PRINCETON, N. J. BS 1198 .V38 Vaughan, C. J. 1816-1897 Voices of the prophets SAe/j VOICES OF THE PROPHETS <0i- iFaitf;, l^raper, and ^uman %ifz By C. J. VAUGHAN, d.d. VICAR OF DONCASTER T/ie voices of the propJiets which are read every sabbath-day.'' — Acts xiii. 27 ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER 56 LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 1867 This Piiblicatioti co77ipletes a Series of three Utile Vohuues^ %vhich have enabled me {through the great liberality of their Publisher) to give substantial aid to the costly work of Rebuilding my Parochial Schools, CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE UNDERSTANDEST THOU WHAT THOU READEST ? 3 FAITH. I. FAITH REPENTING, .... 21 II. FAITH RESOLVING, .... 37 III. FAITH WORKING, .... 55 IV. FAITH RESTING, .... 75 V. FAITH FIGHTING, .... 94 VI. FAITH CONQUERING, .... PRAYER. 114 I. PRAYER AN INSTINCT, A MYSTERY, AND A REVE- LATION, .... II. PRINaPLES OF PRAYER, III. HINDRANCES AND AIDS TO PRAYER, IV. PRAYER IN ITS RELATION TO ACTION, V. PRAYER A DISCIPLINE AND AN EDUCATION, 139 158 177 194 215 iv Contents. HUMAN LIFE. I. THE SON FRETTING AGAINST THE RESTRAINTS OF HIS HOME, .... 237 II. THE FUGITIVE SEEKING FREEDOM IN A FAR COUNTRY, ..... 256 III. THE REBEL REFUSING TO RECEIVE CORRECTION, 272 IV. COMPUNCTIOUS VISITINGS AND REPENTANT RESOLUTIONS, . . . . 29I V. THE wanderer's WELCOME, AND THE HOME- LIFE OF THE RESTORED, . . . 306 INTRODUCTION. UNDERSTANDEST THOU WHAT THOU READ EST? ^O picture is more familiar to us than that of the Ethiopian Nobleman re- turning from his worship at Jerusalem, and reading aloud, on his chariot, the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. It is a history full of instruction. It speaks of an earnestness in seek- ing God — a diligence in the use of light given —an exertion and self-devotion in acting upon the knowledge of duty — which is an example for all time. And it speaks too of the reward of these things : how the eye of God marks such diligence and such exertion ; how He takes care that, to hjm that hath, more shall be given ; how He sends instruction to the teachable, guidance to the seeker, light to the watcher ; and enables one 4 Under standest thou who but now was puzzling hopelessly over the dark sayings of a Prophet, to lay hold of a direct- ing clue and a guiding light, by which he may reach the Saviour Himself, and go on his way rejoicing. The Evangelist Philip, guided by the express mission of the Holy Spirit, approaches the chariot of the Ethiopian stranger ; hears him reading aloud, as he journeys, the Volume of inspired Prophecy; and addresses him in words as grave as they are significant, Uuderstandest thou what thou readest ? Let the same question sound in our hearts this day, in reference to that completed Book, of which Philip and the Ethiopian possessed but one half, and that the more elementary and the less Evangehcal half; and let it say to each one of us, not for an answer aloud, but for an answer to con- science and to the heart-searching God, When thou openest (as all Christians open) the Book of Holy Scripture, to find therein a lamp to thy feet and a light to thy path, Undcrsfanddh thou what thou I'eadest ? I fear there must be, for some of us, what was needless for the devout Ethiopian, an earlier and more elementary question still, Readest thou ? what thoti Readest? 5 In how many a nominally Christian home lies a Bible unread from Sunday to Sunday ! left unopened, unregarded, on the shelf or the table ! eyed (so to say) askance, as an enemy and an intruder, nor come to benefit or to comfort, come rather to torment us before the time ! Some who pray read not : how many, alas ! neither pray nor read. Consciences are sensitive upon this subject. You might bring in vain many ten- tative charges against a Congregation or against its members : you might draw your bow at a venture, trying one by one the arrows of remon- strance and conviction upon a sick man, dying and unawakened before you, and none should pierce and none should hit: but this, I think, might almost be depended upon, to hit at least if it pierced not. Was the Book of God your study and your meditation % Did you daily read, daily mark it? Was it your companion by choice, was it even your monitor by duty % Too often day dawned and night darkened upon you — you rose and you rested — you had time for work, time for food, time for exercise, time for society — but no time for the Bible ; no time to give to the study of that record of Revelation which yet you professed to receive 6 Understandest tJioit as your rule, to trust as your guide, to look to as your hope. Who would not have been ashamed to be seen or to be heard, like this Ethiopian, reading his Bible as he took his journey % And is that shame a good sign — a sign of a depth of rever- ence which cannot bear to be intruded upon, of a sincerity wdiich dreads to be overrated % Or is it not rather a confession of neglect and ungodHness, bashful about religion in public just because it does despite to God in secret % The question, Readest thou ? must go before the question, Under- standest thoti 1 But indeed the two questions are not wholly separate and disconnected. Many read not be- cause they understand not. They have tried many times to become interested in the Bible, and fail- ure has made them close it. And certainly many understand not because they read not. They give themselves no chance of understanding : they do not even read. What is it then to understand the Scriptures % There is an understanding of the mind, and there is also an understanding of the heart. Some parts of the Bible are difficult of expla- nation. There are passages in the Prophets — what thozc Readest ? 7 passages also in the Epistles — which learned men cannot agree upon, which the uneducated cannot even guess at. Allusions to obscure events in history, to manners and customs long obsolete, to natural features now lost, or geographical ar- rangements now obliterated — and, on the other hand, unusual expressions or abstruse arguments such as only scholars can investigate, theologians discuss, or logicians unravel ; — these things, and others like them, make the understanding of a considerable part of Holy Scripture as difficult to the mind, as its deepest meaning must ever be in- accessible to the natural heart of man. In these respects, it may almost be said of a large portion of the Bible, as the Prophet Isaiah says of the vision of God when it came of old to His people, // is become as the words of a book that is sealed^ which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying. Read this ^ I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned. But even where the interpretation is certain, even Avliere the sense is plain, still it cannot be understood — nothing can be understood — without 8 Understandest thou study. It is here that men deceive themselves. They fancy that the Bible is the one book in the world which needs no labour. IMost painful is it, most affronting, to Christian people, to hear men of the world fling abroad hasty, super- ficial, summary judgments upon revelation and doctrine, without so much as the pretence of having studied or reflected or pondered. Every one knows that — Eve7'y ojic can judge of that — is the language, scarcely disguised, upon God's truth and God's inspiration, on the lips of men who would think it monstrous for common sense, apart from long labour, thus to pronounce upon an art, a history, or a science. If any one is to be able to answer Yes to the question, Un- derstandest thoit what thou readest in the Bible ? he must at least have diligently read and earnestly studied, in all its parts, the things written therein. And let me say — lest anything before spoken as to the difficulties of the Bible should be made into a discouragement or a stumbling-block to any — that even a poor person, even an ignorant person, even a young child, will find page after page of God's Holy Word clear and explain itself before him as he dwells upon it in patient, earnest study. what thou Readest f 9 I speak now even of the understanding of it by the mind. Just as the wisest of men can know nothing of the Bible without study, so the humblest of men can know much of the Bible — even as a matter of understanding — by study. Thou hast hid these things^ even intellectually, from the wise and pj'ude7it, and hast revealed them wito babes. How often, how often, do we find that true ! And how much more often, vvhen we come to the second part of understanding, which is that of the heart ! We can all see that what the Bible speaks to in us is not the mind, only or chiefly, but the heart. A person might have read all of it many times over — read it in the Greek and read it in the Hebrew — read it with all the notes of all the commentators, and with the added help of all the travels and all the his- tories which could throw light upon its allusions and upon its references — and yet know nothing of it for his soul's health. The supposition is indeed unnatural : for who would care thus to know the Bible, if he cared not for a thing yet beyond — for the knowledge of it as opening to him the way of salvation 1 But the two kinds of knowledge are dis- tinct, and must be spoken of in their distinctness. lo Under standest th ou What then is it to understand with the heart ? The Ethiopian stranger did not yet understand the Scriptures, because he had not yet found in them Jesus. He was still asking, Of wJiom speaketh the Prophet this — this about the sheep led to the slaughter, and the lamb dumb before his shearer — a humiliation which deprived of justice, and a life taken by violence from the earth — of whom speak- eth the Prophet this ? of himself or of some other man ? And it was when Philip opened his mouthy and beginning at the same Scj'iptiwe preached unto him Jesus, that he first understood, in the true sense, the thing that he read. Even so was it with the Disciples after the Resun-ection, when One greater than an Evangelist at last opefied their -understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. It was by making them see in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, the things concerning Himself. Thus then no man really understands the Bible until he finds Christ in it. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of pi'ophecy. It is not only in one chapter of the Prophet Isaiah, it is all through the Old Testament Scriptures, that God is testifying of His Son. The Law testified of Him. The Moral what thoit Readest ? 1 1 Law, by revealing to man his sinfulness, and making him cry out for forgiveness to One who is All-holy. The Ceremonial Law, as the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches us, by prefiguring an open way into the Divine presence through the atoning and sanctifying blood of Jesus. How much more as the revealing light cleared and brightened, till it became in the Prophetical Scriptures almost a Gospel — disclosing more and more of the work and of the glory of Him that should come, of man's utter need and of God's boundless mercy -—that so there might be no lack of signs by which men (when He came) might recognize their Saviour, and no dimness or dulness of hope for those who must go to their graves before His appearing. And perhaps we think that there can be no doubt, in Gospel times, as to our thus under- standing the Scriptures. We know that they are full of Christ. The very first use made of them for us in childhood was to teach us out of them the Advent and the Ministry, the Life and the Death, of Jesus. And the chief object of our ever opening the Bible for ourselves has been this — that in some cloudy and dark day, of anxiety or of 1 2 Undefstaiidest thoti bereavement, we might find something about Him to cahii our fears, and to say to the tempest of our souls, Peace, he still ! And yet there is no doubt that the understanding of Scripture with the heart is even more rare (if it be possible) than the understanding of it with the mind. We see Christ, it may be, in the Scriptures : but do we go on to seek Him, by their help, as the Light of life, and the Anchor of the soul, and the Propitia- tion for personal sin, and the Source and Inspirer of an individual holiness ? Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life — and they are they which testify of me — and yet, ye will not come to me that ye might have life! Ah! it is here that we come short. AVe see that Christ is in the Bible : but we do not go to Him, we do not call Him in, we do not for ourselves seek nor search nor see Him there ! And this last is the understanding of the heart. This last is the thin'g which enables a man to give an affirmative answer, when the ques- tion is put to him, apart by himself, Understandeth thou 7uhat thou readest ] It remains then to ask, Why not? and to ask also, How ] The two questions may be combined in one brief and closing enquiry. For, if we be- what t/ioic Readest ? 13 come conscious of the reason why we understand not, we shall also be instructed at the same time how we may understand. And here, first of all, I need not fear to say positively that, in this as in every instance, we have not because we ask not. If, not as a form, but with deep earnest truth, we always prayed the Church's Collect before we read the Bible — asking God to give us grace so to read as that we might embrace and hold fast Christ — that would be a safe and a sure step towards the understanding spoken of How much more if we made it a matter of daily prayer that God would be pleased to open our understandings and prepare our hearts to receive Christ into them as our one Divine rest and peace and joy! But, as it is, we read the Bible, when we do read it, as if it could of itself do for us the thing which we want : as if the printed page could enter the soul, and work there by matter what is from first to last a work of spirit ; as if the mere passing of the eye over the lifeless book could do by magic that ofiiice of en- lightenment and salvation which the Holy Spirit of God deputes to nothing and to no one. If we would understand what we read, we must read in 14 Understandest tJiott God's presence what God has revealed : an earnest and solemn act of self-presentation to Him for instruction must precede every reading — and the thought, / am here before God as His child and His disciple^ must go along with the reading — and the prayer for the implanting of what has been taught, and for its carrying out with us into life, must close the reading — or we shall have been guilty (Httle as we may suspect it) of forgetting God in His gifts, of dispensing with His inward teaching even while seeking and occupied in the outward. Next to this, and scarcely second even to this in importance, I would place the consideration, that no one can love and no one can profit by the Bible, unless he is sincerely desirous to live the life which God approves. It is one practical proof — worth many laborious arguments — of the Inspiration of Holy Scripture, that sinners feel towards it just as they feel towards God. When Adam had sinned, he straightway hid himself (it is written) from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And so, if a man is cherish- ing any known sin, you will always find him hiding himself from his Bible. Not only because the Bible is a religious book. He will take up a Christian what thou Readest ? 15 biography — he will take up the narrative of a Christian's deathbed — he will take up a Volume of Sermons, and read without repugnance that which yet reproves and condemns him : he will not take up his Bible. He can more easily pray than do that. The one may be the cry of a miser- able divided heart in the ear of a distant God : the other is like God coming to him, and speaking aloud in his ear the words of confutation and judgment. The man who is not sincerely desiring to make his heart clean and his life pure, will never understand — if he can help it, he will never read — his Bible. See then, on the other hand, one of the ways towards that understanding. Clea7ise your hands, ye sinners ; and piwify your hearts, ye double-minded. So shall ye approach that book which has so much of God, so much of Christ, in it, not with dislike or repugnance, but with an earnest desire that ye may profit and that ye may grow thereby. A third chief hindrance to understanding the Scriptures is the infrequency, the intermittence, of their study. We shall never understand, so long as we grudge and stint the use of them. A common average Christian thinks it his duty 1 6 Uiiderstandest iJiou to read a Psalm or to read a Chapter daily. That is his maximum. Often it is cut short : often it is forgotten : often it is jostled out of his day by some call of business or pleasure, some accident of late rising or of evening drowsi- ness. But the rule is this. It is done, when done, as a duty ; as something for the omission of which he will be punished, by doing which he will have given satisfaction to conscience and to his God. So long as this is our spirit, we may do the duty, but we shall never understand the Bible ! The man who is to do this — the man who is to find Christ, to know God, by his Bible — must begin by determining to have it for his friend. O how I love Thy word I It is ?7iy meditation all the day. His delight is in the law of the Lord : and in His laiu doth he meditate day ajtd night. You may say, that is an advanced stage of the study. It is so. But it has its beginning too. Much depends — I had almost said all depends — upon the way in which you view your Bible. Regard it as a dull book, and it will be so. Regard it as a book fit only for sickness and sorrow, and you will soon make it so. It will retire before you, sad (as il; ^ luhat thou Reddest f 17 were) and reproachful, yet obedient too, into those dark and dismal chambers to which you bid it to confine itself. And then, when you would seek it there, perchance you will not find it. When you Open it, it will not speak : when you call upon it, it will not answer. This is the punishment of those who in days of health have counted God's Word their enemy. But the converse is true also. Determine, God helping you, that you will love your Bible : read it, read it again — read whole books of it at one sitting, and when next you sit down with it, read them again : if anything at first puzzles you, study it, pray over it, then lay it aside, and soon study it again : that which was dark before will oftentimes be hght now : what you know not now, you shall know hereafter : have the book itself always about, keep it very near you, on your desk and on your pillow : I had almost said, confine yourself to it till you can love it — and you will love it : it will begin to talk to you, it will begin to answer you, it will begin to resolve your doubts, and to stimulate your curiosity : it will accommodate itself to your mood ; it will be grave when you are grave, and it will smile when you smile : till at last you shall say with the 1 8 Under standest tJiou, etc. Psalmist, / am as glad of Thy 7vord as one that findeth great spoils — Hoiv S7veet are Thy tvords unto my taste: yea, sweeter than honey to my month — The law of Thy month is dearer nnto me than thousands of gold and silver! Then at last, when the question is put to you, Understandest thon what thou readest 1 you shall be able to answer, with a joyful heart and a good conscience. Thou, Lord, hast given me under- standing — Thou hast dealt well with Thy servant — I thank God through Jems Christ our Lo7'd ! FAITH. FAITH REPENTING. I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear : but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." — ^JoB xlii. 5, 6. [ROM faith to faith, is St Paul's short strong way of describing the Christian life. He who has no faith is no Christian. He whose faith is anything — how- ever weak, however wavering — is something of a Christian. He whose faith is growing — however slowly — is running the Christian race. He whose faith is perfected is already in heaven. Now therefore, of all questions, this becomes the most critical and the most vital. Have I faith 1 To assist such as shall listen in answering that great question ; to guide them not only 2 2 Faith Repenting. to an answer, but to that answer which accom- panies peace and salvation ; and then to furnish them with some directions as to the way in which they should go, that they may in due time join the spirits of just men already made perfect, in that world where faith is lost in sight — this is the threefold object of that little course upon which we now enter, when we would propose as the first of our special meditations on the great sub- ject of Faith, the brief but pregnant thesis, Faith Repenting. We will not spend time in elaborate definitions of the two words which our subject thus brings together. Faith and Repentance. We may just call Faith a spiritual sight, and Repentance a changed mind, and pass at once to the combination which forms the point and pivot of our subject. Faith is a spiritual sight. The seeing with the eye of the soul something which, some one whom, we cannot see with the eye of the body. Read the illustrious records of faith, as they are spread out before us in the i ith chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and you will perceive that what is said of one of the heroes of faith is in Faith Repenting. 