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But if we would make the right use of the day, we might learn of the
Wise men, not only how thankful we ought to be to this our God made Man,
made a little Child for us, but also in what way, especially, He expects
us to show our thankfulness. It was not enough for the Wise men,
having seen Christ’s Star in the East, to believe and lift up their hearts:
there was something more, something outward to be done: they had to come
and worship Him: they had to take a great deal of trouble, to put themselves
to inconvenience, to be absent from their homes, and interrupt their ordinary
employments, for a considerable time: and what to many would be harder
far than all this, they had to do something in open sight of men, which
was very much out of the common way; something, which was sure to be noticed
and pointed at, as a strange, odd, unaccountable step for persons, especially
of their condition, to take. No doubt there were neighbours at hand,
who would say to them, or to others concerning them,
“How can any one be quite sure that this Star means all that it is
said to mean? and supposing it should mean it, what difference can your
going to worship the young Child make? Why cannot you worship Him
as well at home? If He is God, as you say, He can see into your hearts,
and will know just as well what your good meaning is towards Him, as if
you made ever so many journeys to wait upon Him. And then what is
to become of your wisdom and knowledge and all your studies in the stars
and other works of nature? And what is to become of your affairs
and the affairs of your people, kings as you are, and so much looked up
to by every one? Will it not all go on the worse for your giving
up so much time to the visiting of this young Child?”
Thus the Wise men’s neighbours might have talked: and if they had happened
to know anything about Herod, they might have added, “Besides, after all,
your going to Bethlehem will be but an outward bodily act: such a thing
as the tyrant Herod might do: if he heard of this young Child, he might
come and worship Him also, meaning the worst of mischief towards Him.
Keep yourselves at home then and, if you like, worship Him in spirit; but
do not be disturbing yourselves and every one around you with anything
so unusual, so unaccountable, as this journey.”
If there were any, so to remonstrate with the Wise men, they knew better
than to attend to such talk: they had their answer ready, and it was a
short and simple one: “We have seen His Star, and we know that we must
go and worship Him.” And their faith was greatly rewarded: how greatly,
none shall know, but those who shall, by God’s mercy, be admitted to see
them one day Saints in Heaven. For that Saints they are, and the
first-fruits of God’s Saints among the Gentiles, the Church has always
believed, and has honoured them accordingly.
Now do you not at once see, my brethren, how nearly we are concerned
in all this? For we too have the star in the East: Christ’s
tokens have shone upon us, and that exceeding brightly. From our
very babyhood, as long as we can remember, we have been told of this young
Child and of Mary His Mother: our catechisms have told us of Him, we have
been taught to name Him in our prayers, and to bow at that Most Holy Name:
we have seen His House with the sign of His Cross upon it, far unlike all
the other houses around us, and His Day far unlike all the other days of
the week: we have been taken into that house, and told how to behave there,
because He is there: We have been taught something of the Holy Bible, His
Book, and how unlike it is to all other books: We have all our lives long
been used to the sights and sounds of Christmas, the carols, and the green
boughs, and all the rest. The time would fail me to tell the hundredth
part of the tokens that are around us, that we have really and truly seen
that star in the East, Christ present by His Church and all His visible
tokens here on earth. Indeed what else do we mean when we profess
and call ourselves Christians, as we all undoubtedly do, and should think
it hard if we were not so accounted of?
By our own confession, then, we have all of us seen Christ’s Star: but
surely we do not all of us consider, as we ought to do, that we are bound
therefore to come and worship Him. I say, to WORSHIP Him: for that
is the word, that is the duty, to be especially thought of today.
Observe, my brethren, what “worship” means, and how it is constantly spoken
of, as being paid to our Saviour. It means properly “bowing one’s
self down to the earth before a person,” and so acknowledging Him to be
your superior. The devil wanted our Lord to worship him, i.e. to
fall down before him, as though he, the Evil one, were the lawful owner
of this present world; and our Lord in reply, silenced him by declaring
this His eternal law, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only
shalt thou serve.” Our Saviour then, being True God, is worshipped
both in heaven and in earth by all His dutiful and obedient creatures:
they confess and own Him as their God, in all ways inward and outward.
