Unspoken Sermons
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George MacDonald >> Unspoken Sermons
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Brother, when thou sittest at home in thy house, which is the temple of
the Lord, open all thy windows to breathe the air of his approach; set
the watcher on thy turret, that he may listen out into the dark for the
sound of his coming, and thy hand be on the latch to open the door at
his first knock. Shouldst thou open the door and not see him, do not
say he did not knock, but understand that he is there, and wants thee
to go out to him. It may be he has something for thee to do for him. Go
and do it, and perhaps thou wilt return with a new prayer, to find a
new window in thy soul.
Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to him. To wait till thou
go to church, or to thy closet, is to make _him_ wait. He will listen
as thou walkest in the lane or the crowded street, on the common or in
the place of shining concourse.
Remember, if indeed thou art able to know it, that not in any church is
the service done that he requires. He will say to no man, 'You never
went to church: depart from me; I do not know you;' but, 'Inasmuch as
you never helped one of my father's children, you have done nothing for
me.' Church or chapel is _not_ the place for divine service. It is a
place of prayer, a place of praise, a place to feed upon good things, a
place to learn of God, as what place is not? It is a place to look in
the eyes of your neighbour, and love God along with him. But the world
in which you move, the place of your living and loving and labour, not
the church you go to on your holiday, is the place of divine service.
Serve your neighbour, and you serve him.
Do not heed much if men mock you and speak lies of you, or in goodwill
defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their
backs upon you. Only take heed that you turn not from them. Take
courage in the fact that _there is nothing covered, that shall not be
revealed; and hid, that shall not be known_.
THE FINAL UNMASKING.
_For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid,
that shall not be known_.--Matthew x. 26; Luke xii. 2.
God is not a God that hides, but a God that reveals. His whole work in
relation to the creatures he has made--and where else can lie his
work?--is revelation--the giving them truth, the showing of himself to
them, that they may know him, and come nearer and nearer to him, and so
he have his children more and more of companions to him. That we are in
the dark about anything is never because he hides it, but because we
are not yet such that he is able to reveal that thing to us.
That God could not do the thing at once which he takes time to do, we
may surely say without irreverence. His will cannot finally be
thwarted; where it is thwarted for a time, the very thwarting subserves
the working out of a higher part of his will. He gave man the power to
thwart his will, that, by means of that same power, he might come at
last to do his will in a higher kind and way than would otherwise have
been possible to him. God sacrifices his will to man that man may
become such as himself, and give all to the truth; he makes man able to
do wrong, that he may choose and love righteousness.
The fact that all things are slowly coming into the light of the
knowledge of men--so far as this may be possible to the created--is
used in three different ways by the Lord, as reported by his
evangelist. In one case, with which we will not now occupy
ourselves--_Mark_ iv. 22; _Luke_ viii. 16--he uses it to enforce the
duty of those who have received light to let it shine: they must do
their part to bring all things out. In _Luke_ xii. 2, is recorded how
he brought it to bear on hypocrisy, showing its uselessness; and, in
the case recorded in _Matthew_ x. 25, he uses the fact to enforce
fearlessness as to the misinterpretation of our words and actions.
In whatever mode the Lord may intend that it shall be wrought out, he
gives us to understand, as an unalterable principle in the government
of the universe, that all such things as the unrighteous desire to
conceal, and such things as it is a pain to the righteous to have
concealed, shall come out into the light.
'Beware of hypocrisy,' the Lord says, 'for there is nothing covered,
that shall not be revealed, neither hid, that shall not be known,' What
is hypocrisy? The desire to look better than you are; the hiding of
things you do, because you would not be supposed to do them, because
you would be ashamed to have them known where you are known. The doing
of them is foul; the hiding of them, in order to appear better than you
are, is fouler still. The man who does not live in his own
consciousness as in the open heavens, is a hypocrite--and for most of
us the question is, are we growing less or more of such hypocrites? Are
we ashamed of not having been open and clear? Are we fighting the evil
thing which is our temptation to hypocrisy? The Lord has not a thought
in him to be ashamed of before God and his universe, and he will not be
content until he has us in the same liberty. For our encouragement to
fight on, he tells us that those that hunger and thirst after
righteousness shall be filled, that they shall become as righteous as
the spirit of the Father and the Son in them can make them desire.
