A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 18

This was a very curious sermon; quiet, elegant, and learned, with a good deal of sacred and profane history introduced in ill.u.s.tration, which I am sorry I cannot remember in detail. It made, however, no appeal to feeling or to practice; and after listening to it, we all went in to luncheon and discussed our newspapers.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

III.

_Fragments of a Sermon (Anglican Church)._

Text, Luke iv., from the 14th to the 18th, but more especially the 18th verse. This sermon was extempore.

The preacher began by observing, that our Lord's sermon at Nazareth established the second of two principles. By his sermon from the Mount, in which he had addressed the mult.i.tude in the open air, under the vault of the blue heaven alone, he has left to us the principle that all places are fitted for the service of G.o.d, and that all places may be sanctified by the preaching of his truth. While, by his sermon in the Synagogue (that which is recorded by St. Luke in this pa.s.sage), he has established the principle, that it is right to set apart a place to a.s.semble together in worship and to listen to instruction; and it is observable that on this occasion our Saviour taught in the synagogue, where there was no sacrifice, no ministry of the priests, as in the Temple; but where a portion of the law and the prophets might be read by any man; and any man, even a stranger (as he was himself), might be called upon to expound.

Then reading impressively the whole of the narrative down to the 32nd verse, the preacher closed the sacred volume, and went on to this effect:-

"There are two orders of evil in the world-Sin and Crime. Of the second, the world takes strict cognisance; of the first, it takes comparatively little; yet _that_ is worse in the eyes of G.o.d. There are two orders of temptation: the temptation which a.s.sails our lower nature-our appet.i.tes; the temptation which a.s.sails our higher nature-our intellect. The _first_, leading to sin in the body, is punished in the body,-the consequence being pain, disease, death. The _second_, leading to sins of the soul, as pride chiefly, uncharitableness, selfish sacrifice of others to our own interests or purposes,-is punished in the soul-in the h.e.l.l of the Spirit."

(All this part of his discourse very beautiful, earnest, eloquent; but I regretted that he did not follow out the distinction he began with between _sin_ and _crime_, and the views and deductions, religious and moral, which that distinction leads to.)

He continued to this effect: "Christ said that it was a part of his mission to heal the broken-hearted. What is meant by the phrase 'a broken heart?'" He ill.u.s.trated it by the story of Eli, and by the wife of Phineas, both of whom died broken in heart; "and our Saviour himself died on the cross heart-broken by sorrow rather than by physical torture."-

(I lost something here because I was questioning and doubting within myself, for I have always had the thought that Christ must have been _glad_ to die.)

He went on:-"To heal the broken-hearted is to say to those who are beset by the remembrance and the misery of sin, 'My brother, the past is past-think not of it to thy perdition; arise and sin no more.'" (All this, and more to the same purpose, wonderfully beautiful! and I became all soul-subdued to listen.) "There are two ways of meeting the pressure of misery and heart-break: first, by trusting to time" (then followed a quotation from Schiller's "Wallenstein," in reference to grief, which sounded strange, and yet beautiful, from the pulpit, "Was verschmerzte nicht der Mensch?"-what cannot man grieve down?); "secondly, by defiance and resistance, setting oneself resolutely to endure. But Christ taught a different way from either-by _submission_-by the complete surrender of our whole being to the will of G.o.d.

"The next part of Christ's mission was to preach deliverance to the captives." (Then followed a most eloquent and beautiful exposition of Christian freedom-of who were free; and who were not free, but properly spiritual captives.) "To be content within limitations is freedom; to desire beyond those limitations is bondage. The bird which is content within her cage is free; the bird which can fly from tree to tree, yet desires to soar like the eagle,-the eagle which can ascend to the mountain peak yet desires to reach the height of that sun on which his eye is fixed,-these are in bondage. The man who is not content within his sphere of duties and powers, but feels his faculties, his position, his profession; a perpetual trammel,-_he_ is spiritually in bondage. The only freedom is the freedom of the soul, content within its external limitations, and yet elevated spiritually far above them by the inward powers and impulses which lift it up to G.o.d."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IV.

_Recollections of another Church of England Sermon preached extempore._

The text was taken from Matt. xii. 42.: "The Queen of the South shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it," &c.

The preacher began by drawing that distinction between knowledge and wisdom which so many comprehend and allow, and so few apply. He then described the two parties in the great question of popular education.

