Whit- Sunday
June 12, 1859
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”—2 Timothy i. 7.
Many readers of this passage, I doubt not, place the emphasis on the word us. They suppose St. Paul to say, “An ordinary man, who occupied the position which you occupy, the overseer of a society which is composed of various and contradictory elements, in which strange doctrines are appearing, which is exposed to all the influences of a commercial and corrupt city, would fear and tremble. Oftentimes he would be assailed by cowardly thoughts of what this or that man would say of him; oftentimes he would be crushed with the sense of an overwhelming responsibility; oftentimes he would be anticipating future calamities. But it is not so with you or with me. Young as you are, God has put you beyond the reach of such temptations, by the peculiar gift with which He has endowed you. It is your privilege to be as free from fightings and terrors as I, your spiritual father, am.”
It is very natural that those who regard the blessing which Whit-Sunday commemorates as one that was peculiar to the apostolical age, should adopt this interpretation of the text; they cannot well tolerate any other. But I think it is at variance with the direct language, as well as with the pervading tone, of these pastoral letters, and of all St. Paul’s letters to the Churches. Timothy, one would gather from the words which are addressed to him, felt keenly and oppressively the greatness of the task that had been imposed upon him, often shrank from the weight of it, was not less conscious than any teacher or ruler in any age has been, of inexperience and feebleness. No privilege which had been conferred on him, saved him from the sense of fear, or from that bondage which fear produces. If he had such an exemption, he was wholly unlike his teacher and guide. That teacher was often so beaten down by fears within as well as fightings without, as to despair even of life. He had, he said, the sentence of death in him, and there were times when the sentence appeared on the point of executing itself.
What encouragement, then, could he give to Timothy? Precisely that which he had found necessary in his own case, precisely that to which he had been driven by the experience he has described to us. His spirit might be palsied with fear; but there was a Spirit near him and with him which was not a Spirit of fear, to which he could turn as the Deliverer from fear, the Restorer of energy, the Quickener of hope. That Spirit had been given, not to him, Paul, but to the Family of which he was a member;—if in any especial sense to him, to him only because he was a servant of that Family, because he needed powers that were not his own, to make his ministries for it effectual. All his comfort lay in the assurance that this Spirit was God’s Spirit; not bound by the limitations or swayed by the fluctuations of those whom He governed; able at the same moment to control, renovate, emancipate, myriads of human wills, as the sun acts at the same moment on myriads of vegetable or animal existences, in all stages of their growth or their decay. The Apostle, believing as he did that the day of Pentecost spoke of a real, not of an imaginary gift—of a living Person, not of a floating influence,—of that which was the last, highest, most permanent of God’s blessings to His creatures,—of that which was implied in the creation and constitution of Man, but which could not be actually conferred, in its fulness and universality, till Christ had glorified the nature of Man at the right hand of His Father; the Apostle, believing this, could bid Timothy remember in his darkest hours—it was the only remembrance which was of the least avail to himself—that they had been baptized with the Spirit, not of fear, but of Power, of Love, of a Sound Mind.
Assuredly, my brethren, this faith of the Apostle’s would have failed him altogether,—it could have been no refuge to him in those battles with principalities and powers which he found so much more terrible than all battles with flesh and blood,—if he had supposed that we of after-days would not have the same right to exercise it as he had. He lived to bear witness that when Christ “had ascended on high, He received gifts for men, yea, even for the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell among them.”
That witness was either false for his own time, or it is true for us, and for our children, and for as many as the Lord our God shall call. Whitsuntide has declared to generations of men, of all nations and families and tongues, that the message was for them. Let us see then what lessons of strength, of consolation, of warning, each one here may gather from the words that were first written for Timothy.
