eChurch Blog

Good for them!

Daily Mail

Thousands of Christian doctors have boycotted a public consultation on assisted suicide.

They fear a ‘slippery slope’ to legalising euthanasia without Parliamentary approval.

The Christian Medical Fellowship – which represents 4,500 doctors – said its members could not ‘in good conscience’ answer tick-box questions in the consultation document sent out by Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions.

[.....]

Dr Peter Saunders, general secretary. of the Christian Medical Fellowship, has told Mr Starmer in a letter:

‘We fear that publishing any such guidelines runs the real risk of leading over the years to what would effectively be legal sanctioning of the practice of assisted suicide. Case law would inevitably be built up, and statute law permitting assisted suicide would eventually follow.

Legalisation of euthanasia would inevitably follow or accompany that. Parliament will effectively have been by-passed by administrative process, and this should never happen in any democratic society.’

The group argues that in the Netherlands, the drift toward euthanasia began with the refusal to prosecute doctors who helped kill their patients. It was followed by guidelines and finally statute law in 2002. There are now nearly 3,000 cases of euthanasia each year.

The consultation on the draft clarification asks participants to tick ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to factors that may or may not result in prosecution.

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Great article as usual from Melanie Phillips, covering recent comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams:-

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, comes in for a lot of stick — not least from columnists like me.

But in the past few days, he has said something important. He has criticised Government ministers for thinking that Christian beliefs are no longer relevant in modern Britain, and for looking at religion as a ‘problem’.

Many Government faith initiatives, he observed, assumed that religion was an eccentricity practised by oddballs, foreigners and minorities.

This is not just a seasonal exercise in special pleading by a Church leader. Dr Williams has put his finger on what should be a cause of extreme disquiet — the war of attrition being waged against Christian beliefs.

In recent times, there has been a string of cases in which it is no exaggeration to say that British Christians have been persecuted for expressing their faith.

In July, Duke Amachree, a Christian who for 18 years had been a Homelessness Prevention Officer for Wandsworth Council, encouraged a client with an incurable medical condition to believe in God.

As a result, Mr Amachree was marched off the premises, suspended and then dismissed from his job. It was a similar case to the Christian nurse who was suspended after offering to pray for a patient’s recovery.

Christians are being removed from adoption panels if they refuse to endorse placing children for adoption with same-sex couples.

Similarly, a Christian counsellor was sacked by the national counselling service Relate because he refused to give sex therapy sessions to gays.

What this amounts to is that for Christians, the freedom to live according to their religious beliefs — one of the most fundamental precepts of a liberal society — is fast becoming impossible. Indeed, merely professing traditional Christian beliefs can cause such offence that it is treated as a crime.

Take, for example, the case of Harry Hammond, an elderly and eccentric evangelical who was prosecuted for a public order offence after parading with a placard denouncing immorality and homosexuality — even though he was assaulted by the hostile crowd he was held to have offended.

Or look at the case of the Vogelenzangs, a hotelier couple from Merseyside, who last week were cleared of a ‘religiously aggravated’ public order offence after being prosecuted for insulting a Muslim guest.

While their behaviour may have been offensive and unwarranted, it is nevertheless a source of wonderment that for the police, ‘hate crime’ doesn’t seem to occur whenever Christianity is pilloried, mocked and insulted — as happens routinely — but only when a minority faith is in the frame.

Indeed, the Archbishop’s complaint echoed an earlier Church-backed report that accused the Government of merely paying lip service to Christianity while focusing support on Muslims.

The curious fact is that Labour’s hostility to faith is highly selective. It does everything it can to protect and support minority creeds while appearing to do everything it can to attack Christianity.

The root of this double standard is the unpleasant prejudice that minority faiths hail from cultures where people are less well-educated and so cannot be blamed for their beliefs. This, of course, is a deeply racist attitude, and is commonly found on the Left.

As Dr Williams observed, one of the effects of the modern hostility to religion is to give the impression that faith is not really very British. But on the contrary, it is part of the national psyche — even among people who don’t go to church.

To stop the denigration of religion, the Archbishop has called on government ministers to be more willing to talk about their own faith. But since this is seen as the province of cranks, politicians are reluctant to do so because of the risk of public ridicule.

This well-nigh insuperable difficulty was acknowledged yesterday by Tony Blair in an interview about his religious beliefs. As his former spin doctor Alastair Campbell once famously observed: ‘We don’t do God.’

This is because among the intelligentsia, the animosity to religion runs even deeper than the upside-down value system of the multicultural agenda. It springs from the fixed view that reason and religion are in diametrically opposite camps.

Anyone who prays to God must therefore be anti-reason, anti- science and antifreedom – in other words, an objectionable, obscurantist nutcase.

But this is the very opposite of the truth. Rationality is actually underpinned by Judeo-Christian beliefs.

Without the Biblical narrative, which gave the world the revolutionary idea of an orderly universe that could therefore be investigated by the use of reason, science would never have developed in the first place.

And it was the Judeo-Christian belief that all individuals are made equal in the image of God that gave rise to human rights and democracy.

Of course, terrible things have also been done in the name of religion. And equally, people without religious faith can believe in freedom and equality, and lead moral lives.

But that’s because they draw upon a culture that rests on religious foundations. Strip away those foundations and what’s left would be a brutalised and chaotic society.

You don’t have to be a religious believer to be mightily concerned by such a likely consequence. But anxiety over fundamentalism has resulted in rising hostility to all religion.

Notably, however, this is not the case in the U.S., which remains overwhelmingly an upfront Christian society. Its politicians are neither ashamed nor embarrassed to call upon God to bless America at every opportunity.

Unlike U.S. mainstream Churches which, as descendants from the English Puritans, remain deeply wedded to the Biblical tradition, the Church of England has always looked down on true Scriptural believers as half-wits.

