Unspoken Sermons

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But one who reads may call out, in the agony and thirst of a child
waking from a dream of endless seeking and no finding, 'I am bound like
Lazarus in his grave-clothes! what am I to do?' Here is the answer,
drawn from this parable of our Lord; for the saying is much like a
parable, teaching more than it utters, appealing to the conscience and
heart, not to the understanding: You are a slave; the slave has no hold
on the house; only the sons and daughters have an abiding rest in the
home of their father. God cannot have slaves about him always. You must
give up your slavery, and be set free from it. That is what I am here
for. If I make you free, you shall be free indeed; for I can make you
free only by making you what you were meant to be, sons like myself.
That is how alone the Son can work. But it is you who must become sons;
you must will it, and I am here to help you.' It is as if he said, 'You
shall have the freedom of my father's universe; for, free from
yourselves, you will be free of his heart. Yourselves are your slavery.
That is the darkness which you have loved rather than the light. You
have given honour to yourselves, and not to the Father; you have sought
honour from men, and not from the Father! Therefore, even in the house
of your father, you have been but sojourning slaves. We in his family
are all one; we have no party-spirit; we have no self-seeking: fall in
with us, and you shall be free as we are free.'

If then the poor starved child cry--'How, Lord?' the answer will depend
on what he means by that _how_. If he means, 'What plan wilt thou
adopt? What is thy scheme for cutting my bonds and setting me free?'
the answer may be a deepening of the darkness, a tightening of the
bonds. But if he means, 'Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?' the
answer will not tarry. 'Give yourself to me to do what I tell you, to
understand what I say, to be my good, obedient little brother, and I
will wake in you the heart that my father put in you, the same kind of
heart that I have, and it will grow to love the Father, altogether and
absolutely, as mine does, till you are ready to be torn to pieces for
him. Then you will know that you are at the heart of the universe, at
the heart of every secret--at the heart of the Father. Not till then
will you be free, then free indeed!'

Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves; not
from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. He died
that we might live--but live as he lives, by dying as he died who died
to himself that he might live unto God. If we do not die to ourselves,
we cannot live to God, and he that does not live to God, is dead. 'Ye
shall know the truth,' the Lord says, 'and the truth shall make you
free. I am the truth, and you shall be free as I am free. To be free,
you must be sons like me. To be free you must _be_ that which you have
to be, that which you are created. To be free you must give the answer
of sons to the Father who calls you. To be free you must fear nothing
but evil, care for nothing but the will of the Father, hold to him in
absolute confidence and infinite expectation. He alone is to be
trusted.' He has shown us the Father not only by doing what the Father
does, not only by loving his Father's children even as the Father loves
them, but by his perfect satisfaction with him, his joy in him, his
utter obedience to him. He has shown us the Father by the absolute
devotion of a perfect son. He is the Son of God because the Father and
he are one, have one thought, one mind, one heart. Upon this truth--I
do not mean the dogma, but the truth itself of Jesus to his
father--hangs the universe; and upon the recognition of this
truth--that is, upon their becoming thus true--hangs the freedom of the
children, the redemption of their whole world. 'I and the Father are
one,' is the centre-truth of the Universe; and the circumfering truth
is, 'that they also may be one in us.'

The only free man, then, is he who is a child of the Father. He is a
servant of all, but can be made the slave of none: he is a son of the
lord of the universe. He is in himself, in virtue of his truth, free.
He is in himself a king. For the Son rests his claim to royalty on
this, that _he was born and came into the world to bear witness to the
truth_.

KINGSHIP.

_Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king!
To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that
I should bear witness unto the truth: every one that is of the truth
heareth my voice._--John xviii. 37.

Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king. The question is called forth by what
the Lord had just said concerning his kingdom, closing with the
statement that it was not of this world. He now answers Pilate that he
is a king indeed, but shows him that his kingdom is of a very different
kind from what is called kingdom in this world. The rank and rule of
this world are uninteresting to him. He might have had them. Calling
his disciples to follow him, and his twelve legions of angels to help
them, he might soon have driven the Romans into the abyss, piling them
on the heap of nations they had tumbled there before. What easier for
him than thus to have cleared the way, and over the tributary world
reigned the just monarch that was the dream of the Jews, never seen in
Israel or elsewhere, but haunting the hopes and longings of the poor
and their helpers! He might from Jerusalem have ruled the world, not
merely dispensing what men call justice, but compelling atonement. He
did not care for government. No such kingdom would serve the ends of
his father in heaven, or comfort his own soul. What was perfect empire
to the Son of God, while he might teach one human being to love his
neighbour, and be good like his father! To be love-helper to one heart,
for its joy, and the glory of his father, was the beginning of true
kingship! The Lord would rather wash the feet of his weary brothers,
than be the one only perfect monarch that ever ruled in the world. It
was empire he rejected when he ordered Satan behind him like a dog to
his heel. Government, I repeat, was to him flat, stale, unprofitable.

What then is the kingdom over which the Lord cares to reign, for he
says he came into the world to be a king? I answer, A kingdom of kings,
and no other. Where every man is a king, there and there only does the
Lord care to reign, in the name of his father. As no king in Europe
would care to reign over a cannibal, a savage, or an animal race, so
the Lord cares for no kingdom over anything this world calls a nation.
A king must rule over his own kind. Jesus is a king in virtue of no
conquest, inheritance, or election, but in right of essential being;
and he cares for no subjects but such as are his subjects in the same
right. His subjects must be of his own kind, in their very nature and
essence kings. To understand his answer to Pilate, see wherein consists
his kingship; what it is that makes him a king; what manifestation of
his essential being gives him a claim to be king. The Lord's is a
kingdom in which no man seeks to be above another: ambition is of the
dirt of this world's kingdoms. He says, 'I am a king, for I was born
for the purpose, I came into the world with the object of bearing
witness to the truth. Everyone that is of my kind, that is of the
truth, hears my voice. He is a king like me, and makes one of my
subjects.' Pilate thereupon--as would most Christians nowadays, instead
of setting about being true--requests a definition of truth, a
presentation to his intellect in set terms of what the word 'truth'
means; but instantly, whether confident of the uselessness of the
inquiry, or intending to resume it when he has set the Lord at liberty,
goes out to the people to tell them he finds no fault in him. Whatever
interpretation we put on his action here, he must be far less worthy of
blame than those 'Christians' who, instead of setting themselves to be
pure 'even as he is pure,' to be their brother and sister's keeper, and
to serve God by being honourable in shop and counting-house and
labour-market, proceed to 'serve' him, some by going to church or
chapel, some by condemning the opinions of their neighbours, some by
teaching others what they do not themselves heed. Neither Pilate nor
they ask the one true question, 'How am I to be a true man? How am I to
become a man worth being a man?' The Lord is a king because his life,
the life of his thoughts, of his imagination, of his will, of every
smallest action, is true--true first to God in that he is altogether
his, true to himself in that he forgets himself altogether, and true to
his fellows in that he will endure anything they do to him, nor cease
declaring himself the son and messenger and likeness of God. They will
kill him, but it matters not: the truth is as he says!

