Chapter I: KNOW no better way of preaching to you the gospel of Easter, the good (2)

But above all, if anything will teach us that the strength of God’s Spirit is not a strength which we must ask for for ourselves alone; that the blessings of God’s kingdom are blessings which we cannot have in order to keep them to ourselves, but can only enjoy in as far as we share them with those around us; if anything, I say, ought to teach us that lesson, it is the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Just consider a moment, my friends, what a strange thing it is, if we will think of it, that the Lord’s Supper, the most solemn and sacred thing with which a man can have to do upon earth, is just a thing which he cannot transact for himself, or by himself. Not alone in secret, in his chamber, but, whether he will or not, in the company of others, not merely in the company of his own private friends, but in the company of any or everyone, rich or poor, who chooses to kneel beside him; he goes with others, rich and poor alike, to the Lord’s Table, and there the same bread, and the same wine, is shared among all by the same priest. If that means anything, it means this—that rich and poor alike draw life for their souls from the same well, not for themselves only, not apart from each other, but all in common, all together, because they are brothers, members of one family, as the leaves are members of the same tree; that as the same bread and the same wine are needed to nourish the bodies of all, the same spirit of God is needed to nourish the souls of all; and that we cannot have this spirit, except as members of a body, any more than a man’s limb can have life when it is cut off and parted from him. This is the reason, and the only reason, why Protestant clergymen are forbidden, thank God! to give the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, to any one person singly. If a clergyman were to administer the Lord’s Supper, to himself in private, without any congregation to partake with him, it would not be the Lord’s Supper, it would be nothing, and worse than nothing; it would be a sham and a mockery, and, I believe, a sin. I do not believe that Christ would be present, that God’s Spirit would rest on that man. For our Lord says, that it is where two or three are gathered together in His name, that He is in the midst of them. And it was at a supper, at a feast, where all the Apostles were met together, that our Lord divided the bread amongst them, and told them to share the cup amongst themselves, just as a sign that they were all members of one body—that the welfare of each of them was bound up in the welfare of all the rest that God’s blessing did not rest upon each singly, but upon all together. And it is just because we have forgotten this, my friends—because we have forgotten that we are all brothers and sisters, children of one family, members of one body—because in short, we have carried our selfishness into our very religion, and up to the altar of God, that we neglect the Lord’s Supper as we do. People neglect the Lord’s Supper because they either do not know or do not like that, of which the Lord’s Supper is the token and warrant. It is not merely that they feel themselves unfit for the Lord’s Supper, because they are not in love and charity with all men. Oh! my dear friends, do not some of your hearts tell you, that the reason why you stay away from the Lord’s Supper is because you do not _wish_ to be fit for the Lord’s Supper—because you do not like to be in love and charity with all men—because you do not wish to be reminded that you are equals in God’s sight, all equally sinful, all equally pardoned—and to see people whom you dislike or despise, kneeling by your side, and partaking of the same bread and wine with you, as a token that God sees no difference between you and them; that God looks upon you all as brothers, however little brotherly love or fellow-feeling there may be, alas! between you? Or, again, do not some of you stay away from the Lord’s Supper, because you see no good in going? because it seems to make those who go no better than they were before? Shall I tell you the reason of that? Shall I tell you why, as is too true, too many do come to the Lord’s Supper, and so far from being the better for it, seem only the worse? Because they come to it in selfishness. We have fallen into the same false and unscriptural way of looking at the Lord’s Supper, into which the Papists have. People go to the Lord’s Supper nowadays too much to get some private good for their own souls, and it would not matter to many of them, I am afraid, if not another person in the parish received it, provided they can get, as they fancy, the same blessing from it. Thus they come to it in an utterly false and wrong temper of mind. Instead of coming as members of Christ’s body, to get from Him life and strength, to work, in their places, as members of that body, they come to get something for themselves, as if there was nobody else’s soul in the world to be saved but their own. Instead of coming to ask for the Spirit of God to deliver them from their selfishness, and make them care less about themselves, and more about all around them, they come to ask for the Spirit of God because they think it will make themselves higher and happier in heaven. And of course they do not get what they come for, because they come for the wrong thing. Thus those who see them, begin to fancy that the Lord’s Supper is not, after all, so very important for the salvation of their souls; and not finding in the Bible actually written these words, “Thou shalt perish everlastingly unless thou take the Lord’s Supper,” they end by staying away from it, and utterly neglecting it, they and their children after them; preferring their own selfishness, to God’s Spirit of love, and saying, like Esau of old, “I am hungry, and I must live. I must get on in this selfish world by following its selfish ways; what is the use of a spirit of love and brotherhood to me? If I were to obey the Gospel, and sacrifice my own interest for those around me, I should starve; what good will my birthright do me?”

