Westminster Sermons Part 4

ST MARK VII. 32-37.

And they bring unto Jesus one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech Him to put His hand upon him. And He took him aside from the mult.i.tude, and put His fingers into his ears, and He spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain... . And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

Our greatest living philologer has said, and said truly--"If wonder arises from ignorance, it is from that conscious ignorance which, if we look back at the history of most of our sciences, has been the mother of all human knowledge. Till men began to wonder at the stratification of rocks, and the fossilization of sh.e.l.ls, there was no science of Geology.

Till they began to wonder at the words which were perpetually in their mouths, there was no science of Language."

He might have added, that till men began to wonder at the organization of their own bodies, there was no science of healing; that in proportion as the common fact of health became mysterious and marvellous in their eyes, just in that proportion did they become able to explain and to conquer disease. For there is a deep difference between the wonder of the uneducated or half-educated man, and the wonder of the educated man.

The ignorant in all ages have wondered at the exception; the wise, in proportion as they have become wise, have wondered at the rule.

Pestilences, prodigies, portents, the results of seeming accidents, excite the vulgar mind. Only the abnormal or casual is worthy of their attention. The man of science finds a deeper and more awful charm in contemplating the results of law; in watching, not what seem to be occasional failures in nature: but what is a perpetual and calm success.

The savage knows not, I am told, what wonder means, save from some prodigy. Seeing no marvel in the daily glory of the sunlight, he is startled out of his usual stupidity and carelessness by the occurrence of an eclipse, an earthquake, a thunderbolt. The uneducated, whatever their rank may be, are apt to be more interested by the sight of deformities, and defects or excesses in nature, than by that of the most perfect normal and natural beauty.

Those, in the same way, who in the infancy of European science, thought it worth while to register natural phenomena, registered exclusively the exceptions. Eclipses, meteors, auroras, earthquakes, storms, and especially monstrosities, animal or vegetable, exercised their barbaric wonder. The mystery and miracle which underlies the unfolding of every bud, the development of every embryo, the growth of every atom of tissue, in any organism, animal or vegetable--to all this their intellectual eye was blind. How different from such a state of mind, that calm and constant wonder, humbling and yet inspiring, with which the modern man of science searches into the "open mystery" of the universe; and sees that the true marvel lies, not in the infringement of law, but in its permanence; not in the imperfect, but in the perfect; not in disease, but in health; not in deformity, but in beauty.

These words are true of all nature; and specially true, it seems to me, of our outward senses and faculties; true of sight, hearing, speech. The wonder, I think, with the wise man will be, not that there are deaf and dumb persons to be found here and there among us: but that the average, nay, the majority of mankind, are not deaf and dumb. Paradoxical as this a.s.sertion may seem at first, a little thought I believe will prove it to be reasonable.

Whatever view you take of the origin of sight, hearing, voice, the wonder to a thoughtful mind is just the same; how, under the storm of circ.u.mstances, and through the lapse of ages, those faculties have not been lost again and again, by countless individuals, nay, by the whole species. For we must confess that those faculties are gradually developed in each individual; that every animal and every human being which is born into the world, has built up, unconsciously, involuntarily, and as it were out of nothing, those delicate and complex organs, by which he afterwards learns to see, hear, and utter sounds. Is not the wonder, that he should, in the majority of cases, succeed without any effort of his own?

And if I am answered, that the success is owing to hereditary tendencies, and to the laws by which the offspring resembles the parents, I answer: Is not that a greater wonder still? A wonder which all the discoveries of the scalpel and the microscope have been as yet unable, and will be, I believe, to the last unable, to unravel, even to touch? A wonder which can be explained by no theories of vibratory atoms, vital forces, plastic powers of nature, or other such phrases, which are but metaphysical abstractions, having no counterpart in fact, and only hiding from us our ignorance of the vast and venerable unknown. The physiologist, when he considers the manifold combination of innumerable microscopic circ.u.mstances which are required to bring any one creature into the world with a perfectly hearing ear, ought to confess that the chances--if the world were governed by chance--are infinitely greater in favour of a child's being born with an imperfect ear rather than with a perfect one.

