IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I lA^iy^ §2.5 ^ ti& III 2.0 lit 122 M ||>-25 IJU III 1.6 < 6" ► Photographic Sderices Corporation as WP'T MAW STWET \A«!;BS;2, 6. . 84 VII. THE SANCTUARY. " I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise." — Ps. xlii. 4 101 VIII. THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. " Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion ! "When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad." — Ps. liii. 6 113 '.?:. ;«t j>'.-,Ja CONTENTS. IX PAIIK IX. THE PRODIGAL SOy.—l. SIX AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. '* Ami he sniil, A certain man had two sons : and the younger of them said to hia father, Father, give mo the ])()rtion of gooda that falleth to me. And ho divided unto them liis living. And not many days after tlie younger son gathered all to- gether, and took hia journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine iu th. i ' nid ; and he began to be in want. And ho went and joined n msulf to a citizen of that country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed bwine. And he would fain have filled his belly witli the husks that the swine did eat: and no nii'n ';ave unto him." — LuKii XV. 11-lG 13(5 X. THE PRODIGAL SON. -11. A mind's tkansition. " And when he came io himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to sjiare, and I perish with hunger ! I will arise .and go to my f.ither, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father."— Luke xv. 17-20 153 XI. THE PRODIGAL SON.— III. THE JOY OF TvETUUN. ' But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet : and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat, and be merry : for this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry."— Luke xv. 20-24 170 CONTENTS. XII. lUE PRODIGAL SON.- IV rilE ItlSSENTIENT TO TUE COMMON JoV. " Now liis elder son was in the fielfl : and as he camo and drew nigh to the houte, he heard music and dancing, Anl he called y the address of " JJabbi " lie at once })utH liiniself under the stranger's tcacliing, and by his I'urtljer question he expresses his desire to learn, in tiie quiet sedusion of his dwelling, all tl»at he would have him to do. And thus earnestly must we all "strive" after the knowledge and the fellowship of Jesus. Tiie desire feebly aroused, the question languidly asked, the ardour which the first repulse abates and which one blast of scorn destroys, the calculating religiousness which is always on its guard lest it should be " righteous overmuch," that nice adjustment of comparative energy which puts Eeligion into icy proprieties, but rushes with fearless enthusiasm into the chase of fame or gold — all these are fatal hindrances to the finding of the Lord Jesus. " He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him." The seeker stands frightened and shivering before the " strait gate," while the striver presses in. Put your soul into your search, and you will find the Saviour. Surely if for the perishable present your desires are passionate and your purpose strong, much more for the abiding future should you wrestle with earnestness and power. Oh, if but you could see that future as it is — if but for one short hour you could wend into eternity your pilgrim-way — if you could pierce the fathomless obscure, listen with ears not dulled to the rapturous harmonies of heaven, or hearken sbudderingly as voices of wild wailing essay to tell the dark secrets of their prison-house — if, on your earthward return, you could meet on the threshold '(/our oivn nature entering in, some real specimen of glorified or doomed humanity — how would all the tumults of the present be dwarfed into insignificance II I ( 10 ANDREW, THE LORD'S FIRST CONVERT before you ! Commerce would lose its interest, pleasure its fascination, letters their classic charm, and even home much of its sweet alluring sorcery, and your whole soul would be penetrated with tlie pressure of one consuming desire to " save a soul from death." Brethren, Eternity is not less real, because you cainiot make that pilgrimage. The other world is as solemn, as certain, as near, as if there flashed across our path its alternate gleams of sunshine and forks of flame. Oh, to live as if we felt its influence and breathed its air ! Oli, to realize always its nearing destinies, and its ever-present, ever-watching, ever- helpful God ! Bretln'en, no difficulties can prevent our access to Jesus, if we seek him with all our heart. If the proud waters separate us, he will walk upon the billow's crest. If the doors are barred, and the walls of granite masonry, through them all we shall hear his love-whisper breathing. " Peace be unto you ! " If we stand pensively gazing into another's tomb, we shall find him by our side suddenly, glancing at us with loving eyes, and giving us at once conviction and reassurance by the simple mention of our name. If the tomb has opened for ourselves, and in our hardi- hood of four days' death we are deemed putrescent and forsaken, his voice, echoing through the drear aisles of the far-caverned sepulchre, ehall issue its " Come forth," and we shall live. II. Andrew is presented to us as the satisfied believer, exulting in the consciousness of the dis- covered Messiah. His earnestness and faith have been honoured. His restlessness has ceased. And he i ANDREW, THE LORD'S FIRST CONVERT, it blushes in the beauty of a new hope, and in the tenderness of a new attachment to the whole world's liedeeraer. There are two things which are noticeable here — the open-heartedness and the satisfuctoriness of Christianity. The invitation of the forerunner was to leliold the Lamb of God. The Saviour repeats it from his own lips : " Come and see." And this is consonant with the whole genius of the Gospel. Christianity requires no disguises. The faith which she demands is not a blind credulity, but an intelligent reliance. She asks not trust without evidence, but trust in evidence — sufficient, authenticated, brought down to the level of the senses, and yet leaving room for the highest confidences of heroic faith. This is an essential difference between the false and the true in religion. All the systems of ancient mythology and of modern superstition have their reserve and their mysteriousness. Alike at Delphi and Dodona, at Mecca and at Eome, there are secrets for the initiated — responses sounding through a hollow cave, or from behind a curtaining veil — all opinions regulated by a supreme will, all knowledge kept by a custodian priest, and doled out at his pleasure to the submissive people of his charge. The appeal is to the senses rather than to the conscience — veiled prophets, and Pythian madness, and flashing scimitars in the olden times, and attendant acolytes, and fragrant cedar wood, and gorgeous vestments in the times that are — these are the arguments that are to captivate the fancy and allure the faith. Alas ! for the shrivellea thing, that must be draped in kingly garments for men to know it as a King. It is wax-work, not Life. But I l! I I ; t s t I 12 ANDREW, THE LORDS FIRST CONVERT. Christianity has no lack of inlierent grandeur, and therefore needs nob borrow. She has no muttering wizards, that peep in the pauses of their necromancy from out the holy shrine. She deals not in " deceiv- ableness of unrighteousness, nor lying wonders." She seeks not, by ceremonies of terror, to cause the timid to crouch before her altars, nor by idle pageants to dazzle the sensuous into devotees. She announces, in simple language, the sublimest Truth. She presents, for the investigation alike of the simple and of the scholarly, her cumulative and various evidence. She suggests the highest motive, and inspires the highest hope. She grasps the deepest instincts, that she may satisfy them, and unfolds the grandest destiny for the future both of humanity and of the individual man ; and, standing in the majesty of her Truth, she says to all men, " Come and see." Eest not upon Tradition — here is Truth. Be not satisfied with the husks of the prodigal's fare — here is bread from heaven, the dainty and outspread banquet of the Father's house. Carry your trouble no longer, ye whom it has heavily laden — here is deliverance. Toil not so wearily, ye hapless ones — here is Eest. This is the message of Cliristi- anity to you all. She invites your scrutiny and your allegiance. Jesus stands in the way of all hearts that inquire, turns to meet any eager footstep which follows him ; and whether the inquirer be a king in his purple, or a beggar in his rags, a sage of many- wintered years, or childhood with its " prayer-clasped hands," he greets them with the welcome of his grace. " Come and see," thou wondering Nathan ael, hardly looking for a Messiah out of Nazareth ; thou favoured I « ling 111 piany- lasped I grace, liardly roured ANDREW, THE LORDS FIRST CONVERT. 13 one, in Patmos privileged ^vith visions of the after- wards, " Come and see." Behold nie, that it is I my- self — I, the Pierced One, who can therefore heal thy smart of trouble — I, the Weary and Sorrowful, who can charm thy unrest away — I, the Teacher of the heavenly, that thy unbelief may vanish at my presence — I, the Divine Saviour, that I may lift thee to ever- lasting life. Thus frank in its invitations, Christianity is, in like manner, satisfactory in the experiences to which it conducts its children. The inquiry, sincerely prose- cuted, never fails of its result of blessing, God has never said to the seed of Jacob, nor to the seed of Adam, " Seek ye my face " in vain. The heart turned diligently heavenward, the desire panting after God, as the hunted hart after the water-brook, or the wounded deer to the brake, or the caravan in tlie desert to the grove of palms, cannot — God's word hath spoken it — be suffered to end in disappointment and in sorrow. Men " shall know, if they follow on to know, the Lord." There is a certainty in this, greater than attends the search after any earthly knowledge. Long and wearily may men toil after hidden lore, pressing even through the midnight of doubt to the morning of discovery, but in most cases there vtUi be but a vague conviction of attainment ; in nothing but in the purer mathematics can there be anything like demonstration, and even in them the results are bare and passionless and cold. But in the search for Jesus there is an emotional, as well as an intellectual, satis- faction. When Christ is found, it becomes a question of consciousness. The change is warmly felt as well 14 ANDREW, THE LORD'S FIRST CONVERT. as intelligently realized. Through the darkness the seeker presses into the light, but the light is not the chill beam of the lunar rainbow, but the warm rays of a perpetual summer ; not only does the mind rest in satisfaction, but the eye sparkles and tlie heart throbs with happiness. It is at once Life's grandest dis- covery, and Life's chieiest joy : " We have found the Messias." What finding in the world is there like that ! There was joy in the soul of the geometrician of Syracuse, when his Eureka of delight rang upon the ears of the citizens, who deemed him mad. There was joy in the soul of Newton, when the theory of gravita- tion burst upon his wondering view. There was joy in the spirit of Columbus, in the moment of his serene triumph over doubt and mutiny, when the land-birds settled upon the sh.ouds of his vessel, bearing upon their tiny wings the welcomes of a new world. There is joy for the gold-finder, when the rich ore glitters in liis cradle ; for the wanderer, when his wistful eye first glimpses his childhood's home; for the child, when lie has just been let into one of Nature's mysteries, and clasps his hands for very delight and wonder ; for the poet, when he sends a great thought ringing its glad wav throuu;h the world, and stirrin" the souls of men. But what are all these, even in their highest raptures, to the joy of that mom^.nt when the glad disciples can grasp a brother's hand, and announce to him, " We have found the Messias ! " Then all doubt ceases, and all fear is banished from t. . spirit, and dark condemnation lifts its shadow from the man, and sweet peace nestles in, and holy love thrones herself in the new heart j and the smile of Jesus burns the .s WERT. ness the not the u rays of d rest in irt throbs (lest dis- t'ound the here like (metrician upon the Uhere Avas if gravita- e was joy his serene land-birds ring upon d. There cvlilters in istful eye hild, when ,tcries, and ir ; for the its glad .Is of men. 5t raptures, sciples can hiin, " We Libt ceases, and dark man, and )nes herself burns the ANDREW, THE LORD'S FIRST CONVERT. 15 passion and the pride away, and forgiveness speaks in his voice, and the ecstasy of reconciliation, pulsing through the depths of the soul, makes all Creation beautiful — the air vocal with new and sweeter melodies, and a richer lustre to shine from out the cloudless azure of the opening and opened heaven. Brethren, is this satisfaction yours ? Some of you remeniber its lirst thrill, the moment when it first ran in the joyous courses of your soul. Some of you are panting to realize it, and Jesus beckons you to abide with him that you may find the blessing there. III. Having earnestly sought, and happily found, the Messiah, Andrew follows out the first instinct of the regenerate soul, by a proclamation of his discovery, and l)y an invitation to others to share it. Eager to com- nuinicate the glad tidings, he seeks out the companion of his infancy, the partner of his daily toil, " his own brother Simon " — " and he brought him to Jesus." His charity centred in his home, and then radiated its influences around. For some months after this first satisfying interview, the brothers seem still to have followed their fishermen's calling — not elated by the rare privilege which they had enjoyed, perhaps not expecting to be honoured of the Master any further — until in the pious discharge of daily duty the call to the apostleship sounded over the breast of Gennesaret, " and they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him." We a while ago reminded you of tlie striking difference between the Old Testament and tlie New in this matter — that of tli^ first brothers mentioned in the one, the elder slew the younger ; « F ii '! 16 ANDREW, THE LORDS FIRST CONVERT. that of the first brothers mentioned in the other, the elder bi-ought the younger to Jesus. And such is but a type of the difference between the dispensations in which the men respectively lived. The one was a Leviticus, the other is an Evangel ; tlie one was of rigour, the other of love ; the one proclaims the law for a people, the other the charter for a world. The one, given with palpable manifestations of its Divinity, presents us with austere and inimitable types of men ; the other,not less Divine, has greater humanness, appeals more directly to our common sympathies, to the grief and gladness v/hich make up the history of every day. In fine, the one, while not excluding the merciful, tells mainly of Duty and of Judgment ; the other, while affecting and earnest in its warnings, is yet the Gospel of Jesus Christ : " And he brought him to Jesus." Here is Christianity in action, the benevolent embodi- ment of our religion, the necessary philanthropy which would fain enrich others with the treasure which itself has recently received. Brethren, this is the world's necessity, the one blessing for which its mighty heart is yearning — to be brought to Jesus. Its restless up- heavals, all the lava-tides of passionate emotion which roll down the sides of its national Etnas, are but the expressions of this insatiable longing. As in the aggregate, so in the individual. Each man, to be happy, must be brought to Jesus ; eacli family, to be as it should be, a home-type of the " whole family in heaven and earth," must be a Bethany, hallowed by the visits and blessed with the love of Jesus. And this mission may be th*. rarest privilege, as it is the unquestionable duty, of those of you who have your- CONVERT. le other, the , such is but (ensations in one was a one was of 3 the law for 1. The one, ts Divinity, -^pes of men ; ness, appeals to the grief )f every day. lerciful, tells other, while it the Gospel Jesus." lent erabodi- iropy which which itself the world's nighty heart restless up- lotion which are but the As in the man, to be amily, to be le family in lallowed by esus. And as it is the have your- ANDREW, 2 HE LORDS FIRST CONVERT. 17 m selves believed — to bring men to Jesus. Look about upon your families — are there none in the home-circle, none of tlie eyes that shine and glisten when they meet your own, that have not yet learned to sparkle at the Saviour ? Are there none to whom your voice is music, who delight not in the sound of his name ? Thy wife, loving husband — thy child, affectionate parent — are they Christ's ? You have influence over them in persuasion, and by your own union with Christ you have influence over God in prayer. Oh, bring this blended influence to bear, first at home, and then upon all whom your feet can reach, or your loosened tongue win by its eloquence for God. Brethren, I summon you to this work of evangelism to-day. Yours may be a greater victory than ever human conqueror won. The laurel wreath that girds the brow of heroes may wither before the perpetual verdure of your amaranthine crown. It is much to succour the body, " to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction," to go boldly into the fever-homes upon a work of healing and of mercy ; but to do as you may do — to minister with even-handed benefit both to body and soul, to snatch immortal spirits from the very grasp of the destroyer, to bring the foul and frenzied demoniac to Jesus, that he may sit at his feet a clothed and happy man — this is a work which might even make angels envy you, for which Jesus will greet you with his very heartiest welcome, for which God will endow you with pleasures for evermore. I. B ' : , < 1.1 i \ 1 ii I II THE LOED'S ELECT SEllVANT. " Boliold my scvvniit, Avliom I iipliolJ ; mine elect, in whom my son! deligliteth ; 1 have pnt my Spirit npon him : he shall bring forth ju(lgme;it to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift np, nor canse his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking llax shall he not quench : he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be dis- couraged, till he have set judgment in the earth : and the isles shall wait for his law." — IsA. xlii. 1-4. WE find it easier, in human afftiirs, to discover a fault than to suggest a remedy. We com- plain without an i "fort — it is too natural to us to blamo or to repine ; it requires thought, time, sacrifice, to redeem or to amend. It is not so with the Scripture, which is the word of God. There, each word of rebuke is a means to an end. There is no exposure of evil to exhibit the censor's superiority, there is no delight in the merciless anatomy of sin. There is no mockery of distress by the presentation of sorrow that is hopeless, or leprosy beyond cure. Equal to the need, and sur- passing it, present as soon as the need is felt and av^.knov/Iedged, there is the redemption. To illustrate this thought, you have only to look at the verses im- mediately before the text. They give us God's view of the ^^01.•ld's need, the absence of wisdom and manli- THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. 19 VANT. ct, ill whom my soul lie shall bring fortli ry, nor lift up, nor bruised reed sluiU he lot c[ueuch : lu; shall not fail nor be dis- earth : and the islus ■s, to discover a ledy. We com- al to us to blanio me, sacrifice, to h the Scripture, word of rebuke :)Osui'e of evil to is no delight in is no mockery of that is hopeless, le need, and sur- leed is felt and To illustrate it the verses im- ns God's view sdom and manli- ness inevitably resulting from idolatry, the folly of character, the faihire of plan, tlie chaos of thought, the utter and hopeless abandonment of a world with- out a God (Isa. xli. 28, 29). Now, so soon as you liave realized this necessity, while the heart is yet paining under the sadness which the thought of it lias created, the bright light is in the clouds, and in the midst the vision of the lledeemer — " Behold my servant, whom I uphold ; mine elect, in wdiom my soul de- lighteth ; I have put my Spirit upon him : he shall bring ^orth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cau=;e his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench : he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be dis- couraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and \ the isles shall wait for his law." It docs not need that I should enter into argument as to the reference I of this passage to Christ and his great w^ork in the I world. We feel instinctively that the words could \ refer to no other, and it strikes upon us as a matter of i course that they should be quoted by St. Matthew in '; the twelfth chapter of his Gos[)el, and expressly applied I to Jesus. Without misgiving or controversy, we may :;' enter upon our meditation, suffering our thoughts to -. flow around this central figure, and seeking to discern its beauty, while we consider — I. The need of the world. II. The dcsi(jnaiioii of its Deliverer. III. The manner end issue of his worJc. I. The need of the world is affirmed in this passage 20 THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. ! i I '! } i' 'I ,) i t to be the bringing forth or establishment of God's " judgment." The word has many senses in the Scripture, but there are three to whicli we may especially refer you. In Ps. cxlvii. 19, 20, it is thus written : " He showeth his n-ord unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so witli any nation : and as for his judgments, they have not known them." Here the term is used of the precepts of God's law, that direct and unquestion- able revelation which he has given of his word and will. In Isa. i. 1 7 you find it : " Learn to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the father- less, plead for the widow" — and similarly in Luke xi. 42 : " Woe unto you, Pharisees ! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God." Here it evidently stands for righteousness — essential Tightness, that which is just and true, alike towards man and God, the high moral excellence which is the ideal of character, and which the weary world has almost broken its heart in fruitless endeavours to attain. Then in Ps. cxix. 20, " My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath imto thy judgments at all times" — and in the quotation of the text in Matthew's Gospel, it would seem to have reference to the dispensation of grace, the " power of God unto salvation," the provision of might and mastery for human feebleness and struggle. Now, if you think of these meanings for a moment, you will discover, couched in them, the world's strongest necessities to-day. Take the first thought. It is needful surelv that that there should be a bringing forth of "judgment" NT. THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. 21 nt of God's ises in the ;li we may 0, it is thus Jacob, his He hath not s judgments, ■m is used of unquestion- is word and to do well ; ;e the father- irly in Luke ■or ye tithe id pass over it evidently s, that which od, the high laracter, and its heart in i^s. cxix. 20, hath unto quotation of lem to have " power of might and nffrle. Now, noment, you d's strongest surely that " j udgraent " -■■fi i as a revclntion of God's word and loill. Who that looks abroad upon the world but nmst mourn over the bewilderment and confusion of its inhabitants in relation to the things of God. Where there is no revelation there is obscure or distorted vision, and the people perish. If it were possible to conceive of a world without a Bible, and consequently without a standard of authority ; in the spectacle of wayward and active mind, with no restraint upon its folly or frenzy, there would need no darker conception of hell. Who that looks into his own heart, and frets himself with the many problems of existence which the human hatli no skill to solve, can forbear the longing for a liigher wisdom, for a voice which can always make itself heard, and which, when heard, can sibnce the babble of strange tongues, and in imperial tones pro- claii-i to us the true ? In matters of lower moment, we would often flee from the restlessness of licence to the tyranny of some strong thinker's power. The mind longs for rest, when chafed by its endless doubts as the wave upon the rough strand, and from its tumult and passion the yearjiing has been often breathed, " Oh for the light of the Divine ! " This yearning is answered when the judgments of the Lord, " true and righteous altogether," are revealed unto men. The nature need no longer pine, nor wander aimlessly among the speculations of the ages. The feebleness is assured by the nearness of a direct- ing hand, and the pride is humbled by the authority (jf an unchahengeable law. God hath spoken, and every cavil must be silenced, and every question may be answered in his words. Once convinced that the 22 THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT, voice is God's voice, we have no clioice but to obcj'. When lie speaks, it is not an opinion, it is a fiat. He does not reason — he pronounces, enacts, declares ; and the hushed world should listen and be still. The want of the intellect, bowed beneath the sense of its own ignorance, and yet keenly avaricious of knowledge, is met in the Divine law. That law shows man in his dependence, in his fall, in his mysterious possession of a life from which he cannot rid himself, and in the destiny which fills the fut\ir',) of his being. That law shows God in his character, in his relationships, in the magnificence of his enthronement, in the bend and stoop of his mercy towards those who have offended him, in the precept which enjoins obedience, and in the promise which gives the strength to render it. That law brings these revelations of man and God together — discloses, in simultaneous discovery, the need and the remedy — and makes it possible for every man to tiee from his trouble to his Eedeemer, and to find the rest and happiness of being in the knowledge of the " only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent." If you take the nqxt meaning of the word "judg- ment" — essential Tightness — none will deny that in this also a great want of the nature is supplied. The nobility of the Eden inheritance, by which the powers of the soul were in accord with each other, with the external world, and with God, how sadly has it been tarnished by the fall ! The original derangement, how thoroughly has it infused itself into every part of the universe, and into every faculty of the man ! To a thoughtful mind there is nothing more melancholy than the alternate alienation and longing of the mind ANT. 1 but to obey, is a fiat. Ho declares ; and be still. The e sense of its ; of knowledge, )ws man in liis s possession of 3lf, and in the nc;. That law onships, in the the bend and have offended nee, and in the nder it. That d God together le need and the ly man to llee ;o find the rest ;;e of the " only atli sent." le word "judg- eny tliat in this supplied. The lich the powers other, with the ly has it been rangement, how ery part of the e man ! To a 3re melancholy ng of the mind I ^i THE LORDS ELECT SERVANT. n towards the holy and the pure. It has been well said, " IMun can neither renounce his sins nor his God " (Vinet). lie IHes from the Deity he worships ; he is a slave to the sins that ho condemns. There are contradictions in his nature which he cannot re- concile, a war in his soul deadlier tlian of the tented lield. He has longings after purity, but they are stifled by his habits of evil, and have seldom vent — as a jewel might flash for a moment from some foul refuse-heap of a city, only to excite tlie stranger's covetousness, or his wonder how it had got there. Hence it is that man's religious history is so eccentric and unsatisfactory. He cannot acquiesce in evil, but he is fitful and languid in his endeavours to be good ; and until Divine grace has wrought mightily npon his heart, he is by turns attracted and repelled from godli- ness — rapid as the comet in the heavens in his aversion and approach to the sun. His master-w\ant is holiness, but how to reach it he finds not. His heart, con- vulsed with tumultuous passions ; the nations, groaning nnder the cupidity of the selfish, and the insolence of the tyrant's wrong; the world, prostrate in a moral decrepitude, and forced by its religions into still fouler impurity — all long for the establishment of the right. " They look unto the earth ; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish." There is no liijht, no hope. Through the long darkness the eyes strain upward for the glimpse of the day ; the people linger, trembling until the tables are given ; " the isles wait for the law ; " the universal conscience cries out for its coming; and for lack of it " the whole creation travaileth together until now." 11 : ' I; < . i 1 t ' 1 ; 1 1 '■1 L i 1 1' fi 24 T/IJi LOJ^D'S ELECT SERVANT. Consequent upon these two wants of the nature — "judgment" as a revelation of law, and "judgment" fts a habit of righteousness — there is created the third "judgment," as a dispensation of power, because ignor- ance and impurity are helpless and " without strength," until " in due time Christ " dies " for the ungodly." By unaided effort ignorance cannot acquire knowledge, nor pollution be cleansed from its stain. There must be a power by which the scales are shed from the eyes and the warp from the mind ; by which the law becomes a life, and the soul is filled with its ecstasy, and enabled to discharge its obligations ; by which the nature is rescued from its inherited feebleness, and made " valiant for the truth upon the earth." Without the revelation of this power, all other would be an aggravation of the torture, as the sunlight on the shroud seems but a gay mockery of the death it robes. The bringing forth of judgment, which is declared to be "to open the blind eyes," is declared also to be " to bring out the prisoners from the prison ; " and the effect of the Saviour's mediatorial work is described as the judgment of this world, and the casting out of its prince from his usurped dominion. As the special anointing for the great work of deliverance, God says of Christ, " I have put my Spirit upon him." That spirit is a Spirit of power. Where he works, there can be blindness and feebleness no longer : the lame shall leap as an hart, and the darkened eye revel in a new sense of beauty ; the leper shall be as a child in comeliness, and the sepulchred shall be alive from the dead. Here, then, are the wants of the man and of the world met by the bringing forth of judgment from 4NT. )f the nature I "jiulf:;ment" [ited the third lecause ignor- lout strength," ingodly." By :iiovvledge, nor here must be Toni the eyes liich the law th its ecstasy, by wliich the nobleness, and th." Without would be an ilight on the :leath it robes, is dechired to iA also to be on ; " and the s described as ting out of its s the special nee, God says him." That )rks, there can le lame shall evel in a new a child in live from the man and of idgment from TUB LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. 25 LS the Lord. Longing soul, who art panting for heavenly knowledge ! poor chained one, in the fetters of thy sin, paralyzed at the pool-side, hopeless upon the very brink of the IJetliesda ! — here are healing and comfort for thee. No conflict of opinion ; here is rest for thy mind in the standard of unerring truth. No conflict of passion ; here is rest for tliy soul in the purity and justice of the throne. No conflict of I'ear and fore- boding, and despair ; here is rest for thy heart in the tenderness of " strength and peace." Truth, purity, happiness for all, from the bringing in of the judgment of the Lord. And not only are the wants of the individual, but of the world, comprised in this purpose of mercy. He who brings in the judgment is the harmonizer for whom the nations have waited — the royal Prince to whom is committed the arbitration of all things — the source and spring of the earth's unutter- able peace. The world needs nothing, "save Jesus only." All its wants meet in the person of its Surety. Let him work to the completion of his purpose, and Aceldama must bloom into Paradise. All social wrongs will vanish, the monopoly and the oppression ; tlie sources of poverty and the sources of quarrel will disappear from the eartli, which they have cursed so long. All religious evils will be ended. Scepticism will not shake the faith, nor blasphemy curdle the blood ; fanaticism will no longer be grafted upon the reasonable service of the gospel ; men will rejoice in the white light of truth, and blush that they have been accustomed to obscure or distemper its rays; charity will be no longer a fugitive, housed by stealth in hearts warmer than their fellows, but her rejoicing 26 THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT !:«|i M. ■! '1' pil shall Le in the habitable parts of the earth, and her spirit the inspiration of the kingdom " which cannot be moved" — for he shall reign whose right it \z and Christ shall be all in all. Brethren, tlie world craves this day. Men have strong faith that it will come ; they know that there is that in tliemselves, which can he made willing to receive it when it comes ; and all the moaning which now swells out, like the thunder of the waves upon the shore, into a prayer hoarse with the burden of wrong and sorrow, will be turned into a psalm as he appears ; for yet, as by the olden city of Nain, a word from his lips can turn a dirge into the anthem of a bridal. II. There are certain particulars upon which it may be well briefly to dwell, as to the terms which are here applied to Jesus, the world's Deliverer, and which abundantly show the harmony of counsel in the God- h-cad touching the great work of man's rescue from ruin. We find, in the first place, that Christ is called " the Servant " of the Father. In at least three other places in this prophecy is this same term used. In Isa. Hi. 13: "My servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high." In Isa. liii. 11: "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many ; for he shall bear their iniquities." Again in Isa. xlix. G : " It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." It is evident from these passages, that our Lord is THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. 27 1, and her 3h cannot and 10 len liave hat there villing to ng which upon the of wronji appears ; from his dal. h it may hich are id whicli ;he God- ue from s called ee other ed. In itly, ho In ghtecus [uities." ^t thou ibes of I will at thou earth." l.ord is ti called the servant of the Father in reference only to his mediatorial work. He is not essentially a servant. He " took upon him the form of a servant," and with clad heart and willing feet went forth to do a servant's work. There was confided to him a task which no other could accomplish ; and to rebuild the dismantled temple of Jehovah, and to secure for him a higher revenue of honour, and to make possible for him his grandest attribute of forgiveness, and at the same time to uplift and save a world which had " destroyed itself" by sin — he laid his glory by. Christ is called again the " Elect," or chosen of God, in whom his soul delighteth ; or, as JMatthew renders it, almost in the very words in which the Father attested the Son from heaven, " My beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased." If proof were M'anting of his essential equality Avith the Father, and that he was "Emmanuel, God with us," we might surely find it here. Though in the form of a servant, he had the heart and the love of a son. He was chosen to this work because none other was trustworthy. The world would have remained in hopeless ignorance of God, unless "' the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father," had himself " declared him " (John i. 18). He only could " perfect io: ever, by one offering, them that are sanctified ; " he only could be the world's "peace, making both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition between them." He was not only chosen to this work, but, oh ! deeper mystery of tenderness, beloved on account of this work. Deep and everlasting as had been the love of the Father to the Son, it was intensified on account of this. I ': 11 !i, "i I ^ ; I ' I I i# 28 THE LORDS ELECT SERVANT. " Therefore doth my Father love iiie, because I lay down my life for the sheep" (John x. 17); as if the redemption of sinners had struck a deeper chord, and evoked a more exquisite affection, than had arisen from the complacencies of a past eternity, or from the wisest and most skilful administration of the world. To complete this harmony, we have to remind you that the Divine Servant, thus chosen and beloved, was the subject of especial anointing from the Spirit. To this the text refers: " I have put my Spirit upon him." Again, in Isa. xi. 1, 2: " Tlieie shall come forth r. Tlo: out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch sliall gro\v ^iWo of his roots : and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." Again, on that remark- able occasion in the synagogue of Nazareth, the Saviour quotes the words of Isaiah (Ixi. 1-3): "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor;" and then startles his listeners by their decisive application to himself: " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." We gather from these passages, that in unmeasured fulness the influences of the Spirit were shed upon Christ, to hallow and to counsel, to sustain and to make mighty, every act of his incarnate life. Althougli he knew no sin, and therefore needed no renewal, yet even his sinless human nature needed the anointing of the Spirit to enrich it with all suitable qualifications, and to make it strong for service or for suffering ; for eve:' in its highest embodied possibility, human nature cannot do without God. /t: ause I ]ay ) ; as if the chord, and had arisen »r froni the B world, emind you 3loved, was spirit. To upon him." 3rth r- T^o;' 1 groNv oiiu L rest upon Qding, the knowledge it remark- le Saviour Spirit of anointed n startles himself : Dur ears." measured led upon and to A.lthoug]i ewal, yet inting of fications, ing; for n nature THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. 29 Now, take these three thoughts, and you have a sight that may well enkindle your most rapt and reverent wonder — the siglit of the whole Deity at M-ork for man. You see the Father, not stern and implacable, as some gloomy theories present him, but graciously willing the recovery of the lost, arranging the whole scheme of redemption, " according to his good pleasure which he had purposed in himself," and in unexampled tenderness offering, in costliest sacrifice, his only- begotten Son. You see the co-equal Spirit — content mediatorially to proceed from tlie Father and the Son — delighting in tlie gentler manifestations of his energy, shedding his bright baptisms upon Jesus without measure or grudging, stooping from his throne to woo the stubborn sinner to himself, descending like the dew of the morning into the heart of childhood, and of the blasphemer, the beggar, the felon, lifting up those who should he peers for angels, and of the household of God. You see the Divine Son, choosing to be humiliated, and despised, and smitten, entering into that mystery of sorrow which human intellect s^^udders only to conceive, refusing no labour nor sacrifice, but obedient fJike in his loving ministry and in his .itoning death, " delighting " in agony as men delight ill home, knowing no pleasure so sweet as that of snatching brands from the burning, loving the huninnity which he had wedded so well that he took it witli him into heaven, in order that all other humanity might not feel strange and lonely in the sky, and watching in tireless solicitude and pleading in ceaseless advocacy for the earth he has ransomed. Oh, nowhere in the universe is there to be seen a !i -1 I 'if !'i [ ■. I If; • , "• ', ' fl 1 , I r i 1 I i I! ] I : ( 3° THE LORUS ELECT SERVANT siglit like this! All the energies of Heaven engaged to save a sinner! Look on it, that your rebellion may be hushed, and your unbelief and indifference scattered at its presence. You may crouch and tremble before heathen gods, which only smite their worshippers. You may shrink, like the guilty things you are, when the Lord's pure presence surprises you in your for- bidden delights. You may be awed, when Sinai shakes " bei ;" '' he dark pavilion spread of legislative God." You nii e bewildered into fear as you dwell upon each grandeur and marvel of creative power. You may sink into your own nothingness before that insufferable purity, to which the heavens are not clean. But the vision which has been shown to you to-day should awaken other feelings than these. God asks and claims your love. He is not satisfied with distant I'everence, and cold obedience and faultless service. He wants regard, and trust, and clinging. He cares not for the courtier's knee, lie longs for the child's heart ; and he has revealed himself in the mysterious unity of the Trinity thus tenderly, that — •' The mikl glories of his grace Your softer soul may move ; Pity Divine, iu Jesu's face To see, adore, and love. " III. We direct attention briefly to the manner and issue of the Eedeemer's work. There are four thoughts suggested by the passage. 1. We are told that he works unostentatiously. " He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street." Is not this in keeping with all the characteristics of the Saviour? Pretenderd U I. NT. THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. ^en engaged bellion may ice scattered inble before worshippers, u are, when n your for- Sinai shakes lative God." dwell upon . You may insufferable n. But the ■day should [ asks and ith distant ess service. He cares the child's mysterious lanner and ir thoughts ntatioiisly. s voice to eping with Pretender.'^ vaunt insolently of their claims, and are elated by a momentary triumph. He is " meek and lowly in spirit." His heart beats with even pulse, whether the palm-branches are strewed in his path or the thorns are twisted for his crown. False Christs are turbulent and haughty, " boasting themselves to be somebody." He withdrew from the royalty whicli the people would fain have forced upon him, and charged the healed demoniacs that they sliould not make him known. Political demagogues raise tumults for selfish ends. He had no war with Ctesar, forbade the sword to his disciples, steadily discountenanced the risings of their patriot pride, and impressed upon them that in the diviner monarchy, which was above trappings and legions, he reigned as King for ever. And so quietly has Christianity spread its influences upon men. Not the whirlwind, the earthquake, the pestilence, but the dew, the seed, the leaven — things which work quietly, mighty forces, resistless from the might of their silence — these are its emblems. The kingdom of God commonly cometh not with observation. Physical convulsions may precede it. The whirlwind of passion, and the earthquake which shaketh the nations, and the fire, consuming to all olden wrong, and all encumbering circumstance, may be the couriers of the Gospel, but it speaketh in the " still small voice " — that majestic whisper which always makes a silence for itself — how- ever loud and rude the clamour. It does not " strive nor cry," but without strife or crying makes its way into the conscience of the world. We are told, again, that this work is done tenderly — with the utmost mercifulness, and long-suffering. " A 32 THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. 1 ^\\\ I ! :i bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench." What a beautiful representation of the perfection of gentleness is here drawn for us ! Let the images live before you. The dying night- lamp glimmering ghostly through the darkness in the sick-room, when all the world is still, the oil dried up, the last leap of the flame, the curling smoke, the only and offensive trace of recent fire — a kindled lamp for all pur])Oses of utility gone out. Again. The banks of some solitary tarn, with the dreary moorland all around it, the shrill cry of the bittern the only sound that breaks upon the dumb, dead air ; and there, by the sluggish pool, a reed, the sport of the fierce wind, bruised by many tempests, very frail, very lonely, about the most friendless and uncared for object in the world. If man were in question, how would the bruised reed and smoking flax be treated ? Would not the surly hand quench the one and the rude foot of the wayfarer trample down the other ? But he, who is gentler and kinder than human, props the reed and fans the flax, until the one becomes strong in Jehovah's strength, and the other a flame burning brightly and cheerily to his praise. Poor soul, ready-to-halt through all the days of thy pilgrimage, over whom storms have swept pitilessly, and scared from thy side the help of human friends — poor soul, who hast the memory of a brighter religious life stifled by worldly care or evil passion, thy heart an altar where no fire has been lately kindled, there is comfort in the Word for thee. The Saviour is great in gentleness, his mightiest energy is to redeem and save. " A bruised reed shall he not break, INT. smoking flax epresentatiou rawn for us ! dying night- kness in the oil dried up, oke, the only lied lamp for irn, with the 1 cry of the n the dumb, I, a reed, the ny tempests, ■iendless and lan were in nd smokinLT and quench irer trample and kinder ax, until the ;h, and the 3rily to his ill the days have swept ) of human f a brighter vil passion, been lately thee. The mergy is to not break, THE LORD'S ELECT SERVANT. 