BONUS: A Tractarian Christmas from Dr. Pusey

Pusey’s Christmas Day sermon, “Christian Joy”

One may be forgiven if Edward B. Pusey is not the first man you would look to for an excellent Christmas Day sermon.  Although his sermons were certainly erudite and edifying, even those who revere him acknowledge they could be difficult listening even by pre-television standards as an unknown writer notes:

As a preacher he had no pretensions to oratorical skill. He read every word in a low, deep, rather monotonous voice, which in his later years was husky and thick, and seldom lifted his eyes from his manuscript. His sermons were immensely long, packed with patristic learning, and he had a habit, probably acquired during his studies in Germany, of inventing new words, so that his style was often strange and difficult to follow. But the words, whether strange or familiar, were of little account compared with the spiritual fire behind them. 'Men old and young,' says Liddon, 'listened to him for an hour and a half in breathless attention. . . .  (London: The Catholic Literature Association, 1933)

By the way, John Keble, to whom we have paid especial attention this Advent, was noted much less for his sermons than for his poetry.  And Keble seems to have wanted it that way:

As pieces of literature, theology or rhetoric, [Keble’s sermons] do not aspire to the same heights as Newman’s sermons.  This is no accident: Keble thought the pulpit an inappropriate venue for displays of eloquence, however moving and effective, and disciplined himself deliberately to avoid any such display in his own preaching.  Newman records one occasion on which Keble was so distressed by the praise he received for a particularly fine sermon that he made a point of preaching a weak and poorly organized one the following week.  (Maria Poggi Johnson from her introduction to Sermons for the Christian Year)

That from the man whose Assize Sermon “National Apostasy” is recognized as commencing the Oxford Movement!  Yet having read many sermons from Pusey, Keble and other Tractarians, I can testify that most of them are excellent and instructive.  Perhaps it is a commentary on our age that what would be considered an ineloquent or dull sermon in the 19th century is far better than the vast majority of sermons today.

With that, my Christmas gift to you, my forbearing readers, is a Christmas Day sermon from Dr. Pusey, “Christian Joy.”  It was delivered on a Christmas that fell on a Friday.  Since it was published in Plain Sermons in 1841, the sermon was likely delivered in 1835 (But I cannot yet rule out 1829.).

If I may get a bit personal, I was blown away when I read it the other night.  There is such a “spiritual fire” of Truth in it that it is hard to imagine it was delivered “in a low, deep, rather monotonous voice.”  Perhaps Dr. Pusey allowed himself to be slightly lively that Christmas Day.

The fire of this sermon comes from Pusey’s passion for the Incarnation.  The Tractarians, and particularly Pusey, were noted for emphasizing the Incarnation at a time when Latitudinarians were weak on catholic teaching and when Evangelicals emphasized the Atonement sometimes at the neglect of the Incarnation.  Well, Dr. Pusey would have his hearers know how glorious and vital was the Incarnation of the Son of God, that God “was made flesh,” even a babe lying in a manger:

GOD manifest in the flesh! what is this in itself, but that HE Who was “in the Form of GOD” “took upon HIMSELF the form of a servant;” HE Who was, and is invisible, became the object of our mortal senses; HE whom the Heaven of Heavens could not contain, confined HIMSELF within an earthly body; the ETERNAL united HIMSELF with our transitory nature; the IMMORTAL clothed HIMSELF with mortality; the Holy SON of GOD took upon HIM the likeness of sinful flesh; HE Who was with GOD, and was GOD, became man; HE, by Whom all things were made, took of His mother the nature which HE had created. These are only different ways of saying the same great truth, “GOD manifest in the flesh,” of impressing upon ourselves the same great contradiction, the union of Holiness with unholiness, GOD’S Infinity with our nothingness: so, where our understanding fails, there we may begin to adore; so may we bless GOD for the boundlessness of His mercy, and thank HIM that we cannot fathom it.

“GOD manifest in the flesh!” What is this to us, but that our CREATOR came down to His creatures in order to raise us up to HIM; that the HOLY ONE descended to sinners to restore to them their lost purity; that Truth came down to us who were in error; Light to us who sat in darkness; Life to us, who were in the shadow of death.

And Pusey emphasized that the humble glory of the Incarnation, of Christmas, is glorious for us:

Great then, and wonderful, are the blessings, which this day recalls to us, our redemption sealed to us, (for HE Who humbled HIMSELF to take the nature of His creature, the likeness of sinful man, how should HE not finish the work of mercy, which HE came to perform)—our redemption sealed, the enemy of our souls vanquished, our nature reconciled to GOD, and GOD to our fallen nature; yea, our nature reborn, regenerate, raised above what it was when GOD pronounced it good, since now it is inseparably united with the Ever-blessed SON of GOD; and thus, as many of us as are truly united with HIM, are, as St. Peter says, “partakers of the Divine Nature.” . . .

This is, indeed, then, “a day which the LORD hath made,” in which we should rejoice and be glad: it is a day of joy to all, since the SON of GOD came to free all who were bound, and we were all the servants of sin; HE came to give life to the dead, and we were all “dead in trespasses and sins:” it is a day of joy to the sinner, because it proclaims pardon and peace to him . . .

Reading the above practically made me jump out of my chair for joy.  How wonderful indeed is the Incarnation!  How wonderful Christmas is for us sinners!

But now I will get into my weakness as I dare not make myself a critic of Dr. Pusey. I will venture to admit I was blown away by about the first four pages of the sermon, and my quotes are from that.  The rest of the sermon is a more general examination of the sources of Christian joy.  That was definitely in line with Pusey’s aforementioned reputation for preaching long sermons — and, yes, I found it a bit long.  Perhaps making it two sermons would have been better, but I say that as a man raised on television and corrupted by the internet and typing on the same foolishly.

So do not let my foolishness keep you from being enriched by Dr. Pusey’s Christmas Day sermon.  Read it and thereby grasp all the more onto the Christian Joy that can only come from the Incarnation and Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Have a Happy Christmas.