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The former days of blessed nearness had not faded from his memory ; rather he understood their meaning better than when he was in the midst of their sweet- ness. Years and experience, and the teaching of God's Spirit, had taught him to understand what the Master meant when He said :— " It is expedient for you that I go away ; " for when he had departed John saw Him a great deal more clearly than ever he had done when he beheld Him with his eyes. He sees Him now invested with these lofty at- tributes, and, so to speak, involv d in the brightness of the Throne of God. For the words of my text are not only remarkable in themselves, and in the order in which they give these three aspects of our Lord's character, but remarkable also in that they occur in an invocation in which the Apostle is calling down blessings from Heaven on the heads of his brethren. The fact that they do so B 2 THE GIFTS OP CHRIST AS WITNESS, occur points a question : — Is it possible to conceive that the Avriter of tliese \vor(.ls thought of Ji'suh C.^hrist as less than Divine ? Could he have asked for " grace and peace" to come down on the Asiatic Christians from the Divine leather, and an Absti'action and a ^lan ? A strange Trinity that would be, most certainly. Rightly or wrongly, the man that said "Grace and peace be unto you, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from tlie seven sjjirits which are before His Throne, and from Jesus Christ," believed that the name of the One God was Fallier, Son, and Holy Spirit. ]5ut it is not so much to tiiis as to the connection of these three clauses with one another, and to the bearing of till thiee on our Lord's power of giving grace and peace to men's hearts, that I want to turn your attention now. I take the words simply as they lie here ; asking you to consider, iirst, how grace and i)eace come to us " from the faithful Witness " ; how, secondly, they come " from the first be- gotten from the dead " ; and how, lastly, they come " from the Prince of the kings of the earth. " I. — Now as to the first of these, " the faithful Witness." All of you who have any familiarity with the language of Scripture will know that a characteristic of all the writings which are ascribed to the Apostle John, viz., his Gospel, his Epistles, and the book of the Revelation, is their free and remarkable use of that expression, " Witness." It runs through all of them, anc'. is one of the many threads of connection which tie them all together, and which consti- tute a very strong argument for the common authorship of the three sets of writings, vehemently as that has of late been denied. But where did John get this word ? According to his own teaching he got it from the lips of the Master, Who began His career with these words, " We speak that we do know, and bear witness to that we have seen," and who RTSEX AND CROWN KD. all but ended it with these royal words, " Thou sayest that I ain a King ! For this cause came I into the world, that I should hear witness unto the Truth." Christ Ilimself, then, claimed to be in an eminent and special sense the witness to the world. The witness of what ? What was the substance of His testimony ? It was a testimony mainly about God. The words of my text substantially cover the same ground as His own words, " I have declared Thy name unto ]\ly brethren," and as those of the Ajjostle : "The only begot- ten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." And they involve the same ideas as lie in the great name by which Ho is called in John's Gospel, *' the Word of God." That is to say, all our highest and purest and best know- ledge of God comes from the life and conduct and character of Jesus (Mirist. His revelation is no mere revelation by words. Plenty of men have talked about God, and said noble aud true and blessed things about Him. Scattered through the darkness of heathenism, and embedded in the sinfulness of every man's heart, there are great and lofty and pure thoughts about Him, whicli to cleave to and follow out would bring strength and purity. It is one thing to speak about God in words, maxims, precepts ; it is another thing to show us God in act and life. The one is theology, the other is Gospel. The one is the work of man, the other is the exclusive prerogative of God manifested in the flesh. It is not Christ's words only that make Him the "Amen," the " faithful and true Witness," but in addition to these, He witnesses by all His deeds of grace, and truth, and gentleness, and pity ; oy all His yearnings over wir^kedness, and sorrow, and sinfulness ; byall His drawings of theprofli- gate and the outcast and the guilty to Himself, His life of loneliness, His death of shame. In all these, He is show- 6 TIIIC (JIFTS OP CHRIST AS WITNK.SS, iiii,' lis not only tlic Hwrotnoss of a perfocthiunan cliaracter, Ijut in the sweet iicss of a i)erfect human cliaracter, the Hweoter Hweetiiess of our Father, God. The substance of HiH testimony is the Name, the revelation of the character of His Father and our Father. This name of "witness" ])ears like-svise stron^'ly u])oti the characteristic and reniarkal)le UKOtner of our Loi-d's testimony. The task of a witness is toallirm; his business is to tell his story — not to arp^ue about it, simply to state it. And there is nothing' more charactei'istic of our Lord's words than the way in which, without attempt at proof or argumentation, He makes them stand on their own evi- dence ; or, rather, depend upon His veracity. All His teaching is characterised by what would be insane pre- snmi)tion in any of us, and would at once rule us out of court as unfit to be listened to on any grave subject, most of all on religious truth. For His meihod is this : — "Verily, verily, I say to you ! Take it on My word. You ask Me for proof of My saying : I am the proof of it ; I assert it. That is enough for you ! " Not so do men si)eak. So does the faithful Witness speak ; and instead of the conscience and common sense of the world rising up and saying, *' This is the presumption of a religious madman and dic- tator," they have bowed before Him and said, "Thou art fairer than the children of men I Grace is poured into Thy lips." He is the " faithful Witness," Who lays His own character and veracity as the basis of what He has to say, and has no mightier word by which to back His testimony than His own sovereign "Verily! verily! " The name bears, too, on the ground of His testimony. A faithful witness is an eye-witness. And that is what Christ claims when He witnesses about God. "We speak that we do know, we testify that we have seen." " I speak that which I have seen with My Father !" There is nothing more remarkable about the oral portion of our Lord's in ■.,' RISKN AM) CUOWNED. >vitnoRs than the absonco of any ai)})t»ai*anco, snoh as marks all the wisest words of ^'reat men, of liavinp come to them as the result of i)atlent thonj,'ht. We never see 11 im in the act of arriving at a truth, nor detect any traces of the Urocess of forminj^ opinions in Ilim. lie s])eaks as if He had seen, and His tone is that of one who is not thinkinpf out truth or j^'raspinj? at it, but simply narratini,' that which lies plain and clear ever before His eyes. I do not ask you what that involves, but I (piote His own statement of what it involves : — "No man hath ascended up into Heaven save He that came down from Heaven, even the Hon of Man which is in Heaven." There have been plenty of great and gracious words about God, and there have been plenty of black and blas- phemous thoughts of Him. They rise in our own heai-ts, and they come from our brothers' tongues. Men have worshipped gods gracious, gods loving, gods angry, gods pi'tulant, gods capricious ; but God after the fashion of the (lod whom Jesus Christ avouches to us, we have nowhere else, a God of absolute love, "Who "so loved the world" — that is, you and me — "that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish." And now I ask, is there not grace and peace brought to us all from that faithful Witness, and from His credible testimony ? Surely the one thing that the world wants is to have the question answered whether there really is a God in Heaven that cares anything about me, and to Whom I can trust myself wholly ; believing that He will lift me out of all my meannesses and sins, and make me clean and pure and blessed like Himself. Surely that is the deepest of all human needs, howsoever little men may know it. And sure I am that none of us can find the certitude of such a Father unless we give credence tc the message of Jesus Christ our Lord. This day needs that witness as much as any other ; some- 8 THE GIFTS OF CHRIST AS WITNESS, llii times in our unbelieving" moments, we tliink movp, than iww other. There is a wave — I believe it is oul v a wave — passing over the cultivated thought of Europe at pres(»nt which will make short work of all belief in a God tluit does not grip fast to Jesus Christ. As far as I can reapeak to us. And that communion which is blessedness, that communication of power and righteous- ness which is life, are only possible, if it be true that His death w^as not the end of His relationship to us, or of His RISEN AND CROWNED. 11 work in the world, bnt was ouly a transition from one stage of that work to another. We have to look to Christ, the "faithful Witness," the Witness Who witnessed when He died ; but we have to look to Him that is risen ag^ain and takes His place at the right hand of God. And the grace and peace flow to us not only from the contemplation of the past witness of the Lord, but are showered upon us from the open hands of the risen and living Christ. In still another way do grace and peace reach us, from the "first begotten from the dead," inasmuch as in Him and in His resurrection — life we are armed for victory over that foe whom He has conquered. If He be the firstborn, He will have "many brethren." The "first" implies a second. He has been raised from the dead, therefore death is not the destruction of conscious life. He has been raised from the dead, therefore any other man may be. Like another Samson, He has come forth from the prison- house, with the bars and gates upon His mighty shoulders, and has carried them away up there to the hill-top where He is. And the prison-house door stands gaping wide, and none so weak but he can pass out through the ever open portals. Christ has risen, and therefore if we will trust Him we have conquered that last and grimmest foe. And so for ourselves, when we are trembling, as we all do with the natural shrinking of flesh from the thought of that certain death ; for ourselves, in our hours of lonely sorrow, when the tears come or the heart is numbed with pain ; for ourselves when we lay ourselves down in our beds to die, grace and peace, like the dove that fell on His sacred head as it rose from the water of the baptism — will come down from His hands Who is not only "the faithful Witness," but the " first begotten from the dead." III. — Lastly, we have grace and peace from the King of kings. The series of aspects of Christ's work here is ranged in 12 THE GIFTS OF CHRIST AS WITNESS, order of time, in so far as the second follows the first, and the third flows from both, though we are not to suppose that our Lor I. — Where Paul begins, — with an inward renewal, " the renewing of your minds." He goes deep down, because he had learned in his Master's school who said : "'Make the tree good and the fruit good." To tinker at the outside with a host of anxious rules about conduct, and red-tape restric- tions, and prescriptions, is all waste time and vain effort. You may wrap a man up in the swaddling bands of specific l)recepts until you can scarcely see him, and he cannot move, and you have not done a bit of good. We have to go deeper than that, down to the "hidden man of the heart" to touch the inward springs of action. The inner man must be dealt with first, and then the outward will come right in due time. How many of the plans for the social and moral renovation of the world, come under the lash of this condemnation, and are at once declared to be inadequate because they only skim the surface of the ovil ! They are as superficial as a doctor's treatment would be, who would direct all his attention co curing pimples when the patient is dying of consumption. They wipe away the matter of a sore, and leave the sore itself untouched. We shall have to go deeper than that, as Paul, echoing his Master, reminds us ; and to begin right in the middle if we intend to influence to any purpose the circumference and the out- side. First of all must come the rene^ving of the mind and, after that, the transfiguration of the life. Still further, not only have we to begin in the middle, — but there has to be a radical change in the middle, — the renewing of the mind, the making of the mind over again. "The mind," I suppose, is here taken in a somewhat popular sense, for Paul is not teaching psychology, but practical morality. The word seems to be equivalent to the thinking faculty, the " intellect " as we say, but, possibly, to be used in a somewhat wider sense as including the whole inner man, with feelings, and desires, as well as thoughts. That inner man has got a wrong twist somehow ; it needs A TRANSFIGURATION. 19 the »» to be recreated, made anew, moulded over apain. For in all of us, apart from this renovating and ennobling influence, it is what Paul calls " the mind of the flesh," or human nature unredeemed and unregenerate. It is held in slavery and submission to the external — to the material ; it is a mass of affections fixed upon the transient of low thoughts. A predominant self-regard characterises it and its actions. That is a sad stern i)icture. Ah ! dear brethren, what man that knows himself, and has ever tried fairly to judge his own inner history and life, but will say : " It is all true " ? Nature's sternest painter is her best. The teaching that a man, apart from God and the renovating influences of Christianity, has a mind that needs to be shaped all over again before it Js capable of nobility and purity and true holiness, and wisdom, is a teaching to which, if you will strip it of the mere, hard shell of theological language, by which it has often been mado repulsive to men, everybody's conscience, when once it is fairly appealed to, gives in its " Amen ! " And when I come to a miscellaneous congregation like this, and bring the mes- sage to ee ih heart — " Thou art the man ! " there is not one of us, if he is honest with himself, but will say, " Yes ! I know it all ; I am ! " Apart from God we have minds enslaved, that need to be emancipated. Then another step here is — this new creation of the inner man is only possible as the result of the communica- tion of a life from without. That communicated life from without is the life of Jesus Christ Himself, put into your heart, on condition of your simply opening the door of your heart by faith, and saying to Him "Come in, Thou blessed of the Lord." And He comes in, bearing in His hands this gift most chiefly, the gift of a germ of life which will mould and shape our "mind" after His own blessed pattern. But that renewal, beginning in the centre, absolutely C 2 20 THE CHIUSTIAN MIE f fl • 1 essential for all lofty and pure living, wliich is in itself the result of the communication of the gift of .leHus Christ, which gift is the result of our 8imi)le faith — that new life, when given, needs to be fostered and cherished. It is only a little spark that has to kindle a great heap of green wood, and to turn it into its own ruddy likenena. We have to keep our two hands round it, for fear it should be blown out by the rough gusts and tempests of i)aRflion and of circumstance. It is only a little seed that is sown in our hearts ; we have to cherish and cultivate it, to water it by our prayers, and to watch over it, lest either the fowls of the air with light wings should carry it away, or the heavy wains of the world's business and the world's pleasures should crush it to death, or the thorns of earthly desires should spring up and choke it. We must cherish it and care for it, that it may bring forth fruit abundantly in our life. II. — So much for the first point that is here. Now a word or two about the second ; the transfigured life which follows upon that inward renewal. Many of you know, I have no doubt, that the word in our text — " Be ye transformed by the renewal of your minds," is the same as is employed in two of the Evangelists' accounts of our Lord's transfiguration. And it is never employed except there, and here, and once besides. I daresay it would be going too far to say that in select- ing this word the Apostle had in his mind any allusion to that incident, but the coincidence is, at all events, re- markable ; and we may, I think, fairly take that event as illustrating very beautifully the nature of the change which should pass over us. In the transfiguration, our Lord's indwelling divinity seems as it were, to have come floating up to the surface for once, and to have been made visible. So in like manner from within to the outward edge of the being, this renewed mind shall work, irradiating our % » i A TUANSFIOURATION. ''I our fuceawitha diviner boanty, and turning even this "mnddy vesture of decay" into snowy whiteness, "no as no fuller on earth shall be able to white" it. "A transfiLfured life" suLTj^ests to us, in the lii^ht of the story, even nobler and loftier as])irations and hopes than the pliraao, " a trans- formed life." There lie in it, and in the context, some important thouf?hts. It suggests that the inward life, if it is healthy and true and strong, will certainly shape the outward conduct and character. Just as truly as the phy- sical life moulds the infant's limbs, just as truly as every periwinkle shell on the beach, is shaped into the convolu- tions that will fit the inhabitant, by the power of the life that lies within, so the renewed mind will make a fit dwelling for itself. To a large extent a man's spirit shapes his body. Did you never see some homely face, perhaps that of a grey-haired, wrinkled old woman, perhaps that of some pallid invalid, that had in it the very radiance of Heaven, and of which it might be said without exaggera- tion that it " was as the face of an angel" ? Did you never see goodness making men and women beautiful ? Did you never see some noble emotion stamp its own nobility on thi' countenance, and seem to dilate a man's very form and figure, and make the weakest like an angel of God ? H.'ive not there been other faces besides the face of Moses, that shone as men came down from the Mount of Commu- nion with God ? Or as Milton puts it : — "Oft convorso with heavenly habitants Bcfrins to c;ist a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted teniplo of the mind." Even as the fashion of His countenance was altered, so the inner life of Christ deep and true in a man's heart will write its presence in his countenance, and show how awful and how blessed goodness is. But apart from that, which of course is not immediately in the Apostle's mind here, surely it does not need many r i ; « 22 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE >f i n '. I! words to remind you that the inward change of the mind, of which I have been speaking, will manifest itself in con- duct and character. What about the Christianity that does not show itself as such ? What about men that look exactly as if they were not Christians ? What about the inward life that never comes up to the surface ? A certain kind of seaweeds that lie at the bottom of the sea, when their flowering time comes, elongate their stalks and reach the light and float upon the top, and then, when they have flowered and fruited, they sink again into the depths. Our Christian life should come up to the surface and open out its flowers there, and show them to the heavens and to all eyes that look. Does your Christianity do that ! It is no use talking about the inward change unless there is the outward transfiguration. Ask yourselves the question whether that is visible or not in j'our lives. And then, still further, this image of our text suggests to us that the essential character of our transfiguration is the moulding of us into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Christ's life is in you if you are in Him. If you are a Christian man or woman you have got a bit of Jesus Christ in you. And just as every leaf that you take off some plants and Slick into a flower-pot will in time become a little plant exactly like the parent from which it was taken, so the Christ-life that is in you, if it is worth anything, — that is to say, if it is really in you at all — will be shaping you into His likeness, and growing into a copy of its source and origin. The least little tiny speck of musk, invisibly taken from a cake of it, and carried away ever so far, will difluse the same fragrance as the mass from which it came ; and the little almost imperceptible slice, if I may so say, of Jesus Christ's life that is in you and me, if it be in us at all, will smell as sweet if not as strong as the great life from which it came. The life of Christ in us will mould us, in the measure of its power, into the likeness of Christ, from t A TRANSFIGURATION. 23 Whom it comes. What a blessed thoncfht that we may move among men, as copies of Jesus Christ ; with like visil)le consecration, and making men feel as they look a: us that the gospel has power to evoke a rare beauty of character which witnesses for His transforming grace ! But, as I said before, in reference to the inward renewal, so I say in reference to the outward transfiguration, the life within will not work up to the surface and manifest itself in our conduct and character except upon condition of our continual effort, and our own honest endeavour. No doubt it is His life that moulds us, no doubt it is the gift of His Divine Spirit, whereby our characters are refined and hallowed, are ennobled and elevated, are delivered from selfishness, are lifted from their low creeping along the ground, and taught to aspire to the heavens. But all that will not come without our co-operation, earnest and prayer- ful and perpetual. We must be fellow- workers with God, in the task of building up our characters into the likeness of our Master. The fact that His Spirit is given to us is not a reason for our indolence, but it is a reason for our work, because it supplies us with the material with which we can work with some hope of succes'^, and gives us the power by which we can do the thing that we desire. So instead of a man saying, " It is Christ's life in me that must mould me, and therefore I need do nothing," he should say, " I have Christ's life within me to mould me, and therefore I must work." What w^ould you think of a man that said, " It is the steam that drives the spindles, so I need not put the bolting on ! And just as wise is he who makes the thought of the renovation and transfigura- tion being all the work of Christ a pillow for his indolence, and an excuse for his selfish sloth. " Work out your own salvation, for it is God that worketh in you." III. — Lastly, let us consider the ultimate consequence which the Apostle regards as certain, from this central in- l Ill ! I i i \ i 24 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE II ward change ; viz., the unlikeness to the world around. " Be not conformed to this world." I need not spend time in discussing the notion to be attached to the expression, " this world." Suffice it for our present purpose to say it stands for the whole mass of men and things apart from God. And the " fashion of this world" is the whole set of maxims, opinions, thoughts, theories, views of life, pursuits, the like, of such men. We all know well enough what the world is, by the specimen of it that we have inside of ourselves, but the principle that I vrant to insist rpon for a moment is this : that the more we get like Jesus Christ, the more certainly we get unlike the world. For the two theories of life are clean contrary, the one is all limited by this " bank and shoal of time," the other stretches out through the transient to lay hold on the Infinite and Eternal. The one is all for self, the other is all for God, with His will for law, and His love for motive. The two theories, I say, are contrary the one to the other, so that likeness to and adherence to the one must needs be dead in the teeth of the other. And that contrariety is as real to-day as ever it was. Paul's " world " was a grim, heathen, persecuting world ; our " world " has got christened, and goes to church and chapel, like a respectable gentleman. But for all that it is the world yet, all the same, and you and I have to shake our hands free of it as thoroughly as ever it was a Christian man's duty to do so. No doubt there is a great deal of world in the Church, and, thank God, there is a little of the Church in the world, so that the gulf does not seem quite as deep as once it was. But when you come down to fundamentals, and the underlying principles of life, the antagonism is as great and real as ever it was. So let no man fancy that this generation has less need for this commandment than any generation that has gone before. [I ,', ! ' ««»i.--««^»rf A TRANSFIGURATION. 25 arortnd. )n to be ; for our of men world" tieories, by the 3ut the s this : rtainly he one J other m the ther is ve for 3ne to e one was. orhl ; and lat it ve to v'ds a ?reat is a does yon pies ^vas. this ore. How is the commandment to be obeyed ? Well, of course there are large tracts of human life where the saint and the sinner have to do exactly the same things ; whei-e the holiest and the most selfish have to perform the same functions, be touched by the same emotions, feel the same anxieties, weep the same tears, and smile the same smiles ; attend to the same tasks, and gather together the same treasures. No doubt ! and yet " there shall be two women grinding at a mill," the one of them at that side shall be a Christian, the other of them on that side shall not. They push the handle round, and the push that carries the handle round half the circumference of the millstone may be a bit of religious worship, and the push that carries it round the other half of the circumference may be a bit of serving the world and the flesh and tlie devil. Two men shall be sitting at the same desk, two boys at the same bench at school, two servants in the same kitchen, two students at the same class at Owen's College, and the one shall be serving God and glorifying His name, and the other shall be serving self and Satan. The one may be immersed in and the other may be an- tagonistic to the world, to the very depths of his soul. Not the things done, but the motive, makes the difference. And yet that is not all that has to be said. There are a great many things which it is not my business, standing here, to enumerate seriatim, in which not to be "con- formed to the world" means to be outwardly different, and to have nothing to do with certain acts and certain peo])le. Have nothing to do with things for instance, which in themselves are unmistakably wrong ; nor with things which, not being in themselves unmistakably wrong, have got evil inextricably mixed up with them, like, as I be- lieve, the English stage ; nor with things which, not being in themselves unmistakably wrong, and not having evil inextricably mixed up with them, are yet, as ex- 1 26 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ll 111 n h i i i perience shows you, bad for you. This generation of the Church seems in business and in daily life, and most of all in its amusements, to be trying how near it can go to the world, which is to me a suspicious sign that much of it is only a christened world after all. Do not you try, my brother, if you want your Christian life to be vigorous and strong, how near to the world you can go. It is a danger- ous game. It is like children trying how far they can stretch out of the nursery window without tumbling mto the street ; you will go over some day when you miscalcu- late a little bit. Rather ''be ye transfigured," and then you will find that when the inner mind is changed, many of the things that attracted tempt no more, and many of the people that wanted to have you do not care to have you, for you spoil their sport and are a wet blanket to their amusements and enjoyments. Do you deepen the life of Christ in your hearts, and see to it that day by day the influence of His sweet love is more and more manifest in your nature, and then of itself this nonconformity to the world's maxima and the woj-ld's fashion will certainly come. Unless our unlikeness to the world is the result of our growing likeness to Christ, it is of little value. It is use- less to preach unworldliness to men unless they have Christ in their hearts. The great means of becoming un- like the world is becoming like Him, and tho great means of becoming like Him is living near Him and drinking in His life and Spirit. So we shall be delivered from the world's tyranny. So, dear brethren, a great hope is offered to every man ; even the foolishest, the weakest, the most vile and de- graded. There is nobody so deeply stamped with the mark and superscription of the Beast, but that it may be erased from his forehead, and printed there the sign and the token of the Lamb. We cannot, by any effort, mould our A TRANSFIGURATION. 27 natures afresh. But we can open our hearts to the entrance of Christ's transforming life. That will change all the hard, obstinate nature, as a furnace conquers the masses of ore cast into it until they become fluid in proportion as they absorb the heat. So we may be melted by the love and moul led into the likeness of our Lord. We should widen our expectations to the magnificent sweep of His promise. " As we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." But we must begin by opening our hearts to the leaven which shall work onward and outwards till it has changed all. Let us gaze on Him in love and faith, till, lookin*'- we become like Him. The sm when it shines upon "a mirror makes the mirror shine like a little sun. " We all with open face, reflecting as a mirror does the glory of the Lord, shall be changed into the same image." u 'i Sermon III. FROM THE DEPTHS TO THE HEIGHTS. i'j' :il « ' > ■^^tm^ SERMON III. PROM THE DEPTHS TO THE HEIGHTS. " 1. Out of tlic depths have I cried unto Thco, Lord. 2. Lord hear mj' voice ; let Thine cars bo attentive to the voice of my supplications. 3. If Thou, Lord shouldst mark iniquities, Lord ! who shall stand ? 4. But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared. 6. I wait for ,he Lord, my soul doth wait, and in Ilia word do I hope. 6. My soul waitcth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morn- ing : I say, more than they that watch for the morning. 7. Let Israel hope in the Lord ; for with the Lord there is mercj', and with Him is plenteous redemption. 8. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities."— Psalm cxxx. This psalm gives us what we may call the ascent of the soul from the depths to the heights. It is *' a song of degrees," as the heading tells us, that is, a " song of goings up^ Whatever that very enigmatical phrase may mean, there is a sense in which this Psalm, at any rate, is distinctly a song of ascent, in that it starts from the very lowest point of self-abasement and conscious- ness of evil, and rises steadily and, though it may be slowly, yet surely, up to the tranquil summit, led by a conscious- ness of th 3 Divine Presence and grace. Let us, then, read the Psalm over this morning, and try to bring out some little of its depth and beauty. It falls very clearly into four portions, of a couple of verses each. The first of them is a cry from the depths. Then in the second and third verses we have the second rung of the ladder, as it were, or stage of ascent. That great yearn- ing for God is for a moment checked by a dark thought, ■hiliikt*? "I «IS m i , ll 'I r a i : ■i3 * 1 "; ■ ^i: ' ! «:' ■i^ ■ •! , i : ■■: i : 1 ! 1 a2 FROM THE DKPTILS TO THE HEIGHTS, which, however, beinp: overcome, issues into a blessed bri^i-ht assurance. Tlie man has been cryiny- to God, and he stops ; liis voice is, as it were, blown back into his own throat when he thinks this — " If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, Lord! who shall stand ? " And then we must insert a thought that is not expressed in the Psalm. " But Thou dost not so mark iniquity." " For,^' as the little word at the beginning of verse iv. would be more accurately rendered, " there is forgiveness with Thee, that thou mayest be feared." So the dark thought is overwhelmed and drowned, as it were, in the great, glad confidence — "There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." And then, after the appropriation, in this great act of confidence and faith, of the great truth of God's forgiving mercy, there comes the third step in the ladder, also express- ed in a couple of verses : " I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning : I say, more than they that watch for the morning." That is to say, there we get the permanent, peaceful dependence upon God, of the spirit that has tasted His forgiving mercy. Conscious dependence, blessed tranquillity, fixed reliance upon God's faithful Word, and an absorbing desire for more and more of the light which alone can scatter the darkness of fear and guilt and sin— these are the third step on the ladder. And then the fourth, likewise expressed in a couple of verses, is what I may call the missionary call from the depths of personal experience of God's forgiving mercy : — *' Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his trangressions." Up on tlie summit of thai great hope, which belongs to all Israel, of a complete, an all-embracing deliverance and redemption, the Psalmist stands with the sunshine about him, having ! !' FUOM TIIK DEPTHS TO TIIK TIKIGHT'^. \ blesst'cl God, ami o his own sliouklest And then he Psalm. S5 the little iccurately on niayest Imed and — " There eared." eat act of forg'iving ;o express- , my sonl il waiteth morning : k » That pendence ng mercy. i reliance esire for ;atter the liird step couple of from the [nercy : — d there is And he Jp on tjie Israel, of emptiou, , having climbed steadily from that low, abjoct condition of consciousness of his sin and evil. So much, thou, for the outline of the course of thou^fiit that lies here. And now let me just say a word or two about each of these stei)S. I. — We have the cry from the depths. What depths ? The psalmist thinks of himself as of a man at the bottom of a pit, sending up to the surface a faint call which may easily be unheard. He has some sense of the height to which his voice must rise, and its he catches a glimpse of tlie exalted Lord, he feels how far below he is. ]\[easured by the height of that throne " high from the beginning," all men are in the depths. But he does not merely mean to express his sense of human in- significance, nor even his sorrows, nor his despondency. There are deeper pits than these, so deep that these are l)y comparison but dimples on the surface, and a man never truly cries to God till he has been down into the deepe t of them. The depths which the Psalmist here means are aw:\.' down far below these shallow ones. They are the deptli ; into which the spirit feels itself going down, siclc an. I giddy, when there comes the thought, " I am a sinful man, Lord, in the presence of Thy great purity." Out of thcr o depths does he cry to God. Now, three remarks are all I have time to make on this matter : — First, the depths are the place for us all. Every ma;i amongst us has to go down there, if we take the place that belongs to us. The next ^hing is — Unless you have cried to God out of these depths you have never cried to Him at all. Unlc. s you come to Him as a penitent sinful man, with the con- sciousness of transgression awakened within you, your prayers are shallow. ^(11 ■It' i'i 'M FROM THE DEl'TIIS TO THE HEir:}[TS. ' 1 ' V i . ■ ;, I I ^ i r } Or, to put it into other words, tlie bojfiniiiiij,' of all true ])('rsonal rcli^non lies in the sense of my own sin and my lost C()nle who formally call themselves Christians have such a sli^dit hokl of Christian truth, and why the Gospel has so small a i)ower over them, is because they have never found out, in any real sense of the word, that they ai'e sinful men. You .sY/y it no doubt. You breathe out formal confessions. Have you ever been (h)wn into the dejjths, brother? If you have not, tliis psalm may teach j'ou that you have never cried to God. It is a very easy-j,'oin,u have eli^-ion, hes (lie a very ve, tor reason erinj»'s- round e, as a !Lnd so ly the nivj; is in, he And whicli Jesus n this )f the ianity lemto any acts oL" service and devotion, that sehloni brealvs out into any heroisms of self-surrender, and never rises into the hei;j:hts of communion with God, depend upon it that die roots of it are to be found here, that the man has never been down into the abyss and never sent his voice up from it as some man that had tumbled down a coalpit iiii;j:ht llin^' a despairiuur call uj) to the surface, in the hope that somebody wandering past the mouth of it might hear the cry. " Out of the dei)ths " he has not cried unto God. And the third thought about this first part is that you want nothing more than a cry to draw you from the pit. If out of the depths you cry, you will cry yourself out of the depths. Here is a man at the foot of a cliff that rises beetling like a black wall behind him, the sea in front, the bare, upright rock at his back ; not a foothold for a mouse between the tide at the bottom and the grass at the top. What is he to do ? There is only one thing — he can shout. Perchance somebody will hear him, a rope may come dangling down in front of him ; and if he has nerve he may shut his eyes and make a spring and catch it. There is no way for you up out of the pit, brother, but to cry to God, and that will bring a rope down. Nay, rather, the rope is there. Your grasping the rope aad your cry are one. " Ask. and ye shall receive !" God has let down the fulness of His forgiving love in Jesus Christ our Lord, and all that we need is the call, which is like- wise faith, which accepts while it desires, and desires in its acceptance ; and then we are lifted up " out of the horrible pit and the miry clay," and our feet are set upon a rock, and our goings established. We have all to go down into the depths if we would understand ourselves. If we have not cried out of the depths we have never cried at all. Religion begins with penitence. A cry is all that is needed to bring us out of the depths. That is the first step on this ladder. d2 •>'» i 1 ' fmm a * ^ 1 1 ' if ! 36 FROM THE DEPTHS TO THE HEKJHTS. II. — And now as to the seconci. We have here a dark fear and a bright assurance. As I said, the man's })r;iyer is, as it were, bk^wn back into his thi'oat by the thought, " If Tliou, Lord, shouklst mark iniquities, Lord ! who shall stand .^" And then — as if he iconlcl not be swept away from his confidence even by this great blast of cold air from out of the North, that comes like ice and threatens to chill his hope to death — " But," says he, " there Is forgiveness v/itli Thee, that Thou mightest be feared." So these two halves represent the struggle in the man's mind. They are like a sky, one half of which is piled with thunder-clouds, and the other serenely blue. To " mark iniquities " is to impute them to us. The word, in the original, means to ivatcJi, that is to say, to remember in order to punish. If a man be regarded by God's eye through the mist of his sins, they turn the bright sun of God's own light into a red-hot, flaming ball of fire. " If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities," — that is, shouldest take them into account in Thy thoughts and dispositions and dealings towards us, — " Lord ! who shall stand ? Here, then, we have expressed the profound sense of the impossibility of any man's sustaining the righteous judg- ment of God. " Who shall stand," exclaimed a prophet, " when He appeareth ?" " Who may stand in Thy sight," cried a psalmist, " when once Thou art angry ?" Like a man having to yield ground to an eager enemy, or to bend before the blast, every man has to bow before that flashing brightness and to own that retribution would be de- struction. I do not wish to bring exaggerated charges. But has not every man moments in which he knows that remorse is not too strong a word to apply to what should be his feelings about his past ? I do not charge you with vices or with crimes. I do not say there are no moral distinctions amongst men outside the pale of Christianity. I would m 1 FROM THE DEPTHS TO THE HEIGHTS. 37 de- not say, as St. Augustine said, " That the virtues of the lieathen were splendid vices." At least I should want to talk a page and a half of commentary if I did adopt the })hrase ; but I ask you, Is not this true, that you know that there is an awful difference between what you ought to be and what you are "i Do we not all know that our characters and our lives have been, as it were, distorted, that our moral nature has been marred with animal lusts, and that ambitions and worldly dc'sii-es have come in and jjrevented us from follow- ing the law of conscience ? Is not that very conscience, more or less distorted, drugged and dormant ? And is not all this largely voluntary ? Do we not feel, in s})ite of all pleas about circumstances and " heredity," that we could have helped being what we are ? And do we not feel that, after all, if there be such a thing as God's judg- ]nent and retribution, it must come down on us with terrible force ? That is what our psalm means when it says that if God be strict to mark iniquities there is not one of us that can stand before Him ; and we kno\v it is true. You may be a very respectable man ; that is not the question. You may have kept your hands clear ft-om anything that would bring you within the sweep of the law ; that has nothing to do with this matter. You may have subdued animal passions, been sober, temperate, chaste, generous — a hundred other things. Our congrega- tions are not made up, as a rule, of reprobates, but they are made up, as a rule, of two classes — one of sinful men that have a little found out how sinful thev are, and who are trying to trust in God's mercy in Jesus Christ, and so to get better, and the other of Pharisees, who havj never been down into the dopths of their own hearts, nor caught a glimpse of their own evil ; but who listen to all the warnings and pleadings of the Gospel and never think that they have a .y personal inteiest 'n them, but are ^ -' % 38 FROM THE DEPTHS TO THE HEIGHTS. r I i; •i i actually coated over with a water-proofing from their very knowledge of the truth which prevents the truth telling on them, ard think themselves all right because they come to church or chapel on a Sunday, and do not go for a walk in the fields with a dog at their heels. Ah ! dear friends, gross, palpable sin slays its thousands, and that clean, respectable, ghastly purity of a godless, eelf-compiacent morality, I do believe, slays its tens of thousands. " The publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you ! " Not because they are better, but because — poor wretches ! God helptl . i: ! — they know that there is nothing in their lives that they can plume themselves upon. And you, not because your goodness is not goodness of a sort, but because you are building upon it, and think that such words as those of my text go clean over your heads — you are in this perilous position. Oh ! dear friends ! will you go home to-day and take ten minutes at your own home quietly to think over that verse of my psalm, " If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, Lord who shall stand ! " Can I ? Can I ? That is the thundery side of the sky, and it makes all the more tender the sapphire blue of the other side : — " But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." No man ever comes to that confidence that has not sprung to it, as it were, by a rebound from the other thought. It needs, first of all, that the heart should have tremblingly entertained the contrary hypothesis, in order that the heart should spring to the relief and the gladness of the counter truth. It must first have felt the shudder of the thought, " If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities " in order to come to the gladness of the thought, " But there is forgiveness with Thee ! " Forgiveness ! " The word so translated here in my text has for its literal meaning, " cutting-off," " excision.*' li' I FROM THE DEPTHS TO THE HEIGHTS. 311 i |i And so it suggests the notion of taking a man's sin, that great black deformity that has grown upon his soul, and cutting it clean out with a merciful amputating knife. You know that doctors sometimes say, "Well, the only salvation of him would be an operation, but the tumour has got so implicated with the vital tissues that it would scarcely be possible to apply the knife." That is what the world says, and that is what philosophy says, and modern pessi- mism says, about my sin, and your sin, and the world's sin. " No ! we cannot operate ; we cannot cut out th(^ cankerous tumour." Christianity says, " Miserable phy- sicians are ye all ; stand aside ! "and it removes the malig- nant growth by a mighty and wondrous act of God's Divine mercy and Infinite power and love, in the Cross of Jesus Christ, which separates between man and his disease, and cuts it out, leaving him the more living after the amputation of that which was killing him. The world thinks the disease to be a bit of the man that cannot be got rid of. No, says the Gospel ; it can all be swept away through God's forgiveness. Men may say, " There cannot be forgiveness ; you cannot alter consequences," But forgiveness has not to do only with consequences ; but also and chiefly with tho personal re- lation between me and God, and that can be altered. A judge pardons when he remits penalties. A father for- gives though he sometimes chastises. If a man has sinned, his whole life thereafter will be different from what it would have been if he had not sin- ned. I know that well enough. You cannot, by any pardon, alter the past, and make it not to be. I know that well enough. The New Testament doctrine and the Old Testament hope of forgiveness do not assert that you can, but say that you and God can get right with one another. A person can pardon. We have not merely to do with impersonal laws ; we have not only to do with " the mill of n n \ i .i| m • r 40 FROM THE DEPTHS TO THFi: HEICIHTS. ^ ■:: I lilt Cod — " " that grinds slowly," but with God Himself. Thei-e is such a thing as the pardon of God. His love will come to 11 man free, unenibittered, and will not be dammed back by transgressions, if the man will go and say, " Father I I have sinned ! forgive for Thy dear Son's sake. There is forgiveness with Thee ! " And that forgiveness lies at the root of all trne godlinesr;. No man reverences, and loves, and dra\\s near to God so rapturously, so humbly, as the man that has learned pardon through Jesus Christ. My dear friend believe this ; your religion must have for its foundation the assurance of God's pardoning mercy in Christ, or it will have nc firm and deep foundation at all. I press that upon you, and ask you this one question : Is the basis of your religion the sense that Cod has forgiven you freely all your iniquities 'f " There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou inaycst he feared.'''