Part 15

We come to the second source of doubt and questioning—an infinitely more subtle and hazardous one. It is the perception that successful ill-doers do not seem to be miserable. You know how we are all taught that bad men have such terribly evil consciences, that harpies are always behind them, that their hearts are gnawed with dread and anxiety, that they cannot sleep at night, that remorse haunts them. Not a bit of it. You go into the world and pick out men who have gained their wealth, who have wrung it out of the heart's blood of their fellow-men—got it by downright dishonesty; their eyes stand out with fatness, they roll about in their carriages, they have splendid houses, and everybody bows down to them and makes much of them; their faces are wreathed with smiles of self-satisfaction; you sit at their tables, and they tell you how successful they have been; they expect you to envy them; they are not humble and miserable. Then the deadly question comes to you, Where, then, is God? Ah, one can quite understand God letting the external world run its own course! One might explain in some way that God allows, to try men, the prizes of wealth and the joys of life to go to men that do not deserve them. As a good man once said to me, "It is plain that God does not think much of money—why, look at the kind of people he gives it to!" That is so; but the one thing you would believe is this, that in that strange inner world of the human heart, the mind, the conscience God could not keep still. If He gives them the external gift, if He sends them the desire of their flesh, He will send leanness into their soul. Why do you not see their faces haggard? Why can you not trace the lines of care? Why does not shame and degradation sit upon the wealthy man's face who gained his wealth by cheating and lying, by dishonour and meanness? Oh, they seem so happy, so contented, so pleased, so proud, so arrogant! Why does their tongue reach up to heaven, in its pride, and haughtiness, and complacency? Well, you would think that that is a deadly enough doubt to be gnawing at a good lad's heart; but there is a still deadlier one. Here you have the deadliest cause of doubt, when a man, pressed hard by the great fact of prosperous ill-doing, staggered by that blow, does not see the inner, ethical, moral vengeance of God stamped on it. He looks round for confirmation to the good men in the Church; he looks at religious Christian society, he falls back on it, to let it support him, to let it help him; and what does he discover when his eyes pierce through and penetrate? In the heart within him he begins to recognise the hearts of others. Everywhere the Church is secretly doubting too; good men are longing for a share in the ill-gotten gain—ay, tampering with their consciences, themselves turning into the same direction, drinking of the waters of the same cup, and then some of them, more reckless or more honest, speaking straight out: "Yes, I was brought up, like you, to believe in virtue, in honesty, in God, and in goodness; but I have seen throughout that this world is not governed by a good God. If there is a good God, He does not know or does not care; He does not step in; it is the wicked that have the best of it in this world; I am going to take that course." Ah, the moral perversion, the tainted breath of the base, selfish, greedy, unscrupulous world! that detected in the heart of his own father, the good elder, the church member; that detected in his own mother, not valuing or choosing for the society of her home the honourable, the pure, the good, the true, but the people with money, and tainted reputations, and all the rest of it; that is the deadliest thing; that makes the real doubt, the real unbelief; that carries a lad, not to books of philosophy—he will never take much harm from them, even if he has head enough to understand them—but carries him clean away from religion, into shady company too, and takes the virtue and morality out of him, making him sell himself for money in life's sacredest relationships: it is that—the perversion of good. Oh, how much we Christian men and women have to answer for when we denounce sceptics and worldlings, the ungodly young men who stop going to church, and all that! Ay, poor souls, they will have to answer for it! but how much shall we have to answer for it too? The Church, is it not tainted by worldliness? Do we go and take the bravest, the most patient, the most loyal, the most prayerful, the most devout Sunday-school teacher, a working man, and put him in the chair of our Sunday-school assemblies in Exeter Hall? No, no; it is not pure goodness. I do not know that we can help it, but it would be worth while trying that system, instead of the Church, for want of faith, making so very much of the world, of social position, and of purse power.

