Sermons at Rugby Part 10

And it has been so with all the great servants of G.o.d; out of this feeling the love of souls has grown in men.

But this feeling of the value of each individual life, because of the Divine element and presence in it, is a peculiar gift of the Christian revelation.

In the ancient pagan world a man's life was of little account; it is out of the Bible that this new thought has come that every soul has in it an indefinite element of Divine possibilities, and is therefore of value in the sight of G.o.d. It is by virtue of this contribution to our thought that the Bible is truly described as the Great Charter of human rights, and as the source of the great stream of charity and self-sacrifice, of that enthusiasm of humanity which more than all else separates and distinguishes our life from that of heathen antiquity.

It would indeed be difficult to point to any one single thing which makes so great a difference between the quality of one man's life and another's as the presence or absence of this feeling about the value, the possibilities, the sanct.i.ty of each individual soul.

"Let man estimate himself," said Pascal, "let him estimate himself at his true value, honour himself in his capacities, and despise himself in his neglect of those capacities." Yes, if a man is once brought to this condition that he feels the greatness of the ends for which G.o.d has made him, and that he estimates his life by the possibilities of growth that are in it, and by the thought of the Divine influences that work in it; and if he despises himself for neglect of these capacities or possibilities and of these influences, he has awoke to a sense of the first word of Christ and His Apostles.

Your soul is G.o.d's seed-field, G.o.d's building; we are labourers together with G.o.d. Such a description of each individual life is very significant everywhere, and not least in such a society as ours.

To us who are here in this society as masters they are just a parable of our own life; setting forth to each of us what should be his estimate of his own work and aim and purpose, exhibiting to him his field of work with the Divine light on it, and interpreting to him his own endeavours as a fellow-labourer with G.o.d, hoping to contribute in some degree towards the filling in and completing that Divine plan, that ideal picture of the life of every one of you which is in the heavens, and which in imagination he sees as a thing some day to be realised, and the realisation of which, or its failure, may largely depend on his own share in our life and work. It is this feeling that every heart contains the germ of some perfection that makes our life so profoundly interesting, and, it may be added, our responsibilities for the cultivation or neglect of any such germ or capacity so serious and engrossing.

But to you, too, these apostolic suggestions about the Divine influences at work in each heart, and the value of each life in G.o.d's sight, and the Divine voices claiming to be heard in it, should be quite as stimulative as they are to us.

They have in them the germ of all striving after purity and goodness, and of all hatred of sin, and enthusiasm for the uplifting of social life.

The words of Paul to his Corinthian converts may furnish you with new interpretations of your own daily life and duty.

If they were G.o.d's husbandry, or G.o.d's building, are not you? If the Spirit of G.o.d dwelt in them, how does He not dwell likewise in you?

striving for your growth in holiness and good purpose, and for your salvation from sin and its defilements, as he strove for theirs?

And if it was good for every man in that Corinthian community to be warned how he built upon the foundation of life that had been laid in Christ; if it was good for them to be reminded that every man's work would be made manifest, and that the fire would try it, of what sort it was; it is good also for us, masters and boys alike, to remember that we are living under the same law, and that we should take care lest haply we be found to be working against G.o.d.

That Epistle of St. Paul's was written in pain and anguish of heart. The seeds of Christian life which he had sown among them, the purifying influences of the Holy Spirit which were working among them through him and his fellow-labourers, all these ought to have produced fruits easily described, such as peace and love, and purity, and good works; but instead of these, and threatening their destruction, there had sprung up dissension and strife, party spirit, self-conceit, and gross sins which I need not name.

In all this there was grief, disappointment, bitterness; for did they not prove that his work was threatened with failure?

Yet in all that storm of feeling his chief exhortation is this reminder of the dignity of their calling. In the midst of all their sin and failure, though he does not spare rebuke and warning, he always aims at inspiring them by uplifting. And we know that this is the true method, because there is nothing which exercises an influence so strong to uplift and purify as the feeling of our kinship with the life above us, and that we are degrading our life when we forget this or ignore it. And herein is the value of this word of his that G.o.d is dwelling and working in us.