^ That is the second step of this song of ascents. III. — And now about the third stage of this ladder. *' My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning : I say, more than they that watch for the n;orning. I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope." There is the peruiancnt, ])eaceful attitude of the spirit that has tasted the consciousness of forgiving love — a continual dependence upon God. Like a man that has just recovered from some illness, but still leans upon the care, and feels his need of seeing the face of that skilful physician that has helped him through, there will be still, and always, the necessity for the continual application of that pardoning love. But they that have tasted that the Lord is gracious can sit very quietly at His feet and trust themselves to His kindly dealings, resting their souls upon His strong word, and looking for the fuller communication of light from Him- self. This is a beautiful picture of a tranquil, continuous, ever-rewarded, and ever-fresh waiting upon Him, and reliance upon His mercy. 7WT- 1 ',?r,( ^ J \ FROM THE DF.PTHS TO THE HEKiHTS. Ai "More tlian tliev that watch for the nioriiiuij^.'" That is beautiful ! The consciousness of sin was the (lack niudit. The coming- of His loi-giving love tlushed all the eastern Heaven with diffused brifjhtness that i:fre\v into perfect day. And so the man waits (juictly f(u* the ilawn, and his whole soul is one absorbing desire that God may dwell with him, and brighten and gladden him. IV. — I must not dwell upon these words, for I wish to say just a word about the last of the rounds of this huhler, in which the personal experience becomes general, and an evangel, a call upon the man's lii)S to all his brethi-en. "Let Israel hope in the Lord." There was no room for anytliing in his heart wlien he began this psalm except his own self in his miserv, and that Great One liiuh above him there. There was nobodj' in all the universe to him but himself and God, at his first cry from the dei)ths. There is nothing which isolates a man so awl'ully as a consciousness of sin and of his relation to God. Ihit there is nothing that so knits him to all his fellows, and brings him into such wide-reaching bonds of amity and benevo- lence, as the sense of God's forgiving mercy for his own soul. So the call bursts from the lips of the pardoned num, inviting all to taste the experience and exercise the trust which have made him glad : " Let Israel hope in ihe Lord." And then look at the broad Gospel that he has attained to know and to preach. " For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is redemption." Not only forgive- ness, but redemption — and that from every form of sin. It is " plenteous " — multiplied, as the word might be nndered. Our Lord has taught us to what a sum that Divine multiplication amounts. Not once, nor twice, but •" seventy times seven" is the i)rescribed measure of human forgiveness, and shall men be more placable than God ! The perfect numbers, seven and ten are multiplied together, I •4 z I. i' (i ' ■ :« ■ I :! 42 FROM THE DEPTHS TO THE HEIGHTS. i! i Ml' liili . f and that again increased sevenfold, to make a numerical symbol for the Innumerable, and to bring the Infinite within the terms of the Finite. It is inexhaustible re- demption, not to be provoked, not to be overcome by any obstinacy of evil — available for all, available for every grade and every repetition of transgression. " Mine iniqui- ties are more than the hairs of my head," confesses another Psalmist, but almost in the same breath he tells us of God's loving thoughts, which are still more numerous than tiie hairs of his head — " If I would declare and speak of them,they are more than can be numbered." That forgiving grace is older and mightier than all sins, and is able to conquer them all. As when an American prairie for hundreds of miles is smoking in the autumn fires, nothing that man can do can cope with it. But the clouds gather and down comes the rain, and there is water enough in the sky to put out the fire. And so God's inexhaustible mercj% streaming down upon the lurid smoke-pillars of man's transgression, and that alone is enough to quench the flame of a man's and of a world's transgression, though heated from the lowest hell. " With Him is plenteous redemption ; He shall re- deem Israel from all his iniquities." That is the Old Testament prophecy. Let me leave on your hearts the New Testament fulfilment of it. The Psalmist said, " H ' shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. " He was sure of that, and his soul was at " peace in believing " it. But there were mysteries about it which he could not under- stand. He lived in the twilight dawn, and he and all his fellows had to watch for the morning, of which they saw but the faint promise in the Eastern sky. The sun is risen for us — " Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. " That is the fulfilment, the vindication, and explanation of the Psalmist's hope. Lay hold on Christ, and He will lift you out of the depths, and set you upon the sunny heights of the Mountain of God. ! ! 1" I'lTifflmBK^ Sermon IV. i » i! SIMON THE CYRENIAN. 4 5 ■:: ^ Hi 5 ■ ft -H'^' 9 ':^? ■ ! ■ ', i ■ ' ' ; ' if .: ■ I ..i! •: 3 II! 11 I mmmi.M SERMON IV. SIMON THK CVRENl.VN. "Tlipy (;(»iiii)ollo(l oiH^ Simon, a Cyreiiiaii. \\ ho i)a>M>,l l)y, coniirg out of tliooouiilry, iho fallioi- of Alc.xaiKkT ami UnHis, to hear His Cross. " Mark xv. I'l. i'iM i) How little these people knew that they were makijiij: this man immortal ! What a strange fate that is whicli has befallen those persons in the Gospel narrai ve, who foi- an instant came into contact with Jesns Christ. Like ships passing athwart the white ghostlike splendour of the moon- light on the sea, they gleam silvery pure for a moment :is they cross its broad belt and then are swallowed up again in the darkness. This man Simon, fortuitously, as men say, meeting the little procession at the gate of the city, for an instant is caught in the radiance of the light, and stands out visible for evermore to all the world ; and then sinks into the blackness, and we know no more about him. This brief glimpse tells us very little, and yet the man and his act and its consequences may be worth thinking about. He was a Cyrenian ; that is, he was a Jew by descent, probably born, and certainly resident, for purposes of com- 46 SIMON THE CYUKNIAN. It - n;erco, in Cyrene, on the North AlVicuii coast of the Mediterrimoan. No doubt he had come up to Jerusalem for the I'assover ; and like very many of the stranj^ers who flocked to the Holy City for the feast, met some difficulty in finding' acconimodation in the city, and so was obli^'ed to ^'o and lod^'e in one of the outlying villages. From this lodging he is coming in, in the morning, knowing nothing about Christ nor His trial, knowing nothing of what he is about to meet, and happens to see the procession as it is passing out of the gate. He is, by the centurion impressed to help the fainting Christ to carry the heavy Cross. He IH'obably thought Christ a common criminal, and would resent the task laid upon him bj'- the rough authority of the officer in command. But he was gradually touched into some kind of sympathy ; drawn closer and closer, as we suppose, as he looked upon this dying meekness ; and at last, yielding to the soul-conquering power of Christ. Tradition says so, and the reasons for supposing that it may be so may be very simply stated. The description of him in our text as " the father of Alexander and Ruf us " shows that, by the time when Mark wrote, his two sons were members of the Christian community, and had at- tained some eminence in it. A Rufus is mentioned in the salutations in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, as being " elect in the Lord, " that is to say, " eminent, " and his mother is associated in the greeting, and commended as having been motherly to Paul as well as to Rufus. Now, if we remem- ber that Mark's Gospel was probably written in Rome, and for Roman Christians, the conjecture seems a very reason- able one that the Rufus here was the Rufus of the Epistle to the Romans. If so, it would seem that the family had been gathered into the fold of the Church, and in all pro- bability, therefore, the father with them. Then there is another little morsel of possible evidence which may just be noticed. We find in the Acts of the i: mraammmmmmm Hliv.ON THK CYRKNIAN. 47 I ' \w>\ A])()StU'S, in the list of the i)ro])hets and touchers in the Church at Antioeh, a "Simon, wlio is cjiIUmI Ni^-'er ' (that is black, the hot African sun havinj^ tanned his counte- nance, perhaps), and side by side \vitli him one " Lucius of Cyrene, " from which place \ve kno\v that several of the orijjfinal brave ])reachers to the Gentiles in Antioeh came. It is possihir that this may be our Simon, and that he who was the last to join the band of disciples during the Mastei''s life and learned courage at the Cross was itmonij: the first to a])i)rehend the Avorld-wide destination of the (lospel, and to bear it beyond the narrow bounds of his nation. At all events, I think we may, with something' like confidence, believe that his fjflinipse of Christ on that morning' and his contact with the snfVerinj.' Saviour ended in his acceptance of Him as his Christ, and in his bearing? in a truer sense the Cross after Him. And so I seek now to gather some of the lessons th; t seem to me to arise from this incident. I. — First, the greatness of trifles. If that man had started from the little village where he lived five minutes earlier or later, if he had walked a little faster or slower, if he had happened to be lodging on the other side of Jerusalem, or if the whim had taken him to go in at another gate, or if the centurion's eye had not chanced to alight on him in the crowd, or if the centurion's fancy had picked out somebody else to carry the cross, then all his life would have been different. And so it is always. You go down one turning rather than another, and your whole career is coloured thereby. You miss a train, and you escape death. Our lives are like the Cornish rocking stones, pivoted on little points. The most apparently insignificant things have a strange knack of suddenly developing unexpected consequences, and turning out to be, not small things at all, but great and •decisive and fruitful. I i I I ;!; .*■'! h! I i ,1 '.I.S SIMON Til 10 CYUICNIAN. Let lis thon look with over fresh wonder f)n this msirvel- loiis contexture of hiiinnn life, and on Ilini that nionhls it nil to His own i)erl'ect i)uri)()Sos. I^et ns l»iin^»- the luLjhest and lat'Lrest |)rincii)lt»s to hear on the smallest events and eireuinstanees, for you can ni^vor tell which of thesc^ is iroin^' to tui'n out :i revolutionary and formative inilueiu-e in youi* life. And if tlu^ hii,'hest (/hristian })i'in- eijtle is not hrouufht to hear upon the trilles, dt^pend Uj)ou it it will never he hi'oun'ht to hear upon the miiifhty thiu'^s. The most ])art of every life is made U]) of trilles, and unless these are ruled hy the highest motives, life, which is divided into jjfrains likt' the sand, will have ^"-one hy, while we are preparing,'- for the hiuf events which we think Avoithy of h(Mn,Lr reirulated hy lofty ])rinciitles. Take care of the jiMinies and the pounds will take care of themselves. ].(t()k afti'i" th(» ti'ifles, for the law of life is like that which is laid down hy the Psalmist ahout the Kingdom of Jesus (Mii'ist : "Therj shall he a handful of corn mi the earth, '' a little seed sown in an ai)i)arently uiv'jfer »lace "ontheto[) of the mountains." Ay ! hut this will come of it, "The fruit thereof shall shake like Lehanon, " and the great harvest of henediction or of curse, of joy or of sorrow, will come from the minute seeds that are sown in the (jrcdt tritles of your daily life. Let us learn the lesson, too, of quiet confidence in Him in ^Vhose hands the whole puzzling, overwhelming mys- tery lies. If a man once begins to think of how utterly incalculable the consequences of the smallest and most commonplace of his deeds may be, how they may run out into all eternity, and like divergent lines, may enclose a space that gets larger and wider the further they travel ; if, I say, a man once begins to indulge in thoughts like these, it is difficult for him to keep himself calm and sane at all, unless he believes in the great living Providence that lies above all, and shapes the vicissitude and mystery I 'i firTMfiii Iff' RTMON THE CYRENIAN. 40 ol'Iifc. We ciin Iciivo all in His h:ui«l« — and if wo aro wise wo shall <1() so — to WIkmu ijrrat and snutll are tcnnn tlial hiivo no nicanin;^' ; nnd Wiio looks ujion mu'iTs lives, not accordinu: to tho apparent niai,Miitudo of llic deeds witli wliicli they are filled, bnt sinipl}' accordin'.r lo lh(? niot'vo from which, and the purpose towards which, these (U'ods were done. ir. — Tlion, still further, take this other lesson, which lies very i)laiidy liere — the ])lessedness and lionour of jieiliin^ Jesus Christ. If you turn to the story of the Crucilixion, in John's Gospel, you will find that the nai-i-a- tives of the three other Gospels are, in some points sni>i)le- mented by it. In reference to our Lord's bearin.i,' of the Ooss, we are informed by John that wlien He left the Jud^nnent Hall He was carrying it Himself, as was the custom with criminals under the Roman law. The heavy cross was laid on the shoulder, at the intersection of its ai'uis and stem, one of the arms hanpfinp: down in front of the bearer's body, and the long upright trailing behind. Apparently' our Lord's physical strength, sorely tried by a night of excitement and the hearings in the High Priest's Palace, and befoi-e Pilate, as well as l)y the scourging, was une(j[ual to the task of carrying, albeit for that short passage, the heavy weight. And there is a little hint of that sort in the context. In the verse before my text w^e read, " they led Jesus out to crucify Him, " and in the verse after, " they bring, " or l"ar " Him to the place Golgotha, " as if, when the procession began, they led Him, and before it ended they had to carry Him, His weakness having become such that He Himself could not sustain the weight of His ci'oss or of His own enfeebled limbs. So, with some touch of pity in their rude hearts, or more likely with profes- sional impatience of delay, and wanting to get their task over, the soldiers lay hold of this stranger, press him into tlie service and make him carry the heavy upright, which E t i/i I Z N I* I I i IIMI 1*1 'I'l I !!h ,,1 50 SIMON THlil CYRKNIAN. tiaileil on the jirronnd behind Jesiis And so they pass on to tlio i)]ace of execution. Vei'y reverently, and with few words, one wouhl touch iil)on the physical \'cakness of the Master. Still, it doc; not do us any harm to try to realise how very mai'kcd was the collapse of His pliysical nature, and to remember that that collapse was not entirely owincf to the pressure upon Him of tne mere fact of physical death ; and that it was still less a failure of His will, or like the abject cowardice of some criminals who have had to be draixged to the scaf- fold, and helped up its steps ; but that the reason wiiy His flesh failed was vei-y larq-ely because there was laid upon Him the mysterious burden of the world's sin. Christ's demeanour in the act of death, in such sinirular contrast to the calm heroism and strength of hunilreds Avhohave drawn all the'.i' heroism and strength from Him, suggests to us that, looking upon His sufferings, we look upon something the significance of which does not lie on the surface ; and the extreme pressure of which is to be accounted for by that blessed and yet solenni truth of prophecy and Gospel alike — "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of tts all. " But, apart from that, which does not enter properly into ally present contemplations, ]et us remember that thouch changed in form, very truly and really in substance, this blessedness and honour of helping Jesus Christ is given to us ; and is demanded from us, too, if we are His disciples. He is despised and set at nought still. He is crucified afresh btill. There are plenty of men in this day who scofi' at Him, mock Him, deny His claims, seek to oast Him down froiii His throne, rebel against His dominion. I is an easy thing to be a disciple when all the crowd is crying " Hosauna ! " It is a much harder thing to be a disciple when ihe crowd, or even when the influential cultivated opinion of a generation is crying " Crucify Him ! \ ■'TT SIMON THE OYRENIAN. 51 Crucify Him ! " And some of you Christian men and women have to learn the lesson that if you are to hi? Christians you must be Christ's companions v/hen His back is at the wall as well as when men are exalting' and honour- ing Him ; that it is j'our business to confess Him when men deny Him, to stand by Him when men forsake Ilim, to avow Him when the avowal is likely to bring contempt upon you from some people ; and thus, in a very real sense, to bear His Cross after Him. "Let us go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach ;" — the tail end of His Cross. It is the lightest ! He has borne the heaviest end on His own shoulders ; but we have to ally ourselves with that suffering and despised Christ if we are to be His disciples. I do not dwell upon the lesson often drawn from this story, as if it taught us to " take up our cross daily and follow Him. " That is another matter, and yet is closely connected with that about which I speak, but what I say is, Christ's Cross has to be carried to-day ; and if we have not found out that it has, let us ask ourselves if we are Christians at all. There will be hostility, alienation, a comparative coolness, and absence of a full sense of sym- pathy with yoa, in many people, f you are a true Chris- tian. You will come in for a share of contempt from the wise and the cultivated of this ge ^oration, as in all gene- rations. The mud that is thrown after the Master will si)atter your faces too, to some extent ; and if we are walking with Him we shall share, to the extent of our communion with Him, in the feelings with which many men regard Him. Stand to your colours ! Do not be ashamed of Him in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. And there is yet another way too, in which this honour of helping the Lord is given to us. As in His weakness He needed someone to aid Him to bear His Cross, so in His glory He needs our help to carry out the ])urposes for E 2 i: I p i 1 s ! ■I* ;!; I '■' s I 'I ii * ! 52 i|, 1 i -1 :' I' In In 1 i w; SIMON THE CYRENIAN. Avhich thf» Cross was borne. The paradox of a man carry- ing the Cross of Him Who carried the world's burden is repeated in another form too. He needs nothing, and yet He needs us. He needs nothing, and yet He needed that ass which was tethered at the place where two ways met, in order to ride into Jerusalem upon it. He does not nee'd man's help, and yet He does need it, and He asks for it. And though He bore Simon the Cyrenean's sins " in His own body on the tree, " He ne«.ded Simon the Cyrenean to help Him to bear the tree. He needs us to help Him to spread throughout the world the blessed consequences of that Cross and bitter Passion. So to us all is granted the honour, and from us all are required the sacrifice and the service of helping the suffering Saviour. III. — Another of the lessons which may very briefly be drawn from this story is that of the perpetual recompense and record of the humblest Christian work. There were different degrees of criminality, and different degrees of sympathy with Him, if I may use the word, in that crowd that stood round the Master. The criminality varied from the highest degree of violent malignity in the Scribes and Pharisees, down to the lowest point of ignorance, and therefore all but entire innocence on the part of the Roman legionaries, who were merely the mechanical instruments of the order given, and stolidly "watched Him there," with eyes which saw nothing. On the other hand, there w^ere all grades of service, and help and sympathy, from the vague emotions of the crowd who beat their breasts, and the pity of the daughters of Jerusalem, the kindly-meant help of the soldiers, who would have moistened the parched lips, to the heroic love of the women at the Cross, whose ministry was not ended even with His life. But surely the most blessed share in that day's tragedy was reserved for Simon, whose bearing of the Cross may have been compulsory at first, but became, mvmm^ SIMON TUB CYRENIAN. 53 It .'91 ere it was ended, willing service. But whatever were the degrees of reco':^nition of Christ's character, and of sym- pathy with the meaning of His sufferings, yet the smallest and most transient impulse of loving gratitude that went out towards Him was rewarded then, and is rewarded for ever, by blessed results in the heart that feels it. Besides these, service for Christ is recompensed, as in the instance before us, by a perpetual memorial. How little Simon knew that " wherever in the whole world this Gospel was preached, there also, this that he had done should be told for a memorial of him ! " How little he understood when he went back to his rural lodging that night, that he had written his name high up on the tablet of the world's memorj-, to be legible for ever. Why, men have fretted their whole lives away to get what this man got, and knew nothing of — one line in the chronicle of fame^ So we may say, it shall be always, " Iwill never forget any of their works. " We may not leave them inscribed in any records that men can read. What of that, if they are written in letters of light in the " Lamb's Book of Life, '* to be read out by Him before His Father, and the holy angels in that last great day ? We may not leave any separ- able traces of our services, any more than the little brook that comes down some gulley on the hillside flows separate from its sisters, with whom it has coalesced, in the bed of the great river or in the rolling, boundless ocean. What of that so long as the work, in its consequences, shall last ? Men that sow some great prairie broadcast cannot go into the harvest field and say, " I sowed the seed from which that ear came, and you the seed from which this one sprang. " But the waving abundance belongs to them all, and each may be sure that his work survives and is glorified there ; " that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. " So a perpetual remembrance is sure for the smallest Christian service. ■M i 'N 'i; 14: I Hi 11! ji; iji!' I I i i" 5^ SIMON THE CYRENIAN. IV. — The last thing that I would say is, let us learn from this incident the blessed results of contact with the suffering Christ. Simon the Cyrenian apparently knew nothing about Jesus Christ when the Cross was laid on his shoulders. He would be reluctant to undertake the humiliating task, and would plod along behind Him for a while, sullen and discontented ; but by degrees be touched by more of sympathy, and get closer and closer to the Sufferer. And if he stood by the Cross when it was fixed, and saw all that transpired there, no wonder if, at last, after more or less protracted thought and search, he came to understand Who He was that he had helped, and to yield himself to Him wholly. Yes ! dear brethren, Christ's great saying, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me, " began to be ful- filled when He began to be lifted up. The centurion, the thief, this man Simon, by looking on the Cross, learned the Crucified. And it is the only way by which any of us will ever learn the true mystery and miracle of Christ's great and loving Being and work. I beseech you, take your places there behind Him, near His Cross ; gazing upon Him till your hearts melt, and you, too, learn that He is your Lord, and your Saviour, and your God. The Cross of Jesus Christ divides men into classes as the Last Day will. It, too, parts men — sheep to the right hand, goats to the left. If there was a penitent, there was an impenitent thief ; if there was a convinced centurion, there were gunibling soldiers ; if there were hearts touched with com- passion, there were mockers who took His very agonies and flung them in His face as a refutation of His claims. On the day when that Cross was reared on Calvary it began to be Avhat it has been ever since, and is at this moment to every soul who hears the gospel, " a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death." Contact with the suffering J SIMON THE CYREMAN. 55 Christ will either bind to Hi service, and fill you with His Spirit, or it will harden your hearts, and make you tenfold more selfish — that is to say, " tenfold more a child of hell, " than you were before you saw and heard of that Divine meekness of the suffering Christ. Look to Him, I beseech you, who bears what none can help Him to carry, the burden of the world's sin. Let Him bear yours, and yield to Him your grateful obedience, and then take up your cross daily, and bear the light burden of self- denying service to Him, who has borne the heavy load of sin foi- you and all mankind. 1 ' 1. ' • if 1 ; ! ; .' ■ ' r |ii ; ■'' 1*1 'ifi f s 3 t it] z 'I ii :Ji!i r |:' ill' 5 i iilii m il< ! I !' W ' l!il Ifv M SERMON V. m i4 . 1 •i ; ill : i 'i :^m THE PATIENT MASTER AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS. e '4 t * I, i I .lifl I I ! i! III M' SERMON V. I; '9 THE PATIENT MASTER AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS. "Jesus saith unto him. Have I boon so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Mo, Thilip V " John xiv. 9. The Apostle Philip, like some others of the less impor- tant of the Apostolic band, appears only in this Gospel. The little that we know of him shows us his character with considerable clearness. He was the first whom Christ Himself called, and immediately on his obeying that call, he found Nathanael. You remember that his answer to Nathanael's doubt, " Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " was " Come and see ! " Sight was to him the great satisfying experience. He held fast by the maxim : " seeing is believing. " The same simple, matter of fact character comes out in the second reference to him, in connection with our Lord's miraculous feeding of the multitude with the " five barley loaves and the two s^nall fishes. " He singles out Philip to put to him the question, " Where are we to buy bread that these may eat ?" The answer keeps close within the limits of the visible. He has no thought beyond a quick, t It] I Z \i It Vi ■ f 60 THE PATIENT MASTER ! ir-i i ! ! ii 1 11 '1 V '■' ! :l practical calculation, " So many people, so much bread, and so little money in our purses. " A solid, steady, practi- cal man, who was in the way of trusting his senses more than anything else, and who was not very familiar with any loftier region. Then we find him put to jDerplexity by the desire of the heathen Greeks to see Christ, and not venturing to say anything about it to the Master, so dim was his concei)tion of Him, until he had plucked up heart of grace by taking counsel with his fellow townsman Simon. In the text, in precise harmony with all these indications of character, Ave get him breaking in upon our Lord's discourse with arecjuest in which good and evil, right and wrong, are strangely blended : " Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. " He was right to the heart's core in believing that Jesus Christ could do that, and he was right, through and through, in believing that that would be enough for any man ; but he was wrong in fancying that an outward, visible manifestation — which was what was running in his head — such as had been granted to prophets and lawgivers, was better, or more, than he had had for three yeai'S already. The thing that he was asking, in its high- est form was there before him, and, while he thought so much of seeing, he had not been able to see it, though he had been staring at it for three years ! " Have I been so long with you, and yet thou hast not known Me ? " That is the question which may well touch all our hearts, and bring us to our knees before Him. I l)urpose to look at this question, then, of our Lord's this morning in three w^ays : — First of all, as teaching us what ignorance of Christ is ; second, as a wonderful glimpse into His pained and loving heart ; and lastly, as a piercing question for us all. I.— First, this question of our Lord's seems to me ta carry in it a great lesson as to what ignorance of Clirist is. AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS. 01 the mg- Why does onr Lord charge Philip here with not know- ino: Him ? Because Philip hud siiid ''Lord ! show us the Father and it sulliceth us." And why was that (lucstiou a betrayal of Philip's ignorance of Chi'ist ? Because it showed that he had not discern* d Ilini as being " the only P>egotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," and had not understood that "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Not knowing that, all his knowledge of Christ, howsoever tender and sweet it niav have been, howsoever full of love, and reverence, and blind admiration — is but twilight knowledge, which may well be called ignorance. I would press ihat one thouuht ui)on you, dear l)rethren, as plainly coming out of this question and underlying it — that not to know Christ as the manifest God is practically to be ignorant of Him altogether. This man asked for some visible manifestation, such as their old books told them had been granted to Closes on the mountain, to Isaiah in the temple, and to many another one besitles. But if such a revelation had been given — and Christ could have given it if He would — what a poorthing it would ha\ e been when put side by side with that mild and lambent light that was ever streaming from Him, making God visible to every sensitive and responsive nature ! For these external manifestations for which Philip is here hungering, what could they show ? They could show certain majestic, splendid, pompous, outside character- istics of God, but they could never show God, much less could they show " the Father. " The revelation of Right- eousness and Love could be entrusted to no flashing bright- nesses, and to no thunders and lightnings. There can be no revelation of these things to the outward eye, but only to the heart, through the medium of a human life. For not the power which knows no weariness, not the eye which never closes, not the omniscience which holds all things, great and small, in its grasp, are the diviuest glories i 3 t it) z :> rs !4 ■o>iiW"=Mre^^ra^^E_^a!2?5!f*r • -^* « WIBagWjjBjB|r n 02 THE PATIENT MASTER el; I 1. 1 r»» it; in CJod. Thoso are but tho frinpfo, tho ontormost parts of tlie ci renin i'crtMicc ; t\w living Centre is a Ri^^'liteons Love, wliieli eannot bo revealed bv anv moans but bv sliowiiiijf it in aetion ; nor sliown in action by any moans so clearly as by a linnian life. Therofoi-e, above all other forms of manil'oslaiions of God stands the Person of Jesus Christ, God manifest in tho flesh. And let me remind you that this is His own claim, not once nor twice, not in this Gospel alone, but in a liundi'od other i)lacos. Some peo])le tell us that the conception of our Jjord Jesus Christ proper to John's Gospel as beinfjf tho revelation of the Father, is peculiar to John's Gospel. Did you ever read these words in one of the others : — " No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomso- ever the Son will reveal Him " ? It seems to me that if there is anythin{[^ certain about Jesus Chi'ist at all, it is certain that, whilst upon earth, He claimed habitually to be the visible manifestation of God, in a degree and in a manner wholly unlike that in which a pure, good, wise, righteous man may claim to shine with some reflected beams of Divine brightness. And we have to reckon and nuike our account with that, and shape our theology accoi'dingly. So we have to look upon aii Christ's life as showing men the Father. His gentle comi^assion, His meek wis- dom, His patience with contumely and wrong. His long- suffering yearning over men, His continual efforts to draw them to Himself, — all these are the full revelation of God to the world. They all reach their climax on the cross. As we look on Him, faint and bleeding, yet to the end pitying and saving, we see the full, final revelation of the very heart of God, and with adoring wonder, exclaim " Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him, and He will save us. n There are some of vou who admire and reverence this •f • AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS. {Y.\ i jLTeat TeacliPr, this imre Humanity, who know mncl) of lliin, who.-eek to follow in His footsteps in sonic niciisui-t', but who stand outsido that innermost circle wherein lie numifests Himself as the (Jod Incarnate, tiie Sacrifice, aiier and more vital and blessed than his ai'ticulate crci^I, 1 am bound to say that not to know Him in this Hi> very deepest and most essential character is little dillerent from beinn iy-norant of Him altogether. Here is a great thinker or teacher, whose fame has tilled the world, whose books are upon every student's shelf : he lives in a little remote country hamlet ; the cottagers beside him know him as a kind neighbour, and a sym- pathetic friend. They never heard of his booko, they never heard of his thoughts, they do not know anything of his world-wide reputation, all over the world. Do you call that knowing him ? You do not know a man if yon only know the surface, and not the secrets of his being. You do not know a man if you only know the subordi- nate characteristics of his nature, but not the essential ones. The very inmost secret of Christ is this, that he is the Hicarnate God, the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. You may be disciples, in the imperfect sense in which these Apostles were disciples before the Cross, and the Resurrection, and the Ascension, imjiei'fect disciples like them, but without their excuse for it. Ikit oh ! brethren, you will never know Him until you know Him as the Eternal Word, and until you can say " We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. " Not seeing that, you see but as a dim speck, or a star a little brighter than its brethren that hang in the heavens of history. Him Who i-eally is th** Central Sun, from Whom all light comes, to Whom the S 3 t s > 2 s I it I \ ■ ?i It j. I II \' ! 1 J,;! u THE PATIENT MASTER Avliole creation moves. Tf you know Him for the Incar- nate Word and Lainb who bears the world's sin, von know Him for what He is. All the rest is most precious, most fair ; but without that central +ruth, you have but a frair- mentary Christ, and nothing less than the whole Christ is enough for you. II. — Now, secondly, I take these words as giving us a glimpse into the pained and loving heart of our Lord. We very seldom Ixcar Him speak about His own feelings or experience, and when He does it is always in some such incidental way as this. So that these glimpses, like little windows opening out upon some great prospect, are the more precious to us. I think we shall not misunderstand the tone of this question if we see in it wonder, pained love, and tender remonstrance. " Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known M*^ ? " In another place we read : — " He marvelled at their unbelief." And here there is almost a surprise that He should have been shining so long and so near, and yet the purblind eyes should have seen so little. But there is more than that, there is complaint and i)ain in the question — the pain of vainly endeavouring to teacli, vainly endeavouring to help, vainly endeavouring to love. And there are few pains like that. All men that have tried to help and bless their fellows have known what it is to have their compassion and their efforts thrown back upon themselves. And there are few sorrows heavier to carry than this, the burden of a heart that would fain pour its love into another ht-tirt if that heart would only let it, but is repelled, and obliged to bear away its treasures unini- parted. The slowness of the pupil is the sorrow of the honest teacher. The ingratitude and non-receptiveness of some churlish nature that you tried to lavish goc 1 ujjon, have they not often brought a bitterness to your heai-ts ? AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS. iK 65 t If ever you have had a chiM, or a friend, or a dear one that you have tried to get by all means to love you, and to take your love, and who has Uirown it all back in your face, you may know in some faint measure what was at least one of the elements which made Him the " Man of Sorrows anjtood, it still meekly manifests itself. Surely in tha gentle compassion, in that patience with man's wrong an*: contumely, and imperfect apprehension and inadequate affection, we see the manifested God. Let us remeijTjber, too, that the- same pained and |)atieni love is in the heart of the throned Christ to-day. Mystery and paradox as it may be, I suppose that there still passe- over even His victoriong and serene repose in the Heavens some shadow of pain an Him, or so slowly apprehend His character and Hie . ork. Aiid I may, I think, fairly bring to you this questioi . •' Do ye thus requite the f^>rd ? " and urge this appeal O! His pitying, tender love on each of us — Grieve not th* heart that has died for you. We cannot understand how anything like pain should, 9 t Ml (/I 5 > >• Z :> 5 66 THE PATIENT MASTER 111 liowever slightly, darken that glory ; but if it be tnie that He in the Heavens has yet" a fellow-feeling of onr pains, " it is not less true that His love is still wounded bv (iir lovelessness, and His manifestation of Himself made sad by the slowness of our reception of Him. III. — Let us look at this question as being a piercini; question addressed to each of us. It is the great wonder of human history that, after eighteen hundred years, the world knows so little of Jesus Christ. The leaders of opinion, the leaders of the literature of England, for in- stance, to-day, the men that profess to guide the thoughts of this generation, how little they know, really, about this Master ! What profound misconceptions of the wliole genius of Christianity, and of Him who is Christianity, we see among the teachers who pay Him high homage and conventional respect, as well as among those who profess to reject Him and His mission. Some people take a great deal more trouble to understand Buddha than they do to understand Christ. How little, too, the mass of men know- about Him ! It is enough to break one's heart to look round one, and think thai He has been so long time with the world, and that this is all which has come of it. The Light has been shining for all these eighteen hundred years, and yet the mist is so little cleared away, and the ice is so little melted. The great proof that the world is bad is that it does not believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that He has stood before it for nearly nineteen centuries now, and so few have been led to turn to Him with the adoring cry, " My Lord and my God. " But let us narrow our thoughts to ourselves. This question comes to many of you in a very pointed way. You have known about Jesus Christ all your lives, and yet, in a real, deep sense you do not know Him at this moment. For the knowledge of which my texi sp«eaks is the knowledge by acquaintance with a person ratht-r than ,« AND THE SLOW .SCHOLARS. 67 the knowledge that a man may have of a book. And it is the knowledge l)y experience. Have you that ? Do yon know Christ as a man knows his triend, or do you kn(»\v Him as you know about Julius Caesar.? Do you know Christ because you live with Him and He with you, or do you know about Hi in in that fashion in which a man in a great city knows about his neighbour across the street, that has lived beside him for five and twenty years and never spoken to hini once all the time ? Is that your knowledge of Christ ? If so, it is no knowledge at all. "I hav( heard of Him by the hearing of the ear," describes all the acquaintance which a great many of my friends here have with Him. Oh ! my brother ! the very fact that He has been so long with you is the reason why you Know so little about Him. People that live close by something, which men come from the ends of tlie earth to see, have often never seen it. A man may have lived all his life within sound of Niagara, and perhaps never have gone to look at the rush of the waters. Is that what you do with Jesus Christ ? Are you so accustomed to hear about Him that you do not know Him ? have so long heard of Him that you never come to see Him ? " Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known Me ? " And. dear friends, you who do know Him a little, this question comes » vou with a very pathetic appeal. In Him are infinite depths to be experienced and to become acquainted with, and if we know Him at all as we ought to do, our knowledge of Him will be growing day by day. But how many of us stand at the same spot that we did when we first said that we were Christians ! We are like the Indians wko live in rich gold countries and could only gather the ore that happened to lie upon the surface or could he wmtkmd out of the sands of the river. In this great Christ xhmre are depths of gold, great reefs and veins of it, than will enrich us all if we dig, and F 2 f/i I 2 14 I I m. irii 'I I I 68 THE PATIENT MASTER we shall not get it unless we do. He is the boundless ocean. We have contented ourselves with coasting along the shore, and making timid excursions from one headland to another. Let us strike out into the middle deep, and see all the wonders that are there. This great Christ is like the infinite sky with its unresolved nebulae. We have but looked with our poor, dim eyes. Let us take the telescope that will reveal to us suns blazing where now we onlv see darkness. If we have any true knowledge of Jesus Christ at all it ought to be growing every day ; — and why does it not ? You know a man because you are much with him. As the old proverb saj's : " If you want to know anybody you must summer and winter with them ;" and if you want to know Jesus Christ, there must be a great deal more meditative thought uilness, and honest study of His life and work than most of us have i)ut forth. We know peo})le, too, by sympathy, and by love, and by keeping near them. Keep near your Master, Christian men ! Oh, it is a wonder, and a shame, and a sin for us professing Christians, that, having tasted the sweetness of His love, we should come down so low as to long for the garbage of earth. Who is fool eiif^ugh to j)refer vinegar to wine, ])itter herbs to grapes, dross to gold ? Who is there that, having' consorted with tin- King, wituld gladly herd with ragged rebels ? And \et that is what we do. We love one another, our families, people round about us. We labour to surround ourselves with friends, and to fill our hearts from these mnny fountains. All right and well ! But let us seek to know Christ more, and to know Him most chiefly in this aspect, that He i- for us the manifest God and the Saviour of the world. " For this is life eternal, to know Thee the '0 tliou to t hat. •' 1 am innoci lit of the blood of this just iierson ; See ye to it." Matt, x.wii. 1-24. So, what the priests said to Judas, Pilate said to the priests. They contemptuously bade thei/ wretched in- strument bear the burden of his own treachery. They had condescended to use his services, but he presumed too far if he thought that that gave him a claim upon tin it- sympathies. The tools of more respectable and l)older sinners are flung aside as soon as they are done with. What were the agonies or the tears of a hundred suth as he to these high-placed and heartless transgrrssoi'-s ? Priests though they were, and therefore bound by their office to help any poor creature that was struggling with a wounded conscience, they had nothing better to say to him than this scornfvd gibe : — " What is that to us ? See thou to that." Pilate, on the other hand, metes to them the measure which they had meted to Judas. With curious verbal cor- respondence, he repeats the very words of Judas and of 3 t ••1 5 2 I'Ji I'll ii (A ! ii ff 74 "SEE THOU TO THAT." li, : tlio jM'iosts. " Innocent blood," said Judas. " I am inno- cent of the blood of this just person," said Pilate. " See thou to that," answered they. " See ye to it," says he. He tries to shove off his responsibility upon them, and they are quite willini? to take it. Their consciences arc not easily touched. Fanatical hatred which thinks itself intluenced by religious motives is the blindest and cruel- lest of all passions, knowing no compimction, and utterly unperceptive of the innocence of its victim. And so these three, Judas, the priests, and Pilate, sug- gest to us, I think, a threefold way in which conscience is perverted. Judas represents the agony of conscience, Pilate represents the shuffling sophistications of a half- awakened conscience, and those priests and people repre- sent the torpor of an altogether misdirected conscience. I. — Jndas — the agony of cons'^ 'ence. " I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innoceuL blood." We do not need to enter at any length upon the difficult question as to what were the motives of Judas in his treachery. For my part I do not see that there is anything in the Scripture narrative, simply interpreted, to bear out the hypothesis that his motives were mistaken zeal and affection for Christ ; and a desire to force Him to the avowal of His Messiahship. One can scarcely" suppose zeal so strangely perverted as to begin by betrayal, and if the object was to make our Lord speak out His claims, the means adopted were singularly ill-chosen. The story, as it stands, natur- ally suggests a much less far-fetched explanation. Judas was simply a man of a low earthly nature, who be- came a follower (rf Christ, thinking that he was to prove a Messiah of the vulgar type, or another Judas Maccabseus. He was not attracted by Christ's character and teaching. As the true nature of Christ's work and kingdom became more obvious, he became more weary of Him and it. The closest proximity to Jesus Christ made eleven enthusi- ast u« h(| h ul 11 "SKE THOTT TO THAT.'