CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BS571 .M45 1886 
 
 Patriarchs and lawgivers of the Old Test 
 
 olln 
 
 3 1924 029 279 259 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029279259 
 
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 THE 
 
 PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS' 
 
 OF 
 
 X M)i ^z^imatxd. 
 
k SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL 
 OF LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 BY 
 
 REDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A., 
 
 FKOFEaSOA OF MORAL FHILOSOPHY IM THE CNIVBRSITT OF CAMBBIDOB. 
 
EiCHABD Clay & Sons. 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, LONDON, 
 
 AMAdJlAAj^i^ 
 
 Si^^x- 
 
 \jCl-^ 
 
 J>3' 
 
TO TETE 
 
 REV. JAMES SHEEGOLD ANDERSON, 
 
 PRBAChER OF LINCOLN'S INN 
 
 THESB SERMONS ARE DEDICAnSI), 
 
 m GRATEFUL BECOLLECTION OF THE UNVARYING KJJIDNESS 
 
 WHICH HE HAS SHEWN TO THE AUTHOR 
 
 DURING THE FIVE YEARS IN WHICH HE HAS HAD 
 
 THE PLEASURE AND PRIVrLEGE 
 
 OF KNOWING HIM, 
 AND 
 IN WHICH RB HAS BKBN PERICITTED TO WORK WITH HLM 
 
CONTEKTS. 
 
 Adveutisement. 
 
 Peefaob to Second Edition 
 
 Preface to First Edition 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 THE CREATEON OF MANKIND, AND OF THE FIRST MAN. 
 
 Genesis II. 1. — Thua the heavens and the earth were EnUhed, and all 
 the host of them ... . . . . 33 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE FALL AND THE DELUGE. 
 
 Genesis VI. 6, 6, 7. — And God aaw that the wickedness of man waa 
 gi'eat in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughli! of 
 his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord 
 that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his 
 heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have 
 created from the face of the eai-th; both man, and beast, and the 
 creeping thing, and the fowls of the air ; for it repenteth me that 
 I have made them ... . 50 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 NOAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 Genesis XII. 1, 2, 3. - Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee 
 out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's 
 house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of 
 thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name 
 great; and thou shalt be a blessing : And I will bless them that 
 bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee : and in thee shall all 
 families of the wirth be blessed . . OS 
 
VIU CONITSNTS: 
 
 SERMON IT. 
 
 ABBAHAJtf AND ISAAC. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Genesis XXII. 7, 8.— And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and 
 said, My father : and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, 
 Behold the fire and ,the wood : but where is the lamb for the 
 burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide 
 himself a lamb for a burnt offering : so they went both of them 
 together . . . , . . . . ... 80 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 ESAU AND JACOB. 
 
 Genesis XXVIII. 10-17.— And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and 
 went toward Harau. And he lighted upon a certain place, and 
 tarried there all night, because the sun was set ; and he took of 
 the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay 
 down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a 
 ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven ; 
 and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 
 And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord 
 God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac : the land 
 whereon thou lieat, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed ; and thy 
 seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread 
 abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the 
 south : and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the 
 earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee 
 in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into 
 this land ; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which 
 I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, 
 and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place ; and I knew it not. 
 And he was afraid, and said. How dreadful is this place ! this is 
 none other but tbe house of God, and this is the gate of heaven . 100 
 
 SERMON VL 
 
 THE DREAMS OF JOSEPH. 
 
 Genesis SLII. 8, 9. — And Joseph kni;?w his brethren, but they knew 
 not him. And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed 
 of them 118 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 SERMON VIL 
 
 JOSEPH AND HIS BEETHREM, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GuNEBia XLV. 7, 8. — God sent me before you to preseivc you a 
 posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliver- 
 ance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God : and 
 he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, 
 and a ruler throughout all the laud of Egypt 137 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 THE MISSION OF MOSES. 
 
 Exodus V. 22, 23. — And Moses returned imto the Lord, and said. 
 Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people ? why is it 
 that thou hast sent me ? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in 
 thy name, he hath done evil to this people ; neither hast thou de- 
 livered thy people at all . , . . 154 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 THE MIRACLES OF MOSES, AND THE HARDENING OP PHARAOH. 
 
 KxODas X. 20. — But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he 
 would not let the children of Israel go . . . . . 172 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 Exodus XIV. 13, 14. — And Moses said unto the people. Fear ye not, 
 stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew 
 to you to-day : for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, ye 
 shall see them again no more for ever. The Lord shall fight for 
 you, and ye shall hold your peace . .... . . 186 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 THE R£BRLLION OF KORAH. 
 
 Numbers XVI. 3. — And they gatheted themselves together i^aicst 
 Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much 
 upon ycu, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, 
 and the Loi-d is among them : wherefore then lift ye up yourselves 
 above the congregation of the Lord? '-''■* 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 THE PROPHECY OS' BALAAM. 
 
 NUMBiflRS XXIil. 11, 12.— And Balak said unto Balaam, What hast 
 thou dona unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, 
 behold, thou hast blessed them altogether. And he answered and 
 said, Must I not take heed to speak that which the Lord hath put 
 in my mouth ? . . . . 22i 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 PROSPERITT AND ADVERSITY. 
 
 Deot. V. 33. — Ye shall walk in aU the ways which the Lord your God 
 hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well 
 with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land \^hich 
 ye shall possess . . ... . - ■ ^^1 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 
 THE NATION AND THE OHUROH. 
 
 Deut. VII. 22-26. — And the Lord thy God will put out those nations 
 before thee by little and little : thou mayest not consume them at 
 once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee. But the Lord 
 thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with 
 a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. And he shall 
 deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their 
 name from under heaven : there shall no man be able to stand 
 before thee, until thou have destroyed them. The graven images 
 of their gods shall ye burn with fire : thou shalt Hot desire the 
 silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be 
 snared therein : for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God. 
 Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest 
 thou be a cursed thing like it : but thou shalt utterly detest it, 
 and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing . . 2tfi 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 THE TEST OF PROPHECY AND MIRACLE. 
 
 Deut. XXIII. 1-8.— If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer 
 of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the 
 wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let ua 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve 
 them ; thou ahalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or 
 that dreamer of dreams : for the Lord your God proveth you, to 
 know whether ye love the Lord your Ood with all your heart and 
 with all your soul . ... .... 274 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 PENTECOST. 
 
 Deut. XXX. 19, 20. — I cull heaven and earth to record this day 
 against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing 
 and cursing : therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed 
 may live : that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou 
 mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him : for 
 he is thy life, and the length of thy days : that thou mayest dwell 
 in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to 
 Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them . 289 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 JOSHUA AND ST. JOHN. 
 
 Joshua XXIII. 1, 2, 3. — And it came to pass a long time after that 
 the Lord had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies round 
 about, that Joshua waxed old and stricken in age. And Joshua 
 called for all Israel, and for their elders, and for their heads, and 
 for their judges, and for their officers, and said unto them, I am 
 old and stricken in age : and ye have seen all that the Lord your 
 God hath done unto aJl these nations because of you : for the 
 Lord your Qod ia he that hath fought for you . . SOS 
 
 SKRMON XVIII. 
 
 THE BOOK OP JUDGES. 
 
 Judges V. 1, 2. Then aaug Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam 
 on that day, saying, Fraise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel 3'JO 
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 
 F.I.I AND SAMUEL. 
 
 1 Samuel III. H. — And therefore I have sworn unto the house of 
 Eli, that the iniquity of Eh's house shall not be purged with 
 sacrifice nor offering for ever 330 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The First Edition of this book was published under 
 the following title : " The Old Testament : Nineteen 
 Sermons on the First Lessons, for the Sundays from 
 Septuagesima Sunday to the Third Sunday after Trinity. 
 Preached at the Chapel of Lincoln s Inn.'' The following 
 note then appeared at the end of the Preface : — 
 
 "There is no Sermon in this Volume on the fifth Sunday after 
 Easter, as I was absent on that day from lincobi's Inn. I had 
 thought of introducing a Sermon which I preached at Oxford, 
 on the 9th of Deuteronomy : but I determined on the whole that 
 a discourse addressed to a different congregation would confuse the 
 course rather than complete it. Happily the Ghui'ch has selected 
 so many chapters from the book of Deuteronomy, that the omission 
 of two is of less consequence. The Sermon on Whit-Sunday is 
 taken from one of the lessons for Whit-Tueaday. There are none 
 on Trinity Sunday, as the lessons for that day are taken from the 
 book of Genosis, on which 1 had preached already." 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 CiKCUMSTANOES obliged me nearly two years ago to 
 write a pamphlet on the meaning of the word Eternal. 
 Various answers were made to this pamphlet, as con- 
 taining a doctrine which was inconsistent with the 
 popular notion of future punishment. There was one, 
 in which the subject was contemplated from au entirely 
 different point of view. An accomplished member of 
 the University of Oxford, Mr. Mansel, of St. John's, in 
 a letter to a friend,^ pointed out the relation in which 
 my argument stood to our whole belief respecting Heve- 
 lation. He saw that what I had said involved the 
 assumption, that the Eternal Being has actually un- 
 veiled or discovered Himself to his creature man. 
 With much courtesy to me, and much philosophical 
 ability, Mr. Mansel explained his reasons for rejecting 
 that assumption, ' Eevelation,^ he says (pp. 15, 16), 
 ' does not tell us what God is in Himself, but only 
 ' under what accommodations He has vouchsafed to 
 
 i "Man's Conception of Eternity; an Examination of Mr. Maurice's 
 Theory of a Fixed State out of Time, in u Letter to the Rev. L. T. 
 Bemays, by Rev. H. L. Mansel, B.D., Fellow and Tutor of St, John's 
 CoUege, Oxford." J. H. Parker. 
 
 B 
 
a PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 ' represent Himself.' And again (pp. 9^ 10), * Ideas 
 
 * and images which do not represent Grod as He is, may 
 ' nevertheless represent Him as it is onr duty to regard 
 ' Him. They are not in themselves true ; but we must 
 
 * nevertheless believe and act as if they were true, A 
 
 * finite mind can form no conception of an infinite Being, 
 ' which shall be speculatively/ true, for it must represent 
 ' the infinite under finite forms ; nevertheless, a concep- 
 
 * tion which is speculatively untrue may be regulatively 
 ' true. A regulative truth is thus designed not to satisfy 
 ' our reason, but to guide our practice ; not to tell us 
 
 * what God is, but how He wills that we should think 
 ' of Hira.^ 
 
 It will be obvious to the reader of these Sermons, 
 that this statement has a far more direct bearing upon 
 them, than upon the particular question which called 
 forth Mr. Hansel's remarks. My chief object in preaching 
 and writing upon the Old Testament, has been to show 
 that God has created man in His image ; that being so 
 created he is capable of receiving a revelation of God, — 
 of knowing what God is ; that without such a revelation 
 he cannot be truly a man ; that without such knowledge 
 he cannot become what he is always feeling that he ought 
 to become. I believe, as little as Mr. Mansel does, that 
 man^s conceptions of God can be true. I believe that 
 history shows them not only to be limited, but to be 
 false. I believe also, that unless man can rise above 
 his own conceptions, he can know nothing of nature or 
 of himself any more than of God. The history of the 
 Bible, as I read it, is the history of the way in which 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ill 
 
 God has raised men above their own conceptions, has 
 educated them to believe in Him, to trust in Him, 
 to know Him ; a history also of the waj in which 
 men have determined to judge Him according to their 
 conceptions, and so have become idolaters of things in 
 heaven, and on earth, and xmder the earth, framing 
 God outwardly according to the likeness ot that which 
 they see and handle, — inwardly, according to the habits 
 and tendencies of their own minds. The education of 
 man by God is, it seems to me, the education into a 
 knowledge of that which is, not of that which it behoves 
 us to think or believe. Just so far as a man subn>its to 
 that education, he is brought under the government of 
 the true God ; his thoughts and words and acts are regu- 
 lated according to His true law, are in conformity -with 
 His true will : just so far as he does not submit to it, 
 he continues the victim of ever fresh delusions, the 
 utterer and begetter of ever fresh falsehoods. To his 
 mind ' nothing is, but all things seem.' The world 
 about him is as much a phantom world as the world 
 beyond him ; he himself becomes the centre of both, 
 reconstructing both in his own image, turning the 
 realities of earth antj heaven equally into shadows. 
 
 I do most entirely agree with Mr. Mansel, that this 
 is a practical question, and ought to be considered on 
 practical grounds and in reference to its practical issues. 
 That it has the most direct bearing on the history of 
 philosophy I have endeavoured to show elsewhere; 
 here I am much more anxious to speak of its beaiing 
 upon the morality of individuals and of nations. That 
 
 b2 
 
IV PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 subject is very fullj discussed in one of the books on 
 which, I have commented in this volume, the book of 
 Deuteronomy. The whole principle of that book, it 
 seems to me, is this, that a Nation is only a wise and 
 understanding nation when it confesses a God who is, — 
 a God who has made Himself known as the ground of 
 all human righteousness, fidelity, veracity; that when 
 it ceases to believe in such a God, and that He is its 
 actual present King, the Director of its counsels, the 
 Lord of its hosts, it becomes an idolatrous, stupid, 
 slavish nation. Would to God that our statesmen, our 
 philosophers, the teachers in our schools, the divines 
 who give out oracles from our pulpits, would meditate 
 upon the words of that divine and terrible book, and 
 would try whether they cannot regulate their thoughts, 
 their speech, and their acts according to it! The history 
 of all the nations of the world ^ince it was written, — of 
 the nations of Christendom quite as much as of those 
 before the Incarnation, is a commentary upon it. Oh 
 that England may not supply the most luminous, and 
 yet also the darkest commentary of all ! 
 
 I can well exercise towards Mr. Mansel the same 
 tolerance which he has manifested towards me, and ' am 
 ' conscious how little justice can be done to all the 
 ' higher features of his teaching, by a dry, foi^mal ex- 
 ' amination of one particular proposition.' I have no 
 doubt that he is a more truthful man than I am, and 
 could less endure any equivocation in practice than I 
 do. But I cannot help perceiving, that the maxim 
 which he has so clearly and logically announced is the 
 
PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. V 
 
 suppressed premiss in a multitude of minds which 
 possess little of his learning, and would perhaps be 
 even startled by his statement if it waa suddenly and 
 broadly presented to them. The notion of a revelation 
 that tells us things which are not in themselves true, 
 but which it is right for us to believe and to act upon as 
 if they were true, has, I fear, penetrated very deeply 
 into the heart of our English schools, and of our English 
 world. It may be traced among persons who are appa- 
 rently most unlike each other, who live to oppose and 
 confute each other. Those who speak most of the old 
 Catholic creeds seem to love them because they have been 
 handed down to us, not because they utter the Name 
 in which we are living, and moving, and having our 
 being, the name of the Father of an infinite Majesty, 
 of his true and honourable Son, and of the Holy Ghost 
 the Comforter. If we speak of them vrith joy and 
 thanksgiving, as telling us the thing we most crave 
 to know, we are .answered, ' Oh, then you mean, you 
 ' believe them because you like them, not because the 
 * Church has told you to believe them.* In other words, 
 you are to believe them because they ought to be be- 
 lieved, not because they teU the thing as it is. And 
 if we turn for protection against this hard dogmatism, 
 to those who declare themselves the members of an 
 Experimental, or Evangelical, rather than of a Catholic 
 school, if we speak with them in the language which 
 their fathers spoke, of the struggles through which 
 patriarchs and prophets passed, while they were learning 
 to rise above their own poor thoughts, and were coming? 
 
n PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 to the knowledge of God, we are answered, * Oh, then 
 ' you onlj receive the Bible because it corresponds to 
 ' human experience, not as an authoritative message 
 ' from Heaven.' In other words, you are to believe the 
 Bible because you ought to believe it, not because it 
 shows you the way to the knowledge of what you are, 
 and of what God is. Both our religious schools are 
 unconscious plagiarists from the canons of Mr. Mansel's 
 philosophical school. 
 
 But their differences are not in the least likely to be 
 adjusted by the discovery of this common ground. How 
 the atmosphere is to be regulated by the regulative 
 Revelation ; at what degree of heat or cold this con- 
 stitution or that can endure it; who must fix, — since 
 the language of the Revelation is assumed not to be 
 exact, not to express the very lesson which we are to 
 derive from it, — what it does mean; by what con- 
 trivances its phrases are to be adapted to various 
 places and times: these are questions which must, of 
 course, give rise to infinite disputations ; ever new 
 schools and sects must be called into existence to settle 
 them ; there is scope for permissions, proliibitions, com- 
 promises, persecutions, to any extent. The despair which 
 these must cause will probably drive numbers to ask for 
 an infallible human voice, which shall regulate for each 
 period that which the Revelation has so utterly failed to 
 regulate. 
 
 There are some who have observed these things, and 
 have suffered from them more than words can tell. 
 They have seen the great plausibility and convenience 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Vll 
 
 of Mr, ManseFs formiila ; how mucli of what the world 
 calls Mysticism it might save them from ; how easily, 
 if they could be content with it, they might take up 
 with any of the popular systems of Christianity, and 
 pass as creditable religious men. But they have found 
 it impossible. They have been driven to ask if there 
 is not a Eevelation which means revealing ; if God has 
 not revealed Himself; if there is not that in man which 
 can receive this Eevelation, and be moulded in con- 
 formity with it. It is not that their minds do not crave 
 to be regulated as well as to be impelled, — to be regu- 
 lated in the daily events of life, as well as in its most 
 serious and trying emergencies ; but, neither in the one 
 nor in the other, have they found that such a Reve- 
 lation as Mr. Mansel conceives of, serves their purpose. 
 They cannot recollect the rules just at the moment 
 when the little occasions arise which set their minds 
 ajar ; the habits which are formed for one set of cir- 
 cumstances are found not to fit in another; in great 
 crises and revolutions, the machinery for keeping the soul 
 in order refuses to work, — its wheels become clogged, 
 — the safety-valve is stopped. And then the man asks, 
 ' Were not those old words, Be ye perfect, as your 
 
 * Father in heaven is perfect, — high and discouraging as 
 ' they once sounded, — ^more practical, more comforting, 
 ' than all the regulative motives and maxims into which 
 'they have been reduced, — ^because they speak of an 
 
 * actual Revelation of a Father to His children, — of an 
 ' actual power by which He can mould them, however 
 
 * reluctant, into His likeness ? * 
 
VU] PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Tliose who try to meet any of these , doubts „ancl 
 questions, will, of course, be accused of raising them, 
 ,and of inventing a new Theology :to displace that which 
 their fathers found sufficient. All such accusations must 
 .be patiently borne. When they proceed from earnest 
 men, the answer, I hope, will, be found in due time, not 
 in my books, but in a better than mine and than all 
 others. If they are .proposed by frivolous men, neither 
 that .Book nor any other will help them ; they will ^not 
 find ,the truth, for they do ,not seek it, I have endea- 
 voured here to lead my readers b.ack to the old theology, 
 which I am afraid some of our popular notions, and 
 some of our scholastic notions, are sadly concealing 
 from us. I have endeavoured to jnaintaip. here, as else- 
 where, that the most literal meaning pf Scripture is the 
 most spiritual meaning ; that if we follow it faithfullly 
 we shall not be led to the worship of it, but of God ; 
 that if we trace the revelation which the Book sets 
 forth as it gradually lunfplds itself, we shall find that 
 we are drawn away from letters to life ; from sounds 
 that are conveyed to the ear, to liwg words that are 
 conveyed with mighty power to the conscience and the 
 heart; from those words, to Him who speaks th^m,; 
 from the manifestations which came .through the right 
 and wrong acts of men, through their blessings and 
 their punishments, to the perfect manifestation of the 
 Son of God. In these discom^ses I have had to en- 
 counter that which I believe fto be the .great denial of 
 our time, — the one which is most at variance with the 
 express letter of the Bible, and with its whole object 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. ix 
 
 and history, — tlie denial, I mean, that man continued 
 to ,be in the image ot God after the Fall, with the denials 
 which correspond to this, and grow out of it, that man 
 was originally created in the Divine Word, and that 
 apart from Him, neither Adam nor any of his descend-, 
 ants either had, or ever could have, any righteousness 
 or any life. 
 
 While we cling to this (iisbelief we shall, I think, 
 read ourselves more and more into the Bibk;!, and find 
 it less and less the corrector of our ignorance, the guide 
 of our thoughts. For while we are most anxious to 
 plead the Fall as an excuse for our folly and sin- 
 fulness, while we give it a prominence in our discourses 
 which the Apostles never gave it, — for they were sent to 
 preach the Gospel of the kingdom of God, — we are verj- 
 indignant when we are told that Protestant England 
 may have the same low and dark conceptionfi of the 
 character of God which there were among Egyptians or 
 Assyrians. If we really believed that we carry about 
 with us the same fallen nature which Egyptians and 
 Assyrians had, this would seem to be a very obvious 
 consequence ; and our inward experience would tell us 
 that we do not like to retain God in our knowledge, 
 that we have £ . tendency to worship the creature more 
 than the Creator, just as the heathens had. But because 
 we make the Fall a reason for denying them the con- 
 science of good, the craving for it, the search after it 
 with all that is promised to those hereafter who have 
 pursued it here, we are afraid to confess how much the 
 CQTXScience of evil, the readiness to embrace it and to 
 
X PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 sink into it, may belong to us, when our privileges 
 and our religious pretensions are the greatest. In like 
 manner, we cut ourselves off from communion with the 
 great men in the Old Testament. We suppose that 
 God did not speak to them as He speaks to us ; that 
 they heard certain syllables sounding in their ears ; that 
 it was not with ^the real man, — with the spirit of the 
 man, — that the Lord of the heart and reins carried on 
 His wonderful intercourse. Augustine, and Luther, 
 and Knox, delighted to read their own temptations 
 in the temptations of Noah and Abraham. We set 
 these men at an immeasurable distance from us, some- 
 times dreaming that they had advantages which we 
 do not possess, though He, whose day they saw and 
 rejoiced in, had not yet taken flesh and dwelt among 
 men; sometimes supposing that because He has come 
 to us we are fm*ther from Him and them, though the 
 Apostle says, He has brought us into the general 
 assembly and church of just men made perfect. All 
 these miserable contradictions which affect our daily 
 lives, our conduct to each other, which cut us off from 
 the past and the future, which make our religion a mix- 
 ture of bitterness and of trifling, our study of the 
 Scriptures a wearisome duty, our worship of God a 
 profane routine, must go on, it seems to me, and become 
 wider and deeper, unless we grasp more than men have 
 ever grasped yet, the truth which is contained in the 
 first chapter of St. John's ^Gospel ; unless we tell our 
 scholars plainly that they may regard it as a piece of 
 Alexandrian mysticism if they like, but that we want 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XI 
 
 it and willliave it for our common daily lives; imlese 
 we tell our divines that they may explain it away lest 
 it should prove to be a Eevelation for mankind, but that 
 we want such a Revelation ; the Revelation of a Word 
 who was with God, and was God, and who took upon 
 Him the nature of all men, and died the death of all 
 men, that not the scholar or the divine, but the wian 
 might be God's child, and might see Him as He is. 
 
 I have reconsidered and revised these Sermons; but 
 I have not found more than a sentence or two which I 
 cared to change, — ^and this for the sake of making the 
 meaning more clear, not for the sake of modifying it in 
 the least. I brought the subject down to the period of 
 history which is embraced in my "Prophets and Kings," 
 of which a new edition has lately appeared. Some portions 
 of the ground I have travelled again, in my " Sermons 
 on Sacrifice," especially the part referring to Noah and 
 Abraham. But I do not think that I have exactly 
 repeated myself; and though my convictions on the 
 subject of Sacrifice have been far more fully developed 
 in the later volume, I am sure I have not contradicted 
 anything I said in the earlier. In both I have endea- 
 voured to show, that the Old Testament is not con- 
 trary to the New ; that the New is not a mitigation or 
 softening of the acta and the maxims which are exhi- 
 bited to us in the Old, but the complete imfolding of 
 the principles involved in those acts and maxims ; that 
 St. John is not more of a sentimentalist, not less of 
 a warrior, than Joshua; that both alike hold forth 
 rewards only to those who overcome; that each, in his 
 
xii PilEFACE TO. THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 own way, presents to us a Captain of the hosts of the 
 Lord, — a Word of Godj — ^whose garments are dipped in 
 blood. I have striven to prove that selfishness is the 
 curse w^hich "both Testaments are setting forth as the • 
 destruction, of mankind, because it i-s the separoition of 
 men from God and from each other; that Sacrifice is 
 revealed to us in both as the only -means by which the 
 great enemy of the Creator and the creature can be van- 
 quished. I have maintained that Sacrifice, according to 
 the teaching of -both Testaments, involves Death, — the 
 death of the person who presents it, which .is symbolised 
 by the death of animals, though ^Ao:^ could never take 
 away sins. I have spoken of the death of the Cross, the 
 death of the Son of God, as the only interpreter of the 
 facts of the world.; as the only solution of the /meaning 
 of all previous Sacrifices; ,as the only ground of 
 all fiiture Sacrifices ; as that, without which all the 
 example and all the 'blessed life of the Son of -God 
 would have been nothing ; as that which was necessarily 
 attended with agony and horror unspeakable, with the 
 sense of separation between the Father and the Son, 
 which the darkening of earth and heaven could but 
 feebly typify, I have maintained that His death alone 
 icould take away the sin of the world, because it alone 
 could satisfy the perfectly loving mind of God ; because 
 it could alone unite mankind to God in the person of 
 His Son and our Lord, who was known /before the 
 foundation of the world, but who was mia^ifested in the 
 latter day on Calvary; because it alone could draw 
 the minds of all .men, each wandering in. his own 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Xlll 
 
 waj, seeking his own ends, to the one centre. I have 
 striven, lastly, to show that neither Testament sets 
 before men the doctrine, that the selfishness which all 
 God's righteous and terrible punishments have been 
 contending with on this earth, which God's mighty 
 sacrifice has been redeeming us firom, is to be the law of 
 a future state ; that we are to expect in that state the 
 gratification of self, the repeal of the law of sacrifice, 
 I have maintained that the vision of such a state is the 
 vision of a Hell, in which the Devil is reigning supreme 
 and absolute ; and that the Heaven which the Bible, 
 in both its portions, would lead us to think that God 
 has prepared for them that love Him, is a society, from 
 which selfishness, and self-seeking, and seK-indulgence 
 shall be entirely banished ; where the Lamb that was 
 slain shall be the standard of the life, the object of the 
 adoration, of all creatures ; where not a self-concentrated, 
 self-glorifying Being, but the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost, shall be the new name that is written on 
 all hearts, shall be confessed as the foundation of the 
 divine city, the New Jerusalem. 
 
 JvHu, 1856. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 The Autlior of these Sermons has been recently 
 charged in a dissenting Review with ' not suffering men 
 
 * in general to hold converse with the Bible, unless the 
 ' Church in some way be present at the interview, like 
 
 * the jailor when the prisoner receives a visit from his 
 ' friends.'* Whether this statement is true respecting an 
 individual Clergyman, is a question of immense import- 
 ance to him, of little to the world. But I am supposed 
 to be afraid of the Bible, because the Church of which 
 I am a minister is afraid of it. In many other instances, 
 the Reviewer says that my ' relations ' with the Church 
 are * unfriendly ; ' in this part of my conduct, he believes 
 I am its too faithful representative. This accusation 
 therefore concerns us all. It has nothing to do with the 
 sins or the follies of me, or of any who may happen to 
 agree with me. Every Clergyman of the English 
 Church ought to be prepared to prove by his words and 
 his acts whether he pleads guilty to it or not. 
 
 I will merely set down a few notorious facts. I find 
 myself obliged by my position to read each day to 
 
 * Eclectic Review, September 1851, p. 269. 
 
XVi PKEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. 
 
 my Congregation certain chapters irom the Old and the 
 New Testament, These chapters are called ' Lessons/ 
 Thej are not chosen at random, but follow each other 
 continuously. No hint is given about interpretations ot 
 them to be obtained from doctors old or new. On 
 Sundays we read in our Communion Service an Epistle 
 and a Gospel. These taken alone might lead us to 
 fancy that the Bible was to be cut up into portions, 
 each containing some particular moral; not to be treated 
 as a history. Lest we should go away with that 
 impression, the regular order of lessons in the New 
 Testament is preserved, and a special set of lessons is 
 appointed from the Old Testament. These last can by 
 no possibility have been selected for the purpose of 
 teaching a certain set of maxims or notions. They 
 often consist of passages which modem teachers stumble 
 at, and which fastidious parents desire their children to 
 pass over. They must have been appointed because the 
 compilers of our Services held the Bible to be an 
 orderly historical revelation. 
 
 This statement I leave to the consideration of every 
 honest Dissenter. If he knows any religious body here 
 or elsewhere, which has expressed its desire that the 
 Bible, — the whole Bible, —should be presented ' to men 
 in general,' in a more formal, decisive, and practical 
 manner than the English Church has done, 1 shall be 
 rejoiced to hear the name of that body. But if he 
 supposes that in saying so, 1 am striving to make out a 
 case for myself or for the English Clergy, he is entirely 
 mistaken. I think we are laid under a heavy re- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xvn 
 
 sponsibility by our position in a Cliurcli which has 
 given these distinct and emphatical intimations of hei 
 meaning. I do not think; that we have in any satis- 
 factory degree acquitted ourselves of that responsibility. 
 I do not think we have had courage to bring out the 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testament in their 
 simple clear sense, as a revelation of God to Man, or 
 as a lamp to the feet of us Englishmen in the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 The cause of this failure is, I think, not far to seek. 
 The religious world has adopted a certain theory re- 
 specting the Old Testament, The polity we read ot 
 there, we are told, was constructed upon principles 
 entirely peculiar, entirely different from those under 
 which we are living. God was the King of the 
 Hebrews, in a literal actual sense ; He is the King of 
 the people of England, in an imaginary metaphorical 
 sense. This is the assumption with which we begin 
 oxu- studies ; we announce it or imply it continually in 
 our sermons ; it leavens all our thoughts. Consequently, 
 the whole scheme of Old Testament history must be 
 resolved into a scheme of irregular interferences. It 
 cannot be brought to bear, — we have no right to bring 
 it to bear, — upon the actual condition and relations of 
 our English population. It cannot, in any honest sense 
 of the words, be looked upon as a history or revelation 
 for us. It must be treated as a mere collection of 
 religious notions and maxims, as supplying a set of 
 texts upon which we are to make edifying remarks, and 
 from which we are to deduce what ai*e called nracticr.l 
 
XVIU PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 applications. At the same time, it is a part of our 
 business to tell our congregations, tliat the religions 
 teaching of the Old Testament does not strictly belong 
 to us, seeing we are Christians, and have been brought 
 into a much more spiritual economy. . Nay, we are to 
 inform them that the doctrine of a future state and 
 the way of preparing for it, which are taken to be 
 the main subjects of divine communications, can be 
 learnt but very imperfectly and indistinctly from these 
 records. "What then can remain of them? What is 
 the foundation for the reverence which we are taught to 
 entertain for them ? Can you maintain it by speaking 
 of them as merely typical, or the likenesses of some- 
 thing else? Can you maintain it, by drawing from 
 them certain rules of conduct, which in the same breath 
 you say are superseded by other and higlier rules ? 
 
 These are questions which men are asking themselves 
 everywhere. Would to Grod they were asking them 
 more earnestly, with more determination to obtain an 
 answer! If they were, I should not care how much 
 they heard of neological doubts or neological solutions. 
 I believe the first might be a means of leading them to 
 look again into the Bible, for a real and simple history ; 
 that the others would afford them scarcely a temporary 
 resting-place. What makes one tremble, is not the 
 active, but the passive unbelief of our day ; not the vehe- 
 n;ient words, 'like the east-wind,' of men who declare that 
 they cannot be content with conventions, and must have 
 something solid to rest on ; but the placid scepticism 
 ^hich takes it for e:ranted that religious men in general 
 
PKEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. X12 
 
 are standing upon a reef of sand, and has not interest to 
 ask whether there is any rock "beneath upon which we all 
 might stand. Let us confess it plainly and simply. It is 
 not Neologians or Rationalists who have taught men that 
 the Bible is a collection of incoherent fragments, — an 
 old oriental document with which modem civilization 
 has nothing to do. We have taught them that. The 
 religious world has been inculcating the lesson upon all 
 classes amongst us. And then we are shocked and 
 startled when we see it brought out openly before us, 
 dressed in critical formulas : and we fly hither and 
 thither for defence against the evil spirit we have 
 ourselves raised; now begging help of some ortho- 
 dox German, who, we suppose, has more knowledge 
 about documents than ourselves ; now entreating some 
 Genevan divine to furnish us with a new theory of 
 inspiration, which will settle all doubts, and which 
 must be received as if it was itself inspired. 
 
 But there is an earnest infidelity abroad," that will 
 certainly not be settled by the school-arguments, which 
 we childishly suppose may be effectual to convert the 
 lazy infidelity of our upper and professional classes into 
 solid faith. Toiling and suffering men want to know, 
 not how the world was governed thousands of years 
 ago, but how it is governed now ; whether there is any 
 order in it, whether there is any one who can and 
 will rectify its disorders. They must have plain 
 straightforward answers to these questions. They will 
 listen to no talk about a future state, unless we can tell 
 them something about their present state. They will 
 
 C2 
 
^X PRKFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 listen to no arguments from Palej, or Watson, oi 
 Eengstenberg, or Ganssen, to prove that such a book 
 must he inspired or divine. ' If it is/ they say, ' what 
 ' message does it bring to us ? Is it one of despair oi 
 ' of hope, of bondage or of emancipation ? Speak it 
 ' out if you know what it is. We will listen if it is 
 ' what we want, however little we may trust you who 
 ' speak it. We will not listen if you bring ever so 
 "• many arguments to prove your powers, your right to 
 
 * dictate, or your skill to argue, unless you make known 
 ' to us that which will show us the path in which we are 
 ' to walk, more clearly, which will explain why we were 
 
 * sent into this world, and how we are to live in it.' 
 
 This tune goes manly. To words like these I believe 
 we can make answer. The Bible, as I think, is a friend 
 who comes to men in their prison ; the Church, as I 
 think, does stand by during the interview, whether as a 
 jailer to hinder intercourse or not, I will try to explain. 
 The Church, it seems to me, exists in the world as a 
 witness to mankind that there is a continual, divine, 
 gracious government over it ; as a witness to each nation 
 that God is not less a King over it than He was over 
 the Jews : that there has been a more complete reve- 
 lation of His government, of the mode in which it is 
 carried on, of the purposes which it designs to ac- 
 complish, than that which was made in the old time ; 
 but one which does not in the least set that revelation 
 aside, or make it obsolete for us. The Church is to tell 
 men, that the more completely divine any government 
 IB, the more human it is ; that it belongs to all common 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. XXI 
 
 circumstances, ordinary interests, actual business. The 
 Cliurcli is to tell men, that if God was a Eedeemer of 
 old, He is a Eedeemer now ; that if He was the Judge 
 of kings, priests, nobles, in old times, — if He called 
 them to account for their cruelties, punished them for 
 their superstitions, reproved them for their exactions, — 
 He does so still. The Church is to tell men, that if God 
 in other days took cognizance of the bag of deceitful 
 weights and of the sins of the employer who kept back 
 by fraud the wages of the labom*er, He does so still. 
 The Church is to teach men, that society exists for the 
 sake of the human beings who compose it, not to further 
 the accumulation of the capital, which is only one of its 
 instruments. The Church is to declare, that any civi- 
 lization which is not based upon this godly principle, will 
 come utterly to nought ; that all the real blessings which 
 liave flowed from it, have proceeded from the acknow- 
 ledgment of this principle; all the curses which have 
 accompanied the growth of wealth and luxury, £i*om the 
 forgetfolness of it. The Church is to declare, that the 
 spiritual and eternal kingdom which God has prepared 
 for them that love Him, is about men now, and that 
 they may enter into it ; and that His government of this 
 spiritual and eternal world does not make Him less 
 interested for the earth which He has formed for the 
 habitation of man, in which He watches over him and 
 blesses him, and which He desires that he should till 
 and subdue, according to the command which He gave 
 him on the creation-day. 
 
 To bring these truths practically home to the minds 
 
XXll PEEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 and hearts of human beings, is, it seems to me, the 
 great function of a Church. And this function, I believe, 
 the Church of England has in some respects a special 
 call to perform, and can, if she will, perform most 
 effectually. For the very causes which lead to some 
 of her greatest dangers, are signs to her of the work 
 which God means her to do, and which, if she trusts in 
 Him, He will enable her to do. The religious men, 
 and the irreligious men too, of her own community, 
 complain of her as earthly and secular. She is in most 
 imminent danger of becoming all that they accuse her 
 of being. She has stooped to rank and wealth, and 
 trampled upon the poor ; she often does so now. She 
 has fancied that her strength lay in her revenues ; she 
 is still beset every day and hour with that temptation. 
 But, on the other hand, every circumstance in her posi- 
 tion teaches her that she is not merely to be a preacher 
 about the world to come ; that she is to be a witness 
 for God's righteous dominion over the world that is. 
 The relations with the State which Romanists and 
 Protestant Dissenters taunt her with, are relations of 
 infinite peril, of infinite responsibility. She has abused 
 them to immoral purposes. She is bound to use them 
 for the most glorious and holy purposes. She is bound 
 to feel that she is set in high places, and has a voice to 
 reach all classes of society, not that she may utter cant 
 phrases about religion and the Church, in the ears of 
 those who think that these phrases signify the mainte- 
 nance of their possessions, by what are called ' religious 
 sanctions ; ' not to preach servility to the lower classes ; 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIUST EDITION. Xxiil 
 
 but to tell all by words and acts, that they are members 
 of one body; tbat they exist in their different relations 
 as servants one of another, in His immediate presence, 
 under His awfiil eye, "who became the servant of all, 
 and died for all. 
 
 This is a function "which a ' religious world ' can 
 never discharge, never even tries to discharge, A re- 
 ligious world is a society by itself, witnessing for itself, 
 for its own privileges, for its difference from the rest ot' 
 mankind. It acknowledges no vocation from God; it 
 lias no living connexion with the past ; it is subject to 
 all the accidents and mutations of public opinion. Yet 
 it has no hold upon human life in any of its forms. It 
 treats politics, science, literature, as secular ; but it 
 dabbles with them, pretends to reform them by mixing 
 a few cant phrases with them, is really affected by all 
 the worst habits which the most vulgar and frivolous 
 pursuit of them engenders. It ti-embles at every social 
 movement, at every thought which is awakened in human 
 hearts, at every discovery which is made in the world 
 without. But it does not tremble at its own corruptions. 
 It can see its members indifferent to all the precepts of 
 the Bible in their daily occupations as shopkeepers, 
 employers, citizens ; yet if they put the Bible on their 
 banners, and shout about the authority of the inspired 
 Dook at public meetings, it asks no more ; it boasts that 
 we are ' sound at heart ; * it congratulates itself that 
 spirituality is diffusing itself throughout the land. Mean- 
 time, each of its sections has its own Bible. The news- 
 paper or magazine, which keeps that section in conceit 
 
XXIV PEEPACE TO THE PIKST EDITION. 
 
 with itself, and in hatred of others, is to all intents and 
 purposes its divine oraclcj the rule of its faith, the guide 
 of its conduct. For this religious world is an aggregate 
 of sections, a collection of opinions about God and about 
 man ; no witness that there is a living God, or that He 
 cares for men. Its faith is essentially exclusive, and so 
 is its charity ; for though it devises a multitude of con- 
 trivances for relieving the wants of human beings, nearly 
 all these seem to proceed upon the principle, that they 
 are creatures of another race, on behalf of whom religious 
 people are to exercise their graces ; not creatures who 
 have that nature which Christ took, as much sharers 
 in all the benefits of His incarnation and sacrifice, as 
 their benefactors * are. 
 
 There has been a consciousness for many years past 
 among the members of the English Church, that they 
 are not meant to be mere portions of a religious world ; 
 that they utterly belie their high vocation, when they 
 act as if they were. ' We must be chui'chmen,' we 
 have said ; ' we must claim a calling from God, and 
 ' a connexion with the past ; we cannot acknowledge 
 ' ourselves to be mere nominees of the civil power ; we 
 
 * cannot admit that we have merely formed a set of 
 
 * opinions, or established a certain fellowship, for our- 
 ' selves.' But in the endeavour to escape firom this 
 position, and to find a more safe and tenable one, 
 we have, I fear, shown how much the low notions 
 
 * 'And He said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise 
 lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are 
 called benefactors. But ye shall not be so.' Luke xxii. 25, 23. 
 
PBEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITIO^\ XXV 
 
 and habits of a religious "world are cleaving to us. 
 Trying to be sometbing more than a sect, we have 
 exhibited much of the narrowness of a sect ; nay, those 
 who exult in what they call their feelings of brotherhood 
 to all Christian people, have been able to represent us 
 as narrow and exclusive beyond all others. So far as 
 I can see, the English Church must either lose itself in 
 the mass of sects, and perish when the sentence, of 
 wliich there are so many precursory tokens, so many 
 trumpets of warning, goes forth for their destmction ; 
 or else must sink into a portion of the popedom, — and 
 bring down upon itself a portion of that judgment 
 which miserable sufferers in the dens of Naples and 
 Rome join with the saints beneath the altar, in invoking 
 against a power which has usurped the name of Christ, 
 and counterfeited the government of the Father, for the 
 support and propagation of fraud and cruelty, — a power 
 which no visitations of God have been able to teach 
 wisdom and righteousness ; unless we believe that our 
 peculiar standing ground has only been given us, that 
 we may be witnesses of God's blessings to mankind, 
 that we may claim the members of all sects as portions 
 of God's great family, that we may bring the members 
 of all churches to understand, that when they lose their 
 Pope, they only exchange a reality for a phantom, the 
 government of a present High Priest and King for that 
 of an usiu'ping vicar. 
 
 But when we speak of a church taking up a position, 
 what do we mean? Must we wait till the English 
 Chm'ch recovers what we hear so much about in 
 
SXVl PKEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 newspapers, its ' synodical action ? ' That will come, 
 I doubt not, wlien it is good for us. May God prevent 
 it from coming a ' moment before ! Are we to wait for 
 Some decrees or decisions of the rulers of the Church ? 
 Thank God for the mercy which has made those decrees 
 so few, which has hindered our bishops from pronouncing 
 judgments in deference to public opinion, or in con- 
 formity with the wishes of any faction ! So the Church 
 has been prevented from sinking into a sect, so its 
 ministers have been obliged to learn, in spite of them- 
 selves, that when God brings them into a church, He 
 becomes their teacher; He provides them with the 
 means of learning His will and doing it; He gives 
 them a living lore, for which the dead lore of decrees 
 never can be a substitute; which it may crush and 
 stifle. Thus they are taught that when God brings 
 them into a church. He wishes them not to shut out 
 the light which is pouring in on all sides, from members 
 of partial sects, from artists, from scientific men, fi'om 
 political experience, from the conflicts and contradictions 
 of the time ; but that all these are their lesson-books,which 
 His great lesson-book may enable them to understand, 
 to appropriate, to harmonize. Thus they are forced to 
 learn that their business is not to seek for themselves 
 a quiet regulated atmosphere, where they may be safe 
 from the intrusion of perplexities, where no wind of 
 heaven may visit their faces too roughly ; but that their 
 place is in the dusty highway of the world, or on the 
 open sea ; that they are to be exempt from no vulgar 
 interests or temptations to which others are exposed ; 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIKST EDITION, XXvii 
 
 that they are to be acquainted with all shoals and 
 tempests, since only by such experience can they 
 understand the might of a present God, or be fit to 
 deliver His gospel to men. I am sui-e that we have not 
 too many of what are called the difficulties and dangers 
 of our time; that it is cowardly and ignominious to 
 wish them less; that in doing so, we wish that God 
 had robbed us of some of the instruments which He 
 has given us for knowing His mind, and entering into 
 the sense of His revelation. 
 
 Therefore, I say, that every minister of our Church is 
 bound for himself, without waiting for any further 
 guidance than he has, though thankful for all, to con- 
 sider how he may take up that position which he would 
 wish to see the whole Church taking up, K he thinks 
 that the Church has a message for mankind, he is to 
 try, let his lips be ever so stammering, to deliver that 
 message. If he thinks that the Church ought to meet 
 men as men, — not accordmg to their rank or social 
 privileges, not according to the degree or measure 
 of their faith, not according to the nature of their 
 opinions, — but of whom Christ is the Lord, whether 
 they acknowledge Him as such or not, for whom Christ 
 died, whether they feed upon His sacrifice or not, for 
 whom He lives to make intercession, whether they 
 di-aw nigh to the Father of all through Him or not; — 
 then, he is bound, so far as in him lies, to meet them in 
 that way and on that ground : insisting upon no punc- 
 tilios, asking for no deference, claiming no acknow- 
 ledgment of powers but such as he claims for himself 
 
XXYIU PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 bj the words which he utters, or the acts which he 
 does. If he thinks that the Chiu'ch is bound to deal 
 with all the common conditions of human society for 
 the sake of bringing them into conformity with God^s 
 law, he must endeavour individually to take that course. 
 If he thinks +hat the Church should acknowledge 
 obligations to all that are most hostile to it, he should 
 gladly confess when he has received a benefit from any, 
 should be ready to sit at the feet of any, but should feel 
 at the same time that he has the power as a Churchman 
 of returning the obligation, and that this is the very 
 liighest privilege God can confer upon him. 
 
 The reader of these Sermons will perceive that I have 
 come to the study of the Old Testament with no phi- 
 lological lore; with no belief that I have any new 
 interpretations to offer of its history; with the con- 
 viction that the most commonplace view of that history 
 is the truest. I believe that philology is of unspeakable 
 ■ value, and should be applied manfully to Scripture. 
 But I believe also, that the experience of life and ot 
 our own wants furnishes an organon for this investigation, 
 more precious than the largest critical apparatus can 
 ever be. I am satisfied that my clerical brethren who 
 have no greater resources of learning than I have, will 
 one and all be rewarded if they approach the Scripture 
 m the spirit in which the Church teaches them to' 
 approach it, asking the great Teacher who has provided 
 it for our use, to clear their minds of preconceptions and 
 anticipations, and to let them feel what the blessing is 
 of having a common book to correct their narrow, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXIX 
 
 individual judgments, to raise them into tlie apprehen- 
 sion of permanent and imiversal truths. 
 
 In asserting this as the privilege and the duty of 
 English Churchmen, I am not, consciously at least, 
 interfering with the rights, or duties, or powers of an} 
 other men whatsoever. A great portion of the Latin 
 Church believes ms to be heretics, utterly incapable 
 of interpreting God's Word, and of understanding it. 
 Well ! If they have the key of knowledge, let them 
 use it. If they have lights which we do not possess, 
 let those lights shine forth that all may see them 
 and be blessed by them. I think I have more, faith 
 in the powers which God has endued them with, than 
 they have ever shown that they have themselves. 
 If the Pope and the Cardinals would teach us what 
 a righteous government upon earth is, I have no doubt 
 that they would be wonderful interpreters of Scripture. 
 If they exhibit no such divine order, but one most 
 contrary to it, I beHeve that God will some day open 
 the eyes of the Latin Clergy to see that fact, and 
 that the Bible will be their helper in the work of 
 reformation, as much as it was the helper of the 
 Teutonic Clergy and Laity in the sixteenth century. 
 I believe that many portions of the Scriptures which 
 were dark to the students of that time will be clear 
 to them ; just because they are occupied with problems 
 with which those men were not so consciously occupied, 
 and therefore they will be able better to receive the 
 solutions. 
 
 So again the German Protestants despise us as 
 
XXX PEEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. 
 
 ignorant, antiquated, uncritical, I do not ask them 
 to withdraw those censures. Let them be- as learned, 
 modern, critical as thej please ! But thej have found, 
 in the course of the last two or three years, that 
 Germany has a political existence as well as a school 
 existence, and that there are certain very complicated 
 social knots which neither schoolmen nor statesmen 
 can untie. Surely it could not grieve the countrymen 
 of Luther if the book which in his hands became 
 the asserter of their national existence, — which deter- 
 mined their national language, — should prove the 
 instrument of scattering clouds, which the rage of mobs, 
 and the theories of sovereigns, have seemed only to 
 make thicker. 
 
 Our own Dissenters say, that w;e can only look at 
 the Bible through the mist of old traditions. They 
 maintain its absolute, undivided authority. Be it so. 
 Then I trust, that when they have done all that they 
 think necessary in the work of denunciation, they will 
 apply themselves manfully to the work of study. Let 
 them set before us the meaning of those records which 
 they believe are so full of meaning ; let them confound 
 the narrow views which we have formed of them. 
 I have found my own views most narrow and im- 
 perfect ; I have wished to be delivered from them, and 
 to be enabled to see the thing as it is; not distorted 
 by the qualities of the medium through which I look 
 at it. I am not so well acquainted as many are with 
 the traditions of the past; the notions of the present, 
 
 -the impresnions which one receives from the cuxrent 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXXI 
 
 religious literature, from the popular religious dialect, 
 —have been greater impediments to me in the search 
 for the living and literal sense of Scripture, than 
 any other influences whatsoever, always excepting the 
 influence of my own self-conceit and presumption. The 
 forms of my Church have seenjed to me useful in 
 getting rid of hoth these hindrances ; therefore I have 
 prized them. I do not ask or expect the Dissenter 
 to prize them, or to use them for this purpose. Let 
 him hold fast his own maxim— let him determine 
 to learn from the Bible only. If he does so faithfully, 
 I am sure it will teach him. And if he succeeds in 
 breaking more fetters from the hearts and consciences 
 of men than I have been able to break, he will be 
 acting more in the spirit of my Chm*ch, and be carrying 
 out its lessons better than I have done. 
 
 Lastly, the liberal teachers of our day say, that 
 a written revelation is itself an imposition upon men's 
 minds, which they have endured long, and must now 
 shake off. The revelation of Nature is what they want. 
 ' Let that be laid open to men fully and broadly ; there 
 ' will be no more fear of the priest ; his occupation 
 ' will be gone,' Yes, let that be tried. Open this 
 revelation of Nature as fully as you can; let every 
 artist, every scientific man, feel that it is his business 
 and duty to translate, and, if he thinks fit, to illuminate 
 its pages. Let them say, one and all,- that these pages 
 are meant for the poor and ignorant to read in; that 
 the beauties and glories of the outward creation, as well 
 as its secret depths, are intended not for connoisseur? 
 
XXXn PREFACE TO THE FIHST EDITION. 
 
 and men of leisure, but for the toilers and sufFerera 
 - of the eartli. Let such, words be spoken, and let acts 
 be done in conformity with them. And then it will be 
 seen, whether men can be satisfied with this revelation, 
 glorious as it is; whether they will not demand 
 another; whether they will not be miserable slaves, 
 incapable of enjoying the good things which God has 
 provided for their eyes and ears, the victims of every 
 impostor, of every new superstition, unless they know 
 what they themselves are, whence they came, whither 
 they are going, whether He who made them wishes 
 them to dwell in hopeless bondage, or to be the citizens 
 of a divine kingdom. 
 
 Octobei\ 1851 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 THE CREATION OP MANKIND, AND OF THE FIEST MAN. 
 
 (Lmcoln'i Inn, Septuagesima Sunday. — Feb. 16, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Genesis x. and ii 
 
 Genesis n. 1. 
 Thus the heaveiia a/nd the earth were ^nished, and ail the host of them. 
 
 On Septuagesima Sunday we begin the Old Testament. 
 I propose, if God permit, to take the subjects in order 
 which the first Lessons for the Morning and Evening bring 
 before ns. 
 
 To-day the subject is Creation. I have chosen my text 
 from a verse which speaks of Creation, not in progress, but 
 as completed. I have done so advisedly, not because I 
 wish to evade the questions which are suggested by the 
 previous chapter, but because I believe we shall understand 
 them better, if we examine them by the light which is 
 thrown upon them from this. 
 
 When does the Historian say, ' that the heavens and tne 
 earth were finished^ and all the host of themf The last 
 paragraph of the former chapter leaves us in no doubt. 
 The heavens and the earth were finished when * God 
 created man tn His oton tmaffe,' Then the Universe was 
 that which He designed it to be; then he could lodk, not 
 
34 SERMON T. 
 
 upon a portion of it, but upon the whole of it, and say, It 
 is very good,' Then it was a unity: such a unity as was 
 implied in the existence of light and a firmament, a pro- 
 luctive earth, a sun and moon, fishes, birds, beasts of the 
 field ; such a unity as none of these separately, nor aU of 
 them together, could constitute. They find their meaning 
 and interpretation in Man ; as man finds his meaning and 
 interpretation in GoD. 
 
 If we start from any other principle than this, we may 
 talk very learnedly about the cosmogony of Moses; we 
 may attack it as unscientific, or defend it as divine ; but 
 we shall never know of what we are complaining, or for 
 what we are apologizing. The principle, as I hope to show 
 you hereafter, goes through the Bible; its records are 
 mcoherent if you do not recognise it ; just so far as you do, 
 they come into harmony with each other. If any one 
 sti'ives to speculate upon the difierent days of Creation, or 
 the works which are said to be done in them, without 
 referring them all to this final day and final work, and 
 without referring that to the seventh day and the divine 
 rest, he may construct a very ingenious theory, or a number 
 of ingenious theories ; but his thoughts will only have the 
 most remote and accidental connexion with the book of 
 Cxenesis or the Bible. 
 
 Now, supposing this to be the case, we ought to derive 
 our idea of Creation, — at least we ought to determine what 
 is the idea of Creation in the first chapter of the book of 
 Genesis, — from what we are told respecting the creation of 
 man. First of all, ' God made man in His own image; 
 male and female created He them;^ afterwards it is said He 
 madQ ' A man out of the dust of ike ground, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life^ If we follow the letter 
 
CREATION OP OKDEES. 35 
 
 of these passages and do not endeavour to put any notions 
 of our own into them, we shall be led, I think, naturally to 
 the conclusion, that the former words have to do with the 
 SpecieSf as we should say, if we must have logical phrases 
 (which I would rather avoid if it were possible) ; and that 
 the other has to do with an individuifid, with the first man 
 of the race. This, I think, is the interence that we should 
 all draw, if the mere words were set before us without any 
 context : it gains strength the more "^e study the context 
 The two accoimts are distinct, as all readers have per- 
 ceived; the obvious difference between them has suggested 
 a number of schemes to account for their introduction into 
 the same narrative. One, it seems to me, is quite necessary 
 to the other. If we had the first without the second, we 
 should have the description of an ideal man, without being 
 told that there was an actual man. If we had merely the 
 second, we should have the history of the appearance of 
 a solitary creature in the universe, without knowing what 
 he was, or why he was put there, or what relation he bore 
 to all the things about him. But what I wish you particu- 
 larly to notice is, that the part of the record which speaks 
 of man ideaUy, according to his place with reference to the 
 rest of the universe, according to his position with reference 
 to God, is the part which expressly belongs to the history 
 of Creation ; that the bringing forth of man in this sense 
 is the work of the sixth day. 
 
 You will perceive the necessity of this interpretation 
 the more steadily you look at the words, ' God created man 
 in His own image, in the image of God created he Mm; 
 male and female created he themJ* The difficulty in this 
 sentence consists in the change firom the singular to the 
 plural. Now, if you try to express for yourself the for- 
 
 d2 
 
B6 SEBMON I. 
 
 mation of an Order, of a Kace, and at the same time seek 
 to convey the impression that the order or race were to be 
 composed of real beings, you must drop into some language 
 of this sort ; you must involve yourself in this seeming 
 contradiction. You may fancy that you escape from it by 
 resorting to the phrases of the Realists, and affirming the 
 species to have an existence apart from the individual. 
 You may escape from it by adopting the phrases of the 
 Nominalists, and saying, that the man is nothing but the 
 single, separate atom, which you denote by a particular 
 name. But if you wish to talk in the language of fact, 
 and not in mere dialectical terms ; if you wish to satisfy 
 the conscience of mankind, and to express that which we 
 know to be, — whether we can define it or not, — you must 
 speak as Moses speaks ; you must have the ' him^ and the 
 * them;'' that word which declares that the male and female 
 are both comprehended in humanity; that word which 
 declares that humanity equally implies their distinct in- 
 dividual existence. I do not Uke meddling with abstrac- 
 tions, so much as I have felt myself obliged to do, in order 
 to show you how Moses has avoided abstractions ; how he 
 1ias risen above them. He has risen above •them, I con- 
 ceive, because he has contemplated the creation of man not 
 from our point of view, but from God's. He has told us 
 what man was in His mind; and how He brought forth the 
 purpose and intent of His mind into act. If it is said that 
 an invisible being created ' man in His own likeness,' that 
 cannot mean that He invested him with something visible. 
 He may have done so: we are told afterwards that He did; 
 but this cannot have been the special, essential, act of 
 Creation. Again, if we are told that a real Living Being, 
 —the source of all being and all life, — created * man in His 
 
CREATION NOT MANUFACTURE. S7 
 
 own image ;^ thu cannot mean that He created a mere 
 phantom, without substance, without life. The Creation, 
 in this highest sense, must mean the bestowing, under 
 whatever limitations, a portion of His own life, that which 
 corresponded to His own being. It must denote, therefore, 
 in this its highest acceptation, not what we understand by 
 putting together a material thing, but the communicatiou 
 of that inward power and substance, without which matter 
 is but a dream,— apart from which we only conceive it as 
 possible, because we have learnt, bj terrible experience, the 
 possibility of death. 
 
 Now, extend this thought, which seems to arise inevitably 
 out of the stoiy of the creation of Man as Moses delivers it, 
 to the rest of that universe of which he regards man as the 
 climax, and we are forced to the conclusion, that in the one 
 case, as in the other, it is not the visible material thing of 
 which the historian is speaking, but of that which lies 
 below the visible material tiling, and constitutes the sub- 
 stance which it shows forth. 
 
 We are told in the second chapter of * a mist going up 
 from the earth, and watering the face of the ground.^ It is 
 clearly intimated that then, and not till then, did the plants 
 and the herbs of the field appear. It is said at the same 
 time, ^ tha^ the Lord God had created every plant of the 
 field BEFORE it teas in the earth, and every herb of the field 
 BEFORE it grew? We are compelled then to consider the 
 creation of herbs and flowers as well as the creation of 
 beasts, and birds, and ftshes, which is recorded in the 
 previous chapter, as the bringing forth of kinds and orders 
 such as they are according to the mind of God, not of 
 actual separate phenomenal existences, such as they present 
 themselves to the senses of man. The language of the 
 
38 SEKMOW I, 
 
 historian is most strictly in accordance with this interpre- 
 tation, ^ Let the earth hring forth grass, the herb yielding 
 seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose 
 seed is in itself upon the earth.' Again, ' And God created 
 great whales, -and every living creature that moveth, which 
 the waters brought forth abundantly, after' their KINI>/ 
 Again, * Lei the earth bring forth the living creature after 
 his KIND, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth 
 after Ms kind,' 
 
 Perhaps the thought maj occur to you, ' Yes ! it is yeiy 
 
 * true that we are told of a word going forth from God, 
 ' saying, Let this be so ; that may merely indicate the 
 ' process in the Divine mind. But have we not the addi- 
 
 * tional sentence, It was so; and are we not reminded thai 
 
 * the earth brought forth grass, &c.? Must not we take 
 ' these sentences into account as much as the other ? and il 
 ' we do, shall we not arrive, after all, at the merely material 
 
 * notion of creation?' I am far indeed from wishing to 
 overlook these passages, or from fancying that we can 
 understand the others without them. But if you once 
 admit that the going forth of God's Word, — the expression 
 of his Will and Mind is Creation, these sentences which 
 announce that His word was not an idle ineffective word, 
 that what He purposed came to pass, will carry a very 
 different force indeed, from that which we attribute to them 
 when we start from a consideration of the things them- 
 selves. For the passages which say that the earth brought 
 forth grass and fruits, are passages which, if you take them 
 literally, must point not to a single moment, but to the 
 whole life of the world down to the present hour. When 
 a chair or a table leaves the hands of the carpenter, it 
 passes into the hands of the person for whom it is made ; 
 
CEKATION INVOLVES PEODUCTIOX. 3^ 
 
 the workman hap no more concern with it. But when yon 
 hear of the earth bringing forth grass, the herb yielding 
 seed, the fishes or beasts being fruitful and multiplying, you 
 are told of living powers which were imparted once, but 
 which are in continual exercise and manifestation; the 
 Creative Word has been uttered once; the Creative Word 
 is never for a moment suspended ; never ceases to fulfil its 
 own proclamation. That this was the belief of Moses 
 1 shall not stop to prove. I should have to quote half the 
 Pentateuch if I did; the idea is worked into the whole 
 tissue of his faith, and comes out in every phrase he uses ; 
 in subsequent discourses, I shall have to remind you of it 
 continually. What seems most strange is, that this truth 
 sliould have been practically so much forgotten by readers 
 of the first chapter of Genesis; that they should have 
 supposed the heavens and earth were finished and the 
 host of them, in the same manner as any ordinary work 
 of human hands in which there is no life, no prodtictive 
 power, is finished ; whereas Moses speaks of that life and 
 those productive powers as called forth, that they might 
 work on from generation to generation under God's 
 government. 
 
 This mistake has, I believe, originated in our reluctance 
 to acknowledge the meaning which the sacred historian 
 gives to the week of seven days. Some persons, I need 
 not tell you, have supposed that they could only reconcile 
 the Mosaic story with modem Geology, by supposing each 
 day to mean a thousand years. But when they brought 
 themselves to think that the Scripture language was pliable 
 enough to endure an outrage which would have been 
 intolerable in any other book, geologists would not be tied 
 down by such a rule; their discoveries and speculations 
 
40 SERMON I. 
 
 would not be limited within the terms which a purely 
 arbitrary criticism had assigned, as the possible duration of 
 the materials whereof our globe consists. The honesty of 
 Scripture interpretation, as much as the honesty of Science, 
 owes them thanks that they would not; if they had, 
 humble men must have felt that the words of the Bible 
 might mean anything, everything, or nothing ; those who 
 believe that there is in them spirit and life, must have sub- 
 mittted to see them tortured into a materialism, against 
 which they bear the most deliberate and consistent protest. 
 
 No one will say that a literal construction of the first' 
 chapter of Genesis would lead to the notion, that the order 
 of the week is an order determined by the Sun ot the 
 Moon. The most plausible and popular objection to the 
 Mosaic history is, that it affirms the Sun and Moon to have 
 been created on the fourth day. Then first we hear of 
 signs, and seasons, and years ; then we are told, that the 
 day and night were to be divided by the lights in the 
 heavens. Hence we are obliged to suppose that the week 
 had an import in the mind of the historian, altogether 
 distinct from that which he gave to the ordinary measure:* 
 of time. The Jew had been told in his commandments, 
 that it was to remind him of God's work and his own 
 work; of God's rest and his own rest. It was to bring before 
 him the fact of his relation to God, of his being made in the 
 image of God; it was to teach him to regard the universe 
 not chiefly as under the government of Sun or Moon, or as 
 regulated by their courses; but as an order which the 
 unseen God had created; which included Sun, Moon, Stars, 
 Earth, and all the living creatures that inhabit them. 
 
 The week, then, was especially to raise the Jew above 
 the thought of Time, to make him feel that though he was 
 
CREATION NOT MEASTTEED BY THE SUN. 41 
 
 subject to its laws, he yet stood in direct connexion with 
 an eternal law ; with a Being, ' who is, and was, and is to 
 comeJ The more faithfully he acted out the command, 
 to work and rest, and connected it with the whole course 
 and meaning of his own life, and the life of his fellows, the 
 less would the external Universe be an oppression and 
 burden to him ; the more would he enter into an appre- 
 hension of its order ; the more would he be sure that it was 
 not his master. When then the great Lawgiver taught 
 him to associate the different days of this week with 
 different steps or stages in the creation of the world, he 
 certainly never intended him to introduce those very 
 notions into the liistory from which the commandment was 
 to preserve him. He was not to thrust in narrow and 
 idolatrous fancies, derived from the Egyptian astronomy, 
 into his thoughts of the divine order ; he was to acknow- 
 ledge days and months and years as connected with the 
 heavenly bodies ; he was not to feel that the divine Word 
 which had given them their place and their bounds was 
 limited by them, or that the creature of whom it had been 
 said, * Let vs make him in Our likeness,^ was limited by 
 them. The more he meditated on the clear simple view of 
 the Order of the Universe, as it unfolded itself in the mind 
 of the divine Artist, and as it was set forth to man in his 
 week of seven days, — the more would he be delivered from 
 that worship of visible things to which all people on the 
 earth were prone ; the more manly and faithftd would be 
 his inquiries respecting that Universe, before which he did 
 not tremble, which he might not worship, but which he 
 confessed to be the work of the God of Abraham and Isakc 
 and Jacob ; the more certain would be his assurance that 
 the glory of man consists in looking up directly to Him ; 
 
42 SERMON 1. 
 
 in beholding Him In His own proper nature, not througl: 
 dim reflections or eartUj images. 
 
 I apprehend, brethren, that the real earnest study of the 
 Mosaic history of the Creation may serve just the same 
 purpose to us, which I have said that it might have served 
 to the Jews. We know very well, that it was not effectual 
 in delivering them from material idolatry ; what document, 
 however precious, ever was? It was never intended tc 
 exercise any charm or power ot its own ; it was intended 
 to lead them to God, who had declared Himself to be theii 
 deliverer, who could break every chain from off their necks. 
 If, instead of seeking Him, they sought only the book 
 which spoke of Him, it might be a new bondage to them ; 
 it might itself become one of the barriers between them 
 and Him, But the fault lay in themselves, not in it. 
 And I believe the fault lies in us, not in it, that after so 
 many centuries, during which we have been familiar witt 
 the phrases and sentences of it, we are still groping for the 
 sense of it ; often putting it forward as if it were in oppo- 
 sition to truths which God has revealed to those who have 
 honestly studied His Universe ; continually making it a plea 
 for idolatries, which we bring with us to the study of it. 
 This is an error against which we have especial need to 
 watch. Scientific men often say to us, ' You must find 
 
 * out some new interpretation of your book ; you must get 
 
 * rid of the mere letter of it, otherwise you will be in 
 
 * continual conflict with our facts.' I am convinced the 
 directly opposite assertion is true. If we had been less 
 busy with our interpretations, if we had studied the letter 
 of the book more faithfully, we should very rarely indeed 
 have come into any conflict with them ; we should have fell 
 uo suspicion of them ; we should have believed that even theii 
 
CREATION, TO WHOM SIMPLE? 43 
 
 doubts and suggestions, when they were far removed from 
 proofs, and might soon be confuted by new evidence, were 
 yet to be heartily welcomed as helpM towards the dis- 
 covery or elucidation of truth. But our minds being filled, 
 —as the minds of all people in this world are, whether 
 ♦hey call themselves religious, scientific, or by any other 
 name, — with a great many crude materialistic, idolatrous 
 notions, we have not brought them to be corrected and 
 cured by that teaching which we acknowledge to be the 
 highest, the purest, the most spiritual ; but we have 
 insisted that these first, so-called natural, impressions of 
 ours must contain the sense of Scripture. We exclaim, 
 ' This is the obvious meaning of the book. There may be 
 * some highflown conceit about it, no doubt, but all plain 
 ' people must think of it as we do.' I have seldom known a 
 person use language of this kind, who had the least right 
 to put himself forward as representing the common sense 
 or conscience of mankind; who did not show by many 
 infallible tokens that he had been bred in a very artificial 
 school, and that he had taken no pains whatever to clear 
 himself of the habits of it, in order that he might come 
 with an open free mind to receive the lessons of God's word, 
 A divine author, we say, must be simple. Are we sure 
 that His simplicity is not the great obstacle to the discovery 
 of His meaning, by those who will spend no pains in 
 seeking for it, who fancy that hasty and impatient con- 
 clusions which would be intolerable in the readers of 
 another book, are reverent in the readers of this ? 
 
