The Gospel answers that, and says, ‘All life.’
It tells us that our Lord Christ cared not merely for the life of men’s souls, but for the life of their bodies. That wherever he went he brought with him, not merely health for men’s souls by his teaching, but health for their bodies by his miracles. That when he saw a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, he sighed over him in compassion; and did not think it beneath him to cure that poor man of his infirmity, though it was no such very great one.
For he wished to show men that his heavenly Father cared for them altogether, body as well as soul; that all health and strength whatsoever came from him.
When we hear, therefore, of the Spirit giving life, we are not to fancy that means only some high devout spiritual life, or that God’s Spirit has to do only with a few elect saints. That may be a very pleasant fancy for those who believe themselves to be the elect saints; but the message of the Gospel is far wider and deeper than that, or any other of vain man’s narrow notions. It tells us that life—all life which we can see; all health, strength, beauty, order, use, power of doing good work in God’s earthly world, come from the Spirit of God, just as much as the spiritual life which we cannot see—goodness, amiableness, purity, justice, virtue, power of doing work in God’s heavenly world. This latter is the higher life: and the former the lower, though good and necessary in its place: but the lower, as well as the higher, is life; and comes from the Spirit of God, who gives life and breath to all things.
And now, perhaps, we may see what St. Paul meant, by his being a minister ‘not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.’
Do you not see yet, my friends? Then I will tell you.
If I were to get up in this pulpit, and preach the terrors of the law, and the wrath of God, and hell fire: if I tried to bind heavy burdens on you, and grievous to be borne, crying—You must do this, you must feel that, you must believe the other—while I having fewer temptations and more education than you, touched not those burdens with one of my fingers; if I tried to make out as many sins as I could against you, crying continually, this was wrong, and that was wrong, making you believe that God is always on the watch to catch you tripping, and telling you that the least of your sins deserved endless torment—things which neither I nor any man can find in the Bible, nor in common justice, nor common humanity, nor elsewhere, save in the lying mouth of the great devil himself;—or if I put into your hands books of self-examination (as they are called) full of long lists of sins, frightening poor innocents, and defiling their thoughts and consciences, and making the heart of the righteous sad, whom God has not made sad;—if I, in plain English, had my mouth full of cursing and bitterness, threatening and fault-finding, and distrustful, and disrespectful, and insolent language about you my parishioners: why then I might fancy myself a Christian priest, and a minister of the Gospel, and a very able, and eloquent, and earnest one; and might perhaps gain for myself the credit of being a ‘searching preacher,’ by speaking evil of people who are most of them as good and better than I, and by taking a low, mean, false view of that human nature which God made in his own image, and Christ justified in his own man’s flesh, and soul, and spirit; but instead of being an able minister of the New Covenant, or of the Spirit of God, I should be no such man, but the very opposite.
No. I should be one of those of whom the Psalmist says, ‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness’—and also, ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood.’
To shed blood; to kill with the letter which killeth; and your blood, if I did succeed in killing your souls, would be upon my foolish head.
For such preaching as that does kill.