Twenty-Five Village Sermons | Page 7

"visited" you to put it there. If God's
Spirit had not given it you, you would never have got it of yourselves.
But people forget this, and therefore they have so little real love to
God--so little real, loyal, childlike trust in God. They do not think much
about God, because they find no pleasure in thinking about Him; they
look on God as a task-master, gathering where He has not strewed,
reaping where He has not sown,--a task-master who has put them, very
miserable, sinful creatures, to struggle on in a very miserable, sinful
world, and, though He tells them in His Bible that they CANNOT keep
His commandments, expects them to keep them just the same, and will

at the last send them all into everlasting fire, unless they take a great
deal of care, and give up a great many natural and pleasant things, and
beseech and entreat Him very hard to excuse them, after all. This is the
thought which most people have of God, even religious people; they
look on God as a stern tyrant, who, when man sinned and fell, could
not satisfy His own justice--His own vengeance in plain words, without
killing some one, and who would have certainly killed all mankind, if
Jesus Christ had not interfered, and said, "If Thou must slay some one,
slay me, though I am innocent!"
Oh, my friends, does not this all sound horrible and irreverent? And yet
if you will but look into your own hearts, will you not find some such
thoughts there? I am sure you will. I believe every man finds such
thoughts in his heart now and then. I find them in my own heart: I
know that they must be in the hearts of others, because I see them
producing their natural fruits in people's actions--a selfish, slavish view
of religion, with little or no real love to God, or real trust in Him; but a
great deal of uneasy dread of Him: for this is just the dark, false view of
God, and of the good news of salvation and the kingdom of heaven,
which the devil is always trying to make men take. The Evil One tries
to make us forget that God is love; he tries to make us forget that God
gives us all things richly to enjoy; he tries to make us forget that God
gives at all, and to make us think that we take, not that He gives; to
make us look at God as a task-master, not as a father; in one word, to
make us mistake the devil for God, and God for the devil.
And, therefore, it is that we ought to bless God for such Scriptures as
this 104th Psalm, which He seems to have preserved in the Bible just to
contradict these dark, slavish notions,--just to testify that God is a
GIVER, and knows our necessities before we ask and gives us all
things, even as He gave us His Blessed Son--freely, long before we
wanted them,--from the foundation of all things, before ever the earth
and the world was made--from all eternity, perpetual love, perpetual
bounty.
What does this text teach us? To look at God as Him who gives to all
freely and upbraideth not. It says to us,--Do not suppose that your crops

grow of themselves. God waters the hills from above. He causes the
grass to grow for the cattle, and the green herb for the service of man.
Do not suppose that He cares nothing about seeing you comfortable
and happy. It is He, He only who sends all which strengthens man's
body, and makes glad his heart, and makes him of a cheerful
countenance. His will is that you should be cheerful. Ah, my friends, if
we would but believe all this!--we are too apt to say to ourselves, 'Our
earthly comforts here have nothing to do with godliness or God, God
must save our souls, but our bodies we must save ourselves. God gives
us spiritual blessings, but earthly blessings, the good things of this life,
for them we must scramble and drudge ourselves, and get as much of
them as we can without offending God;'--as if God grudged us our
comforts! as if godliness had not the promise of this life as well as the
life to come! If we would but believe that God knows our necessities
before we ask--that He gives us daily more than we can ever get by
working for it!--if we would but seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness, all other things would be added to us; and we should
find that he who loses his life should save it. And this way of looking at
God's earth would not make us idle; it