anybody of any fault, however great:  but the experience of ages is that 
murderers are past mending; that the fact of a man's murdering another is 
a plain proof that he has no moral sense, and has become simply a brute 
animal Our duty is to punish not to amend, and to say to the murderer, 
"If you can be amended; God will amend you, and so have mercy on your 
soul.  God must amend you, if you are to be amended.  If God cannot amend 
you, we cannot.  If God will not amend you, certainly we cannot force Him 
to do so, if we kept you alive for a thousand years."  That would seem 
reasonable, as well as reverent and faithful to God.  But men now-a-days 
fancy that they love their fellow creatures far better than God loves 
them, and can deal far more wisely and lovingly with them than God is 
willing to deal.  Of these objections I take little heed.  I look on them 
as merely loose cant, which does not quite understand the meaning of its 
own words, and I trust to sound, hard, English common sense to put them 
aside.

But there is another objection to capital punishment, which we must deal 
with much more respectfully and tenderly; for it is made by certain good 
people, people whom we must honour, though we differ from them, for no 
set of people have done more (according to their numbers) for education, 
for active charity, and for benevolence, and for peace and good will 
among the nations of the earth.  And they say, you must not take the life 
of a murderer, just because he is made in God's image.  Well, I should 
have thought that God Himself was the best judge of that.  That, if God 
truly said that man was made in His image, and said, moreover, as it were 
at the same moment, that, therefore, whoso sheds man's blood, by man 
shall his blood be shed--our duty was to trust God, to obey God, and to 
do our duty against the murderer, however painful to our feelings it 
might be.  But I believe these good people make their mistake from 
forgetting this; that if the murderer be made in God's image and 
likeness, so is the man whom he murders; and so also is the jury who 
convict him, the judge who condemns him, and the nation (the society of 
men) for whom they act.

And this, my dear friends, brings us to the very root of the meaning of 
law.  Man has sense to make laws (which animals cannot do), just because 
he is made in the likeness of God, and has the sense of right and wrong.  
Man has the right to enforce laws, to see right done and wrong punished, 
just because he is made in the likeness of God.  The laws of a country, 
as far as they are just and righteous, are the copy of what the men of 
that country have found out about right and wrong, and about how much 
right they can get done, and how much wrong punished.  So, just as the 
men of a country are (in spite of all their sins) made in the likeness of 
God, so the laws of a country (in spite of all their defects) are a copy 
of God's will, as to what men should or should not do.  And that, and no 
other, is the true reason why the judge or magistrate has authority over 
either property, liberty, or life.  He is God's servant, the servant of 
Christ, who is King of this land and of all lands, and of all 
governments, and all kings and rulers of the earth.  He sits there in 
God's name, to see God's will done, as far as poor fallible human beings 
can get it done.  And, because he is, not merely as a man, but, by his 
special authority, in the likeness of God, who has power over life and 
death, therefore he also, as far as his authority goes, has power over 
life and death.  That is my opinion, and that was the opinion of St. 
Paul.  For what does he say--and say not (remember always) of Christian 
magistrates in a Christian country, but actually of heathen Roman 
magistrates?  "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.  For 
there is no power but of God:  the powers that be are ordained of God.  
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God:  
and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."  Thus spoke 
out the tenderest-hearted, most Christ-like human being, perhaps, who 
ever trod this earth, who, in his intense longing to save sinners, 
endured a life of misery and danger, and finished it by martyrdom.  But 
there was no sentimentality, no soft indulgence in him.  He knew right 
from wrong; common sense from cant; duty from public opinion; and divine 
charity from the mere cowardly dislike of witnessing pain, not so much 
because it pains the person punished, as because it pains the spectator.  
He knew that Christ was King of kings, and what Christ's kingdom was 
like.  He had discovered the divine and wonderful order of men and 
angels.  He saw that one part of that order was--"the soul that sinneth, 
it shall die."

But some say that capital punishment is inconsistent with the mild 
religion of Christ--the religion of mercy and love.  "The mild religion 
of Christ!"  Do these men know of Whom they talk?  Do they know that, if 
the Bible be true, the God who said, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man 
shall his blood be shed," is the very same Being, the very same God, who 
was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate--the very 
same Christ who took little children up in His arms and blessed them, the 
very same Word of God, too, of whom it is written, that out of His mouth 
goeth a two-edged sword, that He may smite the nations, and He shall rule 
them with a rod of iron, and He treadeth the wine press of the fierceness 
and wrath of Almighty God?  These are awful words, but, my dear friends, 
I can only ask you if you think them too awful to be true?  Do you 
believe the Christian religion?  Do you believe the Creeds?  Do you 
believe the Bible?  For if you do, then you believe that the Lord Christ, 
who was born of the Virgin Mary, and crucified under Pontius Pilate, is 
the Maker, the Master, the Ruler of this world, and of all worlds.  By 
what laws He rules other worlds we know not, save that they are, because 
they must be--just and merciful laws.  But of the laws by which He rules 
this world we do know, by experience, that His laws are of most terrible 
and unbending severity, as I have warned you again and again, and shall 
warn you, as long as there is a liar or an idler, a drunkard or an 
adulteress in this parish.

