Epilogue: Larger Definitions

Ecause certain people had given Jesus Christ bread when

he was hungry, drink when he was thirsty, and clothing when he was naked, and because they had called upon him when he was sick, and visited him when he was in prison, therefore they were called to enter into the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. ‘That is one side of the context. And because other people had omitted to do the whole of these things, they were pronounced accursed, and sent away into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. That is the other and completing aspect of the case. Then the conditions of entering into the kingdom prepared for good people from the foundation of the world are exceedingly simple, and the conditions upon which people are rejected from that kingdom, are, apparently, at least, most insufficient and inequitable. Because you have given a loaf to a beggar, thrown an out-worn garment upon the shoulders of some shivering pauper, and have done both things so carelessly as actually to have forgotten that you had ever done them, there. fore you may enter the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, and be happy in the enjoyment of eternal life. This, perhaps, you could understand, acknowledging the simplicity of the case, and wondering much concerning that simplicity. But you could not so well and comfortably comprehend the other side of the case — namely, that because a man has not given a loaf or a garment, therefore he should go away into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and into everlasting punishment, a state typified by the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. If you read that in the newspaper, you would say this is unjust: if any magistrate in England attempted to do anything of this kind, the whole country would rise in moral indignation and rebellion against injustice so monstrous and aggravated.

Thus we are brought into a very critical condition of mind in relation to this text. Nothing can be simpler than the terms’: there is no long word here within whose tortuous scope men may wriggle and make mistakes, and come to false conclusions. This part of the Testament might be cut out as an elementary lesson for young readers. It becomes, therefore, of supreme importance that we should really understand this matter, lest some of us should be trusting false refuges in relation to the coming of the kingdom, and others should be so infinitely distressed by a sense of injustice at the very outset as to be utterly discouraged from making any attempts ata lofty and noble life. What is to be done? You have to do here what you have to do along the whole line of the Christian kingdom: if you will do it, you are equal to every emergency, triumphant in every controversy, and perfectly at rest regarding the equitability and benevolence of the divine rule of mankind. What you have to do is to enlarge the terms. Observe, I will not have a word changed: I call for expansion of meaning, for the natural development of the words, for enlargement of definition, and then God’s providence is illuminated and commended for its justice and nobleness, and for the very necessity of those principles which it elevates and enforces and honours with final and complete vindication. The Christian faith is to take its place amid all the controversies of the times, by changing nothing essential, touching nothing vital, but by enlarging its terms so as to comprehend all unsuspecting occurrences, all startling accidents, all varieties of the highest and most urgent thinking of the times.

If you take the word hunger, you naturally limit it to the demands of the physical appetite. A child will tell you what hunger means: ask your least child who can speak, what do we give to people who are hungry, and the child will say ‘‘ Bread.’’ That is only the beginning of the definition, and the difficulty I have with many persons in the study of this divine kingdom, is that having got the alphabet, you cannot get them into the construction and combination of syllables, They will hang on by the mere alphabet, and therefore what is their Christianity? A rattle of letters, not high, resonant, infinite music. Is the child’s definition of hunger correct? It is perfectly correct as far as it goes — but what is hunger? Many a man has risen from a king’s feast hunger-bitten, with a thirst unquenchable burning in him. How so? Have the viands been insufficient? Nothing of the kind; the startled table groaned under the load of luxury. Were the wines few or poor? Nay, vintages are poured out through the channels of that banquet-room. What was wanting? Bread for a keener hunger, water for an unappeasable thirst. ‘* Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send a famine upon the land: not a famine of bread nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord.’’ We have all been amply satisfied with our morning repast: there is no man here, probably, with a craving hunger within him, which he at all events has not the means of appeasing. Yet it is possible that the richest man amongst us, the man that has left a table loaded that he might return to a table still more laden — it is possible that even such a man may know the curse of a high spirit, famishing because all earth but sickens it.’’ Now that we are throwing out the meanings thus legitimately, so as to take in the whole line of human want, we begin to enlarge the terms of the trial, so as to meet the terms of the award.