23 substance the secret of the Hfe and works of all the rest, He endured as seeiiig Him who is Invisible. Faith is the looking upv/ard into the heaven above, and seeing God in Christ there j the look- ing onward into the world eternal, and seeing there a life most unlike this life — a life pure and peaceful and blessed and unchanging — reserved for all who, not having seen, have yet loved Christ here, and patiently kept His word and done His Father's will, in spite of weakness and weariness and warfare and temptation, below. Faith is the looking upward, and the looking onward, above and beyond the things w^hich are seen and tem- poral, and the persons who people the world that is, to the things which are unseen but eternal, and to Him whose kingdom is already open in heaven for all who, with a resolution which will take no denial, will earnestly and diligently press into it. This is Faith. He who lives looking upward and looking onward — setting God always before him, and seeking earnestly the salvation which is in Christ Jesus — is a man of faith. It is of him that we speak in these Discourses, and say of him, first, that the man of Faith is a man also of Repentance. 24 Faith Repenting. Repentance, or a changed mind, has reference specially to two subjects ; sin, and God. To repent is to regard sin differently. Once it was made light of, carelessly played with, rashly approached, indolently yielded to, or passionately fostered. Now it is seen as God sees it ; viewed seriously, judged of gravely, deeply bewailed, anxiously guarded against, avoided, dreaded, shrunk from, abhorred. To repent is to regard God differently. Once He was trifled with, left afar off, disliked as an intruder; His Word, His worship, His holy day disregarded; His right as the Creator forgotten, His call as the Redeemer unlistened to and dis- obeyed. Now God is seen as He is ; seen as the Fountain of being, whose we are and must be ; seen as the Spring and Source of Life, whom to know is to be happy, whom to serve is perfected freedom. He who has undergone this change, this change towards sin, and this change towards God, he, and he alone, has true repentance. Now when we speak of Faith Repenting — meaning, of course, by that expression, the man of faith repenting — we say, in effect, that Repent- ance itself is an act of Faith ; that Faith is neces- Faith Repenting. 25 sary to Repentance, and that true Faith prompts and produces true Repentance, It is not very uncommon, in books and sermons, to represent Repentance as going first and Faith as following. Some would even regard Repent- ance as perfected before Faith begins. Some would make Repentance a preliminary stage of the Christian life ; or even no stage of it — a mere preparation and clearing of the way for the Chris- tian life ; and Faith that which comes next — be- ginning where Repentance ends, and wholly dis- tinct from it and separate. And others, however unintentionally, so express them.selves, as to make Repentance a sort of condition which man must satisfy in order to his coming with acceptance to receive life from God. Man must repent, and then God will forgive. No wonder that, under such teaching, Repentance has a chilling and a repul- sive sound! But if the present subject — if the two words. Faith Repenting — should be fixed by God's grace in any listening ear and waiting heart, we shall both see why heretofore we have had no true repentance, and how we may obtain in the future its peaceable fruit, its abiding unchanging joy. I. Holy Scripture is abundant in examples of 26 Faith Repenting. the workings, shallow or deceptive — at all events, disappointing and fruitless — of the things which man calls repentance. It tells of Fear Repenting, and Vexation Repenting, and Despair Repenting, as though to enhance and illustrate the power of the one true heart-deep transforma- tion, which is Faith Repenting, (i) There was once a young man, addicted to the sports of the field, dear to his father's indulgent heart by reason of a certain frankness and sensi- bility which shot now and then like a passing gleam of sunlight over a life of selfishness and self-indulgence, which the plain-spoken oracle of Revelation can characterize only by the epithet J)rofa?ie. And this young man had a brother, most unlike him in natural disposition ; as calcu- lating and purpose-like as the other was short- sighted and impetuous : and he, taking advantage one day of his brother's fatigue and hunger to drive with him a hard bargain, possessed himself, in exchange for a single meal of pottage, of those rights of the first-born which contained in them not only the family inheritance but the patriarchal priesthood. Years passed away, and still the father lived, and still the early recklessness reaped Faith Repenting. 27 not its full recompence of reward. At last retribu- tion fell. He who had despised and sold his birth- right, loses, years afterwards, the blessing too. Then flowed in abundance those bitter tears which are so often regarded as the infallible token, if not the very reality and essence, of repentance : but the bitter tears flowed in vain : Esau for one morsel of meat had sold his birthright : and ye k?iow how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he foinid no place of re- pentafice, though he sought it carefully with tears. It was the repentance of wounded pride — it was the repentance of disappointed ambition — it was the repentance of natural resentment : it was not the repentance of grace — it was not Faith Repenting. How often have we mourned over the late-dis- covered consequences of some youthful folly or more mature transgression ; bitterly accusing our- selves of an act of which all the sweetness has vanished, but of which the sting, it seems, must be perpetual till Hfe is ended ! How have' we lashed ourselves for the folly, till we persuaded ourselves that we were even penitent for the sin ! And yet how wide the difference between regret and repent- 28 Faith Repenting. ance ! How anxious the question for each one of us, which of the two is ours ! Is our sorrow from God and toward God? or is it but that so7'roiv of the world of which an Apostle has written that it even 7vorketh death ? It is Faith only, it is not vexation, which repents. (2) Centuries passed away, and the younger brother s house has grown into a nation upon the earth. For four hundred years that nation has been growing and multiplying under a pressure of servitude and of severity which might have been ex- pected to be its extinction. At length God, the God of its fathers, has come down to see its sorrows. By a long and awful series of miraculous judgments, He is making the oppressor willing to let Israel go free. But again and again, just when the end seems to be gained, the tyrant king relapses into his obdu- racy. Entreat the Lord for me, he said again and again in the hour of his humiliation, and I will let the people go. But as soon as he saw that there was respite^ he hardened his heart. I have si?i7tedthis time: the Lord is righteous, and L and my people are wicked. E?itreat the Loi'd [for it is enoiigli) that there be no mo7'e mighty thiinderings and hail: and L will let yon go, and ye shall stay no longer. The great leader Faith Repenting, 29 listened ; he went out of the city, and spread abroad his hands wito the Lord: the thunders and hail ceased, and the I'ain was not poured upon the earth. But when the king saw that the rain a?id the hail and the thimder were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, neither woidd he let the children of Isj-ael go. It was the repentance of fear — it was not Faith Repenting. O, what a Book is God's Word for unravelhng the mazes of the heart of man ! Which of us has not in some moment of fear registered against himself in heaven some vow of repentance soon to be forgotten ! Who shall count the promises made on deathbeds? Who shall discriminate, save One alone, the reality and the unreality of the repent- ances of battle-fields and shipwrecks? Leave not we such a work for such a moment! Ours be the repentance of a calm but earnest faith ; not the repentance of a sudden terror, of a fearful looking for of judgment / (3) These are two examples of a Repentance not of faith and therefore not effectual. Take yet a third, from a time yet more eventful and a scene more sacred still. It was the time when the Son of God stood in 30 Faith Repenting. human form upon the earth; when He was speaking God's words and doing God's works and fulfilling perfectly the will of God below. There was one amongst His own chosen followers, who lived with Him without loving Him. By degrees the breach widened and deepened, until a deliberate act of treachery sacrificed the Master's life. We might have thought that one who could plan and exe- cute such a crime, must have been hardened be- yond the possibility of penitence. But it was not so. Judas, luJiich had betrayed Him, St Matthew writes, when he saw that He was co?ide77i?ied, repented himself, and brought back the price of the betrayal to the chief priests ajid elders, saying, I have sin7ied in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. Conscience awoke yet once more, even in him, and wrought there something to which Holy Scripture does not altogether refuse the nominal title of repentance. But that repentance was not of faith, and therefore, when it was finished, it brought forth not life but death. The repentance of remorse and despair ended not in amendment but in suicide. Before, or almost before, his Master was in Paradise, Judas had ended by his own hand the life wliich had betrayed His. He departed, and went and hanged himself Faith Repenting. 31 And O, how many a repentance, since that day, has produced the same deadly fruit! Sin seen, too late, to be exceeding sinful — sin seen without Christ — seen in its true character, and seen in its real consequences, but seen apart from that blood of sprinkliiig ■^Mxoki alone can make the sight en- durable — has not only rendered life miserable, it has driven the sinner on to that act of self-destruc- tion which is the seal and signature of his ruin. The repentance of disappointment, the repentance of fear, may be shallow or short-lived ; the repent- ance of remorse, the repentance of despair, may even close recklessly upon the sinner the door of grace for ever. God in His great mercy keep us all from that end ! 2. The same Word of truth, which shows us, by doctrine and example what Repentance is not, teaches us also what it is : sets before us Faith repenting : exemplifies to us the working of that grace which is man's life, in this particular depart- ment, its relation to personal sin and to our recovery and restoration from it. It is altogether deceptive and mischievous lan- guage to represent sin as finally done with so soon as a man comes to Christ for salvation. 32 Faith Repenting, Past sin is not then done with, and present sin is not then done with. The Christian hfe has to take account still of both. And then for the first time can that account be taken rightly, when a man knows in whom he believes, and is able to commit to Him with confidence the keeping of his eternal interests. It was when the Patriarch whose words are before us could say for the first time to his God, Now mine eye sceih Thee, that all his self-confidence and self-esteem gave way at once, and he can add, from the depths of a con- trite soul, Wherefore I abhor myself, and i-epent in dust and ashes. It was the thought of his sin as sin against God his God which made David utter the words of the 51st Psalm: it was the look of Jesus which broke Peter's heart, destroyed for ever his forwardness and self-parade, and made him go forth to weep bitterly, and come back converted to strengthen his brethren. The two great lessons of our subject are these. (i) Only faith can 7'epent. If you would be a penitent man, you must be a man of faith. So long as you pore over the records written within of past transgression and vileness, hoping to reach repentance by means of a truer estimate and a Faith Repenting. 33 livelier consciousness of your own demerit and sinfulness, not only will you never know peace, you will never feel as you ought your own guilt. Begin, rather, at the other end. Begin by falling at the feet of Jesus. Begin by laying hold upon the one hope set before you in the Gospel ; the hope of a free forgiveness, of a perfect absolution, through the one all-perfect all-sufficient sacrifice made by Him for all sin. See your own sins as a re-crucifixion of the Crucified. See Him, never- theless, bearing them on the Cross for you, that you might go free. Lay hold upon the Atonement there made ; upon the love which laid all upon Christ ; upon the love which took upon itself all the load ; upon the love, unexhausted and untir- ing, which still says to you, after all these years of provocation and backsliding, Come unto me, and I will give you rest — My grace is sufficient for thee — The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us fro7n all sin. By degrees, in the daily study, in the hourly use, of that glorious revelation, the forgive- ness of sin, of all sin, for the alone merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, there will rise up within you, as never otherwise, as never before, a sense of the evil of sin, and of your own deep c 34 Faith Repenting, defilement with it, such as will find its best expres- sion in the memorable words, / have heard of Thee by the heating of the ear, hut now mme eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself a7id repent m dust and ashes. Faith only can repent. (2) Faith must repent. It is a sad thought, to any one who is in the least degree taught of God, how slightly Christian people deal with their own sins \ how they dismiss fi-om memory and conscience past years of negligence and ungodliness ; how they make it almost a duty \o forget the things behind — not in St Paul's sense, as the repudiation of self-complacency and over- boldness, but in a sense most opposite, as the dis- missal, from concern and remembrance, of all that is disheartening and saddening in the years that are gone. Not so did St Paul. It is evident that he retained to the end of his course a deep and even anxious recollection of the long period of his unbelief Less than the least of all saints — The least of the Apostles, not meet to be called an Apostle — Once a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious — Sinners, of whom I am chief— ?>'\xd\ are the honest earnest words which express his opinion of himself, in reference to the time when he was a stranger to Faith Repe7iting, 35 Christ, and to its abiding influence upon his Chris- tian standing. A man of faith is kept humble to the end by the memory of the sins of his youth. But is it only in reference to the long past, to the far-distant sinfulness, that he is thus penitent stilU How does each day, as it runs its course, give room and reason for the exercise of a new- repentance ! Good left undone, and evil done, day by day — bad habits but half broken, and better habits but half learned — opportunities of receiving spiritual benefit, and opportunities of influencing others towards godliness, every day neglected, set aside, or sinned away — yes, to the very end the Repentance of Faith must be new every morjiifig, and the aspect and attitude of the believing be also to the last hour of life the aspect and attitude of the penitent. Let us earnestly foster in ourselves this grace, which is the grace of saints. Even faith may be- come over-confident, may fall back little by little into a self-reliance and a levity and a presumption most unbelieving, most unchristian, most displeas- ing to God. Let it not be so with us. Let us sink low that we may rise high. Let us humble ourselves day by day under the mighty hand of God, that He, 36 Faith Repenting. not we, may exalt — and that, not all at once, but only ill due time. Such self-abasement will be the measure of our growth in grace and in the know- ledge of Jesus Christ. / have heard of Thee long and often hy the hearing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself and rej>ent i?t dust and ashes. IL FAITH RESOLVING. "The God of heaven, He will prosper us: therefore we His servants will arise and build." — Neh. ii. 20. IHE Repentance of Faith — our first sub- ject — leads on to the Resolution of Faith, which is the second. Faith Re- ing: and now, Faith Resolving. No doubt the first subject might have, been made to include the second. Resolution may be viewed either as a fruit or as a part of Repentance. For the sake of clearness we have distinguished the two. In each case the point lies in the combination of the two words which form the thesis. There is a repentance which is not of Faith, and certainly there are resolutions which are not of Faith. We desire to enter into judgment with our own souls, 38 Faith Resolving, in reference to our standing in the Christian life ; which is, from its first step to its latest, a life of Faith. We desire to see whether our repentances — for all men have something so called — are real or counterfeit repentances ; whether, when they come to us, they come out of fear, out of disap- pointment, out of punishment, out of remorse ; or whether they spring out of that true and living faith, which is the sight of things unseen, the sight of Him who is invisible. And we desire to see whether our resolutions — for all men know what it is to form resolutions — spring out of that faith which is the conviction of spiritual realities, the apprehension of a living and Almighty Person, or out of something else, which may indeed prompt resolutions, but not the resolutions of a Christian, not the resolutions which accompany salvation. We desire to know this, that, while there is time, we may refuse the wrong kind and choose the right. We would put away the first, that we may establish the second. There is a strong tendency in all human teach- ing to be one-sided. The truth of God, like the city of God, lieth foursquare : but men are ever- more altering that perfect shape, and making it. Faith Resolving. 39 instead, all length or all breadth; all lines or curves or angles, instead of that full and fair pro- portion which God the heavenly Architect has assigned to His work. In nothing is this tendency shown more strongly than in that which is our subject now : the subject of Resolution j which may be briefly defined as a determination of the Will for action. It is the first idea in most minds, that they have only to will and they can of course do. It is an idea implanted in us by nature ; an idea in- herent in that of duty, of responsibility, of judg- ment ; an idea which the Fall has not destroyed, and which the Gospel itself recognizes even while it corrects. Free will is the condition of action j the birthright of the moral being ; the starting-point of effort, and the keystone of accountability. In any scheme of morals, in any system of religion, in any voice of revelation, there must be place found for the human will, there must be the assertion of its existence and (in a certain sense) of its inde- pendence, if there is to be either an echo from the conscience or a strength for the life. If you cannot say to a man, This is the way — then walk in it ; if you cannot appeal to him as one who has 40 Faith Resolving. the power to refuse the evil and choose the good ; if you cannot reason with him of righteousness and te77iperance and judgjnent to come, as things which it is a matter of duty to seek, to practise, and to prepare for ; you make the world one vast mad- house, in which the chain and the padlock must take the place of liberty and self-management, be- cause reason has left her throne, and force only can prevent mischief or secure decency. The will of man may be enfeebled, biassed, besotted, even en- thralled j the man himself may rust it by indolence, blunt it by misuse, spoil it by folly, begrime it by vice : but even in that man it exists still, and each step of its deterioration has been (strange as may be the paradox) not taken by another but taken by itself It was the act of the will which in each instance weakened and damaged the will : and when it lies at last, a helpless, corrupt, and reprobate thing, it hes so by its own choice, and the ruin which is its curse was its own working too. There is in all men this consciousness. Even those who complain the most loudly of the thral- dom of their will to evil, are the most keenly sen- sitive to its possession and to its misuse. They Faith Resolving, 41 know that they have a will, and that by their own will they have lost its force. Language may easily be used in the name of the Gospel — fortified even by Gospel texts — which yet is not true nor wholesome language. I do not doubt that habits of sin have been fastened upon some men by telling them that they were power- less to resist. The food of the healthy is the poison of the sick. AVords which to a Christian man express only his own conscious unworthiness — his inability to stand before God in his own strength, or to earn for himself by merit the re- compense of the great reward — may be to a care- less half-awakened soul a very lullaby of indiffer- ence, neutralizing the strivings of conscience, and at last paralyzing the energies of action. It is time enough to speak of moral impotence, when we see pride and self-confidence dominant : to the ear of apathy and self-complacency the proper call is that which reminds of duty, and declares that that which God commands, His creature must rouse himself to perform. Unwholesome doctrine, on this topic of ac- countabihty and free will, has much to answer for, in reference to the careless lives and evil habits 4 2 Fa ith Resolving. of members of Christian Congregations. Educa- tion has a solemn office in sounding into the ears of children the lesson of strict duty and in- evitable retribution. The discipline of a Christian home and a Christian school rests entirely for its justification upon the reality of the free will. Do this — you can do it — and you shall have praise for the same. Do not this — you can avoid it — and you shall suffer. Form this habit — you can — of thought or speech — and it will bring you reward — you will have done well. Form this other, this opposite habit — but you need not — and it will be your trouble, your foe, your perpetual punish- ment. It is thus — not by the repetition of the words, but by the daily enforcement of them in a discipline not all joyous but often for the present grievous — that the child of impulse and indolence grows by degrees into the man of activity and self-control ; into a condition the very opposite of that which would have been reached by perpetual allowances for human frailty, or incessant inculca- tions of the doctrine of human impotency. And the more the young man or the old man deals on this principle with himself; saying, in regard to each question that comes before him of Faith Resolving. 43 doing or not doing, This ought to he done, therefore it ca7i he done — This ought to he resisted, this thought, this word, this action, therefore it can he, and therefore it shall he — the happier and the truer and the godUer will life itself be : much trouble will be saved, much misery escaped, much evil-doing prevented : Angels and good men will have more to rejoice in, and the enemies of God Himself will find the less cause to blaspheme. Man, even fallen man, has a will, and God requires him to exercise it. The man who cannot resolve is but half a man. And yet there have been those who have so stated this principle, as to make it false in fact and subversive of the Gospel. Some men say, What more do I want? I have a will : I know what is right : I have only to resolve, and I can do all things. Living thus, what has God Himself to say against me % We see at once, when the thought is breathed in words, how dreadful it is. More unpleasing in the sight of man, more offensive to the eye of God, than any prodigal or any Publican, is that cold self-satisfied Pharisee, who sees in himself no flaw, 44 Faith Resolving. sees consequently in the Saviour of sinners no beaidy that he should desire Him. This man has evidently not apprehended the whole of the truth, when he seized that one frag- ment of it, the freedom of the will. And to confine ourselves strictly to the present subject, he has evidently caught but one of the two words before us — Resolving, but not Faith Re- solving — and he shows us, in a living instance, how needful is the conjunction and the combina- tion. There is a Resolution which is not Christian: there is a Resolution which is not of Faith. Free will is one element of truth : free grace is the other. The God of heaven, He will prosper tis : therefore we His servants will arise and build. Or, in corre- sponding words less figurative, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling: for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. The resolutions of Nature are weak, shallow, and partial : the resolutions of Faith, like the inspirations of their Author, are thorough, heart-deep, life-wide, and effectual. Look at each. Ponder, then contrast them. I. Nature resolves. Faith Resolving. 45 Resolves, perhaps, to get rid of a fault. We will not ask how the fault got there ; nor stay to remark that there must be something in- complete in Nature, something defective (in other words) in the condition of the free will, to have allowed a bad habit to establish itself in a being which ought to have been upright. We will take it up where it is. There is something wrong. Wrong, perhaps, in a child : a little trifling trick of ill-temper, untruthfulness, or disobedience. W^rong perhaps in a boy : those which have been mentioned in the child, and, added to them, some- thing a little worse— I need not say of what kind- selfishness, cruelty, or sensuahty. Wrong in a young man : by this time, worse things still— beginnings of self-indulgence, intemperance, or sinful lust. It matters not, in this respect, either the age of the person, or the kind of thing. For in this point— the resolutions of Nature— all ages and all sins are alike. The fault, or the sin, has become trouble- some. I thought I was master. I thought I could say at any moment to my own sin. Thus far shalt thou come and no further. But I was mistaken. I fall when I would stand. I seek it yet again, when I would abstain. Even when I would do 4-6 Faith Resolving. good, the evil is present with me. Then I must seriously appeal to the strong will within. I must rouse my dormant energies, I must rally my scat- tered troops, I must turn out this intruder, I must reign again undisturbed in the citadel of my own being. Nature resolves. Ah! who has not heard the saying, Hell is paved with good frsolutions ? Who that has ever fallen into a bad habit has not found in himself the justification of that sad proverb? In childhood, in boyhood, in youth, in age, w^e sin and resolve — resolve and sin again ; sometimes, it may be, be- cause the resolution is weak — because it does not rise to the emergency — because there is a lingering longing half-reserve all the time within, favouring the foe whose expulsion is the enterprise ; but sometimes in spite of the utmost force and concen- tration of purpose — in spite of an experience of misery bitterly learned, and an intention of amend- ment as vehement as it was sincere. Such is the record, tear-blotted and blood-stained, of ten thou- sand times ten thousand human lives ; lives oscil- lating perpetually between wickedness and virtue, because the power of habit was too strong for the resolution of nature, and the soul that was Faith Resolving, 47 just escaping as a bird out of the s?iare of the fowler was again and again, in spite of itself, entangled therein and overcome. But it might be said, these are exceptional cases. Here the strength of the will has been lost by evil habit. No wonder the blunted instrument cannot all at once recover the edge of its blade and the strength of its wielding, and cut down that evil growth which it has once and for long acqui- esced in. Nature could have resolved, if now she cannot. Let us take then another case. Nature resolves to live a life of virtue. This was the actual endeavour of one man who has — and doubtless of many who have not — left a full account of it. For a time all seemed to prosper. The life was moral; the religious aspect of it outwardly perfect: there was even a high estimate of duty, and a great zeal for God. The man thought himself perfect. At length the Law of God (as he expresses it) came to him. Came home, I suppose, as a real thing : not as a mere written book, but as a voice of authority, as a word of command. It 48 Faith Resolving, came into the deep places of conscience, and said, Thou shalt not so much as desire that which is forbidden. It reached forth into the distant parts of the hfe, and said, God is everywhere : no pro- vince of the being is without His domain : every- where and in all things thou must walk as in His presence. Then was kindled a flame of rebelHon in the moral being. Desire forbidden was even stimulated by the prohibition. Sin, dead within, revived as under the ray of a tropical sun forcing matter into vitality. The^^/r show in the flesh was turned into rottenness, and the supposed perfection of duty was found to be a mere enmity and hatred against God. At last there came into the world One bringing a true message from the living God in heaven : a Man who would make religion real, and who could not be induced to accept conventional phrases or ceremonial observances in the place of a soul's homage and a Ufe's devotion. And when He was found to be resolute, and men could not either intimidate or use Him, they seized Him at length in the holy city, and, calhng in for once the hated foreigner, crucified Him by Gentile hands, and Faith Resolving. 49 thought Him vanquished — when, lo! out of this death there sprang an invincible Ufe, and disciples of the despised Nazarene became the one influence upon earth. And all men must take their side, in regard to this new Religion — he whom we have described among them — the man whose resolution for virtue had thrown him into insurrection against God : and he, of course, went against the ^2<.z2l- xQYi^— persecuted His followers even unto strange cities^ and when they were put to death gave his voice against them ! The resolution of Nature was a resolution against Grace. All this may sound visionary or obsolete in some ears : but let a man take it home — let him express it in modern language and apply it to present circumstances — and it will become real enough, and alas ! true enough in relation to the world of this century and a Church calling itself Christian. Many have resolved in our days — and it is a noble resolution, as it was in Saul of Tarsus — to be men of high attainment in virtue. The resolu- tion was formed early enough to prevent a youth of vice: they estimated the life to which they 50 Faith Resolving, aspired, and it contained in it at least three in- gredients — personal, domestic, and social purity. In the pursuit of this perfection they trusted to the firmness of the resolution, to the strength of the will. God entered not into it — save as the God of creation and perhaps of judgment — the Framer of the moral constitution, and possibly the Arbiter of the individual destiny. Him they acknowledged, probably, in the decent mainten- ance of religious forms : but they sought Him not as necessary to the acquisition of that virtue which they had proposed to themselves as the goal of their race. Now I will not doubt that the life corresponded to this beginning. That, in the case supposed, the end aimed at was reached. The life was blame- less, exemplary, useful. The conscience remained unsullied : the home was peaceful, and the career honourable. But I will venture to say that, even in this most favourable case, the resolution of Nature had at least three fatal defects. First, there was no real concord and conscious communion between the soul and its God. Secondly, there was no deep and all-sufficient con- Faith Resolving. 51 solatlon under the inevitable trials and eventual separations of a life of change and a death of pain. Thirdly, there was no room here for Christ. He was not wanted as the Propitiation for sin. He was not admitted as the humbler of human self- sufficiency, or the alone strength of human weak- ness. To the best resolution of nature Christ can only be what He was to Saul of Tarsus in the days of flesh and the Law ; a superfluity, an offence, a stumbling-block, and a foolishness. 2. Faith resolves. That is, the man of faith resolves ; and resolves as a man of faith — in the exercise of his faith. / will go forth in the stre?igth of the Lord God. The God of heaven, He will prosper tis: therefore we His servants will arise and build. The Christian life is one of perpetual resolutions. (i) Conscience, or the Bible — the conver- sation of a friend, or the ministry of the Word — has suggested to me some grace in which I am defective, or reminded me of some fault to which I ,am prone. The first step is Repentance : the second step is Resolution. The general has be- come the particular. The power of faith has to 52 Faith Resolvmg, be turned in a particular direction. The engine of grace must be brought to bear upon a particular part of the building. It may be that Prayer has been too brief or too superficial. It may be that I have thought too little of the Congregation ; of its prayer, its preaching, or its Sacraments. It may be that my conversation has been marked by symptoms of levity, of vanity, of censoriousness. It may be that some root of bitterness has revived within ; some old sin, once apparently conquered, has again raised its head, and if I would escape utter defeat, discomfiture, and ruin, I must crush, I must tread it down, I must eradicate it. The first step is Repentance : the second step is Reso- lution. But what resolution? A resolution of Faith. And what is that ? First, an earnest calling in of Him in whom I believe. This is the very name given in Scrip- ture to Christian people. They that call upon the Lord. Those who call habitually upon the name of the Lord. They who in everything call upon and call in Jesus Christ. This which the resolution of Nature wholly omits, is the first and foremost element of the resolution of Faith. Faith Resolving. 53 And then, not a mere idle waiting for Jesus Christ to do all for us, without thought, care, or toil of ours. An earnest calling in of Christ, and then an earnest going forth in His strength to do the neglected good, or to cast out the sin har- boured. And once more, not merely a calling in, and a going forth, but a posture and attitude (as it were) of dependence and of expectation, suit- able to one who has a serious undertaking on hand, for which he wants, and must have, all the help and all the grace which is in the Omnipotent and the All-holy. These are the special resolutions of Faith, answering to the special resolutions (above dwelt upon) of Nature. (2) But there is also, as before, a general resolu- tion, bearing upon the life as a whole : an ideal proposed, and a goal made for. The man of faith says to himself, This and this must I be in life, and this and this in death. To me to live must be Christ, and to me to die must be gain. How can this be % Every energy mifSt be knit up for this great enterprise ; the greatest enterprise, by far, which can be presented to a 54 Faith Resolving. responsible immortal being. Before I die, I must be this. If so, I must be this while I live ; lest, coming suddenly, Christ find me something else — something which cannot be with Him because it is not like Him. Then I must beg'in now — begin this day. I must study my great Example, to see what I ought to be. I must commune with Him who is my Life, that I may grow by degrees into His likeness. Every day that I live, I must take a step onwards. It is a perpetual race. Each day is an epitome of life : each night is a rehearsal of death. In proportion as I give myself to the work, I shall be interested, engrossed, absorbed in it. In proportion as I get nearer to Christ, who is my Life and my Resurrection, I shall be nearer to holiness, to happiness, to my home. Not in my strength, but in His — not by looking inward, but by looking upward — upward to the throne of God, and to Him that sitteth thereon — I will press to my mark. From faith to faith — faith repenting, faith resolving — faith working, faith resting — faith militant, faith at last triumphant^ — sii'ch be my life, and such my end ! The God of heaven, He will prosper me: therefore I His ser- vant will arise and build. III. FAITH WORKING. "Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of com after him in whose sight I shall find grace."