Westminster Sermons / with a Preface

by Charles Kingsley

was in all unknown matters to take refuge in God. The words were meant as a sneer. I, as a Christian, glory in them; and ask, Where else should man take refuge, save in God? When man sees anything—as he must see hundreds of things—which he cannot account for; things mysterious, and seemingly beyond the power of his mind to explain: what safer, what wiser word can he say than—This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? God understands it: though I do not. Be it what it may, it is a work of God. From God it comes: by God it is ruled and ordered. That at least I know: and let that be enough for me. And so we may say of life. When we are awed, and all but terrified, by the unfathomable mystery of life, we can at least take refuge in God. And if we be wise, we shall take refuge in God. Whatever we can or cannot know about it, this we know; that it is the gift of God. So thought the old Jewish Prophets and Psalmists; and spoke of a breath of God, a vapour, a Spirit of God, which breathed life into all things. It was but a figure of speech, of course: but if a better one has yet been found, let the words in which it has been written or spoken be shewn to me. For to me, at least, they are yet unknown. I have read, as yet, no wiser words about the matter than those of the old Jewish sages, who told how, at the making of the world, the Spirit, or breath, of God moved on the face of the waters, quickening all things to life; or how God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath or spirit of life, and man became a living soul.

And in the same temper does that true philosopher and truly inspired Psalmist, who wrote the 139th Psalm, speak of the Spirit or breath of God. He considers his own body: how fearfully and wonderfully it is made; how God did see his substance, yet being imperfect; and in God’s book were all his members written, which day by day were fashioned, while as yet there was none of them. “Thou,” he says, “O God, hast fashioned me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me; I cannot attain to it.” “But,” he says to himself, “there is One Who has attained to it; Who does know; for He has done it all, and is doing it still: and that is God and the Spirit of God. Whither”—he asks—“shall I go then from God’s Spirit? Whither shall I flee from God’s presence?” And so he sees by faith—and by the highest reason likewise—The Spirit of God, as a living, thinking, acting being, who quickens and shapes, and orders, not his mortal body merely, but all things; giving life, law, and form to all created things, from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell; and ready to lead him and hold him, if he took the wings of the morning and fled into the uttermost parts of the sea.

And so speaks again he who wrote the 104th Psalm, and the text which I have chosen. To him, too, the mystery of death, and still more the mystery of life, could be explained only by faith in God, and in the Spirit of God. If things died, it was because God took away their breath, and therefore they returned to their dust. And if things lived, it was because the Spirit of

God, breathed forth, and proceeding, from God, gave them life. He pictured to himself, I dare to fancy, what we may picture to ourselves—for such places have often been, and are now, in this world—some new and barren land, even as the very gravel on which we stand was once, just risen from the icy sea, all waste and lifeless, without a growing weed, an insect, even a moss. Then, gradually, seeds float thither across the sea, or are wafted by the winds, and grow; and after them come insects; then birds; then trees grow up; and larger animals arrive to feed beneath their shade; till the once barren land has become fertile and rich with life, and the face of the earth is renewed. But by what? “God,” says the Psalmist, “has renewed the face of the earth.” True, the seeds, the animals came by natural causes: but who was the Cause of those causes? Who sent the things thither, save God? And who gave them life? Who kept the life in floating seeds, in flying spores? Who made that life, when they reached the barren shore, grow and thrive in each after their kind? Who, but the Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of life? God let His Spirit proceed and go forth from Himself upon them; and they were made; and so He renewed the face of the earth.

That, my good friends, is not only according to Scripture, but according to true philosophy. Men are slow to believe it now: and no wonder. They have been always slow to believe in the living God; and have made themselves instead dead gods—if not of wood and stone, still out of their own thoughts and imaginations; and talk of laws of nature, and long abstractions ending in ation

and ality, like that “Evolution” with which so many are in love just now; and worship them as gods; mere words, the work of their own brains, though not of their own hands—even though they be—as many of them are—Evolution, I hold, among the rest—true and fair approximations to actual laws of God. But before them, and behind them, and above them and below them, lives the Author of Evolution, and of everything else. For God lives, and reigns, and works for ever. The Spirit of God proceedeth from the Father and the Son, giving, evolving, and ruling the life of all created things; and what we call nature, and this world, and the whole universe, is an unfathomable mystery, and a perpetual miracle, The one Author and Ruler of which is the ever-blessed Trinity, of whom it is written—“The glorious majesty of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in His works.”

I believe, therefore, that the Psalmist in the text is speaking, not merely sound doctrine but sound philosophy. I believe that the simplest and the most rational account of the mystery of life is that which is given by the Christian faith; and that the Nicene Creed speaks truth and fact, when it bids us call the Holy Spirit of God the Lord and Giver of life.

That this is according to the orthodox Catholic Faith there is no doubt. Many mistakes were made on this matter, in the early times of the Church, even by most learned and holy divines; as was to be expected, considering the mysteriousness of the subject. They were inclined, often, to what is called Pantheism—that is, to

fancy that all living things are parts of God; that God’s Spirit is in them, as our soul is in our body, or as heat is in a heated matter; and to speak of God’s Spirit as the soul and life of the world.

But this is exactly what the Nicene Creed does not do. It does not say that the Holy Spirit is life: but that He is the Lord and Giver of life—a seemingly small difference in words: but a most vast and important difference in meaning and in truth.