The Good News of God E-Book

Charles Kingsley

• Herausgeber: Charles Kingsley
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.THESE words often puzzle and pain really good people, because they seem to put the hardest duty first. It seems, at times, so much more easy to love one’s neighbour than to love God. And strange as it may seem, that is partly true. St. John tells us so—‘He that loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ Therefore many good people, who really do love God, are unhappy at times because they feel that they do not love him enough. They say in their hearts—‘I wish to do right, and I try to do it: but I am afraid I do not do it from love to God.’

Leseprobe

The Good News of God

By

Charles Kingsley

SERMON I.THE BEATIFIC VISION.

Matthew xxii. 27.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

These words often puzzle and pain really good people, because they seem to put the hardest duty first.  It seems, at times, so much more easy to love one’s neighbour than to love God.  And strange as it may seem, that is partly true.  St. John tells us so—‘He that loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’  Therefore many good people, who really do love God, are unhappy at times because they feel that they do not love him enough.  They say in their hearts—‘I wish to do right, and I try to do it: but I am afraid I do not do it from love to God.’

I think that they are often too hard upon themselves.  I believe that they are very often loving God with their whole hearts, when they think that they are not doing so.  But still, it is well to be afraid of oneself, and dissatisfied with oneself.

I think, too—nay, I am certain—that many good people do not love God as they ought, and as they would wish to do, because they have not been rightly taught who God is, and what He is like.  They have not been taught that God is loveable; they have been taught that God feels feelings, and does deeds, which if a man felt, or did, we should call him arbitrary, proud, revengeful, cruel: and yet they are told to love him; and they do not know how to love such a being as that.  Nor do I either, my friends.

Let us therefore think over to-day for ourselves why we ought to love God; and why both Bible and Catechism bid child as well as man to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, before they bid us love our neighbours.  And keep this in mind all through, that the reason why we are to love God must depend upon what God’s character is.  For you cannot love any one because you are told to love them.  You can only love them because they are loveable and worthy of your love.  And that they will not be, unless they are loving themselves; as it is written, we love God because he first loved us.

Now, friends, look at this one thing first.  When we see any man do a just action, or a kind action, do we not like to see it?  Do we not like the man the better for doing it?  A man must be sunk very low in stupidity and ill-feeling—dead in tresspasses and sins, as the Bible calls it—if he does not.  Indeed, I never saw the man yet, however bad he was himself, who did not, in his better moments, admire what was right and good; and say, ‘Bad as I may be, that man is a good man, and I wish I could do as he does.’

One sees the same, but far more strongly, in little children.  From their earliest years, as far as I have ever seen, children like and admire what is good, even though they be naughty themselves; and if you tell them of any very loving, generous, or brave action, their hearts leap up in answer to it.  They feel at once how beautiful goodness is.

But why?

St. John tells us.  That feeling comes, he tells us, from Christ, the light who is the life of men, and lights every man who comes into the world; and that light in our hearts, which makes us see, and admire, and love what is good, is none other than Christ himself shining in our hearts, and showing to us his own likeness, and the beauty thereof.

But if we stop there; if we only admire what is good, without trying to copy it, we shall lose that light.  Our corrupt and diseased nature (and corrupt and diseased it is, as we shall surely find, as soon as we begin to try to do right) will quench that heavenly spark in us more and more, till it dies out—as God forbid that it should die out in any of us.  For if it did die out, we should care no more for what is good.  We should see nothing beautiful, and noble, and glorious, in being just, and loving, and merciful.  And then, indeed, we should see nothing worth loving in God himself:—and it were better for us that we had never been born.

But none of us, I trust, are fallen as low as that.  We all, surely, admire a good action, and love a good man.  Surely we do.  Then I will go on, to ask you one question more.

Did it ever strike you, that goodness is not merely a beautiful thing, but THE beautiful thing—by far the most beautiful thing in the world; and that badness is not merelyan ugly thing, but the ugliest thing in the world?—So that nothing is to be compared for value with goodness; that riches, honour, power, pleasure, learning, the whole world and all in it, are not worth having, in comparison with being good; and the utterly best thing for a man is to be good, even though he were never to be rewarded for it: and the utterly worst thing for a man is to be bad, even though he were never to be punished for it; and, in a word, goodness is the only thing worth loving, and badness the only thing worth hating.

