Preached at Ockham, 11th Sunday after Trinity, September 4, 1859.
“Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery.”—Exodus xx. 13, 14.
Let me remind you once more how these commandments begin. “I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the house of bondage.” The Israelite was to hear those words spoken in his ears before each of these sentences:—I, the Lord thy God, thy Deliverer, say to thee, thou shalt not kill; I, the Lord thy God, thy Deliverer, say to thee, thou shalt not commit adultery.
And let me remind you also once again, that the self-same God, who is, and was, and is to come—He who is our God, and has chosen us to be His people— He who has redeemed us from the service of evil and cruel gods—He who is our Father, and has made us His children—is speaking to us just what He spoke to the Israelites.
The commandments are written in a book, but He is saying them to the heart and soul of every man and woman and child, who cannot even read the letters of the book.
Consider that. Every Englishman knows that it is against the laws of his country to commit murder. He knows that if he does commit it and is found out, he shall be put to death, or be shut up in prison and set to hard labour. And yet murders are committed dark, foul murders—in our land, by men born and brought up like ourselves, breathing this air, nursed upon the knees of mothers, who have had good thoughts in them, who perhaps have done kind deeds. The fear of the law is not enough to stop them; for they say, we shall not be found out. The deed can be done in some out-of-the-way field or wood. The body can be hidden in the ground, or we may choose a secret way of murder, we can use slow poison that even wise people may not understand the working of. Being punished hereafter may sometimes come into their minds; but that hereafter seems a long way off, and who can tell what may happen in the mean time? And so the man broods over this thought of a murder, and at last it gets ripe in his mind, and he does it, and the papers are filled with the news of it. And people read of it, and talk of it, and are not generally much the better for what they read and what they talk. But now, supposing that murderer had believed what the Bible says to us. Suppose he had understood that the Lord his God was saying to him then—just when the deed was going to be done, just when he was purposing it and plotting, just when he was trying the knife or the poison— ‘Thou shalt not do it! No one else knows what thou art after, but I know it. No one else may follow thee in all thy contrivances, but I shall follow thee. No one else may be able to tell where the body has been buried, or how the drugs have been mixed, but I shall see it all.’ Would that have made no difference? Would it have been nothing to him that he was going to part with a friend, to separate from one who had been with him, and watching over him in all his doings? I ask you, if the man had believed this, would it not have stopped him, though the fear of being hanged could not stop him; though the fear of what should happen to him after death could not stop him? Yes, brethren, that was just what he wanted; that was just what he did not believe, what very likely he never believed. He comes to know afterwards that it is so. There is a blankness and dreariness and dread in his heart, as if he had lost something; not an enemy—not the man he had taken so much pains to get rid of—but a well-wisher, One who cared for him, One who had kept him from a thousand wrong deeds before. He is at war, and he sometimes feels that he is at war with the Lord his God. He wishes that he could kill that thought, aye, that he could kill God. It is that he has been trying to do, and a man may come to the state when he shall think that he has done it; and this state is more miserable and horrible than any other.
But what is the use of troubling ourselves about what unhappy murderers might have believed, and did not believe? This is the use of it, brethren, you and I may believe it. You and I may think this commandment is true and not a lie. The Lord our God, our Father, is always with us; knowing our acts, knowing our thoughts and wishes, knowing all the secret influences that may be working in us to do any evil deed. And He has the will to keep us from it. And He has the will to take away the dark, horrible imaginations that lead to it, He has the will to drive them clean and clear out of us, and to put right and blessed and loving thoughts and purposes in the place of them. As our Lord was telling us in the lesson we read this morning, in the Sermon He preached on the Mount, He is calling us to account for the first rising of anger in our heart; He calls us into judgment for the bitter curse that goes out of our lips. He makes us feel what a hell-fire we have kindled in our hearts, when we begin to scorn our brother, and call him fool! Yes, all that is verily so. Christ is Himself speaking in our consciences, and accusing us of bad thoughts and words, long before they start into bad deeds. He begins at the beginning. Is not that good for us to remember, for us who have the same nature with the murderer, for us who may be tempted sometimes as he is tempted; for us who may be cherishing a cruel and savage hatred of some fellow-creature, even if we are kept from hurting his body?