 Scriptural readers and commentators have insisted that 
 the Mosaic history of Creation shall be the history of the 
 formation of the material earth, though there is not a single 
 sentence in which the slightest allusion is made to that 
 
44 SERMON I, 
 
 formation. Thej have insisted that the week must refer t( 
 time as measured bj the sim, though distinct words anc 
 the whole context of the discourse negative such a suppo- 
 sition. Now these are precisely the notions which set the 
 record at variance with the conclusions of physical science, 
 A geologist may not feel that he has any interest in getting 
 rid of such notions, for he can pursue his inquiries withoul 
 caring whether they clash with this book or no. But we 
 have the greatest interest in getting rid of them, — not in 
 order to make peace with science, not even in order to 
 assert the letter of Scripture, though both these objects are 
 highly important, — but because, as long as these conceptions 
 last, we cannot enter into that idea of Creation which the 
 Scripture is in every page bringing out before us ; because 
 we cannot feel the beauty of that order of the Universe 
 which Moses was permitted to reveal to us; because we 
 shall be continually subjecting both the facts of the material 
 world and the laws of the spiritual world to a hard and dry 
 theory of ours, instead of rising gradually, by calm and 
 humble investigations of nature and of God*s word, to an 
 apprehension of them and Him. And do not suppose that 
 It is only now, in this 19th century, through the influence 
 of civilization and scientific inquiry, that divines have been 
 led to feel the mischief which may result from the rashness 
 of interpreters of Scripture and apologists for Scripture, 
 who set themselves in opposition to physical discoveries, 
 even to physical speculations. ' It is a very disgraceful 
 'and pernicious thing, and one greatly' to be watched 
 ' against,' says Augustine, ' that any infidel should hear a 
 ' Christian talking wild nonsense about the earth and the 
 * heaven, about the motions and magnitude and intervals 
 ' of the stars, the courses of years and times, the natures of 
 
CREATION SET AGAINST SCIENCE. 45 
 
 * animals, stones, and other matters of the same kind, pre- 
 ' tending that he has the authority of the Scriptures on his 
 ' side. The other who understands these things from reason 
 
 * or experience, seeing that the Christian is utterly ignorant 
 ' of the subject, that he is wide of the mark by a whole 
 
 * heaven, cannot refrain from laughter. What pain and 
 ' sorrow these rash dogmatists cause to their wiser brethren, 
 ' can scarcely be told ; who, if they have been convicted of 
 
 * a foolish and false opinion by those who do not acknow- 
 ' ledge the authority of our books, straightway produce 
 
 * these same sacred books, in proof of that which they have 
 
 * advanced with the most light-minded rashness and open 
 
 * falseness ; nay, even quote from memory many words 
 
 * which they think will help out their case, understanding 
 ' neither what they say, nor whereof they afcm.' 
 
 So spoke one of the most devout, reverential, and at the 
 same time most courageous, expositors the Church has ever 
 had, in his Commentary on the Book of Genesis according to 
 the Letter. His words are strictly and minutely applicable 
 to the present day. Only that the pride and sin of setting 
 the language of Scripture against the investigation of 
 Nature, is a thousand times gi-eater, when that investigation 
 proceeds, not, as it did in his day, upon rash anticipations ; 
 but upon careful induction of particulars, and that the 
 injury which is done to Scripture by such courses, is not 
 merely or chiefly the laughter which they excite in others ; 
 but the contemptuous, self-exalting assurance which they 
 nourish in the minds of those who indulge in them, — an 
 assurance that hinders them from attaining the faith of 
 little children, as well as from rising to the intellectual 
 stature of men, 
 
 Thei-e is one point to which I would allude, before I quit 
 
46 SERMON I. 
 
 this subject. You may think that if geological facts an 
 not interfered with by this narrative, yet that it does, by it 
 fiindamental maxim as I have laid it down, interfere witl 
 the great astronomical principle which Newton affirmec 
 and demonstrated. If Man is the highest object in th( 
 divine order, is it not most natural that he should look 
 upon the earth as the centre round which all the heavenly 
 bodies are revolving? And does not the record of the 
 fourth day's work seem to affirm, that the sun and moon 
 and stars exist to give light to our planet ? Unquestionably 
 this was a most natural conclusion for man to adopt. That 
 he did adopt it everywhere is the proof how natural i^^ was. 
 But would you get rid of this natural tendency, by denying 
 the plain fact, to which every one's senses give testimony, 
 that the sun and moon do perform ministeries for this 
 earth, and that the whole economy of our earth is affected 
 by those ministeries? Or would you get rid of it, by 
 denying the fact of which the human conscience testifies aa 
 strongly, that a creature endued with a will and a reason 
 must be higher than all the things which his senses con- 
 template, which his mind can conceive of, that have not 
 a will and a reason ? Did any one ever free himself from 
 tlie delusion that the earth was the centre of the uni- 
 verse, by either of these methods ? Did any speculations 
 about the sun or the moon, any reverence for them, any 
 worship of them, destroy this delusion ? Were not all these 
 means of strengthening and deepening it in him? And 
 how then can he, consistently with an acknowledgment 
 of plain facts, consistently with the sense of the dignity 
 and glory which has been put upon him, rise to the con- 
 viction, that neither the earth, nor he himself, can be 
 looked upon as giving the law and order to Creation? 
 
CKEATION POINTING TO MAN. 47 
 
 I answer, he will rise to this conviction, if he can Le 
 taught that he only realizes his own glory when he beholds 
 it in Grod ; if he can be taught that there are other creatures 
 besides himself who share that distinction, — ^which separates 
 him from all mere sentient and animal existences ; if he 
 can be taught upon whom it is that they and he and the 
 whole order to which they belong depend. And these ai-e 
 just the lessons which these chapters of the book of Genesis 
 open to us, and which the whole Bible continues more and 
 more clearly to impress upon us. The chapter we have 
 read this afternoon exhibits the first man beginning to 
 exercise that lordship over the animals which God had 
 given to his race ; beginning to realize the meaning of the 
 words, 'male and female created He them;' subjected to 
 a restriction which told him that he was not an independent 
 being, but made in the image of another. Next Sunday 
 we shall hear how he trifled with that lordship, submitting 
 to a creature whom he was meant to govern, — how the 
 relation of fellowship was broken, — how he set up inde- 
 pendence in place of obedience. As we trace the nature 
 and consequences of that act, we are taught more clearly 
 than any words can teach us, what man becomes when he 
 is a centre to himself, and supposes that all things are 
 revolving around him. But we learn at the same time, 
 by fresh discoveries and revelations, why the words * the 
 Heavens' have always conveyed to the readers of this book, 
 not merely or chiefly the notion of bright and luminous 
 bodies on which they were to gaze, but much more, of 
 Persons, — of Spirits, — dwelling in unknown regions, with 
 reasons and wills like their own, standing in dutiful 
 subjection to the Creator, or revolting against Him, Such 
 a belief, so far as it was maintained, was a preservative 
 
48 SERMON I. 
 
 against the disposition to look upon the earth, as if it were 
 the highest and most glorious portion of the universe, 
 though it might be the prize for which two mighty hosts 
 were contending. 
 
 But most of all, these chapters prepare us for the 
 announcement of that truth which all the subsequent 
 liistorj is to unfold, — that the Word who said, ^ Let there 
 he lijht,' and there was light, who separated the firmament 
 from the waste of waters, and made the dry land appear, 
 and placed the sun and moon and stars in their orbits, and 
 called all organised creatures into life, and who is in the 
 highest sense, the light of men, — the source of their Reason, 
 — the guide of their Wills,— is the head of all principalities 
 and powers, the upholder of- the whole universe. 
 
 It was, brethren, the recognition, — the partial recognition 
 at all events, — of this truth, in the sixteenth century, the 
 acknowledgment that the righteousness which dwells in 
 this Word, is that in which alone man can find his own 
 righteousness, which can alone raise him out of degradation 
 and sin, — it was this which prepared men for the scientific 
 discovery of the seventeenth century, — which enabled them 
 to give up the self-exalting dream, that all surrounding 
 worlds look to the earth as their centre, for the acknow- 
 ledgment of the strange, seemingly monstrous, mystery, 
 that the ball, which appeared to be intended only for its 
 illumination, was that to which all its movements must be 
 referred, A selfish material religion, which consists, only 
 of arrangements to secure our individual felicity hereafter, 
 — a selfish material philosophy, which consists only of ar- 
 rangements to secure our felicity here, — a selfish spiritual 
 religion or spiritual philosophy, which glorifies man above 
 God, may, sooner than we are aware, rob us of this scientific 
 
CREATION POINTING TO GOD. 49 
 
 conviction ; or, at least, make it incapable of bearing any 
 newer and riper fruits hereafter. 
 
 For the sake then of physical science, it may be necessary 
 that we should study, more earnestly and deeply, that 
 Book which has been thought to contradict it, and yet 
 which has nerer been hidden without peril to its existence ; 
 " — has never been simply perused and heartily delighted in, 
 without awakening new and livelier zeal in the pursuit of 
 it. Not for the sake of cultivating such desires however, 
 but for other ends more directly concerning our personal 
 and social life, do I invite you to enter upon this study. 
 I cannot give you an adequate explanation of these or of 
 any chapters in the Bible. I would not if I could. We 
 do not want adequate, self-satisfying explanations. We 
 want to be stirred up to fresh discoveries of our ignorance, 
 to fresh desires for light. I go to the Bible, — I would bid 
 you go to it, — because I feel how much darkness surrounds 
 you and me ; because I believe that He, in whom all light 
 dwells, is ready to meet us there ; to reveal Himself to us ; 
 to guide us onward to the perfect day. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The passage of Augustine referred to in the te^t will be found in the 
 Commentary De Qenesi ad lAtteram, lib. L § 39, be^nning * Plerumque 
 enim accidit.* In the previous part of the book the difficulty about * time' 
 is boldly stated, and t&e idea of a succession in the divine mind which is 
 the ground of succession in our minds, not dependent upon its conditions 
 IB clearly indicated. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 THE FALL AND THE DELTTGl?. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, Sexagesima Sunday.— Feb. 23, 1851.. i 
 Lessons for the day, Genesis iii. and vi. 
 
 Gehesis ti. 5, 6, 7- 
 
 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, <md thai 
 every imagmation of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 
 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved 
 him at his hem't. And the Lord said, 1 will destroy mam, whom I have 
 d'-eatedfrom the face of the earth; both man, a/nd heast, and the cree^ng 
 thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made tJiem. 
 
 There can be no doubt that tbe cbapter we have read this 
 afternoon was chosen because it was supposed to illustrate 
 the one we read this morning. Milton makes the Deluge 
 the most prominent object, in the vision bj which Adam is 
 instructed respecting the consequences of the Fall. All 
 readers of Scripture have felt that there is a connexion 
 between them, though they might not be able clearly to 
 perceive the nature of it. Perhaps if we consider what it 
 is, we may gain some light respecting the meaning of the 
 first event as well as of the second. 
 
 ' God saw that the thoughts of men^s hearts were only et^il 
 continually,^ He had said before, ^ My Spirit shall not 
 always strive with man' ' Here,' it will be said, ' we see 
 
THE FALL, FROM WHAT? ol 
 
 ' the results of the fall, Adam, created innocent, trans- 
 
 * gressed. Hence the evil which had at this time spread so 
 ' widely among his descendants.' I do not say that there 
 is anything erroneous in this statement, but I think that it 
 is vague. There are expressions in it, which are capable 
 of very different significations : some of them may be more 
 or less in accordance with the teaching of Scripture ; some 
 may be quite at variance with it. I believe we must 
 ascertain the force of the words we use before we can be at 
 all sure that we are not, under seemly and orthodox phrases, 
 admitting serious practical heresies into our minds. 
 
 When we say that God made man iTinocent, what do we 
 mean ? The sense often affixed to that language is this : 
 
 * that God gave to Adam, the first man, a certain inde- 
 
 * pendent power, an innocence of his own, which he parted 
 
 * with by eating the fruit of the ti-ee of the knowledge of 
 
 * good and evil ; that man fell when he lost this independent 
 
 * virtue, this innocency of his own ; that as the first father 
 ' lost it, all his descendants by the decree of God, or by 
 
 * some necessity of their relationship, lost it too ; that 
 
 * thence arose the need for Divine Grace, and for men 
 ' being made partakers of a righteousness which is not 
 ' their own.' 
 
 Now I apprehend that the Scripture narrative, if we 
 follow it closely, not only affords no warrant for this 
 statement, but directly negatives it. So far from saying 
 that God endowed man with an independent righteousness, 
 with an innocency of his own, it tells us that God said, 
 ' Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.' 
 Such words absolutely exclude the idea that man according 
 to his original constitution, possessed an^ thing of his own. 
 They affirm him to be good only in so far as he reflects 
 
 x2 
 
52 SERMON 11. 
 
 that wHch exists perfectly in another, so far only as he 
 confesses Him to be the Good. Personal, self-existing 
 righteousness is not only not imparted to him by the law 
 of his creation ; it is denied to him. God did not look 
 upon the order He had made, and lo ! it was very good — 
 because each creature was standing in its own separate 
 excellence — because the highest creature of all held that 
 excellence in its fullest measure. He pronounced it very 
 good because no creature was standing in itself; because 
 each was formed according to its kind in relation to every 
 other ; because the highest creature, that to which all the 
 others looked up, and in which they saw their own per- 
 fection, himself looked up to his Maker, and saw his 
 perfection in Him. 
 
 We must thoroughly satisfy ourselves, that this is what 
 the Scripture affirms of man ; or all the after records will 
 become a weary maze to us. If we take this principle with 
 us, I do not think we shall wish to put anything into 
 Scripture that we do not find there, or to take anything 
 from it which we do find. There may be much which we 
 do not understand, much which perplexes our under- 
 standings. I do not think there will be anything which 
 outrages our consciences, anything which the higher spirit 
 within us shrinks from recognising. 
 
 That divine order for man as the member of a race, as 
 part of an order, which we read of in the first chapter of 
 the book of Genesis, being laid down for him, we heard 
 how a certain man was placed in a certain garden, sur- 
 rounded by a certain number of trees and animals. Of the 
 fruit of the trees he is to partake, all except one. Of the 
 fruit of that tree he must not eat ; in the day that he eats 
 ot itj he will die. He gives names to the creatures which 
 
THE PALL — AN ACl. b'd 
 
 are about him. A help-meet is needed for him. A 
 portion of himself is taken from him, and becomes a 
 woman. She is bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. 
 Thej are naked and are not ashamed. 
 
 This is all that we are told of that first man and woman 
 in their first condition. We may add what we please out 
 of our fancies about their transcendent knowledge, or their 
 seraphic virtues. Nothing of it is to be found in the 
 Bible. No hint of any vast endowments, or wide-reaching 
 thoughts, or great projects. Everything is simple, child- 
 like, just as you would expect it to be. People wearied 
 themselves in former days to find out where the garden 
 was ; what actual country was bounded by the four rivers 
 mentioned in the narrative. They could anive at no 
 conclusion. Then they fell into mystical conceits. They 
 supposed the rivers must be anything but rivers, that the 
 garden must be anything but a garden. From the mysti- 
 cal, the transition was easy to the mythical. The whole 
 was set down as a wonderful dream of later ages, about an 
 imaginaiy golden age. Whereas if you look fairly at the 
 record, there is no golden age at all; nothing but the 
 simplest and most natural description, — the most natural 
 and simple you can conceive, at least if you adopt the 
 belief which a very large body of physiologers, not believers 
 in the Bible, resolutely maintain, that we are all de- 
 scended from one pair. 
 
 Why have we failed to perceive this simplicity? Whence 
 has arisen the temptation to substitute theories and specu- 
 lations for it ? The cause is in the subject of the next 
 chapter. We cannot persuade ourselves that the entrance 
 of Sin into the world, can be anything but the most 
 wonderful of all facts. If that chapter contains the historv 
 
54 SERMON 11. 
 
 of its introduction, it must contain the most deep and awfal 
 metaphysics. Our consciences and hearts cannot be satis- 
 fied except we find them. Most undoubtedly I believe tha 
 deepest and most awful metaphysics are there. It is 
 impossible that a creature who has a reason and a will, can 
 ever do anything which does not involve an unutterable 
 mystery, anything which is not either done in conformity 
 with a law higher than that which keeps the planets in 
 their courses, or else in transgression of it. 
 
 I can imagine nothing less strange, less prodigious, than 
 the act of a woman taking the fruit of a tree and eating it, 
 and giving it to her husband to eat. The question is, what 
 did that act signify? What did it indicate as to the inner 
 mind, the essential being of the persons who were con- 
 cerned in it ? You answer, ' they were innocent before, 
 ' and they ceased to be innocent then.' True. And if it 
 was further demanded, ' In what did the innocence which 
 
 * they previously had, consist? In what did the guilt 
 ' which they now contracted, consist?' you would not 
 hesitate to answer : ' They were obedient before. They 
 ' were disobedient now.' To change the phrase, but not the 
 sense : ' They were acting as dependent creatures before. 
 ' They did an act which asserted independence now. They 
 
 * claimed to be something which they were not. They 
 ' refused to be that which they were.' I need not remind 
 you that this, is no gloss of mine upon the Scriptures. The 
 express language ascribed to the tempter is, ' Ye shall be as 
 Gods knowing good and eviU Part of the pleasure of tlie 
 act lay in the taste of the fruit ; part of it, and the deepest 
 part, lay in the assertion of independence, in showing that 
 they could do what they liked. Every one who has had the 
 least experience of children, understands this irixture of 
 
THE FALL DID NOT CHANGE THE ORDER. 56 
 
 feelings, knows how one passes into the other, what a 
 mighty delight in selfwill lies beneath any forbidden gi-ati- 
 fication of the natural appetite. Every one verifies the 
 truth of the Scripture narrative, in his own daily history. 
 If our minds were less confused and artificial, we should 
 say at once, * This must be the account of the first trans- 
 
 * gression in the world. It has a stamp ot veracity which 
 ' no intricate analysis of motives ever had, or could possibly 
 
 * confer.' 
 
 But we shrink from applying this test ; because it strikes 
 us that Adam, in his paradisaical state, must have been 
 under a law so different from ours, that to bring our 
 knowledge of om-selves or of others to bear upon the 
 subject, is scarcely reverent or safe. Now if what I have 
 said respecting the creation of man be true, this opinion 
 cannot be a right one: it must darken our minds both 
 respecting the letter of Scripture and respecting its higher 
 theology. The principle that man was made in the image 
 of God, is not a principle which was true for Adam and 
 false for us. It is the principle upon which the race was 
 constituted and can never cease to be constituted. Adam's 
 sin consisted, if we are to accept the Scripture account, in 
 disbelieving that law, in acting as if he were not under it. 
 He would be a God; he was not content to be in the image 
 of God. His offence consisted in giving up that position 
 of dependence, which some would tell us only became his 
 when he fell. His wrong consisted in setting up that claim 
 to be something in himself; — which they would tell us that 
 he was, so long as he continued right. We cannot too 
 often repeat the words which scarcely any one wiU deny 
 when he hears them formally uttered, and yet which we 
 continually deny in some of our most popular dogmatic 
 
56 SEEMOK II. 
 
 statements; ' Adam stood by obediencej and fell hj dis* 
 * obedience. He stood bj trust in God, and fell by dis* 
 ' trusting Him,' The sin of bim and of us therefore, is and 
 must be the same. We have a right to justify the truth of 
 the Scripture narrative, by that which we know of our own 
 temptations and our own falls. 
 
 But this is not all. If we admit that the law according 
 to which man was created, was a law laid down for him as 
 belonging to a race, we are able to see his transgression in 
 another aspect. He, the individual man, the Adam made 
 out of the dust of the ground, was setting up himself, 
 was making himself his law. So he was breaking that 
 which was a law of kind, a law of fellowship. The history 
 tells us so. The man first obeys the woman, then com- 
 plains of her as the author of his fault. Strife between two 
 creatures formed for union, bone of each other's bone, is 
 the consequence of both forgetting their relation to God, 
 and seeking to please themselves. The rest of the story is 
 equally significant. We must not allow Milton, much aa 
 we may reverence him even as an interpreter of Scripture, 
 (and we mai/ find him very useful in that character if we 
 read him aright) — we must not suffer our own later 
 knowledge, — to confuse us respecting the literal narrative 
 in the third of Genesis. It says that the serpent, a subtle 
 beast of the field, tempted Eve. We are not, because we 
 think ourselves wiser than Moses, to put the Devil in place 
 nf the serpent, and say that a beast must mean a Spirit. 
 1 fully believe that the Devil did tempt Adam ; did tempt 
 our Lord; does tempt us. But I believe that the knowledge 
 of this spiritual enemy is one of the special blessings which 
 we owe to the revelation of Him who overcame him. 
 Having that knowledge we are bound to use it, — to think 
 
THE FALL INTO DEATH. 57 
 
 that the temptation of our spirit, of our ^111, is the deepest 
 and most terrible of all, that without it every other would 
 be ineffectual and contemptible. The apostle had a right 
 to saj, every Christian ought to understand and repeat his 
 words, ' We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but withprind- 
 palities and powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this 
 world, toitk spiritual wickedness in high places.' And 
 therefore it was no error in our great poet to affirm, that 
 the first man must have been under a spiritual influence, 
 when his spirit or will went wrong. But if we recognise 
 any order in the divine revelations, we shall not be eager 
 to anticipate a discovery which is to come out by degrees, 
 — and which is only safo,, only intelligible, when it is 
 associated with truths that were also to come forth, not at 
 once, but in God's due season, — after He had prepared 
 men to receive them, If we wiU not sufier the sacred 
 historian to tell his own story in his own way, we shall 
 miss some of the precious lessons which he has to com- 
 municate, — and not understand better those which he was 
 not appointed to communicate. What he tells us is, that 
 there was an animal nature in Eve, to which the animal 
 nature in an inferior creatm*e could speak. A most neces- 
 sary fact in the history of man's evil doing; one that 
 enables us to give another passage in the narrative, which 
 is nearly always explained away, its literal force. ' In the 
 DAY that thou eatest of thisfruit, thou shalt surely die^ 
 
 The commentators in general seem to think that the 
 serpent was right when he told Eve, that she should Tiot 
 surely die, that in fact the threat was not accomplished till 
 900 years after. I apprehend this question wholly depends 
 upon the meaning which we give to the word death. We may 
 msist that it shall mean, the moment when the breath goes 
 
58 SERMON II. 
 
 out of the "body. And then we are disposed to say in like 
 manner, that Life means the time during which the breath 
 stays in the "body. But this is not the popular use of the 
 words. The common people feel that Life and Death are 
 two powers struggling for them and in them ; their super- 
 stitions show that they feel so. Nor is it the scientific use 
 of the words. Every physiologist, if he is not a materialist 
 — I should almost say, if he is one — must attach a meaning 
 to them which is not dependent upon certain moments of 
 time. And most assuredly this is not the sense of the 
 words in any part of Scripture. We read indeed in that 
 pathetic chapter which precedes the lesson for this after 
 noon of one patriarch after another, that ' he lived, andhegat 
 sons and daughters, and died^ Then 'death was fulfilled in 
 him ; then it was seen that death had a dominion oyer him. 
 But if we ask ourselves how this is made manifest at a 
 certain instant, the answer is, ' At that instant the creature 
 ' loses its connexion with surrounding things ; it sinks into 
 * itself; it becomes a mere separate existence.' That is 
 Death. And therefore in the day Adam ate of the fruit, 
 he died. That day he took his place as a creature formed 
 out of the dust of the ground, as a mere Adam, and not as 
 a creature formed in the image of God. That day the 
 man sank into the animal. The sentence did execute 
 itself immediately, and all the results of the sentence 
 would have executed themselves also, if God's order had 
 been dependent upon man's will, if Adam had been able to 
 say, ' God's dominion over me, and relation to me, shall 
 ' cease, because I wish to be independent. My condition 
 '' as a man shall not remain, because I have chosen to be an 
 ' animal.^ But this was not to be. The third chapter of 
 Genesis is not only the history of a fall, but of a restora- 
 
THE FALL DISCOVERFD BY GOD, 59 
 
 tiou ; not only of death, tut of resurrection. * Tlie man 
 heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in 
 the cool of the day.' From that voice he tried to shrink. 
 That voice drew from him the confession of his offence. 
 That voice sentenced him to till the ground from which he 
 was taken ; which was cursed for his sake ; which should 
 bring forth thorns and thistles to him. It told him that 
 he should at length return to the dust from which he was 
 taken. It told him that the sei-pent should go upon his 
 belly, and eat the dust. It told him that the seed of the 
 woman should bruise the serpent's head. 
 
 Each of us, I think, must, at some time or other, have 
 felt the reality of the first words in this narrative. He 
 must have said within himself, ' Such a voice of an unseen 
 ' being have I heard speaking down in the depths of my 
 ' heart, awakening me to a consciousness of His reality 
 ' and His personaKty, and of my own.' AVhat I would 
 beseech you is, not to stifle these witnesses to the truth of 
 Scripture by some crude ill-defined thought, that the words 
 must have some different signification from that which our 
 human experience gives to them. They may mean much 
 more than that, but assuredly they do mean that ; and the 
 more you follow out that meaning, the less will you wish 
 to change the letter of them for some other, which would 
 be far less expressive and simple. 
 
 But the words which follow are still more hardly treated, 
 because we will not let the actual facts of the world's his- 
 tory expound them. It has often been supposed that the 
 sentence, * Cursed be the ground for thy saJcey is in direct oppo- 
 sition to that famous passage in the Georgics, beginning 
 
 Pater ipse coleiidi 
 Hivjd facilem esse viam voluit^ 
 
60 SERMON TI. 
 
 in which the poet represents the hardness of the soil as a 
 blessing, because it calls forth the zeal and skill of the 
 husbandman; a passage which commends itself to our 
 consciences, as no less true than beautifal. But the more 
 you studj the words in Genesis, the more you will see 
 that they contain the very root of Virgil's assertion. The 
 ground is cursed for mans sake; thorns and thistles it is 
 to bring forth to him on purpose that he may not yield to 
 that slavish self-indulgent nature into which he has fallen ; 
 on purpose that he may be led to seek help in tilling the 
 earth and subduing it, and in ruling the inferior creatures, 
 from Him who has sent him into the world, under that law 
 and with that blessing. For man's sake too the serpent is 
 accursed; the intercourse between him and the inferior 
 creatures is not broken, but they are humbled, prevented 
 from making themselves intelligible to him ; he has to be 
 reminded continually that with all their strength and sub- 
 tlety they are animals still, not voluntary spiritual creatures. 
 His own nature too is under a curse, still a curse for his 
 sake. For he is not to confess it as his master ; if he does 
 he is under a law of death ; he is to live by faith in God, 
 that faith being sustained by the hope of a helper and de- 
 liverer to come from his own seed. 
 
 If this is the history of the first man and the first trans- 
 gi-ession, are we to call the expulsion from Paradise, — a 
 mere outward Paradise of trees and flowers, — a hard sen- 
 tence? If it was a punishment, was it not a blessing? If 
 we feel that we are reading a Divine history, a history of 
 God's manifestations of Himself, we shall surely say that it 
 was a movement onwards; for the Divine order has not 
 been interrupted because a man has refused obedience to 
 it ; — it is only made more evident by that violation. It is 
 
THE DELUGE EXPLAINS THE FALL. 61 
 
 Been to stand, not in the will of a creature, but on some 
 deeper, safer ground, which, would be more and more clearly 
 revealed. And since God's c/der is not destroyed, His pur- 
 pose that man should be in His own likeness, cannot be 
 destroyed. Man has set up a self-will, has fallen under the 
 dominion of the nature which God had given him. This 
 very act is a step in his education, — a means by which 
 God will teach him more fully what he is, what he is not, 
 what he was meant to be, and what he was not meant to 
 be ; how he may thwart the purposes of his Creator, how 
 he may conspire with them. 
 
 And now comes in that illustration which, I said, the 
 
 earlier record, contained in the lesson of this morning, might 
 
 receive from the later one in the lesson of this afternoon. 
 
 1 have all along spoken of man as created to be one of a 
 
 kind or species ; as yet we have only heard of one man and 
 
 one woman. Yet the existence of a kind was implied in 
 
 their existence ; their transgression was a sin against a law 
 
 which recognised them as belonging to a kind. From this 
 
 time we begin to hear of the propagation of the species. 
 
 Men are multiplied upon the earth. They have multipKed 
 
 under that law of blessing which was given to Eve ; they 
 
 have multiplied with the knowledge of that curse which 
 
 was declared to Adam. The blessing and the curse, the 
 
 life and the death, were both " upon them. Each man 
 
 might try to be independent of God ; to be independent 
 
 of his fellows; to be an animal. Then would follow the 
 
 results which this chapter discloses. Violence would cover 
 
 the earth. Every man would be every man's enemy. 
 
 For the law under which they had been created, the law of 
 
 kind, would be forgotten, — that nature which belonged to 
 
 each man's self would be alone remembered and wor- 
 
62 SERMON 11. 
 
 s}iipped. Is it a hard thing to think that there is ' a coi 
 ' ruption naturally engendered in the offspring of Adam'- 
 in each individual of that offspring ? Hard, undoubtedlj 
 because facts are hard. The sad tale does not belong t 
 one history more than to another. Brutal violence, mei 
 corrupting their ways upon the earth, — this is just wha 
 we hear of everywhere. Scripture had nothing new t 
 tell us about this. But it had a work of its own. It hac 
 to teach us how these facts are compatible with others,— 
 apparently quite at variance with them, which ordinary 
 history and our own experience also make known to us 
 It had to show, how this natural corruption could co-exisi 
 with a perpetual witness in man's conscience, with a con- 
 tinual strife in his will, against it. And it does this work, 
 It shows us that man, yielding to his nature, resists the 
 law which he is created to obey ; that man, given up to 
 himselfj has yet Grod's Spirit striving with him. It shows 
 us how man in himself can have no good thing, and yet 
 ■ how much good he may have ; because there is One who 
 is continually raising him out of himself, — imparting to him 
 that which in his own nature he has not. And it brings 
 out another fact, — without which even these would not en- 
 able us to bear the oppressive proofs of the world's sin and 
 of our own. It exhibits God as interested in the state of 
 the race ; as carrying on a perpetual course of discipline for 
 its reformation and restoration. To hear that the thoughts 
 of men were only evil continually, that their spirits were 
 bent downward, following low, grovelling, divided objects, 
 therefore without sympathy or union, hating each other,— 
 this would be fearful ; and yet the earliest and the latest 
 stories, those which concern the most savage, and those 
 which concern the most civilized ages, would force the dark 
 
THE DELUGE AND GOD'S REPENTANCE. 63 
 
 conviction upon us. But what light is shed upon the 
 darkness, even if it brings the darkness into more horrible 
 relief, when we are told, *God saw the thoughts of men 
 that they were only e-vil continually.' They were not 
 cherishing their foul conceptions, pursuing their mad calcu 
 lations, unwatched, uncared for. There was an eye looking 
 down into their most inward secrets, penetrating the intents 
 of their hearts. And that was the eye of One who desired 
 to make them right within ; who had determined that His 
 earth should be purged of its corruptions, — should ndfil all 
 the ends of His creation. 
 
 And why could He not make it fulfil them, by a fiat ot 
 His omnipotence ? Because, brethren. He had made man 
 in his own image; because He had given him a Will; 
 because He could only restore and regenerate him by 
 restoring and regenerating his Will, Hence we have to 
 read all the Bible through, of floods, famines, pestilences, 
 earthquakes, anarchy, tyranny. It is throughout, the 
 history of an actual government, — throughout, the history 
 of an actual education ; a government of voluntary crea- 
 tures to teach them subjection ; — an education of voluntary 
 creatures to make them firee. And He who carries on thig 
 government and education, is seen, the more He makes 
 Himself known to us, to be not a hard despot, but a loving 
 Ruler ; with that heart and sympathy in perfection which 
 He requires in His creatures. 
 
 If this be so, do you wonder that it is said, * It r^ented 
 Ood that He had made man, and it grieved Him at His 
 heart? ^ Do such expressions startle and scandalize you? 
 I am not sui'prised that they should. I do not entirely 
 wish it were otherwise. For there is a sense in which we 
 dare not attribute repentance to God. His Will cannot 
 
64 SERMON II. 
 
 change ; let other wills set themselves against His as they 
 may. His must remain the absolutely good Will, which 
 from eternity it was. His order cannot he changed or 
 repented of, let men transgress it as they may. It stands 
 firm and unshaken. No other can be substituted for it. 
 But here is our strange contradiction. We can bear to 
 think of God's will being changed, of its being different at 
 one time or another, — -according to the well or ill doings of 
 His creatures. We can bear to think of the Fall changing 
 the whole constitution which God had established, and 
 making a new constitution necessary. But we cannot bear 
 to think of a gracious and merciful Being, having that 
 grief at the sight of wrong, at the folly and wilfulness of 
 His creatures, — at their malice against each other, at their 
 indifference to the beautifiJ. world He has given them to 
 dwell in, — which we should think absolutely essential to 
 the character of every loving ruler or loving parent among 
 ourselves. We know that a father, — not because he wanted 
 the affections of a father, but because he had them, — woidd 
 repent that he had been the instrument of bringing an 
 utterly godless and heartless child into the world. And yet 
 we suppose that there is to be nothing to which this feeling 
 corresponds, in the eternal Archetype. This can only be, 
 because we do not really believe the words upon which all 
 others in Scripture turn; because we do not think that 
 goodness and truth are realities in God ; we take them to 
 be names for certain qualities utterly unlike those which we 
 are to exhibit one to another. If it be so, brethren, our 
 morality has no ground to stand upon ; it is merely the 
 sport of accident or the result of sin. If these expressions 
 of Scripture are not true expressions, but are only ijse^ in 
 accpmmodation to our habits and notions, Scripture is not 
 
THE DELUGE, ACCORDINa TO THE BIBLE. 65 
 
 that whicli it professes to be. It is not a revelation of God. 
 It gives us hints respecting Him which we are not to 
 believe, — ^which it is rather our business to avoid believing ; 
 and that too, when events aflfecting the history of the world 
 are said to have proceeded from these feelings in the 
 Divine Mind, — events which lose all their character and 
 purpose when they are referred to any other origin. 
 
 This has surely happened with the story of the Flood. 
 As it is told in Scripture, it is a most memorable part of 
 the history of man, expounding the course of God's dealings 
 with him. He is grieved that He had made man, because 
 men were living wholly at variance with the law xmder 
 which they were created. He uses the powers of Nature to 
 destroy those who had made themselves the slaves of 
 Nature, The Laws under which He has established the 
 earth become the instruments of its purification, and of the 
 punishment of those who have misused it. A man is found 
 who is perfect in his generation, who trusts in God and does 
 not follow nature. In him the race is preserved, and every 
 kind of creatures. The waters do not overwhelm him. 
 He is divinely taught, how man may float above these 
 waters and make them his servants. All in this recorjd 
 is orderly, consistent, moral. The righteous government 
 which physical things obey, — which man is intended to 
 understand and sympathise with as well as obey, — is vin- 
 dicated. God*s repentance is reconciled with His divine, 
 unchangeable Will. We, in speaking of the Deluge, are 
 not content to dwell upon its moral history, upon its con- 
 nexion with the being of man. "We must build great 
 theories upon it relating to the structure of the globe; 
 theories of which the Bible offers no hint, which interfere 
 with the directness and simplicity of its story, — but yet 
 
 p 
 
66 SERMON II. 
 
 of which it has to bear the disgrace, if science confute 
 them. 
 
 To-day, then, as on last Sunday, I plead for the Scripturi 
 itself, against our crude interpretations of it, both in it 
 history of the Fall and of the Deluge. I ask you not ti 
 believe that a man ivas able to frustrate the purposes o 
 God ; not to think that the world was created in Adam, oi 
 stood in his obedience ; for the Scriptures of the Ne\^ 
 Testament, illustrating those of the Old, teach us that i1 
 stood and stands in the obedience of God's well-beloved 
 Son ; the real image of the Father, the real bond of human 
 society and of the whole universe, who was to be mani- 
 fested in the fulness of time, as that which He had always 
 been ; who was to exhibit in the sorrow, tears, death of a 
 man, the full grace and truth of which all men, so far as 
 they had trusted in God, had exhibited some tokens and 
 reflections. I ask you not to think, — because Adam could 
 only transmit to his descendants the natm-e which he had, 
 and because all who lived according to that nature, were 
 '^vil (Continually in the imagination of their hearts^ — ^that there- 
 fore God forgot the work of His own hands, or ever ceased, 
 or ever has ceased, to seek after them and strive with them. 
 I ask you, lastly, not to doubt that there is a true and holy 
 repentance in God, since otherwise there can be no true 
 2lhd holy repentance in us. For though out repentance be 
 for sin, yet it cannot spring from sin. The holy Being 
 must be the author of it. And if He is the author of it, it 
 must issue from something which there is in Himself, Oh ! 
 be sure that the repentance which He would awaken iij us, 
 is in the strictest sense the counterpart of His own. He 
 would have us wish, — not that His order should be 
 changed, not that His war against evil should be less 
 
THE deluge: its USE TO US. 67 
 
 exterminating than it is; — but that our wills should be 
 brought into conformity with His Will ; that His punish- 
 ments should do the work they are sent to do, — for us, and 
 fpr mankind, and for the earth. He would have us say, 
 
 * Grant that it may repent us and grieve us at our hearts, 
 
 * that we and our brethren have made ourselves the slaves 
 ' of nature instead of Thy servants :• that we have walked 
 
 * after the flesh instead of the Spirit ; that we have lived 
 
 * each as separate individuals warring against each other, 
 
 * not as members of a kind redeemed and united in Christ, 
 
 * — after the downward tendencies of the old Adam, and 
 ■ ' not according to the quickening Spirit of the new. 
 
 ' Grant us and all Thy children this repentance ; that so we 
 ' may pass safely through whatever judgments and chas- 
 ' tisements Thou hast ordained for the corrupted earth in 
 
 * which we dwell ; that we may be fit to behold it and 
 ' offer thanksgiving sacrifices for it, when it comes forth 
 
 * from Thy hands purified and renewed ! ' 
 
SERMON TIT. 
 
 NOAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn, Quinquagesima Sunday. — March 2, IR51 ^ 
 Lessons for the day, Genesis ix. and xii 
 
 Genesis sii. 1 — 3. 
 
 Now the Lord had said v/iito Ahram, Get thee out of thy coimtry, and fro* 
 thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee. 
 And I vnll make of thee a great nation, and I wilt bless thee, and make thy 
 name great j and thou shalt he a blessing : And I will bless tk&nthat blest 
 thee, and cv/rse him that curseth thee : and in thee shall all families of tht 
 tarth be blessed. 
 
 The following words opened the lesson for this morning: 
 — ' And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, 
 Be JTuitful, and multvply, and replenish the earth. And the 
 fear of you and the dread of you shall he wpon every beast of 
 the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that 
 moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea ; 
 into your hand are they delivered^ Every moving thing that 
 liveth shall be meat for you ; even as the green herb have 1 
 given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which , 
 is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood 
 of your lives will I require ; at the hand of every beast will 
 1 require it, and at the hand of man ; at the hand of every ' 
 man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso 
 sheddeth marHs bloody by man shall Ms blood be shed: for 
 
NOAH: HIS BLESSING. 69 
 
 in the image of God made he man. And you, be ye fruitful^ 
 and multiply ; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and mul- 
 tiply therein,^ . (Gen. ix. 1 — 7.) 
 
 No one, I think, has ever doubted that this is a divine 
 blessing upon the human race. The words are addressed 
 to the representatives of it, who had just escaped from the 
 waters of the flood. Now the two characteristics, which 
 were said to belong to man in his original creation, are said 
 to belong to him here. The beasts, the birds, the fishes, 
 are to fear him ; he is made in the image of Grod. Neither 
 of these titles can by possibility be limited to a time that was 
 past.' The dominion is especially assured to Noah and his 
 sons ; the law concerning the shedding of man's blood, — 
 a law^ surely assuming that evil had existed and was 
 likely to exist, — rests on the other and more glorious 
 distinction. There was a third part of the original charter 
 which is renewed and strengthened. ^ Be fruitful^ and 
 multiply, and replenish the earthy is a command given 
 to those who had seen and experienced the wickedness of 
 the old earth, with as much emphasis, with as large a 
 benediction, as it was given on the day when the heavens 
 and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 
 
 I apprehend that, even if we had not been told of that 
 signal witness for God's order and against man's trans- 
 gression, which is contained in the story of the Deluge, we 
 should still have found nothing to surprise us in the 
 blessing of Noah. The worst sinner who perished when 
 the ark floated, had the right of dominion over the birds 
 and the beasts and the fishes; though in consenting to 
 obey his own inclination he had become their slave. He 
 had a right to feel that the blessing, ^increase and multiply,' 
 was his ; only through his uncleaimess, and indifference to 
 
70 SEHMON III. 
 
 the duties of a father, he had made it into a ctirse. He 
 had a right to believe that he had the likeness- of God ; only- 
 he had acquired the likeness of the serpent, which wasj 
 sentenced to go on his belly, and eat dust. In every case 
 the cause was the same, and the effect was the same. Each 
 man would live in himself and to himself. He could not 
 therefore be, in the real sense of the word, a man. He 
 was wrapped up in his Adam nature. He could claim no 
 fellowship with his kind. 
 
 Still, there is something especially appropriate in this 
 language to the inhabitants of a restored earth. One 
 cannot help feeling that, though it is in strictest accordance 
 with all that has gone before, it has yet a wider scope,^ — 
 a. higher promise. Compare it with the simple records of 
 the garden life of Adam, and you perceive that you arfe 
 entering upon a more advanced stage in human history. 
 I use the words because they are true, and because I 
 think it is honouring God and his word to use them. 
 I know very well that we shall hear of more, and more 
 complicated, sins than we have heard of yet. But as I 
 find a perfectly holy Being blessing the work of His 
 hands; as I find the sacred historian regarding the world 
 as His world, and man as under His government;, — 1 
 suppose it is not wrong, but right for us to do the same:— • 
 and to try, — if we can, — to understand what step it is that 
 we have gained since the oppressors of the earth were 
 destroyed, and it began its life anew. 
 
 One change has been often noticed, and has recently 
 been turned into an argument against the old doctrine 
 respecting capital punishment. Noah and his sons are 
 told that, ' Whosoever sheddeth mans hlood, hy man shall 
 Ms hlood he shedJ' But, by a still older decree,, Cain was 
 
NOAH: THE COMMAND TO HIM. 71 
 
 not to be slain for his crime. His mark was to be a 
 warning that no man should lay hands on him. No doubt 
 this is a remarkable contrast, whether it proves the point 
 for the sake of which it is adduced, or not. One sentence 
 contemplates the offender as an individual wrong-doer, 
 who has polluted the earth with his brother's blood, 
 and against whom the earth cries for vengeance. Hence- 
 forth it will refuse to yield him its fruits. The other 
 contemplates men, as forming a society. The blood which 
 is shed is the blood of some particular man ; but it is a 
 di'op out of a common life. Whoso sheds it is guilty of an 
 outrage upon a body politic : ' Of every man's brother 
 will I require the life of man/ Every man is his brother's 
 keeper. Every man is shedding his own blood when he 
 sheds his brother's blood. The word brother was addressed 
 to a family ; Noah and his sons must have interpreted it 
 by their own experience. But the words ^ every mans 
 brother^ expanded the principle of the family to a higher 
 power. They declared that the race was a family; they 
 intimated that society was to be built up on the recognition 
 of an actual relationship among the different members of it. 
 Henceforth this becomes the great subject of the book. 
 
 In the previous records we had an intimation of cities 
 built ; of works in wood and iron ; of the harp and the lyre. 
 But all this prematxire civilization is found in the Cain 
 family. It begins, as so much of the world's so-called 
 civilization has begun, with men breaking loose from 
 family bonds, and forsaking the tillage of the earth, 
 through the desne to sink the consciousness of some crime, 
 in intercourse with their fellows, in the works of their 
 hands, in the delights of sense and sound. Such social 
 progress soon terminates -in a deeper barbarism, domestic 
 
72 SERMON III* 
 
 life having been destroyed to make way for it. But no 
 one can fancy, that such an existence as is reported of the 
 Seth faniily, — that after so many years they begat children^ 
 and after so many more they died — though suitable to the 
 time, and though brightened by glimpses of a higher life, — 
 since it is reported of Enoch that he ' walked with God, 
 and was not, for God took hvm^ — can be a type of that which 
 is intended for man. If it were, — if this mere long span of 
 years were to be envied as the high privilege of an earlier 
 and happier dispensation, — ^you would find it hard to 
 understand tlie records of all the greatest lawgivers, judges^^ 
 kings, prophets, spoken of in Scripture ; hardest of all to 
 understand the story of His birth and death who dwelt on 
 earth less than thirty-three years, and yet whom we hold 
 to be the Priest, and Prophet, and King of the Universe. 
 Our consciences justify the apparent indifference to chrono- 
 logy in Scripture, where the whole history of the patriarchs 
 from Adam to Noah is sumnied up in fewer lines than 
 those which describe the interview of Joseph with his 
 brethren, or the one night in which the Israelites came out 
 of Egypt. 
 
 And this is surely for the reason to which I have so 
 often referred, — * In the image of God made He man' The 
 image of God may be dimly shadowed forth in length of 
 years ; it is actually seen in the righteousness, grace, truth, 
 which constitute His eternal being. The exhibition ot 
 these to us must be the object, one would think, of a 
 Divine revelation, — of a human history. And these, with 
 |ill the qualities which are in conflict with them, come out 
 through the joys and sorrows, the intercourse and the 
 quarrels, of brothers and sisters, fathers and, children, 
 husbands and wives ; through the fellowships and conflicts 
 
NOAH: HIS FAMILY. 73 
 
 of nations, through laws and polities ; through the discovery 
 of the necessary connexion between crime and punieh- 
 ment ; through efforts successful or disappointed, to redress 
 wrong and restore right. It would he a strange puzzle, 
 which I think the most ingenious sophistry would find it 
 hard to clear, if a bock, claiming the character which the 
 Bible claims, did not deal with this, the ordinaiy stuff and 
 material of human existence. We should feel that it was 
 like the Shasters of many nations, a book proving that it 
 came from heaven, by its utter alienation from everything 
 that is acted or felt upon earth. 
 
 The covenant with Noah is certainly not the intro- 
 duction, to a sacred book of this kind. It speaks plainly 
 and simply of the fact of the increase of the species, of men 
 spreading themselves abroad into different countries, of the 
 way in which the life of man was to be reverenced, of the 
 kind of honour which was to be bestowed upon animal life* 
 The distinction in this last case is very remarkable ; you 
 cannot have overlooked it. It is one indication of the new 
 step which the history has taken. The blood of the animal 
 is not to be eaten, for the blood is the Life. A higher 
 dignity is put upon Life than it had before, whether it 
 dwells in a man, or only in an inferior creature. It is 
 evidently intimated that there is a relation between the 
 one and the other. And yet there is a kind of contempt 
 put upon the animals. The man is not to be afraid to 
 eat them ; they belong to him ; he must not dream that 
 there is any divinity in them. The intimation that men 
 were likely to have this dream, and therefore to tremble 
 at any invasion of the sanctity of animal existence, is an 
 introduction to long chapters of Egyptian and Hindoo 
 mythology ; it shows that we are coming into contact with 
 
74 SERMON III 
 
 the opinions of men upon innumerable subjects, pbysicalj 
 and moralj and with the acts in which those opinions have 
 been embodied. 
 
 Yet there is no allusion to such opinions or acts. The 
 whole comes forth in the form of a covenant between God 
 and His creatures ; He is announcing to them the law under 
 which they exist ; He is proclaiming to them the relation 
 in which tney 6tand to Him and to each other; the order 
 in which He has formed the universes — ^^^ to which they 
 must conform themselves in whatever lands they may 
 travel, to whatever races they may give birth. 
 
 ' And God spake unto Noah, and to Ms sons with him, 
 saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and 
 with your seed after you; and with every living creature that 
 is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle,, and of every beast of the 
 earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every 
 beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with 
 you; Tieither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters 
 of a flood,- neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy 
 the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant 
 which I make between me and you and every living creature 
 that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow 
 in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant bettdeen 
 me and the earth. Ar I it shall come to pass, when I bring 
 a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: 
 and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and 
 you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters 
 shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the 
 how shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may 
 remember the everlasting covenant between God and every 
 living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God 
 said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I 
 
NOAH: HIS COVENANT. 75 
 
 have established between me and all flesh that is upon the 
 earth. 
 
 By this passage we may, I think, test some of those 
 notions which we deduce from the maxims and hahits of 
 the world around us, and then transfer almost unconsciously 
 to the Scripture. 
 
 We suppose a covenant to mean a bargain between two 
 parties, whereby each engages to do certain acts ; if there 
 be a failure on either side, the other is free. We admit 
 that, where one of the parties is greatly the superior, the 
 covenant may convey something which the humbler one 
 could not obtain by any act or effort of his own. But we 
 are careful to remind ourselves, that in this case more than 
 in any other, the promise will not be ftilfilled if the con- 
 ditions exacted are not performed. How is the case here ? 
 God is said to declare to the sons of Noah, that a flood 
 shall no more drown the earth. He gives them the bo^v 
 in the heavens, as a sign of this purpose. When He 
 brings a cloud upon the earth, He will look upon the rain- 
 bow and remember His covenant with all flesh. Wlicre 
 does the hint of a bargain intrude itself here ? How is the 
 appearance of the rainbow, or the pledge which it is said 
 to give, made dependent upon any good or evil act of the 
 creature who looks up to it? And yet this is called a 
 Covenant; it is the first occasion, on which we meet with 
 the phrase; by the use of it here we must in a great 
 measure determine what is the use of it everywhere els(\ 
 Nor can I conceive a more beautiful guide to our thoughts* 
 respecting the relations of God with human beings, a more 
 divine correction of the false way in which we are apt to 
 think of His position . and of ours. Would it have been 
 the least help or comfort to the children of Noah as they 
 
76 sehmok hi. 
 
 ti'avelled east and west, north and south, to think that the 
 world was suhject to a Being who might regulate it now 
 upon one principle, now upon another, according as they 
 pleased or displeased him ? Alas ! it was precisely this 
 notion which they did adopt ;: — which was the root of all 
 their distrust, of all their dark idolatries, of their cowardice, 
 of their neglect of the work of tilling the earth and sub- 
 duing it. They fancied they were under a capricious ruler, 
 not under One who had said that the order of summer and 
 winter, seed-time and harvest, should never cease; under 
 One who had drowned the earth because He was deter- 
 mined to assert and preserve the order which He had. 
 formed ; under One who had proved that the rains did not 
 come at their own pleasure, but were obedient to His 
 righteous will, and executed His gracious purposes \ under 
 One who had promised that they should keep the bounds 
 which He had assigned for them. 
 
 And thus we understand in what sense, and in what 
 sense alone, man was a party to this covenant. He might 
 believe or disbelieve the sign, which was said to bear that 
 divine testimony. He might think it was a pledge of 
 God's care of the world, of God's special care of him his 
 chief minister in and over the world. Or he might think 
 it meant nothing at all, that it was an appearance merely, 
 dependent upon no principle, pointing to no design ; which 
 had no import to him, nor to any of the creatures whom 
 God had made subject to him. 
 
 All his future acts would depend upon this difference, — 
 because they would depend upon the question whether he 
 worshipped a Being in whom he trusted, or one whom he 
 regarded as an enemy. But a Being who is the object of 
 our trust, upon whom we absolutely depend, is not one 
 
ABRAM : KOT AN EXCEPTIONAL PERSON. 77 
 
 wliom we can ever think of as trafficking with us. We 
 ask Him to reveal to ns what He is, and what we are. 
 We ask for pledges and assurances of our relation to Him. 
 These, the Scripture says, He gives us ; without these we 
 may have everything to feed pur senses, hut we are not 
 men ; for man lives by faith, and till faith is called forth in 
 him, he is still but an animal with the capacities of a 
 spirit. 
 
 The history of Abram, which we have entered upon this 
 afternoon, is the grand illustration of this truth. I have 
 deferred any allusion to it thus far, for I am most anxious, 
 that we should not look upon Abram as an exception in 
 the course of this history, because God is said to have 
 spoken to him, and made him know that he was to go out 
 of his father's house, or because he became the head of 
 a peculiar nation, or because he is called the * father of the 
 faithful.' Would it not have been the greatest deviation 
 from the idea of this narrative, as it has come out before us 
 thus far, if God were not supposed to speak to men, to 
 make known His will to them, to give them the power of 
 fulfilling it ? Would not the anomaly, the exception be, 
 that he should not have intercourse with the creature whom 
 He had made in His image ? Would not the absence of 
 such intercourse involve the loss of all that is precious to 
 men? Would it not be the sealing and confirming of their 
 own monstrous dream of independence, that in which lay 
 all animal degradation, all destruction of brotherhood? 
 The Scripture, you will find, assumes it to be the normal 
 condition of man, that he should receive communications 
 from God, Whatever good comes forth from him it sup- 
 poses to be the result of such communications. We hear 
 of them made to the Egyptian Pharaoh, to the Philistine 
 
78 ' SERMON III. 
 
 Abimelech. * They are told of something which they arc 
 not to do ; that teaching, it is not proved but taken for 
 granted, must come from the Lord of the heart and reins. 
 Of Abram we are told nothing, except that he was 
 descended from Shem, till we hear that God said to him, 
 " Get thee out of thy father s house, and from thy Icmdred, 
 into a land that I will tell thee of. ' Nothing is said of the 
 time or manner of the communication. We do not want 
 to hear anything of either. Moses expects us to believe 
 that God knew the mind of the Mesopotamian shepherd, as 
 of all other men whom He had formed, and could make 
 that mind aware of His presence, No heap of words could 
 make the awfulne^s of the discovery greater ; the simplest 
 are the best. But it is not merely the revelation of an 
 actual presence. Abram is taught that he is the servant of 
 Him who has declared Himself to him ; he is to go where 
 He bids him ; he is to become a wanderer, to settle himsell 
 in another land ; and there he is told that he shall found 
 a family; and that God will make of him a great nation; 
 and that his seed shall possess the land in which he is only 
 to sojourn, 
 
 These words, ^ great nation,' belong to the new period. 
 ,We heard no such language in the time before the flood. 
 The inhabitants of the earth were then probably gathered 
 within very narrow limits ; at least, the Scripture gives us 
 no hint which can make us think otherwise. It is by the 
 sons of Noah that the earth is said to be overspread. I 
 shall not allude to any of the ethnological speculations 
 which have been raised upon the story of their families. 
 Most of them are very crude ; in nearly all of them there 
 is a large element of vague tradition, which we have 
 grafted upon the simple letter, till we can hardly separate 
 
abram: founder of a nation. 79 
 
 tlie one from the other. But there are one or two passages 
 in the narrative containing, it seems to me, precious and 
 profound ethnological facts, which we are apt to overlook 
 or to misinterpret The storj of the curse pronounced on 
 Canaan by Noah, has exercised our ingenuity to discover 
 what special nations were comprehended in it. Would it 
 not have been better to consider the occasion and nature of 
 the curse, before we investigated the geographical limits of 
 it? And would n'ot that inquiry have led to the truth, so 
 important for understanding the infancy of societies, but 
 ■equally important for understanding them in their greatest 
 maturity, that wherever the reverence for fathers is lost, 
 there is a people predestined to slaveiy; servants of 
 servants, sooner or later, will tliey become. And whatever 
 opinions we may hold respecting the Semitic or Japhetic 
 stocks, we shall not hesitate to think that, in some way or 
 other, the establishment and recognition of the paternal 
 authority would be associated with the blessing, human 
 and divine, which rested upon tlie tents of the first, and 
 which the other was afterwards to inherit. 
 
 Another of these facts is, sm*ely, that the sons of Noah, 
 10 whatever lands they might have journeyed, were to be 
 ' divided after their families, after their tongues, in their 
 lands, ajier their nations.^ This dispersion, and these 
 distinctions, are surely a part of the original divine order ; 
 the fulfilment of God's designs for the race which He had 
 made after His own likeness. To overturn that order, to 
 frustrate that design, the wandering tribes met on the 
 plain of Shinar, and said, * Go to, let us make bricks, and 
 hum them throughly ; and let us build a tower that may 
 reach to heaven ; and let us make ourselves a name, that we 
 be not scattered abroad upon the earthJ* In other words, 
 
80 SERMOK III. 
 
 let lis build a society, not upon faith in the unseen God 
 and His covenant, but upon faith in brick walls. Let this 
 be the bond of our union. Let us provide securities 
 against the divine power, lest it should crush us. The 
 plan, we are told, was confounded : they left off to build the 
 tower. The earth was overspread, though they determined 
 that it should not be. Distinct families and nations were 
 established, in spite of this attempt to reduce all into one 
 indistinguishable mass. But we are told also that a Babel 
 society was established by a mighty hunter, in whom all 
 have recognised the beginner of the great Asiatic tyrannies. 
 Polities rose up, based upon a worship of natural powers, 
 feared, not trusted ; whose cruel purposes were to be averted 
 by such means as human wit and strength could devise. 
 The rulers of these kingdoms owned no Lord of man after 
 whose image they and their subjects were formed ; they 
 bowed to the powers which they thought they discerned in 
 the storm, or in the dark sky; powers to which they 
 attributed their own qualities; with which they had no 
 sympathy; whose dominion was shadowed forth in their 
 own. Such is society according to man's conception and 
 aiTangement of it. Society, of which self-will is the king, 
 and animals are the subjects. But this was not God's 
 society ; and therefore it was said to Abram : ' / will make 
 of thee a great nation ; and in thee shall all the families of 
 the earth he blessed,^ 
 
 I have hastily recapitulated the previous history, that 
 you may see how here, as in every case that has come 
 before us, the divine order is maintained, not violated, by 
 what we are wont, awkwardly and irreverently, to call the 
 divine interventions and interferences. The calling out of 
 the Mesopotamian shepherd ; the setting apart of his family 
 
abbam: a blessing to mankind 81 
 
 and his nation as a chosen family and nation; these are 
 often spoken of as necessary for some high religious 
 purpose, hut as disturbing the course of human history. 
 But if the early records are what they have appeared to he, 
 this call of Abram is a step in the unfolding of that social 
 order^ which is the order intended for human beings, as 
 such; that order which the individualizing tendencies of men 
 were transgressing and revolutionizing. The polity which 
 Abram was to begin was not to be less human, because it 
 was national. The nationality of it was to be the protest 
 against the universal empires, — which were so inhuman, 
 because they were so ungodly. 
 
 But was not Abram, as the faithful man, the father of 
 the faithful, heir of a special privilege which separated 
 him from his unfaithful descendants, still more from the 
 unfaithful majority of mankind ? Just so far as this, — every 
 unfaithful descendant of Abram, every unfaithful man, was 
 setting up his own separate, selfish nature, was unwilling 
 to stand upon that truth which belonged to the whole 
 race. Every unfaithful man of the race of Abram, every 
 unfaithful man anywhere, would be a God ; he would not 
 claim the right of knowing God and being like Him. There- 
 fore all such were tempted to make gods of their own, and 
 to forget the living God. Abram's faith consisted in not 
 doing this ; in acknowledging the Lord to be God ; in 
 recollecting Him ; in living as if He were that guide and 
 protector He declared Himself to be. The promise to him 
 was, * In thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth 
 he blessed,* He believed the promise. He counted it the 
 highest blessing and glory which could be given him, — 
 not that he should be blessed, but that he should be the 
 channel of blessings to multitudes unknown. 
 
 G 
 
8.2 SERMON III. 
 
 And therefore said our Lord, speaking to those who, 
 counted it their highest glory to he Abraham's children,-i- 
 ' He saw my day and rejoiced,^ The words were most 
 startling to the Jews ; for said they, l^ou art not fifty years 
 old, and hast thou seen Abraham f The depth of meaning 
 which lies in His answer we cannot yet appreciate. It 
 must be considered in the light of a later revelation, which 
 was made not to the father of the faithful, but to the 
 lawgiver of the nation. But thus much we may see in it. 
 He said, ' I am He in whom God made the covenant with 
 ' the old fathers of the human family, when He bade them 
 
 * look up to the bow, which was the sign that He would no 
 
 * more drown the earth with a flood. I am He iu whom 
 ' He formed all men to be brothers, so that he who sheds 
 'the blood of another, sheds his pwn, I am that brother 
 ' of whom He will require the life of every man. I am He 
 *• from whom came the life, the faith, the hope, the love of 
 ' all who , had strength to believe that God was their 
 ' Creator and Preserver and Deliverer, not their enemy. 
 \ I am He in whom God could look upon them, and in 
 
 ' whom they could, look upon God, And what I was, i 
 ' I am ; I am still the eternal bond of Peace and fellowship, ' 
 
 * the seed in which all the families of the earth shall be 
 
 * blessed ; — the destroyer of every Babel tyranny which has 
 
 * mocked the divine government, and spread curses among 
 ' mankind.* 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 ABIUHAM AND ISAAC. 
 
 (Lincu^u'fl Inn, First Sunday In Lent.— March 9, 1851.) 
 LesBons for the day, Genesis xix. and xxxi. 
 
 Genesis xxn. 7, 8. 
 
 And Isaac ^aJee imto Abraham his father, ar>d said, My father: and he 
 said, Sere am I, my son. And he said, Behold the^e amd the wood: but 
 where is the lamb for the hwmt offering^ And Abrah^vm said, My s(yn, God 
 will provide himself a hmib for a 6um< offering : so they went both of them 
 
 There was a passage in the chapter from which 1 preached 
 last Sunday, to which I did not then allude. The story 
 of . Abraham's call is scarcely concluded, before we are told 
 that he went down into Egypt in consequence of a famine ; 
 that there he persuaded his wife to call herself his sister ; 
 that he was mtreated well for her sake ; that she was 
 saved by God's providence from the effect of her husband^s 
 falsehood. Is it desirable to keep such a story as this in 
 the background, or to find some mystical explanation of it 
 which shall show that the untruth of a patriarch is not like 
 the untruth of another man ? I apprehend that any one who 
 takes the first course, must hold his own judgment to be 
 higher than that which guided the writer of the book ; that 
 any one who takes the second, must set up for himself a 
 
 g2 
 
84 SERMON IV. 
 
 most fluctuating standard of right and TTrong, I find this 
 narrative here, given with all simplicity ; I suppose there 
 is a reason why it should be given. I assume that it was 
 meant to say what it does say. And the natural prvmd 
 €tcie view of the subject is that which accords best with 
 the preceding and subsequent narrative. The whole history, 
 instead of suffering firom the admission that the first father 
 of the Jewish nation acted just in the way in which another 
 Mesopotamian shepherd, going into a strange country, and 
 seized with a sudden fear of what might befal him, was ~ 
 likely to have acted, — that he displayed cowardice, selfish- 
 ness, readiness to put his wife in a terrible hazard for his 
 own sake, — the history, I say, instead of being made mora 
 difficult and unintelligible by this statement, is brought out 
 by it in its true and proper character. Any notion that we 
 are going to read of a hero, or a race of heroes, is dispelled 
 at the very outset. The dream that this man had in him, 
 in his own nature, something different from other men, that 
 he was not exposed to every ordinary temptation incident 
 to human beings as such, — incident to the place, time, cir- 
 cumstances, in which it was appointed that he should live, 
 — is taken away, not by surmises of ours, but by the ex- 
 press announcements of the sacred historian, intended for 
 other purposes also it may be, but certainly for this one 
 above all others, — that the Jewish people might not fall into 
 any mistakes respecting their ancestor, or fancy him to be 
 a person of another kind from themselves. And so we feel 
 the force of the words, ' In thee, and thy seedy shall ALL the 
 families of the earth he blessed,^ Here is a man, not picked 
 out as a model of excellence ; not invested with sonie rare 
 qualities of heart and intellect ; one apt to fear ; apt to lie; 
 certain to feaXj certain to lie, if once he began to speculate 
 
ABRAHAM NO HERO. 85 
 
 according to his own sagacity on the best way of preserving 
 himself. He is made aware of an invisible guide who is 
 near him ; of an invisible government which is ovfer him ; 
 and which it concerned not him only, but all human beings 
 in all generations, to be acquainted with. Herein lies his 
 greatness, his strength. What he is apart from his Teacher 
 we see in his journey to Egypt ; a very poor, paltry earth- 
 worm indeed ; one not to be despised by us, because we are 
 earth-worms also ; but assuredly worthy of no reverence for 
 any qualities which were his by birth, or which became his 
 merely in virtue of his call. What he was when he was 
 walking in the light, when thai transfigured him from an 
 earth-worm into a man, his after story will help us to 
 understand. 
 
 And thus, my brethren, the same principle which we 
 recognised in the history of Adam in his first estate, — of 
 Adam fallen, of every man before the flood, good or evil, of 
 those who perished in the waters, and of those who were to 
 inaugurate the new economy of the restored universe, — 
 meets us again in this more advanced stage of the history. 
 All these lived because they were members of a race formed 
 in God's image. All might claim that image, confessing 
 their dependence upoA Him whom they could not see. All 
 might sink into their own individual animal natures, which 
 were under the curse of death. Of that degradation, and of 
 its consequences, God himself, and all true men hearing and 
 echoing his voice, bore testimony ; the warning, by its very 
 terms, declared who could raise them out of this death, how 
 they might hold fast this life. In these respects there is no 
 change. Abraham must stand or fall, sink or rise, as all 
 who preceded him stood or fell, sank or rose. He must 
 yield to the invisible Guide, or become the slave of visible 
 
86 SERMON ly. 
 
 things. He must walk by faith or by sight. There is in 
 him no more stock of faith, than there was in Adam a stock 
 of innocence. Faith can as little be a property as innocence. 
 The child depends and trusts before -it has gone wrong ; it 
 ceases to trust, and so goes wrong. The man trusts from 
 the sense of weakness, the feeling that evil is close to him ; 
 BO he becomes right. But there must be an object of trust 
 in both cases. And as that object reveals itself more dis- 
 tinctly, the history of the person or the race that receives the 
 revelation advances, Abraham^s story is no mere repetition 
 of Adam's or Noah's. A step, a very great step, has been 
 made in discovery, and the discovery has reference to Abra- 
 ham himself; to Abraham as connected with a surroimding 
 world ; to Abraham as the head of a family and a nation. 
 One great truth xmites all these aspects of his life together. 
 He is educated to acknowledge a Righteous Being, — a Being 
 the direct opposite of that one whom the Babel-builders wor- 
 shipped, whom they feared as the probable destroyer of their 
 brick walls, whom by all acts they were to propitiate that 
 he might save them. It is not only One who preserves men 
 from the waters, who blesses them, bids them increase and 
 multiply, and restrains them from shedding each other's 
 blood, that is disclosed to the mind and heart of Abraham. 
 It is a person in whom Stedfastness, Fidelity, Truth, dwell 
 absolutely. The shepherd comes to apprehend a character ; 
 one different from his own, which he is able partly to under- 
 stand through that very difference, through the want of 
 fidelity and truth in himself, and yet which he must 
 acknowledge as the image after which he is formed. Let 
 us trace, so far as we are permitted, the process of his 
 discipline and his illumination. 
 1, The thought may sometimes have struck your own 
 
ABRAHAM; THE MONOTHEIST? 87 
 
 minds, — it will be suggested to you by many modem books 
 of a certain school, — that the circumstances of Abraham 
 were eminently favourable to the cultivation in him of a 
 pure, simple, monotheistic faith. A man living under the 
 eye of Nature, — on open plains, amidst flocks and herds, — 
 away from the artifices and deceptions of cities, was likely, 
 it may be said, to preserve his devotion imsuliied, and to 
 give it that healthy direction which it loses when a know- 
 ledge of the world's evil suggests painful questions respect- 
 ing the origin of evil, and confuses the belief in a perfectly 
 benignant Creator and Guardian. 
 