Did you ever feel this, my friends?  Happy are those among you who have felt it; for of you the Lord says, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.  Ay, happy are you who have felt it; for it is the sign, the very and true sign, that the Holy Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of goodness, is working in your hearts with power, revealing to you the exceeding beauty of holiness, and the exceeding sinfulness of sin.

But did it never strike you besides, that goodness was one, and everlasting?  Let me explain what I mean.

Did you never see, that all good men show their goodness in the same way, by doing the same kind of good actions?  Let them be English or French, black or white, if they be good, there is the same honesty, the same truthfulness, the same love, the same mercy in all; and what is right and good for you and me, now and here, is right and good for every man, everywhere, and at all times for ever.  Surely, surely, what is noble, and loveable, and admirable now, was so five thousand years ago, and will be five thousand years hence.  What is honourable for us here, would be equally honourable for us in America or Australia—ay, or in the farthest star in the skies.

But, some of you may say, men at different times and in different countries have had very different notions—indeed quite opposite notions, of what men ought to be.

I know that some people say so.  I can only answer that I differ from them.  True, some men have had less light than others, and, God knows, have made fearful mistakes enough, and fancied that they could please God by behaving like devils: but on the first principles of goodness, all the world has been pretty well agreed all along; for wherever men have been taught what is really right, there have been plenty of hearts to answer, ‘Yes, this is good! This is what we have wanted all along, though we knew it not.’  And all the wisest men among the heathen—the men who have been honoured, and even worshipped as blessings to their fellow men, have agreed, one and all, in the great and golden rule, ‘Thou shalt love God, with all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbour as thyself.’

Believe about this as you may, my friends, still I believe, and will believe; I preach, and will preach, this, and nought else but this:—That there is but one everlasting goodness, which is good in men, good in all rational beings—yea, good in God himself.

These last are solemn words, but they are true; and the more you think over them, the more, I tell you, will you find them true.  And to them I have been trying to lead you; and will try once more.

For, did it never strike you, again—as it has me—and all the world has looked different to me since I found it out—that there must be one, in whom all goodness is gathered together; one, who must be perfectly and absolutely good?  And did it never strike you, that all the goodness in the world must, in some way or other, come from him?  I believe that our hearts and reasons, if we will listen fairly to them, tell us that it must be so; and I am certain that the Bible tells us so, from beginning to end.  When we see the million rain-drops of the shower, we say, with reason, there must be one great sea from which all these drops have come.  When we see the countless rays of light, we say, with reason, there must be one great central sun from which all these are shed forth.  And when we see, as it were, countless drops, and countless rays of goodness scattered about in the world, a little good in this man, and a little good in that, shall we not say, there must be one great sea, one central sun of goodness, from whence all human goodness comes?  And where can that centre of goodness be, but in the very character of God himself?

Yes, my friends; if you would know what God is, think of all the noble, beautiful, loveable actions, tempers, feelings, which you ever saw or heard of.  Think of all the good, and admirable, and loveable people whom you ever met; and fancy to yourselves all that goodness, nobleness, admirableness, loveableness, and millions of times more, gathered together in one, to make one perfectly good character—and then you have some faint notion of God, some dim sight of God, who is the eternal and perfect Goodness.

It is but a faint notion, no doubt, that the best man can have of God’s goodness, so dull has sin made our hearts and brains: but let us comfort ourselves with this thought—That the more we learn to love what is good, the more we accustom ourselves to think of good people and good things, and to ask ourselves why and how this action and that is good, the more shall we be able to see the goodness of God.  And to see that, even for a moment, is worth all sights in earth or heaven.

Worth all sights, indeed.  No wonder that the saints of old called it the ‘Beatific Vision,’ that is, the sight which makes a man utterly blessed; namely, to see, if but for a moment, with his mind’s eye what God is like, and behold he is utterly good!

No wonder that they said (and I doubt not that they spoke honestly and simply what they felt) that while that thought was before them, this world was utterly nothing to them; that they were as men in a dream, or dead, not caring to eat or to move, for fear of losing that glorious thought; but felt as if they were (as they were most really and truly) caught up into heaven, and taken utterly out of themselves by the beauty and glory of God’s perfect goodness.  No wonder that they cried out with David, ‘Whom have I in heaven, O Lord, but Thee? And there is none on earth whom I desire in comparison of Thee.’  No wonder that they said with St. Peter when he saw our Lord’s glory, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here,’ and felt like men gazing upon some glorious picture or magnificent show, off which they cannot take their eyes; and which makes them forget for the time all beside in heaven and earth.