And what I have said of this commandment, is just as true of the next. In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord speaks of that as well as of the words, “Thou shalt not kill.” He speaks of the secret lusts which work in a man’s heart before he dares to defy the law, and defile his neighbour’s wife. He says to every one of us: thou canst not hide from me the deed of darkness, though no mortal may be acquainted with it; thou canst not hide from me all the secret desires that are leading thee to ruin another and thyself—thou canst not make excuses with me. I know thy temptations, but I can give thee the victory over them, I can save thee from destroying the soul of one thou pretendest to love, the peace of a family, thy own truth. The dread of being detected and exposed may not hold thee back in thy evil way; but I can. Here, again, I say, the adulterer and adulteress sin, because they do not believe this. It seems to them an idle tale. But they know afterwards that it is not an idle tale. There comes to them, as there does to the murderer, the certainty that they have lost something that was infinitely precious. They have set themselves at war, not with the world and with men, but with the living and true and loving God. The misery that awaits them is not when people are looking on and scorning them; they might bear that; they might comfort themselves with the thought, ‘perhaps if they had been in our circumstances they would not have been better.’
But it is in lonely hours, when no one is condemning them, when they are trying to find comfort in each other, or to look back upon the days of their childhood, or to hope for better hours—it is then that some voice speaks to them, and says: you have sold your birthright; you would not have a Father. You did not let His Spirit govern you; you have given yourselves to an evil spirit.
Brethren, there are very sad and fearful thoughts connected with these commandments. But there are also very blessed thoughts connected with them. Is it nothing to remember that the Lord God Himself watches over the life of every one of us, poor creatures as we are? that He has declared and does declare how precious it is in His eyes? ‘I say to thee, poor man and rich man, beggar and king, “Thou shalt not kill.” I say to the man with the strongest arm, with the greatest dominion over his fellow-creatures—that strength is mine; that dominion is lent thee by me, to defend life not to take it away. And if thou usest it for the wrong purpose instead of the right one; if thy strength become a plague and a destruction to thy fellow-men, though none of them may call thee to account for it, I shall call thee to account for it. Thou wilt answer to me for every drop of this sacred life which thou spillest; of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.’ And thus, too, we come to understand better what God’s promises are concerning this life of ours. It is subject to a thousand accidents. All things seem to conspire against it. Death seems to get the mastery over it at last. But no, He has said, ‘Death I will be thy plague.’ As every plant and tree seems to die in winter and to revive in spring, so He says to this more wonderful life in our bodies: ‘It shall go on, and this is the pledge and witness that it shall. The head of you all, the Son of Man, the only-begotten heavenly Son of God, died Himself and rose again. God’s conflict with death is accomplished. The grave shall not kill’
And so again, the Lord thy God is the God over thy household. He watches over the marriage bond. He does not, in his care for the whole universe, forget thee and thy wife. He has uttered His decree that you shall live together in holy wedlock, and that no man shall break that covenant betwixt you made, and that you shall not break it to each other. His curse goes forth against that sin.
Yes, against sin. For, recollect, that there is no more precious life than this of wife, of husband. The life of trust and affection; the life of friendship and wedded love; the life of doing good to men; the life of reverence and worship. This is the true life of a man; not the life that is sustained by eating and drinking. And, therefore, God who cares much for that bodily life, cares more for this better life which He has bestowed upon his human creatures. And he encourages and wishes them to give up one for the sake of the other. Brave men have been ready—are ready—to give up the life of their bodies, that their households may be safe from pollution, that their country may be governed by righteous laws; that they may save it from falling under wicked tyrants; that they may worship the true God in spirit and in truth. He who says thou shalt not kill, bids us understand that it is well to pour out blood as if it were water, rather than to become base and foul creatures—beasts, instead of His servants and children. That was the reason he sent the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites. They were corrupting and defiling the earth with their murders and adulteries and abominations. It was time that the earth should be cleared of them. It was time that a God of righteousness, who watches over life and marriage, and does not leave men to follow their own lusts, should be proclaimed among them. And as I said to you last Sunday about the commandment, “Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” that a nation in which the reverence for parents is gone, will not stay long on the land which the Lord its God has given it: so, I say, now, about the crimes of which I have spoken to-day. A land is defiled with blood, whether we think it or not; a land is defiled by breaches of the marriage vow in the high or the low. And when these crimes spread far and wide, when they are spoken lightly of, when they are thought only to concern those who commit them, and not to concern us all; when we are amused by reading about them, instead of being ashamed for the sake of our people; then let us look well that that does not come upon us which has come upon other people before us. Let us recollect that the God who gave these commandments is king now, as he was when they were heard on Sinai, and that there is no respect of persons with Him, and that He has sworn that He will set righteousness and truth on His earth whoever shall prefer unrighteousness and falsehood.