First then, in reference to the giving of actual bread — bread as usually understood. Most unquestionably there is a distinct reference to that gift: that is the very basis of the judgment: that is the initial and necessary line of the whole movement — for if you would not give natural and ordinary bread, you would not give the higher necessaries to the hunger and the thirst of mankind. Imagine not, therefore, that I am liberating any man from the responsibility of giving natural bread to natural hunger: that must be assumed initially, intermedially, and finally — no change or modification can be allowed there. If you ask me to justify the enlargement of my terms, I justify the enlargement by a reference to your own experience and your own consciousness. ‘The word - hunger is variously used in Holy Scripture, as is the word thirst. ‘* Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’’ Let us visit this man, sitting on his velvet cushion upon his luxurious carpet, with his hand upon a bell which, touched, will bring a hundred servants around him, with pictures, horses, and large estates, and gold hardly to be counted. Happy man? Never has one moment’s happiness. Satisfied? Burning with an intolerable hunger and thirst. What wants he? You must find that out. He wants one word of love, one assurance of sympathy, one breath of condolence, one prayer of intercession — he hungers to know himself: he says, ‘‘I cannot tell what I am, what I feel; Iam tormented, distressed: I feel in my heart an aching void.’’ If you would sit down beside that man, and break the bread of the Kingdom of Heaven to him, and give him to drink of the water of which Christ said, if a man drink he shall never thirst again, you would leave that man behind you satisfied, delighted, thankful; you would have come within the sweep of the infinite meaning of this marvellous passage. To satisfy the hunger of men is to be on the way to the approval of heaven.

Let us visit another soul amply supplied with all things material and temporal — a man to whom you can do no favour in the ordinary sense of that term. He has more than he can eat and drink of a physical kind: his house is large enough, his resources are more than abundant, they are redundant to the utmost plentifulness. If you gave him more gold he would not know that you had given it to him. What can we do for this man? Listen to him. He is the victim of superstition, of narrow notions, of false ideas, of bigoted conceptions, of sectarian sympathies: he is in prison, his soul is in bondage. Reveal the truth to him, show him how little he has yet seen, teach him how to take up his stakes and put them further out, how to lengthen his cords, take in more roofage, give him a peep over boundaries that have already shut him in — what have you done to that man? You found him in prison, you cpened the door and sent him into a wide and glorious and incorruptible liberty. We have never been in prison, in the ordinary sense of the term, and, therefore, I contend we must not have the Kingdom of Heaven shut up within a few terms that are necessarily limited: we must find for the limited word an illimitable meaning, and thus the Kingdom of Heayen shall over- - Jap the kingdom of earth, and the greater shall include the less.

If we make a third call, the case will be still more complete. It shall be upon a person who has gone the round of the whole scheme of things in society — a man who has drunk every cup, tasted to exhaustion every enjoyment, who has had men-servants and women-servants, and the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all sorts, gardens, and pools of water — who has been in the giddy swirl and riot of conventional happiness, gone through it all, and set down the drained goblet with a curse. “‘What are you, sir?’ I say to this man, who has passed the whole round of earthly and sensual delights. He says, ‘‘I am sick, sated, nauseated, poisoned.’’ Will you take again the goblet you have set down? Never. Whatails thee? Sickness — death. Ah! let me speak to thee: there is another world, a faith-world, — where souls live, where Hope rekindles her lamp, where the spirit can be satisfied, where ideas are enlarged, and answered by evercompleting revelations, a kingdom thou hast never been in, bread thou hast never eaten, water.thou hast never tasted. The king of the fair land sends me to thee, sick one, and dead, and says, ‘*Compel him to come in.’’ Wilt come? He says, ‘* Will you take me?’’ I answer, ‘‘I will.’’ He says, ‘‘ I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned: there is nothing on thy side to be accounted for, explained or justified, the burden is on me and on me alone.’’ He goes: his sickness is forgotten: a new and healthy appetite stirs every faculty of his nature. He was sick and in prison — you visited him — so you have enlarged the number of the guests that throng the house of the Saviour.

