Unspoken Sermons

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As for us, now will we come to thee, our Consuming Fire. And thou wilt
not burn us more than we can bear. But thou wilt burn us. And although
thou seem to slay us, yet will we trust in thee even for that which
thou hast not spoken, if by any means at length we may attain unto the
blessedness of those _who have not seen and yet have believed_.

THE HIGHER FAITH.

_Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou
hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have
believed._--JOHN xx. 29.

The aspiring child is often checked by the dull disciple who has
learned his lessons so imperfectly that he has never got beyond his
school-books. Full of fragmentary rules, he has perceived the principle
of none of them. The child draws near to him with some outburst of
unusual feeling, some scintillation of a lively hope, some
wide-reaching imagination that draws into the circle of religious
theory the world of nature, and the yet wider world of humanity, for to
the child the doings of the Father fill the spaces; he has not yet
learned to divide between God and nature, between Providence and grace,
between love and benevolence;--the child comes, I say, with his heart
full, and the answer he receives from the dull disciple is--"God has
said nothing about that in his word, therefore we have no right to
believe anything about it. It is better not to speculate on such
matters. However desirable it may seem to us, we have nothing to do
with it. It is not revealed." For such a man is incapable of
suspecting, that what has remained hidden from him may have been
revealed to the babe. With the authority, therefore, of years and
ignorance, he forbids the child, for he believes in no revelation but
the Bible, and in the word of that alone. For him all revelation has
ceased with and been buried in the Bible, to be with difficulty
exhumed, and, with much questioning of the decayed form, re-united into
a rigid skeleton of metaphysical and legal contrivance for letting the
love of God have its way unchecked by the other perfections of his
being.

But to the man who would live throughout the whole divine form of his
being, not confining himself to one broken corner of his kingdom, and
leaving the rest to the demons that haunt such deserts, a thousand
questions will arise to which the Bible does not even allude. Has he
indeed nothing to do with such? Do they lie beyond the sphere of his
responsibility? "Leave them," says the dull disciple. "I cannot,"
returns the man. "Not only does that degree of peace of mind without
which action is impossible, depend upon the answers to these questions,
but my conduct itself must correspond to these answers." "Leave them at
least till God chooses to explain, if he ever will." "No. Questions
imply answers. He has put the questions in my heart; he holds the
answers in his. I will seek them from him. I will wait, but not till I
have knocked. I will be patient, but not till I have asked. I will seek
until I find. He has something for me. My prayer shall go up unto the
God of my life."

Sad, indeed, would the whole matter be, if the Bible had told us
_everything_ God meant us to believe. But herein is the Bible itself
greatly wronged. It nowhere lays claim to be regarded as _the_ Word,
_the_ Way, _the_ Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible,
the ever unfolding Revelation of God. It is Christ "in whom are hid all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," not the Bible, save as leading
to him. And why are we told that these treasures are _hid_ in him who
is the _Revelation_ of God? Is it that we should despair of finding
them and cease to seek them? Are they not hid in him that they may be
revealed to us in due time--that is, when we are in need of them? Is
not their hiding in him the mediatorial step towards their unfolding in
us? Is he not the Truth?--the Truth to men? Is he not the High Priest
of his brethren, to answer all the troubled questionings that arise in
their dim humanity? For it is his heart which

Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.

Didymus answers, "No doubt, what we know not now, we shall know
hereafter." Certainly there may be things which the mere passing into
another stage of existence will illuminate; but the questions that come
here, must be inquired into here, and if not answered here, then there
too until they be answered. There is more hid in Christ than we shall
ever learn, here or there either; but they that begin first to inquire
will soonest be gladdened with revelation; and with them he will be
best pleased, for the slowness of his disciples troubled him of old. To
say that we must wait for the other world, to know the mind of him who
came to this world to give himself to us, seems to me the foolishness
of a worldly and lazy spirit. The Son of God _is_ the Teacher of men,
giving to them of his Spirit--that Spirit which manifests the deep
things of God, being to a man the mind of Christ. The great heresy of
the Church of the present day is unbelief in this Spirit. The mass of
the Church does not believe that the Spirit has a revelation for every
man individually--a revelation as different from the revelation of the
Bible, as the food in the moment of passing into living brain and nerve
differs from the bread and meat. If we were once filled with the mind
of Christ, we should know that the Bible had done its work, was
fulfilled, and had for us passed away, that thereby the Word of our God
might abide for ever. The one use of the Bible is to make us look at
Jesus, that through him we might know his Father and our Father, his
God and our God. Till we thus know Him, let us hold the Bible dear as
the moon of our darkness, by which we travel towards the east; not dear
as the sun whence her light cometh, and towards which we haste, that,
walking in the sun himself, we may no more need the mirror that
reflected his absent brightness.