Oh! my friends, I pray God that some of you, at least, may change your mind. I pray God that some of you may see at last, that all the misery and the burdens of this time, spring from one root, which is selfishness; and that the reason why we are selfish, is because we have not with us the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of brotherhood and love. Let us pray God now, and henceforth, to take that selfishness out of all our hearts. Let us pray God now, and henceforth, to pour upon us, and upon all our countrymen, ay, and upon the whole world, the spirit of friendship and fellow-feeling, the spirit which when men have among them, they need no laws to keep them from supplanting, and oppressing, and devouring each other, because its fruits are love, cheerfulness, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, honesty, meekness, temperance Then there will be no need, my friends, for me to call you to the Supper of the Lord. You will no more think of staying away from it, than the Apostles did, when the Spirit was poured out on them. For what do we read that they did after the first Whit-Sunday? That altogether with one accord, they broke bread daily; that is, partook of the Lord’s Supper every day, from house to house. They did not need to be told to do it. They did it, as I may say, by instinct. There was no question or argument about it in their minds. They had found out that they were all brothers, with one common cause in joy and sorrow—that they were all members of one body—that the life of their souls came from one root and spring, from one Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the light and the life of men, in whom they were all one, members of each other; and therefore, they delighted in that Lord’s Supper, just because it brought them together; just because it was a sign and a token to them that they did belong to each other, that they had one Lord, one faith, one interest, one common cause for this life, and for all eternity. And therefore the blessing of that Lord’s Supper did come to them, and in it they did receive strength to live like children of God and members of Christ, and brothers to each other and to all mankind. They proved by their actions what that Communion Feast, that Sacrament of Brotherhood, had done for them. They proved it by not counting their own lives dear to them, but going forth in the face of poverty and persecution, and death itself, to preach to the whole world the good news that Christ was their King. They proved it by their conduct to each other when they had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, as every man had need. They proved it by needing no laws to bind them to each other from without, because they were bound to each other from within, by the love which comes down from God, and is the very bond of peace, and of every virtue which becomes a man.

XI. ASCENSION-DAY.

And Jesus led them out as far as to Bethany; and he lifted up his
hands and blessed them. And it came to pass while he blessed them,
he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they
worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem, with great joy; and were
continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.—LUKE xxiv.
50–53.

