The day of judgment.
Here follows a grand picture, in which a few simple thoughts are set.
I. THE DAY OF JEHOVAH. This stands for any and every epoch of clearer light which reveals the relative worth of things. False estimates of life and its objects have become by custom fixed. The imagination has been under a delusion. A false idea of greatness and goodness has become so fixed that nothing but a revolution will subvert it. The criticism of words may be defied; but the criticism of facts, of results,—against this there is no appeal. There is no reversal of the judgment of events. A great day of judgment was, for example, the French Revolution of a century ago. The falsehood of generations was then expiated in blood. Social institutions which were bad, inhuman, yet which those who had grown up in them regarded as impossible to alter, were effaced in that terrible outpouring of the wrath of God. The sense amidst great wrong that the judgment of God cannot long be delayed, is expressed in the common saying, "Things must take a turn before long." In the life of the individual, every stopping-point or turning-point at which a false way of life terminates, may be viewed as a day of judgment and a day of Jehovah.
II. THE DAY BRINGS WITH IT A SHOCK TO HUMAN IMAGINATION. The prophet piles up images to represent the reversal of all human ideals of greatness and loftiness. The gigantic trees of Lebanon and Bashan, the mountains and hills, the towers and the high ramparts, the tall ships sailing Tarshish-wards (Psalms 48:8), the turrets of villas and houses of pleasure, draw down upon them the violence of the storm. The vast and lofty in nature and in works of art are not of more value in the eyes of God than the small and lowly. They are hints of the greatness of the spirit, and if we give such objects an independent greatness, we are suffering from an illusion. The greatness and the beauty are in the seeing mind. There is not so much to be seen of the work of God in a mountain as in a moth. "Life apparent in the smallest midge is marvelous beyond dead Atlas' self." The palaces, the streets of a great city, are signs of the human soul and its greatness, but not the truest signs. It is a common error to look for the tokens of a people's greatness in their buildings and mechanical achievements. But from what source does material creation and production come? That is the ultimate question. Our works of art are works of the flesh and of pride, or works of the spirit wrought in humility and the love of truth. A few such works in plastic stuff of stone, or on canvas, or in poetic words, endure through all change. That which is untrue must fall sooner or later beneath the criticism of God and be exposed. And in the downfall of human works the eternal God is again manifested in his supreme greatness and glory. It is our own false imaginations which hide him from us.
III. THE ABANDONMENT OF THE IDOLS. For the idols cannot help their worshippers, who must run to hide themselves. Yet at first they cling to them. But soon in alarm they cast them away into any corner, any refuse-heap, any filthy haunt of bats and moles. "To cast to the bats" is as proverbial an expression in the East for throwing clean away as rejected rubbish, as "throwing to the dogs" with us. There comes a time when men will be willing to get rid of their most precious objects so that they may but save themselves. A secret terror haunts the false conscience, which in moments of clear revelation of truth rises to an acme and becomes a panic. The true heart longs for more of God's light, the false can only exist behind an artificial veil or screen. In every time larger light is appearing, truths for the conduct of life are coming into currency; in short, the Divine Critic of our life is making his censure felt. Alas for those who rush into any cave at hand, plunge into obscurantism rather than face the worst, which thus faced will prove the best!
IV. THE MORAL. "Cease ye from man." If in any such day of revelation all the proud ideals of human society may be discovered false, and cast aside as worthless; if the time of revelation shows that we have been resting upon rotten shams; if we have an uneasy consciousness that it is always so;—how vain is all confidence in human wit and work! The bitter words seem to cast contempt upon every species of beast and satisfaction. A poet of our time has written a great work to show that "our human speech is naught, our human testimony false, our fame and human estimation words and wind" (Browning,' Ring and Book'). But how can we cease from man? We can only know the true and the eternal through some form of human experience. The answer is—Man merely as man, an independent fact, is naught; he and all his pass away. In living for himself as if there were no truth, no good, beyond, he becomes a lie. If we see man only we see the false; if God working in and through man and his history, we find the true in the false. Working through the false shows of sense, we may reach the spirit of things, the mind of God. We leave our hold on the fugitive human fact, false if we try to stereotype it, that we may plant our foot on the constant. The Divine
"Truth is forced
To manifest itself through falsehood; whence divorced
By the excepted eye, at the rare season, for
The happy moment, truth instructs us to abhor
The false, and prize the true, obtainable thereby."
J.
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM