The Bible the Book of Freedom, Personal, National, Universal

“For He brought them out of darkness, and out of the shadow of death: and brake their bonds in sunder.”—Psalm cvii. 14 (Prayer-book Version).

I believe it is a common notion, sanctioned by divines, eagerly adopted by infidels, that the desire of Freedom which men are wont to cherish is discouraged in the Bible as secular and profane. The evil nature, we are often told, prompts us to cry out for Liberty; Subjection and Obedience are the watchwords of Christianity. There may be, it is said, a regulated Liberty which is compatible with Religion; but then it is Religion which imposes the regulations, not which awakens the cravings.

That there is a Religion of which this assertion is true no one will dispute: nor that it is a kind of religion which has been much in vogue among men; one which statesmen have asked for to keep the people in order; one which Churchmen have been able and willing to provide. But that it is the Religion—the Worship—which we read of in the Old and New Testaments, I think a person who is disposed to take them in their simple, literal signification cannot affirm. How comes it that these words stand at the threshold of the Ten Commandments, the ground and sanction of them all, “I am the Lord thy God, Which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”? How comes it that the sternest part of this record, that which most inculcates obedience, most warns of the consequences of disobedience, is the history of a national deliverance? How comes it that the readiness to endure slavery, the longing for the fleshpots of Egypt, is the very sin which the Divine Lawgiver denounces, the very one which all the Divine discipline, we are taught, is designed to cure? How comes it that captivity and slavery are the punishments, the ultimate punishments, which the Prophets warn their countrymen of, those which they hardly dare to contemplate? How comes it that the praise of God is always connected with some rescue out of a strange land; for the Lord’s Songs cannot, the Psalmist tells us, be sung there? How comes it that the word “Redemption”—rather, the idea of which that word is the symbol—is the key-note of the New Dispensation as of the Old, that the one fulfils the other because it contains the complete Redemption? Are all these tokens insufficient to show us that the Bible does not aspire to provide checks against the excesses of freedom, but to instruct us in the nature of freedom, to stimulate an appetite for it, to make us ashamed of our contentment without it, to explain under what conditions we may obtain the highest measure of it?

It is easy to say, “Yes! the Bible speaks of a freedom, but not of that which men ordinarily pant for.” It is easy to say this, and there is a ground for the saying. It is true that the Israelites coveted freedom while they were working under Pharaoh’s task-masters; it is true that they were ready to stone Moses when he brought them from under that yoke into the toils and perils of the wilderness. In other words, they desired they knew not what; when it was given them they shrank from it. So was it then; so has it always been; so will it be to the end of time. In this sense, the freedom which the Bible speaks of is not what men intend by freedom when they ask for it,—in this sense, but in no other. It is not true that the Bible palters with words in a double sense; that it appeals to a feeling which has worked mightily in them, only for the sake of substituting some other in the place of it. What men cry against when they are most fretful and impatient, that it encourages them to cry against, and promises that they shall be set free from; what they thirst after, when their thirst is strongest and least governable, that it promises to supply. If men will be in earnest,—if, in the words of a great orator, they will not rest while they have a link of the chain which galls them clanking to their legs,—God, so say the Scriptures, will bring them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and break their bonds asunder. And as experience proves that this earnestness is not natural to men, that fitful irregular efforts, despondency, subserviency are natural to them, God, the Scripture teaches us further, does, by bitter suffering and by marvellous encouragements, kindle in us that which of itself would not be, keep that alive which left to itself would perish.

My brethren, if we would consider these things, and would believe that the words of the honestest book in the world are not cheating words, I think we should find all our lives much clearer and more real. We have often thought with ourselves, “If we could get into a certain posture of mind, we might perhaps sympathise with what we hear in churches. But it is a peculiar posture; we must have an apprehension of sin which we do not possess, and would not willingly counterfeit; we must have a sense of rebellion against a holy Law, of being exposed to the wrath of a holy Being; we must desire to please Him, to know Him, to be like Him. All this is well for those to whom it is given; there are characters of a certain complexion to which religion seems natural and necessary. By all means let them have it and enjoy it. But they tell us continually that we are cast in a different mould from them; that we cannot understand them, though they would give their lives that we should. Must we not, then, for the present at least, follow our bent as they follow theirs: not force ourselves, as we would not force them, into a shape which was not made for us?” Such words are spoken, you know it well, sometimes openly, more often secretly. It is better when they are expressed, than when they are kept pent up in the heart; for when the conscience sees them fairly, it is ready with the answer to them.

