Sermons at Rugby Part 2

Your estimate of your life should be fundamentally different from this.

You are primarily a child of G.o.d, illumined by direct communion with the Spirit of G.o.d; and your first duty, therefore, whenever and in whatever place or circ.u.mstances you may chance to be, is not to follow this or that tradition or usage which may meet you; but to stand up and show that you are G.o.d's child, and therefore a judge of all traditions or customs, and not their slave.

This is the revelation which Christ declares to us as the one first requisite of the Christian life. So you see the Christian man's att.i.tude towards all traditions or customs is that of independence; his thought and his judgment are as free in regard to them as if they were newly born. He is, in fact, bound to judge them according to their deserts; and no society can hope to prosper unless this is recognised, so that evil customs may not corrupt the common life. It is the danger of such corruption that makes the Saviour denounce the traditional habit, and summon His followers to live by the rule of close personal communion with G.o.d. Thus the life that goes forward and rises to higher and yet higher levels is always a life of new revelations, a life which is being illumined and illumined afresh by those flashes of Divine insight, and strength, and courage, which come to men only as they came to the Lord Himself in the secret communion of prayer and meditation, and through that independence of spirit which arises from the sense of G.o.d's presence to guide us and to uphold.

Take your own case. If you are living here simply according to traditional rules, doing this or that because, as you may be told, everybody does it; accepting standards of conduct and rules of practice, because, as you understand, or, as some one undertakes to persuade you, they have always been so accepted, why, then, you are growing up to be one of that never-ending succession of men who are the Pharisees, the opponents of the Christ, in every generation, who live with tame conscience in any sort of company, and perpetuate the bad traditions of the world.

But if you listen to the call of Christ, and have truly learned to feel that the only real man's life is that which you live with the light of G.o.d's law shining upon it, then, as a matter of course, you will rise superior to the influence of any tradition or custom, no matter what its authority may seem to be.

And it will indeed be a happy thing for you if you grow up with that G.o.d- given strength of character and purpose which can treat all traditions, and all usages, or fashions, or customs as things that should be subordinated, and should not rule us, as things to be used by us if they help us to a better life, but to be flung aside and rejected, if they contradict the voice of G.o.d in our hearts.

V. VAIN HOPES.

"And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. But he said, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."--ST. LUKE xvi. 30, 31.

It is by no means uncommon for any one who is living a life which does not satisfy his own conscience to console himself with the fancy that if only such and such things were different around him he would be a new man, filled with a new spirit, and exhibiting a new character. But is it so very certain that this would be the case?

Such persons are apt to dream of some goodness or some virtue which under other circ.u.mstances they would make their own; and there are, in fact, few conditions more dangerous than that of this cla.s.s of dreamers, whether among boys or men. To all who may be tempted in this way, our Lord's words in the parable come with a very significant warning: "Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. But he said, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

When insidious and delusive hope would draw us on and beguile us in any sinful way, whispering that G.o.d will some day send special gifts and messengers of grace to inspire us with new life, this is his plain answer: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

And hardly any one can say that he is altogether free from this tendency to lean upon the future with vain hopes, and is in no need of the warning which this text conveys to us.

In serious moments, when the mind is calm, and neither pa.s.sion nor appet.i.te is stirring, we feel how good a thing it is to have crucified the flesh and to be living close to Christ; but when we are within the fiery circle of trial or temptation, when sinful desires arise, or pa.s.sions are strong, or solicitations to evil are subtle and enticing, then we are only too ready to catch at any hopes about the vague future.

To the unstable and incontinent, to those whose nature is weak while their conscience is not dead, this hope is a dangerous temptation, beguiling them with the suggestion that some day there will open before them an easy path to that virtue or self-denial to which the way is too rough at present. "Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent." By-and-by, they say, as they dream about the future, G.o.d will lay His hand upon them; the Holy Spirit will touch their souls with new life; they will receive in some inscrutable way new power, and in the exercise of this power they will cast off the bondage of sin or weakness; but how and by what means this great and necessary change is to be brought about they do not stop to think, and meanwhile they yield to worldly or fleshly appet.i.te, trusting vaguely to an uncertain future for some Divine gift.