— Ruth ii. 2. lEMEMBERING without ceasing your work of faith. The Repentance of Faith, and the Resolution of Faith, is followed in due order by the Work of Faith. That is no true Repentance which does not re- solve : and that is no true Resolution which does not work. WORK. Work has many aspects. It may be treated as a portion of man's curse. In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread, was one section of the original curse. But it was not work which was new to man. 56 Faith Working, From the beginning v;ork had been assigned to him : the difference was that work henceforth was to be both excessive in degree and compara- tively unremunerative. The earth was to bring fortli in great part thorns and thistles in return for labour : and that labour was to be no longer moderate and wholesome, but wearisome and dis- proportionate. Still for fallen man work was also a safe- guard. It is in the idle heart, it is in the indolent life, that the rankest weeds of evil grow : a toil so hard as to be the gradual undermining of the physical strength, is yet the protection of the moral and may be the safety of the spiritual being. And not only so. Let the labouring man compare lives with the luxurious, and his lot will be found on the w^hole to be the happier. The sleep of a laboicring man is sweet, says the Book of Ecclesiastes, whether he eat little or much : but the ahiindance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. If work is not always happiness, certainly idleness is always misery. And yet once more : there is a dignity too in work. God Himself works : works all days ahke : works, as none else, without intermission Faith Working. 57 and without repose. Else would the universe be broken up, order become again chaos, and life death. If Christ can say, My Father worketh hitJm'to, and I work ^ such a sentence elevates at once the humblest toil, dignifies the meanest, and consecrates the commonest. Now since work is thus universally God's ordi- nance for His creatures ; even for His holy Angels who have never fallen ; an ordinance on the whole beneficent, and destined (we trust) to be perpe- tuated even in that neiu heaven and new earth wherein divelleth 7'ighfeous?iess ; an ordinance in the keeping whereof He Himself goes before, and calls upon man to be but His follower and imitator ; it is plain that the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ could not leave this great topic untouched ; could not possibly fail to say some- thing about work ; about its place in the system of the Divine life in man ; about its proper mo- tive and method, about its duty, its blessing, and its reward. The Gospel of Christ does 7iot leave work out. On the contrary, it is full of it. And when we take now for our subject the brief but compre- hensive thesis, Faith Working, we know not how 58 Faith Working, to grasp or to handle it ; so wide is its reach, so large its compass, so manifold its application. Men have quarrelled oftentimes about Faith and Work. They have tried to set the one against the other, and asked which of the two it is which justifies. We shall not enter into that vexed question. We shall only say very briefly, that, where one of the two is certainly, there, as of course, is the other really. Faith which worke not, is not, in God's sense, faith ; and work which springs not of faith is not, in God's sense, work. The two words. Faith Working, seem to remind us that there are other things which work besides Faith. Let us set before our minds, first of all, two or three of these other labourers in the great work-field of life, that w^e may see afterwards how they differ from their one Christian and Evan- gelical rival, which is the grace of Faith. I. Natwe works. Sometimes in the mere consciousness of health and vitality. There is that in a man which will not and cannot be idle. If his position is such that he wants nothing ; that he has all and ahotmds by no exertion of his own; wealth left to him from his forefathers, a home furnished and a Faith Working, 59 table supplied from day to day by dependents whom he feels not the cost of lodgmg and feeding and paying for their service ; then, rather than endure the wretchedness of utter inaction, he will make a toil even of his pleasures : he will rise tip early and late take rest^ spend weari- some days for the sake of toil, that he may even deceive himself into the thought that he is busy, and escape that tedium of indolence against which he bears witness half unconsciously that it is the very foe of peace. Thus even Wealth works. The Esaus of a luxurious home will take their quiver and their bow, and go to the field day by day to hunt for their venison. And certainly the opposite of wealth works. Want works. A large part of the human family literally eats its bread in the sweat of its face. For how many millions of homes, at this moment, is the father of the family the winner of its bread, and the mother of the family the patient, uncom- plaining, yet (to speak plainly) drudging house- wife ! Want works : works that it may live : works that it may supply life to those whom God has given to it as its own. And does not Covetousness work — and Ava- 6o Faith V/oi^king. rice work — that love of mo7iey (in some one or other of its forms) of which an Apostle writes that it is a root of ail evil 1 Wlien want is satisfied, wishing begins. The lust of having is not filled with getting : and to add this grain and that to an already heaped up store, is found as powerful an incentive to labour as that first urgency of neces- sity which made the man ask, What shall I eat, and wherewith shall I be clothed ? Where is he who really knows when he has enough, or counts that a reason for repose, which he can possibly turn into a motive for labour ] And does not Ambition work ? Men, on the one hand, who want nothing — men, on the other hand, who desire nothing — of the vulgar wealth of this world, will yet spend ceaseless toil upon the pursuit of honour. What is it which makes men politicians — whether in the small affairs of a town, or in the great interests of a nation ? What is it which makes men willing to spend in a sultry arid city weeks and months of a glorious summer, which is enriching their distant fields and gardens with a beauty lost upon their possessor 1 Ambition — in one of its forms or in Faith Workino;^ 6 1 many — the ambition of fame, or the ambition of power, or the ambition of fashion, or the ambition of importance — this reconciles a man to anything : Ambition works : works with an earnestness and a devotion which it is hard sometimes to distin- guish from self-sacrifice. And does not Knowledge work — knowledge, and the thirst of knowledge % What is to come, in ten thousand cases, of all this accumulation of wisdom % For one man who rises to distinction by writing, thousands live laborious days and nights in reading : this appetite, like others, grows by indulgence ; and every year sends to the grave many a mind filled Vvdth undivulged secrets of knowledge, and many a brain prematurely worn out by relentless and now profitless researches. Work has its victims as well as its votaries : and no insignificant portion of these are men who have martyred themselves in knowing. Do we blame indiscriminately these workers who are not yet of Faith % Doubtless human life is the gainer by every kind and department of industry. The labourers of society are its benefactors. Better any work than any idleness. 62 Faith Working. And we must add yet one more to the list of workers ; one which comes nearer than any before it to that of which we are in quest, and yet stops . short of being that which alone is dis- tinctively Christian. Duty works. There are those who are brought day by day to the performance of the task set them, not by inchnation, but in spite of it ; not from a superabundance oi energy which must have its vent, but rather with a conscious lack of energy which must be made up for by the mere sense of duty. There are men who would give much for repose : men, too, who might rest without wanting : men, too, for whom the world has found no honour — whose business is uncon- genial to them if not repulsive, and who ply it from youth to age without expectation of success or hope of change. And yet they work. Duty works, as well as want, or covetousness, or ambi- tion, or the thirst of knowledge : Duty works also ; works on principle ; and seems at first sight to miss scarcely by a hair's breadth that higher, that highest attainment, the working of a principle which is not of this world, the spiritual gift and grace of faith. Faith Working, 63 2. Faith works. And a very little consideration will show us some definite points in which the work of Faith differs from any of those industries of which we have hitherto spoken. The little Parable of the text will then be expounded, and we shall hear Faith saying, in reference to the life-work proposed to her, Let me now go to the field, and glea?i eai^s of corn after Him in whose sight I have found grace. (i) The work of Faith looks witfmi. Nothing can be plainer, and yet nothing is more often forgotten, than that out of the heart (in all senses) are the issues of life. Out of the abundance of the heart the moiLth speaketh. Speech, Christ says, is the mere overflow of the heart. And so action is nothing but the expression of an inward prin- ciple j the coming out of something which first is within. These things, to a Christian, are self- evident. But when we go on to apply them, some dispute, some mistake, almost all evade them. Life, we say, is seen by God in its spring. It is not the performance, by daily routine, of a cer- tain number, nor even a certain kind, of separate acts. It is not the mere discharge of the offices 64 Faith Working, which belong to the particular station in which God has placed us. It is not merely a careful attention to business, a studious regard to pro- priety, nor even the addition to these of a regular and decent attendance upon the ordinances of Divine worship. There is nothing, in any of these things, or in all of them, which necessarily implies there being anything left when this mortal husk and shell is stripped off from the soul which it encases. All these things may have been done and well done, and yet the immortal soul, when it has shuffled off its bodily circumstance, may find itself utterly unqualified (to say the least) for that standing before God, and still more for that dwelling with God, which is the thing which comes after death, the thing which is to be through eternity. The question, What will you do in heaven ? is one which may Avell sound with dis- quietude and consternation in many ears not of the profane or dissolute, not of the blasphemers of God or of the open injurers of man. The work of Faith then, unlike other works, begins within. Faith, which is the sight of the unseen, apprehends the existence of spirit, the pos- sibility of regeneration, and the direct influence of Faith Working. 65 Divine grace upon the heart and soul of man. It would not be faith — in the Christian sense — if it did not apprehend these mysteries. Before Faith can set out upon her gleaning, she must find grace in the sight of One unseen. One half of her work, and that the primary and the most essential, has to be done within. Not indeed that the outward work can stand still until the inward work is ac- complished. Day by day a man must fulfil the duties which grow out of his circumstances. Nor would the inward work really be prospered by the suspension or postponement of the outward. Still we say that the inward comes first ; first in import- ance, first (in a sense) in order. No man's day's work will be interfered with by prayer and watch- ing. On the contrary, the day is lengthened for effective labour by every moment taken from it at either end for deep communing and earnest wrestling with Him who is alike God of Nature, God of Providence, and God of Grace. Look well to the condition of that soul, the health of which, the prosperity of which, will evermore com- municate itself to the work and to the life. Neglect that, and then, whatever else it may be, yours will not be the work of Faith : it will not have the 66 Faith Working, benediction of God : there will be nothing of it left when the thoughts of earth perish. (2) The work of Faith looks upward. Faith does not make that broad and deep line, which some draw, between religious work and unreligious. And though we have spoken of the work of Faith as beginning within, this is not to be understood as though Faith first looked to the heart and then went out to attend to the life. Faith is a thing which moves altogether where it 7noves at all ; pervades everything, and makes all things of one piece and colour : insomuch that Prayer is concerned much about matters of duty and conduct, and Action, in its turn, whatever it be, draws all its strength and vitality from the Divine communion. The work of Faith, throughout, looks upward. Not in seasons of worship only. / have set the Lord always before me: because He is on my right hand, I shall not be moved. The eye of Faith is upon God, even while the hand of Faith, and the foot of Faith, is moving among the things of this world. We have scarcely yet expressed the particular thin.oj now intended. Faith Working. 67 The motto of the work of Faith, in this aspect, is a double motto. One part of it has been given : I have set the Lord always before me. The other is, I delight to do Thy will, my God. The one is the spiritual side, the other the practical. God is at my right hand—thdl is the strength : My work is God's will — that is the motive. What assurance, what quietness, what unity, what dignity, is given to my day's work, by just remembering that, whatever it is— however hum- ble, or however difficult — hov/ever dull, or how- ever suffering — it is the will of God ! It is the will of God that the rich man should be bountiful, that the active man should be useful, that the public man should be patriotic, that the poor man should be provident, that the lawyer should be upright, the physician humane, the clergyman diligent. It is the will of God that I should this day go forth to my work and to my labour until the evening ; furnishing my little quota to earth's toils and to man's happiness j serving my generation in the humble offices, at home and abroad, in which God has set me towards my fellows, until the long night cometh when I can no more work. It is the will of God that I should to-day pay this visit 6S Faith Working. of courtesy or of charity, do this act of duty or kindness, read this book, write this letter, hold this converse ; and I, because I have found grace in His sight — because He has so loved me as to give His Son to die for me, and so borne with me and had patience as to give me this added day of life, reason, and efficiency — I therefore delight to do it : Lo, I cof7ie, like my Master before me, because in the Volume of the Book it is prescribed to jiie — I delight to do God's will, yea, His law is tuithin my heart. Thus Faith looks upward in working. (3) The work of Faith looks around. It may be said of most, if not of all the workers before enumerated, that their toil was in a great degree selfish. The work of pleasure-seeking, and the work of money-getting, and the work of am- bition, is essentially and altogether selfish. The work of necessity, of providing for a family, of keeping bread in the house and hunger from the household, has probably in it a large admixture of selfishness : at all events, if it looks beyond itself, it looks not beyond its own. The work of acquir- ing knowledge, unless it be sedulously guarded, is commonly, if not of necessity, a self-seeking labour. Faith Working. 69 Even the work of duty — if it stops with duty — may centre in and be circumscribed by self It is only Faith, which knows how to be really unselfish. If any of the other workers are so in any degree, it must be, we may venture to say, by an admix- ture, by the aid, of faith. But of faith it is written that it tuoj'keth by love. How is this % Faith says, Let me go now to the fields and glean ears of corn after Him in whose sight I have fojind grace. The work of Faith is the imitation of Christ. The work of Faith is the following and gleaning after Christ. No words could be more expressive. It is but a gleaning which is left to Faith. The work of Christ Himself is the harvest. It is He who wrought entirely by love. It is He who carried unselfishness to its limit, and left to those who come after, only, as it were, the glea?ting grapes when the vintage is done. But that Faith which looks within, and which looks above, does really look around also. Faith does look not only on her own things, but on the things of others. Faith does seriously contemplate the wants and the woes and the wickednesses which are making havoc of humanity, and has ^/o Faith Working. something truly of that mind in her which 7c. So, when the earthly house of this taheiiiade is dissolved, I shall have a building of God — an house 7iot made with hands, etei'nal in the heavens. It. THE FUGITIVE SEEKING FREEDOM IN A FAR COUNTRY. " But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord," — JONAH i. 3. HITS the Son fretting against the Re- straints of his Home becomes, in the second place, the Fugitive seeking Free- dom in afar Coimtry. How often, during the six millenniums of earth's history, has this experience been verified, over and over again, in human hearts and in human homes ! The son has said to his father. Give me my portion j and then has taken his journey to enjoy that inheritance in freedom. Or the son has not even said this, or said any- diingj but has just made his escape from employ- ments which were monotonous, and from influences which were irksome. IMany a home has been de- solated — many a parent's age has been brought down with sorrow to the grave — by reason of such undutifulness and such wilfulness. Some slight The Fugitive seeking Freedom^ etc. 257 interference, some reasonable (or, be it so, some hasty) rebuke, overnight, has been followed — alas for the selfishness of the young ! — by a stealthy night departure, and by long years of untracked wandering and of cruel heartless silence. The young man has enlisted himself as a soldier — or he has found a ship going to this colony or that foreign shore : he has paid the fare thereof and gone aboard. It is an old story. Now and then, but very seldom, success and fame have crowned it : a man once a fugitive from his father's home, has risen into eminence and opulence through his exile, and has lived to write himself a page in his- tory ; the history of his country, or the history of his Church. Far more often the undutifulness of youth has fulfilled itself in the misery of manhood : evil habits, formed early, have borne fruit, long and late, in wretchedness and ruin : or, if not long and late, this has been because the great sinner is commonly a short-lived man; because, if a man will not turn, judgment must bend its bow, and a God long mocked must at last interpose for punishment. Thus viewed, the subject is a sad one : it must be so. But this, is not precisely the treatment 258 The Fiigitive seeking Freedom designed for it to-day. Circumstances have for- bidden any formal or elaborate dissection of the terms or combinations of the thesis. The hand of God seems peculiarly present to us : again and again within but a few months it has pleased Him — in mercy, we trust, as well as in severity — to strike down one and another of our foremost men, leav- ing blanks in families, and gaps in wider circles, never to be filled up. Surely there is a lesson in these things ! Surely we are to learn some- thing more from such visitations than a mere cold reflection upon the uncertainty of life, upon the miscalculations of self-confidence, or the strange startling suddenness with which a man may be hur- ried from amidst the commonplace familiarities of things temporal into the marvellous, the inscrut- able mysteries of a world eternal ! If such events are ever to be turned to their true account, it must be by a deeper and a more thorough work than this. If each death occasioned the new birth but of one soul, it would be worth all the havoc which it makes of loving and happy homes. Let us then for this time — our minds sobered and solem- nized by God's dealing — endeavour so to use the brief moments of this meditation, as that it may in a far Coimtry. 