Jesus is a king because his business is to bear witness to the truth.
What truth? All truth; all verity of relation throughout the
universe--first of all, that his father is good, perfectly good; and
that the crown and joy of life is to desire and do the will of the
eternal source of will, and of all life. He deals thus the death-blow
to the power of hell. For the one principle of hell is--'I am my own. I
am my own king and my own subject. _I_ am the centre from which go out
my thoughts; _I_ am the object and end of my thoughts; back upon _me_
as the alpha and omega of life, my thoughts return. My own glory is,
and ought to be, my chief care; my ambition, to gather the regards of
men to the one centre, myself. My pleasure is _my_ pleasure. My kingdom
is--as many as I can bring to acknowledge my greatness over them. My
judgment is the faultless rule of things. My right is--what I desire.
The more I am all in all to myself, the greater I am. The less I
acknowledge debt or obligation to another; the more I close my eyes to
the fact that I did not make myself; the more self-sufficing I feel or
imagine myself--the greater I am. I will be free with the freedom that
consists in doing whatever I am inclined to do, from whatever quarter
may come the inclination. To do my own will so long as I feel anything
to be my will, is to be free, is to live. To all these principles of
hell, or of this world--they are the same thing, and it matters nothing
whether they are asserted or defended so long as they are acted
upon--the Lord, the king, gives the direct lie. It is as if he
said:--'I ought to know what I say, for I have been from all eternity
the son of him from whom you issue, and whom you call your father, but
whom you will not have your father: I know all he thinks and is; and I
say this, that my perfect freedom, my pure individuality, rests on the
fact that I have not another will than his. My will is all for his
will, for his will is right. He is righteousness itself. His very being
is love and equity and self-devotion, and he will have his children
such as himself--creatures of love, of fairness, of self-devotion to
him and their fellows. I was born to bear witness to the truth--in my
own person to be the truth visible--the very likeness and manifestation
of the God who is true. My very being is his witness. Every fact of me
witnesses him. He is the truth, and I am the truth. Kill me, but while
I live I say, Such as I am he is. If I said I did not know him, I
should be a liar. I fear nothing you can do to me. Shall the king who
comes to say what is true, turn his back for fear of men? My Father is
like me; I know it, and I say it. You do not like to hear it because
you are not like him. I am low in your eyes which measure things by
their show; therefore you say I blaspheme. I should blaspheme if I said
he was such as anything you are capable of imagining him, for you love
show, and power, and the praise of men. I do not, and God is like me. I
came into the world to show him. I am a king because he sent me to bear
witness to his truth, and I bear it. Kill me, and I will rise again.
You can kill me, but you cannot hold me dead. Death is my servant; you
are the slaves of Death because you will not be true, and let the truth
make you free. Bound, and in your hands, I am free as God, for God is
my father. I know I shall suffer, suffer unto death, but if you knew my
father, you would not wonder that I am ready; you would be ready too.
He is my strength. My father is greater than I.'

Remember, friends, I said, 'It is as if he said.' I am daring to
present a shadow of the Lord's witnessing, a shadow surely cast by his
deeds and his very words! If I mistake, he will forgive me. I do not
fear him; I fear only lest, able to see and write these things, I
should fail of witnessing, and myself be, after all, a castaway--no
king, but a talker; no disciple of Jesus, ready to go with him to the
death, but an arguer about the truth; a hater of the lies men speak for
God, and myself a truth-speaking liar, not a doer of the word.

We see, then, that the Lord bore his witness to the Truth, to the one
God, by standing just what he was, before the eyes and the lies of men.
The true king is the man who stands up a true man and speaks the truth,
and will die but not lie. The robes of such a king may be rags or
purple; it matters neither way. The rags are the more likely, but
neither better nor worse than the robes. Then was the Lord dressed most
royally when his robes were a jest, a mockery, a laughter. Of the men
who before Christ bare witness to the truth, some were sawn asunder,
some subdued kingdoms; it mattered nothing which: they witnessed.

The truth is God; the witness to the truth is Jesus. The kingdom of the
truth is the hearts of men. The bliss of men is the true God. The
thought of God is the truth of everything. All well-being lies in true
relation to God. The man who responds to this with his whole being, is
of the truth. The man who knows these things, and but knows them; the
man who sees them to be true, and does not order life and action,
judgment and love by them, is of the worst of lying; with hand, and
foot, and face he casts scorn upon that which his tongue confesses.

Little thought the sons of Zebedee and their ambitious mother what the
earthly throne of Christ's glory was which they and she begged they
might share. For the king crowned by his witnessing, witnessed then to
the height of his uttermost argument, when he hung upon the cross--like
a sin, as Paul in his boldness expresses it. When his witness is
treated as a lie, then most he witnesses, for he gives it still. High
and lifted up on the throne of his witness, on the cross of his
torture, he holds to it: 'I and the Father are one.' Every mockery
borne in witnessing, is a witnessing afresh. Infinitely more than had
he sat on the throne of the whole earth, did Jesus witness to the truth
when Pilate brought him out for the last time, and perhaps made him sit
on the judgment-seat in his mockery of kingly garments and royal
insignia, saying, 'Behold your king!' Just because of those robes and
that crown, that sceptre and that throne of ridicule, he was the only
real king that ever sat on any throne.