And if he should evade the difficulty; and try to explain the usual success by saying that nature is governed by law: I answer--What is nature? What is law? You never saw nature nor law either under the microscope. They too are metaphysical abstractions, necessary notions and conceptions of your own brain. You have seen nothing but the fact and the custom; and all you can do, if you be strictly rational, is with a certain modern school to say, with a despairing humility, which I deplore while I respect--deploring it because it is needless despair, and yet respecting it because it is humility, which is the path out of despair and darkness into hope and light--to say with them, "Man can know nothing of causes, he can only register positive facts." This, I say, is one path--one which I trust none here will tread. The only other path, I believe, is, to go back to the lessons which we ought to have learnt in our childhood, for those to whom the human race owes most learnt them thousands of years ago; and to ascribe the ever successful miracles of nature to a Will, to a Mind, to a Providence so like that which each of us exercises in his own petty sphere, that we are not only able to understand in part the works of G.o.d, but to know from the very fact of being able to understand them--as one of our greatest astronomers has so well said lately--that we are made in the image of G.o.d. To say with the old Psalmist, that the universe is governed by "a law which cannot be broken:" but why? Because G.o.d has given it that law. To say "All things continue as they were at the beginning:" but why? Because all things serve Him in whom we live and move and have our being. To confess the mystery and miracle of our mortal bodies, and say with David, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made; such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me, I cannot attain unto it:" but to add the one only rational explanation of the mystery which, thank G.o.d, common sense has taught, though it may be often in confused and defective forms, to the vast majority of the human race in all times and all lands--that He who grasps the mystery and works the miracle is G.o.d; that "His eye sees our substances yet being imperfect; and in His book are all our members written, which day by day were fas.h.i.+oned, when as yet there were none of them."

And then to go forward with the Psalmist, and with the common sense of humanity; to conclude that if there be a Creator, there must also be a Providence; that that life-giving Spirit which presided over the creation of each organism presides also over its growth, its circ.u.mstances, its fortunes; and to say with David, "Whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I climb up to heaven, Thou art there. If I go down to h.e.l.l, Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there Thy hand shall lead me; Thy right hand shall hold me still."

Yes. To this--to faith and adoration--ought right and reason to lead the physical philosopher. And to what ought it to lead us, who are most of us, I presume, not physical philosophers? To grat.i.tude, surely, not unmixed with fear and trembling; till we say to ourselves--Who am I, to boast? Who am I, to pride myself on possessing a single faculty which one of my neighbours may want? What have I, that I did not receive?

Considering the endless chances of failure, if the world were left to chance; and I may say, the absolute certainty of failures, if the world were left to the blind compet.i.tion of merely physical laws, is it not only of the Lord's mercies that we are not failures too? that we have not been born crippled, blind, deaf, dumb--what not?--by the effect of circ.u.mstances over which we have had no control; which have been working, it may be, for generations past, in the organizations of our ancestors?

But what shall we say of those who have not received what we have received? What shall we say of those who, like the deaf and dumb, are, in some respects at least, failures--instances in which the laws which regulate our organization have not succeeded in effecting a full development?

We can say this, at least, without entangling and dazzling ourselves in speculations about final causes; without attempting to pry into the mystery of evil.

We can say this: That if there be a G.o.d--as there is a G.o.d--these failures are not according to His will. The highest reason should teach us that; for it must tell us that in the work of the Divine Artist, as in the work of the human, imperfection, impotence, disorder of any kind, must be contrary to the mind and will of the Creator. The highest reason, I say, teaches us this. And Scripture teaches it like wise. For if we believe our Lord to have been as He was--the express image of the Almighty Father; if we believe that He came--as He did come--to reveal to men His Father's will, His Father's mind, His Father's character: then we must believe that He acted according to that will and according to that character, when He made the healing of disease, and the curing of imperfections of this very kind, an important and an integral part of His work on earth.

"And they brought unto Jesus one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech, and besought Him to put His hand upon him. And Jesus took him aside from the mult.i.tude, and put His fingers into his ears; and He spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain ... And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak."

Consider this story awhile. He healed the man miraculously, by means at which we cannot guess, which we cannot even conceive. But the healing signified at least two things--that the man could be healed, and that the man ought to be healed; that his bodily defect--the retribution of no sin of his own--was contrary to the will of that Father in Heaven, who willeth not that one little one should perish.

But Jesus sighed likewise. There was in Him a sorrow, a compa.s.sion, most human and most divine.

It may have been--may He forgive me if I dare rashly to impute motives or thoughts to Him--that there was something too of a divine weariness--I dare not say impatience, seeing how patient He was then and how patient He has been since for more than 1800 years--of the folly and ignorance of man, who brings on himself and on his descendants these and a hundred other preventible miseries, simply because he will not study and obey the physical laws of the universe; simply because he will not see that those laws which concern the welfare of his body, are as surely the will of G.o.d as those which concern the welfare of his soul; and that therefore it is not merely his interest but his solemn duty to study and to obey them, lest he bear the punishment of his own neglect and disobedience.

