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 1978.
4478.66-
 28220

WILL GOD INTERFERE?

A SERMON

PREACHED IN

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, BEDFORD,

ON MARCH THE NINTH, 1866,

BEING THE DAY OF HUMILIATION APPOINTED BY THE

BISHOP OF ELY FOR THE CATTLE PLAGUE.

BY THE

REV. M. F. SADLER, M.A.

PREBENDARY OF WELLS, AND VICAR OF ST. PAUL'S, BEDFORD ;
AUTHOR OF 66 THE SECOND ADAM AND THE NEW BIRTH ; "
66 CHURCH DOCTRINE,-BIBLE TRUTH," ETC.

Published at the Request ofthe Mayor and Corporation of Bedford.

LONDON :

BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET ;

BEDFORD : J. R. PORTER.
1866.
 LONDON:
PRINTED BY R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREET HILL.

T MU
SH SE
ITI UM
BR
 ΤΟ

W. J. NASH, Esq.

MAYOR,

AND TO THE CORPORATION OF BEDFORD,

This Sermon ,

PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST,

IS DEDICATED.
 A SERMON.

ST. JOHN V. 17.

"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

ST. JOHN XIV. 9.

"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

ON such an occasion as this day of prayer and humilia-

tion, it would be useless - and worse than useless, it would
be affectation— for me to ignore the fact that the appoint-
ment of any such a day, as one of National Humiliation,
has been considered, not only inexpedient or premature,
but wrong. Not only has the appointment of a day of
prayer and fasting been objected to, but prayer itself, in
order to move God to avert this cattle plague, or any other
similar visitation, has been reprobated.
It is said that that outward system of things with which
we are surrounded, which we call " Nature," is so closely com-
pacted a sequence of cause and effect, that there is no room
left for any interference with it, even by God Himself,-
that an interference on His part with those subtle atmo-
spheric influences which engender, or which bear about,
cholera or fever, is not to be looked for by us, God's
creatures ; and So, if we ask Him to interfere on our behalf
in this our sore strait, we are asking Him to set aside His
own order of government— we are, in point of fact, doing as
 6

foolish and impertinent a thing as if we were to ask Him

that for our convenience the sun should not set at its proper
time to-night, or rise at its proper time to-morrow.
This illustration has actually been used by one who, I
believe, professes to be a Christian, in order to show us that
though, under the pressure of such a calamity, it is right
for us to use all means which science may place within
our disposal ; yet that we must not for a moment act on
the assumption that our Almighty Ruler has any means,
reserved to Himself, at His disposal, to avert or mitigate
such a calamity.
I would, first of all, show the unreasonableness of sup-
posing that God has ordained such a rigidly unalterable
system , as would make it wrong to pray to Him to alleviate
or remove our present distress, and then I would show how
the Revelation of the Son of God sets a believing mind for
ever at rest on such a point.
1. First of all, when we look at the course of Nature
around us, what do we see ? We see the greatest pos-
sible certainty combined with the greatest possible un-
certainty. Take the very illustration which has been used
-the revolutions, real or apparent, of the heavenly bodies,
the sun and moon. We can calculate the rising and
setting of these bodies on any day of the year to the
moment. We can calculate their daily rising and setting
for many years in advance. It is usual for ships going on
long voyages to take almanacs with them showing the
exact position in the heavens, not only of the sun and
moon, but of other heavenly bodies, for every day of,
perhaps, two or three consecutive years.
But is any calculation to be relied upon which professes
to foretell from what quarter the wind will blow, for one
week approximately, or one day certainly ?
Is any calculation to be relied upon which will foretell
 7

the degrees of temperature, for the next twenty-four hours

approximately, or for the next hour certainly ?
Who, on New Year's Day, could have calculated that
during the first weeks of this very year we should have had
the temperature of the middle of spring, and that now
(March 9th) we should have just passed through the cold
which we associate with Christmas ?
See, too, what science has revealed to us of late respect-
ing that subtle and mysterious agent - so subtle and
mysterious that many think that it is the connecting link
between matter and spirit-the electric fluid. That at-
mospheric changes to a great degree depend upon its
accumulation or defect is certain ; but the knowledge of
this, so far from enabling us to calculate changes of such
moment to our well-being as those of the air we breathe,
only renders the probability that we shall ever be able to
calculate them still more uncertain. All the knowledge
which we have attained respecting this most tremendous
of all forces, only seems to convince us how impossible it
will be to predict that, at any given hour, a cloud may (or
may not) hover over us so surcharged with it, as to vary
the course of winds and alter the temperature, and change
the face of the sky over half a kingdom .
When one realizes this, one can well believe that God
may have ordained that one part of the course of nature
may be rigidly unalterable, because He would have us
see in it an outward visible sign of the unchangeableness
of His eternal purpose, and yet that another part may be
perfectly flexible, in order that by it we may see how our
Creator is free to deal with us according to the freedom
with which He has endowed us.
As our free will has power within its sphere so that we
can alter some things which affect our well-being, and not
others, why may not God have power within His sphere,
 8