I begin now, with these incidents before me, to see that the upshot of this, if ever it came to a great Assize, must be very solemn; for this hunger was no passing appetite, this thirst was no flake of fire that could be put out with a drop of water, this nakedness was no exposure of the skin, this sickness was no affection of the physical functions. Itwasa hunger of the soul, and a thirst of the spirit, and a nakedness of the whole nature, and the whole head was sick, and the whole heart was faint; and if you can find a man who can answer these necessities and destitutions, you will find a man worthy of a kingdom, be it infinite in measurement, be it lasting as eternity; you will indeed deserve the ‘* Well done,’’ which is Heaven.

The other side of the case is thus abundantly provided for.

The difficulty of everlasting punishment is now no difficulty at all, but a necessity. For what would the case be then — who are they that go away? According to the terms set forth in the Scripture before us, as enlarged according to human experience and consciousness, there are people who have done nothing, answered no cry of the spirit, appeased no desire of the soul, healed no affection of the conscience, thrown no light of liberty upon the judgment of men, neglected every one, answered no prayers, heeded no cries, satisfied no wants — my friends, to what can they go? When the solemn answer comes, ‘‘ To everlasting punishment,’’ the conscience says, ‘‘ Severe, but right.’’ The hunger of the universe for uprightness and justice is answered and satisfied in that going away. I believe in everlasting punishment. I cannot define it, nor will I have any ordinary human definition thrust upon me. I only know this, that it must be something fearful beyond the imagination of man to conceive. It is not everlasting because it continues three hundred centuries rather than three hundred days. That is a question of time: everlasting is a quality as well as a quantity. Eternal is more than duration, it is duration forgotten, duration sunk in an agony or delight. Joy has no time, misery has nothing but time.

How large the field of service is: hunger, thirst, nakedness, sickness, imprisonment, destitution of every kind — there is room enough in that field for your talent and mine, and the resources of the individual and the whole commonwealth. Find your corner — work it well. If it be the giving of natural bread, God bless you — it is much needed. If it be the giving of ideas, God bless you — they are the true bread which cometh down from heaven. If it be the giving of sympathy, God bless you — it is wanted, for the sick heart dies of the poisoned confections of time. It is just the field Christ himself occupied; Jesus Christ has written his own history in these words: he did nothing else for three years than what he describes the righteous as having done in these verses — he went about doing good. If the people were hungry he said, ‘‘ Give them to eat.’’ If they were thirsty of spirit, feeling the keen necessities of the heart, he sat down upon the mountain and opened his mouth and taught them. If they were deluded, victimized, ensnared by. temptations, traditions, and if they were befooled and misled by incompetent teachers, he liberated them from their prison of inadequate perceptions and perverted ideas and introduced them into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

. This leads me to say that no man can occupy this field except in Christ’s spirit, It is notian inviting field: no man goes to the hospital for a day of recreation, he goes to teach, to heal, to mitigate pain. No man would go to the lunatic asylum for the purpose of spending a half-holiday. He goes to see if anything can be done, if any poor wretch can yet be saved from the outermost, — and as he goes in the angels sing ‘* Glory to God in the highest: on earth peace and good will towards men.’’ If you have not Christ’s spirit, you soon tire of dealing with the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned, miserable. There is nothing in these things themselves to fascinate the taste, to engage the affections, to conciliate the esteem and fire the energy of the human heart. These things are repulsive in themselves; unless we get the right view they will shock us and affright us and repel us, and we shall seek health and beauty and plenty and freedom, and call these things our delights.

So then the case is not so simple as you at first thought it to be. It is not the thrusting a loaf into the hands of a beggar and therefore going to Heaven. It is not a sinful life for seventy years, and then calling in some poor wretch off the streets and giving him a goblet of water, and then saying, ‘‘ There now, I am going straight up to glory.’’ I thought it must be deeper than that: I felt that that was wrong: I know it now. What has the Christian teacher done this morning — changed a single word? Not one. Altered the venue? Not for a moment. Rewritten the Bible? Not a verse of it. What then? What every Christian expositor and every Christian controversialist must do: then he will take the spoil from mighty kings: he must enlarge his definitions, thrust out his terms to their full signification, and he will find that the kingdom of heaven is wide enough to include all science, all politics, all hunger, all thirst, all misery, all need — that it is a kingdom of kingdoms, as its Lord is King of kings.