ON this day it is fit and proper for us—if we have understood, and enjoyed, and profited by the wonder of the Lord’s Ascension into Heaven—to be in the same state of mind as the Apostles were after His Ascension: for what was right for them is right for us and for all men; the same effects which it produced on them it ought to produce on us. And we may know whether we are in the state in which Christian men ought to be, by seeing how far we are in the same state of mind as the Apostles were. Now the text tells us in what state of mind they were; how that, after the Lord Jesus was parted from them, and carried up into Heaven, they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem, with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. It seems at first sight certainly very strange that they should go back with great joy. They had just lost their Teacher, their Master—One who had been more to them than all friends and fathers could be; One who had taken them, poor simple fishermen, and changed the whole course of their lives, and taught them things which He had taught to no one else, and given them a great and awful work to do—the work of changing the ways and thoughts and doings of the whole world. He had sent them out—eleven unlettered working men—to fight against the sin and the misery of the whole world. And He had given them open warning of what they were to expect; that by it they should win neither credit, nor riches, nor ease, nor anything else that the world thinks worth having. He gave them fair warning that the world would hate them, and try to crush them. He told them, as the Gospel for to-day says, that they should be driven out of the churches; that the religious people, as well as the irreligious, would be against them; that the time would come when those who killed them would think that they did God service; that nothing but labour, and want, and persecution, and slander, and torture, and death was before them—and now He had gone away and left them. He had vanished up into the empty air. They were to see His face, and hear His voice no more. They were to have no more of His advice, no more of His teaching, no more of His tender comfortings; they were to be alone in the world—eleven poor working men, with the whole world against them, and so great a business to do that they would not have time to get their bread by the labour of their hands. Is it not wonderful that they did not sit down in despair, and say, “What will become of us?” Is it not wonderful that they did not give themselves up to grief at losing the Teacher who was worth all the rest of the world put together? Is it not wonderful that they did not go back, each one to his old trade, to his fishing and to his daily labour, saying, “At all events we must eat; at all events we must get our livelihood;” and end, as they had begun, in being mere labouring men, of whom the world would never have heard a word? And instead of that we read that they went back with great joy not to their homes but to Jerusalem, the capital city of their country, and “were continually in the temple blessing and praising God.” Well, my friends, and if it is possible for one man to judge what another man would have done—if it is possible to guess what we should have done in their case—common-sense must show us this, that if He was merely their Teacher, they would have either given themselves up to despair, or gone back, some to their plough, some to their fishing-nets, and some, like Matthew, to their counting-houses, and we should never have heard a word of them. But if you will look in your Bibles, you will find that they thought Him much more than a teacher—that they thought Him to be the Lord and King of the whole world; and you will find that the great joy with which the disciples went back, after He ascended into heaven, came from certain very strange words that He had been speaking to them just before He ascended—words about which they could have but two opinions: either they must have thought that they were utter falsehood, and self-conceit, and blasphemy; and that Jesus, who had been all along speaking to them such words of wisdom and holiness as never man spake before, had suddenly changed His whole character at the last, and become such a sort of person as it is neither fit for me to speak of, or you to hear me speak of, in God’s church, and in Jesus Christ’s hearing, even though it be merely for the sake of argument; or else they must have thought _this_ about His words, that they were the most joyful and blessed words that ever had been spoken on the earth; that they were the best of all news; the most complete of all Gospels for this poor sinful world; that what Jesus had said about Himself was true; and that as long as it was true, it did not matter in the least what became of them; it did not matter in the least what difficulties stood in their way, for they would be certain to conquer them all; it did not matter in the least how men might persecute and slander them, for they would be sure to get their reward; it did not matter in the least how miserable and sinful the world might be just then, for it was certain to be changed, and converted, and brought to God, to righteousness, to love, to freedom, to light, at last.

If you look at the various accounts, in the four gospels, of the Lord’s last words on earth, you will see, surely, what I mean. Let us take them one by one.

St. Matthew tells us that, a few days before the Lord’s ascension, He met His disciples on a mountain in Galilee, where he had appointed them to await him; and there told them, that all power was given to Him in heaven and earth. Was not that blessed news—was not that a gospel? That all the power in heaven and earth belonged to _Him_? To Him, who had all His life been doing good? To Him, in whom there had never been one single stain of tyranny or selfishness? To Him, who had been the friend of publicans and sinners? To Him, who had rebuked the very richest, and loved the very poorest? To him, who had shown that He had both the power and the will to heal every kind of sickness and disease? To Him, who had conquered and driven out, wherever He met them, all the evil spirits which enslave and torment poor sinful men? To Him, who had shown by rising from the dead, that He was stronger than even death itself? To Him, who had declared that He was the Son of God the Father, that the great God who had made heaven and earth, and all therein, was perfectly pleased and satisfied with Him, that He was come to do His Father’s will, and not His own; that He was the ancient Lord of the earth, the I AM who was before Abraham? And He was now to have all power in heaven and earth! Everything which was done right in the world henceforth, was to be His doing. The kingdom and rule over the whole universe, was to be His. So He said; and His disciples believed Him; and if they believed Him, how could they but rejoice? How could they but rejoice at the glorious thought that He, the son of the village maiden, the champion of the poor and the suffering, was to have the government of the world for ever? That He, who all the while He had been on earth had showed that He was perfect justice, perfect love, perfect humanity, was to reign till He had put all His enemies under His feet? How could the world but prosper under such a King as that? How could wickedness triumph, while He, the perfectly righteous one, was King? How could misery triumph, while He, the perfectly merciful one, was King? How could ignorance triumph, while He, the perfectly wise one, who had declared that God the Father hid nothing from Him, was King? Unless the disciples had been more dull and selfish than the dumb beasts around them, what could they do but rejoice at that news? What matter to them if Jesus were taken out of their sight, as long as all power was given to Him in heaven and earth?

