All Saints' Day and Other Sermons Part 14
I know people do not like to believe that; I know that it is much more convenient to fancy that when a man repents, and, as he says, turns over a new leaf, he need trouble himself no more about his past sins. But it is a mistake; not only is the letter and spirit of Scripture against him, but facts are against him. He may not choose to trouble himself about his past sins; but he will find that his past sins trouble him, whether he chooses or not,--and that often in a very terrible way, as they troubled those poor Jews in their day, and our forefathers after the Reformation.
"What?" some will say, "is it not expressly written in Scripture that 'when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive?' and 'all his transgressions that he hath committed they shall not be mentioned unto him,' but that 'in his righteousness which he hath done he shall live?'"
No doubt it is so written, my friends. And no doubt it is perfectly and literally true: but answer me this, when does the wicked man do that which is lawful and right? The minute after he has repented? or the day after? or even seven years after?--the minute after he is forgiven, and received freely back again as G.o.d's child, as he will be, for the sake of that precious blood which Christ poured out upon the cross? Would to G.o.d it were so, my friends. Would to G.o.d it were so easy to do right, after having been accustomed to do wrong. Would to G.o.d it were so easy to get a clean heart and a right spirit. Would to G.o.d it were so easy to break through all the old bad habits--perhaps the habits of a whole life-time.
But it is in vain to expect this sudden change of character. As well may we expect a man, who has been laid low with fever, to get up and go about to his work the moment his disease takes a favourable turn.
No. After the forgiveness of sin must come the cure of sin. And that cure, like most cures, is a long and a painful process. The sin may have been some animal sin, like drunkenness; and we all know how difficult it is to cure that. Or it may have been a spiritual sin--pride, vanity, covetousness. Can any man put off these bad habits in a moment, as he puts off his coat? Those who so fancy, can know very little of human nature, and have observed their own hearts and their fellow creatures very carelessly. If you will look at facts, what you will find is this:- -that all sins and bad habits fill the soul with evil humours, just as a fever or any other severe disease fills the body; and that, as in the case of a fever, those evil humours remain after the acute disease is past, and are but too apt to break out again, to cause relapses, to torment the poor patient, perhaps to leave his character crippled and disfigured all his life--certainly to require long and often severe treatment by the heavenly physician, Christ, the purifier as well as the redeemer of our sin-sick souls. Heavy, therefore, and bitter and shameful is the burden which many a man has to bear after he has turned from self to G.o.d, from sin to holiness. He is haunted, as it were, by the ghosts of his old follies. He finds out the bitter truth of St Paul's words, that there is another law in his body warring against the law of his mind, of his conscience, and his reason; so that when he would do good, evil is present with him. The good that he would do he does not do; and the evil that he would not do he does. Till he cries with St Paul, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" and feels that none can deliver him, save Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yes. But there is our comfort, there is our hope--Christ, the great healer, the great physician, can deliver us, and will deliver us from the remains of our old sins, the consequences of our own follies. Not, indeed, at once, or by miracle; but by slow education in new and n.o.bler motives, in purer and more unselfish habits. And better for us, perhaps, that He should not cure us at once, lest we should fancy that sin was a light thing, which we could throw off whenever we chose; and not what it is, an inward disease, corroding and corrupting, the wages whereof are death. Therefore it is, that because Christ loves us He hates our sins, and cannot abide or endure them, will punish them, and is merciful and loving in punishing them, as long as a tincture or remnant of sin is left in us.
Let us then, if our consciences condemn us of living evil lives, turn and repent before it be too late; before our consciences are hardened; before the purer and n.o.bler feelings which we learnt at our mothers' knees are stifled by the ways of the world; before we are hardened into bad habits, and grown frivolous, sensual, selfish and worldly. Let us repent. Let us put ourselves into the hands of Christ, the great physician, and ask Him to heal our wounded souls, and purge our corrupted souls; and leave to Him the choice of how He will do it. Let us be content to be punished and chastised. If we deserve punishment, let us bear it, and bear it like men; as we should bear the surgeon's knife, knowing that it is for our good, and that the hand which inflicts pain is the hand of one who so loves us, that He stooped to die for us on the cross. Let Him deal with us, if He see fit, as He dealt with David of old, when He forgave his sin, and yet punished it by the death of his child. Let Him do what He will by us, provided He does--what He will do--make us good men.