But this doctrine of the Spirit is not my end now, although, were it
not true, all our religion would be vain, that of St Paul and that of
Socrates. What I want to say and show, if I may, is, that a man will
please God better by believing some things that are not told him, than
by confining his faith to those things that are expressly said--said to
arouse in us the truth-seeing faculty, the spiritual desire, the prayer
for the good things which God will give to them that ask him.

"But is not this dangerous doctrine? Will not a man be taught thus to
believe the things he likes best, even to pray for that which he likes
best? And will he not grow arrogant in his confidence?"

If it be true that the Spirit strives with our spirit; if it be true
that God teaches men, we may safely leave those dreaded results to him.
If the man is of the Lord's company, he is safer with him than with
those who would secure their safety by hanging on the outskirts and
daring nothing. If he is not taught of God in that which he hopes for,
God will let him know it. He will receive, something else than he prays
for. If he can pray to God for anything not good, the answer will come
in the flames of that consuming fire. These will soon bring him to some
of his spiritual senses. But it will be far better for him to be thus
sharply tutored, than to go on a snail's pace in the journey of the
spiritual life. And for arrogance, I have seen nothing breed it faster
or in more offensive forms than the worship of the letter.

And to whom shall a man, whom the blessed God has made, look for what
he likes best, but to that blessed God? If we have been indeed enabled
to see that God is our Father, as the Lord taught us, let us advance
from that truth to understand that he is far more than father--that
his nearness to us is beyond the embodiment of the highest idea of
father; that the fatherhood of God is but a step towards the Godhood
for them that can receive it. What a man likes best _may_ be God's
will, may be the voice of the Spirit striving _with_ his spirit, not
against it; and if, as I have said, it be not so--if the thing he asks
is not according to his will--there is that consuming fire. The danger
lies, not in asking from God what is not good, nor even in hoping to
receive it from him, but in not asking him, in not having him of our
council. Nor will the fact that we dare not inquire his will, preserve
us from the necessity of acting in some such matter as we call
unrevealed, and where shall we find ourselves then? Nor, once more, for
such a disposition of mind is it likely that the book itself will
contain much of a revelation.

The whole matter may safely be left to God.

But I doubt if a man _can_ ask anything from God that is bad. Surely
one who has begun to pray to him is child enough to know the bad from
the good when it has come so near him, and dares not pray for _that_.
If you refer me to David praying such fearful prayers against his
enemies, I answer, you must read them by your knowledge of the man
himself and his history. Remember that this is he who, with the burning
heart of an eastern, yet, when his greatest enemy was given into his
hands, instead of taking the vengeance of an eastern, contented himself
with cutting off the skirt of his garment. It was justice and right
that he craved in his soul, although his prayers took a wild form of
words. God heard him, and gave him what contented him. In a good man at
least, "revenge is," as Lord Bacon says, "a kind of wild justice," and
is easily satisfied. The hearts desire upon such a one's enemies is
best met and granted when the hate is changed into love and compassion.

But it is about hopes rather than prayers that I wish to write.