33 1 and the smoking flax shall he not quench." And so tenderly does he watcli over the progress of the Gospel in the world. He bears with infirm purpose, and does not always chide the rash or hasty deed. To him the day of small things is but the promise of a glorious future. He is not in:tpatient of growth nor of fruit. He gives time for the blossoming above, and for the clasphig of the broad roots below. He is not fretted by the heathen's rage nor by the people's vanit}'-. In the most degenerate Israel, he sees the seven thousand faithful who have never bowed the knee to Baal ; and he waits to be gracious to the proudest rebel, and does not spurn the humblest beggar, and has room in his heart for the affections of the simplest child. We are told, again, that this work is done persever- ingly and successfully : " He shall not fail nor be dis- couraged, till he have set judgment in the earth : and the isles shall wait for his law." It is a plain and \miiiistakeable prediction. Judgment shall be set in the earth ; and the isles, isolated so long, but patiently longing for deliverance and sympathy — " the isles shall wait for his law." This is a settled matter, which the risen Saviour sits " expecting " to realize, and which the faith of believers may anticipate on the warrant of his Word. The years may come and go with but little apparent progress ; the armies of the enemy may be as gaily caparisoned, and as boastful of victory ; the fort- resses may seem to be without a breach ; the scorners may be loud in their ribaldry ; the standard-bearer may be stricken, and the banner itself soiled with dust and stained with blood — but there is not the interval of a moment in the Saviour's march to triumph, calm as the 1. C 14 34 THE LOJ^D'S ELECT SEKVANT. Mil sun in the heavens. Ho bringeth fortli judgment unto victory. Noiseless, but constant as the flight of time, lie presses to his assured purpose, and waits for tlie ex- pected end. He is not discouraged by sinister omens or unwonted opposition, by faithless traitors, or by wearied friends. None of the ordinary causes of failure operate in him. Men fail because they nnderrate difficulties and make no careful counting of the cost, or because they work without a heart and consequently ■without a will, or because there is a misgiving that the work itsell: is unworthy, or because death touches them suddenly in the midst of tiieir toil. He saw the end from the beginning, calculated every danger, measured the stature and strength of every enemy. He loved the work so well, that for its sake he delighted in the baptism of the lire. He feels the work to be the noblest, the highest destiny for man, the most magnifi- cent revelation of God. He ever liveth, and only hath Immortality. " He shall not fail, nor be discouraged." Against embattled earth, and gathered forces of the pit, he shall bring forth judgment unto victory, until he rests from his labour, until he gathers his children, until he wears his crown. NT. clfimeut unto it of time, lie ; for the ex- nister omens dtors, or by ses of failure ;y underrate of the cost, consequently /in'jf that the ouches them saw the end er, measured lie loved pjhted in the : to be the lost magnili- id only hath iscouraged." s of the pit, y, until he lis children, III. SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN, ■^'M ** And Samuel said to Saul, "Why hast thou disquieted mo, to hrin,!? me up ? And Saul answered, 1 am sore distressed ; I'or the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams : therefore I have called thee, that tiiou mayest make known unto me what 1 shall do. "—1 Sam. xxviii. 15. YOU will at once imagine that we are not about to occupy our time to-night in what, under less I important circumstances, might be an interesting topic I of discussion, viz. the various theories which have been advanced touching this notable visit of Saul to the I Witch of Endor. We mention those theories only so I i'ar as is necessary to clear our way to an intelligent I and profitable treatment of the sulvjcct before us. The I theories of exposition have varied, as might have been ' expected, according to the character of the minds which have respectively held them. Some have supposed that the appearance of Samuel was a real one, effected by Satanic agency. To this there is the fatal objection, V that it gives to the Spirit of evil a power over the I spirits of the just, which Scripture nowhere warrants, I and against which every feeling within us conspires in I rebellion. Some, again, have resolved the whole affair into imposture, and account for the phantom by ] \ i'N I, ![■ , W U 36 SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. jugglery, and for the voice by ventriloquism ; while others hold to the belief that Samuel actually appeared, and that his appearance was effected by an agency that was distinctly Divine. The theory which supposes imposture, acting upon an excited and highly credulous imagination, is perhaps most in accordance with the i-ationalizing tendencies of the age ; though, if we re- member that it was an age in whicli the sorcerer lived, in which the sin of witchcraft was denounced amoncist others as one of which there was likelihood that some would be guilty, the absolute rejection of the super- natural would seem to be more sceptical than sound. Might it not have been that the woman intended to juggle, and had prepared herself accordingly, but that tlie result, by Divine interposition, was other and higher tlian her incantations knew ? She seems to have been frightened at the effect of her own words — startled at tlie cloaked and venerable form which, unexpectedly to herself, had arisen as if in answer to her spell. IMore- over, the authoritative rebuke of the unhappy monarch's transgression, and the sui'e word of prophecy which accurately foretold his doom, can hardly be supposed to have come from any other than lips that were inspired ; and God's inspiration would not be conferred on one whose life was a righteous forfeit to his own law. He who brought ]\Ioses and Elias from the spirit- land to be present at the priestly baptism of the Saviour, and to confer, upon the holy mount, on the glories of the consummated redemption, might not hesitate to pronounce upon a reprobate sinner, by the very lips which had so often and so faithfully warned him, the sentence of his doom ; and after dream and Urim and MAN. iquism ; while mlly appeared, 3y an agency t'liicli supposes ^lily credulous mce with the ugli, if we re- sorcerer lived, luced anion ust ood that some of the super- l than sound. 1 intended to ngly, hut that ler and higher to have heen -startled at expectedly to pell. IMore- »py monarch's phecy which be supposed :)S that were he conferred to his own )ni the spirit- r the Saviour, .he glories of ; hesitate to lie very lips led him, the id Urini and S^iUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. 37 prophet had alike ceased their warning and their com- fort, to condemn him by the very voice which liimself had disquieted from tlie grave. Thus much — not in- tended to be cither dogmatic or exhaustive — upon tlie circumstances under which the words before ns were uttered. It is of far more importance tliat we prepare ourselves to learn the solemn lessons, and to be warned by the terrible example. We liave before us a picture, which we can scarcely find elsewhere in tlie Bible, of a God-deserted man — one who has in former times had plenteous advantage and revelation, but who has ibrsaken God, until God lias forsaken him in turn, and who is now joined to his idols, seared against the ])eiiitent desire — one who presents that most appalling of all wrecks of ruin — a human soul consciously severed from the sympathy, and bereft of the favour, of the Divine. Let us reverently listen to the teachings which the life of such an one inculcates, while, with all the iervency of a spirit alive to its danger, we earnestly deprecate his doom. I. And, first, there is illustrated lierc the aceclcratwf/ 2Jrogrcss of evil. — Can you imagine a greater contrast than between this restless and wretched coward, who evokes Hell's aid perchance to bailie Heaven, and that comely youth who stood among the people at Mizpeh, with another heart within his bosom, and in statelv presence higher than them all ? What has chanced to cloud so fair a promise, and to darken so bright a sky? The chosen alike of God and man, as ingenu- ously modest as he was famed for manly beauty — of valour in fight, of clemency in victory — rushing like a 1 ! 1' ai 1 i 1 38 SAC/L, T-HE GOD-DESEKTED MAN. liuii to the rescuu of tlie men of Jabosh-gilead, spaiiiiL? the lives of the men of Belial, who affected to despi.se him, even as the lion spurns to trample on the dead — humble in his ascription of praise, and devout and eager in his sacrifice of peace-offerings, and in his recognition of God as the giver of victory : never, surely, did a reign open fairer ; but how has the fine gold become dim ! From the monarch on the eve of tlie battle of Jabesh- gilead, to tlie monarch on the eve of the battle of Gilboa, what a fearful fall ! AVhat has wrought it ? What has made the Ijrave a trend)ler, and the prosperous deserted, and driven the king of Israel to consort with them that wrought folly, even with the muttering sorceress whose very jiresence he had interdicted in the land Oh, it is the same inlluence which worked the ,,nal curse into the world, which swept away the primitive Eden, and branded the man who tilled it, and which through the advancing ages has sliarpened every anguish and has sliaped every sepulchre — the same dark secret that is written upon all unhappy liearts to-day — Saul has suffered, because Saul has sinned. In his elevation he had forgotten God. Pride had stolen away his heart ; he had been guilty of repeated and flagrant disobedience. Selected to do a certain work, he had omitted to perform it ; and in his usurpation of the priestly office, in his ostentatious will-worship, in the rebellion which spared the Amalekite alive, in his jealousy and self-consimiing rage, and in his butchery of the Lord's anointed, we see the graduated scale of deeper and still deeper crime — pride, impatience of restraint, the sinful purpose, the disobedient deed^ the lliU' il! 4 I MAN. -gileatl, spfuiii^^r cted t(j dospi.se L3 on tlio dead ad devout and rs, and in his ictory : never, v lias the fine ittle of Ja,l)esli- attle of Gilboa, it? Wliatlias >ei'oiis deserted, vith tliem that orceress 'vvliose 10 land Oil, II the jial the primitive it, a?id Avhich rpened every the same dark \arts to-day — mod. In his ,d stolen away 1 and flagrant work, he had pation of the )rship, in the alive, in his his butchery lated scale of nipatience of ent deed, the SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. 39 cherished hate, jealousy, madness, murder. Oh, look into tiiat dark cave of Endor ; see, amid congenial night and sights and sounds unholy, that haggard man, who, now that Heaven is silent, would fain make league with Hell — mark his countenance, ghastly with the wanness of despair — see the struggling hell within his bosom, as anger wrestles for the mastery with fear — look upon that sad, trampled vassal of impiety, as he lies unkinged along the ground, tlie heart smitten out of him by the tidings of tlie morrow. Can there be a more sorrowful exhibition of the Nature's fall ? Can there be a more affecting illustration of the bitterness of forsaking God ? Do we not seem to hear a voice, as it might be the sigh of some pitying angel, wailing plaintively over the prostration of a goodly shrine, proclaiming the cause, that it may be branded and hated by ourselves ? "When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." It is for our own profit to gaze and to meditate upon this fallen king, for it is the same enemy of sin against which we have all of us to contend. We need not, alas ! go back to ancient Israel in search of moral ruins. They are in the midst of us, all around us ; our path is strewed with the columns that were shattered by the successive shocks of the one great earthquake of the fall. You may perhaps have read the story, how a stout denier of the universal taint of humanity once paused before two companion pictures that were hung up to view. The one represented a laughing child, with large round eyes, and open brow and waving curls that goldened in the sunshine, and cheeks whose damask shamed the ripening fruit — w^earing that happy II .11 11! I i ^ i I ^i 40 SAC/Z, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. smile which can be worn but once in lif-^, the smile whose ripples are tangled by no weeds of suspicion and break upon no strand of doubt — looking gaily from the fair earth into the blue heaven, with no misgiving that there were serpents in the buslies of the one, nor tempests in the bosom of the other. From the canvas of the second picture glared a wolfish eye, the home of all dark subtletv and shamelessness ; and in the gloom of a dimly-lighted cell you could perceive the matted hair and sulkni brow and blood-stained garments of a murderer. Cliains clanked heavily, or seemed to clank, uprm the limbs. Everything told of the desperate character of the man ; and his countenance wore an expression of almost demon hate, as if in his ferocity lie cursed hie fetters and his fate together. Upon these two pictures the thoughtful gaze was fixed, until at last the exclamation broke out in a tone of half- concealed triumph — "Do you mean to sny that there is an equal taint in the natures of those two, or that any amount of contagion or of evil teaching could develope that guileless child into that godless and hardened man ? " when, alas ! for his thuory, he was told that the pictures had both of them been drawn i'rom the life, and were portraits of the same individual at different stages of his history. Oh ! read you not the moral of the tale ? are you not pre})cnred to take its warnirg ? There is an accelerating speed in an ungodly course, which increases like the momentum of an avalanche ; and the experience of melancholy thousands and the testimony of Scripture assure us that it is an easy descent to perdition, when the bias of the nature is seconded by the strenuous endeavours k± MAN. \ the smile 5f suspicion g gaily from misgivin>T he one, noi- the canvas . the home ind in tlie 3reeive the cl garments seemed to 3 desperate i wore an is ferocity *r. Upon xed, until 3 of lialf- :ihat there >, or tliat »g could Hess and ', he was n drawn idividual you not to take d in an nientum ancholy sure us he bias eavours SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. 41 '^i. of the will. Sinner, wherever thou art, thy only safety is to stop to-day. Beware lest thy sin become habit, and thy habit obduracy, and tliy obduracy hardening and despair. Eesolves for the future are powerless, ibr each moment of thy continued bondage forges for thee new fetters of iron. Such is the deceitfulness of sin, such the fleetness of its noiseless but rapid motions, that if thou yieldest to its initial influence, thou art entangled before thou art aware ; blind to the danger, imtil, acjonized and remorseful, tiiou hast a fearful awaking at the end. No man ever intended to bring upon himself disgrace and ruin. A man trembles at liis first fraud, blushes at his first lie. In those grim hulks, or on that endless wheel of labour, you will find multitudes who have hearts, though they have cased them from impression as in breastplates of steel. If you could get them to tell the secrets of their history, you would startle, perhaps, to find them so much like your own — good resolutions, early home - training, deathless memories of mothers' prayers, but strong temptations, feeble resistance, gay and godless associates — a first fall, from which the wrestler neve] rose, multi- plied concealments to hide it, then the open forwardness, and the casting off the mask of shame. Oh, take the truth to your hearts — no man became ever all at once a criminal, a hypocrite, a villain ; and from the sight of this forsaken man, who has slid rri',>idly down, until to-night we see him on the last rung of the ladder, and we know that to-morrow he shall be a dishonoured suicide, let us beware of the deceitfulness of sin, let us shudder from it into the Saviour's arms — outstretched, thank God, to-day; let us not rest in any false or 4:j SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. fraudulent hope which Jesus has not granted, lest liaply we come delicately, like Agag, saying, " The bitterness of death is past," when the axe gleams already in the lifted hand of Justice, and the niothev that bare us is about to be childless among women. The subject teaches, secondly — II. That to every sinner there will come Ms moment of need. — It may be that in his delirium of success and empire there came, for a long period, no thouglit of the God he had deserted, to the mind of Saul. One by one his means of spiritual communication ceased ; but he felt no lack of their guidance, and therefore took no heed of their departure. Samuel was gathered to his fathers ; there Wii*:! no longer the seer in Israel ; the Urim glittered not upon the breast of the high priest, for he had fallen a victim to the IMonarch's raG;e. Gradu- ally tlie whispers of conscience became fainter, and the good Spirit of God forbore to strive; yet prosperity encircled him, his banners floated freely, day after day found his royalty untarnished, the same supple courtiers round him, the same appliances of wealth or pleasure. So long he felt no need, but there came another time upon his soul. He had alienated the affection of Jonathan, and h.ad driven from the ranks of his army the loyal hra-p and trusty sword of David. The Philistines, \\\\o had given him short respite, had again invaded th.o la^id, and were encamped in Shunem, and he knew that they were a well-appointed and numerous host, better armed and disciplined than his own. The kingdom seemed in imminent peril ; and his arm had lost its bnn'ciy, because his heart had gone from the IfAM :raiited, lest yiiig, "The axe gleams the motliei' women. ' moment of iiiccess and thouglit of I. One by sased; but I'e took no i'ed to liis srael; the igh priest, . Gradu- ', and the )i'osperity after day courtiers pleasure, her time ction of lis army The ^d again 3m, and imerous TJie mi had om the SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. 43 trust which gave it courage. Then it was that the sense of loneliness overcame him, and the consciousness of all that he had lost rushed in full flood upon his soul. Then he remembered the Lord he had forsaken, and cried to him in his distress, but the heavens were as brass unto his prayers. Xo dream inspired his darkness, nor Urim gave him counsel, nor prophet spake to cheer him by his sagacity and power. Oli, the dread solitude of the God-forsaken man ! How frantic his remorse, how abject and spiritless his terror! Long would he brood over the days of early promise, and vainly would he long for their return. He had often fretted against the faithful prophet's words, had longed to be freed from his presence, had deemed his reproofs an impertinence against his throne. But how gladly would he recall him now ! What a passionate intensity of regret couches in the words, " Bring me up Samuel." " Let me hear his voice again, even if he speak in anger, and tell of judgment Anything rather than this long, drear, terrible, do' ning silence! Oh that I knew where I might find him I I would go after him even into the sepulchre, and agony were a cheap price to pay for just one assuring word. This hour jf need and loneliness, when the spirit cries out in its extremity of anguish, comes some time to every man. The worldling may prolong his revelry, and accumulate his gain, but the hour will come when he will discover that the world is a cheat, and that riches cannot always profit. The sinner may seem to pursut^ his course with impunity ; he may heap up riches from tlie world's commerce, and gather from its societies a revenue of adulation ; all he does may seem, in I i! i 'I if I 1 ?: I M I 44 SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. spontaneous alchemy, to turn itself into gold, and his hardness of heart and contempt of God's word and commandment may seem to hold him in stead as good, as if there were neither law nor God. But the Eternal One is neither dead nor sleeping, and all the delayed vengeance wh ch he has heaped up against himself will be poured out upon him — it may be in his wintry age, it may be on his forsaken deathbed. I may speak to some to-nicfht, who have bometimes shuddered beneath the thunders of the law, but who have shaken off the impression, and who are complacent in the hope that skies are as briglit, and frames as strong, and prospects as far-reaching and as gay for them as ever. Deem it not cruel in me if I shatter your hollow joy. From the past you are auguring the future ; and " because sentence against your evil work has not been executed speedily," you are indulging in the dream that it is indefinitely postponed. Ah, why thus abuse the long- suffering of your Judge ? Is it a time for laughter or for thankfulness, wlien the condemned cell opens to the minister of mercy, who bears the kind reprieve ? Your hour of need may be nearer than you think. God's mercy may still delay it — l)ut it will come, the hour of trial, when sorrow breaks upon sorrow, as billows upon a desolate strand. It will come — the hour of attliction, when racked frame and paining nerves confuse the brain, and the tossing of the illness prevents the continuity of the prayer. It will come — the hour of abandonment, when no friends can solace and no daughters of music can charm ; when, lonelier than hermit in his cell, or than prisoner in his dungeon, the spirit will fret in a solitude which is but a hopeless MAN, oiti, and hig s word and 3ad as good, the Eternal he delayed bimself will wintry age, i-y speak to ed beneath 'Gn off the hope tliat prospects Deem it y- From " because executed ;hat it is the Ions- lighter or opens to •eprieve ? u think. ■ome, the I'row, as lie — the g nerves >re vents he hour and no sr than 3on, tlie opeless SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. 45 and protracted dying. It will come — the hour of Teath, when the lean hands must grapple with their fate ; when Being is discovered in its nakedness, with all its flowers and music gone ; when the veil is folded o'er the earth, and there opens up on the scared spirit the boundless, the avenging, the unseen. It will come — and you must meet it, whether or not you are ready. I adjure you, prepare for it now ; don't wait till your soul writhes in its grasp before you begin. That's a poor chance you have to think and pray, when the tears scald the cheek and the fever liottens in the veins, when you quiver with the agony of some present pain, or quake from the apprehension of some additional disaster, when the physician at the bed's head and the shadow at its foot wage with each other the unequal strife. Oh, don't wait for that. Flee to the ever- willino; Saviour now, and then his guidance will be yours in sorrow ; your days and nights alike shall be under the protection of the mystic pillar, and you shall have no need to work some foul enchantment in order to wring direction from the sheeted dead. There is illustrated again, in this subject the, tcrriUe power of conscience. That there is in the world a faculty of conscience, remaining faithful long after other faculties have betrayed their trust, like an incorruptible warder whose colleagues have been bribed, is a point which I might fearlessly call upon every one of you to prove. You feel it within you ; you know that upon your every action it holds its assize, and it pronounces its decisions. When the heart is I'enewed by grace, and the Holy Spirit bears his direct i J ' ! II :U 46 SAUL, THE GOD-DESERTED MAN. aud glorious witness to adoption, the conscience becomes an occasion of joy, and in the witness which it bears to fidelity sends a thrill of gladness through the soul. " This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience." On the other hand, it is impossible to exaggerate the terror wliich an accusing conscience works within the mind of the sinner. It has been acutely observed, that very much both of human misery and of human sinful- ness spring from the workings of an evil conscience. A conscience aroused but not appeased may be a powerful prompter to evil. The turbulence of human passion may be often the frantic endeavour of the mind to stijle the monitor which it cannot still. And just as the mainspring of a watch, disordered, sends irregu- larity through the whole of its machinery, so it is possible for the conscience, prince among the faculties, to derange instead of directing the rest. And who shall tell the horror of the man whom an accusing conscience harasses ? It will blanch Belshazzar's cheek, before the seer's lips trace out the mystic cha- racters which blaze upon the wall. It will startle Herod into ashen tremor, as he deems' the murdered John the Baptist to be risen from the dead. It will Ijreak up the fountains of Marah within the recreant but true-souled apostle, and send Peter out to weep bitterly for his sin. It will hound the traitor Judas to his dark tryst with Death within the field of blood. And so in the case of Saul. His conscience had foredoomed him. His insane desire to penetrate the future was but the gambler's last chance, when, the wealthy fortune gone, he risks the silver piece, it is so small. His greatest enemy was witliin — the wounded 'IAN. ice becomes fell it bears ?li tlie soul, conscience." ?g-erate tlie within the &i'ved, that lan sinful- Jonscience. "ay be a of human the mind And just Is iiTegu- so it is faculties, ^nd who ticcusinose, with- which, as oted trials ihe past is •nt ! Oh, hide from '> harrows an. But, le moan solemnly liing" to And now, why is it that we have brought this sub- ject before you ? It were cruel to paint in sombre colours for effect, and to dwell upon a ruined nature to those of whom the presented character were pro- l)hetic, and who were pressing hopelessly to the same inevitable end. Credit me, I pray you, with an aim that is far holier, and a purpose that is far more kind. As to the last dark thought I mentioned, tliai need not come to you. I don't believe in despair for ran- somed men. On this side the grave — if you were sure that you should live to make it — even the late, repentance is not vain. But I do believe that there are those among you who, now that the year has closed upon you, are more hardened in sin, and more litted than when the year began for the penalties of the prison and the fire. You have felt the accelerating power of evil ; you have put away the consciousness of the hour of need. You have tried hard to silence the accusing conscience ; and, after affectionate warnings, for which your hearts are witnesses, and a fidelity in the declaration of the truth as it is in Jesus — which I dare you to deny — you are at this day alien from Christ, withholding the homage of the heart which he has claimed, and which he died to redeem. There can be but one end to this, if you continue impenitent — " indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil." I deprecate that doom for you — I would not have you fall into that doom. The Saviour awaits the coming of penitent hearts, is ever ready to join them on their travel, and make their hearts burn within them as he talketh with them by the way. Come and give yourselves to him L D I ill < ; SO SAUL, THE COD-DESERTED MAN. now. You need work no enciiautnients. He will nut say to you as did Samuel to the affrighted Saul, " "Why liast thou disquieted me to bring me up ? " You need not " ascend into heaven ... to bring Christ down from above, or descend into the deep ... to bring up Christ again from the dead ; but ... if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him frcm the dead, thou shalt be saved." IV. BACKSLTDIXG. " lienjeiiibor therefore from whence tlion art fallen, nnil repent, ami do the first works." — He v. ii., part of ver. 5. " /^ EEAT is Diana of the Epliesians." With cease- VJT less and earnest clamour rose and swelled the cry, passed from lip to lip and from street to street, until the whole city was in confusion. Craftsmen, jealous for the honour of their craft, and idolaters, jealous for the honour of their deity, joined in common cause, and had great wrath and zeal togetlier, as they dragged into the place of public meeting certain alleged offenders ; while the multitude — like all multitudes — are smitten with sudden sympathy of panic ; though, inflamed and unreasoning, the greater part know not wherefore they are come together. What is the meaning of it all ? What has startled the quiet city ;0f Ephesus from its classic and elegant repose ? What / strange shadow has come upon the " great goddess I Diana," that uproar should be roused and revel within ytliG precincts of h er sacre d fane? The "way" about which this " no small stir'NUas arisen is the minister- ing to the Gentiles the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the lips of the Apostle Paul. It would be a solemn and a singular scene to have witnessed the first public ri t 53 liACKSUniAG. V" liiuinpli of Christianity, when bearded men, read in the lore of books, and ^vi.s3 with the experience of years — men ^vho had striven fortlie secrets of alchemy, or liad waved the magician's wand, or had woven the ahalistic spell, or practised all dark acts of wizardry — " broil f>ht their books together, and burned them before nil the people ; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver." As we witness this marvellous victory of faith over interest, of simple truth ov'er lucrative and ancient error, we cease to wonder at the malignity of the opposition, and are not surprised that Satan should have stirred up his emissaries in one last convulsive effort to re-establish his empire there. The church, thus founded in the city of Ephesus, continued for a long series of years to extend its borders, and to consolidate its strength. There are interesting traditions concerning some years of its prosperous history, when the Apostle John, silver- haired and venerable with age, was carried into their public assemblies, that he might bless them with wise and timely counsel, and that they might be instructed by the loving words of the once beloved disciple, who had lain upon the bosom of the Lord. In acknowledgment of their rapid growth in grace, and perhaps also of the costly sacrifices wliich they had made for the truth's sake, God inspired his servant to address to them an epistle, rich above all others in developments of the fellowship of the mystery, and in unfoldings of the inner life which is hid with Christ in God. They seem to have retained many of the characteristics of manl}'' and vigorous piety, even when corruption had entered upon other churches -1 iiii.jiiK.itiBMBiiBaei BACKSLIDING. 53 n, read in lerience of •f alchemy, woven tlie k^izardrv — ■ leni before 3 of theiii, As we interest, of , we cease 1, and are 3d up his !-establish 3d in the of years strength. )iiie years in, silver- into their *vith wise nstructed iple, who in grace, ich tliey ired his ibove all mystery, bid with many of ty, even ihurches once flourishing as they; and in the epistle that is nuw before us — written to the angel or minister, and containing in accurate summary all matters of com- mendation or of censure whicli the eye of the Searcher had discovered — there is nuich which would leave even model churches in our modern times very far behind. They were laborious in duty, and patient in suffering ; they shrank in holy sensitiveness from unworthy companionship — they could " not bear them which were evil." With true discrimination of an apostle's character and office, they had tested those who had simulated an apostleship, and had found them liars. They had prosecuted their holy toil with pure motives, for even the Heart-searcher says of them, " For my name's sake thou hast laboured." They had had hearts of constancy, for they " fainted not " under the pressure of difficulty and sorrov/. Wliat is lacking in this almost perfect picture ? What of shortcoming can tarnish the lustre of this resplendent piety? Alas! it is there — the incipient apostasy, the departure from the fresh affec- tion with which their hearts had kindled after God. " Nevertheless I have soniewhat against tliee, because thou hast left thy first love." Without any pretensions to Ephesian piety, there are confessedly in the present day many lamentable instances of defective or forsaken profession. Those who are fallen in the church, and those who are fallen froni the church, are both to be found in the midst of us. The world abounds with backsliders in heart and in life ; and if the census could be taken of the multi- tudes now irreligious, of the prayerless households and HI ii ii ii' ! « 1 ,! 1 rs ( 1 I f 54 BACKSLIDING. Sabbathless familie'=i, who have been at some time or other in connection with our various churches, the result would be something absolutely appalling. It cannot be unprofitable for us, therefore, to direct attention to a subject so momentous, reminding you— T. Of 3ome of the ordinary causes of falling. 11. Of the signs that it has taken place. I. There is implied in the very wording of the text that there had been the possession of re.igior. Those cannot fall wdio have never attained ; ar.d it is im- possible to remember the characteristics cf the Ephesian church, and the fact of its being addres.:2d in such regretful and affectionate warnino', without arriving at the conclusion that it had " tasted " largely " of the grace of God, and felt the powers of the world to come." There are many of th'»se usually designated backsliders, who have never realized the conscious enjoyment of religion. Undyr some conjuncture of circumstancer, smarting under disappointment, softened by affliction, or standing by a freshly-opened grave, they , have come under impression ; seriousness has settled on their brow, their sensibilities 1 ave been reached and stirred, and for awhile they have manifested great con- cern, and some measure of delight in the services and hopes of the sanctuary ; but the heart was not changed. And by and by the restraint has begun to be irksome, and the old longing has come for the pleasures of sin, and they have relapsed into more than the former inveteracy of evil. These, of course, are in circum- stances of equal guilt and equfil peril ; but they are I mMMM BACKSLIDING. 55 time or dies, the ng. It :o direct niindiii!,' the text Those b is im- ^phesiaii in sucli iviiig at "of the i'orld to sigiiated jnscioiis ture of softened ^e, they ;tled on ed and at con- ies and banged, 'ksome, of sin, former ircum- ey are I not in the text made the subjects of specific warning. The address is_^to__those who were once converted,//'' who felt the transformation of the Gospel, and were gladdened by its hope immortal, but who have fallen ; and to some cf the prominent causes of apostasy we will for a moment address ourselves, and we may mention — 1. Adverse or persecuting injluences h'ought to hear upon the sold. — In the personal history of the Ee- deemer, the moment of his arrent was the moment of his disciples' desertion ; and when the spears of the lloman band glanced through tlie thickets of Geth- ■semane, " then all tli(; disciples forsook him and fled." Even the earnest and affectionate Peter turned recreant in the continued presence of danger, and faltere^ forth the cowardly utterance, " I know not the man.' Instances might easily be gathered from the history of the church, in which, in times of persecution and danger, there has been u lamentable falling away. And, in truth, there must be an inwrought conviction, a stern and sturdy principle, to give birth to Christian heroism, t > hold fast to unpopular opinions and re- pulsive "truths, to keep an unblenching faith in sight of the fetters and the scaffold. There are multitudes who, like Cranmer, would recant at the vision of the stake, but who would not, like Cranmer, nobly avenge theii.' reputation by invoking the fiercest of the fire to be wreaked upon " this unworthy hand." Sometimes, wlien external persecution is quiet, men. are deterred by domestic opposition, and a man's foes to spiritual decision " are those of his own household." Tlie Father interposes his authority in x / m III I'-; Ij ' n ' 1 ' 'i- 8 I 5 j. 56 BACKSLIDING. forbiddance of his child's devotion ; the husband com- pels the wife to detach herself from the people of God ; the sister rallies the brother out of his serious- ness ; or the affection, which ought to hallow the home with a deeper sacredness, by entwining round it the supports of religion, unwinds the tendril spirit from its safest and surest clinging. And who, that knows anything of the power and preciousness of the home-affections, will deny that their appeal to the spirit is well-nigh irresistible, and that, when they plead on the side of ungodliness, that peril is the chiefest of all. You have seen the results, alas ! too often. Sometimes by the threat of disinheritance, sometimes by the shafts of ridicule, hurled remorse- lessly against a proud and sensitive heart, a young man, just entering upon life imder solemn impressions of responsibility, has been shaken in his resolve and turned into the path of the scorner; or a fair giil, the promise of whose opening womanhood was given to Christ — an earl y and accepted espousal — has been plunged into a round of heartless lolly, and has gone through life with the remorseful consciousness, inspoken to her conscience as from a disappointed Saviour, that she had left her fi Jo love. Brethren, I would not undermine the obligations of parental authority, nor limit the influence of that outflowing love, which in its tenderness emparadises home ; but when either the command of a parent, or the beseeching of a friend, whispers of rebellion against God, at all hazards the pleading must be resisted, at all hazards the command must be disobeyed. The trial may be painful, and the struggle severe. It is sad to feel 1 1 I 5a5»a«if»«.« V "v. ^ p<^ ^/ ' K ^_ iLitiiw —'2-' --^ T. E V. f ii I . ( 1 il' THE BELIEVER'S SONSIIIP. " l^elovei^, now arc we tlie sons of floil, nncl it doth not yet appear wLut we sliall l)c : but wo know that, when he shall appear, we shall he like him ; for we shall see him as he is. Anil every man that hath this hope iu him puritieth himself, even as he is pure." — 1 John iii. 2, 3. IT is a law of our nature, or rather of our mental constitution, that in looking at any particular I truth or subject, we unconsciously present it in that V aspect which strikes ourselves the most forcibly, or which is the most congenial to our own minds. A doc- trine may be presented before a dozen individuals, and each may have a just appreciation of it in its entirety, while as a matter of contemplation or attachment it will appear to each in very different phases, regulated to every one by the bent of his own desire. It is mercifully ordered that, with substantial unity of sen- timent, there should be allowed this latitude in the personal consciousness of men. Take, for example, the heaven of the believer's hope and prospect. While the object of expectation has been one to the universal church, the features of that object have been various as in the glass of the kaleidoscope, and individuals have dwelt for their comfort upon the different aspects of its blessedness, according to their own felt need, or 1 TITE BELIEVERS SON Sill P. 67 ^1 }'eaniing sorrow. Tims it is said of Wi I be r force, wliosn lite was one sunny activity of benevolence, nnbnjkeu by the wearing languors of the sick-bed, tliat wlien lio thouglit of heaven, it was as a place whicli refined and sublimated every righteous affection — tliat his central idea was love; while tlie suffering liobert ILdl, wiioso life was a torturing illness, and his brow beaded ever with the sweat of pain, murmured in his acutest paroxysms of the promised recompense of red. Tiiis remark ap[)lies somewhat to the styles of the writers of the Ijible, and affects the matter of the communica- tions which they severally unfold to us ; and from the incidental glimpses which we obtain of individual character, Ave are not suri)rised to find I'aul a willing captive to the intellectual sublimity of the gospel, and its masterly advocate against tiie baffled scliools ; to find I'eter combining the faithful and tender reproof of the erring, witli the bold, almost scornful, denuncia- tions of the perverse and proud ; to iind the judicious James insisting upon practical duty, and warning against unfruitful faith ; and to find John, the beloved of them all, declaring the gospel of love, warming every precept with its genial inspiration, and exhorting the whole body of the faithful to its cultivation and to its spread. In the former chapter, he has shown that knowledge of Christ and union with Christ produce as their necessary fruit, obedience to the whole law, and affection towards the whole brother- hood of the faithful ; and he then directs to the right legulation of this emotion of love, tells them that it sliould flow out in gratitude and service to God tlie Creator, and in tenderness and pity towards man the 68 THE BELIE VEKS SONSHIP. i u, i '\ : ' fellow, but that it should hold itself loosely from tho world, because it is a transitory thing — it and the lust of it are rai)idly passing away — and that it should put all. erroi's away from its embrace, because they are irreconcileable with that heavenly truth, in which (and not in iniquity) it is their duty to rejoice. Then, in tlie commencement of this ch-ipter, he soars, enraptured, into the contemplation of the believer's privileges ; declares that the humblest Christian, though the world llout him with its mockery, and frown him from its fellowships, is the heir of a diviner adoption — a minor now, but to inherit a kingdom by and by — a neophyte\ now, but to have afterwards a present world at his i instalment as a royal priest unto God. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." There is in these words a rich mine of comforting truth, which will well repay us for endeavouring to explore it, for it brhigs before us — 1. The, lidicvcr^s present relationship. 11. J fflimpsc oj his future. 1. At the first reading of this marvellous declaration, we are almost startled into the inquiry, Is it our race and nature which are so highly honoared ? Can it possibly be man, so frail and so erring, so often yielding to the tyranny of circumstance, so often im- pelled helplessly by his own frantic passion, so earth- bound in his pursuits, so seldom breaking away from 1 THE BELIEVERS SONSHIP. 