Preached at Ockham, 10th Sunday after Trinity, August 28, 1859.
“Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”—Exodus xx.
I am going to speak to you this afternoon of one of the Commandments. Some people tell us that the Commandments generally do not concern us, they belonged to the Old Dispensation. Some say that it is a great bondage to impose them upon Englishmen who live under the Gospel. Some say that this Commandment, especially, is not meant for us, however good it may be in itself, because it speaks of a land which the Lord gave the Jews, and we are not dwellers in that land. I should not argue against these opinions. I wish to try what they are worth in one instance.
The Israelites were travelling from the land of Egypt, in which they had been bondsmen, to a land which had been promised them. They were told that the Canaanites who occupied that land had become filthy and brutal—the cup of their iniquity was full. They had fancied that the land was their own, to do what they liked with it. They did not acknowledge that they were set in it to till it and dress it. They did not acknowledge that there was any one who would call them to account if they misused it, and became plagues to each other and to mankind. The Israelites were taught that men were only tenants of the soil on which they dwell. It was bestowed on them for certain uses. If they forget these uses they will be turned out of it. The Canaanites were to be cast out of this land because the true owner of it had found them mischievous and corrupt. The Israelites were to succeed them. These Israelites were never to fancy, as the Canaanites had done, that it was their land. They were always to recollect that they were only husbandmen, set by the Great Landlord to watch over it for Him. They were to count it as a great blessing to have this stewardship entrusted to them. And they were to ask very earnestly, What was it that caused these people not to live longer in the land? The same wrong doings would lead to the same result. There was no favouritism. They were there to be witnesses of a truth—to do a work. If they were not witnesses of this truth, if they failed to do this work, they would perish off the land; others would dispossess them. What was it, then, this people had done which had taken the land from them? The great answer to the question is given in the first and second Commandments. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not worship the likeness of anything in heaven or earth or under the earth.” The Canaanites had not worshipped a God who makes free. They had worshipped gods who are tyrants, who make slaves. They had worshipped gods whom they dreaded and hated. They had supposed these gods to bear the likenesses of things in heaven and earth and under the earth. They had stooped and crouched to these things. Some of the objects were noble and glorious; but worship had degraded them. For men thought of them only as they ministered to their wants, or awakened their fears; so they became different in each land. It was impossible to think of them as blessings common to the whole earth. And as they were thought of only as ministering to men’s wants, men would glorify all things whatever which ministered to their wants. The lowest animal might be as much an object of reverence as the sun or moon.
And here was the mighty contradiction. The men felt they were greater than the greatest of these things, whilst they were bowing down to them. They could not help thinking so. They wanted a God to govern them; to tell them what they should be and what they should do; to hold them in fellowship with each other. The sun and moon could not do this, nor the animals. They could not teach them to keep their oaths; they could not teach them to work or to rest; they could not tell them when they should make their children or their servants work and rest. Here were some of the causes why these Canaanites were living in slavery, and why they were to be driven from the land.
The fifth Commandment gives another reason. When Ham exposed his father’s nakedness, it was said, “Servants of servants shall his children be.” That is to say, Ham’s own sin of not honouring his father will be the curse not only of him, but of future generations. Wherever there is a race of people who do not honour their parents, there will be a race of slavish people; this cannot be otherwise. And this, I have no doubt, was a main cause of the brutality and slavery of these Canaanites, inseparable from that of which I have just spoken. They did not revere the father who had begotten them, or the mother who had brought them forth. The child had no thought of its parents; perhaps scarcely knew who they were. The parents had no thought of their children. When it came to this in that or any country of the old world, the inhabitants of that country were becoming curses to themselves and to all about them. The land was taken from them. If we believe the Bible, we shall believe that God took it from them.
You see, then, why it is said here, “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” That is as much as to say, ‘You Israelites must not fancy that your days in that land which I am about to give you will be longer than those of the Canaanites, if you do not honour your fathers and mothers; for it cannot be so. By my everlasting law it cannot. I have placed you in families. I have given you fathers and mothers. And I have created you sons and daughters to look up to them and pay them reverence. And if that reverence departs from you, if you do not care for the family to which you belong, then you will not care for the land to which you belong. You will not love it and fight for it. You will not think it a sacred place because it has the tombs of those who went before you in it. You will not call it your home, and wish to come back to it whenever you wander. You will not believe that you have anything to do with the generations that lived here of old, and with those that shall be born when you are in your graves. You will be mere miserable creatures, thinking only of the present hour, how much you can get to eat and to drink, or how much you can scrape together. And then, be sure, there will creep over you idleness and cowardice, and any invader that comes upon you will be too mighty for you and will eat you up.’
And this, which was said to the whole people, was, you see, said to each one of them. Each man there had his own father and mother. Each was to honour his father and his mother; otherwise he would become a poor vagabond. Either he would run away from his land, just because he was tired of it, or, if he stayed in it, he would be a useless sot or gambler, caring for no one but himself; always trying to please himself—his own enemy and his country’s enemy.