But He had told them more. He had told them that they were not to keep this glorious secret to themselves. No: they were to go forth and preach the gospel of it, the good news of it, to every creature—to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. The good news that God was the King of men, after all; that cruel tyrants and oppressors, and conquerors, were not their kings; that neither the storms over their heads, nor the earth under their feet, nor the clouds and the rivers whom the heathens used to worship in the hope of persuading the earth and the weather to be favourable to them, and bless their harvests, were their kings; that idols of wood and stone, and evil spirits of lust, and cruelty, and covetousness, were not their kings; but that God was their King; that He loved them, He pitied them in spite of all their sins; that He had sent His only begotten Son into the world to teach them, to live for them—to die for them—to claim them for His own. And, therefore, they were to go and baptize all nations, as a sign that they were to repent, and change, and put away all their old false and evil heathen life, and rise to a new life, they and their children after them, as God’s children, God’s family, brothers of the Son of God. And they were to baptize them into a name; showing that they belonged to those into whose name they were baptized; into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They were to be baptized into the name of the Father, as a sign that God was their Father, and they His children. They were to be baptized into the name of the Son, as a sign that the Son, Jesus Christ, was their King and head; and not merely their King and head, but their Saviour, who had taken away the sin of the world, and redeemed it for God, with His own most precious blood; and not merely their Saviour, but their pattern; that they might know that they were bound to become as far as is possible for mortal man such sons of God as Jesus himself had been, like Him obedient, pure, forgiving, brotherly, caring for each other and not for themselves, doing their heavenly Father’s will and not their own. And they were to baptize all nations into the name of the Holy Spirit, for a sign that God’s Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, would be with them, to give them new life, new holiness, new manfulness; to teach, and guide, and strengthen them for ever. That was the gospel which they had to preach. The good news that the Son of God was the King of men. That was the name into which they were to baptize all nations—the name of children of God, members of Christ, heirs of a heavenly and spiritual kingdom, which should go on age after age, for ever, growing and spreading men knew not how, as the grains of mustard-seed, which at first the least of all seeds, grows up into a great tree, and the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches of it—to go on, I say, from age to age, improving, cleansing, and humanising, and teaching the whole world, till the kingdoms of the earth became the kingdoms of God and of His Christ. That was the work which the Apostles had given them to do. Do you not see, friends, that unless those Apostles had been the most selfish of men, unless all they cared for was their own gain and comfort, they must have rejoiced? The whole world was to be set right—what matter what happened to them? And, therefore, I said at the beginning of my sermon, that a sure way to know whether our minds were in a right state, was to see whether we felt about it as the Apostles felt. The Bible tells us to rejoice always, to praise and give thanks to God always. If we believe what the Apostles believed, we shall be joyful; if we do not, we shall not be joyful. If we believe in the words which the Lord spoke before He ascended on high, we shall be joyful. If we believe that all power in heaven and earth is His, we shall be joyful. If we believe that the son of the village maiden has ascended up on high, and received gifts for men, we shall be joyful. If we believe that, as our baptism told us, God is our Father, the Son of God our Saviour, the Spirit of God ready to teach and guide us, we shall be joyful. Do you answer me, “But the world goes on so ill; there is so much sin, and misery, and folly, and cruelty in it; how can we be joyful?” I answer: There was a hundred times as much sin, and misery, and folly, and cruelty, in the Apostles’ time, and yet they were joyful, and full of gladness, blessing and praising God. If you answer, “But we are so slandered, and neglected, and misunderstood, and hard-worked, and ill-treated; we have no time to enjoy ourselves, or do the things which we should like best. How can we be joyful?” I answer: So were the Apostles. They knew that they would be a hundred times as much slandered, and neglected, and misunderstood, as you can ever be; that they would have far less time to enjoy themselves, far less opportunity of doing the things which they liked best, than you can ever have; they knew that misery, and persecution, and a shameful death were before them, and yet they were joyful and full of gladness, blessing and praising God. And why should you not be? For what was true for them is true for you. They had no blessing, no hope, but what you have just as good a right to as they had. They were joyful, because God was their Father, and God is your Father. They were joyful because they and all men belonged to God’s family; and you belong to it. They were joyful, because God’s Spirit was promised to them, to make them like God; and God’s Spirit was promised to you. They were joyful, because a poor man was king of heaven and earth; and that poor man, Jesus Christ, who was born at Bethlehem, is as much your King now as He was theirs then. They were joyful, because the whole world was going to improve under His rule and government; and the whole world is improving, and will go on improving for ever. They were joyful, because Jesus, whom they had known as a poor, despised, crucified man on earth, had ascended up to heaven in glory; and if you believe the same, you will be joyful too. In proportion as you believe the mystery of Ascension-day; if you believe the words which the Lord spoke before He ascended, you will have cheerful, joyful, hopeful thoughts about yourselves, and about the whole world; if you do not, you will be in continual danger of becoming suspicious and despairing, fancying the world still worse than it is, fancying that God has neglected and forgotten it, fancying that the devil is stronger than God, and man’s sins wider than Christ’s redemption till you will think it neither worth while to do right yourselves, nor to make others do right towards you.

