The War and the Gospel: Sermons and Addresses During the Present War — Background and Themes

eakness, they also point to our hope, and to the means for our deliverance. We have still as much reason to rejoice as the angels had when they sang this song, because the great joy of it lies in the eternal fact that there is a Saviour and there is a King, Who, if His people will trust Him, will save them from their sins and all the miseries that their sins involve. If our own lives and the life of our nation and the life of Europe can be made truly Christian, if we can bring more of the love of Christ and the life of Christ into our daily existence, we have the assurance that He will save us, and will extirpate the abuses and the falsehoods which have brought the nations of Europe to this terrible pass.

In a few days we are to have a Day of Humble Prayer and Intercession to Almighty God. Let it be, above all, a day of humble acknowledgment of our failure as individuals and as a nation in His true faith and obedience. I would fain it had been called by the good old Christian and English name of a Day of Humiliation. We ought to be humiliated. We have, in such ways as I have indicated, been contented with a half-Christian life in public affairs and in society. We and our men of letters, and men of learning, and men of affairs, have been affected with the same half-heartedness in our allegiance to Christ, which shocks us when we see it displayed in all its nakedness in other countries, and especially in the one which is chiefly opposed to us. Let us be humiliated for it before God, not caring, in comparison with our true relation to Him, what interpretation the world may put on our repentance.

But let us also rejoice more than ever in the assurance of Christmas that a Saviour has been born to us, that we have an eternal King in our Lord Jesus Christ, Who can save us from our sins, and our ruin, and ourselves, if we will but give ourselves up to Him absolutely. Let us realize with infinite thankfulness that the souls of those who are now sacrificing their lives for us are in His saving and merciful hands. Let us be reminded by the angelic vision that we ourselves, and the souls of those who have passed and are passing away, are not brought merely into contact with the “blackness and darkness and tempest” of war, but are come unto “Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, and to an innumerable company of Angels, and to the general assembly of the Church of the Firstborn and to Christ the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.” Let us realize this more than we have yet done. Let us realize the truth of the Angels’ proclamation that Christ and Christ alone is our Saviour and our King, that He alone can save us, individuals and nations alike, from our sins; and then, in spite of all the distress and anxiety which surrounds us, this may prove the most blessed Christmas of our lives, and it may bring us a happiness which will last unto life eternal.

CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR.

A SERMON PREACHED ON CHRISTMAS DAY A.D. 1915.

“_Who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His Own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel._”--2 Tim. i. 9, 10.

There has never been an occasion in our own lives, and there have been few occasions in the world’s history, on which we have had more reason for unbounded thankfulness for the blessed message of Christmas. We are celebrating this Festival to-day in a sadder and darker world than any of us can remember, amid scenes of bloodshed and desolation, of which an adequate description can only be found in the lurid pictures of the Book of Revelation, with war and hatred all around us instead of peace and good will, and with death and destruction raging over a great part both of Europe and of Asia. If we had to confine our vision to the present world, and to the prospects it offers, men’s hearts might well, in our Lord’s words, be “failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth”; but Christmas breaks upon this dark scene with a message and a promise, which enable us to lift our hearts and hopes above this present world and this earthly scene. The heavens are opened; a great illumination bursts upon the world; and an innumerable multitude of the heavenly host are heard singing, in tones of rejoicing and thankfulness, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.” They are good tidings of great joy, proclaiming peace and good will from God towards men--good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people, that unto us was born that day in the City of David “a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord!” Such tidings of great joy are the very things for which our hearts are yearning amid the distresses, bereavements and sorrows, and the overwhelming anxieties of the moment, and such are the tidings which Christmas brings. Let us beware of allowing the heavy burdens and sorrows of the hour to obscure, or to muffle, to our hearts these tidings of great joy. On the contrary, the darker the hour, the heavier the burden; let us open our hearts the more to this glory of God shining round about us, as on this day, and to the tidings of great joy which are proclaimed to us by the Angelic Choir.

