference to the authority of God’s Word and the example and teaching of our Lord. I believe, indeed, that faith in God and God’s Word, and love of Christ, still subsist in much of their old intensity among the simpler classes of the German nation—among numbers to whom the name and the teaching of Luther are still a venerated influence. But they have ceased to mould the character and guide the thoughts of the educated classes, and the consequence is that human nature has broken loose from all control, and has abandoned itself to an unbridled lust of power and of earthly pleasure.

It is painful to contemplate such a spectacle, and to recall it to you; but it is necessary we should realize what it means, if we are to learn the lesson which is the most imperative for us at this moment, and if we are to take home to our minds the full[61] blessing of the promise of Whit Sunday. It is encouraging to bear in mind that a similar spectacle and crisis existed in the world at the time when our Lord spoke the words of the text. The Roman Empire, although, like the German nation, it rendered great services to mankind, was in His day developing into a terrible despotism, and its rulers were becoming the incarnation of a ruthless and unscrupulous force. The age of the twelve Cæsars, some of whom were monsters of violence and vice, was commencing; and at that moment there appeared another influence, that of the twelve Apostles, who proclaimed in the world the authority and the inspiration of another King, their Lord and Master, who taught the blessedness of another ideal—the ideal of poverty of spirit, of mourning, of meekness, of mercy, of purity, and of peacemaking. The two ideals struggled side by side for three centuries; but the spirit of violence proved unable to crush the spirit of meekness, and had at last to acknowledge its superiority, and to submit, in great degree, at all events, to the authority and example of our Lord. The mostly highly organized[62] physical force that the world at that day had ever seen was slowly but surely undermined by the spirit of Christian meekness and love; and from that moment Christian principles of conduct extended their authority more and more over the whole range of worldly life, and even over the fierce passions and struggles of war. Gradually there became established those principles of chivalry under which, as our great philosophical statesman described it, there prevailed “that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.” That great amelioration of human passion and of human evil was won by the persistent contemplation and assertion of the authority and example of our Lord, and by the perpetual inculcation of the teaching of His Apostles. The Spirit of God, descending as on this great day, inspired Evangelists and Apostles to write those Gospels in which the Person, the teaching, and the example of our Saviour are so marvellously depicted, and[63] those Epistles in which they are brought home to our hearts with such touching force. The same Spirit was vouchsafed to the great teachers and leaders of the Church, and quickened in the hearts of the people at large the gracious seed which was thus sown. If the new embodiment of the rule of force in human affairs is to be effectually overcome, it can only be by the same means. It cannot be done by our arms alone. Force alone is no remedy for force. The Spirit of Christ as it lives in the Books of the New Testament, must again make its appeal to the minds and consciences of the nations of Europe; and the Spirit of God, acting through those examples and exhortations, must bring home to us, once more, the life and love of Christ, must open men’s hearts to receive His image, and so enable them once more to have a right judgment in all things.

The prayer of the Collect, therefore, should turn our hearts and minds, at this juncture, to the supreme necessity, if we would save ourselves from the dangers of wrong judgment, and if, according to a famous saying, we would “save Europe[64] by our example,” of submitting our hearts and lives with the deepest earnestness to the ideals set before us in the Scriptures, and especially in the teaching and example of our Lord and His Apostles, as the only sufficient means of maintaining a right judgment among us on the great moral problems of life. As a nation we have hitherto enjoyed unique advantages in this respect. To no other nation in the world has it ever been given to have the Word of God, the whole Word of God, read aloud in our churches, Sunday by Sunday, for more than three hundred years; and to have thus had the words and deeds of Christ, and the exhortations of His Apostles, and the devotions of Psalmists and Prophets, impressed upon our minds week by week, and sometimes day by day, until much of them has become the most familiar of all the records of our memories. There has been another means, moreover, especially in Scotland, but in England also, by which we have been kept in constant touch with the same influence, and that is the custom, which generally prevailed till recently, of Family Prayer, and the reading of the Holy[65] Scriptures in the family circle. By these means that Divine Seed was sown in the hearts of young and old, and it could not but produce much fruit. If we desire to preserve the Christian instincts, which can alone protect us against such dreadful relapses into a world of violence and ungoverned passion as human nature has been proved capable of, let us submit ourselves with renewed earnestness to those Divine Words, and to that Christian discipline, which have maintained for so long, in this country, the character of Christian gentlemen and gentlewomen, and have upheld among us, in spite of our many faults and failures, at all events the main principles of a right judgment. When our Lord says, in the text, that His Spirit would bring all things to the remembrance of the Apostles, whatsoever He had said unto them, He gave a promise which was in the first instance fulfilled, as I have said, in the writings of the Evangelists and the Apostles, but to which it is also the privilege of every Christian to appeal. If we will read His Scriptures, He will open our minds to understand them, He will bring home to us, by His[66] fellowship, the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God; He will save us from false judgments of all kinds; and will enable us to uphold in our own hearts, and in the world at large, that truth and love, that meekness, gentleness, and humility, for the protection of which we are now appealing to the arbitrament of battles, and of the God of battles. May He grant us victory in that appeal; and when it has been granted to us, let us strive to render the victory secure by living more devoutly in His faith and fear, and seeking more diligently the Grace of His Holy Spirit.

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The Advent Message and the War.

IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, NOV. 29, 1914.

The season of Advent, with which the Church’s year reopens brings to us a message of peculiar appropriateness and encouragement at the present moment. It does so because it lays the corner-stone of the grand edifice of the Gospel, or the good news of God, of which we shall follow the construction through the Church’s year. What is the special message of Advent? It is the message of that grand verse in the Psalms, “Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.” It proclaims to us the message of the prophets, opened to us in triumphant tones by the prophet Isaiah in the Lesson of to-day, that righteousness is the very foundation on which God is building up society;[68] that it is the very root from which our own lives and the life of our nation derive their existence; that it was to promote this righteousness that our Lord came into the world at His first Advent in great humility; and that it is to establish that righteousness finally that He will come again in great glory to judge the quick and the dead. This is the beginning of God’s revelation to us, and it is also the end and the culmination of His revelation. It is the beginning of the Gospel, and it is also the end of the Gospel.

If we would understand the blessing of the Gospel, we must begin with the conviction that the one great object for which this whole dispensation of human society exists is that complete righteousness, the glory of the Divine righteousness, may be established in it, and that nothing but this can promote either the glory of God or the happiness of man. Read the Psalms with this consideration in your mind, and I think you will be deeply impressed with the fact that every prayer to God embodies a prayer for the establishment of right against wrong; so that the Psalmist only dares to pray for himself so far as the deliverances[69] and successes he prays for are in harmony with the righteous will and purposes of God. Every prayer is in the spirit of the exquisite Psalm of this evening: “Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies: for I flee unto Thee to hide me. 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.” We have no right to ask or expect help on any other condition than that; for the one supreme work which God is working day by day, and year by year, and century by century, is the realization in human life of what that righteousness and judgment are, which are the foundation of His throne.

Advent reminds us, in the first place, of this grand and simple fact, and bids us make it the starting point of all our Christian thought and hope; but it gives us the further assurance that God is not only carrying forward that work of righteousness now, but that He will complete it hereafter. It repeats that message which St. Paul proclaimed to the world at large, through the Athenians, that “God hath appointed a day in the which He will[70] judge the world in righteousness by that Man Whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” That was the culmination of St. Paul’s Gospel to the people of Athens. That is the culmination of the message of the Gospel to ourselves at the present day. What do we need more than all at this moment? What are our minds full of but the dreadful spectacle before us of the whole earth filled with violence, of an awful outbreak of hatred, unrighteousness, injustice, wanton cruelty, and barbarity? The words of Isaiah read this morning are exactly applicable to the spectacle of Belgium and France at this moment: “Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.” Might not our hearts almost fail us as we contemplate such a volcanic eruption of injustice and violence after nineteen centuries of Christianity? But our hearts will not fail us, any more[71] than the heart of Isaiah failed him in his day. And why? Because of this assurance—an assurance deep down in our souls—that this unrighteousness cannot prevail. That conviction lies very deep in human nature, even apart from God’s revelation in the Psalms and the Gospel. But by this revelation it is given an irrefragable strength, and we grasp with the deepest conviction the assurance of the Psalmist: “Let the floods clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful together before the Lord, for He is come to judge the earth, with righteousness to judge the world, and the people with His truth.” That is the message of Advent, and there never was a time in history when we could grasp it more thankfully with all our hearts and souls.

There is something inexpressibly elevating and inspiring in this message of a future judgment and of the final vindication of righteousness, as it enables us to look beyond this present scene of distress and trouble, to realize that all that is passing around us is in reality only part of a far larger and grander scene, and that the events of the hour are but a brief[72] passage in a universal history, which has been carried forward for centuries under God’s hand, and is being worked out under His guidance to a glorious and righteous conclusion. If you allow your gaze and your thoughts to be fixed mainly on your own lives, on the lives of your own generation, or even of our own national history, you may well be distressed and perplexed at the apparent defeat of righteous causes and purposes, at the overthrow of the laborious work of years of peace, at what seems like the destruction of those bonds of human society to which prophets and saints and soldiers and statesmen had devoted their labours and their very lives for generations. So it seemed to Isaiah in his day; so it seemed to Habakkuk when he exclaimed, “that judgment doth never go forth.” So it has seemed to many a devoted servant of God and man, if he trusted only to his own eyes, from generation to generation. Nothing but prophecy, the prophecy of the Old and New Testaments, is, in fact, adequate to the strain thus put upon men and women by these experiences. But only believe, as the prophets assure you, only believe[73] as our Saviour declared, and as His Apostles proclaimed by His commission, that it is but part of one great history, one great universal dispensation, in which God is steadily ensuring, by whatever means may in His Divine wisdom be necessary, the supremacy of righteousness and the overthrow of evil, and you can then live through it, and struggle through it, not merely with the patience, but with the exultation, which marked the Jewish prophets and psalmists. Belgium and Northern France are now passing through the very experiences, to the letter, which Isaiah described in the case of the people of Israel in his day; but Isaiah looked through all these distresses to a time when “the Lord’s House should be established in the top of the mountains and should be exalted above the hills, and all nations should flow into it”; when “out of Zion should go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”; when “He should judge the nations, and should rebuke many peoples, and should beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, when nation should not lift up sword against nation, neither should they[74] learn war any more.” That was Isaiah’s assurance, even in the dark days he describes. We have a hundred-fold more ground for the same assurance when it has been proclaimed to us by our Lord Himself, and sealed with His blood, and countersigned with the assurance and the blood of His Apostles and Saints.

Even from this general point of view, the message of Advent comes to us with a supremely inspiring force in the crisis of our great national struggle, but it has other aspects of profound grace and comfort as well as of warning. The most gracious, perhaps, of all its aspects is the assurance it gives us that the final judgment of the world, the final establishment of righteousness, the final reward of the good, will be in the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ. This, of course, is a matter of faith, based on positive revelation, resting on the personal assurance of our Lord and His Apostles. It is no matter of speculation, no matter of opinion, but a positive statement of fact, which is one of the corner-stones of the Christian religion. There is too much tendency at present to resolve that religion into matters of mere human[75] thought and feeling and hope, and to make its acceptance depend on its conformity to modern ideas; but there is no possibility of treating in that manner such a point of definite, momentous, fundamental fact as that our Lord Jesus Christ has been appointed by God to be the Judge of quick and dead, to sum up the whole world’s destiny, and to assign to each one of us, to every one in this congregation, his place hereafter in the Kingdom of God or outside it. The office of judge, even in this world, is a solemn one. How infinitely awful is the position of the Eternal Judge of all! Now the substance of the revelation of Advent is that this great office is not veiled, as it was to the Jews, and as it must needs be, without revelation, to all the world, in the mysterious, distant, and dread form of the absolute majesty of God Himself; but that it is formally delegated to One Who is not only the Son of God, but the Son of Man, to the Lord Jesus Christ, Who took our flesh and blood upon Him, Who died for us and rose again. “God hath appointed a day,” St. Paul says, “in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man Whom He hath[76] ordained ... Whom He raised from the dead.” The grace which is involved in this declaration is so infinite that I hesitate to speak freely of it in my own words, and I am thankful to be able to express it in language of one of the most authoritative of all divines, our own Bishop Pearson, in his grave and deliberate Exposition of the Creed. “If,” he says (page 305), “we look upon the judgment to come only as revealing our secrets, as discerning our actions, as sentencing our persons, according to the works done in the flesh, there is not one of us can expect life from that tribunal at the last day.... It is necessary, therefore, that we should believe that Christ shall sit upon the throne, that our Redeemer shall be our Judge, that we shall receive our sentence, not according to the rigour of the law, but the mildness and mercies of the Gospel; and then we may look not only upon the precepts, but also upon the promises of God. Whatsoever sentence in the sacred Scriptures speaketh anything of hope, whatsoever text administereth any comfort, whatsoever argument drawn from thence can breed in us any assurance, we can confidently make use of them all[77] in reference to the judgment to come; because by that Gospel which contains them all we shall be judged. If we consider Whose Gospel it is, and Who shall judge us by it, ‘we are the members of His Body, of His Flesh, and of His Bones; for which cause He is not ashamed to call us brethren.’ As one of our brethren He hath redeemed us, He hath laid down His life as a ransom for us.... Well, therefore, may ‘we have boldness and access with confidence,’ by the faith of Him unto the throne of that Judge, Who is our brother, Who is our Redeemer, Who is our High Priest, Who is our Advocate, Who will not by His word at the last day condemn us, because He hath already by the same word absolved us, saying, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death into life.’”

At a time when death is all around us, when so many of our nearest and dearest and best may pass at any moment through the shadow of death to the judgment which is beyond, it is of infinite comfort[78] to be assured by this Divine message that they pass, not to a severe tribunal which will judge them by the letter of the law, and by a strict estimate of their faults, but to this gracious and merciful throne of their Brother, their Advocate, and their Redeemer, Who will judge them with infinite mercy and equity. I do not hesitate to say that He will judge them with peculiar sympathy, because they have died in the very cause in which He died Himself, and which it is His office as a judge to maintain—the cause of righteousness. In the ancient Church, martyrdom was regarded as ensuring remission of sins and absolution. Soldiers, no doubt, would feel that it would be putting their case too high to place their sacrifice of their lives in the cause of their King and country, in a war like this, on quite the same level as the heroic martyrdom of the great Saints of old. But it is a sacrifice of the same nature. It is coloured by the virtue of the sacrifice of Christ Himself, and of His followers; and we may confidently be assured that those who meet their death on the battlefields of this war in the spirit of faith in Christ,[79] and in simple devotion to duty, will be received by Him in the sense of those gracious words, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and may hope to be admitted in some degree into the joy of their Lord. According to the judgment of the ancient Church, and the greatest of our own Divines, we may confidently bear the memories of them in our prayers before that Throne of gracious judgment—not presuming to know, or desiring to know, more than this, that they are in the hands of One Who is at once a Judge and a Saviour, and trusting that, in praying for His gracious and merciful reception of them, we are but giving expression to the yearnings of His own Divine and Human Heart.

Such are some of the blessed assurances which the Advent Season brings us, and we cannot be too thankful for them in our present time of distress. But it brings us one lesson of warning, which it is equally important for us to bear in mind. A war like this is undoubtedly a judgment. It springs from the sins of men, from their passions and their lusts, their lack of love, their unrighteousnesses[80] of various kinds. War shows us death, and all that is involved in death, as the natural consequence of human passions, when not controlled by the spirit of Christ and the Will of God. “When lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” That is the law of Nature. It applies more or less to all who are engaged in war, and we, in this war, must not shrink from acknowledging our part in the accumulation of human wrong which has, at length, exploded into this scene of violence and misery. Advent, therefore, bids us look into our own hearts and lives, and ask ourselves what there has been in them which is not in conformity with the Will of God and with the law of the Saviour Who is to be our Judge. One immense blessing conferred on us by the knowledge that He will be our Judge is that we know, by His teaching and by His example, what are the principles of that righteousness and judgment which it is His office to enforce. It points us to the records of His love and teaching in the Gospels, to the messages of His Apostles, and to the Bible which was[81] His law, as our guide in daily life in all circumstances and relations. That is the standard by which we shall be hereafter judged; and in proportion as we believe and realize this, shall we devote ourselves to its study and strive after its fulfilment. We are sadly reminded now that in this world there is no comfort on which we can permanently rely; but there is one comfort in life and in death of which we may be assured; it is that which our Lord revealed to us, when He gave us at once this command and this assurance, “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.” Let us seek that comfort in life and in death, and it will not fail us.

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Divine Judgment and Renovation.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, OCTOBER 11, 1916.

These words were uttered by Him that sitteth on the throne, as the interpretation of the grand vision which passed before the Apostle at the conclusion of the Revelation vouchsafed to him. “I saw,” he says, “a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.... 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.”

[83]

But this vision was the sequel of fearful scenes which had passed before the Apostle as the future course of the Divine judgments was unrolled before him. He had witnessed a terrible succession of destructions, and plagues, and wars, falling upon the inhabitants of the earth, involving miseries and sufferings incalculable. He had seen passing before him the awful punishments inflicted upon the enemies of God, of Christ, of righteousness, and truth. One quotation in the final scene will be enough to remind you of the nature of the visions. “I saw an angel,” says the Apostle (chapter xix. 17), “standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, small and great.” At length, when these fearful plagues and judgments are completed the Apostle sees a great white throne and Him that sat on it, from Whose face the[84] earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. Then the books were opened, and the dead, who stood before God, both small and great, were judged, every man according to their works. Then it is, after this awful consummation, that the Apostle sees a new heaven and a new earth. And He that sits upon the great white throne says, “Behold, I make all things new.”

