LIBRA.RY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
GIRT OR
Received
Accession No. tf $ ^ . Class No.
S E R N S
ERTSON
SERMONS
PREACHED AT BRIGHTON
BY THE LATE
REV. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON
THE INCUMBENT OF TRINITY CHAPEL.
NEW EDITION.
NEW YORK AND LONDON:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
1899.
TO
THE CONGREGATION
WORSHIPPING IN
TRINITY CHAPEL, BRIGHTON,
FROM AUGUST 15, 1847, TO AUGUST 15, 1853,
THESE
RECOLLECTIONS OF SERMONS
PREACHED BY THEIR LATE PASTOR
ARE DEDICATED.
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
IN publishing these Sermons, a few words of explana-
tion are necessary.
They are not notes previously prepared, nor are they
Sermons written before delivery. They are simply "Rec-
ollections:" sometimes dictated by the Preacher himself
to the younger members of a family in which he was inter-
ested, at their urgent entreaty; sometimes written out by
himself for them when they were at a distance and unable
to attend his ministry.*
They have been carefully preserved, and are now pub-
lished without corrections or additions, just as they were
found. Mr. Robertson attached no value whatever to
them, and never gave any directions concerning them.
The only Sermon which saw the light in his lifetime is
now republished in this volume, with his own preface, ex-
plaining how it was preserved, and that it was printed by
desire of his congregation.
Unfortunately, in some instances this series is incom-
plete. The fourth of the Advent Lectures f was never
written out, owing to his uncertain and suffering state of
health; and this cause, combined with his remarkable dis-
like to recalling his discourses a peculiarity known to all
who were intimately acquainted with him has made these
* A reference to a paragraph in his own preface to "The Israelite's Grave"
(page 235) explains this.
t The fourth and last Advent Lecture was "The Jewish;" on the text,
" He came unto his own, and his own received him not." John i. 11.
vi Preface.
recollections more broken and imperfect than they would
otherwise have been.
It is not necessary to say one word in this place of the
character of Mr. Robertson's teaching; it is best illustrated
in the published volumes of his Sermons ; and yet it seema
needful to say, that even these suggest but a very faint idea
of the influence that teaching exercised on all who came
within its sphere.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH SERIES.
IT is proposed shortly to issue a volume entitled " Pulpit
Notes," which will consist of the skeleton or outline which
Mr. Kobertson prepared before delivering his Sermons. In
some cases only a line or a single word is given to indicate
a division of his subject; in others he has written out a
whole thought, to be further amplified and completed in
course of preaching.
The Editor believes that such a volume will be of serv-
ice in two ways first, as offering suggestions to preachers
in the preparation or consideration of their addresses; and,
secondly, as being sufficiently complete for purposes of
home-reading where it is the custom at family prayers, or
on Sundays, to read a short discourse, occupying but a few
minutes.
With reference to the first of these, it seems to be felt
very generally that the pulpit is not what it was originally
intended to be. There is a wide-spread opinion that it
was designed for the edification of the mind as well as the
heart; and it may be that one great cause of the indiffer-
ence with which men are said to listen to preachers, arises
from the fact, that for the most part their addresses are far
below the intelligence of their audience, who are wearied
with the trite repetitions of platitudes that neither instruct
nor inform. These Sermons and " Pulpit Notes" evidence
the character of a teaching, not only earnestly listened to,
but also most influential. Perhaps the contrast between
viii Preface.
these and the sermons usually preached, may suggest a
means of re-awakening an interest now almost dormant in
the minds of listeners. In this view, a volume will shortly
be issued, and if it be found successful another will be put
to press.
The Editor appends a portion of a letter from a friend
on the subject of preaching, because it serves to show that
the indifference he has adverted to springs from other
causes than mere irreligiousness.
MY DEAR , I think one great need in our pulpit ministrations is nat-
uralness ; by which I mean an exact recognition of the facts of our daily life.
The phrase, "the dignity of the pulpit," has given a fatally artificial charac-
ter to the mass of sermons. Mr. Spurgeon and his vulgar slang is a violent
reaction from the cold unfelt conventionalities with which men have grown
so familiar ; and his success is due to the fact that he recognizes the men
and women before him as flesh and blood sinning, suffering, tempted, fail-
ing, struggling, rising. Like all extreme reactions, it shocks a great many
by its levity, its irreverence, and its vulgarity.
But it is in this direction must come our pulpit reform. We come day after
day to God's house, and the most careless one of us there, is still one who, if
he could really hear a word from God to his own soul, would listen to it
ay, and be thankful for it. No heart can tell out to another what waves of
temptation have been straggled through during the week past with what
doubtful success. How, after the soul has been beaten down and defiled,
with what bitter anguish of spirit it has awoke to a knowledge of its back-
slidings and its bondage to sin : not to this or that sin merely, but to a gen-
eral sense of sinfulness pervading the whole man, so that Redemption would
be indeed a joyful sound.
Many are miserable in their inmost hearts, who are light-hearted and gay
before the world. They feel that no heart understands theirs, or can help
them. Now, suppose the preacher goes down into the depths of his own
being, and has the courage and fidelity to carry all he finds there, first to God
in confession and prayer, and then to his flock as some part of the general
experience of Humanity, do you not feel that he must be touching close upon
some brothei'-man's sorrows and wants? "Be ye as I am, for I am as ye
are." Many a weaiy and heavy-laden soul has taken his burden to the Sav-
iour, because he has found some man of "like passions with himself." who
has suffered as he has, and found relief. I think a bold faithful experimental
preaching rarely fails to hit some mark, and oftentimes God's Spirit witnesses
to the truth of what is said, by rousing this and that man to the feeling,
Preface. ^
"Why I, too, have been agonizing, and falling, and crying for just such help
as this. Ah, this man has indeed something to say to me."
I may be wrong in my opinion, but it is one of deep conviction, gained
long ago, that no amount of external evidence in the way of proof of the
truth of Christianity is worth any thing in the way of saving a human
soul.
There is always as much to be said on one side as the other, because, just
as Archimedes could not move the earth without a fulcrum, so there must be
something taken for granted in all external evidence, which a rigid logician
might fairly demur to granting. But when, as with the Spirit of God, the
voice of a man reaches his fellow-man, telling him of his inner aspirations
and failures, his temptations, his sins, his weakness not in generals, but in
details of light that has come and has been extinguished ; of hopes bora,
yet not nourished ; of fears which have grown stronger and stronger, and
which refuse altogether to be silent, even in the midst of the engagements or
pleasures of life does not the man feel that here is a revelation of God's
truth as real and fresh as if he had stood in the streets of Jerusalem, and
heard the Saviour's very voice ? The man feels that, in this word, which has,
so to speak, "told him all that ever he did," there must be a divine life.
"One touch of nature makes the whole word kin."
I think that a ministry which should work mightily amongst a people
would be one in which very rarely is heard any development of the modus
operandi or ''plan of salvation ;" in which proof of the divine mission of
Christ, or of God's revelation, was never attempted, but in which the great
facts themselves were set forth as the alone solution of the wants, sorrows,
and sins of the hearers ; in which the fact of Adam's fall, and any conse-
quences it had on the human race, were only touched upon incidentally ;
but in which the individual man's fall was pressed home upon him from his
own certain convictions. Not because Adam fell, and the race fell in him,
but because you have fallen therefore you need a Saviour, and divine life
and light are indispensable.
The man who quietly slumbers under Adam's sin and its tremendous con-
sequences his relation to which consequences how is it possible for a poor
uneducated person to comprehend ? may be aroused to a sense of his con-
nection with the fact of a fall in himself, and a need of such a restorer as
Christ. I am sure I don't know whether this is orthodox or not; but I
doubt whether orthodox creeds and confessions of doctrine have ever turned
one soul from the error of his ways, or brought him in real earnest to Christ
Preface.
Let look at ttts boldlT. Sefotteen thousand pahvte echo m oar land
erar Smday, to idirt di pracfaer consider* the soundest fcan of draft
GoqieL Is hGo^sworfdiaxfe preached? His He dunged His purpose?
d does He BO longer intend that "His
Yet where is the
UNIVERSITY
CALIFOJ*
CONTENTS.
Setfes.
SERMON I.
Preached April 29, 1849.
GOD'S REVELATION OF HEAVEN.
1 COR. ii. 9, 10." Eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him. But
God hath revealed them unto us by his
Spirit " Page '23
SERMON II.
Preached June 6, 1849.
PARABLE OP THE SOWER.
CONFIRMATION LECTURE.
MATT. xiii. 1-9. "The same day went Je-
sus out of the house, and sat by the sea-
side. And great multitudes were gath-
ered together unto him, so that he went
into a ship, and sat ; and the whole mul-
titude stood on the shore. And he spake
many things unto them in parables, say-
ing, Behold, a sower went forth to sow ;
and when he sowed, some seeds fell by
the wayside, and the fowls came and de-
voured them up: Some fell upon stony
places, where they had not much earth :
and forthwith they sprung up, because
they had no deepness of earth: And
when the sun was up, they were scorch-
ed ; and because they had no root, they
withered away. And some fell among
thorns ; and the thorns sprung up, and
choked them : But others fell into good
ground, and brought forth fruit, some a
hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thir-
ty-fold. Who hath ears fco hear, let Mm
Oear" . 33
SERMON III.
Preached June 10, 1849.
JACOB'S WRESTLING.
CONFIRMATION LECTURE.
GEN. xxxii. 28, 29. "And he said, Thy
name shall be called no more Jacob, but
Israel : for as a prince hast thou power
with God and with men, and hast pre- 1
vailed. And Jacob asked him, and s;iid
Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. 4,nfl
he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost
ask after my name? And he blessed
him there" Page 46
SERMON IV.
Preached August 12, 1849.
CHRISTIAN PROGRESS BY OBLIVION
OF THE PAST.
PHIL. iii. 13, 14. "Brethren, I count not
myself to have apprehended : but this
one thing I do, forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which are before, I
press toward the mark for the prize of
the high calling of God in Christ Je-
sus " 51
SERMON V.
Preached October 21, 1849.
TRIUMPH OVER HINDRANCES
ZACCHEUS.
LUKE xix. 8. "And Zaccheus stood, and
said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the
half of my goods I give to the poor ; and
if I have taken any thing from any man
by false accusation, I restore him four-
fold" 68
SERMON VI.
Preached October S8, 1849.
THE SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE OF
THE SABBATH.
COL. ii. 16, 17. " Let no man therefore
judge you in meat, or in drink, or in re-
spect of a holyday, or of the new moon,
or of the sabbath -days: Which are a
shadow of things to come ; but the body
is of Christ " T8
SERMON VII.
Preached November 4, 1849.
THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.
HEB. iv. 15, 16." For we have not a high-
priest which can not be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities ; but wafl
Xll
Contents.
in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin. Let us therefore come
boldly \uito the throne of grace, that we
may obtain mercy, and find grace to help
in time of need" Page SS
SERMON VIII.
Preached November 11, 1849.
'HARISEES AND SADDUCEES AT
JOHN'S BAPTISM.
TT. iii. 7. "But when he saw many of
he Pharisees and Sadducees come to his
)aptism, he said unto them, O genera-
tion of vipers, who hath warned yon to
flee from the wrath to come?" 99
SERMON IX.
Preached November 5, 1849.
CAIAPHAS'S VIEW OF VICARIOUS
SACRIFICE.
JOHN xi. 49-53. "And one of them, named
Caiaphasjbeing thehigh-priestthat same
year, said unto them, Ye know nothing
at all, nor consider that it is expedient
for us, that one man should die for the
people, and that the whole nation perish
not. And this spake he not of himself:
but being high-priest that year, heproph-
esied that Jesus should die for that na-
tion ; and not -for that nation only, bnt
that also he should gather together in
one the children of God that were scat-
tered abroad. Then from that day forth
they took counsel together for to put him
to death" 110
SERMON X.
Preached December 2, 1849.
REALIZING THE SECOND ADVENT.
JOB xix. 25-27." For I know that my Re-
deemer liveth, and that he shall stand
at the latter day npon the earth : And
though after my skin worms destroy this
body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
Whom I shall see for myself, and mine
eyes shall behold, and* not another ;
though my reins be consumed within
me" 120
SERMON XI.
Preached December 6, 1849.
FIRST ADVENT LECTURE.
TJ1E GREEK.
unto salvation to every one that believ.
eth : to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek. For therein is the righteous-
ness of God revealed from faith to faith :
as it is written, The just shall live by
faith " Page 130
SERMON XII.
Preached December 13, 1849.
SECOND ADVENT LECTURE.
THE ROMAN.
ROM. i. 14-16. "I am debtor both to the
Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to
the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much
as in me is, I am ready to preach the gos-
pel to you that are at Rome also. For I
am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ:
for it is the power of God unto salvation
to every one that believeth ; to the Jew
fir^t, and also to the Greek " 1ST
SERMON XIII.
Preached December 20, 1849.
THIRD ADVENT LECTURE.
THE BARBARIAN.
ACTS xxviii. i-7. "And when they were
escaped, then they knew that the" island
was called Melita. And the barbarous
people showed us no little kindness : for
they kindled a fire, and received us every
one, because of the present rain, and be'-
cause of the cold. And when Paul had
gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them
on the fire, there came a viper out of the
heat, and fastened on his hand. And
when the barbarians saw the venomous
beast hang on his hand, they said among
themselves, No doubt this man is a mur-
derer, whom, though he hath escaped the
sea, yet vengeance snfferetb. not to live*
And he shook off the beast into the fire,
and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked
when he should have swollen, or fallen
down dead suddenly : but after they had
looked a great while, and saw no harm
come to him, they changed their minds,
aud said that he was a god. In the same
quarters were possessions of the chief
man of the island, whose name was Pub-
lius; who received us, and lodged us
three days courteously " - . . 148
SERMON XIV.
Preached December 15, 1849.
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SPIRITUAL
HARVEST.
ROM. i. 14-17. "I am debtor both to the! GAT- vi. 7, S.~ "Be not deceived; God is
Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to;
the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much i
as in me is, I am ready to preach the
eospel to you that are" at Rome also.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel '
of Christ: for it is the power of God I
not mocked : for whatsoever a man sow-
eth, that shall he also reap. For he that
soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption; but he that soweth to the
Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life ever-
lasting" 158
Contents.
Xlll
SERMON XV,
Preached December 31, 1849.
THE LONELINESS OP CHRIST.
JOHN xvi. 31, 32. "Jesus answered them,
Do ye now believe ? Behold, the hour
cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall
be scattered, every man to his own, and
shall leave me alone: aud yet I am
pot alone, because the Father is with
me" Page 168
SERMON XVI.
Prsached October 20,1850.
THE NEW COMMANDMENT OF LOVE
TO ONE ANOTHER.
JOIJN xiii. 34. "A new commandment I
give unto you, That ye love one another ;
as I have loved you, that ye also love one
another " 177
SERMON XVII.
Preached June 15, 1851.
THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH TO
MEN OF WEALTH.
1 SAM. xxv. 10, 11. "And Nabal answered
David's servants, and said, Who is Da-
vid? and who is the son of Jesse ? there
be many servants nowadays that break
away every man from his master. Shall
I then take my bread, and my water, and
my flesh that I have killed for my shear-
ers, and give it unto men, whom I know
not whence they be ?" 185
SERMON XVIII.
Preached June 22, 1851.
CHRIST'S JUDGMENT RESPECTING
INHERITANCE.
LUKE xii. 13-15. "And one of the com-
pany said unto him, Master, sneak to
my brother, that he divide the inherit-
ance with me. And he said unto him,
Man, who made me a judge or a divider
over you ? And he said unto them, Take
heed, and beware of covetonsness ; for a
man's life consisteth not in the abun-
dance of the things which he possess-
ed" 198
SERMON XIX.
Preached July 13,1851.
FREEDOM BY THE TRUTH.
JOHN viii. 32. "And ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make yon
free" '209
SERMON XX.
Preached at the Autumn Assizes, held at Lewes, 1853
THE KINGDOM OF THE TRUTH.
JOHN xviii. 37 " Pilate therefore said
unto him, Art thou a king then ? Jesui
answered, Thou sayest that I am a king.
To this end was I born, and for this
cause came I into the world, that I
should bear witness unto the truth.
Every one that is of the truth heareth
my voice " Page 2T&
SERMON XXI.
Preached November 7, 1852.
THE SKEPTICISM OF PILATE.
JOHN xviii. 38. "Pilate saith unto him,
What is truth ?" 226
SERMON XXII.
Preached on the first day of Public Mourning for the
Queen Dowager, Dec. 1849.
THE ISRAELITE'S GRAVE IN A
FOREIGN LAND.
GEN. 1. 24-26. "And Joseph said unto his
brethren, I die ; and God will surely visit
you, and bring you out of this land unto
the land which he sware to Abraham, to
to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph
took an oath of the children of Israel,
saying, God will surely visit you, and ye
shall carry up my bones from hence. So
Joseph died, being a hundred and ten
years old : and they embalmed him, and
lie was put in a coffin in Egypt "... . 236
Seconti Serfes.
SERMON I.
Preached January 6,1850.
THE STAR IN THE EAST.
MATT. ii. 1, 2. "Now when Jesus was born
in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of
Herod the king, behold, there came wise
men from the east to Jerusalem, saying,
Where is he that is born King of the
Jews? for we have seen his star in the
east, and are come to worship him". 249
SERMON II.
Preached February 10, 1850.
THE HEALING OF JAIRUS'S DAUGH-
TER.
MATT. ix. 23-25. "And when Jesus camo
into the ruler's house, and saw the min-
strels and the people making; a noise,
XIV
Contents.
he said unto them, Give place : for the
maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And
they laughed him to scorn. But when
the people were put forth, he went in,
and took her by the hand, and the maid
rose " Page 25'
SERMON III.
Preached March 10, 1850.
BAPTISM.
i. 26-29. "For ye are all the chil-
dren of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as have been bap-
tized into Christ have pnt on Christ.
Thert; is neither Jew nor Greek, there
is neither bond nor free, there is neither
male nor female : for ye are all one in
Christ Jesus, And if ye be Christ's,
then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs
according to the promise ". . ....... 207
SERMON IV.
Preached March 17,1850.
BAPTISM.
I PETEB iii. 21. " The like figure where-
unto even baptism doth also now save
us" 277
SERMON V.
Preached October 13, 1S50.
ELIJAH.
1 KINGS xix. 4. "Bat he himself went a
day's journey into the wilderness, and
came and sat down under a juniper-tree :
and he requested for himself that he
uiight die ; and said, It is enough ; now,
O Lord, take away my life ; for I am not
better than my fathers " 286
SERMON VI.
F.-eached January 12, 1851.
NOTES ON PSALM LL
Written by David, after a double crime :
Uriah put in the fore-front of the battle
the wife of the murdered man taken,
etc. 293
SERMON VII.
Preached March 2, 1851.
OBEDIENCE THE ORGAN OF SPIR-
ITUAL KNOWLEDGE.
JOHN vii. 17. "If any man will do his
will, he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak
of myself"... ,. 300
SERMON Vin.
Preached March 30, 1851.
RELIGIOUS DEPRESSION.
PSALM xlii. 1-3. "As the hart panteth
after the water brooks, so pauteth my
soul after thee, O God. My soul thirst-
eth for God, for the living God : when
shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my meat day and
night, while they continually say unto
me, Where is thy God ?" Page 308
SERMON IX.
Preached April 6, 1851.
FAITH OF THE CENTURION.
MATT. viii. 10." When Jesus heard it, he
marvelled, and said to them that follow-
ed, Verily I say unto you, I have not
found so great faith, no, not in Is-
rael " 313
SERMON X.
Preached July 27, 1851.
f
THE RESTORATION OF THE
ERRING.
GAL. vi. 1, 2." Brethren, if a man be over-
taken in a fault, ye which are spiritual,
restore such a one in the spirit of meek-
ness ; considering thyself, lest thou also
be tempted. Bear ye one another's
burdens, and so fulfill the law of
Christ " 318
SERMON XI.
Preached Christmas Day, 1851.
CHRIST THE SON.
HEB. L 1, 2. " God, who at sundry times
and in divers manners spake in time
East unto the fathers by the prophets,
ath in these last days spoken unto us
by his Son" S21
SERMON XII.
Preached April 25, 185J.
WORLDLINESS
1 JOHN ii. 15-17. "If any man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in
him. For all that is in the world, the
lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Fa-
ther, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof: but
he that doeth the will of God abideth
forever " 33?
Contents.
xv
SERMON XIII.
Preached November 14, 1852
THE SYDENHAM PALACE, AND THE
RELIGIOUS NON-OBSERVANCE OF
THE SABBATH.
ROM. xiv. 5, 6. "One man esteemeth one
day above another : another esteemeth
every day alike. Lei every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind. He that
regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the
Lord; and he that regardeth not the
day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.
He that eateth, eateth to the Lord for he
giveth God thanks ; and he that eateth
not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth
God thanks " Page 343
SERMON XIV.
Preached Januarys, 1853.
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF
JESUS.
LUKE ii. 40. "And the child grew, and
waxed strong in spirit, filled with wis-
dom ; and the grace of God was upon
him".., .. 353
SERMON XV.
Preached January 9, 1853.
CHRIST'S ESTIMATE OF SIN.
LUKE xix. 10. "The Son of man is come
to seek and to save that which was
lost" 363
SERMON XVI.
Preached January 16, 1853
THE SANCTIFICATION OF CHRIST.
JOHN xvii. 19. "And for their sakes 1'j
sanctify myself, that they also might be
sanctified through the truth " 372 1
SERMOX XVII.
Preached January 23, 1853.
THE FIRST MIRACLE.
I. THE GLORY OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER.
ifested forth his glory ; and his disciples
believed on him " Page 393
SERMON XIX.
Preached March 20, 1853.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
JOHN x. 14, 15. " I am the good shepherd,
and know my sheep, and am known of
mine. As the Father knoweth me, even
so know I the Father : and I lay down
my life for the sheep" 404
SERMON XX.
Preached Easter Day, March 27, 1853.
THE DOUBT OF THOMAS.
JOHN xx. 29. "Jesus saith unto him,
Thomas, because thou hast seen me,
thou hast believed: blessed are they
that have not seen, and yet have be-
lieved" 415
SERMON XXI.
Preached May 8, 1853.
THE IRREPARABLE PAST.
MARK xiv. 41, 42. "And he cometh the
third time, and saith unto them, Sleep
on now, and take your rest : it is enough,
the hour is come ; behold the Son of man
is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise up, let us go ; lo, he that betrayeth
me is at hand" 420
3Tf)frt Series.
SERMON I.
Preached April 28, 1850.
THE TONGUE.
ST. JAMES iii. 5, 6. " Even so the tongue
is a little member, and boasteth great
things. Behold, how great a matter a
little fire kindleth ! And the tongue is
a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the
tongue among our members, that it de-
fileth the whole body, and setteth on
JOHN ii. 11.-" This beginning of miracles flre . the course of nature ; and it is set
f\\A T^oiif* i f~ rt ~r/^~iii 3 i on nrfi nrnfili .. <4i>7
did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and man-
ifested forth his glory ; and his disciples
believed on him" 383
SERMON XVIII.
Proached January 30, 1853.
THE FIRST MIRACLE.
II. .THE GLORY OF THE DIVINE SON.
JOHN 11. 11. "This beginning of miracles
did Jsus in Cana of Galilee, and man-
SERMON II.
Preached May 5, 1850.
THE VICTORY OF FAITH.
1 JOHN v. 4, 5. " For whatsoever is born
of God overcometh the world: and thifl
is the victory that overcometh the world,
even our faith. Who is he that over-
cometh the world, but he that believeth
that Jsus is the Son of God ?" 440
XVI
Contents,
SERMON III.
Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 18oO.
THE DISPENSATION OF THE
SPIRIT.
1 COB. xii. 4. "Now there are diversities
of gifts, bat the same Spirit "..Page 455
SERMON IV.
Preached May 26, J850.
THE TRINITY.
2 THESS. v. 23. "And the very God of
peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray
God yocr whole spirit and soul and body
be preserved blameless unto the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ " 464
SERMON V.
Preached June 2, 1850.
ABSOLUTION.
LUKE v. 21. "And the scribes and the
Pharisees began to reason, saying,
Who is this which speaketh blasphe-
mies? Who can forgive sins, but God
alone ?" 476
SERMON VI.
Preached June 9, 1850.
THE fLLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
HEE. xi. &-10. " By faith Abraham, when
he was called to go out into a place
Which he should after receive for an in-
heritance, obeyed ; and he went out,
not knowing whither he went. By faith
he sojourned in the land of promise, as
in a strange country, dwelling in taber-
nacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs
with him of the same promise : for he
looked for a city which hath founda-
tions, whose builder and maker is
God"... .. 4ST
SERMON VII.
Preached June 23, 1830.
THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
8 COR. v. 14, 15. "For the love of Christ
constraineth us ; because we thus judge,
that if one died for all, then were all
dead: and that he died for all, that
they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto him which
died for them, and rose again " 495
SERMON VIII.
Preached June 30, 1850.
THE POWER OF SORROW.
2 COR. vii. 9, 10. " Now I rejoice, not that
ye were made sorry but that ye sorrow-
ed to repentance: for ye were made
sorry after a godly manner, that ye
might receive damage by us in nothing.
For godly sorrow worketh repentance
to salvation not to be repented of: but
the sorrow of the world worketh
death" Page 504
SERMON IX.
Preached August 4, 1830.
SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITE-
MENT.
Em. v. 17,18. "Wherefore be ye not un-
wise, but understanding what the will
of the Lord is. And be not drunk with
wine, wherein is excess; but be filled
with the Spirit" 510
SERMON X.
Preached August 11, 1850.
PURITY.
TITCS i. 15. "Unto the pure all things
are pure: but unto them that are de-
filed and unbelieving is nothing pure;
but even their mind and conscience is
defiled " 516
SERMON XI.
Preached February 9, 1851.
UNITY AND PEACE.
] COL. iii. 15. "And let the peace of God
I rule in your hearts, to the which also ye
are called in one body ; and be ye thank-
1 ful" ..522
SERMON XII.
Preached January 4, 1858.
! THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.
MATT. v. 48. " Be ye therefore perfect,
even as your Father which is in heaven
is perfect" 530
SERMON XIII.
Preached January 4, 1852.
CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.
1 COR. vii. 18-24. "Is any man called
being circumcised? let him not become
uncircumcised. Is any called in nncir-
cumcision ? let him not be circumcised.
Circumcision is nothing, and uncimim-
cisiou is nothing, but the keeping of the
commandments of God. Let every man
abide in the same calling wherein he
was called. Art thou called being a
servant? care not for it: but if thon
niayest be made free, use it rather.
For he that is called in the Lord, being
a servant, is the Lord's freeman : like-
wise also he that is called, being free,
Contents.
xvn
IS Christ's servant. Ye are bought with
a price ; be not ye the servants of men.
Brethren, let every man, wherein he is
called, therein abide with God". Page 539
SERMON XIV.
Preached January 11, 1852.
MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.
1 COB. vii. 29-31. "But this I say, breth-
ren, the time is short : it remaineth, that
both they that have wives be as though
they had none ; and they that weep, as
though they wept not ; and they that re-
joice, as though they rejoiced not ; and
they that buy, as though they possessed
not; and they that use this world, as
not abusiug it: for the fashion of this
world passeth away " 547
SERMON XV.
Preached January 11, 1850.
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAM-
ILY.
EPII. iii. 14, 15." Our Lord Jesus Christ,
of whom the whole family in heaven
and earth is named " 555
SERMON XVI.
Preached January 25, 1852.
THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CON-
SCIENCE.
1 COB. viii. 7-13. "Howbeit there is not
in every man that knowledge : for some
with conscience of the idol unto this
hour eat it as a thing offered unto an
idol; and their conscience being weak
is defiled. But meat commendeth us
not to God: for neither, if we eat, are
we the better ; neither, if we eat not,
are we the worse. But take heed lest
by any means this liberty of yours be-
come a stumbling-block to them that
are weak. For if any man see thee
which hast knowledge sit at meat in
the idol's temple, shall not the con-
science of him which is weak be em-
boldened to eat those things which are
offered to idols ; and through thy knowl-
edge shall the weak brother perish, for
whom Christ died ? ' But when ye sin so
against the brethren, and wound their
weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.
Wherefore, if meat make my brother to
offend, I will eat no flesh while the
world standeth, lest I make my brother
to offend " 565
SERMON XVII.
I / Preached May 16, 1852.
VICTORY OVER DEATH.
I COB. xv. 5S, 5T. "The sting of death is?
sin ; and the strength of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, which giveth us
the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ" :... Page 57(1
SERMON XVIII.
Preached June 20, 1852.
MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S
GREATNESS.
ISA. Ivii. 15." For thus saith the high and
lofty One that inhablteth eternity, whose
name is Holy; I dwell in the high and
holy place, with him also that is of a
couta-ite and humble spirit " 588
SERMON XIX.
Preached June 27, 1852.
THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE
OF LAW.
A FEAGMKNT.
1 TIM. i. 8. "But we know that the law
is good, if a man use it lawfully "... 598
SERMON XX.
Preached February 21, 1858.
THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.
LUKE xv. 31, 32. "And he said unto him,
Son, thou art ever with me, and all that
I have is thine. It was meet that we
should make merry, and be glad: for
this thy brother was dead, and is alive
again ; and was lost, and is found". 603
SERMON XXI.
Preached May 15,1853.
JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.
LUKE iii. 19, 20." But Herod the tetrarch,
being reproved by him for Herodiae,
his brother Philip's wife, and for all the
evils which Herod had done, added yet
this above all, that he shut up John in
prison " 614
Jfourt!) .Series.
SERMON I.
Preafehed January, 1848.
THE CHARACTER OF ELL
1 SAM. iii. 1. "And the child Samuel min*
istered unto the Lord before Eli. And
the word of the Lord was precious in
those days; there was no open vis-
ion I? . . 623
XV111
Contents.
SERMON II.
Preached March, 1848.
THE APPOINTMENT OF THE FIRST
KING IN ISRAEL.
1 SAM. xii. 1. "Aud Samuel said unto all
Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto
your voice in all that ye said unto me, and
have made a king over you ". . . Page CSS
SERMON III.
PRAYER.
MATT. xxvi. 39. "And he went a little
further, and fell on his face, and prayed,
saying, O my Father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless,
not as I will, but as thou wilt " 644
SERMON IV.
Preached January 25, 1852.
PERVERSION, AS SHOWN IN BA-
LAAM'S CHARACTER
NUMB. xxii. 34, 35. "And Balaam said
nuto the angel of the Lord, I have
sinned ; for I knew not that thou stood-
est in the way against me : now there-
fore, if it displease thee, I will get me
back again. And the angel of the Lord
said unto Balaam, Go with the men :
but only the word that I shall speak
nnto thee, that thou shalt speak. So
Balaam went with the princes of Ba-
lak" 651
SERMON V.
Preached February 1,1852.
SELFISHNESS, AS SHOWN IN BA-
LAAM'S CHARACTER.
NUMB, xxiii. 10. "Who can count the
dust of Jacob, and the number of the
fourth part of Israel ? Let me die the
death of the righteous, and let my last
end be like his !" 657
SERMON VI.
Preached December 28, 1851.
THE TRANSITORINESS OF LIFE.
PBALM xc. 12. "So teach us to number
onr days, that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom " 663
SERMON VII.
Prenched July 7, 1850.
VIEWS OF DEATH.
ECCT.KS. ii. 15, 16. "Then said I in my
heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it
happeneth even to me ; and why was 1
then more wise? Then I said in my
heart, that this also is vanity. For there
is no remembrance of the wise more
than of the fool forever; seeing that
which now is in the days to come shall
all be forgotten. Aud how dieth the
wise man ? as the fool " Page 670
SERMON VIII.
Preached December 12, 1859.
WAITING FOR THE SECOND AD~
VENT.
2 THESS. iii. 5. "And the Lord direct your
hearts into the love of God, and into the
patient waiting for Christ " 674
SERMON IX.
Preached November IS, 1849.
THE SINLESSNESS OF CHRIST.
1 JOHN iii. 4, 5. " Whosoever committeth
sin transgresseth also the law: for sin
is the transgression of the law. And ye
know that he was manifested to take
away our sins; and in him is no
sin" 680
SER3ION X.
Preached November 9, 1851.
CHRIST'S WAY OF DEALING WITH
SIN.
MARK ii. 8-11. "And immediately, when
Jesus perceived in his spirit that they
so reasoned within themselves, he said
unto them, Why reason ye these things
in your hearts'? Whether is it easier
to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins
be forgiven thee ; or to say/Arise, and
take up thy bed, and walk? But that
ye may knoAV that the Son of man hath
power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith
to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee,
Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy
way into thine house" " 690
SERMON XI.
Preached June 6, 1852.
REGENERATION.
JOHN iii. 5-7. "Jesus answered, Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be
born of water and of the Spirit, he can
not enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that, which is born of the Spirit is
spirit. Marvel not that I said nnto thee,
Ye must be born again " . . 69'
Contents.
XIX
SERMON XII.
Preached July 4, 1858.
AN ELECTION SERMON.
ACTS i. 23-26. "And they appointed two,
Joseph called Barsabas, who was sur-
named Justus, and Matthias. And they
prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which
knowest the hearts of all men, shew
whether of these two thou hast chosen,
that he may take part of this ministry
and apostleship, from which Judas by
transgression fell, that he might go to
his own place. And they gave forth
their lots; and the lot fell upon Mat-
thias; and be was numbered with the
eleven apostles " Page 704
SERMON XIII.
Preached November 24, 1850.
ISAAC BLESSING HIS SONS.
GEN. xxvii. 1-4. "And it came to pass,
that when Isaac was old, and his eyes
were dim, so that he could not see, he
called Esau his eldest son, and said
unto him, My son: and he said unto
him, Behold, here am I. And he said,
Behold now, I am old, I know not the
day of my death : Now therefore take,
I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver
and thy bow, and go out to the field,
and take me some venison ; and make
me savory meat, such as I love, and bring
it to me, that I may eat ; that my soul
may bless thee before I die " 710
SERMON XIV.
Preached April, 1849.
SALVATION OUT OF THE VISIBLE
CHURCH.
ACTS ix. 36. "Now there was at Joppa a
certain disciple named Tabitha, which
by interpretation is called Dorcas: this
woman was full of good works and
almsdeeds which she did," etc.
ACTS x. 1. "There was a certain man in
Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of
the band called the Italian band,"
etc. 716
SERMON XV.
Preached 1849.
THE WORD AND THE WORLD.
AOTB xix. 1, 2. "And it came to pass, that
while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul hav-
ing passed through the upper coasts
came to Ephesus; and finding certain
disciples, he said unto them, Have ye
received the Holy Ghost since ye be-
lieved? And they said unto him, We
have not so much as heard whether
there be any Holy Ghost," etc 724
SERMON XVI.
Preached June 24, 184ft
SOLOMON'S RESTORATION.
NEH. xiii. 26. " Did not Solomon king of
Israel sin by these things? yet among
many nations was there no king like him,
who was beloved of his God ". .Page 735
SERMON XVII.
Preached June 1,1851.
JOSEPH'S FORGIVENESS OF HIS
BRETHREN.
GEN. 1. 15-21. "And when Joseph's breth-
ren saw that their father was dead, they
said, Joseph will peradventure hate us,
and will certainly requite us all the evil
which we did unto him. And they sent
a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy
father did command before he died, say-
ing, So shall ye say unto Joseph, For-
!, I pray thee now, the trespass of
brethren, and their sin ; for they
give, I pray thee now, the trespass of
thy brethren, and their sin ; for they
did unto thee evil : and now, we pray
thee, forgive the trespass of the serv-
ants of the God of thy father. And Jo-
seph wept when they spake unto him.
And his brethren also went and fell
clown before his face; and they said,
Behold, we be thy servants. And Jo-
seph said unto them, Fear not: for am
I in the place of God ? But as for you,
ye thought evil against me; but God
meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as
it is this day, to save much people alive.
Now therefore fear ye not: I will nour-
ish you, and your little ones. And he
comforted them, and spake kindly unto
them" 745
SERMON XVIII.
Pleached November 16, 1849.
A THANKSGIVING DAY AFTER
CHOLERA.
JOHN v. 14, 15. "Afterward Jesus findeth
him in the temple, and said unto him,
Behold, thou art made whole: sin no
more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.
The man departed, and told the Jews
that it was Jesus, which had made him
whole" 752
SERMON XIX.
Preached August 8, 185!.
CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP.
MAL. iii. 16. "Then they that feared the
Lord spake often one to another: and
the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and
a boi-k of remembrance was written be-
fore him for them that feared the Lord,
and that thought upon his name " , 76J
XX
Contents.
SERMON XX.
Preached February 2, 1851.
RECONCILIATION BY CHRIST.
COI.OSB. i. 21. "And yon, that were some-
time alienated and enemies in your mind
by wicked works, yet now hath he rec-
onciled " Page 766
SERMON XXI.
Preaehed March 13, 1853.
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHARITY.
1 PETER iv. 8. "And above all things
have fervent charity among yourselves:
for charity shall cover the multitude of
sins" 776
SERMON XXII.
Preaehed January 8, 1849.
THE UNJUST STEWARD.
LUKE xvi. 8, 9. "And the lord commend-
ed the unjust steward because he had
done wisely: for the children of this
world are iii their generation wiser than
the children of light. And I say unto
you, Make to yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness ; that,
when ye fail, they may receive you into
everlasting habitations " 787
SERMON XXIII.
Preached February 16, 1851.
THE ORPHANAGE OF MOSES.
A SERMON PREACHED ON BEHALF OF THE |
ORPHAN SOCIETY.
Exoi>. ii. 6-9. "And when she had opened |
it, she saw the child : and, behold, the !
babe wept. And she had compassion
on him, and said, This is one of the
Hebrews' children. Then said his sis-
ter to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go
and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew |
women, that she may nurse the child
for thee ? And Pharaoh's daughter said I
to her, Go. And the maid went and |
called the child's mother. And Pha-
raoh's daughter said unto her, Take
this -child away, and nurse it for me,
and I will give thee thy wages. And i
the woman took the child, and nursed
t >: 794
SERMON XXIV.
Preached December, 1347.
CHRISTIANITY AND HINDOOISM.
AN ADVENT LEOfCRE.
DEUT. vi. 4, 5." Hear, O Israel : The Lord
our God is one Lord : And thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thine
heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy might" Page SOI
SERMON XXV.
Preached January 13,1850.
REST.
MATT. xi. 28, 29. " Come unto me, nil y
that labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you, and' learn of me; for I am meek
and lowly in heart: and ye shall find
rest unto your souls " 806
SERMON XXVI.
THE HUMANE SOCIETY.
A SERMON PREACHED ON ITS 1JEHALF.
MARK v. 35-43. " While he yet epake,
there came from the ruler of the syna-
gogue's house certain which said, Thy
daughter is dead; why troublest thou
the "Master any further ? As soon as
Jesus heard the word that was spoken,
he saith unto the ruler of the syna-
gogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And
he suffered no man to follow him, save
Peter, and James, and John the brother
of James. And he cometh to the house
of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth
the tumult, and them that wept and
wailed greatly. And when he was come
in, he saith unto them, Why make ye
this ado, and weep? the damsel is not
dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed
him to scorn. But when he had put
them all out, he taketh the father and
mother of the damsel, and them that
were with him, and entereth in where
the damsel was lying. And he took the
damsel by the baud, and said unto her,
Talitha cumi ; which is, being inter-
preted, Damsel, (I say unto thee,) arise.
And straightway the damsel arose, and
walked ; for she was of the age of twelve
years. And they were astonished with
a great astonishment. And he charged
them straitly that no man should know
it; and commanded that something
should be jriveu her to eat " 813
SERMON XXVII.
Preached December 1, 1850.
THREE TIMES IN A NATION'S HIS-
TORY.
LUKE xix. 41^4. "And when he was coma
near, he beheld the city, and wept over
it, saying, If thon hadst known, even
thou, at least in this thy day, the things
which belong unto thy peace! but now
they are hid from thine eyes. For the
days shall come upon thee, that thine
enemies shall cast a trench about thee.
and compass thee round, and keep thee
in on every side, and shall lay thee even
Contents.
xxi
with the ground, and thy children within
thce; and they shall not leave in thee
one stone upon another; because thon
tmetreet not the time of thy visita-
tion" Page 81S
SERMON XXVIII.
Preached December 8, 1850.
INSPIRATION.
ROM. xv. 1-4." We then that are strong
ought to bear the infirmities of the
weak, and not to please ourselves. Let
every one of us please his neighbor for
his good to edification. For even Christ
pleased not himself; but, as it is writ-
ten, The reproaches of them that re
proached thee fell on me. For whatso-
ever things were written aforetime were
written for our learning, that we through
patience and comfort of the Scriptures
might have hope " Page 825
SERMON XXIX.
Preached Good Friday. 1851
THE LAST UTTERANCES OF CHRIST
JOHN xix. 30. "When Jesus therefore
had .received the vinegar, he said, It is
finished : and he bowed his head, and
gave up the ghost" 32
SERMONS
Jir0t Series.
GOD'S REVELATION OF HEAVEN.
* Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart oi
man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God
hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." 1 Cor. ii. 9, 10.
THE preaching of the Apostle Paul was rejected by num-
bers in the cultivated town of Corinth. It was not wise
enough, nor eloquent enough : nor was it sustained by mir-
acles. The man of taste found it barbarous : the Jew miss-
ed the signs and wonders which he looked for in a new dis-
pensation : and the rhetorician missed the convincing argu-
ments of the schools. To all which the Apostle was content
to reply, that his judges were incompetent to try the ques-
tion. The princes of this world might judge in a matter of
politics : the leaders in the world of literature were qualified
to pronounce on a point of taste : the counsellors of this
world to weigh an amount of evidence. But in matterp
spiritual, they were as unfit to judge, as a man without ea
is to decide respecting harmony ; or a man judging alone bj
sensation, to supersede the higher truth of science by an ap-
peal to his own estimate of appearances. The world, to
sense, seems stationary. To the eye of reason it moves
with lightning speed, and the cultivation of reason alone can
qualify for an opinion on the matter. The judgment of the
senses is worth nothing in such matters. For every kind ot
truth a special capacity or preparation is indispensable.
For a revelation of spiritual facts two things are needed :
First, a Divine Truth ; next, a spirit which can receive it.
Therefore the Apostle's whole defense resolved itself into
this : The natural man receiveth not the things which are of
24 God^s Revelation of Heaven.
the Spirit of God. The world by wisdom knew not God,
And his vindication of his teaching was : These Revealed
Truths can not be seen by the eye, heard by the ear, nor
guessed by the heart ; they are visible, audible, imaginable,
only to the spirit. By the spiritually prepared, they are
recognized as beautiful, though they be folly to all the world
besides, as his Master had said before him, " Wisdom is justi-
fied by her children." In whatever type of life fche might be
exhibited, whether in the austere Man of the Desert, or in
the higher type of the social life of Christ, the Children of
Wisdom recognized her lineaments, justified and loved her
She was felt by them.
Two things are contained in this verse :
I. The inability ot the lower parts of human nature the
natural man to apprehend the higher truths.
II. The nature and laws of Revelation.
I. By the natural man is meant the lower faculties ot man ;
and it is said of these that they can not discover spiritual
truth.
1. Eternal truth is not perceived through sensation. " Eye
hath not seen the things which God hath prepared for them
that love Him."
There is a life of mere sensation. The degree of its enjoy-
ment depends upon fineness of organization. The pleasures
of sense arise from the vibration of a nerve, or the thrilling
of a muscle nothing higher.
The highest pleasure of sensation comes through the eye.
She ranks above all the rest of the senses in dignity. He
whose eye is so refined by discipline that he can repose with
pleasure upon the serene outline of beautiful form, has reach-
ed the purest of the sensational raptures.
Xow, the Corinthians could appreciate this. Theirs was
the land of beauty. They read the Apostle's letter, sur-
rounded by the purest conceptions of Art. In the orders of
architecture, the most richly graceful of all columnar forms
receives its name from Corinth. And yet it was to these
men, living in the very midst of the chastely beautiful, upon
whom the Apostle emphatically urged "Eye hath not seen
the things which God hath prepared for them that love
Him."
Let us not depreciate what God has given. There is s
rapture in gazing on this wondrous world. There is a joy
in contemplating the manifold forms in which the All Beau-
ful has concealed His essence the Living Garment in which
the Invisible has robed His mysterious loveliness. In every
God^s Revelation of Heaven. .25
aspect of Nature there is joy ; whether it be the purity of
virgin morning, or the sombre gray of a day of clouds, or the
solemn pomp and majesty of night ; whether it be the chaste
lines of the crystal, or the waving outline of distant hills,
tremulously visible through dim vapors ; the minute petals
of the fringed daisy, or the overhanging form of mysterious
forests. It is a pure delight to see.
But all this is bounded. The eye can only reach the finite
Beautiful. It does not scan " the King in his beauty, nor
the land that is very far off." The Kingdom, but not the
King something measured by inches, yards, and miles not
the land which is very far off in the Infinite.
Again, it is perishable beauty a sight to sadden rather
than delight. Even while you gaze, and feel how fair it is,
joy mingles with melancholy, from a consciousness that it
all is fading : it is the transient not the Eternal Loveliness
for which our spirits pant.
Therefore, when He came into this world, who was the
Truth and the Life, in the body which God had prepared for
Him, He came not in the glory of form : He was " a root out
of a dry ground : He had no form nor comeliness ;" when
they saw Him, " there was no beauty that they should desire
Him." The eye did not behold, even in Christ, the things
which God had prepared.
Now observe, this is an Eternal Truth ; true at all times
true now and forever. In the quotation of this verse, a false
impression is often evident. It is quoted as if the Apostle
by " the things prepared " meant heaven, and the glories of
a world which is to be visible hereafter, but is at present un-
seen. This is manifestly alien from his purpose. The world
of which he speaks is not a future, but a present revelation.
God hath revealed it. He speaks not of something to be
manifested hereafter, but of something already shown, only
not to eye nor ear. The distinction lies between a kingdom
which is appreciable by the senses, and another whose facts
and truths are seen and heard only by the spirit. Never yet
hath the eye seen the Truths of God but then never shall
it see them. In heaven this shall be as true as now. Shape
and color give them not. God will never be visible nor
will His blessedness. He has no form. The pure in heart
will see Him, but never with the eye; only in the same way,
but in a different degree, that they see Him now. In the an-
ticipated vision of the Eternal, what do you expect to see ?
A shape ? Hues ? You will never behold God. Eye hath
not seen, and never shall see in finite form, the Infinite One,
nor the Infinite of feeling or of Truth.
2
26 God's Revelation of Heaven.
Again no scientific analysis can discover the truths of
God. Science can not give a Revelation. Science proceeds
upon observation. It submits every thing to the experience
of the senses. Its law, expounded by its great lawgiver, is,
that if you would ascertain its truth you must see, feel, taste.
Experiment is the test of truth. Now, you can not, by
searching, find out the Almighty to perfection, nor a single
one of the blessed Truths He has to communicate.
Men have tried to demonstrate Eternal Life from an ex
ainination of the structure of the body. One fancies he has
discovered the seat of life in the pineal gland another Jn
the convolution of a nerve and thence each infers the con
tinuance of the mystic principle supposed to be discovered
there. But a third comes, and sees in it all nothing really
immaterial: organization, cerebration, but not Thought or
Mind separable from these ; nothing that must necessarily
subsist after the organism has been destroyed.
Men have supposed they discovered the law of Deity writ-
ten on the anatomical phenomena of disease. They have ex-
hibited the brain inflamed by intoxication, and the structure
obliterated by excess. They have shown in the disordered
frame the inevitable penalty of transgression. But if a man,
startled by all this, gives up this sin, has he from this selfish
prudence learned the law of Duty ? The penalties of
wrong-doing, doubtless : but not the sanction of Right and
Wrong written on the conscience, of which penalties are only
the enforcements. He has indisputable evidence that it is
expedient not to commit excesses ; but you can not manu-
facture a conscience out of expediency : the voice of con-
science says not, It is better not do so, but " Thou shall
not."
No : it is in vain that we ransack the world for probable
evidences of God and hypotheses of his existence. It is idle
to look into the materialism of man for the Revelation of his
immortality ; or to examine the morbid anatomy of the body
to find the rule of Right. If a man go to the eternal worlcl
with convictions of Eternity, the Resurrection, God, already
in his spirit, he will find abundant corroborations of that
which he already believes. But if God's existence be not-
thrilling every fibre of his heart, if the Immortal be not al-
ready in him as the proof of the Resurrection, if the law of
Duty be not stamped upon his soul as an Eternal Truth, un-
questionable, a Jhing that must be obeyed, quite separately
from all considerations of punishment or impunity, science
will never reveal these observation pries in vain the phy-
sician comes away from the laboratory an infidel. Eye hath
God" s Revelation of Heaven. 27
not seen the truths which are clear enough to Love and to
the Spirit.
2. Eternal truth is not reached by hearsay "Ear hath
not heard the things which God hath prepared for them that
love Him."
No revelation can be adequately given by the address of
man to man, whether by writing or orally, even if he be put
in possession of the Truth" itself. For all such revelation
must be made through words : and words are but counters
the coins of intellectual exchange. There is as little re-
semblance between the silver coin and the bread it pur-
chases, as between the word and the thing it stands for.
Looking at the coin, the form of the loaf does not suggest
itself. Listening to the word, you do not perceive the idea
for which it stands, unless you are already in possession of
it. Speak of ice to an inhabitant of the torrid zone, the
word does not give him an idea, or if it does, it must be a
false one. Talk of blueness to one who can not distinguish
colors, what can your most eloquent description present to
him resembling the truth of your sensation ? Similarly in
matters spiritual, no verbal revelation can give a single sim-
ple idea. For instance, what means justice to the unjust
or purity to the man whose heart is steeped in licentious-
ness ? What does infinitude mean to a being who has never
stirred from infancy beyond a cell, never seen the sky, or the
sea, or any of those occasions of thought which, leaving
vagueness on the mind, suggest the idea of the illimitable ?
It means, explain it as you will, nothing to him but a room :
vastly larger than his own, but still a room, terminated by a
wall. Talk of God to a thousand ears, each has his own dif-
ferent conception. Each man in this congregation has a
God before him at this moment, who is, according to his
own attainment in goodness, more or less limited and im-
perfect. The sensual man hears of God, and understands
one thing. The pure man hears, and conceives another
thing. Whether you speak in metaphysical or metaphorical
language, in the purest words of inspiration, or the grossest
images of materialism, the conceptions conveyed by the same
word are essentially different, according to the soul which
receives them.
So that apostles themselves, and prophets, speaking to the
ear, can not reveal truth to the soul no, not if God Himself
were to touch their lips with fire. A verbal revelation 19
only a revelation to the ear.
Now see what a hearsay religion is. There are men who
believe on authority. Their minister believes all this Chris-
2 8 God V Revelation of Heaven.
tianity true : therefore so do they. He calls this doctrine es-
sential : they echo it. Some thousands of years ago, men
communed with God : they have heard this and are content
it should be so. They have heard with the hearing of the
ear, that God is love that the ways of holiness are ways
of pleasantness, and all her paths peace. But a hearsay be-
lief saves not. The Corinthian philosophers heard Paul, the
Pharisees heard Christ. How much did the ear convey ?
To thousands exactly nothing. He alone believes truth who
feels it. He alone has a religion whose soul knows by expe-
rience that to serve God and know Him is the richest treas-
ure. And unless Truth come to you, not in word only, but
in power besides authoritative because true, not true because
authoritative there has been no real revelation made to you
from God.
3. Truth is not discoverable by the heart " neither have
entered into the heart of man the things which God hath
prepared for them that love Him."
The heart two things we refer to this source : the power
of imagining, and the power of loving.
Imagination is distinct from the mere dry faculty of rea-
soning. Imagination is creative it is an immediate intui-
tion ; not a logical analysis we call it popularly a kind of
inspiration. Now imagination is a power of the heart.
Great thoughts originate from a large heart : a man must
have a heart, or he never could create.
It is a grand thing, when in the stillness of the soul,
thought bursts into flame, and the intuitive vision comes like
an inspiration ; when breathing thoughts clothe themselves
in burning words, winged as it were with lightning ; or when
a great law of the universe reveals itself to the mind of
Genius, and where all was darkness, his single word bids
Light be, and all is order where chaos and confusion were be-
fore. Or when the truths of human nature shape themselves
forth in the creative fancies of one like the myriad-minded
poet, and you recognize the rare power of heart which sym-
pathizes with, and can reproduce all that is found in man.
But all this is nothing more than what the material man
can achieve. The most ethereal creations of fantastic fancy
were shaped by a mind that could read the life of Christ,
and then blaspheme the Adorable. The truest utterances,
and some of the deepest ever spoken, revealing the unrest
and the agony that lie hid in the heart of man, came from
one whose life was from first to last selfish. The highest
astronomer of this age, before whose clear eye Creation lay
revealed in all its perfect order, was one whose spirit refused
God's Revelation of Heaven. 29
to recognize the Cause of causes. The mighty heart of
Genius had failed to reach the things which God imparts to
a humble spirit.
There is more in the heart of man it has the power of
affection. The highest moment known on earth by the
merely natural, is that in which tha mysterious union of
heart with heart is felt. Call it friendship love what you
will, that mystic blending of two souls in one. when self is
lost and found again in the being of another, when, as it
were, moving about in the darkness and loneliness of exist-
ence, we suddenly come in contact with something, and we
find that spirit has touched spirit. This is the purest,
serenest ecstasy of the merely human more blessed than
any sight that can be presented to the eye, or any sound
that can be given to the ear: more sublime than the sub-
limest dream ever conceived by genius in its most gifted
hour, when the freest way was given to the shaping spirit of
imagination.
This has entered into the heart of man, yet this is of the
lower still. It attains not to the things prepared by God,
it dimly shadows them. Human love is but the faint type
of that surpassing blessedness which belongs to those who
love God.
II. We pass, therefore, to the nature and laws of Revela-
tion.
First, Revelation is made by a Spirit to a spirit " God
hath revealed them to us by His Spirit." Christ is the voice
of God without the man the Spirit is the voice of God with-
in the man. The highest revelation is not made by Christ,
but comes directly from the universal Mind to our minds.
Therefore, Christ said Himself, " He, the Spirit, shall take of
mine and shall show it unto you." And therefore it is writ
ten here "The Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep
things of God."
Now the Spirit of God lies touching, as it were, the soul
of man ever around and n'ear. On the outside of earth
man stands with the boundless heaven above him : nothing
'between him and space space around him and above him
the confines of the sky touching him. So is the spirit of
man to the Spirit of the Ever Near. They mingle. In every
man this is true. The spiritual in him, by which he might
become a recipient of God, may be dulled, deadened by 2
life of sense, but in this world never lost. All men are not
spiritual men, but all have spiritual sensibilities which might
awake. All that is wanted is to become conscious of the
30 God^s Revelation of Heaven.
nearness of God. God has placed men here to feel aftei
Him if haply they may find Him, albeit He be not far from
any one of them. Our souls float in the immeasurable ocean v/
of Spirit. God lies around us : at any moment we might be
conscious of the contact.
The condition upon which this self-revelation of the Spirit
is made to man is love. These things are "prepared for
them that love Him," or, which is the same thing, revealed
to those who have the mind of Christ.
Let us look into this word love. Love to man may mean
several things. It may mean love to his person, which is
very different from himself, or it may mean simply pity.
Love to God can only mean one thing: God is a Character.
To love God is to love His character. For instance God
is Purity. And to be pure, in thought and look ; to turn
away from unhallowed books and conversation, to abhor the
moment in which we have not been pure, is to love God.
God is love and to love men till private attachments
have expanded into a philanthropy which embraces all at
last even the evil and enemies, with compassion that is to
love God. God is truth. To be true, to hate every form
of falsehood, to live a brave, true, real life, that is to love
God. God is Infinite ; and to love the boundless, reaching
on from grace to grace, adding charity to faith, and rising
upward ever to see the Ideal still above us, and to die with
it unattaiued, aiming insatiably to be perfect even as the
Father is perfect, that is love to God.
This love is manifested in obedience; love is the life of
which obedience is the form. " He that hath my command-
ments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me He
that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings." Now here
can be no mistake. Nothing can be love to God which does
not shape itself into obedience. We remember the anecdote
of the Roman commander who forbade an engagement with
the enemy, and the first transgressor against whose prohibi-
tion was *his own son. He accepted the challenge of the
leader of the other host, met, slew, spoiled him, and then in tri-
umphant feeling carried the spoils to his father's tent. But
the Roman father refused to recognize the instinct which
prompted this as deserving of the name of love ; disobedience
contradicted it, and deserved death : weak sentiment, what
was it worth ?
So with God : strong feelings, warm expressions, varied in-
ternal experience co-existing with disobedience, God counts
not as love. Mere weak feeling may not usurp that sacred
name.
God 's Revelation of 'Heaven. 31
To this love, adoring and obedient, God -reveals His truth
for such as love it is prepared : or rather, by the well-
known Hebrew inversion, such are prepared for it. Love is
the condition without which revelation does not take place.
As in the natural, so in the spiritual world : By compliance
with the laws of the universe, we put ourselves in possession
of its blessings. Obey the laws of health, and you obtain
health : temperance, sufficiency of light and air, and exercise,
these are the conditions of health. .Arm yourselves with the
laws of nature, and you may call down the lightning from the
sky: surround yourself with glass, and the lightning may
play innocuously a few inches from you ; it can not touch
you ; you may defy it ; you have obeyed the conditions of
nature, and nature is on your side against it.
In the same way, there are conditions in the world of
Spirit, by compliance with which God's Spirit comes into
the soul with all its revelations, as surely as lightning from
the sky, and as invariably : such conditions as these : " The
secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." " No man
hath seen God at any time." " If we love one another, God
dwelleth in us." " With this man will I dwell, even with him
that is of a meek and contrite spirit." " If any man will do
His will, he shall know of the doctrine " reverence, love,
meekness, contrition, obedience these conditions having
taken place, God enters into the soul, whispers His secret, be-
comes visible, imparts knowledge and conviction.
Now these laws are universal and invariable . they are
subject to no caprice. There is no favorite child of nature
who may hold the fire-ball in the hollow of his hand and
trifle with it without being burnt ; there is no selected
child of grace who can live an irregular life without unrest ;
or be proud, and at the same time have peace ; or indolent,
and receive fresh inspiration ; or remain unloving and cold,
and yet see and hear and feel the things which God hath
prepared for them that love Him.
Therefore the apostle preached the Cross to men who felt,
and to men who felt not, the Revelation contained in it.
The Cross is humbleness, love, self-surrender these the
apostle preached. To conquer the world by loving it to
be blest by ceasing the pursuit of happiness, and sacrificing
life instead of finding it to make a hard lot easy by submit- ^
ting to it : this was his divine philosophy of life. And the
princes of this world, amidst scoffs and laughter, replied, Is
that all ? Nothing to dazzle nothing to captivate. But
the disciples of the inward life recognized the Divine Truth
which this doctrine of the Cross contained The humble of
32 God's Revelation oj Heaven.
heart and the loving felt that in this lay the mystery of life,
of themselves, and of God, all revealed and plain. It wau
God's own wisdom, felt by those who had the mind of
Christ.
The application of all this is very easy : Love God, and
He will dwell with you. Obey God, and He will reveal the
truths of His deepest teaching to your soul. Not perhaps :
as surely as the laws of the spiritual world are irreversi-
ble, are these things prepared for obedient love. An inspira-
tion as true, as real, and as certain as that which ever prophet
or apostle reached, is yours, if you will have it so.
And if obedience were entire and love were perfect, then
would the revelation of the Spirit to the soul of man be per-
fect too. There would be trust expelling care, and enabling
a man to repose ; there would be a love which would cast
out fear; there would be a sympathy with the mighty All
of God. Selfishness would pass, isolation would be felt no
longer; the tide of the universal and eternal Life would
come with mighty pulsations throbbing through the soul.
To such a man it would not matter where he was, nor what :
to live or die would be alike. If he lived, he would live
unto the Lord ; if he died, he would die to the Lord. The
bed of down surrounded by friends, or the martyr's stake
girt round with curses what matter which ? Stephen,
dragged, hurried, driven to death, felt the glory qf_God
streaming on his face : when the shades of faintness were
gathering round his eyes, and the world was fading away
into indistinctness, " the things prepared " were given him.
His spirit saw what " eye had never seen." The later martyr
bathes his fingers in the flames, and while the flesh shrivels
and the bones are cindered, says, in unfeigned sincerity, that
he is lying on a bed of roses. It would matter little what
he was the ruler of a kingdom, or a tailor grimed with the
smoke and dust of a workshop. To a soul filled with God,
the difference between these two is inappreciable as if, from
a distant star, you were to look down upon a palace and a
hovel, both dwindled into distance, and were to smile at the
thought of calling one large and the other small.
Xo matter to such a man what he saw or what he heard ;
for every sight would be resplendent with beauty, and every
sound would echo harmony; things common would become
transfigured, as when the ecstatic state of the inward soul
reflected a radiant cloud from the form of Christ. The
human would become divine, Life even the meanest
noble. In the hue of every violet there would be a glimpse
of Divine affection, and a dream of Heaven. The forest
Parable of the Sower. 33
would blaze with Deity, as it did to the eye of Moses. The
creations of genius would breathe less of earth and more of
Heaven. Human love itself would burn with a clearer and
intenser flame, rising from the altar of self-sacrifice.
These are " the things which God hath prepared for them
that love Him." Compared with these, what are loveliness
the eloquent utterances of man the conceptions of the
heart of Genius ? What are they all to the serene stillness
of a spirit lost in love : the full deep rapture of a soul int<
which the Spirit of God is pouring itself in a mighty tide of
Revelation ?
II.
PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
"The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea-side.
And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into
a ship, and sat ; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake
many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow ;
and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way-side, and the fowls came and
devoured them up : Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much
earth : and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth :
And when the sun was up, they were scorched ; and because they had no
root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns ; and the thorns
sprung up, and choked them : But others fell into good ground, and brought
forth fruit, some a hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold. Whe
hath ears to hear, let him hear." Matt. xiii. 1-9.
BEFORE the reception of the Lord's Supper on Sunday
next, I have been anxious to address you once more, my
young friends, in order to carry on the thoughts, and, if pos-
sible, deepen the impressions of Tuesday last. During the
last few weeks you have been subjected to much that is
exciting; and in proportion to the advantage is the danger
of that excitement. A great part of the value of the rite of
Confirmation consists in its being a season of excitement or
impression. The value of excitement is, that it breaks up
the old mechanical life which has become routine. It stirs
the stagnancy of our existence, and causes the stream of life
to flow more fresh and clear. The danger of excitement is
the probability of reaction. The heart, like the body and
the mind, can not be long exposed to extreme tension with-
out giving way afterwards. Strong impressions are suc-
ceeded by corresponding listlessness. Your work, to which
you have so long looked forward, is done. The profession
has been made, and now left suddenly, as it were, with noth-
2*
34 Parabie of the Sower.
ing before you, and apparently no answer to the question,
What are we to do now ? Insensibly you will feel that all is
over, and the void within your hearts will be inevitably
filled, unless there be great vigilance, by a very different
class of excitements. This danger will be incurred most by
precisely those who felt most deeply the services of the past
week.
The parable I have selected dwells upon such a class of
dangers.
No one who felt, or even thought, could view the scene ol
Tuesday last without emotion. Six or seven hundred young
persons solemnly pledged themselves to renounce evil in
themselves and in the world, and to becpme disciples of the
Cross. The very color of their garments, typical of purity,
seemed to suggest the hope and the expectation that the
day might come when* they shall be found clothed with that
inward righteousness of which their dress was but a symbol,
when "they shall walk with Him in white, for they are wor-
thy." As yet fresh in feeling, as yet untainted by open sin,
who could see them without hoping that?
Aly young friends, experience forces us to correct that
sanguine anticipation. Of the seven hundred who were
earnest then, it were an appalling question to ask how many
will have retained their earnestness six months hence, and
how much of all that which seemed so real will be recognized
as pure, true gold at the last Great Day. Soon some will
have lost their innocence, and some will have become frivolous
and artificial, and the world will have got its cold, deaden-
ing hand on some. Who shall dare to guess in how many
the best raised hopes will be utterly disappointed ?
Now the question which presents iuelf is, How comes so
much promise to end in failure? And to th..s the parable of
the sower returns a reply.
Three causes are conceivable : It m'ght be the will, or, if
you venture so to call it, the fault 01 Him who gave the
truth ; or it might be some inherent impotency in the truth
itself; or, lastly, the fault mighi lie solely in the soil of the
heart.
This parable assures us that fie r ault does not lie in God,
the sower. God does not predesni ate men to fail. That is
strikingly told in the history of Judas "From a ministry
and apostleship Judas fell, that he might go to his own
place." The ministry and apostleship were that to which
God had destined him. To work out that was the destiny
appointed to him, as truly as to any of the other apostles.
He was called, elected to that. But when he refused to ex-
Parable of the Sower. 35
ecute that mission, the very circumstances which, by God's
decree, were leading him to blessedness, hurried him to ruin.
Circumstances prepared by Eternal Love, became the desti
ny which conducted him to everlasting doom. He was a
predestined man crushed by his fate. But he went to hia
" own place." He had shaped his own destiny. So the ship
is wrecked by the winds and waves hurried to its fate.
But the winds and waves were in truth its best friends
Rightly guided, it would have made use of them to reach
the port ; wrongly steered, they became the destiny which
drove it on the rocks. Failure the wreck of life is not to
be impiously traced to the will of God. " God will have all
men to be saved, and come to a knowledge of the truth."
God willeth not the death of a sinner.
Nor, again, can we find the cause in any impotency of
truth : an impotency, doubtless, there is somewhere. The
old thinkers accounted for it by the depravity of Matter.
God can do any thing, they said. Being good, God would
do all good. If he do not, it is because of the materials He
has to deal with. Matter thwarts Him : Spirit is pure, but
Matter is essentially evil and unspiritual : the body is cor-
rupt. Against this doctrine St. Paul argues in the text,
u For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being bur-
dened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed
upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life."
2 Cor. v. 4.
The true account is this : God has created in man a will
which has become a cause. " God can do any thing ?" I
know not that. God can not deny himself; God can not do
wrong ; God can not create a number less than one ; God
can not make a contradiction true. It is a contradiction to
let man be free, and force him to do right. God has per-
formed this marvel, of creating a being with free-will, inde-
pendent, so to speak, of Himself a real cause in His uni-
verse. To say that He has created such a one, is to say that
He has given him the power to fail. Without free-will there
could be no human goodness. It is wise, therefore, and good
in God, to give birth to free-will. But once acknowledge
free-will in man, and the origin of evil does not lie in God.
And this leads us to the remaining cause of failure which
is conoeivable. In our own free-will in the grand and fear-
ful power we have to ruin ourselves lies the real and only
religious solution of the mystery.. In the soil of the heart is
found all the nutriment of spiritual life, and all the nutriment
of the weeds and poisons which destroy spiritual life. And
it is this which makes Christian character, when complete, a
36 Parable of the Sower.
thing so inestimably precious. There are things precious,
not from the materials of which they are made, but from the
risk and difficulty of bringing them to perfection. The
speculum of the largest telescope foils the optician's skill in
casting. Too much or too little heat the interposition of a
grain of sand, a slight alteration in the temperature of the
weather, and all goes to pieces it must be recast. Therefore,
when successfully finished, it is a matter for almost the con-
gratulation of a country. Rarer, and more difficult still
than the costliest part of the most delicate of instruments,
is the completion of Christian character. Only let there
come the heat of persecution, or the cold of human deser-
tion, a little of the world's dust, and the rare and costly
thing is cracked, and becomes a failure.
In this parable are given to us the causes of failure, and
the requirements which are necessary in order to enable im-
pressions to become permanent.
I. The causes of failure.
1. The first of these is want of spiritual perception. Some
of the seed fell by the way-side. There are persons whose
religion is all outside ; it never penetrates beyond the intel-
lect. Duty is recognized in word, not felt. They are reg-
ular at church, understand the Catechism and Articles, con-
sider the Church a most venerable institution, have a respect
for religion, but it never stirs the deeps of their being.
They feel nothing in it beyond a safeguard for the decencies
and respectabilities of social life ; valuable, as parliaments
and magistrates are valuable, but by no means the one aw-
ful question which fills the soul with fearful grandeur.
Truth of life is subject to failure in such hearts in two
ways : By being trodden down : wheat dropped by a harvest-
cart upon a road lies outside. There comes a passenger's
foot, and crushes some of it ; then wheels come by the
w r heel of traffic and the wheel of pleasure crushing it grain
by grain. It is "trodden down."
The fate of religion is easily understood from the parallel
fate of a single sermon. Scarcely has its last tone vibrated
on the ear, when a fresh impression is given by the music
which dismisses the congregation. That is succeeded by an-
other impression, as your friend puts his arm in yours and
talks of some other matter, irrelevant, obliterating any slight
seriousness which the sermon produced. Another, and an-
other, and another and the word is trodden down. Ob
serve, there is nothing wrong in these impressions. The
farmer's cart which crushes the grain by the way-side is roil-
Parable of the Sower. 37
ing bv on rightful business, and the stage and the pedestrian
are in their place ; simply the seed is not. It is not the
wrong-ness of the impressions which treads religion down,
but only this, that outside religion yields in turn to other
sutside impressions which are stronger.
Again conceptions of religious life, which are only concep-
tions outward, having no lodgment in the heart, disappear.
Fowls of the air came and devoured the seed. Have you
ever seen grain scattered on the road? The sparrow from
the housetop, and the chickens from the barn rush in, and
within a minute after it has been scattered not the shadow
of a grain is left. This is the picture, not of thought crushed
by degrees, but of thought dissipated, and no man can tell
when or how it went. Swiftly do these winged thoughts
come, when we pray, or read, or listen ; in our inattentive,
sauntering, way-side hours : and before we can be upon our
guard, the very trace of holier purposes has disappeared. In
our purest moods, when we kneel to pray, or gather round
the -altar, down into the very Holy of holies sweep these
foul birds of the air, villain fancies, demon thoughts. The
germ of life, the small seed of impression, is gone where,
you know r.ot. But it is gone. Inattentiveness of spirit,
produced by want of spiritual interest, is the first cause of
disappointment.
2. A second cause of failure is want of depth in character.
Some fell on stony ground. Stony gronnd means often the
soil with which many loose stones are intermixed ; but that
is not the stony ground meant here : this stony ground is the
thin layer of earth upon a bed of rock. Shallow soil is like
superficial character. You meet with such persons in life.
There is nothing deep about them ; all they do and all they
have is on the surface. The superficial servant's work is
done, but lazily, partially not thoroughly. The superficial
workman's labor will not bear looking into but it bears a
showy outside. The very dress of such persons betrays the
slatternly, incomplete character of their minds. When re-
ligion comes in contact with persons of this stamp, it shares
the fate of every thing else. It is taken up in a superficial
way.
There is deep knowledge of human nature and exquisite
fidelity to truth in the single touch by which the impression
of religion on them is described. The seed sprang up quick-
ly, and then withered away as quickly, because it had no
depth of root. There is a quick, easily-moved susceptibility
that rapidly exhibits the slightest breath of those emotions
which play upon the s irface of the soul, and then as rapidly
38 Parable of the Sower.
passes off. In such persons words are ever at command^
voluble and impassioned words. Tears flow readily. The
expressive features exhibit every passing shade of thought
Every thought and every feeling plays upon the surface ; ev-
ery thing that is sown springs up at once with vehement veg-
etation. But slightness and inconstancy go together with
violence. " Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaketh." True ; but also out of the emptiness of the heart
the mouth can speak even more volubly. He who can always
find the word which is appropriate and adequate to his emo-
tions is not the man whose emotions are deepest: warmth
of feeling is one thing, permanence is another. On Tuesday
last, they who went to the table most moved and touched
were not necessarily those who raised in a wise observer's
breast the strongest hope of persistence in the life of Christ.
Rather those who were calm and subdued : that which
springs up quickly often does so merely from this, that it has
no depth of earth to give it room to strike its roots down and
deep.
A young man of this stamp came to Christ, running, kneel-
ing, full of warm expressions, engaging gestures, and profess-
ed admiration, worshipping and saying, " Good Master !"
Lovable and interesting as such always are, Jesus loved him.
But his religion lay all upon the surface, withered away when
the depth of its meaning was explored. The test of self-sac-
rifice was applied to his apparent love. He was ready for
any thing. Well, " Go, sell that thou hast," " and he went
away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." It had
sprung up quickly ; but it withered because it had no root.
And that is another stroke of truth in the delineation of
this character. Xot wealth nor comfort is the bane of its
religion ; but " when tribulation or persecution ariseth be-
cause of the word, by-and-by they are offended." A pleas-
ant, sunny religion would be the life to suit them. "They
receive the word with joy." So long as they have happiness
they can love God, feel very grateful, and expand with gen-
erous emo'tions. But when God speaks as he spoke to Job
out of the whirlwind, and the sun is swept from the face of
their heaven, and the sharp Cross is the only object left in
the dreary landscape, and the world blames, and friends
wound the wounded with cold speech and hollow common-
places, what is there in superficial religion to keep the heart
in its place, and vigorous still ?
Another point. Xot without significance is it represented
that the superficial character is connected with the hard
heart. Beneath the light thin surface of easily-stirred dust
Parable of the Sower. 39
fie** the bed of rock. The shallow ground was stony ground.
And it is among the children of light enjoyment and unset-
tled life that we must look for stony heartlessness : not in the
world of business not among the poor, crushed to the earth
by privation -and suffering. These harden the character, but
often leave the heart soft. If you wish to know what hol-
lo wness and 'heartlessness atv, you must seek for them in the
world of light, elegant, superficial fashion where frivolity
has turned the heart into a rook >ed of selfishness. Say w r hat
men will of the heartlessuess of t/uJe, it. is nothing compared
with the heartlessness of fashion. Say what they will of the
atheism of science, it is nothing to the atheism of that round
of pleasure in which many a heart lives: dead while it lives.
3. Once more, impressions come to nothing when the mind
is subjected to dissipating influences, and yields to them.
" Some fell among thorns."
There is nutriment enough in the ground for thorns, and
enough for wheat ; but not enough, in any ground, for both
wheat and thorns. The agriculturist thins his nursery-
ground, and the farmer weeds his field, and the gardener re-
moves the superfluous grapes for that very reason, in order
that the dissipated sap may be concentrated in a few plants
vigorously.
So in the same way the heart has a certain power of lov-
ing. But love, dissipated on many objects, concentrates it-
self on none. God or the world not both. " No man can
serve two masters." " If any man love the world, the love
of the Father is not in him." He that has learned many ac-
complishments or sciences, generally knows none thoroughly.
Multifariousness of knowledge is commonly opposed to
depth, variety of affections is generally not found with in-
tensity.
Two classes of dissipating influences distract such minds.
" The cares of this world, and the deceit-fulness of riches,
choke the word." The cares of this world its petty trifling
distractions not wrong in themselves simply dissipating
filling the heart with paltry solicitudes and mean anxieties
wearing. Martha was u cumbered with much serving."
Her household and her domestic duties, real duties, divided
her heart with Christ. The time of danger, therefore, is
when life expands into new situations and larger spheres,
bringing with them new cares. It is not in the earlier stages
of existence that these distractions are felt. Thorns sprang
up and choked the wheat as they grew together. You see
a religious man taking up a new pursuit with eagerness.
At first no danger is suspected. But it is a distractioji
4O Parable of the Sower.
something that distracts or divides ; he has become dissipat>
ed, and by-and-bjr you remark that his zest is gone ; he is no
longer the man he was. He talks as before, but the life is
gone from what he says : his energies are frittered. The
word is " choked."
Again, the deceitfulness of riches dissipate. . True as al-
ways to nature, never exaggerating, never one-sided : Christ
does not say that such religion brings forth no fruit, but
only that it brings none to perfection. A fanatic bans all
wealth and ail worldly care as the department of the devil :
Christ says, " How hardly shall they that trust in riches en-
ter into the kingdom of heaven." He does not say the di-
vided heart has no religion, but that it is a dwarfed, stunted,
feeble religion. Many such a Christian do you find among
the rich and the titled, who, as a less encumbered man,
might have been a resolute soldier of the Cross ; but he is
only now a realization of the old Pagan fable a spiritual
giant buried under a mountain of goTd. Oh ! many, many
such we meet in our higher classes, pining with a nameless
want, pressed by a heavy sense of the weariness of exist-
ence, strengthless in the midst of affluence, and incapable
even of tasting the profusion of comfort which is heaped
around them.
There is a way God their Father has of dealing with such
which is no pleasant thing to bear. In agriculture it is call-
ed weeding. In gardening it is done by pruning. It is the
cutting off the over-luxuriant shoots, in order to call back
the wandering juices into the healthier and more living
parts. * In religion it is described thus : " Every branch that
beareth fruit he purgeth." .... Lot had such a danger,
and was subjected to such a treatment. A quarrel had aris-
en between Abraham's herdsmen and his. It was necessary
to part. Abraham, in that noble way of his, gave him the
choice of the country when they separated. Either hand
for Abraham either the right hand or the left : what
cared the Pilgrim of the Invisible for fertile lands or rugged
sands? Lot chose wisely, as they of the world speak.
Well, if this world be all he got a rich soil became a
prince, had kings for his society and neighbors. It was
nothing to Lot that " the men of the land were sinners be-
fore the Lord exceedingly" enough that it was well-water-
ed everywhere. But his wife became enervated by volup-
tuousness, and his children tainted with ineradicable corrup-
tion the moral miasma of the society wherein he had made
his home. Two warnings God gave him : first, his home
property were spoiled by the enemy ; then came the fire
Parable of the Sower. 41
from heaven ; and lie lied from the cities of the plain a riun-
ed man. His wife looked back with lingering regret upon
the splendid home of her luxury and voluptuousness, and
was overwhelmed in the encrusting salt : his children car-
ried with them into a new world the plague-spot of that
profligacy which had been the child of affluence and idle-
ness ; and the spirit of that rain of fire of the buried Cities
af the Plain rose again in the darkest of the crimes which
the Old Testament records, to poison the new society at its
very fountain. And so the old man stood at last upon the
brink of the grave, a blackened ruin scathed by lightning,
over the grave of his wife,, and the shame of his family
saved, but only " so as by fire."
It is a painful thing, that weeding work. - " Every branch
in me that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring
forth more fruit." The keen edge of God's pruning-knife
cuts sheer through. No weak tenderness stops Him whose
love seeks goodness, not comfort, for His servants. A man's
distractions are in his wealth and perhaps fire or failure
make him bankrupt : what he feels is God's sharp knife.
Pleasure has dissipated his heart, and a stricken frame for-
bids his enjoying pleasure shattered nerves and broken
health wear out the Life of life. Or perhaps it comes in a
sharper, sadder form ; the shaft of death goes home ; there
is heard the wail of danger in his household. And then,
when sickness has passed on to hopelessness, and hopeless-
ness has passed on to death, the crushed man goes into the
chamber N of the dead; and there, when he shuts down the
lid upon the coffin of his wife, or the coffin of his child, his
heart begins to tell him the meaning of all this. Thorns
had been growing in his heart, and the sharp knife has been
at work making room but by an awful desolation tearing
up and cutting down, that the life of God in the soul may
not be choked.
II. For the permanence of religious impressions this para-
ble suggests three requirements :"" They on the good ground
are they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard
the word keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience."
^ 1. *J An honest and good heart." Earnestness : that is,
sincerity of purpose. Now, sincerity is reckoned by an ex-
aggeration, sometimes, the only virtue. So that a man be
sincere, they say, it matters little what he thinks or what he
is ; but in truth is the basis of all goodness ; without which
goodness of any kind is impossible. There are faults more
heinous, but none more ruinous, than insincerity. Subtle
42 Parable of the Sower.
ininds, which have no broad, firm footing in reality, lose
every thing by degrees, and may be transformed into any
.shape of evil ; may become guilty of any thing, and excuse
it to themselves. To this sincerity is given, in the parable,
success : a harvest thirty-fold, sixty-fold, a hundred-fold.
This earnestness is the first requisite for real success in
svery thing. Do you wish to become rich ? You may be-
come rich : that is, if you desire it in no half-way, but thor-
oughly. A miser sacrifices all to this single passion ; hoards
farthings, and dies possessed of wealth. Do you wish to
master any science or accomplishment ? Give yourself to it,
and it lies beneath your feet. Time and pains will do any
thing. This world is given as the prize for the men in ear-
nest ; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the
world to come. " The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence,
and the violent take it by force." Only there is this differ-
ence : In the pursuit of wealth, knowledge, or reputation,
circumstances have power to mar the wisest schemes. The
hoard of years may be lost in a single night. The wisdom
hived up by a whole life may perish when some fever impairs
memory. But in the kingdom of Christ, where inward char-
acter is the prize, no chance can rob earnestness of its exactly
proport ioned due of success. " Whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap." There is no blight, nor mildew, nor
scorching sun, nor rain-deluge, which can turn that harvest
into a failure. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
earth." .... Sow for time, and probably you will succeed
in time. Sow the seeds of life humbleness, pure-hearted-
ness, love; and in the long eternity which lies before the
soul, every minutest grain will come up again with an in-
crease of thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold.
2. Meditation is a second requisite for permanence. They
keep the word which they have heard.
Now, meditation is often confounded with something which
only partially resembles it. Sometimes we sit in a kind of day-
dream, the mind expatiating far away into vacancy, whilst
minutes and hours slip by, almost unmarked, in mere vacuity.
This is not meditation, but reverie a state to which the soul
resigns itself in pure passivity. When the soul is absent
and dreaming, let no man think that that is spiritual medita-
tion, or any thing that is spiritual.
Meditation is partly a passive, partly an active state.
Whoever has pondered long over a plan which he is anxious
to accomplish, without distinctly seeing at first the way,
knows what meditation is. The subject itself presents itself
in leisure moments spontaneously : but then all this sets the
Parable of the Sower. 43
mind at work contriving, imagining, rejecting, modifying
It is in this way that one of the greatest of English engineers,
a man uncouth and unaccustomed to regular discipline of
mind, is said to have accomplished his most marvellous tri-
umphs, He threw bridges over almost impracticable tor
rents, and pierced the eternal mountains for his viaducts.
Sometimes a difficulty brought all the work to a pause : then
he would shut himself up in his room, eat nothing, speak to
no one, abandon himself intensely to the contemplation of
that on which his heart was set ; and at the end of two or
three days, would come forth serene and calm, walk to the
spot, and quietly give orders which seemed the result of su-
perhuman intuition. This was meditation.
Again, he knows what it is, who has ever earnestly and
sincerely loved one living human being. The image of his
friend rises unbidden by day and night, stands before his soul
in the street and in the field, comes athwart his every
thought, and mixes its presence with his every plan. So far
all is passive. But besides this he plans and contrives for
that other's happiness, tries to devise what would give pleas-
ure, examines his own conduct and conversation, to avoid
that which can by any possibility give pain. This is medi-
tation.
So, too, is meditation on religious truths carried on. If it
first be loved, it will recur spontaneously to the heart.
But then it is dwelt on till it receives innumerable applica-
tions is again and again brought up to the sun and tried in
various lights, and so incorporates itself with the realities of
practical existence.
Meditation is done in silence. By it we renounce our nar-
row individuality, and expatiate into that which is infinite.
Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly
meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which
afterwards shapes life and mixes itself with action, is the fruit
of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in
silence. We meet God alone.
For this reason, I urged it upon so many of you to spend
the hour previous to your Confirmation separate from friends,
from books, from every thing human, and to force yourselves
into the Awful Presence.
Have we never felt how human presence, if frivolous, in
such moments frivolizes the soul, and how impossible it is to
come in contact with any thoughts which are sublime, or
drink in one inspiration which is from Heaven, without de-
grading it, even though surrounded by all that would natu-
rally suggest tender and awful feeling, when such are by ?
44 Parable of the Sower.
It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of
sermons which you hear, nor the amount of religious conver-
sation in which you mix ; but it is the frequency and the
earnestness with which you meditate on these tilings, till the
truth which may be in them becomes your own, and part of
your own being, that insures your spiritual growth.
3. The third requisite is endurance. " They bring forth
fruit with patience." Patience is of two kinds. There is an
active, and there is a passive endurance. The former is a
masculine, the latter for the most part a feminine virtue.
Female patience is exhibited chiefly in fortitude in bearing
pain and sorrow meekly without complaining. In the old
Hebrew life, female endurance shines almost as brightly as in
any life which Christianity itself can mould. Hannah, under
the provocations and taunts of her rival, answering not again
her husband's rebuke, humbly replying to Eli's unjust blame,
is true to the type of womanly endurance. For the type of
man's endurance you may look to the patience of the early
Christians under persecution. They came away from the San-
hedrim to endure and bear; but it was to bear as conquerors
rushing on to victory, preaching the truth with all boldness,
and defying the power of the united world to silence them.
These two diverse qualities are joined in One, and only One of
woman born, in perfection. One there was in whom human na-
ture was exhibited in all its elements symmetrically complete.
One in whom, as I lately said, there met all that was manliest
and all that was most womanly. His endurance of pain and
grief was that of the woman rather than the man. A tender
spirit dissolving into tears, meeting the dark hour not with
the stern defiance of the man and the stoic, but with gentle-
ness, and trust, and love, and shrinking, like a woman. But
when it came to the question in Pilate's judgment-hall, or the
mockeries of Herod's men of war, or the discussion with the
Pharisees, or the exposure of the hollow falsehoods by which
social, domestic, and religious life w r ere sapped, the woman
has disappeared, and the hardy resolution of the man, with
more than manly daring, is found in her stead. This is the
"patience" for us to cultivate: To bear and to persevere.
However dark and profitless, however painful and weary ex-
istence may have become, however any man like Elijah may
be tempted to cast himself beneath the juniper-tree and say,.
" It is enough : now, O Lord !" life is not done, and our Chris-
tian character is not \von, so long as God has any thing left
for us to suifer, or any thing left for us to do.
Patience, however, has another meaning. It is the oppo
site of that impatience which can not wait. This is one of
Parable of the Sower. 45
the difficulties of spiritual life. We are disappointed if the
harvest do not come at once.
Last Tuesday, doubtless, you thought that all was done,
and that there would be no more falling back.
Alas ! a little experience will correct that. If the hus-
bandman, disappointed at the delay which ensues before the
blade breaks the soil, were to rake away the earth to exam-
ine if germination were going on, he would have a poor har
vest "He must have " long patience, till he receive the early
and the latter rain." The winter frost must mellow the seed
lying in the genial bosom of the earth : the rains of spring
must swell it, and the suns of summer mature it. So with
you. It is the work of a long life to become a Christian.
Many, oh, many a time are we tempted to say, v ' I make no
progress at all. It is only failure after failure. Nothing
grows." Now look at the sea when the flood is coming in.
Go and stand by the sea-beach, and you will think that the
ceaseless flux and reflux is but retrogression equal to the ad-
vance. But look again in an hour's time, and the whole
ocean has advanced. Every advance has been beyond the
last, and every retrograde movement has been an impercep-
tible trifle less than the last. This is progress : to be esti-
mated at the end of hours, not minutes. And this is Chris-
tian progress. Many a fluctuation many a backward mo-
tion with a rush at times so vehement that all seems lost ;
but if the eternal work be real, every failure has been a real
gain, and the next does not carry us so far back as we were
before. Every advance is a real gain, and part of it is never
lost. Both when we advance and when we fail, we gain.
We are nearer to God than we were. The flood of spirit-
life has carried us up higher on the everlasting shores, where
the waves of life beat no more, and its fluctuations end, and
all is safe at last. "This is the faith and patience of the
saints."
It is because of the second of these requirements, medita-
tion, that I am anxious we should meet on Sunday next for
an early Communion at eight o'clock. I desire that the can*
didates may have a more solemn and definite Communion
of their own, with few others present except their own rela^
tions and friends. In silence and quietness, we will meet
together then. Before the world has put on its full robe of
light, and before the busy gay crowd have begun to throng
our streets before the distractions of the day begin, we will
consecrate the early freshness of our souls untrodden, un-
hardened, undissipated to God. We will meet in the sim-
plicity of brotherhood and sisterhood. We will have Com
46 Jacob's Wrestling.
munion in a sacred meal, which shall exhibit as nearly as
may be the idea of family affection. Ye that are beginning
life, and we who know something of it ye that offer your-
selves for the first time at that table, and we who, after sad
experience and repeated failure, stil.l desire again to renew
our aspirations and our vows to Him we will come and
breathe together that prayer which I commended to you at
your Confirmation " Our Father, which art in heaven, lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
III.
JACOB'S WRESTLING.
" And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel : for as
a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And
Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said,
Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name ? And he blessed him
there.' Gen. xxxii. 28, 29.
THE complexion of this story is peculiarly Jewish. It
contains three points which are specially interesting to every
Jew in a national point of view. It explained to him why
he was called Israelite. It traces the origin of his own
name, Israelite, to a distant ancestor, who had signally ex-
hibited religious strength, and been, in the language of those
times, a wrestler with God, from whence he had obtained
the name Israel. It casts much deep and curious interest
round an otherwise insignificant village, Peniel, where this
transaction had taken place, and which derived its name
from it, Peniel, the face of God. And, besides, it explained
the origin of a singular custom, which might seem a super-
stitious one, of not suffering a particular muscle to be eaten,
and regarding it with a kind of religious awe, as the part in
which Jacob was said by tradition to have been injured, by
the earnest tension of his frame during this struggle. So far
all is Jewish, narrow, merely of local interest. Besides this,
much of the story is evidently mythical.
It is clear at once that it belongs to that earlier period
of literature when traditions were preserved in a poetical
shape, adapted to the rude conceptions of the day, but en-
shrining an inner and a deeper truth. To disengage this
truth from the form in which it is encased is the duty of
the expositor.
Now, putting aside the form of this narrative, and looking
Jacob's Wrestling. 47
into the heart and meaning of it, it will become apparent
that we have no longer any thing infantine, or Jewish, or of
limited interest, but a wide truth, wide as human nature ; and
that there is before us the record of an inward spiritual
struggle, as real now in the nineteenth century as then : aa
real in every earnest man as it was in the history of Jacob.
We take these points :
I. The nameless secret of existence.
II. The revelation of that secret to the soul.
The circumstances which preceded this event were these :
more than twenty years before, Jacob had been guilty of a
deliberate sin. He had deceived his father; he had over-
reached his free-spirited, impetuous, open-hearted brother
Esau. Never, during all those twenty years, had he seen
the man whom he had injured. But now, on the point of
returning to his native country, news was brought to him of
his brother's approach, which made a meeting inevitable.
Jacob made all his dispositions and arrangements to pre-
pare for the worst. He sent over the brook Jabbok first
the part of his femily whom he valued least, and who would
be the first to meet Esau ; then those whom he loved most,
that, in the event of danger, they might have the greatest
facility in escaping ; then Jacob was left alone, in the still
dark night. It was one of those moments in existence when
a crisis is before us, to which great and pregnant issues are
linked when all has been done that foresight can devise,
and the hour of action being past, the instant of reaction has
come. Then the soul is left passive and helpless, gazing face
to face upon the anticipated and dreadful moment which is
slowly moving on. It is in these hours that, having gone
through in imagination the whole circle of resources and
found them nothing, and ourselves powerless, as m the hands
of a Destiny, there comes a strange and nameless dread, a
horrible feeling of insecurity, which give's the consciousness
of a want, and forces us to feel out into the abyss for some-
thing that is mightier than flesh and blood to lean upon.
Then, therefore, it was that there came the moment of a
conflict within the soul of Jacob, so terrible and so violent
that it seemed an actual struggle with a living man. In the
darkness he had heard a voice, and came in contact with a
Form, and felt a Presence, the reality of which there was no
mistaking. Now, to the unscientific mind, that which is
real seems to be necessarily material too. What wonder
if, to the unscientific mind of Jacob, this conflict, so real,
and attended in his person with such tangible result^
4 8 Jacob's Wrestling.
seemed all human and material a conflict with a tangi
bie antagonist? What wonder if tradition preserved it in
such a form ? Suppose we admit that the Being whose
awful presence Jacob felt had no form which could be grap-
pled by a human hand, is it less real for that ? Are there no
realities but those which the hand can touch and the eye see V
Jacob in that hour felt the dark secret and mystery of ex-
istence.
Upon this I shall make three remarks.
1. The first has reference to the contrast observable be
tween this and a former revelation made to Jacob's soul.
This was not the first time it had found itself face to face
with God. Twenty years before, he had seen in vision a
ladder reared against the sky, and angels ascending and de-
scending on it. Exceedingly remarkable. Immediately
after his transgression, when leaving his father's home, a ban-
ished man, to be a wanderer for many years, this first meet-
ing took place. Fresh from his sin, God met him in tender-
ness and forgiveness. He saw the token which told him that
all communication between heaven and earth was not sever-
ed. The way was clear and unimpeded still^ Messages of
reciprocated love might pass between the Father and His
sinful child, as the angels in the dream ascended and de-
scended on the visionary ladder. The possibility of saintliness
was not forfeited. All that the vision taught him. Then
took place that touching covenant, in which Jacob bound
himself to serve gratefully his father's God, and vowed the
vow of a consecrated heart to Him. All that was now past.
After twenty years God met him again ; but this second in-
tercourse was of a very different character. It was no lon-
ger God the Forgiver, God the Protector, God the covenant-
ing Love, that met Jacob ; but God the Awful, the Unnam-
able, whose -breath blasts, at whose touch the flesh, of the
mortal shrinks and shrivels up. This is exactly the reverse
of what might have been anticipated. You would have ex-
pected the darker vision of experience to come first. First
the storm-struggle of the soul; then the vision of peace. It
was exactly the reverse.
Yet all this, tried by experience, is a most true and living
account. The awful feelings about Life and God are not
those which characterize our earlier years. It is quite natu-
ral that in the first espousals of the soul in its freshness to
God, bright and hopeful feelings should be the predominant
or the only ones. Joy marks, and ought to mark, early re-
ligion. Nay, by God's merciful arrangement, even sin is not
that crushing thing in early life which it sometimes becomes
Jacob's Wrestling. 49
in later years, when we mourn not so much a calculable
number of sinful acts, as a deep pervading sinfulness. He-
morse does not corrode with its evil power then. Forgiveness
is not only granted, but consciously and joyfully felt. It is
as life matures, that the weight of life, the burden of this un-
intelligible world, and the mystery of the hidden God, are
felt.
A vast amount of insincerity is produced by mistaking
this. We expect in the religion of the child the experience
which can only be true in the religion of the man. We
force into their lips the language which describes the wrest-
ling of the soul with God. It is twenty years too soon. God,
in His awfulness, the thought of mystery which scathes the
soul, how can they know that yet before they have got the
thews and sinews of the man's heart to master such a
thought ? They know nothing yet they ought to know
nothing yet of God but as the Father who is around their
beds they ought to see nothing yet but Heaven, and angels
ascending and descending.
This morning, my young brethren, you presented your-
selves at the communion-table for the first time. Some of
you, we trust, were conscious of meeting God. Only let us
not confound the dates of Christian experience. If you did,
it was not as Jacob met God on this occasion, but rather as
he met Him on the earlier one. It were only a miserable
forcing of insincerity upon you to require that this solemn,
fearful sensation of his should be yours. Rather, we trust,
you felt God present as the Lord of Love. A ladder was
raised for you to heaven. Oh, we trust that the feeling in-
some cases at least was this as of angels ascending and de-
scending upon a child of God.
2. Again I remark, that the end and aim of Jacob's strug-
gle was to know the name of God. " Tell me, I pray thee,
thy name." A very unimportant desire at first sight. For
what signifies a name ? In these days, when names are only
epithets, it signifies nothing. " Jehovah, Jove, or Lord," as
the " Universal Prayer " insinuates, are all the same. Now,
to assert that it matters not whether God be called Jehovah,
Jove, or Lord, is true, if it mean this, that a devout and ear-
nest heart is accepted by God, let the name be what it will
by which He is addressed. But if it mean that Jove and Je-
hovah express the same Being that the character of Him
whom the Pagan worshipped was the same as the character
of Him whom Israel adored under the name of Jehovah -
that they refer to the same group of ideas, or that always
names are but names, then we must look much deeper.
50 Jacob's Wrestling.
In the Hebrew history are discernible three periods dis-
tinctly marked, in which names and words bore very differ-
ent characters. These three, it has been observed by acute
philologists, correspond to the periods in which the nation
bore the three different appellations of Hebrews, Israelites^
Jews,
In the first of these periods names meant truths, and words
were the symbols of realities. The characteristics of the
names given then were simplicity and sincerity. They were
drawn from a few simple sources: either from some charac-
teristic of the individual, as Jacob, The Supplanter, or Moses,
Drawn from the Water ; or from the idea of family, as Ben-
jamin, The Son of my Right Hand; or from the conception
of the tribe or nation, then gradually consolidating itself; or,
lastly, from the religious idea of God, But in this- ease not
the highest notion of God not Jah or Jehovah, but simply
the earlier and simpler idea of Deity : El Israel, Tlie Prince
of El ; Peniel, The Face of EL
Ii. these days names were real, but the conceptions they
contained were not the loftiest,
The second period begins about the time of the departure
from Egypt, and it is characterized by unabated simplicity,
with the addition of sublime r thought and feeling more in-
tensely religious. The heart of the nation was big with
mighty and new religious truth and the feelings with which
the national heart was swelling found vent in the names
which were given abundantly. God, under His name Jah,
the noblest assemblage of spiritual truths yet conceived, be-
came the adjunct to names of places and persons. Oshea's
name is changed into Je-hoshua.
Observe, moreover, that in this period there was no fas-
tidious, over-refined chariness in the use of that name. Men
conscious of deep and real reverence are not fearful of the
appearance of irreverence. The word became a common
word, as it always may, so long as it is felt, and awe is real.
A mighty cedar was called a cedar of Jehovah, a lofty mount-
ain, a mountain of Jehovah, Hirman beauty even was praised
by such an epithet, Moses was divinely fair, beautiful to
God. The Eternal name became an adjunct. No beauty-
no greatness no goodness, was conceivable, except as ema-
nating from Him : therefore His name was freely but most
devoutly used.
Like the earlier period, in this too, words mean realities ;
but, unlike the earlier period, they are impregnated with
deeper religions thought.
The third period was at its zenith in the time of Christ'
Jacob's Wrestling. 51
words had lost their meaning, and shared the hollow, unreal
state of all things. A man's name might be Judas, and still
he might be a traitor. A man might be called Pharisee ex-
clusively religious and yet the name might only cover the
hollowness of hypocrisy ; or he might be called most noble
Festus, and be the meanest tyrant that ever sat upon a pro-
consular chair. This is the period in which every keen and
wise observer knows that the decay of national religions feel-
ing has begun. That decay in the meaning of words, that
lowering of the standard of the ideas for which they stand,
is a certain mark of this. The debasement of a language is
a sure mark of the debasement of a nation. The insincerity
of a language is a proof of the insincerity of a nation : for a
time comes in the history of a nation when words no longer
stand for things ; when names are given for the sake of an
euphonious sound ; and when titles are but the epithets of
unmeaning courtesy : a time when Majesty- Defender of
the Faith Most Noble Worshipful, and Honorable not
only mean nothing, but do not flush the cheek with the
shame of convicted falsehood when they are worn as empty
ornaments.
The name of God shares this fate. A nation may reach
the state in which the Eternal Name can be used to point
a sentence, or adorn a familiar conversation, and no longer
shock the ear with the sound of blasphemy, because in good
truth the name .no longer stands for the highest, but for a
meaner conception, an idol of the debased mind. For exam-
ple, in a foreign language, the language of a light and irre-
ligious people, the Eternal Name can be used as a light ex-
pletive and conversational ejaculation, and not shock any
religious sensibility. You could not do that in English. It
would sound like a blasphemy to say, in light talk, My God J
or Good God ! Your flesh would creep at hearing it. But
in that language the word has lost its sacredness, because il
has lost its meaning. It means no more than Jove or Baal,
It means a being whose existence has become a nursery fable.
No marvel that we are taught to pray, "Hallowed be Thy
name." We can not pray a deeper prayer for our country
than to say, Never may that name in English stand for a
lower idea than it stands for now. There is a solemn powet
in words, because words are the expression of character.
"By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words
thou shalt be condemned."
Yet in this period, exactly in proportion as the solemnity
of the idea was gone, reverence was scrupulously paid to the
corpse-like word which remained and had once inclosed it
52 Jacob's Wrestling.
In that hollow, artificial age, the Jew would wipe his- pen
before he ventured to write the name he would leave out
the vowels of the sacred Jehovah, and substitute those of the
less sacred Elohim. In that kind of age, too, men bow to
the liame of Jesus often just in that proportion in which they
have ceased to recognize His true grandeur and majesty of
character.
In such an age it would be indeed preposterous to spend
the strength upon an inquiry such as this: "Tell me Thy
Name ?" Jehovah, Jove, or Lord what matter ? But Jacob
did not live in this third period, when names meant nothing,
nor did he live in the second, when words contained the deep-
est truth the nation is ever destined to receive. But he lived
in the first age, when men are sincere, and truthful, and ear-
nest, and names exhibit character. To tell Jacob the name
of God was to reveal to him what God is and who.
3. I observe a third thing. This desire of Jacob was not
the one we should naturally have expected on such an occa-
sion. He is alone his past fault is coming retributively on
a guilty conscience he dreads the meeting with his brother.
His soul is agonized with that, and that we naturally expect
will be the subject and the burden of his prayer. No such
thing ! Not a word about Esau not a word about person-
al danger at all. All that is banished completely for the
time, and deeper thoughts are grappling with his soul.
To get safe through to-morrow ? No, no, no ! To be
blessed by God to know Him, and what He is that is the
battle of Jacob's soul from sunset till the dawn of day.
And this is our struggle the struggle. Let any true
man go down into the deeps of his own being, and answer
us what is the cry that comes from the most real part of
his nature ? Is it the cry for daily bread? Jacob asked for
that in his first communing with God preservation, safety.
Is it even this to be forgiven our sins ? Jacob had a sin to
be forgiven, and in that most solemn moment of his exist-
ence he did not say a syllable about it. Or is it this
"Hallowed be thy name?" No, my brethren. Out of our
frail and yet sublime humanity, the demand that rises in the
earthlier hours of our religion may be this Save my soul ;
but in the most unearthly moments it is this " Tell me thy
Name." We move through a world of mystery ; and the
deepest question is, What is the being that is ever near,
sometimes felt, never seen That which has haunted us
from childhood with a dream of something surpassingly fair,
which has never yet been realized That which sweeps
through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast
Jacob's Wrestling. 53
from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken
and silent in our loneliness That which has touched us in
our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony,
and our mortal affections have shrivelled up with pain
That which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness, and con-
ceptions of superhuman excellence ? Shall we say It or He ?
What is It? Who is He? Those anticipations of Immor-
tality and God what are they ? Are they the mere throb-
bings of my own heart, heard and mistaken for a living
something beside me? Are they the sound of my own
wishes, echoing through the vast void of nothingness ? or
shall I call them God, Father, Spirit, Love ? A living Be-
ing within me or outside me ? Tell me Thy Name, thou
awful "mystery of Loveliness ! This is the struggle of all
earnest life.
We come now to
II. The revelation of the mystery.
1. It was revealed by awe. Very significantly are we
told, that the Divine antagonist seemed, as it were, anxious
to depart as the day was about to dawn, and that Jacob
held Him more convulsively fast, as if aware that the day-
light was likely to rob him of his anticipated blessing, in
which there seems concealed a very deep truth. God is ap-
proached more nearly in that which is indefinite than in
that which is definite and distinct. He is felt in awe, and
wonder, and worship, rather than ia clear conceptions.
There is a sense in which darkness has more of God than
light has. He dwells in the thick darkness. Moments of
tender, vague mystery often bring distinctly the feeling of
His presence. When day breaks and distinctness comes,
the Divine has evaporated from the soul like morning dew.
In sorrow, haunted by uncertain presentiments, we feel the
Infinite around us. The gloom disperses, the world's joy
comes again, and it seems as if God were gone the Being
who had touched us with a withering hand, and wrestled
with us, yet whose presence, even when most terrible, was
more blessed than His absence. It is true, even literally,
that the darkness reveals God. Every morning God draws
the curtain of the garish light across His eternity, and wo
lose the Infinite. We look down on earth instead of up to
heaven, on a narrower and more contracted spectacle that
which is examined by the microscope when the telescope is
laid aside smallness, instead of vastness. "Man goeth
forth unto his work and to his labor till the evening ;" and
in the dust and pettiness of life we seem to cease to behold
54 Jacob's Wrestling.
Him : then at night He undraws the curtain again, and we
see how much of God and eternity the bright distinct day
has hidden from us. Yes, in solitary, silent, vague darkness,
the Awful One is near.
This morning, young brethren, we endeavored to act on
this belief; we met in stillness, before the full broad glare of
day had rested on our world. Your first Communion im-
plored His blessing in the earlier hour which seems so pecu-
liarly His. Before the dull, and deadening, and earthward
influences of the worJd had dried up the dew of fresh morn-
ing feeling, you tried to fortify your souls with a sense of
His presence. This night, before to-morrow's light shall
dawn, pray that He will not depart until He has left upon
your hearts the blessing of a strength which shall be' yours
through the garish day, and through dry, scorching life, even
to the close of you)* days.
2. Again, this revelation was made in an unsyllabled
blessing. Jacob requested two things. He asked for a
blessing and he prayed to know the name of God. God
gave him the blessing. " He blessed him there," but refused
to tell His name. " Wherefore dost thou ask after ray
name ?" '
In this, too, seems to lie a most important truth. Names
have a power, a strange power, of hiding God. Speech has
been bitterly defined as the art of hiding thought. Well,
that sarcastic definition has in it a truth. The Eternal
Word is the Reveal&r of God's thought, and every true word
of man is originally the expression of a thought; but by de-
frees the word hides the thought. Language is valuable
>r the things of this life ; but for the things of the other
world, it is an encumbrance almost as much as an assistance.
Words often hide from us our ignorance of even earthly
truth. The child asks for information, and we satiate his
curiosity with words. Who does not know how we satisfy
ourselves with the name of some strange bird or plant, or the
name of some new law in nature? It is a mystery perplex-
ing us before. We get the name, and fancy we understand
something more than we did before, but, in truth, we are
more hopelessly ignorant; for before we felt there was a
something we had not attained, and so we inquired and
searched : now, we fancy we possess it, because we have got
the name by which it is known, and the word covers over the
abyss of our ignorance. If Jacob had got a worc7,that word
might have satisfied him. He would have said, Now I un-
derstand God, and know all about Him.
Besides, names and words soon lose their meaning. In
JacoBs Wrestling. 55
trie process of years and centuries the meaning dies oil tnern
like the sunlight from the hills. The hills are there the
color and life are gone. The words of that creed, for exam-
ple, which we read last Sunday (the Athanasian), were living
words a few centuries ago. They have changed their mean-
ing, and are, to ninety-nine out of every hundred, only dead
words. Yet men tenaciously hold to the expressions of
which they do not understand the meaning, and which have
a very different meaning now from what they had once
Person, Procession, Substance : and they are almost worse
with them than without them for they conceal their igno-
rance, and place a barrier against the earnestness of inquiry,
We repeat the creed by rote, but the profound truths of -Be-
ing which the creed contains, how many of us understand ?
All this affords an instructive lesson to parents and to
teachers. In the education of a pupil or a child, the wise
way is to deal with him as God dealt with his pupil, the
child-man Jacob : for before the teaching of God, the wisest
man, what is he but a child ? God's plan was not to give
names and words, but truths of feeling. That night, in that
strange scene, He impressed on Jacob's soul a religious awe
which was hereafter to develop, not a set of formal expres-
sions, which would have satisfied with husks the cravings of
the intellect and shut up the soul. Jacob felt the Infinite,
who was more truly felt when least named. Words would
have reduced that to the Finite : for, oh, to know all about
God is one thing to know the living God is another. Our
rule seems to be this : Let a child's religion be expansive
capable of expansion as little systematic as possible : let it
lie upon the heart like the light loose soil, which can be
broken through as the heart bursts into fuller life. If it be
trodden down hard and stiff in formularies, it is more than
probable that the whole must be burst through, and broken
violently, and thrown off altogether, when the soul requires
roorh to germinate.
And in this way, my young brethren, I have tried to deal
with you. Not in creeds, nor even in the stiffness of the
catechism, has truth been put before you. Rather has it
been trusted to the impulses of the heart on which, we
believe, God works more efficaciously than we can do. A
few simple truths : and then these have been left to work,
and germinate, and swell. Baptism reveals to you this truth
for the heart, that God is your Father, and that Christ has
encouraged you to live as your Father's children. It has re-
vealed that name which Jacob knew not Love. Confirma-
tion has told you another truth, that of self-dedication to
56 Jacob's Wrestling.
Him. Heaven is the service of God. The highest blessed-
ness of life is powers and self consecrated to His will. These
are the germs of truth ; but it would have been miserable
self-delusion, and most pernicious teaching, to have aimed at
exhausting truth, or systematizing it. We are jealous of over-
systematic teaching. God's love to you the sacrifice of
your lives to God but the meaning of that? Oh, a long,
long life will not exhaust the meaning the Name of God.
Feel him more and more all else is but empty words.
Lastly, the effect of this revelation was to change Jacob's
character. His name was changed from Jacob to Israel,
because himself was an altered man. Hitherto there had
been something subtle in his character a certain cunning
and craft a want of breadth, as if he had no firm footing
upon reality. The forgiveness of God twenty years before
had not altered this. He remained Jacob, the subtle sup-
planter still. For, indeed, a man whose religion is chiefly
the sense of forgiveness, does not thereby rise into integrity
or firmness of character a certain tenderness of character
may very easily go along w r ith a great deal of subtlety.
Jacob was tender and devout, and grateful for God's pardon,
and only half honest still. But this half-insincere man is
brought" into contact with the awful God, and his subtlety
falls from him. He becomes real at once. Every insincere
habit of mind shrivels in the face of God. One clear, true
glance into the depths of Being, and the whole man is altered.
The name changes because the character is changed. No
longer Jacob, The Supplanter, but Israel, The Prince of God
the champion of the Lord, who had fought with God and
conquered ; and who, henceforth, will fight for God, and be
His true, loyal soldier : a larger, more unselfish name a
larger and more unselfish man honest and true at last.
No man becomes honest till he has got face to face with
God. There is a certain insincerity about us all a some-
thing dramatic. One of those dreadful moments which
throw us upon ourselves,'and strip off the hollowness ot our
outside show, must come before the insincere is true.
And again, young brethren, such a moment, at least of
truthfulness, ought to have been this morning. Let the old
pass. Let the name of the world pass into the Christian
name. Baptism and Confirmation, the one gives, and the
other reminds us of the giving of a better name and a truer.
Henceforth be men. Lose the natural frailty, whatever it is.
See God, and you will lose it.
To conclude, here is a question for each man separately-
What is the name of vour God ? Not in the sense of this
Christian Progress by Oblivion oj the Past. 5 7
age, but in the sense of Jacob's age. What is the Name of
the Deity you worship? In the present modern sense of
Name, by which nothing more than epithet is meant, of
course the reply is easy. The Name of yours is the God of
Christian worship the Threefold One the Author of Exist-
ence, manifested in Divine Humanity, commingling with us
as pure Spirit the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That, of
course, you say is the name of your God. Now, put away
names give words to the winds. What do you adore in
your heart of hearts ? What is the name oftenest on your
lips in your unfettered, spontaneous moments ? If we over-
heard your secret thoughts, who and what is it which is to
you the greatest and the best that you would desire to real-*
ize ? The character of the rich man, or the successful, or the
admired ? Would the worst misery which could happen to
you be the wreck of property the worst shame, not to have
done wrong, but to have sunk in the estimation of society ?
Then in the classifications of earth, which separate men into
Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, you may rank as a worship*
per N of the Christian's God. But in the nomenclature ot
Heaven, where names can not stand for things, God sees you
as an idolator your highest is not His highest. The Name
that is above every name is not the description of your God.
For life and death we have made our choice. The life of
Christ the life of Truth and Love; and if it must be, as the
result of that, the Cross of Christ, with the obloquy and
shame that wait on truth that is the name before which we
bow. In this world "there are gods many, and lords
many : but to us there is but one Lord, the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ."
IV.
CHRISTIAN PROGRESS BY OBLIVION OF
THE PAST.
"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing \
ao ; forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus. "Phil. iii. 13, 14.
THE first thing which strikes us on reading these verses
is, that the Apostle Paul places himself on a level with the
persons whom he addresses. He speaks to them as frail,
weak men, and he gives them in himself a specimen of what
3*
58 Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past.
frailty and weakness can achieve in the strength of Christ,
And it is for this reason that the passage before us is one of
the most encouraging in all the writings of St. Paul. For
there is one aspect in which the apostle is presented to us,
which is perhaps a depressing one. When we look at his al-
most superhuman career, reverence and admiration we must
feel ; but so far does he seem removed from ordinary life that
imitation appears out of the question. Let us select but two
instances of this discouraging aspect of the apostle's life.
Most of us know the feeling of unaccountable depression
which rests upon us when we find ourselves alone in a foreign
town, with its tide of population ebbing and flowing past us,
a mass of human life, in which we ourselves are nothing.
But that was St. Paul's daily existence. He had consecrated
himself to an almost perpetual exile. He had given up the
endearments of domestic life forever. Home, in this world,
St. Paul had none. With a capacity for the tenderest feel-
ings of our nature, he had chosen for his lot the task of living
among strangers, and as soon as they ceased to be strangers,
quitting them again. He went on month by month, attach-
ing congregations to himself, and month by month dooming
himself to severance. And yet I know not that we read of
ono single trace of depression or discouragement suffered to
rest on the apostle's mind. He seems to have been ever fresh
and sanguine, the salient energy of his soul rising above the
need of all human sympathy. It is the magnificent spectacle
of missionary life, with more than missionary loneliness.
There is something almost awful in the thought of a man
who was so thoroughly in the next world that he needed not
the consolations of this world. And yet, observe, there is
nothing encouraging for us in this. It is very grand to look
upon, very commanding, very full of awe ; but it is so much
above us, so little like any thing human that we know of,
that we content ourselves with gazing on him as on the glid-
ing swallow's flight, which we wonder at, but never think of
imitating.