But there is a question which you may very well ask me about this matter, which I will try to answer.
I have spoken as if murder and adultery were crimes which would certainly bring down God’s righteous punishments upon the men who commit them, and upon the land which suffers them. But am I not sent to preach forgiveness to those who have sinned? ought I then to have spoken as if these judgments were sure; as if there was no escaping them? Brethren, I am sent to preach the largest and freest forgiveness that God can give, or man can receive. I am sent to tell you that God gave His Son to reconcile the world to himself, and that Christ is the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. And this message we are to proclaim without stint or measure to all manner of people; and those who proclaim it in hulks, and prisons, and penitentiaries, and convict settlements, to the worst and most guilty people, are true servants and handmaids of God, and are blessings to their country. But they are so if they give this message as God gives it, not as man changes it. Christ died to take away the sin of men; He died to unite men to the righteous and sinless God. The Lord our God who has redeemed us out of the house of bondage will always deliver us from sin; will always give us a new and right and clean heart. He did that for David; the Jewish king, who had committed adultery and murder. He will do it for the poorest Englishman who has been guilty of the same sins. But He did not free David from punishment; He punished him all his life long. He made him feel all his life long that to seduce the wife of a poor soldier, and to get him slain, was a horrible offence in the eyes of the King of Kings, which he would visit not with some pretty little punishment, such as David might have invented for himself, but with sore and tremendous punishment, with the ingratitude of his children, and the rebellion of his people. It would have been very bad for this king if it had been otherwise. He would then never have known what God’s righteousness is. He would never have sought for himself righteousness, or a deliverance from his own folly and sin. He would never have been righteous in his execution of God’s laws, and yet tender to sinners who were not so bad as he had been. And so it is still. He who says “Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery”—because He is the Lord our God, our Redeemer, our Father—will take away the murderous spirit out of the murderer, and give him a loving and gentle spirit, even His own: will drive the foul spirit out of the adulterer’s heart, and give him a holy and pure spirit; even His own. But He will not suffer either the one or the other to escape punishment. And I am well convinced that the murderer and adulterer to whom He has given repentance would be very sorry if they did escape it. They would feel that He was not the great God such as they believe Him to be. They would feel that He was not the Saviour such as they believe him to be, seeing that He did not keep them in mind of the evil which had separated them from Him, and did not compel them to turn away from themselves and seek Him. Whenever the thought gets into the mind of any people that God can be persuaded by any prayers or intercessions of any sort whatever, in earth or heaven, to release particular people from the punishment that He has thought good for them, that people will go further and further from righteousness; adulterers and assassins will both abound amongst them. And as they go further into evil they will become more superstitious, and will practise more arts to keep God at a distance from them. Therefore, brethren, drive all such thoughts from you. Understand that a man cannot have any curse so terrible as to be left in his sin, or to be allowed to go on without punishment; and that he cannot have any such great blessing as to be raised out of his sin, and to have it treated as his blackest and bitterest enemy. For this end Christ died and revived—not that He might save us from our Father in heaven, but that He might bring us nigh to Him, and make us sharers of His goodness and truth, which are the everlasting foes of all that is not good and true in us, and in the whole universe.
I beseech you to recollect this, you who are bringing your children to be baptized, promising in their name that they should keep God’s will and commandments, and walk in the same. I beseech you to think of it who are learning these commandments at school, and you who are old and who have learned what it is to break them. To all of you God speaks words of mercy and deliverance. He loves you all too much to leave you easy when you are disobeying and forgetting Him. And especially, I beseech you who have eaten the bread and drunk the wine to-day at our Lord’s table, to remember that these were the witness and assurance that He is with us everywhere, wherever we are, and whatever we are doing, and that He can make us obey what St. Paul calls the royal law—what St. James calls the law of liberty—thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself—and if this is written in our hearts, there is no fear that we shall do any wrong to our neighbour or to our country.