Is every Christian expected to bear witness? A man content to bear no
witness to the truth is not in the kingdom of heaven. One who believes
must bear witness. One who sees the truth, must live witnessing to it.
Is our life, then, a witnessing to the truth? Do we carry ourselves in
bank, on farm, in house or shop, in study or chamber or workshop, as
the Lord would, or as the Lord would not? Are we careful to be true? Do
we endeavour to live to the height of our ideas? Or are we mean,
self-serving, world-flattering, fawning slaves? When contempt is cast
on the truth, do we smile? Wronged in our presence, do we make no sign
that we hold by it? I do not say we are called upon to dispute, and
defend with logic and argument, but we are called upon to show that we
are on the other side. But when I say _truth,_ I do not mean _opinion_:
to treat opinion as if that were truth, is grievously to wrong the
truth. The soul that loves the truth and tries to be true, will know
when to speak and when to be silent; but the true man will never look
as if he did not care. We are not bound to say all we think, but we are
bound not even to look what we do not think. The girl who said before a
company of mocking companions, 'I believe in Jesus,' bore true witness
to her Master, the Truth. David bore witness to God, the Truth, when he
said, '_Unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy, for thou renderest to every
man according to his work_.'

JUSTICE.

_Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every
man according to his work_.--Psalm lxii. 12.

Some of the translators make it _kindness_ and _goodness_; but I
presume there is no real difference among them as to the character of
the word which here, in the English Bible, is translated mercy.

The religious mind, however, educated upon the theories yet prevailing
in the so-called religious world, must here recognize a departure from
the presentation to which they have been accustomed: to make the psalm
speak according to prevalent theoretic modes, the verse would have to
be changed thus:--'To thee, O Lord, belongeth justice, for thou
renderest to every man according to his work.'

Let the reason of my choosing this passage, so remarkable in itself,
for a motto to the sermon which follows, remain for the present
doubtful. I need hardly say that I mean to found no logical argument
upon it.

Let us endeavour to see plainly what we mean when we use the word
_justice,_ and whether we mean what we ought to mean when we use
it--especially with reference to God. Let us come nearer to knowing
what we ought to understand by justice, that is, the justice of God;
for his justice is the live, active justice, giving existence to the
idea of justice in our minds and hearts. Because he is just, we are
capable of knowing justice; it is because he is just, that we have the
idea of justice so deeply imbedded in us.

What do we oftenest mean by _justice_? Is it not the carrying out of
the law, the infliction of penalty assigned to offence? By a just judge
we mean a man who administers the law without prejudice, without favour
or dislike; and where guilt is manifest, punishes as much as, and no
more than, the law has in the case laid down. It may not be that
justice has therefore been done. The law itself may be unjust, and the
judge may mistake; or, which is more likely, the working of the law may
be foiled by the parasites of law for their own gain. But even if the
law be good, and thoroughly administered, it does not necessarily
follow that justice is done.

Suppose my watch has been taken from my pocket; I lay hold of the
thief; he is dragged before the magistrate, proved guilty, and
sentenced to a just imprisonment: must I walk home satisfied with the
result? Have I had justice done me? The thief may have had justice done
him--but where is my watch? That is gone, and I remain a man wronged.
Who has done me the wrong? The thief. Who can set right the wrong? The
thief, and only the thief; nobody but the man that did the wrong. God
may be able to move the man to right the wrong, but God himself cannot
right it without the man. Suppose my watch found and restored, is the
account settled between me and the thief? I may forgive him, but is the
wrong removed? By no means. But suppose the thief to bethink himself,
to repent. He has, we shall say, put it out of his power to return the
watch, but he comes to me and says he is sorry he stole it and begs me
to accept for the present what little he is able to bring, as a
beginning of atonement: how should I then regard the matter? Should I
not feel that he had gone far to make atonement--done more to make up
for the injury he had inflicted upon me, than the mere restoration of
the watch, even by himself, could reach to? Would there not lie, in the
thief's confession and submission and initial restoration, an appeal to
the divinest in me--to the eternal brotherhood? Would it not indeed
amount to a sufficing atonement as between man and man? If he offered
to bear what I chose to lay upon him, should I feel it necessary, for
the sake of justice, to inflict some certain suffering as demanded by
righteousness? I should still have a claim upon him for my watch, but
should I not be apt to forget it? He who commits the offence can make
up for it--and he alone.