That is what we need to be--just, merciful, pure, faithful, loyal, useful, honourable with true honour, in the sight of G.o.d and man. That is what we need to be. That is what we shall be at last, if we put ourselves into Christ's hand, and ask Him for the clean heart and the right spirit, which is His own spirit, the spirit of all goodness. And provided we attain, at last, to that--provided we attain, at last, to the truly heroic and divine life, which is the life of virtue, it will matter little to us by what wild and weary ways, or through what painful and humiliating processes, we have arrived thither. If G.o.d has loved us, if G.o.d will receive us, then let us submit loyally and humbly to His law.
"Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."
SERMON x.x.xIII. HUMAN SOOT
Preached for the Kirkdale Ragged Schools, Liverpool, 1870.
St Matt, xviii. 14. "It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."
I am here to plead for the Kirkdale Industrial Ragged School, and Free School-room Church. The great majority of children who attend this school belong to the cla.s.s of "street arabs," as they are now called; and either already belong to, or are likely to sink into, the dangerous cla.s.ses--professional law-breakers, profligates, and barbarians. How these children have been fed, civilized, christianized, taught trades and domestic employments, and saved from ruin of body and soul, I leave to you to read in the report. Let us take hold of these little ones at once. They are now soft, plastic, mouldable; a tone will stir their young souls to the very depths, a look will affect them for ever. But a hardening process has commenced within them, and if they are not seized at once, they will become harder than adamant; and then scalding tears, and the most earnest trials, will be all but useless.
This report contains full and pleasant proof of the success of the schools; but it contains also full proof of a fact which is anything but pleasant--of the existence in Liverpool of a need for such an inst.i.tution. How is it that when a ragged school like this is opened, it is filled at once: that it is enlarged year after year, and yet is filled and filled again? Whence comes this large population of children who are needy, if not dest.i.tute; and who are, or are in a fair way to become, dangerous? And whence comes the population of parents whom these children represent? How is it that in Liverpool, if I am rightly informed, more than four hundred and fifty children were committed by the magistrates last year for various offences; almost every one of whom, of course, represents several more, brothers, sisters, companions, corrupted by him, or corrupting him. You have your reformatories, your training ships, like your Akbar, which I visited with deep satisfaction yesterday- -inst.i.tutions which are an honour to the town of Liverpool, at least to many of its citizens. But how is it that they are ever needed? How is it--and this, if correct, or only half correct, is a fact altogether horrible--that there are now between ten and twelve thousand children in Liverpool who attend no school--twelve thousand children in ignorance of their duty to G.o.d and man, in training for that dangerous cla.s.s, which you have, it seems, contrived to create in this once small and quiet port during a century of wonderful prosperity. And consider this, I beseech you--how is it that the experiment of giving these children a fair chance, when it is tried (as it has been in these schools) has succeeded?
I do not wonder, of course, that it has succeeded, for I know Who made these children, and Who redeemed them, and Who cares for them more than you or I, or their best friends, can care for them. But do you not see that the very fact of their having improved, when they had a fair chance, is proof positive that they had not had a fair chance before? How is that, my friends?
And this leads me to ask you plainly--what do you consider to be your duty toward those children; what is your duty toward those dangerous and degraded cla.s.ses, from which too many of them spring? You all know the parable of the Good Samaritan. You all know how he found the poor wounded Jew by the wayside; and for the mere sake of their common humanity, simply because he was a man, though he would have scornfully disclaimed the name of brother, bound up his wounds, set him on his own beast, led him to an inn, and took care of him.
Is yours the duty which the good Samaritan felt?--the duty of mere humanity? How is it your duty to deal, then, with these poor children?
That, and I think a little more. Let me say boldly, I think these children have a deeper and a nearer claim on you; and that you must not pride yourselves, here in Liverpool, on acting the good Samaritan, when you help a ragged school. We do not read that the good Samaritan was a merchant, on his march, at the head of his own caravan. We do not read that the wounded man was one of his own servants, or a child of one of his servants, who had been left behind, unable from weakness or weariness to keep pace with the rest, and had dropped by the wayside, till the vultures and the jackals should pick his bones. Neither do we read that he was a general, at the head of an advancing army, and that the poor sufferer was one of his own rank and file, crippled by wounds or by disease, watching, as many a poor soldier does, his comrades march past to victory, while he is left alone to die. Still less do we hear that the sufferer was the child of some poor soldier's wife, or even of some drunken camp-follower, who had lost her place on the baggage-waggon, and trudged on with the child at her back, through dust and mire, till, in despair, she dropped her little one, and left it to the mercies of the G.o.d who gave it her.
In either case, that good Samaritan would have known what his duty was.