69 >: his trammels into the kindred of the upper air — is it he to vhom you spea c of a divine sonship ? is it he whom you serve with an investiture into heaven's full and filial privileges ? Who tliat looks upon man in liis estrangement, in his stubbornness of enmity, in liis audacious ingenuities of rebellion against God, can/ lielp the feeling that for i.im to be exalted into sui rare a blessedness, is an exliibi:ion of loving-kindness 1 that is beyond compare — a marvel of condescending j grace which passes all human wonder ? There is something in the words, as the apostle utters them, which you at once feel to imply something more than tliat common and natural fatherhood which God sus- tains to all men. In one sense he is the Father of all earth's scattered tribes. There were no distinct aboriginal nations who sprang into being otherwise than by his creative word. He made of one blood all nations, however subsequently chequered by the influences of climate or of species. The apostle vindi- cates the Gentile claim to be considered as of the family. " Doubtless thou art our Father, thougli Abra- ham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not : thou, Lord, art our Father, our Eedeeiner ; tliy name is from everlasting." Heatlien poets could sing, " For we are also his offspring ; " and in acknowledg- ment of his relation to his creatures, as well as of his modes of essential existence, revelation has presented him endearingly as " God the Father." Of this general fatherhood you ore all partakers. It is the heritage of man as man. It is a blessing native to you, conferred without your volition, like physical life, eucompassing you, when you are reckless of it, u3 } ^ H ->^A ^y 70 THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIR v. i tlie vital air — not at all dependent upon individual character, but a necessary adjunct of your creaturely condition. You are children of God, because he breatiied the life into you, and in him you have your being. There are some who abuse this truth of God's universal fatherliness, to the ignoring of his punitive justice, and therefore to tlie dishonour of his name. They talk loosely of his great compassion, they jh'o- / fess a sentimental admiration of his benevolence, and imagine that to a Being so kind, punishment must of necessity be cruelty. Hence, forgetful that " a God all mercy were a God unjust," they weave plausible ; theories, in which he is represented as receiving all , men to his bosom, either by an act of indiscriminate \ forgiveness, or after, at most, a brief and clement expiation of punishment. Brethren, has this delusive liope a lodgment in any of you ? Are you basing your confidence upon the Father's kindness, while you are indifferent to the Father's honour ? I would fain be earnest in repetition, and bold in rebuke of so blasphemous an error. I tell you it is not true. That hope of yours is a false one, and will perish. It rests upon an improper notion that sin is a little thing, whereas it is really an evil of appalling foulness. A rebel people could not make Moses quail ; but, in the vision of their moral danger, he shuddered like a frightened child, and prayed — whatever may be the meaning of the fearful prayer — that his own name might be blotted out of the book which God had written. David was fearless before Goliath's massive spear and triple mail, but " horror took hold on him," shook him in its grasp, when he thought of the wicked THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIP. 71 that had forsaken God's law. Jeremiah was plaintive ever, but there was a deeper sting in his sadness, when he " wept in secret places because of the people's pride." Paul had a heart of dauntless proof. He stood calm amid frowning billows, heroic amid frowning kings ; he wore fetters as jewellery, and ventured without blanching " into the mouth of the lion." But the strong man bowed himself, and the fountains of the great deep of his soul were broken up, when he dwelt upon the sinner's danger — " Of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that thev are the enemies of the cross of Christ : whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." Nay, their destitution and their doom drew tears from diviner eves than his, for " when he came near and beheld the city, he wept over it, saying. If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! but iiow they are hid from thine eyes," Surely, with these examples before us, it becomes us not to think lightly or indifferently of sin, or to imagine that a thing so reprobated v.'ill be cancelled with a look, like some childish mischief or folly of idle words. No ! God is angry with the wicked eveiy day. He will by no means clear the guilty without a satisfaction, an equivalent, a reason ; and to say that the Father will forgive simply on account of his fatherhood, is to abstract from God's perfection of character, to reduce human character to a mythic and conventional distinction, to abolish the difference between right and wrong, to rob the Chris- tian of Lis security for the fullilment of the promises, IP I « 72 THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIP. and to reproduce, in all its enormity, the old original lie which tempted Adam out of Paradise, and made Paradise itself only the memory of a beauteous dream. I warn you very faithfully, if all you rest upon for participation in the promise of the text, is your inheritance of God's natural fatherhood, that you have neither part nor lot in the matter. Cliildren you may be, but you are children wayward and prodigal — starve- lings in a far country, with the husks and perhaps tlie liabits of the swine — and so long as there has come upon you no transforming energy, so long as there has spoken to you no reconciling word, God looks Tipon you not witli complacency, but with displeasure ; and, robbed of his accustomed reverence by your evil deeds, he grieves to utter his complaint — "A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master : if then I be a father, where is mine honour ? and if I be a master, where is my fear ? saith tiie Lord of hosts unto you, priests, that despise my name. And ye say. Wherein have we despised thy name ? " It is manifest, then, that when the apostle speaks to believers as the " sons of God," he has a reference to some exclusive privilege wliich has come to them, other than by natural descent or personal worthiness ; and you do not need to be reminded that he regards them as being "reconciled unto God by the death of his Son." There is an evident reference to a change which has taken place in them, from alienation to friendship, from condemnation to acceptance, from a state of radical and sinful estrangement, to a state of wisliful waiting upon God. The apostle refers to the love which alone has originated and carried out the \ THE BELIEVERS SON SHIP. 73 great scheme of redemption, wliicli has harmonized every contrariety, which has made individual salvation possible in every case on certain and easy terms, and which has not merely freed from the apprehension of penalty, hut has loaded with honour, and " caught up a slave to inherit a crown ;" and, in the ecstasy of his contemplation, he Simmons the whole world to gaze with him upon the glorious vision : " Behold ! wliat manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." This is there- fore not a natural nor hereditary, but an imparted son- ship — not of right, but of adoiJtion. These sons of God are " born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." You liave seen sometimes a heart smitten on account of sin, the life shadowed by the condemning bitterness, the sense of guilt and wrath making all creation dismal ; no beauty in the landscape, because no beauty in the soul ; no music in creation, because the heart's harp has got a broken string — the spirit panting only to be delivered from the burden which hung about it like a very body of death ; and, perhaps, it has been in your experience to be present when such an one has exchanged tear5 for triumph, and sighs for songs, when the haggard cheeks have blushed as with the hues of Sharon's rose, when the healing sun has impearled the teardrops as they glistened still upon tlie eyelid ; and when, from the lips, late mute or sobbing, there rose the full-voiced anthem of the converted sinner. The change has been palpable even to the bystanders. The most thoughtless have observed it in the sparkle of the eye ; and those who have opportunities of judgm.nt will attest its I'l'l 74 T/m BELIEVERS SONSHIP. genuineness from the improvement in the life. This change is both relative and real. The man has been penitent ; he has groaned by reason of the disquietude of his spirit; he has bowed himself in godly sorrow; he lias toiled up the way somewhat ascending to the foot of the cross ; with the agony and grip of the drowning clutching the last chance for life, he has reposed his trust on Jesus, and, " being justified by faitii, he has peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." In that blest moment he receives a whole cluster of blessing. The Judge justifies the prisoner, the Monarch pardons the rebel, the Father adopts the son, and the Divine Spirit, sent from on high to witness to the fact of his adoption, works in that same instant the regeneration of the nature, creates the clean heart and the right spirit; and the man rises in the newness of a holier life — no rebel, no criminal, not even a servant who discharges duty at the bidding of fear — but a son who, with cheer- ful alacrity, leaps on his obedient way, and thrills with eagerness to do his new-found Father's will. It is in the possession of this privilege, consciously realized, that the apostle says to those of like experience, whose hearts would vibrate to his own in throbs of unison, " BelovevI, now are we the sons of God." Who ; hall estimate the preciousness of this rare an^l hallowed privilege ? Where, amongst the records of human history, or in the long experience of years, shall con- descension like this iind parallel ? We have read of warriors who have been merciful in the moment of tiiumph, and who have sjDareil lives which had been forfeited by repeated treacheries ; there were magnani- mous hearts beating beneath the intrepid breasts of old, f THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIP. 75 a stern chivalry restrjiiiied the mad passion of the knights of song and story, and poets have sung to the applauding world of the bridal between tenderness and courage : but never could human charity compass so large a self-sacrifice as this, to take a perfidious captive, a traitor to every obligation, stained with the heart's blood of the nearest and dearest, and instal him in the family, and give him the household welcome and the children's bread ; but " God commendeth his love to- ward us," not merely that " while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," but " that we might receive the adoption of sons." If you consider all that is scripturally involved in this great blessing of adoption, it will tend to augment your gratitude and wonder. The apostle pursues the argument into a still higher domain of privilege : " If children, then heirs ; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." The plain statements of the Bible transcend the loftiest hyperboles of human speech — pint-\\Q\Y% — the law of primogeniture superseded, no inequality of division : " To him that overcometh will I give to sit down : " " Enter into the joy of thy Lord : " " All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." Oh, here is the august and stately splendour of Christian bestowment, " that we should be called the sous of God !" It is something to pay the debt of the prisoner, to strike the fetters from his chafed limbs, to open for him the doors of the dungeon, and to let the air of heaven kiss his brows again, and purify him from the very smell of bondage. That were in itself a lU . 1 I §' i- i m '' B ^' 1 ' \ 76 T/I£ BELIEVER'S SON SHIP. precious benefit, to remove the guilt and condemnation I'rom the heart of the bowed debtor, and to set liim free. And yet in many instances freedom were but a partial boon. Suppose the man friendless and poor, sensitive to " the rich man's scorn, the proud man's contumely, and the spurns which patient merit from the imworthy takes," unable to hold his own among the buffet and battle of the world ; by his deli\'erance you banish him from the place, where, though in thraldom, he was housed and fed, and turn him helpless upon men's cruel pity or still more cruel wrong. Still, you say, the man is free, he is in no man's power, he has the great and common birthright of his race. This is true, and it is a grand thing to give him freedom ; but it were a grander thing surely to translate him from the prison- house to the palace, to lift him from ruin to royalty, to screen him from the inclement blasts of an unequal sky, to provide for him and watch over him as a child. Hence it seems as if God, in his boundlessness of com- passion, felt that salvation, considered simply as the deliverance from the curse of the law, Avere only a partial exhibition of divine tenderness ; and so he con- ferred upon the ransomed one the adoption of sonship, as at once the rarest mark of condescension, and the most magnificent illustration of love. Indeed, there can be no higher. Here all experiments of blessing terminate, and all scattered rays of love converge. Earth and heaven in this are drained of their greatest riches. Grace itself is exhausted, and the fulness of the Father's heart is poured out here; the most gorgeous visions of wealth and privilege that pen can trace, or pencil sketch, or words syllable, are poor to this ; and 1 THE BELIEVER'S SONS HIP. 77 all the thick-coming fancies of the poet's brain, even when imagination has downed him the most superbly, dwindle before the glory of this simple fact, that we — ignorant, frail, erring, mortal — that -z^e "should be called the sons of God." Brethren, this privilege may be yours. God will confer it upon every penitent heart of you, if you will seek it at his hands. The Spirit waits to bestow it, and you may enter into its enjoyment now. II. The text gives us a glimpse, and but a glimpse, of the believer's future : " It doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is," There is a general uncertainty, redeemed by a particular assurance. We may not be able to understand with definiteness the blessed conditions of our future exist- ence, but of one fact, and that the highest, we are sure : " It doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." It was not the purpose of God to reveal fully to us " the recompense of re- ward," either of deliglit or doom. We have hints rather than tidings, glimpses rather tlian visions. There is enough to guide us to a general knowledge of the nature of the retribution which awaits us, and to im- press us with sanctions which appeal to our hope and to our fear ; but there is not enough to overweigh our moral freedom, nor to interfere with our exercise of faith, nor in any wise to neutralize the purposes of our jM'obationary trial. " It doth not yet appear what we shall be." God hath hidden from us the excellent ,Jh tr 1 r 78 THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIP. glory — tlio ocotiii fulness of the believer's eternal privi- lege is beyond the ken of reason — and stretches on through the everlasting years, an expanse tuo vast for mortal eye to scan, and too deep for mortal plummet to sound. We may not complain of this — that the inlierit- ance is not at once explored by us now in the time of our infancy — that tliere shall be sweet surprises in the sky — that we neither know nor feel now with the knowledge and with the feeling of the hereafter. Our gratitude should repress our curiosity. The very fact that it is an inheritance should silence us when our desire would fain pierce the invisible, and babble of its wondrous secrets. If the rew'ard were of debt and not of grace, we might demand a more accurate acquaintance with our own property ; but it is of unmerited favour, that we are permitted to anticipate a heaven at all. There are some men who lord it over broad lands which their own swords have won, or which they have pur- chased with the wealth which they have gotten by the sweat of brow or brain ; but there are others who leap at once into patrimonial acres and into revenues amassed by some grim ancestor of a forgotten former time, or who wear coronets because in their veins there runs the blood — after all, no redder than a churl's — which they have drawn from the Plantagenets or Howards. These last are the types of us, in our possession of every spiritual blessing. We inherit them by God's great adopting love ; and each one ransomed spirit in the heaven, even the sweetest-harped and loftiest-throned, will reverently sing, " We got not this place in possession by our own hand, neither did our own arm save us; but thy right hand, and thine r, r THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIP. 79 arm, and the light of thy countonance, bocause thoi hadst a favour unto us." I^ut while the revelations of the future are to disclose the details of the believer's happiness, on one point the apostle expresses himself as perfectly certain now: "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as lie is," Tliis is not the language of hesitation, nor even of conjectiire, but of lirni and well-warranted conviction. And he had reason for tlie assurance which he so confidently expresses ; for to have that mind tliat was in Christ Jesus, was the highest apos- tolic ambition ; and that men might learn his lowliness and embrace his yoke, was one of the purposes for which Christ came into the world. Brethren, here is the highest object of Christian attainment — to be like Christ ; here is something more enrapturing to the renewed soul than monarchy or minstrelsy of heaven ; that is, the disposition of heart which will tit the king to beseem himself with dignity, and the harper to discourse music worthy of his fellows in the choir. Christ did " leave us an example that we should follow in his steps," and it becomes us, like the Tsalraist, to " set the Lord always before us." The aspirant after excellence in any particular pursuit strives to imitate the selectest models. The young sculptor would fain wield a Phidias' mallet. The artist follows reverently the history of Ilatfaelle or Angelo ; or, placing before him some hero of his hearts idclatry, longs to be the Apelles to paint his especuil A l.exander. There are few of us who have not lived imitative lives, and longed to be like such an one who in one or other department had excelled his ill IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) C V. % 1.0 I.I if 1^ H^ us 14^ 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 11.6 M 6" ► Pi <^ ^% o1^' Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WKST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716)6/2-4503 :/i ^ 'f ^ 8o THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIP. t fellows. But all human models are imperfect ; and so perverse, moreover, is the nature we inherit, that we are fain to reproduce rather the weaknesses of great men than their strengths. The same infirmity besets ns in our aspirations after Christ-likeness; but our model here is complete and is Divine. In that all-perfect humanity, never divorced from the Divinity which it enshrined, but shining upon us nevertheless with its individual glory, there was neither weakness nor blemish ; there is a perfect human nature which no guilt, either trans- mitted or personal, had ever stained. But though to aspire after that model is the believer's life-work, and he is bent, with a purpose which never falters, upon growing up into that likeness, there are rebel elements at work within him, and "hindra,nces strew all the >^.y." Those of you who have a spiritual history, who have learned to battle with these evil forces which once held you in thrall, and which are loth to re- linquish the lordship over you which they have almost claimed by prescription, and which they have held for years — you can understand the difficulties of the soul's upward progress — you can tell of years of struggle, with sometimes triumphant and sometimes only doubtful mastery, of season? of alternate depression and gladness, of fierce temptations, to resist which has required your utmost manhood and Divine help withal, and which have left you bathed in the sweat of very physical exhaustion, as if overtasked by the drudgery of labour. You know how the inbred depravity has doggedly fought with you at every footstep — how, when beaten, i.t has retreated fighting — how the old man, as Bunyan Si THE BELIEVERS SONSHIP. 8r il \ liath it, has given you a gripe which almost strangled you, when you thought him paralyzed in the last gasp of age. The Christ-likeness, believe me, is not drawn upon the soul in a moment — taken, like a photograph, by a flash of the sun. By the regeneration of the Holy Ghost the nature is renewed, I know, and the man is started fairly upon his new and noble work ; but the precision and detail of the likeness, like the finished picture of the artist, arc the labour of thought- ful and toiling years. Through many failures — through dreads — of hypocrisy, of indifference, of shortcoming, of worldly-mindedness — seizin<7 upon the spirit and shaking it like a spiritual ague — through hurricane blasts of passion, and frequent rain of tears — through baptisms fierce as of fire, and exhausting as of blood — through the toil up new Calvaries, and the passing through strange agonies, which, in their measure and in far-off and reverent distance, may be called the soul's Gethsemanes — through all these must the believer press into " that mind which was in Christ Jesus," and even at the close of an existence, during which he has never lost sight of the purpose which came into him at the time of his conversion, he may feel that he has exhibited but an imperfect copy of his glorious Pattern. But oh ! the p''omise stands comforting and sure — and I speak it for those of you who know what conflict is, and who need to be encouraged in your hallowed war — by and by the soul's ambition will be realized, by and by the Spirit will be batHed and thwarted no longer, by and by his presence will burst upon us ; and when we see him it will be a transforming I. F !, 82 THE BELIEVER'S SOJSISHIP. vision : " we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is." Eejoice not over us, ye our enemies, when the sword flies out of our hand, and we are apparently worsted in the fight ! Triumph not over our decrepi- tude too soon. There is a time coming when we shall have breasted the last wave of trial, shuddered at the last tramp of demon, groaned beneath the last wrench of sin, gazed upon the corpse of the last destroyed enemy ; lor Christ hath risen, and lives ! and " when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is." Brethren, if you are in Christ to-day, it is yours to delight yourselves in the contemplation of your coming privilege. To be like Christ, fully and without a drawback to reflect his image, this is the destiny of your ransomed nature. In this world we hope to follow our pattern, to remind others somewhat of the Saviour with whom we have companioned, to cause men to say of us when they see our strife after holy living, "He has been with Jesus;" but yonder, if we be faithful unto death, we shall receive this, the highest and most enrapturing crown of life, perfect assimilation to our Lord. To us now, with the scales of mortality upon our vision, and its faintness evei lurking about our hearts, the thought is overwhelming. Summoned, as were the chosen, to the Mount of Transfiguration, we should "fear," as they did, "to enter into the cloud ; " but not only will Ke> be trans- figured, and appear with the veil of humanity dropped, in all the glory of the essentially Divine, but we too shall have a transfiguration. Ours will be the Tabor- expvirience as well as the Tabor-communion ; the fashion i * THE BELIEVER'S SONSHIP. 83 I -' of our countenance shall, be changed ; there shall be a human nature, not scarred and fallen, but erect and beauteous as in the ancient Eden ; the mind, no longer error-stricken, shall exult in the white light of Truth, unwarped by any medium that would distemper its rays ; the soul, freed from its bondage of evil habits, and from the tyranny of an evil heart of unbelief, shall gratefully realize its purity, and find in God its heaven ; and the whole man at length, through redeeming grace, shall fulfil the end of his creation, and there shall be a peopled recompense, in which Jehovah shall look round upon a family gathered out of this lost world of ours — a family without a rebel and without a prodigal — and every happy spirit reflecting his own image, mado like him ; " for we shall see him as he is." i «ii I**^ ry- A> VI THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE "And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces t(» tho earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, but is risen."— Luke xxiv. 5, 6. THE love with whicli the Saviour had inspired his disciples, and especially those leal-hearted women who followed him, was not quenched by the many waters of his passion and death. Cherished hopes had been cruelly blighted, schemes of personal aggrandisement had been proved of impossible fulfil- ment. The cross was a marvellous mortifier of ambition ; the tomb might well have become the sepulchre of faith ; and those bewildered ones, who had failed to penetrate the real glorification of the Messiah, might be excused if they declined to follow him now that the grave had closed upon his body. But the strong affections of those loving hearts prevailed over tho scanty faith of those perplexed understandings, and though there hardly lurked perhaps in any heart the hope of resurrection — though they spoke of their faith in the past tense, and had interred in that " sepulchre hewn out of a rock " each patriotic hope and personal dream of freedom — their love burned in their hearts, tinged their whole history with a melancholy sadness, I L THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. 85 and drew their charmed footsteps very early in the morning to the place where Jesus lay. You can fancy their wonder when, laden with the spices and ointments /\vith which the loving work of embalmment was to be / done, they came to the sepulchre on the morning of I the third day; and, instead of the massive stone, I imperial seal, pomp of soldiery, and all the other \ imposing attestations to his burial, beheld a vacant neighbourhood, a removed barrier, a disused shroud, a forsaken tomb, and " a vision of angels which said that he was alive." "With what eager recollection would the} urge themselves to recall all that he had said while he was yet with them ; how many enigmas which had baffled them would this wondrous event interpret ; with what intensity of affection would they cling to the risen Saviour; and how diligently would they set themselves to be more fully instructed in his purpose, and to be more fitting instruments for the work which he had chosen them to do ! Brethren, I want you to accompany me this morning, that we may together journey to behold the place where they laid him. You climbed with me the holy mount, and watched him, awed and wondering, as he entered into the cloud ; we thought together upon his soul, now troubled with the darkening of the sorrow; we heard his last public discourse. Let us now go to the grave to weep and worship there. Nay, be not affrighted. It is no place of skulls. No hideous images of death surround, no horrors of the discovered charnel, "no festering limb and rotting bone, in dire confusion tossed." We wend our way amid the foliage and the flowers ; it is but a Sabbath ! s: i ! 86 THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. stroll into a garden in the spring. And if through our tears we grope wilderingly for the sight of the body, the rebuking angels speak to us in the words of the text : " Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, but is risen." It will be well, perhaps, in the first place, to remind ourselves of the e viden ces, and then of the purposes, of the resurrection oTTThrist. The necessity that the resurrection should be fenced round with impregnable evidence will be manifest, if you consider the place w?iich it occupies among the massive facts upon which the Christian system is founded, and the prominence which is uniformly ascribed to it by the inspired writers : " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins." And in this age of daring and rash thought, when speculators rush into regions which they were never chartered to tread, and when men, with seeming modesty and deprecating humble- ness, dig about the foundations of Christian truth — if haply they may be undermined — there is the greater reason that we should mark well the bulwarks of Truth, and consider her palaces, that we may tell it to the generation follov ag. They who deny the reality of miracles, and speak — some flippantly, some strongly — upon their being matters rather for derision than for argument, would do well to remember that their denial is in fact an absolute denial of Christianity ; for the resurrection of Christ is the greatest and sublimest of his miracles, and if this be disproved, the faith of all believers is vain. It is impossible, of course, to strike out new sources of evidences in proof of this historical fact ; or, if the ingenuity of mind should essay to do so. i V THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. 87 they would lack of necessity some of the strength and venerableness which are connected with the " pillar and ground " of the former time. The vintage might be extensively advertised ;;nd critically praised, but it would lack the ancient aroma, and " no man having tasted the old wine, would straightway desire the new, for he would say the old is better." There are what may be called external and internal lines of proof. The resurrection involves the reality of the death, and this is a fact which in ancient times was never doubted, and which it was reserved for the infidelity of the moderns, driven from every other vantage ground, to assail. A million and a half of people saw him die ; the Eoman governor judicially affirmed him to be dead ; the blood and water issuing from the spear- wound, and showing that both the pericardium and the heart had been pierced, demonstrated his death. The soldiers, when in their barbarous mercy they brake the legs of the malefactors who were crucified with him, " when they saw that he was already dead" — not that he had swooned from the excruciating suffering, but that life had actually departed — " when they saw that he was already dead, brake not Ms legs." It is an established fact that, in the days of Pontius Pilate, Jesus of Nazareth did actually die. It is a fact also of importance in this deepening series, that Christ was buried. Interment was not often granted to crucified criminals, but in this case Provi- dence overruled the sordid in Pilate, and the cautious in the Scribes and Pharisees, to multiply the witnesses of the resurrection. Joseph of Arimathsea, a rich and honourable man, "went in boldly unto Pilate, and til n- t 88 TUB EMPTY SEPULCHRE. begged the body of Jesus," and with decent observance, and with customary respect, they laid him in the grave. There was no pomp of sables nor mockery of nodding plumes, no hired mourners wailed in the cold traffic of unfelt sorrow, but heart - mourners wept at his burial, and the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre was rolled there by regretful hands. Do you think it suspicious that these offices should have been per- formed by those who were followers of Jesus, and foolish of the governor to have given up the body ? The scribes and priests of old seem to have thought with you on this matter ; and, to prevent either spolia- tion or jugglery, they demanded and obtained the imperial seal upon the stone, and a troop of watching so^ '^"" . Now remember that the sepulchre was a ca"* iewn out of a rock, whose granite ribs defied the sapper's power. There was no aperture out of which the body could be surreptitiously conveyed ; the only possible entrance was by the rolling away of the stone. It is by no means an unimportant fact, that there is no doubt about the Saviour's burial. J Another fact patent to all the world, which the / exultations of Christ's friends and the dismay of his I enemies alike combined to testify, was that the V.sepulchre was empty on the third day. The women who were the earliest visitors went wondering to tell the disciples it was empty. The soldiers who had been sent to guard it went wondering to the priests who had hired them with the tidings. There were the clothes and the spices, but there was no body. The sepulchre was indubitably empty on the third day. Then comes the question, How came the sepulchre to m THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. 89 be empty ? There have only been two theories put v forth in answer to this question. The rulers said the \ body was stolen ; the apostles said the body had risen. / No third solution has ever been tried to solve the problem of the empty sepulchre. Then let us examine for a moment the Jewish account of the matter. If the body was stolen, either the friends or the enemies of Christ must have committed the astounding felony. It is manifest on the face of it, that the enemies of Christ had no motive but to secure its retention in the grave ; or that if they had had it in possession, they might at once have produced it, and so covered the Eedeemer's cause with the ignominy of detected imposture. They therefore were not the perpetrators nor the abettors of the deed. Then the friends of Jesus — his disciples — must have been the doers of the wrong ; and " this saying is commonly reported among the Jews unto this day." I would have you consider the cumulative im- probability which gathers around such a supposition. Men of brave hearts might have planned such a daring adventure ; but the disciples were cowards in his life- time, when he was at hand for their rescue, quailed and stammered when they were taxed with being his followers, and, on the first symptom of danger, with one accord forsook him and fled. Men of ti*ue faitli might have risked something to lealize a brilliant dream ; but the disciples' faith died with the Master — scarcely a hope lingered in their minds that they would ever behold him again, and they were but half assured as to the truth which he had chosen them to deliver. Men of strong arm might, in the hardihood 1 t ■■ ; ■. 90 THE EMl-TY SEPULCHRE. |i| of desperation, have assaulted a superior and well- disciplined enemy, five times their number ; but timid fishermen, who had n*" ^aith in their own cause, would as soon have dared a general rebellion, as ha\e attacked a force ordered specially tc watch against their coming, and composed of bronzed veterans scarred with the woundo of many a fierce campaign. Besides, look at the palpable absurdity of the soldiers' story : " His disciples came by night, and ttole him away while we slept." This marvellous deed was done, if done at all, by twelve men against sixty — done when all Jerusalem was filled with the excitement of the story — done when the moon shone brilliantly through a cloud- less oriental sky — done at the season of the Passover, when the streets were thronged all night ; and though the strict discipline of Eoman military law adjudged death as the deserved penalty of a sentinel's slumber at his post, we are required to believe that this inexorable drowsiness settled on this night upon the whole troop, that they sank into a slumber so opportune and so sound, that no rolling of the stone, nor disciples* stealthy tread, nor earthquake's shock, awoke them; and that the disciples had calculated their chances so /Admirably, that at this period of simultaneous and con- Ivenient coma they accomplished their purpose, and < Icarried ofi" the body. The lie is too transparent to deceive even the most credulous Hebrew, and the very clumsiness of the apology sets in clearer light the grandeur of the truth. Then if you consider the manner in which the witnesses gave their testimony, you will feel conviction kindle into certainty. To attest the sincerity of the testifiers, as well as the THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE, 91 verity of their witness, you liave but to look at time, and place, and motive. Impostors travel into spots remote, wait until distance of time seek revenue of gain or power as the results of their perseverance in falsehood. But the apostles athrmed the resurrection, when the tale yet thrilled the city's heart and made it beat with faster pulses, or of hope or anger ; they said it in the public places of resort where Lie sufferer's feet had trodden. In the synagogues where he had taught, in the hall where he had been scour THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE, 95 so irliich you it is with Dpear coii- •the ay be the false Christs and false prophets of whom I have so often warned you to beware." The predictions of Christ respecting his own death and Kesurrection were prophecies as real and sacred as any which issued from the lips of ancient seers ; and if they were falsified, utter ruin must have come upon his cause and fame. And yet this was the truth which the apostles most especially proclaimed — Jesus is risen. They sounded it in the startled hearing of the Jews, who marvelled at their boldness, and of the rulers, who tried to compass the silencing of the witness which they could not gainsay. "Do the rulers know indeed" — the murmur circulated widely among the observant peoples — " that this is the very Christ?" "Jesus is risen!" said the fervent Peter on that pentecostal field-day of the first Gospel-crusade, and to three thousand hearts the truth wended its straight and conquering way. ** Jesus is risen !" proclaimed the preachers of the truth, whom persecution had scattered into many nations of the earth, and everywhere they found that they were proclaiming, not only a marvel, but a power. Jesus is risen ! It is the clarion call of the highest inspirations yet ; and when misgivings harass our faith, or insolent scepticisms assail our ancient trust, we may go visit the deserted sepulchre, and see graven on its scarp of rock as an attestation of the character, and an epitaph to the memory of the tenant that once was there, " Truly he was declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead." Again, the Resurrection of Christ was the seal of the acceptance of his sacrifice, and, by consequence, of infinite moment to confirm the hopes of the world. u 96 THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. The purpose of the incarnation — that to which all others were subsidiary — was the death of Christ, as a substitute for the sins of the world. "We are not going to loosen our faith from this ancient anchorage, al- though there be flapping in the sails of the vessel, and evil spirits whistle up a breeze. " We preach Christ crucified, the power and the wisdom of God." The world is represented as being under the dominion of death, and of him that had the power of death ; and to bruise that power in its head, and to rescue from that strong man armed, and bind him and spoil liis goods, and to abolish death by death, and to bring the long-hidden secrets of life and immortality to light; were the designs for which Messiah came. All that was required to constitute a valid substitute — freedom from hereditary or from personal taint, and supremacy over the law which had been violated by his clients — met in the person of Jesus. All that was required to constitute a perfect sacrifice — willinghood to suffer, capacity to bear the suffering, the endurance which blenched not from the curse and from the midnight, but was constant and heroic to the end — all met in the offering of Jesus. And when the last groan was wrung from the victim, and the last cross-message spoken, and the last mighty litany uprose with its majestic mercy, he said, " It is finished," and he died. The interval between the death and resurrection, though crowded with important incident, and not for a moment regarded anxiously in heaven, where they knew the end from the beginning, was to wondering hearts on earth a season of palpitating haste, and strange, expectant, fluttering hope and fear. If there was a THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE, 97 time when suspense ever rested upon our destinies, it was then; and doubt might have been excused its questionings, and loving faith its wailing searcli for the living among the dead. Why abides that debtor in the dungeon, gazing moodily through the loopholes of his enforced retreat upon the sward, fresh carpeted with emerald in honour of the fair young spring ? Because the law has claims upon him that are yet unfulfilled, and an inexorable creditor exacts the uttermost farthing. "Wliy walks that debtor forth, imgyved and buoyant, exchanging greetings with his fellows upon equal terms, looking forth upon the sun with glances as free as are his own, moving among the fair fellowships of earth " with joy and with the certain step of man ? " Because the demands of law are satisfied ; the justice which imprisoned him, pro- tects him; and in the conscious, common I'j'it of manhood unembarrassed and uncrimed, he can say " Hands off" to each intrusive touch upon the shoulder. So, while Christ was cribbed in the prisoning grave, it was a token to the world that the Surety was detained because the debt was yet unpaid ; but when he rose, it was the symbol of the world's deliverance from the legal pain, and from the grasp of bondage. " He was raised again for our justification." Power to forgive sins accrued equitably from the weakness of the crucifixion, and from the humiliation of the grave. The stone was rolled away from the destiny, as well as from the sepulchre. The angel who sat upon it received his commission in that moment which John, in the glad apocalypse, saw him flying through the midst of heaven to fulfil. There, in the tomb, emblemed .11? \\ h I. G 1:1 I Ifl i 98 THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. \'i .< by those clothes of death, the world's guilt and ruin lie ; there, in the Christ risen and glorious, the world's hope and healing live. Do you wonder that that faith should be precious which trusts in the liesurrection of Jesus ? do you wonder that we should keep Easter with such joyous hearts ? do you wonder that apostles should break out exulting]/, " It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again" ? or that, worthy to be linked with that soul- charming name, like a warrior's chiefest battle brought to mind always when men speak of him, we should preach " Jesus and the Resurrection " in the ears of ransomed sinners ? Brethren, take its comfort to yourselves. Not inaptly, nor without a purpose, do the Easter and the spring- time come together. That first, fresh April blossoming of the woodland with its inimitable green of foliage, is bright type of the fortunes of the race, redeemed by Jesus from the long winter of triumphant Death. Let Nature, thus interpreted, repeat the consolation which Scripture loyally affirms : " Now is Christ risen from the dead." *' Is there a !.;dart that loves the spring, The witness can refuse ; Can mortals doubt, when angels bring From heaven their Easter news ? When holy men and matrons speak Of Christ's forsaken bed, And voices high forbid to seek The living 'mong the dead ? " Just a word upon the third thought. The Resurrection of Christ is the earnest of our own rising, the pledge of immortality to the race for whom he was the second Adam. Tlie enfo^'cement of our own resurrection as THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. 99 ■rection pledge second resulting from the resurrection of Clirist, forms, you remember, the staple argument in that magnificent chapter (1 Cor. xv.) which has become the chosen elegy of the church. The apostle there speaks of Christ as the first-fruits of immortality. True, there had been exceptional instances of resurrection before Christ — instances all of them of the prelusive exercise of Im power — the daughter of Jairus, and the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus, and the saints which rose in brief visit to their kindred in the Holy City when the warders of the invisible world were stunned by the great shock of the Crucifixion. But all these died again, and the graves, which had been prematurely opened, received them in the fulness of their appointed times. Christ only " dieth no more ;" and just as when the queenly moon comes forth, around her come her attendant stars, trooping one by one, and just as the first ears of corn were waved before the Lord in pledge that the great harvest of Palestine should be gathered, so, as we stand by the Saviour's vacant sepulchre, we may rejoice in the certainty that our own shall be vacant too, and that " because he lives, we," who believe in him, " shall live also." Mourner ! believest thou this ? Why go weeping to the grave, moaning with an inner sorrow so consuming that it has dried up the fountains of the tears ? Your loved ones are not there. Why seek ye the living among the dead ? If ye answer that 'tis human too, for " Love is not the soul's alone ; It twines around the form we woo, The mortal we have known ; " still, the very form you clasped is not there — it is I 100 THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. slowly dying into the life of the glorified and spiritual body. We know not when the last trump shall sound, but it shall not be until each mortal is ready for the re-union ht in his light; and then we have looked into tho vale of the future, upon which there has fallen the broad and shadowless light of eternity, and tho allotted recompenses have risen up before us, and wo have seen tho habitations of tho righteous and tho abodes of tho wicked, alternately smiling and frowning, anil shining and glooming, until wo have almost heard tho melody of the one, and shuddered at the wailings of the t)ther. And inasmuch as it " is not good " that the soul should be without this highest knowledge, inasnnich as enlarged acquaintance with spiritual truth is associated with inviiluable benefit, when you consider the temple as the scen^} of instruction, you will not refuse to join in the language of the text : " I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise." ■ 43 THE SANCTUAR Y. H3 10 llH v.. ill L lilc -l\\o u tbo Great ire ouv ; aiul , \ipou liscu \\\^ of the >vuately |i(T, until ue, and Mie soul lumcli as Issociatcil le temple [e to join Bm to tlte It in tlw scow, of nmsahifj'ou, — W(5 Iiiivo coiiLiiiually to inotini (»V(!i' lli(5 udlicXivo occiinciiKUiH tliab art! ])ii|)p(>niii^ around iis. AIIIicLioii and (li.sa|)])()iiiUii('.iil; and Ix'-rciavcinent and trial c(>in(! like, ^lim spcicLicis, liaunl.in^; nwc.vy avemio, and constantly lliLtin;^' across tlu) patli of life. TIio univorso is cliarj^ajd vvilli \vim!|»- in<^. " Man is horn to trouble." " The whohs creation {^roanoth and travaiictli in i)ain together until now." The rcli,L;ion of tlio (jlospcl is dcsi^iuid to impart com- fort to those who am in sorrows. iht, hy whom it was .vcvcahMJ, is tiio ({(»d of all consolation ; iind he has (Mdtodicd the m(!ssa;j;e which his iinnist(!i'H are authori/t'd to dijlivcr: "(.'ond'ort ye, condort ye, my ])eople, saith your (Jod." These consolations ani souji^ht for and applicul in jtrivate life, hut it is in the house of (jod thai they are brouj^ht out in their ia-ij^htcHt effulgence, and with their clearest lustre. Thtie are, ])(!rhaps, no cases in the vast varieties of human grief which have not been alleviated here. Jfcre the contrite one has been led to dry his tears and hush his throb- bings at the sight and at the foot of the cross. JLtc the poor beggar of this worltl's riches has been put into i)osscssion of the " pearl of great ])rice " and tla^ " unscarchaljle riches of Christ." Jfcrc the oppressed and anxious have cast their burden on the Lord, and found that he could sustain them, //ire the father, bereaved and childless — of whose offspring death has deprived him, written in the very heart of his existence a sudden and strange erasure, and smitten to the dust the hope and summit of his pride — has been led to look upward and to quiet nis convulsive agitations, and bless and worship the liedeemcr, w I'M 'if,''' il' i M has tratliered the I II ill jij \ ' I ! ! ! 