 I have no doubt that the circumstances of Abraham were 
 the best possible to fit him for the work which he had to do, 
 just as I believe that yours and mine are the best, if we use 
 them rightly, to fit us for the work which we have to do- 
 But I would ask you to remember, that there was nothing 
 in the perpetual beholding of natural objects which could 
 preserve him from the worship of those objects. Cities may 
 be very dangerous, but it is not in cities especially that men 
 have learned to bow before the Sun, when he ' comes as a 
 bridegroom out of his chamber y^ or ^to kiss the hand when the 
 Moon IS walking in her brightness,^ These are the special 
 temptations of the shepherd, — of the man on the open plain, 
 — of the devout man, who feels his need of something to 
 adore, and who is not constantly led by the power which 
 men exert over him, to bestow his adoration upon them. 
 The recollection perhaps of the North American Indian and 
 his Great Spirit presents itself to you, and you ask whether 
 that is not, at all events, an instance of a God heard in the 
 winds, seen in the clouds, not taking any definite, visible 
 shape? Whether it be so or not, I think you will perceive 
 in a moment, that the difierence between the worshio of the 
 
88 SERMON IV. 
 
 Nortia American Indian and that of Abraham, is even Wider 
 than that between the worship of the Sabsean and his. For 
 the marked peculiarity of Abraham is, that he does not 
 hear God in the winds, or see Him in the clouds, — that he 
 does not associate Him primarily with the things around 
 him, but primarily with himself and with human beings. 
 This man living out of cities, this settler in lands, which 
 neither he nor any one appropriates, is yet regarding the 
 Lord of All in connexion with a family, with a nation, with 
 all the families of the earth. God speaks to him, — tells 
 him where he shall go, and what he shall do ; that is the 
 Scriptural statement, which we may reject if we please, 
 but which we must not pretend to explain by cases and 
 examples unlike it in every respect. You cannot, by any 
 considerations of this kind, escape from the acknowledg- 
 ment of a distinct call from an actual, personal, imseen 
 Being, addressed to the man himself, felt and confessed by 
 him in his inmost heart and conscience. But if you begin 
 from the belief of such a call, the more you reflect upon 
 Abraham's outward position the better. Think, then, if 
 you please, of the simplicity, the regularity, the monotony, 
 of a shepherd's life. Remember that his flocks not only 
 constitute his wealth, but his work ; that all exercises of 
 vigilance, courage, patience, are needful for the performance 
 of that work. Remember, further, that in the guidance 
 and discipline of these animals he has the help of others, 
 who are not merely animals, — that he has men-servants and 
 women-servants, — that these form a pastoral family, of 
 which Sarah is the head. Remember that the conduct and 
 ordering of this human society is a part of his needful busi- 
 ness, which we should of course think much higher and 
 nobler than the other, and which we are taught to think so 
 
ABRAHAM : 
 
 hj the Book of Genesis. I will not ask you at present to 
 reflect how lauch the language of Scripture is studded with 
 allusions to the Lord of All as a shepherd ; and that these 
 allusions are no accidental appendages or ornaments of the 
 discourse, but are worked into the very tissue of it. Such 
 observations I may often have occasion to make hereafter. 
 I only give a hint of them now, because they illustrate the 
 truth upon which Abraham^s education turns. If his work 
 was not the image of a Divine work ; if his government 
 over the sheepfold, — and still more in the tent, — was 
 not the image of the Divine government ; the narrative 
 would not be the consistent or the profoundly true one 
 that it is. 
 
 II. And this we shall find is quite as important a reflec- 
 tion with a view to Abraham*3 personal character, as it is 
 with a view to his position and office as a patriarch. Take 
 two or three instances. Abraham asks how it is that his 
 seed should possess the land, seeing that he goes childless, 
 and his steT^ard Eliezer is his heir. He is told that one 
 from his loins should be his heir. He believes the word, 
 and it is counted to him for righteousness. Here we are 
 informed of a blessing which came to Abraham himself. 
 He acquired a new and higher standing-groimd. Tlie 
 spirit within him confessed a perfectly righteous Being, — 
 one who could fulfil his own promises, — one who was the 
 Lord over the powers of nature, and the powers of man. 
 This faith of his can-ied him out of himself : it made him 
 partaker of the Righteousness of Him in whom he believed; 
 just as the eye enters into the possession of the objects which 
 it sees. The phrase ' counted to Mm for S-^hteousness ' is 
 the fittest we can conceive for expressing such a result as 
 this ; for making us feel that he did not actually acquire a 
 
90 SERMON IV. 
 
 certain amount of rigliteousness wliicli he could call his 
 own, as one acquires fields or houses by purchasing them ; 
 but that he became, in the most real and actuai. sense, 
 righteous himself', because he confessed and trusted the 
 E-ighteous God. The expression teaches us also, as every 
 Scripture expression teaches us, — to regard all good as 
 coming from above, and God's judgment of a man as that 
 which determines what he is, because it is the perfectly true 
 judgment. This passage then clearly belongs to Abraham, 
 distinctly, personally. The blessing is his. And yet it is 
 altogether bound up with his hopes of a seed. He becomes 
 righteous in proportion as he looks forward to that which 
 was beyond himself, and as his own life is identified with 
 the life of his family. 
 
 Again, the story of Abraham^s effort to realize the pre- 
 diction by taking the handmaid of his wife, brings out 
 another part of that divine and human discipline to which 
 he was subjected. The humiliating and natural result is, 
 a feud between Sara and Hagar. In the discovery that a 
 divine promise was not to be fulfilled by an ax;t of self-will, 
 — with further discovery that God saw the deserted woman, 
 and cared for her and her child, and that he too had a work, 
 and was to be the head of a tribe, — lay a lesson concern- 
 ing himself and his Divine Guide, which the patriarch could 
 have obtained in no other way. The feeling of the differ- 
 ence between submission to an instinct and obedience to a 
 divine command, — between the child according to the order 
 laid down for man, and the child of nature, — must have 
 enabled him to apprehend distinctions which he could not 
 have arrived at through the most ^accurate and formal pre- 
 cepts. But here also the individual lesson came through 
 the family. 
 
ABRAHAM : HIS COVENANT. 91 
 
 Unce more. The covenant of circumcision, whicli was 
 made with Abraham after the birth of Ishmael, and the 
 change which took place in his name, brought out with a 
 quite new force, the truths which he had been gradually 
 apprehending before. That covenant, like the covenant 
 with Noah, was one not of bargain, but of blessing. It 
 was an assurance, that he who entered into it was called, 
 chosen, set apart by God. He had not taken up the 
 position himself; his business was simply to acknowledge 
 that it was his, and to act as if it were. But, unlike the 
 former covenant, man was to make the sign ; the sign was 
 a perpetual indication to him that he must give up his own 
 natural inclinations if he would be a true man according to 
 God*s call and purpose. It was therefore more distinctly 
 human than the other, if it was less universal ; it taught 
 Abraham a truth about himself which the rainbow could 
 not teach him. Yet he only acquired this wisdom through 
 an ordinance which concerned every member of his house- 
 hold, and all who were to come after him, as much as it 
 concerned him. 
 
 III. But the history is not confined to the tent of Abra- 
 ham. Lot, who came forth with him out of Mesopotamia, 
 chooses the plains of Jordan, which are well watered, — a 
 very garden of the Lord. He dwells in the cities of the 
 plains, and pitches his tent towards Sodom. We have a 
 view of these cities, first as engaged in one of the predatory 
 wars of the time, in which Abraham with his train of 
 servants takes part to rescue his kinsman ; then as destroyed 
 by fire fi:om heaven. I shall not stop to justify the first 
 narration from the suspicions of certain critics, who say 
 that it must be an interpolated fragment, because Abraham 
 is not there the simple shepherd any longer, but the armed 
 
I 
 
 02 , SERMON 'iV* 
 
 wariior. The more the alleged contradictions of the story 
 are conwdered, the more thoroughly oriental and pastoral it 
 will appear ; exteraallj as well as internally coherent. But 
 the destruction of the cities bears so closely upon the wholp 
 life of the patriarch, and on the principle of the bookj that 
 I must have adverted to it, even if it had not been brought 
 before us in the lesson for this morning. 
 
 That which the covenant had told him concerning 
 himself and every man, was about to be fulfilled in Sodom 
 and Gomorrah. The inhabitants of the cities had become 
 the slaves of inclination and nature; they had sunk into 
 beasts, and below beasts. They could not be suffered to 
 go on in that condition. They had chosen the law of death^ 
 and in some signal manner that law would execute itself. 
 Abraham is told that it will. The communication comes 
 to him in a different form from any of what we have heard 
 yet. We have heard of God speaking to him, commanding 
 him, and giving him promises. Nothing has been said of 
 any visible appearance, and when nothiiig is said we have 
 no right to assume it. Here we are told of three persons 
 coming to him as he was sitting by his tent -door in the 
 plain of Mamre, in the heat of the day. The visitants are 
 called angels. But neither here nor elsewhere in Scripture 
 is the angel represented as of another essence, or even of 
 another form, than man. They converse with Abraham ; 
 they eat with him. He feels that the invisible world has 
 been opened to him , that he has had communion with the 
 dwellers in it. There is simplicity, quietness, awe, through 
 the whole record of the interview. No great phrases ate 
 used to indicate that it was some deviation from order in 
 favour of a particular person; rather, it seems to be 
 assumed, that such intercourse is according to order, hoW- 
 
ABRAHAM- HIS INTERCESSION. 93 
 
 ever the confusions of man's life may have interrupted it. 
 But after Abraham lias been warned of the birth of a son, 
 two of these angels go on their way towards Sodom, 
 Abraham is left in mysterious converse with a Being who 
 is called ' the Lord,' We do not hear that there is any 
 longer a visible presence. He makes known to him what 
 is coming on the cities in which Lot dwells : Abraham's 
 spirit is drawn ont into intercession for them. He asks — 
 not that wickedness may continue to exist; but — that if 
 there are ten righteous in the city, it may be spared for 
 their sakes. He asks this because he is certain that the 
 Judge of the earth must do right. He believes him to be 
 a righteous Being, not a mere sovereign who does what he 
 likes. On that foundation his intercession is built; the 
 first recorded in Scripture ; the model of all the rest. It is 
 man beseeching that right may prevail : that it may prevail 
 among men ; by destruction, if that must be ; by the in- 
 fusion of a new life, if it is possible. It is man asking that 
 the gracious order of God may be victorious, in such way 
 as He knows is best, over the disorder which His rebellious 
 creatures have striven to establish in His universe. The 
 mercy which is prayed for is not an exception from the right- 
 eousness, but the fruit of it. 
 
 But if this prayer is in accordance with the highest 
 teaching of Scripture, what can we say of the words, */ 
 will go down noic, and see whether the men of Sodom have 
 done altogether according to the erg of it, which is come unto 
 me ; and if noty I will know ;' with the corresponding 
 narrative of the angels coming to the gate of Lot's house ? 
 Is not this language anthropomorphic ? Is it not incon- 
 sistent witli tlie belief of God's omnipresence? My 
 brethren, ai-e we sure that we know what we mean when 
 
94 SERMON IV. 
 
 we use tKat word, ' omnipresence ' ? Are we sure that we 
 are not hiding a want of meaning, a no meaning, under 
 a wide philosophical generalization? If so, we maj talk 
 against anthropomorphism as much as we please, hut 
 depend upon it we shall drive men to be anthropomorphic, 
 and idolatrous too, bj our vagueness and unreality. For 
 those who are men with actual flesh and blood, and not 
 speculators or philosophers, must have an actual object 
 to believe in, or thej must give up belief altogether. 
 They can be Theists or Atheists, but they cannot float 
 in a cloudland between the two ; confessing God and 
 making Him nothing, under pretence of making Him 
 everything. The more sincerely and faithfully we deal 
 with our own minds, the more I believe we shall discover 
 that the highest knowledge of all does not come at once ; 
 a^d never comes in phrases and abstractions. If man is 
 capable of knowing God, it must be because there is 
 that in him, that in every part of his being, which 
 responds to something in God; — all his acts and ways, 
 all his exercises of observation, insight, foresight, rule, 
 must be derived from some source, and that source must 
 be the Creator. I may repeat this maxim to weariness, 
 but I wish you to feel that it is the maxim of Scripture ; — 
 and that it would be false to itself if the maxim was 
 not carried into every, even the minutest, detail. We 
 need not be afraid of any opprobrious phrases. If the 
 Scripture revelation leads to idolatry, — if it does not offer 
 an effectual deliverance from idolatry, such a deliverancfc 
 as no philosophers have been able, after six thousand 
 years, to devise, — cg-st it aside. But do not be frightened, 
 by. the word anthropomorphism; for there may be the 
 deepest reason in the nature of things, in the laws of the 
 
ABRAHAM; HOW HE ESCAPED IDOLATRY. 95 
 
 universe, why God should onlj be known in and through 
 a Man. 
 
 The whole judgment upou the cities of the plain is, in 
 one sense, the condemnation of the sin which men commit 
 when they become worshippers of themselves ; in another, 
 the assertion of the truth which lies beneath that enormity. 
 Man seeing only himself sinks to the point where society 
 becomes impossible, — where every man becomes the 
 corrupter and destroyer of every other. Man seeing 
 himself in God, feeling his own relation to God ♦ grows 
 into the perception of a fellowship and sympathy Detween 
 himself and every being of his own race, — into a percep- 
 tion of the loving care and government which he is to 
 exercise over all creatures of lower races ; grows into this 
 perception, because the divine character, — the mind which 
 upholds all things, and keeps all things at one, the mind, 
 in the likeness of which humanity is created, — dawns more 
 and more clearly upon him. And thus the man is prepared 
 for the last and culminating point in the divine educa- 
 tion, that in which he learns the meaning and ground 
 of self-sacrifice; how it is possible, how it is implied 
 in our very existence as servants of God, as members of 
 a kind ; how it may become the most frightftd of all con* * 
 tradictions. 
 
 IV. The history of this stage of Abraham's discipline, 
 we have heard in the lesson this afternoon. As in all the 
 other steps of it, the life of the family is inseparably 
 involved with the life of the individual; the most awful 
 experience in the personal being of the patriarch, relates to 
 the child of promise, — the child of laughter and joy. The 
 facts are told in the same style as all that have gone 
 before. * After these things it came to pass that the L&rd did 
 
96^ SERMON IV. 
 
 tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Ahraham : and he said, 
 Behold, here I am. And He said, Take now thy son, thine 
 only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee to the land oj 
 Moriah; and offer him for a hurnt-offering upon one of the 
 mountains which I will tell thee of^ A very easy expla- 
 nation, critics assure us, is to be found for this narration. 
 It was a process in the mind of the patriarch. The 
 thoug:ht occurred to him, * It would be acceptable to God 
 ' that I should slay my son ;' accordingly he determined to 
 do so. Of course we are indebted to any one who reminds 
 us that this process took place in the mind of Abraham ; 
 but if we had not received that instruction, we should have 
 been at some loss to know where else it could have taken 
 place. It was precisely because such deep and tremendous 
 thoughts were presented to the mind and spirit of Abraham, 
 that he referred them to God. He knew that an invisible 
 Being had held converse with his spirit. He knew that 
 this was the Being to whom he owed obedience. He knew 
 that He was a righteous Being. But how could he know 
 if that command came from this righteous Being ? Might 
 it not come from some darker source? He was certain of 
 this, that the impulse to self-sacrifice, — the feeling that he 
 qwed all to God, and was bound to devote all to God, — 
 was not from any dark source. Tliat was assuredly from 
 above. He could no more doubt it than he could doubt 
 his own existence. What then had he to do ? The Judge 
 of the whole earth would do right, and would not suffer 
 him to do wrong. He would cast himself upon Him ; he 
 would make himself ready to do the thing which would be 
 most agonising to him ; he would not try, by any act of 
 his, to save the child which God had given him. If the 
 promises to his race were dependent upon him, the Author 
 
ABRAHAM: PROCESSES IN HIS MIND. 97 
 
 of those promises could take care of him ; if not, he could 
 put the cause into His hands. To argue upon what 
 Abraham did or did not do, should or should not have 
 done, without considering him as a subject of Divine 
 education, is simply to argue about another Abraham, not 
 the one of which the book of Genesis speaks. K we take 
 the whole story just as it stands, we shall believe that God 
 did tempt Abraham, — as He had been all his life tempting 
 him, — in order to call into life that which would else have 
 been dead ; in order to teach him truths which he would 
 else have been ignorant of. Of all truths, the most 
 precious for himself and for his race, was to know that the 
 first-bom of the body was not to be slain for the sin of the 
 soul, — or as any token of devotion to God. And yet if 
 that negative truth could not be brought into union with 
 the positive one, that a man is to sacrifice his child, 
 himself, everything that he has, to God, then would 
 there be a perpetual contradiction in the hearts of the 
 best, the wisest, and the most simple; such a contradic- 
 tion as sometimes would lead to the death of an Iphi- 
 genia; sometimes to the rejection of sacrifice altogether, 
 as a mere barbarous impiety. Frightful as the first result 
 is, I believe it is the less terrible alternative. For there is 
 in deed and truth no middle path. The life of the indi- 
 vidual, the life of society, must come at last to make self- 
 indulgence, self-seeking, self-will, its foundation, or else 
 , Sacrifice. The one was that upon which Sodom stood, and 
 by which it fell ; and that which must, — by a fire from 
 heaven, such as appealed to the sense and conscience of 
 the elder world, or by the withering up of powers, 
 energies, hopes, — involve all cities and nations, which 
 yield to it, in a like ruin. The other was the basis 
 
 H 
 
98 SERMON IV. 
 
 which God laid tor the commonwealth, of which Abraham 
 was the beginner: for that wider commonwealth which, 
 was to comprehend all the families of the earth. 
 
 And surely in doing so, He did not intend a departure 
 from His own primary law. He did not intend that a man 
 should be called upon to make a sacrifice, without feeling 
 that in that act he was, in the truest sense, the image of. 
 his Maker. Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the 
 kings, found there was a priest in Salem who could bless 
 him in God^s name ; who was higher than he was^ though 
 he was to be father of many nations. Abraham, returning 
 from the offering of the lamb which was caught in the. 
 thicket, felt that there must be a higher sacrifice than that 
 which he had intended to offer. To ascertain how it was, 
 possible that the Lord of all could make a sacrifice, — the 
 greatest, most transcendent of all, — was the deepest problem 
 with which the souls of righteous men could be exercised. 
 But if it was hard to conceive the possibility ; it was harder 
 still to think that anything which was right in man could 
 be other than a reflex of something in God. It was 
 monstrous, and horrible to believe, that the best offerings 
 of man could b6 meant to change the will of his Maker,— 
 instead of being the fulfilment of it. 
 
 They had this story to guide them in their meditations. 
 Abraham and Isaac went both of them together ; Abraham 
 prepared the wood and the fire. He said that God 
 himself would provide the lamb for the burnt-offering. 
 The experiences of a nation's sins and degeneracies, deeper 
 anguish still in the hearts of individual men, helped to ex- 
 pound that riddle. At last the fall light dawned upon the 
 mind of one who had found himself sinking in deep mire, 
 where no ground was. ' Sacrifice and offering thou wouldesi 
 
ABRAHAM AND HIS SON. 99 
 
 not ; hut a body hast thou prepared me. Lo, I comey (in the 
 volume of the book it is vrriUen of Tne,) to do Thy vnll^ 
 Ood; yea, thy law is within my heart, I am content to do 
 itJ A filial sacrifice was seen to be tie only fonndation on 
 whicli the Hearts of men, the societies of earth, the kingdom 
 of heaven, could rest. 
 
 hS 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 ESAU AND JACOB, 
 
 Jliincoln'^s Inn, Second Sunday in Lent, March 16, 1851.) 
 Lessons foi the day, Gen. xxvii. and xxxiv. 
 
 Genesis xxviil 10 — 17. 
 
 And Jacob went out from Beer-shebat tmd went toward ffaran. And At 
 lighted v/pon a certain place, and tarried there aU night, because the sun 
 was set ; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his 
 pillows, and lay down i/a that place to sleep. And he dreamedj mid behold 
 a ladder set u/p on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven : a/ad be- 
 hold the ajigels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the 
 Lord stood above it, wnd said, I am the Zoi'd God of Abraham thy father^ 
 Q/nd the God of Isaac : the land wh&i'eon thou liest, to thee will I give it, cmd 
 to thy seed ; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou sliait 
 spread ah'oad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the 
 outh : wnd in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth he 
 blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places 
 whither thou goest, and will bring thee agamvnto this land; for IwiU not 
 leave thee, v/ntil I have dons that which I have spoken to thee of. And 
 Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this 
 place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, Sow dreadful 
 is this place 1 this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate oj 
 
 I HOPE the selection of the lessons for to-day will haye 
 shown you that the Church, at least, does not wish us to 
 regard the lives of the Patriarchs as the lives of grand and 
 heroic men. The specimens of the history of Isaac and 
 
JACOB ; THE SUPPLANTER. 101 
 
 Jacob are taken from the two most humUiating passages of 
 it. In the first we have an old patriarch, sending forli his 
 elder son to fetch the venison which he loves, and cheated 
 by his younger son at the instigation of his wife. The 
 second belongs to another generation ; Jacob is snrronnded 
 by his own children; the one daughter of his race is de- 
 filed ; two of his sons take a crafty and brutal vengeance 
 upon the offender and his whole people. 
 
 Do not imagine that I wish to pass over such records as 
 these, which I believe have been brought before us honestly, 
 manfully, deliberately. It would be entirely contrary to 
 the purpose which I announced at the commencement of 
 this series of sermons if I turned away your thoughts from 
 the difficult passages of the book of Genesis, to fix them 
 upon those passages in which all perceive some value, and 
 from which some moral may readily be extracted. Still 
 less do I wish to select the idyllic or poetical passages of 
 the story, that you may forget how much there is in it 
 of prosaic reality. But I apprehend that your minds are 
 more likely to be perplexed by the words I have just read 
 to you, when they are taken in connexion with the nar- 
 ratives between which they are interposed, than by those 
 narratives in themselves. Ton could hardly help feeling 
 that there was something brave and truthful in an 
 historian^ who exhibited the ancestor of his own tribe in a 
 less advantageous light than the ancestor of a rival and 
 opposing tribe. You might be disposed to think he must 
 have been under some higher and diviner guidance than 
 his own, when he laid bare the ftiry and meanness of the 
 men after whose names his countrymen were called. But 
 you are puzzled when you reflect that the cunning Jacob 
 obtained a blessing, of which his more frank and noble 
 
102 SERMON V. 
 
 brother was deprived ; tLat he received divine commu- 
 nications to which the other was a stranger ; that his 
 seed, — that seed which exhibited the most detestable 
 passions of savages, — were the inheritors of the highest 
 promise ever bestowed upon men. This association of 
 what is high with what is low, of spiritual glcaies with the 
 most earthly propensities, suggests doubts to your minds 
 which you might be glad to quell, but cannot. Must not 
 morality suffer, you ask, when He whom we proclaim to be 
 a God of Eighteousness favours the man whom our con- 
 sciences pronounce to be base, condemns him in whom we 
 are compelled to feel sympathy ? In order to defend the 
 history, are you not obliged to set up a certain sacerdotal 
 tlieory about human character which interferes with all 
 ordinary obligations, and makes common men feel that the 
 so-called religious standard is utterly at variance with the 
 faith and probity which are required in their dealings with 
 each other ? I am certain that these thoughts are stirring 
 in a number of minds : it is because they ought to be met 
 fairly that I have taken my text from the brighter rather 
 than from the darker part of Jacob's biography. But I 
 have chosen it also, because I regard it as in no sense less 
 belonging to the realities of this book, than the story of 
 JacoVs imposture, or of the massacre at Shechem ; becfiuse 
 it seems to me no beautiful episode, but a part of the re- 
 gular narrative, connected with all that has gone before it 
 and with all that follows ; because I cannot think of 
 Jacob's vision as indicating that a communion with the 
 invisible was vouchsafed to the infancy of our race, and 
 is denied to it in its manhood, but only as the first step 
 in a series of manifestations, each more perfect, more 
 substantial, more nermanent than the last. 
 
JACOB; THE PLAIN MAN. 103 
 
 I spoke last Sunday of the temptation of Abraham to 
 slay his son, as the last great step in his education. The 
 discipline which had raised him to a higher personal stan- 
 dard, which had enabled him to be truly a man, had been 
 discipline through and for his family. His relations with 
 his wife, his nephew, his children, had shown him what 
 was petty and grovelling in himself, — had been the means 
 of awakening the faith, hope, patience, which lifted him 
 above himself, and made him act as the servant of God. 
 That crisis when his love for his new-given child and his 
 faith in the promise were brought into apparent conflict 
 with a more awful duty, was really the reconciliation of 
 his human feelings with their divine original ; the moment 
 when he knew that he was made in the likeness of His 
 Creator. The solemn transaction with the sons of Heth 
 respecting the burial-place of Sarah, and his directions 
 respecting the marriage of Isaac, are the only other memo- 
 rable records concerning him. And why are they memorable? 
 Simply because they concern the great common-places of 
 humanity ; because they have to do with those events in 
 which one man has the same interest as another. Beaders 
 are sure when they lay down the book of Genesis that they 
 have perused a very marvellous naiTative. Learned critics 
 supply them with a phrase, and tell them that they have 
 not been occupied with history in the strict sense, but with 
 mythical stories which contain moral or spiritual lessons of 
 more or less value. Alas for men who spend all their lives 
 in their studies, and have never yet discovered that birth, 
 marriage, death, bm-ial, belong to the facts, and not to the 
 legends of mankind ! The marvel of the history, as 1 tried 
 to show you last Sunday, lies in the absence of the peculiar, 
 the grotesque ; in the homeliness of all the details ; in the 
 
104 SERMON V. 
 
 inherent littleness of the personages who are the subjects 
 of it. But the feeling of the reader is right and natural, 
 though the explanation of the critic is forced and artificial. 
 That is a strange history which teaches us to look upon the 
 familiar as most wonderful ; upon the every-day order of 
 existence as a divine order ; which connects God not with 
 exceptional acts, but with the habitual course and current 
 of existence. The Bible is unlike other books, precisely 
 on this gTOund. It is more offensive than other books, pre- 
 cisely on this ground. We can tolerate a religion^ any 
 religion ; but a history which exhibits God as an actual 
 personal Being, without whom the vulgarest affairs of 
 men are unintelligible and anomalous, interferes with the 
 different schemes we have made for ourselves ; — we are 
 glad, by any outrage upon the letter of the story, to per- 
 suade ourselves that it belongs to a region of cloud-land, 
 with which we have nothing to do. 
 
 The story of Isaac's first meeting with his wife has so 
 much of simple quiet beauty, that we expect to find their 
 after life in some degree corresponding to it. We are dis- 
 appointed to hear merely of a man who is rich in flocks and 
 herds, whose chief controversies with his neighbours have 
 respect to the digging of wells, who repeats the falsehood 
 of his father respecting his wife, whose story seems not 
 only free from romantic incidents as that of the elder 
 patriarch was, but whose character wants the marked indi- 
 viduality of his. He is the heir of the covenant. This is 
 his one distinction, the only one of which he is conscious 
 himself, or which he can transmit to his descendants. He 
 lives in tents, away from the cities of the plain, expecting 
 that at some distant day his seed will become a great nation 
 through which the families of the earth shall be blessed. 
 
ESAU AND JACOB; THEIK CHAKACTERS. 105 
 
 This belief mingles with all his care of his flocks and his 
 herds, with the digging of his wells, with his love for his 
 wife. Whenever he loses this recoUectionj the coarse Adam 
 nature is all that we discern ; the man sinks into the crea- 
 ture made out of the dust of the groimd. Upon him and 
 upon Rebecca both, the desire of oflfspring, the expectation 
 of a birth, the actual occurrence of it, confer a blessing 
 which they could gain in no other way. Their faith and 
 hope are called forth. They feel at once their connexion 
 with God. The mother is taught that two nations are in 
 her womb ; the elder shall serve the younger. A mysterious 
 feeling of her relation to the future, of generations to be 
 blessed through her, raises her above the sordidness and 
 selfishness of her earthly nature. The glory of being a 
 mother illuminates her whole existence. The children are 
 born. She has the sense of a prophecy hanging over them. 
 She wonders how it may be fulfilled. They gi-ow up with 
 just the opposition of characters, that may be seen among 
 piembers of the same family in a patriarchal tent, or in an 
 English home of the nineteenth century. The one has the 
 strong impulses of the hunter : the other dwells near the 
 hearth, caring for all plain, quiet occupations. As we might 
 expect, — corn-age, frankness, a sense of dominion, belong 
 to the first ; thoughtftdness, timidity, subtlety, to the other. 
 The one realizes half the blessing of man. He has the 
 feeling that he can govern the earth and subdue it. The 
 other half, — that he is made in the image of an invisible 
 Being, — seldom presents itself in his dreams or aspirations. 
 To the feeble man, conscious of personal insignificance, the 
 thought of the unseen and the future, the vague dim pro- 
 mise of the covenant, appears as something actual ; all the 
 more true because it is not what his hands can grasp, or 
 
106 SEEMON V. 
 
 what they are required to mould. The moment comes 
 which brings the thoughts of their hearts forth into act. 
 Jacob makes his brother's hunger an occasion for bargaining 
 with him for his birthright. Esau says, ' What profit shall 
 this hvrthright do to me f ' 
 
 Neither one nor the other knew what good it would do. 
 The vision of something to be realized now or hereafter 
 dawned upon Jacob, a vision probably mixed with many 
 sensual and selfish expectations ; still of a good not tangible, 
 a good which must come to him as a gift from God. The 
 absence of all want, all discontent with the present and the 
 visible, is the feeling which exhibits itself in the acts and 
 utterances of Esau, There is one desire common to both. 
 The father's last blessing is a very sacred thing, to which 
 great advantages must be attached. Each would have this. 
 Esau feels that he has a claim to it. Rebecca will fulfil the 
 prophecy, and win it for her younger son if she can. She 
 has a strange notion that it is Grod's prophecy ; and there- 
 fore must come to pass ; and therefore that she must do 
 something to make it come to pass, Jacob's faith is of the 
 same kind with hers. He enters into the plot and carries it 
 through. The old man finds that he has been deceived. 
 The blessing once given cannot be recalled. But Esau's 
 bitter cry brings the assurance that his dwelling too shall 
 be in the fatness of the earth. 
 
 Esau has apparently been robbed of the treasure that he 
 desired most. But has he really lost anything ? Was there 
 any occasion for his exceeding bitter cry ? All that he had 
 ever thought to win comes to him in the richest abundance. 
 Instead of the dreary pastoral life, he has the rich free 
 hunter's life. A society soon forms itself around him. He 
 becomes the chief of a tribe, — a tribe which rises, it would 
 
ESAU AND JACOB; THEIR FATES. 107 
 
 appear, speedily to consequence among the people of the 
 desert, — which acquires possessions and government. His 
 frankness and courage are thought to deserve a reward. 
 He has it. Just the one he would have chosen for himself, 
 just the one which qualities such as his can win. 
 
 And what did Jacob, who so meanly bought the birthright 
 and earned the blessing, gain by these acts ? First of all> 
 he has to leave his father's tent ; then, with no share of his 
 brother's courage and recklessness of danger, to make a 
 lonely journey through a desert ; then to come among kins- 
 folk who cheat him as he has cheated; then to exhibit 
 himself in the pitifal condition of a suppliant before Esau, 
 and to receive his forgiveness ; then to be the witness of his 
 daughter's shame and of the crimes of those who were to 
 be the heads of the chosen race; to see them making 
 themselves hateful in the eyes of their neighbours, and 
 plotting against one another. 
 
 Was his blessing nothing then ? Had he been deceiving 
 himself all the while as well as others ? No surely. The 
 blessing came to him even as soon as he had begun his 
 wanderings. * For lie lighted upon a certain jplace^ and 
 tarried there all nighty because the sun was set. And he took 
 of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows^ and 
 lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold 
 a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to 
 Heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and de- 
 scending upon itJ This gift appertained to his birthright ; 
 this was the privilege of the covenant. He was permitted 
 to learn that the visible world is not all with which he has 
 to do ; that there is an unseen world, of which he is also a 
 citizen ; that the Creator of the visible and invisible is con- 
 nected with the lowest, poorest, most insignificant of Hia 
 
108 SERMON V. 
 
 creatures ; that there is a way from Heaven to earth, and 
 from earth to Heaven ; that a man may know what that 
 way is. Strange discovery to burst at once upon the mind 
 of a herdsman, whose wit might indeed have been sharpened 
 by the exercises of craft, but in whom mere fancy was as 
 little likely to be awakened as in the dullest ploughman of 
 our own day ! Amazing discovery ! And yet the very one 
 for which his mind had been preparing, the very object to 
 which his faith with all its dimness and confusion had been 
 pointing, the one thing which could elevate a heart that had 
 never been able to dream of victories over nature or the 
 outer world. The poor plain shepherd had here his high 
 gift ; the first great step in his divine education ; the assur-, 
 ance which raised him to the feelings and dignity of a man. 
 He knew that though he was to be chief of no himting 
 tribe, there might yet come forth from him a blessing to the 
 whole earth. 
 
 This assurance was given to him in a dream. I shall 
 have more to say upon that point presently, aJid of the 
 efiects which the dream left upon him when he awoke. 
 I will only observe now, that however he arrived at the 
 conviction, he was convinced that the God of Abraham 
 and of Isaac was with him, and would be with him in all 
 his journeyingSj and in the land to which he was going; 
 and that the same Being who was with him would be with, 
 his seed after him. Suppose this to be a fact, and not 
 a mere fiction, or an impression upon his mind, what 
 follows ? Then all that befell him in his after years, — his 
 marriage with Leah and Eachel, his service with Laban, 
 his flight, his reconciliation with his brother, the birth of- 
 his sons, the logs of her whom he loved best, the separation 
 from Joseph, his descent into Egypt, — would be parts of 
 
JACOB: UNDER DISCIPLINE. 109 
 
 a divine discipline ; diflferent acts of His government who 
 had said, that He would not leave him till he did the thing 
 which He had promised. Every day of that evil pilgrimage 
 of which he spoke afterwards, brought him some new 
 experience divinely directed to the purpose of curing the sin 
 which was most especially his ; some punishment aimed 
 at that evil which was darkening his soul and confusing 
 the light that fell upon it from above. This was a 
 blessing indeed, the highest that can be vouchsafed to 
 a creature ; not to be left to itself, not to be allowed to go 
 on weaving its webs of falsehood; to be reminded at 
 every turn, * See what that tortuous act of yours has done 
 
 * for you, see by what an inevitable, eternal law it has 
 ' brought forth its appointed fruit ; see how certainly those 
 ' who sow the wind, be they who they may, must reap the 
 
 * whirlwind.' I say this was a blessing quite unspeak- 
 able. And it corresponded to the faith which Jacob had 
 cherished, — as the gifts and rewards • which Esau obtained 
 corresponded to his character. But how does this kind of 
 reward, great as I admit it to be, interfere with our belief 
 of God's righteousness ? How does it afford any warrant 
 for the peculiar morality which priests are said, and too 
 truly said, to have encouraged and admired, greatly to the 
 detriment of themselves and of those whom they have 
 influenced? If your idea of God's justice is, that He is to 
 find a man with a ready-made virtue, and to bestow prizes 
 upon it, you are indeed at war, not with this passage of 
 Scripture, but with the whole of it. You are at war 
 equally with the witness of your own hearts and con- 
 sciences, as to what you want and as to the blessings 
 which you should wish your Creator to bestow. Surely 
 it is an infinitely grander, more moral, more rationa' 
 
110 SERMON V. 
 
 and more comforting doctrine, — that all good in man 
 is but the reflection of His good ; and that He brings 
 those who without Him have no goodness, to a perception 
 of that which is in Him, — that it may become theirs. 
 
 As to the second point, I acknowledge without hesitation, 
 that men whose thoughts are turned by whatever means to 
 the invisible world, — and who have a confased appre- 
 hension that they are to find their home in it, — are tempted 
 to a kind of dissimulation which active energetic hunters 
 like Esau seldom practise. They feel as if they had 
 a peculiar secret, a lore of their own, which cannot be 
 explained to other men. They have a notion that the 
 blessings which they dream of are of so transcendent a cha- 
 racter, that a little double dealing in pursuit of them mttst 
 be pardonable, may be commendable, I admit that this 
 early instance in the world's history is a very distinct 
 warning that habits of this kind would be characteristic of 
 a certain class of men ; and that class the one of which the 
 pretensions would be the greatest, and which would 
 practically, though secretly, exercise the greatest influence 
 over the world. The warning is there. Thank God for 
 it! I cannot conceive any so useful or so solemn. If 
 Christian priests, like Shylock the Jew, have made use of 
 Jacobus example as a justification of their own craft, — on 
 their beads be the sin and the blasphemy. God is teaching 
 them in that story, of his willingness to deliver them fi-om 
 their most terrible danger, from the foe tliat is nearest to 
 them. If they will turn medicines into poison, — if they 
 will pretend that a tendency which the devil has implanted 
 in them, is part of the faith which they have received from 
 God, — they must and will meet with the reward of so 
 horrible a contradiction. The God of Truth will not 
 
JACOB : THE BEUGIOUS PLOTTER. Ill 
 
 reveal Himself to them. He -will answer them according 
 to the idols which they have cherished in their hearts, 
 Every day they will make Him more in the likeness of 
 their own insincerity and untruth. I say, which the devil 
 has planted in them. For I do hold that this tendency to 
 falsehood, — ^which lies so near a true and precious faith, 
 and must either destroy it or he destroyed by it, — is more 
 essentially and radically devilish than those habits of mind 
 to which Esau was prone. They were fleshly, worldly 
 tendencies. The priestly or spiritual man is not free from 
 these, God knoweth. Woe to him if he fancies he is not 
 open to the assaults of the very lowest of them ! But he 
 has, in some more direct way than the majority of men, 
 to contend with spiritual wickedness. Dunstan was not 
 wrong in saying, that he had more conscious and perilous 
 struggles with the Evil one than the men of the court. 
 But he should have known, that the Evil one was assail- 
 ing him then chiefly when the thought of lying for God 
 suggested itself to him ; that he was in the grasp of the 
 fiend when he dallied with that suggestion ; that he was con- 
 quered by him when he yielded to it. And let none say, 
 — that in Jacob's case, or his, or any other, — ^the sin 
 consists in pursuing a glorious aaii-righteoua end by un- 
 righteous means. K the true end was clearly before the 
 inward eye, the way to it would be clear also. It is 
 because our eye is not single ; because there are perplexed, 
 contradictory images floating before it, — Self mixing with 
 God, the knowledge of a righteous and true Being con- 
 founded with the attainment of some personal gratification ; 
 that we prefer an irregular and tangled course to a straight 
 one. If the disciples of Loyola had fally settled in their 
 minds what end God had set before them as the prize of 
 
112 SERMON V. 
 
 their high calling, there would have been no crooked arts 
 ' in their policy. So far as they proposed to themselves the 
 reconciliation of the members of Christ's Church, His glory 
 and the diffusion of His Gospel, as their ends ; so far their 
 instruments were trust, obedience, self-sacrifice, all that is 
 noblest in man. It was because the paltry object of sup- 
 porting a Church-system, — of binding men together under a 
 visible head, of spreading their own order over the worlds' 
 mingled in frightful confusion with this' holy purpose,-^ 
 that faith was turned into the admission and tolerance of 
 falsehood, obedience into slavery, self-sacrifice into the 
 cringing of court-parasites or the ministration to all populat 
 delusions and diseases, in the pulpit or at the confessional. 
 And so it must always be, A really right end involves right 
 means. Therefore our faith must be in a present and living 
 God, not in auy scheme of ours ; then He will purge oui 
 eyes to know Him as the God of Truth, and to feel that 
 the ground upon which we stand is dreadful, because He 
 is there. 
 
 And thus I am led to the subject from which I have 
 been too long detained by my desire to show you the 
 truthfulness of this book; viz. the connexion between the 
 vision of Jacob and his history, and the history of man- 
 kind. It was a vision, a dream of the night. We are 
 told so expressly. This was the method which the Guide 
 and Teacher of men judged fittest for them in their 
 infancy. In this way He apprised them, as no doubt 
 niany peasants in our own time have been apprised, that 
 there was another world about them than that which the 
 visible sun illuminated. But the all-important part of the 
 narrative is that which concludes it. When Jacob waked 
 out of his sleep, he said, ^ How dreadful is this place f 
 
JACOB; EEALITT OF HIS DEEAMS. 113 
 
 Swely this 18. none other than the house of God I Surely this 
 ts none other than the gate of heavenJ The dream had 
 come in a night and was gone in a night. The ladder was 
 seen no more, Bnt that which had been revealed, was 
 a permanent reality, was a fact, to accompany him through 
 all his after existence. He might lose it amid the sights of 
 the earthly world,. All mere efforts of memory to recollect 
 it might be unavailing.. New visions might be needful to 
 recal the former to his mind ; new sorrows and fears might be 
 upedful to drive him back into the unseen world, and to 
 make him seek for the mysterious help that had been 
 promised him. Still that which had been discovered to 
 him could not pass away. He would know inwardly, that 
 the clouds which concealed it from him were drawn up 
 from his own earthly nature. And though there was some- 
 thing, doubtless, in the place where he had slept which 
 seemed to him specially dreadful, and which he may have 
 felt always to be so ; yet the words of the vision itself told 
 him that God would be with him whithersoever he went. 
 So that by degrees he will have learnt that every place was 
 dreadful for the same reason ; that it was not only between 
 Beersheba and Haran that the angels were ascending and 
 descending ; that anywhere the same glorious pageant might 
 be presented to his inward eye. 
 
 Now the great question we have to ask ourselves is, 
 ' Was this a fact for Jacob the Mesopotamian shepherd, 
 
 * and is it a phantasm for all ages to come ? Or was it a 
 ' truth which Jacob was to learn just as he was to learn the 
 
 * truth of birth, the truth of marriage, the truth of death, 
 
 * that it might be declared to his seed after him ; and that 
 
 * they might be acquainted^ with it as he was, only in 
 
 * a fuller and deeper sense?' If we take the Bible for our 
 
 I 
 
114 SJEUMON V, 
 
 guide, we must adopt the latter conclusion, and not tlie 
 lormer. The mere ladder set upon eairth and reaching to 
 Heaven, we hear of no more. It was a part of a dream. 
 It had all the quality and character of a dream. But that 
 which it expressed, comes out clearer and clearer in every 
 subsequent revelation. When Jacob in a later time of his 
 life wrestled with a Man till the break of day, — ^when 
 Moses heard the Voice speaking out of the bush,^when 
 Isaiah in the year that king U^ziah died saw the Lord also 
 sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and his train 
 filling the temple ; each felt that he had learnt something 
 which was to be the staff of his future life ; that which was 
 to be a strength to the patriarch in every personal and 
 family sorrow; that which would prepare the lawgiver 
 to found and sustain a nation; that which would enable 
 the prophet when the fire had touched his lips, to say, 
 ' Here am 7, send me^ That which each saw was nor 
 a repetition of that which his predecessor had seen. The 
 teaching was progressive. Only each was sure that the 
 world into which he had been brought was not a shadow- 
 world; that he had been made aware of the substance, 
 apart from which all things we converse with are but 
 shadows. And when our Lord said to the true Israelite 
 whom He had seen and known whilst he was praying 
 beneath the fig-tree, ' Hereafter ye shall see Heaven 
 opened, and the angels of Gcd ascending and descending 
 upon the Son of Man ; ' surely He gave him to understand 
 that this Son of Man was that ladder between earth 
 and Heaven, between the Father above and His children 
 upon earth, — which explained and reconciled all previous 
 visions, and shewed how angels and men could meet 
 and Jiold converse with each other. 
 
JACOB; REALITY OP HIS DKEAMS. 115 
 
 In the first book of the Bible we hear of Jacob in 
 a lonely place between Beer-sheba and Haran seeing a 
 ladder set upon earth and reaching to Heaven. In the 
 last book of the Bible we are told that St. John in the 
 Isle of Patmos saw the Son of Man walking in the midst 
 of the golden candlesticks, and holding the seven stars 
 in his right hand. 
 
 I have hinted a little at what is intermediate between 
 these two Visions ; I would dare to ask you now, whether 
 the higher and most perfect revelation is not that which 
 belongs to us, whether ISt. John was not permitted to 
 declare to us the law and mystery of our personal and 
 social existence ; that which can alone interpret to us 
 its order and harmony; that too which tells us the 
 meaning of our strifes and discords ? Oh 1 brethren, 
 we talk much of the future, of that which is to come ; we 
 koow not how or where. Why do we think so little of 
 that which is, of that in the midst of which we are living 
 and moving and having our being ? The future will be to 
 us but a very vague and dim shadow, till we inquire what 
 are the grounds of our present life. But if we have 
 courage to do that, Jacob's history may supply us with 
 another lesson. He was taught to say, ' Vertli/ God is 
 here, and I knew it not This ts none othet than the house 
 of God, This is none other than the gate of Heaven,^ 
 Then he was enabled to look on into a far distant future ; 
 to feel that he should be interested in that which happened 
 long after he left the earth ; ths^t he should live because 
 his God was not the Grod of the dead, but of the Kving • 
 that the blessings to his distant seed would be blessings 
 to him. Here was the real difference between him and 
 Esau. He had no -feeling of a present, of a living God; 
 
 i2 
 
116' SERMON v: 
 
 therefore he was content with a mere present possessibn^v. 
 with plenty of corn and wine and fatness of the earth. In 
 time, no doubt, he and his posterity wonld feel their need 
 of Beings to worship, of beings to protect them. They- 
 would form their gods out of the visible things in which 
 they lived. Earth would become the archetype of Heaven, 
 and therefore all their belief in Heaven would be some- 
 thing to make them more afraid of the earth, less able to 
 till it and subdue it, less able to redeem it from the weeds 
 and the beasts that possessed it. This is the last and 
 highest result of the tribe of hunters, of those who seemed 
 as if they held the earth in fee and had an undisputed 
 right to the property of it. The poor wanderer in the 
 desert, the plain man, — whose ignorance and cowardice, 
 and meanness, were purged away by God's discipline, who 
 lived in a land which was not his own, and died an exile, — - 
 left a family out of which there grew a nation, which was 
 itself to give birth to a universal church ; which was tos 
 possess and conquer and civilize a world. If we begin 
 from the invisible, if we confess Him whom we cannot see 
 to be the ground and root of all that we do see, if we 
 u?jite ourselves to a present King and Father, if we believe- 
 that every place we walk in is a dreadful and a joy&l 
 place because He is there, that we ourselves are dreadfiil 
 beings because our bodies are temples in which he hias 
 promised to dwell, — a mighty and glorious future lies 
 before us in the blessings of which we shall be sharers 
 along with the distant seed that will then be inheriting the 
 earth ; because heaven and earth are made one in Christ ; 
 and the spirit and the fire which have come forth from 
 Him; will quicken and renew the whole visible universe. 
 Shall we take up this position, or shall we spend our time 
 
ESAU AND JACOB; THE CONTEAST. 117 
 
 in considering how much of the fatness of the earth, of its 
 oil and wine, we can appropriate to ourselves, — not caring 
 how much we shut out from ourselves the good things 
 which eye hath not seen or ear heard, — not caring if the 
 earth remains for ever an habitation of unclean beasts and 
 evil spirits ? 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 THE BREAMS OF JOSEPH. 
 
 (Xiocoln'B Inn, Third Sunday in Lent. March 23, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Genesis xxxix. and xlii. 
 
 Genesis xlii. 8, 9 
 
 Arid Jos^h knew his h'ethren, hut they knew not hint. And Joseph r&mem~ 
 heied the drea-'ns which he dreamed of them. 
 
 Many persons, in our day, have come to the conclusion 
 that the Bible contains a number of records respecting the 
 early life of the world, which may be very instructive to us 
 if we only interpret them according to our more advanced 
 knowledge, and do not hold ourselves bound by the 
 scriptural explanations of them. It is not denied thnt 
 these explanations have a worth of their own. * They tell 
 ' us how men looked at the marvels of their own life, and 
 
 * of the world, when those marvels were just beginning to 
 ' be noticed ; how naturally and readily they referred tliem 
 
 * to some supernatural source. It is our privilege, we are 
 
 * told, to have rid ourselves of the theocratic element out of 
 ' personal and social life ; we see, or may see, all miracles, 
 ' prophecies, presentiments, brought under ordinary hrnnan 
 
 * principles and laws ; but we are not to be the less 
 
THE DltEVMS OF JOSEPH. 119 
 
 ' thankful for the light which history, sacred or profane, 
 ' throws upon the condition of those who were still re- 
 
 * cognising the prints of divine footsteps in the earth about 
 
 * them, — or in the more startling experiences of their own 
 ' minds. 
 
 I may have many opportunities of considering other 
 applications of this doctrine. I shall speak to-day of one 
 which the history of Joseph brings specially under our 
 notice. He had dreams of his own greatness, the Scripture 
 says, which were fulfilled. He foretold a coming famine 
 in Egypt, and provided against it. He referred his own 
 dreams, and his power of interpreting Pharaoh's, to God. 
 
 * A very natural conclusion for him to arrive at,' our 
 philosophers will say. ' If we take the history of hig 
 ' after life as it stands, what were his early dreams but the 
 
 * acting out of that law which an eminent teacher of our 
 ' day has expressed in the words : " Our wishes are a fore- 
 
 * feeling of our capabilities," — what was there in his 
 
 * judgment of the condition of Egypt, and in his arrange- 
 
 * ments with respect to it, which differed from what we 
 
 * should call, in our times, a rude political discernment or 
 
 * intuition ? ' 
 
 I hope, through God's grace, to consider these questions 
 fairly ; I am thankful that they have been started. I 
 believe much is to be learned irom them which will help us 
 in our understanding of iScripture, and will increase our 
 love for it. 
 
 The formula that *our wishes are fore-feelings of our 
 capabilities,' is, I believe, one of much beauty and worth. 
 Many difficult passages in the biographies of great men are 
 explained by it. Perhaps all of us may have learnt from 
 what has occurred to ourselves, that it is not only appUcable 
 
120 SERMON Yl. 
 
 to great men. In looking back to the castles of earliest, 
 boyliood, we may see that they were not wholly bnilt of 
 air, — that part of the materials of which they were com- 
 posed were derived from a deep quarry in ourselves, — that 
 in the form of their architecture were shadowed out the 
 tendencies, the professions, the schemes, of after years. 
 Many may smile sadly, when they think, how little the 
 achievements of the man have corresponded to the expec- 
 tations of the child or of the youth. But they cannot help 
 feeling that those expectations had a certain appropriateness 
 to their characters and their powers ; that they might have 
 been fulfilled, not according to the original design, but in 
 some better way. I do not think that such retrospects can 
 be without interest, or need be without profit, to any one. 
 However shifting the scenery of a man's life may have 
 been, — however various and contradictory the purposes 
 which he has formed and which he has relinquished, — he 
 will be able in most cases, if he looks for it, to trace some 
 predominant thought or wish which has connected them 
 together ; which explains their diversities ; which has 
 never quite deserted him at any time. Some dream there 
 has been, — it may have belonged to the day or the night, 
 , it may have been part of a lively consciousness, or of an 
 almost passive impression, — which has said ; ' This or that 
 * thou mayest do. To this or that, thou art destined.' As 
 new outward circumstances draw us hither and thither^ — 
 as new desires or faculties are called forth in us, — tliis 
 first intimation seems to be lost or banished. But it 
 appears again in another form. The new circumstances, 
 the new faculties, look as if they might themselves 
 be imparted for the sake of this primary half-forgotten 
 aim. If we could pursue it, we think it might point 
 
JOSEPH; WISHES AND REALISATIONS. 121 
 
 and concentrate a number of vague floating desires; 
 it might cure us of much mawkishness and restlessness ; 
 it might quicken resolutions and hopes that are languid 
 and drooping. Then come hitter disappointments from 
 without and from within ; cross-blasts seeming to drive 
 the new-fledged purpose downward to earth ; a number of 
 mocking voices declaring how vain it is ; wild experiments 
 to realize it terminating in shame : terrible discoveries that 
 we were weakest just where we thought we were strongest ; 
 that the lesson which we fancied we were sent to teach the 
 world, was one which we had scarcely begun to learn 
 ourselves. It is well if any man escapes out of this state 
 of mind without settling down into the conclusion,— ' Let 
 ' us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die : let the stream of 
 ' the world carry us where it will ; we will struggle with 
 * it no more. All things come at last alike to all. He 
 ' who has most of determination suffers most, when he 
 ' finds that he must become the victim of influences which 
 ' he cannot control.^ But even he who does sink into this 
 wretchedness will have moments in which flashes of strange 
 light come to him, — showing him capabilities of good in 
 him which might have brought those dreams of childhood 
 to fniition. 
 
 'And even as life returns upon the drowned. 
 Life's joy rekindling brings a throng of pains, 
 Keen pangs of love, awakening as a babe 
 Turbulent with an outcry in the heart. 
 And fears, self-will'd, that shun the eye of hope, 
 And hope, that scarce can know itself from fear. 
 Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, 
 And genius given and knowledge won in vain.* 
 
 AU such dark experiences attest the truth of the wise 
 man's saying. And if there should come out of this death 
 
122 ^ SERMON VI. 
 
 a better and a higlier birth ; it the man should consecrate 
 himself at the eleventh hour to the noblest service and the 
 highest objects ; he will find that that service and those 
 objects were in very deed foreshown and forefelt in his 
 childish aspirations. They told him what he was meant 
 to be, and what at length he is making a serious effort to 
 become. 
 
 I have not concealed the great merit of this philosophical 
 generalisation from the actual experiences of life, or the 
 evidence which it furnishes that the person who made it 
 had himself entered livingly into these experiences, and 
 was no mere generaliser. But now, I would ask you, * If 
 ■" this is true, do we not want some other tnith to sustain it ? 
 ' Can any one think that his presentiments have this signifi 
 ' cance, and not ask himself, Whence came they ? How can 
 ' I interpret them ? Who can interpret them for me ?' It 
 seems to me cowardly and ignominious not to propose this 
 question manfully to ourselves. How persons can boast 
 of their deep penetration into the laws of humanity who 
 will not do it, I cannot understand. It is no idle curiosity 
 Tyhich forces it upon us. The practice and the suffering of 
 life make an answer to it necessary. Perhaps you have 
 found one. Perhaps you can talk about the * destinies,' or 
 the ' eternities,' or the ' mysterious abysses,' from which 
 these thoughts and wishes and presentiments come to us. 
 Very good words, if you can make any use of them ; still 
 better if they are only expressions of an ignorance which 
 wishes to be enlightened, indications of a vagueness which 
 longs for clearness and reality. Very bad words, if they 
 are resorted to as* substitutes for reality, — as fine high- 
 sounding expressions for cheating others and cheating 
 you];selves into the belief that you have found something 
 
JOSEPH; WHENCE COME WISHES? 123 
 
 which you have not found, or have ascertained that nothing 
 is to be found. But good or bad, they have all been tried 
 before. If any phrases have been used up in the past 
 history of the world, these have been emphatically so. If 
 there are any to which a man should not resort, as to the 
 ultimate results of modem wisdom, they are these. All 
 the heathen world were trying to make out who put the 
 strange thoughts into their minds which were working 
 there ; who connected these thoughts by such strange links 
 one with another; who bound the different fragments of 
 their lives together; — by what wonderful art those fragments 
 could become a whole. They tried ' the eternities,' ' the 
 destinies,' *the mysterious abysses.' It would not do. 
 Something more actual, living, personal, was needful. 
 They must have actual beings who could teach them ; 
 who could impart light and knowledge to them ; who 
 could see the past, the present, and the future in one. 
 They tried to conceive of such Beings. They could but shape 
 their conceptions from the things and the persons which lay 
 atound them. Looking for a ground of their thoughts and 
 experiences, their thoughts and experiences became the 
 ground of those to whom they referred them. They could not 
 bring their lives into unity. For that which should have 
 united them was itself divided. Do you think, that it would 
 be well that we should go over this wearisome experience 
 again ? Do you think that the way of showing the advance- 
 ment of our knowledge, is to take up a position which must 
 compel us to repeat all the different experiments that men 
 have made, while they were searching for some firm ground 
 upon which they might stand, some fixed order to regulate 
 their spiritual movements and their outward acts? But if 
 you would not do that, I believe you must go back with 
 
•124 SERMON VI. 
 
 me to Jacob's tent, and must learn liow a Hebrew boy 
 bebaved bimself in Potiphar's bouse, in an Egyptian prison, 
 at tbe court of Pbaraoh, You must learn over again tb<e 
 first elements of buman bistory, tbat you may find a 
 principle upon wbicb you can safely and consistently act 
 in tbis day ; — a principle wbicb will fill up tbe boUow tbat 
 was left in tbe deep maxim of our own 19tb century sage, 
 and can raise it from an intellectual generalization into 
 a practical trutb, 
 
 Tbe beads of tbe Jewisb tribes, as we become better ac- 
 quainted witb tbem, are just wbat we should bave supposed 
 tbey would bave been from tbe lesson of last Sunday ; fall 
 of all rude and savage impulses, impatient of borne sub- 
 jection, not yet tamed by tbe sterner discipline of law. 
 Just tbe inclinations and tendencies wbicb we saw in Esau 
 are in tbem. At tbe same time tbey bave inherited mucb 
 of tbeir father's craft; tbey will compass their ends by 
 force or cunning, or both. It is no Arcadian picture ; tbe 
 simple life of shepherds, as the book of Genesis represents 
 it, is infected witb vices which we think the most foreign 
 from simplicity. And yet the vices are those specially 
 , belonging to such a state of society ; the complications and 
 refinements of cities are not there; you cannot attribute 
 tbe evils which spring up in tbe patriarchs to contact with 
 the surrounding world. Tbey are all children of tbe cove- 
 nant ; that covenant bass told tbem tbat tbey bave a nature 
 in tbem wbicb they are not to obey ; that covenant has 
 told tbem tbat One whom they cannot see has taken them 
 into His service. They may remember it or forget it ; to 
 forget it is to follow tbeir inclinations and impulses; to 
 remember it is to believe in Grod ; to believe that He is 
 present witb them, guiding them, protecting tbem. Tbe ' 
 
JOSEPH; AT HOME. 125 
 
 Stiripture did not represent Esau or Jacob as aTriving by 
 any efforts of thongbt or reasoning at one conclusion or the 
 other. The first did what his na;ture prompted him to do ; 
 became a hunter ; acquired dominion. The other followed 
 his inclination too ; suffered for it ; became a wanderer ; 
 then God revealed Himself to him, and made him know 
 that He was with him, and would be with him whither- 
 soever he might go. Jacob became aware of a fact ; a fact 
 which his brother had not cared to know ; a fact for 
 himself and his seed after him. The Scripture says God 
 discovered that fact to him. The Being who had made 
 man in His own image, told this man that he was made in 
 His image : taught him that he was not meant, like the 
 serpent, to go on his belly and eat dust. That is the only 
 explanation given ; the only one that could be given if the 
 history was consistent with itselfi It assumes that man 
 lives because he is related to God ; that when he denies 
 that relation he chooses death. It assumes that God is 
 continually teaching men of their relation to Him, and that 
 they are continually flying from His voice. 
 
 Joseph's story is in strict accordance with these principles. 
 He grows up in his father's tent ; a child favoured by his 
 father, therefore hated by his brethren. He has dreams of 
 greatness; his brothers* sheaves are to bow down before- 
 him, the sun and the moon are to pay him obeisance. In 
 his vanity he tells the dreams, and is hated the more. 
 His brothers plot against his life ; throw him into a pit y 
 sell him to a company of Ishmaelites. Not a word is said 
 of what has been taking place in himself, during all this 
 time. There is no description of his anguish, or of any 
 thoughts of comfort that came to him. We are merely 
 told that God was with him, — that he found favour with 
 
126 afiKMON vi» 
 
 Potiphar, an Egyptian, — that lie became tlie steward of his 
 house. It is the next part of the story, which we read this 
 morning, that reveals what has heen passing within him ; 
 what has been the eiFect of the pit, his banishment, his 
 slavery. The words to his master's wife, ' Can I do this 
 great wickedness, and sin against God f ' tell us that the 
 child of the covenant believes the covenant. Away from 
 the tents in which he has been brought up, — without any 
 outward tokens to remind him of any lessons he has received 
 there, in an hour of tremendous temptation, — he confesses 
 a righteous E-uler, whom he is to obey ; he trusts in Him, 
 and does obey Him; he goes to prison for it. His dream 
 is not very likely to be fulfilled ; the sheaves are ijot 
 bowing down to him ; the sun and the moon are not doing 
 him any obeisance. But he hears of other dreams. Two 
 servants of Pharaoh are troubled with the thoughts that 
 have come into their minds. They long for a diviner. 
 Joseph tells them that dreams belong to God. He has 
 been learning a wonderful lesson. Other men's thoughts 
 and dreams come from God as well as his. The child of 
 the covenant is not a witness for his own privileges, for his 
 own relation to God. In him and in his seed all the 
 families of the earth are to be blessed. He is to be a 
 witness to all, of the source from which thoughts, inti- 
 mations, prophecies, come. He believes God who has sent 
 the dream can give the interpretation. He declares the 
 riddle to them, and, as he said, it comes to pass. At the 
 next stage of the history he is brought before Pharaoh, who 
 has also dreamed dreams. They concern not himself, but 
 the land he governs. He has consulted diviners, who 
 cannot tell him wjiat they mean. Joseph believes that 
 God hath sent these dreams for a purpose : that He cares 
 
127 
 
 for the land of Egypt ; that He wishes Pharaoh to know 
 what is coming upon it ; that He wishes him to provide for 
 the ftiture. The Hebrew hoy becomes the first man in 
 Egypt ; the dispenser of com to that land, and other lands. 
 His brethren come to buy, and bow before him. He 
 knows them, and they know not him. Then he remembers 
 the dreams which he had dreamed of them. 
 
 I wish to fix your minds upon this part of the narrative ; 
 the other portions of it may come before us in the lessons 
 for next Sunday. We all faney that we understand the 
 story of Joseph and his brethren ; though perhaps there 
 are depths in it, even as a domestic record, which we have 
 none of us penetrated. But those passages of it which 
 respect his own dream, — and the dreams of the servants of 
 the king, and of the king himself, — are often regarded as 
 merely ornamental, half mythical, additions which we are 
 glad to pass over. I believe we do so at a very serious loss 
 to ourselves, — at a very gi'eat risk of falling into the super- 
 stitions which we are most careful to avoid. Tou acknow- 
 ledge the fact of dreams ; you acknowledge that people 
 have been puzzled by them in past ages, and probably are 
 now. Tou acknowledge that people have been made the 
 victims of the moat wretched impostures through their 
 eagerness to find a way out of the perplexities, which the 
 thoughts on their bed have caused them. Where is the 
 escape from this danger ? Do you think we find it, when 
 we are taught that the scenery of dreams is borrowed from 
 the external world, — from the places and circumstances 
 with which we are familiar when we are awake? But 
 when you have proved all that, you have left the great 
 riddle unsolved, — the real cause of human anxieties just 
 where it was. I bring all this scenery about me in my 
 
r28'' SEEMON vr. 
 
 dreams ; but how do I bring it? What are the thouglita 
 which invest themselves with that scenery? Who am I, 
 the dreamer ? Till you have found a reply to tbese 
 questions, you may produce endless theories of dreams and 
 apparitions, but you have not taken one step to relieve the 
 heart of its confusion, or to- prevent it from seeking all 
 unlawful, mischievous aids to quiet itself. Joseph met it 
 with this answer, ^Dreams belong to God.' ' However 
 ' your thoughts came to you, do not seek by tricks and 
 ' magic to make their meaning clearer to you. There is 
 ' an unseen teacher of your spirit, to whou^ you may refer 
 ' these and all your^ perplexities. There is a righteous 
 ' and true Being, whom you may consult about them. 
 
 * No doubt there is a purpose in all He does ; be sure 
 
 * that His purposes with you, His human creatures, are 
 'specially wondei-ful. And He means you to discern 
 ' them. He does not intend your lives to be dark 
 ' enigmas to you.' 
 
 Allthis, you say, belongs to an early stage of history. 
 I grant you that it does. It professes to belong to that 
 stage. But if dreams are, there should be some words to 
 tell us that they are under a law ; that they do not come 
 by accident ; that they have a connexion with the mysteries, 
 of our being ; that they may have to do with the future as 
 well as the past. Other deeper truths may be told us as, 
 we proceed ; but these cannot be indifferent to us. Men 
 in the early times may have been more troubled by their 
 dreams than we are ; and therefore it was fitting that the. 
 help needful to secure deliverance from the trouble should 
 be given especially to them. But they do affect us, 
 whether we are frank enough to confess it or not. We: 
 know that though our dreams may never have told us any-r 
 
JOSEPH; DREAMS AND THOUGHTS. 129 
 
 thing about that which is to come, they have told us 
 secrets of our own experience ; they have shown us ho\r 
 near dark fierce thoughts, which we fancied at a great 
 distance, were lying to us. The confusion which is in 
 them, reminds many how confased and incoherent their 
 waking existence is. They bring past, present, and futm-e 
 so strangely together ; they force us all to feel, if we do 
 not reflect, that there must be some conditions of our minds 
 which are different from the conditions of space and time. 
 There is something in them, then, which needs to be in- 
 terpreted. I think the interpretation for us and for the 
 old world lies in the belief, — that we are under a living 
 and Divine Teacher who does not wish us to walk in 
 darkness. 
 