* 7& o- e. (I (' f I- y s astic discii)les, but it nuulo one tniitor. No man conM live near Him for three years without coming to hute Him if he did not love Him. Then, as ever, He was set for the fall and for the rise of many. He was the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. But be this iia it may, we have here to do with the sudden revulsion of feeling which followed upon the acconi])- lishedact. This burst of confession does not sound like the words of a man who had been actuated by motives of mis- taken affection. He knows himself a traitor, and that fair, perfect character rises before him in its purity, as he had never seen it before — to rebuke and confound him. So this exclamation of his puts into a vivid shape, which may help it to stick in our memories and hearts, this thought — what an awful (lifference there is in the look of a sin before you do it and afterwards ! Before we do it the thing to be gained seems so attractive, and the transgression that gains it seems so comparatively insig- nificant. Yes ! and when we have done it the two alter places ; the thing that we win by it seems so contemptible — thirty pieces of silver ! pitch them over the Temple inclosure and get rid of them — the things that we win by it seem so insignificant, and the thing that we did to win them dilates into such awful magnitude ! For instance, suppose we do anything that we know to be wrong, being tempted to it by a momentary indulgence o" some mere animal impulse. By the very nature of the case, that dies in its satisfaction and the desire dies along with it. We do not want the thing anymore when once we have got it. It lasts but a moment and is past. Then we are left alone with the thought of the sin that we have done. When we get the prize of our wrong-doing, we find out that it is not as all-satisfying as we expected it would be. Most of our earthly aims are like that. The cha-e is a great deal more than the hare. H ••1 •« 2 D it I I Or, as George I I It' ! li <0 "SEE TFIOIJ TO THAT." Ii('i"l)ort has it, " Nothinc: between two (li^U TO THAT •» 77 id 10 T 10 10 i think too oxcliisively of thom, and if yon do they will drive yon to madness of deai)air. My dear friend, there is no i)enitence or remorse whieli is deep enonj^'h for the smaHest tnins.n'ression ; l)nt the)-*' is no transLrression which is so j^reat but tliat for^'iveness for it may come. And we may have it for the aslcint,' if we will cro to that dear Christ that died for ns. Tlie con- sciousness of sinfulness is a wholesome consciousness. 1 would that every man and woman listening to me now had it deep in their consciences, and then I would that it ini«,dii lead us all to that one Lord in whom there i^* for» It k ;:,)■ ! ii m notliincf to fear from this Kinj?, whose Kingdom rested on His witness to the Truth. He knows perfectly well tliat unavowed motives of personal enmity lie at the bot- tom oftlh^ whole business. In the words of our text he ac(iuits Christ, and thereby condems himself. If Pilate kiHJW that Jesus was innocent, he knew that he, as governor, was guilty of prostituting Roman justice, which was Rome's best gift to her subject nations, and of giving u]) an innocent man to death, in order to save himself trouble and to conciliate a howling mob. No washing of his hands will cleanse them. •' All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten " tliat hand. But his words let us see how a man may sophisticate his conscience and quibble about his guilt. Hej'e, then, we get once more a vivid picture that may remind us of what, alas ! we all know in our own ex])erience, how a man's conscience may be cloar-sighted enough to discern, and vocal onougli to declare, that a certain thing is wrong, but not strong enough to restrain from doing it. Conscience has a voice and an eye ; alas ! it has no hands. It shares the weakness of all law, it can- not get itself executed. Men will climb over a fence, although the board that says, " Trespassers will be prose- cuted," is staring them in the face in capital letters at the very j^lace where they jump. Your conscience is a king witliout an army, a judge without officers. " If it had autho- rity, as it has the power, it would govern the world," but as things are, it is reduced to issuing vain edicts and to saying, " Thou shalt not ! "and if you turn round and say" I will, though," then conscience has no more that it can do. And then here, too, is an illustration of one of the com- nionest of the ways by which we try to slip our necks out of the collar, and to get rid of the responsiblities that really belong to us. " See ye to it " does not avail to put Pilate's crime on the priests' shoulders. Men take part 11 cci n| Clj 111 ni ai S(| SEli THOU TO THAT. »? '^ in evil, and each thinks himself innocent, because he has companions. Half-a-dozen men carry a burden to,i,''elher ; none of then: fancies that he is carrying it. It is like the case of turning out a platoon of soldiers to shoot a mutineer — nobody knows whose bullet killed him, and nobody feels himself guilty ; but there the man lies dead, and it was somebody that did it. So corporations, churches, societies, and nations do things that individuals would not do, and each man of them wipes his mouth and says, '* I have done no harm." And even when we sin alone we are clever at finding scapegoats. " The woman tempted me and I did eat," is the formula univei'sally used yet. The school-boy's excuse : — " Please, sir ! it was not me ! it was the other boy ! " is what we are all ready to say. Now, I pray you, brethren, to remember that, whether our consciences try to shutlle off responsibilty for united action upon the other members of the firm, or whether we try to excuse our individual actions by laying blame on our tempers, or whether we adopt the modern slang, and talk about circumstances, and heiedity and the like, as being reasons for the diminution or the extinction of the notion of guilt, it is sophistical trifling ; and down at the bottom the most of us know that I alone am responsible for the volition which leads to my act. I could have helped it if I had liked. Nobody compelled me to keep in the partnership of evil, or to yield to the tempter. Pilate was not forced by his subjects to give the commandment that " it should be as they re- quired." They had their own burden to carry,. Each man has to bear the consequences of his actions. There are many " burdens " which we can " bear for one another, and so fulfil the law of Christ ;" but every man has to bear as his own the burden of tlie fruits of his deeds. In that harvest, he that sowetli and he that reapeth are one, and each of us has to drink as we ourselves have brewed. i: 1/1 5 > •« 2 D :^f| 1. ^ 80 <' Uli'T.-' SEE THOU TO THAT. "God will send the bill to you," and you have to pay for your share, however many companions you may have had in the act. So do not you sophisticate your consciences with the delusion that your responsibility may be shifted to any other person or thin."'. These may diminish, or may modify your responsibility, and God takes all that into account. But after all these have been taken into account there is this left — that you vourselves have done the act, which you need not have done unless you had so willed, and that having done it, you have to carry it on your back for evermore. " See thou to that," was c* heart- less word, but it was a true one. " Every one of us shall ^ive an account of himself to God," and as the old Book of Proverbs has it, " If thou be wise thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest thou alone shalt bear it." III. — And so, lastly, we have here another group still — the priests and people. They represent for us the torpor and misdirection of conscience. " Then answered all the people and said. His blood be on us and on our children." They wei'e perfectly ready to take the burden upon them- selves. They thought that they were " doing God service " when they slew God's Messenger. They had no percep- tion of the beauty and gentleness of Christ's character. They believed Him to be a blasphemer, and they believed it to be a solemn religious duty to slay him then and there. Were they to blame because they slew a blasphemer ? According to Jewish law — no ! They were to blame because they had brought themselves into such a moral con I'll 2 K I ! i I III III I. if SERMON VII. HOW TO DWELT. IN THE FIRE OP GOD. ; % • ■ I m; "Who among us shall dwell with the ilevoiiriiig lire'? Wlio among us sliali dwell with everlasting burnings? lie that walketh riglitcously, and si)cak(>tl\ ui>riglitly; be that despiseth thegaiuof oiipressions, that shakcth his hands from holding of hrilics, that ^tol)pc■th his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." — Isa. xxxiii. 14, 15. •■ He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God."--l John iv. 16. 1 HAVE put these two verses together because, striking as is at first sight, the contrast in tlieir tone, they refer to the same subject, and they substantially preach the same truth. A hasty reader, who is more influenced by sound than by sense, is apt to suppose that the solemn expressions in my first text : " the devouring fire " and " everlasting burnings " mean hell. They mean God, as is <[\u te obvious from the context. The man who is to " dwell in the devouring fire " is the good man. He that is able to abide "the everlasting burjiings" is "the man that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly," that " despiseth the gain of oppression, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." The prophet has been calling all men, far and near, to behold a great act of Divine judgment in which God has been I i , ;( ••I 5 2 lit iJ 1^ n *t\ n Hi 88 now TO DWELL IN THE FIRH OF (JOD. 11' nmnil'ested in (lainiiiji,'' ^lory, consuiniii','' evil ; llo^v he rei)resents the "sinners in Sion", the nn worthy monibevH of the nation, as seized with sudden terror, and anxionsly asking? this question, M'hicli in eU'ecl nieaiis : "Who ani(»ng us can abide peacefully, joyfully, fed and briiJi^ht- ened, not consumed and annihilated, by that lUisliii .uf bri,<,ditness and purity?" The i)rophet's answer is Ihe answer of common sense — like draws to like. A holy God must have holy conii)anions. But that is not all. The fire of God is the fire of love as well as the fire of purity ; a fire that blesses and (|uick- ens, as well as a fire that destroys and consumes. So the Apostle John comes with his answer, not conti'adictin.i,'- the other one, but deepening it, expanding it, letting us see the foundations of it, and proclaiming that as a holy God must be surrounded by holy hearts, which will opoi themselves to the flame as flowers to the sunshine, so a loving God must be clustered about by loving hearts, who alone can enter into deep and true friendship with Him. The two answei'S, then, of these texts are one at bottom ; and when Isaiah asks, " Who shall dwell with the ever- lasting fire ?" — the perpetual fire, burning and unconsumed, of that Divine righteousness — the deepest answei', which is no stern requirement but a merciful promise, is John's answer, " He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God." The simplest way, I think, of bringing out the force of the words before us will be just to take these three points which I have already suggested — the world's question, the partial answer of the prophet, the complete answer of the Apostle. I. — The world's question. I need only remind you how frequently in the Old Testament the emblem of fire is employed to express the Divine nature. In many places, though by no means in all, the prominent idea in the emblem is that of the purity now TO DWEIJi IN THK FlUE OF ilol). Sl> of the Divine nat nrc. which flashos and Iliunt'S aH a.uralnst nil ^^ilich is evil and sinfnl. So we iva top of the mountain," and yet into that blaze and brightness the Law-giver went, and lived and nin';ed in it. There is, then, in the Divine nature a side of antagonism and opposition to evil, which flames against it, and labours to consume it. I would s])eak with all resi)ect for the motives of many men in this day who dread to enti'rtain the idea of the Divine wrath against evil lest they should in any manner trench upon the purity and perfectness of the Divine love. I respect and sympathise with the motive altogethi r : and I neither respect nor sympathise with the many ferocious pictures of that whioh is called the w^rath of God against sin, which njuch so-called ortho- dox teaching has indulged in. Hut if you will only remove from that Avord " anger " the mere human associa- tions which cleave to it, of passion on the one hand, and of a wish to hurt its object on the other, then you cannot, I think, deny to the Divine nature the possession of thai passionless and unnuilignant wrath, without striking a fatal blow at the perfect purity of God. A God that does not hate evil, that does not flame out against it, using all the energies of His being to destroy it, is a God to whoso character there cleaves a fatal susx)icion of indifference to good, of moral apathy. If I have not a God to trust in that hates evil because He lovoth ri'jhteousness, then "the it t I '•I 2 I! U IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) m ,v .V4 '^ 'A 4 wLf. 1.0 I.I 11.25 2.0 ?'- i 1.8 U 111.6 y] % ^v ^V '^ / y /^ w Photographic Sciences Corporation ^ \ SJ :\ \ tv 4^ ^^ o^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ifi %■ 90 HOW TO DWELL IN THE FIRE OF GOD. : pillared firmament itself were rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble"; nor were there anj' hope that this damnable thing that is killing and sucking the life-blood out of our spirits should ever be destroyed and cast aside. Oh ! It is short-sighted wisdom, and it is cruel kindness, to tamper with the thought of the wrath of God, the " everlasting burnings " of that eternally pure nature wherewith it wages war against all sin ! But then let us remember that, on the other side, the fire which is the destructive fire of perfect purity is also the tire that quickens and blesses. God is love, says John, and love is fire, too. We speak of " the flame of love," of " warm affections," and the like. The symbol of fire iloes not mean destructive energy only. And these two are one, God's wrath is a form of God's love ; God hates because He lo /es. And the " wrath '' and the " love " differ much more in the difierence of the eye that looks, than they do in them- selves. Here are two bits of glass, one of them catches and retains all the fiery-red rays, the other all the yellow. It is the one, same, pure, white beam that passes through them both, but one is only capable of receiving the fiery- red beams of the wratli, and the other is capable of receiving the golden light of the love. Let us take heed lest, by destroying tne wrath, we maim the love ; and let us take heed lest, by exaggerating the wrath, we empty the love of its sweetness and its preciousness ; and let us accept the teaching that these are one, and that the deepest of all the things that the world can know about God lies in that double saying, which does not contradict its second half by its first, but completes its first by its second — God is Righteousness, God is Love. Well, then, that being so, the question rises to every mind of ordinary thoughtfulness : "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire ? who among us shall dwell HOW TO DWELL IN THE FIRE OP GOD. 91 with everlasting burniii*?s ?" A God flighting a,i::ainst evil ; can you and 1 hope to hold familiar fellowship with Him ? A God fighting against evil ; if He rises up to exercise His judging and His punishing energies, can we meet Him ? " Can thy heart endure and thy hands be stroni:, in the day that I shall deal with thee ?" is the question that comes to each of us if we arc reasonable people. I do not dwell upon it ; but I ask you to take it, and entertain it for yourselves. To " dwell with everlasting burnings " means two things. First, it means to hold a familiar intercourse and com- munion with God. The question which presents itself to thoughtful minds is — what sort of man must I be if I am to dwell near God ? The lowliest bush may be lit by the Divine tire, and not be consumed by it ; and the poor- est heart may be all aflame with an indwelling God, if only it yield itself to Him, and long for His likeness. p]lectricity only flames into consuming fire when its swift passage is resisted. The question for us all is, how can I receive this Holy fire into my bosom, and not be burned ? Is any communion possible, and if it be, on what con- ditions ? It is the question which the heart of man is really asking, though it knows rot the meaning of its own unrest. " To dwell with everlasting burnings" means, secondly, to bear the action of the fire, the judgment of the present and the judgment of the future. The question for each of us is, can wc face that judicial and punitive action of that Divine Providence which works even here, and how can we face the judicial and punitive action in tlie future ? I suppose you all believe, or at lea^t say that you believe, that there is such a future judgment. Have you ever asked yourselves the question, and rested not until you got a reasonable answer to it, on which, like a man t \ 2 ■4 miii i iiw i .4L4j.iii'..;.i'n>H!. :| ' :'"' ; ., ( 1 'i' : 1 ! j ■ |. •A -i I .1 .^" a f ! (I i ■ i 92 HOW TO DWELL IN THE FIllE OF COD. leaning on a pillar, you can lean the^vhole weiL,"^!!! of your expectations — how am I to come into the i)rcsence of that devouring fire ? Have you )[?ot any firepr( f di-ess that will enable you to go into ihe furnace like the Hebrew- youths, and walk up and down in the midst of it, well and at liberty? Have jou? "Who shall dwell amidst the everlasting fires ? " That question has stirred sometimes, I know, in the consciences of every man and woman that is listening: to me. Some of you have tampered with it, and tried to throttle it, and laughed at it, and shullled it out of yonr mind by the engrossments of business, and tried to get rid of it in all sorts of ways : and here it has met yon aiiain to-day. Let us have it settled, in the name of eominoii sense (to invoke nothing higher) once for all, upon reason- able principles that will stand ; and do you see tliat you settle it to-day. II. — And now, look next at the ju'ophet's answer. It is simiDle. He says that if a man is to hold fellowship with, or to face the judgment of, the pure and righteous God, the plainest dictate of reason and common sense is that he himself must be pure and righteous to match. The details into which his answer to the (juestion runs out are all very homely, prosaic, pedestrian kind of virtues, nothing at all out of the way, nothing that people would call splendid or heroic. Here they are : — " He that walks righteously," — a short injunction, easily spoken, but how hard ! — "and speaketh uprightly, he that despiseth the gain of oppres- sion, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, thnt stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, that shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." Righteous action, righteous si)eech, inward hatred of possessions gotten at my neigh- bour's cost, and a vehement resistance to all the seductions of sense ; shutting his hands, stopping his eai'S, fastening his eyes up tight so that he may not handle, nor hear, nor HOW TO D\\ i:ll in thk fire of god. I i see the evil — there is the outline of a homely, everyday sort of morality which is to mark the man who, as Isaiah says, can " dwell amongst the everlasting fires." Now, if at your leisure you will turn to the Psalms xv. and xxiv. you will find there two other versions of the same questions and the same answer, both of which were obviously in our prophet's mind when he spoke. In the one you have the question put : "Who shall abide in Thy tabernacle.?" In the other you have the same question put : " Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord ? " And both these two psalms answer the question and sketch the outline (and it is only an outline) of a rii;hteous man, fj'om the Old Testament point of view, substantially in the S'lnie fashion that Isaiah does here. I do not need to remark upon the altogether unscientific and non-exhaustive nature of the description of righteous- ness that is set forth here. There are a great many virtues, plain and obvious, that are left out of the picture. Ihit I w«int you to notice one very special defect, as it might seem. There is not the slightest reference to anything that we call religion. It is all purely pedestrian, worldly morality ; do righteous things ; do not t-:^ll lies ; do not cheat your neighbour ; stop your ears if people say foul things in your hearing ; shut your eyes if evil comes be- fore you. These are the kind of duties enjoined, and these only. The answer of my text moves altogether on the surface, dealing only with conduct, not with charac'.er, and dealing with conduct only in reference to this world. There is not a word about the inner nature, not a word about the inner relation of a man to God. It is the mini- mum of possible qualifications for dwelling with God. Well, now, do you achieve that minimum ? Suppose ■we waive for the moment all reference to God ; sui)i)ose we \vaive for the moment all reference to motive and inward nature ; suppose we keep ourselves only on tlie e t 5 ■il 'f I i I .1 I '4 H J! Il 94 HOW TO DWELL IN THK FIRK OF GOD. ' , outside of thinjxs, and ask what sort of roitdi/ct a man must have tluit is able to walk with God ? We have heard the answer. Now, then, is that we? Is this sketch here, admittedly imi)erfect, a mere black-and-white swift outline, not intended to be shaded or coloured, or brought uj) to the round ; is this mere outline of what a S'ood man ou.2:ht to be, at all like me ? Yes or no ? I think we must all say No ! to the question, and acknowledge our failure to attain to this homely ideal of conduct. The requirement pared down to its lowest possible degree, and kept as supei-ficial as ever you can keep it, is still miles above me, and all I have to say when I listen to such words is, "God be merciful to me a sinner." My dear friends ! take this one thought away with you to-day : — the requirements of the most moderate conscience are such as no man among us is able to comply with. And what then ? Am I to be shut up to despair ? am I to say, — then nobody can dwell within that bright flame ? Am I to say, — then when God meets man, man must crumble away into nothing and disappear ? Am I to say, for myself — then, alas ! for me, when I stand at His judg- ment bar ? III. — T-et us take the Apostle's answer : "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God." Now% to begin with, let us distinctly understand that the New Testament answer, represented by John's great words, entirely endorses Isaiah's ; and that the difference between the two is not that the Old Testament, as repre- sented by Psalmist and Prophet, said : — ' You must be righteous in order to dw^ell with God," and that the New Testament says : " Ycu need not be ! " Not at all ! John is just as vehement in saying that nothing but purity can bind a man in thoroughly friendly and familiar conjunc- tion with God as David or Isaiah was. He insists as iSl HOW TO DWELL IN THE FIRE OF GOD. Df) much as anybody can insist upon this prreat princi])!^, that if we are to dwell \vith God Ave must b? like (Uu\, and that we are like God when we are like Him in riirlito- ousness and love, "He that Faith he hath fellowshij* vith Him, and walketh in darkness, is a liar ! " That is John's Bhort way of gathering it all \\\). Righteousness is as essential in the Gospel scheme for all communion and fellowship with God as ever it was declared to be by the most rigid of legalists ; and if any of you have got the notion that Christianity has any other terms to lay down than the old terms — that righteousness is essential to communion — you do not understand Christianity. If any of you are building upon the notion that a man can come into loving and familiar friendship with God as long as he loves and cleaves to any sin, you have got hold of a delusion that will wreck your souls yet, — is, indeed, harming, wrecking them now, and will finally destroy them if you do not get rid of it. Let us always remember that the declaration of my first text lies at the very foun- dation of the declaration of my second. What, then, is the difference between them ? Why for one thing it is this — Isaiah tells us that we must be righteousness, John tells us how we may be. The one says " There are the conditions," the other says, " Here are the means by which you can have the conditions." Love is the productive germ of all righteousness ; it is the fulfilling of the law. Get that into your hearts, and all these relative and personal duties will come. If the deep- est, inmost life is right, all the surface of life will come right. Conduct will follow character, character will follow love. The efforts of men to make themselves pure, and so to come into the position of holding fellowship with God are like the wise efforts of children in their gardens. They stick in their little bits of rootless flowers, and they ' i nmm.Jumti-m.if'jjJLX': •f,r % HOW TO DWELL IN THE FIRE OP GOD. II ! I i:. Avater tliem, but, beinj? rootless, the flowers are all withered to-morrow and flunur over the hedi'-e the day after. P>iit if we have the love of God in our hearts, we have not root- less flowers, but the seed which will spring up and bear fruit of holiness. But that is not dl. Isaiah says : " T^i,i?hteouness," John says "Love," which makes ri,i?hteousness. And *hen he tells us how we may get love, having first told us how we may get righteousness : We love Him because He first loved us. It is just as impossible for a man to work himself into loving God as it is for a man to work himself into righteous actions. There is no dillerence between the impossibilities in the two cases. Rut what we can do is, Ave can go and gaze at the thing that kindles the love ; we can contemplate the Cross on which the groat Lover of our souls died, and thereby we can come to love Him. John's answer goes down to the depths, for his notion of love is the response of the believing soul to the love of God which was manifested on the Cross of Calvary. To have righteousness we must have love : to have love we must look to the love that God has to us ; to look rightly to the love that God has to us we must have faith. Now you have got to the very bottom of the matter. That is the first step of the ladder — faith ; and the second step is love, and the third step is righteousness. And so the New Testament, in its highest and most blessed declarations, rests itself firmly upon these rigid requirements of the old law. You and I, dear brethren, havf but one way by which we can walk in the midst of that fire, rejoicing and unconsumed, namely that we shall know and believe the love which God hath to us, love Him baclv again " with pure hearts fervently," and in the might of that receptive faith and productive love, l)f^come like Him in holiness, and ourselves be " baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Thus, fire-born and fiery, we shall dwell as in our native home, in God Himself. Sermon VIII. THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. 2 18 > 1^ H if .'.' M 't i it ''■ i f\ I A ' 1 *i 1 i'l I'!' ' * t I > I i^„ m in «i' nKil < ^' ^^ ill -'T P' |i SERMON VIII. THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. " A nishing mighty wind." . . . "Cloven tongues like as fire." . . "I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh." Acts it. 2, 3, 17. " Ye huTC an unction from the Iluly One." 1 John ii. 20. "Wind, fire, water, oil, — these four are constant Scriptural symbols for the Spirit of God. We have them all in these fragments of verses which I have taken for my text this morning, and which I have isolated from their context for the purpose of bringing out simply these symbolical references. I think that perhaps we may get some force and freshness to the thoughts proper to this day* by looking at these rather than by treating the subject in some more abstract form. We have then the Breath of the Spirit, the Fire of the Spirit, the Water of the Spirit, and the Anointing Oil of the Spirit. And the consideration of these four will bring out a great many of the principal Scriptural ideas about the gift of the Spirit of God which belongs to all Christian souls. I. — First, " a rushing mighty wind." Of course, the symbol is but the putting into picturesque form of the idea that lies in the name. Spirit is breath. * Whit Sunday. h2 •4 (/I 3 2 I i I .T: .! s tf i" 100 THE POURPOTiD SYMBOLS OP THE SPIRIT. ^ fi H Wind is but air in motion. Preath is the synonym for life. Spirit and life are two words for rne thing. So then, in the symbol, the "rushing mighty wind," we have set forth the highest work of the Spirit — the communication of a new and supernatural life. We are carried back to that grand vision of the prophet •who saw the bones lying, very many and very dry, sapless and disintegrated, a heap dead and ready to rot. The question comes to him : " Son of man 1 Can these bones live ?" The only possible answer, if he consult experience, is, " Lord God I Thou knowest.*' Then follows the great invocation : " Come from the four winds, breath ! and breathe upon these bones that they may live." And the breath comes and "they stand up, an exceeding great army." It is the Spirit that quickeneth. The Scripture treats us all as dead, being separated from God, unless we are united to Him by faith in Jesus Christ. According to the saying of the Evangelist, "They which believe on Him receive" the Spirit, and thereby receive the life which He gives, or, as our Lord Himself speaks, are " born of the Spirit." The highest and most characteristic olTice of the Spirit of God is to enkindle this new life, and hence His noliest name, among the many by which He is called, is the Spirit of life. Again, remember, " that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." If there be life given it must be kindred with the life which is its source. Reflect upon those profound words of our Lord : — " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, and canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit." They describe first the operation of the life-giving Spirit, but they describe also the characteristics of the resulting life. " The wind bloweth where it listeth." That spiritual life, both in the Divine source and in the human recipient, TIIK FOUliFOLD SYMBOLS OP THE >PIRIT. 101 18 its >wn law. Of course the wind has its laws, as every ])hysiciil iv^vnt has ; but these are so coniplicatetl ami undiscovered that it has always been the very symbol of freedom, and poets have spoken of these " chartered libertines," the winds, and "free as tlie air" has become a proverb. So that Divine Spirit is limited by no human conditions or laws, but dispenses its ^'ifts iiisuperb disre^Mrd of conventionalities and extcrnalisms. Just as the lower tjift of what we call "j,'enius" is above all limits of culture or education or position, and falls on a wool-stapler in Strat- ford-on-Avon,orona plouf^hman in Ayrshire, so, inasimilar nuinner, the altogether did'erent ^'ift of the Divine, life- giving Spirit follows no lines that Churches or institutions draw. It falls upon an Augustinian monk in a convent, and hesludves P^urope. It falls upon a tinker in Bedford gaol, and he writes " Pilgrim's Progress." It falls upon a cob- bler in Kettering, and he founds modern Christian missions. It blows " where it listeth," sovereignly indifl'erent to the exi)ectations and limitations and the externalisms, even of organised Christianity, and touching this man and that man, not arbitrarily but according to " the good pleasure " that is a law to itself, because it is perfect in wisdom and in goodness. And as thus the life-giving Spirit imparts Himself ac- cording to higher laws than we can grasp, so in like manner the life that is derived from it is a life which is its own law. The Christian conscience, touched by the Spirit of God, owes allegiance to no regulations or external com- mandments laid down by man. The Christian conscience, enlightened by the Spirit of God, at its peril will take its beliefs from any other than from that Divine Spirit. All authority over conduct, all authority over belief is burned up and disappears in the presence of the grand democracy of the true Christian principle : "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ : " and every one of you possesses I f i' , r *1't ! 1 It) 102 THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. the Spirit which teaches, the Spirit which inspires, the Spirit which enlightens, the Spirit which is the guide to all truth. So " the wind bloweth where it listeth," and the voice of that Divine Quickener is, "Ji, olf shall to My darling be Bolh law and impulse." Under the impulse derived from the Divine Spirit, the human spirit "listeth" what u right, and is bound to follow the promptings of its highest desires. Those men only are free as the air we breathe, who are vitalised by the Spirit of the Lord, for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there, and there alone, is liberty. In this symbol there lies not only the thought of a life derived, kindred with the life bestowed, and free like the life which is given, but there lies also the idea of power. The wind which filled the house was not only mighty but "borne onward" — f.tting type of the strong impulse by which in olden times " holy men spake as they were * borne onward ' " (the w^ord is the same) " by the Holy Gliost." There are diversities of operations, but it is the same breath of God, wiiich sometimes blows in the softest pianissimo that scarcely rustles the summer woods in the leafy month of June, and sometimes storms in wild tempest that dashes the seas against the rocks. So this mighty life-giving Agent moves in gentleness and yet in power, and sometimes swells and rises almost to tempest, but is ever the impelling force of all that is strong and true and fair in Christian hearts and lives. The history of the world since that day of Pentecost has been a commentary upon the words of my text. With viewless, impalpable energy the mighty breath of God swept across the ancient world and " laid the lofty city " of paganism " low ; even to the ground, and brought it even to the dust." A breath passed over the whole civi- lized world, like the breath of the west wdnd upon the / THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. 103 glaciers in the spring, melting the thick-ribbed ice, and wooing forth the flowers, and the world was made over again. In our own hearts and lives this is the one power that will make us strong and good. The question is all- important for each of us, " Have I this life, and does it move me, as the ships are borne along by the wind ? " " As many as are impelled by the Spirit of God, they " — they — " are the sons of God." Is chat the breath that swells all the sails of your lives, and drives you upon your course ? If it be, you are Christians ; if it is not you are not. II. — And now a word as to the second of these symbols : — " Cloven tongues as of fire " — the Are of the Spirit. I need not do more than remind you how freqnontly that emblem is emploj'ed both in the Old and in the New Testament. John the Baptist contrasted the cold nc^-ative efficiency of his baptism, Avhich, at its best, was but a baptism of repentance, with the quickening power of tlie baptism of Him that was to follow him ; when he said '• I indeed baptise you with water, but he that comctli jJter me is mightier than I. He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." The two mcrn but one, the fire being the emblem of the Spirit. You will remember, too, how our Lord Himself employs the same metaphor when He speaks about His coming to bring fire on the earth, and His longing to see i: kindled into a beneficent blaze. In this connection, the fire is a symbol of a quick, triumphant energy, which will trans- form us into its own likeness. There are two sides to thai emblem, as we saw in cur last sermon, one destructive, one creative ; one wrathful, one loving. There are the fire of love, and the fire of anger. There is the fire of the sunshine which is the condition of life, as well as the fire of the lightning which burns and consumes. The emblem of fire is selected to express the work of the Spirit of God, I'irf iP! \\m m M f 104 THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT, II U I, ■ ■! ; m I i Mi by reason of its leaping, triumphant, transforming energy. See, for instance, how, when you kindle a pile of dead ;^reen wood, the tongues of fire spring from point to point until they have conquered the whole mass, and turned it all into a ruddy likeness of the parent flame. And so here, this fire of God, if it falls upon you, will burn up all your coldness, and will make you glow with enthusiasm* working your intellectual convictions in fire, not in frosi-, making your creed a living power in your lives, and kindling you into a flame of earnest consecration. The same idea is expressed by the common phr&,Des of every language. We talk about the fervour of love, the warmth of affection, the blaze of enthusiasm, the fire of emotion, the coldness of indifference. Christians are to be set on fire of God. If the Spirit dwell in us, it will make us fiery like itself, even as fire makes the wettest green wood into fire. We have more than enough of cold Christians who are afraid of nothing so much as of being betrayed into warm emotion. I believe, dear brethren, and I am bound to express the belief, that one of the chief wants of the Christian Church of this generation, the Christian Church of this city, the Christian Church of this chapel, is more of the fire of God ! We are all icebergs compared with what we ought to be. Look at yourselves ; never mind about your urotliren. Let each of us look at his own heart, and say whether there is any trace in his Christianity of the power of that Spirit Who is fire. Is our religion flame or ice ? Where among us are to be found lives blazing with enthusiastic devotion and earnest love ? Do not such words soun I like mockery when applied to us? Have we not to li. ten to that solemn old warning that never loses its power, and, alas ! seems never to lose its appropri- ateness ; " because thou art neither cold nor hot I will spue thee out of my mouth." We ought to be like the THE FOURFOLD SYMIJOLS OP THE SPIRIT. 105 -''O burning beings before God's throne, the seraphim, the spirits that blaze and serve. We ought to be like God Himself, all aflame with love. Let us seek penitently for that Spirit of fire who will dwell in us all if we will. The metaphor of fire suggests also — purifying. " The spirit of burning " will burn the filth out of us. That is the only way by which a man can ever be made clean. You may wash and wash and wash with the cold water of moral reformation, you will never get the dirt out with it. No washing and no rubbing will ever clear sin. The way to cleanse a soul is to do with it as they do with foul clay — thrust it into the fire and that will burn all the black- ness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two things conquer my sin ; the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past ; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which makes me pure and clean for all the time to come. Pray to be kindled with the fire of God ! III. — Then once more, take that other metaphor, " I will pour out of My Spirit." That implies an emblem which is very frequently used, both in the Old and in the New Testament, viz., the Spirit as water. As our Lord said to Nicodemus : " Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." The " water " stands in the same relation to the " Spirit " as the " fire " does in the saying of John the Baptist already referred to— that is to say, it is simply a symbol or material emblem of the Spirit. I suppose nobody would say that there were two baptisms spoken of by John, one of the Holy Ghost and one of fire, — and I suppose that just in the same way, there are not two agents of regeneration pointed at in our Lord's words, I t (/I I \i I ,1i ( .' ^ I'M ! 'ill ' a I ' I. i i! i 106 THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. I I ■i I ■I f f' s * - h nor even two conditions, but that the Spirit is the sole agent, and " water " is but a figure to express some aspect of His operations. So that there is no reference to the water of baptism in the words, and to see such a reference is to be led astray by sound, and out of a metaphor to manufacture a miracle. There are other passages where, in like manner, +he Spirit is compared to a flowing stream, such as, for instance, when our Lord said, " He that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water," and when John saw a " river of water of life proceeding from the throne." The expressions, too, of "pouring out" and "shedding forth" the Spirit, point in the same direction, and are drawn from more than one passage of Old Testament prophecy. What, then, is the significance of comparing that Divine Spirit with a river of water ? First, cleansing, of which I need not say any more, because I have already spoken about it in the previous part of my sermon. Then, further, refreshing, and satisfying. Ah ! dear brethren, there is only one thing that will slake the immortal thirst in your souls. The world will never do it ; love or am- bition gratified and wealth possessed, will never do it. You will be as thirsty after 3'ou have drunk of these streams as ever you were before. There is one spring " of which if a man drink, he shall never thirst " with unsatis- fied, painful longings, but shall never cease to thirst with the longing which is blessedness, because it is fruition. Our thirst can be slaked by the deep draught of the river of the Water of Life, which proceeds from the Throne of God and the Lamb. The Spirit of God, drunk in by my spirit, will still {^ind satisfy my whole nature, and with it I shall be glad. Drink ol this ! " Ho ! everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ! " The Spirit is not only refreshing and satisfying, but also productive and fertilising. In Eastern lands a rill of THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. 107 water is all that is needed to make the wilderness rejoice. Turn that stream on to the barrenness of your hearts, and fair flowers will grow that would never ij^row without it. The one means of lofty and fruitful Christian living is a deep, inward possession of the Spirit of God. The one way to fertilize barren souls is to let that stream flood them all o^'^er, and then the flush of green will soon come, and that which was else a desert will " rejoice and blossom as the rose." So this water will cleanse, it will satisfy and refresh, it will be productive and will fertilize, and "everything shall live whithersoever that river cometh." IV. — Then, lastly, we have the oil of the Spirit. " Ye have an unction," says John, in our last text, " from the Holy One." I need not remind you, I suppose, of how in the old system, prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with consecrating oil, as a symbol of their calling, and of their fitness for their special officorf. The reason for the use of such a symbol, I presume, would lie in the invigorating and in the supposed, and possildy real, health-giving eflect of the use of oil in those climates. Whatever may have been the reason for the use of oil in official anointings, the meaning of the act was plain. It was a preparation for a specific and distinct service. And so, when we read of the oil of the Spirit, we are to think that it is that which fits us for being prophets, priests, and kings, and which calls us because it fits us for these functions. You are anointed to be prophets that you may make known Him Who has loved and saved you ; and may go about the world evidently inspired to show forth His praise, and make His Name glorious. That anointing calls and fits you to be priests, mediators between God and man ; bringing God to men, and by pleading and persuasion, and the presentation of the truth, drawing i»; n -1 « , hi M I iti 108 THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. men to God. That unction calls and fits you to be kings, exercising authority over the little monarchy of your own natures, and over the men round you, who will bow in submission whenever they come in contact with a man all evidently aflame with the love of Jesus Christ, and filled with Ilis Spirit. The world is ha^d and rude ; the world is blind and stupid ; the world often fails to know its best friends and its truest benefactorn ; but there is no crust of stupidity so crass and dense but that through it there will pass the penetrating shafts of light that ray from the face of a man who walks in fellowship with Jesus. The whole Israel of old were honoured with these sacred names. They were a kingdom of priests ; and the Divine voice said of the nation " Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets' no harm." How much more are all Christian men, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, made prophets, priests, and kirgs to God ! Alas for the difference between what they ought to be and what they are ! And then do not forget also that when th*^ Scriptures speak about Christian men as being anointed, it really speaks of them as being Messiahs. "Christ" means anointed, does it not ? *' Messiah " means anointed. And when we read in such a passage as that of my text, " Ye have an unction from the Holy One," we cannot but feel that the words point in the same direction as the great words of our Master Himself, "As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." By derived authority, no doubt, and in a subordinate and seconciary sense, of course, we are Messiahs, anointed with thai; Spirit which was given to Him not by measure, and which has passed from Him to us. " If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." So, dear brethren, all these things being certainly so, what are we to say about the present state of Christendom ? THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT. 109 What are we to say abont the present state of English Christianity, Church and Dissent alike ? Is Pentecost a vanished slory, then ? Has that rushing mighty windblown itself out, and a dead calm followed ? Has that leaping fire died down into grey ashes ? Has the great river that burst out then, like the stream from the foot of the glaciers of Mont Blanc, full-grown in its birth, been all swallowed up in the sand, like some of those rivers in the Eiist ? Has the oil dried in the cruse ? People tell us that Christianity is on its death-bed ; and to look at a great many profess- ing Christians seems to confirm the statement. But let us thankfully recognise that we are not straitened in God, but in ourselves. To how many of us the question might be put : — " Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you believed ? " And how many of us by our lives answer : — ' We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost." Let us go where we can get it ; and remember the blessed words : — " K ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him." S ^1 I ) u (A ! i\ H 'If 4 I i : Sbrmon IX. SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD. ; il 1 M H SERMON IX. SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD. "Godly sorrow workfth repentance to salvation not to be rcputitod of, but tho sorrow of the world worketh death."