Such, in brief, is the burden of the Book of Revelation. It will be observed that it involves these two cardinal points: First, the judgment and the extirpation of all that is evil by a series of struggles and agonies; and secondly, after this terrible experience, the creation of all things new. The first part, however, in the process of the Divine administration, consists of a series of scenes of miseries, disasters, and bloodshed than which nothing more terrible can be imagined, and which are described with a lurid force to which no other human writing offers anything comparable. War and disease and the confusion of all the elements of human society, and even of heaven and earth, are brought before us, until men are[85] reduced to cry to the very mountains and rocks to cover them. All is described as the inevitable result of the wrath of God against evil and its representatives, and a fearful joy is ascribed to the heavenly beings who behold this vindication of the Divine righteousness. The four and twenty elders fall on their faces and worship God, saying (xi. 17), “We give Thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, Which art and wast and art to come, because Thou hast taken to Thee Thy great power and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldest give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the Saints, and to them that fear Thy Name, small and great, and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.” And then in awful response are heard, in the temple of God, “lightnings and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake and great hail.”

These dread scenes, these fearful judgments, are depicted as the inevitable preliminary in the manifestation of the Divine Will and the establishment of the Divine Kingdom. This is the main fact[86] which stands out broadly from the Book. It is not necessary, for the purpose of appreciating this, to comprehend the signification of each of the awful scenes which are predicted. How far they are capable of any explanation before the final events may well be doubted. Old Testament prophecy remained in great part mysterious until the moment of its accomplishment, and the full interpretation of Christian prophecy can hardly be less dependent upon its actual realization. But one thing is plain, that the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ upon earth, the full realization of all its promises of peace and goodwill, the complete manifestation of the glory and power of its King—that these great hopes and blessed promises cannot, according to the Book of Revelation, be realized without the world passing through scenes of fearful struggle and misery, and without the execution of Divine judgment upon the evil and falsehood with which it abounds.

These are stern truths which it is well for us to bear in mind amidst the terrible scenes which are now being enacted in the present war. The New Testament[87] begins with promises of peace, and it ends with a vision of peace and glory in which God will wipe away all tears from our eyes; but the warning is conveyed to us, through the mouth of the last Apostle, that this blessed condition cannot be reached except through a manifestation of Divine justice and Divine wrath, which will bring upon earth and upon all mankind inconceivable miseries. The sins of men must be brought into judgment. The Divine righteousness must expose their real character by the consequences they naturally involve. The truth must be manifested that there is a Judge of all the earth, Who brings every work of man into judgment, whether it be good or whether it be evil; and the evil in the works of men is so deep and far-reaching that its judgment must needs involve the most terrible suffering. In proportion as God takes to Himself His great power and reigns, the first result must be seen in these agonies of human nature, and must culminate in the disruption of the very elements of nature itself.

It is well we should remind ourselves[88] how fearfully these pictures of the Apostle of love have been fulfilled in the history of the world since his time. It was not long after he wrote, when a series of persecutions broke upon the Christian Church, which were at length avenged by terrible intestine wars between the heads of the Roman Empire, and in due course of time, by the overthrow of that Empire itself in a long series of wars and devastations, which can only be fitly described in some of the vivid language of the Apocalypse itself. It would be appalling if we could realize the extent to which Europe was filled with “blood and fire and vapour of smoke” during the five or six centuries which elapsed between the overthrow of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the Christian civilisation of the Middle Ages. Then followed the incalculable miseries and untold bloodshed involved in the contest between the Christian and the Mohammedan world, throughout the long period of the Crusades. Add to this all the intestine wars between Christians themselves during the Middle Ages, and the fearful devastation of which the East was the victim in the course of[89] Mohammedan conquests and revolutions, and you have before your eyes a picture not adequately described elsewhere than in this terrible Book. The Reformation was followed by a long series of wars, during which a great part of the surface of Europe suffered the most cruel devastations; and even to the present day the whole world open to our observation has been suffering from almost continuous bloodshed in one part or other of its surface.

The scenes which strike us with such horror at this moment are but a specimen of agonies which have been endured for long generations in the successive struggles of mankind; and if we are horrified at the wars and agonies around us, we may be reminded, by the readiness of all nations for such conflicts, that they are almost the normal condition of humanity. In the middle of the last century Burke calculated that, assuming the numbers of men then upon earth to be computed at 500 millions at the most, the slaughter of mankind in the various wars and revolutions which were known up to that date amounted to upwards of seventy times that number, or 35,000 millions. That,[90] on what he thought a moderate estimate, represents the amount of bloodshed which the passions of men had, up to his time, inflicted upon human society. How much more is to be added to that tremendous calculation for the wars which have followed since that date in the East and West? Taking these facts into account, we shall see good reason to recognize that the Book of Revelation, in its fearful scenes, is but a true description of the actual experience of mankind. The plagues, and destructions, and slaughters which that Book depicts, as the result of the just judgments of God, have, as a matter of fact, been realized, and it is through scenes of suffering and misery of this nature that the world is being conducted by the Divine justice to its ultimate goal.

But we have the more reason to be inexpressibly thankful that that goal is revealed to us as one of peace and bliss. It is when we bear in mind the miseries and agonies which the Book of Revelation depicts, and which are brought so bitterly home to us by such a war as the present, that we realize the full force of the promise that “God shall wipe away all tears from[91] 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.” Seeing what the world has been hitherto, and the miseries by which it is burdened now, we might well despair of such a result, unless we had the express assurance of Revelation that there is One sitting upon the throne Who gives this as the very definition of His work, “Behold, I make all things new.” We should, indeed, be ungrateful not to recognize that the state of things around us contains in itself some pledge and earnest of this revelation. Grievously as the passions of mankind degrade them in practice, there is nevertheless publicly recognized, in principle, a higher standard of responsibility, a higher and more universal obligation to maintain peace and goodwill on earth, than at any previous time in the world’s history. Even amidst such a war as is now waging, principles have been established for its conduct, which produce a great alleviation of its miseries, compared with those which were suffered in the great struggles of nations and of races in previous ages, or even[92] during the last century. But still, none must feel more grievously than those who have the conduct of human affairs how slight would be our hopes of the establishment of complete peace on earth, did it depend simply on the wisdom or strength of even the wisest leaders of mankind. They cannot extirpate the passions which are the real ultimate cause of the wars and fightings among us. They cannot take out of men’s hearts the lusts which war in their members, and which nullify the best laws and institutions. Our hope lies in the assured faith that all the terrible scenes of which the earth is full, like those in the Book of Revelation, are under the control of Him that sitteth on the throne, that they are working out great purposes of truth and justice, that the actions of all men, small and great, are subject to His ultimate judgment, and that, finally, when the issues of right and wrong in this world have been thus worked out, in a manner which shall vindicate the truth and righteousness of God, He will fulfill His great work, in which He is even now engaged, of making all things new.

It is, indeed, an unconscious faith of[93] this kind which sustains men, and has ever sustained them, amidst the confusions and sufferings of life and history. A deep instinct compels them to believe that they are in the hands of a God of justice and truth, and to appeal to Him in the midst of their struggles, and even in those crises in which their best efforts seem to be defeated. But it is the special privilege, the special grandeur, of the Christian Faith to have an explicit assurance of this truth from the mouth of the Judge Himself. He said unto His Apostle, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” He, the King of Peace, left with His last Apostle the warnings and the promises of this Book. Lest men should be discouraged by the terrible experiences through which they were yet to pass, He warned them beforehand that such experiences were inevitable, and that the world would have to pass through a purgatory of this kind; but at the same time He told them that, when judgment was completed, a new Heaven and a new Earth would be the result, and He bade them be assured that, amidst whatever darkness and confusion, He was[94] sitting on the throne making all things new.

All that we have to do individually is to see that we are true to Him, and in our hearts live in obedience to His will. In the text He goes on to say to the Apostle, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.” “Blessed,” he says again, “are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” We are not able, with our limited and earthly vision, to discern “the work that God worketh from the beginning of the world,” or the course of His judgments in the world at large. That is beyond us, and we must submit and take our part, whatever it may be, in these mysterious manifestations, possessing our souls in the patience which such assurances as those in the text[95] can alone provide. But we can have the comfort, for our own selves, of passing through this strange and painful scene in sure and certain hope of our ultimate blessedness, provided in our own hearts and souls we give ourselves up to the rule and the order of Him Who is the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, provided we make it the whole purpose of our lives to do His commandments, and, by His grace, overcome the evil which besets us in our own lives. Our personal and private lives reflect in greater or less degree those stern experiences which this Book describes in the case of the world at large. We have our sins, and as the consequences of our sins our sufferings and sorrows, desolations and punishments of various kinds, and we must expect to have to bear them till the moment of our departure arrives. But by God’s grace we are also allowed in some measure to anticipate the privilege which is held out to the world at large, and which is our own ultimate hope. The fulfilment of the blessed promise of making all things new is not merely commenced, but, if we will, is consciously commenced, within our hearts and souls while we are upon[96] earth. “We ourselves,” says St. Paul, “groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” just as “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” But we have the first-fruits of the Spirit. His grace is within us at all times to give us new hearts and new spirits, to introduce His peace into our souls, and to enable us to spread that peace around us. Let us only seek it faithfully, and the renewing and replenishing water of life will restore us and maintain our energies, and will be in us as a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

[97]

Resistance Unto Blood.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, GOOD-FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 1916.

“Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” That is the manner in which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews applies the Cross of Christ as an example and an inspiration to Christians. He is exhorting them to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us,” and to “run with patience the race that is set before us,” “looking unto Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our Faith, who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross.” It is an aspect of our Saviour’s Cross which it is most important to realize if its significance for ourselves is to be duly appreciated. What was it that brought our Lord to the Cross? Of course, the ultimate cause was that the will of God required that sacrifice to be made for the expiation of human sin. “Him,” said[98] St. Peter, “being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” But God’s counsel and will were worked out by human agencies; and it is of infinite interest to consider what were the motives which led men like the leaders of the Jewish nation to commit the awful crime of putting to death the Son of God, manifested in perfect human nature. The simple explanation is that He “resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” Our Lord strove against sin, and sinners could not endure His antagonism; and the opposition between the two was so intense that one or other of the two antagonists had to be overpowered. That is the substance of the story of our Lord’s life as told by the Evangelists. Our Lord came proclaiming that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand—a Kingdom with higher claims and severer judgments than the Jews could tolerate. It claimed a spiritual perfection instead of a legal one, an obedience of the heart instead of a mere compliance in external acts; it penetrated into the secrets of the conscience;[99] and our Lord further declared that He Himself was the Judge by Whom these claims would be enforced. The Jewish rulers felt that this amounted to superseding themselves and their authority, and they treated our Lord as a usurper who must be suppressed. The tremendous denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees: “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” was an act of open and righteous hostility to the authorities who had rejected His mission and spurned His claims. They felt that He or they must be overthrown, and they used the Roman Government to destroy Him.

It thus appears that our Lord’s crucifixion was the culminating struggle in the never-ceasing battle between right and wrong, righteousness and sin, in which the history of mankind consists. Our Lord appeared as the representative of absolute righteousness, and He was put to death because men could not endure that righteousness. In His rejection by the Jews and His crucifixion by the Roman Governor, the highest official representatives of human righteousness at that time and place combined to condemn themselves. But[100] they could not have consummated that sacrifice without the consent and even co-operation of our Lord Himself. He had power, if He had chosen to exert it, to destroy them and assert His Divine supremacy. “Thinkest thou,” He said, “that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? But how, then, shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” Instead of destroying His enemies, He submitted to be put to death Himself. He allowed the unrighteousness of human nature to break in full force upon His own head; He Himself became its victim, and a victim of such infinite greatness as to constitute an expiation for all the sin of mankind. Sin and evil can only be avenged by an adequate exhibition and endurance of their consequences. But that endurance and that manifestation were afforded, in the highest conceivable form, in the destruction, so far as men could effect it, of perfect goodness and holiness. That was what our Lord’s submission to the Cross involved. When that expiation had been made to God and God’s righteousness, our Lord assumed[101] His full authority as a Saviour and a Judge, and, by His Resurrection and Ascension, established the Kingdom of Heaven in all its grace and power. Henceforth men have lived under that dispensation of love as well as of justice, and the Cross has been held aloft among them as the means and the assurance of forgiveness and of grace.

No human being can imitate our Lord in that supreme act of self-surrender to His Father’s will, by which He abandoned all His right and power to avenge Himself on His enemies, and became the supreme victim, and therefore atonement, for human sin. But it is possible for men to follow Him in the course of action which brought Him to that awful decision and agony. “He resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” So far as we strive against sin and evil, whatever the consequences to ourselves, we are following Him to the foot of the Cross. It is not the mere endurance of suffering, the mere surrender of life in itself, which renders us followers of our Lord in His sacrifice: men have endured much and sacrificed much for more or less selfish reasons, for ambition or for[102] military glory and power. But the essence of our Lord’s sacrifice was that it was made in the cause of righteousness and truth only. “To this end was I born,” He said, “and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” We are following Him so far as in all our words and acts we are bearing witness unto the truth. That witness may at any time involve suffering and death. God has so constituted mankind that few great causes have ever been finally won without the voluntary sacrifice of life. That sacrifice may sometimes be made, like that of our Lord and of the martyrs, by the voluntary endurance of the cruel penalties inflicted by the enemies of the truth; or it may be endured in obedience to the claim of lawful authorities that we should take up arms and offer our lives, in defence of some righteous cause. Men may act in our Lord’s spirit if they submit to wrong in their own persons, rather than avenge themselves. But the authorities who, as St. Paul says, are the ministers of God, are bound to protect those committed to their charge, and for that purpose have a right to call[103] upon those under them to use the sword at their command to defend the right. In so using the sword at the command of their rulers, at whatever cost to themselves, they also are acting in Christ’s spirit, because they are upholding righteousness and asserting the truth in the manner required by their duty. To all forms of organized sin the witness of the Jewish sacrifices holds good. “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” That, so long as the present dispensation lasts, is the unalterable law of God’s Will and Word. Soldiers, therefore, who are obeying a lawful command in defence of the right, are offering their lives in the spirit in which Christ endured the Cross, and may claim the comfort of being fellows with Him in the “holy war” of right against wrong.

But if the Cross of Christ is to be the centre of our lives, we must strive to live in all things, and not only in such great crises as those of war and the battlefield, in the spirit which brought our Lord to His Cross—the spirit of absolute obedience in all things to the righteous will of God. What the Spirit of the Cross requires of us is the absolute surrender of our own[104] wills to the will of God, and the constant endeavour to bear witness to that will, and to promote it in every part of our lives. It is not the mere meditation on the sufferings of the Cross which will bring us into harmony with it. The Apostles do not dwell much on them, profoundly as they must have been moved by them. What they dwell on is the spirit which moved our Saviour to accept them and to bear them. That spirit is to be discerned throughout His life, as well as in His agony in the garden and in His sayings on the Cross. It is embodied in His gracious words: “Whoever shall do the will of My Father which is in Heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother.” The Cross is the highest and final expression of His devotion and His Father’s will; but we can follow that spirit in every duty, however humble. If the National Mission is to fulfil its object, it must impress that spirit of supreme devotion to the will of God, as revealed in Christ, upon the nation as a whole, and the Cross must become the symbol of our national, no less than of our individual, life.

[105]

The King’s Accession and Intercession.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, 1915.

It is in fulfilment of the duty prescribed in this text that we hold every year a Service of Thanksgiving and Intercession on the anniversary of our King’s accession to the throne, and I am sure we all know and appreciate the abundant reasons we have for offering such thanksgivings. We know that every public action of the King since he came to the throne has borne witness to his unreserved devotion to the welfare of his subjects in all parts of his Empire. His visit, for instance, to India was a very arduous and anxious undertaking, and was prompted by his own desire to assure the Indian people of his deep personal care for them, and also to strengthen the bonds between them and his[106] subjects at home; and no doubt the generous service which Indian princes and soldiers are now rendering to the Empire on the plains of Flanders is in great measure due to the influence of that visit, in deepening the loyalty and devotion of his Indian subjects. We have had abundant evidence, moreover, in the last few months, of the King’s deep sympathy with his people in the sorrows and losses which this war is inflicting upon them. He has sent his son and heir to serve with his soldiers at the Front, and has himself visited them there to thank and cheer them, and he has lately set a very conspicuous example of personal self-denial in the ordinary habits of life. We see that the King and Queen live for the good of their subjects, and for the promotion of all that is good and true and gracious throughout their vast Empire, and that their example is one of the chief influences which are working among us for these noble ends. Knowing and appreciating all this, I need not say more to induce you to join with a full heart to-day in the words of our Service, and to “yield unfeigned thanks to God” that He was pleased, as[107] on this day, to place His servant our Sovereign Lord King George upon the throne of this realm.

But I think it may be desirable and opportune to lay some special stress on those intercessions which we are bidden to offer “for kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” Those words remind us, first of all, that the purpose of God, so far as this world is concerned, is that we may live a life of peace in all godliness and honour—a state of peace in which men may enjoy the happiness for which God intended them, in which they may “replenish the earth and subdue it,” and develop to the utmost the faculties and capacities with which God has endowed them. That is the main object to be kept in view for the purpose of the present life. The next fact of which the words remind us is that the maintenance of these peaceful conditions of life depends mainly upon Kings and all that are in authority. It does not depend merely upon Kings, but also upon those in authority, who are the Kings’ Ministers. In some parts of the world, as in this[108] country, Kings no longer have the power by themselves, and of their own motion, to determine the course of public affairs, to keep the peace or to declare wars. Yet their position must always give them an immense influence in the government of a nation; and even now, in the two greatest countries of Europe—Germany and Russia, they have not merely the supreme control, but the supreme initiative, in affairs of State. The peace of the world, the possibility of our living a quiet and peaceable life, depends in Europe, in the main, on the rulers of Russia and Germany, upon those in authority in France, and upon the King of England and his Ministers.