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of G.o.d, that the Holy Ghost dwelleth in you, and that G.o.d's temple is holy? and if any man destroy the temple of G.o.d, him shall G.o.d destroy."

Let us then begin again our common life with a determination to bear in mind the possibilities and the sanct.i.ty of each separate soul that comes amongst us.

Living in crowds, we are apt to forget this; and, forgetting it, some treat their own souls as if they were of no value, and some the souls of others, and so the work of sin and waste goes on from generation to generation.

But in our best moments, in our times of serious thought, if we have been once enlightened, we can never again cease to feel the dignity and the value of each human life.

When we think of G.o.d's care for us we feel it; when we think of the possibilities He has ordained for us we feel it; when we think of the endless life that lies before us we feel it; above all, we never fail to feel it when our thoughts revert to any life that has been s.n.a.t.c.hed away from us. Some of you are thinking to-day of the master whose home is darkened by the presence of the angel of death. You think of her whom G.o.d has taken, who was moving among you not so long ago, as your tender, considerate, and helpful friend. It may be that you were not uninfluenced by her self-devotion and holiness.

When you think of such an one you feel no doubt about the value and the sanct.i.ty of each human life.

Well, then, transfer this feeling to your own life, or to the life of the boy who sits beside you, or who lives as your companion. In the purpose of our common Father, your lives also are destined for holy uses.

To remember this may be a safeguard against temptation or sinful habit; it may inspire you with a new feeling of the value of _all_ the lives around you, and a new sense of the duty you owe to the good life of this society in which G.o.d has placed you, that you may prove a vessel of honour sanctified for His service.

XX. HE THAT OVERCOMETH.

"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his G.o.d, and he shall be My son."--REVELATION xxi. 7.

Year by year as at this time, when the week of our Saviour's Pa.s.sion and Death is just in front of us, and the shadow of His Cross is falling over us, one generation after another of the boys of this school gather here, and in the face of the congregation, young and old, they take upon them the vows of a Christian life. So we met last Thursday, and your vow is still fresh upon a great many of you, as indeed it can hardly fail to be fresh in the memory of every one in this congregation who has ever taken it. Let us pause for a moment and repeat its plain words. You have declared your faith in G.o.d the Father, G.o.d the Son, and G.o.d the Holy Ghost, the Father, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier of your life. You have vowed that you renounce the devil and his works, that you renounce covetous desires, that you renounce the carnal desires of the flesh, so that you will not follow nor be led by them. And you have vowed that you will keep G.o.d's holy will and commandments, and walk in them all the days of your life. And you take this upon you, let us hope, in sincerity and honesty of purpose.

And, if so, the text I have read to you declares G.o.d's promise, if you persevere, just as another text in the same chapter declares that into the City of G.o.d there shall not enter anything that defileth or worketh abomination or maketh a lie. This, then, is the promise--"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his G.o.d, and he shall be My son." But as we think of this and look forward, we have to remember that this life to which you are dedicated is not an easy matter.

If you are to succeed in it, you have to think of it always as a life under a vow, as in fact a consecrated life, consecrated by your own promise and profession. And this is a great safeguard if you bear it always in mind.

It is indeed the first condition of safety from the attacks and the impulses of sin, this consciousness which you will carry about with you, that you are self-dedicated--that there was a day on which you said "I will"--so that if you are to be true to your profession and declared purpose, you will strive to keep near to G.o.d in the spirit, and you will have no dealings with the devil and his works, and you will resist all the degrading solicitations of the flesh, and will live in the atmosphere of things that are pure and of good report.