Those who would base all human progress on secular instruction, on knowledge in contradistinction to ignorance, as on light opposed to darkness;-and the mistake of those who, taking the contrary extreme, denounce all secular instruction imparted to the poor as dangerous, or contemn it as useless. The error of those who sneer at the triumph of intellect he termed a species of idiocy; and the error of those who do not see the insufficiency of knowledge, blind presumption. Then he contrasted worldly wisdom and spiritual; with a flow of gorgeous eloquence he enlarged on the picture of worldly wisdom as exhibited in the character of Solomon, and of intellect, and admiration for intellect, in the character of the Queen of Sheba. "In what consisted the wisdom of Solomon? He made, as the sacred history a.s.sures us, three thousand proverbs, mostly prudential maxims relating to conduct in life; the use and abuse of riches; prosperity and adversity. His acquirements in natural philosophy seem to have been confined to the appearances of material and visible things; the herbs and trees, the beasts and birds, the creeping things and fishes. His political wisdom consisted in increasing his wealth, his dominions, and the number of his subjects and cities. On his temple he lavished all that art had then accomplished, and on his own house a world of riches in gold, and silver, and precious things: but all was done for his own glory-nothing for the improvement or the happiness of his people, who were ground down by taxes, suffered in the midst of all his magnificence, and remained ignorant in spite of all his knowledge. Witness the wars, tyrannies, miseries, delusions, and idolatries which followed after his death."

"But the Queen of Sheba came not from the uttermost parts of the earth to view the magnificence and wonder at the greatness of the King, she came to hear his wisdom. She came not to ask anything from him, but to prove him with hard questions. No idea of worldly gain, or selfish ambition was in her thoughts; she paid even for the pleasure of hearing his wise sayings by rare and costly gifts."

"Knowledge is power; but he who worships knowledge not for its own sake, but for the power it brings, worships power. Knowledge is riches; but he who worships knowledge for the sake of all it bestows, worships riches.

The Queen of Sheba worshipped knowledge solely for its own sake; and the truths which she sought from the lips of Solomon she sought for truth's sake. She gave, all she could give, in return, the spicy products of her own land, treasures of pure gold, and blessings warm from her heart. The man who makes a voyage to the antipodes only to behold the constellation of the Southern Cross, the man who sails to the North to see how the magnet trembles and varies, these love knowledge for its own sake, and are impelled by the same enthusiasm as the Queen of Sheba." He went on to a.n.a.lyse the character of Solomon, and did not treat him, I thought, with much reverence either as sage or prophet. He remarked that, "of the thousand songs of Solomon one only survives, and that both in this song and in his proverbs his meaning has often been mistaken; it is supposed to be spiritual, and is interpreted symbolically, when in fact the plain, obvious, material significance is the true one."

He continued to this effect,-but with a power of language and ill.u.s.tration which I cannot render. "We see in Solomon's own description of his dominion, his glory, his wealth, his fame, what his boasted wisdom achieved; what it could, and what it could not do for him. What was the end of all his magnificence? of his worship of the beautiful? of his intellectual triumphs? of his political subtlety? of his ships, and his commerce, and his chariots, and his horses, and his fame which reached to the ends of the earth? All-as it is related-ended in feebleness, in scepticism, in disbelief of happiness, in sensualism, idolatry, and dotage! The whole 'Book of Ecclesiastes,' fine as it is, presents a picture of selfishness and epicurism. This was the King of the Jews! the King of those that know! (_Il maestro di color chi sanno._) Solomon is a type of worldly wisdom, of desire of knowledge for the sake of all that knowledge can give. We imitate him when we would base the happiness of a people on knowledge. When we have commanded the sun to be our painter, and the lightning to run on our errands, what reward have we? Not the increase of happiness, nor the increase of goodness; nor-what is next to both-our faith in both."

"It would seem profane to contrast Solomon and Christ had not our Saviour himself placed that contrast distinctly before us. He consecrated the comparison by applying it-'Behold a greater than Solomon is here.' In quoting these words we do not presume to bring into comparison the two _natures_, but the two intellects-the two aspects of truth. Solomon described the external world; Christ taught the moral law. Solomon ill.u.s.trated the aspects of nature; Christ helped the aspirations of the spirit. Solomon left as a legacy the saying that 'in much wisdom there is much grief;' and Christ preached to us the lowly wisdom which can consecrate grief; making it lead to the elevation of our whole being and to ultimate happiness. The two majesties-the two kings-how different! Not till we are old, and have suffered, and have laid our experience to heart, do we feel the immeasurable distance between the teaching of Christ and the teaching of Solomon!"

