SERMON XI.

BLESSING AND CURSING.

(Preached at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, Ash Wednesday, 1860.)

DEUTERONOMY xxviii. 15.

It shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.

MANY good people are pained by the Commination Service which we have just heard

read.

They dislike to listen to it. They cannot say 'Amen' to its awful words. It seems to them to curse men; and their conscience forbids them to join in curses. To imprecate evil on any living being seems to them unchristian, barbarous, a relic of dark ages and dark superstitions.

But does the Commination Service curse men? Are these good people (who are certainly right in their horror of cursing) right in the accusations which they bring against it? Or have they fallen into a mistake as to the meaning of the service, owing, it may be supposed, to that carelessness

rate and critical habits of mind, wh common among religious people at day?

I cannot but think that they mista say that the Commination Service For to curse a man, is to pray and w may become angry with him, and anger on the man by punishing him no such prayer and wish in any word mination Service. Its form is not, 6 'that doeth such and such things,' b 'he that doeth them.'

Does this seem to you a small di fine-drawn question of words? Is it, difference whether I say to my fellow and pray that you may be stricken or whether I say, You are stricken whether you know it or not. I wa

and I warn you to go to the physici

great, and no less, is the difference.

say,

that it is v

And if any one shall that the authors of the Liturgy were of this distinction; but that they mea what priests in most ages have mea must answer, that it is dealing them and unfair measure, to take for grant were as careless about words as we are

were (like some of us) so ignorant of grammar as not to know the difference between the indicative and the imperative mood; and to assume this, in order to make them say exactly what they do not say, and to impute to them a ferocity of which no hint is given in their Commination Service.

But some will say, Granted that the authors of the Commination Service did not wish evil to sinners granted that they did not long to pray, with bell, book, and candle, that they might be tormented for ever in Gehenna-granted that they did not desire to burn their bodies on earth; those words are still dark and unchristian. They could only be written by men who believed that God hates sinners, that his will is to destroy them on earth, and torture them for ever after death.

We may impute, alas! what motives and thoughts we choose, in the face of our Lord's own words, Judge not, and ye shall not be judged. But we shall not be fair and honest in imputing, unless we first settle what these men meant, in the words which they have actually written. What did they mean by 'cursed,' is the question. And that we can only answer by the context of the Commination Service. And that again we can only answer by seeing what it means in the Bible, which the Reformers profess to follow in all their writings.

Now, what does the Bible mean by a curse, and

cursing? For we are bound to believe, in all fairness, that the Reformers meant the same, and neither more nor less.

The text, I think, tells us plainly enough.

We know that its words came true. We know that the Jews did perish out of their native land, as the Author of this book foretold, in consequence of doing that against which Moses warned them. We know also that they did not perish by any miraculous intervention of Providence: but simply as any other nation would have perished; by profligacy, internal weakness, civil war, and, at last, by foreign conquest.

We know that their destruction was the natural consequence of their own folly. Why are we to suppose that the prophet meant anything but that? He foretells the result. Why are we to suppose that he did not foresee the means by which that result would happen? Why are we, in the name of all justice, to impute to him an expectation of miraculous interferences, about which he says no word? The curse which he foretold was the natural consequence of the sins of the nation. Why are we not to believe that he considered it as such? Why are we not to believe that the Bible meaning of a curse, is simply the natural illconsequence of men's own ill-actions? I believe that if you will apply the same rule to other places

of Scripture, you will have reason to reverence the letter and the spirit of Scripture more and more, and will free your minds from many a superstitious and magical fancy, which will prevent you alike from understanding the Bible and the Commination Service.

The Book of Deuteronomy, like the rest of Moses' laws, says nothing whatever about the life to come. It says, that sin is to be punished, and virtue rewarded, in this life; and the Commination Service, when it quotes the Book of Deuteronomy, means so, so I presume, likewise. Indeed, if we look at the very remarkable, and most invaluable address which the Commination Service contains, we shall find its authors saying the same thing, in the very passages which are to some minds most offensive.

For even in this life the door of mercy may be shut, and we may cry in vain for mercy, when it is the time for justice. This is not merely a doctrine: it is a fact; a common, patent fact. Men do wrong, and escape, again and again, the just punishment of their deeds; but how often there are cases in which a man does not escape; when he is filled with the fruit of his own devices, and left to the misery which he has earned; when the covetous and dishonest man ruins himself past all recovery; when the profligate is left in a shameful old age, with worn-out body and defiled