It is a momentous fact, and a surprising one to realize. God has so constituted mankind that the welfare of the masses, of the millions of ordinary men and women, depends upon the actions of a few dozens of the leading men in the various countries of Europe. We are proud of being a constitutional country, and of the fact that by the election of members of Parliament—by selecting, that is, the members of the House of Commons—the vast majority of Englishmen have a voice[109] in creating their own Government; and to a certain extent in that way we govern ourselves. But nevertheless, in the last resort, the fate of the country depends upon the dozen or two men who are placed in power by the House of Commons. It is a simple fact that the mass of the people in this country had no voice whatever in determining whether we should or should not enter upon this terrible war. It was determined for us in the course of a few hours by the King’s Ministers, and by the action they took in their relations with other countries. In the nature of the case it must be so. Whether they will or not, great masses of people and great nations cannot do without a Government; and when they have established one, that Government must necessarily act in many critical emergencies without waiting to consult the people whom it governs. A nation and its King, with his Ministers, constitute as much one body, to use St. Paul’s image, as the various elements and limbs of the human body and its brain. We become one single organism, under the control and management of the brain of that organism,[110] which is the King and his Ministers. It is an awful responsibility for men to have entrusted to them, to be able to declare war and thus to launch many millions of men in their own country, and hundreds of millions of men in the Empire and in other countries, upon a gigantic struggle, of which all we know for certain at the outset is that it will involve a sacrifice of tens of thousands of lives, the devastation of fair countries, and the waste of enormous treasure. But so it is and ever must be. In the freest republics that ever existed the chief rulers have had similarly to act as the brain of the whole people; and it depends on their wisdom and faithfulness, not merely at critical moments, but in that daily administration of affairs out of which critical moments arise, whether the people shall live a quiet and peaceable life or not.

We must add to this the fact—which no one would be more ready to recognize than these leaders and rulers, Kings, Ministers, or Presidents, themselves—that the affairs with which they have to deal, the problems they have to solve, are too vast and mysterious to be fully grasped[111] by any human brain, and that they are liable to the most grievous miscalculations. If you need evidence of this, look at the outbreak of the present war. Our rulers in this country had no idea at all, within a few days of the event, that such a war was about to break upon us; the rulers of all other nations have been loudly proclaiming, ever since it began, that they are not responsible for it, and that it would not have happened but for circumstances which they could not foresee or control. There seem, indeed, to have been wild and unscrupulous spirits in Germany who were eager for it, and who had long been intriguing for it; but none the less it burst upon Europe suddenly and unexpectedly, and it baffled the foresight of European statesmen in general. In the face of such imperfect competence for these problems of statesmanship, and of such enormous responsibility for them, are we not compelled to stretch out our hands towards Heaven, and implore God’s guidance for the rulers who are feeling their way amidst such dim lights—“for kings and for all in authority,” upon whose words and actions the fate of the world and its peace, the happiness[112] and the very life of millions of men and women are dependent? If, indeed, we could not do so, we might well despair. We should behold before us a mass of nations rising against one another, blinded—as we see in Germany that nations can be blinded—by passion and pride, and fighting wildly, almost like men in the dark, and we might well feel helpless before such a chaos. But knowing, as it is the privilege of Christians to know, that “the Lord sitteth above the water-floods,” that “the Lord remaineth a King for ever,” knowing, as another Psalm says, that “the Lord is King, be the people never so impatient. He sitteth between the cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet,” we cry unto the Lord in our trouble, and implore Him to deliver us out of our distress.

There is another reason for our thus appealing to Him, which is, that we are assured by His Word that the whole history of the world has been under his control, and that He has been directing its course throughout, and determining the fate of nations for His own purposes. We have before us the most conclusive[113] evidence of this in the history of the Jews. The course of their history and their position in the world at the present day were announced to Abraham and Moses thousands of years ago, and they have fulfilled, and are now fulfilling, the place and the function in the world which were then assigned to them. There is nothing, accordingly, on which the Bible insists more urgently and constantly than that the great issues of war and history are in the hands of God. It is not merely that He exercises a general controlling influence over them, but that He has His own purposes, which He is gradually fulfilling by means of “the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.” It teaches us that “except the Lord build the house they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city the watchman watcheth but in vain.” He does not merely interpose in the course of the building, but He is the Builder. He is building up, through the ages, some great design, and all nations will be made in the end to conform to it.

It is certain, for instance, that it was not by our design or forethought, or our skill, that the Empire which we are now called[114] on to defend was built up. A hundred years ago—nay, fifty years ago—no statesman seems to have imagined that the British Empire would grow, or could grow, to the vast dimensions it now possesses. Not merely did they not imagine it—some of them actually deprecated its growth. It has not been by our will and design, but in great measure against them, that the British nations have been developed into one great body politic. It must be the hand of God which we see in all that development. We have, whether we will or no, a great work laid upon us all over the world—in India, in America, and in the Islands of the sea—and we recognize that it is by God’s will that this task and responsibility, which is at the same time a great privilege, has been laid upon us. We may well, therefore, implore continually His help and guidance in the discharge of it. Is it not, then, an imperative duty, is not St. Paul right in putting it in the very forefront of our duties, that we should offer up supplications, intercessions, urgent prayers for the King and for all in authority under him, that they may be guided to know God’s will in the vast problems[115] which are set before them? that “God’s wisdom may be their guide and that His Arm may strengthen them,” and that He may direct their actions and endeavours to His own glory, to the accomplishment of His great designs, and to the welfare of our people?

Let us ask ourselves earnestly whether we have realized, as we ought, since this war began, that it is in God’s hands, and not in ours, to determine its issue. War is not merely an appeal to the sword—it is, in a far higher degree, an appeal, the final appeal, to God Himself. Lord Bacon observes that great soldiers and Commanders have always been conspicuous for their acknowledgment that the issues of their great battles and campaigns all depended upon some supernatural power. They knew better than others the infinite accidents and chances upon which the issue of war depends, and they realized that it was in God’s power to determine that issue as He pleased. I fear it must be owned that we have not, as yet, acknowledged this truth in the present war as much as we ought. If we had, would not the Services of Intercession in this[116] Cathedral and elsewhere be more frequently and more earnestly attended? Let us be reminded then, by this Service of Prayer and Supplication, on the anniversary of the Accession of our King, how deeply he and his Ministers need that prayer and intercession, how wholly dependent they are, in bearing the momentous burdens laid upon them, upon “the good hand of our God upon them”; and let us henceforth “pray without ceasing” for God’s blessing upon our King, and particularly, at this time, for his victory over the bitter enemies by whom he has been forced into this dreadful struggle.

[117]

The Christian Sanction of War.

AT THE SERVICE OF INTERCESSION FOR THE KING’S NAVAL AND MILITARY FORCES IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, AUGUST, 1914.

We are assembled here this afternoon, at the call of our King in Council and of our Archbishop, for the purpose of solemn intercession with Almighty God on behalf of his Majesty’s naval and military forces now engaged in war. That is in accordance with the solemn practice of our fathers at all the great crises of our history; and it is only about fourteen years since we were similarly interceding with Almighty God in this cathedral, when the King’s forces were engaged in an arduous struggle in South Africa. But the gravity of our present struggle is greater than that of any in the memory of living men, perhaps greater than that of any other in our history. The very existence of our Empire, and even the independence of our Kingdom, is at stake; and the Power by which we are threatened has[118] been, of late years, deemed the greatest military force in Europe, and a naval force only second to our own. It may be that the capacities and resources of our Kingdom and Empire will be strained as they have never been strained before, and that all our manhood, and even our womanhood, will be called upon for all the force and endurance of which they are capable. Prayer to God is incumbent upon us at all times; but there are special reasons why, in a great war, it is the most important of all duties, and the most precious of all privileges. The issues of war are, in an extraordinary degree, beyond the control of man. The issue of a battle or a campaign may, in fact, be determined by incidents, moral and physical, which no human power can foresee or control. Our own deliverance from the Spanish Armada was certainly determined, in an incalculable degree, by the tremendous storm which wrecked the Spanish fleet at the critical moment; and again and again in history have great battles been decided by influences of that nature, or by some incalculable turn in the feeling and temper of an army. Consequently,[119] when nations go to war they place themselves and their fortunes in the hands of God in a more absolute manner than in any other human affairs. That is what we have now done by declaring war against Germany; and we have, therefore, more reason than at any other time in our history to fall before God’s footstool, and to implore Him for the protection and blessing which He, and He only, can give us. It is still more true now than in the Psalmist’s time that “there is no king that can be saved by the multitude of an host, neither is any mighty man delivered by much strength; an horse is counted but a vain thing to save a man, neither shall he deliver any man by his great strength. Behold the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear Him, and upon them that put their trust in His mercy.” In that spirit we now bow before His throne—in the words of our daily prayer in time of war and tumult—before the throne of “the only Giver of all victory.”

Coming before Him in these solemn circumstances, and with this momentous petition, it becomes us to ask ourselves whether we are doing so in a spirit, and[120] with a cause, in which we can expect His blessing, and a favourable answer to our prayers. “If I incline unto wickedness with my heart,” says the Psalmist, “the Lord will not hear me.” If we are to offer our prayers with a believing and confident heart, we must have our conscience clear; and before men ask God’s blessing in so tremendous an issue as that of war, they must consider with the most solemn earnestness whether they can feel assured that what they are doing and asking is in accordance with His will.

As to the lawfulness of war itself, though some good Christian minds are troubled by the question, the answer seems clear and simple. War is justifiable for the same reason that it is lawful to put men to death for great crimes, like murder and treason. The conscience of mankind at large, the conscience of Christian States at large, has uniformly wielded the sword of justice in avenging and averting, by the punishment of death, such crimes of violence and treachery as destroy the very frame of Society. That use of the sword of justice, moreover, has the express support of Revelation,[121] for St. Paul has declared that the ruler “beareth not the sword in vain; he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” But if it is lawful to use the sword of justice against individuals, it must be equally lawful to use it against a community of individuals—in other words, against a society, or a nation, who are unjustly destroying or threatening the lives and the peace of another society or nation. The use of the sword—which is an elementary name for war—has been shown by thousands of years of experience to be, in the last resort, the only effectual means of punishing and preventing unjust violence. It is vain to argue what might be possible or desirable if man were an uncorrupt creature. He is, as a matter of fact, a sinful creature; and, as St. Paul plainly says, it is God Himself who has put the sword into the hands of human authority to punish, and to restrain, the effects of that sinfulness.

Thus the mere fact of our resort to the sword need not of itself burden our consciences. But if this account of its awful purpose be true, one indispensable condition for its use is obviously requisite.[122] If the purpose of the sword is to punish injustice, then we must take care that it is used for that solemn purpose only. It was not given to men to enable them to gratify their ambition or pride, or to enlarge their kingdoms at their pleasure, or for any selfish purpose whatever. He who draws the sword for any purpose but that of upholding justice and judgment on the earth is committing the crime of murder on the vastest scale, and renders himself justly liable to the stern use of the sword against himself. If, therefore, we are to come before God with a clear conscience at this moment, we must be able to say, from our hearts, that we have not now drawn the sword from any selfish motive, or under the influence of any violent passion, but that we have drawn it simply and solely in the discharge of our bounden duty, and in fulfilment of just promises and engagements to our neighbours. My brethren, I believe it may be confidently asserted that this country has never been engaged in a war in respect to which this could be said with more unqualified confidence than in the present case.

[123]

I think, indeed, we may thankfully consider, in reviewing our long history, that the wars by which our Empire has been developed and established have, on the whole, been of this character, and have not been prompted by either national or dynastic ambition. The wars under Queen Elizabeth, in which the germs of our Empire were laid, were mainly prompted by a just indignation against the cruel and superstitious tyranny of Spain; and the wars of Marlborough and Wellington were similarly fought to protect Europe against an overbearing and unjust domination. In the heat of those struggles we may have been betrayed, in some instances, into an unjust use of the sword; but, on the whole, we may thank God that the wars which have established Great Britain in its present position have been—at least mainly—fought in just causes. Certainly in the present instance we have no other motive or object. We covet no other nation’s possessions; we have not interfered—and do not desire to interfere—with any other nation’s affairs; we would not willingly exert our influence for any other purpose but that[124] of promoting righteousness and freedom; and if, in our later history, we have erred, as human beings can hardly avoid erring sometimes, the errors have been due to a failure of judgment, and not of motive or intention. As to the particular occasion of this war, we have offered no provocation whatever, except what has been called “the strong antipathy” of right to wrong; the provocation which adherence to promise and treaties must ever offer to those who would break them; the provocation which defence of the weak must ever offer to those who would overbear them. We can say in a word, with a good conscience, that we are at least earnestly endeavouring to act as the servants of Him of Whom the Psalmist exclaims: “The Lord is King; the earth may be glad thereof; yea, the multitude of the isles may be glad thereof. Clouds and darkness are round about Him; righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.” It is in the cause of that righteousness and judgment that we desire to act.

But there is one other condition that we must fulfil, if we are to dare to claim the favour of God in this great struggle.[125] We must not only ask whether we are upholding righteousness in our public action but whether we are observing it in our own hearts, and in our national life. Sufferings, we are told in our Prayer Book, may be sent “to correct and amend in us whatever doth offend the eyes of our Heavenly Father.” Can we fail to be sensible that there is much in our lives, both private and public, which must offend His eyes? Our private sins must be left to our private consciences. But who has not listened during the last few years, with a painful sense of their justice, to reproaches among ourselves at the luxury, the extravagance, the reckless pursuit of pleasure, the general self-indulgence, which have been too prevalent among us? With what heart can men appeal for God’s favour and protection, in their hour of need, who, in their hours of well-being, have neglected His worship and disregarded His Word and Sacraments? Before going into battle as a nation and as individuals, let us seek His absolution in that comprehensive prayer of our Litany “that it would please Him to give us true repentance, to forgive us all our sins, negligences, and[126] ignorances, and to endue us with the grace of His Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to His Holy Word.”

In so far as we approach Him in this spirit, we may humbly hope for His blessing on the bravery and the self-sacrifice of our sailors and soldiers. Those sacrifices, moreover, alike for them and for ourselves, will be relieved of their worst bitterness, and will be glorified by a sacred and Divine example. They will not be fruitless sacrifices. They will be sacrifices which will win for the fellow-countrymen of those who offer them, and for the world at large, grand additions to that edifice of righteousness and judgment, of Christian civilization, towards which the hopes of mankind are directed with an inexpressible yearning. If this war results, as we now pray that it may, in the reassertion of principles which were in danger of being forgotten or overridden, in the re-establishment of the faith of treaties, and in the protection of the weak against the strong, it will have established for Europe and the world a great consolidation and advance in the essential principles of national truth and justice.[127] It is a comparatively poor thing to die for glory, or for power and wealth; but it is a grand thing to die for righteousness and equity, for the God who allows us to be His instruments in upholding them, and for the King and country whose call we are proud to obey. If, moreover, men go to war in this spirit, they may claim a still more Divine privilege. In the sacrifice which soldiers make in a righteous cause, they are following, in the most essential characteristic, the “author and finisher of our Faith,” the “Captain of our Salvation,” whose work is summed up in that soldier-like phrase, “He resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” The soldier who sheds his blood on the battlefield in a righteous cause, and with a righteous purpose, is doing the very thing that Christ did, and he may be assured of Christ’s approval and blessing. In quiet times we may fail to realize adequately the solemn truth that, whenever we receive the Holy Communion, we are receiving spiritual benefits which were won for us by the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ. If war, in one aspect, is a horrible thing, so was the[128] Cross; but the whole hope of the salvation of mankind, here and hereafter, was won by that Divine bloodshed; and its grace and glory are reflected over every battlefield, in which blood is shed in the long struggle against unrighteousness. In these convictions, and with these solemn resolves, let us now appeal to God, in firm and humble faith, for His help in this hour of need; and let us enter into this dread conflict with the full assurance that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

[129]

The Warning of the Tower In Siloam.

PREACHED IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, OCTOBER 25, 1914.

“Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” In these solemn words, twice repeated, our Lord affords us a flash of light upon the principles and methods of the Divine judgments, and utters a solemn warning; and I think that both the revelation and the warning will be found intensely applicable to the distressing sufferings and anxieties through which we and our country are now passing. Our Lord had been speaking about the severity of the Divine justice, and about the blindness of men in not foreseeing the approach of His judgments. “Ye hypocrites,” He said, “ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not[130] what is right?” and He warns them that if they fall into the hands of justice, they will not depart thence till they have paid the very last mite. At this mention of the Divine judgment, some who were present told Him of a dreadful act of violence which had recently occurred, of some Galilæans, “whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” It would seem they were members of an extremely zealous sect of Jews, who objected to the custom which then prevailed of offering sacrifices in the Temple for the welfare of the Roman Government; and Pilate treated their conduct as treasonable, and had them slaughtered in the Temple while they were offering their own sacrifices. The object of the interruption seems to have been to ask our Lord whether these men had brought such a punishment upon themselves by unusual sin, and it may also have been intended to tempt Him to pronounce some censure on Pilate, and thus to bring Himself into conflict with the Roman authorities. But our Lord’s reply lifts the matter at once out of any personal or local bearings, and lays down a principle which applies to all such tragedies. “Suppose[131] ye,” He said, “that these Galilæans were sinners above all the Galilæans because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” He drives the truth home by applying it to another recent tragedy, which might have seemed a mere accident. “Those eighteen,” He said, “upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” It is not for you, He seems to say, to be curious about the reason why these particular men have suffered in this way. What you should do is to learn that you are all liable to suffer in the same way, and that you will do so unless you repent.