so that He also may alter some things which He has

ordained to be the instruments of that will of His which
changes with our wills, and hold others in their rigidly
fixed courses till His Almighty fiat suspends even their
revolutions ?
And remember that these changes of air and heat and
electricity (and perhaps of subtler agents still, such as
ozone) are the most important of all to us, for they are
those which most of all affect the term of our life, i.e. the
term of our probation.
Wellnigh twelve years ago the Asiatic cholera attacked
the metropolis.
A gentle breeze, scarcely, I believe, perceptible, was
blowing from the north. Whilst it held on the fearful
pest found its victims almost entirely on the south side of
the Thames.
In a few hours the wind changed and a gentle breeze
set in from the south, and the number of cases on the
north side increased, I am afraid to say, how many fold.
In one parish alone, where there had scarcely been
a single death, there were above five hundred. I speak
feelingly, for the parish in question adjoined the one in
which I had at that time the cure of souls.
Now, when we speak of five hundred persons more
perishing through this slight change in the direction of
the wind, what mean we ? Why, we mean five hundred
persons having their time of probation cut short- five
hundred persons having their eternal state sealed- five
hundred persons out of the reach of the ministry of the
word and the sound of the Gospel.
If God is a Sovereign Judge (and our conscience—the
part of our nature given us to guide us as moral and
responsible agents-tells us that He is) , then His rule
over us must take into account the time which He gives
 9

us to prepare for a future and more perfect state, in which

He will reward or punish us according to our conduct in
this world. Now He cannot take this into account in the
case of each man unless He determines the period of that
man's probation, for it makes all the difference to His
judgment of each man, whether that man be cut off in his
sins, or after he has repented and been forgiven.
So that unless God is able to determine when and how
He summons a man before Him, He has abdicated His
office as a Sovereign Judge.
But His way of summoning us before Him till the
Second Advent of His Son is by death.
So that if God be a Sovereign Judge, He must hold in
His own hands the power of life and death. He must
hold this power as perfectly subject to the motions of His
own righteous will, as our sins are subject to the motions
of our wills.
To this end He must not have parted with His power
of controlling atmospheric changes, or the still more subtle
principles which determine the state of the air, when and
how far it should engender fever or plague, for on such
things depends especially the term of life of these bodies
of ours, and by consequence the future state of those free
and responsible souls whose union with their bodies con-
stitutes the term of their probation.
So that if God be a judge, the laws of nature which
have to do with the lengthening or shortening of human
life must be subordinate to Him, and be under the control
of His righteous will.
Now, of course, the argument hitherto has gone upon
the assumption that God's judgments upon sin are in-
flicted in a future life, and not in this ; but what if some
of His judgments are inflicted in this life?
The universal sense of mankind in all ages has con-
 10

nected calamity with the anger of the Supreme Being,

and the Christian religion has made no difference in our
views on such a matter excepting this (and, of course, it is
a most blessed difference), that it has substituted the word
discipline " for the word " anger."
The heathen regarded every calamity as a direct sign
of the anger of the Deity. We, on the contrary, regard
all calamity as equally apportioned and controlled by
God, but not in anger, but for discipline-to show us
what we are to teach us something of the terrible, but
needful lesson, that " as a man feareth so is His dis-
pleasure," so that under the fear of His judgment we may
take refuge in Him.
We, who believe in God, hope and trust that this is
so ; we should lose much of our sense of the true Father-
hood of God if we did not realize that " when we endure
chastening, God dealeth with us as with sons " dealeth
with us, not in the way of blind, unreasoning fate, but in
the way of kind and reasonable Fatherhood, which adapts
the discipline to the state of soul of him who is under
training for eternal life. But, of course, all this requires
that God should have all things that can possibly conduce
to discipline at His absolute disposal, such as health,
sickness, life, death, and all the causes, near and remote,
which lead to these things.
And so we believe-reasonably believe-that He has.
He would not be a Moral Governor, a Just Judge, a
Righteous Sovereign, above all a loving Father, if He
has not. 墨
And all this bears directly upon our right to pray against
calamity of any sort, no matter how inevitable it seems.
Are we to suppose that God punishes only-that He
is a Sovereign Judge without power to respite, to modify,
to forgive ?
 11