I. I suppose we have all felt tempted, at times, to use language which is just the reverse of the Apostle’s. We have read in records of the past,—we have known on a larger or smaller scale among our contemporaries,—such instances of strange panic and cowardice, of counsel and heart failing just when the need for them was the greatest, that we have been ready to exclaim, “Surely there is something Divine in this! We cannot attribute such a loss of nerve and energy to the pressure of outward circumstances; these often evoke the greatest courage when they are most appalling. We cannot attribute it merely to a natural want of courage; those same men, or bodies of men, at other crises, showed that they were capable of manly effort. Their fear is surely supernatural. God has given them this spirit of Fear.” Such a mode of speaking is not uncommon; it is not without strong excuse. Many awful sentences of Scripture might be alleged in support of it. I think these sentences find an echo in our own consciences.
But I think also, brethren, that our consciences will tell us that we pervert such passages of Scripture, if we set them in opposition to the doctrine of St. Paul in the one now before us. We need not study the records of the past, or the actions of our fellowmen, to learn what the spirit of fear or cowardice is. Each one knows the gripe of it in himself. Each one has trembled before the opinion of Society, or of that little fraction of Society with which he has to do, or of some particular man. Each has, perhaps, known something of that cowardice which springs from self-distrust, from the apprehension of lions in his path, from doubtfulness, which of several paths he should choose, from the foretaste of coming evils. If only some (how many would be included in that some!) shrink at the thought of certain acts being exposed which they would desire that none should ever know but themselves, is there one of us who has not been made conscious of tempers, habits, states of mind which he has longed to conceal from the eye of that Judge to Whom he is sure they must be most hateful?
Now every one of these fears has not only an apparent but a real justification. It is exceedingly likely that the verdict of the individual or the public which we dread will be given against us; the sense of feebleness is no delusion; the actual sorrow often surpasses our dream of it; the bad act has been done, and will some day be discovered; the man lies to himself if he says, “I have not been as unkind, as base, as insincere as my heart witnesses that I have been; that unkindness, baseness, insincerity, are not as much at war with the nature of a pure, loving, true God, as I supposed that they were.” And yet this fear which is reasonable takes away my reason; it makes me false and slavish. Why? Because I am not obeying the perfect reason; my will is out of harmony with the free and just will. I am afraid of things which have no right over me, but which claim a right over me when I have broken loose from my lawful allegiance. The old Scriptures may well represent God as giving men over to their fear; as leaving them to feel what they are without Him; what they must become if He were not upholding them. But such a statement is surely in strict consistency with the fuller and more perfect one of the Apostle, that the Spirit of Fear is not God’s Spirit,—not the Spirit which He gives,—that that is the Spirit against which we are revolting when the other gets the mastery of us; that only by recollecting the presence—the continual presence—of a Spirit of Power and Love and of a Sound Mind, can we shake off its tyranny, and recover the dignity of men.
II. The Spirit of God is said to be a Spirit of Power. Consider the different kinds of Power before which men bow, and those which they covet most to exercise. There is none more familiar or more wonderful than that of the Orator. It is felt in the most savage tribes and the most civilized; you are doubtful whether the North-American Indian, or the Greek in the age of Pericles or Philip, illustrates it most. It is not a material force. It acts upon the understandings, still more upon the wills of men. You know that it may be a most immoral, a most detestable power; one which leads to all mischievous acts, to all lying habits of mind. Yet you cannot banish it from your commonwealths. You cannot diminish it without diminishing human sympathy, without making human beings more inhuman. Whence does it come? How can you direct it? Will you consider the story we have been reading to-day? A set of Galilean fishermen, noted for an uncouth dialect, are met at a Jewish feast, at which men from all parts of the Roman and the Parthian Empires are gathered. Suddenly, we are told, they begin to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gives them utterance. They make themselves understood; those who hear, feel that through the stammering tongues of such simple men, One is speaking to them Who knows what is in them, and what they want. We have a stereotyped explanation of this mystery. It was necessary that the Apostles should know different languages, that they might preach the Gospel effectually. The Apostles themselves do not speak of this necessity; they do not seem to have been aware of it. But they did feel the need of learning that the words which they used, in their own tongue or any other, were not their own. They did need to learn that words were an awful trust, for which they must give account to Him from Whom they came. They did need to feel that words are the witnesses and instruments of communion between men and men, not because they are animals, but because they are spirits, and because a Divine Spirit is speaking to them. Is not this the secret of the orator’s power? Is there not a Spirit of Power from whom all his capacity of influencing his fellows, of acting upon his fellows, is derived? If he remembers his responsibility to that power,—if he habitually confesses it as the source of his own,—if he never dares, under one pretence or another, above all, under any religious pretence, to trifle with truth and honesty, what health there will be in his speech, what health it will impart! How his words will clear the air of its mists, instead of raising mists to make the air dark and stifling! And how, if we hold this faith, each of us, though we possess none of the special gifts of the orator, we shall feel the grandeur, the fearfulness of that organ of speech which has been committed to us all! With what shame and repentance we shall confess the truth of St. James’s lesson, that the tongue is a little member which no man can tame, which requires another ruler than man to keep it from sending forth poison,—nay, in his own tremendous but not exaggerated language, from “setting on fire the course of Nature, even as it is set on fire of hell!” That is what malicious, lying words can do; that is their origin. If there is not this Spirit of Power to quell them and to purify them, they will laugh to scorn laws, conventions, all the charms and restraints that our wisdom can invent.