With such a half-hearted foundation of religious belief, it has been more vulnerable than other Churches to the secular onslaught against religion.

Dr Williams exemplifies this weakness by trying to go with the flow of social change and is for ever apologising for Christianity.

Certainly, it did some terrible things in the past to people of other faiths. But it is also responsible for the astonishing achievements of western civilisation.

Rather than complaining about politicians, Dr Williams should use his office to teach the nation about the seminal importance of Christianity to this society. But to do that, he has to have faith in his own Church — a faith that too often appears to be lacking.

The key point about the U.S. is that it still believes in itself as a nation and in its values, which are rooted in religion. Loyalty to their churches follows from loyalty to the nation in a kind of benign cycle.

In Britain, however, religion and nation have formed a vicious cycle in which hostility to the country’s identity and values reflects and feeds into hostility to the religion upon which they are based.

The Archbishop’s anguish at the onslaught upon Christian faith is very real. But unless he starts promoting the Church as the transcendental custodian of a civilisation rather than the Guardian newspaper at prayer, the society to which it gave rise will continue to sleepwalk off the edge of a religious and cultural cliff.

The new Bishop of the armed forces, The Rt Rev Stephen Venner:-

…..has called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists that recognises their humanity.

Even though they today blew up a girls’ school in Pakistan…..(473 to date).

Presumably we should also be sympathetic to the Islamic fundamentalists treatment of women and girls?

The good Bishop goes on to say:-

….that the Taliban should be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.

Yes let’s all stand in admiration as they decimate, persecute and destroy communities that have a different faith and religion to them. Perhaps we should also admire criminal gangs for their sense of loyalty to one another, as they impose their will through the use of terror and intimidation.

Utter madness! I bet the troops who are bravely fighting literally to the death against the Taliban (including Muslims I might add), won’t appreciate these foolish comments.

Telegraph

The Taliban can be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to one another, the new bishop for the Armed Forces has claimed.

The Rt Rev Stephen Venner called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists that recognises their humanity.

The Church of England’s Bishop to the Forces warned that it will be harder to reach a peaceful solution to the war if the Afghan insurgents are portrayed too negatively.

His comments came as the Prime Minister visited Afghanistan and warned that the Taliban was fighting a “guerilla war” aimed at causing “maximum damage”. Gordon Brown said soldiers were discovering improvised explosive devices every two hours….

Bishop Venner stressed his admiration for the sacrifices made by the British forces fighting in Afghanistan but also urged the need for a reassessment of how the Taliban are viewed.

“We’ve been too simplistic in our attitude towards the Taliban,” said Bishop Venner, who was recently commissioned in his new role by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“There’s a large number of things that the Taliban say and stand for which none of us in the west could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation because it’s not honest really.

“The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.”

Besides their attacks on the armed forces, the Taliban have also been responsible for public beatings, amputations and executions and have launched bomb attacks on the civilian population in Afghanistan.

They often refer to foreign forces as “Crusaders” in an echo of the religious wars of the Middle Ages….

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Perhaps the Good Bishop Stephen Venner, would like to take a few moments to read this excellent article from the Diplomat today, for some education in reality:-

They embraced the religion of their invaders to escape the caste system that had condemned them to a miserable existence. But Karlos Zurutuza reports on how, centuries later, Christians in the Taliban stronghold of Quetta are once again becoming ‘untouchables.’

This is what Damian Thompson had to say about these comments from the The Rt Rev Stephen Venner:-

Here’s my adaptation of part of the report by my colleagues Jonathan Wynne-Jones and Duncan Gardham, in which I have tinkered with a couple of words:

Bishop Venner stressed his admiration for the sacrifices made by the Allied forces fighting in Europe but also urged the need for a reassessment of how the Nazis are viewed.

“We’ve been too simplistic in our attitude towards the Nazis,” said Bishop Venner, who was recently commissioned in his new role by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“There’s a large number of things that the Nazis say and stand for which none of us in Britain could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation because it’s not honest really.

“The Nazis can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.”

Unfair? Maybe. But what a prat.

Bloomin’ right!

You simply have to read this one to believe it:-

Guardian

It started out as a well-intentioned attempt to bring festive cheer to some of society’s most neglected members – the hundreds of children who each year are caught up in the UK’s asylum system.

But when the Anglican church’s leading expert on Father Christmas, dressed as St Nicholas himself, arrived with one of Britain’s most distinguished clerics to distribute presents to children held at the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire, things took a turn straight out of Dickens.

An unedifying standoff developed that saw the security personnel who guard the perimeter fence prevent St Nicholas, the patron saint of children and the imprisoned, from delivering £300 worth of presents donated by congregations of several London churches.

In a red robe and long white beard, clutching a bishop’s mitre and crook, St Nick – in real life, the Rev Canon James Rosenthal, a world authority on St Nicholas of Myra, the inspiration for Father Christmas – gently protested that he was not a security threat, but to no avail.

Then as St Nicholas, accompanied by the Rev Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, canon theologian at Westminster Abbey, attempted to bless the gifts, the increasingly angry security guards called the police. The resulting ill-tempered and surreal impasse between church and state was videotaped by asylum seeker support groups and could become an internet viral hit.

The row comes amid mounting concern about the treatment of children in immigration removal centres. Last week senior doctors called for an immediate end to the “profoundly harmful” detention of children in immigration removal centres. In today’s Observer a number of leading children’s authors – including Michael Morpurgo, Michael Bond and Philip Pullman – have signed a letter calling for an end to child detention.

Rosenthal, who regularly appears alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury at festive parades, is the founder of the St Nicholas Society, which was set up to promote “interest, learning, and appreciation of the tradition of St Nicholas”.

“St Nick has never been turned away from anywhere before,” Rosenthal said. “So I was extremely disappointed not to be able to hand deliver the gifts to the children detained at Yarl’s Wood. I hope the kids realise that they will be firmly in my prayers.”