Now, it will be seen that there is a momentous revelation contained in these words, respecting the real cause of such dreadful disasters as these two incidents illustrated. When He says, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” He clearly intimates that a Divine judgment is going forward in the world, which sooner or later brings suffering and destruction[132] upon men in consequence of their sin. Even what we might call a physical accident, like the fall of a tower which kills eighteen persons, is a warning to men that they are liable to such a death at any moment, and that, therefore, they should repent and be prepared for it. It is an example of what may befall any of us, and of what will befall all of us in one way or another, unless we repent. If we look more particularly into the example of the men whom Pilate slaughtered, we shall realize that it has a peculiarly close application to our own day. These men, who were resisting the Roman Government, were examples of the vehement passions which were at that time surging among the Jewish people. Our Lord Himself was the victim of the fierce hatred of foreign influence which prevailed among the people. The priests and Pharisees said among themselves, “What do we? For this man doeth many miracles, and if we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” And the High Priest, Caiaphas, replied, “Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is[133] expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” Thus it was that the passions of the Jewish people were worked up into such blindness and wickedness, that they committed the awful crime of putting our Lord to death; and then in forty years the prediction of our Lord was fulfilled, and the great mass of them perished in just such a slaughter as that which Pilate committed, the blood of the nation being shed in torrents in the Courts of the Temple, and amidst its sacrifices. These events—the massacre by Pilate, the murder of our Lord, the destruction of the Jewish people—were not separate and disconnected events. They were all the consequence of the sins and evil passions which our Lord denounced among the Jews of His time; and the disasters which the Jews suffered were the judgments of God’s righteousness upon those sins.

Now what this reveals to us is the constitution of that world of human society amidst which we live. The bedrock of it, the basis of its whole constitution, is the righteousness of God and His unwavering maintenance of His moral laws. As the[134] Psalmist says, “Clouds and darkness are round about Him,” and we cannot follow in all respects His mysterious dispensations; but one thing we know for certain, that “righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.” All His providential government of mankind is based on the assertion of right and the punishment and repression of wrong; and, as another prophet says, when you see God’s judgments in the world you may be sure that the object of them is that the inhabitants of the world may learn righteousness. But it is of the first importance we should realize how those judgments are for the most part executed. It is not, as a rule, by the special and visible interposition of God’s hand. There have been times, indeed, as on various occasions in the history of the Jews, such as the deliverance of His people from Egypt, when God manifestly interposed, by miraculous means, to punish His enemies and to deliver His people. But for the most part, and in the general course of history, the moral and religious laws which God has established in human nature are left to work out their natural consequences, and men are punished not merely because of their sins, but by their[135] sins, and by the working out of their sins in their lives. The explanation of the chief troubles of mankind, and in particular of the wars and sufferings which have cursed the earth from generation to generation, is contained in that statement of St. James: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” When the men and women of whom a nation is composed give way to those lusts of which St. James speaks, to covetousness, jealousy, sensuality, and untruthfulness, they are gradually storing up the fuel of passions for some great conflagration, which arises in the natural course of things, as the consequence of some great public injustice into which they are betrayed. They thus rouse the indignation of other people, they commit injustices which must be resisted, and then the world is convulsed in some great war like the present.

War, in fact, is the natural penalty by[136] which, under God’s constitution of the world, the evil passions of men punish themselves. We may take an example from the physical world. The earth under our feet is held together, and affords us a sure foothold, by virtue of certain physical and chemical laws which are perpetually at work in it, such as the law of gravitation and the laws of chemical attraction. They are always working silently, and it is by means of the incessant action of those laws that the whole face of the earth is maintained from day to day. But from time to time, from some causes which we do not yet understand, something occurs to disturb their ordinary peaceful course, and then by their own natural action they produce some tremendous convulsions, like earthquakes or the eruptions of volcanoes. So it is with the moral world of national and international life. It is maintained in peace and stability, as a rule, by the principles of mutual trust and regard, if not of love, which are at the root of social and political life; but if falsehood and jealousy and covetousness accumulate in some part of the world, there is sure, sooner or later, to be a terrible convulsion and a[137] devastating eruption of “blood and fire and vapour of smoke.” War is thus the outburst, the visible embodiment, of the passions behind it, of the accumulated sins which nations and generations have been indulging. We look with horror on war and all its miseries, and justly so; but what we ought to look on with more horror are the sins and wickedness and passions of which war is the inevitable result. People say that war is wrong, and of course it is wrong that there should be war; but the wrong in it is not the actual waging of the war, not at least the using of the sword, in the Name of God, to assert right against wrong; that is the bounden duty of the lawful authority. Where the wrong lies is in the passions which make the war, and which compel men to resort to so terrible a vindication of righteousness.

Have we not, I must ask, a glaring illustration of the profound moral principles thus asserted by our Lord in the present war? The means of communication in our day enable us to realize the feelings which are at work over the face of Europe amidst this terrible convulsion;[138] and there is one fact which is appallingly conspicuous in that manifestation. That fact is the falsehood, the hatred, the violent imputations of evil motives, the overbearing ambition which are at work in the great nation—for a great nation it is—with which we are at war. As I will presently observe, I am far from acquitting ourselves of all blame in the matter. There was never a human struggle yet in which either side was perfectly free from blame; but as to the gross misrepresentations which are eagerly disseminated abroad respecting the motives and the conduct of this country, there can be no question whatever, and no adequate excuse. Whatever faults and errors we have committed, our statesmen have not been animated in the development of our Empire by greed and selfish ambition, or by a mere desire to be supreme over other nations. So far as our enemies are acting upon these ideas of our motives, they are absolutely blind; and there is nothing more terrible in the revelations which this war affords than that individuals and nations are capable of such absolute delusions, on so vast a scale, respecting one another’s motives and characters. It is[139] plain that what has made this war is a total absence of that Christian charity between individuals and nations which St. Paul inculcates as “the very bond of all virtues,” and which is therefore the bond of all society. The most heart-rending thing, after all, is not that we are at war, but that Christian nations should be capable, in their daily life and thought, of such an absolute negation of those principles of moral life and faith which our Lord came to establish among us. Our Lord here warns us that unless men repent of this uncharitable temper, and of the sins associated with it, war can never be abolished, and we shall all perish in some fearful conflagration. At present the conflagration, like the tower in Siloam, has wrought its destruction mainly upon others than ourselves. A modern despot, indignant, like Pilate, at opposition to the claims of his nation, has mingled the blood of Belgian men and women and children with their sacrifices, with their ruined churches and desolated homes. But it is certainly not because a people like the brave Belgians were sinners above all men that dwelt in Europe[140] that they have thus suffered. “I tell you, Nay,” our Lord’s Voice is heard in this text; “but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Look to yourselves; ask yourselves whether there are or have been sins prevailing among you which, under the laws of God’s righteousness, must work out their evil consequence in your social and national life; and repent, lest ye likewise perish.

It is impossible, in dealing with this subject, not to express, as I have done, a deep indignation at the motives and the spirit which have been displayed by our enemies in this war. But we should miss the whole purpose of our Lord’s warning unless we applied it in the first instance, and in the main, to ourselves. Let us bear in mind that what has happened in Belgium and France might in conceivable circumstances, in the further development of scientific warfare, in the air as well as in the sea, happen to ourselves; and let us take to heart the clear warning of our Lord that the only way to avert such destructions, and to avoid perishing ourselves, is to repent, and from our hearts to cultivate among us those principles of[141] charity, truth, righteousness and religion, which alone can keep human nature in peace.

After all, can we be sure that we are not partly to blame for this war by our own faults and failures? Have our statesmen, have we as a nation, been looking facts in the face and meeting them with faithfulness and self-sacrifice? Do not many among us ask whether this war would ever have been possible if we had realized our danger and our duty in time, and prepared ourselves, at whatever cost, to avert the danger? How far have we, and those who guide us, allowed ourselves to be diverted from the truth of our condition by sectarian and party passions and uncharitable class jealousies? Have we seriously laid to heart “the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions?” Is it compatible with the love of God and of Christ that those divisions should prevail so far as to lead to the curtailment of the Christian instruction of our school-children, and the secularization of property left by our ancestors for the hallowing of God’s Name and the promotion of Christ’s Kingdom? We have, moreover, been on the verge of civil war; and the[142] very possibility of such war is proof enough, on the principles we have been considering, that some of the passions which lead to all wars have been rife among us. The possibility of that intestine war seems, in fact, to have been one of the considerations which encouraged the present attack upon us. Add to all this the social and personal vices, against which good men among us and great societies have been struggling for years, and have we not abundant reason to apply earnestly to our nation and to our individual selves the Lord’s warning: “Repent, or ye shall likewise perish?” For my part, I could wish that we were afforded an opportunity, by some solemn appointment of a Day of National Humiliation as well as Intercession, to search our consciences in the sight of God, and to unite in one great act of national repentance. But let us at least endeavour to discharge this duty of repentance and amendment for our own souls and in our individual lives; and we may then be assured that we are doing the best we can towards averting from our nation that suffering and ruin, which are brought so closely home to us in the miseries of our Allies.

[143]

The Righteous Ideal.

AT CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY, 1915.

It is with the utmost appropriateness that this psalm is placed first in the Psalter, for it expresses the spirit which underlies all other psalms, and, in fact, the whole of the Scriptures. Its message lies, indeed, at the root of the religion of the Old Testament, and of the New Testament also. Let us notice, in the first place, that its opening word—the word “blessed”—is the keynote of the Scriptures from first to last. In the first chapter of Genesis, which we have read this morning, we read, not only that God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good; but more particularly, that when God made man He blessed them, and gave them a special commission. He placed[144] them in the Garden of Eden, in which He made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the Tree of Life also in the midst of the Garden. He blessed them, and intended them to be blessed; and He gave them a command which they had only to obey in order to enjoy that blessing. Man forfeited the blessing by disobeying the command; but the last chapter of the Bible, which we have read this evening, describes the recovery of it by those who have faithfully served Him. It describes a day when there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in the new Garden of the Tree of Life. “The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” Thus the Bible holds out, from beginning to end, the prospect of blessedness, or perfect happiness, as that which God designs for men, and which will be ultimately[145] bestowed upon His faithful servants. Between the beginning and the end, in the midst of this great dispensation, when our Lord appeared with His new covenant, His message is described as a Gospel, as “good tidings of great joy,” and the first word He utters in that great Sermon on the Mount, which contains his special teaching, is this characteristic word “blessed.” He repeats it again and again, “Blessed be ye poor.... Blessed are ye that hunger now.... Blessed are ye that weep.” The promise of blessing is thus the keynote of our Saviour’s message.

Now this characteristic of the Bible and of our Saviour’s teaching explains, and in great degree justifies, the universal craving of men and women for happiness. The pursuit of happiness in one form or another is the most universal motive of human conduct. It inspires some of our best exertions, and it prompts most of our sins. The motive of our first mother, as described in the third chapter of Genesis, is still that of nearly all of us, in one way or another. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was[146] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat.” The world, the flesh, and the devil are perpetually offering men fruits of this kind, and the craving for the happiness they promise is so great that men and women seize them, in spite of the knowledge they have in their consciences that to do so is wrong and against the will of God. In daily life we find that different fruits—forbidden fruits—appeal to different classes of men and women, but they are all liable to be attracted by some fruit or other and to be possessed by some “ruling passion.” It is striking, moreover, to look at the course of history, and observe how different fruits, different ideals, have attracted the various nations of the world. To the Greek the attraction was that of beauty and art, and their temptation was to give themselves up to the pleasures which those ideals could afford them, with but little moral restraint. The fruit which most attracted the Roman mind was that of rule and power. The passion, indeed, for creating great empires has been one of the strongest in mankind. We see it in full strength in the great[147] Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and, unhappily, we see it in full force in a great nation of the present day. These pleasures and glories have accordingly been the subject of a vast amount of human literature—poetry, and history, and song.

But the characteristic of the people of Israel, and of Jewish literature, is that none of these ideals of happiness, whether of beauty or glory or power, have animated their best representatives. The one ideal which was always before the minds of their great prophets, and poets, and teachers was the ideal of righteousness, the ideal of the law of God, which is the subject of this first Psalm. The truth, with which the Book of Genesis opens, that God has given a law to men, that He has declared His will to them, and given them statutes and commandments in which that will is expressed—this is the supreme thought in the mind of the Jewish Psalmist or prophet, and, in spite of all their faults, of the Jewish nation as a whole. Psalm cxix. is, perhaps, the fullest expression of this conviction and passion. That psalm is one long variation of its opening verse, “Blessed are they that are undefiled in[148] the way, and walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep His testimonies, and seek Him with their whole heart.” “O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” “How sweet are Thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through Thy precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way.” You will see that these phrases express a positive passion in the mind of the Psalmist for the law of God—as strong a passion at least, or even stronger, than the passions of some men for the pleasures of sense, and of others for the pleasures of ambition and worldly success. “I opened my mouth,” says the Psalmist, “and drew in my breath, for my delight was in Thy commandments.” The whole frame of the man, his body as well as his mind, is absorbed in this passion for the law of God. The Jew craves for blessing, or for happiness, as much as the Greek or the Roman, but he seeks that blessing in the knowledge and obedience of the law of God. He knows it is to be found in the way of righteousness and nowhere else. Thus the first Psalm is a fitting introduction to all the rest. “His delight,[149]” it says, “is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the waterside, that will bring forth his fruit in due season. His leaf also shall not wither; and look, whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper.” This psalm, in short, embodies the very essence of the belief of the true Jew, which is that the law of God and the righteousness of God are the one source of all happiness and blessedness, and that the highest privilege of men and women is to give themselves up, body and soul, to the pursuit of the happiness which is there to be found.

I think we shall all recognize that the tendency of men and women is, for the most part, too different from this. They may wish to do right and to avoid wrong, but it is comparatively rare for the supreme passion of their lives to be the pursuit of righteousness, and for the supreme love of their lives to be for the law of God. Is it not our general tendency to pursue our own objects, to seek enjoyment, and happiness, and success in our own ways, and to regard the law of God, and the principles of righteousness, as a controlling[150] power, an external authority, which checks us when we are in danger of going wrong and so far guides us? but the love of it, and the longing for obedience to it, is too rarely the main motive of our lives. That is the characteristic of those whom we regard as Saints, but it is not, I fear, the characteristic of the mass of men and women. This, however, is the ideal put before us, throughout the Scriptures, as that which ought to be predominant in our hearts and lives. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” says Moses, “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” “This,” said our Lord, “is the great commandment.” “Blessed,” according to this Psalm, “is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” It is not enough for such a man not to do wrong; his whole soul is absorbed in the passion for doing what is right. He believes that the law of God has set before him a great ideal, a vision of the perfection of human nature; and his great craving is to realize that ideal and to be what God intended him to be. He knows that all blessing is to be found in that law and in[151] those visions of perfection, and he pursues them with his whole heart.

This spirit of the godly man is associated with another aspect of the same truth which is ever present in the Bible, and which is very imperfectly realized among men in general. We are apt to be satisfied with recognizing right and wrong as one of the many elements with which we are concerned in life. Life is a vast scene of innumerable passions, and interests, and pleasures, and schemes—personal, social, political, and imperial; and nearly all of us recognize, no doubt, that right and wrong, righteousness and justice, have a momentous place among these various energies and interests; but in the light of the Bible, and in the teaching of our Lord, that is a very imperfect view to take of their position. There, right and wrong, righteousness and justice, are supreme over all other interests; they are the foundation on which the whole edifice of life is built up; or they are, as it were, the very cement by which the whole is held together. As the history of the Jewish people is told in the Bible, every event in their career is shown to turn on[152] the question of their righteousness or wickedness. God’s one object is to educate them to be a righteous nation, to keep His commandments, and statutes, and judgments, so that they may realize His great design for them. They suffer punishment, such as invasion by enemies, or captivity by Assyria or Rome, not merely because of the ambition of those nations, and of their own comparative weakness, but because they were becoming faithless to the law of God, and not living for His honour and glory. All that the world, and the worldly historian, might see of them was that they had provoked the Assyrian or Roman monarch by some act of self-assertion and pride, and that he avenged himself by invading and desolating their country. But the prophetical men who wrote the Books of Kings, and other historical Books of the Old Testament, went behind this immediate cause, and saw that it was by the providence of God that the people were thus punished, because they had forgotten the God of their fathers, and were ceasing to serve Him. They were inspired to see this element of righteousness, and of the law of the Lord,[153] as the most essential in the whole history, and asserting itself continually under the control of God’s providence.

I venture to think we might illustrate the matter by an example from modern science. We know now that the most important and universal force in nature is that of which one of the most familiar forms is electricity. We know that its influence in the form of light and magnetism pervades the whole of nature; we know that the very movements of our limbs, of our hands and fingers, are dependent upon it, that this is the force which animates our nerves and through them controls our whole bodies. We know that the element in which it works—the ether—pervades the whole universe, and that the light which flashes from stars hundreds of millions of miles away is due to this subtle force. And yet until less than a hundred years ago men hardly realized its existence. It was an unseen force, which worked behind all other forces, and even men of science had but a dim appreciation of it. So it was with this supreme force of righteousness, until it was brought into full light by the revelation of the prophets[154] and of our Lord and His Apostles. What they revealed to us, what the Bible is teaching in every page, what our Lord, above all, impresses on us with supreme force, is that God’s righteousness is like the ethereal fluid, which is at once the illuminating agent and the motive force of all human life. It is quiet for the most part, and men hardly observe it; but on a sudden it bursts out into some great storm, like that which startled the author of Psalm xxix. “The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon many waters.” We see the flash of the lightning of righteousness, and hear the crash of its thunder. “The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness.” That is the meaning, no doubt, of a great war like the present. Some evil had been accumulating, some passions of ambition and greed, some failures in duty, some defections from truth, faults of one kind in one nation, and sad failures of duty in another, and, on a sudden, some spark lights an explosion, and the whole world is ablaze with flames of fire. So it is also in our[155] private lives. We may go on for a long time yielding to weaknesses, or even sins, and righteousness may seem to be silent, the voice of conscience may seem to be a mere voice and not to be asserting its supremacy; but, on a sudden, or after a long and gradual accumulation of wrong-doing, God asserts His law, our neglect of righteousness finds us out, and God’s justice is vindicated upon us.

