Preached at Brampton Ash, Morning of the 16th Sunday after Trinity, October 5, 1862.
“And there came a fear on all, and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us, and that God hath visited His people,”—Luke vii. 16.
You remember, many of you, the cholera which came upon this land eight years ago. Many of you will remember another a few years before that, and another still further back. That brought a great fear on many neighbourhoods. They saw one and another who was well one Sunday, carried off before the next. This seat was empty and that. Whose seat might be empty the next week? This they called a visitation of God. ‘It is very terrible,’ they cried, ‘He is indeed visiting us. We must ask Him to stay His Hand.’ They knew, indeed, that their own neglect had often much to do with the spread of the disease. Houses were not kept clean from mere idleness, or from their own selfish plans people put themselves and their neighbours in danger. Many drank too much, and that made them weak when the disorder caught hold of them. ‘Still,’ they said, ‘this is God’s doing. He is visiting us.’
Now, my friends, in one way it was quite right to use this language. God does remind us of His presence by these things. Men recollected that there was One over them who cared for their doings. One who commanded them to be clean and sober, and to think of their neighbours as well as themselves. They start up suddenly as if they had waked out of a long heavy sleep, and say, ‘He is there and we knew it not. We have been taking our own way. We have fancied we were left to do as we liked. And lo! it is clear we cannot take our own ways. We cannot do as we like. There is One whom we see not that has fixed which is the right course. There is One who is pointing to us very clearly, “That is the way, walk ye in it; there is terrible danger in going out of it.”’
So far it is a right and useful thought that God visits us in any plague, in any railway accident, in any calamity of any kind that comes to one or another of us. In many places, after the cholera, there was much improvement. The houses and the streets were much better. Nuisances were removed. Rich men saw that they were deeply concerned in the state of the poor; the poor saw that they must bestir themselves and correct their bad habits. A blessing came out of the misery. It was clear that God had been working among us; because that blessing came out of the misery. That is the sure token that neither man nor the devil has the upper hand. The pain and anguish are compelled to serve a good end. They work for a Father not for a tyrant.
That turns the fear which a cholera or any like sorrow produces into a good fear. The fear alone is not good. It makes men cowards. It makes them more likely to catch the plague. It makes them shrink from services to one another. As long as they think that the plague has been sent by some cruel enemy who has a spite against them and wants to take vengeance on them, they do not exert themselves manfully against it, they merely crouch under it. Their fear very often renders them more careless and mad. They think it is too late to set their houses right; they drink harder that they may forget themselves. And as soon as they suppose the danger is over this poor miserable beggarly fear is exchanged for indifference. They remember nothing. They take their chance till the next time.
The true fear—the only fear that is not bad, that is not accursed, is that sort of fear which you are told of in the Gospel of to-day. What caused that fear? A poor woman had lost her only son. She was going out to bury him. A crowd of people were with her. As they came near the gate of the city, the Lord Jesus Christ met them. He said to the woman, weep not. He touched the bier. Those who bare it stood still. He said, “Young man I say unto thee arise.” He that was dead sat up. Jesus delivered him to his mother.
Now it is said, a great fear came upon all, and they said, “A great prophet has risen among us, and God has visited His people.” That was what made the fear! Why there is a Deliverer among us! There is one who is stronger than Death among us! We have feared Death. We have thought Death is the master of us all. He must carry all before him. And now there is One who can take a man out of his hands; who can compel him to give up his prey. A great fear came upon them, of One who had such power.
But was it only His power which they thought of? See what the Gospel says. “When Jesus saw the woman He had compassion upon her.” They had never found any compassion in death. He had seized hold of the youngest creatures, of the most beautiful creatures. He had torn them away from mothers, not heeding their cries in the least. But the Conqueror of death is full of compassion. He feels not only for people in general, but for this one woman. He understands her grief. He enters into it. Can there be such a Being? Can there be one who cares, actually cares, for each one—cares for the sorrow of each one? Who can He be?
They could not doubt it. This must be a great prophet of God. He must be speaking the words of God. He must be doing the work of God. Only such an one could have this might—only such an one could have this pity! Yes! He who can mock death must have come from the Living God. He who is all good, cannot have learnt His goodness from selfish people such as we are. God then must have visited His people. This must be in truth His visitation.
My dear friends! I long exceedingly that we should all feel as this people in Palestine felt at that moment about God’s visitations. I am sure we have more right to the feeling than they had. For we not only think as they thought that Jesus is a great prophet from God, One who speaks the words of God. We believe, and say every Sunday, that He is the only begotten Son of God; that He came down from Heaven to do His Father’s will and to finish His work; and that He did His Father’s will and finished His work, by saving us men. We do not only believe He raised up the son of the woman of Nain, or the daughter of Jairus or the brother of Mary and Martha. We believe that He went down into death and the grave and Hell, and that He triumphed over them once for all, showing that if they were strong, He was stronger. We believe that He did this for them who, through fear of death, had been in bondage all their lives long. We believe that He overcame Him who had the power of death that is the Devil. We believe that He ascended on high to the right hand of His Father, and that all His enemies will be made His footstool. We believe that Death, the last enemy, will be destroyed.
And, therefore, we have a right to say that this was God’s great visitation, and that by it we are to judge of all His other visitations. He visited His people by sending His Son to redeem one and another out of the jaws of death, and then by giving up His Son to suffer death for all mankind. He visited His people by raising up His Son to be the King of the whole earth; the elder brother of His whole family in Heaven and earth. He visited His people by sending His Holy Spirit to teach them to call Him Father, to comfort them in their sorrows, to unite them to each other, to bestow His Eternal Life on their spirits, at last to raise their bodies out of death and corruption. These are the great visitations which the Bible tells us of, and explains to us. And if we believe, we shall think that He visits us every morning, when He causes the light to break out of the darkness, and when he rouses us out of our sleep. We shall think that He visits us in the gift of daily bread. We shall think that He visits us in seed-time and harvest.
We shall think that He visits us in the lessons of our fathers and mothers, in the kind words of every friend. We shall think that He visits us when we come to Church and hear His Holy Word and receive the food of His Sacraments. We shall not think less than before that He visits us when He sends sickness into our families or our neighbourhoods, or when we hear of strange accidents and sudden deaths. But we shall remember that it is Christ, and not death, who is God’s prophet—Christ, and not death, who tells us what God is. Therefore we shall consider every such visitation as a sign that He is among us who stopped the bier at the gate of the city, who had compassion on the widow woman, who said to the young man ‘Arise.’ A great fear and awe will come upon us while we remember how near He is to us, though we see Him not. We shall ask Him to strengthen us to bear whatever we have to bear, to do what we have to do. We shall ask that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, may visit us and visit all the sorrowers of the earth, and may give them that peace which the world cannot give. We shall ask that at last every one we have loved and known may hear the voice which says ‘Arise,’ and that children may be given to their mothers, and mothers to their children, by His own loving hand who came upon earth, who lives in Heaven, to heal the breaches in his Father’s family, and to gather all together in one.