What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith
in me and hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter! The
faith that limits itself to the promises of God, seems to me to partake
of the paltry character of such a faith in my child--good enough for a
Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith. Those who
rest in such a faith would feel yet more comfortable if they had God's
bond instead of his word, which they regard not as the outcome of his
character, but as a pledge of his honour. They try to believe in the
truth of his word, but the truth of his Being, they understand not. In
his oath they persuade themselves that they put confidence: in
_himself_ they do not believe, for they know him not. Therefore it is
little wonder that they distrust those swellings of the heart which are
his drawings of the man towards him, as sun and moon heave the ocean
mass heavenward. Brother, sister, if such is your faith, you will not,
must not stop there. You must come out of this bondage of the law to
which you give the name of grace, for there is little that is gracious
in it. You will yet know the dignity of your high calling, and the love
of God that passeth knowledge. He is not afraid of your presumptuous
approach to him. It is you who are afraid to come near him. He is not
watching over his dignity. It is you who fear to be sent away as the
disciples would have sent away the little children. It is you who think
so much about your souls and are so afraid of losing your life, that
you dare not draw near to the Life of life, lest it should consume you.

Our God, we will trust thee. Shall we not find thee equal to our faith?
One day, we shall laugh ourselves to scorn that we looked for so little
from thee; for thy giving will not be limited by our hoping.

O thou of little faith! "in everything,"--I am quoting your own Bible;
nay, more, I am quoting a divine soul that knew his master Christ, and
in his strength opposed apostles, not to say christians, to their
faces, because they could not believe more than a little in God; could
believe only for themselves and not for their fellows; could believe
for the few of the chosen nation, for whom they had God's ancient
_word_, but could not believe for the multitude of the nations, for the
millions of hearts that God had made to search after him and find
him;--"In everything," says St Paul, "In everything, by prayer and
supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto
God." For this _everything_, nothing is too small. That it should
trouble us is enough. There is some principle involved in it worth the
notice even of God himself, for did he not make us so that the thing
does trouble us? And surely for this _everything_, nothing can be too
great. When the Son of man cometh and findeth too much faith on the
earth--may God in his mercy slay us. Meantime, we will hope and trust.

Do you count it a great faith to believe what God has said? It seems to
me, I repeat, a little faith, and, if alone, worthy of reproach. To
believe what he has not said is faith indeed, and blessed. For that
comes of believing in HIM. Can you not believe in God himself? Or,
confess,--do you not find it so hard to believe what he has said, that
even that is almost more than you can do? If I ask you why, will not
the true answer be--"Because we are not quite sure that he did say
it"? If you believed in God you would find it easy to believe the word.
You would not even need to inquire whether he had _said_ it: you would
know that he meant it.

Let us then dare something. Let us not always be unbelieving children.
Let us keep in mind that the Lord, not forbidding those who insist on
seeing before they will believe, blesses those who have not seen and
yet have believed--those who trust in him more than that--who believe
without the sight of the eyes, without the hearing of the ears. They
are blessed to whom a wonder is not a fable, to whom a mystery is not a
mockery, to whom a glory is not an unreality--who are content to ask,
"Is it like Him?" It is a dull-hearted, unchildlike people that will be
always putting God in mind of his promises. Those promises are good to
reveal what God is; if they think them good as binding God, let them
have it so for the hardness of their hearts. They prefer the Word to
the Spirit: it is theirs.

Even such will leave us--some of them will, if not all--to the
"uncovenanted mercies of God." We desire no less; we hope for no
better. Those are the mercies beyond our height, beyond our depth,
beyond our reach. We know in whom we have believed, and we look for
that which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Shall
God's thoughts be surpassed by man's thoughts? God's giving by man's
asking? God's creation by man's imagination? No. Let us climb to the
height of our Alpine desires; let us leave them behind us and ascend
the spear-pointed Himmalays of our aspirations; still shall we find the
depth of God's sapphire above us; still shall we find the heavens
higher than the earth, and his thoughts and his ways higher than our
thoughts and our ways.

