Advent Sunday
November 28, 1858
“Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”—James v. 7, 8.
These words prove that St. James, like the other Apostles, expected the coming of the Lord in his own day. I have often endeavoured to show you that their expectation was not a false one. A greater change than they looked for took place in the condition of the world. It might not be in all its particulars that which they supposed it would be. Different degrees of illumination may have been vouchsafed them, as to the mode in which it would work. Their very hope showed that there were confusions in their minds which a clearer light must scatter. For it was light they desired; light which should shine into their hearts, and shine out upon the whole Church. But they were certain as to the nature of the blessing which would be vouchsafed to them. It would be a blessing, the same in kind as that which all the older prophets had expected; a day of clearness and revelation: fearful therefore to those who loved darkness; awful even to those who longed for deliverance from darkness. Every signal judgment which had come upon the nation of Israel had been described as such a day, and the event corresponded with the description. It did prove to be a discovery of that which had been hidden. When it came, fearfulness surprised the hypocrites; trusting hearts found that there was indeed a refuge for the needy in his distress, when the blast of the terrible ones was as a storm against the wall. They said, “This is our God, we have waited for Him; He is come, and He will save us.”
Such a day the Apostles expected, one which should transcend all former days, inasmuch as it would wind up the history of the old world; inasmuch as it would announce that the King who had entered Jerusalem, meek and sitting upon an ass, was indeed the King of the whole earth; inasmuch as it would involve the downfall of that city that would not have Him to reign over it, that had cast Him forth as a malefactor. There is no timidity or hesitation in the writers of the New Testament on this point. They speak with as much authority and confidence of Christ’s coming speedily as about any past event. For while He was on earth He had discoursed on this subject with especial definiteness. And He had affixed to His language the seal of that solemn declaration, “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” His appearance in the flesh was unintelligible, if it were not soon to be followed by a manifestation of the power which was His in heaven and earth. Of course none of the Apostles knew whether he should stay on earth to witness that day. The sentence concerning St. John, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”—might seem to indicate that he alone would. But a day which would reveal Christ as Lord of both worlds—which would declare that dying, rising, ascending, He had united them for ever,—could not be less glorious, wherever they might be. On this side of death, they would know in a measure,—on that, far more perfectly, what the crisis meant,—what a victory over the enemies of God and man it betokened.
In this sense, the Apostles might look forward to the day of their death as itself a day of revelation. No men had more motive for looking forward to that day as a day of repose. But if for the words, “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh,” had been substituted, “The time of your death draweth nigh,” the Apostle’s argument for patience and stability of heart would have been worth nothing. A man may possibly encourage himself in the endurance of physical pain by the thought, “It will soon be over;” though I think, in general, he will not gain much help from that recollection taken alone;—so much agony is concentrated into a moment; there is a feeling of continuance in it which overreaches the mere intellectual conclusion that it is likely to pass away. But a student who has been labouring for years to find the solution of a difficult problem, can gather no possible comfort from hearing that in a little while that trouble would cease, along with all other trouble. He had looked forward to a joyful εὕρηκα as the reward of his search; he only learns that it has been all wasted, that he had better not have engaged in it. Add to the thought of death the thought of a future for him, and you may fill him with fears of what is so vague and unknown; you may encourage him to think that his tasks shall not be interrupted, that the calling to which he was devoted here shall be pursued under better conditions, with more success. Mix with this future the thought of Christ’s death and resurrection and ascension, and you have wrought a change indeed, because you have almost changed the day of death into a day of the Lord. But there is something unsatisfactory even in a hope apparently so full of immortality as this. If we narrow our Lord’s death to ourselves, we destroy its significance for ourselves; if it does not take away the sin of the world, it does not take away ours; if it does not reconcile men to God, it does not reconcile any man. This conviction waxes stronger and stronger in the mind of a man, the more conscious he becomes of the links by which he is bound to his fellow-creatures, the more he perceives how entirely his union with them depends on his union with Christ, and on the relation in which He stands to the Father. Redemption from selfishness he feels to be the great redemption of all. He has tasted a very little of its blessedness; he hopes that he shall enter into the fulness of it. How can that hope be realised? how can he help losing all he has won, and sinking back into the condition which he feels to be at once natural and accursed, if in his visions of the future he only sees a comfortable escape for himself from the tumults and calamities of his present existence? He may expand this notion of an escape into anticipations of positive felicity; but they must all gradually melt into thin air, or be condensed into the forms of a sensual paradise, if he remains the centre of them. And think how little such visions correspond to the business of life! How large a portion of that, with all the hopes and fears which belong to it, has reference to kinsfolk, neighbours, your country, the universe! Tell me that I am to work patiently, because in a little time my task will be over, and I shall enter into rest or enjoyment, and you seem evidently to imply that my work is for myself; that if this one thread of my destiny can be fully spun out, I shall have gained all I have been aiming at; which is not true in any sense, unless I have been living an utterly unchristian and detestable life; not true even then, for since I cannot by my will sever myself from those with whose life, by God’s eternal law, mine is intertwined. It was reasonable then, it was inevitable, that the hope of the coming of the Lord should have overshadowed, in the minds of men full of self-denial and love like St. James and his fellow-Apostles, all hopes that merely pointed to the termination of their own pilgrimage. And it was not only reasonable for them. They looked forward to this manifestation, because they were men and felt as men. In every age since their day the most simple, genuine, human feelings have turned in the same direction. Thoughts of a grave where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest, have not been enough to soothe those who have been persecuted by the wicked, who have been most weary, and had the greatest need of rest. Thoughts of their own forgiveness, the deliverance of their own souls, the glorification of their own bodies, have not contented those who have prized forgiveness most, reckoned the soul at its highest worth, have anticipated the change of the earthly body to the heavenly with the greatest clearness. Beneath all these apprehensions, sustaining them all, lay the strong inward conviction that there must be a Revelation of the Divine excellence and beauty, in which the lowliest sufferer, the saddest outcast might share; which would be for each because it would be for all; the real fulfilment of all that had been shadowed forth in ancient prophecies in the hearts of those who uttered them; the real warrant for patience, because it would bring every work to its issue, every problem to its solution.
