Well, my dear friends, God shall judge you, not I. If little is given to a man little is required of him. But not nothing at all; because more than nothing was given him. A little is given to every man; and, therefore, a little is required of every man. And so, he who knew not his Master’s will shall be beaten with few stripes. But he will be beaten with some stripes, because he ought to have known something, at least of his Master’s will. If you were dumb animals, which can only follow their own lusts and passions, and must be what nature has made them, then your excuse would be good enough; but your excuse is not good now, just because you are men and women, and not dumb beasts, and, therefore, can rise above your natures, and conquer your lusts and passions, as they cannot, and can do what you do not like, because, though you dislike it, you know that it is right. And, therefore, God does not take that excuse which sinners make, that they have had no teaching. But what does he do to them?
Suppose, now, that you had a dog which would not be taught, or broken in, or cured of biting, or made useful, or bearable in any way, what would you do to that dog? I suppose that you would kill it; you would say: “It is an ill-conditioned animal, and there is no making it any better; so the only thing is to put it out of the way, and not let it eat food which might be better spent.” Now, does God deal so with sinners? When young people rush headlong into sin, and become a nuisance to themselves and their neighbours, does God kill them at once, that better men may step into their place? No. And why? Just because they are not dumb animals, which cannot be made better, but God’s children, who can be made better. If there were really no hope of a sinner repenting and amending, I think God would not leave him long alive to cumber the ground. But there is hope for every one; because God the Father loves all; the loving heart of the Lord Jesus Christ yearns after all; the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from the Father and the Son, strives with the hearts of all; therefore God, in His patience and tender mercy, tries to bring his foolish children to their senses. And how? Often in the very same way, in which Ezekiel says He tried to bring the Jews to their senses, by letting them go on in the road of sin, till they see what an ugly pit that same road ends in. If your child would not believe you when you warned and assured him that the fire would burn him, would it not be the very best way of bringing him to his senses, to tell him: “Very well; go your own way; put your hand into the fire, and see what comes of it; you will not believe me; you will believe your own feelings, when your hand is burnt.” So did the Lord to those rebellious Jews when they would go after their fathers’ sins. He gave them statutes which were not good, and judgments by which they could not live, to the end that they might know that He was the Lord. God did not make them commit any sins. God forbid! He only took away His Spirit, His light and teaching, from them, and let them go on in the light of their own foolish and bewildered hearts, till their sin bred misery and shame to them, and they were filled with the fruit of their own devices. Then, after all their wealth was gone, and their land was wasted by cruel enemies, and they themselves were carried away captive into Babylon, they began to awake, and say to themselves: “We were wrong after all, and the Lord was right. He knew what was really good for us better than we did. We thought that we could do without Him, disobey Him. But He is the Lord after all. He has been too strong for us; He has punished us. If we had listened to His warnings years ago, we might have been saved all this misery.”
Ah, how many a poor foolish creature, in misery and shame, with a guilty conscience and a sad heart, sits down, like the prodigal son, among the swinish bad company into which his sins have brought him, longing to fill his belly with the husks which the swine eat! but he cannot. He tries to forget his sorrow by drinking, by bad company, by gambling, by gossiping, like the fools around him: but he cannot. He finds no more pleasure in sin. He is sick and tired of it. He has had enough of it and too much. He is miserable, and he hardly knows why. But miserable he is. There is a longing, and craving, and hunger at his heart after something better; at least after something different. Then he begins to remember his heavenly Father’s house. Old words which he learnt at his mother’s knee, good old words out of his Catechism and his Bible, start up strangely in his mind. He had forgotten them, laughed at them, perhaps, in his wild days. But now they come up, he does not know where from, like beautiful ghosts gliding in. And he is ashamed of them; they reproach him, the dear old lessons; and yet they seem pleasant to him, though they make him blush. And at last he says to himself: “Would God that I were a little child again; once more an innocent little child at my mother’s knee! I thought myself clever and cunning. I thought I could go my own way and enjoy myself. But I cannot. Perhaps I have been a fool; and the old Sunday books were right after all. At least I am miserable. I thought I was my own master. But perhaps He about whom I used to read in the Sunday books is my Master after all. At least I am not my own master; I am a slave. Perhaps I have been fighting against Him, against the Lord God, all this time, and now He has shown me that He is the stronger of the two. . . . ” And so the poor man learns in trouble and shame to know, like the Jews of old, who is the Lord.
And when the Lord has drawn a man thus far, does He stop? Not so. He does not leave His work half done. If the work is half done, it is that we stop, not that He stops. Whosoever comes to Him, howsoever confusedly, or clumsily, or even lazily they may come, He will in no wise cast out. He may afflict them still more to cure that confusion and laziness; but He is a physician who never sends a willing patient away, or keeps him waiting for a single hour.
How then does the Lord deal with such a man? Does He drive him further? Not if he will go without being driven. You would call it cruel to drive a beast on with blows, when it was willing to be led peaceably. And be sure God is not more cruel than man. As soon as we are willing to be led, He will take His rod off from us, and lead us tenderly enough. For I have known God do this to a man, and a sinful man as ever trod this earth. I have known such a man brought into utter misery and shame of heart, and heavy affliction in outward matters, till his spirit was utterly broken, and he was ready to say: “I am a beast and a fool. I am not worth the bread I eat. Let me lie down and die.” And then, when the Lord had driven that man so far, I have seen, I who speak to you now, how the Lord turned and looked on that man as he turned and looked on Peter, and brought his poor soul to life again, as He brought Peter’s, by a loving smile, and not an angry frown. I have seen the Lord heap that man with all manner of unexpected blessings, and pay him back sevenfold for all his affliction, and raise him up, body and soul, and satisfy him with good things, so that his youth was renewed like the eagle’s. And so the man’s conversion to God, though it was begun by God’s chastisements and afflictions, was brought to perfection by God’s mercy and bounty; and it happened to that man, as Ezekiel prophesied that it would happen to the Jews, that not fear and dread, but honour, gratitude, and that noble shame of which no man need be ashamed, brought him home to God at last. “And you shall remember your ways, and all your doings wherein ye have been defiled: and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evils which you have committed. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have wrought with you for my name’s sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O house of Israel, saith the Lord God.”
