Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity
October 31, 1858
“By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.”—Proverbs xvi. 6.
How many opposing theories, in jurisprudence, education, theology, are suggested by these few words! “If you would reform criminals, you must use mercy; all other methods have been tried and failed;” this is one doctrine with which, in this day, we must be all tolerably familiar. Those who consider that it furnishes an all-sufficient rule for the treatment of convicted wrong-doers, generally extend it also to the discipline of children; severity with them is held to aggravate the evil which it seeks to cure. The habit of mind which leads to these two conclusions arrives, without any logical effort, at a third,—that the Divine character should be presented to men as one of pure unmixed mercy; so only, they say, can the hard heart of a sinner be melted; so only can his iniquity be purged.
The opposite temper is scarcely less common, either as a reaction against this, or as that which has provoked it. “Make criminals, make children feel that there is a stern law, which must execute itself, which does not change its nature or lose its power because they are pleased to trifle with it. That method certainly may bring the actual offender to reason,—is the only one at all likely to deter others from imitating him; it uses the young to regard transgression as something involving detection and shame; it forms strong, not, like the other system, soft and puny men.” Those who give these attributes the highest throne on earth can only contemplate in the Majesty of the Heavens a form of fixed eternal Justice and Right. The sense of these, they think, purges iniquity, if anything can.
As we think of the first clause in the text, so shall we think of the second. “The Fear of the Lord,” say one class, “was inculcated by the Old Dispensation; the Love of Him is the principle of the New. Men may depart from evil under the influence of fear, but they speedily return to it again. Let them heartily delight in Him who forbids evil, and they will renounce it for ever.”——“Vain expectation, belied by all experience!” exclaim the teachers of the opposite school; “what becomes of mere feeling, affection, gratitude, sympathy, when a strong motive is presented to the heart,—when it is supported by subtle arguments to the understanding? That which you trust gives way, often leagues itself with the assailant. The hope of forgiveness which you have been so careful to encourage is a continual temptation to make the venture. The tender sensitive spirit your gentle treatment has created is the most prone to all dangerous attractions. Fortify it with Fear, let it tremble to do wrong, or you will find that you have not kept it from falling; awaken its fears when it has fallen, or it will never depart from evil.”
These arguments are practically very perplexing; the most practical people have a witness in themselves or in their experience that the decisions of neither school can be implicitly followed. But their efforts to follow both a certain way, or to discover a compromise between them, are not in general very successful. A criminal jurisprudence which is partly severe, partly lenient, misses the security of rules and the grace of gentleness. The mischiefs of that education which to-day is rigid, to-morrow relaxed, are proverbial. All wise persons tell us that unvarying cruelty, or the most resolute indulgence, is less utterly destructive of body and soul. And I dare not conceal my conviction, brethren, that the theology which answers to these experiments, and furnishes the secret or acknowledged justification of them, is in its effects and in its principle even more terrible. The notion, so often put forward in popular as well as scholastic writings, of a conflict in the Divine Mind between the attributes of Justice and Mercy, and of a scheme by which they are brought into reconciliation, would have been too revolting, I am sure, for the consciences of good and wise men, if they had recollected Who it was of Whom they were daring to speak. In the awfulness of prayer or thanksgiving, they could not have borne such a conception of the Being Whose name is holy, Whose nature is one. But earthly rhetoric or technical phraseology can raise a thick veil between the heart and its object. While we are occupied with these there may be no sense of our standing in a Divine presence; we may utter words concerning Him Who inhabiteth eternity, which we should resent as mean and unworthy if they were applied to a fellow-creature for whom we cared. By a Mercy and Truth thus torn apart and set in opposition to each other, we may say boldly, iniquity is not purged; by that fear which such a representation of God begets, men will not depart from evil.
Solomon was speaking in the spirit of the Old Testament; yet you perceive in his words no sense of a contradiction between these two qualities, no endeavour to show how they may be adjusted to each other. He assumes that they must work together, that one cannot exist without the other. He does not say that Truth is to be tempered with Mercy, or that Mercy must not be carried too far lest it should interfere with Truth; or that Mercy pleads for the guilty man whom Truth condemns, or that Truth demands a compensation for its concessions to Mercy. He says simply, “By Mercy and Truth iniquity is purged;” both are equally enemies of iniquity; both are equally interested in its extirpation; both are equally interested in the deliverance of the creature who is tormented by it.