To have conceived such a purpose as this, to have opened your heart to its influence, to have lived in it even for a little while, to have felt its purifying and strengthening breath upon your soul even for a few weeks, may be enough, as some of you know very well, to lift your life up to a new level, so that it becomes and is felt by you to be a quite different life from what you lived before--a life of new thoughts, of new notions about what is good or what is evil, about the degrading character of sin and the misery and hatefulness of it, as also about the happiness of a life that is inspired by good aims and purposes, and is free from a sense of G.o.d's wrath upon you for some low standard of conduct, or some sinful appet.i.te or pa.s.sion. If you have once felt the influence of this change in your heart, you know the difference henceforth between the higher life and the lower, the life that is clinging to G.o.d, however feebly, and is in the way of salvation, and the life of sin which will inevitably end in degradation and in death.

But this life in Christ to which you are dedicated is not an easy one; let us not suppose it. It is a n.o.ble life, and every one who strives to live it is doing something to enn.o.ble his society; but it is not an easy life. It is never so represented to us in the Bible. There is a sense no doubt in which our Lord invites us to see how easy is His yoke compared with the yoke of sin--but He Himself calls upon every believer to take up his cross and follow Him. That call may bring to any of us not peace but a sword. St. Paul sets the Christian life before us as a race to be run with patience; as a conflict which will sometimes be very hard. In St. James we see it as the discipline of sore temptation, and in St. Peter it is the fiery trial that is to try us.

And again, in the Revelation of St. John, we have this picture of blessing only to those that endure, and to those who have not defiled their garments, and those who have come through great tribulation.

And all our personal experience confirms this language of Holy Scripture, reminding us, as it does, how hard it is for an individual to keep in the narrow way of the spotless Christian life, and how it is still harder to stamp the mark of Christian purpose upon a society.

Yet these are the two things to which G.o.d is calling us. These you have in fact vowed that you will strive after; and if you are unfaithful in either respect, if you give up your effort for an easy, drifting life, you are letting go your confirmation vows; and whereas you were intended to be the salt of your society, your salt will lose its savour. To consider this just now may save some of you from discouragement and some from waste and failure.

Men are stronger to meet their difficulties if they know that they have to meet them or else to fail and sink. And so it will be with you. You will be more likely to go forward strong in earnest purpose, strong in the strength which G.o.d supplies, if you bear it in mind that, as St. Paul would have expressed it, we are appointed unto these trials; and that a soldier of Christ must expect to have to endure hardness; and in fact that it is a law of our spiritual life that one of the chief roots of all growth in strength and goodness is suffering. We grow through trial and suffering to true manhood in Christ.

So, if you look at your own life and experience, you will find that some suffer through a sore struggle with their own temptations, or their own weaknesses--their desires, their appet.i.tes, their fears, or the habits they have contracted, and their struggle may be so hard that it needs all the grace of G.o.d to keep them firm in their purpose. Some again suffer not from internal but from external hindrances. Companions may be against them, or a low public opinion may be against them, and they may feel as if they could hardly stand firm in isolation, or under suspicion, or mockery, or enmity; and some may suffer because the conscience around them is depraved, and they feel too weak to fight against it, though they know and acknowledge its depravity. But however hard may be the fight there should be no discouragement, if only you are able still to say in all honesty that you are holding fast to the good purpose which you uttered in your confirmation vows. Two quite simple warnings may sometimes do us great service--one, is that we are very apt to exaggerate the forces against us. They seem very strong when we are feeling weak; but they sometimes break up and disappear if they are met with a little courage. And the other warning is this, that we sometimes let ourselves sink and drift into sinful ways or moral cowardice, by neglecting the helps which G.o.d gives us for the strengthening of a good life in us.

Thus if we neglect real prayer, or do not seek the support of good companionship, if we take no pains to live in a good atmosphere and amidst good surroundings, if there is little of devout thought or habitual worship in our life and still less of Holy Communion, if we thus allow ourselves to drift out of the range of the higher moral and spiritual influences, our vows are forgotten and our good purposes fade away, our will becomes weak, and the world with all its temptations is very likely to overcome us.

Feeling the infinite issues that hang on such considerations as these, let us carry about with us the inspiring and invigorating call and the promise contained in the text with which I began this sermon--"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his G.o.d, and he shall be My son."