England's Stewardship The Substance of a Sermon Preached on the Fast-Day, in Trinity Church, Tunbridge Wells — Story, Setting & Ideas

Transcribed from the 1857 Thomas Hatchard edition by David Price, email [email protected]

ENGLAND’S STEWARDSHIP:

THE SUBSTANCE OF A SERMON PREACHED ON THE FAST-DAY, IN TRINITY CHURCH, TUNBRIDGE WELLS.

BY THE REV. EDWARD HOARE, M.A., INCUMBENT.

LONDON: THOMAS HATCHARD, 187, PICCADILLY. TUNBRIDGE WELLS: MRS. HASTING, AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.

MACINTOSH, PRINTER, GREAT NEW-STREET, LONDON.

ENGLAND’S STEWARDSHIP.

“Give an account of thy stewardship.”

AT no time in England’s history has she been called to humble herself before God under more harrowing circumstances than the present. We have not to deplore the discomfiture of our armies, or the hardships of our soldiers,—not the privations on the heights of Sebastopol, or the deadly conflicts of Balaklava and the Redan,—events which are, more or less, to be expected in a soldier’s life; but we are now summoned to prayer by the cries of tortured infants, by the unutterable agonies of heartbroken mothers, of daughters, sisters, and wives, who have been called to endure outrages and witness scenes in comparison of which it would have been a light matter to have been torn limb from limb by the tigers of the jungle. Satan appears to have been let loose in India, in all his deadly and corrupt ferocity. There has been a kind of filling up of God’s four sore judgments. Famine, pestilence, and war had already followed each other in quick succession; but we thought we were free from noisome beasts. But now we have something incomparably worse let loose on our fellow-countrymen to fill the fair plains of India with wailing, lamentation, and woe.

But it is not needful to recapitulate these tales of horror. I am persuaded that I need not stand here to excite your sympathy for the sufferers. You have felt that already, and I trust that many an earnest cry has long ere this gone up from your homes for India. If not, just think on the little garrison at Lucknow, hemmed in by rebel thousands, with provisions every day diminishing, with the massacre of Cawnpore before their eyes, and with the horrid murderer at the head of the blockading force thirsting for their blood, and eager, if ever he can gain the power, to re-enact the same barbarities on themselves. Think what those women must endure, as the little stores are doled out day after day; and they know that, unless they are relieved, they have no prospect but the foulest massacre; and every heart must acknowledge that the time is come, if it be not already past, for the universal cry of wrestling prayer, and most earnest pleading with God on their behalf.

But this is a day for humiliation as well as prayer, and national judgments are so intimately connected with national sins, that the nation’s prayer should clearly be accompanied by the nation’s humiliation. It behoves us, therefore, to consider what ground there is for such humiliation, and what sins there are to call forth our repentance and confession. But we need not in this inquiry occupy time by the consideration of those sins which are more especially connected with home, for the finger of God points to India. It is there that the blow has fallen, and there that we must look for this sin. It is clearly on Indian matters that God now has a controversy with his people, and therefore our conduct with reference to India should be the subject of especial enquiry. Let us, then, examine, in the first place, England’s stewardship; and afterwards, England’s account of that stewardship.

There can be no doubt that England stands in a position of a steward before God. We are all stewards of the various talents and opportunities which we possess. The minister is a steward of the mysteries of God, and I stand here myself this very day as his steward, or servant, to declare his word. The parent is a steward; and what a stewardship it is to be entrusted with the training of immortal souls for the kingdom of the Lord! The rich man is a steward; his property is not his own, but he is entrusted with it in order that he may lay it out for man’s happiness and God’s glory. On the same principle, nations are entrusted with their various stewardships. The Jewish nation, for example, was the steward of Scripture: “Unto them were committed the oracles of God;” and whatever be the particular power or privilege of a nation, that power or privilege is a talent, or stewardship, to be employed in the service of Him who gave it.