And it was good for them to be there: but not too long.  Man was sent into this world not merely to see, but to do; and the more he sees, the more he is bound to go and do accordingly.  St. Peter had to come down from the mount, and preach the Gospel wearily for many a year, and die at last upon the cross.  St. Augustine, in like wise, though he would gladly have lived and died doing nothing but fixing his soul’s eye steadily on the glory of God’s goodness, had to come down from the mount likewise, and work, and preach, and teach, and wear himself out in daily drudgery for that God whom he learnt to serve, even when he could not adore Him in the press of business, and the bustle of a rotten and dying world.

But see, my dear friends, and consider it well—Before a man can come to that state of mind, or anything like it, he must have begun by loving goodness wherever he saw it; and have settled in his heart that to be good, and therefore to do good, is the most beautiful thing in the world.  So he will begin by loving his brother whom he has seen, and by taking delight in good people, and in all honest, true, loving, merciful, generous words and actions, and in those who say and do them.  And so he will be fit to love God, whom he has not seen, when he finds out (as God grant that you may all find out) that all goodness of which we can conceive, and far, far more, is gathered together in God, and flows out from him eternally over his whole creation, by that Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and is the Lord and Giver of life, and therefore of goodness.  For goodness is nothing else, if you will receive it, but the eternal life of God, which he has lived, and lives now, and will live for evermore, God blessed for ever.  Amen.

So, my dear friends, it will not be so difficult for you to love God, if you will only begin by loving goodness, which is God’s likeness, and the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit.  For you will be like a man who has long admired a beautiful picture of some one whom he does not know, and at last meets the person for whom the picture was meant—and behold the living face is a thousand times more fair and noble than the painted one.  You will be like a child which has been brought up from its birth in a room into which the sun never shone; and then goes out for the first time, and sees the sun in all his splendour bathing the earth with glory.  If that child had loved to watch the dim narrow rays of light which shone into his dark room, what will he not feel at the sight of that sun from which all those rays had come Just so will they feel who, having loved goodness for its own sake, and loved their neighbours for the sake of what little goodness is in them, have their eyes opened at last to see all goodness, without flaw or failing, bound or end, in the character of God, which he has shown forth in Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the likeness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person; to whom be glory and honour for ever.  Amen.

SERMON II.THE GLORY OF THE CROSS.

John xvii. 1.

Father, the hour is come.  Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.

I spoke to you lately of the beatific vision of God.  I will speak of it again to-day; and say this.

If any man wishes to see God, truly and fully, with the eyes of his soul: if any man wishes for that beatific vision of God; that perfect sight of God’s perfect goodness; then must that man go, and sit down at the foot of Christ’s cross, and look steadfastly upon him who hangs thereon.  And there he will see, what the wisest and best among the heathen, among the Mussulmans, among all who are not Christian men, never have seen, and cannot see unto this day, however much they may feel (and some of them, thank God, do feel) that God is the Eternal Goodness, and must be loved accordingly.

And what shall we see upon the cross?

Many things, friends, and more than I, or all the preachers in the world, will be able to explain to you, though we preached till the end of the world.  But one thing we shall see, if we will, which we have forgotten sadly, Christians though we be, in these very days; forgotten it, most of us, so utterly, that in order to bring you back to it, I must take a seemingly roundabout road.

Does it seem, or does it not seem, to you, that the finest thing in a man is magnanimity—what we call in plain English, greatness of soul?  And if it does seem to you to be so, what do you mean by greatness of soul?  When you speak of a great soul, and of a great man, what manner of man do you mean?

Do you mean a very clever man, a very far-sighted man, a very determined man, a very powerful man, and therefore a very successful man?  A man who can manage everything, and every person whom he comes across, and turn and use them for his own ends, till he rises to be great and glorious—a ruler, king, or what you will?

