The Good News of God | Page 9

For what greater misery for really good men, than to see
things going wrong, and not to be able to mend them; to see poor
creatures suffering, and not to be able to comfort them? No, my friends,
we will believe--what every one who loves a beloved friend comes
sooner or later to believe--that those whom we have honoured and

loved, though taken from our eyes, are near to our spirits; that they still
fight for us, under the banner of their Master Christ, and still work for
us, by virtue of his life of love, which they live in him and by him for
ever.
Pray to them, indeed, we need not, as if they would help us out of any
self-will of their own. There, I think, the Roman Catholics are wrong.
They pray to the saints as if the saints had wills of their own, and
fancies of their own, and were respecters of persons; and could have
favourites, and grant private favours to those who especially admired
and (I fear I must say it) flattered them. But why should we do that?
That is to lower God's saints in our own eyes. For if we believe that
they are made perfect, and like perfectly the everlasting life, then we
must believe that there is no self-will in them: but that they do God's
will, and not their own, and go on God's errands, and not their own;
that he, and not their own liking, sends them whithersoever he wills;
and that if we ask of HIM--of God our Father himself, that is enough
for us.
And what shall we ask?
Ask--'Father, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.'
For in asking that, we ask for the best of all things. We ask for the
happiness, the power, the glory of saints and angels. We ask to be put
into tune with God's whole universe, from the meanest flower beneath
our feet, to the most glorious spirit whom God ever created. We ask for
the one everlasting life which can never die, fail, change, or disappoint:
yea, for the everlasting life which Christ the only begotten Son lives
from eternity to eternity, for ever saying to his Father, 'Thy will be
done.'
Yes--when we ask God to make us do his will, then indeed we ask for
everlasting life.
Does that seem little? Would you rather ask for all manner of pleasant
things, if not in this life, at least in the life to come?
Oh, my friends, consider this. We were not put into this world to get
pleasant things; and we shall not be put into the next world, as it seems
to me, to get pleasant things. We were put into this world to do God's
will. And we shall be put (I believe) into the next world for the very
same purpose--to do God's will; and if we do that, we shall find
pleasure enough in doing it. I do not doubt that in the next world all

manner of harmless pleasure will come to us likewise; because that will
be, we hope, a perfect and a just world, not a piecemeal, confused,
often unjust world, like this: but pleasant things will come to us in the
next life, only in proportion as we shall be doing God's will in the next
life; and we shall be happy and blessed, only because we shall be living
that eternal life of which I have been preaching to you all along, the life
which Christ lives and has lived and will live for ever, saying to the
Eternal Father--I come to do thy will--not my will but thine be done.
Oh! may God give to us all his Spirit; the Spirit by which Christ did his
Father's will, and lived his Father's life in the soul and body of a mortal
man, that we may live here a life of obedience and of good works,
which is the only true and living life of faith; and that when we die it
may be said of us--'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; for they
rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.'
They rest from their labours. All their struggles, disappointments,
failures, backslidings, which made them unhappy here, because they
could not perfectly do the will of God, are past and over for ever. But
their works follow them. The good which they did on earth--that is not
past and over. It cannot die. It lives and grows for ever, following on in
their path long after they are dead, and bearing fruit unto everlasting
life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and in
generations yet unborn.

SERMON IV. THE SONG OF THE