And yet how many temptations did the Israelite find when he came into the land which the Lord God gave him, not to honour his father and mother! How often the evil spirit will have whispered to him, ‘How they grudge you this or that thing, how unfair they are to you! How much wiser you are than they are! How can you be such a feeble creature as to care for what they say to you? Surely you know best what you have need of?’ All these things they heard, and some of them were partly true. The fathers and mothers might be often unfair and foolish; they might neglect their children; very likely they might, in their youth, have not reverenced their parents. So that the young man would frequently persuade himself that he had the right on his side. And except he believed that the Lord his God had said amongst thunders and lightnings to his fathers, and was saying then to him, “Honour thy father and thy mother,” and unless he believed that the Lord who spoke these words was indeed his God as well as his father’s God, and unless he believed that this God knew what was good for him and for all men, and was commanding the thing that was right and true; and unless he believed that this God would give him strength to obey that which He commanded, he would yield continually to his evil nature; no fear of what was coming upon him would keep him from doing so, his anger and his self-will would be too strong for that. But the words would be fulfilled to him. His days would not be long in the land which the Lord his God gave him. And if there were a great multitude like him, they would hasten the time when the whole land should be desolate.
My friends! do these things belong to the history of the old world, to what people call a former dispensation? I hold that they belong to us, I hold it to be just as true of England as it was of Judea, that it is a land which the Lord our God has given us. It is not ours, any more than the land of Canaan was the Israelites. We are tenants of it, just as they were. Our forefathers understood that they were to till it and subdue it for God, and to drive wild beasts out of it, and to root out the thorns and thistles, and to hand it down better than they found it, to their children and their children’s children.
Whilst we remember this, every one of us, if he has not a foot of land that he calls his own, may yet say, ‘I hold this land of God; I have a share of it; yes, and in all the good things that have been done, and in all the brave and good men that have dwelt upon it.’ It is not more the rich man’s than the poor man’s. All who walk upon it, and breathe the air, and look up to the sun may say, ‘It is my inheritance.’ And this is the tie by which the Lord our God has bound us to it, and given us a property in it. Our fathers and mothers belonged to it, as their fathers and mothers did, and while we reverence them, while we count it a great and wonderful thing to have had them to watch over us, and a great and wonderful thing that we should be allowed to care for them, then every one of us may feel that his days are indeed very long in this country. Yes, for they are not bounded by our birth nor by our death either. The country had people in it who belonged to us before we came into it; it will have those belonging to us when we have gone out of it. And that is a pledge and assurance that our ancestors are concerned in all its blessings and sorrows wherever they are, and that we shall be concerned in its blessings and sorrows wherever we go. For it is the Lord God who is, and was, and is to come; who has watched over our family, and will watch over those who shall come hereafter.
But then, dear friends, we, too, have the very same temptations which the Jews had. Some are tempted not to honour their fathers on one ground, some on another; some have tolerable excuses for their sin; some have very poor excuses. Some honour their fathers and not their mothers, or their mothers and not their fathers. Some scarcely know what honouring means; they can only think of themselves and their own importance. And oh! brethren, how bitter is the anguish of recollecting that the honour has not been rendered, and that the time for it is gone; their grey hairs are in the dust; they want no more the services that were withheld, the reverence and the love which were refused them. It is an awful thought, and yet God may use it for bringing us to deep repentance before Him, for leading us to arise and go to that Father whose Spirit we have grieved whenever we have grieved our parents upon earth. And that is what Christ bids us remember. It is this Father, the Lord our God, the Father who gave up His only begotten Son for us all; the Father who loves and honours that Son, and is loved and honoured by Him, world without end, for one Spirit of love binds them for ever and ever; it is He who says to us, in that still small voice which made the prophet tremble more than the thunder, and the earthquake, and the fire, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” He has set over thee a father to remind thee of His justice and truth, a mother to remind thee of His mercy and gentleness. Oh, ask for His Spirit, that thou mayest honour thy father and mother as He would have thee honour Him. Do not let their waywardness, their weakness, or even their sins towards thee, check this, which He who has no waywardness, or weakness, or sin, asks of thee, and would put within thee. Receive it and cherish it as His own gift, which it is the highest good to have, and the greatest calamity to want! Count the commandment which He gives thee to be thy life. So out of the earthly honour there will spring one that is eternal. The vision of the perfect Father, and the joy and blessedness of being His child, will dawn upon thee more and more. And with the higher blessing will come a greater enjoyment and appreciation of the lower. Thou wilt know more of the mystery and wonder of belonging to a family, more of the mystery and wonder of belonging to a nation. Thou wilt see how the prosperity of England is linked to the prosperity of every English hearth and home, how one will be sound and safe as long as the other is sound and safe.
My friends! this may be obsolete teaching in the opinion of wise people. The writers of our Catechism did not think it so. Those who wrote the Canon Law did not think it so. They believed that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is our God; that the God who delivered the Israelites and gave them their land is our God. They believed that He has promised in His new covenant to write His laws in our hearts by His Spirit. And I believe that thunders and lightnings as terrible as those which confirmed the commandment on Sinai, will show us that they were not mistaken. We may talk of refinement and civilization as much as we will, but if these old words do not stand as the words of a living God, we shall sink back into barbarism. We may talk of national prosperity as we will, but if children do not honour their parents, no contrivances of statesmen, no commercial successes, no religious profession, will keep us on the land which God has given us. We may talk of free institutions as we will, but if the ground of freedom be cut from under our feet, the oldest of all curses will be fulfilled in us, “Servants of servants shall they be.”