7,
 
 1859.
 
 PREACHED IN OXFORD IN 1859. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD. 
 BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 
 DEiN OF CANTERBURY. 
 ARCHDEACON RANDALL. 
 REY. DR. MOBERLY. 
 DR. HESSEY. 
 
 REV. T. T. CARTER. 
 C. P. EDEN. 
 A. S. FARRAR. 
 J. LAWRELL. 
 H. P. LIDDON. 
 J. S. WOODFORD. 
 
 BE-ISSUE. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 AND 377, STRAND, LONDON : 
 
 JAMES PARKER AND CO. 
 
 MUCCCI.XXVII.
 
 SERMON I. 
 ftty ftata* of Sin. 
 
 BY SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD. 
 
 SERMON II. 
 $\t ^psnr of making ligljt of Sin. 
 
 BY SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD. 
 SERMON ILL 
 
 BY THE REV. ADAM. S. FARRAR, M.A. 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 Coomb or Swat Sin, anb pen Sin. 
 
 BY THE VEN. ARCHDEACON RANDALL. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 SSSHM Sin, anb Sins of |nfirraitjr. 
 
 BY THE VERY REV. THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 2066399
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 Slins of fafyan^A, an& fjofo to wsist tfiem. 
 
 BY THE REV. H. P. LIDDON, M.A. 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 t Cross of Cfrrist tfj* ^liktancx from % <f mlt 
 of gin. 
 
 BY THE REV. JOHN LAWRELL, M.A. 
 
 SERMON VIII. \V C 
 
 Cross of Christ i\t gdiforante from i\t 
 ef.Sfa 
 
 BY THE REV. T. T. CARTER, M. 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 of i\t f olg (i^fost fyt &irengl|j against 
 
 BY THE REV. G. MOBERLY, D.C.L. 
 
 SERMON X. 
 of (grat* % fjtlps against ^i 
 
 BY THK REV. J. R. WOODFORD, M.A.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON XL 
 
 |3lf-*aminali0n a daarfc against Sin. 
 
 BY THE REV. C. P. EDEN, M.A. 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 fafyt S5Sag.es rf Sin in in. 
 
 BY JOHN, LORD BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 &^e S&ages 0f Sin in (Sternitg. 
 
 BY THE REV. J. A. HESSEY, D.C.I*
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 0f Sm, 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD, 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, AND 
 LORD HIGH ALMONER TO THE QUEEN. 
 
 (Preached in the Church of St. Mary-the-Virgin, March 9, 1859.)
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 1 ST. JOHN iii. 4. 
 For sin is the transgression of the law. 
 
 IT is our desire, my brethren, to address you 
 throughout this Lent on the subject of sin. 
 We wish to dwell upon it with you in as many 
 aspects as possible : to address you concerning it 
 by many voices on successive nights. We desire 
 to get your minds to rest upon the considerations 
 it involves. We would fain, if God enables us to 
 do so, escape from that light and passing notice of 
 it which is one of our great temptations concern- 
 ing it, and from which, breeding as it does within 
 us incomplete notions of its evil, its deceitfulness 
 gathers fresh strength to ensnare and destroy its 
 victims. 
 
 For this purpose the various parts of this wide 
 subject have been placed in what we think a 
 natural sequence, and we earnestly entreat you 
 to work with us in our endeavours, both by regu- 
 larity of attendance and by self-examination, me- 
 
 B2
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 dilation, and, above all, by prayer to God, as to 
 what from week to week has been impressed upon 
 you. May He, of His great mercy, be pleased so 
 to accompany with His heavenly blessing the 
 words which shall be spoken in His Name, that 
 they may indeed tend to His glory and to the 
 salvation of souls. 
 
 Very little consideration may shew us the im- 
 portance of seeing wherein consists the real nature 
 of sin. For reason and experience alike teach 
 us that we cannot hope to overcome any disease 
 which has fixed itself upon us whilst its true 
 nature is undetected, and it is not known what 
 part of us it attacks, and so what remedies we are 
 to use, or how we are to strive against it. The 
 empiric who sets himself, in dealing with any 
 disease of the body, merely to counteract its ex- 
 ternal symptoms, often aggravates the malady with 
 which he ignorantly meddles ; and he assuredly 
 runs a far greater risk of working a far wider ruin 
 who attempts in such presumptuous ignorance to 
 deal with the disorders of the soul. And there 
 are two considerations upon which, even in the 
 first opening of this subject, we shall do well to 
 pause for awhile, which make a knowledge of the 
 true nature of this disorder of the first importance 
 to us : the first, that it is a disease of so fearful a
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. O 
 
 quality, and the second, that it so surely affects, 
 every one of us. 
 
 Weigh but for a moment its effects, and you 
 must appreciate something of its deadly charac- 
 ter; look what it has wrought in the heavenly 
 world; scan, so far as our feeble capacities and 
 limited knowledge enable us to do so, those ser- 
 ried ranks of glorious spirits which surround the 
 everlasting throne ; think of the greatness, and 
 glory, and blessedness, and number of the mighty 
 angels of God's presence ; see them, as clouds lit 
 up with the sun's beams, which, drenched with 
 the glory of its light, give back from their every 
 fold the brightness of its radiance ; see them thus 
 in the light of God's countenance, mark the great 
 majesty of their might, gaze on the unstained 
 blessedness which their whole being ceaselessly 
 proclaims, and then estimate as best you can the 
 multitude of their innumerable squadrons; see 
 them thus "excelling in strength" and blessed- 
 ness, and countless in number, angels and arch- 
 angels, thrones and dominions, cherubim and 
 seraphim, all in their ranks, gradations, orders, 
 and degrees, filling like some ocean tide of crea- 
 ture-life the empyrean over us ; and then remem- 
 ber, that (if we deem aright) one-third part of 
 those who were once reckoned in that matchless
 
 6 SERMON I. 
 
 host are now no more amongst their ranks, that 
 they bask no more in the uncreated light, pour 
 
 ^ forth no more from golden harps the praises of 
 the Highest, rejoice no more in the full and 
 blessed exercise of every satisfied desire of their 
 glorious nature, but are "cast down to hell, re- 
 served in everlasting chains under darkness unto 
 the judgment of the great Day," lost, and lost for 
 ever, without room for repentance, without the 
 offer of atonement, without the gentle visitations 
 of mercy, without the abundant dew of grace ; re- 
 member that those natures, framed and fashioned 
 according to the wise design and by the prevailing 
 
 v _ word of the All-Wise and the All-Mighty with 
 the largest capacities for blessedness with which 
 created beings could be gifted, have all those vast 
 capacities filled full with anguish, unconceivable, 
 unalleviated, never-ending, and then see what sin 
 has wrought, and measure as you can in that awful 
 shattering of God's great work of love what sin is. 
 Or turn to this world, and compare what it was 
 when, as " very good," God's blessing rested upon 
 its rejoicing dawn ; when man, rejoicing in His 
 maker and in himself, possessed and ruled as 
 "God's vicegerent this happy, peaceful, harmoni- 
 ous, undecaying creation, on this earth of beauty ; 
 when every sense with which his body was en-
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 7 
 
 dowed was an inlet only of delight, when his mind - 
 was full of light, when his reason was unclouded, 
 his conscience the approving reflex of God's smile ; 
 when praise was the atmosphere of his life, and 
 death and separation were unknown to and uncon- 
 ceivable by him ; and then gather into one heap 
 the sadnesses of this present earth, its lazarhouse " 
 pangs and base defilement, its darkened imagi- 
 nations, its toiling, wearied, suffering multitudes, 
 its broken hearts, its hopeless lives, and despairing 
 deaths, and remember that all these are the work 
 of sin, and see what a poison must be in it. Or look 
 at beings likejrourself. made by God to learn how 
 to love Him here, and then to serve Him eternally 
 in blessedness inconceivable ; and see these in outer -L 
 darkness or in consuming flames, hear the gnash- U. 
 ing of their teeth, see the worm which dieth not. 
 
 n^JIfc 
 
 rearing eternally its accursed head against them, 
 and then see what sin is, which has cast them out 
 from that glory, and thrust them down to tM$^ 
 perdition. Or but once more, look to Calvary. 
 See the eternal Son of the Father, very God of 
 very God ; see Him dying in shame, in agony, in 
 desertion ; hear those groans ; listen to that cry, 
 "My God ! My God ! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 
 and know that this too is sin's work. This, even 
 this, was needed before its malignity could be cured
 
 8 SERMON I. 
 
 and its sting extracted ; and see here, in the suf- 
 ferings of Him who was the Only-begotten of the 
 Almighty Father, more than in the fall of angels, 
 or the sorrows of an universe, or even than in the 
 flames of hell, how fearful, how mysterious, how 
 inconceivable a curse must dwell in sin when this 
 could be its work, when to remove it from man 
 this awful sacrifice was necessary ! Oh root of bit- 
 terness inconceivable! oh accursed mystery of 
 unfathomable evil ! oh horror of great darkness, 
 which casts its utter blackness on the spirit as we 
 even meditate upon it! oh strange, monstrous, 
 terrible secret of this most familiar presence ! 
 
 For, secondly, all this belongs not to some dis- 
 tant world, not to beings of another kind from us, 
 not to devils in hell and spirits in torment ; but 
 it belongs to us, it touches us, nay, it is in us, 
 
 -*i 
 
 \ in every one of us, ruling in some, struggling in 
 others, present in all ; not wholly cast out even 
 I from the holiest; threatening, and, unless kept 
 under by God's grace, sure at last to work utter 
 ruin to each one of us. Surely we must enter 
 upon this as no idle speculation. Surely we must 
 with all serious earnestness set ourselves to learn 
 its nature and its cure, if this, which has thinned 
 the ranks of angels, ruined a new-created world, 
 lit up the flames of hell, and nailed the Lord of
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 glory to a cross of shame, if this indeed be pre- 
 sent, struggling, threatening within us. 
 
 What, then, is its nature ? " Sin/ ; says God's 
 Word, in the passage I have read to you, " Sin 
 is the transgression of the law." But, then, what 
 is "the law," and what its "transgression?" To 
 each of these we must seek an answer, if we would 
 at all enter into the depths of this question. And 
 first, what is " the law ?" Not any particular set 
 of precepts or prohibitions, though all precepts 
 and prohibitions given by God must be to him who 
 receives them a part of " the law/' but " the law" 
 itself is far higher than these; it is the manifestation 
 to the reasonable creatures whom His love has 
 breathed into being, possessed of reason, will, and 
 moral consciousness by the unapproachable and 
 incomprehensible Lord of so much of the perfec- 
 tion of His own necessary character as can be com- 
 prehended by the creature to whom it is revealed, 
 in order that the character of the supreme Lord 
 may be formed and maintained, according to his 
 limited capacity, in the creature also; that he, 
 in his small circumference of being, may be 
 concentric with the majestic arc of the infinite 
 Creator. For it is with this purpose that the 
 Lord reveals Himself. So that the revelation is to 
 its receiver most properly a law ; and its purpose
 
 10 SERMON I. 
 
 -makes it a law of love ; since it is only by con- 
 forming to this that the created being can be truly 
 happy. For this connection of the reasonable 
 creature's happiness with the existence of a true 
 harmony between his own spiritual being and the 
 character of God, is not an arbitrary enactment 
 grounded on the mere will of the supreme Lord, 
 as in our wilfulness we are so apt to imagine, but 
 it is indeed a necessary consequence of the in- 
 alienable relation between the perfect Creator, 
 from Whom we have our being and in Whom we 
 subsist, and the reasonable creatures of His hand. 
 First, because only by this harmony of his own 
 will with the Will of his Creator can the perfection 
 of the creature's own nature be reached or main- 
 tained. For as God is all good, and as the crea- 
 ture must be the expression which God is pleased 
 to give in created matter to some idea existing 
 in its perfectness in His eternal mind, the creature 
 must be an emanation of the Creator's goodness ; 
 and the perfection of his own being, in which 
 only he can find happiness, must be the fulfilling 
 that idea of goodness of which he is the crea- 
 turely expression. And then, next, this must be 
 so, because only in the Creator^ can the creature, 
 created with capacities for knowing, loving, serv- 
 ing, resting on his Creator, ever find complete
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 11 
 
 happiness. All lower objects, whatever measure of 
 passing pleasure they may give him, leave the 
 deeper part of his nature unsatisfied ; and there 
 is no perfect or enduring bliss without full satis- 
 faction ; everything else is restlessness and un- 
 certainty. Unless, therefore, his character be in 
 harmony with the character of his Maker, there 
 can be no true happiness for the creature. By 
 whatever means, then, the supreme Lord reveals 
 Himself to His reasonable creatures, that reve- 
 lation is to them "the law." Whether it be 
 vouchsafed to them as it is now to the elect an- 
 gels, and as of His loving mercy it shall one day 
 be to the ransomed_ojis of Adam, by the beatific 
 vision, when "we," too, "shall be_jikjtlimj for 
 we shall see Him jis He is;" or whether it be by 
 His voice in nature, or in His written Word, or in 
 the secret whisper of the conscience ; however it 
 may be given, the revelation of His character, 
 His will, His blessed purposes, this is " the law " 
 to His reasonable creation. Only in fulfilling this 
 can any creature act according to the perfectness 
 of his own created being, or be blessed in the 
 iove and knowledge of his Lord. This, then, is 
 " the law," and here also we may see what is its 
 " transgression." 
 
 It is for the creature in thought or in will, and
 
 12 SERMON L 
 
 most of all in such actions as combine perfected 
 thought and will, to choose for himself anything 
 which is contrary to that which the supreme Lord 
 has revealed to him as His own character. And 
 as in keeping this law there is for the creature all 
 blessedness, so in the transgression of it there is 
 certain and inevitable misery. For, first, every 
 variation from it is, as we have seen, a disturb- 
 ance, and it may be a fatal disturbance, of the 
 intricate and marvellous machinery of his own 
 being, all of which was planned and executed with 
 divine wisdom for a purpose to which he in his 
 waywardness is running counter. Here, doubt- 
 less, we may find the cause and the history of the 
 fall of the apostate angels. " They kept not their 
 first estate." Under some temptation of self-will 
 they quitted that order in which God's loving 
 wisdom had placed them; and violating that, 
 the indwelling grace of God, whereby alone the 
 creature can ever stand upright, was first resisted 
 and then quenched in them, and their nature be- 
 came incapable of the bliss for which they had 
 been created. They who were originally fashioned 
 to walk the golden battlements of heavenly light, 
 were now only fit to be cast down into the outer 
 darkness. It was as though beings made for the 
 sunlight chose for themselves a voluntary blind-
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 13 
 
 ness, and became henceforth fit only for the black- 
 ness of the night. And as it was with the fallen 
 angels, so it must be with every other creature; 
 in choosing that which is at variance with the will 
 of Him who created them, they reject all possible 
 perfectness in their own nature. 
 
 And then, next, they lose that which, as we 
 have seen, alone can fill with perfect and endur- 
 ing happiness the reasonable soul created capable 
 of knowing it, the loving revelation to itself of 
 the Lord of all as its abiding portion. For the 
 creature whose will, affections, and spiritual na- 
 ture are diverse from those of the Almighty, can- 
 not rejoice in Him; the contradiction between 
 them makes it impossible ; all the boundless reach 
 of the Creator's perfections becomes to such a 
 fallen one the occasion of a more energetic re- 
 pulsion of his own nature from that, the only true 
 centre and rest of his being. The almighty arm, 
 the all-searching eye, the all-comprehending in- 
 telligence, even the infinite love from which he 
 is first divorced, and against which he soon goes 
 on to rebel, become occasions of a bitterer sepa- 
 ration. It is indeed to such an one a kicking 
 against the pricks, a hopeless striving of the 
 finite against the infinite. Here, then, we have 
 before us some, though doubtless a most imper-
 
 14 SERMON I. 
 
 feet, notion of what is the nature of sin. It is the 
 willing revolt of a reasonable creature against the 
 perfectness of his Almighty Creator, revealed to 
 him to be the purifying, ennobling, and blissful 
 law of his own being. 
 
 And all this leads us to some most practical con- 
 clusions, to which I hasten. First, we have here 
 some light thrown on the awful mystery of eternal 
 death, and of the steps down which the creatures 
 of the God of love are dragged into it. For this 
 view of the nature of sin shews us that eternal 
 death is not, as men often speak and think, a 
 punishment arbitrarily inflicted in the world to 
 come for sin which was committed here, but is in- 
 deed sin in a higher stage of its own development 
 than we can see it now. Men are led into this error 
 very much by their confounding together in their 
 thoughts the pleasures of sin, which are but for a 
 season, with the nature of sin, which is enduring. 
 In that world to come, the pleasures which serve 
 as baits to tempt men to sin are gone for ever ; 
 and so men fancy that the sin is gone. But it is 
 not so : the bait is gone, but the barbed hook is 
 there ; sin does not depart with its passing joys. 
 Even our experience here contradicts this mistake ; 
 the beginnings of sin have all its pleasantness, even 
 here ; at the last it stingeth like a serpent. The
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 15 
 
 bloated frame and shaking limbs of the drunkard, \ 
 the madness of the gambler, the shattered nerves 
 and rottenness of the bones of the libertine, all 
 these are familiar instances of this truth ; and all 
 the highest forms of all the sins we know are 
 well-nigh pleasureless, and often, even in this 
 world, full of pain. Malignity, hatred, despair, 
 the last and blackest sins into which the smaller 
 pleasurable sins have run, are often, even in this 
 life, a visible anguish to their victim; and the 
 reason of all this, and its end, is taught us as we 
 gaze into the nature of sin. For sin is not a thing, 
 but a certain mode of action by a reasonable crea- 
 ture, and that action affects his own inward con- ' 
 stitution; and the misery of eternity is not the 
 mere retribution appointed for something which 
 happened in this life, but is a continuous and most 
 intense course of action into which action here has 
 by necessary steps run on. For every act of man 
 here against that harmonious rule which is the 
 Almighty's perfectness, at once makes his own 
 nature less perfect, increases the contradiction be- 
 tween himself and the Almighty, and drives from 
 him the remains of that grace which alone keeps 
 him from being hopelessly and incurably dis- 
 cordant with truth and goodness. 
 
 So that if we do but suppose, which all nature
 
 16 SERMON I. 
 
 round us in her seasons of growth teaches us by 
 parables, which the life of every man from child- 
 hood to old age teaches us by experience, and 
 which God's Word teaches us by direct assurance, 
 that in our life here in the Church of Christ we 
 are under a special spiritual probation, have special 
 intercessions for us of Christ the Lord, special aids 
 of the Holy Ghost, and the like, so that here 
 God's love is exhausting all the powers which, 
 consistently with the freedom of our will, can be 
 brought to bear upon us to draw us to salvation, 
 and that with life this special trial ends; that 
 from the reprobate, (as having been tried to the 
 end,) with this life is withdrawn the last tarrying 
 breath of God's grace, if, I say, we do but suppose 
 this then all is awfully clear, we may see that 
 the soul, which, up to the point we can watch it, 
 has gone on acting against God, and in so acting 
 hardening its own nature in opposition to His, 
 will go on so acting in the eternal world. For 
 whilst there is nothing to change it, there is every, 
 thing to increase that evil action. The differ- 
 ence between a man, however depraved, in whom 
 but one spark of God's light remains, and one 
 in whom it is put out for ever, is immeasurable. 
 It is the difference between a man and a devil : 
 there is something human left in the one ; there
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 17 
 
 is some influence of Christ's incarnation, there is 
 the spark which even yet might who can deny 
 it? be blown by His breath into the fire of true 
 love to God ; there is some withholding of the 
 evil ; some, however faint ; a stimulating of the 
 good by the just-departing presence of God the 
 Holy Ghost ; and from the other all this is gone, 
 and gone for ever. He has passed in his ob- 
 duracy over the fiery chasm which parts the 
 utmost confines of the state of grace from the 
 state of reprobation. To see God now is for him 
 only to hate Him and to rage against Him. He 
 is inwardly conscious of the eternal contradiction 
 which his nature in its own ruin has become to 
 the nature of God ; he is held in the grasp of 
 an Omnipotent Lord, against whose necessary 
 character his being is an energetic, hating, in- 
 creasing, never-ending rebellion; he blasphemes 
 God, and he cannot die; he blasphemes His 
 goodness, His love, His truth, His holiness, and 
 he blasphemes His power because His Omni- 
 potence is linked eternally to these spiritual 
 attributes, which his inmost being abhors. Oh, 
 awful secret of eternal misery revealed to us by * 
 the very nature of sin ! oh, appalling, horrible, yet 
 it may be of God's grace to some of us saving 
 aspect of the lake which burneth with fire and 
 c
 
 18 SERMON I. 
 
 brimstone for ever, ' " where their worm dieth 
 not, and their fire is not quenched !" 
 
 For, secondly, see here the true evil of the least 
 allowed sin. For this, which is the consequence 
 of the deadly nature of sin, must be in every sin ; 
 and when we give way to the least sin, we yield 
 ourselves to it, and we cannot know how far it may 
 prevail over us. The mere allowing our earthly 
 hearts to fix with too much delight upon lawful 
 things short of their true Lord, this of itself 
 may destroy us, by being the first step which 
 leads us away from Him as the centre of our 
 being. Still more, one habit of sin, one allowed 
 evil temper, one permitted lust, may be the acting 
 of our soul against God which insures for us the 
 eternal rebellion of a lost spirit in the blackness of 
 despair. It is not, as men think, that the external 
 acts of sin will entail each one its corresponding 
 punishment, and that if therefore it is only small 
 sins which we allow in ourselves we shall escape 
 so severe a punishment as the loss of the soul, it 
 is that where the evil remains undestroyed by 
 God's grace, there is the common principle of 
 all sin, and that must make our dwelling with 
 the Holy God impossible. One drop of a subtle 
 poison will kill the strongest man ; and but one 
 acting of this subtler and more deadly poison
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 19 
 
 unrestrained, and so pervading the nature, will 
 slay the soul. Doubtless, as some poisons destroy 
 the life of the body more suddenly than others, so 
 some sins lay waste the soul with a more awful 
 rapidity than others, because they concentrate 
 into themselves a more energetic contradiction 
 of the holiness of the blessed God : but all have 
 the evil nature in them ; and one therefore which 
 possesses the soul may, and if it remains, must, 
 shut it out from heaven and blessedness, not 
 because God is a severe exactor of a threatened -- 
 penalty, but because sin must part the soul which 
 it possesses from Him, who, by the necessity of His - 
 own blessed nature, cannot bear iniquity. Yes, 
 when you are tempted to trifle with the least 
 remaining sin, remember that it is THIS which 
 you are turning against you, the necessary holi- __ 
 ness of God; remember that if that one speck, 
 as you deem it, now remains in you, your whole 
 being is corrupt ; that you cannot enter with it 
 into the joys of God's presence unless He changes 
 His nature : unless, that is, all the light of heaven ^ 
 be turned into darkness. Unless that perfect truth 
 and burning holiness and stainless love of God 
 which is the centre of all holy being, which holds 
 the ranks of the seraphim in their fiery brightness, 
 c2
 
 20 SERMON I. 
 
 which is the hope of the righteous and the eternal 
 blessedness of the saints made perfect, unless 
 THAT shall change its nature, you cannot, with 
 your nature possessed by a single sin, endure His 
 awful presence. Oh accursed nature of that evil 
 of which we make so light ! Is it not enough to 
 guard us from allowing the rule of one sin, that, 
 as in our open sight, the cruel poisoner of our 
 race poisoned by one transgression the whole mass 
 of humanity ? Is it not enough that we have seen 
 s the least allowed sin visibly destroy, by well-nigh 
 imperceptible increments of corruption, souls for 
 which Christ died ? Is it not enough that for this 
 very reason He has warned us that he who shall 
 keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, 
 is guilty of all ? 
 
 And again, see here the need we have of crying 
 constantly to God for larger and yet larger gifts of 
 His converting grace. For how otherwise than by 
 His direct working can this renewal of our nature 
 be wrought within us? and when can we be so 
 satisfied that the work is wrought perfectly within 
 us as to cease from calling on Him to work it yet 
 more thoroughly ? " Turn Thou me, O Lord, and 
 so shall I be turned," is the cry of the chiefest of the 
 saints. " Break up, O Lord, the fallow ground,
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 21 
 
 cleanse Thou the ground of my heart ; purge me 
 with hyssop, that I may be clean ; wash me, that 
 I may be whiter than snow :" these, and not the 
 indolent wishes of the well-nigh slumbering spirit, 
 half assenting to its own low estate, these are 
 indeed the strong breathings of heavenly desire, 
 which break forth from the soul which He is 
 thoroughly renewing. Surely, my brethren, this 
 should be one special use of this holy season. 
 Surely the sorrowful sounds of Lent, and the list- 
 ening to the curses which our God has spoken 
 against sin, should lead to the searching into our 
 own hearts, to the endeavouring to deepen our 
 own penitence, and to obtain from God a more 
 complete clearing from all the remains of sin 
 within ourselves. 
 
 And then, lastly, let us learn hence that lesson 
 without which prayer for the gifts of God's grace 
 is nothing but delusion, the lesson of striving in 
 act against sin. Let us, my brethren, first by 
 self-searching, and then by conquering in some- 
 thing, some hitherto over-mastering temptation 
 or recurring infirmity, use that grace which God 
 gives us for this very purpose. This is the true 
 use of Lent : of its willing surrender of some 
 accustomed indulgences, of its comparative sevc-
 
 22 SERMON I. 
 
 rities, of its watchings and its self-denials ; that 
 through God's grace sin may be cast out of us, 
 and we be able, with lusts subdued and hearts 
 purified, to receive and to give back the light of 
 the loving countenance of God our Father, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
 SERMON II. 
 gaiter 0f Hfokmg 2Rgjji of Silt, 
 
 SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD, 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, AND 
 LORD HIGH ALMONER TO THE QUEEN. 
 
 (Preached in the Church of St. Giles, March 11, 1859.)
 
 SEEM ON II. 
 
 PROVERBS xiv. 9. 
 Fools make a mock at sin. 
 
 nnURNING from the ordinary softened tones of 
 -L worldly moralists to the pages of God's Word is 
 like suddenly exchanging the close, heated atmos- 
 phere of a sick chamber for the keen breezes of 
 some mountain-top. Here things are called by 
 their right names. Instead of the half-censure 
 into which the condemnation of wickedness is so 
 often reduced, we meet with such declarations as 
 " The foolishness of fools is folly ;" and instead of 
 mawkish promises and showy professions of getting 
 rid of the evil of sin by clearing away its gross- 
 ness without changing its nature, by dressing 
 it up in garments of greater refinement, whilst 
 its inner pollution is left untouched; instead of 
 such promises as these, we are met by such 
 homely and, to many, unpalatable truths as 
 this, "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a
 
 26 SERMON II. 
 
 mortar amongst wheat with a pestle, yet will not 
 his foolishness depart from him a ." 
 
 Indeed, throughout this Book of Proverbs espe- 
 cially, the fool meets with no sort of tenderness ; 
 he is marked out everywhere for contumely and 
 condemnation. But we must not fail to note who 
 it is who throughout bears this appellation ; it is 
 not the man of poor natural faculties, or even of 
 small acquired attainments ; the fool of the Book 
 of the Proverbs is the moral and spiritual fool : 
 he may be the wise man in the wisdom of the 
 world, but he is, in the deepest sense of such words, 
 " the man void of understanding." 
 
 One passage will suffice to shew where we 
 ought to class him. For we read, " The great 
 God that formed all things, both rewardeth the 
 fool and rewardeth transgressors." It is in this 
 company that he is condemned. Now it is of fools, 
 in this the highest and most comprehensive sense, 
 that these words speak, " Fools make a mock of 
 sin." Let me pray you, my brethren, to mark 
 seriously with me to-night some of the specialties 
 of this foolishness. Indeed, we have cause to do 
 so : it is nearly three thousand years since Solomon 
 spoke these words amongst turbaned men in that 
 ancient city of the mountain-land of Judsea, and 
 
 " Prov. xxvii. 22.
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN. 27 
 
 there is hardly a custom or a mode of thought 
 amongst us now of all that was universal amongst 
 men then; and yet man under all these dissimi- 
 larities is one, and in the deepest part of his 
 nature the same. And so fools go on now mock- 
 ing at sin, just as they did when the Wise Man 
 rebuked them of old ; with the same foolishness, 
 with the same provocation of God, with the same 
 ruin to themselves and others. We have need, 
 then, to lay the matter seriously to heart, and may 
 God give us grace to profit by it. 
 
 And first, consider, my brethren, the real fool- 
 ishness in itself, without going on to its conse- 
 quences, of mocking at sin, that is, of making 
 light of it, of making a jest of it, of finding some 
 sort of sport in it. For what is sin ? Whether we 
 are still the slaves of it, or whether, through God's 
 mercy in Christ Jesus, we have been in any mea- 
 sure delivered from its yoke, I ask you alike, is 
 it not really a very terrible thing ? If you have been 
 at all delivered from it, no doubt you know this." 
 Nothing is so terrible ; it is really the only one 
 thing that is terrible, and other things, like pain 
 and death, which look at a distance the most 
 terrible, borrow all their terror from it, and wear 
 to those who have overcome it a very gentle, and 
 often a very friendly aspect. Yes, you know well
 
 28 SERMON II. 
 
 enough that " the sting of death is sin," and that 
 in delivering you from sin, our Lord Jesus Christ 
 has taken for you the worst sting out of death 
 itself. But I need not ask you whether sin is 
 terrible; you have seen it as it can only be 
 seen in the cross of Christ, seen it nailing your 
 Lord to that ; you cannot doubt about its fearful 
 and mysterious malignity of nature. I do not 
 wait for your verdict ; I will ask its slave and its 
 victim. I ask you, ungodly man, in the midst of 
 your ungodliness, if you will -be serious but for a 
 moment, is not sin a very terrible thing ? is it not a 
 very great tyrant ? is it not a very hard master ? 
 are not its wages death death in life ? Does it 
 ever give you peace ? is not your very sport in it 
 the forced merriment of the actor, or the grim 
 convulsive laughter of the maniac ? Are the ra- 
 vages it has wrought, as you know, in your body, 
 in your temper, in your powers of finding inno- 
 cent, abiding pleasure, in your mind, in your soul, 
 are these really in your own estimate things to 
 sport about? Are they not, if you dared to speak 
 the truth to yourself, horrible realities, to which 
 you shut your eyes, because you are too weak to 
 set yourself in earnest to break the chains of what 
 you feel to be a miserable thraldom ? Even whilst 
 you live in them, do you not know that you dare
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN, 29 
 
 not look calmly or deliberately at them? Now, 
 then, is it or is it not utter foolishness to laugh at 
 such things as these ? who but a drivelling fool or 
 a raving maniac would find cause for laughter at 
 the crested asp whose head was reared to bury its 
 fangs in his vitals ? 
 
 And if you look from its work within you to 
 its work around you, is the foolishness of such 
 conduct much less manifest ? What but sin is the 
 cause of all the misery round us? what else 
 brought the blissful plains of paradise under the 
 curse of thorns and barrenness ? what else brought 
 sickness, pain, anguish, and death into the world ? 
 What would you say of one who, after some ter- 
 rible battle, could walk amongst the mangled ranks 
 of the dying, could mark the parched lips of the 
 wounded man as they feebly strove to hiss out his 
 cry for water, and could find mirth in his convul- 
 sions and sport in his agonies? Would you not 
 disown all fellowship of kind with such a jester, 
 and say he must be either a madman or a devil? 
 And what else is it to find sport in sin, that ter- 
 rible wound of the precious soul, that disfigure- 
 ment of God's image, that most agonizing sorrow 
 in every reasonable soul it possesses, that begin- 
 ning of the pit, that presence, almost felt, of the 
 undying worm, that certain, inevitable, ever-acting
 
 30 SERMON II. 
 
 cause of all man's sorrows, and pangs, and anguish, 
 that worker of loathsome bodies and wounded af- 
 fections, of broken hearts and of lost souls ? 
 
 Oh, my brethren in Christ, can there be any- 
 thing more ghastly, more horrible, more estranged 
 from all that is human, more accursed, more truly 
 devilish, than to jest with this, the deadliest, most 
 universal, most incurable sorrow which ever en- 
 tered our world? Surely, surely, seen only in 
 itself, it is the highest form of the most utter 
 foolishness to make a mock of sin. 
 
 But go on to the consequences of so mocking 
 at it, and you will see yet more, and, if it were 
 possible, greater proofs of its foolishness. And 
 first, see the effects of his mocking on the mocker 
 himself; nothing can be so hardening, so deaden- 
 ing to the soul, and that for many reasons; for 
 with the tendency of our fallen nature to sin, it 
 is only by constant watchfulness we can escape 
 it. Every lawful affection, the gratification of 
 natural appetites, the following honourable busi- 
 ness, nay, even the love of our children, all, unless 
 we are ever watching, through our great weakness 
 lead us into sin. We become sensual, or worldly, or 
 swallowed up with care, or drawn away in our affec- 
 tions from God, unless we, whose " great enemy" 
 ever " goeth about seeking whom he may devour/'
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN. 31 
 
 are evermore " sober and vigilant." And the fear \ 
 of sinning can alone keep alive our watchfulness. 
 When, then, we begin to laugh at any sin, we 
 must, as we cease for the time to fear it, cease to 
 watch against it ; we become accustomed to it ; 
 our mirth has bred in us a horrible familiarity 
 with it ; we do as the drunkard did, who, in 
 the maudlin fondness of his cups, caressed the 
 venomous cobra, and found instant death from his 
 mad familiarity with the treacherous reptile. And 
 we jest with sin, and it stingeth like a serpent. 
 And so closely are all kinds of sin linked together 
 by a community of nature, that in making a sport 
 of one we open our soul to all. We sport with 
 one enemy, and all the band, who lay hidden in am- 
 bush, rush in on our unwariness. One sports with 
 wine, " wherein is excess," and he awakens from 
 his drunken brawl to find himself a murderer. An- 
 other sports with vanity, and display, and love of 
 attentions, and finds, almost before she knows 
 her fall, that she is an utter outcast. There is 
 no guard save in the fear of sinning, and the fear 
 of sinning is the exact opposite of the confident 
 foolishness of making it your jest. For this rea- 
 son, then, first, to mock at sin is most hardening 
 to the soul. 
 
 And then, next, it is so because it is so alto-
 
 32 SERMON II. 
 
 gether alien from and contrary to the mind of 
 Christ. All that is around Him testifies of this. 
 What can grieve the soul of one of His saints 
 here so deeply as to see sin in himself, and in 
 those with whom he lives? Truly, in its lightest 
 indications it "vexes the righteous soul." Sick- 
 ness, pain, nay, even death, are lesser evils in his 
 sight. He would rather follow the dear child 
 with whose life his soul is bound up to the grave 
 of the righteous than to the chamber of wanton- 
 ness. And if this is so in the saints of Christ, 
 with all their infirmities, how is it in the holy 
 ones of the heavenly world ? To them, all sinless 
 as they are, sin must shew altogether monstrous and 
 horrible. Devils may grin at it, but the holy angels 
 see it in the light of God's countenance, and so 
 hate it; so pity us poor fallen creatures who are 
 exposed to it, that even their blessedness in God's 
 presence is heightened when but one escapes from 
 it, for " there is joy in heaven over one sinner that 
 repenteth." And if this is the way in which sin 
 shews itself to the holy ones, how does Christ view 
 it ? what was His estimate of it ? Did not He 
 so hate it that He left the bosom of the eternal 
 Father and became a man to redeem thee from it ? 
 Was not all His life a rebuking its vileness, and 
 a bearing for thee of its sting ? Did not His strife
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN. 33 
 
 with it Almighty Son as He was of the Almighty 
 Jehovah draw from Him a sweat as of great drops 
 of blood ? did it not bow His stainless face to shame 
 and spitting ? did it not crown Him with thorns ? 
 did it not pierce His hands and His feet ? did it 
 not darken His very soul with the cloudings of 
 His Father's countenance? Is THIS what thou, O 
 redeemed man, art sporting with, laughing at it in 
 thyself and in others? thinking it sport to hear 
 the child frame his mouth for oaths or give up his 
 soul to rage, or to see youth dallying with im- 
 purity, or one bearing God's image reeling in the 
 hiccupping vomit of his intemperance, or firing 
 up into the blaze of rage ? Is it this that thou art 
 doing ? How is it possible to make thine inner 
 nature, thy judgment, thy estimate of things, more 
 utterly diverse from His in whom was no sin, 
 Who wept for its present and coming judgment 
 in Jerusalem, Who has told thee by the mouth 
 of the beloved disciple that "he who committeth 
 sin is of the devil," Who with the burning seve- 
 rity of true love condemned as " a generation of 
 vipers" who could not escape the damnation of hell, 
 those who had given themselves up to it? Yes, 
 my brethren, to jest with that which slew thy 
 Lord, which He hates, must deaden thy heart by 
 making thee altogether estranged from Him.
 
 34 SERMON II. 
 
 And so, further, it must quench the Spirit, for it 
 is an eminently presumptuous mode of sinning. 
 It is bad enough to be hurried away by the power 
 of appetite, and to lose sight of the grossness of sin 
 under the fury of a sensual temptation j but in 
 such an one there may be no entire and esta- 
 blished submission to the evil, and so there may, 
 of God's mercy, be a rising again from its pollu- 
 tions. But what is it to sit deliberately down 
 when the first pleasures of temptation have palled 
 on the sated senses, and invent a hellish grati- 
 fication in sporting with corruption even when 
 those pleasures are worn out? How must the 
 Spirit of purity, the Spirit of tenderness, the Spirit 
 of contrition, the free and Holy Spirit of the God 
 of truth and love, how utterly must He forsake 
 the polluted tabernacle of such a heart as this ! 
 
 And, moreover, remember how this habit must 
 kill the first beginnings of repentance. For the 
 pangs of the soul under the sentence of God's 
 law in which repentance must begin, is the most 
 complete contradiction of this vile mockery at 
 sin, which makes your seeing its true face im- 
 possible. 
 
 Yes, this is a hardening and a deadening evil, 
 it is one of the last forms of utter spiritual cor- 
 ruption. Surely then, my brethren, if we look
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN. 35 
 
 at the consequences of mocking at sin on the 
 mocker himself, we may see that indeed it is the 
 uttermost foolishness to which a redeemed man 
 can give himself. 
 
 But even yet we have not exhausted all its folly ; 
 for look next at its consequences upon others. As 
 there is nothing more ruinous to a man's self, so 
 there is nothing more corrupting to others. The 
 old sinner who laughs the younger out of his fear 
 of sin, is, in a special sense, the devil's servant; 
 he does his work signally, he uses for him that 
 fellowship of nature which Satan possesses not, to 
 decoy his brethren into the net of the fowler ; and 
 more even than the evil spirits themselves can 
 he do the devil's work, "One sinner destroyeth 
 much good b ." 
 
