my own part, I can truthfully say that I have learned more of God in the sorrows of life than when I have been enjoying myself. Again, don’t misunderstand me; I do thank God for the joys of life, even the simplest, for a good score at cricket as well as for a symphony; for a good play as well as for a good friend. But it has been in the loneliness and anxiety of life that God has convinced me of his own reality and love. I want to suggest that, very gently, to you. Give God a chance to transmute the sorrows of the past into the profits of the future. In the light of that, reflect on the mercies of God.
That will lead us to the fundamental meaning of God’s mercies. If you can turn sorrow into blessing, then the Cross is the supreme instance of what he does; more, it is the means by which he does it. I want to speak to you very simply about this. As I have said to you before, this is the point where in the last resort the preacher is bound to drop his interesting illustrations and speak directly, and even then, it is hard enough to find the right words. It was an old writer of the Middle Ages who found himself in this position, and whose words I want to use.
What language shall I borrow To praise Thee, heavenly friend, For this my dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? (Bernard of Clairvaux)
What language is there? He loved me and gave himself for me. There is something old about that, but how can I give you the meaning that is in my mind? The other day at home, we were thinking, dreaming if you like, about the places we want to visit when the war is over, and that sort of thing becomes possible again. I turned again to pictures of old Provence—you know my love for classical antiquity—thought of all those places where the Greeks and Romans thought lofty thoughts of life and death when England was a haunt of wild animals and all the ache of the past of history came back to me. So it does here. He loved me—before the foundations of the world, the New Testament says. Press your thought back into the misty obscurity of remotest time, beyond the origins of barbarian England, beyond the beginnings of Greece and Rome, beyond the first speech of one human being to another, before the upheaval or rock and ice and vapor that was the beginning of earth—then he loved me, then the Son of God had it in mind to die for me.
But his love is not like, say the old amphitheater at Nimes—worn out, unused, the mere shell of its ancient glory, not like Avignon, the old home of the Popes where the glory has now departed. He loves me now, in spite of and in my sin. And this is the measure of his love, his care. You sometimes here the expression used, say of those in the army, “they would go through hell for him.” Christ has done that for us; that is how he loves, and love of that order does not change. “I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God . . .” What then? That is God’s side of the covenant, what is ours?
A LIVING SACRIFICE
There is no time to say all that might be said by way of exegesis of the words of the text. A living sacrifice. The principles of sacrifice are too little understood. People think of the sacrifices of the Old Testament as dead things, dead animals. They were not. Killing the animal, shedding its blood, was the means of setting free its life that it might be given to God. It is no dead gift we are to offer to God, no mere formal worship, it is life itself, spiritual worship as the text says. It is a tragedy to see men and women offering dead gifts to God, and bestowing their life elsewhere. You do see that; and I cannot say, if you can, that I have never done it. Compare, with you, the energy, interest, and attention, the life that you put into other things, with what you give to God.
Think of all the energy that is being put into the war effort. Think of what you put into your business, and yes into your games. Last Friday night I came in as usual to join the end of Choir Practice, but stayed outside the room talking for a time. I heard the choir practicing, doing as I had done many times myself in choral work, going over a single unusual phrase again and again, then repeating the process with the next phrase, then putting the phrases together to build up an artistic whole. And I have thought since, here are the people putting infinite trouble and pains into a well worthwhile musical job, they put me to shame. Do I go into the details of my life, my moral life, my Christian life with so much attention? Do I polish every phrase of life that I may make a perfect offering to God? The answer (God forgive me) is No, I don’t. Anything will do for God. I can remember the days when I gave every spare moment to improving my batting. When I could do nothing else, I would exercise my wrists so as to acquire a firmer grip. Do I treat my faith as seriously as I then treated my cricket? It is a question like that that finds me out.
It is this living sacrifice that counts. It is that which leads to the inward transformation of the mind that our text speaks about. The “Directions for Making Covenant” has a fine phrase for this. It says, “Embark with Christ. Adventure yourself with him.” These old Methodists knew the Christian life is an adventure. That may have meant a share of hardness for them. It certainly meant that they were never bored—and that in spite of having no radio, no cinema, no dancing. That is still true. I have just read in the new Home Missions report of a corporal who on the advice of his officers was applying for a Commission. In a questionnaire he was told to “describe the most thrilling moment in your life.” When the answer reached the Colonel, he was dumbfounded, whatever did this mean? The man had written “it was when I was converted and gave my heart to Jesus.” Embark with Christ; adventure yourself with Him.
Two things, says the Direction, are necessary for a sinner to come to Christ. He must have a deep sense of his own sin and misery. I cannot give you that. I can hold up before you the Savior you have crucified and pray the Holy Spirit will do his work. And he must have an utter despair of himself and all else besides Christ. “Nothing will bring a sinner to Christ but absolute necessity. He will try to forsake his sins, and see if by this means he may escape. He will have recourse to prayers, and sermons and sacraments. But none of these good things will do. Only Christ can save. And as Christ will never be accepted, so can the sinner never be received of him, unless he lets go all these props, and trusts in Him alone. Christ will have no sharer with him in the work of saving souls.”
The rich offer of God’s grace is open to you. The covenant grant is open that you may put your name in it. I remember the day that as a shy young freshman I went up to the Cambridge Senate House. A crowd of us filed slowly forward to write our names in the great book; and dimly, ignorantly I had one thought of what it meant. Of the rules one was pledging oneself to keep but still more of the open door into a privileged world through which one was passing, and of men and women who struggled and sacrificed that scholarship might survive; of the whole army of persons who had gone before and when I was joining you could see the names in there—Edmund Spenser, Isaac Newton, William Pitt, William Wordsworth, Clark Maxwell, C. T. Shedd and for a moment, there it stood—Charles Kingsley Barrett.
You are invited to join yourself to the glorious company of the Church and enter into the rich inheritance of Christ. “I beseech you by the mercies of God to present your bodies, your whole selves to God.” Let us use the words of the old document:
“I come Lord; I believe Lord, I throw myself upon thy grace and mercy; do not refuse me! I have not whither else to go. Here I will stay; I will not stir from thy door; in thee will I trust and rest and venture myself. God hath laid my help on thee, and on thee I lay my hope for pardon, for life, for salvation. If I perish, I perish on thy shoulder; if I sink, I sink in thy end; if I die, I die at thy door. Bid me not go away, for I will not go.”
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“ST. AUGUSTINE”—Romans 13.12–14
[Preached thirty-two times from 8/27/44 at Bondgate Darlington to 8/28/05 at Bowburn]
1576 years ago tomorrow (August 28, AD 428), one of the greatest, wisest, most noble persons who ever walked this minute but momentous planet of ours died. He died with civilization crumbling around his ears. Around the chamber of his death bed, at no great distance, lay the walls of his North African city; and outside the walls was camped an invading barbarian army. Humanly speaking, only one man stood and had stood between civilization and complete collapse; and that one man was he who lay dying in his bed. It has been said of him “He had saved Christendom at the moment when Honorius Emperor of the West, lost Rome.”
As you have already divined, I am talking about St. Augustine, upon whom most of modern Christianity is, in one way or another, built.