XII. THE FOUNT OF SCIENCE.

(_A Sermon Preached at St. Margaret’s Church_, _Westminster_, _May_
4_th_, 1851, _in behalf of the Westminster Hospital_.)

When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and received
gifts for men, yea, even for his enemies, that the Lord God might
dwell among them.—PSALM lxviii. 18, and EPHESIANS iv. 8.

IF, a thousand years ago, a congregation in this place had been addressed upon the text which I have chosen, they would have had, I think, little difficulty in applying its meaning to themselves, and in mentioning at once innumerable instances of those gifts which the King of men had received for men, innumerable signs that the Lord God was really dwelling amongst them. But amongst those signs, I think, they would have mentioned several which we are not now generally accustomed to consider in such a light. They would have pointed not merely to the building of churches, the founding of schools, the spread of peace, the decay of slavery; but to the importation of foreign literature, the extension of the arts of reading, writing, painting, architecture, the improvement of agriculture, and the introduction of new and more successful methods of the cure of diseases. They might have expressed themselves on these points in a way that we consider now puerile and superstitious. They might have attributed to the efficacy of prayer, many cures which we now attribute—shall I say? to no cause whatsoever. They may have quoted as an instance of St. Cuthbert’s sanctity, rather than of his shrewd observations, his discovery of a spring of water in the rocky floor of his cell, and his success in growing barley upon the barren island where wheat refused to germinate; and we might have smiled at their superstition, and smiled, too, at their seeing any consequence of Christianity, any token that the kingdom of God was among them, in Bishop Wilfred’s rescuing the Hampshire Saxons from the horrors of famine, by teaching them the use of fishing-nets. But still so they would have spoken—men of a turn of mind no less keen, shrewd, and practical than we, their children; and if we had objected to their so-called superstition that all these improvements in the physical state of England were only the natural consequences of the introduction of Roman civilisation by French and Italian missionaries, they would have smiled at us in their turn, not perhaps without some astonishment at our stupidity, and asked: “Do you not see, too, that _that_ is in itself a sign of the kingdom of God—that these nations who have been for ages selfishly isolated from each other, except for purposes of conquest and desolation, should be now teaching each other, helping each other, interchanging more and more, generation by generation, their arts, their laws, their learning becoming fused down under the influence of a common Creed, and loyalty to one common King in Heaven, from their state of savage jealousy and warfare, into one great Christendom, and family of God?” And if, my friends, as I think, those forefathers of ours could rise from their graves this day, they would be inclined to see in our hospitals, in our railroads, in the achievements of our physical Science, confirmation of that old superstition of theirs, proofs of the kingdom of God, realisations of the gifts which Christ received for men, vaster than any of which they had ever dreamed. They might be startled at God’s continuing those gifts to us, who hold on many points a creed so different from theirs. They might be still more startled to see in the Great Exhibition of all Nations, which is our present nine-days’ wonder, that those blessings were not restricted by God even to nominal Christians, but that His love, His teaching, with regard to matters of civilisation and physical science, were extended, though more slowly and partially, to the Mahometan and the Heathen. And it would be a wholesome lesson to them, to find that God’s grace was wider than their narrow theories; perhaps they may have learnt it already in the world of spirits. But of its _being_ God’s grace, there would be no doubt in their minds. They would claim unhesitatingly, and at once, that great Exhibition established in a Christian country, as a point of union and brotherhood for all people, for a sign that God was indeed claiming all the nations of the world as His own—proving by the most enormous facts that He had sent down a Pentecost, gifts to men which would raise them not merely spiritually, but physically and intellectually, beyond anything which the world had ever seen, and had poured out a spirit among them which would convert them in the course of ages, gradually, but most surely and really, from a pandemonium of conquerors and conquered, devourers and devoured, into a family of fellow-helping brothers, until the kingdoms of the world became the kingdoms of God and of His Christ.