The Lord says also, 'If they have called the master of the house
Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household! Fear
them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be
revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.' To a man who loves
righteousness and his fellow men, it must always be painful to be
misunderstood; and misunderstanding is specially inevitable where he
acts upon principles beyond the recognition of those around him, who,
being but half-hearted Christians, count themselves the law-givers of
righteousness, and charge him with the very things it is the aim of his
life to destroy. The Lord himself was accused of being a drunkard and a
keeper of bad company--and perhaps would in the present day be so
regarded by not a few calling themselves by his name, and teaching
temperance and virtue. He lived upon a higher spiritual platform than
they understand, acted from a height of the virtues they would
inculcate, loftier than their eyes can scale. His Himalays are not
visible from their sand-heaps. The Lord bore with their evil tongues,
and was neither dismayed nor troubled; but from this experience of his
own, comforts those who, being his messengers, must fare as he. 'If
they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall
they call them of his household!'--'If they insult a man, how much more
will they not insult his servants!' While men count themselves
Christians on any other ground than that they are slaves of Jesus
Christ, the children of God, and free from themselves, so long will
they use the servants of the Master despitefully. 'Do not hesitate,'
says the Lord, 'to speak the truth that is in you; never mind what they
call you; proclaim from the housetop; fear nobody.'
He spoke the words to the men to whom he looked first to spread the
news of the kingdom of heaven; but they apply to all who obey him. Few
who have endeavoured to do their duty, have not been annoyed,
disappointed, enraged perhaps, by the antagonism, misunderstanding, and
false representation to which they have been subjected therein--issuing
mainly from those and the friends of those who have benefited by their
efforts to be neighbours to all. The tales of heartlessness and
ingratitude one must come across, compel one to see more and more
clearly that humanity, without willed effort after righteousness, is
mean enough to sink to any depth of disgrace. The judgments also of
imagined superiority are hard to bear. The rich man who will screw his
workmen to the lowest penny, will read his poor relation a solemn
lecture on extravagance, because of some humblest little act of
generosity! He takes the end of the beam sticking out of his eye to
pick the mote from the eye of his brother withal! If, in the endeavour
to lead a truer life, a man merely lives otherwise than his neighbours,
strange motives will be invented to account for it. To the honest soul
it is a comfort to believe that the truth will one day be known, that
it will cease to be supposed that he was and did as dull heads and
hearts reported of him. Still more satisfactory will be the unveiling
where a man is misunderstood by those who ought to know him
better--who, not even understanding the point at issue, take it for
granted he is about to do the wrong thing, while he is crying for
courage to heed neither himself nor his friends, but only the Lord. How
many hear and accept the words, 'Be not conformed to this world,'
without once perceiving that what they call Society and bow to as
supreme, is the World and nothing else, or that those who mind what
people think, and what people will say, are conformed to--that is, take
the shape of--the world. The true man feels he has nothing to do with
Society as judge or lawgiver: he is under the law of Jesus Christ, and
it sets him free from the law of the World. Let a man do right, nor
trouble himself about worthless opinion; the less he heeds tongues, the
less difficult will he find it to love men. Let him comfort himself
with the thought that the truth must out. He will not have to pass
through eternity with the brand of ignorant or malicious judgment upon
him. He shall find his peers and be judged of them.
But, thou who lookest for the justification of the light, art thou
verily prepared for thyself to encounter such exposure as the general
unveiling of things must bring? Art thou willing for the truth whatever
it be? I nowise mean to ask, Have you a conscience so void of offence,
have you a heart so pure and clean, that you fear no fullest exposure
of what is in you to the gaze of men and angels?--as to God, he knows
it all now! What I mean to ask is, Do you so love the truth and the
right, that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to the idea of an
exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself--an exposure that
may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humble?