Are we to suppose that He is a Father exercising dis-

cipline, and yet without power to temper that discipline—
to adapt it to varying circumstances, or to remit it when
the mere fear of it has perhaps produced a more salutary
effect than the infliction itself would have done ?
In answer to all this, we may perhaps be reminded that
any link in that series of causes and effects which we call
" Nature " depends upon some previous link, and that upon
another, and that upon another, and so on till we come
back to the beginning of things -so that the atmospheric
state of this year, and consequently the diseases engendered
by it, depend on those of last year, and those of last year
on the year before, and so on, till we come back to the
Creation ; and hence it is argued that a pestilence this
year cannot be a discipline for the men now living, because
the remote causes which have led to the present state of
the atmosphere which has occasioned the particular pesti-
lence may be traced back for thousands of years.
But what of this ? Does not God foresee all that will
come to pass ? Does He not foresee sin-when and under
what circumstances each sin will take place ? and can
He not provide beforehand for its punishment if He
foresee it ?

We may throw the sequence of causes and effects as far

back as we please. We shall never be able to throw it
further back than the foreknowledge of Almighty God.
So that this reasoning leads to nothing. It only plunges
us hopelessly in that most unfathomable of all abysses-
the reconciliation of the foreknowledge of the Creator
with the freedom of the creature.*

* The arguments of the preceding pages hold equally good though the
cattle plague, or any similar visitation, be propagated in all cases by con-
tact, and not by atmospheric influence, as some diseases are.
In such a case, if it is to be " stamped out " it must be by human means,
 12

But we now come to our second point- how the Reve-

lation of the Son of God sets the believing mind for ever
at rest upon such a matter as this.
The God whom no searching can find out has brought
Himself near to us in the Incarnation of His dear Son-
near indeed, for He has not come amongst us as an angel,
or cherub, or seraph, but He has dwelt amongst us in our
flesh, as the Son of Man.
The Son of the living God, without losing one attribute
of His Deity, has become Son of Man-so that men saw
Him, heard Him speak, felt His flesh that it was real
flesh. Men were His companions, His familiar friends ;
they had countless opportunities of observing His conduct :
what He said, how He acted, how He suffered, how He
prayed.
Now He who thus lived among men for some years, and
whose life we are so familiar with, was the Image of the
Invisible God. He was the express Image of the Father's
Person. As a human father gets a human son in his like-
ness, so the Eternal Father has begotten one Eternal Son
exactly like Himself. And this Son so made known the
hidden Incomprehensible Deity, that when men saw Him
they saw God, when men heard Him they heard the very
words of God. When they saw Him act under any
circumstances, it was as if God Himself acted ; nay, it was
God who was acting.
He made known the hidden mind of God as none ever

enforcing the strictest isolation, or by the universal adoption of some plan

or remedy not yet discovered ; but cannot God control the national will to
adopt the necessary measures, or leave that will to itself so that it should
fruitlessly weary itself in endeavouring to arrive at the united action so
needful?
Even the sense of self-interest is by no means sure to lead men to hit on
the right plan where interests appear conflicting. Persons most interested
by no means always adopt the best way of advancing their own interest.
 13

had done, or ever can do. He made known, if I may so

say, the heart of God. He made known the will, intention,
designs of God.
Now we acknowledge all this with respect to all matters
pertaining to salvation. We should not be Christians if
we did not.
We acknowledge, for instance, that His Incarnation
reveals to us the hidden love of God to our fallen race,
in that God sent not His Son into the world to condemn
the world, but that the world through Him might have life.
We acknowledge that His pure, spotless, and benevolent
life reveals to us the holiness and goodness of God—that
His death reveals to us the anger of God against sin,
which required no less for its atonement-that His Resur-
rection is the outward and visible sign that the anger of
God is turned away from us, in that He, God, raised up
from the dead our Sinbearer. We know all this. It has
been, I trust, and yet is the food of the souls of many
amongst us.
But have we ever considered that every page of the
accounts of our Saviour's life on earth sets at rest, or
should set at rest for ever, these doubts and difficulties about
God interfering with the laws of nature for our benefit ?
The accounts of the life of our Lord present to us the
picture of One who was all day long interfering with the
laws of nature. It was, next to preaching, His chief occu-
pation. Take, for instance, the account He gives to the
disciples of John of His daily life and usual acts. " Go
and show John those things which ye do hear and see :
the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, and the deaf hear ; the dead are raised up,
and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them."
What are all these (except the last) but interferences with
the natural order of things ?
 14