 But you care so much more for the thoughts of the day, 
 than of the night ; they are so much more practically im- 
 portant. Time ; and so much more wonderful. When 
 shall we know how wonderful they are? Oh, brethren, if 
 you have ever been really lost in the mazes of your own 
 thoughts ; if they have been so tormenting to you that you 
 would have fled from them, had it been possible, to utter 
 vacancy, almost idiotcy ; if you have found them interfere 
 with all manly action, and the maddest course of action 
 seemed better than the indulgence of them ; if you have, 
 any of you, been in a state approaching to this, — and how 
 many noble spirits at certain periods of their history have 
 not only approached it, but realized it !— oh how would you 
 welcome the words. * The interpretation of these belongs to 
 Qod^ And when we have listened to all magicians and 
 diviners, calling themselves philosophers or priests, and 
 have tried their medicines for stifling thought and doubt, 
 their systems of opinion, their rules of conduct, and have 
 
 K 
 
130 SEEMON VI. 
 
 exclaimed, 'Miserable comforters are ye all,' we must a 
 last, in despair of them and of ourselves, grasp, if it be 
 with ever so feeble a hand, at this truth. If we do, how 
 shall we have to rejoice and give thanks for having been 
 east into deep pits and mire, where no ground is ; for then 
 IS a man able to hear a voice which says to him, ' Whe7i 
 thou walkest through the waters T will he with thee, through 
 the rivers^ they shall not overflow thee. Lo, I am with thee 
 <dways,^ 
 
 There are crises, however, in a man's life, when he is 
 neither troubled with the dreams of the night nor of the 
 day ; when he is called to act, and to act at once ; when 
 there is no time for weighing motives and balancing argu- 
 ments ; when life and death hang upon the decision of a 
 moment. To such a crisis had Joseph come when he spoke 
 the words.^ ' Shall I do this great wickedness^ and sin against 
 God f ' The belief of a living, present God was then all 
 in all to him. And at such a season it is all in all to every 
 man;, into whatever age he is born. Let no one, indeed, 
 who is exposed to a fierce and sudden temptation, refuse 
 any help that is afforded him by the lowest, most grovelling 
 considerations. If the fear of punishment, — the shame of 
 detection, the loss of credit, suggest itself to him as an 
 argument foi resistance, let him welcome it, — or any 
 external impediment to crime, as an angel from heaven. 
 The subtle suggestion, ' If thou hast no truer reason than 
 this for being righteous, thou hadst better sin,' has caused 
 the fall of thousands. No one bears more clearly the 
 image and superscription of the tempter. But though this 
 is true, let us all beware of trusting to any one of these 
 motives, or fancying that it will stand us in any stead. In 
 some foreign land, — where the traditions of childhood and 
 
JOSEPH; IN POTIPHAE's HOUSE. 131 
 
 home are no longer about you, where the laws of society 
 are looser, where opinions you have held tenaciously are 
 discredited, — there be sure that nothing will avail but the 
 belief of a present Helper and Deliverer; of One who 
 cares more for us than we care for ourselves; who may 
 bring us into prison, but who will not suffer any who trust 
 in Hira and not in themselves, to fall from Him. 
 
 Thus far then we have not found that we shall gain 
 much, by casting, as the phrase is, the theocratic element 
 out of our lives, or, to speak plain English, by ceasing to 
 believe in a living God who guides us and rules us. Alas, 
 brethren, we have been casting away this belief more and 
 more I In our religious talk about feelings and systems, in 
 our philosophical cant about theocratic elements and abysses 
 and eternities, — this practical faith has vanished more and 
 more from us. And therefore I believe we are in the 
 greatest danger of dreamers, and diviners, and magicians, 
 who will arise among us to practise impostures, probably 
 under the name of science. We are in danger of falling 
 into hopeless mazes of speculation, seeming ever to advance, 
 really returning to the point from which we set out. 
 Finally, we are in danger, when any great trial of our 
 moral strength comes, of sinking ignominiously, because 
 we have nothing better to rely upon than calculations of 
 consequences, or religious terrors, or a sense of honom- ; 
 all which the gusts of passion may scatter to the winds. 
 And lastly, I believe we are unable, through this unbelief, 
 to realize that coherency and harmony in our lives which 
 we trace in the life of the young Hebrew, amidst all the 
 changes of his fortune. ' His days were linked each to 
 ' each in natural piety.' The wishes of his infancy fore- 
 shadowed the events of his manhood. Every step of his 
 
 K 2 
 
132 SERMON VI. 
 
 discipline was a step in the formation of his chara3ter. It 
 was so because he referred all dreams, instincts, events, to 
 God ; because he did not think about his own character, or 
 how he was to bring his dreams to pass ; but left himself 
 and his history in God's hands. It will be so with us in 
 the midst of all our complications if they drive us to the 
 same course; if they lead us to think that because the 
 path is too tangled for us to find it, we must trust Him to 
 guide our steps. It will not be so, if we undertake to 
 build up a character or make a scheme of life for ourselves ; 
 or if we choose any of the flickering lights of human 
 systems, or of human teachers, to follow. The sparks 
 which we have kindled, or which they have kindled, will 
 not lead us through the darkness. We shall cry to one 
 and to another, * Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone 
 out^ And this because we have not gone to Him who is 
 ready not to sell but to give, that we might get oil for 
 ourselves ; who is as willing to take the government and 
 education of us, as He was to guide the Hebrew boy and 
 the lord of Egypt. 
 
 But I must not forget, that while the dream of Joseph 
 belonged specially to his own personal history, the dreams 
 of Pharaoh were of a nation's abundance and famine. I 
 do not wish to pass by the suggestion, that Joseph's 
 interpretations and prophecy, and all the arrangements 
 which are said to have been consequent upon them, were 
 only the effect of ordinary sagacity and foresight ; such aB 
 a politician in our day may exercise without any dream or 
 interpretation or prophecy at all, I have said already, 
 that both this view of the history, and that which we have 
 just been considering, have, as it seems to me, a real worth. 
 That worth consists in the witness which they bear against 
 
JOSEPH; THE INTEEPEETER, 133 
 
 the inclination of divines to separate the narrative of 
 Scripture, and the actors in it, from common life and 
 experience; to represent them as exceptions, and not as 
 rules ; and so to outrage the conscience of Christendom, 
 which has always received the Bible as a book of laws and 
 examples for human beings. If any statements, even 
 those which infringe most upon the divine authority ol 
 Scripture, warn us of this evil method into which we have 
 unquestionably fallen, — and set us upon asking how we 
 may return to an older and more honest one, — I cannot but 
 bless God for them, and think that He has permitted them 
 for the instruction of His church. That the way which the 
 modern school takes to avoid the error, in the former 
 instance, is not the right one, I have argued from our 
 individual experience ; that the way which it takes in this 
 case, is not the right one, I could argue as confidently from 
 our national experience. The first cry was, ' If we could 
 
 * but quite expel the theocratic element from our own 
 
 * lives, how clear and free they would be ! ' But the steps 
 we have taken in this direction, did not seem to have made 
 them at all freer and clearer ; did not hold out any promise 
 of their becoming so. ' If we could but get the theocratic 
 ' element out of politics^ it is said, * what insight and fore- 
 
 * sight our statesmen would possess ; how ready they would 
 
 * be for all emergencies ; how little they would be embar- 
 ' rassed by any antiquarian maxims ! ' Do you find that 
 we are making progress towards this consummation? Do 
 you find that as the idea of God having any concern in the 
 politics of the world has been more and more banished 
 from our minds, our politics have become more consistent, 
 more harmonious, more hopeful? Do you find that the 
 trammels of old party-maxims can be cast ofi^, or that if 
 
134 SERMON VI. 
 
 they are cast off, the freedom is a safe one ? Do you find 
 , that there is no weary repetiticm of old phrases ; no weary 
 recapitulation of old experiments ; no tendency to disap- 
 pointment and despair even in the youngest, in whom hope 
 is wont to be most alive ? May it not be possible, brethren, 
 that, in this case as in the other, we have sought to fill up 
 the chasm which separates Scripture from the daily life of 
 mankind, in the method which is just the reverse of the 
 true one? Instead of talking about Joseph's political 
 sagacity and foresight, — for which he certainly gave 
 himself no credit, — might it not be better if we talked less 
 «)f our own ; if we inquired whence these qualities must 
 come, supposing they be worth anything ? And might not 
 that consideratioii lead us to think, as Joseph thought, that 
 man is made in the image of God; that God exercises 
 providence, and that the creature who bears His image is 
 intended to exercise providence; that the past, present, 
 and future, are open to Him ; that therefore, — in a measm*e 
 according to the circumstances and exigencies in which He 
 places Him, — He would have His creature study and 
 interpret the past, the present, the future? May it not 
 then be that, instead of the theocratic element having been 
 too strong, at any time, in the politics of the world, it has 
 always been far too weak ; and that to this weakness we 
 owe very much of the vagueness and imbecility of poli- 
 ticians, as well as very much of the unfair dealings and 
 dangerous pretensions of priests? Yes, brethren, oi priests; 
 for the priest, who is sent into the world to testify that 
 God is the King of the earth, may set up himself to be the 
 king of it ; he may secularize the Universe, that he may 
 be the one spiritual person in it. If he does so, lie will 
 assuredly become, in the most radical and dreadful sense, 
 
JOSEPH ; THE STATESMAN. 135 
 
 secular hinirfelf. And if you acknowledge his falsehood, if 
 you submit to be secularized by him, — if you say that 
 your civil transactions have nothing to do with God, — he 
 will establish his power over you ; not a divine, godly 
 power, but a very earthly, sensual, devilish power. Believe 
 priests to be perpetual witnesses in their words, lives, 
 sacraments, that you all of you stand in a direct relation 
 to God ; that you all of you are in covenant with Him ; 
 that every work of yours is a vocation from Him ; tliat no 
 part of your civil transactions is indifferent to Him, or 
 can be excluded from His cognisance. Believe this, that 
 politicians may possess manly strength and freedom, tnie 
 insight and foresight ; that they may recognise the past as 
 connected with the present, and the present as the seed 
 of the future. The Bible in its first book, and through 
 after pages of it, is teaching you this political lesson ; this 
 is the lesson which we find opening upon us in the family- 
 records of the book of Genesis ; this is the lesson which 
 the Code will more fully unfold ; this is the deepest secret of 
 the prophetical lore. Cast it away, and every new expe- 
 rience of the world, instead of giving you fi:esh light, will 
 only be a fresh riddle : every new power you acquire in the 
 world of sense will make you inwardly feebler ; every new 
 society you establish will only reproduce the weakness and 
 rottenness of the old. Confess it, embrace it, act upon it, 
 and every experience may be welcomed as part of the divine 
 teaching, to correct past errors, to prepare blessings for 
 the time to come; every discovery, every machine that 
 gives you a victory over matter, will be a fulfilment of 
 the divine promise and covenant ; every colony that you 
 send forth will raise up a race of men to till, subdue, 
 enlighten, and civilize the earth. 
 
136 SERMON YI. 
 
 And do not fancy that, in using this language, I am 
 speaking as a Jew, not as a Christian ; as a reader of the 
 history of Joseph, not as a reader of the Sermon on the 
 Mount, and the Epistles of St. Paul. The Sermon on the 
 Mount brings into clear light and manifestation that divine 
 and fatherly kingdom, of which Joseph saw the first 
 glimpse when he became the teacher of Pharaoh, and the 
 preserver of Egypt. It invites men to be like their Father 
 in . Heaven. It was spoken by One having authority, who 
 showed forth that image in which man was created ; who 
 fulfilled the office of Prophet, because He was the Son of 
 Him to whom the past, the present, and the future, are 
 known ; who exhibited the office of a King, because He was 
 the Son of the King eternal, immortal, invisible ; who 
 created man to rule over the works of His hands. And 
 the Epistles of St. Paul declare how He ascended on high, 
 how He sent His Spirit to dwell among men ; to endue 
 them with gifts of wisdom and foresight ; to fit them for 
 all offices of obedience and government. The Gospel does 
 indeed disclose to us a society consisting of all kindreds 
 and nations ; but it confirms the witness of the old dispen- 
 sation, — that every special kindred and nation is grounded 
 on the name and stands in the might of Him, who raised 
 up a prisoner to inform princes of His will, and to teach 
 senators wisdom. 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, Fourth Sunday in Lent, March SO, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Genesis xliii, and xlv. 
 
 Gbnssib xly. 7, 8. 
 
 Qod serU me before you to preserve you a posterity vn the earth, and to save 
 yov/r Uvea by a great deliverance. So -now it was not you tJtat sent me 
 hither^ but God : and he hath made me a fcUli^ to Pharaoh^ and lord of 
 all his house, and a ruler througliout aU the land of Egypt. 
 
 We finish this afternoon our yearly readings in the book 
 of Genesis. I do not think we could find any words which 
 exhibit its character more perfectly than those which I have 
 taken for my text. They belong expressly to the life of 
 Joseph. But Joseph, — contemplated in that aspect in 
 which I purposely omitted to speak of him last Sunday, 
 — is himself the most perfect embodiment of patriai'chal 
 history ; the point of transition firom it to the subsequent 
 national history. 
 
 I. ' God sent me bejbre you to preserve you a posterity in 
 the earthJ* The brethren of Joseph were standing before 
 him. To them he seemed to owe all that had been 
 wretched in his past years; the unexpected change he 
 might naturally attribute to his own faith, continency, 
 wisdom, or to a new and opposite set of circumstances. 
 
138 SERMON VII. 
 
 But that natural conclusion -was an impossible one to a 
 child of the covenant who believed it to be true. He must 
 refer the whole series of events, those which were linked to 
 the sins of others, those which looked like the result of his 
 own virtues, to God. How he could do this, and yet re- 
 gard the wrong doings of his brothers as very heinous and 
 needing punishment, — how he could do it, and yet feel that 
 faith, obedience, moral strength, are the conditions of all 
 greatness and victory for man, — we may consider pre- 
 sently. I wish you only to observe now that he did take 
 this course ; that he did refer the whole order and purpose 
 of his existence, all that had been adverse to it, all that 
 had been prosperous in it, to God. And you will not 
 fancy, that his words implied a lazy acknowledgment of 
 some ultimate cause to which it is convenient that all . 
 agencies, influences, operations, should be traced, lest we 
 should be overwhelmed with their multitude. No such 
 philosophical necessity had ever occurred to the mind of the 
 Hebrew shepherd. When he was alone, when he was 
 amidst his brethren, when they contrived his death, when 
 they made him a slave, when he grew to be trusted and 
 tempted, when he was in prison, when he was telling 
 dreams, a living present Guide. and Teacher had revealed 
 Himself to him, as the One whom it was his privilege to 
 know, and of whom his life was to testify in all its con- 
 ditions of poverty or greatness.^ To think, * Any part of this 
 ' web of life has been woven by another than Him, — my 
 * brothers were able to throw me into a pit, I was able 
 ' to win these honours without Him,' — would have been an 
 utter inconceivable horror ; simply the loss of the treasure 
 which had been imparted to him in his father's tent, and 
 compared with which all more recent treasures, except so 
 
JOSEPH'S THEORY OP LIFE. 139 
 
 far as they were the expansion and multiplication of this, 
 had no worth at all, 
 
 I am sorry to use so many words for the purpose of im- 
 pressing you with what may well seem so plain a truth. 
 But it is because of its plainness that we forget it. In a 
 complicated state of society, much of our time is spent in 
 trying to unravel its complications; if not, we lose our- 
 selves in them. In either case, it is very hard indeed to 
 preserve or to acquire the habit of honestly and simply 
 confessing an actual personal Being, as the source of the 
 order we find in our own existence and in the universe. 
 Phrases importing that we do, are very familiar to us ; far 
 too familiar. They are so ready for use, and are so much 
 used, that their stamp is worn off, and they become merely 
 conventional. For this reason it is so profitable to go back 
 into this early morning of the world's day ; not that we 
 may talk about its clearness and freshness ; not that we 
 may fancy the earth was another earth than it is now, less 
 subject to the damps and dreariness of night ; not that 
 we may fancy it was illuminated by some different sun ; but 
 that we may convince ourselves that it has a sun now 
 which will warm us, and show us our way if we walk in 
 the light of it. And this is the more necessary ; because a 
 very serious doubt, which must be settled, arises some time 
 or other in all our minds, how, when so much of what we 
 see and feel around us is evil, we dare attribute the uni- 
 verse and all its scheme and order to God. Must we 
 not, in some sense, dispute his absolute goodness, or else 
 let in, at some corner of our minds, the idea of a rival 
 creator, — an Ahriman as well as an Ormuzd? In a 
 number of different phases we shall have hereafter to face 
 this question, and to see what help the Scripture gives us 
 
140 SEfiMON VII. 
 
 m solving it, when it has become most intricate and appa-^ 
 rentlj hopeless. But now, — "before the deeper puzzles of the 
 conscience and heart have been brought out, while crimes 
 are broad, coarse, palpable, and there is no casuistry among 
 those who escape from them, — we have to inquire, how 
 Joseph was able with such simple boldness to speak of God 
 as having ordained a series of events, the actors in which, — 
 no one felt more keenly than himself, — had been heartless, 
 cruel, and false. 
 
 The answer, you will perceive, is precisely that to which 
 all our previous examination of this book has led us. He 
 recognised with infinite wonder an order in the whole story 
 of his life ; that order he was certain was God's, He knew 
 that violence and disorder had been at work in it. What 
 temptation had he to think of them as God's ? Imputing 
 to Him a distinct purpose of good and blessedness, what a 
 strange perverseness it would have been to think that any- 
 thing which had marred the good and blessedness, anything 
 which had striven to defeat the purpose, was His ? It was 
 no distinction which the schools were to elaborate ; it was 
 the great eternal distinction, deeper than that between day 
 and night, light and darkness, which a heart cultivated, 
 purged, made simple by God's discipline, confessed, nay, 
 found it impossible to deny. And just that which Joseph 
 discovered in his own particular experience, Moses has been 
 setting forth for the Universe. The order which God 
 created is very good. The order which He preserves and 
 upholds is very good. There was no flaw in it before man 
 fell, there is no flaw in it since man fell. That fall had 
 actually no power to subvert it, or derange it. That fall 
 was precisely the refusal of a man to recognise his own 
 glorious place in this order ; an effort to make for himself 
 
HE BELIEVES IN GOD'S ORDEK, 141 
 
 an independent place out of it. He wanta to be something 
 in himself ; he will not act and live as one made in the 
 image of God. The history goes on, the disbelief and dis- 
 order multiply. But the eternal order goes on asserting 
 itself, — calmly, uninterruptedly. God treats man accord- 
 ing to the law which He laid down for him on the 
 Creation-day. He speaks to him, unveils Himself to 
 him, shows him that he can only live while he confesses 
 a relation to Him. Do you find a few acknowledging this 
 truth, the majority setting it at nought? But you find 
 also that the few are leading simple, orderly, human 
 lives ; that the others are out of order, are inhuman. You 
 must use that language ; any other carries contradiction on 
 the face, and in the heart of it. But how are these inliuman, 
 disorderly creatures regarded by their Creator? Have 
 they succeeded in establishing that place for themselves 
 outside His universe which they seem to covet ? No ! they 
 are within the circle of it, they are under His discipline and 
 education. He is teaching them by their own disorders ; 
 by all that they are doing to set at nought His government, 
 and to canonize their own self-will. He claims them as 
 belonging to Him. They may resist the claim, they may 
 choose a way of their own. They may try to shut them- 
 selves up in their separate Adam nature. But they cannot 
 do it. The divine order is hemming them in, forcing them 
 in their most inconsistent acts to acknowledge its presence, 
 and to pay it homage. They are husbands, children, brothers, 
 fathers. They cannot live in themselves, to themselves. 
 They must act as if they belonged to a society. They will 
 try to construct that society upon the basis of selfishness 
 and self-will. They will throw aside the family bonds, and 
 set up a mere wild, desert independence, or combine 
 
142 SERMON VII. 
 
 under some miglity hunter, or build cities where they are 
 knit together by a desire to get a greater number of 
 material enjoyments than they could procure separately, 
 But in the desert the feeling of tribe is still present ; their 
 ready submission to the tyrant shows that they are meant 
 for government ; the cities must acknowledge a law ; when 
 it is utterly cast aside, and absolute self-indulgence reigns, 
 fire comes down from heaven to assert its reality. And 
 meantime the world is not left to these wild experiments to 
 frame an order from disorders. God brings out Abraham, 
 and teaches him what it is to be a husband and a father. 
 The mystery of these relations discovers itself to him by 
 slow degrees, — through his own errors, through the delay 
 in the fulfilment of God^s promises, through the witness 
 which the covenant bears that he lives for the sake of a 
 race unborn. So the ground is laid for a divine and 
 human society. There is to be no hasty building upon 
 that ground ; the children of the covenant are to be for the 
 present shepherds merely ; every inclination they may feel 
 to connect themselves with tribes apparently more advanced 
 and organized, is disappointed. Yet they are not to be 
 stationary. The twelve sons of Jacob bring forth a set of 
 experiences, altogether different from any which we could 
 hear of in Abraham's tent. The brotherly relation is 
 elucidated through these experiences ; as the fatherly 
 and filial had been in the birth, circumcision, and 
 sacrifice of Isaac. The sins of brothers form the subject 
 of the narrative; through these sins we come to under- 
 stand the true form of the character from which they are 
 departures, 
 
 II. This is the second principle which the words of 
 Joseph expound to us : ' God hath sent me lefore you to 
 
BROTHERHOOD — REAL- 143 
 
 preserve you a posterity in tks earth, and to save your lives 
 by a great deliverance.^ 
 
 He starts with assuring them that GOD has been the 
 orderer and director of his history, and that He has had 
 a purpose in it. What purpose? The modem answer I 
 think would be, ' To save His saint, and show the difference 
 between him and his ungodly brethren.' A very proper 
 answer that may be, but you see it is not Joseph's. He 
 does not speak of a difference between himself and his 
 brethren. He speaks of them as members of one family. 
 He thinks that the special work to which he has been 
 appointed, — that to which all his troubles and all his 
 prosperity have been subservient, — is to preserve for them 
 a posterity on the earth. What ! to preserve a posterity 
 for Keuben, and Simeon, and Levi, for those who had 
 exhibited so much lawlessness, recklessness, instability, 
 and whose seed, — as their father foresaw on his death-bed, 
 — would resemble them in many of their worst features? 
 Yes, for this very end. Joseph had no notion that his 
 preservation meant anything, that it would be any lesson 
 for the times to come, except so far as it sei-ved for the 
 establishment and propagation of the covenant-family. He 
 could not separate himself from it even in thought. He could 
 not dream of any blessings for himself which were not 
 blessings for it. The sin of his brothers had been that they 
 would not feel themselves part of a family, that they would 
 not act as if they belonged to it. What must his righteous- 
 less be but to take the opposite course ? Wherein was he 
 better than they if he did not recognise the sacredness of the 
 bond which they had set at nought ; if he had projects, or 
 schemes of life, or hope for the fature, apart from them ? 
 Children feel that this is the sense and purport of the 
 
144 SERMON VII. 
 
 storj. They read it witli intense interest, because they do 
 not give it that narrow character which it receives from our 
 mature religious selfishness. And therefore they are not 
 perplexed by the question, ' But how was he not afraid to 
 ' confound good with evil by putting himself on the level 
 ' of his brothers, though they were not righteous men and 
 ' he was?' They have an instinct to see that Joseph took 
 the best of all methods to show the difference between 
 good and evil, and that he could not have shown it if he 
 had not put himself on the level of his brethren. He had 
 indeed a power to which they were strangers, and he was 
 bound to use it. Feeling himself to be God's servant, he 
 could become God^s instrument for educating them into an 
 apprehension of their wrong-doing, — and into a perception 
 of the blessings which they might claim. His roughness 
 to them, his questions respecting their state and kindred, — 
 the imprisonment of Simeon, the demand to see Benjamin, 
 his unexpected kindness, the putting his cup into the 
 youngest brother's sack, — were all steps in a discipline 
 which he knew that One better than he was carrying on 
 through his means. The effects of it must have made him 
 wonder. To see how words apparently in nowise con- 
 nected with their past history should have struck a chord 
 in them which had never vibrated before, and led them to 
 say, ' We are verily guilty concerning our brother ; ' to see 
 how such filial and brotherly love could be awakened in 
 those who had conspired against him, that they should be 
 ready to give up their own lives for Benjamin ; this must 
 have stirred deep and awful thoughts in him as it does in 
 us. What a mysterious influence is this for one man to 
 exert over another ! That he should be able to call forth 
 a Conscience in these rough shepherds ! That he should 
 
JOSEPH, EDUCATING HIS BEOTHERS. 145 
 
 Open springs in hearts hitherto ice-bound! In Joseph's 
 mind, these observations will not have taken so formal 
 a shape ; they will have been woven into his own personal 
 feelings and sympathies ; his absorbing belief in a present 
 God will have turned them into acts of thanksgiving to 
 Him, rather than into reflections upon man. Still, in one 
 way or another, — we may be sure that he and we, at 
 a distance of four thousand yeays, must have om* deepest 
 thoughts upon these things in common. For to us also 
 the beauty of the history is in this, — that we see how tnily 
 a man may be the image of God in the practical teaching 
 and discipline of those who are brought under His influence ; 
 how, if we indeed seek for His guidance and inspiration, — 
 wondering at the latent harmonies there are in human 
 spirits, trembling at their frightful discords, knowing oui- 
 own incapacity to bring out the one, too conscious how 
 often by a rude and ignorant meddling with instruments so 
 subtle we have produced the other, — He will enable them 
 to respond to a touch which is in truth His and not ours. 
 
 Joseph's story in this respect expands the principle 
 which we have traced throughout the book of Genesis, and 
 presents it in a higher form. A fuller revelation has been 
 made of the method in which God was educating him ; that 
 revelation enables him to educate his brothers. But as the 
 power of educating has been acquired through suffering, it 
 can only be exercised through sympathy, — a sympathy the 
 more perfect because it never sinks for a moment into 
 indulgence, because it is mixed with sternness and punish- 
 ment. His delay to own and embrace his brothers is of 
 course the bitterest mortification to himself, the heaviest 
 cross he could bear. There was a fear lest his father should 
 die before he could meet him ; the famme might sweep 
 
146 SERMON TIT. 
 
 tliem all away before tliej were reconciled. Such tlioughta 
 must have come into his mind, but he could not give heed 
 to them ; his work must be done ; for the sake of his 
 family he was sent there ; he must act for it, whether he 
 - puts his brothers to torture or himself. 
 
 III. And so he was indeed ' saving their lives hy a great 
 deliverance.^ He was providing iagainst the immediate 
 destruction which the famine was threatening them with ; 
 he was providing against the more thorough and per- 
 manent destruction which their own selfishness and crimes 
 were working out. He understood this to be the purpose 
 of God in His ways to them ; a clear line of light was 
 visible, running through all their deeds of darkness; it 
 shone the brighter for that darkness; it directed him to 
 ' the point whither all was tending ; it showed him the 
 direction of his own steps. God^s intention was to save 
 life, not to desti'oy it; there were all around powers and 
 principles of destruction interfering with that intention and 
 thwarting it ; somehow it would accomplish itself; somehow 
 death would be shown to be less mighty than life, — evil 
 than good ; his business was to act in the faith that it was 
 so ; to walk on manfully when he could not the least see 
 how it was so or could be so ; to trust himself implicitly 
 to the God of his fathers, certain that He was righteous 
 and true, whatever else was unrighteous and false ; to be 
 confident that if he did this in one place or another, in a 
 prison or as chief man in Egypt, he should be a fellow- 
 worker with the Creator of heaven and earth, a counter- 
 worker of all that had marred His creation. So now * it 
 was not you that sent me hither, but Q-od» * That is my 
 ' calm, deliberate conviction, wrought into me by years of 
 ' trialj confirmed into a settled uniform certainty by those 
 
JOSEPH, A FATHER TO PHARAOH. 147 
 
 Vicissitudes in raj lot, which at first sight would seem to 
 ' be very unsettling. You have been my teachers, divine 
 
 * messengers and helpers to me on my way, fitting me 
 ' to know what my task on earth is, fitting me to fulfil it, 
 ' I owe you gratitude, not blame, for my own part, and 
 
 * that gratitude I have expressed by being in my turn your 
 ' teacher ; by showing you what a blessing God has put 
 ' on your family ; what it is to make divisions in that 
 
 * family ; how we may in very deed act as if we had the 
 ' covenant, and were brothers.' His speech was far nobler 
 and simpler than this ; but these thoughts were all implied 
 in it. And there were still other words which he spoke 
 that are necessary to the understanding of his life, and of 
 the divine purpose as exhibited in it and in the whole book 
 of Genesis. 
 
 IV. ' He hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of 
 all his hxmse, and ruler over the land of Egypt^ You might 
 have fancied that these words would have been uttered 
 first. The dignity seemed so much the greater to be 
 lord over a great kingdom, than to preserve a little 
 Palestine family. But it could not be greater in the mind 
 of Joseph ; his human affections made the support of that 
 little family, a dearer object to him than Pharaoh and all 
 Egypt. And his affections did not give out a false note, 
 they responded to God's own teaching and inspiration ; 
 the support of that family was not only a higher and 
 nearer duty to himself, it was a mightier service to 
 mankind. He was maintaining, so he believed, a seed in 
 which all families of the earth were to be blessed ; a witness 
 for the divine order upon earth; a witness against all 
 contradictions and subversions of that order. But though 
 this obligation was first, it did not exclude the other. 
 
 l2 
 
148 SERMON VII. 
 
 Hi§ glory iu Egypt had not been sought for by himself , 
 it h^d been thrust upon him. God, "who had sent him to 
 save his own family by a great deliverance, had surely just 
 as much proposed that he should be a father to Pharaoh 
 and a lord of his land. So Joseph judged ; on that faith 
 he acted. 
 
 I would earnestly entreat you to consider what his course 
 of action was. The commentators on the book of Genesis 
 at the time of the Reformation, — when preaching in pulpits 
 was more regarded and had more influence than it has 
 now, — were wont to speak of the patriarchs as great 
 preachers. So I believe that they were, — very great 
 preachers ; yet the specimens of their preaching, which 
 I find in the only book that can have preserved any 
 reports of it, do not answer to our common notions. 
 Joseph did not go to Pharaoh saying, ' We Hebrews have 
 
 * a religion which is much better than the religion of you 
 
 * Egyptians. Cast oiF your own ; embrace ours.' He said 
 nothing at all about a religion. You might suppose, — '- 
 from one part of the policy which he sanctioned and 
 established, — that he had forgotten it ; for he confirmed the 
 previous privileges ot the Egyptian priests, and did not 
 insist that their land should be given up to Pharaoh, 
 Joseph did not understand that he was sent into Egypt to 
 bear witness of a religion, but of the living God, who had 
 called him out, and made a covenant with him and 
 with his fathers. That God he believed had chosen a 
 family to declare His name, — to set Him forth as the 
 Righteous Being, — the ground of the order of the world, — 
 the only Deliverer of it from its disorders. Joseph's 
 sermon to Pharaoh was therefore a simple declaration 
 that this Righteous Being was the Lord over Egypt,— 
 
JOSEPH, A WITNESS FOB GOD. 149 
 
 that He could set it in order. And his sermon to the 
 Egyptians was the proof which his administration gave 
 that he had spoken truth. He showed them that there 
 was an order in the disposition of seasons ; in seed-time, 
 and harvest; an order which sudden prosperity, followed 
 by famines, did not interrupt; of which those startling 
 changes were themselves signs. He showed that plenty 
 and famine were themselves sent to cultivate self-discipline 
 and providence in men; that men were therefore themselves 
 the subjects of a higher order. He used the experience of 
 their wants and sufferings as a means of leading them to 
 acquiesce in an arrangement, or, rather, to propose it, 
 which made them for the first time conscious that they 
 were under a government which was caring for them, and 
 watching over them ; a government not arbitrary, not 
 seeking its own ends, but confessing obligations to its 
 subjects, while it demanded obedience from them. He 
 organized a community, — he made the king feel that he 
 stood in an actual living relation to his subjects, and his 
 subjects in an actual relation to him and to each other. 
 Scripture represents this as a divine work, for which 
 a man must have a divine vocation. But it does not 
 represent Joseph as moulding Egypt according to a Jewish 
 type. There is little in his institutions, which corresponds 
 to the after-organization of the Jewish nation. Being 
 God's servant, he was to take the materials which he 
 found lying about him, to show that there was an order in 
 them, however they might have fallen into disorder ; not 
 to bring in some scheme or notion of his own. Kings, 
 priests, proprietors, were already there. He was not 
 to alter that fact; nor to say that these were not the 
 elements of a human society, but to prove that they were ; 
 
150 SERMON Yll. 
 
 not to tell Egyptians th&t God had not been ^working 
 among them, till a Hebrew boy came there, but to show 
 them that He had ; that they ought to have oAvned His 
 working in all the common business of their lives ; to 
 believe that He was working among them for good, and 
 not for evil. 
 
 ' But a child of the covenant ought to testify against 
 ' false worship.' And was not this a testimony against 
 false worship, — the greatest that could be borne? Do 
 you mean by false worship idolatrous worship ? Did not 
 Joseph declare that an unseen Being was the King and 
 Lord of their society and of outward nature ? Do you mean 
 hj false worship devil worship, — the worship of malevolent 
 powers, who were plotting mischief against the land, and 
 those who dwelt in it ? Joseph declared by his words and 
 acts that a RigJiteoua Being, one perfectly gracious, who 
 was doing good and only good to those who dwelt in it, 
 ruled over their society and over nature. It is most im- 
 portant to remark, that this was the first form of the 
 Jewish protest. When the family became a nation, it was 
 to speak out boldly against idolatry and devil worship, — 
 to maintain a perpetual and dreadful fight against them. 
 But we shall mistake the nature of that fight altogether, if 
 we suppose it was a struggle for a Jewish religion against 
 other religions. The story of Joseph in Egypt is written 
 to confute such a falsehood. Before any law had been 
 given, — before any word had been spoken about idolatry, 
 as such, — the Hebrew youth is uttering that very truth 
 concerning God which Moses and Joshua and David were 
 to utter in quite other methods. He was declaring Him to 
 be the true and merciful King of the whole earth ; he was 
 claiming his right as a child of the covenant, to exhibit 
 
THE BIBLE AND ITS INTERPRETERS. 151 
 
 Him in that character, and to organize a society which was 
 not in the covenant, upon that conviction. 
 
 If there is anything in these statements, brethren, which 
 jars with previous notions and theories of yours, once and 
 again I say, * To the law and to the testimony ; if we speak 
 not according to this word, there is no light in us,^ K I have 
 in any way tortured the Scriptures, if I have departed from 
 their literal meaning, I would beseech you not to heed 
 what I have said. The effort to follow them strictly, has 
 removed a great many crude and artificial notions from my 
 mind. I think it would have that effect upon yours. I 
 never can believe that the Bible has less power of making 
 itself intelligible than other books ; I have always found 
 that it threw much more light upon others, than it received 
 from them. Its commentators are often of exceeding value 
 when we use it to expound them ; otherwise they are very 
 difficult. But it is especially when we ask its help in 
 unravelling the tangled skein of our own personal and 
 social life, that its meaning comes out to us strong and 
 clear. We see then, that it is not telling us about itself or 
 teaching us to make it an object of our worship ; that it 
 tells us of a living Lord who was with Joseph, and who is 
 with us. It is telling us what the will and purpose of that 
 living Being is towards us and towards the universe. It is 
 telling us what His method is in dealing with the creatm-cs 
 whom He has formed in His image. It is telling us how 
 He forms them into societies, and deals with them as 
 belonging to a society ; how it is their continual tendency 
 to act as if they were selfish creatures having no relation to 
 each other. It tells us how in so doing they sink into 
 worshippers of the visible, and forget the invisible. It 
 tells us how a family is called out to show forth the true 
 
152 SEEMON YII. 
 
 divine law of society, and to strive against the false and 
 destructive perversion of it. It tells ns how the members 
 of the chosen family are just as prone to that perversion as 
 any other men, — and exhibit it in a new and more per- 
 nicious form, — pretending that God has set them up against 
 His other creatures, not as blessings to them. It tells us 
 how He is true, though all men should be liars ; how His 
 chosen seed, in spite of its own pride and sin, does its work, 
 and will at last accomplish it altogether. 
 
 The book of Genesis forms a very complete introduction 
 to the history of that seed ; not anticipating the subsequent 
 developments, but in a specially simple family-history 
 embodying the principles which must hereafter be seen in 
 the nation and in the church. Some writers are fond of 
 speaking of the characters and facts which it brings before 
 us, as types of those which we are to read of in the New 
 Testament. Joseph especially they look upon as a type of 
 the Son of Man. I have not used this language, because 
 I am afraid it is apt to beget a feeling that the Bible is not 
 so much a real book containing a history of actual men, as 
 a repository of ingenious analogies. I know no feeling 
 against which, in these days, we have more need to 
 struggle than that. But the great truth which is implied 
 in this typical view of Scripture, I have endeavoured to 
 illustrate in each discourse. Because I regard Abraham, 
 Jacob, and Joseph, as actual men, men made in the image of 
 God, I must regard them as showing forth some aspect of 
 His character and life whom I recognise as the express 
 Image of God's person ; some grace answering to the full 
 grace which was in Him. "^^^he whole story of Joseph 
 would seem to me a mere strange episode, — an exhibition 
 of virtues for which there was no ground, an awakening of 
 
JOSEPH AND CHRIST. 153 
 
 hopes never to be fulfilled, — if I did not think that in the 
 fulness of the time He was manifested whose goings forth 
 had been of old, from everlasting, whose life had been in all 
 ages the Light of men ; that He was separated from His 
 brethren through their sin ; that He was sent before them 
 to preserve life and to build up a family on earth and in 
 heaven ; so that Crod, and not Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate, 
 was the author of His death and His resurrection ; by which 
 death and resurrection He has proved Himself to be the 
 Head of BKs Church, the Brother of every man, the Knler 
 and Deliverer of the Nations. 
 
SERMON VIIL 
 
 THE MISSION OF MOSES. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Exodus iii. and v. 
 
 Exodus v. 22, 23. 
 
 And Moses retitmed v/nto the Lord, andsaid. Lord, wherefore hast thou so emi 
 entreated this people ? why is it that thou hast sent me ? For since I came 
 to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people ; neither 
 hast thou deU/oered thy people at all. 
 
 No one doubts tliat tlie History in the book of Exodus 
 is the history of a deliverance. The most superficial reader 
 ■would say, that the subject of it is the redemption of a 
 people out of slavery. The Church has adopted this view 
 of it so completely, that we do not break the ordinary course 
 of our reading on Palm Sunday and Easter Day. The 
 chapters respecting the plagues which were sent to Pharaoh, 
 respecting the Passover, and the passage of the Red Sea, 
 are our lessons on the Passion and the Resurrection. The 
 Law of Redemption (so the Church teaches) is asserted in 
 the Old Testament facts; is evolved and fulfilled in the 
 facts of the New. We are not taught to look upon one as 
 belonging to an earthly, the other to a spiritual economy ; 
 the one as merely a figure of the other. The Jewish 
 Redemption is nothing except as it has a spiritual foundation. 
 
THE NEW AGE. I55 
 
 The Cliristian Redemption is nothing if its results do 
 not affect the earth. Neither is figurative; both are 
 substantial 
 
 At the close of the book of Genesis we found the records 
 of the Hebrew family becoming interwoven with those of 
 the Egyptian monarchy. There was no coniusion between 
 them. The family remained a family surrounded with all 
 its patriarchal traditions, marked out by the sign of a divine 
 covenant. The kingdom of the Pharaohs was abeady 
 existing. Joseph subverted nothing which he found. He 
 merely taught kings, priests, and people, that they were 
 different parts of an order established by God ; that there 
 were relations between them, and obligations due from 
 each to the other. He never for a moment forgot his own 
 peculiar position. Only by remembering it, could he help 
 a people which did not share it with him. If he had 
 ceased to look upon himself as a chosen witness for the 
 unseen God, he would have lost his power of serving the 
 king and nation of Eg3rpt. 
 
 This is the connexion between the inhabitants of Goshen 
 and the natives of Egypt, when the curtain falls upon the 
 first act of this divine drama. Before it rises again, they 
 are changed. Another Pharaoh, perhaps another dynasty, 
 is ruling. The stranger race is multiplied, it has become 
 dangerous and suspected. They are still no part of the 
 Egyptian nation, but are distinguished from it by race, 
 occupation, the covenant. It is reasonable to suppose that 
 they are also distinguished by want of organization; by 
 ignorance of the arts in which Egypt was beginning to 
 excel ; by greater grossness and barbarism. The patri- 
 archal family had grown into a horde ; it must have lost its 
 ■Jomestic character, yet it was attached to no polity. The 
 
156 SERMON VIII. 
 
 low habits which the sacred historian attributed to the 
 sons of Jacob would assuredly be perpetuated and diffused 
 among their descendants, — settled in a rich country, with 
 a considerable command of material enjoyments, still prac- 
 tising pasturage, — though surrounded by men who had 
 made much progress in tillage. 
 
 A people in this state was ripe for slavery. It only 
 required a monarch with some ordinary notions of policy, 
 and some ambition of making himself illustrious by great 
 works, to conceive the plan of using such a set of ready- 
 made tools to build tombs or treasure-houses. The Scrip- 
 ture narrative brings a monarch of the kind before us, with 
 magicians as his advisers. It scarcely requires the com-- 
 monest and oldest information we possess respecting 
 Egyptian wisdom, though the latest may be very service- 
 able, to explain what kind of advisers these must have 
 been. They must have possessed a knowledge of nature 
 beyond that of their countrymen, who had sufficient ex- 
 perience of the utility of such knowledge to reverence 
 teachers endued with any rare portion of it. The magicians 
 must have considered this knowledge as divine ; and have 
 come more and more to . regard the different powers of 
 nature and the different objects in which these powers weve 
 exhibited, as themselves divine. They will have been 
 politicians as well as naturalists, ready to employ their lore 
 and the mastery which it gave them over the things of the 
 earth, to uphold the authority of the monarch, or to 
 promote his plans. They will therefore have fallen into 
 a scheme of trick and dissimulation, which would have been 
 ineffectual and impossible, if there had not been some 
 truths lying at the root of it ; and some real assurance in 
 their own minds both of those truths and of their own 
 
THE BONDAGE. 157 
 
 capacities. It is this mixture of faith with insincerity, — 
 of actual knowledge with the assumption of knowledge, of 
 genuine power with the desire to make the power felt and 
 worshipped, a readiness therefore to abuse it to low grovel- 
 ling purposes, — which we have to recognise in the impos- 
 tures of all subsequent ages, and to which we are here 
 mtroduced in one of its primitive manifestations. It was 
 most natural for a politic monarch to wish that a body of 
 strangers, who were doing little good in a certain portion 
 of his land, should be made slayes, and so become agents 
 in cai-rying out what seemed to him magnificent projects. 
 It was most natural that a body of politic priests, — dis- 
 liking these strangers, for the traditions and customs which 
 separated them from their influence, — should readily co- 
 operate with him in that plan, or should be the first sug- 
 gesters of it. It was equally natural that his Egyptian 
 subjects should sympathise with the design, and should 
 feel that they were raised in the degradation of another 
 race. But it was impossible that king, priests, and people, 
 should eflfect this seemingly sage and national purpose, 
 without forging new chains for themselves, without losing 
 some perceptions of a moral order in the world and a moral 
 Euler of it, which had been implied in their government 
 and worship, and which Joseph^s arrangements had drawn 
 out ; it was impossible but that with the loss of this feeling, 
 they should sink farther and further into natural and 
 animal worship. 
 
 These remarks I believe are quite needful for the under- 
 standing of the life of Moses, upon which we entered this 
 morning. That life is encompassed, in the Antiquities of 
 Josephus, with a multitude of incidents, all tending to 
 glorify the great Lawgiver of the nation, and to show what 
 
158 SERMON Vlfl. 
 
 feats Le was able to accomplisli for liis Egyptian masters 
 while he was content to be the leader of their armies. The 
 Scripture narrative may be summed up in a few lines. 
 Very simple lines indeed, — belonging no doubt to a re- 
 markable story, but one which cannot be called eventful 
 or glorious, seeing that in the course of eighty years only 
 five or six events are recorded, and the majority of those 
 not tending to the exaltation, but to the humiliation of 
 him who is the hero of them, Moses is saved by his 
 mother's love from the sentence of exposure which had 
 been pronounced upon the Hebrew children ; Pharaoh's 
 daughter pities the child, draws him out of the Nile, 
 brings him up as her son. He learns the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians; he feels for the misery of his own people; 
 he kills an Egyptian who was oppressing one of them. 
 He tries to convince two Hebrews that they are brethren, 
 and finds that his own countrymen are likely to ruin him 
 for wishing to make them free. He flies into the land 
 of Midian, helps the daughters of a priest who have 
 come to a well to draw water, — dwells with the man* 
 becomes his son-in-law, begets two sons; for forty years 
 keeps the flock of Jethro in the desert. 
 
 This is all we hear of the deliverer and leader of the 
 Hebrew people, before the event which was recorded in 
 the first lesson for this morning. Our previous studies 
 in the book of Genesis will have prepared us to think 
 that a revelation of God is not an interruption of a 
 Scripture narrative ; not an exception fi:om that which 
 it lays down as the law of man^s life, — but a part of 
 the divine order, without which human life would be 
 irregular and confused. And we were not left without 
 signs and tokens to guide our thoughts respecting the 
 
THE PURPOSE OP VISIONS. 159 
 
 nature of such revelations. What was said of the ladder 
 which Jacob saw in his vision, and of his own impressions 
 when he awoke, would lead us to expect that no discovery 
 of this kind could be merelj momentary, or for a momen- 
 tary purpose. It must be merely the removal of some 
 cloud which concealed an actual abiding presence from 
 the man to whom the vision was granted, — that he 
 might know the ground upon which he was at all 
 times standing. In Jacob's case we saw that the vision 
 was not to the outward eye. It came to him in a 
 dream, as if for the very pm-pose of declaring that it 
 was not an appearance to the senses which made the 
 place whereon he had slept dreadful. In Jacob's case 
 we found that the blessing was one which he could 
 not limit to himself. The words which were spoken 
 to him concerned his seed. The God who was near 
 him when he knew it not, would be as near to them as 
 He was to him. 
 
 Moses had passed many more years in the world than 
 Jacob; knew much of which he was ignorant; had expe- 
 rienced a kind of sorrow which had never reached him. 
 He had passed through the sore trial, of feeling himself 
 the member of an utterly degi-aded race, which he had 
 dreamed of helping, and could not help; in the very 
 sufferings of which he was not allowed to share. He had 
 had an early inward intimation, that he might unite and 
 deliver this people. The intimation had come to nothing. 
 They were more crushed than ever; he was bound to a 
 strange country, connected with a family which belonged 
 to no tribe of Israel. Did the covenant of his fathers 
 mean anything? Was it true that an actual living 
 Being had called them out from all the families of the 
 
160 SERMON VIII. 
 
 earth? Was it true that He had promised to be with 
 them and to protect them? All appearances contra- 
 dicted such a belief. But if it were true, if that promise 
 were ever fulfilled, what was the truth or the promise to 
 him ? The flock he was keeping was not the flock of any 
 Palestine shepherd. He might call himself an Egyptian, 
 a Midianite, an Ethiopian, as well as a Hebrew. 
 
 Yes. And this education in an Egyptian court, in the 
 family of a Midianitish priest, in an Ethiopian desert, was 
 just the one which was to prepare him for understanding 
 the vocation of a Hebrew in the world ; was just the one 
 which was to fulfil all his early wishes and anticipations ; 
 just the one which was to make him fit for a deliverer and 
 lawgiver of his people. It required that he should be 
 far from kinsmen and from country, — from every external 
 association with the covenant of his fathers, — that he 
 might hear and understand the words, I AM that I AM ; 
 that he might believe the assurance, I Am hath sent thee. 
 
 Before Moses heard these words, he had turned aside 
 to see a great sight, A bush was burning and was not 
 consumed. Apart from the meaning which he may then 
 or afterwards have discerned in that sign, there is some- 
 thing, I apprehend, in the method of this revelation which 
 must have been very instructive to him, and may be 
 to us. It is an outward sign, something appealing to 
 curiosity and wonder, which first seizes the attention 
 jof a man, whether he be a shepherd on a lonely plain 
 or the dweller in a city, and which compels him to ask 
 himself, 'What is this? whence comes it?' He may 
 turn aside to see the great sight merely as a sight. 
 The impression it makes may be upon his senses, > or 
 through his senses upon his imagination. But if his 
 
THE BUSH. 161 
 
 inind has been mncli exercised •with inward conflicts 
 before, — if he has been seeking for something not to 
 gratify his eyes, but to be a rest and home for his 
 own being, if his thoughts concerning himself have 
 been connected with thoughts of other men, if he has 
 been labouring under a weight which is resting upon 
 himself and upon them, — then the visible object will 
 not be that which takes possession of him or holds 
 him captive. It will be but the sign to him ot some- 
 thing behind and beneath. He wiU ask for that which 
 is signified by the brirning bush. Its terror, and its 
 wonder, will be not in itself, but in that. 
 
 ^ And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, 
 God called unto him out of the midst of the hush, and said^ 
 Moaea, Moses, And he said, Here am IJ This form 
 of speech we have already met with in the Scripture ; 
 we shall meet with it often again, I can conceive 
 none which so perfectly indicates and expresses the 
 revelation of the unseen Lord to the conscience of His 
 creature, and its acknowledgment of the Divine Presence 
 in the acknowledgment of itself. A man says, 'i7ere 
 am /,' when he feels that there is One higher than 
 himself holding converse with him. He knows that 
 he is, because he believes that God is. But the voice 
 said, * Draw not nigh hither ; for the place whereon thou 
 standest is holy ground^ Then came to a waking man 
 in broad daylight that assurance of an invisible Being 
 near -to him, before whom he must bow down, which 
 came to Jacob when he was asleep. It was the dis- 
 covery to him of an actual person; of the God of his 
 fathers, of Him who had spoken to them. He was 
 not a name, then ; not a tradition, not a dream of the 
 
 M 
 
162 SERMON VIII. 
 
 past. He lived now as He lived then ; He wlia had 
 been with men in past ages, was actually with hiia at 
 that hour. ' And He said, I am the GuD pf thy father, 
 the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, And 
 Moses hid his face ; for he was afraid to look upon God^ 
 The visible appearance was nothing; the burning bush 
 had no awe in it. That had only led him to turn aside 
 and see. The awe was in that he could not see ; but which 
 was so intensely real ; ' he was afraid to hoh upon GoD.' 
 * And yet the same revelation which awakened this fear 
 gave the assurance, ' / have surely seen the ajffliction of my 
 people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by 
 reason of their taskmasters ; for I know their sorrows ; and 
 I am come down to deliver them,^ I do not apprehend that 
 such a communication will have made the fear of Moses 
 less. There is something infinitely awful in the belief of 
 One who knows what we are feeling and thinking, and 
 what himdreds of other beings are feeling and thinking. 
 If we actually had this belief, if we realized it as Moses 
 must have done at that moment, we too should hide our 
 faces. The sense of that penetrating eye would be for 
 a time overwhelming. But, ' I have known their sorrows ^ 
 I have heard their cry ; ' here is the pressure from beneath 
 which supports the pressure from above j this imparted to 
 Moses the trust and hope which were stronger than his 
 fear, though they did not destroy it, Aad the declaration, 
 ■ / am come to deliver them,' gave the interpretation to all 
 tliose dim anticipations and vague dreams which he had 
 cherished, that he was to be the deliverer. Another and a 
 mightier than he was interested in this work ; He would 
 undertake it. He would carry it through. The promise 
 made hundreds of years before to Abraham would yet be 
 
THE REVELATION 163 
 
 accomplished ; ' / will bring them up out of thai land^ unto 
 a good land and a large, unto a land flowing toitk milk and 
 honey, unto the place of the Canaanites, omd the AmoriteSf 
 and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites,^ All 
 this is possible, all this must be. This broken rax^e of 
 slaves has not been multiplying for nothing during all these 
 years ; it will yet do what it was called out to do. Mighty 
 tribes will fall before it, the good land shall be ours. 
 
 Yoti say this was a powerful impression upon the mind of 
 a shepherd. So say I too. The question is, how you are 
 to account for that impression, whence it came. Given the 
 impression, I want to know the impresser. I can only speak 
 about it as the Bible does. . I believe it was God who gave 
 him the impression. I do not find it very wise to conclude 
 that Moses made it upon himself. He had the impression 
 before, that he was to set his people free. He could make 
 nothing of it. The wish was there ; not the power to fulfil 
 the wish. That came when the living and eternal God made 
 him know that He was, and that He was a deliverer, ' The 
 words, ' / have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians 
 oppress them/ are immediately followed by these, ' Com£ 
 now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that THOU 
 mayest bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt/ The 
 man begins to understand that he is made in God's image, 
 and that he can only be what is righteous, and do what is 
 beneficial, when the righteous and wise Lord moulds his 
 character and directs his acts. 
 
 Yet this inspiration is not sufficient. For when the 
 creature is brought into communion with the Creator, a 
 feeling of superhuman power alternates with a sense of 
 weakness and helplessness such as was never realized 
 before : ' And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I 
 
 m2 
 
164 SERMON viir. 
 
 should go unto Pharaoh, and thai I should hrtng forth the 
 children of Israel out of Egypt V This is the first of a 
 series of utteranceSj betokening the conscionsness of a 
 vocation, and reluctance to enter upon it, which I believe 
 have attested the truth of this narrative to thoughtful and 
 earnest men who knew their own hearts, more than all 
 argimients on behalf of it. They have perhaps felt strongly 
 and often the temptation to say, * This is only what we 
 * have ourselves experienced; it is not the account of a 
 '■ revelation at all ; ' but when they have tried to explain 
 fairly to themselves what they have experienced, they have 
 been much more disposed to confess with silence and awe, 
 ' Moses has delivered the simple fact ; we were perverting 
 ' it by notions and theories of ours. Grod was with us, 
 ' and we knew it not.' No ! brethren, it was not a discourse 
 which, passed in the mind of a man, where none was 
 present but himself. There would have been no discourse ; 
 the whole would be a fiction ; your lives and mine 
 would be a fiction, if it had been so. Moses knew that 
 One was sending him who had a right to send him and 
 whom he ought to obey. He felt in himself an utter 
 incapacity for the work which was laid upon him ; he had 
 a desire to shrink from it, and to bury himself in the earth, 
 rather than imdertake it. And with this cowardice he had 
 the courage to speak it out; he believed that the Being 
 who was holding converse with him desired truth in his 
 inward parts, and would bear no prevarication.* He could 
 tell all that was in him, because he was sure that there was 
 One near who understood him, and could set him right; 
 of all assurances the most helpful to a man who craves to 
 be right himself; the most mdispensable to one who has 
 a great task to fulfil for his brethren. Such a conviction 
 
THE NAME. 165 
 
 does not mate tim fanatical; he knows himself to be full 
 of £inaticism, as well as of timidity; he could have no 
 hope of being cured of either tendency if he could not lay 
 open his heart to a Being who knew the secrets of it, 
 who could make him calm and bold; careful of obeying 
 his own impulses; equally careful not to be scared by 
 appearances or possible consequences from going on in a 
 straight line to the end which is set before hira. 
 
 But the great revelation of all, that for which I said 
 Moses had been prepared by so marvellous a discipline, 
 was still to come, * And Moses said unto God, Behold, 
 when I come unto tlie children of Israel, and shall say unto 
 them, The God of yov/r fathers hath sent me unto you, and 
 they shall say unto me, What is his Name f what sliall I say 
 unto them f ' It was an awful question ; asked with deep 
 awe: ' The Egyptians have their Ammon, their hidden God. 
 
 * They have other names for each power and object they 
 ' worship. God of our fathers, by what name shall I dare 
 
 * to speak of Thee f ' The answer came forth : ' And God 
 said unto Moses, I AM that I am ; and he said unto him, 
 Thus shalt thou say to them, I AM hath sent Tne unto you,' 
 Oh ! that I could persuade you, brethren, and persuade the 
 teachers of our land, not to try to make words of such deep 
 and tremendous significance as these more intelligible by 
 translating them into the dry philosophical formula of ' the 
 ' self-existing Being,' Oh ! that we could believe that the 
 Scripture form of speech is the right form ; that in it we 
 have a living, life-giving substitute for our dead phrases ; 
 that when we cling to them we are in infinite danger of 
 merging the person in a vague generality, the substance 
 in a pliantom. We should indeed be able and most ready 
 to point out the connexion between Scripture forms of 
 
166 SEKMON VIII. 
 
 sj)ccch and all olliers ; we should not suffer ourselves to "be 
 deceived by a mere repetition of the divine words ; or give 
 ourselves credit for enterinoj into truths because we caii 
 quote glibly the texts which express them. But when 
 we are most feeling the bondage of customary religious 
 phrases and technicalities of theology, — such sentences 
 as these offer themselves to us as the greatest helps- to 
 our emancipation ; as hints how language may be a ladder 
 set upon earth and reaching to heaven, — how the peasant 
 who knows no logic and can comprehend no abstractiofiS, 
 may rise to true and practical apprehensions of God, from 
 which our logic and our abstractions are excluding us. 
 V But further, I would beseech you to remember that 
 Moses was called to be the deliverer and founder of si 
 Nation. The more we read of that nation, the more we 
 shall feel that it could not have for its basis any abstraction 
 or logical formula. It stood upon no conception of the 
 unity of God, it stood upon no denial of the Egyptiaii faith, 
 or any other; it stood upon no scheme of making the 
 speculations of priests or hierophants the property of the 
 people. Either it stood upon this Name, or both it and 
 all that has grown out of it are mockeries and lies from 
 first to last ; roots, branches, flowers, fruit, all are rotten, 
 and all must be swept away. ' The Lord God of the 
 ' Hebrews, the God of our nation, the God of Abtaham, 
 ' Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our family, has established 
 ' and upholds the order of human existence tind of all 
 * nature,' this is the truth which Moses learnt at the bush-j 
 the only one which could encounter the tyranny of Pharaoh, 
 or the tricks of the magician; the only one which could 
 bring the Jews or any people out of slavery into manly 
 freedom and true obedience. 
 
THE DELIVEfiER. 167 
 
 We hear much from a certain school in our days of the 
 intense nationality of the Mosaic Economy ; especially we 
 are reminded s^ain and again that the God whom the 
 Jews worshipped was the liord Grod of the Hebrews. So 
 far from suppressing this fact, I shall delight to bring it 
 before you, to present it in all the aspects in which the 
 Scripture presents it. I believe that there ceases to be any 
 reality in the story if we explain away this fundamental 
 characteristic of it ; that the Jews, instead of having done 
 more for the world than any other people, would have done 
 nothing for it, if they had not believed that the Lord was 
 their Grod. But while you give all possible prominence to 
 this assertion, while you remember that in the very passage 
 of which I have been speaking Moses is told to say to 
 the people, * Tlie Lord God of your fathers^ the God of 
 Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, hath sent me to you: this 
 is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all 
 generations,^ do not let the remembrance of that other 
 pass from your minds. Do not suppose that the deep 
 hollow in the heart of the lonely shepherd could have been 
 filled by the thought, all cheering and wonderfiil as that 
 was, of one who cared for his fathers and chose them. 
 Abraham in his intercession had said, ' Shall not the 
 Judge of the whole earth do right ? ' His own discipline, 
 the discovery of his own wrong, had led him to perceive 
 a righteousness lying at the root of the universe. Faith 
 in God's Righteousness was the source of his own right- 
 eousness. And now that Moses is going forth to 
 encounter the unrighteousness of the world in its high 
 places,-^-now that the chosen people are called to this 
 higher stage of their history, now that they are not only 
 to witness for good in the earth but to fight with evil, 
 
168 SERMON, vni. 
 
 that Name is proclaimed which tells them that their calling 
 is to struggle for that which IS against that which is NOT ; 
 for the Absolute and Eternal Truth against every thing 
 that i& counterfeit and false. And this truth is living, 
 present, personal. He himself is the Lord of hosts, 
 claiming the subjection and allegiance of every power 
 upon earth ; putting down every power which tries to be 
 independent of Him, and to set up its own self-will. The 
 vision of such a Po\ver, working at every moment near to 
 every man, is appalling. And yet upon it rests all the 
 security of the words, * I have seen the affliction of my 
 people, and heard their cry^ and know their sorrows,^ It 
 was no partial sympathy, though particular men, actual 
 creatures, were, as they needs must be, the objects of it. 
 In all acts towards them, the sympathy of the divine 
 nature with the sufferer, the hatred of the divine nature 
 for the oppressor, would be gradually unfolding itself. 
 Love would be seen to be the eternal twin of Truth ; not 
 a feeble creature of time pleading for the infraction of the 
 laws upon which heaven and earth rest, seeking exemption 
 for one and another from its universal obligations. '^ 
 
 , I have alluded already to those struggles in the mind of 
 Moses himself, which are so strikingly brought out in the 
 fourth chapter of Exodus, when he found that he was not 
 eloquent, neither heretofore nor since the Lord had spoken 
 to him ; when he exclaimed, ' Oh my Lord, send, I pray 
 thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt sendJ* I would 
 not willingly destroy the force of such passages by any 
 elaborate comment upon them. You cannot fail to 
 perceive, I think, how perfectly they are in harmony with 
 that view of the Divine Education, which forced itself 
 upon us so strongly in the Book of Genesis. Throughout 
 
THE MIRACLES. If)9 
 
 we see the divine Will treating men as voluntary, spiritual 
 creatures ; not crushing, but calling forth into lively con- 
 sciousness, the will that is in them; allowing it to feel 
 itself, to assert its own freedom ; then teaching it slowly, 
 gradually, wherein that freedom consists ; what destroys it- 
 But this discipline becomes now more distinct than before, 
 because we have reached a time when we are to see how 
 men are trained to be leaders and shepherds of a people ; 
 and how those processes which are to go on in the heart 
 of a whole society are first ti-ansacted and experienced in 
 their own hearts. One remark I would make in reference 
 to this subject, which may not be without use hereafter. 
 Moses, we are told in the fourth chapter, was assured of 
 the reality of his commission by certain outward signs, 
 which signs it was promised that he shoidd be able to 
 exhibit before Pharaoh. It was afi^ he received this 
 evidence that these doubts and internal conflicts occurred 
 which made him wish to give up his task altogether. 
 There was no charm then in these miracles. They had 
 a deep meaning and purpose ; they had not the power, — 
 they were not meant to have the power, — of overcoming 
 the resistance of the human spirit to the will of its Creator. 
 But that resistance was overcome. Moses went to the 
 heads of the Hebrew tribes, and told them that the Lord 
 God of their fathers was caring for them, and about to 
 deliver them. They bowed their heads and worshipped. 
 He knew that he had come in the right Name ; he had not 
 to prove his commission ; their sufferings interpreted it. 
 Through suffering God had revealed Himself to their 
 fathers, through suffering He spoke to them. He had now 
 encouragement for tlic other part of his task. He went in 
 unto Pharaoh and said " Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, 
 
170 SERMON VIII. 
 
 Let my people go^ that they may hold a feast unto me in the 
 wilderness. And Pharaoh said. Who is the Lord, that 1 
 should obey his voice to let Israsl go f I know not the Lord, 
 neither will I let Israel go^ We may think that this would 
 be of course the language of a heathen king, of one who 
 was not in the covenant. The Scripture does not teach us 
 so. We are told that the Lord spoke to Lahan and to 
 Abimelech, and that they understood His voice. Wheir 
 Joseph told Pharaoh who was reigning in his day, that 
 the Lord had sent him his dream, and had interpreted it, 
 he believed the message and acted accordingly. It is never 
 assumed in any part of Scripture that God is not declaring 
 Himself to heathens, ot that heathens may not own Him. 
 We shall find precisely the opposite doctrine in the Old 
 Testament as in the New, When then this Pharaoh said, 
 ' Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice f ' we are to 
 understand that he had brought himself into a condition of 
 ignorance and darkness, which did not belong to him in 
 consequence of his position, or of any natural disadvantages. 
 He had come to regard himself as the Lord, his will as the 
 will which all things were to obey ; therefore he said 
 inevitably, ' Who is the Lord?' He had lost the sense of 
 a righteous government and order in the world ; he had 
 come to believe in tricks and lies ; he had come to think 
 men were the mere creatures and slaves of natural agencies. 
 Had God no voice for such a man, or for the priests and 
 the people whom he represented, and whose feelings were the 
 counterparts of his ? We shall find that He had. But it 
 must be another voice than that which said, * lam the Lord, 
 Let my people go,'' It must utter itself in plagues of fire 
 and darkness and blood. 
 
 Pharaoh said that the people were idle, and therefore 
 
MOSES BEFORE PHARAOH. 171 
 
 that they desired to cease from their works. He com- 
 manded the taskmasters to increase their burdens; they 
 were to make bricks without straw. The officers of the 
 children of Israel saw that they were in evil case. They 
 thought that those who professed to be their deliverers had 
 proved their worst enemies. And Moses and Aaron felt 
 the same. Had they not deceived themselves after all? 
 Was not the whole of that strange vision in the desert 
 a mockery ? Was not Moses bom to be the plague of his 
 nation, and his own ? And Moses said, ' Where/ore is it 
 that thou hast so evil intreated this people f why is it that 
 thou hast sent me f for since I came to Pharaoh to speak in 
 thy name, he hath done evil to this people ; neither hast thou 
 delivered thy people at alU 
 
 It was the hardest, bitterest of all experiences, yet for 
 a man who had a mighty work to do, — and who must be 
 assured that he was merely the instrument in doing it, not 
 the author of it, — the most necessary. And such, even 
 such a discipline, — only deeper and more dreadful, because 
 He was not merely the deliverer of a nation, but of man- 
 kind, not merely a man, but the Man, not merely the 
 servant, but the Son,— did He pass through, — who trod 
 the winepress alone, when of the people there was none 
 with Him ; who knew the sorrows and oppressions of His 
 creatures by actual experience of them ; who in the hour of 
 redemption felt the most unutterable desertion ; and who 
 yet fcould say, (and the Jews understood what He meant, 
 for they took up stones to stone Him,) * Before Abraham 
 was, 1 AM.* * 
 
 * P&rt of the Gospel for the day. 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 THE MIKACLES OF MOSES, AND THE HARDENING OF 
 PHAEAOH. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, Palm Sunday, April 13, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Exodus ix. and x 
 
 EXODUa X. 20. 
 
 Bat the Lord hardened Pha/i'aoJVs hearty so that he would not let the children 
 of Israel go. 
 
 Three questions arise out of the chapters which vre read 
 this morning and this evening, each of which has exercised 
 the skill of commentators, and, what is far more important, 
 the hearts of earnest practical readers. The first concerns 
 the nature and purpose of the miracles which Moses 
 wrought in Egypt ; the second, the powers which the 
 magicians are said to have put forth in rivalry of his ; the 
 third, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, which is attri- 
 buted in my text, and in many other passages, to ' the 
 Lord,' 
 
 As the last subject bears the most seriously upon our 
 own lives and upon our views of the character of God, 
 I wish to keep it most prominently before me, and to, 
 devote most of this discourse to it. But I cannot omit 
 the other topics. They too are, in a moral point of view, 
 deserving of the greatest attention. The right con- 
 
THE MAGICIAN. 17S 
 
 sideration of them will, I believe, be very helpftil to the 
 right consideration of the deeper enigma. 
 
 I. A free-thinking traveller in Egypt, who wrote about 
 twenty years ago, said that he had seen himself all the 
 plagues, which Moses speaks of as miraculously inflicted 
 upon the land. Allowing for the exaggeration of a man who 
 wished to utter a startling sentence, there is little in this 
 statement to which a literal believer in the Mosaic narra- 
 tive need object. The sacred historian never intimates 
 that there had not been plagues of locusts, or of hail, or of 
 flies, or of darkness before, or that there might not be 
 again. ' More than once he suggests a comparison between 
 the one which he is describing and others of a like kind. 
 In what sense then, it may be asked, did they deserve the 
 name of portents or miracles ? I answer, these names, or 
 some equivalent names, would have been given to them by 
 the Egyptians themselves, or by any people to whom they 
 occurred, without any reference to the purpose with which 
 Moses connects them, or to the Being who he says was the 
 sender of them. That which presents itself to the senses 
 of men as something strange, unusual, fearful, they will 
 call a portent : that which awakens their wonder, and for 
 which they cannot accoxmt, they will describe as a miracle. 
 The scientific man is as much bound to admit the existence 
 of portentous facts as the most vulgar man ; only he says 
 that he can account for a great many of those by which the 
 other is staggered. Those which he cannot accoimt for 
 he still believes are referable to some law; they are not 
 mere accidents or irregularities. 
 