— 2 Cor. vii. 10. Very near the close of his missionary career the Aporitlo Paul siiiunied up his preaching as beins' all directed to enforcing- two points, " Repentance towards God, andfaKh in our J^ord Jesus Christ." These two, repi^ntance and faith, ou:.;ht never to be separated in thought, as they are inseparable in fact. True repentance is impossible with- out faitli, true faith cannot exist without repentance. Yet the two are separated very often, even by earnest Christian teachers. The tendency of this day is to say a gi eat deal about faith, and not nearly enou^^^'h in proportion about rei)entance ; and the effect is to obscure the very idea of faith, and not seldom to preach, " Peace ! i)eace ! when there is no peace." A Gospel which is always talk- ing about faith, and scarcely ever talking about sin and rei)entance, is denuded, indeed, of some of its most unwel- come characteristics, but is also deprived of most of its power, and it may very easily become an ally of unright- i ! (/I Ml z I* 'h i ?' " 111 SORROW ACCORDING TO fJOD. ►Ji ■, consncss, and an indiil^'once to Rin. The reproach that th(^ Christian doctrine of salvation throuf^'li faith is im- moral in its substance derives most of its force from f«)i';,'otting that "repentance towards God" is as real a condition of salvation as is " faith in our Lord Jesus CMirist." We have hero the A])0stle's deliverance about one of these twin thouijfhts. Wo have three staires — the root, the stem, the fruit ; sorrow, repentance, sah'ation. But there is a ri^dit and a wronnnot get salvation without repentance. You do not get Si! 1 vat ion by repentance. You cunnot get the salvation of God unless you shake ofl; yonr i>in. It is no use preaching to a man, "Faith, Faith ! Faith ! ! " unless you i)reach along with it, " Break ofT your iniquities." "j.et tlie wicked forsake his way and the unri-^hteous man his thoughts, and let him turn unto the Lord." The nature of the rase forbids it. It is a clear contradiction in terms, and an absolute impossibility in fact, that God should save a man with the salvation which consists in the deliverance from sin, whilst that num is holding to his sin. Unless, therefore, you have not merely sorrow, but repentance, which is turning away fi'om sin with resolute purpose, as a man would turn from a serpent, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. But you do not get salvation for your repentance. It is no case of barter, it is no case of salvation by works, that work being repentance : " Could ray zoal no respite know, Coulil my tours for cvor flow, All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and Thou alone." Not my penitence, but Christ's death, is the ground of the salvation of everyone that is saved at all. Yet repentance is an indesi)ensable condition of salvation. What is the connection between repentance and faith ? There can be no true repentance without trust in Christ. i i «!■ I I! f f\ '''I !l 123 SORROW ACCORDINC; TO GOD. There can be no true trust in Christ without the forsaking,' of my sin. Repentance without faitli, in so far as it is possible, is one long misery ; like the pains of those })oo]' Hindoo devotees that will go all the way from Cape Comorin to the shrine of Juggernaut, and measure every foot of the road with the length of tiieir ow^n bodies in the dust. Men will do anything, and willingly make any sacrifice, ratlierthan open their eyes to see this, — that repentance, clasi)ed hand in hand with faith, leads the guiltiest soul into the forgiving presence of the crucified Christ, from whom Peace flows into the darkest heart. On the other hand, faith without repentance is not possible, in any deep sense. But in so far as it is possible, it jDroduces a superficial Christianity which vaguely trusts to Christ without knowing exactly wdiat it is trusting Him for, or why it needs Him ; and which has a great deal to say about what I may call the less important parts of the Christian system, and nothing to say about its vital centre ; which preaches a morality which is not a living power to create ; which practises a religion which is neither a joy nor a security. The old word of the Muster has a deep truth in it : " These are they which heard the word, and anon with joy received it." Having no sorrow^ no penitence, no deep consciousness of sin, " they have no root in them- selves, and in time of temptation they fall away." If there is to be a profound, an all-pervading, life-transforming sin and devil-conquering faith, it must be a faith rooted deep in penitence and sorrow for sin. Dear brethren, if, by God's grace, my poor words have touched your consciences at all, I beseech you, do not trifle with the budding conviction ! Do not seek to have the wound skinned over. Take care that you do not let it all pass in idle sorrow or impotent regret. If you do, you will be hardened, and the worse for it, and come nearer to that condition which the sorrow of the world worketh, the SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD. 123 awful death of the soul. Do not wince from the knifo before the roots of the cancer are cut out. The pain is merciful. Better the wound than the malignant growth. Yield yourselves to the Spirit that would convince you of sin, and listen to the voice that calls to you to forsake your unrighteous ways and thoughts. But do not trust to any tears, do not trust to any resolves, do not trust to any reformation. Trust only to the Lord that died on the Cross for you, Whose death for you. Whose life in j'ou, will l>e deliverance from your sin. Then you will have a salvation which, in the striking language of my text, "is not to be repented of," which will leave no regrets in vour hearts in the dav when all else shall have faded, and the sinful sweets of this world shall have turned to ashes and bitterness on the lips of the men that feed on them. •'The sorrow of the world works death." There are men and women listening to me now who are half conscious of their sin, and are resisting the pleading voice that comes to them, who at the last will open their eyes upon the realities of their lives, and in a wild passion of remorse, exclaim : " I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly." Better to make thorough work of the sorrow, and by it to be led to repentance toward God and faith in Christ, and so secure for our own that salvaiion for which no man will ever regret having given even the whole world, that he might gain his ow^n soul. z J tiii (/I ■ { ip I 3: 'J 11 1 ! - ■ ■ i 1 ii »!.'i' ^1 '•■''! \ Seemon X. THE FIRST DISCIPLES. I. JOHN AXD ANDREW. i ii'^p i •'I i !■ I ' i BERMON X. THE FIRST DTSCirT/:S.— I. JOHN AND ANDREW. (I "And the two (lisoi])loa lioanl Iliin spoak and thoy followod Jt^sns. Then Josun turned and saw thoin following, and saitli unto thoin, What scok j-o V Tl\oy said unto Iliiii ; Uahbi (which is to say, being interpreted. Master), wlicrc dwclh^st Thou ? Ilo saith unto tlieni. Come and see. Tliey oanio and saw whore He dwelt, and abode with Hiiu that day, for it was about the tenth hour." John i. 37-39. In these verses we see the head waters of a pfreat river ; for we have before us nothing less than the be.!j:inning's of the Christian Church. So simply were the fust discii)les made. The great society of believers was born like its Master, unostentatiously and in a corner. Jesus has come back from His six weeks in the wilder- ness after Ki^ baptism, and has presented Himself before John the P>a}itist for his final attestation. It was a great historical moment when the Last of the Prophets stood face to face with the Fulfilment of all prophecy. In his words : " Behold the Lamb of God Which taketh away the sin of the ^vorld ! " Jewish prophecy sang its swan-song, uttered its last rejoicing "Eureka ! I have found Him !' and died as it spoke. We do not sufficiently estimate the magnificent self- suppression and unselfishness of the Pai)tist, in that he, with his own lips, here re])eats his testimony in order I f h it] 2 I 'i >> !■ tt f 1 , . ; jjh rj8 THE FIltsT DLSCIPLKS: i: ;t Uj i."f J__ I to i)oint his clisci))k's uw.ty IVoiii liimself, niul to aiiach tliem to JosuH. U' lie could luive been touclied l»y envy he would not so ^dadly have recog'nised it as his lot to decrease ^vhile Jesus increased. Kare nuiL>naniniity that in a teacher ! Tin; two who hear John's words are Aiulrew, Simon I'eler's brother, and an anonymous man ; tlie latter is jtrobably the Kvan^u^elist. Tor it is renuii-k- uble that we never iind the names oC James and John in this (j!osi)eI (thou'^h IVom the other Gospels we know how closely tliey were associated with our Lord), and that we only find them referred to as " the sons of Zebedee," once near the close of the book. That fact points, I think, in the direction of John's authorship of this Gosi)el. These two, then, follow Jesus behind, fancyin^:!' them- selves unobserved, not wanting to speak to Ilim, and probably with some notion of tracking Ilim to Ilis home, in order that they may seek an interview at a hder period. But He Who notices the first beginnings of return to Him, and always comes to meet men, and is better to them than their wishes, will not let them steal behind Him un- cheered, nor leave them to struggle with dillldence and delay. So He turns to them, and the events which I have read in the verses that follow as my text for this morning, ensue. We have, I think, three things especially to notice here. First, the Master's question to the whole world, " What seek ye ? " Second, the Master's invitation to the whole world, " Come and see ! " Lastly, the personal commu- nion which brings men's hearts to Him, " They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with Him that day." L — So, then, first look at this question of Christ to the whole world, *' What seek j^e ? " As it stands, on its surface, and in its primary application, it ij the most natural of questions. Our Lord hears footsteps behind JOHV AND ANDREW. lf?0 this lore, 'hut niu- und the its rost lind ITim,Rn(l,asanyonewonhl(lo,tnrnfla})ont, with the fpiost ion wliich anyone would awk, "What is it tluit you want?" That (question would derive all its meaninjjf from the look with which it was accompanied, and the tone in which it was spoken. It miifht moan either annoyance and rude repulsion of the roqujest, even before it was presented, or it might mean a glad wish to draw out the ])etition, and more than half a pledge to bestow it. All (lopondrt on the smile with which it was askod, and the intonation of voice which carried it to their ears. And if we had been there we should have felt, as they evidently felt, that thbugh in form a question, it was in reality a promise, and that it drew out their shy wishes : made them conscious to themselves of what they desired, and gave them confidence that their desire would be granted. Clearly it had sunk very deep into the Evangelist's mind ; and now% at the end of his life, when his course iii nearly run, the never-to-be-forgotten voice sounds still In his memory, and he sees again, in sunny clearness, all the scenes that had transpired on that (hiy by the fords of the Jordan. The first words and the last words of those whom we have learned to love are cut deep on our hearts. It was not an accident that the first words which the Master spoke in His Messianic ofiice were this i)rofoundly significant question, " What seek ye ? " He asks it of us all, He asks it of us to-day. Well for them who can answer, " Rabbi I where dwellest llwu ^ " " It is Thou Whom we seek ! " So, venturing to take the words in that somewhat wider application, let me just suggest to you two or three directions in which they seem to point. I. — First, the question suggests to us this : the need of having a clear consciousness of what is our object in life. The most of men have never answered that question. They live from hand to mouth, di'iven by circumstances, guided by accidents, impelled by unreflecting passiona I i: s s ■ il r; ^'^ 1^ I* \ \\ ■ u X 13.) THE FIRST DISCIPLES : >!,■ ^ i-'lJ;: and desires, knowing what they want for the moment, but never having tried to shape the whole of their lives into one consistent theory, so as to stand up before God in Christ when He puts the question to them, "What seek ye ? " and to answer the question. These incoherent, instinctive, unrefiective lives that so many of you are living are a shame to your manhood, to say nothing more, God has made us for something else than that we should thus be the sport of circumstances. It is a disgrace to any of us that our lives should b^ like some little fishing boat, with an unskilful or feeble hand at the tiller, yawing from one point of the compass to another, and not keeping a strait and direct course. I pray you, dear brethren, to front this question : " After all, and at bottom, what is it I am living for ? Can I formulate the aims and purposes of my life in any intelligible state- ment of which I should not be ashamed ?" Some of vou are not ashamed to do what you would be very much ashamed to say, and you practically answer the question, '' What are you seeking ? " by pursuits that you durst not call by their own ugly names. There may be people in this congregation this morning that are living for their lusts, for their passions, for their ambitions, for avarice, that are living in all uncleanness and godlessness. I do not know. There are plenty of shabby, low aims in all of us, which do not bear being dragged out into the light of day. I beseech you to try and get hold of the ugly things and bring them up to the surface, however much they may seek to hide in the congenial obscurity, and twist their slimy coils round something in the dark. If you dare not put your life's object into words, bethink yourselves whether it ought to be your life's object at all. Ah, brethren ! If we would ask ourselves this question, and answer it with any thoroughness, we should not JOHN AND ANDREW. 131 make so many mistakes as to the places where we look for the things for which we are seeking. If we knew what we were really seeking, we should know where to go to look for it. Let me tell you what you are seeking, whether you know it or not. You are seeking for rest for your heart, a home for your spirits ; you are seeking for perfect truth for your understandings, perfect beauty for your affections, perfect goodness for your conscience. You are seeking for all these three, gathered into one white beam of light, and you are seeking for it all in a person. Many of you do not know this, and so you go hunting in all manner of impossible places for that which you can only find in one. To the question, " What seek ye ? " the deepest of all answers, the only real answer is, "My soul thirsteth for God, for tLe living God." If you know that, you know where to look for what you need ! " Do men gather grapes of thorns ?" If these are really the things that you are seeking after, in all your mistaken search — oh ! how mistaken is the search ! Do men look for pearls in cockle-shells, or for gold in coal-pits ; and why should you look for rest of heart, mind, conscience, spirit, anywhere and in anything short of God ? *' What seek ye .^" The only answer is, " We seek Thee !" And then, still further, let me remind you how these words are not only a question, but are really a veiled an d (j^ implied prom ise. The question, " What do you want of Me ?" may either strike an intending suppliant like a blow, and drive him away with his prayer sticking in his throat unspoken, or it may sound like a merciful invitation, " What is thy petition, and what is thy request, and it shall be granted unto thee ?" We know which of the two it was here. Christ asks all such questions as this (and there are many of them in the New Testament), not for His information, but for our strengthening. He asks people, not because He does not know before they answer, E 2 Is z I* (A il 1. 1 \l i i l\ I 132 THE FIRST DISCIPLES : but that, on the one hand, their own minds may be clear as to their wishes, and so thej' may wish the more earnestly because of the clearness ; and that on the other hand, their desires being expressed, they may be the more able to receive the gift which He is willing to bestow. So He here turns to these men, whose purpose He knew well enough, and says to them, " What seek ye ?" Herein He is doing the very same thing on a lower level, and in an outer sphere, as is done when He appoints that we shall pray for the blessings which He is yearning to bestow, but which He makes conditional on our supplications, only because by these supplications our hearts are onened into a capacity for receiving them. We have, then, in the words before us, thus understood, our Lord's gracious promise to give what is desired on the simple condition that the suppliant is conscious of his own wants, and turns to Him for the supply of them. " What seek ye ?" It is a blank cheque that He puts into their hands to fill up. It is the key of His treasure-house which He offers to us all, with the assured confidence that if we open it we shall find all that we need. Who is He that thus stands up before a whole world of seeking, restless spirits, and fronts them with the question which is A pledge, conscious of His capacity to giv ^ to each of them what each of them requires ? Who is tiu's that professes to be able to give all these men and women and children bread here in the wilderness ? There is only one answer — the Christ of God. And He has done what He promises. No man or woman ever went to Him, and answered this question, and pre- sented their petition for any real good, and was refused. No man can ask from Christ what Christ cannot bestow. No man can ask from Christ what Christ will not bestow. In the loftiest region, the region of inward and spiritual gifts, which are the best gifts, we can get everything that we II. 1 1-" JOHN AND ANDREW. 133 want, and our only limit is, not His boundless Omnipotence and willingness, but our own poor, narrow, and shrivelled desires. " Ask, and ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall lind." He stands before us, if I may so say, like some of those fountains erected at some great national festival, out of Avhich pour for all the multitude every variety of draught which they desire, and each man that goes with his empty cup gets it filled, and gets it filled with that which he wishes. " What seek ye ?" Wisdom r You students, you thinkers, you young men that are fighting with intellectual difficulties and perplexities, " What seek ye ?" Truth ? He gives us that, fou others, " What seek ye ?" Love, peace, victory, self-control, hope, anodyne for sorrow ? Whatever you desire, you will find in Jesus Christ. The first words with which He broke the «ilence when He spake to men as the Messias, wei-e at once a searching question, probing their aims and purposes, and a gracious promise pledging Him to a task not beyond His power, however far beyond that of all otliers, even the task of giving to each man his heart's desire. " Wliat seek ye r" " Seek, and ye shall find." II. — Then, still further, notice how, in a similiar fashion, we may regard here the second words which our Loi'd speaks as being His merciful invitation to the world. "Come ana see." The disciples' answer was simple and timid. They did not venture to say, " May we talk to You ? " " Will Y'ou take us to be Your disciples ? " All they can muster courage to ask now is, "Where dwellest Thou.?" At anothei time, perhaps, we will go to this Rabbi and speak with him. His answer is, " Come ! Come now ! Come, and by intercourse with Me, learn to know Me." His temporary home was probably nothing more than some selected place on the river's bank, for He had not where to lay His head ; but such as it was He welcomesthem to it, " Come and sue I 'I 'A i I ('■ ;f > y ] i i n lU THE FIRST DISCIPLES: \ '■ N'l 'I' 'I Take a plain, simple truth out of that. Christ is always glad when people resort to Him. When He was here in the world, no hour was inconvenient or inopportune ; no moment was too much occupied ; no physical wants of hunger, or thirst, or slumber were ever permitted to come between Him and seeking hearts. He was never impatient. He was never wearied of speaking, though He was often wearied in speaking. He never denied Himself to anybody, or said, " I have something else to do than to attend to you." And just as in literal fact, whilst He was here upon earth, nothing was ever per- mitted to hinder His drawing near to anybody that wanted to draw near to Him, so nothing now hinders it ; and He is glad when any of us resort to Him and ask Him to let us speak to liim and be with Him. His weariness or occu- pation never shut men out from Him then. His glory does not shut them out now. Then there is another thought here. This invitation of the Master is also a very distinct call to a first-hand know- ledge of Jesus Christ. Andi'ew and John had heard from the Baptist about Him, and now what He bids them to do is to come and hear Himself. That is what he calls you, dear brethr I i t ■ 1 li . • f i 1 1 14G THE FIRST DISCIPLES: luimmerfl of rejiRoning, and ho is not much the nearer being a C irisliiin tlum lie ^vaR before; just as you may pound ice to pieces and it is i)onnded iee after all. The mightiest argument that we can use, and the argninent that wo can all use, if mo have got any religion in us at nil, is that of Andrew, " We have found the Messias." I was reading the other day a story in some newR])aper or other about a minister that preached a very elaborate course of lectures in refutation of some form of inli- delity, for the special benefit of a man that attended his place of worship. Soon after the man came and declared himself a Cliristian. The minister said to him, "Which of my discourses was it that removed your doubts ?" The reply was, " Oh ! it was not anj of your sermons that iniluenced me. The thing that set me thinking was that a poor woman came out of the chapel beside me, and stumbled on the steps, and I stretched out my hand to help her, and she i^aid, 'Thank you !' Then she looked at me and said : ' Do you love Jesus Christ, my blessed Saviour ? ' And I did not, and I went home and thought about it ; and now I can say / love Jesus." The poor woman's w^ord, and her frank confession of her experience, was all the transforming power. If you have found Christ, you can say you have. Never mind about the how ! Any how ! Only say it ! A boy that is sent on an errand by his father has only one duty to perform, and that is to repeat what he was told. Whether we have any eloquence or not, whether we have any logic or not, whether we can speak persuasively and gracefully or not, if we have got hold of Christ at all we can say that we have ; and it is at our peril that we do not. We can say it to somebody. There is surely someone who will listen to you more readily than to anybody else. Surely you have not lived all your life and bound nobody to you by kindness and love, so that they will gladly attend to SIMON PETRR. 117 eiirer may The nient i»t idl, |n>])or )ornte iiili- 31 H led 3 ami id to [ your your 3t me 3hapel ed out Then ihrist, home 1^ esus ot her Never A boy duty told, have y and Ive can |o not. who >urely bo you md to what yon say. Well, then, ?/.scthe power that is ji^ivcn to you. Remember the be,cfiiininp;s of the Christian Churcli — two men ; each of wliom found his brother. Two and two make four ; and if every one of us would ^o, accordinu^ to the old law of warfare, and each of us slay our man, ' r rather each of us give life by God's grace to someone, or try to do it, our congregations and our churches would grow as fast as, according to the old problem, the moin y gn>w that was paid down for the nails in the horse's shoes. Two snowflakes on tlu; toj) of a mountain are an avalanche by the time they reach the valley. " He first findeth his bi'odier, Simon." I J. — And now I turn to the second part of this text, the self-revelation of the Master. The bond which knit these men to Christ at first was by no means the perfect Christian faith which they afterwards attained. They recognised Him as the Messiah, they were personally attached to Him, they were ready to accept His teaching and to obey His commandments. That was about as far as they had got. But they were scholars. They had entered the school. The rest will come. We had not, then, to expect that Christ would begin by preaching to them faith in His Divinity and atoning work. He binds them to Himself. That is lesson enough for a beginner for one day. It was the impression which Christ Himself made on Simon which completed the work begun by his brother. What, then, was the impression ? He comes all full of wonder and awe, and he is met by a look and a sentence. The look, which is described by an unusual word, was a penetrating gaze which regarded Peter with fixed atten- tion. It must have been remarkable, to have lived in John's memory for all these years. Evidently, as I think, a more than natural insight is implied. So, also, the saying l2 ••■*i ft; .*< '/t < '1: I 148 THE FIRST DISCIPLES: h:^ !!i Avith which our Lord received Peter seems to me to be meant to show more than natural knowledge : " Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas." Christ may, no doubt, have learned the Apostle's name and lineage from his brother, or in some other ordinary way. But if you observe the similar incident which follows in the conversation with Nicodemus, and the emphatic declaration of the next chapter that Jesus knew both " all men," and " what was in man " — both human nature as a whole, and each indi- vidual — it is more natural to see here superhuman knowledge. So, then, the first point in our Lord's self-revelation here is that He shows Himself possessed of supernatural and thorough knowledge. One remembers the many instances where our Lord read men's hearts, and the prayer addressed to him, probabl y by Peter, " Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men,'' and the vision which John saw of eyes like a flame of fire, and thb sevenfold " I know thy works." It may be a very awful thought, "Thou, God, seest me." It is a very unwelcome thought to a great many men, and it will be so to us unless we can give it the modifica- tion which it receives from the belief in the Divinity of Jet^us Christ, and feel sure that the eyes which are blazing with Divine Omniscience are dewy with Divine and human love. Do you believe it ? Do you feel that Christ is looking at you, and searching you altogether ? Do you rejoice in it ? Do you carry it about with you as a consolation and a strength in moments of weakness, and in times of tempta- tion ? Is it as blessed to you to feel " Thou Christ beholdest me now," as it is for a child to feel that when Jt is playing in the garden its mother is sitting up at the window watching it, and that no harm can come ? There have been men driven mad in prisons because they knew )king lice in land a inpta- Jhrist Iwhen the 'here Iknew SIMON PKTER. 149 that somev^here in the wall there was a little pinhole, through which a gaoler's eye was always, or might be always, glaring down at them. And the thought of an absolute Omniscience up there, searching me to the depths of my nature, may become one from which I recoil shudderingly, and will not be altogether a blessed one unless it comes to me in this shape : — " My Christ knows me altogether and loves me better than He knows. And so I will spread myself out before Him,, and though I feel that there is much in me which I dare not tell to men, I will rejoice that there is nothing which 1 need to tell to Him. He knows me through and through. He knew me when He died for me. He knew me when He forgave me. He knew me when He under! ook to cleanse me. Like this very Peter I will say : — " Lord thou knowest all things," and, like him, I will cling the closer to His feet, bei.ause I know, and He knows, my weakness and my sin.'^ Another revelation of our Lord's relation to His disciples is given in the fact that he changes Simon's name. Jehovah, in the Old Testament, changes the names of Abraham and of Jacob. Babylonian kings in the Old Testament change the names of their vassal princes. Masters impose names on their slaves ; and I suppose that even the marriage custom of the wife's assuming the name of the husband rests originally upon the same idea of absolute authority. That idea is conveyed in the fact that our Lord changes Peter's name, and so takes absolute pos- session of him, and asserts His mastery over him. We belong to Him altogether, because He has given Himself altogether for us. His absolute authority is the correlative of His utter self-surrender. He Who can come to me and say ; " I have spared not my life for thee," and He only, has the right to come to me and say : " yield yourself wholly to Me." So, Christian friends, your Master wants all your service ; do you give yourselves up to Him out and out, not by half and half. til m li *Q| -5! S (/I i p '■'■',' m- V'-^i I 150 THE FIRST DISCIPLES : Lastly, that change of name implies Christ's power and promise to bestow a new character and new functions a!id honours. Peter was by no meanf* a " Peter " then. The name no doubt mainly implies ofiicial function, but that official function was prepared for by personal character ; and in so far as the name refers to character, it means firmness. At that epoch Peter was rash, impulsive, head- strong, self-confident, vain, and, therefore, necessarily changeable. Like the granite, all fluid and hot, and lluid because it was hot, he needed to cool in order to solidify into rock. And not until his self-confidence had been knocked out of him, and he had learned humility by fall- ing ; not until he had been beaten from all his presump- tion, and tamed down, and sobered and steadied bj^ years of difficulty and responsibilities did he become the ]'ock that Christ meant him to be. All that lay concealed in the future, but in the change of his name, while he stood on the very threshold of his Christian career, there was preached to him, and there is preached to us, this great truth, that if you will go to Jesus Christ He will make a new man of you. No man's character is so obstinately rooted in evil but Christ can change its set and direction. No man's natural dispositions are so faulty and low but that Christ can develop counterbalancing virtues ; and out of the evil and weakness make strength. He will not make a Peter into a John, or a John into a Paul, but He will deliver Peter from the " defects of his qualities," and lead them up into a higher and a nobler region. There are no outcasts in the view of the transforming Christ. He dismisses no people out of His hospital as incurable, because anybody, everybody, the blackest, the most rooted in evil, those who have longest indulged in any given form of transgression, may all come to Him ; with the certainty that if they will cleave to Him ; He will read all their character and all its weaknesses, and then with a ' and i and The that cter ; leans liead- ^arily tin id Lidify been J tall- mmp- years 3 ]'OCk led in stood •e was great iiake a |nately iction. Kv but d out 11 not ut He I," and There hrist. rable, Irooted given ih the lad all dth a SIMON PETER. 151 glad smile of welcome and assured confidence on His face, will ensure to them a new nature, and new dignities. " Thou art Simon — thou shalt be Peter." The process will be long. It will be painful. There will be a great deal pared off. The sculptor makes the marble image by chipping away the superfluous marble. Ah ! and when you h/.ve to chip away superfluous flesh and blood it is bitter work, and the chisel is often deeply dyed in gore, and the mallet seems to be very cruel. Simon did not know all that had to be done to make a Peter of him. We have to thank His providence that we do not know all the sorrows and trials of the process of making us what He wills us to be. But we may be sure of this, that if only we keep near our Master, and let Him have His way with us, and work His will upon us, and if only we will not wince from the blows of the Great Artist's chisel, t^/ien out of the roughest block He will carve the fairesi? staiue ; and He will fulfil for us at last His great prom/se : — " I will give unto him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it." b '--^ ^ r-ii (ft ! 'i ,fi^ , 1 ^ ■ ! ( ) It Sermon XII. THE FIRST DISCIPLES III.— PHILIP. s '•I'; =J iHI f i (•r f THE FIRST DJ.'>CIPLES: TIT.— PHILIP. m SERMON XII. i:! "The (1;iy following Jo-u.s would go forth iuto Galik'O, and flndcth Philip, and •ailh uiitu hi lu : Follow .Me." Jybu i. 43. "The day following" — We have a diary in this cliaptt-r, and the next, extentling from the day when John the Ltiptist j^ives his official testimony to Jesus up till our Lord's first journey to Jerusalem. The order of events is this. The deputation fi'oni tlie SaiduMh'ini to John occu- pied the first day. On the second Jesus comes back to John after his temptation, and receives his solemn attesta- tion. On the third chiy, John repeats his testimony, and three disciples, probably four, make the nucleus of the church. These are the two pairs of brothers, James and John, Andrew and Peter, who stand first in every catalogue of the Apostles, and were evidently nearest to Christ. " The day following " of our text is the fourth day. On it our Lord determines to return to Galilee. His objects in Ills visit to John were accomplished — to receive his public attestation, and to gather the first little knot of His followers. Thus launched upon His course, He desired to return to His native district. 4 '1 1 -J ^ \r 156 THE FIRST DISCIPLES: THILIP. These events had occurred where John was baptising, in a place culled in the English version Bethabara, which ineiins " The house of crossing," or as we might say, Ferry- house. The traditional site for John's baptism is near Jericho, but the next chapter (verse i.) shows that it was only a day's journey from Cana of Galilee, and must thereiore have been much further north than Jericho. A ford, still bearing the name Abarah, a few miles south of the lake of Gennesaret has lately been discovered. Our Lord then, and His disciples had a day's walking to take them back to Galilee. Rut apparently before they set out on that morning, Philip and Nathanael were added to the little band. So these two days saw six disciples gathered round Jesus. Andrew and John sought Christ and found Him. To them He revealed Himself as very willing to be approached, and glad to welcome any to His side. Peter, who comes next, was brought to Christ by his brother, and to him Christ revealed Himself as reading his heart, and promis- ing and giving him higher functions and a more noble character. Now I come to 'Axe third case, "Jesus findeth Philip," who was not seeking Jesus, and who was brought by no one. To him Christ reveals Himself as drawing near to many a heart that has not thought of Him, and laying a masterful hand of gracious authority on the springs of life and character in that autocratic word " Follow Me.'* So we have a gradually heightening revelation of the Master's graciousness to all souls, to them that seek and to them that seek Him not. It is only to the working out of these simple thoughts that I ask your attention now. I. — First, then, let us deal with the revelation that is given us here of the seeking Christ. Everyone who reads this chapter with even the slightest attention must observe how "seeking" and "finding"' Me." the i and ig out rhtest THE FIRST DISCIPLES : PHILIP. 157 't; , )| Ling »»• are repeated over and over again. Clirist tnrna to Andrew and John with the question, " What sfch ye ?" Andrew, as the narrative saj's, ^'/indcth his own bi-otln-r, Simon, and saith unto him ; 'We have found the ^k'ssins !' " Then, again, Jesus /itnJs Philip; and again, rhili]), aa soon as he has been won to Jesus, goes ofl' to Jiiid Nutlia- iiael ; and his glad word to him is, once moie, "We luive found the IMessias." It is a reciprocal play of tindiiig and seeking all through these verses. There are two kinds of finding. There is a casual stumbling upon a thing that you were not looking for, and there is a finding as the result of seeking. It i.-> thy latter which is here. Christ did not casually stumble upon Philip, upon that morning, before they departe*! from the fords of the Jordan on their short journej' to Cana of Galilee. He went to look for this other Galilean, one who was connected with Andrew and Peter, a native of the same little village. He went and found him ; and whilst Philip was all unexpectant and undesirous, the Master came to him and laid His hand upon him, and drew him to Himself. Now that is what Christ often does. There are men like the merchantman who went all over the world seek- ing goodly pearls, who with some eager longing to possess light, or truth, or goodness, or rest, search up and down and find it nowhere, because they are looking for it in a hundred different places. They are expecting to find a little here and a little there, and to piece all together to make of the fragments oneall-suflicing restfulness. Then when they are most eager in their search, or, when perhaps it has all died down into despair and apathy, the veil, seems to be withdrawn, and they see Him Whom they have been seeking all the time and knew not that He was there beside them. All, and more than all, that they sought for in the many pearls is stored far them in the CI ■«»■ !■», 'j< '^ ;/ .•... ; ■• «,/ ! til n li 1 f i,' 1 »! lis B 1 i I iliii! li If ilil" I ! ! |i 15S THE FIRST DISCIPLES : PHILIP. one Pearl of great price. The ancient covenant stands liriu to-day as for ever. " Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you." P)Ut then there are others, like Paul on the road to Damascus ; like Matthew the publican, sitting at the receipt of custom, on whom there is laid a sudden hand, to wliom there comes a sudden conviction, on whose eyes, not lookhig to the east, there dawns the light of Christ's l)i'esence. Such cases occur all through the ages, for He is not to be confined, bless His name ! within the narrow limits of answering seeking souls, or of showing Himself to people that are brought to Him by ha man instru- mentality ; but far bejond these bounds He goes, and many a time discloses His beauty, and His sweetness to hearts that wist not of Him, and who can only say, *'Lo ! God was in this place, and I knew it not." "Thou wast found of them that sought Thee not." As it was in His miracles upon earth, so it has been in the sweet and gracious works of His grace ever since. Sometimes He healed in response to the yearning desire that looked out of sick eyes, or that spoke from parched lips, and no man that ever came to Him and said, " Heal me ! " was sent away beggared of His blessing. Some- times He healed in response to the beseeching of those who with loving hearts, carried 'heir dear ones and laid them at is fact. But sometimes to magnify the spontaneity and the completeness of His own love, and to show us that He is bound and limited by no human co-operation, and tiiot Hc5 is His own motive. He reached out the bless- ing to a hand that was not extended to grasp it ; and by His question, " Wilt thou be made whole ? " kindled desires that else had lain dormant for ever. And so in this story before us ; He will welcome and over-answer Andrew and John when laey come seeking ; He will turn round to them with a smile on His face, that THE FIRST DISCIPLES; PHILIP. 15:> laid leity \w us itioii, )less- [d by idled and :in or • that convei ts the question, " What seek ye ?" into an invitation, "Come and see." And when Andrew brings his brotlior to Him, He will go More than half-way to meet him. But when these are won, there still remains another way by which He will have disciples brought into His Kingdom, and that is by Himself going out and laying His hand on the man and drawing him to His heart by the rev Is' ion of his Love. But further, and in a deeper sense He really seeks n.s :>11, and unasked bestows His love upon us. Whether we seek Him or no, there is no heart U])on earth which Christ does not desire ; and no man or woman within the sound of Hi;; Gospel whom He is not in a very real sense seeking tlicvt He may draw them to Himself. His own W'ord is a Avonderful one : "The Father ser/cpfh such to wor&hip Him ;" as if God went all up and down the world looking for hearts to love Hiin and to turn to Him with reverent thankfulness. And as the Father so the Son — who is for us the revelation of the Father : "The Son of ^Man is come to seek and to save that wliich was lost." Nobody on earth wanted Him, or dreamed of His coming. When He bowed the heavens and gathered Himself into the narrow space of the manger in Bethlehem and took upon Him the limitations and the burdens, and the weaknesses of manhood, it Avas not in response to any petition, it was in reply to no seeking ; but He came spontaneously, nnmoved, obeying but the impulse of His own heart, and M'^'ause He would have mercy. He Wiio is the Beginning, and will be first in all things, was lirst in this. I^^fore they called He answered, and ci.me upon earth unb'^i ^ k I; If ii 162 THE FIRST DISCIPLES : PHILIP. It is a call at the least to accept Him as a Teacher, but the whole gist of the context here is to show us that from the beginning Christ's disciples did not look upon Him as a Rabbi's disciples did, as being simply a teacher, but recognised Him as the Messias, the Son of God, the King of Israel. So that they were called upon by this command to accept His teaching in a very special way, not merely as Hillel or Gamaliel asked their disciples to accept theirs. Do you do that ? Do you take Him as your illumination about all matters of theoretical truth, and of practiced wisdom ? Is His declaration of God your theology ? .s His declaration of His own Person your creed ? Do you think about His Cross as He did when He elected to be remembered in all the world by the broken body and the shed blood, which were the symbols of His reconciling death ? Is His teaching, that the Son of Man comes to give His life a ransMm for many, the ground of your hope ? Do you follow Him in your belief, and following Him in your l)elief, do you accept H^im, as, by His death and passion, tlie Saviour of your soul ? That is the first gtep — to follow Him, to trust him wholly for what He is, the Incarnate S(m of God, the Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and therefore for your sins and mine. This is a call to faith. It is also a call to obedience. "Follow Me" certainly means, "Do as I bid you," but softens all the harshness of thai e«'mmand. Sedulously plant your little feet in His firm footsteps. Where you see His track going across the bo|^ be not afraid to w ilk after Him, though it may seem to lead you into the deepest and the blackest of it. Follow Him, and you will be right. " Follow Him " and you will be blessed. Do as Christ did, or as according to the best of your judgment it seems to you that Christ would have done if He had been in your circumstances ; and you will not go far wn ag. "The Imitation of Christ," which the THE FIRST DISCIPLES : PHILIP. 1G3 Le IS, tainly less of n His 3S the I seem )llo\v will best have will the old anonymous monk wrote his book about, is the sum ol all practical Christianity. " Follow Me !" makes disciple- ship to be something more than intellectual acceptance of His teaching, something more than even reliance for my salvation upon His work. It makes discipleship — spring- ing out of these two — the acceptance of His teaching and the conseq'ient reliance, by faith, upon His word — to be a practical reproduction of His character and conduct in mine. It is a call to communion. If a man follows Christ he will walk close behind Him, and near enough to Him to hear Him speak, and to be " guided by His eye." He will be separated from other people, and from other things. In these four things, then — Faith, Obedience, Imitation, Communion — lies the essence of discipleship. No nian is a Chrif^tian who has not in some measure all four. Have you got them ? What right has Jesus Christ to ask me to follow Him ? Why should I ? Who is He that He shoukl set Himself up as being the perfect Example and the Guide for all the world ? What has He done to bind me to Him, that I should take II im for my Master, and yield myself to Him in a subjection that I refuse to the mightiest names in literature, and thought, and practical benevolence ? Who is this that assumes thus to dominate over us all ? Ah ! brethren, thei^i is onlv one answer. This is none other th$:in the Son of God Who has given Himself a Ransom for me, and therefore, has the right, and only therefore has the right, to say to me, ' Follow Me.' " III. — And now one last word. Think for a moment about this silently and swiftly obedient disciple. Philip says nothing. Of course the narrative is mere sketchy outline. He is silent but he yields. Ah ! brethren, how quickly a soul may be won or lost ! That moment, when Philip's decision was trembling in M 2 !i i is; ri 164 THE FIRST DISCIPLES : PHILIP. the balance, was but a moment. It might have .i^-one the other way, for Christ has no pressed men in His army ; they are all volunteers. It might have gone the other way. A moment may settle for you whether you will be His disciple or not. People tell us that the belief in instanta- neous conversions is unphilosophical. It seems to me that the objections to them are unphilosophical. All de- cisions are matters of an instant. Hesitation may be long, weighing and balancing may be a protracted process, but the decision is always a moment's work, a knife-edge. And there is no reason whatever why anyone listening to me now may not now, if he or she will, do as this man Philip did on the spot, and when Christ says, " Follow Me," turn to Him and answer, " I will follow thee whither- soever Thou goest." There is an old Church tradition which says that the disciple who, at a subsequent period answered Christ : — " Lord ! suffer me first to go and bury my father," was this same Apostle. I do not think that is at all likely, but the tradition suggests to us one last thought about the reasons, why people are kept back from yielding this obedience to Christ's invitation. Many of you are kept back as that procrastinating follower was, because there are some other duties, which you feel, or make to be, more important. " I will think about Christianity, and turning religious when this, that, or the other thing has been got over. I have my position in life to make. I have a great many things to do that must be done at once, and really, I have not time to think about it." Then there are some of you that are kept from following Christ because you have never found out yet that you need a guide at all. Then there are some of you that are kept back because you like very much better to go your way, and to follow your own inclination ; and dislike the idea of following the will of another. There are a 'illE F1R8T DISCIPLES: PHILIP. 1G5 the this ^ept lere be, and has I once, host of other reasons that I do not need to deal with now ; but oh ! brethren, none of them are worth pleading. They are excuses, they are not reasons. "They all with one consent be^^an to ni^ke excuse." Excuses, not reasons ; and manufactured excuses, in order to cover a decision which has been taken before, and on other grounds altogether, which it is not convenient to bring up to the surface. I am not going to deal with these in detail, but I beseech you, do not let what I venture to calJ Christ's seeking of you once more, even by my poor words now, be in vain. Follow Him! Trust, obey, imiMte, hold fellowship with Him. You will always have a Companion, you will always have a Protector. " He that followeth Me," saith He, " shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And if you will listen to tiie Shepherd's voice and follow Him, that sweet old promise will be true, in its Divinest and sweetest sense about your life, in time ; and about your life in the moment of death, the isthmus between two worlds, and about your life in eternity — " They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the sun nor heat smite them ; for He that haih mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them." Follow thou Me. •i: '•'if • hi wing yon Lt are your 5like ire a m Sermon XIII, THE FIRST DICIPLES. III.