These considerations ought to lead to a deeper devotion to those principles of right and wrong, and to that supreme vision of righteousness which the Bible and our Lord and His Apostles impress upon us; but I would add that it is the great message we should take home to ourselves, not merely in our individual lives, but in our national life. We see before us a great nation, endowed with some of the highest capacities of human nature, allowing itself to be absorbed more and more, year by year, by a great passion for power and dominion and supremacy in the world. This passion has taken such hold on it that it thinks itself justified in over-riding and defying the laws of truth and justice and mercy, even in the imperfect[156] form in which they have been formally recognized in the law of nations. Everything, we are told, must yield to the demands of a nation which believes that a certain supremacy in the world is necessary for it. The consequence is that the air has to be cleared by this awful outburst of national thunder and lightning. But let us apply the danger and the lesson to ourselves. What is our own ideal as a nation and as an empire? Perhaps we too have been in danger of being fascinated too much by that vision of empire. It is a legitimate ideal when applied to right purposes, and subject to the right control; but those purposes must be those of Divine righteousness, and the control is the control of the law of God. If we make it the main object of every power with which God has entrusted us to promote His laws, to support and to spread further the Kingdom of His Christ, to do righteousness and justice in the world, so far as our power and influence reaches; if for that purpose we strive to ensure that all our legislation, and all our imperial and national action, is deliberately and constantly directed to the support and extension of[157] the law of God and of Christ, then we may hope for God’s blessing on our achievements, and may trust to be preserved from those perversions of national spirit, and from that military and arbitrary passion, against which we have at this moment to maintain so desperate a struggle. Let us strive after this great object, alike in ourselves, in our country, and throughout our Empire, and then we may hope that as a nation we may be, in the Psalmist’s words, “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season,” and that whatsoever we do may prosper. In a word, as a nation no less than as individuals, let our delight be in the law of the Lord, and in His law let us meditate day and night.

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Reasons For Intercession.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL: DAY OF SPECIAL INTERCESSION FOR THE WAR, JUNE 17, 1915.

We are come here this evening to offer our earnest prayers and supplications to God for His help in this grievous and dangerous crisis of our national life, to entreat Him to grant the victory to our King and his Allies, and to deliver our nation, our Empire, and the world from the violence and oppression with which they are threatened by the enemy. In order that we may do so aright, it is necessary we should realize distinctly what is God’s special concern with the war, and what is our own relation to Him in respect to it. Now, the one supreme truth which I would urge upon you this evening is that the war, as a whole—its origin, its course, its end, and its purpose—is in the hands of God, and that we must look to Him,[159] and to Him alone, for our guidance in it, and our deliverance from it. I fear we are too much disposed to think of the natural causes of the war, of the natural means we have of conducting it, and of the human and physical forces which are engaged in it; while we think of God as standing outside the struggle, and appeal to Him to interfere in it, as we might appeal to some great human power, in our extremity. We are too much disposed to act and think as if the result depended entirely on the number of men we can put in the field, upon the munitions of war we can obtain, the guns and the shells and the other physical means we can bring into action. It is true that these thing—men and the munitions of war—are the indispensable instruments of success and victory. Even in times when God interfered miraculously, He required His people, as under Joshua and David, to put forth their full strength, and to make the utmost sacrifices for their cause. But the main lesson which is inculcated in the Scriptures respecting war is that it is one of God’s great agencies for carrying out His will and accomplishing His own[160] purposes, and that its issue is in all cases absolutely in His hands. It is He Who permits war; it is He Who in the exercise of His righteous judgment, occasions war; it is He Who alone can determine the issue of war; and it is His purposes, and not ours, which are brought to pass by war.

If, in fact, we would apprehend our position and the position of our Empire and of Europe in this war, we must in spirit see God upon His throne, permitting by His judgment the fierce passions of war to break forth, and controlling the whole course of the tremendous storms they involve by His justice and His will. As the Psalmist says, “The Lord reigneth, be the people never so impatient, He sitteth between the Cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet.” Or, again, “The Lord is King, the earth may be glad thereof; yea, the multitude of the isles may be glad thereof: Clouds and darkness are round about Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat. There shall go a fire before Him and burn up His enemies on every side. His lightnings gave shine unto the world: the earth saw[161] it and was afraid.” That might be taken for a picture of war with the thunders and lightnings of its “red artillery.” Let us, if we would turn this occasion to due account, look up for a while from the human thunders and lightnings by which the earth and sea are now shaken; let us raise our eyes and our hearts to the Psalmist’s vision of God sitting on His throne, above all these earthly and human struggles and sufferings, and though clouds and darkness are round about Him, yet controlling them by His righteous judgment.

Let us look into this general consideration a little more particularly. War is the result of human passion, human error, and human sin. If only men were unselfish, wise, and true, there would be no occasion for the struggles from which it springs; but instead of that they are covetous, foolish, and blind, and God has so constituted mankind that the ultimate appeal of these passions and follies must be made to force; and in the ordinary course of His providence He leaves them to make that appeal. He lets their passions work themselves out to their natural results, and so[162] bring their own punishment upon themselves. If, indeed, men sought His guidance and grace in all humility and earnestness before war broke out, we may be confident He would guide and control them; but the very danger of their pride and their passion is that it makes them forget Him, and then He suffers them to find their need of Him by leaving them to bear the consequences. But when those consequences have broken out into war, they are then, in the most absolute degree, subject to His over-ruling hand. It is an essential characteristic of war that it sets forces loose which are beyond calculation, and beyond human control. Ordinary ways of action are suspended, and we become subject to the most unexpected and most incalculable influences. We are beginning to see it ourselves in the present war. We are forced to resort to public measures which all confess to be absolutely unprecedented; and the whole world, old and new, is immersed in dangers and disorders never before dreamed of. But when men and nations are in this tumult and disorder and blindness, then they realize, as they too often fail to do in quiet[163] times, that they are absolutely dependent on God. He has at His command infinite natural and spiritual forces by which the result of a war or a battle can be determined. As in the famous battle of Joshua, or in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in our own history, storms and tempests, or a mere turn in the weather, or it may be added, the invisible interposition of some angelic agent, may defeat all human schemes and determine the issue of a battle, and, through a battle, the fate of an Empire. Of great commanders, moreover, no less than of kings, the words of our Collect are true, that their hearts are in God’s rule and governance, and that He disposes and turns them as it seems best to His godly wisdom.

The message of the Bible, in fact, from first to last, the message of Jewish history, and the message of the Psalms, is that God is in a pre-eminent degree the “Lord of war,” with Whom it lies to bring on men the judgment of war, to control war, and to make wars to cease. “O come hither,” says the Psalm of my text, “behold the works of the Lord, what destruction He hath brought upon the[164] earth. He maketh wars to cease in all the world, he breaketh the bow, and knappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the chariots in the fire. Be still, then, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen and I will be exalted in the earth.” Or, as it is expressed in another Psalm, “There is no king that can be saved by the multitude of an host, neither is any mighty man delivered by much strength. A horse is counted but a vain thing to save a man, neither shall he deliver any man by his great strength. Behold the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear Him, upon them that put their trust in His mercy.” Or, once more, “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what Thou hast done in their time of old; How Thou hast driven out the heathen with Thy hand, and planted them in; how Thou hast destroyed the nations and cast them out. For they gat not the land in possession through their own sword; neither was it their own arm that helped them; but Thy right hand and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.”

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The first conviction, then, with which we should come before God to-day is that, although the utmost efforts on our part are required, still, when we have used the last ounce of our strength, and made the last sacrifice of life and limb, we are absolutely dependent for the issue upon the will, the power, and the over-ruling providence of God. We are bound to fall at His feet as His helpless creatures, absolutely dependent on His hand. We are bound to recognize that the wealth and power we enjoy, the great position which this Empire occupies in the world, have been gifts from Him, and that we gat not this possession by our own sword; neither was it our own arm that helped us; but God’s right hand and God’s arm, and the light of His countenance, because He had a favour towards us, for some great purposes of His own.

But what were those purposes? If we feel that we are thus the instruments of God’s hand, to be used as He pleases, we must needs ask, with anxious earnestness, What are His great purposes? and can we know whether we are acting in accordance with them? We know that we are[166] not in the hands of an arbitrary power or an unreasoning will. We know that whatever God does is done with reason and justice and love. Here, again, it is our privilege to have revealed to us, in God’s Word, the great purposes for which He is working. His methods and His ways of carrying His purposes out are beyond our comprehension, but He has graciously told us what those purposes are. Their great object is the manifestation of His glory, His truth, His love, to be the light, the salvation, the infinite happiness of man. That was the object of the whole of His work in establishing the people of Israel in their land, in protecting them, in bringing punishments upon them, in delivering them from their enemies, or allowing them to fall into captivity. By means of them—through their history, their Prophets, their Psalmists, and their Kings—He made known that grand revelation of Himself which is recorded in our Bibles. All these acts were done, and their memory is preserved, in order that all the world might see and learn that in knowledge of Him, in obedience to Him, in love to Him and prayer to Him, is life and health, in[167] body and soul, in this world and in the next. Let us be assured that that remains His purpose, and the guiding rule of His providence, throughout all history, and in our own, to the present day. If God has given us wealth, and strength, and prosperity, and imperial power, we may be sure that it is in order that we may be His instruments for the spread of His Kingdom, for bringing the knowledge of Christ and of Christ’s salvation to the ends of the earth, that the love of Christ, the example of Christ, the law of Christ may be established throughout the world. Do not let us suppose that there is any other object whatever in God’s dispensations. The manifestation of God in Christ, and the bringing of all human souls, all human life, into harmony with it, into the full enjoyment of it, and consequently into perfect obedience to His will—this is the end of all the struggles, of all the wars, of all the sufferings of mankind, mysterious as they are, and utterly baffling to our feeble apprehension.

There is surely an infinite comfort in realizing this great revelation. If we grasp the assurance that this is the sure and[168] certain end of God’s dispensations, we can bear with patience, and even with thankfulness, the sufferings and sorrows through which they are worked out. While we bitterly mourn the loss of those who are sacrificed in such a war as this, we can feel that they have laid down their lives in the eternal battle in which Christ is the Commander, and in which we are all taking part, and that we remain one with them, and they one with us, in serving Christ and asserting the will of God.

or will be crossing soon. Only let us take care, if we are to have the reward, hereafter, of having served in this great army, that we are working, fighting, dying, and suffering bereavement, in the cause of this great Commander and in accordance with His will.

But if these are the purposes with which God has directed all history, and controls all wars, we cannot dare to come before Him, and ask for His help, unless the spirit in which we are joining in this war[169] is in harmony with His, and unless we mean, with His help, to act and fight in entire devotion to Him, and in obedience to Christ. If we fought merely to gain victory, to assert the supremacy of our Empire, to establish our superiority over other nations, we could not expect His countenance and help, and we should be affronting His Majesty and His Holiness by asking for it; but these are not our aims. They are, it appears, in the main, those of our enemy, and for that reason we may be confident that God’s face will be against them. But, so far as we are fighting for a kingdom and an Empire which acknowledges in all things the sovereignty of our Lord Jesus Christ, which endeavours to act, to govern, and to serve in accordance with His will, and which will promote and protect the spread of His Kingdom—so far as we are conscious in our consciences that that is our aim—we may confidently come before Him and appeal to Him to help us with His right hand and His holy arm. But we cannot thus serve Him and obey Him as a nation unless we obey and serve Him in our own individual lives; and when we kneel,[170] therefore, before Him to-day we are called upon to pledge ourselves, with the utmost sincerity and earnestness, to give our hearts and wills and lives up to Him in all things, with greater truth and singleness of heart than we have ever yet realized.

If we look candidly into the recent life of our nation, it must, I fear, be acknowledged that we have in many respects grievously failed in this Christian spirit. The habits of our people have in too many respects declined from the Christian standard which was set us by our forefathers in their best days. The worship and service of God and Christ have not been held so high among us as the supreme duty of life. We see it in the increasing neglect of the public worship of God, in a less general piety of life, in a growing disposition to acquiesce in standards of action which are not in all respects those of the New Testament; in the failure to look to the authority of Christ and His Apostles as the supreme rule in all the relations of life, in the relations of men and women, in the ideals of domestic and private life. We have lived too much for this life and too little for the next. We[171] have cared too much for time and too little for eternity. We shall not be able to fulfil the purposes of God for our nation and for the world unless we amend our lives in these respects, unless we humbly confess our failure before Him, and set ourselves resolutely to live more Christian lives in the future. If we kneel before Him this evening in this spirit of confession for the past, and of heartfelt devotion for the future, we may come boldly to His throne of grace; and we may be thankful to be assured that our country and our country’s cause, and the welfare of all who are dear to us, here and hereafter, are in His hands. You are invited to begin your supplication this evening with that penitential Psalm, in which David confessed from the bottom of his heart his own grievous sin, but was also inspired by God’s Holy Spirit to seek comfort and regeneration, righteousness and peace. That is the spirit in which we should approach God at all times, but especially in a time of sore trial like the present; and if we do so, we may confidently join in the concluding petition, in which the Psalmist beseeches God’s[172] blessing upon His nation. “The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise. O be favourable and gracious unto Zion; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness,” with the devoted offerings and service of a regenerated and Christian nation. God grant it, for Christ’s sake.

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The Eternal Source of Goodness.

PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, MARGATE, NOVEMBER 7, 1915.

In these words a singularly vivid picture is set before us. God is represented to us as the Sun in the Heavens, from Whom light and warmth are perpetually streaming. The text does not merely say that all good gifts come from above and that none but good gifts come from thence. It means also that those good gifts are perpetually being poured upon us, just as light and heat are perpetually flowing from the sun. But it points out one great difference between the physical sun and this Divine source of grace and glory. The sun and the other lights of the heavens which are dependent upon it are all liable to be obscured or eclipsed. They are “subject to variableness and shadow of[174] turning,” that is, to the shadows occasioned by their turning in their daily revolutions, so that daylight is succeeded by the darkness of night, and the moon waxes and wanes. But the light of the Divine glory and grace is never thus obscured from us. It is perpetually shining, and we can enjoy its blessed influence at every moment. God is the Father of Lights—the Father of Light of all kinds; and all grace and truth are perpetually proceeding from Him. “Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above,” coming down continually from “the Father of Lights with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” This is the great truth which is embodied in the beautiful words of the Collect just used, “Lord of all power and might Who art the Author and Giver of all good things.”

This is the first grand truth which is revealed to us by our Christian faith. It is involved in the revelation of God to us as our Father in Heaven, and it is impressed on us in the Sermon on the Mount, when our Lord bids us live as “the children of our Father which is in Heaven: Who maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on[175] the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” It would be well for us to realize this more fully and constantly. We see the sun in the Heavens; we are sensible of its lifegiving influences day by day; but we do not always have so vividly before us the Supreme Sun of the spiritual Heavens, and we are tempted to live without the constant realization of His presence. There are, indeed, experiences which are a great trial to our faith in this constant Presence, and which even make men and women ask themselves in perplexity whether there can be, in reality, any such perpetually Divine source of all good things—whether any Divine Power is really at all times pouring the best blessing upon mankind. What is the meaning, for instance, many anxious hearts have asked themselves at a time like this—what is the meaning and the explanation of such fearful miseries as the world is now suffering through the present war? Can it be a God from Whom all good things are perpetually coming Who permits half the world to fall into such distresses and agonies as we have heard of lately, and are daily hearing? The evil[176] in the world has at all times been a perplexity to faith, and when manifested on such a tremendous scale, when it rises before us in the monstrous form of an awful war, the question presses upon our hearts and minds with painful force. But the privilege of the Christian is to maintain through all these distresses the proclamation that the love of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God, the blessing of God are still at work, notwithstanding the clouds with which they seem obscured. Clouds and darkness may be round about Him, but righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne.

The general explanation of this great mystery is that these sufferings are the means by which God asserts the supremacy of righteousness and truth. He has so ordered the world that unrighteousness, ungodliness, untruth, immorality of all kinds inevitably punish themselves by leading to appeals to force, and so provoke the wars and fightings of which St. James speaks in this Epistle. “From whence,” he says, “come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts, that war in your members? Ye[177] lust and have not; ye kill, and desire to have and cannot obtain”—can there be a truer description, in brief, of the origin of the present war? These are God’s judgments, in which He so orders the world that nations and individuals punish themselves for their indulgence in covetous and unbridled passions. They will not submit to be checked by conscience or by reason, and therefore God leaves them to the natural consequences of their mutual lusts and violences. In fact, the miseries of war are a conspicuous instance of the great truth that good things are always coming from God. Vengeance for evil is a good thing; and the punishment, even the bitter punishment, of selfishness, whether in individuals or in national life, the severest punishments of covetousness, arrogance, forgetfulness of God, disobedience to Christ—these punishments are good things; and if God is chastising Europe for such sins, and ourselves in no small measure, He is doing it at once in judgment and in mercy. It is a warning to every nation, and to every man and woman, to consider in what respect they have been failing in their duty to God and[178] to Christ, to their neighbour, and even to themselves, and to pray God to open their eyes and enable them to repent and amend. What we see before us in a convulsion like this, is the outburst of the lightnings and thunders of righteous judgment, and if it brings men to their knees in penitence and amendment of life, it may prove one of God’s greatest blessings to the world.