 Such men may be found doing their deadly 
 work everywhere and in every rank of society. 
 Who overcomes the scruples which linger as 
 God's witnesses in the mind of the tempted 
 soul like these? who leads the young to over- 
 come the blush which might save her, and to 
 dally with destruction, like the elder sister in 
 pollution, with her scoffing laugh at virtue as pru- 
 dery? who leads on the youth into the drunken 
 riot of the ale-house like the old drunkard, with 
 b Eccles. ix. 18. 
 D2
 
 36 SERMON IF. 
 
 his song and his jest at intemperance ? who 
 breaks down the fence of honesty like the hard- 
 ened offender who can mask his villainy under 
 the smiling features of a jest? who can banish 
 modesty from the young like the scorning mocker 
 at sin ? And oh ! what havoc does he work hereby 
 in a soul for which Christ died ! " It is," says the 
 Wise Man, "a sport to the fool to do mischief c ;" 
 and oh ! what mischief ! to teach him to " grieve 
 the Spirit n of the Lord, to dishonour Christ, to 
 wound his conscience, to give himself to Satan. 
 Surely as we gaze on this work we can under- 
 stand the meaning of the Wise Man's speech, " Let 
 a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man rather 
 than a fool in his folly." Nowhere is it more 
 needful thoroughly to declare this truth than 
 amongst ourselves; for the laws, customs, and 
 condition of our society here specially expose us 
 to this evil. The young are its peculiar victims ; 
 and the young, living apart for the time from 
 fathers, mothers, and sisters, with those nearly of 
 their own age, in a society the social laws of 
 which are in many respects peculiar to itself, 
 are specially exposed to it. Two or three years 
 constitutes with us a generation ; and so a seni- 
 ority of standing, so small in actual amount of age 
 c Trov. x. 23.
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN. 37 
 
 that it hardly parts at all the elder from the 
 younger as to that equality which breeds fa- 
 miliarity, yet abundantly suffices to give to his 
 example and words a marvellous weight and au- 
 thority. The leader, too, in evil is not himself, 
 for the most part, far enough on in sin to have 
 reaped as yet its full bitterness; and so he is 
 exactly in the position to laugh the younger man 
 out of his scruples, or his modesty, or his restraints 
 of habit, and to lead him on in sin. All the 
 generations of college life which I myself knew 
 intimately, furnished some instances of such cha- 
 racters: men a very few years older than their 
 victims, but bolder in impurity or intemperance, 
 in irreligiousness of life or conversation, in ex- 
 pensiveness, in self-indulgence, or in culpable 
 idleness, and who mainly by mockery at sin be- 
 came the corruptors of those slightly their juniors. 
 Surely such men are the devil's very hirelings. 
 They have gone into the " far land" of their pro- 
 digality ; they have to a certain extent worn out 
 the first gladsomeness of early vice ; the " great 
 famine" of the soul has come upon them ; they have 
 begun to be in want, and instead of returning to 
 their Father's house, they have "joined" them- 
 selves to the " householder of that" far " land," 
 they have sold themselves to that Evil One to do
 
 38 SERMON II. 
 
 his work. And what misery and ruin do they 
 cause ! Those whom they have corrupted become 
 themselves in their turn the corrupters of others, 
 and so a whole tradition of iniquity becomes 
 established in what should be a seat of holy 
 learning and an abiding centre of holy influ- 
 ences. Yea, because of such things the very " land 
 mourneth." Follow but one of these cases a little 
 into detail, and see what it is. The young man 
 in his modesty comes amongst us from his father's 
 house ; he is its hope, and stay, and joy ; it may be 
 that his very coming here is the fruit of many a 
 noble act of self-denial, gladly borne for him who 
 is the sister's, and the mother's, and the father's 
 darling object of affection. He comes from the 
 holy shelter of a loving home ; he comes with no 
 firmly fixed stability of character, but with many 
 good purposes and high aspirations, and he is 
 received into the soul- withering atmosphere of the 
 scorner's laugh. At first he feels as if his cheek 
 tingled when he hears holy things ridiculed and 
 sees sin sported with ; but he has not the courage 
 of a martyr, and though he does not join in the 
 laugh, he does not rebuke it; and so a fatal 
 change passes upon him. Gradually, insensibly 
 he learns the scorner's lesson, " the beginning of" 
 whose " words is foolishness, and the end of his
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF STN. 39 
 
 talk mischievous madness a ." His modesty is gone ; 
 vice follows in some of its hydra-headed forms; 
 he goes after his evil leader until the dart strikes 
 through his liver. And follow him a little further 
 when the sickness which so continually waits on 
 sensuality and excess has seized upon him ; go 
 with him to that home of purity which he left 
 rejoicing in his comparative innocence, and oh ! 
 what broken hearts are there ! See the inmates of 
 that house as one by one they leave the curtained 
 room where the hectic flush and ceaseless cough 
 tell the tale of life cut short by sin ; see the sister's 
 passionate anguish, hear that sob of the mother 
 who bare him, or listen to the prayer which bursts 
 from the pent-up heart of that bowed-down man, 
 whose head he is sprinkling before its time with 
 the snows which agony sheds more hastily than age; 
 hear him entreating, not for the life of his beloved, 
 that is past, but hear him interceding for the 
 soul which he cannot awaken to repentance, as, 
 like the royal father of old, he cries in his anguish 
 to his God for the departing wanderer, into whose 
 future he scarcely dares to cast those weeping 
 eyes, " O Absalom, my son, my son ! would God 
 I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son !" 
 Or picture for a moment to yourself a scene 
 d Eccles. x. 13. 

 
 40 SERMON II. 
 
 from a different rank. Through the broad panes 
 of a low-class home of intemperance, clouded 
 everywhere as they are by the hot breath of the 
 wretched crew within, the white flaunting gas- 
 light quivers forth into the cold midnight air. You 
 can hear, as the swing-door shuts and opens, the 
 oaths, and blasphemies, and ribaldry, and anger, 
 and sottishness of those within. You can mark 
 the wan, fierce look of one, the soul-sinking, 
 painted gladness of another, the glazed, floating 
 eye of a third. And you know their life. Do 
 you know their death? You need not go far 
 to see it. Look at that archway by the river 
 side, scarcely twenty yards from where that hell- 
 ish mockery of joy is affronting God's great so- 
 lemnity of night; if you could penetrate the dark- 
 ness which shrouds it, what would you see? an 
 outcast even from those outcasts, in rags and vermin, 
 and loathsomeness and despair. And what was she 
 once ? Did she not kneel by a mother's side and 
 lisp a prayer? did not she come forth from a home 
 of virtuous poverty? did not that long -brazen 
 cheek once know how to blush? And what has 
 made her what she is? what but the having been 
 taught to make a mock at sin ? And what is she ? 
 what has it made her? Do you ask? Did you 
 hear that splash in the sullen water? and do you
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN. 41 
 
 ask, What is she ? She is a lost soul, a lost soul for 
 which Christ died ; she who was set apart in Bap- 
 tism to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, she is 
 gone to dwell with devils for ever, and to be 
 herself a devil. 
 
 Yes, it is a horrible thought, but not the less 
 profitable, because it brings out this fearful truth, 
 my brethren, the irretrievableness of the mocker's 
 work. No one who has led another to laugh at 
 sin c an ever calculate or ever undo the work he 
 may have done. For a moment's gratification, 
 to raise a laugh, to dispel ennui, to gain a little 
 popularity, he has slain a soul for which Christ 
 died; slain it as surely as does the poisoner 
 who mixes the cup slay the victim of his poison. 
 He may possibly turn himself and repent; 
 God's goodness and mercy may bring him back; 
 the Blood of Christ may wash even him clean, 
 but for them, for his victims, what can he do? 
 Nothing but weep. He cannot undo his work ; 
 sin's work is irreparable, saving only by the sove- 
 reign grace of the Lord of all. He can do nothing 
 for the innocence he first polluted, for the tongue 
 to which he taught the ribald or blaspheming joke, 
 for the soul he taught to laugh at sin, and so 
 brought to perish in its fetters. Yes, even in his 
 deepest penitence he must " let that alone for ever." 
 
 Surely, then, in the consequences of such a
 
 42 SERMON II. 
 
 course to others as well as to himself, it is written 
 plain in characters of blood and fire, that it is 
 only " fools who make a mock at sin." 
 
 How, then, are we to escape this evil ? Let me, 
 in conclusion, suggest to you one or two practical 
 rules for your deliverance. 
 
 1. Fly from the very first beginnings of this 
 sin, whether in yourself or in others. Turn at 
 once from anything which wakens a blush upon 
 your cheek, or a rising sigh in your spirits. These 
 are God's merciful guards, keeping the outposts of 
 your innocence. Let them alarm you, whether 
 it be a ribald allusion, or a profane joke, or a jest 
 upon Scripture, or the making ridiculous some 
 moral principle you feel to be true ; shrink from it 
 as from the hiss of the venomous adder, fly from 
 it as from the breath of hell. 
 
 2. Understand the real value of that in which 
 you are tempted to join. There is an air of 
 courage, a dash of spirit about it, and this forms, 
 in a great measure, its dangerous power of attract- 
 ing you. But all this is masquerade. Remember 
 the striking attestation of this with which Colonel 
 Gardiner's account of his own days of license sup- 
 plies us : his was so joyous a temperament, that 
 he was commonly called by his fellows, who en- 
 vied his seeming immunity from depression, " the 
 happy rake ;" and yet he confessed in his soberer
 
 THE DANGER OF MAKING LIGHT OF SIN. 43 
 
 state that never did a dog come into the chamber 
 of their orgies without his wishing that he were 
 that brute, rather than the miserable creature he 
 felt himself to be. Yes, depend upon it, the 
 laughing at sin is the stage after its poor enjoy- 
 ments are for the most part past. It is the paint 
 on a cheek which has lost its true vermilion ; 
 What seems to be joy is unreal, the " crackling of 
 thorns under the pot ;" that ribald laugh dies into 
 a groan, ill-hidden by the sneer which covers and 
 would conceal it. You are like a guest sitting at a 
 feast, not with men enjoying its dainties, but with 
 dead bodies who are but acting a ghastly mimicry 
 of life ; and their chaplets of roses hide the 
 worms of corruption which are creeping in and 
 out of their dishonoured, decaying brows. Large 
 experience shews that the seeming bravery of 
 such men is a lie. Look at that trembling wretch, 
 just now the leader of the host in ribald blas- 
 phemy, but who has fallen on his knees, and con- 
 fesses with quivering anguish his terror, because his 
 friends have placed without his knowledge under 
 the table of his mockery of God, an ape dressed 
 up to image forth to him the enemy of souls. 
 Look at those twelve dressed like devils to dance 
 their dance of profaneness on the Lord's day, 
 whilst His people worship Him in church ; and 
 see them fly terror-stricken because an unknown
 
 44 SERMON II. 
 
 thirteenth is found in their company. Look at 
 such things as these, and read at once the hollow- 
 ness of their bravado and the endurance of God's 
 truth, " The wicked fly when no man pursueth, 
 but the righteous is brave as a lion." 
 
 3. And lastly, if you are tempted to envy sin- 
 ners their laugh, or to shrink from their mockery, 
 dispel the phantoms which threaten you by one 
 ejaculation of prayer, and one resolute thought of 
 the eternal realities around you ; think of a soul in 
 torment, think of buying this fools' laughter at 
 that price ; think of your Lord on the cross, see 
 how the nails have torn His hands, how the thorns 
 affront His brow, how His head already falls in 
 extremity of agony upon that tortured shoulder ; 
 think of that, and remember that, and remind your- 
 self that that was sin's work, the work in part of 
 your sins ; and, trembling exceedingly lest " the 
 foolishness of fools" seize on you too, and make 
 you "mock at sin," murmur forth from your 
 tempted heart the prayer which shall not be in 
 vain, "By Thine agony and bloody sweat, by 
 Thy cross and passion, by Thy precious death and 
 burial, by Thy glorious resurrection and ascension, 
 Good Lord, deliver me."
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 flf j 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. ADAM. S. FARRAR, M.A., 
 
 FELLOW OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 (Preached at St. Elbe's Church, March 16, 1859.)
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 ROMANS vii. 2123. 
 
 / find then a law, that, when 1 would do good, evil is present 
 with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward 
 man : but I see another law in my members, warring against 
 the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law 
 of sin which is in my members. 
 
 "VTO one can read the description which the 
 -L i Apostle here gives of the struggle with evil 
 which goes forward in the secrets of the human 
 consciousness, without being struck "with the con- 
 trast which the description presents to those aspects 
 under which sin is usually exhibited in other parts 
 of the sacred Scriptures, or in the uninspired specu- 
 lations of heathen thought. 
 
 The existence of sin and the consciousness of 
 guilt are facts which have never failed to awaken 
 attention, and to demand their solution in the 
 science or in the religion of every people. 
 
 In the literature of the old religions of the 
 East, which the study of the sacred language of
 
 48 SERMON III. , 
 
 ancient India has unveiled to the knowledge of our 
 ao-e, we find proof that the existence of evil was 
 painfully felt, and that earnest minds sought deli- 
 verance from it by ascetic discipline as their high- 
 est aim. But evil was looked at as it lies in nature, 
 not as it exists in man. It was regarded as part 
 of the imperfection which pervades the universe 
 around, not as the woe peculiar to the human 
 race. Men cast their eyes around on the beauteous 
 temple in whose courts they daily walked, and 
 they saw the mighty harmony of its magnificent 
 proportions marred by the prevalence of sorrow, 
 by the existence of decay, by the spread of evil. 
 And thus sin was to them but as the common fate 
 of that universe of being, of whose scheme evil 
 was to their conceptions as much a necessary part 
 as goodness. And though such a view of evil this 
 dualism or rival co-existence and co-eternity of 
 evil and of good was restricted to the Oriental 
 mind, yet even in Western nations like the ancient 
 Greeks, whose acute perceptions and fine instincts 
 would have been more likely to guide them to a 
 truer view of its nature, evil was viewed rather 
 as folly than as sin, and its cure was sought in il- 
 lumination rather than in discipline. 
 
 Whence, then, was a higher and truer view of 
 sin learned ? How was it that men came to look
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIX. 49 
 
 upon sin not merely as disorder, part of the evil 
 which pervades creation, nor merely as ignorance, 
 a special intellectual weakness of man, but as 
 transgression against the personal will of a loving 
 Father God, and as the internal disarrangement 
 and disadjustment of man's own nature, a struggle 
 between belligerent powers in the human heart? 
 It was from the Jewish prophets that the one 
 idea came, and from the teaching of the apostles 
 of our Lord that the other derived specially its 
 brightness. 
 
 Whatever assaults scepticism may make against 
 the inspiration of the ancient Hebrew prophets, 
 the piety of their writings will ever stand un- 
 shaken, the solid monument of their heaven-kin- 
 dled intuitions, the enduring evidence that God 
 had opened up a communication with their minds, 
 and had enkindled a spark of His own perfections 
 on the altar of their spirits. Explain as you may 
 the mighty mysteries of the Jewish economy, that 
 mystery remains the mightiest, the most inex- 
 plicable of all, how and why the writers of an 
 obscure Eastern people, with little opportunities of 
 enlargement of ideas, with a country whose phy- 
 sical features were not specially productive of in- 
 tellectual advancement, with a history signally des- 
 titute, if stripped of its supernatural ingredients, 
 E
 
 50 SERMON III. 
 
 of those circumstances which are wont to form an 
 extraordinary character in nations, should have at- 
 tained to such a sublime idea of God, to such a deep 
 conviction of sin, to such a peace-giving method of 
 reconciliation with Heaven at an age of the world 
 when the nations which have been the subsequent 
 centres of intellectual life, and the sources of men- 
 tal advancement, had not as yet emerged from the 
 darkness of their early barbarism. And this mystery 
 is increased, and its peculiarity made more con- 
 vincing, when you remember that these vivid ideas 
 were not the creation of that nation's poetry, but 
 mark the quiet, unadorned utterances of its prose. 
 You might have been tempted to attribute them 
 to the discoveries of human genius if they had 
 merely flashed forth in the magnificent odes of 
 the Book of Job, or the lyric psalms of David, or 
 the pathetic poetry of Isaiah, or the strains of 
 sublime and wild eloquence of Ezekiel ; but when 
 you trace them in the ordinary prose of some of 
 the other prophets, in discourses rural and didac- 
 tic, in the homely words of honest remonstrance, 
 in unadorned narratives of historic chronicles, you 
 cannot help attributing this universal instinct of 
 piety to some common elevation of sentiment, the 
 product of no merely natural genius, but kindled 
 by a God-inspired religion.
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 51 
 
 And so again, while the Jewish prophets present 
 us vividly with the idea of God as a Father, and 
 of sin as an ungrateful disobedience to His com- 
 mands, the apostles of our Lord, and specially 
 St. Paul, enlarge that idea by connecting it with 
 human nature, and by lamenting in themselves, 
 and proving by appeals to the consciousness of 
 others, the existence of a struggle in the human 
 heart of evil against good. Evil is no longer with 
 them want of harmony, it is no longer want of 
 knowledge, it is no longer merely transgression 
 against Heaven ; it is the principle of selfishness in 
 man struggling against conscience. It is no longer 
 outside in nature; it is no longer perceived only by 
 the eye of Heaven. Evil is inside man. The human 
 soul is a battle-field. Two powers therein are grap- 
 pling in internecine warfare, in irreconcilable anta- 
 gonism; and on that shock of war as it exists in each 
 human breast Heaven is looking down, and to each 
 soul where good is prevailing God is nigh to afford 
 His aid to make that soul victorious through the 
 power of that mighty Conqueror who Himself once, 
 in the loneliness of the Oriental desert, grappled 
 face to face with the spirit of evil in persistent en- 
 counter, and who, having overcome and mounted 
 up on high, and received gifts for men, is able to 
 succour to the end of time them that are tempted.
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 And if you ask again, whence St. Paul learned 
 this great truth, I answer, mainly from his own 
 heart, from his own religious experience, from that 
 struffirle of good against evil which God had first 
 stirred up within him in those three days of in- 
 tense mental agony when he lay smitten at Da- 
 mascus with the arrows of conviction, feeling that 
 he delighted in the law of God after the inward 
 man, but saw another law in his members war- 
 ring against the law of his mind, and bringing 
 him into captivity to the law of sin which was in 
 his members. Yet we should not preserve either 
 the truth of historic evidence or. acknowledge the 
 light which Providence has mercifully vouchsafed 
 to the uninspired heathen, if we did not reco"-- 
 nise that some portion of this truth had been felt 
 in the later schools of Greek thought, and that 
 from them the Apostle in part borrowed this in- 
 ternal aspect of sin, this aspect derived from the 
 anatomy of human consciousness. When, through 
 a period of some centuries, one after another 
 teacher had arisen in Greece, baffled guessers 
 at great truths which they almost touched, men 
 turned their attention in disgust away from specu- 
 lation to the consideration of duty, and in the teach- 
 ing of that school of the Stoics which is named 
 in the Book of the Acts as ruling many thoughtful
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 53 
 
 minds in the age of St. Paul, men had come to 
 conceive, in some degree, of sin as internal, and 
 had evolved the idea of moral obligation, of moral 
 progress, of moral perfection. These ideas had 
 stamped themselves on Greek thought and on the 
 Greek language, and we can hardly doubt that it 
 was from the contact with them which the Apostle 
 must have had, consciously or unconsciously, in 
 youth at Tarsus, that after his conversion to Chris- 
 tianity and his supernatural illumination by the 
 Spirit of the Lord, he was led, when he explained in 
 writing to Greeks the Christian life, to present the 
 facts of it in such a Western, such a European point 
 of view. The inspiring Spirit never destroyed the 
 individual peculiarities in thought, or knowledge, 
 or temper of the various inspired messengers whom 
 He condescended to make use of, but consecrated 
 to His own purposes their differing gifts. And so 
 we may justly admit that somewhat of the Apo- 
 stle's introspective view of sin, somewhat of his 
 disposition to point to its existence inside of man, 
 is the product of the influences of thought which, 
 through the Stoic philosophy, had become common 
 in his day. Yet how enlarged is his view, how 
 intimate his knowledge of the heart, how deep his 
 consciousness of its inner workings, how minute 
 his psychological anatomy ! a depth, a minuteness
 
 54 SERMON 111. 
 
 to be set down to the fact that he was describing 
 a struggle in which he was participating, and a 
 contest of which his own heart was the battle- 
 field. 
 
 It is not, however, so much to the nature of sin 
 as to its growth, i. e. the laws which regulate its 
 growth, and the means which we possess to check 
 or neutralize that development, that I wish now 
 to draw your attention. Yet the view which we 
 have been taking of sin was a necessary preliminary 
 to place ourselves in a fit position for studying its 
 growth and progress. We have looked at sin ex- 
 ternally as want of harmony in creation, or as 
 disobedience to a loving Father, and internally as 
 a principle in man struggling against good, a law 
 of sin in our members warring against the law of 
 our mind, and bringing us into captivity to the 
 law of sin which is in our members. And more 
 than this of the nature of sin we need not know, 
 more than this we cannot know. If the progress 
 of knowledge in our age, and the command which 
 experience has afforded to us of the true methods 
 of scientific inquiry, have taught us anything, they 
 have taught us this kind of lesson of humility ; they 
 have imparted the conviction that there are regions 
 of inquiry into which we cannot travel, spheres of 
 thought that we cannot compass, heights and depths
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 55 
 
 in nature and in the God of nature which we can- 
 not fathom. And thus we are content, in modern 
 times, to lay aside inquiry into the origin of things, 
 and to rest content with knowing the steps which 
 attend their progress. We do not e. g., as we cast 
 our eyes on the stars which are scattered in glitter- 
 ing millions on the dark ground of the sky ask 
 the reason why they are there j but, assuming the 
 fact of their existence, we strive to learn their 
 movements, not merely for the gratification of our 
 curiosity, but to provide for the toiling mariner the 
 chart which shall guide his path across the trackless 
 waters. And similarly in the instance of vegetable 
 or animal life, we understand not the process, and 
 we seek not to understand it, which quickens the 
 primitive germ-cell which ultimately developes into 
 the beauteous flower or the living animal, the 
 herb and the living being alike yielding seed and 
 fruit after his kind ; but, starting with the fact of 
 life as a thing inexplicable, we then study the 
 circumstances which mark its development and 
 growth, we notice what destroys it and what sup- 
 ports it, and we draw rules accordingly for its 
 nutriment and its sustenance. And thus similarly 
 in theological questions like the subject of sin, we 
 cannot understand how evil first entered either 
 into a sinless universe or into a sinless man;
 
 56 SERMON III. 
 
 it is a mystery unfathomable. But admitting its 
 t-xistence, we can see how it propagates itself in 
 \videning circles, what circumstances foster it, 
 what check it, and we can learn our own duty 
 both as regards ourselves and others. This is the 
 subject which I am about briefly to consider. 
 
 Now if you ponder on the question for a 
 moment, you will easily perceive that there are 
 but two great causes which operate to produce the 
 growth of sin, as of any other phenomenon con- 
 nected with life or decay, viz., causes that are 
 internal to man, such as a corrupt nature, and 
 causes that are external to him, such as the power 
 of circumstances, the force of the law of habit and 
 mental association, the potency of evil example 
 through sympathy. If we briefly survey these, 
 we shall understand the chief facts that apper- 
 tain to the growth of sin, alike in nations and 
 individuals. 
 
 The first cause I allege to be the existence of a 
 natural tendency to evil in man. There will always 
 be discrepancy of opinion on a subject like this, 
 with the theories on which it is wholly unnecessary 
 to encumber ourselves when the facts are so clear. 
 For the plain facts are these, not only that evil is 
 universally prevalent, that its tide rolls on in spite 
 of powerful attempts made to check it, but that the
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 57 
 
 seeds of evil may be observed in children in their 
 earliest years ; that each one of us is conscious of a 
 greater tendency in childhood towards evil than to- 
 wards good, and conscious of some internal impedi- 
 ment at every step of our lives, offering resistance to 
 our progress in goodness. Facts like these, which 
 are undeniable, are easily explained by the doc- 
 trine that a tendency toward evil, a deterioration, 
 is transmitted hereditarily in our moral nature in 
 an analogous manner to the transmission of intel- 
 lectual and physical characteristics, the propaga- 
 tion of which is patent to all. Here accordingly, 
 in facts like these, whether you explain them by 
 that theory which reason thus seems to suggest 
 and which Holy Scripture seems clearly to con- 
 firm, or by any other, you have an evident cause 
 directly contributing in each individual man to- 
 ward the growth of evil. It is, indeed, a blessed 
 fact that man is not wholly corrupt, that God's 
 image in him is not wholly obliterated, that though 
 conscience is disobeyed it still witnesses, that 
 though the righteous will is dethroned it still 
 exists with its diminished powers ; but yet along 
 with all these relics of goodness there is this 
 evil tendency within us, this enemy within our 
 own breasts, this law of sin warring against the 
 law of our mind and bringing us into captivity,
 
 58 SERMON III. 
 
 this traitor within the citadel of our own con- 
 sciousness, which is the great cause of putting us 
 at the mercy of our foes. 
 
 And to this internal foe must be added the force 
 of external circumstances, and the influence also 
 of that curious fact of mind which we are accus- 
 tomed to call habit, if we would estimate rightly 
 the bearing of this internal corruption on the pro- 
 gress of sin. For God has mysteriously allowed 
 us to be placed in this world to be tempted, to 
 be tried; and He has adapted external circum- 
 stances in such a manner as exactly to put us to 
 the test, so that by yielding we may sink in de- 
 pravity, and by mounting victorious we may grow 
 from strength to strength. Each one's own ex- 
 perience will teach him this fact. Even in the 
 little world of home, the first world which the 
 young child knows, that little child has its trials ; 
 it is subjected to circumstances which check its 
 selfishness, which test its wilfulness, which de- 
 velope or crush its benevolence. In the larger 
 world of school, the youth, as years advance, 
 meets his first taste of greater temptations the 
 temptations to untruth, to idleness, to cruelty, 
 to selfishness; and then at last, when plunged 
 into the wide, wide world of life and society, and 
 put upon his own moral trial, his own master,
 
 THE GROWTH OF SlJf. 59 
 
 what solicitations does he meet to test his in- 
 tegrity, his modesty, his conscientiousness, his 
 dutifulness, his piety ! Human life is one last- 
 ing period where human beings are brought face 
 to face with evil, and tempted like our Lord in 
 the wilderness. 
 
 And if, accordingly, you would estimate fully the 
 power which these external circumstances possess 
 in combination with our natural evil hearts in con- 
 tributing to the growth of sin, you should take 
 into account the fact to which I have before al- 
 luded, the strengthening power of habit. This 
 law of our nature, that what we have done once 
 we find less difficulty in repeating, tells with tre- 
 mendous potency in promoting the spread of evil. 
 Whatever be the cause of this fact of the forma- 
 tion of habits, the law is clear. It may be that 
 in that mysterious union which connects mind 
 and body some increased susceptibility may be 
 excited in the nervous organism which transmits 
 impressions from the outer world to the inner 
 soul, so that the excited sensibility is more easily 
 awakened on the recurrence of the temptation ; or 
 it may be that, in obedience to that remarkable phe- 
 nomenon of mind which is called "association," 
 the idea of some object on which we have once 
 employed ourselves is more easily suggested and
 
 CO SERMON III. 
 
 more easily recurs after a previous presentation to 
 our mental vision; but be the cause of the forma- 
 tion of habits these or any other undiscovered 
 circumstances, the existence of the law of habit 
 is undoubted, and its influence in contributing to 
 the growth of sin is inappreciably great. 
 
 Nor yet ought you,in your estimate of the 
 causes which regulate this growth, to neglect to 
 take into account also the influence of the prin- 
 ciple of sympathy on the formation of character 
 through example. That very principle of mutual 
 sympathy which makes us beat in unison with the 
 tastes, the wishes, the thoughts of others, leads us, 
 consciously or unconsciously, to imitate their vir- 
 tues, and also, unfortunately, to copy their sins. 
 Bound together in one bond of human life, each 
 individual acts on his neighbour through ex- 
 ample ; and that neighbour is, by an inexplicable 
 sympathy, susceptible to his influences, and reci- 
 pient of the impressions which emanate from his 
 character. 
 
 In these various circumstances, in the natural 
 evil tendencies of man's nature, in the tempta- 
 tions created by external circumstances, in the 
 susceptibility to contract evil habits and to allow 
 our sympathies to betray us into copying evil ex- 
 amples, we see the chief natural causes which have
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 61 
 
 contributed to the growth of sin in every age, and in- 
 dividual, and nation. There may be other and more 
 secret influences of evil at work : it seems certain 
 from Scripture that spirits of evil are maliciously 
 plotting our ruin and contributing to the spread 
 of sin. We have not examined these supernatural 
 causes, partly because men are far too ready to ex- 
 cuse their sins by imputing them to the evil one, 
 instead of allowing their own responsibility for 
 them, and partly for the reason that to have done 
 so would be to have abandoned that view of evil 
 which the Apostle Paul presents in our text as 
 an internal struggle of a law of sin within our 
 members warring against the law of our mind. 
 It is not of sin as caused by any power outward, 
 nor of sin as want of harmony, nor of sin as dis- 
 obedience that he speaks, but of sin innate, sin 
 growing up with our growth, according to the 
 natural processes in which Providence permits it 
 to develope itself within us. Yet in these natural 
 causes of the growth of sin we have surely dis- 
 covered reasons enough to make us feel how 
 perilous is our position, that we have a danger 
 within our own hearts as well as temptations 
 around us, traitors within as well as foes with- 
 out. 
 
 Where, then, shall be our safeguard ? How can
 
 62 SERMON HI. 
 
 we save ourselves from evil ? and what can we do 
 to check it in others ? 
 
 Is there deliverance from this woe of woes, from 
 this woe within us, this woe around us? Listen 
 to the Apostle, when in the bitterness of his 
 agonizing description he lamented, " Oh wretched 
 man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body 
 of this death," breaking out into the triumphant 
 exclamation, "I thank God through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord." Yes! in Jesus, by pardon through 
 His vicarious atonement and by the strength of 
 His Spirit, there is deliverance. 
 
 We are in danger of regarding our present life 
 of trial in such a way as to overlook the mercy 
 which can be shewn to exist even in a discipline 
 of probation. Though we cannot pretend to har- 
 monize the two equally true, but to us apparently 
 conflicting, doctrines of Divine providence and 
 human freedom, yet we cannot doubt that the 
 entrance of sin, the growth of sin, were not cir- 
 cumstances which (to speak after the manner of 
 men) took the Almighty by surprise; the atone- 
 ment of Christ, that majestic evidence of eternal 
 love, was not an after-thought designed to counter- 
 act the unexpected accident; but in the counsels 
 of the eternal prescience sin had been foreseen 
 and a remedy provided. If we omit the evidence
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 63 
 
 which is derivable in favour of such a conjecture 
 from abstract considerations of the Almighty's 
 character, and from some mysterious indications 
 which science seems to have shewn in creations 
 antecedent to human history of providential pre- 
 paration of this world for the residence of beings 
 who were to endure a state of probation, we may, 
 at least, probably infer so much from the hint 
 which Divine revelation seems to afford in the 
 expression, " the Lamb slain before the foundation 
 of the world." For if this be the meaning de- 
 signed, we may venture to look upon this present 
 dispensation of trial, though not in an uncor- 
 rupted world, as was originally designed, yet as a 
 dispensation of mercy. For before the creative 
 fiat had gone forth, "Let us make man in our 
 image/' (if we may measure in succession the 
 thoughts of a Being whose intelligence is not 
 fettered by conditions of time, but before whom 
 all is open in one eternal present from everlasting 
 to everlasting,) the design had entered of testing 
 man and redeeming man. 
 
 "We pretend not to fathom the Almighty's pur- 
 poses, but it would appear, if we may judge from 
 experience, that it is His good pleasure invariably 
 to make effort the preliminary to perfection. In 
 that mysterious glimpse which Scripture affords
 
 64 SERMON III. 
 
 us of His government over the choir of unseen 
 spirits, it appears that He put them to the test; 
 they, too, like man, had their probation. And 
 therefore, my brethren, if this be the case, we 
 may be encouraged to take a more cheerful view 
 of our condition in this world of sin than we 
 might at first have been inclined to do. What 
 if we are hampered with sin within? what if 
 we are let and hindered by temptation around ? 
 It is God's will over us, and it is a will of 
 mercv, not of punishment. He puts us here to 
 test us, to try us, to see if we will bow down to 
 evil, or in the might of Christ rise and conquer. 
 It is not that He has subjected us to evil from 
 which there is no escape : He has provided us 
 with the deliverance ; He has arranged this world 
 in such a manner that if we will avail ourselves 
 of that deliverance, the very laws which conduced 
 before to the growth of sin contribute to the 
 growth of goodness. The trying circumstances 
 become the means of victory, the example be- 
 comes the means of warning or of improvement, 
 the habit becomes the fortification of piety. And 
 thus it is not in judgment, but in love, that He 
 has put us in this scene of trial. Trial is the step, 
 the condition to perfection ; and it is in the wish 
 to raise us to this perfection, to give us that hol'u
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 65 
 
 ness which only those can have who have raised 
 themselves from unholiness, that He has subjected 
 us to this scene of conflict. 
 
 The history of the old Idumean patriarch bend- 
 ing on his heap of ashes beneath the tempest of 
 sorrow which was bursting over his head, where 
 yet the dispensation was intended in mercy, sums 
 up as in one mighty parable the moral of the 
 world's destiny. That sweat of agony in the still- 
 ness of the midnight beneath the shade of the 
 olive-garden, unrelieved save by the groan of 
 the Son of Man, "Not as I will, but as Thou 
 wilt," gathers up as in one moment of concen- 
 trated suffering the Gethsemane of human life, 
 and exhibits for ever the majesty of resigna- 
 tion and the cheerfulness of suffering. God tries 
 us, but it is for our improvement; He tries us, 
 but it is in mercy; He tries us, but He has 
 cheered us with examples of successful endurance, 
 and with help through the atonement of His Son. 
 The agony of a Job perfects Job's character, but 
 the agony of Jesus, staggering beneath the load 
 of the sins of the world, while it exemplifies re- 
 signation, purchases victory for the resigned. Let 
 us not, then, long for the freedom from trial, 
 which the rest of the blessed shall hereafter give. 
 Rather, let us take our part in the battle of life, 
 F
 
 66 SERMON III. 
 
 assured that if we do our duty in it, and rise 
 superior to evil, we are doing God's will, we are 
 growing into ripeness for heaven; nay, we have 
 heaven now, for heaven is not so much a place as 
 a state, and he who is rising above evil has heaven 
 already within his soul; and that larger heaven 
 into which he shall one day be ushered will be 
 but the continuance of that little heaven of holi- 
 ness and goodness of which he has the foretaste 
 now. 
 
 How, then, shall we thus do our part? How 
 shall we rise superior to evil? What is it that we 
 need ? I answer, we need these two things, first, 
 pardon from God for the many sins of word, and 
 thought, and deed which we have committed, 
 and secondly, the mighty aid of God's Spirit to 
 strengthen us from repeating our sins, and to 
 make us grow into the likeness of His holiness. 
 My brethren, I ask you solemnly to examine your- 
 selves to see whether you are personally partakers 
 of these blessings? Have you reason to believe 
 that you are pardoned of God ? You know His 
 promises, indeed, but are you sure that God has 
 looked personally down upon your souls to give 
 the blessedness of them to you ? Many of you 
 will remember an anecdote respecting the cele- 
 brated Bishop Butler, who had spent a life of
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 67 
 
 reverent study, and been a champion for religion, 
 that on one occasion during his last illness, in the 
 desolation of his spirit he spoke to his chaplain 
 in words which have indeed been variously nar, 
 rated a , but the sense of which was, "How am I 
 to know that Christ is a Saviour to me?" And 
 this will exactly be our anxiety in that mo- 
 ment when no other friend can stand with us, 
 and our spirits are just about to depart. Now 
 there really ought not to be much uncertainty on 
 this point; for God gives usually to pardoned 
 men such an internal sense of joy and assurance, 
 and such a consciousness of holiness, that they 
 know by an inexplicable intuition that they have 
 received mercy of Him. I am aware that some 
 decry this statement as fanaticism, but I must 
 venture humbly to express my belief that it is as 
 capable of proof, as a fact of religious life, as any 
 such fact whatsoever. If you take the memoirs of 
 religious men, and use them as facts on which to 
 found an induction, or ask the private history of 
 any religious men whom you may be privileged to 
 know, you will find that by some event, perhaps 
 by a trial, perhaps by a truth-telling sermon, they 
 were brought to feel themselves sinners, guilty 
 before God, as though God had His eye singly on 
 
 Bartlett's Life of Bp. Butler, p. 221. 
 F2
 
 C8 SERMON III. 
 
 them, and with prayers and tears they sought 
 God's mercy, pleading not their own righteousness, 
 but the efficacy of Christ's atoning death ; and after 
 often (it may be) months of such earnest prayer, 
 their longing hearts were cheered, sometimes sud- 
 denly, sometimes more gradually, perhaps in the 
 privacy of their own chamber, perhaps in the re- 
 ception of the life-giving Sacrament, by an internal 
 consciousness of a pardoned heart, by an inex- 
 pressible gladness which must be felt to be under- 
 stood, and which uttered, "Whereas I was blind 
 now I see." And as the proof that such a state 
 was not a transient feeling, the mere dream of a 
 fanatic, it was accompanied by such a change of 
 heart as formed to the individual himself, and to 
 others round him, the proof that some miraculous 
 change had passed over his spirit. The sins which 
 he once loved he now began to hate ; the duties 
 which he had once despised he now loved; the 
 prayers to which he had been obliged to drag him- 
 self became henceforth a pleasure ; his will began 
 to yield a cheerful obedience to God's will; his 
 affections were set on holiness, his aspirations 
 mounted up to heaven ; and the love of man fol- 
 lowed the love of God as steadily as effect followed 
 cause, and with the joyful energy of a benevolent 
 heart he began to feel his daily work, his daily
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIX. 69 
 
 effort to serve men, to be the performance of God's 
 work by him as really after his degree as by the 
 priest who kneels at the altar, or by the seraph 
 who wings his flight on his errand of love. 
 
 This religious change, which is generally called 
 "religious conversion," (the name,however, matters 
 little,) is the very outset of conscious and solid 
 advances in holy life, the very secret of lasting 
 victory over evil. Now, my brethren, I wish you 
 to ask yourselves whether you have attained this 
 state, and if not, whether you are seeking it? This 
 is the great gift which our Lord is willing to be- 
 stow, and which will turn your repeated defeats 
 in contending with sin into cheering victory ; 
 and it rests with yourselves to attain it through 
 earnest prayer. 
 
 And if you have reason to hope that you have 
 attained it, it is not a thing with which to rest con- 
 tent ; it is but the very beginning of the Christian 
 life. There is need constantly of fresh outpourings 
 of the Holy Ghost upon your souls, to purify you as 
 God is pure ; there is need of the constant dew of 
 the Holy Spirit to water your souls with His re- 
 freshing influences ; there is need of His mighty 
 aid to help you to make your daily life of trial the 
 very means of your growth in holiness. 
 
 This is what we can do for ourselves in lessening
 
 70 SERMON III. 
 
 the growth of evil. But what can we do for 
 others ? If only once our hearts are touched with 
 the desire to rescue others from evil, we shall soon 
 find out means to effect it. And oh, if all other 
 means are cut off from us, we can at least diminish 
 evil by our example. If we cannot preach Christ, 
 if we cannot work for Him, we can at least live 
 for Him, we can at least instruct mankind by the 
 silent eloquence of a holy life ; that living ser- 
 mon, known and read of men, will touch many 
 a heart which nothing else can reach. And to 
 a holy life we can add our prayers. Men may 
 despise prayer, hut they cannot by their scoffs 
 prevent it from having efficacy with God; it 
 travels away from this earth up to the throne of 
 a gracious God, and is heard afar off in His pre- 
 sence. You cannot confer a greater boon on your 
 fellow man than to remember him in your prayers ; 
 and if you, my brethren, who are yourselves striv- 
 ing in Christ's strength to flee from evil, and 
 who earnestly wish to do something to check its 
 growth, bear before God in your secret prayers 
 those in whose welfare you are interested, and 
 those agencies of usefulness which exist for the 
 diminution of evil, you will confer a blessing not 
 the less real because unknown ; in the great day 
 when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed,
 
 THE GROWTH OF SIN. 71 
 
 you may have the delight to find that your prayers 
 have not been unheard ; and in the day of your 
 own deaths you will feel the solemn gloom of that 
 moment cheered as by a ray of approval from the 
 eternal presence-chamber, if you are then able to 
 indulge the hope that your lives and examples have 
 caused one single sin less to be committed against 
 the Divine Majesty, if you have reason to believe 
 that your pleadings on the mountain-top have 
 cheered one single brother man struggling on 
 the plain below in the great battle of life against 
 death, of good against evil. 
 
 " Thou hast a few names which have not defiled 
 their garments, and they shall walk with Me in 
 white, for they are worthy. He that overcometh, 
 the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and 
 I will not blot his name out of the book of life ; 
 but I will confess his name before My Father and 
 before His angels."
 
 SERMON IV. 
 or j&ttni Sin, mttr Dn Sin. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 YEN. J. RANDALL, 
 
 ABCHDEACON OF BERXS. AND CHAPLAIN TO THE 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD. 
 
 (Preached in tlw Church of St. Mary-tfa- Virgin, March 18, 1859.)
 
 SEEMON IV. 
 