And if this be so--if Christ be a God of severity as well as a God of 
love, a God who punishes sinners as well as a God who forgives penitents-
-what then?  We are, He tells us, made in His likeness.  Then, according 
to His likeness we must behave.  We must copy His love, by helping the 
poor and afflicted, the weak and the oppressed.  But we must copy His 
severity, by punishing whenever we have the power, without cowardice or 
indulgence, all wilful offenders; and, above all, the man who destroys 
God's image in himself, by murdering and destroying the mortal life of a 
man made in the image of God.  And more; if we be made in the likeness of 
God and of Christ, we must remember, morning and night, and all day long, 
that most awful and most blessed fact.  We must say to ourselves, again 
and again, "I am not a mere animal, and like a mere animal I must not 
behave; I dare not behave like a mere animal, for I was made in the 
likeness of God; and when I was baptised the Spirit of God took 
possession of me to restore me to God's likeness, and to call out and 
perfect God's likeness in me all my life long.  Therefore, I am no mere 
animal; and never was intended to be.  I am the temple of God; my body 
and soul belong to God, and not to my own fancies and passions and lusts, 
and whosoever defiles the temple of God, him will God destroy."

Therefore, this is our duty, this is our only hope or safety--to do our 
best to keep alive and strong the likeness of God in ourselves; to try to 
grow, not more and more mean, and brutal, and carnal, but more and more 
noble, and human, and spiritual; to crush down our base passions, our 
selfish inclinations, by the help of the Spirit of God, and to think of 
and to pray for, whatsoever is like Christ and like God; to pray for a 
noble love of what is good and noble, for a noble hate of what is bad; 
and whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report to think of 
these things.  And to pray, too, for forgiveness from Christ, and for the 
sake of Christ, whenever we have yielded to our low passions, and defiled 
the likeness of God in us, and grieved His Spirit, lest at the last day 
it be said to us, if not in words yet in acts, which there will be no 
mistaking, no escaping,--"I made thee in My likeness in the beginning of 
the creation, I redeemed thee into My likeness on the cross, I baptised 
thee into My likeness by my Holy Spirit; and what hast thou hast done 
with My likeness?  Thou hast cast it away, thou hast let it die out in 
thee, thou hast lived after the flesh and not after the spirit, and hast 
put on the likeness of the carnal man, the likeness of the brute.  Thou 
hast copied the vanity of the peacock, the silliness of the ape, the 
cunning of the fox, the rapacity of the tiger, the sensuality of the 
swine; but thou hast not copied God, thy God, who died that thou mightest 
live, and be a man.  Then, thou hast destroyed God's likeness, for thou 
hast destroyed it in thyself.  Thou hast slain a man, for thou hast slain 
thy own manhood, and art thine own murderer, and thine own blood shall be 
required at thy hand.  That which thou hast done to God's likeness in 
thee, shall be done to that which remains of thee in a second death."

And from that may Christ in His mercy deliver us all.  Amen.



SERMON VII.  TEMPTATION



Eversley, 1872.  Chester Cathedral, 1872.

St Matt. iv. 3.  "And when the tempter came to Him, he said, If Thou be 
the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."

Let me say a few words to-day about a solemn subject, namely, Temptation.  
I do not mean the temptations of the flesh--the temptations which all men 
have to yield to the low animal nature in them, and behave like brutes.  
I mean those deeper and more terrible temptations, which our Lord 
conquered in that great struggle with evil which is commonly called His 
temptation in the wilderness.  These were temptations of an evil spirit--
the temptations which entice some men, at least, to behave like devils.

Now these temptations specially beset religious men--men who are, or 
fancy themselves, superior to their fellow-men, more favoured by God, and 
with nobler powers, and grander work to do, than the common average of 
mankind.  But specially, I say, they beset those who are, or fancy 
themselves, the children of God.  And, therefore, I humbly suppose our 
Lord had to endure and to conquer these very temptations because He was 
not merely a child of God, but the Son of God--the perfect Man, made in 
the perfect likeness of His Father.  He had to endure these temptations, 
and to conquer them, that He might be able to succour us when we are 
tempted, seeing that He was tempted in like manner as we are, yet without 
sin.

Now it has been said, and, I think, well said, that what proves our 
Lord's three temptations to have been very subtle and dangerous and 
terrible, is this--that we cannot see at first sight that they were 
temptations at all.  The first two do not look to us to be wrong.  If our 
Lord could make stones into bread to satisfy His hunger, why should He 
not do so?  If He could prove to the Jews that He was the Son of God, 
their divine King and Saviour, by casting Himself down from the pinnacle 
of the temple, and being miraculously supported in the air by angels--if 
He could do that, why should He not do it?  And lastly, the third 
temptation looks at first sight so preposterous that it seems silly of 
the evil spirit to have hinted at it.  To ask any man of piety, much less 
the Son of God Himself, to fall down and worship the devil, seems 
perfectly absurd--a request not to be listened to for a moment, but put 
aside with contempt.