—NATHANAEL. :i '14 I" : i^i ^.1 ?; jjjl I ''i '^^1. IS* ■ 1 1 , ,it' ^^^ .«» '• *' ••< ' i|i -t ■ ^M •i '^1 .r' 1 i ! li '« >f:!i ► i! t ' I'l^ ' I ;' m I i SERMON XIII. THE FIRST DISCIPLES.— III. NATHANAEL. "Philip flndoth N;itlianiiol,!\u.l saitb unto liiin, Wo have found Iliiii of Whom Mow •» in the law, iviul in the prophots, did write, Jcsns of Nazaretli. tlio Son of Joseph. And Nathanaol said luito him, Can thi're any good lliin^' (.'(imc out of Xazaivth? Philip Baitli unto liim, Come auij sie. Jesus saw Xailianael cdminK to Him, and saiiii of iiim, Behold an Israelit" indeed, in wliom is no .uuile I Nathanael saitli unto Ilim Whence knowest Thou UieV Jesus answered and said unto him, IJefore iliat I'liilip ealleil tiioe, when tliou wast undi r liic li;^ irco, 1 saw tliee. Xatiianacl answered and saitli unto Him, Habbi, Thou ai'L the Sou of God ; Thou ait the King of Israel." -John i, 45-49. The words are often the least part of a conversation. The Kvangelist can tell us what Nathanael said to Jesus, and what Jesiis said to Nathanael, but no evan,i,''elist can rei)roduce the look, the tone, the magnetic inlluence which streamed out from Christ, and, we may believe, more than anything He said, riveted these men to Him. It looks as if Nathanael and his companions were very easily convinced, as if their adhesion to such tremendous claims as those of Jesus Christ was much too facile a thinj,' to be a very deep one. But what can be put down in black and white yoes a very short way to solve the secret of the power which drew them to Himself. The incident which is before us now runs substantially on the same lines as the previous bringing of Peier to ^i 'Jl II 170 TIIK FIUST DISCIPLES: NATIIAN'AEL. ^i Jeans Christ. In both casos the inim is l)r()ii;^lit by ji frlontl, in both cases tlie friend's weapon is simj»ly llie exjti'ession of hifl own ])ei*Sf)nal experience, " \V(^ Inive found tlie Messias," althoii,L;]i IMnl ij) has a little more to ^1%;' about Christ's corres^'ondence with the i)rophetic word. !>. l)oth cases the work \:. finished by our Lord Himself Uiuni Test- in*,' His own supernatural knowled^^'e to (lie in([iiirinj^ Bi)irit, thou^L;h in the case of Nathanael that jn-oces^ is a little more lengthened out than in the case of Peter, because there was a little ice of hesitation and of doubt to be melted away. And Nathanael, startin.uf fi-oni a lower point than Peter, having questions and lirsitatiojis which the other had not, rises to a higher j)oint of faitli and certitude, and from his lips first of all comes the full, articulate confession, beyond which the A]>ostl('S never went as long as our Lord was upon earth : " lial>bi, Thou art the Son of God ; Thou art the King of Israel." So that both in regard of the revelation that is given of the character of our Lord, and in regard of the teaching that is given of the development and process of faith in a soul, this last narrative fitly crowns the w^hole series. In look- ing at it with you now, I think I shall best bring out its force by asking you to take it as falling into these three portions ; first, the i)reparation — a soul brought to Christ by a brother ; then the conversation — a soul fastened to Christ by Himself ; and then the rapturous confession. — "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God ; Thou art the King of Israel." L — Look, then, first of all, at the preparation — ^a vDuI brought to Christ by a brother. " Philip findetli Nathanael." Nathanael, in all probability, as commentators will tell you is the Apostle Bai-tholomew ; and in the catalogues of the Apostles in the Gospels, Philip and he are always associated together. So that the two men, friends before, had their friendship riveted and made more close by this sacredest i!!i t its liree lirist id to !<»• of ^^ul lael." you the lated their dest Tlin PinST DI CTPLES : NATTIANAEL. 171 Df all bonds, Unit the one had been to the other tin* moans of brin^ini,' him to Jesus Christ. Tliere ia iiothiuL;- Miat ties men to each other like that. If you want to know the full sweetness of association with friends, and of human love, get some heart knit to yours by this sacred and eternal bond that it owes to you its lirst know led,L':e of tiie Saviour. So all hunnin ties will be sweetened, euuobled, elevated, and made perpetual. " We have found Ilini of Whom Moses, in tlu' law, and the proi)hets did write : Jesus of Na/ureth, the Son of Joseph." Philip knows nothing about Christ's super- natural birth, nor about its having been in iiethleliem ; to him He is the son of a Nazarene ])easant. lUit, notwith- standing tliat, lie is the great, significant, mysterious Person for Whom the whole sacred literature of Israel had l)een one long yearning for centuries ; and he has come to believe that this Man standing beside him is the Person on Whom all pi'evious Divine communications for a millennium past focussed and cent.'ed, I need not dwell upon these avo''us, because to do so would be to repeat substantially what I said in a former sermon on these first disciples, about the value of personal conviction as a means of producing conviction in the minds of others, and about the necessity and the possibility of all who have found Christ for themselves saying so to others, and thereby becoming Ilis missionaries and evangelists. I do not need to repeat what I said on that occasion ; therefore, I pass on to the very natui-al hesitation and question of Nathanael : "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " A prejudice, no doubt, but a very harmless ont ♦, a very thin ice which melted at, soon as Christ's smile beamed upon him. And a most natural prejudice. Nathanael came from Cana of Galilee, a little hill village, three or four miles from Nazareth. We all ,*• i 1. ! 1 , ' ] i' ■ h . 1 ! ' ' ' 'i 1 ' ) H' a tfMiTTiiTTirBrffi^^^T si 172 THE FIRST DISCIPLES : NATHANAEL. ' rt "(h.i() know the bitter feuds and jealousies of neighbouring villages, and how nothing is so pleasant to the inhabitants of one as a gibe about the i.nhabitants of another. And in Nathanael's words there simijly speaks the rustic jealousy of Cana against Nazareth. It is easy to blame him, but do you think that you or I, if we had been in his place, would have been likely to have said anything very different ? Suppose you were told that a peasant out of Ross-shire was a man on whom the whole history of this nation hung. Do you think you would be likely to believe it without first saying, *' That is a strange place for such a person to be born in." Galilee was the despised part of Palestine, and Nazareth obviously was a proverbially despised village of Galilee ; and this Jesus was a carpenter's son that nobody had ever heard of. It seemed to be a strange head on which the Divine Dove should flutter down, passing by all the Phai'isees and the Scribes, all the great people and wise people. Nathanael's prejadice was but the giving voice to a fault that is as wide as humanity, and which we have, every day of our lives, to fight with; not only in regard of religious matters but in regard of all others — namely, the habit of estinjating people, and their work, and their wisdom, and their power to teach us, by the class to which tliey are supposed to belong, or even by the place from A\hich they come. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ?" "Can a German teach an Englishman anything that he does not know ?" " Is a Protestant to owe anything of spiritual illumination to a Roman Catholic ?" " Are we Dissenters to receive any wisdom or example from Churchmen ?" " Will a Conservative be able to give any lessons in politics to a Liberal ?" " Is there any other bit of England that can teach Lancashire ?" Take care that whilst you are holding up your hand^ in horror against the prejudices of itants And L'llStlC L or I, ely to were whom think aying, n in." zareth cililee ; d ever ch the dl the d wise ' voice ch we nly in hers — work, by the /en by »' Can a hes not inritnal jenters Imen .'' )olitics id that on are ices of lyii THl'J FIRST DISCIPLES ; NATHANAEL. 17:5 our Lord's contemporaries, who stumbled at His oris^in, you are not doinq- the same thing in regard to all manner of subjects twenty times a day. Thai is one very plain lesson, and not at all too secular for a sermon. Take another. This three-parts innocent prejudice of Nathanael brings into clear relief for us what a very real obstacle to the recognition of our Lord's Messianic authority His apparent lowly origin was. We have got over it, and it is no difficult}^ to us ; but it was so then. When Jesus Christ came into this world Judea was ruled by tlie most heartless of aristocracies, an aris- tocracy of cultured pedants. Wherever you get such a class you get people who think that there can be noliody worth looking at, or worth attending to, outside tlie little limits of their own supercilious superiority. Wliy did Jesus Christ come from " the men of the earth," ;is the T^abbis called all who had not learned to cover every plain precept with spiders' webs of casuistry ? Why, for one thiiig, in accordance with the general law that the great reformers and innovators always come from outside these classes, that the Spirit of the Lord shall come on a herds- man like Amos, and fishermen and peasants spread the Gospel through the world ; and that in politics, in literature, in science, as well as in religion, it is always true that " not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called." To the cultivated classes you have to look for a great deal that is precious and good, but for fresh impulse, in unbroken lields, you have to look outside them. And so the highest of all lives is conformed to the general law. More than that, "Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph," came thus because He was the })oor man's Christ, because He was the ignorant man's Christ, beciuse His word wj-s not for any class, but as broad as the world. He came poor, obscure, unlettered, that all who, like Him, were ])oor m 1 ) ' i 4 ' 174 TIIR FIRST DISCIPLES : NATHANAEL. and untouched by the finq-er of earthly culture, might in Him find their Th-other, tlieir Helper, and their Friend. "Phili]) e^aith unto him, Come and see." He is not going to argue the question. He gives the only possible rjnswer to it — "You ask me, can any good thing come out of Nazareth ?" " Come and see whether it is a good thing or no ; and if it is, and came out of Nazareth, well then, the quest) <>,i has answered itself." The quality of a thing cannot be settled by the origin of the thing. As it so hai)pe]ied, this Man did not come out of Naza- reth at all, though neitlier Philip nor Nathanael knew it ; but if He had, it would have been all the same. The right answer was " Come and see." Now, although, of course, there is no kind of correspon- dence betv/een the mere prejudice of this man Nathanael and the ro(»ted intellectual doubts of other generations, yet " Come and see" carries in it the essence of all Chris- tiaii apologetics. By far the wisest thing that any man who has to plead the cause of Christianity can do is to put Christ well forward, and let people look at Him, and trust Him to produce His own imixre^sion. We may argue round, and round, and round about Him for evermore, and we shall never convince as surely as by simply holding Him forth. " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." Yet we are so busy proving Christianity that we sometimes have no time to preach it ; so busy demonstrat- ing that Jesus Christ is this, that, and the other thing, or contratlieting the notion that He is not this, that, and the other thing, that we forget simply to present Him for men to look at. Depend upon it, whilst argumf^nt has its func- tion, and there are men that must l)e approached thereby ; on the whole, and for the general, the true wny of pro])agating Christianity is to proclaim it, and the second best way is to prove it. Our arguments do fare very often very much as did that elaborate discourse that a bishop once preached ■I II I'. THE FIRST DTSCirLES : NATHAN AEL. 175 it in (1. 1 not ^sible e out thing n, the thing Naza- ^w it ; The to prove the existence of a God, at the om] of which a simple old woman who had not followed his reasoning very intelliLrently, exclaimed, "Well, for all he says, I can't help thiiikiiic there is a God after all." The errors that are q^noted to lie confuted often remain more clear in the hearers' minds than the attempted confutations. Hold forth Christ — crv aloud to men, "Come and see!" and some eves will turn and some hearts cleave to Him. And. on the other side, dear brethren, j'ou have not done fairly by Christianity until you have complied with this invitation, and submitted your mind and heart honestly to the influence and the impression that Christ Himself would make upon it. II. — We come noAv to tlie second stage — the conversa- tion between Christ and Nathanael, whore we see a soul fastened to Christ by Himself. In general terms, as I remarked, the method by which our Lord manifests his Messiahship to this single soul is a revelation of His supernatural knowledge of liim. But a woi'd or two mav be said about tlie details. Mark the emphasis with which the Evangelist shows us that our Lord speala.^ this discriminating characterisation of Nathanael before Nathanael had come to Him : "He saw him coming." So it was not with a swift, penetrating glance of intuition that He read his character in his face It wag not that He generalised rapidly from one action which He had seen him do. It was not from any previous personal knowledge of him, for, obviously, from the w^ords of Philip to Nathanael, the latter had never seen Jesus Christ. As Nathanael w^as drawing near Him, before he had done anything to show himself, our Lord spoak'S the words which show that He had read his very heart. "Behold an Israelite indeed, in w^hom is no guile." That is to say, here is a man wdio truly re])resents tnat which was the ideal of the whole nation. The reference II ■i III fi 176 THB] FIKST DISCIPLES: .^ATHANAEL. it-' V I rs...!;: ■It iiiiii 'I' 'ill is, no clonbt, lo the old story of the occasion on which Jacob's iiii'ijc was chanijced to Isicel. Aiul we sliall neo a further reference to the same story in the sul)se(|uent vei'ses. Jncob had wrestled with God in that niyslei'ioiis scene by tin .'i^ 'v>k Jabbok, and had overcome, and had received ii,s: i of the name Jacob, "a supplanter," the name of I. • 'or as a Prince hast thou power with God and hasi pre\iiii- l." And, says Christ : — This man also is a son of I^vii' !, one of God's warriors, who has prevailed with Him by ]):a or. "In whom is no guile" — Jacob in his early l.fe ]i:i 6^ 3? WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. MSSO (716) 872-4:^03 W ^ '<*> ( 6^ mam 184 THi: FIRST DISOIPLfiS: ifil 'Ilil |l 11! h \> believest thou ? thoii slialt see s-n^iiter thin!^s than those." He accepts Nathaiiaers eonfession and the confession of his fellows. Human lij)S have given Him many i^Teat and wonderful titles in this chapter. John called Him the Lamb of Hod ; the first discii)les hailed Him as tiie '' ^lesFias, which is the Christ;" Nathanael fell before Him with the rapturous exclamiition, "Thou art the Son of God ; Thou art the Kinir of Israel." All tliese crowns had been put on His head by human hands, but here He ci'owns Himself. He makes a mi.^htier claim than any that they had dreamed of, and proclaims Himself to be the medium of all communication and intercourse between Heaven and earth. " Hereafter ye sh.ill see the heavens opened, and the an^^els of God ascending and descending ui)on the Son of Man." So, then, there are two great principles that lie in these verses, and are contained in, first, our Lord's mighty f.omiseto His new disci])les, and second, in our Lord's witness to Himself. Let me say a word or two about each of these. L — Our Lord's promise to His new disciples. Christ's word^ here may either be translated as a ques- tion or as an affirmation. It makes comparatively little dii^'erence to the substantial meaning whether we read "believest thou"? or "thou believest." In the former case there will be a little more vivid expression of surprise and admiration at the swiftness of Nathanael's faith, but in neither case are we to find anything of the nature of blame oi- of doubt as to the reality of his belief. The question, if it be a question, is no question as to whether Kathanael's faith was a genuine thing or not. There is no hint that he has been too quick with his confession, and has climbed too rapidly to the point that he has attained. But in either case, whether the word be a question or an ailirmatiou, we are to see in it the solemn and glad recog- BELIBVlNa AND SEEING IS.') i» nition of the reality of Nathunaol's ooiifosjsion and belief. Here is tlie first time that that word "belief came from Christ's lips ; and when we i-omember all the impor- tai^ce that has been attached to it in t]iesubse(i[ules were believers. Then, notice still further that our Lord here employs l;|." ,i|: 4 halt be still moi-e convii!ced when illu- minated l)y I\Ie. Thou shalt see even :is tjiou art seen. I saw thee, and that bound thee to ]Me ; thou shalt see Me, and that will confirm the bond." There is another antithesis, namely — between believing and seeing. "Thou believest — that is thy present; thou shalt see, that is thy hope for the future." Now I have already explained that, in the pro]'er primary meaning and ai>i)lication of the woi'ds, the sight which they i)romise is simi)ly the observance with the outward eye of the historical facts of our Lord's life which w(M'e yet to be learned. lUit still we may gather a truth from this antithesis which will be of use to us. "Thou Ijelievest — thou shalt see." Thai is to sav, in the loftiest region of spiritual experience you must believe first, in order that you may see. I do not mean, as is sometimes meant, by that statement that a man has to ti-y to force his understanding into the attitude of accepting religious truih in order that he may fli ! IS 18S THE FIRST DISCIPLES '. m &>•■. ^^ 11 •!"' ■ll\ "W'l'- ' ...1 J '?. ■"'*' 4'*.. > ;|#' ,,h • r\ ii I -ii bave an experience which will convince him that it is true. I mean a very much simpler thing than liiat, and a very mnch truer one, viz., this, that unless we trust to Christ and take our illumination from Him, we shall never behold a whole set of truths which, when once we trust Him, are all plain and clear to us. It is no mysticism to say that. What do you know about God ? — I put emphasis upon the word "know." — What do you know about Him, however much you may argue and speculate and think i)r()b;ible, and fear, and hojio, and question, about Him ? Whiit do you know about Him apart from Jesus Christ ? What do you know about human duty, apart from Him ? What do you know of all that dim region that lies beyond the grave, a])art from Him ? If you trust Him, if you fall at His feet and say " Rabbi I Thou art my teacher and mine illumination," then you will see. You will see God, man, yourselves, duty ; you will see light upon a thousand complications and peri)lexi- ties ; and you will have a brightness above that o " the noon-day sun, streaming into the thickest darkness of death and the grave and the awful Hereafter. Christ is the light. In that "light shall we see light." And just as it needs the sun to rise in order that my eye may behold the outer woild, so it needs that I shall have Christ shining in my Iltaven to illuminate the whole Universe, ii. order that I jnay see clearly. "Believe and thou shalt see." For only when we trust Him do the mightiest truths that affect humanity stand plain and 3lear before us. And besides that, if Ave trust Christ, we get a living dxperience of a multitude of facts and principles which are all mist and darkness to men except through their faith ; an experience which is so vivid and brings such certitude as that it may well be called vision. The world says, "Seeing is believing." So it is about the BELIEVING AND SKKINO. 1S9 in coarse thinq-s that yon can handlo, but about every thiii'Jr that is hi'^her tliau tliose invert tiio provorl), and you i;o.t the truth. " Seeini,^ is believini,'." Yos, in renard to outward tliingf^. Btdieving is sceiiiijf in rcijfard to (iod and spii'itual truih. " Delievest thou ? tliou shalt see." Then, thirdly, there is li'j^ht here about anotlior matter, the connection between I'aitli and ])ro'-^rc'f.fl. " Thou jhalt see i^reater thiuLTs tlian tliese A \vise teaelier stimulates his scholars from the l)et^inninL,% l)y yivinif ^li ho'' lucli tht ahead to be 1( them That does not drive theni to d('Sj)air ; it braces all th(ir powers. And so Clirist, as His lirst lesson to these men, substantially says, "You have learnt nothin.Lr yet, you are only beginning." That is true about us all. Faith at first, both in rei^urd of its contents and its quallt}', is very rudimentary and infantile. A man when lie is first converted — jirrhaps suddenly — knows aft-M* a fashion that he himself is a very sinful, wretched, [)()i>r creature, and he knows that Jesus Christ has died for him, and is his Saviour, and his heart goes out to Iliin, in confidence, and love, and obctlitnice. i>ut he is only standing at the door and peeping in yet. He has only ina.itered the ali)hal)et. He is but on the frontier of the promised land. His faith has brought him into contact with Infinite power, and what will be the end of that ? He will indefinitely grow. His faith has stai'tcii him on a course to which there is no natural end. As loiig as it keei)s alive he will be growir.r and growing, and gelling nearer and nearer to the grc;;: centre of all. So here is a grand possibility opened out in these sim[)le words, a possibility which alone meets what you need, and what you are craving for, whether you know it or not, namely, something that will give you ever new powers an< I acquirements ; something which will ensr.re your closer and ever closer approach to an absolute object of joy and I " r^ .! .• i V '•. 1 190 THE FIIIST DTS(TPL;:S: truth ; ROTrioUiin.LT tliat Avill cnsni-c yon pf^nlrst Ftairnntion and f,ni;iriiiit('o nnc('!i^in:r procrrrss. ]''\ crv iliiiii,' oNo jjfots Avoni out, sooner oi- later ; if not in tliis \V()rI(I, tlieii in ain")tlier. Tliei'e is on*' eonrsc^ on ^vlli^h a man can eiitei- ^vit.h the cei-tainty lliat tln'i-o is no end to it, that it Avill open out, and out, and out as In; advances — with the certainty that come life, come dealli, it is ail tlu' same. Wlicn the tree .qrows too tall for the preenhonse Ihey lift the roof, ami it tri'ows hiudier still. ^Vll<•tller you have your .iJfroAvth in tlii^ hnver woi'ld, or wlicMicr you have your top up in the lui^dilness and (he lilue of I'caNen, the gfrowth is in one direction. There is a way that secures endless proq-ress, and here lies the seciet of it : ''Thou believest ! thou shalt see greater thinps than these.'" Now, brethren, that is a grand jxissihility, and it is a solemn lesson for some of you. You professing Cliristian peojile, are yon any taller than you were when you were born ? Have yon grown at all ? Are yon growing now ? Have 3~on seen any further into the (!(^})tlis of .lesus Christ than yon did on that first day when you fell at Ilis feet and said, "Thou art the Son of God, Thou ai-t the King of Israel !" His promise to you th(^n was, "Thou believest I thou shalt see greater things." If yon have not seen greater things it is because your faith has broken tlown, if it has not expired. II. — Xow let me turn to the second thought which lies in these great words. We have here, as 1 said, our Lord crowning Himself by His own witness to His own dignity. " Hereafter ye shall see the Heavens opened." IMark how, with superbly autoci-atic iips. He bases this great utterance upon nothing else but His own word. Pj()i)hets ever said, "Thus saith the Lord." Christ ever said : "Verily, verily, I say unto you." "Because He could swear by no greater, He swore by Himself." He puts His own assui an ce i! 11. BEIilEvi^'t; AND .^EEINU. J'Jl aiice said, ;rily, \J no aiice insUwil of all aiyuiiicnl ati' itself above him, b(;held the ladder on which the ani;els of (jlod ascended and de.iccnded. So says Christ, you shall see, in no virion of the night, in no transitory appearance, but in a practical waking re, lit y, that ladder come down again, and the angels of God moving upon it in their errands of mercy. And who, or what, is this ladder? C rist. Do not read these words as if they meant that the angels of God were to come down on Him to help, and to honour, and to succour Him as they aven and earth, the ladder wdtli its foot upon the earth, in His humanity, and its top in the Heavens. " No man hath ascended up into Heaven save He Which came down from Heiven, even the Son of Man Which is in Heaven." My time will not allow me to expand these ttioughtsas I m I' li'"U I « 1 if j'." ; ill' -'i: i. I ' I il igt p\ m\' i i: jr ■-^f 5 :"7: 111-2 THE FIRST DTSCn'I.ES: II ejiiit to liJivc (lone : lot me i)iil \hr]\\ in the bi'leleat oiit- liiie. Christ is the mctliuin of all eomiMinication hetwoeii Ik'uvcn ami earth, iiiasmnch as He is tlu^ iiiediimi of all revelation. 1 lia\e spoken incidcniiilly ahout that in the former jiait of this Bejnion, i^o 1 do not dwell on it now. Christ is the ladder between Heaven and earth, inas- mueli as in Iliin the sense of sepaiaiion, and the reality of separation, are swept away. Sin has shnt Heaven ; there comes down from it many a blessing; njion inithankiul heads, but between it in its i)nrity and ihe earth in its muddy foulness "there is a great g'ulf fixed." It is not beeause God is great and 1 am small, oi- because He is Inlinite and I am a mere pm-point as against a great continent, it is not because He lives for ever, and my life is but a haiid-l)ieadth, it is not because of the diU'ei'enee between His Omniscience and my ignorance, His strength and my weakness, that I am paited from Him: " ^'o^lr sins have sei)arate '■■ T'- *■* ■'' .', 1 \^ ' , ■ ■ ' ■ fli '.' / . I •*< r'h ■ ./ |:^,,i-:n m ] ■ ' i i ■ : ^- ;f i .-s' ■ . 1 : ■ i ■ Ml. »! SERMON XV. CHRIST AND HIS CAPT0R3. *A8 soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ijround. Then asked He thciu asjaiu, Whom .-eok yc? And tli"y said, Jcsih of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I liave told j'ou that 1 am Ife; if therefore, ye seek Mo, let these go their way? That the saying might be fulUlled which lie spake, Of them which Thou gavest Mc have I lost uoac."- JouN xviii. 1-9. 'x HIS remarkable incident is narrated by John only. It fits in with the purpose which he himself tells us governed his selection of the incidents which he records. " These things are written," says he, near the end of the Gospel, "That ye might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life in His name." The whole of the peculiarities of the substance of John's Gospel are to be explained on the two grounds that he was writing a supplement to, and not a substitute for, or a correction of, the Gospels already in existence ; and that his special busine ss was to narrate such facts and ^\ oi Js as set forth the glory of Christ as the Only Begotten of the Father. The incident before us is, as I think, one of these. The Evangelist would have us see in it, as I gather from his manner of narrating it, mainly three things. He em- ■4 : h I t \^^ ' 'I \lh. 4" 198 CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS. 4 ' i' phasises that strange recoil of the wonld-be captors before Christ's majestic, calm " I am He." That whs a manifesta- tion of Christ's glory. He emphasises our Lord's patient standing there, in the midst of the awe-sti-nck crowd, and even inciting them, as it would seem, to do the work for which they had come out. That was a manifestation of the voluntariness of Christ's sufferings. And He emphasises the self-forgetting care with which at that supreme moment He steps between His faithless, weak friends and danger with the wonderful words, " If ye seek Me, let these go their way." To the Evangelist that little incident is an illustration, on a very low level, and in regard of a comparatively trivial matter, of the very same principle by which salvation from all evil in time and in eternity, is guaranteed to all that believe on Him : — 1. — First, then, consider this remarkable momentary manifestation of our Lord's glory. " I am He !" When they were thus doubly assured by the traitor's kiss and by His own confession, why did they not lay hands upon Him ? There He stood in the midst of them, alone, defenceless ; there was nothing to hinder their binding Him on the spot. Instead of that they recoil, and fall in a huddled heap before Him. Some strange awe and terror, of which they themselves could have given no account, was upon their spirits. How came it about ? Many things may have conspired to produce it. I am by no means anxious to insist that this was a miracle. Things of the same sort, though much less in degree, have been often enough seen ; when some innocent and illustrious victim has for a moment paralysed the hands of his would-be captors, and made them feel, though it were but transiently "how awful goodness is." There must have been many in that band who had heard Him, though, in the uncertain light of quivering moonbeams and smoking torches, they failed to recognise Him till He in: CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS. 109 ame ;e it. icle. ave and sof it lere ini, aiiis H© spoke. There must have been many more wlio had licard of Him, and many wiio suspected that tlioy were about to lay hands on a holy man, perhaps on a prophet. There must have been reluctant tools amon n may then woll stand for a partial fiiHiliiicTit of TTia nilurlity Avords, even thonjjfli theso wait for tlicir (:()ini>lt!t(^ acooni- pliBhnionts till tho hour whon ail i\w slicc^) aro ^Mtlicrcd into tho one fold, and no evil bcaHtn, nor weary journeys, nor barren pastures can harass them any more. This trivial incident, then, becomes an exposition of highest truth. Let us learn from such an use of such an eventto look upon all common and transitory circumstiuices as governed by the same loving hands, and woi'king to tho same ends as the most purely sp. ritual. Tho visible is tho veil which drapes tho invisible and clings so closely to it as to reveal its outline. The common events of life are all parables to the devout heart, which is the wise heart. They speak mystic meanings to ejirs that can hear. The redeeming love of Jesus is proclaimed by every mercy which perishes in the using ; and all things should tell us of His self-forgetting, self-sacrificing care. Thus, then, we may see in that picture of our Tiord's surrendering Himself that His trembling disciples might go free, an emblem of what He does for us, in regard to all our foes. He stands between us and them, receives theii* arrows into His own bosom, and says, " Let these go their way." God's law comes with its terrors, with its penalties, to us Avho have broken it a thousand times. The con- sciousness of guilt and sin threatens us all more or less, and with varying intensity in difl'erent minds. The weariness of the world, " the ills that flesh is heir to," the last grim enemy, Death, and that which lies beyond them all, ring you roun'J, my friends ! — What are you going to do in order to escape from them ? You are a sinful man, you have broken God's law. That law goes on crashing its way and crushing down all that is opposed to it. You have a weary life before you, however joyful it may sometimes be. Cares and troubles, and sorrows, and tears, and losses, and disappointments, •II 8 I m^ 1 IVlJir'; ' •' *■ ' ' ' -J .' ■ mm: ' 'i >:: 'tl .1 ill.''-' ^iiitii* ? y 206 CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS. and hard duties that you will not be able to perform, and dark days in which you will be able to see but very little liglit, are all certain to come sooner or later ; and the last moment will draw near when the King of Terrors will bo at your side ; and beyond death there is a life of retribution in which men reap the thincjs that they have sown here. All that is true, much of it is true about you at this moment, and it will all be true some day. In view of that, what are you going to do ? I preach to you a Saviour Who has endured all for ns. As a mother might fling herself out of the sledge that her child might escape the wolves in full chase, here is One that comes and fronts all your foes, and says to them " Let these go their way. Take Me." " By His stripes we are healed." *' On Him was laid the iniquity of us all." He died because He chose ; He chose because He loved. His love had to die in order that His death might be our life, and that in it we should find our forgiveness and peace. He stands between our foes and us. No evil can strike us unless it strike Him first. He takes into His own heart the sharpest of all the darts which can pierce ours. He has borne the guilt and punishment of a world's sin. These solemn penalties have fallen upon Him that we, trusting in Him, " may go our way," and that there may be no condemnation to us if we are in Christ Jesus. And if there be no condemnation, we can stand whatever other blows may fall upon us. They are easier to bear, and their whole character is different, when we know that Christ has borne them already. Two of the three whom Christ protected in the garden died a martyr's death ; but do you not think that James bowed his neck to Herod's sword, and Peter let them gird him and lead him to his cross more joyfully and with a different heart when they thought of Him that had died before them ? The darkest prison cell will not be so very dark if we remember that Christ ihiia 1 r 'iV 11: CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS. 207 lifl« been there before us, and death itself will be softeiuMl into shop because our Lord has died. " If therefore," says He, to the whole pack of evils bayin? round us, with their cruel eyes and their hungry mouths, "ye seek M(% let these go their way." So, brother, if you will fix your trust, as a poor, sinful soul in that dear Christ, and ^'et behind Him, and put Him between you and your enemies, then, in time and in eternity, that saying will be fulfilled in you which He spake, *' Of them which Thou guves*" Me, I have lost none." Ilii ^li 1 iimi |j{i| 1 1 'fff 1 m VtM III 1 1 '-jiiiP Sermon XVI. SKY, EARTH, AND SEA : A PARABLE OF GOD. I!i ♦ ■ I ' ■ ' 1 : . 1 ^:,':;?rV •; ■ , s > ,\ if mi^t' 55fe! i'. 'j ; V •w , 1(1 . «; - f^*". i' K '' U. i ■> ■ ■ ■ t ; ■ ', ^: 5' v| ■■ tu if In :'' ^ .;»i. I !'' ' •. ■ ; , ••«. • ' ' . ..;> 1, ^ -;:: :^i. I; i Ml -^ r 5 ..^ 1 ;:5 j:' « « f ■ 1 SERMON XVI. SKY, EATITTT, AND SEA: A PARABLE OF COD. "Thy mercy, Lord, is in the hoavons; and thy fiiithfulncsa rcarhi tli unto the clouds. Thy riphtcousncps is like the preat nioinitains; Thy Ji'dL'inoi'ts arc a great dec]'; Lord. Thou iirc.-crvost man and boast. How oxrcllput isTliy h vir.,i-'-kindn('s>, O Lord ! tacriforc the children of men put their trust under tlio the shadow of thy wings." Psa. xxxvi. 5-7. ;! This wonderful description of the manifold bri,i,^htness of the Di\ine nature is introduced in this psalm with singular abruptness. It is set side by side with a vivid picture of an evildoer, a man who mutters in his own heart his godlessness, and with obstinate determination plans and plots in forgetfulness of God. Without a word feo break the violence of the transition, side by side witli that picture, the Psalmist sets before us these thoughts of the character of God. He seems to feel that that was the only relief in the contemplation of the miserable sights of which the earth is only too full. We should go mad when we think of man's wickedness unless we could look up and see, with one quick turn of the eye, the Heaven opened and the throned Love that sits u}) theic gazing on all the chaos, and working to soothe sorrow, and to purify evil. 'f If 'lli !'■ •■ 1* ■ r1^ •i*,! 212 SKY, EARTH, AND SEA : Perhaps there is another reason for this dramatic and striking swiftness of contrast between the godless man and the revealed God. The true test of a life is its power to bear the light of God being suddenly let in upon it. How would yours look, my friend, if all at once a window in Heaven was opened, and God glared in upon you ? Set your lives side by side with Him. They always are side by side with Him whether you know it or not ; but you had better bring your " deeds to the light that they may be made manifest " now, than to have to do it as suddenly, and a great deal more sorrowfully, when you are dragged out of the shows and illusions of time, and He meets you on the threshold of another world. Would a beam of light from God, coming in upon your life, be like a light falling upon a gang of conspirators, thai would make them huddle all their implements under their cloaks, and scuttle out of the way as fast as possible ? Or would it be like a gleam of sunshine upon the flowers, opening out their petals and wooing from them fragrance ? Which ? But I turn from such considerations as these to the more immediate subject of my contemplations this morn- ing. I have ventured to take so great words for my text, though each clause would be more than enough for many a sermon, because my aim now is a very modest one. I desire simply to give, in the briefest way, the connection and mutual relation of these wonderful words; not to attempt any adequate treatment of the great thoughts A', hich they contain, but only to set forth the meaning and interdependence of these manifold names for the beams of the Divine light, which are presented here. The chief part of our text sets before us God in the variety and boundlessness of His loving nature, and the close of it shows us man sheltering beneath God's wings. These are the two main themes for our present consideration. '> i A PARVBLE OP GOD. 213 out ch? the Inorn- text, (iiany e. I ction ot to lights ming the here, the the od's sent I. — We have, first, God in the boundlessness of His loving nature. The one pure light of the Divine nature is broken up, in the prism of the psalm, into various rays, which theo- logians call, in their hard, abstract way. Divine attributes. These are " mercy, faithfulness, righteousness." Then we have two sets of Divine acts — judgments, and the preservation of man and beast ; and finally we have again " lovingkindness," as our version has unfortunately been misled, by its love for varying its translation, to rendei- the same word which begins the series and is there called " mercy." Now that "mercy" or "lovingkindness" of which my text thus speaks, is very nearly equivalent to the New- Testament " love " ; or, perhaps, still more nearly equiva- lent to the New Testament " grace." Both the one and the other mean substantially this — active love communi- cating itself to creatures that are inferior and that might have expected something else to befall them. Mercy is a modification of love, inasmuch as it is love to an inferior. The hand is laid gently upon the man, because if it were laid with all its weight it would crush him. It is the stooping goodness of a king to a beggar. And mercy is likewise love in its exercise to persons that might expec t something else, being guilty. As a general coming to a body of mutineers with pardon and favour upon his lips, instead of with condemnation and death ; so God comes to us forgiving and blessing. All His goodness is for- bearance, and His love is mercy, because of the weakness, the lowliness, and the ill desert of us on whom the love falls. Now notice that this same " quality of mercy " stands here at the beginning and at the end. All the attributes of the Divine nature, all the operations of the Divine hand lie within the circle of His mercv — like diamonds A 'M m 1 * I IF rl f ; ■ i 214 SKY, B\RTH, AND SEA : set in a golden ring. Mercy, or love (lowing ont in bless- ings to iiiCerior and guilty creatures is the root and ground of all (lod's character ; it is the foundation and impulse of all His acts. Modern science reduces all modes of physical energy to one, for which it has no mime but — eno:gy. We are taught by God's own revelation of Him- self — and most especially by His final and perfect reve- lation of Himself in Jesus Christ — to trace all forms of Divine energy back to one which David calls mercy, which John calls love. It is last as well as first, the final upshot of all reve- lation. The last voice that speaks from Scripture has for its special message "God is Love." The last voice that sounds from the completed history of the world will have the same message, and the ultimate word of all revelation, the end of the whole of the majestic unfolding of God's purposes will be the proclamation to the four corners of the universe, as from the trump of the Archangel, of the name of God as Love. The northern and the southern pole of the great sphere are one and the same, a straight axle through the very heart of it, from which the bounding lines swell out to the equator, and towards which they converge again on the opposite side of the world. So mercy is the strong axletree, the northern pole and the southern, on which the whole world of the Divine perfections revolves and moves. The first and last, the Alpha and Omega of God, beginning and crowning and summing up all His being and His work, is His mercy, His lovingkindness. But next to mercy comes faithfulness. " Thy faithful- ness reacheth unto the clouds." God's faithfulness is in its narrowest sense His adherence to His promises. It implies, in that sense, a verbal revelation, and definite words from Him pledging Him to a certain line of action. *' He hath said, and shall He not do it." " He will not alter the thing that is gone out of His lips." It is only a A r/.UABLE OP GOD. 215 i TOUJ^h lines !8 thfiil- is in . It finite ction. 1 not >nlv a (itul wholuis iictvially Ki)oken to men who can be a "faith- ful God." Me will not jKilter with a double sense, keej)- inur His word of promise to the ear, and breakin;^ it to the liojie. i)Ut not only His articulate promises, but also His own });).st actions, bind Him. He is always true to these ; and not only continues to do as He has done, but discharj^'cs every obli,<,'ation which His past imposes on Him. The ostrich was said to leave its egi,''s to be hatched in the sand. Men brin^ men into i)ositions of dependence, and then li^ditly shake responsibility from careless shoulders. But God accepts tlie cnies laid upon Him by His own acts, and dischar^g'^es them to the last jot. He is a " faithful Creator." Creation brings obligations with it ; obligations on the creature ; obligations on the Creator. H' God makes a being, God is bound to take care of the being that He has made. If He makes a being m a given fashion, He is bound to provide for the necessities that He has created. According to the old proverb, if He makes mouths it is PHs business to feed them. And He recognises the obligation. His past binds Him to certain conduct in His future. We can lay hold on the former manifestation, and we can plead it with Him. ''Thou hast been, and Therefore Thou must be." " Thou hast taught me to trust in Thee ; vindicate and warrant my trust by thy unchangeableness." So His word. His acts, and His own nature, bind God to bless and help. His faithfulness is the expression of His unchangeableness. " Because He could swear by no greater. He sware by Himself." Take then these two thoughts of God's lovingkindness and of God's faithfulness and weave them together, and see what a strong cord they are to which a man may cling, and in all his weakness be sure that it will never give nor break. Mercy might be transient, and arbitrary, but w^hen you braid in " faithfulness " along with it, it becomes 216 SKY, EARTH, AND SEA : fixed as the pillars of Heaven, and immutable as the throne of God. Only when we are sure of God's faithfulness can we lift up thankful voices to Him, " because His mercy endureth for ever." A despotic monarch may be all full of tenderness at this moment, and all full of wrath and sternness the next. He may have a whim of favour to-day, and a whim of severity to-morrow, and no man can say, " What doest thou ?" But God is not a despot. He has so to, speak " decreed a constitution." He has limited Himself. He has marked out His path across the ^^reat, wide region of possibilities of the Divine action ; He has buoyed out His channel on that ocean, and declared to us His purposes. So we can reckon on God, as astronomers can foretell the motions of the stars. We can plead His faithfulness along with His love, and feel that the one makes sure that the other s'lall be from everlasting to everlasting. The next beam of the Divine brightness is righteous- ness. " Thy righteousness is like the great mountains." Rigliteousness is not to be taken here in its narrow sense of stern retribution which gives to the evildoer the punishment that he deserves. There is no thought here, whatever there may be in other places in Scripture, of any opposition between mercy and righteousness, but the notion of righteousness here is a broader and greater one. It is just this, to put it into other words, that God has a law for His being to which He conforms ; and that what- soever things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure down nore, those things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure up there ; that He is the archetype of all excellence, the ideal of all moral completeness : that we can know enough of Him to be sure of this that what we call right He loves, and what we call right He practises. Brethren, unless we have that for the very foundation of our thoughts of God, we have no foundation to rest on. »» m A PARABLE OP GOD. 217 Unless we feel and know that " the Judge of all the earth doeth right, and is right, and law and righteousness have their home and seat in His bosom, and are the expression of His inmost being, then I know not where our confi- dence can be built. Unless ' Thy righteousness, like the groat mountains,' suriounds and guards the low plain of our lives, they will lie open to all foes. Then, next, we pass from the Divine character to the Divine acts. Mercy, faithfulness, and righteousness all converge and flow into the great river of the Divine " Judgments." By judgments are not meant merely the acts of God's punitive righteousness, the retributions that destroy evil- doers, but all God's decisions and acts in regard to man. Or, to put it into other and briefer words, God's judgments are the whole of the " ways," the methods of the Divine government. So Paul, alluding to this very passage when he says " How unsearchable are Thy judgments,'* adds, as a parallel clause, meaning the same thing, " and Thy ways past finding out." That includes all which men call, in a narrower sense, judgments, but it includes, too, all acts of kindness and loving gifts. God's judg- ments are the expressions of His thoughts, and these thoughts are thoughts of good and not of evil. But notice, in the next place, the boundlessness of all these characteristics of the Divine nature. " Thy mercy is in the heavens," towering up above the stars, and dwelling there, like some Divine aether fiilling all space. The heavens are the home of light, the source of every blessing, arching over every head, rimming every horizon, holding all the stars, opening into abysses as we gaze, with us by night and by day, undimmed by the mist and smoke of earth, unchanged by the lapse of centuries ; ever seen, never reached, bending over us always, always far above us. So the mercy of God towers I J ' s ; i : ! f 21s SKY, KMiril, AND SKA : ubovo us, iiiul sUiops down lowjinls uh, riuiH us :ili jiIkmiL ;iiul iircluvs uvtT us ;ill, sheds down its (Uuvy IxMUMliclions l),v iii^Hil and by dav ; is fillI('ndour; is iumi* us iwvv to hU'Ss :iimI ^U('('«tnl^ and lu'lp, and iiolds us :ill in its blue iMMind. "Thy I'ailhl Illness icarlu'lh lo llu> clouds." S(ran;^'»' thai (Joil's fixed failhruiniv-is should be (loinpariMl (o (he \or\ enil>leuKs of inulalion. The clouds are unstable, Ihey whirl and nudt and chanije. Slran^M' lo think of tlu-i unal(erabh> lailhiulness as reai'hinjj: to Ihcun ! May it not be tlijit Ihe very niutiibilitv of tlu^ niulabh^ may In* the means ol" manir<>slin;j: (iu* unalterable Hamen(>ss of (lud's faitlil'ul i>ur|tose, of His uiu'han^^fable love, and of II is ever consistent di\din,i;H ? May not the appai'cnt Incon- i^ruity be a part of tlu> felicity of the bold words ? Is it m>t (rue that earthly thinfj:s, as they chanj^e (heir forms an«l uudt away, K'aviui,^ no ti;ud< behind, i)hantoinlil still obey (he behests of (hat Diyine faithful- ness, and leather and dissolye and bi-eak in the brief showers of bless! nix, or short, sharp crashes of Htorin at (he bidding of that steadfast puri)ose which works out one uisalterable tU'sit;n by a thousand insti'umeiits, uiul chani^oth all (hini^s, beii^i:: in itself unchantii'ed ? The thinjx that is eternal, even the faithfulness of God, dwells amid, and shows itself tlirouL;h, the things that are tem- poral, tlie tlyini? clouds of change. Again, "Thy righteousness is like the great mountains." Like these, its roots are fast and stable ; like these, it stands lirm for ever : like these, its summits touch the tleeting clouds of liunuui circumstance ; like these, it is a shelter and u refuge, inaccessible in its steepest peaks, but affording numy a cleft in its rocks, wdiere a man may hide and be safe. But, unlike these, it knew no beginning, ^ud shall know no end. Emblems of permanence as they r A IVVIlAUIiK OK (lOI). 