1 Samuel 13:13-14 And Samuel said to Saul, You have done foolishly: you have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God, which he commanded you… The king, one whose character faithfully represented their own national character and desires. Like his people, he leaned to an arm of flesh. Their sin in desiring his rule was his sin in the conduct of that rule. In his darkening course and fearful end was exhibited to them that law of God's dealings of which their own national history was to be to all ages the most marvellous example whereby His chosen instruments, who refuse to fulfil the end for which He raises them up, are cast down into darkness, and their opportunity of service is given to another. In all this, so far as individuals go, the lesson is plain and inevitable. It is a law of that unseen but most certain dominion which even here, amidst the blinding showers which conceal His immediate working, the Most High is administering, that they who being set anywhere to do His will neglect to do it, are replaced by other and more faithful instruments. This is an universal and eternal law. It was evidently thus that He dealt with the chosen people, who in this, as in so many respects, were the pattern nation. What else but a declaration of this truth is their whole history as it is recorded by inspired annalists and interpreted by gifted prophets? How is this written in every page of the record of God's dealings with them, down to that last sentence of rejection pronounced by the mouth of the Apostle Paul, when charging on themselves the guilt of their own blood, he said, "Lo, we turn to the Gentiles." Here then we may see the same righteous hand which wasted Jerusalem overturning the great Assyrian Nineveh. The same law, which first exalted and then cast down the chosen people reached also to the great empires of the heathen world. They rose because they were commissioned to do a certain work; they fell, not by any mere natural process of decay, but under the weight of God's judicial sentence, executing itself through the permitted action of these secondary causes. And now let me ask you to apply this principle to our own country, and its prospects at this moment. 1. Are there then any tokens which specially mark out for us our appointed work? Now to answer this question we must glance at those distinctive features of our national life which sever us from other people. The first of these is our insular position; for this at once confines us within narrow bounds at home, and facilitates the formation of those distant settlements by which alone we can provide for increasing numbers. Further, the same cause makes it well-nigh impossible that we should be a great military nation, and naturally leads, as the condition of national defence, to our becoming strong in naval power: Further, the natural characteristics of our people tend to produce the same result. In many of the highest gifts bestowed on other tribes of men we are manifestly deficient. We have not the keen sense of beauty which has ere now enabled Greece and even Rome to exalt our race. But we have the gifts of a hardy, industrious, enterprising genius. We are fitted, apparently by innate disposition, to be great subduers of nature's rebellious and reluctant but conquerable powers. And when any external agency has threatened to destroy these powers, as when Spain and its Armada, or France at the head of a continual system of exclusion, would have destroyed our naval greatness, some direct interpositions of Providence have thwarted their designs. The natural course of such influences has led us on, first to the establishment of distant factories, and then to those factories growing into settlements, and from them turning into colonies, which hays sometimes grown into mighty nations. Now what special charge would such a national organisation seem naturally to suggest as having been providentially committed to our hands? Surely at once it suggests that we are to be employed by God as the bearers of some message to every race and tribe. Not more evidently does the possession of great military power wielded by a single despotic will, mark a people as charged with the avenger's office; not more evidently do eminent gifts of genius mark a nation as charged to educate its brethren, than do our special faculties, instincts, and relations to the great family of man mark us as the bearers of some message through the world. What then can be the message to bear which we have been so eminently fitted? Let the spiritual blessings God has given us supply the answer to this question. 2. And if here we pause but for one moment, to ask how we, as a nation, have fulfilled this our vocation, how appalling is the answer! Have we not encircled the earth with the girdle of our settlements? Is it not true that as from east to west the morning sun awakens to new life the successive nations, the drum roll of English soldiers follows round the world its rising light? And what, with all this, have we clone for God? Alas, how tardy, how scanty, how interrupted, how unsystematic, how timid, how faithless have been our services! How readily and how plentifully have we sown our vices and diseases broadcast over a suffering world! How feebly, alas, have we planted amongst its nations the living seed of God's truth in God's Church! if it be so with us, why tarries yet the day of retribution, why sleep the thunders of judgment? Is our present prosperity but the deep calm before the wild triumph of the hurricane? God only knows, my brethren, how close to us may be that fearful time of uttermost rejection. If to our startled gaze were now opened revelations such as those which fell at Patmos on the beloved St. John, we perhaps might see the mighty angels of vengeance withholding, but, as for a moment, the four winds of heaven, to see whether Britain would repent and do God's work. Here then plainly is our nation's calling and our nation's risk. 3. And if this indeed be our vocation, what are the especial duties binding upon us if we would rise up to its greatness? May it please God to bring them home in all their power to some who listen to them. Now beyond all question the first of all requisites for the delivery of such a message is that we have received it thoroughly ourselves. Here then, alike for the teacher and the taught, is our first, necessity; that the truth of God in all it, purity, with a loving spirit and a patient reiteration, be proclaimed and inculcated; that every lawful means be used, in season and out of season, to reproduce amongst, ourselves men of the true apostolic stamp. Next to this we need to learn to feel, and to make others feel, how mighty are the issues for our own people, and for a waiting world, which hang on our fidelity or faithlessness. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. |
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