Transcribed from the 1866 William Skeffington edition by David Price.
A Plain Sermon.
By JAMES
GALLOWAY COWAN, M.A.,
Perpetual Curate of St.
John’s, Hammersmith.
LONDON:
WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163
PICCADILLY.
1866.
Isaiah xlv., v. 5 & 7.
“I am the Lord, and there is none else. There is no God beside me . . . I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things.”
That God is the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible; that He orders all things in heaven and earth according to His own will; that all parts of the universe have their origin, their functions, their capabilities from Him; that they operate or are suspended at His word; that He exalts to prosperity, and lays low in adversity; that He kills and makes alive—are truths which, asserted in a general way, I suppose all of you would readily acknowledge. But, brethren, would it not be only in this general way? In particular and individual instances of what are called nature’s operations, is not the great moving or permitting power often lost sight of, ay, and virtually denied to be at work? Much of this oversight, this practical infidelity, is due, I doubt not, to our use of the word “nature.” We talk of the law of nature, we admire and wonder at the works of nature, until we all-but deify nature, p. 4and dethrone nature’s God. Some may say that when we speak of nature we mean God. But do we? Does not the expression suggest to our minds some indescribable, some unknown essence, working in a mechanical, perfunctory, necessary, inevitable, compulsory way, more frequently than present to us any thought of the Lord Jehovah?
And not less frequently are secondary or subordinate causes so contemplated and insisted on as to exclude from our minds all consideration of the great first cause.
There are indeed laws by which all the movements and productions and changes of the natural world are effected; but we often forget that it is God who originally ordained these laws; that they are not, in themselves, powers, but only the rules by which His power operates: that, in fact, these rules for the direction of His power resolve themselves simply into the consistent motions of His infinite wisdom: that, as by Him everything was arranged at the beginning, so in conformity to the laws suggested by His wisdom He has been superintending and directing all things ever since—the laws themselves being, of course, subject to their all-wise framer and, both by their regular operation and their occasional wonderful diversion or suspension, subserving the great purposes of His sovereign government. Now, looking only into what is called the Book of Nature, simply making our own observations on these laws without the aid of the light of revelation, we cannot fail to discern that they are good in themselves, and that they generally operate for good. We see, indeed, that they can work for evil: the nipping of the frost, the blasting of the lightning, the p. 5overwhelming of the flood, the withering of the drought—these are specimens of what power of destruction there is in God’s elements. Yet they are not their general operations; frost and electric fluid, and heat and water, and a drying sun or wind, being in themselves good agents, agents only occasionally productive of injurious results. If now from these our own discoveries we turn to what God has discovered to us in the Book of His word, we shall have all our former observations confirmed, and the reasons for the occasional evil tendency of what are called nature’s operations fully and clearly explained. Fire and hail, sun and vapour, and stormy wind fulfil His word. He maketh the winds His messengers, and flames of fire His servants. He employs ordinary agents to effect special ends. Instead of sending forth new agents to perform His will, He diverts the old ones from their usual course and makes them fulfil it.
Now when God thus makes use of naturally beneficial agents to bring about destructive ends He does so for some particular purpose. Calamities are never brought upon any of God’s creatures from what we call caprice. God never willingly afflicts or grieves; that is, He never does it simply to satisfy His own will, or to exhibit His own power. God’s thoughts and ways are not as our thoughts and ways. Man, if he knows himself to be possessed of a certain power, often exercises it without care or thought that he is thereby injuring others, or for the bare purpose of display. But not so God. If He afflicts, it is because there is some need of, some good in the affliction; most often, though by no means exclusively, it is to correct p. 6offenders, and to warn others (by their chastisement) not to follow their example. We have only to glance at the history of the Israelites and the circumstances in which God afflicted them, to be convinced that such visitations—whether of consuming fire, of overwhelming water, of destroying sword, of famishing dearth, or of noisome pestilence—are called forth by the conduct of those on whom they come. We, therefore, call these visitations judgments, judgments of punishment, of correction or of warning. They are chastisements which, after all gentler methods have failed, our Gracious Father, desirous of our reformation and eternal safety, employs, and employs most reluctantly, as among the last efforts to recall us into His paths. How sad it is to think that very many of the objects of these visitations allow them to come and go unheeded, and, therefore, of course, unimproved! How much sadder that men who heed them and feel them, in the deceitfulness and unbelief of their hearts, refuse themselves to learn and labour to unteach others the deep and salutary lessons which God, by His judgments, arrests us to hear, and through them utters to us, as it were, with an audible voice! Amid these heaven-sprung calamities, there are to be found, not only careless, heedless men everywhere, but alas! close observers, full of care, so-called philosophers (one begins almost to hate the name from its constant mal-appropriation by the sophist and the infidel) who will observe these calamities, note the signs of the times, speculate about what ought to be done, and yet not dream of recognising, yea, refuse to recognise when it is pointed out to them, the interposition of their God! How marvellous this is! What utter folly is p. 7it! They acknowledge that there is a God. They believe that he has charge of all the elements; they know the general tendency of those elements to be for good; they see them working evil; yet they will not perceive that God has done it. Every cause is made mention of but the great first cause. Every influence is sooner believed in than His.