Well, my friends, and the very danger of these spiritual temptations is--
that they do not look like temptations.  They do not look ugly, absurd, 
wrong, they look pleasant, reasonable, right.

The devil, says the apostle, transforms himself at times into an angel of 
light.  If so, then he is certainly far more dangerous than if he came as 
an angel of darkness and horror.  If you met some venomous snake, with 
loathsome spots upon his scales, his eyes full of rage and cunning, his 
head raised to strike at you, hissing and showing his fangs, there would 
be no temptation to have to do with him.  You would know that you had to 
deal with an evil beast, and must either kill him or escape from him at 
once.  But if, again, you met, as you may meet in the tropics, a lovely 
little coral snake, braided with red and white, its mouth so small that 
it seems impossible that it can bite, and so gentle that children may 
take it up and play with it, then you might be tempted, as many a poor 
child has been ere now, to admire it, fondle it, wreathe it round the 
neck for a necklace, or round the arm for a bracelet, till the play goes 
one step too far, the snake loses its temper, gives one tiny scratch upon 
the lip or finger, and that scratch is certain death.  That would be a 
temptation indeed; one all the more dangerous because there is, I am 
told, another sort of coral snake perfectly harmless, which is so exactly 
like the deadly one, that no child, and few grown people, can know them 
apart.

Even so it is with our worst temptations.  They look sometimes so exactly 
like what is good and noble and useful and religious, that we mistake the 
evil for the good, and play with it till it stings us, and we find out 
too late that the wages of sin are death.  Thus religious people, just 
because they are religious, are apt to be specially tempted to mistake 
evil for good, to do something specially wrong, when they think they are 
doing something specially right, and so give occasion to the enemies of 
the Lord to blaspheme; till, as a hard and experienced man of the world 
once said:  "Whenever I hear a man talking of his conscience, I know that 
he is going to do something particularly foolish; whenever I hear of a 
man talking of his duty, I know that he is going to do something 
particularly cruel."

Do I say this to frighten you away from being religious?  God forbid.  
Better to be religious and to fear and love God, though you were tempted 
by all the devils out of the pit, than to be irreligious and a mere 
animal, and be tempted only by your own carnal nature, as the animals 
are.  Better to be tempted, like the hermits of old, and even to fall and 
rise again, singing, "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, when I fall I 
shall arise;" than to live the life of the flesh, "like a beast with 
lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains."  It is the price a man 
must pay for hungering and thirsting after righteousness, for longing to 
be a child of God in spirit and in truth.  "The devil," says a wise man 
of old, "does not tempt bad men, because he has got them already; he 
tempts good men, because he has NOT got them, and wants to get them."

But how shall we know these temptations?  God knows, my friends, better 
than I; and I trust that He will teach you to know, according to what 
each of you needs to know.  But as far as my small experience goes, the 
root of them all is pride and self-conceit.  Whatsoever thoughts or 
feelings tempt us to pride and self-conceit are of the devil, not of God.  
The devil is specially the spirit of pride; and, therefore, whatever 
tempts you to fancy yourself something different from your fellow-men, 
superior to your fellow men, safer than them, more favoured by God than 
them, that is a temptation of the spirit of pride.  Whatever tempts you 
to think that you can do without God's help and God's providence; 
whatever tempts you to do anything extraordinary, and show yourself off, 
that you may make a figure in the world; and above all, whatever tempts 
you to antinomianism, that is, to fancy that God will overlook sins in 
you which He will not overlook in other men--all these are temptations 
from the spirit of pride.  They are temptations like our Lord's 
temptations.  These temptations came on our Lord more terribly than they 
ever can on you and me, just because He was the Son of Man, the perfect 
Man, and, therefore, had more real reason for being proud (if such a 
thing could be) than any man, or than all men put together.  But He 
conquered the temptations because He was perfect Man, led by the Spirit 
of God; and, therefore, He knew that the only way to be a perfect man was 
not to be proud, however powerful, wise, and glorious He might be; but to 
submit Himself humbly and utterly, as every man should do, to the will of 
His Father in Heaven, from whom alone His greatness came.

Now the spirit of pride cannot understand the beauty of humility, and the 
spirit of self-will cannot understand the beauty of obedience; and, 
therefore, it is reasonable to suppose the devil could not understand our 
Lord.  If He be the Son of God, so might Satan argue, He has all the more 
reason to be proud; and, therefore, it is all the more easy to tempt Him 
into shewing His pride, into proving Himself a conceited, self-willed, 
rebellious being--in one word, an evil spirit.