Now let us look at one other feature in St. Paul's character
his superiority to those temptations which are potent with
ordinary men. We say nothing of his being above the love
of money, of his indifference to a life of comfort and personal
indulgence. Those temptations only assail the lower part of
our nature, and it is not saintliness to be above these : com-
mon excellence is impossible otherwise. But when we come
to look for those temptations which master the higher and
the nobler man ambition, jealousy, pride it is not that we
see them conquered by the apostle ; they scarcely seem to
Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past. 59
have even lodged in his bosom at all. It was open to the
apostle, if he had felt the ambition, to make for himself a
name, to become the leader of a party in Corinth and in the
world. And yet remember we not how sternly he put down
the thought, and how he labored to merge his individuality in
the cause, and make himself an equal of inferior men?
" Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers, serv-
ants, by whom ye believed ?"
Again, in respect of jealousy. Jealousy seems almost in-
separable from human love. It is but the other side of love,
the shadow cast by the light when the darker body inter-
venes. There came to him in prison that most cutting of all
news to a minister's heart, that others were trying to sup-
plant him in the affections of his converts. But his was that
lofty love which cares less for reciprocation than for the well-
being of the objects loved. The rival teachers were teach-
ing from emulation ; still they could not but bless by preach-
ing Christ to his disciples. " What then ? Notwithstanding
every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preach-
ed ; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." There
is not a trace of jealousy in these words.
Once more : Degrading things were laid to his charge.
The most liberal-minded of mankind was charged with big
otry. The most generous of men was suspected of avarice.
If ever pride were venial, it had been then. Yet read through
the whole of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and say
if one spark of pride be visible. He might have shut himself
up in high and dignified silence. He might have refused to
condescend to solicit a renewal of the love which had once
grown cold; and yet we look in vain for the symptoms of
offended pride. Take this one passage as a specimen : " Be-
hold, this third time I am willing to come unto you ; . . . .
and I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though
the more abundantly I love you, the less I am beloved."
In this there is very little encouragement. A man so
thoroughly above human resentment, human passions, human
weakness, does not seem to us an example. The nearer Hu-
manity approaches a perfe'ct standard, the less does it com
mand our sympathy. A man must be weak before we can
feel encouraged to attempt what he has done. It is not the
Redeemer's sinlessness, nor His unconquerable fidelity to
duty, nor His superhuman nobleness, that win our desire to
imitate. Rather His tears at the grave of friendship, His
shrinking from the sharpness of death, and the feeling of hu-
man doubt which swept across His soul like a desolation,
These make Him one of us, and therefore our example.
60 Christian Progress by Oblivion of the 1'asi.
And it is on this account that this passage seems to us so
full of encouragement. It is the precious picture of a frail
and struggling apostle precious both to the man and to the
minister. To the man, because it tells him that what he feels
St. Paul felt, imperfect, feeble, far from what he would wish
to be; yet with sanguine hope, expecting progress in the
saintly life. Precious to the minister, because it tells him
that his very weakness may be subservient to a people's
strength. Not in his transcendent gifts not in his saintly
endowments not even in his apostolic devotedness, is St.
Paul so close to our hearts, as when he makes himself one
with us, and says, " Brethren, I count not myself to have ap-
prehended."
And we know not how otherwise any minister could hope
to do good when he addresses men who are infinitely his su-
periors in almost every thing. We know not how else he
could urge on to a sanctity which he has not himself attained:
we know not how he could dare to speak severely of weak-
nesses by which he himself is overpowered, and passions of
which he feels in himself all the terrible tyranny, if it were
not that he expects to have tacitly understood that in his
own case which the apostle urged in every form of expres-
sion : Brethren, be as I am, forl am as ye are struggling,
baffled, but panting for emancipation.
We confine ourselves to two subjects :
I. The apostle's object in this life.
II. The means which he used for attaining it.
I. The apostle's object or aim in this life was " perfection."
In the verse before " Not as though I had already attained,
either were already perfect." Perfection was his unreached
mark.
And less than this no Christian can aim at. There are
given to us "exceeding great and precious promises," that by
means of these we might be partakers of the Divine Nature.
Not merely to be equal to the standard of our day, nor even
to surpass it. Not to be superior to the men amongst whom
,ve live. Not to forgive those who have little to be forgiven.
Not to love our friends, but to be the children of our Father
to be pure even as Christ is pure to be " perfect even as
tur Father which is in heaven is perfect."
It is easily perceivable why this perfection is unattainable
in this life. Faultlessness is conceivable, being merely the
negation of evil. But perfection is positive, the attainment
of all conceivable excellence. It is long as eternity expan-
sive as God. Perfection is our mark: yet never will the
Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past. 6 r
aim be so true and steady as to strike the golden centre.
Perfection of character, yet, even to the dying hour, it will
be but this, "I count not myself to have apprehended."
Christian life is like those questions in mathematics which
never can be exactly answered. All you can attain is an ap-
proximation to the truth. You may labor on for years and
never reach it ; yet your labor is not in vain. Every figure
you add makes the fraction nearer than the last to the million-
millionth ; and so it is with holiness. Christ is our mark
the perfect standard of God in Christ. But be as holy as
you will, there is a step nearer, and another, and another, and
so infinitely on.
To this object the apostle gave himself with singleness of
aim. " This one thing I do" The life of man is a va-
grant, changeful desultoriness ; like that of children sporting
on an enamelled meadow, chasing now a painted butterfly,
which loses its charm by being caught now a wreath of
mist, which falls damp upon the hand with disappointment
now a feather of thistle-down, which is crushed in the grasp.
In the midst of all this fickleness, St. Paul had found a pur-
pose to which he gave the undivided energy of his soul.
" This one thing I do I press towards the mark."
This is intelligible enough in the case of a minister; for
whether he be in the pulpit or beside a sick man's bed or
furnishing his mind in the study, evidently and unmistakably
it is his profession to be doing only one thing. But in the
manifold life of the man of the world and business, it is not
so easy to understand how this can be carried out. To an-
swer this, we observe there is a difference between doing and
being. Perfection is being, not doing ; it is not to effect an
'act, but to achieve a character. If the aim of life were to do
something, then, as in an earthly business, except in doing
this one thing the business would be at a stand-still. The
student is not doing the one thing of student life when he
has ceased to think or read. The laborer leaves his work
undone when the spade is not in his hand, and he sits beneath
the hedge to rest. But in Christian life, every moment and
every act is an opportunity for doing the one thing, of be-
coming Christ-like. Every day is full of a most impressive
experience. Every temptation to evil temper which can ac-
sail us to-day will be an opportunity to decide the question
whether we shall gain the calmness and the rest of Christ, or
whether we shall be tossed by the restlessness and agitation
of the world. Nay, the very vicissitudes of the seasons, day
and night, heat and cold, affecting us variably, and producing
exhilaration or depression, are so contrived as to conduce to
62 Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past.
wards the being which we become, and decide whether we
shall be masters of ourselves, or whether we shall be swept at
the mercy of accident and circumstance, miserably suscepti*
ble of merely outward influences. Infinite as are the vari-
eties of life, so manifold are the paths to saintly character ;
and he who has not found out how directly or indirectly to
make every thing converge towards his soul's sanctification,
has as yet missed the meaning of this life.
In pressing towards this u mark," the apostle attained a
prize ; and here I offer an observation, which is not one of
mere subtlety of refinement, but deeply practical. The mark
was perfection of character, the prize was blessedness. But
the apostle did not aim at the prize of blessedness, he aimed
at the mark of perfectness. In becoming perfect he attained
happiness, but his primary aim was not happiness.
We may understand this by an illustration. In student -
life there are those who seek knowledge for its own sake, and
there are those who seek it for the sake of the prize, and the
honor, and the subsequent success in life that knowledge
brings. To those who seek knowledge for its own sake the
labor is itself reward. Attainment is the highest reward.
Doubtless the prize stimulates exertion ; encourages and
forms a part of the motive, but only a subordinate one : and
knowledge would still have " a price above rubies," if there
were no prize at all. They who seek knowledge for the sake
of a prize are not genuine lovers of knowledge they only
love the rewards' of knowledge : had it no honor or substan-
tial advantage connected with it, they would be indolent.
Applying this to our subject, I say this is a spurious good-
ness which is good for the sake of reward. The child that
speaks truth for the sake of the praise of truth, is not truth
lul. The man who is honest because honesty is the best pol
icy, has not integrity in his heart. He who endeavors to be
hum ble, and holy, and perfect, in order to win heaven, has
only a counterfeit religion. God for His own sake Good-
ness because it is good Truth because it is lovely this
is the Christian's aim. The prize is only an incentive; insep-
arable from success, but not the aim itself.
\Vith this limitation, however, w r e remark that it is a Chris
tinn duty to dwell much more on the thought of future bless-
edness than most men do. If ever the apostle's step began
to flag, the radiant diadem before him gave new vi'^or to his
heart, and we know how at the close of his career the vision
becanfe more vivid and more entrancing. "Henceforth there
is laid up for me a crown of glory !" It is our privilege, if
we are on our way to God, to keep steadily before us the
Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past. 63
thought of homo. Make it a matter of habit Force your-
self at night, alone, in the midst of the world's bright sights,
to pause "to think of the heaven which is yours. Let it calm
you and ennoble you, and give you cheerfulness to endure
It was so that Moses was enabled to live amongst all the fas-
cinations 0f his courtly life, with a heart unseduced from his
laborious destiny. By faith ..." esteeming the reproach of
Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt." Why?
" For he had respect unto the recompense of the reward." It
was so that our Master strengthened his human soul for its
sharp earthly endurance. " For the joy that was set before
him, He endured the cross, despising the shame." If we
would become heavenly-minded, we must let the imagination
realize the blessedness to which we are moving on. Let us
think much of rest the rest which is not of indolence, but of
powers in perfect equilibrium. The rest which is deep as
summer midnight, yet full of life and force as summer sun-
shine, the sabbath of eternity. Let us think of the love of
God, which we shall feel in its full tide upon our souls. Let
us think of that marvellous career of sublime occupation
which shall belong to the spirits of just men made perfect ;
when we shall fill a higher place in God's universe, and more
consciously, and with more distinct insight, co-operate with
God in the rule over His Creation. "I press towards the
mark for the prize."
II. We pass to our second topic. The means which St.
Paul found available for the attainment of Divine and per-
fect character. His great principle was to " forget the things
which were behind, and to reach forward to the things which
were before." The wisdom of a divine life lies hid in this
principle. I shall endeavor to expand the sentiment to make
it intelligible.
W T hat are the things behind, which are to be forgotten ?
1. If we would progress in Christian life, we must forget
the days of innocence that lie behind us. Let not this be
misunderstood. Innocent, literally, no man ever is. We
come into the world with tendencies to evil; but there was
a time in our lives when those were only tendencies. A
proneness to sin we had ; but we had not yet sinned. The
moment had not yet arrived when that cloud settles down
upon the heart, which in all of after-life is never entirely re-
moved : the sense of guilt, the anguish of lost innocence, the
restless feeling of a heart no longer pure. Popularly, we call
that innocence ; and when men become bitterly aware that
early innocence of heart is gone, they feel as if all were lost*
64 Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past
and so look back to what they reckon holier days with A p<^
culiar fondness of regret. I believe there is much that is
merely feeble and sentimental in this regret. Our early in-
nocence is nothing more than ignorance of evil. Christian
life is not a retaining of that ignorance of evil, nor even a re
turning of it again. We lose our mere negative sinlessness.
We put on a firm manly holiness. Human innocence is not
io know evil ; Christian saintliness is to know evil and good,
and prefer good. It is possible for a parent, with over-fas-
tidious refinement, to prolong the duration of this innocence
unnaturally. He may lock up his library, and prevent the
entrance to forbidden books ; he may exercise a jealous cen-
sorship over every book and every companion that comes into
the house ; he may remove the public journal from the table,
lest an eye may chance to rest upon the contaminating por-
tion of its pages ; but he has only put off the evil hour. He
has sent into the world a young man of eighteen or twenty,
ignorant of evil as a child, but not innocent as an angel who
abhors the evil. No ; we can not get back our past igno-
rance, neither is it desirable we should. No sane mrnd wish-
es for that which is impossible. And it is no more to be re-
gretted than the blossom is to be regretted w r hen fruit is
hardening in its place; no more to be regretted than the
slender gracefulness of the sapling, when you have got in-
stead the woody fibre of the heart of oak of which the ship
is made ; no more to be regretted than the green blade when
the ear has come instead, bending down in yellow ripeness.
Our innocence is gone, withered with the business-like con-
tact with the great world. It is one of the things behind.
Forget it. It was worth very little. And now for some-
thing of a texture more firm, more enduring. We will not
mourn over the loss of simplicity, if we have got instead
souls indurated by experience, disciplined, even by fall, to
refuse the evil and to choose the good.
2. In the next place, it is wise to forget our days of youth,
Up to a certain period of life it is the tendency of man to
look forward. There is a marvellous prodigality with which
we throw away our present happiness when we are young,
svhich belongs to those w r ho feel that they are rich in happi-
ness, and never expect to be bankrupts. It almost seems
one of the signatures of our immortality that we squande?
time as if there were a dim consciousness that we are in pos-
session of an eternity of it ; but as we arrive at middle age,
it is the tendency of man to look back.
To a man of middle life, existence is no longer a dream,
but a reality. He has not much more new to look forward
Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past. 65
to, for the character of his life is generally fixed by that
time. His profession, his home, his occupations, will be for
the most part what they are now. He will make few new
acquaintances no new friends. It is the solemn thought
connected with middle age that life's last business is begun
in earnest; and it is then, midway Jbetween the cradle and
the grave, that a man begins to look back and marvel with a
kind of remorseful feeling that he let the days of youth go by
so half enjoyed. It is the pensive autumn feeling it is the
sensation of half sadness that we experience when the long-
est day of the year is past, and every day that follows is
shorter, and the lights fainter, and the feebler shadows tell
that nature is hastening with gigantic footsteps to her win-
ter grave. So does man look back upon his youth. When
the first gray hairs become visible when the unwelcome
truth fastens itself upon the mind that a man is no longer
going up the hill, but down, and that the sun is already west-
ering, he looks back on things behind. Now this is a nat-
ural feeling, but is it the high Christian tone of feeling ? In
the spirit of this verse, we may assuredly answer, No. We
who have an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and
that fadeth not away, what have we to do with things past?
When we were children, we thought as children. But now
there lies before us manhood, with its earnest work ; and
then old age, and then the grave, and then home.
And so manhood in the Christian life is a better thing
than boyhood, because it is a riper thing ; and old age ought
to be a brighter, and a calmer, and a more serene thing than
manhood. There is a second youth for man, better and holi-
er than his first, if he will look on and not back. There is a
peculiar simplicity of heart and a touching singleness of pur-
pose in Christian old age, which has ripened gradually and
not fitfully. It is then that to the wisdom of the serpent is
added the harmlessness of the dove ; it is then that to the
firmness of manhood is joined almost the gentleness of wom-
anhood ; it is then that the somewhat austere and sour char-
acter of growing strength, moral and intellectual, mellows
into the rich ripeness of an old age made sweet and tolerant
by experience ; it is then that man returns to first principles.
There comes a love more pure and deep than the boy could
ever feel ; there comes a conviction, with a strength beyond
that which the boy could never know, that the earliest lesson
of life is infinite, Christ is all.
3. Again, it is wise to forget past errors. There is a kind
of temperament which, when^indulged, greatly hinders growth
in real godliness. It is that rueful, repentant, self-accusing
66 Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past.
temper which is always looking back, and microscopically ob-
serving how that which is done might have been better done.
Something of this we ought to have. A Christian ought to
feel always that he has partially failed, but that ought not
to be the only feeling. Faith ought ever to be a sanguine,
cheerful thing ; and perhaps in practical life we could not
give a better account of faith than by saying that it is,
amidst much failure, having the heart to try again. Our
best deeds are marked by imperfection ; but if they really
were our best, " forget the things that are behind " we shall
do better next time.
Under this head we include all those mistakes which be-
long to our circumstances. We can all look back to past life
and see mistakes that have been made, to a certain extent
perhaps, irreparable ones. We can see where our education
was fatally misdirected. The profession chosen for you per-
haps was not the fittest, or you are out of place, and many
things might have been better ordered. Now on this apos-
tolic principle it is wiss to forget all that. It is not by re-
gretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done,
but by making the best of what we are. It is not by com-
plaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well
the tools w e have. What we are, and where we are, is God's
providential arrangement God's doing, though it may be
man's misdoing ; and the manly and the wise way is to look
your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made out
of them. Life, like war, is a series of mistakes, and he is not
the best Christian nor the best general who makes the few-
est false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that ; but he
is the best w r ho wins the most splendid victories by the re-
trieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes : organize victory out
of mistakes.
Finally, past guilt lies behind us, and is well forgotten.
There is a way in which even sin may be banished from the
memory. If a man looks forward to the evil he is going to
commit, and satisfies himself that it is inevitable, and so
treats it lightly, he is acting as a fatalist. But if a man pa
tially does this, looking backward, feeling that sin when it
is past has become part of the history of God's universe, and
is not to be wept over forever, he only does that which the
Giver of the Gospel permits him to do. Bad as the results
have been in the world of making light of sin, those of brood-
ing over it too much have been worse. Remorse has done
more harm than even hardihood. It was remorse which
fixed Judas in an unalterable destiny ; it was remorse which
filled the monasteries for ages with men and women whose
Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past. 67
fives became useless to their fellow-creatures ; it is remorse
which so remembers by-gone faults as to paralyze the ener-
gies for doing Christ's work ; for when you break a Chris-
tian's spirit, it is all over with progress. Oh, we want every
thing that is hopeful and encouraging for our work, for God
knows it is not an easy one. And therefore it is that the
Gospel comes to the guiltiest of us all at the very outset with
the inspiring news of pardon. You remember how Christ
treated sin. Sin of oppression and hypocrisy indignantly,
but sin of frailty " 'Hath no man condemned thee ?' ' No
man, Lord.' ' Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no
more.' " As if he would bid us think more of what we may
be than of what we have been.
There was the wisdom of life in the proverb with which
the widow of Tekoah pleaded for the restoration of Absalom
from banishment before David. Absalom had slain his
brother Amnon. Well, Amnon was dead before his time ;
but" the severity of revenge could never bring him back
again. " We must all die," said the wise woman, " and are
as water spilt upon the ground, which can not be gathered
up again." Christian brethren, do not stop too long to weep
over spilt water. Forget your guilt, and wait to see what
eternity has to say to it. You have other work to do now.
So let us work out the spirit of the apostle's plan. Inno-
cence, youth, success, error, guilt let us forget them all.
Not backward are our glances bent,
But onward to our Father's home.
In conclusion, remember Christian progress is only possi-
ble in Christ. It is a very lofty thing to be a Christian ; for
a Christian is a man who is restoring God's likeness to his
character ; and therefore the apostle calls it here a high call~
ing. High as heaven is the calling wherewith we are called.
But this very height makes it seem impracticable. It is nat-
ural to say, All that was well enough for one so transcend-
ently gifted as Paul to hope for : but I am no gifted man ;
I have no iron strength of mind ; I have no sanguine hope-
fulness of character; I am disposed to look on the dark side
of things ; I am undetermined, weak, vacillating ; and then
I have a whole army of passions and follies to contend with.
We have to remind such men of one thing they have forgot-
ten. It is the high calling of God, if you will ; but it is the
high calling of God in Christ Jesus. What the world calls
virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The founda-
tion of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood
of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His Resurrec-
68 Triumph over Hindrances.
tion. First let a man know that all his past is wrong and
sinful ; then let him fix his eye on the love of God in Christ
loving him even him, the guilty one. Is there no strength
in that no power in the knowledge that all that is gone by
is gone, and that a fresh, clear future is open ? It is not the
progress of virtue that God asks for, but progress in saintli-
ness, empowered by hope and love.
Lastly, let each man put this question to himself, " Dare
I look on ?" With an earnest Christian, it is " reaching
forth to those things which are before." Progress ever.
And then just as we go to rest in this world tired, and wake
up fresh and vigorous in the morning, so does the Christian
go to sleep in the world's night, weary with the work of
life, and then on the resurrection-day he wakes in his second
and his brighter morning. It is well for a believer to look
on. Dare you ? Remember, out of Christ, it is not wisdom,
but madness to look on. You must look back, for the long-
est and the best day is either past or passing. It will be
winter soon desolate, uncheered, hopeless, winter old age,
with its dreariness and its disappointments, and its queru-
lous broken-heartedness ; and there is no second spring for
you no resurrection-morning of blessedness to dawn on the
darkness of your grave. God has only one method of salva-
tion, the Cross of Christ. God can have only one ; for the
Cross of Christ means death to evil, life to good. There is
no other way to salvation but that ; for that in itself is, and
alone is, salvation. Out of Christ, therefore, it is woe to the
man who reaches forth to the things which are before. To
such I say ; My unhappy brethren, Omnipotence itself can
not change the darkness of your destiny.
V.
TRIUMPH OVER HINDRANCES ZACCHEUS.
" And Zaccheus stood, and said unto the Lord ; Behold. Lord, the half of
my goods I give to the poor : and if I have taken any thing from any man
by false accusation, I restore him fourfold." Luke xix. 8.
THERE are persons to whom a religious life seems smooth
and easy. Gifted by God constitutionally with a freedom
from those inclinations which in other men are tyrannous
and irresistible, endued with those aspirations which other
men seem to lack, it appears as if they were born saints.
Triumph over Hindrances. 69
There are others to whom it is all a trial a whole world
of passions keep up strife within. The name of the spirit
which possesses them is Legion. It is a hard tight from
the cradle to the grave up-hill work toil all the way;
and at the last it seems as if they had only just kept their
ground.
There are circumstances which seem as if intended as a
very hot-bed for the culture of religious principle, in which
the'difficulty appears to be to escape being religious.
There are others in which religious life seems impossible.
For the soul, tested by temptation, is like iron tried by
weights. No iron bar is absolutely infrangible. Its
strength is tested by the weight which it will bear without
breaking. No soul is absolutely impeccable. It seems as if
all we can dare to ask even of the holiest is how much temp-'
tation he can bear without giving way. There are societies
amidst which some are forced to dwell daily, in which the
very idea of Christian rest is negatived. There are occupa-
tions in which purity of heart can scarcely be conceived.
There are temptations to which some are subjected in a long
series, in which to have stood upright would have demand-
ed not a man's but an angel's strength.
Here are two cases : one in which temperament and cir-
cumstances are favorable to religion ; another in which both
are adverse. If life were always the brighter side of these
pictures, the need of Christian instruction and Christian
casuistry i. &, the direction for conduct under various sup-
posabie cases, would be superseded. The end of the institu-
tion of a Church would be gone ; for the Church exists for
the purposes of mutual sympathy and mutual support. But
the fact is, life is for the most part a path of varied trial.
How to lead the life divine, surrounded by temptations
from within and from without how to breathe freely the
atmosphere of heaven, while the feet yet touch earth
how to lead the life of Christ, who shrunk from no scene
of trying duty, and took the temptations of man's life as
they came or how even to lead the ordinary saintly life,
winning experience from fall, and permanent strength out
of momentary weakness, and victory out of defeat, this is
the problem.
The possibility of such a life is guaranteed by the history
of Zaccheus. Zaccheus was tempted much, and yet Zacche-
us contrived to be a servant of Christ. If we wanted a mot-
to to prefix to this story, we should append this : The suc-
cessful pursuit of religion under difficulties.
These, +hen, are the two branches of our thoughts to-day:
70 Triumph over Hindrances,
I. The hindrances to a religious life.
IL The Christian triumph over difficulties.
I. The hindrances of Zaccheus were twofold : partly cir-
cumstantial partly personal. Partly circumstantial, arising
from his riches and his profession of a publican.
Now the publican's profession exposed him to temptations
in these three ways. First of all, in the way of opportunity.
A publican was a gatherer of the Roman public imposts.
Not, however, as now, when all is fixed, and the Government
pays the gatherer of the taxes. The Roman publican paid
so much to the Government for the privilege of collecting
them, and then indemnified himself, and appropriated what
overplus he could, from the taxes which he gathered. There
was, therefore, evidently a temptation to overcharge, and a
temptation to oppress. To overcharge, because the only re-
dress the payer of the taxes had was an appeal to law, in
which his chance was small before a tribunal where the
judge was a Roman, and the accuser an official of the Ro-
man Government. A temptation to oppress, because the
threat of law was nearly certain to extort a bribe. Be-
sides this, most of us must have remarked that a certain
harshness of manner is contracted by those who have the
rule over the poor. They come in contact with human souls
only in the way of business. They have to do with their ig-
norance, their stupicfity, their attempts to deceive ; and hence
the tenderest-hearted men become impatient and apparently
unfeeling. Hard men, knowing that redress is difficult, be-
come harder still, and exercise their authority with the inso-
lence of office ; so that, w T hen to the insolence of office and
the likelihood of impunity there was superadded the pecu-
niary advantage annexed to a tyrannical extortion, any one
may understand how great the publican's temptation was.
Another temptation was presented : to live satisfied with
a low morality. The standard of right and wrong is eternal
in the heavens unchangeably one and the same. But here
on earth it is perpetually variable it is one in one age or
nation, another in another. Every profession has its conven-
tional morality, current nowhere else. That which is per-
mitted by the peculiar standard of truth acknowledged at
the bar is falsehood among plain men ; that which would be
reckoned in the army purity and tenderness would be else-
where licentiousness and cruelty. There is a parliamentary
honor quite distinct from honor between man and man.
Trade has its honesty, which rightly named is fraud. And
in all these cases the temptation is to live content with the
Triumph over Hindrances. 7 1
Btandard of a man's own profession or society ; and this is
the real difference between the worldly man and the relig-
ious man. He is the worldling who lives below that stand'
ard, or no higher ; he is the servant of God who lives above
his age. But you will perceive that amongst publicans a
very little would count much that which would be laxity
to a Jew and shame to a Pharisee, might be reckoned very
strict morality among the Publicans.
Again, Zaccheus was tempted to that hardness in evil
which comes from having no character to support. But the
extent to which sin hardens depends partly on the estimate
taken of it by society. The falsehood of Abraham, the guilt
and violence of David, were very different in their effect on
character in an age when truth and purity and gentleness
were scarcely recognized, from what they would be now.
Then Abraham and David had not so sinned against their
consciences as a man would sin now in doing the same acts,
because their consciences were less enlightened. A man might
be a slave-trader in the Western hemisphere, and in other re-
spects a humane, upright, honorable man. In the last cen-
tury, the holy Newton of Olney trafficked in slaves after be-
coming religious. A man who had dealings in this way in
this country could not remain upright and honorable, even if
it were conceivable that he began as such ; because he would
either conceal from the world his share in the traffic, and so,
doing it secretly, would become a hypocrite, or else he must
cover his wickedness by effrontery, doing it in defiance of
public shame, and so getting seared in conscience. Because
in the one case, the sin remaining sin, yet countenanced bj
society, does not degrade the man nor injure his conscience
even to the same extent to which it would ruin the other,
whose conscience must become seared by defiance of public
shame. It is scarcely possible to unite together the idea of
an executioner of public justice and a humble, holy man.
And yet assuredly, not from any thing that there is unlaw-
ful in the office ; ah executioner's trade is as lawful as a sol-
dier's. A soldier is placed there by his country to slay his
country's enemies, and a doomster is placed there to slay
the transgressors of his country's laws. Wherein lies the dif
ierence which leaves the one a man of honor, and almost ne-
cessitates the other to be taken from the rank of reprobates,
or else gradually to become such ? Simply the difference of
public opinion public scorn. Once there was no shame in
the office of the execittioner, and the judge of Israel, with his
own hands, hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
Phineas executed summary and sanguinary vengeance, and
72 Triumph over Hindrances.
his name has been preserved in a hymn by his country's
gratitude. The whole congregation became executioners in
the case of blasphemy, and no abandonment was the result.
But the voice of public opinion pronouncing an office or a
man scandalous, either finds jr else makes them what it has
pronounced them. The executioner i or becomes an out-
cast, because reckoned such.
More vile and more degraded than even the executioner's
office with us was the office of publican among the Jews. A
penitent publican could not go to the house of God without
the risk of hearing muttered near him the sanctimonious
thanksgiving of Pharisaism : " God, I thank Thee that I am
not as this publican." A publican, even though high in of-
fice, and rich besides, could not receive into his house a teach-
er of religion without being saluted by the murmurs of the
crowd, as in this case: "He is gone to eat with a man that
is a sinner." A sinner ! The proof of that ? The only proof
was that he was a publican. There are men and women in
this congregation who have committed sins that never have
been published to the world ; and therefore, though they be
still untouched by the love of God, they have never sunk
down to degradation ; whereas the very same sins, branded
with public shame, have sunk others not worse than them
down to the lowest infamy. There is no principle in educa-
tion and in life more sure than this to stigmatize is to ruin ;
to take away character is to take away all. There is no
power committed to man, capable of use and abuse, more cer-
tain and more awful than this : " Whose soever sins ye remit,
they are remitted unto them."
This, then, was a temptation arising out of Zaccheus's cir-
cumstances to become quite hardened by having no char-
acter to support.
The personal hindrance to a religious life lay in the rec-
ollection of past guilt. Zaccheus had done wrong, and
no four-fold restitution will undo that where only remorse
exists.
There is a difference between remorse and penitence. Re-
morse is the consciousness of wron^-doing with no sense of
love. Penitence is that same consciousness, w r ith the feeling
of tenderness and gratefulness added.
And pernicious as have been the consequences of self-right-
eousness, more destructive still have been the consequences
of remorse. If self-righteousness has slain its thousands, re-
morse has slain its tens of thousands ; #>r, indisputably, self-
righteousness secures a man from degradation. Have yon
never wondered at the sure walk of those persons who, to trust
Triumph over Hindrances. 73
to their own estimate of themselves, are always right ? They
never sin, their children are better brought up than any other
children, their conduct is irreproachable. Pride saves them
from a fall. That element of self-respect, healthful always, is
their safeguard. Yes, the Pharisee was right. He is not an
extortioner, nor unjust, and he is regular in his payments and
his duties. That was self-righteousness: it kept him from
samtliness, but it saved him from degradation too. Remorse,
on the contrary, crushes. If a man lose the world's respect,
he can retreat back upon the consciousness of the God with-
in. But if a man lose his own respect, he sinks down and
down, and deeper yet, until he can get it back again by feel-
ing that he is sublimely loved, and he dares at last to respect
that which God vouchsafes to care for. Remorse is like the
clog of an insoluble debt. The debtor is proverbially ex-
travagant one more, and one more expense. What can it
matter when the great bankruptcy is near ? And so, in the
same way one sin, and one more. Why not? why should
he pause when all is hopeless? what is one added to that
which is already infinite ?
Past guilt becomes a hindrance too in another way it
makes fresh sin easier. Let any one, out of a series of trans-
gressions, compare the character of the first and the last.
The first time there was the shudder and the horror, and the
violent struggle, and the feeling of impossibility. I can not
can not do that. The second time there was faint reluc-
tance, made more faint by the recollection of the facility and
the pleasantness of the first transgression, and the last time
there is neither shudder nor reluctance, but the eager plunge
down the precipice on the brink of which he trembled once.
All this was against Zaccheus. A publican had lost self-re-
spect, and sin was therefore easy.
II. Pass we on to the triumph over difficulties. In this
there is man's part, and God's part.
Man's part in Zaccheus's case was exhibited in the discov-
ery of expedients. The Redeemer came to Jericho, and Zac-
cheus desired to see that blessed countenance, whose very
looks, he was told, shed peace upon restless spirits and fever-
ed hearts. But Zaccheus was small of stature, and a crowd
surrounded him. Therefore he ran before, and climbed up
into a sycamore-tree. You must not look on this as a mere
act of curiosity. They who thronged the steps of Jesus were
a crowd formed of different materials from the crowd which
would have been found in the amphitheatre. He was there
as a religious teacher or prophet ; and they who took pains to
74 Triumph over Hindrances.
see Him, at least were the men who looked for sa/vation ?t,
Israel. This, therefore, was a religious act.
We have heard of the " pursuit of knowledge under diffi-
culties," The shepherd, with no apparatus besides his thread
and beads, has Iain on his back, on the starry night, mapped
the heavens, and unconsciously become a distinguished as-
tronomer. The peasant-boy, w T ith no tools- but his rude knife,
and a visit now and then to the neighboring town, has begun
his scientific education by producing a watch that would
mark the time. The blind man, trampling upon impossibili-
ties, has explored the economy of the bee-hive, and, more
wondrous still, lectured on the laws of light. The timid
stammerer, with pebbles in his mouth, and the roar of the sea-
surge in his ear, has attained correctest elocution, and sway-
ed as one man the changeful tides of the mighty masses of
the Athenian democracy. All these were expedients. It is
thus in the life religious. No man ever trod exactly the
path that others trod before him. There is no exact chart
laid down for the voyage. The rocks and quicksands are
shifting. He who enters upon the ocean of existence arches
his sails to an untried breeze. He is "the first that evei
burst into that lonely sea." Every life is a neio life. Ev-
ery day is a new day like nothing that ever went before,
or can ever follow after. No books no systems no fore-
cast set of rules, can provide for all cases ; every case is a
new case. And just as in any earthly enterprize, the conduct
of a campaign, or the building of a bridge, unforeseen diffi-
culties and unexpected disasters must be met by that inex-
haustible fertility of invention which belongs to those who do
not live to God second-hand. We must live to God first-
hand. If we are in earnest, as Zaccheus was, we must invent
peculiar means of getting over peculiar difficulties.
There are times when the truest courage is shown in re-
treating from a temptation. There are times when, not be-
ing on a level with other men in qualifications of temper,
mind, character, we must compensate by inventions and
Christian expedients. You must climb over the crowd of
difficulties which stand between your soul and Christ you
must " run before " and forecast trials, and get into the syca-
more solitude. Without a living life like this, you will never
get a glimpse of the King in his beauty ; you will never see
Him. You will be just on the point of seeing Him, and yet
be shut out by some unexpected hindrance.
Observe again, an illustration of this : Zacchens's habit of
restoration. " Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to
the poor ; and if I have taken any thing from any man bif
Triumph over Hindrances. 75
false accusation, I restore him fourfold." There are two ways
of interpreting this ; it may have reference to the future. It
commonly is so interpreted. It is supposed that, touched by
the love of Christ, Zaccheus proclaimed this as his resolve I
hereby promise to give the hall of my goods to the poor.
But it is likely that this interpretation has been put upon it
in order to make it square with the evangelical order of emo-
tions grace first, liberality after. The interpretation seems
rather put on the passage than found there. The word is
not future, but singular : Behold, Lord, I give. And it seema
more natural to take it as a statement of the habit of Zac-
cheus's previous life. If so, then all is plain. This man, so
maligned, had been leading a righteous life after all, accord-
ing to the Mosaic standard. On the day of defense he stands
forward and vindicates himself from the aspersion. " These
are my habits." And the Son of Man vindicates him before
all. Yes, publican as he is, he too is a " son of Abraham."
Here, then, were expedients by which he overcame the hin-
drances of his position. The tendency to the hardness and
selfishness of riches he checked by a rule of giving half away.
The tendency to extortion he met by fastening on himself
the recollection, that when the hot moment of temptation
had passed away, he would be severely dealt with before the
tribunal of his own conscience, and unrelentingly sentenced
to restore fourfold.
God's part in this triumph over difficulties is exhibited in
the address of ,Jesus : " Zaccheus, make haste and come
down ; for to-day I must abide at thy house."
Two things we note here : Invitation and Sympathy. In-
vitation " come down." Say what we will of Zaccheus
seeking Jesus, the truth is, Jesus was seeking Zaccheus.
For what other reason but the will of God had Jesus come
to Jericho but to seek Zaccheus and such as he? Long
years Zaccheus had been living in only a dim consciousness
of being a servant of God and goodness. At last the Saviour
is born into the world appears in Judea comes to Jericho,
Zaccheus's town passes down Zaccheus's street, and by
Zaccheus's house, and up to Zaccheus's .person. What is all
this but seeking what the Bible calls election ? Now there
is a specimen in this of the ways of God with men in this
world. We do not seek God God seeks us. There is a
Spirit pervading time and space who seeks the souls of men.
At last the seeking becomes reciprocal the Divine Presence
is felt afar, and the soul begins to turn towards it. Then
when we begin to seek God, we become conscious that God
is seeking us. It is at that period that we distinguish the
76 Triumph over Hindrances.
voice of personal invitation "Zaccheus!" It is then that
the Eternal Presence makes its abode with us, and the hour
of unutterable joy begins, when the banquet of Divine Love
is spread within the soul, and the Son of God abides there as
at a feast. " Behold, I stand at the door and knock : If any
man hear my voice, I will come in and sup with him, and he
with me."
This is Divine Grace. We are saved by grace, not will.
" It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but
of God that showeth mercy." In the matter of man's salva-
tion God is first. He comes to us self-invited He names us
by name He isolates us from the crowd, and sheds upon us
the sense of personal recognition He pronounces the bene-
diction, till we feel that there is a mysterious blessing on our
house, and on our meal, and on our heart. " This day is sal-
vation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of
Abraham."
Lastly, the Divine part was done in Sympathy. By sym-
pathy we commonly mean little more than condolence. If
the tear start readily at the voice of grief, and the purse-
strings open at the accents of distress, we talk of a man's
having great sympathy. To weep with those who weep :
common sympathy does not mean much more.
The sympathy of Christ was something different from this.
Sympathy to this extent, no doubt, Zaccheus could already
command. If Zaccheus were sick, even a Pharisee would
have given him medicine. If Zaccheus had been in need, a
Jew would not have scrupled to bestow an alms. If Zac-
cheus had been bereaved, many even of that crowd that mur-
mured when they saw him treated by Christ like a son of
Abraham would have given to^ his sorrow the tribute of a
sigh.
The sympathy of Jesus was fellow-feeling for all that is hu-
man. He did not condole with Zaccheus upon his trials
He did not talk to him "about his soul" He did not preach
to him about his sins He did not force his way into his house
to lecture him He simply said, " I will abide at thy house:"
thereby identifying himself with a publican: thereby ac-
knowledging a publican for a brother. Zaccheus a publican?
Zaccheus a sinner? Yes; but Zaccheus is a man. His heart
throbs at cutting words. He has a sense of human honor.
He feels the burning shame of the world's disgrace. Lost?
Yes: but the Son of Man, with the blood of the human race
in His veins, is a Brother to the lost.
It is in this entire and perfect sympathy with all Humani-
ty that the heart of Jesus differs from every other heart that
Triumph over Hindrances. 77
is found among the sons of men. And it is this oh, it ia
this, which is the chief blessedness of having such a Saviour.
If you are poor you can only get a miserable, sympathy from
the rich ; with the best intentions they can not understand
you. Their sympathy is awkward. If you are in pain, it i&
only a factitious and constrained sympathy you get from
those in health feelings forced, adopted kindly, but imper
feet still. They sit beside you, when the regular condolence
is done, conversing on topics with each other that jar upon
the ear. They sympathize ? Miserable comforters are they
all. If you are miserable, and tell out your grief, you have
the shame of feeling that you were not understood ; and that
you have bared your inner self to a rude gaze. If you are ir.
doubt, you can not tell your doubts to religious people ; no,
not even to the ministers of Christ for they have no place
for doubts in their largest system. They ask, What right
have you to doubt? They suspect your character. They
shake the head ; and whisper it about gravely, that you read
strange books that you are verging on infidelity. If you
are depressed with guilt, to whom shall you tell out your
tale of shame ? The confessional, with its "innumerable evils,
and yet indisputably soothing power, is passed, away ; and
there is nothing to supply its place. You can not speak to
your brother man, for you injure him by doing so, or else
weaken yourself. You can not tell it to society, for society
judges in the gross, by general rules, and can not take into
account the delicate differences of transgression. It banishes
the frail penitent, and does homage to the daring hard trans-
gressor.
Then it is that, repulsed on all sides ^nd lonely, we turn
to Him whose mighty Heart understands and feels all.
" Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of
eternal life." And then it is that, exactly like Zaccheus,
misunderstood, suspected by the world, suspected by our
own hearts the very voice of God apparently against us
isolated and apart, we speak to Him from the loneliness of
the sycamore-tree, heart to heart, and pulse to pulse.
" Lord, Thou knovvest all things :" Thou knowest my se-
cret charities, and my untold self-denials. " Tliou knowest
that I love thee."
Remark, in conclusion, the power of this sympathy on
Zaccheus's character. Salvation that day came to Zaccheus's
house. What brought it ? What touched him ? Of course,
" the gospel." Yes ; but what is the gospel ? What was
his gospel? Speculations or revelations concerning the Di
vine Nature ? the scheme of the atonement ? or of the in-
78 The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath.
carnation ? or baptismal regeneration ? Nay, but the Di
vine sympathy of the Divinest Man. The personal love of
God, manifested in the face of Jesus Christ. The floodgates
of his soul were opened, and the whole force that was in the
man flowed forth. Whichever way you take that expres-
sion, " Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the
poor :" If it referred to the future, then, touched by unex-
pected sympathy, finding himself no longer an outcast, he
made thai resolve in gratefulness. If to the past, then, still
touched by sympathy, he who had never tried to vindicate
himself before the world, was softened to tell out the tale of
his secret munificence. This is what I have been doing all
the time they slandered me, and none but God knew it.
It required something to make a man like that talk of
things which he had not suffered his own left hand to know,
before a scorning world. But, anyhow, it was the manifest-
ed Fellowship of the Son of Man which brought salvation to
that house.
Learn this : When we live the gospel so, and preach the
gospel so, sinners will be brought to God. We know not
yet the gospel power ; for who trusts, as Jesus did, all to
that ? Who ventures, as He did, upon the power of Love,
in sanguine hopefulness of the most irreclaimable? who
makes that, the divine humility of Christ, " the gospel ?"
More than by eloquence, more than by accurate doctrine,
more than by ecclesiastical order, more than by any doc-
trine trusted to by the most earnest and holy men, shall we
and others, sinful rebels, outcasts, be won to Christ by that
central truth of all the Gospel the entireness of the Redeem-
er's sympathy. In other words, the Love of Jesus,
VI.
THE SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE OF THE
SABBATH.
" Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a
olyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath-days : which are a shadow of
things to come; but the body is of Christ." Col. ii. 16, 17.
No sophistry of criticism can explain away the obvious
meaning of these words. The apostle speaks of certain in-
stitutions as Jewish : shadowy : typical : and among these
we are surprised to find the sabbath-days. It has been con-
tended that there is here no allusion to the seventh day of
The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath. 79
rest, but only to certain Jewish holydays, not of Divine in-
stitution. But, in the first place, the " holydays " have been
already named in the same verse; in the next we are con-
vinced that no plain man, reading this verse for the first
time, without a doctrine to support, would have put such an
interpretation upon the word : and we may be sure that St.
Paul would never have risked so certain a misconstruction
of his words by the use of an ambiguous phrase. This,
then, is the first thing we lay down a very simple postu-
late, one would think when the apostle says the sabbath-
days, he means the sabbath-days.
Peculiar difficulties attend the discussien of the subject of
the sabbath. If we take the strict and ultra ground of sab-
bath observance, basing it on the rigorous requirements of
the fourth commandment, we take ground which is not true ;
and all untruth, whether it be an over-statement or a half-
truth, recoils upon itself. If we impose on men a burden
which can not be borne, and demand a strictness which, pos-
sible in theory, is impossible in practice, men recoil ; we have
asked too much, and they give us nothing the result is an
open, wanton, and sarcastic desecration of the Day of Rest.
If, on the other hand, we state the truth, that the sabbath
is obsolete a shadow which has passed without modifica-
tion or explanations, evidently there is a danger no less per-
ilous. It is true to spiritual, false to unspiritual men ; and a
wide door is opened for abuse. And to recklessly loosen the
hold of a nation on the sanctity of the Lord's day would be
most mischievous to do so willfully would be an act almost
diabolical. For if we must choose between Puritan over-
precision on the one hand, and on the other that laxity
which, in many parts of the Continent, has marked the day
from other days only by more riotous worldliness, and a more
entire abandonment of the whole community to amusement,
no Christian would hesitate : no English Christian, at least ;
to whom that day is hallowed by all that is endearing in
early associations, and who feels how much it is the very
bulwark of his country's moral purity.
Here, however, as in other cases, it is the half-truth which
is dangerous the other half is the corrective ; the whole
truth alone is safe. If we say the sabbath is shadow, this is
only half the truth. The apostle adds, " the body is ot
Christ."
There is, then, in the sabbath that which is shadowy and
that which is substantial ; that which is transient and that
which is permanent ; that which is temporal and typical,
and that which is eternal. The shadow and the body.
8o The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath.
Hence, a very natural and simple division of our subject
suggests itself.
I. The transient shadow of the sabbath which has passed
away.
II. The permanent substance which can not pass.
L The transient shadow which has passed away.
The history of the sabbath-day is this. It was given by
iMoses to the Israelites, partly as a sign between God and
them, marking them oif from all other nations by its observ-
ance ; partly as commemorative of their deliverance from
Egypt. And the reason why the seventh day was fixed on,
rather than the sixth or eighth was, that on that day God
rested from His labor. The soul of man was to form itself
on the model of the Spirit of God. It is not said, that God
at the creation gave the sabbath to man, but that God rest-
ed at the close of the six days of creation : whereupon he
had blessed and sanctified the seventh day to the Israelites.
This is stated in the fourth commandment, and also in Gen. i.,
which was written for the Israelites ; and the history of crea-
tion naturally and appropriately introduces the reason and
the sanction of their day of rest.
Nor is there in the Old Testament a single trace of the
observance of the sabbath before the time of Moses. After
the Deluge, it is not mentioned in the covenant made with
Noah. The first account of it occurs after the Israelites had
left Egypt; and the fourth commandment consolidates it
into a law, and explains the principle and sanctions of the
institution. The observance of one day in seven, therefore,
is purely Jewish. The Jewish obligation to observe it rest-
ed on the enactment given by Moses.
The spirit of its observance, too, is Jewish, and not Chris-
tian. There is a difference between the spirit of Judaism
and that of Christianity. The spirit of Judaism is separa-
tion that of Christianity is permeation. To separate the
evil from the good was the aim and work of Judaism : to
sever one nation from all other nations; certain meats from
other meat ; certain days from other days. Sanctify means
to set apart. The very essence of the idea of Hebrew holi-
ness lay in sanctification in the sense of separation. On the
contrary, Christianity is permeation it permeates all evil
with good it aims at overcoming evil by good it desires
to transfuse the spirit of the day of rest into all other days,
and to spread the holiness of one nation over all the tvofkt
To saturate life with God, and the world with Heaven s that
is the genius of Christianity.
The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath. 8 1
Accordingly, the observance of the sabbath was entirely
in the Jewish spirit. No fire was permitted to be made on
pain of death : Exod. xxxv. 3. No food was to be prepared :
xvi. 5, 23. No buying nor selling : Neheni. x. 31. So rigor-
ously was all this carried out, that a man gathering sticks
was arraigned before the congregation, and sentenced to
death by Moses.
This is Jewish, typical, shadowy ; it is all to pass away.
Much already has passed : even those who believe our
Lord's day to be the descendant of the sabbath admit this.
The day is changed. The first day of the week has taken
the place of the seventh. The computation of hours is al-
tered. The Jews reckoned from sunset to sunset modern
Christians reckon from midnight to midnight. The spirit
of its observance, too, is altered. No one contends now for
Jewish strictness in its details.
Now observe, all this implies the abrogation of a great
deal more nay, of the whole Jewish sabbath itself. We
have altered the day the computation of the hours the
mode of observance : What remains to keep ? Absolutely
nothing of the literal portion except one day in seven : and
that is abrogated, if the rest be abrogated. For by what
right do we say that the order of the day, whether it be the
first or the seventh, is a matter of indifference, because only
formal, but that the proportion of days, one in seven, instead
oi one in eight or nine, is moral and unalterable ? On what
intelligible principle do we produce the fourth command'
ment as binding upon Christians, and abrogate so important
a clause of it as, "In it thou shalt do no manner of work ?"
On what self-evident ground is it shown that the Jew might
not light a fire, but the Christian may ; yet that if the postal
arrangements of a country permit the delivery of a letter, it
is an infraction of the sabbath ?
Unquestionably on no scriptural authority. Let those
who demand a strict observance of the letter of scripture re-
member that the Jewish sabbath is distinctly enforced in
the Bible, and nowhere in the Bible repealed. You have
changed the seventh day to the first on no clear scriptural
permission. Two or three passages tell .us that, after the
nesurrection, the apostles were found together on the first
day of the week (which, by-the-way, may have been Satur-
day evening after sunset) But it is concluded that there-
fore probably the change was apostolic. You have only a
probability to go on and that probability, except with the
aid of tradition, infinitesimally small for the abrogation of
a single iota of the Jewish fourth commandment.
4*
H2 The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath.
It will be said, however, that works of necessity and works
of mercy are excepted by Christ's example.
Tell us, then, ye who are servants of the letter, and yet do
not scruple to use a carriage to convey you to some church
where a favorite minister is heard, is that a spiritual necessi-
ty or a spiritual luxury ? Part of the Sunday meal of all of
you is the result of a servant's work. Tell us, then, ye ac-
curate logicians, who say that nothing escapes the rigor of
the prohibition which is not necessary or merciful, is a hot
repast a work of necessity or a work of mercy ? Oh ! it
rouses in every true soul a deep and earnest indignation to
hear men who drive their cattle to church on Sundays, be-
cause they are too emasculated to trudge through cold and
rain on foot, invoke the severity of an insulted Law of the
Decalogue on those who provide facilities of movement for
such as can not afford the luxury of a carriage. What
think you, would He who blighted the Pharisees with such
burning words, have said, had He been present by, while
men, whose servants clean their houses, and prepare their
meals, and harness their horses, stand up to denounce the
service on some railway by which the poor are helped to
health and enjoyment ? Hired service for the rich is a ne-
cessity hired service for the poor is a desecration of the
sabbath ! It is right that a thousand should toil for the few
in private ! It is past bearing in a Christian country that a
few should toil for thousands on the sabbath-day !
There is only this alternative : if the fourth command-
ment be binding still, that clause is unrepealed " no man-
ner of work ;" and so, too, is that other important part, the
sanetification of the seventh day and not the first. If the
fourth commandment be not binding in these points, then
there is nothing left but the broad, comprehensive ground
taken by the apostle. The whole sabbath is a shadow of
things to come. In consistency, either hold that none of the
formal part is abrogated, or else all. The whole of the let-
ter of the commandment is moral, or else none.
II There is, however, in the sabbath a substance, a per-
manent something " a body " which can not pass away.
"The body is of Christ;" the spirit of Christ is the fulfill-
ment of the law. To have the spirit of Christ is to have ful-
filled the law. Let us hear the mind of Christ in this mat-
ter. " The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sab-
bath." In that principle, rightly understood, lies the clue
for the unravelling of the whole matter. The religionists
of that day maintained that the necessities of man's nature
The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath. 83
must give way to the rigor of the enactment: He taught
that the enactment must yield to man's necessities. They
said that the sabbath was written in the book of the Law ;
He said that it was written on man's nature, and that the
law was merely meant to be in accordance with that nature.
They based the obligation to observe the sabbath on the sa-
credness of an enactment ; He on the sacredness of the na-
ture of man.
An illustration will help us to perceive the difference be-
tween these two views. A wise physician prescribes a regi-
men of diet, to a palate which has become diseased : lie fixes
what shall be eaten, the quantity, the hours, and number of
times. On what does the obligation to obey rest ? On the
arbitrary authority of the physician ? or on the nature with
which that prescription is in accordance ? When soundness
and health are restored, the prescription falls into disuse :
but the nature remains unalterable, which has made some
things nutritious, others unwholesome, and excess forever
pernicious. Thus the spirit of the prescription may be still
in force when the prescriptive authority is repealed.
So Moses prescribed the sabbath to a nation spiritually
diseased. He gave the regimen of rest to men who did not
feel the need of spiritual rest. He fenced round his rule
with precise regulations of details one day in seven, no
work, no fire, no traffic. On what does the obligation to
obey it rest ? On the authority of the rule ? or on the ne-
cessities t of that nature for which the rule was divinely
adapted ? Was man made for the sabbath, to obey it as a
slave? or, Was the sabbath made for man? And when
spiritual health has been restored, the Law regulating the
details of rest may become obsolete ; but the nature which
demands rest never can be reversed.
Observe, now, that this is a far grander, safer, and more
permanent basis on which to rest the sabbath than the mere
enactment. For if you allege the fourth commandment as
your authority, straightway you are met by the objection
" no manner of work." Who gave you leave to alter that ?
And if you reply, works of necessity and works of mercy I
may do, for Christ excepted these from the stringency of the
rule, again the rejoinder comes, is there one in ten of the
things that all Christians permit as lawful really a matter
of necessity ?
Whereas, if the sabbath rest on the needs of human na-
ture, and we accept His decision that the sabbath was made
for man, then you have an eternal ground to rest on from
which you can not be shaken. A son of man mav be lord
84 The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath.
of the sabbath-day, but he is not lord of his own nature,
He can not make one hair white or black. You may abn>
gate the formal rule, but you can not abrogate the needs of
your own soul Eternal as the constitution of the soul of
man is the necessity for the existence of a day of rest.
Further still, on this ground alone can you find an impreg-
nable defense of the proportion, one day in seven : on the
other ground it is unsafe. Having altered the seventh to
the first, I know not why one in seven might not be altered
to one in ten. The thing, however, has been tried ; and by
the necessities of human nature the change has been found
pernicious. One day in ten, prescribed by revolutionary
France, was actually pronounced by physiologists insuffi-
cient. So that we begin to find that, in a deeper sense
than we at first suspected, " the sabbath was made for man."
Even in the contrivance of one day in seven, it was arranged
by unerring wisdom. Just because the sabbath was made for
man, and not because man was ordained to keep the sabbath-
day, you can not tamper even with the iota, one day in seven.
That necessity on which the observance leans is the need
of rest. It is the deepest want in the soul of man. If you
take off covering after covering of the nature which wraps
him round, till you come to the central heart of hearts, deep
lodged there you find the requirement of repose. All men
do not hanker after pleasure all men do not crave intel-
lectual food. But all men long for rest ; the most restless
that ever pursued a turbulent career on earth did by that
career only testify to the need of the soul within. They
craved for something which was not given : there was a
thirst which was not slaked : that very restlessness be-
tokened that restless because not at rest. It is this need
which sometimes makes the quiet of the grave an object of
such deep desire. " There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest." It is this which creates
the chief desirableness of heaven : " There remaineth a rest
for the people of God." And it is this which, consciously or
unconsciously, is the real wish that lies at the bottom of all
others. Oh ! for tranquillity of heart heaven's profound
silence in the soul, " a meek and quiet spirit, which in the
sight of God is of great price !"
The rest needed by man is twofold. Physical repose of
the body a need which he shares with the animals through
the lower nature which he has in common with them.
" Thou shall do no work, nor thy cattle," so far man's
sabbath-need places him only on a level with the ox and
with the ass.
The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath. 85
But, besides this, the rest demanded is a repose of spirit.
Between these two kinds of rest there is a very important
difference. Bodily repose is simply inaction : the rest of the
soul is exercise, not torpor. To do nothing is physical rest
to be engaged in full activity is the rest of the soul.
In that hour, which of all the twenty-four is most emblem-
atical of heaven, and suggestive of repose, the eventide, in
vvhich instinctively Isaac went into the fields to meditate
when the work of the day is done, when the mind has ceased
its tension, when the passions are lulled to rest in spite of
themselves, by the spell of the quiet star-lit sky it is then,
amidst the silence of the lull of all the lower parts of our
nature, that the soul comes forth to do its work. Then the
peculiar; strange work of the soul, which the intellect can
not do meditation, begins. Awe, and worship, and wonder
are in full exercise ; and Love begins then in its purest form
of mystic adoration and pervasive and undefined tenderness
separate from all that is coarse and earthly swelling as
if it would embrace the All in its desire to bless, and lose it-
self in the sea of the love of God. This is the rest of the
soul the exercise and play of all the nobler powers.
Two things are suggested by this thought.
First, the mode of the observance of the day of rest. It
has become lately a subject of very considerable attention.
Physiologists have demonstrated the necessity of cessation
from toil : they have urged the impossibility of perpetual oc-
cupation without end. Pictures, with much pathos in them,
have been placed before us, describing the hard fate of those
on whom no. sabbath dawns. It has been demanded as a
right, entreated as a mercy, on behalf of the laboring man,
that he should have one day in seven for recreation of his
bodily energies. All well and true. But there is a great
deal more than this. He who confines his conception of the
need of rest to that, has left man on a level with the brutes.
Let a man take merely lax and liberal notions of the fourth
commandment let him give his household and dependents
immunity from toil, and wish for himself and them no more
he will find that there is a something wanting still. Experi-
ence tells us, after a trial, that those Sundays are the hap-
piest, the purest, the most rich in blessing, in which the
spiritual part has been most attended to those in which the
business letter was put aside till evening, and the profane
literature not opened, and the ordinary occupations entirely
suspended those in which, as in the temple of Solomon,
the sound of the earthly hammer has not been heard in the
temple of the soul : for this is, in fact, the very distinction be-
86 The Shadow and Substance of ttie Sabbath.
tween the spirit of the Jewish sabbath and the spirit of the
Christian Lord's day. The one is chiefly for the body
" Thou shalt do no manner of work." The other is princi-
pally for the soul "I was in the spirit on the Lord's day.''
The other truth suggested by that fact, that the repose of
the soul is exercise, not rest, is, that it conveys an intimation
of man's immortality. It is only when all the rest of our hu-
man nature is calmed that the spirit comes forth in full ener
gy: all the rest tires, the spirit never tires. Humbleness,
awe, adoration, love, these have in them no weariness : so
that when this frame shall l)e dissolved into the dust of the
earth, and the mind, which is merely fitted for this time-
world, learning by experience, shall have been superseded,
then, in the opening out of an endless career of love, the
spirit will enter upon that sabbath of which all earthly sab-
baths are but the shadow the sabbath of eternity, the im-
mortal rest of its Father's home.
Two observations, in concluding.
1. When is a son of man lord of the sabbath-day? To
whom may the sabbath safely become a shadow ? I reply,
he that has the mind of Christ may exercise discretionary
lordship over the sabbath-day. He who is in possession of
the substance may let the shadow go. A man in health has
done with the prescriptions of the physician. But for an un-
spiritual man to regulate his hours and amount of rest by his
desires, is just as preposterous as for an unhealthy man to
rule his appetites by his sensations. Win the mind of Christ ;
be like Him ; and then, in the reality of rest in God, the sab-
bath form of rest will be superseded. Remain apart from
Christ, and then you are under the law again ; the fourth
commandment is as necessary for you as it was for the Is-
raelite the prescriptive regimen which may discipline your
soul to a sounder state. It is at his peril that the worldly
man departs from the rule of the day of rest. Nothing can
make us free from the law but the Spirit.
- 2. The rule pronounced by the apostle is a rule of liberty,
and at the same time a rule of charity : " Let no man judge
you in respect of the sabbath-days." It is very difficult to
discuss this question of the sabbath. Heat, vehemence, acri-
mony, are substituted for argument. When you calmly ask
to investigate the subject, men apply epithets, and call them
reasons : they stigmatize you as a breaker of the sabbath,
pronounce you " dangerous," with sundry warnings against
you in private, and pregnant hints in public.
The apostle urges charity: "One man esteemeth one day
above another : another man esteemeth every day alike." . . .
The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath. 87
- He that regardeth the day, regardeth it to the Lord ; and
he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he regardeth
it not." Carry out that spirit. In the detail of this question
there is abundant difficulty. It is a question of degree.
Some work must be done on the sabbath-day : some must
sacrifice their rest to the rest of others; for all human life is
sacrifice, voluntary or involuntary.
Again, that which is rest to one man is not rest to another,,
To require the illiterate man to read his Bible for some hours
would impose a toil upon him, though it might be a relaxa*
tion to you. To the laboring man a larger proportion of the
day must be given to the recreation of his physical nature
than is necessary for the man of leisure, to whom the spirit-
ual observance of the day is easy, and seems all. Let us
learn large, charitable considerateness. Let not the poor
man sneer at his richer neighbor, if, in the exercise of his
Christian liberty, he uses his horses to convey him to church
and not to the mere drive of pleasure ; but then, in fairness,
let not the rich man be shocked and scandalized if the over-
wearied shopkeeper and artisan breathe the fresh air of heav-
en with their families in the country. "The sabbath was
made for man." Be generous, consistent, large-minded. A
man may hold stiif, precise Jewish notions on this subject,
but do not stigmatize that man as a formalist. Another may
hold large, Paul-like views of the abrogation of the fourth
commandment, and yet he may be sincerely and zealously
anxious for the hallowing of the day in his household and
through his country. Do not call that man a sabbath-break-
er. Remember, the Pharisees called the Son of God a sab-
bath-breaker. They kept the law of the sabbath, they broke
the law of love. Which was the worst to break ? which was
the higher law to keep? Take care lest, in the zeal which
seems to you to be for Christ, ye be found indulging their
spirit, Ana 11 ot His.
88 The Sympathy of Christ.
VTL
THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.
" For we hare not a high-priest which can not be touched with the feeling
of our infirmities : bat was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin. "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may ob-
tain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." Heb. iv. 15, 16.
ACCORDING to these verses, the priesthood of Jesus Christ
is based upon the perfection of His humanity. Because
tempted in all points like as we are, therefore He can show
mercy, and grant help. Whatever destroys the conception
of His humanity does in that same degree overthrow the no-
tion of His priesthood.
Our subject is the Priestly Sympathies of Christ. But we
make three preliminary observations.
The perfection of Christ's humanity implies that He was
possessed of a human soul as well as a human body. There
was a view held in early times, and condemned by the
Church as a heresy, according to which the body of Christ
was an external framework animated by Deity, as our bodies
are animated by our souls. What the soul is to us, Deity
was to Christ. His body was flesh, blood, bones moved,
guided, ruled by indwelling Divinity.
But you perceive at once that this destroys the notion of
complete humanity. It is not this tabernacle of material ele-
ments which constitutes our humanity: you can not take
that pale corpse from which life has fled, and call that man.
And if Deity were to take up that form and make it its
abode, that would not be a union of the Divine and Human.
It would only be the union of Deity with certain materials
that might have passed into man, or into an animal or an
herb. Humanity implies a body and a soul.
Accordingly, in the life of Christ we find two distinct
Classes of feeling. When He hungered in the wilderness
wherf He thirsted on the cross when He was weary by the
well at Sychar He experienced sensations which belong to
the bodily department of human nature. But when out of
twelve He selected one to be His bosom friend when He
looked round upon the crowd in anger when the tears
streamed down His cheeks at Bethany and when He recoil
ed from the thought of approaching dissolution : these
The Sympathy if Christ. 89
grief, friendship, fear were not the sensations of the body,
much less were they the attributes of Godhead. They were
the affections of an acutely sensitive human soul, alive to all
the tenderness, and hopes, and anguish with which human
life is filled, qualifying Him to be tempted in all points like as
we are.
The second thought which presents itself is, that the Re-
deemer not only was, but is man. He was tempted in all
points like us. He is a high-priest which can be touched.
Our conceptions on this subject, from being vague, are often
very erroneous. It is fancied that in the history of Jesus's
existence, once, for a limited period and for definite purposes,
He took part in frail humanity; but that when that purpose
was accomplished, the Man forever perished, and the Spirit
reascended, to unite again with pure unmixed Deity. But
Scripture has taken peculiar pains to give assurance of the
continuance of His humanity. It has carefully recorded His
resurrection. After that He passed through space from spot
to spot : when He was in one place He was not in another.
His body was sustained by the ordinary aliments broiled
fish and honeycomb. The prints of suffering were on Him.
His recognitions were human still. Thomas and Peter were
especially reminded of incidents before His death, and con-
nected with His living interests. To Thomas He says
" Reach hither thy hand." To Peter" Lovest thou me ?"
And this typifies to us a very grand and important truth. >
It is this, if I may venture so to express myself the truth of
the human heart of God. We think of God as a Spirit, in-
finitely removed from and unlike the creatures He has made.
But the truth is, man resembles God : all spirits, all minds,
are of the same family. The Father bears a likeness to the
Son whom He has created. The mind of God is similar to
the mind of man. Love does not mean one thing in man, and
another thing in God. Holiness, justice, pity, tenderness
these are in the Eternal the same in kind which they are in
the finite being. The present manhood of Christ conveys
tliis deeply important truth, that the Divine heart is human
in its sympathies.
The third observation upon these verses is, that there is a
connection between what Jesus was and what Jesus is. He
run be touched now, because He was tempted then. The in-
cidents and the feelings of that part of the existence which
is gone have not passed away without results which are drep
ly entwined with His present being. His past experience haa
left certain effects durable in His nature as it is now. It has
endued Him with certain qualifications and certain suscepti-
9<D The Sympathy of Christ.
bilities, which He would not have had but for that experi*
ence. Just as the results remained upon His body, the prints
of the nails in His palms, and the spear-gash in His side, so
do the results remain upon His soul, enduing Him with a cer-
tain susceptibility, for " He can be touched with the feeling of
our infirmities ;" with certain qualifications, for " He is able
to show mercy, and to impart grace to help in time of need."
To turn now to the subject itself. It has two branches.
I. The Redeemer's preparation for His priesthood.
II. The Redeemer's priestly qualifications.
I. His preparation. The preparation consisted in being
tempted. But here a difficulty arises. Temptation, as ap-
plied to a Being perfectly free from tendencies to evil, is not
easy to understand. See what the difficulty is. Temptation
has two senses: It means test or probation; it means also
trial, involving the idea of pain or danger. A common acid
applied to gold tests it, but there is no risk or danger to the
most delicate golden ornament. There is one acid, and only
one, which tries it, as well as tests it. The same acid applied
to a shell endangers the delicacy of its surface. A weight
hung from a bar of iron only tests its strength ; the same,
depending from a human arm, is a trial, involving, it may be,
the risk of pain or fracture. Now trial placed before a sin-
less being is intelligible enough in the sense of probation it
is a test of excellence : but it is not easy to see how it can be
temptation in the sense of pain, if there be no inclination to
do wrong.
However, Scripture plainly asserts this as the character of
Christ's temptation. Not merely test, but trial.
First, you have passages declaring the immaculate nature
of His mind as here, " without sin." Again, He was " holy,
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." And again, " The
prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in fie." Thp
spirit of evil found nothing which it could claim as its own in
Christ. It was the meeting of two elements which will no*
amalgamate. Oil and water could as easily blend, as tl
mind of Christ with evil. Temptation glanced from His
heart as the steel point does from the surface of the diamond.
It was not that evil propensities were kept under by the pow'
er of the Spirit in Him : He had no evil propensities at all.
Obedience was natural to Him.
But then we find another class of passages such as this :
" He suffered, being tempted." There was not merely test in
the temptation, but there was also painfulness in the victory,
How could this be without any tendency to evil ?
The Sympathy of Christ. 91
To answer this, let us analyze sin. In every act of sin
there are two distinct steps: There is .the rising of a desire
which is natural, and, being natural, is not wrong : there is
the indulgence of that desire in forbidden circumstances ; and
that is sin. Let injury, for example, be inflicted, and resent-
ment will arise. It must arise spontaneously. It is as im
possible for injustice to be done, and resentment not to fo!
low, as it is for the flesh not to quiver on the application 01
intense torture. Resentment is but the sense of injustice,
made more vivid by its being brought home to ourselves;
resentment is beyond our control, so far. There is no sin in
this: but let resentment rest there; let it pass into, not jus-
tice, but revenge ; let it smoulder in vindictive feeling till it
becomes retaliation, and then a natural feeling has grown
into a transgression. You have the distinction between these
two things clearly marked in Scripture. "Be ye angry"
here is the allowance for the human, " and sin not " here is
the point where resentment passes into retaliation.
Again, take the natural sensation of hunger. Let a man
have been without food : let the gratification present itself,
and the natural desire will arise involuntarily. It will arise
just as certainly in a forbidden as in a permitted circum-
stance. It will arise whether what he looks on be the bread
of another or his own. And it is not here, in the sensation
of hunger, that the guilt lies. But it lies in the willful grat-
ification of it after it is known to be forbidden.
This was literally one of the cases in which Christ was
tried. The wish for food was in His nature in the wilderness.
The very mode of gratifying it was presented to His imagina-
tion, by using Divine power in an unlawful way. And had He
so been constituted that the lower wish was superior to the
higher will, there would have been an act of sin ; had the
two been nearly balanced, so that the conflict hung in doubt,
there would have been a tendency to sin: what we call a sin-
ful nature. But it was in the entire and perfect subjugation
of desire to the will of right that a sinless nature was ex-
hibited.
Here then is the nature of sin. Sin is not the possession of
desires, but the having them in uncontrolled ascendency over
the higher nature. Sinfulness does not consist in having
strong desires or passions : in the strongest and highest na-
tures, all, including the desires, is strong. Sin is not a real,
thing. It is rather the absence of a something, the will to do
right. It is not a disease or taint, an actual substance pro-
jected into the constitution. It is the absence of the spirit
which orders and harmonizes the whole \ so that what we
92 The Sympathy of Christ.
mean when we say the natural man must sin inevitably, h
this, that he has strong natural appetites, and that he has no
bias from above to counteract those appetites : exactly as if
a ship were deserted by the crew, and left on the bosom of
the Atlantic with every sail set and the wind blowing. No
one forces her to destruction, yet on the rocks she will surely
go, just because there is no pilot at the helm. Such is the
state of ordinary men. Temptation leads to fall. The gusts
of instincts, which rightly guided would have carried safely
into port, dash them on the rocks. No one forces them to
sin ; but the spirit-pilot has left the helm. [Fallen Nature.]
Sin, therefore, is not in the appetites, but in the absence of
a controlling will.
Now contrast this state with the state of Christ. There
were in Him all the natural appetites of mind and body.
Relaxation and friendship were dear to Him so were sun-
light and life. Hunger, pain, death He could feel all, and
shrunk from them. Conceive, then, a case in which the grat-
ification of any one of these inclinations was inconsistent
with His Father's will. At one moment it was unlawful to
eat, though hungry : and without one tendency to disobey,
did fasting cease to be severe ? It was demanded that he
should endure anguish ; and willingly as He subdued Him-
self, did pain cease to be pain? Could the spirit of obedi-
ence reverse every feeling in human nature ? When the
brave man gives his shattered arm to the surgeon's knife,
will may prevent even the quiver of an eyelid, but no will
and no courage can reverse his sensations, or prevent the op-
eration from inflicting pain. When the heart is raw, and
smarting from recent bereavement, let there be the deepest
and most reverential submission to the highest Will, is it
possible not to wince? Can any cant demand for submission
extort the profession that pain is pleasure ?
It seems to have been in this way that the temptation of
Christ caused suffering. He suffered from the force of de-
sire. Though there was no hesitation whether to obey or
not, no strife in the will, in the act of mastery there , was
pain. There was self-denial there was obedience at the
expense of tortured natural feeling. 'He shrunk from St.
Peter's suggestion of escape from ignominy as from a thing
which did not shake His determination, but made Him feel,
in the idea of bright life, vividly the cost of His resolve.
" Get thee behind me, tempter, foV thou art an offense." In
the garden, unswervingly, " Not as I will, but as Thou wilt."
There was no reluctance in the will. But was there no
struggling no shudder in the inward sensations no ^e
The Sympathy of Christ. 93
membrance that the Cross was sharp no recollection of the
family at Bethany, and the pleasant walk, and the dear com-
panionship which He was about to leave ? " My soul is ex-
ceeding sorrowful to die." ....
So that in every one of these cases not by the reluctancy
of a sinful sensation, but by the quivering and the anguish
of natural feeling when it is trampled upon by lofty will
Jesus suffered, being tempted. He was " tempted like as we
aie." Remember this. For the way in which some speak
of the sinlessness of Jesus reduces all His suffering to phys-
ical pain, destroys the reality of temptation, reduces that
glorious heart to a pretense, and converts the whole of His
history into a mere fictitious drama, in which scenes of trial
were only represented, not really felt. Remember that, " in
all points," the Redeemer's soul was tempted.
II. The second point we take is the Redeemer's priesthood.
Priesthood is that office by which He is the medium of
union between man and God. The capacity for this has
been indelibly engraven on His nature by His experience
here. All this capacity is based on His sympathy : He can
be " touched with the feeling of our infirmities."
Till we have reflected on it, we are scarcely aware how
much the sum of human happiness in the world is indebted
to this one feeling sympathy. We get cheerfulness and
vigor, we scarcely know how or when, from mere associa-
tion with our fellow-men ; and from the looks reflected on
us of gladness and employment, we catch inspiration and
power to go on, from human presence and from cheerful
looks. 'The workman works with added energy from having
others by. The full family circle has a strength and a life
peculiarly its own. The substantial good and the effectual
relief which men extend to one another is trifling. It is not
by these, but by something far less costly, that the work is
done. God has insured it by a much more simple machinery.
He has given to the weakest and the poorest, power to con
tribute largely to the common stock of gladness. The
child's smile and laugh are mighty powers in this world.
VVTien bereavement has left you desolate, what substantial
benefit is there which makes condolence acceptable? It
can not replace the loved ones you have lost. It can bestow
upon you nothing permanent. But a warm hand has
touched yours, and its thrill told you that there was a liv-
ing response there to your emotion. One look, one human
sigh has done more for vou than the costliest present could
convey.
94 The Sympathy of Christ.
And it is for want of remarking this that the effect of
public chanty falls often so far short of the expectations of
those who give. The springs of men's generosity are dried
up by hearing of the repining, and the envy, and the discon-
tent which have been sown by the general collection and the
provision establishment, among cottages where all was har
mony before. The famine and the pestilence are met by
abundant liberality; and the apparent return for this is riot
and sedition. But the secret lies all in this. It is not in
channels such as these that the heart's gratitude can flow.
Love is not bought by money, but by love. There has been
all the machinery of a public distribution : but there has
been no exhibition of individual, personal interest. The
rich man who goes to his poor brother's cottage, and without
affectation of humility, naturally, and with the respect which
man owes to man, enters into his circumstances, inquiring
about his distresses, and hears his homely tale, has done
more to establish an interchange of kindly feeling than he
could have secured by the costliest present by itself. Pub-
lic donations hav<? their value and their uses. Poor-laws
keep human beings from starvation : but in the point of
eliciting gratitude, all these fail. Man has not been brought
into contact close enough with man for this. They do not
work by sympathy.
Again, when the electric touch of sympathetic feeling has
gone among a mass of men, it communicates itself, and is
reflected back from every individual in the crowd, with a
force exactly proportioned to their numbers. The speech or
sermon read before the limited circle of a family, and the
same discourse uttered befoi'e closely crowded hundreds, are
two different things. There is strange power even in the
mere presence of a common crowd, exciting almost uncon-
trollable emotion.
It is on record that the hard heart of an Oriental conquer-
or was unmanned by the sight of a dense mass of living mil-
lions engaged in one enterprise. He accounted for it by say-
ing that it suggested to him that within a sigle century
not one of those millions would be alive. But the hard-
jhearted bosom of the tyrant mistook its own emotions ; his
tears came from no such far-fetched inference of reflection :
they rose spontaneously, as they will rise in a dense crowd,
you can not tell why. It is the thrilling thought of numbers
engaged in the same object. It is the idea of our own feel-
ings reciprocated back to us, and reflected from many hearts,
It is the mighty presence- of life.
And again, it seems partly to avail itself of this tendency
Tke Sympathy of Christ. 95
within us that such stress is laid on the injunction of united
prayer. Private devotion is essential to the spiritual life
without it there is no life. But it can not replace united
prayer, for the two things have different aims. Solitary
prayer is feeble in comparison with that which rises before
the throne echoed by the hearts of hundreds, and strength-
ened by the feeling that other aspirations are mingling with
our own. And whether it be the chanted litany, or the
more simply read service, or the anthem producing one emo-
tion at the same moment in many bosoms, the value and the
power of public prayer seem chiefly to depend on this mys-
terious affection of our nature sympathy.
And now, having endeavored to illustrate this power of
sympathy, it is for us to remember that of this in its fullness
He is susceptible. There is a vague way of speaking of the
Atonement which does not realize the tender, affectionate,
personal love by which that daily, hourly reconciliation is
effected. The sympathy of Christ was not merely love of
men in masses:* He loved the masses, but he loved them
because made up of individuals. He "had compassion on
the multitude ;" but He had also discriminating, special ten-
derness for erring Peter and erring Thomas. He felt for the v"
despised lonely Zaccheus in his sycamore-tree. He compas-
sionated the discomfort of His 'disciples. He mixed His
tears with the stifled sobs by the grave of Lazarus. He
called the abashed children to His side. Amongst the num-
bers, as He walked, He detected the individual touch of
faith. "Master, the multitude throng thee, and sayest thou,
~Who touched me ?" u Somebody hath touched me."
Observe how he is touched by our infirmities with a sep-
arate, special, discriminating love. There is not a single
throb, in a single human bosom, that does not thrill at once
with more than electric speed up to the mighty heart of God.
You have not shed a tear or sighed a sigh that did not
come back to you exalted and purified by having passed
through the Eternal bosom.
The priestly powers conveyed by this faculty of sympa-
thizing, according to the text are two : the power of mercy,
and the power of having grace to help. "Therefore" be-
cause He can be touched u let us come boldly," expecting
mercy and grace.
1. We may boldly expect mercy from Him who has learned
to -sympathize. He learned sympathy by being tempted :
but it is by being tempted, yet without sin, that He is spe
cially able to show mercy.
There are two who aie a&fit for showing mercy: He who
g6 The Sympathy of Christ,
has never been tried; and he who, having been tempted, ha*
i'allen under temptation. The young, untempted, and up
right, are often severe judges. They are for sanguinary pun
ishment : they are for expelling offenders from the bosom
of society. The old, on the contrary, who have fallen much,
are lenient ; but it is a leniency which often talks thus : Men
must be men a young man must sow his wild oats and re-
form.
So young ardent Saul, untried by doubt, persecuted the
Christians with severity; and Saul the king, on the contrary,
having fallen himself, weakly permitted Agag to escape pun-
ishment. David, again, when his own sin was narrated to
him under another name, was unrelenting in his indignation :
"The man that hath done this thing shall surely die."
None of these were qualified for showing mercy aright.
Kow this qualification " without sin " is very remarkable :
for it is the one we often least should think of. Unthinking-
ly we should say that to have erred would make a man leni-
ent : it is not so.
That truth is taught with deep significance in one of the
incidents of the Redeemer's life. There stood in His pres-
^ence a tempted woman, covered with the confusion of recent
conviction. And there stood beside her the sanctimonious
religionists of that day, waiting like hell-hounds to be let
loose upon their prey. Calm words came from the lips of
Him "who spake as man never spake," and whose heart
felt as man never felt. " He that is without sin among you
let him first cast a stone." A memorable lesson of eternal
truth. Sinners are not fit to judge of sin : their justice is re-
venge their mercy is feebleness. He alone can judge of
sin he alone can attemper the sense of what is due to the
offended law with the remembrance of that which is due to
human frailty he alone is fit for showing manly mercy, who
has, like his Master, felt the power of temptation in its
might, and come scathless through the trial. " In all points
tempted yet without sin /" therefore, to Him you may
"boldly go to find mercy."
2. The other priestly power is the grace of showing " help
in time of need."
We must not make too much of sympathy, as mere feeling.
We do in things spiritual as we do with hot-house plants
The feeble exotic, beautiful to look at, but useless, has costly
sums spent on it. The hardy oak, a nation's strength, is per-
mitted to grow, scarcely observed, in the fence and copses.
We prize feeling and praise its possessor. But feeling is
only a sickly exotic in itself a passive quality, having in it
The Sympathy of Christ. 97
nothing moral, no temptation and no victory. A man is no
more a good man for having feeling, than he is for having a
delicate ear for music, or a far-seeing optic nerve. The Son
of man had feeling He could be " touched." The tear
would start from His eyes at the sight of human sorrow.
But that sympathy was no exot : .c in His soul, beautiful to
look at, too delicate for use. Feeling with Him led to this,
" He went about doing good." Sympathy with Him was this,
'' Grace to help in time of need."
And this is the blessing of the thought of Divine sympa-
thy. By the sympathy of man, after all, the wound is not
healed ; it is only stanched for a time. It can make the tear
flow less bitterly : it can not dry it up. So far as permanent
good goes, who has not felt the deep truth which Job taught
his friends " Miserable comforters are ye all ?"
The sympathy of the Divine Human ! He knows what
strength is needed. He gives grace to help ; and when the
world, with its thousand forms of temptation, seems to whis-
per to us as to Esau, Sell me thy birthright, the other voice
speaks, Shall I barter blessedness for happiness the inward
peace for the outward thrill the benediction of my Father
for a mess of pottage ? There are moments when we seem,
to tread above this earth, superior to its allurements, able to
do without its kindness, firmly bracing ourselves to do our
work as He did His. Those moments are not the sunshine
*if life. They did not come when the world would have said
diat all round you was glad: but it was when outward
trials had shaken the soul to its very centre, then there came
Tom Him " grace to help in time of need."
1. He who would sympathize must be content to be tried
and tempted. There is a hard and boisterous rudeness in
DUF hearts by nature which requires to be softened down.
We pass by suffering gayly, carelessly, not in cruelty, but
unfeelingly, just because we do not know what suffering is.
We wound men by our looks and our abrupt expressions
without intending it, because we have not been taught the
delicacy, and the tact, and the gentleness which can only be
learnt by the wounding of our own sensibilities. There is a
haughty feeling in uprightness which has never been on the
yerge of fall that requires humbling. There is an inability
to enter into difficulties of thought which marks the mind to
which all things have been presented superficially, and
which has never experienced the horror of feeling the ice of
doubt crashing beneath the feet.
Therefore, if you aspire to be a son of consolation if you
would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy if you
98 The Sympathy of Christ.
would pour something beyond commonplace consolatioi
into a tempted heart if you would pass through the inter-
course of daily life with the delicate tact which never in^
flicts pain if to that most acute of human ailments, mental
doubt, you are ever to give effectual succor, you must be
content to pay the price of the costly education. Like Him,
you must suffer being tempted.
But remember, it is being tempted in all points, yet with-
out sin, that makes sympathy real, manly, perfect, instead of
a mere sentimental tenderness. Sin will teach you to feel
for trials. It will not enable you to judge them, to be mer-
ciful to them, nor to help them in time of need with any cer-
tainty.
Lastly, it is this same human sympathy which qualifies
Christ for judgment. It is written that the Father hath
committed all judgment to Him, because He is the Son of
Man. The sympathy of Christ extends to the frailties of
human nature, not to its hardened guilt : He is " touched
with the feeling of our infirmities" There is nothing in His
bosom which can harmonize with malice ; He can not feel
for envy; He has no fellow-feeling for cruelty oppression
hypocrisy ; bitter censorious judgments. Remember, He
could look round about Him with anger. The sympathy of
Christ is a comforting subject. It is, besides, a tremendous
subject ; for on sympathy the awards of heaven and hell are
built. " Except a man be born again " not he shall not,
but " he can not enter into heaven." There is nothing in
him which has affinity to any thing in the Judge's bosom.
A sympathy for that which is pure implies a repulsion of
that which is impure. Hatred of evil is in proportion to the
strength of love for good. To love good intensely is to hate
evil intensely. It was in strict accordance with the laws of
sympathy that He blighted Pharisaism in such ungentle
words as these : " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers ! how
can ye escape the damnation of hell?" Win the mind of
Christ now or else His sympathy for human nature will
not save you from, but only insure, the recoil of abhorrence
t the last " Depart from me ! I never knew you."
Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism. 99
VIII.
THE PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES AT JOHN'S
BAPTISM.
" But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his bap-
tism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee
from the wrath to come ?" Matt. iii. 7.
IT seems that the Baptist's ministry had been attended
with almost incredible success, as if the population of the
country had been roused in mass by the tidings of his doc-
trine. " Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea,
and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized
by him in Jordan, confessing their sins."
The success of his ministry was tested by the numbers
that he baptized. Not so a modern ministry. Ministerial
success is not shown now by the numbers who listen. Not
mere impression, but altered character, marks success. Not
by startling nor by electrifying congregations, but by turn-
ing men from darkness unto light, from the power of Satan
unto God, is the work done. With John, however, it was
different. He was on earth to do a special work the work
of the axe, not the trowel ; to throw down, not to build ; to
startle, not to instruct ; and therefore his baptism was sim-
ply symbolized by water, the washing away of the past :
whereas that of Christ was symbolized by fire, the touching
of the life and heart with the living flame of a heavenlier
life. Whoever, therefore, came to John for baptism, possess-
ed conviction of the truth of that which John taught, and.
thereby so far tested the fidelity and success of his ministry.
Bearing, then, in mind that coming to John's baptism was
the seal of his success, and that his baptism contained, in
symbolical form, the whole substance of his teaching, these
are the two topics of the text :
I. The meaning wrapped up in John's message.
II. The Baptist's astonishment at his own success.
I. The meaning of John's message. His baptism implied
to those who came to put themselves under its protection
that they were in danger, for it was connected with th
warning, " Flee from the wrath to come !"
ioo Pharisees and Sadducees at Jo/ins Baptism.
Future retribution has become to us a kind of figment.
Hell is in the world of shadows. The tone in which educa-
ted men speak of it still, is often only that good-humored
condescension which makes allowance for childish supersti
tion.
Part of this incredulity arises from the confessedly sym-
bolical intimations of Scripture on the subject. We read
of the fire and the worm of spirits being salted with fire
of a lake of fire and brimstone. All this tells solely of phys-
ical suffering. And accordingly, for centuries this was the
predominant conception of Christendom on the subject.
Scarcely any other element was admitted. Whoever has
seen those paintings on which the master-spirits in Art have
thrown down the conceptions of their age, will remember
that hideous demons, distorted countenances, and waves of
flame represent the whole idea. And in that immortal work
in which he who sang of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven has
embodied the belief of his day, still the same fact prevails.
You read of the victims of unchaste life hurried on the dark
whirlwind forever ; of the heretics in their coffins of intense
fire, and of the guilty spirits who are plunged deep down in
" thick-ribbed ice. n But in those harrowing pictures which
his genius has painted with such vividness, there is not one
idea of mental suffering embodied. It is all bodily awful, in-
tolerable torture. Now all this we believe no longer. The
circles of hell and the mountain of purgatory are as fabulous
to us as the Tartarus of the heathens. Singular that in an
age in which the chief aim of science appears to be to get rid
of physical pain and discomfort, as if these were the worst
evils conceivable, the idea of a bodily hell should be just the
one at which we have learnt to smile. But with the form,
we have also dispossessed ourselves of belief in the reality
of retribution at all.
Now Scripture language is symbolical. There is no salt,
no worm, no fire to torture. I say not that a diseased soul
may not form for itself a tenement hereafter, as here, pecu-
liarly fitted to be the avenue of suffering ; but unquestiona-
bly we can not build upon these expressions a material helL
Hell is the infinite terror of the soul, whatever that may
be. To one man it is pain. Rid him of that, he can bear all
degradation. To another it is public shame. Save him from
that, and he will creep and crawl before you to submit to any
reptile meanness. " Honor me now, I pray thee, before the
people," cries Saul, till Samuel turns from the abject thinir in
scorn. To others, the infinite terror is that compared with
which all these would be a bed of roses. It is the hell of
Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism. 1 01
having done wrong the hell of having had a spirit from
God, pure, with high aspirations, and to be conscious of hav-
ing dulled its delicacy and degraded its desires the hell of
having quenched a light brighter than the sun's of having
done to another an injury that through time and through
eternity never can be undone infinite, maddening remorse
the hell of knowing that every chance of excellence, and
every opportunity of good, has been lost forever. This is the
infinite terror ; this is wrath to come.
You doubt that? Have you ever marked that striking
fact, the connection of the successive stages of the soul?
How sin can change the countenance, undermine the health,
produce restlessness ? Think you the grave will end all that
that by some magic change the moral being shall be bui
led there, and the soul rise again so changed in every feeling
that the very identity of being would be lost, and it would
amount to the creation of a new soul ? Say you that God is
love? Oh, but look round this world. The aspect of things
is stern very stern. If they be ruled by love, it is a love
which does not shrink from human agony. There is a law
of infinite mercy here, but there is a law of boundless rigor
too. Sin, and you will suffer that law is not reversed. The
young, and the gentle, and the tender, are inexorably sub-
jected to it. We would shield them if we could, but there is
that which says they shall not be shielded. They shall weep,
and fade, and taste of mortal anguish, even as others. Carry
that out into the next world, and you have " wrath to come."
John's baptism, besides, implied the importance of confes-
sion. "They were baptized, .... confessing their sins."
On the eve of a promised new life, they were required to ac-
knowledge the iniquity of their past life. In the cure of our
spiritual maladies there is a wondrous efficacy, to use a home-
ly phrase, in making a " clean breast." There is something
strengthening, something soothing, and at the same time
something humbling, in acknowledging that we have done
wrong. There is a pride in us which can not bear pity.
There is a diseased sensitiveness which shrinks from the
smart of acknowledgment ; and yet that smart must be borne
before we can be truly soothed. When was it that the
younger son in the parable received the ring, and the robe,
and the banquet, which represent the rapture of the sense
of being forgiven ? When he had fortitude enough to go
back, mile by mile, step by step, every inch of the way he
had gone wrong, had borne unflinchingly the sneer of his fa-
ther's domestics, and, worse than all, the sarcasms of his im-
maculate brother, and manfully said out, "Father, I have
IO2 Pharisees and Sadducees at Johds Baptism.
sinned against heaven and before thee." When was it that
the publican went down justified to his house when he said,
even before a supercilious Pharisee, " God be merciful to me
a sinner?" When did the royal delinquent hear the words,
"The Lord hath also put away thy sin?" When he gave
the sacrifice of his lips " I have sinned before the Lord."
And when did the Church of Ephesus rise into the bright-
est model of a perfect church that has yet been exhibited on
earth ? After her converts had publicly come forward, burnt
those manuscripts which were called " Ephesian letters " to
the value of 50,000 pieces of silver, " confessed and showed
their deeds."
There is a profound truth in the popular anxiety that a
murderer should confess before he dies. It is an instinctive
feeling that a true death is better than a false life that to
die with unacknowledged guilt is a kind of lie. To acknowl-
edge bis sin is to put it from him to abjure it to refuse to
acknowledge it as part of himself to separate it from him
to say, I will keep it as mine no more : then it is gone. Who
here has a secret of guilt lying like lead upon his heart ? As
he values serenity of soul, let that secret be made "known.
And if there be one to-day who is impressed or touched by
all this, let him beware how he procrastinates that which
was done when John baptized. The iron that once was cool-
ed may never be warmed again the heart that once had its
flood-gates open, and has delayed to pour out the stagnation
of its wretchedness, may be closed forever.
Once more, John's baptism implied the necessity of a re-
newal of heart. We lose part of the significance of that cer-
emony from its transplantation away from a climate in which
it was natural and appropriate.
Ablution in the East is almost a religious duty : the dust
and heat weigh upon the spirits and heart like a load ; the
removal is refreshment and happiness. And it was impossi-
ble to see that significant act in which the convert went
down into the water, travel-worn and soiled with dust, disap-
peared for one moment, and then emerged pure and fresh
without feeling that the symbol answered to, and interpreted
a strong craving of the human heart. It is the desire to wash
away that which is past and evil. We would fain go to an-
other country and begin life afresh. We look upon the grave
almost with complacency, from the fancy that there we shall
lie down to sleep and wake fresh and new. It was this same
longing that expressed itself in heathenism by the fabled
river of forgetfulness, of which the dead must drink before
they can enter into rest.
Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism. 1 03
Now to that craving John gave reality and meaning when
he said, " Behold the Lamb of God !" For else that craving
is but a sick fond wish. Had John merely said, " Flee from
the wrath to come !" he would have filled man's life with the
terrors of anticipated hell. Had he only said, " My baptism
implies that ye must be pure," he would have crushed men's
hearts with the feeling of impossibility ; for excellence without
Christ is but a dream. He gave meaning and promise to all
when he said, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sins of the world."
Sin-laden and guilty men the end of all the Christian min-
istry is *to say that out with power, " Behold the Lamb of
God !" Divine life and death ! to have had one glimpse of
which, with its ennobling impulses, it were worth while to
have endured a life of suffering. When we believe that the
sacrifice of that Lamb meant love to us, our hearts are light'
ened of their load : the past becomes as nothing, and life be-
gins afresh. Christ is the river of forgetfulness in which by-
gone guilt is overwhelmed.
II. The Baptist's astonishment at his own success. It was
a singular scene which was exhibited in those days on the
banks of Jordan. There was a crowd of human beings, each
having a history of his own men who have long mouldered
in earth's dust, but who were living then in fresh and vigor-
ous existence. Think of it. Busy life was moving there
beings who had their hopes and fears about time and eter-
nity, to whom life was dear as it is to us at this day. They
had come to be cured of that worst of human maladies, the
aching of a hollow heart ; and a single mortified man was
bending over them, whose countenance bore all that peculiar
aspect of saintliness which comes from spare diet and austere
habits, and all that unruffled composure which comes from
lonely communings with God : a solitary man, who had led
a hermit's life, but was possessed of rare sagacity in worldly
matters ; for, hermit as he was, John took no half-views of
men and things : there was nothing morbid in his view of
life; there was sound common sense in the advice he gave
the different classes which came to him. "Repent," with
him, did not mean, Come with me into the wilderness to live
away from the world, but it meant this : Go back to the
world, and live above it, each doing his work in an unworld-
ly spirit. It was a strange spectacle, men of the world com-
ing with implicit reverence to learn the duties of active life
from a man whose world was the desert, and who knew noth
ing of active life except by hearsay.
104 Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism.
Now what was the secret of this power by which he chained
the hearts of men as by a spell ?
One point in the secret of this success was a thing which
we see every day. Men of thought and quiet contemplation
exercise a wonderful influence over men of action. We ad-
mire that which we are not ourselves. The man of business
owns the control of the man of religious thoughtfulness.
Like coalesces in this world wuth unlike. The strong and
the weak, the contemplative and the active, bind themselves
together. They are necessary for each other. The active
soldiers and the scheming publicans came to the lonely, as-
cetic John to hear something of that still, inner life, of which
their own career could tell them nothing.
A second cause of this success appears to have been that
it was a ministry of terror. Fear has a peculiar fascination.
As children love the tale of the supernatural which yet makes
them shudder, so do men, as it would seem, find a delight in
the pictures of eternal woe which terrify them partly from
the pleasure which there is in vivid emotions, and partly, per-
haps, from a kind of feeling of expiation in the horror which
is experienced. You could not go among the dullest set of
rustics and preach graphically and terribly of hell-fire with-
out insuring a large audience. The preaching of John in
this respect differed from the tone of Christ's. Christ taught
much that God is love. He spoke a great deal of the Fa-
ther which is in heaven. He instructed in those parables
which required thoughtful attention, exercise of mind, and a
gently sensitive conscience. He spoke didactic, calm dis-
courses, very engaging, but with little excitement in them :
such discourses as the Sermon on the Mount, respecting
goodness, purity, duties ; which assuredly, if any one were
to venture so to speak before a modern congregation, would
be stigmatized as a moral essay. Accordingly His success
was much less marked than that of John's. No crowds were
baptized as His followers : one hundred and twenty, in an
upper chamber, appear to have been the fruits of his life-
work. To teach so, is assuredly not the way to make strong
impressions ; but it is the way to work deeply, gloriously
for eternity. How many of John's terrified Pharisees and
Sadducees, suppose we, retained the impression six months ?
What is your religion ? Excitability, romance, impression,
fear ? Remember, excitement has its uses, impression has its
value. John, in all circumstances of his appearance and style
of teaching, impressed by excitement. Excitement, warmed
feelings, make the first actings of religious life and the break*
ing of inveterate habits easier. But excitement and impres*
Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism. 105
sion are not religion. Neither can you trust to the alarm
produced by the thought of eternal retribution. Ye that
hav e been impressed, beware how you let those impressions
d'e away. Die they will, and must : we can not live in ex-
citement forever; but beware of their leaving behind them
nothing except a languid, jaded heart. If God ever gave you
the excitements of religion, breaking in upon your monotony,
as John's teaching broke in upon that of Jerusalem, take care.
There is no restoring of elasticity to the spring that has been
overbent. Let impression pass on at once to acting.
We have another cause to assign for John's success. Men
felt that he was real. Reality is the secret of all success.
Religion in Jerusalem had long become a thing of forms.
Men had settled into a routine of externals, as if all religion
centred in these. Decencies and proprieties formed the sub-
stance of human life. And here was a man in God's world
once more who felt that religion is an everlasting reality.
Here was a man once more to tell the world that life is
sliding into the abyss that all we see is but a shadow that
the invisible Life within is the only real life. Here was a
man who could feel the splendors of God shining into his
soul in the desert without the aid of forms. His locust-food,
his hair-garment, his indifference to earthly comforts, spoke
out once more that one at least could make it a conviction
to live and die upon, that man does not live on bread alone,
but on the Living Word which proceedeth out of the mouth
of God. And when that crowd dispersed at sunset, and John
was left alone in the twilight, with the infinite of darkness
deepening round him, and the roll of Jordan by his side, re-
flecting the chaste, clear stars, there was something there
higher than Pharisaic forms to speak to him : there was
heaven and eternity to force him to be real. This life waa
swiftly passing. What is it to a man living like John but a
-show and a dream? He was homeless upon earth. Well,
but beyond beyond in the blue eternities above, there was
the prophet's home. He had cut himself off from the solaces
of life. He was to make an enemy of the man of honor, Her-
od. He had made an enemy of the man of religion, the Phar-
isee. But he was passing into that country where it matters
little whether a man has been clothed in finest linen or in
coarsest camel's hair : that still country, where the struggle-
storm of life is over, and such as John find their rest at last
in the home of God, which is reserved for the true and brave.
If perpetual familiarity with such thoughts as these can not
make a man real, there is nothing in this world that can.
And now look at this man, so disciplined. Life to John
5*
106 Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism.
was a reality. The citizens of Jerusalem could not go to
him, as they might have gone .to the schools of their rabbis,
for learned subtleties, or to the groves of Athenian literature
for melting imagery. Speech falls from him sharp rugged
cutting : a word, and no more. " Repent !" " wrath to
come." "The axe is laid at the root of the trees." "Fruit-
less trees will be cast into the fire." He spoke as men speak
. vhen they are in earnest, simply and abruptly, as if the
^graces of oratory were out of place. And then, that life of
his ! The world could understand it. There was written on
it, in letters that needed no magnifying-glass to read, " Not
of this world."
It is, after all, this which tells the reality of unworldli-
ness. The world is looking on to see what religious people
mean. It has a most profound contempt for unreality. Such a
man as John comes before them. Well, we understand that :
we do not like him: get him out -of the way, and kill him
if he interferes with us but it is genuine. They then turn
and see other men drawing ingenious distinctions between
one kind of amusement and another indulging themselves
on the sabbath-day and condemning others who do similar
things, and calling that imworldliness. They see that a
religious man has a shrewd .eye to his interests is quick at
making a bargain captivated by show and ostentation
affects titled society. The world is very keen-sighted: it
looks through the excitement of your religious meetings,
quietly watches the rest of your scandal, scans your con-
sciousness, and the question which the world keeps putting
pertinaciously is, Are these men in earnest ? Is it any mar-
vel if Christian unreality is the subject of scoffs and bitter
irony ?
Let men see that you are real inconsistent, it may be,
sinful : oh, full of sin, impetuous, hasty, perhaps stern John
was. But compel them to feel that you are in earnest.
This is the secret of influence.
So much, then, for the causes of success. Now let us an-
alyze that success a little more closely, by considering the
classes of men on whom that influence told.
First of all, we read of soldiers, publicans, and the poor
people, coming to John for advice, and with the acknowl-
edgment of guilt, and we do not read that their arrival
excited the smallest emotion of astonishment in John's
bos<rvm. The wonder was not there. No wonder that the
poor, whose lot in this world is hard, should look wistfully
for another. No wonder that soldiers, with their prompt
habits of obedience and their perpetual opportunities of self
Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism. 107
devotion, should recognize with reverence the type of heroic
life which John presented. No wonder that the guilty pub-
licans should come for purification of heart. For is it not
true that the world's outcasts may be led by their very sin
to Christ ? It is no wonder to see a saddened sinner seeking
in the disappointment and weariness of solitary age that
which he rejected in the heat of youth. Why, even the
world is not astonished when it sees the sinner become the
saint. Of course, the world has its own sarcastic account to
give. Dissipation leads to weariness, and weariness to sati-
ety, and satiety to devotion, and so your great sinner be-
comes a great saint, and serves God when all his emotions
are exhausted. Be it so. He who knew our nature well,
knew that marvellous revolutions go on in the soul of a man
whom the world counts lost. In our wildest wanderings
there is sometimes a love, strong as a father's, tender as a
mother's, watching over us, and bringing back the erring
child again. Know you not the law of Nature ? Have you
never seen how out of chaos and ferment Nature brings
order again life out of death, beauty out of corruption ?
Such, gainsay it who will, often is the history of the rise of
saintliness and purity out of a disappointed, bruised, and
penitent spirit. When the life-hopes have become a wreck
when the cravings of the heart for keen excitement have
been ministered to so abundantly as to leave nothing but
loathing and self-reproach behind when innocence of heart
is gone yes, even then scoff who will the voice of Him
is heard, who so dearly purchased the right to say it : " Come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest."
John was not surprised that such came to him, owning
the power of life-giving truth.
But among those who came, there were two classes who
did move him to marvel. The first was the moral, self-satis-
fied formalist. The second was the calm, metaphysical,
reasoning infidel. When he saw the Pharisees and Saddu-
cees coming, he said : " Who hath warned you ?" Now who
were these men ?
The Pharisees were men who rested satisfied with the
outward. The form of religion, which varies in all ages, that
they wanted to stereotype. The inner heart of religion
the unchangeable justice, mercy, truth that they could not
feel. They had got their two schools of orthodoxy the
school of Shammai and the school of Hillel ; and, under the
orthodoxy of these popular idols of the day, they were con-
tent to lose their OAvn power of independent thought ; souls
io8 Pharisees and Sadducees at Johns Baptism.
that had shrunk away from all goodness and nobleness, and
withered into the mummy of a soul. They could jangle
about the breadth of a phylactery ; they could discuss, as if
it were a matter of life and death, ecclesiastical questions
about tithe ; they could decide to a furlong the length of
journey allowable on the sabbath-day ; but they could not
look with mercy upon a broken heart pouring itself out to
God in His temple, nor suifer a hungry man to rub an ear
of corn on the Sabbath, nor cover the shame of a tempted
sister or an erring brother. Men without souls, from whose
narrow hearts the grandeur of everlasting truth was shut out.
There was another class in Israel as different from the
Pharisees as man can be from man. The Sadducees could
not be satisfied with the creed of Pharisaism, and had begun
to cross-examine its pretensions. They felt that the thing
which stood before them there, challenging the exclusive
name of religion, wkh its washing of cups, its fastings, its
parchment texts, this had nothing in it of the Eternal and
the Infinite. This comes not from the Almighty God, and so
from doubt they passed on to denial. The usual order had
taken place. The reaction from superstition is infidelity.
The reaction from ultra-strictness is laxity. The reaction
from Pharisaism was the Sadducee. And the Sadducee, with
a dreadful daring, had had the firmness to say : " Well then,
there is no life to come. That is settled. I have looked
into the abyss without trembling. There is no phantom
there. There is neither angel, spirit, nor life to come. And
this glorious thing, man, with his deep thoughts, and his
great, unsatisfied heart, his sorrows and his loves, godlike
and immortal as he seems, is but dust animated for a time,
passing into the nothingness out of which he came." That
cold and hopeless creed was the creed of Sadduceeism. Hu-
man souls were trying to live on that, and find it enough.
And the strange thing was that these men, so positive in
their creed, so distinct in their denial, so intolerant of the
very name of future existence, crowded to John to make
those confessions, and promise that new life, which were
meet for men who desired to flee from the wrath to corne.
Wrath to come ! What had the infidel to do with that r
Repentance unto life ! Why should the denier of life listen
to that ? - Fruits meet for repentance ! What had the form-
alist to do with that rebuke, whose life was already all that
could be needed ? " O generation of vipers," said the proph-
et, in astonishment, "who hath warned you to flee from the
wrath to come ?"
I deduce, from those facts which astonished John, two
Pharisees and Sadducees at yohris Baptism. 1 09
truths. Formalism, even morality, will not satisfy the con-
science of man. Infidelity will not give rest to his troubled
spirit. It is a pregnant lesson, if we will only read it thought-
fully, to consider those two classes going up for baptism.
That heart of man which the moralist tells us is so pure and
excellent, the light of day has shone into it, and behold, in
the moralist's self, it is not pure, but polluted and miserable :
else, what has that Pharisee to do with the symbol of new
life which he has gone to John to use ? That clear, unbiased
intellect with which the skeptic reached his conclusions, be-
hold it is not clear nor unbiased ! It has been warped by
an evil life. His heart is restless, and dark, and desolate ;
else, why is that Sadducee trembling on Jordan's brink?
There is a something which they want, both Pharisee and
Sadducee, and they come to see if baptism will give it them.
Strangely moved indeed must those men have been ay,
shaken to the inmost soul before they could so contradict
their own profession as to acknowledge that there was a
hollowness in their hearts. We almost fancy we can stand
at the water's edge and hear the confession which was wrung
from their lips, hot-burning and choked with sobs, during the
single hour in which reality had forced itself upon their
soiils: "It is a lie ! we are not happy we are miserable
Prophet of the Invisible ! what hast thou got to tell us of
that awful other world ?"
For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and
look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal in-
tegrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanish into
thin air: your decencies, and your church-goings, and your
regularities, and your attachment to a correct school and
party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine what is all
that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come ?
And skepticism too, how philosophical and manly soever
it may appear, will it rock the conscience with an everlast-
ing lullaby ? Will it make, with all its reasonings, the tooth
of the worm less sharp, and the fire less fierce that smoulders
inwardly? Let but the plain, true man speak. We ask
from him no rhetoric. We require no eloquence. Let him
but say, in his earnestness, Repent or Wrath to come, and
then what has infidelity to fall back upon ?
There is rest in this world nowhere except in Christ the
manifested love of God. Trust in excellence, and the better
you become, the keener is the feeling of deficiency. Wrap
up all in doubt, and there is a stern voice that will thunde' 1
at last out of the wilderness upon your dream.
A heart renewed- -a loving heart a penitent and humble
T 10 Laiaphass View of Vicarious Sacrifice.
heart a heart broken and contrite, purified by love that
and only that is the rest of man. Spotlessness may do for
angels, repentance unto life is the highest that belongs to
man.
IX.
CAIAPHAS'S VIEW OF VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.
"And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high-priest that same
fear, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expe-
dient for us, ^hat one man should die for the people, and that the whole na-
tion perish not. And this spake he not of himself: but being high-priest
that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation ; and not for
that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children
of God that were scattered abroad. Then from that day forth they took
counsel together to put him to death." John xi. 49-53.
Ox this occasion, the first resolution passed the Jewish
Sanhedrim to compass the death of Jesus. The immediate
occasion of their meeting was the fame of the resurrection of
Lazarus. There were many causes which made the Saviour
obnoxious to the priests and Pharisees. If that teaching
wer-e once received, their reign was over : a teaching which
abolished the pretensions of a priesthood, by making every
man his own priest, to offer spiritual sacrifices to God
which identified religion with Goodness making spiritual
excellence, not ritual regularity, the righteousness which
God accepts which brought God within the reach of the
sinner and the fallen which simplified the whole matter by
making religion a thing of the heart, and not of rabbinical
learning or theology : such teaching swept away all the ex-
clusive pretensions of Pharisaism, made the life which they
had been building up with so much toil for years time
wasted, and reduced their whole existence to a lie.
This was the ground of their hatred to the Son of Man.
But this was not the ground which they put forward. He
was tried chiefly on the charge of treason against the Em-
peror; and the argument by which the mind of the judge
was principally swayed was, " If thou let this man go, thou
art not Cesar's friend." The present passage contains the
Hrst trace of the adoption of that ground. "If we let him
alone, the Romans will come and take away both our place
and nation."
Be it observed, then, the real ground of opposition was
natred of the light. The ostensible ground was patriotism,
Caiaphas s View of Vicarious Sacrifice. 1 1 1
public zeal, loyalty, far-sighted policy ; and such is life. The
motive on which a deed of sin is done is not the motive
which a man allows to others, or whispers to himself. Listen
to the criminal receiving sentence, and the cause of condem-
nation is not the enormity of the crime, but the injustice of
the country's law. Hear the man of disorderly life, whom
society has expelled from her bosom, and the cause of the
expulsion is not his profligacy, but the false slander which
has misrepresented him. Take his own account of the
matter, and he is innocent injured pure. For there are
names so tender, and so full of fond endearment, with which
this world sugars over its dark guilt towards God, with a
crust of superficial whiteness, that the sin on which eighteen
centuries have looked back appalled was, to the doers of
that sin, nothing atrocious, but respectable, defensible, nay
even, under the circumstances, necessary.
The judgment of one of these righteous murderers was
given in remarkable terms. Apparently there were some in
the council, such mc^n as Nicodernus, who could not acquiesce
in the view given of the matter. Doubtless they alleged the
unfairness of the proceeding, and the innocence of the ac-
cused ; upon which Caiaphas replied, " Ye know nothing at
all, nor consider that it is expedient that one man die for the
people, and that the whole nation perish not." The remark-
able point in this judgment is, that it contained the very cen-
tral doctrine of Christianity : unconsciously, Caiaphas had
uttered the profoundest of all truths, the necessity, of the
innocent suffering for the guilty. He had stated it in the
very words which St. John could have himself adopted. But
they meant one thing in the lips of holy Love, and quite an-
otTier thing in the lips of tyrannical Policy. Yet St. John,
contemplating that sentence years after, could not but feel
that there was something in the words deeper than met the
ear a truth almost inspired, which he did not hesitate to
call prophetic. " Being high-priest that year, he prophesied."
We must not, therefore, call this merely a singular coinci-
dence. It was the same truth viewed from different sides:
the side of Caiaphas, and the side of John ; the side of the
world, and the side of God. That truth was the vicarious
sacrifice of "Christ.
And there are two ways in which you may contemplate
that sacrifice. Seen from the world's point of view, it is
unjust, gross, cruel. Seen as John saw it, and as God looks
at it, it was the sublimest of all truths ; one which so entwines
itself with our religious consciousness, that you might as soon
tear from us our very being, as our convictions of the reality
112 Caiaphas s View of Vicarious Sacrifice.
of Christ's atonement. Our subject, then, is the vicarious
sacrifice of Christ. The words of Caiaphas contain a formal
falsehood and a material truth : the outward statement, and
an inspired or prophetic inward verity so that the subject
branches into two topics :
I. The human form, in which the words are false.
II. The divine principle or spirit, in which they are true.
I. The human form, in which the words are false.
Vicarious means in the stead of. When the Pope calls
himself the vicar of Christ, he means that he is empowered
in the stead of Christ to absolve, decree, etc. When we
speak of vicarious suffering, we mean that suffering which is
endured in another's stead, and not as the sufferer's own
desert.
1. The first falsity in the human statement of that truth of
vicarious sacrifice is its injustice. Some one said the accused
is innocent. The reply was, Better that one should die than
many. " It is expedient for us, that one man should die for
the people, and that the whole nation perish not" It was
simply with Caiaphas a question of numbers : the unjust ex-
pediency of wresting the law a little to do much apparent
good. The reply to that was plain. Expediency can not
obliterate right and wrong. Expediency may choose the
best possible when the conceivable best is not attainable ;
but in right and wrong there is no better and best. Thou
shall not do wrong. Thou must not : you may not tell a lie
to save life. Better that the whole Jewish nation should per-
ish, than that a Jewish legislature should steep its hand in
the blood of one innocent. It is not expedient to do injustice.
There are cases in which it is expedient to choose the sac-
rifice of one instead of that of many. When a whole army
or regiment has mutinied, the commander, instead of general
butchery, may select a few to perish as examples to the rest.
There is nothing here unjust. The many escape, but the few
who die deserve to die. But no principle could justify a
commander in selecting an innocent man, condemning him
by unjust sentence, and affecting to believe that he was
guilty, while the transgressors escaped, and learned the
enormity of their transgressions by seeing execution done
upon the guiltless. No principle can justify nothing can
do more than palliate the conduct of the ship's crew upon
the raft who slay one of their number to support their exist-
ence on his flesh. No man would justify the parent, pursued
in his chariot by wolves over Siberian snows, who throws out
one of his children to the pack, that the rest may escape
Caiaphass View of Vicarious Sacrifice. 1 1 3
while their fangs are buried in their victim. You feel at
once expediency has no place here. Life is a trifle compared
with law. Better that all should perish by a visitation ol
God, than that they should be saved by one murder.
I do not deny that this aspect has been given to the sacri-
fice of Christ. It has been represented as if the majesty of
law demanded a victim : and, so as it glutted its insatiate
thirst, one victim would do as well as another the purer
and the more innocent the better. It has been exhibited as
if Eternal Love resolved in fury to strike, and so as He had
His blow, it mattered not whether it fell on the whole world,
or on the precious head of His own chosen Son.
Unitarianism has represented the Scriptural view in this
way, or, rather perhaps, we should say, it has been so repre-
sented to Unitarians and, from a view so horrible, no won-
der if Unitarianism has recoiled. But it is not our fault if
some blind defenders of the truth have converted the self-de-
votion of love into a Brahminical sacrifice. If the work of
redemption be defended by parallels drawn from the most
atrocious records and principles of heathenism, let not the
fault be laid upon the Bible. We disclaim that as well as
they. It makes God a Caiaphas. It makes Him adopt the
words of Caiaphas in the sense of Caiaphas.' It represents
Him in terms which better describe the ungoverned rage of
Saul, missing his stroke at David, who has offended, and in
disappointed fury dashing his javelin at his own son Jon-
athan.
You must not represent the Atonement as dependent on
the justice of unrighteous expediency.
2. This side of viewing the truth was the side of selfish-
ness. It was not even the calm resolve of men balancing
whether it be better for one to die or many, but whether it
is better that He or we should perish. It is conceivable in
the ca$e supposed above, that a parent in the horrible di-
lemma should be enough bewildered to resolve to sacrifice
one rather than lose all ; but it is not conceivable that the
doubt in his mind should be this Shall I and the rest per-
ish or this one ? yet this was the spirit in which the party
of Caiaphas spoke. "The Romans will come and take away
our place and our nation."
And this spirit, too, is in human nature. The records of
antiquity are full of it. If a fleet could not sail, it was as-
sumed that the deities were offended. The purest and ten-
derest maiden of the royal household was selected to bleed
upon the altar : and when the sharp knife passed to her in-
nocent heart, this was the feeling in the bosoms of those
H4 Caiaphas s View of Vicarious Sacrifice.
stern and unrelenting warriors of the blood and of the
stock of Caiaphas Better she should suffer than we.
