Sermon 4. Prejudice and Faith
Quinquagesima,
5th March 1848
{52} We have in the Gospel for this day what, I
suppose, has raised the wonder of most readers of the New Testament. I
mean the slowness of the disciples to take in the notion that our Lord
was to suffer on the Cross. It can only be accounted for by the
circumstance that a contrary opinion had strong possession of their
minds—what we call a strong prejudice against the truth, in their
cases an honest religious prejudice, the prejudice of honest religious
minds, but still a deep and violent prejudice. When our Lord first
declared it, St. Peter said, "Be it far from thee, Lord, this
shall not happen to Thee." He spoke so strongly that the holy
Evangelist says that he "took our Lord and began to rebuke Him."
He did it out of reverence and love, as the occasion of it shows, but
still that he spoke with warmth, with vehemence, is evident from the
expression. Think then how deep his prejudice must have been.
This same prejudice accounts for what we find in
{53} today's gospel. Our Lord said, "Behold we go to Jerusalem, and
all that is written of the Son of man shall be accomplished. For He
shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and scourged
and spat upon; and after they have scourged Him, they will put Him to
death, and the third day He shall rise again." Could words be plainer?
Yet what effect had they on the disciples? "They understood none of
these things, and this was hid from them, and they understood not the
things that were said." Why hid? Because they had not eyes to see.
And so again after the resurrection, when they
found the sepulchre empty, it is said, "They knew not the Scripture,
that He must rise again from the dead." And when St. Mary Magdalen and
the other women told them, "their words seemed to them as an idle
tale, and they did not believe them"; and accordingly when our Lord
appeared to them, "He upbraided them with their incredulity and
hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen Him
after He was risen again."
This is certainly a very remarkable state of
mind, and the record of it in the gospels may serve to explain much
which goes on among us, and to put us on our guard against ourselves,
and to suggest to us the question, Are we in any respect in the same
state of imperfection as {54} these holy, but at that time prejudiced,
disciples of our Lord and Saviour?
It will be well to observe what the cause of
their blindness was—it was a false interpretation which they had
given to the Old Testament Scriptures, an interpretation which was
common in their day, and which they had been taught by the Scribes and
Pharisees, who sat in Moses' seat and pretended to teach them Moses'
doctrine. It was the opinion of numbers at that day that the promised
Messiah or Christ, who was coming, would be a great temporal Prince,
like Solomon, only greater; that he was to have an earthly court,
earthly wealth, earthly palaces, lands and armies and servants and the
glory of a temporal kingdom. This was their idea—they looked for a
deliverer, but thought he would come like Gideon, David, or Judas
Maccabaeus, with sword and spear and loud trumpet, inflicting wounds
and shedding blood, and throwing his captives into dungeons.
And they fancied Scripture taught this doctrine.
They took parts of Scripture which pleased their fancy, in the first
place, and utterly put out of their minds such as went contrary to
these. It is quite certain that the Prophet Isaias and other prophets
speak of our Lord, then to come, as a conqueror. He speaks of Him as
red with the blood of His enemies, and smiting in wrath the heads of
diverse countries; as ruling kings with a rod of iron, and extending
His dominion to the ends of the earth. {55} It is also true that
Scripture elsewhere speaks of the Messias otherwise. He is spoken of
as rejected of men, as a leper, as an outcast, as persecuted, as spat
upon and pierced and slain. But these passages they put away from
them. They did not let them produce their legitimate effects upon
their hearts. They heard them with the ear and not with the head, and
so it was all one as if they had not been written; to them they were
not written. It did not occur to them that they possibly could mean,
what nevertheless they did mean. Therefore, when our Lord told them
that He, He the Christ, was to be scourged and spat upon, they were
taken by surprise, and they cried out, "Be it far from Thee,
Lord—impossible, that Thou, the Lord of glory, should be buffeted
and bruised, wounded and killed. This shall not happen unto Thee."
