True Words for Brave Men

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And then when such thoughts come over us, we cannot help going on to say,
"What is this death? this horrible thing which takes husbands from their
wives, and children from their parents, and those who love from those who
love them? What is it? How came this same death loose in the world?
What right has it here, under the bright sun, among the pleasant fields,
this cruel, pitiless death, destroying God's handi-work, God's likeness,
just as it is growing to its prime of beauty and usefulness?"

And then--there--by the bedside of the young at least, we do feel that
death must be God's enemy--that it is a hateful, cruel, evil
thing--accursed in the sight of a loving, life-giving God, as much as it
is hated by poor mortal man.

And then, we feel, there must be something wrong between man and God. Man
must be fallen and corrupt, must be out of his right place and state in
some way or other, or this horrible death would not have got power over
us! What right has death in the world, if man has not sinned or fallen?

And then we cannot help going further and saying, "This cruel death! it
may come to me, young, strong, and healthy as I am. It may come
to-morrow; it may come this minute; it may come by a hundred diseases, by
a hundred accidents, which I cannot foresee or escape, and carry me off
to-morrow, away from all I know and all I love, and all I like to see and
to do. And where would it take me to, if it did take me? What should I
be? What should I see? What should I know, after they had put this body
of mine into that narrow house in the church-yard, and covered it out of
sight till the judgment day?" Oh, my friends, what a thought for you,
and me, and every human being! We might die to-night, even as those whom
we know of died!

But perhaps some of you young people are saying to yourselves, "You are
trying to frighten us, but you shall not frighten us. We know very well
that it is not a common thing for a young person to die--not one in a
hundred (except in a war time) dies in the prime of his years; and
therefore the chances are that we shall not die young either. The
chances are that we shall live to be old men and women, and we are not
going to be frightened about dying forty years before our death. So in
the meanwhile we will go our own way and enjoy ourselves. It will be
time enough to think of death when death draws near."

Well then, if you have these thoughts, I will ask you, what do you mean
by _chance_? You say, the _chances_ are against your dying young. Pray
what are these wonderful things called chances, which are to keep you
alive for thirty or forty or fifty years more? Did you ever _hear_ a
chance, or _see_ a chance? Or did you ever meet with any one who had?
Did any one ever see a great angel called Chance flying about keeping
people from dying? What is _chance_ on which you depend as you say for
your life? What is _chance_ which you fancy so much stronger than God?
For as long as the _chance_ is against your dying, you are not afraid of
neglecting God and disobeying God, and therefore you must suppose that
_chance_ is stronger than God, and quite able to keep God's anger off
from you for thirty or forty years, till you choose to repent and amend.
What sort of thing is this wonderful chance, which is going to keep you
alive?

Perhaps you will say, "All we meant when we said that the chances were
against our dying was that God's will was against our dying."

Did you only mean that? Then why put the thought of God away by foolish
words about chance? For you know that it is God and God only who keeps
you alive. You must look at that, you must face that. If you are alive
now, God keeps you so. If you live forty years more, God will make you
live that time. And He who can make you live, can also let you _not_
live; and then you will die. God can withdraw the breath of life from
you or me or any one at any moment. And then where would our _chances_
of not dying be? We should die here and now, and know that God is the
Lord and not _chance_ . . .

But think again. If God makes you alive He must have some reason for
making you alive. For mind--it is not as you fancy, that when God leaves
you alone you live, and when He puts forth His power and visits you, you
die. _Not that_, _but the very opposite_. For in Adam all die. Our
bodies are dead by reason of sin, and in the midst of life we are in
death. There is a seed of death in you and me and every little child.
While we are eating and drinking and going about our business, fancying
that we cannot help living, we carry the seeds of disease in our own
bodies, which will surely kill us some day, even if we are not cut off
before by some sudden accident. That is true, physicians know that it is
true. Our bodies carry in them from the very cradle the seeds of death;
and therefore it is not because God leaves us alone that we live. We
live because God, our merciful heavenly Father, _does not_ leave us
alone, but keeps down those seeds of disease and death by His Spirit, who
is the Lord and Giver of Life.