It may be, for instance, that you were wrong in regard to those, for
the righting of whose wrongs to you, the great judgment of God is now
by you waited for with desire: will you welcome any discovery, even if
it work for the excuse of others, that will make you more true, by
revealing what in you was false? Are you willing to be made glad that
you were wrong when you thought others were wrong? If you can with such
submission face the revelation of things hid, then you are of the
truth, and need not be afraid; for, whatever comes, it will and can
only make you more true and humble and pure.
Does the Lord mean that everything a man has ever done or thought must
be laid bare to the universe?
So far, I think, as is necessary to the understanding of the man by
those who have known, or are concerned to know him. For the time to
come, and for those who are yet to know him, the man will henceforth,
if he is a true man, be transparent to all that are capable of reading
him. A man may not then, any more than now, be intelligible to those
beneath him, but all things will be working toward revelation, nothing
toward concealment or misunderstanding. Who in the kingdom will desire
concealment, or be willing to misunderstand? Concealment is darkness;
misunderstanding is a fog. A man will hold the door open for anyone to
walk into his house, for it is a temple of the living God--with some
things worth looking at, and nothing to hide. The glory of the true
world is, that there is nothing in it that needs to be covered, while
ever and ever there will be things uncovered. Every man's light will
shine for the good and glory of his neighbour.
'Will all my weaknesses, all my evil habits, all my pettinesses, all
the wrong thoughts which I cannot help--will all be set out before the
universe?'
Yes, if they so prevail as to constitute your character--that is, if
they are you. But if you have come out of the darkness, if you are
fighting it, if you are honestly trying to walk in the light, you may
hope in God your father that what he has cured, what he is curing, what
he has forgiven, will be heard of no more, not now being a constituent
part of you. Or if indeed some of your evil things must yet be seen,
the truth of them will be seen--that they are things you are at strife
with, not things you are cherishing and brooding over. God will be fair
to you--so fair!--fair with the fairness of a father loving his
own--who will have you clean, who will neither spare you any needful
shame, nor leave you exposed to any that is not needful. The thing we
have risen above, is dead and forgotten, or if remembered, there is God
to comfort us. 'If any man sin, we have a comforter with the Father.'
We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will
not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are
ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit we should be
ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a
thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be.
Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those
who would get into the heart of things. In the name of God let us
henceforth have nothing to be ashamed of, and be ready to meet any
shame on its way to meet us. For to be humbly ashamed is to be plunged
in the cleansing bath of the truth.
As to the revelation of the ways of God, I need not speak; he has been
always, from the first, revealing them to his prophet, to his child,
and will go on doing so for ever. But let me say a word about another
kind of revelation--that of their own evil to the evil.
The only terrible, or at least the supremely terrible revelation is
that of a man to himself. What a horror will it not be to a vile
man--more than all to a man whose pleasure has been enhanced by the
suffering of others--a man that knew himself such as men of ordinary
morals would turn from with disgust, but who has hitherto had no
insight into what he is--what a horror will it not be to him when his
eyes are opened to see himself as the pure see him, as God sees him!
Imagine such a man waking all at once, not only to see the eyes of the
universe fixed upon him with loathing astonishment, but to see himself
at the same moment as those eyes see him! What a waking!--into the full
blaze of fact and consciousness, of truth and violation!
To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself!
Or think what it must be for a man counting himself religious,
orthodox, exemplary, to perceive suddenly that there was no religion in
him, only love of self; no love of the right, only a great love of
being in the right! What a discovery--that he was simply a
hypocrite--one who loved to _appear_, and _was_ not! The rich seem to
be those among whom will occur hereafter the sharpest reverses, if I
understand aright the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Who has not
known the insolence of their meanness toward the poor, all the time
counting themselves of the very elect! What riches and fancied
religion, with the self-sufficiency they generate between them, can
make man or woman capable of, is appalling. Mammon, the most
contemptible of deities, is the most worshipped, both outside and in
the house of God: to many of the religious rich in that day, the great
damning revelation will be their behaviour to the poor to whom they
thought themselves very kind. 'He flattereth himself in his own eyes
until his iniquity is found to be hateful.' A man may loathe a thing in
the abstract for years, and find at last that all the time he has been,
in his own person, guilty of it. To carry a thing under our cloak
caressingly, hides from us its identity with something that stands
before us on the public pillory. Many a man might read this and assent
to it, who cages in his own bosom a carrion-bird that he never knows
for what it is, because there are points of difference in its plumage
from that of the bird he calls by an ugly name.