259 work in us, through grace, some serious heart-deep resolutions which may bring forth fruit unto hfe eternal ! The Fugitive seeking Freedom in a far Country. I. We are going to speak now of God's fugitives. Are we amongst them 1 I suspect that all of us either are so or have been. The text tells us that even a Prophet may be one of God's fugitives. His very commission (in this case) made him so. That which he ought to have regarded as a great honour laid upon him — to be allowed to do a work for God in calling a wicked place to repentance — is the occasion of bringing out the selfishness and rebellion of his heart, and he rises up to flee to a distant land from the presence of the Lord. It was an ignorant thought, you say. One whom God had brought so nigh to Himself ought to have been able to say, in answer to such a temptation, Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit 1 or whither shall Ifieefrom Thy presence ? If I ascefid up iiito heaveti^ Thou art there : if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the 7norning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me. 26o The Fttgitive seeking Freedom And yet, I repeat it, we are all prone to the same error and to the same sin still. This Prophet fled from a duty. He was to go and cry against Nineveh — and he would not. He feared the peril of such an enterprise — he feared its difficulty — perhaps he feared its ridicule. And thus, rather than obey, he would become one of God's fugitives. Perhaps he might find a shore on which God was not ! Perhaps he might escape God's notice, lying in the sides of the ship, and rapidly sailing away from the sacrifices and from the sanctuaries of Israel ! And which of us has not known what it is to flee away from an irksome duty? Oh, how many things which ought to be done, do we daily leave undone ! All the day long, in one form or an- other, we are fugitives from our duty. One ex- cuse after another suggests itself for postponing, for evading, for fleeing from, something which we know all the time God has laid upon us to be done. And at certain moments in life — some- times for long years of life together — we are guilty of more than this common negligence, this ordi- nary procrastination, of small particulars of duty. Who has not known what it is — yes, some perhaps in a far Country, 261 have not known, but thousands too well under- stand it — to avoid, to dread, to hate, some definite thing which God has appointed him % to refuse to "be reconciled, it may be, to some one whom my jwn fault, more than the other's, has estranged % to refuse to discharge some debt of love or mercy, which, till it is paid, must lie Hke a millstone upon the stiff neck ? it may be, to refuse to bear God's message of warning to some near friend whom we know to be trifling on the brink of ruin, God's word of grace and salvation to some loving but careless soul which without it may be for ever lost? These are hints, necessarily vague and general, as to the possibility of being God's fugitives in re- ference to some definite call of duty. But the case is commoner yet, and even more critical, in which the flight is not from one thing which ought to be done, but rather, in general, from a hoHness which condemns and from a presence which over- awes us. The great revelations of sin and salva- tion, made in the Law and in the Gospel, are no secrets to any one born in a Christian land and brought up amongst the ordinances of our holy faith. Deep down in every conscience there is 262 The Fugitive seekhig Freedom an echo to these sounds. AVe all know that we ought to repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. We all know that we ought to come to God through Jesus Christ, to seek from Him pardon and grace, and to live day by day in preparation for death and judgment. These things are no secrets to any man. There is a voice within, which enforces them : there is a voice within, which bears witness against a life of carelessness, a life of godlessness, a life of worldliness, a life of sin. Per- haps there is scarcely one person amongst us all, who has not at times given heed to these strivings of the Spirit — sought to listen to God's Word, and to open the closed door between himself and his Saviour. Many have lived, for a few days or weeks at a time, under serious impressions, almost per- suaded to become Christians indeed. The hand of God is strong and powerful, as it works in the dispensations of His Providence, and seeks to make them minister to the purposes of His grace. Oh, there is no life quite let alone of God from the cradle to the grave ! And certainly I believe there are none amongst us all, whose heart's desire and prayer is not, Let me die the death of the righteous ! let me not die impenitent ! let me not awake from in afar Country. 26 o the pain of dying, to find myself in torments ! Therefore I say that, so far as knowledge is con- cerned, and so far as conviction is concerned, and so far as general intentions and aspirations are concerned, we all have that in us which responds to the voice of God in the Gospel. But are all then obeying that voice ? Are none of us, this very day, fugitives from it % fleeing from the presence of the Lord, in the very act of seem- ing to seek it % This too is possible. This is the very cause why many worship. If they gave up the forms of religion, the inward voice might become too loud for them ! They might not be able quite openly to flee from God's presence — they would be ashamed and afraid to do that. But this out- ward form of seeking Him — this one Sunday ser- vice which lasts them for the week — just keeps the conscience still, and enables them all the better to be fugitives from God in heart and life. These are the tricks and subterfuges of the sinner — by which alone he makes it possible for himself to live without God in the world. 2. And what now is the fugitive seeking % We might describe his object by many names. We might call it pleasure — or we might call it self- 264 The Ftigitive seeking Freedom indulgence — or we might call it rest and repose — or we might divide it into those more definite de- partments of self-pleasing, one of which is the lure of one man and another of another. But at present we call it by a very comprehensive term, embrac- ing in itself all the rest : the Fugitive is seeking Freedom, seeking Liberty. O much-dishonoured, much-abused name ! What folly, what sin, what crime, what outrage, has not sheltered itself, at one time or another, under the sacred title of freedom? We have seen what it comes to on a large scale ; when a nation has set itself to be free, in the sense of emancipation from law, emancipation from order, emancipation from religion, emancipation from God. We have seen what it came to : what foul and bloodthirsty licence — what retributive, what mutual, what suicidal slaughter — till at last the world stepped in to re- monstrate, and an iron despotism crushed out beneath its heel the last spark of independence and of self-rule ! And we have seen too, all of us, on a very small scale, what the pursuit of liberty may end in : we have seen a son shaking off the easy yoke of home-affection, casting behind his back the safe and blessed privilege of that unbought i7t a far Country. 265 and unselfish love, that he may wallow in the mire of degrading passions, bring shame on his name and a curse upon her that bare him. We have seen what this kind of freedom comes to : — and perhaps in these most horrible forms we should all of us shrink from and repudiate it. Yet are these worst excesses and most frightful riots of freedom, only representative, only typical, of that which happens every day in the souls of God's fugitives. What is it which they count freedom % Is it not the power of pleasing themselves — of doing what they list — of living by themselves and to themselves (so far as God is concerned) in an existence which yet, whether they will or no, is all of His giving and of His preserving and of His ordering % They will say, and count it a just and a convincing argu- ment. Our words and thoughts, our habits and actions, the members of our bodies and the facul- ties of our minds, all are our own — who is lord over us % Let us live as we will — none can call us to account : let us believe or not believe, let us obey or disobey, let us follow this course or that, live for this object, or for that, or for no object — we are independent, we are irresponsible, we will please ourselves, and we will risk the consequences. 266 The Fttgitive seeking Freedoin It was just so that the first temptation swept away the loyaUy and obedience of the creature. Ye shall he as gods ; no longer depending day by day upon the favour and upon the will and upon the power of another : ye shall be your own masters — free to believe, free to will, and free to do, without control from above, and without these ser- vile questionings from within ! God's fugitive is seeking Freedom. Arid what does he findl Let the conscience, let the memory, let the experience answer. Every day that we remain apart from God — every day that we rise and rest without prayer — every day that we ask ourselves not. What is right ? but, What is pleasant 1 — every day that we indulge ourselves in some evil habit, and yield without brave resistance to idleness and selfishness and forgetfulness of God — every such day some new chain is forged for us and fastened on : every such day the free man finds himself more and more a slave : the slave, not of one from whose thral- dom he can escape — or to whose thraldom if he submits himself, he may still be a freeman wathin — but the slave of a power whose seat is in the will; whose lash smites upon the very soul, in a far Country, 267 and whose dungeon is the black hideous darkness of a self-accusing and a self-tormenting despair ! Of all slaveries the most cruel and the most hope- less is that which sin binds upon the sinner ; the yoke of good long left undone and evil willingly- done; the inability to do that which he would, the horrible constraint and compulsion to sin on and die ! It is of such a slavery as this that the Word of God speaks in these well-known passages, Verily, verily I say unto you, He that comjnitfeth sin is the slave of sin. . . . Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves slaves to obey, his slaves ye are to who7n ye obey 1 . . . While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the slaves of cor- ruption; for ofivhom a man is overcome, of the saine is he brought in bondage. God too would have us seek freedom : but not of this vile and ruinous kind : not the freedom to beUeve a lie : not the freedom to do evil (as the Prophet says) ivith both hands, and bring on ourselves swift destruction : not the freedom to seduce other souls to share our hell, tormented and tormenting for ever : but that freedom which is the successful pursuit of happiness — that freedom which is the power both to will 268 The Fugitive seeking Freedom and to do our own good — that freedom which is Christ's discipleship — that freedom which is God's service. 3. There is yet a third point in this thesis : and with it we conclude. Where does God's fugitive seek his freedom % In the far country. He has taken his journey; he has made his voyage : and it is indeed a long journey — a voyage over vast waters — by which a man gets away from his God : God has so fenced us in with mercies — God has so guarded us with the safe keeping of His love — that it takes time and thought and long schem- ing to get away from Him : the young conscience is still sensitive — the young heart is still tender — and oftentimes, when we even think that we have escaped, we are surprised again and again, in the dark watches of the night, or in the waking visions of noonday, with an unsought and unwelcome visitant from God's presence, reminding us of Him whom we would forget, and bringing us back, chained and in custody, before the tribunal which we fancied ourselves to have defied. But yet it can be done. It takes time to harden any man : it is a gradual process, it is a slow pro- cess, but we can go through with it if we will : we in afar Country. 269 can break through one barrier, and then another barrier, and at last find ourselves to be free : when we would do evil, it becomes easier to us : when we would spend a day, and a Sunday, and a whole ■ week, away from God, we find at last that we can : yes, we are in the far country now : things which once frightened us now seem safe : things which once looked impossible, so wicked were they, we can now do and never tremble : if there is on earth a peace of God, there is also a counterfeit of it, which is the peace of death : we can reach that state, if we will, through long carelessness and much sinning: and when we have reached it, we shall begin to understand what freedom is — the bad freedom, the devil's freedom — freedom to think our own thoughts, even when they are blas- phemous ; freedom to live our own lives, even when they are wicked ; freedom to work out our own ruin without much fear and trembhng : the fugitive has sought freedom — he has also found it — in the far country : God can be kept out of it for days and months and years : we think we have triumphed over Him : the thing formed can say to Him that formed it, I am free — I am my own — where art Thou % 270 The Ftigitive seeking Freedom Then is the work of rebellion perfected : the fugitive is in the far country — and he has found his freedom. It is not for this time to tell how God comes after him even there ; how the right-aiming thun- derbolts can gleam and scare still in that distance; or how even there God can make His name known, and vindicate His supremacy over all the earth. Even there — even in that far world — even in the fancied triumph of that flight and of that defiance — the heart of Divine love yearns over the fugitive still, and would win him back, while yet there is time, to a better rest and a securer home. You know that you are not happy. There is something, even there, which says to you. This is 7iot your rest: you were born for something better : the husks that the swine eat are not the food of souls : there is a home behind as well as a home above — a home from which you have wan- dered, a home of which the memories are about you still, a home of which the doors are still open and the tender mercies ever free ! O Israel^ thou hast destroyed thyself: hit in me is thy help. . . . O Israel, return : for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity : take in a far Country. 271 with you words, and turn to the Lord: say, Father, I have sinned — and plead earnestly before Him those compassions which are every morning new. Sleepers, wake ! Fugitives, hasten home ! Still the Bridegroom tarries : still the doors are open ! O wait not till the expiring lamp warns you of your fatal slumber ! Wait not till the gate be for ever closed, and they that come afterwards must stand through a dayless night in the chill outer darkness ! He saith, I have heard thee i7i an accepted time ; and in a day of salvation have I succoured thee : Behold, now is the accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salvation ! III. THE REBEL REFUSING TO RECEIVE CORRECTION. " Thou hast stricken them, ... but they have refused to receive correction." — ^Jer. v. 3. HE Son has become the Fugitive, and the Fugitive has become the Rebel. Such is the downward course of the human being. Now we are to see it at its worst. May it be with deep compassion, if the case be not ours — with earnest contrition, if it be ! I. Who is the Rebel] To rebel is properly to renew warfare. The conquered cities which for twelve years served Chedorlaomer, in the thirteenth year reljelled: that is, they renewed the war; reopened the question of servitude ; reasserted their claim to independ- ence, and brought uj^on themselves a second struggle and a second conquest. The Rebel refusing, etc. 273 In this its original meaning the word Rebel is applicable to every sinner. The war between man and his God was ended once for all when Christ suffered. God was in Christ reconcilifig the world unto Himself. And in that world were we — all mankind : all who sinned in Adam were redeemed and reconciled in Christ. We saw in our first subject that we are all sons : sons first by Creation ; then sons by Redemption ; then sons, thirdly, by individual incorporation into the Church and body of Christ. Therefore, whosoever sins, also rebels — renews a finished war, and breaks an established reconciliation. It is a great matter — lying very near the root of all true religion — to understand and lay hold of this. All mankind were redeemed to God by the blood of Christ : all baptized persons are sons by a special adoption and by an individual incorpora- tion. Every child ought to be brought up, in Christian homes and in Christian schools, on this supposition. He ought to regard himself, and he ought to be treated by others, as verily and indeed a member of Christ, a child of God, and an in- heritor of the kingdom of heaven. There is no doubt that he is inside the home : there is no 2 74 '^^^ Rebel refusing reason why he should ever quit it. Peace with God, a willing obedience, a loving service — these things ought to be his from the very first : they are so, by God's gift — they are so, by God's will : if they are not so on his part, not so by a glad acceptance and by a cheerful devotion, the fault is his only : the son has fretted against the restraints of his home, till at last he has even become a fugitive seeking rest in a far country : the sinner is not obliged to sin ; if he will sin, he is not con- tinuing a war but rather breaking a peace \ rising against the loving hand which rules but to bless : in the original sense of the word rebel — the re- newer of a once finished war — the sinner is always a rebel too. But we use the word now in a somewhat dif- ferent and more popular sense. We use it as expressing a state beyond that of a discontented son, beyond that of an insubordinate exile. It is the third and lowest step on the ladder of the self- ruin. It corresponds to that particular section of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, in which the young man, having demanded his portion, and having carried it with him into the far country, and having wasted it for some time in riotous to receive Correction. 