Verses 38-50
Chapter 51
Prayer
Almighty God, thou art good to us with exceeding fulness of mercy. Thy compassions fail not, they come up with the light every morning, and they fill the darkness of the night with lights brighter than the stars. Thou art our helper: when we are helpless thou art nearer to us than our own life; thou art round about us like a great defence of fire, and no man can pluck us out of the Father's hand. Thy promises are exceeding great and precious, and as for their number, they have none the Sands upon the seashore may be counted, but thy mercies are beyond all reckoning, they fill our life, they overflow it, they are our daily inspiration and confidence, and our one hope and final security. Thou dost enrich us all the promises of thy grace are ours, the unsearchable riches of Christ are our possession, all things are ours. Lord, increase our faith, give us that bold yet loving hand, which seizes the prize in all its fulness and preciousness and applies it to the poverty and the whole necessity of life. We have not, because we ask not, or because we ask amiss, give us the asking spirit and the right spirit of asking, and turn our whole life, not into a cry of distress, but into a prayer of hope then wilt thou open the windows of heaven, and our life shall know its littleness by reason of the infinity of thy reply.
We come to thee through Jesus Christ, the one way, the way that is living and abundant and as continual as our necessity. We come by the way of the Cross, we tarry at the Cross, our eyes are upon the Cross, our expectation is from the Cross; as for him who hangs upon it, he saved others, himself he cannot save. He is our Saviour not his own, he died for sin once, and he reigneth unto righteousness through all the ages of thine own duration. May we hide our little life in his eternity, may we bring our daily sin to his age-long intercession, to the blood shed before the foundation of the world, and in the presence of that great mystery our sins shall vanish like a driven cloud.
Thou hast set before us a great destiny, thou dost ply our life with many calls, thou dost urge us by many impulses, thou dost turn our ambition into a religious force and lure us by many a promise of larger life and nobler attainment. Help us to obey the call, may we never be disobedient to the heavenly vision. Speak to us out of thy temple of light, and answer our questioning when we desire to know what thou wouldst have us to do. May we fill up the little day of our life with filial industry, with gentle, unmurmuring patience, toiling at any service thou dost impose upon us, and bearing ourselves throughout our whole task as those whose strength is in heaven and whose inspiration is of God.
Thou knowest our whole necessity, our life in all its throbbing pain and pitiful helplessness and wordless desire and mute agony, in all its hope, expectation and vehement desire, in all its solicitudes and wanderings and curious questionings thou knowest us altogether, thou knowest the burdens we carry, the stings that wound us every day, and the fire which scorches us like the judgment that is infinite. Thou knowest our rest and our hope, and the place we count most secure. According to all our life do thou now come to us and do thou cleanse us by the inspiration of thy Spirit, and make us holy by the application of the blood of the heart of Christ, and passing through all the mystery of thine inward discipline, may we come out of the same godly, strong, pure, tender, large of heart, noble of purpose, marked by entirety and joyousness of consecration, and may our life be an ascending sacrifice unto the heavens.
Pity us in our littleness, help us to bear the rebuffs and scorn of men, enable us to forgive our enemies with large pardons, yea, with multiplied releases of love. Enable us to bear patiently with all who provoke us or try our temper or seek to drag us down in our noblest endeavours. When there is sickness in the house, may the healer from heaven be there, where death comes, steadily, stealthily, nearer, nearer, may the Resurrection and the Life be nearer still, to foil the enemy in his purpose.
Give unto children the spirit of obedience, and unto parents the spirit of wisdom and of love. May the master and the servant live together in Christian amicableness, and may all classes and conditions of men feel themselves united, not in the region of transient distinctions, but in the roots and vitalities of things, and all those relations which survive the wreck of time and pass on to the higher fellowships of the world unseen.
Give us all to feel this day what is meant by the lifting up of the spirit by the shining of the Sun of Righteousness upon the inward heart and life may there be great joy in the sanctuary, may the temple be filled with the shouting and singing of those whose hearts experience great release from the burden and torment of sin and as a man who hath come upon great prey, upon the prizes of heaven. Thus for one day in the weary week may our feet stand in a large place, and our hearts be lifted up in a freeman's song. Amen.
