Ask that question of God, my friends, and not of me. Isaiah said that those who hearkened to God diligently should eat what is good. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said the same—that if we seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, all other things should be added to them. He did not mean us to be idle, God forbid! but this He meant, that if we, each in his business and calling, put steadily before ourselves what is right, what God would wish us, His subjects, to be in His Kingdom—if instead of making our first thought in every business we take in hand, “What will suit my interest best, what will raise most money, what will give me most pleasure?” we said to ourselves all day long, “What will be most right, and just, and merciful for us to do; what will be most pleasing to a God who is love and justice itself? what will do most good to my neighbour as well as myself?” then all things would go well with us. Then we should be prosperous and joyful. Then our plans would succeed and our labour bring forth real profit to us, because they would be according to the will of God: we should be fellow-workers with Jesus Christ in the great work of doing good to this poor distracted world, and His help and blessing would be with us.
And if you ask me, how can this come to pass, I must answer, as Isaiah does in this same chapter: “The Lord’s ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, but higher than ours, as the heavens are above the earth.” But if we do turn to God, and repent each man of us of his selfishness, his unfaithfulness, his hard-heartedness, his covetousness, his self-will, his ungodliness—then God’s blessing, as Isaiah says, will come down on us, and spring up among us, we know not how or whence, like the rain and snow, which comes down from heaven and waters the earth, and makes it bud and bring forth to give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall be the Lord’s word, which goes out of His mouth; it will not return to Him void, but will accomplish what He pleases, and prosper in that whereto He sends it. He will teach us and guide us in the right way. He will put His word into the mouths of true teachers to show us our duty. He will pour out His spirit upon us, to make us love our duty. In one way and another, we know not how, we shall be taught what is good for England, good for each parish, good for each family. And wealth, peace, and prosperity for rich and poor will be the fruit of obeying the word of God, and giving up our hearts to be led by His spirit. As it was to be in Judæa, of old, if they repented, so will it be with us. They should go forth with joy and do their work in peace. The hills should break before them into singing, and all the trees of the field should clap their hands; instead of thorns should come up timber-trees: instead of briers, garden-shrubs. The whole cultivation of the country was to improve, and be to the Lord for a name, and a sign for ever that the true way to wealth and prosperity is the way of God, justice, mercy to each other, and obedience to the will of Him who made heaven and earth, trees and fruitful fields, rain and sunshine, and gives the blessings of them freely to His children of mankind, in proportion as they look up to Him as a loving Father, and return to him day by day, with childlike repentance, and full desire to amend their lives according to His holy word.
XXIII.
THE LOVE OF CHRIST.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead. And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.—2 Cor. v. 14, 15.
What is the use of sermons?—what is the use of books? Here are hundreds and thousands of people hearing weekly and daily what is right, and how many do what is right?—much less love what is right? What can be the reason of this, that men should know the better and choose the worse? What motive can one find out?—what reason or argument can one put before people, to make them do their duty? How can one stir them up to conquer themselves; to conquer their own love of pleasure, laziness, cowardice, conceit, above all their own selfishness, and do simply what is right, morning, noon, and night? That is a question worth asking and considering, for there ought to be some use in sermons and in books; and there ought to be some use in every one of us too. Woe to the man who is of no use! The Lord have mercy on his soul; for he needs it! It is, indeed, worth his while to take any trouble which will teach him a motive for being useful; in plain words, stir him up to do his duty, to do his rights; for a man’s rights are not, as the world thinks, what is right others should do to him, but what is right he should do to others. Our duty is our right, the only thing which is right for us. What motive will constrain us, that is, bind us, and force us to do that?