And such hopes, in whatever age conceived, have not proved more fallacious than in the first. The great critical periods which good men thought were at hand did come. If those who passed through them scarcely took note of them, history confesses their reality. If our vision were brighter, if we saw things less through the mists of the present, we should feel their significance more, not less. When those who foresaw them vaguely, imperfectly, as to special incidents erroneously, passed out of the earth, they will have learnt, no doubt, that they had underrated, not exaggerated their importance,—that they dwelt too much on trifles concerning themselves,—that they had too little owned the Divine hand which was stretched out, the Divine voice which was speaking in them. To learn how that hand is stretched out for the deliverance of men, when they perceive it least, how that voice is speaking to men amidst the loudest clamours, in the deepest silence, we may be sure is their delight now, wherever they are; therefore they know that they had a hope which did not make them ashamed, and which will not make ashamed any who cherish it in the Church below. That which is the warrant of this hope, that which is the true ground of this patience, belongs to us as much as to any former generation. Advent Sunday bids us keep it in mind, the text I have read to you expresses it. “Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and the latter rain.”
I considered, not long ago, how the image of a husbandman, sowing seed and waiting for a harvest, illustrated the kind of diligence which St. Paul demanded of his Corinthian disciples, the kind of reward they were to expect from it. The tiller of the ground is not a speculator. He obeys natural laws. He casts in his seed. He leaves it to no chance or skill to ripen it. He waits a harvest. It is a harvest for others, as well as himself. The fruits are the reward the Apostle dwells on, not the price they fetch in the market. If St. James merely taught us the same lesson, we might be very thankful, for our attention cannot be too often fixed on these natural analogies; none withdraw us so much from vulgar mercantile notions, none give us such a sense of a Divine and human order; of the relation which exists, of the difference which exists, between the creatures of a Lord, and the children of a Father of spirits. But that, I think, is not all which is signified here, not the most important part of what is signified. The Spiritual Husbandman is not, first of all, man,—but God. The resemblance is to His transactions, with us and with His universe. It applies to us, because we are formed in His image, and have nothing good in us, save the reflection of His perfect goodness. It is His patience which St. James would have us meditate on; His longsuffering, with individuals, families, nations, Churches; His watchfulness, till the seeds which He has planted really drink in the gracious nourishment which He pours upon them. It is language with which we are familiar. Longsuffering is the epithet which the writers in the Bible most frequently associate with the character of God. And I am certain that our hearts and consciences respond to their use of it. We are sure that that must be the characteristic of an all-loving Being, Who looks out on such a world as ours. We are sure that the word does not deceive us in the least, however far short it may fall of that which it labours to utter. For we are sure that this was the characteristic of Him who did fully express the Divine substance, who was the perfect image of the Father.