And therefore (as you will see at first sight) the first two temptations 
were clearly meant to tempt our Lord to pride; for would they not tempt 
you and me to pride?  If we could feed ourselves by making bread of 
stones, would not that make us proud enough?  So proud, I fear, that we 
should soon fancy that we could do without God and His providence, and 
were masters of nature and all her secrets.  If you and I could make the 
whole city worship and obey us, by casting ourselves off this cathedral 
unhurt, would not that make us proud enough?  So proud, I fear, that we 
should end in committing some great folly, or great crime in our conceit 
and vainglory.

Now, whether our Lord could or could not have done these wonderful deeds, 
one thing is plain--that He would not do them; and, therefore, we may 
presume that He ought not to have done them.  It seems as if He did not 
wish to be a wonderful man:  but only a perfectly good man, and He would 
do nothing to help Himself but what any other man could do.  He answered 
the evil spirit simply out of Scripture, as any other pious man might 
have done.  When He was bidden to make the stones into bread, He answers 
not as the Eternal Son of God, but simply as a man.  "It is written:"--it 
is the belief of Moses and the old prophets of my people that man doth 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God:--as much as to say, If I am to be delivered out of this 
need, God will deliver me by some means or other, just as He delivers 
other men out of their needs.  When He was bidden cast Himself from the 
temple, and so save Himself, probably from sorrow, poverty, persecution, 
and the death on the cross, He answers out of Scripture as any other Jew 
would have done.  "It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God."  He says nothing--this is most important--of His being the eternal 
Son of God.  He keeps that in the background.  There the fact was; but He 
veiled the glory of His godhead, that He might assert the rights of His 
manhood, and shew that mere man, by the help of the Spirit of God, could 
obey God, and keep His commandments.

I say these last words with all diffidence and humility, and trusting 
that the Lord will pardon any mistake which I may make about His Divine 
Words.  I only say them because wiser men than I have often taken the 
same view already.  Of course there is more, far more, in this wonderful 
saying than we can understand, or ever will understand.  But this I think 
is plain--that our Lord determined to behave as any and every other man 
ought to have done in His place; in order to shew all God's children the 
example of perfect humility and perfect obedience to God.

But again, the devil asked our Lord to fall down and worship him.  Now 
how could that be a temptation to pride?  Surely that was asking our Lord 
to do anything but a proud action, rather the most humiliating and most 
base of all actions.  My friends, it seems to me that if our Lord had 
fallen down and worshipped the evil spirit, He would have given way to 
the spirit of pride utterly and boundlessly; and I will tell you why.

The devil wanted our Lord to do evil that good might come.  It would have 
been a blessing, that all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of man 
should be our Lord's,--the very blessing for this poor earth which He 
came to buy, and which He bought with His own precious blood.  And here 
the devil offered Him the very prize for which He came down on earth, 
without struggle or difficulty, if He would but do, for one moment, one 
wrong thing.  What temptation that would be to our Lord as God, I dare 
not say.  But that to our Lord as Man, it must have been the most 
terrible of all temptations, I can well believe:  because history shews 
us, and, alas! our own experience in modern times shews us, persons 
yielding to that temptation perpetually; pious people, benevolent people, 
people who long to spread the Bible, to convert sinners, to found 
charities, to amend laws, to set the world right in some way or other, 
and who fancy that therefore, in carrying out their fine projects, they 
have a right to do evil that good may come.

This is a very painful subject; all the more painful just now, because I 
sometimes think it is the special sin of this country and this 
generation, and that God will bring on us some heavy punishment for it.  
But all who know the world in its various phases, and especially what are 
called the religious world, and the philanthropic world, and the 
political world, know too well that men, not otherwise bad men, will do 
things and say things, to carry out some favourite project or movement, 
or to support some party, religious or other, which they would (I hope) 
be ashamed to say and do for their own private gain.  Now what is this, 
but worshipping the evil spirit, in order to get power over this world, 
that they may (as they fancy) amend it?  And what is this but self-
conceit--ruinous, I had almost said, blasphemous?  These people think 
themselves so certainly in the right, and their plans so absolutely 
necessary to the good of the world, that God has given them a special 
licence to do what they like in carrying them out; that He will excuse in 
them falsehoods and meannesses, even tyranny and violences which He will 
excuse in no one else.

Now, is not this self-conceit?  What would you think of a servant who 
disobeyed you, cheated you, and yet said to himself--No matter, my master 
dare not turn me off:  I am so useful that he cannot do without me.  Even 
so in all ages, and now as much as, or more than ever, have men said, We 
are so necessary to God and God's cause, that He cannot do without us; 
and therefore though He hates sin in everyone else, He will excuse sin in 
us, as long as we are about His business.