Will self-interest? Will a man do right because you tell him it is his interest, it will pay him to do it? Look round you and see.—The drunkard knows that drinking will ruin him, and yet he gets drunk. The spendthrift knows that extravagance will ruin him, and yet he throws away his money still. The idler knows that he is wasting his only chance for all eternity, and yet he puts the thought out of his head, and goes on idling. The cheat knows that he is in danger of being almost certainly found out sooner or later; he knows too that he is burdening his own conscience with the curse of inward shame and self-contempt; and yet he goes on cheating. The hard master knows, or ought to know (for there is quite enough to prove it to him) that it would pay him better in the long run to be more merciful, and less covetous; that by grinding those whom he employs down to the last farthing, he degrades them till they become burdens on him and curses to him; that what he gains by high prices, he will lose in the long run by bad debts; that what he saves in low wages, he will pay in extra poor-rates; and that even if he does make money out of the flesh and bones of those beneath him, that money ill gotten is sure to be ill spent, that there is a curse on it, that it brings a curse in the gnawing of a man’s own conscience, and a curse too in the way it flows away from his family as fast as it flowed to them. “He that by usury and unjust gain increases his wealth, shall gather for him that will pity the poor.” So said Solomon of old. And men who worship Mammon find it come true daily, and see that, taking all things together, a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses, and that those who make such haste to be rich, fall, as the apostle says, “into temptation and a snare, and pierce themselves through with many sorrows.” Such a man sees his neighbours making money, and making themselves more unhappy, anxious, discontented by it; he sees, in short, that it is not his interest to do nothing but make money and save money: and yet in spite of that, he thinks of nothing else. Self-interest cannot keep him from that sin. I do not believe that self-interest ever kept any man from any sin, though it may keep him from many an imprudence. Self-interest may make many a man respectable, but whom did it ever make good? You may as well make house-walls of paper, or take a rush for a walking-stick, as take self-interest to keep you upright, or even prudent. The first shake—and the rush bends, and the paper wall breaks, and a man’s selfish prudence is blown to the winds. Let pleasure tempt him, or ambition, or the lust of making money by speculation; let him take a spite against anyone; let him get into a passion; let his pride be hurt; and he will do the maddest things, which he knows to be entirely contrary to his own interest, just to gratify the fancy of the moment. Those who call themselves philosophers, and fancy that men’s self-interest, if they can only feel it strong enough, would make all men just and merciful to each other, know as little of human nature as they do of God or the devil.
What will make a man to do his duty? Will the hope of heaven? That depends very much upon what you mean by heaven. But what people commonly mean by going to heaven, is—not going to hell. They believe that they must go to either one place or the other. They would much sooner of course stay on earth for ever, because their treasure is here, and their heart too. But that cannot be, and as they have no wish to go to hell, they take up with heaven instead, by way of making the best of a bad matter.
I ask you solemnly, my friends, each one of you, which would you sooner do—stay here on earth, or go to heaven? You need not answer me. I am afraid many of you would not dare answer me as you really felt, because you would be ashamed of not liking to go to heaven. But answer God. Answer yourselves in the sight of God. When you keep yourselves back from doing a wrong thing, because you know it is wrong, is it for love of heaven, or for mere fear of being punished in hell? Some of you will answer boldly at once: “For neither one nor the other; when we keep from wrong, it is because we hate and despise what is wrong: when we do right it is because it is right and we ought to do it. We can’t explain it, but there is something in us which tells us we ought to do right.” Very good, my friends, I shall have a word to say to you presently; but in the meantime there are some others who have been saying to themselves: “Well, I know we do right because we are afraid of being punished if we do not do it, but what of that? at all events we get the right thing done, and leave the wrong thing undone, and what more do you want? Why torment us with disagreeable questions as to why we do it?”
Now, my friends, to make the matter simpler, I will take you at your words, for the sake of argument. Suppose you do avoid sin from the fear of hell, does that make what you do right? Does that make you right? Does that make your heart right? It is a great blessing to a man’s neighbours, certainly, if he is kept from doing wrong any how—by the fear of hell, or fear of jail, or fear of shame, or fear of ghosts if you like, or any other cowardly and foolish motive—a great blessing to a man’s neighbours: but no blessing, that I can see, to the man himself. He is just the same; his heart is not changed; his heart is no more right in the sight of God, or in the sight of any man of common sense either, than it would be if he did the wrong thing, which he loves and dare not do. You feel that yourselves about other people. You will say “That man has a bad heart, for all his respectable outside. He would be a rogue if he dared, and therefore he is a rogue.” Just so, I say, my friends, take care lest God should say of you, “He would be a sinner if he dared, and therefore he is a sinner.”
How can the hope of heaven, or the fear of hell, make a man do right? The right thing, the true thing for a man, is to be loving, and do loving things; and can fear of hell do that, or hope of heaven either? Can a man make himself affectionate to his children because he fancies he shall be punished if he is not so, and rewarded if he is so? Will the hope of heaven send men out to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, visit the sick, preach the gospel to the poor?—The Papists say it will. I say it will not. I believe that even in those who do these things from hope of heaven and fear of hell, there is some holier, nobler, more spiritual motive, than such everlasting selfishness, such perfect hypocrisy, as to do loving works for others, for the sake of one’s own self-love.