All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

by Charles Kingsley

We have no Cæsar over us in free England, and shall not have, while Queen Victoria, and her children after her reign; but if ever one, or many (which God forbid!), should arise and try to set themselves up as despots over us, I trust we shall know how to render them their due, be they native or foreigner, in the same coin in which our forefathers have always paid tyrants and invaders. No. The only Cæsar which we have to fear—and he is a tyrant who seems ready, nowadays, to oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God, or is worshipped,—patronizing, of course, Religion, as a harmless sanction for order and respectability, but dictating morality, while telling us all day long, with a thousand voices and a thousand pens—“Right is not the eternal law of God. Whatever profits me, whatever I like, whatever I vote—that and that alone is right, and you must do it at your peril.” Do you know who that Cæsar is, my friends? He is called Public Opinion—the huge anonymous idol which we ourselves help to make, and then tremble before the creation of our own cowardice; whereas, if we will but face him, in the fear of God and the faith of Christ, determined to say the thing which is true, and do the thing which is right, we shall find the modern Cæsar but a phantom of our own imagination; a tyrant, indeed, as long as he is feared, but a coward as soon as he is defied.

To that Cæsar let us never bow the knee. Render to him all that he deserves—the homage of common courtesy, common respectability, common charity—not in reverence for his wisdom and strength, but in pity for his ignorance and weakness. But render always to God the things which are God’s. That duty, my good friends, lies on us, as on all mankind still, from our cradle to our grave, and after that through all eternity. Let us go back, or rather, let us go home to the eternal laws of God, which were, ages before we were born, and will be, ages after we are dead—to the everlasting Rock on which we all stand, which is the will and mind of our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, to whom all power is given (as He said Himself) in heaven and on earth. And we have need to do so, for in such times of change as these are, there will always be too many who fancy that changes in society and government change their duty about religion, and are, some of them, sorely puzzled as to their duty to God: and others ready to take advantage of the change to throw off their duty to God, and run into licence and schism and fanaticism.

Now let all people clearly understand, and settle it in their hearts, that no change in Church or in State can change in the least their duty to God and to man. If the world were turned upside down, God would still be where He is, and we where we are—in His presence. Right would still be right, my friends, and wrong wrong, though all the loud voices in the world shouted that wrong is right and right wrong. No change of time, place, society, government, circumstance of any kind, can alter our duty to God, and our power of doing that duty. Whatever the Cæsar of the hour may require us to render to him, what we are bound to render to God remains the same. The two things are different in kind, so different, that they never need interfere with each other.

Even if, which God forbid, the connection between Church and State were dissolved; even if, which God forbid, the Church of England were destroyed for a while—if all Churches were destroyed—yea, if not a place of worship were left for a while in this or any other land; yet even then, I say, we could still render to God the things which are God’s, and offer to Him spiritual sacrifices, more pleasing to Him than the most gorgeous ceremonies which the devotion, and art, and wealth of man ever devised—sacrifices, by virtue of which the Church would arise out of her ruins, like the Jewish Church after the captivity, more pure, more glorious, and more triumphant than ever.

What do I mean? I mean this—that there are three sacrifices which every man, woman, and child can offer, and should offer, however lowly, however uneducated in what the world calls education nowadays. Those they can offer to God, and with them they can worship God, and render to God the things which are God’s, wherever they are, whatever they are doing, whatever be the laws of their country, or the state of society round them. For of these sacrifices our Lord Himself said, The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.

Now what are these spiritual sacrifices?

First and foremost, surely, the sacrifice of repentance, of which it is written, “The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, oh God, Thou wilt not despise.” Surely when we—even the best of us—look back on our past lives; when we recollect, if not great and positive sins and crimes, yet the opportunities which we have neglected; the time, and often the money which we have wasted; the meannesses, the tempers, the spite, the vanity, the selfishness, which we have too often indulged—When we think of what we have been, and what we might have been, what we are, and what we might be; when we measure ourselves, not by the paltry, low, and often impure standard of the world around us, but by the pure, lofty, truly heroical standard of our Lord Jesus Christ—what can we say, but that we are miserable—that is, pitiful and pitiable sinners, who have left undone what we ought to have done, and done that which we ought not to have done, till there is no health in us?

And if you ask me, How is it a sacrifice to God to confess to Him that we are sinners? the answer is simple. It is a sacrifice to God, and a sacrifice well-pleasing to Him, simply because it is The Truth. God wants nothing from us; we can give Him nothing. The wild beasts of the forest are His, and so are the cattle on a thousand hills. If He be hungry He will not tell us for the whole world is His and all that is therein. But what He asks is, that for our own sakes we should see the truth about ourselves, see what we really are, and sacrifice that self-conceit which prevents our seeing ourselves as God our Father sees us. And why does that please God? Simply because it puts us in our right state, and in our right place, where we can begin to become better men, let us be as bad as we may. If a man be a fool, the best possible thing for him is that he should find out that he is a fool, and confess that he is a fool, as the first, and the absolutely necessary first step to becoming wise. Therefore repentance, contrition, humility, is the very foundation-stone of all goodness, virtue, holiness, usefulness; and God desires to see us contrite, simply because He desires to see us good men and good women.

Next, the sacrifice of thankfulness, of which it is written, “I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.” And again—By Christ let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks unto His name. Ah! my friends, if we offered that sacrifice oftener, we should have more seldom need to offer the first sacrifice of repentance. I am astonished when I look at my own heart, by which alone I can judge the hearts of others, to see how unthankful one is. How one takes as a matter of course, without one aspiration of gratitude to our Father in heaven—how one takes, as a matter of course, I say, life, health, reason, freedom, education, comfort, safety, and all the blessings of humanity, and of this favoured land. How we never really feel that these are all God’s undeserved and unearned mercies; and then, how, if we set our hearts on anything which we have not got, forget all that we have already, and begin entreating God to give us something which, if we had, we know not whether it would be good for us; like children crying peevishly for sweets, after their parents have given them all the wholesome food they need. Ah! that we would offer to God more frankly the sacrifice of thanksgiving! So we should do God justice, by confessing all we owe to Him; and so, we must believe, we should please God; for if God be indeed our Father in heaven, as surely as a parent is pleased with the affection and gratitude of his child, so will our Father in heaven be pleased when He sees us love Him, who first loved us.

Next—the sacrifice of righteousness, of which it is written, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” To be good and to do good, even to long to be good and to long to do good, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, is the best and highest sacrifice which any human being can offer to his Father in heaven. For so he honours his father most truly; for he longs and strives to be like that Father; to be good as God is good, holy as God is holy, beneficent and useful even as God is infinitely beneficent and useful; being, in one word, perfect, as his Father in heaven is perfect. This is the best and highest act of worship, the truest devotion. For pure worship (says St James), and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.