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Do you ever have such thoughts as those come over you, my friends, when you are thinking of the Lord Jesus, and praying to him?  If you do, shall I tell you what to say to them when they arise in your minds, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’  Get thee away, thou accusing devil, who art accusing my Lord to me, and trying to make me fancy him less loving, less condescending, less tender, less understanding, than he was when he wept over the grave of Lazarus.  Get thee away, thou lying hypocritical devil, who pretendest to be so very humble and reverent to the godhead of the Lord Jesus, in order that thou mayest make me forget what his godhead is like, forget what God’s likeness is, forget that it was in his manhood, in his man’s words, his man’s thoughts, his man’s actions, that he shewed forth the glory of God, the express image of his person, and fulfilled the blessed words, ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’  Get thee behind me, Satan.  I believe in the good news of Easter Day, and thou shall not rob me of it.  I believe that he who died upon the Cross, rose again the third day, as very and perfect man then and now, as he was when he bled and groaned on Calvary, and shuddered at the fear of death, in the garden of Gethsemane.  Thou shalt not make my Lord’s incarnation, his birth, his passion, his resurrection, all that he did and suffered in those thirty-three years, of none effect to me.  Thou shalt not take from me the blessed message of my Bible, that there is a man in heaven in the midst of the throne of God.  Thou shalt not take from me the blessed message of the Athanasian Creed, that in Christ the manhood is taken into God.  Thou shalt not take from me the blessed message of Holy Communion, which declares that the very human flesh and blood of him who died on the Cross is now eternal in the heavens, and nourishes my body and soul to everlasting life.  Thou shalt not, under pretence of voluntary humility and will-worship, tempt me to go and pray to angels or to saints, or to the Blessed Virgin, because I choose to fancy them more tender, more loving and condescending, more loving, more human, than the Lord himself, who gave himself to death for me.  If the Lord God, the Son of the Father, is not ashamed to be man for ever and ever, I will not be ashamed to think of him as man; to pray to him as man; to believe and be sure that he can be touched with the feeling of my infirmities; to entreat him, by all that he did and suffered as a man, to deliver me from those temptations which he himself has conquered for himself; and to cry to him in the smallest, as well as in the most important matters—‘By the mystery of thy holy incarnation; by thine agony and bloody sweat; by thy cross and passion; by thy precious death and burial; by thy glorious resurrection and ascension;’ by all which thou hast done, and suffered, and conquered, as a man upon this earth of ours, good Lord, deliver us!

SERMON XXXVI. THE BATTLE WITHIN

(Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1858.)

Galatians, v. 16, 17.  This I say then, Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.  For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

Does this text seem to any of you difficult to understand?  It need not be difficult to you; for it does not speak of anything which you do not know.  It speaks of something which you have all felt, which goes on in you every day of your lives.  It speaks of something, certainly, which is very curious, mysterious, difficult to put into words: but what is not curious and mysterious?  The commonest things are usually the most curious?  What is more wonderful than the beating of your heart; your pulse which beats all day long, without your thinking of it?

Just so this battle, this struggle, which St. Paul speaks of in this text, is going on in us all day long, and yet we hardly think of it.  Now what is this battle?  What are these things which are fighting continually in your mind and in mine?  St. Paul calls them the flesh and the spirit.  ‘The flesh,’ he says, ‘lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.’  They pull opposite ways.  One wants to do one thing, and the other the other.  But if so, one of them must be in the right, and the other in the wrong.  Now, St. Paul says, when these two fall out with each other, the spirit is in the right, and the flesh in the wrong.  And therefore, the secret of life is, to walk in the spirit, and so not to fulfil the lusts of the flesh.

But if so, it must be worth our while to find out which is flesh, and which is spirit in us, that we may know the foolish part of us from the wise.  What the flesh is, we may see by looking at a dumb beast, which is all flesh, and has no immortal soul.  It may be very cunning, brave, curiously formed, beautiful, but one thing you will always see, that a beast does what it likes, and only what it likes.  And this is the mark of the flesh, that it does what it likes.  It is selfish, and self-indulgent, cares for nothing but itself, and what it can get for itself.