God's Spirit of Life is fighting against death in our bodies from the
moment we are born. And then, as Moses says, when He withdraws that
Spirit of His, then it is that we die and are turned again to our dust.
So that our living a long time or a short time, does not depend on
CHANCE, or on our own health or constitution, but entirely on how long
God may choose to keep down the death which is lying in us, ready to kill
us at any moment, and certain to kill us sooner or later.

And yet people fancy that they live because they cannot help living,
unless God interferes with them and makes them die. They fancy,
thoughtless and ignorant as they are, that when they are in _health_, God
leaves them alone, and that therefore when they are in health they may
leave God alone.

My friends, I tell you that it is God, and not our constitution or chance
either which keeps you alive; as you will surely find out the moment
after the last breath has left your body. And therefore I ask you
solemnly the plain question, "For what does God keep you alive?" _For
what_? Will a man keep plants in his garden which bear neither fruit nor
flowers? Will a man keep stock on his farm which will only eat and never
make profit; or a servant in his house who will not work? Much more,
will a man keep a servant who will not only be idle himself, but quarrel
with his fellow servants, lead them into sin and shame, and teach them to
disobey their master? What man in his senses would keep such plants,
such stock, such servants? And yet God keeps hundreds and thousands in
His garden and in His house for years and years, while they are doing no
good to Him, and doing harm to those around them.

How many are there who never yet did one thing to make their companions
better, and yet have done many a thing to make their companions worse!
Then why are they alive still? Why does not God rid Himself of them at
once and let them die, instead of cumbering the ground? I know but one
reason. If they were only God's plants, or His stock, or His servants,
He might rid Himself of them. But they are something far nearer and
dearer to Him than that. They are His children, and therefore He has
mercy on them. They are redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world; and therefore for the
sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, God looks on them with long-suffering and
tender loving-kindness. Man was made in God's likeness at first, and was
the son of God. And therefore howsoever fallen and corrupt man's nature
is now, yet God loves him still, even though he be a heathen or an
infidel. How much more for you, my friends, who know that you are God's
children, who have been declared to be His children by Holy Baptism, and
grafted into Christ's church. You at least are bound to believe that God
preserves you from death, _because He loves you_. He protects you every
day and every hour, as a father takes care of His children, and keeps
them out of dangers which they cannot see or understand.

Yes! this is plain truth--your heavenly Father is keeping you alive! Oh,
do not make that truth an excuse for forgetting and disobeying your
heavenly Father!

Why does He keep you alive? Surely because He expects something of you.
And what does He expect of you? What does any good father expect of his
children? Why does he help and protect them? Not from mere brute
instinct, as beasts take care of their young when they are little, and
then as soon as they are grown up cast them off and forget them. No. He
takes care of his children because he wishes them to grow up like
himself, to be a comfort and a help and a pride to him.

And God takes care of _you_ and keeps you from death, for the very same
reason. God desires that you should grow up like Himself, godly and
pure, leading lives like His Son Jesus Christ. God desires that you
should grow up to the stature of perfect men and women, which is the
likeness of Jesus Christ your Lord.

But if you turn God's grace in keeping you alive into a cloak for
licentiousness and an excuse for sinning--if, when God keeps you alive
that you may lead _good_ lives, you take advantage of His fatherly love
to lead _bad_ lives--if you go on returning God evil for good, and
ungratefully and basely presume on His patience and love to do the things
which He hates, what must you expect? God loves you, and you make that
an excuse for not loving Him; God does everything for you, and you make
that an excuse for doing nothing for God; God gives you health and
strength, and you make that an excuse for using your health and strength
just in the way He has forbidden. What can be more ungrateful? What can
be more foolish? Oh, my friends, if one of our children behaved to us in
return for our care and love a hundredth part as shamefully as most of us
behave to God our Father, what should we think of them? What should we
say of them?