There is another power mixed frequently with this, but yet different in its direction and its nature, which also can be limited to no country, or circumstances, or stage of cultivation. The physician, the healer, is welcomed in all lands by different titles, but always for this reason, that he can in some way act on the life of men, can oppose the powers that are threatening life. In some regions his functions are hardly distinguished from those of the priest, because he too is conversant about life and death, a life or death that may continue when the resources of the ordinary physician are exhausted. Think how these powers, separate or combined, working in alliance or hostility, meet you, into whatever part of the earth you travel! Think how they mingle with ancient traditions, with philosophical theories, with hints and promises of good that you are afraid of weakening, with an immorality, lying, slavery, that are dragging nations into perdition! Think how vain the efforts of the statesman are to encounter them when their operation is most pernicious; how generally, in our time, he gives over the endeavour as a hopeless, and even as a wrong one; how he considers it his best chance to make some tolerable compromise with those who claim supernatural agencies, be they of what kind they may. For in fact he cannot stop to inquire of what kind they are, whether the priests invoke a Destroyer or Deliverer, or each by turns; whether they reckon Cursing or Blessing their mightiest and most desirable weapon; whether they deliberately hold Truth or Falsehood to be the most religious.
But if we refer all powers that physicians or that priests can exert over the bodies or the spirits of men to that Spirit who dwelt in Jesus Christ; if we believe that He came into the world to baptize us with that Spirit; if we suppose that God has given us that Spirit and no other;—then all love of cursing, all tampering with falsehood under any pretext, all attempt to obtain reputation or influence by practising on men’s ignorance or baseness, can be regarded as nothing less than blasphemy against the most high God, than a trafficking with the Spirit of Evil. Such sins in those whom God has appointed as the witnesses of His goodness, the ministers of His gifts to mankind, must be more terrible and penal than they can be in any other persons. The Christian priest ought to know that he is as liable to this abuse of his power as any Brahmin, and that in him it has a far deeper criminality, because it is a direct contradiction of this doctrine concerning God’s Spirit, which he exists to proclaim, an attempt to quench His light in himself and in other men. A reflection surely which will drive him, if anything can, to that Spirit as his only refuge from his own presumption and wilfulness.
Once more. The most simple, naked exhibition of human power is in that royal Will, which obtains supremacy by claiming it,—which compels individuals and nations, they know not how, to own that it is meant to rule them, and that they must needs obey. That such a force as this exists, it is as idle to deny as to deny the force of sea or wind. To pretend that any precautions of policy or knowledge have been found adequate to prevent the intrusion of such forces, or to hinder men from yielding to them, is to deny the facts of history as much as the courtiers of Canute denied the facts of Nature. But there is a limit to this force somewhere. We all feel and know that there is. We are certain that the most settled, organized tyranny is still a rebellion, and must end as rebellions end. What is the warrant for this conviction? Whit-Sunday says it is this, that the highest power, the all-ruling Will, was manifested in One Who took upon Him the form of a Servant,—Who came upon earth not to be ministered unto, but to minister. It says that He Who thus descended is the same that has ascended far above all Heavens, that He might fill all things. It says that His noblest gift to men is His own Spirit of Power. It says that to that Spirit all spirits must at last bow; that any will which is mere arbitrary will—which does not seek to deliver and to raise those whom it rules—must be broken in pieces; that the only effectual power will be proved at last to be that which can give up itself.