Therefore, my dear friends, whenever we are tempted to do or say anything 
rash, or vain, or mean, because we are the children of God; whenever we 
are inclined to be puffed up with spiritual pride, and to fancy that we 
may take liberties which other men must not take, because we are the 
children of God; let us remember the words of the text, and answer the 
tempter, when he says, If thou be the Son of God, do this and that, as 
our Lord answered him--"If I be the Child of God, what then?  This--that 
I must behave as if God were my Father.  I must trust my God utterly, and 
I must obey Him utterly.  I must do no rash or vain thing to tempt God, 
even though it looks as if I should have a great success, and do much 
good thereby.  I must do no mean or base thing, nor give way for a moment 
to the wicked ways of this wicked world, even though again it looks as if 
I should have a great success, and do much good thereby.  In one word, I 
must worship my Father in heaven, and Him only must I serve.  If He wants 
me, He will use me.  If He does not want me, He will use some one else.  
Who am I, that God cannot govern the world without my help?  My business 
is to refrain my soul, and keep it low, even as a weaned child, and not 
to meddle with matters too high for me.  My business is to do the little, 
simple, everyday duties which lie nearest me, and be faithful in a few 
things; and then, if Christ will, He may make me some day ruler over many 
things, and I shall enter into the joy of my Lord, which is the joy of 
doing good to my fellow men.  But I shall never enter into that by 
thrusting myself into Christ's way, with grand schemes and hasty 
projects, as if I knew better than He how to make His kingdom come.  If I 
do, my pride will have a fall.  Because I would not be faithful over a 
few things, I shall be tempted to be unfaithful over many things; and 
instead of entering into the joy of my Lord, I shall be in danger of the 
awful judgment pronounced on those who do evil that good may come, who 
shall say in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? 
and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful 
works?  And then will He protest unto them--I never knew you.  Depart 
from me, ye that work iniquity."

Oh, my friends, in all your projects for good, as in all other matters 
which come before you in your mortal life, keep innocence and take heed 
to the thing that is right.  For that, and that alone, shall bring a man 
peace at the last.

To which, may God in His mercy bring us all.  Amen.



SERMON VIII.  MOTHER'S LOVE



Eversley, Second Sunday in Lent, 1872.

St Matthew xv. 22-28.  "And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the 
same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou 
son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.  But he 
answered her not a word.  And his disciples came and besought him, 
saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.  But he answered and 
said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  Then 
came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.  But he answered and 
said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to 
dogs.  And she said, Truth, Lord:  yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which 
fall from their master's table.  Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O 
woman, great is thy faith:  be it unto thee even as thou wilt.  And her 
daughter was made whole from that very hour."

If you want a proof from Scripture that there are two sides to our 
blessed Lord's character--that He is a Judge and an Avenger as well as a 
Saviour and a Pardoner--that He is infinitely severe as well as 
infinitely merciful--that, while we may come boldly to His throne of 
grace to find help and mercy in time of need, we must, at the same time, 
tremble before His throne of justice--if you want a proof of all this, I 
say, then look at the Epistle and the Gospel for this day.  Put them side 
by side, and compare them, and you will see how perfectly they shew, one 
after the other, the two sides.

The Epistle for the day tells men and women that they must lead moral, 
pure, and modest lives.  It does not advise them to do so.  It does not 
say, It will be better to do so, more proper and conducive to the good of 
society, more likely to bring you to heaven at last.  It says, You must, 
for it is the commandment of the Lord Jesus, and the will of God.  Let no 
man encroach on or defraud his brother in the matter, says St Paul; by 
which he means, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.  And why?  
"Because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have 
forewarned you and testified."

My friends, people talk loosely of the Thunder of Sinai and the rigour of 
Moses' law, and set them against what they call the gentle voice of the 
Gospel, and the mild religion of Christ.  Why, here are the Thunders of 
Sinai uttered as loud as ever, from the very foot of the Cross of Christ; 
and the terrible, "Thou shalt not," of Moses' law, with the curse of God 
for a penalty on the sinner, uttered by the Apostle of Faith, and 
Freedom, in the name of Christ and of God.  St Paul is not afraid to call 
Christ an Avenger.  How could he be?  He believed that it was Christ who 
spoke to Moses on Sinai--the very same Christ who prayed for His 
murderers, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."  And 
he knew that Christ was the eternal Son of God, the same yesterday, to-
day, and for ever; that He had not changed since Moses' time, and could 
never change; that what He forbade in Moses' time, hated in Moses' time, 
and avenged in Moses' time, He would forbid, and hate, and avenge for 
ever.  And that, therefore, he who despises the warnings of the Law 
despises not man merely, but God, who has also given to us His Holy 
Spirit to know what is unchangeable, the everlastingly right, from what 
is everlastingly wrong.  So much for that side of our Lord's character; 
so much for sinners who, after their hardness and impenitent hearts, 
treasure up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation 
of the righteous judgment of God, in the day when God shall judge the 
secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to St Paul's Gospel.