1 , i ! \ i 1 1 I 1 1 ^ ! \ fii THE SANCTUAR Y. H„.. the ^^;idow has be n M to ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ Helper, and ^^^f**^' ^e H^re the orphan, awaking ,nore than a husband l"™ ./j^^^ messed him with ftom the trance ot gnet which h PP^^^^^^_ ^^^ ^^^ a mute insanity, has ^^^''^^A his "Father, who .3 tears in his eyes h»^,,— f tLaned one, in the in heaven." Here the P°°\ J° has felt him- prospect ot encountenng the l'^^ ^^^^^^a inpatient llf nerved with the strengfliof '^ I- > ^^^, ^,, fox the final ^^^f ■■ Th^ ca e" s mine, and the house you not '^^^P*. / ,*ene ot consolation to me ? of God has been the cene ^^^^ ^^^^^„^ Then, brethren, wecaU upon you F ^.^^ ^^^^ ^^ ot the rsalmist when he says^^ .i^e." the house ot God, - "i the v»ce oj^y ^^^ ^^ ^lie It is tU scene «{ f "^i„h and peculiar bless- ancient tabernacle this '"'^ * '"' ^ within the veil Za. When the high V^"^^ ^f'f^^^^ the fulfil- :lhthe blood ot tl.e --«->;[rthee.andI wm roent ot the promise, ^^^^^^ ^^^ xnercy-seat, from commune with thee ft°f J^^ congregation through between the clierabim; and tue „ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ his medium enjoyed — ^ ^^j;, the veil ot the abrogation -^'W^'^^SyJ-^-^"^ *« ^''T, temple, which had efl«f^''*"[ ^,^„t in twain; the from the directer glory, vm^j^ ^^ ^^.^ushed. privileged and e'^" J^ into the innermost sanctuary, and see iu« innermost slinn^' ^^.^^ tliis blessing The house of ^oa is wio i THE SA YCTUARY. 115 11. Ltll mg ith is the aim- tient Are aouse ne ^ guage letn to n tlie tless- le veil fulfil- I will it, ftom [through At the of the people ju; the tbolished, [nnermost the upon blessing is permanently and delightfully enjoyed ; and there is not one of its services which has not a tendency to bring us nearer to the God we serve. Is it praise ? As the voice of our thankful melody has arisen, have we not often been wrapt in a kind of apocalyptic vision, and, piercing the narrow confines of time, have wo not beheld the heaven of our hope and prospect, with its venerable elders and its seraph bands of worshippers, and the Lamb in the midst of the throne ? and as we have gazed enraptured on the sight, have we not been constrained to acknowledge, " That palace of our glorious King, AVe find it nearer while we sing." Is it prayer ? Have we not gone into the very presence-room of God and conversed with him there, as a man converseth with his friend ? Have we not felt the warmth of the Spirit we asked for descending upon us, nerving us with a strange, because a heavenly, courage, and girding us for the battles of this stormy and uncertain life ? Is it the reading of the Scriptures ? Has not the sight of the Lord, a beam from his glory, a glance from his eye, flashed upon the sacred page, and discovered to lis varied beauties that were unknown before ? Is it the administration of the Holy Communion ? As we have bowed around the sacred table, have we not felt our hearts charged with the love of him who died for us ? And with no distempered vision, but in the calm prospect of faith, have we not seen him on the cross bleeding for our redemption, and on the throne pleading for our safety ? f m':-! lilr; !:■ W I J I il I t 'i i! tiS rT~hwthren, when this lap- Times there have ,'^^!"'^%" ye not remember turous commumonhas been ours- >^^.^^^„„,_y„„ festival « bn ^^^ ^^^^ ^j^,^^ ,,1,0^0 retrospeet ot ho A«= y ^^^^^ ^^j^^^^ ,,, , memory yo'^/™^'^. ^^Jf Then we call on you by you most ardently strive ! j jjj^ psalm.st : b:;trrtrtic:;:r:t.ooa,.ith the voice All the institutions ^"^^ ^^^ ,_ Je designed rich in blessing or '.»S;«^ /^f ,,Cers, and to clothe 10 subserve the P«f »''»"; ir'Iven. That this is ,hem with a -e "ess or hea ^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^,^^ especially true ^"^/^^^ ^ ..m ^ pre- sanctuary, many who a>e -^J often, wlien pared very cheerfu ly to »^ ;"° ^^ ,,,3„es, and the tired spirit, sated of the v v ^^^ ^^.^ perplexed with its concern ,pases * - ^^ ^^^ LlLy of J-Vti^et"" thlty." and refreshed it can ■■ dru* of the b.oo ^^^^ ^ ^^^^„„ „f „gain "lift^l'"^''^"'*- „ I'veco^^*" the house o£ ,rfold t-P'f-''"?'/;^^.' influences of heavenly prayer, and under the reMN ^^ ^^^^ ^^,^,.^ y^e, " your soul -"^ U,: ,,i„, and deep serene, li the fowler," f«<\«'^^^ '^;;e;er doubted at all. yo„ have wondered *^' y"" ^^'^'^^e when you ^ere Again, you can ^«» f J^e^f^i alluremerrt to battling strongly vvi A "'^^ 1 ^3 -^^ „,ade to your ,l„_almost irres^ - f-:^^„, „,- your extremity weaker nature— -ana ui Der our lOSO (Toice (.vever signed clothe Ills 13 of the le pve- wlieu and he dry U," and freshed ction of lOuse of leavenly ,he snare p serene, all. ^ou -were jment to e to your extremity T/IE SANCTUARY. 117 you iled to the sanctuary as to a city of refuge ; and Jesus was present there, and a glance of his pure countenance, and a touch of his invigorating hand, and you were strong to battle and to triumph. There was a moral torpor seized you in your Christian course, a spiritual paralysis chained you in bondage, your very soul seemed dead within you, and the time when you loved God and the candle of the Lord shone brightly in your tabernacle had scarcely an existence, save in faint and lingering memory ; and one memorable morning in the house of God, the glorious presence of the Saviour burst upon the chained one, you were galvanized by the cross, you stretched ibrth your withered hand to lift it up in prayer, and from that moment, in the strength and nobility of spiritual life, you have gone on your way rejoicing. Nay, haply a cold estrangement had come upon you, you had forsaken the association of Cln-iptian brother- hood, you were about to depart even from the outer- court worshippers, and to link yourself with the scoffer and with the ungodly, and you cast a cold glance of alienation behind you, as the expression of your unkind farewell — and there, on that last morning, your glance was met by another, even that kind up- braiding glance which broke Peter's heart, and it broke yours ; and thus the Temple was your birth- place, and the song at tlie close of tliat service was your nativity hymn, and at that moment you were born of God. Have you these reminiscences ? Then by their very sacredness, never to be forgotten, I call on you to joni with the Psalmist : " I went with them to the houMe of God, with the voice of joy and praise." I \ : ,'11 ! i i If "I ll viir. THE SALVATION OF ISUAKL "Oh tliat tlie salvation of Israel were come out of Zion ! Wlien Ood bringetli back the captivity of liis people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad."— Ps. liii. 6. THIS is one of tliose psalms which were wailed out at intervals during the time of captivity, when, though the hope of deliverance was still innerly cherished, the day which was to realize it had not dawned even on the clearest vision. All these psalms have a plaintive character of their own, such as might have been expected when all the outward circumstances were untoward, and no joy of home or freedom quivered in the heart whose fingers swept the strings. And yet the prisoners v/ere prisoners of hope ; and throughout all disastrous changes, confidence in the brighter future existed and reigned within them, as a principle too finely established to be shaken, either by tyrannous exactions or by fleeting years. Brethren, the centuries have rolled away, each with its own burden of vicissitude, and with its own record of progress ; but there is a long captivity which has never once been lifted from one fated nation, and beneath which they are languishing to-day. The mourn- ful story which Vespasian's medal tells is the story of • I THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 119 the Jewish nation now. The weeper still sits beneath the palm tree, the one hand listless alike from music and labour, tiie other covering the eyes whose lids droop heavily ; and she makes her sad plaint to a ■world which has too often scorned her, and to a church which has too often been indifferent to her claints, in the very language of ancient prophecy: " Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his lierce anger." It is my purpose — a purpose which, 1 fear, with every endeavour to be helpful to the cause I advocate, I shall very imperfectly fulfil — to present before you, in condensed fulness, the condition and the destiny of the once favoured race of Israel, reminding you — I. That their salvation is needed. II. That their salvation is promised. III. That Christians are hound to seek it hj personal effort and prayer. I. There is nothing which more strongly moves the sympathies of the thoughtful, than to behold some impoverished descendant of an ancient house gazing mournfully upon the demesne which he once called his own, but which has passed into the hands of the stranger; or some scion of the De Courcys and Plan- tagenets starving, in the squaHd destitution to which his spendthrift habits have reduced him. The inspiring associations of the past do but deepen the present desolation, and our pity for his fall is the deeper because of the contrast from his former heritasfo of O 11! , 'I. ! 1 , 1.' ■ 11 1 'I ( Sf 120 THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. laiik and fortune. Here is not an individual, but a nation thus homeless and ruined — a nation that could once outrival the proudest and most highly privileged. K it he considered that tlie antiquity of a family, and the great names won by tiiose who have belonged to it, aggravate the calamity of its fall, then your pity for this prostrate people may be intense, because in their case both these conditions exist. The haughtiest noble who boasts of Norman blood has not an ancestry half so renowned, nor a lineage half so pure, as the poor Jew pedlar, on whose vagrancy he thinks with pity, or whose sordidness he rebukes with scorn. The Jew had had a history for long years before the Babylonian empire laid the foundations of its jjower, before a dwelling rose upon the Capitoline Hills, before the Confederate Greeks assembled beneath the walls of Troy. Where the records of other empires are lost, or have drivelled into the veriest fable, you have accurate records, drawn under divine guidance, of patriarchal customs and tim^ s, when this wondrous people were chosen to be witnesses for God. When the antiquarian eye glistens before some fragment of the ancient Babylon, it may be that he gazes on the disinterred handiwork of some Jewish builder. When the traveller is wearied with the climbing of the Pyramids, it is not improbable that the Jew piled up their steep stairs of stone. When the explorer pene- trates into the royal tombs at Thebes, there stares out at him from the walls the very Hebrew physiognomy, which is so familiar in the midst of us to-day. Hebrew chieftains were brave, and Hebrew shepherds wealthy, when time itself was young. It will be THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 121 remembered also, that theirs are some of the most illustrious names which the annals of the world record. Why should they despair of statesmansliip, for whom Moses enacted his wise and patient lawgiving, and in whose veins the blood of Daniel Hows ? "Why should not they be brave, who are the descendants of Joshua and of the valiant Maccabees ? Why scorn them as if they were incapable of genius, when they are of the kindred of Ezekiel the fiery-eyed, or Isaiah the glorious, or the minstrel monarch of Israel ? Who shall say that all their wealth of wisdom was monopo- lized by Solomon, or that all their power of command was translated with Elijah, or that all their marvels of eloquence ceased with the last words of Paul ? Who will not weep that tluy should ever be stubborn ?.nd degraded, " of whom as concerning the llesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." But this nation, thus venerable in its history and rich in its renowned sons, has vanished. It is now " scattered and peeled," and its children inherit the displeasure whicii, as we believe, eighteen hundred years ago their fathers invoked upon themselves. The Prophet promised by Moses rose up in the midst of them, but they refused to hearken to his words; the Messiah " came to his own, but his own received him not." The day of visitation dawned in clearness and brilliancy, but they trifled or opposed through its noontide to its twilight, until it set before their eyes. Their own obduracy in the rejection of the Saviour issued in their own rejection from hcinrj the privilcr/cd people, and in their exile from the land where such glorious ojtportunities had- lee'/i yivcn. ::'', iili!;i 122 THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. I f ■ Just look more largely at each of these thoughts for a moment. The whole ritual of Jewish service supposes that there be a living heart in the wor- shipper; otherwise there is nothing in the services to redeem, them from formality, or to distinguish them from any other ceremonies of unmeaning symbolism. In Levitical times, this inspiring heart was the hope and promise of the Messiah ; in the times of the Redeemer's incarnation, it was belief in the Messiah wlio had come, and whose coming had been approved by miracles, announced by angels, and attested by Divine sanctions of impressiveness and power. But to the mass of the Jewish people this heart, this trust, was lacking. To them first were the tidings pro- claimed ; their ancestral right and the boundlessness of Christ's compassion alike necessitated that. But they rejected the counsel of God against themselves ; and, by consequence, the vitality languished out of their system, the symbol of God's presence abode no longer in the temple, and the temple itself v/as by and by razed to its foundations, so that not one stone was left upon another. How remarkable a fulfilment has there been of the woes of Hosea's prophecy: " The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim " (Hos. iii. 4). From that time there has been no king of the Jews, nor even the remnant of a nation over which he could reign ; they have now no high priest, for their genealogies are lost, and they know not, it is said, who are of the tribe of Levi and who of the family of Aaron. Their sacrifice is no THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 123 longer presented, for the chief Eabbi is an officer un- known to their law, and invested with no mediatorial authority, and in burdensome ceremonies they spend the annual day of expiation — ceremonies which cannot possibly profit them. The Mishna and Gemara of their Talmuds have so encumbered the law, that they no longer study it with reverence as their fathers did ; and though there are reactionary symptoms here and there, and some are evidently panting after the true light of the Word, of the mass it may be said with truth now as in the days when Paul wrote to Corinth, " When Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart." Not a few of them, from this fatal neglect of God's Word, have relapsed into a species of Deism, and multitudes into a total and eclipsing worldliness, which renders them practically atheists in the world. Their worship is more a bodily than a spiritual service ; and there is mournfully little, either of instruction for the mind, or of the cultivation of purity for the heart. They cling yet vainly to the dream of the coming Messiah ; but are readier to anticipate their uplifting from their manifold afflictions and their restoration to their patrimonial home, than the circumcision of the heart and the mastery over human passion, which we have learnt to be the highest glories of his kingdom. Alas for them! they have been so often mocked with shadows, that it is said they have a curse for him who shall calculate the time of the Eedeemer's advent. Alas for them ! if they are sincere and earnest, their consciences are but lashed into accusing activitv to be lulled into a delusive repose. Alas for them ! to a crouching fear of death they are all their lifetime l„| I ' '• 'v i I 1.1 • 1 i 124 THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. subject to bondage, and at the best have but a glim- mering ray, with which to light their pilgrim footsteps in their last travel to the dark unknown. Surely they need the kind offices of Christian compassion, and the prayer unceasingly offered .that their eyes may be delivered from their films of blindness, and the hearts >" the disobedient turned about to the wisdom of tlit^ . '. If you take lii- other thought — their dispersion into all lands — their condition will be still more appreciated in its painfulness and ruin. It is not idly that Jeremiah says, " God hath delivered them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither he shall drive them." How marvellous their history has been, and continues to be in this matter — scattered, to de- nationalize them — but one in the mighty sympathies which have defied all the disasters of the years ! You see them present everywhere — but having nowhere their belongings — rising up in the midst of national combinations, like a strange chemical element, which refuses affinity wdth everything with which men try to mingle it — always identical, but always homeless. There never was possibly a more terrible siege, either in ancient or in modern warfare, than the siege of Jerusalem. The mind sickens over the recital of the combined horrors of the slaughter and the famine, as they are recorded in the annalist's page ; but there were darker woes and fiercer cruelties behind. Decrees of banishment succeeded the downfall of the city ; the first wild attempt at insurrection was expiated by l!i i THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. licli try ess. ,her of the I, as .lere rees the by J25 the destruction of half a million of the remnant that was left; and, in the time of Hadrian, the heaviest penalties were threatened upon any Hebrew who re- mained in Jewry. He might not oar the blue waters of Tiberias, nor own a rood in the fertile Sharon, nor, save by stealth or by bribe, steal a glance upon the hill of Zion ; and, cruellest of all, he could not even have in Hebron the poor comfort of a grave, for he must wander witheringiy throughout succeeding ages. Though surrounding governments ran through all grooves of change, no reversal of the attainder came upon the disinherited Jew. Jerusalem had been over- run by successive hordes of strangers — all religions but the purest had been professed within its walls — all alien tribes could find shelter and traffic — but it was inexorably barred against the entrance of its own children. From the minaret there might gleam the crucifix of the Papist, or wave the crescent of the Ottoman, or shine the bright lances of the tameless Arab — the Jew was still proscribed; or if, now and tlien, there dawned a milder policy or more merciful times, he lived in his own home by sufferance, and, in literal fulfilment of the prophecy, he had " a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind, and feared day and night, and had none assurance of his life." And now, though they have larger immunity than before, they are practically in banishment still. They have no portion in Jerusalem, and scarcely a memorial ; they owe their tolerated presence in the Holy City to the protection which the British flag gives to its own subjects everywhere, or they have bargained for a foot- f: , i 1:| ' I? ' I! 126 THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. hold ; and, to regain this inalienable birthright, have purchased this gift of God with money. Not only are they exiled still from Jerusalem — exiled so thoroughly that it is computed that at this day there are fewer Jews in Palestine than in London — but there has been no colonization among them, by which they have become politically considerable in any other country, and have gathered to a head of power. The scattering has been complete and perpetual. This marvellous people have a sort of ubiquity. They live in every nation of Europe, they swell the tide of emigration, and turn up, mysterious and shrewd, at the antipodes ; they shiver in Siberia and Greenland, and scorch in Afric's heat, and bow before the simoom of the desert, and lave their wearied limbs in Gunga's sacred stream. In all countries where they have wandered, persecution and contempt have awaited them. In the East their sufferings have been multiplied ; the lazy Turk rouses himself to express his momentary anger against the Hebrew. Chivalrous France, classic Italy, romantic Spain, tolerant and thoughtful Germany, all in former days have treated the Jew with cruelty, and in later times with slander and with scorn ; and in England, free, enlightened, happy, there are dark historic pages which record the calamities of the Israelite — how avarice was rapacious, and chivalry unknightly, and honour, even royal honour, belied, and the common laws of right and honesty forgotten when their interests were concerned — how Saxon, Thane, and Norman noble alike thrust them from the courtesies of life — and how even the swineherd and the jester dared insult the velvet gaberdine with ribald oaths and with unseemly scorn. I ll THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 127 It is but lately that all the reproach of persecution has been wiped away, and even now there are but few of us that have felt as we ought for this people — still, after so many ages, branded with their original curse, and without a prince and without a sacrifice. Think with Christian sympathy of their political dispersion, and of their religious danger, and I am sure that there will be struck upon your hearts such a consciousness of needed salvation, that you will cry out in the entreaties of the text, " Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion ! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad." I, '■■i II. We come to notice that their salvation is attain- able. The harp is not always to hang idly upon the willows, nor to be swept by troubled fingers to wild and plaintive music. The penal curse is to be reversed; the malediction, though it has hung over the unhappy race for ages, is not eternal. The existence and opera- tion of the society whose claims we advocate to-day, are the proofs tliat a widespread belief of this has obtained in the Christian church. You feel, all of you, that when you feel tenderly towards this disinherited elder brother of the family, and long for his reinstatement in the inheritance which he has sold for nought, you have both warrant for your tender wishes, and hope that they will be realized in the love and words of the Father. But what do we mean when we speak of the salva- tion of Israel ? It is, perhaps, necessary to explain our terms, as the word may be variously understood. i 128 THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. % We at once affirm our meaning to be, tlie conversion of the Jewish nation unto Christ — their looking upon him whom they have pierced, not in rage, as many of them do now, not in remorse and hopeless- ness, as in the quick recoil of conviction they might be tempted to do, but in contrite and godly sorrow. All otlier meanings which may be put upon the word, are lacking if they include not this first and highest. Some look for political deliverance — a social salva- tion, beneath whose amenities they shall be refined into that higher character, from which their long persecutions have debased them. But if you invest them with all rights of citizenship here, or bring them to their own land with all the spontaneous gladness of a jubilee, but do not change their hearts, the curse, which has cleaved to them in their wanderings, would cleave to them equally in the city of their solemnities — an abomina- tion of desolation more hateful than the Eoman eagle flaunting in the holy place. Some look for mental emancipation — an emergence from the bondage of the Eabbinical law into a sort of free-thinking liberalism, which is cousin-german to absolute infidelity. Some expect only to see the Hebrews come over to a speculative adhesion to the Messiahship of Christ, or to a mere nominal adoption of the Christian name. Brethren, if all we do by our efforts be but to dis- lodge the Jew from liis ancestral faith, to unsettle his cherished ideas, and to supply him with nothing better, we incur a very alarming responsibility, and accomplish a very doubtful good. If we perr^uade to an intellectual THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 129 ver to :ist, or le. to dis- tle his better, inplisU assent only, though we secure silence from the blas- phemies and removal of the prejudice, we are just hiding light in darkness, and making darkness denser by the sad eclipse. If we are content with a nominal profession of Christianity, we give premiums to tlie crafty and the sordid, and lay ourselves open to the perpetration of those discreditable frauds upon us, which have already created a primd facie impression of dis- trust against a converted Jew. Nothing will at once fulfil tlie mission of the Chris- tian church and satisfy her pants of roused desire, but the real renovation of the Jewish race, that they may individually become heirs of the grace of pardon, reconciled to God through Christ, " having their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." That this result will be accomplished we do verily and in truth believe ; and that not by special miracle, not by any process other than that which makes every conversion miraculous, but by the power of the Holy Ghost, acting in persuasive might upon their own free power of choice, and making eftectual the appeal of the ministry or the utterance of the Word. Surely there is no irreversible hindrance in God, nor invincible stubbornness in Hebrew hearts against the truth. It is true that the curse has been pleaded in bar of Christian endeavour to reclaim them — ^just as it was pleaded in justification of the accursed system of slavery — but " God hath not cast off his people whom he foreknew." It is true that the Jews themselves acknowledge a peculiar hardness about Jewish natures, and that many others would be inclined to the opinion which Luther somewhat roughly affirms : " Ein Juden- I. I i '!■ I'i It :i 1 130 THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 1 Herz ist stock-, stein-, eiscn-, teufelhart ; " ^ but it is the stony out of the llesh whicli God has specially promised to remove. Itooted as are their prejudices, they can be noted out by Gospel husbandry. It was not only for a witness tliat Christ's pitying tenderness enjoined the " beginning at Jerusalem " of the tidings of great joy ; and, as if to shame and silence for ever Gentile indolence and un- belief, God gave, in the initial campaign of the apostles, a glorious Pentecostal type of the conversion of Israel, in the three thousand Jews who were smitten and saved under Peter's rousing words. There are many circumstances, moreover, whicli f xalt our hopes for the conversion of the Jewish people. It is not for nothing, surely, but in fulfilment of some divine purpose, that they have preserved their indi- viduality through so many centuries of years, and that the land of their fathers has been held in such marvel- lous abeyance of possession. Interpreting the future by the past, we may well conclude that his mercy yearns over them, " though his hand is stretched out still." Mercy hid herself behind all their sufferings in the former tim.e. Behind the bondage of Egypt was the education for a magnificent nationality, and the prcstif/e which came upon them by the manner of their deliverance, and the destruction of their enemies. Lehind the wandering in the wilderness was the training — never interrupted during the forty years — for the Canaan of inheritance and rest. Behind the Assyrian and the Babylonish captivities, there was the purpose to disgust them witli idolatry, and to make ^ A Jew heart is stick -stone -iron -devil-hard. if'' 'I HE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 131 iii^' 1; the -for the the ake their \viLiies3 to the Divine Unity more distinct and impressive. Some gracious design is manifest in eacli I)ainful infliction or seeming abandonment, and why should it not be so now ? Is it not astounding that they shouhl continue to exist ? Aboriginal tribes of the forest have died out before advancing civilisation. The Jew has had more per- secution than any of them, but he lives still. Violence and strife have pursued him unrelentingly ; he has been driven before Pagan lances, and scorched by Itomish faggots, and gashed by Turkish scimitars witli cruel wounds ; all the enginery of torture, and all the exactions of tyranny, have been employed to exter- minate him — and yet he lives. Empires have de- cayed — and he seems to have risen from their ruins. Kingdoms have been born — and he has assisted at the birth. Everywhere he wanders on his separate way, amid the Bourses of Europe, beneath the glare of tropic suns, amid costly archipelagoes of ocean. His distinction even of suffering is as glorious to him, as were the displayed phylacteries to the Pharisees of old. Amid many temptations to coalesce, though not the balance only, but the entirety of temporal motive inclined to persuade him to amalgamate — though with but little difficulty he might at one time have united with the Mohammedan power, and so have secured impunity and the chances of revenge — yet through all hazards he has maintained his separation, exclaiming with all the fervour with which men express a passion of their souls, " I am a Jew, I can never be anything else but a Jew. I mav become a Christian, I can never become a Gentile" — wearing his national reproach, J -I I . If ■ i I I ■i 1 1. 132 THE SAL V ATI ON OF ISRAEL. as a fallen king his diadem ; faithful to the traditions of his ancestors, even in his altered fortunes, " as the sunllower turns to the sun when he sets the same look which she turned when he rose." If you add to this consideration that which invests it with a still greater marvel — namely, that it is com- puted that there has not only been preservation of race, but an approximate equality in number, and that there are three millions and a half of Jews in the world to-day, just as there were when the chariots drave heavily after them, and the Eed Sea rolled back at their glorious leader's signal — you cannot refuse the conviction that all this has not been an arbitrary impulse, but a Divine arrangement ; that the Fath has tracked the prodigal in all his wanderings, anci that by and by there shall be the best robe, and the music, and the festival, because of the dead that is alive again, and of the lost that is found. There are not wanting indications, moreover, in the feeling of all thoughtful men, of an awakened interest in this great matter of Israel's salvation. The mind of Christendom is no longer indifferent. Christians of every name have interred their ancient prejudices fifjainst the Hebrew, and vie with each other to atone ior the criminal apathy of the past by being no longer laggards nor idlers, but by comjiassiiig this cause with the tenderness of sympathy, with the diligence of faithful labour, and with the importunity of prayer. Among the Jews themselves there are stirrings and quickenings, as of a nascent birth. Many questions and customs, which the Eabbinisra of the ages has enjoined, have been discarded by their modern in- ill with 3 of and itions has In in- THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 133 telligence ; and there lias been struck in many hearts a chord of earnest feeling which lias led them to the study of the prophecies, only to be dismayed by the conclusion that the Messiah has already come. Their jirejudices against Jesus have in many instances been diminished ; there is an eagerness to receive, and an insatiableness to devour, the New Testament Scriptures among many, who a few years ago would have scorned to touch them as unclean. And last, not least, many among them have been actually converted, and evi- dence, in consistent living and earnest missionary toil, that they have passed from death aiito life. In this review of probabilities, I have abstained from the mention of that wliicli forecloses the entire argument — while yet it is a sure resting-place for i'aith, — the absolute promise of God. It is, however, impossible to read many parts of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea's prophecies, or to follow the apostle's argument in the 11th of Romans, without resting upon the assurance, as clearly revealed as any part of the Divine will, that " if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead ? " Yes, Israel shall be saved ! God hath promised it, and it shall be so. Vain shall be all the efforts of the world and the devil to hinder it. Through the degeneracy of character, and tlirough the incrustation of prejudice, and through the inveteracy of habit, and through the teeming slaveries of years, the conquering word of Jesus shall make its resistless way. In deepest sorrow for the great wrong they did to the Crucified, "the land shall mourn, every family apart;" ; if. Mil 134 THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. I If ■ I ! until, sprinkled v/itli the blood they shed, they shall rejoice in his purity and healhig, and in the great day when the multitudes shall gather for the coronation of the Son of man, there shall be the Jew — eldest born among the aristocracies — with an ancestry that dates before parchments, " concerning the flesh " of the kindred of the King, bending the knee, foremost in the homage, lifting the voice most tuneful in the praise, nuLl, with an eagerness that no other can out- rival, " bringing forth the royal diadem, to crown him ■Lord of all." Brethren, to hasten this consummation all of you may contribute. The Hebrew people have many claims upon you. They are men, and they appeal to you for the common pitifulness of manhood. They are men in need and in peril ; and their sorrows, like the wounds of the ancient Greek, are their advocates before you. Much of our present privilege came to us by their means. Their bards sang for us. Their prophets thi'ill us yet. The grand fishermen and tent-makers whom tliey sent forth are inspirations to us at this hour. They kept through a long dark night, and amid a hoide of prowling enemies, the lively oracles of God. We have to atone to them for the wrongs of ages. Children of those who oppressed them, and who killed their prophets, we should do better than build their sepulchres — we should teach them how, holily, to live, and how, hopefully and triumphantly, to die. God has not finally cast them away. Christ died for them, and intercedes in his royalty for their THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL. 135 li recovery. The Spirit strives witli them with a power which many of them are unwilling to acknowledge. Nov/ your duty is before you — to work and pray for their salvation, and to let the active benevolence testify to the sincerity with which the lips have breathed the prayer : " Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion ! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad." i k, }\ m I I this land Icles Ings land Ihaii Low, tly. ;! 1 . lied heir i I IX. THE PRODIGAL SON.— I. SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 4 f " And he said, A certain man had two sons : and the younger of tliem said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his sub- stance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land ; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him." — Luke xv. 11-16. .., 1 THERE is something in this inimitable parable*' which goes siruight to every human heart. It is almost impossible to refuse an entrance to it ; it storms the strongest fortress of the soul. By its appeal to that latent sensibility to impression — that dormant or sepulchred humanness which underlies, in every man, his surface of passion or pride — it makesK^ its way to the sympathy of the rudest, and surprises the most callous into the emotion which finds its best relief in tears. The child loves to hear its simple ^ and affecting story ; and many a criminal, whom*^ crime has done its worst to harden, has been sub- 1l It it its that s, in lakegK^ rises best ^ iple ^ SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 137 dued by some stray hearing of its experience — it seemed so like his o\yn. The occasion of its utter- ance was partly in vindication of a character, and partly in enforcement of a principle. When the Saviour entered upon his public ministry, " the common people heard him gladly," and his tones of tenderness had a charm for tlie most detested and depraved. " Then drew near unto him all the publicans and siuners for to hear him." But this fact, which one would have thought would at once have commended his teaching, was tortured into an accusation against him by the malignity of the Pharisee-mind. From the beginning the scribes and Pharisees had honoured him with their hatred, had plotted to ensnare him into the utterance of sedition or of blasphemy, and had watched eagerly for his fall. All their prejudices were sho( A beyond forgiveness, both by the circumstances of his advent, ;iud by the whole tenor of his life. They looked for a King who should sway a visible sceptre, and dvvell a a royal pa" ace, or for a Teacher who should pay his court to the doctors of the law, and, having won over the highest minds, should select from among them : iiose who should be authorized to dispense his truth ; or, if not these, for a Prophet who should be recluse and uncourtly, and who, awful in sanctities wliich tl.c city would pollute, could therefore abide only in the wilderness. This was their ideal of the long-promised Messiah ; and when Jesus came — not a monarch, but a Nazarene — not a recluse, but a " friend of publicans and sinners " — not the retailer of esoteric doctrine to the privileged few, but the great preacher upon whose |::i !:■■ ^'Vi. I' I ^gBWiWH W i ' ilil M SI . I 1. 138 Z^^ PRODIGAL SON. lips hung the multitude with amazement and deligl;t — their prejudice deepened into an implacable hostility, which pursued ita victim to the death. It is difficult to conceive of a course more calculated to provoke them than that which the Saviour consistently pursued. They looked down upon the masses of the people with a contempt which they cared not to conceal. " This people which knoweth not the law are cursed ;" and if there was one class which was held in greater abhorrence than another, it was the class which gathered tlie taxes of a hated foreign power, and, dressed in a little brief authority, made their office doubly odious by rapacity and extortion. And yet, passing by the anointed priest, the venerable elder, the astute scribe — not to mention themselves, the reputable and ascetic Pharisees — these were the very classes to whom the new Teacher addressed himself, and in whose companionship he was wont to mingle. Enmity could hardly fail to seize upon so fair an occasion, and she improved it to the uttermost. " Surely," she would say, in her envenomed addresses and conversations — " surely you will no more listen to ravings like these ! 'i lie man has no character ; he speaks blasphemy— does his works of healing on the Sabbath — does not fast — drags out a mendicant exist- ence — eats with iinwashen hands — consorts with the vilest, doubtless from congeniality of I'eeliug — ' receives sinners and eats with them.' " Now it is partly to vindicate himself against this accusntion that the Saviour unfolds to them his principle of action, and appeals to the home-experience of th<'m all whether that principle was not one of the commonest of life. SJN AND nS CONSEQUENCES. 139 The principle is this, that the mind uniformly goes out in deepest interest, among all the objects of attach- ment, after that one which is in peril. The three parables illustrate it well. You do not wonder that tlie woman should be listless about the nine pieces of silver, safe in the desk or in the drawer, but that she should be active and interested about the one piece which slie had lost. You feel at once that it is nf.ture for the shepherd to leave the ninety and nine folded, though it were in the wilderness, and seek in pit and glen for the one hapless which had wandered astray. And when the illustration is carried higher, and the thing in peril is not a coin, nor a sheep, but a child, you feel, in your heart of hearts — and it is com- mended to you by your own experience — by the clinging tenderness with which you yearned over the dying babe, by the wakeful anxiety with which you tremble for the absent son — that the child that had been alienated, and around whose history had darkened clouds of shame and sin, would on his return wa'^e the highest raptures of deliverance, and be greeted with the heartiest welcome of the father's soul. It is impossible to compress all the lessons of this interest- ing parable into one discourse. The very riches of the subject have indeed hitherto deterred our approach to it ; but now that, in Divine help, we are venturing among its hidden treasures, we will confine ourselves at first to a brief meditation upon I. The 'prodiijaVs sin, and II. Its consequences; Leaving his change of mind, the bliss of his recovery, and the rather interestin ;,.^|; :!i.::' ! i probh f > '1 I ! i ! U 140 THE PRODIGAL SON. the elder son, to furnish ns with profit on some future occasion. And first, as to the prodigal's sin. It has struck me that some amongst you may be congratulating yourselves in secret that here at least you are safe from denunciation and alarm, because the delineation must be of uncommon sin, and of a broad and strongly- marked type of depravity, from whose brand you feel yourselves free. Nav, it is rather one of the most ordinary phases of impiety. I could select thousands'^ upon thousands in this great city who an.wer in every/ particular to the graphic description of the text. Do you see that young man, of high spirits and assured mien — full of generous impulses, carried away by a thoughtless enthusiasm — for whom almost everybody has a good word, about whom there can be many tales told of his quick and graceful courtesy, and of the money that he has squandered in gifts of romantic generosity — a little gay, to be sure, men say, but he's so good-hearted : he is no man's enemy but his own. He would not hurt a worm. He will be sure to see his folly, and it will be all right with him by and by. Ah! THAT is he — the very embodiment of the younger son before us. There is nothing in the narrative which would lead us to suppose that he was disfigured by malevolence or by cruelty. He is not accused of betrayal of human trust, nor of outrage upon human charities. He is very far removed from the sordid and the dastardly. He is simply, like thousands now, a careless, light-hearted child of the world, eager for present enjoyment, and, in the twining of his affec- tions round some realized good, forgetful of the great I SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 141 ^i I future for which he ought to live. There is nothing, therefore, in the case before us that can justify your inattention, or that can encourage you to hope that you will escape from the pressure of the truth ; and in the anatomy of the prodigal's transgression you will find the scalpel at work upon yourselves. He sinned, 1, Because of the alienation of his affix- iion. There was the root of his rebellion. He had forgotten the obligations of his position, and the kind outflowings of that generous heart which, for his indul- gence, had spared neither effort nor sacrifice. His heart had wandered from its early tenderness, and had become warped, by yielding to a sinful lust of freedom, from its filial love. From this alienated heart, in natural sequence, flowed his after disobedience and sin. And it is to the heart that we must look, brethren, to discover the secret of our own rebellion. We are conscious, each one of us, if we will calmly consider the matter, that our affections are naturally estranged from God. It has been well observed, and there is in the observation both philosophic and religious truth, that there is both an attractive and a repelling principle in human nature towards God. There are instincts in the soul which rise up responsive when we are told that there is a God, and which prompt us to seek for succour or to render homage. There are times in every man's life when he is irresistibly drawn out after God in sentimental or imploring adoration. Whenever emotions are aroused, whether they be of gratitude or of terror, the mind tramples in a moment upon its loudly -vaunted atheisms. When we thrill de- lightedly at some inspiring tidings, or before some i.b il I iil ' i 142 THE PRODIGAL SON, ] ! superb scene of travel — when we are rescued from some terrible peril, or give the heart-grasp to some loved one just spared to us from the gates of the grave ; or when, on the other hand, we are remorseful for some recent sin, in some awakening hour of con- science, beneath some great agony of spirit, when our burdened liearts can find no outlet but in prayer — when we bend over the fastly-waning life which we would give a world to reanimate, or when ourselves are racked in some struggle of mortal pain; — these are the seasons when we betake ourselves to the thought of the Divine, and call upon the God whom we have been taught to worship, to inspire our faith, or to remove our fear. But even in these moments, when we are attracted towards God, we are conscious of an influence that repels. We are drawn back, as it were, by the power of some invisible hand. In prosperity we are prone, the while we revel in the gift, to be forgetful of the Giver : our hearts become at ease in their possessions, and are inflated with pride. In adversity we either turn our own trouble inwards, and brood about it till it maddens us, or try to lose it amid the whirl of the world's excitements, or drown it in the cup of the drunkard ; and some, infatuated, seek to end the sting of the sorrow by the steel of the suicide. In our consciousness of sin, we either try to banish it from our thoughts entirely, or to believe that the chances of future time will favour us, or to pacify our consciences by a round of external observances ; or, in our own strength, to wrestle proudly with our corruptions, that we may overcome them. In all these conditions, " God is not in all our SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 143 thoughts," and we avail ourselves of any resource or expedient ratlier than seek rest and healing in him. Our hearts are alienated, there is no outgoing of affection towards the Creator within us. We coldly admit his existence, and that is all ; and when we think of him, it is either with supreme indifference or with abject terror. Brethren, I do charge home upon you this rebellion of the heart to-day, as the fruitful source of your every overt act of treason. Pressing through all the developments of external cliaracter, and all the secrecies of conflicting motive, I seize hold of your innermost heart, and I say, Here is the traitoi-. This heart has thrown off its allegiance, and leagued itself with rebels. This heart "is not right in the sight of God." With the heart thus alienated, you can the more readily explain the prodigal's impatience of^M^rmmi,, hankering after present licence of enjoy- ment, and departure from the house of his father. All these followed as the natural consequences of estranged affection. A yoke that is felt must always be galling ; an enforced servitude stirs up within the man all latent feelings of rebellion. Hence, when the principle of filial love was gone, the restraint of the home became irksome, the desire for independence grew into a passion, and then followed the project of the journey into a far country, and of the uncontrolled rioting in the portion of goods. And the like sad absence of reverent love to God has produced in all sinners the like impatience of his laws, and the like wanderings of heart and life. Feelings are the germs of actions ; and it is impossible for an affection to be cherished without an intensification of its energy i!i;; 144 THE PRODIGAL SON. which will give colour and direction to every activity of the man. We cannot take fire into our bosom, and then escape the penalty of the burning. We cannot without hazard play with the fang of the asp; nor, until the millennium shall arrive, may the child put his hand upon the cockatrice's den. You cannot look into yourselves, and study carefully your own spiritual state, without confession of your own guilt in this matter. You were indifferent or hostile to God's government. The very conscience which reminded you of his claims, obscured his loving-kindness from you, and urged you to hide from his displeasure. Then you fretted against his laws, and felt them an exacting tyranny rather than an honourable service. Then you were consumed with an avarice for present enjoyment; and, with a churl's selfishness, you took the bounty from the Father at the time when you were panting to rebel against his authority, and into a far country — the farther the better for your purpose, because the more seemingly beyond control — v qu too k your departure from the ancestral home. And with occasional variations^ now^oF more notorious, now of more deceitful impiety, this is the biography of you all. It is no strange tale of unexampled ill. It is no foreign history of evil, so atrocious and so alien tliat you shudder as at the news of a distant massacre, and thank God that you are not as other men. You are the iiigrates who have abused the Father's kind- ness ; you the spendtlirifts who have run to this excess of riot ; you the prodigals who are thus exiled from the Father's heart and home. Brethren, take the hunibling truth ; and deem me not your enemy for :ii!i )Ose, iok ^ith of you [t is klien icre, jF026 lind- this liled the for S/JV AND I2'S CONSEQUENCES. 