But I think one thing, if anything, would stagger their simple old Saxon faith; one thing would make them fearful, as indeed it makes the preacher this day, that the time of real brotherhood and peace is still but too far off; and that the achievements of our physical science, the unity of this great Exhibition, noble as they are, are still only dim forecastings and prophecies, as it were, of a higher, nobler reality. And they would say sadly to us, their children: “Sons, you ought to be so near to God; He seems to have given you so much and to have worked among you as He never worked for any nation under heaven. How is it that you give the glory to yourselves, and not to Him?”

For do we give the glory of our scientific discoveries to God, in any real, honest, and practical sense? There may be some official and perfunctory talk of God’s blessing on our endeavours; but there seems to be no real belief in us that God, the inspiration of God, is the very fount and root of the endeavours themselves; that He teaches us these great discoveries; that He gives us wisdom to get this wondrous wealth; that He works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. True, we keep up something of the form and tradition of the old talk about such things; we join in prayer to God to bless our great Exhibition, but we do not believe—we do not believe, my friends—that it was God who taught us to conceive, build, and arrange that Great Exhibition; and our notion of God’s blessing it, seems to be God’s absence from it; a hope and trust that God will leave it and us alone, and not “visit” it or us in it, or “interfere” by any “special providences,” by storms, or lightning, or sickness, or panic, or conspiracy; a sort of dim feeling that we could manage it all perfectly well without God, but that as He exists, and has some power over natural phenomena, which is not very exactly defined, we must notice His existence over and above our work, lest He should become angry and “visit” us . . . And this in spite of words which were spoken by one whose office it was to speak them, as the representative of the highest and most sacred personage in these realms; words which deserve to be written in letters of gold on the high places of this city; in which he spoke of this Exhibition as an “approach to a more complete fulfilment of the great and sacred mission which man has to perform in the world;” when he told the English people that “man’s reason being created in the image of God, he has to discover the laws by which Almighty God governs His creations, and by making these laws the standard of his action, to conquer nature to his use, himself a divine instrument;” when he spoke of “thankfulness to Almighty God for what he has already _given_,” as the first feeling which that Exhibition ought to excite in us; and as the second, “the deep conviction that those blessings can only be realised in proportion to”—not, as some would have it, the rivalry and selfish competition—but “in proportion to the _help_ which we are prepared to render to each other; and, therefore, by peace, love, and ready assistance, not only between individuals, but between all nations of the earth.” We read those great words; but in the hearts of how few, alas! to judge from our modern creed on such matters, must the really important and distinctive points of them find an echo! To how few does this whole Exhibition seem to have been anything but a matter of personal gain or curiosity, for national aggrandisement, insular self-glorification, and selfish—I had almost said, treacherous—rivalry with the very foreigners whom we invited as our guests?

And so, too, with our cures of diseases. We speak of God’s blessing the means, and God’s blessing the cure. But all we really mean by blessing them, is permitting them. Do not our hearts confess that our notion of His blessing the means, is His leaving the means to themselves and their own physical laws—leaving, in short, the cure to us and not preventing our science doing its work, and asserting His own existence by bringing on some unexpected crisis, or unfortunate relapse—if, indeed, the old theory that He does bring on such, be true?

Our old forefathers, on the other hand, used to believe that in medicine, as in everything else, God taught men all that they knew. They believed the words of the Wise Man when he said that “the Spirit of God gives man understanding.” The method by which Solomon believed himself to have obtained all his physical science and knowledge of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop which groweth on the wall, was in their eyes the only possible method. They believed the words of Isaiah when he said of the tillage and the rotation of crops in use among the peasants of his country, that their God instructed them to discretion and taught them; and that even the various methods of threshing out the various species of grain came “forth from the Lord of hosts, who is excellent in counsel, and wonderful in working.”