Well—he is a great man: but I know a greater, and nobler, and more glorious stamp of man; and you do also.  Let us try again, and think if we can find his likeness, and draw it for ourselves.  Would he not be somewhat like this pattern?—A man who was aware that he had vast power, and yet used that power not for himself but for others; not for ambition, but for doing good?  Surely the man who used his power for other people would be the greater-souled man, would he not?  Let us go on, then, to find out more of his likeness.  Would he be stern, or would he be tender?  Would he be patient, or would he be fretful?  Would he be a man who stands fiercely on his own rights, or would he be very careful of other men’s rights, and very ready to waive his own rights gracefully and generously?  Would he be extreme to mark what was done amiss against him, or would he be very patient when he was wronged himself, though indignant enough if he saw others wronged?  Would he be one who easily lost his temper, and lost his head, and could be thrown off his balance by one foolish man?  Surely not.  He would be a man whom no fool, nor all fools together could throw off his balance; a man who could not lose his temper, could not lose his self-respect; a man who could bear with those who are peevish, make allowances for those who are weak and ignorant, forgive those who are insolent, and conquer those who are ungrateful, not by punishment, but by fresh kindness, overcoming their evil by his good.—A man, in short, whom no ill-usage without, and no ill-temper within, could shake out of his even path of generosity and benevolence.  Is not that the truly magnanimous man; the great and royal soul?  Is not that the stamp of man whom we should admire, if we met him on earth?  Should we not reverence that man; esteem it an honour and a pleasure to work under that man, to take him for our teacher, our leader, in hopes that, by copying his example, our souls might become great like his?

Is it so, my friends?  Then know this, that in admiring that man, you admire the likeness of God.  In wishing to be like that man, you wish to be like God.

For this is God’s true greatness; this is God’s true glory; this is God’s true royalty; the greatness, glory, and royalty of loving, forgiving, generous power, which pours itself out, untiring and undisgusted, in help and mercy to all which he has made; the glory of a Father who is perfect in this, that he causeth his rain to fall on the evil and on the good, and his sun to shine upon the just and on the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil; a Father who has not dealt with us after our sins, or rewarded us after our iniquities: a Father who is not extreme to mark what is done amiss, but whom it is worth while to fear, for with him is mercy and plenteous redemption;—all this, and more—a Father who so loved a world which had forgotten him, a world whose sins must have been disgusting to him, that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for us, and will with him freely give us all things; a Father, in one word, whose name and essence is love, even as it is the name and essence of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

This, my friends, is the glory of God: but this glory never shone out in its full splendour till it shone upon the cross.

For—that we may go back again, to that great-souled man, of whom I spoke just now—did we not leave out one thing in his character? Or at least, one thing by which his character might be proved and tried?  We said that he should be generous and forgiving; we said that he should bear patiently folly, peevishness, ingratitude: but what if we asked of him, that he should sacrifice himself utterly for the peevish, ungrateful men for whose good he was toiling?  What if we asked him to give up, for them, not only all which made life worth having, but to give up life itself?  To die for them; and, what is bitterest of all, to die by their hands—to receive as their reward for all his goodness to them a shameful death?  If he dare submit to that, then we should call his greatness of soul perfect.  Magnanimity, we should say, could rise no higher; in that would be the perfection of goodness.

Surely your hearts answer, that this is true.  When you hear of a father sacrificing his own life for his children; when you hear of a soldier dying for his country; when you hear of a clergyman or a physician killing himself by his work, while he is labouring to save the souls or the bodies of his fellow-creatures; then you feel—There is goodness in its highest shape.  To give up our lives for others is one of the most beautiful, and noble, and glorious things on earth.  But to give up our lives, willingly, joyfully for men who misunderstand us, hate us, despise us, is, if possible, a more glorious action still, and the very perfection of perfect virtue.  Then, looking at Christ’s cross, we see that, and even more—ay, far more than that.  The cross was the perfect token of the perfect greatness of God, and of the perfect glory of God.

So on the cross, the Father justified himself to man; yea, glorified himself in the glory of his crucified Son.  On the cross God proved himself to be perfectly just, perfectly good, perfectly generous, perfectly glorious, beyond all that man could ever have dared to conceive or dream.  That God must be good, the wise heathens knew; but that God was so utterly good that he could stoop to suffer, to die, for men, and by men—that they never dreamed.  That was the mystery of God’s love, which was hid in Christ from the foundation of the world, and which was revealed at last upon the cross of Calvary by him who prayed for his murderers—‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’  That truly blessed sight of a Saviour-God, who did not disdain to die the meanest and the most fearful of deaths—that, that came home at once, and has come home ever since, to all hearts which had left in them any love and respect for goodness, and melted them with the fire of divine love; as God grant it may melt yours, this day, and henceforth for ever.