275 living, has at last begun to feel the discipline of degradation and wretchedness, the leanness of that dreadful soul-famine, and the grovelling for a morsel of food amongst the husks that the very swine did eat. The word rebel is chosen to ex- press this lowest depth of the sinner's ruin. Let us look into it a little. And that not coldly, not as idle bystanders, not as curious spectators — but as persons deeply interested ; as having in ourselves the germs and elements (at least) of this and of every evil thing j many of us as more than this — as being now, or as having once been, our- selves sunk and lost in this sea of distress and despair. The rebel spoken of is, of course, in general terms, a rebel against his God. He has taken up arms in that hopeless, that unnatural strife, which the fallen mortal creature is waging, for his brief day, against Him who formed him. He is striving (as the Prophet says) with his Maker. Does this expression sound exaggerated to any one % Do these seem to be hard terms to apply to a life which bears so few outward marks perhaps of being a struggle against any one — which seems rather to have its chief mark, its principal fault, 276 The Rebel refusing just in being too easy, too little of a conflict, too much a mere letting alone, or a mere floating down life's stream, taking things as they come, and obey- ing impulses without doubt or questioning] Then let us examine two or three points in this rebellion. We are speaking of one who has al- ready left God's home ; of one who is already in the far country: living, that is, from day to day without thinking upon God ; going to his daily labour without prayer ; doing what he likes to do, or what he is tempted to do, without asking him- self, Is this right % is this consistent with duty % is this the will of God? Of such a man we say, first of all, that— He is a rebel against light. It is easy to say that men have different stand- ards, judge variously of right and wrong, count a certain pleasure or a certain gain innQcent or un- lawful according to early instructions, long associa- tions, rooted habits of thought and action, in which no two persons are exactly alike. Doubtless in smaller particulars this is true. Let no man judge another — let no man even judge for another — in such matters. But the rebel, the man who is living without God day by day, can shelter himself under to receive Correction, 277 no such excuses. As to the great broad outHnes there is no difference of judgment. One man knows as well as another what is a sin. God leaves no one without witness. There is that in each bosom which gives its name, of right or wrong, to each separate thing that we do or leave undone. And that inward tribunal we carry with us even into the far country. We cannot put it down ; we cannot leave it behind. However disregarded, however despised, however outraged, that inward judge speaks and will speak, and so makes the sinner against God a rebel also, in the first place, against light. He is a rebel also against power. AVe think it a mark of great infatuation, when a thoroughly vanquished and prostrate race will peri- odically renew its impotent rebellion against the giant empire which holds it down. But how faint and poor an image is this kind of idle struggling, in comparison with that which a sinner undertakes against his God ! In Him we live and move and have our being. It is He who gives the man of busi- XiQSS power to get wealth: it is He who endowed the eloquent tongue with its speech, and the inventive brain with its cunning : it is He who nightly re- 278 The Rebel refusing freshes with sleep, and daily renews with waking : when He taketh away our bj'eath, we die, a?id are turned again to our dust. Therefore when we do the thing which we know God disapproves, when we try to dispense with that prayer which is the soul's exercise and air and daily bread, how can we even expect it to end well % There must come a time when sin shall be seen by us to have been exceeding sinful ; when that evil thing which we would try to call good shall find us out at last in remorse and punishment. And we see the guilt and the folly yet more plainly, when we add this — that the rebel against God is a rebel against love. The word ungrateful has a harsh sound, a con- demning sense, as between a man and his fellow. To tell of benefits on one side unsparingly lavished, and on the other side unthankfully enjoyed, is to raise in our fallen nature a feeling of righteous in- dignation. It is not a question of religion, whether an undutiful son, whether a tmsted and untrust- worthy servant, whether an outcast youth raised from indigence and refusing to acknowledge and bless his benefactor, is worthy of respect or of abhorrence : we all feel it as we ought in human to receive Correction 279 life : how is it that we do not feel it as between man and God? Everything that we have is of God ; everything that God commands He com- mands not for His good but for ours ; every call which He sends He sends to draw us towards happiness ; everything which He requires He re- compenses as though it were some meritorious service : and if then we sin, we are shutting out love j if we are disobedient, we are ungrateful too ; if we are living in vanity, in ungodliness, in sin, we are not only rebels against light, and rebels against power; we are this also, beyond and above all else — rebels against love. 2. But now observe, as the text and the subject bid us, that even this rebel is not let alone. Men are apt to say — some men have said it in words, and many more say it in their thoughts-^— God has long ago give?t me up. And it cannot be denied — we all want the painful truth for warning and for quickening — that there are some passages of Holy Scripture which seem to tell of a hardening, even in this life, not only inveterate but judicial ; of a sin unto death for which prayer itself may rise in vain from a brother. But even these solemn words are not to be so applied by any man as to 28o The Rebel refusing form a reason why he personally should not struggle, should not pray, should not hope. If he but desires to do any one of these things, he may be sure that he has not yet committed (be it what it may) the unpardonable offence. And speaking generally, and of that which alone any of us can know, we may say with confidence that even towards the most rebellious God is still using a discipline which is here called correction. It is the word which especially denotes the correction of a child by his father. It is the word used, for example, in that well-known saying of the Book of Proverbs, Foolishness is hound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. And so, in its transfer (as here) to God's disci- pline, we read in the Book of Job, Behold^ happy is the maji who7n God correcteth : therefore despise not thou the chastening {correctio7i) of the Almighty. It is not so much in the treatment — it is rather in his use of the treatment — that man differs from man, the rebel from the Christian, during his trial and probation-time below. Thou hast stricken them — but they have refused to receive correction. The hand of God is far-reaching. It is not only in the home of the son, it is not only within the to receive Correction, 281 Paradise of the upright, it is also over the remote exile, over the wilful wanderer, over the obstinate rebel, that that hand is stretched out still, for cor- rection, for control — if he will, for blessing. So long as we live, God is dealing with us : we cannot get away from His presence; we cannot really make our escape from His Spirit. It is a serious thought — full of admonition — surely for each one of us full of encouragement. What a key is here to the mysteries of our being ! This strange scene, this tangled web, this clueless labyrinth, of chance and change, of success and defeat, of enjoyment and suffering, of tranquillity and desolation, which human life pre- sents on the surface, and which seems to a careless looker-on as though nothing and no one could explain it — yet, if this word correction has any meaning, if the term discipline has any applica- tion to these matters, the riddle is more than half read. If the hand which holds the thread of des- tiny, if the power which besets and begirds us all round, and out of which there is evidently no escape for any one, is a hand of wise counsel and a power of loving forethought — a hand which works towards an end, and a power which is not 282 The Rebel refusing so much force as rule — if this be so, then not only can we trust where we see not, but even in the thickest darkness there arises upon us at once a marvellous light. There is no thought more wonderfully com- pounded of mercy and judgment, than that of God's correction as exercised towards His rebels. Yea, for the rebellions also, says the Psalmist, that the Lord God might dwell a7nong the?n. That is the end in view : not, as some would say, for greater condemnation ; not, as theorists might put it, to stop the mouth of cavil, and deprive guilt itself of its last excuse; not thus — but with the desire — say it reverently, but say it still — with the desire that the closed heart may at last open itself, and the hard frozen spirit thaw and melt, ere it be too late, under the sunbeam of the Divine love. Yea, for the rebellions also, that the Lord God might dwell a7nong the??i. Sometimes we draw into detail the working of this correction. It is exercised in all manner of ways. The resources of the Creator are of course absolutely infinite. He who made man's heart — He who in the beginning arranged within us the whole mechanism of feeling and motive, of in- to receive Correction. 283 fluence and impulse, of thought and affection, of desire, resolution, and will — can bring to bear upon each just that touch which shall be per- suasive ; can apply, with a skill as true as the power is resistless, circumstances to dispositions, and means to ends, outward things to things in- ward, and natural agencies to spiritual conditions ; insomuch that eternity shall not exhaust the retro- spect of lives carefully guided through the world's wilderness, and souls marvellously disciplined into a capacity and receptivity of grace. All these operations are far above out of our sight. Such knowledge is too wonde7'ful and ex- cellent for tis : we cannot attain to it. Neverthe- less, in the belief that God is working — working in a Providence as minute as it is universal, and as considerate as it is resistless ; working everywhere and in all things, for man's discipHne and correc- tion in righteousness — in the belief of these things, strongly grasped and tenaciously clung to, lies the only rest for troubled thoughts, the only satisfac- tion for interminable doubtings; even in the as- surance that God has not deserted His earth, but is guiding all His counsels towards a goal of per- fect happiness and perfect love. 284 The Rebel refusing 3. But for the present we are to dwell upon the use made by the rebellious of the Divine discipline. 77/^?/ kast stricken tJicin — but they have refused to receive correction. The correction is there, not for all only, but for each; only the rebel refuses to receive it. It may be the outward correction : that which comes to a man in Providential circumstances: the correction of loss and disappointment, the correction of failure and loneliness, the correction of sorrow and bereavement, of diminished strength, waning comfort, supports withdrawn, and shattered idols. It may be that correction which lies in the direct consequences and punishments of sin : the paralyzed frame, witnessing in mid life to youth's excesses; the shame which follows upon certain discoveries ; the destruction of earth's prospect with the departure of earth's respect : it maybe even the felon's prison and the condemned man's cell. These too, if they be but so taken, are God's corrections for His rebels : even out of these, through the w^ondrous working of Divine grace, there have sprung, as of old for the penitent malefactor on Calvary, words of precious absolu- to 7^eceive Correction. 285 tion, promises of a Paradise that very day opened, and a remembrance, late sought but sure, in the coming of the Saviour's kingdom. Or it may be, once again, an entirely inward correction : as when some particular sin lies with crushing weight upon the conscience; when the thought of a brother's injured soul comes back as a torturer and an executioner in the night's endless watches ; when the vivid sense of ingrati- tude and heartlessness, towards man or towards God, flashes a scaring searing light upon the transgressor, and in the hopeless consciousness of irreparable evil he feels hell itself opened, and the frightful endless torment before its due time begun. Less things than these : a mighty famine arising upon the wanderer who has already spent his all ; a deep unutterable sense of vacuity, desola- tion, and nothingness, even while life still smiles, and the fortune of the self-tormentor is the envy of a beholding world. And this there may be, where there has been little perhaps of open, gross, notorious sin ; where no brother's blood, of ruined life or lost soul, cries from the ground for vengeance; where there has been much that is amiable and nothing that is disgraceful — only a 286 The Rebel refusing world too much lived for, and a God of grace and redemption banished from all the thoughts. Now it is the nature of the rebel to refuse to receive these corrections. We will say just two things. First, he misunderstands them. For a long time he does not connect them at all with the thought of God. He calls them misfor- tunes — calamities —hardships — incalculable disap- pointments of his reckoning — things which fall upon him when they fall not upon this man and that man of his acquaintance who had done just the same — injuries therefore and injustices of fortune, rather than the due requitals of a wrong and wicked and Godless course of life. This of the outward corrections. And then for the inward. That aching void, that miserable con- sciousness of a purposeless wasted hfe, that keen self-reproach for definite sins, or that scarcely less keen self-reproach for an utterly useless, selfish, God-forgetting existence — all this he calls weak- ness, low spirits, melancholy, unaccountable de- j)ression, due more to the health than to the soul ; something that must be shaken off by changes of air and scene j something that must be charmed to receive Correction, 287 away by cheerful converse, or exorcised by a re- solute and vigorous self-control. Thus he misunderstands his symptoms, by sever- ing them, while he can, from any connexion with the conscience or with the hand of God. And when this cannot be; when the arrow fastens itself too deeply and too unmistakably within to leave room for doubt whence it comes, whose hand forged and whose bow discharged it ; then the misunderstanding of the Author changes into a misconception of the motive. Then the man says. Not because God loved me and would save, but because He hated and would destroy, is this misery come upon me : let m.e alone, that I may hopelessly suffer : let me alone, that I may curse God and die. It is no imaginary reasoning which we thus describe : thousands of thousands amongst God's fallen creatures have thus set and steeled themselves against the fatherly hand, when it in- terposed at last to bring sin to remembrance, not that it should be clung to and perished with, but that it should be shaken off, cast away, and fled from. The hand was the hand of love : only the life on which it was laid was the Hfe of one who would not be loved. 288 The Rebel refzcsing Then, finally, he who has misunderstood the correction, goes on to neutralize it. This too is possible. This too is easy. A man who ought to be much alone with his sorrow, will rush out into the w^orld to get rid of it. A man who ought to enter very deeply into the why and the wherefore of correction ; taking himself to task, and sitting in judgment upon him- self, to know for what reason God is contending with him ; will go anywhere to have his hurt healed slightly; to be made to think that the affliction has no meaning, or not this ; to be assured by sympathizing friends that he has no cause for un- easiness ; that, in this case at least, trouble has sprimg out of the ground^ and that it brings with it therefore for him neither reproof nor doctrine. The consequence is that he too refuses to receive correctio?t, neutralizing its gracious import by a slight and superficial treatment. And thus it may go on even to the end. Even old age may come — as the Prophet says, gray hairs are here ajid there upon him^ yet he knoweth not — knoweth not the sign of an approaching end, knoweth not nor considereth the day of his visita- tion. It is so, often, even on a death-bed : to the to receive Correction. 289 very last day, the hand of correction is unnoticed, and he who has lived in thoughtlessness and worldliness will rush unprepared to meet his God! I would not willingly call any one here present a rebel (in this sense) against his God. Yet even in the congregation there are hearts knowing their own bitterness ; yea, hearts writing bitter things against themselves by reason of conscious unfaith- fulness, and long and obstinate alienation from God. And of these, and of all, I would make one last request : that they would try themselves by this one criterion — their behaviour towards God's corrections : feeling well assured that His correc- tions are abroad amongst us, and that great and sore is the peril of their being either misconstrued or misused. Let it not be said of us that we either despised God's chastening, or (on the other hand) fainted under His correction; that we either slighted as an unmeaning thing, or resented as an unkind thing, that breach in the even tenor of an unbroken prosperity, by which God both reminds us of His reality and seeks to draw us towards His repose. He who spared not His ozvn Son may well see suffering to be the necessity of His people. 