The St Nicholas Society, along with Citizens for Sanctuary, which campaigns to end the detention of children and families in the asylum system, is writing to the centre’s management to complain at how it handled the pre-announced visit. They have complained about the heavy-handed tactics employed by the guards who patrol the perimeter fence and Serco, the private company that operates Yarl’s Wood.

The two groups say that Serco refused requests to provide details about the 35 children in the centre so they could receive appropriate presents. They complain that the company did not respond to numerous requests to discuss how a handover of presents could be carried out if St Nicholas was prevented from entering during his visit this month.

Serco also refused permission for the two clerics to enter the centre to visit two refugee families later the same day, as it had previously agreed. They were handed letters from Dawn Elaine, contracts manager at Yarl’s Wood, saying permission had been revoked because of “concerns about your conduct”.

The minor row is threatening to escalate into a bigger furore over the government’s policy of keeping children in Immigration Removal Centres.

“If this is how visitors are treated, I shudder to imagine what else transpires inside Yarl’s Wood,” Rosenthal said.

Sagovsky added: “This was about bringing a moment of joy to kids locked up in a deplorable situation. I can’t help but contrast the smiles and wonderment on the faces of the children St Nicholas visited at a local primary school with the sad fate of those kids who will be locked up in Yarl’s Wood over Christmas.”

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A fascinating article in the Telegraph that covers an IPPR report on UK immigration and faith trends. Unsurprisingly the report concludes that thousands of Muslims have moved to the UK because it is more sympathetic towards Islam than other European countries. Surprisingly however, amongst those immigrants that claim a faith, more than half are Christian and around a quarter are Muslims.

As African Pentecostals are among the fastest-growing groups, the report states that UK Christianity is becoming more charismatic and fundamental.

The reason for the influx of Christians is potentially connected to persecution in their native countries.

Anyway, pop over to the telegraph and have a look as it is well worth a read:-

It would appear that Nicky Gumbel committed a ‘cardinal sin’ and actually had the audacity to pray….yes pray….at a Christmas reception for Christian leaders hosted by Gordon Brown. Here are a few of the comments from shocked, stunned and rightly horrified guests:-

But guests were dumbfounded when they were asked to join in prayers by the Rev Nicky Gumbel

Well who can blame them? What on earth was Nicky thinking of? I mean, praying at a gathering of Christian leaders!

One who was there said: ‘It was quite bizarre. Suddenly Nicky Gumbel was up in front of everybody urging them to pray for Gordon Brown and for the success of the Copenhagen summit.

Granted he most certainly shouldn’t have prayed for the wretched Hopenhagen summit, even I find that bizarre.

….But a lot of traditional church people found it deeply awkward and inappropriate.’

Yes, very inappropriate, no wonder all of those Christians felt awkward, praying indeed, I don’t know, whatever next?

….‘It was all very jolly then suddenly went serious for an uncomfortable three or four minutes of prayer.

Yes, Heaven forfend that praying to God for the leader of a nation should ruin a perfect moment of revelry.

Check out Archbishop Cranmer’s comments on this as he is in seriously good form, this is his final paragraph for you:-

Merry Christmas, Prime Minister. Had Cranmer been invited, he would have prayed that this might be your last in Downing Street. And he would have coughed and spluttered like a demon-possessed goblin during the incantation to Gaia for the success of Copenhagen.

Classic

The following article from the MailOnline is written by Mike Judge of the Christian Institute, who defended Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang in court. I have read today that on top of everything this couple have suffered, they even received hate mail and threats from cowards, before the case even came to court to establish their guilt or innocence. Disgusting.

MailOnline

Common sense has, for once, prevailed. The criminal case – yes, criminal case – against a Christian couple, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, has been dismissed.

Hopefully, the Vogelenzangs can get on with their lives and start to rebuild their hotel business – a business that has almost been destroyed because of the allegations against them.

Thanks to the donations of thousands of Christians, The Christian Institute was able to pay for Mr and Mrs Vogelenzang’s legal defence. We did so because it was a significant case of free speech, not just for Christians, but for every person’s right to question someone else’s beliefs.

Now that the case is over I hope the nation will ask itself: What’s happening to free speech?

How on earth did a breakfast discussion about religion end up with two Christians sitting in the dock at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court? Big questions need to be asked of the police and the CPS.

But we need to ask wider questions, too, about the direction free speech is taking.

It seems we have become hypersensitive on a range of subjects. We roll our eyes and shake our heads at the ‘political correctness’ of it all.

But it gets much more serious when the police appear to be acting on this hypersensitivity and investigating incidents that ought to be nowhere near the criminal law.

When Anne Robinson made an ‘anti-Welsh’ joke on a BBC TV show, four police officers spent 96 hours and £4,000 of public money investigating it. Would the same have happened if a Welshman had made a joke about the English? Of course not.

Earlier this year, Christian grandmother Pauline Howe was investigated by two police officers because she wrote a letter of complaint to her local council expressing her disapproval of a gay parade in her home town.

The police knew she had committed no crime, but sent round two officers anyway.
I don’t blame the ordinary bobby on the street. Most are decent, hardworking public servants who put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe.

But I do blame the endless stream of equality and diversity policies that have been passed by the Government and embraced so enthusiastically by police chiefs anxious to appear in tune with fashionable thinking.

If freedom of speech means anything at all, it must mean the freedom to say something that someone else may not like. Otherwise all we are left with is the freedom to be inoffensive – and that kind of freedom is not worthy of the name.

Nor does the overtly Godless nature of our Government help matters. Yesterday, the Archbishop of Canterbury accused Labour of treating religious believers as ‘oddities’ and ‘eccentric’.

I agree with him when he says that this is an attitude that has ‘denormalised faith and intensified the perception that faith is not a part of our bloodstream. And you know, in great swathes of the country that’s how it is’.

