Plain Sermons, preached at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, Regent Street. Second Series

by James Galloway Cowan

Partly, no doubt, for the sake of others, this manifestation and speech were made. Jesus generally hid His wondrous works from the gaze of the masses, and forbade that they should even hear of them by the hearing of the ear: just as He concealed the meaning of His speech by veiling it in parables, hard to be understood, that mere curiosity might not be indulged, that faith might have some privilege over want of faith, that needless provocation of His enemies might be avoided, and witness against Him withheld, that those who He knew would see and hear in vain, might be spared the greater condemnation of beholding and despising. Sometimes, however, an exception was made, and Jesus spoke and acted openly; that those present might see, and those absent might hear of Him, and so come unto Him and be saved. This may have been the case here. Or, more probably, the manifestation was not so much for the multitude, it was for the inner circle; for Jairus, whose faith needed to be prepared, for the shock of the coming announcement—“Thy daughter is dead, why troublest thou the Master any more?” or for better heeding of the injunction, “Be not afraid, only believe;” for the disciples, too, whom He would thus confirm in the faith, and prepare for their mission and sufferings, whom He would thus enable to record for our instruction and comfort, the things which Jesus has done, which He is ever ready to do again. But, specially, it was for the woman herself; that she might not suppose that she had obtained unknown possession of a blessing, or that it was the mere touch which cured her, and not the All-knowing Healer, pleased by her faith and so making effectual an otherwise useless act; that she might become acquainted with Him, and so learn to love Him, and gratefully remember Him, and by and by, when she came to know his will, might delight to do it; that she might have something more than she sought—this is ever the rule of Christ’s giving—the “Go in peace,” as well as the “Be whole of thy plague;” that she might be taught, and we, through her, that Divine mercy is ever to be acknowledged, and open glory to be given to God.

The history is replete with profitable suggestions—lessons of faith and practice. Let us select three for present consideration.

First, let us observe, that we may throng and press Jesus, and yet not touch Him. “Thou seest the multitude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou who touched me?” Even so! The idle, curious, controversial, captious thronging is nothing accounted of: it is the touch of eager desire and humble faith which alone is noticed. At first, brethren, we are tempted to think, that the most strangely indifferent, the most unblessed of men, are those who do not join the throng, and press about the Lord Jesus. That He is in the sanctuary, and men do not enter into His presence there; that He is teaching the way of life, and men will not hear sermons nor read the Bible; that He may be conversed with, and yet men will not pray; that He may be touched, and yet sacraments are not received: this, we think, is as strange as it is sad. And so, indeed, it is. But it is stranger and sadder, that any should come into the Sanctuary, and not perceive Christ’s presence; that they should hear and read without learning; that they should use words of prayer and yet not be heard; that they should press and throng Jesus in ordinances, and never touch Him; deriving no benefit from Him, because they seek it not aright; being beneath His eye, and yet unnoticed; crowding around Him, and upon Him, and yet unfelt! But assuredly, as of old it was, so it is now. If mere idleness brings men to the Sanctuary, mere observance of a decent fashion, if they come only to hear and see something new, to wile away the time which hangs wearily upon them, to gain themselves a good name as respectable and pious, if they are watching to see, what may be criticised, what may be talked about and condemned, if they are rendering merely a formal obedience, and offering only an outward service—then, I was going to say, Christ takes no more notice of them than if they were not present; but I should rather say, He is wrathful against them for being present. He blinds their eyes, and turns away His own. He is dumb to them; they deaf to Him. He yields nothing to them, though they seem like Moses to have cleft the rock. He feels them not, though they squeeze and press! My brethren, it may be that some of you have long been in the company of Christ, have missed very few opportunities of public worship, have become very familiar with the Scriptures, have often repeated prayers and psalms, have been frequent communicants, and yet are none the better in feeling and desire, have experienced no spiritual relief, have no more love or perception of the truth, than if you had been utter strangers to Christ, and never been near Him nor heard of Him. Hence it may be that religion is to you but a name: it profits you not, it affords you no delight, it exercises no influence upon you. Would you know why? Because you have been but thronging and pressing, because you have had no real sense of your misery, have entertained no real desire to be relieved and blessed, and so have made no well-directed, persevering effort to touch Christ! You are, as you feel, no better, no wiser, than if there were no Christ, or you had never been near Him! And you will never be wiser and better, however much you press and throng, till you realise your want, and are convinced that Christ alone can relieve it, and come to Him faithfully, resolutely, humbly, to touch the hem of His garment, and be healed of your plague. First, then, strive to know what you want, and to be convinced that Christ can and will grant it; and, then, feeling the desire of it, being sure from Whom alone it can be had, and how it must be sought, draw near—with the feeling of necessity, with the perseverance of desire, with the consciousness of unworthiness—and effect the touch of faith. You shall not, in that case, remain unblessed; your plague shall be stayed, your faith shall be commended, your effort crowned, your humility exalted; you shall have more than you sought; enlarge your desire as you will, it shall be more than satisfied: and He whom you would but touch, and then shrink away, shall call you forth, and own, and bless you, and give you everlasting peace and perfect salvation.