Such a view as this was surely the only one which could satisfy a Jew who believed in the God of Abraham. He had been taught from his infancy that the Lord of Heaven and Earth had revealed Himself to his fathers as the God of Righteousness and Truth. In His righteousness and His truth they were to confide. Thither they were to fly as a refuge in all calamities and troubles. This Truth was an unfathomable depth. But it was their only security. The temptation to honour being less righteous, less true, was mighty; such unrighteous and false gods were worshipped by the heathen around about; all the evil tendencies in themselves inclined them to take part in the worship. They fell into it; they found themselves degraded and enslaved. What escape had they? The Being whom they had forgotten was what He had ever been. His Mercy and Truth were fixed as the hills, or as the firmament over their heads. When they were wearied with their own inventions; when they had found every reed which they had leaned upon going into their hands and piercing them, the recollection of Him came back to them. There was a time when the thought of One so unlike themselves was terrible; they had fled from Him to creatures whom they could judge according to their own standard, who were the images of their own good and evil. In their despondency and weakness it was their only comfort to believe there was One unlike themselves; One Who was not changeable and capricious as they were. They cried to Him. He heard their cry, and delivered them. He was merciful, and forgave their transgressions. The grace was wonderful, wholly undeserved; till they felt it to be so, they knew not what it meant. It unfolded to them depths in the Divine character of which they had known nothing, or only by the hearing of the ear. But was the goodness strange, because it came from a perfectly Righteous Being? Did this make it more perplexing? Surely not; they felt that only a perfectly Righteous Being could be perfectly merciful. To be unmerciful, hard-hearted, selfish, was a part—a chief part—of their own unrighteousness and falsehood. Why, but because they had departed from that blessed Image after which they were formed, that image in which Mercy and Truth are necessarily and eternally united?
When we read the Psalms, we perceive that the Righteousness and Truth of God are the refuge to which holy men betake themselves from enemies within as well as without, from the sins which were crushing down their spirits as much as from the Philistines or Ammonites who threaten to destroy their bodies. They implore Mercy; but they implore it of One Who they believe is willing to bestow it, because He is Righteous. They implore Mercy; but it is the Mercy of being delivered from unrighteousness; from lying lips and a deceitful tongue. That view of Mercy in which it takes the form of indulgence of sins, tolerance of falsehood in others or themselves, they dare not cherish. Often has it been presented to them, but the yielding to it is nothing less than departing from God; it is one of the very diseases and enemies which they desire Him to deliver them from; one of the iniquities from which by His Mercy and Truth they are purged. Again, that notion of Truth or Justice which confounds it with power or sovereignty; which supposes that its object is to obtain so much vengeance for so much wrong committed; that it must have an equivalent for any delay in the execution of its sentences.—this notion was familiar to them in the religion of the heathen, familiar from the sympathy their evil hearts had with it. But when they turned to Him, their true King, to Him Who was the God of Truth and without iniquity, it was in the confidence that He would abolish those dark idols of their fancy, would teach them to sanctify Him in their hearts, to make Him their fear and Him their dread.
Yes! their fear and dread; for it is indeed, as has been alleged, the doctrine of the Old Testament that the fear of God is the beginning and the end of Wisdom, that by this man departs from evil. But it is the fear of God, to which holy men give this title, not that miserable substitute for it, the fear of punishment. It was the fear of the Lord, the Righteous and Merciful Lord; not the fear of some false being, some creature of their own thoughts, clothed with their own evil qualities. Such creatures they were not to fear; they were to fight continually against the fear of them. The more gracious and blessed He was Who ruled over them, their Creator and Lord, the more were they to cultivate the fear of Him in their hearts. Superstition and idolatry terminate in universal fear; but they begin with the effort to get rid of fear. A man does not like the feeling of an Invisible Presence, of One Who is near him by night and day, spying out all his ways, looking into the depths of his heart. He cannot bear the demand which such a Being makes upon his awe. He longs to trifle. And if he can have gods measurable by his conceptions, approachable by his senses, he can trifle even in his acts of worship. He knows that these things are beneath them, and he can take his revenge for the effort of honouring them by gross familiarity, sometimes by open contempt. What fear he has of beings whose characters he has brought down to the level of his own, who are chiefly his patrons and helpers, lays him under no necessity of departing from evil, has no power to withdraw him from it.
I have spoken of the Old dispensation. Is all changed, as we are sometimes told, in the New? Jesus said, “He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.” Did any one see in Him that warfare of Truth with Mercy which we have so rashly dreamed of in the eternal Mind? A warfare there was throughout His life upon earth,—with foes seen and unseen, —with Scribes and Pharisees,—with the rulers of the darkness of this world,—with spiritual wickedness in high places. But it was the warfare of Truth and Mercy against untruth and hardness of heart. These were united in all who set themselves to resist His blessed words and acts; the perfect harmony of their opposites was revealed in Him. He showed that Mercy and Truth were divided only by the evil which seeks to destroy both. He showed that it is by their perfect union that iniquity is purged. Before that manifestation, the battle of attributes and qualities which our weakness and sin produce in us might be transferred to God. Holy men, we see, were raised by God’s teaching out of the temptation, were forced, by the experience of division in themselves, to demand unity in Him. But when in a human countenance they beheld the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father,—and that glory was the fulness of Grace and Truth,—the mist vanished from their eyes. When once the subject nature reflected the absolute Nature, all was calmness, peace, concentrated good. And it was perceived that the Son of God was become the Son of Man, that men might receive the uniting Spirit of God; that the strifes and conflicts of opposing feelings and tempers might be stilled in them; that they might show forth, in their words and acts to their fellow-men, that Mercy and Truth which, together, and not apart, purge iniquity.