I’m a Christian who speaks out on issues such as abortion, sexual ethics, marriage, gambling and a bunch of other controversial topics. I’m fully aware that some people may not agree with my opinions.

Some of those people may be deeply offended by my views – just as I am sometimes deeply offended by the views of others.

But that’s part and parcel of living in a free and open society where we are free to speak, free to question and free to listen to each other.

It also includes the freedom to argue back and protest against things we don’t agree with. That’s the cut and thrust of a democracy.

How can we make things better? Well, we could start with re-examining the public order laws under which Mr and Mrs Vogelenzang were charged with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words’, that were ‘religiously aggravated’.

Everyone now knows about the Vogelenzangs but at The Christian Institute we deal with many other cases. Indeed, over the past year, we have dealt with approximately 170 separate incidents where Christians have had their liberty infringed, only a fraction of which ever make headlines.

We might also consider redefining so-called ‘hate crimes’ and ‘hate incidents’.
The definition of ‘hate’ is alarmingly elastic.

No genuine Christian should harbour hatred in their hearts, much less spew hatred out of their mouths.

But when public authorities start to confuse disagreement on a controversial issue with hatred, then the liberty of us all is in peril.

The Association of Chief Police Officers worryingly defines a hate incident like this: ‘Any incident, which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate.’

Police officers investigate and record such incidents, even though no crime has been committed.

Well, perception is a very subjective thing. In the Vogelenzangs case, the Muslim lady who complained perceived the Christian couple’s comments as threatening and abusive.

The Vogelenzangs perceived they were simply expressing their opinion about Islam.

In ACPO’s definition of a hate incident, the complainant’s view is king. Surely this subjective definition needs dramatically rewriting.

This definition of a hate crime or hate incident, together with the misapplication of public order laws, has been the cause of several worrying cases of police officers detaining citizens for expressing their opinions in a public place.

This situation was brought home to me when a friend of mine, Julian Hurst, told me what happened to him when he was handing out leaflets inviting people to a church Easter service.

Julian is a church worker in the Manchester area. He told me that he had been challenged by five police officers and his literature had been investigated by the Hate Crimes Unit because someone had complained to the police that the leaflet was offensive.

It turned out that a complainant merely objected to the presence of evangelical Christians dishing out leaflets, but this was after the police had swooped on Julian. It is the knee-jerk reaction of the police that concerns me.

People are understandably frustrated when they perceive that other minorities are being treated more sensitively. They wonder why a Christian couple are charged with a crime when they criticise Islam during a debate over breakfast, while officers stand by watching extremist Muslims hold up placards at protests calling for their opponents to be beheaded.

I’m concerned about everyone’s free speech because that’s the way each of us protects our own. But naturally, as a Christian, I am especially concerned when I see Christians being treated more harshly than others.

Never have there been more ‘equality and diversity’ laws. Yet the marginalisation faced by Christians is increasing at an alarming rate. In many instances equality and diversity laws are being used as a sword to attack, rather than a shield to protect – and Christians are most likely to be on the receiving end.

When it comes to applying equality and diversity laws, Christians seem to be the first to be punished and the last to be protected.

Thankfully, in Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang’s case, common sense has for once prevailed.

And they shouldn’t!

Church bells are to call the faithful to worship God, not to worship man.

Jesus Christ is saviour and He will set all things right on His return to this planet.

Churches that ring their bells for the Hopenhagen climate conference today, are prostituting themselves to the zeitgeist religion of environmentalism.

Click here for BBC report

“It shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light.”
Zechariah 14:7

I SHALL not stay to notice the particular occasion upon which these words
were uttered, or to discover the time to which they more especially refer; I
shall rather take the sentence as a rule of the kingdom, as one of the great
laws of God’s dispensation of grace, that “at evening time it shall be light.”
Whenever philosophers wish to establish a general law, they think it
necessary to collect a considerable number of individual instances, these
being put together, they then infer from them a general rule. Happily, this
need not be done with regard to God. We have no need, when we look
abroad in providence, to collect a great number of incidents, and then from
them infer the truth; for since God is immutable, one act of his grace is
enough to teach us the rule of his conduct. Now, I find in this one place it
is recorded that on a certain occasion, during a certain adverse condition of
a nation, God promised that “at evening time it should be light.” If I found
that in any human writing, I should suppose that the thing might have
occurred once, that a blessing was conferred in emergency on a certain
occasion, but I could not from it deduce a rule, but when I find this written
in the book of God, that on a certain occasion when it was evening time
with his people God was pleased to give them light, I feel myself more than
justified in deducing from it the rule, that always to his people at evening
time there shall be light.

This, then, shall be the subject of my present discourse. There are different
evening times that happen to the church and to God’s people, and as a rule
we may rest quite certain that at evening time there shall be light.
God very frequently acts in grace in such a manner that we can find a
parallel in nature. For instance, God says, “As the rain cometh down and
the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, even so shall my word be,
it shall not return unto me void, it shall accomplish that which I please, it
shall prosper in the thing whereto I have sent it.” We find him speaking
concerning the coming of Christ, “He shall come down like rain upon the
mown grass, as showers that water the earth.” We find him likening the
covenant of grace to the covenant which he made with Noah concerning
the seasons, and with man concerning the different revolutions of the year
— ”Seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and
day and night shall not cease.” We find that the works of creation are very
frequently the mirror of the works of grace, and that we can draw figures
from the world of nature to illustrate the great acts of God in the world of
his grace towards his people. But sometimes God oversteps nature. In
nature after evening time there cometh night. The sun hath had its hours of
journeying; the fiery steeds are weary; they must rest. Lo, they descend the
azure steeps and plunge their burning fetlocks in the western sea, while
night in her ebon chariot follows at their heels. God, however, oversteps
the rule of nature. He is pleased to send to his people times when the eye
of reason expects to see no more day, but fears that the glorious landscape
of God’s mercies will be shrouded in the darkness of his forgetfulness. But
instead thereof, God overleapeth nature, and declares that at evening time
instead of darkness there shall be light.