III. If the world was to be instructed that all power of speech, of imparting life and wisdom to men, of governing societies, is of God, and is His gift to His creatures, certainly no teachers could be so suitable as those Galileans who spoke only one rough dialect, which their own countrymen counted ridiculous; who had no art but that of mending their nets; who had trembled not only before priests and rulers, but before men-servants and maid-servants. And yet I know not whether there was not something even more wonderful in the selection of these men to show that all Love is of God; that His Spirit is the author of whatever love men are able to exhibit in acts or to feel within. For as Jews they had learnt to despise and hate all the uncircumcised; as Galileans they must often have been jealous of that more favoured part of their own race, which looked down upon them. They had been chosen, indeed, by a Teacher who bore all their narrowness and ignorance; who educated them by a careful and gracious discipline for the work to which He had destined them. Their affection had been drawn out towards Him; that affection had been a bond to each other, though interrupted by continual desires in each of them to be the chief in His kingdom. But their affection had been tried, and had broken down. It had failed towards the Master; what strength could there be in it towards any of their fellows? If love was their own, or had its springs in them, it must be utterly dried up. Then reflect how it burst forth, how it poured itself out first upon Jews, who scorned them; next upon Gentiles, whom it had been part of their religion to scorn; to see what it could endure—not merely of sudden violent hostility, but of continuous, ever-increasing bitterness and contempt, taking all new and unsuspected forms; and this while they were proving and confessing that they had precisely the same inclinations to be spiteful and malicious, now as ever, with that new irritation which comes from the disappointment of affections and hopes. So they were trained to understand that there must be about them and with them a Spirit of ever-living, long-suffering love, the heights and depths of which they could never measure,—of which they could only say, It is the Spirit of Him Who died upon the Cross, and Who in that death manifested the very nature of His eternal Father and His purposes to men. This Spirit has been given to us, that we may be moulded into conformity with that nature,—that we may be heralds of that purpose. While we are subject to His guidance, actuated by His energy, we can claim men of all kindreds and nations as children of the same Father, as brothers one of another. We can bind them into a society of witnesses for Christ’s redemption of the world,—for Christ’s dominion over the world. Trusting to our own powers and our love, we should be the feeblest of all creatures for good,—nay, through the greatness of the commission which we have set at nought, the most potent of all creatures for mischief.
Brethren! it is this Whitsuntide lesson which we must get by heart, even as these Galileans did. We have talked of our love to men; some have spoken of their love to God. Both professions may be real; there may be a genuine sympathy in a number of hearts for the miseries of their fellow-creatures whom they see, or whom they only hear of; that sympathy may prompt active exertions as well as benevolent words. There may be a sense of gratitude, sometimes of overpowering gratitude to God for mercies which have been bestowed, for sins which have been forgiven. But, oh! the infinite danger that this philanthropy should become a hollow fashion, of which the phrases are repeated to-day because we had some feeling that corresponded to them yesterday! What danger that the well-being of hundreds of millions may be less dear to us than the triumph of a party,—nay, that we may make grand sentences about the hundreds of millions into mere tools for working out our own beggarly and selfish triumphs! What probability that, not grand philanthropy only, but private friendship, once most cordial,—love, once passionate and deep,—may become chilled, may be quite frozen by petty jealousies and suspicions. And yet more perilous still are those warm religious emotions which seem to carry the very pledge and seal of eternity in them. How hard to admit frankly that they are not what they were! How many arts will a man be tempted to use that he may persuade himself they are not changed! How he will try to keep up warmth in himself by denouncing others! How at last he may cast aside all faith, declaring that he knows it to be a delusion, and that he would save others if he could from the imposture to which he has yielded!