It is not for man even to guess what thoughts may have pa.s.sed through the mind of Christ when He sighed over the very defect which He was healing.

But it is surely not irreverent in us to say that our Lord had cause enough to sigh, if He foresaw the follies of mankind during an age which was too soon to come.--How men, instead of taking the spirit of His miracles and acting on it, would counterfeit the mere outward signs of them, to feed the vanity or the superst.i.tion of a few devotees. How, instead of looking on His miracles as rebukes to their own ignorance and imbecility; instead of perceiving that their bodily afflictions were contrary to the will of G.o.d, and therefore curable; instead of setting themselves to work manfully, in the light of G.o.d, and by the help of G.o.d, to discover and correct the errors which produced them, mankind would idle away precious centuries in barbaric wonder at seeming prodigies and seeming miracles, and would neglect utterly the study of those far more wondrous laws of nature which Christ had proved to be under His government and His guidance, and had therefore proved to be working for the good of those for whom He came to die. Christ had indeed sown good seed in His field. He had taught men by His miracles, as He had taught them by His parables, to Whom nature belonged, and Whose laws nature obeyed. And the cessation of miracles after the time of Christ and His Apostles had taught, or ought to have taught, mankind a further lesson; the lesson that henceforth they were to carry on for themselves, by the faculties which G.o.d had given them, that work of healing and deliverance which He had begun. Miracles, like prophecies, like tongues, like supernatural knowledge, were to cease and vanish away: but charity, charity which devotes itself for the welfare of the human race, was to abide for ever.

Christ, as I said, had sown good seed: but an enemy--we know not whence or when--certainly within the three first centuries of the Church--came and sowed tares among that wheat. Then began men to believe that devils, and not their Father in Heaven, were, to all practical intents, the lords of nature. Then began they to believe that man's body was the property of Satan, and his soul only the property of G.o.d. Then began they to fancy that man was to be delivered from his manifold earthly miseries, not by purity and virtue, reason and knowledge, but by magic, masked under the sacred name of religion. No wonder if, in such a temper of mind, the physical amelioration of the human race stood still. How could it be otherwise, while men refused to see in facts the acted will of G.o.d; and sought not in G.o.d's universe, but in the dreams of their own brains, for glimpses of that divine and wonderful order by which The eternal Father and The eternal Son are working together for ever through The eternal Spirit for the welfare of the universe?

We boast, my friends, at times, of the rapid triumphs of modern science.

Were we but aware of the vast amount of preventible misery around us, and of the vast possibility of removing it, which lies in the little science which we know already, we should rather bewail the slow departure of modern barbarism.

There has been no period of the world for centuries back, I believe, in which man might not have been infinitely healthier, happier, more prosperous, more long-lived than he has been, if he had only believed that disease, misery, and premature death were not the will of G.o.d and of Christ; and that G.o.d had endowed him with an intellect which could understand the laws of the universe, in order that he might use those laws for his own health, wealth, and life. Very late is society in commencing that rational course on which it ought to have entered centuries ago; and therefore very culpable. And it is not too much to say, that to the average of persons suffering under preventible disease or defect, even though it be hereditary, society owes a sacred debt, which it is bound to pay by making those innocent sufferers from other's sins as happy as possible; where it has not yet learnt--as it will learn, please G.o.d, some day--to cure them.

There is, thank G.o.d, a healthier feeling than of old abroad of late upon this point. Men are learning more and more to regard such sufferers not as the victims of G.o.d's wrath, but of human ignorance, vice, or folly.

And it was with deep satisfaction that I read in the last Report of the Schools for the Deaf and Dumb a statement of what were considered the most probable physical causes of deafness and dumbness, and a hope that it would be possible, hereafter, to prevent as well as cure those diseases.