 The business of the magician or enchanter, was to deal 
 with portents of this kind. He was to produce them if 
 they were wanted, for the service of himself or of his 
 
174 SERMON TS. 
 
 masters. If they came without his summons, he was tc 
 explain their origin, and to suggest any measures that 
 were desirable in consequence of them. His power had 
 two supports. First, the certainty in men's minds that all 
 phsenomena must have some cause, with the witness of the 
 conscience that the cause had something to do with them. 
 Secondly, the uncertainty whether the cause might not be 
 a malevolent being, whether his indignation might not 
 proceed from some delight in injuring them, from a mere 
 capricious pleasure in exercising power, fi-om some' honour 
 or service refused to himself for which he required com- 
 pensation or propitiation. The office of the soothsayer 
 could not have been so honoured as it was, if there had 
 not been an inward testimony in the heart to the worth 
 and reality of the function which he assumed. It could 
 not have become the false thing that it became, if there 
 had not been an ignorance of a moral standard by which 
 his explanations could be tested. 
 
 Now consider what was the foundation of the message 
 which Moses brought to the king of Egypt. He said, 
 ' The I Am,' the perfectly true Being, had sent him. He 
 sa-id this Being cared for a set of slaves upon whom 
 Pharaoh and the Egyptians were trampling. He said that 
 the Lord God commanded Pharaoh to let this people go.. 
 First ot all he gave signs and tokens, such as the 
 magicians were wont to give of their skill and potency, 
 claiming the power of producing these signs, not for 
 himself, but for the invisible Being who commanded 
 Pharaoh to do what was right. Then all the powers 
 of nature to which the Egyptians did homage, to which 
 the magicians taught them to do homage, began to be 
 ministers of destruction to them. One terrible visitation 
 
THE PLAGUES. 175 
 
 followed another. ' All these,' said Moses, ' have a moral 
 ' end, all come from a righteous Ruler. These powers of 
 ' nature are His. They have broken loose upon you, not 
 *• in wild disobedience, but as the regular orderly ministers 
 
 * of His purposes. They come from no capricious decree. 
 ' They obey a law. God's order has been violated by 
 ' you ; He is asserting it. Man, His chief and highest 
 
 * creature, has been put down. He is determined to raise 
 ' him up, and to show that these natural agents are his 
 
 * servants, not his masters. Again, a man has forgotten 
 
 * that he only reigns because he is made in the image of 
 
 * God. Pharaoh has presumed to reign for himself, to set 
 
 * himself up as an independent self-willed ruler. These 
 ' natural agents, these plagues of fire and darkness, are 
 
 * sent to mock his supremacy, to make him feel his 
 ' weakness, to show him that he can only be a master 
 
 * when he confesses himself to be a subject.' 
 
 I cannot conceive any sublimer witness than this for an 
 order of the universe, and for that order which had been 
 from the beginning, which was proclaimed on the Creation- 
 day, when God said, *iei us make man in our image, 
 after our likeness ; ' which was proclaimed in the Flood, in 
 the Call of Abraham, in the lessons which the Hebrew 
 prisoner gave to the king. Throughout it is a m<yi'al 
 order, a hvman order ; not interfering with the order of 
 nature, — vindicating it, interpreting it, but still rising above 
 it. The order of the famUy we found was more precious 
 and sacred than the order of seed-time and harvest ; j^ 
 God by bringing out the one into clearness brought out 
 also the other. Now we are to learn that the political 
 order, — the relation of kings to subjects, of the highest to 
 the meanest, — is more sacred than the laws of light and 
 
176 SERMON IX. 
 
 darkness, tlian those which regulate the flight ot insects cJf 
 the inundation of rivers. Yet in recognising the one, we 
 learn to recognise the other. In feeling that there is 
 a connexion and correspondency between them, — and that 
 Right and Justice which lie at the foundation of man's 
 being do at last determine the movements of all invo-^ 
 luntary creatures, — we come to feel that they are the 
 legitimate subjects of human investigation, and that it 
 is for the glory of God that we should understand thena. 
 
 The simplest and most patient study of that portion of 
 the book of Exodus, which refers to these Egyptian plagues, 
 will, I think, lead us most to this conclusion, that Moseg is 
 in these acts of his life, as in all others, the witness for 
 a divine eternal law, and the witness against every kind of 
 king-craft or priest-craft which breaks this law; or sub- 
 stitutes any devices of man's power or wit in place of it, — 
 or represents it as tolerating the oppression of any one of 
 the creatures who are the subjects of it. How a man can 
 be an assertor of such a law if he does not begin with the 
 confession and assertion of an absolute Lawgiver, — of 
 One who commands right because He is right in Himself, - 
 in His own inward essence, — I cannot understand. Moses 
 protested against the deceits and impostures of the magi- 
 cians, precisely because he protested for the living and 
 eternal Lord, If he did not go in to Pharaoh with the real 
 faith that he came from Him, he had no faith to withstand 
 them. He might disbelieve them, contradict them, ridicule 
 them; but he could not strike at the root of their falsehood, 
 — for he could not sever the truth which was latent in their* 
 falsehood from it. He could not justify the kiiowledge that 
 there was in them by a higher knowledge. He could not 
 expose the immorality of the ends to which they turned 
 
THE RIGHTEOUS GOD AND THE TYRANT. 177 
 
 tUeir power over nature hj showing that such a power had 
 a moral end. You think you escape from miracles by 
 getting rid of this story of Mosea. No ; you make every- 
 thing miraculous; you leave the world at the mercy of 
 fortune-tellers and soothsayers; you teach men to look 
 upon everything which they see as a portent, and to trust 
 to the most dishonest expounder of it. 
 
 For there will be, there must be, a mixture of some 
 observations that have been the result of experience,r-of 
 ,6ome traditional or distorted science, of some anticipations 
 of truths which may hereafter be brought to light, — in 
 every scheme of jugglery, whensoever or by whomsoever 
 produced. No man, thanks be to the God of Truth, can 
 invent or concoct a pure, naked, absolute lie. We all know 
 this now. Everybody rcpeat^i it. But then we repeat it 
 lazily, indifferently, with a shameful tolerance for lies, and a 
 shameful indifference whether the truth is ever severed from 
 them. And so it will be and must be more and more, — 
 till we lose all capacity of discerning what is genuine from 
 what is counterfeit, if we do not believe that the genuine 
 proceeds from an actual God, and the counterfeit from an 
 actual Devil; if we do not believe that God wills us to 
 know the truth, and that the Devil is seeking to make us 
 dwell in a lie, — till we become naturalized to it, and unable 
 to breathe in , any other atmosphere. I hold it then to be 
 a special token of honesty and veracity, that Moses records 
 the success of the magicians in several of their experiments. 
 We might fairly have discredited the story as partial and 
 unlikely if there had been no such admission. Certainly 
 it would ha"ve been no guide to us in walking amidst the 
 impostxu'es of later times, in confronting them, and not 
 being entangled iii them, if we had been told that all which 
 
 N 
 
178 SERMON IX. 
 
 the deceivers attempted came to nought. We do not find 
 it so. Even the most flagrant chicanery is not always 
 disappointed ; and in nine cases out of ten, fact and fraud 
 are curiously dovetailed into each other. If you wiR not 
 do homage to the one, you will not detect the other. 
 
 11. But supposing the contrast between Moses and the 
 magicians did set forth the opposition between good and 
 cvii, the true and the false, is not that distinction lost when 
 we are told that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart f Do 
 not these words distinctly describe Grod as the author of 
 something in man which is pronounced to be utterly wrong ? 
 Is He not said to have foreseen Pharaoh's sin, and not only 
 to have foreseen, but to have produced it ? After pleading 
 for the literal interpretation of Scripture, must we not take 
 refuge in some figurative, unnatural sense of this language, 
 in order to avoid the worse alternative of finding in it a 
 positive denial of God's goodness ? 
 
 I apprehend the literal meaning is here, as in other cases, 
 the safe one, provided we take all possible means to ascer- 
 tain what the letter must have signified to the mind of the 
 writer, what it would signify to us, if we interpreted it 
 according to the context of his language and thoughts, not 
 according to some theory of ours. Let us reflect then upon 
 the previous statements of the historian. ' The Lord,' he 
 said, ' had seen the affliction of His people, and heard their 
 cry, and hn£.w their sorrows' He determined to deliver 
 them. He comrnanded Pharaoh, their oppressor, to let them 
 go. What is the effect of that command upon Pharaoh ? 
 It irritates and provokes him. Is there anything very 
 sti-ange in that ? Is it not just what you would expect that 
 it would do ? But then, if it were so, I should say, in any 
 common case, He who sent the command produced the irri- 
 
POWER AND GOODNESS. 179 
 
 tation and provocation. That would be the obvious, natural 
 way of stating the fact, why must I depart from it in this 
 instance ? Is it merely because I believe the command to 
 have been a right and a good one ? "Would that be a reason, 
 if I was speaking of any human father or mother, for not 
 saying, ' The precept so jarred against the feelings of the 
 * child to whom it was given, that it provoked him to the 
 ' very utmost ?' You do not object to it then on this groimd. 
 But if not on this, upon what other ? Is it not that you 
 think God so infinitely powerful that He could have made 
 Pharaoh do just what He liked, and therefore that a fonn 
 of speech which would be appropriate in the case of an 
 ordinary parent, is not appropriate in His ? If you take 
 that gi'ound, keep to it. Do not mix it up with the other 
 ground oi goodness. It is a question oi power. And on 
 that question I join issue with you. I say that the Bible, 
 not in this passage, but throughout, exhibits God's opera- 
 tion upon the will of the creature whom He has made in 
 His image, as something quite distinct from that operation 
 by which He compels the obedience of involuntary crea- 
 tures. He treats the first always as creatures capable of 
 resisting Him ; yes, and as creatures whom no Tmre power 
 can ever bring into submission to Him. 
 
 But * hardening the heart ! ' That is so much stronger 
 a phrase than merely ' irritating and provoking.* Assuredly 
 it is. The one may merely point to a temporary excitement ; 
 the other indicates a continual process. But if you have 
 admitted the possibility and even propriety of one form of 
 language, let us see whether it does not naturally, inevit- 
 ably pass into the other. Moses says that God not only 
 sent the command to Pharaoh, but that He sent one pun- 
 ishment after another to him for resisting that command 
 
 n2 
 
ISO SEEMON IX, 
 
 It does not surprise you to "be told, that some of these pun- 
 ishments shook the heart of the king for a moment, but that 
 presently he relapsed into his previous determination, and 
 that after each new act of remorse and each new effort to 
 throw it off, he became harder and more obstinate. You 
 know enough of yourselves and of your fellow-men, to feel 
 that such a statement is reasonable, nay, that it has a great 
 air of probability. Must you not say then that the punish- 
 ment itself hardens the heart ? And if you have the same 
 strong conviction which Moses had, that the punishment was 
 the deliberate act of a Person, can you help saying that He 
 hardened the heart ? 
 
 You still do not like to say it. I feel thankful that you 
 do not. Your reluctance is a witness for that very truth 
 which Moses is here trying to teach you. He wants you 
 to feel that the will of God was altogether a good will; 
 and that therefore Pharaoh's will, — which was a bad wiU, 
 a proud self-will, — strove against it, and was lashed into 
 greater fury by meeting with that which was contrary to 
 itself. It is good to shrink from any phrase, yes, though 
 it be a phrase of Scripture, which seems to impugn the 
 absolute entire goodness of God. It is well to determine 
 that we will not suffer such a phrase, let it come with what 
 authority it will, to impugn the very ground on which we 
 give it that authority ; that we will not let God's book set 
 us at war with God Himself. But when we have adopted 
 this true and manly resolution, we shall, I believe^ find that 
 these words of Scripture are most necessary to us, — for the 
 very purpose of making us understand the awful contradic- 
 tion which there may be between the will of a man and 
 the will of his Creator ; how that contradiction may be 
 aggravated by what seemed to be means for its cure ; how 
 
GOODNESS HABDENS. 181 
 
 It may be effectually cured. The subject is a very profound 
 and awfiil one. But it is one which we must face in the 
 actual work of life, and which we therefore should not 
 refuse to face when it presents itself to us on the page of 
 Scripture. I find the startling words respecting Pharaoh 
 justifiable, because I do not find that I can describe facts 
 of every-day occurrence in ourselves, if I may not have 
 recourse to them. 
 
 Great and severe troubles come upon us. We say that 
 God has sent them. We actually think so. Friends who 
 look on, observe that God is trying us, doubtless for our 
 benefit. They complain afterwards, that we are not better 
 than we were before, not gentler, more resigned, more 
 humble. Our sufferings have only embittered us. They 
 wonder at it. God has shown us His great power. We 
 have said it was His. Should it not have changed the 
 whole course and habit of our lives ? At all events, how 
 can it have stiffened and made rigid that which it seemed 
 sent to soften ? 
 
 There is another instajice of hardening, brethren, which 
 seems more terrible than this, and yet with which we are 
 quite as familiar. We speak of prayers, sermons, sacra- 
 ments, as God's ordinances. The language is scriptural ; 
 our consciences approve it. But do not our consciences 
 and Sci'ipture agree in testifying that the appointed feasts, 
 the Sabbaths, the solemn assemblies, Lents, Passion-weeks, 
 Easter-days, may harden the hearts not of those only who 
 neglect them, but of those who observe them ? May we 
 not become duller, more inobservant of the facts of which 
 these seasons speak, less concerned about the meaning of 
 the facts year after year ? Does not the very repetition of 
 the names and sounds seem to produce this effect ? 
 
182 
 
 SEEMON IX. 
 
 This, you say, is an opposite case to that of Pharaoh. 
 He is said to have been hardened bj strange and unexpected 
 events ; I am speaking of the hardness which comes frOm 
 routine. I admit the difference. I only wish you to see 
 in how many instances, most unlike each other, the same 
 strange, tremendous truth is brought home to us; that 
 messages which we attribute to the Lord of all, — messages 
 of terror and of mercy, rare and sudden, or often repeated, 
 — may make us less disposed to obey Him, less in the state 
 of mind in which He would have us be, than we were 
 before. But if you desire an exact parallel to the story in 
 the book of Exodus, tlien consider how frequently we have 
 all been called to notice within the last thirty years, — 
 within the last three, — that thrones may be shaken to their 
 foundations, and that those who sit upon them, whether 
 they call themselves civil rulers or ecclesiastical, may come 
 out of the whirlwind which they confess that the Lord has 
 sent, not more gracious to their subjects, not more just in 
 their dealings with other nations, but in all respects more 
 pitiless, more defying, more determined to assert the domi- 
 nion as theirs which God has so solemnly by His judgments 
 declared to be His. What can we say, but that the Lord 
 hath hardened their hearts ? 
 
 But how then does it ever come to pass that the hearts 
 of any are softened ? How is it that iiidividuals, yes, and 
 that kings and nations, have come out of the fires with 
 their dross burnt out and the gold shining clear and bright? 
 Is this the Lord^s work, or is it their own ? Surely they 
 would all confess, ' It is not our own work. We were 
 ' proud, self-willed, choosing a way that was not good, 
 ' He has chastened and subdued us. Are we then to say, 
 as some delight to say, ' It is mere sovereignty. He decrees 
 
GOODNESS SOFTENS. 183 
 
 *that this man should be gracious, and that obstinate?' 
 How can we say that, if all the evidence we have con- 
 sidered, whether drawn from the words and facts of the 
 Bible, or from our own lives, has gone to prove that no 
 mere act of divine sovereignty, no mere decree, can affect 
 the heart or will of any human being ? ' For this cause' 
 it is said, ' have I raised thee up^for to shew in thee my 
 POWER.' The demonstration that the Creator was mightier 
 than the creature ; that the king must give way before the 
 King of kings, was decisive. The Will and Order of God 
 were proved to be the Will and Order which must and 
 should prevail, let what would stand in their way. Just 
 what was wanting, was the consent of the creature's will to 
 the divine Will. That, this mighty demonstration could 
 not bring about. It is the very purpose of the divine 
 historian to show us that it could not. There needs a 
 demonstration of the Love of the Almighty Lord, a recog- 
 nition of that by the spirit of the man, in order that it may 
 humble itself and repent in dust and ashes. When once it 
 perceives this Love as the essence of the divine Mind, — 
 as the spring of all its purposes, as directed towards it and 
 the whole universe, as manifested and expressed in those 
 punishments which grieve it most, — then the softening 
 begins, and not till then. Up to that moment the severe 
 lesson and the gracious one, — the famine and the plenty, 
 the locusts and the east wind which drives them away, — 
 ai-e equally lost, are equally hardening. Not but that they 
 serve, one and all, very great and glorious purposes. They 
 declare what God is doing and means to do. They are Hi a 
 proclamations of war against oppression and falsehood, 
 they are actually missiles and engines against the op- 
 Dressor and the liar. But while they are only thought to 
 
184 SEKMON IX. 
 
 proceed from a great Lord, — and not from a Father who 
 desires that we should be like to Him, that we should hate 
 oppression and lying as He hatea them, that we should be 
 ^acious and true as He is, that we should be fellow- 
 workers with Him to carry out. His plans for the extirpation 
 of evil and the establishment of righteousness and peace on 
 the earth, — they will stir up the discords of our hearts, not 
 bring out their sweeter music. 
 
 My brethren, it is very needful that we should fully 
 recognise this distinction ; it may save us from much 
 despair, both of ourselves and of our fellow-men. We 
 shall give up wondering and complaining that circum- 
 stances which are thought eminently favourable have not 
 produced the effects which we looked for from them ; we 
 shall let go our displeasure that the trying discipline has 
 not made our own characters or the characters of those we 
 care for, what we think it ought to have made them. We 
 shall learn not to worship circumstances or discipline, but 
 to seek for Him who ordains them ; to ask what He is, 
 and what He would wish to do with us. And to these 
 questions we can find an answer. If we have trusted that 
 Passion-weeks would of themselves work a reformation in 
 us^ we shall have been as sorely disappointed as if we 
 expected it from personal sorrows or national judgments. 
 But Passion-week will tell us, whence the help is to come 
 which it cannot bring. It may tell us, indeed, that the 
 mere sight of the Lamb of Grod in His outward form could 
 not soften the hearts of Jewish priests or Roman; soldiers. 
 It may tell us that the hearts of those who saw Him 
 hanging on the cross were hardened by that spectacle, so 
 that they cried, ' He saved others, himself He cannot save' 
 It may tell us that the sop at the Paschal feast^ — the last 
 
HOW WE MAY BE SOFTENED. 185 
 
 token of friendship and tenderness from the Master and 
 Lord, hardened the heart of the Son of Perdition, so that 
 Satan entered into him, and he went out a conscious 
 traitor. It tells ns that even the eleven had their hearts 
 hardened ; so that at the Last Supper they were disputing 
 which of them should be the greatest ; so that they could 
 not watch with Christ one hour during the agony ; so that 
 they all forsook Him and fled. But it tells us of a Love 
 deeper than all this mockery, betrayal, desertion ; of a Love 
 brought out through them and by means of them. It tells 
 us that in the agony and death of Chiist the will of the 
 Son yielded itself absolutely, unreservedly, to the Will of 
 the Father ; and that the whole of that perfectly loving 
 Will shone forth in the acts and sufferings of a Man. It 
 ' tells us, that with this sacrifice God is well-pleased ; that 
 this sacrifice is an eternal bond between the Creator and 
 creature, which sin and death and hell cannot break. It 
 tells that we may give up ourselves to God, and that His 
 own Spirit, — the Spirit in which Christ offered up Him- 
 self, — will come down to consume the sacrifice. It tells ns 
 that, — whatever reluctance we may feel in ourselves, or see 
 in our brethren, — there is a mysterious power which can 
 make us willing ; it tells that however hard our hearts may 
 be, — and whatever new hardness they may have contracted 
 from God's own discipline and our refus^ to understand 
 it, — tlie divine Spirit of grace and discipline can subdue 
 even all things to Himself. It teaches us to find something 
 beneath all Pharaoh's hardness and our own, — something 
 far beyond our faculties to understand or measure in the 
 words, ^ And ly if I he lifted wp^ will draw all men unte 
 
SERMON X. 
 
 THE PASSOVER 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, Easter Sunday, April 20, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Exod. xii. and xiv. 
 
 Exodus xiv. 13, 14. 
 
 And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see tJie 
 Ovation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to-day: for the Egyptia/ns 
 whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them agaim no more for ever. 
 The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold yow peace. 
 
 The feast of the Passover may liave suggested very 
 different thoughts to Israelites eating at the same table, 
 partaking together of the lamb and of the bitter herbs. 
 We may imagine two persons coming to it during the 
 period of Persian or Roman ascendancy ; both well in- 
 structed in the history of their country ; neither of them 
 indifferent to the events which they were commemo- 
 rating, — patriots, and religious men. One may have 
 fixed his mind on the destruction of the Egyptian first- 
 born, — upon the change in Pharaoh^s mind from defiance 
 to cowardice, upon his subsequent relapse, — upon the 
 overthrow of his hosts in the Red Sea. Such reflections 
 were naturally suggested by the narrative ; they could not 
 be passed over by any reader of it ; a deep moral surely 
 
THREE WAYS OF KEEPING THE FEAST. 187 
 
 lay in them. Yet one who was occupied chiefly with them 
 would be likely to contract a vehement and ferocious 
 habit of feeling ; along with some hatred of oppression 
 there would be in his mind a peculiar hatred for 
 Egyptians; he would contemplate the Lord of all ex- 
 clusively, or mainly, as an Avenger. 
 
 The other Israelite might consider that the service 
 was instituted to remind his countrymen of their own 
 exemption ; to tell them that the destroying angel passed 
 by the houses upon which he saw the mark of blood; 
 to awaken their wonder that the Red Sea should have 
 been made the instrument of their protection instead of 
 their overthrow. In such feelings you will be disposed to 
 recognise a more genial temper, one sensitive to present 
 mercies; willing to forget, in gratitude for them, any 
 darker events that were associated with them. But you 
 may reasonably suspect that a leaven, — a very large 
 leaven, — of self-congratulation and self-exaltation will 
 have defiled this keeper of the feast. He will have been 
 apt to look upon Israelites as possessing in themselves, 
 for their own sake, some claim to the divine kindness and 
 favour which other nations had not. If practical experience 
 and a recollection of the Scriptiu'e history prevented him 
 from seeing, in the people at large, any distinguishing 
 merits, he may have discovered them in certain individuals 
 for whose interest the Lord was so solicitous that He 
 tolerated the rest, or permitted the faults of the one as 
 a foil to the excellences of the other. Gradually he must 
 have become by this process of meditation more exclusive, 
 than even the man who started from a consideration of the 
 divine vengeance. It will have been more necessary for 
 him to dwell upon the curse of the surrounding people 
 
188 SERltOK X. 
 
 and of his own, ttat lie might understand the blessings 
 and security of those who- had a right to feed upon the 
 paschal Lamb. And he will have lost the sense which 
 the other had of the divine Justice, of God as a puniaher 
 of wrong-daing. The vision of a capricious being favour^ 
 ing one race or portion of a race, will have been all 
 that he could take in ; such a being will have become 
 his God, 
 
 But is it not possible to conceive a third Israelite coming 
 to Jerusalem from some distant heathen land, with a fervent 
 desire to participate in the great national solemnity and 
 thanksgiving, yet possessed by a spirit unlike either of 
 these ? In the country where he was sojourning he will 
 have heard continually, of great avenging deities ruling the 
 powers of nature, inflicting plagues and torments on men, 
 — to be conciliated and propitiated by hecatombs of oxen, 
 or by the more precious sacrifice of children. He will have 
 felt that those who confessed these deities had hold of a 
 truth ; that to deprive them of it would have been to make 
 them think that wrong was safe and would go unpunished. 
 But he will have felt also how continually wrong was safe 
 and did go unpunished through this very belief, — ^through 
 the confusion of the people as to the nature of the evils 
 which provoked the divine displeasure; through the ten- 
 dency of the priest to represent the chief of these evils as 
 offences against themselves, as omissions of some services 
 which theT/ had prescribed, and through their wiUinguess to 
 overlook or forgive positive injuries to individuals and to 
 society if such services were performed. He will have seen 
 how really the people hated the gods whom they wor- 
 shipped in this character ; how much it was the whole aim 
 and scope of their religion to provide escapes from them ; 
 
THE GODLY WAT. 189 
 
 yet how much their own minds were fashioned hj their 
 belief, — how every day the Inst of vengeance became their 
 absorbing passion, how the relaxation of that vengeance 
 must be purchased of them — just as the relaxation of the 
 divine vengeance was purchased by base hypocritical sub- 
 mission, by flattery, by presents. 
 
 Such a Jew will, moreover, have been familiar with the 
 notion of divinities who patronised particular soils and 
 races ; who for the sake of these favourites would manifest 
 themselves in the hour of battle, would put on human 
 shapes, would suspend the laws of nature ; who could be 
 invoked as helpers and protectors in every emergency. He 
 will have seen that this faith proved itseK to have a founda- 
 tion, — by the strength which it imparted to those who 
 possessed it, by the courage with which they could struggle 
 to the death for their hearths and homes, by the confidence 
 with which they could go forth into other regions to spread 
 the name of their tribe and of the God who watched over it. 
 But he will have seen that the belief in a divine protector 
 was gradually absorbed into a belief of the excellence and 
 glory of the particular people whom he protected, — into a 
 feeling that they were a law to themselves and might hold 
 down all other people by their might ; he will have seen 
 that when they reached this period of declension they will 
 have begun to lose their national unity and strength ; that 
 visible men will have seized the power which they had 
 ascribed to gods ; that those who had exulted in their 
 intellectual superiority, or in their reverence for an unseen 
 law, will have become slaves of brutal instincts, or a mortal 
 tyrant. - 
 
 A man who had contemplated the heathen divinities 
 under both these aspects, — or rather who, without any 
 
190 SERMON X. 
 
 effort of contemplation, had been forced by all the cere- 
 monial of heathen worship and the speech and practices of 
 the people around him, to feel that these were the habitual 
 prevailing impressions respecting them, — will have turned 
 to the records of his own countrj^s history with a strange 
 wonder. He will have perceived in them that which cor- 
 responded to each form of belief with which he had become 
 familiar. He would remember how each of those forms 
 had at different times held possession of his own mind ; he 
 may have been conscious of a half-righteous, half-restless 
 struggle with both. He may for a time have fancied that 
 Judaism was but a peculiar tjipe of national or tribe-reli- 
 gion. But he will have been struck with this amazing 
 difference, — that writers of the Jewish books, when they 
 speak of God as a judge and an avenger, Seem for that very 
 reason to fly TO Him ; that the one desire and object of 
 their life is not t6 be delivered from Him, but to know Him 
 better. He will have perceived that under the pressure of 
 calamity, under the consciousness of moral evil, they betook 
 themselves directly to Him, — asking no counsel of any one 
 how they might avoid the pimishment of their sin, but asking 
 Him to rid them of the sin itself. He will have perceived 
 that whenever the Lord is spoken of as caring for the 
 Israelite, it is because He is said to be a God who cares 
 for the oppressed and the feeble. He could not but see 
 that the crimes and wrong-doings of Israelites were pun- 
 ished as severely as those of other people ; nay, that the 
 history was one continual record of these punishments. 
 Thus the idea of a God of order and right will have risen 
 up before him, as a refuge from the divisions and contra- 
 dictions of the world.. To have such a God for their God^ 
 he will have regarded as the great glory of the chosen 
 
THE AVENGER AND REDEEMER. 191 
 
 people. He will have come then to the Passover, not first 
 or chiefly to celebrate the destruction of Egyptians or the 
 deliverance of Israelites, but first and chiefly to praise God 
 the perfectly righteous Being, to acknowledge Him to be 
 the Lord. And this will have been no cold, distant work, 
 undertaken without reference to his own personal feelings 
 and hopes. To find a solid lock beneath his feet instead of 
 shifting sand, a just God and a Saviour, — instead of chance, 
 or fate, or self-will, — directmg the movements of the uni- 
 verse, what a salvation, what a new Hfe to a man must this 
 be ! And this personal life, how closely must it have been 
 intertwined with his national life I None could estimate 
 the favour shown to his land, more than he who believed 
 that the God of Truth, the God of the whole earth, had 
 taught his countrymen that He was their King ; and who 
 knew what kings the people of the earth had made for 
 themselves in place of Him. On the other hand, no one 
 could less wish than he, to suppress the evidence that this 
 King had come forth crushing and trampling down what- 
 ever earthly power opposed itself to His. He would never 
 be disposed to lose sight of the Avenger in the Redeemer, 
 because he would feel that one office was as needful as the 
 other, for the establishment of a righteous and merciful 
 order on the earth. 
 
 If you have gone along with me in the previous lectures 
 on the books of Genesis and Exodus, you will not doubt, 
 I tliink, tliat the man who celebrated the Jewish festival 
 in this spirit was a true countryman of the patriarchs 
 and of Moses. We have seen throughout that the histoiy 
 is one of God's dealings with man ; that no attempt 
 whatever is made to magnify one class of men at the 
 expense of another ; that Abraham j Isaac, Jaco^j, and 
 
192 SEHMON X. 
 
 tlieir descendants are presented to ns as average specimens 
 of humanity ; often seeming to sink below the ordinary 
 level ; that they rise above it only when they acknowledge 
 God as their guide, teacher, deliverer, and as the guide, 
 teacher, deliverer of others as well as themselves ; that 
 till Moses knew ffim in that character, — till he learnt, 
 while apart from all tribe-associations, in the deserts of 
 Midian, as the son-in-law of a Midianitish priest, to know 
 the God of Abraham as the I AM, — he was not fit to be 
 a deliverer of his people; that he went in to Pharaoh 
 in the strength of His Name, to witness for God as the God 
 of truth and order, against the tricks and sleights of the 
 magicians, — as the Lord of those powers of nature to 
 which the kings and priests and people of Egypt were 
 doing homage; that the acts which hardened Pharaoh's 
 heart were acts done on the behalf of oppressed slaves,— 
 testimonies that God cared for them, and that the rulers 
 of the earth in hurting them were rebelling against Him. 
 This is the plain sense of the record, which one part of 
 it gives out as much as another, and which connects 
 the different parts of it together. One does not get it 
 by straining texts or groping for hidden meanings. It 
 lies there for the wayfaring man. The wayfaring man 
 when the Bible has been opened to him has found this 
 meaning there, whether scholars or divines have found 
 it or not. 
 
 And surely we do not lose the thread which has 
 accompanied us hitherto in the chapters which we have 
 been reading to-day. The text which I have taken 
 seems to me to embody the spirit of the whole passage : 
 * Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, 
 which He will shew to you to-day. The Lord shall fight 
 
THE LOED IS TOUR KING. 193 
 
 /or yoUy and ye shall hold your pea>ce,' It was not the 
 children of Israel who brought themselves out of Egypt. 
 They were a set of poor crouching slaves. It was not 
 Moses who brought them out. He had once aspired to 
 that honour, but shame and exile had followed his efforts. 
 After forty years he had learnt that he was not eloquent 
 neither before nor since God had spoken to him. He 
 found that the Israelites looked upon him as a disturber 
 who had increased their burdens, and that all the signs 
 and wonders he wrought before Pharaoh made him 
 more obstinate. It was the Lord who brought them 
 out. It was the Lord who slew the Egyptians and pre- 
 served them. This was what the Passover told them 
 on the night they left Egypt; what it was to tell all 
 future generations. The unseen Lord had done this 
 act of vengeance; the unseen Lord had done this act 
 of deliverance. The same Mind, the same Will, was 
 directing both events. The same purpose of righteousness, 
 the same purpose of mercy, must be traced in that 
 punishment which caused that great cry throughout the 
 land of Egypt from the king on the throne to the 
 captive in the dungeon : and in the act by which the 
 children of Israel were led with a high hand into the 
 wilderness. The Lord was fighting for them. They 
 were simply to follow where they were led, to accept 
 the deliverance which He gave them, and to remember 
 whence it came. The blood which they marked upon 
 their door-posts was set there in obedience to a command. 
 The lamb which they sacrificed was offered in obedience 
 to a command. They were to eat it with bitter herbs in 
 obedience to a command. All these were witnesses of 
 a Presence with them, of an unseen Being who was 
 
 
 
194 SERMON X. 
 
 doing tlie work while they were holding their peace. 
 The cloud that followed them by day, the fire that was 
 with them by night, were testimonies of the same 
 Presence. The Lord God was in the midst of them ; 
 the shout of an unseen King was amongst them. 
 
 In the lesson which we have read this afternoon, we 
 have this piinciple brought out into clearer manifestation. 
 People in our day have wished to get rid of what they 
 call the supernatural interference with the course of the Red 
 Sea, and to account for the phsenomenon which Moses 
 records by the fluxes and refluxes of the tide. If they 
 only mean, and I believe this feeling is latent in their 
 explanation, that God is a God of order, who does not 
 recklessly trample upon His own laws, I believe there is 
 no one who has taught them that lesson like Moses; 
 I believe it is the one which he was especially com- 
 missioned to teach. There is nothing, that I know of, 
 in th e story which interferes with the existence of 
 natural laws, nothing which would induce us to doubt 
 that the E-ed Sea is subject to laws like aU other seas. 
 What the history does call upon us to own is, that all 
 creatures, and therefore the chief creatures on this earth, 
 are subject to a moral Ruler ; to a God who governs all 
 things according to a moral law; who invites man tc 
 confess that law as the guide of his acts ; who wiL 
 proclaim it and enforce it in spite of all disobedience 
 on the part of the only being who can disobey it, or is 
 disposed to disobey it. That the story declares. And 
 if there had been no such declaration, — I believe, as 
 I said in the case of -the plagues and of the miracles 
 which confuted the magicians, — you would have no 
 natural science ; you would have merely a cowardly 
 
THE RED SEA; TERRIBLE. 195 
 
 slavery to nature, man creeping and crawling before her, 
 not daring to investigate her secrets, — ^because lie would 
 no longer regard himself as the minister and image of 
 her Creator. 
 
 I grant you that the destruction of the Egyptian first- 
 bom and of Pharaoh's host in the Eed Sea, are startling 
 and awfiil events, as the perishing of any number of human 
 beings by any hurricane, pestilence, shipwreck, must be. 
 Why do you think these more so than others? Is it 
 because you have arrived at some knowledge of the future 
 condition of these particular sufferers, which you have not 
 in the other case ? How did you arrive at it ? The Bible 
 tells you nothing about it. We merely hear that the first- 
 bom died, that the hosts of the Egyptians went down into 
 the sea. I know nothing more of them, except that they 
 are not gone out of God's sight because they are gone out 
 of mine, and that the Judge of all the earth will do right. 
 The Bible gives me that assurance. T find it a very 
 soothing and comforting one. I could not bear to look 
 upon the facts which are passing every day before our eyes, 
 if .1 had not this assurance. The belief that the Egyptians 
 were drowned as much as the Israelites were saved, * because 
 the mercy of" the Lord endureth for ever,' — can help me to 
 look upon problems which I have no skill to solve, without 
 horror, nay, with confidence and hope. Take away that 
 belief, — give us no hint, no example to guide us in con- 
 sidering the ways of God to His creatures, — and we should 
 sink back into the conclusions which we all feel to be so 
 natural to us, which all men without that help have sunk 
 into. The predominance of evil would lead us to think 
 that it is the everlasting law of the world, instead of the 
 transgression and violation of its law. 
 
 o2 
 
196 SEEMON X. 
 
 It will need but a few remarks to show how the re- 
 maining part of the book of Exodus, which we leave this 
 afternoon, and the following book of the Pentateuch, from 
 which the Church takes none of her Sunday lessons, 
 confirm and illustrate the doctrine of the text. After all 
 that has been said, you might still feel staggered at the 
 distinction between Israelites and Egyptians ; you might 
 say that it comes out much more markedly in the Mosaic 
 history than I have chosen to suppose ; that the notion of 
 referring it to some general principle in the Divine Mind 
 or Economy, — ^belongs to our century, not to the age in 
 which Moses wrote. Look then at the chapters in the 
 book of Exodus which record the joumeyings of the 
 children of Israel in the wilderness^ the laws which were 
 given them when the trumpet sounded loud and long, the 
 statutes which were laid down for their special observance 
 when they should come into the promised land. Do you 
 find that the rule which we traced through the book of 
 Genesis has deserted us ; that the descendants of the 
 twelve sons of Jacob are represented as more righteous 
 than they were; that there is any one indication in any 
 part of this book, that the Israelites as such, are considered 
 a better, purer, nobler race than the Egyptians ? If you 
 have heard the words ' stiff-necked people ' till you have 
 ceased to attach any meaning to them, or have learnt to 
 think of them merely as words of course, can you get rid 
 in like manner of all the events which the historian so 
 minutely records for the purpose of justifying these word», 
 and of humbling the pride of the Jewish people in all time 
 io come ? Are not the acts and feelings which are attri- 
 buted to the Jewish people, precisely what you would 
 expect fi*om a mixed multitude of men, recently slavey, 
 
MOSES A JEW AND A MAN. 197 
 
 journeying through a desolate and droughty country? 
 Is not their desire for the flesh-pots of Egypt, their 
 dislike of Moses, their crying for water and for food, 
 their readiness to set up a calf and worship it, their 
 dancing and feasting, exactly what you would look for? 
 But would you look to be told these things, — just these 
 things, — without any compensating record of high faith 
 and great virtues, by a native historian, by one whose 
 whole heart was Jewish? Must he not have had some- 
 thinghigher than this native instinct, this Jewish heart, some- 
 thing which transfigured them, yet without the least 
 extinguishing them ? And what was this ? Was it not 
 that he felt himself to be the historian of Grod's acts, the 
 utterer of the law which He had established, the law which 
 He has created man to obey, the law which each Israelite, 
 just as much as each Egyptian, feels something in his 
 heart disposing him to break ? And is it not against this 
 fleshly nature in man, this disposition in man to become the 
 servant of it, that the thunders of God are directed ? Is it 
 not with this He is warring in whomsoever He finds it, in 
 the race of Shem or the race of Ham, in prince or beggar ? 
 And is not this the other lesson which He is teaching us, 
 that men are, and only can be truly men, lifted above the 
 tendencies of their animal nature, when they regard them- 
 selves as called by God, as His appointed and elected 
 ministers upon earth ? Is Israel said to be a holy nation, 
 a peculiar people, a race of kings and priests to God, while 
 yet Israelites are described by such ignominious names, 
 and those names vindicated by such ignominious facts? 
 What is this, but the truth which we have been learning 
 from the beginning of the Old Testament? That God 
 ci'eated men to be members of a kind, portions of a Society ; 
 
198 SERMON X. 
 
 that as a kind, a Society, He created them to be in His own 
 image ; but that the first man, and each man since, has 
 been trying to thwart this purpose, to set himself up as 
 a creature, separate from his kind, separate from God ; and 
 that in spite of this inclination God has gone on con- 
 tinually asserting His original purpose and order, gradually 
 unfolding it to men, and by wonderftd processes of education 
 leading them to understand it, and submit to it ? 
 
 Of these processes the most wonderful was surely the 
 institution of Sacrifices, and the whole economy which is 
 connected with them. The ground of the national exist- 
 ence was laid in Sacrifice. The killing of the lamb ; the 
 blood-token upon the door, the consecration of all the first- 
 born, were the witnesses that the slaves of Pharaoh were 
 redeemed to be the people of God. The sacrifices which 
 were subsequent to the giving of the law, which presumed 
 a breach of it on the part of individuals or of the whole 
 nation, looked back to this primary institution. Sacrifice 
 was not merely the redress of an evil ; it was a return to 
 the rightful, orderly state of each man and of the people. 
 The setting up of a self-will is the disturbance of the 
 order ; the sacrifice or giving up of the will is the re- 
 storation of it. Therefore, the sacrifices in the book of 
 Leviticus are not like the heathen sacrifices, — schemes to 
 bring about a change in the Divine Mind. They proceed 
 just as much as the law proceeds from that Mind. God 
 declares what they are, and how and why they should be 
 offered. God appoints the persons who shall present them. 
 The priest belongs to a tribe which is chosen to represent 
 the first-born of the nation ; to represent, in fact, the whole 
 nation. It is an order which declares the whole people to 
 be called, redeemed, sanctified people. It testifies of Qod*a 
 
THE SACRIFICE. 199 
 
 perpetual presence with the nation. It testifies that He is 
 the healer and restorer of the bodies as well as the spirits 
 of His people. It testifies that His highest operations are 
 upon the wills of men ; that He seeks to conform them to 
 His perfectly good and gracious Will; that the highest 
 blessedness and fireedom of a man or a nation consists in 
 this conformity. 
 
 I may have more to say on the subject of the priest- 
 hood, if I am permitted to speak to you on the lesson for 
 next Sunday morning, which, though taken jfrom the book 
 of Numbers, bears directly upon that of Leviticus. I have 
 alluded to it this afternoon partly because it is so intimately 
 connected with the doctrine of Sacrifice, and because that 
 doctrine cannot be separated fi:om the Passover; partly 
 because this office rightly understood strikingly illustrates 
 my text. For the priest was in effect to say to the Jew 
 who brought the sacrifice to the door of the tabernacle of 
 the congregation, Tlie Lord shall fight for you, and you 
 shall hold your peace, ' You are not come to purchase 
 ' forgiveness of your sin, or deliverance from your sins by 
 ' acts or efforts of yours. Submit yourselves to God, and 
 ' He will work in you forgiveness and deliverance.' And 
 partly I have touched upon this topic because it helps us 
 in tracing the passage from the Jewish Passover and the 
 overthrow of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, to the Christian 
 Passover and all which it implies, assures us of, and 
 foretells. 
 
 A Jew who ate the Paschal Lamb mainly that he might 
 commemorate the destruction of the Egyptian, or the favour 
 shown to Israelites, may not have been absolutely tied to 
 the recollection of those events. He may have hoped that 
 
200 SERMON X. 
 
 the same power which, slew one enemy of the nation might 
 slay another; that Persians, Syrians, or Eiomans, might 
 feel the terrors of His vengeance. Yet even this hope 
 must have been feehle; for analogies, though great helps 
 to the intellect, are but poor supports to the heart when 
 crushed by actual miseries. He who was mainly absorbed 
 in thanksgiving that one people had been chosen to receive 
 a mercy which had been denied to others, may have often 
 tried to assure himself that the continuance of the race was 
 a witness that promises given to one generation would be 
 fulfilled to another. But how often will the thought have 
 intruded itself to damp all his expectations ; ' To whom were 
 ' the promises made ? Can they have been intended for 
 ' the wretched godless people I see about me who bear the 
 
 * name of Israelites ? Is there any sign that they are 
 " inheriting blessings, the nature of which they do not 
 ' understand? Must there not be an election within the 
 
 * election ? And is it not a great question, — a question of 
 ' deepest doubt and anxiety, — whether I belong to that 
 
 election, and therefore whether I have any warrant for 
 ' rejoicing in this feast at all?' But how will it have been 
 with him who counted it his chief blessedness to see God 
 asserting his order through Egyptians and Israelites, and 
 in despite of the unbelief and rebellion of both ? Will it 
 have been a great effort of analogical reasoning with him 
 to conclude, that He who is and was and is to come would 
 go on asserting His order till He had put down every 
 enemy of it, till He had completely made manifest His 
 own character and purpose? As he asked himself what 
 were the enemies of God's order, what powers had striven 
 to set it aside, would not the history of Israelites and 
 
VICTORY AND DELIVERANCE. 201 
 
 Egyptians give the answer ; ' The worship of visible things, 
 ' Sensuality, Self-will, Selfishness?' Would he not think 
 that it was God's intention to wage perpetual war with 
 these till He had proved whether they or He were mightier ? 
 Must he not have seen again that there were actual 
 physical curses lying side by side with these, which were 
 interfering likewise with the order of human society, and 
 therefore with the constitution of God ? Would not Death, 
 the breaker-lip of family and national fellowship, present 
 itself to him as the great intruder into Creation, which 
 must be crushed before it could Vindicate its true and 
 original meaning? Would he not thus be drawn on to 
 understand, — his own personal experience and miseries at 
 once presenting the riddle and make him welcome the 
 solution, — that the God, the living God, of whose Kingdom 
 from age to age the Passover bore testimony, would not 
 cease His work in the world till all those evils which belong 
 to man as mati, to Egyptians and Israelites equally, had 
 been overcome by a victory and deliverance, as signal and 
 as actual as that which took place when the oppressed 
 people came out of the house of bondage, and when their 
 persecutors sank to be seen no more for ever? And if he 
 tried to think of the method of such a deliverance, though his 
 thoughts may often have been baffled, yet some great hints 
 which could not be mistaken will have discovered them* 
 selves to his faith and his reason, as he contemplated the 
 troubles of man and the design of God by the light which 
 God himself had thrown upon them. God must be the 
 deliverer, in the least case as in the greatest. Man must be 
 the instrument of deliverance. It must be a deliverance 
 wrought by the First-bom of many brethren f(yr His 
 
202 SERMON X. 
 
 brethren ; by a Higb Priest as the representative of a 
 Society. It mnst be a deliverance wronght by one parti- 
 cipating in the evils of those whose chains he broke. It 
 must come through a sacrifice. That sacrifice must be a 
 ■Voluntary one. It could, in no sense, be a sacrifice to over- 
 come or defeat the will of the Creator. It must be a perfect 
 surrender to His Will, one which should manifest it fully, 
 and in perfect absolute reconciliation with the Will of 
 Man. 
 
 Thus I conceive, brethren, did God educate His Jewish 
 servants in no forced or unnatural way, — but by a most 
 regular and gradual discipline, to feel that an Easter Day 
 must lie beneath a Paschal feast; and that men of all 
 kindreds and tribes might be called to celebrate a complete 
 conquest and a universal Redemption. And if it has been 
 given to us, brethren, to possess that which they antici- 
 pated, — the enjoyment of our possession must depend 
 wholly upon the spirit in which we have claimed it. If 
 we have kept a Passover for ourselves, merely seeking in 
 it some pledge or means of our security, if we have thought 
 of it as a sentence of exclusion upon other men, — we shall 
 have gone empty away; the good which we have sought 
 we shall have missed ; we shall not have really partaken of 
 the Paschal Lamb, because we shall not have eaten it with 
 the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. But if we 
 have desired to give Grod thanks for His great glory ; if, 
 leaving questions about ourselves or other men to Him who 
 alone can take care of us or them, we have blessed Him 
 that He has put down His enemies. Sin, Death, Hell, 
 showing that when they were mightiest He was mightier ; 
 that He has perfectly manifested His Love in His perfect 
 
THE FEAST IS NOT OUHS. 203 
 
 Image, showing that in Him there is Light and no darkness 
 at all; that He has established a complete reconciliation 
 with His creatures ; then He will have been indeed with 
 us, — teaching us to hold our peace, and to see the salvation 
 which He has won for us, — enabling us to receive every 
 Easter, though it should come to us amidst ever so many 
 personal or general sorrows, as the sure pledge to each 
 man and to the whole earth of Resurrection and Life 
 
SERMON XL 
 
 THE REBELLION OF KORAH. 
 
 /Lincoln's Inn, First Sunday after Easter. — April 27, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Numbers xvi. and xxii. 
 
 Numbers xvi. 3. 
 
 And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Am^on, 
 and said unto thevfij Ye take too much upon yoUf seehig all the congrega- 
 tion are holy, every one of them, a/nd the Lord is among tJiem: wherefore 
 then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord ? 
 
 As the story of Balaam, wliicli we liave begun this 
 afternoon, is continued in the lessons for nest Sunday, 
 I propose to reserve the whole of it for that day. The 
 chapter we read this morning, which records the in- 
 surrection of Korah and his company, and their punish- 
 ment, will furnish ample material for the present sermon. 
 
 It has furnished the materials for many sermons, and 
 for at least as m any arguments against the Jewish 
 economy and the books which make it known to us. 
 Divines have taken Korah's offence as the type of all 
 intrusions on the part of ordinary people into the office 
 of the priesthood ; they have uttered mysterious hints as 
 to the probability that similar crimes would lead to similar 
 results in this world or the next. Objectors have dis- 
 
koeah: a levite. 205 
 
 covered clear evidence in this narrative, that the books 
 of Moses had a sacerdotal origin, and that the whole 
 scheme of the Jewish commonwealth was contrived for 
 sacerdotal purposes. ' What was the crime imputed to 
 ' Korah,' they have asked, ' but the crime which has been 
 ' laid to the supporters of popular freedom, and the 
 ' protestants against exclusive privileges, in all ages ? 
 ' What was the miracle of so many men going down 
 
 * alive into the pit, but the pattern of all after inventions 
 
 * to crush the too rash assertors of human rights by 
 
 * a pretended divine intervention?* 
 
 There is one observation, very obvious to any thoughtful 
 reader of this story, which has, I think, been overlooked 
 both by those who have quoted it as an authority, and 
 those who have denounced it as an imposture. Dathan 
 and Abiram were sons of Eeuben ; but Korah, the 
 principal person in the story, the one whose rebellion 
 is first spoken of, was a son of Levi. He belonged to 
 the tribe which was set apart for the service of the 
 Tabernacle. Moses says to him and his company, in 
 answer to the complaint in my text, ' Ye take too much 
 on you^ ye SONS OF Levi.' Whatever their sin was, then, 
 it cannot be set down as first of all an instance of popular 
 presumption. It is not, as we should say in modem 
 language, the case of laymen complaining of the separation 
 or consecration of a particular order. It is the case of 
 certain members of that order claiming an office, irom 
 which they supposed themselves unfairly excluded, affirming 
 that persons belonging to their own class had usurped 
 powers which did not belong to them. It is quite true 
 that these Levites joined with members of another tribe, 
 and that they proclaimed ' ALL the congregation of ike Lord 
 
206 SERMON XI. 
 
 to he Jiolyj every one of them^ and the Lord to he among 
 ihem^ I do not wisli to overlook that point in tte case 
 at all. I shall often have occasion to refer to it. But 
 if those who put forth this argument were themselves 
 members of the consecrated tribe, — and if the story was, 
 as it notoriously and professedly was, told as a warning 
 to after times, it must have been meant to point out 
 temptations to which that tribe would be peculiarly liable. 
 I apprehend then that a divine who comments upon this 
 narrative, cannot deduce from it any moral which shall be 
 applicable to his lay hearers, till he has allowed it to 
 bear with the force of its terrors upon himself; he is bound 
 first to ask, *0f what evil to which my position and 
 ' circumstances expose me does it teach me to beware?' 
 
 I do not expect this consideration will have any im- 
 mediate weight upon those, who have been long possessed 
 by the notion that the Old Testament history is an in- 
 vention of priests. They will at once parry it by the 
 remarks, ^ that the tribe of Levi, no doubt, derived its main 
 ' importance in the eyes of the writer from its containing 
 
 * within it the family of Aaron ; that if the rest of the 
 ' tribe is in any degree depressed by this record, it is for 
 
 * the sake of bringing out this family in greater glory ; 
 ' that the secret of priestly power lies in the notion that 
 ' the priest alone may offer sacrifices ; that the terrible 
 
 * example which was made of Levites who had ventured to 
 assume this function, was the most effectual protection 
 
 ' that can be conceived for the sanctity of the priestly 
 ' caste ; that it must have derived great additional awful- 
 ' ness from the fact, that the popular champions were 
 ' themselves connected by birth with that caste.' 
 
 I'here are two or three statements mixed together here, 
 
SCRIPTURE TREATMENT OF AARON. 207 
 
 whicli it is of some importance we sliOTild separate. First, 
 it is desirable to ascertain whether Aaron, as a person, 
 is magnified in these books, and whether any inherent 
 sanctity is supposed to dwell in his family. K we adopt 
 the usual belief respecting^ the author of these books, he 
 had every personal and hereditary temptation to this 
 course. Those who do not hold them to have been 
 written by Moses will suppose them to have proceeded 
 from the members of some sacerdotal college in a later 
 time. They will have had all reasons for attributing 
 heroical and mystical qualities to their first founder. 
 What then do we hear of him ? At first he is merely the 
 spokesman of Moses, the person who exhibits the signs 
 which show that he has come with a true message. Next 
 we find him permitted to go up into the mountain for 
 a little while, but speedily coming down while Moses 
 tarried in communion with the Lord God of Israel forty 
 days and forty nights. In his absence Aaron does indeed 
 assume the guidance of the people, or rather they put him 
 at their head. For what purpose? That he may make 
 a golden calf, and lead the orgies by which the people 
 expressed their reverence for it. The next fact in his 
 personal history is recorded in the twelfth chapter of this 
 book in these words : ^ And Miriara and Aaron spake 
 against Moses hecause of the Ethiopian woman whom he had 
 married* And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoTcen only 
 hy Moses, hath He not spolcen also hy itsf. . , , And the 
 anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and He 
 departed. And the cloud departed from off the tabemacUj 
 and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow, and 
 Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold she was l^ous^ 
 These axe the main facts recorded concerning Aaron, 
 
208 SEKMON XI, 
 
 besides those "wMch refer to his coiiseca:ation as a priest, 
 and to the different offices which were assigned him in that 
 character. Would they not seem rather to warrant an 
 opposite inference, to that which has been deduced from 
 them ? Might they not be the basis for a plausible theory, 
 which it would be worth the while of any candidate for 
 neological honours to elaborate, that the legislator was, for 
 the sake of his own dignity, undervaluing his priestly 
 brother, — exhibiting his weaknesses with painful accuracy, 
 showing what a tendency there was in him, not only before 
 but after he had received his consecration, to claim powers 
 for himself which had not been conceded to him ? 
 
 There would be a difficulty in making out this charge of 
 personal ambition against Moses, because so little is done 
 to make him appear an illustrious hero in any part of the 
 narrative; because his weakness, Ms wrath, Ms desire to 
 abandon his work, are brought out as strongly as the 
 errors of his brother ; because he is said to have drawn 
 upon himself the heavy sentence of exclusion from the 
 promised land by counting it a hardship that he must 
 strike a rock for a rebellious people. It would be difficulty 
 too, to explain, upon this hypothesis, why he should have 
 established his brother in an office which was so soon 
 .found to be a rival to his own and a check upon it. But 
 to say that the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, 
 are first of ^k books of Laws, is to say what all persons, 
 Jews and Christiians, who have considered the subject, have 
 said. These books clearly contain the history of ^ the 
 organization of a .people. One part of that organization 
 consisted in the appointment pf the priest and the assign- 
 ment of his offices. It follows from this very statement, 
 that this order could not be the paramount one in the 
 
ALL THE TRIBE6, HOLY. 209 
 
 Jewish commonwealth. It was, as an otdcr^ suhject \o 
 the law ; the priest, as a ^^erson, was subject to the law- 
 giver as a person. If you say that a whole book is given 
 up to the laws respecting the priestliood, — and that this is 
 a proof how great the dignity of the fanction was, — you 
 are certainly right But remember at the same time that 
 these laws were, — by their very minuteness and accm'acy, — 
 restraints upon the discretion and arbitrary power of tlie 
 priest. He was shackled on the right hand and on the 
 left, if laws are shackles ; he could not impose his own 
 fancies or decrees upon the people except by violating the 
 very title-deed upon which he held his authority ; he was 
 reminded in everything he did that he was a servant of the 
 commonwealth ; that he had certain very great and re- 
 markable functions to discharge, but that he must by no 
 means overstep the limits of those functions ; that tlie 
 sacredness of them did not in any wise lessen the strength 
 of this obligation, but increased it. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the tribe" of Levi was not more 
 appointed or called by God, than the tribe of Judah or 
 Reuben. The family of Aaron was not more called by 
 God than any Israelitish family. Each tribe was to 
 occupy its own place in the host, and to look upon that 
 as the place appointed it by God. Each tribe was to 
 subdue and till a certain portion of the promised land, 
 and to look upon that portion as assigned to it by God, 
 Each family had some work to do which God had fixed 
 for it, and not for any other. Each person had some 
 work to do which God had ordained for him, and not 
 for any other man. And the duties and occupations of 
 these tribes, families, persons, having all this divine 
 origin, were all holy; it was wicked to think of them 
 
 p 
 
210 SERMON XI. 
 
 as auytliing else. But it would have been a most minute 
 and mischievous legislation which attempted to define 
 the tasks that should be performed by each family or 
 person. The Mosaic legislation attempted nothing o£ 
 the kind ; it did what was much better and more eiFectual ; 
 it affirmed a principle of universal and individual appli- 
 cation; it established an order which embodied that 
 principle, and showed how all departures from it must 
 necessarily lead to confusion ; it enforced its own decrees 
 against that order more solemnly, more tremendously, 
 than against any other part of the society, — that it might 
 bear a testimony as much by its transgressions as by its 
 obedience, to the eternal truth upon which its existence 
 rested. 
 
 1 have called the priesthood an Order. Many people 
 delight to call it a Caste. Both phrases are legitimate, 
 but they are ^ not interchangeable. They have a different, 
 I had nearly said an opposite, sense ; though the same 
 persons may deserve first one name and then the other. 
 They do not differ in this, that one is, and the other is 
 ijot, hereditaty. That is an accident, which may belong 
 to an order of priests, or may be wanting in a caste ot 
 priests. But an order sinks into a caste when it claims 
 a position for itself, and supposes that it has m itself 
 some power of transmitting its privileges, whether by 
 natural birth or by any other kind of succession. A caste 
 r^e|_ into an order when it acknowledges God as the 
 only source of its gifts, — God as the present bestower of 
 them, God as the ground of its continuance from 
 generation to generation, God as able to withdraw its 
 privileges at any moment, — God as certain to withdraw 
 them if it acts for its own sake, and not as the instrument 
 
CASTES AND ORDERS. 211 
 
 oi carrying out the purposes of His government. Every 
 caste of priests uses phrases, preserves ceremonies, claims 
 rights, which imply these maxims ; for every caste either 
 has been an order, or carries in itself the possibility 
 of becoming one. But there are always clear signs when 
 it has lost the practical belief of these maxims. Then it 
 feels that its gi-eat business is to struggle for dominion, to 
 treat all other portions of the commonwealth as secular; 
 tlien it becomes insolent, ambitious, crafty ; then the 
 conflict which it has commenced against other orders is 
 repeated within itself. One part of its officers grasps 
 at the duties of another ; strife and revelry become its 
 distinguishing characteristics; these it fosters in its own 
 bosom, these it communicates to the whole body-politic, 
 — these obtain for it the fear of those whom it tries to 
 rule while they are weak, their hatred when they become 
 strong. 
 
 The Mosaic history is a continual witness of the 
 tendency which there was in the divinely-appointed order 
 to become a caste ; a perpetual record of the ways in 
 which God was counter-working that tendency. The 
 tabernacle said that He was there, in the midst of the 
 people, the I Am, the God of truth. Woe to the man 
 who dared to practise his tricks and deceptions, his 
 schemes for the advancement of himself or his class, in 
 that Presence ! The Aaronic family was appointed to offer 
 the sacrifices ; it was to show that God Himself was the 
 author of the sacrifices. Woe to it if it tried to persuade 
 the people that it was the inventor of them, or could make 
 them more acceptable ! It testified of the holiness of the 
 nation. Woe to it if -it desired to set up its own holiness 
 against that of the nation ! 
 
 p2 
 
212 SERMON 2?I. 
 
 But was not tliis the very thing against which Korah 
 and his company were protesting? Did not they say, 
 ' All the Lord's people are holy, every one of them, and 
 'the Lord is among them'? Did not. they put forth 
 this as their -very reason for objecting to the sacrificial 
 privileges of Aaron and his family? Unquestionably. 
 They were the assertors of a popular maxim. But 
 unhappily that popular maxim, — like many others, 
 would have been destructive of the people, — would have 
 been fatal to their moral, political, spiritual freedom. 
 Aaron had carried out the wishes- of the multitude by 
 setting up an idol. It has beeu a temptation, one of the 
 leading temptations of priests in all days, to do this. 
 They submit to be spokesmen of popular prejudices, the 
 agents of popular sensuality; so they become deniers 
 of the invisible God, so they become the tyrants of those 
 of whom they were first the tools, Korah would have 
 asserted for himself, and for the other families of the tribe 
 of Levi, the privilege and right of offering sacrifices. 
 Dathan and Abiram would have claimed that privilege 
 and right for all the tribes. There was a lie in the words. 
 They at once introduced the principle, of which sacrifice 
 is the renunciation, the principle against which the family 
 of Aaron was the permanent protest. 
 
 We may deny the ground upon which Jewish society 
 was constituted ; we may say that it was a mere fiction to 
 speak of God as a King, — of Him as the distributer of 
 human offices, of Him as making them mutually dependent 
 and serviceable for the good of the whole. We may say 
 manfully, * There can be no other principle than that of 
 
 * mutual strife and rivalry. Men must fight to get the 
 
 * best things for themselves, must regard all works and 
 
PUNISHMENT OF THE REBELLION. 213 
 
 * duties as prizes to be scrambled for/ But if we admir 
 the maxim which we have traced through the books of 
 Scripture at all, we must not complain because it is 
 consistently carried out ; because all men are treated as 
 servants and functionaries of God ; because those who are 
 set to make known His government and the method of it 
 to others, are subject to the severest penalty when they 
 become assertors of a competitive, self-seeking principle 
 in their own persons. 
 
 Of that penalty I must now say a few words. I have 
 maintained in former sermons that the Bible is to be 
 regarded (all believers in its authority do professedly 
 regard it) as a revelation of laws, not of anomalies. It 
 becomes a guide and an example to us because it unfolds 
 to us imvaried and eternal principles of the divine govern- 
 ment, — not because it gives us a set of instances in which 
 those principles were departed from. I hold that this 
 signal judgment upon Korah and his company must be 
 looked upon in the same light, as all the passages of the 
 history which we have considered hitherto. A new society 
 is in process of organization by the Creator and Ruler of 
 the world; a society which is in some way or other to 
 make men understand better their own position and their 
 relation to Him. It answers that purpose if it enables us 
 to judge of some of the startling events which happen in a 
 complicated state of society, by the hints and precedents 
 of this simple one. We read how in the last century the 
 most remarkable thinkers on the continent of Europe, 
 Voltaii'e and Rousseau for instance, speculated and debated 
 about the causes of the earthquake at Lisbon, — whether it 
 could or could not be reconciled with a theory of Optim- 
 ism ; how a German, who was to prove as celebrated as 
 
214 SERMON XT. 
 
 eitlier of them,* attributed a revolution in his boyish 
 feelings, which affected all his life afterwards, to hia 
 reflections on the moral or providential causes of this 
 event. Men want some explanation of this kind then, 
 something besides the interpretation of the physical pheno- 
 menon. If they believe the Bible ever so little, they will 
 seek for it, and may be led in their search to very uncharit- 
 able as well as very unsatisfactory conclusions. Those who 
 receive the Bible can tell no more about the condition of 
 particular persons who were the subjects of that visitation, 
 than these French or German, these full-grown or childish, 
 speculators. They care much less to know, because Christ 
 has taken off the sharp edge of such inquiries by His words 
 respecting those on whom the tower of Siloam fell, — and 
 because they can calmly leave them in His hands, under 
 whose guidance we all are, and whom we know to be 
 righteous. But it is surely some help and comfort to 
 believe that whenever a natural calamity of this kind 
 occurs, — at least whenever men are the victims of it, there 
 is a moral derangement which needs to be removed, and 
 which God is seeking to remove. If the earthquake of 
 Lisbon swept away hundreds and thousands, of whom we 
 cannot pronounce that they were worse than we are, — at 
 least we may hear in it a voice denouncing those same 
 sins which brought death upon Korah and his company ; 
 the ambition and falsehood of priests leading to the un- 
 belief, sensuality, godlessness of a people. It was a hand- 
 writing on the wall addressed to all Europe. The attempts 
 of the seers and soothsayers of the age to decypher it, 
 showed that they felt it to be so. And when that natural 
 
 • See Goethe's Dichtung imd Wahrheit, Book I. The earbhriuakfl 
 
 happened in his sixth year. 
 
L JNSTAN DID NOT IMITATP MOSES. 215 
 
 admonition was disregarded, there came in due time a 
 more fearful moral earthquake, of which not one but all 
 kingdoms felt the shock, — itself a more solemn and terrihle 
 declaration of what must come to pass when the members 
 of the sacred order seek power, wealth, credit, instead of 
 acting as God's ministers ; how the ruin which they have 
 brought upon a land falls most fearfully and heavily upon 
 themselves. 
 
 Such lessons as these, I believe, lie in the story of Korah, 
 and show why the omission of it would have been a grievous 
 loss to mankind. When it is compared with those acts of 
 vengeance which are ascribed to Dunstan and other miracle- 
 workers in the Middle Ages, — sfcts for the assertion of their 
 own power, for the purpose of proving that the priest had 
 the natiural and supernatural world at his beck, and that 
 he could break through the laws of both for the sake of 
 extorting wonder and obedience from men, — I can only 
 ask that the two records may be a little more carefully 
 examined, in order to ascertain whether the resemblance 
 between them is not superficial and the opposition radical ; 
 whether it was not the special object of the one to vindi- 
 cate the divine order which the other was subverting; 
 whether the punishment of Korah was not carrying its 
 most direct message to the consciences of those who held 
 themselves to be merely the privileged executors of the 
 divine vengeance upon laymen. I have taken this view of 
 the subject throughout, desiring that we who minister in 
 holy things should remember of what infinite confusion we 
 may be the cause, through our pride and self-exaltation, 
 through our eager assertion of rights and powers, when our 
 business is to confess responsibilities ; through our fancy 
 that we are doing God service by lifting up ourselves above 
 
216 SERMON XI. 
 
 civil rulers, by co;aiplajniiig of our ecclesiastical superiors, 
 by feyerish and restless efforts tp get a position for our- 
 selves -wliich God li^S not given us, wbile we are carelessly 
 throwing aside the inighty moral and spiritual influence 
 which He has given us, — grasping at shadows, letting go 
 what is substantial, wishing to have our powers acknow- 
 ledged, not compelling our people to acknowledge them by 
 exerting them on their behalf. I am afraid this restless 
 habit of mind exists in many Levites of this day, who are 
 very loud in their denunciations of Korah, and very quick 
 in finding parallels for him. 
 