If you look into the thoughts and habits of your life, some of you may be compelled to acknowledge that this case is not unfamiliar to you. So men sometimes dally with a temptation, and linger beside it, courting its company, instead of flinging it away from them, as the snare of the devil, because of some secret hope that by-and-by G.o.d will place them out of the way of it, or give them some new strength against it, which as yet has not been given. How easy it is for us to entice ourselves in this way out of the narrow path of present duty into the tangled wilderness of a weak and sinful life, from which escape becomes every day more difficult.

And this enticement along the ways of sin being so easy, it may be happening to some of you. You may feel that, judged even by your own standard, which is more likely to be too low than too high, your life is somehow unsatisfactory; your better instincts may be telling you that you were born for something higher, purer, stronger than what you are or have been; and you are cherishing the hope that it will be different with you some day; your circ.u.mstances, you think, or your occupation, or your companionship will have changed, and so you fondly imagine that you yourself will be sure to change, as if your soul were just a weatherc.o.c.k that answers to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some habit of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper be eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes on you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no serious effort to get away from it now, and you yield all the more because of this misleading hope that some day you will be touched by a supernatural hand, and will rise up to a regenerate life. And yet our reason tells us that all this is the very essence of self-deceit, and that such dreams and hopes are the devil's most subtle temptation. This kind of vain hope is based on a complete misconception of the nature of our conflict with sin, and the way to escape from it. To think thus of spiritual gifts and the growth of the spiritual life, is to follow a very dangerous delusion. It was just such a misunderstanding that is expressed in the hope of Dives about his brethren: "If one went unto them from the dead, they will repent." Their ordinary daily teachings, he seems to say, the voice of Moses and of the prophets, the examples of good men around them, the warnings, the exhortations, these, being so familiar, may not have startled them out of their sin; but if only one were to go to them from the dead, some messenger of strange voice and aspect, who had seen h.e.l.l, and could paint its horrors, then surely the course of their life would be checked and changed, and their spirit would wake up in them, and they would sin no more. But to all this comes back the stern warning of the Divine answer: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

And we may profitably consider what this means in its application to our own life. Such a warning is evidently meant to remind us that the mystery of sin in human life is not to be got rid of by any such reliance on vague hopes. This mystery of sin in the heart and life, misleading, weakening, dragging us down, means in fact the subtle, poisonous, creeping power which evil inclinations exercise over a weak and depraved will. Are we, then, to trust to some sudden visitation from above, for which we make no preparation, to break down or overthrow a power of this kind? On the contrary, the words of this parable stand here to declare to us that it is nothing less than perversity and folly in any man to go on either defiling his nature, or degrading it, or even neglecting to strengthen and support it, under this delusion that some day the breath of Heaven will sweep it clean or give it new vigour. And your own experience is in exact accordance with these parabolic warnings of the Saviour. You know that your moral and spiritual nature is now at this present time undergoing a process of continual and momentous change, that every day, or week, or month leaves its mark upon it; and that your soul's life means not waiting for some angel of G.o.d's providential grace to visit you and carry you up into a new air; but it means that you are weaving the web of your unchangeable destiny by your use or abuse of the gifts of G.o.d that are in your hands to-day.

Born into the world with the taint of inherited corruption in us, as also with the germs of pure affection and high instinct and purpose, we have to take care for ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat out the good, by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by hardening into depraved habits in our manhood. If we let our youth take an unhappy downward course, whether in taste or habit, every day puts salvation farther off from us, because every day any fault which is indulged or nursed tends to grow deeper and more inveterate; and yet, forgetting this, how many, while their early years are running to waste, nurse the vain hope that some day they will receive the sudden baptism of a new birth.

So, then, instead of vaguely trusting, any of us, to the hope of what some future call or help or happy visitation may do for us, let us obey the Divine injunction, which, when rightly understood, is very pressing, urging us, as we hope to see good days, to be very jealous of our present life and its tendencies; let us do this, standing always firm and immovable in the things that are pure and of good report.

However it may be in some other matters, in this matter of our moral and spiritual life, the greatest, the most important, the most serious thing of all, it is almost invariably true that the child is father of the man, and we feel that we have no right to expect it to be otherwise. In our everyday consideration of life, we recognise all this: we speak of growth in character and formation of habit as facts which no one would ignore, and which cannot be overestimated. But to acknowledge these, and at the same time to trust that G.o.d will hereafter arrest any stream of sinful tendency in us which we ourselves do not attempt to stop now, is to add presumption to sin.