 1 TIM. v. 24. 
 
 Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment 
 and some men they follow after. 
 
 has been some question as to the pre- 
 -L cise application of these words in the place 
 where they stand, but the general meaning appears 
 plain enough, that the sins of some men are 
 so manifest and flagrant, that they seem openly 
 to call the sinners to judgment; while the sins 
 of other men, though for a time they may be 
 concealed, and, as it were, left behind in the 
 march of life, are yet sure to pursue the sinners 
 and overtake them, and bring them to judgment 
 in the end. 
 
 It is a very awful image that is here presented 
 to us of sin going before to judgment, and of the 
 sinner, bound in the train of his sin, unable to 
 draw back from it ; forced to follow it by a sup- 
 posed necessity, either of entangling worldly cir- 
 cumstances, or of uncontrollable fleshly lusts, or
 
 76 SERMON IV. 
 
 of the fear of man, which ever bringeth a snare ; 
 looking fearfully to the dreadful judgment towards 
 which he is advancing, or, if he closes his eyes 
 and turns away his thoughts from that, walking 
 as one that walketh in darkness, not knowing 
 whither he goeth, but, nevertheless, proceeding 
 by certain steps to the same miserable termina- 
 tion of his journey. 
 
 For this is the condition of all open and noto- 
 rious sinners. They are sold as slaves to sin ; every- 
 body sees and knows them to be such ; they know 
 it themselves, and are bitterly conscious of their 
 bondage, however they may affect to think lightly 
 of it, or even glory in it ; as there are those whose 
 glory is in their shame, and who boast of being 
 free from the restraints of religion, honour, and 
 public decency. Sad misuse of the name of free- 
 dom, to call themselves free, because they have 
 thrown off the light and easy yoke of holiness, 
 and bound themselves in the chains of the hard 
 master, sin, whose wages is death ! 
 . I have put these things to you in a figure. 
 But are they not a great and stern reality ? Who 
 ever offended the general conscience of society 
 by a great and public sin, and did not feel 
 himself to be speedily judged, condemned, and 
 degraded? and that not only in other men's
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 77 
 
 judgment, which he would fain set aside or over- 
 rule if he could, as partial, unreasonable, and un- 
 just, but in the judgment of his own heart, which, 
 in spite of himself, affirms and concurs in that of 
 the world. For though the world itself is full of 
 sin, yet, bad as it is, it does, in an imperfect and 
 irregular way, respect virtue and rebuke vice. 
 
 And hereby the judgment of the world becomes 
 a token and intimation of God's judgment, and 
 God makes the conscience and opinion even of 
 wicked men testify against the wickedness of 
 others, though perhaps less wicked than them- 
 selves. But this judgment of the world, though 
 it punishes, does not usually reform the sinner. 
 It terrifies and hunts him from the repose of social 
 dignity, it cannot recal or restore him : its effect 
 is more commonly to drive him deeper into sin. 
 He has lost his place in reputable society, he will 
 seek one in that which is abandoned, like himself. 
 If he is a profligate, he will herd with profligates ; 
 if he is a thief, with thieves : and so he will go 
 on, from bad to worse, hardening his heart, and 
 treasuring up for himself an accumulation of wrath 
 against the final day of wrath. Such is the ordi- 
 nary course of open sin. Not that every person 
 who has fallen into open sin is certain to fol- 
 low that course out to the end: woeful indeed
 
 78 SERMON IV. 
 
 would be the case of a vast proportion of mankind 
 if that were so, and doubtless there are many 
 happy instances to the contrary : how that comes 
 to pass, and what hope of that sort there may be 
 for each particular sinner who has so offended, we 
 shall consider by-and-by ; at present let it rest 
 that all open sin goes before to judgment. 
 
 But how stands the case with regard to secret 
 sins ? There is in these, we may suppose, no 
 manifest offence against the decencies and pro- 
 prieties of society : the world knows nothing 
 of the sin, character is not lost, the sinner's life 
 may be in other respects unimpeachable. Cannot 
 his sin be covered up? cannot he set it down 
 in his own reckoning as his share of that human 
 infirmity to which all men are liable, many of 
 them, perhaps, in a deeper degree than he is? 
 cannot he put a fair face upon the matter, and 
 go on as a respectable, nay, even as a religious, 
 man ? It is a vain hope ; the covered sin cor- 
 rupts the whole life. If open sin is like an over- 
 mastering fire, that blazes out at every window 
 and flames up through the roof of the devoted 
 house, secret sin is as the smouldering heat, that 
 preys upon the main timbers, unobserved for a 
 time, but stealthily eating its way from one to 
 another, till at last the crash comes, and the
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 79 
 
 building crumbles into dust and ashes. What 
 calamity is so frightful and appalling as the sudden 
 downfall of a man, long looked upon as of pure 
 and honourable life, but found out at last to have 
 been hiding wickedness under an outward show 
 of virtue ? And yet sad as this is, it is not so sad 
 as if the cherished sin had passed undiscovered 
 and unrepented of, till the sinner stood to answer 
 for it before the great judgment-seat. 
 
 I said that covered sin corrupts the whole life. 
 And is it not so ? Of course the secret sinner is 
 ashamed of his sin ; at least he is ashamed of it 
 in reference to the effect it would produce against 
 him, if it were known, in the minds of some 
 people for whose opinion he cares. Then he 
 must live in a constant disguise of false appear- 
 ance. His daily life must be a lie, and he must 
 be under a continual necessity of committing 
 fresh sins to hide former ones. We know, by the 
 many dreadful disclosures that have come before 
 the world in courts of justice, how constantly this 
 is the case where people have entered upon a 
 course of fraud ; how they go on from little acts 
 of dishonesty to great ones, till they grow mad 
 and reckless in their wickedness, and detection 
 bursts upon them like a clap of thunder. And in 
 like manner, with regard to sins of the flesh, what
 
 80 SERMON IV. 
 
 horrible crimes have people been led on to com- 
 mit, for the purpose of concealing the original 
 transgression ! Child-murder, murder of the part- 
 ner in guilt, self-murder, all of these are even 
 common consequences of a sin which it was hoped 
 would never come to light. 
 
 Let me say this to you, my brethren, and espe- 
 cially to you, my younger academical brethren, 
 who, through the heat of youth and removal from 
 the chastening restraint of home society, are laid 
 peculiarly open to temptations of this sort, that 
 there is no sin so constantly followed by its ap- 
 propriate punishment in this life as the sin of 
 which I have just been speaking. Of this I am con- 
 vinced by a course of long and not inattentive ob- 
 servation. And is it not a merciful as well as wise 
 arrangement of God's providence that this should 
 be so ? that the sacred ordinance of marriage, 
 God's first and chiefest gift to man for his comfort 
 in the social state, that from which all other social 
 comforts flow, and on which they depend, should 
 be fenced by sanctions that the wilfulness of man 
 shall not violate with impunity ? that any union 
 of the sexes, other than that honourable and holy 
 union of one with one for life, should bear its 
 curse, for an example and a beacon to be avoided ? 
 Men may make light of this matter, they may
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 81 
 
 turn it to a jest, the very law of man may set 
 itself in opposition to the strictness of the law of 
 God, but the sin does not the less bear the brand 
 of God's condemnation, nor will it fail to find the 
 sinners out. 
 
 But besides the outward and visible consequence, 
 what I may call the material penalty of sin, whe- 
 ther open or secret, there is an inward one of 
 even greater severity ; namely, the alienation of 
 the mind from God, and consequent derangement 
 of all the spiritual faculties and operations of the 
 soul. Can a man who is consciously and design- 
 edly dishonest, or an extortioner, or a drunkard, 
 or an adulterer, hold unreserved and refreshing 
 communion with his Maker, who is of purer 
 eyes than to behold iniquity ? Will such a man 
 " delight himself in the Almighty ? will he al- 
 ways call upon God a ?" Assuredly he will not. 
 Very wicked people do, indeed, in times of urgent 
 and sore distress, call out with great and bitter 
 cries upon God to give them that help which they 
 have so little right to expect; but no man of de- 
 praved habits of life can be a constant, sincere, and 
 hearty suppliant to God. It is an old and most 
 true remark, that nobody can go on both sinning 
 and praying; for either praying will make him 
 
 * Job xxvii. 10. 
 G
 
 82 SERMON IV. 
 
 leave off sinning, or sinning will make him leave 
 off praying. A wilful sinner might keep up the 
 outward form, and be even all the worse for doing 
 so, but he could not exercise the spirit of prayer. 
 Open sinners do not often keep up even the form, 
 or if thev do, the whole world perceives the in- 
 consistency of their practice; and the sight of 
 their affected devotion is more likely to be hurt- 
 ful than helpful to their own reputation, as well as 
 to the cause of religion. " Thou that makest thy 
 boast of the law, through breaking of the law 
 dishonourest thou God? For the name of God 
 is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you b ." 
 For though a person who is notoriously wicked 
 in some particulars may, from mere worldly pru- 
 dence, and a just appreciation of his own interest, 
 be upright in others, this does not cleanse the 
 blot of his character either to the world or to 
 himself. The thief is not honoured by people of 
 any discernment because he may happen to be 
 sober, nor the adulterer because he may happen 
 to be industrious. And much less can he, upon 
 any reasonable estimate of his own spiritual state, 
 appease his conscience, entertain a comfortable 
 hope that he is in God's favour, or make it the 
 serious business of his life to advance God's glory. 
 
 b Rom. ii. 23, 21.
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 83 
 
 He is, by his works, a manifest enemy to the 
 kingdom of grace. He does not submit to it 
 himself, and them that would submit he, by the 
 scandal of his bad example, hinders. 
 
 And how stands, in this particular, the case of 
 the secret sinner ? We suppose his sin not to be 
 known to the world ; his example therefore creates 
 no scandal, shocks nobody's feelings ; it may not 
 even be blemished by any apparent inconsistency ; 
 it may shew fair throughout ; but the hidden sin de- 
 files the sinner's conscience, and bars his approach 
 to God, just as much as open wickedness does. 
 And this is the way in which it operates. The 
 man feels that there is a part of his habitual life 
 that he cannot freely disclose and acknowledge to 
 God ; a condemning secret, which he would fain 
 withdraw, if he could, even from the judgment 
 of his own heart. But he cannot bring himself 
 to give up the sin; the sore rankles and throbs 
 under the touch, but he cannot bear to apply the 
 searching remedy. The right hand offends, but 
 he has not resolution enough to cut it off; the 
 right eye offends, and darkens his whole body, 
 but he has not faith enough to pluck it out; and 
 yet without that there can be no true communion 
 between God and him. There may be an out- 
 ward appearance of morality and religion, taught 
 
 G2
 
 84 SERMON IV. 
 
 by the opinion of the world, enforced by the ne- 
 cessity of keeping up his reputation, maintained 
 in many particulars by his own perception that 
 everywhere, except in the one point, the pure 
 life is the happy life; but how true is the sen- 
 tence of the Apostle, that " whosoever shall keep 
 the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he 
 is guilty of all c ;" guilty of rebellion against the 
 authority which establishes all, and consequently 
 incapable of real and sincere piety. The conse- 
 quence is, that the form of religion, which we are 
 supposing the secret sinner to keep up, is but a 
 deception, a hollow mask to hide the practical 
 infidelity of his character. Infidelity ! Is it then 
 a true inference that whoever lives in the prac- 
 tice of a known sin denies God ? If this be so, 
 what a precipice lies open before the sinner's 
 feet ! Consider it, then, and let us see what the 
 truth is. 
 
 It is plain that the wilful sinner can have no 
 comfort in the knowledge of God, or in approach- 
 ing Him in prayer. He has chosen to set him- 
 self in opposition to God, to make God his enemy, 
 and to be holden for an enemy by Him. He 
 thinks the law of God, at least in that particular 
 branch of it against which he rebels, an intolerable 
 
 c James ii. 10.
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 85 
 
 tyranny ; a tyranny so intolerable, that he will 
 break peace with God, and run the risk of His 
 vengeance, rather than submit to it. But there 
 are several ways by which he may escape from 
 the direct contemplation of this fearful conclusion, 
 and the tempter will be sure to suggest that way 
 that is most suitable to the sinner's disposition. 
 It may be suggested that the law which forbids 
 the darling sin is not God's law, the revelation 
 which is supposed to declare it is misstated or mis- 
 represented, or perhaps is no real revelation at all. 
 Though it is extensively believed in the world, and 
 particularly by those who are reckoned prudent and 
 discerning people, yet the world is very liable to be 
 deceived, and the prudent and discerning people 
 are for the most part such as are in circumstances 
 not much exposed to temptation, and glad to keep 
 other people under restraint for their own pur- 
 poses. Now, if a man adopts this line of reasoning, 
 and follows it even a little way, though he may 
 not go the utmost length to which, when he has 
 once set out upon its principles, it would logically 
 carry him, he is an unbeliever. He has unmade, in 
 his own mind, the God whom the Bible declares 
 to us ; and if he has set up any other god in His 
 place, it is a god such as the heathen invented for 
 themselves, a god that requires the observance of
 
 86 SERMON IV. 
 
 no laws that are not agreeable to the taste of his 
 worshippers. 
 
 This is the condition of mind alike of the open 
 and of the secret sinner ; but in the case of the 
 open sinner we all understand it. Nobody won- 
 ders that the man who is profligate is also irreli- 
 gious ; and nobody thinks of taking his opinion or 
 his practice into account in any matter in which 
 religion is concerned. But the secret sinner may 
 unsettle the faith of many souls besides his own. 
 The doubts which he willingly entertains upon 
 religious subjects, and the irreverent and unsub- 
 missive view that he takes of them, give a low 
 tone to his whole conversation, and exercise a 
 most mischievous influence upon the minds of all 
 his associates. 
 
 I have endeavoured to set clearly before you 
 the evil both of open and of secret sin; and in 
 these two classes all sin is comprehended. And 
 as there is no man that sinneth not, every one of 
 you is or has been either an open or a secret 
 sinner, and most probably both. I do not mean 
 that every one has followed, or is about to follow, 
 the fatal course of sin in either of these divisions 
 to its full length. In all men's lives there are 
 falls; in most men's lives there are recoveries: 
 the falls are more or less grievous, the recoveries
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIX. 87 
 
 arc more or less complete : but as to fall is uni- 
 versal, so, through the grace of God, to recover is 
 common. Yet it is not a trifling evil to have 
 fallen ; for recovery, though common, is not cer- 
 tain, and any fall may be the beginning of a down- 
 ward course, from which there may be no return. 
 One sin does not make a sinful habit, but every 
 sinful habit begins from one sin, and the second 
 sin is easier than the first, and so on. And there 
 is such a connection between all the members of 
 the body of sin, that a fall into one sin is most 
 likely to throw the sinner into another, until the 
 corruption of the whole character is complete 
 and settled into habit. You, my brethren, have 
 all of you taken some steps towards the forma- 
 tion of such evil habits. I trust that many of 
 you have retraced those steps; I wish and pray 
 that all may. But for this purpose there is need 
 of much watchfulness and prayer, and great search- 
 ings of heart, both to acknowledge and forsake 
 past sins, and also to guard against relapses into 
 such as we hope we have forsaken. And here 
 there is a debt due both to the Church and to 
 the world, as well as to God and our own souls, 
 that according to the quality of the sin so should 
 be also that of the repentance. He that has 
 sinned openly should, as far as lies iii his power
 
 88 SERMON IV. 
 
 make amends openly, by shewing his penitence 
 as plainly as he did his sin. And this will be 
 done mainly by submitting in a humble spirit 
 to the reproaches of bad men and the suspicions 
 of good men upon the change of his conduct from 
 viciousness to regularity of life, and from negli- 
 gence to strictness in offices of religion. He must 
 bear to be thought a pretender in these, until, if it 
 shall so please God, he shall, by faithful persever- 
 ance in them, gain right to be received as a witness 
 to their value and efficacy ; for this is one of the 
 appropriate punishments of sin, that even when 
 the sinner has left it he should still remain charged 
 with it in the judgment of men, because they can- 
 not know his heart, whether he is truly penitent 
 or not, till he has had time and opportunity to 
 give proof of the sincerity of his reformation. 
 
 The secret sinner, again, will have to recollect, 
 and, so far as he may, to repair any damage that 
 he may have done to the cause of religion by 
 the looseness of his conversation while he was 
 supposed to be, though he really was not, a trust- 
 worthy companion for people of sincere and un- 
 polluted minds. He will have to counteract, and 
 he will find it hard enough to counteract, the ill 
 effects of the supercilious indifference with which 
 he then treated all strict statements of Christian
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 89 
 
 doctrine, and of the seeming liberality with which 
 he was wont to excuse denials of the faith and to 
 apologize for breaches of morality by other people, 
 because he felt that the maintenance of strict prin- 
 ciples of faith or morality was a sentence of con- 
 demnation against himself. 
 
 But whatever may be the proper outward mani- 
 festations of penitence for either open or secret 
 sin, the work itself must be begun and wrought 
 out within the sinner's heart. He must be brought 
 to feel the guilt and danger of his condition, and 
 to recognise the quarter from whence he must 
 look for deliverance; he must consider himself 
 and his own ways, and God and His ways, how 
 far the two have gone asunder, and how they may 
 be brought together again ; how the reconciliation 
 between them may be effected, and what will be 
 the consequence to himself if it is not effected. 
 Every fresh act of sin hardens the mind and will 
 more and more, against the admission of such 
 considerations, and it is the great triumph of 
 the tempter to exclude them altogether. On the 
 other hand, God calls the sinner continually to 
 repentance, assuring us that He is not willing that 
 any should perish, but that all should turn from 
 their sin and be saved. He tells us that He 
 " gave His only-begotten Son, to the end that all
 
 90 SERMON IV. 
 
 that believe in Him should not perish, but have 
 everlasting life d ." And He hath committed the 
 ministry of this reconciliation to His Church, whose 
 office it is to proclaim to all men, but most espe- 
 cially to inculcate upon her own members, both 
 the goodness and severity of God ; His severity to 
 those who continue in disobedience and hardness 
 of heart, His goodness to those that abhor their 
 past sins, and seek to Him for pardon and re- 
 newal unto holiness. 
 
 This season of Lent has been specially appointed 
 by the Church for the work of self-examination 
 and penitence : not but what we ought to be 
 daily humbling ourselves for those faults which 
 we daily commit, but because through our natural 
 slowness and coldness to spiritual things we are 
 apt to fall into a negligent way of performing 
 these daily duties, and so require to be ever and 
 anon awakened and warned to set ourselves more 
 heartily to our painful task. And no period of 
 the year can be fitter for the purpose than this 
 interval between the time of our commemorating 
 the great mercy of God our Saviour in taking 
 upon Him our flesh for our sakes, and our cele- 
 brating, as we hope to do at Easter, the victory 
 that He has won for us over death and hell. In 
 
 d John iii. 16.
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 91 
 
 the meantime, let us look upon ourselves as walk- 
 ing through the wilderness of this world with Him 
 for our companion, beholding all our acts and 
 present to our very thoughts, as He was with the 
 Israelites in their penal journey, afflicted in all 
 their affliction, and as the angel of God's Presence 
 saving them 6 ; and yet not pardoning their trans- 
 gressions while they were disobedient to His voice, 
 forasmuch as the Name of the Most High was in 
 Him f . We cannot hide our doings or our thoughts 
 from Him ; let us then try, by His help, to make 
 them such as He may behold with pleasure. 
 Though, as Moses the man of God bears witness 
 in his prayer for the people in the wilderness of 
 old, He hath " set our misdeeds before" Him, " and 
 our secret sins in the light of" His " counten- 
 ance g ," yet He watches over them, not for our 
 destruction, but for our amendment and restora- 
 tion. And if we will so " number our days" as 
 to " apply our hearts unto wisdom," He will surely 
 "turn" Him "again at the last, and be gracious 
 unto" His "servants 11 ." Let us then beg Him to 
 impart to us, according to our need, that know- 
 ledge of ourselves, our ways and our hearts, which 
 He absolutely and entirely possesses, and to give 
 us grace that we may carefully cultivate such 
 
 Isu. Ixiii. 9. f Ex. xxiii. 21. * Ps. xc. 8. h ver. 12, 13.
 
 9.2 SERMON IV. 
 
 knowledge and turn it to profitable account. And 
 let us not be offended if our conscience, thus en- 
 lightened, should discover blemishes in our con- 
 duct of which we were unaware before : for as 
 there are sins open to the world, and sins secret 
 from the world, so are there in every one's own 
 life sins which he knows and sins which he knows 
 not ; perhaps not instructed as to their guilty 
 character, more likely not thinking of them as of 
 sins chargeable to his own account, secret plagues 
 of his own heart, and hindrances to his salvation : 
 such as are the sins of infirmity of temper and 
 constitution, which are so often suffered to pass 
 unnoticed and uncorrected, though the same prin- 
 ciple of evil works in them as in the grosser sins, 
 to which they frequently lead, namely, the mind- 
 ing of the flesh not subject to the law of God. 
 It is against these unobserved roots of bitterness, 
 and their still more bitter fruit when they have 
 attained their full growth unchecked, that the 
 Psalmist prays, " Who can tell how oft he offend- 
 eth ? O cleanse Thou me from my secret faults. 
 Keep Thy servant also from presumptuous sins, 
 lest they get the dominion over me : so shall I be 
 undefined and innocent from the great offence 1 ." 
 It is a great point gained if we can bring our- 
 
 1 Ps. xix. 12, 13.
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 93 
 
 selves to pray this prayer with a hearty and sincere 
 desire that it may be heard and granted ; and a 
 blessed thing indeed it is for us, if we will but think 
 so, that the wounds of our souls are open to the 
 eye of one who is so ready to pour balm into 
 them. " Will He plead against us with His great 
 power? No; but He will put strength into us k ." 
 He waits to have mercy upon us, and is most 
 willing to forgive us. Our blessed Lord, the 
 Messenger of the covenant of grace, cries aloud 
 to us, " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." All that 
 He requires is, that we should come to Him with 
 truly penitent hearts, not justifying ourselves, not 
 claiming an acquittal for the past or a licence for 
 the future, because of the exceeding strictness of 
 God's law, or the temptations and difficulties of 
 our own position ; but honestly acknowledging, as 
 the truth always is, that we need not have been 
 overcome by temptation if we had heartily re- 
 sisted it, that we have no true ground of defence 
 to stand upon, and nothing on which we can rest 
 our hope but the promised and proved mercy of 
 Him who is both our Advocate and Judge. It is 
 by the pride of man overpowering his faith that a 
 vast proportion of those who have gone astray 
 
 h Job xxiii. 6.
 
 94 SERMON IV. 
 
 into sin is kept back from returning to the way 
 of peace. " How can I do this great wickedness 
 and sin against God ?" is the preserving thought 
 when temptation assails. How can I acknowledge 
 this great wickedness and thus humble myself in 
 my own sight, and consent to be humbled, if need 
 so require, and if it shall so please God, in the 
 sight of men ? is the thought that hinders recovery 
 when temptation has conquered. To avoid this 
 penalty of reproach corrupt nature struggles by 
 every artifice and every violence. When the sus- 
 picions of conscience have been aroused, the sin- 
 ner's first inclination is to defend what he has 
 done, to assert its lawfulness, or at least to main- 
 tain that it was allowable under his peculiar cir- 
 cumstances. If he finds that defence insufficient, 
 then he is tempted to turn his thoughts away from 
 the subject, and persuade his conscience to let it 
 rest. That failing, the last resource for him who 
 cannot resolve to repent, is defiance of religious 
 restraint and self-abandonment to sin. 
 
 That we may not be thus ruined by our own 
 obstinacy and hardness of heart, the goodness of 
 God encourages us to submit to the necessary 
 humiliation, by every argument that can move 
 either our fear or our affection ; by the considera- 
 tion of His universal Presence, His infinite power,
 
 COVERED OR SECRET SIN, AND OPEN SIN. 95 
 
 His unerring justice, His prevailing mercy. The 
 open sinner may choose to brave the judgment of 
 men, who at the worst can but kill him, and after 
 that have no more that they can do; the secret sin- 
 ner may trust to the chances of escaping the judg- 
 ment of men, who can but pass sentence upon 
 outward acts, which he hopes they may never dis- 
 cover ; but neither of them can hope to baffle the 
 judgment of God, unless he can get rid of the 
 belief that God is, and that He will reward or 
 punish men according to their deeds. 
 
 Let us not, then, be withheld by false shame 
 from owning to God and to ourselves, and, if it 
 must be so, to man also, the heinousness of those 
 sins which we may have openly and knowingly 
 committed ; nor let us attempt to take refuge in 
 that ignorance of our own acts and of their quality, 
 which, in whatever degree it is wilful, is in that 
 degree an aggravation of sin, not an excuse for 
 what is done amiss; but let us gladly accept the 
 light which the Word and Providence of God 
 affords to us, that we may come to know ourselves 
 as we are known by Him. It may be a painful, 
 but it will be a saving knowledge : for it is by the 
 rule of God's knowledge that we must stand or 
 fall, and therefore the most rigorous application 
 that we can make of that rule to our own case is
 
 96 SERMON IV. 
 
 the best for us. We cannot hide our sins from 
 Him ; we are ruined if we hide them from our- 
 selves. " He that covereth his sins shall not 
 prosper ; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them 
 shall find mercy 1 ." "If we say that we have no 
 sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in 
 us: if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just 
 to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all 
 unrighteousness" 1 ." 
 
 1 1 Prov. xxviii. 13. m 1 John 5. 8, 9.
 
 SERMON V. 
 SKIM Sht, attfr Stirs 0f <f itfirmiig. 
 
 sr THE 
 
 VERY REV. THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 (Preached in the Church of St. Mar y-the- Virgin, March 23, 1859.)
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 LUKE xxii. 42. 
 Not My will, but Thine, be done. 
 
 HE who said this, my brethren, was without 
 sin, but in other respects was tempted like 
 ourselves. These words, therefore, setting forth 
 as they do a diversity between His will and His 
 Father's will, and thus far a similarity to the state 
 of each of us, of necessity stop short of that limit 
 in this diversity, where sin would begin. That 
 any human will, that our blessed Lord's human 
 will, at any moment differed from God's will, is a 
 token of the infirmity of humanity, inasmuch as 
 it is a divergence from the highest good ; but by 
 the well-known conditions of our Lord's incarnate 
 being, it is, in His case, not a token of depravity. 
 And it will be obvious to every one that this last 
 proposition, that such diversity of will was no 
 token of depravity, is dependent for its truth, not 
 on the fact that there was in this instance a higher 
 
 H2
 
 ICO SERMON V. 
 
 will, a will to say, " Not My will, but Thine, be 
 done/' and thus preventing the divergent human 
 will from running out into rebellion, but of ne- 
 cessity on the phenomena of such divergence it- 
 self; seeing that in our blessed Lord there were 
 no such tendencies to sin to be restrained and 
 corrected. And thus we find here, as so often, 
 the constitution and truth of our human nature 
 reflected, as in a clear and unsullied mirror, from 
 His human nature. Before the light of the glory 
 of its exaltation becomes too bright for us, while 
 He is yet under the shadow of infirmity and suf- 
 fering, we who have received the truths which 
 the Spirit has taught the Church respecting His 
 divine Person, learn best by His sayings, and that 
 which is revealed of Him, to lay down safely in 
 ourselves the frontier lines which mark off infir- 
 mity from sin, the imperfection from the depra- 
 vation of the creature. 
 
 " Not My will, but Thine, be done." This 
 negation, this separation, is true of us all ; true by 
 the conditions of our personal being. That our 
 will, which is the conscious director of our thoughts 
 and actions, should be our own, not the mere 
 reflex of an exterior impulse, even though that 
 impulse be from Him who made us, is necessary 
 to the very idea of personality at all. The person
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY. 101 
 
 differs from the mere animal, in that he is a realm, 
 so to speak, in himself; recognises a law within 
 him, takes account of agreements with that law 
 and disagreements from it; has in him a sense 
 of accountability, and an unquestionable power, 
 within certain limits, of self-direction. Our will 
 is not God's will : it may be free or in bondage, 
 it may be rightly or wrongly aimed, it may be 
 conservative or destructive of our best interests, 
 the result of no counsel, or of ill counsel ; but it 
 is in every case our own, not that of another. 
 
 And the mention of these alternatives will lead 
 us on to the consideration and to the distinction 
 of the facts and the tendencies of their inde- 
 pendence and divergence. That our personal 
 will is our own, not God's, is, I said, bound up 
 with our personal being. Thus far would be true 
 of the highest angelic being, of the purest and 
 loveliest created spirit : in such an one the con- 
 ditions of personality, the foundations of respon- 
 sibility, are the same as in ourselves ; in such an 
 one, again, by the very fact of creation, and thus 
 of inferiority to God, there is and must be, how- 
 ever unbroken and faithful the consent of his 
 will to God's will, yet a coming short of that 
 perfectly holy will of His ; just as though two 
 strings may be in blameless unison, yet the fact
 
 102 SERMON V. 
 
 of one being stronger and clearer than the other, 
 
 C* O 
 
 shall render that accord so far imperfect. And 
 so downward through all degrees of purely spiri- 
 tual existence, as distance from God in strength 
 and rank of being increases, so must also increase 
 this difference between God's will and the personal 
 will of the creature. But all this increase is tri- 
 fling, compared to that which follows as a matter 
 of course when we descend the step which sepa- 
 rates angels from the race of men. We are indeed, 
 in all the most glorious attributes of spiritual 
 being, but a little lower than the angels ; in this 
 one matter however we differ from them widely. 
 In us the spirit is bound up with a body of mortal 
 flesh, liable, to speak as yet of it as our blessed 
 Lord bore it on Him, to the wasting of daily 
 decay, to suffering, and disease, and death ; in- 
 vading the spirit and deflecting the will by a 
 thousand appetites, and desires, and sympathies. 
 Nor can this be otherwise, unless the body should 
 alter its very nature. There is a natural body, and 
 there is a spiritual body. One day we shall bear 
 a spiritual body, even as our blessed Lord now 
 bears a spiritual body; then namely, when He 
 shall change the body of our humiliation, that it 
 may be like to the body of His glory. Then we 
 shall become even as the holy angels; but not,
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY. 103 
 
 in this matter, even as He is Himself. His will, 
 in the unity of the Godhead, is now absolutely 
 and identically God's will. There is no more in- 
 firmity of the earthly body, to raise even a passing 
 mist over the pure, clear, divine purpose in Him ; 
 but with us it never can be so ; because our spirits 
 will always be created spirits, removed at an in- 
 finite distance even when in blameless accord 
 from the unapproachable Godhead itself. 
 
 So far then will of necessity be the difference 
 between the Lord and ourselves in our highest 
 estate ; but now, what is it in our lower ? It is 
 based on two circumstances: the one, wherein 
 the second Adam differed from the first even 
 when upright in his obedience ; the other, where- 
 in the second Adam differed from the first when 
 fallen, and from all of us who have inherited that 
 his fall. The former is the difference between 
 the uncreated and the created spirit, between the 
 perfect and the imperfect, the Inhabiter of eter- 
 nity and the creatures of yesterday ; and this 
 difference we may place in the absolute certainty 
 on His part, of accord in purpose and practice with 
 God's will ; the inconceivability of His swerving 
 into unfaithfulness and sin ; the entire fortifying 
 of the will against the peril of every infirmity 
 arising from the human body ; the certainty that
 
 10-1 SERMON V. 
 
 these words, " Not My will, but Thine, be done," 
 would be not the mere utterance of a holy wish 
 which the pressure of circumstances might over- 
 bear, but the unfailing determination and practi- 
 cal testimony of the whole life itself. The latter is 
 the difference, even in weakness and humiliation, 
 between the sinless and the sinful ; between Him, 
 in whom the enemy of souls had nothing, found 
 no point of communication, no rest for the sole of 
 his foot, and us, whose erring nature is full of 
 inclinations towards him, whose hearts are ever 
 his wonted and trodden way, and too often his 
 usurped and settled habitation. 
 
 " Not My will, but Thine." How vastly does 
 the narrow cleft which before seemed to part 
 these two, increase, and become a great gulf 
 fixed, when we take all this into consideration ! 
 Between the conscious self-direction of Him who 
 knew no sin, and the conscious self-direction of 
 the victim and servant of sin, how wide and ap- 
 parently hopeless a difference ! In a moment, 
 when the principle of sin is admitted, the pos- 
 sibility of disobeying God revealed in the con- 
 science, there enter with it the perversion, and 
 depravation, and bondage of the will in man, the 
 blinding of the natural conscience, and paralysis 
 of the moral energies. Man, in fact, becomes, if
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITJ. 105 
 
 now the bent of his nature be followed, a miser- 
 able wreck, drifting without a sufficient helm or 
 compass, the sport of every storm of unholy pas- 
 sion, and too probably at last to perish on the 
 sunken rocks of the enemy's temptations. 
 
 It is in this state that we find our race, when 
 we come, as now, to speak of our wilful sins, 
 and our sins of infirmity. The former of these 
 will be, as mere matter of definition, indicated 
 for us by the reversal of our Lord's saying in our 
 text. " Not Thy will, but mine," is the language 
 of the wilful sinner. And this is true of strictly 
 wilful sin in all cases, however much or little may 
 be the knowledge of what God's will is, or of 
 what God is. There is wilful sin against the 
 least light, as well as against the most. Its degree 
 of heinousness increases as knowledge of good 
 increases, but in kind it remains the same. 
 
 It will perhaps, however, be well for us not 
 to approach our practical treatment of wilful sin 
 with a conception of it so hastily formed, and so 
 independently of its reference to different states 
 of the human subject, and of its relation to other 
 kinds of sin, more especially to that kind which 
 stands coupled with it in the allotted subject of 
 this discourse. For various kinds of personal sin 
 run into and condition one another curiously and
 
 106 SERMON V. 
 
 intricately. That which is at the moment a sin of 
 infirmity, and thus of minor apparent guilt in it- 
 self, is often only one component in a mass of 
 deliberate misdirection of the moral being which 
 has paralyzed the will, so that it is possible that 
 an insulated act of even wilful sin itself, if the 
 first, if early in the downward course, may belong 
 to a state less depraved, and be of less damning 
 significance. We must tread very cautiously and 
 well assure our ground, where the bounding lines 
 are so liable to be mistaken. 
 
 That all sin is against God, is a maxim in 
 theology, confirmed by observation of our own con- 
 sciousness of responsibility. The moral conscience 
 is but the consciousness of God. This seems 
 an inevitable conclusion, whether we regard that 
 conscience in its more enlightened, or in its darker 
 and degraded state ; it is as sure, as that the 
 looking for of judgment implies the apprehension 
 of a Judge, by whom that judgment will be exe- 
 cuted. And if God created us, this consciousness 
 of Himself is His own original implanting. Only 
 by revelation from God can God be known to 
 man. It was He who first set the bounds of this 
 knowledge : He who has graciously enlarged them 
 by historical revelation from time to time. That 
 their domain is in all cases narrower than it might
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND &INS OF INFIRMITY. 107 
 
 be in virtue of His revelation, that in some cases 
 it has been contracted to an almost inappreciable 
 point, has been the consequence, not without 
 God's judicial concurrence, of man's departure 
 from Him. In fact, the two great results of man's 
 original sin have been these, the blinding of the 
 conscience to discern God's will, and the wither- 
 ing up of the moral power to obey it. And when 
 we speak of the guilt of original sin, as it rests 
 generally on our whole race, we take both these 
 into account. So that, in this primal sense, every 
 sin is the result in man of an original wilful sin ; 
 and a sin of infirmity, properly and purely so 
 called, does not exist. But it is manifest that for 
 our present purpose we must not go back thus 
 far, but must take man as we find him ; not in- 
 deed as we find him in a state of degraded hea- 
 thenism, with all this guilt resting upon him, for 
 then we could lay down no salutary rules respect- 
 ing his moral self-government, seeing that he is 
 the slave and prey of sin; but as we find him 
 here in God's Church, freed from original guilt in 
 Baptism, and placed in a state of grace. We must 
 remove from him the accumulated load of the 
 imputation of the sin of his race, before we can 
 treat of him with reference to spiritual health, or 
 recovery from spiritual disease. And we must of
 
 103 SERMON V. 
 
 necessity also suppose, that the conditions of that 
 state of grace have been normally fulfilled with 
 regard to him; that he has come under that in- 
 creased knowledge of God and His holy will which 
 is provided for His Church. That there are sad 
 exceptions to this within the limits of His Church, 
 is, alas, too plain ; that there may be also excep- 
 tional cases where the state of grace has been 
 entered otherwise than by the ordinary means, 
 we must not deny ; but when we are treating the 
 subject in general, it is to the rule, and to ordi- 
 nary compliance with it, that we must look. 
 
 This then being presupposed, the condition 
 and means of grace, the revelation of pardon and 
 redemption by Christ, the offered aid of the Holy 
 Spirit through Him, let us enquire into our pre- 
 sent state with regard to the sins of which we 
 speak to-night. 
 
 Our will is not God's will. It stands as the 
 helm of our personal being, ready to be turned 
 whithersoever the governor listeth. Into the de- 
 termination, which way it shall be turned, enter 
 many and conflicting considerations. The re- 
 vealed will of God, producing in us all a deeper 
 and more solemn sense of obligation to Him ; the 
 wonders of redemption, whereby the kindly affec- 
 tions are stirred into action ; the various motives
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY. 109 
 
 by which He appeals to us for our good and His 
 glory, these are ever persuading us to act in the 
 direction of God's will, to be like Him, to follow 
 where He draws. These are not mere considera- 
 tions in ourselves, nor due to the mere activity of 
 our own minds, but are the means which His 
 Holy Spirit uses, ever pleading and striving with- 
 in us. And it is manifestly idle to say, with any 
 practical view, that we have no power to turn the 
 wavering helm in the direction of these sugges- 
 tions. The very fact of God working within us 
 for our good, is a tacit covenant that the required 
 power for good shall be supplied, and that it is in- 
 deed by His appointment awaiting us, even while 
 such pleading is exercised by Him. Limit as we 
 will the extent of that power, we must leave some- 
 thing, some initiative, within the range of our own 
 determination, or we remove altogether the grounds 
 of human responsibility. And the difficulty of 
 such a concession is vastly diminished when we 
 presuppose, as we are now doing, the state of 
 grace and membership of the Christian Church. 
 "We beseech you, be ye reconciled unto God;" 
 " we beseech you that ye receive not the grace of 
 God in vain/' all such expressions as these speak 
 to us of a state in which God " worketh in us both 
 to will and to do of His good pleasure." For prac-
 
 HO SERMON V. 
 
 tical purposes, as indeed is universal in all exhor- 
 tation and all remonstrance, the initiative freedom 
 of self-guidance must be assumed. But when we 
 have assumed it, it is still very difficult to say 
 wherein consists wilful sin. It is plain that we 
 must not give this name to all sins against light 
 and knowledge, to all misdirections of the helm 
 when the true direction was plain; for thus we 
 should be attributing to man a depravity not his 
 own, and forgetting the powerful solicitations of 
 the devil, the world, and the flesh, which are ever 
 prompting him to evil, the law which he finds 
 within his members, causing evil to be present 
 with him when he would do good ; but on the 
 other hand, neither must we pass over to the 
 other list, of excusable and venial sins, any one of 
 such aberrations from the known path of duty, 
 seeing that the will yielded to them, if not a 
 deliberative, at least a compromising and treacher- 
 ous consent. And from this consideration it be- 
 comes plain that the term 'wilful sin' is but a 
 relative one, embracing in its general grasp many 
 various degrees of sin wherein the will has been 
 more or less exercised in the direction of tempta- 
 tion. We may however trace onward these de- 
 grees, until we arrive at a meaning of the word 
 where it seems to have attained its height of guilt
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY, 111 
 
 and of fearful consequences. In order to this, 
 we must suppose a case suitable to our purpose. 
 If sin is to be properly so called wilful, a man 
 must be in a condition deliberately and earnestly 
 to exercise his self-guidance in the direction of 
 evil. The course must be calm, the vessel must 
 answer the helm, the guiding hand must be steady, 
 the watching eye keen and unfailing. 
 