What is that answer? The one which I have hinted at already. Granted, that there is in you none of that sense of personal evil which you have heard that you ought to experience; is there no sense of bands which you would wish to be quit of? It signifies little what these bands are called in the vocabularies of theologians and philosophers. Whether the oppressors are sensual, intellectual, or spiritual, we need not settle; if we are oppressed in our own selves, that is enough. For I am speaking of what is actual, not of what we read in books. Do not we hear men complaining continually that they cannot do what they would, or be what they would? They lay the fault on the tyranny of laws, or of governors who do not heed laws, upon custom, upon social rules and etiquette; upon the inveteracy of old maxims and habits; upon the fashions of the present day; upon chimeras and superstitions respecting the future. Each may shift the burden on a different place, but each feels it. Each must shift it upon something. Every one has good reasons for fixing upon that which he imagines to be the cause; yet none can do justice to the indignation of his neighbour. “It is misplaced,” he says. “If men only knew what he knows, how they would direct all their energies against the real grievance; with what a unanimous effort they would redress it! But he cannot do it alone; he must bring the world to his mind.” Here is a confession that, whatever the evil be, the mind of man is in some way the ultimate cause of its not being removed; it must lie very near to that, be its home where it may. The Bible, I think you will find, is not as unjust to our different apprehensions respecting its nature, as we are to one another; it justifies us all. Evil laws, abuse of law, bad customs, the rules of society, are all admitted to be links in the chain by which we are held fast; the liberty promised has respect to all these. And the tacit acknowledgment, that after all it is in ourselves that we must be slaves or free; that no outward yoke could crush us if we had not put it on; that if we would cast it off, we could,—this acknowledgment, which is made unawares by those who in their theories most avoid it, is sanctioned and repeated in every page of Scripture, nay, is the expression of its deepest principle. For when we confess, in any terms, that the will is at the root of the tyranny we are groaning under, we stumble upon that doctrine which we found so offensive. We say that circumstances do not make our fetters, but that Sin makes them; that circumstances become the servants of Sin, and do its work, because we are its servants, and are doing its work; we do feel this sin, though we may not have understood the language in which some people express their feelings respecting it. But there can be no greater cruelty than to lead a man to this discovery, if you can lead him no further; doing so, you make him desperate; you take away those dreams of emancipation which he had, while he felt that his tyrants were on the outside of him; you tell him that freedom is meant for him, and can never be reached. To this condition must a man come at length, who has learnt the deep precious truth that

“It is the will
Alone which chains us to permitted ill,”

and has not learnt that there is One Who is seeking to set the will free; One above man; One Who sympathizes with men; One Who is working in man to will and to do of His good pleasure.

If, then, brethren, the sigh for pardon has not yet risen out of our hearts, that sigh may yet be working in another form,—apparently, not really another. We may cry for an Absolver, for one who will set us free from the bonds of those sins which by our frailty we have committed. The voice of God, be sure, is not monotonous; it does not speak in one accent only, and that one measured and adapted and reduced by human art. If there be spirits which respond at once to the accusation of having violated a righteous law, and others which are quickly touched by the sense of having grieved a loving and gracious Father and Friend, there are those, less sensitive perhaps,—of sterner, colder stuff,—which nevertheless are conscious of a weight often too hard to bear. They do not like to give it a religious name; and whether it is pride or honesty, or both, which causes the reluctance, I would not disturb it, if only they will take care that the choice of a name does not hide the fact from them, or give it a false colour. Whatever a man’s perplexity is, whatever it be which makes his actions irregular, his thoughts unquiet, his life contradictory, that is a band which needs to be broken for him, and which, after infinite fretting, he will find that he cannot break for himself, not if he has all the machinery of nature and art to help out his individual weakness. He must turn to the Lord of his will, to One Who can meet him there, in a region which the vulture’s eye has not seen. He must say, “In this region of darkness and the shadow of death I cannot see my way. The world without I may know something of, though not much; but here, in the depths of my own being, I am lost. Here, where I most need peace, I find the sources of my disturbance; here, whither I fly for freedom from the slavery of the world around, I find a dungeon-keep. But I am sure there is Light here, if I could see it. I am sure it might shine in, and turn this prison-house into a kingly palace. Source of Light, do Thou enlighten me! Mighty Deliverer, do Thou absolve me!”—Such voices have gone up from men in all places and conditions, and the answer has come. They have found that it had been given long ago, and yet that it came forth all fresh and mighty. For their bands have been broken asunder. They have known assuredly that the words of God are true words, purified seven times in the fire. They have been certain that Christ came to set free the imprisoned spirit of man; that He is nigh to that spirit now; that it may trust in Him; that it may prove day by day the truth of His own words, “If the Son shall make you free, then are ye free indeed.”

