Let us bear in mind, even though we cannot copy, the dying words of Muhammed the Arab, who, when he found his end draw near, went forth into the market-place, and asked before all the people, ‘Was there any man whom he had wronged? If so, his own back should bear the stripes. Was there any man to whom he owed money? and he should be paid.’ ‘Yes,’ cried some one, ‘those coins which you borrowed from me on such a day.’ ‘Pay him,’ said Muhammed: ‘better to be shamed now on earth, than shamed in the day of judgment.’ He was a heathen. And shall we Christians be worse than he? Then let us pray for the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, which will make us faithful and true; so that no man may be the worse for us in this life; no man may have to say of us, when he hears that we lie dying, ‘He wronged me, he cheated me, he lied to me; God forgive him:’ but that our friends, as they carry us to the grave, may feel that they have lost one whom they could respect and trust; and say, as the earth rattles in upon the coffin lid, ‘There lies an honest man.’
SERMON XXV. THE SIGHS OF CHRIST
(Twelfth Sunday after Trinity.)
Mark vii. 34, 35. And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.
Why did the Lord Jesus look up to heaven? And why, too, did he sigh?
He looked up to heaven, we may believe, because he looked to God the Father; to God, of whom the glorious collect tells us, that he is more ready to hear than we to pray, and is wont to give more than either we desire or deserve. He looked up to the Father, who is the fountain of life, of order, of health, of usefulness; who hates all death, disease, infirmity; who wills that none should perish, body or soul.
My friends, think of these cheering words; and try to look up to God the Father, as Christ looked up. Look up to him I say, if but once, as a Father. Not merely as your Father, but as the Father of the spirits of all flesh; the good God who creates, and delights to create; who orders all worlds and heavens with perfect wisdom, perfect power, perfect justice, perfect love; and peoples them with immortal souls and spirits, that they may be useful, happy, blessed, in keeping his laws, and doing the work which he has ordained for them. Oh think, if but once, of God the perfect and all-loving Father; and then you will know why Jesus looked up to him.
And you will see, too, why Jesus sighed. He sighed because he was one with the Father. He sighed because he had the mind of God. Because God, the Lord of health and order, hates disease and disorder. Because God, the Lord of bliss and happiness, hates misery and sorrow. Because God made the world at first very good; and, behold, by man’s sin, it has become bad.
Why did he sigh? Surely, also, from pity for the poor man. His infirmity was no such great one; he had an impediment in his speech, and with it, as many are apt to have, deafness also: but it was an infirmity. It was a disease. It was something out of order, something gone wrong in God’s world; and as such, Christ could not abide it; he grieved over it. He sighed because there was sickness in a world where there ought to be nothing but health, and sorrow where there ought to be nothing but happiness. He sighed, because man had brought this sickness and sorrow on himself by sin; for, remember, man alone is subject to disease. The wild animal in the wood, the bird upon the tree, seldom or never know what sickness is; seldom or never are stunted or deformed. They live according to their nature, healthy and happy, and die in a good old age. While man—Why should I talk of what man is, of how far man is fallen from what God the Father meant him to be, while one hundred thousand corpses of brave men are now fattening the plains of Italy for next year’s crop; while even in our favoured land, we find at every turn prisons and reformatories, lunatic asylums, hospitals for numberless kinds of horrible diseases; sickness, weakness, and death all round us? Only look up yonder to Windsor Forest, and see the vast building now in progress there before your eyes, for lunatic convicts—the most miserable, perhaps, and pitiable of human beings,—and let that building be a sign to you, how far man is fallen, and what cause Jesus had to sigh, and has to sigh still, over the miseries of fallen man.
Yes, my friends, not without reason did the old heathen poet, who had no sure and certain hope of everlasting life, say, that man was the most wretched of all the beasts of the field; not without reason did St. Paul say, that if in this life only we have hope in Christ, then the Christian man, who dare not indulge his passions and appetites, dare not say, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die: but must curb himself, and give up his own pleasure and his own fancy at every turn, is of all men most miserable.