The Christian Life Part 8

But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not altogether accidental: it is a carelessness which we do not wish to break. So long as it lasts, we manage to get the activity and interest of life, without a sense of its responsibility. We like exceedingly to lay the reins, as it were, upon the neck of our inclinations, to go where they take us, and to ask no questions whether we are in the right road or no.

Inclination is never slumbering: this gives us excitement enough to save us from weariness, without the effort of awakening our conscience too.

Therefore society, expressing in its rules the feelings of its individual members, prescribes exactly such a style of conversation as may keep in exercise all other parts of our nature except that one which should be sovereign of all, and whose exercise is employed on things eternal.

Not being, then, properly in earnest,--that is, our conscience and our choice of moral good and evil being in a state of repose,--our language is happily contrived so as that it shall contain nothing to startle our sleeping conscience, if her ears catch any of its sounds. We still commend good and dispraise evil, both in the general and in the particular. But as good and evil are mixed in every man, and in various proportions, he who commends, the little good of a bad man, saying nothing of his evil,--or he who condemns the little evil of a good man, saying nothing of his good,--leads us evidently to a false practical conclusion; he leads us to like the bad man and to dislike the good.

Again, the lesser good becomes an evil if it keeps out a greater good; and, in the same way, the lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no thought of comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature be asleep, then we shall most estimate the good to which we are most inclined; and where we find this we shall praise it, not observing that it is taking up the place of a greater good which the case requires, and, therefore, that it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments may lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men and despise good; we may approve of qualities which, are, in fact, ruining a man; and despise others which, in the particular case, are virtues; without ever in plain words condemning virtue or approving vice.

But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest greatly lowers the strength of our feelings even towards the good which we praise and towards the evil which we condemn. It was an admirable definition of that which excites laughter, that it was that which is out of rule, that which is amiss, that which is unsightly, (these three ideas, and other similar ones, are alike contained in the single Greek word [Greek: aischron],) provided that it was unaccompanied by pain. This definition accounts for the otherwise extraordinary fact, that there is something in moral evil which, in some instances, affects the mind ludicrously.

That is to say, if moral evil affects us with no pain; if we see in it nothing, so to speak, but its irregularity, its strange contrast with what is beautiful, its jarring with the harmony of the system around us; then it does acquire that character which is well defined as being ridiculous. Thus it is notorious that trifling follies, and even gross vices, are often so represented in works of fiction as to be exceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what I mean, to name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the notions of vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral pain; get rid also of those points in it which awaken physical disgust; retain merely the notion of the incoherent language, and the strange capricious gait of intoxication; and we have then an image merely ridiculous, as much, so as the rambling talk and absurd gestures of the old buffoons.

Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laughable; and of things which are really wicked, disgusting, hateful, being expressed by names purely ludicrous. Where no great physical pain or distress is occasioned by what is evil, our sense of its ludicrousness will be exactly in proportion to the faintness of our sense of moral evil; or, in other words, to our want of being in earnest. The evil that does not seriously pain or inconvenience man, is very apt to be regarded with feelings approaching to laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of its being an offence against G.o.d.

Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being in earnest, from the habitual slumber of conscience, or that sovereign part of us which looks upon our whole state with reference to its highest interests, and pa.s.ses judgment upon all our actions,--how, from the practical absence of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and be indifferent to the good; to admire qualities which, from usurping the place of better ones, are actually ruinous; and, finally, to regard all common evil not so much with deep abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And thus the practical judgment and influence of the society around us may be fatally evil; while the society all the time shall contain, even in its very perversion, various elements of truth and of good.