We may understand this the better if we consider, more particularly, the means by which God is always pouring upon the world those blessed influences of goodness and righteousness of which the text and the Collect speak. They tell us that He is like the sun in the heavens pouring His bright beams upon us and the world at large. Where is that Sun? It is in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, in all His words and deeds, and in those Scriptures which, as He said, testify of Him. The answer is contained in the truth that “God, Who, at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers, by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, Who is the brightness of His glory and the[179] express image of His Person.” “No man,” we are told, “hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” He declares Him in various ways. In the first place, the grace and truth and glory of God are seen in the Face of Jesus Christ, in His life as recorded in the Gospels, and in His words. “He that hath seen me,” said our Saviour Himself, “hath seen the Father.” It is God Himself Who is seen in every act and word of Jesus Christ, and if we want to know God, to realize His character and His will, we have only to study the life and words of our Lord, and we see it all in vivid human features. God in Christ is as visible to the eyes of our hearts and minds as the sun in the heavens. As the physical sun is visible to every human eye, so the sun of the spiritual world—God Himself—is visible to every human mind in the person of our Lord. This comparison is as old as the Psalms. “The heavens,” says the 19th Psalm, “declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork,” and then it proceeds, “the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, the testimony[180] of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” The law of the Lord of which the Psalmist spoke was that revelation of the Will of God which was given to the Jews at sundry times and in divers manners, and is recorded in the ancient Scriptures. But that law is now summed up, explained, enlarged, and perfected in the face of Jesus Christ, and in His words. In Him is God to be seen. In Him is the source of the highest moral and spiritual goodness.

The Collect goes on to pray “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness.” The Name of God means the character of God, and if we are to love character we must see it, and we can see it in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. If you wish to love God, you must learn to love Jesus Christ. To love God is to love righteousness, truth, and goodness, and in Jesus Christ we see them in life and in human reality. Righteousness, goodness, truth, purity, grace, may be loved, indeed, in the abstract; but the love for them must be infinitely deepened if we see them concentrated in a living person, so that the love of them is identified with the love[181] of Him. If, in fact, we would keep the love of these great things alive in our hearts, if we would continually deepen it, if we would have the eyes of our minds and hearts opened more and more, the supreme necessity is that we should learn more and more of Jesus Christ, live with Him by constant study of His deeds and words, and so open our souls to the impress of His grace and truth. The history of the world since He lived and died is the sufficient proof of this fact. The Christian Church, which is charged with the duty and the privilege of living in His spirit and working in His name, has, notwithstanding many failures and faults, held up before the world the highest standard of goodness and truth. There is no more conspicuous illustration of this influence of Christ and His Church than the fact that the noble Societies which, by their devoted care of the wounded, now mitigate the horrors of war, are called “Red Cross” Societies, and were founded and maintained in obedience to the spirit of Christ. Since Christ came, it is through Him that all these good things do come, and if we would enjoy them we must live and work in His light.

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But this is far from being the sole means by which Christ is the source of all good things. He promised His disciples before He died, that He would send the Holy Spirit into the world Who should bring to their remembrance all things that He had told them, and should be to them and to their followers an adviser and comforter, such as He had Himself been while He was with them—Who should convince them of sin, of righteousness and judgment—teach them, that is, what sin is, and what righteousness is, and bring home to them the nature of the judgment of God. He formed them into a Society, to be a perpetual witness of Him to the world; and He established two ceremonies (which we call Sacraments) to be a perpetual pledge to His followers of His love and of His grace, and to be a special means by which that grace should be bestowed on them; so that the source of this Divine illumination and bounty is not merely Christ in the past, in His life on earth, as we read of Him in the words of the New Testament, but Christ living and working in His Church by means of those words, and by means of the Sacraments which testify of them and[183] bring them home to every individual soul. The words of Christ and the Sacraments of Christ are means which can be seen and handled, by which the grace of God is manifested and conveyed to us.

Moreover, He has told us, as I have mentioned, that the Old Testament throughout, the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, speak of Him, reveal His character and His Will. To the Jews, who had only the Old Testament, He said, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me.” Combined, these are the visible, tangible, and audible instruments by which the “Lord of all power and might, the Author and Giver of all good things,” shines into our hearts and speaks to our inmost souls. There are, indeed, and always have been, other influences in the world by which goodness and truth are impressed upon us; and there are, and always have been, many gracious human influences by which they are upheld in our hearts and in the world at large; but these are all imperfect, and liable to perversion, in comparison with the influence of Jesus Christ and His Church and the[184] Holy Scriptures; and we can never be sure of their being kept true and unperverted, except so far as they are brought to the test, and subjected to the influences, through the Person of Jesus Christ and of His words in the Holy Scriptures, of that Lord of all power and might from whom all good things do come.

These considerations may help to explain to us the source of the evils which have plunged Europe into its present convulsions and they will be the best guide to ourselves for our own action in the present and the future. It is, unhappily, an unquestionable matter of fact that a great part of Europe, and especially of Germany, has lost sight for a generation or two of that Sun of Righteousness, Who is the Author and Giver of all good things. They have rejected the authority of Christ, and denied the Divine reality of the revelation of God’s will in the Old Testament. The consequence is that they have deprived themselves of the influences of that Divine light, and have been setting up standards of right and wrong in national and individual life, which are inconsistent with it. Some of the best instincts of a[185] strong and manly nation have consequently been perverted. National ideals have been pursued which are inconsistent with Christian civilization, and men have been driven by these perverted instincts and passions into the hell of war. We may be sure that Europe will not again enjoy permanent peace until, by the merciful correction of that Lord from Whom all good things do come, the love of His Name has again been grafted in their hearts, and the true religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ revived and increased.

But it becomes us to apply to ourselves, very seriously, the same considerations. Must we not admit that among ourselves also a similar disregard of the only source from Whom all good things do come has been sadly and increasingly prevalent of late years, and perhaps for a generation or two past? What is the meaning of the acknowledged falling off in attendance at Divine Worship, of the increasing disuse of family Prayers, and of the daily reading of Scripture in the family, and of the less distinctively Christian tone of much of our literature and of our stage? Let us[186] put it to our own consciences whether we live, as we ought, in the constant sense that it is only in the word of God and of Christ, as contained in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, in constant subjection to His word and to the influences of His Spirit, that we can be sure of finding the true light to our paths, and a rod and a staff to comfort us amidst the temptations and perplexities of the world? Do we live under the constant influences of the Scriptures, and of the ordinances and Sacraments of Christ? If not, it can only be because we do not believe the blessed assurances of this text, and of our Church’s Collect. Unless men and women are blinded for the time by the influence of some strong passions, or of some perverted teaching, could they fail to submit themselves day by day to the Lord, from Whom all good things do come, so that those good and gracious things may sink more and more deeply into their souls, mould their characters, and guide them more and more into the way that leadeth to everlasting life? Men will travel far to sunny lands for the healing influences of this world’s sun upon their bodily health.[187] Can they fail, if they realize the blessing offered them day by day, to seek the companionship of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father, for the sake of their spiritual health in this world and in the next?

Let us then, in the first place, be led back by these present trials and agonies to the only source of all truth and light for this world and the next, to the words which God spake “in sundry times and in divers manners,” in ages past, and above all, to those which He spake by His Son, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His Person; and if we feel their supreme preciousness for ourselves, let us do everything in our power to promote and spread those sacred words and that divine light throughout the world, as you are asked to help in doing this morning. Here lies the only hope for ourselves, the only hope for our people at large, for our nation and empire. Let us henceforth join with a new earnestness in the prayer of the Collect: “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of Thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

[188]

The National Ideal.

PREACHED IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, JANUARY 3rd, 1915.

We have been summoned this evening by our King and by the Chief Pastor of our Church, to a Service of humble prayer and intercession to Almighty God on behalf of our Nation and Empire now engaged in war; and in the Form of Humble Prayer in which we have just joined there is an exhortation explaining and urging upon us the spirit in which that intercession should be made. In addressing you this evening I would draw special attention to one point in that exhortation. Before all else, we are told, we must remember that those who would receive good at the hands of God must go to Him in humility, with a due sense of their many faults and continual short-comings[189] in His sight. In other words, a humble prayer must be before all else a prayer of humiliation. It is a principle which is impressed upon us every day in the Exhortation at the beginning of our prayers. “The Scripture,” we are told, “moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickednesses; and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our Heavenly Father; but confess them with a humble, lowly, penitent and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy,” and we are surely bound, on an occasion like this, to take to heart the words which follow, viz., that “although we ought at all times humbly to acknowledge our sins before God: yet ought we most chiefly so to do, when we assemble and meet together” as we do to-day, to implore His special mercy in the greatest crisis which our nation and Empire has ever had to encounter. If every morning and evening ought to waken in us a humble, lowly, and penitent confession of our sins, surely an hour when, as a whole Nation, we are seeking[190] God’s merciful and gracious help calls for still deeper and humbler confession of our sins.

There has been, I fear, some reluctance among us to yield ourselves to this penitent humiliation, and it will be well therefore to remind ourselves a little of the reasons there are for it. Now the first and most patent of all the reasons why we should recognize our sins and wickedness is the bare and ghastly fact of this war in itself. We are all distressed and grieved by it, and are all saying what a horrible thing it is that war—and such a war—should be possible in a Christian Europe. But what we should first of all realize is that it is a horrible exhibition of the sin and wickedness of human nature. Just contrast what Europe was a few months ago with the scenes that are now exhibited in Belgium, France, and Poland. A few months ago, Europe was a prosperous country, full of wealth, comfort, and enjoyment of all kinds. Its many millions were engaged in quiet occupations which employed their energies happily. “They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded.” Fathers and[191] mothers and children, families young and old, cities and villages were in the enjoyment of plenty, and full of hope for the future. God had prospered them, and there was much hope that the wants and sufferings which were still the lot of too many among them might be gradually removed by benevolent legislation and mutual help; but, on a sudden, at a few days’ notice, this scene of happiness, and hope, and well-being is overthrown as if by an earthquake. Some parts of it are overwhelmed by “blood and fire and vapour of smoke,” and the whole of it, from the extreme west of our Isles to the East of Russia, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean is transformed into a vast Barracks, in which sons and fathers are torn from their families, leaving behind them too often the lamentation and mourning of wives and mothers, weeping for those who are not. The language of the prophet is not too strong for the occasion “The land was a Garden of Eden and is become a desolate wilderness.” I ask you, is not such a sudden and disastrous transformation the most clear proof we could have of some deadly evil being at work in human nature?[192] What else, but some deadly, inherent evil could in a few weeks or days blot out all peace in Europe and let loose a sort of hell in human society and human life. We were proud of the growth of civilization, and were constructing all sorts of schemes of social and political development, when, on a sudden, our civilization explodes, and we find ourselves surrounded by its wrecks in fire, and ruin, and carnage, and hatred, and violence of all kinds. All this explosive force of evil must have been there. There must have been corruptions, and sins, and vices at work which we did not surmise; and fair as the life of Europe seemed outside, it must really have been in some respects rotten to the core. This war has not been imposed upon Europe from without, as it was when the great barbarian invaders poured over it fourteen hundred years ago. All this horror, and misery, and bloodshed, and ruin has sprung out of the materials—out of the civilized materials—provided by Europe itself, and it must be some internal disease, some original vice and corruption which is revealed to us in the ghastly spectacle which is now presented by so large a[193] part of the most favoured lands of the world.

Some one perhaps may be tempted to say that this indictment applies to the countries which have provoked this war, but not to Europe at large; but that, I am sure, would be, if not unjust to those countries, at least not candid with respect to ourselves. Is it not the case that, to an increasing extent of late years, the civilization of Europe has been united, and marked in the main by similar characteristics? Have not the literature and many of the ideas of Germany penetrated the literature and the thought of France and England? Has there been conspicuous among us any protest against the habits of thought, the tendencies of religious belief or unbelief, the luxuries if not the waste of living, which have prevailed elsewhere? If the life and civilization of Europe has ended in this great catastrophe, can we honestly stand aside and claim to be free of all blame, and to have had no share in the tendencies and evils which have produced so horrible a result? We shrink from them in their full development, we denounce them, we resolve to fight against them[194] to the last, and to re-establish sounder and more Christian principles of public and social life, but dare we say that we have not dallied with them? Can we honestly claim to have repudiated them at their source, so as to be free from any part or lot in sins and errors which have led to so hideous a result? I will not try to drive such painful questions further home. I will only say that if we are honest with ourselves, we shall not venture to adopt the Pharisee’s attitude and exclaim, on a day like this, “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, or even as this German.” In a word, we have had some share, at all events, in the tone of thought and life which has prevailed in Europe for the last two generations, and we shall be more true to God and to ourselves if we are content, on this day of humble confession and intercession, simply to exclaim “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

But confession of sin should be but the first step to amendment of life, and for the purpose of that amendment we must endeavour to realize more particularly what the sins are, which in God’s righteous judgment have brought this misery upon[195] us. Many of them we have acknowledged in the Litany in which we have joined. We have prayed for deliverance from those sins wherein as a nation we have grieved God. We have confessed to pride, boasting, and self-sufficiency, to covetousness, worldliness, and indifference to the needs of others, to drunkenness, impurity, and all manner of self-indulgence, to trusting in our own strength and forgetting God, to want of faith in God, to want of love to Him and to one another, to a want of charity towards all men. These are the sins charged upon us by the chief pastors of our Church, and they constitute surely a grievous catalogue of vices, sufficient in themselves to account for the failure of the civilization of which we form a part, and to require us to humiliate ourselves very deeply before God. We are called upon by the Archbishops not merely to pray, as we do in our daily Litany, against those evils, but to acknowledge that they are sins wherein, as a nation, we have grieved God. Now it must be left to our individual consciences to apply those grievous confessions to our own hearts and lives. Of some of[196] them, perhaps, we shall all acknowledge ourselves to have been guilty; and we are bound to put it earnestly to our hearts and consciences how far we have individually been guilty of them. But it is not for the preacher, who is deeply sensible of his own sins, to press such charges upon others. I would rather adopt this evening the more gracious, and, I hope, more helpful course of reminding you of the one supreme and sufficient method by which all such sins, whatever they may have been, may be overcome, and may be averted for the future.

It is the method and the obligation impressed upon us in the text by the great Law Giver of Israel when he was laying the foundation of the Jewish nation. It is instructive to remember that the discourses of Moses recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy are described as having for their first and immediate object to lay down the principles on which the Jewish people could realize the great purpose which God had in view for them, and could become a strong and prosperous nation. “These,” said Moses, in the verses following the text, “are the commandments,[197] and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: that thou mightest fear the Lord Thy God, to keep all His Statutes and His Commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear, therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily.” And then he proceeds to sum up those statutes and judgments in the momentous words which Our Lord Himself selected as the first and great commandment of the Law, “Hear O Israel,” said Moses, “The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” That, in the words of the book in which our Saviour sought the great principles of His own life, and which He quoted again and again as laying down eternal truths—that is the great principle on which a sound moral, religious, and secure national life must be founded—the principle of loving the[198] Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might. The God Whom the people of Israel were thus called on to love with all their heart, soul, and might, was the God Who had delivered them out of Egypt and its bondage, and Who was about to establish them in the land of Canaan by wonders and signs which could only have been wrought by His supreme power, and Who, in the most solemn and awful circumstances, had declared at Mount Sinai the cardinal laws of social and national life. The God to whom our Saviour applies the principle was His Own Father, the God Who is seen in His Own words and in His ministry, Whose will is so graciously explained to us in the records of His life and in the words of His Apostles, and Whose character, therefore, and will are clearly and distinctly revealed. Our Lord, when He adopted these words of Moses, declared to the whole world that in order that they may live, and that it may be well with them, and that they may prolong their days in the peace and happiness He designed for them, the one supreme condition is that they should love the God Who is His Father, with all[199] their heart, soul, mind, and strength. If they do that, if the whole of their lives is submitted to His will as revealed by His Son Jesus Christ, then they will have a supreme authority, a secure guide in their personal, their family, and their social life; and He adds to the assurance of Moses the promise of His Holy Spirit to interpret His will to them and to assist them in their struggles. That is the one and the sufficient condition for realizing here on earth the blessing of the peace which God designs for us. Life animated by that love would secure it—and that alone.

Now the one question it would be well for us to put to ourselves on this day of confession and self amendment is whether it has not been the chief wickedness, and the growing wickedness, of Europe at large, and of ourselves in particular, to fail to make this love of God, this submission to God and to Christ, the one supreme principle and inspiration of our whole life, private, social, and public. I would ask whether religion, as people generally understand it, has not been allowed to become of late years, in an increasing degree, too much of a private and personal[200] matter—a matter of individual preference, a part of a man’s character which could hardly be treated as an absolute duty, so that a man who did not live a religious life was, as it were, within his rights, and that he could not be treated as neglecting a supreme obligation? Has it not been our temptation, as a nation, to legislate without a supreme regard to this first duty, so as even to allow our children and the children of the nation to be educated without supreme regard to it? Has not attendance at Divine Worship been grievously neglected of late years as a consequence of this growing decay of the love of God? Have not the words of our Lord and His Apostles been losing the authority which they used to possess among us, and which they must possess with all who believe them to be a revelation of the supreme Will of Almighty God? As a consequence of all this, has there not been a grievous loss among us of the sense that we are all under the judgment of God, that we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, to give account of all that we have done in the body, good or bad? And has not the most momentous of all controlling[201] influences been thus grievously weakened in our own lives? It is enough for one like myself to suggest the question. It needs a prophet with a Divine Mission to drive it home.