Christ's Denials
It was always difficult for Christ to say No. Surely he was not born to say that cold word to any human heart that asked a question of him. The negative did not come easily to those beneficent lips they were shaped rather to say with all tunefulness and sympathy of love, "Yes," to every human desire, to every yearning, loving spirit. Yet in this case Jesus Christ says' "No," and no man can say No with so severe a firmness. In his lips, under such circumstances as are detailed in the text, his No was final. He had an intermediate no, which he never meant to stand as such the No which he said to the Syro-Phoenician woman it was an experimental No, there was no hollowness of. final, negative purpose in it, it was one of the trials or temptations addressed to the human heart by him who intends to fill that heart with larger blessing in consequence of its temporary denial. When did Jesus Christ say "No" to the sick, to the weary, to the broken-hearted, the bruised, the helpless, the wounded spirit? When did he say it to any little child that asked the favour of his smile? Yet in this case, standing up in front of an evil and adulterous generation, he said "No." 'Twas unlike him and yet very like him: he would rather have said "Yes" to human prayer, but it is sometimes quite as merciful to say "No" as to say "Yes."
What was it the Scribes and Pharisees wanted from Jesus Christ? They sought a merely intellectual gratification, they wanted a sign, something to estimate, something to speculate upon, another link in a chain of argumentative evidence. Jesus Christ never came to satisfy the mere intellect of man. Therein have all the doctors and sages and leaders of the Church made many a mischievous mistake. They have written evidences, and built up proofs, and conducted a high intellectual argument. The gospel has nothing to say to the intellect merely as such; to the intellect, stiff and blind in its godless conceit, the gospel has nothing to utter but a plain disappointing "No." The wisdom of this world is not the wisdom of God. What are called proofs, in the lower schools of men, are not to be taken as proofs in the higher reasoning and in the diviner culture. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. To this man will I look, to him that is of a broken and contrite heart, who trembleth at my word. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. In the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, in which the mission of Christ is stated in many particulars, I find no reference to the intellect. "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath sent me" what to do? to give signs and wonders, to satisfy mere intelligence and carnal curiosity and intellectual ambition? No such line can be found in this loving and beneficent specification of duty and vocation. The meek, the captive, the bound, the tired, the helpless, the mourning, the tearful, the sad all these are gathered within the enclosure of Christ's purpose, but the merely intellectual and literalistic and argumentative, where are they? Outside, of no consequence in this great strife they will be brought in by other processes, yea, they shall be found on bent knee, worshipping him who is the King. Meanwhile Jesus Christ keeps his great answers and his great promises and benedictions for the meek, the broken-hearted, the sincere, the child-like, the docile, and those who have no self-confidence.
What does Jesus Christ teach in this broad answer? Jesus Christ teaches that there is already enough in human history to satisfy every healthy and earnest mind if right use be made of it. The great questions of the heart were answered at the beginning; the gospel is in Genesis; God planted every tree from the very first, and the after ages have but developed the roots set in the human heart by the divine hand, or planted in heaven by him who plants only the trees of righteousness. All great answers have been given. Jonah and the queen of the south have their counterparts in all histories and in all cultivated and developed human lives. If you have not lived the story of Jonah the dictionary can never explain it to you. The whale and its mouth, and a thousand mysteries that gather around it you will never be able to understand it; but if you have been Jonah, and have been in the whale and in the deep, and have been cast out, and have passed through all the tragedy, you will know the meaning of the spirit, without being able to give any satisfaction to those who live in the universe of a zoological garden, and who never penetrate the inward poetry and apocalyptic meaning of the things that are happening around them every day. The earth is full of signs, the heavens shine with tokens, all life is a witness and confirmation. We need no more proof; what we do need is to make better use of the proof we already have.
Let me, therefore, speak with all moral incisiveness and positiveness of meaning, to those who are yet among the Scribes and the Pharisees, saying, with vulgar or ill-concealed conceit of intellect, "Master, we would see a sign from heaven." There shall no more signs be given; what we now have to do is not to add to the evidences but to utilize them. You do not want a new Bible, you want to read the Bible you already have in your hands. There is not a man in a thousand who knows anything about the Bible vitally and really, in all its grasp and meaning. There is no book of such momentous purpose and significance so little read and so little understood. We are outside, and we see only the edges and surfaces of things written in the inner book. We do not want more evidences, evidences have often misled the thinker or have only been food to the pride of his intellect, or have only established him in the confidence of his own conceit, for wherein he has mastered them, he has said, if not in words yet in effect, "See how able I am, and how clever and how masterly is my grasp of things." That man has not come into the kingdom of heaven at all. I will not say he has not come in by the right gate, he has come in by no gate, he is as one who walks round about it and takes observations and makes measurements, but has never been caught in the whirlwind of its music, in the fire and sacrifice of its ineffable passion. You do not want more evidence, you need the understanding heart, the clean heart, the right spirit, the child-like disposition, all prayers in one, "Lord, teach me what thou wouldst have me do."