Oh, beware, beware! God is a righteous God, strong and patient, and God
is provoked every day, and bears it according to His boundless love and
patience. But "if a man _will not_ turn," says the same text, "He will
whet His sword." And then--woe to the careless and ungrateful sinner.
God will cut him down and bring him low. God will take from him his
health, or his money, or his blind peace of mind; and by affliction after
affliction, and shame after shame, and disappointment after
disappointment, teach him that his youth, and his health, and his money,
and all that he has, are his Father's gifts and not his own property--and
that His Father will take them away from him, till he feels his own
weakness, till he sees that he is really not his own but God's property,
body and soul, and goes back to his heavenly Father and cries, "Father, I
have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be
called Thy son. I have taken Thy gifts and gone away with them from Thy
house unto the far country of sin, and wasted them in riotous living,
till I have had to fill my belly with the husks which the swine did eat.
I have had no profit out of all my sins, of which I am now ashamed. I
have robbed Thee and abused Thy gifts and Thy love. Father, take me
back, for I have sinned, and am not worthy to be called Thy child."

XVIII. EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY WISDOM; OR, STOOP TO CONQUER.

"The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he
established the heavens."--PROV. iii. 19.

Did it ever strike you as a very remarkable and important thing, that
after saying in Proverbs iii. that Wisdom is this precious treasure, and
bidding his son seek for her because (verse 16) "Length of days is in her
right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour: Her ways are ways of
pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,"--Solomon goes on immediately
to say (verses 19, 20), "The Lord by Wisdom hath founded the earth, and
established the heavens?"

By Wisdom: by the very same Wisdom, Solomon says, which is to give men
length of days, and riches, and honour. Is not this curious at least?
That there is but one wisdom for God and man? That man's true wisdom is
a pattern of God's wisdom? That a man to prosper in the world must get
the very same wisdom by which God made and rules the world? Curious. But
most blessed news, my friends, if we will think over what it means. I
will try to explain it to you: first, as to this world which we see;
next, as to the heavenly world of spirits which we do not see.

You have, many of you, heard the word "Science." Many of you of course
know what it means. That it means wisdom and learning about this earth
and all things in it. Many more of you of course know that in the last
hundred years science has improved in a most wonderful way, and is
improving every day; that we have now gas-lights, steam-engines, cotton-
mills, railroads, electric telegraphs, iron ships, and a hundred curious
and useful machines and manufactures of which our great-grandfathers
never dreamed; that our knowledge of different countries, of medicines,
of the laws of health and disease, and of all in short which has to do
with man's bodily life, is increasing day by day; and that all these
discoveries are very great blessings; they give employment and food to
millions who would otherwise have had nothing to do; they bring vast
wealth into this country, and all the countries which trade with us. They
enable this land of England to support four times as many human beings as
it did two hundred years ago; they make many of the necessaries of life
cheaper, so that in many cases a poor man may now have comforts which his
grandfather never heard of.

I know that there is a dark side to this picture; that with all this
increase of wisdom, there has come conceit, and trust in deceitful
riches, and want of trust in God, and obedience to His law. I know that
in some things we are not better, but worse than our forefathers; God
forgive us for it! But the good came from God; and that man is very
unwise and unthankful too, who despises God's great gift of science,
because fallen man has defiled His gift as it passed through his unclean
hands.

Look only at this one thing, as I said just now, that by all these
wonderful discoveries and improvements, England is able to support four
times as many Englishmen as it used of old, and that, if we feared God,
and sought His kingdom better, I believe, England would support many more
people yet--and see if _that_ be not a thing to thank Almighty God for
every day of our lives.

Now how did this wonderful change and improvement take place--suddenly,
and, as it were, in the course of the last hundred years? Simply by
mankind understanding the text (Prov. iii. 19), and by obeying it. I
tell you a real truth, my friends, and it happened thus.

For more than sixteen hundred years after our Lord's time, mankind seem
to have become hardly any wiser about earthly things, nay, even to have
gone back. The land was no better tilled; goods were no more easily
made; diseases were no better cured, than they had been sixteen hundred
years before. And if any learned men longed to become very wise and
cunning, and to get power over this world and the things in it, they flew
off to witchcraft, charms, and magic, deceived by the devil's old lie,
that the kingdom and the power and the glory of this world belonged to
him and not to God.