Of all who will one day stand in dismay and sickness of heart, with the
consciousness that their very existence is a shame, those will fare the
worst who have been consciously false to their fellows; who, pretending
friendship, have used their neighbour to their own ends; and especially
those who, pretending friendship, have divided friends. To such Dante
has given the lowest hell. If there be one thing God hates, it must be
treachery. Do not imagine Judas the only man of whom the Lord would
say, 'Better were it for that man if he had never been born!' Did the
Lord speak out of personal indignation, or did he utter a spiritual
fact, a live principle? Did he speak in anger at the treachery of his
apostle to himself, or in pity for the man that had better not have
been born? Did the word spring from his knowledge of some fearful
punishment awaiting Judas, or from his sense of the horror it was to be
such a man? Beyond all things pitiful is it that a man should carry
about with him the consciousness of being such a person--should know
himself and not another that false one! 'O God,' we think, 'how
terrible if it were I!' Just so terrible is it that it should be Judas!
And have I not done things with the same germ in them, a germ which,
brought to its evil perfection, would have shown itself the
canker-worm, treachery? Except I love my neighbour as myself, I may one
day betray him! Let us therefore be compassionate and humble, and hope
for every man.
A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he
may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter, and thinking
himself a good Christian. Continuously repeated sin against the poorest
consciousness of evil must have a dread rousing. There are men who
never wake to know how wicked they are, till, lo, the gaze of the
multitude is upon them!--the multitude staring with self-righteous
eyes, doing like things themselves, but not yet found out; sinning
after another pattern, therefore the hardest judges, thinking by
condemnation to escape judgment. But there is nothing covered that
shall not be revealed. What if the only thing to wake the treacherous,
money-loving thief, Judas, to a knowledge of himself, was to let the
thing go on to the end, and his kiss betray the Master? Judas did not
hate the Master when he kissed him, but not being a true man, his very
love betrayed him.
The good man, conscious of his own evil, and desiring no refuge but the
purifying light, will chiefly rejoice that the exposure of evil makes
for the victory of the truth, the kingdom of God and his Christ. He
sees in the unmasking of the hypocrite, in the unveiling of the
covered, in the exposure of the hidden, God's interference, for him and
all the race, between them and the lie.
The only triumph the truth can ever have is its recognition by the
heart of the liar. Its victory is in the man who, not content with
saying, 'I was blind and now I see,' cries out, 'Lord God, just and
true, let me perish, but endure thou! Let me live because thou livest,
because thou savest me from the death in myself, the untruth I have
nourished in me, and even called righteousness! Hallowed be thy name,
for thou only art true; thou only lovest; thou only art holy, for thou
only art humble! Thou only art unselfish; thou only hast never sought
thine own, but the things of thy children! Yea, O father, be thou true,
and every man a liar!'
There is no satisfaction of revenge possible to the injured. The
severest punishment that can be inflicted upon the wrong-doer is simply
to let him know what he is; for his nature is of God, and the deepest
in him is the divine. Neither can any other punishment than the
sinner's being made to see the enormity of his injury, give
satisfaction to the injured. While the wronger will admit no wrong,
while he mocks at the idea of amends, or while, admitting the wrong, he
rejoices in having done it, no suffering could satisfy revenge, far
less justice. Both would continually know themselves foiled. Therefore,
while a satisfied justice is an unavoidable eternal event, a satisfied
revenge is an eternal impossibility. For the moment that the sole
adequate punishment, a vision of himself, begins to take true effect
upon the sinner, that moment the sinner has begun to grow a righteous
man, and the brother human whom he has offended has no choice, has
nothing left him but to take the offender to his bosom--the more
tenderly that his brother is a repentant brother, that he was dead and
is alive again, that he was lost and is found. Behold the meeting of
the divine extremes--the extreme of punishment, the embrace of heaven!