But are we not taught that it is the Sacrifice of Christ which purges iniquity? Yes, brethren, but we are not taught (in the Bible at least) that the Sacrifice of Christ was the sacrifice to one attribute for the sake of bringing it into agreement with another. We are taught that it was the sacrifice of a Son to a Father, Whose Will He perfectly delighted to do; Whose Will, because it was the true and merciful will, was perfectly manifested in the act of self-sacrifice; the only act which could purge the sin of self-will,—that is the sin of the world; which could reconcile the world to God; which could bring the subject will, that had rebelled against the Divine Will, under its gracious government. By the Mercy and Truth of the Father, seeking after the creatures who had become hateful and false because they had ceased to confide in Him, and had made gods like themselves; by the Mercy and Truth of the Son, uniting Himself to those creatures in all their misery and death, that He might raise them to be partakers of His own life; by the Mercy and Truth of the Spirit, stirring up the wills of men that they might bring forth the fruit of merciful and true works, and so be plentifully rewarded with the knowledge of Him; by this Mercy and Truth is the iniquity of our race and of each of its members purged.
And by the fear of this great and holy Name do men depart from evil. Rightly is it said, that the mere belief in One all-pitiful to infirmities and sins, is not enough to keep men from evil, or to raise them out of it. Rightly is it said, that the dread of an unbending Lawgiver pursuing evil with quick, inevitable punishment, is not enough to keep men from evil, or to raise them out of it. The despair of the last conclusion has the same result as the ease of the first. Wretchlessness of unclean living is as much the escape from the bondage of terror, as it is promoted by the expectation of perpetual indulgences. But the fear of One in Whom dwells all Mercy and Truth; to be separated from Whom is to be separated from Mercy and Truth; from Whom comes restoration as well as life; Who seeks to deliver us from the misery that is in us, that we may possess the treasures that are in Him; this fear, when it is entertained in the heart, when it penetrates the whole man, will keep us from every evil way. Nor ever let us fancy that the revelation of God which the New Testament contains has made that fear obsolete or unsuitable to our condition. The Name which is uttered there is the Name of absolute, eternal Truth and Love; therefore it should make us tremble more than any which was heard in the old time. An Israelite might break in upon the bounds of Sinai, might mock its thunders, with less peril to his moral being than a Christian can receive continually the pledges of Christ’s Redemption, of His fellowship with man, while he cultivates in himself all the tempers from which Christ came to redeem us, the mind which is most contrary to His mind.
Yes! brethren, this is the awfulness of our position! It is our moral being which is at stake. It is the second death of all trust, affection, sincerity, or, in Solomon’s words, of Mercy and Truth, in ourselves and in the world, that threatens us! This death, to which all other punishments are as nothing, may be stealing upon us in the midst of outward respectability,—under the shadow of religious ordinances,—whilst our profession is the fairest in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world around us. If ever any of us find that it is even so, if we suspect that the life within has been perishing, that we have been growing less merciful and less true, while we have been using seemly phrases and punctually fulfilling what are called religious duties,—if that fearful discovery comes to us at any moment,—oh, let us beware how we use it! First of all, let us not try to persuade ourselves that we must be mistaken,—that our consciences have been too cruel with us. God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things. He tells us these secrets. Next, let us not try by any artificial method to cultivate the fear which has been wanting in us, to produce an affected reverence for the outward thing or shrine, when the reverence for the inner Presence has departed. That course will make us more false; probably it will make us more unmerciful, for we shall comfort ourselves by condemning those who we suppose are less devout than we are. And lastly, do not let us cast off God’s ordinances, as if they had been the causes of our insincerity. They have been true—we have been liars. They have been saying to us, “He who is Truth and Mercy has come nigh to you,—has pardoned you, has made peace with you; He would have imparted to you His Mercy and Truth, that you might show forth the image of both in your dealings with men. If in your shame and confusion you will now turn to Him, owning that you have no such qualities of your own, and that without Him you never can have them, He will show you that He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever; that His Mercy and Truth have still power to purge iniquity; that He can give you that Fear by which men depart from evil.”