290 The Rebel re/using, etc. He who raised up the Lord Jesus will both manifest the risen life of Jesus in the mortal flesh and in the trying fortunes of His people, and at last raise them also by Jesus, and present them faultless before the presence of His glory. IV. COMPUNCTIOUS VISITINGS AND REPENTANT RESOLUTIONS. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus." — Jer. xxxi. 1 8. |HE story of a life — the whole story of a whole life — what a marvel ! what a mystery ! AVho can wTite it, save One alone 1 Well can we understand that such a record should have, as our Lord instructs us, an interest even in heaven. If it is given to those ministering spirits who behold the face of God, to track the course of a soul ; to follow the wanderings, and read the riddles, and unravel the complications, of one single real life, as it forms its own character, and works out its own destiny, on this little stage of present being ; well may it be that they should find in such contemplations a deep, an almost 292 Compunctious Visitmgs absorbing interest ; that they should wonder and vex themselves, that they should even suffer and weep, over the perversenesses of these rebels against grace and redemption : and if, in one case and another, under this influence or that, they discern at last a decisive return from long wander- ings, a true repentance and reformation in one who has hitherto set himself to oppose and counteract God's correction, that then the words should be verified which were spoken once on earth by our Lord Jesus Christ, Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that re_pe?2teth, more than over ninety a7id nine just persons, which need no repentance. God grant to each of us some portion of the same sympathy, the same yearning over tempted and imperilled and batthng souls, as we ponder at this time the subject proposed to us — those com- pimctioiis visitings and repe7ita7it resoliitiofis which have formed in all ages, for so m.any thousands of our fallen race, the very turning-point and transition from the death of sin to the life of righteousness ! I trust that the past week has witnessed amongst ourselves some of these workings of Divine grace. I trust that this very night will seal some of these vows unchangeably at the table of Christ's dying mid Repentant Resolutions. 293 love. That so the army of the faithful may be replenished in this place with new soldiers, and the joy of heaven refreshed and rekindled by the spec- tacle of a great repentance. We have dwelt hitherto upon the dark side of the soul's life. We have seen the son becoming the fugitive, and the fugitive hardening into the rebel. We have seen the original love thanklessly slighted, and the patient correction obstinately re- fused. In all this we have had only to go into the heart for its experiences, and pour them forth into other hearts similarly exercised. How shall it be now % Must we part company at this point, and speak of things which all but a few know not? Oh, not so, my brethren ! Even now let us go all together, and seek Him from whom in different ways and degrees all have wandered ! I. I will not then enter now into what we may call the more exceptional regrets and remorses of sinful souls. I will not speak of definite acts of cruel wrong done to others, nor of such impieties towards God as but one here and there can have been guilty of. Our Lord touches a different and a more thrilHng chord, when He makes the wan- derer, in his uttermost destitution, think of the 294 Compunctious Visitings plenty of his home \ compare what he might have been with what he is, and say, as he comes to himself, only just this, How many hired servants of my father's have bread ejiongh and to spare^ and I perish with hunger! And so now, this evening, in the few moments left to us by the coming Service, let us lay this one thought to heart — how good and blessed a thing it is to be even anywhere, even in the lowest and meanest place, within the true house and home of God j how evil and bitter a thing to have ever left it, to have wandered away into the far country for the sake of being rid of those restraints, which are themselves, for all who will view them aright, no chain of bondage, but rather a perfected free- dom. This is the compimction which I would have to visit us. I would have the undutiful son, I would have the wilful wayward exile, I would have the hardened rebel, say to himself this night. Would that I had never left my home ! God Himself was my Father: He created, He redeemed, He called me : He set me within His doors, by no choice of mine, when I was a dumb senseless in- fant : He provided for my training in Christian and Repentant Resolutions, 295 knowledge, He gave me ordinances of worship, He put His Word in my hand, He caused me to know right from wrong, the way of salvation from the way of ruin : all this He did for me, and I would none of Him. Day after day, as I grew up, I relaxed a little, and yet a little more, of my known rule of duty : I began to give up praying, I trifled with His sacred day, I counted worship a burden, I cared not to give thanks, I thought for- getfulness pleasure, and self-indulgence happi- ness : thus I lived : not without occasional remini- scences of better things ; not without some strivings of conscience, not without some faint short-lived endeavours after righteousness ; but still, on the whole, away from God, at a distance from God, without God in the world. And now I am reaping the fniits of this. There is a great famine within me ; not of bread nor of water, as the Prophet writes, but of God's Word, of God's presence, of comfort and peace, of rest and hope. When trouble comes, / have no place to flee unto: when I would weep, my heart is a stone : when death strikes down another beside me, though I tremble I cannot feel ; cannot feel, that iS; as I ought, the lesson God would teach, 296 Compunctious Visitings nor learn so to number my own days as to apply my heart to wisdom. And when I am in pros- perity, God is not in all my thoughts : I live for the hour and for the day, I live not for God and the soul, for Christ and eternity. Oh, I am very far from God — I who, by right and title at least, was once within the home. And now something brings to me just the wish, just the sigh, after something better. I look per- haps upon one beside me, who is different : dif- ferent just in this one point : not in being higher than I in outward advantage ; not in being richer, or nobler, or more successful ; it may be, quite the contraiy — poor, while I am rich; disappointed, while I am prosperous ; a servant, perhaps, while I am a master — inferior, then, in all these things — but in one thing above me ; that he is inside the home ; that he has never left, or has long returned to, the fam.ily of God ; that he knows in whom he believes, and is persuaded that He can keep, and will keep, against the day of Christ, the deposit of his life and of his soul. I see him, just because he is inside that home, with bj'ead enough a?id to spare: always contented, always satisfied, always thank- ful ; ingenious (as man might say) in seeing only and Repentant Resohttions. 297 good, seeing mercy in severity and love in suffer- ing ; never doubting the gracious purpose, and never harbouring a mistrust of the wisdom which is guiding all things towards an end. Bread efiough and to spare — ajtd I perish wii/i himger — I, a child — I, a son ! There are young people in this congregation — God grant there may be elder persons too — whose hearts are in this frame this evening. They are reproaching themselves, not for this crime or that ; not so much for this or that which they have done or left undone ; but rather with the w^aste of blessing, with the general refusal of love, of which they have been guilty; with having left God's home ; with having forsaken the Guide of their youth; with having dealt unthankfully and heart- lessly with Him who was never weary of doing them good. And now they would return — did they but know the way — could they but be sure of being let in ! This is the true compunction — that prickiftg of the hearty of which Scripture tells : not the panic terror of one before whose eyes hell has suddenly opened herself; not the abject cringing fear of Divine vengeance, which with many is the 298 Compunctious Visitmgs beginning, middle, and end too, of all conversion : no, the returning thought of home \ the recollec- tion of a Divine family and household of which I was by inheritance and adoption a member ; the recollection of a Divine name and face and relationship which I still designate as that of a Father; the coming back upon me of a something, of a some One, kinder and more lovely and more desirable than all the vain things for which I have sacrificed it ; the reminiscence of a bright and ordered dwelling, in which the very menials were princes — and the deep inner questioning, Why am I absent now from that dwelling % who shall re- store me — or is it too late — to that home of my infancy which still casts its light upon me from afar in my wretchedness and in my exile % I pause for one moment to say to those in this place who are already inmates of the Divine home, See that you make it desirable, to them that are without ! See that they be constrained to say of you, He the servant, she the handmaid, of that home, has evidently enough and to spare ! Let it be seen of all that you are happy, that you are at peace, that you are satisfied, contented, restful, hopeful ! It is thus that souls are drawn to Jesus; and Repentant Resolutions. 299 by the sight of that peace, of that happiness, which He communicates. It is thus that com- punctions visit exiled sons ; through the bright blessed faces of those who have found rest in Christ. 2. This is that Compunction of which we would speak. And now of the Resolution. We have called it a repentant resolution : hop- ing that you would all understand by repefifafit, not gloomy, not remorseful, not black and blank and despairing, but that which it indeed is, of or belonging to a changed mind, to a new mind^ the mind which sees all things in an altered light — sin as exceeding sinful, and hoHness as altogether blessed. Repentant Resolutions, I will arise, and go to my Father — a7id will say M7ito Him, Father — / have sinned against heaven and before Thee — against Thee, and in the sight of heaven. Mark first how the repentant resolution speaks of God. My Father. Yes, you may have sinned ; you may have gone a long way in sin ; you may have cast behind your back Christian habits — habits of prayer, of wor- 300 Comptmctious Visitings ship, of religious observance, even of moral duty — ■ yet are you a Son still ; and your God is your Father still ! Happy is he — God grant us grace to make the thought more present to any one ! — who in his remotest exile, in his uttermost destitution, still speaks, still thinks, of God as his Father. That relation can never be lost — not while life lasts j we say not how it may be hereafter ! Say to yourself, God is my Father. That is my chief sin, that I left Him being such ; that, though He is my Father, and though His presence is there- fore my home, yet I left Him ; ran away from Him ; entered the devil's service ; tried to make him my Father instead of God. But I could not. The moment that the thought comes back to me, God is my rightful ow?ier, and God my rightful Lo7'd, that moment the relation springs again into fullest force, God is thy Father too! Again, / will arise. Yes, there is need of exertion. Sit still, and thou art bound; sorry, but not contrite ; miserable, but not repentant. Iwillarise^ must the soul say : I will shake off the lethargy : I will break the fetter and Repenimit Resolutions. 301 of sleep and indolence : I will arise and go : there is a journey, though it be but in the soul's going ; and therefore there must be a rising, a rousing of the whole man, like that which in the days of the Son of God below enabled one whose hand was withered, yet at the Divine command to stand forth and stretch it out. The power is given in the willing. Say, / will arise, and grace shall lift thee up. And I will go. Whither, and how? First, in prayer. We have called it a soul's journey. The soul must arise and pray. As if God were present — knowing that God is present — because God is present — so, and thus, and there- fore, speak to Him. Say, Father, I have sinned — say it — He hears ! Oh the marvellous power of that little common- place thing which we call prayer ! So soon done ; so often supposed to be done by every man ; so often not done when it has been (by a reckoning of time) even long and earnest ! Yet, where the will once is, done almost in no time ; done (it may be) without word or sound or sign ; done in the heart of the man ; done in the ear of his God ! / will arise, afid I will go, and I will say, Father, 302 Compunctious Visitmgs I have sinned ! Say that, from the heart, as to a present and a prayer-hearing God — and the work is done ! And again, Go, in effort. We must not trifle with or mock God : and therefore he who would pray must endeavour too. In particular, we must resolutely give up known sins. We are all such cowards : cowards with ourselves : we dare not say within, I will, and I will 7iot: we yield up the helm to chance, to habit, to temptation — to some- thing not to be called tem.ptation — mere idleness, indolence, or what not. If we would only pray first, and then try, we could do so many things, and forbear so many : but we are cowards, the best of us, towards our own poor selves. Cowards too towards the devil, and towards his agents and tools around. Resist the devil, St James says, a7id he will flee from yon : for he too is a coward, and the chief of cowards ; bold towards the timid, das- tardly before the brave. Therefore, I say, he who would arise and go — and this is the repentant re- solution of which alone we speak to-night — must face his own sins, his own chief sin, in the name of Christ ; face it, and beat it too ! Let it not be, that we should be resolute and brave in all else. and Repentant Resolutions. 303 and yet cowards and dastards towards that which is our one foe ! Give tip your sin, is the first word of Christ to those who would return to their Father. And then, thirdly and lastly, Go, in the use of all means. God has furnished us with various means and instruments of access to Him. Such is His Holy Word, read and pondered daily and prayed over. Such are all those occasions of Christian converse, in which they who fear the Lord speak one to another, for mutual edification and strengthen- ing, and the Lord hearkens, and opens for them His blessed book of everlasting remembrance. One such is that to which you have heard your- selves bidden to-day ; a weekly meeting, under the guidance of an appointed Minister, for reading, for instruction, for praise, for prayer. Such, above all, is that ordinance of Divine Communion to which — so many of us for the first time — we are all invited this evening. Be not backward thus to arise and go to your Father ! He is very present at that Table. There, more than anywhere be- low, He flings back the folding-gates of His house, and bids the erring son to enter. Say not in your hearts, any one, Thus far will I follow, but I will 304 Cornpitnctious Visitings not go in : I came to Confirmation, but I come not to Communion. Weigh not out thus your service by grains and scruples ! If Confirmation meant anything, it meant Communion. He who could say with a clear conscience last Friday, / do^ can say this evening, / co?ne. Neither the one nor the other are professions of attainment : both the one and the other are confessions of need. I will ai'ise and go to my Father. We must get to Him somehow. If we do not get to God Himself, we have done nothing after all. Even public worship, even Holy Communion, even private prayer and study of the Scriptures, may stop short of reaching God. O most unhappy of all disappointments ! to have done so much, and yet not attained — to have drawn so near the gate, and yet never entered ! Therefore we must bear this in mind, amidst and above all else, that things which God instituted as means must never be treated as if they were ends ; in other words, that we must press through all outward ordinances, as through so many courtyards and vestibules, into the actual presence-chamber and shrine of the Divine Father Himself. Nothing less, nothing else, will ever satisfy the immortal man : that, and Repentant Resolutions, 305 that alone, is the bread of Hfe ; that bread of which the very doorkeeper inside the Home has enough and to spare. Jesus said unto them, /, I myself — not my ordinances, not my Word, not my Church, not my Supper — I myself — am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger ; and he that helieveth ofi me shall nrver thirst. Lord, evermore give us this bread ! THE wanderer's WELCOME, AND THE HOME-LIFE OF THE RESTORED. "They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of thy house." — Psalm xxxvi. 8. RETURN Home. That is our subject. Whose heart does not respond to it? The schoolboy — the traveller — the soldier son — the Indian husband — it is an expe- rience at once among the commonest and among the most memorable ; familiar to all, and yet to none trivial ; old in itself and in the general, and yet in the feehng and in the instance evermore new likewise. These are the things which Scripture speaks of j stirring the depths of universal nature into spark- ling waves of spiritual influence. Scripture — and He who speaks in Scripture — goes into humanity itself for its illustrations of things Divine. And for The Wanderer s Welcome, etc. 307 this amongst other reasons Scripture is a book for all men ; not for the rich and wise only, nor yet (on the other hand) for the poor and simple only, but for all alike and equally ; because it deals not with the artificialities which overcrust the life of man, but with those matters in which the Hfe it- self consists j speaking a language which all under- stand, and addressing a soul which all possess. A Return Home. If that is the figure em- ployed, certainly it is intelligible. But how is it as to the use, as to the applica- tion, of the figure % Is that also universally appro- priate ? It is a common, and not unnatural feehng, which makes a sinful person isolate himself in his sinful- ness. It is one of the strongest barriers which men erect against their own salvation, this argu- ment — My case is pecufiar: no one ever sinned quite like me : no one has wandered so far, or so obstinately, or in this particular direction : no one therefore can understand my case, and no one's recovery is any warrant for my hope. Thus secrets are locked up, which ought to be confided to the physician; and the entrance of God's light into the life and into the soul is rendered impossible, 3o8 The Wanderer's Welco7ne, and by the determination of the sufferer to regard him- self as alone in his guilt, alone in his ruin. How different the view of Christ ! Evidently He who knows what is in man sees in those whom He came to save a substantial uni- formity amidst every possible variety of circum- stance. As all need their daily bread, so all need to be forgiven for daily sins. The two petitions follow each other in the Lord's Prayer. And thus, when He tells the story of a life's wandering and a soul's return, He speaks of that which all will understand, and of w^hich all the saved will have had a true experience. The saints of old time used words of utter self- condemnation when they poured out their soul's secrets in the ear of God. And we in like manner, framing our prayers for universal worship — fram- ing them for worshippers of all sorts and of all histories, and desiring surely that they should ex- press nothing but that which is true in the sight of the Lord — have made this the very language of the Church in her morning and evening devotions through the week and the year and the generation, Almighty and most uierciful Father^ we have erred and strayed from thy ways — like lost sheep. the Home-life of the Restored. 