One thing must surely be plain--that the punishment of the wrong-doer
makes no atonement for the wrong done. How could it make up to me for
the stealing of my watch that the man was punished? The wrong would be
there all the same. I am not saying the man ought not to be
punished--far from it; I am only saying that the punishment nowise
makes up to the man wronged. Suppose the man, with the watch in his
pocket, were to inflict the severest flagellation on himself: would
that lessen my sense of injury? Would it set anything right? Would it
anyway atone? Would it give him a right to the watch? Punishment may do
good to the man who does the wrong, but that is a thing as different as
important.

Another thing plain is, that, even without the material rectification
of the wrong where that is impossible, repentance removes the offence
which no suffering could. I at least should feel that I had no more
quarrel with the man. I should even feel that the gift he had made me,
giving into my heart a repentant brother, was infinitely beyond the
restitution of what he had taken from me. True, he owed me both himself
and the watch, but such a greater does more than include such a less.
If it be objected, 'You may forgive, but the man has sinned against
God!'--Then it is not a part of the divine to be merciful, I return,
and a man may be more merciful than his maker! A man may do that which
would be too merciful in God! Then mercy is not a divine attribute, for
it may exceed and be too much; it must not be infinite, therefore
cannot be God's own.

'Mercy may be against justice.' Never--if you mean by justice what I
mean by justice. If anything be against justice, it cannot be called
mercy, for it is cruelty. '_To thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy, for thou
renderest to every man according to his work_.' There is _no_
opposition, _no_ strife whatever, between mercy and justice. Those who
say justice means the punishing of sin, and mercy the not punishing of
sin, and attribute both to God, would make a schism in the very idea of
God. And this brings me to the question, What is meant by divine
justice?

Human justice may be a poor distortion of justice, a mere shadow of it;
but the justice of God must be perfect. We cannot frustrate it in its
working; are we just to it in our idea of it? If you ask any ordinary
Sunday congregation in England, what is meant by the justice of God,
would not nineteen out of twenty answer, that it means his punishing of
sin? Think for a moment what degree of justice it would indicate in a
man--that he punished every wrong. A Roman emperor, a Turkish cadi,
might do that, and be the most unjust both of men and judges. Ahab
might be just on the throne of punishment, and in his garden the
murderer of Naboth. In God shall we imagine a distinction of office and
character? God is one; and the depth of foolishness is reached by that
theology which talks of God as if he held different offices, and
differed in each. It sets a contradiction in the very nature of God
himself. It represents him, for instance, as having to do that as a
magistrate which as a father he would not do! The love of the father
makes him desire to be unjust as a magistrate! Oh the folly of any mind
that would explain God before obeying him! that would map out the
character of God, instead of crying, Lord, what wouldst thou have me to
do? God is no magistrate; but, if he were, it would be a position to
which his fatherhood alone gave him the right; his rights as a father
cover every right he can be analytically supposed to possess. The
justice of God is this, that--to use a boyish phrase, the best the
language will now afford me because of misuse--he gives every man,
woman, child, and beast, everything that has being, _fair play_; he
renders to every man according to his work; and therein lies his
perfect mercy; for nothing else could be merciful to the man, and
nothing but mercy could be fair to him. God does nothing of which any
just man, the thing set fairly and fully before him so that he
understood, would not say, 'That is fair.' Who would, I repeat, say a
man was a just man because he insisted on prosecuting every offender? A
scoundrel might do that. Yet the justice of God, forsooth, is his
punishment of sin! A just man is one who cares, and tries, and always
tries, to give fair play to everyone in every thing. When we speak of
the justice of God, let us see that we do mean justice! Punishment of
the guilty may be involved in justice, but it does not constitute the
justice of God one atom more than it would constitute the justice of a
man.

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