When we speak of Heaven and h.e.l.l, we have in our thoughts the vision of those ultimate points towards which the diverging courses of men's lives are slowly tending day by day. And the question rises: "On which of these lines is my life travelling at the present time, and towards which side of the impa.s.sable gulf?"

At present we know that the way of Christ is still open before us, and that He calls us with a voice which never grows weary; but we feel equally that the future is dark, if we waste or misuse the present, and we do not know how long the heavenward path may be as open, or as easy, as it is to-day. For the question is not a question of G.o.d's untiring patience or the never-failing love of Christ. It is not how long will His Spirit continue to strive with us, as it has striven hitherto, through the care and love of parent or friend, through the exhortations or efforts of a teacher, or the example of a companion, or in a thousand other ways. The question is rather whether it is not folly to expect that G.o.d will send upon us some other more powerful regenerating and strengthening influence, if we are now neglecting all this care and love and patient striving on our behalf. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

Consider these things while life is fresh, and good influences are present with you. Whatever our faults may be, they all come under this one rule, that to-day is given us to win our freedom from their power--to- day and not to-morrow. The question which is pressed home through the warning of this parable is thus a very plain one: "What is my future hope or prospect, if I let this or that particular sin lurk and linger in my heart, feeding upon me every day, and growing stronger in consequence?

What if I do not resist any fault that has a hold upon me? What if I do not pray to be delivered from it? What if I do not flee from it?"

If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

VI. WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?

"And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?"--1 KINGS xix. 9.

There is a sound of rebuke in these words. They seem to imply that the lonely mountain of h.o.r.eb was not the place in which G.o.d expected to find such a servant as Elijah, and that there should be no indefinite tarrying, no lingering without an aim in such a solitude.

As you read the familiar history you see how the record of the prophet's retirement and his vision in h.o.r.eb is a record, first of all, of reaction after fierce conflict; it exhibits the picture of a strong man in a moment of weakness ready to give up the hopeless struggle, crying to G.o.d, "It is enough, now, O Lord, take away my life;" and then it shows us how G.o.d dealt with him in that solitude; we hear the Divine voice pleading in him again, bearing its Divine witness, putting its searching questions, teaching him the universal lesson that despondency, weakness, solitude, shrinking and retiring, if they have any place in our life, are only for a time, and must not be allowed to rule in it.

That Divine vision which came to Elijah in the recesses of the mountain is, in fact, the voice of G.o.d summoning him back to the duties that were waiting for him, and the renewal of his strength for the new work he had to do. And the interest of such a vision never fails, because, like Elijah, all men come to times when they too lie under the juniper tree in the wilderness longing to be set free from the burden which is too heavy for them, be it the burden of some call, or work, or duty, or of resistance to some temptation, or the struggle against sin or vice. It comes to all of us, and not once only, but many times over, this hour of darkness; and it will continue to come so long as the flesh is weak. And it is at such moments that a man is the better for going with the prophet into this h.o.r.eb, the mount of G.o.d, making Elijah's vision his own vision, and renewing his strength, at the same Divine source. How often it happens to men, to boys, to all alike, that they flee into the desert, away from the post of present duty, away from the face of difficulties which they cannot or will not stand up against, away from the moments of trial and discipline. And, seeing that our life is not and cannot be a solitary thing, seeing that the pulsations of each individual's life are creating other pulsations which answer them back in other lives, we know not where or how many, whenever we thus shrink away from our duty, when we turn our back upon it, or despond about it, when we become deaf to the higher calls, we are, in fact, crying to G.o.d to be relieved of our service to Him and to our fellows. And it is a happy thing for our life if He does not answer us according to our cry, and let us go into the wilderness, and leave us alone there.

This voice, following us with the question, "What doest them here?" is the evidence that G.o.d has not abandoned us.

"What doest thou here, Elijah?" How often must this voice have followed the monk into his solitude, refusing to be silenced, piercing through all the false notions about a man's relationship to his fellow-men, warning each soul that it cannot separate itself from the great tide of universal life.

And the voice comes to us, the same warning voice of G.o.d, whenever we stand aloof and let the tide around us run on anyhow, as if we didn't care how it ran, or whenever in obedience to any impulse, whether of selfishness or of timidity, we try to persuade ourselves that some duty may be left alone.