Whether the causes a.s.signed in that Report are the true ones, is a point of inferior importance for the moment. The really important point is, that the principle should be allowed, the question raised, by a society, composed of religious men, and teaching to those poor deaf and dumb as almost their primary work that true religion which they are just as capable of receiving as we. The right path has been entered--the path which is certain in due time to lead to success. And meanwhile our duty is, while we confess that it is the fault of society and not of G.o.d, that these afflicted ones exist among us--it is our duty, I say, to cultivate and to develop to the highest every faculty, instinct, and power, in them which G.o.d's order has preserved from the effects of man's disorder; to feed the eye with fair and n.o.ble sights, though the ear be shut to soothing and inspiring sounds; to cultivate the intellect to such a pitch that it may be able to perform practical work, and if possible to earn a sufficient livelihood, even though the want of speech makes it impossible for them, deaf and dumb, to compete on equal terms with their fellow-men; to awaken in them, by religious training, teaching and wors.h.i.+p, those purer and more unselfish emotions by which their hearts may become a field ready and prepared for G.o.d's grace. To do this; and to regard them, whenever we come in contact with them; not merely with pity, while we remember how much their intellects lose, in losing the whole world of sound; but with hope, when we see that through the one sense which is left they take in fully not only the meaning of the voluble hands which teach them, but more, the meaning of that meaning--the spiritual truths and feelings which signs express; with wonder, not at the defect, but at the innate health which almost compensates for the want of hearing by concentrating its powers upon the sight; and lastly, with admiration for that humanity which, as it were imprisoned, fettered, maimed, yet can, by the G.o.d-given force of the immortal spirit, so burst its prison-bars, and rise, through hindrances which seem to us impa.s.sable, to the tenderest, the n.o.blest, the purest, and most devout emotions.

SERMON VI. THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT.

ST JOHN III. 8,

The wind bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

It is often asked--men have a right to ask--what would the world have been by now without Christianity? without the Christian religion? without the Church?

But before these questions can be answered, we must define, it is discovered, what we mean by Christianity, the Christian religion, the Church.

And it is found--or I at least believe it will be found--more safe and wise to ask a deeper and yet a simpler question still: What would the world have been without that influence on which Christianity, and religion, and the Church depend? What would the world have been without the Holy Spirit of G.o.d?

But some will say: This is a more abstruse question still. How can you define, how can you a.n.a.lyse, the Spirit of G.o.d? Nay, more, how can you prove its existence?--Such questioners have been, as it were, baptized unto John's baptism. They are very glad to see people do right, and not do wrong, from any well-calculated motives, or wholesome and pleasant emotions. But they have not as yet heard whether there be any Holy Spirit.

We can only answer, Just so. This Holy Spirit in Whom we believe defies all a.n.a.lysis, all definition whatsoever. His nature can be brought under no terms derived from human emotions or motives. He is literally invisible; as invisible to the conception of the brain as He is to the bodily eye. His presence is proved only by its effects. The Spirit bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but thou canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.

Such words must sound as dreams to those a.n.a.lytical philosophers who allow nothing in man below the sphere of consciousness, actual or possible; who have dissected the human mind till they find in it no personal will, no indestructible and spiritual self, but a character which is only the net result of innumerable states of consciousness; who hold that man's outward actions, and also his inmost instincts, are all the result either of calculations about profit and loss, pleasure and pain, or of emotions, whether hereditary or acquired. Ignoring the deep and ancient distinction, which no one ever brought out so clearly as St Paul, between the flesh and the spirit, they hold that man is flesh, and can be nothing more; that each person is not really a person, but is the consequence of his brain and nerves; and having thus, by logical a.n.a.lysis, got rid of the spirit of man, their reason and their conscience quite honestly and consistently see no need for, or possibility of, a Spirit of G.o.d, to enn.o.ble and enable the human spirit. Why need there be, if the difference between an animal and a man be one of degree alone, and not of kind?

We answer: That there is a flesh in man, brain and nerves, emotions and pa.s.sions, identical with that of animals, we do not deny. We should be fools if we did deny it; for the fact is hideously and shamefully patent.

None knew that better than St Paul, who gave a list of the works of the flesh, the things which a man does who is the slave of his own brain and nerves--and a very ugly list it is--beginning with adultery and ending with drunkenness, after pa.s.sing through all the seven deadly sins. And neither St Paul nor we deny, that in this fleshly, carnal and animal state the vast majority of the human race has lived, and lives still, to its own infinite misery and confusion; and that it has a perpetual tendency, whenever lifted out of that state, to fall back into it again, and perish.

But St Paul says, and we say: That crushed under this animal nature there is in man a spirit. We say: That below all his consciousness lies a n.o.bler element; a divine spark, or at least a divine fuel, which must be kindled into life by the divine Spirit, the Spirit of G.o.d. And we say that in proportion as that Spirit of G.o.d kindles the spirit of man, he begins to act after a fas.h.i.+on for which he can give no logical reason; that by instinct, and without calculation of profit or loss, pleasure or pain, he begins to act on what he calls duty, honour, love, self-sacrifice. But what these are he cannot a.n.a.lyse. Mere words cannot define them. He can only obey that which prompts him, he knows not what nor whence; and say with Luther of old: "I can do no otherwise. G.o.d help me."