I trust that you will know, in like case, what your duty is. For is not this, and none other, your relation to these children in your streets, ragged, dirty, profligate, sinking and perishing, of whom our Lord has said--"It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish?" It is not His will. I am sure that it is not your will either. I believe that, with all my heart. I do not blame you, or the people of Liverpool, nor the people of any city on earth, in our present imperfect state of civilisation, for the existence among them of brutal, ignorant, degraded, helpless people. It is no one's fault, just because it is every one's fault--the fault of the system. But it is not the will of G.o.d; and therefore the existence of such an evil is proof patent and sufficient that we have not yet discovered the whole will of G.o.d about this matter; that we have not yet mastered the laws of true political economy, which (like all other natural laws) are that will of G.o.d revealed in facts. Our processes are hasty, imperfect, barbaric--and their result is vast and rapid production: but also waste, refuse, in the shape of a dangerous cla.s.s.
We know well how, in some manufactures, a certain amount of waste is profitable--that it pays better to let certain substances run to refuse, than to use every product of the manufacture; as in a steam mill, where it pays better not to consume the whole fuel, to let the soot escape, though every atom of soot is so much wasted fuel. So it is in our present social system. It pays better, capital is acc.u.mulated more rapidly, by wasting a certain amount of human life, human health, human intellect, human morals, by producing and throwing away a regular percentage of human soot--of that thinking, acting dirt, which lies about, and, alas! breeds and perpetuates itself in foul alleys and low public houses, and all dens and dark places of the earth.
But, as in the case of the manufactures, the Nemesis comes, swift and sure. As the foul vapours of the mine and the manufactory destroy vegetation and injure health, so does the Nemesis fall on the world of man; so does that human soot, these human poison gases, infect the whole society which has allowed them to fester under its feet.
Sad, but not hopeless! Dark, but not without a gleam of light on the horizon! For I can conceive a time when, by improved chemical science, every foul vapour which now escapes from the chimney of a manufactory, polluting the air, destroying the vegetation, shall be seized, utilised, converted into some profitable substance; till the black country shall be black no longer, the streams once more crystal clear, the trees once more luxuriant, and the desert which man has created in his haste and greed shall, in literal fact, once more blossom as the rose. And just so can I conceive a time when, by a higher civilisation, formed on a political economy more truly scientific, because more truly according to the will of G.o.d, our human refuse shall be utilised, like our material refuse, when man, as man, even down to the weakest and most ignorant, shall be found to be (as he really is) so valuable, that it will be worth while to preserve his health, to develop his capabilities, to save him alive, body, intellect, and character, at any cost; because men will see that a man is, after all, the most precious and useful thing on the earth, and that no cost spent on the development of human beings can possibly be thrown away.
I appeal, then, to you, the commercial men of Liverpool, if there are any such in this congregation. If not, I appeal to their wives and daughters, who are kept in wealth, luxury, refinement, by the honourable labours of their husbands, fathers, brothers, on behalf of this human soot. Merchants are (and I believe that they deserve to be) the leaders of the great caravan, which goes forth to replenish the earth and subdue it. They are among the generals of the great army which wages war against the brute powers of nature all over the world, to ward off poverty and starvation from the ever-teeming millions of mankind. Have they no time--I take for granted that they have the heart--to pick up the footsore and weary, who have fallen out of the march, that they may rejoin the caravan, and be of use once more? Have they no time--I am sure they have the heart--to tend the wounded and the fever-stricken, that they may rise and fight once more? If not, then must not the pace of their march be somewhat too rapid, the plan of their campaign somewhat precipitate and ill-directed, their ambulance train and their medical arrangements somewhat defective? We are all ready enough to complain of waste of human bodies, brought about by such defects in the British army.
Shall we pa.s.s over the waste, the hereditary waste of human souls, brought about by similar defects in every great city in the world?
Waste of human souls, human intellects, human characters--waste, saddest of all, of the image of G.o.d in little children. That cannot be necessary. There must be a fault somewhere. It cannot be the will of G.o.d that one little one should perish by commerce, or by manufacture, any more than by slavery, or by war.
As surely as I believe that there is a G.o.d, so surely do I believe that commerce is the ordinance of G.o.d; that the great army of producers and distributors is G.o.d's army. But for that very reason I must believe that the production of human refuse, the waste of human character, is not part of G.o.d's plan; not according to His ideal of what our social state should be; and therefore what our social state can be. For G.o.d asks no impossibilities of any human being.