But, when we turn to the Gospel for the day, we see the other side of our 
Lord's character, boundless condescension and boundless charity.  We see 
Him there still a Judge, as He always is and always will be, judging the 
secrets of a poor woman's heart, and that woman a heathen.  He judges her 
openly, in public, before His disciples.  But He is a Judge who judges 
righteous judgment, and not according to appearances; who is no respecter 
of persons; who is perfectly fair, even though the woman be a heathen:  
and, instead of condemning her and driving her away, He acquits her, He 
grants her prayer, He heals her daughter, even though that daughter was 
also a heathen, and one who knew Him not.  I say our Lord judged the 
woman after He had tried her, as gold is tried in the fire.  Why He did 
so, we cannot tell.  Perhaps He wanted, by the trial, to make her a 
better woman, to bring out something noble which lay in her heart unknown 
to her, though not to Him who knew what was in man.  Perhaps He wished to 
shew his disciples, who looked down on her as a heathen dog, that a 
heathen, too, could have faith, humility, nobleness, and grace of heart.  
Be that as it may, when the poor woman came crying to Him, He answered 
her not a word.  His disciples besought Him to send her away--and I am 
inclined to think that they wished Him to grant her what she asked, 
simply to be rid of her.  "Send her away," they said, "for she crieth 
after us."  Our Lord, we learn from St Mark, did not wish to be known in 
that place just then.  The poor woman, with her crying, was drawing 
attention to them, and, perhaps, gathering a crowd.  Somewhat noisy and 
troublesome, perhaps she was, in her motherly eagerness.  But our Lord 
was still seemingly stern.  He would not listen, it seemed, to His 
disciples any more than to the heathen woman.  "I am not sent but unto 
the lost sheep of the house of Israel."  So our Lord said, and (what is 
worth remembering) if He said so, what He said was true.  He was the King 
of the people of Israel, the Royal Prince of David's line; and, as a man, 
His duty was only to His own people.  And this woman was a Greek, a Syro-
phenician by nation--of a mixed race of people, notoriously low and 
profligate, and old enemies of the Jews.

Then, it seems, He went into a house, and would have no man know it.  
But, says St Mark, "He could not be hid."  The mother's wit found our 
Lord out, and the mother's heart urged her on, and, in spite of all His 
rebuffs, she seems to have got into the house and worshipped Him.  She 
"fell at His feet," says St Mark--doubtless bowing her forehead to the 
ground, in the fashion of those lands--an honour which was paid, I 
believe, only to persons who were royal or divine.  So she confessed that 
He was a king--perhaps a God come down on earth--and again she cried to 
Him.  "Lord, help me."  And what was our Lord's answer--seemingly more 
stern than ever?  "Let the children first be filled:  for it is not meet 
to take the children's bread and cast it unto the dogs."  Hard words.  
Yes:  but all depends on how they were spoken.  All depends on our Lord's 
look as He spoke them, and, even more, on the tone of His voice.  We all 
know that two men may use the very same words to us;--and the one shall 
speak sneeringly, brutally, and raise in us indignation or despair; 
another shall use the same words, but solemnly, tenderly, and raise in us 
confidence and hope.  And so it may have been--so, I fancy, it must have 
been--with the tone of our Lord's voice, with the expression of His face.  
Did He speak with a frown, or with something like a smile?  There must 
have been some tenderness, meaningness, pity in His voice which the quick 
woman's wit caught instantly, and the quick mother's heart interpreted as 
a sign of hope.

Let Him call her a dog if He would.  What matter to a mother to be called 
a dog, if she could thereby save her child from a devil?  Perhaps she was 
little better than a dog.  They were a bad people these Syrians, quick-
witted, highly civilised, but vicious, and teaching vice to other 
nations, till some of the wisest Romans cursed the day when the Syrians 
first spread into Rome, and debauched the sturdy Romans with their new-
fangled, foreign sins.  They were a bad people, and, perhaps, she had 
been as bad as the rest.  But if she were a dog, at least she felt that 
the dog had found its Master, and must fawn on Him, if it were but for 
the hope of getting something from Him.

And so, in the poor heathen mother's heart, there rose up a whole heaven 
of perfect humility, faith, adoration.  If she were base and mean, yet 
our Lord was great, and wise, and good; and that was all the more reason 
why He should be magnanimous, generous, condescending, like a true King, 
to the basest and meanest of His subjects.  She asked not for money, or 
honour, or this world's fine things:  but simply for her child's health, 
her child's deliverance from some mysterious and degrading illness.  
Surely there was no harm in asking for that.  It was simply a mother's 
prayer, a simply human prayer, which our Lord must grant, if He were 
indeed a man of woman born, if He had a mother, and could feel for a 
mother, if He had human tenderness, human pity in Him.  And so, with her 
quick Syrian wit, she answers our Lord with those wonderful words--
perhaps the most pathetic words in the whole Bible--so full of humility, 
of reverence, and yet with a certain archness, almost playfulness, in 
them, as it were, turning our Lord's words against Him; and, by that very 
thing, shewing how utterly she trusted Him,--"Truth, Lord:  yet the dogs 
eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."