You see that God’s mercy to them would not make them conceited or careless. It would increase their shame and confusion when they found out what sort of a Lord He was against whom they had been rebellious; long-suffering and of tender mercy, returning good for evil to His disobedient children. That feeling would awake in them more shame and more confusion than ever: but it would be a noble shame, a happy confusion, and tears of joy and gratitude, not of bitterness. Such a shame, such a confusion, such tears, as the blessed Magdalene’s when she knelt at the Lord’s feet, and found that, instead of bating her and thrusting her away for all her sins, He told her to go in peace, pardoned and happy. Then she knew the Lord; she found out His character—His name; for she found out that His name was love. Oh, my friends, this is the great secret; the only knowledge worth living for, because it is the only knowledge which will enable you to live worthily—to know the Lord. That knowledge will enable you to live a life which will last, and grow, and prosper for ever, beyond the grave, and death, and judgment, and eternities of eternities. As the Lord Himself said, when He was upon earth, “This is eternal life, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Therefore there is no use my warning you against sin, and telling you, do not do this, and do not do that, unless I tell you at the same time who is the Lord. For till you know that The Good God is the Lord, you will have no real, sound, heartfelt reason for giving up your sins; and what is more, you will not be able to give them up. You may alter your sort of sins from fear of this and that; but the root of sin will be there still; and if it cannot bear one sort of fruit it will bear another. If you dare not drink or riot, you may become covetous and griping; if you dare not give way to young men’s sins, you will take to old men’s sins instead; if you dare not commit open sins you will commit secret ones in your thoughts. Sin is much too stout a plant to be kept from bearing some sort of fruit. As long as it is not rooted up the root will breed death in you of some sort or other; and the only feeling which can root up sin is to know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is your Lord, and that your Lord condescended to die upon the cross for you; that you must be the Lord’s, and are not your own, but bought with the price of His most precious blood, that you may glorify God with your body and your soul, which are His.
Just so, the blessed St. Augustine found that he could never conquer his own sins by arguing with himself, or by any other means, till he got to know God, and to see that God was the Lord. And when his spirit was utterly broken; when he saw himself, in spite of all his wonderful cleverness and learning, to have been a fool and blind all along, though people round him were flattering him, and running after him to hear his learning; then the old words which he learnt at his mother’s knee came up in his mind, and he knew that God was the Lord after all, and that God had been watching him, guiding him, letting him go wrong only to show him the folly of going wrong, caring for him even when He left him to himself and his sins, and the sad ways of his sins; bearing with him, pleading with his conscience, alluring him back to the only true happiness, as a loving father with a rebellious and self-willed child. And then, when St. Augustine had found out at last that God was his Lord, who had been taking the charge of him all through his heathen youth, he became a changed man. He was able to conquer his sins; for God conquered them for him. He was able to give up the profligate life which he had been leading; not from fear of punishment, but from the Spirit of God—the spirit of gratitude, honour, trust, and love toward God, which made him abide in God, and God abide in him. To that blessed state may God of His great mercy bring us all. To it He will bring us all unless we rebel and set up our foolish and selfish will against His loving and wise will. And if He does bring us to it, it is little matter whether He brings us to it through joy or through sorrow, through honour or through shame, through the garden of Eden, or through the valley of the shadow of death. For, my dear friends, what matter how bitter the medicine is, if it does but save our lives?
XLVII.
THE MARRIAGE AT CANA.
There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there. And both Jesus was called, and His disciples, to the marriage.—John ii. 1, 2.
It is, I think, in the first place, an important, as well as a pleasant thing, to know that the Lord’s glory, as St. Paul says, was first shown forth at a wedding, at a feast. Not at a time of sorrow, but of joy. Not about some strange affliction or disease, such as is the lot of very few, but about a marriage, that which happens in the ordinary lot of all mankind. Not in any fearful judgment or destruction of sinners, but in blessing wedlock, by which, whether among saints or sinners, mankind is increased. Not by helping some great philosopher to think more deeply, or some great saint to perform more wonderful acts of holiness, but in giving the simple pleasure of wine to simple commonplace people, of whom we neither read that they were rich or righteous. We do not even read whether the master of the feast ever found out that Jesus had worked a miracle, or whether any of the company ever believed in Him, on the strength of that miracle, except His mother and the disciples, and the servants, who were probably the poor slaves of people in a low or middling class of life. But that is the way of the Lord. He is no respecter of persons. Rich and poor are alike in His sight; and the poor need Him most, and therefore He began his work with the poor in Cana, as He did in St. James’s time, when the poor of this world were rich in faith, and the rich of this world were oppressors and taskmasters. So He does in every age. Though no one else cares for the poor, He cares for them. With their hearts He begins His work, even as He did in England sixty years ago, by the preaching of Whitfield and Wesley. Do you wish to know if anything is the Lord’s work? See if it is a work among the poor. Do you wish to know whether any preaching is the true gospel of the Lord? See whether it is a gospel, a good news to the poor. I know no other test than that. By doing that, by preaching the gospel to the poor, by working miracles for the poor, He has showed forth His glory, and proved Himself the true, and just, and loving Lord of all.