It is now my business to illustrate this general rule by different particulars. I
shall dwell most largely upon the last, that being the principal object of my
sermon this morning.

1. To begin, then, “At evening time it shall be light.” The first illustration
we take from the history of the church at large. The church at large has
had many evening-times. If I might derive a figure to describe her history
from anything in this lower world, I should describe her as being like the
sea. At times the abundance of grace has been gloriously manifest. Wave
upon wave has triumphantly rolled in upon the land, covering the mire of
sin, and claiming the earth for the Lord of Hosts. So rapid has been its
progress that its course could scarce be obstructed by the rocks of sin and
vice. Complete conquest seemed to be foretold by the continual spread of
the truth. The happy church thought that the day of her ultimate triumph
had certainly arrived, so potent was her word by her ministers, so glorious
was the Lord in the midst of her armies, that nothing could stand against
her. She was “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army
with banners.” Heresies and schisms were swept away, false gods and idols
lost their thrones.

Jehovah Omnipotent was in the midst of his church, and he upon the white
horse rode forth conquering and to conquer. Before long, however, if you
read history, you find it always has happened that there came an ebb-tide.
Again the stream of grace seemed to recede, the poor church was driven
back either by persecution or by internal decay, instead of gaining upon
man’s corruptions it seemed as if man’s corruption gained on her, and
where once there had been righteousness like the waves of the sea, there
was the black mud and mire of the filthiness of mankind, mournful tunes
the church had to sing, when by the rivers of Babylon she sat down and
wept, remembering her former glories, and weeping her present desolation.
So has it always been — progressing, retrograding, standing still awhile,
and then progressing once more, and falling back again. The whole history
of the church has been a history of onward marches, and then of quick
retreats — a history which I believe is, on the whole, a history of advance
and growth, but which read chapter by chapter, is a mixture of success and
repulse, conquest and discouragement. And so I think it will be, even to the
last. We shall have our sunrises, our meridian noon, and then the sinking in
the west; we shall have our sweet dawnings of better days, our
Reformations, our Luthers and our Calvins; we shall have our bright full
noon-tide, when the gospel is fully preached, and the power of God is
known; we shall have our sunset of ecclesiastical weakness and decay. But
just as sure as the evening-tide seems to be drawing over the church, at
evening time it shall be light.” Mark well that truth all through the sacred
history of the church. In the day when every lamp of prophecy seemed to
have ceased, when he who once thundered in the streets of Rome was
burned at the stake and strangled; when Savanarola had departed, and his
followers had been put to confusion, and the black clouds of Popery
seemed to have quenched the sunlight of God’s love and grace upon the
world; in those dark dim ages when the gospel seemed to have died out, no
doubt Satan whispered in himself; “The church’s sunset is now come.” It is
evening time with her. Only a few rays are struggling from the sun of
righteousness to cheer the darkness. Satan thought, mayhap the world
should lie for ever beneath the darkness of his dragon wing. But lo! at
evening time it was light. God brought forth the solitary monk that shook
the world; he raised up men to be his coadjutors and helpers; the sun rose
in Germany; it shone in every land, nor have we ever had an even-tide so
near to darkness since that auspicious time. Yet there have been other
seasons of dark foreboding. There was a time when the church of England
was sound asleep, when the various bodies of Dissenters were quite as bad,
when religion degenerated into a dead formality, when no life and no
power could be found in any pulpit throughout the land, but when an
earnest man was so rare that he was almost a miracle. Good men stood
over the ruins of our Zion, and said, “Alas, alas, for the slain of the
daughter of my people! Where, where are the days of the mighty puritans
who with the banner of the truth in their hand crushed a lie beneath their
feet? O truth I thou trust departed; thou hast died.” “No,” says God, “it is
evening time; and now it shall be light.” There were six young men at
Oxford who met together to pray; those six young men were expelled for
being too godly; they went abroad throughout our land, and the little
leaven leavened the whole lump. Whitfield, Wesley, and their immediate
successors flashed o’er the land like lightning in a dark night, making all
men wonder whence they came and who they were, and working so great a
work, that both in and out of the Establishment, the gospel came to be
preached with power and vigor. At evening time God has always been
pleased to send light to his church.

We may expect to see darker evening times than have ever been beheld.
Let us not imagine that our civilisation shall be more enduring than any
other that has gone before it, unless the Lord shall preserve it. It may be
that the suggestion will be realised which has often been laughed at as
folly, that one day men should sit upon the broken arches of London
Bridge, and marvel at the civilisation that has departed, just as men walk
over the mounds of Nimroud, and marvel at cities buried there. It is just
possible that all the civilisation of this country may die out in blackest
night, it may be that God will repeat again the great story which has been
so often told — “I looked, and lo, in the vision I saw a great and terrible
beast, and it ruled the nations, but lo, it passed away and was not.” But if
ever such things should be — if the world should ever have to return to
barbarism and darkness — if instead of what we sometimes hope for, a
constant progress to the brightest day, all our hopes should be blasted, let
us rest quite satisfied that “at evening time there shall be light,” that the
end of the world’s history shall be an end of glory. However red with
blood, however black with sin the world may yet be, she shall one day be
as pure and perfect as when she was created. The day shall come when this
poor planet shall find herself unrobed of those swaddling bands of darkness
that have kept her lustre from breaking forth. God shall yet cause his name
to be known from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof,

“And the shout of jubilee,
Loud as mighty thunders roar,
Or the fullness of the sea
When it breaks upon the shore,
Shall yet be heard the wide world o’er.”
“At evening time it shall be light.”