145 telling it. It is no joy to me thus to dwell upon the prostration of the nature which I share. There is a natural pride within me, which would make me delight to vaunt with the loudest the dignity of human nature, if 1 dare. But it were folly to ci catri ze a wound while the nuschief festers in the flesh, or to hide a peril lest a shock should be given to the nervous system of the man in danger; and I but prove the sincerity of my good wishes for your welfare, when I follow you into the land of your wandering, and warn you to repent and to return. It is with like purpose that I now proceed to dwell upon the results or consequences of your sin. Tlie text intimates that there M'as a season of revelryA during which no outward calamities overtook the pro- 1 digal ; when he revelled in his delirium of pleasure, 1 and in his dream of freedom ; when passion drowned j thought, and silenced conscience, and banished fear ; f and when, with ample means and boisterous associates, he " withheld not his heart from any joy." It were to defeat our own purpose to affirm that there are no pleasures in sin. The world would never continue in its ways if it reaped no gratification. There is doubt- less something congenial to the wayward heart in the objects of its fond pursuit, and there is often thrown a blinding charm about the man, beneath whose spell unholy he fancies every Hecate a Ganymede, and dailies with deformity which he mistakes for beauty • but our point is this, that in every course of trans- gression, in every departure of the human spirit from (Jod, there is debasement in the process, and there is ruin in the inevitable end. I think this statement is I. £ '1' 4 , U6 THE PRODIGAL SON. h i i ii ■1 I borne out by the passage on whose truth we are now dilating. Tiiere are several ideas suggested by it, which present a fearful picture of the disastrous con- sequences of sin. Tiiere is, for example, what has been well expressed by the word homclessncss} H^ was in a far country ; there was the aBsenceTeven in his wildest revelry, of domestic joys, and orderly comforts, and all those nameless endearments which realize to a man the feeling of home. There are nations to which this idea of homelessness brings no sense of loss. You might talk vainly about home amid the bleak, gay, outside life of Paris. They have not the word in their language — they have not the thing in their hearts ; but to you who know what it is — to whom such words as hearth-stone, and roof- tree, and ingle-nook, and fireside, and fatherland, are symbols of blessed meaning, words less sacred only than those which speak of heaven and God — to you there will be a cold shadow, a sense of utterest and extremest desolation, when you think of homelessness, which can hardly be put into language. Sad are the visions which the thought calls up before you. You seem to see the wreck of some fair human thing who has lost the jewel of her womanhood, whom wolfish lust has cast upon society, and who lives to waylay society in furtherance of her terrible revenge. You see her — ey(5s sunken and cheeks hectic with intemperance — flitting along under the beetling eaves, gliding alter- nate from the dazzling dram-shop to the dark arches of congenial obscurity; or perhaps you follow her fugi- tive steps, stealthy as a guilty thing's^as she speeds * Kobertaon. ill' S/JV AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 147 fgi- *• Where the Itunps quiver So I'lir in the river, With many a lij^ht, From garret to basement, From window and casement, And stands with amazement, Houseless by night." Oh, IS it not a case for heart-break? especially when you tliink that this lost one once wore the comely snood of maidenhood, and carolled free and happy as the bird beneath the dear recompense of a mother's smile. But what is every sinner, what are \ you, if you are at this moment alien from Christ, buy homeless in the world ? When the storm comes, whither can you flee for shelter ? Beneath the world's cold arches ? You may drip, and drench, and shiver, but hardly shelter there. In the world's lighted halls of pleasure ? Ay, while you have money and means ; but when you have spent all, they turn you into outer darkness, let the storm howl ever so wildly. Look into the future, your future — the future which must come. How dark it is ! No__prospect ! How end- less it is ! No rest ! A homeless spirit ! Oh, of all calamities that can afflict me, of all vials of wrath which can be poured out upon my head, surely there can be none of more concentrated and appalling bitterness than this thought of a soul without a home. There is, again, the thought of waste and degradation. He " wasted his substance." " He joined himself to a citizen of that country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine." How is the fine gold become dim, and the grace of the fashion of it perished! and how close and natural J 'I uS THE PRODIGAL SON. i: w —^ _ tlie sequence ! First the roystering prodigal, then the spendthrift swineherd ; first the real degradation, in the waste of the property and of the time, then the apparent degradation, an occupation not mean in itself, Ijut degradint^ for the rich man's lieir. Every thought- ful mind must be saddened at the contemplation of the waste and degradation which are inseparable from the condition of the sinner. The two, indeed, are twins, and cannot be sundered. It is :iot necessary that there should be manifest humiliaticn, some great change of circumstance, some ostentatious fall from a height originally possessed, in order to c^egrade an individual. That is degraded which is below the intention of its being. There is no degradation in the\ peasant wielding the flail or whistling at the plough — ' there is degradation in a laonarC'^, if he be a tou6 and a gambler. There has been t^.'ue royalty in a cottage — there has been sottish viler 3ss on a throne. There is always sadr jss in the contemplation of ruin. Amid the broken columns of Baalbec or Palmyra, shapeless heaps, where once proud cities stood ; in some desolate fane, with the moonlight shini ig ghostly into crypt and cloister, the mind dwells regretfully upon the former time, when the hum of men broke lively on the listening ear, or througli the long aisles there swept the cadence of some saintly psalm. We gaze mourn- fully upon a deserted mansion, with the sky looking clear upon its crumbling masonry or naked rafters — the tall, dank grass in the court-yard, which once echoed to the hoof of the baron's charger — the garden, erst kept so trimly, now a bloomy wilderness of weeds and flowers, and trailing languidly over the blackening tage king ung SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 149 walls the ivy, that only parasite which clings faithfully to ruin. Sadder still is it to look upon the overthrown temple of the human mind, when morbid fancies prey, like so many vultures, on the distempered brain ; and when the eye which ought to be kingly in its glances, is dulled in the suUenness of the idiot, or glares in the frenzy of the madman. But to those who are enlightened to understand the true relation of things, and what ought to be their connection with the heavenly, there are sadder sights than these — sights that wake more solemn and pr^ssionate mourning — in the moral wastes of the world, and in the debasement of the nature whicJi once bore the image of God. I ^see wealth , the gift of a good God, and intended to be used for his glory, hoarded by avarice, or lavished in extravagance and sin. I see genius, that regal dower of Heaven to man, grovelTiiTgT'a pander, among the stews of sensuality, or blaspheming, an atheist, in all the ribaldries of scepticism. I^ee formalism and indifferei'ce, like Herod and Pilate, riialong truce together that they may slay the Holy and the Just One. I see men- — earnest, thoughtful, amiable men — engrossed as eagerly about present advantage as if there were no death to prepare for, and no future to inherit — living for themselves as selfishly as if they had blotted out from the universe its God. I see ^nergy misdirected, passion frantic and triumphingT trutlT prostrate, error in high and even in holy places, manhood run to waste, the inheritance of immortality bartered for a golden bauble, conscience discrowned and a slave, the Law broken, the Gospel rejected the blood of Jesas trampled on by those for whom it was shed, J'!! lijii: •1 li ; :l I \i > ' [:i. ; 150 THE PRODIGAL SON. and accounted an unholy thing. Oh, brethren ! is there not enough in the ruin to bring sorrow even upon an angel's gladness ? and should not you, who are yourselves thus degraded — and there are some of you here — arouse yourselves, and throw your whole souls into the search for a refuge against the day of vengeance ? for God will surely be avenged upon a nation and upon a people like this. And then there is, thirdly, tlic, Jliouglit of abandon- ment and famine. He " would fain Have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat : and no man gave unto him." How utter and terrible the destitution ! What ! friendless ? Where are the com- panions of his debauchery, the flatterers who lauglied at his jokes, and drank his wine, and spunged, vile human funguses, upon his reckless liberality ? Are they all gone from him — all? Is there not one to replenish the bare table, of whose sweepings he would have been formerly glad ? And are these thy friend- ships, thou hollow, painted harlot of a world ? " No man gave unto him," And then came the famine, with its sickening hunger, and its tortures of remorse, that wounded spirit vvhich was a still sharper thorn. " And he began to be in want." He, upon whom in childhood's years no breath had blown too rudely ; he, whose every want had been anticipated by a wishful tenderness that hardly brooked to slumber ; he, whose youth was gay with the holiday promise of a sky without a cloud — he began to be in want. So the famine came. But that dread famine of the soul is drearier, which sated worldlings sooner or later feel. That famine, when the spirit loathes its former food of Wn (I I .3 i •> S/N AND ITS CONSE Q UENCES. 1 5 1 ashes, and knows not where is aliment more congenial ; when it shudders at the boisterous greeting of its associates in sin, and would give worlds if it could efface from itself those sinful memories which have burnt into the soul like fire. Oh, there are seasons of wretchedness when this gaunt famine comes — this dreary sense of inner hunger — which make existence an intolerable burden. Jl^ar the statesman on the\ pinnacle of power, when some one wished him a happy 1 new year : " It had need be happier than the last, for \ I do not remember a single happy day in that." Hp,7 .r J the practised and wary lawyer, who had held the highest prizes of his profession so long, that he became the envy of the aspirants who coveted the seals : " A few weeks will send me to dear Encombe, as a short resting-place between vexation and the grave," Hear the accomplished and valiant soldier, brilliant alike at . the dinner-table and in the field : " Many a time when my society was the most courted, I would have given millions, if I had had them, to have had nothing more responsible about me than the soul of that dog." Such are the world's autobiographies, when they are candidly given, of courtiers who have been behind the scenes, and found their tinsel and their hollowness ; of infidel wits who have been disgusted with adulation ; of poets, consumed with soul-thirst, which passion's Geyser springs had maddened, but could not slake ; of emperors who have left the monarchy for the monastery, and have worn the cowl as more fitting than the crown, or who broke their great false hearts in some rocky islet's solitude, racked with the twin maladies of the body and of the soul. Brethren, those of you who ■';( i '■ M: I I ;l :i ':; 5 152 THE PRODIGAL SON. are yet in sin, has the famine come upon you ? or liave you not quite spent all ? If its teetli are not now in your flesh, you need but to go on in your waywardness, and you will feel them soon. Homelessness, waste, famine — and do you really choose these things when God offers you the banquet, the fortune, the heaven ? Why, oh why, will you spend your money " for that which is not bread ? and your labour for that which satisfieth not ? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me : hear, and your soul shall live." (Isa. Iv. 2, 3.) I could almost rejoice, and surely it were no unkindness, that the famine should consume you, if only, like the prodigal, you might be driven \J)ack to the Father's house. |< ;, til: II > Bii X. THE TEODIGAL SOK— II. A MIND S TRANSITION. •'Ami wlion lie came to himself, lie saiJ, How mar.y lured servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with luniger ! I will arise and go to my father, and will soy unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father." — LuKU xv. 17-20. ! i:,-p. 1 I 1 '* WE left the prodigal in the far country, degraded and in shame — reaping, in sad harvest from the swift seed himself had sown. Come with me into the far country again ; it will not harm you to burn for a while benaatli its torrid sun, and there is a sight to see which may well repay our travel. In the world around us there are many interesting objects of study. He whose eyes are open, and whose mind is covetous of knowledge, may find, wherever his footsteps wander, abundant entertainment and delight. Who can think without emotion, intense even to awe, of the grand problem, the endlessly-repeated miracle of life ? Not only does man live, but nature lives — the elements live, the earth, the air, the woodlands, the wate.rs all swarm with life. There is life in the drop of dew and I ■'. i t i !i' ii ! ! 1 -t »S4 THE PRODIGAL SON. in the grain of sand ; in tlie mould which dampens on the crumbling wall; in the phosphoric gleam which plays upon the ocean's wave. Our palaces are built with the skeletons of ancient life ; life cradles within life, and is evolved out of life and out of death ; and the very parasites which live within the living have often their parasites — " little animated miracles, claim- ing their modicum of nourishment that they may develon and exist." How wonderful all this is ! and yet how much more wonderful the history of one human heart ! Look at that world where thought is active and where feeling glows, where reason and passion meet and clash, and combat, now languid in the slumber of the sated senses, now thrilled with quickest pulses of desire. To read its mysteries, to study its changes, to understand its relations to itself, to the external world, to its fellows, to its God — to mark its action amid some surge of circumstances, or under the play and sweep of influences which aim to control it — how interesting and how profitable the endeavour ! Surely, in subordination to things higher, and whose sacredness may not be disputed, there is truth in the often-quoted assertion of the poet, that "the proper study of mankind is man." Again, what interest attaches to a battle-field, if on it was decided the destiny of a nation, or if the overthrow of some colossal ambition had made it a holy shrine of liberty ! How the eye glistens as it hears the tale of conflict, gazes upon the heights which daring valour scaled, or the covert from whose friendly shade the panting ranks swept breathless on the foe — how the whole scene is pictured on the fancy, as if we were compassed by the .« - I. A MIND'S TRANSITION. 1^ 3D smoke of war, and heard the din of musketry, and felt the clash of arras ! Brethren, our business to-day is with a human heart, in which there raged a battle fiercer than all strife of hostile armies, a battle whose issues were more decisive and important than when combatants make truce, and tired contests end. The analysis of the process by which the revolution was effected in the nature of the prodigal must surely be interesting; for our own hearts have been, each of them, the arena of the same conflict, and the war is against a common enemy. In the meditation upon the passage, we cannot for- bear, in the first place, the reflection, that so rooted is the heart's enmity to God, that man must often be driven, as by the blast of a tempest, to submission and to duty. The prodigal must suffer beneath want, and shame, and abandonment before he thinks on his ways, and turns longingly to the house of his Father. How often is it that the consequences of crime — the disease, the misery, the remorsefulness which wait upon the track of sin, though in themselves sequences of a purely natural law — are used of God as means to impression and salvation ! Some flippant infidels have remarked upon the frequency of this, and in their small way have scoffed at a religion which they represented to be the offspring of disgust and of satiety — the resource of a spirit bankrupt of enjoyment, and which has wrung for itself the last solitary husk of pleasure. But that must be a dis- torted and malignant spirit which could make light of such a merciful provision. Even were it true, which it is not, that all men become prodigal before they are penitent, and must be taught by personal and painful (!i k\\ 156 THE PRODIGAL SON. ^ 'I w it ^ experience the vanity of the world, and its worthless- ness to satisfy the wants of one immortal spirit, who does not see that there is proof in this at once of God's yearning for his creatures' highest happiness, and of the exquisite loving-kindness which he has revealed in the Gospel of his Son ? To have so framed man's nature, that he is susceptible of being influenced to consideration and repentance by the very penalties which follow and brand his sin, is itself a token of compassion which is manifest to all but the callous and the blind. And oh ! there is a riches of tender mercy in the thought that God will accept of a peni- tence, if it be but sincere, that is ever so lately rendered ; and that even the cry of a bruised heart, wincing beneath a thousand disappointments, jaded from the fruitless labours of a wasted lifetime, shall not come up before the throne in vain. Let no sinner, in that perversity of mischief which would distil poisons from a herbal, turn this grace of God into licentious- ness, and " sin that grace may abound." There is no Gospel invitation for any moment but the present one; and the often-reproved hardener of his neck, because he spurned the rebuke, and rooted himself in his wickedness, "shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." If the monitors have spoken to you — if sorrow, and disappointment, and shame have tracked your unguided footsteps, and like weird aven- gers have broken in upon your desperate repose — oh, listen to their warnings while there is time. The Spirit will not always strive through these, or any messengers. Delay, and the cloud of doom may burst, and the vial of God's wrath be full. A MIND'S TRANSITION. 157 You must not suppose tliat the mind of tlie prodigal came at once, in sudden revulsion, from heedlessness to serious thought, and from obduracy to tender and softened feeling. There would be, in all probability, in accordance with the laws of mental working, several preliminary stages. The earliest feelings would still j)artake of the character of resistance and rebellion. An awakened conscience, that is not pacified, only exasperates into more audacious rebellion. An active desire after things forfeited or forbidden chafes the spirit, as the rock, which does not hinder the stream, but impels it in more passionate tide. Wlien the bewilderment which God has mercifully appointed to dull the first shock of sorrow had passed away, and the prodigal awoke to realize his condition — alone, un- friended, penniless, a stranger — the first tendencies of the mind — unregenerate, and without any true know- ledge, as it was — would be towards the sullenness of despair, and the second, perhaps, towards the blasphemies of bootless anger. Both these are natural to a condemning conscience, which has not been told of the divinely troubled waters of some pool of liealing. And into these refuges of lies what multitudes of sinners flee ! Let ine probe into your own conscience, as, standing in this far country, you view the wreck of manhood on whose history we dwell. Are you not conscious that you have reposed often in some dread thought of Fatalism, and resigned yourselves in sullen fretfulness to consequences which your own imprudence or impiety had brought on ? Have you not felt em- bittered by the very discipline which was intended to subdue you ? have you not revolted more and more under •i 158 THE PRODIGAL SON. the chastenings of the rod ? Have not your passions been inflamed, and your enmity increased in bitterness, by the ranklinp; soreness ^vith which you have writhed under your present punishment, and by the boding liorror which presented a more fearful one to come \ Oh, there can be no greater curse than nnsanctified suffering ! Until the lion is tamed, he is more furious in the cage than in the forest ; his roar is fiercer for his bondage, and the stamp of his foot and the lash of Iiis tail against his den are displays of wilder passion than when he roamed liis native wilds. Many a man, whom shame has only maddened into more frantic resistance, walks the earth to-day a moral Laocoon, stung in a living martyrdom by the serpents which in his bosom lodge. It is hardly credible how much, not only of human sadness, but of human sin, has sprung from the soul's first passionate recoil against detected criminality, or blasted reputation, or enforced penalty, or stained honour. "When remorse scourges, it is not, like Solomon, with whips, but, like Rehoboam, with scorpions ; and the intolerable anguish of a wounded sjiirit has prompted to many a deed of violence, from which, before his passions were hounded into madness by a guilty conscience, the man would have shrunk with loathing and with horror. Hath the murderer a witness of his crime ? Then the remorseful conscience whispers that, for safety's sake, that witness too must die. Doth the good man of the house awake while the burglaer are rifling his treasure ? doth the child's eye gaze unwit- tingly upon a deed of shame ? is the dread secret, locked for so long in the guilty bosom, in some tell- tale hour betrayed ? Then the conscience, unheeded A MIND'S TRANSITION. 159 ::. 1] till it has become imbruted, will goad the passions into some fouler enormity of evil. Oh, when evil passions and an evil conscience seethe in the same caldron, who can image or create a deeper hell ? The sullen despondency, with which the prodigal would strive to reconcile himself to his fate, would mingle with oft-repeated curses pronounced upon his adverse destiny, rather than his own folly. i»y the licence which thought gives us, we may go into those dreary chambers of his heart — we may heiir its moaning, as it frets against the realities of its condition, even as the lone wave moans painfully upon the cold and listening shore. " Well, it is over — the worst has come at last. It has threatened long, a; d there have been many dark prophecies of the end. 1 am ruined ! That brief revel of my life ! — ah, how I hate the memory ! Why did God make me thus ? Why was the blood so hot in my veins, that quiet happiness, such as I used to have, seemed all too dull and slow ? How contented these swine feed ! They limit their desires, and are happy in their limitation. They were never other than they are ; but I — curses on the knaves that fawned upon me ! curses on my own folly that fed itself upon their glozing lies ! is there not one of them that cares for me ? — not one that throws a thought after the man he helped to ruin ? Be still, thou asking heart ! — bind the girdle tighter, that will keep the hunger down ! Ah ! my table is soon spread ! Husks ! h usks ! husks ! — bring the courses in ! How dainty for the pampered servants that once stood behind my chair! Well, I'll brave it all. What ! yield to bow myself, a pitiful mendi- m 1 'M 1 60 THE PRODIGAL SON. cant, where hearts have leaped to welcome the most honoured guest they had ! No ! never ! Ah ! if my father could but see me now ! No ! I cannot go back to be the butt of the servants' scorn, and to writhe under the contemptuous pity of my sleek and jealous brother, and to meet the justly offended glances of my father's eye. Letter anything than that ! Better these brute swine — these desolate fields — this lonely, savage isolation from the human — the drudgery of this purse-proud citizen ! Nay, if the worst come to the worst — and these liollow cheeks and sunken eyes seem to show me the shadow of the end — I can but fold the robe over my broken heart and die ! " Brethren, do you deem this a picture overwrought — that the shadows are laid on too thickly — that there breathes no man with soul so dead ? Ah ! there are thousands upon thousands who are thus steeling them- selves against the convictions of God's Holy Spirit ; and it may be that there are some before me, who, if I could but summon them hither, and constrain to candour, and ask to tell, each for himself, the story of his own bitterness, and pride, and struggle, would confess in your hearing that the half hath not been told. c But all this was but the swathing grave-cloth out of whose folds the new man was to rise — the gathering of the dark and angry cloud which was soon to be dissolved in showers, and on whose bosom the tri- umphant sun would paint the iris by and hy. That ever-present Spirit, who strives with men to bring them to the knowledge of the truth, was doubtless all the while at work upon the prodigal's heart; and f Ill A MIND'S TRANSITION. i6i 1" jm- if to of luld leen out kng be Itri- [hat kng all md wlieu he works, out of the brooding storm come tho calm aud the zephyr of the summer-tide — out of the death of enjoyment the rare blessedness which is the highest good — out of the death-working sorrow of the world the repentance which is unto life eternal. We know not precisely how the change was effected from the hardness of heart, and contempt of God's word and commandment, to the softening of thought and contrition. Perhaps the Divine Spirit wrought by the power of memory, thawed the ice away from the frosted spirit by sunny pictures of the past — by the vision of the ancestral home — of the guileless childhood — of the father's ceaseless strength of ten- derness — of the spell of a living mother's love, or of the holier spell of a dead one. God does often work by these associations of subtle and powerful energy, and none may limit the Holy One of Israel ; but the distinction between the prodigal in his riot and the prodigal in his repentance was so marked and definite, as to leave no doubt of the reality of his change. Disposition, purpose, tendency, all were transformed. He had come under another influence, which had changed the whole bent of his desire, and which had given a new direction to every footstep of his course. This thorough change in heart and feeling must come upon every penitent sinner ; and the conscious- ness of it must necessarily attend us in every Godward movement of the soul. "That home, which once glowed for me with many-lighted windows of welcome, how sadly and deservedly forfeited ! That father, who has daily loaded me with benefit, and whose unutter- able love has spared for me neither effort nor sacrifice, I. L 1^ 162 THE PRODIGAL SON. how sorely have I grieved him ! That life, with all its treasure of majestic and manifold endowment, how utterly have I wasted it ! Those sins, which estranged me from my youth's affections, and drove me to this heritage of foreign shame, how I abhor them now ! That x)ride and unbelief, which have embittered my transgressions and hindered my return, how gladly would I trample them beneath my feet, wending homeward, and drown their memory, as I fall on my father's neck, in floods of contrite tears ! " Some- thing of this must every penitent feel — a loathing of his former self, a self-accusing fidelity which will not dissemble its impieties — a hatred, not only of the smart of sin, but of its substance — the yearning of a deeply-wounded spirit, which longs for reconciliation to the God and Father from whom it has become so wilfully estranged. Brethren, are these feelings youi's ? Are you conscious that an influence has swept over you, working this bloodless revolution? Do you wonder, in awe, as you reflect upon your former peril — in gratitude, as you reflect upon your marvellous deliverance ? Oh, if you have yielded to the Spirit's power, and felt the godly grief, at once heart-breaking and healing, you will not give stint to your devotion, nor be languid and measured in your service of the Lord. Yours will be a sense of obligation so deep ard overwhelming, that it will constrain from you both the praise of the lip which knows not how to hush its doxologies, and the life's more constant and worthy hosanna. If we look at the prodigal after he has yielded to the influence which has come down upon him from ITS! CUlg [ion, the lecp ,you Iw to and id to from A MINUS TRANSITION. 163 above, we see an order of being essentially different from the one on which we a while ago gazed. The external circumstances are much the same : the land- scape is still sterile; th^ swine still feed; the man still stands, solitary, and finfriended, and hungering; but he is not the same. He was defiant then ; he is disconsolate now. The stern in his nature has been succeeded by the softened and the sad. Then he glared insanely round him, an utter rebel against the right, and shook his puny fist against the omnipotence which overcame him ; now he smites, not the innocent air, but his own guilty breast, in whose sin he has learned to discover the secret of tlie sorrow and the shame. He is a thousandfold a truer man now, ragged and hungry as he is, than when he sotted in the boisterous wassail or the long carouse. Then he was the wealthy and the heedless, whose habits had become imbruted as the swine's ; now he is the swineherd, already kindling with the hopes and struggling into the aspirations of the man. There are just three points suggested in the narra- tive which we may notice lor a moment. It was a transition from madness to reason, from sullen pride to fiahnission and acknowledgment, from despondency to determined and immediate endeavour. It is no word of man, but the word of inspiration, which has de- clared the insanity of a sinner, and that he " comes to himself" when he thinks upon his ways and is wise. And all the habits in which the sinner is wont to indulge answer to the habits and delusions of those who have been bereft of reason, or in whom it has been deposed from its rightful government of the man. 1 % i : t h I 1 i 164 TI/£ PRODIGAL SON. Madness is rash and inconsiderate action — action witiiout tlionght of consequences. The madman's hand is sudden in its vioknice ; the madman's tongue shoots out its barbed arrows ; he is reckless of the slain reputation, or of the murdered life ; and is not like rashness a characteristic of the sinner ? Little recks he of his own dishonour, or of the life that he has wasted in excess of riot. He goes heedlessly on, tliougli his every step were up tlie crater's steep, and mid the crackling ashes. Madness is mistake of the great pui'poses of life ; the employment of the faculties upon objects that are contemptible and unworthy. Hence you see tlie lunatic intently gazing into vacancy, or spending hours in the eager chase of insects on the wing, or scribbling, in strange medley of the ribald and the sacred, scraps of verse upon the torn-out pages of a Bible. And are there not greater degradations in the pursuits which engross such multitudes of the unconverted ? Are there not thousands who waste their lives in habits which spring from no thought, and lead to no result — habits compared with which, as has been well said, " there is activity in the life of a zoophyte, and earnestness in the eccentricities of a swallow " ? Madness is the fostering of morbid de- lusions which mount upon the brain unbidden ; the undue predominance of distempered fancy, which can invert all laws, and bring the impossible to be the actual in a moment at its regal bidding. You can see the lunatic — an imaginary king — with a wondrous sense of realuess, and with a courtly bearing, happily unconscious, finding that " stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." And such is " the in A MIND'S TRANSITION. 165 es of Ills in the waste )uglit, 'hicli, ife of of a Id de- ; the |h can e the can drous ,ppily rison "the blindness of heart whicli has happened " iinto a world of sinners, that they deem themselves kingly, when, alas ! they are sadly dislionoured, and exult in the distemper of a delirious freedom, when they are " led captive by the devil at his will." In all circum- stances of human transgression, varied only by the several modiiications of the disease, there is truth in the declaration of the Scripture, " Madness is in their heart while they live, and after tliat they go to the dead." From this state of madness the contrite prodigal has emerged ; formerly rash and thoughtless, he has begun to consider, and consideration is the sworn enemy of levity, and the fruitful parent of high purposes in the soul ; formerly warped by a mistaken view of life, and led by erroneous judgment into corrupt and vicious jiractice, he has been awakened to juster perceptions of duty, and to a right valiant endeavour to discharge it ; formerly inflated with notions of a fictitious dignity, and eaten up with the pride of position or of posses- sions, he has now humbler, and therefore truer, views of himself, and sees himself the fouler because of his exalted lineage, just as a prince of the blood royal is most of all men traitorous to his rank and destiny when he companies with harlots and with thieves. When a sinner comes to himself, he blushes for his former frenzy ; he feels himself a child of the Divine ; he feels himself an heir of the eternal ; and, looking with a strange disdain upon the things which formerly trammelled him, he lifts heavenward his flashing eye, and says, " There is my portion and my home." Now, with the Beulah-land before him, he wonders that the I! = 11 i6o THE PRODIGAL SON. h ! \ I' I ! / mirage of life should have so long deluded him, and in the serenity of present peace can hardly believe that he should ever have found a charm in the turbulence of passion, or in the glare of pleasure. Heaven and earth are now seen by him in their true relations — heaven the throne, earth the footstool — heaven the recompense, earth the probation. He has learned not to despise this world, nor to undervalue its joys, when they are properly estimated. A savage recluse, or an envious and disappointed worldling, may do that. He would have done it in that savage mood of defiance which has just swept over him like a storm ; but he has been taught, at the feet of Jesus, a kindlier and more human lore. He pities the world, not slanders it ; he could weep for the sin which has defiled its beauty, and for the cruel scars which tell of outrage and of wrong ; and enjoying with a rapturous gratitude its gladness, and enduring with faith's deep submission its portion of trial, he stands in his lot until the end of the days, never forgetful of the brighter world beyond — ripening by the privileges of the present into a mellow prepara- tion for the future, and then, like good old Simeon, his dying breath a blessing, he departs in peace to heaven. There is a transition again, from pindc to siibmission and aclmowledfjnunt. In his former mood of mind he only intensified his own rebellion, and was ready, doubtless, to blame circumstances, or companions, or destiny, or anything rather than his own wickedness and folly. " All things have conspired against me ; never, surely, had any one so hard a lot as T. I might not have been exactly prudent now and then, but I i' ! A MIND'S TRANSITION. 167 in i ission d he |eady, IS, or klness nie ; nigbt )Ut I have done nothing to merit such punishment as this. I will never confess that I have done wrong ; if I were to return to my father, I would not abate a hair's - breadth of my privileges ; I would insist — and it is right, for am I net his son ? — upon being treated pre- cisely as I was before." So might have thought the prodigal in his pride. But in his penitence no humilia- tion is too low for him- -no concealment nor extenua- tion is for a moment en. rtained ; with the expectation, not of sonship, but of servitude, and with the frank and sorrowful acknowledgment of sin, he purposes to travel, and to cast himself at the feet of his father. The penitential sorrow has trampled out the pride, and, instead of being prepared to dictate terms, he would submit cheerfully to the meanest lot, and to the most protracted trial, and to the coldest "welcome, if only he may be permitted to reside in the old house at home. This humility is characteristic of all true contrition. As pride was one of the deadly sins by whicli our first parents fell, the whole provision of God's mercy, and every rescript and every promise of our religion, are framed, as with one common purpose, to hide pride from man. The Scriptures declare, with an earnest- ness of repetition which the occasion justifies, that salvation cannot be achieved by the holiest human- living; nor does meritoriousness attach to the most scrupulous observance of the law. As all — from the smiling babe upon the proud mother's knee, and the youth secluded, in the rural home, from the contagion of the city's leprosy, up to the sa.age nurtured in cruelty, and the bronzed perpetrator of a thousand crimes — have been born in sin and shapen in iniquity, ■\\- i ;l ! ,■! r in I ! r mi 1; J Ik 1 1 / i68 THE PRODIGAL SON. so all are equally helpless to secure their own accept- ance, or to maintain themselves for one brief moment in the consistency of spiritual living. There is no room for pride in any solitary human bosom. Once he was a sinner reckless in his sins, and with a high hand vaunting himself in his wickedness ; now he is but a sinner saved by grace ; he never grows into a sanctity which is independent of Divine assistance ; and if it were to happen for him to continue until there shone from him the glory of old age faithfully relying upon God, and then in some moment of garrulous vanity to loosen his hold of the sustaining arm, in that moment he would stumble and fall. Oh, bid your pride avaunt ! harbour it not for an instant in your bosom, lor it and the carnal security which it engenders are the flatterer's most successful snares. The safest path to the City of Habitations is not by the mountain bridle-path, overhung by the loosened cliff, and over- hanging the deep ravine, nor yet along the icy track of the glacier's glittering peril ; it winds along the green pastures where still waters flow, and to the very slopes of the hill on which the city stands, " through the low vale of humble love." And then, just in a word, there is the transition from desiiondency to active and lio'peful endeavour : " I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father." There is not only the mental process, but the corresponding action — the rousing of the soul from its indolent and tormenting despair. A MIND'S TRANSITION. 169 This is one main difference between the godly sorrow and that consuming sadness which preys upon the lieart of the worldling : the one disinclines, the other prompts to action ; the one broods over its own hap- lessness until it wastes and dies, the other cries piteously for help, and then exults in deliverance and blessing. There was something more than fable in the old mythology which told of Pandora's box — a very I'eceptacle of ills made tolerable only because there was hope at the bottom. In every true contrition there is hope. What ! despair ? Nay, though you were never such an arrant prodigal ; nay, though you are wrinkled in iniquity, and your hoary head, so far from being a crown of righteousness, is a very brand of shame ; nay, though you stood upon the loosening earth by the pit's mouth, and heard the yell of demon voices and the dance of demon feet. Despair is no word for this world's languages ; despair has no right to a foot of land on this ransomed planet's territory ; its kingdom is not of this world, but of the world beneath and to come. We may leave the prodigal without shuddering ; he will be no worse when we come to him again. The evils of his pride and defiance were those he had most to dread ; he has parted witli these, and we see him, subdued and earnest, travelling homeward with a royal hope within bis soul. i;!!v li II. f i. [■i i jill i I*: XL THE PEODIGAL SOK— III. THE JOY OF RETURN. ** But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet ; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat, and be merry : for this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." — Luke xv. 20-24. rt'lHERE are two kinds of minds of whose opinions J- we have been informed, touching the relative importance of this world to other worlds, all being provinces in the same moral empire — the one is the mind of the infidel, the other is the mind of the angel. As a matter of course, they represent the extremes of sentiment, and are as widely apart from each other as might be the descriptions of the same landscape given by two men, the one of whom had dimly seen it for a moment, as he woke up from a slumber in a fast train ; the other of whom, from some heathery slope or upland, had drunk in its beauty with ample leisure and with a broad sweep of vision. When the infidel thinks of THE JO V OF RETURN. 171 ig of tliis world, even if he is so much of a believer as to admit its fall, he looks at it with narrow sympathies ; wrapt in his own selfishness, he cannot conceive of the nobility which would yearn with pity over some revolted province, and which would visit a scene of insurrection, not to destroy the rebels, but to pardon them ; nay, he cannot even conceive of a vigilant tenderness, so comprehensive that it can govern a universe of worlds with as perfect a recognition of the minute, as of the magnificent in each, and so unfailing that it is moved by no rebellion from its benevolent design. Hence the great facts of man's sin and ransom — of God's providence, caring for this world, the sickly, and the erring ; and of God's grace stooping to replace it in its orbit — finding as they do no precedent in his own emotions, and evoking no response from the depths of his own consciousness, are treated by the sceptic as a delusion of fanaticism rather than as a reality of faith. He cannot believe that that man, as insignificant in comparison with the planet whose surface he scarcely specks, as the one crystal to the avalanche, or the one bubble, with its mimic rainbow, to the torrent waters of Niagara, can be even looked at in the administrations of the great economy, much less that all his concerns and all his interests are noted as carefully as if there were no other on the earth beside him. He cannot believe that of all worlds which sun themselves in their Creator's smile, this reckling world which has strayed should be the object of especial graciousness, and that for its deliverance there should have been struck out of the heart of goodness a scheme of compassion unparalleled in the universe before. 'i" ( !ii I I ' I I 1 m n ill 173 T/I£ PRODIGAL SON. This is a knowledge altogether too wonderful and a belief altogether too high to have a home in an infidel's bosom. And yet these very facts are to the angels matters both of interest and of joy. These glorious l)eings, "full of eyes" to gather and observe all know- ledge, and with large hearts of charity, vibrate, although of alien nature, to each chord of human strufwle and conquest; to them it is but matter of higher praise, that throughout the universe, and even into its very ravines and cells of being, there penetrate the glances of that eye whose brightness they nmst veil themselves to see ; to them the grace which leaves the loyal worlds to condescend to the succour of the shrouded one is the rarest grace of all ; and to angelic eyes, in the wondrous scheme of earth's redemption by the offering of the Divine Substitute, there is a perpetual mystery, into M'hich they still desire to look, and where to their enraptured study the whole Deity is known. Not merely on the God-ward side do these facts excite their adoration, but on the man-ward side their sympathy. They have watched, you remember, over this our world from the beginning ; they sang together at its birth ; they revelled in the beauty of the young Eden, and strayed at dewy eve by the paths where its blest inhabitants wandered ; they shuddei ed beneath sin's cold shadow, and grieved over the blight and the departure of the innocence they had loved so well. Hence they have known our world in all its fortunes ; and just as an elder brother, of a benevolent heart, might heap caresses upon the infant born when he was old enough "to move about the house with joy, and with the certain step of man," finding endearment THE JO Y OF RETURN, 173 1'^ "> le in itu very helplessness ; so those holy angels, bright in the radiance of their first estate, have quick sensi- bilities for all human welfare still ; and whenever the sinner is arrested in his course, or the penitent cry is heard, or the prodigal, in his far country, turns a homeward glance of soul, there comes a hush upon their harping, only to be succeeded by a burst of more rapturous music, " for there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." Your feeling, brethren, as you come with me to dwell upon the prodigal's return, will be, if you feel rightly, such as neither the sceptic nor the angel can compass ; for you will have the proper sympathy which neither of tliem possesses — the sceptic, because he has divorced himself from the wedlock between Humanity and Faith ; the angel, because he " Never felt above Redeeming grace nor dying love, " To you it will but re-enact, in one phase or other of our meditation on it, a chapter in your own history. You will be saddened by the chill thought of present alienation, or thrilled by the memory of your own home-travel after years of estrangement and of sin. We left the prodigal in the far country, but peni- tent, changed, resolute in the purpose to return to the houF.e of his father. As we follow him on his journey, we can trace and sympathize with the mingling of feoUng!^ in his soul. There is not remorse — for remorstj is the consciousness of guilt without the hope and prayer for mercy ; and all those dark emotions have gone from him, swept out of his soul when the %. 'J ^%. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 1.0 H"- IS^ I.I ^ i^ ill 2.2 IT Ki liO 1.8 1.25 |||.4 ^ .4 6" - ► V] 7 Photograpdc Sdena^s Corporation 23 WEST MAIK STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 873-4503 ^s 4^> ^%> 1

