It may be so. I am the last to deny that our Lord Jesus Christ has (as he certainly could, if he chose) shown himself bodily to certain of his saints (as he showed himself to St. Paul and to St. Stephen) in order to strengthen their faith in some great trial. But if it had been good for us in general to see the Lord in this life, doubt not that we should have seen him. And because we do not see him, be sure that it is not good.
We may say, again, ‘Ah that the Lord Jesus had but remained on earth, what just laws, what peace and prosperity would the world have enjoyed! Wars would have ceased long ago; oppression and injustice would be unknown.’
It may be so. And yet again it may not. Perhaps our Lord’s staying on earth would have had some quite different effect, of which we cannot even dream; and done, not good, but harm. Let us have faith in him. Let us believe in his perfect wisdom, and in his perfect love. Let us believe that he is educating us, as he educated the apostles, by going away. That he is by his absence helping men to help themselves, teaching men to teach themselves, guiding and governing men to guide and govern themselves by that law of liberty which is the law of his Spirit; to love the right, and to do the right, not from fear of punishment, but of their own heart and will.
For remember, he has not left us comfortless. He has not merely given us commands; he has given us the power of understanding, valuing, obeying these commands. For his Spirit is with us; the Spirit of Whitsuntide; the Comforter, the Encourager, the Strengthener, by whom we may both perceive and know what we ought to do, and also have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.
Come to yonder holy table this day, and there claim your share in Christ, who is absent from you in the body, but ever present in the spirit. Come to that table, that you may live by Christ’s life, and learn to love what he commandeth, and desire what he doth promise, that so your hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; namely, in the gracious motions and heavenly inspirations of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son.
SERMON XXI.
ENDURANCE.
i Peter ii. 19.
This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.
This is a great epistle, this epistle for the day, and full of deep lessons. Let us try to learn some of them.
‘What glory is it,’ St. Peter says, ‘if, when ye be beaten for your faults, ye take it patiently?’ What credit is it to a man, if, having broken the law, he submits to be punished? The man who will not do that, the man who resists punishment, is not a civilized man, but a savage and a mere animal. If he will not live under discipline, if he expects to break the law with impunity, he makes himself an outlaw; he puts himself by his rebellion outside the law, and becomes unfit for society, a public enemy of his fellow-men. The first lesson which men have to learn, which even the heathen have learnt, as soon as they have risen above mere savages, is the sacredness of law—the necessity of punishment for those who break the law.
The Jews had this feeling of the sacredness of law. Moses’ divine law had taught it them. The Romans, heathen though they were, had the same feeling—that law was sacred; that men must obey law. And the good thing which they did for the world (though they did it at the expense of bloodshed and cruelty without end) was the bringing all the lawless nations and wild tribes about them under strict law, and drilling them into order and obedience. That it was, which gave the Roman power strength and success for many centuries.