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IX.
THE COMFORTER

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER

If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.—John xvi. 7.

We are now coming near to two great days, Ascension-day and Whit-Sunday, which our forefathers have appointed, year by year, to put us continually in mind of two great works, which the Lord worked out for us, His most unworthy subjects, and still unworthier brothers.

On Ascension-day He ascended up into Heaven, and received gifts for men, even for His enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them; and on Whit-Sunday, He sent down those gifts.  The Spirit of God came down to dwell in the hearts of men, to be the right of everyone who asks for it, white or black, young or old, rich or poor, and never to leave this earth as long as there is a human being on it.  And because we are coming near to these two great days, the Prayer-book, in the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, tries to put us in mind of those days, and to make us ready to ask for the blessings of which they are the yearly signs and witnesses.  The Gospel for last Sunday told us how the Lord told His disciples just before His death, that for a little while they should not see Him; and again a little while and they should see Him, because he was going to the Father, and that they should have great sorrow, but that their sorrow should be turned into joy.  And the Gospel for to-day goes further still, and tells us why He was going away—that He might send to them the Comforter, His Holy Spirit, and that it was expedient—good for them, that He should go away; for that if He did not, the Comforter would not come to them.  Now, in these words, I do not doubt He was speaking of Ascension-day, and of Whit-Sunday; and therefore it is that these Gospels have been chosen to be read before Ascension-day and Whit-Sunday; and in proportion as we attend to these Gospels, and take in the meaning of them, and act accordingly, Ascension-day and Whit-Sunday will be a blessing and a profit to us; and in proportion as we neglect them, or forget them, Ascension-day and Whit-Sunday will be witnesses against our souls at the day of judgment, that the Lord Himself condescended to buy for us with His own blood, blessings unspeakable, and offer them freely unto us, in spite of all our sins, and yet we would have none of them, but preferred our own will to God’s will, and the little which we thought we could get for ourselves, to the unspeakable treasures which God had promised to give us, and turned away from the blessings of His kingdom, to our own foolish pleasure and covetousness, like “the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”

I said that God had promised to us an unspeakable treasure: and so He has; a treasure that will make the poorest and weakest man among us, richer than if he had all the wealth gathered from all the nations of the world, which everyone is admiring now in that Great Exhibition in London, and stronger than if he had all the wisdom which produced that wealth.  Let us see now what it is that God has promised us—and then those to whom God has given ears to hear, and hearts to understand, will see that large as my words may sound, they are no larger than the truth.

Christ said, that if He went away, He would send down the Comforter, the Holy Spirit of God.  The Nicene Creed says, that the Holy Spirit of God is the Lord and Giver of life; and so He is.  He gives life to the earth, to the trees, to the flowers, to the dumb animals, to the bodies and minds of men; all life, all growth, all health, all strength, all beauty, all order, all help and assistance of one thing by another, which you see in the world around you, comes from Him.  He is the Lord and Giver of life; in Him, the earth, the sun and stars, all live and move and have their being.  He is not them, or a part of them, but He gives life to them.  But to men He is more than that—for we men ourselves are more than that, and need more.  We have immortal spirits in us—a reason, a conscience, and a will; strange rights and duties, strange hopes and fears, of which the beasts and the plants know nothing.  We have hearts in us which can love, and feel, and sorrow, and be weak, and sinful, and mistaken; and therefore we want a Comforter.  And the Lord and Giver of life has promised to be our Comforter; and the Father and the Son, from both of whom He proceeds, have promised to send Him to us, to strengthen and comfort us, and give our spirits life and health, and knit us together to each other, and to God, in one common bond of love and fellow-feeling even as He the Spirit knits together the Father and the Son.

I said that we want a Comforter.  If we consider what that word Comforter means, we shall see that we do want a Comforter, and that the only Comforter which can satisfy us for ever and ever, must be He, the very Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of life.