What think ye? Here is a man who is filling his grate with all kinds of fuel, and a beautiful grate it is, not wanting in capacity. And still he re-arranges the material, again he redistributes the fuel, he takes it all out and puts other fuel in, and calls the attention of men to the size of his grate and to the purpose of his life, and he challenges men to find any better fuel than he has yet secured. What should he be doing? Not playing himself at grate-filling, but setting fire to the material already in his possession, and thus kindling a friendly influence in the house, the fire, that household apocalypse, that household revelation, that chamber of the picture-gallery, the fire wherein battles are fought and victories won, and temples built and sacrifices offered, and great motions continually are proceeding which are to be caught by the imagination and transformed into all kinds of utility in the life. O, fool, light the fuel you have; other fuel will be wanted and will be ready to come, not for ornament but for use.
Jesus Christ gave a broad answer, we have just said, to this inquiry for a sign. "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest and finding none: then he saith, I will return." That unclean spirit is curiosity, idle, vain, self-seeking curiosity, and when once it has been satisfied by the great replies of history, and still wants a further satisfaction, and goes out to find it, it will return and become sevenfold greater than it once was. Beware how you keep your curiosity chained. Strengthen the chain every day. Once get into the spirit of sign-seeking and question-asking, and vital piety becomes an impossibility in your case. Never let question-asking get the upper hand of you. In this solemn department of life keep curiosity in its right place, which is outside, mile on mile away from the letter. Consider how easy it is to ask for signs, how poor and feeble an intellectual condition it is merely to be able to ask questions, to propound difficulties, to suggest troubles, and to bewilder and puzzle those who are endeavouring to do great good in the world. Do not mistake question-asking or sign-seeking for intellectual greatness.
The doctrine is not only true intellectually, it is true morally. If once you get over a bad habit you must do something more, or that bad habit will come back to you, and finding the house empty, swept, and garnished, will bring with it seven other habits worse than itself, and the last state of your heart shall be sadder than the first. What is that other thing a man has to do after he has got rid of a bad habit? He has to cultivate a good one. It is not enough to cease to curse, you must learn to pray; it is not enough to throw away from you the evil-spirited book and to say, "I will never read another line of you;" you must replace it by a wise and good book, otherwise the old appetency will wake, and will urge you to its cruel satisfaction.
Herein it is very important that all merely negative reformers should be followed up in their noble and beneficent course by those who have something distinctive and positive to offer to such as have been reclaimed from open and scandalous vices. You have been converted from the sin of drunkenness; it is not enough that you be a mere abstainer from intoxicating drinks, you must be surrounded by the noblest influences, you must be intellectually enlightened and trained, you must betake yourself to some grand moral purpose, you must become deeply interested in some philanthropic and beneficent scheme, and thus must complete in positiveness what has been so happily begun in the region that is merely destructive or negative.
The unclean spirit will come back. No man can remain in the same state from time to time getting no better, getting no worse it is not in human nature to be thus stationary. "The last state of that man is worse than the first," said Christ concerning those who had not filled up the house of the heart with good and heavenly spirits. We become worse and worse every day if we are not pursuing the right course; we do not stand still. Nor is the decadence and corruption of our nature a rapid and visible one; the process is silent, subtle, often invisible, and not seldom unfelt in its detailed action. The sapping goes on quietly, the strength is sucked out of a man little by little, so that he shakes himself and says, "I am as strong as ever;" but there comes a time when in shaking himself he reveals himself to himself, and feels that he is no longer the young, blithe, strong, clear-headed man which he was in his earlier life. Sometimes the collapse is sudden; there is nothing in the outward circumstances to betoken what has been proceeding within; but at one critical touch the whole outline gives in and the collapse is complete. I may have illustrated this to you before by the action of the white ant. The white ant will enter into a door and will eat it up; every fibre of the wood will be consumed by the little creature, and the paint will be left untouched. You would say, "The door is there, open it." If you touch it it falls; the whole of the woodwork has been consumed by the little mischief-maker. It is also the same in our life. We appear to be the same; to all outward seeming we are just as we were twenty years ago; but if we have not been growing in the right direction, there will come upon us a touch, and we shall sink and perish, and the tremendous reality will be revealed.