I can say no more, my friends.  If this good news does not come home to your hearts by its own power, it will never be brought home to you by any words of mine.

SERMON III.THE LIFE OF GOD.

1 John i. 2.

For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us!

What do we mean, when we speak of the Life everlasting?

Do we mean that men’s souls are immortal, and will live for ever after death, either in happiness or misery?

We must mean more than that.  At least we ought to mean more than that, if we be Christian men.  For the Bible tells us, that Christ brought life and immortality to light.  Therefore they must have been in darkness before Christ’s coming; and men did not know as much about life and immortality before Christ’s coming as they know—or ought to know—now.

But if we need only believe that we shall live for ever after death in happiness or misery, then Christ has not brought life and immortality to light.  He has thrown no fresh light upon the matter.

And why?  For this simple reason, that the old heathen knew as much as that before Christ came.

The old Greeks and Romans, and Persians, and our own forefathers before they became Christians, believed that men’s souls would live for ever happy or miserable.  The Mussulmans, Mahommedans, Turks as they are called in the Prayer-book, believe as much as that now.  They believe that men’s souls live for ever after death, and go to ‘heaven’ or ‘hell.’

So those words ‘everlasting Life’ must needs mean something more than that.  What do they mean?

First.  What does everlasting mean?

It means exactly the same as eternal.  The two words are the same: only everlasting is English, and eternal Latin.  But they have the same sense.

Now everlasting and eternal mean something which has neither beginning nor end.  That is certain.  The wisest of the heathen knew that: but we are apt to forget it.  We are apt to think a thing may be everlasting, because it has no end, though it has a beginning.  We are careless thinkers, if we fancy that.  God is eternal because he has neither beginning nor end.

But here come two puzzles.

First.  The Athanasian Creed says that there is but one Eternal, that is, God; and never were truer words written.

But do we not make out two Eternals?  For God is one Eternal; and eternal life is another Eternal.  Now which is right; we, or the Athanasian Creed?  I shall hold by the Athanasian Creed, my friends, and ask you to think again over the matter: thus—If there be but one Eternal, there is but one way of escaping out of our puzzle, which makes two Eternals; and that is, to go back to the old doctrine of St. Paul, and St. John, and the wisest of the Fathers, and say—There is but one Eternal; and therefore eternal life is in the Eternal God.  And it is eternal Life because it is God’s life; the life which God lives; and it is eternal just because, and only because, it is the life of God; and eternal death is nothing but the want of God’s eternal life.

Certainly, whether you think this true or not, St. John thought it true; for he says so most positively in the text.  He says that the Life was manifested—showed plainly upon earth, and that he had seen it.  And he says that he saw it in a man, whom his eyes had seen, and his hands had handled.  How could that be?

My friends, how else could it be?  How can you see life, but by seeing some one live it?  You cannot see a man’s life, unless you see him live such and such a life, or hear of his living such and such a life, and so knowing what his life, manners, character, are.  And so no one could have seen God’s life, or known what life God lived, and what character God’s was, had it not been for the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was made flesh, and dwelt among us, that by seeing him, the Son, we might see the Father, whose likeness he was, and is, and ever will be.

But now, says St. John, we know what God’s eternal life is; for we know what Christ’s life was on earth.  And more, we know that it is a life which men may live; for Christ lived it perfectly and utterly, though He was a man.

What sort of life, then, is everlasting life?

Who can tell altogether and completely?  And yet who cannot tell in part?  Use the common sense, my friends, which God has given to you, and think;—if eternal life be the life of God, it must be a good life; for God is good.  That is the first, and the most certain thing which we can say of it.  It must be a righteous and just life; a loving and merciful life; for God is righteous, just, loving, merciful; and more, it must be an useful life, a life of good works; for God is eternally useful, doing good to all his creatures, working for ever for the benefit of all which he has made.

Yes—a life of good works.  There is no good life without good works.  When you talk of a man’s life, you mean not only what he feels and thinks, but what he does.  What is in his heart goes for nothing, unless he brings it out in his actions, as far as he can.