 All these united, it may be said, and truly, can 
 only be found in the spirits of evil themselves. 
 But there may be a fearful approximation to them 
 in man, in any of us, my brethren. Let but 
 a character be comparatively free from the wild 
 gusts of passion, which sweep away the vessel 
 in spite of its helm ; let a man but know himself, 
 and be able to govern himself, in the lower and 
 secular senses of those terms ; but let him have 
 tampered with God's light and God's voice within 
 him, till he has quenched the one, and drowned 
 the whispers of the other: let us suppose that 
 there are no bodily habits of grovelling self- 
 indulgence, no overweening diversions of per- 
 sonal vanity, none, or but few, of the softening 
 and helping influences of human love, under which 
 the spark of God's Spirit often smoulders when 
 the guiding flame of His Presence has been ex- 
 tinguished ; cut off, if you will, all direct worldly
 
 112 SERMON V. 
 
 interests; reduce such an one, thus obedient to 
 the law of evil, to as nearly a self-sufficing state 
 as this world will admit of .and, though such an 
 instance may be rare, and though, on account of 
 bodily and mental infirmity, such a state must 
 sooner or later be interfered with, yet it is one 
 quite possible for any man to be in at a given 
 moment, or at all events in its main and most 
 fearful features. This seems to realize for us the 
 idea of wilful sin : and forasmuch as no man is 
 without affections acting on and reacted on by his 
 course of life, it is difficult to imagine such a state 
 of deliberate practice of evil, without a correspond- 
 ing hatred of God, a corresponding antipathy to 
 all that is His, His Word, His servants, His Church, 
 but most especially, because such hatred is more 
 intense in proportion as the hated object lies 
 nearer and more obtrusive, to His blessed Spirit, 
 whose strivings in the heart excite rebellion in its 
 most direct and personal form. 
 
 It is this state of wilful antagonism to God and 
 the Godlike, this almost Titanic usurpation of the 
 throne of God within man, to which those mys- 
 terious sayings of our Lord and His apostles seem 
 to point, which allude to a sin, and that against 
 the Holy Spirit of God, past all power of forgive- 
 ness in this world or in the world to come. For
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY. 113 
 
 it is this which forms the nearest possible approach 
 to the condition of the fallen spirits themselves, 
 whose sin seems to consist in the deliberate direc- 
 tion of the purely spiritual being to the thwarting 
 and opposition of the holy will of God. And as 
 the advance of the spiritual life brings a man ever 
 more and more into personal union with God, so 
 does this, which is the extinction and the reversal 
 of spiritual life, bring a man more and more into 
 personal enmity to God, to all that is known of 
 God in His holiness, in His love, in His power. 
 And hence it is true, if taken within proper limits, 
 that the highest degree of wilful sin can never be 
 found except within the pale of the Christian 
 Church ; or, at all events, unless where the blessed 
 Gospel is preached and known. " They have both 
 seen and hated both Me and My Father," was 
 our Lord's description of His Jewish adversaries, 
 with regard to whom He spoke those awful words 
 concerning the sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 I trust in God, and firmly believe, that I am 
 speaking to none in whom this fearful state has 
 become a reality. But let us remind one another, 
 that for all its misery, we need not all its complete- 
 ness ; that the avenues to it are many ; it is ap- 
 proached through every treacherous surrender of 
 the will to the enemy, through every evil habit of 
 I
 
 114 SERMON V. 
 
 thought, word, or deed, known to be evil and yet 
 continued. There are some poisons so deadly, 
 that the mere contact with them will extinguish 
 life ; and none can tell, how small a portion of 
 deliberate personal alienation from God may 
 wither up the sources of our spiritual life, of 
 which union with Him through His Son by His 
 Spirit is the centre and spring. That our sins 
 are the punishment of our sins, is a proposition 
 involving grave error, but it has its true side. No 
 man ever yet deliberately turned the helm one 
 way, when God's voice was heard commanding 
 him to turn it another, without consequences 
 which, even in glory, eternity shall mourn. " The 
 Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," 
 blessed be God for it ; but if we set ourselves to 
 repent of our cleansing, and deliberately incur a 
 pollution which lies, so to speak, within the cleans- 
 ing, if we prostitute the powers of the world to 
 come for the purposes of the rebellious world that 
 now is, where is there a new and ulterior redemp- 
 tion to be found ? where a greater Spirit of grace, 
 to awaken yet another new birth unto righteous- 
 ness ? O none can exaggerate, none can describe, 
 the difficulty, the bitterness of that repentance, if 
 it ever come, of him who looks back, not on in- 
 finite weaknesses and lapses unto sin, not on a
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY. 115 
 
 heavenly Father offended by his waywardness and 
 unholiness, not on a Saviour crucified for his 
 sins, not on a Holy Spirit often grieved and pro- 
 voked to depart from him, but on a second 
 paradise and a second traitorous fall, on a deeper 
 and a more deliberate listening to a more subtle 
 and dangerous tempter, on a personal alienation 
 from God, not before apprehending His mercies 
 in Christ, but since and in the midst of them, and 
 in spite of them, and on account of them. 
 
 Blessed are they among us, my brethren, for 
 whom such a repentance, so difficult, so impro- 
 bable, so impossible except to God's great power, 
 has not become a dreadful necessity. And in 
 proportion to that blessedness, would I conjure all 
 who hear me to keep their hearts with all dili- 
 gence, as regards the accesses of sin. There is 
 no result for which our spiritual enemy is more 
 anxious, than that we should let him into our 
 secret hearts, and suffer his hand to guide the 
 helm of our lives; there is nothing which so 
 surely lies at the head, and forms the aim, of even 
 his apparently most trifling solicitations. "Give 
 Me thine heart," is the gracious and unmistake- 
 able language of every access to us on the part of 
 God ; this our heart it is, which His grace toils 
 to win, for out of it are the issues of life. " Give 
 i2
 
 116 SERMON V. 
 
 Me thine heart," is the language, equally unmis- 
 takeable by every watchful spirit, of the tempter 
 of our souls ; for in it must that poison work, which 
 brings about our everlasting death. And as the 
 drawing near to Him, who deigns to persuade us 
 for our good, will be followed by His ever more 
 and more drawing near to us, by every voice of 
 His becoming more distinct, more pleasant, to us, 
 fuller of grace and love, so will the resisting Satan 
 ever be followed by his fleeing from us, by his 
 solicitations becoming less frequent, less attractive, 
 less dangerous to our peace. 
 
 By this last hope and fear we are brought to 
 the consideration of those other sins, from which 
 the course of the holiest among us can never be 
 entirely free : those sins which are not of the pur- 
 pose, in which the conscious direction of our being 
 has no share; which start from the eye of the 
 Christian the tear of penitence, and send through 
 his heart the keen pang of self-condemnation, even 
 while they are committed ; sins which the blessed 
 Spirit often annuls in their very birth, often turns 
 aside from their mark, by His preventing and 
 overruling grace. Such is the rapid uncharitable 
 thought, flitting like a shadow of a cloud across 
 the clear sky of our Christian charity; such the 
 suggestion of unworthy motives, detested in our
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY. 117 
 
 next moment's reflection ; such the paltry de- 
 viation from strict truth in narrative, to serve our 
 own credit, to turn a sentence, or point a jest. 
 To the same kind belong those manifold faults of 
 passing temper and outward manner, by which the 
 characters of good men are so often marred, and 
 their usefulness hindered; those messengers of 
 Satan to buffet them, keeping down their self- 
 contentment, and sending them day by day in 
 penitence to God for their unworthiness and their 
 often infirmities. 
 
 Respecting these sins, while we keep them as 
 such in their proper and subordinate place, as sins 
 not unto death, yet there is but one tone in which 
 a minister of Christ can speak of them, and that 
 must be one of solemn caution. Not any, even 
 the least sin, is ever to be trifled with. All sins 
 are the tempter's victories. We cannot afford 
 to stumble, when face to face with the enemy. 
 The uncharitable thought, which is allowed to flit 
 across the mind to-day, may return and obtain a 
 lodgement in the heart as it ponders by night, 
 and find guilty utterance in the morning; the 
 infirmity of temper, seldom occurring and quickly 
 repented of now, will, if no new advantage be 
 obtained over it, occur more often, and till it passes 
 unrepented ; and so onwards, and downwards, till
 
 it begets hasty and sinful words, and they bring 
 about embittering of domestic relations, and mo- 
 roseness, and alienated hearts, and evils for this 
 world and the next world, which none can venture 
 to foretell. 
 
 The safe and wise course for us, my brethren, 
 with regard to these sins of infirmity, these which 
 seem to lie lightly round us and on us, is, never 
 to be contented till we are gaining on them, and 
 to dread as a deadly peril their gaining on us. 
 For all of them we have a certain remedy, against 
 their prevalence over us a never-failing resource, 
 even watchfulness and prayer. Is there not among 
 us in the present day too much carelessness about 
 sins of this class ? Are we not too much in the 
 habit of thinking that manner and temper, and 
 certain unchristian ways of speaking and surmising 
 of others, are to be tolerated as trifles, and not to 
 be put into the balance against undeniable fruits 
 of the Christian life in other departments of the 
 character ? Do we not forget, that the sphere of 
 most direct and telling influence of every one of 
 us is not in the wide world, but in our own house- 
 holds, among those who know us well and love us, 
 or who, knowing us, ought to be drawn to love us, 
 and to love Christ the more on account of us ? 
 
 "Not My will, but Thine." Where is there
 
 WILFUL SIN, AND SINS OF INFIRMITY. 119 
 
 room here for tolerated sins of infirmity ? Is there, 
 in the man who is united to God, no power to 
 make the weak strong? Cannot He, who com- 
 manded to stretch forth the withered hand, and it 
 was restored whole even as the other, give thee, 
 give me, grace and strength, even in struggling 
 against our weaknesses, to rise up into new life 
 and vigour? Is God's restoring grace a fable, 
 or a reality ? 
 
 Remember, in parting, two solemn truths, both 
 from the pen of our Lord's beloved Apostle : " If 
 any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, 
 Jesus Christ the righteous : and He is the pro- 
 pitiation for our sins." But, on the other hand, 
 " He that is born of God sinneth not : because he 
 keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth 
 him not." 
 
 Let the former of these keep the sorrow of our 
 penitence from sinking into distrust ; let the latter 
 prevent the confidence of our faith from rising into 
 presumption.
 
 SERMON VI. 
 Sms 0f Cwmf, anb *0fo ta nmi 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. H. P. LIDDON, M.A., 
 
 STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, 
 AND VICE-PRINCIPAL OP ST. EDMUND HALL, OXFORD. 
 
 (Preached in St. Giles's Church, March 25, 1859.)
 
 BEBMON VI. 
 
 ST. MATTHEW xv. 19. 
 Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, 
 
 IT1HESE words of our Lord and Saviour are 
 _L closely related to three separate truths. They 
 imply that nothing which is merely outward and 
 material, and unaffected by those laws which bear 
 upon the moral health and life of the human soul, 
 can by any possibility defile it ; they imply, fur- 
 ther, that while all that is good in us comes from 
 God and His heavenly grace, all that is evil is 
 purely our own ; and, lastly, by the expression 
 "evil thoughts," we learn not merely that the 
 unuttered reasonings a of the soul may be evil in 
 their origin and in their tendency, but that they 
 may be in themselves evil, in being truly and 
 properly sins. This would appear from our Lord's 
 solemn manner of allusion to them : He classes 
 them at once with the "murders, adulteries, for- 
 nications, thefts, false-witness, and blasphemies," 
 
 rovripol.
 
 124 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 in which they issue ; and His great Apostle in 
 like manner, when enumerating the works of the 
 flesh, mentions " adultery, fornication, unclean- 
 ness, lasciviousness, idolatry, murders, drunken- 
 ness, and revellings," side by side with such spiri- 
 tual sins as "hatred, emulations, envyings, and 
 heresies V 
 
 I. To this last-named point, the real sinfulness 
 of evil thoughts, our attention will be confined 
 on the present occasion ; and it is obvious to 
 remark that many Christians who fully admit 
 that a word spoken or an act done against the 
 law of the Most High can forfeit the peace and 
 impoverish or destroy the life of the soul, are yet 
 slow to believe in the existence of sin, that is, of 
 deliberate opposition to the known will of God 
 perfected in the sphere of thought. They cannot 
 bring themselves to admit that a mere thought, 
 which leads to no outward result, which is em- 
 bodied in no act or word, which flashes into being 
 and dies away within the soul, can yet be an 
 offence against God of such a character as to 
 forfeit His smile and blessing; they have never 
 entertained any such doctrine, and they put it 
 aside somewhat impatiently as being overstrained 
 and exaggerated. Accordingly, before insisting 
 b Gal. v. 19, 20.
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 125 
 
 more particularly on the truth before us, it may 
 be useful to ask ourselves why there is so general 
 an indisposition seriously to receive it. 
 
 1. And one explanation is probably to be found 
 in the fact that our notions of right and wrong 
 take their colour, more generally than we are in- 
 clined to suspect, from the human laws by which 
 society is protected. Thus it is that the opinions 
 of many persons on questions connected with the 
 marriage-tie vary with the varying enactments 
 of the legislature, and are formed or abandoned 
 without reference to the law of God. Thus it is 
 that murder and dishonesty appear unpardonable 
 in the eyes of men who think lightly of sins 
 against purity ; because although Holy Scripture 
 would seem to speak more severely of the latter, 
 the former are punished by the law of the land. 
 That law is indeed a blessing, not merely because 
 it affords us protection, but because, generally 
 speaking, it enforces the law of God ; yet it aims 
 confessedly at the protection of society; it does 
 not attempt the sanctification of the man ; it leaves 
 many flagrant breaches of the law of God utterly 
 unpunished; it may occasionally run counter to 
 the law of God ; it only claims to rule in the pro- 
 vince of sense ; and those who have no higher 
 standard of right and wrong than is afforded by
 
 126 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 human law, or by that public sentiment to which 
 our laws give either shape or expression, are natu- 
 rally disposed to take little account of sins which 
 lie so entirely beyond the range of the statute- 
 book and the policeman, as do sins of thought. 
 
 2. But there is another reason which indisposes 
 us to think with sufficient seriousness of sins of 
 thought; namely, that to know anything really 
 about them, we must know something of our own 
 hearts. We can study sinful acts and words as 
 they are exhibited in the lives of great criminals, 
 in the page of history, in those with whom we 
 live. Such a study may cause no moral uneasi- 
 ness, and be a source of much mental enjoyment ; 
 the soul ranges from first to last beyond its own 
 precincts, in contemplating the lives and deeds of 
 others; but an honest transcript of the heart's 
 true thoughts, of their subtlety, their energy, 
 their variety, their resource, of what Holy Scrip- 
 ture broadly terms the deceitfulness above all 
 things and desperate wickedness which mingles 
 with them, this cannot be set down upon paper 
 or conveyed in language, it must be learnt within. 
 And to look into the soul with an honest desire 
 to see it as God sees it, and to form His estimate 
 of its condition and prospects, is always difficult : 
 it is wearisome to our natural powers, and painful
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 127 
 
 to our self-love. It was this which made the 
 ministry of our divine Lord so peculiarly gall- 
 ing to the men of His day and generation ; they 
 had strong religious instincts and desires, but they 
 would fain have satisfied those instincts by an 
 outward obedience to precepts and customs ; they 
 shrank from a law which claimed to rule not less 
 in the sphere of thought than in the sphere of 
 sense. And our Lord bends the mental gaze 
 back from the outward act upon the inward, un- 
 seen motion of the soul, with the firm, ceaseless, 
 inexorable decision of His mighty love. If they 
 shrink from the very presence of the murderer 
 or of the harlot, He points to the thought of 
 hatred which would kill, as being really murder, 
 and to the ungratified lust, which is already adul- 
 tery . If they set store by the fastings, and 
 prayers, and alms-deeds which they regularly per- 
 formed, He unveils the motive which may turn 
 an act of self-discipline or a work of mercy into a 
 deadly sin d . How constantly does He arrest and 
 rebuke sin which as yet existed only in the stage 
 of thought ! Not in virtue of any mere natural 
 keenness or penetrative sagacity, but because He 
 was That Being Who " needed not that any should 
 testify of man/' as " knowing" already " what was 
 c St. Matt. v. 21, 22, 27, 28. d Ib., vi. 2, 5, 16.
 
 128 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 in man*," did He rebuke those scribes who in 
 thought accused Him of blasphemy, as He ab- 
 solved the paralytic', and the secret reasonings of 
 those Pharisees who held that He cast out evil 
 spirits by the power of Beelzebub 5 , and those who 
 watched Him in their malice, to see if He would 
 heal the withered hand on the Sabbath h , and the 
 disciples when they indulged in dreams of per- 
 sonal ambition 1 , and the two travellers along the 
 Emmaus-road who at heart despaired of the cause 
 of GodJ. For He, the Eternal Wisdom of the 
 Father, had not emptied Himself of His glory, 
 and taken upon Him the weakness and the humi- 
 liations of a created nature that He might deal 
 with moral evil only when it rises to the surface 
 of human life, and arrests the eye, or sounds in 
 the ear of man : by proclaiming that " the king- 
 dom of God is within us k ," He obliges us, His 
 disciples, to follow Him, at whatever cost of mental 
 effort or mental suffering, into the inmost cham- 
 ber of the spirit, which He has ransomed by His 
 Blood, and which He would purify by His grace 
 and doctrine. Leave we, then, awhile the outer 
 
 St. John ii. 25. 
 
 f St. Matt. ix. 3, 4; St. Mark ii. 8 j St. Luke v. 22. 
 
 f St. Matt. xii. 25 ; St. Luke xi. 17. 
 
 fc St. Luke vi. 6 ; St. Mark iii. ^, 4. l St. Luke ix, 46, 47. 
 
 J Ib., xxiv. 15, 32. * Ib., xvii. 21.
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 129 
 
 world to descend with Christ our Lord into the cata- 
 comb of the heart, to track out its tortuous passages, 
 to note the forms and legends which, however in- 
 distinctly, are shadowed forth from its walls, to 
 make the crooked ways straight and the rough 
 places plain within us, until by His grace each fa- 
 culty shall have been newly signed with His cross, 
 and each thought taken captive to His obedience 1 . 
 3. There is a third cause of the disinclination 
 to look sins of thought honestly in the face, I 
 mean the dread of fostering an over-scrupulous, 
 over-refining temper, in matters of religion. This 
 is an objection which harmonizes with our na- 
 tional character, and is felt by many who do not 
 admit its force in terms. It is urged from two 
 opposite quarters. Coming, as it does sometimes, 
 from earnest Christians, who fear the dangers of a 
 path along which they have not yet journeyed, 
 this scruple is entitled to tender and respectful 
 consideration, although to encourage it were most 
 injurious to the weal of the soul. Is there any 
 here who honestly fears lest while he endeavours 
 to analyze and to conquer the strong subtle sins 
 of his heart and intellect, he should numb the 
 sense of sin within him, and fall even into " hard- 
 ness of heart, and contempt of God's word and 
 1 2 Cor. x. 5. 
 K
 
 130 SlJfS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 commandments ?" Let him rely on the love and 
 power of our Lord, as a sufficient guard against 
 these and other possible dangers which may beset 
 the path of strict duty. But when the world 
 affects anxiety as to the integrity of the religious 
 character, when it lays its hand upon our shoulder 
 and bids us occupy ourselves with the plain duties 
 (thereby meaning the external acts) of our state 
 of life, and warns us to leave thought to take 
 care of itself unless we would be the victims of 
 an abject, morbid, unmanly scrupulosity, we may 
 well regard its advice with the utmost suspicion. 
 Doubtless there is danger in over-scrupulousness 
 of conscience ; it implies distrust of the love of our 
 Lord, it is a subtle form of spiritual selfishness, 
 it interferes with duty, it enfeebles prayer ; but it 
 is a danger which belongs to the higher stages of 
 Christian obedience, and those who are not seri- 
 ously obeying it at all are not unlikely to exag- 
 gerate it. Certainly it is not the characteristic 
 danger of our day and generation this over- 
 sensitiveness of conscience which is diseased and 
 unpractical ; nor is the world at other times slow 
 to insinuate that Christ's servants care only for 
 form and outward duties when they are jealous 
 of the decencies of their Master's service. The 
 world which took objection to St. John Baptist
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 131 
 
 and our Lord for opposite reasons" 1 dislikes vital 
 religion, now as then, in all shapes; and now, 
 as then, wisdom is justified of the weakest and 
 most erring of her children. If worldly men in- 
 terfere in religious matters, it is too generally in 
 the same spirit in which Herod interested himself 
 about the birthplace of the holy Babe of Beth- 
 lehem 11 . I brush this objection from our path, 
 not without impatience at its being even enter- 
 tained when urged from such a quarter, and pro- 
 ceed to consider the question before us, the real 
 sinfulness of evil thoughts. 
 
 II. Believe it, dear brethren, an evil thought is 
 a sin. Holy Scripture tells us that " the thought 
 of foolishness/' i. e. of moral folly, "is sin ;" Holy 
 Scripture describes the sinner by stating that 
 " God is not in all his thoughts," i. e. that He is 
 in none of them?; that while his feet run to evil, 
 his thoughts are thoughts of iniquity q ; and in re- 
 viewing the results of the fall upon our common 
 nature, it says that " all the imaginations of the 
 thoughts of man's heart were only evil contin- 
 ually'." The Lord knoweth the thoughts of 
 fallen man, that they are vain ; and therefore at 
 
 m St. Matt. xi. 18, 19. Ib., ii. 4, 7, 8, 13. 
 Prov. xxiv. 9. p Ps. x. 4. 
 
 Isa. lix. 7. r Gen. vl 5. 
 
 K2
 
 132 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 his conversion the unrighteous man will " forsake 
 his thoughts 8 " not less than his " ways," and the 
 penitent whose " thoughts" are " right*," will say 
 with the Psalmist, "I hate vain thoughts, but 
 Thy law do I love u ." And if "thought" as it is 
 alluded to in the Old Testament, often includes 
 the desires and designs which we entertain, the 
 strict law of our Lord and Saviour warns us that 
 a thought apart from these, such as that "the 
 gift of God's grace may be purchased with money," 
 or that we may " take our ease, and eat, drink, 
 and be merry v ," in our state of probation, is ut- 
 terly offensive to Almighty God. And therefore 
 the Church warns us, before approaching the Holy 
 Communion, to " repent," if any be not only an 
 " adulterer," but " in malice, or envy, or any 
 other grievous crime x ," and leads us to "acknow- 
 ledge and bewail our manifold sins and wicked- 
 ness which we from time to time have grievously 
 committed by thought," as well as by ' ' word and 
 deed, against the divine majesty of our heavenly 
 Father?." 
 
 But I hear it whispered, Are we then to sup- 
 pose that the involuntary caprice of memory, that 
 
 Isa. Iv. 7. ' Prov. xii. 5. 
 
 11 Ps. cxix. 113. T Acts viii. 22; St. Luke xii. 19. 
 
 * Address in Communion Service. 
 
 f Confession in Communion Service.
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 133 
 
 the undefined image which hovers before the eye 
 of the soul, that the phantom of imagination which 
 rises importunately upon us when we would fain 
 be rid of all that does not speak of God, can for- 
 feit His grace, and our hope, and joy, and peace ? 
 Assuredly not. If the will consent only to the 
 law of God, the soul may contemplate the law of 
 the members warring, by the inventive suggestions 
 of evil, against that which is still the law of the 
 mind z . The corruption of the fall underlies the 
 grace of regeneration, and "out of the heart/' 
 as from a volcano, are darted forth thoughts of 
 lust and anger, which remind us of the fire 
 that smoulders beneath. These thoughts glance 
 off the hard and polished surface of the living 
 soul ; they do not penetrate it ; for the shield 
 of faith the Creed of the Church repeated 
 with fervent devotion to Him of whom it speaks 
 may easily " quench all the fiery darts of 
 the wicked one a ." Only when we cease to view 
 these thoughts with humiliation, and loathing, 
 and disgust, only when we are careless to repel 
 and dissipate them, and grow tolerant of their 
 continued presence in the soul, do they become 
 more than a temptation, which, like all other 
 temptations, may, if resisted, by God's mercy pro- 
 
 * Rom. vii. 23. Eph. vi. 16.
 
 134 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 mote our growth in Christian grace ; only when 
 the will admits such thoughts, when it welcomes, 
 entertains, accepts, fondles, appropriates them, do 
 they enter into the marrow of the soul, and work 
 its death. But one thought of evil deliberately 
 entertained may do this, since one thought of evil 
 to which the will consents is a perfect sin ; one 
 thought of evil accepted by the will is an act of 
 the soul. We too often think of an act as some- 
 thing necessarily without us, something which we 
 can see, or feel, or hear; yet, when the eye is 
 closed, and the mouth is dumb, and the body 
 motionless, it is possible to act for God or against 
 Him with the whole purpose, strength, and in- 
 tensity of the inward being. Resolutions, we 
 know, are properly acts b , but the soul can act 
 without going so far as to form resolves, inten- 
 tions, and designs ; since each indulgence or check 
 to feeling and passion in its earliest, feeblest stage, 
 is a moral act; each idea which is presented to 
 the understanding is accepted or set aside by a 
 moral act ; each concession to imagination, each 
 curb that we put upon it, is a moral act. The 
 seat of action is within us, deeds and words are 
 its outward and visible signs; but action is a 
 thing not of the hand and mouth, but of the will ; 
 b Bp. Butler's Analogy.
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 135 
 
 and the will can accept or set aside, the will can 
 deal with thought, however subtle, and transient, 
 and complicated, just as certainly as it can deal 
 with the knife of the assassin, or the solicitations 
 of the prostitute, or the gold of the employer. 
 What are sins of deed, but sins of thought which 
 have acquired embodiment and outward form, 
 which have been handed over to the organs of 
 the body, and by them carried forth into the 
 sphere of sense? But whether it see the light 
 of day or no, the thought of foolishness when 
 harboured in the soul is sin less deadly, perhaps 
 less deliberate, than the uttered word and per- 
 petrated deed, but still certainly sin : it may 
 never guide a human hand, or clothe itself in 
 human speech, but it is sin ; it may nestle be- 
 neath those features on which we trace the sharp 
 lines of pain, those features so holy in their com- 
 posure, so rapt in attention, so elevated in prayer, 
 so bright with the smile of charity, so instinct 
 with sympathy and with tenderness, but it is sin. 
 Like the hidden colloquy within the chambers 
 of the soul of him who in the Gospel -parable 
 thought that his houses and stores should continue 
 for ever, and that he had only to enjoy life, it 
 may represent a life of worldliness it may pro- 
 voke instant punishment, for it is perfect sin. It
 
 136 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 may be that one flash of thought, one moment of 
 rebellion against the will of the Creator, forfeited 
 Satan's throne in heaven, as being perfect sin. 
 Does not an evil thought on which we have 
 brooded with pleasure leave us with less faith, 
 less hope, less charity, less inclined to pray, and 
 to labour, and to learn ? in short, sensibly lodged 
 on a lower stratum of moral life, or rather of moral 
 death, than we rested on before ? and what won- 
 der, if it be perfect sin ? what wonder, if the acts 
 of the human spirit be indeed measured not by 
 their relation to sense and time, but by their 
 agreement with, or opposition to, the known will 
 of the Infinite Creator? 
 
 And there are two considerations which may 
 enable us yet more clearly to apprehend the true 
 significance of sins of thought. 
 
 (a.) Consider, then, that thought is the life- 
 blood of the soul. Often in our waking hours 
 the tongue is silent and the hand is stayed; but 
 thought is ever active ; it precedes action, and 
 colours and gives it point, direction, and mean- 
 ing ; it clothes itself in language, and is forthwith 
 lodged in other souls, but it does not cease be- 
 cause we cease to speak or to exert ourselves ; it 
 may be trivial, irregular, weak, aimless ; it may 
 proceed almost unconsciously to our real selves,
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 137 
 
 like the natural functions of our body; but it 
 courses, like the blood in our veins, with ceaseless 
 activity along the passages of the soul ; it yields 
 companionship to the poorest inmate of the work- 
 house not less surely than to the most accom- 
 plished thinker of this University; in some de- 
 gree it is a necessary and perpetual process, it is 
 the movement which attests a living spirit. Like 
 the Eternal Wisdom and Personal Reason of the 
 Father, as One brought up with Him and rejoicing 
 ever before Him c , the thought of man is co- 
 existent with the souFs life, scarcely intermitted 
 even in sleep, unrestrained by society and custom, 
 unrecognised, unpunished, unrewarded by man, yet 
 the element on which Christ and Satan, good and 
 evil, grace and nature, contend for the final pos- 
 session of the soul. Specially is this the case in 
 an age of high civilization like our own, when so 
 many restraints short of the will of God throw us 
 back upon the solitary, unperceived converse of 
 our separate spirits, within which, it may be, we 
 live the more intensely as we shrink from express- 
 ing our true moral life without them. 
 
 Would you know, my brethren, in what direc- 
 tion the current of your spiritual being is flow- 
 ing ? does it set towards heaven or towards hell ? 
 c Prov. viii. 30.
 
 133 SINS Of THOUGHT, 
 
 Judge not by your outward acts; they are per- 
 chance the unreflecting tribute which you pay 
 to friends or education, to position or interest. 
 Judge not by your words; you may have learnt 
 a conventional language rich in the phrase of 
 piety, but provoking no echo within the soul. 
 But your thoughts, what are they ? When you 
 last walked alone, how did they occupy you? 
 "When you laid your head last night upon your 
 pillow, towards what class of subjects did they in- 
 stinctively revert? Did they rise upwards towards 
 the attributes of God, towards the Person, the 
 Majesty, the Sufferings, the "Work, the promises of 
 our blessed Lord, towards your own spiritual con- 
 dition, your hopes and fears, your ever-approach- 
 ing eternity ? Or did they grovel among the earth- 
 ly business of the past day, among its schemes of 
 gain and of ambition, among its pleasures of sense 
 or pleasures of fancy, among its littlenesses and 
 disappointments, and its hopes and fears for the 
 material or social fortunes of the coming morrow ? 
 When thus alone we see ourselves most truly, we 
 are unbiassed by the influences and traditions which 
 mould our outward life ; we take no precautions, 
 it may be, and thought moves freely and uncon- 
 strainedly onwards, and the trifle of the moment, 
 like the straw upon the surface of the tide, tells
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 139 
 
 of the end towards which the deep stream of life 
 is steadily tending, and of the energy or lassitude 
 with which that end is pursued. Onward it flows, 
 the current of thought, precipitating a succession 
 of moral acts so rapidly that we take no note of 
 them, but achieving in silence what in another 
 world may be discovered to have been the most 
 important results, for weal or woe, of our spiritual 
 history. Each deliberate thought of sin, my bre- 
 thren, mingles with that flood of inward life, dis- 
 colours its purity, or makes its foulness more 
 polluted, becomes incorporate with the life-blood 
 of the soul, vanishes only to re-appear upon the 
 surface at the holiest times, or under the most 
 distressing combinations, to clog the efforts of 
 penitence, or to hasten the precipitancy of despair. 
 A time we know must come to each one of us, 
 when the goods we possess, the home we inhabit, 
 the dear friends we love, nay, the body in which 
 we have so long tabernacled, must be left behind 
 us ; and then all our thoughts, that is, our designs 
 and intentions, perish, as the Psalmist says, and 
 come to nought. But thought, the conscious life 
 of the indestructible spirit, perishes not ; we know 
 how Dives thought in hell, and how the souls of 
 martyrs think beneath the heavenly altar. It 
 flows on in unbroken continuity when we part
 
 140 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 with all else ; it is with us in the dread moment 
 of passage ; it is keenly anticipating the agony or 
 blessedness which lies before us ; it sleeps not, 
 that sum and product of all earthly thought, while 
 we await the awful judgment. 
 
 (/3.) But observe how sins of thought can only 
 be estimated aright when we realize a sacred gift 
 of which at Baptism we became partakers " Christ 
 in us; the hope of glory." Mere calculations of 
 the temporal and even of the eternal consequences 
 of sin furnish a far less powerful motive to inward 
 holiness than is afforded by the unfeigned, un- 
 hesitating, absolute conviction that in our Baptism 
 " we were made members of Christ/' and by that 
 awful sensation of wondering love which realizes 
 true membership in the Holy Body. God, who 
 has sanctified all our Members by His blessed 
 Son's quickening manhood, has consecrated our 
 head, as Bishop Taylor says, into a very temple of 
 His Presence : nor is lust, or violence, or drunken- 
 ness more degrading to the body of the Christian, 
 than are sins of thought destructive of the high 
 sanctity of the regenerated soul. The Christian 
 soul is God's temple : and we cannot, if we would, 
 sin only as they sin whom He has never hallowed 
 by a second birth. The Christian soul is a tem- 
 ple : why, then, is the inner shrine polluted by the
 
 AND HOW TO MJHSltiT THEM. 141 
 
 imagery of evil? why do the tables of the money- 
 changers disfigure the outer courts ? why are the 
 five senses the gates of the temple so open to all 
 thoughts and spirits who would pass within? The 
 Christian soul is a temple : why make we not a 
 covenant with the eyes, lest they admit aught which 
 may soil its purity ? with the ears, lest they give 
 access to voices that jar upon the harmonies of the 
 inmost shrine ? why in this day of literary activity, 
 when thought presses for admission from such 
 countless sources, from reviews, newspapers, no- 
 vels, are we not less careful to ask ourselves, 
 " Is this amusing ?" than " How will this befit the 
 sanctities of the inner temple and the Presence of 
 Christ ?" The Christian soul is a temple : why 
 then strive we not with the Apostle in prayer that 
 " our whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserv- 
 ed blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ 4 ;" so "glorifying God in our body and 
 in our spirit, which are alike His e " own? 
 
 III. 1. Of the leading forms of sins of thought, 
 I would mention, first of all, that waste of religious 
 thought which is so characteristic of our modern 
 life. We live in an atmosphere of religious ideas, 
 which penetrate every avenue of the soul: good 
 books, good examples, art and literature, minister 
 d 1 Thess. v. 23. ' 1 Cor. vi. 20.
 
 142 SI WS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 to the exactness of religious impressions ; the life 
 of Christ, the glories of heaven, the beauty of holi- 
 ness, have again and again roused our imagina- 
 tions and kindled our inmost spirits : where is 
 the result? where is the sensitiveness to sin, the 
 active charity, the energetic obedience, the in- 
 trepid devotion to truth which might be expected 
 to result from such familiarity with the things of 
 God ? Surely we are not free to treat " the holy 
 inspirations whereby we think those things that 
 be good" as if they were no such talents as the 
 outward advantages for which we must one day 
 give account to God ; rather let us believe that 
 no form of truth or of holiness has from our earliest 
 childhood floated before the eye of the soul to be 
 forgotten by Him who, in His mercy, granted it, 
 and who will ask what it has done for us. Better 
 were it to have lived and died in the darkness of 
 Tyre and Sidon, than to see and know much of 
 truth, as did Chorazin and Bethsaida. For reli- 
 gious thought which leads not to active obedience 
 is a double evil : it is an opiate and a source of weak- 
 ness ; it drugs the awakened sensibilities of the 
 soul, and it enfeebles its life, by evoking impres- 
 sions which do not force us to a severer, heartier 
 service. Great need have we to pray that He, " by 
 whose holy inspirations alone we can think those
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 143 
 
 things that be good, would vouchsafe" ever " His 
 merciful guidance that we may perform the same." 
 2. Trifling thoughts are not so harmless as we 
 may suppose. We pass hours in dwelling upon 
 absurdities unworthy the attention of men who 
 are living in earnest ; we build castles in the air, 
 or form schemes of occupation which the good 
 providence of God has denied us. This habit is 
 not merely weakness, it is sin ; it renders us indis- 
 posed for present duties ; it dishonours the facul- 
 ties wherewith God has endowed us ; it ministers 
 to self, and is closely allied to sins of vanity, which 
 are condemned by the world's standard of good 
 taste, and therefore in many cases are indulged 
 only (although constantly and intensely) in the 
 sphere of thought. It leads us to forget that we 
 have received all that we have and are from our 
 heavenly Father; it withdraws the soul insensibly 
 from looking towards Him; it destroys that so- 
 briety of mind which is an integral part of the 
 Christian character. Above all, it makes prayer 
 very difficult, by dissipating thought, and render- 
 ing spiritual collectedness almost out of the ques- 
 tion. " Wisdom is before him that hath spiritual 
 understanding : but the eyes of a fool are in the 
 ends of the earth f ." How many of us must fear 
 
 ' Prov. xvii. 24.
 
 144- STJfS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 that the opportunities of communion with God in 
 prayer only add to our sins ; that each amen to 
 \vhich we assent is often a new act of insincerity ; 
 that we are never less earnest than when engaged 
 in the most solemn of possible occupations ! Why 
 is this, but because we have indulged idle thoughts 
 at other times, and cannot check their importunity 
 when we are in the presence of God ? 
 
 3. Uncharitable thoughts of others are still more 
 common, and more destructive. We are afraid 
 to face the consequences of an open rupture; 
 worldly prudence, the love of ease, the anxiety to 
 maintain a character, seal the lips and stay the 
 hand. But charity, which thinketh no evil, is 
 banished from the heart : we dwell upon the 
 foibles and faults of others ; we exaggerate their 
 mistakes or their sins ; we are secretly pleased at 
 their failure and pained at their success ; we quar- 
 rel with them mentally over and over again ; we 
 even go so far it is a dreadful thought as to 
 envy or depreciate the graces which the Holy 
 Spirit of Christ may have given them. And these 
 thoughts speedily grow on us if they are indulged : 
 they brood like a dark cloud for hours, or days, or 
 weeks over the soul ; they dim its lustre and blunt 
 its keenness; they defile the man not less truly 
 in one degree than false witness and blasphemies
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 145 
 
 in another; they spread an atmosphere of death 
 by sapping the life of that charity which is the 
 bond of perfectness, and without which whosoever 
 liveth is counted dead in the presence of the God 
 of love. 
 
 4. Yet more deadly are thoughts of impurity. 
 These are generally the sad heritage of past in- 
 dulgence, and they are proofs of the deep scars 
 which such sin leaves even in the souls of peni- 
 tents. To tamper with thoughts like these is 
 madness; to dwell on them, to repeat in thought 
 the evil which they recal, is destruction. Num- 
 bers, too, who lack the opportunity or the enter- 
 prise which is needed for open sin, who are re- 
 strained by many motives short of the love of 
 God from the worst indulgence, yet stock their 
 imaginations with the very fuel of passion, while 
 taking credit to themselves that passion is not 
 openly gratified. If you are ever tempted to 
 think lightly of such thoughts on the ground that 
 they are not open sins, reflect that they do stain 
 the soul, that they lay it open to the first tempta- 
 tion, that, beyond all other thoughts, they eat out 
 the love of God. What is the value of a character 
 for respectability, if our inward parts are to be 
 very wickedness? Where is the blessedness of 
 the outer whiteness of the sepulchre, if the inner 
 L
 
 146 S2J3 Of THOUGHT, 
 
 chambers of the soul are a museum and repository 
 of whatever is unclean and defiling ? 
 
