Westminster Sermons. Charles Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ this is the good news of Passion-week; a gospel which men are too apt to forget, even to try to forget, as long as they are comfortable and prosperous, lazy and selfish.  The comfortable prosperous man shrinks from the thought of Christ on His Cross.  It tells him that better men than he have had to suffer; that The Son of God Himself had to suffer.  And he does not like suffering; he prefers comfort.  The lazy, selfish man shrinks from the sight of Christ on His Cross; for it rebukes his laziness and selfishness.  Christ’s Cross says to him—Thou art ignoble and base, as long as thou art lazy and selfish.  Rise up, do something, dare something, suffer something, if need be, for the sake of thy fellow-creatures.  Be of use.  Take trouble.  Face discomfort, contradiction, loss of worldly advantage, if it must be, for the sake of speaking truth and doing right.  If thou wilt not do as much as that, then the simplest soldier who goes to die in battle for his duty, is a better man than thou, a nobler man than thou, more like Christ and more like God.  That is what Christ’s Cross preaches to the lazy, selfish man; and he feels in his heart that the sermon is true: but he does not like it.  He turns from it, and says in his heart—Oh! Christ’s Cross is a painful subject, and Passion-week and Good Friday a painful time.  I will think of something more genial, more peaceful, more agreeable than sorrow, and shame, and agony, and death; Good Friday is too sad a day for me.

      Yes, so a man says too often, as long as the fine weather lasts, and all is smooth and bright.  But when the tempest comes; when poverty comes, affliction, anxiety, shame, sickness, bereavement, and still more, when persecution comes on a man; when he tries to speak truth and do right; and finds, as he will too often find, that people, instead of loving him and praising him for speaking truth and doing right, hate him and persecute him for it: then, then indeed Passion-week begins to mean something to a man; and just because it is the saddest of all times, it looks to him the brightest of all times.  For in his misery and confusion he looks up to heaven and asks—Is there any one in heaven who understands all this?  Does God understand my trouble?  Does God feel for my trouble?  Does God care for my trouble?  Does God know what trouble means?  Or must I fight the battle of life alone, without sympathy or help from God who made me, and has put me here?  Then, then does the Cross of Christ bring a message to that man such as no other thing or being on earth can bring.  For it says to him—God does understand thee utterly.  For Christ understands thee.  Christ feels for thee.  Christ feels with thee.  Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee.  Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through.  He, the Son of God, endured poverty, fear, shame, agony, death for thee, that He might be touched with the feeling of thine infirmity, and help thee to endure, and bring thee safe through all to victory and peace.

      But again, Passion-week, and above all Good Friday, is a good time, because it teaches us, above all days, what it is to be good, and what goodness means.  Therefore remember this, all of you, and take it home with you for the year to come.  He who has learnt the lesson of Passion-week, and practises it; he and he only is a good man.

      Nay more, Passion-week tells us, I believe, what is the law according to which the whole world of man and of things, yea, the whole universe, sun, moon, and stars, is made: and that is, the law of self-sacrifice; that nothing lives merely for itself; that each thing is ordained by God to help the things around it, even at its own expense.  That is a hard saying: and yet it must be true.  The soundest Theology and the highest Reason tell us that it must be so.  For there cannot be two Holy Spirits.  Now the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed himself upon the Cross is The Holy Spirit.  And the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ made all worlds is The Holy Spirit.  But the spirit by which He sacrificed Himself on the Cross is the spirit of self-sacrifice.  And therefore the spirit by which He made the world is the spirit of self-sacrifice likewise; and self-sacrifice is the law and rule on which the universe is founded.  At least, that is the true Catholic faith, as far as my poor intellect can conceive it; and in that faith I will live and die.

      There are those who, now-a-days, will laugh at such a notion, and say—Self-sacrifice?  It is not self-sacrifice which keeps the world going among men, or animals, or even the plants under our feet: but selfishness.  Competition, they say, is the law of the universe.  Everything has to take care of itself, fight for itself, compete freely and pitilessly with everything round it, till the weak are killed off, and only the strong survive; and so, out of the free play of the self-interest of each, you get the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number.

      Do we indeed?  I should have thought that unbridled selfishness, and the internecine struggle of opposing interests, had already reduced many nations, and seemed likely to reduce all mankind, if it went on, to that state of the greatest possible misery of the greatest number, from which our blessed Lord, as in this very week, died to deliver us.  At all events, if that is to be the condition of man, and of society, then man is not made in the likeness of God, and has no need to be led by the Spirit of God.  For what the likeness of God and the Spirit of God are, Passion-week tells us—namely, Love which knows no self-interest; Love which cares not for itself; Love which throws its own life away, that it may save those who have hated it, rebelled against it, put it to a felon’s death.

      My good friends, instead of believing the carnal and selfish philosophy which cries, Every man for himself—I will not finish the proverb in this Holy place, awfully and literally true as the latter half of it is—instead of believing that, believe the message of Passion-week, which speaks rather thus: telling us that not selfishness, but unselfishness, mutual help and usefulness, is the law and will of God; and that therefore the whole universe, and all that God has made, is very good.  And what does Passion-week say to men?

      “Could we but crush that ever-craving lust

      For bliss, which kills all bliss; and lose our life,

      Our barren unit life, to find again

      A thousand lives in those for whom we die:

      So were we men and women, and should hold

      Our rightful place in God’s great universe,

      Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature,

      Nought lives for self.  All, all, from crown to footstool.

      The Lamb, before the world’s foundation slain;

      The angels, ministers to God’s elect;

      The sun, who only shines to light a world;

      The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers;

      The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves

      Flee the decay of stagnant self-content;

      The oak, ennobled by the shipwright’s axe;

      The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower;

      The flower which breeds a thousand velvet worms,

      Born only to be prey to every bird—

      All spend themselves on others; and shall man,

      Whose twofold being is the mystic knot

      Which couples earth and heaven—doubly bound,

      As being both worm and angel, to that service

      By which both worms and angels hold their lives—

      Shall he, whose very breath is debt on debt,

      Refuse, forsooth, to see what God has made him?

      No, let him shew himself the creatures’ lord

      By freewill gift of that self-sacrifice

      Which they, perforce, by nature’s law must suffer;

      Take up his cross, and follow Christ the Lord.”

      And thus Passion-week tells all men in what true goodness lies.  In self-sacrifice.  In it Christ on His Cross shewed men what was the likeness of God, the goodness of God, the glory of God—to suffer for sinful man.

      On this day Christ said—ay, and His Cross says still, and will say to all eternity—Wouldest thou be good?  Wouldest СКАЧАТЬ