Therefore St. James says, ‘Thou hast faith, and I have works.  Shew me thy faith without thy works,’ (and who can do that?) ‘and I will shew thee my faith by my works.’

And St. John says, there is no use saying you love.  ‘Let us love not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth;’ and again—and would to God that most people who talk so glibly about heaven and hell, and the ways of getting thither, would recollect this one plain text—‘Little children, let no man deceive you.  He that doethrighteousness is righteous, even as God is righteous.’  And therefore it is that St. Paul bids rich men ‘be rich also in noble deeds,’ generous and liberal of their money to all who want, that they may ‘lay hold of that which is really life,’ namely, the eternal life of goodness.

And therefore also, my friends, we may be sure that God loves in deed and in truth: because it is written that God is love.

For if a man loves, he longs to help those whom he loves.  It is the very essence of love, that it cannot be still, cannot be idle, cannot be satisfied with itself, cannot contain itself, but must go out to do good to those whom it loves, to seek and to save that which is lost.  And therefore God is perfect love, and his eternal life a life of eternal love, because he sends his Son eternally to seek and to save that which is lost.

This, then, is eternal life; a life of everlasting love showing itself in everlasting good works; and whosoever lives that life, he lives the life of God, and hath eternal life.

What I have just said will help you, I think, to understand another royal text about eternal life.

For now’ we may understand why it is written, that this is life eternal, to know the true and only God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.  For if eternal life be God’s life, we must know God, and God’s character, to know what eternal life is like: and if no man has seen God at any time, and God’s life can only be seen in the life of Christ, then we must know Christ, and Christ’s life, to know God and God’s life; that the saying may be fulfilled in us, God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

One other royal text, did I say?  We may understand many, perhaps all, the texts which speak of life, and eternal life, if we will look at them in this way.  We may see why St. Paul says that to be spiritually minded is life; and that the life of Jesus may be manifested in men: and how the sin of the old heathen lay in this, that they were alienated from the life of God.  We may understand how Christ’s commandment is everlasting life; how the water which he gives, can spring up within a man’s heart to everlasting life—all such texts we may, and shall, understand more and more, if we will bear in mind that everlasting life is the life of God and of Christ, a life of love; a life of perfect, active, self-sacrificing goodness, which is the one only true life for all rational beings, whether on earth or in heaven.

In heaven, my friends, as well as on earth.  Form your own notions, as you will, about angels, and saints in heaven, for every one must have some notions about them, and try to picture to himself what the souls of those whom he has loved and lost are doing in the other world: but bear this in mind: that if the saints in heaven live the everlasting life, they must be living a life of usefulness, of love and of good works.

And here I must say, friends, that however much the Roman Catholics may be wrong on many points, they have remembered one thing about the life everlasting, which we are too apt to forget; and that is, that everlasting life cannot be a selfish, idle life, spent only in being happy oneself.  They believe that the saints in heaven are notidle; that they are eternally helping mankind; doing all sorts of good offices for those souls who need them; that, as St. Paul says of the angels, they are ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to those who are heirs of salvation.  And I cannot see why they should not be right.  For if the saints’ delight was to do good on earth, much more will it be to do good in heaven.  If they helped poor sufferers, if they taught the ignorant, if they comforted the afflicted, here on earth, much more will they be able, much more will they be willing, to help, comfort, teach them, now that they are in the full power, the full freedom, the full love and zeal of the everlasting life.  If their hearts were warmed and softened by the fire of God’s love here, how much more there!  If they lived God’s life of love here, how much more there, before the throne of God, and the face of Christ!

But if any one shall say, that the souls of good men in heaven cannot help us who are here on earth, I answer, when did they ascend into heaven, to find out that?  If they had ever been there, friends, be sure they would have had better news to bring home than this—that those whom we have honoured and loved on earth have lost the power which they used to have, of comforting us who are struggling here below.  That notion springs altogether out of a superstitious fancy that heaven is a great many millions of miles away from this earth—which fancy, wherever men get it from, they certainly do not get it from the Bible.  Moreover it seems to me, that if the saints in heaven cannot help men, then they cannot be happy in heaven.  Cannot be happy?  Ay, must be miserable.  For what greater misery for really good men, than to see things going wrong, and not to be able to mend them; to see poor creatures suffering, and not to be able to comfort them?  No, my friends, we will believe—what every one who loves a beloved friend comes sooner or later to believe—that those whom we have honoured and loved, though taken from our eyes, are near to our spirits; that they still fight for us, under the banner of their Master Christ, and still work for us, by virtue of his life of love, which they live in him and by him for ever.