 5. Lastly, unworthy, profane, or sceptical thoughts 
 about Almighty God and His attributes. Num- 
 bers indulge in these, as if they were a proof of 
 mental activity, and could do no harm ; yet it is 
 impossible to suppose that such thoughts, deli- 
 berately harboured, can fail utterly to destroy the 
 life of the soul. Ever since childhood our minds 
 have been opening more and more upon the na- 
 tural world, upon the history and character of our 
 race, upon our special work in life, upon the spirit 
 and associations, and temper and opinions of our 
 day; have they opened with equal activity upon 
 the character and being of Him Whom truly to 
 know is everlasting life ? Has our interest in what 
 He tells us about Himself steadily deepened ? or, 
 while the mind has been active elsewhere, has it 
 been sluggish and careless only about that which 
 concerns Him, His revealed nature and His pre- 
 scribed service? and are there secret causes at 
 work, which dispose the soul to close its eye 
 upon the Author of the law and light within ? Is 
 there in our past spiritual history, that tampering 
 with the heard voice of God, that unfaithfulness 
 to the light which has streamed from heaven, 
 which leads us to prefer the darkness that cannot
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 147 
 
 comprehend God to that light which every man 
 that doeth evil hateth ? And then, has the ear of 
 the soul been readily open to the discriminating 
 contempt, or to the polished sarcasms, or to the 
 coarse invective, or to the erudite attack with 
 which God's throne, His Word, His Church, His 
 Sacraments, His grace, His servants are assailed ? 
 If so, in time the heart will harden into accom- 
 plished unbelief. The moral reasons are within ; 
 and Satan has plenty of theories at hand, by which 
 to satisfy and flatter the soul that desires to shun 
 the light of heaven. " An evil heart of unbelief 
 in departing from the living God" how fearful, 
 yet how easily may it be ours. There is disbelief 
 in God's judgments, which are far above out of the 
 sinner's sight, there is the presumption or rejec- 
 tion of His mercy, and then, as God recedes from 
 the soul, self is proportionately magnified, and the 
 sinner sits down to sketch the form and measure 
 the powers of the King of Heaven, and makes to 
 himself a god who is impersonal or powerless, or, 
 at any rate, less than the Infinite Being who is 
 loved and worshipped by His Church. " Thou 
 thoughtest wickedly that I am even such an one 
 as thyself: but I will reprove thee." The human 
 soul will not long bow down to the creature of 
 its own imagination ; so it passes on to a finished 
 apostacy. There is no satisfaction in a deity 
 
 L2
 
 148 MA T S Of THOUGHT, 
 
 for whom nothing is sacrificed, and who has no 
 personal relation to the soul of his worshippers: 
 so that at last, whatever may still be conceded to 
 the prejudices of education, or to the requirements 
 of society, the moral " fool hath said in his heart, 
 There is no God." 
 
 IV. Believe, my Christian brethren, with all 
 your hearts, that it is sinful to consent to a thought 
 of evil. You know not whither it may lead you in 
 thought or deed ; but you can control and crush out 
 its life, if you deal with it at once- Do not stand 
 and watch it, as if it were a mental curiosity to 
 which you had no relation, and over which you 
 had no control. Believe heartily in the masterful 
 and resistless power of the regenerate will over the 
 whole inner being of man ; believe heartily that 
 when Scripture bids you bring every thought into 
 the obedience of Christ, it does not prescribe an 
 impossibility, since all may be done through the 
 might of Christ, who strengtheneth you. Away 
 with the unworthy, faint-hearted dream of unbelief 
 that the respectabilities of life, the outward con- 
 formities and proprieties of religion, may be secured 
 to the Lord of Righteousness, but that Satan must 
 triumph, since he is in fact resistless, in the pro- 
 vince and domain of thought. 
 
 It is of course plain that each kind of evil 
 thoughts has its separate cure. Do your thoughts
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 149 
 
 wander at prayer? Make a rule of collecting 
 them in secret before you enter the house of God, 
 avoiding conversation and general society for at 
 least some short time previously. Do they run 
 on your own excellencies ? Think, at least once 
 a day, of that one sin in your past life, which is 
 perfectly known to God, and which causes you 
 most pain and shame. Are you tempted to much 
 secret uncharitableness ? Conquer the temptation 
 by always offering a secret, heartfelt prayer to our 
 loving Lord in behalf of the object of your suspi- 
 cion or dislike ; you cannot long help loving those 
 for whom you pray in good earnest. Are you 
 haunted, even at the holiest times, with the impure 
 suggestions of the evil one ? All depends on your 
 trampling out the spark at once, ere it fall upon 
 passions which are soon roused into deadly energy, 
 by an intense, fervid appeal to the King of purity, 
 " Thou Son of David, have mercy on me." Are 
 you led to think favourably of the doctrines and 
 advocates of scepticism? You may, of course, 
 carry your serious difficulties to those who can 
 assist and relieve them ; but when Satan suggested 
 to our Lord in the wilderness that He should fall 
 down and worship him, he was met with a stern, 
 " Get thee behind Me." And we too might learn, 
 when tempted to unbelief, to distrust our powers
 
 ]50 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 rather than forfeit our faith, to look the tempter 
 in the face, and say the Creed of Christendom 
 straight through, anchoring ourselves on no 
 human rock, but on that Forerunner Who has 
 passed within the vail, and Who is a very present 
 help in trouble. 
 
 Of more general remedies for evil thoughts I 
 will mention four: 1. First, is the constant 
 endeavour to realize that deep truth which is 
 so wonderfully expressed in Psalm cxxxix., the 
 truth that our whole inner being is at all times 
 and under all circumstances open to the Eye of 
 God. "The Lord seeth not as man seeth: for 
 man looketh on the outward appearance, but the 
 Lord looketh on the hearts." " The Lord searcheth 
 all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations 
 of the thoughts 11 ." He " searches the hearts and 
 tries the reins, to give every man according to 
 his way, and according to the fruit of his doings 1 ." 
 He "sees" and "hears" the "imaginations" of 
 the wicked against His servants k . He is at hand 
 to mark the deep inner convulsions of the human 
 spirit as man " becomes vain in his imaginations" 
 while "his foolish heart is darkened 1 ;" or as he 
 "casts down imaginations and every high thing 
 
 1 Sam. xvi. 7. h 1 Chron. xxviii. 9. i Jer. xvii. 10. 
 k Lain. iii. 60, 61. 1 Roui. i. 21.
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. ]51 
 
 that exalteth itself against the knowledge of 
 God m ." Thus "searching us out, and knowing 
 us, and understanding our thoughts long before 11 ," 
 He absolutely " requires" moral " truth in the in- 
 ward parts " as an homage to His omnipresence. 
 This doctrine, so plainly taught in the Old Tes- 
 tament, receives a yet more definite expression 
 in the New. For St. Paul tells us that he who 
 thus searches, marks, tests the secret processes of 
 thought, is none other than That Lord of mercy 
 who for our sakes lay in the Cradle and died upon 
 the Cross. St. Paul tells us that He, the Personal 
 Word of God, stands over each conscience, as did 
 the priest of the old covenant over the legal victim, 
 and that with the knife of a faultless anatomist, 
 He distinguishes perfectly between the various 
 elements of grace and nature, reason and affection, 
 thought and purpose, which commingle in the 
 deep intricacies of the human spirit. The Word 
 of God, quick and powerful, and sharper than any 
 two-edged sword, pierceth even to the dividing 
 asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and 
 marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and 
 intents of the heart ; neither is there any creature 
 that is not manifest in His sight P." Do we believe 
 
 m 2 Cor. x. 5. n Ps. cxxxix. 1. 
 
 o Ps. li. 6. P Heb. iv. 12, 13.
 
 ]52 SIX'S OF THOUGHT, 
 
 this? Have we a reputation for Christian graces, 
 friends to magnify our good points, a fair outside, 
 and a heart stocked with the imagery of sin ? Do 
 we make social gain and capital out of the Name 
 and kingdom of Jesus Christ, while our intellects 
 are in perpetual revolt against Him? There is 
 no creature that is not manifest in His sight, who 
 has done everything for us Christians, and "with 
 whom," in life and in death, " we have to do q ." 
 One day at least we shall know this : " All the 
 Churches shall know that I am He which search- 
 eth the hearts and reins 1 ." 
 
 2. Secondly, therefore, let us bear in mind this 
 truth, that evil thoughts will be exposed and con- 
 demned at the day of judgment. They will then 
 take their true place, side by side with the sins 
 to which they lead. We would not, it may be, 
 be seen as we are by those whom we love and 
 respect; they know our life of word and deed, 
 they know nothing of our life of thought. In 
 their presence at least we curb that abundance of 
 the heart out of which the mouth speaketh; they 
 dream little of that which God and His angels 
 know, of the pride, and sloth, and indifference, 
 and selfishness, and hate, and lust which reign 
 within. Do we tremble or rejoice at their unsus- 
 q Heb. iv. 14. r Rev. ii. 23.
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 153 
 
 picious ignorance ? All one day will be known, 
 and we must exchange the praise of men for the 
 condemnation of the Lord of truth. Surely when 
 tempted to indulge thoughts of evil, it may help 
 us to remember that "God shall bring every 
 work into judgment, and every secret thing," i.e. 
 every thought, " whether it be good or whether 
 it be evil 8 ." That as " there is nothing covered 
 that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall not 
 be known 4 ," "the Lord will bring to light the 
 hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest 
 the counsels of the heart"." More awful is this 
 aspect of the judgment-day than any other; more 
 solemn than any other the name which the great 
 apostle gives it, "The day when God shall judge 
 the secrets of men by Jesus Christ"." 
 
 3. Thirdly, remembering the sacredness of every 
 power of the regenerated soul, let us aim at oc- 
 cupying each power fully with the things of God. 
 We must expel evil thoughts by thoughts of holi- 
 ness and truth. There is no neutrality in the 
 spiritual world. If Christ be not Lord, Satan is 
 in possession of the citadel of thought, perchance 
 repressing its grossness, its violence, its darker 
 shades of evil, supplying us with a refined selfish- 
 
 Eccles. xii. 14. * St. Matt. x. 26. 
 
 " 1 Cor. iv. 5. * Rom. ii. 16.
 
 154 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 ness, a prudent and restrained sensuality, a subtle 
 form of pride which observes the limit of good 
 taste, and can act humility. We must expel the 
 evil one by the presence of the All-holy ; we 
 must empty the memory of sin by loading it with 
 the psalms and the blessed words of Christ ; we 
 must withdraw the intellect from lawless specula- 
 tion, by projecting it on that glorious revelation 
 of the Being of beings which it can never really 
 master, but which will ever delight it; we must 
 make a store of things true, and honest, and just, 
 and pure, and lovely, and of good report, to think 
 of those things ?, to make them the food of imagi- 
 nation in our leisure hours. Learn daily a por- 
 tion of Scripture, or meditate upon some parable, 
 or miracle, or act, or suffering of our blessed 
 Saviour. So may be gathered treasures of holy 
 thought rich towards God, against the days which 
 are coming upon us, the days of failing sight and 
 failing strength, the loss or absence of friends, 
 the hour of death, the abode of the houseless 
 spirit, now reft of everything but thought, at its 
 appointed station in the everlasting world. 
 
 4. Lastly, besides the constant entreaty that 
 our Lord would search and seek the ground of our 
 hearts, by proving and examining our thoughts z ; 
 r Phil. iv. 8. * Ps. xxvi. 2.
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 155 
 
 that He would keep us inwardly in our souls by 
 rescuing us from all evil thoughts which could 
 assault and hurt them 8 ; that He would cleanse 
 the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of 
 His Holy Spirit, so enabling us more perfectly to 
 love Him b , we do well to cultivate the habit of 
 ejaculatory prayer as a sovereign remedy against 
 sins of thought 
 
 Such short prayers darted up to heaven in the 
 hour of need, may save us many a heart-ache, and 
 win grace to help our infirmities. Certainly evil 
 thoughts indispose us for such prayer by their 
 mere approach, and suggest to us the words of the 
 possessed demoniac as most fitly our own, " What 
 have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of 
 God Most High." But this need not be : " where 
 sin abounds, grace hath much more abounded;" 
 and no prayers, we may be reverently sure, are 
 more favourably received by our ascended Lord 
 than petitions for mercy such as He deigned to 
 receive and to answer so often in the days of His 
 flesh, the true voice of the heart's deep agony, 
 wrung from it by the felt presence of the tempter, 
 and the sense of its own abject weakness. We 
 need not kneel, we need but pause a moment 
 
 Collect for 2nd Sunday in Lent. b Communion Service.
 
 156 SINS OF THOUGHT, 
 
 in work or conversation, close the eyes, and by 
 one intense effort of will to place ourselves before 
 the very throne of Christ. "Thou that takest 
 away the sins of the world, have mercy upon me. 
 From all blindness of heart, from pride, vain-glory 
 and hypocrisy, from envy, hatred, and malice, and 
 all uncharitableness, good Lord, deliver me." Can 
 He but hear that cry, and help the soul that sin- 
 cerely utters it? Can He, from Whose Temples 
 the Precious Blood was pressed by the crown of 
 thorns, can He, Whose Human Soul was poured 
 forth in agony beneath the olive-trees of Gethse- 
 mane in expiation of our sins of thought, turn a 
 deaf ear to the fainting spirit which He has re- 
 deemed, when the phantoms of evil haunt it, and 
 the foul breath of the enemy is upon it? Surely 
 in that trial-time our once suffering and now 
 triumphant Lord will deliver " from the snare of 
 the hunter and from the noisome pestilence/' 
 "from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, 
 and from the sickness that destroyeth at the noon- 
 day." Prom His throne of glory He utters a 
 word of mercy, which, though descending from the 
 age of prophecy, is ever expressive to the believ- 
 ing heart of the presence and love of One who is 
 truly touched with a feeling of our infirmities : 
 " Fear not ; for I have redeemed thee, I have
 
 AND HOW TO RESIST THEM. 157 
 
 called thee by thy name ; thou art Mine. When 
 thou passest through the waters, I will be with 
 thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not over- 
 flow thee : when thou walkest through the fire, 
 thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame 
 kindle upon thee."
 
 SERMON YII. 
 
 C^ Cr0ss 0f Christ % gjeJ&ermitt fbm 
 dlt 0f Sin, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JOHN LAWRELL, M.A., 
 
 IHCUMBENT OE ST. MATTHEW'S, CITT EOAD. 
 (Preacfad in the Church of St. Giles, March 30, 1859.)
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 1 COR. i. 23, 24. 
 
 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, 
 and unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto tJiem which are 
 called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and 
 the wisdom of God. 
 
 THE season of Lent always seems like a pil- 
 grimage to the Holy City, and the Lenten ser- 
 vices so many stations by the way. We are now 
 within earshot of Jerusalem; we can hear what 
 they are saying, and as we near the city we hear 
 them crying out, " Crucify Him, crucify Him." 
 
 In time they had their wish. Judas made his 
 bargain, and received his wages ; he got his money, 
 but he lost his soul. Pilate bore his unwilling 
 testimony to the innocence of that "just man," 
 he could find no fault in Him ; he washed his 
 hands, and thought perhaps that there was no 
 stain of blood left on them ; but when he had 
 scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified. 
 The priests had incited the multitude, and others 
 
 M
 
 162 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 in turn demanded the shedding of the innocent 
 v blood, " His blood be on us and on our child- 
 ren;" and so it was. The soldiers had most un- 
 consciously fulfilled prophecy, " They parted His 
 garments among them, and upon His vesture did 
 they cast lots." When men saw the quaking 
 earth, and the rent rocks, they feared greatly; 
 and the centurion, sent there for a very different 
 purpose, has left on record his evangelic testi- 
 mony, " Truly this was the Son of God V 
 
 They had their way ; their wish was accom- 
 plished ; He was crucified ! But all the while 
 the ignominy was passing away from the cross ; 
 it could not degrade Him. He became " the 
 curse," but in doing so He gave dignity to the 
 cross. He was lifted up from the earth, and He 
 raised the cross from its low estate. From that 
 time it became the emblem of the Christian faith ; 
 it upheld the banner of love which floated over 
 the triumphant people of God; on its outline 
 noble churches were reared to God's honour; it 
 became part of a rite of the Church ; those who 
 received the Sacrament of Baptism were received 
 into the Church of Christ, being " signed with the 
 sign of the cross, in token that thereafter they 
 .should not be ashamed to confess the faith of 
 
 * St. Matt, xxxii. 54.
 
 FROM THE QUILT OF SIN. 163 
 
 Christ crucified ;" it became the central ornament 
 in the crown of kings, and shone as a decoration 
 of merit on the breastplate of warriors. It be- 
 came an exclamation of faith and hope, Ave crux ! 
 spes unica meal And beyond all, and especially 
 for our meditation to-night, the cross of Christ 
 became a doctrine. 
 
 I. "The cross of Christ became the remedy 
 for the guilt of sin," that is, the theme on which to 
 fix our thoughts ; the one sacrifice for sin was 
 offered on Calvary, the power of that sacrifice is 
 universal in its application. The only Son of 
 God, Jesus Christ, suffered death upon the cross 
 for our redemption : He " made there (by His one 
 oblation of Himself once offered) a full, perfect, 
 and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction 
 for the sins of the whole world." The Blood of 
 Christ flows on in one perpetual, unending stream 
 for the purifying of the souls of men, and deliver- 
 ing them from the guilt of sin. From the spring 
 rising at the foot of the cross comes forth the 
 "fountain opened to the house of David, and 
 to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for 
 uncleannessV It is poured forth from the hal- 
 lowed side of the Saviour of the world, pierced 
 then by the soldier's spear, as now by the sins of 
 
 b Zech. xiii. 1. 
 M2
 
 164 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 the human race. The sacramental tide of blessing 
 and of cleansing continues to supply the needs of 
 the perishing nations of mankind, and to apply 
 the Blood of Christ, ever fresh, to those who are 
 engaged in the conflict of the spirit against the 
 flesh, and to give strength and refreshment to the 
 regenerate, in whom even this " infection of nature 
 doth remain." 
 
 The power of the cross is taught us in one 
 passage of the writings of St. John, " The Blood 
 of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all 
 sin c ." He sets forth that truth as the ground of 
 deliverance from the guilt of sin, enabling us to 
 have close communion with God, fellowship with 
 the Father and with the Son, intercommunion 
 one with another through Him, and power to 
 " walk in the light, as He is in the light d ." In 
 another passage of the writings of the same St. John 
 we learn the lesson of the glory of the cross; in 
 the ascription of praise at the opening of the Book 
 of the Revelation, his grateful heart thus pours 
 forth its tribute, " Unto Him that loved us, and 
 washed us from our sins in His own Blood, and 
 hath made us kings and priests unto God and His 
 Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever 
 and ever. Amen. 5 ' 
 
 1 John L 7. d Rev. i. 5.
 
 FROM THE GUILT OF SIN. 165 
 
 On the cross He makes the offering of Himself 
 for sin. He offers His substance. See Him de. 
 spoiled of all of which they could rob Him. 
 Scarce arrived at Calvary, they strip Him of His 
 garments ; they take off the robe of Him who . 
 clothes in white the lily of the field, and decks 
 with beauteous colour the flowers that grow a- 
 round ; they take off the vesture of Him who is 
 " clothed with majesty and honour, and who decks 
 Himself with light as with a garment 6 ." 
 
 He offers up His dignity, He submits to every 
 attack on His feeling or His affections. No 
 thought so sacred, but what it meets with insult ; 
 no love so tender, but what it is treated with 
 contumely. The King of Glory is dishonoured, 
 and Him on whom angels gladly wait, wicked 
 men take upon themselves to speak of with con- 
 tempt and to regard with scorn. 
 
 He offers up His sacred flesh; His Body al- 
 ready scored with stripes, and bleeding from the 
 pressure of the thorns; His Body, weary with 
 fasting and parched with thirst, is nailed to the 
 accursed tree, and inhuman executioners revel in 
 their work of torture. The Lord of Life is killed ! 
 The words, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him," have 
 become a satisfied desire and a fulfilled prophecy. 
 Ps. civ. 2.
 
 166 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 They have done unto Him what they listed ; His 
 Blood is shed ; He gives up the ghost. 
 
 In carrying out their cruelty, how little these 
 men knew what a work they were accomplish- 
 ing. In their seeming mastery over Him, they 
 were giving Him a victory most complete : they 
 proclaimed Him a conqueror over sin and death ; 
 they gave a theme for every preacher, and a text 
 for every sermon ; to every one who went forth 
 to tell the "glad tidings" they furnished a topic 
 and an argument, and to those who sought by in- 
 fluence to move the world they supplied the ful- 
 crum on which to rest the lever. The deliverance 
 from the guilt of sin now became a possible doc- 
 trine, for the cross of Christ was the cause of that 
 deliverance. 
 
 II. But St. Paul tells us that to some the cross 
 was an offence : to the Jew it was a stumbling- 
 block, to the Greek, or Gentile, it was foolishness. 
 In the one case it had to combat with superstition, 
 in the other it was to oppose intellectualism ; for 
 these were respectively the causes of offence in the 
 classes of whom St. Paul speaks. " To Christ in 
 His humiliation the Jews had a religious, the 
 Greeks an intellectual, objection 1 ." 
 
 The Jew was looking for signs ; he wanted 
 ' Stanley, in loc.
 
 FROM THE GUILT OF SIN. 167 
 
 some visible proof, something tangible, some tem- 
 poral prosperity, some evidence of the exercise of 
 power. Once they came to Him, saying, " Master, 
 we would see a sign from Thee g ." He answered 
 them by the declaration that their evil deeds en- 
 titled them to no sign, except that of Jonas the 
 prophet ; telling them that the men of Nineveh 
 and the Queen of the South should rise up against 
 them in the judgment, as they had accepted the 
 proffered sign, while the men around Him were 
 rejecting the counsel of God. At another time 
 in the coasts of Magdala, Pharisees and Sadducees 
 came to Him, sinking their respective differences, 
 and joining together for the purpose of tempting, 
 Him, and desired that He would shew them a 
 sign from heaven h . He gave them the reproof of 
 nature, and in an earlier part of His ministry He 
 had shewn their superstitious failing, when He 
 declared, " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye 
 will not believe 1 ." They had formed their own 
 estimate of what Messiah was to be and to do, 
 and they allowed their own false preconceptions 
 to blind their eyes, so as to refuse Him when 
 He came. 
 
 The Greek was intellectually dissatisfied; the 
 preaching of the cross was to him a system too 
 
 e St. Matt. xii. 38. " St. Matt. xvi. 1. ' St. John iv. 38.
 
 168 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 weak; the suffering death was a sign of feeble- 
 ness, the crucifixion a mark of failure ; as a hero- 
 worshipper he needed some one more as a leader 
 of a conquering people than Christ professed Him- 
 self to be; the weapons of the Gentiles' warfare 
 were carnal, were mighty without God, and the 
 strongholds they sought to pull down were very 
 different from those which Christ came to de- 
 stroy. 
 
 Again, the system of the cross was too in- 
 complete for his logical powers; the reasoning 
 seemed to him inconclusive, and no wonder, for 
 he left out the greater and more convincing part 
 of the argument. 
 
 And, my brethren, does not the spirit of these 
 two classes remain among us to the present day ? 
 Have we not among us the spirit of the Jew, 
 looking down somewhat contemptuously on the 
 means first taken for the preaching of the cross ; 
 men who are inclined to think that it was un- 
 worthy and unnatural to entrust the founding of 
 the fifth monarchy to a company of poor fisher- 
 men; that it was not to be expected to satisfy 
 the minds of those who were dwelling on the 
 idea of the fulfilment of the glorious prophecies 
 of the evangelical prophet ; that to convince the 
 world, and to establish a new religion, it would
 
 FROM THE QUILT OF SIN. 169 
 
 have been better to have had the visible assump- 
 tion of royal power, a conquering chief and an 
 army with banners; that the earth should open 
 for and swallow up the unbelievers, and that dis- 
 obedient villages should have been destroyed with 
 fire from heaven. 
 
 Have we not among us also the spirit of the 
 Greek, men who seek to obtain through the 
 intellect what God intended to be received only 
 by faith, persons who are constantly objecting 
 with one set phrase, "Well, I never could under- 
 stand;" to whom vicarious sacrifice seems an 
 impossibility ; who doubt the need of a satisfaction 
 being made for sin ; who think we are calling in 
 question the very character of God, when we talk 
 of His requiring it; who seem never to have 
 realized the real heinousness of sin, or the full 
 amount of sacrifice needed, freely offered as that 
 sacrifice was by both the Father and the Son ; who 
 never have fully accepted the idea of Jesus Christ 
 as the representative man, dying for the human 
 race in their stead, bearing the weight of the 
 Father's wrath, and in His own Person under- 
 going the penalty which was due to all mankind ; 
 never, in fact, having understood, at least so it 
 appears, the value, the purpose, or the effect of 
 the Incarnation?
 
 170 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 If to some the cross of Christ is still a stum- 
 bling-block, and to others it is still foolishness; if 
 they are still unable to make it agree with their 
 own prejudices, or cannot feel that reason is to be 
 subordinated to faith, the title of this sermon 
 will not be accepted or cared for by them; to 
 those who feel no great burden from the guilt of 
 sin, the cross of Christ can have no very spe- 
 cial interest ; they will either doubt the stain of 
 nature which that guilt declares, or they will 
 look for some other deliverance than the cross 
 of Christ. 
 
 III. But, brethren, to those who know the 
 depth of the stain of sin, how man's spiritual 
 nature becomes soiled and marked with this evil, 
 glad tidings are they which tell them of the de- 
 liverance from that guilt in and by the cross of 
 Christ. " To them which are called, both Jews 
 and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the 
 wisdom of God ;" the power of God as deliver- 
 ing from the bondage of sin, the wisdom of God 
 as exhibiting the divine wisdom of the plan. of 
 redemption. "The law of the spirit of life in 
 Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law 
 of sin and death k ." The spirit will be set free, 
 and the eyes of the understanding will be en- 
 
 k Rom. viii. 2.
 
 FROM THE QUILT OF SIN. 171 
 
 lightened by the divine radiance which shine forth 
 from the cross. 
 
 (i.) Lift up your eyes, my brethren, and behold 
 Christ upon the cross ; Christ the King, on His 
 throne of the cross, laying claim to the most en- 
 tire authority and the most universal dominion; 
 exercising the royal prerogative, and not satis- 
 fied with an external or temporal obedience, but 
 requiring the obedience of the heart, which is 
 an obedience which must last through eternity. 
 In the exercise of His prerogative He annexes 
 territory to His dominion by subjugating the will 
 of those who admit His claim ; and by the ready 
 surrender of themselves of all that they have or 
 are to Him as their Lord paramount, the Hea- 
 then become His inheritance, casting down their 
 altars, cutting down their groves, and throwing 
 their idols to the moles and to the bats. The ut- 
 most parts of the earth become His possession. He 
 is not affected by distance nor scared by numbers. 
 All shall know Him, from the least to the greatest, 
 all shall rejoice under His wide-extended and 
 triumphant sway. He subdues His enemies, He 
 " breaks them with a rod of iron, He dashes them 
 in pieces like a potter's vessel 1 ." 
 
 The insolent, the obstinate, and the unruly feel 
 1 Ps. ii. 9.
 
 172 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 the weight of His arm, for He threatens not with 
 an empty menace, neither does He unsheath the 
 sword in vain. Christ the King gives forth His 
 edicts from His throne, the cross, and those who 
 disobey Him do it to their own* cost. But He 
 manifests the kingly power most of all in His 
 royal clemency : " Shewing mercy unto thou- 
 sands" is one of His chiefest attributes ; " For. 
 giving iniquity, transgression, and sin," is one of 
 the characteristics in which He pourtrays Himself 
 in His Word. His desire is not that any should 
 perish, but that all should come to repentance ; 
 and it is from that throne of the cross that He 
 proclaims His general amnesty to mankind. "I 
 believe in the forgiveness of sins," is what He 
 puts into the mouth of each one who admits His 
 royal power ; and from the guilt of sin man finds 
 his deliverance in the cross of Christ. 
 
 (ii.) Lift up your eyes, my brethren, and behold 
 Christ upon His cross, Christ the Priest standing 
 by the altar of the cross. Or, rather, we must 
 regard Him as Priest and Victim : no other 
 victim worthy of such a . Priest, no other priest 
 worthy of such a Victim. A willing sacrifice, 
 He immolates Himself. All acts of the priest- 
 hood belong to Him : obedience, intercession, 
 and benediction.
 
 FROM THE QUILT OF SIN. 173 
 
 On our behalf He makes the offering of Him- 
 self; by His perfect obedience He fulfils the re- 
 quirements of the law ; pardon can be extended 
 to man while yet the integrity of the law is pre- 
 served ; by His patience He endures the curse of 
 the law, and He knew no sin in being made sin 
 for us, that we might be made the righteousness 
 of God in Him. 
 
 He makes intercession for us at the right hand 
 of God the Father, He pleads His own precious 
 merits, He makes His priestly offering within 
 the holy of holies, and by His perpetual mediation 
 He applies continually the virtue of His sacri- 
 fice to us. 
 
 He gives us His benediction, His blessing of 
 goodwill, expressive of His love, and His bless- 
 ing of authority conferring His grace, for without 
 doubt the less is blessed of the better. 
 
 On the one altar He offers the one sacrifice, 
 unlimited by space, unended by time, sanctify- 
 ing the earth, saving the human race ; by the 
 Blood of the cross He cleanses from the guilt 
 of sin. 
 
 (iii.) Lift up your eyes, my brethren, and behold 
 Christ upon His cross, Christ the Prophet teach- 
 ing from His chair of the cross, giving lessons from 
 this august seat, in a school of the most luminous
 
 174 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 description; setting forth a system of ethics by 
 the side of which the teaching of ancient phi- 
 losophy is confessedly imperfect; with a divine 
 eloquence which makes the oratory of the past 
 to lisp and stammer ; the highest code of morals, 
 combined with the deepest spiritual truth, that 
 which affects man in relation to God, his neigh- 
 bour, and himself. 
 
 And this is no barren teaching ; as well as giv- 
 ing a great lesson, He has set us a great example : 
 He is not only a sacrifice for sin, but also an en- 
 sample of holy life ; He is not only the repre- 
 sentative, He is also the pattern-man; Christ the 
 Man, in whose footsteps we may walk, as well as 
 Christ the Victim, who by His Blood washed 
 out the stains of the guilt of sin. 
 
 Let us rely, then, on the covenants of God, 
 the covenant of suretiship between the Father and 
 the Son, and the covenant of grace between God 
 and man. " The determination of God's counsel 
 was made upon a covenant or argument between 
 the Father and the Son, in which it was concluded 
 by them both what He should suffer, and what 
 He should receive. For besides the covenant 
 made by God and man, confirmed by the Blood 
 of Christ, we must consider and acknowledge an- 
 other covenant from eternity, made by the Fa-
 
 FROM THE GUILT OF SIN. 175 
 
 ther and the Son .... The determination, there- 
 fore, of our Saviour's Passion was made by cove- 
 nant of the Father who sent, and the Son who 
 suffered" 1 ." 
 
 Finally, the manner in which it is to be effica- 
 cious to ourselves is by applying the virtue of the 
 Blood of Christ to the soul by renewed acts of 
 faith. " The Blood of Christ alone is able to wash 
 away this deep stain, and to change the hue of 
 the spiritual Ethiopian; nothing can cleanse the 
 soul but that Blood which redeemed the soul n ." 
 
 Apply, then, that Blood by continued acts of 
 faith, feel that the guilt of sin is washed away in 
 that purifying stream, and then in your daily life 
 each day will tell you why St. Paul made " the 
 cross" the subject of his teaching, "I determined 
 to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ 
 and Him crucified ," and why he accounted 
 it matter for glory, '*' God forbid that I should 
 glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I 
 unto the world P." 
 
 m Pearson on the Creed, Art. IV., " Suffered." See also South 's 
 Sermon on Isa. liii. 8. 
 
 " South's Sermon on 1 John iii. 3. 
 
 1 Cor. ii. 2. p Gal. vi. 14.
 
 SEEMON Till. 
 
 toss of Cjmst % gjeliforana fnrai 
 % |j0ker of Sin. 
 
 BT THE 
 
 REV. T. T. CARTER, 
 
 BECTOB OP CLEWEE, BKEK8. 
 (Preacfod in the Church of St. Giles, April 1, 1859.)
 
 A 
 
 \ 
 
 GAL. ii. 20. 
 
 / am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not 7, but 
 Christ liveth in me. 
 
 THE Crucifixion was the most awful instance of 
 the power of sin, in accomplishing its penalty 
 of death, even in the person of our Lord; but 
 while yielding to it, He overcame it. He over- 
 came sin in the very nature over which it had 
 reigned. He passed through death, only that 
 Humanity in Him might come forth in a more 
 perfect life, and sin received its death-blow at 
 the very moment when it seemed most to have 
 triumphed. 
 
 The mystery thus accomplished in our Lord's 
 person was not to terminate in His person. He 
 overcame sin in our nature for the sake of that 
 nature, that not He Himself alone, but the 
 nature also of every one of His elect might 
 receive the same mysterious power. He com- 
 municates to His elect what He Himself had 
 obtained. All the acts of His earthly life were
 
 180 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 sacramental, i. e. they contained powers which 
 were to be communicated. As in His Baptism 
 He received gifts of the Spirit, which were to 
 pass on from Himself to all baptized in His Name ; 
 as in His temptation He asserted powers over 
 Satan which were to be the heritage of all who 
 follow Him in faith, even so in His crucifixion 
 He endued the whole nature which He had as- 
 sumed with power over sin. 
 
 In order to enter into this mystery it is neces- 
 sary to bear in mind two great principles. (1.) Our 
 Lord raised our nature in Himself to its perfec- 
 tion by a gradual progressive advancement under 
 trial, and on the cross this sanctification reached 
 its highest earthly stage : " He learned obedience 
 by the things that He suffered, and being made 
 perfect," He became the author of eternal salvation 
 to all them that obey Him." Perfect He was in 
 every stage of man's being, and Himself the source 
 of all perfection ever abiding in Him, because 
 from the very moment of the divine Incarnation 
 the " fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily" in 
 His human nature ; yet of necessity His perfection 
 must unfold itself according to the capacities ot 
 humanity, and it is the natural effect of advancing 
 years and progressive trial to develope increasing 
 powers in man. It was necessary, then, in order
 
 FROM THE POWER OF SIN. 181 
 
 that the appointed laws of humanity should not 
 be violated in His person, for He was in all 
 things "made like unto His brethren, sin only 
 except," that He should manifest in our nature 
 its ordained perfection in Himself only by growth 
 and patient endurance. In His flight into Egypt, 
 in being subject to His parents, in the Temptation, 
 in His laborious ministry under continual perse- 
 cution, in His daily self-sacrifice, in His Agony, in 
 the judgment-hall, He was progressively mani- 
 festing the perfectness of His humanity in its 
 assimilation to the Divine will, and the lessons 
 which He learnt reached their climax on the 
 cross. We see there One in man's true 
 Whom all natural sensations, purest 
 holiest affections, were subjected to a will 
 pletely united with the will of God. The last 
 act of obedience was there consummated. 
 
 (.2.) The second principle to be borne in mind 
 is the unity between Christ and all His true 
 members, a substantial unity of life. As there 
 is an organic sympathy between one portion of 
 a body and another, the health of one organ com- 
 municating itself to each other organ, health 
 spreading from one to the other, so by the links 
 which bind the members of the Body of Christ, 
 ministering nourishment throughout, the powers 
 
 : on me 
 form, in 1 1 
 instincts, i 1 -~ 
 vill com- \
 
 182 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 which His humanity obtained by obedience, are 
 communicated and become the abiding posses- 
 sion of all who are truly living in Him. 
 
 It is not uncommon to interpret all those deep 
 sayings of Scripture which speak of our * dying/ 
 our * being buried/ our ' rising again/ with Christ, 
 as though they were merely a symbolic represen- 
 tation, or mere metaphor, strong forms of expres- 
 sion intended to exhibit exalted ideas of what we 
 should strive to be. But this supposition of mere 
 imagery cannot exhaust the meaning of such 
 words as St. Paul's in the text, " I am crucified 
 with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me." Can such words be un- 
 derstood merely to denote a high state of self- 
 mortification ? Is the Apostle speaking merely 
 of an imaginary Christ having an imaginary 
 existence in him, and do his words mean no- 
 thing more than an exalted view of his own 
 spiritual advancement ? Do they not rather im- 
 ply a personal experience on the part of the 
 speaker of a life which he had actually received ? 
 When our Lord saidj "I am the Vine, ye are 
 the branches: He that abideth in Me and I in 
 him, the same bringeth forth much fruit," He 
 meant more than imagery. He meant a real com- 
 munion of life flowing from Himself; an actual
 
 FROM THE POWER OF SIN. 183 
 
 transmission of life from Himself into His elect. 
 And is it not in accordance with this language of 
 our Lord, that the Apostle by inspiration recog- 
 nises in himself the very realization of this or- 
 ganic unity, this intimate communication of the 
 powers of the Divine humanity, the raising of his 
 own nature by the participation of the virtues of 
 our Lord's person, so that the life of the disciple 
 becomes in some deep mystery identified with the 
 life of the Master, as he yielded his own will to 
 be conformed to the will of his Lord, Who in- 
 habited, Who possessed him. 
 
 From these two principles, that our Lord im- 
 parted to His humanity its perfection through 
 suffering, which suffering reached its consumma- 
 tion on the cross, and that He communicates 
 this new life from Himself to each one in whom 
 His grace works according to His purpose, arise 
 those great truths of Holy Scripture which con- 
 nect with the Cross the idea of a personal triumph 
 over sin. Among the wonderful expressions which 
 speak of a renewed man's spiritual powers, ex- 
 pressly referring them to the Cross as their source, 
 let these few be considered : " God forbid that I 
 should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me 
 and I unto the world." Again : They that are
 
 184 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections 
 and lusts." Again : " The preaching of the cross is 
 to them that perish foolishness, but unto us who 
 are saved it is the power of God." And again, St. 
 Paul's prayer : " That I may know Him, and the 
 fellowship of His sufferings, being made conform- 
 able unto His death." Here too we may see one 
 reason of the stern rebuke given to St. Peter, when 
 he shrank from the idea of the Passion : " When 
 Jesus began to shew unto His disciples that He 
 must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things, 
 then Peter began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it 
 far from Thee, Lord : this shall not be unto Thee." 
 St. Peter's answer was the shrinking of humanity 
 from the idea of suffering, when yet suffering was 
 the only means either of atonement for sin, or of 
 deliverance from its power. Our Lord's severe 
 reproof, " Get thee behind Me, Satan ; thou art 
 an offence unto Me; for thou savourest not the 
 things which be of God, but the things which be 
 of men," implied that this shrinking was subver- 
 sive of the very purpose of His coming in the 
 flesh. It was not merely a case of imperfect be- 
 lief, such as all the disciples in their measure then 
 shared ; nor merely a dread of seeing his Master 
 humbled and his own hopes disappointed; nor 
 merely a tenderness of love which would save Him
 
 FROM THE POWER OF SIN. 185 
 
 from such a destiny ; for such feelings, though 
 the result of infirmity, could not have drawn forth 
 such an awful denunciation. Our Lord viewed 
 the state of mind which his words indicated as di- 
 rectly antagonistic to the restoration of humanity, 
 as what must fatally perpetuate the soul's bondage 
 to Satan. That our Lord regarded His destined 
 sufferings not merely as a means of atonement, 
 but as a means of sanctification also, and this to 
 be realized, not in Himself alone, but in us also, 
 is evident from the words which immediately fol- 
 low, when after His reply to St. Peter He passes 
 at once to the work of the cross in the souls of all 
 who would follow Him : " Then said Jesus unto 
 His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let 
 him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow 
 Me. And whosoever will save his life shall lose 
 it ; and whosoever will lose his life for My sake 
 shall save it." St. Peter's words were the shrink- 
 ing from the idea of mortification at all, even 
 in our Lord's person. Our Lord's words are the 
 assertion of the necessity of being ourselves as- 
 sociated with Him in His sufferings. St. Peter 
 would have withdrawn our Lord from the cross. 
 Our Lord replies, that unless the cross has its 
 abiding impression on the soul of every one, he 
 cannot be saved. The same conclusion is to be
 
 186 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 drawn from our Lord's language in His last inter- 
 cessory prayer for the disciples, where, evidently 
 speaking of His approaching sacrifice, He says ; 
 " And for their sake I sanctify Myself, that they 
 also may be sanctified through the truth." The 
 expressions prove how closely in His mind the 
 thought of His sufferings was connected, first 
 with His own sanctity, and next with our sanc- 
 tity in Him. 
 
 Thus then the Cross, when received into the soul, 
 becomes a living power. It is not merely an object 
 external to us, to be contemplated by faith ; nor 
 only a ground of confidence for the forgiveness of 
 sins ; but it is a spell, a magical influence, which 
 frees the soul from evil ; yet not a mere spell, be- 
 cause it is an actual newness of life entering into 
 the soul, altering its character, raising and perfect- 
 ing its very nature by its introduction of new vital 
 powers, even the living powers of our Lord's cruci- 
 fied humanity, conforming each soul to itself. 
 