< \ ii i i I 1 :, I i i ; i8o TBE PRODIGAL SON. " But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and f 11 on his neck, and kissed hiui." He did not wait until the prodigal had knocked at the door, and been subjected to the servants' wonder; he did not wait for the low pro- stration, and for the abject and servile sorrow ; there was no standing upon a sort of etiquette of morals, no drawing of the cloak of dignity round until every punctilious requirement of orthodox penitence had been fultilled, and then relaxing to grant the self-abased request, and to speak cold words of pardon. All this would have been just, inflexibly just ; and the prodigal who had been thus treated would have had no cause of complaint, but rather much ground of thankfulness. We must take care that we are not spoiled by God's mercy, and tempted by his unparalleled compassion to think lightly and superficially of sin. Sin is a foul evil, and " when it is finished it bringeth forth death." Just as there ensues spontaneous combustion from the decomposition of certain vegetable substances, so the very foulness of sin bursteth, as by natural sequence, into fire. F t the very sense we have of the enormous impiety of sin will only enhance our estimate of the boundlessness of grace in its forgiveness. As in all other illustrations by which things Divine are intended to be made known to us, the analogy halts for want of compass and power. To understand aright the early moving of God towards the sinner, we must remember his omniscience, an attribute which of course is want- ing in the human father. The Divine eye can track the prodigal through every brake and scaur of the far country into ,vhich he has wandered ; no debauchery r THE JO Y OF RETURN. i8i of his excess of riot is hidden ; his defiance and his depression, the steeling and the softening of his soul, are alike open to the glances from which nothing is concealed. He knows, sinner, that secret deed of darkness, covered up so carefully from human sight, that habit of impurity or fraud, that stern and haughty resistance to his will, wliich thy soul has indulged through so many rebellious years. He knows, peni- tent, thy soul's first yearnings after him, thy struggles against the corruption which yet mastered thee, thy brave upspringing with a new purpose of right even after mortifying failure, thy secret loathing of thy sin, the uneasy clanking of the chain which thou hadst yet no key to open and no strength to snap in sunder. The Father sees thee, though thou art yet a long way off. His compassion goes out to meet thee from the first moment when thy homeward march begins ; thy prayers and thine alms come up before him, like those of Cornelius, " for a memorial," though not for a merit ; in token of thy sincerity, though not in purchase of thy pardon. Oh, what unspeakable comfort couches in this thought for every contrite heart ! Thy pil- grimage need not be with bleeding feet and long endurance to a far-off shrine, a shrine at which the idol abides senselessly, with nor heart to feel nor strength to succour. The word of grace is nigh thee, even in thy heart and in thy mouth. Swift as the hart upon the mountains runs the Father's love to meet and welcome thee. Thou hast been long expected ; the home has hardly seemed complete without the erring but unforgotten child. Bruised and hunger- ing as thou art, start thee on the journey ; thou shalt ImI l82 THE PRODIGAL SON. \.\ not travel all the way alone ; the first part of thy travel may be with sorrowful he.art and burdened back, but hie thee to the cross of Jesus. So sure as God's word is true, he will meet thee there, and thy burden shall fall from thy shoulders, and the sad- ness from thy heart, and thou shalt bound along thy joyous pilgrimage a light-hearted, because forgiven, sinner. Your impression of God's loving-kindness will be deepened — and that is surely the intention of this pearl of parables — if you pass from the haste with which the prodigal was met to consider the welcome with W'hich the prodigal was greeted. We last saw him wending his way to his father, agitated with a housand apprehensions, but brave in the doing of what iie had recently discovered to be right. He had not only thought upon return, but he had let purpose ripen into deed. There are multitudes who think upon repentance and faith as duties to be some time per- formed, but who dream about them through the kindly summer-time, and then, when the winter comes, are in the far country, ragged and famine-stricken still ; but in the case before us, the action waited promptly on the will. He not only came to himself, but he came to his father. And now they have met — the yearning father and his humbled child. The father saw him iirst, for his love looked out and his compassion ran ; the son came slowly, with downcast eyes, that dreaded the first glimpse of the home which they yet longed unutterably to see. If he sighted the running figure in the distance, and saw as it came near that the form was the venerable one of his father ; still more, if his THE JO V OF RETURN. 183 ling ran; lided ^ged jure lorni hia tumult of emotion allowed him, with a strange thrill of hope, to note the outstretched arms and kindling eye ; how must his heart have palpitated witli tlie rushing blood, and the wave of his penitence swelled into a swifter tide ! But perhaps he knew not of this ; perhaps, overwhelmed with the feelings or oppressed by the fears which mastered him, he saddened on unheeding, until he was roused from his stupor of sorrow by the clasp of his father's arms. Oh, the delight of that first moment of conscious favour ! Think of all the raptures of deliverance first realized after imminent peril — -the drowning, when the strong swimmer grasps him ; the fire-girdled, when from the topmost window the fireman receives the fainting on his safe but slender ladder; the slave, when from the lash, and the swamp, and the branding iron, he leaps on to the frontiers of freedom ; the child, when the agonized mother presses him to her bosom, unharmed from the eagle's talons — what are they all to the first gush of rapturous gladness which thrills, in the moment of reconciliation, through the breast of the forgiven sinner ? The transition is so marvellous, so startling, that it is all too deep for language. Condemned before ! now looking into eyes that glisten with tenderness, and lips that quiver with pardons. Polluted before ! now sensible of an inner cleansing. Aimless and without a hope before ! now furnished, so to speak, with the principia of a new existence, and strong to work it out with a will. Orphaned in the vast uni- verse before I now conscious of encircling arms and of a living Father. Have you felt it ? The rare blessed- ness, the indefinable thrill, almost startling you, until, l; .- r 1 i i I 184 THE PRODIGAL SON. by lapse of time, it became familiar happiness, and you were taught of '^od to call it by its proper name, " That I— a child of wrath and lell— 1 should be called a child of God." Oh, if you have not, God waits to confer it; in Christ it is ready for your faith. The atonement has purchased not only deliverance but adoption for the world, and you, tlie vilest and the farthest prodigal, may lift your eyes, red with the contrite tears, and call God Father by the Holy Ghost. The love of God to man is never displayed more illustriously than in his reception of the returning sinner. Take tlie tenderest- hearted father that you know, one of those who are deemed weakly indulgent to a degree incompatible with the jjroper maintenance of authority, and ask yourselves what his reception would be of a child who had out- raged his tenderness, wasted his property, and brought disgrace and scandal upon a name which a long ancestry of integrity had honoured. Alas ! such are the strange contradictions of the nature we inherit, that the most blindly indulgent would become the most bitterly implacable, and even in the case of the most forgiving there would be a struggle with pride, and a distant waiting for the full tale of confession, and a reserve, and a hesitancy, and a long probation before full re- instalment into former privilege; and even then, a lurking suspicion and a jealous watchfulness, and now and then the sharp arrows of a keen upbraiding, which would show that the lip's forgiveness of the sinner is far easier than the heart's oblivion of the sin. But not so does God measure his graciousness towards the penitents whom^ for Jesus' sake, he accepts and THE JO Y OF RETURN. welcomes to liis favour. Not the stern silence, but the warm embrace ; not the abhorrent recoil from pollution, but the large charity which at once exalts the abased, and clothes and cleanses the vile ; not t^ie ear strained for the listening to the confession, but the kiss which heals the wound and stops the words ; not the yoke of servitude, but the ring of affection ; not the measured tones and solemn c.i itions of a judicial acquittal, but the festal feast and tha diffusive gladness, as when an heir of broad lands is Lorn. Surely this is unexampled grace, and yet this is the golden sceptre which is stretched out by the monarch to you. A servant ! No, but a robe, and shoes, and a ring — and tliese are not the apparel of slaves : they have serge for garment, and a badge for decoration, and tread with naked feet — but a robe, and shoes, and a ring for the returning prodigal; and thus the Father owns the son. There is something significant in the thought that the latter part of the prodigal's purposed confession was suppressed in the presence of the father. " Make me as one of thy hired servants " was in his heart in the far country, but not on his lips when he sobbed out his penitence at home ; and why was this ? It was in his heart still — he felt it to be immeasurably more than he deserved — he would willingly have borne the yoke for life, if only his loving obedience might have shown that he was changed, but he could not further sin against his father's fatherliness ; and refusal to accept the sonship which was pressed upon him in the kiss of peace would have been to do that fatherliness dishonour. Take heed, thou penitent, that thou dost i86 THE PRODIGAL SON. \ i t .1 not thus sin to-day. It is well for thee to feel thy humbleness, anu, in the sense of thy own demerit, to abase thyself lowly before God ; but it is not well to persist in obstinate and wilful unbelief. Thou hon- ourest God by the simplicity and heartiness of thy trust in his promises. It is thy truest duty, as well as thy most surpassing privilege, to be called his son. To despise this high calling is sin in thee, and thou shalt be punished for it as surely as the man who refused the rich robe at the wedding banquet, who was cast to the darkness and the shame. God welcoming and blessing his erring but now penitent child! And is that sight — visible to the higher intelligences who in heaven throb with human sympathies and recognitions still — visible in this house of prayer ? Oh, there can be no sight like that ! Before it fade the most gorgeous things that start from canvas or that speak in marble ; nothing so rapturous and wonderful ever caught the poet's eye in the rolling of its finest frenzy. Day unto day uttereth no speech so eloquent ; night unto night discovereth no secret of such glowing wonder ; the deep sea hath no treasure of so rare a preciousness ; the winged winds bear no such joyous tidings. It thrills through all the regions of the sentient and the happy. The wings of the seraphim unfold with a newer flutter of gladness. The Divine Son rejoices to see of the travail of his soul ; and the everlasting Father, attesting its eternal fitness, proclaims to the awed and silent heaven, " It was meet that we should make merry and be glad," for this my son " v/as dead, and is alive again ; and was lost, and is found." I 1''. XII. THE PRODIGAL SON.— IV. THE DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. ** Now his elder son was in the field : and as he came and drew ni^h to the house, he heard music and dancin;^. Arid he called one of the servants, nnd asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come ; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in : therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed 1 at any time thy commandment : and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends : but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad : for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again ; and was lost, and is found." — Lukk xv. 25-32. THE instruction of this inimitable parable is not yet exhausted. We left the household amid a scene of apparently universal gladness. The penitence was accepted, the reconciliation was complete ; the prodigal, a prodigal no longer, renewed a happiness from which he had been long estranged ; the joy spread from heart to heart, and the house rang with the dance-music, that light and tripping carol of joyous song which i-: _J — 1 88 THE PRODIGAL SOM. young lips warble when skies are bright, and hope has banished care. But from this general satisfaction there now appears to be one dissentient — and as you have seen it often in common life, where tlie harmony of a party has been thoroughly spoiled by one proud or petulant intruder — the elder son comes in. He has been out in the field, and returning, perhaps, at the punctual meal-time, he marks and wonders at the unwonted festivity which has broken in upon the quiet of his home. When he hears the cause, his annoyance is not abated, but inflamed. He is angry, jealous, upbraiding, proof against the entreaties of his father, and so pertinacious in his offended pride, that he elicits from the father a declaration of the essential lightness of his conduct in the matter of the prodigal, and an implied rebuke of his own disobedi- ence and sin. It will not be amiss for us to inquire — us a pendant to the meditations which have already occupied us — into this problem of character. It may be that, as we look into it, we may start some stray reflection that will encourage or that will condemn ourselves. It is necessary to remind ourselves that the audience to whom these parables were spoken was a mingled one of Pharisees and publicans ; for it seems as though t 'le contempt felt by the despisers had been publicly expressed — expressed in the hearing of the despised — and that the great Teacher willed to weave into his narrative some appropriate instruction for each. It is clear, too, that the immediate purpose which the parables were designed to answer, was the rebuke of the narrowness which murmured because of the welcome DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. 189 which was given to the publicans and sinners. Hence it is probable that tlie mass of expositors are right, when they conclude that there is allusion, in the cha- racter of the elder son, to the Jew, as distinguished by his affected superiority to the Gentile, and to the Pharisee, as a sort of religious aristocrat among the Jews. Still there are difficulties connected wi'.h every exposition. Our object is to extract as much of the gold out of the mine as we may, and that object will be best attained by combining, so far as they involve no contradiction, the various thoughts to which the subject naturally gives rise, and, without aiming at any elaborate construction, to get some harvest of pvofit from them all. And, first, there is something in the state of feeling I which we 7aay suppose to have existed in the elder son \with which many a perplexed Christian can very largely sympathise. We may suppose him to have been trained, from his youth, to believe that there was excellency in obedience, and that in every well-ordered household it would be appropriately recognised and rewarded. Just so we are taught that recompense of virtue and punishment of vice are fundamental prin- ciples of government ; and that Jehovah, the supreme source of government, has declared that he l^veth righteousness, and " hateth iniquity as an abominable thing." With these convictions instilled into him, as the early instructions of his childhood, and with the experience which his own family history gave him of the discomfort and impiety of sin, he comes home from his honest industry, and is astonished to perceive lighted windows, and to hear the sound of the harp ii 'lii 190 THE PRODIGAL SON. and of the tabret swelling through the unaccustomed air. He inquires into the cause, and is told that one has come who is associated in his mind only with ideas of profligacy and shame, and that his return has been hailed with a rapture of revelry, which during long years of quiet service never woke up in the father's house for liim. Is it not natural that his first thought should be a bewildered wonder ? Will not the murmur rise almost involuntarily ? Will not the vague idea of natural justice feel as if it were out- raged, and the mind shudder as with a flash of consciousness that all is not right somehow in the moral government which sanctions such an anomaly ? You can listen, for the heart's voice is audible — " My brother come, and this pageantry of welcome for him ! His seems to be the licence, and mine the drudgery. He has had a gay career of it, and it seems that his fortune has not forsaken him now. It is very strange ! Obedience is not worth the music and the festival. They are reserved for riot and ruin. It seems as though the surest way to my father's heart is to be wild, and wayward, and prodigal. Tliere is no dis- tinction, then, between good and evil, or if there be, the evil has tlie advantage, for the banquet follows hard on the debauchery, and looks like its wages of reward. ' Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency,* for slights are put upon faithfulness, and premiums offered to sin." Brethren, how man/ of us are there who recognise the tones of our own fretful wailing under the pressure cf some multitude of thoughts which have sorely per- plexed our souls ? It is no new temptation. Like a a VrSSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. 191 sigh of the wind it swept over hearts in ancient Israel, and to all ages there has been this darkling shadow of a great mystery, beneath which men have groped in painfullest uncertainty, until they could emerge happily into a firm reliance. David felt it when he looked upon the flourishing of the wicked ; and it was a thought too painful for him " until " he " went into the sanctuary of God." Job felt it, when disaster followed on disaster, and each dashed a breaker of sorrow upon the strand of his soul. The labourers felt it, v/ho were hired when the dew glittered and the lark sang, because those who wrought but one hour were made equal in remuneration to them, who had borne the burden and heat of the day. We have felt it in commercial life, when a man of small prin- ciple has grasped wealth by handfuls, "is a child gathers pebbles on the shore, while a tradesman of unbending honesty has struggled through a lifetime just to keep a doubtful equality between the winner and the spender. We have felt it in social life, when a reconciled adversary has stirred up all the warmth of kindly feeling, and gone straight into the inner chambers of a heart which has been locked to the fast and quiet friend of years. We have felt it in religious life, when a newly converted man has revelled in a joy and comfort which have never thrilled ourselves, though we have striven eagerly after the Divine image, and laboured in the Divine service delightedly and long. It is much the same feeling, with which a cynic with a turn for sarcasm might inveigh against that inverted philanthropy, which expends its charities on criminals, and leaves honest men to shudder before the 1 192 THE PRODIGAL SON. ! i ■ !' ! shadow of famine ; or which immures helpless integrity in a prison which it calls a workhouse, and shelters lusty thievishness in a workhouse which it calls a prison ; or which suffers honesty to embrown itself with the swarth of toil, and then starve, through an angry winter, in dismal attics and on scanty fare, while felons are so warmly ho ised, and carefully trained, and kindly fed, that they sigh when their release approaches, and steal on 'purpose, to have a lodging in Dartmoor or Portland again. Yes ! there are such anomalies both in man's and in God's govern- ment, which bafiie all hasty thinkers, and which lead perplexed ones, in the track of the elder son, to feel wonder, and then despondency, and then murmuring, and then anger, and jealousy, and suUenness, and all the offspring of rebellion. It was surely to soothe this natural perturbation, and to reassure the startled faith in goodness, shocked by this natural surprise, that the father " came out and entreated him." God bears with the infirmities of his people, and will not always chide, though there will be always cause for chiding. He does not break the bruised reed, nor fret it for its lack of strength; he does not quench the smoking flax, in anger that there is dark vapour where there ought to be brilliant flame. He props the reed and fans the flax until they become as a rod of strength, and as a beacon-blaze upon a hill. How marked and beautiful was this characteristic in the teaching of Jesus ! Does the faith of the affrighted disciples fail them in a storm- swept vessel ? He utters no rebuke of their cowardice until he has removed the source of their terror. Doea DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. 193 Peter, faltering from his momentary heroism, sink through the yielding wave; or, stricken with a very horror of cowardice, fringe his denial with a border of blasphemy ? He is helped from the billows, and graciously forgiven for the sin. Do Zebedee's children become possessed of a strange ambition, and seek for a proud pre-eminence in his kingdom amid the clamour of the murmuring ten ? He stills the rising indigna- tion, and places the feet of humility upon the neck of pride. Is Thomas incredulous until the prints and scars convince him? In "reach hither thy finger," there is the best possible rebuke for unbelief. And if you look into your own iiearts, you will discover manifold and glorious instances of God's long- suffering. Can you not recall those seasons in your history when you staggered at the greatness of the promise, or shrank from the difficulty of the command ; when, in the day of smiling fortune, you forgot the arm that raised you, and, in the day of frowning skies, you hardly and terribly rebelled? You have often since been so conscious of your sinfulness that you have wondered that the Lord bore with you, and your estimate of Divine loving-kindness rose so high that to you it is no marvel that, however strongly provoked to anger, he should come out and entreat the sinners against his grace and love. The answer of the father to the petulant remon- ctrance of the son is very noticeable, and is very decisive. He might — human fathers would — have sternly rebuked all interference with his rightful autho- rity; have stood upon his fatherly prerogative, and have frowned the complainer into silence by such an L N \\\\ 1' f, I . 'I '. 194 THE PRODIGAL SON. utterance as, " Is thine eye evil, because I aiu good ? is it not lawful for me to do as I will with mine own ? " He might have readily exposed the lurking hypocrisy and alienation which the very terms of the remonstrance displayed. But he did neither of these. The justification of his conduct, which he condescends to make, rests not upon eternal sovereignty, but upon eternal fitness — not " I have willed to do this thing," but " It was meet that we should make merry and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again ; and was lost, and is found." This is but the repeated statement of that which it is the province of the whole chapter to enforce — that there is something in the moral recovery of a sinner over which God himself rejoices, and which is matter of legitimate gladness to every creature that his hands have made. The chapter says there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, " more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." Christ says there is a propriety in this, and we respond to it by the whole of our proceeding in the conduct of our natural affections, or in the regulation of our daily lives. We do not get into ecstasies every morning as we greet the friends from whom we parted overnight, and with whom we have exchanged the same customary salutations for years. Our deep love is not the less because the expressions of it are the less demon- strative. The gay peasants of beautiful Italy are so accustomed to bright sun and blue sky, that they are not prostrate in thankfulness, nor wild with delight, when they see the morning dawn ; but in some arctic island, or at the close of some protracted rainy season DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY, 195 in the tropical savannah, the first glimpse of sunshine will be an inspiration of gladness, or a call to prayer. The stream flows leisurely in its wonted bed until the tempest howls or the obstruction comes, and then it overflows. Let tlie peril threaten our beloved ones, let the fangs of illness fasten, or the cold world's scorn assail, or adverse influences lour, and the deep tender- ness will well forth upon them, with a full tide, imexpected even to ourselves- — a very Nile of soothing and healing waters. If it had been the hap of the elder son to sicken, or to have been crushed beneath the bitterness of some terrible sorrow, all the spirit's joy-bells would have been rung for his recovery, and all the wealth's resources lavished with a free hand to restore to him the comfort of his soul. It was not that the father preferred the profligate to the faithful, or sanctioned disobedience and was indifferent to loyalty ; in the one case, assuming that the elder's account of his own fidelity was true, there had been years of uninterrupted complacency and favour; in the other case, there was but an hour — a wild and rapturous hour of joy. Not only is the justification rested upon the right- fulness of rejoicing over the recovery of the erring, but the elder son is reminded that his privilege is the greatest after all — " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that 1 have is thine." You can expand this sentiment that you may bring out all its fulness of meaning. " My son, why this unreasonable anger ? of what hast thou to complain? hast thou not par- taken of my bounty, shared my counsels, and been compassed with my love continually ? I had thought \\h . Hl^ 196 THE PRODIGAL SON. that thou lovedst me, and that my presence was dearer to thee than a kid slaughtered from the fold for a separate revel with ' thy friends.' Thou art ever with me. For thee there has been a constant feast, a never- ceasing smile of welcome. Why grudge to thy brother an hour of the gladness which thou hast realised for these many years ? Thou complainest that thou hast never had a feast. No, nor the famine, nor the rags, nor the desertion of thy friends, nor the company of the swine. If thou hast never been wild with delight, thou hast never been frantic with agony ; if thou hast never felt the ecstasy, thou hast never felt the hunger. Thy brother has smiled to-day in the light of his father's countenance — that light has shone upon thee, familiarly and without a cloud ; thy brother has had shoes, a ring, a robe, a • banquet — thou the inherit- ance, for * all that 1 have is thine.' " Brethren, surely our questionings have been answered, and our unbelief rebuked, while the father has thus been talking to the elder son. In the long run, depend upon it, there is a reward for the righteous, and the triumphing of the wicked is short. All our misgiving arises only from our short-sightedness, and we should bow in acquiescence and in gratitude if, like God, we could see the end from the beginning. The ancient Nemesis was fabled sometimes to tarry, in order that the man she tracked to ruin might be the more decisively destroyed ; and God's providence, though in the noon of man's passion it may seem to slumber, is but accumulating the electricity which, in the dead of night, shall hurl its lightnings on his head. " Fret not thyself," therefore, " because of evil-doers. ; t DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. 197 neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord ; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust also in him ; and he shall bring it to pass" (Ps. xxxvii. 1-5). Do you wonder that that newly converted man, he who has been changed suddenly by Divine grace from profligacy to penitence, should have so much of the peace that passeth understanding, and of the joy of the Holy Ghost ? Ah ! cease your wonder — you have no need to envy him. He has been an orphan all his life ; he may be allowed to exult a little in the new sensation of a father's clasping arms. He has hungered so long that his constitution has lost its tone, and ho must have cordials and stimulants to supply his lack of vigour. He has been a serf and vassal, and he only leaps and shouts, perhaps, in this the first delirium of his freedom. You need not envy him. Ah ! if you could but see how he envies yo% — ^you, the elder sons — ^who, during his long yeanj of outlaw-life, have dwelt quietly and happily at home. He needs more joy than you do. If he has not an exuberance of Divine comfort, he will fail and be disheartened in the work which he has arisen to do. Long habits of ungodliness are tyrannous over him, from which your lives are free. There are memories of sin which haunt him like avenging spectres, and which people his fancy oftentimes with visions of such terrible impurity, that if they could but be burnt out (»f his \h i 1 98 THE PRODIGAL SON. ■: \ soul by sharpest cautery, he would shout welcome to the hissing brand. Kej )ice over that prodigal, I charge you. Do not give him the cold glancr^ and the short answer ; watch over him with loving jealousy ; help him speedily if his footsteps stumble. Prove your godliness by your iXod-lihencss, in your tenderness of care over the erring, and in your frank and hearty joy for his recovery. " It is meet that you should make merry and be glad ; for this your brother [can you say the word heartily ? if you cannot, you are none of Christ's] was dead and is alive again ; and was lost, and is found." We fear, however, that with all our willingness to throw the mantle of charity over this elder son, we are compelled, by the evidence, to return him as the guiltier of the twain. It is not the perplexed saint who speaks in the bitter language of the narrative : taking the best view of it, it is the ungcnial and reluctant servant ; taking the worst view of it, it is the unmasked hypocrite, or the ostentatious J^harisee. The type of character that is unfolded to us is of a very unamiable sort. He seems to have been a man reserved, and unsocial, with very little of the milk of human kindness — a man who could not have been intemperate if he would, ft least without trampling upon all the barriers of his temperament — a miser lather than a spendthrift. The prodigal, at his wildest, was redeemed by a careless generosity, that might have shared his last shekel with a beggar; but the elder son would have been free from all suspicion of being guilty of any extravagance of charity. The prodigal turned out the whole of his nature — tlio worst I a :he kst DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY, 199 of liira was patent to the sun ; but the elder con- strained himself to a decorous service, and hid, behind a plausible conduct, coarse passions and a sordid soul. At the best, there is nothing winning about him ; he is but a son with a servant's heart. A son, with tiie heart of a son, might have been surprised when he heard the unwonted merriment ; but his inquiry of the cause would have been made, not of the servant, but of the fatlier, and the ice would have melted from his heart, even if annoyance had hastily frosted it, when his father came out and entreated him to fill the reserved seat, and share the general joy. Brethren, there are such ungenial professors of religion now — men " whose lot," in the quaint words of another, " is always cast in the land of Cabul." They are always " in the field " when the prodigal comes home ; they are never ready to give the first shake of the hand to the wanderer ; they fret at the bustle of his reception, partly because it disturbs their ease, and partly because it reveals their littleness. Their religion is a task- work, not a service of love — a burdened pilgrimage, not a sunny travel home. Meet them where you will, the atmosphere becomes suddenly polar ; their trials are grievous, their discontents are many. To them there is no life in the Church, no summer in the world. Their principal activity is to suggest a defi- ciency or to expose a fault ; for in proportion to their discomfort is their censoriousness, for, as it is a literary canon that the critical tendency lodges in the shal- lowest brain, even so the slanderous tendency coils about the weakest heart. If they are in the vine- yard at all, they are stunted shrubs, or trees of Ih ! ;■; 200 THE PRODIGAL SON. eccentric growth — they do not flourish in the "beauty of the palm, nor endure in the vigour of the cedar. They know not of the delight of conversion, they rejoice not in God their Saviour. How utterly un- happy such a state of heart must be ! The elder sons of this type are their own worst enemies ever. " He would not go in." Well, and who suffered but him- self? The lights were not put out, the music did not cease, the festivity of the gathered household flowed evenly and merrily on. Even the father, though he came out to expostulate, and was grieved at the sullenness and sin, went in again to those who could appreciate his kindness, and whom his smile made happy. Father, servants, friends, prodigal, all were rejoicing together ; he alone in the outer dark- ness nursed his selfish pride, and voluntarily excluded himself from the light and gladness of the home. Oh, if there are any here who thus banish themselves from the Church's common joy, I pray you think upon your folly ! That Cabul is an unsightly place of sojourn, and there is no passage from it into heaven. If, however, you narrowly look into the spirit of the elder son, it is to be feared that we can scarcely accord to him even the qualified praise of being a sincere but eccentric striver after the right. Closely examined, there are many points of identity between him and his brother, as his brother was when we first made his acquaintance, while there are features about the elder which make his impiety not only lamentable but re- pulsive. There was the same alienation of heart. It betrays itself in his very words. " Lo ! these many years do I serve thee." A son would have said love DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. 201 thee ; but the spirit of the slave and of the hireling degraded the affection into a servitude undertaken for the hope of a reward. Hence he complains as a servant might whose wages had been unrighteously" withheld, " Thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." There was the same sinful longing for freedom from restraint and for in- dulgence in independent merriment. He, too, must have comrades that were unfitted for the presence of his father. With equal love of pleasure to his brother, but with a greater selfishness, he panted for the licence which yet his worldly prudence forbade him to request. How much better were his "friends" than the "harlots" of his erring brother ? Did not the one answer to the other ? In these, the essential points of the prodigal's rebellion, the elder was, on the testimony of his own lips — wrung from him in that unguarded moment 7'hen the mask slipped off from the countenance, because anger had convulsed it — as guilty as the brother he despised. Then he had other vices, which Le could not forbear to display, and from which his more reckless brother was free. The faults of the prodigal were far removed from the dastardly and mean ; but many of those vile passions, for which in the days of his flesh Christ reserved his severest reprobations, found a lodgment in the elder brother's soul. There is an implied isolation in the fact of his being left " in the field " until the ordinary hour of his return. The father knew his selfishness, and feared his ire, or the fleetest of foot would have been despatched to summon him to the festival of love. Then he displays the anger of offended pride, and envy, M : i 202 THE PRODIGAL SON. ; 1 '\ ! ■ I' ■•I too gross and foul a fiend to be harboured in a good man's bosom. Then the indignant remonstrance, which was the cruel answer to the father's entreaty, discovered not only his servile spirit and his sordid hope of advan- tage, but the complacent and haughty self-righteousness which, like Peter's Galilean speech, " bewrayeth " the Pharisee all the world over : " Lo, these many year? do I serve thee ; neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment." How utterly does sin blind the conscience of its perpetrator! I have seen a drunkaid stutter out an indignant protest against a charge of intemperance. I have known a swearer deny, with an oath, that he was ever guilty of a habit so profane ; and here is a poor deluded sinner, in the very act of sin — sin against the love due to his brother and the honour due to his father together — laying to his soul the unction of a perfect righteousness, as if the summer fleece were impure in his presence, and the snow-flake stained beside him. What concentrated evil-hearted- ness, moreover, is there in the whole of his reference to the prodigal. " This thy son " — as though he had no affinity of blood, as though he would take care to shake free from the leprosy of such polluted relationship — " was come " — not was come hack ; that thought was a thought too high, his was too callous a nature to be thrilled with the great idea of return — " was come " — l^ecause necessity impelled him, and hunger drave him hither, an unfriended and miser?" \i beggar — " which hath devoured thy living with harlots." How knew he that ? Did his own base heart teach him ? "Was "the wish the father to the thought"? " Thy living" — every word is loaded with the utmost possible harsh- !t m DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. 203 ness, for, as his portion of goods, the living was in a sense his own. " But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, tliou hast killed for him the fatted calf." Brethren, I ask you now, which is the guiltier — the generous, thoughtless, riotous prodigal, or the seemly, slanderous, hypocritical elder brother '« And there are many snch in our churches and congregations now. Do you ask who they are ? All who hold the form, but who deny the power of godliness — all who "draw near to God with their mouth whilst their heart is far from him " — all who have never bowed the knee in broken-hearted sorrow, and are yet crying Peace, peace ! to their imperilled and unhappy souls — all who repine at another's elevation, or are envious of another's good, while they deem their own virtues so unmistakeable, and their own excellence so manifest, as to silence all gainsayers — they are the elder brothers. Perhaps — let us come closer — there is very much of his image in ourselves. It is said that when a company of German divines were discussing this parable, and various con- jectures were hazarded as to the identity of this elder son, a devout but eccentric brother, on being applied to for his opinion, said — " I know, for I learned it yesterday. It is myself ! for I fretted and murmured because such an one had an extraordinary baptism of the Holy Spirit from on high." Oh for the spirit of searching, to discover and to exorcise the demon ! But there is mercy even for the elder son. The Father entreats still ; and the censoriousness and hypocrisy, as well as the impatience and estrangement, may bo freely and graciously forgiven. The grand il I'i i! 204 THE PRODIGAL SON. jubilate with which the chapter closes forbids us to despair of any. It is meet that God should save them, and that the whole ransomed universe should exult over the pardoned sinner. Mercy! joy because of mercy ! These are the latest notes of the spirit-psalm which linger on our ears and in our hearts as this sweet chapter closes. Mercy ! God's best and dearest attribute I Mercy ! earth's last and fondest hope ! Mercy ! Heaven's crowning and eternal triumph ! It is stammered out from mortal lips that fain would lisp its music — it swells in grandest diapason in the song of the redeemed. Last and longest of the impressions which this subject may have made upon our minds, this thought of mercy clings. And now that we are closing this series of life -pictures, drawn with a trembling hand, and with a deep consciousness of latent beauty and power in the subject which are be- yond the artist's skill, one vision seems to fill the foreground: it is that of the Father clasping the prodigal to his embrace in the sight of earth and heaven, and saying, in tones to which the choirs of angels were discord, and which each seraph hushes his song that he may hear, " I am he that speaketh iu righteousness," and that am " Mighty to save." XIII jif SIN AND MERCY. " I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as % cloud, thy sins : return unto me ; for I have redeemed thee." — IsA. xliv. 22. HOW wonderful is the influence of the love of Christ ! It impregnates the world with fra- grance. It transforms the vile into the precious, and exalts the common into the consecrated. It lights up this stricken and wailing planet with a strange glad- ness, and makes earth the vestibule and audience-rooni> of heaven. There are some representations of the Divine character which are calculated only to inspire us with awe. We cannot contemplate his incommunicable perfections without inexpressible reverence. When we, who are creatures of clay, hear of his power — that " he doeth as he will among the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of earth, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him. What doest thou ?" — when we are told of his omnipresent and all-searching eye, that " if we ascend into heaven he is there ; that if we make our bed in hell, behold ! he is there ; that if we take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter- most parts of the sea, even there shall his hand lead , \,i It f !l ! 