(Preached on the Anniversary of the Battle of Leipsic, October 18th, 1818.)
TEXT: PSALM lxviii. 3, 4.
ANY one who had heard our last hymn without knowing the occasion of to-day’s festival might suppose that we seemed more like entering on a day of supplication in regard to the future, than on what it really is, a day of thankful remembrance of the great and divine deliverance wrought for us in the immediate past. But can we, or ought we, to separate these? God’s kindness and grace always anticipate our will and resolution; and therefore we can only ground each request to Him for blessing and prosperity in the future on our heartfelt sense of gratitude for what we have already received from Him, for the favours of the same kind with which He has loaded and satisfied us. And so, in taking a thoughtful view of the past, the more our eyes are turned to one important point and we feel stirred up to thankfulness towards God, must we not ask ourselves so much the more earnestly whether we are even worthy, by the use which we make of them, to offer thanks for His gifts; whether, by a life tending more to His honour, we deserve to bring into His courts our thanks and praise for His gracious help? Let this, then, be the direction that our common meditations take to-day. Let us go down into the depths of our hearts, and examine ourselves before the Lord, and beseech Him for cleansing, that so our thanks may rise to Him well-pleasing and not in vain.
In those times which we unite with all our brethren of the Fatherland in commemorating to-day, we were firmly persuaded that, especially in order to put far from among us all godless habits which threatened to take root so firmly, to maintain the old foundations of piety and loyalty which were in danger of becoming insecure, and to strengthen anew the natural ties of love which were becoming relaxed by the intrusion of the stranger;—that for all these reasons it was necessary to wage that perilous warfare. Well then, the more we were convinced of this, the more must it concern us now, in commemorating the divine help given in that struggle, that we be not of those who must melt like wax before the fire at the presence of the Lord; the more careful must we be that our joy is a heartfelt joy before the Lord, and that our whole being, consecrated anew to Him in thankfulness, may be maintained before Him in truth and faithfulness. To ask what is meant by a joy before God, how it is distinguished from the transitory joy of the world or in oneself, would be, unless in so far as each of us is able to answer it or has already answered it for himself, a wide question, too wide for one meditation. I will therefore confine myself to showing what our joy must be free from, if it is to deserve the name of a joy before the Lord.
Three principal points here suggest themselves to me to which I wish to direct your attention: that every joy that is to hold its ground in God’s presence must be free; first, from falsehood; secondly, from slothfulness; and thirdly, from vanity.
I. Our joy in the deliverance which God wrought for us is to be free from falsehood. We know that when the war was imminent, of which we are now celebrating the decisive day (though not that day alone), all those whom we hail as brothers and fellow-countrymen were not of one mind on the great matter. If some had for long been waiting and hoping for the moment when their desire to win back with the sword a natural and honourable position should be gratified; there were others who thought that the existing condition of things could be borne, and that it was wiser to put up with it than hastily to stake everything in an uncertain war. Now those who thought and spoke in this way, must always have a claim to our respect, in so far as, after the resolution was taken, though contrary to their opinion, they did all that the Fatherland and the law required of them; because they fairly contributed their share to the common cause. For the first thing at the forming of any great resolution is always that every one should seek to bring his own convictions to bear; the second, that he frankly join in what has finally become the common will. But if the events that followed have not changed the opinion of those our brethren, and yet they feel able to take part in the general joy of an anniversary such as this, we must point out to them that theirs is a different joy from that of the rest, and that it cannot be quite that which the joy before the Lord ought to be. For by himself, perhaps, and in an earthly way, one may rejoice when that which he has done with half conviction or without any conviction comes to a successful issue; but before God he can only be ashamed. For it is not over outward things that we are allowed to rejoice before God, who Himself has no outward part and who makes no account of anything outward, but only of that which is in the heart; we are not to rejoice over consequences and events, but only in the power and deed from which they proceeded. But those persons cannot rejoice in those things, who hold that the influential opinion at that time was not the right one, but count that man should have a still greater power of endurance to bear what exasperates him, and to bend still lower under what can only appear to him an external necessity; for such persons rejoice only in the results, not in the deed. But be there few or many such, can the rest of us who are met here to-day to thank God for inclining the hearts of men and nations at that time to refuse any longer to bear dishonourable chains, for inspiring them with courage and hope and loving enthusiasm;—can we say that ours is a truthful thanksgiving, and can our joy be a joy before the Lord, if those sentiments over which we rejoice have no longer the same power in our hearts? Can we claim this if we are now no longer inspired with the same zeal to restore a social life befitting us and pleasing to God; if we are not striving, with a perseverance worthy of that first enthusiasm, to keep safe and to improve what then through God’s blessing came anew into our possession? Can we claim it if we have now become careless about the difference between what is worthy and what is unworthy of man; if we are now turning back, and after the old, evil manner, each seeking his own; each one seeking to gain, out of the treasure won for all, as much as possible for himself: and all no longer united with that first love, each denying himself to seek the common weal? No, in that case our joy is no joy before God, for He is a God of truth; in that case the false spirit must melt before Him like wax; and the empty joy, let it show itself as it will, and put on what pious appearance it will, can only be, for the most part, the pleasure of this world; while the shout of our text, Let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God, when it sounds in the untrue soul, sounds like the cry of the avenger, destroying its joy. Only if the old zeal has not been allowed to cool; only if that is still true with us which we then felt as the most sacred truth of our lives, that a man does not exist for himself, but for the common cause; that to risk life for the brethren is the call of God in the soul, and that not arbitrary power, but the well-knit bonds of justice are the surest supports of piety and spiritual prosperity; only if we feel those convictions as strongly as we then did, are our hearts really rejoicing before God. If it is so with us, we are in a position to think, if not without pain and mourning, at least with feelings purified from base mixture, of what this war has cost us, to remember those who watered the harvest of our joy with their precious blood, and set their seal, by their death, to the faith and strength that inspired us; while this remembrance especially must without doubt cause the untrue heart to melt like wax before God.