This may be the way in which the sacrifice of Christ is re-
garded by us. There is a kind of acquiescence in the Atone-
ment which is purely selfish. The more bloody the repre-
sentation of the character of God, the greater, of tonrse, the
satisfaction in feeling sheltered from it. The more wrath in-
stead of love is believed to be the Divine name, the more
may a man find joy in believing that he is safe. It is the
feeling of the Siberian story : the innocent has glutted the
wolves, and we may pursue our journey in safety. Christ
has suffered, and I am safe. He bore the agony I take the
reward : I may now live with impunity : and, of course, it is
very easy to call acquiescence in that arrangement humility,
and to take credit for the abnegation of self-righteousness :
but whoever can acquiesce in that thought chiefly in refer-
ence to personal safety, and, without desiring to share the
Redeemer's cross, aspire to enjoy the comforts and the bene-
fits of the Redeemer's sacrifice, has but something of the
spirit of Caiaphas after all, the spirit which contentedly sac-
rifices another for self selfishness assuming the form of wis-
dom.
II. We pass to the prophetic or hidden spirit in which
these words are true.
I observe, first, that vicarious sacrifice is the Law of Be-
ing. It is a mysterious and fearful thing to observe how all
God's universe is built upon this law, how it penetrates and
pervades all Nature, so that if it were to cease, Nature would
cease to exist. Hearken to the Saviour himself expounding
this principle : "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much
fruit." We are justified, therefore, in assuming the Law of
Nature to be the Law of His own Sacrifice, for He^ himself
represents it as the parallel.
Now observe this world of God's. The mountain-rock
must have its surface rusted into putrescence and become
dead soil before the herb can grow r . The destruction of the
mineral is the life of the vegetable. Again the same process
begins. The " corn of wheat dies," and out of death more
abundant life is born. Out of the soil in which deciduous
leaves are buried, the young tree shoots vigorously, and
strikes its roots deep down into the realm of decay and
death, Upon the life of the vegetable world, the myriad
forms of higher life sustain themselves still the same law :
the sacrifice of life to give life. Farther still: have we
Caiaphas s View of Vicarious Sacrifice. 1 1 5
never pondered over that mystery of nature the dove
struck down by the hawk the deer trembling beneath the
stroke of the lion the winged fish falling into the jaws of
the dolphin ? It is the solemn law of vicarious sacrifice
again. And as often as man sees his table covered with the
flesh of animals slain, does he behold, whether he think of it
or not, the deep mystery and law of being. They have sur-
rendered their innocent lives that he may live.
Nay, farther still : it is as impossible for man to live as it
is for man to be redeemed, except through vicarious suffer-
in o\ The anguish of the mother is the condition of the
child's life. His very being has its roots in the law of sacri-
fice ; and from his birth onward, instinctively this becomes
the law which rules his existence. There is no blessing
which was ever enjoyed by man which did not corne
through this. There was never a country cleared for civili-
zation, and purified of its swamps and forests, but the first
settlers paid the^ penalty of that which their successors en-
joy. There never was a victory won, but the conquerors
who took possession of the conquest passed over the bodies
of the noblest slain, who died that they might win.
Now observe, all this is the law obeyed, either uncon-
sciously or else instinctively. But in the redemption of our
humanity, a moment comes, when that law is recognized as
the will of God adopted consciously, and voluntarily obeyed
as the law of man's existence. Then it is that man's true
nobleness, his only possible blessedness, and his redemption
from blind instincts and mere selfishness, begin. You may
evade that law you may succeed in living as Caiaphas did,
sacrificing others instead of yourself and men will call you
wise, and prudent, and respectable. But you are only a
Caiaphas : redeemed you are not. Your proper humanity
has not begun.
The highest Man recognized that law, and joyfully em-
braced it as the law of His existence. It was the conscious-
ness of His surrender to that as God's will, and the voluntari-
ness of the act, which made it sacrifice. Hear Him : " No
man taketh my life from me. I have power to lay it down,
and I have power to take it up again." " This command-
ment have I received from my Father." Had he been by
the wiles of Caiaphas simply surprised and dragged strug-
gling and reluctant to doom, He would have been a victim,
but not a sacrifice; He would have been an object of our
compassion, but by no means of our admiring wonder. It
was the foresight of all the result of His opposition to the
world's sin, and His steady uncompromising battle against
1 1 6 Caiaphass View of Vicarious Sacrifice.
it notwithstanding, in every one of its forms, knowing that
He must be its victim at the last, which prevented His death
from being merely the death of a lamb slain unconsciously on
Jewish altars, and elevated it to the dignity of a true and
proper sacrifice.
We go beyond this, however. It was not merely a sacri-
fice, it was a sacrifice for sin. " His soul was made an offer-
ing for sin." Neither was it only a sacrifice for sin it was
a sacrifice for the world's sin. In the text, " that Jesus
should die for that nation ; and not for that nation only, but
that also He should gather together in one the children of
God that were scattered abroad."
Two ideas are necessaiy to be distinctly apprehended by
us in order to understand that : the first is the notion of
punishment, the second is the idea of the world's sin.
By punishment is simply meant the penalty annexed to
transgression of a law. Punishment is of two kinds : the
penalty which follows ignorant transgression, and the chas-
tisement which ensues upon willful disobedience. The first
of these is called imputed guilt, the second is actual guilt.
By imputed guilt is meant, in theological language, that a
person is treated as if he were guilty : if, for example, you ap-
proach too near the whirling w T heel of steam machinery, the
mutilation which follows is the punishment of temerity. If
the traveller ignorantly lays his hand on the cockatrice's
den, the throb of the envenomed fang is the punishment of
his ignorance. He has broken a law of nature, and the guilt
of the infection is imputed to him ; there is penalty, but there
is none of the chastisement which follows sin. His conscience
is not made miserable. He only suffers.
Farther, according to the constitution of this world, it is
not only our own transgressions of ignorance, but besides,
the faults of others, which bring pain and sorrow on us. The
man of irritable and miserably nervous temperament owes
that often to a father's intemperance. Many a man has to
straggle all his life with the penury which he reaps as th
harvest of a distant ancestor's extravagance. In the stride*
sense of the word, these are punishments the consequences
annexed to transgression : and, in the language of theology,
they are called imputed guilt. But there~is an all-important
distinction between them and the chastisements of personal
iniquity. If a man suffer ill health or poverty as the results
of his own misconduct, his conscience forces him to refer thia
to the wrath of God. He is reaping as he had sown, and
the miseries of conscious fault are added to his penalty.
But if such things come as the penalty of the wrong of oth-
Caiaphass View of Vicarious Sacrifice. \ 1 7
ers, then, philosophically though you may call them punish'
ment, in the popular sense of the word they are no punish-
ments at all, but rather corrective discipline, nay, even rich-
est blessings, if they are received from a Father's hand, and
transmuted by humbleness into the means of spiritual
growth.
Apply all this to the sacrifice of Christ. Let ho man say
that Christ bore the wrath of God. Let no man say that
God was angry with His Son. We are sometimes told of a
mysterious anguish which Christ endured, the consequence
of Divine wrath, the sufferings of a heart laden with the
conscience of the world's transgressions which He was bear-
ing as if they were His own sins. Do not add to the Bible
what is not in the Bible. The Redeemer's conscience was
not bewildered to feel that as His own which was not His
own. He suffered no wrath of God. Twice came the voice
from heaven, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased.' 1 '' There was seen an angel strengthening Him.
Nay, even to the last, never did the consciousness of purity
and the Father's love forsake Him. "Father, into Thy
hands I commend my spirit."
Christ came into collision with the world's evil, and He
bore the penalty of that daring. He approached the whirl-
ing wheel, and was torn in pieces. He laid His hand upon
the cockatrice's den, and its fangs pierced Him. It is the
law which governs the conflict with evil. It can be only
crushed by suffering from it The Son of man who
puts His naked foot on the serpent's head, crushes it: but
the fang goes into His heel.
The Redeemer bore imputed sin. He bore the penalty of
others' sin. He was punished. Did He bear the anger of
the Most High ? Was His the hell of an accusing con-
science ? In the name of Him who is God, not Caiaphas,
never. Something more, however, is necessary to complete
our notion of punishment. It is a right estimate of law.
We are apt to think of punishment as something quite arbi-
trary, which can be remitted or changed at will. Hence we
almost always connect it with the idea of wrath ; hence, the
heathen tried to bribe and coax their deities to spare ; and
hence the sacrifice of Christ comes to be looked upon in the
light of a sagacious or ingenious contrivance, a mere
" scheme " of redemption.
Now remember what law is. The moral laws of this uni-
verse are as immutable as God Himself. Law is the Being
of God. God can not alter those laws : He can not make
wrong right. He can not make truth falsehood s nor
\
1 1 8 Caiaphass View of Vicarious Sacrifice-
hood truth. He can not make sin blessed, nor annex hell to
innocence. Law moves on its majestic course irresistible.
If His chosen Son violates law, and throws Himself from the
pinnacle, He dies. If you resist a law of the universe in its
eternal march, the universe crushes you, that is all. Consid-
er what law is, and then the idea of bloody vengeance passes
away altogether from the sacrifice. It is not " an eye for an
eye," and " a tooth for a tooth," in the sanguinary spirit of
the old retaliatory legislation. It is the eternal impossibility
of violating that law of the universe whereby penalty is an-
nexed to transgression, and must fall, either laden with curse
or rich in blessing.
The second idea which it behooves us to master is that of
the world's sin. The Apostle John always viewed sin as a
great connected principle One; a single world-spirit ex-
actly as the electricity with which the universe is charged is
indivisible, imponderable, one, so that you can not sepa-
rate it from the great ocean of fluid. The electric spark
that slumbers in the dew-drop is part of the flood which
struck the oak. Had that spark not been there, it could be
demonstrated that the whole previous constitution of the
universe might have been different, and the oak not have
been struck.
Let us possess ourselves of this view of sin, for it is the
true one. Separate acts of sin are but manifestations of one
* great principle. It was thus that the Saviour looked on the
sins of His day. The Jews of that age had had no hand in
the murder of Abel or Zacharias, but they were of kindred
spirit with the men who slew them. Condemning their
murderers, they imitated their act. In that imitation they
" allowed the deeds of their fathers ;" they shared in the
guilt of the act which had been consummated, because they
had the spirit which led to it. " The blood of them all shall
come on this generation." It was so, too, that Stephen look-
ed on the act of his assassins. When God's glory streamed
upon his face, he felt that the transaction going on then was
not simply the violence of a mob in an obscure corner of the
world, it was an outbreak of the great principle of evil. He
saw in their act the resurrection of the spirit of those who
tad " resisted the Holy Ghost " in their day, slain the proph-
ets, opposed Moses, crucified " the just one," and felt that
their genuine descendants were now opposing themselves to
the form in which Truth and Goodness were appearing in
his day.
It is in this way only that you will be able, with any reali
ty of feeling, to enter into the truth that " your sins nailed
Caiaphass View of Vicarious Sacrifice. 1 1 q
Him to the cross ;" that " the Lord hath laid on "Him the in-
iquity of us all ;" that He died " not for that nation only,
but that also He should gather together in one the children
of God that were scattered abroad." If, for instance, indis-
putable evidence be given of the saintliness of a man wiiose
creed and views are not yours, and rather than admit that
good in him is good, you invent all manner of possible mo-
tives to discredit his excellence, then let the thought arise,
This is the resurrection of the spirit which was rampant in
the days of Jesus ; the spirit of those who saw the purest
goodness, and rather than acknowledge it to be good, prefer-
red to account for it as a diabolical power. Say to yourself,
I am verging on the spirit of the sin that was unpardonable,
I am crucifying the Son of God afresh.
If in society you hear the homage unrebuked Honor to
the rich man's splendid offering, instead of glory to the wid-
ow's humble mite if you see the weak- and defenseless pun-
ished severely for the sins which the great and strong do un-
blushingly, and even with the connivance and, admiration of
society if you find sins of frailty placed on the same level
with sins of pride and presumption or it you find guilt of
any kind palliated instead of mourned, then let the dreadful
thought arise in the fullness of its meaning I allow the deeds ./
of those days His blood shall come upon this generation.^'
My sin and your sin, the sin of all, bears the guilt of the Re- >.
deemer's sacrifice. It was vicarious He suffered for what
He never did. " Not for that nation only, but that also He
should gather together in one the children of God that were
scattered abroad."
To conclude : estimate rightly the death of Christ. It was
not simply the world's example it was the world's Sacrifice.
He died not merely as a martyr to the truth. His death is
the world's life. Ask ye what life is ? Life is not exemption
from penalty. Salvation is not escape from suffering and
punishment. The Redeemer suffered punishment, but the Re-
deemer's soul had blessedness in the very midst of punish-
ment. Life*is elevation of soul nobleness Divine charac-
ter. The spirit of Caiaphas was death : to receive all, and
give nothing to sacrifice others to himself. The spirit of
Christ was life: to give and not receive to be sacrificed,
and not to sacrifice. Hear Him again : " He that loseth his
life, the same shall find it." That is life : the spirit of losing
all for love's sake. That is the soul's life which alone ia
blessedness and heaven. By realizing that ideal of humani-
ty, Christ furnished the life which we appropriate to oui>
selves only when we enter into His spirit.
I2O Realizing the Second Advent.
Listen : Only by renouncing sin is His death to sin yours
only by quitting it are you free from the guilt of His blood
only by voluntary acceptance of the law of the Cross, self-
surrender to the will of God, and self-devotion to the good
of others as the law of your being, do you enter into that
present and future heaven which is the purchase of His vica-
rious sacrifice.
REALIZING THE SECOND ADVENT.
"For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand gt the lat-
ter day upon the earth : And though after my skin worms destroy this body,
yet in'my flesh shall I see God : Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes
shall behold, and not another ; though my reins be consumed within me. "
Job xix. 25-27.
THE hardest, the severest, the last lesson which man has
to learn upon this earth, is submission to the will of God. It
is the hardest lesson, because to our blinded eye-sight it often
seems a cruel will. It is a severe lesson, because it can be
only taught by the blighting of much that had been most
dear. It is the last lesson, because when a man has learned
that, he is fit to be transplanted from a world of willfulness
to a world in which one will alone is loved, and only one is
done. All that saintly experience ever had to teach resolves
itself into this, the lesson how to say affectionately, "Not as
I will, but as Thou wilt." Slowly and stubbornly our hearts
acquiesce in that. The holiest in this congregation, so far as
he has mastered the lesson, will acknowledge that many a
sore and angry feeling against his God had to be subdued,
many a dream of earthly brightness broken, and many a
burning throb stilled in a proud, resentful heart, before he
was willing to suffer God to be sovereign in His own world,
and do with him and his as seemed to Him best.
The earliest record that we have of this struggle in the.
human bosom is found in the Book of Job. It is the most
ancient statement we have of the perplexities and miseries
of life, so graphic, so time to nature, that it proclaims at once
that what we are reading is drawn not from romance but
life. It has been said that religious experience is but the fic-
titious creation of a polished age, when fanciful feelings are
called into existence by hearts bent ua,ck in reflex and mor-
bid action on themselves. We have an answer to that in
this book. Religion is no morbid fancy. In the rough, rude
Realizing the Second Advent. 121
ages when Job lived, when men did not dwell on their feel-
ings as in later centuries, the heart-work of religion was
manifestly the same earnest, passionate thing that it is now.
The heart's misgivings were the same beneath the tent of an
Arabian Emir which they are beneath the roof of a modern
Christian. Blow after blow fell on the Oriental chieftain.
One day he was a father a prince the lord of many vas-
sals and many flocks, and buoyant in one of the best of bless-
ings, health ; the next, he was a childless, blighted, ruined
man. And then it was that there came from Job's lips those
yearnings for the quiet of the grave which are so touching,
so real; and, considering that some of the strongest of the
elect of God have yielded to them for a moment, we might
almost say, so pardonable : " I should have been at rest
where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at
rest. There the prisoners rest together : they hear nbt the
voice of the oppressor. Wherefore is light given unto him
that is in misery, and life unto the bitter of soul which
long for death, but it cometh not, and dig for it more than
for hid treasures which rejoice exceedingly and are glad
when they can find the grave ?"
What is the Book of Job but the record of an earnest soul's
perplexities ? The double difficulty of life solved there, the
existence of moral evil the question whether suffering is a
mark of wrath or not. What falls from Job's lips is the
musing of a man half-stunned, half-surprised, looking out
upon the darkness of life, and asking sorrowfully why are
these things so ? And all that falls from his friends' lips is
the common-place remarks of men upon what is inscrutable
maxims learned second-hand by rote and not by heart, frag-,
ments of deep truths, but truths misapplied, distorted, torn
out of all connection of time and place, so as to become ac-
tual falsehoods : only blistering a raw wound.
It was from these awkward admonitions that Job appealed
in the text. He appealed from the tribunal of man's opinion
to a tribunal where sincerity shall be cleared and vindicated.
He appealed from a world of confusion, where all the foun-
dations of the earth are out of course, to a world where all
shall be set right. He appealed from the dark dealings of a
God whose way it is to hide Himself, to a God who shall
stand upon this earth in the clear radiance of a love on
which suspicion's self can not rest a doubt. It was faith
straining through the mist, and discerning the firm land that
is beyond. " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He
shall stand at the latter day upon the earth." We take two
points ;
6
122 Realizing the Second Advent.
I. The certainty of God's interference in the affairs of this
world.
II. The means of realizing that interference.
God's interference, again, is contemplated in this passage
in a twofold aspect : A present superintendence " I know
that my Redeemer liveth." A future, personal, visible inter
ference "He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, 1 *
I. His present superintendence,
1. The first truth contained in that is God's personal ex-
istence. It is not chance, nor fate, which sits at the wheel
of this world's revolutions. It was no fortuitous concourse of
atoms which massed themselves into a world of beauty. It
was no accidental train of circumstances which has brought
the human race to their present state. It was a living God,
And it is just so far as this is the conviction of every day,
and every hour, and every minute " My Kedeemer liveth "
that one man deserves to be called more religious than anoth-
er. To be religious is to feel that God is the Ever Near. It
is to go through life with this thought coming instinctively
and unbidden, "Thou, God, seest me." A life of religion is
a life of faith : and faith is that strange faculty by which man
feels the presence of the invisible ; exactly as some animals
have the power of seeing in the dark. That is the difference
between the Christian and the world.
. Most men know nothing beyond what they see. Tin's love-
ly world is all in all to them : its outer beauty, not its hidden
loveliness. Prosperity struggle sadness it is all the same.
They struggle through it al! alone, and when old age comes,
nd the companions of early days are gone, they feel that they
are solitary. In all this strange, deep world they never meet,
or but for a moment, the Spirit of it all, who stands at their
very side. And it is exactly the opposite of this that makes
a Christian. Move where he will, there is a Thought and
Presence which he can not put aside. He is haunted forever
by the Eternal Mind. God looks out upon him from the clear
sky, and through the thick darkness is present in the rain-
drop that trickles down the branches, and in the tempest that
crashes down the forest. A living Redeemer stands beside
him goes with him talks with him, as a man with his friend.
The emphatic description of a life of spirituality is: "Enoch
walked with God :" and it seems to be one reason why a
manifestation of God was given us in the flesh, that this liv-
ingness of God might be more distinctly felt by us,
We must not throw into these words of Job a meaning
which Job had not. Reading these verses, some have
Realizing the Second Advent. 123
covered in them all the Christian doctrine of the Second Ad'
i cut of a Resurrection of the Humanity of Christ. This
is simply an anachronism. Job was an Arabian Emir, not a
Christian. All that Job meant by these words was, that he
knew he had a vindicator in God above: that though his
friends had the best of it then, and though worms were prey-
ing on his flesh, yet at last God Himself would interfere to
prove his innocence. But God has given to us, for our faith
to rest on, something more distinct and tangible than He
gave to Job. There has been One on earth through whose
lips God's voice spoke, and from whose character was reflect-
ed the character of God. A living Person manifesting Deity.
It is all this added meaning gained from Christ with which
we use thes'e words: "I know that my Redeemer liveth."
But we must remember that all that was not revealed to Job.
2. The second truth implied in the personal existence of a
Redeemer is sympathy. It was the keenest part of Job's
trial that no heart beat pulse to pulse with his. His friends
misunderstood him ; and his wife, in a moment of atheistic
bitterness, in the spirit of our own infidel poet, " Let no man
say that God in mercy gave that stroke," addressed him thus :
"Curse God and die." In the midst of this, it seems to have
risen upon his heart with a strange power to soothe, that he
was not alone : gall and bitterness were distilling from the
lips of man, and molten lead was dropping from the hand of
God. But there was a great difference between the two in-
flictions. Men were doiii^ their work, unknowing of the pain
they gave : God was meting out His in the scales of a most
exquisite compassion, not one drop too much, and every drop
that fell had a meaning of love in it. " Affliction," said the
tried man, "cometh not out of the dust, neither doth trouble
spring out of the ground " superintending all this, " I know
that my Redeemer liveth."
And here there is one word full of meaning, from which we
collect the truth of sympathy. It is that little word of ap-
propriation, " my " Redeemer. Power is shown by God's at-
tention to the vast ; sympathy by His condescension to the
small. It is not the thought of heaven's sympathy by which
we are impressed, when we gaze through the telescope on the
mighty world of space, and gain an idea of what is meant by
infinite. Majesty and power are there, but the very vastness
excludes the thought of sympathy. It is when we look into
the world of insignificance which the microscope reveals, and
find that God has gorgeously painted the atoms of creation,
and exquisitely furnished forth all that belongs to minutest
life, that we feel that God sympathizes and individualizes.
124 Realizing the Second Advent*
When we are told that God is the Redeemer of the
we know that lovfc dwells in the bosom of the Most High ;
but if we want to know that God feels for us individually
and separately, we must learn by heart this syllable of en-
dearment, "My Redeemer." Child of God, if you would
have your thought of God something beyond a cold feeling
of His presence, let faith appropriate Christ. You are as much
the object of God's solicitude as if none lived but yourself.
He has counted the hairs of your head. In Old Testament
language, " He has put your tears into His bottle." He has
numbered your sighs and your smiles. He has interpreted
the desires for which you have not found a name nor an ut-
terance yourself. If you have not learned to say, "My Re-
deemer," then just so far as there is any thing tender or affec-
tionate in your disposition, you will tread the path of your
pilgrimage with a darkened and a lonely heart; and when
the day of trouble comes, there will be none of that triumph-
ant elasticity which enabled Job to look down, as from a
rock, upon the surges- which were curling their crests of fury
at his feet, but could only reach his bosom with their spent
spray.
3. The third thing implied in the present superintendence
is God's vindication of wrongs. The word translated here
Redeemer is one of quite peculiar signification. In all the
early stages of society the redress of wrongs is not a public,
but a private act. It was then as now blood for blood.
But the executioner of the law was invested with something
of a sacred character. Now he is the mere creature of a
country's law, then he was the delegated hand of God ; for
the next of kin to the murdered man stood forward solemnly
in God's name as the champion of the defenseless, the goel, or
Avenger of Blood. Goel is the word here : so that, trans-
lated into the language of those far-back days, Job was pro-
fessing his conviction that there was a champion or an
Avenger, who would one day do battle for his wrongs.
It is a fearful amount of this kind of work which is in ar-
rear for the Avenger to execute, accumulating century by
century, and year by year. From the days of Cain and Abel
there have been ever two classes : the oppressor and the op-
pressed; the gentle humble ones who refuse to right them-
selves, and the unscrupulous who force them aside. The
Church has ever had the world against it. The world struck
its first deadly blow by the hand of Cain, and it has been
striking ever since: from the battle-field, and the martyr's
stake, and the dungeons of the Inquisition, and the prisons
of the lordly tyrant, the blood of the innocent has cried fo!
Realizing the Second Advent. 125
vengeance. By taunt and sneer, the world has had her tri-
umph. And the servants of the Meekest have only had this
to cheer them, " I know that my Redeemer liveth."
There is a persecution sharper than that of the axe. There
is an iron that goes into the heart deeper than the knife.
Cruel sneers, and sarcasms, and pitiless judgments, and cold-
hearted calumnies these are persecution. There is the ty-
rant of the nursery, and the play-ground, and the domestic
circle, as well as of the judgment-hall. "Better were it,"
said the Redeemer, " for that man ii a millstone had been
hanged about his neck." Did you ever do that ? Did you
ever pour bitterness into a heart that God was bruising, by a
cold laugh, or a sneer, or a galling suspicion into a sister's
heart, or a friend's, or even a stranger's ? Remember when
you sent them, as Job's friends sent him, to pour out their
griefs alone before their Father, your name went up to the
Avenger's ears, mingled with the cries of His own elect.
There is a second mode in which God interferes in this
world's affairs. There is a present superintendence perceived
by faith ? but there is a future redress which will be made
manifest to sight. "He shall stand at the latter day upon
the earth." I shall see Him.
First of all, there will be a visible, personal interference.
All that Job meant was in the case of his own wrongs. But
if we use those words, we must apply them in a higher sense.
The Second Advent of Christ is supposed by some to mean
an appearance of Jesus in the flesh to reign and triumph vis-
ibly. Others who feel that the visual perception of His form
would be a small blessing, and that the highest and truest
presence is always spiritual and realized by the Spirit, believe
that His advent will be a coming in power. We will not
dispute : controversy whets the intellect, and only starves, or
worse, poisons the heart. We will take what is certain.
Every signal manifestation of the right, and vindication of
the truth in judgment, is called in Scripture a coming of the
Son of Man. A personal advent of the Redeemer is one
which can be perceived by foes as well as recognized by
friends. The destruction of Jerusalem, recognized by the
heathen themselves as judgment, is called in the Bible a com-
ing of Christ. In the Deluge, in the destruction of the cities
of the plain, in the confusion of tongues, God is said to have
come down to visit the earth. There are two classes, then,
who shall see that sight. Men like Job, who feel that their
Redeemer liveth ; and men like Balaam, from whose lips
words of truth, terrible to him, came : " I shall see Him, but
not now ; I shall behold Him, but not nigh." " Every eye
126 Realizing the Second Advent.
shall see Him." You will see the triumph of the right the
destruction of the wrong. The awful question is, As Balaam
or as Job ?
Besides this, it will be unexpected : every judgment com-
ing of Christ is as the springing of a mine. There is a mo-
ment of deep suspense after the match has been applied to
the fuse which is to fire the train. Men stand at a distance,
and hold their breath. There is nothing seen but a thin,
small column of white smoke, rising fainter and fainter, till it
seems to die away. Then men breathe again ; and the inex-
perienced soldier would approach the place thinking that the
thing has been a failure. It is only faith in the experience of
the commander, or the veterans, which keeps men from hur-
rying to the spot again till just when expectation has be-
gun to die away, the low, deep thunder sends up the column
of earth majestically to heaven, and all that was on it comes
crushing down again in its far circle, shattered and blacken-
ed with the blast.
It is so with the world. By God's word the world is doom
ed. The moment of suspense is past : the first centuries, in
which men expected the convulsion to take place at once;
for even apostles were looking for it in their lifetime. We
have fallen upon days of skepticism. There are no signs of
ruin yet. We tread upon it like a solid thing fortified by its
adamantine hills forever. There is nothing against that but
a few words in a printed book. But the world is mined : and
the spark has fallen ; and just at the moment when serenity
is at its height, " the heaven shall pass away with a great
noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat," and the
feet of the Avenger shall stand on the earth.
II. The means of realizing this interference.
There is a difference between knowing a thing and realiz-
ing it. When a poor man becomes suddenly the possessor of
a fortune or of dignity, it is some time before the thing be-
comes so natural to him that he can act in his new sphere
like his proper self: it is all strangeness at first. When the
criminal hears the death-sentence in the dock, his cheeks are
tearless. He hears the words, but scarcely understands that
they have any thing to do with him. He has not realized
that it is he himself that has to die. When bereavement
comes, it is not at the moment when the breath leaves the
body that we feel what has been lost : we know, but yet we
must have it in detail: see the empty chair, and the clothes
that will never be worn again, and perceive day after day
pass, and he comes not : then we realize.
Realizing the Second Advent* ' 127
,fot> finew that God was the vindicator of wrongs that he
But why did he go on repeating in every possible form
the same thing : u I shall see God see him for myself mine
eyes shall behold Him yes, mine and not another's?" It
would seem as if he were doing what a man does when he
repeats over and over to himself a thing which he can not
picture out in its reality. It was true: but it was strange,
and shadowy, and unfamiliar.
It is no matter of uncertainty to any one of us whether he
himself shall die. He knows it. Every time the funeral bell
tolls, the thought in some shape suggests itself, I am a mor-
tal, dying man. That is knowing it. Which of us has real-
ized it ? Who can shut his eyes, and bring it before him as a
reality, that the day will come when the hearse will stand at
the door for him, and that all this bright world will be going
on without him; and that the very "flesh which now walks
about so complacently, will have the coffin-lid shut down
upon it, and be left to darkness, and loneliness, and silence,
and the worm ? Or take a case still more closely suggested
by the text out of the grave we must arise again long after
all that is young, and strong, and beautiful before me shall
have mouldered into forgetfulness. Earth shall hear her
Master's voice breaking the long silence of the centuries, and
our dust shall hear it, and stand up among the myriads that
are moving on to judgment. Each man in his own proper
identity, his very self, must see God, and be seen by Him
looking out on the strange new scene, and doomed to be an
actor in it for all eternity. We all know that on which of
our hearts is it stamped, not as a doctrine to be proved
texts, but as one of those things which must be hereafter,
in sight of which we are to live now ?
There are two ways suggested to us by this passage for
realizing these things. The first of these is meditation. No
man forgets what the mind has dwelt long on. It is not by
a passing glance that things become riveted in the memory.
It is by forcing the memory to call them up again and again
in leisure hours. It is in the power of meditation to bring
danger in its reality so vividly before the imagination that
the whole frame can start instinctively as if the blow were
falling, or as if the precipice were near. It is in the power
of meditation so to engrave scenes of loveliness on a painter's
eye that he transfers to the canvas a vivid picture that was
real to him before it was real to others. It is in the power
of meditation so to abstract the soul from all that is passing
before the bodily eye, that the tongue shall absently speak
out the words with which the heart was full, not knowing
128 * Realizing the Second Advent.
that others are standing b'y. It seems to have been this that
Job was doing he was realizing by meditation. You can
scarcely read over these words without fancying them the
syllables of a man who was thinking aloud.
It is like a soliloquy rather than a conversation. " I shal]
see him." Myself. Not another. My own eyes.
This is what we want. It is good for a man to get alone,
and then in silence think upon his own death, and feel how
time is hurrying him along : that a little while ago, and he
was not a little while still, and he will be no more. It is
good to take the Bible in his hands, and read those passages
at this season of the year which speak of the Coining and the
End of all, till from the printed syllables there seems to come
out something that has life, and form, and substance in it,
and all things that are passing in the world group themselves
in preparation for that, and melt into its outline. Let us try
to live with these things in view. God our Friend Christ
our living Redeemer ; our sympathizing Brother ; our con-
quering Champion : the triumph of truth, the end of wrong.
We shall live upon realities then : and this world will fade
away into that which we know it is, but yet can not .realize
an appearance, and a shadow.
Lastly, God insures that His children shall realize all this
by affliction. Job had admitted these things before, but this
time he spoke from the ashes on which he was writhing.
And if ever a man is sincere, it is when he is in pain. If
ever that superficial covering of conventionalities falls from
the soul, which gathers round it as the cuticle does upon the
&ody, and the rust upon the metal, it is when men are suffer-
ing. There are many things which nothing but sorrow can
teach us. Sorrow is the great teacher. Sorrow is the real-
izer. It is a strange and touching thing to hear the young
speak truths which are not yet within the limits of their ex-
perience : to listen while they say that life is sorrowful, that
friends are treacherous, that there is quiet in the grave.
When we are boys we adopt the phrases that we hear. In a
kind of prodigal excess of happiness, we say that the world is
a dream, and life a nothing that eternity lasts forever, and
that all here is disappointment. But there comes a day of
sharpness, when we find >to our surprise that what we said
had a meaning in it, and we are startled. That is the senti-
mentalism of youth passing into reality. In the lips of the
young such phrases are only sentimentalities. What we
mean by sentimentalism is that state in which a man speaks
things deep and true, not because he feels them strongly, but
because he perceives that they are beautifu! 3 and that U is
Realizing the Second Advent. 129
touching and fine to say them things which he fain would
feel, and fancies that he does feel. Therefore, when all is
well, when friends abound, and health is strong, and the com-
forts of life are around us, religion becomes faint and shad-
owy. Religious phraseology passes into cant the gay, and
light, and trilling use the same words as the holiest ; till the
earnest man, who feels what the world is sentimentalizing
about, shuts up his heart, and either coins other phrases or
else keeps silence.
And then it is that if God would rescue a man from that
unreal world of names and mere knowledge, He does what he
did with Job He strips him of his flocks, and his herds, and
his wealth ; or else, what is the equivalent, of the power of
enjoying them the desire of his eyes falls from him at a
stroke. Things become real then. Trial brings man face to
face with God God and he touch; and the flimsy veil of
bright cloud that hung between him and the sky is blown
away : he feels that he is standing outside the earth with
nothing between him and the Eternal Infinite. Oh, there is
something in the sick-bed, and the aching heart, and the rest-
lessness and the languor of shattered health, and the sorrow
of affections withered, and the stream of life poisoned at its
fountain, and the cold, lonely feeling of utter rawness of heart
which is felt when God strikes home in earnest, that forces a
man to feel what is real and what is not.
This is the blessing of affliction to those who will lie still
and not struggle in a cowardly or a resentful way. It is
God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, and saying, In
the sunshine and the warmth you can not meet Me : but in
the hurricane and the darkness, when wave after wave, has
swept down and across the soul, you shall see My form, and
hear My voice, and know that your Redeemer liveth.
6*
1 30 First Advent Lecture.
XI.
FIRST ADVENT LECTURE.
THE GRECIAN.
" I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians ; both to the wise,
ind to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gos.
pel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ : for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believe; li ;
to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the lighteouHi .-> (
God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall In l.y
faith." Rom. i. 14-17.
THE season of Advent commemorates three facts. 1.
That the Lord has come. 2. That He is perpetually coming.
8. That He will yet come in greater glory than has yet ap-
peared. And these are the three Advents: The first in the
flesh, which is past ; the second in the spirit ; the third, His
judgment advent.
The first occupies our attention in these lectures.
We live surrounded by Christian institutions ; breathe an
atmosphere saturated by Christianity. It is exceedingly
difficult even to imagine another state of things. In the en-
joyment of domestic purity, it is difficult to conceive the de-
basing effects of polygamy; in the midst of political liber-
ty, to conceive of the blighting power of slavery ; in scien-
tific progress, to imagine mental stagnation ; in religious lib-
erty and free goodness, to fancy the reign of superstition.
Yet to realize the blessings of health we must sit by the
sick-bed ; to feel what light is we must descend into the
mine and see the emaciated forms which dwindle away in
darkness ; to know what the blessing of sunshine is, go down
into the valleys where stunted vegetation and dim vapors
tell of a scene on which the sun scarcely shines two hours in
the day. And to know what we have from Christianity, it
is well to cast the eyes sometimes over the darkness from
which the Advent of Christ redeemed us.
There are four departments of human nature spoken of in
these verses on which the light shined. The apostle felt that
the Gospel was the power of God unto salvation to the
Greeks, the Romans, the Barbarians, and the Jews. In the
present lecture we consider Christianity presented to the
Grecian character, and superseding the Grecian religion.
The Grecian. 131
Four characteristics marked Grecian life and Grecian
religion : Restlessness, worldliness, the worship of the beau-
tiful, the worship of the human.
I. Restlessness. Polytheism divided the contemplation
over many objects : and as the outward objects were mani-
fold, so was there a want of unity in the inward life. The
Grecian mind was distracted by variety. He was to obtain
wisdom from one Deity : eloquence from that Mercurius for
whom Paul was taken ; purity from Diana for whom Ephe-
sus was zealous ; protection for his family or country from
the respective tutelary deities ; success by a prayer to For-
tune.
Hence dissipation of mind that fickleness for which the
Greeks were famous and the restless love of novelty which
made Athens a place of literary and social gossip " some
new thing." All stability of character rests on the contem-
plation of changeless unity.
So in modern science, which is eminently Christian, having
exchanged the bold theorizing of ancient times for the pa-
tient humble willingness to be taught by the facts of nature,
and performing its wonders by exact imitation of them on
the Christian principle the Son of man can do nothing of
Himself but what He seeth the Father do.
And all the results of science have been to simplify and
trace back the manifold to unity. Ancient science was only
a number of insulated facts and discordant laws ;- modern
science has gradually ranged these under fewer and ever
fewer laws. It is ever tending towards unity of law.
For example, gravitation. "The planet's motion, and the
motion of the atom of water that dashes tumultuously, and
as it seems lawlessly, down the foam of the cataract ; the
floating of the cork, the sinking of the stone, the rise of the
balloon, and the curved flight of the arrow, are all brought
under one single law, diverse and opposite as they seem.
Hence science is calm and dignified, reposing upon uniform
fact. The philosopher's very look tells of repose, resting, as
he does, on a few changeless principles.
So also in religion. Christianity proclaimed " One God
and one Mediator between God and Man, the man Christ
Jesus." Observe the effect in the case of two apostles. St.
Paul's view of the Gospel contemplated it as an eternal
divine purpose. His Gospel, the salvation of the Gentiles,
was the eternal purpose which had been hidden from ages
and generations. His own personal election was part of an
eternal counsel. All the children of God Jiad been predesti-
132 First Advent Lecture.
nated before the creation " unto the adoption of children by
Jesus Christ to Himself." Now see the effect on character.
First, on veracity 2 Cor. i. 18, etc. He contemplated the
changeless " yea " of God ; His own yea became fixed as
God's changeless, and calmly unalterable.
Again in orthodoxy "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
\to-day, and forever." " Be not carried about by divers and
strange doctrines." Truth is one, error manifold many
'opinions, yet there can be but one faith. See how calm and
full of rest all this spirit is.
Now consider St. John. His view of the Gospel recog-
nized it rather as tbe manifestation of love than the carry-
ing out of the unity of an everlasting purpose. If you view
the world as the Greek did, all is so various that you must
cither refer it to various deities, or to different modes of the
same Deity. To-day you are happy God is pleased : to-
morrow miserable God is angry. But St. John referred-
these all to unity of character "God is Love." Pain and
pleasure, the sigh and smile, the sunshine and the storm, nay,
hell itself, to him were but the results of eternal love.
Hence came deep calm the repose which we are toiling
all our lives to find, and which the Greek never found.
II. Worldliness. There are men and nations to whom
this world seems given as their province, as if they had no
aspiration above it. If ever there was a nation who under-
stood the science of living, it was the Grecian. They had
organized social and domestic life; filled existence with
comforts ; knew how to extract from every thing its great-
est measure of enjoyment. This world was their home ; this
visible world was the object of their worship. Not like the
Orientals, who called all materialism bad, ami whose highest
object was to escape from it, " to be unclothed, not clothed
upon," as St. Paul phrases it. The Greeks looked upon this
world in its fallen state, and pronounced it all " very good."
The results were threefold.
1. Disappointment. Lying on the infinite bosom of Na-
ture, the Greek was yet unsatisfied. And there is an insa-
tiable desire above all external forms and objects in man-
all men which they can never satisfy. Hence his craving
too, like others, was from time to time, " Who will show us
any good?" This dissatisfaction is exhibited in the parable
of the prodigal, who is but the symbol of erring humanity.
Away from his father's home, the famine came, and he fed
on husks. Famine 'and husks are the world's unsatisfactory
ness. A husk is a thing that seems full is really hollow
The Grecian. 133
which stays the appetite for a time, but will not support the
life. And such is this world leaving a hollowness at heart,
staying our craving but for a time. " He that drinketh of
this water shall thirst again." And the worldly man is try-
ing to satiate his immortal hunger upon husks.
3. Degradation. Religion aims at an ideal life above this
actual one to found a divine polity a kingdom of God a
church of the best. And the life of worldliness pronounces
this world to be all. This is to be adorned and beautified.
Life as it is. Had you asked the Greek his highest wish, he
would have replied, " This world, if it could only last I ask
no more." Immortal youth and this bright existence.
This is to feed on husks, but husks which the swine did eat.
No degradation to the swine, for it is their nature ; . but
degradation to man to rest in the outward, visible, and pres-
ent, for the bosom of God is his home. The Greek, therefore,
might be, in his own language, " a reasoning animal," but
not one of the children of heaven.
3. Disbelief in immortality. The more the Greek attached
himself to this world, the more the world unseen became a
dim world of shades. The earlier traditions of the deep-
thinking Orientals, which his forefathers- brought from Asia,
died slowly away, and any one who. reminded him of them
was received as one would now be who were to speak of pur-
gatory. The cultivated Athenians were for the most part skep-
tics in the time of Christ. Accordingly, when Paul preach-
ed at Athens the resurrection of the dead, they " mocked."
This bright world was all. Its revels, its dances, its the-
atrical exhibitions, its races, its baths, and academic groves,
where literary leisure luxuriated, these were blessedness,
and the Greek's hell was death. Their poets speak pathet-
ically of the misery of the wrench from all that is dear and
bright. The dreadfulness of death is one of the most re-
markable things that meet us in those ancient writings.
And these men were startled by seeing a new sect rise uf
to whom death was nothing who almost courted it. They
heard an apostle say at Miletus, u None of these things move
me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might
finish my course with joy." For the cross of Christ had
crucified in their hearts the Grecian's world. To them life
was honor, integrity, truth ; that is the soul : to this all
!>ther was to be sacrificed. This was the proper self, which
could only die by sin, by denying its own existence. The
rise of the higher life had made this life nothing, " and de-
livered those who, through fear of death, were all their life-
time subject unto bondage."
1 34 First Advent Lecture.
Appeal to the worldly-minded. Melancholy spectacle!
Men and women shutting out the idea of death, the courte*
sies of society concealing from them the mention of their
age, by all false appliances of dress, etc., etc., and staying the
appearance of the hand of time. You must die. The day
will come, and the coffin. Life in God alone robs that
thought of dreadfulness : when the resurrection being begun
within, you can look upon the decay of the outward man,
and feel, I am not dying.
III. The worship of the beautiful. The Greek saw this
world almost only on its side of beauty. His name for it was
Cosmos, divine order or regularity. He looked at actions in
the same way. One and the same adjective expressed the
noble and the beautiful. If he wanted to express a perfect
man, he called him a musical or harmonious man.
What was the consequence ? Religion degenerated into
the arts. All the immortal powers of man were thrown upon
the production of a work of the imagination. The artist who
had achieved a beautiful statue was almost worshipped ; the
poet who had produced a noble poem was the prophet of the
nation ; the man who gave the richest strains of melody was
half divine. This was their inspiration. The arts became
religion, and religion ended in the arts.
Hence, necessarily, sensuality became religious, because all
feelings produced by these arts, chiefly the voluptuous ones,
were authorized by religion. There is a peculiar danger in
refinement of sensuous enjoyments. Coarse pleasures dis-
gust, and pass for what they are ; but who does not know
that the real danger and triumph of voluptuousness are
when it approaches the soul veiled under the drapery of ele-
gance ? They fancied themselves above the gross multi-
tude : but their sensuality, disguised even from themselves,
was sensuality still ay, and at times even, in certain festi-
vals, broke out into gross and unmistakable licentiousness.
And hence the greatest of the Greeks, in his imaginary re-
public, banished from that perfect state all the strains which
were soft and enfeebling all the poems that represented any
deeds of deities unworthy of the Divine all the statues
which could suggest one single feeling of impurity. Him-
self a worshipper of the purest beautiful, it was yet given to
his all but inspired heart to detect the lurking danger before
which Greece was destined to fall the approach of sensuali-
ty through the worship of the graceful and the refined.
There is this danger now. Men are awakened from coarse
rude life to the desire of something deeper ; and the god of
The Grecian. 135
spirit of this world can subtly turn that aside into channels
which shall effectually enfeeble and ruin the soul. Refine-
ment melting imagery dim religious light ; all the witch-
ery of form and color music architecture ; all these, even
colored with the hues of religion, producing feelings either
religious or quasi-religious, may yet do the world's work.
For all attempt to impress the heart through the senses, " to
make perfect through the flesh," is fraught with that danger
beneath which Greece sunk. There is a self-deception in
those feelings the thrill, and the sense of mystery, and the
luxury of contemplation, and the impressions on the senses :
all these lie very close to voluptuousness enfeeblement of
heart yea, even impurity.
This, 'too, is the ruinous effect of an education of accom-
plishments. The education of the taste, and the cultivation
of the feelings in undue proportion, destroy the masculine
tone of mind. An education chiefly romantic or poetical, not
balanced by hard practical life, is simply the ruin of the
soul.
If any one ever felt the beauty of this world, it was He.
The beauty of the lily nestling in the grass He felt it all ;
but the beauty which He exhibited in life was the stern love-
liness of moral action. The King in His Beauty "had no
form or comeliness ;" it was the beauty of obedience, of noble
deeds, of unconquerable fidelity, of unswerving truth, of Di-
vine self-devotion. The Cross ! the Cross ! We must have
something of iron and hardness in our characters. The Cross
tells us that is the true Beautiful which is Divine : an in-
ward, not an outward beauty, which rejects and turns stern-
ly away from the meretricious forms of the outward world,
which have a corrupting or debilitating tendency.
IV. The worship of humanity. The Greek had strong hu-
man feelings and sympathies. He projected his own self on
nature ; humanized it ; gave a human feeling to clouds, for-
ests, rivers, seas.
In this he was a step above other idolatries. The Hindoo,
for instance, worshipped monstrous emblems of physical pow-
er. Might gigantic masses hundred-handed deities, scarce-
ly human, you find in Hindostan. In Egypt, again, life was the
thing sacred. Hence all that had life was in a way divine
the sacred ibis, crocodile, bull, cat, snake. All that produced
and all that ended life. Hence death too was sacred. The
Egyptian lived in the contemplation of death. His coffin
was made in his lifetime ; his ancestors embalmed ; the sa-
cred animals preserved in myriad heaps through generations
1 36 First Advent Lecture.
in mummy pits. The sovereign's tomb was built to last for,
not centuries, but thousands of years.
The Greek was above this. It was not merely power, but
human power ; not merely beauty, but human beauty ; not
merely life, but human life, which was .the object of his pro-
foundest veneration. His effort therefore was, in his concep-
tion of his god, to realize a beautiful human being. And not
the animal beauty of the human only, but the intelligence
which informs and shines through beauty. All his life he
was moulding into shape visions of earth a glorious human
being. Light under the conditions of humanity ; the " sun
in human limbs arrayed" was the central object of Grecian
worship.
Much in this had a germ of truth more was false. This
principle, which is true, was evidently stated : The Divine,
under the limitations of humanity, is the only worship of
which man is capable. Demonstrably, for man can not con-
ceive that which is not in his own mind. He may worship
what is below himself, or that which is in himself resembling
God ; but attributes of which from his own nature he has no
conception, he clearly can not adore.
The only question therefore is, What he shall reckon di-
vine, and in alliance with God ? If power, then he worships
as the Hindoo ; if life, then as the Egyptian ; if physical and
intellectual beauty, then as the Greek.
Observe, they wanted some living image of God contain-
ing something more truly divine to supplant their own. For
still, in spite of their versatile and multifarious conceptions,
the illimitable Unknown remained, to which an altar stood in
Athens. They wanted humanity in its glory they asked
for a Son of Man.
Christ is Deity under the limitations of humanity. But
there is presented in Christ for worship, not power, nor beau-
ty, nor physical life, but the moral image of God's perfec-
tions. Through the heart, and mind, and character of Jesus
it was that the Divinest streamed. Divine character, that
was given in Christ to worship.
Another error. The Greek worshipped all that was in
man. Every feeling had its beauty and its divine origin.
Hence thieving had its patron deity, and treachery, and cun-
ning ; and lust had its temple erected for abominable wor-
ship. All that was human had its sanction in the example
of some god.
Christ corrects this. Not all that is human is divine.
There is a part of our nature kindred with God : the strength-
ening of that, by mixture with God's spirit, is our true and
Second Advent Lecture. 1 37
proper humanity regeneration of soul. There is another
part whereby we are related to the brutes : our animal pro-
pensities, our lower inclinations, our corrupted will. And
whoever lives in that, and strengthens that, sinks not to the
level of the brutes, but below them, to the level of the de-
mons : for he uses an immortal spirit to degrade himself:
and the immortal joined with evil, as the life to the body, is
demoniacal.
In conclusion, remark, In all this system one thing was
wanting the sense of sin. The Greek worshipped the beau-
tiful, adored the human, deified the world : of course this wor-
ship found no place for sin. The Greek would not have spok-
en to you of sin: he would have told you of departure from
a right line ; want of moral harmony ; discord within : he
would have said that the music of your soul was out of tune.
Christ came to convince the world of sin. And after Him
began to brood upon the hearts of Christendom that deep
cloud that rests upon the conscience which has been called
into vitality of action and susceptibility.
For this Greece had no remedy. The universe has no rem-
edy but one. There is no prescription for the sickness of the
heart, but that which is written in the Redeemer's blood.
XII.
SECOND ADVENT LECTURE.
THE ROMAN.
" I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians ; both to the wise,
and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gos-
pel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ : for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ;
to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Rom. i. 14-16.
THE Advent of Christ is the gulf which separates ancient
from modern history. The dates B.C. and A.D. are not arbi-
trary but real division. His coming is the crisis of the world's
history. It' was the moment from^whence light streamed into
the realms of darkness, and life descended into the regions of
the grave. It was the new birth of worn-out Humanity.
Last Thursday we considered the effects of this Advent on
Greece. We found the central principle of Grecian life to be
worldliness. The Greek saw, sought, and worshipped, noth-
ing higher than this life, but only this life itself. Hence
138 Second Advent Lecture.
Greek religion degenerated into mere taste, which is peroep
tion of the beautiful. The result on character was three-fold :
Restlessness, which sent the Greek through this world w r ith
his great human heart unsatisfied, fickle in disposition, and
ever inquiring, with insatiable curiosity, after some new
thing. Licentiousness ; for whosoever attaches his heart to
the outward beauty, without worshipping chiefly in it that
moral beauty of which all else is but the type and suggestion,
necessarily, slowly, it may be, but inevitably, sinks down and
down into the deepest abyss of sensual existence. Lastly,
unbelief. The Greek, seeing principally this "world, lost his
hold upon the next. For the law of faith is, that a man can
only believe what is already in his spirit. Pie believes as he
is. The Apostle Paul writes in astonishment to these Greeks
(of Corinth), " How say some among you there is no resurrec-
tion of the dead ?" But the thing was explicable. Paul was
" dying daily." The outward lite decayed ; the inner grew
and lived with more vitality every day. He/*^ the life to
come in which he believed. But the Corinthians, leading an
easy, luxurious life, how could it be a reality to them? How
could they believe in immortality, in whom the immortal
scarcely stirred, or only feebly ? To these the apostle felt
bound to preach the living Gospel. " I am debtor to the
Greeks."
To-day, we turn to the Roman nation, its religion, and its
life. At the time of which the New Testament speaks, Greece
had been nearly a century and a half a province of Rome.
In the language of Daniel, the kingdom of brass had given
way to the kingdom of iron. The physical might of Rome
had subdued Greece, but the mind of Greece had mastered
Rome. The Greeks became the teachers of their conquerors.
The deities of Greece were incorporated into the national
faith of Rome. Greek literature became the education of the
Roman youth. Greek philosophy was almost the only phi-
losophy the Roman kne\v. Rome adopted Grecian arts, and
was insensibly moulded by contact with Grecian life. ?"
that the world in name and government was Roman, but i
feeling and civilization Greek.
If, therefore, we would understand Roman life, we must
contemplate it at an earlier period, when it was free from
Greek influence, and purely exhibited its own idiosyncracies.
The nation which we contemplate to-day was a noble one
humanly, one of the noblest that the world has seen.
Next to the Jewish, the very highest. We may judge from
the fact of St. Paul's twice claiming his Roman citizenship,
and feeling the indignation of a Roman citizen at the indig
The Roman. 139
nity of chastisement. And this too in an age when the name
had lost its brightness when a luxurious, wealthy Greek could
Eurchase his freedom. Claudius Lysias bought it " with a
irge sum of money." And yet we may conceive what it
had been once, when even the faint lustre of its earlier dignity
could inspire a foreigner, and that foreigner a Jew, and that
Jew a Christian, with such respect.
At the outset, then, we have a rare and high-minded peo
pie and their life, to think of. They who have imbibed the
spirit of its writers from their youth can neither speak nor
think of it without enthusiasm. Scarcely can we forbear it
even in the pulpit. Nor is this an unchristian feeling, earth-
ly, to be checked ; for in order to elevate Christianity, it is
not necessary to vilify heathenism. To exalt revelation, we
need not try to show that natural religion has no Jtruths.
To exhibit the blessings of the Advent, it is not needful to
demonstrate that man was brutalized without it. It is a
poor, cowardly system which can only rise by the degrada-
tion of all others. Whatever is true belongs to the kingdom
of the truth. The purer the creed, the higher the character,
the nobler the men who, without revelation, signally failed at
last, the more absolute is the necessity of a Redeemer, and
the more are we constrained to refer gratefully all blessings
to His Advent.
We take three points : the public and private life of Rome,
and its moral and inevitable decay at last.
I. The public life of Rome.
First, I notice the spirit of its religion. The very word
shows what that was. Religion, a Roman word, means ob-
ligation, a binding power. Very different from the corre-
sponding Greek expression, which implies worship by a sen-
suous ceremonial (threskeia).
The Roman began, like the Jew, from law. He started
from the idea of duty. But there was an important differ-
ence. The Jew was taught duty or obedience to the law of
a personal, holy God. The Roman obeyed, as his Etruscan
ancestors taught him, a fate or will, and with very different
results. But at present we only observe the lofty character
of the early religion which resulted from such a starting-point.
The early history of Rome is wrapped in fable ; but the
fable itself is worth much, as preserving the spirit of the old
life when it does not preserve the facts. Accordingly, the
tradition taught that the building of Rome was done in obe-
dience to the intimations of the will of Heaven. It was re-
built in a site selected not by human prudence, but by a voice
140 Second Advent Lecture.
divinely guided. Its first great legislator (Numa) is repre
sented as giving laws, not from a human heart, but after se-
cret communion with the superhuman. It was the belief of
Roman writers that the early faith taught access to God only
through the mind ; that therefore no images, but only tem-
ples, were found in Rome during the first two centuries of
hep existence. No bloody sacrifices defiled the city. War
itself was a religious act ; solemnly declared by a minister of
religion casting a spear into the enemy's territory. Nay, we
even find something in spirit resembling the Jewish sabbath ;
the command that during the rites of religion no traffic
should go on, nor workman's hammer break the consecrated
silence, but that men should devoutly contemplate God.
Here was a high, earnest, severe religion.
Now this resulted in government, as its highest earthly ex-
pression. Duty and therefore law on earth as a copy of
the will of Heaven. Different nations seem, consciously or
unconsciously, destined by God to achieve different missions.
The Jew had the highest : to reveal to the world holiness.
The Oriental stands as a witness to the reality of the Invisi-
ble above the Visible. The Greek reminded the world of
eternal beauty ; and the destiny of the Roman seems to have
been to stamp upon the minds of mankind the ideas of law,
government, order.
Beauty was not the object of the Roman contemplation,
nor worship ; nor was harmony. The taste for them might
be taught, superinduced, but it was not natural. It was not
indigenous to the soil of his nature. Hence, when Greece was
reduced to a Roman province, in 146 B.C., the Roman soldiers
took the noblest specimens of Grecian painting and converted
them into gambling-tables.
You may distinguish the difference of the two characters
from the relics w r hich they have left behind them. The Greek
produced a statue or a temple, the expression of a sentiment.
The Roman, standing upon visible fact, dealing with the prac-
tical, and living in the actual life of men, has left behind him
works of public usefulness : noble roads which intersect em-
pires, mighty aqueducts, bridges, enormous excavations for
draining cities at which we stand astonished ; and, above all,
that system of law, the slow result of ages of experience,
which has so largely entered into the modern jurisprudence
of most European nations.
One of their own Avriters has distinctly recognized this
destiny. "It is for others to work brass into breathing
shape others may be more eloquent or describe the
circling movements of the heavens, and tell the rising of
The Roman. 141
the stars. Thy work, O Roman ! is to rule the nations :
these be thine acts : to impose the conditions of the world's
peace, to show mercy to the fallen, and to crush the proud."
In accordance with this, it is a characteristic fact that
we find the institutions of Rome referred to inspiration. Not
a decalogue of private duties, but a code of municipal laws.
And, turning to the page of Scripture, whenever the Roman
comes prominently forward, we always find him the organ
of law, the instrument of public rule and order. Pilate has
no idea of condemning unjustly: "Why, what evil hath He
done ?" But he yields at the mention of the source of law,
the emperor. The Apostle Paul appeals to Caesar, and
even a corrupt Festus respects the appeal: "Unto Ca?sar
shalt thou go." Nor could even the prisoner's innocence
reverse his own appeal : " This man might have been set at
liberty if he had not appealed unto Caesar." The tumult at
Ephesus is stilled by a hint of Roman interference : " We
are in danger of being called in question for this day's
uproar." When the angry crowd at Athens, and the equally
angry mob of the Sanhedrim, was about to destroy Paul,
again the Roman, Claudius Lysias, comes " with an army,
and rescues him."
It was always the same thing. The Roman seems almost
to have existed to exhibit on earth a copy of the Divine
order of the universe, the law of the heavenly hierarchies.
II. Private life.
We observe the sanctity of the domestic ties. Very
touching are all the well-known anecdotes: that, for in-
stance, of the noble Roman matron, who felt, all spotless as
she was, life-dishonored, and died by her own, hand. The
sacredness of home was expressed strongly by the idea of
two guardian deities (Lares and Penates) who watched over
it. A Roman's own fireside and hearth-stone were almost the
most sacred spots on earth. There was no battle-cry that
came so to his heart as that, " For the altar and the hearth."
How firmly this was rooted in the nation's heart is plain
from the tradition, that for 170 years no separation took
place by law between those who had once been united in
wedlock.
There is deep importance in this remark, for it was to this
that Rome owed her greatness. The whole fabric of the
Commonwealth rose out of the Family. The family was
the nucleus round which all the rest agglomerated. First,
the family ; then the clan, made up of the family and its
dependents or clients ; then the tribe ; lastly, the
142 Second Advent Lecture.
And so the noble structure of the Roman Commonwealth
arose, compacted and mortised together, but resting on the
foundation of the hearth-stone.
Very different is it in the East. A nation there is a col-
lection of units, held together by a government. There is
a principle of cohesion in them, but only such cohesion as
belongs to the column of sand, supported'by the whirlwind :
when the blast ceases, the atoms fall asunder. When the
chief is slain or murdered, the nation is in anarchy the
family does not exist. Polygamy and infanticide, the bane
of domestic life, are the destruction, too, of national existence.
There is a solemn lesson in this. Moral decay in the
family is the invariable prelude to public corruption. It is
a false distinction which we make between public integrity
and private honor. The man whom you can not admit into
your family, whose morals are corrupt, can not be a pure
statesman. Whoever studies history will be profoundly
convinced that a nation stands or falls with the sanctity of
its domestic ties. Rome mixed with Greece, and learned
her morals. The Goth was at her gates; but she fell not
till she was corrupted and tainted at the heart. The domes-
tic corruption preceded the political. When there was no
longer purity on her hearth-stones, nor integrity in her Sen-
ate, then, and not till then, her death-knell was rung.
We will bless God for our English homes. Partly the
result of our religion ; partly the result of the climate which
God has given us, according to the law of compensation by
which physical evil is repaid by moral blessing ; so that, its
gloom and darkness making life more necessarily spent
within doors than it is among Continental nations, our life is
domestic, and theirs is social. When England shall learn
domestic maxims from strangers, as Rome from Greece, her
ruin is accomplished. And this blessing, too, comes from
Christ who presided at the marriage-feast at Cana, who
found a home in the family of Nazareth, and consecrated the
hearth-stone with everlasting inviolability.
Let us break up this private life into particulars.
1. We find manly courage. This too is preserved in a
.word. Virtue is a Roman word manhood, courage; for
courage, manhood, virtue were one word. Words are fossil
thoughts : you trace the ancient feeling in that word you
trace it, too, in the corruption of the word. Among the
degenerate descendants of the Romans, virtue no longer
means manhood ; it is simply dilettantism. The decay of
life exhibits itself in the debasement even of words.
We dwell on this courage, because it was not merely
The Roman. 143
animal daring. Like every thing Roman, it was connected
with religion. It was duty, obedience to will, self-surrender
to the public good. The Roman legions subdued the world ;
but it was not their discipline alone, nor their strength, nor
their brute daring. It was rather, far, their moral force
a nation whose legendary and historical heroes could thrust
their hand into the flame, and see it consumed without a
nerve shrinking; or come from captivity on parole, advise
their countrymen against peace, and then go back to torture
and certain death : or devote themselves by solemn self-
sacrifice (like the Decii), who could bid sublime defiance
to pain and count dishonor the only evil. The w^orld must
bow before such men ; for unconsciously, here was a form
of the spirit of the Cross self-surrender, unconquerable
fidelity to duty, sacrifice for others. And so far as Rome
had in her that spirit, and so long as she had it, her career
was the career of all those who in any form, even the low-
est, take up the Cross: she went forth conquering and to
conquer.
2. Deep as Roman greatness was rooted in the courage
of her men, it was rooted deeper still in the honor of her
women. I take one significant fact, which exhibits national
feeling. There was a fire in Rome called eternal, forever
replenished. It was the type and symbol of the duration
of the Republic. This fire was tended by the Vestals a
beautifully significant institution. It implied that the dura-
tion of Rome was co-extensive with the preservation of her
purity of morals. So long as the dignity of her matrons
and her virgins remained unsullied, so long she would last.
No longer. Female chastity guarded the Eternal City.
Here we observe something anticipative of Christianity.
In the earlier ages after the Advent there were divine honors
paid to the Queen of Heaven, and the land was covered over
with houses set apart for celibacy. Of course, rude and
gross minds can find plenty to sneer at in that institution,
and doubtless the form of the truth was mistaken enough, as
all mere forms of doctrine are. But the heart of truth which
lay beneath all that superstition was a precious one. It was
this. So long as purity of heart, delicacy of feeling, chastity
of life, are found in a nation, so long that nation is great no
longer. Personal purity is the divinest thing in man and
woman. It is the most sacred truth which the Church of
Christ is commissioned to exhibit and proclaim.
Upon these virtues I observe : The Roman was conspicu-
ous for the virtues of this earth honor, fidelity, courage,
chastity, all manliness ; yet the apostle felt that he had a
1 44 Second Advent Lecture.
Gospel to preach to them that were in Rome also. Moral
virtues are not religious graces. There are two classes of
excellence. There are men whose lives are full of moral
principle, and there are others whose feelings are strongly
devotional. And, strange to say, each of these is found at
times disjoined from the other. Men of almost spotless
earthly honor, who scarcely seem to know what reverence
for things heavenly and devout aspirations towards God
mean ; men who have the religious instinct, pray with fer-
vor, kindle with spiritual raptures, and yet are impure in
their feelings, and fail in matters of common truth and
honesty. Each of these is but a half man, dwarfed and
stunted in his spiritual growth. The " perfect man in Christ
Jesus," who has grown to the " measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ," is he who has united these two things :
who, to the high Roman virtues which adorn this earth,
has added the sublimer feelings which are the investiture of
Heaven: in whom "justice, mercy, truth " are but the body
of which the soul is faith and love.
Yet observe, these are moral virtues, and morality is not
religion. Still, beware of depreciating them. Beware of
talking contemptuously of " mere morality." If we must
choose between two things which ought never to be divided,
moral principle and religious sentiment, there is no question
which most constitutes the character " which is not far from
the kingdom of heaven." Devout feelings are common
enough in childhood, religious emotions, religious warmth,
instances of which are retailed by the happy parent ; com-
mon enough, too, in grown men and women but listen
those devout feelings, separate from high principle, do not
save from immorality : nay, I do believe, are the very step-
ping-stone towards it. When the sensual is confounded
with and mistaken for the spiritual ; and merely devout
warmth is the rich, rank soil of heart in which moral evil
most surely and most rankly grows you will not easily
build Roman virtues upon that. But high principle, which
is, in other words, the baptism of John, is the very basis on
which is most naturally raised the superstructure of religious
faith. Happy, thrice happy he who begins with the law and
ends with the gospel.
HI. The decline of Roman life.
1. First "came corruption of the moral character. The
Roman worldliness was of a kind far higher than the Gre-
cian. In his way the Roman really had the world's good at
heart. There was a something invisible at which he aimed :
The Roman. 145
invisible justice, invisible order, invisible right. Still it was
only the law on earth the well-being of this existence. And
whatever is only of this earth is destined to decay. The
soul of the Roman, bent on this world's affairs, became secu-
larized, then animalized, and so at last, when there was little
left to do, pleasure became his aim, as it had been the Gre-
cian's. Then came ruin swiftly. When the emperors lived
for their elaborately contrived life of luxury, when the Roman
soldier left his country's battles to be fought by mercenaries,
the doom of Rome was sealed. Yet, because it was a nobler
woiidliness, less sensual and less selfish, the struggle with de-
cay was more protracted than in Greece. Lofty spirits rose
to stem the tide of corruption, and the death-throes of Rome
were^long and terrible. She ran a mighty career of a thou-
sand years.
2. Skepticism and superstition went hand in hand. An
example of the former we have in Pilate's question, " What
is truth ?" An example of the latter in the superstitious
belief of the inhabitants of Lystra that Paul and Barnabas
were "gods come to them in the likeness of men." And this
probably was a tolerably accurate picture of the state of
Roman feeling. The lower classes sunk in a debased super'
stition the educated classes, too intellectual to believe in it,
and yet having nothing better to put in its stead. Or per-
haps there was also a superstition which is only another
name for skepticism : infidelity trembling at itself, shrinking
from its own shadow. There is a fearful question for which
the soul must find an answer the mystery of its own being
and destinies. Men looked into their own souls, and, listen-
ing, heard only an awful silence there. No response came
from the world without. Philosophy had none to give.
And then men, terrified at the progress of infidelity, more
than half distrusting their own tendencies, took refuge in
adding superstition to superstition. They brought in the
gods of Greece, and Egypt, and the East : as if multiplying
the objects of reverence strengthened the spirit of reverence
in the soul ; as if every new sacredness was a barrier be-
tween them and the dreadful abyss of uncertainty into which
they did not dare to look.
This is as true now as then. Superstition is the refuge of
a skeptical spirit, which has a heart too devout to dare to be
skeptical. Men tremble at new theories, new views, the
spread of infidelity, and they think to fortify themselves
against these by multiplying the sanctities which they rever-
ence. But all this will not do. Superstition can not do the
work of faith, and give repose or peace. It is not by multi
146 Second Advent Lecture.
plying ceremonies it is not by speaking of holy things with
low, bated breath it is not by entrenching the soul behind
the infallibility of a church, or the infallibility of the words
and sentences of a book it is not by shutting out inquiry,
and resenting every investigation as profane, that you can
arrest the progress of infidelity. Faith, not superstition, is
the remedy.
There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his
heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy that
is, reverences God does not tremble at the apparent success
of attacks upon the outworks of his faith. They may shake
those who rested on those outworks they do not move him
whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no props
or crutches to support his faith. He does not need to multi-
ply the objects of his awe in order to keep dreadful doubt
away. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undis
mayed at the approaches of Infidelity.
3. In Rome religion degenerated into allegiance to the
State. In Greece, as it has been truly said, it ended in taste.
In Rome it closed with the worship of the emperor. Noth-
ing shows the contrast between Greek and Roman feeling
more strongly than this. In Greece the poet became the
prophet, and the artist was the man divinely inspired. In
Rome the deification of the emperor, as the symbol of gov-
ernment, was the point towards which, unsuspected, but by
a sure and inevitable consecutiveuess, the national feeling foi
ages had been tending.
. And the distinction between the Christian and the Roman
tone of feeling is no less strikingly contrasted in the very
same allegiance. Sacrament, perhaps, is the highest word of
symbolical life in both. It is a Roman word. In Rome it
meant an oath of allegiance to the Senate and Roman people.
Nothing higher the Roman knew. In the Christian Church
it is also the oath of highest fidelity ; but its import there is
this : " Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our-
selves, our souls and bodies, to be a living sacrifice."
In this contrast of the sacramental vows, as I have re-
marked before, were perceptible the different tendencies of
the two starting-points of revealed religion and Roman.
Judaism began from law or obligation to a holy person.
Roman religion began from obedience to a mere will. Ju
daism ended in Christianity, whose central principle is joy-
ful surrender to One whose name is Love. The religion of
Rome ended, among the nobler, as Cato and the Antonines,
in the fatalism of a sublime but loveless stoicism, whose es<
sential spirit is submission to a destiny : among <he ordinary
The Roman. 147
men, in mere zeal for the state, more or less earthly. It stiff
ened into stoicism, or degenerated in public spirit.
4. The last step we notice is the decline of religion into ex-
pediency. It is a startling thing to see men protecting popu-
lar superstitions which they despise ; taking part with solemn
gravity in mummeries which in their heart they laugh at.
Yet such, we are told, was the state of things in Rome. It
is a trite and often quoted observation of a great Roman,
that one minister of religion could scarcely meet another
without a smile upon his countenance, indicating conscious-
ness of a solemn mockery. And an instance of this, I believe,
we have in the Acts of the Apostles. The town-clerk or mag-
istrate of Ephesus stilled the populace by a kind of accom-
modation to their prejudices much in the same way in which
a nurse would soothe a passionate child. Apparently, as we
are told, he belonged to the friends of Paul ; and we can
scarcely forbear a smile at the solemn gravity with which he
assures the people that there could be no doubt that the im-
age fell down from Jupiter : no question throughout all Asia
and the world about the greatness of the " great goddess
Diana."
For there were cultivated minds which had apprehended
some of the truths of Christianity philosophers who were
enlightened far beyond their age. But a line of martyred
philosophers had made them cautious. They made a com-
promise. They enjoyed their own light, kept silence, and
left the rest in darkness. The result was destruction of their
own moral being ; for the law of truth is that it can not be
shut up without becoming a dead thing, and mortifying the
whole nature. Not the truth which a man knows, but that
which he says and lives, becomes the soul's life. Truth can not
bless except when it is lived for, proclaimed and suffered for.
This was the plan of the enlightened when the Saviour
came. And this is the lowest step of a nation's fall, when
the few who know the truth refuse to publish it ; when gov-
ernments patronize superstition as a mere engine for govern-
ing; when the ministers of religion only half believe the
dogmas which they teach, dare not even say to one another
what they feel and what they doubt ; when they dare not be
true to their convictions for fear of an Ephesian mob.
Therefore it was necessary that One should come into the
world who should be true the truest of all that are woman-
born ; whose life was truth ; who from everlasting had been
the truth. It was necessary that He should come to preach
the Gospel to the poor, to dare- to say to the people some
truths which the philosophers dared not say, and other truths
1 48 Third Advent Lecture.
of which no philosopher had ever dreamed. The penalty of
that true life was the sacrifice which is the world's Atone
ment. Men saw the Mortal die. But others saw the Im-
mortal rise to take His place at the right hand of Power :
and the Spirit which has been streaming out ever since from
that life and death is the world's present Light, and shall be
its everlasting Life.
XIIL
THIRD ADVENT LECTURE.
THE BARBARIAN.
"And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called
Melita. And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness : for they
kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and
because of the cold. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and
laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his
hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand,
they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though
he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suifereth not to live. And he shook
off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit the}* looked when he
should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had
looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their
minds, and said that he was a god. In the same quarters were possessions
of the chief man of the island, whose name was Publius ; who received us,
md lodged us three days courteously." Acts xxviii. 1-7.
OF the four divisions of the world at the time of the Ad-
vent, two have already been reviewed. The Greek, seeing
the right only on its side of beauty, ended in mere intellect-
ual refinement. The artist took the place of God, and genius
stood for inspiration. The Roman's destiny was different.
His was not the kingdom of burnished brass, but the king-
dom of iron. He set out with the great idea of duty and
law : exhibited in consequence the austere simplicity of pure
domestic life, in public affairs government and order: stamp-
ing upon the world the great idea of obedience to law. In
the decline of Rome the results of this were manifest. After
a mighty career of a thousand years Rome had run out her
course. Among the loftier minds who stood out protesting
against her corruption, and daring in a corrupted age to be-
lieve in the superiority of right to enjoyment, grand con-
tempt for pleasure, sublime defiances of pain told out the
dying agonies of the iron kingdom, worthy of the heart of
steel which beat beneath the Roman's robe. This was stoi-
The Barbarian. 149
cism : the Grecian philosophy which took deepest root, as
might have been expected, in the soil of Roman thought.
Stoicism was submission to a destiny : hard, rigid, loveless
submission. Its language was Must. It must be, and man's
highest manliness is to submit to the inevitable. It is right
because it must be so. Besides these higher ones, there were
others who carried out the idea of duty in quite another di-
rection. With the mass of the nation, reverence for law
passed into homage to the symbol of law loyalty to the
Government ; its highest expression being the sacramental
homage to the nation's authority. So that, as I have alread)
said, the Roman spirit stiffened into stoicism, and degener-
ated into worship of the emperor. This was not accidental,
it was the inevitable result of the idea. It might have taken
half the time, or ten times as long ; but at last the germ
must have ripened into that fruit and no other. The Roman
began with obedience to will.
Law, meaning obedience to a holy God, passes by a nat-
ural transition into the Gospel : that .is, reverential duty to a
person becomes the obedience of love at last, which obeys
because the beautifulness of obedience is perceived. The
Jew began in severity, ended in beauty. The Roman began
in severity, ended in rigidity, or else relaxation. To him the
Advent came proclaiming the Lord of love instead of the co
ercive necessity of a lifeless fate.
To the Greek worshipper of beauty, the Advent came with
an announcement of an inner beauty. He who was to them,
and all such, " a Root out of a dry ground, with no form or
comeliness," with nothing to captivate & refined taste, or
gratify an elegant sensibility, lived a life which was divine
and beautiful. His religion, as contrasted with the Grecian,
supplementing it, and confirming in it what was true, " was
the worship of the Lord in the beauty of holiness."
The third department is the necessity of the Advent for
the Barbarian world.
By Barbarian was meant any religion but the Roman or
the Greek a contemptuous term, the spirit of which is com-
mou enough in all ages. Just as now every narrow sect
monopolizes God, claims for itself an exclusive heaven, con-
temptuously looks on all the rest of mankind as sitting in
outer darkness, and complacently consigns myriads whom
God has made to His uncovenanted mercies, that is, to prob-
able destruction, so, in ancient times, the Jew scornfully des-
ignated all nations but his own as Gentiles ; and the Roman
and Greek, each retaliating in his way, treated all nations
but his own under the common epithet of Barbarians.
1 50 Third Advent Lecture.
We shall confine ourselves to-day to a single case of bar*
barian life. We shall not enter into the religion of our own
ancestors, the Celts and Teutonic nations, who were barbari<
ans then, nor that of the Scythians or the Africans. One in-
stance will be sufficient.
Twice in his recorded history St. Paul came in contact
with barbarians twice he was counted as a god. Once
among the semi-barbarians of Lycaonia, at Lystra once her*?
at Melita.
There is a little uncertainty about the identification of this
Melita. It was a name shared by two islands Malta, and
Melida in the Adriatic. But it seems to be established be-
yond all reasonable doubt that it was on Malta, not on Me-
lida, that St. Paul was wrecked. The chief objection to this
view is, that immediately before the wreck we are told
chap, xxvii. 27 that they were "driven up and down in
Adria." But this is satisfactorily answered by the fact that
the name Adriatic was applied often loosely to all the sea
round Sicily. Two great arguments in favor of Malta then
remain : After leaving the island, the apostle touched at Sy-
racuse, and so went on to Rhegium and Puteoli. This is the
natural direction from Malta to Rome, but not from Melida.
Then besides, " barbarians " will not apply to the inhabitants
of Melida. They were Greeks : whereas the natives of Mal-
ta, living under Roman government, were originally Cartha-
ginians, who had been themselves a Phoenician colony. The
epithet is perfectly correct as applied to them.
It is the Carthaginian or Phoenician religion, then, which
moulded the barbarian life, that we examine to-day. We
take three points.
I. Barbarian virtues.
II. Barbarian idea of retribution.
III. Barbarian conception of Deity.
I. Barbarian virtues. Two errors have been held on the
subject of natural goodness. The first, that of those who
deny to fallen man any goodness at all, and refuse to admit
even kindliness of feeling. In the language of a celebrated
and popular expounder of this view, "man in his natural
state is one-half beast and one-half devil." This is the effect
of a system. No man in his heart believes that. No moth-
er ever gazed upon her child, baptized or unbaptized, and
thought so. Men are better than their creed. Their hearts
are more than a match for their false theological system.
Beneath the black skin of the African there runs a blood as
warm as that which is in the blue veins of the Christian.
The Barbarian. 151
Among the civilized heathen, the instinctive feelings are aa
kindly and as exquisitely delicate as they were ever found
in thes bosom of the baptized. Accordingly, we find here
these natural barbarian virtues of hospitality and sympathy.
The shipwrecked mariners, wet and cold, were received in
Melita with a warm, compassionate welcome. The people of
the island did not say, " Depart in peace, be ye warmed and
filled." They gave them those things which were necessary
for the body. And a Christian contemplating this, gave this
distinct testimony, " The barbarous people showed us no lit-
tle kindness."
The second error is the opposite one of placing too high a
value on these natural virtues. There is a class of writers
who talk much of early unsophisticated times. They tell of
the days " when wild in woods the noble savage ran." They
speak of pastoral simplicity, and the reverence and piety of
mountain life. According to them, civilization is the great
corrupter. But the truth is, the natural good feelings of hu-
man nature are only instincts: no more moral than a long
sight or a delicate sense of hearing. The keen feelings of
the child are no guaranty of future principle perhaps rath-
er the reverse. The profuse hospitality of the mountaineer,
who rarely sees strangers, and to whom gold is little worth,
becomes shrewd and selfish calculation so soon as temptation
from passing traffic is placed in his way. You may travel
among savages who treat you, as a stranger, with courtesy,
but yet feed on the flesh of their enemies. And these Meli-
tans, who " showed no little kindness " to the wrecked crew,
belonged to a stock who, in the most civilized days of Car-
thage, offered human sacrifice, and after every successful battle
with the Romans burnt the chief prisoners alive as a thank-
offering to Heaven. If we trace them still farther back, we
find their Pho3nician ancestors in the Old Testament tainted
with the same practice, and the Hebrews themselves imbib-
ing it from them, so as to be perpetually arraigned by their
prophets on the charge of making their sons and daughters
"pass through the fire to Baal." They could be kind to
strangers, and cruel to enemies.
The Advent of Christ brought a new spirit into the world.
"A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one an-
other." That wasYiot the new part. The Melitans would not
have disagreed with that. ... " As I have loved you, that
ye love one another." " As I have loved you," .... that
makes all new. So also 1 John ii. 7, 8. The " old command-
ment " was old enough. Barbarians felt in their hearts. But
the same commandment with " true light " shining on il
different indeed.
152 Third A dvent L ecture.
" Love your neighbor, hate your enemy." Carthaginians
obeyed that. Hear the law of love expounded by Himself.
" But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
which despitefully use you and persecute you. For if ye
love them which love you, what do ye more than others?
Do not even . . . (the barbarians) . . . the same ?" This is
Christianity that is, the mind of Christ.
; Remark, too, the principle on which this is taught. " That
ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven :
for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." Not upon
merely personal authority; not by a law graven on stone,
nor even printed in a book, to be referred to, chapter and
verse ; but on the principle of the imitation of God. His
heart interpreted the universe He read its " open secret,'*
which is open to all who have the heart to feel it, secret to
all others. A secret, according to Him, to be gathered from
the rain as it fell on the just and the unjust, from the dejv
of heaven, from the lily, and from the fowls of the air, from
the wheat, from every law and every atom. This was His
revelation. He revealed God. He spelled for us the mean-
ing of all this perplexing, unintelligible world. He pro-
claimed its hidden meaning to be Love. So He converted
rude barbarian instincts into Christianj graces by expand-
ing their sphere and purifying them of selfishness causing
them to be regulated by principle, and elevating them into
a conscious imitation of God in His revealed character.
II. The Barbarian idea of retribution.
The Apostle Paul was one of those who are formed to be
the leaders of the world. Foremost in persecution, foremost
in Christianity (" nothing behind the chiefest apostles ") fore-
most in the shipwreck, his voice the calmest, his heart the
stoutest, his advice the wisest in the tumult ; foremost, too,
when all was over, not as a prisoner, but actively engaged
for the general good, it is Paul who is gathering the Sticks
to make the fire. From those sticks a viper sprung and fas-
tened on his hand, and the first impression of the barbarians
was, " No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he
hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live."
This is the very basis of all natural religion the idea of
the connection between guilt and retribution. In some
form or other it underlies all mythologies. The sleepless,
never-dying avengers of wrong the Nemesis who presides
over retribution the vengeance which suffereth not the
The Barbarian. 153
murderer to live the whips and scorpions of the Furies
it seems the first instinct of religion.
In the Barbarian conception of it, however, there was
something gross, corporeal, and dangerous ; because they
misinterpreted natural laws into vengeance. Yet there is a
proneness in man to judge so. We expect that nature will
execute the chastisements of the spiritual world. Hence all
nature becomes to the imagination leagued against the
transgressor. The stars in their courses fight against Sisera ;
the wall of Siloam falls on guilty men ; the sea will not carry
the criminal, nor the plank bear him the viper stings
every thing is a minister of wrath. On this conviction na-
tions constructed their trial by. ordeal. The guilty man's
sword would fail in the duel, and the foot would strike and
be burnt by the hot ploughshare. Some idea of this sort
lurks in all our minds. We picture to ourselves the spectres
of the past haunting the nightly bed of the tyrant. We take
for granted that there is an avenger making life miserable.
But experience corrects all this. The tyrant's sleep is
often as sweet and sound as the infant's. The sea will
wreck an apostle, and bear a murderer triumphantly. The
viper stings the innocent turf -cutter. The fang of evil
pierces the heel of the noblest as he treads it down. It is
the poetry of man's heart, not the reality of the universe,
which speaks of the vengeance which pursues guilt with un-
relenting steps to slay ; only in poetry is this form of jus-
tice found ; only in poetry does the fire refuse to burn the
innocent ; only in poetry can Purity lay her hand on the
fawning lion's mane. If we ask where these Melitans got
their idea of retribution, the reply is, out of their own
hearts. They felt the eternal connection between wrong-
doing and penalty. The penalty they would have executed
on murder w~as death. They naturally threw this idea of
theirs into the character of God, and blended together what
was theirs and what is His. This is valuable as a proof of
the instinctive testimony of man's heart to the realities of
retribution. It is utterly worthless as a testimony to the
form in which retributive justice works, because it is not
borne out by the facts of life.
Ao;ain, that notion was false, in that it expected vengeance
for flagrant crime only. " This man is a murderer." "There
is a common and superstitious feeling now to that effect,
" Murder will out :" as if God had set a black mark on mur-
der as if, because it is unlikely to escape detection in a
country where every man's hand is against the murderer,
impunity was not common enough in countries where hu
ST*
1 54 Third Advent Lecture.
man life is held cheap. The truth is, we think much of
crime, little of sin. There is many a murderer executed
whose heart is pure and whose life is white, compared with
those of many a man who lives a respectable and even hon-
ored life. David was a murderer. The Pharisees had com-
mitted no crime, but their heart was rotten at the core.
There was in it the sin which has no forgiveness. It is not
a Christian but a Barbarian estimate, which ranks crime
above sin, and takes murder for the chief of sins marked out
for Heaven's vengeance.
As information increased, this idea of retribution disap-
pears. Natural laws are understood, and retribution van-
ishes; Then often comes Epicureanism or Atheism. "All
things come alike to all : there is one end to the righteous
and to the sinner ; to the clean and to the unclean : to him
that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not." This is the
feeling of the voluptuary of Ecclesiastes. If so, then the in-
ference suggests itself to Epicurean indolence " Let us eat
and drink"" it is all the same. Or the skeptical feeling
comes thus : " Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and
washed my hands in innocency." For assuredly there is no
vengeance such as this which suffers not the murderer to
live, but arms the powers of nature against him. Therefore
why do right instead of wrong ?
Thus the idea of retribution is gone for those who see no
deeper than the outward chance of penalty.
The Advent of Christ brought deeper and truer views.
It taught what sin is, and what suffering is. It showed the
Innocent on the Cross bearing the penalty of the world's sin,
but Himself still the Son of God, with whom the Father was
not angry, but "well pleased."
The penal agonies of sin are chiefly those which are exe-
cuted within. "Vengeance," said the Melitans, " suffereth
not the murderer to live." " Whosoever slayeth Cain," said
God, "vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." Cain,
the murderer, lives Christ, the holy, dies. Cain is to us
the dread type of hell. To live ! that is hell, to live when
you fain would die. There is such a thing as being salted
with fire, a never annihilating but still consuming torture.
You may escape the viper and the wreck. You may by
prudence make this world painless, more or less. You can
not escape yourself. Go where you will, you carry with
you a soul degraded, its power lost, its finer sensibilities de-
stroyed. Worse than the viper's tooth is the punishment
of no longer striving after goodness, or aspiring after the life
of God. Just as the man can not see through the glass on
The Barbarian. 155
which he breathes, sin darkens the windows of the soul.
You can not look out even to know the glories of the fair
world from which your soul excludes itself. There is no
punishment equal to the punishment of being base. To sink
from sin to sin, from infamy to infamy, that is the fearful
retribution which is executed in the spiritual world. You
are safe, go where you will, from the viper : as safe as if
you were the holiest of God's children. The fang is in your
soul.
HI. The Barbarian conception of Deity.
When the viper fell off, and Paul was left uninjured, they
changed their mind and said that he was a god.
Observe first, this implied a certain advance in religious
notions. There is a stage of worship prior to that of man-
worship. Man finds himself helpless among the powers of
nature, and worships the forces themselves which he finds
around him. This takes different forms. The highest is the
worship of that host of heaven from which Job professed
himself to be free. With some it is the adoration of lifeless
things : the oak which has been made sacred by the light-
ning-stroke ; the " meteoric stone " which fell down from
Jupiter. So the Israelites adored the brazen serpent, with
which power had once been in connection. Evidently there
can be no holy influence in this. Men worship them by fear,
fortify themselves by charms and incantations : do not try
to please God by being holy, but defend themselves from
danger by jugglery. The Christians of the early ages car-
ried about bits of consecrated bread to protect themselves
from shipwreck.
Besides this, men have worshipped brute life some ani-
mal, exhibiting a limited quality, which is yet reckoned a
type of the Divine. The hawk-eyed deities of Egypt, for in-
stance, implied omniscience. Beast-worship was that of
Egypt. Israel learned it there, and in an early stage of their
history imitated the highest form which they knew, that of
Apis, in their golden calf.
It is quite clear that the Melitans were in a stage beyond
this. It is a step when men rise from the worship of lifeless
things to that of animals another when they rise to worship
human qualities; for they are nearest the Divine. Perhaps
a step higher still, when, like the early Romans, they wor-
ship a principle like Destiny, separate from all shape. They
were in the stage of worshipping what is human.
2. But in this worship of the human we have to distinguish
that it was the adoration of the marvellous, not the rever*
156 Third Advent Lecture.
ence for the good. It was not Paul's character to which
they yielded homage. It was only to the wonderful mys-
tery of, as they supposed, miraculous escape. So, too, at
Lystra. It was the miracle which they chiefly saw.
All that would pass away when they knew that he was a
man of like passions with themselves, or when they were in-
formed that it was a providential escape which might have
happened to any ordinary man. When the savage sees the
flash of European fire-arms he kneels as to a god ; but when
he has learned its use, his new religion is gone. When the
Americans first saw the winged ships of Spain, they thought
that the deities spoke in thunder; but when they discovered
the secret of their humanity, the worship ceased. And thus
science is every day converting the religion of mere wonder
into Atheism. The mere worship of the mysterious has but
a limited existence. As you teach laws, you undermine that
religion. Men cease to tremble. The Laplander would no
longer be awed by the eclipse if he knew how to calculate it
with unerring accuracy. The savage's dread of lightning as
the bolt of God, is over when he sees the philosopher draw
it from the clouds, and experimentalize on it in his laboratory.
The awe created by a pestilence is passed, when it is found
to be strictly under the guidance of natural laws. And the
Romanist, or the semi-Romanist, whose religion is chiefly a
sense of the mysterious, the solemn, and the awful, and
whose flesh creeps when he sees a miracle in the consecration
of the sacraments, ends, as is well known, in infidelity, when
enlightenment and reason have struck the ground of false
reverence from beneath his feet.
It is upon this indisputable basis that the mightiest sys
tern of modern Atheism has been built. The great founder
of that system divides all human history into three periods.
The first, in which the Supernatural is believed in ; and a
personal agent is believed in as the cause of all phenomena.
The second, in which metaphysical abstractions are assumed
as Causes. The third, the Positive stage, in which nothing
is expected but the knowledge of sequences by experience ;
the Absolute, that lies beneath all phenomena, being forever
unknowable, and a God, if there be a God, undiscoverable by
the intellect of man.
This conclusion is irrefragable. Granted that the only ba-
sis of religion is awe, a worship of the marvellous, then ver-
ily, there "remains nothing for the human race to end in but
blank and ghastly Atheism.
Therefore has the Redeemer's Advent taught a deeper truth
to man. The Apostle Paul spoke almost slightingly of the
The Barbarian. 157
marvellous. " Covet earnestly the best gifts : yet show 1
unto you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the
tongues of men and angels, and have not love, I am become
as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." Love is diviner
than all wondrous powers.
So, too, the Son of God came into this world, depreciating
the merely mysterious. ''An evil and adulterous genera-
tion seeketh after a sign. No sign shall be given to it."
"Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe."
Nay, His own miracles themselves, so far as the merely won-
drous in them was concerned, He was willing, on one occa-
sion at least, to place on the same level with the real or sup-
posed ones of exorcists among themselves. " If I by Beel-
zebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out ?"
It was not the power, nor the supernatural in them, which
proved them divine. It was their peculiar character their
benevolence, their goodness, their love which manifested
Deity.
Herein lies the vast fallacy ot the French skeptic. The
worship of the merely Supernatural must, as science pro-
gresses, legitimately end in Atheism. Yes, all science re-
moves the Cause of causes farther and farther back from hu-
man ken, so that the baffled intellect is compelled to confess
at last we can not find it. But "the world by wisdom knew
not God." There is a power in the soul, quite separate from
the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvel-
lous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above
the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the
wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God.
The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a
mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love
which the heart feels, and which the intellect does not even
pretend to judge or recognize. And he is safe from the in-
evitable decay which attends the mere Barbarian worship,
who has felt that as faith is the strongest power in the mind
of man, so is love the divinest principle in the bosom of God
in other words, he who adores God as known in Christ, rath-
er than trembles before the Unknown whose homage \s
yielded to Divine Character rather than to Divine Power.
158 The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest.
XIV.
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST.
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth.
that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life ever-
lasting." Gal. vi. 7, 8.
THERE is a close analogy between the world of nature
and the world of spirit. They bear the impress of the same
hand ; and hence the principles of nature and its laws are
the types ad shadows of the Invisible. Just as two books,
though on different subjects, proceeding from the same pen,
manifest indications of the thought of one mind, so the
worlds, visible and invisible, are two books written by the
same finger, and governed by the same idea. Or rather,
they are but one book, separated into two only by the nar-
row range of our ken. For it is impossible to study the uni-
verse at all without perceiving that it is one system. Be~
gin with what science you will, as soon as you get beyond
the rudiments, you are constrained to associate it with an-
other.
You can not study agriculture long without finding that
it absorbs into itself meteorology and chemistry : sciences
run into one another till you get the " connection of the sci-
ences ;" and you begin to learn that one Divine idea con-
nects the whole in one system of perfect order.
It was upon this principle that Christ taught. Truths
come forth from His lips, not stated simply on authority, but
based on the analogy of the universe. ^ His human mind, in
perfect harmony with the Divine mind with which it is mix-
ed, discerned the connection of things, and read the Eternal
Will in the simplest laws of nature. For instance, if it were
a question whether God would give His Spirit to them that
asked, it was not replied to by a truth revealed on His au-
thority ; the answer was derived from facts lying open to all
men's observation. " Behold the fowls of the air"" behold
the lilies of the field " learn from them the answer to your
question. A principle was tnere. God supplies the wants
which He has created. He feeds the ravens He clothes the
lilies He will feed with His Spirit the craving spirits of His
children.
The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest. 1 59
It was on this principle of analogy that St. Paul taught in
this text. He tells us that there is a law in nature accord-
ing to which success is proportioned to the labor spent upon
the work. In kind and in degree, success is attained in
kind; Tor example, he who has sown his field with beech-
mast does not receive a plantation of oaks ; a literary educa-
tion is not the road to distinction in arms, but to success in
letters ; years spent on agriculture do not qualify a man to
be an orator, but they make him a skillful farmer. Success,
again, is proportioned to labor in degree, because, ordinarily,
as is the amount of seed sown, so is the harvest : he who
studies much will know more than he who studies little. In
almost all departments it is " the. diligent hand which mak-
eth rich."
The keen eye of Paul discerned this principle reaching far
beyond what is seen, into the spiritual realm which is un-
seen. As tare-seed comes up tares, and wheat-seed wheat ;
and as the crop in both cases is in proportion to two condi-
tions, the labor and the quantity committed to the ground
so in things spiritual, too, whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap. Not something _else, but " that." The
proportion holds in kind ft holds, too, in degree, in spiritual
things as in natural. " He which soweth sparingly shall
reap also sparingly ; and he which soweth bountifully shall
reap also bountifully." If we could understand and rightly
expound that principle, we should be saved from much of the
disappointment and surprise which come from extravagant
and unreasonable expectations. I shall try first to elucidate
the principle w'hich these verses contain, and then examine
the two branches of the principle.
I. The principle is this, " God is not mocked : for whatso
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
There are two kinds of good possible to men : one enjoyed
by our animal being, the other felt and appreciated by our
spirits. Every man understands more or less the difference
between these two : between prosperity and well-doing be-
tween indulgence and nobleness between comfort and in-
ward peace between pleasure and striving after perfection
between happiness and blessedness. These are two kinds
of harvest, and the labor necessary for them respectively is
of very different kinds. The labor which procures the har-
vest of the one has no tendency to secure the other.
We will not deprec are the advantages of this world. It
is foolish and unreal to do so. Comfort, affluence, success,
freedom from care, rank, station these are in their real way
1 60 The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest.
goods ; only the labor bestowed upon them does not proem a
one single blessing that is spiritual.
On the other hand, the seed which is sown for a spiritual
harvest has no tendency whatever to procure temporal well-
being. Let us see what are the laws of the sowing and reap
ing in this department. Christ has declared them : " Bless-
ed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." " Bless-
ed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness : for
they shall be filled " (with righteousness). " Blessed are they
that mourn : for they shall be comforted." You observe,
the beatific vision of the Almighty fullness of righteous-
ness divine comfort. There is nothing earthly here it is,
spiritual results for spiritual labor. It is not said that the
pure in heart shall be made rich ; nor that they who hunger
after goodness shall be filled with bread ; nor that they who
mourn shall rise in life and obtain distinction. Each depart-
ment has its own appropriate harvest reserved exclusively
to its own method of sowing.
Every thing in this world has its price, and the price buys
that, not something else. Every harvest demands its own
preparation, and that preparation will not produce another
sort of harvest. Thus, for example, you can not have at
once the soldier's renown and the quiet of a recluse's life.
The soldier pays his price for his glory sows and reaps.
His price is risk of life and limb, nights spent on the hard
ground, a weather-beaten constitution. If you will not pay
that price, you can not have w r hat he has military reputa-
tion. You can not enjoy the statesman's influence together
with freedom from public notoriety. If you sensitively
shrink from that, you must give up influence ; or else pay
his price the price of a thorny pillow, unrest, the chance of
being to-day a nation's idol, to-morrow the people's execra-
tion. You can not have the store of information possessed
by the student, and enjoy robust health : pay his price, and
you have his reward. His price is an emaciated frame, a de-
bilitated constitution, a transparent hand, and the rose taken
out of the sunken cheek. To expect these opposite things :
i soldier's glory and quiet, a statesman's renown and peace,
the student's prize and rude health, would be to mock God,
to reap what has not been sowed.
Now the mistakes men make, and the extravagant expec-
tations in which they indulge, are these : they sow-for earth,
and expect to win spiritual blessings, or they sow to the
Spirit, and then wonder that they have not a harvest of the
good things of earth. In each case they complain. What
have I done to be treated so ?
The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest. 1 6 1
The unreasonableness of all this appears the moment we
have understood the conditions contained in this principle,
" Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
It is a common thing to hear sentimental wonderings
about the unfairness of the distribution of things here. The
unprincipled get on in life, the saints are kept back. The
riches and rewards of life fall to the lot of the undeserving.
The rich man has his good things, and Lazarus his evil things.
Whereupon it is taken for granted that there must be a fu-
ture life to make this fair : that if there were none, the con-
stitution of this world would be unjust. That is, that be-
cause a man who has sown to the Spirit does not reap to the
flesh here, he will hereafter ; that the meed of well-doing
must be somewhere in the universe the same kind of recom-
pense which the rewards of the unprincipled were here
comfort, abundance, physical enjoyment or else all is wrong.
But if you look into it, the balance is perfectly adjusted
even here. God has made his world much better than you
and I could make it. Every thing reaps its own harvest, ev-
ery act has its own reward. And before you covet the en-
joyment which another possesses, you must first calculate the
cost at which it was procured.
For instance, the religious tradesman complains that his
honesty is a hindrance to his success : that the tide of cus-
tom pours into the doors of his less scrupulous neighbors in
the same street, while he himself waits for hours idle. My
brother, do you think that God is going to reward honor, in-
tegrity, high-mindedness, with this world's coin? Do you
fancy that He will pay spiritual excellence with plenty of
custom? Now, consider the price that man has paid for his
success. Perhaps mental degradation and inward dishonor.
His advertisements are all deceptive; his treatment of his
workmen tyrannical ; his cheap prices made possible by in-
ferior articles. Sow that man's seed, and you will reap that
man's harvest. Cheat, lie, advertise, be unscrupulous in your
assertions, custom will come to you. But if the price is too
dear, let him have his harvest, and take yours; yours is
a clear conscience, a pure mind, rectitude within and with-
out. Will you part with that for his ? Then why do you
complain ? He has paid his price, you do not choose to
pay it.
Again, it is not an uncommon thing to see a man rise from
insignificance to sudden wealth by speculation. Within the
last ten or twenty years England has gazed on many such a
phenomenon. In this case, as in spiritual things, the law seems
to hold : He that hath, to him shall be given. Tens of thou*
1 62 The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest.
sands soon increase and multiply to hundreds of thousands,
His doors are besieged by the rich and great. Royalty ban-
quets at his tableland nobles court his alliance. Whereupon
some simple Christian is inclined to complain : " How strange
that so much prosperity should be the lot of mere clever-
ness
Well, are these really God's chief blessings ? Is it for such
as these you serve Him ? And would these indeed satisfy
your soul? Would you have God reward his saintliest with
these gauds and gewgaws all this trash rank, and wealth,
and equipages, and plate, and courtship from the needy
great ? Call you that the heaven of the holy ? Compute
now what was paid for that? The price that merchant-
prince paid, perhaps with the blood of his own soul, was
shame and guilt. The price he is paying now is perpetual
dread of detection ; or worse still, the hardness which can
laugh at detection ; or one deep lower yet, the low and grov-
elling soul which can be satisfied with these things as a
paradise, and ask no higher. He has reaped enjoyment
yes, and he has sown, too, the seed of infamy.
It is all fair. Count the cost. "He that saveth his life
shall lose it." Save your life if you like, but do not complain
if you lose your nobler life yourself: win the whole world,
but remember you do it by losing your own soul. Every sin
must be paid for ; every sensual indulgence is a harvest, the
price for which is so much ruin for the soul. " God is not
mocked"
Once more, religious men in every profession are surprised
to find that many of its avenues are closed to them. The
conscientious churchman complains that his delicate scruples
or his bold truthfulness stand in the way of his preferment ;
while another man, who conquers his scruples or softens the
eye of truth, rises, and sits down a mitred peer in Parliament.
The honorable lawyer feels that his practice is limited, while
the unprincipled practitioner receives all he loses ; and the
Christian physician feels sore and sad at perceiving that char-
latanism succeeds in winning employment ; or, if not char-
latanism, at least that affability and courtly manners take the
place that is due to superior knowledge.
Let such men take comfort, and judge fairly. Porjularity
is one of the things of an earthly harvest for which quite
earthly qualifications are required. I say not always dishon-
orable qualifications, but a certain flexibility of disposition ;
a certain courtly willingness to sink obnoxious truths, and
adapt ourselves to the prejudices of the minds of others ; a
certain adroitness at catching the tone of those with whom
The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest. 1 63
we are. Without some of these things no man can be popu
lar in any profession.
But you havenresolved to be a liver a doer a champion
of the truth. Your ambition is to be pure in the last re-
cesses of the mind. You have your reward : a soul upright
and manly a fearless bearing, that dreads to look no man in
the face-^-a willingness to let men search you through and
through, and defy them to see any difference between what
you seem and what you are. Now, your price : your price is
dislike. The price of being true is the Cross. The warrior
of the truth must not expect success. What have you to do
with popularity ? Sow for it, and you will have it. But if
you wish for it, or wish for peace, you have mistaken your
calling ; you must not be a teacher of the truth ; you must
not cut prejudice against the grain : you must leave medical,
legal, theological truth, to harder and nobler men, who are
willing to take the martyr's cross, and win the martyr's
crown.
This is the "mistake men make. They expect both har-
vests, paying only one price. They would be blessed with
goodness and prosperity at once. They would have that on
which they bestowed no labor. They take sinful pleasure,
and think it very hard that they must pay for it in agony,
and worse than agony, souls deteriorated. They would
monopolize heaven in their souls, and the world's prizes at
the same time. This is to expect to come back, like Joseph's
brethren from the land of plenty, with the corn in their sacks,
and the money returned, too, in their sacks' mouths. No, no ;
it will not clo. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked."
Reap what you have sown. If you sow the wind, do not
complain if your harvest is the whirlwind. If you sow to the
Spirit, be content with a spiritual reward : invisible within :
" more life and higher life."
II. Next, the two branches of the application of this
principle.
First : He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap
corruption. There are two kinds of life : one of the flesh,
another of the spirit. Amidst the animal and selfish desires
of our nature there is a voice which clearly speaks of duty,
right, perfection. This is the Spirit of Deity in man ; it is
the life of God in the soul. This is the evidence of our
divine parentage.
But there is a double temptation to live the other life
instead of this. First, the desires of our animal nature are
keener than those of our spiritual. The cry of Passion is
1 64 The Principk of the Spiritual Harvest.
louder than the calm voice of Duty. Next, the reward in
the case of our sensitive nature is given sooner. It takes
less time to amass a fortune than to become heavenly-
minded. It costs less to indulge an appetite than it does
to gain the peace of lulled passion. And hence, when men
feel that for the spiritual blessing, the bread must be cast
upon the waters which shall not be found until after many
days (skepticism whispers " never !"), it is quite intelligible
why they choose the visible and palpable, instead of the
invisible advantage, and plan for an immediate harvest
rather than a distant one.
The other life is that of the flesh. The " flesh " includes
all the desires of our unrenewed nature the harmless aa
well as sinful. Any labor, therefore, which is bounded by
present well-being is sowing to the flesh whether it be the
gratification of an immediate impulse, or the loner-contrived
plan reaching forward over many years. Sowing to the
flesh includes, therefore,
1. Those who live in open riot. He sows to the flesh
who pampers its unruly animal appetites. Do not think
that I speak contemptuously of our animal nature, as if it
were not human and sacred. The lowest feelings of our
nature become sublime by being made the instruments of
our nobler emotions. Love, self-command, will elevate them
all ; and to ennoble and purify, not to crush them, is the
long, slow work of Christian life. Christ, says St. Paul, is
the Saviour of the body* But if, instead of subduing these
to the life of the Spirit, a man gives to them the rein and
even the spur, the result is not difficult to foresee. There
are men who do this. They " make provision for the flesh,
to fulfill the lusts thereof." They whet the appetites by
indulgence. They whip the jaded senses to their work.
Whatever the constitutional bias may be, anger, intemper-
ance, epicurism, indolence, desires, there are societies, con-
versations, scenes, which supply fuel for the flame, as well
as opposite ones which cut off the nutriment. To indulge
in these, knowing the result, is to foster the desire which
brings forth the sin which ends in death. This is "sowing
to the flesh."
If there be one to whom these words which I have used,
veiled in the proprieties due to delicate reserve, are not
without meaning, from this sentence of God's word let him
learn his doom. He is looking forward to a harvest wherein
he may reap the fruit of his present anticipations. And he
shall reap it. He shall have his indulgence, he shall enjoy
his guilty rapture, he shall have his unhallowed triumph,-
The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest. 1 65
and the boon companions of his pleasures shall award him
the meed of their applause. He has sown the seed, and i
fair requital he shall have his harvest. It is all fair. He
shall enjoy. But tarry a while : the law hath yet another
hold upon him. This deep law of the whole universe goes
farther. He has sown to the flesh, and of the flesh he has
reaped pleasure; he has sown to the flesh, and of the flesh
he shall reap corruption. That is, in his case, the ruin of
the soul. It is an awful thing to see a soul in ruins : like a
temple which once was fair and noble, but now lies over-
thrown, matted with ivy, weeds, and tangled briers, among
which things noisome crawl and live. He shall reap the
harvest of disappointment the harvest of bitter, useless
remorse. The crime of sense is avenged by sense, which
wears by time. He shall have the worm that gnaws, and
the fire that is not quenched. He shall reap the fruit of
long-indulged desires, which have become tyrannous at last,
and constitute him his own tormentor. His harvest is a
soul in flames, and the tongue that no drop can cool. Pas-
sions that burn, and appetites that crave, when the power
of enjoyment is gone. He has sowed to the flesh. " God is
not mocked." The man reaps.
2. There is a less gross way of sowing to the flesh. There
are" men of sagacity and judgment in the affairs of this life
whose penetration is almost intuitive in all things where the
step in question involves success or failure here. They are
those who are called in the parable the children of this
world, wise in their generation. They moralize and specu-
late about eternity, but do not plan for it. There is no seed
sown for an invisible harvest. If they think they have
sown for such a harvest, they might test themselves by the
question, What would they lose if there were to be no eter-
nity ? - For the children of God, so far as earth is concerned,
" If in this life only they have hope in Christ, then are they
of all men most miserable." But they these sagacious,
prudent men of this world they have their reward. What
have they ventured, given up, sacrificed, which is all lost
forever, if this world be all ? What have they buried like
seed in the ground, lost forever, if there be no eternity?
Now we do not say these men are absolutely wicked.
We distinguish between their sowing to the flesh, and the
sowing of those profligates last spoken of. All we say is,
there is " corruption " written on their harvest. It was for
earth, and with earth it perishes. It may be the labor of
the statesman, planning, like the Roman of old, the govern-
ment and order of the kingdoms of the earth ; or that of the
1 66 Tke Principle of the Spiritual Harvest.
astronomer, weighing suns, prescribing rules of return to
comets, and dealing with things above earth in space, but
unspiritual still ; or that of the son of a humbler laborious-
ness, whose wprk is merely to provide for a family: or,
lastly, the narrower range of the man of pleasure, whose
chief care is where he shall spend the next season, in what
metropolis, or which watering-place, or how best enjoy the
next entertainment.
All these are objects more or less harmless. But they
end. The pyramid crumbles into dust at last. The mighty
empire of the eternal city breaks into fragments which dis-
appear. The sowers for earth have their harvest here : Suc-
cess in their schemes quiet intellectual enjoyment exemp-
tion from pain arid loss the fruits of worldly-wise sagacity.
And that is all. " When the breath goeth forth, they return
to their dust, and all their thoughts perish." The grave is
not to them the gate of paradise, but simply the impressive
mockery which the hand of death writes upon that body for
which they lived, and with which all is gone. They reap
corruption, for all they have toiled for decays !
Ye that lead the life of respectable worldliness, let these
considerations arrest your indifference to the Gospel. You
have sown for earth. Well. And then what? Hear the
Gospel, which tells of a Saviour whose sacrifice is the world's
life w r hose death is the law of life; from whose resurrection
streams a Spirit which can change carnal into spiritual men
whose whole existence, reflecting God, was the utterance of
the Divine truth and rule of heavenly life, the blessedness of
giving. To live so, and to believe so, is to sow to the Spirit.
Lastly, sowing to the Spirit. " He that soweth to the
Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."
What is meant by sowing to the Spirit here is plain. " Let
us not be weary in well-doing," says the apostle directly after:
" for in due season we sfiall reap if we faint not." Well-do-
ing : not faith, but works of goodness, were the sowing that
he spoke of.
There is proclaimed here the rewardableness of works. So
in many other passages : " Abounding in the work of the Lord,
forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the
Lord." " Laying up a good foundation for the time to come,'
was the reason alleged for charging rich men to be willing to
give ; and so all through. There is an irreversible principle.
The amount of harvest is proportioned to the seed sown ex-
actly. There are degrees of glory. The man who gives out
of his abundance has one blessing. She who gives the mite,
all she had. even all her living, has another, quite different
Tfe Principle of the Spiritual Harvest. 167
The rectitude of this principle, and what it is, will be plainer
from the following considerations :
1. The harvest is life eternal. But eternal life here does
not simply mean a life that lasts forever. That is the destiny
of the soul all souls, bad as well as good. But the bad do
not enter into this "eternal life." It is not simply the dura-
tion, but the quality of the life which constitutes its charac-
ter of eternal. A spirit may live forever, yet not enter into
this. And a man may live but for five minutes the life of
Divine benevolence, or desire for perfectness : in those five
minutes he has entered into the life which is eternal never
fluctuates, but is the same unalterably, forever in the life of
God. This is the reward.
2. The reward is not arbitrary, but natural. God's re-
wards and God's punishments are all natural. Distinguish
between arbitrary and natural. Death is an arbitrary pun-
ishment for forgery : it might be changed for transportation.
It is not naturally connected. It depends upon the will of
the law-maker. But trembling nerves are the direct and nat-
ural results of intemperance. They are, in the order of na-
ture, the results of wrong-doiri*g. The man reaps what he has
sown. Similarly in rewards. If God gave riches in return
for humbleness, that would be an arbitrary connection. He
did give such a reward to Solomon. But when He gives life
eternal, meaning by life eternal not duration of existence but
heavenly quality of existence, as explained already, it is all
natural. The seed sown in the ground contains in itself the
future harvest. The harvest is but the development of the
germ of life in the seed. A holy act strengthens the inward
holiness. It is a seed of life growing into more life. " What-
soever a man soweth, that shall he reap." He that sows
much, thereby becomes more conformed to God than he w^as
before in heart and spirit. That is his reward and harvest.
And just as among the apostles there was one whose spirit,
attuned to love, made him emphatically the disciple whom
Jesus loved, so shall there be some who, by previous disci-
pline of the Holy Ghost, shall have more of His mind, anfl
understand more of His love, and drink deeper of His joy
than others they that have sowed bountifully.
Every act done in Christ receives its exact and appropriate
reward. They that are meek shall inherit the earth. They
that are pure shall see God. They that suffer shall reign
with Him. They that turn many to righteousness shall shine
as the stars forever. They that receive a righteous man in
the name of a righteous man that is, because he is a right-
eous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. Even the
1 68 The Loneliness of Christ.
cup of cold water, given in the name of Christ, shall not lose
its icward.
It will be therefore seen at once, reward is not the result
of merit. It is, in the order of grace, the natural consequence
of well-doing. It is life becoming more life. It is the soul
developing itself. It is the Holy Spirit of God in man making
itself more felt, and mingling more and more with his soul,
felt more consciously with an ever-increasing heaven. You
reap what you sow not something else, but that. An act
of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness
deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing
sown, multiplied a hundred-fold. You have sown a seed of
life, you reap life everlasting.
XV.
THE LONELINESS OF CHRIST.
"Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh,
yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall
leave me alone : and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me."
John xvi. 31, 32.
THERE are two kinds of solitude : the first consisting of
insulation in space, the other of isolation of the spirit. The
first is simply separation by distance. When we are seen,
touched, heard by none, we are said to be alone. And all
hearts respond to the truth of that saying, This is not soli-
tude ; for sympathy can people our solitude with a crowd.
The fisherman on the ocean alone at night is not alone when
he remembers the earnest longings which are arising up to
heaven at home for his safety ; the traveller is not alone when
the faces which will greet him on his arrival seem to beam
upon him as he trudges on ; the solitary student is not alone
when he feels that human hearts will respond to the truths
which he is preparing to address to them.
The other is loneliness of soul. There are times when
hands touch ours, but only send an icy chill of unsympa
thizing indifference to the heart : when eyes gaze into ours,
but with a glazed look which can not read into the bottom
of our souls when words pass from our lips, but only come
back as an echo reverberated without replying through a
dreary solitude when the multitude throng and press us, and
we can not say, as Christ said, " Somebody hath touched me :"
The Loneliness of Christ. 169
for the contact has been not between soul and soul, but only
between form and form.
And there are two kinds of men who feel this last solitude
in different ways. The first are the men of self-reliance :
self-dependent who ask no counsel, and crave no sympathy
who act and resolve alone who can go sternly through
duty, and scarcely shrink, let what will be crushed in them.'
Such men command respect ; for whoever respects himself
constrains the reverence of others. They are invaluable in
all those professions of life in which sensitive feeling would
be a superfluity ; they make iron commanders ; surgeons
who do not shrink ; and statesmen who do not flinch from
their purpose for the dread of unpopularity. But mere self-
dependence is weakness, and the conflict is terrible when a
human sense of weakness is felt by such men.
Jacob was alone when he slept in his way to Padan-aram,
the first night that he was away from his father's roof, with
the world before him, and all the old associations broken up,
and Elijah was alone in the wilderness when the court had
deserted him, and he sajd, " They have digged down Thine
altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword: and I, even
I, only am left, and they seek my life to take it away."