Those were the beautiful words--more beautiful to me than whole volumes 
of poetry--which our Lord had as it were crushed out of the woman's 
heart.  Doubtless, He knew all the while that they were in her heart, 
though not as yet shaped into words.  Doubtless, He was trying her, to 
shew His disciples--and all Christians who should ever read the Bible--
what was in her heart, what she was capable of saying when it came to the 
point.  So He tried her, and judged her, and acquitted her.  Out of the 
abundance of her heart her mouth had spoken.  By her words she was 
justified.  By those few words she proved her utter faith in our Lord's 
power and goodness--perhaps her faith in His godhead.  By those words she 
proved the gentleness and humility, the graciousness and gracefulness of 
her own character.  By those words she proved, too,--and oh, you that are 
mothers, is that nothing?--the perfect disinterestedness of her mother's 
love.  And so she conquered--as the blessed Lord loves to be conquered--
as all noble souls who are like their blessed Lord, love to be conquered-
-by the prayer of faith, of humility, of confidence, of earnestness, and 
she had her reward.  "O woman," said He, the Maker of all heaven and 
earth, "great is thy faith.  For this saying go thy way.  Be it unto thee 
even as thou wilt.  The devil is gone out of thy daughter."  She went, 
full of faith; and when she was come to her house, she found the devil 
gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.

One word more, and I have done.  I do not think that any one who really 
took in the full meaning of this beautiful story, would ever care to pray 
to Saints, or to the Blessed Virgin, for help; fancying that they, and 
specially the Blessed Virgin, being a woman, are more humane than our 
Lord, and can feel more quickly, if not more keenly, for poor creatures 
in distress.  We are not here to judge these people, or any people.  To 
their own master they stand or fall.  But for the honour of our Lord, we 
may say, Does not this story shew that the Lord is humane enough, tender 
enough, to satisfy all mankind?  Does not this story shew that even if He 
seem silent at first, and does not grant our prayers, yet still He may be 
keeping us waiting, as He kept this heathen woman, only that He may be 
gracious to us at last?  Does not this story shew us especially that our 
Lord can feel for mothers and with mothers; that He actually allowed 
Himself to be won over--if I may use such a word in all reverence--by the 
wit and grace of a mother pleading for her child?  Was it not so?  "O 
woman, great is thy faith.  For this saying go thy way.  Be it unto thee 
even as thou wilt."  Ah! are not those gracious words a comfort to every 
mother, bidding her, in the Lord's own name, to come boldly where 
mothers--of all human beings--have oftenest need to come, to the throne 
of Christ's grace, to find mercy, and grace to help in time of need?

Yes, my friends, such is our Lord, and such is our God.  Infinite in 
severity to the scornful, the proud, the disobedient:  infinite in 
tenderness to the earnest, the humble, the obedient.  Let us come to Him, 
earnest, humble, obedient, and we shall find Him, indeed, a refuge of the 
soul and body in spirit and in truth.


Thou, O Lord, art all I want.
All and more in thee I find.  Amen.



SERMON IX.  GOOD FRIDAY



Eversley, 1856.

St. Luke xxiv. 5, 6.  "Why seek ye the living among the dead?  He is not 
here, but is risen."

This is a very solemn day; for on this day the Lord Jesus Christ was 
crucified.  The question for us is, how ought we to keep it? that is, 
what sort of thoughts ought to be in our minds upon this day?  Now, many 
most excellent and pious persons, and most pious books, seem to think 
that we ought to-day to think as much as possible of the sufferings of 
our Blessed Lord; and because we cannot, of course, understand or imagine 
the sufferings of His Spirit, to think of what we can, that is, His 
bodily sufferings.  They, therefore, seem to wish to fill our minds with 
the most painful pictures of agony, and shame, and death, and sorrow; and 
not only with our Lord's sorrows, but with those of His Blessed Mother, 
and of the disciples, and the holy women who stood by His cross; they 
wish to stir us up to pity and horror, and to bring before us the saddest 
parts of Holy Scripture, such as the Lamentations of Jeremiah; as well as 
dwell at great length upon very painful details, which may be all quite 
true, but of which Scripture says nothing; as so to make this day a day 
of darkness, and sorrow, and horror, just such as it would have been to 
us if we had stood by Christ's cross, like these holy women, without 
expecting Him to rise again, and believing that all was over--that all 
hope of Israel's being redeemed was gone, and that the wicked Jews had 
really conquered that perfectly good, and admirable Saviour, and put Him 
out of the world for ever.

Now, I judge no man; to his own master he standeth or falleth; yea, and 
he shall stand, for God is able to make him stand.  But it does seem to 
me that these good people are seeking the living among the dead, and 
forgetting that Christ is neither on the cross nor in the tomb, but that 
He is risen; and it seems to me better to bid you follow to-day the Bible 
and the Church Service, and to think of what they tell you to think of.