True, you may raise a dumb beast above that, by taming and training it.  You may teach a horse or dog to do what it does not like, and give it a sense of duty, and as it were awaken a soul in it.  That is very wonderful, that we should be able to do so.  It is a sign that man is made in God’s likeness.  But I cannot stay to speak of that now.  I say our flesh, our animal nature, is selfish and self-indulgent.  I do not say, therefore, that it is bad: God forbid.  God made our bodies and brains, as well as our souls; and God makes nothing bad.  It is blasphemous to say that he does.  No, our bodies as bodies are good; the flesh as flesh is good, when it is in its right place; and its right place is to be servant, not master.  We are not to walk after the flesh, says St. Paul: but the flesh is to walk after the spirit—in English, our bodies are to obey our spirits, our souls.  For man has something higher than body in him.  He has a spirit in him; and it is just having this spirit which makes him a man.  For this spirit cares about higher things than mere gain and comfort.  It can feel pity and mercy, love and generosity, justice and honour; and when a man not only feels them, but obeys them, then he is a true man—a Christian man: but, on the other hand, if a man does not; if he be a man in whom there is no mercy or pity, no generosity, no benevolence, no justice or honour; who cares for nothing and no one but himself, and filling his own stomach and his own pulse, and pleasing his own brute appetites in some way, what should you say of that man?  You would say, he is like a brute beast—and you would say right—you would say just what St. Paul says.  St. Paul would say, that man is fulfilling the lusts of the flesh; and you and St. Paul would mean just the same thing.  Now, St. Paul says, ‘The flesh in us lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.’  And what do we gain by the spirit in us lusting against the flesh, and pulling us the opposite way?  We gain this, St. Paul says, ‘that we cannot do the things that we would.’

Does that seem no great gain to you?  Let me put it a little plainer.  St. Paul means this, and just this, that you may not do whatever you like.  St. Paul thought it the very best thing for a man not to be able to do whatever he liked.  As long, St. Paul says, as a man does whatever he likes, he lives according to the flesh, and is no better than a dumb beast: but as soon as he begins to live according to the spirit, and does not do whatever he likes, but restrains himself, and keeps himself in order, then, and then only, he becomes a true man.

But why not do whatever we like?  Because if we did do so, we should be certain to do wrong.  I do not mean that you and I here like nothing but what is wrong.  God forbid.  I trust the Spirit of God is with our spirits.  But I mean this:—That if you could let a child grow up totally without any control whatsoever, I believe that before that lad was twenty-one he would have qualified himself for the gallows seven times over.  Thank God, that cannot happen in England, because people are better taught, most of them at least; and more, we dare not do what we like, for fear of the law and the policeman.

But, if you knew the lives which savages lead, who have neither law outside them to keep them straight by fear, nor the Spirit of God within them to keep them straight by duty and honour, then you would understand what I mean only too well.

Now St. Paul says,—It is a good thing for a man not to be able to do what he likes.  But there are two ways of keeping him from it.  One is by the law, the other is by the Spirit of God.  The law works on a man from the outside by fear; but the Spirit of God works in a man by honour, by the sense of duty, by making him like and love what is right, and making him see what a beautiful and noble thing right is.

Now St. Paul wants us to restrain ourselves, not from fear of being punished, but because we like to do right.  That is what he means when he says that we are to be led by the Spirit, instead of being under the law.  It is better to be afraid of the law than to do wrong: but it is best of all to do right from the Spirit, and of our own free will.

Am I puzzling you?  I hope not: but, lest I should be, 1 will give you one simple example which ought to make all clear as to the struggle between a man’s flesh and his spirit, and also as to doing right from the Spirit or from law.