Next, let us observe, that nothing can keep back and nothing hide from Christ. We are sometimes tempted, in the deep sense of our unworthiness, in review of the distance between us and the Healer, of the many obstacles which intervene, to give up in despair, and say to ourselves, “It is of no use trying, I am not fit for such a blessing, and if I were, I cannot reach it.” Now, consider, who could be more unfit, and who more unable to approach Christ than this poor woman. There was a positive law which forbade her coming; her touch was pollution: yet Christ reproached her not with disregarding that law, nor refused her because of it; and when she touched He did not recoil, but encouraged her. For us there is no excommunicating law. From us Christ is pledged not to recoil. “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” is an invitation, a positive command. “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out,” is a most solemn pledge. Why, then, should we shrink? What shall we fear? And as for difficulties and hindrances, our own infirmities, the opposition of the world or the Devil, the sneers of despisers, the distance, the crowd, the hurrying on, can aught compare with what threatened this woman, and what she overcame? O are we not ashamed to forego salvation, to keep away from Christ, to desist from determination to reach Him, by any plea of personal infirmity, or of difficulty in the way? What in ourselves is worse than the twelve years’ growing, enfeebling, overwhelming malady of this woman? What in aught around us is more impenetrable than the great crowd? and whenever was Christ as distant from us as He was from her? And then as to the discouragement which Satan would suggest to us, that in our age we cannot, like this poor woman, get anything from Christ by stealth; that the power to heal flows not unconsciously; that He must see, and approve, and stay for us, and even anticipate us; and that by reason of our insignificance and the wide extent of His dominion, it is not reasonable to suppose that we shall be observed—brethren, are we not assured, by the fact that she was discerned, and watched for, and singled out from the great multitude, that the gaze which is comprehensive enough to include all is particular enough to distinguish each; that there is nothing beneath His notice; that He can get through, and will get through, all that stands between us and Him: that He who keeps vast globes in their orbits, takes thought even for sparrows; that He counts the hairs of each individual’s head; that He hears each sigh, and feels each sorrow; that the roar of the universe is not louder in His ear than the feeblest cry of distress from the lowest of His creatures? O it is a blessed assurance, and one for which we should be heartily thankful, that it was always when there was most to distract, that Christ was most closely attentive; that it was in the most dazzling glare that He saw most clearly; that it was when He seemed most absorbed in other aims, that His notice and help were most readily secured; that in the way to raise the daughter of Jairus, He was so easily stopped to heal and bless the woman with the issue of blood! No sight too insignificant to escape His eye; no sound too faint to reach His ear; no crowd so great as to hide the individual; no object so engrossing as to exclude from notice, or to hurry on from concern for the least, the unworthiest of other objects!

Lastly, let us observe that power to heal was ready to flow wherever there was a channel made for it. We are not, of course, to understand that Christ healed unconsciously; that any mere formal touch secured, as it were, without the violation of His will, the grace which He was anointed to bestow; but we are to understand, that such is the law of grace, that where there is a demand there is a supply; that like as the thirsty sand surely drinks in the rising wave, like as a sponge absorbs the water into which it is plunged, so the sensibly void heart, the yearning desire, the faithful effort, the moral fitness, is sure of what it wants and seeks, if it is found in the place where what it wants exists. It is one of the most wonderful, most mysterious, and at the same time most sure effects of Christ’s incarnation that human nature, needing and desiring, put into communion with Him, possessing, overflowing, shall have by the necessary operation of an invariable law, the thing which it wants, and which He has to bestow. There is no chance, no mere probability in the case: Christ is the ever-flowing fountain; if you stand beneath, the water must come over you. He is the root full of sap, if you are one of the branches joined to Him, the sap shall flow into and permeate you.