The Angels worship Him with peculiar honour as God made Flesh: for it is
written “When He bringeth in the First-begotten into the world He saith,
“Let all the Angels of God worship Him.” The leper fell down and
worshipped Him, when he came to be cleansed; so did Jairus in behalf of
his dying daughter; so did the Apostles, smitten with awe when they saw
Him walking on the sea; so did the woman of Canaan, to get the devil cast
out of her daughter: so did the mother of Zebedee’s children, when she
would obtain a gift for them; so did all the disciples after His Resurrection:
when He left them to ascend into Heaven, they were in the act of worshipping
Him. Worship, in short, is owning Him for our King and our God, not
in thought only, nor in word only, but in outward actions, such as our
fellow creatures can take notice of. This He expects of us all, to
come and worship Him: not only to pray, not only to exercise ourselves
inwardly in good, dutiful, religious thoughts, but to render Him homage
in the sight of men and Angels: to confess with lip and knee as well as
with heart that we have none in Heaven but Him; neither is there any upon
earth that we desire in comparison of Him. This is a distinct duty,
and cannot be satisfied by any devotion which is only between God and ourselves.
As our King, He expects that we should wait upon Him in public, and tender
Him our reverent adoration in the presence of all His people, Angels and
men: but this we cannot do, except we come where Angels and men are assembled
around Him, their God: and where is that, but in His own Place, the Church?
Thither we must resort, as the Israelites resorted to Jerusalem: wilfully
to stay away from Church, is to fail in dutiful acknowledgment to our great
and holy King. This should be considered more than it is: it will
help us all to understand better, why holy men and holy women have at all
times made such a point of coming to serve God here in His own House.
We have known, for example, aged persons and others, who had become so
deaf that they could not hear a single word, how they have come religiously
into the congregation, and have done their best to join in the service.
Why? Might they not as well have said the same prayers and read the
same lessons, to have done as well, for there would have been no public
worship: their light would not have shone before men: they would not have
been giving the same glory to God, nor bearing the same witness to Him
in sight of their fellow men. Thus a great part of their duty to
Him would have been left undone. And alas! my brethren, is not the
same duty far more inexcusably left undone by the many, who can hear, who
have their health, who live conveniently within reach of the Church; and
yet allow themselves, Sunday after Sunday, to neglect the great duty of
coming to adore our Saviour? They little think Whom they are affronting,
to whose whispers they are listening: least of al did they think, the first
time they lightly permitted any foolish trifle to keep them from God’s
House, what a grievous chain they were beginning to forge for themselves,
the chain of a bad miserable habit, incurable save by the special grace
of God. No one would believe, till he had seen or unhappily tried,
how fast, how fearfully fast, the custom of not going to Church will form
itself in a man. It seems such a simple easy action, for a person,
when his time comes, to prepare himself and go to his Lord’s House.
But those, who have long left it off, are suffered by Almighty God, in
just judgement, to sink into such sloth and cowardice, that they feel as
if they really could not break the chain, and once more draw near to Him.
But He is at hand to help them, and they man and must break through to
Him. They see His Star, and they may and must come and worship Him,
if they would not have Him count them rebels and enemies.
You, my brethren, who have come here to worship Him, may yet have need
to be reminded, why He requires it of you to do so. Not merely for
the edification and comfort which you may find here, not even for the spiritual
grace which you hope to be blessed with in partaking of God’s most holy
Sacraments, but mainly, as I said, for this reason also, that it is an
acknowledgement which Christ, as your great King, expects of you.
Bear it in mind, and spread the thought of it as well as you can among
your brethren (alas! too many), who are now so ignorant or so careless
of it. Say to them as one said of old, This is where “the tribes
go us, even the tribes of the Lord; to testify unto Israel, to give thanks
unto the Name of the Lord.” Say to them, you have seen His Star as
well as we: why will you not come with us and worship Him? Instruct
them, that although the Lord does not now call us all to worship Him is
some one place, as at Jerusalem, or at such or such a mountain: yet wherever
we are He appoints us a place where we may come and “worship Him in spirit
and in truth:” not the less in spirit, because our bodies also worship
Him; not the less in truth, because we worship Him in open communion with
His Church, which is the Truth and Reality of all the old prophecies and
parables.
And if we worship, we must give: we must give alms of our substance;
and in Holy Communion we must offer to Him “Ourselves, our souls and bodies.”
Even as the Wise men opened their treasures and to their lowly King presented
gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And if it puts you more or
less out of your way, either to come to Church at all, or to spare something
for an offering to Him there, this is the trial of your faith. O
pray that you may meet it courageously, and not draw back either from worshipping
Him, or from giving: and then the Face of the Lord Jesus, that bright and
morning Star, shall never be turned away from you.
As this is the first Sunday in the new year, I will end with a New Year’s
wish for you and for myself. “O that we may this year show a more
lively since of the Presence of Him Whom the Wise men came to see, than
we ever have done in former years! O that we all, according to our
opportunities, seeing as we do Hi star, may come constantly to worship
Him: those who can conveniently, in daily service; those who can at all,
in Sunday service; with child-like, earnest lifting up of the heart for
ourselves and for all whom we ought to remember.”