It is well we should remember, in the first place, that, even though to ourselves this hour is peculiarly dark, it is but an aggravation, and we may hope a comparatively brief one, of human experience throughout all history. That history has been from the first marked by two aspects, in the sharpest contrast to one another. In the first place, from century to century it has been one of incessant struggle, of war, of the rising of nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom; and the Book of Revelation depicts the world as ending in scenes of greater struggle and desolation than have ever gone before. That has been the terrible reality of human experience from the commencement to the present time. But, on the other hand, throughout these distressing scenes there has always been heard a moral and spiritual Voice, assuring men that God was controlling all these sufferings and struggles, and that all was working for good, alike to the world at large and to the individual.

You have the representation of the experience of every generation of men in the pages of the Bible, and especially of the Prophet Isaiah. He is known as the Evangelical Prophet, because he depicts in deeper and nobler tones than any other inspired voice that blessed promise of good will, of which the final proclamation was uttered to-day. But let us bear in mind the circumstances under which the glorious promises which we recite and sing at this season were uttered. Let us listen to Isaiah’s own description of them in the twenty-fourth chapter: “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.... The land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word.... All joy is darkened; the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction.” These were the visible realities around him, but he is inspired to look over them and through them; and he ends that passage by declaring that “it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth;” and that, at the last, “the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously.” Isaiah and his fellow-Prophets were surrounded by scenes of war and bloodshed and desolation as terrible as any we have around us in our own day, and it was over these fields of battle and destruction that the glorious songs were heard which are our delight and encouragement at this season. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received at the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” There is nothing more amazing in the experience of the human heart, and more inspiring to ourselves, than that these grand songs of hope and deliverance and comfort should have echoed over the desolate fields of Judea, and lived in the hearts of a people who were as crushed, and all but destroyed, as any of the ruined nations of Europe of the present day.

It has been the same all through history. Even where there was not the inspired voice of Revelation, there was still among the Greeks and Romans the ineradicable hope of a Golden Age; and an inner witness of God’s Spirit kept alive in the whole human race a firm belief in His justice and His ultimate deliverance, both for the world and for individuals, from age to age. Let us not think, therefore, that in the strain and distress and suffering of the present hour we are undergoing any novel or special experience; and if we should be tempted to be out of heart, let us be shamed by the faith of the past, by the inspiration of the Prophets, and even by the uninspired faith and courage of mankind at large. Let us believe, through all, as they did, that the Lord reigneth, and that though “clouds and darkness are round about Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.” The birth of our Lord, which we celebrate to-day, and the Divine Voice which spoke in Him through human lips, have given us a final assurance that He is reigning, and that He will judge the world in righteousness.

But it has done other things, of which my text more particularly speaks, which are a source of still greater joy and assurance to us individually. By the message which our Lord brought us, an infinite and blessed light has been thrown over the great mystery which darkened the minds, and dimmed the faith, of men before His time. The Apostle says that our Saviour “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” Though looking first, as we may and ought, with the Prophets, to the ultimate vindication of righteousness and justice throughout the world, by the fulfilment of God’s judgments in the struggles of mankind, there still remained, and there remains at this moment, to many hearts among us, the mystery of the sacrifice of life which such judgments involve--the mystery of the destruction of thousands of lives precious in themselves, and infinitely dear to those who loved them, and who lived with them and for them here. Before the Gospel, men’s hearts strained at the burden of that mystery, and it is wonderful that human nature endured it with such courage and patience; but now, says the Apostle, God’s purpose and grace in this bitter experience “is made manifest by the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.”

It would be rather truer to the original, and more closely corresponding with the facts, to say--not that our Lord hath abolished death, for, alas! that still remains around us--but that He hath brought death to nought, annihilated its power, and destroyed its strength. “The last enemy,” we are told, “which shall be destroyed is death”; but meanwhile, for every Christian soul, its greatest distress and terror is gone because our Lord has thrown a glorious illumination upon it, and has “brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” He has enabled us to see beyond the grave, beyond those dreadful battlefields, strewn with the bodies of those whom we had loved and honoured, and has made manifest to us that they still live on in a new life, and a glorious immortality. Who can estimate the mercy to sad and sorrowing hearts of the establishment of that blessed hope on the firm assurance of our Lord Himself, who, after suffering an agonizing death here, appeared to His Apostles and declared, “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death”? The pain of bereavement remains--that is like the loss of a limb, which time alone can soften--but the definite assurance, from the Saviour’s lips, that those who have died in His faith and obedience have entered on a new and blessed life, must be of infinite comfort to those who loved them. We are not left any longer to hopes and to future expectations; but can grasp the assurance of present realities which are vouched for by the Saviour who took our nature upon Him, who lived our life, and died our death, and showed Himself alive beyond the grave. This is what we owe to the Saviour’s birth, with all the gracious revelation of which it was the commencement.