Now Comforter means one who gives comfort; so the meaning of it will depend upon what comfort means.  Our word comfort, comes from two old Latin words, which mean with and to strengthen.  And, therefore, a Comforter means anyone who is with us to strengthen us, and do for us what we could not do for ourselves.  You will see that this is the proper meaning of the word, when you remember what bodily things we call comforts.  You say that a person is comfortable, or lives in comfort, if he has a comfortable income, a comfortable house, comfortable clothes, comfortable food, and so on.  Now all these things, his money, his house, his clothes, his food, are not himself.  They make him stronger and more at ease.  They make his life more pleasant to him.  But they are not him; they are round him, with him, to strengthen him.  So with a person’s mind and feelings; when a man is in sorrow and trouble, he cannot comfort himself.  His friends must come to him and comfort him; talk to him, advise him, show their kind feeling towards him, and in short, be with him to strengthen him in his afflictions.  And if we require comfort for our bodies, and for our minds, my friends, how much more do we for our spirits—our souls, as we call them!  How weak, and ignorant, and self-willed, and perplexed, and sinful they are—surely our souls require a comforter far more than our bodies or our minds do!  And to comfort our spirits, we require a spirit; for we cannot see our own spirits, our own souls, as we can our bodies.  We cannot even tell by our feelings what state they are in.  We may deceive ourselves, and we do deceive ourselves, again and again, and fancy that our souls are strong when they are weak—that they are simple and truthful when they are full of deceit and falsehood—that they are loving God when they are only loving themselves—that they are doing God’s will when they are only doing their own selfish and perverse wills.  No man can take care of his own spirit, much less give his own spirit life; “no man can quicken his own soul,” says David, that is, no man can give his own soul life.  And therefore we must have someone beyond ourselves to give life to our spirits.  We must have someone to teach us the things that we could never find out for ourselves, someone who will put into our hearts the good desires that could never come of themselves.  We must have someone who can change these wills of ours, and make them love what they hate by nature, and make them hate what they love by nature.  For by nature we are selfish.  By nature we are inclined to love ourselves, rather than anyone else; to take care of ourselves, rather than anyone else.  By nature we are inclined to follow our own will, rather than God’s will, to do our own pleasure, rather than follow God’s commandments, and therefore by nature our spirits are dead; for selfishness and self-will are spiritual death.  Spiritual life is love, pity, patience, courage, honesty, truth, justice, humbleness, industry, self-sacrifice, obedience to God, and therefore to those whom God sends to teach and guide us.  That is spiritual life.  That is the life of Jesus Christ; His character, His conduct, was like that—to love, to help, to pity, all around—to give up Himself even to death—to do His Father’s will and not His own.  That was His life.  Because He was the Son of God He did it.  In proportion as we live like Him, we shall he living like sons of God.  In proportion as we live like Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our spirits will be alive.  For he that hath Jesus Christ the Son of God in him, hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life, says St. John.  But who can raise us from the death of sin and selfishness, to the life of righteousness and love?  Who can change us into the likeness of Jesus Christ?  Who can even show us what Jesus Christ’s likeness is, and take the things of Christ and show them to us; so that by seeing what He was, we may see what we should be?  And who, if we have this life in us, will keep it alive in us, and be with us to strengthen us?  Who will give us strength to force the foul and fierce and false thoughts out of our mind, and say, “Get thee behind me, Satan?”  Who will give our spirits life? and who will strengthen that life in us?

Can we do it for ourselves?  Oh! my friends, I pity the man who is so blind and ignorant, who knows so little of himself, upon whom the lessons which his own mistakes, and sins, and failings should have taught him, have been so wasted that he fancies that he can teach and guide himself without any help, and that he can raise his own soul to life, or keep it alive without assistance.  Can his body do without its comforts?  Then how can his spirit?  If he left his house, and threw away his clothes, and refused all help from his fellow-men, and went and lived in the woods like a wild beast, we should call him a madman, because he refused the help and comfort to his body which God has made necessary for him.  But just as great a madman is he who refuses the help and the strengthening which God has made necessary for his spirit—just as great a madman is he who fancies that his soul is any more able than his body is, to live without continual help.  It is just because man is nobler than the beast that he requires help.  The fox in the wood needs no house, no fire; he needs no friends; he needs no comforts, and no comforters, because he is a beast—because he is meant to live and die selfish and alone; therefore God has provided him in himself with all things necessary to keep the poor brute’s selfish life in him for a few short years.  But just because man is nobler than that; just because man is not intended to live selfish and alone; just because his body, and his mind, and his spirit are beautifully and delicately made, and intended for all sorts of wonderful purposes, therefore God has appointed that from the moment he is born to all eternity he cannot live alone; he cannot support himself; he stands in continual need of the assistance of all around him, for body, and soul, and spirit; he needs clothes, which other men must make; houses, which other man must build; food, which other men must produce; he has to get his livelihood by working for others, while others get their livelihood in return by working for him.  As a child he needs his parents to be his comforters, to take care of him in body and mind.  As he grows up he needs the care of others; he cannot exist a day without his fellow-men: he requires school-masters to educate him; books and masters to teach him his trade; and when he has learnt it, and settled himself in life, he requires laws made by other men, perhaps by men who died hundreds of years before he was born, to secure to him his rights and property, to secure to him comforts, and to make him feel comfortable in his station; he needs friends and family to comfort him in sorrow and in joy, to do for him the thousand things which he cannot do for himself.  In proportion as he is alone and friendless he is pitiable and miserable, let him be as rich as Solomon himself.  From the moment, I say, he is born, he needs continual comforts and comforters for his body, and mind, and heart.  And then he fancies that, though his body and his mind cannot exist safely, or grow up healthily, without the continual care and comforting of his fellow-men, that yet his soul, the part of him which is at once the most important and the most in danger; the part of him of which he knows least; the part of him which he understands least; the part of him of which his body and mind cannot take care, because it has to take care of them, can live, and grow, and prosper without any help whatsoever!