But as things are, one has only to go into the streets of this, or any great city, to see how we, with all our boasted civilisation, are, as yet, but one step removed from barbarism. Is that a hard word? Why, there are the barbarians around us at every street corner! Grown barbarians--it may be now all but past saving--but bringing into the world young barbarians, whom we may yet save, for G.o.d wishes us to save them. It is not the will of their Father which is in heaven that one of them should perish. And for that very reason He has given them capabilities, powers, instincts, by virtue of which they need not perish.
Do not deceive yourselves about the little dirty, offensive children in the street. If they be offensive to you, they are not to Him who made them. "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." Is there not in every one of them, as in you, the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world? And know you not Who that Light is, and what He said of little children?
Then, take heed, I say, lest you despise one of these little ones.
Listen not to the Pharisee when he says, Except the little child be converted, and become as I am, he shall in nowise enter into the kingdom of heaven. But listen to the voice of Him who knew what was in man, when He said, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Their souls are like their bodies, not perfect, but beautiful enough, and fresh enough, to shame any one who shall dare to look down on them. Their souls are like their bodies, hidden by the rags, foul with the dirt of what we miscall civilisation. But take them to the pure stream, strip off the ugly, shapeless rags, wash the young limbs again, and you shall find them, body and soul, fresh and lithe, graceful and capable--capable of how much, G.o.d alone who made them knows. Well said of such, the great Christian poet of your northern hills--
"Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From G.o.d, who is our home."
Truly, and too truly, alas! he goes on to say--
"Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy."
Will you let the shades of that prison-house of mortality be peopled with little save obscene phantoms? Truly, and too truly, he goes on--
"The youth, who daily further from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid, Is on his way attended."
Will you leave the youth to know nature only in the sense in which an ape or a swine knows it; and to conceive of no more splendid vision than that which he may behold at a penny theatre? Truly again, and too truly, he goes on--
"At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day."
Yes, to weak, mortal man the prosaic age of manhood must needs come, for good as well as for evil. But will you let that age be--to any of your fellow citizens--not even an age of rational prose, but an age of brutal recklessness; while the light of common day, for him, has sunk into the darkness of a common sewer?
And all the while it was not the will of their Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Is it your will, my friends; or is it not? If it be not, the means of saving them, or at least the great majority of them, is easier than you think. Circ.u.mstances drag downward from childhood, poor, weak, fallen, human nature. Circ.u.mstances must help it upward again once more. Do your best to surround the wild children of Liverpool with such circ.u.mstances as you put round your own children. Deal with them as you wish G.o.d to deal with your beloved.
Remember that, as the wise man says, the human plant, like the vegetable, thrives best in light; and you will discover, by the irresistible logic of facts, by the success of your own endeavours, by seeing these young souls grow, and not wither, live, and not die--that it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
SERMON x.x.xIV. NATIONAL SORROWS AND NATIONAL LESSONS
On the illness or the Prince of Wales.
Chapel Royal, St James's, December 17th, 1871.
2 Sam. xix. 14. "He bowed the heart of all the men of Judah, even as the heart of one man."
No circ.u.mstances can be more different, thank G.o.d, than those under which the heart of the men of Judah was bowed when their king commander appealed to them, and those which have, in the last few days, bowed the heart of this nation as the heart of one man. But the feeling called out in each case was the same--Loyalty, spontaneous, contagious, some would say unreasoning: but it may be all the deeper and n.o.bler, because for once it did not wait to reason, but was content to be human, and to feel.
If those men who have been so heartily loyal of late--respectable, business-like, manful persons, of a race in nowise given to sentimental excitement--had been asked the cause of the intense feeling which they have shown during the last few days, they would probably, most of them, find some difficulty in giving it. Many would talk frankly of their dread lest business should be interfered with; and no shame to them, if they live by business. Others would speak of possible political complications; and certainly no blame to them for dreading such. But they would most of them speak, as frankly, of a deeper and less selfish emotion. They would speak, not eloquently it may be, but earnestly, of sympathy with a mother and a wife; of sympathy with youth and health fighting untimely with disease and death--they would plead their common humanity, and not be ashamed to have yielded to that touch of nature, which makes the whole world kin. And that would be altogether to their honour. Honourably and gracefully has that sympathy showed itself in these realms of late. It has proved that in spite of all our covetousness, all our luxury, all our frivolity, we are not cynics yet, nor likely, thanks be to Almighty G.o.d, to become cynics; that however encrusted and cankered with the cares and riches of this world, and bringing, alas, very little fruit to perfection, the old British oak is sound at the root--still human, still humane.