11 ii- ,Tsn \ i 11 * ' [ ': I L 20() S/X .IM) .U/'A'CV. us, iiinl his vi}.i;li(. limul mIimII 1u»M iis" — wlioii tlio chi»lliMi;^i» is tho };niinhMir (tf his prrftu't.ioiis -wo siiriiilc into o\ir iiativi' iusioiiiliraiu-o, and are humhlod in (ho dust, und(M- his luii^hty iiand. And yet, wo iiro iilhtwcd to \v[\'V to olhor luM'ltH'lions niori< consohii;^' and (hili,<;ht,- lul ; and ii' our miiuls prostrato th(Mns(>lv(>s hol'on^ " tho i^roat, and only rolontato," wo may lilt, onrsolvos to holiold him in tho (onilort>r majosty oT his goodness, soattorinq; around hiuj (h«^ lokt'iis and momorials of his lovo. Suoh oontiMujilations aro HU;4^'ostod hy tho j)assago whioh is now htM'oro us. ir 1 speak to any who still slumber " in tlui oldnoss of tho h'lter," thovo is that in tho words which I trust may rouse them to Ihoui^ht and to ])rayor; if I speak to any o( aroused eonviction and alarmt'd eonscionce, there is that in th'- words which is suited to their need, and which can lill them with conlidenco and joy. 1. 'riu'ir /.s" irroifniscd the cxititencc of sin. II. Then' is aj/inticd tJic exercise, of mere jf. I. Tho individuals to whom this j^racious promise was addressed had been i;uilty of enormous and a<^- cravated rebellion ; thoir transgressions had gathered blackness and density — they were us " a thick cloud," and " as a cloud." The prophet in the commencejnent of h^s prophecy paints their turi>itude in graphic and\ awful 'Colours. They are brought into degrading com- \ parison ;vith the very beasts of the Held : " The ox ' knowerh his owner, and the ass his master's crib : but Vjsrael doth not know, my people doth not consider.^ S/N AND M/'.h'CY. 207 icieil Dud," tuent aiulx com- \ ox but / dei-y lln jtroccitMlrt 1,0 rrpr^HdiiL Uicir oriiiicH mm 11 biinlcii, wtii^liiiij^ Mi(!iii down Troin iJio <'n!('-l,n(!nH ol' truudiood, HO Mml/ llic.y iii(! oltl !;.';< ■(! to Mloop iuiil cioimiIi ''(inc.'illj lli(< iiKixonildr lynuiiiy of (ivil "u [((iopli! /fr^A^ wiUi iiiitjiiity." 'riiin drjiravity liu'i coiiK! down in licnidilMiy inuiHniisMioii IVoiri ;.;(!ii('r;i,l/ioii to ;^(!n(!riilion — ".,». H(!(!(| ol <',vil-d(t('rH," 'J'li(!r(! Iihh Ik!(!Ii h nud iiivfiiHioii of ull iiuXlirul Older: l,li(! vory «,'iiiI(!l(!HH w^f, of cliildliofjcl, which HhouM Ito Hh()(!l{(!d iil hoimkIh ol' rihaldry, and Kcarcd at sij^dits of .sin, lias Imicoiikj at. onco an udojit and a Uiaciicr in evil — •" cliildniii that aro coi- ruptei'M." 'I iicy liavo anivcid at ~th'nl do'^'^^cd and authiciouH jxiitiiuKiil-y in crime when e,v(!n chustiHorncnt 1(»H(!H ilH Hidiitariiie.sH, and Tails of its wonted ofCect,. "Why .should yo bo Htiicke.n any iiiokj ? Ye will revolt nioro and more : tlie wholo liead is .sick, and the i wholo heart faint." / JIo represents them moreover as, with all this bad- ness of heart and looseiieHs of life, decorous and .seemly in external wor.shii) — their fasts rigidly observed, their service faultless, their praises harmoniously intoned — and thus {i;ivin;:,' a deeper dye and fouler loathsomeness to tluiir impiety by a hypocritical profession of religion. " IJring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomina- tion unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, 1 cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting." IIow terrible a description of a people estranged from God ! But, passing from these I particular individuals to the general aspect of the race, / the awful description will in substance apply to every son and daughter of Adam. The challenge is a universal one : " Who can say, I w ( t 'i I I 2o8 SIN AND MERCY. m I' iHli f fi ii r have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin ?" One answer alone must be universally returned : " The good man is perished out of the earth." " There is none that doeth good, no, not one." " Every mouth is stopped, and all the world is guilty before God." The spreading virus has infected every vein, the fretting pestilence has slaughtered and sepulchred a world. Yes, sin is everywhere. The crown has dropped from \ tlie brow of human nature ; the sceptre, wielded in Eden, has been cast from the nerveless and paralyzed arm ; and the olden Paradise itself, as if the very scene of the great rebellion could no longer be borne, has been swept from the face of the earth. Man, indeed, delirious in his ruin, a dreamer of happiness amid the squalor and beggary of the fall, may in the visions of the night picture the primitive Elysium, fragrant and beautiful, with the footsteps of angels treading its soft solitudes, and the voice of God in delicious companion- ship, heard " in the cool of the day." But morning comes Y'ith its cold awakening light, dashes him from his momentary elevation, despoils him of his sorcery and of his throne, and rouses him to the sorrowful consciousness that VT€ "If, round Eden's distant steep, Angelic legions stray, Alas ! they are but sent to keep His guilty foot away." Yes, sin is everywhere. Broad and deep, the wide world over, we can trace the fire- written syllables : " As^ by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." f:- ;IN AND MERCY. 209 We know that the doctrine we preach is to pseudo- philanthropists and benevolent idealists unpopular and repulsive — "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence " — but we cannot help that. This fancied exemption from the ruin of the fall, this clinging to the perfectibility of unaided human nature, is a danger- ous error which has already slain its thousands, and which must, at all hazards, be confronted and exposed. It is this self-exalting theory which lies at the root of many fatal schemes of error — which has in- fected our current literature, which has warped the reasonings of our press, which is prominent in the harangues of our popular lectures — many of them mischievously clever — and which by the flatter^" of its siren-song, has lured many an unwary sinner to his own shame. There are many now-a-days whose sole business seems to be to exalt the nature they inherit, to dwell upon its power of self-guidance, and to trace its brilliant march from the low to the lofty — from the transcen- dental up to the divine. They talk of its dignity as if it were stainless and noble. They forget that sin has marred its beauty, and tarnished its honour, and that its only dignity now is the dignity of the traitor, saved by the clemency of the monarch from the penalties of the headsman or the gallows. You may try the experiment in its fairest aspects for yourselves. You may take a child in its innocence an'^. sensibility, and deeming, with Lord Palmerston, that all children are born good, you may assiduously instruct it in the principles of morals, and carefully seclude it from the influence of bad example. You \''\ I. »T0 SIN AND MERCY. may write upon its fresh young heart the laws of rectitude and the benevolent affections, and the holy name of God ; and you may watch for tlie development of all that is " of good report, and lovely." Ah, you have been too late in the field : you deemed your inscription was the first, but " an enemy hath done this " before you. The heart is over-written already. Let but the passions play upon the opening mind, let the fire of temptation near it, hold it up to the lamp of opportunity, and in hell's dark cipher there will become distinct and palpable the characters of crime. There are times, indeed, when the foulness of human nature will precipitate, and when it may present an aspect of moral amiableness and beauty. You can hardly fancy, in the summer-time, that the lake which sparkles in the sunbeam, and whose blue depths are clear and calm, could ever be lashed into a thing of storm; but let the blasts of winter rage, and they swell the turbid waters, and the scowling waves will foam out their own shame. The Gospel proceeds altogether upon the basis of an entire and universal depravity. " It assimilates all varieties of human character into one common con- dition of guilt, and need, and helplessness." And this is just that part of it, against which the man of honest worldliness or the man of graceful generosity feeb most disposed to fret and to rebel. They do not like to be grouped up with publicans and harlots and the outcasts from the society of men. They cannot brook it, that they should require pre- cisely the same kind of treatment to prepare them for I 1- SIN AND MERCY. 21 r )f an all con- this Ln of rosity They and men. a joyous immortality, as the most profligate aud aban- doned of their neighbours. And yet the Scripture leaves them no alternative. It recognises but two varieties of character here, and but two varieties of condition in the world beyond the grave. And it were easy to trace out cliaracters, from the extreme of murderous atrocity to the highest blamelessness of merely human morality, and to show that they are alike " ungodly;" and " the ungodly cannot stand in tlie judgment," any more than " sinners in the congregation of the righteous." We shall carry along with us universal conviction and universal sympathy, when we affirm the depravity of the wretch who with fiendish resolve has plotted, and with ruthless hand has perpetrated, a murder. We shall not have many deniers of our position, if we detach one feature of offensiveness from that abomin- able character. Leave him with all his dishonesty, and with all his licentiousness, but let him recoil, with natural aversion, from the shedding of blood. But if you admit thus far the soundness of our argument, you must go with us when we apply it to the man of ease and affluence, constitutionally abhor- rent of cruelty and perfidy, whose type is the man of whom we read in the parable — charged neither with fraud in acquiring, nor with insolence in spending wealth, but simply that in his life of luxury " he was not rich toward God." Committed as you are to the principle, you must carry it still higher. The man may be furnished at once with fine sensibility and with honourable principle. Integrity the noblest may etamp his dealings, he may have been tested by the ' I i\ 212 SJN AND MERCY. teiiiptatioiis of unlawlul gain and by tho reverses of sad and perplexing embarrassment, and amid all lluctuations nuiy have retained the goodwill of his fellows and an untarnished character ; and this right- eous man, so high in his i)ractiee of commercial virtues, may have won by his benevolence and amiableness a rich revenue of affection, and his family may cling with fondness round his knees, and deem him the " good man for whom peradventure sorae would (lave to die." It is difficult to look on such a man and restrain your involuntary homage; and yet, " though we love the man, we will not lie about tho man." It may be — it very often is — that the Being who brought him into existence, who fitted his heart for its emotions of uprightness and generosity, who made the world a theatre for their exei'cise, who gave his admirers hearts to appreciate and tongues to express their ai)preciation of his moral worth, " is not in all his thoughts," No motive of love to God, or even fear of his displeasure, has actuated his condu t ; and if he dies in his present region, and with his present trust, without the transformation and without the hope of the Gospel, like a beauteous wreck drifting down upon the dark waters to ruin, he will have to depart iVoni the presence of God, banished everlastingly from the glory of his power. This is the scriptural estimate of the morality that is without godliness. Upon the most exalted professors of this mere earthly goodness, Christ comes with the keenness of his discernment, and with the power of his rebuke : " I know you, that ye have not the love of God within you;" and because of this fact, and of SIN AND MERCY. 213 I ( this fact alone, " every mouth imist be stopped, and all the world be guilty before CJod." Brethren, I do account it a satisfaction, amid the manifold unworthinesses of my ministerial life, that on this matter I have given no uncertain sound. I dr> insist upon it as indispensable to a faithful minister of Christ, that he should with all fidelity set forth the guilt and danger of every member of his charge ; that he should allow no peace while there is no godliness ; that he should proclaim war to the grave while sin lords it in undisputed ascendency ; that he should mix restlessness for the sinner — sorrow in his cup — anxiety gnawing at his vitals — care corroding his enjoyments — remorse lashing him through the eartli like a doomed and stricken spirit — so long as he willingly submits to be " led captive by the Devil at his will." And this is just the conviction to which I wish to bring you now — not that they are sinners, who dwell amid the darkness of heathenism ; not that they are sinners, who crowd the hulks for punishment, or breathe in prisons the feculent air ; not that they are sinners, who follow unblushing in the drunkard's revel, or in the harlot's train ; — but that you are sinners — sinners in danger of perishing ; that many of you, with abundant light, with all possible moral appliances, with counsel- ling friends, with pious education, with a faithful ministry, with many — very many — impressions of religion, are in danger of perishing ; more heinous in guilt and more fearful in punishment than Sodom ; that between you and heaven at this moment there h\ a chasm which none but the Almighty can bridge Jl 214 S/JV AND MERCY. over; that in your heart there is a taint of radical vileness, which only the heart's blood of ilic Saviour can hallow ; tliat upon you rests an amount of wrath and of wretchedness, which only a heaven-descended atonement can ehactually bear away. W\ II. ^'liere is affirmed the existence of mercy. It might have been imagined, that the declaration of apostasy and impenitence would have been followed by the threats of doom. We might have supposed that wlien the prophet had revealed transgressions " like a thick cloud," he might have gone away with- out holding out any hope of mercy. Is not Jehovah a just God ? Is he not angry with the wicked every day? Are not his perfections united in their opposition to sin ? Do not sins of aggravation and enormity expose their perpetrators to a fearful doom ? And yet we hear not the voice of vengeance, but the voice of mercy. The Lord is not in the whirlwind. We see him not in the fire ; we hear him not in the storm ; but the still small voice calmly whispers, and he is there. And he speaks to the criminal arraigned at the bar, and con- i'used with the conviction of his crimes : " I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins : return unto me ; for I have redeemed thee." Premising that this promise of mercy is reconciled with God's purity, and with his recorded displeasure against sin by the atonement of Jesus, so that no dishonour is done to the Throne, and the law is upheld, vindicated, magnified, we observe that this character of God, as a God of mercy, is the great s/jv and mercy. 2^5 n not e still ad he con- otted loud, hee." aciled asure at no iw i.s b this great Bible theme. The whole tale of the Scriptures is a story of grace. Every promise distils it. It is the burden of the prophet's message and of the poet's song. Evangelists live but to point to its fulness. Apostles preach but to unfold its wonders. The last words of the volume, before it was finally closed as a completed and authoritative revelation, are words of grace, as if the Angel of Mercy lingered to utter them, and uttered them last that they might leave the most indelible impression, as if it were wished to attest the validity of every other invitation by that last stamp of the signet-ring — " The Spirit and the bride say. Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." We said that sin was everywhere. Blessed be God ! "where sin hath abounded, grace hath much more abounded." Like the rich music of some majestic river, it ceases not day nor night in its benevolent*, flow — generation after generation rippling on — ever sounding its notes of gladness in the ears of the guiltj anc' the dying. The gracious mind of God unrolls itself fold after fold, in the successive pages of the Bible. The gracious purposes of his heart, like do many stars — countless and unquenchable — come spark- ling out through the midnight of our destiny. Turn where we will, gaze where we will, there is the grace of God shining out in its unsullied brightness, or struggling through the clouds which obscure or dis- colour its light. Scarcely had the fall defiled the world, and enta'^ed its heritage of wrath and shame, before the first pro- ti 2l6 SIN AND MERCY. % '\ mise of grace was breathed : " The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Scarcely had the thunders of Sinai died away, before Grace spoke in comfort : " I will make all my goodness pass bvsfore thee, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord, merci- ful and gracious, pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin." This is the free, the certain, the repeated testi- mony of the word, that " if through the offence of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, !ia abounded unto many." This gift of grace was never known until the en- trance of sin. There had been power, and righteous- ness, and goodness before. There was power in the creation of all that is — in the glorious furniture of the heavens — in the fiat by which the wondrous earth came forth ; there was righteousness in the allotments of the heavenly hierarchy — in the hurling of the rebellious over the battlements of heaven ; there was goodness, pure essential goodness, in the love that was manifested towards Adam unfallen. But when man sinned, perverted his nature, cor- I'lpted his way, bereft himself of every love-compelling quality — became utterly defiled and unworthy — then grace came in a new fountain struck out of the Godhead, a new idea for the wonder and homage of the universe. All former displays which God had made of himself were ascents to higher elevation. This was a mightier forthputling of his perfections, inasmuch as it showed — not only how high the love of God could rise, but how deeply the mercy of God could go down — not only the glorious fellowship of I ii S/JV AND MERCY. 217 then the I of had angels which it could fill with its rejoicing, but the branded aud downtrodden outcasts to whom it could stoop and uplift chem from hell into heaven. " the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and mercy o£ God." We announce it then, brethren, as an indubitable and glorious fact, that God can " be just, and the justifier of all them that believe." Christ hath died, the just for the unjust. The everlasting Son of the everlasting Father has stooped from his throne; he became the weeping babe in the manger of Bethlehem — the weary traveller on the journey of life — the agonized sufferer in the garden of Gethsemane — the spotless victim on the hill of shame. The declarations of the vicarious nature of the death of Christ are frequent and impressive : " This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins." " Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto yo^' the forgiveness of sins." " In whom we have redemption through his Wood, even the forgiveness of sins." " Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father: to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever." Brethren, it is on the cross of Christ that the law is magnified and the pardon sealed, that holiness glows in imperishable vindication, and that mercy triumphs in her proudest gains. The cross is the fulness of love, the security of hope, the pledge of immortality ; and the application of the blood of the cross — net its '.I ■''' . ii I 2l8 SIN AND MERCY. exhibition, not the intellectual assent to it as a doc- trine, not even the deeply-wrought conviction of its necessity — but the application — the real, vital, appro- priating application of that blood to the conscience^ — secures forgiveness, happiness, heaven. Brethren, I do rejoice that the statement of salvation is so clear, and that it is before you now. I address yoi p^l No need of cruel lacerations, difficult penar. costly works, piled-up charities ; broad and strong upon your hearts I impress the old Gospel message, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved." 1^1 oc- its ro- lon ■ess ;ult md pel md XIV. STRENGTH AND PEACE. " The Lord will give strength unto his people ; the Lord will bless hia people with peace." — Ps. xxix. 11. T IHOROUGHLY to realize all the comfort of this delightful promise, you must acquire some knowledge of the geographical structure of the psalm. Standing in the porch of the Temple, the Psalmist watches the progress of a thunder-storm as it rises in the distance, swells grandly on, breaks over his head, and passes away. He imagines its first rise from the far Mediterranean, and its royal play upon the waters : " The voice of the Lord is upon the waters : the God of glory thundereth : the Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful ; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty " (vers. 3, 4). He then traces it as it has settled upon the lofty range of the Lebanon hills, and the tall cedars are uprooted and broken by the roughness of its mountain sport : " The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars ; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He maketh them also to skip like a calf ; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn " (vers. 5, 6). Forked and vivid, the blue lightnings glare, and the storm howls through the wilderness, making itf desolation more savage and desolate still ; ^1- H t : 11 .1 Ml IS \ it i r ! h ' i 220 STRENGTH AND PEACE. " The voice of the Lord divideth the liames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness ; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh" (vers. 7, 8), On it sweeps from the cleft uplands, pouring its destructive floods through woodland knolls and o'er the level and indented plain ; for the brand has unlocked the prisoned heart of waters, and they leap to be released as the prisoner leaps from bondage : " The voice of the Lord inaketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests : and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory. The Lord sitteth upon the flood ; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever " (ver. 9, 10). And now the tempest has fulfilled its purifying mission ; and as the big drops linger upon the panting flower-cup, or go to swell the murmur of the brook into a hoarser chorus, there is a glad hush upon the landscape, and a sweet balm upon the heaven-scented air. Then the minstrel speaks to the heart of faith, and out of the recent freshly-remembered danger he reads the lesson, everlasting in its comfort, of a safety which no disasters can disturb : " The Lord will give strength unto his people ; the Lord will bless his people with peace." And it is so often with us — is it not ? that the things we soonest dread are those in which our pro- tection and our blessing lie ? Who of us is there that would not have been more cowardly than the disciples in their fear, when, still and pale along the heavy night and cheerless waters, there moved that awful form ? The thunder frightens us ; we heed not that it stays the pestilence. We shudder when the keen lightnings play, forgetful that they cleave the STRENGTH AND PEACE. 221 clouds which hang darkly on our pathway home. It is doubly sweet, therefore, when we are assured that the world's dreadful things are but the tokens of liis power, who is our Saviour, and that when the tempest rages and the aliens fear, we have a filial interest in the great Being who rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm. But the promise is to " his people " both of strength and peace. They only who have chosen his service, and who abide with all faithfulness in his testimonies, are the heirs of these inspiring words. For all others there is no relief from the crash of the storm, nor comfort in the peal of the thunder. It behoves us to inquire into the reality of our interest in the promise, and to assure ourselves of that, that so our souls may exult in the breadth and fitness of the blessing which these words contain — " strength and peace." And what else can our utmost need comprise ? See the labourer whom the morning calls from slumber, hastening to the cheerful fields where the dew has freshly glittered, and the lark has newly sung — what needs he for the work which waits his ready hand ? Surely strength to do it — the flexile nniscle, the strong obedient sinew. See him again at the eventide, when the sun is liberal to the western clouds, and throws them largess of glory. See how, to greet his homeward footstep, little feet are pattering from under the jasmined thatch, and at the garden gate. There is great mystery and clapping of hands, while from the inner room there flashes out upon the twilight a loving wifely smile. What is his fitting blessing just then ? what the endowment which seems properly to belong to that 'season? Surely Mii^tiii It 222 STRENGTH AND PEACE. peace — nothing to corrode, distract, alarm — a tranquil spirit, around wliich slumber draws, as the cool quiet shadows draw around the outside world. It would seem then, that in the two blessings promised in the text we have the supply of our need, alike for our morning worlc and evening rest, the inspiration for the duty and the recompense of its loyal discharge — " strength and peace." They must be united to fulfil the highest uses of each other. There must be no remorse in the bosom of the strong man, no consuming passion-fever, no deep wasting anxiety, or his strength will be paralyzed and his labour be left unfinished. There must be no feebleness even in the tired frame, or sleep will flee the eyelids, and the man will toss in nightly unrest that will unfit sadly for the energies of daily toil. The complement of Christian endowment, therefore, is to be realized in the fulfilment of the promise of the text; and ye whose hearts are fixed, though your fortunes are tried, may for your encourage- ment dwell upon it to-day. 11 ■ I I. " The Lord will give strength unto his people." This surely implies that he will enable them to )onie to him at first, that the sincere desire, the God\7ard turning of the soul, the almost hopeless glance of penitence toward the far-off heaven, shall receive en- couragement, and help, and promise. The first power, indeed, to awake out of the death of sin, must be of Divine bestowment. The state of the race is uniformly represented in Scripture to be a state of absolute help- lessness. The strength is utterly shred out of us ; we are incapable by our unaided strength of one solitary STRENGTH AND PEACE. 223 to of len- der, of iry godly impulse — we are " dead in trespasses and sins." But the Breath has coine forth to breathe upon the valley of the slain ; the influences of the quickening and free Spirit have been purchased for thti race by the offering of tlie universal Surety, and the true Light, coming into the world, enlighteneth every man that dwells upon its surface, or that breathes its air. The universality of the heritage of the Spirit is as complete as is the universality of the defilement of the fall. The blessing comprises and would hallow wherever the curse has tainted and banned. Oh, it is a beautiful thought — redeeming our con- ceptions of human destiny from the despondency which the meditation upon sin's ravages induces — that God the Comforter is in the world, and tliat he strives with men, with all men, to bring them to the knowledge of the truth. There is not one who is bereft of this precious influence from Heaven. Do you startle at an announcement so broad ? Do your thoughts wander to some unhappy one whose downward course you have traced, whose countenance is coarsely lined with evil wrinkles, not sown there by the hand of Time — to whom, in his insolent impiety, there is neither en- dearment in affection nor sacredness in law, and whose life seems to be one long outrage upon the charities which are society's enduring bond ; and are you scep- tical as to any softening upon that hardness of heart, as to any Divine influence at work upon that vessel of wrath long since fitted for destruction ? His secret heart, if you could but always see it, would reveal many a convincing memory, and many a whispered warning ; you would find that there have been times in 224 STRENGTH AND PEACE. *M Lis history vlieii he has bowed, sincere and reverent as childhood ; when he has stayed, spell-bound, from some contemplated crime, because there has thrilled through him some remembered stanza of his infancy ; or when his companions of the revel have jeered him for his unusual thoughtfulness because he heard a voice they could not liear — borne in to him by some subtle mental association, and repeating some godly rebuke of a father, long departed, or some wishful earnestness of a minister M'ho speaks on earth no longer. I am bold to affirm it, there is not one before me, grown to man's estate, arrived at those years of life when the mysterious purchase of the fall — the knowledge of good and evil — has come upon you, who has not been per- sonally the subject of the strivings of the good Spirit of God. You may have perversely hardened your- selves in sin, or you may have encrusted yourselves with worldly policy and interests as with a triple- coated weapon of resistance, or, stolid and shameless, you may have been sunken in indifference to all things true and sacred ; but your wanderings have not been without a reprover, nor your slumbers without a re- buking vision. God has not left himself without a witness even in you. There have been seasons of visitation when you were unwontedly subdued, when impressions were within you, which, yielded to, would have led you to Christ. There have been obstructions in your evil ways, placed there by a Divine hand ; and if you perish after all, it will be the suicide's perdition, it will be because you sought and loved Death — because, with a strong will to die, you plunged over the gulf, heedless of the grace that clasped you, and of the 1 STRENGTH AND PEACE, 225 forbearing loving-kindness which did not ceiiso its longings .for your return. Oh yes ! no feeble spirit, convinced and disquieted, need plead its feebleness as a ground of refusal to come to the Saviour. Let but the paralyzed shamble, or be carried, to Bethesda, and the angel surely will trouble the waters. Let the prodigal sadden on his homeward journey, and while yet a great way off, he will be met and overwhelmed by the prescient tenderness of the Father. I speak to-day to those who know this of a truth. You re- member when you iirst essayed to come — when, with the scales just falling from your eyes, you asked, trembling and astonished, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " How eager was the gentleness which greeted your coming, and how exquisite the care which guided your blundering footsteps, until you had got where the " green pastures " flourished and the " still waters " rippled by ! And so eagerly will all feeble ones be strengthened and all penitents welcomed to the Saviour's heart and arms. Sinner ! he awaiteth thee. He, touched with the feeling of thine infirmities — he, with all the lovingness of thy kindliest fellow, and with all the omnipotence of God — he awaiteth thee. Do thy knees totter ? Are thy hands infirm ? have they lost the clasping power ? He csliall confirm the weak hand and strengthen the feeble knee. Dost thou sink beneath the yielding waters ? See, he walks upon them to thy rescue. Art thou frightened by the storm's nearing howl, sobbing out thy sorrow like an ailing child ? His arms are round thee, and thou art safe. Dost thou endeavour to pray, but words fail thee — thy tongue cleaves to thy mouth — the labouring I. P ! il ! 1 )■ i 226 STRENGTH AND PEACE. ii- ! silence broken only by the groans of the cluit'ed spirit, which frets beneath the burden of too strong a sorrow ? He reads thy heart, and says to thee, ere yet thy efforts liave prevailed to syllable a prayer. " l]efore yo call 1 will answer ; and while ye are yet speaking I will hear." " The Lord will give strength unto his people ; the Lord will bless his people with peace." There is implied also in this promise, the, communi- cation of the gift of poiver to he a true witness and yood soldier of the Truth. It is manifest that those who are called to tlie service of the Truth must not be passive recipients of its influence, nor indol' *■. pen- sioners upon its abundance of privilege. th is not a fortune bequeathed, but a stewardship entrusted, and requiring exactness and fidelity in the discharge of the duties which it involves. The whole of the representations, under which the Christian life is pre- sented in Scripture, are suggestive of activity. Every promise addressed to the apocalyptic churches is " to him that overcometh ; " and " the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." You will be confirmed in your estimate of this, if you call to mind what a Christian is summoned to do. There have been passions within him, aforetime turbu- lent and unruly ; they are to be tamed into completest order, and are to be sentinels in the new palace in which the heavenly monarch is to dwell. There has been a will, haughty and defiant, which refused for- merly to submit to the Master's yoke, and vaunted of its freedom by an insolent championship of evil. That will, preserving its empire and its liberty, is to choose to be a servant of Christ, and reverently to yield itself STRENGTH AND PEACE. 227 to his better and perfect will. There has been an imagination, truant from tlie truth, prone to fill the chanibers of her imagery with vain pictures of for- bidden delights, and to keep the censers of her ministry fed with strange fire. This imagination is to be sub- dued from its waywardness, and to become a chastened waitress upon faith and love. There has l)eeu a conscience, recreant often from its trust, paltering witli duty in a double sense, true perhaps in its own judg- ments, but rare and feeble in its magisterial warnings. This conscience is to beer me a true viceroy, indicating the counsel and jealous for the honour of the Sovereign. There has been a life, indifferent — it may be rebel — at best unharmful to others, and light-hearted in its enjoyment of its own heritage of hours. That life is to be regarded henceforth as a consecrated thing; its time is to be hoarded for God, as a miser hoards his treasure ; its energy is to find a home in benevolent and holy effort, and its eye to sparkle with the radiance of an inner and heavcnlier glory. This is, in briefest summary, what a Christian is called upon to do ; and you will readily perceive that all this involves no little strife and conflict, and that to bear himself bravely in this conflict, with combined foes outside and a traitorous heart within, he must needs have invulnerable armour, and be sustained and heartened by a strength that is mightier than his own. How otherwise could he — very weakness as he is — accomplish a work so mighty ? The world is powerful, and is marshalled against him ; where is his might to cope with its banded legions, or hold his own against its hate or scorn ? The flesh within him " lusteth to evil ;" how shall he 228 STRENGTH AND PEACE. !■/ I understand its secrets, defeat its devices of impurity, and carry on triumphant warfare, even in the strong- hold of the soul ? The enemy, the Devil, with a malignity embittered, and a cunning perfected by the lapse of many miserable years, waiteth to entangle and devour. How shall he withstand a craft so ex- quisite, and be unscathed amidst a hate so deadly ? The heart of many a Christian warrior has been often thus painfully questioned, and in itself, and in all the resources of merely human alliance, it could furnish no comforting reply. But here comes in tlie blessed- ness of ihe inimitable promise : " The Lord will give strength unto his people " — strength for their very fiercest combat, strength mightier than of their subtlest and most fiendish enemy. Every need of the chafed wrestler, of the wearied pilgrim, of the bleeding but still dauntless soldier, is comprised in these inspiring words. I remind you of their '!omfort now. There are those before me by whom the consolation is needed. With high purpose of right, you have enlisted under the cross-banner of the spiritual knighthood, and you are anxious to be manful in the strife and to bear witness faithfully and v/ith honour. But you are often disheartened. The purity, after which you are bound to aim, glitters far above you, seeming distant and inaccessible as the summit of an Alp; the enemies appear so formidable, and your own heart so treacherous and unstable, that the lethargy of the soul will creep over you, like that fatal drowsiness which overtakes a iVosted traveller, and you are almost ready, for very weariness, to lie down and die. My brother, take this promise, and let it be the staff in your hand in your li' STRENGTH AND PEACE. 229 difficult and perilous climbing: "The Lord will give strength unto his people " — needed, suitable, abundant, everlasting strength. With this promise relied on in the heart, and realized as it will soon be in the ex- perience, the stammering lip will become eloquent in testimony, and the coward soul will glow with a hero's bravery ; that Divine strength, never exhausted, breathed into the soul for every day's exigency, and ceasing not, however long the combat or protracted the pilgrimage, will strengthen you to persevere. In that strength you shall gird yourselves, unfearing, for the struggle with the latest enemy ; then, like the Master you have served, you shall conquer by dying. That strength shall nerve you for the final shout of triumph, and, having " finished the work " and " kept the faith," you shall pass in among the greeting angels to the harp, and the palm, and the crown. II. There is another blessing wliich this wealthy word announces, and to which believers have an equal claim : " The Lord will bless his people with peace." You cannot look into the Bible, either into the Old Testament or into the New, without discovering that peace is, so to speak, the master-blessing, the grand issue both of the Law an;i of the Gospel to mankind. Thus it is the climax of the Jewish benediction, as if in those rich old times of Levitical costliness and beauty there was no higher blessedness than that " The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace." It is presented, moreover, in glowing ■yj i U ! ill 230 STRENGTH AND PEACE. \\ ; prophecy as the crowning result of the Messiah's reign : " Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end." " In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon enduretli." Floating through the ages as the under- stood purpose of incarnate n)eity, it reappears in the song with which Heaven announced his advent to enraptured Earth : " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." It was the Saviour's chosen salutation : " Peace be unto you " — the salutatio?! with which his heralds were to inaugurate their entrance into a dwelling : " Peace be on this house." l^iC dying Saviour bequeathed it to his followers as his most precious legacy of love : " I*eace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." And the apostle, in a prayer whose every emphatic word shows his estimate of its inestimable worth, supplicates the " God of peace to give peace always and by all means." If such be the Scripture importance of this blessing, there is surely strong consolation for us, who by Divine grace may claim it for our own. The first and highest thing which seems to be implied in t)iis blessing of peace is coiiscious reconciliatiori with GoL "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." Here is the scriptural assertion of the believer's privilege — " peace with God," freedom from the sense of wrath, and from the apprehension of doom, and this freedom to be enjoyed already — not merely to light up the death-bed, not merely to play around the destiny with a sort of tremulous lustre, but to brighten with its radiance the sky of the present, as well as to redeem the future from its otherwise hopeless gloom. " We STRENGTH AND PEACE. 231 all this ■who plied ivith with ever's sense d this lit up estiny with edeeiu "We God, Lord peace witii uoa, tnrougn our L.ora Jesus Christ." You are familiar — alas! who is not? — with the sad his- tory of the original fall, and with its transmission both of guilt and depravity to the whole hapless race who have sprung from the first pair. You are no strangers, either, to that all-comprising provision by which God's justice, satisfied of its claims, and God's mercy, exult- ing in the grandeur of its compassions, combine for the salvation of the penitent and believing sinner. Faith in Christ is the divinely appointed condition on which this salvation hangs ; and so soon as a sinner believes, however leprous up to the moment of his faith, however recklessly he may have laboured pre- viously to discrown himself of the glory of his manhood, he enters upon the inheritance of the covenant, and is fully and consciously forgiven. God, the Sovereign, pardons ; God, the Jufl'^-e, justifies ; God, the Father, adopts into his family — all throu,c;h the merits of Jesus; and the Divine iSpirit, a awitt messengi i to testify to the fact of adoption, works in that same instant the regeneration of the nature, by which the stony is removed and the heart of flesh brought in and by which the new life issues from the 11 > w heart, to flow, broadening and deepening, up into it.s source and centre — God. And this peace in believing is no heir- loom of a family, nor immunity of a favoured fuw. It is the common privilege of faith. If you d«» not enjoy it, you are living below the blessings which the gospel has provided for you ; you are choosing the position of a servant, when God calls you to the endearment of a son. Oh, do not rob yourselves of the comfort of which you are chartered as the rightful heirs. Dwell 11 i :H I 1:! .--..-.. -- - — ^ 232 STRENGTH AND PEACE. no longer in the dreamy cloudland, through whose rifts the sun shines seldom, and where the air is thin and cold. Cone into the bright land, where the light of God's countenance shineth and warmeth ever. There is no condemnation in that land, for the curse doth not brood there; there is no doubt nor fear, for the shadows have vanished and the true Light is gleaming still. The dwellers there run with cheerful feet in the way of duty, for there is no suspicion to clog the move- ments, nor despair to leaden the soul; the redeemed walk there with songs and everlasting joy ; God visits that land as a more perfect Eden, and it adjoineth heaven. The invitation is in good faith offered to you all — on the simple terms of penitence and trust in Christ. Instead of the curse, you may have the blessing ; instead of insecurity, the sure refuge of the everlasting arms ; instead of dark omens in the con- science and hard thoughts of God, the love of God shed abroad, and "the peace of God which passeth all understanding, keeping your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." In the peace which the text promises, there is im- plied also the. hush and harmony of the once discordant spirit. It has been said that " order is heaven's first law," and it is certain that the order of creation is its glory — that the continuance of each sphere in its orbit, and of each wonderful succession in its allotted sequence, makes up the harmony of the magnificent whole. Now the great law of order was maintained in the creation of man. There \vere no native elements of disturbance in his soul. His body — adapted and exquisite in its design — yielded all its members to STRENGTH AND PEACE. 