I have kept to general language, to general views, perhaps too much; but all the time my mind has been fixed on the particular application of this, which lies scarcely beneath the surface, but which I cannot well bear more fully to unveil. But whoever has attended to what I have been saying, will be able, I should trust, to make the application, for himself, to those points in our society which most need correction. He will be able to understand how it is that the influence of the place is not better, while it undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the public opinion of a Christian school may yet be, in many respects, very unchristian. If he has attended at all to what I have said about our so rarely being in earnest, he will see something of the mischief of some of those publications, of those books, of that tone of conversation, which, I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly impossible is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters: to say this book is too light, or this is an excess of light reading, or this laugh was too unrestrained, or that tone of trifling too perpetual. But, in these things, we should all judge ourselves; and remember that you are so little under outward restraint, your choice of reading is so free, your intercourse with one another so wholly uncontrolled, that, enjoying thus the full liberty of more advanced years, you incur also their responsibility. There is, doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in kind and in quant.i.ty; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation and manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And you must be quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to indulge such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness have no necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed one of the greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the most earnest thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more grace than when they are united with the shallowness and hardness of him who is, in the sight of G.o.d, a fool. It were a strange notion, that we could never be merry without intoxication, yet not stranger than to think that mirth is the companion only of folly or of sin. But, setting G.o.d in Christ before us, then the conscience is awake; then we are in earnest; then we measure things rightly; then we feel them strongly; then we love those that are good, and shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is no matter of laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a ludicrous name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so miscall, is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever.

LECTURE XVIII.

GENESIS xxvii. 38.

_And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father?

Bless me, even me also, O my father_.

MATTHEW xv. 27.

_And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table_.

Of these two pa.s.sages, the first, as we must all remember, is taken from the first lesson of this morning's service; the second is from the morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and point out, I think, that particular view of the story of Jacob obtaining the blessing which is most capable of being turned to account; for, as to the conduct of Jacob and his mother, it is manifestly no more capable of affording us benefit, as a matter of example, than the conduct, in some respects similar, of the unjust steward in our Lord's parable. The example, indeed, is of the same kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about his future worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the one by dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be anxious about the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to us, which no such unworthy means can be required to gain. But the point of the story to which the text refers, and which is ill.u.s.trated also by the words of the Syrophoenician woman, is one which very directly concerns us all, being no other than this,--what should be the effect upon our own minds of witnessing others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves, whether obtained by the immediate gift of G.o.d, through the course of his ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or unlawful act of those who are in possession of them?

Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule either of nature or of human society, there must be many in every congregation who are so far in the condition of Esau and of the Syrophoenician woman, as to be inferior to others around them in some one or more advantages. The inferiority may consist in what are called worldly advantages, or in natural advantages, or in spiritual advantages, or in some or all of these united. And it is not to be doubted that the sense of this inferiority is a hard trial, both as respects our feelings towards G.o.d and towards men. It is a hard trial; but yet, no trial overtakes us but such as is common to man: and here, as in all other cases, G.o.d will, with the trial, also make a way for us to escape, that we may be able to bear it.

Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases in which this inferiority exists amongst us. With regard to worldly advantages, the peculiar nature of this congregation makes it less necessary than it generally would be, to dwell upon inequality in these: in fact, speaking generally, we are a very unusual example of equality in these respects; the advantages of station and fortune are enjoyed not, literally, in an equal degree by all of us, but equally as compared with, the lot of the great ma.s.s of society; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the comforts of life. What differences there are would, probably, appear in instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, any thing were really trifling by which the temper and feelings, and through them the principles, of any amongst us may be affected for good or for evil. It may possibly happen that, in the indulgences, or means of indulgence, given to you by your friends at home, there may be sometimes, such a difference as to excite discontent or jealousy. It may be, that some are apt to exult over others, by talking of the pleasures, or the liberty, which they enjoy; and which the friends of others, either from necessity or from a sense of duty, are obliged to withhold. If this be ever felt by any of you as a trial; if it gall your pride, as well as restrict your enjoyments; then remember, that here, even in this seemingly little thing, the inferiority of which you complain may be either increased ten-fold, or changed into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold, even as from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath, if by discontent, and evil pa.s.sions towards G.o.d and man, you make yourselves a hundred times more inferior spiritually than you were in outward circ.u.mstances; but changed into a blessed superiority, if it be borne with meekness, and patience, and thankfulness, even as it was said of the Gentile centurion, that there had not been found faith equal to his, no, not in Israel.