They run together; 'the wheel is come full circle.' For, I venture to
think, there can be no such agony for created soul, as to see itself
vile--vile by its own action and choice. Also I venture to think there
can be no delight for created soul--short, that is, of being one with
the Father--so deep as that of seeing the heaven of forgiveness open,
and disclose the shining stair that leads to its own natural home,
where the eternal father has been all the time awaiting this return of
his child.
So, friends, how ever indignant we may be, however intensely and
however justly we may feel our wrongs, there is no revenge possible for
us in the universe of the Father. I may say to myself with heartiest
vengeance, 'I should just like to let that man see what a wretch he
is--what all honest men at this moment think of him!' but, the moment
come, the man will loathe himself tenfold more than any other man
could, and that moment my heart will bury his sin. Its own ocean of
pity will rush from the divine depths of its God-origin to overwhelm
it. Let us try to forethink, to antedate our forgiveness. Dares any man
suppose that Jesus would have him hate the traitor through whom he came
to the cross? Has he been pleased through all these ages with the
manner in which those calling themselves by his name have treated, and
are still treating his nation? We have not yet sounded the depths of
forgiveness that are and will be required of such as would be his
disciples!
Our friends will know us then: for their joy, will it be, or their
sorrow? Will their hearts sink within them when they look on the real
likeness of us? Or will they rejoice to find that we were not so much
to be blamed as they thought, in this thing or that which gave them
trouble?
Let us remember, however, that not evil only will be unveiled; that
many a masking misconception will uncover a face radiant with the
loveliness of the truth. And whatever disappointments may fall, there
is consolation for every true heart in the one sufficing joy--that it
stands on the border of the kingdom, about to enter into ever fuller,
ever-growing possession _of the inheritance of the saints in light_.
THE INHERITANCE.
_Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be
partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light_.--Ep. to the
Colossians i. 12.
To have a share in any earthly inheritance, is to diminish the share of
the other inheritors. In the inheritance of the saints, that which each
has, goes to increase the possession of the rest. Hear what Dante puts
in the mouth of his guide, as they pass through Purgatory:--
Perche s'appuntano i vostri desiri
Dove per compagnia parte si scema,
Invidia muove il mantaco a' sospiri.
Ma se l'amor della spera suprema
Torcesse 'n suso 'l desiderio vostro,
Non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema;
Che per quanto si dice piu li nostro,
Tanto possiede piu di ben ciascuno,
E piu di caritade arde in quel chiostro.
Because you point and fix your longing eyes
On things where sharing lessens every share,
The human bellows heave with envious sighs.
But if the loftiest love that dwelleth there
Up to the heaven of heavens your longing turn,
Then from your heart will pass this fearing care:
The oftener there the word _our_ they discern,
The more of good doth everyone possess,
The more of love doth in that cloister burn.
Dante desires to know how it can be that a distributed good should make
the receivers the richer the more of them there are; and Virgil
answers--
Perocche tu rificchi
La mente pure alle cose terrene,
Di vera luce tenebre dispicchi.
Quello 'nfinito ed ineffabil bene,
Che lassu e, cosi corre ad amore,
Com' a lucido corpo raggio viene.
Tanto si da, quanto trova d' ardore:
Si che quantunque carita si stende,
Cresce sovr' essa l' eterno valore.
E quanta gente pin lassu s' intende,
Piu v' e da bene amare, e pin vi s' ama,
E come specchio, l' uno all' altro rende.
Because thy mind doth stick
To earthly things, and on them only brood,
From the true light thou dost but darkness pick.
That same ineffable and infinite Good,
Which dwells up there, to Love doth run as fleet
As sunrays to bright things, for sisterhood.
It gives itself proportionate to the heat:
So that, wherever Love doth spread its reign,
The growing wealth of God makes that its seat.
And the more people that up thither strain,
The more there are to love, the more they love,
And like a mirror each doth give and gain.
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