But I have rather wandered from my point. Doubt has now run its course, completed its curriculum. The question is often raised, Does it matter what a man believes? No, not what he believes about the abstract theories or explanations either of philosophy or theology—it will not matter much what he thinks about these abstruse questions; but it matters infinitely and eternally what he thinks about God, and goodness, and life. Ah, there a man's heart-faiths make his life-conduct! It was so with the poet here, when those dark, demon doubts had filled his soul, when his mind was in a ferment, when his heart was pricked and bitter within him, when he heard good men—men that were good once—round him saying, "Does God know?" and when he felt himself in a God-forsaken world, where there was nothing but each man snatching the best he could get, where everything was given over to wickedness and evil. Ah, then, such a man does not stop at theoretical atheism and scepticism! he goes farther. "Surely in vain have I kept my hands clean; I have been a fool to deny myself forbidden joys and pleasures; I have been punished, I have been injured; those that were unscrupulous, and impure, and dishonest have had the best of it; I have done with being a fool; I am going to have my share too." Now doubt has reached its most dangerous point; it is going to hurry into forbidden action.

It was at this moment that the recoil came. I will tell you how. If a man has got any heart at all, he can go any length in his own head with his doubts and questions about whether there is a God or a heaven, or whether it is worth while trying to be holy, and pure, and honest; but if he has any heart at all, the moment that he says, "I am going to be pure no longer, but I am going to be foul," then there is something in him that draws him back. He sees himself, or rather he feels, that he is not doing harm to any one with those doubts that are in his own intellect, but the moment he says, "I am going out into the world, in the train, in the town, in the warehouse, and I am going to tell it, right and left, that I count it an old wife's fable that there is a God and heaven, that I count the man an idiot who denies himself any fleshly joy that he can get without coming within the grasp of the law"—I say, if he has any heart at all, he suddenly thinks to himself, "If I say that to my younger brother, if I say that to that innocent maiden, I shall be doing a cruel wrong to the generation of God's people." Oh, there is an eternal, immovable fact! Doubt may have all logic on its side, but doubt and the denial of God and of virtue are the world's damnation. It may be an advantage to a man to cheat and steal, but it cannot be an advantage to his neighbours. Take the worst man in the City, and ask him if he would wish that all goodness, all virtue, all religion should be so crushed out that every man should become a thief, a robber, a burglar. No; he does not want that. Even in the case of an infidel, if he be a man of fine conscience and fine heart—I have known such—not for his life would he tell his doubts to a child, not for his life would he say a word to stop that mother teaching her boy to pray. I have known such men who told me that they were thankful that the mother of their children kept on doing it. Yes, that Psalm is far away from our theoretical theologies or intellectual apologies and the rest of it. See how intensely human it is—that recognition that doubt held within the intellect is not very harmful, but let it go out into the world, and it will do unspeakable mischief; it is that that gives the doubter check. Ay, and there is reason in it, rationality. When a man recognises that fact he has got to go farther. If doubt manifestly would harm the world, if the denial of God, and goodness, and the earth's moral government would damage human society, then there must be something wrong in the reasoning that leads up to that denial. The facts cannot be as I have fancied, or else my inferences are wrong; for never, never can it be evil to know the truth. Therefore that denial of mine that there is a good God, or that if there be a God He governs this world by goodness, must be false. Now all things appear to the man in a new light. Why? Because he has got up to a great elevation. Suddenly it darts upon him, "Before, I was looking at this world out of my little self; I judged everything by its effect upon my own personality, my own life. I was suffering, and therefore all things must be wrong." What a poor little aspect that is! Now he has risen up to a point where he stands as God stands; he looks at the big world out of himself, and he sees that the doubt, the denial, would destroy all that is best in the world. And he looks farther; he has reached to God's sanctuary. Now his eyes travel over wider reaches of human story. Before he was like a man down in a valley where there is a winding river, and just where he stood the river seemed to flow in one direction, and he went away and proclaimed to men that the river ran north. Now he has travelled away up the mountain, and he is able to look over the whole extent, and he sees that there was a winding and twisting in the stream, but observes that its great ultimate course is to the southern seas. The man stands up above this world of ours, he looks over the great spread of its course and history, and what is the absolute conclusion? That everywhere in the end immorality has death in it; that violence, wickedness, selfishness ruin themselves; that oppressive dynasties have fallen, and corrupt peoples have been struck down; that sin everywhere has God's vengeance set in it, and ends in death. Everywhere in the end virtue does triumph and survive, goodness proves superior. That is a fact which the evolutionist tells us. This world seeks and reaches the moral, the good, the true, the noble in intellect, heart, and soul. It was made, the religious man says, by a good God, and it is making for goodness. Yes; but there comes another revelation. For the good man says to himself, "Now, how came it that I could not see that before?" and suddenly an overwhelming shame falls upon him. "How could I not see that before? Oh, because I was such a little soul, because I lived in such a despicable, little world! I failed to see the truth because I was as base as those bad men. What makes them forsake God and goodness? Because they count earthly gain the supreme thing. Why was I so bitter against their getting the earthly gain? Because I counted it the supreme thing. I, a man made in God's image, a man held by God's hand, a man whose will was being overshadowed, and led, and guided by God's Spirit, through all was so ignorant and so brutish that I thought God's best gift that He had to give to His children was money, or fleshly pleasure, or earthly adulation. I was no better than a brute beast. To the brute beast God can give nothing more than meat, and drink, and fleshly sensual delight; but that a man held in God's hand, loved by God, should have great joy about these things! Ah, my doubt grew not out of the world's enigmas alone! it grew out of my own low morals." Now he stands in a new position. He sees as God sees, and he says to himself, "Ah, let this world grow as ill as it may; even if it were the case that money, power, social ambition, earthly rewards did go predominantly to wickedness, what then? Here am I, a man loving honour, truth, justice, mercy, purity, God; shall I hesitate for one moment if I must lose all the world? Can I hesitate for one moment? No; goodness alone, with no earthly reward, is heaven, and far more precious than all worldly gain." Why? Because goodness has in it the very breath of God, the throb of His Spirit, the echo of His heart. The good man has God in him, loving him, continually with him, he continually with God; and this world lies beneath him, and death beneath his feet. Ah, the best this world can give trembles before death and the grave, and breaks and is gone! but in goodness the human heart clasps God, and doubt is at an end.