And if we cannot strengthen our own souls no man can strengthen them for us.  No man can raise our bodies to life, much less can he raise our souls.  The physician himself cannot cure the sicknesses of our bodies; he can only give us fit medicines, and leave them to cure us by certain laws of nature, which he did not make, and which he cannot alter.  And though the physician can, by much learning, understand men’s bodies somewhat, who can understand men’s souls?  We cannot understand our own souls; we do 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 know what answer will be ready, in some of your minds at least, to all this.  You will be ready to reply, almost angrily, “Of course if everyone was perfect, we should need no laws: but people are not perfect, and you cannot expect them to be.”  My friends, whether or not we expect baptized people, living in a Christian country, to be perfect, God expects them to be perfect; for He has said, by the mouth of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, “Be ye therefore perfect, as our Father which is in heaven is perfect.”  And He has told us what being perfect is like; you may read it for yourselves in His sermon on the Mount; and you may see also that what He commands us to do in that sermon, from the beginning to the end, is the exact opposite and contrary of the ways and rules of this world, which, as I have shown, make burdensome laws necessary to prevent our devouring each other.  Now, do you think that God would have told us to be perfect, if He knew that it was impossible for us?  Do you think that He, the God of truth, would have spoken such a cruel mockery against poor sinful creatures like us, as to command us a duty without giving us the means of fulfilling it?  Do you think that He did not know ten thousand times better than I what I have been just telling you, that laws could not change men’s hearts and wills; that commanding a man to love and like a thing will not make him love and like it; that a man’s heart and spirit must be changed in him from within, and not merely laws and commandments laid on him from without?  Then why has He commanded us to love each other, ay, to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who use us spitefully?  Do you think the Lord meant to make hypocrites of us; to tell us to go about, as some who call themselves religious do go about, with their lips full of meek, and humble, and simple, and loving words, while their hearts are full of pride, and spite, and cunning, and hate, and selfishness, which are all the more deadly for being kept in and plastered over by a smooth outside?  God forbid!  He tells us to love each other, only because He has promised us the spirit of love.  He tells us to be humble, because He can make us humble-hearted.  He tells us to be honest, because He can make us love and delight in honesty.  He tells us to refrain ourselves from foul thoughts as well as from foul actions, because He can take the foul heart out of us, and give us instead the spirit of purity and holiness.  He tells us to lead new lives after the new pattern of Himself, because He can give us new hearts and a new spring of life within us; in short, He bids us behave as sons of God should behave, because, as He said Himself, “If we, being evil, know how to give our children what is good for them, much more will our heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”  If you would be perfect, ask your Father in heaven to make you perfect.  If you feel that your heart is wrong, ask Him to give you a new and a right heart.  If you feel yourselves—as you are, whether you feel it or not—too weak, too ignorant, too selfish, to guide yourselves, ask Him to send His Spirit to guide you; ask for the Spirit from which comes all love, all light, all wisdom, all strength of mind.  Ask for that Spirit, and you shall receive it; seek for it, and you shall find it; knock at the gate of your Father’s treasure-house, and it shall be surely opened to you.