 But I dp npt wish to forget that Dathan and Abiram were 
 joined in rebellipn with !Sorah ; that the factioiig ambitious 
 mem])er pf tl^^ ^apred tribe awakened a like factious 
 ambitious spirit in tlie other tribes. The story is meant 
 for you as well as for us. If what I have said is truQ, 
 it could not 3<pply tp us ]inless it applied tp you. W^ 
 are sent into the woxl^ in this day, as the tribe of Levi wa3 
 sent into the FQ^ld under the old dispensatioii, to bear 
 witness fpv the, cpi?.3ecration and holiness of God'9 entirp 
 family, "V^^e become gttUty, as they did, wh§n by o^r 
 words or our acts "vye lead you to think that you have not 
 received this consecration; that you are not set apart to 
 God ; tl^at ypu and yo^r children and your occupations are 
 not l;^oly in His sigjit, Our sin m all tiines has been not 
 that we have proplaim^^ top loudly ^nd too practically pur 
 calling by God; it has been — that with these words o?i 
 our lips, wp have acted as if we had soiae power of our 
 own, spn^e inherent sanctity, some right to put ourselves in 
 His place. Aa4 you haye bejieved us all too. readily. In 
 old times men thought the priest was himself a God, — 
 because they did not reaUy confess God to be with them ; 
 
UNBELIEF OP SUPERSTITION. 217 
 
 in later times they have lost their reverence for the man, 
 and have justified their contempt of him hj saying that he 
 was practising a fiction "when he represented God as 
 really taking part in the afiairs of the world. The unbelief 
 of the modem time was latent in the superstition of the 
 earlier ; and has worked itself out as it was certain to do. 
 But it is working out and will work out a new superstition ; 
 you know it, you tremble at it, — you feel that the weapons 
 with which you are fighting it are very ineffectual, and 
 lose their edge the moment they come into contact with it. 
 You say that the priest ought to do homage to the laws ot 
 the country in which he dwells; and you utter a great 
 truth. But you find that he appeals to some other law 
 higher than yours, and that men recognise the appeal. 
 You then try to persuade him and them, that they are 
 going back to the maxims of an obsolete economy ; that 
 £^11 notions of priestly dignity are merely Judaical. The 
 answer is ready, * No, these notions are emphatically 
 ' Christian. The Jewish priest was circumscribed by local 
 ' and national limits ; he was therefore amenable to a local 
 
 * and national law ; Christ has broken down these limits ; 
 
 * now the priest can only pay homage to a universal law ; 
 
 * must assert his place in a imiversal society.^ Another 
 jvnswer is given to you which you can as little trifle with : 
 
 * Sacrifice,' it is said, * is not less precious to the Christian 
 ' than to the Jew ; it is infinitely more precious ! Every- 
 
 * thing in the new economy is based upon sacrifice. And 
 
 * that sacrifice must be daily, must be habitual. And that 
 
 * sacrifice must connect earth with heaven. There must be 
 
 * some persons to signify the reality of that connexion, 
 ' some to show that we are not less a society than those 
 
 * were who lived before Christ died to make all one. Would 
 
!218 SERMON XL 
 
 * you depose the living witnesses that such a connexion 
 ' and such a society exists ? ' You must meet the demand's 
 of this kind, for they stir the hearts of hundreds and 
 thousands ; to stifle them or crush them is impossihle. It 
 is certain that they are breeding discontent in families, 
 insubordination in nations ; they will combine with elements 
 of discontent and insubordination from sources the most 
 apparently unlike themselves. 
 
 Brethren, it is not by talking against Judaical notions 
 that you will escape these great practical dangers. It is 
 much more by looking manfully into Jewish history, and 
 seeing wliether it does not contain truths and principles 
 which, — amidst all changes of circumstances, in the latest 
 stage of growth and development as well as in the earliest, 
 — ^belong to human beings. It tells us that God is the 
 King of the Nation ; the real ground of its orders, of its 
 institutions, — the real teacher of its wise men, — the real 
 author and director of all events that befall it. I hold that 
 whatever else has been changed, that fundamental truth 
 remains; I could not account for any alterations in the 
 outward world, or they would drive me to despair, if I did 
 not believe it. What follows as to the duty of the priest? 
 He comes into a nation. He says he is a witness for some- 
 thing else than mere civil or local or secular government. 
 By all means let him be such a witness. And as a proof 
 that he is, let him do homage- to the order which the 
 Eternal Lord has established in a land ; let him show that 
 he does not look upon that as merely civil or secular or 
 earthly ; let him make the people who are living under it 
 see that, whatever they think, he thinks, and is ready at all 
 ' times to declare, that their society is no work of human 
 hands, no result of vulgar conventions. Let him say 
 
THE DUTY OF PRIESTS. 219 
 
 further, that God being the author and lawgiver of human 
 society, all its disorders and anomalies are contrary to His 
 will ; and that statesmen as well as churchmen, instead of 
 tolerating and excusing them, ought to he labouring day 
 and night for the removal of them, — assured that if they do 
 not, He will bear the most awful protest against the acts of 
 individual men or official men, of civilians or ecclesiastics, 
 against all diseases of long growth or modem introduction, 
 which affect the well-being of His subjects. A man who 
 takes this course may be very disagreeable to the high or 
 the low wrong-doers of a land ; he must lay his account 
 with being so. But he will not and cannot be a disturber 
 of the family or national order of a country ; he must be 
 bringing the mightiest help to the preservation of both. 
 For instead of looking upon the universal order of the 
 Church as interfering with either of these, he must believe 
 that it stands upon the same divine foundation ; that the 
 same Lord who is the Chief Bishop of the universal family, 
 and has endowed it with His Spirit, has called on each 
 nation to be a witness in its own place, within its own 
 limitations, of His Divine authority and Kingship, But 
 since it is the tendency of a mere national organization to 
 become exclusive, — to assert the dignity of birth or the 
 sacredness of property above the dignity and sacredness of 
 humanity, — the business of the priest in each land will 
 be especially to protect it against this danger ; continually 
 to proclaim in the ears of kings, princes, nobles, rich men, 
 that the glory which they share with the peasant is their 
 highest glory ; to tell them that if they set above this any 
 treasures outward or inward, gifts of money or rank oi 
 intellect, — if they do not reckon these merely as lent them 
 for the sake of the whole land, — they will bring upon them- 
 
220 SEEMON XI. 
 
 selves and upon tkeir country swift destmction. The priest 
 who presents Christ's finished sacrifice for the whole human 
 race, — for rich and poor, high and low, —is entrusted above 
 all men with this commission. Every subordinate minister 
 of the tabernacle is in his position and degree entrusted 
 with it; and therefore it must be for the ruin of both, — they 
 must expect to go down alive into a deeper pit than that 
 which received Korah and his company,— if they show that 
 wealth, honours, distinctions of any kind, are the great 
 objects of their search, that they are fighting for higher 
 places either in man's household or God's ; not remembering 
 that ' he who exalteth hvmself shall be abased, and he who 
 humhleth himself shall be exalted,^ 
 
 May the great High Priest, — who came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a 
 ransom for many, — plead for us within the veil, that we 
 may be delivered from the consequences of our contentions 
 and rivalry ; that ecclesiastics of all orders, that civil rulers 
 and people, may understand their several functions, their 
 common consecration by Him and to Him ; that so we 
 may be all one in Him,, a family of kings and priests X6 
 His and our irather. 
 
SERMON XIL 
 
 THE PROPHECY OF BALAAM. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, Second Sunday after Easter, May 4, 1851.) 
 LesBons for the day, Numbers xxiii. xxiv. and xxv. 
 
 Numbers xxrn. 11, 12. 
 
 And Salak said unto Balaam, What hast thou done tmto mel I took thee 
 to curse mme enemies f andj beJioldf thou hast blessed them altogether. And 
 he amswered amd said. Must I not taJx heed to speaJc thai which tlie Loj'd 
 luUh put tn my motbth f 
 
 There are many particulars in this story of Balaam 
 which remind us of the prophets who are spoken of in the 
 Homeric poems and in the tragedies of Greece, He was 
 summoned by Balak in the full faith that whomsoever he 
 cursed was cursed, and whomsoever he blessed was blessed. 
 He was evidently supposed to have that knowledge of 
 things past, present, and future, which is ascribed to 
 Calchas, and which gave him his high repute with the 
 Grecian fleet. He is appealed to, just as that seer was 
 appealed to when a pestilence was raging in the host, or 
 when the ships were weather-bound ; just as Tiresias was 
 sent for to explain the calamity which had befallen Thebes, 
 and to clear up the mystery which overhung the house of 
 (Edipus. Balaam gives offence to the king of Moab iust 
 as they offended the heroes of the classical tales. However 
 
222 SERMON XII 
 
 legendary these tales may be, all persons admit that they 
 describe accurately a certain state of society. The 
 prophets must have possessed this credit. Some of them 
 must have been willing to incur the risk of displeasing 
 rulers. 
 
 A mere parallel of this kind would be of little worth for 
 its own sake ; nor do I conceive that it is wanted for the 
 proof or illustration of the Scriptures. It becomes im- 
 portant in consequence of the questions which are often 
 asked respecting the reality of the knowledge of these 
 prophets, and the source from which they derived it. On 
 this subject very different opinions have been entertained. 
 In old times Heathen seers were often said to be endued 
 with a diabolical sagacity ; if they were ever right an evil 
 spirit enabled them to be so. The ordinary opinion in this 
 day would probably be that they were mere deceivers, able 
 to impose upon people somewhat more ill-informed than 
 themselves. The holders of both these opinions are wont 
 to contrast these false prophets with the true Jewish pro- 
 phet, who received his illumination from God, All infidel 
 schools would of course deny that difference ; the most 
 modem one would probably say, that the Hebrew as well 
 as the Gentile prophets were shrewd observers and poli- 
 ticians, who sometimes dishonestly, but often in good 
 faith, proclaimed themselves the receivers of a divine 
 inspiration. 
 
 We who acknowledge the Bible as the high and ultimate 
 authority, must desire that our decisions should be revised, 
 corrected, even reversed by it, if we have adopted them 
 from tradition, or fashioned them by our own weak, hasty 
 inductions, without consulting it; those who question or 
 deny its claim, should at least be willing to know what it 
 
223 
 
 actually says, lest they should impute statements to it 
 which are not to be foxmd in it, nay, which positively 
 contradict those that are found in it. 
 
 Balaam is a heathen prophet ; he is certainly not 
 produced as a specially favourable specimen of one. In 
 tJie New Testament he is represented as the very type of 
 false and evil teachers ; that view of his character could 
 not have been confined to St, Peter and St. John ; it must 
 have been the one habitually prevailing amoug their 
 qountrymen. It was never doubted among tliem, — the 
 story perfectly justifies the belief, — that he was inclined 
 to fulfil Balak's wishes, and that he did ultimately fulfil 
 them more efiectually than by any words; that he deli' 
 berately set before the Israelites that temptation into 
 which we are told, in the lesson for this evening, that they 
 fell. And yet the teaching of Balaam is not ascribed to an 
 evil spirit, but to God : he is not treated as a mere 
 pretender to powers which were not his ; his knowledge 
 and foresight are acknowledged as real. The difference 
 between him and those prophets who were the wise and 
 noble guides of the Jewish nation, and its neglect of whom 
 was one of its greatest sins, must therefore be sought for 
 somewhere else than in the nature or the origin of their 
 respective gifts. It is not only affinned again and again, 
 that God put words in Balaam's mouth, but that he knew 
 it ; and that he had a fear of speaking any words except 
 those, and of not speaking those words. It is taken for 
 gi-anted that this was not a sudden, unwonted com- 
 munication. He asks couusel of the Lord, and expects 
 guidance from Him. These are not inferences drawn fi:om 
 the story by unnatural torturing, they are the plain 
 obvious facts of it. Those who have most studied the 
 
224 SERMON XII. 
 
 moral of the story for their guidatice, and foi the instruction 
 of others, have been most compelled to take notice of 
 them ; * it is hj remembering them that the apparent 
 difficulties of the narrative become the most solemn and 
 practical portions of its lessons. 
 
 If this discovery came upon us all at once, I conceive it 
 might be startling, even shocking, to our minds. But the 
 whole previous history has been preparing us for it. It 
 has been the assumption throughout the Scripture narra- 
 tive, that God is the' teacher of men, that they have no 
 teaching of any kind which does not come from Him. 
 And this not in some loose, general way. When we want 
 to escape from the plain honest import of words, we say, 
 ' Oh yes ! No doubt that is true m a certain sense,' Thanks 
 be to Grod, there are none of these ' certain senses,' which 
 are in truth most uncertain, in His Bible. The words are' 
 pure words. They mean what they say. If God is spoken 
 of as teaching any person whatever, — Jacob or Laban, 
 Joseph or Pharaoh, Moses or Jethro, — ^we may feel sure 
 that the writer wishes us to understand him simply, not to 
 iind some cunning explanation of his language which will 
 empty it of all its significance. He must intend an actual 
 communication, — a communication of intelligence, per- 
 ception, living power, — to that in a human being which is 
 capable of receiving it. Whenever a man exhibits such 
 intelligence, perception, power, the Scripture does not refer 
 it to some impression made upon his outward senses by the 
 things which surround him, and which appeal to them. It 
 supposes that these outward things remain blank and dead 
 to him who has not some power within, which is capable 
 
 * See, for example, Butler's celebrated sermon on the Ctiaraccer of 
 Balaam. , 
 
THE prophet's EXPERIENCE. 225 
 
 of interpreting and qnickening them. It supposes that the 
 more a man gives himself up to these things, the more 
 helpless, the more inhuman, he hecomes. But it declares 
 also that there is One, even He in whose image he was 
 formed, who does not allow him to remain their victmi, 
 who makes him aware of a world which his ejes and taste 
 do not reveal to him, a world closely connected with 
 himself; a world with which he can converse, in which 
 he can live ; a world with which he is meant to converse, 
 in which he is meant to live ; because there is a spirit in 
 him which is created to govern the sensible world, not to 
 be governed by it. 
 
 Now a person deeply and inwardly assured that he is not 
 sent into the world merely to gaze in stupid wonder upon 
 its spectacles and phantoms, — assured that he has that 
 within him which passes show, assured that he is endowed 
 with a power of looking into the heart of things, — such 
 a man is recognised by his fellow-men as a prophet. They 
 have found by experience that this character belongs to 
 him. They have found that he divines secrets which are 
 hidden from them ; that he can connect the past and 
 present and future, which seem to them lying utterly apart 
 from each other. They cannot doubt that he both sees 
 and foresees ; that he has an intuition of the nature and 
 causes of events, and of their results. And beside this, 
 their own hearts own his power and peneti-ation. He can 
 ascertain by undoubted auguries what is passing in them ; 
 he can anticipate their conclusions; can awaken in them 
 that which had gone to sleep ; can bring into light that 
 which was yet unborn. 
 
 In this acknowledgment there is no falsehood. On the 
 contrary, there is homage to tnith, the deference of men to 
 
 Q 
 
226 SERMON XII, 
 
 one who is higher than themselves ; and yet who they feel 
 has sympathies with them; who has glimpses into a real 
 world, a world of which they know little, yet which they 
 are sure they have something to do with. Neither is he 
 false in admitting that he has exercised the faculty which 
 they ascribe to him, least of all in saying that the faculty is 
 not his own, — that the light which his eye beholds is not 
 created by the eye, that it comes to him from the Source 
 of light. When the prophet owned that his teacher was 
 One unseen and Divine, he had the most inward assurance 
 that his words were true, — true because they were opposed 
 to his natural pride and self-sufficiency. 
 
 And how then was Balaam a false prophet ? No Jew or 
 Christian says that he was a false prophet because the pre- 
 dictions which he uttered came to nought. We delight to 
 maintain that they were confirmed ; that what he spoke of 
 the goodly tents of Israel was fulfilled more perfectly than 
 he dreamed ; that the Star which he saw in his vision did. 
 actually arise and shine upon Gentiles as weU as Hebrews, 
 That test of truth, if it were enough, the prophet Balaam could 
 well endure. But it is Twt enough to satisfy the demands of 
 Scripture or of our consciences. A man may be false, though 
 all his words are true, though he has gifts and endowments 
 of the highest order, though those gifts and endowments 
 proceed, as all proceed, from God, though he refers them to 
 Him, and seems to hold them as His vassal. Let us endea- 
 vour to trace out this falsehood, as the. Scripture, illustrated 
 and interpreted by sad experience, discovers it to us. 
 
 Balaam dwelt by the river of the land of the children of 
 his people, with a consciousness of that power in himself 
 which Balak and the Moabites ascribed to him. How 
 terrible is that consciousness of power ! How fearful the 
 
THE PROPHET BECOMING SELF-CONSCIOUS. 227 
 
 thought, ' I possess a secret which is unknown, or onlj 
 ' dimly known, to these people about me ! I see sights 
 
 * which they cannot see ; 1 hear words which they cannot 
 
 * hear ! They believe that he whom I bless is blessed, he 
 ' whom I curse is cursed. What reverence accrues to me 
 
 * from that belief! And how well I am entitled to it! 
 ' How I overlook them! How mean the thoughts and 
 ' purposes of these rulers are in comparison of mine ! How 
 
 * little they know what they are doing ! How they tremble 
 ' at every passing breeze ! How little they are able to 
 
 * foresee the -dangers which are actually threatening them ! ' 
 
 Such thoughts as these, brethren, lead to one effect most 
 surely. The inward eye becomes more dim; the light 
 that was in the man turns to darkness. Himself takes the 
 place of the God whom he believed in and worshipped. 
 He awakes like Samson after the hair has been shorn, and 
 feels that his strength is departed. But the shadow of it 
 must be preserved. He must persuade himself, and .per- 
 suade others, that wisdom and power are his still. He 
 resorts to the tricks of the diviner. He imposes upon men 
 with appearances, leading them to fancy that he obtains 
 his insight by some conjuring arts which he can exhibit 
 before them. Speedily the falsehood, which he has been 
 practising on others, returns upon himself. Though he 
 has vaunted of the powers which set him above ordinary 
 men, he begins to covet their possessions ; to think 
 that, after all, these are the most real things. And why 
 should not he, the wise man, obtain them, nay, have a 
 larger share of them than others ? Henceforth this becomes 
 the only end which he can distinctly propose to himself. 
 
 He would be happier if he could thoroughly make it his 
 end. But he cannot. He is haunted with the sense of 
 
 q2 
 
228 SERMON XII. 
 
 something else truer and deeper, that is immeasura'blj 
 more worth seeking after. He still is sure that there is an 
 invisible Teacher near him, that all his wisdom has come 
 from Him. At times this truth overmasters him. He has 
 forsaken God through his pride, through a love of power 
 and a craving for earthly goods. But God will not leave 
 him. He comes to him in the dark night; He makes him 
 feel that there is a Presence which cannot be put by. At 
 such a moment, in such a crisis of his life, the messengers 
 of Balak come to Balaam. They know his weakness. 
 They bring with them the rewards of divination, and 
 flatteries as potent as they are. 
 
 Moreover they invite him to a work which has many 
 attractions. A curse carries with it a far greater semblance 
 of power than anything else. All who are seeking to 
 make themselves admired and feared, exercise themselves 
 in cursing. It is the shortest road to fame. Yet Balaam 
 resists. God says to him, ' Thou shalt not curse this people, 
 for they are Messed.^ The conviction that this is the 
 Divine Will, is too mighty for all Balak's promises. His 
 messengers return home. 
 
 But they come again. Balak was no doubt familiar 
 with the evil side of the prophet. His struggles and 
 repentances he might also have heard of, and have believed 
 that they would be readily overcome, or were feigned to 
 increase the price of surrender. The new bait was before 
 his eyes. He repelled it; but alas! with a fine sentence. 
 He cannot be content to resolve against it in a better 
 strength; he must utter his purpose in words which will 
 sound strong and eloquent in his own ears : ' If Balak 
 would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot 
 go beyond the word of the Lord my God, to do less or more,' 
 
THE PROrHET TEMPTED. 229 
 
 Re was playing with the hook when he seemed to himsell 
 to be thrusting it away. Perhaps he had mistaken the 
 voice of God before. How could he be sure ? He would 
 seek for further guidance. Could any one blame him fox 
 doing so? Was it not piety? Yes! that piety which is 
 another name for falsehood, which leads to the very con- 
 summate act of falsehood. Oh I how wretched tlie case 
 would have been if Balaam had been merely carrying on 
 this debate with himself, as we with our refined, atheistic 
 philosophy would say that he was, — as now that he had 
 brought himself into a false state of mind, he probably 
 thought that he was. But neither we nor he can alter the 
 fact. The Scripture here, as in every other case, tears oif 
 the mask and shows us the reality. It was not a mere 
 dialogue with himself, a game in which the same hand was 
 moving the pieces on both sides. Grod was debating the 
 case with him, was educating him, as He educates us all, 
 by permitting him to taste the effects of his own self-will, 
 by making him understand what it was to tamper with 
 truth and try to warp it to his own purpose. * ffo,' said 
 the Voice : * but only the word that I shall speah unto thee, 
 that thou shalt speakJ* 
 
 Was this merely the echo of the Divine word in a hollow, 
 bewildered conscience ? That is not a full explanation of 
 the fact, though it is one which we must not* disregard. 
 Balaam did go, and was intended to go. He would not 
 have learned the lesson which he was to learn if he had 
 not gone. And yet his going was a wilful act. It was 
 the struggle of one determined to have his own way, 
 claiming the privilege of a man, while he was reducing 
 himself into the condition of an animal, one that must be 
 held in with bit and bridle, because he will not be guided 
 
2/?0 SERMON XII. 
 
 and governed as a spiritual creature. You are puzzled at 
 the language of Scripture about God's permitting Balaam 
 to go, and then being displeased at him for going. You 
 may well be puzzled. For what are so utterly bewildering' 
 as the mazes and contradictions of a human will, confessing 
 a Master, struggling to disobey Him? But would you' 
 rather that the Bible left this fact unnoticed ? "Would you 
 rather that it described human actions and events without 
 reference to it ? Is that the proof which you demand 
 that it was written hy God and for men? You will not 
 .have that sign if you ask for it ever so much. Not here 
 aume, but everywhere, you will be met with these contra- 
 d] .itions ; man striving with God, God dealing with him as 
 a voluntary creature, such as He had made him to be, not 
 crushing his will by an act of omnipotence, but teaching it 
 to feel its own impotency and madness. 
 
 And this surely is the sense of the next part of the stoiy. 
 How ' ike durab ass rebuked the madness of the fro-phet^ I 
 know not, nor care to know. But I believe that whatever 
 sounds it uttered, they did convey exactly that meaning to 
 the mind of the prophet wliich it is said that they conveyed. 
 He felt that the instinct of a brute was made the instrument 
 of teaching him ; that what he could not learn by gracious 
 inward discipline, was brought home to him by rough, 
 humiliating, outward discipline. I feel too deeply the 
 essential veracity, of the story, to be troubled with minute 
 questions about its details. I would not force them upon 
 any one's belief merely by uttering the coarse sentence, 
 that ' they are in the Bible, and therefore must be received.' 
 The heart and conscience are too delicate and too sacred 
 organs for such treatment. One is always afraid of leading 
 people to fancy that they do believe what they do not 
 
THE PROPHET AND THE ANGEL. 23J 
 
 believe, and so of propagating hypocrisy under the name of 
 faith. I am not afraid for any of the accessary details of 
 Scripture, if one is led to recognise the meaning and 
 coherency of its laws and its facts ; but I tremble greatly 
 for those who dwell on those details as mere exercises 
 either of skill or of what they call trust and reverence ; 
 while the laws and facts are more and more escaping, or 
 their minds are becoming too sensual and frivolous to take 
 them in. 
 
 But the story proceeds. Balaam learns that there was 
 an Angel in the way. He is again a humbled man ; he 
 is assured that God will not let him speak any words but 
 His own. Still he tampers and traffics with the inward 
 voice. He allows Balak to build the altar, and offer the 
 bullocks and the rams. He practises the usual arts of the 
 diviner. But as he looks down upon the hosts of Israel, 
 a mightier inspiration than any he has known yet, takes 
 possession of him. The vision of a divine kingdom, of 
 a society in wliich God shall really be the King, in whicli 
 all ranks and orders shall be subject to Him and witnesses 
 of His presence, — a vision which may have dawned upon 
 him in the better and purer days of his childhood, — now 
 comes upon him as one that is actually to be realized. 
 ' From the tops of the rocks he sees them, from the hills he 
 beholds them, Lo, the people shall dwell aloney and not he 
 reckoned among the nations T I say, that it was a new 
 inspiration, not because he was now for the first time 
 speaking at God's bidding and uttering the words of the 
 Almighty, but because heretofore he had thought of him- 
 self as the inspired man, as the divine prophet, — of all 
 other people, as excluded from the divine communications 
 except as they were imparted through him. And now the 
 
232 SERMON XII. 
 
 marvellous spectacle opens upon him, of a people whom 
 God has blessed, of a nation which is called by His Name. 
 With this there comes a belief which had been hidden 
 from him before, of God, not merely as the giver of 
 wisdom to favourite men, but as the righteous Being, the 
 Author of a divine order. Out of that thought another 
 unfolds itself ; a deep sense, if it were but a transient one, 
 of his own unrighteousness. What has he been living for ? 
 To be called a prophet ; to be praised, glorified, sought 
 after by people and rulers ; to have the delight and anguish 
 of feeling himself raised above other men, separated from 
 all others. 
 
 It has been weariness and vexation of spirit. Oh, for 
 the possibility of being right and true, of being like Him 
 whose words he has uttered ! Oh, if he might but get that 
 gift at last, when Balak's gifts and all his own will look to 
 him even more paltry than they looked then ! Oh, that 
 he might ' die the death of the righteous^ and his hist end he 
 like his I ' 
 
 That deep cry came from the inmost heart of a man 
 conscious of his hoUowness as he had never been conscious 
 of it before. Tou may think that when his soul swells 
 into poetry, when he looks upon the goodly tents of Israel 
 and sees them spread forth as the valleys, as gardens by 
 the river-side, as lign-aloes which the Lord had planted,, as 
 cedar-trees beside the waters, — the personal conflict has 
 ceased, and that the outward prospect is occupying him 
 altogether. No ! there is a deep melancholy in the tones 
 of that song which -shows you what is passing in the mind 
 of the singer. The vision of a body of men marshalled in 
 their hosts by God Himself, having the shout of a King 
 in the midst of them, brings indeed into his heart a sense 
 
THE PEOPHET CAKEIED OUT OF HIMSELF. 233 
 
 of life and joy. But it is the sight of spring to one whose 
 spirit is wintry. The nation has a strength within it 
 which must conquer ; God has blessed it ; no enchant- 
 ments that are formed against it shall prosper. It shall 
 be higher than Agag ; the Kenite must fall before it ; all 
 that seems great now must be broken ; there are victories 
 in the distance which the prophet sees dimly, and can only 
 express in words rising fai- above his own conceptions. 
 But what has he to do with these triumphs of God? * He 
 Will see therrif hut not now ; he shall behold themy hit not 
 nigh.'' A Star he sees is rising upon the world, a light 
 that shall one day fill it. * But who shall live when God 
 doeth this f ' What would he give if he could sympathise 
 with the great purpose which will be accomplished in the 
 world; if he could care to see righteousness and truth 
 established in it, if he could feel as he supposes each one 
 in that Israelitish host must be feeling, while it advances 
 with predestined and invincible might, * with the strength of 
 a unicorn^' to put down the tyrannies of the earth, and 
 proclaim God as the King. But there is a banier of pride 
 and self-exaltation which will not be broken down. 
 When he saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he 
 could abandon for a moment his prophetical machinery; 
 ' he went not, as at other times, to seek for enchantments.^ 
 Truth triumphed for that hour in his heart, as it would one 
 day ti'iumph over the nations. But the evil spirit returned 
 to the house that was empty, swept, and garnished, and 
 took with it seven spirits more wicked than itseK The 
 magician could not bear to gaze upon the broken wand ; to 
 part with power, even the reputation of possessing it, that 
 he might die the death of the righteous. He had felt sin 
 at the core of his life, without seeking to have it cast out ; 
 
234 SEEMON XII. 
 
 tie had known God as a rigliteous Being. Hencefortli 
 they were at war. He is filled with a deeper spite against 
 the people whom he might not curse than it was possible 
 for Balak to feel ; he has been permitted to know the 
 secret of their strength ; he sees how it may be sapped. 
 ' Curse them not, but tempt them to lust and cor- 
 ' ruption ; then they will be as weak and contemptible as 
 * yourselves.' 
 
 We have found, brethren, what a good pretext there 
 is for both the theories, which I was compelled to reject 
 at the beginning of this discourse. Balaam was a 
 deceiver ; one who tried to impose his divinations upon 
 .rulers and people, Balaam did become a most faithful 
 servant of the Spirit of evil. What I could not admit, — 
 what reverence for the words of Scripture forbad me to 
 admit, — was, that Balaam got his wisdom by tricks of 
 his own, or from the devil. To think so is to subvert all 
 moral order, and to deny the very principle which the 
 Bible is written to assert. All good is from God ; all 
 power, all wisdom, is from Him ; only the direction and 
 the use of it come to us from ourselves or from the 
 tempter. I know that there is a kind of ~ sacredness 
 attaching in our minds to the mere word and name of 
 inspiration, and that we are afraid to speak of evil men 
 as being the subjects of a divine inspiration, — even though 
 Scripture authorizes and enforces the opinion. Nay, we 
 are afraid to speak of any gifts and powers except those 
 which were used in the composition of the Scripture-books 
 as being inspired. I rejoice and give thanks that during 
 the last week that most dangerous and ungodly prejudice 
 has been in a very solemn manner broken through and 
 set at nought by an authority to which English Church- 
 
ALL KNOWLEDGE, INSPIRATION. 235 
 
 men owe all respect. The sentence has gone forth as 
 the profoundest expression of our English faith, in the 
 presence of the representatives of all nations, that 
 knowledge of every kind, that -which leads to the creation 
 of railways and steam-carriages, as well as the most 
 spiritual, is of God ; * that the spirit of man is from Him, 
 * and that his understanding comes from the inspiration 
 " of the Almighty.* * That is a phrase which inferior 
 ministers might have shrunk from using, lest it should 
 give offence to their weaker brethren. But if they 
 yielded to that excusable cowardice before, they are 
 bound now to proclaim aloud a truth, which was never 
 more needed to preserve nations from sinking into 
 Atheism, in proportion as they become stewards of ampler 
 treasmres and mightier powers. 
 
 Do you ask what security there is for the special 
 dignity and authority of Scripture, if the doctrine which 
 has received this sanction gains cun-ency? I answer, 
 there is no security for the special dignity and authority 
 of Scripture while you are content to rest them upon an 
 arbitrary limitation of a word which Scripture itself 
 instructs us to employ in a very wide and general sense. 
 If you would know what the special claims of Scripture 
 are upon your reverence and love, let it instruct you 
 how to distinguish the false prophet from the true. 
 You will not find that Isaiah is true and Balaam false, 
 because the one received communications from God and 
 the other did not, nor because Isaiah belonged to the 
 covenant people and Balaam did not; for we hear 
 continually of false prophets amongst circiomcised men 
 
 - The prayer of the Archbishop of Canterbury at the opening of the 
 Great Exhibition, May lat, 1851. 
 
236 SERMON XIL 
 
 who frequented the divine schools. But you will find that 
 Isaiah lived for his people, and not for himself; that he 
 did not value himself upon his gifts, or upon his holiness, 
 or upon anything whatsoever that belonged to him as an 
 individual. His eyes had seen the King the Lord of 
 Hosts, and that sense of God^s holiness which made him 
 know that he was an unclean man and dwelt among 
 a people of unclean lips, — yet enabled him to go forth 
 and declare His truth and His kingdom, to testify that 
 if the kings of the house of David were ever so un- 
 believing, ever so tyrannical, He would raise up a King 
 who should be a refuge from the heat and storm; who 
 should judge the poor, who should gather together the 
 outcasts of Israel, and in whom the Gentiles should trust. 
 The certainty, under every pos^ble discouragement and 
 conflict, that the righteous God would prevail over all 
 that was unrighteous and anarchical in the universe, — the 
 delight in this assurance, — the willingness to be made 
 an instrument of carrying out God's purposes, let what 
 would come of him or his character, let him be honoured 
 as a prophet, or cast out as the offscouring of tlie earth, — ' 
 this, this is the sign of the true man, this is what 
 separates him from the solitary self-seeker who shrank 
 from the thought of God appearing to set the world right ; 
 who only wished, when his wishes were purest, that he 
 might die the death of the righteous. 
 
 But the faithful man, Isaiah or Jeremiah, did not 
 come to this state without passing through internal 
 struggles which Balaam never knew, without having to 
 experience all the temptations which he did know and 
 to which he yielded. The books of their prophecies are 
 no mere records of words put intp their mouths, of sudden 
 
THE SCRIPTURES REVEAL GOD. 237 
 
 overpowering inspirations. They tell how the man 
 struggled with the divine Teacher, how he said he would 
 speak no more words in His name, till the fire could not 
 keep itself pent in his heart any longer ; how he com- 
 plained that the Lord had deceived him ; how the precious 
 and the vile had need to be separated in him by the 
 severest discipline, that he might know assuredly that 
 he was not speaking the thoughts of his own heart, 
 but words which God desired him to speak for the good 
 of his age and of generations to come. This is the 
 Scriptmre, — not merely an inspired book, as we sometimes 
 call it, thinking to pay it great honour, — ^but an actual 
 discovery of God Himself and of His ways with His 
 creatures. K we consider it only as a collection of 
 inspired sentences or oracles, we may accept it as 
 divine ; but we shall gradually lose sight both of Him 
 who is speaking in it, and of those by whom and to 
 whom He is speaking ; its godliness and its humanity 
 ^9jdll disappear together. We shall be continually stumbling 
 at one sentence and another, trying to force them into 
 some strange meaning of our own ; then violently 
 outraging the conscience which God's Word itself has 
 been cultivating in us, calling in His Omnipotence to 
 dispense with His righteousness, — when it is the very 
 characteristic of Scripture that it makes Eighteousness 
 the root of God's being, — power only its instrument and 
 accident. If we take that other view of the Bible, — 
 the errors, sins, false or imperfect judgments of its best 
 and wisest men, will be no scandals to us ; we shall 
 accept them as foils which enable us to see His character 
 more clearly, in whom is light and no darkness at all. 
 We shall perceive that men could only apprehend truth, 
 
238 SERMON XII. 
 
 just SO far as ihej saw it in Him after whose image 
 they were formed. Every step in the history will be 
 a step into clearer illumination, God showing Himself 
 more fully, that the thoughts and actions of men may be 
 capable of a closer correspondence to His. At the same 
 time, it will be no perplexity to nSj but an infinite 
 comfortj — that the powers, and energies, and kindly 
 affections, and right desires of every man whatsoever, 
 in every part of the earth, whether yielding to the right 
 or resisting it, should be vindicated for Him from whom 
 every good and perfect gift comes down. This will 
 not hinder us from recognising His gracious purpose, 
 in calling out a family, a nation, a church, to be the 
 heralds of His great Name, to show forth His kingly 
 and fatherly rule over men. For we shall see how 
 dangerous all His most precious gifts are likely to become, 
 if those who are entrusted with them do not know that 
 they are but holding them as dispensers to a great 
 household ; and that they can have no blessings of their 
 own, except so far as they feel that they are meant to 
 give each member of that household his own portion 
 of meat at the due season. The Bible, so considered, 
 becomes an orderly expanding history. The Star which 
 Balaam saw afar off emerges more and more out of the 
 darkness. At last it is seen how God could raise up 
 a Prophet to men ; one of their brethren, who should be 
 with them in all their sorrow and affliction, because He 
 was with His Father in heaven, and perfectly delighted 
 to show forth His name, to declare His kingdom, to do 
 His will upon the earth. At last it is seen how His 
 Holy Spirit, which had been bestowed without measure 
 upon His well-beloved Son, could come down and make 
 
THE BALAAMITES IN ALL DAYS. 239 
 
 men's bodies His temples; could bind men of every 
 nation and tribe in one ; could inspire them witli all 
 gifts; could consecrate all their gifts to the service of 
 their Father in Heaven and their brethren upon earth. 
 
 I must say one word more, which is closely connected 
 with the application of this whole subject to oxir own selves. 
 Though the writers of the New Testament cannot have 
 held an essentially diflferent opinion respecting Balaam 
 from that which was common among their countiymen, yet 
 they certainly dwell upon the dark side of his character 
 more than it is dwelt upon in the book of Numbers. They 
 especially represent him as the type of a false prophet, and 
 this not for the purpose of condemning him, but of showing 
 how his evil tendencies might be more prevalent and more 
 fatal in the new dispensation than the old. The reason is 
 evident. They had been taught to refer all gifts and 
 powers, which appear in particular men, to that Holy 
 Spirit, who was now manifested as the iudweUer in human 
 hearts, as the bond of human fellowship. Those whom 
 St. John in the Apocalypse describes as followers of Balaam 
 were men who believed most strongly in a Spirit, and 
 boasted that they were possessors of it, but who forgot 
 altogether that He was the Spirit of Holiness ; who blessed 
 Him for enduing them with powers, — who did not ask 
 Him to renew and remake theTJiselves, the wielders and 
 exercisers of those powers. Such Balaamites there have 
 been in all ages among those who minister at Grod's altar, 
 among those who perform different offices in His household 
 and His vineyard. In whatever form self-exaltation comes 
 into the heart of man, — in the form of craving for popularity, 
 of intellectual pride, of spiritual pride, in the desire foi 
 dominion over others, in the secret triumph of oui owi 
 
240 SERMON XII. 
 
 superiority J — the Balaam sin is working underground; 
 tlie fruits of it may some day become apparent. Let no 
 one of us say tliat it is not his sin, that it may not penetrate 
 into him and diffuse itself through him, when he seems to 
 himself to be engaged, — nay, when he is in fact engaged, — 
 in the most godly services, and receiving the most godly 
 inspirations. Let our trust be in God and not in ourselves, 
 to deliver us from this root of bitterness. Let us ask Him 
 that we may not value ourselves upon gifts, or tongues, or 
 prophecies, but may be filled with that love which shall' 
 remain when they cease, and when He is all in all. 
 
SERMON XTIL 
 
 PROSPERITY AND ADVEE.STT7. 
 
 (Linroln's Inn, Third Sunday after Easter, Hay 11, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day, Deuteronomy it. and v. 
 
 Dbut. V. 33. 
 
 Te shaU walk in all the ways which the Lord yow God hath commanded 
 you, that ye may Ztve, and that it may be wdl with you, and that y. 
 may prolong your days in the land which ye shaU possess. 
 
 There are certain popular maxims and phrases respecting 
 the difference between the Old and New Testament which 
 we accept, as if they were parts of holy Scripture, and 
 which affect all our judgments of it. The rewards of the 
 Jewish dispensation, we are told, were temporal ; those of 
 the Christian, eternal. The Israelite was taught to respect 
 blessings in the world that is; we are hidden to set our 
 minds upon the world that is to come ; prosperity was the 
 sign of God's favour to the chosen nation; adversity is one 
 of the seals of adoption in the Church. If these sayings 
 really expressed the deepest thoughts of those who use 
 them and repeat them ; if divines were not compelled again 
 and again to forget them when they are dealing with the 
 tacts of the Scriptures, or applying them to the consciences 
 of men; it humble wayfarers when they are in want of 
 
 R 
 
242 SERMON XIII. 
 
 a guide for their lives, or help in their sorrows, did no" 
 continually set them at nought; I should consider it a 
 perilous and rash enterprise to dispute their authority ' 
 For though they cannot, so far as I know, allege decrees of 
 any church in their favour, and though on the face of them 
 they look as if they interfered with egme by which we 
 profess to be bound, there is, no doubt, a sanctity in 
 customary notions which should not be rudely violated. 
 Their currency is evidence that they carry a truth within 
 them, and that tnith, — however we may think it has been 
 perverted by the elements with which it is surrounded into 
 a cause of error and unbelief,— should be diligently sought 
 out, and reverently acknowledged, before we dare to reject 
 the opinion in which it is enshrined. 
 
 I have chosen a passage from the lesson for this afternoon 
 which seems to afford a strong justification for the view 
 which is ordinarily taken of the Jewish economy; it is 
 a passage the importance of which can scarcely be over- 
 rated; it may help us, I think, to understand better the ^ 
 whole book from which it is taken. The words whidi 
 close my text, ' That ye may live, and that it may he well 
 with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land 
 which ye sJtall possess,^ are likely to fix your attention first 
 as bearing most directly upon this subject. I have no 
 desire to avoid the most literal interpretation of them; 
 any other I should hold to be entirely unsuitable to the 
 context, and to the character of the person who spoke- 
 tliem. But I must defer the consideration of them till I have 
 examined those which precede them, without which they 
 are unintelligible upon any hypothesis, ' Ye shall walk in alt 
 the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you,^ 
 
 I. One of these clauses is commonly said to enjojn 
 
god's highest blessing to the jew. 243 
 
 a duty, the other to promise the blessings which those 
 might confidently look for who performed it. Whatever 
 worth there may be in this division, it cannot be considered 
 a satisfactory one by any thoughtful reader of the book of 
 Deuteronomy. Let me recal to you two or three passages 
 from the chapters which we have read to-day. Take for 
 instance this : * For what nation is there so great, who hath 
 God 80 nigh tmto them, as the Lord our God is, in all things 
 that we call upon him for f And what nation is there so 
 great, that hath statutes and Judgments so righteous as all, 
 this law which I set before you this d/iyV And this again : 
 ' But the Lord hath taken you and brought you out of the 
 iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of 
 inheritance, as ye are this day,* Once more : ' Ask now 
 of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the 
 day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the 
 one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been 
 any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like 
 it f Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of 
 the midst of the f re, as thou hast heard, and livef Or hath 
 God assayed to go and take Him a nation from the midst of 
 another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, a'nd 
 by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm, 
 and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your Ood 
 did for you in Egypt before your eyes f Unto thee it was 
 shewed, that thou mightest hnow that the Lord He is God; 
 there is none else beside Him.' 
 
 No\v what is the effect of all these passages? (and there 
 are hundreds like them; they embody the very spirit of 
 the book.) Do they not declare in the most plain and 
 direct manner that the main, characteristic, fundamental 
 blessing of the Israelite, consisted in this, that God took 
 
 r2 
 
244 SERMON XIII. 
 
 him into covenant with Himself; that He delivered him 
 out of the hand of human oppressors ; that He brought 
 him under His own government ; that He revealed to him 
 what manner of Being He was ? Would not your natural 
 couclusion be on the first perusal of these passages, — would 
 it not be strengthened by all subsequent reflection upon 
 them, by comparison of one with the other, 'Whatever. 
 ' other advantages the Israelite may have enjoyed, I am 
 ' taught here that his relation to God, his national position 
 ' which is grounded upon that, the fact that he was placed 
 ' under a divine law and made acquainted with its nature, 
 * were his great gifts and privileges, to which all others 
 ' were subordinate ? ' Is there anything new or surprising 
 i 1 1 such s tatements ? Coul d you h ave doubted, after 
 reading the books of Genesis, and Exodus, and Numbers, 
 that the highest mercy God could confer upon men was to 
 make them conscious of His presence and of His order ; 
 that want of belief in that Presence, want of submission to 
 that order, were the curses of human beings,— from which 
 all slavery to men and to natural things, all division, all 
 suffering, proceeded ? 
 
 We fall then, I conceive, into a very inaccurate method 
 of speech, when we say that the prize which God proposes 
 to His people is set forth in one of these clauses ; the duty, 
 or performance by which they are to earn that prize, in the 
 other. Moses teaches his countrymen that- God has con- 
 ferred upon them the highest prize which man can 
 conceive, freely and without any merit on their part. 
 When they were bondsmen of Pharaoh, He claimed them 
 as His servants ; when they trembled before the powers of 
 the visible world, He showed them that~ these powers were 
 His instruments, and that He used them for their good ; 
 
AN INVISIBLE, ETERNAL BLESSING. 245 
 
 when they fancied that the Ruler of the world was in- 
 different to them, or hated them. He proved that He was 
 watching over them and caring for them, even in their 
 meanest condition, though they were not thinking at all of 
 Him; when they supposed that He was capricious, He 
 proved to them the evenness, regularity, equity of His 
 government ; when they fancied that He was unmerciful, 
 He declared Himself as the Lord God, forgiving iniquity, 
 and transgression, and sin. Was this knowledge of the 
 living and unseen God nothing in itself, but only valuable 
 in virtue of some results that were to come of it ? Moses 
 tells his countrymen that it was everything. This know- 
 ledge was the good thing which they had received from the 
 Source of all Good. To hold it fast, was to be a nation ; 
 to lose it, was to sink back into the condition out of which 
 they had been raised, — not by their own might,— and 
 which if they trusted in their own might, would assuredly 
 overtake them again. 
 
 Will any one say, brethren, that this was a visible 
 blessing? It was the discovery to them of an invisible 
 Being. Moses said to them, ' Take ye therefore good heed 
 to yourselves ; for ye saw no manner of similitude in the 
 day when the Lord spake unto you in SorebJ' Or was it 
 a temporal blessing ? It was the discovery to them of 
 a Being who is and was and is to come, the same from 
 generation to generation. Surely the word temporal* 
 must be the most inappropriate to describe it that we can 
 conceive. If the knowledge of God is eternal life, eternal 
 life was offered to the Israelites. Our Article cannot be too 
 strong in its denunciation of the doctrine that the old 
 fathers looked only for transitory promises. One who 
 could not pass away or change was the ground of all their 
 
246 SETIMON XIII. 
 
 bellefj the object of all their hope. They came into 
 a region o£ transitoriness and change when thej forgot 
 Him, or began to draw their notions of Him from the 
 vicissitudes of the world around them and the fiuctuations 
 of their own hearts. 
 
 II. Is there no duty then enjoined in the words of my 
 text ? Does it merely speak of a blessing or a privilege ? 
 Certainly when it is said, ' Ye shall walk in all the ways 
 which the Lord your God hath comfmanded yov^^ it must be 
 meant that there was something required on the part of the 
 creature as well as something bestowed by the Creator. 
 What I wish you to observe is, that we cannot imderstand 
 what is required unless we understand what is bestowed. 
 If we believe that a way has been made for us, and that 
 we have been put into that way, we can apprehend the force 
 of the precept to walk in it ; we can feel what is meant by 
 transgression and revolt. If we believe that an actual 
 living Being to whom we are related has put us in this 
 way, and that it is a way of dependence upon Himself, we 
 can understand how the preservation of it becomes a duty 
 to Him ; we begin in fact to know what duty is. If, 
 finally, we believe that He who puts us in this way is the 
 only person who can keep us in it, or prevent us from 
 going out of it, we may feel that His command is itself 
 a power ; that it does not merely say, ' Thus and thus you 
 ' must do, thus and thus you must not do ; ' but, * This 
 ' will I enable you to do, this will I prevent you from 
 ' doing.' 
 
 The more you read the book of Deuteronomy, the more 
 you will feel that these are the principled upon which all 
 the exhortations of Moses to the Israelites are based. He 
 repeatSj as you heard this afternoon, the Ten Command- 
 
BLESSINGS THE GROUND OF DUTIES. 247 
 
 ments to the people, — to those Israelites who were bom in 
 the wilderness. These commandments begin as they did 
 at first with the words, * / am the Lord thy God^ which 
 brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of 
 bondage,' They are not literal copies of the former 
 precepts ; in one instance there is a memorable alteration. 
 The Sabbath is ordained, not as before, because God 
 rested on the Sabbath-day. The Israelite who keeps 
 it is to remember that God had delivered him out of 
 the land of Egypt. Thus the belief of a redemption 
 already eifected underlies every institution, every precept, 
 the whole economy. Moreover, the commandments are 
 represented as God's covenant; it is not merely said 
 amidst thunders and lightning and fire, ' Whoso trans- 
 * gresseth shall die.' God out of this thimder and lightning 
 *nd that fire proclaims that His own will and power 
 shall go forth to hold up the nation and all the members 
 of it in their obedience ; that they are people of in- 
 heritance to Him, that He will be with them and guide 
 them, and support them by night and day. Accordingly 
 the exhortations and warnings of this book are not 
 directed against the rebellions of a people who are told 
 to do certain acts and who neglect them, or who do acts 
 which are forbidden. They are directed against a people 
 with whom God is in covenant, — who deny that He is 
 among them, who do not trust Him to keep them as 
 He has promised to do, — who think they can do right, 
 and be right without Him ; who set up other gods in 
 the place of Him, because they do not like to retain 
 Him in their knowledge; who become the worshippers 
 and servants of visible things, because the presence of an 
 invisible Being is terrible and hateful to them; who 
 
248 SERMON XIII. 
 
 worship unrighteous and unmerciful beings like themselves^ 
 because they shrink from the recollection of the righteous 
 and merciful Lord. The effects, of such wilfulness are 
 set down in very appalling language, some of which 
 we may consider hereafter ; language illustrated and 
 fulfilled in the history of that people, and, as I think, 
 in the history of every nation in the ancient and modern 
 world of which we have any records. And so also the 
 effects of obedience are set down with the like breadth 
 and clearness ; these effects being order ; prosperity ; union 
 among themselves ; victory over enemies, — the honour 
 and reputation of a true and understanding people in the 
 sight of nations; all the material blessings which ac- 
 company and follow such a state of society. 
 
 III. We come then at length to this class of blessings 
 which are shortly gathered up in the words : * That yt 
 iriay live, and that it may he well with you, and that ye may 
 prolong your days in the land which ye shall possessJ' 
 h is here signified in very simple, clear language, which 
 admits, I conceive, of no double sense, that a people in 
 a right, orderly, godly state shall be a well-doing people ; 
 a people with all the signs and tokens of strength, 
 growth, triumph ; a people marked for permanence, and 
 indefinite expansion. I cannot put another meaning 
 upon these words ; I should think that a wish to dilute 
 their force was a proof of the greatest carelessness about 
 the authority from which they proceed, as well as of 
 the most shocking inhumanity. If it be the distinction 
 of saints and spiritual men, that they do not trouble 
 themselves about the external prosperity of a land, that 
 they do not care whether the oxen are strong to labour, 
 whether the sheep are bringing forth thousands and ten 
 
THE INWARD AND THE OUTWARD. 249 
 
 thousands, whether there is no complaining in the streets ; 
 if they are so occupied in the future as to have no 
 interest in the present, too busy with their souls to 
 have leisure for thinking about the ruin which may be 
 threatening the bodies of their fellow-men, — then I say 
 at once Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, were not saints 
 and spiritual men. They had no pretension to the title ; 
 every word they have left is a disclaimer of it They 
 never fancied that the desire that their nation should 
 have all possible outward blessings was a proof of in- 
 difference to the unseen Source of these blessings ; they 
 considered it an act of homage to Him, — that any other 
 feeling would have been a practical denial of Him. It 
 natural things were not His, if the bodies of men were 
 not His, then it would have been right to put on 
 a contempt of the external world and of aU which merely 
 concerned man as an animal. But since they rejected 
 any such notion as idolatrous or atheistic, — since they 
 believed the one Lord, their God, to be the Lord of the 
 whole universe, — they had no choice but either to forget 
 Him altogether, or to see tokens of His wisdom and 
 power in all events whatsoever, whether voluntary or 
 involuntary creatures were the instruments in bringing 
 them to pass. Since they held that God's order was 
 the perfectly right and living order, they could not but 
 think that all disorder, all wrong and death which had 
 invaded it, must have come through man's neglect to 
 fulfil the part which had been assigned him ; — through his 
 unwillingness to till and subdue the earth which he was 
 meant to till and subdue ; through his idleness and 
 distrust and self-seeking, his refusal to walk in the ways 
 which God had commanded. They knew too well, for 
 
250 SERMON XIII. 
 
 they felt in themselves, how strong the disposition in 
 all men was to choose a way of theii own, and to forget 
 the covenant of God. They could only look up ,to Him 
 to overcome this tendency, in them and, in their country- 
 men, by whatever discipline or punishment He knew to 
 be needful. 
 
 IV. And therefore, brethren, it cannot be true, — the 
 whole history of the Jews declares it not to be true, — that 
 the blessings of adversity were unknown to them, were 
 reserved for a later period. Which of the good men of the 
 Old Testament was not proved in a furnace ? Into whose 
 soul did the iron at some time not enter? It was not 
 because they believed in God's promises to their nation, and 
 were sure that its outward prosperity must and would at 
 last correspond to its inward health and vitality, — it was 
 not because they longed for the earth to bring forth and bud, 
 to have heaps of corn upon it, that its presses might burst 
 forth with new wine, — it was not on this account that they 
 had to endure less of inward sadness, or fewer reproaches 
 from the kings and priests and people to whom they spoke. 
 No ; the more strong their feeling was that God had chosen 
 their nation and made a covenant with it, the greater was 
 the struggle with their individual selfishness, their desire of 
 great things for themselves; the more need had they of 
 God*s fires to purify them. The more they believed that 
 the nation could only be what it was intended to be 
 when it was remembering the covenant of its God, the 
 more had they to reprove those who were living to them- 
 selves and glorying in themselves, — not caring for th^ 
 privilege upon which all the outward blessings of Israel 
 depended, — not caring to know Him who executed right- 
 eousness and judgment upon the earth. These reproofs 
 
THE RELIGION OF EAST MEN. 251 
 
 brought, as they were certain to bring, reproaches, shame, 
 persecution upon those who uttered them. No men could 
 be more taught than the Jewish seers were, that punish- 
 ments are necessary for individuals and nations, and that 
 ' whom the Lord hvetk He cJuzatenetk,^ 
 
 I have thought it necessary to examine these often- 
 repeated dogmas respecting Old Testament histoiy, — 
 because they seem to me to have just the same effect in 
 hindering the right and manly investigation of it, as the 
 idols which Bacon denounced and overthrew, in hindering 
 the fair investigation of nature. But I have felt even more 
 anxious to discuss them upon another ground, because, if 
 I am not mistaken, they are as hurtful to the rightful 
 understanding of the New Testament as of the Old. They 
 prevent us from seeing the difference which does exist 
 between them, by inventing one which does not exist ; and 
 they both indicate and foster tendencies, which in our day 
 I fear are ripening and are bringing forth very evil fruits. 
 
 For it is sui*ely a perilous and an almost fatal notion, 
 that Christian men have less to do with the present than 
 the Jews had, that their minds and their religion are to be 
 projected into a region after death, because there only the 
 Divine Presence is dwelling. Is it possible that this is 
 what the writers of the New Testament meant when they 
 proclaimed that the Son of God had taken flesh and become 
 man, and that thenceforth the Lord Grod would dwell with 
 men and walk with them, and that they should be His 
 children and He would be their Father ? Do such words 
 import, that the world in which Grod has placed us has lost 
 some of the sacredness which it had before ; that the 
 visible has become hopelessly separated from the invisible ; 
 that earth and heaven are not as much united as they were 
 
252 SERMON Xltti 
 
 when Jacob was travelling to the land of the people of th6 
 east : that now earth is merely a forlorn place, in which 
 men are forced to stay a certain number of years, engaged 
 in a number of occupations with which Heaven has 
 nothing to do, while yet it is held that the preparation for 
 Heaven is the great business of those who dwell here? 
 Surely there must be terrible contradiction in such lan- 
 guage, a contradiction which cannot fail to exhibit itself in 
 oar practice, to introduce unreality, insincerity, heart- 
 lessness into every part of it. 
 
 This unreality, insincerity, heartlessness, may remain 
 hidden for a time, though its mischiefs will be at work. 
 There may be a sort of compromise and understanding in 
 the upper and middle classes of society, that certain, 
 persons shall have religious tastes and indulge them, while 
 the majority shall be given up to their farms and mer- 
 chandise. The hollowness of the arrangement will often 
 come to light ; it will divide those who feel and know 
 that they ought to be at one ; family obligations, family 
 affections will break it down, or will be destroyed by 
 it ; at length those whose consciences tell them that 
 they must work in the world feel themselves excom- 
 municated, and act as if they were; while those whose 
 minds are in the future declare that they must separate 
 themselves and form a world of their own, or their souls 
 will perish. Such things have happened again and again 
 in all societies, — are happening now. But still, as I said, 
 these social conventions, often broken, may be renewed; 
 there may be truces if there can be no solid peace, so long 
 as what are called the respectable classes have the power 
 of settling the terms. But from the moment that the men 
 of toil and suffering, the real stuff of which every country 
 
THE RELIGION OF WORKING MEN. 253 
 
 is composed, claim to exercise any direct and independent 
 thought upon such subjects, from that moment it becomea 
 absolutely impossible that arrangements which are grounded 
 upon the notion of a part of mankind having certain 
 religious propensities, and a part belonging to the world, 
 should last. The alternative then is a faith which shall 
 belong to men as men, which shall concern all their 
 ordinary pursuits, toils, relations ; which shall not only 
 bestow upon them an artificial sanctity, a passing bene- 
 diction, but which shall show that they are holy according 
 to God's eternal purpose and order, — the alternative, I say, 
 is between such a faith and absolute Atheism. We must 
 settle it in our minds clearly and decisively, — not that we 
 may come to this point hereafter,but that we are come to it 
 now, — here in England and in every country of Christen- 
 dom. The revolutions of three years ago announced this 
 crisis ; oh ! do not let us delude ourselves with the notion 
 that any plots or devices of ours have suspended it. God 
 in His mercy is giving us a brief respite, during which we 
 may decide on what gi-ound we will take our stand. If 
 we hope anything from a conventional religion adopted to 
 keep the existing system of the world together, we shall 
 find ourselves utterly deceived ; the fabric and its props 
 will fall together. If we hope anything from a religion 
 having no deeper foundation than a wish for our own 
 personal security, we shall find that the protest against 
 selfishness which Christianity has borne for 1800 years 
 will prove the destruction of the counterfeit which usurps 
 its name. But if we believe in our hearts that the New 
 Testament is not contrary to the Old ; that our Covenant 
 is larger, deeper, more social than the Jewish, — not 
 narrower, more individualizing, less rooted in the Nature 
 
254 SERMON XIII. 
 
 and Being of God ; tliat every maxim of trade or govern- 
 ment, however sustained by custom, opinion, authority, 
 which is opposed to Truth and Righteousness, is doomed 
 to perish ; then we have a Gospel which men will listen to 
 in the nineteenth century more than they did in the 
 sixteenth or the third ; a Gospel that will uphold all ranks 
 and orders of society so long as they do not interfere with 
 a more fixed and everlasting order ; but which will derive 
 fresh evidence and authority from their dissolution if they 
 should claim for themselves some independent worth, and 
 set at nought the blessings which God has intended for all 
 His creatures. ' I said^ Ye are gods, and are children of the 
 most High^ your authority is God-given, and deserves all 
 reverence while you use it as if it were. But if you will 
 be gods in yourselves, if you pretend to some absolute 
 right over your fellow-creatures, if you will not acknow- 
 ledge that they, the meanest of them, are children of the 
 most High, redeemed by the blood of His Son, endued 
 with His Spirit, then, shall ye fall like feeble men as you 
 are, and die like one of those princes whose fate has been 
 set before your eyes as a spectacle and warning to your- 
 selves. The Book we have begun to read to-day is full of 
 terrible threatenings and prophecies ; let us not forget 
 them or apply them to others rather than to ourselves. 
 Assm-edly they will be executed upon us if we choose some 
 separate way of our own ; not that way which God has 
 intended for us all. But if we will walk in that good way, 
 His word remains sure. The land which the Lord our 
 God has given us will be a good land. We shall be able 
 to rejoice in the prosperity of it. We shall be able to 
 leave it an inheritance to our children's children. And 
 with it we shall leave them also the blessing which God in 
 
god's promises to ENGLAND. 255 
 
 His old covenant and His new prononnced upon the poor ; 
 the sign of fatherly love which Solomon and St, Pan! alike 
 saw in God's chastisements ; the assurance that here we 
 are in the presence of an innumerable company of saints 
 and angels, and of God the Judge of all, and that Christ 
 desires that we shall enter into the fuller enjoyment of that 
 society, ■ into a deeper apprehension of His Redemption, 
 when death is swallowed up in victory. 
 
SmMON XIV, 
 
 • THE NATION AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 (I-incohi'B Inn, Fourth Sunday after Easter, May 18, 1851.^ 
 Lessons for the day, Deut. vi. and vii. 
 
 Deut. VII. 22—26. 
 
 ^.nd the Lord thy God will put out those nations h.efore thee hy little and 
 little : thou mayest not consume them at oncCj lest the beasts of the field 
 increase upon thee. But the Lord thy God shaU deliver them unto thee, 
 and shall destroy tliem with a mighty destruction^ untU they he de- 
 stroyed. And he shall ddvver their hmgs into thine 'hand, and thou 
 shalt destroy their name from under hea/ven : there shall no man he able , 
 to stand before thee, v/ntU thou ha/ve destroyed them. The graven images 
 of their gods shall ye hum with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or 
 gold that is on therHf nor take it urUo thee, lest thou be snaked therein : 
 for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God. N&lther shalt thou h'ing 
 an alominatipn into thine house, lest thou he a cursed thing like it: 
 but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it 
 is a cwsed thing. 
 
 In my last Sermon I tried to show you that the Old 
 Testament does not differ from the New, because the 
 rewards which it proposes are transitory or earthly, or 
 because it exalts prosperity, and does not recognise 
 adversity as a blessing. But I did not deny that there 
 was a very striking difference between them. I hinted 
 that one evil of these widely-diffused notions was, that 
 thev concealed the true character of it. The obvious and 
 admitted distinctions, that one contains a partial, the other 
 
THE JEWS A RACE OF FIGHTERS. 257 
 
 a complete revelation of the Name and nature of God; 
 that one presents to us a peculiar Nation, the other a 
 imiversal Church unfolding itself out of that nation, — 
 explain, it seems to me, the facts which the inventors of 
 these theories have unsuccessfully attempted to explain. 
 I am quite aware, however, that questions of a very serious 
 kind arise out of this view of the subject. Have we any 
 right to say that the Christian Church is a mere expansion 
 of the Jewish nation, a perfect flower coming out of a bud ? 
 Are they not contradictory in their very nature ? Are not 
 exclusion, war, persecution, extermination, set forth as 
 principles of the one ; comprehension, peace, forgiveness, 
 regeneration, of the other? Is it possible to speak of 
 the same Being as the Author of both ? Is it possible for 
 any one heartily to sympathise in the fruits of the Gospel, 
 who does not shrink with a kind of hon-or from the acts 
 enjoined by the Israeli tish Law? Have not the great evils 
 of the Church, in fact, arisen from the eflfort to combine in 
 itself two opposite natures, to be at once loving and 
 hateful, destructive and life-giving ? Is not the time come, 
 when this unnatural combination must cease, when the new 
 must expel the old, or be swallowed up by it ? 
 
 The lessons which we have read to-day force these 
 inquiries upon us. They bring out before us in all their 
 strength and fulness those characteristics of the Jewish 
 dispensation which one class of our popular teachers openly 
 dec ounce as cruel and hardhearted ; which another rejoices 
 to think were right once, but have become utterly wrong 
 now ; from which a third seeks to derive reasons foi 
 holding no communion with the members of an idolatrous 
 Church, though it shrinks from adopting the Jewish pre- 
 cedent as an actual guide to ourselves. I wish to consider, 
 
 S 
 
258 SERMON XIY. 
 
 first, what, according to the statements we have been 
 reading, the Jewish nation was to be and to do ; secondly, 
 how far its principles and acts are in accordance with those 
 which our Lord enjoins upon His disciples; thirdly, in 
 what sense we inherit or do not inherit Jewish obligations. 
 ' I. There can be no doubt that these passages represent 
 the Jewish nation as bound to a perpetual conflict with 
 idolatry. The resistance was primarily an internal one. 
 The members of the nation were not to meddle with the 
 accursed thing ; they were never to bow down to natural 
 or human symbols. This was the tenure of the nation's 
 existence; losing this it lost itself. So Moses teaches 
 in- these chapters; the doctrine comes out still more dis- 
 tinctly,* minutely, awfully, afterwards. But the Israelite 
 was not merely to be tenacious of the true worship, ^and 
 watchfiil against any intrusion of the false ; he was to go 
 forth against the idolatrous people of Canaan, to, break in 
 pieces their gods, to destroy their altars and high places. 
 The language on the one subject is as clear and imperative 
 as on the other. There is no room for the plea that the 
 Jew was to defend his own position, without assailing that 
 of his fellows. He was to feel that he had a commission 
 to fight, not chiefly for his own borders, though these would 
 be extended, but mainly as the soldier of God, to put dowii 
 that which fexalted itself against Him. And not only the 
 idol or the idol-temple was to be destroyed ; the inhabitants 
 of the idolatrous country, their wives, their children, their 
 sheep, and their oxen, were to be put to death. The leader 
 of the hosts was to set his foot upon the necks of their 
 kings. 
 
 What is this, it will be saidj but a religious war of the 
 most ferocious kind, a war for establishing the tenets of 
 
FACTS CONCERNING IDOLATEY. 259 
 
 Judaiam. and putting down the tenets of those who differed 
 from it ; a war not justified upon the ordinary excuses of 
 lands invaded or threatened, of commerce interrupted, even 
 of fears that such results might happen if no steps were 
 taken to hinder them? How can any war whatso- 
 ever, any crusade, be denounced or considered otherwise 
 than praiseworthy and exemplary, if these are defended ? 
 
 It will be seen at once that such phrases as * the tenets of 
 Judaism,' the ' tenets of Heathens,* are not scriptural ex- 
 pressions, or equivalents for any that are to be found in 
 Scripture. They are struck in a different mint. Some 
 may think them much better, belonging to a much more 
 advanced state of civilization. Whether that is so or not, 
 one cannot be substituted for the other ; they have nothing 
 in common. We merely read ourselves into the Bible when 
 we introduce them there ; and it is an idle thing to pro- 
 nounce judgment upon a case which we have invented. 
 
 Without taking that course, we may consider a few facts 
 which ordinary history makes known to us. If we examine 
 the condition of any people in the old world, we shall, I 
 think, perceive that some apprehensions of a just and 
 righteous Power, the ground of law and order, the pro- 
 tector of boundaries, the avenger of wrong, lay near the 
 heart of them all. In proportion as the people we read of 
 was strong, concentrated, triumphant, so was this feeling 
 strong. But near it lay an element of weakness, division, 
 falsehood. They connected this righteous and avenging 
 Power with some visible objects. Such objects had different 
 aspects in different places, produced different effects on 
 different minds. The worshippers of them became divided, 
 narrow, local. This was one inevitable result. But besides 
 this, they became animal and sensuaL Their gods had 
 
 s 2 
 
'260 SERMON XIV. , 
 
 been formed in great part by tlieir animal and sensual 
 instincts. Every day the thing worshipped became more 
 coloured and perverted by the low habits of t?ie worshipper's 
 mind ; every day that mind became grosser from the objects 
 which it reverenced and yrhich it had debased. 
 
 But presently there comes in a new cause of corruption. 
 The priest, — the witness that there is a Being, or that 
 there are beings above man, whom he is intended to 
 worship, — promotes the growth of these downwaird ten- 
 dencies. He becomes their minister. As the conscience 
 grows indifferent to actual transgressions, the religious acts 
 which he enjoins keep up in it a sort of morbid sensitive- 
 ness. Its pains must be removed, though its sins cannot. 
 Hence a whole system of practices, each of which tends to 
 make the belief in God more confused, to make that which 
 is divine more and more in the likeness of the corrupt 
 human, of the animal, of the devilish. It has not been a 
 mistake or delusion into which men have fallen, when they 
 have traced all the moral evils of the world, all its political 
 evils, to its superstitions ; that is to say, to its false notions 
 of God. They have only gone wrong when they have 
 failed to see that all these hateful superstitions are the 
 denials of some precious truths, of which the national 
 consciience, the national constitution, even the national 
 idolatry, was testifying. They have only gone wrong 
 when they have refused to see that all the strength, the 
 order, the truth, which have been in any people, must 
 have come from above; because the weakness, disorder, 
 untruth, which were in them, so certainly have come from 
 beneath. 
 