But about two hundred and fifty years ago, it pleased God to open the
eyes of one of the wisest men who ever lived, who was called Francis
Bacon, Lord Verulam, Lord Chancellor of England, and to show him the real
and right way of learning by which men can fulfil God's command to
replenish the earth and subdue it. And Francis Bacon told all the
learned men boldly that they had all been wrong together, and that their
wisdom was no better than a sort of madness, as it is written, "The
wisdom of man is foolishness with God;" that the only way for man to be
wise was to get God's wisdom, the wisdom with which He had founded the
earth, and find out God's laws by which He had made this world.

"And then," he said, "if you can do that, you will be able to imitate God
in your own small way. If you learn the laws by which God made all
things, you will be able to invent new things for yourselves. _For you
can only subdue nature by obeying her_." That was one of his greatest
sayings, and by it he meant, that you can only subdue a thing and make it
useful to you, by finding out the rules by which God made that thing, and
by obeying them.

For instance, you cannot subdue and till a barren field, and make it
useful, without knowing and obeying the laws and rules of that soil; and
then you can subdue and conquer that field, and change and train it, as I
may say, to grow what you like. You cannot conquer diseases without
knowing and obeying the laws by which God has made man's body, and the
laws by which fever and cholera and other plagues come.

Let me give you another instance. You all have seen lightning
conductors, which prevent tall chimneys and steeples from being struck by
storms, so that the lightning runs harmless downward. Now we can all see
how this is conquering the force of lightning in a wonderful and
beautiful way. But before you can conquer the lightning by a conductor,
you must obey the lightning and its laws most carefully. If you make the
conductor out of your own head and fancy, it will be of no use. You must
observe and follow humbly the laws which God has given to the lightning.
You must make the conductor of metal wire, or it will be useless. You
must make it run through glazed rings, or it will be only more dangerous
than no conductor at all; for God who made the lightning chose that it
should be so, and you must _obey_ if you wish to _conquer_.

Man could not conquer steam, and make it drive his engines and carry his
ships across the seas, till he found out and obeyed the laws which God
had given to steam; and so without breaking the laws, man turned them to
his own use, and set the force of steam to turn his machines, instead of
rushing idly out into the empty air.

So it is with all things, whether in heaven or earth. If you want to
rule, you must obey. If you want to rise to be a master, you must stoop
to be a servant. If you want to be master of anything in earth or
heaven, you must, as that great Lord Verulam used to say, obey God's will
revealed in that thing; and the man who will go his own way, and follow
his own fancy, will understand nothing, and master nothing, and get
comfort out of nothing in earth or heaven.

Well--when Lord Verulam told men his new wisdom, they laughed and
scoffed, as fools always will at anything new. But one by one, wise men
tried his plan, and found him right, and went on; and from that time
those who followed Lord Verulam began discovering wonders of which they
had never dreamed, and those who did not, but kept to the old way of
witchcraft and magic, found out nothing, and made themselves a laughing
stock. And after a while witchcraft vanished out of all civilised
countries, and in its place came all the wonderful comforts and
discoveries which we have now, and which under God, we owe to the wisdom
of the great Lord Verulam. Cotton mills, steam engines, railroads,
electric telegraphs, sanitary reforms, cheap books, penny postage, good
medicine and surgery, and a thousand blessings more. That great Lord
Chancellor has been the father of them all.

And a noble thought it is for us Church people, and a glorious testimony
to the good training which the Church of England gives, that the three
men, who more than any others laid the foundation of all our wonderful
discoveries, I mean Lord Verulam, Mr. Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton, were
all of them heart and soul members of the Church of England.

I said just now that the man who will not obey, will never rule; that the
man who will not stoop to be a servant, will never rise to be a master;
that the man who neglects God's will and mind about things, and will
follow his own will and fancy, will understand nothing, and master
nothing, and get comfort out of nothing, either in earth or heaven.