Now imagine for one instant, brethren, that we believed this to be true; what would follow? All history would become a record of the processes of this husbandry, of the means which a Creator uses, that His creation may be very good; which a Father uses to make his children enter into His will and fulfil it. Despair of our race and of ourselves would then seem to us of all things the most unreasonable and wicked—hope, the sober fulfilment of a duty, the submission to an irresistible evidence. Whatever theories about races, conquests, natural influences, religious influences, powers of law, authority of great men, have been defended by any thoughtful student, would be carefully and honestly considered. We should not be eager to embrace one or reject another. The facts on which they are built would be recognized as Divine facts. We should refer them all to one first principle. We should treat them as the tools and processes of the Husbandman for bringing His fruit to ripeness. Whatever another class of teachers have talked learnedly or experimentally about conscience and reflection, active or passive powers, faculties of discourse and induction, of affection and will, would be most interesting, so long as the analysis was not employed to destroy the life of that upon which it was exercised. For we should feel that we could not possibly look at anything human which does not lead us to a Divine Archetype; that all is fragmentary and confused, till it is seen in its relation to Him, in its dependency upon Him. And when we are forced, not by what we read of others, but by what we feel in ourselves, to dwell on that which has broken this relation, has marred this dependency—when Sin stands out before each man as that which has turned aside, again and again, the spade of the great Husbandman, when it would have prepared his heart to receive the seeds or the rain, and to bring forth fruits for the harvest,—oh! let us not forget that the Word was made flesh, to cast every plague, and sickness, and evil spirit out of our sin-stricken humanity! Let us not forget that what we are tempted to pronounce helpless and incurable, He bore; that He claimed it as His Father’s possession; that He has redeemed it by an unspeakable agony, and quickened it with a Divine life.
I repeat it, brethren, if the doctrine of St. James is a true doctrine, hope—the very highest, most vigorous, most sustained hopefulness—is the godly and true state of our being; and whatever tempers we admit that are foreign to hope and contradictory of it, are so far immoral and anti-Christian. But it would be the cruellest mockery to say this——a man would prove himself utterly unfit to preach to others, because utterly unaware of what is passing in himself,—if he did not confess at the same time how much within us and around us is continually warring with this hope, threatening its existence, seeming to prove it monstrous and ridiculous. Turn anywhere in the world, and you will find facts which laugh at you for entertaining it; and every one of those facts has that which corresponds to it and explains it in our own hearts. Where are the signs and pledges of Peace, Freedom, and Order in the nations of the earth? how much of that Peace, and Freedom, and Order do we find has established itself in our bosoms? If you see encouragements in one direction, degeneracy and darkness is increasing in another; the clouds of to-day belie the bright promise of yesterday. Is it not so in the world? is it not so in ourselves? There is a bird of calm, a Sabbath serenity, which you think has descended and rested upon you on some still evening, or by the sick bed of some friend; in a few hours the tempests have returned; a slight accident, a foolish affront, the gossip of idle men, the noise of parties, has shaken to its centre the spirit which you supposed was fixed upon its rock. These are ordinary experiences. There are more fearful battles in which some have to engage; wherein they are driven to despair even of life. The arguments for hope seem all answered by the very voice by which they were first brought. The Bible, Prayers, Sacraments, become themselves the great sources of despondency and terror. The words of Life remind us of voices that spoke them to us, which are now mute, and how little we have profited by their speech or their example! Sacraments remind us how little we have believed God’s own promises, how little our light has shined before men. Holy seasons seem by their recurrence to testify that the world has been moving, and that we ourselves have been retrograding. He is but a Job’s comforter who merely denounces such a state of feeling, or who hopes to cure it by texts and aphorisms. To preach of patience is often the very means of stirring up all impatience. It must be always so, I think, if you do not believe that there is a Patience infinitely above ours, a Patience from which ours must be derived. When we have learned that faith ever so imperfectly, we may make a better use of the Scriptures, of the ordinances of God, of holy seasons, than that which we commonly draw from them. The Scriptures will not be a mere repository of sentences, to be quoted without reference to the occasions which called them forth, or the persons who spoke them, and therefore generally with still less suitableness to the conditions of the persons to whom they are offered; but as witnesses how the God of Patience and Hope led His servants, not over easy slopes and through sunny glades, but through the valley of the shadow of death, into the clearness and light of His own presence; how He saw signs of life in those who counted themselves, or whom their discerning friends counted, dead; how He kindled that life, till all felt it and were warmed by it; till their very failures and evil doings became lessons to distant ages. Divine Sacraments will teach us that we are but receivers of a food which is given us hour by hour from above,—but partakers of a blood which has been poured out for all as well as for us. And so, it will be no wonder to us that we are asked year after year to remember that Christ has come in great humility; year after year to expect that He will come in great glory. Each year will assure us more that without His humiliation here we must be lost for ever in our pride; we must for ever conceive falsely of God, falsely of Man. Each year will tell us more that every act of God’s providence is in its measure a manifestation of His Son’s glory,—a witness that He, and no other, is the Prince of all the kings of all the earth. Every year will tell us, that unless these manifestations were to issue in a final and complete manifestation of Him as the Judge of the whole earth, every hope that He has cherished in us must be crushed and disappointed. Every year, showing more how God has brought His ends to pass in His own good time, and how little we have hastened the work by our restlessness, will contain new lessons of patience. Every year will say that death is not more certain to each of us, that the rising of day out of night is not more certain, than the unveiling of the Son of Righteousness upon this earth of ours.