Such a method, you say, seems to you now miraculous. It did not seem to our forefathers miraculous that God should teach man; it seemed to them most simple, most rational, most natural, an utterly every-day axiom. They thought it was because so few of the heathen were taught by God that they were no wiser than they were. They thought that since the Son of God had come down and taken our nature upon Him, and ascended up on high and received gifts for men, that it was now the right and privilege of every human being who was willing to be taught of God, as the prophet foretold in those very words; and that baptism was the very sign and seal of that fact—a sign that for every human being, whatever his age, sex, rank, intellect, or race, a certain measure of the teaching of God and of the Spirit of God was ready, promised, sure as the oath of Him that made heaven and the earth, and all things therein. That was Solomon’s belief. We do not find that it made him a fanatic and an idler, waiting with folded hands for inspiration to come to him he knew not how nor whence. His belief that wisdom was the revelation and gift of God did not prevent him from seeking her as silver, and searching for her as hid treasures, from applying his heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; and we do not find that it prevented our forefathers. Ceadmon’s belief that God inspired him with the poetic faculty, did not make him the less laborious and careful versifier. Bishop John’s blessing the dumb boy’s tongue in the name of Him whom he believed to be Word of God and the Master of that poor dumb boy, did not prevent his anticipating some of the discoveries of our modern wise men, in setting about a most practical and scientific cure. Alfred’s continual prayers for light and inspiration made him no less a laborious and thoughtful student of war and law, of physics, language, and geography. These old Teutons, for all these superstitions of theirs, were perhaps as businesslike and practical in those days as we their children are in these. But that did not prevent their believing that unless God showed them a thing, they could not see it, and thanking Him honestly enough for the comparative little which He did show them. But we who enjoy the accumulated teaching of ages—we to whose researches He is revealing year by year, almost week by weeks wonders of which they never dreamed—we whom He has taught to make the lame to walk, the dumb to speak, the blind to see, to exterminate the pestilence and defy the thunderbolt, to multiply millionfold the fruits of learning, to annihilate time and space, to span the heavens, and to weigh the sun—what madness is this which has come upon us in these last days, to make us fancy that we, insects of a day, have found out these things for ourselves, and talk big about the progress of the species, and the triumphs of intellect, and the all-conquering powers of the human mind, and give the glory of all this inspiration and revelation, not to God, but to ourselves? Let us beware, beware—lest our boundless pride and self-satisfaction, by some mysterious yet most certain law, avenge itself—lest like the Assyrian conqueror of old, while we stand and cry, “Is not this great Babylon which I have built?” our reason, like his, should reel and fall beneath the narcotic of our own maddening self-conceit, and while attempting to scale the heavens we overlook some pitfall at our feet, and fall as learned idiots, suicidal pedants, to be a degradation, and a hissing, and a shame.

However strongly you may differ from these opinions of our own forefathers with regard to the ground and cause of physical science, and the arts of healing, I am sure that the recollection of the thrice holy ground upon which we stand, beneath the shadow of venerable piles, witnesses for the creeds, the laws, the liberties, which those our ancestors have handed down to us, will preserve you from the temptation of dismissing with hasty contempt their thoughts upon any subject so important; will make you inclined to listen to their opinion with affection, if not with reverence; and save, perhaps, the preacher from a sneer when he declares that the doctrine of those old Saxon men is, in his belief, not only the most Scriptural, but the most rational and scientific explanation of the grounds of all human knowledge.