Suppose you were a soldier going into battle.  You see your comrades falling around you, disfigured and cut up; you hear their groans and cries; and you are dreadfully afraid: and no shame to you.  It is the common human instinct of self-preservation.  The bravest men have told me that they are afraid at first going into action, and that they cannot get over the feeling.  But what part of you is afraid?  Your flesh, which is afraid of pain, just as a beast is of the whip.  Then your flesh perhaps says, Run away—or at least skulk and hide—take care of yourself.  But next, if you were a coward, the law would come into your mind, and you would say, But I dare not run away; for, if I do, I shall be shot as a deserter, or broke, and drummed out of the army.  So you may go on, even though you are a coward: but that is not courage.  You have not conquered your own fear—you have not conquered yourself—but the law has conquered you.

But, if you are a brave man, as I trust you all are, a higher spirit than your own speaks to your spirit, and makes you say to yourself, I dare not run away; but, more, I cannot run away.  I should like to—but I cannot do the things that I would.  It is my duty to go on; it is right; it is a point of honour with me to my country, my regiment, my Queen, my God, and I must go on.

Then you are walking in the Spirit.  You have conquered yourself, and so are a really brave man.  You have obeyed the Spirit, and you have your reward by feeling inspirited, as we say; you can face death with spirit, and fight with spirit.

But the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh is not ended there.  When you got excited, there would probably come over you the lust of fighting; you would get angry, get mad and lose your self-possession.

There is the flesh waking up again, and saying, Be cruel; kill every one you meet.  And to that the Spirit answers, No; be reasonable and merciful.  Do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, and turn yourself into a raging wild beast.  Your business is not to butcher human beings, but to win a battle.

Well; and even if you have conquered the enemy, you may not have conquered your worst enemy, which is yourself.  For, after having fought bravely, and done your duty, what would the flesh say to you?  I am sure it would say it to me.  What but—Boast: talk of your own valiant deeds and successes; get all the praise and honour you can; and shew how much finer a person you are than any of your comrades.  But what would the Spirit say?—and I trust you would all listen to the Spirit.  The Spirit would say, No; do not boast; do not lower yourself into the likeness of a vain peacock: but be just, and be modest.  Give every man his due; try to praise and recommend every one whom you can; and trust to God to make your doing your duty as clear as the light, and your brave actions as the noonday.

So, you see, all through, a man’s flesh might be lusting, and would be lusting, against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and see, too, how in each case, the flesh is tempting the man to be cowardly, brutal, vain, selfish, and wrong in some way, and the Spirit is striving to make him forget himself, and think of his comrades and his duty.

Now when a man is led by the Spirit, if he is tempted to do wrong, he does not say, I will not do this wrong thing, but I cannot.  I cannot do what you want me.  I like to hear a man say that.  It is a sign that he feels God’s voice in him, which he must obey, whether he likes or not; as Joseph said when he was tempted.  Not, I had rather not, or I dare not: but, How can I do this great wickedness against my master, who has trusted me, and put everything into my hand, and so, by being a treacherous traitor, sin against God?

Now, is this Spirit part of our spirits, or not?  I think we confess ourselves that it is not.  St. Paul says that it is not.  For he says, there is one Spirit—that is, one good Spirit—of whom he speaks as the Spirit; and this, he says, is the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit which inspires the spirits of all noble, Christ-like, God-like men.

In this Spirit there is nothing proud, spiteful, cruel, nothing selfish, false, and mean; nothing violent, loose, debauched.  But he is an altogether good and noble spirit, whose fruit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.  This, he says, is the Spirit of God; and this Spirit he gives to those spirits,—souls, as we call them now,—who desire it, that they may become righteous with the righteousness of Christ, and good with the goodness of God.