Now the Bible, it is most remarkable, never enlarges anywhere upon even 
the bodily sufferings of our dear and blessed Lord.  The evangelists keep 
a silence on that point which is most lofty, dignified, and delicate.  
What sad and dreadful things might not St. John, the beloved apostle as 
he was, have said, if he had chosen, about what he saw and what he felt, 
as he stood by that cross on Calvary--words which would have stirred to 
pity the most cruel, and drawn tears from a heart of stone?  And yet all 
he says is, "They crucified Him, and two other with him, on either side 
one, and Jesus in the midst."  He passes it over, as it were, as a thing 
which he ought not to dwell on; and why should we put words into St. 
John's mouth which he did not think fit to put into his own?  He wrote by 
the Spirit of God; and therefore he knew best what to say, and what not 
to say.  Why should we try and say anything more for him?  Scripture is 
perfect.  Let us be content with it.  The apostles, too, in their 
Epistles, never dwell on Christ's sufferings.  I entreat you to remark 
this.  They never mention His death except in words of cheerfulness and 
triumph.  They seem so full of the glorious fruits of His death, that 
they have, as it were, no time to speak of the death itself.  "Who, for 
the joy which was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, 
and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."  That is the 
apostles' key-note.  For God's sake let it be ours too, unless we fancy 
that we can improve on Scripture, or that we can feel more for our Lord 
than St. Paul did.  In the Lessons, the Psalms, the Epistle, and Gospel 
for this day, you find just the same spirit.  All except one Psalm are 
songs of hope, joy, deliverance, triumph.  The Collects for this day, 
which are particularly remarkable, being three in number, and evidently 
meant to teach us the key-note of Good Friday, make no mention of our 
Lord's sufferings, save to say that He was CONTENTED, "contented to be 
betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death 
upon the cross," but are full of prayers that the glorious fruits of His 
death may be fulfilled, not only in us and all Christians, but in the 
very heathen who have not known Him; drawing us away, as it were, from 
looking too closely upon the cross itself, lest we should forget what the 
cross meant, what the cross conquered, what the cross gained, for us and 
mankind.

Surely, this was not done without a reason.  And I cannot but think the 
reason was to keep us from seeking the living among the dead; to keep us 
from knowing Christ any longer after the flesh, and spending tears and 
emotions over His bodily sufferings; to keep us from thinking and 
sorrowing too much over the dead Christ, lest we should forget, as some 
do, that He is alive for evermore; and while they weep over the dead 
Christ or the crucifix, go to the blessed Virgin and the saints to do for 
them all that the living Christ is longing to do for them, if they would 
but go straight to Him to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; 
whom St John saw, no longer hanging on the accursed tree, but with His 
hair as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire, and His voice 
like the sound of many waters, and His countenance as the sun when he 
shineth in his strength, saying unto him, "Fear not, I am the first and 
the last; I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for 
evermore."  This is what Christ is now.  In this shape He is looking at 
us now.  In this shape He is hearing me speak.  In this shape He is 
watching every feeling of your hearts, discerning your most secret 
intents, seeing through and through the thoughts which you would confess 
to no human being, hardly even to yourselves.  This is He, a living 
Christ, an almighty Christ, an all-seeing Christ, and yet a most patient 
and loving Christ.  He needs not our pity; but our gratitude, our 
obedience, our worship.  Why seek Him among the dead?  He is not there, 
He is risen!  He is not there, He is here!  Bow yourselves before Him 
now; for He is in the midst of you; and those eyes of His, more piercing 
than the mid-day sunbeams, are upon you, and your hearts, and your 
thoughts, and upon mine also.  God have mercy upon me a sinner.

Yes, my friends, why seek the living among the dead?  He is not there, 
but here.  We may try to put ourselves in the place of the disciples and 
the Virgin Mary, as they stood by Jesus' cross; but we cannot do it, for 
they saw Him on the cross, and thought that He was lost to them for ever; 
they saw Him die, and gave up all hope of His rising again.  And we know 
that Christ is not lost to us for ever.  We know Christ is not on the 
cross, but at the right hand of God in bliss and glory unspeakable.  We 
may be told to watch with the three Maries at the tomb of Christ:  but we 
cannot do as they did, for they thought that all was over, and brought 
sweet spices to embalm His body, which they thought was in the tomb; and 
we know that all was not over, that His body is not in the tomb, that the 
grave could not hold Him, that His body is ascended into heaven; that 
instead of His body needing spices to embalm it, it is His body which 
embalms all heaven and earth, and is the very life of the world, and food 
which preserves our souls and bodies to everlasting life.  We are not in 
the place of those blessed women; God has not put us in their place, and 
we cannot put ourselves into their place; and if we could and did, by any 
imaginations of our own, we should only tell ourselves a lie.  Good 
Friday was to them indeed a day of darkness, horror, disappointment, all 
but despair; because Easter Day had not yet come, and Christ had not yet 
risen.  But Good Friday cannot be a day of darkness to us, because Christ 
has risen, and we know it, and cannot forget it; we cannot forget that 
Easter dawn, when the Sun of Righteousness arose, never to set again.  
Has not the light of that Resurrection morning filled with glory the 
cross and the grave, yea the very agony in the Garden, and hell itself, 
which Christ harrowed for us?  Has it not risen a light to lighten the 
Gentiles, a joy to angels and archangels, and saints, and all the elect 
of God; ay, to the whole universe of God, so that the very stars in their