SERMON XIV.
THE BLESSING OF PEACE.

SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION DAY.
Being also the day of thanksgiving for peace at the end of the war with Russia.

Ps. xxiv. 9, 10.

"The Lord sitteth above the water-flood: and the Lord remaineth a King for ever: The Lord shall give strength unto His people; the Lord shall give His people the blessing of peace."

THIS time last year, my brethren, and for months before and after, we were (so to speak) in a great storm: like our Lord's disciples that night on the sea of Galilee, when "there arose a great tempest in the sea, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full." And what did the disciples then? They had our Saviour on board, and they knew it, but He was sleeping. In that He was the Son of Man, weariness had come upon Him after His hard day's work, and it pleased Him in His Divine providence to give way to it at that time, so trying the faith of His followers; and our faith too, my brethren, whether we will really turn to Him on the like occasions, as His disciples then did; for they "came to Him, and awoke Him saying, Lord save us: we perish." So did our mother the holy Church, all the time of that storm of war, which we thought so much of, while it was going on. Three times a week the Church prayed in the Litany, "that it may please Thee to give unto all nations, unity, peace, and concord;" and when there was no Litany, then we prayed for all Christian nations especially; that they might hold the Faith not only "in the unity of the spirit," but also "in the bond of peace." And more than all this, as often as we offered the Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion, we offered it for all that confess His Holy Name, that they might "live in unity and godly love." Thus the Church prayed; and who can tell how many prayed at home also, alone or with their families, that God would bring the war speedily to a right and lasting peace? And now He Who was in the ship with us, sleeping as it were, and unseen all the while, He hath heard us, unworthy, according to the greatness of His mercy, and when we least expected it, hath stayed the winds and the sea; according to that power which He shewed in so many miracles, wherein the Voice of the Lord hath been upon the waters, preserving Noah in the ark, abating the Deluge, dividing the Red Sea, quieting the ocean when Jonah had been cast into it, and the sea whereon S. Peter walked to meet Him; and delivering S. Paul and his companions from shipwreck according to His promise. We are to make no question of it, that He Who thus stilleth the raging of the sea, He, and no other it is, Who stilleth the madness of the people also: subduing men's violent passions, and making peace, when so many were eager for war.

How can we ever thank Him enough, first for the public blessing, that we are no longer at war, especially no longer at war with a nation of Christians, our brethren in the Faith; and that, so far as there may have been unfair aggression and injustice, it seems to be sincerely and effectually withdrawn and ended? And again, how can we thank Him enough for the consolation restored to so many of our fellow-creatures, who may now lie down at night and rise up in the morning, without the aching, heart-wearing thought of those who are dearest to them being in pain and danger, and they unable to wait on them or help them: who are now freed from the sad anxiety of listening after what every day may bring forth, lest they should find themselves on a sudden widowed, orphaned, or otherwise made mourners? We had so sadly abused the blessings of our long continued peace, that surely we deserved to have them entirely taken away from us. But He, Whose Name is Merciful, has had mercy upon us. He has given us another trial. God grant, that, in this time of restored peace, we may be more earnest in setting a good example to the heathen, and in praying and labouring for their conversion, than we proved ourselves to be before the war!

We cannot thank Him enough. But there is a way of thanking Him which He will surely receive: and God our Saviour calls upon us to take this way, by the very season, on which our thanksgiving falls. It is not without reason, depend upon it, that the good providence of God calls upon us thus to thank Him for the blessing of peace, in the very season of Peace, the time between our Lord's Ascension and the coming of the Holy Ghost. He went away, lifting up His Hands and blessing us, and what His words of blessing were, we know. When He came among His disciples, He was accustomed to say, "Peace be unto you:" and when He took leave of them, the night before His Death, some of His last words were, "Peace I leave with you, My Peace I give unto you." And when His Holy Spirit came down, sent down by Himself from heaven, He came to be our Peace, making both one, Jews and Gentiles to be one in Christ. Therefore, as I said, this particular season is indeed a suitable season for us to think worthily of the outward and temporal peace, with which it has pleased God to bless us. The very time itself instructs us to receive that peace as a true and great blessing, yet to think nothing of it in comparison with the heavenly Peace of which it is a shadow. And how are we to thank Him? Surely in the same way, in which He of His great love requires us to thank Him for all His mercies: by humbly receiving fresh mercies from Him. Such is His tender, parental mind towards us. "What reward shall I render unto the Lord for all the benefits that He hath done unto me?" So asks the Psalmist: and what is the reply fit for God's true servants to make? "I will receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the Name of the Lord." The reward He looks for at our hands is, that we should consent to receive another and greater blessing from Him. We, English Christians, are to thank Him for this deliverance from the dangers and miseries of war, by drawing near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, and humbly accepting from His Hands the spiritual and eternal good things which He, our Ascended Lord, is inviting us to.