But turning from worldly advantages to those which are called natural, and the inequality here is at once as great as elsewhere. In all faculties of body and mind; in the vigour of the senses, of the limbs, of the general const.i.tution; in the greater or less liability to disease generally, or to any particular form of it; or, again, in powers of mind, in quickness, in memory, in imagination, in judgment; the differences between different persons in this congregation must be exceedingly wide. But, with regard to bodily powers, the trial is little felt, till the inferiority is shown in actual suffering from pain or from disease. So long as we are in health, our enjoyments are so many, and we so easily accommodate our habits to our powers, that a mere inferiority of strength, whether it be of limb or of const.i.tution, is not apt to make us dissatisfied. But if it comes to actual illness or to pain, if we are deprived of the common enjoyments and occupations of our age, then perhaps the trial begins to be severe; and when we look at others who have taken the same liberties with their health as we have done, and see them notwithstanding perfectly well and strong, while we are disabled or suffering, we may think that G.o.d has dealt hardly with us, and may be inclined to ask with Esau, "Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father!" Now this language, according to the sense in which we use it, is either blameable or innocent. If we mean to say, "Hast thou health to give to others only and not to me? give me this blessing also, as thou hast given it to my brethren:" then it has in it somewhat of discontent and murmuring; it implies a claim to which G.o.d never listens. But if we mean, "Hast thou only one kind of blessing, my father? If thou hast blest others in one way, I murmur not nor complain: but out of thine infinite store, give me also such a blessing as may be convenient for me;" then G.o.d hears the prayer, then he gives the blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it bear so evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are become first; if others have health, and we have sickness, yet the spirit of patience and cheerful submission which G.o.d gives with it is so great a blessing, and makes us so certainly happy, that the strongest and healthiest of our friends have often far more reason to wish to change places with us, than we with them.

Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And here, undoubtedly, the difference is apt to be a trial. Not that, probably, it excites discontent or murmuring against G.o.d; nor jealousy against those whose faculties are better than our own: the trial is of another kind; we are tempted to make our inferiority an excuse for neglect; because we cannot do so much nor so easily as others, we do far less than we might do. But the parable shows us plainly, that if one talent only has been given us, while others have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, must be made to yield its increase. Here is the feeling expressed so earnestly by the woman entreating Christ to heal her daughter. "The dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Small as may be the portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty vouchsafed to others, still it is capable of nourishing us if we make use of it; still it shows that we too have our blessing. And if using it with thankfulness, if doing our very best with it, knowing that "a man is accepted according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath not," we labour humbly and diligently; then, not only does the talent itself become increased, so that our Lord, when he comes to reckon with us, may receive his own with usury: but a blessing of another kind is added to our labours, again, as in the former case, making those who were last to become first. For if there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see G.o.d's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly, humbly, and zealously cultivated. From how many pains are they delivered, to which great natural talents are continually exposed; irritation, jealousy, a morbid and nervous activity, bearing fruits not of peace, but of gall! With what blessings are they crowned, to which, the most powerful natural understanding is a stranger! the love of truth gratified, without the fear that truth will demand the sacrifice of personal vanity; the line of duty clearly discerned, because those mists of pa.s.sion and selfishness which obscure it so often from the view of the keenest natural perception, have been dispersed by the spirit of humility and love; imperfect knowledge patiently endured, because whatever knowledge is enjoyed is known to be G.o.d's gift, and what he gives, or what he withholds, is alike welcome. This is the blessing of those who having had inferior natural powers, have so laboured to improve them according to G.o.d's will, that on all there has been grafted, as it were, some better power of grace, to yield a fruit most precious both for earth and heaven.

But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and this is perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great is this inequality in truth, when it seems to be so little! All of you, the children of Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church; all partaking here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same word of G.o.d, the same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of G.o.d, and not, like Esau, or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the covenant of blessing? Yet your real condition is, notwithstanding, very unequal. How unlike are your friends at home; how, unlike, also, are your friends here! Are there not some to whom their homes, both by direct precept and by example, are a far greater help than to others? Are there not some, whose immediate companions here may encourage them in all good far more than may be the case with, others? So, then, there may be some to whom this great blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. What then?

Shall we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to our Father's house; that we will not walk as our brother walks, unless we have his advantages? Then must we remain cast out; vessels fashioned to dishonour; rejected of G.o.d, and cursed. Nay rather let us put a Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry, "'Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father.' If thou hast given to others earthly helps, which thou hast denied to me, give me thyself and thy own Spirit the more! If father and mother forsake my most precious interest, do thou take me up. If my nearest friends will not walk with me in the house of G.o.d, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always, making my house as thine. Outward and earthly means thou givest or takest away at thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that I yet may not lose thee."