Ah Lord! be thou in all our being; as not in the Sundays of our time
alone, so not in the chambers of our hearts alone. We dare not think
that thou canst not, carest not; that some things are not for thy
beholding, some questions not to be asked of thee. For are we not all
thine--utterly thine? That which a man speaks not to his fellow, we
speak to thee. Our very passions we hold up to thee, and say, "Behold,
Lord! Think about us; for thus thou hast made us." We would not escape
from our history by fleeing into the wilderness, by hiding our heads in
the sands of forgetfulness, or the repentance that comes of pain, or
the lethargy of hopelessness. We take it, as our very life, in our
hand, and flee with it unto thee. Triumphant is the answer which thou
boldest for every doubt. It may be we could not understand it yet, even
if thou didst speak it "with most miraculous organ." But thou shalt at
least find faith in the earth, O Lord, if thou comest to look for it
now--the faith of ignorant but hoping children, who know that they do
not know, and believe that thou knowest.

And for our brothers and sisters, who cleave to what they call thy
word, thinking to please thee so, they are in thy holy safe hands, who
hast taught us that _whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of
man, it shall be forgiven him_; though unto him that blasphemes against
the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven_.

IT SHALL NOT BE FORGIVEN.

_And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be
forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it
shall not be forgiven.--LUKE xi. 18.

Whatever belonging to the region of thought and feeling is uttered in
words, is of necessity uttered imperfectly. For thought and feeling are
infinite, and human speech, although far-reaching in scope, and
marvellous in delicacy, can embody them after all but approximately and
suggestively. Spirit and Truth are like the Lady Una and the Red Cross
Knight; Speech like the dwarf that lags behind with the lady's "bag of
needments."

Our Lord had no design of constructing a system of truth in
intellectual forms. The truth of the moment in its relation to him, The
Truth, was what he spoke. He spoke out of a region of realities which
he knew could only be suggested--not represented--in the forms of
intellect and speech. With vivid flashes of life and truth his words
invade our darkness, rousing us with sharp stings of light to will our
awaking, to arise from the dead and cry for the light which he can
give, not in the lightning of words only, but in indwelling presence
and power.

How, then, must the truth fare with those who, having neither glow nor
insight, will build intellectual systems upon the words of our Lord, or
of his disciples? A little child would better understand Plato than
they St Paul. The meaning in those great hearts who knew our Lord is
too great to enter theirs. The sense they find in the words must be a
sense small enough to pass through their narrow doors. And if mere
words, without the interpreting sympathy, may mean, as they may, almost
anything the receiver will or can attribute to them, how shall the man,
bent at best on the salvation of his own soul, understand, for
instance, the meaning of that apostle who was ready to encounter
banishment itself from the presence of Christ, that the beloved
brethren of his nation might enter in? To men who are not simple,
simple words are the most inexplicable of riddles.

If we are bound to search after what our Lord means--and he speaks that
we may understand--we are at least equally bound to refuse any
interpretation which seems to us unlike him, unworthy of him. He
himself says, "Why do ye not of your own selves judge what is right?"
In thus refusing, it may happen that, from ignorance or
misunderstanding, we refuse the verbal form of its true interpretation,
but we cannot thus refuse the spirit and the truth of it, for those we
could not have seen without being in the condition to recognize them as
the mind of Christ. Some misapprehension, I say, some obliquity, or
some slavish adherence to old prejudices, may thus cause us to refuse
the true interpretation, but we are none the less bound to refuse and
wait for more light. To accept that as the will of our Lord which to us
is inconsistent with what we have learned to worship in him already, is
to introduce discord into that harmony whose end is to unite our
hearts, and make them whole.