What those good things are, the Psalmist in the text tells us. The first is, spiritual strength: for "the Lord will give strength unto His people;" and the second is, spiritual peace: for "the Lord will give His people the blessing of peace." And they both depend on His Ascension; for what had gone before them is this, "The Lord sitteth above the water-flood, and the Lord remaineth a King for ever."

"The Lord sitteth above the water-flood." He poured out the flood in the time of Noah, and stayed it when it had done its work. He ordereth the nations, who are as mighty waters. They think they are having their own way: but indeed it is His way in which they are moving, His work which they are accomplishing, without knowing it. And again, in the spiritual world also: it is as in the twenty-fourth Psalm, "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods." At the first creation, Christ, the Word of the Lord, by Whom the heavens were made, laid out the earth above the waters: and at the new creation, the great deliverance of the world, He founded His new heaven and His new earth, the holy Church, His heavenly kingdom, on the waters of holy Baptism.

And again, "The Lord remaineth a King for ever." The kingdoms of this world change continually and pass away: not so the kingdom of Christ, that kingdom which began on Ascension Day, and under which we are now living. His "kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion endureth throughout all generations." It is the stone hewn out of the mountain without hands, against which nothing can stand: it will dash in pieces, one after the other, all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them, be it more or less: iron, brass, silver or gold: but as for Christ's kingdom itself, the Holy Church Universal, it shall never be dashed in pieces, for it is founded upon the Rock, Christ. And let this be our comfort and our stay in all the changes and chances of the kingdoms of men here below; in all human and earthly politics. England may pass away, as Egypt and Babylon, Greece and Rome, have passed away before her; but the Church of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem, shall never pass away. "The Lord remaineth a King for ever:" and therefore His promises are for ever; and His people whom He hath formed for Himself, they also are for ever.

And what are His promises? Every good thing: but at this time, as I said, two more especially are set before us:--spiritual strength, and spiritual peace. "The Lord will give strength unto His people," strength, to stand firm in the place wherein He shall set them; strength, to accomplish the work which He shall appoint for them; strength, to prevail against the enemies whom He shall at any time permit to rise up against them. Such strength He promised to His holy Apostles, when, as at this time, He gave them His parting benediction. "Ye shall receive power, i. e. "strength," "after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." They waited as He bade them, and in ten days time, as we shall hear on Whitsunday, "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost," Who made them bold to stand fast in the Faith, gave them a tongue and a heart to do their work in preaching it, and in due time victory over death and hell, won as their Master's had been before, by dying. Thus the Lord gave, and is ever giving, strength unto His people.

He gave also, and is ever giving, to the same people that other blessing of peace: peace with God, peace with their brethren, peace and consolation each in his own heart. Of these three, peace with God is the first and best, and on it the others depend; for as one asks, who had it in perfection, "if God be for us, who can be against us?" The peace of God is to have God Almighty, the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost, for our friend and not our enemy; to be on our part and not against us. It is the blessing of all blessings: but as S. Paul says again, it "passeth all understanding;" for it is hidden in God Himself. But it maketh itself known usually by the two other kinds of peace, peace with our fellow men, and peace with our own hearts; by our being in love and charity with our neighbours, and by the witness of a man's own heart, that he constantly and humbly endeavours to please and obey his Divine Master, and when he falls, makes haste by His aid to recover.