But some of you, perhaps, are saying to yourselves, “How will my being changed and renewed by the Spirit of God, render the laws less burdensome, while the crime and sin around me remain unchanged?  It is others who want to be improved as much, and perhaps more than I do.”  It may be so, my friends; or, again, it may not; those who fancy that others need God’s Spirit more than they do, may be the very persons who need it really the most; those who say they see, may be only proving their blindness by so saying; those who fancy that their souls are rich, and are full of all knowledge, and understand the whole Bible, and want no further teaching, may be, as they were in St. John’s time, just the ones who are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked in soul, and do not know it.  But at all events, if you think others need to be changed by God’s Spirit, pray that God’s Spirit may change them.  For believe me, unless you pray for God’s Spirit for each other, ay, for the whole world, there is no use asking for yourselves.  This, I believe, is one of the reasons, perhaps the chief reason, why the fruits of God’s Spirit are so little seen among us in these days; why our Christianity is become more and more dead, and hollow, and barren, while expensive and intricate laws and taxes are becoming more and more necessary every year; because our religion has become so selfish, because we have been praying for God’s Spirit too little for each other.  Our prayers have become too selfish.  We have been looking for God’s Spirit not so much as a means to enable us to do good to others, but as some sort of mysterious charm which was to keep us ourselves from the punishment of our sins in the next life, or give us a higher place in heaven; and, therefore, St. James’s words have been fulfilled to us, even in our very prayers for God’s Spirit, “Ye ask and have not, because ye ask amiss, to consume it upon your lusts”—save our selfish souls from the pains of hell; to give our selfish souls selfish pleasures and selfish glorification in the world to come: but not to spread God’s kingdom upon earth, not to make us live on earth such lives as Christ lived; a life of love and self-sacrifice, and continual labour for the souls of others.  Therefore it is, that God’s Spirit is not poured out upon us in these days; for God’s Spirit is the spirit of love and brotherhood, which delivers a man from his selfishness; and if we do not desire to be delivered from our selfishness, we do not desire the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God will not be bestowed upon us.  And no man desires to be delivered from his own selfishness, who in his very prayers, when he ought to be thinking least about himself alone, is thinking about himself most of all, and forgetting that he is the member of a family—that all mankind are his brethren—that he can claim nothing for himself to which every sinner around him has an equal right—that nothing is necessary for him, which is not equally necessary for everyone around him; that he has all the world besides himself to pray for, and that his prayers for himself will be heard only according as he prays for all the world beside.  Baptism teaches us this, when it tells us that our old selfish nature is to be washed away, and a new character, after the pattern of Christ, is to live and grow up in us; that from the day we are baptized, to the day of our death, we should live not for ourselves, but for Jesus, in whom was no selfishness; when it teaches us that we are not only children of God, but members of Christ’s Family, and heirs of God’s kingdom, and therefore bound to make common cause with all other members of that Family, to live and labour for the common good of all our fellow-citizens in that kingdom.  The Lord’s prayer teaches us this, when He tells us to pray, not “My Father,” but “Our Father;” not “my soul be saved,” but “Thy kingdom come;” not “give me,” but “give us our daily bread;” not “forgive me,” but “forgive us our trespasses,” and that only as we forgive others; not “lead me not,” but “lead us not into temptation;” not “deliver me,” but “deliver us from evil.”  After that manner the Lord told us to pray; and, in proportion as we pray in that manner, asking for nothing for ourselves which we do not ask for everyone else in the whole world, just so far and no farther will God hear our prayers.  He who asks for God’s Spirit for himself only, and forgets that all the world need it as much as he, is not asking for God’s Spirit at all, and does not know even what God’s Spirit is.  The mystery of Pentecost, too, which came to pass on this day 1818 years ago, teaches us the same thing also.  Those cloven tongues of fire, the tokens of God’s Spirit, fell not upon one man, but upon many; not when they were apart from each other, but when they were together; and what were the fruits of that Spirit in the Apostles?  Did they remain within that upper room, each priding himself upon his own gifts, and trying merely to gain heaven for his own soul?  If they had any such fancies, as they very likely had before the Spirit fell upon them, they had none such afterwards.  The Spirit must have taken all such thoughts from them, and given them a new notion of what it was to be devout and holy: for instead of staying in that upper room, they went forth instantly into the public place to preach in foreign tongues to all the people.  Instead of keeping themselves apart from each other in silence, and fancying, as some have done, and some do now, that they pleased God by being solitary, and melancholy, and selfish—what do we read? the fruit of God’s Spirit was in them; that they and the three thousand souls who were added to them, on the first day of their preaching, “were all together, and had all things common, and sold their possessions, and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need, and continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their bread in gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people.”  Those were the fruits of God’s Spirit in them.  Till we see more of that sort of life and society in England, we shall not be able to pride ourselves on having much of God’s Spirit among us.