 When, thus, the Cross is received, the whole life 
 feels the influence. As the shadow of the Passion 
 falls on the heart, and the sacred wounds open to 
 the soul in their deep mystery, there comes a sure, 
 though it may be a slowly progressive, change. 
 First, there can no longer be an unresisted in- 
 dulgence of sin ; no one can continue at ease in
 
 FROM THE POWER OF SIN. 187 
 
 sin with the thought of the Crucifixion in his mind. 
 A man may not have courage to cast his sin off at 
 once, but the vision of the cross pursues the guilty 
 conscience, and rises up before it again and again, 
 unless he finally reject grace, and become repro- 
 bate. He can no more rest till, sooner or later, 
 he has confessed his sin and arisen to struggle 
 against it. And from the same consciousness, as it 
 grows, the soul is stirred to make efforts to obtain 
 self-discipline. The true strength of abstinence, 
 of self-denial, of the mortification of the senses, 
 arises out of the deepening impression of the 
 Passion. 
 
 The Cross, moreover, casts a new meaning over 
 all external objects. Our natural longings are for 
 wealth, power, pleasure, ease, earthly honour, 
 either as ultimate objects in themselves, or as 
 means towards some further selfish end. By de- 
 grees they are felt to jar against the spirit of the 
 cross. Then arises the desire to cast them away, 
 even when lawfully possessed, as though high 
 sanctity were unattainable while they remain. 
 Even things most blameless, home affections, 
 friendships, literature, change their aspect. They 
 are raised to a higher sphere, or the Cross cuts 
 between us and them. It is by the Cross that 
 the saints have learnt to bear their self-sacrifices,
 
 188 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 their persecutions in strange lands, their lives of 
 labour, their selling all their goods to give to the 
 poor, their abandonment of the world, their lone- 
 liness, their painful deaths. For in the Cross is 
 seen, more vividly than in any other teaching, that 
 not sin only is to be overcome, if we would be 
 free, but nature itself. Sin can never be over- 
 come, if to overcome it alone be the aim. It is 
 one of the elementary lessons of religion, that if 
 sin is to be avoided, the occasion of sin is to be 
 avoided also. The scene, the place, the compa- 
 nion, the predisposing cause, needs to be cut off. 
 But, more than this, there is no freedom, no se- 
 curity, till the very nature itself which once sinned 
 has been mortified, till the soul has learnt to look 
 on outward things with an equal eye, can ac- 
 cept alike riches or poverty, honour or contempt, 
 health or sickness, long or short life. For the 
 mystery of sin lies in the cravings of nature. 
 Natural feelings and instincts are the elements out 
 of which sin forms its materials of existence, and 
 our virtue is but a thing dependent on chance, 
 until the natural impulses of the soul be subdued. 
 A man living in retirement, amongst religious 
 companions, under restraints of home, fettered by 
 ties and responsibilities, may pursue what seems a 
 religious course ; but let the same person fall into
 
 FROM THE POWER OF SIN. 189 
 
 unfavourable circumstances, where temptations are 
 around him, or former restraints are removed, and 
 he may sensibly decline, and gradually fall away. 
 What multitudes there are of persons virtuous to 
 all seeming, whose virtue depends entirely on the 
 circumstances in which they happen to be ; who are 
 serious and earnest in the presence of the good, 
 but gay and intemperate in the presence of the 
 careless. Their lives are the mere result of the 
 fortuitous combination of events. They are de- 
 pendent for their good or their evil on whom they 
 happen to be with, or the scene which happens to 
 be around them. They are virtuous just as the 
 sea is calm, when no storm has stirred it. Their 
 virtue is no real virtue. And the reason is because 
 the nature of the soul is not in itself subject to the 
 law of God, nor mortified in its inner powers. 
 But the Cross is specially the manifestation of the 
 sinless nature being made subject to God. It was 
 nothing that the sinner should be crucified, "We, 
 indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of 
 our deeds, but this Man hath done nothing amiss." 
 That the sinful member should be nailed to the 
 cross was no marvel, no mystery in the condemna- 
 tion of the transgressor; but that innocence, the 
 organs and members of a Being perfectly good, 
 should be pierced with the nails, the spear, and
 
 190 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 the thorns, this is the mystery of the Cross. Even 
 so in us it were an imperfect work merely to 
 check positive transgression, merely to abstain 
 from actual sin. We are in such case still under 
 the power of our members, not our members in 
 our own power. Our senses, our passions, our im- 
 pulses, are still like the current of waters setting 
 against a barrier, though stayed for the moment. 
 But the barrier may give way ; the waters may 
 make a sudden rush and overpass it ; they may find 
 some side channel or some weak point, and to- 
 wards it the whole mass of the stream will set. 
 There is no peace, no safety, in such a state as 
 this. And therefore it is that Holy Scripture 
 teaches, that not the sin only which is in our 
 members, but our very members themselves, are 
 to be mortified, " Mortify therefore your mem- 
 bers which are on the earth ;" that our eyes must 
 be stayed from seeing, our ears learn not to hear, 
 our lips be taught the law of silence, our hand 
 restrain its touch, our appetite be inured to fast. 
 
 There are two stages of progress in obtaining 
 this power. (1.) An equanimity under external 
 states, prosperous or adverse, able to accept of 
 God, as He will, the loss or the gain, the gratifica- 
 tion or the denial, the full or the scant measure. 
 This is the state of which St. Paul speaks in his
 
 FROM THE POWER OF SIN. 191 
 
 Epistle to the Philippians: "I have learned in 
 whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. 
 I know both how to be abased, and I know how 
 to abound : everywhere and in all things I am in- 
 structed both to be full and to be hungry, both to 
 abound and to suffer need." And then he adds, 
 what follows as a consequence of such attain- 
 ment, " I can do all things through Christ which 
 strengtheneth me :" I have entered into a state of 
 holy equanimity, and therefore I have power not 
 only over sin, but over my members, which were 
 once its instruments. (2.) It is a further stage, 
 when the suffering which such a state involves is 
 borne not only without murmur, but even with 
 thankfulness to God. Of this St. Paul speaks, 
 when he applies to himself the idea of being cru- 
 cified. For manifestly it is not the sin in himself 
 which he speaks of as being crucified, it is, "/am 
 crucified with Christ;" the living self, irrespective 
 of its sin ; the humanity in him, viewed indepen- 
 dently of its acts; the very person of the man, 
 existing in his complex attributes of sensation, of 
 affection, of passion, of intellect ; the /, the inner 
 central being of the man, which in its natural 
 state has passed away, and has revived again un- 
 der another aspect : "Nevertheless I live ; yet not 
 I," not the same natural man, " but Christ liyeth
 
 192 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 in me ;" the new image of humanity conformed in 
 Christ to the Divine will, through patient submis- 
 sion to suffering ; " and the life I now live in the 
 flesh" is a reproduction of the perfected humanity 
 of Christ in a measure communicated to His elect, 
 "I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved 
 me and gave Himself for me." 
 
 The Cross, then, when thus received, has a very 
 practical bearing on our lives. As the old Prophet 
 when he would raise the dead, "lay upon the 
 child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his 
 eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, 
 and he stretched himself, and the flesh of the 
 child waxed warm," life entering supernaturally 
 into his form, through the impression of the man 
 of God uniting himself with him, even so the 
 crucified form of the true Elisha is to be impressed 
 upon each one of His elect, the pierced hands on 
 our hands, the parched mouth on our mouth, the 
 blood-streaming eyes on our eyes, each member 
 receiving the impress of His image and being con- 
 formed to His mind. It is needful for every one 
 who would follow our Lord to consider with himself 
 what portion of his nature has been to him chiefly 
 the cause of sin. It may be bodily appetite ; most 
 frequently to the young it is sensual passion; it 
 may be sloth, or mere indolence ; it may be pride,
 
 FROM THE POWER OF SIN. 193 
 
 covetousness, self-will, ambition, temper, intel- 
 lectual vanity, desire of power. Be it what it 
 may, the lesson we have been learning is to con- 
 trast the operations of this sinful faculty in our- 
 selves with the manifestation of the same faculty in 
 our Lord. We see in Him at once our condemna- 
 tion, our example, and, blessed be God, the source 
 
 of our conversion. Let the effort be to brino- 
 
 o 
 
 yourself in that one respect under the influence 
 of the grace manifested in our Lord. Let this 
 one point of your fall be studied in the light 
 of the Crucifixion, and the influence will spread. 
 The subdual of one natural passion is the decisive 
 point in the soul's history. Religion becomes from 
 that hour a reality. The spirit of the Crucified 
 has entered into that soul, and the tide of life has 
 turned. The soul has now its own experience of 
 the power of the cross ; it is no longer a theory 
 or a hope. " The Spirit beareth witness with our 
 spirit, that we are the children of God ;" " We 
 know in whom we have believed," for He dwelleth 
 in us. A new world opens; the invisible is ap- 
 prehended, the external is no longer all in all. 
 The idea of a power beyond oneself, higher than 
 nature, is felt to be a truth, and the soul passes 
 into a consciousness of what is eternal. We often 
 speak of experimental religion, as though denoting 
 o
 
 194 THE CROSS OF CHRIST, &c. 
 
 some particular kind of religion ; but no religion 
 has become real to the soul till it has become 
 experimental ; for religion is life, " Christ liveth 
 in me," and life is the sphere of consciousness 
 and the ground of experience. But for this we 
 need patient effort, for "patience worketh ex- 
 perience, and experience hope, and hope maketh 
 not ashamed, because the love of God is shed 
 abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which 
 is given unto us." And to advance in this course 
 requires perseverance in the same patient effort, 
 gradually but firmly "casting down imaginations, 
 and every high thing that exalteth itself against 
 the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity 
 every thought to the obedience of Christ."
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 |)flfoer of % Jjolg (gjmsf % Stotgtjr 
 against Sin. 
 
 BT THE 
 
 REV. G. MOBERLY, D.C.L., 
 
 HEAD MASTEE OT WINCHESTER CO1LEGE. 
 
 (PreacJted in tlie Church of St. Mary-Ike' Virgin, April 6, 1859.) 
 
 o2
 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 ROMANS viii. 9. 
 
 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the 
 Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the 
 Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. 
 
 TO be in Christ is to be within the scope and 
 influence of the Holy Spirit of God. None 
 can be in Christ without partaking also of that 
 sacred and mysterious indwelling of the Holy 
 Spirit ; nor can any, so far as we are informed in 
 Holy Scripture, have that sacred indwelling in its 
 true, full, sanctifying vitality, unless he be planted 
 into Christ, a member of the sacred body in which 
 the Holy Spirit is as the circulating and life-giving 
 blood, a branch of the Vine in which He is as the 
 sap. The Body and the Spirit are correlative, 
 the one to the other. To be a member of the 
 Body is to be made to drink into one Spirit; 
 just as by one Spirit we are baptized into one 
 Body. The one Body answers to the one Spirit, 
 and neither is, nor can be, without the other.
 
 198 THE POWER OF THE HOLT GHOST 
 
 To be in Christ, then, is to be within the scope 
 and influence of the Holy Ghost. It is an estate ; 
 it is the Christian estate, or condition. Every 
 Christian man, insomuch as he hath been planted 
 into the Body of Christ, and still remaineth in it, 
 hath also in him the indwelling of the Holy 
 Ghost. His condition is not that of a poor weak 
 creature holding out his hands to a powerful good 
 Being outside of himself, proclaiming for ever 
 his own utter helplessness, calling on God to ap- 
 proach him from without, receiving intermittent 
 helps of God in answer to intermittent or occa- 
 sional applications of prayer, his condition, I say, 
 is not such as that. It is the condition of one 
 who ought to be strong, for he dwells in a strong 
 tower who dwells in Christ, and he ought to be 
 growing stronger and stronger in whose heart is 
 the indwelling of the most strong and Holy Spirit, 
 who, if he has not the Spirit of Christ continually 
 within him, is surely none of His, who, if he is not 
 growing on in the growth and strengthening of 
 the Spirit, is surely risking the loss of his Chris- 
 tian condition, and his place in the Body of his 
 Lord. 
 
 This, I say, is the Christian estate, and we 
 build up our Christian teaching best and most 
 truly by founding it upon this basis. This is
 
 TEE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 199 
 
 the language of our Lord and His apostles re- 
 specting it. How, for instance, can any man read 
 that most precious of all the discourses of Christ, 
 written in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and 
 seventeenth chapters of St. John, and doubt that 
 this is the Lord's own gracious teaching, that they 
 who abide in the Vine (that surely is, who con- 
 tinue in the Body of Christ,) shall have the Com- 
 forter dwelling with them and in them; and, 
 having the Comforter, shall see Christ, who will 
 manifest Himself to them by the Spirit, and shall 
 have the peace of the Holy Ghost, and that re- 
 joicing of heart in the Holy Ghost which no man 
 can take from them ? 
 
 Or how can any doubt that St. Paul, in the 
 eighth chapter to the Romans, teaches the same 
 doctrine, that is to say, that they who are in 
 Christ must needs have the Spirit of Christ, so 
 that if they have not the Spirit they are none of 
 His ; but that, having the Spirit and being His, 
 they have in the Spirit life and peace, and son- 
 ship and adoption, and the witness of the Spirit 
 with their own spirit that they are heirs of God 
 and joint-heirs with Christ ? 
 
 Or how can any person doubt that this is the 
 teaching of St. John, who bids us " hereby know 
 that we dwell in God, and He in us," which is
 
 \ 
 
 200 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 surely none other than that we are very mem- 
 bers incorporate in the Body of His Son, "be- 
 cause He hath given us of His Spirit?" And 
 observe that this is the way the apostles describe 
 the estate and condition of Christian people to 
 whom they write, whether, as in a special Epistle, 
 they are addressing the whole Christian popula- 
 tion of a single city, or, as in a general one, the 
 whole Christian Church throughout the world. 
 
 But it is indeed, brethren, the sacred revealed 
 truth of Holy Scripture, that all we baptized peo- 
 ple into the Body of Christ, which is the Church 
 of God, that all we, without exception, are thus 
 made to partake of the Holy Spirit of the Most 
 High God ? Is it the very truth, not to be pared 
 away, or explained or diluted away, that as we 
 are Christians, so the blessed indwelling of the 
 Holy Ghost is surely in the heart of every single 
 one among us ? that in my heart, and your heart, 
 and the heart of every one, the Almighty Spirit of 
 God dwells with our own spirit, searching, sanc- 
 tifying if we will, any way, whether increasing or 
 grieved within us, there dwelling until the spark 
 of divine life grow strong, and burn, and purify 
 us even unto fitness for the presence of God and 
 the kingdom of heaven, or be by final impenitence 
 quenched in any soul, so that he be lost abso-
 
 THE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 201 
 
 lately and for ever ? And is this not the language 
 only of hope and charity, the hypothetical lan- 
 guage which is compatible with ever so much un- 
 certainty in each particular instance, but the very 
 language of Holy Writ, so that we must build our 
 teaching absolutely upon it, and speak so and 
 none otherwise respecting it? 
 
 I know not how any person who studies the 
 words of Holy Scripture faithfully can doubt that 
 this is indeed the way, the only way, in which 
 the Lord and His apostles speak of the condition 
 of Christian people in regard to the Holy Spirit 
 of God. But oh ! brethren, what a lofty, what an 
 awful teaching it is ! how awful in its loftiness ! 
 To think that we, every one of us, baptized into 
 the Church of God, have in our hearts the true 
 presence of the Holy Spirit of God, so that whe- 
 ther we sleep or wake, whether we are alone or in 
 company, whether we are at our prayers, or busy 
 with the most secular and least religious of our 
 employments, He is with us, not seeing us from 
 outside, but secretly and within, as spirit may 
 dwell with spirit, seeing, searching, not control- 
 ling, not coercing, but yearning to help, sanctify, 
 and save us ; and that all this has been going on 
 within us from the very font, so that thoughtless 
 or thoughtful, heedless or watchful as we have
 
 202 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 been, that Almighty searcher of hearts has known 
 and traced, yea, and felt, if I may speak so, our 
 whole history of growth or decay in grace, that 
 history which by God's great mercy in Christ is 
 not closed yet, but may still, whatever be its dark 
 passages hitherto, end in repentance and full par- 
 don, and entire sanctification in Christ. Is not 
 this a lofty teaching, brethren ? Yes, and utterly 
 awful and humbling in its loftiness, when we turn 
 one by one to ourselves, and endeavour to re- 
 member honestly and deeply how it has been 
 with us in all those years that are passed, and 
 how it is now that they are gone by for ever. 
 
 Brethren, this is a time for very faithful and 
 simple words, and I desire by God's help to speak 
 to you most plainly and unreservedly on this great 
 subject, that we may think together for awhile, 
 and still more seriously afterwards, if we will, 
 severally, of our own condition in respect of this 
 sacred indwelling. 
 
 The Holy Spirit of God is a delicate thing. 
 In Him, and in His continual and increasing 
 presence within us, is our only hope, or strength, 
 or salvation ; without Him we cannot resist 
 - temptation, or refrain from sin. If we be in 
 the flesh, which is inevitable if we be not in the 
 Spirit and the Spirit in us, we cannot please
 
 THE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 203 
 
 God. We are not naturally subject to the law of 
 God, neither indeed can we be. But we were 
 early placed by God's mercy within the sphere 
 and scope of the Holy Spirit, so that in the Ian- 
 guage of Holy Scripture the work is begun in us, 
 the seed is sown, the spark of life is lighted ; but 
 oh ! how does it fare ? Is the Divine inmate oc- 
 cupying more and more of our hearts, so as to be 
 making them more and more holy; or is He in 
 any of us losing hold of them, and gradually in 
 grief withdrawing Himself from them who will 
 not have Him ? 
 
 We know not how spirit acts upon spirit; we 
 cannot discriminate, amid the continual risings of 
 thought and feeling within our breasts, how much 
 or what is the natural growth of our own minds, 
 or what is suggested, fostered, or checked by the 
 operation of other spirits upon ours. And I be- 
 lieve that we do harm to ourselves by attempting 
 too close scrutiny into these things. Faith, and 
 love, and other spiritual graces will not grow well 
 when we are for ever trying to watch their growth, 
 trying as it were to feel the pulse of our soul, 
 trying as it were to see the seeds growing, and 
 to analyze what is ours and what is God's, what 
 is the effect of the soil and what of the rain, 
 interfering with the natural and orderly processes
 
 204 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 of growth rather than helping them, by attempt- 
 ing to dive too deep and search too narrowly the 
 manner of the mystery of the spirit of man in- 
 fluenced by the Spirit of God. 
 
 No : we must not pry too closely into the man- 
 ner of that mysterious operation. Eather cover 
 up the soil in which that sacred seed is deposited, 
 and leave it to germinate by its own holy work- 
 ing. Enough for us to know that He who alone 
 in all the world baptizeth with the Holy Ghost, 
 surely blessed His own ordinance with His own 
 mysterious gift, so that in our hearts that Holy 
 Ghost dwelleth, a spark of sacred fire never to be 
 extinguished, unless, which God forbid ! we should 
 sin fatally without repentance, and be cast forth, 
 as a branch cut off and destined for the burning. 
 Yes, brethren, one fire, or the other fire : either 
 the fire of purifying grace, or the fire of destroy- 
 ing anger. The Holy Spirit comes with fire, and 
 He will either save our souls by sanctifying them 
 in Christ, or He will burn them up with utter 
 destruction if they will not abide His searching, 
 holy, purifying fire. But though we may not too 
 narrowly pry into the manner, very carefully must 
 we watch the fact of the sacred growth of the 
 Holy Spirit in us. 
 
 In that sacred growth we are alone with the
 
 THE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 2Q5 
 
 Spirit. Neither father nor mother, neither bro- 
 ther nor companion, neither husband nor wife, can 
 either grow for us or directly help our growth; 
 no, nor directly impede it. The lonely spirit of 
 a man in its depths hath none with it but God. - 
 None can pluck it out of His hand, nor ruin it, 
 unless it consents to be ruined ; but neither can 
 any make it grow, or impart directly one spark of 
 life to it. No things outward, no Church ordi- 
 nances, nor daily prayers, nor knowledge, nor op- 
 portunities of any kind, can of themselves, or 
 directly, make us grow in the Holy Spirit. The 
 work must go on within, deep in our separate 
 souls. None can penetrate to it, or directly touch 
 it. We are alone with the Spirit of God. We 
 mingle outwardly, and know each other's faces in 
 the flesh, and judge more and less correctly of 
 each other's minds, but how slight and superficial 
 at the best is all this knowledge and judgment! 
 How little can our nearest friend or neighbour 
 really know the secrets of our heart, the real 
 thoughts, the secret wishes, the mingled feelings, 
 or fathom the secret well which each carries with- 
 in him of memory and consciousness ! But to the 
 divine indwelling Spirit the very depths are clear ; 
 He does not wait for the wordings of the lips or 
 the actings of the hand ; He knows, He searches.
 
 206 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 He would fain sanctify the deepest and most in- 
 ward stirrings of thought, wish, and will. We 
 are in the deep of our hearts, alone with the 
 Spirit. Alone with the Spirit! And He must 
 gain the separate victory with each separate soul. 
 Quite alone, quite apart from all others, except in 
 the way of outward and superficial helps, the Holy 
 Spirit must triumph separately in the depth of 
 each man's spirit. And each such victory will be 
 gained, not by the exercise of irresistible or co- 
 ercing power, but by the voluntary yielding of 
 the spirit of a Christian man to His loving lead- 
 ings, to His loving leadings who is the one only 
 Witness, the one undeceived, unbaffled, infallible 
 Witness of all we truly are, of all we have been, 
 and of all that in our hearts we truly wish and 
 purpose to be. 
 
 Brethren, when we think thus of the Holy 
 witnessing and searching Spirit, does not the 
 thought come forcibly, and as it were startlingly, 
 into each of our minds, How does He then fare 
 in me? In the midst of the forgetful world, 
 wandering on, as I have been, all my life, at one 
 time thinking more seriously of such things, but 
 at another thoughtless, and falling into all manner 
 ^ of sin and folly, oh ! how has the sacred witness- 
 ing Spirit fared in my wilful heart ? Is He there
 
 THE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 207 
 
 still ? Have I not quite banished Him by neglect 
 and forgetfulness, and worse ? Is He striving yet 
 to win me to the life of Christ, to sanctify me, 
 and save me, or has He quite yielded me up,' 
 grieved finally, and gone from me for ever ? 
 
 Happy he who is so far startled by this thought 
 as to take it deep into his heart, and dwell upon 
 it with true prayers and honest self-examination. 
 
 For, brethren, how lightly, else, do we seem to 
 live; we, the spirit-bearing souls whom Christ 
 has purchased for immortality ; how lightly, I say, 
 do we seem to live, and how lightly to hold of 
 this indwelling Spirit in all our common lives! 
 Talking so freely; reading all sorts of light and 
 sometimes debasing things ; letting our minds loose 
 in wild, and wanton, and unkind thoughts; idling 
 our time, spending our money, eating, drinking, 
 playing beyond the bounds of Christian refresh- 
 ment and recreation ; thinking, alas ! little enough 
 of the eternal Inmate who witnesses and searches 
 all, who must pray from our hearts if we are to pray 
 really at all, who is to keep us in Christ, and so 
 bring us to our everlasting inheritance. How apt 
 we are to substitute for the thought of the inwardly 
 searching Spirit our outwardly seeing neighbours, 
 comforting ourselves in our fair external seeming, 
 or our generally good character outwardly, among
 
 208 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 men, instead of welcoming the salutary pain which 
 comes of the thought of the inward, undeceived 
 Spirit. For men are blind, and men can be 
 cheated, and men are very indulgent, seeing that 
 they need much indulgence themselves, and men 
 make many great mistakes; but the Spirit of 
 God is surely like the Word of God, " living and 
 powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, 
 piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and 
 spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a dis- 
 cerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." 
 Can a spirit-bearing soul be otherwise than mani- 
 fest in His sight ? Are 'we not helpless and open 
 even as a victim with its throat exposed to the 
 knife unto the eyes of Him to whom our ac- 
 count is to be rendered? Can we deceive the 
 Spirit? Can we neglect the Spirit, even to the 
 quenching of the spark of Divine fire within us, 
 and not utterly lose Christ ? 
 
 Oh, my brethren, met as we are in this season 
 of Lent to remind one another of the evil of sin, 
 and, if it may be, to encourage one another to 
 turn to God with more and more faithful repent- 
 ance, shall we not take to our hearts this most 
 sacred and awful truth which I have been unfold- 
 ing? How fearful sin is when we thus regard it, 
 as done in the very face, so to speak, of the wit-
 
 TEE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 209 
 
 nessing and indwelling Spirit ! When St. Paul 
 speaks to the Hebrews of the hopeless case of 
 such as finally do despite unto the Spirit of grace, 
 what can he mean more expressly than this, that 
 the Spirit is in the hearts of Christian men, and 
 that when they advisedly sin without repentance, 
 that they deliberately reject Him ? that where He 
 and the spirit of a man are met alone in the deep 
 of a heart, and He desires to guide that heart and 
 sanctify it, the wilful spirit of a baptized man is 
 mad enough to disown His guidance deliberately, 
 and to resolve to have none of His sanctification ? 
 Oh, brethren, it is nothing less than ourselves, 
 ourselves entire and without reserve, ourselves in 
 soul and body, ourselves down to the most secret 
 and inward wish of our heart, that God will have 
 of us. He will not accept half-service, or outward, 
 or only half-devotion. No, this searching, in- 
 dwelling Spirit utterly rebukes and abashes the 
 idea of such unreal obedience. " My son, give Me 
 thine heart," give it Me all, hold none away, hide 
 nothing away in the deepest corner, lie not to the 
 Holy Ghost who is in thee. Didst thou bargain 
 to give less than all thou hadst for that heavenly 
 treasure, of which the Holy Ghost within thee is 
 the divine earnest and guarantee ? Nay, then, let 
 not Satan tempt thine heart to lie to that infallible
 
 210 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 Witness that is within thee, that thou shouldest 
 try to keep back part of the price of that ines- 
 timable inheritance. 
 
 Oh let us not shrink and fear, or hesitate j let us 
 yield ourselves up willingly, lovingly, to the guid- 
 ance of Him whom we cannot shun, and who will 
 most lovingly guide us. That Holy Spirit will 
 Himself give us the power to fulfil His own sacred 
 claims upon us ; only let us frankly, and faithfully, 
 and loyally render ourselves up to His discipline. 
 Does it seem like a lofty and unattainable strain 
 of doctrine to teach of the indwelling Witness, and 
 to tell you how the divine and infallible Spirit of 
 the Most High God sees, tries in the balance, and 
 would fain sanctify, every the most secret wish 
 and thought of the heart ? Does it seem to clash 
 too violently to be practical or practicable with 
 the light current of ordinary life and conversation, 
 with the true consciousness of our own hearts, to 
 be told of this sacred law of thorough saintliness, 
 of unreserved and entire devotion, which the truth 
 of the indwelling Spirit thus lays upon us ? In- 
 deed, brethren, it were a doctrine far too lofty, 
 and too terrible in its loftiness for us and such as 
 we are, if it did not carry with it its own remedy, 
 its own soothing, sacred, precious antidote. The 
 fire of God's presence will not devour us if we will
 
 THE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 211 
 
 let it purify us ; His Holy Spirit will not condemn 
 us, if we will, even now, let Him guide us and 
 have us for His own. The indwelling Spirit, much 
 as He knows of our weakness and our sin, will not 
 utterly abash and confound us at the judgment, if 
 we will yield ourselves up to Him, even now, with 
 true, penitent, undissembled purpose. 
 
 The Holy Ghost is not the witness only against 
 sin, God forbid ! nay, He is even still more our 
 strength against sin, our only strength, our only 
 possible strength, against sin. 
 
 Does not sin solicit us on every side, within us 
 and without ? Is not sin in our hearts, yea, and 
 in every member of our bodies ? Is not sin in the 
 books, in the newspapers we read ? Is not sin in 
 our lightness of talking, in our lonely times, and 
 in our times of company? Is not the defiling 
 knowledge of sin forced upon our too willing ears 
 and thoughts by everything that goes on round 
 about us ? 
 
 And what is the talisman against all this danger ? 
 What is the antidote which is to keep us unharmed 
 amid all this infection, made all the more dan- 
 gerous because men will not believe in its exist- 
 ence, except the Holy Spirit of God, ruling, 
 ruling alone and absolutely in our hearts ? 
 
 Oh, brethren, I would not speak mere words, 
 p2
 
 212 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 mere sounding words ; I would, if by the grace of 
 God I may, speak to the true consciousness of 
 each Christian here, of every single spirit-bearing 
 soul that hears me. 
 
 Can you bear to think, really and seriously, of 
 your own heart, of that deep well that is within 
 you of conscience and memory, and to recollect 
 that as the Holy Spirit of God which is in you 
 knows all now, so will all, absolutely all, all that 
 you would not for your life betray to the nearest 
 friend you have on earth, be brought out into the 
 fullest light at the day of judgment? It is not 
 more certainly revealed that our secret sins are 
 now set in the light of God's countenance a , nor 
 that He searcheth the heart b and tries the reins 
 of man c , and understandeth his thoughts long be- 
 fore, than that when He cometh to judge the world 
 He will " bring to light the hidden things of dark- 
 ness, and make manifest the most secret counsels 
 of the heart d ." And if this thought, fairly faced 
 and contemplated, be, as in itself it is, overpower- 
 ingly painful to any one, how can you then hesi- 
 tate to do the only thing that can possibly offer 
 you an escape from the pain of it ? that is, to yield 
 yourself up in body and soul, absolutely up, to the 
 
 a Ps. xc. 8. b Ps. xliv. 21 ; cxxxix. 1. 
 
 c Jer. xvii. 10. d 1 Cor. iv. 5.
 
 THE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 213 
 
 guidance of that Holy Spirit of God who is still 
 yours ? 
 
 Is sin still too strong, or does the memory of 
 former sin wind itself still too closely round your 
 thoughts, and seem to forbid you, to make it im- 
 possible for you, to detach yourself from it, and - 
 turn thus to the simple and entire obedience of 
 the Holy Spirit? Nay, (if there be any such who 
 hears me now,) let him turn all the more, memory 
 and all, to the loving, gracious Spirit within him. 
 I know well that he cannot kill at once, nor by 
 any effort of immediate will, that serpent-memory 
 of sin that coils round the heart of one who has 
 gone far from God in his youth, and has not yet 
 altogether repented. I know well how it clings, 
 and coils, and threatens, suggesting despair at one 
 time, and at another bringing up the thoughts of 
 old sin, till the soul is apt to sin again in thinking 
 of it, and long it keeps its fangs and its poison, 
 strong and venomous enough to ruin the soul that 
 allows its mastery. But let him turn all the more, 
 memory and all, and he will find at last that in 
 the strength of the Spirit by slow degrees, it may 
 be, but at last the fatal strength of that serpent- 
 memory will uncoil itself from his soul, and die 
 away around him. 
 
 But believe me, brethren, that for one who has
 
 214 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 not yet gained this victory over memory, but is 
 sore and distressed for his sin, it is an unspeak- 
 able comfort to feel in his heart of hearts that 
 whatever be his past offences, which he does not 
 wish to extenuate before God or conceal, and for 
 which he desires to have grace to repent worthily, 
 yet at this moment he really is ready to yield, 
 does yield up his heart to the Spirit, and without 
 any reserve of feeling, thought, or wish, does in- 
 wardly, yes, this moment does, a real act of inward 
 surrender, and gives his secret self to God. 
 
 And let a man so wounded reflect on that com- 
 fortable word, (oh, how comfortable to an anxious 
 soul!) that if a man, a Christian man, sin, and 
 repent of his sin, we have a Paraclete with the 
 Father, the same Jesus Christ the righteous, who 
 is the propitiation for our sins. And remember, 
 brethren, that there are two Paracletes, one in our 
 hearts, and one on the Father's right hand ; one 
 suggesting repentance and crying in holy prayers 
 from within ourselves, the other offering those holy 
 prayers for His own precious sake to the Father. 
 They never act asunder: the Paraclete in heaven 
 only offers what the Paraclete on earth inspires. 
 If, then, you have sinned, and have grace to desire 
 to repent; if at this very moment, as this message 
 of God sounds in your ears, the desire to render
 
 THE STRENGTH AGAINST SIN. 215 
 
 yourself up to God, to be holy and sanctified by 
 the Spirit, moves in your heart, is not that, think 
 you, the movement of that very Paraclete within 
 you, giving you one help more, one hope more, 
 one opportunity more of entire sanctification and 
 salvation ? And is not the other Paraclete at this 
 moment ready to offer to His Father, for His own 
 sake, the silent prayer your soul is breathing now, 
 and the worded prayers which this night before 
 you sleep your lips will earnestly and repentantly 
 pour out before God ? And how many more such 
 helps and opportunities, if you neglect this one, 
 can you reckon upon? Indeed, these are not 
 mere words, brethren, they are most deep and 
 most important truths ; shall we not lay them to 
 our heart? shall we not this night, before we lie 
 down to sleep, pray in some such petition as this? 
 O Holy Spirit of the Most High God, who, ever 
 since I was made to drink into Thee by holy Bap- 
 tism, hast dwelt in this heart of mine, who alone 
 hast known it in all its wayward and wandering 
 thoughts, who hast been grieved, alas ! how often 
 and how heavily, by my wanton, repeated, and 
 presumptuous sins ; yet who still, blessed be God 
 for His mercy, solicitest my heart, and movest me 
 to this desire of repenting and returning unto God 
 again, O Holy Spirit of my God, fill my spirit
 
 216 THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST, &c. 
 
 with Thy grace : accept it, take it, mould it, sanc- 
 tify it. Never may I forget Thy searching, puri- 
 fying, awful presence; never may I attempt or 
 wish to conceal one thought or wish from Thee. 
 Alone or in company, by night or by day, may I 
 feel and realize Thee, penetrating and sanctifying 
 my inmost soul. Strengthen me to resist sin, and 
 to bear meekly the pain which the memory of sin 
 brings, but never to be led by it to despair, or to 
 repeat my sin by dwelling on the thought of it. 
 Teach me to pray ; pray for me and with me ; 
 teach me to use aright all the means of grace 
 which Thou givest me in the Church. 
 
 And lead me on thus, O holy, sanctifying Spirit, 
 from strength to strength, that, kept in Christ to 
 the last, and made holy in my body and my soul, 
 He may confess me to be His before the Father, 
 His for ever, when He returns with His holy 
 angels to judge the world.
 
 SERMON X. 
 teaits 0f (Sraa ijre jj,elps agamsi Sin* 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. J. E. WOODFORD, M.A., 
 
 VICAR OF KEMPSFOKD, GLOUCESTERSH1EK. 
 
 (Preached in St. Giles's Church, April 8, 1859.)
 
 SEKMON X. 
 
 ST. MATTHEW iv. 4. 
 
 Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
 
 FT1HESE words, as originally used by Moses 
 -L and as quoted from the Book of Deutero- 
 nomy by our blessed Lord, have a somewhat 
 narrower signification than that which we propose 
 to give them in deducing the doctrine upon which 
 our thoughts are to be fixed to-night, "The 
 means of grace the helps against sin." In their 
 primary application they are a reproof of a very 
 common error, the error of so contracting our 
 vision to our own particular pursuits as to regard 
 them as all-important, of allowing our minds to 
 be so absorbed by the ordinary laws of God's 
 government under which we live as to forget 
 that God is above all law, and can and does 
 dispense with those laws, or supersede them by 
 a higher law, when He sees fit. Thus Moses 
 reminds the children of Israel how God led them 
 during forty years in the wilderness, feeding them
 
 220 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 with manna, a mode of nourishment unknown to 
 them or their fathers, that He might make them 
 learn that man doth not live by bread only ; that 
 over and above the common ways of sustenance 
 provided by His Providence, there are others to be 
 vouchsafed at His pleasure ; so that men, whilst ac- 
 quiescing in the ordinary course of the world, are 
 not to suffer their recognition of His personal go- 
 vernment to grow dull, Himself to be shut out by 
 the very perfectness of His laws. So, again, when 
 the same words were reiterated by One greater 
 than Moses at the commencement of His mys- 
 terious struggle with the tempter in the wilder- 
 ness, it was with a similar meaning: the devil, 
 we are told, found our blessed Lord after His forty 
 days' fast " an hungred," and forthwith upon the 
 natural wants of His human nature built up the 
 first temptation, forgetting what the author of 
 the Book of Wisdom knew, "that it is not the 
 growing of fruits which nourisheth man, but that 
 it is Thy word, O God, which preserveth them 
 that put their trust in Thee :" " If Thou be the 
 Son of God, command that these stones be made 
 bread ;" as though there were no other means of 
 satisfying the cravings of hunger than that which 
 in God's ordinary providence is the appointed 
 way of so doing.
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 221 
 
 The devil suggests the sin of putting God's 
 will in the place of God Himself; he creates a 
 temptation to distrust God's power out of the 
 admission of one of God's laws. Because by 
 bread man is meant, as a rule, to be kept alive, 
 therefore bread must be obtained by right or 
 wrong, just as men are apt to justify the seek- 
 ing a livelihood in unlawful ways by urging the 
 pressure of want, by saying that they must live, 
 losing sight of that personal providence which 
 in the midst of His most invariable laws the Al- 
 mighty still maintains. Our Lord meets the temp- 
 tation by the answer, God can, if He will, min- 
 ister unto man's need extraordinarily, so that the 
 failure of all ordinary supplies is never to suggest 
 distrust or be a plea for trespass : " It is written, 
 Man doth not live by bread alone." Such, we 
 say, is the original force of the text, but it may 
 be taken in a far wider sense. As, on the one 
 hand, it prompts the thought that deep hidden in 
 the storehouses of heaven are means of blessing 
 and preservation and sustenance as new and un- 
 dreamt of by men as was the existence of the 
 manna which, when the morning broke, lay so 
 strangely around the tents of the people of Israel, 
 BO, on the other hand, it tells us that man's life is 
 something greater, nobler, more sublime than
 
 222 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 what plenty of bread can nourish, -or scantiness of 
 bread destroy. Oh most solemn teaching of the 
 desert to the city ! Oh true voice from the 
 wilderness, ringing up to these days of overtasked 
 energies and increasing worldliness, proclaiming 
 that not in civilization and refinement, not in 
 scientific acquirements and political combinations, 
 however wise, does man's life consist ! Face to face 
 with the great adversary stands the Head and Type 
 of humanity. The tempter, who is ever in secrecy 
 and silence coming to us, has, it would appear, at 
 a crisis in the history of our race stepped forth 
 from the blackness of darkness which ordinarily 
 envelopes him : how we know not, but we can 
 scarcely read the story of Christ's temptation in 
 the wilderness without feeling that there was then 
 a manifestation of the infernal presence more clear 
 and appreciable than any which is permitted to 
 oppress us; and it is therefore with a solemnity 
 greater even than that which usually accompanies 
 the words of our blessed Lord, that the oracular 
 utterance of the text is invested, striking as it 
 does the keynote of the mystery of human life in 
 the ears of the enemy whose perpetual toil is to 
 make all human life a discord and confusion: 
 " Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 223 
 
 You will observe that these words affirm, 1. 
 what true life is not, and by inference what it 
 is; 2. how man's true life is sustained. Let us 
 dwell in order upon both these truths. 
 