Now both this holy peace, and the strength which enables us to preserve it, are promised, you see, to Christ's people, and to Christ's people only. Christ's people are His, not only as any other people may be said to belong to their king; as Cæsar's, or Pharaoh's or Cyrus' subjects might be called their people; but in a nearer and dearer sense, because they are His members; really though mysteriously united to Him by His Holy Spirit; "members of His Body, of His flesh, and of His bones." This strength and peace, strength to obey Him, and peace so long as they really strive to do so, are therefore made sure to them; for, as they live by Christ's life, not they but Christ living in them, so they are strong by Christ's strength, and at peace by Christ's peace: as He said in His gracious Farewell, "Peace I leave with you, My Peace I give unto you." And therefore, as soon as ever we quit our hold of Christ, we lose both our strength and our peace. Without Him we can do nothing: neither can any man come to the Father but by Him.

My brethren, let no man deceive himself. There are many who try to persuade themselves that all is right with them, because they have no enemies, and all around are on good terms with them. But this is merely outward peace: a heathen or an unbeliever might have it. It is no safe mark of your being one of God's people; and you hear what He says, His people only have the gift and the blessing of peace. So it is with nations, so it is with the soul of each one. We know by God's sure word of prophecy, that "the nation and kingdom, which will not serve" God's Church, however it may prosper for a time, "shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted." And too well, I fear, may most of us know by our own sad experience, that so far as a man cuts himself off even from his Saviour by wilful neglect of any of his duties, so far he shuts himself out from true peace, and joy, and consolation.

Surely, it is so, my brethren, and you cannot deny it. Any one great duty, wilfully neglected, deprives a man of true peace, because it deprives him of Christ. Now then, my brethren, let me speak to you (the subject and the time itself even call on me for it): let me speak freely to you on one matter, which most nearly concerns the peace of us all. We have just been celebrating the Ascension of our Saviour to His Father's Right Hand: we have known and believed the hope laid up in store for us, in that Christ Jesus our King and our Priest is gone up into heaven, in order to be both our Strength and our Peace. Now as we know that He cannot be our Strength, unless we are members of Him, and therefore, we would not on any account remain un-baptized: so let us for God's sake consider, that neither can He be our Peace, unless we apply to ourselves what He hath done and is doing, to make our peace with God: unless we take our part in His atoning Sacrifice. And how are we to do this? In the Sacrament of Holy Communion. If we wilfully neglect or abuse that Sacrament, we refuse to have Christ for our Priest. And who then is to reconcile us? How can we ever have peace with God?

My brethren, do let me beseech you to lay this to heart; for indeed it is of more consequence than any of us can well imagine. One of the great feasts of the Church, Whitsuntide, as you know, is fast coming on: and may I acknowledge it to you, I look forward to it with dread: for it will bring with it a trial in which I fear too many of Christ's flock in this place will fail. It is a sad and a humbling confession to make, for one who has the care of souls; but I must confess to-day before you, that in this parish we can count those who have at some time communicated and have withdrawn themselves from Holy Communion, we can count them, I say, by twenties, almost by fifties: and if we add to them the many who having been instructed and promised, yet go on week by week, and month by month, and year by year, breaking their promise, then we shall have to count them by hundreds. And moreover, my brethren, who can help fearing that some may perhaps be partaking unworthily? Sad things have happened, which may well cause us to fear it. And they are not cases of ignorance. It is not as if men had not been told the meaning and the consequence of what they do and leave undone. They have been told what Christ said, and how to set about obeying Him.

Alas! if one were able to think of these mischiefs as they really are, in their full effect on men's souls, it would be enough to break a Christian Pastor's heart, unless God in His great mercy were to shew him also at the same time the great, the almost angelical, blessings vouchsafed to those who communicate duly with a humble and contrite heart. The Lord increase their number, and make us more fit to be among them! For of such it is written, '"Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabited eternity, Whose Name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." "I have seen his ways and will heal him: I will restore comforts unto him and to his mourners. I create the fruit of the lips: Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord; and I will heal him."

O blessed words! Which of you would not wish to have them spoken to his own self? And they will be, if you lose no time, but come seriously to Christ in His ordained way. But if not, you may read in the next verses, what God hath decided concerning you: "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."

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