It is this which makes ordinances effectual signs of grace; means, not by which grace may perhaps be bestowed, but by which it is sure to be bestowed, if they are rightly used. The woman, whose history we have been considering, might have been disappointed in her hope: for Christ had not taught her, nor made her any promise, nor prescribed to her any course; but He has so enlightened us in the mystery of His Incarnation; He has so pledged to us His grace; He has so shown us how to obtain it, that we may most confidently say, “If I may but touch, I shall be whole.” Grace, the manifold grace of Christ’s glorified body—the source of sanctification and every blessing, is ready to flow, and will flow as soon as He is touched. Of course, as we have seen, this touch must be directed by right feeling; but still, observe, there must be a touch. “Thy faith hath saved thee.” Not because it kept thee still, sighing for, talking of, waiting for Me, but because it roused thee, and made thee encounter so much, and do so much to come and touch Me. Faith gives quality to the touch, but, after all, the touch secures the blessing. So it ever is. The touch necessary, and the touch effectual. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.” The water of Baptism is the laver of regeneration. The bread which we break, and the cup which we bless, are the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Using the outward part rightly, you do certainly receive the inward grace: for as soon as Christ is rightly touched, and these are appointed ways of touching, immediately—as it were, spontaneously—virtue to heal goes out of Him.

Let it not, however, be supposed, that this view of the way of healing and sanctifying makes Christ a servant of grace instead of the Lord of grace; that it directs us to a mere storehouse to help ourselves, instead of sending us to a living, loving, discerning Saviour, of Whom we are to crave the help and blessing which are His to give as He will. No, brethren, it exalts ordinances, but only because they are Christ’s ordinances, the clothes in which He is clad, as He walks among us, the garments through which power to heal is transmitted from Him to us. The use of these things without a sense of unworthiness, without humility and faith, is like the thronging of Christ by the crowd, not only unprofitable, but rude and profane; and this sense of unworthiness, this humility and faith, together with the power and perseverance to act upon them, are all the gifts of Christ, seed sown, increase given by Him according to His will. Look, then, to the Physician, as well as to the remedy, to the Giver of grace as well as to the Channel of grace; and, knowing that without Him you can do nothing, and except from Him receive nothing, beseech Him to enable you to seek grace rightly, and then to bestow it freely, not for any worthiness, for any feeling, for any deed; but simply because of your necessity, out of His boundless love.

SERMON XVI.
PREACHING PARABLES.

Ezekiel, xx., 49.

Ah Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables?

Ezekiel had been commissioned with the utterance of a warning, in figurative but very intelligible language, that God was about to bring a great calamity upon Jerusalem and all Judah; that young and old, good and bad, should be affected by it—“I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree and every dry tree”; that the judgment should be irresistible “the flaming flame shall not be quenched,” and the destruction universal; “all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.” According to some expositors, as soon as he received this commission, concluding from his past experience that the Jews would profess not to understand his message, or would say, that it was an exaggeration, or that it did not apply to them, and so disregard it, he entreated of God, in the words of the text, that such an excuse might be taken away by the delivery instead of a plain and unmistakeable warning: “O Lord, not a parable. Thy people will not heed parables.” Whereupon God, in gracious condescension to His prophet, in determination to be heard and understood by the people, substituted for this first message, not indeed wholly unfigurative language, but a simpler parable, which carried with it to all its own interpretation. But it is better, I think, to suppose, that Ezekiel does not here anticipate the people’s perversity, and so persuade God at once to withdraw His words; but that he narrates and grieves over the actual reception which the message, faithfully delivered, had encountered. The people would not hear it. They said it was obscure: a parable, an enigma, a poetical exaggeration. God did not speak to them by it; or, if He did, they could not tell what He said. “Ah! Lord God—alas! it is the old tale—I told them Thy words, but they would not hear; they turned away from me, saying, Surely we cannot understand him.”