233 all 12I1 ini- lani IS its kted [cent Id in lents and Is to fulfil the behests of the soul; and that soul kuevv no tumult of corruption, but its every faculty was loyal, and its every thought reverent and sincere. Sadly was this original quiet convulsed by tlie fact of the fall. The conscience, intended to be the monarch of the faculties, was deposed from its sovereignty ; the will, forgetful of its plighted troth, ran greedily after evil for reward ; and the passions, in their frantic sport, scattered firebrands and arrows and death. And this discord of the nature exists still ; and where it has not been counteracted by the humanizing Gospel of Christ, it has made each land a Bochim, and each heart a hell. Whence come wars and fightings, perfidies and cruelties, the satrap's insult and the oppressor's wrong ? Are they not all fruits of the one upas tree ? It is the great original discord of the nature, which is perpetu- ated in each passionate outburst and in each wrangling lawsuit, in each outcast ruffian and in each unhappy home. And if you travel into any unconverted heart, you find it brooding there. Disunion of purposes — a law in the members warring against the law of the mind — passion triumphing even against the dictates of the judgment, and the decisions, strongly pronounced, both of reason and conscience together — the harbour- ing of thoughts revengeful, or malicious, or sinister, or haughty, or impure. Brethren, have you not felt them in yourselves ? do you not mourn, those of you who have the mastery, that there are so many of them remaining — subdued, but not destroyed ? It is for you to comfort yourselves with the promise : " The Lord will bless his people with peace." Keep your faith firm and strong in the promises, and the anarcliy ii I i 11'' .1 I: i i! I ■ 1 I ■ ! STRENGTH AND PEACE. within shall disappear. There shall be the casting down of the imaginations of your pride. Passions shall be no longer tempters to evil, but agents and energies for good ; and all the rebel within you, con- strained to sweet submission, bound in willing captivity, shall be at one in the service of Christ. Yes, it shall be so. The ocean swells stormfuUy now, the vexed waves toss and murmur in their wrathfulness, but he shall speak and there shall be a great calm. " Strength and peace !" And surely in their grandest combination, they shall unite within the soul at last. The strength and peace of thy lifetime, O thou follower of Jesus, shall gird and bless thee more when thou comest to the mortal struggle. Hast thou feared that last fight ? Doth cheek blanch and lip quiver at the tliought of it? Why fearest thou? That enemy has been over- come. He is no giant invincible, that all the armies of Israel should flee before him. He, who is thy Peace and tliy heart's Strength, abolished him for thee eighteen centuries ago. Death to the Christian is but the time of greatest triumph, because the time of nearest home. Just as autumnal tints are richest on the woodland, and the decaying forest-trees wear gayest colours, as if, like so many Caesars, they had gathered their imperial robes about them — so seemly to die — so the Christian has found often the strength most vigorous and the peace the stillest and divinest, when the shadow gathered on the countenance, sympathetic with the other shadow wliich had waited in the room. Be comforted, my brother, whom tlie thought of deatli hath oftentimes oppressed with a strange, heavy dis- quiet. Be comforted. God will he (jlorified in the thy liee but of on lyest lered ' I STRENGTH AND PEACE. 235 diaih, if thou but aim to glorify him in the life. If the eventide come on with lengthening shadows, or without a twilight, as in Eastern skies, there shall be light at eventide. If the conflict be with torn plume and broken sword, like the wounded chieftain, ** With dying hand above tlie head, You'll shake the fragment of the blade, And shout your victory." And when tlie last convulsion tlirills the quiet frame no more, and weeping friends sigh in the first burst of sorrow — " so good, so kind, and he is gone " — in heaven they will speak of you as one that rests from his labours, and angel voices shall weave in fairer melody than earth's, at once your epitaph and your destiny — " OUIETNESS AND ASSUKANCE FOR EVI'i!." i m lit !il J,' ■I I i 1, mi -: 1 1 1 11- Jv' 1 f- m XV. CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. " My little children, these thing's write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous : and he is the propitiation for our sins." — 1 John ii. 1, 2. L ET us consider — I. The nature of the office vjhich Christ as our Advocate sustains. II. The qualifications which he possesses for its fulfil- ment. I. Speaking generally, an advocate is one who in- tercedes with an offended party on behalf of the offender, or who pleads the cause of an arraigned criminal. In this latter aspect an advocate is opposed to an accuser : the accuser presses the indictment, the advocate con- ducts the defence. And the ofiice, which Christ has undertaken for his people, is analogous in its nature and in its duties. When " the accuser of the Brethren" prefers and would substantiate his charge, our Advocate pleads our cause and appears for us in the presence of God. There are two or three general remarks upon this office of an Advocate, which it will bo well for us to impress upon our minds. CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. 237 in- Inder, In .ser : con- has ture iren" locate [ce of upon lor U3 1. It would seem to he necessary for various reasons that there should he this Mediator hetween God and man. God has never suffered the fact of his own existence to be altogether erased from the conscience and from the belief of man. I might almost say further, God has never suffered the fact of the Unity and Spirituality of his existence to be banished from the religions of mankind. It is not a little noticeable how tliese great Truths of God's unity and spiritual nature lay hidden in the depths of ancient philosophy, and lurked in the vicinity both of savage and of educated idolatries. For this mainly the Jews seem to have been separated, that they might lift up in the sight of all nations a testimony to the Unity of God. The Great Spirit of the American Indians, the all-absorbing Brahm of the Hindu, the Great God of storms whom the grim-faced Calmuck worships — all these, though impersonal ab- stractions, are refinements of the Unity of God. You find this great Truth underlying the more pretentious mythologies of Greece and Eome. The Pantheon had its multitude of divinities ; heroes and demigods divided amongst them the allegiance of the people ; but the thought of something superior, incomprehensible, eternal, found an uncertain lodgment in the highest- mounted minds. Greece boasted her Deities, of whose human passion and martial prowess the blind old Homer sang ; but all, even to Jupiter, the highest, were subject to an imperial influence, against whose decisions they were powerless. They called this power Fate; but it is easy to discover the truths of the Divine unity and spirituality shining through the mystic veil, and we do not wonder that in later times the dim II f 11 'i im ii 5! 1 1: m '' iti illl! 1 • ^ 1 , , i: ; i . 1 ii i! i i 238 CHRIST O VR AD VOCA TE. yearning 'sliould have struggled into expression upon " the altar Avith this inscription, To the unknown God." Now the main causes of idolatry are of course to be found in the darkening of a foolish, and in the corrup- tion of a wicked, heart ; but, in a secondary sense, it may be questioned whether it has not arisen from the recoil of men's hearts from ideas of the purely spiritual, which they felt their inability to comprehend. You can feel this inability in yourselves ; of the spirit- world we know nothing. We feel its subtle influences around us, but we cannot comprehend it. We cannot expound its laws, nor trace its sequences, nor image its inhabit- ants. If we travel ever so little out of the province of sense, or beyond the material horizon, we are lost. In our bewilderment of faculty, when we strive to comprehend that we may worship, we impersonate Divine attributes, clothe them in material form, and adore the ideal which our own imagination has embodied. The human nature, knowing nothing of the spiritual except in alliance with the bodily, cannot conceive of, much less regard, an abstract spiritual existence. Hence it seems necessary that there should be some tangible method of communication — some " form of God, which thought it not robbery to be equal with God" — in which the trust of men might rest, and around which the worship of men might gather. The Pagan peoples, in the absence of Ilevelation, invested their departed heroes with intermediate powers, and coRstituted them, in some sort, intercessors with the offended Gods. In the dim twilight of the shepherd - age, Job speaks as the representative of CHRIST O UR AD VOCA TE. 239 be Iform jqual rest, Lther. ition, Idiate Issors the ^e of thousands, when he breatlies out his complaint, " Neitlier is there any daysman between us, wlio can lay his hand upon us both." This want was supplied in the case of the Jews by the sumptuous furniture of their economv. So \0\v2, as tlie law^'iver lived and the hi^li priest ministered, so long as the seer's eye had an open vision and the breast of the prophet heaved beneath the swelling Inspiration, so long as the Urim and Thummim flashed unpaled from the breastplate and the Shekinah abode in the awfulness of its own glory — so long had they evidence palpable to the understand- ing of the Divine and indwelling presence, and founda- tion strong for faith in the forthputtings of his grace and power. It had been strange, if, in a more glorious economy — the last and utmost of the dispensations of God — man had been left to his own vague conceptions of the unseeen object of his worship ; but God has sent his Son into the world, his only Son, M'hom he loved, and all men now may see the fellowship of the mystery, because " the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only- begotten of the Father, full of grace and trutli." Here is something to grasp at, something that brings the matters of our highest interest down to the level of our hearts and lives. We need no longer be confused amid the multitude of our thoughts within us. God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. The Divinity works not in some subtle laboratory of power, dwells not in a sphere so far away that vulgar vision faints to follow it — " he is not far from any one of us." Out in our daily walks we may meet him. Omni- potence is in the midst of us, healing tiie leprous and It ■ .1 240 CHRIST O UR AD VOCA TE. \\v ■ %. \ ■m\ raising the dead. Omniscience sees Nathanael under the fig-tree oratory, and anticipates for Simon the sifting-time of Satan the destroyer. Omnipresence speaks, and the ruler's little daughter liveth. Eternity tells to wondering listeners of a youth that was elder than Abraham. Who of us is there, whose all of tangible and realizing thought of God does not spring from the life of the Eedeemer ? Our shrinking flesh fud bailled reason own the truth, "No man hath seen God at any time " — but our triumphant faith joyfully finishes tlie sentence, " The only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." And while with holy reverence, and with fearfulness of the guilt and profanation of Idolatry, we acknowledge, " There is one God " — the God incarnated for us — He gives us the best and highest revelation of himself, and prompts our full thanksgiving for the words that follow, " There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 2. This office, of advocacy is essential to the completeness of the priestly office. — The fact that Christ stands to us in the same relation as did the Jewish high priests to the people, is one to which the Scriptures bear ample and explicit witness : " Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec." " Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." *' Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. 241 nder the 3ence irnity elder ill of jpring ; AcsIa 1 seen .yfuUy lich is him." nes3 of *vledge, .3— H"^ imself, s that d men, Is to ns tests to ample ir after re have leavens, Ifession. lot be was in It sin." javenly of our profession, Christ Jesus." " For the law niaketh men high priests which have infirmity ; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is coDsecrated for evermore." There can be no question that we are taught by these passages, that Christ in his own person became a High Priest for us, and undertook in that capacity all the offices which the superseded priesthood had sustained. Now you remember that the high priest was not only to slay the victim on tlie annual day of atonement, but to take the fresh blood into the sanc- tuary, and sprinkle it, yet warm, upon the mercy-seat. The life of the offering, its substantial value and acceptance, was in the blood — " It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul." But the offerer had not completely fulfilled his duty, until he had sprinkled it within the veil. Moreover, he was to take a censer in his hand, with burning coals from off the altar, that from the sweet incense cast into the fire there might rise the cloud to cover the mercy-seat upon the testi- mony; and the intercession was required, as well as the atonement, to secure immunity from death. Now all this is typical of Christ. The high priest slew the victim in the outer court of the tabernacle, and in the sight of the people for whom its blood was to atone. Christ also was " evidently set forth " in his passion, and there was a countless host of testimony around the hill of shame. The high priest, bearing the names of the twelve tribes upon his breastplate, lifted the veil with reverent hand, and presented the incense, and offered the intercession in secret and alone : so the veil gathered round the Saviour upon the crest of Olivet, I. Q '\ * ■ I 242 CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. \\ \ ' IT ■ i ; and the "Holiest" is the faint type of heaven, "whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec." Thus, as the blood shed upon the altar was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, the blood of richer hue and costlier significance shed for us on earth, has been sprinkled for us in heaven. Until the completion of the sacrifice the priest stands before the altar. " It i.^. finished" — so he sits upon his throne. The pri3stly dct which Christ performs in heaven, as it could not be the offering of a new sacrifice, must then be the presentation of the old — the continual memorial of an expiation v;hich could never lose its lustre, and which could avail for the extremest exigency of his people's need. And this is the grand design of his ascension into heaven. lu his Incarnation he came from the Father to reveal to us the Divine plan, and to work it out by the forthputting of his power. In his Ascension he went back to the Father, announcing the completion of the purpose, claiming the recompense of his glorious toil, and superintending the bestowment of those treasures of salvation which his dying had purchased for mankind. " This man, because he continueth ever, hath an un- changeable priesthood." Oh, this unchangeable priest- hood ! How the thought of it is presented as an abiding succour to many a manly heart that would else yield to the pressure of its enemies. Other priests become infirm with age, sicker^ ii disease, and die. " He evci' liveth to make intercession for us." Other priests are limited in their access to the Shekinah ; can only approach the presence under certain restrictions, and on a particular day. " Our high priest is passed CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. 243 into the heavens," and " sits expecting " at once the prayers of his people and the disasters of his foes. Other priests may be deposed by imperial violence or slain by seditious hands. We have a strong and sure consolation, knowing that Christ Jesus, dying once, dieth now no more. Otlier priests have yielded to corrupting influences, have lost tlieir moral force, and their ollice has become an effete and shrivelled thing — a titular dignity that only made conspicuous the foulness of the wearer. Our High Priest, spotless in life and mighty in advocacy, has been consecrated, not " alter the word of a carnal commandment, but after the power 01 an endless life." The biood that is sprinkled upon other altars is dried up, and itr. elficacy lasts but for a time. The blood of the nobler Sacrifice, by a chemistry altogether inscrutable, retains through the round of years its freshness and its power. Oh, this unchangeable priesthood ! That was a beautiful scene in the historv of ancient Israel, v/li'in the hosts of Amalek came out to fight with the Hebrews in liephi- dim; and while swords flashed and spears glittered in the plain below, on the lone hillside were the inter- cessor and his helpers, who ruled the changing fortunes of the war, " And when Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed : and when he let down his hand," the Amalekites were masters of the field. That is a move, beautiful scene, appealing as it does to the home ex- perience of every believer, which takes place full often during the Christian's pilgrimage. The principalities and powers of our liostility gather for the spiritual war, an host encamp against us, our foes beleaguer our path, and endanger our [)urity and our peace; but yonder, iu '"^•'rfmmvvm'^ef 244 CHRIST OUR ADVOCAJ^E. ! .:{l i; Wh m imperial elevation, " high on his Father's throne," far above all that is harmful and all that is harassing, our " Intercessor stands, and pours his all-prevailing prayer." His voice knows no faltering, and his liand is not heavy with weariness. He prays for us that our feebleness may be inspirited, and that our faith may not fail. That prayer is heard. The Father regards his pleading Son ; a strange courage enters into us, we are nerved either for action or for suffering; and the legions of the enemy, dismayed and crestfallen, are scattered. II. In every point of view or of conception, " Jesus Christ the righteous" is our perfect Advocate, throughly furnished for every good word and work ; and it is matter of difficulty to select those aspects of his qualification, which will most warmly commend him to our regard. We observe — 1. He is a sympathizing Advocate. We all know the value of sympathy in the ordinary causes of human arbitration. There is no heart in a hireling, who pleads for the sak" of the hire. He may have large attain- ments and forensic skill, he may argue with convincing logic, and declaim with simulated earnestness ; but if there be no principle to inspire him, and no tenderness to inflame his zeal, his eloquence may perhaps be as brilliant, it will certainly be as useless, as a firework display. But let the man feel in sympathy with the cause he pleads, let his inner chords be struck, let him draw his arguments from his heart-strings, and swelling thought will soon kindle into burning word. It is an unspeakable recommendation of Christ our Advocate, CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. 245 that he compassionates and has sympathy with us who are the clients of his love. The apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, brings forward this tenderness as indispensable to the fidelity of the office : " Where- Ibre in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people." It is mentioned again as entering of necessity into the character of a priest, that he should " have com- passion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of tiie way ; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity." And in the prosecution of his ai'gument the apostle shows that because, as God, he could not have the perfect sympathy which comes only from like ex- perience, he for this purpose took on him the fulness of our nature. " Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." In the sore travail of his incarnate life he learned the necessity of obedience, and the difficulties which to mortals hedge it round. The " strong crying " which he sent up in the time of his agony, was wrung from him that he might cry strongly for us in the time of our utmost need. He was " acquainted with grief," that he might the better plead for its removal. He was a " man of sorrows," that in his own all-embracing experience he might comprehend every conceivable anguish of man- kind. Hence we have the strongest guarantee that our Advocate will sympathize with our struggles and sorrows, for he has still the remeu)brance of his own. Oh, that is an exquisite declaration, upon which it is no wonder that we should so often dwell with lingering T) i). .'H t; ■ 246 CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. > ' fondness, as loth to lose its comfort for a moment: *•' We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all ])oints tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Touching is the most palpable of the senses. " Eeach liither thy finger, and thrust it into the print of the nails," is a substantial rebuke to unbelief. We have demonstrative evidence of that which our hands have handled " of the word of Life," with the feeling — not an evaporating sentiment roused at the recital of a tale of sorrow, or received from some teacher's lips as one that was proper to be cultivated — touched with the fading, with the veritable experience, the same yoke, the same smart, the same pang of shooting trouble. "In all points," whether from within or from without — whether the Enemy suggest, or circumstances combine, or interest whisper, or difficulty would seem to compel — " in all points," alike from the prompt- ings of thy weaker nature and from the rude alarms of raging foes — " in all points tempted." Yes, we have a sympathizing Advocate ! Believer, dost thou hear it ? There is no trouble which thou canst be called to endure, no sharpness of trial which awaits thee, no dark scene of temptation which may lower upon thy pathway, through which thou wilt not have the comforting and healing pre- sence of thy Saviour. Is Satan desirous to have thee that he may sift thee as wheat ? Courage ; Christ is praying for thee that thy faith may not fail ; and he, in the hour of the power of darkness, was himself tested, and overcame. Art thou in the gripe of poverty, thy iifh CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. 247 life a perpetual battle between the winner and the spender, dim forebodings clouding thy future, doomed at times almost to feel the truth of the proverb, that " hunger is a sharp thorn " ? Look forward, if thou canst see through the darkness, thou wilt descry his form in the distant front, for tliis is part of the path he trod. Art thou in circumstances yet more difficult than those of actual poverty, feeling the pressure of the times, bewildered with the fierce competitions of business, struggling to maintain the position that has become twined with the associations of years ? Per- haps the tempter is busy with thee. Some unlawful undertaking invites, and the bait glitters in his hand of immediate and lucrative returns. Some temporary pressure straitens, and the creation of fictitious capital would afford relief. Some plausible speculation tempts, and by a fortunate throw of the dice thou may est gamble thyself at once into affluence. The inducements are strong, and the resolution wavers. Make haste and to thy knees, that thou mayest have the benefit of the Intercessor's prayer. Unworthy modes of relief were suggested to him; he knows the strength of the temptation, and the weakness of thy faith. Thy Advocate will ask for strength for thee ; and as thou risest, subdued and grateful, thou wilt go forth again to struggle with thy lot, saying, " The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ? " Does sin present itself before thee, masked beneath the customs of society, favoured by the oppor- tunities of circumstance, besetting because of thy position, offered by the hand of friendship ? All these accumulations combined in the onset of the ■ p ■. V "."nW^itmi 248 CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. Destroyer upon him. Art thou wandering in a wil- derness, a solitary way, where thou findest no city to dwell in ? Have friends forsaken thee ? Is thine an uncheered journey ? Have the shadows gathered round thee, and art thou groping in the dense dark- ness, with nor friend to help nor light to guide ? If a flash of lightning comes to give a momentary glare upon the scene, thou wilt see the footprints of the Advocate in the same trodden sand. Art thou travel- ling consciously and surely to the. grave ? Steals there over thy senses already the darkening of the dim mystery of death ? Dost thou shudder as thou thinkest that here at least no help can avail thee, that thine must be unfriended travel, that thou must pass the grim portals alone ? Nay, thou art not alone. Thine Advocate and Redeemer has been here. Approach it without fear. How dark it is ! It seems to offer no welcome to the belated traveller, no rest to the weary pilgrim. Ah! but this is its outside aspect. The shutters are close, and they secure the safety and keep out the cold. Enter, and there's light in the sepulchre — steadily burning as it has burnt since it was first hung, there is the bright lamp of the Saviour's love. The tomb, if he is thine Advocate, is to thee no chamber of horrors. It is a lighted hall of waiting — the antechamber in which the guests tarry for awhile until they are summoned to the bridal. 2. He is a 'prevalent Advocate. It is not without reason that the apostle subjoins, "and he is the pro- pitiation for our sins : and not for ours ouly, but also for the sins of the whole world." His intercession is founded upon his atonement. B" - ' ■ I HI ! CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. 249 ihout pro- also ssion 3. He is a continual Advocate. The intercession which he manages for his people never ceases through weariness — is not interrupted by the lapse of time. " We have an Advocate " — we, in the infancy of the primitive times — we, amid the dark ages of eclipse and sorrow — we, in the subsequent age of revival. Flowing down to us from apostolic days — flowing on from us to those smiling futures of which we dimly see the dawn — believers of all nations and ages have prolonged, and will prolong, the strain until the last man, with its note upon his lips and its blessings at his heart, shall mount from the charred earth to heaven. It is manifest that the advocacy of Christ must be perpetual, because it is founded upon his death ; and " he hath obtained eternal redemption for us." The virtue of that death is everlasting, therefore the plea grounded upon that virtue must be ever- lasting too. The blood must be voiceless, before the intercession can be silent. The blood, sprinkled upon the mercy-seat, and never wiped off, was the emblem of that unceasing advocacy, whose plaintive and pre- vailing melody is always heard in heaven, and has power with God. The perpetuity of the intercession of Christ follows, moreover, from the perpetuity of his priesthood. He is a High Priest for ever ; and therefore, as advocacy is the only priestly act com- patible with the excellent glory of the heavenly state, he intercedes for ever. And this is just what we need. Our offences are continually committed, our shortcomings are of daily recurrence ; we need, there- fore, an atonement continually offered — an intercession that never suspends its prayer. I • 1,1 .-■-.^i*'' " *"" ■ « «ii ' " ' nJbaiiiiijMBan 250 CHRIST OUR ADVOCATE. \ i "I ;Hil We have an Advocate ! In the long history of the church, our Advocate has watched over its interests, and has screened it from harm. Time after time, signal retribution has come down upon the oppressors of God's people ; conspiracies have been frustrated, rebels baffled in their schemes; the weapons of the aliens have fallen from their paralyzed arm ; Ahitho- phel's counsel has been turned to foolishness; blessing has come out of Shimei's complicated wrong ; and the wondrous bush, girdled with fire as with a garment, has come unconsumed from amid tte fronds of flame. Profanity has ascribed all this to chance ; Natural Eeligion, to the fitness of things ; Philosophy has talked about fortuitous combinations; Fatalism has muttered of destiny; but Faith, with better wisdom, sees the IMan at the right hand, and has gone blithely on, singing in its joyous pilgrimage : ' ' The Father hears him pray, His dear Anointed One ; He cannot turn away The i)resence of his Son." We have an Advocate ! And because we have, the thunder has slumbered in its cloud, and the Angel has passed harmlessly over us, and the arm of an offended God has not been lifted from its merciful repose. We have an Advocate ! And around this truth should cluster our all of gratitude for the past, and of anticipation for the future. Looking upon the face of the Anointed, God has borne with our ill-manners, and has subdued our hardness, and has supplied us with all the grace we have. We draw our every blessing through the entreaties of the Advocate. IIo CHRIST O UR ADVOCA TE. a.Si pleads for our justification, and tlie glad Spirit hastes to bear swift and brilliant witness. He pleads for daily pardon of daily shortcoming and sin, and we go down to our houses justified. He pleads for progressive holiness, and the indwelling grace comes down. He asks for power of resistance, and we become brave, and our hearts swell with a strange heroism. He presents our service, weak and worthless in itself, and the voice isi^ues from the throne — " They shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I M'ill glorify the house of my glory." He entreats for triumph over death, and the glassy eye lights up with a fire more piercing than its youthful glances knew ; and the tongue, which all thought sealed in silence, is loosened for a dying-spirit hymn, " death ! where is thy sting ? " He pleads for full salvation, in all the depth and eternity of that royal word ; and hosts of the ransomed — a great cloud of witnesses — crowd to the battlements of heaven to bear their testimony to the listening sons of men : " Wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost that come nnto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." He is the exclusive Advocate. He was the only Eedeemer, and by consequence he is the only Inter- cessor. "He trod the winepress alone, and of the people there was none " to help him ; and only he is authorized to appear for us in the presence of God. " Neither is there salvation in any other." To associate others with him in the work of advocacy, is to cast a reflection either upon his ability or willingness to save. "VVe don't want many mediators; we want one. : I H' f 1' I I. il, m 252 CHRIST O UR AD VOCA TE, It may be predicated safely, that those who have proper views of the sacerdotal act of sacrifice, will liave proper views of the sacerdotal act of intercession. Hence the church which dishonours him by supple- menting the fires of purgatory to supply the defect of his atonement, dishonours him by invocating saints and angels to supply the defect of his intercession. " There is one," and only one, " Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Alas ! that men will employ advocates who can gain no hearing, and whose suit cannot possibly prevail. That poor llomanist, telling his b(. is, and repeating his litanies with an intenseness and a fervour worthy of a better toil — what is he doing ? He has put his cause into the hands of another advocate, some frail mortal like himself, whom his church has canonized for the sake of hire. Why the hair shirt and the spiked bedstead, the fasts of rigid mortification, and the vigils so long protracted that slumber gets frightened at the staring eyes, and that which was begun as an austerity becomes its own penalty — a nervous system utterly, and perhaps fatally, unstrung ? The devotee has made his penance his advocate, instead of casting his burden upon Christ. The reputable worldling, why is he so eager in benevolence ? Why piles he up his charities with no niggard hand ? Why with such punctilious observance fulfils he to the letter the requirements of that severe ritual ? He has made his righteousness his advocate, and is hoping to come by its means unto God. And thou sad penitent, who hast for so long mingled thy drink with weeping, thou art making thy tears thy advocate, so long as thou lookest not to Christ. 1 1 , Hi' XVI. DECKIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH. " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." — Gal. vi. 7-9. \(f ISO ies ms of iSS ito |by Lst. AMONG the trials to which the great Apostle of the Gentiles was subjected, and among the sharpest in the series, because he was wounded by them through the hearts of others, were what he him- self denominates " perils from false brethren." Close upon his track, in many of the places where he had successfully preached the Gospel, and had Ibrmed the faithful into compact and flourishing churches, came a troop of lieretical teachers, preaching divers and strange doctrines, and drawing away the hearts of many. Amongst the most active and daiif^erous of these were certain men from Jerusalem, who would fain have grafted Christianity upon Judaism, and have imposed upon the Gentiles the rigidness of legal observance and submission to the yoke of circumcision. As Paul was known to entertain more liberal opinions, they were especially inflamed against him, and compassed sea and land to counterwork him in his holy toil. At the 254 DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESIL \\\ I' <, ; :il l ! u - period at which this epistle was written, raul wus probably at Corinth. He had gone there with a saddened heart, for there too he had had to mourn over the unstable, and perverse, and impure, and his presence was demanded that the due administration of discipline might be secured upon the offenders. It is supposed that as there was regular and speedy communication between Ephesus and Corinth, the tidings of the de- fection in Galatia had struck upon him, on his arrival at the latter city, with painful surprise. They had received him on his first visit as if he had been an angel from heaven, and he bears them record that they loved him with an affection so ardent, " that if it had been possible," they "would have plucked out" their " own eyes, and have give them to " him. Their re- bellion against him was therefore the more distressing, and he grieves over their apostasy, and ascribes it to the enchantments of some unholy spell. The false teachers had not scrupled to use falsehood and slander to sow the seeds of alienation in their minds. They had charged him with dissimulation, with a desire to keep his converts in a condition of subordinate privi- lege, with interested partisanship, and especially with usurping an apostolic authority to which he had no rightful claim, inasmuch as he was not among the number of the original twelve. His purpose, therefore, m this epistle was to vindicate his independent apostle- ship, to contradict the falsehoods of his designing adversaries, and to show that their Judaizing teachings would reduce Christianity to an effete and cumbrous ceremonial — blemished of its beauty, shorn of its strength, and crippled utterly of its spirituality and i!:! W^- to Use er ley to ivi- lith no ,Ue •re, le- )U3 its md DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH. 255 gianJeur. After he has in masterly argument estab- lished these positions, he proceeds, as his manner was, to warn against besetting danger, and to inculcate practical duty ; and some of the most faithful ad- monishings, which ever proceeded from his pen, were prompted by that wholesome severity to which his. tenderness for their welfare constrained him. We need not remind you that the Galatians have no monopoly of inconstancy, that a fickle religious adherence is the bane of thousands everywhere, and that multitudes in all ages and in all lands — true children of Eeuben — might have aflixed to them his character, as at once a brand and a prophecy, " UnV^ stable as water, thou shalt not excel." It cannot, therefore, be amiss for us to examine into the grounds of our own hope ; for haply, by carefully pondering the apostle's words, we may be roused and delivered from some imminent moral peril The first thing which strikes us in the words we\ have chosen, is tlu solemnity of the ajjostles 'warning:) " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." He seems to intimate that such is the audacious wickedness of the human heart, that it has within it so many latent mazes of iniquity, that they might be self-deceived either as to their apprehensions of that which was ,*.'/-/, J^ right before God, or as to their own actual condition \ ^ ( \j in his sight; and he tells them that God is not »• mocked by this pretended service — that to him all hearts are open, and that in impartial and discriminat- ing arbitration he will render to every man according to his deeds. Brethren, if there be but a possibility Hi: if I >' ■'d.c. en 256 DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH. w f M ' ; i 1 is. ' ■j\^ of this, it behoves us to take earliest warning. On a matter like this it is impossible to exaggerate the danger. It is sad to be deceived in a friend ; to waste the heart's living water upon the sand, to expend the treasures of a confiding affection upon an ingrate who, ■ in recreant haste, will lift up the heel against his l^ benefactor. It is sad to be deceived in our estimate I of health ; to wake up to the sudden consciousness \ that insidious disease has been sapping the strength ; for years, and that we inherit feebleness instead of '^f vigour, and burning instead of beauty, and a fascinat- 1 ing damask, which is but the tinting for the tomb. I It_js _ sad to be d ££fiLved in our computation of pro- \ perty ; to imagine ourselves affluent, and to gather round us comforts for life's tranquil evening, and then to be confronted in a moment with embarrassment and with the prospect of penury ; to see aU our household objects, each one the shrine of some holy association or of some tender and happy memory, vanish from our sight, and the very home of our childhood become the dwelling of the stranger. But great as is the sadness of these deceptions, they are not without mitigation nor beyond repair. A truer friendship may build up the breaches of the heart, wlTrcii had been dismantled by the false one's treachery; the labour of years may discharge the liabilities withiiouolTrpand repurchase the alienated home; even heal tb may bloom again upon the faded cheek, through the blessing of God upon the skill of the healer. But a mistake about the state of the soul — deception on this, the most momentous of all matters — a veil folded about the heart so that it cannot see DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH, 257 tions, epair. of the one's the enated faded kill of oul- — latters ot see its own V.elplespness and peril — this is a state of which thought shudders to conceive, and to describe whoso portentousness language has no words that are sufficiently appallingT' The causes wliich induce this self-deception ; vo the same as those, which operate to produce similar results in other matters than those of the soul's relation to God. How is the health ruined, but by reckless exposure, by prodigal waste of strength, by neglect of trilling ailments until they grow into giant maladies, by an overweening confidence which will not believe in the reality of peril ? How do men entail embarrassment, upon their circumstances ? By hazardous ventures, by the indulgence in that cupidity which, in its haste to be rich, would fain gamble itself into affluence ; by the ostentatious speed which grasps -^ at luxuries before comforts are earned ; by the dogged- '^ ness which refuses to admit the possibility of danger,"^ and which, to save itself from honest humiliation, goes on to fraudulent bankruptcy. The same conditions, brethren, are largely the conditions of this state of |i spiritual ruin. Men talk of health and peace, when the whole head is sick with the confusion of intel-^' lectual error, and the whole heart is faint with the '- lassitude of mortal sin. Men imagine themselves rich and increased in goods, and having need of nothing, when they are " wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." Perhaps their delusive hope may have been fostered in them by their iniiexible adhesion to some favourite doctrine. They have remem- brances of the former time, when the joy of the Lord was their strength, when the wilUng spirit revelled in the exercises of devotion, when the Bible was a I. R 1 1 r 258 DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH. treasure, and the Sabbath a queenly privilege, and the sanctuary the audience-chamber where the King re- ceived his guests, and the closet the pavilion where he hid them from the strife of tongues. Things are not so with them now. But they live upon the memory of the past; they blow every now and then at the white ashes of their hearts' former fires, and say, "Aha! I am warm!" when there is a "lie in their right hand, and a deceived heart hath turned them aside." Or perhaps they are zealous in all the ordin- ances of religion, present in the house of prayer with almost obtrusive punctuality, noisy in their enthusiasm f(ir the welfare of the denomination, warm in their admiration of the minister's discourses, sometimes ex- periencing a glow as they are told of Christ's perfection of beauty and of love, and sometimes checked by a spasm of remorse in some projected wrong-doing, and without any close examination they rest satisfied with iheir state, and talk fluently of the heaven into which tliey anticipate their ushering, and of the rest in whose dreamless blessing they hope by and by to al)ide. Or perhaps — and this is the more frequent 'Experience of such an one — they habitually exclude from their thoughts the faintest apprehension of danger. Their hearts are like ancestral rooms in some lordly mansion, but rarely entered by the owner; and they are content to go on recklessly from month to month and year to year, drowning contemplation in ostenta- tious activity, and hoping that some miracle will rouse them from their languor, and will heal them of tlieir palsy at last. Brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, are any of lordly they nonth Itenta- will iXQ. of uiy of DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH. 259 you in such a case ? Are you among the blinded and lost ones to whom the Gospel is hid ? Have you resisted the Spirit so long, that he but seldom and feebly strives with you ? Have a care, I beseech you, for there can be no peril more imminent than yours. The headlong rider through the darkness, before whom the dizzy precipice yawns ; the heedless traveller for whom, in the bosky woodland, the bandits lie in ambush, or upon whom, from the jungle's density, the tiger waits to spring ; the man who, gazing faintly upward, meets the cruel e^'^e and lifted hand and flashing steel of his remorseless enemy — they of whose condition, thank God, yon can only poorly image, who, in far dungeons and beneath the tortures of a tyrant's cruelty, groan for sight of friend or glimpse of day, all around whom perils thicken hopelessly, and to whom, with feet laden with the tidings of evil, the messengers of disaster come — how they move your sympathy ! how you shudder as you dwell upon their danger ! how you would fain stir yourselves into brave efforts for their rescue or their warning ! Brethren, your own danger — the peril which like a thick cloud wraps you at this moment round — is more ]iearly encompassing, and is more infinitely terrible. You are deceiving yourselves, you are haply deceiving your fellows, but you are not deceiving God — " God is not mocked." He sees the whited wall and the enclosed corruption — you cannot impose on him. I implore you, take warning in time. Go in penitence to-night, delay not a moment, for the business requires haste. " Flee" — be immediate and uigent — " from the wrath to come." Christ waits to stream light upon your long 26o DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH. ■ . 1 r- !( darkness, and to smile your uncertainty and unbelief away. Only rest on him, and the scales shall fall i'rom your eyes, and the veil shall be lifted from your heart ; and in tlie rapture of your new-found and well- warranted confidence you shall know that " light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart." We come next to consider the import of the aiJostUs statement, " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of tlie llesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." The term here rendered "llesh " has a wider meaning than it had of yore ; and the desires of the flesh constructively include all those, whether depraved or refined, which are indulged without reference to God, which appeal not to his law for their warrant, nor to his favour for their gratification. The desires of the Spirit are those which come from his inspiration, and find in his approval their recompense and joy. The apostle represents the provision which men make for the fulfilment of these desires under the analogy of ordinary husbandry — as a sowing respectively to the flesh and to the Spirit — and he announces that the result will follow by inevitable sequence, of a harvest similar to the seed. He who would gatlier the wheat into the garner, must scatter the wheat seed in the fur'-ow. Barley and rye will come each from their own ju ; and tares, if an (enemy stealthily scatter them ,vhile the husbandmarf and his fellows slumber. It is manifest, then, that the great principle which the apostle would impress upon us, is that we have largely the ) DECEIVED SOWERS TO THE FLESH. 261 his )ostle the and will liar to lo the ir^'ow. rhilel lit 13 Ipostle \ ■' the ' making or the rnarrin