Take the sudden and instantaneous chasing away of a

fever, or the healing of any disease by a mere word. What
is the natural law of disease in the human body ? Why,
that the remedy must have some relation to the disease, as
in all surgical remedies ; or, as in almost all other cases,
the remedy, in the shape of some drug, must be taken
into the body, and be assimilated to it as food is, or else
produce its effect somewhat after the manner of a poison,
counteracting, in some inscrutable way, the poison already
in the frame.
In all cases the remedy requires time-more or less-
days, weeks, months, perhaps years.
But here is the Image of God, who does what God
does, and shows to us what God is. Here He is spending
His life in setting at naught the laws of disease, by healing
men by a single word ; sometimes by a mere silent exercise
of His will, the stricken ones being at a distance from
Him. So also He sets aside all laws requiring the gradual
production of food, as in the case of His turning the water
into wine, or multiplying the substance of the loaves.
So also the law of gravitation by walking on the water.
So, above all, the law of corruption and death by raising
Lazarus from the dead.

Now supposing, as some affirm, that it is contrary to the

will of God that the laws of nature should ever be inter-
fered with, is it possible to imagine that the express
Image of God should have so acted, so constantly acted ?
If God has made the laws of nature as immutable as
moral laws, and put it out of the scope of His providence
ever to interfere with them, why should His Son have
done so, if He is His Image, and manifests the hidden
mind and wisdom of His Father ?
If God has put it out of the scope of His providential
dealings ever to interfere with natural laws, would not His
 15

Son, His Express Image, have given very different answers

to those who came to Him to be healed ? Would he not

have said to the suppliant who came to tell Him that his
servant was at the point of death, " My friend , I cannot
" assist you as you wish. My Father has ordained certain
" natural laws, and I cannot interfere with them, for He
66
· never does so Himself. Indeed He has as good as put
" such a thing out of His power, so stringently has He
" bound the observance of these laws on Himself and on
" His creatures.
" I cannot consequently assist you in the way you
" desire. I can tell you for your comfort that eighteen
" hundred years hence great improvements will be made
in the healing art, which will materially alleviate the
<<
misery of those dwelling upon the earth at that time ;
" but these discoveries are not made yet, and I cannot
(6
anticipate them. It would be as great an infringement
66 of my
Father's plan if I were to set aside the laws on
" which accessions of knowledge depend, as if I were to
66
set aside the laws of matter. So you must bear what
God has laid upon you till by natural means He sees fit
" to remove it."

These, according to all principles of God-excluding

science, ought to have been His words when men asked
Him to heal them.
What He actually said in such cases was, " I will, be
thou clean ; " " Go thy way, thy son liveth ; " " Arise, and
take up thy bed, and walk ; " " Lazarus, come forth."
We are told that God can never, or will never, set aside
or interfere with the operation of the laws of nature. The
laws of disease require time to subdue the disease, and
more time to restore the strength wasted by it ; the laws
of vegetation require months to convert into bread, or into
wine, the sap which the root of the wheat or the root of
 16

the vine absorbs and so God cannot, or will not, expedite

the process under any circumstances.
But why not ? Are the laws of nature moral laws ? or
has God pledged Himself in no emergency to interfere
with them ? Has He so tied His own hands that he cannot
put forth a finger to arrest or to rectify the evil which, if
He is a good God, must certainly be displeasing to Him,
though He tolerates it, and even saves us by it ?
I, for one, cannot believe any assumption so monstrous .
I believe in a Holy Personal Supreme Ruler, who cannot
be indifferent to the sin and consequent evil which has got
hold of His creation.
I believe in the Incarnation of the Son of this Supreme
Being, and I believe that He is the very Image of His
Father, and does the works of His Father. I believe in
a God who has not subordinated the moral and spiritual
to the natural, but the natural to the moral and spiritual ;
and when I see the Express Image of this God setting
aside at the cry of prayer the laws of disease and death,
I thankfully recognise it as an assurance that the unseen
God has reserved to Himself the power of interfering with
this miserable state of things when and how He chooses.
Such palpable suspensions of the order of nature on the
part of the Eternal Son whilst on earth are all a fortiori
arguments, that the same Eternal Son, to whom all power
is committed, has reserved to Himself the right of inter-
fering more impalpably, though science may fail to show
us the point at which and the mode in which He acts.
They are all foreshadowings of a still more tremendous
interference when He returns. They are pledges that all
things shall not continue as they were from the beginning
of the Creation.
I cannot see the hidden spring which God touches, or
the hidden link which God breaks, when in some cases
 17