309 Now, if this be true, ho\v precious to each one of us ought to be this present subject, the Wan- derer's Welcome ! We may speak upon it to all — for all, more or less, are Wanderers. We say it ourselves. We have said it of ourselves again and again — we have said it now — We have erred and strayed. It is not the excepted case : it is uni- versal. Would to God that we all and each felt it so ! For, if we say that we have not sinned, the truth is not in us — we deceive ourselves ! The difference is not there : not in the wander- ing — though the ways in which we have lost our- selves are as various as the thoughts of man's heart — not in the wandering, but in the re- turn. Some of us have not yet tasted the bitterness of the wandering. The mighty famine has not yet come to us. We have not yet quite run through our portion of goods. Life is but a little way spent : youth, health, strength, spirits, these are still ours : hope is larger than regret, faults are not yet seen as sins, God is not in our thoughts — or, if He comes there at all, it is not as a Person, not as a Life, a Voice, a Power, but only as a name — why should we return? we are but just 3 1 o The TVafiderers Welcome^ and free ; beginning to taste the delicious fruit which is to make us gods : why should we return'? And others of us, though the famine has arisen, and we are in want, yet cannot make up our minds quite to return : we will try a compromise first : there is a citizen of the country who will employ and feed me : I am not at my last resource yet : that dull distant Home is not yet my only refuge : presently perhaps — in the very end of life — not now, not to-day ! And others have even tried to return, and could not find the way. They had no confidence in the welcome. They could not offer a whole heart. They set out — again and again they set out — but they were hindered — they desponded — they looked behind them — they never arrived. The remem- brance of a long succession of half-repentances lies heavy upon them, clogging their steps, and enfeebling effort by destroying hope. Such are some of the conditions upon which God our Father looks down to-night in this con- gregation, and still mercifully speaks, even to these, of the Wanderer's Welcome. HoAV and where is the welcome given % What is meant by the Father seeing the erring the Home- life of the Restored. 3 1 1 son a great way off, and running forth to fall on his neck and kiss him % It is there in the Book — what is it in fact and in the life % How does God make good the words now? By what signs shall we know, any one of us, that we personally are welcomed home? A deeply important, a deeply solemn question. I would answer it as simply and seriously as pos- sible. Many persons build everything upon feeling. One says, I feel that I am forgiven. Something within tells me that I am forgiven. On such a day, in such a place, the assurance came to me : I build upon that. And another says, I cannot feel that I am forgiven. I cannot get peace. I was told that I should have an inward sense of pardon : and I have not got it. Therefore I am not yet forgiven. There must be something a little wrong here. This sort of doctrine scarcely has the stamp of truth upon it. I am forgiven, because I feel that I am forgiven — 1 am not forgiven, because I can- not feel that I am forgiven ! that is not like Christ's teaching : that is not the firm rock of a Gospel, of a Revelation, of a message brought to us irom 312 The Wanderers Welcome, and God, if, after all, my feeling this or that is to make this or that true, and my not feeling it is to make this or that (which is nothing less than my salvation) false and void ! Well may we pray the Psalmist's prayer, set 77ie upon the rock that is higher than 1 1 This rock, of mere feeling, is not higher than I : it is more precarious, more shifting, more fleeting, even than I : for it takes in but one part of me, and that the least stable and the least stedfast. AVe must begin quite differently. The welcome spoken of is, first of all, the sure word of God. Christ is the Propitiation for our sins^ and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world — that is my welcome home ! Whether I come or come not, Christ bore my sins : it is done ! Let me come, not to get it done, but because it is done ! Let me come, because there is nothing in the way ; because, when I was far off, the Father had compassion, and conveyed to me the tidings of my forgiveness and of my welcome ! And so then, even if I cannot feel it as I would ; even if I still walk in much gloom and in much despondency and in much self-misgiving; that does not shake the fact : God welcomes me for all the Home-life of the Restored. 3 1 3 that, if I just cling to the drowning man's rope, which is the Cross of Christ ! And when once the matter is taken out of the province of feeling, and carried into the region of simple Revelation, there is this result also — it is one of the proofs of the Divine harmony of the Gospel — that the very refusal to depend upon feeling brings the feeling ; that, just in proportion as I look out of myself to Christ alone, take God at His word, and exclude self from my view, in the same proportion peace comes ; not to be trusted in, yet surely to be given thanks for ; not convey- ing, yet echoing, the welcome ; not making me a son, but yet helping to bear the witness that I am a son of God. Let a man try this counsel; let him earnestly pray to God on the strength of the Gospel — com- ing to Him as a sinner, spreading before Him his exact state, keeping back nothing, treating Him as a Father, from whom he has wandered, but who desires and has provided for his salvation — and let him see whether in the very act he does not also feel a welcome ; whether, as of old, when in days of childhood he confessed some little fault to his father or his mother, and felt himself forgiven, 314 The Waiidei'er s Welco7ne, and so now, telling out his deeper, graver, viler sins to a Father who seeth in secret, there be not sent into his soul that blessed ray which is the glory of the Divine presence, assuring him of God's hearing, and breathing into his soul, there and then, some answer of peace. I trust and believe that there are those here present, who are now rejoicing in the Wanderer's Welcome. They have become conscious of sin. They have made a great exertion to shake off the yoke. They have earnestly tried to draw nigh to God. They have set themselves to lay hold on the hope set before them. They have got this night a glimmering at least of hope. Home shines beyond — yea, they are at its door ! The Father has compassion, and meets them a long way off with His blessed welcome. Let them take it, and doubt not ! It is a free welcome, unfettered by condition or compact — Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely I But now we are to suppose this first step taken. The return is accompUshed. The wanderer is welcomed home. There is joy in heaven over the repenting sinner : joy too on earth in the heart which has found a Father. the Home-life of the Restored. 3 1 5 Is all done? May we rest here, or float hence- forth down a peaceful stream into a safe and blessed haven % Some have so learned Christ. They have made Conversion everything. They have left out of view all those Scriptures which speak to true con- verts of working out salvation, of the danger of falling away, of the daily necessity of faith and patience, of prayer and watching. Like some old- fashioned tale, ending with the marriage ; stopping short of the most eventful days, and excluding from the view the most real trials, of human life ; so does this one-sided doctrine territ)ly distort the true estimate of the spiritual being, and stunt the growth in grace of many who have even entered upon the true life of Christ. Therefore it is that we have added now to the Wanderer's Welcofne this second thesis also — and the HotJie-life of the Restored. Sometimes, in human Hfe, a son returns home, and will not stay at home. Again, as of cCld, he frets against its restraints, and becomes again an exile. Not for lack of a kindly loving welcome. Not on account of reproaches for the past, or of harsh conditions imposed for the future. No, for 3i6 The Wandei^er s Welcome^ and the old reason : because the abode of love is un- lovely to the unloving; because the heart of sin cannot abide in the dwelling of the righteous ; because (as the Prophet says) two cannot walk together except they be agreed, and the self-will which has seen the world and tasted of its lawless indulgences can scarcely settle itself down amidst calm unexciting comforts and sober monotonous occupations. The son again becomes the fugi- tive, and the fugitive again hardens into the rebel. It is so in the case of God's Home. Who has not known, at some time or other of his life, some- thing which may fitly be called a return and a welcome? Of whom has it not now and then been said, and with truth, by his friends, He has turned over a new leaf — he is going on better % Of whom even this. He is sorry for his sin, and is becoming more serious % Who has not, whether observed or unnoticed, at some time or other of his life, made his humble supplication to God for pardon and salvation % That was, if it was sincere, a return home : and at the time how could we doubt the welcome % Yet over and over again in the Home-life of the Restored. 317 a man's life these things come and go : these chants of feeling and purpose visit him, and pass away, and are forgotten ! And so now, addressing some who may be meditating such a return — and some who, through God's grace, have even realized it — I w^ould sug- gest a few thoughts to-day with reference to the Home-life on which you are entering ; that life, I mean, which comes after the first turning to God ; that life which ought to continue — which God grant may continue in us — from this time forth till we die and are safe for ever. The Home-life of the Restoi'ed — that is the last part of our subject. Having returned to God — having received His blessed welcome to that spi- ritual home, of His love and presence, which our sins had forfeited — how shall we retain that bless- edness? how shall we keep upon our souls the freshness of that pardon and of that acceptance, so that, when we die, we may be ready for the real home — for the family of the just made per- fect ] And here I would say — First, we must form our expectations truly. In 3i8 The Wanderers Welcome, and the first days of repentance, while the soul is feeling after God, and just beginning to grasp the promise and to lay hold upon the great Sacrifice which is our hope, there is usually a stir and ex- citement within, which powerfully affects the whole course and current of our being. Where the work is strong and earnest, there is in the first days a natural expectation that the whole of life will be of this character ; that the day will be occupied in communion, and the night in praise. And when this is not found so to be \ when the inward life is found to fluctuate like the outward; when hope itself loses its freshness, and the experience of lingering or reviving sin disappoints the calcula- tion of a rapid progress towards perfection ; then comes, too often, weariness, languor, depression, despondency ; at last, relaxed effort, acquiescence in low attainment, inconsistencies of speech and habit ; in the end, amidst many half-recoveries, even a falling away from grace once given, a tar- nished and sullied if not forfeited crown. It might not have been thus, if the expectations of the young Christian had been more truly formed. Expect not — we should say to ourselves — the the Home-life of the Restored. 3 1 9 permanence of your first feeling. You are enter- ing upon what may prove to be a long life of Christian faith and duty. This life will bring with it, of necessity, many experiences. There will be in it long periods of sameness, monotony, dulness. Duty itself will often look very commonplace, very unimportant, sometimes very unattractive. The spirits will vary with varying health, and even the soul will oftentimes ebb and flow with both. There will often be an impression upon your mind that you are doing little good, that your endeavours find little success, and your prayers no answer. Some- times, when you have been living for years in the Home of which we speak, you will almost feel, like the Elder Son in the Parable, that a sort of in- justice is done to you ; that, instead of thanks or reward, you are only suffered and taken (as it were) for granted : for others, the wilful wandering ones, the fatted calf is killed ; their recovery is hailed, with transports of joy, as life from the dead: there are no outbreaks of joy over you; your service is treated as a matter of course, eliciting no wonder, and recompensed by no reward. Frame your expectations beforehand on these 320 The Wanderer s Welcome, and suppositions. Recognize these as the natural ex- periences of a long Home-life. Think how it is in an earthly home. It is the stranger son who makes its excitements. It is the return which draws forth the welcome. The sister who is al- ways there — bearing its burdens, smoothing its roughnesses, allaying its little discords — she is not thanked, she is not praised : yet, if she were to die, she would be the one missed ! It is some- what thus in God's family, the household of His true servants, the community of His spiritual Church. Be well contented if God should ever say to you. Son, thou art ever with me. That is higher praise, surer comfort, after all, than the tur- bulent jubilee which welcomes home the prodigal ! This, too, perhaps, was once yours : wish not that it should be yours again ! That first welcome, joyful as it is, is purchased but by long wandering : be it yours to wander no more ! say rather now, Tills God is my God for ever and ever : He shall be my Guide unto death I And then, having formed our expectations justly, we must, in the second place, be careful to live by the rules of the Home. the Home-life of the Restored. 321 Here again a life of mere feeling is out of place. We want rules. We require the curb of rule to keep us orderly, and we require the stimulus of rule to keep us active. If we are to wait for the prompting of inclination, to pray, to read, to medi- tate, to worship, to commune, to communicate, we shall wait long and wait in vain. We must set ourselves, in the very outset of a home-life with God, to live by the home-rules. No earthly house- hold could prosper, in which the caprice or the appetite of each inmate was to be the prescriber of its hours of food and resting : so is it with God's House. In the first moments and days of a great conversion, there will be eagerness enough for opportunities of grace : but that life thrives best, in the long run, which is lived by rule ; that life, which has its fixed times of waiting upon God, and resolutely keeps to them, year after year, without waiting for inward impulses of strong in- clination or conscious imperious need. The Home- life of the Restored must be marked by a rigid conscientious adherence to the rules of the House- hold. We must take our place in it as sons ; thankfully adapting ourselves to its Master's 322 The Wanderer s Welcome^ and wishes, and, whether at the moment we will or no, carefully doing the thing which He says. There is a third thing. He who would live the Home-life of the Restored, and be found in it when the Master comes, must tJiroiv himself tho7vngkly into the life. Sometimes in earthly homes a son or a daughter lodges within the house, who is in reality no part of the household ; so entirely distinct from it are the real interests, so completely elsewhere the friendships and the affec- tions. Such an inmate is an incubus upon the home. There is no help there for the rest, be- cause there is no sympathy and no incorporation. Alas ! how true a picture of that which many Christians are in God's Home ! If we would ever live the restored life — live it so as to belong to it, live it so as to be a part of it — we must throw all our sympathies, all our interests, all our hearts into it. Let its society be your society, its work your work, its honour your joy, its de- feat your sorrow ! It is here that we fail. Willing to enjoy the privilege of Christian worship, hop- ing to enter into the Christian rest, we are not, heart and soul, inside the family, bound up (as the Home- life of the Restored. 323 Scripture says) in the hundle of life with it, having it for the business of busy days, and for the rising and resting meditation of calm silent nights, how we may further its aims and help its triumphs. He will never be safe in God's house who sits loose to it : he who would abide in it for ever must see that his heart be there. God give us this, and all shall be well ! Lastly, we would say, Look on far enough. Fix your thoughts on the end. Let no impatience rob you of the real blessedness — to be found of Him in peace. In the happiness of the home — even of God's home — below, forget not the great return, forget not the great welcome ! More or less, we are wanderers still, the best of us : without leaving the home, we can err and stray within it : we have still to say, in some sense, / will arise and go to my Father: and not until death comes, or the Advent, can that purpose be absolutely fulfilled. See that we miss it not ! Let us so use God's Home on earth; the means of grace, the ordi- nances of prayer and praise and communion, the opportunity of ministering to Christ in His poor and in His children, the blessed power, given to 324 The Wanderer's Welcome, etc. each of us, of making some little return for all the benefits that He has done to us, at least by receiv- ing the Clip of salvatio7t a7id calling upon the jiame of the Lord; that at last we may hear the glad welcome into a heavenly home, Come, ye blessed cf my Father— enter thou into the joy of thy Lord! l^ Ballajttyite and Co7npa7iy, Printers^ Edinhirgh.