The Apostle’s assurance goes, indeed, beyond this illumination of our present experience, and seems to throw a glorious light upon the whole history of mankind. “God,” he says, “hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus, before the world began.” It is now made manifest by the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it existed from all eternity “before the world began.” If so, then through those long ages which preceded our Lord’s birth, this life and immortality were given to the millions to whom His Name had not been manifested, but who died in the discharge of their duty, and who faithfully made the sacrifices which were involved in His government and just judgment of the world. Christ revealed the wars and sufferings of this world as the inevitable consequence of the operation of God’s righteousness and justice upon the evil, the sin, and the Godlessness of mankind. Sooner or later those sins and evils gather to a head, in some great corruption of society and political life, in some enormous crime of ambition or pride; and the righteousness and justice of God, working through the ordinary laws of human nature, evokes some tremendous reaction against them; and we behold the overthrow of a great Empire, or a European Revolution, or a world-wide clash of the forces of right and wrong. That is the course of history, as determined before the world began by the inscrutable righteousness and wisdom of God.

That is the condition under which the world now exists, and people who talk of abolishing war are like people standing on the crater of a great volcano, and trying to persuade themselves that there will be no more eruptions. As long as there is evil in the world and God’s righteousness in the world, you will have the moral reactions between the two bursting from time to time into some awful conflagration like the present. That is the revelation of the whole Bible, brought to its culmination in the Book of Revelation. But what was manifested to-day, and proclaimed by the Heavenly Hosts, was God’s love and mercy to the individual souls who have been the victims of these convulsions, and who might seem to have been treated as mere passing elements in the temporal scene. At the Birth of Christ, and by means of it, were manifested and assured God’s peace and good will to every soul of man who passes through this brief scene of struggle and, it may be, of death. It proclaims that for each individual soul death may be said to have been in effect abolished, that for every one of them, according to the eternal purpose of God, “life and immortality” have been prepared and assured; and that the struggles and sufferings of this mortal life, terrible as they may be, are not worthy to be compared with the glory that was designed, before the world began, for those who do the will of God. This is the blessed revelation of Christmas, and it is our privilege to fix our eyes and our hearts upon it, amid the sorrows and troubles of the moment; and in proportion as we do so, we shall respond with our whole hearts and souls to the exhortation of the same Apostle. “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

THE THINGS SEEN AND THE THINGS NOT SEEN.

PREACHED IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, EASTER DAY, 1915.

“_For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal._”--2 Cor. iv. 16.

These touching words of St. Paul are based upon the grand truth to which Easter Day is a standing witness. “Therefore,” he says, or “for which cause, we faint not.” That cause is stated in the verse just before, “Knowing that He Which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus, and shall present us with you.” The Apostle had just been giving a vivid description of the extreme strain, and almost mortal struggle, in which the work of his ministry involved him. “We are troubled,” he says, “on every side ... always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” The Apostle was undergoing a strain which was draining the very life of his body, in order to preach the Gospel which was bringing life to the souls of others; but he endured it in the knowledge that, even if it involved the sacrifice of his life, He Who raised up the Lord Jesus would raise him up also by Jesus, and present him in a new life at the day of the Resurrection. In this knowledge, his experience that his outward man was perishing did not make him faint, for he knew that his inward man was being renewed day by day. If he was daily dying, he was but experiencing the dying of the Lord Jesus; and thus, by entering into closer sympathy with his Lord, he was becoming united also with His life. Christ’s resurrection in glory was an assurance to him of his own resurrection, and the sufferings of the moment were as nothing to him in comparison with that glory. That affliction was, after all, light and momentary, when it was realized that it was working out for him, more and more exceedingly, an eternal weight of glory. The things which he saw and felt at the moment were, after all, but temporary, whereas the things which were not then visible were eternal. If the earthly frame, which was his present tabernacle, were dissolved by death, he knew that there was ready for him “a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.”