 Now what the Scriptures say is this, that the God of the 
 whole earth declared or unveiled Himself to the members 
 
EFFECTS OP CONQUEST. 261 
 
 of one family, because it was His purpose that m that 
 family all the families of the earth should be blessed ; that 
 in due time He raised this family into a nation, revealing 
 to the members of it His righteousness and truth, through 
 laws, ordinances, and institutions ; renewing the covenant 
 which He had made with their forefathers ; preserving 
 most carefiilly the distinctions of their families ; treating 
 3ach as an integral portion of the nation. To this nation 
 It is said He gave the command that they should go forth 
 against certain tribes, the cup of whose iniquities was full, 
 — that is to say, in whom idolatry had produced its 
 ultimate effects, in whom it had reached its fall consum- 
 mation, who had lost the very sense of righteousness and 
 order and truth, who were preying upon each other, who 
 had sunk into all unutterable crimes, — for the purpose of 
 sweeping their gods, themselves, and everything that 
 belonged to them, from the face of the earth. However 
 we judge of these facts, this we must at least admit to be 
 the statement of them. And therefore the difference 
 between the Jews and other people is precisely this : All 
 the great nations that we read of have effected extensive, 
 and on the whole, salutary, conquests. Their triumphs 
 have been the means of spreading law, government, civi- 
 lization, where they would otherwise not have reached. 
 They have swept away feeble, corrupt, sensualized people, 
 who had become animal-worshippers or devil-worshippers, 
 and had lost all sense of their human dignity. But we 
 feel that the nations who have done these works, have done 
 them in gi-eat part for their own glory, for the in- 
 crease of their territory, at the instigation and for the 
 gratification of particular leaders. All higher and more 
 blessed results of their success, which it is impossible 
 
262 SERMON XIV. 
 
 not to recognise, have been stained and corrupted by 
 the ignoble and selfish tendencies which have inixed with 
 them and been the motives to .them ; so that we are con- 
 tinually perplexed with the question, what judgment we 
 shall form of them, or what different causes we can find for 
 such opposite effects. There is one nation which is taught 
 from the very first that it is not to go out to win any 
 prizes for itself, to bring home the silver or gold, the sheep 
 or the oxen, the men-servants or the women-servants, that 
 it is to be simply the instrument of the righteous Lord 
 against those who were polluting His earth and making it 
 unfit for human habitation. If this people were represented 
 as a particularly exalted and virtuous people in themselves, 
 their history would throw little light upon that of others 
 They would be merely rare exceptions, from whose 
 successes or failures no inference could be drawn. But 
 being throughout affirmed and proved to be a hard-hearted, 
 stupid, stiff-necked people, we perceive whence all their 
 strength, vitality, courage proceeded. We see that they 
 were great, and brave, and united, as Moses tells them 
 they would be, — just so far as they believed that God was 
 in the midst or them and going forth with them, that this 
 gave all the heart to their enterprises, — and that just so far 
 as they lost this, they were meaner and more selfish than 
 all other people. The confusion then that we see elsewhere, 
 is explained and removed here. If we could believe Moses's 
 statement, it would 'be the greatest help in understanding 
 and interpreting Greek, Roman, and all other histories ; it 
 would explain to us why all ancient history is national 
 history; why the history of two or three little nations is 
 really the history of the whole world. At the same time 
 it would show us how a nation, which seemed at first tho 
 
HOW WE EXPLAIN THEM. 263 
 
 enemy of all others, was really doing their work; was 
 warring with their evils as much as its own ; was acting as 
 the punisher of evils, which, if they are left in a land, 
 destroy the inhabitants of it by inward consumption and 
 by mutual executions. 
 
 We have all some method of accounting for the stories 
 we read of destructive wars ; but they are often tortuous, 
 conftised, immoral methods. We talk of good coming out 
 of evil; as if that which was bad did or could of itself 
 produce any fruits except bad ones. We speak of the 
 great advantages of a more civilized nation meeting a less 
 civilized, even if one exterminates the other ; a conclusion to 
 which we are certainly driven in many cases by facts, but 
 yet in which I think we are all at times shaken by other 
 facts of a very humiliating and painful kind ; and which, 
 when we have arrived at it, is not altogether consolatory 
 or satisfactory. We believe that a people utterly defiled 
 by its own immoralities and superstitions is destined to 
 perish, and generally perishes by the hand of some other 
 race; — those words, 'is destined,' or 'generally,' either 
 merely announcing certain observations of experience, or 
 introducing some vague, dark, xmknown fate, to relieve the 
 oppression which they cause us. All these are either 
 contrivances to escape from the belief in God ; or else the 
 trembling, convulsive eflforts of shipwrecked men to gi-asp 
 at that belief. Suppose now they dared say to themselves, 
 'This was ordained. Grod intended this, and appointed 
 
 * the persons who were to carry it out ; the blessing came 
 ' from Him ; what they did as His agents, they did bene- 
 ' ficially, effectually ; whatever they did merely to carry 
 
 * out a scheme of their own, to gratify their own lust of 
 ' vengeance, to build up greatness for themselves, was 
 
2Q4: SERMON XIV. 
 
 \ rebellion agaihst Him, and led to miaerj.' If we had 
 courage to use this language, — that is to say, if we had 
 courage to follow the letter of the Bible, and to believe that 
 it was giving ua a rule for our guidance as to the course of 
 the world, — we should, it seems to me, face undoubted 
 facts and series of facts with far more honesty and with far 
 more hope. Fqr consider what we have gained. We have 
 not merely substituted one name for another. When we 
 speak of God, we mean the Eighteous Being, the defender 
 , of Right, the opposer of Wrong, We mean that there is 
 such a Being. One, of whose nature Eight is the ground ; 
 of whose acts Right is the end. We distinctly affirm that 
 that which contradicts His being, that with which He is at 
 war, is every form of oppression, injustice, falsehood ; what- 
 ever has undermined human society and made the earth 
 miserable and accursed. We, affirm that all this came not 
 from Him, but simply by abuse and perversion of that 
 power with which He has entrusted His creatures ; by the 
 insurrection of beings whom He had endued with wills 
 against His will. We affirm that He calls out men to be 
 His agents and fellow-workers ; to understand the purposes 
 which He has at heart. We affirm that whensoever these ' 
 instruments of His become self-seekers, — and aim at turning 
 the commission which He has given them to their own 
 personal ends — that moment they are punished upon the 
 same principles as all other people, and with greater 
 severity. 
 
 II. I have merely assumed hitherto that we are con- 
 sidering the condition of the old world. It may seem to 
 you that many facts which meet us every day are of the 
 same kind with those to which I have been alluding : but 
 I do not urge that thought upon you at present. We are 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 265 
 
 asked whether the Gospel has not introduced quite 
 another view of human duties and of the divine character, 
 from that which we find in the book of Deuteronomy; 
 whether we can apply the maxims of that book without 
 setting aside all that we have learnt from the Sermon on 
 the Mount ? Now we surely have not learnt thia from the 
 Sermon on the Mount, that there is not a Righteous Being, 
 — One whose Will is to all good, — One to whom Injustice 
 and Wrong are opposed. Our Lord did not open His lips 
 to repeal that fundamental principle of the Old Dispensation. 
 On the contrary, He came, — so His whole discourse, so all 
 His parables and His acts intimate, — to show forth the 
 Righteousness of God, to bring it out in its fullest and 
 innermost meaning. Neither did He say that henceforth 
 men were not to be the instruments in doing his work, in 
 carrying out His purposes. On the contrary, — He said 
 that they were to be like His Father in heaven; that 
 they were to be as He was, and do as He did. Nor 
 can we say that He proclaimed a doctrine which would 
 less interfere with the local gods of the different people of 
 the earth ; on the contrary, He more distinctly announced 
 a one Father of all the families of the earth who was 
 claiming the homage of all. Supposing the Gospel to 
 diffuse itself, it must be quite as assertive and intrusive as 
 Judaism. Its very comprehensiveness involves it in a 
 more direct and deadly hostility with all partial and 
 divided objects of worship. The ends of the two dispen- 
 sations then do not appear to be different any more than 
 their principle. The difference must be sought for in the 
 means by which the principle is manifested and the ends 
 effected. Here we certainly encounter a very marked 
 opposition ; but I believe no contradiction. Hatred and 
 
266 SERMON XIV. 
 
 love in all cases are opposites; but the hatred of evil ia 
 so far from heing contrary to the love of good, — ^that one 
 cannot exist without the other. They must have different 
 ways of expressing themselves ; one can never be merged 
 in the other. Each must have its own province and work, 
 or both will suffer and at last perish. Christ brings out 
 the all-perfect, universal, absolute Love of God in His acts 
 and His sufferings. His life and His death. So far as it 
 can be proclaimed in words, He seiids forth His disciples 
 to proclaim it. He ordains sacraments which shall be 
 witnesses that it is really gathered up in a Person, that it 
 must be received from Him. 
 
 As this message or revelation concerns the exhibition of 
 the Divine character in human images, those must be the 
 best and most perfect instruments and messengers of it 
 who exhibit this character in their own : loving their 
 enemies ; doing good to those who hate them ; in all things 
 building their lives upon sacrifice, not selfishness. But 
 the evil fruits of selfishness must meet with their own 
 appropriate recompense. The sword of justice, not words 
 or acts of tenderness, must cut off these. He who being 
 entrusted with it, fails to use it through any weakness or 
 faintness of heart, yields to selfishness, — refases to be 
 God's minister, allows that which is hateful to God and 
 destructive to his fellow-creatures, to live and multiply. 
 He who is seized with a sudden fancy that he is to forgive 
 enemies when he is called upon to punish wrong, will not 
 forgive them when they injure him. The judge who is 
 too tender-hearted to sign a warrant for the execution of 
 a criminal, will very probably end by being the head of 
 a committee of safety, and will defile the land with the ^ 
 blood of innocent men. 
 
THE NATION TURNED INTO THE CHUKCH. 267 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount then is in peril from those 
 who insist that it shall abrogate one tittle of the Law. 
 But it may limit the functions of the Lawgiver, if it point 
 to some more effectual method of accomplishing His 
 purposes than any which he can use. He must always be 
 interested in putting down idolatry, because it interferes 
 with the invisible authority upon which Law stands ; and 
 because it is the fruitful source of crime. He is interested 
 therefore in finding the most effectual means of extin- 
 guishing idolatry. Our Lord shows us that the punish- 
 ment of the idolater is not now the best means. The 
 proclamation of Him is a more perfect one. It was proved 
 to be so. Idolatry was more directly assaulted in its high 
 places, received more deadly wounds, in the three centuries 
 during which the Gospel of the Son of God was opposed 
 by all the swords of the lloman empire, and when it had 
 no earthly sword of its own, than by all the battles of the 
 Israelites. Henceforth, therefore, the magistrate may 
 confine himself to the punishment of the unrighteous acts 
 which idolatry produces. He may, just because he hates 
 it as much as Joshua or David hated it, leave it in its own 
 naked form to be encountered by a power which has been 
 proved to be mightier than his own. 
 
 III. The distinctions which I have attempted to draw 
 are not artificial; they belong to the nature of things, 
 they are deep and radical. They must affect all the 
 relations between the magistrate and the herald of the 
 Gt)spel, between the Nation and the Church. We 
 acknowledge generally that to punish wrong and to 
 remove the causes which hinder the well-doing of a com- 
 munity, is the characteristic work of the one; that the 
 diffusion of good principles, the advancement of the 
 
268 SERMON XIV. 
 
 mell'heing of a community, should be the great aim of , , 
 the other. But then these distinct tasks so often involve 
 and ctoss each other, that men say they must at last . . 
 be identified ; they so continually interrupt each other 
 and interfere with each other, that men cry they must 
 be wholly separated. The process of identifying them 
 takes place in two different methods. The civil power- 
 in a particular nation may look upon itself as divine, 
 and therefore as bound to claim spiritual functions; the 
 ecclesiastical power may claim to itself all civil functions. 
 In other words, Christianity may be resolved into Judaism ; 
 the Church may be looked upon as only a part of the 
 Nation. Or Judaism may be taken up into Christianity, 
 the Church may affirm that it has no need of the Nation. 
 The former system has had able advocates in all times, 
 some very recent ones. The Scotch Covenant, afterwards 
 our own Commowealth and Protectorate, were very 
 vigorous attempts to realize it in practice. The whole 
 history of Romanism is an illustration of the other. Tixe 
 study of both experiments throws great light upon the 
 relation between the Old and New Testaments ; but 
 receives back a greater and more brilliant light from them. 
 A very intense honest hatred of idolatry characterised 
 those who dwelt exclusively upon God's covenant with • ■ 
 the nation ; a feeling of God's actual government, and' 
 of his righteous war with evil, gave a healthful strength 
 and manliness to their minds. But the Gospel of His 
 good-will to men was strangely narrowed by these bold 
 wielders of the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. They 
 could not look upon Christ's incarnation and death as 
 actual witnesses of God's reconciliation with mankind. - - - 
 They could- only look upon them as the deliverance of ' ' 
 
THE CHURCH MADE INTO A NATION. 269 
 
 a few from tHat evil, which they came hy degrees to 
 regard as more essentially the ground of things than 
 God Himself. When they did try to think of Him 
 as the ground of all things, it was hardly possible for 
 them not to consider Him the author of the curses, which 
 the Old Testament represents as the consequence of 
 departure from the state which He established. It was 
 not possible to avoid the sinking of God's righteousness 
 in His sovereignty, or to prevent His election of some 
 from being regarded as implying a want of love, if not 
 hatred, for the rest. Thus not Christianity only, but 
 Judaism, was outraged by this Judaical Christianity. 
 The fundamental principle of the Old Covenant,> that 
 the choice of one people was to be for the blessing of 
 all,— its fundamental doctrine that the revelation of 
 a God of righteousness is that blessing, — were put in 
 peril by the good men who held this faith as a true 
 and solid possession, were absolutely subverted in the 
 minds of numbers to whom they bequeathed it. 
 
 The other experiment is, I believe, equally decisive. 
 The Latin, Church has valiantly and zealously asserted 
 the Name into which we are baptized, as a ground of 
 fellowship between all nations and kindreds. It has put 
 fortli the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Christ as declaring 
 an actual union and reconciliation between heaven and 
 earth, between God and man. It has declared the highest 
 authority to be a spiritual authority. And, apparently 
 in zeal to maintain these great principles, it has claimed 
 a right to crush the individual nations; asserting one 
 general language for devotion; aflSrming Christendom to 
 have one place and one man for its centre. What has 
 come of this ? The hatred of idolatry has ceased- Every 
 
270 SERMON XTV. 
 
 . old form of sensual and divided worship has been adopted 
 and naturalized by the Church; everything which the 
 Jewish nation was to count accursed, it has blessed. And 
 yet it has become local, partial, and narrow. The Uni- 
 versal Society, in order to put down the nations, became 
 itself, not indeed in any high and noble sense a Nation, 
 but, a petty principality; a court with all the worst, 
 most corrupt, most selfish habits incident to a principality 
 and a court. Instead of showing its superiority to the 
 nations by dispensing with their swords in the propa- 
 gation of its faith, it has craved for their aid, and this 
 while its better men were proving continually how much 
 more they could do by acts and words of love, and how 
 ineffectual persecutions were. And when the nations 
 have given it this help, — ^instead of going forth, like the 
 Jews, to put down immoral superstitions which interfered 
 with the confession of God's righteous and universal name, 
 and corrupted the earth, — they have become the, agents 
 in establishing superstitions ; therefore in fostering in the 
 heart of nations the crimes which the righteous punish^ 
 ments of the civil legislator and judge must afterwards ' 
 exterminate, if they can. Such have been the results 
 of trying to sink the Church in the Nation or the Nation 
 in the Church, 
 
 The cry for separating" them which is so loud in our 
 day, supports itself by two opposing arguments. One 
 set of them proceed upon the notion that beliefs are 
 involuntary, indifferent, belonging to a region with which 
 the legislator has nothing to do. The other affirms 
 that belief to be all-important, imperative, enjoined by 
 divine authority ; therefore it must be preserved from 
 all interference with a power by its nature incompetent, 
 
REASONS FOE SEPARATION. 271 
 
 yet, a3 experience shows, apt to be intruflive. I quite 
 agree with those who take the first ground, — that belief 
 in all its shapes and forms is a very subtle principle, 
 which requires a kind of treatment entirely unlike that 
 which legislators and magistrates can afford time or 
 wisdom to bestow upon it; only I should say that it 
 lies out of their reach not because it is involuntary, but 
 because it is concerned with the innermost will of man ; 
 whereas their transactions must be chiefly with his out- 
 ward acts. But if they fancy that these outward acts 
 are not affected and determined by the processes whicli 
 go on within, all experience belies and contradicts tliem ; 
 they must encounter the effects of belief, whatever it is, 
 at every turn ; they must acknowledge them as its effects, 
 whether they like it or not. And therefore their notion 
 that it is indifferent, becomes in practice a very poor and 
 insincere pretence, which is dropped in a moment, when 
 its results become palpably inconvenient; the doctrine, 
 in fact, coming at last to this, that all beliefs may be 
 tolerated while they are not beliefs ; while they are 
 negative, feeble, inoperative. The moment they come 
 forth with any positive energy, — the legislator who adopts 
 this theory is confounded, and finds that he must per- 
 secute in fact, though not in name. 
 
 Such inclinations and acts on his part seem to afford 
 great justification for the eagerness of religious men to 
 be exempt from all State cognizance, so far as their religion 
 is concerned. But unless they are prepared to deny that 
 a false religion does produce evil and corrupt moral effects, 
 such effects as the makers and executors of laws must take 
 cognizance of ; unless they are prepared to affirm that 
 their religion does not bear at all upon human life, or 
 
272 SERMON XIV. 
 
 that it has a set of maxims altogether peculiar to itseH, 
 which are not meant for human beings as such^ that is, 
 unless they are ready to take up all the maxims which 
 are most utterly disparaging to the Gospel, and which 
 have in all times been checking its influence and perverting 
 its nature, they cannot rationally maintain their theory 
 of separation ; least of all can they enforce it in 
 practice. 
 
 These conclusions might be very distressing and un- 
 satisfactory, if there were not evidence that while men 
 have been tiying to identity the Nation with the Church, 
 or to sever them utterly, God has been using each for 
 His purposeSjrr—has been claiming each for a distinct part 
 of His kingdom. However selfish the plans of kings • 
 may have been, they have been witnesses against the 
 idolatry which priests have been promoting. He has 
 made the assertion of royal supremacy a bulwark against 
 a supremacy which was undermining His own. He has 
 used nations, as of old, to punish and destroy others more 
 corrupt than themselves, — though they might not feel that 
 they were acting by His command, and might covet the ^ 
 silver and gold which He forbade the Jew to touch.' He 
 has infused into little insignificant communities an irre- 
 sistible might, with which they have overthrown long- 
 established tyrannies. He has taught our rulers, at 
 various periods of our history, that it is our vocation 
 to resist every power, papal, imperial, democratic, which 
 strives to destroy the peculiarities of race, family, indi- 
 vidual, — and to construct a society which shall be an 
 artificial corporation, not a living body. At the same 
 time He has raised up witnesses for ' the unity of His own 
 nature, and of mankind, which He has formed in His 
 
god's method bettee than oues. 273 
 
 image. Priests, in spite of their own sm and exclusiveness, 
 tave kept alive a testimony in the world, that a Spirit 
 has come down to establish a universal communion, with 
 which the diversities of feeling, opinion, temperament, 
 constitution, shall not interfere. 
 
 And now the time is come when we must either under- 
 stand these purposes of God, and work together with 
 them; or when that separation of Nation and Church, 
 which decrees civil and ecclesiastical have been unable 
 to effect, — shall be effected, as far as we are Concerned, 
 by the separation of all that is meant to be united and 
 harmonious in our hearts. The notion has been working 
 for a long time among us, that indifference is another name 
 for charity ; that zeal for Truth and the name of God is 
 identical with exclusiveness and narrowness. If we yield 
 to that notion, for us there will be no Nation, no Church ; 
 each will succeed in robbing us of the other. But if we 
 have learnt to believe that the Spirit of love is a consuming 
 fire which must destroy the idols and high places that we 
 ourselves have set up, and then all those which are with- 
 drawing men anywhere firom the living and true God, — 
 we shall find that the command to drive out the debased 
 people of Canaan, is an utterance of the same gracious 
 Will which bade the disciples go into all lands and preach 
 the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them ' in the Name 
 of the Father J and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost* 
 
SERMON XV. 
 
 TxtE TE^T OF PROPHECY AND MIRACLE. 
 
 {iiincttlh's Inn, Sunday after Ascension Day, June 1, 1851.) 
 Lessons fbrthe day, Deuteronomy xii. and xiii. 
 
 Deutbronomt Siii. 1 — 3. 
 
 If thicrc a/rise a/mor^ yov, a prophet^ w a dreamier of dreams, and gi^eth thet 
 a sign or a wonder, a/rtd the sign or tJie wonder come to pass, whereof he 
 spake imto thee, saymg, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not 
 hn&um, a/nd let us S&he th^; thoil shaZt not hea/rken trnto the words of that 
 prophet, or that drea/mer of dreams : for the Lord yowr Ood proveth you, to 
 know whether ye love the Lord yow God with all your heart and with all 
 your soiil. 
 
 The thought will certainlj come to us when we hear 
 these words ; ' But is not this the test by which I have 
 ' been taught to tiy the divine prophets? Has not the . 
 ' fulfilment of their predictions been the reason which has 
 
 * been given me for believing in their mission and autho- 
 
 ' rity, nay, for believing the Revelation of Grod in the- 
 ' Scriptm-e altogether ? If the test fails in any one case,— , 
 
 * if I have the highest authority for thinking that it will 
 ' fail, — if I am warned that the guesses of a lying and 
 ' mischievous prophet may be successful, and that yet 
 
 * I shall be guilty of a sin if I pay heed to them, what 
 
 * is the worth of this evidence and of all the arguments 
 
DID MOSES TRUST IN SIGNS? 275 
 
 * that have been grounded upon it ? ' For many reasons 
 It is exceedingly desirable, even necessary, that we should 
 consider this question at the present time. Let us desire 
 that we may look at it humbly and fearlessly, not shrinking 
 from. any acknowledgment of our own mistakes and in- 
 sincerities, and sure that nothing is safe but Truth. 
 
 One objection to the language of the text, which would 
 seem to many very formidable, will not, I trust, have much 
 weight with you. * Did not the whole commission and 
 ' work of Moses, it might be asked, regt on signs and 
 ' wonders? Did he not go into Pharaoh with power to 
 
 * turn a rod into a serpent and water into blood? And 
 ' was not the faith which these signs awakened in his own 
 
 * power, the reason for obeying him and for letting tlie 
 ' people go ? Was it not by signs and wonders, in like 
 ' manner, that he asserted this authority over the Israelites 
 ' in the wilderness ? To diminish the trust of the people 
 
 * in signs and wonders, — was it not to sbake all their trust 
 ' in himself, all their assurances that God was with him?' 
 
 The consideration we have bestowed upon the previous 
 books of Moses, and upon this last, has, I trust, shown us 
 clearly what the answer to these questions is. He was to 
 exhibit signs and wonders before Pharaoh ; but the signs 
 and wonders were for the very purpose of breaking that 
 trust in charms and portents and in the tricks of magicians, 
 which had crushed in the tyrant's mind all trust in 
 «, living, righteous God. These acts proved that a God 
 who cared for the outcast and slave, was Bang and Master 
 of the Universe, that its powers were His powers ; that 
 Pharaoh in doing homage to them was giving himself up 
 to felse gods. They were demonstrations of this &ct tov^ 
 him and to mankind : but instead of its being aflfirmed that^ 
 
 T 2 
 
276 SERMON XV. 
 
 these powers exercised a salutary and gracious effect on the 
 n>ind of Pharaoh, we are told expressly and , repeatedly 
 that they hardened him. The commission of Moses to 
 Pharaoh then did not rest upon signs and wonders, or 
 consist in them. It rested upon a revelation of the ^ 
 Eighteous God to his own conscience ; it consisted, in 
 a message from the Righteous Grod to the conscience of 
 the Egyptian. The signs and wonders were most valuable 
 accidents and accompaniments of the message. But they 
 denoted a foregone conclusion. If they were regarded in 
 any other light than as a declaration of an invisible King 
 to men who were serving visible things, that they were 
 His subjects, the purpose of the sign was not accomplished^ 
 its effects were evil, and not good. 
 
 The case was still stronger in respect to the Israelites. 
 All the signs and wonders which Moses wrought in their 
 eyes when they were murmuring against him in the 
 wilderness, were signs that Grod Himself was in the midst 
 of them; that He was caring for them, watching over 
 them, supplying their daily wants^ There is not one of 
 the miracles which is not distinctly affirmed to have this 
 object. We may say, if we please, Moses was permitted 
 to break the ordinary laws of the imiverse that he might 
 prove he had a special dignity and a right to be obeyed. 
 He says no such thing. He says, ' You shall see by this 
 
 * and this act whether the Lord is among us or not, 
 
 * whether He is regularly and habitually our King, 
 
 * whether He is governing the daily, hourly events of our 
 ' lives.' The miracles were assertions of a permanent 
 order against the inclination of the Israelites, exhibited in 
 all their doubts and complainings, to suppose that they 
 were under a capricious ruler, under an irregular govern- 
 
RECAPITULATION OF EVIDENCE. 277 
 
 ment ; snch as it was the curse of the people round about 
 them to confess and helieve in, — if I may apply such 
 sacred words as ' confess ' and ' believe ' to a condition of 
 mind which implied the absence of all confidence, a 
 perpetual fluctuation and uncertainty. 
 
 These conclusions, which were involved in aU the 
 history of the earlier books, form the staple doctrines of 
 the book of Deuteronomy, There they are drawn out' 
 with the greatest care ; they are forced upon us again and 
 again ; all Moses' lessons from the past and concerning the 
 future turn upon them. The meaning and use of the 
 manna, as Moses expounds it in this book, is a key to all 
 the other cases of divine interference, as we call it. They 
 received it, he says, day by day, that * they might learn that 
 man does not live hy bread alone, but by every word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth rnan UveJ* The 
 particT^lar instance was the discovery and exemplification 
 of a universal law. One mode of illustrating it had been 
 appropriate to the wilderness, another would be appro- 
 priate to the promised land : the first was not a better, 
 diviner state of things than the second ; it was inferior, 
 transitional, always intended to issue in the blessing 
 promised to their fathers ; the blessing, not of being left 
 to themselves, but of no longer doing that which was right 
 in their own eyes ; of being brought into a more fixed 
 national order. But the words of Moses go further. The 
 Israelite was not only instructed that he did not live by 
 bread alone, but that man did not. The lesson of the 
 manna was a lesson respecting the whole race which God 
 had formed in His image. It was an assertion that all 
 were under an invisible government, were sustained by an 
 unseen hand; it was a witness against that dependence 
 
278 SERMON xy. 
 
 upon chance, or upon the spontaneous finits of the earth, 
 which made cultivation of the land,^the fulfilment of 
 God's law and blessing, — inipossihle ; it was a solemn 
 record that' the Egyptian was not subject to one giver of 
 corn, and the Assyrian, the Greek, to another ; but that there 
 was one Lord over all ; first and chiefly the Lord of human 
 beings, then the Lord .of the earth and its productions. 
 
 Signs and wonders then, — either such as were shown 
 before' Pharaoh to tell him that he was not the King of 
 kings, and could not rule subjects according to his ples^surcj 
 or such as told the Israelites that a deliverer and not an 
 enemy was constantly governing them, — do not in th,e 
 very least degree interfere with the principle laid down iu 
 the text. They established no obligation in a Jew or in 
 any man to believe a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, 
 because he showed a wonder, and because the wonder 
 came to pass. They supplied him with a law which, if he 
 obeyed it, would be a protection against that danger; 
 which would not allow him to wait for the results of 
 a dream or a prophecy before he pronounced judgment 
 upon it ; which would make the question one of great 
 indifference to him, whether the issue accorded with thei 
 guess or confuted it. 
 
 The prophet came to the faithful Israelite with a bi;irden. 
 of the Lord. There would be a hurricane or an' invasion, 
 or great victories and prosperity. ' Well what then ? In 
 ' either case what is it you bid me do ? Is it to trust in 
 ' the Lord God of Israel, to make Him my dread and Him , 
 * my confidence? Is it to repent that I have so often 
 ' neglected the duty which lay before me, and chosen a 
 ' bye-path of my own ? Is it to determine in God's 
 ' strength that I will be more simple and manful in my 
 
BOW TO TRY A PROPHET. 279 
 
 * otedience henceforth ? Then you are a prophet of the 
 ' Lord ; whatever happens I shall be right in giving ear to 
 
 * you. I am certain of your credentials. Grod has sent 
 '* you to me ; it is His voice which is speaking to me ; I 
 ' shall be rejecting Him, not you, if I do not heed it.* 
 
 * Or do you come to persuade me that I am not to trust 
 ' God, not to act as if He had made a covenant with me ? 
 
 * Do you wish to frighten me out of my confidence, to set 
 
 * me upon inventing new plans of my own, or adopting 
 
 * new plans of yours ? Do you wish me to add some 
 ' practices to my worship, which the law of my fathers has 
 
 * not prescribed, that I may recommend myself more to the 
 
 * divine favour, or avert the divine wrath ? Do you wish 
 ' to make me feverish, restless, discontented, by your 
 
 * announcements of evil to come, or easy and satisfied 
 
 * with the condition of myself and of my land by your 
 
 * announcements of good to come ? Do you want to make 
 ' me tremble as the trees tremble in the wind, or wouJd 
 ^ you make me think that all is peace and security ? Ton 
 
 * are no prophet of the Lord ; you would turn me away 
 
 * from following Him ; you would have me bow down to 
 i false gods, gods who can be bribed to give me help or 
 
 * success, or to let me go on in my bad courses. I do not 
 
 * care the least whether the event corresponds to your 
 ^ words or not. There may be a famine, there may be 
 
 * plenty of com or wine, there may be a defeat, there may 
 ' be 9. triumph,^ — anyhow you are a deceiver ; you would 
 
 * lead me into wrong or falsehood, if you have ever so 
 
 * much knowledge of what is going to take place in the 
 
 * world. Begone with your dreams and prophecies, your 
 ' signs and wonders ; I am not afraid of them, but I am 
 
 * afraid of you and of myself, because you are come 
 
280 SEKMON XVt 
 
 " speaking out of that which is evil in you t6 that tvhich 
 * is evil in me. I know what it is in my heart which 
 ' answers to t/ottr language. It is that which does not 
 ' answer to God's language, it is that which makes me 
 ' unwilling and unable to hear that and obey it/ 
 
 So a man or woman of Israel, whose heart was sound in 
 God's covenant, would have spoken. It did not require 
 any skill in sifting evidence, any capacity for reasoning 
 about the inspiration of the prophet, any power of weighing 
 likelihoods as to the accomplishment or non- accomplishment 
 of his predictions. The wayfarer who was a fool in all 
 trials of this kind, but was striving to be true and to do 
 the work he had to do, would have laid bare the pretensions 
 of a lying prophet, and confessed a real one. Those who 
 would not have done either, — those upon whom each mere 
 trickster could always calculate as a sure prey, — were the 
 sons and daughters of Sion who led wanton and luxurious 
 lives, who fancied they were wittier and wiser than their 
 neighbours ; who knew by heart all the criteria by which 
 the divine seer could be ascertained. The diseased, morbid 
 consciences of such Israelites, their self-conceit, and their 
 desire of being different from the vulgar, their love of 
 novelty, their belief in tests which are infallible on paper — 
 most fallible when brought to bear in the actual business 
 of life, — tempted and rewarded eveiy man who sought to 
 establish a dominion over them himself, and to make them 
 traffic with the gods of the people round about. From 
 these came the worshippers of Baal and Ashtaroth ; these 
 offered their children to Moloch ; these burned incense to 
 the Queen of Heaven. All moral abominations followed 
 from their religious practices ; all political ruin, all direct' 
 outrages upon law. It was not, therefore, a hard saying, — 
 
WHO YIELDED TO FALSE PEOPHETS. 281 
 
 however it may sound so, — that the Israelite was to have 
 no pity upon them who seduced him into such courses ; that 
 he was to consider the idolatrous son or wife an enemy; 
 that he was to go forth to destroy any city among the tribes 
 in which idolatry had established itself. I explained, the 
 last time I addressed you, why we are not bound by these 
 precedents, why it would be a sin in us to act upon these 
 commands ; not because the evil is less now than it was 
 then, or that it affects nations and undermines law and 
 morality less, but that a greater and more effectual remedy 
 lias been discovered to us for it ; that the Gospel of the 
 Son of God has more power to destroy false worship than 
 the sword of the civil ruler ; that when he tries to do it. 
 he finds that he can strike off branches which soon grow 
 again, but cannot reach the root. The wisdom of ex- 
 perience forces him to abstain, because it shows him that 
 he is weak. The wisdom of God, the Supreme Reason, 
 commands him to abstain, because it shows him what is 
 strong. So far, thanks be to God, the precepts of this 
 book have been set aside by the revelation of the principles 
 upon which they are grounded. But be it never forgotten, 
 that though Christians have no right or authority to engage 
 in a religious war, even for the putting down of any false 
 system ; though, even in countries which we possess, the 
 civil magistrate must only in outrageous cases, where 
 crime is the direct and palpable result of a religion, as in the 
 burning of Hindoo widows, interfere with the free exercise 
 of it ; yet that God did call forth the Mahometan armies in 
 the 7th century, to do a work by vulgar arms, which the 
 Christian Church was not accomplishing by its mightier 
 weapons, because the hand which wielded them was palsied 
 through contact with the accursed thing. The Eternal 
 
282 SERMO^ XV. 
 
 . EighteoTisness will assert itself in one way or anotlier,^T^ 
 with us or without us,-^by a full declaration of the Truth 
 ajid Law which draws all that is partial into itself, or by ' 
 a visible proclamation of its own eternal hostility to the 
 material religions which divide human beings, and make • 
 them crawl upon earth instead of rising to heaven. But 
 if subject to this observation — I have joyfully confiessed 
 that a portion of the lesson we have read this afternoon 
 has lost its application to us, I cannot make that ad- 
 mission with reference to my text and the doctrine which 
 we have seen to be contained in it. I think it does bear 
 very directly upon our thoughts and conduct, and that in 
 several ways. 
 
 I. If the text teaches us how the true Jfewish prophet 
 would speak to his people, and in what spirit they were 
 to hear him, it teaches us who read him, how we are 
 to receive his words. That events have answered to 
 particular predictions which we find in the Bible, may 
 increase our interest in studying it and may strengthen 
 our faith. But there is a deeper instruction to be gained 
 from the prophecies than the observation of these coinci- 
 dences can impart. The real significance of these is 
 felt when they are viewed in connexion with the course 
 of the divine- government. ' The search for them aloiie, 
 is a mere exercise of dexterity, — of a dexterity which, 
 is found deceitful and dangerous in its application to 
 the affairs of the world, — which is useless, fallacious, 
 and most irreverent, when it is resorted to for the in- 
 terpretation of Scripture. The facts of pur Lord's life 
 do indeed beautifully fulfil, as the Evangelists bid us 
 observe, the intimations and indications of the prophets , 
 but that is because the Word who was speaking by 
 
APPLICATIONS TO OUE DAY, 283 
 
 aud in the Prophets, whose character and office they 
 were permitted in glimpses to behold, was fully mani- 
 fested when the Virgin hare a Son, and His name was 
 called Jesus. Such fulfilments we might trace with 
 ever fresh delight in His acts and words, though the 
 writers on the evidences of prophecy should have mistaken 
 its application in a hundred cases or in every case. If ^ 
 any new historical information were to disprove all 
 that has been advanced by these wj-iters, the tnith of 
 Christianity and of Prophecy would not he affected in 
 even the slightest degree. We should only be thrown 
 back from Bible commentators upon the Bible itself, 
 and there we should find treasures for which we have, 
 as yet, only begun to dig ; yet which are not far from 
 any of us, and may reward the search of the ordinary 
 reader, and of the practical statesman, quite as much 
 as that of the scholar. A man who has learnt from 
 the Prophet to acknowledge a guide of his spirit, — who 
 rebukes his errors, calls forth bis faith, turns all events 
 into 'discipline, — does not want proofs pf that prophet's 
 veracity. A student of the causes of a nation's well- 
 being and of the steps which lead to its ruin, is much 
 more impressed by a few such passages as those whicli 
 record the early visions of Isaiah respecting the state 
 of Jerusalem, — its luxuries, it^ bribes, its idols, the 
 faithless race of priests, the extortions of the rich, the 
 eagerness of proprietors to lay house to house and field 
 to field, the feebleness, at last the confessed, feebleness 
 of rulers, their eagerness for power passing into a cowardly 
 dread of it, lest the ruin should be under their hand — 
 than by all ' the arguments drawn from events which 
 are supposed exactly to have carried out the denunciations 
 
284 SEUMON XV. 
 
 against Egypt, or Tyre, or Ba1)ylon. That these 3e* 
 riunciations were carried out and will be carried out 
 against every country and city in the state to which 
 the inspired man refers, all history will teach us, whether 
 we can point to the special incidents which proved their 
 truthfulness or not. And such lessons must surely be 
 more solemn and profitable to ourselves and ultimately 
 more , convincing to gainsayers, than those upon which - 
 a certain class of modem divines seem inclined to dwell 
 so earnestly and exclusively. 
 
 There is another class which cares little for these 
 arguments from the past. ' Let us ask the prophets/ 
 they say, ' what they have to tell us of the time to comeJ 
 Much assuredly : yet the interpreter is not to be heard- 
 if he does not speak to us first of a Present God, of one 
 who is in covenant with us as He was with our fathers, 
 who is calling on us every hour to tm-n from our idols 
 to Him. If this is not the substance of his teaching ; 
 if all his predictions do not flow out of it ; if he begins - 
 with arguing about events that are to be, and about the 
 when and the where and the how; he is not speaking 
 in the spirit of Scripture: though he may quote it ever 
 so profusely we may be sure he does not tinderstalid it. 
 To us, at all events, he is speaking falsely. He is leading, 
 us away from our actual Judge and Lord ; he is making 
 the conceits of our intellects or our imaginations the 
 objects of our fear and our hope. We must not wait 
 for the year or day which he has fixed for the occurrence 
 of some portentous judgment or great blessing, to de- 
 termine whether we will give heed to him or not. If ' 
 he would make one action or thought or belief of ours 
 depend upon a contingency ; if he would make our 
 
THE ARGUMENT FKOM MODERN SIGNS. 285 
 
 faith in God and in the certain fulfilment of every word 
 that he has spoken, varj with the changes in his con- 
 clusions and calculations ; the principle of the text applies 
 to him. The Lord our God is using ihia prophet, this 
 dreamer of dreams, to see whether we love Him and 
 can trust in Him ; or whether we trust in events and 
 circumstances and our own theories. 
 
 II. What I have said of Prophecy applies also to 
 Miracles. The text does not separate them, nor can we. 
 We turn to the signs and wonders in the New Testament 
 as in the Old, to prove that God was speaking them. 
 Do we not rather need the assurance that God is speaking 
 to explain the signs and wonders ? The leper who heard 
 Christ speaking with authority on the Mount, said as 
 he came down, * Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make im 
 chan,^ He confessed the voice of the Deliverer and 
 the King. He came to Him trusting that He would 
 exercise the power, which belonged to Him in both 
 characters, on his behalf. How simple does the record 
 of every sign of our Lord seem, when it is looked at as 
 the expression at once of His love and His might, of 
 His divine sympathy with suffering, and His divine will 
 to restore health! K we try to ascend from the sign 
 to Him, do we reaUy ever find Him? Do we discover 
 His close relation to ourselves? Do we recognise TTiin 
 indeed as the brightness of the Father's glory? The 
 Gospel of the Son of Gt)d to men, that He came to make 
 them children of his Father in heaven, would be im- 
 perfect if the Lord had not asserted his claim to be ruler 
 of winds and waves, of the souls and bodies of his 
 creatures. How meanly do we think of it, when we 
 suppose that it cannot be presented at once to the hearts 
 
286 SERMON XV, 
 
 find consciences of miserable and feinful men, but must 
 be ustiered in wi'tli a long array of proofs, wliich the great 
 majority of people, in our day at least, find it much harder 
 to receive than that which is proved, nay, which I- suspecl 
 they never do ^receive till they have first embraced that 
 
 III. And lastly, this consideration becomes Very im- 
 portant, when not only we ourselves, but the poor people 
 of our land, are continually assailed with argun^ents 
 intended to show, that the signs and wonders recorded 
 in recent ecclesiastical history are not different in kind 
 from those which are spoken of in Scripture, We ought 
 not to dream that rules, however valuable in themselves, 
 for testing the evidence of a miracle, will be of the 
 slightest avail in removing impressions of this kind 
 from the minds of honest and humble people, who have 
 only a slender knowledge of facts, and have never been 
 trained to any habits of judicial investigation. Is it 
 fair, is it right, to demand of them a culture which we 
 know that they cannot possess? And suppose they didy 
 are we sufficiently sure of our historical inferences, to 
 insist that a course of practical -conduct shall be made' 
 dependent upon them ? We may see good reasons- to 
 think that devout men have overlooked intermediate . 
 agencies in their zeal to refer all events to God, and 
 that indevout men have played with the weakness of 
 their fellow-men for the sake of drawing reverence to 
 themselves. But there may still remain many stories 
 for which we cannot account, and a multitude moie which 
 we cannot require other people to account for iu our way. 
 We want some safer and more . comprehensive rule than 
 we can arrive at by any such methods. The text offers 
 one. A person who takes it for his guide may make 
 
HOW A WATFAUEE MAT MEET IT. 287 
 
 answer to his tempter, * I shall not debate with you 
 
 * about the reality of this or that sign or wonder. Let 
 
 * it have all the worth or credit you can give it. Bui 
 ' for what end do you bring it before me? What am 
 ' I to do, because the eyes of this statue are seen to 
 ' wink ; or the blood of that saint, imder the pressure of 
 ' priestly prayers and popular curses, undergoes liquefac- 
 ' tion ? You say, if it be so I must abandon the ground 
 
 * I have held up to this hour. What ground ? My 
 ' belief that God has made a covenant with our fathers 
 ' and us, my assurance that God has reconciled Himself 
 
 * to us in His Son, and that in that Son we may draw 
 
 * nigh to Him with clear consciences ? Yes ! that is 
 
 * what you mean, in whatever words you may disguise 
 
 * your meaning. Here then is my reply. Your advocates 
 ' say that a habit of faith is better than a habit of 
 ' unbelief ; on that plea they call upon us to believe 
 
 * these miracles. On that plea I repudiate your exhorta- 
 ' tions. I believe in God the Father who has exalted 
 ' His Son with great triumph to His kingdom in heaven. 
 
 * I will not risk that faith by declaring that I cannot live 
 
 * ^dthout a visible father on earth. I believe in the Son 
 
 * who has ascended on high that He may fill all things, 
 ' and present His perfect Sacrifice before Him who has 
 
 * accepted it for me and all mankind. I will not ex- 
 ' change that faith for the acknowledgment of an 
 ' incomplete sacrifice and local intercessors, who can 
 ' awaken no reverence and fill no hollow in my heart, 
 
 * I believe in God the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who is 
 
 * able to exalt us to the place whither our Lord is gone before 
 
 * us. I will not give up that faith for faith in prophets 
 ' and dreamers, in workers of signs and wonders, who 
 
288 SKEMON XV. 
 
 ' would bring down Christ again from above. I belicTC 
 ' in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghbst, the one 
 ' God into whose name I am baptized, in whom I am 
 
 * united to the whole Church on this side of death and the 
 ' other. I fear for - myself and for my age lest you 
 
 * should take this faith from us, leaving us a phantom 
 ' Church instead of a real one, a dead system for a Living 
 
 * God.' 
 
SEUMON XVI- 
 
 PENTECOST. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, Whit Stmdajr, June 8, 1851.) 
 Lessons for the day Deut. zti. 1 — 18, and isalah xi. 
 
 DbUT. XXX, 19, 20. 
 
 i call heaven <md ea/rth to record this day againtt you, that 1 have 
 set he/ore you life and death, hlesai/ng and cursing : ther^ore cftoose 
 UfCf that hath thou and thy seed may Ivoe: that thou mayest love ike 
 Lord thy Ood^ and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest 
 cleave vmZo him: for he is thy life, and tlie length of thy days: thaJt 
 thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, 
 to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. 
 
 You will have felt I think by this_ time, how well the 
 book of Deuteronomy answers to its name. It is most 
 strictly a Law book. It sets forth the Law under 
 which the Israelites were living, and which they could 
 not violate without losing their life as a nation. But- 
 it is not a book of Statutes, It does not contain a set of 
 decrees which the chosen race were to observe, like those 
 which are found in the latter part of Exodus. It rather 
 explains the very meaning and principle of their social 
 existence. It is what we might call in modem language, 
 a constitutional treatise ; an exhibition of the grounds 
 upon which their polity rested. This is the second Law, 
 or that which was implied in the terms and denunciations 
 of the first, 
 
 u 
 
290 SERMON XVI. 
 
 In a former Sermon I -noticed a very memorable 
 difference between the form of the Fourth Commandment, 
 as it is delivered in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, 
 and as it is repeated here. I consider that difference to 
 be significant of the object which the later record keeps 
 steadily in view. The Sabbath was to be kept, not 
 merely because. God rested on the seventh day, but 
 because the Israelites had been bondsmen in the land 
 of Egypt, It commemorated a Redemption, That fact 
 of a redemption lay, I said, beneath all the institutions 
 which the chosen people were enjoined to preserve. Apart 
 from the faith and acknowledgment of it, their institutions, 
 — one and all^ — became unreal, unintelligible. They could 
 not observe them, if they did not receive them as 
 witnesses that they had been delivered firom a tyrant 
 and taken under God's immediate government. That 
 truth was the foundation of their society. It woul<J 
 hold together so long as that truth was remembered. 
 It would perish when that truth was lost. The book 
 of Deuteronomy is nothing but a continuous assertion 
 and illustration of this maxim ; an application of it to 
 Ishe condition of the nation in all periods. 
 
 The lesson we read this morning supplies us with. 
 a memorable instance. It has been chosen to-day because 
 it records the appointment of the Pentecost, or Feast 
 of Weeks. Let me repeat to you the words in which 
 that appointment is set forth : * Seven weeks ^halt thou 
 numher unto thee. Begin to numher the seven tceeks from. 
 such time as thou heginnest to put the sickle to the corn. 
 And th&u shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the Lord thy 
 God, with a tribute of a fr-eewill offering of thine hand, 
 which tfiou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as 
 
FEASTS OF KEDEMPTION. 291 
 
 the Lord thy God hath blessed thee. And thou xhalt rejoice 
 before the Lord thy God, thou, and thy son, arui thy 
 daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and 
 the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the 
 fatherless, and the widow, that are among you, in the place 
 which the Lord thy God hath chosen to place His Name 
 there. And thou shalt remember thai thou wast a bondman 
 in Egypt, and thou shalt observe and do these statutes' 
 
 The last words, ' You were bondmien in the land of Egypt,^ 
 we should have supposed must be meant for the Passover, 
 since that was instituted on the night of their liberation, 
 and was to be a perpetual celebration of it. But no ! This 
 feast, which was to begin when the sickle was put into the 
 corn, this feast which was a thanksgiving for what we call 
 the blessings of nature, was, just as much as the other, a 
 feast of Redemption. They could not keep it, except they 
 had been made free; they could only keep it with any 
 gladness, when they received it as a token and pledge of 
 their freedom. The poor idolater would seize the fruits of 
 the earth, would feel that they had in some way dropped 
 upon him ; that if he did not perform certain sei^vices, they 
 might another year reftise to come to him. The blessing 
 of the Israelite was that he could understand all the regular 
 and mysterious processes in the ground and in the mind of 
 tlie husbandmen, to be appointed by his invisible Lord 
 and Friend. He could wait in faith their coming at the 
 season which the gracious Ruler had fixed; could hail 
 them when they appeared as blessings the more new and 
 mai'vellous for their orderly recurrence; could look upon 
 interruptions, failures and disappointments as warnings to 
 remind hira of God or of his own neglects and trans* 
 soress'ons. That was the spirit of one recollecting that he 
 
 tj2 
 
292 SERMON XYI. ^ 
 
 had been a "bondman in the land of Egypt ; that he had 
 been under the rod of a tyrant who might decree one thing 
 to-day and another to-morrow, who cared only for obtaining 
 results, and nothing for the human creatures who were to 
 produce them ; that he had lived among men and had shared 
 their ignominious delusion, who fancied that all their 
 wealth came from the river or its inundations, or from 
 some animal powers, and that these must be flattered or 
 appeased; that he had looked upon the earth as a hard 
 and partial mothet, pouring her dainties into the lap of 
 some of her children, refusing a bare subsistence to the 
 great multitude of them. And now it was his privilege to 
 feel and know that he was not at the mercy of the earth or 
 of a man, that He who had brought him out of slavery was 
 the life-giver, the giver of strength and wisdom to man ; 
 then the giver of the fruits which rewarded the use of his 
 powers. He was to regard the earth and those fruits as 
 blessings to the manservant and the maidservant, to the 
 widow and the fatherless. They were to take part in the 
 great festival ; for they were sharers in the meaning of it, 
 in the good-will of Him who was praised in it. 
 
 I have not chosen this passage for my text to-day, but 
 one from a chapter which the Church reads ou Whit 
 Tuesday, because I think it embodies the spirit of the 
 whole book, and throws great light upon the Jewish aud 
 Christian Pentecost. It is a recapitulation of principles 
 which I have dwelt upon already; but one clause of it 
 brings out a topic most needful for the illustration of the 
 Pentateuch, upon which I have not yet found opportunity 
 to speak. I do not dread the charge of repetition, and 
 I should consider the omission of that subject a very 
 e^ulpable one. 
 
A MAN PRESENT IN tHE BOOK. 293 
 
 When I say that the took of Deuteronomy is a book of 
 laws and maxims, I am using language which, though 
 true, is not satisfactory. Do not let such phrases cause 
 you to forget that a living man is speaking in it. We do 
 not miss merely what some would call the dramatic interest 
 of it, — we miss its inmost sense and intention, — if we lose 
 sight of the old man standing before a mixed multitude of 
 people, whose fathers he saw carrying burdens in Egypt, 
 and whom he had been leading for forty years towards 
 a land which he was not to enter. Not a single precept 
 is, in the proper sense of the word, intelligible, if you con- 
 sider it as a precept, without remembering that it came 
 out of the mind and heart of the Teacher, and was 
 charged with all his experience, his sympathy, his sorrow, 
 and his hope. 
 
 If any one should say, * But these are divine words ; 
 ' why need we think of the mere human agent who was 
 'appointed to deliver them?' — I answer him, You will 
 never know what divine words mean, if you strive to separate 
 wliat God has joined together. They will become mere 
 letters to you, which you may worship as you may worship 
 a stock or a stone, but they will not be God's words to 
 that generation or any other. If you would think of Him 
 as a Person, if you would believe that He can and does 
 speak to men, then let Him explain to you the nature and 
 method of His own speech. Look at the sympathy and 
 the love and the sorrow, as well as at the hope and foresight 
 of the prophet, as expressing to you, feebly but most 
 really, the mind of Him whose servant he was, whom he 
 was representing whenever he truly fulfilled his office as 
 a guide and lawgiver of the people. I do not say that we 
 may not derive very great blessings from a book, though we 
 
294 SERMON XYI. 
 
 overlook the accidents and circumstances of it, or only heai 
 some of its sentences apart from their context. * The wind 
 hloweth where it listeih ; yon cannot tell whence it cometh^ 
 or whither it goeth^ God's voice may speak to a man^s 
 heart through any phrase or symbol. But if we profess to 
 study a book, we must follow the course it points out, not 
 take one of our own. And the loss is very great, if 
 through dread of being too human in our thoughts and 
 Feelings, we learn to think that all human thoughts and 
 feelings have not their original in God. 
 
 I. '/ call heaven and earth to record against you^^ says 
 Moses. This was no idle rhetorical formula. The open 
 sky was over his head, the same sky which was over 
 Abraham when he left his father's house not knowing 
 whither he went ; the same to which he looked up that he 
 might know by the multitude of the stars what his seed 
 should be ; the same under which Jacob had slept when 
 he saw the ladder ; the same which had been over his 
 descendants when they were making the bricks in the 
 land of bondage ; the same which had looked down upon 
 them in the hot day, in the clear night, all the time they 
 had been journeying through the desert ; the same which 
 their children's children would behold in the land of 
 promise. It was the witness and pledge of permanence, 
 the sign that in the midst of perpetual change there is that 
 which abides. 
 
 And the earth was at their feet; the earth which re- 
 ceived its heat, light, quickening power, from that heaven; 
 the earth which might be a garden such as Egypt was, or 
 a wilderness such as they were passing through ; the earth 
 which might be changed from the one to the other ; the 
 earth which needed something else than sun or shower, 
 
HEAVEN AND EARTH ; WITNESSES. 295 
 
 winch asked for some hand to put the seeds within it, and 
 for some hand to destroy the thorns and thistles that grew 
 upon it ; the earth which was given to man that he might 
 dress it and keep it, and bring food for his race out of it. 
 Moses then could call heaven and earth equally to testify 
 to his words. The one said to man, * Thou art meant to 
 
 * look above thyself. Only in doing so canst thou find 
 
 * endurance, illumination, life.' The other said, * Thou art 
 ' meant to work here. Thou must put forth an energy 
 
 * which is not in me, or I shall not yield thee my fruits.' 
 The one said, ' The sun, moon, stars, are shining upon 
 
 * thee ; but if thou askest sympathy from them thou wilt 
 
 * not find it ; if thou askest power from them thou wilt 
 ' learn that what thou receivest from them is not what 
 
 * thou needest; it is not akin to thy own. To find help 
 ' from them thou must suppose each of them to be ruled 
 ' by some Person. And that is a pledge and proof that 
 
 * there is a Person ruling over them who is claiming thy 
 ' obedience, who is desiring that thou shouldest know Him.' 
 The earth said to him, ' If thou wouldest govern me and 
 
 * subdue me, work with Him who is governing thee and 
 ' seeking to subdue thee ; for my Creator is thy Lord and 
 ' King. He who understands all my secrets, and can 
 
 * make thee understand them, is the same who knows the 
 
 * secrets of thy spirit, and would make thee know them.' 
 
 II. But he says, \Ihave set before thee life and death, 
 blessing and cursing.^ You have heard how he had done 
 this. There is not one exhortation in this book, as I said 
 before, which would lead an Israelite to think that he was 
 to aim at obtaining a life which had not been freely given 
 him, or to avoid a curse from which he had not been 
 already delivered. He is warned in the most fearful 
 
296 SEfeAtON XVI. 
 
 language oi forgetting the things whicli his .eyes tad seeli, 
 of not beheTing that the Lqrd God had really taken His 
 fathers and him, his brethren and his children, to be 
 a people of inheritance to Himself ; he is told what misery 
 will come upon him if he goes after the gods of the 
 nations, or makes them for himself out of the things above 
 or beneath. There is no hint given him upon which he 
 can build a dream of security ; the past is invoked to 
 remind him of his teniptation to faithlessness and murmur- 
 ing ; he is not encouraged to expect that any circumstances 
 will diminish that temptation, — that it will assail him less 
 in the promised land than in the wilderness. But all the 
 terrible warnings and prophecies of what he and his 
 descendants may do hereafter imply that he is in a blessed 
 condition and that they will be; the condition of men 
 whom God has claimed to be His servants and to know 
 Him, the condition of men who may trust Him to the very 
 utmost to uphold them, bless therai, protect them against 
 their enemies. 
 
 III. And therefore he goes on : ' Choose lifsy ' Say 
 
 * distinctly, deliberately to thyself, I do not mean to give 
 
 * up the ground on which I am standing. I do not believe 
 ' that there is any power in earth or hell which can 
 ' compel me to give it up. God has placed me on it ; all 
 ^ which is contrary to God may say it is not mine ; but all 
 
 * that is contrary to God will not prevail against God, and 
 ' therefore need not prevail against me/ This stedfast 
 resolution each Israelite would find it needful to make, and 
 having made it, continually to repeat. For death would 
 come in the form of life, the curse would put on all the 
 attractions of a blessing. Earth would fill her lap with 
 pleasures to draw away her master from his dominion, and 
 
MFfi GIVEN; DEATH CHOSEN. 297 
 
 make him lose himself in her embraces. He would be 
 tempted to become a slave by the hope of independence ; 
 and when once he had tasted the cup and been transformed, 
 not only those who had presented it, but those who should 
 raise him, would conspire to tell him that his rights as 
 a man were gone ; that he was no longer in any relation to 
 God ; that he must thenceforth count himself one of the 
 creatures into the likeness of which he was reduced. This 
 30th chapter of Deuteronomy is especially an answer to 
 that lie. It presumes the Israelite to have fallen ; to have 
 incurred the deepest curse which this book pronounces. 
 And still it addresses him as a child of the covenant ; still 
 it bids him act on the assurance that God has not for- 
 gotten it, and is at hand to lift him out of the abyss of 
 unbelief and falsehood into which he has sunk, * Choose 
 life^ is still the command at all times ; is still a command 
 which at all times could be obeyed ; because it is not in 
 the power of man to convert his own falsehood into a truth, 
 or to convert God's truth into a falsehood. 
 
 IV. I urged, in a former sermon, that the blessings of 
 the Jewish covenant were first of all inward and spiritual 
 blessings, though all outward good things flowed from 
 these. The words before us abundantly confirm that 
 assertion. The great reward of choosing life is, ' that 
 iJiou mayeat love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest 
 obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him.^ 
 The recompense for not distrusting and suspecting a 
 friend, for assuming that he means you well even when 
 you cannot understand him, even when his acts would 
 bear a hard construction, is, that you come to be 
 acquainted with him, to enter into his character, to dis- 
 cover all the deep hidden sympathies of it. ' You must 
 
298 SERMON XVI, 
 
 ' love him,' says the poet, ' ere to you he will seem -worthy 
 
 * of your love.' It is a paradox in human friendship, and 
 yet every one may have proved it for himself. We might 
 hesitate to apply the paradox to our relations with God, 
 because they are grounded upon the principle, ' not that we 
 ' loved Him, but that He loved us.' And yet it is applicable 
 there also. For He himself awakens in His creature a 
 blind trust, a faith of expectancy, grounded upon the 
 acknowledgment that He is that which by degrees He will 
 show Himself to be. And therefore the growth of love 
 and knowledge, and the power of cleaving more strongly 
 because the attraction is stronger, are always proclaimed in 
 Scripture as the rewards and prizes of a man who walks in 
 the way in which God has set him to walk, who chooses 
 life and not death. 
 
 V. '* For,^ says Moses, ' He is thy life and the length of thy 
 days,"" 'From Him comes the power which enables thee 
 ' to trust Him and cleave to Him. In Him who is the 
 
 * unchangeable and immortal One thou wilt find thy own 
 
 * immortality. The land of thy fathers, of Abraham, and 
 ' Isaac, and Jacob, will be the perpetual symbol and 
 ' witness to thee that He continues the same from gene- 
 
 * ration to generation, that He is present with the whole 
 ' race of which thou art a member. Dwelling in that 
 
 * land, and remembering that it is His, you will learn 
 ' what it is to have Him for your everlasting dwelling- 
 ' place and home.' 
 
 VI. And here comes in another strong moral compulsion 
 to this course, * that it may he well with thee, and with thy 
 SEED after thee.' In the fourth chapter of this book, the 
 precept to teach the things which their eyes had seen to 
 their sons and their sons' sons, is repeated vith gi-eat 
 
THE WORD NIGH THEE. 299 
 
 emphasis and solemnitv again and again. When they are 
 told that it shall go well with them if they shall keep God's 
 covenant, it is added in the same chapter, * and with thy 
 children after tkee,^ Though I have not yet spoken 
 expressly upon these words, you will have seen, I hope, 
 how the sense of them has been coming out through all 
 the lessons we have been considering. The five books of 
 Moses are emphatically the history of a family. I have 
 tried to show you that they are the history of an education. 
 We have seen that God is Himself s^t forth as the teacher 
 of the family from generation to generation ; as the teaclier 
 of each new member of it, — by means of the circumstances 
 in which he is placed, with a view to the work which he is 
 appointed to fulfil. What I wish you specially to observe 
 here is, how inseparably the divine and the human education 
 are blended. The fathers are to teach their children that 
 which God has done for them, that which he will be doing 
 for those who come after them. The great lesson of all 
 which they have to impart is, — that He will be the present 
 and living guide of each succeeding race as much as He 
 had been of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were not 
 to indoctrinate their children with a great many notions 
 about a distant Being dwelling in some far-oflf, unknown 
 region: they were to tell them that the Lord was their 
 God, that He was dwelling in the midst of them, that they 
 were the children of His covenant. Nowhere is this 
 lesson conveyed more strikingly and beautifully than in 
 the chapter from which my text is taken : ' Far this com- 
 mandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden 
 from ^lee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that ^ou 
 shouldest say. Who shall go upjhr us to heaven, and bring it 
 unto i/s» that we may hear it, and do itf Neither is it 
 
300 s£rmon ^vi. 
 
 beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say. Who shall go over the 
 sea for its, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do 
 it f But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and 
 in thy heart, that thou may est do it^ 
 
 This doctrine of a God nigh to them, a God of the 
 heart and reins, an ever-living teacher, was the soul 
 of Jewish education, as it was the soul of Jewish history 
 In the second commandment, the Jew Was told what 
 would be the consequence if that education was forgotten. 
 God, it is said, is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities 
 of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth 
 generations of them that hated Him. The words are 
 startling and terrible. We shrink from them with 
 a kind of horror. But these are the facts of history. 
 The Jews did forget the unseen and righteous God; 
 they did forget that He had made a covenant with 
 them and with their children. And the children did 
 become more corrupt than the fathers, more superstitious, 
 idolatrous, divided, slavish. The curse must be a real 
 one. The commandment which affirms it carries its 
 own witness. And it also carries within it, the comfort 
 that is needful to sustain us under the oppression which 
 the mere fact nakedly contemplated must cause us. 
 There is a iealous God, jealous over his creatures because 
 He loves them, — who is watching over them when they 
 are wandering furthest from Him, when they are most 
 forgetting and distrusting Him. He has not caused 
 or decreed their superstitions, their divisions, their slavery. 
 All have come from their not choosing the state which 
 He intended for them ; from their going out of the good 
 way, from their liking death better than life. Hence 
 came the primary curse, hence the entail of curseSj each 
 
THE SPIRIT OP TEUTH, 301 
 
 more terrible and degrading than the last How such 
 an entail should ever be cut off, how men can ever be 
 preserved from sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss 
 which they make for themselves, this is the information 
 which we ask from ordinary history, and ask In vain ; 
 this is precisely the information which the Scriptures are 
 written to give us ; that ordinary history may become to 
 us not a dark, but an illuminated, scroll. 
 
 VII. I said that these words of the text interpret 
 what has preceded them in the books of Moses ; and 
 the more we meditate upon them, the more we shall get 
 that help from them. But I said also that they belonged 
 to the Whitsuntide festival. We have not far to seek tor ^ 
 the, connexion. We hear the words * choose lifeJ They 
 sound promising, cheering wordfl. We persuade ourselves 
 that they are not only reasonable, but that they tell us 
 where the power is which can enable us to obey them. 
 Put in the sore conflict with actual temptations that 
 confidence disappears. It seems as if after all we were 
 under a law of death, as if we had little to do but to cry, 
 * Who shall deliver us from it ? ' In the midst of that 
 stiife, some of the words which we have read in this 
 chapter open a prospect of relief. But it is lost in the 
 tumult of our thoughts. It seems as if we mvst be 
 climbing to heaven, and crossing the sea, and going down 
 to hell. There is a haste and fever in us, which will 
 not let us be still to hear the Divine Word, though it 
 be ever so near us. Then comes that other speech from 
 the lips of One who knew what was in man, ' I will send 
 you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth, who shall 
 abide with you for ever. For He dwelUth toith you, and 
 ahall he in youJ* If we hold that that promise has been 
 
302 SERMON XVI. 
 
 fulfilled,— that the Comforter has actually been manifested 
 as the guide, inspirer, sanctifier of human hearts, the 
 author of sevenfold gifts, the light and fire of love, — then 
 God is indeed calling Heaven and earth to record against us 
 this day, that nothing can be done for His vineyard which 
 He has not done for it ; that He has brought us within 
 a circle of blessings, that He has made us partakers of 
 a Divine Life, that He has given us the power of choosing 
 that life ; that we are resisting the Holy Ghost if we 
 do not cleave to Him and love Him, and claim the 
 blessings of His new and perfect covenant. 
 
 We have need to remember that this gift appertains 
 to the most inward and radical part of our being. It is 
 not a gift which is dependent on feelings and tempers of 
 our mind ; but is to be the source of those feelings and 
 tempers. The Holy Spirit is an indwelling Person, not 
 a vague and transitory influence. We have need to re- 
 member this, because the fight which we have to fight 
 is a harder one than that of men in the old time. Evil 
 came before them more in its outward and gross forms. 
 To us it presents itself in its inward power and essence. 
 The words, ' We wrestle not with flesh, and Mood, but with 
 principalities and powers, with spiritual wickedness in high 
 places,^ were spoken not by a lawgiver, but by an Apostle ; 
 not to a camp of Israelites, but to a baptized Church. 
 He felt the full power of his own words. It may be, 
 brethren, that we are to feel the power of them more 
 than our fathers did. It may be that we shall have to 
 understand, in this latter age of the world, that there 
 is indeed a battle going on between evil and good in their 
 most naked and absolute natures. It may be impossible , 
 for us to shrink from the confession, if we attempt it ever 
 
TUE GIFT TO GENERATIONS. 303 
 
 SO, that a Spirit of evil is claiming us for his subjects, 
 is demanding our undivided worship. The words, ' I have 
 set "before you, life and death, blessing and cursing,' may 
 come for us to mean, * You must either secretly and 
 
 * openly confess the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to 
 ' be God, or you must in your inward hearts and in all 
 
 * your outward acts confess the devil to be God,' And 
 if so, what need is there that we should fall back upon 
 tlie fact and the mystery of this day, that we should say 
 boldly, * Christ our Lord has proved that the Spirit of 
 
 * good is mightier than the Spirit of evil ; that the one can 
 
 * and shall cast out the other.^ 
 
 And oh ! brethren, let us not forget that it is a blessing 
 for us and for our seed after us. This is the meaning of 
 all our festivals ; this is, above all, the meaning of our 
 Whitsuntide festival, I hail it as a testimony that not 
 God's outward gifts only, — the blessings of spring-time 
 and harvest, — but the treasure of His own Spirit, is for 
 the manservant and the maidservant, for the widow and the 
 fatherless, for the stranger that is within our gates. I hail 
 it as breaking down the barriers which our selfishness as 
 members of a nation has drawn between different classes, 
 between those who are breathing the same air, speaking 
 the same language, governed by the same laws ; which our 
 proud religious selfishness has drawn between those who 
 are heirs of the same covenant. But I hail it still more as 
 a proof that that covenant is the same trom age to age, as 
 a' witness against our neglect in handing down to those 
 who shall come after us the torch which our fathers handed 
 to us. We have not dared to tell the children of this 
 land that they are redeemed by Christ's blood and endued 
 \A'ith God's Spirit. That sin is visited upon us, and may 
 
304 SERMON XVI. 
 
 be visited upon our cliildren. Many of us are seeking,-^ 
 they may seek, — help in superstitions and idolatry, because 
 we have not held fast the belief that the living and true 
 Grod is in the midst of us. Whitsuntide proclaims that 
 truth in spite of us. The loving and jealous God is still 
 saying to us, ' The pronjjse is for you and for your 
 ' children, and for multitudes from the east and from the 
 
 * west, from the ^orth and from the soTith, whom I shall 
 
 * iiereafter calL^ 
 
SERMON XVll. 
 