"Is it for us," says the objector who, by some sleight of will,
believes in the word apart from the meaning for which it stands, "to
judge of the character of our Lord?" I answer, "This very thing he
requires of us." He requires of us that we should do him no injustice.
He would come and dwell with us, if we would but open our chambers to
receive him. How shall we receive him if, avoiding judgment, we hold
this or that daub of authority or tradition hanging upon our walls to
be the real likeness of our Lord? Is it not possible at least that,
judging unrighteous judgment by such while we flatter ourselves that we
are refusing to judge, we may close our doors against the Master
himself as an impostor, not finding him like the picture that hangs in
our oratory. And if we do not judge--humbly and lovingly--who is to
judge for us? Better to refuse even the truth for a time, than, by
accepting into our intellectual creed that which our heart cannot
receive, not seeing its real form, to introduce hesitation into our
prayers, a jar into our praises, and a misery into our love. If it be
the truth, we shall one day see it another thing than it appears now,
and love it because we see it lovely; for all truth is lovely. "Not to
the unregenerate mind." But at least, I answer, to the mind which can
love that Man, Christ Jesus; and that part of us which loves him let us
follow, and in its judgements let us trust; hoping, beyond all things
else, for its growth and enlightenment by the Lord, who is that Spirit.
Better, I say again, to refuse the right _form_, than, by accepting it
in misapprehension of what it really is, to refuse the spirit, the
truth that dwells therein. Which of these, I pray, is liker to the sin
against the Holy Ghost? To mistake the meaning of the Son of man may
well fill a man with sadness. But to care so little for him as to
receive as his what the noblest part of our nature rejects as low and
poor, or selfish and wrong, that surely is more like the sin against
the Holy Ghost that can never be forgiven; for it is a sin against the
truth itself, not the embodiment of it in him.

Words for their full meaning depend upon their source, the person who
speaks them. An utterance may even seem commonplace, till you are told
that thus spoke one whom you know to be always thinking, always
feeling, always acting. Recognizing the mind whence the words proceed,
you know the scale by which they are to be understood. So the words of
God cannot mean just the same as the words of man. "Can we not, then,
understand them?" Yes, we can understand them--we can understand them
_more_ than the words of men. Whatever a good word means, as used by a
good man, it means just infinitely more as used by God. And the feeling
or thought expressed by that word takes higher and higher forms in us
as we become capable of understanding him,--that is, as we become like
him.

I am far less anxious to show what the sin against the Holy Ghost
means, than to show what the nonforgiveness means; though I think we
may arrive at some understanding of both. I cannot admit for a moment
that there is anything in the Bible too mysterious to be looked into;
for the Bible is a _revelation_, an unveiling. True, into many things
uttered there I can see only a little way. But that little way is the
way of life; for the depth of their mystery is God. And even setting
aside the duty of the matter, and seeking for justification as if the
duty were doubtful, it is reason enough for inquiring into such
passages as this before me, that they are often torture to human minds,
chiefly those of holy women and children. I knew a child who believed
she had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, because she had, in
her toilette, made an improper use of a pin. Dare not to rebuke me for
adducing the diseased fancy of a child in a weighty matter of theology.
"Despise not one of these little ones." Would the theologians were as
near the truth in such matters as the children. _Diseased fancy!_ The
child knew, _and was conscious that she knew,_ that she was doing wrong
because she had been forbidden. _There was rational ground for her
fear_. How would Jesus have received the confession of the darling?
_He_ would not have told her she was silly, and "never to mind." Child
as she was, might he not have said to her, "I do not condemn thee: go
and sin no more"?

To reach the first position necessary for the final attainment of our
end, I will inquire what the divine forgiveness means. And in order to
arrive at this naturally, I will begin by asking what the human
forgiveness means; for, if there be any meaning in the Incarnation, it
is through the Human that we must climb up to the Divine.

I do not know that it is of much use to go back to the Greek or the
English word for any primary idea of the act--the one meaning _a
sending away_, the other, _a giving away_. It will be enough if we look
at the feelings associated with the exercise of what is called
_forgiveness_.

A man will say: "_I_ forgive, but I cannot forget. Let the fellow never
come in my sight again." To what does such a forgiveness reach? To the
remission or sending away of the penalties which the wronged believes
he can claim from the wrong-doer.

_But there is no sending away of the wrong itself from between them_.

Again, a man will say: "He has done a very mean action, but he has the
worst of it himself in that he is capable of doing so. I despise him
too much to desire revenge. I will take no notice of it. I forgive him.
I don't care."

Here, again, there is no sending away of the wrong from between them--
no _remission_ of the sin.

A third will say: "I suppose I must forgive him; for if I do not
forgive him, God will not forgive me."

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