Either in earth or heaven, I say. For the same rule which holds good in
this earthly world, which we do see, holds good in the heavenly world
which we do not see. Solomon does not part the two worlds, and I cannot.
Solomon says the same rules which hold good about men's bodies, hold good
about their souls. The great Lord Verulam used always to say the same,
and we must believe the same. For see, Solomon says, that this same
wisdom by which God made the worlds, will help our souls as well as our
bodies; that it is not merely the earthly wisdom which brings a man
length of life and riches, but heavenly wisdom, which is a tree of life
to every one who lays hold of her (Prov. iii. 18). The heavenly wisdom
which begins in trusting in the Lord with all our heart, the heavenly
wisdom which is learnt by chastenings and afflictions, and teaches us
that we are the sons of God, is the very same wisdom by which God founded
the earth, and makes the clouds drop down dew! Strange at first sight;
but not strange if we remember the Athanasian creed, and believe that God
is one God, who has no parts or passions, and therefore cannot change or
be divided.

Yes, my friends, God's wisdom is one--unchangeable, everlasting, and
always like itself; and by the same wisdom by which He made the earth and
the heavens, by the same wisdom by which He made our bodies, has He made
our souls; and therefore we can, and are bound to, glorify Him alike in
our bodies and our spirits, for both are His.

It may not seem easy to understand this; but I will explain what I mean
by an example. I just told you, that in earthly matters we must stoop to
conquer; we must obey the laws which God has given to anything, before we
can master and use that thing. And in matters about our own soul--about
our behaviour to God--about our behaviour to our fellow-men, believe me
there is no rule like the golden one of Lord Verulam's--stoop to
conquer--obey if you wish to rule. For see now. What is there more
common than this? It happens to each of us every day. We meet a fellow-
man our equal, neither better nor worse than ourselves, and we want to
make him do something. Now there are two ways in which we may set about
that. We may drive our man, or we may lead him. You know well enough
which of those two ways is likely to succeed best. If you try to drive
the man, you say to yourself, "I know I am right. I see the thing in
this light, and he is a fool if he does not see it in the same light. I
choose to have the thing done, and done it shall be, and if he is stupid
enough not to take my view of it, I will let him know who I am, and we
will see which of us is the stronger!" So says many a man in his heart.
But what comes of it? Nothing. For the other man gets angry, and
determines to have his way in his turn. There is a quarrel and a great
deal of noise; and most probably the thing is not done. Instead of the
man getting what he wants, he has a fresh quarrel on his hands, and
nothing more. So his blustering is no sign that he is really strong. For
the strong man is the man who _can_ get what he wants done. Is he not?
Surely we shall all agree to that. And the proud, hot, positive,
dictatorial, self-willed man is just the man, in a free country like
this, who does _not_ get what he wants done. He will not stoop--therefore
he will not conquer.

But suppose we take another plan. Suppose instead of trying to drive, we
try to lead. Suppose if we want a man to do anything, we begin by
obeying him, and serving him, that we may afterwards lead him, and
afterwards make use of him. There is a base, mean way of doing that, by
flattering, and fawning, and cringing, which are certainly the devil's
works. For the devil can put on the form of an angel of light; but we
need not do that. We may serve and obey a man honestly and honourably,
in order to get him to do what he ought to do. I will tell you what I
mean.

Suppose when we have dealings with any man, we begin with him, as I was
saying we ought to begin with earthly things--with a field for
instance--we should say, before I begin to make this field bear the crop
I want I must look it through and understand it. I must see what state
it is in--what its soil is--what has been taken off it already--what the
weather is--what state of drainage it is in, and so forth; and I must
obey the rules of all these things, or my crop will come to nothing. So
with this man. First of all, before I get anything out of the man, I
must understand the man. I must find out what sort of temper and
character he has, what his opinions are, how he has been brought up, how
he has been accustomed to look at things--so as to be able to make
allowance for all, else I shall never be able to understand how he looks
at this one matter, or to make him understand _my_ way of looking at it.
And to do that--to understand the man, or make him understand me, I must
begin by making a _friend_ of him.

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