December 1998 Issue

John Keble has an interesting sermon called, The Revelations of that Day, I: The Resurrection, All Miracles in One."¹ Those familiar with modern exegetical techniques, that is, letting the Hebrew scripture stand on its own merit, will look askance at Keble's use of the Isaiah text. It is worth remembering, however, that preachers are, after all, products of their time. This being the case, Keble's explicit understanding of the Isaiah's text paving the way for Jesus as Messiah must be seen on its own merit.

Keble begins by reminding his congregation that during Advent "we must do what we can to prepare ourselves and one another for the Coming of our Lord." He urges the people to picture in their minds the scene described in the sermon's text. This technique of "imagination" is an effective one, sustained throughout by Keble. The overriding image is of "the Last Day" or "the Judgment Day." He ties several apocalyptic, or at least, eschatological images together from scripture: The flood, the fire of Sodom and Gommorah, the ruin of Babylon, and the plaques of Egypt.

Keble then turns from these judgmental images of the Last Day, to another miracle-image believers will see—our Lord's miracles of love. In this meaty part of his sermon, he uses five images of the end miracle of love. First, the formerly blind will see the Lord's glory. Keble says, "Jesus at His Coming shall open their eyes for the first time." The second, third, and fourth images are cast in the respective physical conditions: Deafness, lameness, and other loathsome diseases.

The last image Keble thrusts upon the text in this Day of Judgment is resurrection. "I mean, the opening of all our graves, and the resurrection of our bodies at the sound of the last trumpet." In this sermon, resurrection images are read into the Hebrew text; not an ideal methodological approach. Keble is to be commended, however, on using his listener's imagination as they reflect upon the text.

Henry Sloane Coffin grabs attention with this introductory statement: "Illusion seems to be an essential part of the arrangement of life." Hence, the beginning of The Mirage Becomes a Pool."² Coffin, from this sermon's outset, establishes two conceptions of God. One is the personal concept of God, the other the impersonal. He says to believe one image to the exclusion of the other, impoverishes the fuller concept of God, which is, after all, both imminent and transcendent. As he says, "both contain illusion; but both lead us on to a supreme reality."

At this point in the moment, Coffin shifts to two long illustrations. One is how belief in Jesus Christ embodies our moral bearings. "He seems the embodiment of moral Force." This Christ, both human and divine, represents both sides of a more complete understanding of God (mentioned above). This is how Christ's incarnation further symbolizes the nearness and transcendence of God.

The other long illustration is centered in our hope of immortality. St. John of Patmos and Paul are quoted, showing that their pictures of God are not mere illusions, so much as an anticipatory picture of life to come. This is the hope of Advent—that the mirage shall become a pool.

The Dumb Singing is C. H. Spurgeon's sermon on Isaiah 35:5-6 in a collection unimaginatively titled Sermons of C. H. Spurgeon, Vol III.³ Picking up on the implicit theology of grace, Spurgeon says, "What a difference grace makes, whenever it enters the heart!... The tongue of the dumb not simply speaks, but it sings."

Spurgeon structures his sermon around how grace affects people when it enters life. He dismisses those many in his own time, professing saving grace, but living lives which have not actually been changed. These folks live under the pretentious lie that grace does not have a moral dimension. The remainder of this homily turns on the idea that: "where God hath blotted out transgression, He also removeth our love of it, and maketh us seek after holiness, and walk in the ways of the Lord."

This neat outline summarizes the content:

I. The sort of people whom God has chosen to sing his praises, and to sing them eternally.

II. A more full description of the dumb people described.

III. Certain special times and seasons when those dumb people sing more sweetly than at others.

This sermon is obviously dated, but has two strong features to recommend its reading. First, Spurgeon sustains the image of singing as a metaphor for living the Christian life. Second, within the body of the sermon text are many worthy illustrations gleaned from Spurgeon's voracious reading. These are drawn not only from every corner of scripture, but also the writings of Brooks, Bunyon, Cruden, Milton, and others.

James Stewart begins his excellent sermon, Beyond Disillusionment to Faith,⁴ with a portrait of the desert/wilderness. It is this place of desolation with which both Israel and we must come to terms. He pictures a weary wilderness traveller seeing the most cruel of all desert phenomena—the mirage. He speaks powerfully about Israel's proto-typical mirage: The dream of freedom in the Egyptian bondage.

Drawing on the mirage image he quotes Napoleon who said, "Great men are meteors that consume themselves; to light the earth. This is my burnt-out hour." Goethe, Byron, and Disraeli are all also quoted in succession and to great effect.

At this juncture in the sermon he makes this rhetorical statement: "Yes, if Isaiah can reverse this, it will be exciting indeed." That is, in Isaiah's vision all the mirages of human expectation, crushed in life's experience, will now be divinely reversed. This is how Stewart puts it, "It is here that Isaiah breaks in dramatically. With incredible daring he takes the cynical reading of life and the commonplace judgment of the world which says that the pool will always turn out to have been a mirage, he takes it and reverses it. `No,' shouts Isaiah, `it's a lie! Hear the word of the Lord: The mirage shall become a pool.'" Stewart then illustrates this reversal with images from the life of Jesus and St. Teresa.

This sermon is one of grace: God's grace can reverse every appearance of life, changing it from a mere mirage to a shimmering pool of God's love.

David Neil Mosser

1. John Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve (London: Walter Smith, 1884), pp.90-98.
2. Henry Sloane Coffin, The World's Great Sermons (Garden City: Garden City Publishing Co., 1943), pp.320-323.
3. C.H. Spurgeon, Sermons of C.H. Spurgeon (London: Funk and Wagnells Company), pp.119-137.
4. James S. Stewart, Best Sermons, Vol. VIII (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Inc., 1962), pp.18-24.