 JOSHUA AND ST. JOHK. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn, First Sunday after Trinity. June 2£. 1S51.) 
 Lessons for the day, Joshua x* and xxiii. 
 
 JosnuA xxiu. 1, 2, 3. 
 
 And it came to pass a long time after that the Lord had given rest unto 
 Israel from ail their enemies round aboutj that Joshua toaxed old and 
 stricken in age. And Joshua called for dlllsraelf and f<yr their dders, a/nd 
 for tlievi' heads, and for their jvdgeSt and for their ojfficers, and said wnto 
 them, I am old and stricken in age : a/nd ye ha/oe seen all that the Lord your 
 Qod hath done v/nto all these nations became of you : for the Lord your 
 Ood is he that JuUh fought for you. 
 
 The command wliich. Moses gave the Israelites to go and 
 smite the Canaanites with the edge of the sword, was touched 
 upon when I was considering the book of Deuteronomy. 
 I do not wish to repeat what I said at that time. But the 
 lesson we read this morning brings the subject before us 
 again under a different aspect. K we have been ever so 
 much convinced that a war is justifiable, the details of 
 actual battles^^-especiallj when they are given so broadly, 
 with so little attempt to gloss over the most frightful 
 circumstances of them, as in the book of Joshua, — may 
 well cause us some perplexity. And the compilers of our 
 
 X 
 
306 SERMON XYII. 
 
 services seem as if thej had been anxious to increase 
 rather than allay it. They have not only chosen as 
 a specimen of the book the chapter which contains most 
 records of conquest and slaughter, hut they have brought 
 this chapter side by side with an Epistle of which the 
 burden is, ' God is love; he that loveth not hnoweth not God, 
 Can anything be more startling than the contrast of these 
 two documents ? Nothing, certainly ; that I conceive is 
 the reason for placing them both before us at the same 
 time. The Church knew, that the readers of the Old 
 and New Testament must be struck with the opposition. 
 She wished her ministers not to shrink from a fair and 
 manfiil examination into its nature and cause. 
 
 Perhaps the course which has been taken for presenting 
 the difl&culty to us, may suggest the right method of 
 considering it. Joshua and St. John stand out, as if in 
 direct hostility to each other. We know that the book of 
 Joshua must have been read by the Apostle in his child- 
 hood, his manhood, his old age. Let us inquire, how at 
 different times of his life he must have regarded it. 
 
 I. We find him first a mere Galilsean fisherman. We 
 may take it for granted that he heard the Scriptiires read 
 in the synagogue, that many thoughts and impressions 
 about them came to him as he worked by day or by night 
 upon the lake. At that time, — before he had listened to 
 any diviner voice, when his best outward teaching must 
 have been that of the scribes, — it may be supposed that 
 this book of the wars of the Lord will have had some 
 attractions for him. No doubts respecting the spirit of it 
 will have been suggested to him by others, or probably 
 will have occurred to himself. But it is a very rash 
 conclusion that the absence of doubts involves the presence 
 
JOSHUA, READ BY THE FISHERMAN. 307 
 
 of interest. Though we cannot of course tell, in any 
 instance, what personal and special influences may lead 
 any particular child or man to pore over one book rather 
 than another, all general reasons would lead us to think 
 that at this period the history of his country must have 
 been nearly lost upon him. He will have received it as 
 coming from divine authority, but there will have been 
 nothing which bound it to his actual human sympathies. 
 What was there in what he saw and heard, that could 
 make any Jew feel he belonged to a chosen, vigorous, 
 triumphant people? How much less could a Galilsean 
 dream that he had any share in the glories of a land from 
 which he seemed cut oflf by his dialect and by the contempt 
 of all whom he encountered ? The dead words may indeed 
 have kindled into life in some minds. The present may 
 have seemed to explain the past. Some Judas or Theudas 
 appearing to call upon the peasants of the land not to pay 
 tribute, but to assert their rights as the old people of God, 
 might give those who followed him a momentary delight in 
 the story of Joshua's victories over the sons of Anak. 
 Without this, no comments of doctors will certainly have 
 made the story an intelligible or practical one to them. 
 
 n. It is a common notion, suggested by his own 
 words, that the Apostle was a hearer and disciple of John 
 the Baptist. That would be a new and most memorable 
 sera in his personal life. It must have been the com- 
 mencement of a change in all his feelings respecting the 
 country to which he belonged. The words, * The Kingdom 
 of Heaven is at hand^ believed with however much of 
 strange wonder and questioning, will have broken down 
 the barrier between the ages gone by and his own, and 
 have given him an assured hope that the G^d of Abraham 
 
 x2 
 
308 SERMON XVII. 
 
 was with him and his brethren. Still more thoroughly, 
 will the teaching which was to exalt the valleys, and level 
 the hills, have destroyed the separation of places, dialects, 
 and castes. In Jordan was a common flood for the 
 dwellers in the capital, for Galilseans and Idilmasans. The 
 fisherman had the privilege of repenting ; the Scribes 
 and Pharisees were told that they needed repentance 
 equally, thongh they were less likely to seek for it. The 
 hearts of the children were turned to their fathers ; all the 
 records of God's dealings with them will have acquired 
 a freshness and significance. But though this must have 
 been ultimately the effect of John's preaching upon all 
 who faithfully listened to it, its immediate appeal was 
 undoubtedly to the individual conscience. Each man was 
 awakened to a sense of his own evil ; he felt that he could 
 not have contracted it from without if there had not been 
 a root of it within ; the axe must be laid to that ; he 
 wished, first of all, ^ baptism for the remission of sins. 
 Such a thought absorbs, for a while, a man's being ; the 
 disciples of John will not in general have found leisure to 
 think of the book of Joshua. 
 
 III. Another period came. Jesus saw James the son of 
 Zebedee and John his brother in a ship with Zebedee 
 their father mending their nets, and He called them. 
 They were with Him when He opened His lips and said,. 
 *• Blessed are the poor in spirit;'' ^Love your enemies;^ they 
 were with Him when He was healing the sick ; they were 
 with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration; they were 
 with Him in the garden of Gethsemane. You would 
 conclude, probably, that while John felt the immediate 
 presence and power of His Master, he must have turned 
 away with involuntary, if not confessed, displeasure from 
 
JOSHUA, BEAD BY THE DISCIPLE. 309 
 
 Bucli passages in the Hebrews' books as we have been 
 hearing to-day. I believe it was just then, that he began 
 to feel any hearty sympathy with them. The impression 
 which was left upon the disciples and upon the multitude 
 by the Sermon on the Mount, is fully expressed in the 
 words with which St. Matthew finishes his report of it : 
 ' He spake as one havi'ng authoriti/J' There might be ex- 
 quisite gentleness and benignity in the language of the 
 speaker, in His countenance and His manner. No doubt 
 the people felt that there was. But what they felt chiefly 
 and most distinctly was, ' He is a king, He can command 
 ' us. He is not spelling out the letters of the law, He is 
 ' announcing it as one from whom it has proceeded, who 
 ' knows what it is,' If you read the Gospels, you will see 
 that it was this impression of authority, of kingship, which 
 the disciples received from all the acts and words of their 
 Master. He said that He was come to establish a kingdom, 
 and they were sure that He did not deceive them. They 
 might be slow to discover the conditions and principles of 
 it ; about the reality of it they could have no doubt. They 
 were sure also that they were to be ministers in this 
 kingdom, that the fisherman would not have less to do 
 with it than the ruler of the synagogue, that it was meant 
 for poor men. And now all that they had heard in the old 
 Scriptures of a kingdom which was to put down the tyrants 
 and giants of the earth, came to life in their mind. It was 
 no longer the story of an unknown region ; it was to be 
 fulfilled in their own. They walked with Christ through 
 the very towns and villages which Joshua had portioned 
 out to the tribes of Israel. Every step of the ground 
 which they trod bore witness of some triumph of weakness 
 over strength, of the feeble and degraded over the mighty. 
 
310 SERMON XVII* 
 
 And He who led them was surely asserting and proving 
 that this kind of power was His, that He conld and would 
 exert it. The carpenter's Son could bid the winds and 
 waves be still, could break the fetters of ancient disease, 
 could set men loose from the dominion of evil spirits. Why 
 when possessing such powers, He did not at once shatter in 
 pieces the power of centurions and Eoman governors, and 
 make Judsea or Galilee the seat of a glorious empire, was, 
 of course, a marvel to them ; as so much of His conduct 
 and His language was. But because they could not pene- 
 trate this mystery, they were not to doubt, they could not 
 doubt, that His purpose was the same as that of all leaders, 
 lawgivers, kings, who had preceded Him, or that He was 
 come to do what they had left undone. And while that 
 faith continued, it was absolutely impossible for them not 
 to dwell upon all the battles of Joshua and of David, with 
 an earnest delight, with a confidence that they were battles 
 fought on their behalf, — in the like of which they might 
 one day be permitted to engage, with a prospect of a more 
 complete and permanent victory. 
 
 If you say, that nevertheless they must have shrunk 
 from the thought of the bloodshed and destruction that 
 accompanied these battles, — for what could they see in their 
 Master but grace and goodness to all manner of people ? — 
 I answer, I do not know anythiiig about their feelings 
 except what I can gather from direct statements in the 
 evangelical narratives, or through legitimate inferences from 
 those narratives. And here it happens, that both are 
 directly at variance with this conclusion, plausible as it 
 looks. There are comparatively fe-tv statements respecting 
 St. John in the Gospels ; but evety one which we have, 
 shows that meekness and tenderness were not the aualiti^ 
 
JOSHUA, JUDGED BY CHEIST'S ACTS. 311 
 
 which he first learnt to appreciate in his Lord, and that he 
 was not hindered by any sense of these from desiring to 
 renew the severities of the older time. He would have 
 called down fire upon the village of the Samaritans, as Elias 
 did. 80 he would assert Christ's right to govern and to be 
 obeyed. He forbade a man who was casting out devils in 
 Christ's name, because he followed not with them. So he 
 thought he was maintaining the distinctness of the calling 
 of the disciples, as Jews were taught that it behoved them 
 to maintain their privilege as a covenant people. He 
 wished that he and his brother might sit one on the right 
 hand, and the other on the left, in their Master's kingdom. 
 He was sure that they were able to drink of the cup which 
 their Master drank of, and to be baptized with the baptism 
 which He was baptized with. So he showed that he looked 
 upon their Master's throne as no imaginary or metaphorical 
 one, but as one which was to be established like that of 
 David, through struggle and conflict and garments dyed 
 with blood. Now I am not denying that there was much 
 of ignorance, and confusion, and selfish feeling, mixed with 
 all these thoughts and apprehensions. What I say is (and 
 those who take the opposite view to mine, if I xmderstand 
 them, say the same) that it must have been a mighty step in 
 the education of these Galilsean fishermen, to be taken under 
 the direct guidance of Christ. His discipline may have 
 brought their errors and follies to light, as all true discipline 
 does : but it must have brought them into a much higher 
 position than that in which they were previously. It would 
 be a monstrous outrage upon our reason and conscience to 
 say, that they were not raised infinitely above the state in 
 which they were when they were mending their father's 
 nets, or even when they listened to the Baptist preaching 
 
312 SERMON XVII. 
 
 in the desert. And yet the effect of this greater elevation of 
 character, the effect of their intercourse with the Son of Man, 
 was to make the history, which we regard as so sanguinary, 
 look far more real and divine in their eyes than it had ever 
 done before. 
 
 IV. But there came a fourth stage in St. John's life* 
 He had leant upon his Lord's breast at the last Supper, 
 he had stood beside the cross, he had borne witness 
 to the blood and water which flowed from His side> 
 he had heard the words, ' Woman, behold thy Son,'' * Son, 
 behold thy mother/ he had gone to the sepulchre, he 
 had looked in and seen the linen clothes lying, he had 
 heard the words spoken to him with the other disciples, 
 '^ Peace be unto you. As the Father hath sent me, so sendlyouJ 
 He had heard the words spoken of himself, ' J^ I will that 
 he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? ' He had stood on 
 the mountain of Galilee where they worshipped, but some 
 doubted ; he had seen his Lord ascend on high ; he had waited 
 at Jerusalem with the other Apostles for the promise of the 
 Father; he had been one of those on whom the cloven tongues 
 of fire had sat ; he had been one of those who spoke with 
 other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance ; he had seen 
 the 3,000 baptized, and had become one of the pillars of 
 that church in Jerusalem, the members of which counted 
 nothing they had as their own. Will he not now have 
 regarded those qualities of his Master, which he was scarcely 
 able to discern before, as the most characteristic of His 
 Person and office? Will not his dreams of an actual 
 sovereign have been dispersed ? Will he not have found 
 himself separated by a whole heaven from Joshua and the 
 warriors of the old dispensation ? 1 will reply to each of 
 these questions separately. 
 
JOSHUA, AFTER THE EESUREECTION. 313 
 
 I cannot doubt that when St. John waa endued with 
 that Spirit which dwelt perfectly in his Master, he felt 
 and understood as it was impossihle for him to do till 
 then, the force of the words, * Come unto Me, all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon youj and 
 learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you 
 shall find rest to your aoulsJ* The Spirit no doubt 
 convinced him of his own want of meekness, of hia 
 uncharitableness, of his exclusiveness, showed him how 
 different the mind of which such qualities form a part 
 is from the mind of Christ; what need there is of 
 hard conflict with ourselves, that the one may take the 
 place of the other, — that the true Lord of our spirits 
 may ascend His throne and cast out the evil power 
 which has usurped it. Yes, brethren, unless the Scripture 
 deceives us altogether, St. John had need of hard 
 inward struggles, to become a gentle, gracious, loving 
 man. That soft feminine countenance, — unmarked by 
 a single furrow, — which painters have chosen to ascribe 
 to him, can never have been his actually, is not his 
 ideally. The man wlio would have called fire from 
 heaven upon the Samaritans, the man who was sure he 
 could endure Chrisf s baptism of fire, had no soft features, 
 no sentimental expression. If he was the apostle of 
 love, it was love in a different sense from this. ' Blessed 
 is he that overcometh,' are the words wliich rang again 
 and again in his ears, when he saw the vision of his glorified 
 Master. He had been taught, through the bitterest 
 inward strife, what such words meant. And therefore, 
 though he delighted to dAvell upon the graciousness and 
 gentleness of his Master, he did not forget that Ho 
 made him a scourge of small cords, and drove the*n 
 
314 SEEMON xvri. 
 
 that sold and them that bought out of the Temple, or 
 that he told the proud religious men of Jerusalem that 
 they were claiming the devil for their father, and doing 
 the deeds- of their father. Such stern sentences did not 
 seem to him inconsistent with the divinest grace and 
 mercj. He could not conceive of a grace and mercy 
 which tolerated evil, which did not seek for the extirpa- 
 tion of it. 
 
 And this being the case, brethren, I must utterly 
 deny that St. John looked upon Jesus less as an actual 
 King when He had ascended on high that He might fill 
 all things, — than when He was sitting on the lake of 
 Gennesareth, or walking in the streets of Jerusalem. 
 This was to him the sign and pledge that His Kingdom 
 Was an actual one; the descent of the Spirit was the 
 sign that He was actually setting it up on earth, as 
 He had promised He would. No doubt the kingdom which 
 was thus beginning was very diiFerent in most respects 
 from that which he had anticipated. The paradox which 
 had seemed so incomprehensible when it was first uttered, 
 that in this kingdom the chief of all should be servant of all, . 
 now interpreted itself by his own experience, and by all the 
 discords and contentions which arose from the neglect of it. 
 He learnt from his Master's sufferings, he was learning 
 gradually from his own, that the garments dyed in 
 blood were the garments of the Conqueror Himself ; that 
 endurance and death are the greatest and divinest mani- 
 festations of the power of good, — the mightiest instruments 
 in casting out evil. He found that that which provokes the 
 bitterest opposition and raises against itself all the restless 
 factions in the heart of man and in human society, is not 
 a law but a gospel ; not the proclamation of punishment, 
 
JOSHUA, READ BY THE PREACHLR. 315 
 
 but the proclamation of forgiveness : not the assertion of 
 God's pity for a few, but of His love for all. But that 
 discovery only made him more certain that, — before God 
 establishes His righteous and loving kingdom upon earth, 
 and brings human wills into captivity to it, — there 
 must be a mighty resistance; such a one as would 
 justify the seeming contradiction, that the Prince of 
 Peace came not to bring peace upon earth, but a sword. 
 
 To the third question then, — how far St. John at this 
 stage of his life can have entered into the history of the 
 wars of Joshua, — I answer, It is quite possible that his 
 strong belief in Christ as a conqueror through suffering, — 
 and of this being the highest method of conquest, — may 
 for a time have made him unable to understand the 
 triumph with which the old Israelite leader records the 
 discomfiture and extinction of the Canaanitish hosts. 
 I do not know whether this was the case or not. I can 
 quite conceive that it was. But then I think this 
 feeling would have been accompanied by two others. 
 First, with a very distinct acknowledgment that Joshua's 
 battles were tending to the establishment of a righteous 
 kingdom upon earth, — steps, though perhaps almost 
 incomprehensible steps, to that victory of the weak over 
 the strong which the Gospel and the Church, by other 
 instruments, and with greater success, were achieving. 
 The second feeling is, that the Christian man is in as 
 literal a sense a warrior as the Jew ever was ; that spiritual 
 wars are not fantastic wars, but rather contain the con- 
 centrated essence of that struggle and effort which we 
 Bee outwardly exhibited in the battles of individual 
 heroes or of disciplined armies ; and therefore that the 
 language which describes such battles is one which 
 
316 SEEMON XYII. 
 
 the churclmian is obliged, even in spite of himself, to 
 adopt as the only exact and satisfactory one, for describing 
 the work in which he is or ought to be engaged, both 
 when he is alone, and when he is in the midst of his 
 fellows. 
 
 V. But the words which I have quoted already, ' If 1 
 will that he, tarry till I come^ remind us that there was 
 still another stage in the history of St. John. He was not 
 merely to take part, as the other Apostles did, in the 
 establishment of the universal kingdom upon earth, but 
 he was to see the kingdom which had preceded it pass 
 away. Eefore he died, that city which he had been wont 
 to call the holy city, the city of peace, was to become the 
 most unholy and turbulent of all cities. The doom of that 
 city which his Master had announced, was to be fulfilled 
 in his day ; to him was vouchsafed the vision of another 
 Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven. Thus it 
 was not possible for St. John, if he desired it ever so, 
 merely to contemplate a society that brought members into 
 itself by an inward attraction, that fought only with 
 spiritual weapons. He was forced to think of armies 
 compassing the homes of his fathers, and the Temple in 
 which God had been worshipped. He was forced to see 
 not Palestine only, but the whole Roman empire, given 
 up to revolution and anarchy. There was the horrible 
 spectacle of the generals of legions contending without 
 a principle, which should have the right to torment the 
 world; there was the still more horrible spectacle of 
 religious sects persecuting and supplanting each other 
 in the name of the God who had called them out to 
 testify of Him as the Lord that executeth righteousness 
 and judgment in the earth. Was a Christian man to be 
 
THE TWO OLD MEN. 317 
 
 indifferent to such sights as these ? Was he to say, ' All 
 ' this has nothing to do with me. These are the strifes of 
 
 * the World, I belong to the Church ; I have secured my 
 ' salvation. "What signifies it to me if these unbelieving 
 
 * heathens or Jews tear each other in pieces ? ' Yes, 
 brethren, a Christian in our day may use this honible 
 and blasphemous language, and may compliment himself 
 upon the high spiritual state of mind which it indicates. 
 St. John could not, for he believed that ' Ood so loved the 
 WORLD as to give His only-begotten Son for it^ He believed 
 that that Son of God had actually taken the nature of 
 these unbelieving heathens and Jews. And therefore how 
 utterly appalling these facts of the world^s history must 
 have been to him, if he had had no help to the solution <5f' 
 them ! It could not have been enough for him to know 
 that there is something besides wars and sieges, the over- 
 throw of kingdoms, distress of nations, with perplexity. 
 He must know that there is a meaning in these very things, 
 that they do not go on without God, that the devil has not 
 his own way with respect to them. Will he not then have 
 turned with another kind of interest than he ever felt 
 before, to the records of his country's history, to that very 
 one which we have been reading this afternoon ? 
 
 Joshua said to the elders and officers and people of 
 Israel, * I am old and stricken in age. Ton have seen 
 ' what the Lord God hath done for you. He hath driven 
 
 * out these nations before you. He HimseK hath fought 
 ' for you.' Will not the Apostle, old and stricken in age, as 
 he sat alone in the island to which he was banished for the 
 Name of Jesus Christ, and for the Word of His testimony, 
 and meditated on all the son*ows and confusions of tlie 
 earth upon which he was dwelling, have found in the old 
 
318 SERMON XVII. 
 
 leader of his country's hosts, a teacher, and a friend ? He 
 could learn from him that there is a divine and gracious 
 purpose in that which looks saddest and darkest ; he was 
 told that nations are not swept out of the earth for nothing; 
 he could read in the destruction of them the assurance that 
 no long possession can confer a right upon those who do 
 wrong ; that the earth is God's, and that He will reclaim it 
 from those who lay it waste and make it a den of rohbers. 
 This is comfort which no lapse of ages could weaken, 
 which no change of circumstances or sins of men could 
 take away. For thus he knew why Jerusalem was doomed 
 to fall, though God's temple was in it, though One greater 
 than the temple had hallowed it, and walked in it, and 
 frept over it. Thus he knew why the great city which had 
 trampled down Jerusalem and was the appointed instru- 
 ment of her punishment, would herself perish in the 
 greatness of her pride and her luxury ; and why every 
 form of godless power which might establish itself there 
 or elsewhere, — whatever names it should assume, whatever 
 disguises it should wear,^would fall in due time by God's 
 sentence, because it measured its power against His . 
 because it crushed the earth which He had redeemed, and 
 raised an idol of falsehood to mock His truth. Thus he 
 knew assuredly that whatever Dagon, or Moloch, or Mam- 
 mon, should be set up in any land or in any time for men 
 to worship, — and should command them to receive its mark 
 and its image and the number of its name, — would be 
 thrown down. His nation had existed to testify of that 
 truth by its words and its arms. The Church which was 
 unfolding itself out of his nation would exist to testify of 
 it more completely. For it had been revealed to him that 
 the foundations of the universe stood upon Love ; that God 
 
HATE EVIL; LOVE ONE ANOTHEE. 319 
 
 is Love, and that whosoever dwelt in Love, dwelt in God. 
 Therefore all which was contrary to Love was a lie, and 
 would perish utterly and for ever. 
 
 Thus, I think, will St. John have been instructed that 
 the new commandment, — ^which is true in Christ and true 
 in uSj which He has fulfilled and which we may ftdfil, — is 
 the same old commandment which was heard from the 
 beginning. The old commandment and the new are both 
 for us. To our elders and judges and officers God is saying, 
 
 * I have fought for you and your nation. Therefore only 
 
 * it has prospered. See that you do not set up strange gods 
 
 * in place of me. Be strong and very courageous to fulfil 
 
 * even my sternest precepts, to put down the wrong and to 
 
 * maintain the right.' To us, — our Bishops, our Presbyters, 
 our Deacons, our people, — He is speaking as He spoke by 
 the mouth of the old apostle the last time that he was 
 borne into the church at Ephesus, ' M^ children, love one 
 anoiher.^ 
 
SERMON XVIII. 
 
 THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 
 
 (Lincoln's Ion, Second Sunday after Trinity, June 29, St. Peter's Day, 1851 \ 
 Lessons for the day, Judges iv. and t. 
 
 Judges v. 1, 2. 
 
 TTien sam^ Deborah and Barak the son of Ahinoam on that day, sa/yvngt 
 Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel, 
 
 A PERSON who thinks that a divine Lesson-book should 
 present to us exclusively or chiefly high maxims of morality, 
 or perfect models of character and behaviour, finds the 
 book of Judges a great stumbling-block. He would rather 
 pass it over ; he would wish it were found in some other 
 place, not as a part of Scripture ; he feels that only extracts 
 carefully selected from it can be safely set before a Christian 
 congregation. For the tribes of Israel are exhibited not as 
 specimens of excellence, proofs of the blessed results of the 
 divine government which had been established among them, 
 but disorganized and barbarous ; in strife with each other, 
 the victims and slaves of the nations round about. In their 
 extreme need, we hear of champions rising up in their 
 defence. The historian seems to wish that we should 
 sympathise with them ; to a certain extent we are obliged 
 to do so. But are we not often ashamed of our sympathy, 
 
THE STOET OF GIDEON. 321 
 
 *nd afraid to indulge it? Are not these champions 
 prone to ordinary vices ? do they not sometimes seem as if 
 (they indulged them in a more gigantic way than their 
 fellow-men ? 
 
 If there is one of the judges for whom we are inclined 
 to feel a more than common interest and reverence, it is 
 Gideon, The different scenes of his life form as clear 
 [pictures, as the eye or imagination can desire. Ton see 
 ihim threshing wheat to hide it firom the Midianites; 
 tremhling lest he should die because he has seen sin angel 
 of the Lord ; rising up by night to throw down the altar of 
 Baal ; watching his fleece to know whether the dew will 
 rest upon it while the ground is dry ; gathering thousands 
 about him and sending away all but the three hundred who 
 lapped the water with their mouths; going out to see the 
 ioflts of the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the children 
 of the East, as they lay along the valley asleep like grass- 
 hoppers for multitudes ; listening to the dream of the soldier 
 TN'hich cheers him for the work of the morrow ; arousing 
 his company with their trumpets, their lamps, and their 
 pitchers.; leading them forth with the shout, ' The sword 
 of the Lord, amd of Gideon;^ putting the hosts of the 
 Midianites to flight ; coming over Jordan with his little 
 band faint but pursuing ; taking vengeance on the men oi 
 Succoth .and Penuel, slaying with his own hand Zebah and 
 Za;lmunna whom his sons dared not look upon ; — all these 
 visions rise brightly before the minds of children, and 
 sometimes return to grown men as if they had once been 
 parts of themselves. But after all it may be asked, ' Does 
 
 * the child accurately distinguish between the impressions 
 ' which are made upon it by these sacred histories and those 
 
 • which it receives from classical or middle-age tales ? Is 
 
 T 
 
'622 SERMON xvin. 
 
 * Gideon essentially a different man from Diomed? . Are his 
 
 * acts more strictly conformable to an ordinary ethical, — not 
 'to speak of a Christian, — standard? If Gideon's prowess 
 
 * is referred to an invisible power, so is that of the Greek, 
 ' Why should one be invested with a halo of sanctity, and 
 
 * the other be called profane ? Why are we encouraged to 
 
 * study the one for examples^ and told that the other is a 
 ' legend of paganism ?' These questions present themselves 
 to the man as he reflects on the lore of his infancy. They 
 give rise to a vast amount of perplexity and scepticism. 
 
 One common way of solving these diflficulties is to say, 
 ' We have been mistaken in supposing that the Bible is a 
 ' divine history at all. It is an ordinary human history. 
 
 * There .are continual references in it, no doubt, to super- 
 ' natural beings ; so there are, and must be, in every human 
 ' history, because men in all times and places have believed 
 ' in such beings. The Hebrew belief was, no doubt, 
 ' different from the Greek belief, as that was from the 
 ' Eg3rptian. Hence a difference in the accidents of the 
 ' story. In kind they are the same.' 
 
 Another course which commends itself to persons whc 
 are not willing to take this extreme one, is to say, * There 
 
 * are divine elements in the book assuredly ; doctrines which 
 ' must have come from God, illustrations of those doctrines 
 ' in the lives of holy men. But along with this there is 
 ' a common, earthly history, which ' must be treated like 
 
 * every other.' 
 
 In these lectures I have not, as you know, used either of 
 these methods, of explaining the Scripture-books, and of 
 removing the difficulties which occur to the student of 
 them. I have adopted in its fullest sense the ordinary 
 belief of our country, that we are dealing with a divine 
 
THE BIBLE, GOD'S BOOK. 323 
 
 history ; that the Bible is the record of God's revelations 
 of Himself ; that each distinct part of it has a worth of its 
 own ; that these portions together constitute a real, not an 
 imaginary, whole. Our mistakes originate, I have tried 
 to show you, not in the rigidness with which we have 
 adhered to this belief, but in our careless deviations from 
 it. Sometimes we confound a revelation of God with 
 a revelation of certain notions and opinions about God, 
 Sometimes we think that a history of God's revelations 
 means a history of certain exceptional heroes. Either of 
 these suppositions is in direct contradiction with the 
 express language, with the inmost spirit, of the Bible, 
 God promises to declare Himself to us that we may believe 
 in Him, trust Him, love Him, — ^not that we may hold 
 a certain theory concerning Him. God tells us that Fie 
 has made Man in His own image ; not a few particular 
 men who are different from their kind, but the kind itself. 
 And he assuredly who is the most perfect specimen of it, 
 in whom the divine image is ftilly manifested, will be he who 
 is most entirely at one with the whole race, — who the least 
 separates himself even from the most miserable and 
 degraded portions of it. The characteristic of all the 
 books which we have yet examined, has been this ; each 
 man who is brought before us, instead of being a picked 
 man, different in his natural qualities and tendencies from 
 nis fellows, raised above them by some accidental advan- 
 tage, is precisely like all others, — his infirmities those 
 which belong to men generally, those which belong; 
 to his own class specially. Such infirmities, instead 
 of being hidden, are carefully noted ; more pains are 
 taken to exhibit them in those who are the founders of 
 the nation than in others. Jacob is set forth in disadvan- 
 
 r 2 
 
324 SERMON XVIII. 
 
 tageous contrast with Esau ; the first presmnption of 
 Moses, his subsequent unwillingness to ohey God's com^ 
 mands, the unbelief which Texclude.d him from the promise^ 
 land, are all industriously brought out before us. If we 
 choose to 3ay that these Scripture saints are great by 
 reason of some inherent greatness ■ of theirs, that is our 
 fault. The Bible, has laboured to deliver us firom an 
 opinion, so very mischievous to ourselves, so destructive of 
 the truth which it wishes us to receive. It has tried to 
 convince us,, that it is making us.apquainted with men of 
 the same nature "with ourselves,-^not exempt from our 
 tepaptations, but sharing in them, frequently yielding to 
 thejn. And "what then are these men good for? Why 
 does it concern us tq hear of them? They are good for 
 precisely this. God calls them out that they may act as 
 His servants, as deliverers of their country, as benefactors 
 to mankind. So far as they yield themselves to that 
 calli^ig, so far as they give themselves up to do the wort 
 which they a?:e called to do. He speaks -in them, He shines 
 through them ; men see His image, and are raised by it to 
 know what they are meant to be. So soon as ever the^e 
 men begin to act and speak for themselves,— to use the 
 strength or the wisdom which God has given them on their 
 own behalf, to set themselves up as heroes or tyrants 
 separate from their brethren^ the moment they yield to the, 
 attiractipns of the eartn beneath them, to the impulses of 
 their lower nature,; — that moment they become witnesses 
 for God by their rebellion, as they had been by their 
 obedience ; making evident the truth of their assertion, 
 that He gqverps the world, since if these His servants 
 governed it without Him, they would soon make a 
 desert of it. 
 
THE JUDGES OF OUR FLESH AND BLOOD. 325 
 
 Suppose this principle should not forsake us at the end 
 of the book of Joshua, but ahould be carried on into the 
 book of Judges, what would follow ? Would it be a very 
 puzzling fact that Gideon, and Jephtha, and Samson, should 
 not be more free from the passioiis and temptations incident 
 to human beings, incident to men of their tribe and race, — 
 of the peculiar age into which they were bom, — ^incident to 
 iSpecial gifts and a Special position, than all those whom we 
 have heard of before? The conscience of mankind has 
 answered this question. It has said very decidedly, * This 
 
 * would not have been a true book, and therefore certainly 
 ' not a divine book, if it had been otherwise. Above all, 
 ' it would not have been a book for men. We should have 
 ' had no sympathy with it ; it would have given us no 
 
 warnings* It might have been useful for the people of 
 
 * another planet ; it would have proved itself not to be 
 ' intended for ours.* * Oh I * but then it is asked, ' are not 
 ' these inspired men? And are not inspired men to be 
 
 * different from other men?' Alas, that we should cut 
 ourselves off from God's great mercy to His creatures for 
 the sake of an epithet. Alas ! that when He raises up 
 men to teach us what He is and vhat we are, we should 
 tUiTi round upon Him and say, ' Thou oughtest to have so 
 ' constituted these men that they should not have been our 
 ' teachers, that they should have had no relations with us ; 
 
 * Otherwise Thou dost not satisfy our notion of what an 
 ' inspired man should be.' Brethren, it does not signify 
 one jot, whether God satisfies our notion of what an 
 inspired man ought to be. It does not signify one jot 
 whether we have a notion upon that subject or not, further 
 than this, that if it interferes with our learning what is 
 good for us to leam,^and recognising truth where we meet 
 
^26 SEliMON XVIII. 
 
 with it, and being true ourselves, — the sooner we part with 
 it the better. Depend upon it, the inspiration of these 
 men was not something which was imparted to them that 
 they might not do us good, that they might be more 
 separate from us. It was given to them to bind them more 
 closely to those among whom they dwelt, to make them feel 
 for them and act for them, because God was feeling for 
 them and acting for them. It was given to them, that they 
 might be helpers to all men in all times to come, who must 
 be taught of God, yes, and be inspired by God, if they are. 
 to do any true act, or utter any true word. It was given 
 them, that they might teach men in all ages to come, not to 
 think themselves safe because they have a calling from God 
 and gifts from God, but to understand and believe that the 
 greatest perils attach themselves to that honour ; that they 
 are only safe in holding it when they refer it all to God, 
 and use it wholly for their brethren, believing that there is 
 not one, the very lowest of those brethren, who is more 
 likely to fall than they are, who has not as great capacities, 
 for the highest knowledge as they have. 
 
 But I wish to consider the question I proposed just 
 now, more directly. If this is so, where lies the difference 
 between these and the Pagan heroes ? If you mean to 
 ask, ' Since the Scripture refers all powers whatsoever to 
 ' God, how are we to prove that the powers which Pagan 
 ' heroes or those who recorded the exploits of thos& heroes 
 ' possessed, and which they said proceeded from some godj 
 * did not in fact proceed from Him ? ' I frankly own, I 
 cannot answer you. With the Scripture in my hands, 
 telling me in every page that I must attribute every good 
 gift to the Source of Good, I will not and dare not argue 
 for any exception. I have said very often that I look 
 
JEWS AND PAGANS. 327 
 
 upon the Scripture as a law-book, a book which tells us 
 the principle on which the whole world is governed. I do 
 not think that I should prove my reverence for it, and my 
 sense of the difference between it and Pagan records, if 
 I said that they established a case of deviation from those 
 laws. If again you mean to ask whether the portraits of 
 heroes in Pagan stories resemble those which the Bible 
 brings before us? I answer, Just so far as they are 
 faithfiil descriptions of human beings, and of the good and 
 evil which is in them, just so far they do resemble the 
 characters which the Scriptm-e presents to us; because those 
 are the faithful and veritable characters of men. But I 
 find this especial difference between the Pagan and the 
 Scripture stories. The former, as we all confess, are 
 pictures of heroes^ of men apparently exalted above 
 humanity, while they offer no standard by whicli we 
 can measure what humanity is, or wliat is above it. 
 Where all begins from the one eternal God, all is tending 
 to bring forth the one Man in whom all men may feel and 
 realize their own glory. Where all begins from man, and 
 only works up towards God, that which is general and 
 common necessarily becomes associated with the mean, 
 that which is separate and rare with the celestiaL This ia 
 the inverted order of Paganism, this is the secret of that 
 self-exaltation which mingles with and defiles the patriot- 
 ism and self-sacrifice which God has taught men in every 
 land to exhibit, and which He has never suffered to become 
 extinct amidst all the contradictory and destructive elements 
 that have been working beside them. 
 
 I do not think, brethren, that it is necessary to teach our 
 children that they should try the acts which they read of 
 in different books by different standards. I think that if 
 
328 "~ SERMON XVIIt. 
 
 we dio this, we sllall verjr ^ievously confuse tteir mialdsi 
 and utterly dfestroy tteir belief in the Bible,' which, if it 
 Has any effect upon ns at all, must lead via to feel that theter 
 is the same right and! WrDng in all cases whatsoever. Totf 
 are not bound to check a chrM's sympathy or yoiir own 
 with a st'ory in any Pagan book, because you wish it to' 
 reverence, or because you yourself reverence, the' sacrecf 
 books; If that reverence is real and not affected, it will 
 extend your sympathy in all dStectious; it will attach' 
 yoUr'^ sympatihy to whatever is goocf and real*, sever it 
 froiu -vdiatever is artificial and' dishonest. Olxr' forefathersc 
 Were not so' wrong as We sometimes fancy, in bnngiiig 
 Pagan' assoc&trbns, and even Pagan' divinities, into fellow^ 
 ship with Hebrew and Christian' truths. So devout a poet 
 as Edmund Spensei*, so stern A hater of idolatry as John 
 ffilton, would surely not have sanctioned that pTactiiie; if 
 they had' not feft that the Scriptutes throw light upon al? 
 the surrounding world, that theyclaitn all' things fot (xotj, 
 and redeem' all the" subordinate- agencies in the creatio^ 
 which men' have set up against Hinr, for Bis service. On 
 no other principle; is it possible to reconcile' the classivial 
 studiies in our public' schools with their evidently" Christian 
 foundation and object. Oh the other hand, this principle: 
 fully recognised and' carried' out, would, I believe, do" nit)re 
 than anything else to' harmonise' the* different parts 
 af our education', and to show that it is intendied t'o 
 call forth' the powers, the conscience, the' reason of 
 human beings madfe in the image- of GtoS, — Hot to' fit 
 them to be rivals of each other in the - mfeerable 
 service of Mammon. But if we set that object before 
 us, we must labour above all things' that we may not 
 use the Bible itself, to destroy the object fo^ whicE 
 
FAITH AND FREEDOM : IDOLATRY AND SLAVERY. 329 
 
 it was written, abstracting out of it a capricions 
 iirsteud of an immutable morality. 
 
 Tie lessons we have read this morning and afternoon 
 have been turned to this most dangerous use. I cannot 
 sufficiently admire the wisdom and courage of the Chufch, 
 in choosing them to illustrate the character, and spirit of 
 the book of Judges. No passages of it could have served 
 the purpose nearly so well. All the characteristics of this 
 patt of the history are to be found in them. The Israelites 
 do' evil in the sight of the Lord; the Deliverer and his- 
 (Covenant are forgotteft; they give themselves up to the 
 worship of visible things. The consequences which Moses 
 had so solemnly predicted, follow. They are sold into the 
 hands of Jabin king of Canaan* For twenty years Sisera 
 the captain of his hosts, who has nine hundred chariots of 
 iron, mightily oppresses them. This is the principle which 
 proves itself in so many different cases. Faith and freedom 
 are pronounced and found to be insepairable. Idolatry is 
 the necessary forerunner of slavel-y. Then comes an in- 
 spiration,-^in the strictest, simplest sense of the word, A 
 woman feels that God has called her to speak wordst' of 
 hope, reproof, encouragement to the people. She stirs up 
 Barak to help her ; one tribe after another gathers about 
 them ; the man will go against the enemy if the prophetess 
 will go with him, else he will not go. The inspiration has 
 been communicated to the people ; they know that God is 
 in the midst of them; they put Sisera to flight; he escapes 
 on foot. Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite tempts him 
 into heir tent, promising him safety. While he sleeps she 
 takes a nail and drives it into his temples. She shows him 
 dead to Barak and Deborah. Thej sing a song of triumph 
 to the Lord for the discomfiture of their enemies,. Deborah 
 
330 SERMON XVIIT. 
 
 not oulj exults in the fall of Siseta, but pronounces Jael 
 ' blessed among women,' for the deed which she has done. 
 Here we have the very puzzle to which I have been 
 alluding, brought before us in another form. Deborah- 
 is an inspired woman ; you cannot read the story of 
 her acts without feeling that she is. You cannot read 
 her song without recognising in it the tone and power 
 of a prophetess. And Deborah, thus speaking, praises 
 a woman for persuading a man at peace with her fatheir 
 and the Kenites to take refuge with her, that she 
 may privately and deliberately murder him. This is 
 the case, and the question therefore arises in a number 
 of hearts. Are we bound to commend Jael's act 
 because Deborah commends it? Should we not call it 
 an, act of very detestable treachery if we read of it 
 elsewhere ? Are we to give it a different name, because 
 we meet with it here ? I say at once and without hesitation. 
 It is at the peril of our consciences if we do this. We 
 cannot ventm*e upon such trifling with etern&.l laws 
 which God hath established, and not man. The moral 
 law recognised in an Arab tent condemns an aet of this 
 kind ; if we in any wise sanction it, we are saying, 
 not that we possess a written law, but that we have the 
 privilege of casting aside one which, as St. Paul ex- 
 pressly declares, is the work of God icritten in men!s hearts. 
 Think how terrible this result is ; how fatal to all 
 reverence for Scripture, and for the righteousness which it 
 reveals ! I have heard indeed of one desperate method 
 of cutting the knot to which some divines have resorted 
 in despair of untying it. They have said that Jael meant 
 to be faithful to Sisera when she beckoned him into 
 her house, but that she received a sudden intimation 
 
DEBORAH AND JAEL. 331 
 
 from heaven of her duty to commit the murder, and com- 
 mitted it accordingly. I only mention this horrible solu- 
 tion of the riddle as an instance of the strange frauds "we 
 may practise upon ourselves. We desire to justify God^s 
 ways ; that we may do so we cast the whole blame of 
 human evil upon Him ! We cannot feel comfortable 
 while we believe that the thought of an act which we 
 feel to be treacherous arose in the mind of the wife of 
 Heber the Kenite ; we are quite happy if we can believe 
 that it arose in the Divine Mind ! I know that when the 
 interpretation presents itself in this fonn it will make us 
 all shudder. I desire that it should. A number of such 
 blasphemous notions dwell within us in a confused 
 twilight. They must be brought into the clear open day 
 that we may see what they are. Else they will work 
 in some an utter unbelief in all moral distinctions, an 
 unbelief which must terminate in Atheism ; they will 
 tempt others, who receive the Bible as the guide of their 
 judgments and their lives, to think that Eavaillac was, 
 after all, the worthiest champion of Christendom. Brethren, 
 whether we see our way on this subject or not, let us 
 solemnly resolve that we will not abandon the least 
 particle of what we feel and know to be true, for the 
 sake of getting satisfaction upon it. If you trust God, 
 you can wait, you must wait, for light about a thousand 
 perplexing passages in His providence. If you think 
 that the Scriptures record His word you can wait 
 till He makes you understand it. You will then have 
 often to be thankful for perplexities, as the physical 
 student has in his department, which destroy crude 
 theories and bring you into a more quiet and humble 
 investigation of facts. But if you begin with under- 
 
332 SERMoi? xviii. 
 
 milling the divine character, for the sake of explaining 
 more easily and rapidly events which you see or read of, 
 you have purchased a temporary,— very temporary,-^ 
 repose to your intellect by the sacrifice of the principled 
 upon which your eiistetide as a nioral and spiritual 
 creature irpsts- 
 
 ' But then the Bible applauds the act of Jael/ , No I 
 not the Bible. The Bible tells me frankly that Deborah 
 the prophetess applauded it, and I am sure that it tells 
 me the truth. I am sure that a woman inspired with 
 ail intense sense of her country^s miseries and wrongs, 
 burning with a desire for the destructiofi of the oppressor, 
 certain that when he fell he would fall by God's 
 righteous judgments, and not by any achievement of 
 hers or Barak's, sttuck with the retribution which had 
 <)vertakeii one who had trampled upon other men's rights, 
 and practised base frauds, as all tyrants do when open 
 violence fails,^I am ^ure that sttch a Woman could not 
 appreciate the merit or demerit of the instmnient who 
 had wrought deliverance for Israel ; that in her thanks-* 
 giving to Grod she wonld mingle gratitude to Jael, 
 without the least pausing to consider whether she had 
 been prompted by the same inspiration which led h^r 
 forth to hazard her life for God'^s people, or by a very 
 different and diabolical one. That at such a moment^ 
 any person, — a woman especially, — should lose all other 
 feelings in one indiscriminate emotion of rapture,^ — should 
 tteat all persons wh o had helped to produce it tts 
 worthy of admiration and benediction,-^We should all 
 think exceedingly natural. And I ask you whether 
 the habit of mind which leads you not to expect that 
 which is simple and natural in the Bible, is not a Very 
 
DOES THE BTBLE PRAISE JAEL? 333 
 
 false and dangeroua one ? Should we not suspect ourselves 
 when we find we are indulging it ? I should think 
 this a veiy genuine description of strength and weakness 
 if I had read it elsewhere, — but in the hook of God, — 
 that is quite different ! What ! because you think it is 
 God's book you look for something unreal! You are 
 startled and scandalised because you meet with that 
 which is thoroughly in accordance with facts and expe- 
 rience ! You will have to be shocked and scandalised by 
 such discoveries, the further you read in it. You must 
 go elsewhere if you want to see human beings dressed 
 out for show and effect ; here you will see them as they 
 are, in all the greatness which they derive from a high 
 calling and purpose, in all the littleness which belongs 
 to them 9,3 mere creatures of flesh and blood. And this, 
 tliis is the witness that you are studying the work of 
 a Divine Artist ; this is the proof that the Bible is not 
 a collection of fragments, but that it has a living unity. 
 We in our wisdom desire a picture in which there shall be 
 no perspective ; where each person shaJl stand out as full 
 and large and prominent as every other ; where light and 
 shadow and proportion shall be wholly wanting. You 
 cannot be satisfied that Deborah should be a brave, noble 
 woman, that she should go forth in the name of the Lord 
 of hosts, that she should trample down strength, should 
 praise the Lord for the avenging of Israel. You must 
 instal her as a teacher of ethics, though she makes no 
 pretensions to the character, though the Bible nowhere 
 claims it for her. I do not ask Deborah to explain how 
 an act which I recognise as the judgment of a righteous 
 God upon an evil man should be effected by the deed of a 
 person more evil than himself. I doubt not that when she 
 
^34 SERMON XVIII. 
 
 was judging Isrstel under the palm-tree, she would have 
 been led, — hj her reverence for the law of God and by His 
 teaching, — to inflict the most summary and decisive judg- 
 ments upon such acts as she then commended. At that 
 instant, all other thoiights were absorbed in joy for the 
 rescue which she ascribed to its true source. 
 
 I think God, and not man, is the author of the Bible ; 
 I believe that He is teaching me through Deborah much 
 that I have need to learn. I gladly receive the lessons 
 which He imparts through her. But I shall not allow my 
 reverence for her to interfere with my reverence for God. 
 I shall not insist that she must be right, when she contra- 
 dicts lawgivers, prophets, Apostles, the Son of God. I 
 shall not in that neological spirit, cut the Bible into frag- 
 ments, and insist that it is without coherency, without a 
 purpose. I shall regard it as a book of gradual discovery, 
 of growing Revelation; and I shall believe this to be its 
 final and most certain revelation, that God is light, and 
 with Him is no darkness at all ; that He never caUs good 
 evil, or evil good; that every false act done by saint or 
 sinner, man or angel, proceeds from the father of lies. 
 Since the' Son of God has been manifested, the works of 
 the devil have; been manifested also ; it is a monstrous 
 contempt of God's blessed teaching to say that we cannot 
 know them ; an awful denial of it to say that in certain 
 instances we may identify them with His works who has 
 come to destroy them. 
 
 Brethren, in what I have said this afternoon I have not 
 been encouraging you to interpret Scripture in a lax, care- . 
 less method, according to some notions of your own. I 
 have wished you to feel that you are studying a holy and 
 divine record, and therefore that you are to be very watchful. 
 
JOB AND ST. PETEE. 335 
 
 leat you should substitute rude and vulgar conclusions of 
 mortal judgment for that which is higher than mortal 
 judgment, and is to correct them, God teaches us in His 
 Scriptures hj the errors, confusions, contradictions of His 
 best and stoutest servants. Was not Joh an inspired man ? 
 Might not even his thi-ee friends claim some supernatural 
 teaching ? Their words are recorded in Scripture. Thank 
 God that they are ! Not for the world would we dispense 
 with them. But if we receive them as authoritative, we 
 contradict God Himself, for we are told He was angry both 
 with Job and his fiiends because they had justified them- 
 selves rather than Him. We must be content to learn in 
 His way, not in ours; to be trained as that apostle was, 
 whom we remember to-day, by the experience of our own 
 mistakes, presumption, vanity, cowardice ; to be trained by 
 the records of the mistakes, presumption, vanity, cowardice, 
 of those whom we venerate most, who have been the 
 greatest pillars of the Church ; that so we may learn what 
 that eternal rock is upon which it rests, and against which 
 the gates of hell shall never prevail. 
 
SERMON XIX. 
 
 ELI AND SAMUEL. 
 
 (Lincoln's Inn. Third Sunday after Trinity July 6, I85i,; 
 Les:>oi>ti for the day. 1 Sainuei ii. and lu 
 
 1 Samuel in. 14. 
 
 And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Mi, that the iniquity of Eh*a 
 house shall not be pv/rged with sacnfice nor offerimg for ever. 
 
 OuE Lessons have brought us to a new stage in the histoiy 
 of the chosen nation. We begin to-day the prophetical 
 and regal period of it. That is a subject upon which I do 
 not intend to enter now. 
 
 I have chosen a passage from the lesson of this afternoon, 
 not so much because it is an opening to the later books of 
 the Old Testament, as because it throws back a light upon 
 the earlier. I regard it as the most suitable conclusion to 
 these Lectures. The questions which have so often occupied 
 us in the course of them, whether the character of the 
 Bible as a divine history interferes with its claims to be a 
 faithful human history ; whether the divine kingdom which . 
 the Scriptures speak of means merely a priestly kingdorh ; 
 whether the real maxim of Jewish records is utterly in- 
 applicable to us, or whether we are as much under an actual 
 divine government as they were ; — all come before us in the^ 
 
THE WICKED PRIESTS, 337 
 
 story of Eli and SamueL The priestly order, as we have 
 seen, was an essential part of the Jewish commonwealth. 
 It dwelt in a particulat family; the rebellion of Korah, 
 Dathan, and Abrram, had been an attempt to take it out 
 of that family ; the suppression and punishment of their 
 rebellion vindicated the limitation. Eli inherited the office 
 which had belonged to Aaron ; his sons offered the daily 
 sacrifice. They were sons of Belial, we axe told; they 
 knew not the Lord, They valued the portions which it 
 procured them ; they made it vile in the eyes of the people 
 by showHig how vile it was in their eyes ; having lost all 
 sense of God's presence in the acts which most avouched 
 His presence, there was nothing to restrain them. They 
 became openly and brutally corrupt; gloating, it would 
 seem, in the thought of turning consecrated places into 
 places of sin. Thus they made the sacrifice of the Lord 
 to be abhorred. This is the special charge against them. 
 The people loathed the whole service. It not only lost all 
 reality in their minds, it became positively hatefal to them. 
 Unbelief in anything true began to mix strangely and 
 awfully with honest detestation of a lie. This is a descrip- 
 tion, the liveliest and most faithful possible, of a nation 
 becoming atheistical through the atheism of its priests; 
 learning to think that whatever is divine is with them ; 
 inwardly convinced at the same time that in them there is 
 nothing divine, something very devilish. 
 
 Old Eli, the high priest, might have kept some of them 
 from this persuasion. There must have been in him a real 
 sense of the sacredness of his function. No one could 
 dream that he thought of what he was to gain by it, or 
 ever used it for any base ends. Whatever reverence a man 
 ^an inspire by showing that his heart is personally engaged 
 
338 SEBMON XIX. 
 
 in his work, that it caused him inward delight, he will have 
 inspired. But there is a limit to this kind of respect, and 
 moreover a mischief in it. Eli was a pious or devout man ; 
 he was evidently a kind-hearted, amiable man ; but he was 
 not, strictly speaking, a righteous man. He did not care 
 that God's order should be established, that wrong^doers 
 should be punished. So long as he could keep his internal 
 quietness, all was welL He wished his sons to be better, 
 no doubt ; he told them so. To preserve the commonwealth 
 from pollution, to make the Tabernacle a fit place, not for 
 his- devotions, but for God to dwell in, — this did not come 
 within the range of his religion. This good man exhibited 
 in himself one side of that atheism, which was coming forth 
 in heaxtlessness among' the people, in depravity among his 
 own children. He honoured God as an individual man ; 
 not as a father, as a member of a nation, as a high priest. 
 Whatever honour therefore he attracted to himself, did not 
 go beyond himself. He was the specimen of a departing 
 age ; he was sincere, no doubt ; but his sincerity would die 
 with him. His sons seemed to be the regular natural 
 specimens of the priestly character. ' That was what 
 ' the mysterious consecration, and the holy oil, and the 
 
 * vestments for glory and beauty, and the Urim and 
 
 * Thummim, and the words upon the forehead were coming 
 
 * to at last ! ' 
 
 All this the Scripture does not make the slightest attempt 
 to conceal or to palliate. The case is stated broadly, Eli 
 is condemned as well as his sons. And what then has 
 become of that order of which we have heard so much? 
 Is it nothing ? Has it proved itself to be the empty thing 
 which the nations round about always thought it was; 
 which the people of the covenant are beginning to think 
 
THE DIYIXE METHOD. 339 
 
 that it is ? The order is just where it always was ; not shat- 
 tered or shaken in the smallest degree ; confirmed and esta- 
 blished by the unbelief of the people, the crimes of Hophni 
 and Phinehas, the imbecility of their father. If it was not 
 of God, it was false from the first ; if it was of God, He 
 would prove it to be His, and prove that He was not 
 dependent upon the order, but the order upon Him. This 
 is the great and blessed truth which the story brings out 
 before us. It is not, as some would say, that a dignus 
 vindice nodus had occurred, and that then God interrupted 
 the ordinary course of His Providence to set things right. 
 Man, not He, is the interrupter. Man breaks the course of 
 his obedience ; he will not believe that God is with him of 
 a truth. Then God shows him that He is. He does not 
 allow him to remain in his delusion, to shut his eyes and 
 fancy that he is unseen. 
 
 I. There are two methods in which we are told this 
 revelation or discovery of the reality of things was made to 
 the people of Israel at this time. Both are methods in the 
 strict sense of the word ; not sudden miracles, but a series 
 of acts producing an impression by their conformity with a 
 law, by their continuousness and relation to each other, A 
 child is born to a woman who had for many years been 
 longing and praying for one. In her joy and thankfulness 
 for the gift she devotes him to the service of the Tabernacle. 
 He is brought up as a child under the eye of the priest. 
 As he lies in his little chamber, near the place where the 
 Ark of God was, before the lamp went out, a voice called 
 him which he thought was Eli's. He learnt by slow 
 degrees that another than Eli was calling him, and that he 
 had words to utter which wou^d make both the ears of the 
 whole house of Israel to tingle. Eli perceived that there 
 
 z 2 
 
340 SERMON XIX. 
 
 was something in the heart of the child. He forced hira 
 to declare it. Then the boy told him that the Lord would 
 not cease till he had made an end of the house of Eli, and 
 that sacrifice and offering would not purge away the evil 
 which it had committed. 
 
 Does it seem to you that this communication to Samuel 
 was something strange and irregular, not in conformity with 
 the regular course of G^'s dealings. I think a moment's 
 reflection will show you that you are mistaken, A Jew 
 who believed in God's covenant, could never think it a 
 strange event that God should hold converse with a man. 
 The feeling that this was possible was no doubt exceedingly 
 weak at that time ; just because faith in the covenant was 
 exceedingly weak. The routine of daily services and 
 sacrifices will have seemed to the Israelites in the days of 
 Hophni and Phinehas a mere muttering of addresses to God, 
 or attempts to move His mind ; which ordinarily they will 
 have regarded with indifference or contempt; which in 
 critical and extreme moments they will have hoped might 
 be successful. The thought of God ordering the sacrifice, — 
 God communicating Himself to the creature, God uttering 
 Himself to him and by him, — will have become a faded 
 traditional thought in their minds. Why ? Simply because 
 their minds were out of tune, ready to exchange unbelief 
 for superstition and superstition for unbelief, incredulous of 
 an invisible Presence, and therefore credulous of visible 
 powers and influences; turning all things upside down, 
 supposing that it was easier for the meaner being to ascenil 
 to the higher, than for the higher to stoop to the meaner. 
 Now if it pleased God to con ect this false and vicious state 
 of feeling, and to show that He does educate His creatures ; 
 that He knows what is passing in their inner minds, and 
 
THE BOY PROPHET. 341 
 
 can awaken those minds to perception and to action ; — can 
 you think of any simpler and quieter method than that 
 of training a child, — already dedicated to a mysterious 
 service, — to feel and know that he was actually under 
 an unseen guide, and was to he the spokesman of His 
 purposes ? 
 
 Something of what is implied in the very idea of a 
 prophet I have hinted at in former sermons. The full 
 development of the character and office belongs to the later 
 books. But thus much is clearly intimated in the passage 
 we have read this afternoon, that he whom all Israel from 
 Dan to Beersheba knew and felt to be a prophet, was under 
 an education and government which obliged him to feel 
 that his words were not his own, and yet that he was in the 
 highest degree responsible for them ; that they were given 
 him, but given him in trust ; and that he must seek for 
 continual help neither to hide that which he was to publish, 
 nor to mingle with it notions and fancies of his own. 
 These three characteristics meet in this simple child- 
 prophet. He knows that God is his teacher; he knows 
 that He is teaching others through him ; he knows that he 
 is to foretel the inevitable results of ill-doing to priests and 
 to people. 
 
 IL This is one of the methods. I have indicated the 
 other in the last sentence, the method of retribution. The 
 righteous Judge of the world shows that the world cannot 
 go on without Him ; that priests who try to establish their 
 rule as if they had one of their own and were not merely 
 His servants, — must above all men pay the penalty of their 
 sin and unbelief. The people whom they have perverted 
 into godlessness must taste the fruit of their godlessness. 
 Those who have . fancied there could be a routine of 
 
342 SERMON XIX. 
 
 ordinances witliout the God who appointed them, — and that 
 some independent charm was in them, — must be stripped 
 of all signs and pledges of the Divine Presence, till they 
 confess that Divine Presence without them, and so are fit to 
 l)e trusted with them again. The Philistines came against 
 Israel. The elders of Israel in their terror thought that 
 the Ark of God might save them if it was carried down to 
 the battle ; the atheistical priests went with it. They were 
 slain, the host discomfited, the Ark taken. Eli fell dead at 
 hearing the news. The glorj of the land was departed. 
 If He who had made His Presence known in the Ark, had 
 been confined to it, the land must have indeed perished. 
 There was nothing left to keep it alive. But God was the 
 same, wherever the Ark might be. He still spoke out His 
 judgments and His prophecies by Samuel's voice. In due 
 time, having proved that the nation, lived only in Him and 
 by Him, He gave it health and restoration. 
 
 Now imagine the earnest Dominican, Savonarola, in the 
 days of Alexander the Sixth, reading this passage. Do 
 you think he could have supposed that it belonged only to 
 the times when the judges judged Israel? Must he not 
 have said, ' It belongs to my time and my country. The 
 
 * abominations which the priests of the Christian Church 
 
 * are committing in the city which boasts to be the centre 
 
 * and mother of all, are such as Hophni and Phinehas 
 ' never perpetrated. And the cause of them is the same. 
 
 * These Italian priests of ours, like the Jewish, can go 
 ' through their routine of services without the slightest 
 
 * belief in God, without the least sense that He is a 
 
 * righteous King and Judge. They think that they are to 
 ' speak a great many words, and to go through a circle of 
 
 religious acts, but they have no dream that He is 
 
THE SUOC?ESSION BROKEN. 343 
 
 speaking or acting. These men who are sent into the 
 
 * world to testify that He lives, think in their hearts that 
 ' He is dead. And therefore it is certain that they •will 
 
 * commit crimes in the darkness of night, nay, in the face 
 ' of day, which ordinary men, which heathens, would 
 ' tremble at.' Now when a man, overwhelmed with these 
 thoughts, felt an irresistible compulsion to proclaim aloud 
 in the ears of his countrymen that God would come forth 
 out of His place to punish the simonies, and murders, and 
 incests which He had seen, and to prove that Italy and the 
 Church had another ruler than those who were defiling and 
 destroying them, do you think he cotild doubt that the 
 same divine voice which Samuel heard as he lay near Eli's 
 chamber, was bidding Mm testify of present sins and 
 coming destruction? I cannot conceive how a man could 
 shake himself free from the influence of that Art Worship, 
 which was banishing all other in his day, and could defy 
 all terrors of the visible and invisible world, that he might 
 speak what he knew to be true, if he confessed any lower 
 call than this. I know well that Savonarola did mingle 
 fanaticism, sometimes grievous fanaticism, with his manly 
 and noble protest for righteousness. I allude to his case 
 partly for that reason. It seems to me that any extravagant 
 pretensions which he put forward for himself, — any errors 
 into which his mighty iufluence as a preacher, and the 
 belief of the people in his prophetical powers betrayed him, 
 — was the consequence, not of his studying the history of 
 Samuel, and accepting it too simply as a guide for the 
 times to come, but of his omitting to draw from it some of 
 its deepest and most helpful lessons. The temptation of 
 Savonarola and of every man possessing remarkable 
 endowments and feeling certain of the purpose to which 
 
344 SERMON XIX. 
 
 he should devote theirij is to think of himself as under 
 some economy different from that of other men. Though 
 in his moments of highest inspiration he claims them all as 
 fellow-heirs with him, — though the very secret of his 
 power lies in his sympathy, — yet he is continually apt to 
 fancy (and how fearfully does the adoration of crowds 
 increase and perpetuate the delusion !) that ie is an 
 altogether different being from those who hang upon his 
 lips. Hence come the pretensions, and sometimes the 
 dishonourable efforts to support them, which have defiled 
 the lives of men essentially true and brave, and have 
 caused them their greatest sorrows and humiliations. Now 
 the moral of Samuel's story, standing as it does, not alone, 
 but as part of a history altogether in accordance with it, is 
 surely this ; that the man is right, and the child is right, 
 just so far as he acknowledges that God's voice is speaking 
 to him secretly and inwardly, preparing him for whatever 
 work he has to do ; that the man who is conscious of 
 special powers and a special commission, is emphatically to 
 assert that God is the author of them, — in order that he 
 may encourage all his brethren to feel that their gifts and 
 their callings are also divine. Why was Samuel raised up 
 except to tell a people who had forgotten God's ancient 
 covenant, that it was true and no lie ? Why is any 
 teacher raised up in the Christian age except to tell 
 baptized men that God^s Spirit is with them, and that the 
 greatest and the least of them must give account for 
 a trust so awful ; for the presence of a Guide whom they 
 may trifle with and grieve, but whom they cannot banish, 
 and who is speaking to them continually, whether they 
 heed His voice or despise it? 
 
 I cannot feel, brethren, that we, the priests of the 
 
PERILS OP A TRUE PROPHET. 345 
 
 Englisli churcli, have borne this testimony to jou the 
 members of it as we ought, bj our deeds or by our words. 
 All praise be to God, if the open scandals among us are 
 not what they may have been in other days ; not such as 
 may enable us to find an exact parallel for our own case in 
 the lessons we read to-day. But I dare not say, that we 
 too have not made the offering of the Lord oftentimes to be 
 abhorred by the people. Whenever we represent the great 
 atoning Sacrifice in the language of heathenism, and not in 
 the language of the Gospel, — as an offering to make God 
 loving, and not as the fruit of His love, as an effort of 
 Christ to obtain that which the Father was unwilling to 
 grant, not as His perfect surrender and submission to the 
 Will of the Father, — we make the very principle of 
 sacrifice to'be abhorred ; we destroy all apprehension of its 
 true nature in the creature, because we have denied the 
 ground and original of it in the Creator. When we do 
 not proclaim the gospel of a finished sacrifice for mankind, 
 but draw limitations and distinctions which shut out 
 multitudes from the blessings of it ; we cause the offering 
 of the Lord to be abhorred. When we show in our services 
 or our worship, that we care for the rich more than for the 
 poor, and that we think the one exist for the sake of the 
 other, — that one main business of the priest is to preserve 
 the barriers of classes, and to assert wealth as the great 
 barrier, not to proclaim a universal communion ; — we cause 
 the offering of the Lord to be abhorred. When we dispute 
 with each other, and rail at each other, and show that we 
 do not believe the Spirit of love has power to overcome the 
 spirit of wrath and hatred, even in ourselves ; we cause the 
 offering of the Lord to be abhorred. When we use cant 
 phrases to which no realities correspond ; we cause the 
 
346 SERMON XIX. 
 
 offering of the Lord to be atliorred. When we tell meB 
 that they are to make great efforts, and to overcome great 
 temptations, and do not tell them that they have God 
 IlimseU helping them and striving with them; we cause 
 the offering of the Lord to be abhorred. 
 
 I speak, brethren, as feeling the infinite peril which 
 those are in of forgetting God, who are continually 
 speaking of Him to others, and whose privilege and calling 
 it is to set forth the tokens and sacraments of His Presence. 
 Eli and his house needed a Samuel ; it will go ill with us, 
 the priests of this day, if we think that children — and that 
 himdreds and thousands who are without the innocence of 
 children — may not speak words of awe and warning to us. 
 In one sense, every man whom we meet in the streets, with 
 the image of God defaced and crushed through our in- 
 difference, is a prophet to us. But yet it may please the Lord 
 of the vineyard to send different teachers from these, men 
 really taught by Him to see the evils we are committing, 
 and what will flow from them. Oh ! may we not stone 
 them and cast them out ! And may they be preserved by 
 His grace from setting up themselves, or fancying that they 
 have any right to be honoured, or have any glory except in 
 uttering the word which He has committed to them, and in 
 doing the acts which He has sent them to do ! Christ said 
 to the twelve fishermen whom He was sending forth with 
 words of blessing and warning to publicans and sinners, to 
 priests and rulers, ^He that keareth you heareih me ; he that 
 despiseth you despiseth me. He that despiseth me despiseth 
 Him that sent me^ From that contempt of Himself may 
 He of His mercy deliver us and om' land. And may He. 
 deliver us also from the great curse and unbelief, of 
 fancying thfit His Church rests upon those who temporarily 
 
PKOPHETS WABN PRIESTS. 347 
 
 minister in it ; or that the sentence wliich must go forth 
 against them, if they are faithless and godless, aSects its 
 stability. The ark may he taken captive ; the priests may 
 die in their sins ; the witness and relic of the old world 
 may fall down with the weight of age and sorrow. But 
 amidst thunders and earthquakes, the Tabernacle of Testi- 
 mony will be opened in heaven ; and He will be revealed 
 who has the covenant of an everlasting priesthood ; the 
 Living Word who is the Teacher of prophets, the King of 
 kings and Lord of lords. 
 
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