But the loneliness of the tender Jacob was very different
from that of the stern Elijah. To Jacob the sympathy he
yearned for w r as realized in the form of a simple dream. A
ladder raised from earth to heaven figured the possibility of
communion between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God.
In Elijah's case, the storm, and the earthquake, and the fire
did their convulsing work in the soul, before a still, small
voice told him that he was not alone. In such a spirit the
sense of weakness comes with a burst of agony, and the
dreadful conviction of being alone manifests itself with a
rending of the heart of rock. It is only so that such souls
can be taught that the Father is with them, and that they
are not alone.
There is another class of men who live in sympathy.
These are affectionate minds which tremble at the thought
of being alone : not from want of courage, nor from weak-
ness of intellect conies their dependence upon others, but
from the intensity of their affections. It is the trembling
spirit of humanity in them. They want not aid, nor even
countenance, but only sympathy. And the trial comes to
them not in the shape of fierce struggle, but of chill and ut-
ter loneliness, when they are called upon to perform a duty
on which the world looks coldly, or to embrace a truth whicn
has not found lodgment yet in the breasts of others.
1 70 The Loneliness of Christ.
It is to this latter and not to the former class that we
must look if we would understand the spirit in which the
words of the text were pronounced. The deep humanity of
the soul of Christ was gifted with those finer sensibilities of
affectionate nature which stand in need of sympathy. He
not only gave sympathy, but wanted it too, from others.
He who selected the gentle John to be his friend who found
solace in female sympathy, attended by the women who
ministered to him out of their substance who in the triai-
iiour could not bear even to pray without the human pres-
ence which is the pledge and reminder of God's presence
had nothing in Him of the hard, merely self-dependent
character. Even this verse testifies to the same fact, A
stem spirit never could have said, " I am not alone ; the Fa-
ther is with Me ;" never would have felt the loneliness which
needed the balancing truth. These words tell of a struggle
an inward reasoning a difficulty and a reply a sense of
solitude " I shall be alone ;" and an immediate correction
of that, "not alone the Father is with Me."
There is no thought connected witb the life of Christ more
touching, none that seems so peculiarly to characterize His
spirit, than the solitariness in which He lived. Those who
understood Him best only half understood Him. Those
who knew Him best scarcely could be said to know Him,
On this occasion the disciples thought Now we do under-
stand now we believe. The lonely spirit answered, " Do
ye now believe ? Behold, the hour cometh that ye shall be
scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone."
Very impressive is that trait in His history. He was in
this world alone.
I. First, then, we meditate on the loneliness of Christ.
II. On the temper of His solitude,
1. The loneliness of Christ was caused by the Divine ele
vation of His character. His infinite superiority severed
Him from sympathy; His exquisite affectionateness made
that want of sympathy a keen trial.
There is a second-rate greatness which the world can com-
prehend. If we take two who are brought into direct con-
trast by Christ Himself, the one the type of human, the oth-
er that of Divine excellence, the Son of Man and John the
Baptist, this becomes clearly manifest. John's life had a
certain rude, rugged goodness, on which was written, in
characters which required no magnifying-glass to read, spir-
itual excellence. The world, on the whole, accepted him.
Pharisees and Sadducees went to his baptism. The people
The Loneliness of Christ. \ 7 1
idolized him as a prophet ; and if he had not chanced to
cross the path of a weak prince and a revengeful woman, we
can see no reason why John might not have finished his
course with joy, recognized as irreproachable. If we in-
quire why it was that the world accepted John and rejected
Christ, one reply appears to be that the life of the one was
finitely simple and one-sided, that of the other divinely com-
plex.
In physical nature, the naturalist finds no difficulty in com-
prehending the simple structure of the lowest organizations
of animal life, where one uniform texture and one organ per-
forming the office of brain and heart and lungs, at once leave
little to perplex. But when he comes to study the complex
anatomy of man, he has the labor of a lifetime before him.
It is not difficult to master the constitution of a single coun-
try ; but when you try to understand the universe, you find
infinite appearances of contradiction : law opposed by law
motion balanced by motion happiness blended with misery :
and the power to elicit a divine order and unity out of this
complex variety is given to only a few of the gifted of the
race. That which the structure of man is to the structure
of the limpet that which the universe is to a single coun-
try the complex and boundless soul of Christ was to the
souls of other men.
Therefore, to the superficial observer, His life was a mass
of inconsistencies and contradictions. All thought them-
selves qualified to point out the discrepancies. The Phari-
sees could not comprehend how a holy teacher could eat with
publicans and sinners. His own brethren could not recon-
cile His assumption of a public office with the privacy which
He aimed at keeping. " If thou doest these things, show
thyself to the world." Some thought He was " a good
man," others said, " Nay, but He deceiveth the people."
And hence it was that lie lived to see all that acceptance
which had marked the earlier stage of His career, as for in-
stance at Capernaum, melt away. First the Pharisees took
the alarm ; then the Sadducees ; then the political party of
the Herodians ; then the people. That was the most terrible
of all : for the enmity of the upper classes is impotent ; but
when that cry of brute force is stirred from the deeps of so-
ciety, as deaf to the voice of reason as the ocean in its
strength churned into raving foam by the winds, the heart
of mere earthly oak quails before that. The apostles, at all
events, did quail. One denied, another betrayed, all desert-
ed. They " were scattered, each to his own :" and the Truth
Himself was left alone in Pilate's judgment-hall.
172 The Loneliness of Christ.
Now learn from this a very important distinction. To
feel solitary is no uncommon thing. To complain of being
alone, without sympathy and misunderstood, is general
enough. In every place, in many a family, these victims of
diseased sensibility are to be found, and they might find a
weakening satisfaction in observing a parallel between their
own feelings and those of Jesus. But before that parallel is
assumed, be very surQ that it is, as in His case, the elevation
of your character which severs you from your species. The
world has small sympathy for Divine goodness; but it also
has little for a great many other qualities which are disagree-
able to it. You meet with no response you are passed by
find yourself unpopular meet with little communion.
Well ; is that because you are above the world, nobler, de-
vising and executing grand plans which they can not com-
prehend vindicating the wronged, proclaiming and living
on great principles offending it by the saintliness of your
purity, and the unworldliness of your aspirations ? Then
yours is the loneliness of Christ. Or is it that you are
wrapped up in self cold, disobliging, sentimental, indifferent
about the welfare of others, and very much astonished that
they are not deeply interested in you ? You must not use
these words of Christ. They have nothing to do with you.
Let us look at one or two of the occasions on which this
loneliness was felt.
The first time was when He was but twelve years old,
when His parents found Him in the temple, hearing the
doctors and asking them questions. High thoughts were in
the child's soul : expanding views of life ; larger views of
duty and His own destiny.
There is a moment in every true life to some it comes
very early when the old routine of duty is not large enough
when the parental roof seems too low, because the Infinite
above is arching over the soul when the old formulas in
creeds, catechisms, and articles seem to be narrow, and they
must either be thrown aside, or else transformed into living
and breathing realities when the earthly father's authority
is being superseded by the claims of a Father in heaven.
That is a lonely, lonely moment, when the young soul first
feels God ; when this earth is recognized as an " awful place,
yea, the very gate of heaven ;" when the dream-ladder is
seen planted against the skies, and we wake, and the dream
haunts us as a sublime reality.
You may detect the approach of that moment in the
young man or the young woman by the awakened spirit of
inquiry : by a certain restlessness of look, and an eager ear*
The Loneliness of Christ. 173
nestness of tone by the devouring study of all kinds of books
by the waning of your own influence, while the inquirer
is asking the truth of the doctors and teachers in the vast
temple of the world by a certain opinionativeness, which is
austere and disagreeable enough ; but the austerest moment
of the fruit's taste is that in which it is passing from green-
ness into ripeness. If you wait in patience, the sour will
become sweet. Rightly looked at, that opinionativeness is
more truly anguish : the fearful solitude of feeling the inse-
curity of all that is human ; the discovery that life is real,
and many forms of social and religious existence hollow.
The old moorings are torn away, and the soul is drifting,
drifting, drifting, very often without compass, except the
guidance of an unseen hand, into the vast infinite of God.
Then come the lonely words, and no wonder, " How is it
that ye sought me ? Wist ye not that I must be about my
Father's business ?"
2. That solitude was felt by Christ in trial. In the des-
ert, in Pilate's judgment-hall, in the garden, He was alone
and alone * must every son of man meet his trial-hour. The
individuality of the soul necessitates that. Each man is a
new soul in this world ; untried, with a boundless possible
before him. No one can predict what he may become, pre-
scribe his duties, or mark out his obligations. Each man's
own nature has its own peculiar rules ; and he must take up
his life-plan alone, and persevere in it in a perfect privacy
with which no stranger int^rmeddleth. Each man's tempta-
tions are made up of a host of peculiarities, internal and ex-
ternal, which no other mind can measure. You are tried
alone alone you pass into the desert alone you must bear
and conquer in the agony alone you must be sifted by the
world. There are moments known only to a man's own self,
when he sits by the poisoned springs of existence " yearning
for a morrow which shall free him from the strife." And
there are trials more terrible than that. Not when vicious
inclinations are opposed to holy, but when virtue conflicts
with virtue, is the real rending of the soul in twain. A
temptation in which the lower nature struggles for mastery
can be met by the whole united force of the spirit. But it
is when obedience to a heavenly Father can be only paid by
disobedience to an earthly one ; or fidelity to duty can be
only kept by infidelity to some entangling engagement ; or
the straight path must be taken over the misery of others ;
or the counsel of the affectionate friend must be met with a
" Get thee behind me, Satan," oh, i is then, when human ad-
vice is unavailable, that the soul feels what it is to be alone.
1 74 The Loneliness of Christ.
Once more the Redeemer's soul was alone in dying
The hour had come they were all gone, and He was, as He
predicted, left alone. All that is human drops from us in
that hour. Human faces flit and fade, and the sounds of
the world become confused. " I shall die alone " yes, and
alone you live. The philosopher tells us that no atom in
creation touches another atom they only approach within a
certain distance ; then the attraction ceases, and an invisible
something repels they only seem to touch. No soul touches
another soul except at one or two points ; and those chiefly
external a fearful and a lonely thought, but one of the
truest of life. Death only realizes that which has been the fact
all along. In the central deeps of our being w r e are alone.
II. The spirit or temper of that solitude.
1. Observe its grandeur. I am alone, yet not alone.
There is a feeble and sentimental way in which we speak of
the Man of Sorrows. We turn to the cross, and the agony,
and the loneliness, to touch the softer feelings, to arouse
compassion. You degrade that loneliness by your compas-
sion. Compassion ! compassion for Him ! Adore if you
will respect and reverence that sublime solitariness with
which none but the Father was but no pity ; let it draw
out the firmer and manlier graces of the soul. Even tender
sympathy seems out of place.
For even in human things, the strength that is in a man
can be only learnt when he is thrown upon his own resources
and left alone. What a man can do in conjunction with oth-
ers does not test the man. Tell us w r hat he can do alone.
It is one thing to defend the truth when you know that your
audience are already prepossessed, and that every argument
will meet a willing response ; and it is another thing to hold
the truth when truth must be supported, if at all, alone met
by cold looks and unsympathizing suspicion. It is one thing
to rush on to danger with the shouts and the sympathy of
numbers ; it is another thing when the lonely chieftain of
the sinking ship sees the last boatful disengage itself, and
folds his arms to go down into the majesty of darkness,
crushed, but not subdued.
Such and greater far was the strength and majesty of the
Saviour's solitariness. It was not the trial of the lonely her-
mit. There is a certain gentle and pleasing melancholy in
the life which is lived alone. But there are the forms of na-
ture to speak to him, and he has not the positive opposition
of mankind if he has the absence of actual sympathy. It is
a solemn thing, doubtless, to be apart from men, and to feel
The Loneliness of Christ. 1 75
eternity rushing by like an arrowy river. But the solitude
of Christ was the solitude of a crowd. In that single human
bosom dwelt the thought which was to be the germ of the
world's life : a thought unshared, misunderstood, or rejected.
Can you not feel the grandeur of those words, when the Man
reposing on His solitary strength, felt the last shadow of per-
fect isolation pass across His soul : " My God, my God, why
hast Thou forsaken me ?"
Next, learn from these words self-reliance, " Ye shall
leave me alone." Alone, then, the Son of man was content
to be. He threw Himself on His own solitary thought ; did
not go down to meet the world, but waited, though it might
be for ages, till the world should come round to Him. He
appealed to the future ; did not aim at seeming consistent ;
left His contradictions unexplained ; " I came from the Fa-
ther, I leave the world, and go to the Father." " Now,"
said they, " thou speakest no proverb " that is, enigma.
But many a hard and enigmatical saying before He had
spoken, and He left them all. A thread runs through all
true acts, stringing them together into one harmonious
chain ; but it is not for the Son of God to be anxious to
prove their consistency with each other.
This is self-reliance to repose calmly on the thought
which is deepest in our bosoms, and be unmoved if the
world will not accept it yet. To live on your own convic-
tions against the world is to overcome the world ; to believe
that what is truest in you is true for all ; to abide by that,
and not be over-anxious to be heard or understood, or sym-
pathized with, certain that at last all must acknowledge the
same, and that while you stand firm, the world will come
round to you, that is independence. It is not difficult to get
away into retirement, and there live upon your own convic-
tions ; nor is it difficult to mix with men, and follow their
convictions ; but to enter into the world, and there live out
firmly and fearlessly according to your own conscience, that
is Christian greatness.
There is a cowardice in this age which is not Christian.
We shrink from the consequences of truth. We look round
and cling dependently. We ask what men will think what
others will say whether they will not stare in astonishment.
Perhaps they will ; but he who is calculating that, will ac-
complish nothing in this life. The Father the Father who
is with us and in us what does He think ? God's work can
not be done without a spirit of independence. A man is got
pome way in the Christian life when he has learned to say
liumbly and yet majestically, " I dare to be alone."
176 The Loneliness of Christ.
Lastly, remark the humility of this loneliness. Had the
Son of man simply said, I can be alone, He would have said
no more than any proud, self-relying man can say. But
when he added, " because the Father is with me," that inde-
pendence assumed another character, and self-reliance be-
came only another form of reliance upon God. Distinguish
between genuine and spurious humility. There is a false
humility which says, " It is my own poor thought, and I
,must not trust it. I must distrust my own reason and judg-
ment, because they are my own. I must not accept the dic-
tates of my own conscience, for it is not my own, and is not
trust in self the great fault of our fallen nature ?"
Very well. Now remember something else. There is a
Spirit which beareth witness with our spirits ; there is a God
who " is not far from any one of us ;" there is a " Light
which lighteth every man which cometh into the world." Do
not be unnaturally humble. The thought of your mind, per-
chance, is the thought of God. To refuse to follow that may
be to disown God. To take the judgment and conscience of
other men to live by, where is the humility of that ? From
whence did their conscience and judgment come? Was the
fountain from which they drew exhausted for you ? If they
refuse like you to rely on their own conscience, and you rely
upon it, how are you sure that it is more the mind of God
than your own which you have refused to hear ?
Look at it in another way. The charm of the words of
great men those grand sayings which are recognized as true
as soon as heard is this, that you recognize them as wisdom
which has passed across your own mind. You feel that they
are your own thoughts come back to you, else you would
not at once admit them : " All that floated across me before,
only I could not say it, and did not feel confident enough to
assert it, or had not conviction enough to put it into words."
Yes, God spoke to you what He did to them : only they be-
lieved it, said it, trusted the Word within them, and you did
not. Be sure that often when you say, " It is only my own
poor thought, and I am alone," the real correcting thought is
this, " Alone, but the Father is with me ;" therefore I can
live that lonely conviction.
There is no danger in this, whatever timid minds may
think no danger of mistake, if the character be a true one.
For we are not left in uncertainty in this matter. It is given
us to know our base from our noble hours to distinguish
between the voice which is from above, and that which
speaks from below, out of the abyss of our animal and selfish
nature. Samuel could distinguish between the impulse,
The New Commandment, Etc. 177
quite a human one, which would have made him select Eliab
out of Jesse's sons, and the deeper judgment by which "the
Lord said, Look not on his countenance, nor on the height
of his stature, for I have refused him." Doubtless deep
truth of character is required for this ; for the whispering
voices get mixed together, and we dare not abide by our
own thoughts, because we think them our own, and not
God's ; and this because we only now and then endeavor to
know in earnest. It is only given to the habitually true to
know the difference. He knew it, because all His blessed
life long He could say, "My judgment is just, because I seek
not my own will, but the will of Him which sent me."
The practical result and inference of all this is a very sim-
ple, but a very deep one the deepest of existence. Let life
be a life of faith. Do not go timorously about, inquiring
what others think, what others believe, and what others say.
It seems the easiest, it is the most difficult thing in life, to do
this believe in God. God is near you. Throw yourself
fearlessly upon Him. Trembling mortal, there is an unknown
might within your soul which will wake when you command
it. The day may come when all that is human, man and
woman, will fall off from yon, as they did from Him. Let
His strength be yours. Be independent of them all now.
The Father is with you. Look to Him, and He will save you.
XVI.
THE NEW COMMANDMENT OF LOVE TO ONE
ANOTHER.
"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I
have loved you, that ye also love one another." John xiii. 34.
THESE words derive impressiveness from having been spok-
en immediately before the last Supper, and on the eve of
the great Sacrifice : the commandment of love issued appro-
priately at the time of the Feast of Love, and not long before
the great Act of Love. For the love of Christ was no fine
sat/ing: it cost Him His life to say these words with mean-
ing, " As I have loved you."
There is a difficulty in the attempt to grasp the meaning
of this command, arising from the fact that words change
their meaning. Our Lord affixed a new significance to the
word love : it had been in use, of course, before, but the new
sense in which He used it made it a new word.
8*
178 The New Commandment of
His law is not adequately represented by the word love c .
because love is, by conventional usage, appropriated to one
species of human affection, which, in the commoner men, is
the most selfish of all our feelings ; and in the best is too ex-
clusive and individual to represent that charity which is uni-
versal.
Nor is charity a perfect symbol of His meaning ; for chari-
ty, by use, is identified with another form of love which is but
a portion of it, almsgiving ; and too saturated with that
meaning to be entirely disengaged from it, even when we
use it most accurately.
Benevolence or philanthropy, in derivation, come nearer to
the idea ; but yet you feel at once that these words fall
short ; they are too tame and cold ; too merely passive, as
states of feeling rather than forms of life.
We have' no sufficient word. There is therefore no help
for it, but patiently to strive to master the meaning of this
mighty word love, in the only light that is left us the light
of the Saviour's life : "As I have loved you :" that alone ex-
pounds it. We will dispossess our minds of all preconceived
notions ; remove all low associations, all partial and conven-
tional ones. If we would understand this law, it must be
ever a "new" commandment, ever receiving fresh light and
meaning from His life.
Take, I. The novelty of the law " That ye love one an-
other."*
IL The spirit or measure of it "As I have loved you."
I. Its novelty. A "new commandment," yet that law
was old. See 1 John ii. 7, 8. It was new as an historical fact.
We talk of the apostolic mission as a matter of course ; we
say that the apostles were ordered to go and plant churches,
and so we dismiss the great fact. But we forget that the
command was rather the result of a spirit working from with-
in, than of an injunction working from without. That spirit
was love.
And when that new spirit was in the world, see how
straightway it created a new thing. Men before that had
travelled into foreign countries : the naturalist to collect
specimens; the historian to accumulate facts; the philoso-
pher to hive up wisdom, or else he had staid in his cell or
grove to paint beautiful pictures of love. But the spectacle
of an Apostle Paul crossing oceans not to conquer kingdoms
not to hive up knowledge, but to impart life not to accu-
mulate stores for self, but to give, and to spend himself-
was new in the history of the world. The celestial fire had
Love to one Another. 1 79
the hearts of men, and their hearts flamed ; and it
caught, and spread, and would not stop. On they went, that
glorious band of brothers, in their strange enterprise, over
oceans, and through forests, penetrating into the dungeon,
and to the throne to the hut of the savage feeding on hu-
man flesh, and to the shore lined with the skin-clad inhabit-
ants of these far isles of Britain. Read the account given
by Tertullian of the marvellous rapidity with which the
Christians increased, and you are reminded of one of those
vast armies of ants which moves across a country in irresisti-
ble myriads, drowned by thousands in rivers, cut off by fire,
consumed by man and beast, and yev fresh hordes succeeding
interminably to supply their place.
A new voice was heard : a new yearning upon earth ; mau
pining at being severed from his brother, and longing to
burst the false distinctions which had kept the best hearts
from each other so long an infant cry of life the cry of the
young Church of God. And all this from Judea the nar-
rowest, most bigoted, most intolerant nation on the face of
the earth.
Now I say that this was historically a new r thing.
2. It was new in extent. It was, in literal words, an old
commandment given before both to Jew and Gentile. To
the Jew, as, for instance, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself: I am the Lord." To the Gentile, in the recognition
which was so often made of the beauty of the law in its par-
tial application, as in the case of friendship, patriotism, domes-
tic attachment, and so on.
But the difference lay in the extent in which these words
"one another" were understood. By them, or rather by
" neighbor," the Jew meant his countrymen ; and narrowed
that down again to his friends among his countrymen so
that the well-known Rabbinical gloss upon these words, cur-
rent in the days of Christ, was, " Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bor and hate thine enemy." And what the Gentile under-
stood by the extent of the law of love, we may learn from
the well-known words of their best and wisest, who thanked
heaven that he was born a man, and not a brute a Greek,
and not a barbarian : as if to be a barbarian were identical
with being a brute.
Now listen to Christ's exposition of the word neighbor.
" Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your
enemies." And he went farther : as a specimen of a neigh-
bor, he specially selected one of that nation whom, as a theo-
logian and a patriot, every Jew had. been taught to hata
1 80 The New Commandment of
And just as the application of electricity to the innumerable
wants of human life and to new ends is reckoned a new dis-
covery and invention of modern times (though the fact has
been familiar for ages to the Indian child in the forest of
the Far West, and applied by him for ages to his childish
sports), so the extension of this grand principle of Love to
all the possible cases of life, and to all possible persons
even though the principle was known and applied long be
fore, in love to friends, country, and relations is truly and
properly " a new commandment," a discovery, a gospel, a
revelation.
3. It was new in being made the central principle of a
system. Never had obedience before been trusted to a prin-
ciple : it had always been hedged round by a law. The
religion of Christ is not a law 7 , but a spirit ; not a creed, but
a life. To the one motive of love, God has intrusted the
whole work of winning the souls of His redeemed. The heart
of man was made for love pants and pines for it : only in the
love of Christ, and not in restrictions, can his soul expand.
Now it was reserved for One to pierce, w T ith the glance of in-
tuition, down into the springs of human action, and to pro*
claim the simplicity of its machinery. " Love," said the
apostle after Him, "Love is the fulfilling of the law."
We are told that in the new commandment the old per-
ishes : that under the law of love, man is free from the law
of works. ^Let us see how.
Take any commandment for example, the sixth, the sev-
enth, the eighth. I may abstain from murder and theft, de-
terred by law ; because law has annexed to them certain
penalties. But I may also rise into the spirit of charity
then I am free from the law ; the law was not made for a
righteous man : the law no more binds or restrains me, now
that I love my neighbor, than the dike built to keep in the
sea at high tide restrains it when that sea has sunk to low-
water mark.
Or the seventh. You may keep that law from dread of
discovery, or you may learn a higher love : and then you can
not injure a human soul ; you can not degrade a human
spirit. Charity has made the old commandment superfluous.
In the strong language of St. John, you can not sin, because
you are born of God.
It was the proclamation of this, the great living principle
of human obedience, not with the pedantry of a philosopher,
nor the exaggeration of an orator, but in the simple reality
of life, which made this commandment of Christ a new com-
mand men t.
Love to one Another. 1 8 1
II. The spirit or measure of the law "as I have loved
you."
Broadly, the lova of Christ was -the spirit of giving all He
had to give. " Greater love hath no man than this, that a
man lay down his life for his friend." Christ's love was not
a sentiment ; it was a self-giving. To that His adversaries
bore testimony: "He saved others; himself He can not
save." Often as \Ve have read these words, did it ever strike
us, and if not, does it not bring a flash of surprise when we
perceive it, that these words, meant as taunt, were really the
noblest panegyric, a testimony higher and more adequate far
than even that of the centurion ? " He saved others ; him-
self He can not save." The first clause contained the answer
to the second " Himself He can not save !" How could He,
having saved others ? How can any keep what he gives ?
How can any live for self, when He is living for others ?
Unconsciously, those enemies were enunciating the very
principle of Christianity, the grand law of all existence, that
only by losing ,self you can save others; that only by giving
life you can bless. Love gives itself! The mother spends
herself in giving life to her child ; the soldier dies for his
country; nay, even the artist produces nothing destined for
immortality, nothing that will live, except so far as he has
forgotten himself, and merged his very being in his work.
" He saved, others ; himself He can not save." That was
the love of Christ. Now to descend to particulars.
That spirit of self-giving manifests itself in the shape of
considerate kindliness. Take three cases: First, that in
which he fed the people with bread. " I have compassion
on the multitude, because they continue with me now three
days, and have nothing to eat." There was a tenderness
which, not absorbed in his own great designs, considered a
number of small particulars of their state, imagined, provided,
and this for the satisfaction of the lowest wants. Again, to
the disciples : " Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place,
and rest awhile." He would not overwork them in the sub-
limest service. He did not grudge from duty their interval
of relaxation ; He even tenderly enforced it. Lastly, His
dying words : " Behold thy mother ! Woman, behold thy
son !" Short sentences. He was too exhausted to say
more. But in that hour of death-torture, He could think of
her desolate state when he was gone, and with delicate,
thoughtful attention provide for her well-being.
There are people who would do great acts ; but because
they wait for great opportunities, life passes, and the acts of
love are not done at all. Observe, this considerateness of
1 8 2 The New Commandment of
Christ was shown in little things. And such are the parts
of human life. Opportunities for doing greatly seldom occur ;
life is made up of infinitesimals. If you compute the sum of
happiness in any given day, you will find that it was com-
posed of small attentions, kind looks, which made the heart
swell, and stirred into health that sour, rancid film of misan-
thropy w r hich is apt to coagulate on the stream of our inward
life, as surely as we live in heart apart from our fellow-crea-
tures.
Doubtless the memory of each one of us will furnish him
with the picture of some member of a family whose very
presence seemed to shed happiness: a daughter, perhaps,
whose light step, even in the distance, irradiated every one's
countenance. What was the secret of such a one's power ?
what had she done? Absolutely nothing; but radiant
smiles, beaming good-humor, the tact of divining what every
one felt and every one wanted, told that she had got out of
self and learned to think for others ; so that at one time it
showed itself in deprecating the quarrel which lowering
brows and raised tones already showed to be impending, by
sweet words; at another, by smoothing an invalid's pillow;
at another, by soothing a sobbing child ; at another, by hu-
moring and softening a father who had returned weary and
ill-tempered from the irritating cares of business. None but
she saw those things. None but a loving heart could see
them. That was the secret of her heavenly power.
Call you those things homely trifles, too homely for a ser-
mon ? By reference to the character of Christ, they rise into
something quite sublime. For that is loving as He loved.
And remark, too, these trifles prepared for larger deeds. The
one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love,
is ever the one who is always doing considerate small ones.
The soul which poured itself out to'death upon the cross for
the human race, was the Spirit of Him who thought of the
wants of the people, contrived for the rest of the disciples,
and was thoughtful for a mother.
Once again it was a love never foiled by the unworthiness
of those on whom it had been once bestowed. It was a love
w r hich faults, desertion, denial, unfaithfulness could not chill,
even though they wrung His heart. He had chosen and He
trusted. Even in ordinary manhood, that is a finely-temper-
ed heart, one of no ordinary mould, which can say, "It ever
was my way, and shall be still, when I do trust a man, to
trust him wholly."
And yet there was every thing to shake His trust in hu-
manity. The Pharisees called him Good Master, and were
Love to one Another. 183
circumventing Him all the while. The people shouted ho-
sannas, and three days afterwards were shrieking for His
blood. One disciple who had dipped in the same dish, and
been trusted with His inmost counsels, deceived and betrayed
Him; another wa.s ashamed of Him; three fell asleep while
He was preparing for death ; all forsook Him. Yet nothing
is more surprising than that unshaken, I had well-nigh said
obstinate, trust with which He clung to His hopes of our
nature, and believed in the face of demonstration.
As we mix in life, there comes, especially to sensitive na-
tures, a temptation to distrust. In young life we throw our-
selves with unbounded and glorious confidence on such as
we think well of an error soon corrected : for we soon find
out too soon that men and women are not what they
seem. Then comes disappointment ; and the danger is a re-
action of desolating and universal mistrust. For if we look
on the doings of man with a merely worldly eye, and pierce
below the surface of character, we are apt to feel bitter scorn
and disgust for our fellow-creatures. We have lived to see
human hollowness ; the ashes of the Dead Sea shore ; the
falseness of what seemed so fair; the mouldering beneath
the whited sepulchre : and no wonder if we are tempted to
think " friendship all a cheat smiles hypocrisy words de-
ceit ;" and they who are what is called knowing in life con-
tract by degrees, as the result of their experience, a hollow
distrust of men, and learn to sneer at apparently good mo-
tives that demoniacal sneer which we have seen, ay, per-
haps felt, curling the lip at times, " Doth Job serve God for
naught ?"
The only preservation from this withering of the heart is
love. Love is its own perennial fount of strength. The
strength of affection is a proof not of the worthiness of the
object, but of the largeness of the soul which loves. Love
descends, not ascends. The might of a river depends not on
the quality of the soil through which it passes, but on the in-
exhaustibleness and depth of the spring from which it pro-
ceeds. The greater mind cleaves to the smaller with more
force than the other to it. A parent loves the child more
than the child the parent ; and partly because the parent's
heart is larger, not because the child is worthier. The Sav-
iour loved His disciples infinitely more than His disciples
loved Him, because His heart was infinitely larger. Love
trusts on ever hopes and expects better things ; and this, a
trust springing from itself and out of its own deeps alone.
And more than this. It is this trusting love that makes
men what they are trusted to be so realizing itself. Would
1 84 The New Commandment, Etc.
you make men trustworthy? Trust them. Would you
make them true ? Believe them. This was the real force
of that sublime battle-cry which no Englishman hears with-
out emotion. When the crews of the fleet of Britain knew
that they were expected to do their duty, they did their duty.
They felt, in that spirit-stirring sentence* that they were
trusted; and the simultaneous cheer that rose from every
ship was a forerunner of victory the battle was half-won al-
ready. , They went to serve a country which expected from
them great things, and they did great things. Those preg-
nant words raised an enthusiasm for the chieftain who had
thrown himself upon his men in trust, which a double line of
hostile ships could not appall, nor decks drenched in blood
extinguish.
And it is on this principle that Christ wins the hearts of
His redeemed. He trusted the doubting Thomas, and Thom-
as arose with a faith worthy " of his Lord and his God." He
would not suffer even the lie of Peter to shake His convic-
tion that Peter might love him yet, and Peter answered no-
bly to that sublime forgiveness. His last prayer was in ex-
tenuation and hope for the race who had rejected Him, and
the kingdoms of the world are become His own. He has
loved us, God knows why I do not and we, all unworthy
though we be, respond faintly to that love, and try to be
what He would have us.
Therefore come what may, hold fast to love. Though men
should rend your heart, let them not embitter or harden it.
We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. Oh,
strive to enter into something of that large celestial charity
which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the
overbearing world can not withstand forever. Learn the
new commandment of the Son of God. Not to love merely,
but to love as He loved. Go forth" in this spirit to your life-
duties: go forth, children of the Cross, to carry every thing
before you, and win victories for God by the conquering
power of a love like His.
The Message of the Church to Men of Wealth. 1 85
XVII.
THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH TO MEN OF
WEALTH.
"And Nabal answered David's servants, and said, Who is David? and
who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays that break
away every man from his master. Shall'l then take my bread, and my
water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men,
whom I know not whence they be?" 1 Sam. xxv. 10, 11.
I HAVE selected this passage for our subject this evening,
because it is one of the earliest cases recorded in the Bible
in which the interests of the employer and the employed,
the man of wealth and the man of work, stood, or seemed to
stand, in antagonism to each other.
It was a period in which an old system of things was
breaking up, and the new one was not yet established. The
patriarchal relationship of tutelage and dependence was
gone, and monarchy was not yet in firm existence. Saul
was on the throne but his rule was irregular and disputed.
Many things were slowly growing up into custom which had
not yet the force of law ; and the first steps by which cus-
tom passes into law from precedent to precedent are often
steps at every one of which struggle and resistance must
take place.
The history of the chapter is briefly this : Nabal, the
wealthy sheep-master, fed his flocks in the pastures of Car-
rael. David was leader of a band of men who got their liv-
ing by the sword on the same hills : outlaws, whose excesses
he in some degree restrained, and over whom he retained a
leader's influence. A rude irregular honor was not unknown
among those fierce men. They honorably abstained from
injuring Nabal's flocks. They did more: they .protected
jhem from all harm against the marauders of the neighbor-
hood. By the confession of Nabal's own herdsmen, "they
were a wall unto them both by night and day, all the time
they were with them keeping their flocks."
And thus a kind of right grew up : irregular enough, but
sufficient to establish a claim on Nabal for remuneration of
these services ; a new claim, not admitted by him : reckoned
by him an exaction, which could be enforced by no lawj
1 86 The Message of the Church
only by that law which is above all statute-law, deciding ac-
cording to emergencies an indefinable instinctive sense of
fairness and justice. But as there was no law, and each man
was to himself a law, and the sole arbiter of his own rights,
what help was there but that disputes should rise between
the wealthy proprietors and their selfconstituted champions,
with exaction and tyranny on the one side, churlishness and
parsimony on the other ? Hence a fruitful and ever-fresh
source of struggle : the one class struggling to take as much,
and the other to give as little as possible. In modern lan-
guage, the Rights of Labor were in conflict with the Rights
of Property.
The story proceeds thus : David presented a demand, mod-
erate and courteous enough (vs. 6, 7, 8). It was refused by
Nabal, and added to the refusal were those insulting taunts
of low birth and outcast condition which are worse than
injury, and sting, making men's blood run fire. One court
of appeal was left. There remained nothing but the trial by
force. " Gird ye on," said David, " every man his sword."
Now observe the fearful, hopeless character of this strug-
gle. The question had come to this : whether David, with
his ferocious and needy six hundred mountaineers, united by
the sense of wrong, or Nabal, with his well-fed and trained
hirelings, bound by interest and not by love to his cause,
were stronger? Which was the more powerful want whet-
ted by insult, or selfishness pampered by abundance ; they
who wished to keep by force, or they who wished to take ?
An awful and uncertain spectacle, but the spectacle which is
exhibited in every country where rights are keenly felt, and
duties lightly regarded where insolent demand is met by in-
sulting defiance. Wherever classes are held apart by rivalry
and selfishness, instead of drawn together by the law of love
wherever there has not been established a kingdom of
heaven, but only a kingdom of the world there exist the
forces of inevitable collision.
I. The causes of this false social state.
II. The message of the Church to the man of wealth.
I. False basis on which social superiority was held to rest.
Throughout Nabal's conduct was built upon the assump-
tion of his own superiority. He was a man of wealth. Da-
vid was dependent on his own daily efforts. Was not that
enough to settle the question of superiority and inferiority ?
It was enough on both sides for a long time, till the falsehood
of the assumption became palpable and intolerable. But pal-
pable and intolerable it did become at last.
To Men of Wealth. 187
A social falsehood will be borne long, even with consider-
able inconvenience, until it forces itself obtrusively on men's
attention, and can be endured no longer. The exact point
at which this social falsehood, that wealth constitutes supe-
riority, and has a right to the subordination of inferiors, be-
comes intolerable, varies according to several circumstances.
The evils of poverty are comparative they depend on cli-
mate. In warm climates, where little food, no fuel, and scan-
ty shelter are required, the sting is scarcely felt till poverty
becomes starvation. They depend on contrast. Far above
the point where poverty becomes actual famine, it may be-
come unbearable if contrasted strongly with the unnecessary
luxury and abundance enjoyed by the classes above. Where
all sutler equally, as men and officers suffer in an Arctic voy-
age, men bear hardship with cheerfulness: but where the suf-
fering weighs heavily on some, and the luxury of enjoyment
is out of all proportion monopolized by a few, the point of
reaction is reached long before penury has become actual
want : or again, when wealth or rank -assumes an insulting,
domineering character when contemptuous names for the
poor are invented, and become current among the more un-
feeling of a wealthy class then the falsehood of superiority
can be tolerated no longer : for we do not envy honors which
are meekly borne, nor wealth which is unostentatious.
Now it was this which brought matters to a crisis. David
had borne poverty long nay, he and his men had long en-
dured the contrast between their own cavern-homes and beds
upon the rock, and Nabal's comforts. But when Nabal add-
ed to this those pungent biting sneers which sink into poor
men's hearts and rankle which are not forgotten, but come
out fresh in the day of retribution " Who is David ? and
who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays
that break away every man from his master," then David
began to measure himself with Nabal; not a wiser man- nor
a better nor even a stronger. Who is this Nabal ? Intel-
lectually, a fool ; morally, a profligate, drowning reason in
excess of wine at the annual sheep-shearing; a tyrant over
his slaves overbearing to men who only ask of him their
rights. Then rose the question which Nabal had better not
have forced men to answer for themselves. By what right
does this possessor of wealth lord it over men who are infe-
rior in no one particular?
Now observe two things.
1. An apparent inconsistency in David's conduct. David
had received injury after injury from Saul, and had only for-
given. One injury from Nabal, and David is striding over
1 88 The Message of the Church
the hills to revenge his wrong with naked steel. How came
this reverence and irreverence to mix together?
We reply. Saul had a claim of authority on David's al-
legiance ; Nabal only one of rank. Between these the Bible
makes a vast difference. It says, The powers which be are
ordained of God. But upper and lower, as belonging to dif-
ference in property, are fictitious terms: true, if character
corresponds with titular superiority; false, if it does not.
And such was the difference manifested in the life of the Son
of God. To lawful authority, whether Roman, Jewish, or
even priestly, He paid deference ; but to the titled mark of
conventional distinction, none. Rabbi, Rabbi, was no Divine
authority. It was not power, a delegated attribute of God
it was only a name. In Saul, therefore, David reverenced
one his superior in authority ; but in Nabal he only had be-
fore him one surpassing him'in wealth. And David refused,
somewhat too rudely, to acknowledge the bad, great man as
his superior: would pay him no reverence, respect, or alle-
giance whatever. Let us mark that distinction well, so often
confused kings, masters, parents : here is a power ordained
of God. Honor it. But wealth, name, title, distinctions,
always fictitious, often false and vicious, if you can claim
homage for these separate from worth, you confound two
things essentially different. Try that by the test of His life.
Name the text where Christ claimed reverence for wealth
or rank. On the Mount did the Son of Man bow the knee
to the majesty of wealth and wrong, or was His Sonship
shown in this, that He would not bow down to that as if of
God?
2. This great falsehood respecting superior and inferior
rested on a truth. There had been a superiority in the
wealthy class once. In the patriarchal system wealth and
rule had gone together. The father of the family and tribe
was the one in whom proprietorship was centred; but the
patriarchal system had passed away. Men like Nabal suc-
ceeded to the patriarch's wealth, and expected the subordi-
nation which had been yielded to patriarchal character and
.position ; and this when every particular of relationship was
altered. Once the patriarch was the protector of his depend-
ents. Now David's class was independent, and the protect-
ors, rather than the protected : at all events, able to defend
themselves. Once the rich man was ruler in virtue of pa-
ternal relationship. Now wealth was severed from rule and
relationship : a man might be rich, yet neither a ruler, nor a
protector, nor a kinsman. And the fallacy of Nabal's expec-
tation consisted in this, that he demanded for wealth that
To Men of Wealth. 1 89
reverence which had once been due to men who happened to
be wealthy.
It is a fallacy in which we are perpetually entangled.
We expect reverence for that which was once a symbol of
what was reverenced, but is reverenced no longer. Here in
England it is common to complain that there is no longer any
respect of inferiors towards superiors that servants were
once devoted and grateful, tenants submissive, subjects en-
thusiastically loyal. But we forget that servants were once
protected by their masters, and tenants safe from wrong
only through the guardianship of their powerful lords ; that
thence a personal gratitude grew up ; that now they are pro-
tected by the law from wrong by a different social system
altogether ; and that the individual bond of gratitude sub-
sists no longer. We expect that to masters and employers
the same reverence and devotedness shall be rendered which
were due to them under other circumstances, and for differ-
ent reasons ; as if wealth and rank had ever been the claim to
reverence, and not merely the accidents and accompaniments
of the claim as if any thing less sacred than holy ties could
purchase sacred feelings as if the homage of free manhood
could be due to gold and name as if to the mere Nabal-fool
who is labelled as worth so much, and whose signature car-
ries with it so much coin, the holiest and most ennobling
sensations of the soul, reverence and loyalty, were due by
God's appointment.
No. That patriarchal system has passed forever. No
sentimental waitings for the past, no fond regrets for the
virtues of a by-gone age, no melancholy, poetical, retrospect-
ive antiquarian ism can restore it. In Church and State the
past is past : and you can no more bring^ back the blind
reverence, than the rude virtues of those days. The day has
come in which, if feudal loyalty or patriarchal reverence are
to be commanded, they must be won by patriarchal virtues
or feudal real superiorities.
II. Cause of this unhealthy social state : A false concep-
tion respecting rights.
It would be unjust to Nabal to represent this as an act of
willful oppression and conscious injustice. He did what ap-
peared to him fair between man and man. He paid his
laborers. Why should he pay any thing beyond stipulated
wages ?
David^s demand appeared an extravagant and insolent
one, provoking unfeigned astonishment and indignation. It
was an invasion of his rights. It was a dictation with re-
1 90 The Message of the Church
spect to the employment of that which was his own. "Shall
I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I
have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I
know not whence they be ?"
Recollect, too, there was something to be said for Nabal.
This view of the irresponsible right of property was not his
invention. It was the view probably entertained by all his
class. It had descended to him from his parents. They
were prescriptive and admitted rights on which he stood.
And however false or unjust a prescriptive right may be,
however baseless when examined, there is much excuse for
those who have inherited and not invented it ; for it is hard
to see through the falsehood of any system by which we
profit, and which is upheld by general consent, especially
when good men too uphold it. Rare indeed is that pure-
heartedness which sees with eagle glance through conven-
tionalisms. This is a wrong, and I and my own class are
the doers of it.
On the other hand, David and his needy followers were
not slow to perceive that they had their rights over that
property of Nabal's,
Men on whom wrongs press are the first to feel them, and
their cries of pain and indignation are the appointed means
of God to direct to their wrongs the attention of society.
Very often the fierce and maddened shriek of suffering is
the first intimation that a wrong exists at all.
There was no law in Israel to establish David's claims.
This guardianship of Nabal's flocks was partly a self-consti-
tuted thing. No bargain had been made, no sum of reward
expressly stipulated. But there is a law besides and above
all written law, which gives to written laws their authority,
and from which so often as they diverge, it is woe to the
framers of the law : for their law must perish, and the
Eternal Law unseen will get itself acknowledged as a truth
from heaven or a "truth from hell a truth begirt with fire
and sword, if they will not read it except so.
In point of fact, David had a right to a share of Nabal's
profits. The harvest was in part David's harvest, for with-
fout David it never could have been reaped. The sheep were
in part David's sheep, for without David not a sheep would
have been spared by the marauders of the hills. Not a
sheaf of corn was carried to Nabal's barn, nor a night passed
in repose by Nabal's shepherds, but what told of the share
of David in the saving of that sheaf, and the procurement of
that repose (not the less real because it was past and mi-
Been). The right which the soldier has by law to his pay,
To Men of Wealth. 191
vas the right which David had by unwritten law a right
resting on the fact that his services were indispensable for
the harvest.
Here, then, is one of the earliest instances of the Rights
of Labor coming into collision with the Rights of Property :
rights shadowy, undefined, perpetually shifting their bound-
aries, varying with every case, altering with every age, in-
capable of being adjusted except rudely by law, and leaving
always something which the most subtle and elaborate law
can not define, and which in any moment may grow up into
a wrong.
Now when it comes to this, Rights against Rights, there
is no determination of the question but by overwhelming
numbers or blood. David's remedy was a short, sharp, de-
cisive one. " Gird ye on every man his sword." And it is
difficult, for the sake of humanity, to say to which side in
such a quarrel we should wish well. If the rich man succeed
in civil war, he will bind the chain of degradation more se-
verely and more surely for years, or ages, on the crushed serf.
If the champions of popular rights succeed by the sword,
you may then await in awe the reign of tyranny, licentious-
ness, and lawlessness. For the victory of the lawless, with
the memory of past wrongs to avenge, is almost more san-
guinary than the victory of those who have had power long,
and whose power had been defied.
We find another cause in circumstances. Want and un-
just exclusion precipitated David and his men into this re-
bellion. It is common enough to lay too much weight on
circumstances. Nothing can be more false than the popular
theory that ameliorated outward condition is the panacea for
the evils of society. The Gospel principle begins from with
in, and works outward.
The world's principle begins with the outward condition,
and expects to influence inwardly. To expect that by chang-
ing the world without, in order to suit the world within, by
taking away all difficulties and removing all temptations, in-
stead of hardening the man within against the force of out-
ward temptation to adapt the lot to the man, instead of
moulding the spirit to the lot, is to reverse the Gospel method
of procedure. Nevertheless, even that favorite speculation
of theorists, that perfect circumstances will produce perfect
character, contains a truth. Circumstances of outward con-
dition are not the sole efficients in the production of charac-
ter, but they are efficients which must not be ignored. Fa-
vorable condition will not produce excellence, but the want
of it often hinders excellence, It is true that vice leads to
192 The Message of the Church
poverty : all the moralizers tell us that, but it is also true
that poverty leads to vice.
There are some in this world to whom, speaking humanly
social injustice and social inequalities have made goodness
impossible. Take, for instance, the case of these bandits or
Mount Carmel. Some of them were outlawed by their own
crimes, but others doubtless by debts not willfully contracted
one at least, David, by a most unjust and unrighteous per-
secution. And these men, excluded, needy, exasperated by a
sense of wrong, untaught outcasts, could you gravely expect
from them obedience, patience, meekness, religious resigna-
tion ? Yes, my brethren, that is exactly the marvellous im-
possibility people do most inconsistently expect; and there
are no bounds to their astonishment if they do not get what
they expect : Superhuman honesty from starving men, to
whom life by hopelessness has become a gambler's desperate
chance ! chivalrous loyalty and high forbearance from crea-
tures to whom the order of society has presented itself only
as an unjust system of partiality ! We forget that forbearance
and obedience are the very last and highest lessons learned by
the spirit in its most careful training. By those unhallowed
conventionalisms through which we, like heathens, and not
like Christians, crush the small offender and court the great
one that damnable cowardice by which we banish the se-
duced and half admire the seducer by which, in defiance of
all manliness and all generosity, we 'punish the weak and
tempted, and let the tempter go free : by all these we make
men and women outcasts, and then expect from them the
sublimest graces of reverence and resignation !
II. The message of the Church to the man of wealth.
The message of the Church contains those principles of
life which, carried out, would, and hereafter will, realize the
Divine Order of Society. The revealed Message does not
create the facts of our humanity it simply makes them
known. The Gospel did not make God our Father, it au-
thoritatively reveals that He is so. It did not create a new
duty of loving one another, it revealed the old duty which
existed from eternity, and must exist as long as humanity is
humanity. It was no " new commandment," but an old com-
mandment which had been heard from the beginning.
The Church of God is that living body of men who are
called by Him out of the world, not to be the inventors of a
new social system, but to exhibit in the world by word and
life, chiefly by life, what Humanity is, was, and will be, in
Ihe Idea of God. Now so far as the social economy is con-
To Men of Wealth. 193
eerned, the revelations of the Church will coincide with the
discoveries of a Scientific Political Economy. Political
Economy discovers slowly the facts of the immutable laws
of social well-being. But the living principles of those laws,
which cause them to be obeyed, Christianity has revealed to
living hearts long before. The Spirit discovers them to the
spirit. For instance, Political Economy, gazing on such a
fact, as this of civil war,, would arrive at the same principles
which the Church arrives at. She too would say, Not self-
ishness, but love. Only that she arrives at these principles
by experience, not intuition by terrible lessons, not revela-
tion by revolutions, wars, and famines, not by spiritual im-
pulses of charity.
And so because these principles were eternally true in hu-
manity, we find in the conduct of Abigail towards David in
this early age, not explicitly, but implicity, the very princi-
ples which the Church of Christ has given to the world ; and*
more the very principles which a sound political economy
would sanction. In her reply to David we have the antici-
pation by a loving heart of those duties which selfish pru-
dence must have taught at last.
1. The spiritual dignity of man as man. Recollect David
"was the poor man, but Abigail, the high-born lady, admits
his worth : " The Lord will certainly make my lord a sure
house ; because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord, and
evil hath not been found in thee all thy days." Here is a
truth revealed to that age. Nabal's day, and the day of such
as Nabal, is past ; another power is rising above the horizon.
David's cause is God's cause. Worth does not mean what a
man is worth you must find some better definition than
that.
Now this is the very truth revealed in the Incarnation.
David, Israel's model king, the king by the grace of God, not
by the conventional rules of human choice is a shepherd's
son. Christ, the King who is to reign over our regenerated
humanity, is humbly born the poor woman's Son. That is
the Church's message to the man of wealth, and a message
which it seems has to be learned afresh in every age. It was
new to Nabal. It was new to the men of the age of Christ.
In His day they were oifended in Him, because He was hum-
bly born. "Is not this the carpenter's son?" It is the of-
fense now. They who retain those superstitious ideas of the
eternal superiority of rank and wealth have the first princi-
ples of the Gospel yet to team. How can they believe in the
Son of Mary ? They may honor Him with the lip, they deny
him in Hia brethren. Whoever helps to keep alive that an-
9
1 94 The Message of the Church
cient lie of upper and lower, resting the distinction not on
official authority or personal worth, but on wealth and title,
is doing his part to hinder the establishment of the Redeem-
er's kingdom.
Now the Church of Christ proclaims that truth in baptism.
She speaks of a kingdom here in which all are, as spirits,
equal. She reveals a fact. She does not affect to create the
fact. She says not hypothetically r u This child may be the
child of God if prevenient grace has taken place, or if here-
after he shall have certain feelings and experiences ;" nor,
" Hereby I create this child magically by supernatural power
in one moment what it was not a moment before :" but she
says, authoritatively, " I pronounce this child the child of
God : the brother of Christ the First-born the Son of Him
who has taught us by His Son to call Him our Father, not
my Father. Whatever that child may become hereafter in
'fact, he is now, by right of creation and redemption, the child
*f God. Rich or poor, titled or untitled, he shares the spirit-
ual nature of the second Adam the Lord from heaven."
2. The second truth expressed by Abigail was the law of
Sacrifice. She did not heal the grievance with smooth words.
Starving men are not to be paciiied by professions of good-
will. She brought her two hundred loaves, and her two
skins of wine, her five sheep ready dressed, etc. A princely
provision !
You might have said this was waste half would have
been enough. But the truth is, liberality is a most real econ-
omy. She could not stand there calculating the smallest pos-
sible expense at which the affront might be wiped out. True
economy is to pay liberally and fairly for faithful service.
The largest charity is the bet economy. Nabal had had a
faithful servant. He should have counted no expense too
great to retain his services, instead of cheapening and de-
preciating them. But we wrong Abigail if we call this econ-
omy or calculation. In fact, had it been done on economical
principles, it would have failed. Ten times this sum from
Nabal would not have arrested revenge. For Nabal it was
too late. Concessions extracted by fear only provoke ex-
action further. The poor know well what is given because
it must be given, and what is conceded froih a sense of jus-
tice. They feel only what is real. David's men and David
felt that these were not the gifts of a sordid calculation, but
the offerings of a generous heart. And it won them their
gratitude their enthusiasm their unfeigned homage.
This is the attractive power of that great law, whose high-
est expression was the Cross. " I, if I be lifted up, will draw
To Men of Wealth. 195
all men unto Me." Say what you will, it is not interest, but
the sight of noble qualities and true sacrifice, which com-
mands the devotion of the world. Yea,.even the bandit and
the outcast will bend before that as before a Divine thing. In
one form or another, it draws all men, it commands all men.
Now this the Church proclaims as part of its special mes-
sage to the rich. It says that the Divine Death was a Sac-
rifice. It declares that death to be the law of every life
which is to be like His. It says that the law, which alone
can interpret the mystery of life, is the self-sacrifice of Christ.
It proclaims the law of His life to have been this : "For their
sakes I devote (sanctify) Myself, that they also may be de-
voted through the truth."
In other words, the self-sacrifice of the Redeemer -was to
be the living principle and law of the self-devotion of His
people. It asserts that to be the principle which alone can
make any human life a true life. " I fill up that which is be-
hind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body's
sake, which is the Church." We have petrified that sacrifice
into a dead theological dogma, about the exact efficacy of
which we dispute metaphysically, and charge each other with
heresy. That Atonement will become a living fact only
when we humbly recognize in it the eternal fact that sacri-
fice is the law of life. The very mockers at the crucifixion
unwittingly declared the principle: "He saved others: him-
self He can not save." Of course how could He save him-
self who had to save others? You can only save others
when you have ceased to think of saving your own soul ;
you can only truly bless when you have done with the pur-
suit of personal happiness. Did you ever hear of a soldier
who saved his country by making it his chief work to secure
himself? And was the Captain of our salvation to become
the Saviour by contravening that universal law of sacrifice,
or by obeying it ?
Brother, men, the early Church gave expression to that
principle of sacrifice in a very touching way. They had all
things in common. "Neither said any of them that aught
of the things which he possessed was his own." They failed,
not because they declared that, but because men began to
think that the duty of sharing was compulsory. They pro-
claimed principles which were unnatural, inasmuch as they
set aside all personal feelings, which are part of our nature
too. They virtually compelled private property to cease,
because he who retained private property when all were
giving up was degraded, and hence became a hypocrite and
liar,, like Ananias.
1 96 The Message of the Church
But let us not lose the truth which they expressed in an
exaggerated way : " Neither said any of them that aught of
the things which he possessed was his own." Property is
sacred. It is private property ; if it were not, it could not
be sacrificed. If it were to be shared equally by the idle
and the industrious, there could be no love in giving. Prop-
erty is the rich man's own. Nabal is right in saying, My
bread my water my flesh. But there is a higher riuht
which says, It is not yours. And that voice speaks to every
rich man in one way or another, according as he is selfish or
unselfish : coming as a voice of terror or a voice of blessing.
It came to Nabal with a double curse, turning his heart into
stone with the vision of the danger and the armed ranks of
David's avengers, and laying on David's soul the sin of in-
tended murder. It came to the heart of Abigail with a
double blessing : blessing her who gave and him who took.
To the spirit of the Cross alone we look as the remedy for
social evils. When the people of this great country, espe-
cially the rich, shall have been touched with the spirit of
the Cross to a largeness of sacrifice of which they have not
dreamed as yet, there will be an atonement between the
Rights of Labor and the Rights of Property.
3. The last part of the Church's message to the man of
wealth touches the matter of rightful influence.
Very remarkable is the demeanor of David towards Nabal,
as contrasted with his demeanor towards. Abigail. In the
one case, defiance, and a haughty self-assertion of equality ; in
the other, deference, respect, and the most eloquent bene-
diction. It was not therefore against the wealthy class, but
against individuals of the class, that the wrath of these men
burned.
See, then, the folly and the falsehood of the sentimental
regret that there is no longer any reverence felt towards
superiors. There is reverence to superiors, if only it can be
shown that they are superiors. Reverence is deeply rooted
in the heart of humanity you can not tear it out. Civiliza-
tion science progress only change its direction : they do
not weaken its force. If it no longer bows before crucifixes
and candles, priests and relics, it is not extinguished towards
what is truly sacred and what is priestly in man. The
fiercest revolt against false authority is only a step towards
submission to rightful authority. Emancipation from false
lords only sets the heart free to honor true ones. The free-
born David will not do homage to Nabal. Well, now go
and mourn over the degenerate age which no longer feels
respect -for that which is above it. But behold David has
To Men of Wealth. 197
found a something nobler than himself. Feminine charity
sacrifice and justice and in gratitude and profoundest
respect he bows to that. The state of society which is
coming is not one of protection and dependence, nor one
of mysterious authority, and blind obedience to it, nor one
in which any class shall be privileged by Divine right, and
another remain in perpetual tutelage ; but it is one in which
unselfish services and personal qualities will command, by
Diyine right, gratitude and admiration, and secure a true
and spiritual leadership.
Oh, let not the rich misread the signs of the times, or mis-
take their brethren : they have less and less respect for ti-
tles and riches, for vestments and ecclesiastical pretensions,
but they have a real respect lor superior knowledge and su-
perior goodness: they listen like children to those whom
they believe to know a subject better than themselves. Let
those who know it say whether there is not something inex-
pressibly touching and even humbling in the large, hearty,
manly, English reverence and love which the working-men
show towards those who love and serve them truly, and
save them from themselves and from doing wrong. See how
David's feelings gush forth : " Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel which sent thee this day to meet me : and blessed be
thy advice, and blessed be thou which hast kept me this day
from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with
mine own hand."
The rich and the great may have that love if they will.
To conclude. Doubtless David was wrong : he had no
right even to redress wrongs thus ; patience was his divinely
appointed duty; and doubtless in such circumstances we
should be very ready to preach submission and to blame
David. Alas ! we, the clergy of the Church of England,
have been only too ready to do this : for three long centu-
ries we have taught submission to the powers that be, as if
that were the only text in Scripture bearing on the relations
between the ruler and the ruled. Rarely have we dared to
demand of the powers that be, justice ; of the wealthy man
and the titled, duties. We have produced folios of slavish
flattery upon the Divine Right of Power. Shame on us !
we have not denounced the wrongs done to weakness : and
yet for one text in the Bible which requires submission and
patience from the poor, you will find a hundred which de-
nounce the vices of the rich in the writings of the noble
old Jewish prophets, that, and almost that only that, in the
Old Testament, with a deep roll of words that sound like Si-
nai thunders : and that in the New Testament in words less
ig8 Christ's Judgment Respecting Inheritance.
impassioned and more calmly terrible from the apostles anq
their Master : and woe to us in the great day of God, if we
have been the sycophants of the rich instead of the redressera
of the poor man's wrongs woe to us if we. have been tutor-
ing David into respect to his superior, Nabal, and forgotten
that David's cause, not Nabal's, is the cause of God.
XVIII.
CHRIST'S JUDGMENT RESPECTING INHERIT-
ANCE.*
' And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother,
that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who
made me a judge or a divider over you? And he said unto them, Take
heed, and beware of covetousness : for a man's life consisted! not in the
abundance of the things which he possesseth." Luke xii. 13-15.
THE Son of God was misunderstood and misinterpreted in
His day. With this fact we are familiar ; but we are not at
all familiar with the consideration that it was very natural
Uiat He should be so mistaken.
He went about Galilee and Judea proclaiming the down-
fall of every injustice, the exposure and confutation of every
lie. He denounced the lawyers who refused education to
the people, in order that they might retain the key of knowl-
edge in their own hands. He reiterated Woe ! woe ! woe !
to the Scribes and Pharisees, who revered the past, while
systematically persecuting every new prophet and every
brave man who rose up to vindicate the spirit of the past
against the institutions of the past. He spoke parables
which bore hard on the men of wealth : that, for instance,
of the rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen,
and fared sumptuously every day, who died, and in hell lift
up his eyes, being in torments that of the wealthy proprie-
tor who prospered in the world ; who pulled down his barns
to build greater ; who all the while was in the sight of God
a fool ; who in front of judgment and eternity was found un-
ready. He stripped the so-called religious party of that day
of their respectability, convicted them, to their own astonish-
ment, of hypocrisy, and called them " whited sepulchres."
* This Sermon was preached the Sunday after that on which "The Mes-
sage of the Church to Men of Wealth " was preached, and it was intended af
a further illustration of that subject.
Chrises Judgment Respecting Inheritance. 199
He said God was against them ; that Jerusalem's day was
come, and that she must fall.
And now consider candidly : suppose that all this had
taken place in this country ; that an unknown stranger,
with no ordination, with no visible authority, basing his au-
thority upon his truth, and his agreement with the mind of
God the Father, had appeared in this England, uttering halt
the severe things He spoke against the selfishness of wealth,
against ecclesiastical authorities, against the clergy, against
the popular religious party suppose that such an one should
say that our whole social life is corrupt and false suppose
that instead of " thou blind Pharisee," the word had been
" thou blind Churchman !"
Should we have fallen at the feet of such an one and said,
Lo ! this is a message from Almighty God, and He who
brings it is a Son of God ; perhaps what He says Himself,
His only Son God of God ? Or should we not have rath'
er said, This is dangerous teaching, and revolutionary in its
tendencies, and He who teaches it is an incendiary a mad,
democratical, dangerous fanatic ?
That was exactly what they did say of your Redeemer in
His day ; nor does it seem at all wonderful that they did.
The sober, respectable inhabitants of Jerusalem, very
comfortable themselves, and utterly unable to conceive
why things should not go on as they had been going on
for a hundred years not smarting from the misery and the
moral degradation of the lazars with whom He associated,
and under whose burdens his loving spirit groaned thought
it excessively dangerous to risk the subversion, of their quiet
enjoyment by such outcries. They said, prudent men ! " If
He is permitted to go on this way, the Romans will come
and take away our place and nation." The priests and Phar-
isees, against whom He had specially spoken, were fiercer
still, they felt there was no time to be lost.
But still more, His own friends and followers misunder-
stood Him.
They heard him speak of a kingdom of justice and right-
eousness in which every man should receive the due reward
of his deeds. They heard Him say that this kingdom was
not far off, but actually among them, hindered only by their
sins and dullness from immediate appearance. Men's souls
were stirred and agitated. They were ripe for any thing,
and any spark would have produced explosion. They
thought the next call would be to take the matter into their
own hands.
Accordingly, on one occasion, St. John and St. James asked
2OO Christ's Judgment Respecting Inheritance.
permission to call down fire from heaven upon a village of
the Samaritans which would not receive their message.
On another occasion, on a single figurative mention of a
sword, they began to gird themselves for the struggle :
" Lord," said one, " behold here are two swords." Again, as
soon as He entered Jerusalem for the last time, the populace
heralded His way with shouts, thinking that the long-delay-
ed hour of retribution was come at last. They saw the Con*
queror before them who w r as to vindicate their wrongs. In
imagination they already felt their feet upon the necks of
their enemies.
And because their hopes were disappointed, and He w r aa
not the demagogue they wanted, therefore they turned
against Him. Not the Pharisees only, but the people whom
He had come to save the outcast, and the publican, and the
slave, and the maid-servant; they whose cause Pie had so
often pleaded, and whose emancipation He had prepared.
It was I[\Q people who cried, " Crucify Him, crucJfy Him !"
This will become intelligible to us if we can get at the
spirit of this passage.
Among those who heard Him lay down the laws of the
kingdom of God justice, fairness, charity there was one
who had been defrauded, as it seems, by his brother of his
just share of the patrimony. He thought that the One who
stood before him was exactly w y hat he wanted : a redresser
of wrongs a champion of the oppressed a divider and ar-
biter between factions a referee of lawsuits one who
would spend His life in the unerring decision of all misun-
derstandings.
To his astonishment, the Son of Man refused to interfere in
his quarrel, or take part in it at all. " Man, who made me a
judge or a divider between you ?"
We ask attention to two things.
I. The Saviour's refusal to interfere.
H. The source to which He traced the appeal for interfer-
ence.
I. The Saviour's refusal to interfere.
1. He implied that it was not TH\$ jxirt to interfere. "Who
made me a judge or a divider?"
It is a common saying that religion has nothing to do with
politics, and particularly there is a strong feeling current
against all interference with politics by the ministers of re-
ligion. This notion rests on a basis which is partly wrong,
partly right.
To say that religion has nothing to do with politics is to
Christ's Judgment Respecting Inheritance. 201
assert that which is" simply false. It were as wise to say
that the atmosphere has nothing to do with the principles of
architecture. Directly, nothing indirectly, much. Some
kinds of stone are so friable, that though they will last for
centuries in a dry climate, they will crumble away in a few
years in a damp one. There are some temperatures in which
a form of building is indispensable which in another would
be unbearable. The shape of doors, windows, apartments,
all depend upon the air that is to be admitted or excluded.
Nay, it is for the very sake of procuring a habitable atmos-
phere within certain limits that architecture exists at all.
The atmospheric laws are distinct from the laws of architect-
ure; but there is not an architectural question into which
atmospheric considerations do not enter as conditions of the
question.
That which the air is to architecture, religion is to politics,
It is the vital air of every question. Directly, it determines
nothing indirectly, it conditions every problem that can
arise. The kingdoms of this world must become the king-
doms of our Lord and of His Christ. How, if His Spirit i&
not to mingle with political and social truths ?
Nevertheless, in the popular idea that ivligion as such
must not be mixed with politics, there is a profound truth.
Here, for instance, the Saviour will not meddle with the
question. He stands aloof, sublime and dignified. It was
no part of His to take from the oppressor and give to the
oppressed, much less to encourage the oppressed to take
from the oppressor himself. It was His part to forbid op-
pression. It was a judge's part to decide what oppression was.
It was not His office to determine the boundaries of civil
right, nor to lay down the rules of the descent of property.
Of course there was a spiritual and moral principle involved
in this question. But He would not suffer His sublime mis-
sion to degenerate into the mere task of deciding casuistry.
He asserted principles of love, unselfishness, order, which
would decide all questions ; but the questions themselves
He would not decide. He would lay down the great politic-
al principle, " Render unto Caesar the things that be Caesar's,
and unto God the things which are God's;" but He would
not determine whether this particular tax was due to Caesar
or not.
So, too, He would say, justice, like mercy and truth, is one
of the weightier matters of the law ; but he would not decide
whether in this definite case this or that brother had justice
on his side. It was for themselves to determine that, and in
that determination lay their responsibility.
9*
2 o 2 Christ '' s Judg men t Respecting Inherita nee.
And thus religion deals with men, not cases : with human
hearts, not casuistry.
Christianity determines general principles, out of which,
no doubt, the best government would surely spring : but
what the best government is it does not determine whether
monarchy or a republic, an aristocracy or a democracy.
It lays down a great social law : " Masters, give unto your
servants that which is just and equal." But it" is not its part
to declare how much is just and equal. It has no fixed
scale of wages according to which masters must give. That
it leaves to each master and each age of society.
It binds up men in a holy brotherhood. But what are the
best institutions and surest means for arriving at this broth-
erhood it has not said. In particular, it has not pronounced
whether competition or co-operation will secure it.
And hence it comes to pass that Christianity is the eternal
religion, which can never become obsolete. If it sets itself
to determine the temporary and the local, the justice of this
tax, or the exact wrongs of that conventional maxim, it
would soon become obsolete : it would be the religion of one
century, not of ail. As it is, it commits itself to nothing ex-
cept eternal principles.
It is not sent into this world to establish monarchy, or se-
cure the franchise to establish socialism, or to frown it into
annihilation but to establish a charity, and a moderation,
and a sense of duty, and a love of right, which will modify
human life according to any circumstances that can possibly
arise.
2. In this refusal, again, it was implied that His kingdom
was one founded on spiritual disposition, not one of outward
law and jurisprudence.
That this lawsuit should have been decided by the broth-
ers themselves, in love, with mutual fairness, would have
been much that it should be determined by authoritative
arbitration, was, spiritually speaking, nothing. The right
disposition of their hearts, and the right division of their
property thence resulting, was Christ's kingdom. The ap-
portionment of their property by another's division had
nothing to do with His kingdom.
Suppose that both were wrong : one oppressive, the other
covetous. Then, that the oppressor should become gener-
ous, and the covetous liberal, were a great gain. But to
take from one selfish brother in order to give to another self-
ish brother, what spiritual gain would there have been in
this ?
Suppose, again, that the retainer of the inheritance was in
Christ's Judgment Respecting Inheritance. 203
the wrong, and that the petitioner had justice on his side
that he was a humble, meek man, and his petitio.n only one
of right. Well, to take the property from the unjust and
give it to Christ's servant, might be, and was, the duty of a
judge; but it was not Christ's part, nor any gain to the
cause of Christ. He does not reward His servants with in-
heritances, with lands, houses, gold. The kingdom of God is
not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in
the Holy Ghost. Christ triumphs by wrongs meekly borne,
even more than by wrongs legally righted. What we call
poetical justice is not His kingdom.
To apply this to the question of the day. The great prob-
lem which lies before Europe for solution is, or will be, this :
Whether the present possessors of the soil have an exclusive
right to do what they will with their own, or whether a
larger claim may be put in by the workman for a share of
the profits ? Whether Capital has hitherto given to Labor
its just part, or not ? Labor is at present making an appeal,
like that of this petitioner, to the Church, to the Bible, to
God. "Master, speak unto my brother, that he divide the
inheritance with me."
Now in the mere setting of that question to rest, Chris-
tianity is not interested. That landlords should become
more liberal, and employers more merciful : that tenants
should be more honorable, and workmen more -unselfish ;
that would be indeed a glorious thing a triumph of Christ's
cause ; and any arrangement of the inheritance thence result-
ing would be a real coming of the kingdom of God. But
whether the soil of the country and its capital shall remain
the property of the rich, or become more available for the
poor, the rich and the poor remaining as selfish as before
whether the selfish rich shall be able to keep, or the selfish
poor to take, is a matter, religiously speaking, of profound
indifference. Which of the brothers shall have the inherit-
ance, the monopolist or the covetous ? Either neither
who cares ? Fifty years hence what will it matter ? But
a hundred thousand years hence it will matter whether
they settled the question by mutual generosity and forbear-
ance.
3. I remark a third thing. He refused to be the friend of
one, because He was the friend of both. He never was the
champion of a class^ because He was the champion of hu-
manity. We may take for granted that the petitioner was
an injured man one, at all events, who thought himself in-
jured ; and Christ had often taught the spirit which would
have made his brother right him, but He refused to take his
2O4 Christ's Jiidg ment Respecting Inheritance.
part against his brother, just because he was his brother -*
Christ's servant, and one of God's family, as well as he.
And this was His spirit always. The Pharisees thought
to commit Him to a side when they asked whether it was
lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not. But He would take
no side as the Christ : neither the part of the Government
against the tax-payers, nor the part of the tax-payers against
>the Government.
Now it is a common thing to hear of the rights of man
a glorious and a true saying, but, as commonly used, the ex-
pression only means the rights of a section or class of men.
And it is very worthy of remark, that in these social quar-
rels both sides appeal to Christ and to the Bible as the
champions of their rights, precisely in the same way in
which this man appealed to Him. One class appeal to the
Bible, as if it were the great Arbiter which decrees that the
poor shall be humble and the subject submissive ; and the
other class appeal to the same book triumphantly, as if it
were exclusively on their side, its peculiar blessedness con-
sisting in this, that it commands the rich to divide the inher-
itance, and the ruler to impose nothing that is unjust.
In either of these cases Christianity is degraded, and the
Bible misused. They are not, as they have'been made, oh,
shame ! for centuries, the servile defenders of rank and
wealth, nor are they the pliant advocates of discontent and
rebellion. The Bible takes neither the part of the poor
against the rich exclusively, Dor that of the rich against the
poor ; and this because it proclaims a real, deep, true, and
not a revolutionary brotherhood.
The brotherhood of which we hear so much is often only a
one-sided brotherhood. It demands that the rich shall treat
the poor as brothers. It has a right to do so. It is a brave
and a just demand ; but it forgets that the obligation is mu-
tual ; that in spite of his many faults, the rich man is the
poor man's brother, and that the poor man is bound to rec-
ognize him and feel for him as a brother.
It requires that every candid allowance shall be made for
the vices of the poorer classes, in virtue of the circumstances
which, so to speak, seem to make such vices inevitable : for
their harlotry, their drunkenness, their uncleanness, their in-
subordination. Let it enforce that demand; it may and
must do it in the name of Christ. He was mercifully and
mournfully gentle to those who through terrible temptation
and social injustice had sunk, and sunk into misery at least
as much as into sin. But then, let it not be forgotten that
Borne sympathy must be also due on the saive score of cu
Christ's Judgment Respecting Inheritance. 205
curastances to the rich man. Wealth has its temptations, so
has power. The vices of the rich are his forgetfulness of re-
sponsibility, his indolence, his extravagance, his ignorance of
wretchedness. These must be looked upon, no certainly
with weak excuses, but with a brother's eye by the poor
man, if he will assert a brotherhood. It is not just to attrib-
ute all to circumstances in the one case, and nothing in the
other. It is not brotherhood to say that the laborer does
wrong because he is tempted, and the man of wealth because
he is intrinsically bad.
II. The source to which he traced this appeal for a dt
vision.
Now it is almost certain that the reflection which aros
to the lips of Christ is not the one which would have pre-
sented itself to us under similar circumstances. We should
probably have sneered at the state of the law in which a
lawsuit could obtain no prompt decision, and injury get no
redress : or we should have remarked upon the evils of the
system of primogeniture, and asked whether it were just
that one brother should have all, and the others none : or
we might, perhaps, have denounced the injustice of permit-
ting privileged classes at all.
He did nothing of this kind. He did not sneer at the law,
nor inveigh against the system, nor denounce the privileged
classes. He went deeper : to the very root of the matter.
"Take heed and beware of covetousness." It was covet-
ousness which caused the unjust brother to withhold: it
was covetousness which made the defrauded brother indig-
nantly complain to a stranger. It is covetousness which is
at the bottom of all law r suits, all social grievances, all polit-
ical factions. So St. James traces the genealogy. "From
whence come wars and fightings among you ? Come they
not hence, even from your lusts which reign in your flesh ?"
Covetousness the covetousness of all : of the oppressed
as well as of the oppressor ; for the cry " Divide " has its
root in covetousness just as truly as "I will not." There
are no innocent classes: no devils who oppress, and angels
who are oppressed. The guilt of a false social state must
be equally divided.
We will consider somewhat more deeply this covetousness.
In the original the word is a very expressive one. It means
the desire of having more not of having more because
there is not enough, but simply a craving after more. More,
when a man has not enough. More when he has. More,
more, ever more. Give, give. Divide, divide.
206 Christ 's Judgment Respecting Inheritance.
This craving is not universal. Individuals and whole
nations are without it. There are some nations, the con-
dition of whose further civilization is, that the desire of
accumulation be increased. They are too indolent or too
unambitious to be covetous. Energy is awakened when
wants are immediate, pressing, present ; but ceases with the
gratification.
There are other nations in which the craving is excessive,
even to disease. Pre-eminent among these is England. This
desire of accumulation is the source of all our greatness, and
all our baseness. It is at once our glory and our shame. It
is the cause of our commerce, of our navy, of our military
triumphs, of our enormous wealth, and our marvellous inven-
tions. And it is the cause of our factions and animosities,
of our squalid pauperism, and the worse than heathen deg-
radation of the masses of our population.
That which makes this the more marvellous is, that of all
the nations on the earth, none are so incapable of enjoyment
as we. God has not given to us that delicate development
which He has given to other races. Our sense of harmony
is dull and rare, our perception of beauty is not keen. An
English holiday is rude and boisterous : if protracted, it
ends in ennui and self-dissatisfaction. We can not enjoy.
Work, the law of human nature, is the very need of an Eng-
lish nature. That cold shade of Puritanism which passed
over us, sullenly eclipsing all grace and enjoyment, was but
the shadow of our own melancholy, unenjoying, national
character.
And yet we go on accumulating as if we could enjoy more
by having more. To quit the class in which they are and
rise into that above, is the yearly, daily, hourly effort of
millions in this land. And this were well if this word
"above" implied a reality: if it meant higher intellectually,
morally, or even physically. But the truth is, it is only
higher fictitiously. The middle classes already have every
real enjoyment which the wealthiest can have. The only
thing they have not is the ostentation of the means of enjoy-
ment. More .would enable them to multiply equipages,
houses, books. It could not enable them to enjoy them more.
Thus, then, we have reached the root of the matter. Our
national craving is, in the proper meaning of the term, cov-
etousness. Not the desire of enjoying more, but the desire
of having more. And if there be a country, a society, a
people to whom this warning is specially applicable, that
country is England, that society our own, that people are
we. " Take heed and beware of covetousness."
Christ's Judgment Respecting Inheritance. 207
The true remedy for this covetousness He then proceeds
to give. " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of
the things which he possesseth."
Now observe the distinction between His view and the
world's view of humanity. To the question, What is a man
worth ? the world replies by enumerating what he has. In
reply to the same question, the Son of Man replies by esti-
mating what he is. Not what he has, but what he is, that,
through time and through eternity, is his real and proper
life. He declared the presence of the soul : He announced
the dignity of the spiritual man ; He revealed the being that
we are. Not that which is supported by meat and drink,
but that whose very life is in truth, integrity, honor, purity.
"Skin for skin" was the satanic version of this matter; "All
that a man hath will he give for his life." " What shall it
profit a man," was the Saviour's announcement, "if he shall
gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
For the oppressed and the defrauded this was the true
consolation and compensation the true consolation. This
man had lost so much loss. Well, how is he consoled ? By
the thought of retaliation by the promise of revenge by
the assurance that he shall have what he ought by right to
have? Nay, but thus as it were: Thou hast lost so much,
but thyself remains. "A man's life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things which he possesseth."
Most assuredly Christianity proclaims laws which will
eventually give to each man his rights. I do not deny this.
But I say that the hope of these rights is not the message,
nor the pVomise, nor the consolation of Christianity. Rather
they consist in the assertion of the true life, instead of all
other hopes : of the substitution of blessedness which is in-
ward character, for happiness which is outward satisfaction
of desire ; for the broken-hearted, the peace which the world
can not give ; for the poor, the life which destitution can not
take away ; for the persecuted, the thought that they are the
children of their Father which is in heaven.
A very striking instance of this is found in the consolation
offered by St. Paul to slaves. How did he reconcile them to
their lot? By promising that Christianity would produce
the abolition of the slave-trade ? No ; though this was to be
effected by Christianity: but by assuring them that, though
slaves, they might be inly free Christ's freedmen. "Art
thou called, being a slave ? Care not for it."
T^is, too, was the real compensation offered by Christiani-
ty for injuries.
The other brother had the inheritance ; and to win the in-
208 Christ's Judgment Respecting Inheritance.
heritance lie had laid upon his soul the guilt of injustice
His advantage was the property : the price he paid for that
advantage was a hard heart. The injured brother had no
inheritance, but instead he had, or might have had, innocence,
and the conscious joy of knowing that he was not the injurer.
Herein lay the balance.
Now there is great inconsistency between the complaints
and claims that are commonly made on these subjects.
There are outcries against the insolence of power and the
hard-hearted selfishness of wealth. Only too often these cries
have a foundation of justice. But be it remembered that
these are precisely the cost at which the advantages, such as
they are, are purchased. The price which the man in au-
thority has paid for power is the temptation to be insolent.
He has yielded to the temptation, and bought his advantage
dear. The price which the rich man pays for his wealth is
the temptation to be* selfish. They have paid in spirituals for
what they have gained in temporals.
Now, if you are crying for a share in that wealth", and a
participation in that power, you mjust be content to run the
risk of becoming as hard and selfish and overbearing as the
man whom you denounce. Blame their sins if you will, or
despise their advantages ; but do not think that you can
covet their advantages, and keep clear of their temptations.
God is on the side of the poor, and the persecuted, and the
mourners a light in darkness, and a life in death ; but the
poverty, and the persecution, and the darkness are the con-
dition on which they feel God's presence. They must not
expect to have the enjoyment of wealth and the spiritual
blessings annexed to poverty at the same time.
If you will be rich, you must be content to pay the price
of falling into temptation, and a snare, and many foolish and
hurtful lusts, which drown men in perdition ; and if that
price be too high to pay, then you must be content with the
quiet valleys of existence, where alone it is well with us :
kept out of the inheritance, but having instead God for your
portion your all-sufficient and everlasting portion peace,
and quietness, and rest with Christ.
Freedom by the Truth* 209
XIX.
FREEDOM BY THE TRUTH.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you frea**--'
John viii. 32.
IF these words were the only record we possessed of the
Saviour's teaching, it may be that they would be insufficient
to prove His personal Deity, but they would be enough to
demonstrate the Divine character of His mission.
Observe the greatness of the aim, and the wisdom of the
means.
The aim was to make all men free. He saw around Him
servitude in every form man in slavery to man, and race to
race: His own countrymen in bondage to the Romans
slaves both of Jewish and Roman masters, frightfully op-
pressed : men trembling before priestcraft : arid those who
were politically and ecclesiastically free, in worse bondage
still the rich and rulers slaves to their own passions.
Conscious of His inward Deity and of His Father's inten-
tions, He, without hurry," without the excitement which
would mark the mere earthly liberator, calmly said, " Ye
shall be free."
See, next, the peculiar wisdom of the means.
The craving for liberty was not new it lies deep in human
nature. Nor was the promise of satisfying it new. Em-
pirics, charlatans, demagogues, 'and men who were not char-
latans nor demagogues, had promised in vain.
1. First, they had tried by force. Wherever force has
been used on the side of freedom, we honor it ; the names
which we pronounce in boyhood with enthusiasm are those
of the liberators of nations and the vindicators of liberty.
Israel had had such : Joshua the Judges Judas Macca-
baeus. Had the Son of God willed so to come, even on hu-
man data the success was certain. I wafve the truth of His
inward Deity, of His miraculous power, of His power to sum-
mon to His will more than twelve legions of angels. I only
notice now that men's hearts were full of Him : ripe for re-
volt : and that at a single word of His, thrice three hundred
thousand swords would have started from their scabbards.
But had He so come, one nation might have gained liberty
2 1 o Freedom by tJie Truth.
not the race of man : moreover, the liberty would only have
been independence of a foreign conqueror. Therefore as a
conquering king He did not come.
2. Again, it might have been attempted by legislative en-
actment. Perhaps only once has this been done successfully,
and by a single effort. When the names of conquerors shall
have been forgotten, and modern civilization shall have be-
come obsolete when England's shall be ancient history, one
act of hers will be remembered as a record of her greatness,
that Act by which in costly sacrifice she emancipated her
slaves.
But one thing England could not do. She could give free-
dom she could not fit for freedom she could not make it
lasting. The stroke of a monarch's pen will do the one, the
discipline of ages is needed for the other. Give to-morrow a
constitution to some feeble Eastern nation, or a horde of sav-
ages, and in half a century they will be subjected again.
Therefore the Son of Man did not come to free the world by
legislation.
3. It might be done by civilization. Civilization does free
intellect equalizes. Every step of civilization is a victory
over some lower instinct. But civilization contains within
itself the elements of a fresh servitude. Man conquers the
powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave. The
workman is in bondage to the machinery which does his
will : his hours, his wages, his personal habits determined by
k. The rich man fills his house with luxuries, and can not do
without them. A highly civilized community is a very
spectacle of servitude. Man is there a slave to dress, to
hours, to manners, to conventions, to etiquette. Things con-
trived to make his life more easy become his masters.
Therefore Jesus did not talk of the progress of the species
nor the growth of civilization, He did not trust the world's
hope of liberty to a right division of property. But he freed
the inner man, that so the outer might become free too.
" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make yon
free."
I. The truth that liberates.
II. The liberty which truth gives.
The truth which Christ taught was chiefly on these three
points : God man immortality.
First, God. Blot out the thought of God, a living person,
and life becomes mean, existence unmeaning, the universe
dark, and resolve is left without a stay, aspiration and duty
without a support.
Freedom by the Truth. 211
The Son exhibited God as love : and so that fearful .bond,
age of the mind to the necessity of fate was broken. A liv-
ing Lord had made the world, and its dark and unintelligible
mystery meant good, not evil. He manifested Him as a
Spirit ; and if so, the only worship that could please Him
must be a spirit's worship. Not by sacrifices is God pleased,
nor by droned litanies and liturgies, nor by fawning and flat-
tery, nor is his wrath bought off by blood. Thus was the
chain of superstition rent asunder ; for superstition is wrong
views of God, exaggerated or inadequate, and wrong concep-
tions of the way to please Him.
And so when the woman of Samaria brought the conver-
sation to that old ecclesiastical question about consecrated
buildings, whether on Mount Gerizim or on Mount Moriah
God was the more acceptably adored, He cut the whole
conversation short by the enunciation of a single truth:
" God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit and in truth."
2. Truth respecting man.
We are a mystery to ourselves. Go to any place where
nations have brought together their wealth and their inven-
tions, and before the victories of mind you stand in rever-
ence. Then stop to look at the passing crowds who have
attained that civilization. Think of their low aims, their
mean lives, their conformation only a little higher than that
of brute creatures, and a painful sense of degradation steals
upon you. So great, and yet so mean ! And so of individu-
als. There is not one here whose feelings have not been
deeper than we can fathom, nor one who "would venture to
tell out to his brother man the me-an, base thoughts that have
crossed his heart during the last hour. Now this riddle He
solved He looked on man as fallen, but magnificent in his
ruin. We, catching that thought from Him, speak as He
spoke. But none that were born of woman ever felt this or
lived this like Him. Beneath the vilest outside He saw this :
a human soul, capable of endless growth ; and thence He
treated with what for want of a better term we may call
respect, all who approached Him ; not because they were
titled Rabbis or rich Pharisees, but because they were men.
Here was a germ for freedom. It is not the shackle on
the wrist that constitutes the slave, but the /oss of self-re-
spect to be treated as degraded till he feels degraded to
be subjected to the lash till he believes that he deserves the
lash : and liberty is to suspect and yet reverence self to
suspect the tendency which leaves us ever on the brink of
fall to reverence that within ur which is allied to God, re*
212 Freedom by the Truth.
deemed by God the Son, and made a temple of the Holy
Ghost.
Perhaps we have jseen an insect or reptile imprisoned in
wood or stone. How it got there is unknown how the
particles of wood in years, or of stone in ages, grew round
it, is a mystery, but not a greater mystery than the question
of how man became incarcerated in evil. At last the day of
emancipation came. The axe-stroke was given: and the
light came in, and the warmth ; and the gauze wings ex-
panded, and the eye looked bright ; and the living thing
stepped forth, and you saw that there was not its home. Its
home was the free air of heaven.
Christ taught that truth of the human soul. It is not in
its right place. It never is in its right place in the dark
prison-house of sin. Its home is freedom and the breath of
God's life.
3. Truth respecting immortality.
He taught that this life is not all : that it is only a miser-
able state of human infancy. He taught that in words : by
His life, and by His resurrection.
This, again, was freedom. If there be a faith that cramps
and enslaves the soul, it is the idea that this life is all. If
there be one that expands and elevates, it is the thought of
immortality : and this, observe, is something quite distinct
from the selfish desire of happiness. It is not to enjoy, but
to be, that we long for. To enter into more and higher life :
a craving which we can only part with when we sink below
humanity, and forfeit it.
This was the martyrs' strength. They were tortured, not
accepting deliverance, that they might attain a better resur-
rection. In that hope, and the knowledge of that truth, they
were free from the fear of pain and death.
II. The nature of the liberty which truth gives.
1. Political freedom.
It was our work last Sunday to show that Christianity
does not directly interfere with political questions. But we
should have only half done our work if we had not also
learned that, mediately and indirectly, it must influence
them. Christ's Gospel did not promise political freedom,, yet
it gave it : more surely than conqueror, reformer, or patriot,
that Gospel will bring about a true liberty at last.
And this, not by theories nor by schemes of constitutions,
but by the revelation of truths. God a Spirit : man His
child, redeemed and sanctified. Before that spiritual equali-
ty, all distinctions between peer and peasant, monarch and
Freedom by the Truth. 2 \ 3
laborer, privileged and unprivileged, vanish. A better man,
or a wiser man than I, is in my presence, and I feel it a mock-
ery to be reminded that I am his superior in rank.
Let us hold that truth ; let us never weary of proclaiming
it ; and the truth shall make us free at last.
2. Mental independence.
Slavery is that which cramps powers. The worst slavery
is that which cramps the noblest powers. Worse, therefore,
than he who manacles the hands and feet, is he who puts
fetters on the mind, and pretends to demand that men shall
think, and believe, and feel thus arid thus, because others so
believed, and thought, and felt before.
In Judea life was become a set of forms, and religion a
congeries of traditions. One living word from the lips of
Christ, and the mind of the world was free.
Later, a mountain mass of superstition had gathered
round the Church, atom by atom, and grain by grain. Men
said that the soul was saved only by doing and believing
what the priesthood taught. Then the heroes of the Refor-
mation spoke. They said the soul of man is saved by the
grace of God : a much more credible hypothesis. Once
more' the mind of the world was made free, and made free
by truth.
There is a tendency in the masses always to think not
what is true, but what is respectable, correct, orthodox :
we ask, is that authorized ? It comes partly from cowardice,
partly from indolence, from habit, from imitation, from the
uncertainty and darkness of all moral truths, and the dread
of timid minds to plunge into the investigation of them.
Now, truth known and believed respecting God and man
frees from this, by warning of individual responsibility.
But responsibility is personal. It can not be delegated to
another, and thrown off upon a church. Before God, face
to face, each soul must stand to give account.
Do not, however, confound mental independence with men-
tal pride. It may, it ought to coexist with the deepest hu-
mility. For that mind "alone is free which, conscious ever
of its own feebleness, feeling hourly its own liability to err,
turning thankfully to light from whatever side it may come,
does yet refuse to give up that right with which God has in-
vested it of judging, or to abrogate its own responsibility,
and so humbly, and even awfully, resolves to have an opin-
ion, a judgment, a decision of its own.
3. Superiority to temptation.
It is not enough to define the liberty which Christ prom-
ises as freedom from sin. Many circumstances will exempt
214 Freedom by the Truth.
from sin which do not yet confer that liberty "where the
Spirit of the Lord is." Childhood, paralysis, ill health, the
impotence of old age may remove the capacity and even the
desire of transgression ; but the child, the paralytic, the old
man, are not free through the truth.
Therefore, to this definition we must add, that one whom
Christ liberates is free by his own will. It is not that he
would and can not ; but that he can, and will not. Christian
liberty is right will, sustained by love, and made firm by
faith in Christ.
This may be seen by considering the opposite of liberty
moral bondage. Go to the intemperate man in the morn-
ing, when his head aches, his hand trembles, his throat burns,
and his whole frame is relaxed and unstrung : he is ashamed,
he hates his sin, and would not do it. Go to him at night,
when the power of habit is on him like a spell, and he obeys
the mastery of his craving. He can use the language of
Romans vii. : " That which he would, he does not " but the
evil thatvhe hates, that does he." Observe, he is not in pos-
session of a true self. It is not he, but sin which dwelleth in
him, that does it. A power which is not himself, which is not
he, commands him against himself. And that is slavery.
This is a gross case, but in every more refined instance the
slavery is just as real. Wherever a man would and can not,
there is servitude. He may be unable to control his expend-
iture, to rouse his indolence, to check his imagination.
Well, he is not free. He may boast, as the Jews did, that
he is Abraham's son, or any other great man's son that he
belongs to a free country that he never was in bondage to
any man, but free in the freedom of the Son he is not.
4. Superiority to fear.
Fear enslaves, courage liberates and that always. What-
ever a man intensely dreads, that brings him into bondage,
if it be above the fear of God and the reverence of duty.
The apprehension of pain, the fear of death, the dread of the
world's laugh, of poverty, or the loss of reputation, enslave
alike.
From such fear Christ frees, and through the power of
the truths I have spoken of. He who lives in the habitual
contemplation of immortality can not be in boodage to time,
or enslaved by transitory temptations. I do not. say he will
not ; " he can not sin," saith the Scripture, while that faitb is
living. He who feels his soul's dignity, knowing what he is
and who, redeemed by God the Son, and freed by God the
Spirit, can not cringe, nor pollute himself, nor be mean. He
who aspires to gaze undazzled on the intolerable brightness
f UNIVERSITY j
Freedom by the 7>^& '2 1 5
of that One before whom Israel veiled their faces, will
scarcely quail before any earthly fear.
This is not picture-painting. This is not declamation.
These are things that have been. There have been men on
this earth of God's, of whom it was simply true that it was
easier to turn the sun from its course than them from the
paths of honor. There have been men like John the Baptist,
who could speak the truth which had made their own spirits
free, with the axe above their neck. There have been men,
redeemed in their inmost being by Christ, on whom tyrants
and mobs have done their worst, and when, like Stephen, the
stones crashed in upon their brain, or when their flesh hissed
and crackled in the flames, were calmly superior "to it all.
The power of evil had laid its shackles on the flesh, but the
mind, and the soul, and the heart were free.
We conclude with two inferences :
1. To cultivate the love of truth. I do not mean veracity :
that is another thing. Veracity is the correspondence be-
tween a proposition and a man's belief. Truth is the corre-
spondence of the proposition with fact. The love of truth is
the love of realities the determination to rest upon facts,
and not upon semblances. Take an illustration of the way
in which the habit of cultivating truth is got. Two boys see
a misshapen, hideous object in the dark. One goes up to the
cause of his terror, examines it, learns what it is ; he knows
the truth, and the truth has made him free. The other leaves
it in mystery and unexplained vagueness, and is a slave for
life to superstitions and indefinite terrors. Romance, pretti-
ness, " dim religious light," awe and mystery these are not
the atmosphere of Christ's gospel of liberty. Base the heart
on facts. The truth alone can make you free.
2. See what a Christian is. Our society is divided into
two classes those who are daring, inquisitive, but restrain-
ed by no reverence, and kept back by little religion ; those
who may be called religious : but, with all their excellences,
we can not help feeling that the elements of their character
are feminine rather than masculine, and that they have no
grasp or manly breadth, that their hold is on feeling rather
than on truth.
Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ.
He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the
stamp of truth : one whose very eye beams bright with hon-
or; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom,
manliness, veracity ; a brave man a noble man frank, gen-
erous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom
may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form
2 1 6 The Kingdom of the Truth.
of meanness never. Young men, if you have been deterred
from religion by its apparent feebleness and narrowness, re-
member, it is a manly thing to be a Christian.
XX.
THE KINGDOM OF THE TRUTH.
" Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then ? Jesus answered,
Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause
came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one
that is of the tuith heareth my voice." John xviii. 37.
THE Church is the kingdom of God on earth, and the whole
fabric of the Christian religion rests on the monarchy of
Christ. The Hebrew prisoner who stood before the Roman
judge claimed to be the King of men, and eighteen centuries
have only verified His claim. There is not a man bearing
the Christian name who does not, in one form or another, ac-
knowledge Him to be the Sovereign of his soul. The ques-
tion therefore at once suggests itself On what title does this
claim rest ?
Besides the title on which the Messiah grounded His pre-
tensions to be the Ruler of a kingdom, three are conceivable :
the title of force, the title of prescriptive authority, or the ti-
tle of incontrovertible reasoning.
Had the Messiah founded His kingdom upon the basis of
force, he would simply have been a rival of the Caesars. The
imperial power of Rome rested on that principle. This was all
that Pilate meant at first by the question, "Art thou a king ?"
As a Roman, he had no other conception of rule. Right
well had Rome fulfilled her mission as the iron kingdom
which was to command by strength, and give to the world
the principles of law. But that kingdom was wasting when
these words were spoken. For seven hundred years had the
empire been building itself up. It gave way at last, and was
crumbled into fragments by its own ponderous massiveness.
To use the language of the prophet Daniel, miry clay had mix-
ed with the kingdom of iron, and the softer nations which had
been absorbed into it broke down its once invincible strength
by corrupting and enervating its citizens ; the conquerors of
the world dropped the sword from a grasp grown nerveless.
The empire of strength was passing away ; for no kingdom
founded on force is destined to permanence. "They that
take the sword shall perish with the sword."
The Kingdom of the Truth. 2 1 7
Before Pontius Pilate Christ distinctly disclaimed this right
of force as* the foundation of his sovereignty. "If my king-
dom were of this world, then would my servants fight : but
now is .my kingdom not from hence."
The next conceivable basis of a universal kingdom is pre-
scriptive authority. The scribes and priests who waited out-
side for their victim conceived of such a kingdom. They
had indeed already an ecclesiastical' kingdom which dated
back far beyond the origin of Rome. They claimed to rule
on a title such as this : " It is written." But neither on this
title did the Saviour found His claim. He spoke lightly of
institutions which were venerable from age. He contravened
opinions which were gray with the hoar of ages. It may be
that at times He defended Himself on the authority of Moses,
by showing that what He taught was not in opposition to
Moses; but it is observable that He never rested His claims
as a teacher, or as the Messiah, on that foundation. The
scribes fell back on this : " It has been said ;" or, " It is writ-
ten." Christ taught, as the men of His day remarked, on an
authority very diiferent from that of the scribes. Not even
on His own authority : He did not claim that His words
should be recognized because He said them, but because they
were true. " If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me ?"
Prescription personal authority these were not the basis
of His kingdom.
One more possible title remains. He might have claimed
to rule over men on the ground of incontrovertible demon-
stration of His principles. This was the ground taken by ev-
ery philosopher who was the founder of a sect. Apparently,
after the failure of his first guess, Pilate thought in the sec-
ond surmise that this was what Jesus meant by calling Him-
self a king. When fie heard of a kingdom, he thought he
had before him a rival of Caasap ; but when truth was named,
he seems to have fancied that he was called to try a rival of
the philosophers some new candidate for a system some
new pretender of a truth which was to dethrone its rival sys-_
tern.
This seems to be implied in the bitter question, " What is
truth ?" For the history of opinion in those days was like
the history of opinion in our own religions against religions,
philosophies against philosophies religion and philosophy
opposed to one another the opinion of to-day dethroned by
the opinion of to-morrow the heterodoxy of this age reckon-
ed the orthodoxy of the succeeding one. And Pilate, feeling
the vainness and the presumption of these pretensions, having
lived to see failure after failure of systems which pretended tft
10
2 1 8 The Kingdom of the Truth.
teach that which is, smiled bitterly at the enthusiast who
again asserted confidently His claims to have discovered the
undiscoverable. There broke from his lips a bitter, half-sar-
castic, half-sad exclamation of hopeless skepticism, "What is
truth?"
And indeed had the Redeemer claimed this to overthrow
the doctrine of the Porch and of the Academy, and to en-
throne Christianity as a philosophy of life upon their ruins,
by mere argument, that skeptical cry would have been not
ill-timeql.
In these three ways have men attempted the propagation
of the Gospel. By force, when the Church ruled by persecu-
tion by prescriptive authority, when she claimed infallibili-
ty, or any modification of infallibility in the Popery of Rome
or the Popery of the pulpit by reasoning, in the age of
" evidences," when she only asked to have her proofs brought
forward and calmly heard, pledged herself to rule the world
by the conviction of the understanding, and laid deep and
broad the foundations of rationalism. Let us hear the claim
of the King Himself. He rested His royal rights on His tes-
timony to the truth. " Thou sayest, for I am a King (a more
correct translation) ; to this end was I born, to bear witness
to the truth." The mode in which the subjects of the king-
dom were brought beneath His sway was by assimilation.
" Every one that is of the truth, heareth My voice." These,
then, are our points:
I. The basis of the kingly rule of Christ.
II. The qualifications of the subjects of the kingdom.
I. The basis of the kingly rule of Christ.
Christ is a king in virtue of His being a witness to the
truth. "Thou sayest right, To this end was I born, and for
this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness
unto the truth."
Truth is used here in a sense equivalent to reality: for
- l truth " substitute reality, and it will become more intelligi-
ble. For " the truth " is an ambiguous expression, limited in
its application, meaning often nothing more than a theologi-
cal creed, or a few dogmas of a creed which this or that par-
ty have agreed to call "the truth." It would indeed fritter
down the majesty of the Redeemer's life to say that He was
a witness for the truth of any number of theological dogmas.
Himself His life were a witness to truth in the sense of re-
ality. The realities of life the realities of the universe to
these His every act and word bore testimony. He was as
much a witness to the truth of tlie purity of domestic life aa
The Kingdom of the Truth. 2 1 9
to the truth of the doctrine of the Incarnation : to the truth
of goodness being identical with greatness as much as to the
doctrine of the Trinity and more : His mind corresponded
with reality as the dial with the sun.
Again, in being a witness to reality, we are to understand
something very much deeper than the statement that He
spoke truly. There is a wide difference between truthfulness
and mere veracity. Veracity implies a correspondence be-
tween words and thoughts : truthfulness, a correspondence
between thoughts and realities. To be veracious, it is only
necessary that a man give utterance to his convictions; to be
true, it is needful that his convictions have affinity with fact.
Let us take some illustrations of this distinction. The
prophet tells of men who put sweet for bitter, and bitter for
sweet : who call good evil, and evil good. Yet these were
veracious men ; for to them evil was good, and bitter was
sweet. There was a correspondence between their opinions
and their words : this was veracity. But there was no cor-
respondence between their opinions and eternal fact : this
was untruthfulness. They spoke their opinions truly, but
their opinions were not true. The Pharisees in the time of
Christ were men of veracity. What they thought they said.
They thought that Christ was an impostor. They believed
that to tithe mint, anise, and cummin was as acceptable to
God as to be just, and merciful, and true. It was their con
viction that they were immeasurably better than publicans
and profligates : yet veracious as they were, the title perpet-
ually affixed to them is, " Ye hypocrites." The life they led
being a false life, is called, in the phraseology of the Apostle
John, a lie.
If a man speak a careless slander against another, believ-
ing it, he has not sinned against veracity ; but the careless-
ness which has led him into so grave an error effectually
bars his claim to clear truthfulness. He is a veracious wit-
ness, but not a true one. Or a man may have taken up sec-
ond-hand, indolently, religious views : may believe them, de-
fend them vehemently, is he a man of truth ? Has he bowed
before the majesty of truth with that patient, reverential
humbleness which is the mark of those who love her?
Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in which every
one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he
thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the pal-
ace of truth. A palace of veracity, if you will, but no tem-
ple of the truth : a place where every one would be at liberty
to utter his own crude unrealities to bring forth his delu-
sions, mistakes, half-formed hasty judgments : where the de
22O The Kingdom of the Truth.
praved ear would reckon discord harmony, and the depraved
eye mistake color the depraved moral taste take Herod or
Tiberius for a king, and shout beneath the Redeemer's Cross,
"Himself He can not save." A temple of the truth ? Nay,
only a palace echoing with veracious falsehoods : a Babel
of confused sounds, in which egotism would rival egotism,
and truth would be each man's own lie. Far, far more is
implied here than that the Son of Man spoke veraciously, in
saying that He was a witness to the truth.
Again, when it is said that He was a witness to the truth,
it is implied that His very being, here, manifested to the
world Divine realities. Human nature is but meant to be a
witness to the Divine ; the true humanity is a manifestation
or reflection of God. And that is Divine humanity in
which the humanity is a perfect representation of the Divine.
"We behold," says the Apostle Paul, in Christ, "as in a
glass, the glory of the Lord." And, to borrow and carry on
the metaphor, the difference between Christ and other men
is this ; they are imperfect reflections, He a perfect one, of
God.
There are mirrors which are concave, which magnify the
thing that they reflect : there are mirrors convex, which di-
minish it. And we in like manner represent the Divine in a
false, distorted way. Fragments of truth torn out of connec-
tion, snatches of harmony joined without unity. We exag-
gerate and diminish till all becomes untrue. We bring forth
our own fancies, our own idiosyncrasies, our own imagina-
tions, and the image of God can be no longer recognized.
In One alone has the Divine been so blended with the
human, that, as the ocean mirrors every star and every tint
of blue upon the sky, so was the earthly life of Christ the
life of God on earth.
Now, observe, that the perfection of humanity consists in
faithful imitation of, or witness borne to, the mind and life of
God. Whoever has studied and understood the life of Christ
will have remarked, not without surprise, that the whole
principle of His existence was the habit of unceasing imita-
tion. Listen to a few instances of this.
" The Son can do nothing of Himself, but that which He
geeth the Father do." " The words which I speak I speak
not of myself, but the Father which is with me, He doeth
the works." Do we remember the strange and startling
principle on which He defends His infraction of the literal,
legal Sabbath ? " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."
God the Father works all the sabbath-day. So may man,
His son. Do we recollect the ground on which He enforces
The Kingdom of the Truth. , 221
forgiveness of injuries ? A strange ground, surely, which
would never have occurred except to One whose life was
habitual imitation. " Love your enemies ; do good to them
that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you
and persecute you : that ye may be the children of (that is,
resemble) your Father ; . . . for He sendeth His rain upon the
just and upon the unjust."
This, then, is man's this was the Son of Man's relation to
the truth. Man is but a learner a devout recipient of a
revelation here to listen with open ear devoutly for that*
which he shall hear ; to gaze and watch for that which He
shall see. Man can do no more. He can not create truth,
he can only bear witness to it ; he has no proud right of
private judgment, he can only listen and report that which
is in the universe. If he does not repeat and witness to
that, he speaketh of his own, and forthwith ceaseth to be
true. He is a liar, and the father of it, because he creates it.
Each man in his 'vocation is in the world to do this: as
truly as it was said by Christ rnay it be said by each of us,
even by those from whose trades and professions it seems
most alien, " To this end was I born, and for this cause
came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth."
The architect is here to be a witness. He succeeds only
so far as he is a witness, and a true one. The lines and
curves, the acanthus on his column, the proportions, all are
successful and beautiful only so far as they are true the
report of an eye which has lain open to God's world. If he
build his light-house to resist the storm, the law of imitation
bids him build it after the shape of the spreading oak which
has defied the tempest. If man construct the ship which is
to cleave the waters, calculation or imitation builds it on the
model upon which the Eternal Wisdom has already con-
structed the fish's form.
The artist is a witness to the truth, or he will never attain
the beautiful. So is the agriculturist, or he will never reap
a harvest. So is the statesman, building up a nation's polity
ou the principles which time has proved true, or else all his
work crumbles down in revolution : for national revolution
is only the Divine rejection stamped on the social falsehood
which can not stand. In every department of life, man
must work truly as a witness. He is born for that, noth-
ing else : and nothing else can he do. Man the Son can do
nothing of Himself, but that which He seeth God the Father
do.
This was the Saviour's title to be a king, and His king-
dom formed itself upon this law : " Every one that is of the
222 The Kingdom of the Truth.
truth heareth iny voice :" that eternal law which makes
truth assimilate all that is congenial to itself. Truth is like
life : whatever lives absorbs into itself all that is congenial.
The leaf that trembles in the wind assimilates the light of
heaven to make its color, and the sap of the parent stem,
innumerable influences from heaven, and earth, and air, to
make up its beautiful being.
So grew the Church of Christ round Him, as a centre,
attracted by the truth : all that had in it harmony with His
Divine life and words grew to Him (by gradual accretions) ;
clung to Him as the iron to the magnet. All that were of
His Spirit believed : all that had in them the Spirit of Sacri-
fice were attracted to His Cross. " I, if I be lifted up, will
draw all men unto me."
He taught not by elaborate trains of argument, like a
scribe or a philosopher : He uttered His truths rather as
detached intuitions, recognized by intuition, to be judged
only by being felt. For instance, " Blessed are the pure in
heart : for they shall see God." " It is more blessed to give
than to receive." " Blessed are ye when men shall revile
you, and persecute you." Prove that by force by au-
thority by argument you can not. It suffices that a man
reply, " It is not so to me : it is more blessed to receive than
it is to give." You have no reply : if he be not of the
truth, you can not make him hear Christ's voice. The truth
of Christ is true to the unselfish ; a falsehood to the selfish.
They that are of the truth, like Him, hear His voice : and if
you ask the Christian's proof of the truth of such things, he
has no other than this : It is true to me, as any other intui-
tive truth is true ; equals are equal, because my mind is so
constituted that they seem so perforce. Purity is good, be-
cause my heart is so made that it feels it to be good.
Brother men, the truer you are, the humbler, the nobler,
the more will you feel Christ to be your king. You may be
very little able to prove the king's Divine genealogy, or to
appreciate those claims to your allegiance which arise out
of His eternal generation : but He will be your Sovereign
and your Lord by that affinity of character which compels
you to acknowledge His words and life to be Divine. " He
that receiveth His testimony hath set to his seal that God is
true."
II. We pass to the consideration of the qualification of the
subjects .of the empire of the truth. Who are they that are
of the truth.
1. The first qualification is to be true : " He that is of the
The Kingdom of Ike Truth. 223
truth heareth My voice." Truth lies in character. Christ
did not simply speak truth : He was truth : true through
and through ; for truth is a thing, not of words, but of life
and being. None but a Spirit can be true.
For example. The friends of Job spoke words of truth.
Scarcely a maxim which they uttered could be impugned :
cold, hai'4, theological verities : but verities out of place, in
that place cruel and untrue. Job spoke many words not
strictly accurate hasty, impetuous, blundering, wrong; but
the whirlwind came, and, before the voice of God, the vera-
cious falsehoods were swept into endless nothingness: the
true man, wrong, perplexed in verbal error, stood firm : he
was true though his sentences were not : turned to the truth
as the sunflower to the sun : as the darkened plant impris-
oned in the vault turns towards the light, struggling to
solve the fearful enigma of his existence. Job was a servant
of the truth, being true in character.
2. The next qualification is integrity. But by integrity I
do not mean simply sincerity or honesty; integrity rather
according- to the meaning of the word as its derivation inter-
prets it entireness wholeness soundness: that which
Christ means when He says, " If thine eye be single [or
sound], thy whole body shall be full of light."
This integrity extends through the entireness or whole-
ness of the character. It is found in small matters as well
as great ; for the allegiance of the soul to truth is tested by
small things rather than by those which are more important.
There is many a man who would lose his life rather than
perjure himself in a court of justice, whose life is ye*t a tis-
sue of small insincerities. We think that we hate falsehood
when we are only hating the consequences of falsehood.
We resent hypocrisy and treachery and calumny, not be-
cause they are untrue, but because they harm us. We hate
the false calumny, but we are half pleased with the false
praise. It is evidently not the element of untruth here that
is displeasing, but the element of harmfulness. Now he is a
man of integrity who hates untruth as untruth : who resents
the smooth and polished falsehood of society which does no
harm : who turns in indignation from the glittering whiten
ed lie of sepulchral Pharisaism which injures no one. Integ-
rity recoils from deceptions which men would almost smile
to hear called deception. To a moral, pure mind, the arti-
fices in every department of life are painful : the stained
wood which passes for a more firm and costly material in a
building, and deceives the eye by seeming what it is not,
marble : the painting which is intended to be taken for a re
224 The Kingdom of the Truth.
ality : the gilding which is meant to pass for gold : and the
glass which is worn to look like jewels ; for there is a moral
feeling and a truthfulness in architecture, in painting, and in
dress, as well as in the market-place, and in the senate, and
in the judgment-hall.
" These are trifles." Yes, these are trifles but it is just
these trifles which go to the formation of character. He
that is habituated to deceptions and artificialities in trifles,
Hvill try in vain to be true in matters of importance : foi
truth is a thing of habit rather than of will. You can not in
any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be
true, if the habit of your life has been insincerity. And it is
a fearful question and a difficult one, how all these things,
the atmosphere which we breathe of our daily life, may sap
the very foundations of the power of becoming a servant of
the truth. Life becomes fictitious : and it passes into religion,
till our very religion bases itself upon a figment too. We
are not righteous, but we expect God to make believe that
we are righteous, in virtue of some peculiar doctrines which
we hold ; and so our very righteousness becomes the ficti*
tious righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, instead of
the righteousness which is by faith, the righteousness of
those who are the children of the kingdom of the truth.
3. Once more. He alone is qualified to be the subject of
the King who does the truth. Christianity joins two things
inseparably together: acting truly, and perceiving truly.
Every day the eternal nature of that principle becomes
more certain. If any man will do His will, he shall know of
the doctrine whether it be of God.
It is a perilous thing to separate feeling from acting ; to
have learnt to feel rightly without acting rightly. It is a
danger to which in a refined and polished age, we are pecul-
iarly exposed. The romance, the poem, and the sermon,
teach us how to feel. Our feelings are delicately correct.
But the danger is this : feeling is given to lead to action ;
if feeling be suffered to awake without passing into duty,
the character becomes untrue. When the emergency for
real action comes, the feeling is as usual produced : but ac-
customed as it is to rise in fictitious circumstances" without
action, neither will it lead on to action in the real ones.
" We pity wretchedness and shun the wretched." We utter
sentiments, just, honorable, refined, lofty but somehow,
when a truth presents itself in the shape of a duty, we are
unable to perform it. And so such characters become by
degrees like the artificial pleasure-grounds of bad taste, in
which the waterfall does not fall, and the grotto offers only
The Kingdom of the Truth. 225
the refreshment of an imaginary shade, and the green hill
does not strike the skies, and the tree does not grow. Their
lives are a sugared crust of sweetness trembling over black
depths of hollowness : more truly still, " whited sepulchres"
fair without to look upon, " within full of all uncleanness."
It is perilous, again, to separate thinking rightly from act-
,ing rightly. He is already half false who speculates on truth
and does not do it. Truth is given, not to be contemplated,
but to be done. Life is an action not a thought. And the
penalty paid by him who speculates on truth, is that by de-
grees the very truth he holds becomes to him a falsehood.
There is no truthfulness, therefore, except in the witness
borne to God by doing His will to live the truths we hold,
or else they will be no truths at all It was thus that He
witnessed to the truth. He lived it. He spoke no touching
truths for sentiment to dwell on, or thought to speculate upon.
Truth with Him was a matter of life and death. He periled
His life upon the words He said. If He were true, the life
of men was a painted life, and the woes He denounced un-
flinchingly would fall upon the Pharisees. But \fthey were
true, or even strong, His portion in this life was the Cross.
Who is a true man ? He who does the truth ; and never
holds a principle on which he is not prepared in any hour to
act, and in any hour to risk the consequences of holding it.
I make in conclusion one remark. The kingly character
of truth is exhibited strikingly in the calmness of the bearing
of the Son of Man before His judge. Veracity is not neces-
sarily dignified. There is a vulgar effrontery a spirit of
defiance which .taunts, and braves, and challenges coriderrfna-
tion. It marks the man who is conscious of sincerity, but of
nothing higher whose confidence is in himself and his own
honesty, and who is absorbed in the feeling, " I speak the
truth and am a martyr." Again, the man of mere veracity
is often violent, for what he says rests upon his own asser-
tion : and vehemence of assertion is the only addition he can
make to it. Such was the violence of Paul before Ananias.
He was indignant at the injustice of being smitten contrary
to the law ; and the powerlessness of his position, the hope-
lessness of redress, joined to a conviction of the truth of what
he said, produced that vehemence.