You see that the mistake of the Apostles, and
their horror and rejection of what nevertheless was the Eternal and
most blessed Truth of the gospel, arose from a religious zeal for the
honour of God; though a false zeal. It were well, if the similar
mistake of people nowadays had so excellent a source and so good an
excuse. For, so it is, that now as then, men are to be found who, with
Scripture in their hands, in their memories, and in their mouths, yet
make great mistakes as to the meaning of it, and that because they are
prejudiced against the true sense of it.
"I speak as to win men" as the Apostle says; "Judge
{56} ye what I say." Is it not so, my dear Brethren? Far be it from me
to be severe with such, but is it not so, that in this educated and
intelligent and great people, there are multitudes,—nay more, the
great majority is such, as to have put a false sense on Scripture, and
to be violently opposed to the truth on account of this false
interpretation? The Church of Christ walks the earth now, as Christ
did in the days of His flesh, and as our Lord fulfilled the Scriptures
in what was and what He did then, so the Church fulfils the Scriptures
in what she is and what she does now; as Christ was promised,
predicted, in the Scriptures as He was then, so is the Church
promised, predicted, in the Scriptures in what she is now. Yet the
people of this day, though they read the Scriptures and think they
understand them, like the Jews then, who read the Scriptures and
thought they understood them, do not understand them. Why? Because
like the Jews then, they have been taught badly; they have received
false traditions, as the Jews had received the traditions of the
Pharisees, and are blind when they think they see, and are prejudiced
against the truth, and shocked and offended when they are told it.
And, as the Jews then passed over passages in
Scripture, which ought to have set them right, so do Christians now
pass over passages, which would, if dwelt on, extricate them from
their error. For example, the Jews passed over the texts: "They
pierced my hands and my feet," {57} "My God, My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me?" "He was rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief,"—which speak of Christ. And men nowadays pass over such
passages as the following which speak of the Church: "Whosesoever sins
ye remit, they are remitted to them"; "Thou art Peter and upon
this rock I will build my Church"; "Anointing them with oil in the
Name of the Lord"; "The Church the pillar and foundation of the truth";
and the like. They are so certain that the doctrine of the one Holy
Catholic Church is not true, that they will not give their mind to
these passages, they pass them over. They cannot tell you what they
mean, but they are quite sure they do not mean what Catholics say they
mean, because Catholicism is not true. In fact a deep prejudice is on
their minds, or what Scripture calls blindness. They cannot tell what
these passages and many others mean, but they do not care. They say
that after all they are not important—which is just begging the
question—and when they are urged and forced to give them a meaning,
they say any thing that comes uppermost, merely to satisfy or to
perplex the questioner, wishing nothing more than to get rid of what
they think a troublesome, but idle, question.
Now is it not strange that persons who act in
this way, who skip over things in Scripture, and go by their
prejudices, and by the bad teaching they have received in Scripture,
should yet boast that they are scriptural and {58} go by Scripture,
and use their private judgement? No, they do not judge, they do not
examine, they do not go by Scripture; but they take just so much of
Scripture as suits them, and leave the rest. They go, not by their
private judgement, but their private prejudice, and by their private
liking.
Now I will add one thing more. Persons who act
thus are of very different character, just as those who stumbled at
our Lord when He came on earth were very different from each other.
Both the hard-hearted Pharisees and the tender-hearted Apostles were
surprised and shocked at Christ's Passion and death. And so now two
sorts of persons are offended at the Holy Church—some are hopeless,
other are hopeful. The event shows it. We cannot decide which are the
one, which the other, except by the event; but so it is—some are
driven further and further from the Church, the more they hear and see
of it, and others as time goes on are brought nearer to it, and submit
themselves to it.
This being the state of the case, how are we
Catholics to behave ourselves to such prejudiced and erring persons?