Where was his original mistake? What is the original falsehood of all who speak of their love to God and man? This: they take credit to themselves for a love which is moving them to noble thoughts and good deeds, but which has another source than their hearts; which is divine, not earthly; universal, not partial. How may they be saved from casting off all that is true in them, when they discover that they have been false? By frankly confessing that falsehood to the Spirit of Truth Who is convincing them of it. By owning the horrible vanity and conceit of their supposition, that they loved men better than their Father in Heaven loved them; that their love was anything but the result or reaction of His; that they can be anything but His agents and ministers to declare by words or deeds a little of what He is.
IV. Finally, this Spirit is said to be the Spirit of a sound mind. In the last century there was a nervous fear even among wise and great divines, of touching upon such subjects as those I have considered to-day, because they said there was no calculating what selfwilled fanaticism, what extravagant heresies, what contempt of guidance and authority had followed and could follow upon the notion that Christ had bestowed His Spirit, not upon doctors, but upon human beings. They were right. It was impossible, it always will be impossible, to calculate the vagaries of the human spirit, the thickly-coming fancies and wild conceits which haunt the student in his chamber—the union of physical emotions and nervous impressions with profound moral convictions in the heart of the devotee,—the practices and doctrines which are suggested partly by the sin-sick conscience of the penitent, partly by the over-cleverness of the confessor; the effect upon the minds of a people kept in ignorance of a sudden rush of light into the midst of their darkness; the indignation springing from the discovery which the Scriptures impart, if they impart nothing else, that God’s highest blessings are meant for the wayfarer; the confused feeling mingling with this indignation that the wayfarer must have faculties that can reach to all heights and sound all depths. No; you cannot make any estimate or guess of the wildness and madness into which man may be led. And therefore you cannot provide the remedy for this wildness and madness, or any adequate protection against it. Do you think you know of some adequate remedy or protection? Perhaps you will say it lies in the Church. Well, but Whit-Sunday says that the Church stands upon the gift of a divine Spirit—that this is the very ground of its stability and universality. Perhaps you say the Scriptures will be a defence. Be it so. Open them as wide as you can. But their testimony is that the baptism with this Spirit is the end of all God’s dispensations. Must you not then have made a prodigious mistake in seeking to keep this knowledge back through fear of the excesses to which it will lead?
May not this be, after all, the one security against these excesses? May not the Spirit of God keep better watch over those minds which He has taken into His guardianship, than you can keep? May not the great lesson you have to teach the student, the devotee, the penitent, the confessor, the ordinary wayfarer, be this: that there is a Spirit of a sound mind near them—a Spirit Who knows how all are tempted—Who knows what temptation is strongest for each—Who is seeking to unite them in a common fellowship—Who is guiding them to the same haven—Who will suffer none that would act rightly to be without the necessary aids to action, none that would seek truth to be lost in falsehood; Who will continually assist the desire to do right in those who are conscious of the inclination to wrong—Who will for ever kindle afresh the zeal for truth in those who feel that they are beginning to acquiesce in plausible lies?
To tell men that such a guiding Spirit of Power, of Love, of a Sound Mind, has been given them, and is with them,—this is not dangerous, but safe. Believing this, they need not sink into imbecility and fear; they can cultivate every power of which they are conscious; they can be sure that God Himself is cultivating it for the good of His creatures; they can overcome the tendencies to narrowness, to baseness, to selfishness, which are every moment at work upon them, knowing that the love, power, wisdom which created the earth and the heaven are also at work upon them. They can avoid the thousand motives, within and around them, to fanaticism, superstition, exaltation of their own intellects, because the Spirit of all Wisdom has not left them to choose their own follies.
Only it is needful continually to recollect that this Spirit, though given to us, can never be boasted of as ours. He is with us as the light and air are with us; with us to raise us out of ourselves; with us to teach us of the Father and the Son, from Whom He is ever proceeding. Therefore, it is in this confession of our rebellion and vanity, in blessing the Father for the redemption of mankind by His Son, in eating the flesh and drinking the blood of that Son Who gave Himself for the life of the world, that we truly keep Whit-Sunday; that we begin to learn something of the unspeakable gift of which it bears witness to us and to our race.