Then returning to the Queen of Sheba, he treated the character as the type of the intellectual woman. He contrasted her rather favourably with Solomon. He described with picturesque felicity, her long and toilsome journey to see, to admire, the man whose wisdom had made him renowned;-the mixture of enthusiasm and humility which prompted her desire to learn, to prove the truth of what rumour had conveyed to her, to commune with him of all that was in her heart. And she returned to her own country rich in wise sayings. But did the final result of all this glory and knowledge reach her there? and did it shake her faith in him she had bowed to as the wisest of kings and men?

He then contrasted the character of the Queen of Sheba with that of Mary, the mother of our Lord, that feminine type of holiness, of tenderness, of long-suffering; of sinless purity in womanhood, wifehood, and motherhood: and rising to more than usual eloquence and power, he prophesied the regeneration of all human communities through the social elevation, the intellect, the purity, and the devotion of Woman.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

V.

_From a Sermon (apparently extempore) by a Dissenting Minister._

The ascetics of the old times seem to have had a belief that all sin was in the body; that the spirit belonged to G.o.d, and the body to his adversary the devil; and that to contemn, ill-treat, and degrade by every means this frame of ours, so wonderfully, so fearfully, so exquisitely made, was to please the Being who made it; and who, for gracious ends, no doubt, rendered it capable of such admirable development of strength and beauty. Miserable mistake!

To some, this body is as a prison from which we are to rejoice to escape by any permitted means: to others, it is as a palace to be luxuriously kept up and decorated within and without. But what says Paul (Cor. vi.

19.),-"Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from G.o.d, and which is not your own?"

Surely not less than a temple is that form which the Divine Redeemer took upon him, and deigned, for a season, to inhabit; which he consecrated by his life, sanctified by his death, glorified by his transfiguration, hallowed and beautified by his resurrection!

It is because they do not recognise _this_ body as a temple, built up by G.o.d's intelligence, as a fitting sanctuary for the immortal Spirit, and _this_ life equally with any other form of life as dedicate to Him, that men fall into such opposite extremes of sin:-the spiritual sin which contemns the body, and the sensual sin which misuses it.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

VI.

When I was at Boston I made the acquaintance of Father Taylor, the founder of the Sailors' Home in that city. He was considered as the apostle of the seamen, and I was full of veneration for him as the enthusiastic teacher and philanthropist. But it is not of his virtues or his labours that I wish to speak. He struck me in another way, _as a poet_; he was a born poet. Until he was five-and-twenty he had never learned to read, and his reading afterwards was confined to such books as aided him in his ministry. He remained an illiterate man to the last, but his mind was teeming with spontaneous imagery, allusion, metaphor.

One might almost say of him,

"He could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope!"

These images and allusions had a freshness, an originality, and sometimes an oddity that was quite startling, and they were generally, but not always, borrowed from his former profession-that of a sailor.

One day we met him in the street. He told us in a melancholy voice that he had been burying a child, and alluded almost with emotion to the great number of infants he had buried lately. Then after a pause, striking his stick on the ground and looking upwards, he added, "There must be something wrong somewhere! there's a storm brewing, when the doves are all flying aloft!"

One evening in conversation with me, he compared the English and the Americans to Jacob's vine, which, planted on one side of the wall, grew over it and hung its boughs and cl.u.s.ters on the other side,-"but it is still the same vine, nourished from the same root!"

On one occasion when I attended his chapel, the sermon was preceded by a long prayer in behalf of an afflicted family, one of whose members had died or been lost in a whaling expedition to the South Seas. In the midst of much that was exquisitely pathetic and poetical, refined ears were startled by such a sentence as this,-"Grant, O Lord! that this rod of chastis.e.m.e.nt be sanctified, every twig of it, to the edification of their souls!"

Then immediately afterwards he prayed that the Divine Comforter might be near the bereaved father "when his aged heart went forth from his bosom to flutter round the far southern grave of his boy!" Praying for others of the same family who were on the wide ocean, he exclaimed, stretching forth his arms, "O save them! O guard them! thou angel of the deep!"

On another occasion, speaking of the insufficiency of the moral principles without religious feelings, he exclaimed, "Go heat your ovens with s...o...b..a.l.l.s! What! shall I send you to heaven with such an icicle in your pocket? I might as well put a millstone round your neck to teach you to swim!"