But the concluding considerations I would urge from such a review of the condition of the Christian world, and of our own world at this moment, is that if we would overcome the sins which have undermined the peace of Europe and brought about the present awful convulsion, if we would restore and re-establish among ourselves those principles of Christian Faith which alone can make the nation great and happy, and keep it so, the one effectual means which includes all others, the one means which would at once enable us to know what we ought to do and would provide us with the grace and power to fulfil it, is to deepen in our own souls, and to revive all around us and among our people at large, that love of God in Jesus Christ which reveals to us “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,” which gives us a supreme and eternal motive for following it, and which[202] ensures us the power to overcome the terrible temptations which beset us. Let us go home from these prayers, not merely resolved to amend one particular fault, or to combat one particular evil of our day, but surrendering ourselves more absolutely than we have yet done to the will and love of God our Saviour, in all things bringing the revelation of His will, in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures, to bear more than ever on our private, social and public duties. In short, in the words of the text, let us resolve, as the supreme law of our life, to walk in the ways which the Lord our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ have commanded us, that it may be well with us, and that we may prolong our days in the country and the Empire in which His providence and His mercy have placed and supported us.

[203]

Religion and the War.

FROM “THE RECORD,” SEPTEMBER 23, 1916

The way in which this war is stirring the deepest thoughts of our people has received a striking illustration during the last three weeks in a discussion in the pages of the Westminster Gazette. In that able journal religious questions have not ordinarily so congenial a home as in the Spectator, and it is the more illustrative of the tone of the public mind that, since August 28th last, hardly a day has passed without the appearance in its columns of letters of great earnestness on the subject of “Religion and the War.” The discussion was opened on that day by an anonymous article under that title, which opened with these words: “‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ The words of the Prophet come back to me when I hear the preachers trying to reconcile the terrors and horrors of this war with the idea of an all-powerful and all-beneficent Creator”; and around the[204] difficulty thus started the whole discussion has turned. The writer says he has listened, during the last few months, to many sermons, and read many of the articles and pamphlets and books “in which Divines and Philosophers have endeavoured to plumb these deep waters,” and he states briefly the principal arguments that he has found in them. It is not necessary for the present purpose to quote them all, especially as I think the writer has been unfortunate in his pulpits and his books. Several of the pleas he quotes are mere platitudes, such as “that the ways of God are unfathomable, and that one must walk in faith and believe that things are somehow good.” The point to which he reduces the question is that under the strain of our present experience “people see suddenly that the doctrine of an omnipotent and all-loving Creator, as commonly expounded in pulpits, is at war with the plain facts of the visible world.” To this problem all the subsequent letters are directed, and they afford impressive and painful evidence of the distress with which many men and women seem to be groping in perplexity.[205] There are many striking and touching observations in them, and sometimes, as by Lord Halifax, the central principles of the Christian Faith are applied to the problem. But it is disappointing to find that it is not in the Bible or in the Christian Faith that most of the writers seek for a solution of their difficulties. Too many of them seek refuge in philosophical discussions of matters like the Divine omnipotence and the abstract problem of evil. The first writer comes to the conclusion that “theology remains tangled up in its own conception of omnipotence—which brings us at best to the conclusion that God has so limited His own power as to permit the existence of evil, and at worst invests Him with attributes which are the reverse of benevolent,” and to this philosophical question writer after writer returns. The consequence is that the light which is thrown upon the whole problem by the Scriptures and by our Lord Himself is obscured in a maze of philosophy and words.

What, then, has revelation to say upon the subject? The first thing, and the[206] most important, which it has to say is almost ignored in the discussion. As has been said, the problem propounded by the opening writer is to reconcile the terrors and horrors of this war with the idea of an “all-powerful and all-beneficent Creator.” From the point of view of the Bible, of the Psalms in particular, and of our Lord, that description of the Creator leaves out His most important attribute. If we add as the Psalms invariably imply, “an all-righteous Creator,” an element is introduced into the problem which raises entirely fresh considerations. If you merely ask the question how the pain and misery of the war are compatible with perfect beneficence and perfect omnipotence, the answer is obscure. But if you introduce the question of the compatibility of the permission of such suffering with perfect righteousness combined with benevolence, the problem is radically altered. God is dealing with a creature who is not merely capable of pain and happiness, but of a righteousness and a truth like His own; and to bestow upon this creature happiness without righteousness would be inconsistent with the main object for which[207] he was created, and such an idea would, in fact, involve a contradiction in terms. Once recognize that there is no happiness possible for man except in the harmony of his nature with the Divine righteousness, and it is evident that the main object of an all-benevolent Creator must be to produce this righteousness in man, and to repress and extirpate, by whatever means may be requisite, the evil which is incompatible with his happiness.

Now the Scriptures, from the third chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, exhibit God as employing suffering as a remedy for unrighteousness or sin. It is a punishment, but it is also a cure. It may be such suffering as is involved in the condemnation of man to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, instead of being able to “put forth his hand” and seize whatever he craved without effort. It may be the severer remedy of the punishment of death, or the bitter surgery of war. But what the Scriptures reveal is that all the suffering of life, slight or severe, is instituted by God, and employed by Him, to promote and uphold that righteousness in man which can alone[208] qualify him for that harmony with God, which is the happiness for which he was intended. The free will, whatever its degree, with which man has been endowed, must be educated by the suffering which follows its misuse, as well as by the satisfaction which is conferred by its right use. Accordingly it appears to be the cardinal fact of man’s constitution that unrighteousness throws his nature into disorder, and brings a similar disorder into his whole social condition. Families, societies, and nations can only realize their true purposes, they can only exhibit a true order, when the individuals of whom they are composed are righteous, and are thus qualified for their true functions. Let the individuals or component parts become disordered, and the whole society must be disordered, and involved in confusion and perhaps ruin. I have sometimes imagined the case of a visitor introduced to some vast machine, working under immense pressure, and being told by his guide that unfortunately every part of the machine was more or less imperfect, and some of the parts almost rotten. Would the visitor care to expose[209] himself long to the risks of the inevitable explosion? But that is exactly the case of every human society, small or great. All the individuals of which it is composed are grievously imperfect, and some of them are positively vicious. Is it any wonder that it develops antagonistic forces within itself, and that sooner or later it bursts into a great conflagration—the conflagration of a revolution or a war? God, in fact, by this constitution of mankind, has provided that unrighteousness shall punish itself. He does not intervene, as a rule, to inflict a special punishment. He leaves men to work out their own punishment, and to realize from it that there was some corruption at work in their lives.

If it be asked whether an all-powerful and all-beneficent Being could not have provided some less distressing method of education, the first reply may be that of Bishop Butler—that it is foolish for such creatures as we are to try to devise schemes for the construction of better worlds than the one we live in. But the Gospel has provided an answer which removes all temptation to such folly. It[210] reveals the momentous fact that “God, of His tender mercy, did give His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption.” There is no need to enter upon theories of the Atonement in order to appreciate the bearing of that solemn truth upon this problem. Christ, Who lived and died for our redemption, found it necessary for that purpose to submit to the sufferings of the Cross—sufferings at least as bitter as any that are inflicted in war—and He said He submitted to them because it was the will of His Father—of the God Whom He called “His Father and our Father, His God and our God”—that He should do so. It is one satisfactory feature in this discussion that the moral authority of Christ is generally recognized; but it is very little noticed, if at all, that that authority declares, both by repeated assurances, and by the most touching personal experience, that the infliction and endurance of death and agony are compatible with the most perfect relations of love and tenderness between God and the Sufferer.

Our Lord has thus given His blessed[211] personal sanction to what, after all, has been the instinctive belief of human nature, even before He lived and died. Cicero, for instance, in his De Officiis, states it more than once as a cardinal principle of human life and duty that it is more contrary to nature to do or allow unjust acts than to endure any suffering, loss, or even death. But the Cross of Christ elevates this inspiring and consoling conviction to the height of a Divine revelation and consolation; and to those who realize it, the main practical problem of the sufferings of war is solved. All such suffering is God’s remedy for moral evil, and is allowed because it is the only means by which man’s nature can be purified and renovated. From this point of view it becomes quite unnecessary to perplex ourselves with philosophical questions respecting omnipotence. When God has once established a constitution, either for nature or for human nature, He has limited His Own action by the laws of that constitution so long as it lasts. He can, indeed, interfere with it for good cause; and He has done so, both in nature and human nature, by miracle.[212] But to interpose by miracle to avert all distressing consequences of those laws would be to abolish the constitution altogether, and this He will not do until the present dispensation is brought to an end. For the present, God is governing and educating men by means of the laws which He has established, both physical and moral, and He leaves men to take the consequences of their moral violations of those laws, no less than of their physical.

The example of Christ, in His submission, should be enough to prevent any man “replying against God” for this constitution of things. The reflection which should be aroused in our minds by such “terrors and horrors” as those of this war is, on these principles, that there must have been something terribly false and vicious in the condition of the nations of Europe to produce so awful a manifestation of the consequences of evil. They are the consequences which, under the laws of human nature established by God, inevitably follow the prevalence of unrighteousness; and for that reason they are justly described in Scripture as the manifestation of “the wrath of God[213]” against evil. On the principles of the Christian Faith, in short, there is one certainty amidst all our perplexities in this matter. The war and all its miseries reveal to us the fact that great injustices and moral evils were prevalent in Europe, and the greatness of the misery may be taken as a measure of the greatness of the evil. We think we see these moral and religious evils in the state of our enemies, and particularly in the state of German life and religion. But we shall make a fatal mistake if we allow ourselves to think that all the evil and unrighteousness has been on their side. If we are candid with ourselves, we shall recognize that a disregard of God and Christ, a grievous disbelief in the revelation and the guidance they have given us, and a consequent decay of religion, and looseness of moral obligations of all kinds, have been making way among us, and have affected not only our private life, but our standards of public action. We are discovering more clearly, day by day, that if we are to meet the terrible dangers by which we are threatened, we must revive, both in public and in private, the standards of Christian[214] principle which we formally acknowledge—self-denial, self-control, truth in word and deed, the fear of God, and the love of Christ; and in proportion as we succeed in these efforts shall we find that the problems of “religion and the war” are much simpler, better understood by our fathers, and more easily grasped by ourselves, than is supposed in the discussion from which we started.

[215]

Prayer for the Dead.

FROM “THE RECORD,” NOVEMBER 20, 1914

The question of Prayers for the Dead, and particularly of the adoption of such prayers in the public services of the Church, has for some time been pressed forward among us, and under the strain of the distressing bereavements of the present war it is likely to become urgent. An attempt has more than once been made at St. Paul’s to celebrate what would have been a formal Requiem for those who have fallen; and though it has not yet been fully successful, it may very likely be renewed. In the forms issued by authority, both at the time of the Boer War and during the present war, supplications on behalf of the dead have been introduced, which provoked a gentle remonstrance from even so moderate and tolerant an Evangelical as the Bishop of Durham. Other forms will no doubt be prepared by authority for use at the national intercession on the first Sunday of next year; and in many quarters much anxiety is[216] felt lest the introduction of such supplications should be further extended.

This anxiety will not be lessened by the deliberate observations on the subject which were made by the Primate, in a sermon he preached at All Hallows, Barking, on All Souls’ Day, which is fully reported in the Guardian of November 5. He said that “we are not forgetful of the long and mischievous abuse of the devotion” of praying for the dead “in the later mediæval days, until,” as Dr. Mason said “it might almost be said that the main object of religion in the fifteenth century had been to deliver souls out of the ever-heightening horrors of Purgatory, and to ensure the living against incurring them.” “We understand,” said the Archbishop, “why repression of these mischiefs, prevention of these perils, took in our formularies and our Prayer Books so stern, so drastic, a character that no explicit Prayers for the departed at all were admitted into the public language of the Church, and people were taught to rely, in those public offices, upon that alone which can be definitely proved by Holy Scripture. I have no word of censure for those men—Laud and[217] Andrewes, remember, were among them—who thus handled the difficulties which they had to face. But,” the Archbishop significantly proceeded, “surely now there is place for a gentler recognition of the instinctive, the natural, the loyal craving of the bereaved; and the abuses of the chantry system and the extravagances of Tetzel need not now, nearly four centuries afterwards, thwart or hinder the reverent, the absolutely trustful, prayer of a wounded spirit, who feels it natural and helpful to pray for him whom we shall not greet on earth again, but who, in his Father’s loving keeping, still lives, and, as we may surely believe, still grows from strength to strength in truer purity and in deeper reverence and love. I must not dwell on that to-day, but in our thought of what our College of Clergy can do, and has already done, ‘for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,’ I do not like to pass unmentioned a task of wise teaching and of careful guidance, which at a time of such special opportunity and need may appropriately be ours.”

These, I think it must be felt, are very[218] significant words. They indicate clearly that, in the mind of the Archbishop’s advisers, the present time of bereavement and distress affords an opportunity for authorizing the use of Prayers for the Departed, which go beyond “that alone which can be definitely proved by Holy Scripture.” Now, I hope that, without any lack of respect, I may say at once that, while there are, as I believe, many members of the Evangelical School to whom some modification in the language of our Prayer Book in reference to the departed would not be unwelcome, we should be unanimous in deprecating in the strongest manner the introduction of anything beyond “that which can be definitely proved by Holy Scripture”—meaning, as no doubt the Archbishop does, that which can be proved to be conformable to Holy Scripture. Supplications which are not strictly conformable to Holy Scripture may be “natural”—too natural—“instinctive,” and prompted by a “loyal craving.” But the very place and function of Holy Scripture is to direct and control our natural and instinctive cravings; and to allow such natural and instinctive cravings to carry[219] us beyond the limits which a strict adherence to Holy Scripture would prescribe, is to abandon an essential principle of the Church of England, and to forsake the sure guidance which the revelation of the Gospel affords us.

This, in fact, is the very source of the superstitions by which the worship of God has been corrupted in the Church of Rome. There is no better illustration of this danger than is afforded by those abuses in connection with the belief in Purgatory, which the Archbishop so severely denounces. The Roman system of Prayers for the Dead did not originally rise from the doctrine of Purgatory, though in their extreme form they were based on that doctrine. But, historically, the doctrine of Purgatory was developed out of an undue and unscriptural indulgence of Prayers for the Dead; and in so far as natural instincts are allowed at the present day to dictate any such unscriptural indulgence, a tendency will again be encouraged towards a belief in some form of Purgatory. The Archbishop asks whether we need be afraid of the abuses of four centuries ago. But it is not a question[220] of the circumstances of four centuries ago; it is a question of the dangers of human nature in every century, and not least in a century like the present, when there prevails in the Church an avowed drift towards the errors against which, as the Archbishop says, even Laud and Andrewes thought it necessary to be on their guard. The condition of the departed is a matter on which nature can tell us nothing. Our whole knowledge respecting it, all our hopes respecting it, are derived from the revelations of our Lord and His Apostles in the New Testament; and if we wish our prayers in relation to the dead to be in accordance with truth, and to be acceptable to God, we have more reason on this subject than on any other “to rely in our public offices upon that alone which can be proved by Holy Scripture.”

This is so cardinal a principle of our Church that I cannot but feel confident that it is by an inadvertence, if language is used by any persons in authority which seems to imply a disregard of it. I apprehend that what it really means is that our Reformers excluded from our Prayer Book[221] forms of Prayer for the Dead which were in use in the primitive Church; and that an appeal is being made to that primitive example as an authority for their reintroduction. Now, I fully admit that primitive practice has a prima-facie claim to favourable consideration; and, as I have urged for years, if that principle were only acted upon, the Romish practices which are being forced upon our Church by the ritualistic party would be at once condemned. What, then, let us ask, were the Prayers for the Dead which were in use in the primitive Church? The description of them given by Bingham in his account of the ceremonies at the interment of Christians in the ancient Church (vol. viii., Oxford edition, p. 151) is in perfect harmony with that of Field and Ussher, and will not, I think, be questioned. At the interment, as at the Communion Service, “a solemn commemoration was made of the dead in general, and prayers offered to God for them—some Eucharistical, by way of thanksgiving for their deliverance out of this world’s afflictions, and others by way of intercession that God would receive[222] their souls to the place of rest and happiness, that He would pardon their human failures, and not impute to them the sins of daily incursion, which in the best men are remainders of natural frailty and corruption; that He would increase their happiness, and finally bring them to a perfect consummation with all His Saints by a glorious resurrection.” The spirit and purpose of these prayers is illuminated by an observation of Archbishop Ussher (Answer to a Jesuit, chapter vii): “In these and other prayers of the like kind we may descry evident footsteps of the primary intention of the Church in such supplications for the dead, which was, that the whole man, not the soul separated only, might receive public remission of sins and a solemn acquittal in the judgment of that Great Day, and so obtain a full escape from all the consequences of sin, the last enemy being now destroyed, and death swallowed up in victory, and a perfect consummation of bliss and happiness. All which are comprised in that short prayer of St. Paul for Onesiphorus, though made for him while he was alive: The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day.”

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In other words, all these prayers are for those mercies and blessings which are revealed and promised in Holy Scripture, and for them alone. They are not prayers for any alteration in the condition of the Christian soul during the mysterious period between death and the Resurrection, respecting which very various opinions have been held by the Fathers of the Church. They are simply prayers for the fulfilment, especially at the Day of the Resurrection, of those promises of justification or acquittal, and of final glory in body and soul, which are definitely given us in the New Testament. The objection has been raised that of the fulfilment of these promises we have certain assurance, and that therefore we need not pray for them. But, as Ussher and Field abundantly show, this objection is based upon a serious misconception of the nature of prayer. The ancient Church, in accordance with the whole spirit of the Scriptures, realized the privilege of receiving everything from God in the nature of a gift, and therefore prayed to Him for the very things He had most surely promised. It is in that gracious childlike spirit that these supplications for the Christian dead were made in[224] primitive Christian times; and though that spirit has become, unhappily, somewhat obscured among us, yet no one can use the petition “Thy Kingdom come” without being sensible that he is praying for a blessing which is most certain. For these prayers of the early Church, therefore, there was a full warrant in Holy Scripture, and there is no occasion to appeal to any other authority for them.