Pray to them, indeed, we need not, as if they would help us out of any self-will of their own.  There, I think, the Roman Catholics are wrong.  They pray to the saints as if the saints had wills of their own, and fancies of their own, and were respecters of persons; and could have favourites, and grant private favours to those who especially admired and (I fear I must say it) flattered them.  But why should we do that?  That is to lower God’s saints in our own eyes.  For if we believe that they are made perfect, and like perfectly the everlasting life, then we must believe that there is no self-will in them: but that they do God’s will, and not their own, and go on God’s errands, and not their own; that he, and not their own liking, sends them whithersoever he wills; and that if we ask of him—of God our Father himself, that is enough for us.

And what shall we ask?

Ask—‘Father, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.’

For in asking that, we ask for the best of all things.  We ask for the happiness, the power, the glory of saints and angels.  We ask to be put into tune with God’s whole universe, from the meanest flower beneath our feet, to the most glorious spirit whom God ever created.  We ask for the one everlasting life which can never die, fail, change, or disappoint: yea, for the everlasting life which Christ the only begotten Son lives from eternity to eternity, for ever saying to his Father, ‘Thy will be done.’

Yes—when we ask God to make us do his will, then indeed we ask for everlasting life.

Does that seem little?  Would you rather ask for all manner of pleasant things, if not in this life, at least in the life to come?

Oh, my friends, consider this.  We were not put into this world to get pleasant things; and we shall not be put into the next world, as it seems to me, to get pleasant things.  We were put into this world to do God’s will.  And we shall be put (I believe) into the next world for the very same purpose—to do God’s will; and if we do that, we shall find pleasure enough in doing it.  I do not doubt that in the next world all manner of harmless pleasure will come to us likewise; because that will be, we hope, a perfect and a just world, not a piecemeal, confused, often unjust world, like this: but pleasant things will come to us in the next life, only in proportion as we shall be doing God’s will in the next life; and we shall be happy and blessed, only because we shall be living that eternal life of which I have been preaching to you all along, the life which Christ lives and has lived and will live for ever, saying to the Eternal Father—I come to do thy will—not my will but thine be done.

Oh! may God give to us all his Spirit; the Spirit by which Christ did his Father’s will, and lived his Father’s life in the soul and body of a mortal man, that we may live here a life of obedience and of good works, which is the only true and living life of faith; and that when we die it may be said of us—‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.’

They rest from their labours.  All their struggles, disappointments, failures, backslidings, which made them unhappy here, because they could not perfectly do the will of God, are past and over for ever.  But their works follow them.  The good which they did on earth—that is not past and over.  It cannot die.  It lives and grows for ever, following on in their path long after they are dead, and bearing fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and in generations yet unborn.

SERMON IV.THE SONG OF THE THREE CHILDREN.

Daniel iii. 16, 17, 18.

O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.  If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.  But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

We read this morning, instead of the Te Deum, the Song of the Three Children, beginning, ‘Oh all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever.’  It was proper to do so: because the Ananias, Azarias, and Misael mentioned in it, are the same as the Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, whose story we heard in the first lesson; and because some of the old Jews held that this noble hymn was composed by them, and sung by them in the burning fiery furnace, wherefore it has been called ‘The Song of the Three Children;’ for child, in old English, meant a young man.

Be that as it may, it is a glorious hymn, worthy of the Church of God, worthy of those three young men, worthy of all the noble army of martyrs; and if the three young men did not actually use the very words of it, still it was what they believed; and, because they believed it, they had courage to tell Nebuchadnezzar that they were not careful to answer him—had no manner of doubt or anxiety whatsoever as to what they were to say, when he called on them to worship his gods.  For his gods, we know, were the sun, moon, and planets, and the angels who (as the Chaldeans believed) ruled over the heavenly bodies; and that image of gold is supposed, by some learned men, to have been probably a sign or picture of the wondrous power of life and growth which there is in all earthly things—and that a sign of which I need not speak, or you hear.  So that the meaning of this Song of the Three Children is simply this:

‘You bid us worship the things about us, which we see with our bodily eyes.  We answer, that we know the one true God, who made all these things; and that, therefore, instead of worshipping them, we will bid them to worship him.’