If, in these last sentences, I have spoken of that mysterious region wherein lie the roots of all our thoughts, feelings, purposes, acts, do not think that I am therefore withdrawing you from the region of homely practical existence. No! brethren, it is in the common hard warfare of daily life that one becomes conversant with these secrets; in it one learns all the metaphysics that are worth knowing. In trying to do right, as husbands, brothers, fathers, citizens, we find the bands which hold us; the disappointments we meet with in our efforts to encounter the most ordinary temptations and provocations, to do the duty that lies nearest to us; the difficulty of being honest and truthful, still more, of being trustful and loving. Thus are we taught that we want an ever-present helper and deliverer, a daily absolution, a renewal of strength hour by hour. This shows us, too, what kind of absolution we require. It is the Son Who makes us free, because He brings us the adoption of sons. It is the faith, that in Him these spirits of ours may claim God for their Father, because He has in Him claimed them for His sons and given them His Spirit, that they may cry, “Abba, Father,”—it is this faith which raises us above the flesh that has claimed to be our master, when it was meant to be our slave; above that world, of which we were intended to offer the fruits to God, but which has demanded our worship for itself; above that Spirit of Evil, which would persuade us that there cannot be Freedom in the Service of a Loving God, and if we listen to him would make us the slaves of self-will and hatred. We are, therefore, driven back continually upon our Baptism; we have to learn our child’s Catechism afresh every day. The wonderful lessons we learnt in it, are what God has made us to be, what we make ourselves to be when we forget Him, what His Name is, and what strength and deliverance lies in it for ourselves and all our brethren; how in the power of it we can keep His commandments, loving Him with our hearts and souls and strength, loving our neighbour as ourselves; how we and they may pray to Him as members of one body, saying, “Our Father”; how He answers that prayer, first adopting us as His children, then feeding us as His children with the flesh and blood of His Son; how, in the faith of the reconciliation which that flesh and blood express to us, we can offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God,—this wonderful child-lore, brethren, contains the whole secret of that deliverance, which we need in our manhood as in our infancy; oh that, one and all, we may claim it! All that we have ever dreamed of, when our thoughts of the liberty which is possible for humanity were the most glowing; all that sages and saints saw, sometimes afar off, sometimes almost at hand; all that tempted the embrace of longing hearts, and then has fled away and seemed to be only a phantom;—all this is expressed in this teaching, and with it the resolution of the problems of actual life; the escape from woes without, and more fearful woes within; the absolution from the anguish of past guilt, and present helplessness, and the terrors of the future. Let us wait for no change of circumstances, for no new experiences, no fresh revelation. Our circumstances will be a growing bondage unless we seek the Divine freedom; our experiences have been more than enough to tell us all that we cannot live without it; the revelation of God’s Love, which we have already, is warrant for the conviction that it is near all who desire it, that He is awakening the desire for it.

These meditations on the subject of Freedom are not, I think, quite unnecessary at this time. Whenever wild and wicked acts are done in that name, it loses some of its power over timid minds: they are easily tempted to suppose that it is not quite one which religious men should meddle with. The old and obvious suggestion, that religion has been used to justify plots and assassinations as much as freedom, that if you cast away one upon that plea you must cast away both, has little weight with those who live in the moment, and regard history as only an almanac of events that can never recur. And no doubt it would be a mere idle taunt to observe that crimes, which are imputed to the enemies of Popes in our days, have been smiled at and sanctioned by Popes themselves in other days, if it were not needful for our own instruction and warning to remark, that those who would make the Gospel of Christ not a Gospel of Freedom, are doing what in them lies to make both Freedom and Religion criminal and ungodly, and are therefore encouraging the atrocities which are done under either pretext. This consideration should not be quite lost on those who, out of mere wantonness and love of paradox, or a dislike of certain persons and professions, speak lightly and scornfully of a word which no Englishman can in his heart despise, till he has become a traitor to all the memories and traditions of his country,—yes, and a traitor to its Faith also. For faith in a God Who breaks men’s bonds asunder has been the faith of our forefathers, the faith to which we have owed everything that is pure and great amongst us. It is the faith which has given us all our manliness; it has been equally the faith which has given us noble women, capable of showing forth, even under the most enervating and depressing circumstances, a divine strength and heroism. It must not be forgotten that those Sovereigns who brought back to our soil, from the lands in which they had wandered, an impatience of Freedom, a desire for Absolutism, a belief that Absolutism and Religion are natural allies, brought with them also irreverence for women, an accursed heartlessness, a detestable licentiousness. That the infection which they left in the English Court has been in our days thoroughly removed, that domestic purity has established itself there,—this renovation, as it has been the great impulse to loyalty among the people of England, so is it the best pledge that the sons and daughters of our Queen, whithersoever they shall go, will testify, by their words and their lives, how blessed and glorious a thing it is to be born on a free soil. We have a right to believe confidently that she who is leaving us now—since simplicity is stronger than guile, old affections than plausible theories—will never be tempted, by any sophistries, however they may clothe themselves with religious names, by any dread of revolutions and anarchy, be it never so reasonable, to think that a Government can merit the titles of patriarchal and divine by bringing its subjects into bondage, and not by raising them to freedom. May the happy omen of her marriage upon the day on which we commemorate St. Paul’s conversion, continually remind her that the noblest champion for Christ was he who bade men stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free! May all the blessings of which that day speaks be hers! May they be ours, that so we may be God’s ministers, as St. Paul was, in bringing the nations that we rule, and by degrees all the nations, out of darkness and the shadow of death, and in breaking their bonds asunder!