"What doest thou here, Elijah?" The quality of our life depends on the answer we give to such spiritual questioning day by day; for the Divine voices are never silent.

"What doest thou here?" The voice cries to us when we linger in the neighbourhood of any sin, or when we waste our opportunities in some form of idleness, or when we stand by in cold or timid indifference, refusing help or consolation to any soul which seems to need it.

"What doest thou here?" It is possible that some of us hardly like to shape our answer in plain words lest we might have to say: "I am here lingering in my present way of life, not because I feel it to be the right way, but because it is the easy way, and I cannot bring myself to face the harder and more manly course of duty. I hear the voice; I cannot get away from it; it haunts me with its inquiries, when my heart is hot within me, as it is sometimes, while yet I am burying the light that is in my soul." If it should be so with any of you, consider, I pray you, how by such hanging back you strengthen the force of evil in the world and weaken the good.

As the hour of reaction, weakness, flight, came to Elijah, so we must expect it to come to any of us; but the aim and purpose of our life should be that in such an hour we may be able to answer our Heavenly Father when He questions us, as Elijah was able to answer: "I have been very jealous for the Lord G.o.d of Hosts." If we live as those who are jealous for G.o.d and His law, letting it be known and felt that we are thus jealous for His honour, not one of us could fail to make the life around us in some degree better, brighter, happier.

It is in this way that he who is strong and true makes truth and honour and uprightness stronger in those beside him; it is in this way that he who is industrious, as a duty, makes industry more prevalent; it is in this way that he who shows his hatred of impurity makes the atmosphere pure in his society.

And in so far as any of you are acting in this way you are doing a prophet's work, and you, too, may claim to have been jealous for the Lord G.o.d of Hosts. So the youngest boy and the oldest man may become fellow- labourers--[Greek text]--fellow-labourers in the harvest-field of G.o.d, and it is a great privilege to claim.

But the blessing of it is greater still. Very often, if you are known to be thus jealous, even your presence will banish sin, silencing the evil tongue, strengthening the weaker brother, and making the sunshine of a new life to shine all round you.

But what if sometimes you feel that you are not equal to all this? if when the voice cries, "What doest thou here?" you have no answer to give?

It is good for us in such a case to turn and see how G.o.d dealt with His prophet, how He made him come forth and stand on the mount before him.

The Lord pa.s.sed over him, revealing His presence in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, revealing it yet more intimately in the sound of the still small voice. So He sent Him out again with a new commission; and so we, too, may learn our lesson, if we care to learn it.

And the lesson is this, that G.o.d renews our wavering strength, that He lifts up our drooping spirit, and opens our dull eyes and gives us afresh the hearing ear, by communion with Himself. In the solitude of the mount of G.o.d, through the symbols of His power, and in the sound of the inner voices, in meditation, in prayer, we may find those refreshing influences which give us new strength, new thoughts, new notions of G.o.d and duty, and send us out afresh to do His work in new service to Him.

We may follow His teaching to Elijah a little further. The new message to him began, "Return on thy way"--do such and such things. The new message is, in fact, just as always, a new call to old duties--"Return on thy way." And so it is for you and me. After the vision of G.o.d comes the plain and homely work to do, as we walk in old ways, and have to meet all our old dangers and difficulties. Has any one of us ever shrunk from any post of duty in life, or strayed from any straight course? Then if G.o.d has in His mercy visited us with the warning call, "What doest thou here?" or laid the call of a new message upon us, it is almost sure to have been a call to return and take the straight path, or to take our stand at the deserted post. And if it should ever happen to us that the duty which looks too hard is, as indeed it happens very often, some duty of our social life, should we feel as if the world were against us, and we were standing alone, let us not forget G.o.d's word of final encouragement to his prophet, "Yet have I left me seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed to Baal."

It is a word for all time. If ever you are fighting for the good, and growing weary in the fight, the thought may rise in you that you seem to be fighting alone, and that everything is against you, just because you cannot see the seven thousand who are in the same ranks, and on your side.

In the darkest hour of Israel's history we are thus told of an indefinite mult.i.tude who had stood firm in the faith of their fathers, untouched and untainted by adverse influence, and the recollection of it should serve to strengthen and encourage every individual who is really jealous for that which is good.

Let us, then, take the warning, and nurse it as a gift of G.o.d, and go forward where duty calls us, sometimes faint, it may be, and sometimes weary, but still pursuing.