And is not this good news?  I say, my friends, if we will look at it aright, there is no better news, no more inspiriting news for men like us, mixed up in the battle of life, and often pulled downward by our own bad passions, and ashamed of ourselves more or less, every day of our lives;—no better news, I say, than this, that what is good and right in us is not our own, but God’s; that our longings after good, our sense of duty and honour, kindliness and charity, are not merely our own likings or fancies: but the voice of God’s almighty and everlasting Spirit.  Good news, indeed!  For if God be for us who can be against us?  If God’s Spirit be with our spirits, they must surely be stronger than our selfish pleasure-loving flesh.  If God himself be labouring to make us good; if he be putting into our hearts good desires; surely he can enable us to bring those desires to good effect: and all that is wanted of us, is to listen to God’s voice within, and do the right like men, whatever pain it may cost us, sure that we, by God’s help, shall win at last in the hardest battle of all battles, the victory over our own selves.

SERMON XXXVII. HYPOCRISY

Matthew xvi. 3.  Oh ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

It will need, I think, some careful thought thoroughly to understand this text.  Our Lord in it calls the Pharisees and Sadducees hypocrites; because, though they could use their common sense and experience to judge of the weather they would not use them to judge of the signs of the times; of what was going to happen to the Jewish nation.

But how was their conduct hypocritical?  Stupid we might call it, or unreasonable: but how hypocritical?  That, I think, we may see better, by considering what the word hypocrite means.

We mean now, generally, by a hypocrite, a man who pretends to be one thing, while he is another; who pretends to be pious and good, while he is leading a profligate life in secret; who pretends to believe certain doctrines, while at heart he disbelieves them; a man, in short, who is a scoundrel, and knows it; but who does not intend others to know it: who deceives others, but does not deceive himself.

My friends, such a man is a hypocrite: but there is another kind of hypocrite, and a more common one by far; and that is, the hypocrite who not only deceives others, but deceives himself likewise; the hypocrite who (as one of the wisest living men puts it) is astonished that you should think him hypocritical.

I do not say which of these two kinds is the worse.  My duty is to judge no man.  I only say that there are such people, and too many of them; that we ourselves are often in danger of becoming such hypocrites; and that this was the sort of people which the Pharisees for the most part were.  Hypocrites who had not only deceived others, but themselves also; who thought themselves perfectly right, honest, and pious; who were therefore astonished and indignant at Christ’s calling them hypocrites.

How did they get into this strange state of mind?  How may we get into it?

Consider first what a hypocrite means.  It means strictly neither more nor less than a play-actor; one who personates different characters on the stage.  That is the one original meaning of the word hypocrite.

Now recollect that a man may personate characters, like a play-actor, and pretend to be what he is not, for two different objects.  He may do it for other people’s sake, or for his own.

1.  For other people’s sake.  As the Pharisees did, when they did all their works to be seen of men; and therefore, naturally, gave their attention as much as possible to outward forms and ceremonies, which could be seen by men.

Now, understand me, before I go a step further, I am not going to speak against forms and ceremonies.  No man less: and, above all, not against the Church forms and ceremonies, which have grown up, gradually and naturally, out of the piety, and experience, and practical common sense of many generations of God’s saints.  Men must have forms and ceremonies to put them in mind of the spiritual truths which they cannot see or handle.  Men cannot get on without them; and those who throw away the Church forms have to invent fresh ones, and less good ones, for themselves.

All, I say, have their forms and ceremonies; and all are in danger, as we churchmen are, of making those forms stand instead of true religion.  In the Church or out of the Church, men are all tempted to have, like the Pharisees, their traditions of the elders, their little rules as to conduct, over and above what the Bible and the Prayer-book have commanded; and all are tempted to be more shocked if those rules are broken, than if really wrong and wicked things are done; and like the Pharisees of old, to be careful in paying tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, the commonest garden herbs, and yet forget the weighty matters of the law, justice, mercy, and judgment.  I have known those who would be really more shocked at seeing a religious man dance or sing, than at hearing him tell a lie.  But I will give no examples, lest I should set you on judging others.  Or rather, the only example which I will give is that of these Pharisees, who have become, by our Lord’s words about them, famous to all time, as hypocrites.