II. This rule holds equally good in the little, as well as in the great. We
know that in nature the very same law that rules the atom, governs also the
starry orbs.

“The very law that moulds a tear
And bids it trickle from its source
That law preserves the earth a sphere
And guides the planets in their course.”

It is even so with the laws of grace. “At evening time it shall be light” to
the church, “at evening time it shall be light” to every individual. Christian
let us descend to lowly things. Thou hast had thy bright days in temporal
matters: thou hast sometimes been greatly blessed: thou canst remember
the day when the calf was in the stall, when the olive yielded its fruit, and
the fig-tree did not deny its harvest, thou canst recollect the years when the
barn was almost bursting with the corn, and when the vat overflowed with
the oil, thou rememberest when the stream of thy life was deep, and thy
ship floated softly on, without one disturbing billow of trouble to molest it.
Thou saidst in those days, “I shall see no sorrow, God hath hedged me
about; he hath preserved me, he hath kept me, I am the darling of his
providence, I know that all things work together for my good, for I can see
it is plainly so.” Well, Christian, thou hast after that had a sunset; the sun
which shone so brightly, began to cast his rays in a more oblique manner
every moment, until at last the shadows were long, for the sun was setting,
and the clouds began to gather; and though the light of God’s countenance
tinged those clouds with glory, yet it was waxing dark. Then troubles
lowered o’er thee; thy family sickened, thy wife was dead, thy crops were
meagre, and thy daily income was diminished, thy cupboard was no more
full, thou wast wandering for thy daily bread thou didst not know what
should become of thee, mayhap thou wast brought very low; the keel of
thy vessel did grate upon the rocks; there was not enough of bounty to
float thy ship above the rocks of poverty. “I sink in deep mire,” thou saidst,
“where there is no standing; all thy waves and thy billows have gone over
me.” What to do you could not tell; strive as you might, your strivings did
but make you worse. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain
that build it.” You used both industry and economy, and you added
“hereunto perseverance; but all in vain. It was in vain that you rose up
early, and sat up late and ate the bread of carefulness; nothing could you
do to deliver yourself; for all attempts failed. You were ready to die in
despair. You thought the night of your life had gathered with eternal
blackness. You would not live always, but had rather depart from this vale
of tears. Christian! bear witness to the truth of the maxim of the text! Was
it not light with thee at evening time? The time of thine extremity was just
the moment of God’s opportunity. When the tide had run out to its very
furthest, then it began to turn; thine ebb had its flow; thy winter had its
summer; thy sunset had its sunrise; “at evening time it was light.” On a
sudden by some strange work of God, as thou didst think it then, thou wast
completely delivered. He brought out thy righteousness like the light, and
thy glory as the noonday. The Lord appeared for thee in the days of old; he
stretched out his hand from above; he drew thee out of deep waters; he set
thee upon a rock and established thy goings. Mark, thou then, O heir of
heaven! what hath been true to thee in the years that are past, shall be true
to thee even till the last. Art thou this day exercised with woe, and care,
and misery? Be of good cheer! In thine “evening time it shall be light.” If
God chooseth to prolong thy sorrow he shall multiply thy patience; but the
rather, it may be, he will bring thee into the deeps, and thence will he lead
thee up again. Remember thy Savior descended that he might ascend: so
must thou also stoop to conquer and if God bids thee stoop, should it be to
the very lowest hell, remember, if he bade thee stoop he will bring thee up
again. Remember what Jonah said — “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and
thou heardest me.” Oh! exclaim with him of old, who trusted in God when
he had nothing else to trust: “Although the fig-tree shall not blossom,
neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail and the
fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there
shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the
God of my salvation.” Do thou so, and be blessed; for “at evening time it
shall be light.”

III. But now we seek a third illustration from the spiritual sorrows of
God’s own people. God’s children have two kinds of trials, trials temporal
and trials spiritual. I shall be brief on this point, and shall borrow an
illustration from good John Bunyan. You remember John Bunyan’s
description of Apollyon meeting Christian, Bunyan tells it figuratively, but
it is no figure: he that hath ever met Apollyon will tell you that there is no
mistake about the matter, but that there is a dread reality in it. Our
Christian met Apollyon when he was in the valley of humiliation, and the
dragon did most fiercely beset him; with fiery darts he sought to destroy
him, and take away his life. The brave Christian stood to him with all his
might, and used his sword and shield right manfully, till his shield became
studded with a forest of darts, and his hand did cleave unto his sword. You
remember how for many an hour that man and that dragon fought together,
till at last the dragon gave Christian a horrible fall, and down he went upon
the ground; and woe worth the day I at the moment when he fell he
dropped his sword! You have but to picture the scene: the dragon drawing
up all his might, planting his foot upon the Christian’s neck, and about to
hurl the fiery cart into his heart. “Aha! I have thee now, saith he, “thou art
in my power.” Strange to say, “at evening time it was light.” At the very
moment when the dragon’s foot was enough to crush the very life out of
poor Christian, it is said, he did stretch out his hand; he grasped his sword,
and giving a desperate thrust at the dragon he cried. “Rejoice not over me,
O mine enemy; for when I fall I shall arise again;” and so desperately did he
cut the dragon that he spread his wings and flew away, and Christian went
on his journey rejoicing in his victory. Now, the Christian understands all
that; it is no dream to him. He has been under the dragon’s foot many a
time. Ah! and all the world put on a man’s heart at once is not equal in
weight to one foot of the devil. When Satan once gets the upper hand of
the spirit, he neither wants strength, nor will, nor malice, to torment it.
Hard is that man’s lot, that has fallen beneath the hoof of the evil one in his
fight with him. But blessed be God, the child of God is ever safe as safe
beneath the dragon’s foot as he shall be before the throne of God in
heaven. “At evening time it shall be light.” And let all the powers of earth
and hell, and all the doubts and fears that the Christian ever knew, conspire
together to molest a saint, in that darkest moment, lo, God shall arise and
his enemies shall be scattered, and he shall get unto himself the victory. Oh
for faith to believe that. Oh! for confidence in God never to doubt him, but
in the darkest moment of our sorrows, still to feel all is well with us! “At
evening time it shall be light.”

