Town and Country Sermons

by Charles Kingsley

But, as for Christian people, this I will tell you, that unless you hold true doctrines, you will not lead good lives. My experience is, that people are often wrong, when they say false doctrine is a mistake of the head and not of the heart. I believe false doctrine is very often not bred in the head at all, but in the heart, in the very bottom of a man’s soul; that it rises out of his heart into his head; and that if his heart was right with God, he would begin at once to have clearer and truer notions of the true Christian faith. I do not say that it is always so; God forbid! But I do say that it is often so, because I see it so; because I see every day false doctrines about God making men lead bad lives, and commit actual sins; take God’s name in vain, dishonour their fathers and mothers, lie, cheat, bear false witness against their neighbours, and covet other men’s goods. I say, I see it, and I must believe my own eyes and ears; and when I do see it, I begin to understand the text which says, ‘This is eternal life, to know thee, the only God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent;’ and I begin to understand the Athanasian Creed, which says, that if a ‘man does not believe rightly the name of God, and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, he will perish everlastingly; his soul will decay more and more, become more and more weak, unhealthy and corrupt, till he perishes everlastingly. And whatsoever that may mean, it must mean something most awful and terrible, worse than all the evil which ever happened to us since we were born.

There is a very serious example of this, to my mind, in what is called the Greek Church; the Greeks and Russians. They split off from the rest of Christ’s Catholic Church, many hundred years ago, because they would not hold with the rest of the Church that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father. They said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone. Now that may seem a slight matter of words: but I cannot help thinking that it has been a very solemn matter of practice with them. It seems to me—God forgive me if I am judging them hardly!—that because they denied that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son, they forgot that he was the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, by whom he says for ever, ‘Father, not my will but thine be done!’ and so they forgot that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Sonship, the Spirit of adoption, which must proceed and come from Christ to us, that we may call God our Father, and say with Christ, ‘Father, I come to do thy will;’ and so, in course of time, they seem to have forgotten that Christian men were in any real practical sense, God’s children; and when people forget that they are God’s children, they forget soon enough to behave like God’s children, and to live righteous and Godlike lives.

I give you this as an example of what I mean; how not believing rightly the Athanasian Creed may make a man lead a bad life.

Now let me give an example nearer home; one which has to do with you and me. God grant that we may all lay it to heart. You read, in the Athanasian Creed, that we are not to confound the persons of the Trinity, nor divide the substance; but to believe that such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. Now there is little fear of our confounding the persons, as some people used to do in old times; but there is great fear of our dividing God’s substance, parting God’s substance, that is, fancying that God is made up of different parts, and not perfectly one God.

For people are very apt to talk as if God’s love and God’s justice were two different things, different parts of God; as if his justice had to be satisfied in one way, and his love in another; as if his justice wished to destroy sinners, and his love wished to save sinners; and so they talk as if there was a division in God; as if different attributes of God were pulling two different ways, and that God has parts of which one desires to do one thing, and one part another. It sounds shocking, I am sure you will feel, when I put it into plain English. I wish it to sound shocking. I wish you to feel how wrong and heretical it is; that you may keep clear of such notions, and believe the orthodox faith, that God has neither parts nor passions, nor division in his substance at all, but is absolutely and substantially one; and that, therefore, his love and his justice are the very same things; his justice, however severe it may seem, is perfect love and kindness; and his love is no indulgence, but perfect justice.

But you may say—Very likely that is true; but why need we take so much care to believe it?

It is always worth while to know what is true. You are children of the Light, and of the Truth, adopted by the God of truth, that you may know the truth and do it, and no mistake or falsehood can, by any possibility, do anything for you, but harm you. Always, therefore, try to find out and believe what is true concerning everything; and, above all, concerning God, on whom all depend, in whom you live, and move, and have your being. For all things in heaven and earth depend on God; and, therefore, if you have wrong notions about God, you will sooner or later have wrong notions about everything else.

For see, now, how this false notion of God’s justice and love being different things, leads people into a worse error still. A man goes on to fancy, that while God the Son is full of love towards sinners, God the Father is (or at least was once) only full of justice and wrath against sinners; but if a man thinks that God the Son loves him better than God the Father does, then, of course, he will love God the Son better than he loves God the Father. He will think of Christ the Son with pleasure and gratitude, because he says to himself, Christ loves me, cares for me; I can have pity and tenderness from him, if I do wrong. While of God the Father he thinks only with dread and secret dislike. Thus, from dividing the substance, he has been led on to confound the persons, imputing to the Son alone that which is equally true of the Father, till he comes (as I have known men do) to make for himself, as it were, a Heavenly Father of Jesus Christ the Son.

Now, my dear friends, it does seem to me, that if anything can grieve the Spirit of Christ, and the sacred heart of Jesus, this is the way to grieve him. Oh read your Bibles, and you will see this, that whatever Jesus came down on earth for, it certainly was not to make men love him better than they love the Father, and honour him more than they honour the Father, and rob the Father of his glory, to give it to Jesus. What did the Lord Jesus say himself? That he did not come to seek his own honour, or shew forth his own glory, or do his own will: but his Father’s honour, his Father’s glory, his Father’s will. Though he was equal with the Father, as touching his Godhead, yet he disguised himself, if I may so say, and took on him the form of a servant, and was despised and rejected of men. Why! That men might honour his Father rather than him. That men might not be so dazzled by his glory, as to forget his Father’s glory. Therefore he bade his apostles, while he was on earth, tell no man that he was the Christ. Therefore, when he worked his work of love and mercy, he took care to tell the Jews that they were not his works, but the works of his Father who sent him; that he was not doing his own will, but his Father’s. Therefore he was always preaching of the Father in heaven, and holding him up to men as the perfection of all love and goodness and glory: and only once or twice, it seems, when he was compelled, as it were, for very truth’s sake, did he say openly who he was, and claim his co-equal and co-eternal glory, saying, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’

And, after all this, if anything can grieve him now, must it not grieve him to see men fancying that he is better than his Father is, more loving and merciful than his Father is, more worthy of our trust, and faith, and adoration, and gratitude than his Father is?—His Father, for whose honour he was jealous with a divine jealousy—His Father, who, he knows well, loved the world which shrinks from him so well that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him up for it.