Oh, how much our world to-day wants that supreme daring faith in goodness just for itself, and that close fellowship with God, that defies all questionings, all doubts, that would stand if all the evidences about our Gospels and Epistles were swept away, still sure that God is up there, that God loves men, and that God draws them to Himself to make them holy, as their Father in heaven is holy!

IX.

_THE STORY OF QUEEN ESTHER._

ESTHER iv. 13-17.

The subject to which I invite your attention to-night is the Story of Queen Esther. The kernel of it has been read to you in the fourth chapter. I shall read the closing verses, so as to give you the key-note to the meaning of the narrative. After Esther had refused to go and plead for the Hebrews with the King of Persia, "Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. So Mordecai went his way, and did according to all that Esther had commanded him."

It is a very difficult task to calculate how much religion there is in the world—true religion, that God accepts. Elijah once tried to calculate, and concluded there was nobody true to God but himself; blind to the seven thousand that had not bowed the knee to Baal. It is quite possible to take superficial, indulgent, optimistic views of the progress made by mankind, but God knows there are as deadly and wicked and more blasphemous errors committed by good men, who talk of this world as if it were given over to the devil to reign and rule in it, as if things were growing worse and worse, as if the number of men and women whose hearts are God's were few. I think the blunder comes from looking for goodness often in the wrong place, from a mistaken idea of what true religion is. It won't do to reckon up our church members; they are not all genuine. It won't do to count our acts of worship, our prayer-meetings, our praises. These are often mere sound, breath, empty air. If you want to know how much of Christ there is in this world, you must go outside the churches, into the workshops, into the homes of the people. Ay, you must go to lands where Christ's name is not often heard, and you have got to listen with a sympathetic ear, and whenever you hear the accents of Christ's human voice ringing out in any way of genuine love and tenderness, whenever you see duty done patiently, and loyally, and uncomplainingly, whenever you see a heart or a soul follow the light, however dim and glimmering, understand that there you are touching Christ, and stand on a bit of the kingdom of heaven. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is the golden roll of the Old Testament heroes, men of God, stamped by God Himself as genuine; and the deeds recited, too, as having been done by them, that gave them their degree and title as heroes, and nobles, and princes in heaven's kingdom, are not the preaching of sermons, or the writing of books of theology, or the fighting about petty little trivialities of doctrinal explanation, or the performance of rites and ceremonies and acts of worship, but brave deeds of battle, noble, dauntless generalship, heroism, and courage, and self-sacrifice, loyalty to the cause of truth and righteousness in this world. These are the deeds that were done, following the guidance of God, under the inspiration of Heaven, and the men who did them are recited in one long unbroken chain, and linked on in line direct with Jesus Christ, whose death and redemption are presented as the crown and consummation of that long series of priests, and kings, and prophets, and warriors, and heroes, true-hearted men and women who lived for God and fought for God in the olden time. It is sometimes said that Christ was not present in the Old Testament times. True, the human Jesus of Nazareth was not there, but oh, the spirit of Him was! He was the very heart-beat, and pulse, and inspiration of all that long, continuous struggle to bring heaven down into earth, for that is what the Old Testament story presents to us. In every brave deed, in every true word, in every pure and righteous life, it was not the heart of man that glowed, but the very spirit of Christ—Christ coming to full birth and maturity in this world's story.