He blesses the application of certain remedies, and does

not bless the application of the same remedies in to all
appearance similar cases, as little as I can discern the
actual modus operandi of our Lord in annihilating leprosy
or fever by a word or look ; but the latter instances of
power interfering for good are to me welcome tokens that
God has reserved to Himself the former-the palpable
interference is a pledge of the impalpable.
So that I welcome the miracles of Jesus for the very
reason that others distrust the accounts of them.
They are to me an infallible token that the unseen
Ruler of all, whose Son and Image Christ is, does not
regard disease, and blindness, and unsatisfied hunger, and
death itself, otherwise than the nature which He has given
me teaches me to do. He regards these things as evils,
though for a while he allows of their existence for the trial
of His people.
If He regards these things as evils, I trust that He will,
at some future time, expel them from His Redeemed
Creation, and I trust also that in this day of probation
He will mitigate them.
So I believe that it is reasonable on all grounds both of
natural and revealed religion to pray against all evil.
To pray, not of course neglecting human means ; and to
use all human means - scientific, legal, social,-sanctifying
their use with prayer and humiliation.
It is with salvation from natural evils, such as the
cattle plague, or the threatening cholera, as it is with the
salvation of the soul.
" Work out," says the Holy Ghost, " your own salvation
with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you
to will and to do of His good pleasure."
We must use all means to work out in ourselves the
salvation purchased for us and assured to us by the Cross
 18

of our dear Lord. We must repent. We must turn to

God. We must look to Jesus. We must pray, we must
watch, we must use all helps, such as common prayer,
fasting, and above all, the prayerful reception of the Sacra-
ment of our Lord's Body and Blood ; but if we use them
ever so diligently, it is God who from first to last saves us.
All means are useless except He be present.
And so with the calamities with which we have now to
do. If they are arrested by means to all appearance
natural, it will still be found at the last, that only through
God's special help have these natural means served their
purpose.
It is right, then, and reasonable, as well as Christian, to
pray-to pray for spiritual grace unreservedly, because
God desires the salvation of the soul of each one of us
more than we can possibly desire it ourselves -to pray for
temporal gifts, or temporal alleviations reservedly, saying
in our hearts, with each petition for these lower things,
" Thy will be done."
Let us then make some effort from this day forward to
rise up to the Apostle's words : " In everything by prayer
and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be
made known unto God," and then, whether God gives, or
whether He withholds, still, " the peace of God, which
passeth all understanding, shall keep our hearts and minds
through Christ Jesus."

17 AP 66

LONDON R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

 WORKS BY THE REV. M. F. SADLER.

1.

CHURCH DOCTRINE,—BIBLE TRUTH. Fcap. 8vo. 5s.

" Mr. Sadler takes Church doctrine, specifically so called, subject_by

subject, and elaborately shows its specially marked scripturalness. The
Objective Nature of the Faith, the Athanasian Creed, the Baptismal
Services, the Holy Eucharist, Absolution and the Priesthood, Church
Government and Confirmation, are some of the more prominent subjects
treated. And Mr. Sadler handles each with a marked degree of sound
sense, and with a thorough mastery of his subject. ” —Guardian, July 26,
1865.
" There is much that is original in Mr. Sadler's manner of treatment.
He is one of those few writers who can approach an old subject and apply
an old method in an original spirit. " -Christian Remembrancer, July,
1865.
" The book takes a very much wider range than anything we have yet
had from Mr. Sadler. It is the book we should most wish to see in
the hands of the educated Lay Churchmen. "-Literary Churchman, August
12, 1865.
" In this work Mr. Sadler has, we need hardly say, been conspicuously
successful. "-The Churchman, May 24, 1865.
"A manual of Church doctrine, well-nigh complete in all its parts,
evolved from Holy Scripture, in that convincing method which Mr. Sadler
may be said in his previous publications to have made his own. "-Eccle-
siastic, July, 1865.

2.

THE SECOND ADAM, AND THE NEW BIRTH ; or,

The Doctrine of Baptism as contained in Holy Scripture. Third
Edition, greatly enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.

3.

PARISH SERMONS . Fcap. 8vo. Vol. I. Advent to Trinity ;

Vol. II. Trinity to Advent. 7s. 6d. each.

4.
THE SACRAMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY ; or Testimony
of the Scripture to the Teaching of the Church on Holy Baptism ,
with Especial Reference to the Cases of Infants ; and Answers to
Objections. Sixth Edition. 6d.