We should imitate our Lord and Master. He was most patient with them;
He abounded in long-suffering. "A bruised reed did He not break,
and smoking flax did He not quench." He did not argue, but He quietly
led them on. He displayed His wonders to them. He gradually influenced
them by His words and by His grace, and then {59} enlightened them,
till they believed all things. Till that Apostle, who doubted most
stoutly of His resurrection, cried out, overcome, "My Lord and My
God." So must we do now—so does the Church do now. Argument is well
in its place, but it is not the chief thing. The chief thing is to win
the mind, to melt the heart, to influence the will. This the Church
does. After the pattern of her Divine Lord she draws us with cords of
a man, with cords of love, with divine charity; "she hopeth all
things, endureth all things," she opens the gates of her temple, she
lights up her altars, she displays the Most Holy under the sacramental
veil, she bursts forth into singing, till the wayward soul, overcome
and subdued, says with the Patriarch, "It is enough—let me now die,
for I have seen Thy Face; Nunc Dimittis, Lord now lettest Thou Thy
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. I have
heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth
Thee." And, as our Lord after His resurrection opened the
understanding of the disciples to understand the Scripture, so now are
the hearts of men softened and enlightened, and they see that the
Church fulfils all the prophecies about herself, all that is written
in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms; and thus they fall down and
worship, and confess that God is here of a truth.
Blessed are they who thus fall down and worship.
Blessed are they whom the grace of God leads on to embrace {60} the
truth. Blessed who yield their minds to the gentle influences of the
Holy Ghost, and stop not till He has brought them on to the haven.
But, my Brethren, what I have been saying does not apply exclusively
to this or that set of men, but belongs to us all. For all of us, not
this or that man only, but all of us, Catholics or not, are led
forward by God in a wonderful way—through a way of wonders, a way
wonderful to us, a way marvellous, strange, startling, to our natural
feelings and tastes, whatever our place in the Church may be. As faith
is the fundamental grace which God gives us, so a trial of faith is
the necessary discipline which He puts upon us. We cannot well have
faith without an exercise of faith.
This is implied in the very passage which has
given occasion to the remarks which I have been making. When the
disciples shrank from His words about His own death and passion, what
did He do? He met a blind man, and He took him and gave him sight. Why
did He give him this special favour? He expressly tells us. He says, "Thy
faith hath made thee whole." Here was a tacit rebuke of the slowness
to believe in His own disciples and friends, all things are possible
to him that believeth. This poor outcast is a lesson to you, O My own
people. He puts you to shame. He has had faith in Me, while ye stumble
at My word, and when I say a thing, answer "Be it far from Thee,
Lord."
The office this day gives us another instance of
the {61} same great lesson. The Church reads today the history of the
call of Abraham, and meditates upon his great act of obedience, in
lifting up his knife to slay his son. Abraham, our father, is our
great pattern of faith, and his faith was tried, first by being called
on to leave his country and kindred, next by being told to sacrifice
his dearly beloved Isaac. The first was trying enough, but what a
stumbling-block the second might have been to faith less than his. If
the disciples were shocked that the divine Antitype should be put to
death, surely Abraham too had cause of offence that his own Isaac was
to be struck down and slain by him, by his hand, by the hand of his
father! Yet he went about the fulfilment of this command, as gravely,
as quietly, as calmly, as if it was a mere ordinary action. Thus he
showed his faith and gained the blessing.
Be sure, my Brethren, that this must be our way
too. Never does God give faith, but He tries it, and none without
faith can enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore all ye who come to
serve God, all ye who wish to save your souls, begin with making up
your minds that you cannot do so, without a generous faith, a generous
self-surrender; without putting yourselves into God's hands, making no
bargain with Him, not stipulating conditions, but saying "O Lord
here I am—I will be whatever Thou wilt ask me—I will go
whithersoever Thou sendest me—I will bear whatever Thou puttest upon
me. Not in my {62} own might or my own strength. My strength is very
weakness—if I trust in myself more or less, I shall fail—but I
trust in Thee—I trust and I know that Thou wilt aid me to do, what
Thou callest on me to do—I trust and I know that Thou wilt never
leave me nor forsake me. Never wilt Thou bring me into any trial,
which Thou wilt not bring me through. Never will there be a failing on
Thy part, never will there be a lack of grace. I shall have all and
abound. I shall be tried: my reason will be tried, for I shall have to
believe; my affections will be tried, for I shall have to obey Thee
instead of pleasing myself; my flesh will be tried, for I shall have
to bring it into subjection. But Thou art more to me than all other
things put together. Thou canst make up to me all Thou takest from me
and Thou wilt, for Thou wilt give to me Thyself. Thou wilt guide me."
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