One more lesson to guard against misinterpretation of the last. I have used some strong words in speaking of those that differ. Do not, pray, suppose that I would have you regard them with any but kind feelings, much less that I would teach you to cry out against their errors, in railing or contemptuous tones. The Christian minister intent upon laying down clearly the line of right thought and practice, has occasion to speak plainly, and for his hearers’ sake to call things by their right names, however grating they may sound; but with the private individual it is otherwise. In his ordinary course, he has no need to speak of these things, or to think of them, further than to prompt his earnest prayers for the decay of error and dissension, and the establishment of truth and union. And if at any time it becomes his duty or desire to stay a soul from error, or to convert him from it, let him remember, and be sure it is true, that one ounce of love will do more good than many pounds of controversy. [38]
Loud cries of “No popery,” invectives against High Church or Low Church, sneers against “cant,” imputations of unworthy motives to those who differ, contemptuous pity of their ignorance or inferiority, are all carnal. They will unspiritualise yourselves; they will retard, rather than advance the good work on others; they will drive away from you the only power in which you can hope to prevail, that of the Spirit of holiness, and love, and peace.
While then as Churchmen, it is your bounden duty to regard other systems of religion as inferior, perhaps erroneous; be sure that in dealing with the individual disciples of those systems, you remember the history of the thankful Samaritan, and consider that like him, they may be approved and sanctified followers of your common Lord.
Resolve to put away all animosity, and strife, and captiousness; to take the best rather than the worst view of what you dislike, or do not understand; in short, while maintaining as far as possible the orthodoxy of Him who was a true Israelite; like Him, and for His sake, endeavour to love men for themselves, if you cannot love their system; and to rejoice in the opportunity of treating the Samaritan as a brother, and of bringing him within nearer reach of abiding blessedness.
SERMON IV.
ETERNAL ABODE WITH GOD.—(A FUNERAL SERMON.)
1 Thess., iv., 17.
“So shall we ever be with the Lord.”
We read in the third chapter of Genesis of the introduction of death into our world—how sin alienated God from man and man from God, how those who had been endowed with the best faculties of enjoying bliss, who were surrounded by all desirable blessings, who dwelt beneath the bright sun of God’s favour, were by an act of unbelief and wilfulness, suggested by the evil one, driven angrily into the outer world, where toil, and pain, and manifold misery were thenceforth to be their lot.
We are sometimes tempted to think, that the actual punishment of our first parents was less than that they had been threatened with. “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” was God’s assurance; but when they ate they did not die,—as we account dying; they were but banished from the Garden of Eden, and prevented from returning, by cherubims who kept the entrance, and a flaming sword which turned every way. It was indeed a sad reverse—a wilderness instead of a garden—sorrow instead of joy—toil instead of rest—curses instead of blessings: but it was not the threatened death. They did not die.
So we are wont to think: but we err therein; they did die, brethren. This reverse was death. Death (what God means by death) is not annihilation—not ceasing to be; it is protracted existence apart from God, and the blessings of His right hand, and the light of His countenance. More truly did they die when they entered upon this state of existence, than when, hundreds of years afterwards, their bodies stiffened, and their breath ceased, and their flesh turned to corruption in the grave. It is a misconception—a practical unbelief of immortality, which makes us think otherwise. The soul does not perish—does not slumber; living once, it lives ever, and ever knows and feels its existence. The separation of it from the body alters its circumstances, uncasing it—depriving it of one of its appendages—breaking off its connexion with a material and natural world; but not destroying it. No; it lives on, and lives on (in its spiritual relations) as it did before, save that the withdrawal of bodily senses enables and obliges the spiritual senses to exercise themselves to the full, and so intensifies the feelings, and completes the realisation of the spiritual state.
Suppose that in the moment that Adam was driven out of Paradise, he had actually died, that his soul had been immediately separated from the body; what would have been the state of that soul? The same, really, as it was while he lived—banishment from the presence of God, with the consequent absence of what was desirable, and presence of what was hateful. He would have felt it more. Having nothing else to gaze on, the blankness of the spiritual world around him, save where evil spirits stood revealed, would have been more terrible. The desires would have been more intolerable when there was nothing to divert attention from them, and the constrained employments more distasteful. Hopelessness, too, of remedy in that fixed state, which is to have no change but that of increase throughout eternity, would have caused his death to appear a greater reality, but it would not have made it a greater reality. The continuance of bodily existence palliated death; a natural world spread before his eyes diverted his gaze from the spiritual “void”; natural pain even, and sorrow, and toil, beguiled his thoughts and feelings, in a measure, from spiritual miseries; but still he was dead, though he knew it not fully. His state was like to that of the child who sleeps calmly in the dark; but when it wakes, cries and starts in terror. There was darkness all along; but only when the eyes were opened was it fully perceived—felt.