The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-09-20 00:00:00

CANON KINGSLEY ON MAN'S NEED OF
DIVINE TEACHING.

Canon Kingsley, in preaching on Sunday morning at
Westminster Abbey on the 33rd verse of the 119th
Psalm, said that while it had always been deeply valued
as an experimental psalm, it was also a theological
psalm, and specially a psalm of education. 'the words,
" Teach me, 0 Lord, the way of Thy statutes," were
the words of a man who wished to be taught, and who
wished to gain not mere book-learning, but practical
Instruction. The inspired authors of the psalm,
though writing in many keys, always kept to one
original strain—always kept before them two thoughts
first, the thought that there was something in the
world which they must and would learn, because every.
thing in this world and the next depended on learning
It- they must learn God's statutes; and secondly, the
thought that if they were to learn, God himself
I must be the teacher. Thus the psalm is
also a prayer, for its writers were not like
too many men nowadays, who look upon prayer and
inspiration as old-fashioned superstitions—a theory,
said the Canon, certainly not supported by past history
nor by present experience, if their experience is like
mine—but rather they believed that man can learn
nothing unless God teaches him In two ways, first what
to do, and then how to do it. Surely such &belief was
reasonable, and showed the writer's common-sense.
Suppose, continued the preacher, you wore in in a
ship at sea and left to shift for yourselves. Would
it not be wise to learn how to manage the vessel
and how to keep her alloat ; to become acquainted
with the Laws by observing which she would {Rim
and by breaking which she would sink; to learn the
cominandmente about her, the rules of seamanship
and navigation, to gather up the testimonies about her,
the witness which she had borne herself as to the way
she behaved at sea. And how would you attempt to
learn all this? By your own unassisted ideas and
theories? I trust not. I presume you would go to
the shipbuilder and the shipowner, and therefore it is
just as reasonable that you should go, as the psalmist
did, to the Maker of this world for information about
It. 0 how simple is all this, and yet men will not
believe it. Nor each of us is at sea in his own ship.
The sea is this world, the ship is ourself, and the land
to which we are sailing is eternal life. Shall we make
the voyage or not ! Shall we sail or not? Shall we
sink? Or shall we strive, as the clergyman prayed at
our baptism, se to pass the waves of this troublesome
world that finally we may come to the land of everlast-
ing life? Certain it is that we shall sink if we do not
learn the judgments of God about this mortal life. If we
do not keep the laws of God they will keep themselves
In spite of us. Do not fancy that you can break God's
laws without punishment because you are no longer
under the law bat under grace. You are on* under
grace as long as you are obeying the law. Suppose
you went into a mill kept by your own father' Would
that save you from being crushed if you got entangied
in the machinery? So the fact that Gad Is your
father will not keep you if you fail through wilful igno.
ranee, and your only safety is to learn how to pass
through life by keeping His statutes. The Canon
then proceeded to insist in detail on the necessity for
keeping God's commandments, His testimonies, and
His judgments, observing that by the latter term
he meant the way in which God rewards and
punish. us in this life and that which Is to
come. This knowledge may be gained not only from
the Bible but from what happens around us. If
men will use their sense and their intellect and observe
what goes on in any single city or even in their ordi-
nary circle of friends and acquaintances., they may see
how righteousness is rewarded and sin is punished;
they may learn enough about God's judgments. But
wan will not learn. He sees his neighbour punished,
and yet goes and does the same thing himself, as if all
was accident and chance, and as if he would escape
scot free while others sutler. I say again, added the
Canon in conclusion, that the only way to attain
eternal life is thus to know God's statutes, His com-
mandments, His testimonies, and his judgments, and
therefore it is that the Psalmist says they are not
merely the way to life but life itself.