It has been often remarked that there is a great difference
between theological and scientific controversy. Theologians
are proverbially vituperative : because it is a question of ve-
racity : the truth of their views, their moral perceptions,
their intellectual acumen. There exists no test but argu-
ment on which they can fall back. If argument fails, all fails,
10*
226 *Tke Skepticism of Pilate.
But the man of science stands calmly on the facts of the uni
verse. He is based upon reality. All the opposition and
controversy in the world can not alter facts, nor prevent the
facts being manifest at last. He can be calm, because he is
a witness for the Truth.
In the same way, but in a sense far deeper and more sa-
cred, the Son of Man stood calm, rooted in the Truth. There
was none of the egotism of self-conscious veracity in those
placid, confident, dignified replies. This was not the feeling
"I hold the truth," but "I am witness to the truth."
They might spit upon Him kill Him crucify Him give
His ashes to the winds they could not alter the Truth by
which He stood. Was not that His own feeling ? " Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass
away."
There was the kingly dignity of One who, in life and
death, stood firm on truth as on a rock.
In the name of Christ, I respectfully commend these
thoughts for the special consideration of the present week,
to those who will be pledged by oath to witness to the
whole truth they know, and nothing but the truth : to those
who permitted by the merciful spirit of English jurispru-
dence, to watch that their client, if condemned, shall be con-
demned only according to the law are yet not justified by
the spirit of the life of Christ in falsifying or obscuring facts;
and who, owing a high duty to a client, owe one higher to
the Truth : and lastly, to those whom the severe intellectual,
and, much more, moral training of the English bar has quali-
fied for the high office of disentangling truth from the mazes
of conflicting testimony.
From the trial-hour of Christ from the Cross of the Son
of God there arises the principle to which all His life bore
witness, that the first lesson of Christian life is this, Be true
and the second this, Be true and the third this, Be true.
XXI.
THE SKEPTICISM OF PILATE.
"Pilate saith unto him, What is truth ?" John xviii. 38.
THE lesson which we are to draw from this verse must
depend upon the view we take of the spirit in which the
words were spoken. Some of the best commentators con-
The Skepticism of Pilate. 227
ceive them to have been words of mockery : and such is the
great Lord Bacon's view. " ' What is truth ?' said jesting
Pilate, and would not wait for a reply."
In all deference to such authority, we can not believe that
this sentence was spoken in jest. In Pilate's whole conduct
there is no trace of such a tone. It betrays throughout
much of uncertainty, nothing of lightness. He was cruelly
tormented with the perplexity of efforts to save his prisoner.
He risked his own reputation. He pronounced Him, almost
with vehemence, to be innocent. He even felt awe, and was
afraid of Him. In such a frame of mind, mockery was im-
possible.
Let us try to comprehend the character of the man who
asked this question. His character will help us to judge the
tone in which he asked. And his character, the character of
his mind and life, are clear enough from the few things re-
corded of him. He first hears what the people have to say;
then asks the opinion of the priests then comes back to Je-
sus goes again to the priests and people lends his ear
listens to the ferocity on the one hand, and feels the beau-
ty on the other, balancing between them ; and then he be-
comes bewildered, as a man of the world is apt to do who
has had no groundwork of religious education, and hears su-
perficial discussions on religious matters, and superficial
charges, and superficial slanders, till he knows not what to
think. What co?/&/come out of such procedure? Nothing
but that cheerlessness of soul to which certainty respecting
any thing and every thing here on earth seems unattainable.
This is the exact mental state which we call skepticism.
Out of that mood, when he heard the enthusiast before him
speak of a kingdom of the truth, there broke a sad, bitter,
sarcastic sigh, " What is truth?" Who knows any thing
about it ? Another discoverer of the undiscoverable ! Jest-
ing Pilate ! with Pilate the matter was beyond a jest. It
was not a question put for the sake of information : for he
went immediately out, and did not stay for information. It
was not put for the sake of ridicule, for he went out to say,
"I find no fault in Him." Sarcasm there was perhaps: but
it was that mournful, bitter sarcasm which hides inward un-
rest in sneering words: that sad irony whose very laugh
rings of inward wretchedness. We shall pursue, from this
question of Pilate, two lines of thought.
I. The causes of Pilate's skepticism.
II. The way appointed for discovering what is truth.
I. The causes and among these I name first, indecision of
228 The Skepticism of Pilate.
character. Pilate's whole behavior was a melancholy exhi
bition. He was a thing set up for the world's pity. See how
lie acts : he first throws the blame on the priests and then
acknowledges that all responsibility is his own : washes his
hands before the multitude, saying, " I am innocent of the
blood of this just person. See ye to it." And then " Know-
est thou not that /have power to crucify thee, and power to
release thee?" He pronounces Jesus innocent; and then, with
wondrous inconsistency, delivers Him to be scourged: yields
Him up to be crucified, and then tries every underhand ex-
pedient to save Him.
What is there in all this but vacillation of character lying
at the root of unsettledness of opinion ? Here is a man
knowing the right and doing the wrong not willing to do
an act of manifest injustice if he can avoid it, but hesitating
to prevent it, for fear of a charge against himself pitiably
vacillating because his hands were tied by the consciousness
of past guilt and personal danger. How could such a man
be certain about any thing ? What could a mind, wavering,
unstable, like a feather on the wind, know or believe of solid,
stable truth, which altereth not, but remaineth like a rock
amidst the vicissitudes of the ages and the changeful fash-
ions of the minds of men ? "A double-minded man is un-
stable in all his ways." " He that is of the truth, heareth
the voice of truth." To the untrue man all things are untrue.
To the vacillating man, who can not know his own mind, all
things seem alterable, changeful, unfixed ; just as to the man
tossed at sea, all things motionless in themselves seem to
move round, upward, downward, or around, according to his
own movements.
2d. Falseness to his own convictions.
Pilate had'a conviction that Jesus was innocent. Instead
of acting at once on that, he went and parleyed. He argued
and debated till the practical force of the conviction was un-
settled.
Now let us distinguish : I do not say that a man is never
to re-examine a question once settled. A great Christian
writer, whose works are very popular, has advised that when
a view has once been arrived at as true, it should be, as it
were, laid on the shelf, and never again looked on as an open
question : but surely this is false. A young man of twenty-
three, with such light as he has, forms his views : is he never
to have more light? Is he never to open again the questions
which his immature mind has decided on once ? Is he never
in manhood, with manhood's data and manhood's experience,
to modify, or even reverse, what once seemed the very truth
The Skepticism of Pilate. 229
itself? Nay, my brethren the weak pride of consistency,
the cowardice which dares not say I have been wrong all my
life, the false anxiety which is fostered to be true to our prin-
ciples rather than to make sure that our principles aie true,
all this would leave in Romanism the man who is born a Ro-
manist. It is not so : the best and bravest have struggled
from error into truth : they listened to their honest doubts,
and tore up their old beliefs by the very roots.
Distinguish, however. A man may unsettle the verdict of
his intellect : it is at his peril that he tampers with the con-
victions of his conscience. Every opinion and view must re*
main an open question, freely to be tried with fresh light.
But there are eternal truths of right and wrong, such as the
plain moralities and instinctive decencies of social life, upon
which it is perilous to argue. There are plain cases of im-
mediate duty where it is only safe to act at once.
Now Pilate was false to his conscience. His conviction was
that Jesus was innocent. It was not a matter of speculation
or probability at all, nor a matter in which fresh evidence
was even expected, but a case sifted and examined thorough-
ly. The Pharisees are persecuting a guiltless man. His
claims to royalty are not the civil crime which they would
make out. Every charge has fallen to the ground. The
clear mind of the Roman procurator saw that, as in sunlight,
and he did not try to invalidate that judicial conviction. He
tried to get rid of the clear duty which resulted from it.
Now it is a habit such as this which creates the temper of
skepticism.
I address men of a speculative turn of mind. There is
boundless danger in all inquiry which is merely curious.
When a man brings a clear and practised intellect to try
questions, by the answer to which he does not mean to rule
his conduct, let him not marvel if he feels, as life goes on, a
sense of desolation ; existence a burden, and all uncertain.
It is the law of his human nature which binds him ; for truth
is for the heart rather than the intellect. If it is not done it
becomes unreal as gloomily unreal and as dreamily impal-
pable as it was to Pilate.
3d. The third cause of Pilate's skepticism was the taint of
the worldly temper of his day. Pilate had been a public
man. He knew life : had mixed much with the world's busi-
ness,*and the world's politics: had come across a multiplicity
of opinions, and gained a smattering of them all. He knew
how many philosophies and religions pretended to an exclu-
sive possession of truth, and how the pretensions of each were
overthrown by another. And his incredulity was but a spec-
230 The Skepticism of Pilate.
imen of the skepticism fashionable in his day. The polished
skepticism of a polished, educated Roman, a sagacious man
of the world, too much behind the scenes of public life to
trust professions of goodness or disinterestedness, or to be-
lieve in enthusiasm and a sublime life. And his merciful lan-
guage, and his desire to save Jesus, was precisely the liberal-
ism current in our days as in his an utter disbelief in the
truths of a world unseen, but at the same time an easy, care-
less toleration, a half-benevolent, half-indolent unwillingness
to molest the poor dreamers who chose to believe in such su-
perstitions.
This is the superficial liberalism which is contracted, in
public life. Public men contract a rapid way of discussing
and dismissing the deepest questions never going deep
satisfied with the brilliant flippancy which treats religious
beliefs as phases of human delusion, seeing the hollowness of
the characters around them, and believing that all is hollow ;
and yet not without their moments of superstition, as when
Pilate was afraid, hearing of a Son of God, and connecting ijb
doubtless with the heathen tales of gods who had walked
this earth in visible flesh and blood which he had laughed at,
and w r hich he now for one moment suspected might be true ;
not without their moments of horrible insecurity, when the
question, " What is truth ?" is not a brilliant sarcasm, but a
sarcasm on themselves, on human life, on human nature,
wrung out of the loneliest and darkest bewilderment that can
agonize a human soul.
To such a character Jesus would not explain His truth.
He gave no reply : He held His peace. God's truth is too
sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its tran-
sient fit of earnestness.
4th. Lastly, I assign, as a cause of skepticism, that priestly
bigotry which forbids inquiry and makes doubt a crime.
^The priests of that day had much to answer for. Consider
for a moment the state of things. One of whom they only
knew that He was a man of unblemished life came forward
to proclaim the truth. But it was new; they had never
heard such views before; they were quite sure they had never
taught such, nor sanctioned such; and so they settled that
the thing was heresy. He had no accredited ordination.
"We know that God spake to Moses: as for this fellow we *
know not whence He is." Then they proceeded to bind that
decision upon others. A man was heard to say, " Why, what
evil hath he done?" Small offense enough, but it savored
of a dangerous candor towards a suspected man ; and in tha
priestly estimate, candor is the next step to heresy. "Thou
The Skepticism of Pilate. 2 3 1
wast altogether born in sin, and dost Thou teach us ? and
they cast him out of the synagogue." And so again with
Pilate: they stifled his soul's rising convictions with threats
and penalties " If thou let this man go, thou art not Cesar's
friend."
This was what they were always doing : they forbade all
inquiry, and made doubt of their decision a crime.
Now the results of this priestcraft were twofold. The first
result was seen in the fanaticism of the people who cried for
blood : the second, in the skepticism of Pilate. And these
are the two results which come from all claims to infallibility,
and all prohibition of inquiry. They make bigots of the fee-
ble-minded who can not think : cowardly bigots, who at the
bidding of their priests or ministers swell the ferocious cry
which forces a government, or a judge, or a bishop, to perse-
cute some opinion which they fear and hate ; turning private
opinion into civil crime : and they make skeptics of the acute
intellects which, like Pilate, see through their fallacies, and
like Pilate too, dare not publish their misgivings.
And it matters not in what form that claim to infallibility
is made : whether in the clear, consistent way in which Rome
asserts it, or whether in the inconsistent way in which church-
men make it for their church, or religious bodies for their
favorite opinions: wherever penalties attach to a conscien-
tious conviction, be they the penalties of the rack and flame,
or the penalties of being suspected, and avoided, and slan-
dered, and the slur of heresy affixed to the name, till all men
count him dangerous lest they too should be put out of the
synagogue ; and let every man who is engaged in persecuting
any opinion ponder it these two things must follow you
make fanatics, and you make skeptics ; believers you can not
make.
Therefore do we stand by the central protest and truth of
Protestantism. There is infallibility nowhere on this earth :
not in Rome ; not in councils or convocations ; not in the
Church of England ; not in priests ; not in ourselves. The
soul is thrown in the grandeur of a sublime solitariness on
God. Woe to the spirit that stifles its convictions when
priests threaten, and the mob which they have maddened
cries heresy, and insinuates disloyalty " Thou art not Ce-
sar's friend."
II. The mode appointed for discovering the reply to the
question, " What is truth ?"
Observe I do not make our second division that which
might seem the natural one what truth is. I am not about
232 The Skepticism of Pilate.
to be guilty of the presumption of answering the question
which Jesus did not answer. Some persons hearing the text
might think it the duty of any man who took it as a text
to preach upon, to lay down what truth is : and if a minister
were so to treat it, he might give you the fragment of truth
which his own poor mind could grasp : and he might call it,
as the phrase is, The Truth, or The Gospel : and he might re-
quire his hearers to receive it on peril of salvation. And
then he would have done as the priests did ; and they who
lean on other minds would have gone away bigoted ; and
they who think would have smiled sadly, bitterly, or sarcas-
tically, and gone home to doubt still more, " What is truth,
and is it to be found ?"
No, my brethren! The truth can not be compressed into
a sermon. The reply to Pilate's question can not be con-
tained in any verbal form. Think you that if Christ Himself
could have answered that question in a certain number of
sentences, He would have spent thirty years of life in wit-
nessing to it ? Some men would compress into the limits of
one reply or one discourse the truth which it took Christ
thirty years to teach, and which He left unfinished for the
Spirit to complete.
One word more. The truth is infinite as the firmament
above you. In childhood, both seem near and measurable ;
but with years they grow and grow, and seem farther off,
and farther and grander, and deeper and vaster, as God Him-
self; till you smile to remember how you thought you could
touch the sky, and blush to recollect the proud and self-suf-
ficient way in which you used to talk of knowing or preach-
ing " the truth."
And once again : the truth is made up of principles : an in-
ward life, not any mere formula of word?. God's character
spiritual worship the Divine life in the soul. How shall
I put that into sentences ten or ten thousand ? " The words
which I speak unto you, they are truth, and they are life"
How could Pilate's question be answered except by a Life ?
The truth, then, which Pilate wanted which you want, and
I want is not the boundless verities, but truth of inward
life. Truth for me : Truth enough to guide me in this dark-
ling world : enough to teach me how to live and how to die.
Now the appointed ways to teach this Truth. They are
three : independence humbleness action.
First, Independence. Let no man start as if independence
savored of presumption. Protestant independence, they tell
us, is pride and self-reliance, but in truth it is nothing more
than a deep sense of personal responsibility ; a determination
The Skepticism of Pilate. 233
to trust in God rather than in man to teach : in God and
God's light in the soul. You choose a guide among preci-
pices and glaciers, but you walk for yourself; you judge his
opinion, though more experienced than your own ; you over
rule it if needs be; you use your own strength, you rely on
your own nerves. That is independence.
You select your own physician, deciding upon the respect-
ive claims of men, the most ignorant of whom knows more
of the matter than you. You prudently hesitate at times to
follow the advice of the one you trust most, yet that is only
independence without a particle of presumption.
And so precisely in matters of religious truth. No man
cares for your health as you do ; therefore you rely blindly
upon none. No man has the keeping of your own soul, or
cares for it as you do. For yourself, therefore, you inquire
and think, and you refuse to delegate that work to bishop,
priest, or church. Call they that presumption? Oh, the
man who knows the awful feeling of being alone, and strug-
gling for truth as for life and death, he knows the difference
between independence and presumption.
Second, Humbleness. There is no infallibility in man ; if
so, none in us. We may err : that one thought is enough to
keep a man humble. There are two kinds of temper contrary
to this spirit. The first is a disputing, captious temper.
Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to
compare their views to find out the truth. Controversy is
wretched when it is an attempt to prove one another wrong.
Therefore Christ would not argue with Pilate. Religious
controversy does only harm. It destroys the humble inquiry
after truth: it throws all the energies into an attempt to
prove ourselves right. The next temper contrary is a hope-
less spirit. Pilate's question breathed of hopelessness. He
felt that Jesus was unjustly condemned, but he thought Him
in views as hopelessly wrong as the rest: all were wrong.
What was truth? Who knew any thing about it? He
spoke too bitterly, too hopelessly, too disappointedly to get
an answer. In that despairing spirit no man gets at truth :
"The meek will He guide in judgment. . . ."
Lastly, Action. This was Christ's rule " If any man will
do His will. ..." A blessed rule : a plain and simple rule.
Here we are in a world of mystery, where all is difficult, and
very much dark where a hundred jarring creeds declare
themselves to be the truth, and all are plausible. How shall
a man decide ? Let him do the right that lies before him :
much is uncertain some things at least are clear. What-
ever else may be wrong, it must be right to be pure- -to be
234 7^ Skepticism of Pilate.
just and tender, and merciful and honest. It must be right
to love, and to deny one's self. Let him do the will of God,
and he shall know. Observe men begin the other way.
They say, If I could but believe, then I would make my life
true : if I could but be sure what is truth, then I would set
to work to live in earnest. No : God says, Act ; make the
life true, and then you will be able to believe. Live in ear-
nest, and you will know the answer to " What is truth ?"
Infer the blessedness of belief. Young men are prone to
consider skepticism a proof of strong-mindedness a some-
thing to be proud of. Let Pilate be a specimen and a
wretched one he is. He had clear-mindedness enough to be
dissatisfied with all the views he knew : enough to see
through and scorn the squabbles and superstitions of priests
and bigots. All well, if from doubt of falsehood he had gone
on to a belief in a higher truth. But doubt, when it left him
doubting why, he missed the noblest opportunity man ever
had that of saving the Saviour : he became a thing for the
people to despise, and after ages to pity. And that is skep-
ticism. Call you that a manly thing ?
To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched.
But I will not urge that. Seventy years and the most fe-
vered brain will be still enough. We will not say much of
the wretchedness of doubt. To believe is to- be strong.
Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a
man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do
any thing that is worth the doing.
I speak to those who have learned to hold cheap the
threats wherewith priests and people would terrify into ac-
quiescence to those who are beyond the appeal of fear, and
can only yield, if at all, to higher motives. Young men, the
only manly thing, the only strong thing, is faith. It is riot
so far as a man doubts, but so far as he believes, that he can
achieve or perfect any thing. "All things are possible to
him that believeth."
The Israelites Grave. 235
"XXII.
THE ISRAELITE'S GRAVE IN A FOREIGN LAND.*
" And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die ; and God will surely visit* you^
and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel,
saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.
So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old : and they embalmed
him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt." Gen. 1. 24-26.
THERE is a moment when a man's life is re-lived on earth.
It is in that hour in which the coffin-lid is shut down, just
before the funeral, when earth has seen the last of him for-
ever. Then the whole life is, as it were, lived over again in
the conversation which turns upon the memory of the de-
parted. The history of threescore years and ten is soon re-
capitulated : not, of course, the innumerable incidents and
acts which they contained, but the central governing princi-
ple of the whole. Feverish curiosity sometimes spends itself
upon the last hours : and a few correct sentences, implying
faith after the orthodox phraseology, would convey to some
greater hope than a whole life breathing the Spirit of Christ
* \This sermon was formerly published by the Author in a separate form,
and the following Preface to that publication explains so well the circumstances
under which all the other sermons have been preserved, that it has been thought
best to reprint the Preface herej\
"For the publication of the commonplace observations contained in the
following pages, the commonplace excuse may, perhaps, suffice, that printing
was the simplest way of multiplying copies for a few friends who desired
them. Perhaps, too, the uncommonness of the occasion may justify the
writer in giving to an ephemeral discourse an existence somewhat less tran-
sient than the minutes spent in listening to it.
"The sermon is published as nearly as possible as it was spoken. It was
written out concisely for a friend on the day of its delivery, with no intention
of publication. Afterwards, it seemed better to leave it in that state, with
only a few corrections, and the addition of a few sentences, than to attempt
to re-write it after an interval too great to recall what had been said. This
will account for the abruptness and want of finish which pervades the com-
position.
"The writer takes this opportunity of disowning certain sermons which
have been published in his name. They would not have been worth notice,
had not the innumerable blunders of thought and expression which they
contain been read and accepted by several as his. For this reason he feele
it due to himself to state that they are published without his sanction, and
against his request, and that he is'not responsible for either the language or
the ideas."
236 The Israelite's Grave.
separate from such sentences. But it is not thus the Bible
speaks. It tells us very little of the closing scene, but a
great deal of the general tenor of a life. In truth, the clos-
ing scene is worth very little. The felon, who, up to the last
fortnight, has shown his impenitence by the plea of not
guilty, in the short compass of that fortnight makes a con-
fession, as a matter of course exhibits the externals of peni
tence, and receives the Last Supper. But it would be ere
dulity, indeed, to be easily persuaded that the eternal state
of such an one is affected by it. A life of .holiness sometimes
mysteriously terminates in darkness ; but it is not the bitter-
est cries of forsakenness so often the result of physical ex-
haustion nor even blank despair, that shall shake our deep
conviction that he whose faith shone brightly through life is
now safe in the everlasting arms. The dying scene is worth
little little, at least, to us except so far as it is in harmo-
ny with the rest of life.
It is for this reason that the public estimate pronounced
upon the departed is generally a fair criterion of worth.
There are, of course, exceptional cases cases in which the
sphere of action has been too limited for the fair development
of the character, and nothing but the light of the judgment-
day can reveal it in its true aspect cases in which party
spirit has defaced a name, and years are wanted to wash
away the mask of false color which has concealed the genu-
ine features cases in which the champion of truth expires
amidst the execrations of his contemporaries, and after ages
build his sepulchre. These, however, are exceptions. For
the most part, when all is over, general opinion is not far
from truth. Misrepresentation and envy have no provoca-
tives left them. What the departed was is tolerably well-
known in the circle in which he moved. The epitaph may
be falsified by the partiality of relations ; but the broad judg-
ment of society reverses that, rectifies it, and pronounces with
perhaps a rude, but, on the whole, fair approximation to the
truth.
These remarks apply to the history of the man whose final
scene is recorded in the text. The verdict of the Egyptian
world was worth much. Joseph had gone to Egypt, some
years before, a foreigner ; had lived there in obscurity ; had
been exposed to calumny ; by his quiet, consistent goodness,
had risen, step by step, "first to respect, then to trust, com-
mand, and veneration : was embalmed after death in the af-
fections, as well as with the burial rights, of the Egyptians ;
and his honored form reposed at last amidst the burial-place
of the Pharaohs.
The Israelite's Grave. 237
In this respect the text branches into a twofold division.
The life of Joseph, and the death which was in accordance
with that life.
1. The history of Joseph, as of every man, has two sides
its outward circumstances and its inner life.
The outward circumstances were checkered with misfor-
tune. Severed from his home in very early years, sold into
slavery, cast into prison at first grief seemed to have
marked him for her own. And this is human life. Part of
its lot is misery. There are two inadequate ways of ac-
counting for this mystery of sorrow. One, originating in a
zeal for God's justice, represents it as invariably the chastise
ment of sin, or, at the least, as correction for fault. But,
plainly, it is not always such. Joseph's griefs were the con-
sequences, not of fault, but of rectitude. The integrity
which, on some unknown occasion, made it his duty to carry
his brethren's " evil report " to their father, was the occasion
of his slavery. The purity of his life was the cause of his
imprisonment. Fault is only a part of the history of this
great matter of sorrow. Another theory, created by zeal for
God's love, represents sorrow as the exception, and happiness
as the rule of life. We are made for enjoyment, it is said,
and on the whole there is more enjoyment than wretched-
ness. The common idea of love being that which identifies
it with a simple wish to confer happiness, no wonder that a
feeble attempt is made to vindicate God by a reduction of
the apparent amount of pain. Unquestionably, however,
love is very different from a desire to shield from pain.
Eternal love gives to painlessness a very subordinate place
in comparison of excellence of character. It does not hesi-
tate to secure man's spiritual dignity at the expense of the
sacrifice of his well-being.
The solution will not do. Let us look the truth in the face.
You can not hide it from yourself. " Man is born to sorrow
as the sparks fly upward." Sorrow is not an accident, oc-
curring now and then, it is the very woof which is woven
into the warp of life. " God has created the nerves to agonize,
and the heart to bleed ; and before a man dies, almost every
nerve has thrilled with pain, and every affection has been
wounded. The account of life which represents it as proba-
tion is inadequate : so is that which regards it chiefly as a
system of rewards and punishments. The truest account of
this mysterious existence seems to be that it is intended for
the development of the soul's life, for which sorrow is indis-
pensable. Every son of man who would attain the true end
of his being must be baptized with fire. It is the law of out
238 The Israelite's Grave.
humanity, as that of Christ, that we must be perfected
through suffering. And he who has not discerned the divine
sacredness of sorrow, and the profound meaning which is con-
cealed in pain, has yet to learn what life is. The Cross, man-
ifested as the necessity of the highest life, alone interprets it.
2. Besides this, obloquy was part of Joseph's portion.
His brethren, even his father, counted him a vain dreamer,
full of proud imaginings. He languished long in a dungeon
with a stain upon his character. He was subjected to almost
all the bitterness which changes the milk of kindly feelings
into gall : to Potiphar's fickleness, to slander, to fraternal
envy, to the ingratitude of friendship in the neglect of the
chief butler, who left his prison and straightway forgot his
benefactor. Out of all which a simple lesson arises, " Cease
ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." Yet that may
be overstated. Nothing chills the heart like universal dis-
trust. Nothing freezes the genial current of the soul so
much as doubts of human nature. Human goodness is no
dream. Surely we have met unselfishness, and love, and
honor among men. Surely we have seen, and not in dreams,
pure benevolence beaming from human countenances. Sure-
ly we have met with integrity that the world's wealth could
not bribe ; and attachment which might bear the test of any
sacrifice. It is not so much the depravity as the frailty of
men, that makes it impossible to count on them. Was it not
excusable in Jacob, and even natural, if he attributed to van-
ity his son's relation of the dream in which the sun, and the
moon, and the eleven stars bowed down before him ? Was
it not excusable if Potiphar distrusted his tried servant's
word, when his guilt appeared so indisputably substantiated?
Was not even the chief butler's forgetfulness intelligible,
when you remember his absorbing interest in his own dan-
ger, and the multiplied duties of his office ? The world is
not to be too severely blamed if it misrepresents us. It is
hard to reach the truth very hard to sift a slander.
Men who believe Sucn rumors., especially in courtly life,
may be ignorant, hasty, imperfect, but are not necessarily
treacherous. Yet even while you keep this in mind, that the
heart may not be soured, remember your dearest friend
may fail you in the crisis: a truth of experience was
wrapped up ir* the old fable, and the thing you have fostered
in your bohor^ may wound you to the quick ; the one you
have trusted may become your accuser, and throw his own
blame, with dastard meanness, upon you. That was the ex-
perience of Joseph. Was not that* His fate who trusted Ju-
das ? There is One. and but One, whose love is as a rock,
The Israelites Grave. 239
which will not fail you when you cling. It is a fearful, sol-
itary feeling, that lonely truth of life ; yet not without a
certain strength and grandeur in it. The life that is the
deepest and tlie truest will feel most vividly both its desola-
tion and its majesty. We live and die alone. God and our
own souls we fall back upon them at last. " Behold, the
hour cometh, yea, is' now come, that ye shall be scattered,
every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone ; and yet I
am not alone, because the Father is with Me."
3. Success, besides, marked the career of Joseph. Let us
not take half views of men and things. The woof of life is
dark ; that we granted : but it is shot through a web of
brightness. Accordingly, in Joseph's case, even in his worst
days, you find a kind of balance to be weighed against his
sorrows. The doctrine of compensation is found through
all. Amidst the schemings of his brothers' envy he had his
father's love. In his slavery he had some recompense in
feeling that he was gradually winning his master's confi-
dence. In his dungeon he possessed the consciousness of in-
nocence, and the grateful respect of his fellow-prisoners.
In that beautiful hymn which some of you read last Sun-
day,* you may remember that a parallel is drawn between
human life and the aspects of the weather. The morning
rainbow, glittering among the dangerous vapors of the west,
predicts that the day will not unclouded pass away. The
evening rainbow declares that the storms are past, and that
serene weather is setting in. Such is the life of all whom
God disciplines. The morning or the evening brightness is
the portion of a life, the rest of which is storm. Rarely are
the manful struggles of principle in the first years of life suf-
fered to be in vain. Joseph saw the early clouds which dark-
ened the morning of his existence pass away, and the rain-
bow of heavenly peace arched over the calmness of his later
years. " The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosper-
ous man." And it is for this special purpose it is written,
"And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third genera-
tion ; the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were
brought up on Joseph's knees." Long life, and honored old
age, a quiet grave ; these were the blessings reckoned desir-
able in Jewish modes of thought : and they are mentioned
as evidences of Joseph's happiness.
And this, too, is life. The sorrows of the past stand out
most vividly in our recollections, because they are the keen-
est of our sensations. At the end of a long existence we
* Keble's Christian Year. Twenty-fifth Sv.irciay after Trinity.
240 7 he Israelite s Grave.
should probably describe it thus : " Few and evil have the
days of the years of thy servant been." But the innumer-
able infinitesimals of happiness that from moment to moment
made life sweet and pleasant are forgotten ; and very richly
has our Father mixed the materials of these with the home-
liest actions and domesticities of existence. See two men
meeting together in the streets mere acquaintances. They
will not be five minutes together before a smile will over-
spread their countenances, or a merry laugh ring of, at the
lowest, amusement. This has God done. God created the
smile and the laugh, as well as the sigh and the tear. The
aspect of this life is stern very stern. It is a very super-
ficial account of it which slurs over its grave mystery, and
refuses to hear its low, deep under-tone of anguish. But
there is enough, from hour to hour, of bright, sunny happi-
ness, to remind us that its Creator's highest name is love.
Now turn to the spirit of Joseph's inner life. First of all,
that life was forgiveness. You can not but have remarked
that, conversant as his experience was with human treachery,
no expressions of bitterness escape from him. No senti-
mental wailing over the cruelty of relations, the falseness of
friendship, or the ingratitude of the world ; no rancorous
outburst of misanthropy ; no sarcastic skepticism of man's
integrity or woman's honor. He meets all bravely, with
calm, meek, and dignified forbearance. If ever man had
cause for such doubts, he had ; yet his heart was never
soured. At last, after his father's death, his brothers, appre-
hending his resentful recollections of their early cruelty,
come to deprecate his revenge. Very touching is his reply.
" Fear not : for am I in the place of God ? But as for you,
ye thought evil against me : but God meant it unto good, to
bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
Now therefore, fear ye not : I will nourish you and your
little ones."
This is the Christian spirit before the Christian times.
Christ was in Joseph's heart, though not definitely in Jo-
seph's creed. The Eternal Word whispered in the souls of
men before it spoke articulately aloud in the Incarnation.
It was the Divine Thought before it became the Divine Ex-
pression.* It was the Light that lighteth every man that
cometh into the world, before it blazed into the Day-spring
from on high which visited us. - The mind of Christ, the
spirit of the years yet future, blended itself with life before
He came ; for His words were the eternal verities of our hu-
The Israelite s Grave. 241
manity. In all ages love is the truth of life Men can not
injure us except so far as they exasperate us to forget our-
selves. No man is really dishonored except by his own act.
Calumny, injustice, ingratitude the only harm these can do
us is by making us bitter, or rancorous, or gloomy : by shut-
ting our hearts or souring our aifections. We rob them of
their power if they only leave us more sweet and forgiving
than before. And this is the only true victory. We win by
love. Love transmutes all curses, and forces them to rain
down in blessings. Out of the jealousy of his brothers Joseph
extracted the spirit of forgiveness. Out of Potiphar's weak
injustice, and out of the machinations of disappointed pas-
sion, he created an opportunity of learning meekness. Our
enemies become unconsciously our best friends when their
slanders deepen in us heavenlier graces. Let them do their
worst ; they only give us the Godlike victory of forgiving
them.
2. Distinguished from the outward circumstances, we find
simplicity of character : partly in the willingness to acknowl-
edge his shepherd-father in Egypt, where the pastoral life
was an abomination ; partly in that incidental notice which
we have of the feast at which he entertained his brethren,
where the Egyptians sat at a table by themselves, and Joseph
by himself. So that, elevated as he was, his heart remained
Hebrew still. He had contracted a splendid alliance by
marrying into one of the nooiest families in Egypt, that of
Potipherah, the priest of On. And yet he had not forgotten
his country, nor sought to be naturalized there. His heart
was in that far land where he had fed his father's flocks in
his simple, genial boyhood ; the divining-cup of Egyptian
silver was on his table ; but he remembered the days wheji
the only splendor he knew was that coat of many colors
which was made for him by his father. He bore a simple,
unsophisticated heart amidst the pomp of an Egyptian court.
There is a great mistake made on the subject of simplicity.
There is one simplicity of circumstances, another simplicity
of heart. These two must not be confounded. It is com-
mon to talk of the humble poor man, and the proud rich
man. Let not these ideas be inseparably blended together.
There is many a man who sits down to a meal of bread and
milk on a wooden table, whose heart is as proud as the proud-
est whose birth is ro} 7 al. There is many a one whose voice
is heard in the public meeting, loudly descanting on legal
tyranny and aristocratic insolence, who in his own narrow
circle is as much a tyrant as any oppressor who ever dis-
graced the throne. And there is many a man who sits down
11
242 The Israelite s Grave.
to daily pomp, to whom gold and silver are but as brass and
tin, and who bears in the midst of it all a meek, simple spirit,
and a " heart refrained as a weaned child :" many a man
who lives surrounded with homage, and hearing the ap-
plause and flattery of men perpetually, on whose heart these
things fall flat and dead, without raising one single emotion
of fluttered vanity.
The world can not understand this. They can not believe
that Joseph can be humble while he is conscious of such ele-
vation above the crowd of men not even dreaming of it.
They can not understand how carelessly these outsides of
life can be worn, and how they fall off like the unregarded
and habitual dress of daily life. They can not know how the
spirit of the Cross can crucify the world, make grandeur
painful, and calm the soul with a vision of the Eternal
Beauty. They can not dream how His life and death, once
felt as the grandest, write mockery on all else, and fill the
soul with an ambition which is above the world. It is not
the unjewelled finger, nor the affectation of an almost Qua-
kerish simplicity of attire, nor the pedestrian mode of travel-
ling, nor the scanty meal that constitute humility. It is that
simple, inner life of real greatness, which is indifferent to
magnificence, and surrounded by it all, lives far away in the
distant country of a father's home, with the Cross borne si-
lently and self-sacrificingly in the heart of hearts.
3. One characteristic of Joseph's inner life remains
benevolence. It was manifested in the generosity with
which he entertained his brethren, and in the discriminating
tenderness with which he provided his best beloved brother's
feast with extraordinary delicacies. These^were traits of
thoughtfulness. But further still. The prophetic insight
of Joseph enabled him to foresee the approach of famine.
He took measures accordingly ; and when the famine came,
the royal storehouses were opened, and every man in Egypt
owed his life to the benevolent providence of the Hebrew
stranger. It was productive of a great social revolution.
It brought, by degrees, all the land of Egypt into the power
of the Crown, so that a kind of feudal system was establish-
ed, every man holding in direct tenancy from the Crown.
Hence the nation became compacted into a new unity, and
power was concentrated in the hands of government, partly
by the pecuniary revenue thus added, and partly by the
lustre of goodness which Joseph had thrown round the royal
acts. For acts like these are the real bulwarks of a throne.
One such man as Joseph does more to strengthen the Crown
than all the speculations, solemn or trifling, which were ever
The Israelite s Grave. 243
trritten on the " Divine right of kings." There is a right
divine which requires no elaborate theory to make it felt.
II. The death of Joseph was in accordance with his life.
1. The funeral was a homage paid to goodness. Little is
said in the text of Joseph's funeral. To know what it was,
we must turn to the earlier part of the chapter, where that
of Jacob is mentioned. A mourning of seventy days a
funeral whose imposing greatness astonished the Canaanites.
They said, " This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians."
Seventy days were the time, or nearly so, fixed by custom
for a royal funeral ; and Jacob was so honored, not for his
own sake, but because he was Joseph's father. We can not
suppose that Joseph's own obsequies were on a scale less
grand.
Now weigh what is implied in this. This was not the
homage paid to talent, nor to wealth, nor to birth. Joseph
was a foreign slave, raised to eminence by the simple power
of goodness. Every man in Egypt felt, at his death, that he
had lost a friend. There were thousands whose tears would
fall when they recounted the preservation of lives dear to
them in, the years of famine, and felt that they owed those
lives to Joseph. Grateful Egypt mourned the good Foreign-
er ; and, for once, the honors of this world were given to the
graces of another.
2. We collect from this, besides, a hint of the resurrection
of the body. The Egyptian mode of sepulture was embalm-
ing ; and the Hebrews, too, attached much importance to the
body after death. Joseph commanded his countrymen to
preserve his bones to take away with them. In this we de-
tect that unmistakable human craving, not only for immor-
tality, but immortality associated with a form. No doubt
the Egyptian feeling was carried out absurdly. They tried
to redeem from the worm the very aspect that had been
worn, the very features they had loved ; and there was a
kind of feeling, that. while that mummy lasted, the man had
not yet perished from earth. They expected that, in process
of years, it would again be animated by its spirit.
Now Christianity does not disappoint, but rather meets
that feeling. It grants all that the materialist, and all that
the spiritualist, have a right to ask. It grants to the mate-
rialist, by the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, that
future life shall be associated with a material form. Leaving
untouched all the questions which may be raised about the
identity of the atoms that have been buried, it simply pro-
nounces that the spirit shall have a body. It grants to the
244 The Israelite's Grave.
spiritualist all he ought to wish that the spirit shall be free
from evil. For it is a mistake of ultra-spiritualism, to con-
nect degradation with the thought of a risen body ; or to
suppose that a mind, unbound by the limitations of space, is
a more spiritual idea of resurrection than the other.
The opposite to spirituality is not materialism, but sin.
The form of matter does not degrade. For what is this
world itself but the form of Deity, whereby the manifoldness
of His mind and beauty manifests, and wherein it clothes
itself? It is idle to say that spirit can exist apart from form.
We do not know that it can. Perhaps even the Eternal Him-
self is more closely bound to His works than our philosophi-
cal systems have conceived. Perhaps matter is only a mode
of thought. At all events, all that we know or can'know of
mind, exists in union with form. The resurrection of the
body is the Christian verity, which meets and satisfies those
cravings of the ancient Egyptian mind that expressed them-
selves in the process of embalming, and the religious rev-
erence felt for the very bones of the departed by the He-
brews.
Finally, in the last will and testament of Joseph we find
faith. He commanded his brethren, and through them, his
nation, to carry his bones with them when they migrated to
Canaan. In the Epistle to the Hebrews that is reckoned an
evidence of faith. "By faith Joseph gave commandment
concerning his bones." How did he know that his people
would ever quit Egypt ? We reply, by faith. Not faith in
a written word, for^Joseph had no Bible ; rather, faith in that
conviction of his own heart which is itself the substantial evi-
dence of faith. For religious faith ever dreams of something
higher, more beautiful, more perfect, than the state of things
with which it feels itself surrounded. Ever, a day future
lies before it : the evidence for which is its own hope.
Abraham, by that creative faith, saw the day of Christ, and
was glad. Joseph saw his family in prosperity, even in af-
fluence ; but he felt that this was not their rest. A higher
life than that of affluence a nobler destiny than that of
stagnant rest, there must be for them in the future ; else all
the anticipations of a purer earth, and a holier world, which
imagination bodied forth within his soul, were empty dreams,
not the intuitions of God's Spirit. It was this idea of
perfection, which was " the substance of things hoped for,"
that carried him far beyond the period of his own death,
and made him feel himself a partaker of his nation's blessed
future.
And that is the evidence of immortality. When the
The Israelite s Grave. 245
coffin is lowered into the grave, and the duL, heavy sound of
earth falling on it is heard, there are some to whom that
sound seems but an echo of their worst anticipations ; seems
but to reverberate the idea of decay forever, in the words,
" Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." There are
others to whom it sounds pregnant with the expectations o
immortality, the " sure and certain hope of a resurrection to
eternal life." The difference between these two feelings is
measured by the difference of lives. They whose life is low
and earthly, how can they believe in aught beyond the grave,
when nothing of that life which is eternal has yet stirred
within them? They who have lived as Joseph lived, just in
proportion to their purity and their unselfishness, must
believe it. They can not but believe it. The eternal exist-
ence is already pulsing in their veins ; the life of trust and
high hope, and sublime longings after perfection, with which
the decay of the frame has nothing at all to do. That is
gone yes but it was not that life in which they lived, and
when it finished, what had that ruin to do with the destruc-
tion of the immortal ?
For what is our proof of immortality ? "Not the analogies
of nature the resurrection of nature from a winter grave
or the emancipation of the butterfly. Not even the testi-
mony to the fact of risen dead ; for who does not know how
shadowy and unsubstantial these intellectual proofs become
in unspiritual frames of mind ? No; the life of the spirit is
the evidence. Heaven begun is the living proof that makes
the heaven to come credible. " Christ in you is the hope of
glory." It is the eagle eye of faith which penetrates the
grave, and sees far into the tranquil things of death. He
alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in
him already.
There is a special application to be made of this subject to
our hearts. It is not often that the pulpit can be used for a
funeral eulogium. Where Christ is to be exalted in solitary
pre-eminence, it is but rarely that the praise of men may be
heard. Rank, royalty itself, could not command from the
lips of a minister of the King of kings one syllable of adula-
tory, undeserved, or unfelt homage. But there are cases in
which to loftiness of birth is added dignity of character;
and then we gladly relax the rule, to pay a willing tribute
to the majesty of goodness.
There is one to whom your thoughts must have reverted
often during the history which we have been going through,
suggesting a parallel, all the more delicately felt from the
absence of direct allusion. That royal la dy, for whose loss
246 The Israelite s Grave.
the marvellous uniformity of the unbroken funeral hue which
pervades this congregation tells eloquently of general mourn'
ing, came to this land a few years ago, like Joseph, a foreign-
er like Joseph, the earlier years of her sojourn were spent
in comparative obscurity like Joseph, she had her share of
calumny, though in a diiferent form. There are many here
who can remember that in that year when our political feuds
had attained the acme of rancor, the irreverent lip of party
slander dared to breathe its rank venom upon the name of
one of the gentlest that ever .adorned a throne. There are
some who know how that unpopularity was met: with
meekness with Christian forgiveness with quiet dignity
with that composure which is the highest result and evi-
dence of strength. Like Joseph, she passed through the
temptations of a court with unsullied spotlessness like Jo-
seph, the domestic and social relationships were sustained
w^ith beautiful fidelity like Joseph, she lived down opposi-
tion, outlived calumny like Joseph, she used the noble in-
come intrusted to her in acts of almost unexampled munifi-
cence like Joseph, her life was checkered with sorrow ; and
when the clouds of earlier difficulties had cleared away, the
rainbow sign of peace, even in the midst of broken health,
spanned the calmness of her evening years like Joseph, she
will have a regal burial, and her ashes will repose with the
dust of England's princes amidst the mourning of the nation
in which she found a home.
The homage which is given to her is not the homage
yielded to rank or wealth or genius. There will be silver
on her coffin, and magnificence in the pageantry which at-
tends her to the grave ;* but it is not in these that the glory
of her funeral lies. These were the privileges of the most
profligate of her ancestors as well as her. These are the
world's rewards for those whom she delights to honor. There
will be something in her funeral besides which these things
are mean. There is a grandeur in a nation's tears ; and they
will be shed in unfeigned reverence over the remains of all
that was most queenly, and all that was most womanly.
No political fervor mixes with her obsequies. She stood
identified with no party politics. No peculiar religious par-
ty mourns its patroness. Of all our jarring religious sects,
in the Church and out of it, not one dares to claim her as its
own. Her spirit soared above these things. It is known
* This anticipation has not been realized. In one of the most touching
and unaffected documents that ever went right home to English hearts, the
queen of a British sovereign requested to be borne to the grave as the wife
of a sailor.
The Israelite s Grave. 247
that she scarcely recognized them. All was lost in the sub-
limer name of Christian. It is a Christian who has passed
from this earth away, to take her place in the general As-
sembly and Church of the first-born : to stand before God,
the Judge of all, among the spirits of the just made per-
fect.
One word more. Honoring the Queen, profoundly rever-
encing the Woman, let not contemplation stop there. Do
not bury thought in the human and finite. Mildly as her
lustre shone on earth, remember it was but one feeble ray of
the Light that is Uncreated. All that she had she received.
If we honor her, it is to adore Him who made her what she
was. Of His fullness she had received, and grace for grace.
What she was, she became through adoring faith in Christ.
It is an elevating thing to gaze on human excellence, be-
cause through it the Highest becomes conceivable. It is a
spirit-stirring thing to see saintly goodness asserting its ce-
lestial origin by turning pale the lustre of the highest earth-
ly rank; for in this universal mourning our noble country
has not bowed the knee in reverence to the majesty which is
of time. Every heart in England has felt that the sovereign
was merged in the servant of Christ. " The King's daugh-
ter was all glorious within." "Hers was Christian goodness.
Her eyes had beheld the King in His beauty, and therefore
Tier life was beautiful, and feminine, and meek, and simple.
It was all derived beauty. She had robed herself in Christ.
" Reflecting back, as from a burnished mirror, the glory of
the Lord, she was changed into the same image, from glory
to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."*
* 2 Cor. iii. 18. This appears to be the true force and rendering of the
metaphor.
Subjoined are the directions given by her late Majesty for her own funeral.
The reader will be glad to have them preserved in a form less inconvenient
than the columns of a newspaper. Should he be one who feels it a relief to
miss, for once, the worn-out conventionalisms of religious expression, and
come in contact with something fres,h and living, he will find more in these
quiet lines than in ten sermons ; more to make a very happy tear start ;
more of the simplicity and the beauty of the life in God ; more to cool the
feverishness of his heart, and still its worldliness into silence ; more of that
deep rest into which the meek and humble enter ; more that will make him
long to be simple, and inartificial, and real, as Christ was, desiring only, in
life, and death, and judgment, to be found in HIM.
248 The Israelites Grave.
[COPY.]
" I die in all humility, knowing well that we are all alike before the Throne
of God, and request, therefore, that my mortal remains be conveyed to the
grave without any pomp or state. They are to be moved to St. George's
Chapel, Windsor, where I request to have as private and quiet a funeral as
possible.
"I particularly desire not to be laid out in state, and the funeral to take
place by daylight, no procession, the coffin to be carried by sailors to the
chapel.
" All those of my friends and relations, to a limited number, who wish to
attend, may do so. My nephew, Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar, Lords
Howe and Denbigh, the Hon. William Ashley, Mr. Wood, Sir Andrew
Barnard, and Sir D. Davis, with my dressers, and those of my ladies who
may wish to attend.
"I die in peace, and wish to be carried to the tomb in peace, and free
from the vanities and the pomp of this world.
" I request not to be dissected, nor embalmed ; and desire to give as little
trouble as possible.
(Signed) " ADELAIDE R
"November, 184ft-
SERMONS
Series.
i.
THE STAR IN THE EAST.
"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod
the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying,
Where is he that is born King of the Jews ? for we have seen his star in the
east, and are come to worship him." Matt. ii. 1, 2.
OUR subject is the Manifestation of -Christ to the Gentiles.
The King of the Jews has become the Sovereign of the
world : a fact, one would think, which must cause a secret
complacency in the heart of all Jews. For that which is
most deeply working in modern life and thought is the mind
of Christ. His name has passed over our institutions, and
much more has His spirit penetrated into our social and do-
mestic existence. In other words, a Hebrew mind is now,
and has been for centuries, ruling Europe.
But the Gospel which He proclaimed was not limited to
the Hebrews : it was a Gospel for the nations. By the death
of Christ, God has struck His death-blow at the root of the
hereditary principle. " We be the seed of Abraham " was
the proud pretension of the Israelite ; and he was told by
Christ's Gospel that spiritual dignity rests not upon spiritual
descent, but upon spiritual character. New tribes were
adopted into the Christian union, and it became clear that
there was no distinction of race in the spiritual family. The
Jewish rite of circumcision a symbol of exclusiveness, cut-
ting off one nation from all others was exchanged for Bap-
tism, the symbol of universality, proclaiming the nearness of
all to God, His paternity over the human race, and the Son*
ship of all who chose to claim their privileges.
This was a Gospel for the world, and nation after nation
250 The Star in the East.
accepted it. Churches were formed ; the kingdom which is
the domain of love grew; the Roman Empire crumbled into
fragments ; but every fragment was found pregnant with
life. It brake not as some ancient temple might break, its
broken pieces lying in lifeless ruin,. overgrown with weeds:
ratLer as one of those mysterious animals break, of w/iich, if
vou rend them asunder, every separate portion forms itself
into a new anc 1 . .complete existence. Rome gave way; but
every portion became a Christian kingdom, alive with the
mind of Christ, and developing the Christian idea after its
own peculiar nature.
The portion of Scripture selected for the text and for the
gospel of the day has an important bearing on this great
Epiphany. The ' ; wise men " belonged to a creed of very
hoary and venerable antiquity ; a system, too, which had in
it the elements of strong vitality. For seven centuries after,
the Mohammedan sword scarcely availed to extirpate it
indeed could not. They whom the Mohammedan called fire-
worshippers clung to their creed with vigor and indestructi-
ble tenacity, in spite of ail his efforts.
Here then, in this act of homage to the Messiah, were the
representatives of the highest then existing influences of the
world, doing homage to the Lord of a mightier influence, and
reverently bending before the dawn of the Star of a new and
brighter Day. It was the first distinct turning of the Gen-
tile mind to Christ ; the first instinctive craving after a
something higher than Gentilism could ever satisfy.
. In this light our thoughts arrange themselves thus :
I. The expectation of the Gentiles.
IL The Manifestation or Epiphany.
I. The expectation : " Where is He that is born King of
the Jews ? for we have seen His star in the east, and are
^ome to worship Him."
Observe 1. The craving for eternal life. The " wise men "
were " Magians," that is, Persian priests. The name, howev-
er, was extended to all the Eastern philosophers who profess-
ed that religion, or even that philosophy. The Magians were
chiefly distinguished by being worshippers of the stars, or
students of astronomy.
Xo\v astronomy is a science which arises from man's need
of religion ; other sciences spring out of wants bounded by
th is life. For instance, anatomy presupposes disease. There
would be no prying into our animal frame, no anatomy, were
there not a malady to stimulate the inquiry. Navigation
arises from the necessity of traversing the seas to appropri-
The Star in the East. 251
ate t ; ne produce of other countries. Charts, and maps, and
soundings are made, because of a felt earthly want. But
in astronomy the first impulse of mankind came not from
the craving of the intellect, but from the necessities of the
soul.
If you search down into the constitution of your being till
you come to the lowest deep of all, underlying all other
wants you will find a craving for what is infinite a some-
thing that desires perfection a wish that nothing but the
thought of that which is eternal can satisfy. To the untu-
tored mind nowhere was that want so called into conscious-
ness, perhaps, as beneath the mighty skies of the East. Se-
rene and beautiful are the nights in Persia, and many a wise
man in earlier days, full of deep thoughts, went out into the
fields like Isaac to meditate at eventide: God has so made
us that the very act of looking up produces in us percep-
tions of the sublime. And then those skies in their calm
depths mirroring that which is boundless in space and illim-
itable in time, with a silence profound as death and a motion
gliding on forever, as if symbolizing eternity of life, no won-
der if men associated with them their highest thoughts, and
conceived them to be the home of Deity no wonder if an
Eternal Destiny seemed to sit enthroned there no wonder
if they seemed to have in their mystic motion an invisible
sympathy with human life and its mysterious destinies no
wonder if he who could read best their laws was reckoned
best able to interpret the duties of this life, and all that con-
nects man with that which is invisible no wonder if, in
those devout days of young thought, science was only an-
other name for religion, and the Priest of the great temple
of the universe was also the Priest in the temple made with
hands. Astronomy was the religion of the world's youth.
The Magians were led by the star to Christ ; their as-
tronomy was the very pathway to their Saviour.
Upon this I make one or two remarks.
1. The folly of depreciating human wisdom. Of all vani-
ties, the worst is the vanity of ignorance. It is common
enough to hear learning decried, as" if it were an opposite of
religion. If that means that science is not religion, and that
the man who can calculate the motions of the stars may nev-
er have bowed his soul t Christ, it contains a truth. But
if it means, as it often does, that learning is a positive incum-
brance arid hindrance to religion, then it is as much as to say
that the God of nature is not the God of grace; that the
more you study the Creator's works, the farther you remove
from Himself: nay, we must go farther to be consistent, and
252 The Star in the East*
hold, as most uncultivated and rude nations do, that the
state of idiocy is nearest to that of inspiration.
There are expressions of St. Paul often quoted as sanction-
ing this idea. He tells his converts to beware " lest any man
spoil you through philosophy." Whereupon we take for
granted that modern philosophy is a kind of antagonist to
Christianity. This is one instance out of many of the way
in which an ambiguous word misunderstood becomes the
source of infinite error. Let us hear St. Paul. He bids Tim-
othy "beware of profane and old wives' fables." He speaks
of "endless genealogies" "worshipping of angels" "in-
truding into those things which men have riot seen." This
was the philosophy of those days : a system of wild fancies
spun out of the brain somewhat like what we might now
call demonolatry: but as different from philosophy as any
two things can differ.
They forget, too, another thing. Philosophy has become
Christian ; science has knelt to Christ. There is a deep sig-
nificance in that homage of the Magians. For it in fact was
but a specimen and type of that which science has been doing
ever since. The mind of Christ has not only entered into the
Temple, and made it the house of prayer, it has entered into
the temple of science, and purified the spirit of philosopb;.
This is its spirit now, as, expounded by its chief interpreter,
" Man, the interpreter of Nature, knows nothing, and can do
nothing, except that which Nature teaches him." What is
this but science bending before the Child, becoming childlike,
and, instead of projecting its own fancies upon God's world,
listening reverently to hear what It has to teach him? In a
similar spirit, too, spoke the greatest of philosophers, in words
quoted in every child's book : " I am but a child, picking up
pebbles on the shore of the great sea of truth."
Oh, be sure all the universe tells of Christ and leads to
Christ. Rightly those ancient Magians deemed, in believing
that God was worshipped truly in that august temple. The
stars preach the mind of Christ. Not as of old, w^hen a mys-
tic star guided their feet to Bethlehem, but now, to the mind
of the astronomer, they tell of eternal order and harmony ;
they speak of changeless law, where no caprice reigns. You
may calculate the star's return : and to the day, and hour,
and minute it will be there. This is the fidelity of God.
These mute masses obey the law impressed upon them by
their Creator's hand, unconsciously : and that law is the law
of their own nature. To understand the laws of our nature,
and consciously and reverently to obey them, that is the mind
of Christ, the subliinest spirit of the Gospel.
The Star in the East. 253
I remark again This universe may be studied in an irrev-
erent spirit. In Dan. ii. 48, we find the reverence which was
paid to science. Daniel among the Chaldees was made chief
of the wise men ; that is, the first of the Magians : and King
Nebuchadnezzar bowed before him, with incense and obla-
tions. In later days we find that spirit changed. Another
king, Herod, commands the wise men to use their science for
the purpose of letting him know where the Child was. In
earlier times they honored the priest of N&ture : in later times
they made use of him.
Only by a few is science studied now in the sublime and
reverent spirit of old days. A vulgar demand for utility has
taken the place of that lowly prostration with which the
world listened to the discoveries of truth. The discovery of
some new and mighty agent, by which the east and west are
brought together in a moment, awakens chiefly the emotion
of delight in us that correspondence and travelling will be
quickened. The merchant congratulates himself upon the
speedier arrival of the news which will give him the start of
his rivals, and enable him to outrace his competitors in the
competition of wealth. Yet what is this but the utilitarian
spirit of Herod, seeing nothing more solemn in a mysterious
star than the means whereby he might crush his supposed
rival ?
There is a spirit which believes that " godliness is gain,"
and aims at being godly for the sake of advantage which is
honest, because honesty is the best policy which says, Do
right, and you will be the better, that is, the richer for it.
There is a spirit which seeks for wisdom simply as a means
to an earthly end and that often a mean one. This is a
spirit rebuked by the nobler reverence of the earlier days of
Magianism. Knowledge for its own pure sake. God for His
own sake. Truth for the sake of truth. This was the reason
for which, in earlier days, men read the aspect of the heavens.
2. Next, in this craving of the Gentiles we meet with traces
of the yearning of the human soul for light. The Magian sys-
tem was called the system of light about seven centuries be-
fore Christ. A great reformer (Zoroaster) had appeared, who
either restored the system to its purity, or created out of it
a new system. He said that light is eternal that the Lord
of the universe is light ; but because there was an eternal
light, there was also an eternal possibility of the absence of
light. Light and darkness, therefore, were the eternal prin-
ciples of the universe not equal principles, but one the nega-
tion of the other. He taught that the soul of man needs
light a light external to itself as well as in itself. As the
254 The Star in the East.
eye can not see in darkness, and is useless, so is there a ca*
pacity in the soul for light ; but it is not itself light ; it
needs the Everlasting light from outside itself.
Hence the stars became worshipped as the symbols of this
light. But by degrees these stars began to stand in the place
of the light Himself. This was the state of things in the days
of these Magians.
Magianism was now midway between its glory and its de-
cline. For its glorj- we must go back to the days of Daniel,
when a monarch felt it his privilege to do honor to the priest
of Light when that priest was the sole medium of commu-
nication between Deity and man, and through him alone
"Oromasdes" made his revelations known when the law
given by the Magian, revealed by the eternal stars, was " the
law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not." For its
lowest degradation we must pass over about half a century
from the time we are now considering till W T C find ourselves
in Samaria, in the presence of Simon the Magian. He gave
himself out for the great power of God. He prostituted such
powers and knowledge as he possessed to the object of mak-
ing gain. Half dupe, half impostor, in him the noble system
of Light had sunk to petty charlatanism : Magianism had de-
generated into Magic.
Midway between these two periods, or rather nearer to the
latter, stood the Magian of the text. There is a time in the
history of every superstition when it is respectable, even de-
serving reverence, when men believed it when it is in fact
associated with the highest feelings that are in man, and the
channel even for God's manifestation to the soul. And there
is a time when it becomes less and less credible, when clearer
science is superseding its pretensions : and then is the p'eriod
in which one class of men like Simon keep up the imposture
the priests who will not let the old superstition die, but
go on, half impostors, half deceived by the strong delusion
wherewith they believe their own lie another class, like
Herod, the wise men of the world, who patronize it for their
own purposes, and make use of it as an engine of state
another still, who turn from side to side, feeling with horror
the old, and all that they held dear, crumbling away beneath
them : the ancient lights going out, more than half suspecting
the falsehood of all the rest, and with an earnestness amount-
ing almost to agony, leaving their own homes and inquiring
for fresh light.
Such was the posture of these Magians. You can not en-
ter into their questions or sympathize with their wants un-
less you realize all this. For that desire for light is one of
The Star in the East. 255
the most impassioned of our nobler natures. That noble
prayer of the ancient world (iv $e tyaei rat dXeovrov), " Give
light, and let us die:" can we not feel it? Light light
Oh, if the result were the immediate realization of the old fa*
ble, and the blasting of the daring spirit in the moment of
revelation of its God, yet give us light. The wish for light,
the expectation of the manifestation of God, is the mystery
which lies beneath the history of the whole ancient world.
n. The Epiphany itself.
First, they found a king. There is something very signifi-
cant in the fact of that king being discovered as a child.
The royal child was the answer to their desires. There are
two kinds of monarchy, rule or command. One is that of
hereditary title ; the other is that of Divine Right. There
are kings of men's making, and kings of God's making. The
se'cret of that command which men obey involuntarily is sub-
mission of the ruler himself to law. And this is the secret
at* the royalty of the humanity of Christ. No principle
through all His life is more striking, none characterizes it so
peculiarly, as His submission to another will. " I came not
to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me."
"The words which I speak, I speak not of myself." His
commands are not arbitrary. They are not laws given on
authority only, they are the eternal laws of our humanity, to
which He himself submitted: obedience to which alone can
makte our being attain its end. This is the secret of His king-
ship "He became obedient . . . wherefore God also hath
highly exalted Him." And this is the secret of all influence
and all command. Obedience to a law above you subjugates
minds to you who never would have yielded to mere will.
"Rule thyself, thou rulest all."
2. Next, observe the adoration of the Magians very
touching, and full of deep truth. The wisest of the world
bending before the Child. Remember the history of Ma-
gianism. It began with awe, entering into this world be*
neath the serene skies of the East ; in wonder and worship.
It passed into priestcraft and skepticism. It ended in won-
der and adoration as it had begun : only with a truer and
nobler meaning.
This is but a Tepresentation of human life. "Heaven lies
around us in our infancy." The child looks on this world of
God's as one, not many all beautiful wonderful God's
the creation of a Father's hand. The man dissects, breaks
it into fragments loses love and worship in speculation and
reasoning - becomes more manly, more independent, and less
256 The Star in the East.
irradiated with a sense of the presence of the Lord of all ; till
at last, after many a devious wandering, if he be one whom
the Star of God is leading blind by a way he knows not, he
begins to see all as one again, and God in all. Back comes
the child-like spirit once more in the Christianity of old age.
We kneel before the Child we feel that to adore is greater
than to reason that to love, and worship, and believe, bring
the soul nearer heaven than scientific analysis. The Child is
nearer God than we.
And this, too, is one of the deep sayings of Christ "Ex-
cept ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall
in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven."
3. Lastly In that Epiphany we have to remark the Ma-
gians' joy. They had seen the star in the east. They fol-
lowed it it seemed to go out in dim obscurity. They went
about inquiring : asked Herod, who could tell them nothing:
asked the scribes, who only gave them a vague direction.
At last the star shone out once more, clear before them in
their path. " When they saw the star, they rejoiced with
exceeding great joy."
Perhaps the hearts of some of us can interpret that. There
are some who have seen the star that shone in earlier days
go out ; quench itself in black vapors or sour smoke. There
are some who have followed many a star that turned out to
be but an ignis fatuus one of those bright exhalations which
hover over marshes and church-yards, and only lead to the
chambers of the dead, or the cold damp pits of disappoint-
ment: and oh, the blessing of "exceeding joy," after follow-
ing in vain after inquiring of the great men and learning
nothing of the religious men and finding little to see the
star at last resting over " the place where the young Child
lies " after groping the way alone, to see the star stand still
to find thaiT Religion is a thing far simpler than we thought
that God is near us that to kneel and adore is the noblest
posture of the soul. For, whoever will follow with fidelity
his own star, God will guide him aright. He spoke to the
Magians by the star; to the shepherds by the melody of the
heavenly host ; to Joseph by a dream; to Simeon by an in-
ward revelation. " Gold, and frankincense, and myrrh "
these, and ten times these, were poor and cheap to give for
that blessed certainty that the star of God is on before us.
Two practical hints in conclusion.
1. A hint of immortality. That star is now looking down
on the wise men's graves; and if there be no life to come,
then this is the confusion : that mass of inert matter is pur-
suing its way through space, and the minds that watched it,
The Healing of Jairus's Daughter 257
calculated its movements, were led by it through aspiring
wishes to holy adorations ; those minds, more precious than
a thousand stars, have dropped out of God's universe. And
then God cares for mere material masses more than for spirits,
which are the emanation and copy of Himself. Impossible !
" God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." God is
the Father of our spirits. Eternity and immeasurableness
belong to Thought alone. You may measure the cycles of
that star by years and miles : can you bring any measure-
ment which belongs to time or space, by which you can com-
pute the length or breadth or the duration of one pure
thought, one aspiration, one moment of love ? This is eter-
nity. Nothing but thought can be immortal.
2. Learn, finally, the truth of the Epiphany by heart. To
the Jew it chiefly meant that the Gentile too could become
the child of God. But to us ; is that doctrine obsolete ?
Nay, it requires to be reiterated in this age as much as in
any other. There is a spirit in all our hearts whereby we
would monopolize God, conceiving of Him as an unapproach-
able Being ; whereby we may terrify other men outside our
own pale, instead of as the Father that is near to all, whom
we may approach, and whom to adore is blessedness.
This is our Judaism : we do not believe in the Epiphany.
We do not believe that God is the Father of the world we do
not actually credit that He has a star for the Persian priest,
and celestial melody for the Hebrew shepherd, and an unsyl-
labled voice for all the humble and inquiring spirits in His
world. Therefore remember Christ has broken down the
middle wall of partition ; He has revealed God as Our Fa-
ther; proclaimed that there is no distinction in the spiritual
tamily, and established a real Brotherhood on earth.
II.
THE HEALING OF JAIRTJS'S DAUGHTER.
"And when Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the minstrels and
the people making a noise, he said unto them, Give place : for the maid is
not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when the
people were put forth, he went in, and took' her by the hand, and the maid
arose."" Matt. ix. 23-25.
THIS is one of a pair of miracles, the full instruction from
neither of which can be gained, unless taken in connection
with the other.
258 The Healing of Jairu^ s Daughter.
On His way to heal the daughter of Jairus, the Son of Man
was accosted by another sufferer, afflicted twelve years with
an issue of blood. Humanly speaking, there were many causes
which might have led to the rejection of her request. The
case of Jairus's daughter was urgent ; a matter of life and
death ; delay might be fatal ; a few minutes might make all the
difference between living and dying. Yet Jesus not only per-
formed the miracle, but refused to perform it in a hurried
way ; paused to converse to inquire who had touched Him
to perfect the lesson of the whole. On his way to perform one
act of love, He turned aside to give His attention to another.
The practical lesson is this: There are many who are so
occupied by one set of duties as to have no time for others :
some whose life-business is the suppression of the slave-trad^
the amelioration of the state of prisons the reformation
o^ public abuses. Right, except so far as they are monopo-
lized by these, and feel themselves discharged from other ob-
ligations. The minister's work is spiritual; the physician's
temporal. But if the former neglect physical needs, or the
latter shrink from spiritual opportunities on the plea that the
cure of bodies, not of souls, is his work, so far they refuse to
imitate their Master.
He had an ear open for every tone of wail, a heart ready
to respond to every species of need. Specially the Redeem-
er of the soul, He was yet as emphatically the " Saviour of
the body." He " taught the people," but he did not neglect
to multiply the loaves and fishes. The peculiar need of the
woman, the father's cry of anguish, the infant's cry of help-
lessness, the wail of oppression, and the shriek of pain, all
were heard by Him, and none were heard in vain.
Therein lies the difference between Christian love and the
impulse of mere inclination. We hear of men being " inter-
ested " in a cause. It has some peculiar charm for them in-
dividually : the wants of the heathen, or the destitution of
the soldier and sailor, or the conversion of the Jews accord-
ing to men's associations, or fancies, or peculiar bias may
engage their attention and monopolize their sympathy. I
am far from saying these are wrong : I only say that so far
as they only interest^ and monopolize interest, the scurce
from which, they spring is only human, and not the highest.
The difference between such beneficence and that which is
the result of Christian love, is marked by partiality in one
case, universality in the other. Love is universal. It is in-
tevested in all that is human : not merely in the concerns of
its own family, nation, sect, or circle of associations. Hu-
manity is the sphere of its activity.
The Healing of Jairus' s Daughter. 259
Here, too, we find the Son of Man the pattern of our hu-
manity. His bosom was to mankind what the ocean is to
the world. The ocean has its own mighty tide ; but it re-
ceives and responds to, in exact proportion, the tidal influ-
ences of every estuary, and river, and small creek which
pours into its bosom. So it was in Christ; His bosom
heaved with the tides of our humanity ; but every separate
Borrow, pain, and joy gave its pulsation, and received back
influence from the sea of His being.
Looking at this matter somewhat more closely, it will be
plain that the delay was only apparent seemingly there
was delay, and fatal delay : while He yet spake there came
news of the child's death. But just so far as the resurrec-
tion of the dead is a mightier miracle than the healing of the
sick, just so far did the delay enhance and illustrate, instead
of dimming the glory of His mission.
But more definitely still. The miracles of Jesus were not
merely arbitrary acts : they were subject to the laws of the
spiritual world. It was, we may humbly say, impossible to
convey a spiritual blessing to one who was not spiritually
susceptible. A certain inward character, a certain relation
(rapport) to the Redeemer, was required to make the mercy
eificacious. Hence in one place we read, " He could not do
many miracles there because of their unbelief." And His
perpetual question was, " Believest thou that I am able to
do this?"
Now Jairus beheld this miracle. He saw the woman's
modest touch approaching the hem of the Saviour's garment.
He saw the abashed look with which she shrunk from public
gaze and exposure. He heard the language of Omniscience,
" Somebody hath touched Me." He heard the great princi-
ple enunciated, that the only touch which reaches God is
that of faith. The multitude may throng and press ; but
heart to heart, soul to soul, mind to mind, only so do we
come in actual contact with God. And remembering this, it
is a matter not of probability but of certainty, that the soul
of Jairus was actually made more capable of a blessing than
b?fore that he must have walked with a more .hopeful step
that he must have heard the announcement, "Thy daugh-
ter is dead," with less dismay that the words, "Fear not,
only believe," must have come to him with deeper meaning,
and been received with more implicit trust than if Jesus had
not paused to heal the woman, but hurried on.
And this is the principle of the spiritual kingdom. Tn
matters worldly, the more occupations, duties, a man has. t i e
more certain is he of doing all imperfectly. In the thills
260 The Healing of J alms's Daughter.
of God this is reversed. The more duties you perform, the
more you are fitted for doing others : what you lose in time,
you gain in strength. You do not love God the less, but the
more, for loving man. You do not weaken your .affection
for your family by cultivating attachments beyond its pale,
but deepen and intensify it. Respect for the alien, tender-
ness for the heretic, do not interfere with, but rather
strengthen, attachment to your own country and your own
church. He who is most liberal in the case of a foreign
famine or a distant mission, will be found to have only learn-
ed more liberal love towards the poor and the uuspiritual-
ized of his own land : so false is the querulous complaint that
money is drained away by such calls, to the disadvantage of
more near and juster claims.
You do not injure one cause of mercy by turning aside to
listen to the call of another.
I. The uses of adversity.
II. The principles of a miracle.
I. The simplest and most obvious use of sorrow is to re-
mind of God. Jairus and the woman, like many others,
came to Christ from a sense of want. It would seem that a
certain shock is needed to bring us in contact with reality.
We are not conscious of our breathing till obstruction makes
it felt. We are not aware of the possession of a heart till
some disease, some sudden joy or sorrow, rouses it into extra-
ordinary action. And we are not conscious of the mighty
cravings of our half Divine humanity ; we are not aware of
the God within us, till some chasm yawns which must be
filled, or till the rending asunder of our affections forces us to
become fearfully conscious of a need.
And this, too* is the reply to a rebellious question which our
hearts are putting perpetually : Why am I treated so ?
Why is my health or my child taken from me ? What have
I done to deserve this ? So Job passionately complained
that God had set him up as a mark to empty His quiver on.
The reply is, that gifts are granted to elicit our affections ;
they are resumed to elicit them still more; for we never
know the value of a blessing till it is gone. Health, children
we must lose them before we know the love which they
contain.
However, we are not prepared to say that a charge might
Dot with some plausibility be brought against the love of
God, were no intimation ever given that God means to re-
sume His blessings. That man may fairly complain of his
adopted father who has been educated as his own son, and
The Healing of J aims' s Daughter. 261
after contracting habits of extravagance, loosing forward to
a certain line of life, cultivating certain tastes, is informed
that he is only adopted : that he must part with these tem-
porary advantages, and sink into a lower sphere. It would
be a poor excuse to say that all he had before was so much
gain, and unmerited. It is enough to reply that false hopes
were raised, and knowingly.
Nay, the laws of countries sanction this. After a certain
period, a title to property can not be interfered with : if a
right of way or road has existed, in the venerable language
of the law, after a custom " whereof the memory of man
runneth not to the contrary," no private right, however dig-
nified, can overthrow the public claim. I do not say that a
bitter feeling might not have some show of justice if such
were the case with God's blessings.
But the truth is this : God confers His gifts with distinct
reminders that they are His. He gives us, for a season,
spirits taken out of His universe; brings them into temporary
contact with us ; and we call them father, mother, sister,
child, friend. But just as in some places, on one day in the
year the way or path is closed in order to remind the public
that they pass by sufferance and not by right, in order that
no lapse of time may establish "adverse possession," so does
God give warning to us. Every ache and pain every
wrinkle you see stamping itself on a parent's brow every
accident which reveals the uncertain tenure of life and pos-
sessions every funeral-bell that tolls, are only Gcd's re-
minders that we are tenants at will and not by right : pen-
sioners on the bounty of an hour. He is closing up the right
of way, warning fairly that what we have is lent, not given:
His, not ours. His mercies are so much gain. The resump-
tion of them is no injustice. Job learned that, too, by heart,
"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away : blessed be
the name of the Lord."
Again observe the misuse of sorrow. When Jesus came
to the house, He found the minstrels and people making a
noise. In the East, not content with natural grief, they use
artificial means to deepen and prolong it. Men and women
make it a separate profession to act as mourners, to exhibit
for hire the customary symbols and wail of grief, partly to
soothe and partly to rivet sorrow deeply, by the expression
of it.
The South and North differ greatly from each other in
this respect. The nations of the North restrain their grief-
affect the tearless eyes and the stern look. The expressive
South, and all the nations whose origin is from thence, are
262 The Healing of Jairus^s Daiighter.
demonstrative in grief. They beat their breasts, tear theii
hair, throw dust upon their heads. It would be unwise
were either to blame or ridicule the other so long as each is
true to Nature. Unwise for the nations of the South tc
deny the reality of the grief which is repressed and silent ;
unjust in the denizen of the North were he to scorn the
violence of Southern grief, or call its uncontrollable demon-
strations unmanly. Much must be allowed for tempera-
ment.
These two opposite tendencies, however, indicate the two
extremes into which men may fall in this matter of sorrow.
There are two ways in which we may defeat the purposes of
God in grief by forgetting it, or by over-indulging it.
The world's way is to forget. It prescribes gayety as the
remedy for woe ; banishes all objects which recall the past ;
makes it the etiquette of feeling, even amongst near relations,
to abstain from the mention of the names of the lost ; gets
rid of the mourning weeds as soon as possible the worst of
all remedies for grief. Sorrow, the discipline of the Cross, is
the school for all that is highest in us. Self-knowledge, true
power, all that dignifies humanity, are precluded the moment
you try to merely banish grief. It is a touching truth that
the Saviour refused the anodyne on the cross that would
have deadened pain. He would not steep his senses in ob-
livion. He would not suffer one drop to trickle down the
side of His Father's cup of anguish untasted.
The other way is to nurse sorrow : nay, even our best af-
fections may tempt us to this. It seems treason to those we
have loved to be happy now. We sit beneath the cypress ;
we school ourselves to gloom. Romance magnifies the fidel-
ity of the broken heart : we refuse to be comforted.
Now, generally speaking, all this must be done by effort.
For God has so constituted both our hearts and the world,
that it is hard to prolong grief beyond a time. Say w r hat
we will, the heart has in it a surprising, nay, a startling
elasticity. It can not sustain unalterable melancholy ; and
beside our very pathway plants grow r , healing and full of
balm. It is a sullen heart that can withstand the slow but
sure influences of the morning sun, the summer sky, the trees
and flowers, and the soothing power of human sympathy.
We are meant to sorrow, "but not as those without
hope." The rule seems to consist in being simply natural.
The great thing which Christ did was to call men back to
simplicity and nature not to perverted, but original nature.
He counted it no derogation of His manhood to be seen to
weep ; he thought it no shame to mingle with merry crowds ;
The Healing of Jairus's Daughter. 263
He opened His heart wide to all the genial and all the mourn-
ful impressions of this manifold life of ours. And this is
what we have to do ; be natural. Let God, that is, let the
influences of God, freely play unthwarted upon the soul.
Let there be no unnatural repression, no control of feeling
by mere effort. Let there be no artificial and prolonged
grief, no "minstrels making a noise." Let great Nature
have her way ; or, rather, feel that you are in a Father's
world, and live in it with Him, frankly, in a free, fearless,
childlike, and natural spirit. Then grief will do its work
healthily. The heart will bleed, and stanch when it has bled
enough. Do not stop the bleeding ; but, also, do not open
the wound afresh.
II. We come to the principles on which a miracle rests.
1. I observe that the perception of it was confined to a
few. Peter, James, John, and the parents of the child were
the only persons present. The rest were excluded. To
behold wonders, certain inward qualifications, a certain state
of heart, a certain susceptibility are required. Those who
were shut out were rendered incapable by disqualifications.
Absence of spiritual susceptibility in the case of those who
" laughed Him to scorn " unbelief, in those who came with
courteous skepticism, saying, " Trouble not the Master ;" in
other words, He is not master of impossibilities unreality
in the professional mourners the -most helpless of all dis-
qualifications. Their whole life was acting : they had caught
the tone of condolence and sympathy as a trick. Before
minds such as these the wonders of creation may be spread
in vain. Grief and joy alike are powerless to break through
the crust of artificial semblance which envelops them. Such
beings see no miracles. They gaze on all with dead, dim
eyes wrapped in conventionalisms, their life a drama in
which they are but actors, modulating their tones and simu-
lating feelings according to a received standard. How can
such be ever witnesses of the supernatural, or enter into the
presence of the wonderful ?
Two classes' alone were admitted. They who, like Peter,
James, and John, lived the life of courage, moral purity, and
love, and they who, like the parents, had had the film re-
moved from their eyes by grief. For there is a way which
God has of forcing the spiritual upon men's attention.
When you shut down the lid upon the coffin of a child, or
one as dearly loved, there is an awful want, a horrible sense
of insecurity, which sw r eeps away the glittering mist of time
from the edge of the abyss, and you gaze on the phantom
264 The Healing of Jairus's Daughter.
wonders of the unseen. Yes, real anguish qualifies fo'r an
entrance into the solemn chamber where all is miracle.
In another way, and for another reason, the numbers of
those who witness a miracle must be limited. Jairus had
his daughter restored to life : the woman was miraculously
healed. But if every anxious parent and every sick sufferer
could have the wonder repeated in his or her case, the won-
der itself would cease. This is the preposterousness of the
skeptic's demand Let me see a miracle, on an appointed day
and hour, and I will believe. Let us examine this.
A miracle is commonly defined to be a contravention of
the laws of nature. More properly speaking, it is only a
higher operation of those same laws in a form hitherto un^
seen. A miracle is perhaps no more a suspension or contra-
diction of the laws of nature than a hurricane or a thunder-
storm. They who first travelled to tropical latitudes came
back with anecdotes of supernatural convulsions of the ele-
ments. In truth, it was only that they had never personally
witnessed such effects ; but the hurricane which swept the
waves flat, and the lightning which illuminated all the heav-
en, or played upon the bayonets or masts in lambent flames,
were but effects of the very same laws of electricity and me-
teorology which were in operation at home.
A miracle is perhaps no more in contravention of the laws
of the universe, than the direct interposition of a whole na-
tion in cases of emergency to uphold what is right in oppo-
sition to what is established, is an opposition to "the laws of
the realm. For instance, the whole people of Israel reversed
the unjust decree of Saul which had sentenced Jonathan to
death. But law is the expression only of a people's will.
Ordinarily we see that expression mediately made through
judges, office-bearers, kings : and so long as we see it in this
mediate form, we are by habit satisfied that all is legal.
There are cases, however, in which, not an indirect, but a
direct expression of a nation's will is demanded. Extraordi-
nary cases : and because extraordinary, they who can only
see what is legal in what is customary, conventional, and in
the routine of written precedents, get bewildeVed, and reck-
on the anomalous act illegal or rebellious. In reality, it is
only the source of earthly law, the nation, pronouncing the
law without the intervention of the subordinate agents.
This will help us to understand the nature of a miracle.
What we call laws are simply the subordinate expressions of
a will. There must be a will before there can be a law.
Certain antecedents are followed by certain consequents.
When we see this succession, we are satisfied, and call it nat-
The Healing of Jairus's Daughter. 265
ural. But there are emergencies in which it may be neces-
sary for the will to assert itself, and become not the mediate,
but the immediate antecedent to the consequent. No sub-
ordinate agent interposes ; simply the first cause comes in
contact with a result. The audible expression of will is fol-
lowed immediately by something which is generally pre-
ceded by some lower antecedent which we call a cause. In
this case, you will observe, there has been no contravention
of the laws of nature, there has only been an immediate
connection between the first cause and the last result. A
miracle is the manifestation to man of the voluntariness of
power.
Now, bearing this in mind, let it be supposed that every
one had a right to demand a miracle that the occurrence
of miracles was unlimited that as often as you had an ache,
or trembled for the loss of a relation, you had but to pray,
and receive your wish.
Clearly in this case, first of all, the constitution of the uni-
verse would be reversed. The will of man would be substi-
tuted for the will of God. Caprice and chance would regu-
late all : God would be dethroned ; God would be degraded
to the rank of one of those beings of supernatural power with
whom Eastern romance abounds, who are subordinated by a
spell to the will of a mortal, who is armed with their powers
and uses them as vassals ; God would be merely the genius
who would be chained by the spell of prayer to obey the be-
hests of man. Man would arm himself with the powers of
Deity, and God would be his slave.
Further still : This unlimited extension of miracles would
annihilate miracles themselves. For suppose that miracles
were universal that prayer was directly followed by a re-
ply that we could all heal the sick and raise the dead this
then would become the common order of things. It would
be what we now call nature. It would cease to be extraor-
dinary, and the infidel would be as unsatisfied as ever. He
would see only the antecedent, prayer, and the invariable
consequent, a reply to prayer ; exactly what he sees now in
the process of causation. And then, just as now, he would
say, What more do you want ? These are the laws of the
universe: Why interpose the complex and cumbrous ma-
chinery of a God, the awkward hypothesis of a will, to ac-
count for laws ?
Miracles, then, are necessarily limited. The non-limita-
tion of miracles would annihilate the miraculous.
Lastly ; it is the intention of a miracle to manifest the Di-
vine in the common and ordinary.
12
266 The Healing of Jairus^s Daughter.
For instance, in a boat on the Sea of Tiberias the Redeem-
er rose and rebuked the storm. Was that miracle merely a
proof of His divine mission ? Are we merely to gather from
it that then and there on a certain day, in a certain obscure
corner of the world, Divine power was at work ? It is con-
ceivable that a man might credit that miracle that he
might be exceedingly indignant with the rationalist who re-
solves it into a natural phenomenon and it is conceivable
that that very man might tremble in a storm. To what
purpose is that miracle announced to him ? He believes in
God existing in the past, but not in the present ; he believes
in a Divine presence in the supernatural, but discredits it in
the natural ; he recognizes God in the marvellous, but does
not feel Him in the wonderful of every day : but unless it
has taught him that the waves and winds now are in the
hollow of the hand of God, the miracle has lost its mean-
ing.
Here again, as in many other cases, Christ healed sickness
and raised the dead to life. Are we merely to insert this
among the " Evidences of Christianity," and then, with law-
yer-like sagacity, having laid down the rules of evidence,
say to the infidel, " Behold our credentials ; we call upon
you to believe our Christianity ?" This were a poor reason
to account for the putting forth of Almighty Power. More
truly and more deeply, these miracles were vivid manifesta-
tions to the senses that Christ is the Saviour of the body
that now, as then, the issues of life and death are in His
hands that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The
extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in
the ordinary. Nay, the ordinary marvels are greater than
the extraordinary, for these are subordinate to them ; mere-
ly indications and handmaids guiding us to perceive and
recognize a constant Presence, and reminding us that in
everyday existence the miraculous and the Godlike rule us.
Baptism. 267
in.
BAPTISM.
"For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as
many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
nor female : for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then
are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. " Gal. iii. 26-29.
WHEREVER opposite views are held with warmth by re-
ligious-nrinded men, we may take for granted that there is
some higher truth which embraces both. All high .truth is
the union of two contradictories. Thus predestination and
free-will are opposites : and the truth does not lie between
these two, but in a higher reconciling truth which leaves
both true. So with the opposing views of baptism. Men of
equal spirituality are ready to sacrifice all to assert, or to
deny, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. And the truth,
I believe, will be found, not in some middle, moderate, timid
doctrine which skillfully avoids extremes, but in a truth
larger than either of these opposite views, which is the basis
of both, and which really is that for which each party tena-
ciously clings to its own view as to a matter of life and
death.
The present occasion* only requires us to examine three
views.
I. That of Rome.
II. That of modern Calvinism.
III. That of (as I believe) Scripture and the Church of Eng-
land.
I. The doctrine of Rome respecting baptism. We will
take her own authorities.
1. "If any one say that the sin of Adam .... is taken
away, either by the powers of human nature or by any other
remedy than the merit of the One Mediator, our Lord Jesus
Christ, .... or denies that the merit of Jesus Christ, duly
conferred by the sacrament of baptism in the church form, is
applied to adults as well as to children let him be accursed."
Sess. v. 4.
" If any one deny that the imputation of original sin is re-
* The recent decision on the Gorham case of the Privy Council.
268 Baptism.
raitted by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is con-
ferred in baptism, or even asserts that the whole of that
which has the true and proper character of sin, is not taken
away, but only not imputed let him be accursed." Sess.
v. 5.
"If any one say that grace is not given by sacraments of
this kind always and to all, so far as God's part is concerned,
but only at times, and to some, although they be duly re-
ceived let him be accursed."
" If any one say that by the sacraments of the New Cove-
nant themselves, grace is not conferred by the efficacy of the
rite (opus operatum), but that faith alone is sufficient for ob-
taining grace let him be accursed."
" If any one say that in three sacraments, i. e., baptism, con-
firmation, and orders, a character is not impressed upon the
soul, i. e., a certain spiritual and indelible mark (for which
reason they can not be repeated) let him be accursed."
Sess. vii. cap. 7-9.
" By baptism, putting on Christ, we are made a new crea-
tion in Him, obtaining plenary and entire 'remission of all
sins."
It is scarcely possible to misrepresent the doctrine so plain-
ly propounded. Christ's merits are instrumentally applied
by baptism ; original sin is removed by a change of nature ;
a new character is imparted to the soul ; a germinal principle
or seed of life is miraculously given ; and all this in virtue not
of any condition in the recipient, nor of any condition at all
except that of the due performance of the rite.
This view is held, with varieties and modifications of many
kinds, by an increasingly large number of the members of
the Church of England ; but we do not concern ourselves
with these timid modifications, which painfully attempt to
draw some subtle hair's-breadth distinction between them-
selves and the above doctrine. The true, honest, and only
honest representation of this view is that put forward undis-
guisedly by Rome.
When it is objected to the Romanist that there is no evi-
dence in the life of the baptized child different from that-
given by the unbaptized sufficient to make credible a change
so enormous, he replies, as in the case of the other sacrament,
The miracle is invisible. You can not see the bread and wine
become flesh and blood ; but the flesh and blood are there,
whether you see them or not. You can not see the effects
of regeneration, but they are there, hidden, whether visible
to you or not. In other words, Christ has declared that it is
with every one born of the Spirit as with the wind, "77wu
Baptism. 269
nearest the sound thereof" But the Romanist distinctly
holds that you can not hear the sound that the wind hath
blown, but there is no sound that the Spirit hath descended,
and there are no fruits whereby the tree is known.
In examining this view, at the outset we deprecate those
vituperative and ferocious expressions which are used so
commonly against the Church of Rome unbecoming in pri-
vate conversation, disgraceful on the platform, they are still
more unpardonable in the pulpit. I am not advocating that
feeble softness of mind which can not speak strongly because
it can not feel strongly. I know the value, and in their
place, the need of strong words. I know that the Redeemer
used them : stronger and keener never fell from the lips of
man. I am aware that our Reformers used coarse and ve-
hement language ; but we do not imbibe the Reformers'
spirit by the mere adoption of the Reformers' language;
nay, paradoxical as it may seem, the use of their language
even proves a degeneracy from their spirit. You will find
harsh and gross expressions enough in the Homilies, but re-
member that when they spoke thus, Rome was in the as-
cendency. She had the power of fire and sword ; and the
men who spoke so were candidates for martyrdom, by the
expressions that they used. livery one might be called
upon by fire and steel to prove the quality of what was in
him, and account for the high pretension of his words. I
grant the grossness. But when they spoke of the harlotries
of Rome, and spoke ofMier adulteries, and fornications, and
lies which she had put in full cup to the lip of nations, it was
the sublime defiance of free-hearted men against oppression
in high places, and falsehood dominant. But now, when
Rome is no longer dominant, and the only persecutions that
we hear -of are the petty persecutions of Protestants among
themselves, to use language such as this is not the spirit of a
daring Reformer, but only the pusillanimous shriek of a cru-
el cowardice which keeps down the enemy whose rising it is
afraid of!
We will do justice to this doctrine of Rome. It has this
merit at least, that it recognizes the character of a church :
it admits it to be a society, and not an association. An as-
sociation is an arbitrary union. Men form associations for
temporary reasons ; and, arbitrarily made, they can be arbi-
trarily dissolved. Society, on the contrary, is made, not by
will, but facts. Brotherhood, sonship, families, nations are
nature's work : real facts. Rome acknowledges this. It per-
mits no arbitrary drawing of the lines of that which calls it-
self the Church. A large, broad, mighty field : the Christian
270 Baptism.
world : all baptized : nay, expressly, even those who are
baptized by heretics. It shares the spirit, instead of mo-
nopolizing it.
Practically, therefore, in the matter of education, we should
teach children on the basis on which Rome works. We say
as Rome says, You are the child of God : baptism declares
you such. Rome says as Paul says, " As many of you as are
baptized into Christ have put on Christ."
Consequently, we distinguish between this doctrine as
held by spiritual and as held by unspiritual men. Spiritu-
ality often neutralizes error in views. Men are often better
than their creeds. The Calvinist ought to be an Antinomi-
an he is not. So, in holy-minded men, this doctrine of bap-
tismal regeneration loses its perniciousness nay, even be-
comes, in erroneous form, a precious, blessed truth.
It is quite another thing, however, held by unspiritual
men. Our objections to this doctrine are,
1. Because it assumes baptism to be not the testimony to
a fact, but the fact itself. Baptism proclaims the child of
God. The Romanist says it creates him. Then and there a
mysterious change takes place, inward, spiritual, effected by
an external rite. This makes baptism not a sacrament, but
an event. 9
2. Because it is materialism of the grossest kind. The or-
der of Christian life is from within to that which is without
from the spiritual truth to the material expression of it.
The Roman order is from the outwar'd to the creation of the
inward. This is magic. The Jewish Cabalists believed that
the pronunciation of certain magical words engraved on the
seal of Solomon would perform marvels. The whole Eastern
world fancied that such spells could transform one being
into another a brute into a man, or a man into 'a brute.
Books containing such trash were burnt at Ephesus in the
dawn of Christianity. But here, in the midday of Chris-
tianity, we have belief in such spells, given, it is true that it
is said, by God, whereby the demoniacal nature can be exor-
cised, the Divine implanted in its stead, and the evil heart
transformed unconsciously into a pure spirit.
Xow this is degrading God. Observe the results: A child
is to be baptized on a given day ; but when that day ar-
rives the child is unwell, and the ceremony must be post-
poned another week or month. Again a delay takes place
the day is damp or cold. At last the time arrives ; the
service is read ; it may require, if read slowly, five minutes
more than ordinarily. Then and there, when that reading is
slowly accomplished, the mystery is achieved. And all this
Baptism. 271
time, while the child is ill, while the weather is bad, while
the reader procrastinates I say it solemnly the Eternal
Spirit who rules this universe must wait patiently, and come
down, obedient to a mortal's spell, at the very second that rt
suits his convenience. God must wait attendance on the ca-
price of a careless parent, ten thousand accidents, nay, the
leisure of an indolent or an immoral priest. Will you dare
insult the Majesty on high by such a mockery as this result ?
3. We object, because this view makes Christian life a
struggle for something that is lost, instead of a progress to
something that lies before. Let no one fancy that Rome's
doctrine on this matter makes salvation an easy thing. The
Spirit of God is given the germ is implanted ; but it may
be crushed, injured, destroyed. And her doctrine is, that
venial sins after baptism are removed by absolutions and at-
tendance on the ordinances : whereas for mortal sins there is
not no hope but no certainty ever after until the judg-
ment-day. Vicious men may make light of such teaching,
and get periodic peace, from absolution, to go and sin again ;
but to a spiritual Romanist this doctrine is no encourage-
ment for laxity. Now observe, after sin life becomes the ef-
fort to get back to where you were years ago. It is the sad
longing glance at the Eden from which you have been ex-
pelled, which is guarded now by a fiery sword in this world
forever. And, therefore, whoever is familiar with the writ-
ings of some of the earliest leaders of the present movement
Romeward, writings that rank among the most touching and
beautiful of English compositions, will remember the marked
tone of sadness which pervades them their high, sad long-
ings after the baptismal purity that is gone their mournful
contemplations of a soul that once glistened with baptismal
dew, now " seamed and scarred " with the indelible marks of
sin.
The true Christian life is ever onward, full of trust and
hope : a life wherein even past sin is no bar to saintliness,
but the step by which you ascend to higher vantage-ground
of holiness. The " indelible grace of baptism," how can it
teach that?
II. The second view is that held by what we, for the sake
of avoiding personalities, call modern Calvinism. It draws
a distinction between the visible and the invisible Church.
It holds that baptism admits all into the former, but into the
latter only a special few. Baptismal regeneration as applied
to the first, is merely a change of state though what is
meant by a change of state it were hard to say, or to deter-
272 Baptism,
mine wherein an unbaptized person admitted to all the
ordinances would differ in state from a person baptized.
The real benefit of baptism, however, only belongs to the
elect. With respect to others, to predicate of them regen-
eration in the highest sense, is at best an ecclesiastical fie*
tion, said " in the judgment of charity."
This view maintains that you are not God's child until
you become such consciously. Not until evidence of a re-
generate life is given not until signs of a converted soul
are shown, is it right to speak of being God's child, except
in this judgment of charity. Now we remark,
1. This judgment of charity ends at the baptismal font.
It is never heard of in after-life. It is like the charitable
judgment of the English law, which presumes, or is said to
presume, a man innocent till proved guilty : valuable enough
as a legal fiction ; nevertheless, it does not prevent a man
barring his windows, guarding his purse, keenly watching
against the dealings of those around him who are presumed
innocent. Similarly, the so-called "judgment of charity"
terminates with infancy. They who speak of the Church's
language, in which children are called children of God, as
being quite right, but only in "the judgment of charity,"
are exactly the persons who do not in after-life charitably
presume that all their neighbors are Christians. " He is not
a Christian." " She is one of the world," or " one of the
unregenerate." Such is the language applied to those who
are in baptism reckoned children of God. They could not
consistently apply to all adults the language applied in this
text: "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ,
have put on Christ. Ye are all the children of God by faith
ir Christ Jesus."
2. Next, I observe that this view is identical with the
Roman one in this respect, that it creates the fact instead of
testifying to it. Only, instead of baptism, it substitutes
certain views, feelings, and impressions, and asserts that
these make the man into a child of God. The Romanist says
baptism, the Calvinist says faith, makes that true which was
not true before. It is not a fact that God is that person's
Father till in the one case baptism, in the other faith, have
made him such.
3. Observe the pernicious results of this teaching in the
matter of education. Here, again, I draw the distinction
between the practical consequences which legitimately ought
to be, and those which actually are deduced from it. Hap-
pily men are better than their views. Hear the man speak
ing out of his theological system* and then hear him speak-
Baptism. 273
ing out of the abundance of his heart. Hear the religious
mother when the system is in view, and all are indiscrimi-
nately, except a certain few, corrupt, vile, with nothing good
in them, heirs of ruin. But hear her talk unguardedly of
her own children. They have the frailties, weaknesses,
common faults of childhood ; but they have no vice in them :
there is nothing base or degraded in her children ! When
the embraces of her child are round her neck, it will require
more eloquence than you possess to convince her that she is
nursing a little demon in her lap. The heart of the mother-
is more than a match for the creed of the Calvinist.
There are some, however, who do not shrink from con-
sistency, and develop their doctrine in all its consequences.
The children follow out their instructions with fearful fidelity.
Taught that they are not the children of God till certain
feelings have been developed in them, they become by de-
grees bewildered, or else lose their footing on reality. They
hear of certain mystic joys and. sorrows; and unless they
fictitiously adopt the language they hear, they are painfully
conscious that they know nothing of them as yet. They
hear of a depression for sin which they certainly have never
experienced a joy in God, making His service and His
house the gate of heaven ; and they know that it is excess-
ively irksome to them a confidence, trust, and assurance
of which they know nothing till they take for granted
what has been told them, that they are not God's children.
Tauiiht that they are as yet of the world, they live as the
world ; they carry out their education, which has dealt with
them as children of the devil, to be converted; and children
of the devil they become.
Of these two views, the last is by far the most certain to
undermine Christianity in every Protestant country. The
first at least assumes God's badge to be an universal one,
and in education is so far right, practically: only wrong in
the decision of the question how the child was created a
child of God. But the second assumes a false, partial, party
badge election, views, feelings. No wonder that the chil-
dren of such religionists proverbially turn out ill.
III. We pass to the doctrine of the Bible and (I believe)
of the Church of England.
Christ came to reveal a name the Father. He abolished
the exclusive " my," and He taught us to pray, " our Father.''
He proclaimed God the Father man the Son : revealecl that
vhe Son of Man is also the Son of God. Man, as man, God's
child. He came to redeem the world from that ignorance
12*
274 Baptism.
of the relationship which had left them in heart aliens and
unregenerate. Human nature, therefore, became, viewed in
Christ, a holy thing and divine. The revelation is a com-
mon humanity, sanctified in God. The appearance of the
Son of God is the sanctification of the human race.
The development of this startled men. Sons of God !
Yes; ye Jews have monopolized it too long. Is that Samar-
itan, heretic and alien, a child of God ? Yes. The Samar-
itan, but not these outcasts of society ? Yes, these outcasts
ef society. He went into the publican's house and proclaim-
ed that " he too was a son of Abraham." He suffered the
sinful penitent to flood His feet with tears. He saw there
the Eternal Light unquenched the eye, long dimmed and
darkened, which yet still could read the Eternal Mind. She,
too, is God's erring, but forgiven, beloved, and " much-loving "
child. One step farther. He will not dare to say the Gen-
tiles? the Gentiles who bow down to stocks and stones?
Yes, the Gentiles too. He spake to them a parable. He
told of a younger son who had lived long away from his
father's home. But his forgetfulness of his father could not
abrogate the fact of his being his son, and as soon as he rec-
ognized the relationship, all the blessings of it were his own.
Now this is the revelation. Man is God's child, and the
sin of the man consists in perpetually living as if it were
false. It is the sin of the heathen, and what is your mission
to him but to tell him that he is God'S child, and not living
up to his privilege ? It is the sin of the baptized Christian
waiting for feelings for a claim on God. It was the false life
which the Jews had led: precisely this, that they were liv-
ing coerced by law. Christ had come to redeem them from
the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons. But
they were sons already, if they only knew it. "Because ye
are'sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your
hearts, whereby ye cry Abba, Father." To be a son of God
is one thing ; to know that you are, and call Him Father, is
another and that is regeneration.
Now there was wanted a permanent and authoritative
pledge, revealing and confirming this : for, to mankind in
the mass, invisible truths become real only when they have
been made visible. All spiritual facts must have an existence
in form for the human mind to rest on. This pledge is bap-
tism. Baptism is a visible witness to the world of that
which the world is forever forgetting. A common humanity
united in God. Baptism authoritatively reveals and pledges
to the individual that which is true 6*f the race. Baptisni
takes the child and addresses it by name : Paul no longer
Baptism. 275
Saul you are a child of God. Remember it henceforth.
It is now revealed to you, and recognized by you ; and to
recognize God as the Father is -to be regenerate. You, Paul,
are now regenerate ; you will have foes to fight the world,
the flesh, and the devil : but remember, they only keep you
out of an inheritance which is your own not an inheritance
which you have to win by some new feeling or merit in
yourself. It is yours ; you are the child of God you are
a member of Christ you are an inheritor of the kingdom of
heaven.
Observe then baptism does not create a child of God. It
authoritatively declares him so. It does not make the fact,
it only reveals it. If baptism made it a fact then and there
for the first time, baptism would be magic. Nay, faith does
not create a child of God any more than baptism, nor does
it make a fact. It only appropriates that which is a fact al-
ready. For otherwise see what inextricable confusion you
fall into. You ask a man to believe, and thereby be created
a child of God. Believe what that God is his Father?
But God is not his Father. He is not a child of God, you
say, till he believes. Then you ask him to believe a lie.
Herein lies the error, in basis identical, of the Romanist
and the Calvinist. Faith is to one what baptism is to the
other, the creator of a fact ; whereas they both rest upon a
fact, which is a fact whether they exist or not before they
exist ; nay, without whose previous existence both of them
are unmeaning and false.
The Catechism, however, says : In baptism .... I was
made a child of God. Yes, coronation makes a sovereign ;
but, paradoxical as it may seem, it can only make one a
sovereign who is a sovereign already. Crown a pretender,
that coronation will not create the king. Coronation is the
authoritative act of the nation declaring a fact which was
fact before. And ever after coronation is the event to which
all dates back, and the crown is the expression used for all
royal acts : the crown pardons, the prerogatives of the
crown, etc.
Similarly with baptism. Baptism makes a child of God in
the sense in which coronation makes a king. And baptism
naturally stands in Scripture for the title of regeneration and
the moment of it. Only what coronation is in an earthly way,
an authoritative manifestation of an invisible earthly truth,
baptism is in a heavenly way : God's authoritative declara-
tion in material form of a spiritual reality. In other words,
no bare sign, but a Divine sacrament.
Now for the blessings of this view.
276 Baptism.
1. It prevents exclusiveness and spiritual pride, and all
condemnation and contempt of others ; for it admits those
who have no spiritual capacity or consciousness to be God's
children. It proclaims a kingdom, not for a few favorites,
but for mankind. It protests against the idea that sonship
depends on feelings. It asserts it as a broad, grand, uni-
versal, blessed fact. It bids you pray with a meaning of
added majesty in the words, Our Father.
Take care. Do not say of others that they are unregener-
ate, of the world. Do not make a distinction within the
Church of Christians and not-Christians. If you do, what do
you more than the Pharisees of old ? That wretched beggar
that holds his hat at the crossing of the street is God's child
as well as you, if he only knew it. You know it he does
not : that is the difference. But the immortal is in him too,
and the Eternal Word speaks in him. That daughter of dis-
sipation whom you despise, spending night after night in
frivolity, she too has a Father in heaven. " My Father and
your Father, my God and your God." She has forgotten
Him, and, like the prodigal, is trying to live on the husks of
the world the empty husks which will not satisfy the de-
grading husks which the swine did eat. But whether she
will or not, her baptism is valid, and proclaims a fact which
may be, alas ! the worse for her, if she will not have it the
better.
2. This doctrine protests against the notion of our being
separate units in the Divine fife. The Church of Calvinism
is merely a collection of atoms, a sand-heap piled together,
with no cohesion among themselves, or a mass of steel filings
cleaving separately to a magnet, but not to each- other.
Baptism proclaims a church.- Humanity joined in Christ to
God. Do not say that the separating work of baptism,
drawing a distinction between the Church and the world,
negatives this. Do not say, that because the Church is sep-
arated from the world, therefore the world are not God's
children. Rather that very separation proves it. You bap-
tize a separate body, in order to realize that which is true of
the collective race, as in this text, "There is neither Jew nor
Greek." In all things it is the same. If you would sanctify
all time, you set apart a sabbath not to show that other
days are not intended to be sacred, but for the very purpose
of making them sacred. If you would have a "nation of
priests," you set apart a priesthood ; not as if the priestly
functions of instruction and assisting to approach God were
exclusively in that body, but in order, by concentration, to
bring out to greater perfection the priestly character which
Baptism. 277
is shared by the whole, and then thereby make the whole
more truly " priests to God to offer spiritual sacrifices." In
the same "way, if God would baptize humanity, He baptizes
a separate Church, in order that that Church may baptize
the race. The Church is God's ideal of humanity realized.
Lastly, This doctrine of baptism sanctifies materialism.
The Romanist was feeling his way to a great fact when he
said that there are other things of sacramental efficacy be-
sides these two Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. The
things of earth are pledges and sacraments of things in heav-
en. It is not for nothing that God has selected for His sac-
raments the commonest of all acts a meal, and the most
abundant of all materials water. Think you that He
means to say that only through two channels His Spirit
streams into the soul ? Or is it not much more in unison
with His dealings to say that these two are set apart to sig-
nify to us the sacramental character of all nature ? Just as
a miracle was intended not to reveal God working there, at
that death-bed and in that storm, but to call attention to His
presence in every death and every storm. Go out at this
spring season of the year ;. see the mighty preparations for
life that Nature is making ; feel the swelling sense of grate-
fulness, and the pervasive expanding consciousness of love
for all Being ; and then say, whether this whole form which
we call nature is not the great Sacrament of God, the rev-
elation of His existence, and the channel of His communica-
tions to the spirit ?
IV.
BAPTISM.
"The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us." 1
Peter iii. 21.
LAST Sunday we considered the subject of baptism in ref-
erence to the Romish and modern Calvinistic views. The
truth seemed to lie not in a middle course between the two
extremes, but in a truth deeper than either of them. For
there are various modifications of the Romish view which
soften down its repulsive features. There are some who hold
that the guilt of original sin is pardoned, but the tendencies
of an evil nature remain ; others who attribute a milder
meaning to*" regeneration," understanding by it a change of
state instead of a change of nature ; others who acknowledge
278 Baptism.
a certain mysterious benefit imparted by baptism, but decline
determining how much grace is given, or what the exact na-
ture of the blessing is; others who acknowledge that it is in
certain cases the moment when regeneration takes place, but
hold that it is conditional, occurring sometimes, not always,
and following upon the condition of what they call " preven-
ient grace." We do not touch upon these views. They are
simply modifications of the Romish view, and as such, more
offensive than the view itself; for they contain that which is
most objectionable in it, and special evils of their own besides.
We admitted the merits of the two views. We are grate-
ful to the Romanist for the testimony which he bears to the
truth of the extent of Christ's salvation for the privilege
which he gives of calling all the baptized, children of God
for the protest which his doctrine makes against all party
monopoly of God for the protest against ultra-spiritualism,
in acknowledging that material things are the types and
channels of the Almighty Presence.
We are grateful to the Calvinist for his strong protest
against formalism for his assertion of the necessity of an in-
ward change for the distinction which he has drawir be-
tween being in the state of sons, a,nd having the nature of
sons of God.
The error in these two systems, contrary as they are, ap-
peared to us to be identically one and the same that of pre-
tending to create a fact instead of witnessing to it. The Cal-
vinist maintains that on a certain day and hour, under the
ministry of the Word, under the preaching of some one who
"proclaims the Gospel," he was born again, and God became
his Father; and the Romanist declares that on a certain day,
at a certain moment by an earthly clock, by the hands of a
priest apostolically ordained, the evil nature was expelled
from him, and a new fact in the world was created he at-
tained the right of calling God his Father.
Now if baptism makes God our Father, baptism is incan-
tation ; if faith makes him so, faith rests upon a falsehood.
For the Romanist does no more than the red Indian and
the black negro pretend to do exorcise the devil, and infuse
God. The only question then becomes, Which is the true
enchanter, and which is the impostor? for the juggler does,
by the power of imagination, often cure the sick man ; but
the mysterious effects of baptism never are visible, and never
can be tested in this world.
On the other hand, faith would rest upon a falsehood : for
if faith is to give the right of calling God a Fatfter, how can
you believe that which is not true the very moment before
Baptism. 279
belief? God is not your Father. If you believe He is, your
belief is false.
The truth which underlies these two views, on which all
that is true in them rests, and in which all that is false is ab-
sorbed, is the paternity of God. This is the revelation of the
Redeemer. This is authoritatively declared by baptism, ap-
propriated personally by faith, but a truth independent both
of baptism and faith which would still be true if there were
neither a baptism nor a faith in the world. They are the
witnesses of the fact not the creators of it.
Here, however, two difficulties arise. If this be so, do we
not make light of Original Sin? And do we not reduce bap-
tism into a superfluous ceremony ?
Before we enter upon these questions, I must vindicate my-
self from the appearance of presumption. Where the wisest
and holiest have held opposite views, it seems immodest to
speak with unfaltering certainty and decisive tone. Hesita-
tion, guarded statements, caution, it would seem, would be
far more in place. Now, to speak decidedly, is not, necessa-
rily, to speak presumptuously. There are questions involv-
ing great research, and questions relating to truths beyond
our ken, where guarded and uncertain tones are only a duty.
There are others where the decision has become conviction,
a 'kind of intuition, the result of years of thought, which has
been the day to a man's darkness, " the fountain-light of all
his seeing," which has interpreted him to himself, made all
clear where all was perplexed before, been the key to the rid-
dle of truths that seemed contradictory, become part of his
very being, and for which more than once he has held him-
self cheerfully prepared to sacrifice all that is commonly held
dear. With respect to convictions such as these, of course,
the arguments by which they are enforced may be faulty, the
illustrations inadequate, the power of making them intelligi-
ble very feeble ; nay, the views themselves may be wrong ;
but to pretend to speak with hesitation and uncertainty re-
specting such convictions would be not modesty, but affec-
tation.
For let us remember in what spirit we are to enter on this
inquiry. Not in the spirit of mere cautious orthodoxy, en-
deavoring to find a safe mean between two extremes in-
quiring what is the view held by the sound, and judicious,
and respectable men, who were never found guilty of any en-
thusiasm, and under the shelter of whose opinion we may be
secure from the charge of any thing unsound ; nor in the
spirit of the lawyer, patiently examining documents, weigh-
ing evidence, and deciding whether upon sufficient testimony
280 Baptism.
there is such a thing as " prevenient grace " or not ; nor,
once more, in the spirit of superstition. The superstitious
mother of the lower classes baptizes her child in all haste be-
cause she believes it has a mystic influence on its health, or
because she fancies that it confers the name without which it
would not be summoned at the day of judgment. And the
superstitious mother of the upper classes baptizes her child
too in all haste, because, though she does not precisely know
what the mystic effect of baptism is, she thinks it best to be
on the safer side, lest her child should die, and its eternity
should be decided by the omission. And we go to preach to
the heathen while there are men and women in our Christian
England so bewildered with systems and sermons, so pro-
foundly in the dark respecting the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, so utterly unable to repose in eternal love and justice,
that they must guard their child from Him by a ceremony,
and have the shadow of a shade of doubt whether or not, for
omission of theirs, that child's Creator and Father may curse
its soul for all eternity !
We are to enter upon this question as a real one of life
and death as men who feel in their bosoms sin and death,
and who want to determine no theological nicety, but this:
Whether we have a right to claim to be sons of God or not ?
And if so, on what grounds? In virtue of a ceremony, or in
virtue of a certain set of feelings ? Or in virtue of an eternal
fact the fact of God's paternity ?
I reply to two objections.
I. The apparent denial of original sin.
H. The apparent result that baptism is nothing.
I. The text selected is a strong and distinct one. It pro-
claims the value of baptism. " Baptism saves us." But it
declares that it can only be said figuratively: "The like fig-
ure whereunto even baptism cloth also now save us."
Now the first reply I make is, that in truth the Romish
view seems to make lighter of original sin than this. Me-
thinks original sin must be a trifling thing if a little water
and a few human words can do away with it. A trifling
thing if, after it is done away, there is rib distinguishable dif-
ference between the baptized and unbaptized ; if the unbap-
tized Quaker is just as likely to exhibit the fruits of goodness
as the baptized son of the Church of England. We have got
out of the land of reality into the domain of figments and
speculations. A fictitious guilt is done away with by a fic-
titious pardon, neither the appearance nor the disappearance
being visible.
Baptism. 281
Original sin is an awful fact. It is not the guilt of an an-
cestor imputed to an innocent descendant, but if is the ten
dencies of that ancestor living in his offspring and incurring
guilt. Original sin can be forgiven only so far as original
sin is removed. It is not Adam's, it is yours; and it must
.cease to be yours, or else what is " taking away original sin ?"
Now he who would deny original sin must contradict all
experience in the transmission of qualities. The very hound
transmits his peculiarities learnt by education, and the Span-
ish horse his paces, taught by art, to his offspring, as a part
of their nature. If it were not so in man, there could be no
history of man as a species no tracing out the tendencies
of a race or nation nothing but the unconnected repetitions
of isolated individuals and their lives. It is plain that the
first man must have exerted on his race an influence quite
peculiar that his acts must have biased their acts. And
this bias or tendency is what we call original sin.
Now original sin is just this denial of God's paternity, re-
fusing to live as His children, and saying we are not His chil-
dren. To live as His child is the true life to live as not His
child is the false life. What was the Jews' crime? Was it
not this : " He came unto His own, and His own received
him not :" that they were His own, and in act denied it, pre-
ferring to the claim of spiritual relationship, the claim of
union by circumcision or hereditary descent ? What was the
crime of the Gentiles ? Was it not this : that " when they
knew God, they glorified Him not ' as God, neither were
thankful?" For what were they to be thankful? For being
His enemies? -Were they not His children, His sheep of
another fold ? Was not the whole falsehood of their life the
worship of demons and nothings instead of Him ? Did not
the parable represent them as the younger son a wanderer
from home, but still a son f
From this state Christ redeemed. He revealed God not
as the mechanic of the universe, not the judge, but as the
Father, and as the Spirit who is in man, " lighting every man,"
moving in man his infinite desires and infinite affections.
This was the revelation. The reception of that revelation is
regeneration. " He came unto His own, and His own received
Him not ; but to as many as received Him to them gave He
power to become the sons of God, even to as many as be-
lieved on His name." They were His own, yet they wanted
power to become His own.
Draw a distinction, therefore, between being the child of
God and realizing it. The fact is one thing ; the feeling of
the fact, and the life which results from that feeling, is anoth*
282 Baptism.
er. Redemption is the taking of us out of the life of false-
hood into tne life 01 truth and fact. "Of His own will begat
He us by the word of truth." But, remember, it is a truth ;
true whether you believe it. or not ; true whether you are
baptized or not.
There are two ways in which that revelation may be a'>.
cepted. 1. By a public recognition called baptism. 2. By
faith. In two ways, therefore, may it be said that man is
saved. " We are saved by faith." But it is also true, figu-
ratively, "Baptism saves us."
IT. If baptism is only the public recognition and symbol
of a fact, is not baptism degraded and made superfluous?