Now you must bear in mind that these Pharisees were not villains and profligates.  Many people, feeling, perhaps, how much of what the Lord had said against the Pharisees would apply to them, have tried to escape from that ugly thought, by making out the Pharisees worse men than our Lord does.  But the fact is, that they cannot be proved to be worse than too many religious people now-a-days.  There were adulterers, secret loose-livers among them.  Are there none now-a-days?  They were covetous.  Are no religious professors covetous now-a-days?  They crept into widows’ houses, and, for a pretence made long prayers.  Does no one do so now?  There would, of course, be among them, as there is among all large religious parties, as there is now, a great deal of inconsistent and bad conduct.  But, on the whole, there is no reason to suppose that the greater number of them were what we should call ill-livers.  In that terrible twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew, in which our Lord denounces the sins of the Scribes and Pharisees, he nowhere accuses them of profligate living; and the Pharisee of whom he tells us in his parable, who went into the Temple to pray, no doubt spoke truth when he boasted of not being as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers.  He trusted in himself that he was righteous.  True.  But whatever that means, it means that he thought that he was righteous, after a fashion, though it proved to be a wrong one.  What our Lord complains of in them is, first, their hardness of heart; their pride in themselves, and their contempt for their fellowmen.  Their very name Pharisee meant that.  It meant separate—they were separate from mankind; a peculiar people; who alone knew the law, with whom alone God was pleased: while the rest of mankind, even of their own countrymen, knew not the law, and were accursed, and doomed to hell.  Ah God, who are we to cast stones at the Pharisees of old, when this is the very thing which you may hear said in England from hundreds of pulpits every Sunday, with the mere difference, that instead of the word law, men put the word gospel.

For this our Lord denounced them; and next, for their hypocrisy, their play-acting, the outward show of religion in which they delighted; trying to dress, and look, and behave differently from other men; doing all their good works to be seen of men; sounding a trumpet before them when they gave away alms; praying standing at the corners of the streets; going in long clothing, making broad their phylacteries, the written texts of Scripture which they sewed to their garments; washing perpetually when they came from the market, or any public place, lest they should have been defiled by the touch of an unclean thing, or person; loving the chief seats in their religious meetings, and the highest places at feasts; and so forth,—full of affectation, vanity, and pride.

I could tell you other stories of their ridiculous affectations: but I shall not.  They would only make you smile: and we could not judge them fairly, not being able to make full allowance for the difference of customs between the Jews and ourselves.  Many of the things which our Lord blames them for, were not nearly so absurd in Judea of old, as they seem to us in England now.  Indeed, no one but our Lord seems to have thought them absurd, or seen through the hollowness and emptiness of them:—as he perhaps sees through, my friends, a great deal which is thought very right in England now.  Making allowance for the difference of the country, and of the times, the Pharisees were perhaps no more affected, for Jews, than many people are now, for Englishmen.  And if it be answered, that though our religious fashions now-a-days are not commanded expressly by the Bible or the Prayer Book, yet they carry out their spirit:—remember, in God’s name, that that was exactly what the Pharisees said, and their excuse for being righteous above what was written; and that they could, and did, quote texts of Scripture for their phylacteries, their washings, and all their other affectations.

Another reason I have for not dwelling too much on these affectations; and it is this.  Because a man may be a play-actor and a self-deceiver in religion, without any of these tricks at all, and without much of the vanity and pride which cause them.  For recollect that a man may act for his own amusement, as well as for other people’s.  Children do so perpetually, and especially when no one is by to listen to them.  They delight in playing at being this person and that, and in living for a while in a day-dream.  Oh let us take care that we do not do the same in our religion!  It is but too easy to do so.  Too easy; and too common.  For is it not play-acting, like any child, to come to this church, and here to feel repentance, feel forgiveness, feel gratitude, feel reverence; and then to go out of church and awake as from a dream, and become our natural selves for the rest of the week, till Sunday comes round again; comforting ourselves meanwhile with the fancy that we had been very religious last Sunday, and intended to be very religious next Sunday likewise?

Would there not be hypocrisy and play-acting in that, my friends?