2VJ i: ulioiit id ions I'H ;iii(l l.-t (>V(M' .H l)ilM> U) tlii> o, iln'V (>r Ml. 4 \' it iiul 1k» IIic (lod'H or II in incon- ' Is it • forms iliUc iis lidil'iiU brio!' I'll) :it iH out s, iliul Tlu' dwells U'ln- uins.'" lose, it ill the it is a peaks, 1 nuiy tilling, IS they are, tlioiiL,'h Olivet looks down on .I(M'iis;i!nin its it did when M<'h'iii/(M|rlc was its kin;^', and Tahor and llerrnori stand ai lln'.V did, hcfon^ Initnan lips had nanxMl thrrn, llicy arc wrmin;^' awiiy hy wint(!r stor'nis and sinnrncr heals. r>nl, as isiiiah has tiuif^dit lis, when thcearlh is old, (JodV ini;^ht and rnerey are yoiin^' ; for "the rnoimtains nhail ih'piut and the hills he n^nioveil, but My kindness shiill not (h'i);u't Ironi thee." " The (Mirth shall wax old lik*' a L,^u'nlen^, but My ri,L,dit»MMisness shall not brs abol'shed." It is ni tre stabht than tln^ mountains, and firmer than the (irniest thing's upon earth. Then, with wonderlul poetical b(;auty a!id vividness of contrast, there follows upon the emblem of the^'nMt moun- tains of (Jod's ri^d»t(!ousn(^ss the emblem of the " mi'^'htj de(»p" of His ju(li,'menliS. l[(!ro towers VH feet lie the wat(!rs of the bay. So th(^ iri<,''l!t(M)usnesH spriii;.,'S up like some j^M'eat clill', risint,' shecsr from the water's edij:!^ whih^ its feet arc laved by the sea of th.(5 i>ivin<» Jud^Mnents, unfathomable and shoreless. The mountains and the sea are the two grandest things in nature, and in (lurir combination sublime ; the one tiio home of (;alm and silence, the other in })er])etual motion. P)Ut the mountain's roots arc; deeper than the dei)ths of the sea, and though the judgments are a mighty dc^ep, the right- eousness is deeper, and is the bed of the ocean. The metaphor, of course, implies obscurity, l)ut what sort of obscurity ? The obscurity of the sea. And wliut sort of obscurity is that ? Not that which comes from mnd, or anything added, but that which comes from dej)th. As far as a man can see down into its blue-green de])ths they are clear and translucent ; but where the light fails and the eye fails, there comes what we call obscurity. The sea is clear, but our sight is limited. And BO there is no arbitrary obscuritj' in God's dealings, and we know as much about them as it is possible for us i tit'. li rf :, -i^ i 1 i i^hsg 1 >^^ ■ ^i^H ffl^H '^M^HHH 9 1 :; fl w ..9 it > » i I^^^H^^^I J^B m 1 220 SKY, EARTH, AND «EA : to know ; but we cannot see to the bottom. A man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than a man on the level beach. The further you climb the further you will see down into the " sea of glass mingled with fire " that lies placid befoi-e God's throne. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a picture before it is finished ; of a buildingbeforethescaffoldingis pulled down, and it is a hazardous thing for us to say about any deed or any revealed truth that it is inconsistent with the Divine character. Wait a bit ; wait a bit ! " Thy judgments are a great deep." The deep will be drained off one day, and you will see the bottom of it. Judge nothing before the time. But as an aid to patience and faith hearken how the Psalmist finishes up his contemplations : " Lord I Thou preservest man and beast." Very well then, all this mercy, faithfulness, righteousness, judgment, high as the heavens, deep as the ocean, firm as the hills, it is all working for this — to keep the millions of living creatures round about us, and ourselves, in life and well-being. The mountain is high, the deep is profound. Between the mountain and the sea there is a strip of level land. God's righteousness towers above us ; God's judg- ments go down beneath us ; we can scarcely measure adequately the one or the other. But upon the level where we live there are the green fields, where the cattle browse, and the birds sing, and men live, and till, and reap, and are fed. That is to say, we have all enough in the plain, patent facts of creation and preservation of man and animal life in this world to make us quite sure of what is the principle that prevails up to the very top of the in- accessible mountains, and down to the very bottom of the unfathomable deep. What we know of Him, in the bless- ings of His love and providence, ought to interpret for us all that is perplexing. What we understand is good and loving. Let us be sure that what we do not yet understi n 1 A PARABLK OF GOD. ^ >« L is {?oo(l and loving' too. The web is of one textu^'c throii{,']i- out. The least educated ear can catch the music of tlie simpler melodies which run tlirou,<,'h the Great Composer's work. We shall one day be able to appreciate the yet fuller music of the more recondite parts, which to us seem only jangling and chaos at present. It is not His melody but our ears that are at fault. But we may well accept tlie obscurity of the mighty deep of God's judgment, wlu'n "we can see plainly that, after all, the earth is full of His mercy, and that the eyes of all things wait on God, and He giveth them their meat in due season. II. — So much, then, for the great picture here of these boundless characteristics of the Divine nature. Now let us look for a moment at the picture of man sheltering beneath God's wings. " How excellent is Thy lovingkindness, God ! there- fore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings." God's lovingkindness, or mercy, as I ex- plained the word might be rendered, is precious^ for that is the true meaning of the word translated " excellent." We are rich when we have that for ours ; we are poor without it. Our true wealth is to possess God's love, and to know in thought and realise in feeling and reciprocate in aJGEection His grace and goodness, the beauty and perfect- ness of His wondrous character. That man is wealthy who has God on his side ; that man is a pauper who has not God for his. " How precious is Thy lovingkindness, therefore the children of men put their trust." There is only one thing that will ever win a man's heart to love God, and that is that God should love him first, and let him see it. " We love Him because He first loved us," is the New Testament teaching. Is it ^ ot all adumbrated and foretold in these words : " How precious is Thy lovingkindness, God ! therefore the children of men put their trust ?" f r 222 SKY, EARTH, AND SEA : •: M ill !:':':'' We m.iy be driven to wors.iip after a sort by power; we may be smitten into some cold admiration, into Homo kind of reluctant siilijection and tremblin;^ reverence, by the manifenUition of Divine i)erfectionB. Hut there is one thinff that wins a man's heart, and that is the sijjrht of (lod's lioart; and it is only when wo know how precions 1 lis lovin^'kindness is that we shall be drawn towards Him. And then this last verse tells ns how we can make God onr own : " They pnt their trust under the shadow of Thy winq'S." The word here rendered, and accurately ren- dered, "put their trust," has a very beautiful literal meaninpf. It means to flee for refuge, as the man-slayer mij^ht flee into the stronj? city, or as Lot did out of Sodom to the little city on the hill, or as David did into the cave from his enemies. So, with such haste, with such inten- sity, staying for nothing, and with the effort of your whole will and nature, flee to God. That is trust. Go to Him for refuge from all evil, from all harm, from your own souls, from all sin, from hell, and death, and the devil. Put your trust under " the shadow of his wing." That is a beautiful image, drawn, probably, from the grand words of Deuteronomy, where God is likened to the *' eagle stirring up her nest, fluttering over her young," with tenderness in her fierce eye, and protecting strength in the sweep of her mighty pinion. So God spreads the covert of his wing, strong ard tender, beneath which we may all gather ourselves and nest^le. And how can we do that? By the simple process of fleeing unto Him, as made known to us in Christ our Saviour; to hide ourselves there. For let us not forget how even the tenderness of this metaphor was increased by its shape on the tender lips of the Lord : " How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings." The Old Testament took the emblem of the eagle, sovereign, and strong, and fierce ; A PARA RLE OF OOD. tho Now Tostamont took the cmblcrn of tli«' domostic f(t\vl, poacojiblo, and |;,'ontk>, and afl'cctioiiato. Let us {]rv to that Christ, by hnniblo faith, with tlie pU>a on our lips — " Cover my (IcfoncoU'ss \\o;\{\ With tho sbadow of Thy winj?';" and thon all tho Godhead in its morcy, its faithfulni^S';, its ri,i,dit('ou«ness, and its judi^nnonts will b< on our side; and wo shall know how ])recions is tho lovinj^dvindnoss of tho Ijord, and find in Him tho homo and liiding-placo of onr hearts for ever. JU 1 wm ■I! V B* d h I 4lS fri •I Sermox XVII. WHAT MEN FIND BENEATH THE WINGS OF GOD. "r 'fi R^I SERMON XVII. WHAT MEX Fl.ND BENEATH THE WINGS OF GOD. 'TlicvsTinll hcabiiiidanOvsarisIlM with tbo f-,.,,„ . , .i-, , n.:,kn then, ,Iri„k of ,l,c ri,;,- „f Tllv |,uA.„r'l "'' "'"'™' "'"' '"'"" ''"'" x.';':;;."" ™" " ""' '°"'""'" -' ""^ '"■n'.VKh. »>,„„ „csoo„„„t." ,.„„„ In the precedincr verses we saw .-. wonderful picture of he boundless perfections of God ,• His lovini-hdness Sis o/h- ""'\*~-' »" of His two-fofd Tct, he depths of His judgments and the plainness of His merci- ful preservation of man and beast. In these verses ^" hBve an equally wonderful picture of the blessedness o^ ^he ffod y, the ele„,ents of which consists in four hW, satisfaction represented nnder the eniblem of a fea t iov' represents un.ler the imagery of full draughts fr^m; fl wing nver of .lelight ; life, pouring from God as IZu. tain ; light, streaming from Him as source And this picture is connected with the previous one by a very simple link. Who are they who "shall be abun < an.ly satisfied ? " The men " who put their t s beni' the shadow of Thy wings." That is to say, the s mp e exercise of conli.lence in God is the channel th^^h Q 2 h:}: it iii i . '^■'' -.: liENKATH THE WINCJS OF (lOD. which iill tho f'.ihiosH ol' Divinity i);isMes into, iuul tills oui* onii)tinesH." Obsorvo, too, tliat tho wiiolc of tlio biossinufs hero jn'omisod arc to bo ro.ufanlod as prosont and not future. "They sliall bo abundantly satislicMl" would bo far nioro truly rendered in consonance with the Hebrew : "They (trr satisfied"; and so also we should read "Thou r/r>.s7 make them drink ol' the river of Thy pleasures ; in Thy licfht do we see liu^ht." The Psalmist is not spoakiny^ of any future blessedness, to be realised insotno far-ot!, indefinite day to come, butof what is i)ossibleevon in this cloudy and sorrowful life. My text was true on the hills of Palestine, on the day when it was spoken ; it may be true amongst the alleys of INIanchester to-day. My puri)ose this morn- ing is simply to dejd with the four elements in which this blessedness consists — satisfaction, joy, life, light. I. — Satisfaction ; " Tfiey shall be abun(hmtly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house." Now, I suppose, there is a double metaphor in that. There is an allusion, no doubt, to the festal meal of priests and worshippers in the temple, on occasion of the peace-offering. And there is also the simpler metaphor of God as the host at His table, at which we are gue&^^g. " Thy house " may either be, in the narrower sense, the temple ; and then all life is repre- sented as being a glad sacrificial meal in His presence, of which "the meek shall eat and be satisfied." Or Thy " house " may be taken in a more general sense ; and then all life is represented as the gathering of children round the abundant board which their Father's providence si)reads for them, and as glad feasting in the mansions of the Father's house. In either case the plain teaching of the text is, that by the might of a calm trust in God the wdiole mass of a man's desires are filled and satisfied. What do we want to satisfy us ? It is something almost awful to think of the BENEATH THE WINGS OF GOD. tn multiplicity, iind tlu^ vui'loty, and tlio iiiii)L'mtivi!ness of tlu^ ra«^in^»' dcsiivs Avhicli every liumiui soul cari'iert about within it. The heart is like a nest of callow lled'^'elinfj^s, every one of them a jj^reat, wide o})en, ^'•apin^' beak, that ever needs to have food i)ut into it. Heart, mind, \vill, appetites, tastes, inclinations, weaknesses, bodily wants — the whole ci'owd of these are cryins^ foi* their in(3at. The Book of Proverl)s says there are three things that are never satisfied : the grave, the eartli that is not filled with water, and the lire that never says " It is enou. t:.'>*' ! ; **! ; i- ' i , •"^1 .;;'.^i; ''fe; .V ;>■ f;/!! :^: : , :? k: ,u (i(jd, and of all thin^'-s. Christ will feed my heart Avith love if I will oi)en my heart for the entrance of His love. Christ will feed my will with blessed commands if I will submit myself to His sweet and gentle, and yet imjierative, authority. Christ will satisfy all my longings and desires with His own great fulness. Other food palls ujion man's a])i)etite, and we wish for change ; and })liysiologists tell us that a less wholesome and nutritious diet, if varied, is better for a man's health than a more nutritious one if uniform and monotonous. But in Christ there are all consti- tuents that are needed for die building up of the human sjjirit. And so we never v/eary of Him if we only know His sweetness. After a world of hungry men have fed ni)on Him, Ho remains inexhaustible as at the beginning ; like the bread in His own miracles, of which the pieces that were broken, and ready to be given to the eaters were more than the original stock, as it appeared wlien the meal began. Or like the fabled feast in the Norse Walhalla, to which the gods sit down to-day, and to-morrow it is all there on the .board, as abundant and full as ever. So if we have Christ to live r- on, we shall know no hunger ; and "in the days of famine we shall be satisfied." Oh ! brethren, do you know what it is ever to feel that your hungry heart is at rest ? Did you ever know what it is to say, " It is enough " ? Have you anything that satisfies your appetite and makes you blessed ? Surely haste to get more of the world's dainties men s eager shows that there is no satisfaction at its table. Why will you spend " your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfies not," as Indians in famine eat clay which fills their stomachs, but neither stays their hunger, nor ministers strength ? Eat and your soul shall live. II. — Now, turn to the next of the elements of blessed- ness here, joy. " Thou makest them drink of the river of Thy pleasures." BENEATH THE WINGS OF OOD. 231 There may be u i)()ssible reference here, couched in the Avoi'd '• pleasures," to the Garden of Eden, with the river that watered it i)arting into four heads ; for " Eden " is the singukir of the word which is here translated •' pleasures," or " delight." If we take that reference, which is very questionable, there would be suggested the thought that amidst all the pain and weariness of this desert life of ours, though the gates oi Paradise are shut against us, thej' who dwell beneath the shadow of the Divine wing really have a ])aradise blooming around them ; and have flowing ever by their side, Avilh tinkling music the paradisaical river of delights, in which they may bathe and swim, and of which they may drink. Certainly the joys of communion Avith God surpass any which unfallen Eden could have boasted. But, at all events, the plain teaching of the text is that the simple act of trusting beneath the shadow of God's wings brings to us an ever fresh and flowing river of gladness, of which we may drink. The whole concep- tion of religion in the Bible is gladsome. There is no puritanical gloom about it. True, a Christian man has sources of sadness which other men have not. There is the consciousness of his own sin, and the contest that he has daily to wage : and all things take a soberer colouring to the eye that has been accustomed to look, however dimly, upon God. Many of the sources of earthly felicity are dammed up and shut off from us if we are living beneath the shadow of God's wings. Life will seem to be sterner, and graver, and sadder than the lives " that ring with idiot laughter solely," and have no music because they have no melancholy in them. That cannot be helped. But what does it matter though two or three surface streams, which are little better than drains for sewage, be stopped up, if the pure river of the water of life is turned into your hearts ? Surely it will be a gain i 'I -iri ' ji f '■■'■ '' ';;.!■ ■ . . . >■ ^ .■ I- . • ■ " "s. ■■ i: ' ■ 1' .^1 r^;; i\" ■ ' .U( i \ '44. 1- J^ ■■ '". : .«"♦ Hiittili' :i: BENEATH THE WINGS OF GOD. if the sadness, which has joy for its very foundation, is yonrs, instead of the lau^^hter which is only a mocking" mask for a death's head, and of wliich it is true tliat even *' in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness." Better to be " sorrowful, yet always rejoicing," than to be glad on the surface, with a perpetual sorrow and unrest gnawing at the root of your life. And if it be true that the whole Biblical conception of religion is of a glad thing, then, my brother, it is your duty, if you are a Christian man, to be glad, whatever temptations there may be in your way to be sorrowful. It is a hard lesson, and one which is not always insisted upon. We hear a great deal about other Christian duties. We do not hear so much as we ought about the Ci:ristian duty of gladness. It takes a very robust faith to say, " Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." But unless we can say it we have an attainment of Christian life yet unreached, to which we have to aspire. But be that as it may, my point is simply this — that all real and profound possession of, and communion with, God in Christ will make us glad ; glad with a gladness altogether unlike that of the world round about us ; far deeper, far quieter, far nobler, the sister and the ally of all great things, of all pure life, of all generous and lofty thought. And where is it all to be found ? Only in fellowship with Him. "The river of thy pleasures" may mean something yet more solemn and wonderful than pleasures of which He is the Author. It may mean pleasures tuhwh He shares, the v.ery delights of the Divine nature itself. The more we come into fellowship with Him, the more shall we share in the very joy of God Himself. And what is His joy ? He delights in mercy ; He delights in BENEATH THE WINGS OF GOD. 233 I I j.i st'lf-commuiiiciition ; He is the blessed, the happy '^'od because He is the giving God. " He delights in His love. He rejoices over " His penitent child " with singing." In that blessedness we mav share ; or if that be too high and mystical a thought, may we not remember Who it was that said : '" These things speak I unto you, that My joy may remain in you ; " and Who it is that will one day say to the faithful servant : " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord " ? Christ makes us drink of the river of His pleasures. The Shepherd and the sheep drink from the same stream, and the gladness which filled the iieart of the Man of Sorrows, and lay deeper than all His sorrows. He imparts to all them that put their trust in Him. So, dear brethren, what a blessing it is for us to have, as w^e may have, a source of joy, frozen by no winter, dried up by no summer, muddied and corrupted by no iridescent scum of putrefaction which ever mantles over the stagnant ponds of earthly joys ! Like some citadel that has an unfailing well in its courtyard, we may liave a fountain of gladness within ourselves which nothing thai- touches the outside can cut off. We have but to lap a hasty mouthful of earthly joys as we run, but we cannot drink too full draughts of this pure river of water which makes glad the city of God. in. — We have the third element of the blessedness of the godly represented under the metaphor of life, pouring from the fountain, which is God. " With Thee is the fountain of life." The w^ords are true in regard of the lowest meaning of " life " — physical existence, — and they give a wonderful idea of the connection between God and all living creatures. The fountain rises, the spray on the summit catches the sunlight for a moment, and then falls into the basin, jet after jet springing up into the light, and in its turn recoiling into the darkness. The water in the fountain, the w^ater in the spray, the water in the basin, 8 i ;;^! li'i it lit! p! i; iS ;l ■I »»' :>:54 HKNEATH THK WIN(JS OF (lOD. arc all one. WluM'ovcr there is life there is God. Tiie creature is bound to the Creator by a mystic bonhijsically so completely as to annihilate yourself. You can do so ajyirituaUy, and some of you do it, and the consequence is that you are dead, dead, DEAD ! You can be made alive from the dead, if you will lay hold on Jesus Christ, and get His life-^nving spirit into your hearts. IV.— Light. " In Thy light shall we see light." God is "the Father of lights." The sun and all the stars are only lights kindled by Him. It is the very crown of revelation that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Light seems to the unscientific eye, which knows nothing about undulations of a luminiferous aether, to be the least material of material things. All joyous things come with it. It brings warmth and fruit, fulness and life. Purity, and gladness, and knowledge have been symbolised by it in all tongues. The Scripture uses light, and the sun, which is its source, as an emblem 11 I 11 ■ir r f-1 23(; BENKATir Till-: WIXCS OP (lOD. ;i . m \ >i for Ci 0(1 ill Ilis holliR'ss, and IjIcsscmItioss, and oinniscionce. This ^r^i'vid Avord hvw st'Onis to ])oint eliiully to litjflit as kno\vl('d;^('. This sayliii,'' is triu^, as the f'orinor chuise was, in relation to all the ll^lit which men have. The inspiration oi" the Almijjrhty ,L,aveth him uiuk'rstandlng. Tlie faculty by which men know, and all the exercise of that faculty, is His j,'ift. It Is in the measure in which God's li^lit comes to the eye that the eye l)eholds. " IJi,dit" may mean not only the faculty, but the medium of vision. It is in the measure in which (iod's li,^ht comes, and because His light comes, that all light of reason in human nature sees the truth which is its light. God is the author of all true thoughts in all mankind. The spirit of man is a candle kindletl by the. Lord. But as I said about life, so I say about light. The material or intellectual aspects of the word are not the main ones here. The reference is to the si)iritual gift which ])elongs to the men " who put their trust beneath the shadow of Thy wings." In communion with Him Who is the Light as well as the Life of men, we see a whole universe of glories, realities, and brightnesses. Where other eyes see only darkness, we behold " the King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off." Where other men see onlv clondiand and mists, our vision will pierce into the unseen, and there behold "the things which are," the only real things, of which all that the eye of sense sees are only the fleeting shadows, seen as in a dream, while these are the true, and the sight of them is sight indeed. They who see by the light of God, and see light therein, have a vision which is more than imagina- tion, more than opinion, more than belief. It is certitude. Communication with God does not bring with it superior intellectual perspicuity, but it does bring a perception and experience of spiritual realities and relations, which, in UENEATil TIIK \VIN(iS OF GOD. t.':i7 respect of clt'iirucss iind ciTtjiiiity, inuy bo called sinlit. Mimy of us walk in darkiioss, who, if \v«' wwo hut in comiiumion with CJod, would s(!o tlu» loiu' hill-side hhi/iuir witli chariots and horses of tire. Many of us i^'rope in l)er[)lexity, who, if we were but hidiny- under tlu; shadow of God's wind's, would see the truth and walk at liberty in tlie li^lit, wliicli is knowledge an; . I ! ;r; J! •fit *■<.,'* iff: Vli i,j' : I 1 rnj: 4. ^ HERMON XVIII. •il THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS. ca;;^uho s^ :;?i;;;;r m^s r"" '"" '''''^'' "^'^" "^' ^'- - ^^'-'^-^ ^^ OXE or two points of an expository character will serve to introduce what else I have to say on these words. The text is, I suppose, generally understood as if it pointed to the fact that we are called the sons of God as the great exemplification of the wonderfulness of His love Ihat IS a perfectly possible view of the connection and meaning of the text. But if we are to translate with perfect accuracy we must render, not "that we should be If \ „ 'In!' ''' ''''^''' ^^'"^ ''^^ '^"^''^'^ be called the Sons ot God. The meaning then is that the love bestowed is the means by which the design that we should be called His sons is accomplished. What John calls us to contem- plate with wonder and gratitude is not onlv the fact of this marvellous love, but also the glorious end to which It has been given to us and works. There seems no reason for slurring over this meaning in favour of the more vague "that "of our version. God gives His great and R i) 'I-:!. ^ ft:*' ill 'If ui , j ; : If rf7r# 'i^j- 242 THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS. wonderful love in Jesus Christ, and all the gifts and powers which live in Him like fragrance in the rose. All this lavish bestowal of love, unspeakable as it is, may be regarded as having one great end, which God deems worthy of even such expenditure, namely, that men should become, in the deepest sense, His children. It is not so much to the contemplation of our blessedness in being sons, as to the devout gaze on the love which, by its wonderful process, has made it possible for us to be sons, that we are summoned here. Again, you will find a remarkable addition to our text in the Revised Version, namely, " and such we a^e." Now these words come with a very great weight of manuscript authority, and of internal evidence. They are parenthetical, a kind of rapid " aside " of the writer's, expressing his joyful confidence that he and his brethren are sons of God, not only in name, but in reality. They are the voice of personal assurance, the voice of the spirit " by which Ave cry Abba, Father," breaking in for a moment on the flow of the sentence, like an irrepressible glad answer to the Father's call. With these explanations let us look at the words. I. — The love that is given. We are called upon to come with our little vessels to measure the contents of the great ocean, to plumb with our short lines the infinite abyss, and not only to estimate the quantity but the quality of that love, which, in both respects, surpasses all our means of comparison and conception. Properly speaking, we can do neither the one nor the other, for we have no line long enough to sound its depths, and no experience which will give us a standard with which to compare its quality. But all that we can do, John would have us do, — that is, look and ever look at the working of that love till we form some not wholly inadequate idea of it. u :l a ■ ' ^m THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS. 24)5 els to with imate both and We can no more "behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us" than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey's end unwearied and ready for their tasks as when it began. Here are we, ninety odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed by its heat, lighted by its beams, and touched for good by its power in a thousand ways. All that has been going on for no one knows how many .eons. How mighty the Power which produces these effects ! In like manner, who can gaze into the fiery depths of that infinite Godhead, into the ardours of that immeasurable, incom- parable, inconceivable love ? But we can look at and measure its activities. We can see what it does, and so can, in some degree, understand it, and feel that after all we have a measure for the Immeasurable, a comparison for the Incomparable, and can thus " beho]'nition of this sonship by the ehild'H heart. I have already referred to the clause added in tlie Revised Version, "and such we are." As I said, it is a kind of "aside," in which John adds the Amen for himself and for his poor brothers and sisters, toilini? and moilinf]f obscure amonjjf the crowds of Ephesus, to the q-reat truth. He asserts his and their plad consciousness of the reality of the fact of their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He asserts, too, the present possession of that sonship, realising ii as a fact, amid all the commonpluco vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims of life's little day. " Such we are " is the " Here am I, Father," of the child answering the Father's call, " My Son." He turns doctrine into experience. He is not content with merely having the thought in his creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature responds to the great truth. I ask you, do you do that ? Do not be content with hearing the truth, or even with assenting to it, and believing it in your understandings. The truth is nothing to you, unless you have made it your very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the orthodox confession. Unless it has touched your heart and made your whole soul thrill with thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is nothing to you. The mere belief of thirty -nine or thirty-nine thousand Articles is nothing ; but when a man has a true heart-faith in Him, Whom all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes life, and the doc- trine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my brother ? Can yrm say, " And such we are ? " Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say "I know that I am a child of God." There are many very good people, whose tremulous, timorous lips have never ventured to say " I know." They will say, " Well, I hope," or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough,. 11 THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS. 2-1') they will put in an adverb or two, and say " I humbly hope that 1 am." It is a far robUvSter kind of Christianity, a far truer one, aye, and a humbler one, too, tliat throws all considerations of my own character anil merits, and all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind me, and when Cto(1 says "My son !" says " My Father ;" ann Ho shall appaar, wo sliall bo like llini ; for we shall see turn as He is."— 1 John iii. 2. I HAVE hesitated, as you may well believe, whether I should take these words for a text. They seem so far to surpass anything th; t can be said concerning them, and they cover such immense fir^ds of dim thought that one may well be afraid lest one siiwtuld spoil them by even attempting to dilate on them. And yer they are so closely connected with the words of the previous verse, which formed the subject of my last sermon, that I felt as if my work were only half done unless I followed thafe sermon with this. The present is the prophet of the future, sayr^ my text : " Now we are the sons of God, ahd"' (not " ' ^* ") " it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Some mtfi_ say : " Ah ! Noiv are we, but we shall be — nothing !~ John does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a -on of Gr<)d he > S'J *! I, ft- i: ^rx; THK rNI{K\ EAl.EI) FlTrUE will always ho so. Tho ro aro ihrcolliini^s in lliis v(msi> how. if Nvc aiv (Jod's childriMi, our sonsliij) makes lis clcai* vision of an«l iho |)orfo(.'t likoiu^ss to Him Who is our lifo. " Now arc wo tlio sons of (Jod,'' thoivforo wt^ shall he. Wo an^ the sons : wo do not know what wo shall ho. Wo aro tho sons, and l1uMvfon\ tliouL;li tluMT ho a y-roat circumforonco of hlank iunoraiu'o w^ to our futuro, yot, hh>ss(»d ho His namo ! tluM't» is a ixrvAi lii;hi hurmiij^ in tho middlo of it. " Wi' know that wluMi Ho shall a|)|)t\ir wo shall ho liko Him. for wo shall Si>o Him as Wo is.'' 1. — Tho fact of sonshij) makos us (piito sure of llio futuro. 1 am not oonoornod to ap])raiso tin- rt>lativt' value of tho various ai'i^umonts and ]>!•! )l's, or. it may ho. |)i'osum})tions, whuh may roi'ommond iho doclrino of a futuro lifo to men. hut it schmus to mo that tho stronirt'st n^isons for ho- lii>vinij in aiiothor .vovid ai'o those two :- -first, that .losus Christ was raist>d from tho do:id and has ixono up thoro ; and. set'oml. that a man lioro oaii jtriv. and trust, and love liod. and fot'l that ho is His ohild. As \v:i.>> noticed in tho l^rcHcdini; sennon. the word romh'riMl "sons" mi.uht more acturatoly ho transialevi ^ children." if so. wo may fairly say. " ^^'e aie tho fhililn < of Ood now — and if we are children now. we shall be irrown up some time.'" Child- hood leads to maturitv. 'The infant hocomes a man. That is to say, lu- that hero, in an infantile way, is stam- merinir with his jioor. unskilled lijis tho nunie "Abba! Father!" will one dav conn to speak it fnllv. He that • J. « dimly trusts, lii^ that partially lovi^s, he that can lift up his heart in some more or less unwortliy prayer and aspira- tion after Cod, in all these emotions and exercises, has the Ij^ OV THK SONS OF (JOI). o f)? ' ^Tcjit proof ill liiniscir Unit huvM ciiiotioiiH, sncli i-chition- sliip. cjiii iK'Vcc Im' ])iiI mm ciwl to. 'rii(^ rooJH have ^inw down tliroiij^li tl)(^ t('ni|t()i'iil, and li!iv(i laid liol Iw uioi-c ciHidihlo tlian that a man wlio vui h)ok up and say, " My I'atlicr" Hliall Ixi cnislu'd by whiit hcfalls the mkm'c oiitsido of him ; any- tliini^' sccMiis (o MK^ lo ho nion^ h(^lioval)i('! thjin to sn})- pose thai tlio naturo which is (;ai)al)h> of thosts elevating' emotions and ;isi)i rations of conli(hmc(; and hoi)0, which ciin icnow Clod and yearn after Him, and can h)V(^ Him, is (o he \vii)ed (Mit like a ^niat by the linjj;'er of fx.'aUi. Th(5 material haH nothinijf lo do with these feelinufs, and if I icnow myself, in liowever feeljje and imperf(H;t a depfree, lo be tlie son of (Jod, I carry in (lie conviction tlie very l)ied^^e and seal of etei'iial life. Tiiat is a (lioii^dit " whose very sw coniidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming, (ii. 28.) 'J'hat "coming," then, is the "manifestation " of Christ : and it is at the })ei'iod of His coming in His glorj' that His servants " shall be like lUm. and see Him as He is." Clearly then it is Christ whom Ave shall see and become like, and not the Father invisible. To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like Him. That way of traiisforniation by i»e- holding, or of assimilation by the power of hwing con- templation, is the blessed way of enno])ling character, which even here, and in human relationships, has often made it easy to put off old vices and to clothe the soul Avith unwonted grace. ]\Ien have learned to love and gaze upon some fair character, till some image of its beauty has passed into their ruder natures. To love such and to look on them has been an education. The same process is exemplified in more sacred regions, when men here learn to love and look upon Christ by faith, and so become like Him, as the sun stamps a tiny copy of its blazing sphere I ,.•■■■ !■, ll' OF THE SONS OF OOD. 2(>'.\ on thr eye that looks at it. lUit all tlu ^t' aic bill ]i()or far- oil hints and low in'cImU's (»l" the ciuT^'y Aviih which ihat bk'ssed vision of the j^^loritied ('hiisl shall work on the hajjpy hearts that behold Hini, ■ind of the C'oni])leteneHrt of tlie likness to Hii>i which \\ ill be })rinted in li^'ht up- on their faces. It matters not, tlioiiLfh it doth not yet ap})eur wliut we shall be, if to all the questionings of our own hearts we have this for our all sulticient-answer, "we shall be like ITnu." As gootl old Uichard I)axter lias it : — J'l ill "My knnwlcilf^p (if thiU lifo is siiifill, Tlif c.vo of faith is itiiii ; But, 'lis enough that Clirist knows all, AiMi 1 shall »)clikf' Him '." " It is enough for tlie servant that he be as his Lord,'* There is no need to go into the dark and ditTicult questions about the manner of that vision. He HimFelf prayed, in that great intercessory prayer, " Father, I will that these Whom Thou hast given ]\Ie be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.'' That vision of the glorilied manhood of Jesus Christ — certain, direct, clear, and worthy, whether it come through sense or through thought, to be called vision is all the sight of God that men in Heaven ever will have. And through the milleniums of a growing glory, Christ as He is will be the manifested Deity. Likeness will clear sight, and clearer sight will increase likeness. So in blessed interchange these two will be cause and efi'ect, and secui-e the endless progress of the re AND THE SEEK1::g SHEPHERD. iJV ill i i'ti m i 4 1 : fc '■ xw ; . f;,l ' ■it ■ ■'•» m ' ' '' *•• I' :2: , 1. ..-^ I i I i SERMON XX. THE LOST SHEIP AND THE SEEKING SHEFHERD. tlKM^iiur"!^"';" fnmdre,] S1H.0P. and one of th.in ho gono astray. .,o,l> hon„t .oavo tt.f mneu-an.Muri.saml ,,oeth .nto the niountaitui, and se.Je manv, and the strayed be but one. 8till there is a keener ioV ui the recovery of the one than in the unbroken possession of the ninety-and-nine. That feeling in a man may be only selhshness, but homely as it is— when the loser is If I '>ih I l( i r 2(;s THE LOST 8HEEP AND d' :l i "I c: I, It y (jrod, tind the lost are men, it becomes the means of utter- inur and illustratinn' that truth concerninj^'- God which no reli.uio]! but the (Jj'oss has ever been bold enouyh to l)roclaim, that He cai'es most for the wanderers, and rejoices over the return of the one that vent astraj- more than over the ninety-and-nine who never wandered. There are some significant ditferences between this eut 1 am not about to venture on all the thoughts which this parable suggests, nor even to deal with tlie niidn lesson which it teaches. I wish merely to look at the two figures — the wanderer and the seeker. 1 . — First, then, let us look at that figure of the one wandej-er. Of course I need scarcely remind you that in the im- mediate application of the parable in Luke's Gospel, the ninety-and-nine wei-e the respectable people who thouglit the publicans and harlots altogi;;hei* too dirty to touch, arid regarded it as very doubtful conduct on the part of this young Rabbi from .Nazareth to be mixed up with peoi)le whom nobody with a proper regard for whited sepulchres would have anything to do with. To them He answers, in effect — I am a shepherd. That is my vindi- i ini- tho U'll, of ith ted He di- y'f THE SEEKING SHEPHERD. ■2i3 cation. Of course a slieplienl ijoes after and cares ior tlie lost sheep. He does not ask al)ont its worth, or anythinc: else. He simply follows the lost l)ecanse it is ]osr. ft may be a poor little creature after all, but it is lost, and that is enouL;h. An founcth astray," not "which is ij;one astray." It pictures the process of waudering-, not the result as acconiplished. We see the shee}), poor, silly creature, not Jj^oiiiij: anywhere in particular, only there is a sweet tuft of .irrass here, and it crops that ; and here is a bit of ground wliere there is soft walkin*.*', and it ij^oes there ; and .-;(>, step by step, not nieaninfJi' anythinij', not knowin.u: where it is going, or that it /.s going anywhere ; it goes, and goes, antl goes, and at last it finds out that it is away from its beat tm the hillside — for sheep keep to one bit of hillside generally, as any shepherd will tell you — and then it ])egins to bleat, and most helpless of creatures, fluttering and excited, rushes about amongst the thorns and brambles, or gets mired in some ([uag or other, and it will never find its way back of itself until somebody conies for it. '• 8o," says Christ to us, " there are a great many Ox you that do not mean to go wrong ; you are not going any- where in ])articulai', yon do not start on your course wiili any intentions either way, of doing either right or wrong, of keeping near (lod, or going away from Him, but you simply go where the grass is sweetest, or the walking easiest : and look at the end of it : where you have got to. You have got away from Him. Now, if you take that series of parables in Luke xv. and read the stories there, you will see three different sides given of the ])rocess by which a man's heart strays away from God. There is the sheep that w^anders. That is partly conscious, and voluntary, but in a large measure, simply yielding to inclination and temptation. Then I 3 THE SEEKINd SHEPHHRI). •271 'Oil to. IK I es ay is e, there is the coin that truiulU'ri awiiy nnder some piece ol' funiiture, and is lost — that Is a |)lctiU'e of ihe uiaiiner in Avhich a man, without volition, almost mechanieallv Hornetiijirs, slides into sins and disappears as it were, and gels covered over with the dust of evil. And then there is the worst of all, the lad that had full knowledoe of m hat he was doiusJT. " I am sJioin.g into a far oil" country ; I cannot stand this any hm^er — all restraint and no liberty, and no power of doing what 1 like with my own : and always oblig"ed to obey and be dependent ou my father for my pocket money ! Give me wdiat belongs to me, for good and all, and let me go ! Thai is the picture of the worst kind of wandering, when a man kno\vs what he is about, and looks at the merciful restraint of the law of God, and says: "No! I had rather be far awav : and my own master, and not always bo ' cribl)e(l, cal)ined and conhned ' with these limitations." The straying of the half-conscious sheep may seem more innocent, but it carries the poor thing aw^ay from the shepherd as completely as if it had been wholly intelligent and voluntary. Let us learn the lesson. In a world like this, if a man does not kncv.- very clearly where he is going, he is sure to go wrong. If you do not exercise a distinct determination to do God's will, and to follow in His footsteps Who has set us an example ; and if your main purpose is to get succulent grass to eat and soft |)laces to walk in, you are certain before long to wander tragically from all that is right and noble .^nd pure. It is no excuse for you to say ; " I never meant it ;" " I did not intend any harm, I only followed my own inclinations." " More mischief is wrought " — to the man himself, as w^ell as to other people — "from want of thought than is wrought by " an evil will. And the sheep has strayed as eifectually, though, when it set out on its journey, it never thought of 1^1. straying. Young men and womei. remember and take this lesson. •eginning life ! 070 THE LOST SHEEP AND i f " t. h h r I Si r" z ft: (5i < It 3': 1 1 T)nt thou there is nnotlier thiiii^- that 1 must toiu'li "'tr a moment. Tn tlie Revised Version yon will find u very tiny alteriition in the words of my text, which, yet, makes a largfe diflei'ence in the sense. The last clause of onr text, as it stands in onr IMble, is, " and seeketh that which is (/(jncixHtray ;" the Revised Version, more correctly, reads : — "and seeketh that which /.s (joint/ astray." Now, look ;it the difference in these tAVO renderinuis. In the former, the process is rei)resented as finished, in the correct i-endei'in;:;' it is represented as g'oing' on. And that is what I would press on you, the awful, solemn, necessai'ily progressive character of our wandei'ings from God. A man never gets to the end of the distance that separates between him and the Father, if his face is turned away from God. p]very moment the separation is increasing. Two lines start from each other at the acutest angle and diverge further apart from each other the farther they are produced, until at last the one may be away up by the side of God's throne, and the other away down in the deepest depths of hell. So accordingly my text carries with solemn pathos, in a syllable, the tremendous lesson : " The sheep is not gone, (Joi'ikj astray." Ah ! there are some of my hearei's who are daily and hourly increasing the distance between themselves and their merciful Father. Now the last thirg here in this picture is the contrast between the descri})tion given of the wandering sheep in our text, and that in 8t. Luke. Here it is represented as wandering, there it is represented as lost. That is very beautiful and has a meaning often not noticed by hasty readers. Who is it that has lost it ? We talk about the lost soul and the lost man, as if it were the man that had lost /ii>ns('/J\ and that is true, and a dreadful truth it is ! But that is not the truth that is taught in this parable, and meant by us to be gathered from it. Who is it that has lost it ? He to Whom it belonged. I THE SEEKTXC; SHEPHERD. 