"While he yet talked to the people." We must not forget the circumstances under which the next event occurred. Jesus Christ was in the excitement of speech; when he spoke, everything in him spoke; the whole life was an utterance; in no cold blood did this mighty publisher of eternal truths declare his testimony; his quietness was power suppressed, his whisper was a thunder-burst in the azure, when he spoke he trembled, thrilled, vibrated through and through to some influence within and above. "While he talked to the people, behold his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee." His mind was moving forward with the sweep and wholeness of a great river; a man in the crowd sought to turn the urgent river from its channel; Jesus answered out of the inspiration of his human enthusiasm, "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" You cannot understand these words in cold blood; there are fingers so icy that they ought never to touch this Book; there are eyes so cold they ought never to look into these immortal pages. You cannot understand the prophets and the apostles in cold critical mood; you can vivisect their words, etymologise them, searching into remote meanings and earlier definitions, and when you have done all that as I shall endeavour to do in a few instances this evening in this church there remains a broader interpretation which can only be exercised by those who are aflame with the very fire of God.
We all know what it is to speak out of a holy and sublime excitement. There are sacred hours, when we see the broadest and grandest bearings of the lines of life, and in which we seize the innermost meaning of common or tender terms. Our little self is lifted up into a heroic personality, in which no local relation is destroyed, but rather ennobled and sublimed. You must therefore look at Jesus Christ's words in the light of the fact that they were uttered while he yet talked to the people, his soul aglow, his eye alight, his blood fevered with the fire of God, and his whole individuality lifted up into a broader self-hood than was measurable by the merely human eye even in its keenest observation.
Look at this wonderful speech of Jesus; it recalls his earliest recorded words. Said his mother: "Thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing." Said he: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" Already, at twelve years of age, he was another than the son of Mary and the reputed son of the carpenter. Already he had seized the key-word of the universe and realised that relation which makes all other relations fall into their right perspective and assume their proper proportion and colour. We are too local, we are too small, we build ourselves up into families and we enclose ourselves within square huts, and we have terminal points we begin here and we end there, and so far we know nothing about the spirit of Jesus Christ, the great humanity, the world-feeling we do not realise our ancestry and our posterity and our whole bearing in the universe: we detach ourselves: we belong to this sect, or to yonder clan, or to the other fraternity; we are English, or American, or Italian, or Colonial; we have these little narrowing dwarfing terms always clinging to us and impoverishing our speech. Use them as mere conveniences and they may be of some utility, but there ought to be times in the consciousness of every Christian heart in which every land is home and every man a brother.
This answer explains Christ's true relation to the human family. "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother." It is not a question of local pedigree, it is not a claim that can be set up on partial lines. This whosoever is as broad as any whosoever uttered in all the great and inclusive language of the Bible. "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven." He keeps to the key-word, he involves the centre, he stands on vital terms. Not whosoever shall be born in my day and age, whosoever shall be born in my country, whosoever shall speak my language with my accent; not whosoever shall be great or noble, or rich, or mighty whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven. Then that gives me my chance. I may be a relation of Jesus Christ poor, obscure, unknown, helpless; even I may enter the household of faith and be permitted to touch at least the hem of his garment. I may be one of his family; I may be a kinsman of the Son of God; I need no longer be a stranger and a foreigner, but may enter into the household and commonwealth of heaven.
I have thus to offer you a grand ancestry; to offer all men new vitalities, new surroundings, new kinsfolk. This shows the uniting power of Christianity. The Christian religion never divides men, never splits up a human family and belittles our human relations. The Christian religion would have us all brought into a common sympathy, united by a common spirit of loyalty to the same Saviour, and would give each of us the same badge, the old, grim, black, accursed cross, which may be turned into the very symbol of the heart of God himself, the greatest Sufferer, the one Sufferer, the only Heart that knows the meaning of infinite woe.
Here, then, is our standing; this very day we are members one of another. Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; whether one member rejoices, all the members should rejoice with it, and have common dance and song and high delight in the holy place. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. Be no longer strangers and foreigners, but of the household of God. We are not isolated individuals; we grasp hands with the ages, the glorious company of the apostles, the holy band of the prophets before them, the noble army of martyrs uniting them both, the holy Church throughout all the world this is the household of God. Beauteous picture! Tender relationship! it cannot be realised in all its ideal perfection here and now, but we ought always to cling to the inner and vital truth which it typifies, that the Church is one indivisible as the heart that bought it with blood.
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