Now, my dear friends, if we give way to this sort of hypocrisy, we shall get, as too many do, into the habit of living two lives at once, without knowing it.  Outside us will be our religious life of praying, and reading, and talking of good things, and doing good work (as, thank God, many do whose hearts are not altogether right with God, or their eyes single in his sight) good work, which I trust God will not forget in the last day, in spite of all our inconsistencies.  Outside us, I say, will be our religious life: and inside us our own actual life, our own natural character, too often very little changed or improved at all.  So by continually playing at religion, we shall deceive ourselves.  We shall make an entirely wrong estimate of the state of our souls.  We shall fancy that this outward religion of ours is the state of our soul.  And then, if any one tells us that we are play-acting, and hypocrites, we shall be as astonished and indignant as the Pharisees were of old.  We shall make the same mistake as a man would, who because he always wore clothes, should fancy at last that his clothes were himself, part of his own body.  So, I say, many deceive themselves, and are more or less hypocrites to themselves.  They do not, in general, deceive others; they are not, on the whole, hypocrites to their neighbours.  For their neighbours, after a time, see what they cannot see themselves, that they are play-acting; that they are two different people without knowing it: that their religion is a thing apart from their real character.  A hundred signs shew that.  How many there are, for instance, who are, or seem tolerably earnest about religion, and doing good, as long as they are actually in church, or actually talking about religion.  But all the rest of their time, what are they doing?  What are they thinking of?  Mere frivolity and empty amusement.  Idle butterflies, pretending to be industrious bees once in the week.

Others again, will be gentle and generous enough about everything but religion; and as soon as they get upon that, will become fierce, and hard, and narrow at once.  Others again (and this is most common) commit the very same fault as the Pharisees in the text, who could use their common sense to discern the signs of the weather, and yet could not use it to discern the signs of the time, because they were afraid of looking honestly at the true state of public feeling and conscience, and at the danger and ruin into which their religion and their party were sinking.  For about all worldly matters, these men will be as sound-headed and reasonable as they need be: but as soon as they get on religious matters, they become utterly silly and unreasonable; and will talk nonsense, listen to nonsense, and be satisfied with nonsense, such as they would not endure a moment if their own worldly interest, or worldly character, were in question.

But most of all do these poor souls not deceive their neighbours when a time of temptation comes upon them.  For then, alas! it comes out too often that they are of those whom our Lord spoke of, who heard the word gladly, but had no root in themselves, and in time of temptation fell away.  For then, before the storm of some trying temptation, away goes all the play-acting religion; and the man’s true self rises up from underneath into ugly life.  Up rise, perhaps, pride, and self-will, and passion; up rise, perhaps, meanness and love of money; up rise, perhaps, cowardice and falsehood; or up rises foul and gross sin, causing some horrible scandal to religion, and to the name of Christ; while fools look on, and, laughing an evil laugh, cry,—‘These are your high professors.  These are your Pharisees, who were so much better than everybody else.  When they are really tried, it seems they behave no better than we sinners.’

Oh, these are the things which make a clergyman’s heart truly sad.  These are the things which make him long that all were over; that Christ would shortly accomplish the number of his elect, and hasten his kingdom, that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of his holy name, may rest in peace for ever from sin and sinners.

Not that I mean that some of these very people, in spite of all their inconsistency, will not be among that number.  God forbid!  How do we know that?  How do we know that they are one whit worse than we should be in their place?  How do we know, above all, that to have been found out may not be the very best thing that has happened to them since the day that they were born?  How do we know that it may not be God’s gracious medicine to enable them to find themselves out; to make them see themselves in their true colours; to purge them of all their play-acting; and begin all over again, crying to God, not with the lips only, but out of the depth of an honest and a noble shame, as David did of old—Behold I was shapen in wickedness, conceived in sin, and I have found it out at last.  But thou requirest truth in the inward parts, in the very root and ground of the heart, and not merely truth in the head, in the lips, and in the outward behaviour.  Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee: but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.  The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit, as mine is now.  A broken and a contrite heart, ground down by the shame of its own sin, that, O God, thou wilt not despise.