Some people are puzzled to discover how the Book of Esther comes to be in the Old Testament. It is said to be a romance of history. It contains no religious teaching. The name of God is not once mentioned in it, from the first verse to the last. How comes it in the Bible?

Now, it is quite true that there is no direct dogmatic teaching of religious truth. It is absolutely true that the name of God is not to be found in its pages. But what of that? what of that, if the book is one of the most powerful presentations of God's providence working among men, if the book itself has for its very soul and idea the conception of God overruling events in a marvellous fashion to preserve His kingdom on earth? Is the great thing to get the name of God, spelt with its three letters, or to be shown God? Ah! it is the same kind of blunder that causes us to make so much of mere forms of words in the Church, instead of looking to see if the Spirit of God animates the man and woman and the preacher who inhabit the professed house of God on earth. There may be no teaching of religion, no prophesying of Jesus, no foreshadowing of the evangelical truths of redemption in the Book of Esther; but what it does paint for you is a majestic picture of a human heart struggling against its own weakness, rising to a grandeur that had in it the glory of Christ's own self-sacrifice. The name is not there, the phrase is not there; but the core, and kernel, and heart of Christ's love, and faith, and redemption of men are pulsing and beating in the book.

It is a puzzling book. There is a great deal in it that is revolting. The background on which Esther's deed of heroism was done is ugly and repulsive. She lived in a social state that was degraded and base, containing in it customs and habits that almost sicken us who, through Christ's mercy, have been lifted into comparative purity and sweetness.

You remember the story. A dissolute Persian monarch, in a drunken frolic, requires of his queen to do a deed that ran against all that was womanly within her, and she refused. Mercilessly he deposes her from the throne, and he sets to to select another queen. The fair maidens of the land are collected, and in a very disgusting fashion presented to the tyrant, and from among them he chooses the beautiful young Jewess Esther, and makes her his queen. One cannot but pity her for having lived in such a time, for having had to play a part on such a stage of the world's story. One may even fairly ask the question, if it had not been nobler if she had not been presented by her guardian in such a revolting competition? But it is no good for us finding fault with the actual course of the world's story. If God was not too fine to lead men in all the bygone days—polygamy and such like practices were tolerated in the Old Testament time, because of the lowness of men's hearts, as Christ explains to us—it is a mistake in you and me being too fine to recognise God where God was numbering Himself among transgressors, that He might lift mankind to His own level. And then the narrative proceeds; presents to us a succession of cruel, unscrupulous intrigues, mainly between Esther's guardian, Mordecai, (a Jew whom one cannot admire and love, taking the picture of him drawn in this book) and the king's favourite courtier, Haman. In the course of the rivalry between the two, the very existence of God's people throughout the Persian empire is imperilled. Partly through Haman's scheming, but also through dauntless devotion to what they believed to be the cause of God, and which was the cause of God, in spite of the earthliness and imperfections attaching to its soldiers and defenders, partly by evil fixed to them, partly through nobility and goodness, a drama is presented to us, a struggle of heroism and bravery, and in the centre of it is that young queen doing a deed that we cannot but call Christlike.

Now, I want to say this to you: Men's lights in the world are very diverse. The possibilities of goodness and attainment for one man are far greater and far higher than for another. Some of you may be so entangled with evil customs and habits of commercial or of social life that you feel your very position there is impossible to make quite consistent with the full requirements of Jesus Christ. Thus things are. It is no good blinking them. And what are you to do? To despair, to give up any attempt to be good, and pure, and noble? Never! never! Look at all that Old Testament story—men far behind in their notions of common morality, yet on that low, degraded background discerning always a higher that may be done, a lower that may be avoided. No matter where you may stand, no matter how difficult the achievements may be, the one great question is, not what is the framework, but what is the painting you put in it. Are you living for self? or are you living for God? living to your own self-will, or striving to do your duty as far as you can do it?