And we say that such men and women are the salt of the earth, who keep society from rotting; that by such men and women, and by their example and influence, direct and indirect, has Christendom been raised up out of the accursed slough into which Europe and, indeed, the whole known world, had fallen during the early Roman Empire; and that to this influence, and therefore to the Holy Spirit of G.o.d alone, and not to any prudential calculations, combined experiences, or so-called philosophies of men, is owing all which keeps Europe from being a h.e.l.l on earth. And we say, moreover, that those who deny this, and dream of a morality and a civilization without The Spirit of G.o.d, are unconsciously throwing down the ladder by which they themselves have climbed, and sawing off the very bough to which they cling.

Duty, honour, love, self-sacrifice--these are the fruits of The Spirit; unknown to, and un.o.beyed by, the savage, or by the civilized man who--as has too often happened--as is happening now in too many lands, on both sides of the Atlantic, is sinking back into inward savagery, amid an outward and material civilization.

Moreover--and this appears to us a fair experimental proof that our old- fas.h.i.+oned belief in A Spirit of G.o.d, which acts upon the spirit of man, is a true belief--moreover, I say: It is a patent fact, that wherever and whenever there has been a revival of the Christian religion; whenever, that is, amid whatsoever confusions and errors, men have begun to feel the need of the Holy Spirit of G.o.d, and to pray for that Spirit, a moral revival has accompanied the religious one. Men and women have not only become better themselves; and that often suddenly and in very truth miraculously better: but the yearning has awoke in them to make others better likewise. The grace of G.o.d, as they have called it, has made them gracious to their fellow-creatures; and duty, honour, love, self-sacrifice, call it by what name we will, has said to them, with a still small voice more potent than all the thunders of the law: Go, and seek and save that which is lost.

In no case has this instinctive tendency to practical benevolence been more striking, than in the case of that great religious revival throughout England at the beginning of this century, which issued in the rise of the Evangelical school: a school rightly so called, because its members did try to obey the precepts of the Gospel, according to their understanding of them, in spirit and in truth.

The doctrines which they held are a matter not for us, but for G.o.d and their own souls. The deeds which they did are matter for us, and for all England; for they have left their mark on the length and breadth of the land. They were inspired--cultivated, highborn, and wealthy folk many of them--with a strange new instinct that G.o.d had bidden them to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoner and the sick, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to preach good tidings to the meek. A strange new instinct: and from what cause, save from the same cause as that which Isaiah a.s.signed to his own like deeds?--Because "The Spirit of the Lord was upon him."

Yes, if those gracious men, those gracious women, did not shew forth the Spirit and grace of G.o.d with power, then there is either no Spirit of G.o.d, no grace of G.o.d; or those who deny to them the name of saints forget the words of Him Who said: By their fruits ye shall know them; of Him Who said, too: That the unpardonable sin, the sin which shewed complete moral perversion, the sin against the Holy Spirit of G.o.d, was to attribute good deeds to bad motives, and say: He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.

Yes, that old Evangelical School may now have pa.s.sed its prime. It may now be verging toward old age; and other schools, younger and stronger, with broader and clearer knowledge of dogma, of history, civil and ecclesiastical, of the value of ceremonial, of the needs of the human intellect and emotions, may have pa.s.sed it in a n.o.ble rivalry, and s.n.a.t.c.hed, as it were, from the hands of the old Evangelical School the lamp of truth, to bear it further forward in the race. But G.o.d forbid that the spiritual children should be ungrateful to their spiritual parents, though G.o.d may have taught them things which their parents did not know.

And they were our spiritual parents, those old Evangelicals. No just and well-informed man who has pa.s.sed middle age, but must confess, that to them we owe whatsoever vital religion exists at this moment in any school or party of the Church of England; that to them we owe the germs at least, and in many cases the full organization and the final success, of a hundred schemes of practical benevolence and practical justice, without which this country, in its haste to grow rich at all risks and by all means, might have plunged itself ere now into anarchy and revolution. And he must confess, too, if he is one who has seen much of his fellow-creatures and their characters, that that school numbered among its disciples--and, thank G.o.d, they are not all yet gone home to their rest--some of the loveliest human souls, whose converse has chastened and enn.o.bled his own soul. Ah, well--