Why, then, it will be asked, should they not be used in the Church of England? The first and chief answer is that, in substance, they are used. In the Burial Service we pray “that it may please Thee shortly to accomplish the number of Thine elect and to hasten Thy kingdom that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of Thy Holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss in Thy eternal and everlasting glory.” That is a prayer in the very spirit described by Bingham and Ussher as that of the primitive Church. Nor can I interpret in any less comprehensive sense the prayer in our Communion Service, “that we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of His[225] passion.” Field’s statement (vol. ii., Cambridge edition, p. 97) is fully justified by these prayers. “Touching Prayer for the Dead, it is well known that Protestants do not simply condemn all prayer in this kind; for they pray for the Resurrection, public acquittal in the Day of Judgment, and the perfect consummation and bliss of them that rest in the Lord, and the perfecting of whatsoever is yet wanting in them.”

If, therefore, in the Revision of the Prayer Book now pending, or in official forms of intercession now under consideration, it is contemplated to add anything to the language of the Prayer Book, what we have to ask is that such additions may be kept within these scriptural and primitive limits, and may not introduce petitions which imply suppositions respecting the condition of the soul in the intermediate state, of which Scripture tells us nothing. Even the Archbishop’s language might give some encouragement to such suppositions, when he speaks of praying “for him ... who still lives and, as we may surely believe, still grows from strength to strength, in truer purity[226] and in deepened reverence and love.” Whoever believes that does so without warrant of Scripture, and prayer based on such a belief has no authority in revelation. The hope of the Christian is not that his soul will be gradually purified after death, but that, in the words of the commendatory prayer in the Service of the Visitation of the Sick, it may, in death itself, be washed in the blood of that immaculate Lamb, and presented, when it leaves the body, “pure and without spot” unto God. Prayers, in short, which have any tinge of a purgatorial view are unauthorized by Scripture, and inconsistent with a most blessed element of Evangelical hope and faith. Short of this, I could wish, for my own part, that we might imitate the purer forms of prayer in the early Church by more specific mention of the departed, as in what seems to me the beautiful expressions of the earlier Burial Service. “We commend into Thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the soul of this our brother departed, and his body we commit to the earth, beseeching Thine infinite goodness to give us grace to live in Thy fear and love, and to die in Thy[227] favour; that when the judgment shall come, which Thou hast committed to Thy wellbeloved Son, both this our brother and we may be found acceptable in Thy sight.” After all, in presence of the mysteries of death, and of the condition of those we have lost, what prayer can be more comforting than one which simply commends to our Father’s gracious hands, through our Saviour’s merits and grace, the beloved soul after which we yearn? That is a Prayer for the Dead which may be offered without scruple and without cessation, and in which we may find, day by day, and in every moment of sorrow and distress, our refuge and our consolation.

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Christ and the Soldier.

ADDRESS AT THE CHURCH PARADE, IN THE NAVE OF THE CATHEDRAL, SEPT. 27, 1914.

My brethren, when your Commanding Officer did me the honour to ask me to address you, I thought I would try to bring before you, in the simplest and briefest form, the special message which is brought by the Gospel of Christ to men in such a position as that in which you now stand—a position of great anxiety and solemn responsibility. You will meet that responsibility, of course, in the manly and cheerful spirit which has marked soldiers of great races at all times, from the Jews, Greeks, and Romans to our own days. But the Gospel of Christ has the characteristic privilege of bringing good news to human nature in all circumstances. It sheds a new and blessed light on life and all its duties, on death and all its fears, and I would fain impress on you, in one sentence[229] of our Saviour, what is the supreme blessing and guidance which it affords, especially to soldiers.

That blessing is contained in the few words of my text: Ye believe in God; believe also in Me. They are the first words of our Saviour’s address to His disciples, at the moment when they were in great trouble and anxiety, on account of His having told them that He was about to be violently taken from them. It was no ordinary trouble that they were about to encounter, but one of the greatest and bitterest that ever befell human beings. Yet He begins, at once, by bidding them not be troubled. Let not your hearts be troubled, He said. But how were they to avoid it? He gives them a short and sufficient reason: Ye believe in God; believe also in Me. Remember who they were. They were Jews, full of the faith of the old Covenant; familiar with the psalms which we sing every day, believing in God as Abraham did, as David did, as Isaiah did, and as He Himself had taught them to believe. That was and is, a grand faith to live in. But our Lord brought an addition to it, which made[230] it, and makes it, infinitely better. Ye believe in God, He said; believe also in Me. He uses the same word of belief in Himself which He had used of belief in God. “You put your trust in God,” He seems to say; “You give yourselves up to Him, to obey His will for life and for death. Do the same for Me. Give yourselves up also to Me, to obey Me, to trust Me and to love Me.” The privilege of doing that is the reason He gives them for not letting their heart be troubled. If they would obey and trust Him with the same faith which they gave to God, they would have still surer ground for comfort and strength than if they only believed in the God of their fathers.

This was a great claim for our Lord Jesus Christ to make. But He went on to shed His blood on the Cross in attestation of it; and, according to His promise, He rose again after being put to death, to assure us that He was the living Son of God He claimed to be; and that is our sufficient reason for believing it. For that reason we take His word for it, and trust everything He said. But why does this assurance bring that special comfort to[231] His disciples, and to ourselves, which He promises? There are many reasons; but on this occasion I will mention only the one which He Himself proceeds to state. He goes on to declare at once what is perhaps the greatest of all the comforts which He brings. He tells us what is our eternal Home, whither He was Himself going, and where we are meant to go. He says at once: In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also. Every one of us must ask himself, sooner or later, where he is going; what is his eternal Home? More especially must we ask ourselves this question when we are brought face to face, in any way, with the great issues of life and death. When nations are marching in their millions to conflicts which must mean an early death to many of them, we must crave for an answer, more than ever, to the question, What is beyond death? What is the life into which we shall pass from this world?

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Now, in these few words, our Saviour gives us an assurance on this question which is more than sufficient. We shall go into a world in which He is ready to meet us, and in which He is preparing mansions for us. Without the Gospel, there is a complete veil over the future life. But to the Christian that veil is lifted by the Saviour and His Apostles in some glorious details, and above all—far above all—in this: that the Lord Jesus Christ, that living Man of whom you read in the Gospels, Whose character stands out so clearly there, in all graciousness, justice, love, and power, is preparing homes for us, and will be there to receive us unto Himself. David was inspired to sing, When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me. It was a great height of inspired faith to be able to utter that prayer of trust in the great God of his fathers, surrounded, as he then was, by clouds and darkness. But what a vastly greater blessing it is to be able to say it of the Lord Jesus Christ, Whom we are privileged to know, not only as God, but as Man in[233] flesh and blood, and to be assured that in death, as in life, we have with us all the sympathy, all the tenderness, as well as all the righteousness and justice, which He showed during His life on earth. Had He not reason to say: Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in Me?

But if it is to be a comfort to us to know that we shall be received by the Lord Jesus Christ when we pass from this world, and that, whether we pass suddenly or slowly, we shall find ourselves in His hands, we cannot fail to realize that one condition on our own part is essential. We must come to Him with a character, and in a condition, which He can approve. He will meet us in two capacities; first, as our Saviour and friend, but also as our Judge. Without waiting for that ultimate judgment which He has announced, the thought of our closer approach to Him at death must make us deeply apprehensive of His personal judgment on our character and our lives. If we desire to meet Him in happiness, we must be preparing ourselves, while we are here, so as to be at least in general harmony with His will and His character. In consequence of[234] those inveterate sins of mankind, which bring about wars and all other such miseries, He Himself, with His own deliberate consent, was brought to death, and sacrificed His life as an atonement for our evil; and by that sacrifice He has won from God the Father, His Father and our Father, the right to forgive us and to judge us mercifully. We may be sure accordingly that He will receive us into the arms of His mercy, and pardon our innumerable failures and offences, if we truly repent of them. But if we are to be at peace with Him hereafter, in His mansions, He must needs expect us, while we are here, to be trying to grow like Him, and to be doing His will. This accordingly is the second main point which follows from this assurance of our Lord. It places us under the strongest possible obligation to live here as Christ would have us, in order that we may look forward with full hope to living with Him hereafter.

Consequently, this promise of Christ obliges us to Christen, as it were, or to Christianize, the work of our lives, and every duty or profession in which we are[235] engaged. This is a principle which has innumerable applications; and I will only apply it this morning to one aspect of the profession of a soldier. Men had great ideals before Christ came. Few things are nobler, in the profession of arms, than the examples of self-sacrifice, of bravery, of generosity, exhibited by the ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans, and, in our own days, by the Japanese. But the history of the Christian world has shown that it is possible to raise those ideals, if not to a higher, yet to a more gracious, height by adding a Christian touch or colour to them. The knighthood of the Middle Ages, for instance, exhibited the highest qualities of a manly soldiery, elevated, purified, and illuminated by the supreme graces of gentleness, of mercy, of tenderness for the weak, of that impulse to save the suffering and the crushed, which is embodied in our Lord’s character as “the Saviour.” The knight of the Middle Ages was essentially the saviour of the weak, the champion of women, bound by oath to uphold all right and righteousness, to avenge wrong, to maintain, in the midst of his stern duties, the mercies and graces of Christian feeling.[236] One of them, as he stood at the bier of the most famous knight of his day, is described in the old romance as exclaiming: And now, I daresay, that Sir Lancelot, there thou liest: thou wert never matched of none earthly knight’s hands; and thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever stroke with sword; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou wert the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest. Can we fail to be sensible that, even in such an imperfect example, something of the grace of Christian tenderness has been shed over the character—an essence of Christian feeling, which would make impossible in such a soldier any brutal violence or wilful injustice? It was, in fact, the conscious example of Christ which controlled them. They all, more or less, resembled the knight of our own noble poet Spenser:

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That is the true badge not only of Christian service to the wounded, but of Christian warfare itself.

Such, my brethren, is the spirit in which you can apply to your present duties the exhortation of our Saviour in this gracious and cardinal text. It bids you to add the belief in the presence of Christ, the obligation of obedience to Christ, trust in Christ and love towards Him, to all the other principles by which you are animated. The fact that you are here, that you are making great sacrifices, that you are ready to make the greatest sacrifice of all, for your country, is proof enough that you are animated by high and generous motives, that you wish to live and die for the greatest of all causes, for righteousness and justice, for your King and your country. But if you would do the best you can, do one thing more. Take care to add the spirit of Christ to these motives and impulses; strive to enter more deeply,[238] day by day, into His heart and will, to realize more and more, even in the midst of war, that “new commandment” which He gave us, that we should love one another; and so prepare yourselves to meet Him whenever you have to do so, as we all have, soon or late, in such a character that He may be able to say to you: Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. In a word: You believe in God, and in all that the Name of God stands for—righteousness, truth, goodness of all kinds: believe also in Christ, and let His love, His mercy, His purity, His absolute self-sacrifice, add His own peculiar grace to all your words and deeds, and then you may cherish the confident hope that where He is there you will be also.

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The Eternal Life of the Soul.

PREACHED IN THE NAVE OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, AT THE MILITARY CHURCH PARADE, OCTOBER 15, 1916.

These words ought to be in the heart and the mouth of every soul in this congregation. They are the first words of a Psalm, which has been used as a morning Psalm by many generations of Christians, and it is the privilege of all of us to echo them. But let us consider carefully what they mean. Who is the God to Whom they speak? We are in the House of God, to worship God; and we open our worship, every Sunday, with a Psalm which tells us who He is. “The Lord,” it says, “is a great God, a great King above all Gods. In His hand are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it: and His hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.” That[240] is the God to whom the Christian speaks. He is the God Who made heaven and earth, and whose will and power upholds them from hour to hour. He is our maker, “and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.” In other words, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

The word “God” is too often used lightly in common conversation among us, but without due remembrance that it is the Name of the Most awful and supreme reality that can be thought of. We do not use lightly the name of our King, but God is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Our lives and our souls are in the hollow of His hand every moment; and if we considered only His supreme Majesty and our weak and passing frames, we are perfectly insignificant beings before Him. But it is to this Being that the Psalmist addresses the words “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” We may all say that, as well as the Psalmist. It is our privilege to speak to the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, as our own; we may[241] call Him our God, our own God, we may tell Him that we seek Him, that we seek Him above all things, and we may say, as the Psalmist goes on to say, “My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh also longeth after Thee: in a barren and dry land where no water is. Thus have I looked for Thee in the sanctuary (in a Cathedral like this) that I might behold Thy power and glory.” How is it that humble and feeble creatures like ourselves can thus call the God of heaven and earth our own, and speak to Him, and tell Him, in this earnest language, that we cannot do without Him? Where, above all, can we find Him and approach Him?

The Psalmist used these words, and we may use them too, because this God is the nearest of all things in the world to us, and because we are in daily contact with Him in our hearts and souls. It is true He is so great and infinite, that He has made the world, and all its marvels and glories; but we are more concerned to realize that He has made our own selves, and our minds and hearts and consciences, and when we look into those hearts, and listen to those consciences, we are only[242] experiencing, in ourselves, the work of His hands, and listening to His voice. Above all other things, God made right and wrong, He made us to realize the difference between right and wrong; He made the truth, and enabled us to love it, and to hate what is false; in a word, He made our consciences and our minds; and He lives and works in them, as much as He does in the world at large. It is very well for us to look up to the heavens, to think of Him as the Creator of all those stars and worlds, or to look into the infinite mysteries of this world’s life, its minute elements and atoms; but it is more important for us to think of Him as the Giver, and Ruler, and Guide of our very souls and bodies, Who determined what we were made for, and what we ought to do, what sort of a life we ought to live, putting into our hearts the knowledge of our duty, warning us of it by the constant voice of our consciences, and bidding us realize that He will judge us, for our obedience or disobedience to His will and His commands. Think of God, by all means, in His greatness and His Majesty, and His awful powers, but then[243] think of Him as actually in contact with you in your own souls, teaching you and speaking to you in your consciences, and calling to you, by your sense of right and wrong, to remember that He is your judge, and that your very life and happiness depend upon your union with Him. That is the thought of God that should be incessantly in our minds. As the Scripture says more than once, you need not go to the heavens to seek Him there, you need not go into the depths of the earth to seek Him there, but He is near you, nearer to you than anything else, in your very souls and consciences; you hear His voice there, you feel the influence of His Spirit; there you can always find Him, you can turn to Him at any moment and say “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.”

There is no reality in the world which can be compared, in its momentous importance, to this. It must be brought home to us, by the experience which is thrust upon us by the Great War, that everything else with which we have to do, everything else in the world, passes away from us. So it does indeed from everybody,[244] at all times, whether times of war or of peace. There comes a time to every soul when it has to leave the body, and, with the body, everything else with which it has been associated in this world. We all know it when we think seriously about it; but the misfortune is that, in ordinary life, men do not think seriously about it. All their thoughts and interests are engaged in the business and the pleasures and the interests of this life, and they seldom look beyond. But in days like the present we are forced to look beyond them. You, above all, who, at the call of duty, have laid behind you, for the present, all the ordinary interests of life, and are offering yourselves to all the risks of the battlefield—you have reason to ask, with supreme earnestness, what is the reality for which you are making this sacrifice, and what will remain to you if the full sacrifice should be exacted from you.

It is the grand answer of our religion, to say that, whatever happens, God remains to you. This God, moreover, is not a distant God, not merely the Maker of the heavens and the earth, but your God, the God of your inmost soul, the God of your[245] conscience, the God whose eye sees into your hearts, and Whose hand has been with you from your childhood, to help you, to guide you, and to inspire you with all the thoughts of truth, of manliness, of faithfulness, of purity, which you have felt working in you. Whenever the outward clothing of our souls drops off from us, whether in the death of old age, or the death of sickness, or the death of the battlefield, our souls will certainly be in the immediate presence of One Supreme Reality; and that is the God with Whom, in our conscience, our souls have been in contact day by day, and night by night, throughout our lives. That is why we come to worship Him here, that is why we pray to Him day by day, and I hope hour by hour, and minute by minute. That is why we should say to Him like the Psalmist “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” Nothing else is of permanent and everlasting consequence to us, but our relation to Him, and our union with Him—His relation to us, and His love of us. While everything is shaking around us, while the kingdoms are moved, and lives seem thrown away as things of small value,[246] let us remember that one great Living Being remains to all of us, to those whose lives are lost on earth, and to those who remain, and that is the Eternal God, the Giver of all truth, and righteousness and love; and the greater the strain and stress of life and death, the more may we confidently exclaim, in the tumult of the battlefield as much as in the peace of this sanctuary, “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.”

But when and where are you to seek Him? The question has been answered in the truths of which I have reminded you. Seek Him in obedience to that Voice of His, which you hear in your consciences, seek Him in obedience to those principles of right, as against wrong, which He has implanted in you, and which His Spirit is continually reviving in you; seek Him in trying, day by day, to do His Will as He has revealed it to you in His word, especially as He has revealed it to you in the life and teaching of His Own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Seek Him in those sacraments and ordinances of His Church which he has instituted for our comfort. If you obey[247] our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to follow His life, His Spirit will speak to you continually in your consciences, will help you to know your duty and to do it, and you will be saying in practice what you say in words: “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” Our Lord has told you that if you are true hearted in trying to do this, He will forgive you your failures and weaknesses, that He has died to make atonement for them, that He will take you by the hand as you pass from this life to the next, and will be your advocate and sponsor before the face of the righteous and Almighty God. Let us bring this spirit into all we do and all we think, and we shall then be able to join in the succeeding words of this Psalm, “Have I not remembered Thee in my bed: and thought upon Thee when I was waking? Because Thou hast been my helper: therefore under the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice. My soul hangeth upon Thee: Thy right hand hath upholden me.” May God grant us all this faith and this eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hunt, Barnard & Co., Ltd., Printers, London and Aylesbury.

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WORKS BY HENRY WACE, D.D.,

Dean of Canterbury.

SOME QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.

SOME QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.

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