 1. The text affirms that life is not "by bread 
 alone." 
 
 It is a very marvellous gift, our independent 
 individual existence. All life flows from God; 
 He is the great fountain of being ; and yet though 
 the mighty sum of existences is all derived from 
 one common source, each drop no sooner begins 
 to flow than it is found to have a will of its own, 
 habits, tastes, faculties distinct from those of any 
 other. The " breath of life which the same God 
 hath breathed into every man" is in each an 
 independent thing, rounded in itself and perfect, 
 isolated and self-complete. And if the gift of 
 life to every man be thus wonderful, no less great 
 is that which we have to do with it. " To live," 
 is to train, and draw out, and mature all those 
 faculties which are within us. The life of every 
 man is threefold ; the breath of God which is in 
 him has, that is, three elements, each of which it is 
 man's duty to cultivate and develope. Thus there 
 is in every one an animal, an intellectual, and a 
 moral life. We are called upon not only to main- 
 tain ourselves in health and strength, to eat and
 
 224 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 drink, and provide for such wants; not only to 
 exercise the powers of reason, and imagination, and 
 invention, which are the instrumentality by which 
 man fulfils his lofty mission, "to have dominion 
 over and subdue the earth," but we have likewise 
 to cherish all those faculties of love and awe, and 
 reverence and faith, by which we hold on to God, 
 anchoring our being within the veil. " Life," then, 
 regarded in its highest aspect, consists in the 
 maintenance of our relation to God, in growing 
 like-minded with God, loving what He loves, 
 hating what He abhors. That the true life of 
 man is such as this, may be gathered from what 
 is told us in Scripture of the second death, or death 
 eternal. Thus, when we read that the " unbe- 
 lieving and the abominable shall have their part 
 in the lake which burneth with fire and brim- 
 stone, which is the second death," we do not 
 conclude from the terrible decree that there will 
 be any extinction of life in the doomed ones ; the 
 second death is not annihilation ; it is rather the 
 final severance between man and God; it is the 
 withering and snapping asunder for evermore of 
 all those feelings which link man to his Maker, 
 and which, until then, are even in the vilest not 
 wholly ruptured. The second death ! it is the 
 shrouding and burying the soul out of God's
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 225 
 
 sight, so that never again shall it be conscious of 
 one feeling of hope in Him, or love of Him, or 
 desire after Him ; never again shall one cheering 
 ray from the Father of lights break upon the 
 everlasting gloom of that living sepulchre, to 
 awaken a pure thought or holy aspiration. It 
 will live on, the soul of the lost, for ages; ay, 
 but like the swathed and bandaged corpse in the 
 mummy-pit, a loathsome image of what it was ; 
 enduring, but incapable of a single movement of 
 spiritual life. And from this consideration ' of 
 what the death of the soul shall be, may we 
 reason back to that which is its life. To be 
 able to pass away from the myriad sights and 
 sounds which circle us around, and to see beyond 
 the throne of the Invisible; to rise above the 
 cares, and ambitions, and rivalries which make the 
 ear dull and the eye dizzy, and to rejoice in the 
 light and the calm of a sublimer Presence ; to be 
 conscious in the depths of our spirit of an actual 
 interchange of love between ourselves and our 
 Creator, to be sensible of a real communion with 
 Him ; to find that our hearts are gradually loosen- 
 ing from the outer world, and are being slowly 
 but perceptibly drawn more and more within the 
 shadow of the Unseen ; to be aware of a growing 
 conformity in our desires and inclinations to what 
 Q
 
 226 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 instinct tells us is God's character and will, this 
 is " life," the true " life of man/' the right de- 
 velopment of his Maker's primal gift: anything 
 short of this, bodily strength and vigour, in- 
 tellectual refinement, skill in art, profundity of 
 learning, is not the thorough expansion of the 
 soul's life ; we fall beneath our due level, we rise 
 not up to the full ideal of our nature, if as we 
 advance in years we do not advance in religious 
 faith, in love to God, and independence of earth. 
 Arid this "life" is a life which is cherished by 
 other atmospheres than that of this world, whose 
 hunger is fed by other fruits than those which 
 grow from this soil, whose thirst must be slaked 
 by other streams than those which run among 
 the hills. This is the life which, consisting of 
 heavenly-mindedness, devotion, self-sacrifice, is 
 lived not " by bread alone." 
 
 2. But now we arrive at the main question, 
 " How this highest life of man is maintained ?" 
 And the reply is, " By every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God." Our blessed Lord 
 here seems to assert that the spiritual growth of 
 man is promoted by knowledge of and meditation 
 upon those truths which are matters of distinct 
 revelation, by those supernatural gifts of grace 
 which come direct from the Holy Ghost. This
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 227 
 
 we take to be the full meaning of the text. 
 Prayer and thanksgiving, more especially that so- 
 lemn gathering together of worshippers in Christ's 
 Name, which has the mysterious power of draw- 
 ing Him down to be in an especial way amongst 
 us ; sacraments and sacramental rites, which are 
 the very channels through which the powers of 
 the world to come are tasted by the soul, which 
 constitute the ladder of communication between 
 earth and heaven, these are the heavenly bread, 
 the hidden manna wherewith the Head of the 
 Church purifies and confirms the hearts of His 
 people, strengthening them against sin, and sta- 
 blishing them in righteousness. The appointed 
 means of grace are the ordained instrumentality 
 for preserving us from spiritual death. Now in 
 setting forth Church services and sacraments as 
 the helps against sin, we may not forget that there 
 is a disposition to undervalue them, as if they had 
 no such virtue. It is not only that the openly 
 profligate and profane cast scorn upon the as- 
 serted necessity of frequenting the worship of the 
 sanctuary, there is also an inclination amongst 
 respectable and thoughtful men to deny that the 
 way of the Lord is there ; there is a latent un- 
 belief as to the reality of any special presence 
 vouchsafed to the great congregation. Hence mere
 
 228 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 intellectualists are heard to say that they can feel 
 God and adore God better when abroad upon 
 the silent hills beneath the blue outspread of the 
 firmament, than in the stateliest structure of wood 
 and stone :, and hence, in perfect consistency, there 
 is a holding aloof from regular and distinct acts of 
 worship on the part of many men of indisputable 
 integrity, who are forward to acknowledge and to 
 trace in the fabric of creation the signs of the 
 being and providence of God, but have no heart 
 for prayer or Holy Communion, because no faith 
 in God, drawing near to them and operating upon 
 their spiritual being therein. 
 
 In opposition to such, we would argue that the 
 constant attendance at the ordinances of religion 
 is a sure preservative against infidelity and vice. 
 But how? Is it not the fact that persons whose 
 secret life will not bear to be closely looked into 
 are often very regular in performing the outward 
 acts of worship ? that many a man who has been 
 for years remarkable in his parish or neighbour- 
 hood for steady church-going, has been ere now 
 discovered to have been all along a partner in 
 some huge fraud, so that his punctuality at church, 
 and Sacrament, and family worship, has been a 
 cloke to his sin instead of a preservative against 
 it ? Doubtless such cases have occurred ; but even
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 229 
 
 these do not prove the point, that the use of the 
 means of grace has no force to hold up a man's 
 goings. True, a person may be found to have 
 been for a long space of time in a great trespass 
 whilst studiously kneeling week after week in 
 the church and at the altar; but you cannot 
 tell whether that regular worship did not for a 
 considerable time assist him in making head 
 against the temptation. True, he fell ; but how 
 long did he hold out before he fell ? true, his cha- 
 racter has been false, and yet, in the midst of 
 great sin, how many traits of good may be trace- 
 able which even that hollow worship may have 
 tended to cherish. Into what deeper gulf would 
 he have sunk, but for that unworthy homage which 
 some faint whisperings of the crushed conscience 
 would not let him wholly abandon? So much 
 may be said in behalf of the power of religious 
 worship in the worst cases, but in the great majo- 
 rity we believe the power goes farther. The man 
 who is admitting into his heart the poison of un- 
 belief, or who is presumptuously living on in sin 
 which himself knoweth, will find the services of 
 the sanctuary such an intolerable burden that he 
 will be driven to neglect them, or to give up his 
 hidden lust ; for a while he may go on kneeling, 
 repeating words of prayer, communicating as a
 
 230 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 matter of habit, or from unwillingness to distress 
 some whom he loves, and who would be pained if 
 he refused to worship by their side ; but the sense 
 of hypocrisy in all this will become in time so 
 oppressive as to prevent him crossing the church 
 threshold, or compel him to close the ear of his 
 soul determinately against the promptings of in- 
 fidelity or desire. And this is one way in which 
 the means of grace operate as preserving from sin; 
 men cannot go on using them long, whilst the 
 accursed thing is folded up in their hearts. On 
 the other hand, they are not prepared altogether 
 to fling aside the faith of their youth, the hope, it 
 may be, which they have seen light up with un- 
 earthly radiance the face of the dying in the last 
 agony; they are not bold enough to sign away 
 their chance of salvation by a self-excommunica- 
 tion from the religion of Christ; and therefore 
 the result frequently is that they keep on wor- 
 shipping, and struggle against their sin. The 
 secret lust cannot co-exist with the constant 
 prayer; and so, blessed be God, not unfrequently 
 the strong man is defeated by the stronger than 
 the strong. 
 
 But this is not all : the ordinances of Christ are 
 a defence against sin, because they are the means 
 and the pledge of daily forgiveness. What is
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SW. 231 
 
 this? It is, men and brethren, that there could 
 be no striving after holiness without the assurance 
 of pardon for our perpetual infirmities. Suppose 
 for one moment that there were no provision for 
 forgiving our trespasses, why, we must needs sit 
 down in despair of ever working out our salvation. 
 Without the knowledge of pardon and remission 
 ever flowing down from our Father in heaven, 
 there would be no struggle, because no hope of 
 victory. Unless these waters of comfort were ever 
 murmuring in our ears, we should feel it vain to 
 attempt to sow in righteousness. And it is not 
 only that man requires daily pardon, he requires 
 also the sense of the assurance of that pardon. 
 We distrust ourselves; we are not satisfied hav- 
 ing to appropriate God's promises to ourselves. 
 The human mind craves some authority external 
 to itself, to seal and certify its own convictions. 
 It is not enough that promises of pardon be con- 
 tained in the Bible, not enough that the fruit hang 
 abundantly on the bough; our nature requires 
 that some hand, not our own, be stretched forth 
 to gather and place that fruit in our mouths. And 
 here is the scope for a standing ministry, for Sa- 
 craments with an outward, visible sign; for all, 
 in short, which we term the ordinances of religion. 
 The parish church, oh ! it is in every village the
 
 232 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 pledge of forgiveness, the sign from heaven assur- 
 ing those that fall that they may be lifted up ; the 
 absolving words, the Sacramental bread and cup, 
 they are the instrumentality of conveying not 
 only forgiveness, but what man equally requires, 
 the sense of forgiveness, that he may go forth 
 again to the warfare and the toil with fresh 
 hope of success. Indeed, we have in these means 
 of grace just what Adam had not in paradise, 
 and for lack of which that first covenant be- 
 tween God and man utterly failed. We read 
 in Scripture that Christ was manifested to destroy 
 the works of the devil, to undo the ruin which 
 was wrought by the fall; but that ruin is not 
 repaired unless mankind be replaced in as fa- 
 vourable a position as Adam held. Can it, then, 
 be maintained that we under the Gospel dispen- 
 sation are as well situated for winning heaven as 
 was our first parent in Eden? There is, doubt- 
 less, something very startling in the thought that 
 we in this disorganized state, with a corrupt nature, 
 should be in position equal to him who stood forth 
 upon the young earth in the glory of a perfect 
 manhood, ignorant of evil. And yet is this quite 
 true ; and the truth depends upon the fact of our 
 possession of the ordinances of religion, not as 
 mere ceremonies, but pledges and channels ot
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 233 
 
 hidden grace. Consider what were God's require- 
 ments of Adam, perfect obedience : he must 
 obey the Divine will completely; there must be 
 no flaw in his fidelity, no soil in his integrity. 
 And herein is the grand fundamental difference 
 between the covenant under which Adam lived 
 and the Christian covenant. In the Adamite 
 dispensation there was no provision for the short- 
 comings of the creature, no mention of forgive- 
 ness; the very watchword of the Christian cove- 
 nant is " the pardon of sin." There is a terrible 
 sternness in the terms of God's covenant with the 
 first man, " In the day that thou eatest thereof 
 thou shall die." No mention of penitence, no 
 hint of mercy. To Adam, like Esau, was vouch- 
 safed no place for repentance, though he should 
 seek it carefully with tears. And need we re- 
 mind you of the gracious contrast between this 
 state and ours? "All we like sheep have gone 
 astray !" Oh sad confession of universal humanity ! 
 Who is there among us who does not make it his 
 own ? Young man, look back upon the portion of 
 life past : few and evil, thy heart tells thee, have 
 the days of thy pilgrimage been. Old man, travel 
 over again in thought the path along which God 
 hath led thee ; canst thou reckon up the number 
 of thy misdeeds? And if we each write such a
 
 234 TEE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 bitter record against ourselves, what, think you, is 
 the record in God's book ? "Who can tell his secret 
 sin? And yet, notwithstanding all we have done 
 and left undone, we dare still to die in hope of a 
 glad rising again. Wherefore? Because as often 
 as we turn from our sin, God turneth from His 
 wrath. 
 
 And in this one fact we have enough to balance 
 all the advantages which Adam reaped from the 
 possession of an unfallen nature. The long-suf- 
 fering of God was a doctrine never heard of in 
 paradise, it is the prominent feature of Chris- 
 tianity. Noble, we question not, was the thanks- 
 giving and praise which went up from among the 
 trees of the garden ; but, alas ! one transgression 
 destroyed the soul's life; one fault, and all its 
 capacities for holding communion with God were 
 annihilated. The life that is in us nothing but a 
 course of hardened guilt can quench. "If we con- 
 fess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us 
 our sin." And of this forgiveness offered seventy 
 times seven, our churches, and Sabbaths, and 
 Sacraments are the eternal witness. If, on the 
 one hand, by them we confess God before men, 
 by them, on the contrary, God loosens us from 
 the bands of sin ; if through them the fruit of the 
 lips ascends to the highest heaven, through them
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 235 
 
 likewise the light of heaven shines into the soul. 
 It is the hour of prayer which sanctifies every 
 other hour; it is the partaking of that one Bread 
 and Cup which softens animosities, and stills com- 
 plainings, and allays desire. Then, notwithstand- 
 ing languid attention and wandering thoughts, 
 the eternal world weaves its solemn shadows 
 around us sobering and elevating; then, if we 
 concentrate our powers upon what we are about, 
 (for, indeed, the prostration of the whole man, 
 body, soul and spirit, at the footstool of Deity, is 
 no listless effort, but the work of a strong will and 
 high purpose,) we feel the springs of another ex- 
 istence quickened within us. It is the act of wor- 
 ship which itself answers every question as to the 
 use of worship : we may not scan over-closely how 
 the Word or the Sacrament operate upon the 
 soul ; this is the hidden Manna with which He 
 whose Name is secret feeds the life which is 
 hidden with Himself in God. Hence as long as a 
 man is found a constant worshipper and a partaker 
 of Christ's ordinances, we have always strong hope 
 that, notwithstanding failures and backslidings, 
 and deeds unworthy of his high calling, he may 
 yet be built up. But when he is self-banished 
 from the ordinances of religion, when the last 
 lingering traditions of the faith and fear of child-
 
 236 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 hood can no longer draw him across the threshold 
 of the sanctuary, when he first drops off from the 
 Lord's Supper, and ceases next to kneel, as it 
 were, in the outer court, then do we augur for 
 that man a fearful gathering of the legions of 
 darkness around him, an unchecked descent into 
 free-thinking, unbelief, and moral contamination, 
 a gradual but sure extinction of that higher life 
 of the soul which is lived not by bread alone, 
 but by every word which proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God. 
 
 We urge you, then, as the sum of the whole 
 matter, to a steady, humble use of all the means 
 of grace. Never be led by the presumptuousness 
 of a little knowledge to undervalue or forsake 
 what saints and martyrs have testified to have 
 been to them as " water in the desert, as the shadow 
 of a great rock in a weary land." Never let the 
 pleasures, or business, or science of this world en- 
 croach upon your mind so as to incapacitate you 
 for God's worship. There is a life which is main- 
 tained by the sweat of the brow, there is another 
 life of man's soul which is fed, not by corn and 
 wine, but by prayer, and praise, and Holy Com- 
 munion. It is but in the germ, this spiritual life ; 
 but if we cherish it, it will develope more and 
 more till the capacity of concentrating our thoughts
 
 THE HELPS AGAINST SIN. 237 
 
 for a brief hour upon God shall have ripened into 
 the faculty of crying " Holy, holy, holy !" without 
 rest or weariness by day or night ; if we neglect 
 it, even our present feeble powers of knowing and 
 praising God will wax less and less, until we are 
 fit only to be dwellers of that outer darkness, from 
 which no cry of " Abba, Father !" is ever wafted 
 upwards, where no intercourse between the spirit 
 of the creature and the Creator ever breaks the 
 silence of that everlasting exile, the stagnation of 
 that second death.
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 a (iimrb against Sin. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. C. P. EDEN, M.A., 
 
 VICAE OP ABEBFOBD, YOBKSHIBE. 
 (Preached in the Church of St, Mar y-th&- Virgin, April 13, 1859.)
 
 SERMON XL 
 
 LAM. iii 40. 
 Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. 
 
 FT! HE holy man who wrote these words appears 
 -L to have felt that the searching and trying 
 our ways was an advantageous step toward a 
 practical change of life, and turning to the Lord. 
 We may consider him as instructing us to hope 
 that self-examination, duly and piously and ear- 
 nestly performed, may be (under God's blessing) 
 a very great help and guard to us against sin. 
 This, brethren, is our subject to-day; we would 
 approach it in the spirit of prayer, and in reliance 
 on God's help and guidance. The holy prophet 
 says to his countrymen, " Coine, let us search and 
 try our ways." He calls them (you observe) as to 
 a work to which they needed to be exhorted and 
 pressed; and well he might do so, for the work 
 of self-examination is not at all an agreeable work. 
 Some religious works are agreeable ; for example.
 
 242 SELF-EXAMINATION 
 
 the meditation on God's goodness and the bene- 
 fits He has bestowed upon us. " A joyful and 
 pleasant thing it is to be thankful." But it is not 
 at all a joyful and pleasant thing to consider 
 closely our own ways, and see how we have be- 
 haved ourselves toward our good and gracious 
 Father who is on high. 
 
 " 'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, 
 And ask them what report they bore to heaven, 
 And how they might have borne more welcome news ," 
 
 but no poet hath ventured to call it greatly 
 pleasant. Therefore we must, in proportion as the 
 work is unattractive, if it is at the same time 
 pressingly needful, be watchful over ourselves 
 that we do not neglect it. And here I may no- 
 tice, that self-examination is one of those religious 
 exercises which it behoves us of the church of 
 England especially not to neglect, because among 
 us confession to a priest is not insisted upon ; and 
 therefore the examination of ourselves in the sight 
 of God needs to be the more carefully performed ; 
 and I have no doubt that it may, if performed 
 with due care and diligence, be the better safe- 
 guard of the two. But to proceed ; the subject 
 we are upon would be, if taken in its full extent, 
 exceedingly wide. If we were to dwell upon the 
 a Young, Night Thoughts, ii. 376.
 
 A GUARD AGAINST SIN. 243 
 
 urgent necessity of self-examination, with a view 
 to the confession of our sins, and so to the obtain- 
 ing pardon from God and peace of mind, a wide 
 subject indeed ; or if I were to offer you sugges- 
 tions for the method and management of your self- 
 examination in God's sight, another wide sub- 
 ject ; the matter were too much, I should detain 
 you too long. Therefore I ask you to fix your 
 thoughts upon the subject appointed precisely 
 for our consideration to-day, namely, upon self- 
 examination regarded in its precautionary aspect, 
 as a measure of prudence toward the resisting of 
 temptation, a help and precaution against sin. 
 Very practical is our subject. I permit myself to 
 hope, brethren, that you are expecting 1 * to hear 
 it scripturally handled; you will forgive me this 
 one allusion, remembering where I stand ; nor will 
 you be offended if I set forth to you the most 
 simple and homely reflections for indeed they 
 are the best and most cogent that occur to me 
 on the subject. 
 
 First, then, the work of self-examination has 
 this advantage, that it is a real, personal act; 
 and in religion (as has been well observed ) what 
 a man does for himself is of much more avail than 
 
 b The writer had the happiness formprly of being Vicar of 
 St. Mary's. 
 
 K2
 
 244 SELF-EX A MINA TION 
 
 what others do or can do for him. In the stand- 
 ing ordinances of religion, in the Sacraments, in 
 public worship, and in hearing the Word preached, 
 the ministry of others comes in ; but not in that 
 important work of which we now speak. In self- 
 examination, strictly so called, each man is his 
 own minister, and Christ, who is above, the only 
 Priest. But each man his own minister ; he must do 
 the work for himself, and not another ; and with 
 his own mind and attention moreover. Other reli- 
 gious actions may be ' gone through/ as it were, 
 with little thought and attention; but self-ex- 
 amination, if performed at all, is performed with 
 the mind ; with a real application of the faculties 
 to the matter in hand. And this reflection is 
 closely connected with another ; 
 
 2. Self-examination is a private work ; which is 
 a very important point. The public ordinances 
 of religion have their place and value, their great 
 value ; these walls would rebuke me if I underrated 
 the Church's ordinances; the stones would cry out. 
 But the religious improvement of the heart is en- 
 tirely dependent on what passes in private; I 
 mean, is measured by that. What a man is in pri- 
 vate, that he is; and it is in the personal inter- 
 views with our Maker that the critical transactions 
 of our religious history are performed. " For in-
 
 A GUARD AGAINST SIN. 245 
 
 iluence and effect upon a man's self," says that 
 sensible writer, Paley, " there is nothing compar- 
 able to what passes in private. There is no hypo- 
 crisy, for there is no one to see you ; there is no 
 restraint, no being tied down to forms, nothing to 
 disturb or take off your attention." And the re- 
 sult is plain, and well known ; those impressions 
 are always the deepest, which are made which 
 a man fastens upon himself, we may say, in his 
 own meditations. 
 
 Now these are general remarks. The subject 
 seems to demand even a closer handling. Ob- 
 serve, then, that self-examination is 
 
 3. A rehearsing of the judgment-day, for it is a 
 having the soul up before conscience, and con- 
 science is God's voice in the heart. But in the 
 judgment-day, we are instructed to believe that 
 there shall be a bringing forth to the light of each 
 man's every action, in its detail and particular, 
 and (which is much to be observed) in its motive 
 and inward cause. Now these are the things 
 which cannot be discerned without much of care- 
 ful consideration and thought. In the last day 
 they shall all stand out to view, because God 
 shall bring them forth ; but now, in this life, they 
 are greatly hidden even from ourselves ; and who- 
 soever among you, dear brethren, has been the
 
 2 16 SELF-EX A M1NA TION 
 
 most accustomed to this important work of self- 
 examination, will be the most prepared to assent 
 to what I say, that we have constantly not a 
 glimpse of our real motive in things which we do. 
 But self-examination may assist us here ; as it is 
 needful for our detecting, so it may, with God's 
 blessing, greatly help us to discern and detect the 
 real truth in this matter, and will be therein a 
 rehearsing (as I said) and anticipating of the dis- 
 closures of the great day. But dismissing the 
 subject of our motives, important as it is, we recur 
 to what was said above, that in self-examination 
 we bring up the several actions of our day in re- 
 view; we ask ourselves, "O my soul, what hast 
 thou done ? remember, the things thou hast done 
 are written down in God's book ; remember that 
 He gives thee this opportunity of self-recollection 
 and review, to the intent that the sins thou hast 
 committed to-day may not be repeated to-morrow, 
 and thou, my soul, be made hard and unclean by 
 familiar contact with sin." Then comes the re- 
 view, and things which were wrong, but which 
 else had been permitted to slip away into oblivion, 
 and had never been seen again till we faced them 
 at the last day, are drawn back, and made to stand 
 and be looked at ; and we see how Satan gained 
 an advantage against us, through our own negli-
 
 A GUARD AGAINST SIX. 247 
 
 gence and folly. We see our evil deed ; and, none 
 being present but God, we have not that tempta- 
 tion to palliate or excuse it which we should have 
 in conversation with a fellow-creature. No, there 
 we are before God's throne by anticipation, that 
 throne before which the man found without the 
 wedding-garment, when questioned why he has 
 it not, is speechless. Conscience shall be mute, 
 as representing the impartiality of that hour; 
 and be honest with herself, may be, when she 
 hath no temptation to be otherwise. Now such a 
 review of the day's actions as is here described 
 is needful for our religious advancement, just for 
 this reason, because repentance is needful d , and 
 without it we shall perish. But repentance is not 
 a name or a shadow, it is a serious observation of 
 our sins, and a deep regret for them, and a solemn 
 renouncing of them, and a leaving them off. This 
 is repentance, to which the disciples of Jesus 
 Christ are called, and which the heirs of salvation 
 do practise. But such a repentance absolutely 
 requires and supposes a careful review of the ac- 
 tions of our life, and that at stated and oft-re- 
 curring periods, so that the actions may be re- 
 membered, and not slip through, from the length 
 of time through which the review extends, and 
 d Law's Serious Call.
 
 248 SELF-EXAMINATION 
 
 the difficulty of recalling its performances. The 
 case, in short, is this, in order to repentance we 
 must know what we have to repent of; for it 
 were a mere trifling with our Maker to use the 
 language of humiliation and contrition when not 
 really thinking of the things which we have done 
 in disobedience to Him and disregard of His holy 
 will. No, there must be a review, or there will 
 be no repentance, nor any advancement there- 
 fore in the Christian life. And the review must 
 be daily, that is, at the close of each day. Keep 
 short accounts with thy soul ; the dealers of this 
 world can teach thee thus much. Trafficker for 
 eternity ! keep short accounts ; balance thy pages 
 each day ; and then in thy dying hour thou shalt 
 have but one day's page to review 6 . Therefore 
 must the review be daily. A heathen found out 
 thus much: "Let not sleep," said Pythagoras, 
 *' fall upon thy soft eyelids, until thou hast first 
 gone over thrice the actions, all and each of them, 
 of the day ; asking thus, Where have I trans- 
 gressed ? what good have I done ? and what duty 
 have I left undone ?" Thus a heathen spake ; a 
 Christian will vary his questions somewhat from 
 these, asking himself how much nearer he hath 
 drawn to heaven's gate since he last examined his 
 Sherlock's Practical Christian.
 
 A GUARD AGAINST SIN. 249 
 
 soul in God's sight, what advances he has made in 
 Christian watchfulness, how far the love of God 
 has been the one constraining motive and rule of 
 his actions through the day, and how much of 
 that mind hath been in him which was in Christ 
 Jesus; how far he hath watched for the oppor- 
 tunities of serving his Lord ; what warnings he 
 has had, and how they affected him ; what means 
 of grace, and how he availed himself of them. 
 These are some of the questions which the dis- 
 ciple of the Lord Jesus will desire to ask himself 
 at the close of the day. But I must not attempt 
 to exhaust this portion of the subject, the methods 
 (namely) and the rules of our self-examination; 
 I am supposing it to be known in general what 
 these will be, and I am speaking of the benefits 
 of the practice when rightly performed. I shall 
 allude briefly to two more of these benefits, and 
 so conclude. 
 
 4. And first, the practice of this careful and 
 periodical self-examination will most assuredly 
 soften and humanize the character in regard of 
 the social intercourses of life ; making him who is 
 diligent in such practice, gentle and merciful and 
 forgiving toward his fellow-creatures; those, I 
 mean, among whom he lives in daily and domestic 
 relations. And it will have this effect for the
 
 2 5 SELF-EX A MINA TION 
 
 following reason; he who practises careful and 
 searching examination of himself, with due regu- 
 larity, in the sight of God, will be astonished in dis- 
 covering how exactly the things which he has ever 
 complained of in the behaviour of his fellow-crea- 
 tures towards himself, find their counterpart in the 
 things which he has done to his Maker. I would 
 exhort him who deems these things of importance, 
 to observe how just the very points which were 
 the chief offence in the injuries done to himself 
 are characteristics too largely of his own behaviour 
 toward his heavenly Father. The slight, the dis- 
 respect, the unthankfulness, and forgetfulness of 
 promises, just the things which are taken so un- 
 kindly between man and man, which constitute 
 the sting of injury, and alienate between heart and 
 heart, are the very same which we find thai 
 we have to ask our Heavenly Father, having ex- 
 perienced at our hands, not to resent, but to for- 
 give ; for mercy's and for Christ's sake, to forgive. 
 Therefore the self-examiner is a merciful man. 
 
 5. And lastly, he is what each one of us would 
 desire to be, but what the neglecter of self-ex- 
 amination will hardly be a profitable attendant 
 on the services of the Church. And he is so for 
 this reason ; that having considered his ways, he 
 knows what he has to confess when he comes
 
 A GUARD AGAINST SIN. 2.~)1 
 
 into his Mater's presence. He attaches meaning 
 to the words he uses in God's house; he has 
 'prepared his work without,' according to Solo- 
 mon's advice in the Proverbs; like Solomon's 
 workmen, who hewed their stones at a distance 
 and then brought them to be silently framed into 
 a temple. The worshipper who hath diligently con- 
 sidered his ways in the retirement of his chamber, 
 hath weighed himself and found where he was 
 wanting, hath a meaning in his words when he 
 saith to God, " Almighty and most merciful Fa- 
 ther, we have erred, and strayed from Thy ways 
 like lost sheep; we have followed too much the 
 devices and desires of our own hearts; we have 
 offended against Thy holy laws; we have left 
 undone those things which we ought to have done, 
 and we have done those things which we ought 
 not to have done ; and there is no health in us." 
 These words, so powerless and unmeaning as they 
 have often been, alas, from our lips, might have 
 risen up with a different force if they had been 
 the utterance of a well-prepared heart. The visits 
 to God's house are stages in his life, are steps 
 from earth to heaven, to him whose thoughts have 
 been rightly employed during the interval between 
 his visits there ; whose one confession speaks to 
 his former confession, and (may be) rebukes it,
 
 252 SELF-EXAMINATION- 
 
 but with a sweet rebuke, for it is administered at 
 the footstool of a merciful and forgiving God. 
 
 ' There is mercy with Him, and therefore shall 
 He be feared :' and because He hath been so 
 wonderfully forbearing toward us, therefore we 
 will, brethren, with His help, be for the future 
 less indulgent toward ourselves. If undue indul- 
 gence even toward a child is great unkindness, 
 and a laying up of sorrow and a sadder conflict 
 for the victim of our indulgence in the hours to 
 come, what is it when shewn toward our own 
 soul? No; he is wise whose wounds do freely 
 and graciously bleed, in the tears of compunction 
 and godly sorrow ; in such probing of the sore as 
 shall issue in confession of sin, and abhorrence of 
 it for its filthiness and guilt and danger. " The 
 just man falleth seven times a day," and that is 
 quite enough to remember at night ; he will not 
 burden himself therefore with more, but will re- 
 view the page before it is turned over, lest haply 
 it perish from his mind. His hours are going on, 
 and he would fain keep up with them, that when 
 after a long time his Lord shall come and reckon 
 with him, he may be found ready, and his account 
 ready ; not because he hath never been in debt, 
 hath never trespassed, but because each day his 
 trespasses were sought out and humbly confessed
 
 A GUARD AGAINST SUV. 253 
 
 to God, and through the Blood of Christ were 
 forgiven ! 
 
 Now unto Him that is able to keep us from 
 falling, and to present us faultless before the pre- 
 sence of His glory with exceeding joy; to the 
 only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, 
 dominion and power, both now and for ever. 
 Amen.
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 0f Sin in Cime, 
 
 JOHN, LORD BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 
 
 (Preached in Hie Church of St. Mary-Ike- Virgin, April 15, 1859.)
 
 SEEM ON XII. 
 
 ROMANS vi. 21. 
 
 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now 
 ashamed? 
 
 FT! HE author of evil has ever tempted with a lie, 
 -L and offers what it is not in his power to give. 
 " Ye shall be as gods," was his first promise : " ye 
 shall not surely die a ." But mark its fulfilment: 
 the image of God, in which man had been made, 
 was shattered ; " sin entered into the world, and 
 death by sin b ." And when the second Adam was 
 with him on the high mountain, and was shewn 
 " all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of 
 time," the devil said unto Him, "All this power 
 will I give Thee, and the glory of them : for that 
 is delivered unto me ; and to whomsoever I will, 
 I give it c ." It was false. " God," it is written, 
 "removeth kings, and setteth up kings 3 ." And 
 the Holy Spirit had spoken long ago by the 
 * Gen. iii. 4, 5. b Rom. v. 12. c Luke iv. 5, 6. d Dan. ii. 21. 
 S
 
 258 SERMON XII. 
 
 mouth of one who had himself been raised from 
 the sheepfolds to rule the people of Israel: 
 " Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, 
 and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty : 
 both riches and honour come of Thee, and Thou 
 reignest over all ; and in Thine hand is power and 
 might; and in Thine hand it is to make great 
 and to give strength to all 6 ." 
 
 It is always so : and, therefore, in answering 
 the question which I am to consider with you to- 
 night, What are the wages of sin in time, in the 
 life that now is ? my first reply must be, Sin does 
 not pay what it promises. 
 
 I am anxious, brethren, not to exaggerate : I 
 am not about to deny that sin has its pleasures, 
 nor that the worldly and self-indulgent may obtain 
 certain worldly and selfish advantages which they 
 might not have found in the straight way of reli- 
 gion and virtue; but I assert, fearless of contradic- 
 tion from those who have made the perilous, but, 
 alas too frequent trial, that they have not received 
 what they expected: sin has changed its wages, 
 and paid them in debased and adulterate coin. 
 
 Take, for example, the pleasures promised by 
 the sensual appetites, painted, as Satan paints them 
 to the unwary, in voluptuous day-dreams, or even 
 
 1 Chron. xxix. 11, 12.
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN TIME. 259 
 
 as sung by poets who profane the gift of song : all 
 is bright, exhilarating, delicious ; but the palled 
 profligate will tell you ay, even he will tell you 
 who has drunk but once of the poison-cup, and 
 his eyes are opened that the mad pleasure was 
 disappointing as well as brief, that disgust and 
 self-dissatisfaction remain behind, and that there 
 is a thirst, perhaps, lit up in the fevered breast, 
 which it is sin to satisfy and agony to deny. While 
 for those who, with less guilt, have yet thrown 
 themselves into the full current of worldly dissi- 
 pation, till the jaded soul has ceased to live for 
 God, nothing is more common than the self-con- 
 demning excuse, that they do not really love the 
 whirl of amusements which yet they cannot quit, 
 and are weary of a life which they persuade them- 
 selves they are obliged to lead. Satan has allured 
 them from God's service to the world's, and, as 
 ever, has paid them with a lie. 
 
 And so it is with wealth, the glittering bait 
 which some pursue in the paths of dishonesty and 
 in despite of the laws of God, but many more ac- 
 quire, or at least seek, by the arts and habits of that 
 respectable covetousness which men speak well of, 
 but which hardens the heart to the love of man, 
 the love of God, and the influence of His Spirit. 
 And for what ? There is much, no doubt, worth 
 s2
 
 260 SERMON XII. 
 
 the having, which money can purchase, and it is 
 idle to undervalue the advantages of exemption 
 from the fear of poverty, and of the comforts which 
 wealth can command ; but it would be as idle to 
 deny that the pleasure of possession is alloyed by 
 its cares, and fades quickly with its novelty ; that 
 the habits formed by acquiring frequently preclude 
 from enjoying ; that, in short, it was no singular 
 experience, but that of multitudes, which is re- 
 corded for our instruction by the wise monarch 
 who tried on so vast a scale the experiment of 
 "getting him great possessions, and gathering sil- 
 ver and gold. Then I looked on all the work 
 that my hands had wrought, and on the labour 
 that I laboured to do : and, behold, all was vanity 
 and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit 
 under the sun f ." 
 
 Praise, honour, power, again, are among sin's 
 promises, but lose their worth precisely as far as 
 they are obtained by sin. As the result of honest 
 duty and virtuous self-sacrifice, especially when it 
 is from higher and holier motives that the duty 
 has been performed and the sacrifice made, these 
 have their value and their sweetness ; less, doubtless, 
 in possession than in anticipation, and soon losing 
 their relish when enjoyed, yet still real in their 
 ' Eccles. viii. 11.
 
 TEE WAGES OF SIN IN TIME. 261 
 
 degree, innocent, and healthy. But when at- 
 tained by unlawful means, by sinful compliances, 
 or hypocritical pretence, they are but the shadow 
 of themselves. In the unwilling judgment of the 
 inner man, honours undeserved are hollow and 
 well-nigh worthless, and conscience contradicts the 
 voice of praise; the means have corrupted the 
 end ; and the fruits of reputation, influence, glory, 
 which are held out as an encouragement, though 
 not as the motive, to virtuous energy and perse- 
 vering duty, when grasped by the hand of sin, 
 wither at the core, and become like apples of 
 Sodom, fair to the eye but ashes to the taste. 
 Again sin has shuffled her wages; she has paid 
 her servants with a lie. 
 
 But we are not to think that, though prevari- 
 cating thus with what she promises, sin has no 
 wages in this life : she has them without stint ; 
 very real, very sad, and for the most part duly 
 paid. 
 
 Among these we must not pass over the effects 
 of sin upon man's outward fortunes and circum- 
 stances, although not uniform, but often overruled 
 by other laws, and modified by other purposes of 
 the Divine will. Still, however, they are sufficiently 
 general to establish the tendency of sinful habits 
 and the principles of God's government. When
 
 262 SERMON XII. 
 
 they do follow, they follow as the effects of sin ; 
 when they do not follow, it is because the effects 
 have been, in spite of sin, diverted or delayed. 
 They are sin's due wages, though, by some 
 mightier hand, the payment may have been pre- 
 vented or deferred. 
 
 Now, such exceptions notwithstanding, it is 
 hardly possible to over-estimate the amount of 
 misery in this life resulting from the general law ; 
 the great bulk, doubtless, of man's unhappiness 
 here below. I cannot attempt to enumerate the 
 various forms in which, even to outward observa- 
 tion, suffering follows sin. 
 
 The ruined spendthrift, who has destroyed the 
 means of gratification while strengthening the ap- 
 petite for indulgence ; who by the habits of luxury 
 has rendered himself more sensitive to the hard- 
 ships of the poverty to which they have reduced 
 him ; and who has involved others, perhaps, in com- 
 mon misery, whom he is not yet too selfish quite 
 to love : the palled voluptuary, who has over-taxed 
 the powers of nature, and bears passions still un- 
 slaked in an effete and feeble body; suffering, 
 weary, and querulous, unloving and unloved, the 
 very wreck of what was once a man : the doting 
 drunkard, alternating his miserable hours of mad 
 mirth and maudlin penitence, enslaved by a habit
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN TIME. 263 
 
 which disgusts although it masters him, and sink- 
 ing with weakened mind and trembling limbs to 
 an early grave : the poor lost woman, who listened 
 first to the whispers of her own vanity and then 
 to the flattery of others, whom folly led on to sin, 
 and sin launched into the full current of passion, 
 and her name became a reproach, and the door of 
 return was shut, and excitement was a necessity, 
 and there was remorse and loathing, but no peni- 
 tence, till vice and disease had done their ghastly 
 work, and death closed the short and fevered 
 scene : the dishonoured man of business, who, un- 
 der the cover of a high character, was tempted to 
 gamble with his credit, then to retrieve his losses 
 by dishonesty, till his astute schemes broke down 
 by their own weight, the disguise fell off, and 
 amidst the curses of those whom he has impover- 
 ished and betrayed, he sinks into disgrace and 
 ruin : or, most fearful retribution of all, the vicious 
 or irreligious parent, touched, may be, late in life 
 with penitence, or, at least, (as it often is,) hating 
 and dreading in others the sins he has practised 
 himself, but heart-struck to see his children tainted 
 with the infection of his own example, reproducing 
 and perhaps exaggerating his own vices, imitating 
 him in guilt, but not imitating him in penitence, 
 and pressing on deafly on the road to endless ruin,
 
 264 SERMON XII. 
 
 to which he first had pointed them the path : 
 Oh, brethren, these are witnesses which meet us 
 everywhere on the highways of life, all testifying 
 that the wages of sin are sorrow, disappointment, 
 and misery, all replying with melancholy una- 
 nimity to the Apostle's question, "What fruit 
 had ye then in those things whereof ye are now 
 ashamed ? The end of those things is death." 
 
 But the outward course of retribution is crossed 
 by many exceptions ; and often, indeed, as a small 
 segment only of the great circle of God's dealings 
 with the sinner in time and eternity, the heaviest 
 judgment here may be prosperity. "Ephraim is 
 joined to idols: let him alone *." There are, be- 
 sides, many sins involving, perhaps, less guilt, and 
 certainly telling less sensibly upon the outward 
 circumstances and visible fortunes of those who 
 commit them. Let us not think, however, that 
 in such cases sin is paying no wages in this life. 
 Each human being has a world within, to which 
 what we have hitherto said has referred only in- 
 directly, and there are processes going on, and 
 habits forming, and contests waging, and pleasures 
 and pains, ay, ecstasies and agony, which have no 
 expression in the outer world, but which form 
 
 K Hos. iv. 17.
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN TIME. 
 