1. Baptism is given as a something to rest upon; nay, as a
something without which redemption would soon become
unreal which converts a doctrine into a reality which re-
alizes visibly what is invisible.
For our nature is such, that immaterial truths are unreal
to us until they are embodied in material form. Form al-
most gives them reality and being. For instance, time is an
eternal fact. But time only exists to our conceptions as an
actuality by measurements of materialism. When God cre-
ated the sun, and moon, and stars, to serve for " signs and for
seasons, and for days and years," He was actually, so far as
man was concerned, creating time. Our minds would be
only floating in an eternal Now, if it were not for symbolical
successions which represent the processes of thought. The
clock in the house is almost- a fresh creation. It realizes.
The gliding heavens, and the seasons, and the' ticking clock
what is time to us without them ? Nothing.
God's character, again, nay, God Himself, to us would be
nothing if it were not for the creation, which is the great
symbol and sacrament of His presence. 'If there were no
light, no sunshine, no sea, no national and domestic life, no
material witness of His being, God would be to us as good
as lost. The Creation gives us God : forever real in Himself,
by Creation He becomes a fact to us.
It is in virtue, again, of this necessity in man for an out-
ward symbol to realize an invisible idea, that a bit of torn
and blackened rag hanging from a fortress or the taflrail of
a ship, is a kind of life to iron-hearted men. Why is it that
in the heat of battle there is one spot where the sabres flash
most rapidly, and the pistols' ring is quicker, and men and
officers close in most densely, and all are gathered round one
man, round whose body that tattered silk is wound, and held
with the tenacity of a death-struggle ? Are they only chib
Baptism. 283
dren fighting for a bit of rag ? That flag is every thing to
them : their regiment, their country, their honor, their life ;
yet it is only a symbol ! Are symbols nothing ?
In the same way, baptism is a fact for man to rest upon,
a doctrine realized to flesh and blood. A something in eter-
nity which has no place in time brought down to such time
expressions as " then and there."
2. Again, baptism is the token of a church : the token of
an universal church. Observe the importance of its being
the .sacrament of an universal church instead of the symbol
of a sect. Not episcopacy, not justification by faith, nor any
party badge, but " one baptism." How blessed, on the
strength of this, to be able to say to the baptized dissenter,
You are my brother : you anathematize my church link
Popery and Prelacy together malign me ; but the same
sign is on our brow, and the same Father was named over
our baptism. Or to say to a baptized Romanist, You are my
brother too in doctrinal error perhaps in error of life it
may be too : but my brother our enemies the same our
struggle the same our hopes and warfare the very same.
Or to the very outcast, And you, my poor degraded friend,
are my brother still sunk, oblivious of your high calling ;
but still, whatever keeps you away from heaven keeps you
from your own. You may live the false life till it is too
late : but still, you only exclude yourself from your home.
Of course this is very offensive. What ! the Romanist my
brother ! the synagogue of Satan the house of God ! the
Spirit of God dwelling with the Church of Rome ! the be-
liever in transubstantiation my brother, and God's child !
Yes, even so ; and it is just your forgetfulness of what bap-
tism is and means, that accounts for that indignation of
yours. Do you remember what the elder brother in the par-
able was doing ? He went away sulky and gloomy, because
one not half so good as himself was recognized as his father's
child.
3. Baptism is seen to be no mere superfluity when you re-
member that it is an authoritative symbol. Draw the dis-
tinction between an arbitrary symbol and an authoritative
:ne for this difference is every thing.
I take once again the illustration of the coronation act.
Coronation places the crown on the brow of one who is sov-
ereign. It does not make the fact, it witnesses it. Is cor-
onation therefore nothing ? An arbitrary symbolical act
agreed on by a few friends of the sovereign would be noth-
ing; but an act which is the solemn ratification of a country
is every thing. It realizes a fact scarcely till then felt to be
284 Baptism.
real. Yet the fact was fact before otherwise the coronation
would be invalid. Even when the third William was crown-
ed, there was the symbol of a previous fact the nation's de-
cree that he should be king : and accordingly, ever after, all
is dated back to that. You talk of crown-prerogatives. You
say in your loyalty you " would bow to the crown, though it
hung upon a bush." Yet it is only a symbol! You only
say it " in a figure." But that figure contains within it the
royalty of England.
In a figure, the Bible speaks of baptism as you speak of
coronation, as identical with that which it proclaims* It
calls it regeneration. It says baptism saves. A grand fig-
ure, because it rests upon eternal fact. Call you that noth-
ing ?
We look to the Bible to corroborate this. In the Acts of
the Apostles Cornelius is baptized. On what grounds ? To
manufacture him into a child of God, or because he was tV
child of God ? Did his baptism create the fact, or was .
fact prior to his baptism, and the ground on which his bap-
tism was valid ? The history is this : St. Peter could not be-
lieve that a Gentile could be a child of God. But miracu-
lous phenomena manifested to his astonishment that this Gen-
tile actually was God's child whereupon the argument of
Peter was very natural. He has the Spirit, therefore baptism
is superfluous. Nay, he has the Spirit, therefore give him the
symbol of the Spirit. Let it be revealed to others what he is.
He is heir to the inheritance, therefore give him the title-
deeds. He is of royal lineage put the crown upon his head.
He is a child of God baptize him. "Who shall forbid wa-
ter, seeing these have received the Holy Ghost as well as
we?"
One illustration more from the marriage ceremony ; and I
select this for two reasons : because it is the type in Scrip-
ture of the union between Christ and his Church, and because
the Church oi Rome has called it a sacrament.
A deep truth is in that error. Rome calls it a sacramenx,
because it is the authoritative symbol of an invisible fact.
That invisible fact is the agreement of two human beings to
be one. We deny it to be a sacrament, because, though it is
the symbol of an invisible fact, it is not the symbol of a spir-
itual fact, nor an eternal fact : no spiritual truth, but only a
changeful human covenant.
Now observe the difference between an arbitrary or con-
ventional, and an authoritative ceremony of marriage-union.
There are conventional acknowledgments of that agreement,
ceremonies peculiar to certain districts, private pledges, be-
Baptism. 285
trothals. In the sight of God those are valid ; they can not
be lightly broken without sin. You can not in the courts of
heaven distinguish between an oath to God and a word
pledged to man. He said, "Let your yea be yea, and your
nay, nay." Such an engagement can not be infringed with-
out penalty the penalty of frivolized hearts, and that habit
of changefulness of attachment which is the worst of penal-
ties. But now, additional to that, will any one say that the
marriage ceremony is superfluous that the ring he gives his
wife is nothing ? It is every thing. It is the authoritative
ratification by a country and before God of that which be-
fore was for all purposes of earth unreal. Authoritative
therein lies the difference. Just in that authoritativeness
lies the question whether the ceremony is nothing or every
thing.
And yet remember, the ceremony itself does not pretend
to create the fact. It only claims to realize the fact. It ad*
mits the fact as existing previously. It bases itself upon a
fact. Forasmuch as two persons have consented together,
and forasmuch as a token and pledge of that in the shape
of a ring has been given, therefore, only therefore, the ap-
pointed minister pronounces that they are what betrothax
had made them already in the sight of God.
Exactly so, the authoritativeness is the all in all which
converts baptism from a mere ceremony into a sacrament.
Baptism is not merely a conventional arrangement, exceed-
ingly convenient, agreed on by men to remind themselves
and one another that they are God's children, but valid as a
legal, eternal truth, a condensed, embodied fact.
Is this making baptism nothing ? I should rather say
baptism is every thing. Baptism saves us.
One word now practically. I address myself to any one
who is conscious of fault, sin-laden, struggling with the ter-
rible question whether he has a right to claim^God as his Fa-
ther or not, bewildered on the one side by Romanism, on the
other by Calvinism. My brother, let not either of these rob
you of your privileges. Let not Rome send you to the fear-
ful questioning as to whether the mystic seed infused at a
certain moment by an act of man remains in you still, of
whether it has been so impaired by sin that henceforth there
is nothing but penance, tears, and uncertainty until the grave.
Let not Calvinism send you with terrible self-inspection to
the more dreadful task of searching your own soul for the
warrant of your redemption, and deciding whether you have
or have not the feelings and the faith which give you a
right to be one of God's elect. Better make up your minft
286 Elijah.
at once you have not ; you have no feelings that entitle you
to that. Take your stand upon the broader, sublimer basis
of God's paternity. God created the world God redeemed
the world. Baptism proclaims separately, personally, by
name, to you God created you, God redeemed you. "Bap-
tism is your warrant, you are His child. And now, because
you are His child, live as a child of God ; be redeemed from
the life of evil, which is false to your nature, into the life of
light and goodness, which is the truth of your being. Scorn
all that is mean ; hate all that is false ; struggle with all that
is impure. Love whatsoever " things are true, whatsoever
things are just, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,"
certain that God is on your side, and tfiat whatever keeps
you from Him, keeps you from your own Father. Live the
simple, lofty life which befits an heir of immortality.
V.
ELIJAH.
" But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and
sat down under a juniper-tree: and he requested for himself that he might
die ; and said, It is enough ; now, O Lord, take away my life ; for I am not
better than my fathers." 1 Kings xix. 4.
IT has been observed of the holy men of Scripture that
their most signal failures took place in those points of char-
acter for which they were remarkable in excellence. Moses
was the meekest of men, but it was Moses who " spake un-
advisedly with his lips." St. John was the apostle of chari-
ty ; yet he is the very type to us of religious intolerance, in
his desire to call down fire from heaven. St. Peter is pro-
verbially the apostle of impetuous intrepidity, yet twice he
proved a craven. If there were any thing for which Elijah is
remarkable, we should say it was superiority to human weak-
ness. Like the Baptist, he dared to arraign and rebuke his
sovereign : like the commander who cuts down the bridge
behind him, leaving himself no alternative but death or vic-
tory, he taunted his adversaries the priests of Baal, on Mount
Carmel, making them gnash their teeth and cut themselves
with knives, but at the same time insuring for himself a ter-
rible end, in case of failure, from his exasperated foes. And
again, in his last hour, when he was on his way to a strange
and unprecedented departure from this world when th
Elijah. 287
and flame-chariot were ready, he asked for no hu-
man companionship. The bravest men are pardoned if one
lingering feeling of human weakness clings to them at the
last, and they desire a human eye resting on them a human
hand in theirs a human presence with them. But Elijah
would have rejected all. In harmony with the rest of his
lonely severe character, he desired to meet his Creator
alone. Now it was this man so stern, so iron, so independ-
ent, so above all human weakness of whom it was record*
ed that in his trial-hour he gave way to a fit of petulance and
querulous despondency to which there is scarcely found a
parallel. Religious despondency, therefore, is our subject.
I. The causes of Elijah's despondency.
II. God's treatment of it.
The causes of Elijah's despondency.
1. Relaxation of physical strength.
On the reception of Jezebel's message, Elijah flies for his
life toils on the whole day sits down under a juniper-tree,
faint, hungry, and travel-worn ; the gale of an Oriental even-
ing, damp and heavy with languid sweetness, breathing on
his face. The prophet and the man give way. He longs to
die : you can not mistake the presence of causes in part
purely physical.
We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Of that consti*
tution which in our ignorance we call union of soul and body,
we know little respecting what is cause and what is effect.
We would fain believe that the mind has power over the
body, but it is just as true that the body rules the mind.
Causes apparently the most trivial : a heated room want of
exercise a sunless day a northern aspect will make all
the difference between happiness and unhappiness, between
faith and doubt, between courage and indecision. To our
fancy there is something humiliating in being thus at the
mercy of our animal organism. We would fain find nobler
causes for our emotions. We talk of the hiding of God's
countenance, and the fiery darts of Satan. But the picture
given here is true. The body is the channel of our noblest
emotions as well as our sublimest sorrows.
Two practical results follow. First, instead of vilifying
the body, complaining that our nobler part is chained down
to a base partner, it is worth recollecting that the body too
is the gift of Go4, in its way Divine " the temple of the
Holy Ghost ;" and that to keep the body in temperance, so-
berness, and chastity, to guard it from pernicious influence,
and to obey the laws of health, are just as much religious as
288 Rlijah.
they are moral duties ; just as much obligatory on the Chris*
dan as they are on a member of a Sanitary Committee.
Next, there are persons melancholy by constitution, in whom
the tendency is incurable ; you can not exorcise the phantom
of despondency. But it is something to know that it is a
phantom, and not to treat it as a reality something taught
by Elijah's history, if we only learn from it to be patient, and
wait humbly the time and good pleasure of God.
2. Want of sympathy. .
" I, even I only, am left." Lay the stress on only. The
loneliness of his position- was shocking to Elijah. Surprising
this : for Elijah wanted no sympathy in a far harder trial on
Mount Carmel. It was in a tone of triumph that he pro-
claimed that he was the single, solitary prophet of the Lord,
while Baal's prophets were four hundred and fifty men.
Observe, however, the difference. There was in that case
an opposition which could be grappled with : here there was
nothing against which mere manhood was availing. The
excitement was passed, the chivalrous look of the thing
gone. To die as a martyr, yes, that were easy, in grand fail-
ure ; but to die as a felon to be hunted, caught, taken back
to an ignominious death flesh and blood recoiled from that.
And Elijah began to feel that popularity is not love. The
world will support you when you have constrained its votes
by a manifestation of power, and shrink from you when pow-
er and greatness are no longer on your side. " I, even J
only, am left."
This trial is most distinctly realized by men of Elijah's
stamp and placed under Elijah's circumstances. It is the
penalty paid by superior mental and moral qualities, that
such men must make up their minds to live without sympa-
thy. Their feelings will be misunderstood, and their proj-
ects uncomprehended. They must be content to live alone.
It is sad to hear such appeal from the present to the judg-
ment of the future. Poor consolation ! Elijah has been
judged at that bar. *We are his posterity: our reverence
this day is the judgment of posterity on him. But to Elijah
what is that now? Elijah is in that quiet country where
the voice of praise and the voice of blame are alike unheard,
Elijah lived and died alone ; once only the bitterness of it
found expression. But what is posthumous justice to the
heart that ached then f
What greater minds like Elijah's have felt intensely, all
we have felt in our own degree. Not one of us but what
has felt his heart aching for want of sympathy. We have
had our lonely hours, our days of disappointment, and >jf
Elijah 289
moments of hopelessness times when our highest feelings
have been misunderstood, and our purest met with ridicule.
Days when our heavy secret was lying unshared, like ice
upon the heart. And then the spirit gives way : we have
wished that all were over that we could lie down tired,
and rest like the children, from life that the hour was come
when we could put down the extinguisher on the lamp, and
feel the last grand rush of darkness on the spirit.
Now, the final cause of this capacity for depression, the
reason for which it is granted us, is that it may make God
necessary. In such moments it is felt that sympathy be-
yond human is needful. Alone, the world against him, Eli-
jah turns to God. " It is enough : now, Lord"
3. Want of occupation.
As long as Elijah had a prophet's work to do, severe as
that work was, all went on healthily; but his occupation
was gone. To-morrow, and the day after, what has he left
on earth to do ? The misery of having nothing to do pro-
ceeds from causes voluntary or involuntary in their nature.
Multitudes of our race, by circumstances over which they
have no control in single life or widowhood in straitened
circumstances are compelled to endure lonely days, and
still more lonely nights and evenings. They who have felt
the hours hang so heavy can comprehend part of Elijah's
sadness.
This misery, however, is sometimes voluntarily incurred.
In artificial civilization certain persons exempt themselves
from the necessity of work. They eat the bread which has"
been procured by the sweat of the brow of others they
skim the surface of the thought which has been ploughed by
the sweat of the brain of others. They are reckoned the fa-
vored ones of fortune, and envied. Are they blessed ? The
law of life is, in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread.
No man can evade that law with impunity. Like all God's
laws, it is its own executioner. It has strange penalties an-
nexed to it : would you know them ? Go to the park, or the
esplanade, or the solitude after the night of dissipation, and
read the penalties of being useless, in the sad, jaded, listless
countenances nay, in the very trifles which must be con-
trived to create excitement artificially. Yet these very eyes
could, dull as they are, beam with intelligence : on many of
those brows is stamped the mark of possible nobility. The
fact is, that the capacity of ennui is one of the signatures of
man's immortality. It is his very greatness which makes in-
action misery. If God had made us only to be insects, with
no nobler care incumbent on us than the preservation of our
13
290 Elijah.
lives, or the pursuit of happiness, we might be content to
flutter from sweetness to sweetness, and from bud to flower.
But if men with souls live only to eat and drink and be
amused, is it any wonder if life be darkened with despond-
ency?
4. Disappointment in the expectation of success.
On Carmel the great object for which Elijah L ji-7 lived
seemed on the point of being realized. Baal's prophets were
slain Jehovah acknowledged with one voice-^false worship
put down. Elijah's life-aim, the transformation of Israel into
a kingdom of God, was all but accomplished. In a single
day all this bright picture was annihilated.
Man is to desire success, but success rarely cornea. The
wisest has written upon life its sad epitaph " All is vanity,"
i. <?., nothingness.
The tradesman sees the noble fortune for which he lived,
every coin of which is the representative of so much time
and labor spent, squandered by a spendthrift son. The
purest statesmen find themselves at last neglected, and re-
warded by defeat. Almost never can a man look back on
life and say that its anticipations have been realized. For
the most part life is disappointment, and the moments in
which this is keenly realized are moments like this of
Elijah's.
II. God's treatment of it.
1. First He recruited His servant's exhausted strength.
Read the history. Miraculous meals are given then Elijah
sleeps, wakes, and eats : on the strength of that goes forty
days' journey. In other words, like a wise physician, God
administers food, rest, and exercise, and then, and not till
then, proceeds to expostulate ; for before, Elijah's mind was
unfit for reasoning.
Persons come to the ministers of God in seasons of de-
spondency ; they pervert with marvellous ingenuity all the
consolation which is given them, turning wholesome food
into poison. Then we begin to perceive the wisdom of
God's simple homely treatment of Elijah, and discover that
there are spiritual cases which are cases for the physician
rather than the divine.
2. Next Jehovah calmed his stormy mind by the healing
influences of Nature. He commanded the hurricane to
sweep the sky, and the earthquake to shake the ground.
He lighted up the heavens till they were one mass of fire.
All this expressed and reflected Elijah's feelings. The mode
in which Nature soothes us is by finding meeter and no-
Elijah. 291
blei utterance for our feelings than we can find in words
by expressing and exalting them. In expression there is re-
lief. Elijah's spirit rose with the spirit of the storm. Stern,
wild defiance strange joy all by turns were imaged there.
Observe, " God was not in the wind," nor in the fire, nor in
the earthquake. It was Elijah's stormy self reflected in the
moods of the tempest, and giving them their character.
Then came a calmer hour. Elijah rose in reverence felt
tenderer sensations in his bosom. He opened his heart to
gentler influences, till at last out of the manifold voices of
Nature there seemed to speak, not the stormy passions of
the man, but the "still small voice" of the harmony and the
peace of God.
There are some spirits which must go through a discipline
analogous to that sustained by Elijah. The storm-struggle
must precede the still small voice. There are minds which
must be convulsed with doubt before they can repose in
faith. There are hearts which must be broken with disap-
pointment before they can rise into hope. There are dispo-
sitions which, like Job, must have all things taken from them
before they can find all things again in God. Blessed is the
man who, when the tempest has spent its fury, recognizes his
Father's voice in its under-tone, and bares his head and bows
his knee, as Elijah did. To such spirits, generally those of a
stern rugged cast, it seems as if God had said, " In the still
sunshine and ordinary ways of life you can not meet Me, but
like Job, in the desolation of the tempest, you shall see My
form, and hear My voice, and know that your Redeemer
liveth."
3. Besides, God made him feel the earnestness of life.
What doest thou here, Elijah ? Life is for doing. A proph-
et's life for nobler doing and the prophet was not doing,
but moaning.
Such a voice repeats itself to all of us, rousing us from our
lethargy, or our despondency, or our protracted leisure,
" What doest thou here ?" here in this short life. There is
work to be done evil put down God's Church purified
good men encouraged doubting men directed a country
to be saved time going life a dream eternity long one
chance, and but one forever. What doest thou here ?
Then he went on farther : "Arise, go on thy way." That
speaks to us : on thy way. Be.up and doing ; fill up every
hour, leaving no crevice or craving for a remorse, or a re-
pentance to creep through afterwards. Let not the mind
brood on self; save it from speculation, from those stagnant
moments in which the awful teachings of the spirit grope
292 Elijah.
into the unfathomable unknown, and the heart torments it-
self with questions which are insoluble except to an active
life. For the awful Future becomes intelligible only in the
light of a felt and active Present. Go, return on thy way if
thou art desponding on thy way ; health of spirit will re-
turn.
4. He completed the cure by the assurance of victory. 1
" Yet have I left me seven thousand in Israel who have not
bowed the knee to Baal." So, then, Elijah's life had been no
failure after all. Seven thousand at least in Israel had been
braced and encouraged by his example, and silently blessed
him, perhaps, for the courage which they felt. In God's
world for those that are in earnest there is no failure. No
work truly done no word earnestly spoken no sacrifice
freely made, was ever made in vain. Never did the cup of
cold water given for Christ's sake lose its reward.
We turn naturally from this scene to a still darker hour
and more august agony. If ever failure seemed to rest on a
noble life, it was when the Son of Man, deserted by His
friends, heard the cry which proclaimed that the Pharisees
had successfully drawn the net round their Divine victim.
Yet from that very hour of defeat and death there went
forth the world's life from that very moment of apparent
failure there proceeded forth into the ages the spirit of the
conquering Cross. Surely if the Cross says any thing, it
says that apparent defeat is real victory, and that there is a
heaven for those who have nobly and truly failed on earth.
Distinguish, therefore, between the real and the apparent.
Elijah's apparent success was in the shouts of Mount Carmel.
His real success was in the unostentatious, unsurmised obe-
dienoe of the seven thousand who had taken his God for
their God.
This is a lesson for all : for teachers who lay their heads
down at night sickening over their thankless task. Remem-
ber the power of indirect influences: those which distill from
a life, not from a sudden, brilliant effort. The former never
fail, the latter often. There is good done of which we can
never predicate the when or where. Not in the flushing of
a pupil's cheek, or the glistening of an attentive eye ; not in
the shining results of an examination does your real success
lie. It lies in that invisible influence on character which He
alone can read who counte^ the seven thousand nameless
ones in Israel.
For ministers, again what is ministerial success ? Crowd-
ed churches full aisles attentive congregations the ap-
proval of the religious world much impression produced ?
Notes on Psalm LI. 293
Elijah thought so ; and when he found out his mistake, and
discovered that the applause on Carmel subsided into hide-
ous stillness, his heart well-nigh broke with disappointment.
Ministerial success lies in altered lives and obedient humble
hearts : unseen work recognized in the judgment-day.
What is a public man's success? That which can be
measured by feast-days and the number of journals which
espouse his cause? Deeper, deeper far must he work who
works for eternity. In the eye of that, nothing stands but
gold real work : all else perishes.
Get below appearances, below glitter and show. Plant
your foot upon reality. Not in the jubilee of the myriads
on Carmel, but in the humble silence of the hearts of the
seven thousand, lay the proof that Elijah had not lived in
vain.
VI.
NOTES ON PSALM LI.
Written by David after a double crime: Uriah put in the forefront of the
battle the wife of the murdered man taken, etc.
A DARKER guilt you will scarcely find kingly power
abused worst passions yielded to. Yet this psalm breathes
from a spirit touched with the finest sensibilities of spiritual
feeling.
Two sides of our mysterious twofold being here, Some-
thing in us near to hell : something strangely near to God.
" Half beast half devil ?" No : rather half diabolical half
divine : half demon half God. This man mixing with the
world's sins in such sort that we shudder. But he draws
near the Majesty of God, and becomes softened, purified,
melted.
It is good to observe this, that we rightly estimate : gen-
erously of fallen humanity, moderately of highest saintship.
In our best estate and in our purest moments there is a
something of the devil in us which, if it could be known,
would make men shrink from us. The germs of the worst
crimes are in us all. In our deepest degradation there re-
mains something sacred, undefjled, the pledge and gift of our
better nature : a germ of indestructible life, like the grains of
wheat among the cerements of a mummy surviving through
three thousand years, which may be planted, and live, an]
grow again.
294 Notes on Psalm LI.
It is this truth of human feeling which makes the Psalms,
more than any other portion of the Old Testament, the link
of union between distant ages. The historical books need a
rich store of knowledge before they can be a modern book
of life, but the Psalms are the records of individual experi-
ence. Personal religion is the same in all ages. The deeps
of our humanity remain unruffled by the storms of ages which
change the surface. This psalm, written three thousand years
ago, might have been written yesterday : describes the vicis-
situdes of spiritual life in an Englishman as truly as of a Jew.
" Not of an age, but for all time."
I. Scripture estimate of sin.
n. Spiritual restoration.
I. Scripture estimate of sin.
1. Personal accountability. " My sin " strange, but true.
It is hard to believe the sin we do our own. One lays the
blame on circumstances ; another on those who tempted ; a
third on Adam, Satan, or his own nature, as if it were not
himself. " The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the chil-
dren's teeth are set on edge."
In this psalm there is no such self-exculpation. Personal
accountability is recognized throughout. No source of evil
suggested or conceived but his own guilty will no shifting
of responsibility no pleading of a passionate nature, or of
royal exposure as peculiar. " I have sinned." " I acknowl-
edge my transgression : my sin is ever before me."
One passage only seems at first to breathe a different tone :
" In sin did my mother conceive me." By some interpreted
as referring to hereditary sin : alleged as a proof of the doc-
trine of transmitted guilt, as if David traced the cause of his
act to his maternal character.
True as the doctrine is that physical and moral qualities
are transmissible, you do not find that doctrine here. It is not
in excuse, but in exaggeration of his fault that David speaks.
He lays on himself the blame of a tainted nature, instead of
that of a single fault : not a murder only, but of a murderous
nature. " Conceived in sin." From his first moments up till
then, he saw sin sin sin : nothing but sin.
Learn the individual character of sin its personal origin,
and personal identity. There can be no transference of it.
It is individual and incommunicable. My sin can not be
your sin, nor yours mine.
Conscience, when it is healthy, ever speaks thus: "my
transgression." It was not the guilt of them that tempted
you they have theirs ; but each as a separate agent, hia
Notes on Psalm LL 295
own degree of guilt. Yours is your own ; the violation of
your own and not another's sense of duty ; solitary, awful,
unshared, adhering to you alone of all the spirits of the
universe.
Perilous to refer the evil in us to any source out of and be-
yond ourselves. In this way penitence becomes impossible :
fictitious.
2. Estimated as hateful to God. " Against thee, thee only,
.have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight ; that thou
mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when
thou judgest." The simple judgment of the conscience. But
another estimate, born of the intellect, comes in collision with
this religion and bewilders it. Look over life, and you will
find it hard to believe that sin is against God ; that it is not
rather/or Him.
Undeniable, that out of evil comes good that evil is the
resistance in battle, with which good is created and becomes
possible. Physical evil, for example, hunger, an evil, is the
parent of industry, human works, all that man has done : it
beautifies life. The storm-fire burns up the forest, and slays
man and beast, but purifies the air of contagion. Lately,
the tragic death of eleven fishermen elicited the sympathy
and charities of thousands.
Even moral evil is also generative of good. Peter's cow-
ardice enabled him to be a comforter: "when he was con-
verted, to strengthen his brethren." David's crime was a
vantage-ground, from which he rose through penitence near-
er to God. Through it this psalm has blessed ages. But if
the sin had not been done !
Now, contemplating this, we begin to perceive that evil is
God's instrument. " If evil be in the city, the Lord hath
done it." Then the contemplative intellectualist looks over
this scene of things, and complacently approves of evil as
God's contrivance as much as good is a temporary necessi-
ty, worthy of His wisdom to create. And then, can He truly
hate that which He has made ? Can His agent be his enemy ?
Is it not short-sightedness to be angry with it? Not the an-
tagonist of God surely, but His creature and faithful servant
this evil. Sin can not be " against God."
Thus arises a horrible contradiction between the instincts
of the conscience and the judgment of the understanding.
Judas must have been, says the intellect, God's a^ent as
much as Paul. "Why doth He yet find fault? for who had
resisted His will ? Do not evil men perform His will ? Why
should I blame sin in another or myself, seeing it is neces-
sary ? Why not say at once, crime and virtue are the same ?"
296 Notes on Psalm LI.
Thoughts such as these, at some time or another, I doubt
not haunt and perplex us all. Conscience is overborne by
the intellect. Some time during every life the impossibility
of reconciling these two verdicts is felt, and the perplexity
confuses action. Men sin with a secret peradventure behind.
"Perhaps evil is not so bad, after all perhaps good who
knows ?"
Remember, therefore, in matters practical, conscience, not
intellect, is our guide. Unsophisticated conscience ever
speaks this language of the Bible.
We can not help believing that our sentiments towards
right and wrong are a reflection of God's. That we fall just
and true, we can not but think is just and true in His sight.
That which seems base and vile to us, we are compelled to
think is so to Him and this in proportion as we act up to
duty. In that proportion we feel that His sentiments coin-
cide with ours.
In such moments when the God within us speaks most per-
emptorily and distinctly, we feel that the language of this
psalm is true, and that no other language expresses the truth.
Sin is not for God can not be, but " against God." An op-
position to His will, a contradiction to His nature, not a co-
incidence with it. He abhors it will banish it, and annihi-
late it.
In these days, when French sentimentalism, theological
dreams, and political speculations are unsettling the old
landmarks with fearful rapidity, if we do not hold fast, and
that simply, and firmly, that first principle, that right is right,
and wrong wrong, all our moral judgments will become con-
fused, and the penitence of the noblest hearts an absurdity.
For what can be more absurd than knowingly to reproach
ourselves for that which God intended ?
3. Sin estimated as separation from God. Two views of
sin : The first reckoning it evil, because consequences of pain
are annexed; the second evil, because a, contradiction of our
own nature and God's will.
In this psalm the first is ignored ; the second, implied
throughout. "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me;" "Have
mercy upon me," does not mean, Save me from torture.
You can not read the psalm and think so. It is not the
trembling of a craven spirit in anticipation of torture, but
the agonies of a noble one in the horror of being evil.
If the first view were true, then if God were by an act of
will to reverse the consequences, and annex pain to goodness
and joy to crime to lie and injure would become duty as
much as before they were sins. But penalties do not change
Notes on Psalm LL 297
good into evil. Good is forever good ; evil forever evil.
God Himself could not alter that by a command. Eternal
hell could not make truth wrong, nor everlasting pleasure en*
noble sensuality.
Do you fancy that men like David, shuddering iu sight of
evil, dreaded a material hell ? I venture to say, into true
penitence the idea of punishment never enters. If it did, it
would be almost a relief; but oh ! those moments in which
a selfish act has appeared more hideous than any pain which
the fancy of a Dante could devise ! when the idea of the
strife of self-will in battle with the loving will of God pro-
longed forever has painted itself to the imagination as the
real infinite hell ! when self-concentration and the extinC'
tion of love in the soul has been felt as the real damnation of
the devil-nature !
And recollect how sparingly Christianity appeals to the
prudential motives. Use them it does, because they are mo'
tives, but rarely. Retribution is a truth ; and Christianity,
true to nature, warns of retribution. But, except to rouse
men sunk in forgetfulness, or faltering with truth, it almost
never appeals to it : and never, with the hope of eliciting
from such motives as the hope of heaven or the fear of hell,
high goodness.
To do good for reward, the Son of Man declares to be the
sinner's religion. " If ye lend to them who lend to you, what
thank have ye ?" and He distinctly proclaims that alone to
be spiritually good, " the righteousness of God," which " does
good, hoping for nothing in return;" adding, as 'the only
motive, " that ye may be the children of (i. e., resemble) your
Father which is in heaven : for He maketh His sun to shine
on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on
the unjust."
IT. Restoration.
First step, sacrifice of a broken spirit.
Observe the accurate and even Christian perception of the
real meaning of sacrifice by the ancient spiritually-minded
Jews.
Sacrifice has its origin in two feelings : one human, one di-
viiie or inspired.
Tnie feeling : something to be given to God : surrendered :
that God must be worshipped with our best.
Human : added to this, mixed up with it, is the fancy that
this sacrifice pleases God because of the loss or pain which it
inflicts. Then men attribute to God their own revengeful
feelings ; think that the philosophy of sacrifice consists in the
13*
298 Notes on Psalm LI.
necessity of punishing : call it justice to let the blow fall
somewhere no matter where: blood must 'flow. Hence
heathen sacrifices were offered to appease the Deity, to buy
off His wrath the purer the offering the better: to sjlut
His fury.. Instances illustrating the feeling: Iphigenia; Zaleu-
cus ; two eyes given to the law : barbarian rude notions of
justness mixed up with a father's instincts. Polycrates and
Amasis ; seal sacrificed to avert the anger of heaven sup-
posed to be jealous of mortal prosperity. These notions
were mixed with Judaism: nay, "are mixed up now with
Christian conceptions of Christ's sacrifice.
Jewish sacrifices therefore presented two thoughts to the
spiritual, true notions ; to the unspiritual, false ; and express-
ed these feelings for each. But men like David felt that
what lay beneath all sacrifice as its ground and meaning was
surrender to God's will that- a man's best is himself and
to sacrifice this is the true sacrifice. By degrees they came
to see that the sacrifice was but a form typical ; and that it
might be superseded.
Compare this psalm with Psalm L.
They were taught this chiefly through sin and suffering.
Conscience, truly wounded, could not be appeased by these
sacrifices which were offered year by year continually. The
selfish coward, who saw in sin nothing terrible but the pen-
alty, could be satisfied of course. Believing that the animal
bore his punishment, he had nothing more to dread. But
they who felt sin to be estrangement from God, who were
not thinking of punishment, what relief could be given to
them by being told that the penalty of their sins was borne
by another being ? They felt that only by surrender to God
could conscience be at rest.
Learn then God does not wish pain, but goodness ; not
suffering, but you yourself your heart.
Even in the sacrifice of Christ, God wished only this. It
was precious not because it was pain, but because the pain,
the blood, the death were the last and highest evidence of
entire surrender. Satisfaction? Yes, the blood of Christ
satisfied. Why ? Because God can glut His vengeance in
innocent blood more sweetly than in guilty? Because, like
the barbarian Zaleucus, so long as the whole penalty is paid,
He cares not by whom ? Or was it because for the first time
He saw human nature a copy of the Divine nature the will
of Man the Son perfectly coincident with the will of God the
Father the love of duty for the first time exhibited by man
obedience entire, " unto death, even the death of the cross?"
Was not that the sacrifice which He saw in His beloved Son
Notes on Psalm LI. 299
wherewith He was well pleased ? Was not that the sacrifice
of Him who, through the Eternal Spirit, ottered Himself with-
out spot to God : the sacrifice once offered which hath per-
fected forever them that are sanctified ?
2. Last step, spirit of liberty. " Thy free spirit " literal-
ly, princely. But the translation is right. A princely is a
free spirit unconstrained. Hence St. James calls it " the
royal law of liberty."
Two classes of motives- may guide to acts of seeming
goodness: 1. Prudential ; 2. Generous.
The agent of the temperance society appeals to prudential
motives when he demonstrates the evils of intoxication ; en-
lists the aid of anatomy ; contrasts the domestic happiness
and circumstantial comfort of the temperate home with that
of the intemperate. An appeal to the desire of happiness and
fear of misery. A motive, doubtless, and of unquestionable
potency. All I say is, that from this class of motives comes
nothing of the highest stamp.
Prudential motives will move me : but compare the rush
of population from east to west for gold with a similar rush
in the time of the Crusades. A dream a fancy ; but an
appeal to generous and unselfish emotions to enthusiasm
which has in it no reflex consideration of personal greed :
in the one case, siriiply a transfer of population, with vices
and habits unchanged ; in the other, a sacrifice of home,
country, all.
Tell men that salvation is personal happiness, and damna-
tion personal misery, and that goodness consists in seeking
the one and avoiding the other, and you will get religionists :
but poor, stunted, dwarfish asking, with painful' self-con-
sciousness, Am I saved ? Am I lost ? Prudential considera-
tions about a distant happiness, conflicting with passionate
impulses to secure a neaf and present one : men moving in
shackles " letting I dare not wait upon I would."
Tell men that God is love : that right is right, and wrong
wrong : let them cease to admire philanthropy, and begin
to love men : cease to pant for heaven, and begin to love
God : then the spirit of liberty begins.
When fear has done its work whose office is not to create
holiness but to arrest conscience and self-abasement has
set in in earnest, then the free Spirit of God begins to
breathe upon the soul like o gale from a healthier climate,
refreshing it with a more generous and a purer love. Pru-
dence is no longer left in painful and hopeless struggle with
desire : love bursts the shackles of the soul, and we are free.
300 Obedience the Organ of Spiritual KnowLdge*
VII.
OBEDIENCE THE ORGAN OF SPIRITUAL
KNOWLEDGE.
ASSIZE SERMON.
: * it any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be
of God, or whether I speak of myself. " John vii. 1 7.
THE first thing we have to do is to put ourselves in pos-
session of the history of these words.
Jesus taught in the Temple during the Feast of Taber-
nacles. The Jews marvelled at His spiritual wisdom. The
cause. of wonder was the want of scholastic education:
"How knoweth this man letters, never having learned?"
They had no conception of any source of wisdom beyond
learning.
He Himself gave a different account of the matter. " My
doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me." And how He
came possessed of it, speaking humanly, 'He taught (chap. v.
30): "My judgment is just, because I seek not mine own
will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."
That principle whereby He attained spiritual judgment
or wisdom, He extends to all. "If any man will do His
will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God,
or whether I speak of myself." Here, then, manifestly, there
are two opinions respecting the origin of spiritual knowledge :
1. The popular one of the Jews, relying on a cultivated
understanding.
2. The principle of Christ, which relied on trained affec-
tions, and habits of obedience.
What is truth? Study, said the Jews. Act, said Christ,
jmd you shall know. A very precious principle to hold by
; n these days, and a very pregnant one of thought to us,
who during the next few days must be engaged in the con-
templation of crime, and to whom the question will suggest
Uself, how can men's lives be made true ?
Religious controversy is fast settling into a conflict be-
tween two great extreme parties those who believe every
thing, and those who believe nothing : the disciples of credu-
lity, and the disciples of skepticism.
the first rely on authority. Foremost among these, and
Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge. 301
the only self-consistent ones, are the adherents of the Church
of Rome ; and into this body, by logical consistency, ought
to merge all Dissenters, Churchmen, Bible Christians ; all
who receive their opinions because their sect, their church,
or their documents assert them, not because they are true
eternally in themselves.
The second class rely solely on a cultivated understand-
ing. This is the root principle of Rationalism. Enlighten,
they say, and sin will disappear. Enlighten, and we shall
know all that can be known of God. Sin is an error of the
understanding, not a crime of the will. Illuminate the un-
derstanding, show man that sin is folly, and sin will disap-
pear. Political economy will teach public virtue; knowl-
edge of anatomy will arrest the indulgence of the passions.
Show the drunkard the inflamed tissues of the brain, and he
will be sobered by fear and reason.
Only enlighten fully, and spiritual truths will be tested.
When the anatomist shall have hit on a right method of dis-
section, and appropriated sensation to this filament of the
brain, and the religious sentiment to that fibre, we shall
know whether there be a soul or not, and whether conscious-
ness will survive physical dissolution. When the chemist
shall have discovered the principle of life, and found cause
behind cause, we shall know whether the last cause of all is
a personal will or a lifeless force.
Concerning whom I only remark now, that these disciples
of skepticism easily become disciples of credulity. It is in-
structive to see how they who sneer at Christian mysteries
as old wives' fables, bow in abject reverence before Egyp-
tian mysteries of three thousand years' antiquity ; and how
they who have cast off a God believe in the veriest im-
posture, and have blind faith in the most vulgar juggling.
Skepticism and credulity meet. Nor is it difficult to ex-
plain. Distrusting every thing, they doubt their own con-
clusions and their own mental powers ; and that for which
they can not account presents itself to them as supernatural
and mysterious. Wonder makes them more credulous than
those they sneer at.
In opposition to both these systems stands the Christian-
ity of Christ.
1. Christ never taught on personal authority. "My doc-
trine is not mine." He taught " not as the scribes." They
dogmatized : " because it was written " stickled for max-
ims, and lost principles. His authority was the authority of
truth, not of personality : He commanded men to believe,
not because He said it, bi
but He said it because it was true.
302 Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge.
Hence John xii. 47, 48, " If any man hear my words, and be-
lieve not, I judge him not: the word that I have spoken,
the same shall judge him in the last day."
2. He never taught that cultivation of the understanding
would do all, but exactly the reverse. And so taught His
apostles. St. Paul taught, "The world by wisdom knew
not God." His Master said not that clear intellect will give
you a right heart, but that a right heart and a pure life will
clarify the intellect. Not, become a man of letters and learn-
ing, and you will attain spiritual freedom : but, Do rightly,
and you will judge justly : obey, and you will know. "My
judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will but the
will of the Father which sent me." " If any man will do His
will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or
whether I speak of myself."
I. The knowledge of the truth, or Christian knowledge.
H. The condition on which it is attainable.
I. Christian knowledge "he shall know." Its object
" the doctrine." Its degree certainty " shall know"
Doctrine is now, in our modern times, a word of limited
meaning ; being simply opposed to practical. For instance,
the Sermon on the Mount would be called practical : St.
Paul's Epistles doctrinal. But in Scripture, doctrine means
broadly, teaching : any thing that is taught is doctrine.
Christ's doctrine embraces the whole range of His teaching
every principle and every precept. Let us select three
departments of "doctrine" in which the principle of the text
will be found true " If any man will do His will, he shall
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I
speak of myself."
1. It holds good in speculative truth. If any man will do
God's will, he shall know what is truth and what is error.
Let us see how willfulness and selfishness hinder impartial-
ity. How comes it that men are almost always sure to ar-
rive at the conclusions reached by their own party ? Surely
because fear, interest, vanity, or the desire of being reckoned
sound and judicious, or party spirit, bias them. Personal
prospects, personal antipathies, these determine most men's
creed. How will you remove this hindrance ? By increased
cultivation of mind ? Why, the Romanist is as accomplished
as the Protestant, and learning is found in the Church and
out of it. You are not sure that high mental cultivation will
lead a man either to Protestantism or to the Church of Eng-
land. Surely, then, by removing self-will, and so only, can
the hindrance to right opinions be removed. Take away the
Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge. 303
last trace of interested feeling, and the way is cleared for
men to come to an approximation towards unity, even in
judgment on points speculative; and so he that will do
God's will shall know of the doctrine.
2. In practical truths the principle is true. It is more
true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and
habits, than to say that our lives depend upon our opinions,
which is only now and then true. The fact is, men think in
a certain mode on these matters because their life is of a
certain character, and their opinions are only invented after-
wards as a defense for their life.
For instance, St. Paul speaks of a maxim among the Co-
rinthians, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
They excused their voluptuousness on the ground of its con-
sistency with their skeptical creed. Life was short. Death
came to-morrow. There was no hereafter. Therefore it was
quite consistent to live for pleasure. But who does not see
that the creed was the result, and not the cause of the life ?
Who does not see that t /w- they ate and drank, and then be-
lieved to-morrow we die ? " Getting and spending, we lay
waste our powers." Eating and drinking, we lose sight of
the life to come. When the immortal is overborne and
smothered in the life of the flesh, how can men believe in
life to come ? Then disbelieving, they mistook the cause for
the effect. Their moral habits and creed were in perfect con-
sistency : yet it was the life that formed the creed, not the
creed that formed the life. Because they were sensualists,
immortality had become incredible.
Again, slavery is defended philosophically by some. The
negro, on his skull and skeleton, they say, has God's intention
of his servitude written : he is the inferior animal, therefore
it is right to enslave him. Did this doctrine precede the
slave-trade ? Did man arrive at it, and then in consequence,
conscientiously proceed with human traffic ? Or was it in-
vented to defend a practice existing already the offspring
of self-interest ? Did not men first make slaves, and then
search about for reasons to make their conduct plausible to
themselves ?
So, too, a belief in predestination is sometimes alleged in
excuse of crime. But a man who suffers his will to be over-
powered, naturally comes to believe that he is the sport of
fate : feeling powerless, he believes that God's decree has
made him so. But let him but put forth one act of loving
will, and then, as the nightmare of a dream is annihilated by
an effort, so the incubus of a belief in tyrannous destiny is
dissipated the moment a man wills to "do the will of God,
304 Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge.
Observe, how he knows the doctrine, directly he does tho
will.
There is another thing said respecting this knowledge ot
truth. . It respects the degree of certainty " he shall know"
not he shall have an opinion. There is a wide distinction
between supposing and knowing betw r een fancy and con-
viction between opinion and belief. Whatever rests on au-
thority remains only supposition. You have an opinion
when you know what others think. You know when you
feel. In matters practical you know only so far as you can
do. Read a work on the " Evidences of Christianity," and
it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are
true. That is an opinion. Feel God, do His will, till the
Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living
voice, Thou shalt, and thou shalt not ; and then you do not
think, you know that there is a God. That is a conviction
and a belief.
Have we never seen how a child, simple and near to God,
cuts asunder a web of sophistry with a single direct ques-
tion how, before its steady look and simple argument, some
fashionable utterer of a conventional falsehood has been
abashed? how a believing Christian scatters the forces of
skepticism, as a morning ray, touching the mist on the
mountain side, makes it vanish into thin air? And there
are few more glorious moments of our humanity than those
in w r hich faith does battle against intellectual proof: when,
for example, after reading a skeptical book, or hearing a
cold-blooded materialist's demonstration in which God, the
soul, and life to come, are proved impossible, up rises the
heart in all the giant might of its immortality to do battle
with the understanding, and with the simple argument, " I
feel them in my best and highest moments to be true," anni-
hilates the sophistries of logic.
These moments of profound faith do not come once for
all : they vary with the degree and habit of obedience.
There is a plant which blossoms once in a hundred years.
Like it, the soul blossoms only now and then in a space of
years; but these moments are the glory and the heavenly
glimpses of our purest humanity.
H. The condition on which knowledge of truth is attain-
able. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."
This universe is governed by laws. At the bottom of ev-
ery thing here there is a law. Things are in this way and
not that : we call that a law or condition. All departments
Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge. 305
have their own laws. By submission to them, you make
them your own. Obey the laws of the body such laws as
say, Be temperate and chaste : or of the mind such laws as
say, Fix the attention, strengthen by exercise ; and then their
prizes are yours health, strength, pliability of muscle, tena-
ciousness of memory, nimbleness of imagination, etc. Obey
the laws of your spiritual being, and it has its prizes too.
For instance, the condition or law of a peaceful life is sub-
mission to the law of meekness: "Blessed are the meek, for
they shall inherit the earth." . The condition of the Beatific
vision is a pure heart and life: "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God." To the impure, God i sim-
ply invisible. The condition annexed to a sense of God's
presence in other words, that without which a sense of
God's presence can not be is obedience to the laws of love:
" If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is
perfected in us." The condition of spiritual wisdom and cer-
tainty in truth is obedience to the will of God, surrender of
private will : "If any man will do His will, he shall know of
-the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of
myself."
In every department of knowledge, therefore, there is an
appointed "organ," or instrument for discovery of its specific
truth, and for appropriating its specific blessings. In the
world of sense, the empirical intellect : in that world the
Baconian philosopher is supreme. His Novum Organon is
experience : he knows by experiment of touch, sight, sound,
etc. The religious man may not contravene his assertions :
he is lord in his own province. But in the spiritual world,
the " organ " of the scientific man sensible experience is
powerless. If the chemist, geologist, physiologist come back
from their spheres and say, we find in the laws of affinity, in
the deposits of past ages, in the structure of the human
fratne, no trace nor token of a God, I simply reply, I never
expected you would. Obedience and self-surrender is the
sole organ by which we gain a knowledge of that which can
not be seen nor felt. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him." And just as by
copying perpetually a master-painter's works we get at last
an instinctive and infallible power of recognizing his touch,
so by copying and doing God's will we recognize what is
His : we know of the teaching whether it be of God, or
whether it be an arbitrary invention of a human self.
2. Observe the universality of the law. "If any man will
do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of
306 Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge.
God, or whether I speak of myself." The law was true of
the man Christ Jesus Himself! He tells us it is true of all
other men.
In God's universe there are no favorites of heaven who
may transgress the laws of the universe with impunity
none who can take fire in the hand and not be burnt no
enemies of heaven who, if they sow corn, will reap nothing
but tares. The law is just and true to all : " Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap."
In God's spiritual universe there are no favorites of heaven
who can attain knowledge and spiritual wisdom apart from
obedjence. There are none reprobate by an eternal decree,
who can surrender self, and in all things submit to God, and
yet fail of spiritual convictions. It is not therefore a rare,
partial condescension of God, arbitrary and causeless, which
gives knowledge of the truth to some, and shuts it out from
others, but p, vast, universal, glorious law. The light light-
eth every man that cometh into the world. " If 'any man
will do His will, he shall know."
See the beauty of this Divine arrangement. If the cer-
tainty of truth depended upon the proof of miracles, prophe-
cy, or the discoveries of science, then truth would be in the
reach chiefly of those who can weigh evidence, investigate
history, and languages, study by experiment ; whereas as it
is, "The meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will
He teach His way." "Thus saith the high and lofty One
what inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the
high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and
humble spirit." The humblest and the weakest may know
more of God, of moral evil and of good, by a single act of
charity, or a prayer of self-surrender, than all the sages can
teach : ay, or all the theologians can dogmatize upon.
They know nothing, perhaps, these humble ones, of the evi-
dences, but they are sure that Christ is their Redeemer,
They can not tell what " matter " is, but they know that they
are spirits. They know nothing of the " argument from de-
sign," but they feel God. The truths of God are spiritually
discerned by them. They have never learned letters, but
they have reached the Truth of Life.
3. Annexed to this condition, or a part of it, is earnestness.
"If any man will do His will." Now that word "will" is
not the will of the future tense, but will meaning volition :
if any man wills, resolves, has the mind to do the will of
God. So then it is not a chance fitful obedience that leads
us to the truth, nor an obedience paid while happiness lasts
and no longer, but an obedience rendered in entireness and
Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge. 307
in earnest. It is not written, " If any man does His will,"
but if any man has the spirit and desire. If we are in ear-
nest, we shall persevere like the Syrophenician woman, even
though the ear of the universe seem deaf, and Christ Himself
appear to bid us back. If we are not in earnest, difficulties
will discourage us. Because Avill is wanting, we shall be
asking still in ignorance and doubt, What is truth ?
All this will seem to mat y people time misspent. They go
to church because it is the custom, and all Christians believe
it is the established religion. But there are hours, and they
come to us all at some period of life or other, when the hand
of Mystery seems to lie heavy on the soul when some life-
shock scatters existence, leaves it a blank and dreary waste
henceforth forever, and there appears nothing of hope in all
the expanse which stretches out, except that merciful gate of
death which opens at the end hours when the sense of mis-
placed or ill-requited affection, the feeling of personal worth-
lessness, the uncertainty and meanness of all human aims, and
the doubt of all human goodness, unfix the soul from all its
old moorings, and leave it drifting, drifting over the vast in-
finitude, with an awful sense of solitariness. Then the man
whose faith rested on outward authority and not on inward
life, will find it give way: the authority of the priest, the au-
thority of the Church, or merely the authority of a document
proved by miracles and backed by prophecy, the soul con-
scious life hereafter God will be an awful desolate Perhaps.
Well in such moments you doubt all whether Christianity
be true : whether Christ was man, or God, or a beautiful fable.
You- ask bitterly, like Pontius Pilate, What is truth ? In
such an hour what remains? I reply, obedience. Leave
those thoughts for the present. Act be merciful and gentle
honest ; force yourself to abound in little services ; try to
do good to others ; be true to the duty that you know.
That must be right, whatever else is uncertain. And by all
the laws-of the human heart, by the word of God, you shall
not be left to doubt. Do that much of the will of God which
is plain to you, and " You shall know of the doctrine, wheth-_
3r it be of God."
308 Religious Depression.
VIII.
RELIGIOUS DEPRESSION.
"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after
thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God : when shall I
come and appear before God ? My tears have been my meat day and night,
while they continually say unto me,' Where is thy God ?" Psalm xlii. 1-3.
THE value of the public reading of the Psalms in our serv-
ice is, that they express for us indirectly those deeper feel-
ings which there would be a sense of indelicacy in express-
ing directly.
Example of Joseph : asking after his father, and blessing
his brothers, as it were, under the personality of another.
There are feelings of which we do not speak to each oth-
er ; they are too sacred and too delicate. Such are most of
our feelings to God. If we do speak of them, they lose their
fragrance : become coarse : nay, there is even a sense of in-
delicacy and exposure.
Now the Psalms afford precisely the right relief for this
feeling : wrapped up in the forms of poetry, metaphor, etc.,
that which might seem exaggerated is excused by those who
do not feel it ; while they who do can read them, applying
them, without the suspicion of uttering their own feelings.
Hence their soothing power, and hence, while other portions
of Scripture may become obsolete, they remain the most pre-
cious parts of the Old Testament. For the heart of man is
the same in all ages.
This forty-second Psalm contains the utterance of a sor-
row of which men rarely speak. There is a grief worse than
lack of bread or loss of friends. Men in former times called
it spiritual desertion. But at times the utterances of this
solitary grief are, as it were, overheard, as in this Psalm.
Read verses 6, 7. And in a more august agony, " My God.
my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?"
I. Causes of David's despondency.
IL The consolation.
I. Causes of David's despondency.
1. The thirst for God. " My soul thirsteth for God, for
the living God : when shall I come and appear before God?"
There is a desire in the human heart best described as the
Religious Depression. 309
cravings of infinitude. We are so made that nothing which
has limits satisfies. Hence the sense of freedom and relief
which comes from all that suggests the idea of boundless-
ness : the deep sky, the dark night, the endless circle, the il-
limitable ocean.
Hence, too, our dissatisfaction with all that is or can be
done. There never was the beauty yet than which we could
not conceive something more beautiful. None so good as to
be faultless in our eyes. No deed done by us, but we feel
we have it in us to do a better. The heavens are not clean
in our sight, and the angels are charged with folly.
Therefore to never rest is the price paid for our greatness.
Could we rest, we must become smaller in soul. Whoever
is satisfied with what he does has reached his culminating
point : he will progress no more. Man's destiny is to be not
dissatisfied, but forever unsatisfied.
Infinite goodness a beauty beyond what eye hath seen
or heart imagined, a justice which shall have no flaw, and a
righteousness which shall have no blemish to crave for
that, is to be " athirst for God."
2. The temporary loss of the sense of God's personality.
" My soul is athirst for the living God."
Let us search our own experience. What we want is, we
shall find not infinitude, but a boundless One; not to feel
that love is the law of this universe, but to feel One whose
name is love.
For else, if in this world of order there be no One in whose
bosom that order is centred, and of whose Being it is the ex-
pression ; in this world of manifold contrivance, no personal
affection which gave to the skies their trembling tenderness,
and to the snow its purity, then order, affection, contrivance,
wisdom, are only horrible abstractions, and we are in the
dreary universe alone.
Foremost in the declaration of this truth was the Jewish
religion. .It proclaimed not "Let us meditate on the
Adorable Light, it shall guide our intellects" which is the
most sacred verse of the Hindoo sacred books but " Thus
saith the Lord, I am, that I am." In that word "I am" is
declared personality ; and it contains, too, in the expression,
i4 Thus saith" the real idea of a revelation, viz., the volunta-
ry approach of the Creator to the creature.
Accordingly, these Jewish Psalms are remarkable for that
personal tenderness towards God those outbursts of pas-
sionate individual attachment which are in every page. A
person, asking and giving heart for heart inspiring love, be-
cause feeling it that was the Israelite's Jehovah.
3io Religious Depression.
Now distinguish this from the God of the philosopher and
the God of the mere theologian.
The God of the mere theologian is scarcely a living God
He did live ; but for some eighteen hundred years we are
credibly informed that no trace of His life has been seen.
The canon is closed The proofs that He was are in the
things that He has made, and the books of men to whom He
spake ; but He inspires and works wonders no more. Ac-
cording to the theologians, He gives us proofs of design in-
stead of God doctrines instead of the life indeed.
Different, too, from the God of the philosopher. The
tendency of philosophy has been to throw back the personal
Being farther and still farther from the time when every
branch and stream was believed a living power, to the pe-
riod when "principles" were substituted for this belief;
then " laws ;" and the philosopher's God is a law into which
all other laws are resolvable.
Quite differently to this speaks the Bible of God. Not as a
law, but as the life of all that is the Being who feels, and is
felt is loved, and loves again feels my heart throb into His
counts the hairs of my head : feeds the ravens and clothes
the lilies : hears my prayers, and interprets them through a
Spirit which has affinity with my spirit.
It is a dark moment when the sense of that personality is
lost : more terrible than the doubt of immortality. For of
the two eternity without a personal God, or God for seven-
ty years without immortality no one after David's heart
would hesitate, " Give me God for life, to know and be
known by Him." No thought is more hideous than that of
an eternity without Him. " My soul is athirst for God."
The desire for immortality is second to the desire for God.
3. The taunts of scoffers. "As the hart panteth after the
water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Now
the hart here spoken of is the hart hunted, at bay, the big
tears rolling from his eyes, and the moisture standing black
upon his side. Let us see what the persecution was. "Where
is now thy God ?" (ver. 3). This is ever the way in religious
perplexity: the unsympathizing world taunts or misunder-
stands. In spiritual grief they ask, Why is he not like oth-
ers ? In bereavement they call your deep sorrow unbelief.
In misfortune they comfort you, like Job's friends, by calling
it a visitation. Or like the barbarians at Melita when the
viper fastened on Paul's hand, no doubt they call you an in-
fidel, though your soul be crying after God. Specially in
that dark and awful hour, when He called on God, " Eloi,
Eloi," they said, " Let be : let us see whether Elias will come
to save Him."
Religious Depression. 311
Now this is sharp to bear. It is easy to say Christian for-
titude should be superior to it; but in darkness to have no
sympathy ; when the soul gropes for God, to have the hand
of man relax its grasp ! Forest-flies, small as they are, drive
the noble war-horse mad : therefore David says, "As a sword
in my bones, mine enemies reproach me : while they say
daily unto me, Where is thy God?" (ver. 10). Now, ob-
serve, this feeling of forsakenness is no proof of being forsak-
en. Mourning after an absent God is an evidence of love as
strong as rejoicing in a present one. Nay, further, a man
may be more decisively the servant of God and goodness
while doubting His existence, and in the anguish of his soul
crying for light, than while resting in a common creed, and
coldly serving Him. There has been One at least whose ap-
parent forsakenness and whose seeming doubt bears the
stamp of the majesty of faith. " My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me ?"
II. David's consolation.
1. And first, in hope (see verse 5) : distinguish between the
feelings of faith that God is present, and the hope of faith
that He will be so.
There are times when a dense cloud veils the sunlight:
you can not see the sun, nor feel him. Sensitive tempera-
ments feel depression, and that unaccountably and irresisti-
bly. No effort can make you feel. Then you hope. Be-
hind the cloud the sun is; from thence he will come; the
day drags through, the darkest and longest night ends at
last. Thus we bear the darkness and the otherwise intolera-
ble cold, and many a sleepless night. It does not shine now,
but it will.
So too, spiritually. There are hours in which physical de-
rangement darkens the windows of the soul ; days in which
shattered nerves make life simply endurance; months and
years in which intellectual difficulties, pressing for solution,
shut out God. Then faith must be replaced by hope.
" What I do thou knowest not now ; but thou shalt know
hereafter." " Clouds and darkness are round about Him : but
righteousness and truth are the habitation of His throne."
"My soul, hope thou in God : for I shall yet praise Him, who
is the health of my countenance and my God."
2, This hope was in God.
The mistake we make is to look for a source of comfort in
ourselves : self-contemplation, instead of gazing upon God.
In other words, we look for comfort precisely where comfort
never can be.
3 1 2 Religious Depression.
For first, it is impossible to derive consolation from our
own feelings, because of their mutability: to-day we are
well, and our spiritual experience, partaking of these circum-
stances, is bright; but to-morrow some outward circum-
stances change the sun does not shine, or the wind is chill,
and we are low, gloomy, and sad. Then if our hopes were
unreasonably elevated, they will now be unreasonably de-
pressed ; and so our experience becomes flux and reflux, ebb
and flow; like the sea, that emblem of instability.
Next, it is impossible to get comfort from our own acts ;
for though acts are the test of character, yet in a low state
no man can judge justly of his own acts. They assume a
darkness of hue which is reflected on them by the eye that
contemplates them. It would be well for all men to remem-
ber that sinners can not judge of sin least of all, can we es-
timate our own sin.
Besides, we lose time in remorse. I have sinned ; well, by
the grace of God I must endeavor to do better for the future.
But if I mourn for it overmuch all to-day, refusing to be com-
forted, to-morrow I shall have to mourn the wasted to-day;
and that again will be the subject of another fit of remorse.
In the wilderness, had the children of Israel, instead of
gazing on the serpent, looked down on their own wounds to
watch the process of the granulation of the flesh, and see how
deep the wound was, and whether it was healing slowly or
fast, cure would have been impossible : their only chance, was
to look off the wounds. Just so, when giving up this hope-
less and sickening work of self-inspection, and turning from
ourselves in Christian self-oblivion, we gaze en God, then first
the chance of consolation dawns.
He is not affected by our mutability ; our changes do not
alter Him. When we are restless, He remains serene and
calm; when we are low, selfish, mean, or dispirited, He is
still the unalterable I AM. The same yesterday, to-day, and
forever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turn-
ing. What God is in Himself, not what we may chance te
feel Him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope,
"My soul, hope thou in God."
Faith of the Centurion. 313
IX.
FAITH OF THE CENTURION.
"When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed,
Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."
Matt. viii. 10.
THAT upon which the Son of God fastened as worthy of
admiration was not the centurion's benevolence, nor his per-
severance, but his faith. And so speaks the whole New Tes-
tament, giving a special dignity to faith. By faith we are
justified. By faith man removes mountains of difficulty.
The Divinest attribute in the heart of God is love, and the
mightiest, because the most human, principle in the breast
of man is faith. Love is heaven, faith is that which appro-
priates heaven.
Faith is a theological term rarely used in other matters.
Hence its meaning is obscured. But faith is no strange, new,
peculiar power, supernaturally infused by Christianity, but
the same principle by which we live from day to day one
of the'commonest in our daily life.
We trust our senses, and that though they often deceive
is. We trust men ; a battle must often be risked on the in-
telligence of a spy. A merchant commits his ships, with all
his fortunes on board, to a hired captain, whose temptations
are enormous. Without this principle society could not hold
together for a day. It would be a mere sand-heap.
Such, too, .is religious faith ; we trust on probabilities ; and
this though probabilities often are against us. We can not
prove God's existence. The balance of probabilities, scien-
tifically speaking, are nearly equal for a living person or a
lifeless cause : immortality, etc., in the same way. But faith
throws its own convictions into the scale and decides the pre-
ponderance.
Faith, then, is that which, when probabilities are equal,
ventures on God's side, and on the side of right, on the guar-
anty of a something within which makes the thing seem to
be true because it is loved.
It is so defined by St. Paul : " Faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." The hope
is the ground for faith to rest on We consider,
14
3 1 4 Faith of the Centurion.
I. The faith which was commended.
II. The causes of the commendation.
I. The faith which was commended.
First evidence of its existence, his tenderness to his serv<
ant.
Of course this good act might have existed separate from
religion. Romans were benevolent to their domestics ages be-
fore the law had been enacted regulating the relationship be-
tween patron and client.
But we are forbidden to view it so, when we remember
that he was a proselyte. Morality is not religion, but it is
ennobled and made more delicate by religion.
How ? By instinct you may be kind to dependents. But
if it be only by instinct, it is but the same kind of tenderness
you show to your hound or horse. Disbelief in God, and
right, and immortality, degrades the man you are kind to, to
the level of the beast you feel for Both are mortal, and for
both your kindness is finite and poor.
But the moment faith comes, dealing as it does with things
infinite, it throws something of its own infinitude on the per-
sons loved by the man of faith, upon his affections and his
acts: it raises them.
Consequently you find the centurion " building syna-
gogues," " caring for our (i. e., the Jewish) nation," as the
repository of the truth tending his servants. And this
last, observe, approximated his moral goodness to the Chris-
tian standard ! for therein does Christianity differ from mere
religiousness, that it is not a worship of the high, but a
lifting up of the low not hero-worship, but Divine conde-_
scension.
Thus, then, was his kindness an evidence of his faith.
Second proof. His humility : " Lord, I am not worthy that
thou shouldest come under my roof."
Now Christ does not call this humility, though it was hu*
mility. He says, I have not found so great faith. Let us
see why. How is humbleness the result of, or rather identi-
cal with, faith ?
Faith is trust. Trust is dependence on another ; the spirit
which is opposite to independence or trust in self. Hence
where the spirit of proud independence is, faith is not.
Now observe how this differs from our ordinary and mod-
ern modes of thinking. The first thing taught a young man
is that he must be independent. Quite right, in the Christian
sense of the word, to owe no man any thing : to resolve to
get his own living, and not be beholden to charity, which fos-
Faith of the Centurion. 3 1 5
ters idleness : to depend on his own exertions, and not on
patronage or connection. But what is commonly meant by
independence is to rejoice at being bound by no ties to other
human beings to owe no allegiance to any will except our
own to be isolated and unconnected by any feeling of inter-
communion or dependence ; a spirit whose very life is jeal-
ousy and suspicion : which in politics is revolutionary, and in
religion atheism. This is the opposite of Christianity, and
the opposite of the Christian freedom whose name it usurps.
For true freedom is to be emancipated from all false lords, in
order to owe allegiance to all true lords to be free from the
slavery of all lusts, so as voluntarily to serve God and right.
Faith alone frees.
And this was the freedom of the centurion : that he chose
his master. He was not fawning on the emperor at Rome,
nor courting the immoral ruler at Caesarea who had titles
and places to give away, but he bent in lowliest homage of
heart before the Holy One. His freedom was the freedom
of uncoerced and voluntary dependence the freedom and
humility of faith.
3. His belief in an invisible, living Will. " Speak the
word only." Remark how different this is from a reliance
on the influence of the senses. He asked not the presence
of Christ, but simply an exertion of His will. He looked
not like a physician to the operation of unerring laws, or the
result of the contact of matter with matter. He believed in
Him who is the life indeed. He felt that the Cause of causes
is a person. Hence he could trust the Living Will out of
sight. This is the highest form of faith.
Here, however, I observe the centurion learned this
through his own profession. " I am a man under authority,
having soldiers under me." The argument ran thus. I by
the command of will obtain the obedience of my dependents.
Thou by will the obedience of Thine : sickness and health
are Thy servants. Evidently he looked upon this universe
with a soldier's eye : he could not look otherwise. To him
this world was a mighty camp of living forces in which au-
thority was paramount. Trained in obedience to military
law, accustomed to render prompt submission to those above
him, and to extract it from those below him, he read law
everywhere ; and law to him meant nothing, unless it meant
the expression of a personal will. It was this training
through which faith took its form.
The Apostle Paul tells us that the invisible things of God
from the creation of the world are clearly seen ; and, we may
add, from every part of the creation of the world, "The heav-
316 Faith of the Centurion.
ens declare the glory of God ;" but so also does the butter-
cup and the raindrop.
The invisible things of God from life are clearly seen
and, we may add, from every department of life. There is
no profession, no trade, no human occupation which does not
in its own way educate for God.
The soldier, through law, reads a personal will; and he
might from the same profession, in the unity of an army,
made a living and organized unity by the variety of its parts,
have read the principle of God's and the Church's unity,
through the opportunities that profession affords for self-
control, fo generous deeds. When the Gospel was first an-
nounced on earth, it was proclaimed to the shepherds and
Magians in a manner appropriate to their modes of life.
Shepherds, like sailors, are accustomed to. hear a supernat-
ural power in the sounds of the air, in the moaning of the
night-winds, in the sighing of the storm; to see a more than
mortal life in the clouds that wreathe around the headland.
Such men, brought up among the sights and sounds of na-
ture, are proverbially superstitious. No wonder, therefore,
that the intimation came to them, as it were, on the winds in
the melodies of the air : " a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace, good-will toward men."
But the Magians being astrologers, accustomed to read
the secrets of life and death in the clear star-lit skies of
Persia, are conducted by a meteoric star.
Each in his own way ; each in his own profession ; each
through that little spot of the universe given to him. For
not only is God everywhere, but all of God is in every point.
Not His wisdom here, and His goodness there : the whole
truth may be read, if we had eyes, and heart, and time
enough, in the laws of a daisy's growth. God's beauty, His
love, His unity: nay, if you observe how each atom exists
not for itselt alone, but for the sake of every other atom in
the universe, in that atom or daisy you may read the law of
the Cross itself. The crawling of a spider before now has
taught perseverance, and led to a crown. The little moss,
brought close to a traveller's eye in an African desert, who
had lain down to die, roused him to faith in that love which
had so curiously arranged the minute fibres of a thing so
small, to be seen once and but once by a human eye, and
carried him in the strength of that heavenly repast, like Eli-
jah of old, a journey of forty days and forty nights, to the
sources of the Nile ; yet who" could have suspected divinity
in a spider, or theology in a moss ?
Faith of the Centurion. 317
II. The causes of Christ's astonishment.
The reasons why he marvelled may .be reduced under two
heads.
1. The centurion was a Gentile; therefore unlikely to
know revealed truth.
2. A soldier, and therefore exposed to a recklessness, and
idleness, and sensuality which are the temptations of that
profession. But he turned his loss to glorious gain.
The Saviour's comment, therefore, contained the advan-
tage of disadvantages, and the disadvantage of advantages.
The former, " Many shall come from the east and the west,
and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in
the kingdom of heaven ;" the latter, " The children of the
kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness ; there shall
be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
There are spirits which are crushed by difficulties, while
others would gain strength from them. The greatest men
have been those who have cut their way to success through
difficulties. And such have been the greatest triumphs of
art and science : such, too, of religion. Moses, Elijah, Abra-
ham, the Baptist, the giants of both Testaments, were not
men nurtured in the hot-house of religious advantages.
Many a man would have done good if he had not a super-
abundance of the means of doing it. Many a spiritual giant
is buried under mountains of gold.
Understand, therefore, the real amount of advantage
which there is in religious privileges. Necessary especially
for the feeble, as crutches are necessary ; but, like crutches,
they often enfeeble the strong. For every advantage which
facilitates performance and supersedes toil, a corresponding
price is paid in loss. Civilization gives us telescopes and
microscopes ; but it takes away the unerring acuteness with
which the savage reads the track of man and beast upon the
ground at his feet : it gives us scientific surgery, and impairs
the health which made surgery superfluous.
So, ask you where the place of religious might is ? Not
the place of religious privileges not where prayers are
daily, and sacraments monthly not where sermons are so
abundant as to pall upon the pampered taste, but on the hill-
side with the Covenanter ; in the wilderness with John the
Baptist ; in our own dependencies where the liturgy is rarely
heard, and Christian friends meet at the end of months :
there amidst manifold disadvantages, when the soul is thrown
upon itself, a few kindred spirits, and God, grow up those
heroes of faith, like the centurion, whose firm conviction wins
admiration even from the Son of God Himself.
3 1 8 The Restoration of the Erring.
Lastly, see how this incident testifies to the perfect hu-
manity of Christ. The Saviour " marvelled :" that wonder
was no fictitious semblance of admiration. It was a real gen-
uine wonder. He had not expected to find such faith. The
Son of God increased in wisdom as well as stature. He knew
more at thirty than at twenty. There were tilings He knew
at twenty which He had not known before. In the last year
of His life He went to the fig-tree expecting to find fruit, and
was disappointed. In all matters of eternal truth, principles
which are not measured by more or less true, His knowledge
was absolute ; but it would seem that in matters of earthly
fact which are modified by time and space, His knowledge
was, like ours, more or less dependent upon experience.
Now we forget this; we are shocked at the thought of the
partial ignorance of Christ, as if it were irreverence to think
it ; we shrink from believing that He really felt the force of
temptation, or that the forsakenness on the Cross and the
momentary doubt have parallels in our human life. In other
words, we make that Divine Life a mere mimic representa-
tion of griefs that were not real, and surprises that were
feigned, and sorrows that were theatrical.
But thus we lose the Saviour. For it is well to know that
He was divine ; but if we lose that truth, we should still
have a God in heaven. But if there has been on this earth
no real, perfect human life, no love that never cooled, no faith
that never failed, which may shine as a loadstar across the
darkness of our experience, a light to light amidst all convic-
tions of our own meanness and all suspicions of others' little-
ness, why, we may have a religion, but we have not a Christi-
anity. For if we lose Him as a Brother, we can not feel Him
as a Saviour.
THE RESTORATION OF THE ERRING.
" Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore
srch a one in the spirit of meekness ; considering thyself, lest thou also be
tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. "
Gal. vi. 1,2.
IT would be a blessed thing for our Christian society if we
could contemplate sin from the same point of view from
which Christ and His apostles saw it. ' But in this matter
society is ever oscillating between two extremes undue lax-
ity and undue severity.
The Restoration of the Erring. 3 1 9
In one age of the Church the days of Donatism, for in-
stance men refuse the grace of repentance to those who have
erred : holding that baptismal privileges once forfeited can
not be got back; that for a single distinct lapse there is no
restoration. ,
In another age, the Church, having found out its error, and
discovered the danger of setting up an impossible standard,
begins to confer periodical absolutions and plenary indul-
gences, until sin, easily forgiven, is as easily committed.
And so too with societies and legislatures. In one period
Puritanism is dominant and morals severe. There are no
small faults. The statute-book is defiled with the red mark
of blood, set opposite innumerable misdemeanors. In an
age still earlier the destruction of a wild animal is punished
like the murder of a man. Then in another period we have
such a medley of sentiments and sickliness that we have lost
all our bearings, and can not tell what is vice and what is
goodness. Charity and toleration degenerate into that feeble
dreaminess which refuses to be roused by stern views of li{J3.
This contrast, too, may exist in the same age, nay, in the
same individual. One man gifted with talent, or privileged
by rank, outrages all decency: the world smiles, calls it
eccentricity, forgives, and is very merciful and tolerant.
Then some one unshielded by these advantages, endorsed
neither by wealth nor birth, sins not to one-tenth, nor one-
ten-thousandth part ,of the same extent : society is seized
with a virtuous indignation, rises up in wrath, asks what is
to become of the morals of the community if these things
are committed, and protects its proprieties by a rigorous
exclusion of the offender, cutting oif the bridge behind him
against his return forever.
Now the Divine character of the New Testament is shown
in nothing more signally than in the stable ground from
which it views this matter, in comparison with the shifting
and uncertain standing-point from whence the world sees it.
It says, never retracting nor bating, " The wages of sin is
death." It speaks sternly, with no weak sentiment, " Go, sin
no more, lest a worse thing happen unto thee." But then
it accepts every excuse, admits every palliation : looks upon
this world of temptation and these frail human hearts of ours,
not from the cell of a monk or the study of a recluse, but in
a large, real way ; accepts the existence of sin as a fact, with-
out affecting to be shocked or startled ; assumes that it must
needs be that offenses come, and deals with them in a large
noble way, as the results of a disease which must be met
which should be, and which can be, cured.
320 The Restoration of the Erring.
I. The Christian view of other men's sin.
II. The Christian power of restoration.
I. The first thing noticeable in the apostle's view of sin
is, that he looks upon it as if it might be sometimes the
result of a surprise. " If a man be overtaken in a fault."
In the original it is anticipated^ taken suddenly in front. As
if circumstances had been beforehand with the man : as if
sin, supposed to be left far behind, had on a sudden got in
front, tripped him up, or led him into ambush.
All sins are not of this character. 'There are some which
are in accordance with the general bent of our disposition,
and the opportunity of committing them was only the first
occasion for manifesting what was in the heart : so that if
they had not been committed then, they probably would or
must have been at some other time; and looking back to
them we have no right to lay the blame on circumstances 1
we are to accept the penalty as a severe warning meant to
show what was in our hearts.
There are other sins of a different character. It seems
as if it were not in us to commit them. They were, so to
speak, unnatural to us: you were going quietly on your
way, thinking no evil, suddenly temptation, for which you
were not prepared, presented itself, and before you knew
where you were, you were in the dust, fallen.
As, for instance, when a question is suddenly put to a
man which never ought to have been put, touching a secret
of his own or another's. Had he the presence of mind or
adroitness, he might turn it aside, or refuse to reply. But
being unprepared and accosted suddenly, he says hastily
that which is irreconcilable with strict truth ; then, to sub-
stantiate and make it look probable, misrepresents or invents
something else ; and so he has woven round himself a mesh
which will entangle" his conscience through many a weary
day and many a sleepless night.
It is shocking, doubtless, to allow ourselves even to admit
that this is possible; yet no one knowing human nature
from men, and not from books, will deny that this might
befall even a brave and true man. St. Peter was both ; yet
this was his history. In a crowd, suddenly, the question was
put directly, "This man also was with Jesus of Nazareth."
Then came a prevarication a lie; and yet another. This
was a sin of surprise. He was overtaken in a fault.
Every one. of us admits the truth of this in his own case.
Looking back to past life, he feels that the errors which
have most terribly determined his destiny were the result
The Restoration of the Erring. 321
of mistake. Inexperience, a hasty promise, excess of trust,
incaution, nay, even a generous devotion, have been fear-
fully, and, as it seems to us, inadequately chastised. There
may be some undue tenderness to ourselves when we thus
palliate the past : still, a great part of such extenuation is
only justice.
Now the Bible simply requires that we should judge
others by the same rule by which we judge ourselves. The
law of Christ demands that what we plead in our own case,
we should admit in the case of others. Believe that in this
or that case which you judge so harshly, the heart, in its
deeps, did not consent to sin, nor by preference love what is
hateful; simply admit that such an one may have been
overtaken in a fault. This is the large law of charity.
1. Again, the apostle considers fault as that which has
left a burden on the erring spirit. "Bear ye one another's X
burdens."
For we can not say to the laws of God, I was overtaken.
We live under stern and unrelenting laws, which permit no
excuse, and never heard of a. surprise. They never send a
man who has failed once back to try a second chance.
i I There is no room for a mistake; you play against them for
your life; and they exact the penalty .inexorably, " Every .
man must bear his own burden." Every law has its own /
appropriate penalty ; and the wonder of it is, that often the
severest penalty seems set ngainst the smallest transgression.
We suffer more for our vices than our crimes ; we pay dearer
for our imprudences than even for our deliberate wickedness.
Let us examine this a little more closely. One burden
laid on fault is that chain of entanglement which seems to
drag down to fresh sins. One step necessitates many others.
One fault leads to another, and crime to crime. The soul
gravitates downward beneath its burden. It was profound
knowledge indeed which prophetically refused to limit Peter's
sin to once. " Verily I say unto thee .... thou shalt deny
Me thrice."
We will try to describe that sense of burden. A fault
has the power sometimes of distorting life till all seems
hideous and unnatural. A man who has left his proper
nature, and seems compelled to say and do things unnatural
and in false show, who has thus become untrue to himself,
to him life and the whole universe becomes untrue. He can
grasp nothing ; he does not stand on fact ; he is living as in
a dream himself a dream. All is ghastly, unreal, spectral.
A burden is on him as of a nightmare. He moves about in
nothingness and shadows, as if he were not. His own exist-
14*
322 The Restoration of the Erring.
ence swiftly passing might seem a phantom life, were it not
for the corroding pang of anguish in his soul, for that at
least is real !
2. Add to this, the burden of the 1 heart weighing on
itself.
It has been truly said that the human heart is like the
millstone, which, if there be wheat beneath it, will grind to
purposes of health ; if not, will grind still, at the will of the
wild wind, but on itself. So does the heart wear out itself
against its own thought. One fixed idea one remembrance,
and no other one stationary, wearing anguish. This is
remorse, passing into despair ; itself the goad to fresh and
wilder crimes.
The worst of such a burden is that it keeps down the soul
from good. Many an ethereal spirit, which might have
climbed the heights of holiness, and breathed the rare and
difficult air gf the mountain-top, where the heavenliest spir-
ituality alone can live, is weighed down by such a burden
to the level of the lowest. If you know such an one, mark
his history ; without restoration, his career is done. That
soul will not grow henceforth.
3. The burden of a secret.
Some here know the weight of an uncommunicated sin.
They know how it lies like ice upon the heart. They know
how dreadful a thing the sense of hypocrisy is ; the knowl-
edge of inward depravity, while all without looks pure as
snow to men.
How heavy this weight may be, we gather from these
indications. First, from this strange, psychological fact. A
man with a guilty secret will tell out the tale of his crimes
as under the personality of another; a mysterious necessity
seems to force him to give it utterance as in the old fable
of him who breathed out his weighty secret to the reeds. A
remarkable instance of this is afforded in the case of that
murderer, who, from the richness of his gifts and the enor-
mity of his crime, is almost a historical personage, who,
having become a teacher of youth, was in the habit of nar-
rating to his pupils the anecdote of his crime w r ith all the
circumstantial particularity of fact, but all the w r hile under
the guise of a pretended "dream. Such men tread forever
on the very verge of a confession : they seem to- take a fear-
ful pleasure in talking of their guilt, as if the heart could
not bear its own burden, but must give it outness.
Again, is it evidenced by the attempt to get relief in pro-
fuse and general acknowledgments of guilt. They adopt
the language of religion ; they call themselves " vile dust
The Restoration of the Erring. 323
and miserable sinners." The world takes generally what
they mean particularly. But they get no relief, they only
deceive themselves ; for they have turned the truth itself
into a falsehood, using true words which they know convey
a false impression, and getting praise for humility instead of
punishment for guilt. They have used all the effort, and
suffered all the pang which it would have cost them to get
real relief, and they have not got it ; and the burden unac-
knowledged remains a burden still.
The third indication we have of the heaviness of this bur-
den is the commonness of the longing for confession^- None
but a minister of the Gospel can estimate this : heonly who,
looking round his congregation, can point to person after
person whose wild tale of guilt or sorrow he is cognizant of
who can remember how often similar griefs were trem-
bling upon lips which did not unburden themselves whose
heart being the receptacle of the anguish of many, can judge
what is in human hearts : he alone can estimate how much
there is of sin and crime lying with the weight and agony
of concealment on the spirits of our brethren.
The fourth burden is an intuitive consciousness of the hid-
den sins of others 7 hearts.
To two states of soul it is given to detect the presence of
evil : states the opposite of each other innocence and guilt.
It was predicted of the Saviour while yet a child, that by
Him the thoughts of many hearts should be revealed ; the
fulfillment of this was the history of His life. He went
through the world, by His innate purity detecting the pres-
ence of evil, as He detected the touch of her who touched
His garment in the crowd.
Men, supposed spotless before, fell down before Him,
crying, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord !"
This, in a lower degree, is true of all innocence : you would
think that oue who can deeply read the human heart and
track its windings must be himself deeply experienced in
evil. But it is not so at least not always. Purity can
detect the presence of the evil which it does not understand :
just as the dove which has never seen a hawk trembles at
its presence ; and just as a horse rears uneasily when the
wild beast unknown and new to it is near, so innocence
understands, yet understands not the meaning of the unholy
look, the guilty tone, the sinful manner. It shudders and
shrinks from it by a power given to it, like that which God
has conferred on the unreasoning mimosa. Sin gives the
same power, but differently. Innocence apprehends the ap-
proach of evil by the instinctive tact of contrast ; guilt, bj
324 The Restoration of the Erring.
the instinctive consciousness of similarity. It is the pro.
found truth contained in the history of the Fall. The eyea
are opened ; the knowledge of good and evil has come.
The soul knows its own nakedness, but it knows also the
nakedness of all other souls which have sinned after the si-
militude of its own sin.
/ Very marvellous is that test-power of guilt : it is vain to
|think 01 eluding its fine capacity of penetration. Intimations
of evil are perceived and noted, when to other eyes all seems
pure. The dropping of an eye, the shunning of a subject,
the tremulousness of a tone,, the peculiarity of a subterfuge,
will tell the tale. "These are tendencies like mine, and here
is a spirit conscious as my own is conscious."
This dreadful burden the Scriptures call the knowledge
of good and evil : can we not all remember the salient sense
of happiness which we had when all was innocent when
crime was the tale of some far distant hemisphere, and the
guilt we heard of was not suspected in the hearts of the beings
around us ? and can we not recollect, too, how by our own
sin, or the cognizance of others' sin, there came a something
which hung the heavens with shame and guilt, and all
around seemed laden with evil ? This is the worst burden
that comes from transgression : loss of faith in human good-
ness ; the being sentenced to go through life haunted with a
presence from which we can not escape ; the presence of
evil in the hearts of all that we approach.
II. The Christian power of restoration : " Ye which are
spiritual, restore such an one."
First, then, restoration is possible. That is a Christian
fact. Moralists have taught us what sin is ; they have ex-
plained how it twines itself into habit ; they have shown us
its ineffaceable character. It was reserved for Christianity
to speak of restoration. Christ, and Christ only, has revealed
that he who has erred may be restored, and made pure and
clean and whole again.
Next, however, observe that this restoration is accomplished
by men. Causatively, of course, and immediately, restoration
is the work of Christ and of God the Spirit. Mediately and
inBtrumentally, it is the work of men. "Brethren, .... re-
store such an one." ftod has given to man the power of
elevating his brother man. He has conferred on His Church
the power of the keys to bind and loose, " Whosesoever sins
ye remit, they are remitted ; and whosesoever sins ye retain,
they are retained." It is therefore in the power of man, by
his conduct, to restore his brother, or to hinder his restora
The Restoration of the Erring. 325
tion, He may loose him from his sins, or retain their power
upon his soul.
Now the words of the text confine us to two modes in
which this is done : by sympathy and by forgiveness. " Bear
ye one another's burdens."
By sympathy. We Protestants have one unvarying sneer
ready for the system of the Romish confessional. They con-
fess, we say, for the sake of absolution, that absolved they
may sin again. A shallow, superficial sneer, as all sneers
are. In that craving of the heart which gives the system of
the confessional its dangerous power, there is something far
more profound than any sneer can fathom. It is not the
desire to sin again that makes men long to unburden their
conscience, but it is the yearning to be true, which lies at
the bottom, even of the most depraved hearts, to appear
what they are, and to lead a false life no longer ; and besides
this, it is the desire of sympathy. For this comes out of that
dreadful sense of loneliness which is the result of sinning ;
the heart severed from God, feels severed from all other
hearts : goes alone as if it had neither part nor lot with other
men ; itself a shadow among shadows. And its craving is
for sympathy : it wants some human heart to know what it
feels. Thousands upon thousands of laden hearts around us
are crying, Come and bear my burden with me ; and observe
here, the apostle says, " Bear ye one another's burdens."
Nor let the priest bear the burdens of all: that were most
unjust. Why should the priest's heart be the common re-
ceptacle of all the crimes and wickedness of a congregation ?
" Bear ye one another's burdens."
Again, by forgiveness. There is a truth in the doctrine
of absolution. God has given to man the .power to absolve
his brother, and so restore him to himself. The forgiveness
of man is an echo and an earnest of God's forgiveness. He
whom society has restored realizes the possibility of restora-
tion to God's favor. Even the mercifulness of one good
man sounds like a voice of pardon from heaven : just as the
power and the exclusion of men sound like a knell of hope-
lessness, and do actually bind the sin upon the soul. The
man whom society will not forgive nor restore is driven into
recklessness. This is the true Christian doctrine of absolu-
tion, as expounded by the Apostle Paul, 2 Cor. ii. 7-10 : the
degrading power of severity, the restoring power of pardon,
vested in the Christian community, the voice of the minister
being but their voice.
Now, then, let us inquire into the Christianity of our so-.
ciety. Restoration is the essential work of Christianity
326 The Restoration of the Erring.
The Gospel is the declaration of God's sympathy and God's
pardon. In these two particulars, then, what is our right to
be called a Christian community ?
Suppose that a man is overtaken in a fault. What does
he, or what shall he do ? Shall he retain it unacknowledged,
or go through life a false man ? God forbid. Shall he then
acknowledge it to his brethren, that they by sympathy and
merciful caution may restore him ? Well, but is it not cer-
tain that it is exactly from those to whom the name of
" brethren " most peculiarly belongs that he will not receive
assistance ? Can a man in mental doubt go to the members
of the same religious communion ? Does he not know that
they precisely are the ones who will frown upon his doubts,
and proclaim his sins? Will a clergyman unburden his
mind to his brethren in the ministry ? Are they not in their
official rigor the least capable of largely understanding him ?
If a woman be overtaken in a fault, will she tell it to a sis-
ter-woman ? Or does she not feel instinctively that her sis-
ter-woman is ever the most harsh, the most severe, and the
most ferocious judge ?
Well, you sneer at the confessional ; you complain that
mistaken ministers of the Church of England are restoring it
amongst us. But who are they that are forcing on the con-
fessional? who drive laden and broken hearts to pour out
their long pent-up sorrows into any ear that will receive
them? I say it is we: we by our uncharitableness ; we by
our want of sympathy and unmerciful behavior; we by the
unchristian way in which we break down the bridge behind
the penitent, and say, " On, on in sin there is no returning."
Finally, the apostle tells us the spirit in which this is to
be done, and assigns a motive for the doing it. The mode
is, " in the spirit of meekness." For Satan can not cast out
Satan. Sin can not drive out sin. For instance, my anger
can not drive out another man's covetousness ; my petulance
or sneer can not expel another's extravagance. The meek-
ness of Christ alone has power. The charity which desires
another's goodness above his well-being, that alone succeeds
iu the work of restoration.
The motive is, " considering thyself, lest thou also be
tempted." For sin is the result of inclination or weakness,
combined with opportunity. It is therefore in a degree the
offspring of circumstances. Go to the hulks, the jail, the
penitentiary, the penal colony, statistics will almost mark
out for you beforehand the classes which have furnished the
jnmates, and the exact proportion of the delinquency of each
class. You will not find the wealthy there, nor the noble.
Christ the Son. 327
nor those guarded by the fences of social life, but the poor,
and the uneducated, and the frail, and the defenseless. Can
you gravely surmise that this regular tabulation depends
upon the superior virtue of one class compared with others :
Or must you admit that the majority at least of those who
have not fallen are safe because they were not tempted ?
Well, then, when St. Paul says, " considering thyself, lest
thou also be tempted," it is as if he had written, Proud Phar-
isee of a man, complacent in thine integrity, who thankest
God that thou art "not as other men are, extortioners,
unjust, or as this publican," hast thou gone through the ter- /
rible ordeal and come off with unscathed virtue? Or art
thou in all these points simply untried ? Proud Pharisee of
a woman, who passest by an erring sister with a haughty
look of conscious euperiority, dost thou know what tempta-
tion is, with strong feeling and mastering opportunity ?
Shall the rich-cut crystal which stands on the table of the
wealthy man, protected from dust and injury, boast that it
has escaped the flaws, and the cracks, and the fractures
which the earthen jar has sustained, exposed and subjected
to rough and general uses ? Oh man or woman ! thou who
wouldst be a Pharisee, consider, oh consider thyself, lest ;
thou also be tempted.
XL
CHRIST THE SON.
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his
Son." Heb/i. 1, 2.
Two critical remarks.
1. "Sundry times" more literally, sundry portions sec-
tions, not of time, but of the matter of the revelation. God
gave His revelation in parts, piecemeal, as you teach a child
to spell a word letter by letter, syllable by syllable ad-
ding all at last together. God had a Word to spell His own
name. By degrees He did it. At last it came entire. The
Word was made flesh.
2. " His Son," more correctly, " a Son "for this is the
very argument. Not that God now spoke by Christ, but
that whereas once He spoke by prophets, now He spoke bv
a Son. The filial dispensation was the last.
This epistle was addressed to Christians ou the verge of
328 Christ the Son.
apostasy. See those passages : " It is impossible for those
who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly
gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have
tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world
to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto re-
pentance ; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God
afresh, and put Him to an open shame." " Cast not away
your confidence." " We are made partakers of Christ, if we
hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end."
Observe what the danger was. Christianity had disap-
pointed them they had not found in it the rest they antici-
pated. They looked back to the Judaism they had left, and
saw a splendid temple-service, a line of priests, a visible tem-
ple witnessing of God's presence, a religion which was un-
questionably fertile in prophets and martyrs. They saw
these pretensions and wavered.
But this was all on the eve of dissolution. The Jewish
earth and heavens, i. e., the Jewish Commonwealth and
Church, were doomed and about to pass away. The writer
of this epistle felt that their hour was come ;* and if their re-
ligion rested on nothing better than this, he knew that in
the crash religion itself would go. To return to Judaism
was to go down to atheism and despair. ,
Reason alleged they had contented themselves with a
superficial view of Christianity ; they had not seen how it
was interwoven with all their own history, and how it alone
explained that history.
Therefore in this epistle the writer labors to show that
Christianity was the fulfillment of the idea latent in Judaism :
that from the earliest times, and in every institution, it was
implied. In the monarchy, in prophets, in sabbath-days, in
psalms, in the priesthood, and in temple-services, Christianity
lay concealed ; and the dispensation of a Son was the realiza-
tion of what else was shadow. He therefore alone who ad-
hered to Christ was the true Jew, and to apostatize from
Christianity was really to apostatize from true Judaism.
I am to show, then, that the manifestation of God through
a Son was implied, not realized, in the earlier dispensation.
"Sundry portions" of this truth are instanced in the epis-
tle. The mediatorial dispensation of Moses the gift of
Canaan the Sabbath, etc. At present I select these :
I. The preparatory Dispensation.
II. The filial and final Dispensation.
L It was implied, not fulfilled in the kingly office. Three
* See chap. xii. 2C, 27.
Christ the Son. 329
Psalms are quoted, all referring to kingship. In the 2d
Psalm it was plain that a true idea of a king was only fulfill-
ed in one who was a son of God. The Jewish king was king
only so far as he held from God : as His image, the repre-
sentative of the Fountain of law and majesty. To Him God
hath said, " Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee."
The 45th Psalm is a bridal hymn, composed on the marriage
of a Jewish king. Startling language is addressed to him.
He is called God Lord. " Thy throne, O God, is for ever
and ever." The bride is invited to worship him as it were a
God : " He is thy Lord, and worship thou Him." No one is
surprised at this who remembers that Moses was said to be
made a God to Aaron. Yet it is startling, almost blasphem-
ous, unless there be a deeper meaning implied the divine
character of the real king.
In the 110th Psalm a new idea is added. The true king
must be a priest. " Thou art a priest forever, after the or-
der of Melchizedek. This was addressed to the Jewish king ;
but it implied that the ideal king, of which he was for the
time the representative, more or less truly, is one who at the
same time sustains the highest religious character, and the
highest executive authority.
Again, David was emphatically the type of the Jewish re-
gal idea. David is scarcely a personage, so entirely does he
pass in Jewish forms of thought into an ideal sovereign
"the sure mercies of David." David is the name, therefore,
for the David which was to be. Now David was a wander-
er, kingly still, ruling men and gaining adherents by force of
inward royalty. Thus in the Jewish mind the kingly office
disengaged itself from outward pomp and hereditary right
as mere accidents, and became a personal reality. The king
was an idea.
Further still. The epistle extends this idea to man. The
psalm had ascribed (Ps. viii. 6) kingly qualities and rule to
manhood rule over the creation. Thus the idea of a king
belonged properly to humanity ; to the Jewish king as the
representative of humanity.
Yet even in collective humanity the royal character is not
realized. " We see not," says the epistle, " all things as yet
put under him " man.
Collect, then, these notions. The true king of men is a
Son of God : one who is to his fellow-men, God and Lord, as
the Jewish bride was to feel her royal husband to be to her
one who is a priest one who may be poor and exiled, yet
not less royal.
Say, then, whence is this idea fulfilled by Judaism V To
330 Christ the Son.
which of the Jewish kings can it be applied, except with in?
finite exaggeration ? To David ? Why, the Redeemer
shows the insuperable difficulty of this. " How then doth
David in Spirit call him," i. e., the king of whom he was
writing, " Lord, saying, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou
on my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool ?"
David writing of himself, yet speaks there in the third per-
son, projecting himself outward as an object of contempla-
tion, an idea.
Is it fulfilled in the human race ? " We see not yet all
things put under him." Then the writer goes on : " But we
see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for
the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor ; that
He by the grace of God should taste death for every man."
In Jesus of Nazareth alone all these fragments, these sundry
portions of the revealed idea of royalty met.
II. Christianity was implied in the race of prophets.
The second class of quotations refer to the prophets' life
and history (Heb. ii. 11-14; Psalm xxii. 22; Psalm xviii. 2 ;
Isaiah xii. 2 ; Isaiah viii. IS). Remember what the prophets
were. They were not merely predictors of the future.
Nothing destroys the true conception of the prophets' office
more than those popular books in which their mission is cer-
tified by curious coincidences. For example, if it is predict-
ed that Babylon shall be a desolation, the haunt of wild
beasts, etc., then some traveller has seen a lion standing on
Birs Nimroud ; or if the fisherman is to dry his nets on Tyre,
simply expressing its destruction thereby, the commentator
is not easy till he finds that a net has been actually seen dry-
ing on a rock. But this is to degrade the prophetic office to
a level with Egyptian palmistry : to make the prophet like
an astrologer, or a gypsy fortune-teller one who can pre-
dict destinies and draw horoscopes. But, in truth, the first
office of the prophet was with the present. He read eternal
principles beneath the present and the transitory, and in
doing this, of course, he prophesied the future; for a princi-
ple true to-day is true forever. But this was, so to speak,
an accident of his office, not its essential feature. If, for
instance, he read in the voluptuousness of Babylon the se-
cret of Babylon's decay, he also read by anticipation the
doom of Corinth, of London, of all cities in Babylon's
state ; or if Jerusalem's fall was predicted, in it all such
judgment comings were foreseen ; and the language is true
of the fall of the world : as truly, or more so, than that of ,
Jerusalem. A philosopher saying in the present tense the
Christ the Son. 331
law by which comets move, predicts all possible jcometary
movements.
Now the prophet's life, almost more than his words, was
predictive. The writer of this epistle lays down a great prin-
ciple respecting the prophet : " Both he that sanctifieth and
they who are sanctified are all of one." It was the very
condition of his inspiration that he should be one with the
people. So far from making him superhuman, it made him
more man. He felt with more exquisite sensitiveness all that
belongs to man, else he could not have been a prophet. His
insight into things was the result of that very weakness, sen-
sitiveness, and susceptibility so tremblingly alive. He burned
with their thoughts, and expressed them. He was obliged
by the very sensitiveness of his humanity to have a more
entire dependence and a more perfect sympathy than other
men. The sanctifying prophet wr.s one with those whom he
sanctified. Hence he uses those expressions quoted from
Isaiah and the Psalms above.
He was more man, just because more divine more a son
of man, because more a son of God. He was peculiarly the
suffering Israelite : His countenance marred more than the
sons of men. Hence we are told the prophets searched
" what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which
was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the
sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow."
Observe, it was a spirit in them, their own lives witnessing
mysteriously of what the perfect Humanity must be suf-
fering.
Thus, especially, the 53d chapter of Isaiah was spoken orig-
inally of the Jewish nation of the prophet as peculiarly the
Israelite ; and it is no wonder the eunuch asked Philip in per-
plexity, " Of whom doth the prophet say this of himself or
some other man ?" The truth is, he said it of himself, but
prophetically of Humanity ; true of him, most true of the
highest Humanity. Here, then, was a new " portion" of the
revelation. The prophet rebuked the king, often opposed
the priest, but was one with the people. " He that sancti-
fieth and they who are sanctified are all of one."
If, then, One had come claiming to be the Prophet of the
race, and was a sufferer, claiming to be the Son of God, and
yet peculiarly man ; the son of man : the son of man just be-
cause the Son of God : more Divine, because more human :
then this was only what the whole race of Jewish prophets
should have prepared them for. God had spoken by the
prophets. That God had now spoken by a Son in whom the
idea of the true prophet was realized in its entireriess.
332 Christ the Son.
ILL The priesthood continued this idea latent. The writer
of this epistle saw three elements in the priestly idea : 1. That
he should he ordained for men in things pertaining to God;
2. That he should offer gifts and sacrifices ; 3. That lie should
he called by God, not be a mere sel<-asserter.
1. Ordained for men. Remark here the true idea con-
tained in Judaism, and its difference from the heathen no-
tions. In Heathenism the priest was of a different race sep-
arate from his fellows. In Judaism he was ordained for men ;
their representative ; constituted in their behalf The Jew-
ish priest represented the holiness of the nation ; he went into
the Holy of Holies, showing it. But this great idea was only
implied." not fulfilled in the Jewish priest. He was only by a
fiction the representative of holiness. Holy he was not. He
only entered into a fictitious Holy of Holies. If the idea
were to be ever real, it must be in One who should be act*
ually what the Jewish priest was by a figment, and who
should carry our humanity into the real Holy of Holies the
presence of God ; thus becoming our Invisible and Eternal
Priest
: it was implied that his call must be Divine. But in
the 110th Psalm a higher call is intimated than that Divine
call which was madelo the Aaronic priesthood by a regular
succession, or, as it is called in the epistle, " the law of a car-
nal commandment" Melehizedek's call is spoken o The
king is called a priest after his order. Xot a derived or he-
reditary priesthood; not one transmissible, beginning and
ending* in himself (Heb. vii 1-3), but a priesthood, in other
words, of character, of inward right : a call internal, hence
more Divine ; or, as the writer calls it, a priest " after the
power of an endless life," This was the idea for which the
Jewish psalms themselves ought to have prepared the Jew.
Again, the priests offered gifts and sacrifices. Distinguish :
Gifts were thank-offerings T first-fruits of
etc., a man's best ; testimonies of infinite gratefulness, and
expressions of it. But sacrifices were different : they implied
a sense of un worthiness: that sense which conflicts with the
idea of any right to offer gifts.
Now the Jewish Scriptures themselves had explained this
subject, and this instinctive feeling of nnworthiness for which
sacrifice found an expression. Prophets and psalmists had
felt that no sacrifice was perfect which did not reach the con-
science (Ps. 11 16, 17), for instance; also Heb. x. 8-12. Xo
language could more clearly show that the spiritual Jew dis-
cerned that entire surrender to the Divine WiH is the only
perfect sacrifice, the ground of all sacrifices, and that whic*
Worldliness. 333
alone imparts to it a significance. Not the mere sacrifice of
victims. . . . "Then said I, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O
God." Tliat is the sacrifice which God wills.
I say it firmly all other notions of sacrifice are false.
Whatsoever introduces the conception of vindictiveness or
retaliation whatever speaks of appeasing fury whatever
estimates the value of the Saviour's sacrifice by the "penalty
paid" whatever differs from these notions of sacrifice con-
tained in psalms and prophets is borrowed from the bloody
shambles of Heathenism, and not from Jewish altars.
This- alone makes the worshipper perfect as pertaining to
the conscience. He who can offer it in its entireness, He
alone is the world's Atonement ; He in whose heart the Law
was, and who alone of all mankind was content to do it, His
sacrifice alone^can be the sacrifice all-sufficient in the Father's
sight as the proper sacrifice of humanity : He who through
the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, He
alone can give the Spirit which enables us to present our
bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He is
the only High-priest of the universe.
XII.
WORLDLINESS.
"If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in, him. For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth
away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for-
ever.'' 1 John ii. 15-17.
RELIGION differs from morality in the value which it
places on the affections. Morality requires that an act be
done on principle. Religion goes deeper, and inquires into
the state of the heart. The Church of Ephesus was unsus-
pected in her orthodoxy, and unblemished in her zeal : but to
the ear of him who saw the apocalyptic vision, a voice spake,
"I have somewhat against thee in that thou hast left thy
first love."
In the eye of Christianity he is a Christian who loves the
Father. He who loves the world may be in his way a good
man, respecting whose eternal destiny we pronounce no
opinion : but one of the children of the kingdom he is not.
Now the boundary-lines of this love of the world, or
worldliness, are exceedingly difficult to define. Bigotry pro-
334 Worldliness.
nounces many things wrong which are harmless : laxity per-
mits many which are by no means innocent : and it is a
question perpetually put, a question miserably perplexing to
those whose religion consists more in avoiding that which is
wrong than in seeking that which is right, What is world-
Ihess ?
To that question we desire to find to-day an answer in the
text ; premising this, that our object is to put ourselves in
possession of principles. For otherwise we shall only deal
with this matter as empirics ; condemning this and approving
that by opinion, but on no certain and intelligible ground:
we shall but float on the unstable sea of opinion.
We confine ourselves to two points.
I. The nature of the forbidden world.
n. The reason for which it is forbidden.
I. The nature of the forbidden world. The first idea sug-
gested by " the world " is this green earth, with its days and
nights, its seasons, its hills and its valleys, its clouds and
brightness. This is not the world the love of which is pre-
hibited ; for to forbid the love of this would be to forbid the
love of God.
There are three ways in which we learn to know Him.
First, by the working of our minds : love, justice, tender-
ness. If we would know what they mean in God, we must
gain the conception from their existence in ourselves. But
inasmuch as humanity is imperfect in us, if we were to learn
of God only from His image in ourselves, we should run the
risk of calling the evil good, and the imperfect divine.
Therefore He has given us, besides this, the representation of
Himself in Christ, where is found the meeting-point of the
Divine and the human, and in whose life the character of
Deity is reflected as completely as the sun is seen in the
depth of the still, untroubled lake.
But there is a third way in which we attain the idea of
God. This world is but manifested Deity God shown to
eye, and ear, and sense. This strange phenomenon of a
world, what is it? All we know of it all we know of mat-
ter is, that it is an assemblage of powers which produce in
us certain sensations ; but what those powers are in them-
selves we know not. The sensation of color, form, weight,
we have ; but what it is which gives those sensations in
the language of the schools, what is the substratum which
supports the accidents or qualities of Being we can not tell.
Speculative Philosophy replies, It is but our own selves be-
coming conscious of themselves. We, in our own being, are
Worldliness. 335
the cause 01 all phenomena. Positive Philosophy replies,
What the Being of the world is we can not tell, we only
know what it seems to us. Phenomena appearance be
yond this we can not reach. Being itself is and forever
must be, unknowable. Religion replies, That something is
God. The world is but manifested Deity. That which lies
beneath the surface of all appearance, the cause of all mani-
festation, is God. So that to forbid the love of all this
world is to forbid the love of that by which God is known
to us. The sounds and sights of this lovely world are but
the drapery of the robe in which the Invisible has clothed
Himself. Does a man ask what this world is, and why man
is placed in it ? It was that the invisible things of Him from
the creation of the world jnight be clearly seen. Have we
ever stood beneath the solemn vault of heaven when the
stars were looking down in their silent splendor, and not felt
an overpowering sense of His eternity ? When the white
lightning has quivered in the sky, has that told us nothing
of power, or only something of electricity ? Rocks and
mountains, are they here to give us the idea of material mass-
iveness, or to reveal the conception of the Strength of Israel ?
When we take up the page of past history, and read that
wrong never prospered long, but that nations have drunk
one after another the cup of terrible retribution, can we dis-
miss all that as the philosophy of history, or shall we say
that through blood, and war, and desolation we trace the
footsteps of a presiding God, and find evidence that there
sits at the helm of this world's affairs a strict, and rigorous,
and most terrible justice? To the eye that can see, to the
heart that is not paralyzed, God is here. The warnings
which the Bible utters against the things of this world bring
no charge against the glorious world itself. The world is
the glass through which we see the Maker. But what men
do is this : They put the dull quicksilver of their own selfish-
ness behind the glass, and so it becomes not the transparent
medium through which God shines, but the dead opaque
which reflects back themselves. Instead of lying with open
eye and heart to receive, we project ourselves upon the world
and give. So it gives us back our own false feelings and na-
ture. Therefore it brings forth thorns and thistles; there-
fore it grows weeds weeds to us; therefore the lightning
burns with wrath, and the thunder mutters vengeance. By
all which it comes to pass that the very manifestation of God
has transformed itself: the lust of the flesh, and the lust of
the eye, and the pride of life ; and all that is in the world is
no longer of the Father, but is of the world.
336 Worldliness.
By the world again is sometimes meant the men that ere
in the world. And thus the command would run, Love not
men, but love God. It has been so read. The Pharisees
read it so of old. The property which natural affection de-
manded for the support of parents, upon that they wrote
" Corban," a gift for God, and robbed men that they might
give to God. Yet no less than this is done whenever human
aifection is called idolatry. As if God were jealous of our
love in the human sense of jealousy ; as if we could love God
the more by loving man the less ; as if it were not by loving
our brother whom we have seen, that w r e approximate to-
wards the love of God whom we have not seen. This is but
the cloak for narrowness of heart. Men of withered affec-
tions excuse their lovelessness by talking largely of the affec-
tion due to God. Yet, like the Pharisees, the love on which
Corban is written is never given to God, but really retained
f* t r*
for self.
No, let a man love his neighbor as himself. Let him love
his brother, sister, wife, with all the intensity of his heart's
affection. This is not St. John's forbidden world.
By the world is often understood the worldly occupation,
trade or profession which a man exercises. And according-
ly, it is no uncommon thing to hear this spoken of as some-
thing which, if not actually anti-religious, is, so far as it goes,
time taken away from the religious life. But when the man
from whom the legion had been expelled asked Jesus for the
precepts of a religious existence, the reply sent him back to
home. His former worldliness had consisted in doing his world-
ly duties ill his future religiousness was to consist in doing
those same duties better. A man's profession or trade is not
only not incompatible with religion (provided it be a lawful
one), it is his religion. And this is true even of those call-
ings which at first sight appear to have in them something
hard to reconcile with religiousness. For instance, the pro-
fession of a lawyer. He is a worldling in it if he use it for
some personal greed, or degrade it by chicanery. But in it-
self it is an occupation which sifts right from wrong ; which,
in the entangled web of human life, unwinds the meshes of
error. He is by profession enlisted on the side of the right
directly connected with God, the central point of justice
and truth. A nobler occupation need no man desire than to
be a fellow-worker with God. Or take the soldier's trade
in this world generally a trade of blood, and revenge, and
idle licentiousness. Rightly understood, what is it ? A sol-
dier's whole life, whether he will or not, is an enunciation of
the greatest of religious truths, the voluntary sacrifice of
Worldliness. 337
one for the sake of many. In the detail of his existence, how
abundant are the opportunities for the voluntary recognition
of this. Opportunities such as that when the three strong
men brake through the lines of the enemy to obtain the wa*
ter for their sovereign's thirst opportunities as when that
same heroic sovereign poured the untasted water on the
ground, and refused to drink because it was his soldiers' lives
he could not drink at such a price. Earnestness in a law-
ful calling is not worldliness. A profession is the sphere of
our activity. There is something sacred in work. To work
in the appointed sphere is to be religious as religious as to
pray. This is not the forbidden world.
Now to define what worldliness is. Remark, first, that it
is determined by the spirit of a life, not the objects with which
the life is conversant. It is not the "flesh," nor the "eye,"
nor " life," which are forbidden, but it is the " litst of the
flesh," and the " lust of the eye," and the "pride of life." It
is not this earth, nor the men who inhabit it, nor the sphere
of our legitimate activity, that we may not love, but the way
in which the love is given which constitutes worldliness.
Look into this a little closer. The lust of the flesh. Here is
affection for the outward : pleasure, that which affects the
senses only : the flesh, that enjoyment which comes from the
emotions of an hour, be it coarse or be it refined. The pleas-
ure of wine or the pleasure of music, so far as it is only a
movement of the flesh. Again, the lust of the eye. Here is
affection for the transient, for the eye can only gaze on form
and color and these are things that do not last. Once
more the pride of life. Here is affection for the unreal.
Men's opinion the estimate which depends upon wealth,
rank, circumstances.
Worldliness then consists in these three things : Attach-
ment to the outward attachment to the transitory attach-
ment to the unreal : in opposition to love for the inward, the
eternal, the true : and the one of these affections is necessari-
ly expelled by the other. If a. man love the world, the love
of the Father is not in him. But let a man once feel the
power of the kingdom that is within, and then the love fades
of that emotion whose life consists only in the thrill of a
nerve, or the vivid sensation of a feeling : he loses his happi-
ness, and wins his blessedness. Let a man get but one glimpse
of the King in His beauty, and then the forms and shapes of
things here are to him but the types of an invisible loveli-
ness : types which he is content should break and fade. Let
but a man feel truth that goodness is greatness that there
is no other greatness and then the degrading reverence
15
338 Worldliness.
with which the titled of this world bow before wealth, and
the ostentation with which the rich of this world profess
their familiarity with title : all the pride of life, what is it to
him ? The love of the inward everlasting, real the love,
that is, of the Father, annihilates the love of the world.
II. We pass to the reasons for which the love of the world
is forbidden.
The first reason assigned is, that the love of the world is
incompatible with the love of God. If any man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in him. Now what we
observe in this is, that St. John takes it for granted that we
must love something. If not the love of the Father, then of
necessity the love of the world. Love misplaced, or love
rightly placed you have your choice between these two :
you have not your choice between loving God or nothing.
No man is sufficient for himself. Every man must go out of
himself for enjoyment. Something in this universe besides
himself there must be to bind the affections of every man.
There is that within us which compels us to attach ourselves
to something outward. The choice is not this : love, or be
without love. You can not give the pent-up steam its choice
of moving or not moving. It must move one way or the
other : the right way or the wrong way. Direct it rightly,
and its energy rolls the engine-wheels smoothly on their
track : block up its passage, and it bounds away, a thing of
madness and ruin. Stop it you can not ; it will rather burst.
So it is with our hearts. There is a pent-up energy of love,
gigantic for good or evil. Its right way is in the direction
of our Eternal Father ; and then^let it boil and pant as it
will, the course of the man is smooth. Expel the love of
God from the bosom what then ? Will the passion that is
within cease to burn ? Nay. Tie the man down let there
be no outlet for his affections let him attach himself to noth-
ing, and become a loveless spirit in this universe, and then
there is what we call a broken heart : the steam bursts the
machinery that contains it. Or else let him take his course,
unfettered and free, and then we have the riot of worldliness
a man with strong affections thrown off the line, tearing
himself to pieces, and carrying desolation along with him.
Let us comprehend our own nature, ourselves, and our des-
tinies. God is our rest, the only one that can quench the
fever of our desire. God in Christ is what we want. When
men quit that, so that " the love of the Father is not in them,"
then they must perforce turn aside : the nobler heart to break
with disappointment the meaner heart to love the world
Wov Id lines s. 339
instead, and sate and satisfy itself, as best it may, on things
that perish in the using. Herein lies the secret of our being,
in this world of the affections. This explains why our no-
blest feelings lie so close to our basest why the noblest so
easily metamorphose themselves into the basest. The hejirt
which was made large enough for God wastes itself upon the
world.