How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so circ.u.mstanced, and uttering such a prayer! How earnestly do we wish to help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried and so enduring! And think we that G.o.d cares for it less than we do? or have we not already the record of his love towards it, when Christ answered the Syrophoenician woman, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt?" He may not, indeed, see fit to give the very same blessing which was in the first instance denied: we may still have fewer spiritual advantages than others, as far as human helps are concerned; fewer good and earnest friends; fewer examples of holiness around us; fewer to join with us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil.

But though this particular blessing may be denied,--as Esau could not gain that blessing which had been given to Jacob,--yet there is a blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than our brother's. He who serves G.o.d steadily, amidst many disadvantages, enjoys the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier faith; he has gone through trials, and been found conqueror; and for him that overcometh is reserved a more abundant measure of glory.

But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's posterity, have the blessing,--whether it be natural, worldly, or spiritual,--let us consider what became of it when it was not improved. What was the sin of Esau,--speaking not of the individual, but of the less favoured people of Edom,--compared with the sin of Jacob? Nay, not of Edom only; but it shall be more tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for the unbelieving cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the literal, but with the Christian Israel; so it is, not only with the Church as a whole compared with heathens, but with all those individuals amongst us, who enjoy in any larger measure than others any of G.o.d's blessings. They are blessings; but they may be made fatal curses. This holds true with blessings of every kind: with station and wealth, with bodily health and vigour, with, great powers of mind, with large means of spiritual improvement. To whom much is given, of him shall be much, required. It is required of us to enjoy our blessings by using them: so will they be blessings indeed. So it is with money and influence, with health, with talents, with spiritual knowledge, and good friends and parents. There are first who shall be last; that is, those who began their course with advantages which set them before their brethren, if they do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them: for the blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given; and the blessing given, in like manner, becomes too often a blessing taken away.

LECTURE XIX.

MATTHEW xxii. 32.

_G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead, but of the living_.

We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees; and, as their question was put in evident profaneness, and the answer to it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural, so we are apt to think that in this particular story there is less than usual that particularly concerns us. But it so happens, that our Lord, in answering the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most universal and most solemn of all truths,--which is indeed implied in many parts of the Old Testament, but which the Gospel has revealed to us in all its fulness,--the truth contained in the words of the text, that "G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead, but of the living."

I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words, which we often hear even, perhaps, without quite understanding them; and many times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may take them, first, in their first part, where they say that "G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead."

The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a double sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as those who are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are alike applicable: "G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead."

G.o.d's not being the G.o.d of the dead signifies two things: that they who are without him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are also without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior animals, they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to us to have no knowledge of G.o.d; and we are not told that they have any other life than the short one of which our senses inform us. I am well aware that our ignorance of their condition is so great that, we may not dare to say anything of them positively; there may be a hundred things true respecting them which we neither know nor imagine. I would only say that, according to that most imperfect light in which we see them, the two points of which I have been speaking appear to meet in them: we believe that they have no consciousness of G.o.d, and we believe that they will die. And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the agreement, if I may so speak, between these two points; and were intended, perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had far better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and if we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of death and absence from G.o.d are in fact synonymous.

Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death and of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares the description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects how especially it is there said, that G.o.d dwells in the midst of it, and is its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment from the first Eden means a banishment from the presence of G.o.d. And thus, in the day that Adam sinned, he died; for he was cast out of Eden immediately, however long he may have moved about afterwards upon the earth where G.o.d was not. And how very strong to the same point are the words of Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words which express completely the feeling that G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead. This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression used in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so many words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always implies a separation from G.o.d, and the being--whatever the notion may extend to--the being dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin, and had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die:" which means, most expressively, thou shalt not die to G.o.d. In one sense, David died, as all men die; nor was he, by any means, freed from the punishment of his sin: he was not, in that sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to regard G.o.d as his G.o.d; and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly chastis.e.m.e.nts from G.o.d's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be partaker of G.o.d's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose his kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa, yet I do not think that we find the sentence pa.s.sed upon him, "Thou shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that G.o.d had ceased to be his G.o.d, although be visited him with severe chastis.e.m.e.nts, and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the crown of Israel.

Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where the expressions occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall surely die." We have no right to refer these to a mere extension, on the one hand, or a cutting short, on the other, of the term of earthly existence. The promise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's case, of adding to his days fifteen years, is very different from the full and unreserved blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know, undoubtedly, that both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died alike the natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of the promise, and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt belong to G.o.d; in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him; although the veil was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of those terms, "belonging to G.o.d," and "ceasing to belong to him:" nay, can we venture to affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now?

I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to place the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a light which is exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the Scripture implies, that to be dead, and to be without G.o.d, are precisely the same thing, then can it be denied, that the symptoms of death are strongly marked upon many of us? Are there not many who never think of G.o.d, or care about his service? Are there not many who live, to all appearance, as unconscious of his existence as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And is it not quite clear, that to such persons, G.o.d cannot be said to be their G.o.d? He may be the G.o.d of heaven and earth, the G.o.d of the universe, the G.o.d of Christ's church; but he is not their G.o.d, for they feel to have nothing at all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not their G.o.d, they are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned among the dead.

But G.o.d is the G.o.d "of the living." That is, as before, all who are alive, live unto him; all who live unto him, are alive. "G.o.d said, I am the G.o.d of Abraham, and the G.o.d of Isaac, and the G.o.d of Jacob;" and, therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are not and cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because G.o.d owns them: he is not ashamed to be called their G.o.d; therefore, they are not cast out from him; therefore, by necessity, they live. Wonderful, indeed, is the truth here implied, in exact agreement, as we have seen, with the general language of Scripture; that, as she who but touched the hem of Christ's garment was, in a moment, relieved from her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out from him; so they who are not cast out from G.o.d, but have any thing whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of his gracious presence penetrating their whole nature; because he lives, they must live also.

Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote, (if a few years be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even now present before us; even now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive unto G.o.d, or dead unto G.o.d; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that highest possible sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been revealed to us, that we know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means a conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in those little words, life and death. They are far higher, and far deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this moral state, even to you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey, life and death have a meaning: to be dead unto G.o.d, or to be alive to him, are things perceptibly different.

For, let me ask of those who think least of G.o.d, who are most separate from him, and most without him, whether there is not now actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness, the loneliness, the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether they are made unhappy by the fear of G.o.d's anger; of course they are not: for they who fear G.o.d are not dead to him, nor he to them. The thought of him gives them no disquiet at all; this is the very point we start from. But I would ask them whether they know what it is to feel G.o.d's blessing. For instance: we all of us have our troubles of some sort or other, our disappointments, if not our sorrows. In these troubles, in these disappointments,--I care not how small they may be,--have they known what it is to feel that G.o.d's hand is over them; that these little annoyances are but his fatherly correction; that he is all the time loving us, and supporting us? In seasons of joy, such, as they taste very often, have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from his hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love? Sickness, danger,--I know that they come to many of us but rarely; but if we have known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in its graver,--have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's hands, that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing can hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us, to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in this vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and whenever we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own hearts alone, the coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But consider that the things which, we see around us cannot remain with us, nor we with them. The coldness and loneliness of the world, without G.o.d, must be felt more and more as life wears on: in every change of our own state, in every separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels,--the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly: we shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us that "G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead."

And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the G.o.d "of the living"

grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far from every one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who live unto him, that he is their G.o.d, and that they are his children. On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the warmth of his love is spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere of their lives: they for ever feel his blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even now, when they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight still in being with G.o.d, and in living to him, let them be sure that they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal: G.o.d is the G.o.d of the living, and all who are with him must live.

Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the minds of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of the dead that they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that, even whilst writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news reached me that one, who two months ago was one of your number, who this very half-year has shared in all the business and amus.e.m.e.nts of this place, is pa.s.sed already into that state where the meanings of the terms life and death are become fully revealed. He knows what it is to live unto G.o.d, and what it is to die to him. Those things which are to us unfathomable mysteries, are to him all plain: and yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as far from attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it is clear, that these things, life and death, may hurry their lesson upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to G.o.d, and yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us, and we should find then that to be dead to G.o.d was death, indeed, a death from which there is no waking, and in which there is no sleeping for ever.

LECTURE XX.

EZEKIEL xiii. 22.

_With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life_.