 2G5 
 
 much of man's happiness and misery here, besides 
 their weighty bearing on his eternity. 
 
 1. And, first, there is within a sore and uneasy 
 conscience. Whatever may be the nature of this 
 faculty or its laws, it is a fact that there is in 
 every human breast a real sense of demerit when 
 we do wrong, and of approval when we do right ; 
 and that the sense of demerit is accompanied, in 
 a greater or less degree, by pain, shame, or dissa- 
 tisfaction, while that of approval is pleasant, en- 
 couraging, and even exhilarating. In the heart's 
 secret tribunal, even when the sin is unknown to 
 others, there is a verdict, and, to some extent, a 
 penalty; and the sinner finds himself self-con- 
 demned and self-punished. Nor is the penalty a 
 light one. At first, indeed, when conscience is 
 tender, and wilful transgression is in its earliest 
 stage, the suffering is itself acute ; the soul writhes 
 under its own feelings of demerit, and cowers un- 
 der its own shame. It would hide from others, 
 from God, from itself. And even though the 
 perverse will spurns against the correction, or en- 
 deavours by some mental sophistry to evade it, 
 and the sin is sought, or, at least, not shunned, 
 again and again, still conscience perseveres in her 
 reproaches; still, though in feebler accents, she 
 reiterates her sentence ; still, though there may be
 
 2G6 SERMON X1L 
 
 no longer a pang of sharp remorse, there is in the 
 bosom a dull but wearing sore. It is too true, 
 indeed, that repetition deadens the smart, and 
 lightens the weight of self-condemnation, and 
 that habitual sin may succeed at length in stifling 
 the voice of conscience, or, at any rate, in deafen- 
 ing the inner ear to its reproach ; but it must be 
 remembered that, before this is done, the whole 
 man has been degraded in his own esteem; the 
 soul has been sunk, as it were, to a lower level ; 
 "the free spirit 11 /' (as the Psalmist speaks,) the 
 buoyant, happy consciousness of rectitude and 
 liberty, which belongs only to innocence or to the 
 pardoned penitent, is altogether lost. He shuns 
 communion with self, for he has ceased to respect 
 himself. He knows that there is disease within, 
 a loathsome, may be, and a fatal malady ; but he 
 dares not probe it, and forgets it if he can. Oh, 
 terrible, brethren, sometimes is the reproach of an 
 awakened conscience, and its lash cuts deep into 
 the writhing soul ; but yet more terrible is the 
 dull apathy of a seared conscience, as it lies heavily, 
 though motionless, on the sinner's spirit, damping 
 each emotion of hope, and keeping down each 
 stirring of penitence, inflicting the fearful retribu- 
 tion for pleadings unheard and warnings disre- 
 J Ts. li. 12
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN TIME. 267 
 
 garded, that warnings can be regarded and plead- 
 ings can be heard no longer. This is the saddest 
 wage which in this life sin can pay ; and " the end 
 of these things is death." 
 
 2. Hence, too, it follows that the sinner is 
 thrown out of harmony even with external things, 
 and loses, or at least weakens, his taste for the 
 better and purer pleasures which God's mercy 
 has preserved to fallen man. This is the case, for 
 example, to some extent with the enjoyment of 
 the beauty of nature. The scientific investigation 
 of the outer world, indeed, and the intellectual 
 pleasures which belong to science, may not be 
 greatly affected, perhaps, by habits of sin; they 
 belong to another part of the mental constitution : 
 but the simpler taste for nature's beauty one of 
 the purest and healthiest of our instinctive senti- 
 ments is dulled and enervated, if not destroyed, 
 by indulgence in the grosser pleasures of sense, 
 and even by the growth of covetousness and 
 worldly care, and by ambition 'and the thirst for 
 praise : and there are many who would own with 
 a sigh, and who should take warning from the 
 change, that they can remember, but that they 
 can no longer feel, sweet rapture in the music of 
 the woods, or happy awe amidst the silent moun- 
 tains, or the buoyant, lark-like soaring of the
 
 268 SERMON X1L 
 
 grateful spirit, when the early sun is bathing the 
 awakened world in light, and throwing the long 
 slant shadows on the grass, and gemming the 
 earth with dew-drops, and God's smile seems 
 again to be beaming on His creation, and the 
 heart knows that it is all very good. But there 
 is now a busy, restless, anxious world within, 
 which is not in unison with God's world without ; 
 and there are tastes, and appetites, and bad thoughts 
 which have fevered the mental palate, and made 
 its wholesome food insipid ; and nature's beauty 
 is dimmed and veiled to the inner sense, and all 
 her harmonies are out of tune. 
 
 And so it is, and still more sadly, with the 
 social affections : sin robs them of their purity 
 and pleasure. Earth has no such happiness as 
 that which dwells in a holy home. Domestic 
 ties, while hallowed by religion, and knit in the 
 bonds of a virtuous and godly life, husband and 
 wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, 
 loving and loved, trusting and trusted, each living 
 for others rather than for themselves, give the 
 truest foretaste of heaven's love below. But sin 
 mars all this. I am not speaking merely of its 
 outward manifestations, which break up the peace 
 of families, and bring in distrust, and jealousy, and 
 rivalries, and mutual misunderstandings, and out-
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN TIME. 269 
 
 bursts of temper, and alienation and hatred, 
 always more stubborn and bitter when between 
 those who ought to love. Besides all this, which 
 is the cause of incalculable suffering, the domestic 
 affections are often secretly poisoned by sin, even 
 when not outwardly violated or apparently ruffled ; 
 and there is many a heart on which the smile and 
 voice of love fall cold and cheerless, because it has 
 within an uneasy conscience, or lawless passions, 
 or thoughts it dares not divulge ; and there is a felt 
 and painful contrast between its own polluted self 
 and the innocent purity of those who share its 
 home. Oh, brethren, if we could see that busy world 
 within, that true life of each soul, as it lies bare 
 to the keen eye of God, how wide and drear 
 a desolation should we see of pure affections and 
 innocent pleasures, and what should have been 
 this life's best happiness, blighted and withered 
 by the breath of sin ! 
 
 3. Hence, too, results a peevish and restless 
 dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction with self, venting 
 and revenging itself, as it were, on others. I 
 cannot dwell now on this tendency of sin in- 
 dulged, which is modified in its manifestations by 
 temperament, outward circumstances, and even 
 bodily health ; and yet it must not be forgotten 
 in our estimate of the wages of sin, producing, as
 
 270 SERMON XII. 
 
 it does, no small proportion of this life's lesser 
 trials, and inflicting no small amount of pain on 
 patience, temper, and the peace of mind. It is the 
 natural tendency of an uneasy conscience, angry 
 with self, and therefore readily angry with others ; 
 tormenting them with its own peevishness, and 
 in their displeasure and retaliation drawing back 
 fresh torment on itself. And it stands in striking 
 contrast to the calm and happy cheerfulness of 
 the heart at peace with God, reflecting its own 
 sunshine upon those around, and in which the seal 
 of the Holy Spirit within is witnessed by habitual 
 obedience to the divine command, "Let all bitter- 
 ness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil 
 speaking be put away from you, with all malice : 
 and be ye kind to one another, tender-hearted, 
 forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's 
 sake hath forgiven you 1 ." 
 
 4. And we are thus led to indicate the most 
 fearful of sin's wages in time, involving as it does, 
 by necessary consequence, the still more fearful 
 wages of eternity, hardness of heart, and the 
 grieving and quenching of God's Spirit. We have 
 already alluded to the effects of indulged sin on 
 the power of conscience, and have seen how the 
 voice within grows weaker, and the strivings of the 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 31, 32.
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN TIME. 271 
 
 better mind fainter, in proportion as these have 
 been resisted and the other disregarded; but we 
 must remember, too, that there is promised to 
 every one who has been baptized into Christ a 
 supernatural power, the grace of God the Holy 
 Ghost, which alone can convince by the plead- 
 ings of conscience, and overcome in the struggle 
 . with evil. In each member of Christ the pulse of 
 a healthier, holier life has throbbed, and the gen- 
 tle leadings of the Comforter have stirred to God- 
 ward purposes and thoughts ; or at least, He has 
 been near him, ready and watching, as it were, to 
 aid him in the contest if he waged it, and give 
 him the victory if he sought it. Sin need not 
 have had "dominion over him," for he is "not 
 under the law, but under grace." But God's 
 Spirit will not always strive with rebellious man. 
 He requires our co-operation, though He gives us 
 the will and the power; and He ceases to plead 
 and aid, when He pleads and aids in vain. And 
 it is, therefore, an effect of sin indulged, and its 
 most terrible and fatal effect, that God's Spirit 
 resisted is grieved, and at length quenched; the 
 fire grows fainter and the light dimmer ; the heart, 
 as it were, of the spiritual life beats faint and 
 low, scarcely beats at all. There are warnings, 
 perhaps, merciful though solemn warnings, and
 
 272 SERMON XII. 
 
 the last loving pleadings of Him who willeth not 
 the death of a sinner; but at length the trial is 
 over, the probation has failed, and he who might 
 have been a vessel made for heaven, a temple of 
 the Holy Ghost, is "given over to a reprobate 
 mind." " The light within is darkness ; and how 
 great is that darkness !" 
 
 5. I may not intrude on the province of another, 
 nor trace sin's wages beyond the grave ; but that 
 awful future throws forward its dark shadow into 
 this life, and we must not omit, in reckoning up 
 the sinner's payment here, his forebodings of what 
 is to come hereafter. Compared with what is pre- 
 sent, doubtless, or with what is definitely fixed, 
 we are but slightly affected by what is vaguely 
 future, even though it may be even now at hand ; 
 and the heart has a thousand artifices, with Satan's 
 help, to shut out the terrible possibility of what 
 may follow death, or to still its tremors by some 
 self-deceiving fallacy : yet still, when the eyes are 
 kept, as it were, hard closed, there is a conscious- 
 ness that something fearful stands before them, 
 and unbelief itself is haunted by the phantom 
 of at least a possible hell. And often, as the 
 sands of life run low, and the shades of evening 
 are falling, and the memory ranges back over the 
 sinner's past being, seeking in vain for something
 
 THE WAGES OP SIN IN TIME. 273 
 
 to quiet conscience and fpr hope to rest on, but 
 finding instead only the wrecks of sin's broken 
 promises, and reminiscences of vanity and shame 
 and guilty disappointments, that terrible future 
 will make itself felt, and the tempter drops all his 
 flattering hopes, and plies the trembling sinner 
 with despair, ay, and himself, perhaps, suggests 
 with taunting malice the disregarded words of 
 Holy Writ, "What fruit had ye then in those 
 things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end 
 of those things is death." 
 
 Brethren beloved, if these things be so, what 
 need I add more ? If such be sin's wages even in 
 time, will you serve sin ? There is not one here 
 who has not been, or who will not be, tempted. 
 There are many who have yielded and sinned. 
 There are some, probably, who have served sin 
 habitually, and know by sad experience that at 
 least part of what I have said is true. It is all 
 true, brethren, and more ; and then there are the 
 unutterably dreadful wages in eternity. But we 
 need not serve sin; not one of us need serve sin. 
 We have been redeemed to be the Lord's freemen, 
 and the ransom is the precious Blood of Christ. 
 Go to Him in penitence for pardon for the past, 
 and in faith for grace for the future. Eesolve this 
 night to be God's only, and to serve Him. Re- 
 T
 
 274 SERMON XII. 
 
 solve, in utter distrust, indeed, of your poor, weak, 
 erring self, but in simple trust in His promises 
 and strength. There is a struggle before you, no 
 doubt, with some of you a painful and anxious 
 struggle, with all of you the warfare and watch- 
 fulness of a life. The yoke of sin is not broken 
 by good resolutions only, even with God to help. 
 You must strive ; but you need not strive in vain ; 
 the Almighty Spirit will be with you ; and " if the 
 Son," who died to redeem you, " shall make you 
 free, ye shall be free indeed k ." Be in earnest, be 
 watchful, be faithful, be self-denying, be fervent 
 in prayer, and " sin shall not have the dominion 
 over you ; for ye are not under the law, but under 
 grace 1 ." And you may bear away for your en- 
 couragement the cheering words, " Now being 
 made free from sin, and become servants to God, 
 ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end ever- 
 lasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but 
 the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord m ." 
 
 " John viii. 36. ' Rom. vi. 14. m Rom. vi. 22, 23.
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 0f Sin in 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. DE. J. A. HESSEY, 
 
 PEEACHEE TO THE HONOUEABLE SOCIETY OF GBAY'S INN ; 
 HEAD MASTEE OF MEBCHANT TAY LOBS' SCHOOL. 
 
 (Preaclted in the Churcfi. of St. Mary-the- Virgin, April 20, 1859.) 
 
 T2
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 REV. xxii. 12. 
 
 And, behold, I come quickly ; and My reward (wages) is with 
 Me, to give to every man according as his work shall be. 
 
 I HAVE often thought, brethren, that we do 
 not sufficiently value, or do not value in a 
 proper way, that wondrous portion of Holy Scrip- 
 ture which is called the Book of Revelation. 
 Either we consider it to be a document of such 
 mysterious import that it cannot be opened with- 
 out misgiving, cannot be closed without a feeling 
 of despair, or we do something worse still, we 
 hold it to be a fair field on which to employ 
 speculation. For example, whenever a remark- 
 able personage appears on the political stage, 
 whenever an event occurs affecting the balance of 
 power in the world or the fortunes of a certain 
 ecclesiastical state, we deem ourselves capable of 
 discovering such personage or such event in the 
 pages of the divine oracles. Elated with this dis- 
 covery, we proceed to map out the future, to 
 lay down what must happen next. Presently, to
 
 278 SERMON XIII. 
 
 our great discomfiture, something takes place which 
 mars our whole scheme. Then, what is too often 
 the result? Either our personal faith is impaired, 
 or (if through God's mercy we are saved from 
 this) we bring scorn on His Word from those 
 who cannot or will not distinguish between the 
 failure of a prophecy and the failure of a foolish 
 interpretation. 
 
 Now this I conceive to be an unauthorized and 
 improper use of the Book of Revelation. Not 
 indeed that the fulfilment of prophecy is not a 
 strong evidence to the truth of Him " who was, 
 and is, and is to come ;" it is a very strong 
 evidence, and merits sober investigation ; but 
 prophecy was scarcely vouchsafed to lead men 
 away from their personal duties. It would do 
 this, if it licensed a species of study which sub- 
 stitutes fatalism for faithful and humble walking, 
 and an idea that persons are irresistibly carried 
 on by a course of pre-ordained events to an ascer- 
 tained epoch, for that laborious and patient watch- 
 fulness which is ready for the coming of Christ 
 whensoever it shall please Him to appear. Christ 
 constantly put aside such questions as, "Lord, 
 wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to 
 Israel ?" " Lord, what shall this man do ?" and the 
 like, with, " It is not for you to know the times
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 279 
 
 or the seasons which the Father has put in His 
 own power." 
 
 Again, the applicability of this Book to parti- 
 cular events which may be at this moment passing 
 amongst us is a matter beyond all question. But 
 the task of so applying it is so difficult, and has 
 been attended with such doubtful success, that it 
 seems worth while to enquire whether there may 
 not exist a less hazardous or more practical use 
 of it. What if it has been intended, besides its 
 other uses, to prepare us for the coming of Christ ? 
 to prepare us for His coming speedily? and to 
 supply us with an adequate reason why we should 
 be prepared, namely, because His reward (or 
 wages) is with Him, to give to every man accord- 
 ing as his work shall be ? "I come." " I come 
 quickly." " My reward (or wages) is with Me : 
 to the righteous, life ; to the unrighteous, punish- 
 ment." Such is the tenor of our text. And our 
 text may be regarded in a manner as a condensa- 
 tion of the contents of this book. I would pro- 
 pose, at any rate, to direct you to the considera- 
 tion of it under the aspect thus indicated, and 
 from thence to approach that deep mystery which 
 is to be brought before us this evening. It is, 
 as you will recollect, " The Wages of Sin in Eter- 
 nity," the wages which even the loving and mer-
 
 280 SERMON XIII. 
 
 ciful Redeemer must, so to speak, award to the 
 impenitent at His coming. He says, " I come 
 quickly :" may we be enabled, dear brethren, 
 to reply, tremblingly indeed, for we are replying 
 to a Divine announcement, but still (in faith of 
 the better wages which He has in store) hope- 
 fully, "Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus!" In 
 other words, may we not be found among the 
 impenitent ! 
 
 But, to prepare us for the coming of Christ, 
 (you will say,) ' Why, Christ is already come. He 
 came, as at Christmas, in the form of a little child, 
 to visit us in great humility ; He came and was 
 manifested to the shepherds, to the magi, to 
 Simeon and Anna, to all faithful hearts that had 
 long waited His arrival ; He came to His temple 
 as a Prophet and King ; He came to Jerusalem 
 as Priest and Victim ; He came, and went in and 
 out among us for three and thirty years ; He 
 came again from the grave ; He is now in heaven. 
 For what coming, then, is the Book of Revela- 
 tion to prepare us ? And how is a past event 
 to be made a subject of prophecy?' My bre- 
 thren, Christ has indeed corne, in one sense, and 
 we cannot too thankfully celebrate that great 
 and glorious Epiphany which commenced with 
 the star over Bethlehem and ended at the ascent
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY, 281 
 
 from Olivet, when a cloud received out of the 
 sight of the apostles Him whom their soul loved. 
 But, then, there are two other comings of Christ. 
 And for these, unless I am mistaken, the Book on 
 which we are now engaged is eminently adapted 
 to prepare us. The first of them is His coming 
 into men's hearts and exercising government over 
 them by His Spirit; the second is His coming 
 to judgment. 
 
 I would say a word upon each of these. 
 
 The former of them has already begun. It was 
 inaugurated on the day of Pentecost, when Christ, 
 according to His promise, assumed the govern- 
 ment of His Church, the office of guiding it, or 
 rather, all faithful souls within it, into all truth, 
 of protecting it and them from the assaults of 
 every enemy, and at the same time of contending 
 against and rebuking all evil. It is not indeed, 
 now, a coming locally and visibly manifest, as it 
 was on that day, nor is it like the original coming 
 of the Lord in the flesh. It is not a coming of 
 which we may say, " Lo, here," or " Lo, there ;" 
 but still it is a coming present ever and every- 
 where. The other coming, I mean to judgment, is 
 a future one altogether. Whether it will be a 
 local and visible one we are not sufficiently in- 
 formed to be able to decide with accuracy. Most
 
 282 SERMON XIII. 
 
 probably it will be so, because " Every eye shall 
 see Him," and "He will come in the clouds of 
 heaven/' even as " He was seen going into heaven." 
 Faith, it is promised, shall then be lost in sight, 
 hope then be forgotten in enjoyment, expectation 
 then be crowned by perfect realizing of what has 
 been long expected. And so, it is also intimated, 
 faithlessness shall then be confounded, presump- 
 tion humbled, and the words " God hath for- 
 gotten," confuted from " the book of remem- 
 brance." Of these two comings, then, the Book 
 of Revelation seems intended to prepare us, 
 chiefly and primarily for the former, incidentally 
 and secondarily for the latter. And this is so 
 because life precedes death, because as we die, 
 so we are judged ; and because, as we have re- 
 ceived Christ on the former of His two comings, 
 so we shall be prepared for the latter of His two 
 comings. 
 
 Nor let it be supposed for a moment that this 
 statement is at all invalidated by the fact that the 
 book contains a vast variety of predictions, refer- 
 ring, some of them, to the punishments or en- 
 couragements of nations or Churches, some of 
 them perhaps to epochs of change in the natural 
 world, while a limited number only refer directly 
 to the administration of conscience, to the glories
 
 THE WA OES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 283 
 
 of heaven or to the penalties of hell. For, after all 
 the sagacity that we can exercise upon predictions 
 of either class, what can we gain for our practical 
 guidance from them more than this, that Christ 
 is now and ever by His Spirit in the world, seen 
 and unseen ; that every thing good in it is from 
 Him originally, and is fostered by Him ; that He 
 sheds the seed of good works, which, ventured 
 upon in His strength, He graciously attributes 
 to the human agent, and allows to follow that 
 human agent on his departure hence ; that He 
 sees and requites every struggle made for His 
 sake, and furthers every effort towards holiness, 
 by present help, by promise of glory, yea by pre- 
 sent glory and peace within, of which the pictures 
 of heaven are similitudes as well as encourage- 
 ments to them ; that " whatever love and faith and 
 truth are found here," and whatever calm is en- 
 joyed by the soul, are due to Him, who says, as of 
 old to the disturbed elements of nature, " Peace, 
 be still." And, on the other hand, that He, the 
 same Christ, moderates the turbulence of the wicked 
 soul, checks and frustrates its wildest purposes, says 
 to them, " Thus far shall ye go, and no further ;" 
 that though good and evil may appear equally 
 balanced, indications are clearly discernible which 
 side must prevail eventually. Hath He not power
 
 284 SERMON XIII. 
 
 to punish the individual sinner, who "ruleth in 
 the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whom- 
 soever He will," who "sitteth above the water- 
 flood, and abideth a King for ever ?" 
 
 I say, after all the sagacity that can be exercised 
 upon the Book of Revelation, this, for practical 
 purposes, is all that can be discovered, that Christ 
 " comes, and that His reward is with Him, to give 
 to every man according as his work shall be." 
 Let a traveller ascend a mountain, he enlarges 
 his view a little, but distance and other mountains 
 intervening prevent his obtaining that perfect sy- 
 nopsis of the country which removal above earth's 
 surface would, and that alone could, assure to 
 him. And so it is with our study of this Book. 
 We can only discover from it the truths which 
 I have enunciated. But when we consider who 
 we are, and for what we are placed in the world, 
 surely these are important discoveries. For we 
 are here on probation, and to save our souls. And 
 in order that we may be kept in mind of this, we 
 desiderate a present Helper, and an identification 
 of that present Helper with our future Judge. Is 
 it not, then, a great thing to be assured, and that 
 indubitably, that to us, poor, inconstant, wavering 
 creatures, as we daily and hourly feel ourselves to 
 be, Christ is coming, yea, coming so speedily upon
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 285 
 
 each thought, and word, and act of ours, that He 
 may be described rather as already come ? Once 
 realize the truth that the same Christ is in the 
 little world of our hearts who directs the ma- 
 chinery of the great world, that the voice within 
 us is His voice who quells the madness of the 
 people, and with what dignity and authority is 
 that voice invested! And by parity of reason- 
 ing, with what eloquent tones are the fall and rise 
 of this man, or of that Church or empire, endued . 
 and made to speak to us ! " The voice of Christ > 
 is mighty in operation." So, how little do we 
 feel our crosses, our self-denials, our afflictions to 
 be, when once assured that the owner of that voice is 
 coming, to notice them and more than recompense 
 us for them ! that He performs this office already 
 by whispering to the failing heart, " Servant of 
 God, persevere." And on the other hand, how 
 infatuated is sin as an act of rebellion, how worth- 
 less, how short-lived as a matter of enjoyment, 
 if in the very midst of it we are in the grasp of 
 the Omnipotent, and are certified that He is dis- 
 approving or condemning it, or if, immediately 
 after its commission, we, as St. Peter once did, 
 behold His eye turned upon us, warning us both 
 what we are, and to what, except we repent, we 
 must eventually be sentenced.
 
 286 SERMON XIII. 
 
 All this, I say, ray dear brethren, we are taught, 
 and taught legitimately, by the Book of the Reve- 
 lation. The time may indeed come when we 
 shall be able to trace exactly the steps in the his- 
 tory of the world to which its language points in 
 a literal sense ; but it is in a figurative and 
 instructive sense that we must, in a great part, 
 read it now. We must suppose that under the 
 titles of Churches and nations, under the simili- 
 tudes of war in heaven, and of contention for 
 mastery between the powers of light and darkness, 
 and of the passing away of this world, and of the 
 illumination of the world to come without sun or 
 moon, and of the transcendental character of the 
 joys of heaven and of the miseries of hell, are 
 conveyed warnings personal and practical. Here 
 are a few of them : men's souls, their individual 
 souls, like " cities set on a hill, cannot be hid ;" 
 they are naked and open before God, who, as He 
 raised them up, hath power to cast them down; 
 a great conflict is going on within each of those 
 souls, in some Christ prevails, in some Satan ; the 
 souls in which Christ prevails have joy which all 
 description, even of the most brilliant combina- 
 tions in nature and art, must fail to represent 
 adequately ; they are overspread with a holy calm 
 only to be surpassed by the deep tranquillity of
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 287 
 
 heaven ; they have a light when all seems to be 
 darkness. But it is not so with the wicked; of 
 each of these it is true : 
 
 " Horror and doubt distract 
 His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir 
 The hell within him ; for within him hell 
 He brings, and round about him, nor from hell 
 One step, no more than from himself, can fly 
 By change of place : now conscience Wakes despair 
 That slumbered ; wakes the bitter memory 
 Of what he was, what is, and what must be 
 Worse ; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue ." 
 
 But why have we dwelt thus far on the wages 
 of men's works in time ? Because, brethren, it is 
 chiefly, if not only, by analogies drawn from these, 
 and from expressions accommodated to our present 
 consciousness, that we can at all imagine what 
 will be the wages of men's works in eternity, and 
 because, as I have said, it is by means of these 
 that the Book of Revelation conducts our thoughts 
 into eternity. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 neither hath it entered into man's heart to con- 
 ceive, the things which God hath prepared for 
 them that love Him." And a similar inability 
 besets us of conceiving the things which, except 
 for Christ, would involve all sinners, and, in spite 
 of Christ, must involve all impenitent sinners. 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. iv.
 
 288 SERMON XIII. 
 
 Our natural sensations are appealed to, the 
 gnawing canker of disease, the parched tongue, 
 the shrinking of the flesh from scourging, from 
 torture, from the bitter cup, from the devour- 
 ing flame. Our moral sensations are appealed to, 
 our regrets for lost opportunities, our shame at 
 ingratitude, our impatience at folly, our shunning 
 the eye and presence of the good, our horror at 
 the unveiling of our hypocrisy, our disgust at 
 being classified with the evil. These serve, to a 
 certain extent, as symbols and earnests of what shall 
 be hereafter : but as even these may fail to move 
 us, in and by themselves ; as we may say, and per- 
 haps have said, " God's benevolence will surely at 
 length prevail ; eternity, and the word expressive 
 of it, may imply some end or termination," we 
 are expressly assured that there is no end ; that, 
 although our trial on earth is limited, our punish- 
 ment is unlimited, "our worm dieth (or endeth) 
 not, our fire is not quenched;" and that as the 
 happiness of the righteous will last for ever, so 
 will the misery of the wicked. Here, indeed, is 
 the great terribleness of the punishment of sin in 
 eternity. It is easy to see at a glance why un- 
 repented sin should be punished for ever. If 
 punishment be not eternal, if there be the slight- 
 est, the most distant hope of its termination, a
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 289 
 
 man will risk it for present enjoyment. 'You have, 
 some of you, perhaps, heard how, in a modern 
 version of an ancient fable, Prometheus replies to 
 Mercury's warning of the years of his coming 
 torture : he says, " Those years, perchance, no 
 thought can count them, but they pass." On 
 this conviction, on the feeling that the days of his 
 suffering, and of the dominion under which he 
 found himself, were numbered, rest his self-reli- 
 ance and his determination not to yield ; he will 
 await their end. But the wages of the wicked 
 have no end. 
 
 Of this, however, we are informed more dis- 
 tinctly in other parts of Scripture. It is a truth 
 to which we could not have approximated by any 
 efforts of our reason. It is, in fact, a negation, a 
 denial of hope, a denial of relief, a contradiction 
 of what we are inclined to flatter ourselves with, 
 that if punishment in eternity is at all imaged 
 forth by punishment in time, it must be like it in 
 coming to a conclusion. Nay, brethren, let us 
 not so deceive ourselves ; we must, if we die im- 
 penitent, have our very resurrection, and the 
 immortality of our bodies, converted into a curse ; 
 we must have frames eternally capable of physical 
 suffering, and souls eternally capable of moral 
 suffering.
 
 290 SERMON XIII. 
 
 But it is to confirm the position that we shall 
 be rewarded hereafter according to our works, by 
 setting forth that God is continually so rewarding 
 us now, that we have been referred to the Book 
 of Revelation. The question of the duration of 
 the reward is a distinct one, and, as we have said, 
 though in part hinted at there, is set forth more 
 fully in other portions of Scripture. And though 
 we know not, except negatively, what eternity 
 means, and even though, understanding exactly 
 what it means, we were not informed now, that 
 our punishment would be so great in degree, or 
 thus unlimited in continuance, this would not 
 alter the case. Punishment is due, not because 
 we know its nature, but because we violate known 
 obligations, neglect known duties, offend against 
 a government of which we are conscious now, 
 and which we know will be developed fully here- 
 after. To assist you in becoming conscious of it, to 
 guide you in your lives, to make you look forward 
 to what may be in, and on, and to yourselves, (if im- 
 penitent,) I have requested you to regard the Book 
 of Revelation rather in the mass than in detail, 
 rather in its general import as a guide to practice, 
 than in its particular statements as a field for inge- 
 nuity. And I may add, in confirmation of .my view, 
 that the Church has selected a few portions of it
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 291 
 
 only, and those the plainer and more practical, to 
 be read in our public services. Amongst the pas- 
 sages so selected is this twenty-second chapter, 
 in which, unless I am mistaken, you will find 
 intimations of Christ's present coming to and 
 abiding with His people, of His being the root of 
 everything good in the world, of His being " the 
 bright and morning Star" by which they are to be 
 directed to the Sun in His strength, of His being 
 the Alpha of this life, as well as the Omega of the 
 life to come; and, on the other hand, of His 
 being even now the detector and avenger of 
 " whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." Locally, 
 visibly, He is not present; there may be mo- 
 ments when even the righteous is cast down in 
 heart, " Surely I have cleansed myself in vain ;" 
 or when the unrighteous presumes, " My Lord 
 delayeth His coming :" but He that testifies these 
 things saith, "Surely I come quickly;" and He 
 does come, to the righteous with an ineffable 
 reward, to the unrighteous with as ineffable a 
 punishment. 
 
 Ay, but the world knows nothing of this. I 
 grant this generally. But then how should it? 
 Is it likely that righteous or unrighteous would 
 drag to the light of day the inner feelings of their 
 souls ? They could not and would not habitually
 
 292 SERMON XIII. 
 
 do so. The secret and silent satisfaction which 
 the believer experiences in Christ's presence would 
 become neither silent nor secret if it were paraded 
 and spoken of in society. And Satan is too astute 
 a manager of his servants to induce them to 
 declare how galling their servitude is, and how 
 much pain, and doubt, and misgiving it costs them 
 to gain the miserable enjoyments which he places 
 at their disposal. Did they do so, they might 
 deter others from enrolling themselves under his 
 banner: and this would not suit his purpose. 
 But occasionally, as lightning flashes brighten up 
 a dark sky, or for a moment disclose to the 
 traveller the horrors or the beauties of the country 
 through which he is passing, occasionally these 
 things do become known. Ask those who have 
 seen a ship's crew in imminent peril of destruc- 
 tion; ask those whose vocation it is to stand by 
 death-beds. They will tell you of involuntary 
 admissions that Christ has come, and come speedily, 
 both to the righteous, who have seemed their 
 whole life through to have no consolation, and to 
 the unrighteous, who have seemed to have no fear; 
 how He has been always coming to them ; and 
 how, while persons of one class are able to declare 
 thankfully that they have ever welcomed Him 
 with " Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus," others
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 293 
 
 have been constrained to allow that they have 
 ever hidden their faces from Him, and only be- 
 lieved that they were not seen because them- 
 selves would not see. And from these rewards 
 or wages in time we argue to what will be the 
 rewards or wages in eternity. 
 
 The true reason why we should admit that 
 Christ comes, and comes speedily, is, not because 
 His coming is generally talked of, but because He 
 Himself saith it. He saith it, who testifieth that 
 He loveth righteousness and hateth sin, that He 
 giveth as wages glory to the one, punishment to 
 the other. And lest men should persuade them- 
 selves that the voices within are imperfect and 
 doubtful indications of His presence and will, He 
 confirms these by external manifestations of Him- 
 self in nations' and Churches' histories, manifesta- 
 tions extending through all time, and culminating 
 in that great and final one which shall separate 
 good and evil for ever. 
 
 From the tenor of what has been said, dear 
 brethren, you will gather what it is that I desire 
 you to bear in mind while perusing the Book of 
 Revelation. I wish you to turn your thoughts 
 from its speculative character, and to fix them 
 on its practical character. I wish you to recollect, 
 first, that though you could interpret every allu-
 
 I 
 
 294 SER110X XIIL 
 
 sion and decipher every mystical number con- 
 tained in it, though you could calculate the ar- 
 rival of the judgment-day with more accuracy 
 than astronomers compute the return of a comet, 
 or even the occurrence of an eclipse, you would 
 do this to little purpose unless your hearts were 
 softened to consider it to be your own day of 
 judgment, and unless also it were a matter of 
 certainty that you would, as a result of your 
 enlarged knowledge, be better prepared for it. 
 I wish you to recollect, secondly, that he only 
 can meet Christ without fear at the judgment- 
 time who is ready to meet Him at any time. 
 And I wish you to recollect, thirdly, that he only 
 reads these prophecies aright, and reaps advan- 
 tage from them, who anticipates Christ's ultimate 
 coming by setting Christ before himself invisibly, 
 by living always with reference to Christ's ap- 
 proval, and by submitting himself to Christ now, 
 as presiding over his conscience, with the same 
 candour and the same openness as if He were on 
 the "great white throne/' 
 
 Happy is he who, hearing, in the words of the 
 text, " Behold, I come quickly," is able in action 
 to invite Christ to see him, in reflection to bid 
 Him try him and examine him, to look well if 
 there be any way of wickedness in him. Such a
 
 THE WAGES OF SW IJf ETERNITY. 295 
 
 man is not far from the kingdom of God. He 
 will be able to say, in the words of the 20th verse 
 of the chapter before us, "Amen, even so come, 
 Lord Jesus ;" and these words, whispered on his 
 knees on earth, and with his face bowed down 
 to the ground in great humility, he will be able to 
 renew hereafter, in tones of triumph, with face 
 unveiled, as he stands among the crowd of the 
 redeemed in the day of the final manifestation. 
 
 Happy, I say, are those who can without fear 
 peruse the Book of Revelation, and on seeing 
 Christ's announcement, say, "Amen, even so 
 come, Lord Jesus ;" can submit themselves, day 
 by day, and hour by hour, to Him who, though 
 His kingdom be accompanied by " everything that 
 can stir the imagination of man, armies and their 
 array, the battle and the siege ; everything terrible 
 in nature, the dragon and the beast ; or imposing 
 as the lion and the eagle; or the mightiest and 
 fairest of the objects we behold, the rainbow and 
 the morning star b ," is to His own "a hiding-place 
 from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as rivers 
 of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great 
 rock in a weary land ." And happy too are they 
 who, fearing Him at present, are labouring in the 
 strength that He gives them, that they may not 
 b Williams, Pref. to Apoc. ' Isa. xxxii. 2.
 
 296 SERMON XIII. 
 
 have to fear Him then ; who say, " Lord, I believe, 
 help Thou mine unbelief." But they are truly 
 unhappy, who, when they hear the voice of the 
 Son of Man very near them, tremble indeed, but 
 repent not, turn away that they may not hear, and 
 profess that they cannot hear. A day is at hand 
 when He will say, "I am come to judge." They 
 cannot refuse to hear Him then, though they 
 refuse to hear Him now, when He says, "I am 
 come to save." 
 
 "Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus." Can we 
 utter this, my dear brethren, without fear, in either 
 of the two senses in which it may be used? Can 
 we invite Christ to come to us and witness what 
 we do and what we are ? or can we invite Him to 
 come to us in judgment, in firm and stedfast 
 hope that we are of the number of those whom 
 He will recognise and acknowledge as His own ? 
 We hesitate, perhaps, to do so; but do we not 
 utter these words, or, at least, an equivalent to 
 them, every day of our lives? Have we not 
 implied them more than once this evening by 
 saying, "Thy kingdom come?" What does this 
 petition mean, or, to put it more strongly, what 
 must it mean, but this ? ' Come to us, Lord Jesus, 
 by Thy Spirit ; enter, examine, and purify our 
 hearts, and all hearts. Come, and take us and
 
 THE WAGES OF SIX IN ETERNITY. 297 
 
 all home to Thyself in the depths of Thy heavenly 
 communion ?' ' Oh, but we did not think of this,' 
 we reply. Well, what did we think of? The 
 coming of a kingdom must, at least, imply a king ; 
 a king must imply a government, a supervision, 
 an administration of appropriate requitals; and 
 surely we are included under such a government. 
 * Oh, yes ; but we thought of others, we thought of 
 Jews, we thought of Mahometans, we thought of 
 idolaters, we thought ' But I will spare a more 
 lengthened enumeration. We shall have to con- 
 fess at last that if we thought at all we thought 
 of any persons rather than ourselves. When we 
 next use the words, " Thy kingdom come/' let us 
 remember that Christ's coming in either sense ia 
 scarcely a subject of prayer, unless we can so wel- 
 come it as to invite Him into our own souls, and 
 to call Him to judge our own souls. We are not 
 saved because the visible kingdom of God is en- 
 larged, we are saved only if we are members of 
 His inner or invisible communion. Nations arc 
 not saved as nations, " nor do households/' says an 
 eloquent writer, "as households, enter into life ; but 
 each several soul, as it is born alone, is ever lonely 
 before God. . . . Born alone, alone we must 
 live; alone repent, pray, fast, watch, persevere, 
 
 and die ; each one for himself ' work out his own 
 x
 
 298 SERMON XIII. 
 
 salvation/ and 'make his calling and election 
 sure.' " There are " wages to every man, accord- 
 ing as his work shall be." 
 
 God grant, my dear brethren, that as we pray, 
 " Thy kingdom come," we may henceforth, with- 
 out at all abating our charitable desire to bring 
 our brethren to Christ, remember that, whether 
 we will or no, Christ is our King and our Judge j 
 that we need to realize this truth here, to feel 
 Him near us here, if we would not have to fear 
 His presence hereafter. If we do not remember 
 this, we are praying for our destruction, and that 
 a speedy destruction ; we are praying that Christ 
 will sorrowfully point to His Cross, and convince 
 us how we have spurned it ; to salvation, and how 
 we have neglected it ; to the warnings of His 
 Spirit, in the Bible, in our consciences, in the 
 world, in our own lives, and how we have set 
 them all at nought; we are praying that He will 
 bring upon all those miserable wages which by 
 our own mouths we acknowledged, at the be- 
 ginning of Lent, to be due to sin and to sinners. 
 
 Oh may this season, which is now nearly con- 
 cluded, and the reflections brought along with it, 
 and fostered in this holy place, on the nature of 
 sin, its subtleties, its growth, its dangers, on the 
 penalty which has been exacted for it in the per-
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN IN ETERNITY. 299 
 
 son of the blessed Redeemer, on the power given 
 us to resist it in our own persons, and on the 
 wages of it in time and in eternity, bring us in 
 time to the Cross, in eternity to our crown! 
 "Let us return to Him," I quote the Ash- 
 Wednesday services, " who is the merciful receiver 
 
 of all true penitent sinners This if 
 
 we do, Christ will deliver us from the curse of 
 the law, and from the extreme malediction which 
 shall light upon them that shall be set on the left 
 hand ;" that is, from such evil things as our hearts 
 look forward to with fear. And let each of us 
 pray, pray as we never prayed before, 
 
 " Nothing in my hands I bring, 
 Simply to Thy Cross I cling ; 
 While I draw this fleeting breath, 
 When I close mine eyes in death, 
 When I soar to worlds unknown, 
 When I see Thy judgment throne, 
 Rock of Ages, cleft for ine, 
 Let me hide myself in Thee !" 
 
 PEMTW) BY JAMES PABKKR AND CO., CROWS-YARD, OXFORD.