Here are we, for instance, visited with a grievous plague among our herds and flocks. Every one feels some measure of the calamity. All are alive to the necessity of prompt and great efforts to stay the progress of and cure the murrain. There are hundreds of sage suggestions as to the origin of such things; every conceivable precaution and pains is taken to prevent the communication of them, to remove local provocations and incentives, to discover remedies and cures. But who says or imagines “The hand of the Lord hath wrought this”? Who exhorts, “Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn and He will heal us”? I am not making this appeal to encourage disregard of natural causes and influences. These being the agents and instruments which God uses for or against us, which he requires us to foster if they are good, to remove if they are bad, it would be desperate folly, and most provoking sin, to disregard them. By all means let men follow on as they have begun, in scientific inquiry, sanitary precaution and improvement, and the like; but, besides, let them do what hitherto they do not seem to have done at all sufficiently, namely, recognise and acknowledge the hand of the Lord in these plagues. But you will say “Have they not done this? Is not our presence here to-day a proof that we, at least, have done it? Are there p. 8not thousands and thousands in the land who will assemble as we have done, if their pastors invite them? Has there been any objection to, has there not been loud approval of, the special Collect which the authorities in Church and State have appointed for daily use—is not that Collect itself an acknowledgment, and a discerning acknowledgment, that the Lord has sent the murrain among us?”
My brethren, if I could have felt that men generally assented in heart to the doctrine of that Collect, and were endeavouring to act out its prayers in their life, I should have uttered none of the reproof that has passed my lips. But is it not the fact that men are betaking themselves to God in this way only as one of possible remedies and preventives—not tracing the infliction to Him, but merely asking the removal, of Him?: “Somehow we are in trouble; will God deliver us out of it?” Well is it, indeed, when men thus far believe in a God of Providence; for the human dogmas of our days about fixed laws, necessary and certain revolutions or wars and plagues to keep down the population and so forth, have reasoned and calculated too many into the belief that prayer for the alteration, at least of temporal circumstances, is altogether idle, if not profane. Well is it then, if we still believe that God can interfere in the operations of the world, and that if we will call upon Him there is hope that He will. But, my brethren, we shall not have drawn near with acceptable prayer if we have only asked Him to heal us, if we have not also acknowledged that He has torn us. The prayer will not be acceptable, because He will be acknowledged in all His ways, p. 9worshipped for His Majesty as well as His goodness; seen in His wrath, as well as sought in His clemency. And, moreover, it will not be effectual prayer; for His visitations always have a purpose (“Ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done”), and how shall we have responded to the purpose, if we have not recognised the visitation?
Do you ask me what I suppose to be the purpose of this visitation—and what, therefore, we have to do as a nation and as individuals by way of repentance and amendment? I venture not to answer particularly, picking out the precise sins which characterise us as a people, for which God is provoked, to visit us with present wrath, or for which He is but graciously chastising us, that we may cease from them ere they bring forth His displeasure. I rather bid you consider for what reasons God sent His sore plagues among His people of old, and then ask yourselves what there is in us like unto them, what we lack that God thus laboured to produce in them. I do not even venture to say that God is visiting sin at all. He is the Judge, not I. When I am called to the bedside of a sick man, I am bidden by the Church to admonish him—“Whatsoever your sickness is, know you certainly that it is God’s visitation.” There may be a natural cause for it—he may know it, and I may know it—he may have inherited it, or “accidentally and innocently,” as we say, caught it, or by wicked conduct incurred it; he may be able to connect it throughout with its earthly origin, tracing the effect clearly and completely to a natural cause. Nevertheless, I tell him “It is God’s visitation.” I then enumerate some of the p. 10purposes of God’s visitations: to try patience, to increase faith, to correct what is amiss. If I know his life—or he opens his mind to me and reveals it—I point out what seem to be provoking sins, or crying defects, and bid him consider whether these are not among the probable causes of his trouble—anyhow, (I tell him) they are things which he is now admonished to correct; and, if he accuses and condemns himself for all that he can discern as amiss, and resolves by all means to draw nearer to God, this will be accounted an acknowledgment of God’s ownership and rule of him, which will cause the Holy One to return from His hiding-place, and show again the favour of His countenance.
So would I speak, brethren, to you and to myself at this time. Assuredly God’s visitation is upon us. It may be all favour like Job’s trials, nothing may have provoked His wrath, He may simply be fitting us for and leading us on to greater blessedness. (We shall hardly, however, persuade ourselves that we are so righteous in His sight!) It may be loving correction, meant to make us abandon certain paths that lead downwards out of His favour. Or it may be wrath that can no longer spare the guilty. From what we know of ourselves, brethren, do we not fancy that there is a probable explanation of it all, in the growing contempt for God’s sanctions and restrictions in our law-making (as for instance in the marriage laws) in the wide-spreading persuasion that all that happens on earth can be accounted for without supposing the intervention or even the existence of a God, in the self-sufficiency, self-reliance, self-laudation which characterise us in our living only for time and for ourselves? p. 11What is needed, then, is that we should turn indeed to God, that we should see and acknowledge His hand in all our circumstances, that we should live under His rule and by His laws, that we should exhibit His rule and proclaim His praise, and spread far and wide His glory; that we should feel that we exist for these ends; that, if we forget God’s purposes respecting us, we must expect Him to remind us of them in the ways He has ever followed; that, if we frustrate His purposes, He will most surely visit us with His wrath.
This, my brethren, is our Nation’s duty, and its several parts are ours to do. Let each of us then set about examining ourselves; and, trying to discern what in us provokes God’s visitation, let us humble ourselves before Him on account of it and repent of it, and resolve to forsake it, and ask for grace to do so; let us pray to Him to make us think and speak and move henceforth in the remembrance that, in Him, we have our being; that He is our God, and we are His people.
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