IV. Bear with me whilst I just hint at one more particular, and then I will
come to that upon which I intend to dwell mainly at the last. To the sinner
when coming to Christ this is also a truth. “At evening time it shall be
light.” Very often when I am sitting to see inquirers, persons have come to
me to tell me the story of their spiritual history; and they tell me their little
tale with an air of the greatest possible wonder, and ask me as soon as they
have told it whether it is not extremely strange. “Do you know, sir, I used
to be so happy in the things of the world, but conviction entered into my
heart, and I began to seek the Savior; and do you know that for a long time
sir, when I was seeking the Savior I was so miserable that I could not bear
myself? Surely sir, this is a strange thing.” And when I have looked them in
the face, and said, “No, it is not strange; do you know I have had a dozen
to-night, and they have all told me the same; that is the way all God’s
people go to heaven,” they have stared at me, as if they did not think I
would tell them an untruth, but as if they thought it the strangest thing in
all the world that anybody else should have felt as they have felt. “Now, sit
down,” I say sometimes, “and I will tell you what were my feelings when I
first sought the Savior.” “Why, sir,” they say, “that is just how I felt, but I
did not think any one ever went the same path that I have gone.” Ah! well,
it is no wonder that when we hold little acquaintance with each other in
spiritual things our path should seem to be solitary; but he who knows
much of the dealings of God with poor seeking sinners, will know that their
experience is always very much alike, and you can generally tell one by
another, while they are coming to Christ. Now, whenever the soul is truly
seeking Christ it will have to seek him in the dark. When poor Lot ran out
of Sodom, he had to run all the way in the twilight. The sun did not rise
upon him until he got into Zoar. And so when sinners are running from
their sins to the Savior they have to run in the dark. They get no comfort
and no peace, till they are enabled by simple faith to look for all to him
who died upon the cross. I have in my presence this morning many poor
souls under great distress. Poor heart! my text is a comfort to thee. “At
evening time it shall be light.” You had a little light once, the light of
morality; you thought you could do something for yourself. That is all cut
out now. Then you had another light: you had the wax taper of
ceremonies, and you thought full sure that it would light you; but that is all
out now. Still you thought you could grope your way a little by the
remaining twilight of your good works, but all that seems to have gone
now. You think “God will utterly destroy such a wretch as I am! O sir! O
sir!

‘I the chief of sinners am.’

There never lived a wretch so vile; or if there ever lived such an one, surely
God must have cast him into hell at once; I am certain there is no hope for
me. Why, sir, do what I may, I cannot make myself any better. When I try
to pray I find I can’t pray as I should like; when I read the Bible it is all
black against me; it is no use, when I go to the house of God the minister
seems to be like Moses, only preaching the law to me — he never seems to
have a word of comfort to my soul. Well, I am glad of it, poor heart, I am
glad of it; far be it from me to rejoice in thy miseries as such, but I am glad
thou art where thou art. I remember what the Countess of Huntingdon
once said to Mr. Whitfield’s brother. Mr. Whitfield’s brother was under
great distress of mind, and one day when sitting at tea, talking of spiritual
things, he said, “Your ladyship, I know I am lost, I am certain I am!” Well,
they talked to him, and they tried to rally him; but he persisted in it, that he
was absolutely undone, that he was a lost man. Her ladyship clapped her
hands, and said, “I am glad of it, Mr. Whitfield, I’m glad of it.” He thought
it was a cruel thing for her to say. He knew better when she explained
herself by saying, “For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which
was lost; so, then, he came to seek and to save you.” Now, if there be any
here who are lost, I can only say, I am glad of it too, for such the mighty
Shepherd came to rescue. If there are any of you who feel that you are
condemned by God’s law, I thank God you are; for those who are
condemned by the law in their consciences shall yet be pardoned by the
gospel.

“Come, guilty souls, and flee away
To Christ, and heal your wounds;
This is the glorious gospel day
Wherein free grace abounds.”

Nay, this very hour, when you have no day in your heart, when you think
the evening time has come, and you must perish for ever — now is the time
when God will reveal himself to you. Whilst thou hast a rag of thine own
thou shalt never have Christ; whilst thou hast a farthing of thine own
righteousness, thou shalt never have him, but when thou art nothing, Christ
is thine; when thou hast nothing of thyself to trust to, Jesus Christ in the
gospel is thy complete Savior; he bids me tell thee he came to seek and to
save such as thou art.

V. And now I am about to close, dwelling rather more largely upon the
last particular — “At evening time it shall be light.” If our sun do not go
down ere it be noon, we may all of us expect to have an evening time of
life. Either we shall be taken from this world by death, or else, if God
should spare us, ere long we shall get to the evening of life. In a few more
years, the sere and yellow leaf will be the fit companion of every man and
every woman. Is there anything melancholy in that? I think not. The time of
old age, with all its infirmities, seems to me to be a time of peculiar
blessedness and privilege to the Christian. To the worldly sinner, whose
zest for pleasure has been removed by the debility of his powers and the
decay of his strength, old age must be a season of tedium and pain; but to
the veteran soldier of the cross, old age must assuredly be a time of great
joy and blessedness. I was thinking the other evening, whilst riding in a
delightful country, how like to evening time old age is. The sun of hot care
has gone down; that sun which shone upon that early piety of ours, which
had not much depth of root, and which scorched it so that it died — that
sun which scorched our next true godliness, and often made it well-nigh
wither, and would have withered it, had it not been planted by the rivers of
water — that sun is now set. The good old man has no particular care now
in all the world. He says to business, to the hum and noise and strife of the
age in which he lives, “Thou art nought to me; to make my calling and
election sure, to hold firmly this my confidence, and wait until my change
comes, this is all my employment; with all your worldly pleasures and cares
I have no connection.” The toil of his life is all done, he has no more now
to be sweating and toiling, as he had in his youth and manhood; his family
have grown up, and are no more dependent upon him; it may be, God has
blessed him, and he has sufficient for the wants of his old age, or it may be
that in some rustic alms-house he breathes out the lass few years of his
existence. How calm and quiet! Like the laborer, who, when he returns
from the field at evening time casts himself upon his couch, so does the old
man rest from his labors. And at evening time we gather into families, the
fire is kindled, the curtains are drawn, and we sit around the family fire, to
think no more of the things of the great rumbling world; and even so in old
age, the family and not the world are the engrossing topic.