27:'> *■??' That is to say, where vei' a lu^art poor words now, seokini,' yon by many a ])rovi(lence, -^eekin'i' yon hy His Gospel, by His Spirit ; and will never be satisfied till He has fonnd yon ii^ yonr finding Him and tnrninj^' yonr sonl to Him ! Rnt, I beseech yon, do not fori,''et the solemn lesson dniwn from the other form of the parable which is jj^ivea in my text : — if so he thai Hn find it. There is a ])ossibility of failnre I What an awfnl ])ower yon have of bnrying yonrself in thesepnlchre as it were, of yonr own self-will, and hiding' yonrself in the darkness of yonr own nnbelief ! Yon can frnstrate the seekinu^ love of God. Some of yon have done so — some of yon have done so all yonr lives ! Some of yon. perhaps, at this moment are trying" to do it, and conscionsly endeavonring to steel yonr hearts against some softening that may have been creeping over them whilst I have been speaking. Are yon yielding to His seeking love, or wandering fnrther and fnrther from Him ? He has come to find yon. Let Him not seek in vain, but let the Good Shepherd draw yon to Himself, wjien, lifted on the Cross, He giveth His life for the sheej). He will restore yonr sonl and carry yon back on His strong shonlder or in His bosom near His loving heart to the green pastures and the safe fold. There will be joy in His heart, more than over those who have never wandered ; and there will be joy in the heart of the returning wanderer, such as they who had not strayed and learned the misery could never know, for, as the profound Jewish saying has it, " In the place where the penitents stand, the perfectly righteous cannot stand." »: ^% 'IL ving, y my T 2 n f flij 1 iilli'' i |i T^l 1 1 1! . , " ih m>t ' < P . , mF ' 1 : iii ■§ - 1 E <, ^: 2i 11 1 3i i. j • 1 ; f ; i ^1 Sermon XXI. THE TWO-FOLD ASPECT OF THE DIVINE WORKING. :*!( IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) L i.O I.I Hi 128 1 2.5 >^ 1^ 12.2 t lis IIIIIM 1.8 L25 ill U 16 ^^ ^/ % /A *>v^ '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation iV ^-^ ss <> LV ^ 23 WEST MAIK STREET WEBSTER, NY. M580 (716) 872-4503 o^ . -rT^--: Ml i ', irr ;■■' P flH,' t rf f m ! ■i: .^U SERMON XXI. THE TWO-POLD ASPECT OP THE DIVINE WOBKI.NG. You observe thut the words " shall he," in the last cause, are a supplement. Thev are nnitn „..„„ ■in. I ir, f„„t ii, .. , . ^ quite unuecessarv. dn,l m fact they rather hinder the sense. " hey destroy the completeuess of the antithesis between the two ha es ' waJoTX Lo'l"" ''^''r ''"" ""'- """^ ^"P"°- "^S"^" jongeta far deeper and fuller meaning. "The way of voir T'""^"" *" '""^ ""•"='^* = "•" destruction to the worke,^ of miquity." It is the same way which i. natareof the man determines which it shall be to him That IS a penetrating word, which goes deep dov. ' ot human life we are indebted for this book of Proverbs ha.I pondered for many an hour over the perplexed and I ; :m) THK TWO-FOLD ASPECT coiiipliciitt'd fates o\' inon, and tlioy cryntallised their rellexions at last in this tliouuht. They have in it struck upon a ])rineipie which e\i>lains a iri'eat ni;my thin.ufs, ;ind teachi'S us a irreat many soh'Uin k'ssons. Let us ti'y to ^vi a liohl ol' wiiiit is meant, and tiien to h)ok at some ap])lica- tions and illustrations of the i)i'inci)le. 1. — Fii'st, then, let me just try to put clearly the mean- ing and Itearinsj: of these ^vol•ds. " The way of the Lord" means, sometimes in the Old Testament and sometimes in the New, relij^don, considered as the way in which God desires a nnin to walk. So we read in the New Testament of "the way" as the desit^nation of the pi'ofesslon and l)ractice of Christianity ; and "the way of the j^ord " is often used in the Psahns for the path which He traces for man by His sovereij^n will. Ihit that, of conrse, is not the meaninn: here. Here it means, not the road in which God jn-esci-ibes that we should walk, hut that road in which He Himself walks ; or, in other ^^ords, the sum of the Divine action, the soleuin footsteps of God through Creation, JVovidence, and History. His goings forth are from everlasting. His way is in the sea. His way is in the sanctuary. Modern language has a whole set of i)lirases which mean the same thing as the Jew meant by "the way of the Lord," only that Go(.l is left out. They talk about the "current of events,'* " the general tendency of things," " the laws of human alfairs," and so on. I, for my part, prefer the old- fashioned " Hebraism." To many modern thinkers the whole drift and tendency of human affairs affords no sign of a person ilirecting these. They hear the clashing and grinding of opposing forces, the thunder as of falling avalanches, and the moaning as of a homeless wind, but they hear the sound of no footfalls echoing down the ages. This ancient teacher had keener ears. Well for us if we share his faith, and see in all the else distracting mysteries of life and history, "the way of the Lord I" OF THE DIVINE WORKINTI. •isi ling but the r us ting But not only docs tlic cxiJi'cssion i)oint to (he oju'nition of 51 ])('rsoniil Diviiu^ Will in liunum jtH'jiirs, l)ut it (;oncoivc8 of tlijit ojiorjition ;is one, a uniform and consistent whole. II(AVC(ver conijjlicated, and sonictiincs ai)part!ntly contra- dictory, tiie individual events were, there was a unity in them, and they all convergerinei|)le of onr text. This treiiiendons congeries of }K)\vers in the inidst of which we live does net cjire whether wo go with it or jigjiinst it, only if we do the one we shal! i)rosj)er, Jiiid if we do the other we shall very likely be made an end of. Try to stop a train, and it will run over you and niurder you ; get into it, and it will carry you smoothly along. Our lives are sur- ronmled with i)()wers, which will carry onr message!- md be ' \\r slaves if we know^ how to command nature by obeying it, or will imi)assively strike us dead if we do not. Again, in onr physical life, as a rnle, virtue makes strength, sin bi-ings i)nnishnH>nt. " Riotous living " makes diseased bodies. Sins in the flesh are avenged in the ilesh, and there is no need for a miracle to bring it about that he who sows to the Ilesh shall " of the Ilesh reap cor- ruption." (Jod entrusts the punishment of the breach of the laws of temperance and morality in t!ie body to the " natin-al" operation of such breach. The inevitable con- nection between sins against the body and disease in the body, is an instance of the way of the Lord — the same set of principles and facts — being strength to one man and destruction to another. Hundreds of young men in Manchester — some of whom are listening to me now, no doubt — are killing themselves, or at least are ruining their health, by Hying in the face of the plain laws of purity and self-control. They think that they must " have their fling," and "obey their instincts," and so on. Well, if they must, then another " must " will insist upon coming into play — and they must reap as they have sown, and drink as they have brewed, and the grim saying of this book about profligate young men will be fulfilled in many of them. " His bones are full of the iniquity of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the grave." Be not deceived, God is not mocked, and His way avenges bodily transgressions by bodily sufl'erings. OF THE DIVINK WOllKlNCJ. And then, in hij.her regions, on the wliolc, jjfoodncss niJikt'S bloHHrdtu'SH, .md evil brinjjfs ruin. All the powers of (fod'ri universe, and all the tenderness of (Jod's heart arc on the side of the man that does rinht. The stars in their courses tij,dita^Mlnst the man that fii,ditsa,i,'ainst Him : and, on the other hand, in yieldinL,' thyself to the will of (iod and following,' the dictates of Ilis commandments, "Thou HJialt make a leaijue with the beasts of the field, and the stones of the Held shall be at i)eace witli thee." All things serve the soul that serves God, and all war against him who wars against his Maker. The way of the Loi'd cannot but further and help all who love and serve Him. For them all things mest work together for good. \\y the verj* laws of God's own being, which necessarily shai)e all His actions, the whole " stream of tendencv without us makes for righteousness." In the one course of life we go with the stream of Divine activity which i)ours from the throne of God. In the other we are like men trving to row^ a boat kj/ Niagara. All the rush of the mighty torrent will batter us back. Our woi'k will be doomed to destruction, and ourselves to shame. For ever aiul ever to be good is to be well. An eternal truth lies in the facts that the same word " good " means pleasant and right, and that sin and sorrow are both called "evil." All sin is self-inflicted sorrow, and every " rogue is a roundabout fool." So ask j^oui'selves the question: "Is my life in harmony with, or opposed to, these Omnipotent laws which rule the whole field of life ?" Still further, this same fact of the two-foid aspect and operation of the one way of the Lord will l)e made yet more evident in the future. It becomes us to s})eak very reverently and reticently about the mattei', but I can conceive it possible that the one manifestation of God in a future life may be in substance the same, and yet that it may produce opposite effects upon oppositely disposed f 2cSi; THR TWO-FOM) ASPECT 1 * Nv W'^"17!a m asiils. According'' to tho old mystical illustration, the some hi'Jit that melts wax hardens clay, and the same ai)()caly])se of the Divine nature in another world nuiy lo one man be life and joy, and to another man may be teri'or aiul despair. I S7 ibont see life ti re- el of r>r](l, ease ell? We n on all the lost thing's will lie roinul at the bottom. Conscience gets (IhIKmI anil so}»histicat(Ml here. Hut the icy cold of death will wake it up, and the new i)osition will^nve new insight into the true character of our actions. You see how often a man at the end of life; has his eyes cleared to see his faults. IJut how much more will that he the case hereafter ! When the rush of ])assion is past, and yposite ell'ecls streamed from it, and it was " a cloud and darkness to them, hut it jjfave liirlit by ni«,dit to these." lOverythin;^' «lepends on whicli side of the pillar you choos(> to see. The ark of God, which ])rou^lit dismay and di'ath anion^'' false ^'ods and their worshipi»ers, l)roii<,dit blessini,' into the liumlde house of Obed Kdom, the man of (Jath, with whom it rested for three months l)efore it was set in its place in the eitv of David. That which is meant to l)e the savour of life unto life must either be that or the savour of death unto death. Jesus (!hrist is st)/n>'t/iitif/ to each of us. For you who have heard His name ever since you were chihlren, your relation to Him settles your condition and your prospects, and moulds vour character. Either He is for vou the tried Corner-stone, the sure Foundation, on which whoso- ever builds will not be confounded, or He is the stone of stumblinir, a.irainst which whosoever stumbles will be broken, and which will crush to jmwder whomsoever it falls upon. " This Child is set for the rise " or for the fall of all who hear His name. He leaves no man at the level at which He found him, but either lifts him up nearer to God, and i)urity and joy, or sinks him into an ever-descend- ing i)it of darkening separatio^i from all these. Which is He to you ? Something He must be — your strength or your ruin. K you commit your souls to Him in humble faith, He will be your Peace, your Life, your Heaven. If you turn from His offered grace, He will be your Pain, your Death, your Torture. " What maketh Heaven, that maketli hell." Which do you choose Him to be ? I' (J li »' i'' -1 : .^^ H I ft iJ lil. i:h i Sermon XXII. THE UXnVEAHIED GOD AXI) WEAIHED MEN. "t( V 2 it-' ■. m 'II ill:', "■a U I : '" I I, J*' Wri'' Wl.l SERMON XXII. THE UNWEARIED GOD AND WEARIED MEN. be «„,y . . ._,„„ rt,, ,,,, „,„' „,„„ I^^tor"!,; ;■';,"," 'lldf'""" """' '"'""""' iiKiuiu ui, with wiags as raglps ; tl.ov shal] nin m , , MroiiBtli ; llioj sliaU and not famt.»-Isiuu .xl.! 28.31. ' "" "'• """■^' ^ •'"" ^Hcy shall walk. THIS magnificent chapter is the prelude or overture to he grand music of the second part of the prophec es o Isaiah Whatever differences of opinion thire nay be a to the date or the authorship of that half of the hit an 1 hT-t"" "^r^*"" ""' " ^"^^ " connected who e' and that it is spoken as if from the midst, and for the encouragement of the e.xiles in Babylon. Is first words are its keynote : " Comfort ye, comfort ve My tre " That purpose is kept steadily in view througho it ancUn foundation of hope and consolation for Babylonian exiles or for modern Englishmen, to that grand vision of the enthroned God "sitting on the circle^of the a"h before Whom the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers " " They build too low, Who build beneath the Sky. :l< M M 2\H THK UNWKARJEl) COD J..: 1 V A I' For iKitions and for individuals, ii\ vii'w of ])olitical disasters oj' of private sorrows, tlie only holdfast to wliich cheerful liope may clini*' is the old conviction, "The Lord God Omnipotent reij?neth." The final verses of this introdiictoi-y chai)terai"e I'emark- able for the frecjuent occurrence of " fainteth " and " is weary." They come in every sentence, and if we note their use we shall .i^'^et the essence of the hope and conso- lation which the })r()i)het was anointed to pour into the wounds of his own i)eoi)le, and of every heavy-laden soul since then. Notice how, first, the prophet points to the unwearied God ; and then his eyes dro]) from Heaven to the clouded, saddened earth, where there are the faint and the weak, and the sti-onn' becoming faint, and the youths fadin*,' and l)ecomin. it'' l':l '..V M ■/9 t , " > I! 5^ n 5'; . *. THE UNWEABIED GOD none the poorer ; works, and is never wearied ; lives, aid with no tendency to death in His life ; flames with no tendency to extinction in the blaze. The bush burned and was not consumed : " He fainteth not, neither is weary." And let me say, before I go further, here is a lesson for us to learn, of meditative reflection upon the veriest commonplaces of our religion. There is a tendency among us all to forget the indubitable, and to let our religious thought be occupied with the disputable and secondary parts of revelation, rather than with the plaii deep verities which form its heart and centre. The common- places of religion are the most important. Everybody needs air, light, bread and water. Dainties are for tie few, but the table which our " religion " sometimes spreads for us is like that at a rich man's feast — plenty of rare dishes but never a bit of bread ; plenty of wine and wine-glasses, but not a tumbler-full of spring water to be had. There are parts of our faith that are of less irnpor- tance. The most valuable parts are the well-worn tr.iths, the familiar commonplaces that every little child knows. Meditate, then, upon the things most surely believed, and ever meditate until the dry stick of the commonplace truth puts forth buds and blossoms like Aaron's rod. Every pebble that you kick with your foot, if thought about and treasured, contains the secret of the universe. The commonplaces of our faith are the food upon which our faith will most richly feed. And so here, dear brethren, in the old, old truth, that we all take for granted, as being so true that we do not need to think about it, lies the source of all consolation, and hope for men, for churches, for the world. We all have times, depending on mood or circumstances, when things seem black and we are weary. This great truth will shine into our gloom, like a star into a dungeon. Are that io not L, and have lings will Are AND WEARIED MEN. 297 onr hearts to tremble for God's truth to-day ? Are we to share in the pessimist views of some faint-hearted and little-faith Christians ? Surely as lonuf as we can remem- ber the name of the Lord, and His unwearied arm, we have nothing to do with fear or sadness for ourselves or for His Church, or for His world. II. — But we turn next to notice the unwearied God giving strength to wearied man. The eye that looked hopefully and buoyantly up to Heaven, falls to earth and is shaded and sad as it sees the contrast between the serene and immortal strength above, and the burdened fainting souls here. " Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young man shall utterly fall." Earth knows no independent strength. All earthly power is limited in range and duration, and, by the very law of its being, is steadily tending to weakness. But though that has a sad side, it has also a grand and blessed one. Man's needs are the open mouth— if I may so sa}^ — into wliicii God puts His gifts. The more sad and pathetic the condition of feeble humanity by contrast with the strength, the immortal strength of God, the more wondrous that grace and power of His which are not con- tented with hanging there in the heavens above us, but bend right do\Mi to bless us, and to turn us into their own likeness. The low earth stretches, grey and sorrowful, flat and dreary, beneath the blue arched heaven, but the heaven stoops to encompass — ay ! to touch it. " He giveth power to the faint, and to thejii that have no might He increaseth strength." All creatural life digs its own grave. The youths shall faint with the weakness of physical decay, the weakness of burdened hearts, the weakness of consciously distracted natures, the weakness of agonising conscience. They shall be weary with the weariness of dreary monotony, of uncongenial tasks, of long-continued toil, of hope de- ^Th m 208 THE UNWEARIED OOD nt R i I'; t, o u ' •;'» ^•:,.:ts ?!•■■'•* w t > 2 II fcrred, of disupimintccl wishes, of bitter diseiicliantments, of lejirnin^'- the lesson tluit ;ill is vanity — the weariness that creejjs over us all as life ^'•oes on. All these are the occasions for the inward strenj,'tli of God to manifest itself even in iis ; according? to the i^reut word that He spoki' once and means ever: ''My ^race is aullicient for thee, and My sti'en^th is made ptni'ect in w^eakness." Notice the woi'ds preceding- my text, "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold Who hath created these things, I hat bringeth out their host by number. He calleth them all by name by the greatness of His might : for that He is strong in power, not one faileth." There in those heavens, that unwearied strength brings forth their em- battled hosts like a ranked army ; and every one of the mighty orbs answers to the call of the Commander, like a legion to the muster-roll. In the simi)le asti'onomy of those early times, there was no failure nor decay, nor change in the calm heavens. The planets, year by year, returned punctually to their l)]aces : and, unhasting and unresting, rolled upon their ^^"dy. Weakness and weariness had no place there, and the i)ower by which " the most ancient heavens " were upheld and maintained was God's unw-earied might. And then Israel, with singular self-tormenting ingenuity, having obeyed the x>i'^>pbet's injunction to "lift up the eyes on high " and look at the ordained ordei' and undecay- ing bright strength there, iinds in it all the exacerbation of the bitterness of his own lot. He complains that his path is hid, his course on earth seems so sad, and cloudy, and weary, as compared with the paths of those great stars that move without friction, effort, confusion, dust, or noise, while all these things — friction, effort, confusion, dust, noise — beset our little carts as w^e tug them along the dreary road of life. But, says Isaiah, His power does not show itself so tintMits, xiriness are the st itself B Spoke or thee, p yoni' things, h them hut He I those L»ir eni- of the f, like u ere was leavens, o their »n their re, and ' were t. enuity, lip the decay- •bation lat his iloudy, great , dust, usion, along lelf so AND WEARIED MEN. nolily up there iis it does down \\v\v. It is not so much to keep the strong in their strength as to give sti-cngili ti> the weak. It is nincli to " preserve the stui's from wroni^," it is more to restore and to l)ring power to f(»ebit» men. It is much to n])liold all those tliut are falling so that tliey may not fall : but it is moi'e io raise u\) all those that have fallen and are bowed down. So, Iji'ethren, what (Jod iill ffirth -liiill l)riii,i,'." " The oldest angels ai-e the youngest," said Swedenborg. They that wait upon tiie Lord have drunk of the fountain of i)erpetual youth, for the l)Uoyancy and the inextin- guishable hoi)e which are the richest possessions of youth may abide with them whose hopes are set on things beyond the sky. And then, still further, my text goes on to portray the l)lessed consequences of this continuous communication of Divine sti-ength in these words : " They shall run and not be weary." That is to say : this strength of God's, poured into our hearts, if we wait upon Him, shall fit us for the moments of special hard eil'ort, for the crises which require more than an ordinary' amount of energy to be put forth. It will fit us too for the long, dreary hours which require nothing but keeping doggedly at monotonous duties, "They shall w alk and not fail t." It is a great deal easier to be up to the occasion in some shining moment of a man's life, when he knows that a supreme crisis has come, than it is to keep that high tone when plodding over all the dreary plateaux of uneventful, monotonous travel and dull duties. It is easier to run fast for five minutes than to grind along the dusty road for a day. Many a vessel has stood the tempest and then has gone down in the harbour, because its timbers have been gnawed by dry rot. And many a man can do what is wanted in the trying moments, and yet make shipwreck of his faith in uneventful times — " Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven was all tranquillity." I :u>2 TUK INWIiAltlKl) (;i»I) AND Wll A l{ I KD .MKN. Soldiors \vli() could stund (irrn jmd Htrlkc \\ itii all their mij,dit ill the hoiir (>r hatllc will fjdl ash'('|) or have their (•oiini;4"e oozo out at tiicir liii.ycrs' ciuls wlien they have to l\e(»i) Holitai'V watch at their i)()sts throu^di a Ioiilt winter's iiiiifht. We have all a lew inoinents in life of hard, ^dorioiis i'iinniii^% but we have (hiys and years of walkini,', the uneventful discharS «* love, however preS hat lay , 'br<*o1; ""' '" " "'"' love timelP^^ L^l , '""^"^^^ ^^N ^nt to the ever present hoid;t''i:"t:;drHt;.^^^^ ''"'-^ '-'- ^^^-^^^ In the second clause the omission of one letter in the nngmal turns "M-ashed" into "loosed." Vru.l th.t change does not materially affect (he meaning i'ulst" tutes another metaphor. Both are directly luo a It c' men washing their robes and making them white in the X ..^ ;l i am liOG r' CHRIST\S PRESENT 1.OVE blood of tlie Lamb, and equivalent expressions. But we also read about men being I'edeemed and loosed from sin by the blood of the Lamb. The one exjn'ession I'egards sin as a stain from which we have to be cleansed ; the othei* as a bondage or chain, from which we have to be set free. In the present case, the authority of manuscripts is in favoui' of " loosed," and the context, perhajis, slightly favours it also, as the contrast between emancipated slaves and "• kings and priests," who are spoken of in the next clause, heightens the conception of the love which, not content with setting us free, goes on to place on our heads the mitre of the priest and the diadem of the king. Taking, then, the clauses thus read and rendered, and remembering that they form the first words of a doxology which bursts irrepressibly from the lips of the seer as he contemplates what he and his brethren owe to Jesus Christ, we have brought before us the ever-present, timeless love of Jesus, the great act which is the outcome and ])roof of His love, and the jjraise which it should call out. L — First, then, consider the ever-present, timeless love of Jesus Christ. John is writing these words of our text nearly half a century after Jesus Christ was buried. He is speaking to Asiatic Christians, Greeks and foreigners, most of whom had not been born when Jesus Christ died, none of whom had probably ever seen Him in this world. To these people he proclaims, not a past love, not a Christ that loved long ago, but a Christ that loves now, a Christ that loved these Asiatic Greeks at the moment when John was writing, a Christ that loves us nineteenth century English- men at the moment when we read. Another thing must be remembered. He who thus speaks is " the disciple whom Jesus loved." Is it not beautiful that he thus takes all his brethren up to the But we om sin rds sin e other et free. s is in slightly I slaves tie next eh, not r heads ed, and )xoloi?y dv as he :► Jesus imeless [lie and lid call !ss love i half a |kinp to whom whom these ] that ist that 111! was bglisli- tlius it not Ito the AND ITS GREAT ACT. 307 oame level as himself, and delights to sink all that was special and personal in that which was common to all ? He unites himself with his brethren, in that significant " us," which in effect says to the seven churches of Asia, " I stood no nearer the Master than you do. I had nothing which you may not possess if you will." Of course all this is unintelligible, and has really no meaning at all unless we believe Christ to be Divine. Did he who wrote these words, " unto Him that /ovet/t us," think of his Master as dead and in His grave half-a-century ago ? Did he think of Him even as a man who lived still, no doubt in the spirit-world, and perhaps might be or perhaps might not be cognisant of what passed on earth ? Could he have thought of Him as only human, and attributed to Him an actual love to men whom He had never seen in His earthly life ? What exaggerated un- reality it would be to look back over the centuries to the purest and noblest souls who gave themselves for their fellows, and to say that they, dead and gone, had any knowledge of or any love for men who had not been born till long after they had died ! Why, the benevolence with which the warmest lover of his kind looks on the multi- tudes in far-off lands who are his own contemporaries, is much too tepid a sentiment to be called love, or to evoke answering thanks. Still less warm and substantial must he the ghost of the same feeling which such a man But if he is dead and believing that his heart still cherishes for coming generations, gone, who would think of throbbed with love for men on earth ? The heart that can hold all the units of all successive generations, and so love each that each may claim a share in the grandest issues of its love, must be a Divine heart, for only there is there room for the millions to stand, all distinguishable and all enriched and blessed by that love. Is there any- thing but unmeaning exaggeration in this word of my X 2 ri t r' > I L ) ►• ,■♦ I '4 Is! ■1 308 CHRIST'S PRESENT LOVE text, anything that will do for a poor heart struggling with its own evil, and with the world's miseries and devilries, to rest upon, unless we believe that Christ is Divine, and loves us with an everlasting love, because He is God manifest in the flesh ? That Divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is w^oven through the whole of the Book of Revelation, like a golden thread, and manifestly is needed to explain the fact of this solemn ascription of praise to Him, as well as to Avarrant the application of each clause of it to His work. For John to lift up his voice in this grand Doxology to Jesus Christ was blasphemy, if it was not adoration of Him as Divine. He may have been right or wrong in his belief, but surely the man who sung such a hymn to his Master believed Him to be the Incarnate Word, God manifest in the flesh. If we share that faith, we can believe in Christ's present love to us all. It is no misty sentiment or rhetorical exaggeration to believe that every man, woman, and child that is or shall be on the earth till the end of time has a distinct place in His heart, and is an object of His knowledge and of His love. This one word, then, is the revelation to us of Christ's love, as unaffected by time. Our thoughts are carried by it up hito the region where dwells the Divine nature, above the various phases of the fleeting moments which we call past, present, and future. These are but the lower layer of clouds which dri\e before the wind, and melt from shape to shape. He dwells above in the na^^ed, changeless blue. As of all His nature, so, blessed be His name, of His love ; we can be sure that time cannot bound it. We say not, " It was," or " It will be," but " It is." Our text proclaims the changeless, timeless, majestic present of that love which burns, and is not consumed, but glows with as warm a flame for the latest generations as for those men iggling es and irist is use He woven like a lin the well as 9 work, logy to tion of ^ in his 1 to his d, God ^ve can ) misty ,t every irth till d is an ihrist's by [nature, which lower melt |na^^ed, )f His 'e say ir text )f that dth as le men AND ITS GREAT ACT. :•)()'.» who stood within the reach of its rays while He was on earth. " I am the first and the hist," says Christ, and His love partakes of that eternity. It is like a golden fringe which keeps the web of creation from ravelling out. Before the earliest of creatures was this love. After the latest it shall be. It circles theni all around, and locks them all in its enclosure. It is the love of a Divine heart, for it is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. It is the love of a human heart, for that heart could shed its blood, to loose us from our sins. Shall we not take this love for ours ? The foundation of all our hopes and all our joys, and all our strength in our work should be this firm conviction, that we are wrapped about by, and ever- more in, an endless ocean of the present Divine love of the present loving Christ. Then, further, that love is not disturoed or absorbed by multitudes. He loveth ns, says John to these Asiatic Christians ; and he speaks to all ages and people. The units of each generation and of every land have a right to fcei themselves included in that word, and every human being is entitled to turn the " us " into " me." For no crowds block the access to His heart, nor empty the cup of His love before it reaches the thirsty lips on the farthest outskirts of the multitude. When He was here on earth, the multitude thronged Him and pressed Him, but the wasted forefinger of one poor timid woman could 1 3ach the garment's hem for all the crowd. He recognised the difference between the touch that had sickness and supplication in it and the jostlings of the mob, and His healing power passed at once to her who needed and asked it, though so many were surging round Him. So He still knows and answers the silent prayer of the loving and the needy heart. Howsoever tremulous and palsied the finger ; howsoever imperfect and ignorant the faith, His love delights to answer and to over answer in ^ggg m m h i it 310 CHRIST'S IMIESKNT hO\K it, as He did Avitli that ^v()lna^, Avho not only ^ot the healing which she craved, but bore away besides the consciousness of His love and the cleansing of her sins. He does with all the multitude who hang on Him as he did when he fed the thousands. He ranks them all on the grass, and in order ministers to each his portion in due season. We do not jostle each other. There is room in that heart of Christ for us all. " The f,'lovious sky, embracing jill. Is like its ]\[aker's love ; Wherewith encircled, great and small In peace and order move." Every star has its separate place in the great round, *and He calleth them all by name," and holds them in His mind. So we, and all our bi-ethren, have each our own orbit and our station in the Heaven of Christ's heart, and it embraces, distinguishes, and sustains us all, " Unto Him that loveth «.v." Another thought may be suggested, too, of how this present timeless love of Christ is unexhausted by exercise, pouring itself ever out, and ever full notwithstanding. They tell us that the sun is fed by impact of fuel from without, and that the day will come when its furnace- flames shall be quenched into grey ashes. But this love is fed by no contributions from without, and will outlast the burnt-out sun and gladden the ages of ages for ever. All generations, all thirsty lips and ravenous desires, may Flake their thirst and satisfy themselves at that great fountain, and it shall not sink one inch in its marble basin. Christ's love, after all creatures have received from it, is as full as at the beginning ; and unto us upon whom the ends of the earth are come, this j^recious and all- sufficing love pours as full a tide as when first it blessed that little handful that gathered round about Him on eai'th. Other rivers run shallow as they broaden, but this ^v this rcise, iding. from nace- love lit last ever. may I great [arble 1 from horn all- issed on this AND ITS GREAT ACT. :ni "river of God" is as deep when it speads over \hv woi-hl as :f it were poured tliroiigh the narrows of one lu'art. Airain, it is a love unchilled by tlie sovereignty and gh)i7 of Ills exaltation. There is a wonderful diHerence betv,\>en the Christ of the Gosi)els and the ('hrist of the xtevelation. iYM)ple have exaggerated the dilference into contridiction, and then, running to the other extreme otherii have been tempted to deny that there Avas any. But aie thing is not ditl'erent. The Nature bcliind the cireuiistances is the same. The Christ of the Gos})els is the Qirist in His lowliness, bearing the weight of man's sins ; the Christ of the Apocalypse is the Christ in His loftiress, ruling over the world and time. lUit it is the same Christ. The one is surrounded by weakness and the other is girded with strength, but it is the same Christ. The one is treading the weary road of earth, the other is sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty ; but k is the same (*hrist. The one is the " Man of sorrows and icciuainted with grief," the other is the ^lan gloritied and a Companion of Divinity ; but it is the same Chr.st. The hand that holds the seven stars is as loving as the hand that was laid in blessing upon little children. The face that is as the sun shining in its stR'ngth beams with as much love as when it drew pub- licans and harlots to His feet. The breast that is girt with the golden girdle is the same breast upon which John leaned his happy head. The Christ is the same, and the love is unaltered. From the midst of the gloi'v and the sevenfold brilliancy of the light which is inaccessible, the same tender heart bends down over us that l)ent (k)wii over all the wearv and the distressed when He Himself wa? weary ; and we can lift uj) our eyes above stars, and systems, and material splendouis, right up to the cential point of the universe, where the throned Christ is, and see " Him that loveth us " — even as ! ' I If;- ^ f '• ■ )' I f i Ml' 9 [i > •ft P f i I •Jo... ClUa^T o I'liLloENT LOVE TT. — Notice, secondly (he great act in time which is the oil! onie and jH'oof of this endless love. "He loosed us from our sins bv His own blood." The metaphor is that of bondage. " He that committeth sin is the slave of sin." Every wrong thing that we do tends to become our master and our tvrant. We are held and bound in the chains of our sins. The awful inlluenee of habit, the dreadful efl'ect of a corrujjted conscience, the l)ower of regretful memories, the pollution arising from the very knowledge of what is wrong — these are sone of the strands out of which the roi)es that bind m are twisted. We know how tight they grip. I am spetking now, no doubt, to people who are as completely manicled and bound by evils of some sort — evils of flesh, of sense, of lust, of intemperance, of pride, and avai-ice, and wo'ldli- ness, of vanity, and frivolity, and selflshness — as 3om- pletely manacled as if there were iron gyves upon -heii' wrists, and fetters upon their ankles. You remember the old story of the prisoner in his tower, delivered by his friend, w^ho sent a beetle to ciawl up the w^all, fastening a silken thread to it, which hid a thread a little heavier attached to the end of that, ant so on, and so on, each thickening in diameter until they got to a cable. That is how the devil has got hold of a great many of us. He weaves round us silken threads to begin with, slight, as if we could break them with a touch of our fingers, and they draw after them, as certainly as destiny, " at each remove a" thickening " chain," until, at last, we are tied and bound, and our captor laughs at our mad plunges for freedom, which are as vain as a wild bull's in the hunter's net. Some of you have made an attempt at shaking oft' sin — how have you got on with it ? As a man w^ould do who w ith a file made out of an old soft knife tried to work through his fetters. He might make a little impression on the surface, but he would _J h is the ." The 111 sin is tends to ?ld and ence ol* ice, the is; from 5onie of m are petkinj? anicled lense, of wo'ldli- is 3oni- 3n .heii* in his ciawl 1 hid a ant so ley got |a great begin luch of inly as itil, at at oni' wild ide an lit? m old I might would AND ITS (JIIEAT ACT. 'm:\ mostly scratch his own skin, and wear his own iini^'ers, \r.d to very little purpose. But the chains can be got off. Christ looses them by " His blood." Like corrosive acid, that blood, falling upon the fetters, dissolves them, and the ])risoner goes free, emancii)ated by the Son. That deatli has i)o\ver to deliver us from the guilt and penalty of sin. The Hible does not give us the whole theory of an atonement, but the fact is plainly proclaimed tliat Christ died for us, and that the bitter consec^uences of sin in their most iiJense bitterness, even that separatitm from God which is the true death, were borne by Him for our sukes, on our account, and in our stead. By the shedding of His blood is remission of our sins. His blood looses the fetters of our sins, inasmuclyas His death, touching our hearts, and also bringing to us new i)0wers through His Spirit, which is shed forth in consequence of His finished work, frees us from the power of sin, and brings into operation new powers and motives which deliver us from our ancient slaverv. The chains which bound us shrivel and melt as the ropes that bound the Hebrew youths in the iire, before the warmth ef His manifested love and the glow of His Spirit's power. I beseech each heart that listens to me now to vield to the redeeming power of the blood which cleanses from all sin. You cannot deliver yourselves from the slavery of sin, but Jesus Christ, by His own blood, has delivered the whole world, and j'ou amongst the rest. He did it because he loves us, and He has done it once and for all. The one act in time, which is the proof and outcome of His love, is this deliverance from sin by His blood. What a pathos that thought gives to His death ! It was the willing token of His love. He gave Himself up to the cross of shame because He held us in His heart. There p- r ' , ;U4 CIIIIISTS PIIKSI<:.\T I.OVK wiiH no rcjiHon for IHh doiitli, but only thut "lie lovcili us." And with wlmt a Holcnui j)o\vor tliiit thouiflit invosts His (h'litlj ! l]\v\i J [in lovo could not vcucii its end by iiny otIuM' lut'jms — not by nuTo fjrood will, nor by any suiall saci'ilitT. Notliinijf short of the iuttcr (-ross could ac- conii>lis]i His heart's desire for men. There was a needs be for His death, but the necessity was, if we may so say, of His own making'. He must die, for He loved the world so much that He must accept the niissioii of the Fathei', who so loved it tliat He sent the Son to die. His love in His death embi'aced us eiich, as it does to-day. Kach man of all the race may bo (juite sure that he had a place in that Divine-huniiin love of Chiist's as He hunij;' upon the Cross. 1 may take it all to myself, as the whole rainbow is mirrored on each eye that looks. We have no ju-oof of Christ's love to us, and no reason for loving Him, except His death for our sins. Hut if we believe, as John believed, that He tasted death for every man, anil that by that death every poor, sin-niastei-ed soul that trusts in Him may shake oil the demon that sits ui)on his shoulders and be free from the fi^uilt, the punishment, and the tyranny of sin, then we need not despair, how- ever obstinate may be the conflict, })ut go into it wi^li good heart, hai)py in the love and conlident in the power of the Eternal Lover and L^urilier of our souls, whose blood looses us from our sins, whose grace makes us kings and priests to God. III. — One final word as to the praise which should be our answer to this great love. Irrepressible gratitude bursts into a doxology from John's lips, even here at the beginning of the book, as the seer thinks of the love of Christ, and all through the Apocalypse we hear the shout of praise from earth or Heaven. The book which closes the New Testament " shuts up all with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs AND ITS (JllKAT ACT. lUf) and harpiui,'' Hymplionics," as Milton says, in liiH stately diction, and may well represent i'oi' us in that pi'Ppetual cloud of ineense risinj^Mip fi-ai^Tant to tiii^ throne of Ood and of the Lanih, the unceasin.i,' love and thanksi,''ivin^' Avhicli should be man's answer lo (,'hrist's love and sacrilice. Our jmiise of Christ is but the expression of our reco','-- nition of Ilini for what lie is, and our deli^dit in and love towards Him. Such love, which is but our love speaki Lly 1) ill) ;aivinf,% is all which lie asks. Love can only he paul hy love. Any other recompense ollered to it is coinajire of another currency, that is not current in its kin^-doni. The (mly recompense that satisfies love is its own iman-e reflected in another heart. IMiat is what Jesus Christ wants of you. He does not want your admiration, your outward reverence, your lij) homage, your j^'rud.i^nnjj^ obedience. Ilis lieai't hunfji^ers for more and otliei* .i^nfts from you. He wants your love, and is unsatisfied without it. He desired it so much that he was williniif to die to procure it, as if a mother mijLcht think " ]\Iy children have been cold to me while 1 lived ; perhaps, if 1 were to give my life to help them, their hearts might melt.'* All the awful expenditure of love stronger than death is meant to draw forth our love. He comes to each of us, and pleads with us for our hearts, wooing us to love Him by showing us all which lie has done for us, and all which He will do. Surely the Cross borne for us should move us. Surely the throne prepared for us should touch us into gratitude. That Lord Who died and lives dwells now in the Heavens, the centre of a miglity chorus and tempest of praise which surges round His throne, loud as the voice of many waters, and sweet as harpers harping on their harps. The main question for us is, Does He hear our voice in it ? Are our lips shut ? Are our hearts cold ? |s ■I / I 2 '8 I .-tiu (CHRIST'S PRESKNT tiOVH. Do we met't Hit" lire of love witli icv indid'eronci! '; Do we rej)jiy Ilin sacriticT with unmoved st'li'-re^'ard, uihI meet His i)l('ii(rni^'^s with closi'd eai'H ? "Do ye tlius n- <|iiit(' the Jiord, () foolish j)eoi)le and unwise?" Take this (juestion home to your heart, How miuij owest thou unto thy Lord ? He has h)ved thee, has jj^iven PHmseli' for tliee, and His sacrifice will unlock thy fetters and set thee free. Will you be silent in the presence of such transcendent mercy ? Shall we not rather, moved by His dyinjjf love, and joyful in the jmssession of deliverance throu^di His Cross, lift uj) our voices and hearts in a ])er])etual sonj,' of praise, to which our lives of glad obedience shall be as perfect music accompanying^ noble words, " Unto PHm that loveth us, and looseth us from our sins bv His (►wn l)lood " ? Z '■hi if .'11 (;e !" Do L%'ard, and c tliiiH rc- low iiiiich hiiH ^nvi'i) tliy iottt'i'M rescnce of er, moved 5osHion of oices and w lives of mi)aiiyin^'' looseth UH l| Sermon XXIV. THE CROSS, THE GLORY OF CHRIST AND GOD. 'i i !(- !■ 1 9\ SKIJMOX XXfV. TiiK ciidss, Till.: (:i,„Rv ,„.■ r.musT am. ,;oi,. .>:^::^::z.:ii':z.z'.;:zr- ■' -■•■'■ ^•™ '■ "- « < >- .:;'^;;;:™;'^sr;;;;,'-'":i;:::i:;;:';;f '■ ^ ""- -' ""■-" Tll|.;UKisson„.||,i,,,.v,.n ^v,.i,■,l arMMuvful In .1,,. |„.i,.r '""■"Mnn,. will, whiH, ,h,. IOvaMs„.|is,, ,..,„!« .I.hIum .,„ !"''"■'' '.■7;'',;'- /''''•• • •-.n,,i,„„„.,n..,.|v, „„,,., ; w:.s n,.l„." ,,„,. „,„ ,,„,," ll'c Moiil or Christ. |(i,„s,.|r ^ ''' """"■'liul,. connc.lio,, with iho ,l,.,a,-lnn. or th,. •n^.(o.' eo„„.s this si,„.,la,. 1„„.„, .,,■ „,,„„„h in ,.,„■ U;, .• lv.„«,,s, ,,,,,, hasis,. ,h,. ,.on„..c,io„ l,v ,h., ; //,»rro,r, wh.n h. uas „„„,. o„l, .l.s.is sai,l." Thor. i no,t„„. 1 h,. tn.ilor was f,.,,,,,.. His ,„■,.„,.„„. I,a,l I,,.,,, •, cl..UI..^ had ,l,sai,,K.ur<.,l, ,h,. Must,.,- r,.|l at ,,.so • a,.,| .ke some stream, o„t of the hod of which a hla.-k roc'-k has been take,,, His woHs (low mo,: freelv. 