The second reason which the apostle gives for not squan-
dering affection on the world is its transitoriness. Now this
transitoriness exists in two shapes. It is transitory in itself
the world passeth away. It is transitory in its power of
exciting desire the lust thereof passeth away.
It is a twice-told tale that the world is passing away from
us, and there is very little new to be said on the subject.
God has written it on every page of His creation that there
is nothing here which lasts. Our affections change. The
friendships of the man are not the friendships of the boy.
Our very selves are altering. The basis of our being may
remain, but our views, tastes, feelings are no more our former
self than the oak is the acorn. The very face of the visible
world is altering around us : we have the gray mouldering
ruins to tell of what was once. Our laborers strike their
ploughshares against the foundations of buildings which
once echoed to human mirth skeletons of men, to whom
life once was dear urns and coins that remind the antiqua-
rian of a magnificent empire. To-day the shot of the enemy
defaces and blackens monuments and venerable temples
which remind the Christian that into the deep silence of
eternity the Roman world, which was in its vigor in tho
days of John, has passed away. And so things are going.
It is a work of weaving and unweaving. All passes. Names
that the world heard once in thunder are scarcely heard at
the end of centuries : good or bad, they pass. A few years
ago, and we were not. A few centuries farther, and we
reach the age of beings of almost another race. Nimrod
was the conqueror and scourge of his far-back age. Tubal
Cain gave to the world the iron which was the foundation
of every triumph of men over nature. We have their
names now. But the philologist is uncertain whether the
name of the first is real or mythical, and the traveller exca-
vates the sand-mounds of Nineveh to wonder over the rec-
ords which he can not decipher. Tyrant and benefactor,
both are gone. And so all things are moving on to the last
fire which shall wrap the world in conflagration, and make
all that has been the recollection of a dream. This is the
history of the world, and all that is in it. It passes while we
34 Worldline^s.
look at it. Like as when you watch the melting tints of the
evening sky purple-crimson, gorgeous gold, a few pulsa-
tions of quivering light, and it is" all gone: "We are such
stuff as dreams are made of."
Jhe other aspect of this transitoriness is, that the lust of
the world passeth away. By which the apostle seems to re-
mind us of that solemn truth that, fast as the world is fleet
ing from us, faster still does the taste for its enjoyments fleet ;
fast as the brilliancy fades from earthly things, faster still
does the eye become wearied of straining itself upon them.
Now there is one way in which this takes place by a man
becoming satiated with the world. There is something in
earthly rapture which cloys. And when we drink deep of
pleasure, there is left behind something of that loathing
which follows a repast on sweets. When a boy sets out in
life, it is all fresh freshness in feeling zest in his enjoy-
ment purity in his heart. Cherish that, my young breth-
ren, while you can ; lose it, and it never comes again. It is
not an easy thing to cherish it, for it demands restraint in
pleasure, and no young heart loves that. Religion has only
calm, sober, perhaps monotonous pleasures to offer at first.
The deep rapture of enjoyment comes in after-life. And
that will not satisfy the young heart. Men will know what
pleasure is, and they drink deep. Keen delight feverish
enjoyment that is what you long for: and these emotions
lose their delicacy and their relish, and will only come at the
bidding of gross excitements. The ecstasy which once rose
to the sight of the rainbow in the sky, or the bright brook,
or the fresh morning, comes languidly at last only in the
crowded midnight room, or the excitement of commercial
speculation, or beside the gaming-table, or amidst the fever
of politics. It is a spectacle for men and angels, when a
man has become old in feeling and worn-out before his time.
Know we none such among our own acquaintance? Have
the young never seen those aged ones who stand amongst
them in their pleasures, almost as if to warn them of what
they themselves must come to at last? Have they never
marked the dull and sated look that they cast upon the
whole scene, as upon a thing which they would fain enjoy
and can not ? Know you what you have been looking on ?
A sated worldling one to whom pleasure was rapture once,
as it is to you now. Thirty years more, that look and that
place will be yours : and that is the way the world rewards
its veterans; it chains them to it after the "lust of the
world " has passed away.
Or this may be done by a discovery of the unsatisfactory
Worldliness. 341
ness of the world. That is a discovery not made by every
man. But there are some at least who have learned it bit-
terly, and that without the aid of Christ. Some there are
who would not live over this past life again even if it were
possible. Some there are who would gladly have done with
the whole thing at once, and exchange oh ! how joyfully-
the garment for the shroud. And some there are who cling
to life, not because life is dear, but because the future is
dark, and they tremble somewhat at the thought of entering
it. Clinging to life is no proof that a man is still longing
for the world. We often cling to life the more tenaciously
as years go on. The deeper the tree has struck its roots into
the ground, the less willing is it to be rooted up. But there
is many a one who so hangs on just because he has not the
desperate hardihood to quit it, nor faith enough to be " will-
ing to depart." The world and he have understood each
other ; he has seen through it ; he has ceased to hope any
thing from it. The love' of the Father is not in him, but
" the lust of the world " has passed away.
Lastly, a reason for unlearning the love of the world is the
solitary permanence of Christian action. In contrast with
the fleetingness of this world, the apostle tells us of the sta-
bility of labor. "He that doeth the will of God abideth for-
ever." And let us mark this. Christian life is action : not
a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and
only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feel-
ings pass ; resolves and thoughts pass ; opinions change.
What you have done lasts lasts in you. Through ages,
through eternity, what you have done for Christ, that, and
only that, you are. " They rest from their labors," saith the
Spirit, " and their works do follow them." If the love of the
Father be in us, where is the thing done which we have to
show ? You think justly feel rightly yes but your
work ? produce it. Men of wealth, men of talent, men of
leisure, what are you doing in God's world for God ?
Observe, however, to distinguish between the act and the
actor : It is not the thing done, but the doer who lasts.
The thing done often is a failure. The cup given in the
name of Christ may be given to one unworthy of it ; but
think ye that the love with which it was given has passed
away ? Has it not printed itself indelibly in the character
by the very act of giving ? Bless, and if the Son of peace
be there, your act succeeds ; but if not, your blessing shall
return unto you again. In other words, the act may fail, but
the doer of it abideth forever.
We close this subject with two practical truths. Let us
342 Worldliness.
learn from earthly changefulness a lesson of cheerful active
ty. The world has its way of looking at all this, but it is
not the Christian's way/ There has been nothing said to-
day that a worldly moralist has not already said a thousand
times far better. The fact is a world-fact. The application
is a Christian one. Every man can be eloquent about the
nothingness of time. But the application ! " Let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow we die?" That is one application.
Let us sentimentalize and be sad in this fleeting world, and
talk of the instability of human greatness, and the transi-
toriness of human affection ? Those are the only two appli-
cations the world knows. They shut out the recollection
and are merry, or they dwell on it and are sad. Christian
brethren, dwell on it and be happy. This world is not
yours ; thank God it is not. It is dropping away from you
like worn-out autumn leaves ; but beneath it, hidden in it,
there is another world lying as the flower lies in the bud.
That is your world, which must burst forth at last into eter-
nal luxuriance. All you stand on, see, and love, is but the
husk of something better. Things are passing ; our friends
are dropping off from us ; strength is giving way ; our relish
for earth is going, and the world no longer wears to our
hearts the radiance that once it wore. We have the same
sky above us, and the same scenes around us ; but the fresh-
ness that our hearts extracted from every thing in boyhood,
and the glory that seemed to rest once on earth and life have
faded aAvay forever. Sad and gloomy truths to the man who
is going down to the grave with his work undone. Not sad
to the Christian, but rousing, exciting, invigorating. If it be
the eleventh hour, we have no time for folding of the hands :
we will work the faster. Through the changefulness of life
through the solemn tolling of the bell of Time, which tells
us that another, and another, and another, are gone before
us through the noiseless rush of a world which is going down
with gigantic footsteps into nothingness. Let not the Chris-
tian slack his hand from work, for he that doeth the will of
God may defy hell itself to quench his immortality.
Finally, The love of this world is only unlearned by the
love of the Father. It were a desolate thing, indeed, to for-
bid the love of earth, if there were nothing to fill the vacant
space in the heart. But it is just for this purpose, that a
sublimer affection may find room, that the lower is to be ex-
pelled. And there is only one way in which that higher love
is learned. The cross of Christ is the measure of the love of
God to us, and the measure of the meaning of man's existence.
The measure is the love of God. Through the death-kneU
The Sydenham Palace, Etc. 343
of a passing universe God seems at least to speak to us in
wrath. There is no doubt of what God means in the Cross.
He means love. The measure of the meaning of man's exist
'ence. Measure all by the Cross. Do you want success?
The Cross is failure. Do you want a name? The Cross is
infamy. Is it to be gay and happy that you live ? The Cross
is pain and sharpness. Do you live that the will of God may
be done in you and by you, in life and death ? Then, and
only then, the Spirit of the Cross is in you. When once a
man has learned that, the power of the world is gone ; and
no man need bid him, in denunciation or in invitation, not to
love the world. He can not love the world, for he has got
an ambition above the world. He has planted his foot upon
the Rock, and when all else is gone, he at least abides forever.
XIII.
THE SYDENHAM PALACE, AND THE RELIGIOUS
NON-OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH.
"One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every
day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that
regardeth the day, regardeth fy unto the Lord ; and he that regardeth not the
day, to the Lord lie doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord,
for he giveth God thanks ; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not,
and giveth God thanks. " Rom. xiv. 5, 6.
THE selection of this text is suggested by one of the cur-
rent topics of the day. Lately projects have been devised,
one of which in importance surpasses all the rest, for provid
ing places of public recreation for the people : and it has
been announced, with the sanction of government, that such
a place will be held open during a part at least of the day of
rest. By a large section of sincerely religious persons this
announcement has been received with considerable alarm
and strenuous opposition. It has seemed to them that such
a desecration would be a national crime : for, holding the sab-
bath to be God's sign between Himself and His people, they
can not but view the desecration ot the sign as a forfeiture
of His covenant, and an act which will assuredly call down
national judgments. By the secular press, on the contrary,
this proposal has been defended with considerable power. It
has been maintained that the sabbath is a Jewish institu
tion; in its strictness, at all events, not binding on a Chris-
tian community. It has been urged with much force thaj
344 The Sydenham Palace, and the
we can not consistently refuse to concede to the pool man
publicly, that right of recreation which privately the rich
man has long taken without rebuke, and with no protest on
the part of the ministers of Christ. And it has been said
that such places of recreation will tend to humanize, which
if not identical with Christianizing the population, is at least
a step towards it.
Upon such a subject, where truth unquestionably does not
lie upon the surface, it can not be out of place if a minister
of Christ endeavors to direct the minds of his congregation
towards the formation of an opinion ; not dogmatically, but
humbly, remembering always that his own temptation is,
from his very position as a clergyman, to view such matters,
not so much in the broad light of the possibilities of actual
life, as with the eyes of a recluse ; from a clerical and eccle-
siastical, rather than from a large and human point of view.
For no minister of Christ has a right to speak oracularly.
All that he can pretend to do is to give his judgment, as one
that has obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. And on
large national subjects there is perhaps no class so ill quali-
fied to form a judgment with breadth as we, the clergy of
the Church of England, accustomed as we are to move in the
narrow circle of those who listen to us with forbearance and
deference, and mixing but little in real life, till in our clois-
tered and inviolable sanctuaries we are apt to forget that it
is one thing to lay down rules for a religious clique, and an-
other to legislate for a great nation.
In the Church of Rome a controversy had arisen in the
time of St. Paul, respecting the exact relation in which Chris-
tianity stood to Judaism; and, consequently, the obligation
of various Jewish institutions came to be discussed : among
the rest the sabbath-day. One party maintained its abroga-
tion, another its continued obligation. " One man esteemeth
one day above another ; another esteemeth every day alike."
Now it is remarkable that, in his reply, the Apostle Paul, al-
though his own views upon the question were decided and
strong, passes no judgment of censure upon the practice of
either of these parties, but only blames the uncharitable
spirit in which the one "judged their brethren" as irrelig-
ious, and the other " set at naught " their stricter brethren as
superstitious. He lays down, however, two principles for the
decision of the matter : the first being the rights of Christian
conviction, or the sacredness of the individual conscience
"Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind;'* the
second, a principle unsatisfactory enough, and surprising, no
doubt, to both, that there is such a thing as religious observ-
Religious Non-Observance of the Sabbath. 345
ance, and also such a thing as a religious non-observance of
the day " He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the
Lord: and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he
doth not regard it." I shall consider,
I. St. Paul's own view upon the question.
II. His modifications of that view, in reference to separate
cases.
I. St. Paul's own view. No one, I believe, who would
read St. Paul's own writings with unprejudiced mind could
fail to come to the conclusion that he considered the sabbath
abrogated by Christianity : not merely as modified in itd
stringency, but as totally repealed.
For example, see Colossians ii. 16, 17: observe, he counts
the sabbath-day among those institutions of Judaism which
were shadows, and of which Christ was the realization, the
substance or " body ;" and he bids the Colossians remain in-
diiferent to the judgment which would be pronounced upon
their non-observance of such days. "Let no man judge you
with respect to .... the sabbath-days."
He is more decisive still in the text. For it has been con-
tended that in the former passage, " sabbath-days " refers
simply to the Jewish sabbaths, which were superseded by
the Lord's day, and that the apostle does not allude at all to
the new institution, which it is supposed had superseded it.
Here, however, there can be no such ambiguity. " One man
esteemeth every day alike;" and he only says, "let him be
fully persuaded in his own mind." "Every" day must in-
clude first days as well as last days of the week: Sundays as
well as Saturdays. And again, he even speaks of scrupulous
adherence to particular days, as if it were giving up the very
principle of Christianity: "Ye observe days, and months,
and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestow
ed upon you labor in vain." So that his objection was not
to Jewish days, but to the very principle of attaching intrin-
sic sacredness to any days. All forms and modes of particu-
larizing the Christian life he reckoned as bondage under the
elements or alphabet of the law. And this is plain from the
nature of the case. He struck not at a day, but at a princi-
ple. Else, if w r ith all this vehemence and earnestness, he only
meant to establish a new set of days in the place of the old,
there is no intelligible principle for which he is contending,
and that earnest apostle is only a champion for one day in-
stead of another an asserter of the eternal sanctities of Sun-
day, instead of the eternal sanctities of Saturday. Incredi-
ble indeed.
15*
346 The Sydenham Palace, and the
Let us then understand the principle on which he declared
the repeal of the sabbath. He taught that the blood of
Christ cleansed all things; therefore there was nothing spe*
dally clean. Christ had vindicated all for God ; therefore
there was no one thing more God's than another. For to a&-
sert one thing as God's more than another, is by implication
to admit that other to be less God's.
The blood of Christ had vindicated God's parental right to
all humanity; therefore there could be no peculiar people,
" There is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircum-
cision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free : but Christ is all,
and in all." It had proclaimed God's property in all places;
therefore there could be no one place intrinsically holier than
another. No human dedication, no human consecration"
could localize God in space. Hence the first martyr quoted
from the prophet : " Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in
temples made with hands ; as saith the prophet, heaven is
my throne, and earth is my footstool ; what house will ye
build for me ? saith the Lord."
Lastly, the Gospel of Christ had sanctified all time : hence
no time could be specially God's. For to assert that Sunday
is more God's day than Monday, is to maintain by implica-
tion Monday is His less rightfully.
Here, however, let it be observed, it is perfectly possible,
and not at all inconsistent with this, that for human conveni-
ence, and even human necessities, just as it became desirable
to set -apart certain places in which the noise of earthly busi-
ness should not be heard for spiritual worship, so it should
become desirable to set apart certain days for special wor-
ship. But then all such were defensible on the ground of
wise and Christian expediency alone. They could not be
placed on the ground of a Divine statute or command. They
rested on the authority of the Church of Christ ; and the
power which had made could unmake them again.
Accordingly in early, we can not say exactly how early
times, the Church of Christ felt the necessity of substituting
something in place of the ordinances which had been repeal-
ed. And the Lord's day arose : not a day of compulsory
rest ; not such a day at nil as modern Sabbatarians suppose ;
not a Jewish sabbath ; rather a day in many respects abso-
lutely contrasted with the Jewish sabbath.
For the Lord's day sprung, not out of a transference of the
Jewish sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, but rather out of
the idea of making the week an imitation of the life of Christ.
With the early Christians, the great conception was that of
following their crucified and risen Lord: they set, as it were,
Religious N on-Observance of the Sabbath. 347
the clock of Time to the epochs of his history. Friday repre-
sented the Death in which all Christians daily die, and Sun-
day the Resurrection in which all Christians daily rise to
higher life. What Friday and Sunday were to the week,
that Good Friday and Easter Sunday were to the year.
And .thus, in larger or smaller cycles, all time represented to
the early Christians the mysteries of the Cross and the Risen
Life hidden in humanity. And as the sunflower turns from
morning till evening to the sun, so did the early Church turn
forever to her Lord, transforming week and year into a sym-
bolical representation of His spiritual life.
Carefully distinguish this, the true historical view of the
origin of the Lord's day, from a mere transference of a Jew-
ish sabbath from one day to another. For St. Paul's teach-
ing is distinct and clear, that the sabbath is annulled, and to
urge the observance of the day as indispensable to salvation
was, according to him, to Judaize : " to turn again to the
weak and beggarly -elements, whereunto they desired to be
in bondage."
II. The modifications of this view.
1. The first modification has reference to those who con-
scientiously observed the day. He that observeth the day,
observeth it to the Lord. Let him act, then, on that convic-
tion : " Let him be fully persuaded in his own mind." There
is therefore a religious observance of the sabbath-day possi-
ble.
We are bound by the spirit of the fourth commandment,
so far as we are in the same spiritual state as they to whom
it was given. The spiritual intent of Christianity is to wor-
ship God every day in the spirit. But had this law been
given in all its purity to the Jews, instead of turning every
week-day into a sabbath, they would have transformed every
sabbath into a week-day : with no special day fixed for wor-
ship, they would have spent every day without worship.
Their hearts were too dull for a devotion so spiritual and
pure. Therefore a law was given, specializing a day, in or-
der to lead them to the broader truth that every day is
God's.
Now, so far as we are in the Jewish state, the fourth com-
mandment, even in its rigor and strictness, is wisely used by
us ; nay, we might say, indispensable. For who is he who
needs not the day ? He is the man so rich in love, so con-
formed to the mind of Christ, so elevated into the gublime
repose of heaven, that he needs no carnal ordinances at all,
nor the assistance of one day in seven to kindle spiritual
348 The Sydenham Palace, and the
feelings, seeing he is, as it were, all his life in heaven al<
ready.
And doubtless, such the Apostle Paul expected the
Church of Christ to be. Anticipating the Second Advent
at once ; not knowing the long centuries of slow progress
that were to come, his heart would have sunk within him
could he have been told that at the end of eighteen centu-
ries the Christian Church would be still observing days,
and months, and times, and years, and still more, needing
them.
Needing them, I say. For the sabbath was made for
man. Gcd made it for men in a certain spiritual state, be-
cause they needed it. The need therefore is deeply hidden
in human nature. He who can dispense with it must be
holy and spiritual indeed. And he who, still unholy and
unspiritual, would yet dispense with it, is a man who would
fain be wiser than his Maker. We, Christians as we are,
still need the law : both in its restraints, and in its aids to
our weakness.
No man, therefore, who knows himself, but will gladly and
joyfully use the institution. No man who knows the^need
of his brethren will wantonly desecrate it, or recklessly hurt
even their scruples respecting its observance. And no such
man can look with aught but grave and serious apprehen-
sions on such an innovation upon English customs of life and
thought, as the proposal to give public and official counte-
nance to a scheme which will invite millions, I do not say to
an irreligious, but certainly an unreligious use of the day of
rest.
This then is the first modification of the broad view of a
repealed sabbath. Repealed though it be, there is such a
thing as a religious observance of it. And provided that
those who are stricter than we in their views of its obliga-
tion, observe it not from superstition, nor in abridgment
of Christian liberty, nor from moroseness, we are bound in
Christian charity to yield them all respect and honor. Let
them act out their conscientious convictions. Let not him
that observeth not despise him that observeth.
The second modification of the broad view is, that there is
such a thing as a religious non-observance of the sabbath. 1
lay a stress on the word religious. For St. Paul does not say
that every non-observance of the sabbath is religious, but
that he who not observing it, observeth it not to the Lord,
is, because acting on conscientious conviction, as acceptable
as the others, who, in obedience to what they believe to be
His will, observe it.
Religious Non-Observance of the Sabbath. 349
He pays his non-observance to the Lord, who feeling that
Christ has made him free, striving to live all his days in the
spirit, and knowing that that which is displeasing to God is
not work nor recreation, but selfishness and worldliness, re-
fuses to be bound by a Jewish ordinance which forbade la-
bor and recreation, only with a typical intent.
But he who, not trying to serve God on any day, gives
Sunday to toil or pleasure, certainly observes not the day :
but his non-observance is not rendered to the Lord. He may
be free from superstition : but it is not Christ who has made
him free. Nor is he one of whom St. Paul would have said
that his liberty on the sabbath is as acceptable as his broth-
er's conscientious scrupulosity.
Here, then, we are at issue with the popular defense of
public recreations on the sabbath-day : not so much with re-
spect to the practice, as with respect to the grounds on-which
the practice is approved. They claim liberty : but it is not
Christian liberty. Like St. Paul, they demand a license for
non-observance ; only, it is not " non-observance to the Lord."
For distinguish well. The abolition of Judaism is not neces-
sarily the establishment of Christianity : to do away with the
sabbath-day in order to substitute a nobler, truer, more con-
tinuous sabbath, even the sabbath of all time given up to
God, is well ; but to do away with the special rights of God
to the sabbath, in order merely to substitute the rights of
pleasure, or the rights of mammon, or even the license of
profligacy and drunkenness, that, methinks, is not St. Paul's
" Christian liberty !"
The second point on which we join issue is the assump-
tion that public places of recreation, which humanize, will
therefore Christianize the people. It is taken for granted
that architecture, sculpture, and the wonders of nature and
art which such buildings will contain, have a direct or indi-
rect tendency to lead to true devotion.
Only in a very limited degree is there truth in this at all.
Christianity will humanize : we are not so sure that human-
izing will Christianize. Let us be clear upon this matter.
Esthetics are not religion. It is one thing to civilize and
polish : it is another thing to Christianize. The worship of
the beautiful is not the worship of holiness ; nay, I know not
whether the one may not have a tendency to disincline from
the other.
At least, such was the history of ancient Greece. Greece
was the home of the arts, the sacred ground on which the
worship of the beautiful was carried to its perfection. Let
those who have read the history of her decline and fall, who
350 The Sydenham Palace^ and the
have peraeed the debasing works of her later years, tell ua
how "music, painting, poetry, the arts, softened and debilita-
ted and sensualized the nation's heart. Let them tell us
how, when Greece's last and greatest man was warning in
vain against the foe at her gates, and demanding a manlier
and a more heroic disposition to sacrifice, that most polished
and humanized people, sunk in trade and sunk in pleasure,
were squandering enormous sums upon their buildings and
their esthetics, their processions and their people's palaces,
till the flood came, and the liberties of Greece were trampled
down forever beneath the feet of the Macedonian conqueror.
No ! the change of a nation's heart is not to be effected
by the infusion of a taste for artistic grace. " Other founda-
tion can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus."
Not art, but the cross of Christ. Simpler manners, purer
lives:. more self-denial; more earnest sympathy with the
classes that lie below us ; nothing short of that can lay the
foundations of the Christianity which is to be hereafter, deep
and broad.
On the other hand, we dissent from the views of those
who would arrest such a project by petitions to the legis-
lature on these grounds :
1. It is a return backward to Judaism and law. It may
be quite true that, as we suspect, such non-observance of the
day is not to the Lord ; but only a scheme of mere pecuni-
ary speculation. Nevertheless there is such a thing as a re-
ligious non-observance of the day : and we dare not "judge
another man's servant : to his own master he standeth or
falleth." We dare not assert the perpetual obligation of
the sabbath, when an inspired apostle has declared it abro-
gated. We dare not refuse a public concession of that kind
of recreation to the poor man which the rich have long not
hesitated to take in their sumptuous mansions and pleasure-
grounds, unrebuked by the ministers of Christ, who seem
touched to the quick only when the desecration of the sab-
bath is loud and vulgar. \Ve can not substitute a statute law
for a repealed law of God. We may think, and we do, that
there is much which may lead to dangerous consequences in
this innovation : but we dare not treat it as a crime.
2. The second ground on which we are opposed to the ul-
tra-rigor of sabbath observance, especially when it becomes
coercive, is the danger of injuring the conscience. It is
wisely taught by St. Paul that he who does any thing with
offense, i. e., with a feeling that it is wrong, does wrong.
To him it is wrong, even though it be not wrong abstractly.
Therefore it is always dangerous to multiply restrictions and
Religious Non-Observance of the Sabbath. 351
requirements beyond what is essential, because men feeling
themselves hemmed in break the artificial barrier, but break-
ing it with a sense of guilt, do thereby become hardened in
conscience and prepared for transgression against command-
ments which are divine and of eternal obligation. Hence it
is that the criminal has so often in his confessions traced his
deterioration in crime to the first step of breaking the
sabbath-day, and no doubt with accurate truth. But what
shall we infer from this ? Shall we infer, as is so often done
upon the platform and in religious books, that it proves the
everlasting obligation of the sabbath ? Or shall we, with a
far truer philosophy of the human soul, infer, in the language
of St. Peter, that we have been laying on him " a ^oke which
neither we nor our fathers were able to bear ?" in the lan-
guage of St. Paul, that " the motions of sin were by the law,"
that the rigorous rule was itself the stimulating, moving
cause of the sin : and that when the young man, worn out
with his week's toil, first stole out into the fields to taste
the fresh breath of a spring day, he did it with a vague,
secret sense of transgression, and that having, as it were,
drawn his sword in defiance against the established code of
the religious world, he felt that from thenceforward there
was for him no return, and so he became an outcast, his sword
against every man, and every man's sword against him ? I
believe tins to be the true account of the matter ; and be-
lieving it, I can not but believe that the false Jewish notions
of the sabbath-day which are prevalent have been exceeding-
ly pernicious to the morals of the country.
Lastly, I remind you ol the danger of mistaking a " posi-
tive " law for a moral one. The danger is that proportion-
ably to the vehemence with which the law positive is en-
forced, the sacredness of moral laws is neglected. A positive
law, in theological language, is a law laid down for special
purposes, and corresponds with statute laws in things civil.
Thus laws of quarantine and laws of excise depend for their
force upon the will of th*e legislature, and when repealed are
binding no more. But a moral law is one binding forever,
which a statute law may declare, but can neither make nor
unmake.
Now when men are rigorous in the enforcement and rev-
erence paid to laws positive, the tendency is to a correspond-
ing indifference to the laws of eternal right. The written
supersedes in their hearts the moral. The mental history of
the ancient Pharisees who observed the sabbath, and tithed
mint, anise, and cummin, neglecting justice, mercy, and truth,
is the history oi a most dangerous but universal tendency of
352 The Sydenham Palace, Etc.
the human heart. And so, many a man whose heart swells
with what he thinks pious horror when he sees the letter de-
livered or the train run upon the sabbath-day, can pass
through the streets at night, undepressed and unshocked by
the evidences of the wide-spreading profligacy which has
eaten deep into his country's heart. And many a man who
would gaze upon the domes of a Crystal Palace, rising above
the trees, with somewhat of the same feeling with which he
would look on a temple dedicated to Juggernaut, and who
would fancy that something of the spirit of an ancient proph-
et was burning in his bosom, when his lips pronounced the
woe ! woe ! of a coming doom, would sit calmly in a social
circle of English life, and scarcely feel uneasy in listening to
its uncharitableness and its slanders : would hear without
one throb of indignation the common dastardly condemna-
tion of the weak for sins which are venial in the strong ;
would survey the relations of the rich and poor in this coun-
try, and remain calmly satisfied that there is nothing false in
them, unbrotherly and wrong. No, my brethren ! let us
think clearly and strongly on this matter. It may be that
God has a controversy with this people. It may be, as they
say, that our Father will chasten us by the sword of the
foreigner. But if He does, and if judgments are in store for
our country, they will fall not because the correspondence
of the land is carried on upon the sabbath-day : nor because
Sunday trains are not arrested iSy the legislature : nor be
cause a public permission is given to the working classes for
a few hours' recreation on the day of rest but because we
are selfish men : and because we prefer pleasure to duty, and
traffic to honor ; and because we love our party more than
our Church, and our Church more than our Christianity ;
and our Christianity more than truth, and ourselves more
than all. These are the things that defile a nation : but the
labor and the recreation of its poor, these are not the things
that defile a nation
The Early Development of Jesus. 353
XIV.
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.
f< And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; *?>/
;fae grace of God was upon him." Luke ii. 40.
THE ecclesiastical year begins with Advent, then comes
Christmas-day. The first day of the natural year begins
with the infancy of the Son of Man. To-day the Gospel
proceeds with the brief account of the early years of Jesus.
The infinite significance of the life of Christ is not exhaust-
ed by saying that He was a perfect man. The notion of the
earlier Socinians that He was a pattern man (\fsi\oe av0pa>7roe),
commissioned from Heaven with a message to teach men
how to live, and supernaturally empowered to live in that
perfect way Himself, is immeasurably short of truth. For
perfection merely human does not attract ; rather it repels.
It may be copied in form : it can not be Imitated in spirit
for men only imitate that from which enthusiasm and life
are caught for it does not inspire nor fire with love.
Faultless men and pattern children you may admire
them, but you admire coldly. Praise them as you will, no
one is better *for their example. No one blames them, and
no one loves them : they kindle no enthusiasm ; they create
no likeness of themselves : they never reproduce themselves
in other lives the true prerogative of all original life.
If Christ had been only a faultless being, He would never
have set up in the world a new type of character which at
the end of two thousand years is fresh and life-giving and
inspiring still. He never would have regenerated the world.
He never would have " drawn all men unto Him," by being
lifted up a self-sacrifice, making self-devotion beautiful. In
Christ the divine and human blended : immutability joined
itself to mutability. There was in Him the divine which re-
mained fixed; the human which was constantly developing.
One uniform idea and purpose characterized His whole lile,
with a divine immutable unity throughout, but it was sub-
ject to the laws of human growth. For the soul of Christ
was not cast down upon this world a perfect thing at once.
Spotless ? yes. Faultless? yes. Tempted, yet in all points
without sin ? yes. But perfection is more than faultlessnoss.
All Scripture coincides in telling us that the ripe perfection
354 The Early Development of Jesus.
of His manhood was reached step by step. There was a
power and a life within Him which were to be developed,
which could only be developed, like all human strength and
goodness, by toil of brain and heart. Life up-hill all the
way : and every foot-print by which He climbed left behind
for us, petrified on the hard rock, and indurated into history
forever, to show us when, and where, and how He toiled and
won.
Take a few passages to prove that His perfection was
gained by degrees. "It became Him for whom are all
things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons
to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect
through suffering." Again, " Behold, I cast out devils, and
do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be
perfected" " Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedi-
ence." And in the context, " Jesus increased. . . . ."
Now see the result of this aspect of His perfectibility. In
that changeless element of His being which beneath all the
varying phases of growth remained divinely faultless, we see
that which we can adore. In the ever-changing, ever-grow-
ing, subject therefore to feebleness and endearing mutabili-
ty, we see that which brings Him near to us : makes Him
lovable, at the same time that it interprets us to ourselves.
Our subject is the early development of Jesus. In this
text we read of a threefold growth.
I. In strength.
II. In wisdom.
III. In grace.
First, it speaks to us simply of his early development,
" The child grew."
In the case of all rare excellence that is merely human, it
is the first object of the biographer of a marvellous man to
seek for surprising stories of his early life. The appetite for
the marvellous in this matter is almost instinctive and inva-
riable. Almost all men love to discover the early wonders
which were prophetic of after-greatness. Apparently the
reason is that we are unwilling to believe that wondrous ex-
cellence was attained by slow, patient labor. We get an ox-
cuse for our own slowness and stunted growth, by settling it
once for all, that the original differences between such men
and us were immeasurable. Therefore it is, I conceive, that
we seek so eagerly for anecdotes of early precocity.
In this spirit the fathers of the primitive Church collected
legends of the early life of Christ, stories of superhuman in-
fancy : what the infant and the child said and did. Many
The Early Development of Jesus. 355
of these legends are absurd : all, as resting on no authority,
are rejected.
Very different from this is the spirit of the Bible narra-
tive. It records no marvellous stories of infantine sagacity
or miraculous power, to feed a prurient curiosity. Both in
what it tells and in what it does not tell, one thing is plain,
that the human life of the Son of God was natural. There
was first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn. In what
it does not say : because, had there been any thing preter-
natural to record, no doubt it would have been recorded.
In what it does say : because that little is all unaffectedly
simple. One anecdote, and two verses of general descrip-
tion, that is all which is told us of the Redeemer's childhood.
The Child, it is written, grew. Two pregnant facts. He
was a child, and a child that grew in heart, in intellect, in
size, in grace, in favor with God. Not a man in child's
years. No hotbed precocity marked the holiest of infancies.
The Son of Man grew up in the quiet valley of existence
in shadow, not in sunshine, not forced. No unnatural, stimu-
lating culture had developed the mind or feelings : no pub-
lic flattery : no sunning of His infantine perfections in the
glare of the world's show, had brought the temptation of
the wilderness, with which His manhood grappled, too early
on His soul. We know that He was childlike as other chil-
dren : for in after years His brethren thought His fame
strange, and His townsmen rejected Him. They could not
believe that one who had gone in and out, ate and drank and
worked among them, was He whose name is Wonderful.
The proverb, true of others, was true of Him : "A prophet is
not without honor, but in his own country, and among his
own kin, and in his own house." You know Him in a, picture
at once, by the halo round His brow. There was no glory
in His real life to mark Him. He was in the world, and the
world knew Him not. Gradually and gently He woke to
consciousness of life and its manifold meaning ; found Him-
self in possession of a self; by degrees opened His eyes upon
this outer world, and drank in its beauty. Early He felt
the lily of the field discourse to Him of the Invisible Loveli-
ness, and the ravens tell of God His Father. Gradually and
not at once, He embraced the sphere of human duties, and
He woke to His earthly relationships one by one the son
the brother the citizen the master.
It is a very deep and beautiful and precious truth that the
Eternal Son had a human and progressive childhood. Hap-
py the child who is suffered to be and content to be what
God meant it to be a child while childhood lasts. Happy
356 The Early Development of Jesus.
the parent who does not force artificial manners, precocious
feeling, premature religion. Our age is one of stimulus and
high pressure. We live, as it were, our lives out fast. Ef-
fect is every thing. We require results produced at once :
something to show and something that may tell. The folio
of patient years is replaced by the pamphlet that stirs men's
curiosity to-day, and to-morrow is forgotten. " Plain living
and high thinking are no more." The town, with its fever
and its excitements, and its collision of mind with mind, has
spread over the country : and there is no country, scarcely
home. To men who traverse England in a few hours and
spend only a portion of the year in one place, home is becom-
ing a vocable of past ages.
The result is, that heart and brain, which were given to
last for seventy years, wear out before their time. We have
our exhausted men of twenty-five, and our old men of forty.
Heart and brain give way : the heart hardens and the brain
grows soft.
Brethren ! the Son of God lived till thirty in an obscure
village of Judea, unknown : then came forth a matured and
perfect man with mind, and heart, and frame in perfect
balance of humanity. It is a Divine lesson ! I would I could
say as strongly as I feel deeply. Our stimulating artificial
culture destroys depth. Our competition, our nights turned
into days by pleasure, leave no time for earnestness. We
are superficial men. Character in the world wants root.
England has gained much : she has lost also much. The
world wants what has passed away, and which until we se-
cure, we shall remain the clever shallow men we are : a child-
hood and a youth spent in the shade a home.
Now this growth of Jesus took place in three particulars.
I. In spiritual strength. " The child waxed strong in spirit."
Spiritual strength consists of two things power of will, and
power of self-restraint. It requires two^things, therefore, for its
existence strong feelings and strong command over them.
Now it is here we make a great mistake : we mistake
strong feelings for strong character. A man who -bears all
before him before whose frown domestics tremble, and
whose bursts of fury make the children of the house quake
because he has his will obeyed and his own way in all things
we call him a strong man. The truth is, that is the weak
man ; it is his passions, that are strong : he, mastered by
them, is weak. You must measure the strength of a man by
the power of the feelings which he subdues, not by the power
of those which subdue him.
The Early Development of Jesus, 357
And hence composure is very often the highest result of
strength. Did we never see a man receive a flagrant insult,
and only grow a little pale, and then reply quietly ? That
was a man spiritually strong. Or did we never see a man in
anguish stand as if carved out of solid rock, mastering him-
self? or one bearing a hopeless daily trial remain silent, and
never tell the world what it was that cankered his home-
peace ? That is strength. He who with strong passions re-
mains chaste : he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of
indignation in him, can be provoked and yet refrain himself,
and forgive these are strong men, spiritual heroes.
The Child waxed strong. Spiritual strength is reached by
successive steps ; fresh strength is got by every mastery of
self. It is the belief of the savage that the spirit of every
enemy he slays enters into him and becomes added to his
own, accumulating a warrior's strength for the day of battle :
therefore he slays all he can. It is true in the spiritual war-
fare. Every sin you slay the spirit of that sin passes into
you transformed into strength : every passion, not merely
kept in abeyance by asceticism, but subdued by a higher im-
pulse, is so much character strengthened. The strength of
the passion not expended is yours still. Understand then,
you are not a man of spiritual power because your impulses
are irresistible. They s\veep over your soul like a tornado
lay all flat before them ; whereupon you feel a secret pride
of strength. Last week men saw a vessel on this coast borne
headlong on the breakers, and dashing itself with terrific force
against the shore. It embedded itself, a miserable wreck,
deep in sand and shingle. Was that brig in her convulsive
throes strong? or was" it powerless and helpless?
No, my brethren : God's spirit in the soul an inward powei
of doing the thing we will and ought that is strength, noth-
ing else. All other force in us is only our weakness, the vio-
lence of driving passion. " I can do all things through Christ
who strengtheneth me :" this is Christian strength. " I can
not do the things I would :" that is the weakness of an unre-
deemed slave.
I instance one single evidence of strength in the early years
of Jesus : I find it in that calm, long waiting of thirty years
before He began his work. And yet all the evils he was to re-
dress were there, provoldng indignation, crying for interfer-
ence the hollowness of social life the misinterpretations of
Scripture the forms of worship and phraseology which had
hidden moral truth the injustice the priestcraft the cow-
ardice the hypocrisies : He had long seen them all.
All those years His soul burned within Him with a Divine
358 The Early Development of Jesus.
zeal and heavenly indignation. A mere man a weak, emo
tional man of spasmodic feeling a hot enthusiast, would
have spoken out at once, and at once been crushed. The
Everlasting Word incarnate bided his own time : " Mine hour
is not yet come " matured His energies, condensed them by
repression and then went forth to speak and do and suffer
His hour was come. This is strength : the power of a divine
silence : the strong will to keep force till it is wanted : the
power to wait God's time. "He that believeth," said the
wise prophet, " shall not make haste."
IL Growth in wisdom " Filled with wisdom."
Let us distinguish wisdom from two things. From informa-
tion, first. It is one thing to be well-in formed, it is another
thing to be wise. Many books read, innumerable facts hived
up in a capacious memory, this does not constitute wisdom.
Books give it not : sometimes the bitterest experience gives
it not. Many a heart-break may have come as the result of
life-errors and life-mistakes ; and yet men^may be no wiser
than before. Before the same temptations they fall again in
the self-same way they fell before. Where they erred in youth
they err still in age. A mournful truth ! " Ever learning,"
said St. Paul, "and never able to come to a knowledge of the
truth."
Distinguish wisdom, again, from talent. Brilliancy of pow-
ers is not the wisdom for which Solomon prayed. Wisdom
is of the heart rather than the intellect : the harvest of moral
thotightfulness, patiently reaped in through years. Two
things are required earnestness and love. First that rare
thing earnestness the earnestness which looks on life prac-
tically. Some of the wisest of the race have been men Avho
have scarcely stirred beyond home, read little, felt and
thought much. " Give me," said Solomon, " a wise and un-
derstanding heart." A heart which ponders upon life, trying
to understand its mystery, not in order to talk about it like
an orator, nor in order to theorize about it like a philosopher;
but in order to know how to live and how to die.
And, besides this, love is required for wisdom the love
which opens the heart and makes it generous, and reveals se
crets deeper than prudence or political economy teaches;
for example, " It is more blessed to give than to receive."
Prudence did not calculate that, love revealed it. Ko man
can be wise without love. Prudent : cunning : yes ; but not
wise. Whoever has closed his heart to love has got wisdom
at one entrance quite shut out. A large, genial, loving heart
with that we have known a ploughman wise ; without it
The Early Development of Jesus. 359
we know a hundred men of statesmanlike sagacity fools-
profound, but not wise. There was a man who pulled down
his barns and built greater, a most sagacious man, getting on
in life, acquiring, amassing, and all for self. The men of that
generation called him, no doubt, wise God said, " Thou fool.' 3
Speaking humanly, the steps by which the wisdom of Jesus
was acquired were two.
1. The habit of inquiry.
2. The collision of mind with other minds.
Both these we find in this anecdote : His parents found
Him with the doctors in the temple, both hearing and asking
them questions. For the mind of man left to itself is unpro-
ductive: alone in the wild woods he becomes a savage.
Taken away from school early, and sent to the plough, the
country boy loses by degrees that which distinguishes him
from the cattle that he drives, and over his very features and
looks the low animal expressions creep. Mind is necessary
for mind. The mediatorial system extends through all God's
dealings with us. The higher man is the mediator between
God and the lower man : only through man can man receive
development. For these reasons, we call this event aft Jeru-
salem a crisis or turning-point in the history of Him who was
truly man.
He had come from Nazareth's quiet valley and green slopes
on the hillsides, where hill and valley, and cloud and wind,
and day and night, had nourished His child's heart from
communion with minds proverbially low, for the adage was,
"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" to the cap-
ital of His country, to converse with the highest and most
cultivated intellects. He had many a question to ask, and
many a difficulty to solve. As for instance, such as this:
How could the religion accredited in Jerusalem a religion
of long prayers and church services, and phylacteries, and
rigorous sabbaths be reconciled with the stern, manly right-
eousness of which He had read in the old prophets : a right-
eousness not of litany-makers, but of men with swords in their
hands and zeal in their hearts, setting up God's kingdom upon
earth ? a kingdom of truth, and justice, and realities were
they bringing in that kingdom? And if not, who should?
Such questions had to be felt, and asked, and pondered on.
Thenceforth we say therefore, in all reverence, dated the in-
tellectual life of Jesus. From that time " Jesus increased
in wisdom"
Not that they, the doctors of the temple, contributed much.
Those ecclesiastical pedants had not much to tell Him that
was worth the telling. They were thinking about theology.
360 The Early Development of Jesus.
He about religion. They about rubrics and church services,
He about God His Father, and His will. And yet He gained
more from them than they from Him. Have we never ob-
served that the deepest revelations of ourselves are often
made to us by trifling remarks met with here and there in
conversation and books, sparks which set a whole train of
thoughts on fire ? Nay, that a false view given by an inferior
mind has led us to a true one, and that conversations from
which we had expected much light, turning out unsatisfac-
torily, have thrown us upon ourselves and God, and so be-
come almost the birth-times of the soul? The truth is, it is
not the amount which is poured in that gives wisdom : but
the amount of creative mind and heart working on and stirred
by what is so poured in. That conversation with miserable
priests and formalists called into activity the One Creative
Mind which was to fertilize the whole spiritual life of man to
the end of time : and Jesus grew in wisdom by a conversation
with pedants of the law.
What Jerusalem was to Him a town life is to us. Knowl-
edge develops itself in the heated atmosphere of town life.
Where men meet, and thought clashes with thought where
workmen sit round a board at work, intellectual irritability
must be stirred more than where men live and work alone.
The march of mind, as they call it, must go on. Whatever
evils there may be in our excited, feverish, modern life, it is
quite certain that we know through it more than our fore
fathers knew. The workman knows more of foreign politics
than most statesmen knew two centuries ago. The child is
versed in theological questions which only occupied master-
minds once. But the question is, whether, like the Divine
Child in the Temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom,
and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we
are feeling more of its sacred law ; and w r hether, having left
behind the priests, and the scribes, and the doctors, and the
fathers, we are about our Father's business, and becoming
wise to God.
HI. Growth in grace " the grace of God was upon Him. 75
And this in three points :
1. The exchange of an earthly for a heavenly home.
2. Of an earthly for a heavenly parent.
3. The reconciliation of domestic duties.
First step : Exchange of an earthly for a heavenly home.
Jesus was in the temple for the first time. That which was
dull routine to others through dead habit, was full of vivid
impression, fresh life, and God to Him. " My Father's busi-
The Early Development of Jesus. 36 1
ness" "My Father's house." How different the meaning
of these expressions now from what it had been before ! Be-
fore all was limited to the cottage of the carpenter : now it
extended to the temple. He had felt the sanctities of a new
home. In after-life the phrase which He. had learned by
earthly experience obtained a divine significance. "In my
Father's house are many mansions."
Our first life is spontaneous and instinctive. Our second
life is reflective. There is a moment when the life sponta-
neous passes into the life reflective. We live at first by
instinct; then we look in, feel ourselves, ask what we are
and whence we came, and whither we are bound. In an
awful new world of mystery, and destinies, and duties, we
feel God, and know that our true home is our Father's house
which has many mansions.
Those are fearful, solitary moments; in which the heart
knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth
not with its joys. Father mother can not share these;
and to share is to intrude. The soul first meets God alone.
So with Jacob when he saw the dream-ladder: so with
Samuel when the voice called him: so with Christ. So
with every son of man, God visits the soul in secrecy, in
silence, and in solitariness. And the danger and duty of a
teacher is twofold. 1st. To avoid hastening that feeling,
hurrying that crisis-moment which some call conversion.
2d. To avoid crushing it. I have said that first religion is
a kind of instinct ; and if a child does not exhibit strong
religious sensibilities, if he seem " heedless, untouched by awe
or serious thought," still it is wiser not to interfere. He
may be still at home with God : he may be worshipping at
home ; as has been said with not less truth than beauty, he
may be
"Lying in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worship at the temple's inner shrine,"
God being with him when he knew it not. Very mysterious,
and beautiful, and wonderful, is God's communing with the
unconscious soul before reflection comes. The second cau-
tion is not to quench the feeling. Joseph and the Virgin
chid the Child for His absence : *"" Why hast thou dealt so
with us ?" They could not understand His altered ways :
His neglect of apparent duties : His indifference to usual
pursuits. They mourned over the change. And this reminds
us of the way in which affection's voice itself ministers to
ruin. When God comes to the heart, and His presence is
shown by thoughtfulness, and seriousness, and distaste to
common business, and loneliness, and solitary musings, anrj
IB
362 The Early Development of Jesus.
a certain tone of melancholy, straightway we set ourselves
to expostulate, to rebuke, to cheer, to prescribe amusement
and gayeties, as the cure for seriousness which seems out of
place. Some of us have seen that tried ; and more fearful
still, seen it succeed. And we have seen the spirit of fri-
volity and thoughtlessness, which had been banished for a
time, come back again with seven spirits of evil more mighty
than himself, and the last state of that person worse than
the first. And we have watched the still small voice of
God in the soul silenced. And we have seen the, spirit of
the world get its victim back again ; and incipient goodness
dried up like morning dew upon the heart. And they that
loved him did it his parents his teachers. They quenched
the smoking flax, and turned out the lamp of God lighted
in the soul !
The last step was reconciliation to domestic duties. He
went down to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. The
first step in spirituality is to get a distaste for common du-
ties. There is a time when creeds, ceremonies, services, are
distasteful ; when the conventional arrangements of society
are intolerable burdens; and when, aspiring with a sense
of vague longing after a goodness which shall be immeasur-
'able, a duty which shall transcend mere law, a something
which we can not put in words all restraints of rule and
habit gall the spirit. But the last and highest step in spir-
ituality is made in feeling these common duties again to be
divine and holy. This is the true liberty of Christ, when a
free man binds himself in love to duty. Not in shrinking
from our distasteful occupations, but in fulfilling them, do
we realize our high origin. And this is the blessed, second
childhood of Christian life. All the several stages towards
it seem to be shadowed forth -with accurate truthfulness in
the narrative of the Messiah's infancy. First the quiet, un-
pretending, unconscious obedience and innocence of home.
Then the crisis of inquiry : new strange thoughts, entrance
upon a new world, hopeless seeking of truth from those who
can not teach it, hearing many teachers and questioning all :
thence bewilderment and bitterness, loss of relish for former
duties : 'and small consolation to a man in knowing that he
is farther oif from heaven than when he was a boy. And
then, lastly, the true reconciliation and atonement of our
souls to God a second springtide of life a second faith
deeper than that of childhood not instinctive but conscious
trust childlike love come back again childlike wonder
childlike implicitness of obedience only deeper than child-
hood ever knew; when life has got a new meaning, when
Christ's Estimate of Sin. 363
u old things are passed away, and all things are become
new;" when earth has become irradiate with the feeling of
our Father's business and our Father's home.
CHRIST'S ESTIMATE OF SIN.
"The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.""
Luke xix. 10.
THESE words occur in the history which tells of the re-
covery of Zaccheus from a life of worldliness to the life of
God. Zaccheus was a publican ; and the publicans were
outcasts among the Jews, because, having accepted the
office under the Roman government of collecting the taxes
imposed by Rome upon their brethren, they were regarded
as traitors to the cause of Israel. Reckoned a degraded
class, they became degraded. It is hard for any man to live
above the moral standard acknowledged by his own class;
and the moral standard of the publican was as low as possible.
The first step downward is to sink in the estimation of others
the next and fatal step is to sink in a man's own estima-
tion. The value of character is that it pledges men to be
what they are taken for. It is a fearful thing to have no
character to support nothing to fall back upon nothing
to keep a man up to himself. Now the publicans had no
character.
Into the house of one of these outcasts the Son of Man
had entered. It was quite certain that such an act would be
commented upon severely by people who called themselves
religious : it would seem to them scandalous, an outrage
upon decency, a defiance to every rule of respectability and
decorum. No pious Israelite would be seen holding equal
intercourse with a publican. In anticipation of such remarks,
before there was time perhaps to make them, Jesus spoke
these words : " The Son of Man is come to seek and to save
that which was lost." They exhibit the peculiar aspect in
which the Redeemer contemplated sin.
There are two ways of looking at sin. One is the severe
view : it makes no allowance for frailty it will not hear of
temptation, nor distinguish between circumstances. Men
who judge in this way shut their eyes to all but two objects
a plain law, and a transgression of that law. There is no
364 Christ's Estimate of Sin.
more to be said : let the law take its course. Now if thig
be the right view of sin, there 4s abundance of room left for
admiring what is good, and honorable, and upright : there is
positively no room provided for restoration. Happy if you
have done well ; but if ill, then nothing is before you but
judgment and fiery indignation.
The other view is one of laxity and false liberalism. When
such men speak, prepare yourself to hear liberal judgments
and lenient ones: a great" deal about human weakness, error
in judgment, mistakes, an unfortunate constitution, on which
the chief blame of sin is to rest a good heart. All well if
we wanted, in this mysterious struggle of a life, only conso-
lation. But we want far beyond comfort goodness ; and to
be merely made easy when we have done wrong will not help
us to that !
Distinct from both of these was Christ's view of guilt.
His standard of right was high higher than ever man had
placed it before. Not moral excellence, but heavenly, He de-
manded. " Except your righteousness shall exceed the right-
eousness of the Scribes and" Pharisees, ye shall in no case en-
ter into the kingdom of heaven." Read the Sermon on the
Mount. It tells of a purity as of snow resting on an Alpine
pinnacle, white in the blue holiness of heaven ; and yet also,
He the All-pure had tenderness for what was not pure. He
who stood in divine uprightness that never faltered, felt com-
passion for the ruined, and infinite gentleness for human fall.
Broken, disappointed, doubting hearts, in dismay and bewil-
derment, never looked in vain to Him. Very strange, if we
stop to think of it, instead of repeating it as a matter of
course. For generally human goodness repels from it evil
men: they shun the society and presence of men reputed
good, as owls fly from light. But here was purity attracting
evil ; that was the wonder. Harlots and wretches steeped in
infamy gathered round Him. No wonder the purblind Phar-
isees thought there must be something in Him like such sin-
ners which drew them so. Like draws to like. If He chose
their society before that of the Pharisee, was it not because
of some congeniality in evil ? But they did crowd His steps,
and that because they saw a hope opened out in a hopeless
world for fallen spirits and broken hearts, ay, and seared
hearts. The Son of Man was forever standing among the
lost, and His ever predominant feelings were sadness for the
evil in human nature, hope for the divine good in it, and the
divine image never worn out wholly.
I perceive in this description three peculiarities, distin
guishing Christ from ordinary men.
Christ's Estimate of Sin 365
I. A peculiarity in the constitution of the Redeemer's
moral nature.
II. A peculiarity in the objects of His solicitude.
III. A peculiarity in His way of treating guilt.
I. In His moral constitution. Manifested in that peculiar
title which he assumed The Son of Man. Let us see what
that implies.
1. It implies fairly His divine origin : for it is an emphatic
expression, and, as we may so say, an unnatural one. Im-
agine an apostle, St. Paul or St. John, insisting upon it per-
petually that he himself was human. It would almost pro-
voke a smile to hear either of them averring and affirming,
I am a son of man : it would be unnatural, the affectation of
condescension would be intolerable. Therefore, when we
hear these words from Christ, we are compelled to think of
them as contrasted with a higher nature. None could with-
out presumption remind men that He was their brother and
a Son of Man, except One who was also something higher,
even the Son of God.
2. It implies the catholicity of His brotherhood.
Nothing in the judgment of historians stands out so sharp-
ly distinct as race national character: nothing is more in-
effaceable. The Hebrew was marked from all mankind. The
Roman was perfectly distinct from the Grecian character;
as markedly different as the rough English truthfulness is
from Celtic brilliancy of talent. Now these peculiar nation-
alities are seldom combined. You rarely find the stern, old
Jewish sense of holiness going together with the Athenian
sensitiveness of what is beautiful. Not often do you find
together severe truth and refined tenderness. Brilliancy
seems opposed to perseverance. Exquisiteness of taste com-
monly goes along with a certain amount of untruthfulness.
By humanity, as a whole, we mean the aggregate of all these
separate excellences. Only in two places are they all found
together in the universal human race ; and in Jesus Christ.
He having, as it were, a whole humanity in Himself, com-
bines them all.
Now this is the universality of the nature of Jesus Christ.
There was in Him no national peculiarity or individual idio-
syncrasy. He was not the Son of the Jew, nor the Son of
the carpenter ; nor the offspring of the modes of living and
thinking of that particular century. He was the Son of Man.
Once in the world's history was born a MAN. Once in the
roll of ages, out of innumerable failures, from the stock of
human nature, one bud developed itself into a faultless flow-
366 Chrisfs Estimate of Sin.
er. One perfect specimen of humanity has God exhibited on
earth.
The best and most catholic of Englishmen has his preju-
dices. All the world over, our greatest writer would be rec-
ognized as having the English cast of thought. The pattern
Jew would seem Jewish everywhere but in Judea. Take
Abraham, St. John, St. Paul, place them where you will, in
China or in Peru, they are Hebrews : they could not com-
in and all sympathies: their life could not be imitable except
in part. They are foreigners in every land, and out of place
in every country but their own. But Christ is the King of
men, and " draws all men," because all character is in Him,
separate from nationalities and limitations. As if the life-
blood of every nation were in His veins, and that which is
best and truest in every man, and that which is tenderest,
and gentlest, and purest in every woman, were in His char-
acter. He is emphatically the Son of Man.
Out of this arose two powers of His sacred humanity the
universality of His sympathies, and their intense particular
personality.
The universality of His sympathies : for, compare Him
with any one of the sacred characters of Scripture. You
know how intensely national they were in their sympathies,
.priests, prophets, and apostles: for example, the apostles
"marvelled that He spake with a woman of Samaria:" just
before His resurrection, their largest charity had not reached
beyond this, " Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the king-
dom unto Israel?" Or, to come down to modern times,
when His spirit has been moulding men's ways of thought
for many ages : now, when we talk of our philanthropy and
catholic liberality, here in Christian England, we have scarce-
ly any fellow-feeling, true and genuine, with other nations,
other churches, other parties, than our own : we care nothing
for Italian or Hungarian struggles ; we think of Romanists as
the Jew thought of Gentiles ; we speak of German Protest-
ants in the same proud, wicked, self-sufficient way in which
the Jew spoke of Samaritans.
Unless we bring such matters home, and away from vague
generalities, and consider what we and aJl men are, or rather
are not, we can not comprehend with due wonder the mighty
sympathies of the heart of Christ. Kone of the miserable
antipathies that fence us from all the world, bounded the out-
goings of that love, broad and deep and wide as the heart
of God. Wherever the mysterious pulse of human life waa
beating, wherever aught human was in struggle, there to Him
was a thing not common or unclean, but cleansed by God and
Christ's Estimate of Sin. 367
Bacred. Compare the daily, almost indispensable language
of our life with His spirit. " Common people ?" Point us
out the passage where He called any people that God His Fa-
ther made, common ? " Lower orders ?" Tell us when and
where He, whose home was the workshop of the carpenter,
authorized you or me to know any man after the flesh as low
or high ? To Him who called Himself the Son of Man, the
link was manhood. And that he could discern even when it
was marred. Even in outcasts His eye could recognize the
sanctities of a nature human still. Even in the harlot " one
of Eve's family :" a " son of Abraham " even in Zaccheus.
Once more, out of that universal, catholic nature rose
another power the power of intense, particular, personal af-
fections. He was the Brother and Saviour of the human
race ; but this because He was the Brother and Saviour of
every separate man in it.
Now it is very easy to feel great affection for a country as
a whole ; to have, for instance, great sympathies for Poland,
or Ireland, or America, and yet not care a whit for any single
man in Poland, and to have strong antipathies to every sin-
gle individual American. Easy to be a warm lover of Eng-
land, and yet not love one living Englishman. Easy to set a
great value on a flock of sheep, and yet have no particular care
for any one sheep or lamb. If it were killed, another of the
same species might replace it. Easy to have fine, large, liberal
views about the working classes, or the emancipation of the
negroes, and yet never have done a loving act to one. Easy
to "be a great philanthropist, and yet have no strong friend-
ships, no deep personal attachments.
For the idea of an universal manlike sympathy was not new
when Christ was born. The reality was new. But before
this, in the Roman theatre, deafening applause was called
forth by this sentence, " I am a man nothing that can affect
man is indifferent to me." A fine sentiment that was all.
Every pretense of realizing that sentiment, except one, has been
a failure. One and but One has succeeded in loving man : and
that by loving men. No sublime high-sounding language in
His lips about " educating the masses," or " elevating the
people." The charlatanry of our modern sentiment had not
appeared then : it is but the parody of His love.
What was His mode of sympathy with men ? He did not
sit down to philosophize about the progress of the species, or
dream about a millennium. He gathered round Him twelve
men. He formed one friendship, special, concentrated, deep.
He did not give himself out as the leader of the publican's
cause, or the champion of the rights of the dangerou!
368 Christ's Estimate of Sin.
classes ; but He associated with Himself Matthew, a publican
called from the detested receipt of custom. He went into
the bouse of Zaccheus, and treated him like a fellow-creature
a brother, and a son of Abraham. His catholicity or phi-
lanthropy was not an abstraction, but an aggregate of person*
al attachments.
IL Peculiarity in the objects of Christ's solicitude.
He had come to seek and to save the " lost." The world
is lost, and Christ came to save the world. But by the lost
in this place He does not mean the world ; He means a spe
cial class, lost in a more than common sense, as sheep are lost
which have strayed from the flock, and wandered far beyond
all their fellows scattered in the wilderness.
Some men are lost by the force of their own passions, as
Balaam was by love of gold : as Saul was by self-will, ending
in jealousy, and pride darkened into madness : as Hainan was
by envy indulged and brooded on: as the harlots were,
through feelings pure and high at first, inverted and pervert-
ed : as Judas was by secret dishonesty, undetected in its first
beginnings, the worst misfortune that can befall a tendency
to a false life. And others are lost by the entanglement of
outward circumstances, Avhich make escape, humanly speak-
ing, impossible. Such were the publicans : men forced, like
executioners, into degradation. An honest publican, or a
holy executioner, would be miracles to marvel at. And some
are lost by the laws of society, which while defending society
have no mercy for its outcasts, and forbid their return, fallen
once, forever.
Society has power to bind on earth ; and what it binds is
bound upon the soul indeed. For a man or woman who has
lost self-respect is lost indeed.
And oh ! the untold world of agony contained in that ex-
pression " a lost soul !" agony exactly in proportion to the
nobleness of original powers. For it is a strange and mourn-
ful truth, that the qualities which enable men to shine are
exactly those which minister to the worst ruin. God's high-
est gifts talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power : they
carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the
lowest hell. Be sure that it is by that which is highest in
you that you may be lost. It is the awful warning, and net
the excuse of evil, that the light which leads astray is ligl.t
from heaven. The shallow fishing-boat glides safely over the
reefs where the noble bark strands : it is the very might and
majesty of her career that bury the sharp rock deeper in hei
bosom. There are thousands who are not lost (l*ke the ro
Christ's Estimate of Sin. 369
gpectable Pharisees), because they had no impetuous impulses,
no passion, no strong enthusiasm, by the perversion of which
they could be lost.
Now this will explain to us what there was in these lost
ones which left a hope for their salvation, and which Jesus
saw in them to seek and save. Outwardly men saw a crust
of black scowling impenitence. Reprobates they called them.
Below that outward crust ran a hot lava-stream of anguish:
What was that ? The coward fear of hell ? Nay, hardened
men defy hell. The anguish of the lost ones of this world is
not fear of punishment. It was, and is, the misery of having
quenched a light brighter than the sun : 'the intolerable sense
of being sunk : the remorse of knowing that they were not
what they might have been. And He saw that : He knew
that it was the germ of life which God's spirit could develop
into salvation.
It was His work and His desire to save such, and in this
world a new and strange solicitude it was, for the world had
seen before nothing like it.
Not half a century ago a great man was seen stooping and
working in a charnel-house of bones. Uncouth, nameless
fragments lay around him, which the workmen had dug up
and thrown aside as rubbish. They belonged to some far-
back age, and no man knew what they were or whence. Few
men cared. The world was merry at the sight of a philoso-
pher groping among mouldy bones. But when that creative
mind, reverently discerning the fontal types of living being
in diverse shapes, brought together those strange fragments,
bone to bone, and rib to claw, and tooth to its own corre-
sponding vertebrae, recombining the wondrous forms of pjut
ages, and presenting each to the astonished world as it
moved and lived a hundred thousand ages back, then men
began to perceive that a new science had begun on earth.
And such was the work of Christ. They saw Him at work
among the fragments and mouldering wreck of our humanity,
and sneered. But He took the dry bones such as Ezekirl
saw in vision, which no man thought could live, and He
breathed into them the breath of life. He took the scattered
fragments of our ruined nature, interpreted their meaning,
showed the original intent of those powers, which were now
destructive only, drew out from publicans and sinners yearn-
ings which were incomprehensible, and feelings which were
misunderstood, vindicated the beauty of the original inten-
tion, showed the Divine Ordej below the chaos, exhibited to
the world once more a human soul in the form in which GocJ
had made it. saying to the dry bones " Live I"
16*
370 Christ's Estimate of Sin.
Only what in the great foreigner was a taste, in Christ was
love. In the one the gratification of an enlightened curiosi-
ty : in the other the gratification of a sublime affection. In
the philosopher it was a longing to restore and. reproduce
the past. In Christ a hope for the future " to seek and to
save that which was lost."
Ill, A peculiarity in His mode of treatment. How were
these lost ones to be restored ? The human plans are reducible
to three. Governments have tried chastisement for the rec-
lamation of offenders. For ages that was the only expedi-
ent known either to Church or State. Time has written
upon it failure. I do not say that penal severity is not need-
ful. Perhaps it is, for protection, and for the salutary ex-
pression of indignation against certain forms of evil. But as
a system of reclamation it has failed. Did the rack ever re-
claim in heart one heretic ? Did the scaffold ever soften one
felon ? One universal fact of history replies : where the
penal code was most sanguinary, and when punishments
were most numerous, crime was most abundant.
Again, society has tried exclusion for life. I do not pre-
tend to say that it may not be needful. It may be necessary
to protect your social purity by banishing offenders of a cer-
tain sort forever. I only say for recovery it is a failure.
Whoever knew one case where the ban of exclusion was
hopeless, and the shame of that exclusion reformed ? Did
we ever hear of a fallen creature made moral by despair ?
Name, if you can, the publican or the harlot in any age
brought back to goodness by a Pharisee, or by the system
of a Pharisee.
And once more, some governors have tried the system of
indiscriminate lenity : they forgave great criminals, trusting
all the future to gratitude : they passed over great sins, they
sent away the ringleaders of rebellion with honors heaped
upon them: they thought this was the Gospel: they expect-
ed dramatic emotion to work wonders. How far this miser-
able system has succeeded, let those tell us w r ho have studied
the history of our South African colonies for the last twenty
years. We were tired of cruelty we tried sentiment we
trusted to feeling. Feeling failed : we only made hypo-
crites, and encouraged rebellion by impunity. Inexorable
severity, rigorous banishment, indiscriminate and mere for-
givingness all are failures.
In Christ's treatment of guilt we find three peculiarities:
Sympathy, holiness, firmness.
1. By human sympathy. In the treatment of Zaccheui
Christ 's Estimate of Sin. 371
this was almost all We read of almost nothing else as the
instrument of that wonderful reclamation. One thing only,
Christ went to his house self-invited. But that one was ev-
ery thing. Consider it Zaccheus was, if he were like othei
publicans, a hard and hardened man. He felt people shrink
from him in the streets. He lay under an imputation : and
we know how that feeling of being universally suspected
and misinterpreted makes a man bitter, sarcastic, and de
fiant. And so the outcast would go home, look at his gold
rejoice in the revenge he could take by false accusations
felt a pride in knowing that they might hate, but could not
help fearing him : scorned the world, and shut up his heart
against it.
At last, one whom all men thronged to see, and all men
honored, or seemed to honor, came to him, offered to go home
and sup with him. For the first time for many years Zac-
cheus felt that he was not despised, and the floodgates of
that avaricious, shut heart were opened in a tide oi love and
generosity.' " Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to
the poor ; and if I have taken any thing from any man by
false accusation, I restore him fourfold." He was reclaimed
to human feeling by being taught that he was a man still ;
recognized and treated like a man. A Son of Man had come
to " seek " him the lost.
2. By the exhibition of Divine holiness.
The holiness of Christ differed from all earthly, common,
vulgar holiness. Wherever it was, it elicited a sense of sin-
fulness and imperfection. Just as the purest cut crystal of
the rock looks dim beside the diamond, so the best men felt
a sense of guilt growing distinct upon their souls. When
the Anointed of God came near, " Depart from me," said the
bravest and truest of them all, "for I am a sinful man, O
Lord."
But at the same time the holiness of Christ did not awe
men away from Him, nor repel them. It inspired them with
hope. It was not that vulgar unapproachable sanctity which
makes men awkward in its presence, and stands aloof. Its
peculiar characteristic was that it made men enamored of
goodness. It " drew all men unto Him." This is the differ
ence between greatness that is first-rate and greatness which
is second-rate between heavenly and earthly goodness.
The second-rate and the earthly draws admiratipn on itself.
You say, " how great an act how good a man !" The first-
rate and the heavenly imparts itself inspires a spirit. You
feel a kindred something in you that rises up to meet it,
and draws you out of yourself, making you better than you
372 The Sanctification of Christ.
were before, and opening out the infinite possibilities of yoal
life and soul.
And such pre-eminently was the holiness of Christ. Had
some earthly great or good one come to Zaccheus's house, a
prince or a nobleman, his feeling would have been, What
condescension is there ! But when He came whose every
^word and act had in it life and power, no such barren reflec-
iii:>n was the result: but instead, the beauty of holiness had
become a power within him, and a longing for self-consecra-
tion. " Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the
poor: and if I have taken any thing from any man by false
accusation, I restore him fourfold."
By Divine sympathy, and by the Divine Image exhibited
in the speaking act of Christ, the lost was sought and saved.
He was saved, as alone all fallen men can be saved. " Be-
holding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, he was changed
into the same image.'' And this is the very essence of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are redeemed by the life of God
without us, manifested in the person of Christ, kindling into
flame the life of God that is within us. Without Him we
can do nothing. Without Him the warmth that was in
Zaccheus's heart would have smouldered uselessly away.
Through Him it became life and light, and the lost was
saved.
XVI.
THE SANCTIFICATION OF CHRIST.
"And for their sakes'I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified
through the truth." John xvii. 19.
THE prayer in which these words occur is given to us by
the Apostle John alone. Perhaps only St. John could give
it, for it belongs to the peculiar province of his revelation.
He presents us with more of the heart of Christ than the
other apostles: with less of the outward manifestations. He
gives us more conversations, fewer miracles : more of the in
ner life, more of what Christ was, less of what Christ did.
St. John's mind was not argumentative, but intuitive
There are two ways of reaching truth : by reasoning it out
and by feeling it out. All the profoundest truths are felt
out. The deep glances into truth are got by love. Love a
man, that is the best way of understanding him. Feel a
truth, that is the only way of comprehending it.
The Sane tification of Christ. 373
Not that you can put your sense of such truths into words
in the shape of accurate maxims or doctrines : but the truth
is reached, notwithstanding.*
Now St. John felt out truth. He understood his Lord by
loving him. You find no long trains of argument in St.
John's writings : an atmosphere of contemplation pervades
all. Brief, full sentences, glowing with imagery of which
the mere prose intellect makes nonsense, and which a warm
.heart alone interprets, that is the character of his writing .
very different from the other apostles'. St. Peter's knowl-
edge of Christ was formed by impetuous mistakes, corrected
slowly and severely. St. Paul's Christianity was formed by
principles wrought out glowing hot, as a smith hammers out
ductile iron, in hk unresting, earnest fire of thought, where
the Spirit dwelt in warmth and light forever, kindling the
Divine fire of inspiration. St. John and St. John's Christian-
ity were formed by personal view of Christ, by intercourse
with Him, and by silent contemplation. Slowly, month by
month and year by year, he gazed on Christ in silence and
thoughtful adoration : " reflecting as from a glass the glory
of the Lord," he became like Him caught His tones, His
modes of thought, His very expressions, and became partaker
of His inward life. A " Christ was formed* in him."
Hence it was that this prayer was revealed to St. John
alone of the apostles, and by him alone recorded for us.
The Saviour's mind touched his : through secret sympathy
he was inspired with the mystic consciousness of what had
passed and what was passing in the deeps of the soul of
Christ. Its secret longings and its deepest struggles were
known to John alone.
This particular sentence in the prayer which I have taken
for the text was peculiarly after the heart of the Apostle
John. For I have said that to him the true life of Christ
was rather the inner life than the outward acts of life. Now
this sentence from the lips of Jesus speaks of the atoning
sacrifice as an inward mental act rather than as an outward
deed : a self-consecration wrought out in the will of Christ.
For their sakes I am sanctifying myself. That is a resolve
a secret of the inner life. No wonder that it was recorded
by St. John. The text has two parts.
I. The sanctification of Jesus Christ.
II. The sanctification of His people.
I. Christ's sanctification of himself. " For their sakes I
sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through
* Compare 1 Cor. ii. 15, 16.
374 The Sanctification of Christ.
the truth." We must explain this word " sanctify ;" upon it
the whole meaning turns. Clearly it has not the ordinary
popular sense here of making holy. Christ was holy. H
could not by an inward effort or struggle makt Himself
holy, for He was that already. Let us trace the history of
the word " sanctity " in the early pages of the Jewish his-
tory.
When the destroying angel smote the first-born of the
Egyptian families, the symbolic blood on the lintel of every
Hebrew house protected the eldest born from the plague of
death. In consequence, a law of Moses viewed every eldest
son in a peculiar light. He was reckoned as a thing devoted
to the Lord redeemed, and therefore set apart. The word
used to express this devotion is sanctify. "The Lord said
unto Moses, Sanctify unto me all the first-born, whatsoever
openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of
man and of beast : it is mine." By a subsequent arrange-
ment these first-born were exchanged for the Levites. In-
stead of the eldest son in each family, a whole tribe was
taken, and reckoned as set apart and devoted to Jehovah,
just as now a substitute is provided to serve in war in
another's stead. Therefore the tribe of Levi were said to be
sanctified to God:
Ask we what was meant by saying that the Levites were
sanctified to God ? The ceremony of their sanctification will
explain it to us. It was a very significant one. The priest
touched with the typical blood of a sacrificed animal the Le-
vite's right hand, right eye, right foot. This was the Le-
vite's sanctification. It devoted every faculty and every
power of seeing, doing, walking, the right-hand faculties
the best and choicest to God's peculiar service. He was a
man set apart. To sanctify, therefore, in the Hebrew phrase,
meant to devote or consecrate. Let us pause for a few mo-
ments to gather up the import of this ceremony.
The first-born are a nation's hope: they may be said to
represent a whole nation. The consecration, therefore, of the
first-born was the consecration of the entire nation by their
representatives, Now the Levites were substituted for the
first-born. The Levites consequently represented all Israel ;
and by their consecration the life of Israel was declared to
be in idea and by right a consecrated life to God. But fur-
ther still. As the Levites represented Israel, so Israel itself
was but a part taken for the whole, and represented the
whole human race. If any one thinks this fanciful, let him
remember the principle of representation on which the whole
Jewish system was built. For example the first-fruits of
The Sanctification of Christ. 375
the harvest were consecrated to God. Why ? to declare
that portion and that only to be God's? No; St. Paul saya
as a part for the whole, to teach and remind that the whole
harvest was his. " If the first-fruits be holy, the lump also
is holy." So in the same way, God consecrated a peculiar
people to himself? Why? The Jews say because they
alone are His. We say, as a part representative of the
whole, to show in one nation what all are meant to be. The
holiness of Israel is a representative holiness. Just as the
consecrated Levite stood for what Israel was meant to be,
so the anointed and separated nation represents forever what
the whole race of man is in the Divine Idea a thing whose
proper life is perpetual consecration.
One step farther. This being the true life of humanity,
name it how you will, sanctification, consecration, devotion,
sacrifice, Christ the Representative of the Race, submits
Himself in the text to the universal law of this devotion.
The true law of every life is consecration to God : therefore
Christ says, I consecrate myself: else He had not been a
Man in God's idea of Manhood for the idea of Man which
God had been for ages laboring to give through a consecra-
ted tribe and a consecrated nation to the world, was the idea
of a being whose life-law is sacrifice, every act and every
thought being devoted to God.
Accordingly, this is the view which Christ Himself gave
of His own Divine humanity. He spoke of it as of a thing
devoted by a Divine decree. " Say ye of Him, whom the
Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blas-
phemest ; because I said I am the Son of God ?"
We have reached, therefore, the meaning of this word in
the text, " For their sakes I sanctify," i. e., consecrate or de-
vote " myself." The first meaning of sanctify is to set apart.
But to set apart for God is to devote or consecrate ; and to
consecrate a thing is to make it holy. And thus we have
the three meanings of the word, viz., to set apart, to devote,
to make holy rising all out of one simple idea. To go
somewhat into particulars. This sanctification is spoken of
here chiefly as threefold: Self-devotion by inward resolve;
self-devotion to the truth ; self-devotion for the sake of
others.
1. He devoted Himself ?/ inward resolve. " I sanctify my-
self." God His Father had devoted Him before. He had
sanctified and sent Him. It only remained that this devo-
tion should become by His own act se(/*-devotion : com-
pleted by His own will. Now in that act of will consisted
His sanctification of Himself.
376 The Sanctification of Christ.
For observe, this was done within : in secret, solitary
struggle in wrestling with all temptations which deterred
Him from His work in resolve to do it unflinchingly : in
real human battle and victory.
Therefore this self-sanctification applies to the whole tone
and history of His mind. He was forever devoting Himself
to work forever bracing His human spirit to sublime re-
solve. But it applies peculiarly to certain special moments,
when some crisis came, as on this present occasion, which
called for an act of will.
The first of these moments which we read of came when
He was twelve years of age. We pondered on it a few
weeks ago. In the temple, that earnest conversation with
the doctors indicates to us that He had begun to revolve
His own mission in His mind ; for the answer to His moth-
er's expostulations shows us what had been the subject of
those questions He had been putting : " Wist ye not that I
must be about my Father's business ?" Solemn words, sig-
nificant of a crisis in His mental history. He had been ask-
ing those doctors about His Father's business : what it was,
and how it was to be done by Him of whom He had read in
the prophets, even Himself. This was the earliest self-devo-
tion of Messiah : the boy was sanctifying Himself for life
and manhood's work.
The next time was in that preparation of the wilderness
which we call Christ's temptation. You can not look deep-
ly into that strange story without perceiving that the true
meaning of it lies in this, that the Saviour in that conflict
was steeling His soul against the threefold form in which
temptation presented itself to Him in after-life, to mar or
neutralize His ministry.
1. To convert the hard, stony life of duty into the comfort
and enjoyment of this life : to barter, like Esau, life for pot-
tage : to use Divine powers in Him only to procure bread of
earth.
2. To distrust God, and try impatiently some wild, sud-
den plan, instead of His meek and slow-appointed ways to
cast Himself from the temple, as we dash ourselves against
our destiny.
3. To do homage to the majesty of wrong: to worship
evil for the sake of success : to make the world His own by
force or by crooked policy, instead of by suffering.
These were the temptations of His life, as they are of ours.
If you search through His history, you find that all trial was
reducible to one or other of these three forms. In the wil-
derness His soul foresaw them all; they were all in spirit
The Sanctification of Christ. 377
met then, fought and conquered before they came in their
reality. In the wilderness He had sanctified and consecra-
ted Himself against all possible temptation, and life thence-
forward was only the meeting of that in fact which had
been in resolve met already a vanquished foe.
I said He had sanctifieci Himself against every trial : I
should have said, against every one except the last. The
temptation had not exhibited the terrors and the form of
death : He had yet to nerve and steel Himself to that. And
hence the lofty sadness which characterizes His later minis-
try, as he went down from the sunny mountain-tops of life
into the darkening shades of the valley where lies the grave.
There is a perceptible difference between the tone of His
earlier and that of His later ministry, which by its evidently
undesigned truthfulness gives us a strong feeling of the re-
ality of the history.
At first all is bright, full of hope, signalized by success
and triumph. You hear from Him joyous words of antici-
pated victory : " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven." And we recollect how His first sermon in the
synagogue of Capernaum was hailed; how all eyes were fix-
ed on Him, and His words seemed full of grace.
Slowly after this there conies a change over the spirit of
His life. The unremitting toil becomes more superhuman,
" I must work the work of Him that sent Me while it is
day : the night cometh when no man can work." The cold
presentiment of doom hangs more often on Him. He begins
to talk to His disciples in mysterious hints of the betrayal
and the cross. He is going down into the cloud-land, full
of shadows where nothing is distinct, and His step becomes
more solemn, and His language more deeply sad. Words
of awe, the words as of a soul struggling to pierce through
thick glooms of mystery, and doubt, and death, come more
often from His lips : for instance, " Now is My soul troub-
led : and what shall I say ? Father, save Me from this hour
but for this cause came I into the world." " My soul is ex-
ceeding sorrowful, even unto death." And here in the text
is another of those sentences of mournful grandeur : " For
their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sancti-
fied through the truth."
Observe the present tense. Not I shall devote Myself
but I sanctify, i. e., I am sanctifying Myself. It was a men-
tal struggle going on then. This prayer was, so to speak,
part of His Gethsemane prayer, the first utterances of i f --
broken by interruption then finished in the garden. The
consecration and the agony had begun the long inward
378 The Sanctification of Christ.
battle which was not complete till the words came, too
solemnly to be called triumphantly, though they were in-
deed the trumpet-tones of man's erand victory, " It is fin-
ished."
Secondly the sanctification of Christ was self-devotion to
the truth, I infer this, because He says, " I sanctify Myself,
that they also might be sanctified through the truth.' 1
" Also " implies that what His consecration was, theirs was.
Now theirs is expressly said to be sanctification by the
truth. That, then, was His consecration too. It was the
truth which devoted Him and marked Him out for death.
For it was not merely death that made Christ's sacrifice
the world's atonement. There is no special virtue in mere
death, even though it be the death of God's own Son.
Blood does not please God. " As I live, saith the Lord, I
have no pleasure in the death of the sinner." Do you think
God has pleasure in the blood of the righteous ? blood mere-
ly as blood ? death merely as a debt of nature paid ? suffer-
ing merely, as if suffering had in it mysterious virtue ?
No, my brethren ! God can be satisfied with that only
which pertains to the conscience and the will ; so says the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews : " Sacrifices could nev-
er make the comers thereunto perfect." The blood of Christ
was sanctified by the will with which He shed it : it is that
which gives it value. It was a sacrifice offered up to con-
science. He suffered as a martyr to the truth. He fell in
fidelity to a cause. The sacred cause in which He fell was
love to the human race : " Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man give his life for his friends." Now that
truth was the cause in which Christ died. We have His
own words as proof: " To this end was I born, and for this
cause came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth."
Let us see how His death was a martyrdom of witness to
truth.
1. He proclaimed the identity between religion and good-
ness. He distinguished religion from correct views, accurate
religious observances, and even from devout feelings. He
said that to be religious is to be good. " Blessed are the
pure in heart .... Blessed are the merciful .... Blessed
are the meek." Justice, mercy, truth these He proclaimed
as the real righteousness of God.
But because He taught the truth of Godliness, the Phari-
Bees became his enemies : those men of opinions and maxims .
those men of ecclesiastical, ritual and spiritual pretensions.
Again, He taught spiritual religion. God was not in the
temple : the temple was to come down. "But religion would
The Sanctification of Christ. 379
survive the temple. God's temple was man's soul ; and be-
cause He taught spiritual worship, the priests became his en-
emies. Hence came those accusations that He blasphemed
the temple : that he had said contemptuously, " Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
Once more he struck a death-blow at Jewish exclusive-
ness : He proclaimed the truth of the character of God. God
the Father : the hereditary descent from Abraham was noth-
ing : the inheritance of Abraham's faith was every thing.
God therefore would admit the Gentiles who inherited that
faith. For God loved the world, not a private few : not the
Jew only, not the elder brother who had been all his life at
home, but the prodigal younger brother too, who had wan-
dered far arid had sinned much.
Now because He proclaimed this salvation of the Gentiles,
the whole Jewish nation were offended. The first time he
ever hinted it at Capernaum, they took Him to the brow of
the hill whereon their city was built that they might throw
Him thence.
And thus by degrees priests, Pharisees, rulers, rich and
poor He had roused them all against Him : and the Divine
Martyr of the truth stood alone at last beside the cross, when
the world's life was to be won, without a friend.
All this we must bear in mind, if we would understand the
expression, " I sanctify myself." He was sanctifying and
consecrating Himself for this to be a witness to the truth
a devoted One, consecrated in His heart's deeps to die loyal
to truth, even though it should have to give as the reward of
allegiance, not honors and kingdoms, but only a crown of
thorns.
3. The self-sanctification of Christ was for the sake of oth-
ers. " For their sakes." He obeyed the law of self-consecra-
tion for Himself, else He had not been man ; for that law is
the universal law of our human existence. But he obeyed it
not for Himself alone, but for others also. It was vicarious
:jelf-devotion, i. e., instead of others, as the Representative of
Miem. " For their sakes," as an example, " that they also
might be sanctified through the truth."
Distinguish between a model and an example. You copy
the outline of a model : you imitate the spirit of an example.
Christ is our example : Christ is not our model. You might
copy the life of Christ : make Him a model in every act : and
yet you might be not one whit more of a Christian than be-
fore. You might wash the feet of poor fishermen as He did,
live a wandering life with nowhere to lay your head. You
might go about teaching, and never use any worAs but His
380 The Sanctification of Christ.
words, never express a religious truth except in Bible lan-
guage : have no home, and mix with publicans and harlots.
Then Christ would be your model : you would have copied
His life like a picture, line for line, and shadow for shadow ;
yet you might not be Christlike.
On the other hand, you might imitate Christ, get his Spirit,
breathe the atmosphere of thought which He breathed : do
not one single act which He did, but every act in His spirit:
you might be rich, whereas He was poor : never teach, where-
as He was teaching always ; lead a life in all outward partic-
ulars the very contrast and opposite of His : and yet the spirit
of His self-devotion might have saturated your whole being,
and penetrated into the life of every act and the essence of
every thought. Then Christ would have become your exam-
ple : for we can only imitate that of which we have caught
the spirit.
Accordingly, He sanctified Himself that He might become
a living, inspiring example, firing men's hearts by love to imita-
tion a burning and a shining light shed upon the mystery
of life, to guide by a spirit of warmth lighting from within.
In Christ there is not given to us a faultless essay on the love-
liness of self-consecration, to convince our reason how beau-
tiful it is : but there is given to us a self-consecrated One :
a living Truth, a living Person ; a life that was beautiful, a
death that we feel in our inmost hearts to have been divine :
and all this in order that the Spirit of that consecrated life
and consecrated death, through love, and wonder, and deep
enthusiasm, may pass into us, and sanctify us also to the
truth in life and death. He sacrificed Himself that we might
offer ourselves a living sacrifice to God.
IL Christ's sanctitication of His people : " That they also
might be sanctified through the truth."
To sanctify means two things. It means to devote, and it
means to set apart. Yet these two meanings are but differ-
ent sides of the same idea : for to be devoted to God is to be
separated from all that is opposed to God. Those whom
Christ sanctifies are separated from two things : from the
world's evil, and from the world's spirit.
1. From the world's evil So in verse 15, " I pray not that
thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou
fchouldest keep them from the evil." Not from physical evil
not from pain : Christ does not exempt his own from such
kinds of evil. Nay, we hesitate to call pain and sorrow evils,
when we remember what bright characters they have ma'de,
and when we recollect that almost all who came to Christ
The Sanctification of Christ. 381
came impelled by suffering of some kind or other. For ex
ample, the Syrophenician woman had been driven to "fall at
His feet and worship Him," by the anguish of the tormented
daughter whom she had watched. It was a widow that cast
into the treasury all her living, and that widow poor.
Possibly want and woe will be seen hereafter, when this
world of appearance shall have passed away, to have been,
not evils, but God's blessed angels and ministers of His most
parental love.
But the evil from which Christ's sanctification separates
the soul is that worst of evils properly speaking the only
ev il s i n : revolt from God, disloyalty to conscience, tyranny
of the passions, strife of our self-will in conflict with the lov-
ing will of God. This is our foe our only foe that we have
a right to hate with perfect hatred, meet it where we will, and
under whatever form, in Church or state, in false social max-
ims, or in our own hearts. And it was to sanctify or separate
us from this that Christ sanctified or consecrated Himself.
By the blood of his anguish by the strength of his uncon-
querable resolve we are sworn against it bound to be, in a
world of evil, consecrated spirits, or else greatly sinning.
Lastly, the self-devotion of Christ separates us from the
world's spirit.
Distinguish between the world's evil and the world's spirit.
Many things which can not be classed amongst things evil
are yet dangerous as things worldly.
It is one of the most difficult of all ministerial duties to de-
fine what the world-spirit is. It can not be identified with
vice, nor can unworldliness be defined as abstinence from vice.
The Old Testament saints were many of them great trans
gressors. Abraham lied, Jacob deceived, David committed
adultery. Crimes dark, surely ! and black enough ! And
yet these men were unworldly ; the spirit of the world was
not in them. They erred and were severely punished ; for
crime is crime in whomsoever it is found, and most a crime
in a saint of God. But they were beyond their age : they
were not of the world. They were strangers and pilgrims
upon earth. They were, in the midst of innumerable temp-
tations from within and from without, seeking after a better
country, i. e., a heavenly.
Again, you can not say that worldliness consists in mixing
with many people, and unworldliness with few. Daniel was
unworldly in the luxurious, brilliant court of Babylon : Adam,
in Paradise, had but one companion ; that one was the world
to him.
Again, the spirit of the world can not be defined as con
382 The Sanctification of Christ.
sisting in any definite plainness of dress or peculiar mode of
living. If we would be sanctified from the world when Christ
comes, we must be found, not stripping oif the ornaments from
our persons, but the censoriousness from our tongues and the
selfishness from our hearts.
Once more, that which is a sign of unworldliness in one
age is not a certain sign of it in another. In Daniel's age,
when dissoluteness marked the w T orld, frugal living was a suf-
ficient evidence that he was not of the world. To say that
he restrained his appetites w r as nearly the same as saying
that he was sanctified. But now when intemperance is not
the custom, a life as temperate as Daniel's might coexist with
all that is worst of the spirit of the world in the heart ; al-
most no man then was temperate who was not serving God
now hundreds of thousands are self-controlled by prudence,
who serve the world and self.
Therefore you can not define sanctification by any outward
marks or rules. But he who will thoroughly watch will un-
derstand what is this peculiar sanctification or separation
from the world which Christ desired in His servants.
He is sanctified by the self-devotion of his Master from the
world, who has a life in himself independent of the maxims
and customs 'which sweep along with them other men. In
his Master's words, "A well of water in him, springing up
into everlasting life," keeping his life on the whole pure, and
his heart fresh. His true life is hid with Christ in God. His
motives, the aims and objects of his life, however inconsist-
ent they may be with each other, however irregularly or fee-
bly carried out, are yet on the whole above, not here. His
citizenship is in heaven. He may be tempted, he may err,
he may fall, but still in his darkest aberrations there will be
a something that keeps before him still the dreams and aspi-
rations of his best days a thought of the cross of Christ and
'the self-consecration 'that it typifies a conviction that that
is the highest, and that alone the true life. And that if it
were only that would make him essentially different from
other men, even when he mixes with them and seems to catch
their tone, among them but not one of them. And that life
within him is Christ's pledge that he shall be yet what he
longs to be a something severing him, separating him, con-
secrating him. For him and for such as him the consecration
prayer of Christ was made. " They are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world : Sanctify them through thy
truth : thy word is truth."
Tke First Miracle. 383
XVII.
THE FIRST MIRACLE.
i. THE GLORY OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER.
<(: This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested
forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him." John ii. 11.
THIS was the " beginning of miracles " which Jesus did,
and yet he was now thirty years of age. For thirty years he
had done no miracle ; and that is in itself almost worthy to
be called a miracle. That he abstained for thirty years from
the exertion of His wonder-working power is as marvellous
as that He possessed for three years the power to exert. He
was content to live long in deep obscurity. Nazareth, with
its quiet valley, was world enough for Him. There was no
disposition to rush into publicity : no haste to be known in
the world. The quiet consciousness of power which breathes
in that expression, "Mine hour is not yet come," had marked
His whole life. He could bide His time. He had the strength
to wait.
This was true greatness the greatness of man, because
also the greatness of God : for such is God's way in all He
does. In all the works of God there is a conspicuous absence
of haste and hurry. All that He does ripens slowly. Six
slow days and nights of creative force before man was made:
two thousand years to discipline and form a Jewish people :
four thousand years of darkness, and ignorance, and crime,
before the fullness of the time had come, when He could send
forth His Son : unnumbered ages of war before the thousand
years of solid peace can come. Whatever contradicts this
Divine plan must pay the price of haste brief duration. All
that is done before the hour is come decays fast. All preco-
cious things ripened before their time, wither before their
time : precocious fruit, precocious minds, forced feelings. "He
that believeth shall not make haste."
We shall distribute the various thoughts which this event
suggests under two heads.
I. The glory of the Virgin Mother.
II. The glory of the Divine Son.
I. The glory of the Virgin Mother.
In the First Epistle to the Corinthians St Paul speaks of
384 The First Miracle.
the glory of the woman as of a thing distinct from the
of the man. They are the two opposite poles of the sphere
of humanity. Their provinces are not the same, but differ-
ent. The qualities which are beautiful as predominant in
one are not beautiful when predominant in the other. That
which is the glory of the one is not the glory of the other.
The glory of her who was highly favored among women,
and whom all Christendom has agreed in contemplating 'as
the type and ideal of her sex, was glory in a different order
from that in which her Son exhibited the glory of a perfect
manhood. A glory different in degree, of course: the one
was only human, the other more than human, the Word
made flesh ; but different in order too : the one manifesting
forth her glory the grace of womanhood ; the other mani-
festing forth His glory the wisdom and the majesty of
manhood, in which God dwelt.
Different orders or kinds of glory. Let us consider th
glory of the Virgin, which is, in other words, the glory of
what is womanly in character.
1. Remarkable, first of all, in this respect, is her considei
ateness. There is gentle, womanly tact in those words, " The)
have no wine." Unselfish thoughtfulness about others' com
forts, not her own : delicate anxiety to save a straitened
family from the exposure of their poverty : and moreover,
for this is very w r orthy of observation ,. carefulness about
gross, material things : a sensual thing, we might truly say
wine, the instrument of intoxication : yet see how her
feminine tenderness transfigured and sanctified such gross
and common things; how that wine which, as used by the
revellers of the banquet, might be coarse and sensual, was
in her use sanctified, as it was by unselfishness and charity t
a thing quite heavenly, glorified by the ministry of love.
It was so that in old times, with thoughtful hospitality,
Rebekah offered water at the well to Abraham's way-worn
servant. It was so that Martha showed her devotion to her
Lord even to excess, being cumbered with much serving.
It was so that the women ministered to Christ out of their
substance water, food, money. They took these low things
of earth, and spiritualized them into means of hospitality and
devotion.
And this is the glory of womanhood : surely no common
glory : surely one which, if she rightly comprehended her
place on earth, might enable her to accept its apparent hu-
miliation unrepiningly ; the glory of unsensualizing coarse
and common things, sensual things, the objects of mere
sense, meat and drink and household cares, elevating them,
The Glory of the Virgin Mother. 385
bj the spirit in which she ministers them, into something
transfigured and sublime.
The humblest mother of a poor family who is cumbered
with much serving, or watching over a hospitality which she
is too poor to delegate to others, or toiling for love's sake in
household work, needs no emancipation in God's sight. It
is the prerogative and the glory of her womanhood to con-
secrate the meanest things by a ministry which is not for
self.
2. Submission/ "Whatsoever He saith unto you, -do it."
Here is the true spirit of obedience. Not slavishness, but
entire loyalty and perfect trust in a person whom we rever-
ence. She did not comprehend her Son's strange repulse and
mysterious words ; but she knew that they were not capri-
cious words, for there was no caprice in Him : she knew that
the law which ruled His will was right, and that importunity
was, useless. So she bade them reverently wait in silence till
His time should come.
Here is another distinctive glory of womanhood. In the
very outset of the Bible submission is revealed as her pe-
culiar lot and destiny. If you were merely to look at the
words as they stand, declaring the results of the Fall, you
would be inclined to call that vocation of obedience a curse ;
but in the spirit of Christ it is transformed, like labor, into a
blessing. In this passage a twofold blessing stands con-
nected with it. Freedom from all doubt ; and prevailing
power in prayer.
The first is freedom from all doubt. The Virgin seems to
have felt no perplexity at that rebuke and seeming refusal ;
and yet perplexity and misgiving would seem natural. A
more masculine and imperious mind would have been start'
led ; made sullen, or have begun at once to sound the depths
of metaphysics, reasoning upon the hardship of a lot which
can not realize all it wishes: wondering why such simple
blessings are refused, pondering deeply on Divine decrees,
ending perhaps in skepticism. Mary was saved from this.
She could not understand, but she could trust and wait.
Not for one moment did a shade of doubt rest upon her
heart. At once and instantly, " Whatsoever He saith unto
you, do it." And so, too, the Syrophenician woman was not
driven to speculate on the injustice of her destiny by the
seeming harshness of Christ's reply. She drew closer to her
Lord in prayer. Affection and submissiveness saved them
both from doubt. True women both.
Now there are whole classes of our fellow-creatures to
whom, as a class, the anguish of religious doubt never or
17
386 The First Miracle.
rarely comes. Mental doubt rarely touches women. Sol
diers and sailors do not doubt. Their religion is remarkable
for its simplicity and childlike character. Scarcely ever are
religious warriors tormented with skepticism or. doubts.
And in all, I believe, for the same reason the habits of feel-
ing to which the long life of obedience trains the soul.
Prompt, quick, unquestioning obedience : that is the soil for
faith.
I call this, therefore, the glory of womanhood. It is the
true glory of human beings to obey. It is her special glory,
rising out of the very weakness of her nature God's strength
made perfect in weakness. England will not soon forget
that lesson left her as the bequest of a great life. Her bur-
ied Hero's glory came out of that which was manliest in his
character the Virgin's spirit of obedience.
The second glory resulting from it is prevailing power
with God. Her wish was granted. "What have I to do
with thee," were words that only asserted His own perfect
independence. They were not the language of rebuke. As
Messiah He gently vindicated His acts from interference,
showing the filial relation to be in its first strictness dis-
solved. But as Son He obeyed, or to speak more properly,
complied. Nay, probably His look had said that already,
promising more than His words, setting her mind at rest,
and granting the favor she desired.
Brethren, the subject of prayer is a deep mystery. To
the masculine intellect it is a demonstrable absurdity. For
says logic, how can man's will modify the will of God, or
alter the fixed decree ? And if it can not, wherein lies the
use .of prayer ? But there is a something mightier than in-
tellect and truer than logic. It is the faith which works by
love the conviction that in this world of mystery, that
which can not be put in words, nor defended by argument,
may yet be true. The will of Christ was fixed, what could
be the use of intercession ? ancKyet the Virgin's feeling was
true ; she felt her prayer would prevail.
Here is a grand paradox, which is the paradox of all
prayer. The heart hopes that which to reasoning seems im-
possible. And I believe we never pray aright except when
we pray in that feminine childlike spirit which no logic can
defend, feeling as ifvrs modified the will of God, though that
will is fixed. It is flie glory of the spirit that is affectionate
and submissive that it, ay and it alone, can pray, because it
alone can believe that its prayer will be granted ; and it ia
the glory of that spirit, too, that its prayer will be granted.
3. In all Christian ages the especial glory ascribed to the
The Glory of the Virgin Mother. 387
Virgin Mother is purity of heart and life. Implied in the
term " Virgin." Gradually in the history of the Christian
Church the recognition of this became idolatry. The works
of early Christian art curiously exhibit the progress of this
perversion. They show how Mariolatry grew up. The first
pictures of the early Christian ages simply represent the
woman. By-and-by we find outlines of the mother and the
child. In an after-age the Son is seen sitting on a throne, with
the mother crowned, but sitting as yet below Him. In an
age still later, the crowned mother on a level with the Son.
Later still, the mother on a throne above the Son. And last-
ly, a Romish picture represents the eternal Son in wrath,
about to destroy the earth, and the Virgin Intercessor inter-
posing, pleading by significant attitude her maternal rights,
and redeeming the world from His vengeance. Such was, in
fact, the progress of Virgin-worship. First the woman rev
erenced for the Son's sake; then the woman reverenced
above the Son, and adored.
Now the question is, How came this to be ? for we assume
it as a principle that no error has ever spread widely that was
not the exaggeration or perversion of a truth. And be as-
sured that the first step towards dislodging error is to un-
derstand the truth at which it aims. Never can an error be
permanently destroyed by the roots, unless we have planted
by its side the truth that is to take its place. Else you will
find the falsehood returning forever, growing up again when
you thought it cut up root and branch, appearing in the very
places where the crushing of it seemed most complete.
Wherever there is a deep truth, unrecognized, misunderstood,
it will force its way into men's hearts. It will take perni-
cious forms if it can not find healthful ones. It will grow as
some weeds grow, in noxious forms, ineradicably, because it
has a root in human nature.
Else how comes it to pass, after three hundred years of
reformation, we find Virgin-worship restoring itself again in
this reformed England, where least of all countries we should
expect it, and where the remembrance of Romish persecu-
tion might have seemed to make its return impossible ?
How comes it that some of the deepest thinkers of our day,
and men of the saintliest lives, are feeling this Virgin-worship
a necessity for their souls ; for it is the doctrine to which the
converts to Romanism cling most tenaciously ?
Brethren, I reply, Because the doctrine of the worship of
the Virgin has a root in truth, and no mere cutting and up
rooting can destroy it : no thunders of Protestant oratory :
uo platform expositions : no Reformation societies. In out*
388 The First Miracle.
Q
word, no mere negations; nothing but the full liberation of
the truth which lies at the root of error can eradicate error.
Surely we ought to have learnt that truth by this time.
Recollect how, before Christ's time, mere negations failed to
uproot paganism. Philosophers had disproved it by argu-
ment : satirists had covered it with ridicule. It was slain a
thousand times, and yet paganism lived on in the hearts of
men : and those who gave it up returned to it again in a
dying hour, because the disprovers of it had given nothing
for the heart to rest on in its place. But when Paul dared
to proclaim of paganism what we are proclaiming of Virgin-
worship, that paganism stood upon a truth, and taught that
truth, paganism fell forever. The Apostle Paul found in
Athens an altar to the unknown God. He did not announce
in Athens lectures against heathen priestcraft ; nor did he
undertake to prove it, in the Areopagus, all a mystery of in-
iquity, and a system of damnable idolatries that is the
mode in which w r e set about our controversies; b\it he dis-
engaged the truth from the error, proclaimed the truth, and
left the errors to themselves. The truth grew up, and the
errors silently and slowly withered.
I pray you, Christian brethren, do not join those fierce as-
sociations which think only of uprooting error. There is a
spirit in them which is more of earth than heaven, short-
sighted too and self-destructive. They do not make converts
to Christ, but only controversialists, and adherents to a par-
ty. They compass sea and land to make one proselyte. It
matters little whether fierce Romanism or fierce Protestant-
ism wins the day : but it does matter whether or not in the
conflict we lose some precious Christian truth, as well as the
very spirit of Christianity.
What lies at the root of this ineradicable Virgin-worship?
How comes it that out of so few Scripture sentences about
her, many of them like this rebuke, depreciatory, learned men
and pious men could ever have developed, as they call it, or
as it seems to us, tortured and twisted a doctrine of Divine
honors to be paid to Mary ? Let us set out with the con-
viction that there must have been some reason for it, some
truth of which it is the perversion.
I believe the truth to be this. Before Christ the qualities
honored as Divine were peculiarly the virtues of the man :
courage, wisdom, truth, strength. But Christ proclaimed the
Divine nature of qualities entirely opposite : meekness, obe-
dience, affection, purity. He said that the pure in heart
should see God. He pronounced the beatitudes of meekness,
and lowliness, and poverty of spirit. Now observe these
The Glory of the Virgin Mother. 389
were all of the order of graces which are distinctively femi
nine. And it is the peculiar feature of Christianity that it
exalts not strength nor intellect, but gentleness, and loving-
uess, and virgin purity.
Here was a new, strange thought given to the world. It
was for many ages the thought : no wonder it was the one
i^reat novelty of the revealed religion. How were men to
find expression for that idea which was working in them,
vague and beautiful, but wanting substance ? the idea of the
Divineness of what is pure, above the Divineness of what is
strong? Would you have had them say simply, we had
forgotten these things ; now they are revealed now we know
that love and purity are as Divine as 1 power and reason ? My
brethren, it is not so that men worship it is only so that men
think. They think about qualities they worship persons.
Worship must have a form. Adoration finds a person, and if
it can not find one it will imagine one. Gentleness and purity
are words for a philosopher ; but a man whose heart wants
something to adore will find for himself a gentle one, a pure
one, incarnate purity and love, gentleness robed in flesh and
blood, before whom his knee may bend, and to whom the
homage of his spirit can be given. You can not adore except
a person.
What marvel if the early Christian found that the Virgin-
mother of our Lord embodied this great idea ? What marvel
if he filled out and expanded w r ith that idea which was in his
heart, the brief sketch given of her in the Gospels, till his
imagination had robed the woman of the Bible with the
majesty of the mother of God ? Can we not feel that it must
have been so ? Instead of a dry, formal dogma of theology,
the Romanist presented an actual woman, endued with every
inward grace and beauty, and pierced by sorrows, as a living
object of devotion, faith, and hope a personality instead of
an abstraction. Historically speaking, it seems inevitable
that the idea could scarcely have been expressed to the world
except through an idolatry.
Brethren, it is an idolatry : in modern Romanism a perni*
cious and most defiling one. The worship of Mary over-
shadows the worship of the Son. The love given to her is
so much taken from Him. Nevertheless, let us not hide from
ourselves the eternal truth of the idea that lies beneath the
temporary falsehood of the dogma. Overthrow the idolatry ;
but do it by substituting the truth.
Now the truth which alone can supplant the worship of the
Virgin is the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ. I say the
perfect humanity : for perfect manhood is a very ambiguous
39 The First Miracie.
expression. By man we sometimes mean the human race,
made up of man and woman, and sometimes we only mean the
masculine sex. We have only one word to express both
ideas. The language in which the New Testament was
written has two. Hence we may make a great mistake.
When the Bible speaks of man the human being, we may
think that it means, man the male creature. When the
Bible tells us Jesus Christ was the Son of Man, it uses the
word which implies human being: it does not use the word
which signifies one of the male sex: it does not dwell on the
fact that He was a man : but it earnestly asserts that He was
Man. Son of a man He was not. Son of Man He was : for
the blood, as it were, of all the race was in His veins.
Now let us see what is implied in this expression Son of
Man. It contains in it the doctrine of the incarnation : it
means the full humanity of Christ. Lately I tried to bring
out one portion of its meaning. I said that He belonged to
no particular age, but to every age. He had not the qualities
of one clime or race, but that which is common to all climes
and all races. He was not the Son of the Jew, nor the Son
of the Oriental He was the Son of Man. He was not the
villager of Bethlehem: nor one whose character and mind
were the result of a certain training, peculiar to Judea, or pe-
culiar to that century but He was the Man. This is what
St. Paul insists on, when He says that in Him there is neither
Jew nor Gentile, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. A hu
manity in which there is nothing distinctive, limited, or pe-
culiar, but universal your nature and mine, the humanity in
which we all are brothers, bond or free. Now in that same
passage St. Paul uses another very remarkable expression :
" There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor
free, there is neither male nor female." That is the other
thing implied in His title to the Son of Man. His nature
had in it the nature of all nations : but also His heart had in
it the blended qualities of both sexes. Our humanity is a
whole made up of two opposite poles of character the manly
and the feminine. In the character of Christ neither was
found exclusively, but both in perfect balance. He was the
Son of Man the Human Being perfect Man.
There was in Him the woman-heart as well as the manly
brain all that was most manly, and all that was most wom-
anly. Remember what He was in life : recollect His stern
iron hardness in the temptation of the desert : recollect the
calmness that never quailed in all the uproars of the people,
the truth that never faltered, the strict severe integrity which
characterized the Witness of the Truth : recollect the justice
The Glory of the Virgin Mother. 391
that never gave way to weak feeling which let the rich
young ruler go his way to perish if he would which paid
the tribute-money which held the balance fair between the
persecuted woman and her accuser, but did not suffer itself
to be betrayed by sympathy into any feeble tenderness the.
justice that rebuked Peter with indignation, and pronounced
the doom of Jerusalem unswervingly. Here is one side or
pole of human character surely not the feminine side. Now
look at the other. Recollect the twice-recorded tears, which
a man would have been ashamed to show, and which are
never beautiful in man except when joined with strength like
His : and recollect the sympathy craved and yearned for as
well as given the shrinking from solitude in prayei? the
trembling of a sorrow unto death the considerate care which
provided bread for the multitude, and said to the tired disci-
ples, as with a sister's rather than a brother's thoughtfulness,
" Come ye apart into the desert and rest a while." This is
the other side or pole of human character surely not the
masculine.
When we have learnt and felt what is meant by Divine
humanity in Christ, and when we have believed it, not in a
one-sided way, but in all its fullness, then we are safe from
Mariolatry because we do not want it : we have the truth
which Mariolatry labors to express, and, laboring ignorantly,
falls into idolatry. But so long as the male was looked upon
as the only type of God, and the masculine virtues as the
only glory of His character, so long the truth was yet unre-
vealed. This was the state of heathenism. And so long as
Christ was only felt as the Divine Man, and not the Divine
Humanity, so long the world had only a one-sided truth.
One-half of our nature, the sternei portion of it, only was
felt to be of God and in God. The other half, the tenderer
and the purer qualities of our souls, were felt as earthly.
This was the state of Romanism from, which men tried to
escape by Mariolatry. And if men had not learned that this
side of our nature too was made divine in Christ, what possi-
ble escape was there for them, but to look to the Virgin
Mary as the incarnation of the purer and lovelier elements of
God's character, reserving to her Son the sterner and the
more masculine ?
Can we not understand, too, how it came to pass that the
mother was placed above the Son, and adored more ? Chris-
tianity had proclaimed meekness, purity, obedience, as more
Divine than strength and wisdom. What wonder if she
who was gazed on as the type of purity should be reckoned
more near to God than He who had come through miscon?
392 The First Miracle.
ception to be looked on chiefly as the type of Strength and
Justice ?
There is a spirit abroad which is leading men to Rome
Do not call that the spirit of the Devil. It is the desire and
hope to find there in its tenderness, and its beauty, and its
devotion, a home for those feelings of awe, and contempla-
tion, and love, for which our stern Protestantism finds no
shelter. Let us acknowledge that what they worship is
indeed deserving of all adoration: only let us say -that what
they worship ignorantly is Christ. Whom they ignorantly
worship let us declare unto them: Christ their unknown
God, worshipped at an idol-altar. Do not let us satisfy
ourselves by saying as a watchword, "Christ, not Mary:"
say rather, " In Christ all that they find in Mary." The
mother in the Son, the womanly in the soul of Christ. Di-
vine honor to the feminine side of His character, joyful and
unvarying acknowledgment that in Christ there is a reve-
lation of the Divineness of submission, and love, and purity,
and long-suffering, just as there was before in the name of
the Lord of Hosts a revelation of the Divineness of courage^
and strength, and heroism, and manliness.
Therefore it is we do not sympathize with those coarse
expositions which aim at doing exclusive honor to the Son
of God by degrading the life and character of the Virgin.
Just as the Romanist has loved to represent all connection
with her as mysterious and immaculate, so has the Prot-
estant been disposed to vulgarize her to the level of the
commonest humanity, and exaggerate into rebukes the rev-
erent expressions to her in which Jesus merely asserted His
Divine independence.
Rather reverence, not her, but that idea and type which
Christianity has given in her the type of Christian woman-
hood ; which was not realized in her, which never was and
never will be realized in one single woman which remains
ever a Divine Idea, after which each living woman is to
strive.
And when I say reverence that idea or type, I am but
pointing to the relation between the mother and the Son,
and asking men to reverence that which He reverenced.
Think we that there is no meaning hidden in the mystery
that the Son of God was the Virgin's Son? To Him through
life there remained the early recollections of a pure mother.
Blessed beyond all common blessedness is the man who can
look back to that. God has given to him a talisman which
will carry him triumphant through many a temptation. To
other men purity may be a name ; to him it has been once a
The Glory of the Divine Son. 393
realty. "Faith in ail things high beats with his blood."
He may be tempted: he may err: but there will be a light
from home shining forever* on his path inextinguishably.
By the grace of God, degraded he can not be.
XVIII.
THE FIRST MIRACLE.
II. THE GLORY OF THE DIVINE SON.
"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested
forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him." John ii. 11.
IN the history of this miracle two personages are brought
prominently before our notice. One is the Virgin Mary;
the other is the Son of God. And these two exhibit differ-
ent orders of glory, as well as different degrees. Different
degrees, for the Virgin was only human : her Son was God
manifest in the flesh. Different orders of glory, for tine one
exhibited the distinctive glory of womanhood : the Other
manifested forth His glory the glory of perfect manhood.
Taking the Virgin as the type and representative of her
sex, we found the glory of womanhood, as exhibited by her
conduct in this parable, to consist in unselfish considerate-
ness about others, in delicacy of tact, in the power of enno-
bling a ministry of coarse and household things, like the
wine of the marriage-feast, by the sanctity of affection : in
meekness, and lowly obedience, which was in the Fall her
curse,-in Christ become her glory, transformed into a bless-
ing and a power: and lastly, as the name Virgin implies,
the distinctive glory of womanhood we found to consist in
purity.
Now the Christian history first revealed these great truths.
The Gospels which record the life of Christ, first, in the his-
tory of the world, brought to light the Divine glory of those
qualities which had been despised. Before Christ came, the
heathen had counted for Divine the legislative wisdom of
the man, manly strength, manly truth, manly justice, manly
courage. The life and the cross of Christ shed a splendor
from heaven upon a new and till then unheard-of order of
heroism that which may be called the feminine order,
meekness, endurance, long-suffering, the passive strength of
martyrdom. For Christianity does not say, Honor to the
394 Tk* First Miracle.
wise, but " Blessed are the meek." Not, Glory to the strong,
but " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
Not, " The Lord is a man of war, Jehovah is His name," but
" God is Love." In Christ not intellect, but love, is conse-
crated. In Christ is magnified, not force of will, but the
glory of a Divine humility. " He was obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross : wherefore God also hath highly
exalted Him."
Therefore it was, that from that time forward womanhood
assumed a new place in this world. She in whom these
qualities, for the first time declared Divine in Christ, were
the distinctive characteristics, steadily and gradually rose
to a higher dignity in human life. It is not to a mere civiliza-
tion, but to the spirit of life in Christ, that woman owes all
she has, and all she has yet to gain. ^
Now the outward phases in w r hich this redemption of the
sex appeared to the world have been as yet chiefly three.
There have been three ages through which these great truths
of the Divineness of purity, and the strength and glory of
obedience, the peculiar characteristics of womanhood, have
been rising into their right acknowledgment. 1. The ages
of Virgin-worship. 2. The ages of chivalry. 3. The age of
the three last centuries. Now during these three Protestant
centuries, the place and destinies of womanhood have been
every year rising more and more into great questions. Her
mission, as it is called in the cant language of the day
what it is that is one of the subjects of deepest interest in
the controversies of the day. And unless we are prepared
to say that the truth which has been growing clearer and
brighter for eighteen centuries shall stop now exactly where
it is, and grow no clearer: unless we are ready to affirm that
mankind will never learn to pay less glory to strength and
intellect, and more to meekness, and humbleness, and pure-
ness than they do now, it follows that God has yet reserved
for womanhood a larger and more glorious field for her
peculiar qualities and gifts, and that the truth contained in
the Virgin's motherhood is unexhausted still.