Did you ever notice how venerable grandsires when they write a letter fill it
full of intelligence concerning their children? “John is well,” “Mary is ill,”
“all our family are in health.” Very likely some business friend writes to
say, “Stocks are down,” or, “the rate or interest is raised;” but you never
find that in any good old man’s letters; he writes about his family, his lately
married daughters, and all that. Just what we do at evening time; we only
think of the family circle and forget the world. That is what the grayheaded
old man does. He thinks of his children and forgets all beside. Well,
then, how sweet it is to think that for such an old man there is light in the
darkness! “At evening time it shall be light.” Dread not thy days of
weariness, dread not thine hours of decay, O soldier of the cross; new
lights shall burn when the old lights are quenched; new candles shall be lit
when the lamps of life are dim. Fear not! The night of thy decay may be
coming on; but “at evening time it shall be light.” At evening time the
Christian has many lights that he never had before; lit by the Holy Spirit
and shining by his light. There is the light of a bright experience. He can
look back, and he can raise his Ebenezer saying, “Hither by thy help I’ve
come.” He can look back at his old Bible, the light of his youth, and he can
say, “This promise has been proved to me, this covenant has been proved
true. I have thumbed my Bible many a year; I have never yet thumbed a
broken promise. The promises have all been kept to me; ‘not one good
thing has failed.’” And then if he has served God he has another light to
cheer him: he has the light of the remembrance of what good God has
enabled him to do. Some of his spiritual children come in and talk of times
when God blessed his conversation to their souls. He looks upon his
children, and his children’s children, rising up to call the Redeemer blessed;
at evening time he has a light. But at the last the night comes in real
earnest: he has lived long enough, and he must die. The old man is on his
bed; the sun is going down, and he has no more light. “Throw up the
windows, let me look for the last time into the open sky,” says the old man.
The sun has gone down; I cannot see the mountains yonder; they are all a
mass of mist; my eyes are dim, and the world is dim too. Suddenly a light
shoots across his face, and he cries, “O daughter! daughter, here! I can see
another sun rising. Did you not tell me that the sun went down just now?
Lo, I see another; and where those hills used to be in the landscape, those
hills that were lost in darkness, daughter, I can see hills that seem like
burning brass; and methinks upon that summit can see a city bright as
jasper. Yes, and I see a gate opening, and spirits coming forth. What is that
they say? O they sing! they sing! Is this death?” And ere he has asked the
question, he hath gone where he needs not to answer it, for death is all
unknown. Yes, he has passed the gates of pearl; his feet are on the streets
of gold; his head is bedecked with the crown of immortality; the
palmbranch of eternal victory is in his hand. God hath accepted him in the
beloved.

“Far from a world of grief and sin,
With God eternally shut in,”

he is numbered with the saints in light, and the promise is fulfilled, “At
evening time it shall be light.”

And now, my gray-headed hearer, will it be so with thee? I remember the
venerable Mr. Jay once in Cambridge, when preaching, reaching out his
hand to an old man who sat just as some of you are sitting there, and
saying, “I wonder whether those grey hairs are a crown of glory or a fool’s
cap; they are one or else the other.” For a man to be unconverted at the
age to which some of you have attained is indeed to have a fool’s cap made
of grey hairs; but if you have a heart consecrated to Christ, to be his
children now, with the full belief that you shall be his for ever, is to have a
crown of glory upon your brows.

And now, young men and maidens, we shall soon be old. In a little time
our youthful frame shall totter, we shall need a staff by-and-bye. Years are
short things; they seem to us to get shorter, as each one of them runs o’er
our head. My brother, thou art young as I am; say, hast thou a hope that
thine even-title shall be light? No, thou hast begun in drunkenness; anui the
drunkards eventide is darkness made more dark, and after it damnation.
No, young man; thou hast begun thy life with profanity, and the swearer’s
even-tide hath no light, except the lurid flame of hell. Beware thou of such
an even-tide as that! No, thou hast begun in gaiety; take care lest that
which begins in gaiety ends in eternal sadness. Would God we had all
begun with Christ! Would that ye would choose wisdom: for “her ways are
ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” Some religious men are
miserable; but religion does not make them so. True religion is a happy
thing. I never knew what the hearty laugh and what the happy face meant,
till I knew Christ, but knowing him I trust I can live in this world like one
who is not of it, but who is happy in it. If keeping my eye upward to the
Savior, I can say with David, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is
within me bless his holy name,” and bless him most of all for this, that I
know how to bless him. Ah! and if ye in your prime, in the days of your
youth, have been enabled by the Holy Spirit to consecrate yourselves to
God, you will, when you come to the end, look back with some degree of
sorrow upon your infirmities, but with a far greater degree of joy upon the
grace which began with you in childhood, which preserved you in
manhood, which matured you for your old age, and which at last gathered
you like a shock of corn fully ripe into the garner. May the great God and
Master bless these words to us each, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.