1 ,,.. , tenselj- real a.,a l,„man the nanutive becomes when "x" :v20 THE CROSS, THE GLORY OF ■•9 ■''2 II 5 L % - see that Christ, too, felt the oppression of an uncongenial presence, and was relieved and glad at its removal ! The dei)artnre of the traitor evoked these words of triumph in another way, too. At his going away, we may say, the match was lit that was to be applied to the train. He had gone out on his dark errand, and that brought the Cross within measurable distance of our Lord. Out of a new sense of its nearness He speaks here. So the note of time not only explains to us why our Lord spoke, but puts us on the right track for understanding His words, and makes any other interpretation of them than one impossible. What Judas went to do was the beginning of Christ's glorifying. We have here, then, a triple glorification — the Son of Man glorified in His Cross ; God glorified in the Son of Man ; and the Son of Man glorified in God. Let us look at these three things for a few moments now. I. — First, we have here the Son of Man glorified in His Cross. The words are a paradox. Strange, that at such a moment, when there rose up before Christ all the vision of the shame and the suffering, the pain and the death, and the mvsterious sense of abandonment, which was worse than them all. He should seem to stretch out His hands to bring the Cross nearer to Himself, and that His soul should fill with triumph ! There is a double aspect under which our Lord re- garded His sufferings. On the one hand we mark in Him an unmistakable shrinking from the Cross, the innocent shrinking of His manhood expressed in such words as " I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished " ; and in such incidents as the agony in Gethsemane. And yet, side by side with that, not overcome by it, but not overcoming it, there is the opposite feeling, the reaching out almost with eager- ness to bring the Cross nearer to Himself. These two lie CHRIST AND (;0D. :v>i )ngenial I ! The imph in say, the He had he Cross f a new ) of time , puts us tl makes possible. Christ's ion — the 3cl in the od. Let low. id in His such a tie vision e death, ich was out His that His iOrd re- in Him Innocent Is as " I am I icidents Ide with [there is eager- 1 two lie close by eacli other in His heart. lAkv \hv jx'Uiicid waters of tlic Rhine ar.d the turbid sti'eani ol" (lie Moselle, that flow side by side over ii ion*,'' space, neillier of them blendinu' discernibly with the otlier, so tlie sln-inlvini;' and the desire weiv contemporaneous in Ohi'ist's mind. Here we have the triuni])liant anticipation I'isinu" to the surface, and coiupiering for a time tlie slirinkini^'. Whv did ('lii'ist t]iiiii\ of His Ci'oss as a u'lorifviuLT !' The New Testament generally i-cpi-esents it as the verv lowest point of His degi-uhition ; John's Gospel always represents it as the very highest point of His gh)ry. And the two things are both true ; just as the zenith of our sky is the nadir of the skv for those on the other side of the world. The same fact which in one aspect sounds the very lowest depth of Christ's humiliation, in anotlun* aspect is the veiy highest culminating point of His glory. How did the Cross gloi'ify Christ ? In two ways. It was the revelation of His heart ; it was the throne of His sovereign i)ower. It was the revelation of His heart. All His life long He had been trving to tell the woi-ld how much He loved it. His love had been, as it were, liltei'ed by di'ops through His words, thi'ougli His deeds, thi'ongh His whole de- meanour and bearing : luil in His death it comes in a ii 'U<1, and pours itself upon the woi'ld. All His life long He b.vid been i-evealing His heart, through the narrow rifts of His deeds, like s(uneslondei' lancet windows ; but in His death all the barriers are thrown down, and the bi'ightness blazes out upon men. All tlii'ough His life He had been trying to communicate His love to the world, and the fragrance came from the box of ointment exceeding precious, but when the box was ])roken the house Avas filled w^ith the odour. For Him to be known was to l)e glorified. So i)ure and ])erfect was He that revelation of His character and glori- vm 'XOO THE CROSS, THE OLORY OF w^^% m. fication of Himself were one and the same tliinir. I >ocanse His Cross reveals to the world for all time, and for eter- nity, too, a love which shriidcs from nc* saei'iliee, a love wliieh is cai)able of the most entire aljandonment, a love which is diffused over the Avhole surface of humanity and tlirou^di all the aijes, a love wliich comes laden with the ricliest and the hi^diest ^'•ifts, even the turninn" of selfish and sinful heai'ts into its own pure and pei'fect likeness, thei'efore does He say, in conteni})lation of that Cross Avliich w-as to reveal Him for what He was to the world, and to bring His love to every one of us, " Now is the Son of Man gloj'ified." We can fancy a mother, for instance, in the anticipation of shame, and iiLJfnominy, and suffering", and sorrow, and death wdiich she encounters for the sake of some prodigal child, foi'getting all the ignominy, and the shame, and the suffering, and the sorrow, and the death, because all these are absorbed in the one thought : "If I bear them, my poor, wandering, rebellious child will know at last how much T loved him." 80 Christ yearns to impart the know- ledge of Himself to us, because by that knowledge w^e mav be won to His love and service : and hence when He looks forward to the agOxiy, and contumely, and sorrow of the close, every other thought is swallowed up in this one : " They shall be the means by which the Avhole world will find out how deep My heart of love to it was." Therefore does He triumph and say, " Now is the Son of Man glori- fied." Still further. He regards His Cross as the means of His glorifying, because it is His throne of saving j^ower. The i3aradoxical words of onr text rest upon His profound conviction that in His death He w^as about to put forth a mightier and Diviner power than ever he had manifested in His life. They are the same in effect and in tone ae the great words : " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men CHRIST AND (JOD. Because . for eter- e, a love lit, a love inity and with the of selfish likeness, lat Cross 16 world, s the Son :ieipation •row, and prodigal ', and the all these hem, my last how lie know- edge we hen He orrow of his one : or Id will lerefore 111 glori- s of His power, irofound t forth a nifested tone 3(6 all men nnto Me." Now I want von to ask vourselves one ones- tion : In what sense is Oiirist's Ci'oss Christ's glorytying, unless His Cross bears an altogetlier different i-elation to His life from what the death of a great teacher or bene- factor ordinarily bears to His r It is imiX/Ssible that Christ conld have S])()ken such words as these of my text if He had simply thought of His death as a Plato or a John Howard might have thought of his, as being the close of his activity for the welfare of his fellows. Unless Christ's death has in it some substantive value, unless it is something more than the mere termination of His work for the world, I see not how the words Ijefore us can be interpreted. If His death is His glorifying, it must be because in that death something is done which was not completed by the life, however fair ; by the words, how- ever wise and tender : by the works of i)ower, however restorative and healing. Here is something more than these present. What more ? This more, that His Cross is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. He is glorified therein, not as a Socrates might be glorified by his calm and noble death ; not l)ecause nothing in His life became Him better than the leaving of it ; not because the page that tells the story of His passion is turned to by us as the tenderest and most sacred in the world's records ; but because in that death He wrestled with and overcame our foet<, and because, like the Jewish hero of old, dying, He pulled down the house which our tyrants had built, and overwhelmed them in its ruins. " Noav is the Son of Man glorified." xlnd so, brethren, there blend, in that last act of our Lord's — for His death was His act — in strange fashion, the two contradictory ideas of glory and shame : like some skv, all full of dark thunderclouds, and vet between them the bi ightest blue and the blazing sunshine. In the Cross Death crowns Him the Prince of Life, and His Y 2 I I ■liii 'M' :V24: THE CIIOSS, THE (J LORY OF Cross is His tliroiic. All ITis IMi' Ioiil;' lie was ibc lAishi of the AVorld. l)ut the vei'V noontide hour of ITis ,yloi'y WHS thut lioni' wiien the sluulow of eeli])se lay over all the land, and lie hwuij; on the Oi'oss dyinn' in tiie dark. At His eventide " it was liijht.'" "Hi' endured the Ci'oss, desi)isinii- the shame:" and lo ! the shame Hashed up into the vei'v ])rinhtness of Ldoi'v, and the iynoniiny and the snU'ei-ini;' became the jewels of His crown. "Now is the Son of ]Man glorified," II. — Now let lis tui'n for a moment to the second of the three-fold gloi'iiications that ai-e sei foj'th here : God j^dorified in the Son of ]\Ian. The mystery deei)ens as we advance. That God shall be iJi-lorihed in a man is not stran.i'e, l)ut that Hesliall be so gloi'ified in tlie eminent and especial fashi(m in which it is spoken of here, is stran.ne ; and stran^'ei' still when we think that the act in which He was j^loi'itied was the death of an iiinoct-nt Man. If God, in any special and eminent manner, is gioriiied in the ('ross of Jesus Christ, that implies, as it seems to me, two thin.iis at all events — many ni(r.'e which I have nc time to touch upon, l)nt two things very plainly. One is that (Jod was in Clnist, in some singular and eminent manner. If all His life was a continual manifestation of the Divine character, if Christ's words were the Divine wisdom, if Christ's com- passion was the Divine pity, if Christ's lowliness was the Divine gentleness, if His whole litiman life and natu]*e were the brightest and clearest manifestation to the woi'ld of what God is, we can ttnderstand that the Cross was the highest point of the revelation of the Divine nature to the world, and so Avas the glorifying of God in Him. But if we take anv lower view of the relation betweeii a. God and Christ, I know not how we can accjuit these woi'ds of our Master of the charge of ])eing a ^^'orld too wide for the facts of the case. CHTIIST AND (lOD. Tlie words" involve, as it seems to me, not only that idea of u close, nni(iue union and inchvelliiii,'" of God in Christ, but they involve also this othei- : that tliese sullering-B bore no relation to the deserts of the jx'i'son ^vh() endured them. If Christ, with Ilis i)ure and i)erfect character, — the innocency and nol)leness of which all that read the Gospels admit — if Christ t tillered so ; if the highest virtue that was ever seen in this world bi'ought no better wages than shame and spitting and the Cross ; it' Christ's life and Christ's death are simi)lj a typical example of the world's treatment of its greatest, bene- factors ; then, if they have any bearing at all on the character of God, they cast a shadow rather than a light upon the Divine government, and become not the least formidable of the ditliculties and knots that will have to be untied hereafter before it shall be clear that God did evervthing well. But if we can sav, " He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows ;" if v.e can say "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself ;" if we can say that His death was the death of Him Whom God had apijointed to live and die for us, and to bear our sins in His own body on the tree, then, though deep mysteries come with the thought, still we can see that, in a very unique manner, God is glorified and exalted in His death. For, if the dying Christ be the Son of God dying for us, then the Cross glorifies God, because it teaches us that the glory of the Divine character is the Divine love. Of wisdom, or of power, or of any of the more " majestic " attributes of the Divine nature, that weak Man, hanging dying on the Cross, was a strange embodiment ; but if the very heart of the Divine brightness be the pure white fire of love ; if there be nothing Diviner in God than His giving of Himself to His creatures ; if the highest glory of the Divine nature be to pity and to bestow, then fnti' i pit , . '1 I n^iu- m- Ki 1J' :w<; THE CROSS. THE GLORY OF the dross n\Hm wMch Christ died towers above all other revelations as the most awful, the most sacred, the mott tender, the most complete, the most heart-touching", the most soul-subduintf manifestation of the Divine nature; and stars and worlds, and angels and mighty creatures, and things in the heights and things in the depths, to each of which have been entrusted some broken syllables of the Divine character to make known to th*.^ world, dwindle and fade befoi-e the brightness, the lambent, gentle brightness that beams out from the Cross of Christ which proclaims — God is love, is pity, is pardon. And is it not so — is it not so ? Is not the thought that has flowed from Christ's Cross through Christendom about what our Father in Heaven is, the highest and the most blessed that the world has ever had ? Has it not scattered doubts that lay like mountain > of ice upon man's heart ? Has it not swept the heavens clear of clouds that wrapped it in darkness ? Has it not delivered men from the dreams of gods angry, gods capricious, gods vengeful, gods indifferent, gods simply mighty, and vast and awful, and unspeakable ? Has it not taught us that love is God, and God is love : and so brought to the whole world the true Gospel, the Gospel of the grace of God ? In that Cross the Father is glorified. III. — Now, lastly, we have here the Son of Man glorified in the Father. The mysteries and the paradoxes seem to deepen as we advance. " If God. be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him." Do these words sound to you as if they expressed no more than the confidence of a good man, who, when he was dying, believed that he would be accepted of a loving Father, and would be at rest from his sufferings ? To me they seem to say infinitely more than that. " He shall also glorify Him in Himself." Mark that — " in CHRIST AND COD. :V27 all other the mort, liiij?, the : nature; reaturen, epths, to syllables d world, lambent, .f Christ ight that m about he most scattered s heart ? u-rapped rom the ul, gods fill, and k)d, and he true it Cross glorified n as we all also lorify jiessed , when d of a wrings ? "He ,t— " in Hiiiiself." That is the obvious antithesis to wliai has been si)oken about in the iM'evious clause, a glorifying which consisted in a numifestation to the external uni- verse, whereas this is a glorifying within the depths of the Divine nature. And the best connnentary u\H)n it is our I'l'd's own words : "Father! glorify Thou ]Me with the g] which 1 had with Thee before the world was." ^Ve get a glimpse, as it were, into the very centre of the brightness of God : and there, walking in that beneficent furnace, we see "One like unto the Son of ^Man." Christ anticipates that, in some profound and unspeakable sense, He shall, as it were, be caught up into Divinity, and shall dwell, as indeed He did dwell from the l)egiuning, " in the bosom of the Father." " He shall glorify Him in Himself." But then mark, still further, that this reception into the bosom of the Father is given to the Son of Man. That is to say, the Man Clnist Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Ih'other of us all, "bone of our bone and flesh of our Hesli," th ■ very Person that walked upon earth and dwelt amongst us — He is taken up into the heart of God, and in His manhood entei's into that same glory, which, from the beginning, the Paternal Word had with God. And still further, not only have we here set forth, in most wondrous language, the reception and incorporation, if we may use such words, into the very centre of Divinity, as granted to the Son of Man, but we have that glorifying set forth as commencing immediately upon the comple- tion of God's glorifying by Christ upon the Cross. " He shall straightway glorify Him." At the instant, then, that He said, " It is finished," and all that the Cross could do to glorify God was done, at that instant there began, with not a pin point of interval between them, God's glorifying of the Son in Himself. It began in that Paradise into which we know that upon that day He entered, li was iricS THE CROSS, THl*: (JLOJIY OF ClIUlST AND <;0D. >1 ^'l L' P- i uuinifested to the world whan He raised Him from the (lead and ^'•ave Him j^dory. It i-eaclied a still hitfher i)oiut wlien they brought Him near unto the Ancient of Days, anove all d J'ules and all looks ^g and nmoii- list in ither's 11 but f, pre- led at I hast ' may Sermon XXV. THE GREATEST IN THE KINGDOM, AND THEIR REWARD. u I SKliMOX XXV. THE (GREATEST TX THE K1N(JD0M, AND THEIR REWARD. "IIo that recoivoth a proplu-t in the nam of a prophet shall re<.eive a prophets reward, and he that rc.eiveth a r,.hteous man in th n moo^a nphteousman shall receive a ri.^h.eous mans reward. And wl osoe' " • sha ^Mve to drink unto one of these little ones, a eup of eold wat « o h in t i There is nothinn- in these words to show whether they refer to the present or to the future. We shull probably not go wrong if we i-egard tliem as having i-eference to both. For all godliness has "promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come," and " in keepmg God's commandments," as well as /'or keepin- them, " there is great reward," a reward realised in the present, even although death holds the keys of the treasure house in which the richest rewards are stored No act of holy obedience here is left without foi-etastes of joy, which, though they be but " brooks by the way " contain the same water of life which hereafter swells to an ocean. Some people tell us that it is defective morality in Christianity to bribe men to be good by promising them Heaven, and that he who is actuated bv such a motive is M ii'i'.l dm III, % THK (;reatest in the kin(;dom, selfish. Now that fantHstic and over-sti-ained oljjection may bo very simply answered by tAVo corisiderations ; self-rej^ard is not seliishness, and Christianity does not propose the future rewai'd as the motive lor goodness. The motive for ijroodness is love to Jesns Christ ; and if ever there was a man who did acts of Christian goodness only for the sake of what he would get by them, the acts were not Christian goodness, because the motive was wi'oi^g. But it is a i)ieee of fastidiousness to forbid us to reinforce the great Christian motive, which is love to Jesus Christ, l)y the thought of the i-ecomijense of reward. It is a stimulus and an encoui-agement, not the motive for good- ness. This text shows us that it is a suboi-dinate motive, for it says that the reception of a ])rophet, oi- of a righteous man, or of "one of these little ones," \vhich is rewardable, is the reception "in the mime of" a proi)het, a disciple, and so on, oi', in other words, recognising the prophet, or tlie right I'ous man, or the disciple for A\hat he is, and because he is that, and not because of the reward, receiving him with sympathy and solace and help. So, with that explanation, let us look for a moment or two at these very remarkable words of our text. I. — The firs, thing an hich I wisli to observe in them is the three classes of character which are dealt with — " i)rophet," " righteous man," •' these little ones." Now the question that 1 would suggest is this : Is there any meaning in the order in which these are arranged ? It so, Avhat is it ? Do we begin at the bottom, or at the top ? IlaA'e we to do with an ascending or with a descending sCvJj ? Is the jn'ophtt thought to be greater than the righteous man, or less ? Is the righteous man thought to be higher than the little one, or to be loAver ? The question is an important one, and worth considering. Now, at first sight, it certainly does look as if we had here to do with a descending scale, as if we began at the AND THEIR HEW A lib. there ;i'd ? lit Ihe ith a eater man ^ver ? ring. had the top and went (h)\vnwar(ls. A jji-opliet, a man lionoured with a distinct commission from (lod to declai-i- Kis will, is, in certain vei-y obvious i-esi)ects, loftier tlnm a man who is not S(» hononred, liowevei* })in'e and rii^hteous lu^ may be. The dim and venei'able figures, for instance, of Isaiah and Jei'eniiah. towei* lii.idi above all their contemporaries ; and the L;<>dly men who Inni,^" upon tlieii- lii)s, like j'aruch on Jercmiairs, and others, felt themselves to be, an«l were, inferior to them. And, in like manner, the littk' child who believe-, in (Mirist may seem to be insi.ynilicant in comparison with the ])i'()])het with liis (lod-toiiched li})S, or the ]-ii^liteons man of the old dispensation with his anstere })ttrity : as a hnnible vioU't may scm by the side of a rose witli its hcirt of lii'e, oi* a white lily reu'al and tall. ]>nt one i'eme!nl)ers that .lesus Christ Himself declared that ''the least of the little ones" was givater than the greatest who had j^one befoi'e : and it is not at all likelv that He who has jtist been saving' that whoso- ever received His followers received Himself, shonld classify these followers beneath tl:e rii^hteons men of old. The Christian tv])e of charactei' is distinctlv higher than the Old Testament tyi)e ; and the hinnbiest believer is blessed above prophets and ri,yliteoiis meii because his eyes behold and his heai't welcomes the Chi'ist. Therefore I am inclined to believe tliat we lia\e here an ascending series — that we begin at the bottom and not at the to}) : that the i)rophet is less than the I'ighteous man. and the righteous man less than the little one who l)elieves in Christ. For, stippose there Avei'e a pro])het who was not righteous, and a righteous man who was not a prophet. Suppose the se})arati()n between the two characters were complete, which of them is the greater ? Balaam was a prophet ; l^alaam was not a righteous man : I'alaam ^\■as immeasurablv inferioi* to the rightous whose lives he did not emulate, tliough he could not but envv their deaths. In 334 THE GREATEST IN THE KIN(rDOM, I ' SI .' i .1': 'I > ■Z i fi < i a-''- like manner the hi.mblest believer in .lesvis Christ has somethinjjf that a prophet, ii he be not a disciple, does not possess ; and that which he has, and the prophet has not, is higher than the endo^vment that is peculiar to the prophet alone. May we say the same thinj? about the difl'erence between the I'iiij-hteoiis man and the disciple ? Can there be a ricfhteons man that is not a disciple r Can there be a dis- ciple that is not a righteous man ? Can the separation between these two classes be perfect and complete r No I. in the profoundest sense, certainly not. But then at the time when Christ spoke there were some men standing- round Him, who, " as touching the righteousness which is of the law," were " blameless." And there are many men to-day, with much that is noble and admirable in their characters, who stand ai)art from the faith that is in Jesus Christ ; and if the sei)aration be so complete as that, then it is to be emphatically and decisively pronounced that if we have regard to all that a man ought to be ; and if we estimate men in the measure in which they approxi- mate to that ideal in their lives and conduct, "the Christian is the highest style of man." The disciple is above the righteous men adorned with many graces of character, who, if they be not Christians, have a worm at the root of all their goodness because it lacks the supreme refinement and consecration of faith ; and above the fierv- tongued prophet, if he be not a disciple. Now, brethren, this thought is full of very important practical inferences. Faith is better than genius. Faith is better than brilliant gifts. Faith is better than large re(j[uirements. The poet's imagination, the philosopher's calm reasoning, the orator's tongue of fire, even the inspira- tion of men that may have their lips touched to proclaim God to their brethren, are all less than the bond of living ■I ,■■ Mr f !■: AND THEIR REWARD. •>'>r. trust that knits ii soul to Jesus Clirist, and makes it tliereby partaker of that indwelling Saviour. And, in like manner, if there be men, as there are, and no doubt some of them in this congregation, adorned witli vii'tues and graces of character, but who have not rested their souls on Jesus Christ, then high above these, too, stands the lowliest person who has set his faith and love on that Savioui". Neither intellectual endowments nor moral character is the highest, but faith in Jesus Christ. A man may be endowed with all brilliancy of intellect and fair with manv beauties of character, and he mav be lost : and on the other hand simple faith, rudimentary and germlike as it often is, carries in itself the prophecy of all goodness, and knits a man to the source of all l)lessedness. " Whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. Now abideth these three, faith, hoi)e, charity." '' Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are vvritten in Heaven." Ah ! brethren, if we believed in Christ's classification of men, and in the order of importance and dignity in Avhich He arranges them, it would make a wonderful practical difference to the lives, to the desires, and to the efforts of a great many of us. Some of you students ])efore me this morning, young men and young women that are working at college or your classes, if you believed that it were better to trust in Jesus Christ than to be wise, and gave one-tenth, ay ! one hundredth part of the atten- tion and the effort to secure the one which you do to secure the other, would be different people. " Not many wise men after the flesh," but humble trusters in Jesus Christ, are the victors in the world. Believe you that, and order your lives accordingly. Oh ! what a reversal of this Avorld's estimates is coming one day, when the names that stand high in the roll of THE CtREATEST IN THE KINGDOM, ; \ m I <,' fume shall pale, like photographs that have been shut up in a portfolio, and v.hen you take them out have faded ofl' the i)aper. "The world knows nothini^' of its greatest men," but there is a time coming when the spurious mush- room aristocracy that the world has worshipped, will 1)e forgotten : like the nobility of some conij^uered land, who are brushed aside and relegated to pi'ivate life by the new nobility of the conquerors, and when the true nobles, God's greatest, the I'ighteous, who are righteous l^ecause they have trusted in Christ, shall shine forth like the sun " in t'.ie Kingdom of Ux Father." Here is the climax : gifts and endowments at tlie bottom, character and morality in the middle, and at the top faith in Jesus Chi'ist. II. — Now notice briefly in the second place the vai'iety of the reward according to the character. The prophet has his, the righteous man has his, the little one has his. That is to say, each level of spiritual or moral stature receives its own prize. There is no dilJi- culty in seeing that this is so in regard to the rewards of this life. Every faithful message delivei'ed by a prophet increases that prophet's own blessedness, and has joys in the receiving of it from God, in the speaking of it to men, in the marking of its effects as it spreads through the world, which belong to him alone. In all these, and in many other ways, the " prophet " has rewards that no stranger can intenneddle with. All courses of obedient conduct have their own ai)propriate consecpiences and satisfaction. Every chai'acter is adapted to receive, and does receive, in the measure of its goodness, certain bless- ings and joys, here and now. " Surely the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth." And the same principle, of course, applies if we think of the reward as altogether future. It must be re- membered, however, that Christianity does not teach, as 1 ■I- ■ ^liut ix\y ,ded ofl" i-reatest ^ musli- wiU be 1(1, AVllO he new 'S, God's se they n\n " in bottom, op ftiith ' variety his, tlie q)i ritual no diiii- ards of ji'ophet joys in to men, i^h the and in hat no l)edient es and ye, and 1 bless- [is shall think Ibe re- ill, as 1 AND THEIR REWARD. )m believe, that if there be a prophet or a righteous man who is not a disciple, that prophet or righteous man will get rewards in the future life. It must be remembered, too, that every disciple is righteous in the measure of his faith. Discipleship being presupposed, then the disciple-prophet will have one reward, and the disciple-righteous man shall have another ; and where all three characteristics coincide, there shall be a triple crown of glory upon his head. That is all plain and obvious enough if only we get rid of the prejudice that the rewards of a future life are merely bestowed upon men by God's arbitrary good pleasure. What is the reward of Heaven r " Eternal life," people say. Yes ! " Blessedness." Yes ! But where does the life come from, and where does the blessedness come from ? They' are both derived, they come from God in Christ ; and in the deepest sense, and in the only true sense, God is Heaven, and God is the reward of Heaven. " I am thy shield," so long as dangers need to be guarded against, and then, thereafter, " I am thine exceeding great Reward." It is the possession of God that makes all the Heaven of Heaven, the immortal life which His children receive, and the blessedness with which they are enraptured. We are heirs of immortality, we are heirs of life, we are heirs of blessedness, because, and in the measure in which, we become heirs of God. And if that be so, then there is no difficulty in seeing that in Heaven, as on earth, men will get just as much of God as they can hold ; and that in Heaven, as on earth, capacity for receiving God is determined by character. The gift is one, the reward is one, and yet the reward is infinitely various. It is the same light which glows in all the stars, but " star differeth from star in glory." It is the same wine, the new wine of the Kingdom, that is poured into all the vessels, but the vessels are of divers magni- tudes, though each be full to the brim. z 338 THE GREATEST IN THE KINGDOM, P' i 'y M And so in those two sister parables of our Master's, wliich are so remarkably discriminated and so remarkably alike, we have both these asi)ects of the Heavenly reward set forth — both that which declares its identity in all cases, and the other which declares its variety according to the recipient's character. All the servants receive the same welcome, the same prize, the same entrance into the same joy : although one of them had ten talents, and another five, and another two. But the servants who were each sent out to trade Avith one poor pound in their hands, and by their varying diligence reaped varying l)rofi^ts, were rewarded according to the returns that they had brought ; and one received ten, and the other five, and the other two cities, over which to have authority and rule. So the reward is one, and yet infinitely diverse. It is not the same thing whether a man or a woman, being a Christian, is an earnest, and devoted, and growing Christian here on earth, or a selfish, and an idle, and a stagnant one. It is not the same thing whether you content yourselves with simply laying hold on Christ, and keeping a tremulous and feeble hold of Him for the rest of your lives, or whether you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour. There is such a fate as being saved, yet so as by fire, and going into the bright- ness with the smell of the fire on your garments. There is such a fate as having just, as it were, squeezed into Heaven, and got there by the skin of your teeth. And there is such a thing as having an abundant entrance ministered, when its portals are thrown wide open. Some imperfect Christians die with but little capacity for possessing God, and therefore their Heaven will not be as bright, nor studded with as majestic constellations, as that of others. The starry vault that bends above us so far away, is the same in tl: e number of its stars when gazed on by the savage with his unaided eye, and by the AND THEIR REWARD. .'^:v.) [aster's, irkably reward in all cording iive the into the its, and ts who in their varying lat they ler live, iithority diverse, woman, growing and a ler you 'ist, and Ithe rest [ice and 111 a fate bright- There led into And htrance Some [ty for )t be as las that so far gazed )V the astronomer with the strongest telescoi)e ; and the Infinite God, who arches above ns, but comes near to us, disclos-CvS galaxies of beauty and oceans of abysmal light in Himself according to the strength and clearness of the eye that looks upon Him. So, brethren, remember the one glory has infinite degrees ; and faith, and conduct, and character here determine the capacity for God which we shall have when we go to receive our reward. 111. — The lust point that is here is the substantial identity of the reward to all that stand on the same level, however different may be the form of tlieii' lives. " He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward." And so in the ca^e of the others. The active prophet, righteous man, or disciple, and the passive recogniser of each in that character, who receives each as a prophet, or righteous man, or disciple, stand practically and substantially on the same level, though the one of them may have his lips glowing with the Divine inspiration and the other may never have ojjened his mouth for God. That is beautiful and deep. The power of sympathising with any character is the partial possession of that character for ourselves. A man who is capable of having his soul bowed by the stormy thunder of Beethoven, or lifted to Heaven by the ethereal melody of Mendelssohn, is a musician, though he never composed a bar. The man who recognises and feels the grandeur of the organ music of " Paradise Lost " has some fibre of a poet in him, though he be but " a mute, inglorious Milton." All sympathy and recognition of character involves some likeness to that character. The poor woman who brought the sticks and prepared food for the prophet entered into the prophet's mission and shared in the prophet's work and reward, though his task was to beard Ahab, and hers was only to bake his bread. The old z 2 'U^li ■ - ,h -tjf Ki 9 ■S, '•I. i V r 2 r I' I'V'Ipl ..I i'. i 8 ■:■•.' y .■ 1 340 THE GREATEST IN THE KINGDOM, kniffht that clapped Lnther on the back when he went into the Diet of Worms, and said to him : " Well done, little monk ! " shared in Luther's victory and in Luther's crown. He that helps a prophet because he is a prophet, has g-ot the making of a prophet in himself. As all work done from the same motive is the same in God's eyes, whatever be the outward shape of it, so the work that involves the same type of spiritual character will involve the same reward. You find the Egyptian medal on the breasts of the soldiers that kept the base of communication as well as on the breasts of the men that stormed the works at Tel-el-Kebir. It was a law in Israel, and it is a law in Heaven : " As his part is that goeth down into the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff, they shall part alike." " I am going down into the pit, you hold the ropes," said Carey, the pioneer missionary. They that hold the ropes,. and the daring miner that swings away down in the blackness, are one in the work, may be one in the motive, and, if they are, sliall be one in the reward. So, brethren, though no coal of fire may be laid upon your lips, if you sympathise with the workers that are trying to serve God, and do what you can to help them, and identify yourself with them, and so hold the ropes, my text will be true about you. " He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward." They who by reason of circumstances, by deficiency of power, or by the v/eight of other tasks and duties, can only give silent sympathy, and prayer, and help, are one with the men whom they help. Dear brethren ! remember that this awful, mystical life of ours is full everywhere of consequences that cannot be escaped. What we sow we reap, and we grind it, and we bake it, and we live upon it. We have to drink as we have brewed : we have to lie on the beds that we have AND THEIR RKWARD. :vii made. " Be not deceived : God is not mocked." The doctrine of reward has two sides to it. '' Nothinjjf human ever dies." All onr deeds drag after them inevitable con- 6e(inences ; but if you will put your trust in Jesus Christ lie will not deal with you according t« your sins, nor rewai'd you according to your iniquities ; and the darkest features of the recompense of your evil will all be taken away by the forgiveness which we have in His blood. If you will trust yourselves to Him you will have that eternal life, which is not wages, but a gift ; which is not reward, but a free bestowment of God's love. And then, built upon that foundation on which alone men can build their hopes, their thoughts, their characters, their lives, however feeble may be our efforts, however narrow may be our sphere, — though we be neither prophets nor sons of prophets, and though our righteousness may be all stained and imperfect, yet, to our own amazement and to God's glory, we shall find when the fire is kindled which reveals and tests our works, that, by the might of humble faith in Christ, we have built upon that foundation, gold and silver and precious stones ; and shall receive the reward given to every man whose work abides that trial by fire. n , • a ^ ml ' B r. 1. Ii > T 2 '' 1 i * I Sermon XXVI. ONE SAYING WITH TWO MEANINGS. 1 Mf J wi ' I IBs r n IHul f m wff '' . « wM i « 'Iff m 1 i^ J: ,1 ' L J > ■ . '• M. n .*» M t 1 : . It HKUMOX XWl OXE SAYI.VO WITH TWO MKAXI.VUS. un.„ Ilta U,a, »;.'„,"j r "™i,^;i' ■;,"•;■ »•'■";■ '',« I Will, you, ,.„„ ,„„, r ,.„ the Pharisees au,l of the ,,■■ esTsl, r'"' ""''' "^ seize Christ hikI w„ni i i , '""' ''^'<'" »<*'" »<> «-te..s- ooltlr wt: r.,:::;rr' "" '"'"■ .-'w.., inexplicable even to them e ve T i H " '""""^' of the littU. company of His i^ il.fM f '"^^'?""''''^*^ scholars, who ma.le a 4at „ " • ^i" .^, "' *^""■''"^ ^'-»^•' all but tired out even „• J. ™"''"'«'«- ""'' sometimes .ive. «uch\r„: e":r rch "h rr-- ^^■- o.ie group, lovin. sorrow the oil," """''^' ^'"'"'''«'' Ohnst speaks to them botli in nearlv th,. ,. , S7.f 7ii' rr ,;'"■'-•■■""■-'- I * 1 ^ ) :vi(; ONK SAYIiVC WITH TWO IVIKAMNCIS. M tlu'iranus |);ir;il\st'(l ; lh;it wIkmi He wills lie will tjo, u<»l Ix' (Iraii'ircd l»_v I hem oi* any man, but ;.!:<> (o a safe asvliiui, \vluMH> lo(>s can luMtiuM' liiul nor jV.llow. Tlu' olliccrs nicans. Tlicy tiiiidv that, had ,U'\\ as thi'v ha\i> alwa\s hclicvcd Uini to he, lie may v«M'v nossihis consnmiiiato J lis apostacv hv i^oinir over to \\\v (lonlilos altoiiotluM' • hnt, at any rat<\ th(>y Iih'I thai llo is to (>S('a|)o ihiMi* hani tt'nderesi of all the names that ever came from riirisi's lii)s to His disciples, and never was heard on His li])s exce})t on this one occasion, for j)artin.ii' words ought to be very loviui^" words. "A little tinu^ 1 am with you,'* but lie does not say, "And then I ii^o to Him that sent me." " Ye shall seek j\Ie,'" but Ho does not sav " And shall not lind ]\[e."' "As I said unto the Jews, whither I ixo ve cannot come, so now sav 1 to von." That little word • • • " now " makes the announcement a tritth for the jn-esent only. His disciples shall not seek Him in vain, but when thev seek thev shall iind. And thoui^h for a moment they be parted from Him, it is with the prospect and the confidence of reunion. Let us, then, look at the two main tliou^rhts here. First, the two " seekini2:s," the seeking which is vain, and the seeking which is never vain : and the two "cannots." the inabilitv of His enemies for ever- more to come where He is, and the inability of His friends, for a little season, to come where He is. ONK SAYfNd WITH TWO MHAMNCS. 17 I. — Tlic I wo H('('k'm<^'s. Ah I liiivc <)I»s<'!'v«mI, llicrc is ii very Hiiitiifif'Jint (nnissiou "m oncol" the !onns(>t' the wordn. Tlic riH'inicH ju'c told llicy will iicv r iind Iliiu, l)iit no HiK'li diirlv wordn iirc HpokcMi to the friciidH. So, llicn, hostih; Hcckintr (»r llic (Mirist is in vuiii, uiid ioviiii,' Hcckinj^' of Him by Win IViciidH, llioti^di tlioy imdcrstiind Ilirii Imt vrry poorly, juid llicrcron^ H(M'k liiiii Ihiit tin y inuy know 11 in) Ik'Kci", 1h idwiiyH nnHwcrcd jnid ovci'-anHwcnMJ. Let n>o dciil jiisl lor ;i moment or two with vncAi of tlH'S<'. In tlii'ii- simplest use the woimIs of my lirsi text merely meun this : — " Y<.m (;iinnot toneh Me, I ;im })iissin<^ into ;i safe jisylnm where your hands eaii nev(!r reach Me." We njay <^M'neralis(^ thai for a momeid, though it does not lie dii'cetly in my i)atli, and j)rea('h th(^ old l)le,-s(Ml truth that no man with hostile intent seekinj^'' for ('lirist in His )>erson, in Tfis Ci(»r-i)»i'l, or in His followers and friends, can ever find Him. i\ll the anta^Mjuism that has stoi'iiied af»'ainsi Him and His cause and words, and His followerH and lovers, has heen imj)otent and vain. Tlie pursuers are like do^^s chasini^' a hii-d, snillinj,' alont( the {j^rouiid after their prey, which all tin; while sits out of their reach on a bonjrh, and carols to tli(( sky. Ah in the days of His flesh, His foes could not touch His person till He chose, and vainly s«;u^ht Hiii when it pleased Hinj to hide fnmi them, so ever t^'tnoA', in reg-ard of His cause, and in re^^ard of all heartn that love Him, no wea[)on that is formed aj^'^ainst then] shall pi'OKp^-f, "^i'liey shall ])e wra})i)(Ml, when need he, in a cloud of j>i'Mectin^' dai'kness, and stand safe within its shelter. 'J'ake ird cheer all you that are trying' to do anythinj^, however litth;, however secnhir it may appeal' to be, for the ^ooTing thoughts out across the globe to seek for husband, child, or friend when mo ONE SAYING WITH TWO MEANINGS. ,1, fi ^«S. ; V •I; s i. I absent, sets the really Christian heart seekinu: for the Christ, whom, having not seen, it loves, as surelj' as the ivy tendril feels ont for a support. As surely as the roots of a mountain-ash growing on the top of a boulder feel down the side of the. rock till they reach the soil ; as sure as the stork follows the warmth to the sunny Mv^diterranean, so surely, if your heart loves Clirist, will the very heai't and motive of your action be the search for Him. And if you do not seek Him, brother, as surely as He is parted from our sense you will lose Him, and He will be parted from you wholly, for there is no way by which a person who is not befoi-e our cvcn may be kept near us except only by ther, in tin thi*ee-f(>1d form in which I have spoken of it, effort to keep Him in our tlioughts, ill our lov<*. and over our will, is neitlier a seeking which staiMn from a serine thut we do not possess Him, nor one wliich ends in disappointment. But we seek for Him because we already hnve Him in a measure, an go to created wells, and find no water, and return ashamed, and with their vessels ONE SAYIXG WITH TWO ME\NIXGS. :v>i empty, but every one who seeks for that Fountain of salvation shall draw from it with joy. It is as im])ossible that a heart which wants Jesus Clirist shall not have Him, as it is tha. l..ngB dilated shall not fill with air, or as it is that an empty vessel put out in a rainfall shall not be re- plenished. He does not hide Himself, but He desires to be found. May I say that as a mother will sometimes pretend to her child to hide, that the chihrs delight may oe the Je " is a word not of evil but of g(wd cheer ; for buried in the depth of the com- mandment to search is the promise that we shall find. II. — Secondly, let us look for a moment at these two " cannots." " Whither 1 go, ye cannot come," says He to the enemies, with no limitation, with no condition. The "cannot" is absolute and i)ei'maiient, so long as they retain their enmity. To His friends, on the other hand, He^ says, " So 7iow I say to you," the law foi' to-day, the law for this side the tlood, but not the law for the beyond, as He explains more fully in the sul)se(|uent words : — M i %^ :i52 ONE SAYTNC; WITH TWO MEANINGS. " Thoii canst not follow Me now, but thon shalt follow Me afterwards." So, then, Christ is nomeivhere. When He passed from life it was not into a state only, but into a place ; and He took with Him a material body, howsoever changed. He is somewhere, and there friend and enemy alike cannot enter, so long as they are compassed with " the earthly house of this tabernacle." But the incapacity is deeper than that. No sinful man can pass thither. Where has He gone ? The preceding words give us the answer. " God shall glorify Him in Himself." The prospect of that assumption into the inmost glory of the Divine nature directly led our Lord to think of the change it would bring about in the relaticm of His humble friends to Him. While for Himself He triumphs in the prospect. He cannot but turn a thought to their lonesomeness, and hence come the words of our text. He has passed into the bosom and blaze of Divinity. Can I walk there, can I pass into that tremendous fiery furnace ? " Who shall dwell with the everlasting burnings ? " " Ye cannot follow Me now." No man can go thither except Christ goes thither. There are deep mysteries lying in that word of our Lord's, — " I go to prepare a place for you." We know not what manner of activity on His part that definitely means. It seems as if somehow or other the presence in Heaven of our Brother in His glorified humanity was necessary in order that the golden pavement should be trodden by our feet, and that our poor, feeble manhood should live and not be shrivelled up in the blaze of that central brightness. We know not how He prepares the place, but Heaven, whatever it be, is no place for a man imless the Man, Christ Jesus, be there. He is the revealer of God, not only for earth, but for Heaven ; not only for time, but for eternity. ONE SAYING WITH TWO MEANINGS. 35H follow Me . from life I He took d. He is ze cannot le earthly is deeper /here has e answer, rospect of le Divine change it )le friends B prospect, eness, and assed into there, can Who shall re cannot pt Christ rd of our We know definitely resence in mity was should be manhood ze of that t Heaven, the Man, I, not only >r eternity. "No man cometh unto the Father but by ;Me," is true everywhere and always, here as there. So 1 suppose that, but for His presence. Heaven itself would be dark, and its King invisible, and if a man could enter there he would either be blasted with unbearable flashes of brightness or grope at its noon-day as the blind, because his eye is not adapted to such beams. Be that as it may, " the Fore- runner is for us entered." He has gone before, because He knows the great City, " His own calm home. His habitation from eternity." He has gone before to make ready a lodging for us, in whose land He has dwelt so long, and He will meet us, who would else be bewilderea like some dweller in a desert if brought to the capital, when we reach the gates, and guide our unaccustomed steps to the mansion prepared for us. But the power to enter there, even when He is there, depends on our union with Christ by faith. When we are joined to Him, the absolute "cannot," based upon flesh, and still more upon sin, which is a radical and per- manent impossibility, is changed into a relative and tem- porary incapacity. If we have faith in Christ, and are thereby drawing a kindred life from Him, our nature will be in process of being changed into that which is capable of bearing the brilliance of the felicities of Heaven. But just as these friends of Christ, though they loved Him very truly, and understood Him a little, were a long way from being ready to follow Him, and needed the school- ing of the Cross, and Olivet, and Pentecost, as well as the discipline of life' and toil, before they were fully ripe for the harvest, so we, for the most part, have to pass through analogous training before we are prepared for the place which Christ has prepared for us. Certainly, so soon as a heart has trusted Christ, it is capable of entering wh^re He is, and the real reason why the disciples could not come where He went was that they did not yet clearly A A 354 ONE SAYING WITH TWO MEANINGS. i I'-,: l 111-'. .' J know Him as the Divine Sacrifice for theirs and the world's sins, and, however mnch they believed in Him as Messiah, had not yet, nor could have, the knowledge on which they could found their trust in Him as their Saviour. But, while that is true, it is ol^o true thrt each advance in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour will bring with it capacity to advance further into the heart of the far-off land, and to see more of the King in His beauty. So, as long as His friends were wrapped in such dark clouds of misconception and error, as long as their Christian characters were so imperfect and incomplete as they were at the time of my text being spoken, they could not go thither and follow Him. But it was a diminishing impossibility, and day by day they approximated more and more to His likeness, because they understood Him more, and trusted Him more, and loved Him more, and grew towards Him, and, therefore, day by day became more and more able to enter into that Kingdom. Are you growing in power so to do ? Is the only thing which unfits you for Heaven the fact that you have a mortal body ? In other respects are you fit to go into that Heaven, and walk in its brightness and not be consumed ? The answer to the question is found in another one — Are you joined to Jesus Christ by simple faith ? The incapacity is absolute and eterniil if the enmity is eternal. State and place are determined yonder by character, and character is determined by faith. Take a bottle of some solution in which heterogeneous matters have all been melted up together, and let it stand on a shelf and gradually' settle down, and its contents will settle in regular layers, the heaviest at the bottom and the lightest at the top, and stratify themselves according to gravity. And that is how the other world is arranged — stratified. ONE SAYIXG WITH TWO MEANINGS. 355 ■eft in .a,.e,., ilL I 1^^ ^ lr\Tper "" r',' '" Judas witl, .,,„,„ .,,do„. and e, -eenc " r."; tf r'' nnseen but tnn«V 7 ''^'''' '*' * ^y^*'<-' Carrier, ^oot to%roJirrshr,'^:L:;jrr:f r ""^" of rest. You vi iClk t ' r '" """ " '''" ^-'J'^'"™ in ninrl 1.^ ^ ^^^'iinoei ot tile Kmg, and so von will enter m and be for ever with the Lord. "