Sermons on National Subjects. Charles Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ not know what they are, how they live; whence they come, or whither they go.  We cannot cure them ourselves, much less can anyone cure them for us.  The only one who can cure our souls is He that made our souls; the only one who can give life to our souls is He who gives life to everything.  The only one who can cure, and strengthen, and comfort our spirits, is He who understands our spirits, because He himself is the Spirit of all spirits, the Spirit who searcheth all things, even the deep things of God; because He is the Spirit of God the Father, who made all heaven and earth, and of Jesus Christ the Son, who understands the heart of man, who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, and hath been tempted in all things, just as we are, yet without sin.

      He is the Comforter which God has promised to our spirits, the only Comforter who can strengthen our spirits; and if we have Him with us, if He is strengthening us, if He is leading us, if He is abiding with us, if He is changing us day by day, more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ, are we not, as I said at the beginning of my sermon, richer than if we possessed all the land of England, stronger than if we had all the armies of the world at our command?  For what is more precious than—God Himself?  What is stronger than—God Himself?  The poorest man in whom God’s Spirit dwells is greater than the greatest king in whom God’s Spirit does not dwell.  And so he will find in the day that he dies.  Then where will riches be, and power?  The rich man will take none of them away with him when he dieth, neither shall his pomp follow him.  Naked came he into this world, and naked shall he return out of it, to go as he came, and carry with him none of the comforts which he thought in this life the only ones worth having.  But the Spirit of God remains with us for ever; that treasure a man shall carry out of this world with him, and keep to all eternity.  That friend will never forsake him, for He is the Spirit of Love, which abideth for ever.  That Comforter will never grow weak, for He is Himself the very eternal Lord and Giver of Life; and the soul that is possessed by Him must live, must grow, must become nobler, purer, freer, stronger, more loving, for ever and ever, as the eternities roll by.  That is what He will give you, my friends; that is His treasure; that is the Spirit-life, the true and everlasting life, which flows from Him as the stream flows from the fountain-head.

      X.

      WHIT-SUNDAY

      The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance—against such there is no law.—Galatians v. 22, 23.

      In all countries, and in all ages, the world has been full of complaints of Law and Government.  And one hears the same complaints in England now.  You hear complaints that the laws favour one party and one rank more than another, that they are expensive, and harsh, and unfair, and what not?—But I think, my friends, that for us, and especially on this Whit-Sunday, it will be much wiser, instead of complaining of the laws, to complain of ourselves, for needing those laws.  For what is it that makes laws necessary at all, except man’s sinfulness?  Adam required no laws in the garden of Eden.  We should require no laws if we were what we ought to be—what God has offered to make us.  We may see this by looking at the laws themselves, and considering the purposes for which they were made.  We shall then see, that, like Moses’ Laws of old, the greater part of them have been added because of transgressions.—In plain English—to prevent men from doing things which they ought not to do, and which, if they were in a right state of mind, they would not do.  How many laws are passed, simply to prevent one man, or one class, from oppressing or ill-using some other man or class?  What a vast number of them are passed simply to protect property, or to protect the weak from the cruel, the ignorant from the cunning!  It is plain that if there was no cruelty, no cunning, no dishonesty, these laws, at all events, would not be needed.  Again, one of the great complaints against the laws and the government, is that they are so expensive, that rates and taxes are heavy burdens—and doubtless they are: but what makes them necessary except men’s sin?  If the poor were more justly and mercifully treated, and if they in their turn were more thrifty and provident, there would be no need of the expenses of poor rates.  If there was no love of war and plunder, there would be no need of the expense of an army.  If there was no crime, there would be no need of the expense of police and prisons.  The thing is so simple and self-evident, that it seems almost childish to mention it.  And yet, my friends, we forget it daily.  We complain of the laws and their harshness, of taxes and their expensiveness, and we forget all the while that it is our own selfishness and sinfulness which brings this expense upon us, which makes it necessary for the law to interfere and protect us against others, and others against us.  And while we are complaining of the government for not doing its work somewhat more cheaply, we are forgetting that if we chose, we might leave government very little work to do—that every man if he chose, might be his own law-maker and his own police—that every man if he will, may lead a life “against which there is no law.”

      I say again, that it is our own fault, the fault of our sinfulness, that laws are necessary for us.  In proportion as we are what Scripture calls “natural men,” that is, savage, selfish, divided from each other, and struggling against each other, each for his own interest; as long as we are not renewed and changed into new men, so long will laws, heavy, severe, and burdensome, be necessary for us.  Without them we should be torments to ourselves, to our neighbours, to our country.  But these laws are only necessary as long as we are full of selfishness and ungodliness.  The moment we yield ourselves up to God’s law, man’s laws are ready enough to leave us alone.  Take, for instance, a common example; as long as anyone is a faithful husband and a good father, the law does not interfere with his conduct towards his wife and children.  But it is when he is unfaithful to them, when he ill-treats them, or deserts them, that the law interferes with its “Thou shalt not,” and compels him to behave, against his will, in the way in which he ought to have behaved of his own will.  It was free to the man to have done his duty by his family, without the law—the moment he neglects his duty, he becomes amenable to it.

      But the law can only force a man’s actions: it cannot change his heart.  In the instance which I have been just mentioning, the law can say to a man, “You shall not ill-treat your family; you shall not leave them to starve.”  But the law cannot say to him “You shall love your family.”  The law can only command from a man outward obedience; the obedience of the heart it cannot enforce.  The law may make a man do his duty, it cannot make a man love his duty.  And therefore laws will never set the world right.  They can punish persons after the wrong is done, and that not certainly nor always: but they cannot certainly prevent the wrongs being done.  The law can punish a man for stealing: and yet, as we see daily, men steal in the face of punishment.  Or even if the law, by its severity, makes persons afraid to commit certain particular crimes, yet still as long as the sinful heart is left in them unchanged, the sin which is checked in one direction is sure to break out in another.  Sin, like every other disease, is sure, when it is driven onwards, to break out at a fresh point, or fester within some still more deadly, because more hidden and unsuspected, shape.  The man who dare not be an open sinner for fear of the law, can be a hypocrite in spite of it.  The man who dare not steal for fear of the law, can cheat in spite of it.  The selfish man will find fresh ways of being selfish, the tyrannical man of being tyrannical, however closely the law may watch him.  He will discover some means of evading it; and thus the law, after all, though it may keep down crime, multiplies sin; and by the law, as St. Paul says, is the knowledge of sin.

      What then will do that for this poor world which the law cannot do—which, as St. Paul tells us, not even the law of God given on Mount Sinai, holy, just, good as it was, could do, because no law can give life?  What will give men a new heart and a new spirit, which shall love its duty and do it willingly, and not by compulsion, everywhere and always, and not merely just as far as it commanded?  The text tells us that there is a Spirit, the fruit of which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; a character such as no laws can give to a man, and which no law dare punish in a man.  Look at this character as St. Paul sets it forth—and then think what need would there be of all these burdensome and expensive laws, if all men were but full of the fruits of that Spirit which St. Paul describes?

      I СКАЧАТЬ