Now let us spend a few minutes in looking into this hymn, and seeing what it teaches us.

You see at once, that it says that the one God, and not many gods, made all things: much more, that things did not make themselves, or grow up of their own accord, by any virtue or life of their own.

But it says more.  It calls upon all things which God has made, to bless him, praise him, and magnify him for ever.  This is much more than merely saying, ‘One God made the world.’  For this is saying something about God’s character; declaring what this one God is like.

For when you bless a person—(I do not mean when you pray God to bless him—that is a different thing)—when you bless any one, I say, you bless him because he is blessed, and has done blessed things: because he has shown himself good, generous, merciful, useful.  You praise a person because he is praiseworthy, noble, and admirable.  You magnify a person—that is, speak of him to every one, and everywhere, in the highest terms—because you think that every one ought to know how good and great he is.  And, therefore, when the hymn says, ‘Bless God, praise him, and magnify him for ever,’ it does not merely confess God’s power.  No.  It confesses, too, God’s wisdom, goodness, beauty, love, and calls on all heaven and earth to admire him, the alone admirable, and adore him, the alone adorable.

For this is really to believe in God.  Not merely to believe that there is a God, but to know what God is like, and to know that He is worthy to be believed in; worthy to be trusted, honoured, loved with heart and mind and soul, because we know that He is worthy of our love.

And this, we have a right to say, these three young men did, or whosoever wrote this hymn; and that as a reward for their faith in God, there was granted to them that deep insight into the meaning of the world about them, which shines out through every verse of this hymn.

Deep?  I tell you, my friends, that this hymn is so deep, that it is too deep for the shallow brains of which the world is full now-a-days, who fancy that they know all about heaven and earth, just because they happen to have been born now, and not two hundred years ago.  To such this old hymn means nothing; it is in their eyes merely an old-fashioned figure of speech to call on sun and stars, green herb and creeping thing, to praise and bless God.  Nevertheless, the old hymn stands in our prayer-books, as a precious heir-loom to our children; and long may it stand.  Though we may forget its meaning, yet perhaps our children after us will recollect it once more, and say with their hearts, what we now, I fear, only say with our lips and should not say at all, if it was not put into our months by the Prayer-book.

Do you not understand what I mean?  Then think of this:—

If we were writing a hymn about God, should we dare to say to the things about us—to the cattle feeding in the fields—much less to the clouds over our heads, and to the wells of which we drink, ‘Bless ye the Lord, praise him, and magnify him for ever?’

We should not dare; and for two reasons.

First—There is a notion abroad, borrowed from the old monks, that this earth is in some way bad, and cursed; that a curse is on it still for man’s sake: but a notion which is contrary to plain fact; for if we till the ground, it does not bring forth thorns and thistles to us, as the Scripture says it was to do for Adam, but wholesome food, and rich returns for our labour: and which in the next place is flatly contrary to Scripture: for we read in Genesis viii. 21, how the Lord said, ‘I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake;’ and the Psalms always speak of this earth, and of all created things, as if there was no curse at all on them; saying that ‘all things serve God, and continue as they were at the beginning,’ and that ‘He has given them a law which cannot be broken;’ and in the face of those words, let who will talk of the earth being cursed, I will not; and you shall not, if I can help it.

Another reason why we dare not talk of this earth as this hymn does is, that we have got into the habit of saying, ‘Cattle and creeping things—they are not rational beings.  How can they praise God?  Clouds and wells—they are not even living things.  How can they praise God?  Why speak of them in a hymn; much less speak to them?’

Yet this hymn does speak to them; and so do the Psalms and the Prophets again and again.  And so will men do hereafter, when the fashions and the fancies of these days are past, and men have their eyes opened once more to see the glory which is around them from their cradle to their grave, and hear once more ‘The Word of the Lord walking among the trees of the garden.’

But how can this be?  How can not only dumb things, but even dead things, praise God?

My friends, this is a great mystery, of which the wisest men as yet know but little, and confess freely how little they know.  But this at least we know already, and can say boldly—all things praise God, by fulfilling the law which our Lord himself declared, when he said ‘Not every one who saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven.’