At least, I shall be able to quote in support of my own opinion a name from which there can be no appeal in the minds of a congregation of educated Englishmen—I mean Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, the spiritual father of the modern science, and, therefore, of the chemistry and the medicine of the whole civilised world. If there is one thing which more than another ought to impress itself on the mind of a careful student of his works, it is this—that he considered science as the inspiration of God, and every separate act of induction by which man arrives at a physical law, as a revelation from the Maker of those laws; and that the faith which gave him daring to face the mystery of the universe, and proclaim to men that they could conquer nature by obeying her, was his deep, living, practical belief that there was One who had ascended up on high and led captive in the flesh and spirit of a man those very idols of sense which had been themselves leading men’s minds captive, enslaving them to the illusions of their own senses, forcing them to bow down in vague awe and terror before those powers of Nature, which God had appointed, not to be their tyrants, but their slaves. I will not special-plead particulars from his works, wherein I may consider that he asserts this. I will rather say boldly that the idea runs through every line he ever wrote; that unless seen in the light of that faith, the grounds of his philosophy ought to be as inexplicable to us, as they would, without it, have been impossible to himself. As has been well said of him: “Faith in God as the absolute ground of all human as well as of all natural laws; the belief that He had actually made Himself known to His creatures, and that it was possible for them to have a knowledge of Him, cleared from the phantasies and idols of their own imaginations and understandings; this was the necessary foundation of all that great man’s mind and speculations, to whatever point they were tending, and however at times they might be darkened by too close a familiarity with the corruptions and meannesses of man, or too passionate an addiction to the contemplation of Nature. Nor should it ever be forgotten that he owed all the clearness and distinctness of his mind to his freedom from that Pantheism which naturally disposes to a vague admiration and adoration of Nature, to the belief that it is stronger and nobler than ourselves; that we are servants, and puppets, and portions of it, and not its lords and rulers. If Bacon had in anywise confounded Nature with God—if he had not entertained the strongest practical feeling that men were connected with God through One who had taken upon Him their nature, it is impossible that he could have discovered that method of dealing with physics which has made a physical science possible.”

No really careful student of his works, but must have perceived this, however glad, alas! he may have felt at times to thrust the thought of it from him, and try to think that Francis Bacon’s Christianity was something over and above his philosophy—a religion which he left behind him at the church-door—or only sprinkled up and down his works so much of it as should shield him in a bigoted age from the suspicion of materialism. A strange theory, and yet one which so determined is man to see nothing, whether it be in the Bible or in the Novum Organum, but what each wishes to see, has been deliberately put forth again and again by men who fancy, forsooth, that the greatest of English heroes was even such an one as themselves. One does not wonder to find among the general characteristics of those writers who admire Bacon as a materialist, the most utter incapacity of philosophising on Bacon’s method, the very restless conceit, the hasty generalisation, the hankering after cosmogonic theories, which Bacon anathematises in every page. Yes, I repeat it, we owe our medical and sanitary science to Bacon’s philosophy; and Bacon owed his philosophy to his Christianity.

Oh! it is easy for us, amid the marvels of our great hospitals, now grown commonplace in our eyes from very custom, to talk of the empire of mind over matter; for us—who reap the harvest whereof Bacon sowed the seed. But consider, how great the faith of that man must have been, who died in hope, not having received the promises, but seeing them afar off, and haunted to his dying day with glorious visions of a time when famine and pestilence should vanish before a scientific obedience—to use his own expression—to the will of God, revealed in natural facts. Thus we can understand how he dared to denounce all that had gone before him as blind and worthless guides, and to proclaim himself to the world as the one restorer of true physical philosophy. Thus we can understand how he, the cautious and patient man of the world, dared indulge in those vast dreams of the scientific triumphs of the future. Thus we can understand how he dared hint at the expectation that men would some day even conquer death itself; because he believed that man had conquered death already, in the person of its King and Lord—in the flesh of Him who ascended up on high, and led captivity captive, and received gifts for men. The “empire of mind over matter?” What practical proof had he of it amid the miserable alternations of empiricism and magic which made up the pseudo-science of his time; amid the theories and speculations of mankind, which, as he said, were “but a sort of madness—useless alike for discovery or for operation.” What right had he, more than any other man who had gone before him, to believe that man could conquer and mould to his will the unseen and tremendous powers which work in every cloud and every flower? that he could dive into the secret mysteries of his own body, and renew his youth like the eagle’s? This ground he had for that faith—that he believed, as he says himself, that he must “begin from God; and that the pursuit of physical science clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of good, and Father of light.” This gave him faith to say that in this as in all other Divine works, the smallest beginnings lead assuredly to some result, and that the “remark in spiritual matters, that the kingdom of God cometh without observation, is also found to be true in every great work of Divine Providence; so that everything glides on quietly without confusion or noise, and the matter is achieved before men either think or perceive that it is commenced.” This it was which gave him courage to believe that his own philosophy might be the actual fulfilment of the prophecy, that in the last days many should run to and fro, and knowledge should be increased—words which, like hundreds of others in his works, sound like the outpourings of an almost blasphemous self-conceit, till we recollect that he looked on science only as the inspiration of God, and man’s empire over nature only as the consequence of the redemption worked out for him by Christ, and begin to see in them the expressions of the deepest and most divine humility.