For this reason, in reference to that womanhood and its
destinies of which St. Mary is the type, I thought it needful,
last Sunday, to insist on two things as of profound impor-
tance.
L To declare in what her true glory consists. The only
glory of the Virgin was the glory of true womanhood. The
glory of true womanhood consists in being herself: not in
striving to be something else. It is the lalse paradox and
The. Glory of the Divine Son. 395
heresy of this present age to claim for her as a glory the
right to leave her sphere. Her glory lies in her sphere, and
God has given her a sphere distinct ; as in the" Epistle to the
Church of Corinth, when in that' wise ctfapter St. Paul render-
ed unto womanhood the things which were woman's, and
unto manhood the things which were man's.
And the true correction of that monstrous rebellion against
what is natural lies in vindicating Mary's glory, on the one
side, from the Romanist, who gives to her the glory of God ;
and on the other from those who would confound the dis-
tinctive glories of the two sexes, and claim as the glory of
woman what is, in the deeps of nature, the glory of the
man.
Every thing is created in its own order. ..Every created
thing has its own glory. " There is one glory of the sun,
another glory of the moon, and another glory of the sta v a
for one star differeth from another star in glory." There is
one glory of manhood, and another glory of womanhood.
And the glory of each created thing consists in being true
to its own nature, and moving in its own sphere.
Mary's glory was not immaculate origin, nor immaculate
life, nor exaltation to Divine honors. She had none of these
things. Nor, on the other hand, was it force or demanded
rights, social or domestic, that constituted her glory. But it
was the glory of simple womanhood ; the glory of being
true to the nature assigned her by her Maker; the glory of
motherhood; the glory of "a meek and quiet spirit, which
in the sight of God is of great price." She was not the
queen of heaven, but she was something nobler still, a crea-
ture content to be what God had made her: in unselfishness,
and humbleness, and purity, " rejoicing in God her Saviour,"
content that " He had regarded the lowliness of His hand-
maiden."
The second thing upon w 7 hich I insisted was, that the only
safeguard against the idolatrous error of Virgin-worship is a
full recognition of the perfect humanity of "Christ. A full
recognition : for it is only a partial acknowledgment of the
meaning of the incarnation when we think of Him as the
Divine Man. It was not manhood, but humanity, that was
made Divine in Him. Humanity has its two sides : one side
in the strength and intellect of manhood ; the other in the
tenderness, and faith, and submissiveness of womanhood:
Man and woman, not man alone, make up human nature. Ip
Christ not one alone but both were glorified. Strength anci
grace, wisdom and love, courage and purity, Divine manli-
ness : Divine womanliness. In all noble characters you find
396 The First Miracle.
the two blended : in Him, the noblest, blended into one en.
tire and perfect humanity.
Unless you -recognize and fully utter this whole truth, you
will find Mariolatry forever returning, cut it down as you
will. It must come back. It will come back. I had well
nigh said it ought to come back, unless we preach and believe
the full truth of God incarnate in humanity. For while we
teach in our classical schools as the only manliness, Pa-
gan heroism of warrior and legislator, can we say that we
are teaching both sides of Christ ? Our souls were trained
in boyhood to honor the heroic and the masculine. Who
ever hinted to us that charity is the "more excellent way ?"
Who suggested that " he which ruleth his spirit is greater
than he which taketh a city ?"
Again, we find our English society divided into two sec-
tions : one the men of business and action, exhibiting promi-
nently the masculine virtues of English character, truth and
honor, and almost taught to reckon forbearance and feeling
as proofs of weakness; taught in the playground to believe
that a chaste life is romance ; false sentiment and strength-
lessness of character taught there : and in after-life that it is
mean to forgive a personal affront.
The other section of our society is made up of men of
prayer and religiousness : for some reason or other singular-
ly deficient in masculine breadth and strength, and even
truthfulness of character : with no firm footing upon reality,
not daring to look the real problems of social and political
life in the face, but wasting their strength in disputes of
words, or shrinking into a dim atmosphere of ecclesiastical
dreaminess, unreal and effeminate. Dare we say that the
full humanity of Christ in its double aspect is practically
adored amongst us? Have we not made a fatal separation
between the manly and the feminine sides of character ? be-
tween the moral and the devout ? so that we have men who
are masculine and moral, and also men who are effeminate
and devout. But w<here are our Christian men in whom the
whole Christ is formed all that is brave, and true, and wise,
and at the same time all that is tender, and devout, and
r,ure ? Who ever taught us to adore in Christ all that is
most manly, and all that is most womanly, that we might
strive to be such in our degree ourselves ? And if not, can
you wonder that men, feeling their Christianity imperfect,
blindly strive to patch it up through Mariolatry'?
I gather into a few sentences the substance of what was
said last Sunday. I said that Christianity exhibited the
Divine glory of the weaker elements of our human nature,
The Glory of the Divine Son. 397
Heathenism, nay even Judaism, had as yet before him only
recognized the glory of the stronger and masculine. Now
the Romanist personified the masculine side of human na-
ture in Christ. He personified gentleness and purity, the
feminine side of human nature, in the Virgin Mary. No
wonder that with this cardinal error at the outset in his con-
ceptions, he adored ; and no wonder, since Christianity de-
clared meekness and purity more Divine than strength and
intellect, in process of time he came to honor the Virgin
more than Chris^ That I believe is the true history and
account of Virgin-worship.
The Bible personifies both sides of human nature, the mas-
culine and feminine, in Christ, of whom St. Paul declares in
the Epistle to the Galatians, " In Him is neither Jew nor
Greek, bond nor free, male nor female." Neither distinctive-
ly, for in him both the manly and the womanly sides of char-
acter divinely meet. I say therefore that the incarnation of
God in Christ is the true defense against Virgin-worship.
Think of Christ only as the masculine character, glorified
by the union of Godhead with it, and your Christianity has
in it an awful gap, a void, a want the inevitable supply and
relief to which will be Mariolatry, however secure you may
think yourself; however strong and fierce the language
you now use. Men who have used language as strong and
fierce have become idolaters of Mary. With a half thought
of Christ, safe you are not. But think of him as the Divine
Human Being, in whom both sides of our cjouble being are
divine and glorified, and then you have the truth which Ro-
manism has marred and perverted into an idolatry pernicious
in all ; in the less spiritual worshippers sensualizing and de-
basing.
Now there are two ways of meeting error. The one is that
in which, in humble imitation of Christ and His apostles, I
have tried to show you the error of the worship of Mary to
discern the truth out of which the error sprung, firmly as-
serting the truth, forbearing threatening ; certain that he in
Avhose mind the truth is lodged has in that truth the safe-
guard against error.
The other way of meeting error is to overwhelm it with
threats. To some men it seems the only way in which true
zeal is shown. Well, it is very easy, requiring no self-con-
trol, but only an indulgence of every bad passion. It is very
easy to call Rome the " mother of harlots and abominations "
very easy to use strong language about " damnable idola-
tries " very easy for the apostles to call down fire from
heaven upon the Samaritans because they would not receive
The First Miracle.
Christ, and then to flatter themselves that that was godly
zeal. But it might be well for us to remember his somewhat
startling comment, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye
are of." There are those who think it a surer and a safer
Protestantism to use those popular watchwords. Be it so.
But with God's blessing, that will not I. The majesty of
truth needs other bulwarks than vulgar and cowardly vitu-
peration. Coarse and violent language, excusable three hun-
dred years ago by the manners of that day, was bold and
brave in the lips of the Reformer's, with whom the struggle
was one of life and death, and who might be called to pay
the penalty of their bold defiances with their blood. But the
same fierceness of language now, when there is no personal
risk in the use of it, in the midst of hundreds of men and
women ready to applaud and honor violence as zeal, is simply
a dastardliness from which every generous mind shrinks.
You do not get the Reformers' spirit by putting on the ar-
mor they have done with, but by risking the dangers which
those noble warriors risked. It is not their big words, but
their large, brave heart that makes the Protestant. Oh, be
sure that he whose soul hns anchored itself to rest on the
deep calm sea of truth, does not spend his strength in raving
against those who are still tossed by the winds of error.
Spasmodic violence of words is one thing, strength of convic-
tion is another.
When, oh when, shall we learn that loyalty to Christ is
tested far more by the strength of our sympathy with truth
than by the intensity of our hatred of error ? I will tell you
what to hate. Hate hypocrisy hate cant hate intolerance,
oppression, injustice hate Pharisaism hate them as Christ
hated them, with a deep, living, Godlike hatred. But do not
hate men in intellectual error. To hate a man for his errors
is as unwise as to hate one who in casting up an account has
made an error against himself. The Rornanist has made an
error against himself. He has missed the full glory of his
Lord and Master. Well, shall we hate him, and curse, and
rant, and thunder at him ? Or, shall we sit down beside him,
and try to sympathize with him, and see things from his point
of view, and strive to understand the truth which his soul is
aiming at, and seize the truth for him and for ourselves,
" meekly instructing; those who oppose themselves?"
Our subject to-day is the glory of the Divine Son. In that
miracle " He manifested forth his glory." Concerning that
glory we sny :
1 . The glory of Christ did not begin with that miracle : the
miracle only manifested it. For thirty years the wonder-
The Glory of the Divine Son. 399
working power had been in Him. It was not Diviner power
when it broke forth into visible manifestation than it had
been when it was unsuspected and unseen. It had been ex-
ercised up to this time in common acts of youthful life : obe-
dience to His mother, love to His brethren. Well, it was
just as Divine in those simple, daily acts, as when it showed
itself in a way startling- and wonderful. It was just as much
the life of God on earth when He did an act of ordinary hu-
man love or human duty, as when He did an extraordinary
act, such as turning water into wine. God w r as as much, nay
more, in the daily life and love of Christ, than he was in Christ's
miracles. The miracle only made the hidden glory visible.
The extraordinary only proved that the ordinary was Divine*
That was the very object of the miracle. It was done to man-
ifest forth his glory. And if, instead of rousing men to see
the real glory of Christ in His other life, the miracle merely
fastened men's attention on itself, and made them think that
the only glory which is Divine is to be found in what is won-
derful and uncommon, then the whole intention of the miracle
was lost.
Let us make this more plain by an illustration. To the
wise man, the lightning only manifests the electric force which
is everywhere, and which for one moment has become visible.
As often as he sees it, it reminds him that the lightning slum-
bers invisibly in the dew-drop, and in the mist, and in the
cloud, and binds together every atom of the water that he
uses in daily life. But to the vulgar mind, the lightning is
something unique, a something which has no existence but
when it appears. There is a fearful glory in the lightning
because he sees it. But there is no startling glory and noth-
ing fearful in the drop of dew, because he does not know,
what the thinker knows, that the flash is there in all its ter-
rors. So, in the same way, to the half believer a miracle is
the one solitary evidence of God. Without it he could have
no certainty of God's existence.
But to the true disciple a miracle only manifests the pow-
er and love which are silently at work everywhere as truly
and as really in the slow work of the cure of the insane, as in
the sudden expulsion of the legion from the demoniac as
divinely in the gift of daily bread as in the miraculous mul-
tiplication of the loaves. God's glory is at work in the growth
of the vine and the ripening of the grape, and the process by
which grape-juice passes into wine. It is not more glory, but
only glory more manifested, when water at his bidding passes
at once into wine. And be sure that if you do not feel as
David felt, God's presence in the annual miracle, that it is
4OO The First Miracle.
God, which in the vintage of every year causeth wine to
make glad the heart of man, the sudden miracle at Caperna-
um would not have given you conviction of His presence.
" If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you
be persuaded though one rose from the dead." Miracles have
only done their work when they teach us the glory and the
awfulness that surround our common life. In a miracle, God
for one moment shows Himself that we may remember it is
He that is at work when no miracle is seen.
Now this is the deep truth of miracles which most men
miss. They believe that the life of Jesus was Divine, be-
cause He wrought miracles. But if their faith in miracles
were shaken, their faith in Christ would go. If the evidence
for the credibility of those miracles were weakened, then to
them the mystic glory would have faded off His history.
They could not be sure that His existence was Divine.
That love, even unto death, would bear no certain stamp of
God upon it. That life of long self-sacrifice would have had
in it no certain unquestionable traces of the Son of God.
See what that implies. If that be true, and miracles are
the best proof of Christ's mission, God can be recognized
only in what is marvellous : God can not be recognized in
what is good. It is by Divine power that a human Being
turns water into wine. It is by power less certainly Divine
that the same Being witnesses to truth forgives His ene-
mies makes it His meat and drink to do His Father's will,
and finishes His. work. We are more sure that God was in
Christ when he said, " Rise up, and walk," than when He
said with absolving love, " Son, thy sins be forgiven thee :"
more certain when He furnished wine for wedding-guests,
than when He said, " Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do." Oh, a strange, and low, and vulgar ap-
preciation this of the true glory of the Son of God ; the same
false conception that runs through all our life, appearing in
every form God in the storm, and the earthquake, and the
fire no God in the still small voice. Glory in the lightning-
flash no glory and no God in the lowliness of the dew-drop.
Glory to intellect and genius no glory to gentleness and
patience. Glory to every kind of power none to the in-
ward, invisible strength of the life of God in the soul of man.
"An evil and an adulterous generation seeketh after a
sign." Look at the feverish eagerness with which men
crowd to every exhibition of some newly-discovered force,
real or pretended. What lies at the bottom of this feverish-
ness but an unbelieving craving after signs ? some wonder
which is to show them the Divine life of which the evidence
The Glory of the Divine Son. 401
is yet imperfect ? As if the bread they eat and the wine
they drink, chosen by God for the emblems of His sacra-
ments because the commonest things of daily life, were not
filled with the presence of His love ; as if God were not
around their path and beside their bed, and spying out all
their daily ways.
It is in this strange way that we have learned Christ.
The miracles which were meant to point us to the Divinity
of His goodness, have only dazzled us with the splendor of
their power. We have forgotten, what His first wonder-
work shows, that a miracle is only manifested glory.
2. It was the glory of Christ, again, to sanctify, i. e., declare
the sacredness of, all things natural all natural relation-
ships, all natural enjoyments.
All natural relationships. What He sanctified by His
presence was a marriage. Now remember what had gone
before this. The life of John the Baptist was the highest
form of religious life known in Israel. It was the life
ascetic. It was a life of solitariness and penitential auster-
ity. He drank no wine : he ate no pleasant food : he mar-
ried no wife : he entered into no human relationship. It was
the law of that stern and in its way sublime life, to cut out
every human feeling as a weakness, and to mortify every
natural instinct, in order to cultivate an intenser spirituality.
A life in its own order grand, but indisputably unnatural.
Now the first public act of our Redeemer's life is to go
with His disciples to a marriage. He consecrates marriage,
and the sympathies which lead to marriage. He declares
the sacredness of feelings which had been reckoned carnal,
and ( low, and human. He stamped His image on human
joys, human connections, human relationships. He pro-
nounces that they are more than human as it were sacra-
mental : the means whereby God's presence comes to us ;
the types and shadows whereby higher and deeper relation-
ships become possible to us. For it is through our human
aifections that the soul first learns to feel that its destiny is
divine : It is through a mortal yearning, unsatisfied, that the
spirit ascends, seeking a higher object : It is through the
gush of our human tenderness that the immortal and the in-
finite in us reveals itself. Never does a man know the force
that is in him till some mighty affection or grief has human-
ized the soul. It is by an earthly relationship that God haa
typified to us and helped us to conceive the only true espous-
al the marriage of the soul to her eternal Lord.
It was the glory of Christianity to pronounce all these hu-
man feelings sacred: therefore it is that the Church asserts
4O2 The First Miracle.
their sacredness in a religious ceremony ; for example, that
of marriage. Do not mistake. It is not the ceremony that
makes a thing religious : a ceremony can only declare a thing
religious. The Church can not make sacred that which is
not sacred : she is but here on earth as the moon, the witness
of the light in heaven ; by her ceremonies and by her insti-
tutions to bear witness to eternal truths. She can not by
her manipulations manufacture a child of the devil, through
baptism, into a child of God : she can only authoritatively
declare the sublime truth ho is not the devil's child, but
God's child by right. She can not make the bond of mar-
riage sacred and indissoluble.: she can only witness to the
sacredness of that which the union of two spirits has already
made : and such are her own words. Her minister is com-
manded by her to say " Forasmuch as these two persons
have consented together" there is the sacred fact of nature,
" I pronounce that they be man and wife " here is the au-
thoritative witness to the fact.
Again, it was His glory to declare the sacredness of all
natural enjoyments. It was not a marriage only, but a mar-
riage-feast, to which Christ conducted His disciples. Now
we can not get over this plain fact by saying that it was a
religious ceremony : that would be mere sophistry. It was
an indulgence in the festivity of life ; as plainly as words
can describe, here was a banquet of human enjoyment. The
very language of the master of the feast about men who had
well drunk, tells us that there had been, not excess of course,
but happiness there and merry-making.
Neither can we explain away the lesson by saying that it
is no example to us, for Christ was there to do good, and
that what was safe for Him might be unsafe for us. For if
His life is no pattern for us here in this case of accepting an
invitation, in what can we be sure it is a pattern ? Besides,
He took His disciples there, and His mother was there : they
were not shielded, as He was, by immaculate purity. He was
there as a guest at first, as Messiah only afterwards : thereby
He declared the sacredness of natural enjoyments.
Here again, then, Christ manifested His peculiar glory
The temptation of the wilderness was past : the baptism of
John, and the life of abstinence to which it introduced, were
over; and now the Bridegroom comes before the world in
the true glory of Messiah not in the life of asceticism, but
in the life of Godliness not separating from life, but conse-
crating it ; carrying a Divine spirit into every simplest act
accepting an invitation to a feast giving to water the vir-
tue of a nobler beverage. For Christianity does not destroy
The Glory of the Divine Son. 403
what is natural, but ennobles it. To turn water into wine,
and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of
Christianity.
The ascetic life of abstinence, of fasting, austerity, singu-
larity, is the lower and earthlier form of religion. The life
of Godliness is the glory of Christ. It is a thing far more
striking to the vulgar imagination to be religious after the
type and pattern of John the Baptist, to fast, to mortify
every inclination, to be found at no feast, to wrap ourselves
in solitariness, and abstain from all social joys : yes, and far
easier so to live, and far easier so to win a character for re-
ligiousness. A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man
who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and un
dress of life, easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of
unknown sanctity, and men honor him for a saint. The un-
known is always wonderful. But the life of Him whom
men called " a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of
publicans and sinners," was a far harder and a far heavenlier
religion.
To shroud ourselves in no false mist of holiness : to dare to
show ourselves as we are, making no solemn affectation of
reserve or difference from others : to be found at the mar-
riage-feast : to accept the invitation of the rich Pharisee Si-
mon, and the scorned publican Zaccheus: to mix with the
crowd of men, using no affected singularity, content to be
" creatures not too bright or good for human nature's daily
food :" and yet for a man amidst it all to remain a conse-
crated spirit, his trials and his solitariness known only to his
Father a being set apart, not of this world, alone in the
heart's deeps with God: to put the cup of this world's glad-
ness to his lips, and yet be unintoxicated : to gaze steadily
on all its grandeur, and yet be undazzled, plain and simple
in personal desires : to feel its brightness, and yet defy its
thrall : this is the difficult, and rare, and glorious life of
God in the soul of man. This, this was the peculiar glory
of the life of Christ, which was manifested in that first mir-
acle which Jesus wrought at the marriage -ieast in Caua oi
Galilea
404 The Good Shepherd.
XIX.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
" I am the good shepherd, and know ray sheep, and am known of mint
As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father : and I lay down nu}
life for the sheep." John x. 14, 15.
As these words stand in the English translation, it is hard
to see any connection between the thoughts that are brought
together.
It is asserted that Christ is the good Shepherd, and knows
His sheep. It is also asserted that He knows the Father ;
but between these two truths there is no express connection.
And again, it is declared that He lays down His life for the
sheep. This follows directly after the assertion that He
knows the Father. Again, we are at a loss to say what one
of these truths has to do with the other.
But the whole difficulty vanishes with the alteration of a
single stop and a single word. Let the words " even so" be
exchanged for the word " and." Four times in these verses
the same word occurs. Three times out of these four it is
translated " and," and know my sheep, and am known, and
I lay down my life. All that is required then is, that in con-
sistency it shall be translated by the same word in the fourth
case : for " even so " substitute " and :" then strike away the
full stop after " mine," and read the whole sentence thus :
"I am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am
known of mine as the Father knoweth me, and&s I know the
Father : and I lay down my life for the sheep."
At once our Redeemer's thought becomes clear. There is
a reciprocal affection between the Shepherd and the sheep.
There is a reciprocal affection between the Father and the
Son ; and the one is the parallel of the other. The affection
between the Divine Shepherd and His flock can be compared,
for the closeness of its intimacy, with nothing but the affec-
tion between the Eternal Father and the Son of His love.
As the Father knows the Son, so does the Shepherd know
the sheep : as the Son knows the Father, so do the sheep
know their heavenly Shepherd.
I. The pastoral character claimed by Christ.
XL The proofs which substantiate the claim.
L The Son of Man claims to Himself the name of Shep-
The Good Shepherd. 405
herd. - Now we shall not learn any thing from that, unless
we enter humbly and affectionately into the spirit of Christ's
teaching. It is the heart alone which can give us a key to
His words. Recollect how He taught. By metaphors, by
images, by illustrations, boldly figurative, in rich variety
yes, in daring abundance. He calls Himself a gate, a king,
a vine, a shepherd, a thief in the night. In every one of
these He appeals to certain feelings and associations. What
He says can only be interpreted by such associations. They
must be understood by a living heart : a cold, clear intellect
will make nothing of them. If you take those glorious ex-
pressions, pregnant with almost boundless thought, and lay
them down as so many articles of rigid, stiff theology, you
turn life into death. It is just as if a chemist were to ana-
lyze a fruit or a flower, and then imagine that he had told
you what a fruit and a flower are. He separates them into
their elements, names them and numbers them : but thost
elements, weighed, measured, numbered in the exact propor-
tions that made up the beautiful living thing, are not the liv-
ing thing no, nor any thing like it. Your science is very
profound, no doubt ; but the fruit is crushed, and the -grace
of the flower is gone.
It is in this way often that we deal with the words of
Christ, when we anatomize them and analyze them. Theol-
ogy is very necessary, chemistry is very necessary ; but
chemistry destroys life to analyze, murders to dissect ; and
theology very often kills religion out of words before it can
cut them up into propositions.
Here is a living truth which our cold reasonings have often
torn into dead fragments "I am the good Shepherd." In
this northern England it is hard to get the living associa-
tions of the East with which such an expression is full.
The pastoral life and duty in the East is very unlike that
of the shepherds on our bleak hill-sides and downs. Here
the connection between the shepherd and the sheep is simply
one of pecuniary interest. Ask an English shepherd about
his flock, he can tell you the numbers and the value ; he
knows the market in which each was purchased, and the re-
munerating price at which it can be disposed of. There is
before him so much stock convertible into so much money.
Beneath the burning skies and the clear starry nights of
Palestine there grows up between the shepherd and his flock
an union of attachment and tenderness. It is the country
where at any moment sheep are liable to be swept away by
some mountain-torrent, or carried off by hill-robbers, or torn
by wolves. At any moment their protector may have to
406 The Good Shepherd.
save the/n by personal hazard. The shepherd-king tells us
how, in defense of his father's flock, he slew a lion and a
bear : and Jacob reminds Laban how, when he watched La-
ban's sheep in the day, the drought consumed. Every hour
of the shepherd's life is risk. Sometimes for the sake of an
armful of grass in the parched summer days, he must climb
precipices almost perpendicular, and stand on a narrow ledge
of rock where the wild goat will scarcely venture. Pitiless
showers, driving snows, long hours of thirst all this he must
emlure, if the flock is to be kept at all.
And thus there grows up between the man and the dumb
creatures he protects, a kind of friendship. For this is, after
all, the true school in which love is taught dangers mutually
shared and hardships borne together; these are the things
which make generous friendship risk cheerfully encountered
for another's sake. You love those for whom you risk, and
they love you ; therefore it is that, not as here where the
flock is driven, the shepherd goes before and the sheep follow
him. They follow in perfect trust, even though he should be
leading them away from a green pasture, by a rocky road, to
another pasture which they can not yet see. He knows them
all their separate histories, their ailments, their characters.
Now let it be observed how much in all this connection
there is of heart of real, personal attachment, almost incon-
ceivable to us. It is strange how deep the sympathy may
become between the higher and the lower being : nay, even
between the being that has life and what is lifeless. Alone
almost in the desert, the Arab and his horse are one family.
Alone in those vast solitudes, with no human being near, the
shepherd and the sheep feel a life in common. Differences
disappear, the vast interval between the man and the brute :
the single point of union is felt strongly. One is the love of
the protector : the other the love of the grateful life : arid so
between lives so distant there is woven by night and day, by
summer suns and winter frosts, a living network of sympa-
thy. The greater and the less mingle their being together :
they feel each other. " The shepherd knows his sheep, and
is known of them."
The men to whom Christ said these words felt all this
and more, the moment He had said them, which it has taken
me many* minutes to draw out in dull sentences : for He ap-
pealed to the familiar associations of their daily life, and call-
ing Himself a Shepherd, touched strings which would vi-
brate with many a tender and pure recollection of their
childhood. And unless we try, by realizing su< h scenes, to
supply what they felt by association, the words of Chris*
The Good Shepherd. 407
will be only hard, dry, lifeless words to us : for all Christ's
teaching is a Divine poetry, luxuriant in metaphor, over-
flowing with truth too large for accurate sentences, truth
which only a heart alive can appreciate. More than half the
heresies into which Christian sects have blundered, have
merely come from mistaking for dull prose what prophets
and apostles said in those highest moments of the soul, when
seraphim kindle the sentences of the pen and lip into poetry.
"This is my body." Chill that into prose, and it becomes
Transubstantiation. "I am the good Shepherd." In the
dry and merciless logic of a commentary, trying laboriously
to find out minute points of ingenious resemblance in which
Christ is like a Shepherd, the glory and the tenderness of this
sentence are dried up.
But try to feel, by imagining what the lonely Syrian shep-
herd must feel towards the helpless things which are the com-
panions of his daily life, for whose safety he stands in jeopardy
every hour, and whose value is measurable to him not by
price, but by his own jeopardy, and then we have reached
some notion of the love which Jesus meant to represent, that
eternal tenderness which bends over us infinitely lower
though we be in nature and knows the name of each and
the trials of each, and thinks for each with a separate solici-
tude, and gave Itself for each with a sacrifice as special and
a love as personal, as if in the whole world's wilderness there
were none other but that one.
To the name Shepherd, Christ adds an emphatic word
of much significance: "I am the good Shepherd." Good,
not in the sense of benevolent, but in the sense of genuine,
true born, of the real kind just as wine of nobler quality is
good compared with the cheaper sort, just as a soldier is
goo'd or noble who is a soldier in heart, and not a soldier by
mere profession or for pay. It is the same word used by St.
Paul when he speaks of a good, i. e., a noble soldier of Christ.
Certain peculiar qualifications make the genuine soldier
certain peculiar qualifications make the genuine or good
shepherd.
Now this expression distinguishes the shepherd from two
sorts of men who may also be keepers of the sheep : shep-
herds, but not shepherds of the true blood. 1. From rob-
bers. 2. From hirelings.
1. Robbers may turn shepherds : they may keep the
sheep, but they guard them only for their own purposes,
simply for the flesh and fleece ; they have not a true shep-
herd's heart, any more than a pirate has the true sailor's
heart and the true sailor's loyalty. There were many such
408 The Good Shepherd.
marauders on the hills of Galilee and Judea : such, for ex
ample, as those from whom David and his band protected
Nabal's flocks on Mount Carmel.
And many such nominal shepherds had the people of
Israel had in by-gone years : rulers in whom the art of rul-
ing had been but kingcraft ; teachers whose instruction to
the people had been but priestcraft. Government, states-
manship, teachership tL <se are pastoral callings sublime,
even Godlike. For only consider it : wise rule, chivalrous
protection, loving guidance what diviner work than these
has the Master given to the shepherds of the people ? But
when the work is done, even well done, whether it be by
statesmen or by pastors, for the sake of party or place, or
honor, or personal consistency, or preferment, it is not the
spirit of the genuine shepherd, but of the robber. No won-
der He said, "All that ever came before Me were thieves
and robbers."
2. Hirelings are shepherds, but not good shepherds, of
the right pure kind : they are tested by danger. " He that
is a hireling, and not the good shepherd, whose own the
sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep,
and fleeth ; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth
the sheep." Now a man is a hireling when he does his
duty for pay. He may do it in his way faithfully. The
paid shepherd would not desert the sheep for a shower or a
cold night. But the lion and the bear he is not paid to
risk his life against them, and the sheep are not his, so he
leaves them to their fate. So, in the same way, a man may
be a hired priest, as Demetrius was at Ephesus : " By this
craft we get our living." Or a paid demagogue, a great
champion of rights, and an investigator of abuses paid by
applause ; and while popularity lasts he will be a reformer
deserting the people when danger comes. There is no
vital union between the champion and the defenseless the
teacher and the taught. The cause of the sheep is not his
cause.
Exactly the reverse of this Christ asserts in calling Him-
self the good Shepherd. He is a good, genuine, or true-
born sailor who feels that the ship is as it were his own ;
whose point of chivalrous honor is to save his -ship rather
than himself not to survive her. He is a good, genuine, or
true-born shepherd who has the spirit of his calling, is an en-
thusiast in it, has the true shepherd's heart, and makes the
cause of the sheep his cause.
Brethren, the cause of man was the cause of Christ ! He
did no hireling's work. The only pay He got was hatred, a
The Good Shepherd. 409
crown of thorns, and the cross. He might have escaped it
all. He might have been the Leader of the people and their
King. He might have converted the idolatry of an hour
into the hosannas of a lifetime : if He would but have con-
ciliated the Pharisees, instead of bidding them defiance and
exasperating their bigotry against Him : if He would but
have explained, and, like some demagogue called to account^
trimmed away His sublime sharp-edged truths about oppres-
sion and injustice until they became harmless, because mean-
ingless : if He would but have left unsaid those rough things
about the consecrated temple and the sabbath-days : if He
would but have left undisputed the hereditary title of Israel
to God's favor, and not stung the national vanity by telling
them that trust in God justifies the Gentile as entirely as the
Jew : if He would but have taught less prominently that
hateful doctrine of the salvability of the heathen Gentiles
and the heretic Samaritans, and the universal Fatherhood of
God : if he would but have stated with less angularity of
edge His central truth that not by mere compliance with
law, but by a spirit transcending law, even the spirit of the
cross and self-sacrifice, can the soul of man be atoned to
God : that would have saved Him. But that would have
been the desertion of the cause God's cause and man's the
cause of the ignorant defenseless sheep, whose very salvation
depended on the keeping of that Gospel intact : therefore the
Shepherd gave His life a witness to the truth, and a sacrifice
to God. It was a profound truth that the populace gave ut-
terance to, when they taunted Him on the cross : " He saved
others, Himself He can not save." No, of course not ; He
that will save others can not save Himself.
Of that pastoral character He gives here three proofs. I
know My sheep am known of Mine I lay down My life
for the sheep.
I know my sheep, as the Father knoweth Me. In other
words, as unerringly as His Father read His iicart, so unerr-
ingly did He read the heart of man and recognize His own.
Ask we how ? An easy reply, and a common one, would
be He recognized them by the Godhead in Him : His mind
was Divine, therefore omniscient : He knew all things, there-
fore He knew what was in man: and therefore He knew His
own. But we must not slur over His precious words in this
way. That Divinity of His is made the pass-key by which
we open all mysteries with fatal facility, and save ourselves
from thinking of them. We get a dogma ard cover truth
with it : we satisfy ourselves with saying Christ was God,
and lose the precious humanities of His heart and life.
18
4.IO The Good Shepherd.
*
There is here a deep truth of human nature, for he does not
limit that recognizing power to Himself He says that the
sheep know Him as truly as He the sheep. He knew men on
the same principle on which we know men the same on
which we know Him. The only difference is in degree : He
knows with infinitely more unerringness than we, but the
knowledge is the same in kind.
Let us think of this. There is a certain mysterious tact
of sympathy and antipathy by which we discover the like
and unlike of ourselves in others' character. You can not
find out a man's opinions unless he chooses to express them;
but his feelings and his character you may. He can not hide
them : you feel them in his look and mein, and tones and
motion. There is, for instance, a certain something in sincer-
ity and reality which can not be mistaken a certain some-
thing in real grief which the most artistic counterfeit can not
imitate. It is distinguished by nature, not education.
There is a something in an impure heart which purity de-
tects afar off. Marvellous it is how innocence perceives the
approach of evil which it can not know by experience, just
as the dove w r hich has never seen a falcon trembles by in-
stinct at its approach ; just as a blind man detects by finer
sensitiveness the passing of the cloud which he can not see
overshadowing the sun. It is wondrous how the truer we
become the more unerringly we know the ring of truth, dis-
cern whether a man be true or not, and can fasten at once
upon the rising lie in word and look, and dissembling act.
Wondrous how the charity of Christ in the heart finely per-
ceives the slightest aberration from charity in others, in un-
gentle thought or slanderous tone.
Therefore Christ knew His sheep by that mystic power al-
ways finest in the best natures, most developed in the high-
est, by which like detects what is like and what unlike it-
self. He was perfect love, perfect truth, perfect purity :
therefore He knew what was in man, and felt, as by another
sense, afar off the shadows of unlovingness, and falseness, and
impurity.
No one can have read the Gospels without remarking that
they ascribe to Him unerring skill in reading man. People,
we read, began to show enthusiasm for Him. But Jesus did
not trust Himself unto them, "for He knew what was in
man." He knew that the flatterers of to-day would be the
accusers of to-morrow. Nathanael stood before Him. He
had scarcely spoken a word ; but at once unhesitatingly, to
Nathanael's own astonishment "Behold an Israelite indeed,
VD whom there is no guile !" There came to Him a young
The Good Shepherd. . 411
man with vast possessions.: a single sentence, an exaggerated
epithet, an excited manner, revealed his character. Enthusi-
astic and amiable, Jesus loved him : capable of obedience, in
life's sunshine and prosperity, ay, and capable of aspiration
after something more than mere obedience, but not of sacri-
fice. Jesus tested him to the quick, and the young man fail-
ed. He did not try to call him back, for He knew what was
In him and what was not. He read through Zaccheus when
he climbed into the sycamore-tree, despised by the people as
a publican, really a son of Abraham : through Judas, with
his benevolent saying about the selling of the alabaster-box
for the poor, and his false kiss : through the curses of the
thief upon the cross, a faith that could be saved : through the
zeal of a man who in a fit of enthusiasm offered to go with
Him whithersoever He would. He read through the Phari-
sees, and His whole being shuddered with the recoil of utter
and irreconcilable aversion.
It was as if His bosom was some mysterious mirror on
which all that came near Him left a sullied or unsullied sur-
face, detecting themselves by every breath.
Now distinguish that Divine power from that cunning
sagacity which men call knowingness in the matter of char-
acter. The worldly-wise have maxims and rules ; but the
finer shades and delicacies of truth of character escape
them. They would prudently avoid Zaccheus a publican :
they
There is a very solemn aspect in which this power of Jesus
to know man presents itself. It is this which qualifies Him
for judgment this perfection of human sympathy. Perfect
sympathy with every most delicate line of good implies ex-
quisite antipathy to every shadow of a shade of evil. God
hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because
He is the Son of Man. On sympathy the final awards of
heaven and hell are built : attraction and repulsion, the law
of the magnet. To each pole all that has affinity with itself:
to Christ all that is Christlike : from Christ all that is not
Christlike forever and forever. Eternal judgment is noth-
ing more than the carrying out of these words, " I know my
sheep :" for the obverse of them is, " I never knew you, de-
part from me all ye that work iniquity."
The second proof which Christ alleges of the genuineness
of His pastorate is that His sheep know Him.
How shall we recognize truth Divine? What is the test
by which we shall know whether it crimes from God or not ?
They tell us we know Christ to be from God because He
wrought miracles ; we know a doctrine to be from God be-
4 1 2 The Good Shepherd.
cause we find it written: or because it is sustained by an
universal consent of fathers.
That is for observe what this argument implies there is
something more evident than truth : Truth can not prove it-
self: we want something else to prove it. Our souls judge
of truth our senses judge of miracles ; and the evidence of
our senses the lowest part of our nature is more certain
than the evidence of our souls, by which we must partake of
God.
Now to say so is to say that you can not be sure that it is
midday or morning sunshine unless you look at the sun-dial :
you can not be sure that the sun is shining in the heavens
unless you see his shadow on the dial-plate. The dial is val-
uable to a man who never reads the heavens the shadow is
good for him who has not watched the sun : but for a man
who lives in perpetual contemplation of the sun in heaven,
the sunshine needs no evidence, and every hour is known.
Now Christ says, " My sheep know Me" Wisdom is just-
ified by her children. Not by some lengthened investiga-
tion, whether the shepherd's dress be the identical dress, and
the staff and the crozier genuine, do the sheep recognize the
shepherd. They know him, they hear his voice, they know
him as a man knows his friend.
They know him, in short, instinctively. Just so does the
soul recognize what is of God and true. Truth is like light :
visible in itself, not distinguished by the shadows that it
casts. There is a something in our souls of God, which cor-
responds with what is of God outside us, and recognizes it
by direct intuition : something in the true soul which corre-
sponds with truth and knows it to be truth. Christ came
with truth, and the true recognize it as true : the sheep know
the shepherd, wanting no further evidence. Take a few ex-
amples : " God is Love." " What shall a man give in ex-
change for his soul ?" " He that saveth his life shall lose it :
and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." " All
things are possible to him that believeth." "The sabbath
was made for man, not man- for the sabbath." " God is a
Spirit."
Now the wise men of intellect and logical acumen wanted
proof of these truths. Give us, said they, your credentials.
" By what authority doesV thou these things ?" They want-
ed a sign from heaven to prove that the truth was true, and
the life He led, Godlike, and not devil-like. How can we be
sure that it is not frdrn Beelzebub, the prince of the devils,
that these deeds and sayings come ? We must be quite sure
that we are not taking a message from hell as one from
The Good Shepherd. 41 3
heaven. Give us demonstration, chains of evidence chapter
and verse authority.
But simple men had decided the matter already. They
knew very little of antiquity, church authority, and shadows
of coming events which prophecy casts before : but their
eyes saw the light, and their hearts felt the present God.
Wise Pharisees and learned doctors said, to account for a
wondrous miracle, " Give God the glory." But the poor un
lettered man, whose blinded eye had for the first time looked
on a face of love, replied, " Whether this man be a sinner or
not, I know not : one thing I know, that whereas I was blind,
now I see."
The well-read Jews could not settle the literary question,
whether the marks of his appearance coincided with the
prophecies. But the Samaritans felt the life of God : " Now
we believe, not because of thy word, but because we have
heard Him ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ."
The Shepherd had come, and the sheep knew his voice.
Brethren, in all matters of eternal truth, the soul is before
the intellect: the things of God are spiritually discerned.
You know truth by being true : you recognize God by being
like Him. The Scribe comes and says, I will prove to you
that this is sound doctrine by chapter and verse, by what
the old and best writers say, by evidence such as convinces
the intellect of an intelligent lawyer or juryman. Think you
the conviction of faith is got in that way ?
Christ did not teach like the Scribes. He spoke His truth.
He said, " If any man believe not, I judge him not ; the
word which I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the
last day." It was true, and the guilt of disbelieving it was
not an error of the intellect but a sin of the heart. Let us
stand upright : let us be sure that the test of truth is the soul
within us. Not at second-hand can we have assurance of
what is divine and what is not: only at first-hand. The
sheep of Christ hear His voice.
The third proof given by Christ was pastoral fidelity : " I
lay down my life for the sheep." Now here is the doctrine
of vicarious sacrifice : the sacrifice of one instead of another :
life saved by the sacrifice of another life.
Most of us know the meagre explanation of these words
which satisfies the Unitarians : they say that Christ merely
died as a martyr, in attestation of the truths He taught.
But you will observe the strength of the expression which
we can not explain away, "I lay down my life for," i. e, in-
stead of "the sheep." If. the Shepherd had not sacrificed
Himself, the sheep must have been the sacrifice.
414 The Good Shepherd.
Observe, however, the suffering of Christ was not the sam
suffering as that from which He saved us. The suffering of
Christ was death. But the suffering from which He re-
deemed us by death was more terrible than death. The pit
into which He descended was the grave. But the pit in
which we should have been lost forever, was the pit of self-
ishness and despair.
Therefore St. Paul affirms, " If Christ be not risen, ye are
vet in your sins" If Christ's resurrection be a dream, and
tie be not risen from the grave of death, you are yet in the
grave of guilt. He bore suffering to free us from what is
worse than suffering sin : temporal death to save us from
death everlasting : His life given as an offering for sin to
save the soul's eternal life.
Now in the text this sacrificing love of Christ is paralleled
by , the love of the Father to the Son. As He loved the
sheep, so the Father had loved Him. Therefore the sacrifice
of Christ is but a mirror of the love of God. The love of the
Father to the Son is self-sacrificing love.
You know that shallow men make themselves merry with
this doctrine. The sacrifice of God, they say, is a figment and
an impossibility. Nevertheless this parallel tells us that it
is one of the deepest truths of all the universe. It is the pro-
found truth which the ancient fathers endeavored to express
in the doctrine of the Trinity. For what is the love of the
Father to the Son Himself yet not Himself but the grand
truth of Eternal Love losing Itself and finding Itself again in
the being of another ? What is it but the sublime express-
ion of the unselfishness of God ?
It is a profound, glorious truth ; I wish I knew how to put
it in intelligible words. But if these words of Christ do not
make it intelligible to the heart, how can any words of mine?
The life of blessedness the life of love the life of sacrifice
the life of God, are identical. All love is sacrifice the
giving of life and self for others. God's life is sacrifice for
the Father loves the Son as the Son loves the sheep for
whom He gave His life.
Whoever will humbly ponder upon this will, I think, un-
derstand the Atonement better than all theology can teach
him. Oh, my brethren, leave men to quarrel as they will
about the theology of the Atonement ; here in these words is
the religion of it the blessed, all-satisfying religion for our
hearts. The self-sacrifice of Christ was the satisfaction to
the Father.
iiow could the Father be satisfied with the death of Christ,
unless He saw in the sacrifice mirrored His own love ? for
The Doubt of Thomas. 4 1 5
God can be satisfied only with that which is perfect as Him-
self. Agony does not satisfy God agony only satisfied Mo-
loch. Nothing satisfies God but the voluntary sacrifice of
love.
The pain of Christ gave God no pleasure only the love
that was tested by pain the love of perfect obedience. He
was obedient unto death.
XX.
THE DOUBT OF THOMAS.
" Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast
believed : blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
John xx. 29.
THE day on which these words were spoken was the first
day of the week. On that day Thomas, received demonstra-
tion that his Lord was risen from the dead. On that same
day a week before, Thomas had declared that no testimony
of others, no eyesight of his own, nothing short of touching
with his hands the crucifixion marks in his Master's body,
should induce him to believe a fact so unnatural as the res-
urrection of a human being from the grave. Those seven
days between must therefore have been spent in a state of
miserable uncertainty. How miserable and how restless
none can understand but those who have felt the wretched-
ness of earnest doubt.
Doubt moreover, observe, respecting all that is dear to a
Christian's hopes. For if Christ were not risen, Christianity
was false, and every high aspiration which it promised to
gratify was thrown back on the disappointed heart.
Let us try to understand the doubt of Thomas. There are
some men whose affections are stronger than their under-
standings : they feel more than they think. They are simple,
trustful, able to repose implicitly on what is told them lia-
ble sometimes to verge upon credulity and superstition, but
take them all in all, perhaps the happiest class of minds : for
it is happy to be without misgivings about the love of God
and our own eternal rest in Him. u Blessed," said Christ to
Thomas, " are they that have believed."
There is another class of men whose reflective powers are
stronger than their susceptive : they think out truth they
do not feel it out. Often highly gifted and powerful minds,
4i 6 The Doubt of Thomas.
they can not rest till they have made all their grounds Cer-
tain : they do not feel safe as long as there is one possibility
of delusion left : they prove all things. Such a man was
Thomas. He has well been called the rationalist among the
apostles. Happy such men can not be. An anxious and in-
quiring mind dooms its possessor to unrest. But men of
generous spirit, manly and affectionate, they may be : Thomas,
was. When Christ was bent on going to Jerusalem, to cer-
tain death, Thomas said, "Let us go up too, that we may die
with him." And men of mighty faith they may become, if
they are true to themselves and their convictions: Thomas
did. When such men do believe, it is belief with all the heart
and soul for life. When a subject has been once thoroughly
and suspiciously investigated, and settled once for all, the ad-
herence of the whole reasoning man, if given in at all, is given
frankly and heartily as Thomas gave it "My Lord, and my
God."
Now this question of a resurrection which made Thomas
restless, is the most anxious that can agitate the mind of man.
So awful in its importance, and out of Christ so almost des-
perately dark in its uncertainty, who shall blame an earnest
man severely if he crave the most indisputable proofs ?
Very clearly Christ did not. Thomas asked of Christ a
sign : he must put his own hands into the prints. His Mas-
ter gave him that sign or proof. He said, " Reach hither thy
hand." He gave it, it is true, with a gentle and delicate
reproof but He did give it. Now from that condescension
we are reminded of the darkness that hangs round the ques-
tion of a resurrection, and how excusable it is for a man to
question earnestly until he has got proof to stand on. For if
it were not excusable to crave a proof, our Master never
would have granted one. Resurrection is not one of those
questions on w r hich you can afford to wait : it is the question
of life and death. There are times when it does not weigh
heavily. When we have some keen pursuit before us : when
we are young enough to be satisfied to enjoy ourselves the
problem does not press itself. We are too laden with the
pressure of the present to care to ask w r hat is coming. But
at last a time comes when we feel it will be all over soon
that much of our time is gone, and the rest swiftly going.
And let a man be as frivolous as he will at heart, it is a ques-
tion too solemn to be put aside Whether he is going down
into extinction and the blank of everlasting silence or not.
Whether in those far ages, when the very oak which is to
form his coffin shall have become fibres of black mould, and
the church-yard in which he is to lie shall have become per
The Doubt of Thomas. 4 1 7
haps unconsecrated ground, and the spades of a generation
yet unborn shall have exposed his bones, those bones will be
the last relic in the world to bear record that he once trod
this green earth, and that life was once dear to him, Thomas,
or James, or Paul. Or whether that thrilling, loving, think-
ing something, that he calls hirnselt, has indeed within it an
indestructible existence which shall still be conscious, when
avery thing else shall have rushed into endless wreck. Oh,
in the awful earnestness of a question such as that, a specula-
tion and a peradventure will not do : we must have proof
The honest doubt of Thomas craves a sign as much as the
cold doubt of the Sadducee. And a sign shall be mercifully
given to the doubt of love which is refused to the doubt of
indifference.
This passage- presents two lines of thought.
I. The naturalness of the doubts of Thomas, which partly
excuses them.
II. The evidences of the Christian Resurrection.
I. The naturalness of the doubts of Thomas.
The first assertion that we make to explain those doubts
is, that Nature is silent respecting a future life. All that
reason, all that nature, all that religion, apart from Christ,
have to show us is something worse than darkness. It is
the twilight of excruciating uncertainty. There js enough
in the riddle of this world to show us that there may be a
life to come; there is nothing to make it certain that there
will be one. We crave, as Thomas did, a sign either in the
height above or in the depth beneath, and the answer seems
to fall back like ice upon our hearts " there shall no sign
be given you."
It is the uncertainty of twilight. You strain at some-
thing in the twilight, and just when you are beginning to
make out its form and color, the light fails you, and your
eyelids sink down, wet and wearied with the exertion. Just
so it is when we strain into nature's mysteries, to discern the
secrets of the great hereafter. Exactly at the moment when
we think we begin to distinguish something, the light goes
out and we are left groping in darkness the darkness of the
grave.
Let us forget for a moment that we ever heard of Christ :
what is there in life or nature to strengthen the guess that
there is a life to come ? There are hints there are proba-
bilities ther2 is nothing more. Let us examine some of
those probabilities.
First, there is an irrepressible longing in our hearts, W e
18*
4 i 8 77/ Doubt of Thomas.
wish for immortality. The thought of annihilation is horri-
ble : even to conceive it is almost impossible. The wish is a
kind of argument : it is not likely that God would have giv-
en all men such a feeling, if He had not meant to gratify 5 it.
Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we
thirst, God has created liquids to gratify thirst. If we are
susceptible of attachments, there are beings to gratify that
love. If we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely that
there are. an eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that
craving.
Likely, I say : more we can not say. A likelihood of an
immortality of which our passionate yearnings are a pre-
sumption nothing higher than a likelihood. And in weary
moments, when the desire of life is not strong, and in unlov-
ing moments, there is not even a likelihood.
Secondly, corroborating this feeling we have the traditions
of universal belief. There is not a nation perhaps which
does not in some form or other hold that there is a country
beyond the grave where the weary are at rest. Now that
which all men everywhere and in every age have held, it is
impossible to treat contemptuously. How came it to be
held by all, if only a delusion ? Here is another probability
in the universality of belief. And yet when you come to es-
timate this, it is too -slender for a proof: it is only a pre-
sumption. The universal voice of mankind is not infallible.
It was the universal belief once on the evidence of the
senses that the earth was stationary : the universal voice
was wrong. The universal voice might be wrong in the
matter of a resurrection. It might be only a beautiful and
fond dream, indulged till hope made itself seem to be a re-
ality.' You can not build upon it.
Once again : in this strange world of perpetual change,
we are met by many resemblances to a resurrection. With-
out much exaggeration we call them resurrections. There
is tfie resurrection of the moth from the grave of the chrysa-
lis. For many ages the sculptured butterfly was the type
and emblem of immortality. Because it passes into a state
of torpor or deadness, and because from that it emerges by a
kind of resurrection the same, yet not the same in all the
radiance of a fresh and beautiful youth, never again to be
supported by the coarse substance of earth, but destined
henceforth to nourish its etherealized existence on the nectar
of the flowers the ancients saw in that transformation a
something added to their hopes of immortality. It was
their beautiful symbol of the soul's indestructibility.
Again, there is a kind of resurrection when the spring
The Doubt of Thomas. 4 1 9
brings vigor and motion back to the frozen pulse of the win-
ter world. Let any one go into the fields at this spring sea-
son of the year. Let him mark the busy preparations for
life which are going on. Life is at work in every emerald
bud, in the bursting bark of every polished bough, in the
greening tints of every brown hillside. A month ago every
thing was as still and cold as the dead silence which chills
the heart in the highest regions of the glacier solitudes.
Life is coming back to a dead world. It is a resurrection
surely ! The return of freshness to the frozen world is not
less marvellous than the return of sensibility to a heart
which has ceased to beat. If one has taken place, the other
is not impossible.
And yet all this, valuable as it is in the way of suggestive-
ness, is worth nothing in the way of proof. It is worth ev-
ery thing to the heart, for it strengthens the dim guesses and
vague intimations which the heart has formed already. It is
worth nothing to the intellect : for the moment we come to
argue the matter we find how little there is to rest upon in
these analogies. They are no real resurrections, after all :
they only look like resurrections. The chrysalis only seemed
dead : the tree in winter only seemed to have lost its vitali-
ty. Show us a butterfly which has been dried and crushed,
fluttering its brilliant wings next year again show us a
tree plucked up by the roots and seasoned by exposure, the
vital force really killed out; putting forth its leaves again,
then we should have a real parallel to a resurrection. But
nature does not show us that. So that all we have got in
the butterfly and the spring are illustrations exquisitely in
point after immortality is proved, but in themselves no
proofs at all.
Further still. Look at it in another point of view, and it
is a dark prospect. Human history behind and human his-
tory before, both give a stern " No," in reply to the question
Shall we rise again ?
Six thousand years of human existence have passed away ;
countless armies of the dead have set sail from the shores of
time. No traveller has returned from the still land beyond.
More than one hundred and fifty generations have done
their work, and sunk into the dust again, and still there is
not a voice ; there is not a whisper from the grave to tell us
whether indeed those myriads are in existence still, be-
sides, why should they be ? Talk as you will of the grand-
eur of man, why should it not be honor enough for him,
more than enough to satisfy a thing so mean, to ha>e had
his twenty or his seventy years' life-rent of God's universe ?
420 The Doubt of Thomas.
Why must such a thing, apart from proof, rise up and claim
to himself an exclusive immortality ?
Man's majesty ! man's worth ! the difference between him
and the elephant or ape is too degradingly small to venture
much on. That is not all : instead of looking backward, now
look forward. The wisest thinkers tell us that there are al-
ready on the globe traces of a demonstration that the human
race is drawing to its close. Each of the great human fami-
lies has had its o!ay its infancy its manhood its decline.
The two last races that have not been tried are on the stage
of earth doing their work now. There is no other to suc-
ceed them. Man is but of yesterday, and yet his race is
well-nigh done. Man is wearing out, as every thing before
him has been worn out. In a few more centuries the crust
of earth will be the sepulchre of the race of man, as it has
been the sepulchre of extinct races of palm-trees, and ferns,
and gigantic reptiles. The time is near when the bones of
the last human being will be given to the dust. It is his-
torically certain that man has quite lately, within a few thou-
sand years, been called into existence. It is certain that be-
fore very long the race must be extinct.
Now look at all this without Christ, and tell us whether
it be possible to escape such misgivings, and such reason-
ings as these which rise out of such an aspect of things.
Man, this thing of yesterday, which sprung out of the eter-
nal nothingness, why may he not sink, after he has played
his appointed part, into nothingness again ? You see the
leaves sinking one by one in autumn, till the heaps below
are rich with the spoils of a whole year's vegetation. They
were bright and perfect while they lasted : each leaf a mira-
cle of beauty and contrivance. There is no resurrection for
the leaves why must there be one for man ?
Go and stand some summer evening by the river side :
you will see the mayfly sporting out its little hour, in dense
masses of insect life, darkening the air a few feet above the
gentle swell of the water. The heat of that very afternoon
brought them into existence. Every gauze wing is traversed
by ten thousand fibres which defy the microscope to find a
flaw in their perfection. The omniscience and the care
bestowed upon that exquisite anatomy, one would think, can
not be destined to be wasted in a moment, Yet so it is :
wlfen the sun has sunk below the trees its little life is done.
Yesterday it was not : to-morrow it will not be. God has
bidden it be happy for one evening. It has no right or
claim to a second, and in the universe that marvellous life
has appeared once and will appear no more. May not the
The Doiibt of Thomas. 42 1
race of man smk like the generations of the mayfly? Why
can not the Creator, so lavish in His resources, afford to an-
nihilate souls as he annihilates insects ?
Would it not almost enhance His glory to believe it ?
That, brethren, is the question ; and Nature has no reply.
The fearful secret of sixty centuries has not yet found a
voice. The whole evidence lies before us. We know what
the greatest and wisest have had to say in favor of an im-
mortality ; and we know how, after eagerly devouring all
their arguments, our hearts have sunk back in cold disap-
pointment, and to every proof as we read, our lips have re-
plied mournfully, that will not stand. Search through tradi
tion, history, the world within you and' the world without
except in Christ there is not the shadow of a shade of proof
that man survives the grave.
I do not wonder that Thomas, with that honest accurate
mind of his, wishing that the news were true, yet dreading
lest it should be false, and determined to guard against
every possible illusion, delusion, and deception, said so strong-
ly, " Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails,
and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my
hand into his side, I will not believe."
II. The Christian proofs of a Resurrection.
This text tells us of two kinds of proof: The first is the
evidence of the senses " Thomas, because thou hast seen me,
thou hast believed." The other is the evidence of the Spirit
"Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have be-
lieved."
Let us scrutinize the external evidence of Christ's resur-
rection which those verses furnish. It is a twofold evidence :
The witness of the Apostle Thomas, who was satisfied with
the proofs the witness of St. John, who records the circum-
stance of his satisfaction. Consider first the witness of St.
John : try it by ordinary rules. Hearsay evidence, which
c/>mes second-hand, is suspicious, but St. John's is no distant
hearsay story. He does not say that he had heard the story
from Thomas, and that years afterwards, when the circum-
stances had lost their exact sharp outline, he had penned it
rio^vn, when he was growing old and his memory might be
failing. St. John was present the whole time. All the
apostles were there : they all watched the result with eager
interest. The conditions made by Thomas, without which
he would not believe, had been made before them all. They
all heard him say that the demonstration was complete :
they all saw him touch the wounds : and St. John recorded'
422 The Doubt of Thomas.
what he saw. Now a scene like that is one of those solemn
ones in a man's life which can not be forgotten : it graves it-
self on the memory. A story told us by another may be un-
intentionally altered or exaggerated in the repetition ; but a
spectacle like this, so strange and so solemn, could not be
forgotten or misinterpreted. St. John could have made no
mistake. Estimate next the worth of the witness of Thomas :
try it by the ordinary rules of life. Evidence is worth little
if it is the evidence of credulity. If you find a man believ-
ing every new story, and accepting every fresh discovery, so
called, without scrutiny, you may give him credit for sinceri-
ty ; you can riot re'st much upon his judgment : his testimony
can not go for much. For example, when St. Peter, after his
escape from prison, knocked at Mark's mother's door, there
went a maid to open it, who came back scared and startled
with the tidings that she had seen his angel or spirit. Had
she gone about afterwards among the believers with that
tale, that St. Peter was dead and alive again, it would have
been worth little. Her fears, her sex, her credulity, all rob-
bed her testimony of its worth.
Now the resurrection of Christ does not stand on such a
footing. There was one man who dreaded the possibility
of delusion, however credulous the others might be. He re-
solved beforehand that only one proof should be decisive.
He would not be contented with seeing Christ : that might
be a dream: it might be the vision of a disordered fancy.
He would not be satisfied with the assurance of others.
The evidence of testimony which he did reject was very
strong. Ten of his most familiar friends, and certain women,
gave in their separate and their united testimony ; but
against all that St. Thomas held out skeptically firm. They
might have been deceived themselves : they might have been
trifling with him. The possibilities of mistake were innumer-
able : the delusions of the best men about what they see are
incredible. He would trust a thing so infinitely important
to nothing but his own scrutinizing hand. It might be some
one personating his Master. He would put his hands into
real wounds, or else hold it unproved. The allegiance which
was given in so enthusiastically, " My Lord, and my God,"
was given in after, and not before scrutiny. It was the cau-
tious verdict of an enlightened, suspicious, most earnest, and
most honest skeptic.
Try the evidence next by character. Blemished character
damages evidence. Now the only charge that was ever
heard against the Apostle John was that he loved a world
'which hated him. The character of the Apostle Thomas is
The Doubt of Thomas. 423
that he was a man cautious in receiving evidence, and most
rigorous in exacting satisfactory proof, but ready to act upon
his convictions when once made, even to the death. Love,
elevated above the common love of man, in the one heroic
conscientiousness and a most rare integrity in the other
who impeaches that testimony ?
Once more : any possibility of interested motives will dis-
credit evidence. Ask we the motive of John or Thomas for
this strange tale ? John's reward a long and solitary ban-
ishment to the mines of Patmos. The gain and the bribe
which tempted Thomas a lonely pilgrimage to the far East,
and death at the last in India. Those were strange motives
to account for their persisting and glorying in the story of
the resurrection to the last ! Starving their gain, and martyr-
dom their price.
The evidence to which Thomas yielded was the evidence
of the senses touch, and sight, and hearing. Now the feel-
ing which arose from this touching, and feeling, and demon-
stration, Christ pronounced to be faith : " Thomas, because
thou hast seen, thou hast believed." There are some Chris-
tian writers who tell us that the conviction produced by the
intellect or the senses is not faith : but Christ says it is.
Observe, then, it matters not how faith comes whether
through the intellect, as in the case of St. Thomas or
through the heart, as in the case of St. John or as the result
of long education, as in the case of St. Peter. God has many
ways of bringing different characters to faith : but that
blessed thing which the Bible calls faith is a state of soul in
which the things of God become glorious certainties. It
was riot faith which assured Thomas that what stood before
him was the Christ he had known : that was sight. But it
was faith, which from the visible enabled him to pierce up to
the truth invisible: "My Lord, and my God." And it was
faith which enabled him through all life after, to venture
every thing on that conviction, and live for One who had
died for him.
Remark again this : The faith of Thomas was not merely
satisfaction about a fact : it was trust in a person. The
admission of a fact, however sublime, is not faith : we may
believe that Christ is risen, yet not be nearer heaven. It is
a Bible fact that Lazarus rose from the grave, but belief in
Lazarus's resurrection does not make the soul better than it
was. Thomas passed on from the fact of the resurrection to
the person of the risen : " My Lord, and my God." Trust in
the risen Saviour that was the belief which saved his soul.
And that is our salvation too. You may satisfy yourself
424 The Doubt of Thomas.
about the evidences of the resurrection ; you may bring in
your verdict well, like a cautious and enlightened judge;
you are then in possession of a fact, a most valuable and
curious fact : but faith of any saving worth you have not,
unless from the fact you pass on, like Thomas, to cast the
allegiance and the homage of your soul, and the love of all
your being, on Him whom Thomas worshipped. It is not
belief about the Christ, but personal trust in the Christ of
God, that saves the soul.
There is another kind of evidence by which the resurrec-
tion becomes certain. Not the evidence of the senses, but
the evidence of the spirit : " Blessed are they that have not
seen, and yet have believed." There are thousands of Chris-
tians who have never examined the evidences of the resur-
rection piece by piece : they are incapable of estimating it if
they did examine : they know nothing about the laws of ev^
idence: they have had no experience in balancing the value
of testimony : they are neither lawyers nor philosophers : and
yet these simple Christians have received into their very souls
the resurrection of their Redeemer, and look forward to
their own rising from the grave with a trust as firm, as
steady, and as saving, as if they had themselves put .their
hands into His wounds. They have never seen they know
nothing of proofs and miracles yet they believe, and are
blessed. How is this ?
I reply, there is an inward state of heart which makes
truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to
some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a
loving heart : purity is credible to a pure mind : life is cred-
ible to a spirit in which ever life beats strongly : it is incred-
ible to other men. Because of that such men believe. Of
course that inward state could not reveal a fact like the
resurrection ; but it can receive the fact the moment it is
revealed without requiring evidence. The love of St. John
himself never could discover a resurrection ; but it made
a resurrection easily believed, when the man of intellect,
St. Thomas, found difficulties. Therefore " with the heart
man believeth unto righteousness," and therefore "he that
believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself,"
and therefore "faith is the substance of things hoped for."
Now it is of such a state, a state of love and hope, which
makes the Divine truth credible and natural at once, that
Jesus speaks : " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet
have believed."
There are men in whom the resurrection begun makes the
resurrection credible. In them the Spirit of the risen Saviour
The Doubt of Thomas. 425
works already ; and they have mounted with Him from the
grave. They have risen out of the darkness of doubt, and are
expatiating in the brightness and the sunshine of a day in
which God is ever light. Their step is as free as if the clay
of the sepulchre had" been shaken off: and their hearts are
lighter than those of other men ; and there is in them an
unearthly triumph which they are unable to express. They
have risen above the narrowness of life, and all that is petty,
and ungenerous, and mean. They have risen above fear-
they have risen above self. In the New Testament that is
called the spiritual resurrection, a being, " risen with Christ :"
and the man in whom all that is working has got something
more blessed than external evidence to rest upon. He has the
witness in himself: he has not seen, and yet he has believed :
he believed in a resurrection, because he has the resurrection
in himself. The resurrection in all its heavenliness and un-
earthly elevation has begun within his soul, and he knows as
clearly as if he had demonstration, that it must be developed
in an eternal life.
Now this is the higher and nobler kind of faith a faith
more blessed than that of Thomas. " Because thou hast seen
me, thou hast believed." There are times when we envy, as
possessed of higher privileges, those who saw Christ in the
flesh : we think that if we could have heard that calm voice,
or seen that blessed presence, or touched those lacerated
wounds in His sacred flesh, all doubt would be set at rest
forever. Therefore these words must be our corrective.
God has granted us the possibility of believing in a more
trustful and more generous way than if we sain. To believe,
not because we are learned and can prove, but because there
is a something in us, even God's own Spirit, which makes us
feel Light as light, and Truth as true that is the blessed
faith.
Blessed, because it carries with it spiritual elevation of
character. Narrow the prospects of man to this time-world,
and it is impossible to escape the conclusions of the Epicu-
rean sensualist. If to-morrow we die, let us eat and drink
to day. If we die the sinner's death, it becomes a matter of
mere taste whether we shall live the sinner's life or not.
But if our existence is forever, then plainly, that which is to
be daily subdued and subordinated is the animal within us :
that which is to be cherished is that which is likest God
within us which we have from Him, and which is the sole
pledge of eternal being in the spirit-life.
426 The Irreparable Past.
XXI.
THE IRREPARABLE PAST.
"And he eometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and
take your rest : it is enough, the hour is come ; behold, the Son of man is
betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise up, let us go ; lo, he that betrayeth
me is at hand." Mark xiv. 41. 42.
IT is upon two sentences of this passage that our attention
it to be fixed to-day sentences which in themselves are ap-
parently contradictory, but which are pregnant with a les-
son of the deepest practical import. Looked at in the
mere meaning of the words as they stand, our Lord's first
command given to His disciples, " Sleep on now, and take
your rest," is inconsistent with the second command, which
follows almost in the same breath, " Rise, let us be going."
A permission to slumber, and a warning to arouse at once,
are injunctions which can scarcely standlogether in the same
sentence consistently.
Our first inquiry therefore is, what did our Redeemer
mean ? We shall arrive at the true solution of this difficulty
if we review the circumstances under which these words were
spoken.
The account with which these verses stand connected, be-
longs to one of the last scenes in the drama of our Master's
earthly pilgrimage : it is found in the history of the trial-
hour which was passed in the garden of Gethsemane. And
an hour it was indeed big with the destinies of the world,
for the command had gone forth to seize the Saviour's per-
son : but the Saviour was still at large and free. Upon the
success or the frustration of that plan the world's fate was
trembling. Three men were selected to be witnesses of the
sufferings of that hour: three men, the favored ones on all
occasions of the apostolic band, and the single injunction
which had been laid upon them was, " Watch with me one
hour."
That charge to watch or keep awake, seems to have been
given with two ends in view. He asked them to keep
awake, first that they might sympathize with him. He com-
manded them to keep awake that they might be on their
guard against surprise : that they might afford sympathy,
because never in all His career did Christ more stand in need
The Irreparable Past. 427
of such soothing as it was in the power of man to give. It is
true that was not much : the struggle, and the agony, and
the making up of the mind to death had something in them
too Divine and too mysterious to be understood by the dis-
ciples, and therefore sympathy could but reach a portion of
what our Redeemer felt. Yet still it appears to have been
an additional pang in Christ's anguish to find that He was
left thoroughly alone -to endure, while even His own friends
did not compassionate His endurance. We know what a re-
lief it is to see the honest affectionate face of a menial serv-
ant, or some poor dependent, regretting that your suifering
may be infinitely above his comprehension. It may be a se-
cret which you can not impart to him : or it may be a men-
tal distress which his mind is too uneducated to appreciate :
yet still his sympathy in your dark hour is worth a world.
What you suifer he knows not, but he knows you do suffer,
and it pains him to think of it : there is balm to you in that.
This is the power of sympathy.
We can do little for one another in this world. Little,
very little, can be done when the worst must come ; but yet
to know that the pulses of a human heart are vibrating with
yours, there is something in that, let the. distance between
man and man be ever so immeasurable, exquisitely soothing.
It was this, and but this, in the way of feeling, that Christ
asked of Peter, James, and John : Watch be awake : let me
not feel that when I agonize you can be at ease and comfort-
able. But it would seem there was another thing which He
asked in the way of assistance. The plot to capture Him was
laid ; the chance of that plot's success lay in making the sur-
prise so sudden as to cut off all possibility of escape. The
hope of defeating that plot depended upon the fidelity of
apostolic vigilance. Humanly speaking, had they been vigi-
lant they might have saved Him. Breathless listening for
the sound of footsteps in the distance : eyes anxiously strain-
ing through the trees to distinguish the glitter of the lan-
terns ; unremitting apprehension catching from the word of
Christ an intimation that He was in danger, and so giving
notice on the first approach of any thing like intrusion that
would have been watching.
That command to watch was given twice first, when
Christ first retired aside leaving the disciples by themselves;
secondly, in a reproachful way when He returned and found
His request disregarded. He waked them up once and said,
" What, could ye not watch with me one hour ?" He came
again, and found their eyes closed once more. On that occa-
sion not a syllable fell from His lips; He did not waken
428 The Irreparable Past.
them a second time. He passed away sad and disappointed,
and left them to their slumbers. But when He came the
third time, it was no longer possible for their sleep to do
Him harm or their watching to do Him good. The precious
opportunity was lost forever. Sympathy, vigilance, the hour
for these was past. The priests had succeeded in their sur-
prise, and Judas had well led them through the dark, with
unerring accuracy, to the very spot where his Master knelt ;
and there were seen quite close, the dark figures shown in re-
lief against the glare of the red torchlight, and every now
and then the gleam glittering from the bared steel and the
Roman armor. It was all over, they might sleep as they
liked, their sleeping could do no injury now; their watching
could do no good. And, therefore, partly in bitterness, part-
ly in reproach, partly in a kind of irony, partly in sad earnest,
our Master said to His disciples : " Sleep on now : there is no
use in watching now : take your rest forever if you will.
Sleep and rest can do me no more harm now, for all that
watching might have done is lost."
But, brethren, we have to observe that in the next sen-
tence our Redeemer addresses Himself to the consideration
of what could yet- be done : the best thing as circumstances
then stood. So far as any good to be got from watching
went, they might sleep on : there was no reparation for the
fault that had been done : but so far as duty went, there was
still much of endurance to which they had to rouse them-
selves. They could not save their Master, but they might
loyally and manfully share His disgrace, and, if it must be,
His death. They could not put off the penalty, but they
might steel themselves cheerfully to share it. Safety was
out of the question : but they might meet their fate, instead
of being overwhelmed by it: and so, as respected what was
gone by, Christ said, " Sleep, what is done can not be un-
done ;" but as respected the duties that were lying before
them still, He said, " We must make the best of it that can
be made : rouse yourselves to dare the worst : on to enact
your parts like men. Rise, let us be going we have some-
thing still left to do." Here then we have two subjects of
contemplation distinctly marked out for us.
I. The irreparable past.
II. The available future.
The words of Christ are not like the words of other men :
His sentences do not end with the occasion which called them
forth: every sentence of Christ's is a deep principle of hu-
man life, and it is so with these sentences : " Sleep on now "
The Irreparable Past. - 429
that is a principle. " Rise up, and let us be going " that
is another principle. The principle contained in " Sleep on
now " is this, that the past is irreparable, and after a certain
moment waking will do no good. You may improve the fu-
ture, the past is gone beyond recovery. As to all that is
gone by, so far as the hope of altering it goes, you may sleep
on and take your rest : there is no power in earth or heaven
that can undo what has once been done.
Now let us proceed to give illustrations of this principle.
It is true, first of all, with respect to time that is gone by.
Time is the solemn inheritance to which every man is bora
heir, who has a life-rent of this world a little section cut out
of eternity and given us to do our work in : an eternity be-
fore, an eternity behind ; and the small stream between,
floating swiftly from one into the vast bosom of the other.
The man who has felt with all his soul the significance of
Time will not be long in learning any lesson that this world
has to teach him. Have you ever felt it, my Christian breth-
ren ? Have you ever realized how your own little streamlet
is gliding away, and bearing you along with it towards that
awful other world of which all things here are but the thin
shadows, down into that eternity towards which the confused
wreck of all earthly things are bound? Let us realize that,
beloved brethren : until that sensation of Time, and the infi-
nite meaning which is wrapped up in it, has taken possession
of our souls, there is no chance of our ever feeling other than
that it is worse than madness to sleep that time away. Ev-
ery day in this world has its work ; and every day as it rises
out of eternity keeps putting to each of us the question
afresh, What will you do before to-day has sunk into eternity
and nothingness again ? And now what have we to say with
respect to this strange solemn thing Time? That men do
with it through life just what the apostles did for one precious
and irreparable hour in the garden of Gethsemane : they go
to sleep. Have you ever seen those marble statues in some
public square or garden, which art has so fashioned into a
perennial fountain that through the lips or through the hands
the clear water flows in a perpetual stream, on and on for-
ever ; and the marble stands there passive, *cold making
no effort to arrest the gliding water ?
It is so that Time flows through the hands of men swift,
never pausing till it has run itself out ; and there is the man
petrified into a marble sleep, not feeling what it is which is
passing away forever. It is so, brethren, just so, that the
destiny of nine men out of ten accomplishes itself, slipping
away from them, aimless, useless, till it is too late. And
430 The Irreparable Past.
this passage asks us with all the solemn thoughts which
crowd around an approaching eternity what has been our
life, and what do we intend it shall be? Yesterday, last
week, last year they are gone. Yesterday, for example,
was such a day as never was before, and never can be again.
Out of darkness and eternity it was born a new fresh day :
into darkness and eternity it sank again forever. It had a
voice calling to us, of its own. Its own work its own du-
ties. What were we doing yesterday? Idling, whiling
away the time in light and luxurious literature Tiot as life's
relaxation, but as life's business? thrilling our hearts with
the excitements of life contriving how to spend the day
most pleasantly ? Was that our day ? Sleep, brethren ! all
that is but the sleep of the three apostles. And now let us
remember this : there is a day coming when that sleep will
be broken rudely, "with a shock : there is a day in our future
Jives when our time will be counted not by years nor by
months, nor yet by hours, but by minutes the day when
unmistakable symptoms shall announce that the messengers
of death have come to take us.
That startling moment will come w r hich it is in vain to at-
tempt to realize now, when it will be felt that it is all over
at last that our chance and our trial are past. The moment
that we have tried to think of, shrunk from, put away from
us, here it is going too, like all other moments that have
gone before it : and then with eyes unsealed at last, you look
back on the life which is gone by. There is no mistake about
it : there it is, a sleep, a most palpable sleep self-indulged
unconsciousness of high destinies, and God and Christ : a
sleep when Christ was calling out to you to watch with Him
one hour a sleep when there was something to be done a
sleep broken, it may be, once or twice by restless dreams,
and by a voice of truth which would make itself heard at
times, but still a sleep which was only rocked into deeper
stillness by interruption. And now from the undone eterni-
ty the bosom of whose waves is distinctly audible upon your
soul, there comes the same voice again a solemn sad voice
but no longer the same word, " Watch " other words alto-
gether, " You may go to sleep." It is too late to wake;
there is no science in earth or heaven to recall time that
once has fled.
Again, this principle of the irreparable past holds good
with respect to preparing for temptation. That hour in the
garden was a precious opportunity given for laying in spir-
itual strength. Christ knew it well. He struggled and
fought then : therefore there was no struggling afterwards
The Irreparable Past. 431
no trembling in the judgment-hall no shrinking on the cross,
but only dignified and calm victory ; for He had fought the
temptation on His knees beforehand, and conquered all in the
garden. The battle of the judgment-hall, the battle of the
cross, were already fought and over, in the watch and in the
agony. The apostles missed the meaning of that hour ; and
therefore when it came to the question of trial, the loudest
boaster of them all shrunk from acknowledging whose he
was, and the rest played the part of the craven and the
renegade. And if the reason of this be asked, it is simply
this : They went to trial unprepared : they had not prayed :
and what is a Christian without prayer but Samson with-
out his talisman of hair?
Brethren, in this world, when there is any foreseen or sus-
pected danger before us, it is our duty to forecast our trial.
It is our wisdom to put on our armor to consider what lies
before us to call up resolution in God's strength to go
through what we may have to do. And it is marvellous
how difficulties smooth away before a Christian when he
does this. Trials that cost him a struggle to meet even in
imagination like the heavy sweat of Gethsemane, when
Christ was looking forward and feeling exceeding sorrowful
even unto death come to their crisis ; and behold, to his
astonishment they are nothing they have been fought and
conquered already. But if you go to meet those tempta-
tions, not as Christ did, but as the apostles did, prayerless,
trusting to the chance impulse of the moment, you may make
up your mind to fail. That opportunity lost is irreparable :
it is your doom to yield then. Those words are true, you
may "sleep on now, and take your rest," for you have be-
trayed yourselves into the hands of danger.
And now one word about prayer. It is a preparation for
danger, it is the armor for battle. Go not, my Christian
brother, into the dangerous world without it. You kneel
down at night to pray, and drowsiness weighs down your
eyelids. A hard day's work is a kind of excuse, and you
shorten your prayer and resign yourself softly to repose.
The morning breaks, and it may be you rise late, and so
your early devotions are not done, or done with irregular
haste. No watching unto prayer wakefulness once more
omitted. And now we ask, is that reparable? Brethren,
we solemnly believe not. There has been that done which
can not be undone. You have given up your prayer, and
you will suffer for it. Temptation is before you, and you are
not fit to meet it. There is a guilty feeling on the soul, and
you linger at a distance from Christ. It is no marvel if that
432 The Irreparable Past.
day, in which you suffer drowsiness to interfere with prayer,
be a day on which you betray Him by cowardice and soft
shrinking from duty. Let it be a principle through life, mo-
ments of prayer intruded upon by sloth can not be made up.
We may get experience, but we can not get back the rich
freshness and the strength which were wrapped up in these
moments.
Once again this principle is true in another respect. Op-
portunities of doing good do not come back. We are here,
brethren, for a most definite and intelligible purpose to
educate our own hearts by deeds of love, and to be the in-
strument of blessing to our brother men. There are two
ways in which this is to be done by guarding them from
danger, and by soothing them in their rough path by kindly
sympathies the two things which the apostles were asked
to do for Christ. And it is an encouraging thought, that he
who can not do the one has at least the other in his power.
If he can not protect he can sympathize. Let the weakest
let the humblest in this congregation remember, that in
his daily course he can, if he will, shed around him almost a
heaven. Kindly words, sympathizing attentions, watchful-
ness against wounding men's sensitiveness these cost very
little, but they #re priceless in their value. Are they not,
brethren, almost the staple of our daily happiness ? From
hour to hour, from moment to moment, we are supported,
blest, by small kindnesses. And then consider : Here is a
section of life, one-third, one-half, it may be three-fourths
gone by, and the question before us is, how much has been
done in that way ? Who has charged himself with the
guardianship of his brother's safety ? Who has laid on him-
self as a sacred duty to sit beside his brother suffering? Oh !
my brethren, it is the omission of these things which is irrepa-
rable : irreparable, when you look to the purest enjoyment
which might have been your own : irreparable, when you
consider the compunction which belongs to deeds of love
not done ; irreparable, w r hen you look to this groaning w r orld
and feel that its agony of bloody sweat has been distilling
all night, and you were dreaming away in luxury ! Shame,
shame upon our selfishness ! There is an infinite voice in
the sin and sufferings of earth's millions, which makes every
idle moment, every moment, that is, w r hich is not relaxation,
guilt ; and seems to cry out, If you will not bestir yourself
for love's sake now, it will soon be too late.
Lastly, this principle applies to a misspent youth. There
is something very remarkable in the picture which is placed
before us. There is a picture of One struggling, tolling.
The Irreparable Past. 433
standing between others and danger, and those others quiet-
ly content to reap the benefit of that struggle without anxie-
ty of their own. And there is something in this singularly
like the position in which all young persons are placed.
The young are by God's providence exempted in a great
measure from anxiety : they are as the apostles were in re-
lation to their Master: their friends stand between them
and the struggles of existence. They are not called upon to
think for themselves : the burden is borne by others. They
get their bread without knowing or caring how it is paid
for : they smile and laugh without a suspicion of the anxious
thoughts of day and night which a parent bears to enable
them to smile. So to speak they are sleeping and it is not
a guilty sleep while another watches.
My young brethren youth is one of the precious oppor-
tunities of life rich in blessing if you choose to make it so,
but having in it the materials of undying remorse if you suf-
fer it to pass unimproved. Your quiet Gethsemane is now.
Gethsemane's struggles you can not know yet. Take care
that you do not learn too well Gethsemane's sleep. Do you
know how you can imitate the apostles in their fatal sleep ?
You can suffer your young days to pass idly and uselessly
away; you can live as if you had nothing to do but to en-
joy yourselves : you can let others think for you, and not
try to become thoughtful yourselves : till the business and
the difficulties of life come upon you unprepared, and you
find yourselves like men waking from sleep, hurried, con-
fused, scarcely able to stand, with all the faculties bewilder-
ed, not knowing right from wrong, led headlong to evil, just
because you have not given yourselves in time to learn what
is good. All that is sleep.
And now let us mark it. You can not repair that in after-
life. Oh ! remember every period of human life has its own
lesson, and you can not learn that lesson in the next period.
The boy has one set of lessons to learn, and the young man
another, and the grown-up man another. Let us consider
one single instance. The boy has to learn docility, gentle-
ness of temper, reverence, submission. All those feelings
which are to be transferred afterwards in full cultivation to
God, like plants nursed in a hotbed and then planted out,
are to be cultivated first in youth. Afterwards, those habits
which have been merely habits of obedience to an earthly
parent, are to become religious submission to a heavenly par-
ent. Our parents stand to us in the place of God. Venera-
tion for our parents is intended to become afterwards adora-
tion for something higher. Take that single instance ; and
19
434 The Irreparable Past.
now suppose that that is not learnt in boyhood. Suppose
that the boy sleeps to, that duty of veneration, and learns
only flippancy, insubordination, and the habit of deceiving
his father can that, my young brethren, be repaired after-
wards? Humanly speaking, not. Life is like the transition
from class to class in a school. The school-boy who has not
learnt arithmetic in the earlier classes can not secure it when
he comes to mechanics in the higher: each section has its
own sufficient work. He may be a good philosopher or a
good historian, but. a bad arithmetician he remains for life;
for he can not lay the foundation at the moment when he
must be building the superstructure. The regiment which
has not perfected itself in its manoeuvres on the parade-
ground can not learn them before the guns of the enemy.
And just in the same way, the young person who has slept
his youth away, and become idle, and selfish, and hard, can
not make up for that afterwards. He may do something,
he may be religious yes ; but he can not be what he
might have been. There is a part of his heart which will
remain uncultivated to the end. The apostles could share
their Master's sufferings they could not save Him. Youth
has its irreparable past.
And therefore, my young brethren, let it be impressed
upon you NOW is a time, infinite in its value for eternity,
which will never return again. Sleep not ; learn that there
is a very solemn work of heart which must be done while the
stillness of the garden of your Gethsemane gives you time.
Now or never. The treasures at your command are infinite.
Treasures of time, treasures of youth, treasures of opportuni-
ty that grown-up men would sacrifice every thing they have
to possess. Oh for ten years of youth back again with the
added experience of age ! But it can not be : they must be
content to sleep on now, and take their rest.
We are to pass on next to a few remarks on the other sen-
tence in this passage, which brings before us for considera-
tion the future which is still available : for we are to observe,
that our Master did not limit His apostles to a regretful rec-
ollection of their failure. Recollection of it He did demand.
There were the materials of a most cutting self-reproach in
the few words He said : for they contained all the desolation
of that sad word, never. Who knows not what that word
wraps up never it never can be undone. Sleep on. But
yet there was no sickly lingering over the irreparable. Our
Master's words are the words of One who had fully recog-
nized the hopelessness of His position, but yet manfully and
calmly had numbered His resources and scanned His duties,
The Irreparable Past. 435
and then braced up His mind to meet the exigencies of His
situation with no passive endurance : the moment was come
for action " Rise, let us be going."
Now the broad general lesson which we gain from this is
not hard to read. It is that a Christian is to be forever rous-
ing himself to recognize the duties which lie before him now.
In Christ the motto is ever this, " Let us be going." Let me
speak to the conscience of some one. Perhaps yours is a
very remorseful past a foolish, frivolous, disgraceful, frit-
tered past. Well, Christ says, My servant, be sad, but no
languor ; there is work to be done for me yet rise up, be
going ! Oh my brethren, Christ takes your wretched rem-
nants of life the feeble pulses of a heart which has spent its
best hours not for Him, but for self and for enjoyment, and
in His strange love He condescends to accept them.
Let me speak to another kind of experience. Perhaps we
feel that we have faculties which never have and now never
will find their right field ; perhaps we are ignorant of many
things which can not be learnt now ; perhaps the seed-time
of life has gone by, and certain powers of heart and mind
will not grow now ; perhaps you feel that the best days of
life are gone, and it is too late to begin things which were in
your power once : still, my repentant brother, there is encour-
agement from your Master yet. Wake to the opportunities
that yet remain. Ten years of life five years one year
say you have only that will you sleep that away because
you have already slept too long ? Eternity is crying out to
you louder and louder as you near its brink, Rise, be going :
count your resources : learn what you are not fit for, and
give up wishing for it : learn what you can do, and do it with
the energy of a man. That is the great lesson of this pas^
sage. But now consider it a little more closely.
Christ impressed two things on His apostles' minds : 1.
The duty of Christian earnestness " Rise ;" 2. The duty of
Christian energy " Let us be going."
Christ roused them to earnestness when He said, "Rise.'-
A short, sharp, rousing call. They were to start up and
wake to the realities of their position. The guards w.ere on
them : their Master was about' to be led away to doom.
That was an awakening which would make men spring to
their feet in earnest. Brethren, goodness and earnestness are
nearly the same thing. In the language in which this Bible
was written there was one word which expressed them both :
what we translate a good man, in Greek is literally " ear-
nest." The Greeks felt that to be earnest was nearly iden-
tical with being good. But, however, there is a day in life
4.36 The Irreparable Past.
when a man must be earnest, but it does not follow that he
will be good. " Behold the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out
to meet him." That is a sound that will thunder through
the most fast-locked slumber, and rouse men whom sermons
can not rouse. But that will not make them holy. Earnest-
ness of life, brethren, that is goodness. Wake in death you
must, for it is an earnest thing to die. Shall it be this, I
pray you? Shall it be the voice of death which first SMVS,
"Arise," at the very moment when it says, "Sleep on for-
ever?" Shall it be the bridal train sweeping by, and the
shutting of the doors, and the discovery that the lamp is
gone out ? Shall that be the first time you know that it is
an earnest thing to live ? Let us feel that we have been do-
ing : learn what time is sliding from you, and not stopping
when you stop : learn what sin is : learn what " never " is :
" Awake, thou that sleepest."
Lastly, Christian energy " Let us be going." There were
two ways open to Christ in which to submit to His doom.
He might have waited for it : instead of which He went to
meet the soldiers. He took up the cross, the cup of anguish
was not forced between His lips, He took it with His own
hands, and drained it quickly to the last drop. In after-
years the disciples understood the lesson, and acted on it.
They did not wait till persecution overtook them ; they
braved the Sanhedrim: they fronted the world: they pro-
claimed aloud the unpopular and unpalatable doctrines of
the resurrection and the cross. Now in this there lies a prin-
ciple. Under no conceivable set of circumstances are we
justified in sitting
"By the poison 'd springs of life,
Waiting for the morrow which shall free us from the strife."
Under no circumstances, whether of pain, or grief, or disap-
pointment, or irreparable mistake, can it be true that there is
not something to be done, as well as something to be suffered.
And thus it is that the spirit of Christianity draws over our
life, not a leaden cloud of remorse and despondency, but a
sky .not perhaps of radiant, but yet of most serene and chas-
tened and manly hope. There is a past which is gone for-
ever. But there is a future which is still our own.
SERMONS.
Serie0.
THE TONGUE.
" Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Be-
hold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth ! And the tongue is a fire, a
world of iniquity : so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the
whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature ; and it is set on fire of
hell. St. James iii. 5, 6.
IN the development of Christian truth a peculiar office was
assigned to the Apostle James.
It was given to St. Paul to proclaim Christianity as the
spiritual law of liberty, and to exhibit faith as the most act-
ive principle within the breast of man. It was St. John's to
say that the deepest quality in the bosom of Deity is love ;
and to assert that the life of God in man is love. It was the
office of St. James to assert the necessity of moral rectitude ;
his very name marked him out peculiarly for this office : he
was emphatically called, " the Just :" integrity was his peculiar
characteristic. A man singularly honest, earnest, real. Ac-
cordingly, if you read through his whole epistle, you will
find it is, from first to last, one continued vindication of the
first principles of morality against the semblances of religion.
He protested against the censoriousness which was found
connected with peculiar claims of religious feelings. "If
any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not
his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion
is vain." He protested against that spirit which had crept
into the Christian brotherhood, truckling to the rich and de-
spising the poor. " If ye have respect of persons ye commit
sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors." He
protested against that sentimental fatalism which induced
men to throw the blame of their own passions upon God.
4.38 The Tongue.
*' Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God ;
for God can not tempt to evil ; neither tempteth He any
man." He protested against that unreal religion of excite-
ment which diluted the earnestness of real religion in the en-
joyment of listening. "Be ye doers of the word, and not
hearers only ; deceiving your own souls." He protested
against that trust in the correctness of theological doctrine
which neglected the cultivation of character. " What doth
it profit, if a man say that he hath faith, and have not works ?
Can faith save him ?"
Read St. James's epistle through, this is the mind breath-
ing through it all : all this talk about religion, and spiritual-
ity words, words, words nay, let us have realities.
It is well known that Luther complained of this epistle,
that it did not contain the Gospel ; for men who are ham-
pered by a system will say even of an inspired apostle
that he does not teach the Gospel if their own favorite doc-
trine be not the central subject of his discourse ; but St.
James's reply seems spontaneously to suggest itself to us.
The Gospel ! how can we speak of the Gospel, when the
first principles of morality are forgotten ? when Christians
are excusing themselves, and slandering one another ? How
can the superstructure of love and faith be built, when the
very foundations of human character justice, mercy, truth
have not been laid ?
L The license of the tongue.
II. The guilt of that license.
The first license given to the tongue is slander. I am not,
of course, speaking now of that species of slander against
which the law of libel provides a remedy, but of that of
which the Gospel alone takes cognizance ; for the worst in-
juries which man can do to man are precisely those which
are too delicate for law to deal with. We consider therefore
not the calumny which is reckoned such by the moralities of
an earthly court, but that which is found guilty by the spirit-
ualities of the courts of heaven that is, the mind of God.
Now observe, this slander is compared in the text to poi-
son " the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison."
The deadliest poisons are those for which no test is known :
there are poisons so destructive that a single drop insinuated
into the veins produces death in three seconds, and yet no
chemical science can separate that virus from the contam-
inated blood, and show the metallic particles of poison glit-
tering palpably, and say, "Behold, it is there !"
In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the
The Tongue. 439
smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is con-
centrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the mi-
croscope can not distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it
can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and
convert day and night into restless misery.
In St. James's day, as now, it would appear that there
were idle men and idle women, who went about from house
to house, dropping slander as they went, and yet you could
not take up that slander and detect the falsehood there.
You could not evaporate the truth in the slow process of the
crucible, and then show the residuum of falsehood glittering
and visible. You could not fasten upon any word or sen-
tence, and say that it was calumny ; for in order to consti-
tute slander it is not necessary that the word spoken should
be false half truths are often more calumnious than whole
falsehoods. It is not even necessary that a word should be
distinctly uttered ; a dropped lip, and arched eyebrow, a
shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an incredulous expres-
sion of countenance, nay, even an emphatic silence, may do
the work : and when the light and trifling thing which has
done the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left behind,
to work and rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human exist-
ence, and to poison human society at the fountain - springs
of life. Very emphatically was it said by one whose whole
being had smarted under such affliction, " Adder's poison is
under their lips."
The second license given to the tongue is in the way of
persecution ; "therewith curse we men which are made after
the similitude of God." " We !" men who bear the name of
Christ curse our brethren ! Christians persecuted Chris-
tians. Thus even in St. James's age that spirit had begun,
the monstrous fact of Christian persecution ; from that day
it has continued, through long centuries, up to the present
time. The Church of Christ assumed the office of denuncia-
tion, and except in the first council, whose object was not to
strain, but to relax the bonds of brotherhood, not a council
has met for eighteen centuries which has not guarded each
profession of belief by the too customary formula, "If any
rnan maintain otherwise than this, let him be accursed."
Myriad, countless curses have echoed through those long
ages ; the Church has forgotten her Master's spirit and called
down fire from heaven. A fearful thought to consider this
as the spectacle on which the eye of God has rested. He
looks down upon the creatures He has made, and hears every-
where the language of religious imprecations : and, after all,
who is proved right by curses ?
44-O The Tongue.
The Church of Rome hurls her thunders against Protest-
ants of every denomination : the Calvinist scarcely recog-
nizes the Arminian as a Christian : he who considers himself
as the true Anglican, excludes from the Church of Christ all
but the adherents of his own orthodoxy; every minister and
congregation has its small circle beyond which all are her-
etics : nay, even among that sect which is most lax as to the
dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old
school denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising
school.
This is the state of things to which we are arrived. Sis-
ters of Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done
t)y a Samaritan ; ministers of the Gospel fling the thunder-
bolts of the Lord ; ignorant hearers catch and exaggerate
the spirit boys, girls, and women shudder as one goes by,
perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores the same
God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same
life-battle, and all this because they have been taught to
look upon him as an enemy of God.
There is a class of religious persons against whom this ve-
hemence has been especially directed. No one who can read
the signs of the times can help perceiving that we are on the
eve of great changes, perhaps a disruption of the Church of
England. Unquestionably there has been a large secession
to the Church of Rome.
Now what has been the position of those who are about
to take this step ? They have been taunted with dishonest
reception of the wages of the Church ; a watch has been set
over them : not a word they uttered in private, or in public,
but was given to the world by some religious busybody ;
there was not a visit which they paid, not a foolish dress
which they adopted, but became the subject of bitter scruti-
ny and malevolent gossip. For years the religious press has
denounced them with a vehemence as virulent, but happily
more impotent than that of the Inquisition. There has been
an anguish and an inward struggle little suspected, endured
by men who felt themselves outcasts in their own society,
and naturally looked for a home elsewhere.
We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution
are gone by ; but persecution is that which affixes penalties
upon mews held, instead of upon life led. Is persecution only
fire and sword ? But suppose a man of sensitive feeling
says, The sword is less sharp to me than the slander : fire is
less intolerable than the refusal of sympathy !
Now let us bring this home ; you rejoice that the far*jot
and the stake are given up; you never persecuted you
The Tongue. 441
leave that to the wicked Church of Rome. Yes, you never
burned a human being alive you never clapped your hands
as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang had gone
home into the most vital part of the victim's frame ; but did
you never rob him of his friends ? gravely shake your head
and oracularly insinuate that he was leading souls to hell?
chill the affections of his family ? take from him his good
name ? Did you never with delight see his Church placard-
ed as the Man of Sin, and hear the platform denunciations
which branded it with the spiritual abominations of the
Apocalypse ? Did you never find a malicious pleasure in re-
peating all the miserable gossip with which religious slander
fastened upon his daily acts, his words, and even his uncom-
municated thoughts ? Did you never forget that for a man
to " work out his own salvation with fear and trembling " is
a matter difficult enough to be laid upon a human spirit,
without intruding into the most sacred department of an->
other's life that, namely, which lies between himself and
God ? Did you never say that " it was to be wished he
should go to Rome," until at last life,, became intolerable
until he was thrown more and more in upon himself; found
himself, like his Redeemer, in this world alone, but unable, like
his Redeemer, calmly to repose upon the thought that his
Father was with him ? Then a stern defiant spirit took pos-
session of his soul, and there burst from his lips, or heart,
the wish for rest rest at any cost, peace anywhere, if even
it is to be found only in the bosom of the Church of Rome J
II. The guilt of this license.
1. The first evil consequence is the harm that a man does
himself: " so is the tongue among the members, that it de-
files the whole body." It is not very obvious, in what way
a man does himself harm by calumny. I will take the sini'
plest form in which this injury is done; it effects a dissipa-
tion of spiritual energy. There are two ways in which the
steam of machinery may find an outlet for its force : it may
work, and if so it works silently ; or it may escape, and that
takes place loudly, in air and noise. * There are two ways in
which the spiritual energy of a man's soul may find its vent :
it may express itself in action, silently ; or in words, noisily:
but just so much offeree as is thrown into the one mode of
expression is taken from the other.
Few men suspect how much mere talk fritters away spir-
itual energy that which should be spent in action spends
itself in words. The fluent boaster is not the man who is
steadiest before the enemy ; it is well said to him that his
19*
44 2 The Tongue.
courage is better kept till it is wanted. Loud utterance of
virtuous indignation against evil from the platform, or in the
drawing-room, do not characterize the spiritual giant : so
much indignation as is expressed, has found vent, is wasted,
is taken away from the work of coping with evil ; the man
has so much less left. And hence he who restrains that love
of talk lays up a fund of spiritual strength.
With large significance, St. James declares, " If any man
offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, able also to
bridle the whole body." He is entire, powerful, because he
has not spent his strength. In these days of loud profession,
and bitter, fluent condemnation, it is well for us to learn the
divine force of silence. Remember Christ in the judgment-
hall, the very symbol and incarnation of spiritual strength ;
and yet when revilings were loud around Him and charges
multiplied, " He held His peace."
2. The next feature in the guilt of calumny is its uncon-
trollable character : " the tongue can no man tame." You
can not arrest a calumnious tongue, you can not arrest the
calumny itself; you jnay refute a slanderer, you may trace
home a slander to its source, you may expose the author of
it, you may by that exposure give a lesson so severe as to
make the repetition of the offense appear impossible ; but
the fatal habit is incorrigible ; to-morrow the tongue is at
work again.
Neither can you stop the consequences of a slander ; you
may publicly prove its falsehood, you may sift every atom,
explain and annihilate it, and yet, years after you had
thought that all had been disposed of forever, the mention of
a name wakes up associations in the mind of some one who
heard the calumny, but never heard or never attended to
the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused recol-
lection of the whole, and he asks the question doubtfully,
"But were there not some suspicious circumstances con-
nected with him ?"
It is like the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which
burnt unquenched beneath the water, or like the weeds
which, when you have extirpated them in one place are
sprouting forth vigorously in another spot, at the distance of
many hundred yards ; or, to use the metaphor of St. James
himself, it is like the wheel which catches fire as it goes, and
burns with a fiercer conflagration as its own speed increases;
"it sets on fire the whole course of nature" (literally, the
wheel of nature). You may tame the wild beast, the con-
flagration of the American forest will cease when all the
timber and the dry underwood is consumed ; but you can
The Tongue. 443
not arrest the progress of that cruel word which you uttered
carelessly yesterday or this morning which you will utter,
perhaps, before you have passed from this church one hun-
dred yards : that will go on slaying, poisoning, burning be-
yond your own control, now and forever.
3. The third element of guilt lies in the unnaturalness of
calumny. " My brethren, these things ought not so to be ;"
ought not that is, they are unnatural. That this is St.
James's meaning is evident from the second illustration
which follows: "Doth a fountain send forth at the same
place, sweet water and bitter?" "Can the fig-tree, my
brethren, bear olive-berries, or a vine, figs."
There is apparently in these metaphors little that affords
an argument against slander; the motive which they sug-
fest would appear to many far-fetched and of small cogency ;
ut to one who looks on this world as a vast whole, arid
who has recognized the moral law as only a part of the
great law of the universe, harmoniously blending with the
whole, illustrations such as these are the most powerful of
all arguments. The truest definition of evil is that which
represents it as something contrary to nature : evil is evil,
because it is unnatural ; a vine which should bear olive-
berries, an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be dis-
eased: an unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural
act, are the strongest terms of condemnation. It is this
view which Christianity gives of moral evil: the teaching
of Christ was the recall of man to nature, not an infusion
of something new into humanity. Christ came to call out
all the principles and powers of human nature, to restore
the natural equilibrium of all our faculties ; not to call us
back to our own individual selfish nature, but to human
nature as it is in God's ideal the perfect type which is to
be realized in us. Christianity is the regeneration of our
whole nature, not the destruction of one atom of it.
Now the nature of man is to adore God and to love what
is Godlike in man. The office of the tongue is to bless.
Slander is guilty because it contradicts this; yet even in
slander itself, perversion as it is, the interest of man in man
is still distinguishable. What is it but perverted interest
which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of his breth-
ren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight ?
Remember, therefore, this contradicts your nature and your
destiny ; to speak ill of others makes you a monster in God's
world: get the habit of slander, and then there is not a
stream which bubbles fresh from the heart of nature, there
is not a tree that silently brings forth its genial fruit in its
444 T/ie Tongue.
appointed season, which does not rebuke and proclaim you
to be a monstrous anomaly in God's world.
4. The fourth point of guilt is the diabolical character of
slander ; the tongue " is set on fire of hell." Now, this is
no mere strong expression no mere indignant vituperation
it contains deep and emphatic meaning.
The apostle means literally what he says slander is dia-
bolical. The first illustration we give of this is contained
in the very meaning of the word devil. "Devil," in the
original, means traducer or slanderer. The first introduc-
tion of a demon spirit is found connected with a slanderous
insinuation against the Almighty, implying that His com-
mand had been given in envy of His creature: "for God
doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil."
In the magnificent imagery of the book of Job, the accuser
is introduced with a demoniacal and malignant sneer, attrib-
uting the excellence of a good man to interested motives ;
" Doth Job serve God for naught ?" There is another mode
in which the fearful accuracy of St. James's charge may be
demonstrated. There is one state only from which there is
said to be no recovery there is but one sin that is called
unpardonable. The Pharisees beheld the works of Jesus.
They could not deny that they were good works, they
could not deny that they were miracles of beneficence, but
rather than acknowledge that they were done by a good
man through the co-operation of a Divine spirit, they pre-
ferred to account for them by the wildest and most incredi-
ble hypothesis; they said they were done by the power of
Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. It was upon this occa-
sion that our Redeemer said with solemn meaning, "For
every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give ac-
count in the day of judgment." It was then that He said,
for a word spoken against the Holy Ghost there is no for-
giveness in this world, or in the world to come.
Our own hearts respond to the truth of this to call evil,
good, and good, evil to see the Divinest good, and call it
satanic evil below this lowest deep there is not a lower
still. There is no cure for mortification of the flesh there
is no remedy for ossification of the heart. Oh, that misera-
ble state, when to the jaundiced eye all good transforms
itself into evil, and the very instruments of health become
the poison of disease ! Beware of every approach of this !
beware of that spirit which controversy fosters, of watching
only for the evil in the character of an antagonist! beware
The Tongue. 445
of that habit which becomes the slanderer's life, of magni-
fying every speck of evil and closing the eye to goodness \
till at last men arrive at the state in which generous, urii
versal love (which is heaven) becomes impossible, and a sus-
picious, universal hate takes possession of the heart, and that
is hell !
There is one peculiar manifestation of this spirit to which
I desire specially to direct your attention.
The politics of the community are guided by the political
press. The religious views of a vast number are formed by
that portion of the press which is called religious; it be-
comes, therefore, a matter of deepest interest to inquire what
is the spirit of that " religious press." I am not asking you
what are the views maintained whether Evangelical, An-
glican, or Romish but what is the spirit of that fountain
from which the religious life of so many is nourished?
Let any man cast his eye over the pages of this portion of
the press it matters little to which party the newspaper or
the journal may belong he will be startled to find the char-
acters of those whom he has most deeply reverenced, whose
hearts he knows, whose integrity and life are above suspi-
cion, held up to scorn and hatred : the organ of one party is
established against the organ of another, and it is the recog-
nized office of each to point out with microscopic care the
names of those whose views are to be shunned ; and in order
that these may be the more shrunk from, the characters of
those who hold such opinions are .traduced and' vilified.
There is no personality too mean there is no insinuation too
audacious or too false for the recklessness of these daring
slanderers. I do not like to use the expression, lest it should
appear to be merely one of theatrical vehemence ; but I say
it in all seriousness, adopting the inspired language of the
Bible, and using it advisedly and with accurate meaning:
the spirit which guides the "religious press" of this country
which dictates those personalities, which prevents contro-
versialists from seeing what is good in their opponents, which
attributes low motives to account for excellent lives, and
teaches men whom to suspect and shun, rather than point
out where it is possible to admire and love is a spirit " set
on fire of hell."
Before we conclude, let us get at the root of the matter.
" Man," says the Apostle James, " was made in the image
of God:" to slander man is to slander God: to love what is
good in man is to love it in God. Love is the only remedy
for slander : no set of rules or restrictions can stop it ; we
may denounce, but we shall denounce in vain. The radical
44 6 The Victory of Faith.
cure of it is charity "out of a pure heart and faith unfeign-
ed," to feel what is great in the human character ; to recog-
nize with delight all high, and generous, and beautiful ac-
tions ; to tind a joy even in seeing the good qualities of your
bitterest opponents, and to admire those qualities even in
those with whom you have least sympathy be it either the
Romanist or the Unitarian this is the only spirit which can
heal the love of slander and calumny. If we would bless
God, we must first learn to bless man, who is made in the
image of God.
II.
THE VICTORY OF FAITH.
"For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the
victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that over-
cometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"
1 John v. 4, 5.
THERE are two words in the system of Christianity which
have received a meaning so new, and so emphatic, as to be
in a way peculiar to it, and to distinguish it from all other
systems of morality and religion; these two words are the
world, and faith. We find it written in Scripture that to
have the friendship of the world is to be the enemy of God ;
whereupon the question arises the world ? did not God
make the world ? Did He not place us in the world ? Are
we not to love what God has made? And yet meeting this
distinctly we have the inspired record, " Love not the world."
The object of the statesman is, or ought to be, to produce
as much worldly prosperity as possible ; but Christianity,
that is Christ, speaks little of this world's prosperity, under-
rates it nay, speaks of it at times as infinitely dangerous.
The legislator prohibits crime the moralist transgression
the religionist sin. To these Christianity superadds a new
enemy the world and the things of the world. " If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
The other word used in a peculiar sense is faith. It is
impossible for any one to have read his Bible ever so negli-
gently, and not to be aware that the word faith, or the grace
of faith, forms a large element in the Christian system. It is
said to work miracles, remove mountains, justify the soul,
trample upon impossibilities. Every apostle, in his way, as-
signs to faith a primary importance. Jude tells us to " build
The Victory of Faith. 447
up ourselves in our most holy faith." John tells us that
" he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God ;"
and Paul tells us that, not by merit nor by works, but by
trust or reliance only, can be formed that state of soul by
which man is reckoned just before God. In these expres-
sions the apostles only develop their Master's meaning, when
He uses such words as these, "All things are possible to him
that believeth :" " Oh thou of little faith, wherefore didst
thou doubt ?"
These two words are brought into diametrical opposition
in the text, so that it branches into a twofold line of thought.
I. The Christian's enemy, the world.
II. The victory of faith.
In endeavoring to understand first what is meant by
the world, we shall feel that the mass of evil which is com-
prehended under this expression can not be told out in any
one sermon ; it is an expression used in various ways, some-
times meaning one thing, sometimes meaning another ; but
we will endeavor to explain its general principles and
these we will divide into three heads ; first, the tyranny of
the present ; secondly, the tyranny of the sensual ; and last-
ly, the spirit of society.
1. The tyranny of the present.
" Christ," says the Apostle Paul, " hath redeemed us from
this present evil world ;" and again, " Demas hath forsaken
me, having loved this present world."
Let a stress be laid on the word present. World liness is
the attractive power of something present, in opposition to
something to come. It is this rule and tyranny of the pres-
ent that constitutes Demas a worldly man.
In this respect worldliness is the spirit of childhood carried
on into manhood. The child lives in the present hour to-
day to him is every thing. The holiday promised at a distant
interval is no holiday at all it must be'either now or never.
Natural in the child, and therefore pardonable, this spirit,
when carried on into manhood, is coarse is worldliness. The
most distinct illustration given us of this, is the case of Esau.
Esau came from the hunting-field worn and hungry ; the only
means of procuring the tempting mess of his brother's pot-
tage was the sacrifice of his father's blessing, which in those
ages carried with it a substantial advantage ; but that birth-
right could be enjoyed only after years the pottage was
mesent, near and certain ; therefore he sacrificed a future and
higher blessing for a present and lower pleasure. For this
reason Esau is the Bible type of worldliness : he is called in
44 8 The Victory of Faith.
Scripture a profane, that is, not a distinctly vicious, but a
secular or worldly person an overgrown child ; impetuous,
inconsistent, not without gleams of generosity and kindliness,
but ever accustomed to immediate gratification.
In this worldliness, moreover, is to be remarked the game-
ster's desperate play. There is a gambling spirit in hu-
man nature. Esau distinctly expresses this : " Behold I am
at the point to die, and what shall my birthright profit me ?"
He might never live to enjoy his birthright; but the pottage
was before him, present, certain, there.
Now, observe the utter powerlessness of mere preaching
to cope with this tyrannical power of the present. Forty
thousand pulpits throughout the land this 4ay will declaim
against the vanity of riches, the uncertainty of life, the sin of
worldliness against the gambling spirit of human nature ;
I ask what impression will be produced by those forty thou-
sand harangues ? In every congregation it is reducible to a
certainty that, before a year has passed, some will be num-
bered with the dead. Every man knows this, but he thinks
the chances are that it will not be himself; he feels it a
solemn thing for humanity generally but for himself there
is more than a chance. Upon this chance he plays away
life.
It is so with the child : you tell him of the consequences
of to-day's idleness but the sun is shining brightly, and he
can not sacrifice to-day's pleasure, although he knows the dis-
grace it will bring to-morrow. So it is with the intemperate
man : he says " Sufficient unto the day is the evil and the
good thereof; let me have my portion now." So the one
great secret of the world's victory lies in the mighty power
of saying "JVow?."
2. The tyranny of the sensual.
I call it tyranny, because the evidences of the senses are
all-powerful, in spite of the protestations of the reason. In
vain you try to persuade the child that he is moving, and not
the trees which seem to flit past the carnage in vain we re-
mind ourselves that this apparently solid earth on which we
stand, and which seems so immovable, is in reality flying
through the regions of space with an inconceivable rapidity
in vain philosophers would persuade us that the color which
the eye beholds resides not in the object itself, but in our own
perception ; we are victims of the apparent, and the verdict
of the senses is taken instead of the verdict of the reason.
Precisely so is it with the enjoyments of the world. The
man who died yesterday, and whom the world called a suc-
cessful man for what did he live ? He lived for this world
The Victory of Faith. 449
he gained this world. ' Houses, lands, name, position in so-
cietyall that earth could give of enjoyments he had : he
was" the man of whom the Redeemer said that his thoughts
were occupied in planning how to pull down his barns and
build greater. We hear men complain of the sordid love of
gold, but gold is merely a medium of exchange for other
things : gold is land, titles, name, comfort all that the world
can give. If the world be all, it is wise to live for gold. There
may be some little difference in the degree of degradation
in different forms of worldliness ; it is possible that the am-
bitious man who lives for power is somewhat higher than he
who merely lives for applause, and he again may be a trifle
higher than the mere seeker after gold but, after all, look-
ing closely at the matter, you will find that, in respect of the
objects of their idolatry, they agree in this, that all belong
to the present. Therefore, says the apostle, all that is in the
world " the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the
pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world," and are
only various forms of one great tyranny. And then, when
such a man is at the brink of death, the words said t5 the man
in our Lord's parable must be said to him, " Thou fool, the
houses thou hast built, the enjoyments thou hast prepared,
and all those things which have formed thy life for years
when thy soul is taken from them, what shall they profit
thee ?"
3. The spirit of society.
The world has various meanings in Scripture ; it does not
always mean the visible, as opposed to the invisible ; nor the
present, as opposed to the future : it sometimes stands for the
secular spirit of the day the voice of society.
Our Saviour says, " If ye were of the world, the world
would love his own." The apostle says, " Be not conformed
to this world ;" and to the Gentiles he writes, " In time
past ye walked according to the course of this world, the
spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience." In
these verses, a tone, a temper, a spirit is spoken of. There
are two things the Church and the world two spirits per-
vading different bodies of men, brought before us in these
verses those called the Spirit-born, and those called the
world, which is to be overcome by the Spirit-born, as in the
text, " Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world."
Let us understand what is meant by the Church of God.
When we speak of the Church we generally mean a society
to aid men in their progress Godward ; but the Church of
God is by no means co-extensive in any age with that organ-
ized institution which we call the Church ; sometimes it is
450 The Victory of Fait I i.
nearly co-extensive that is, nearly all on earth who are born
of God are found within its pale, nearly all who are of the
world are extraneous to it but sometimes the born of God
have been found distinct from the institution called the
Church, opposed to it persecuted by it. The institution of
the Church is a blessed ordinance of God, organized on earth
for the purpose of representing the eternal Church and of
extending its limits, but still ever subordinate to it.
The eternal Church is " the general assembly and church
of the firstborn which are written in heaven ;" the selected
spirits of the Most High, who are struggling with the evil of
their day ; sometimes alone, like Elijah, and like him, long-
ing that their work was done ; sometimes conscious of their
union with each other. God is forever raising up a succes-
sion of these His brave, His true, His good. Apostolical
succession, as taught sometimes, means simply this a suc-
cession of miraculous powers flowing in a certain line. The
true apostolic succession is not a succession in a hereditary
line, or line marked by visible signs which men can always
identify, *but a succession emphatically spiritual.
The Jews looked for a hereditary succession ; they thought
that because they were Abraham's seed, the spiritual succes-
sion was preserved ; the Redeemer told them that " God was
able of those stones to raise up children unto Abraham."
Therefore is this ever a spiritual succession in the hands of
God alone ; and they are here called the God-born, coming
into the world variously qualified ; sometimes baptized with
the spirit which makes them, like James and John, the "sons
of thunder," sometimes with a milder spirit, as Barnabas,
which makes them " sons of consolation," sometimes having
their souls indurated into an adamantine hardness, which
makes them living stones rocks like Peter, against which
the billows of this world dash themselves in vain, and against
which the gates of hell shall not prevail. But whether as
apostles, or visitors of the poor, or parents of a family, born
to do a work on earth, to speak a word, to discharge a mis-
sion which they themselves perhaps do not know till it is ac-
complished these are the Church of God the children of
the Most High the noble army of the Spirit-born ! Op-
posed to this stands the mighty confederacy called the world.
But beware of fixing on individual men in order to stigmatize
them as the world. You may not draw a line and say " We
are the sons of God, ye are of the world." The world is not
so much individual as it is a certain spirit ; the course of this
world is " the spirit which now worketh in the children of
disobedience." The world and the Church are annexed as
The Victory of Faith. 451
inseparably as the elements which compose the atmosphere.
Take the smallest portion of this that you will, in a cubic
inch the same proportions are found as in a temple. In the
ark there was a Ham ; in the small band of the twelve apos-
tles there was a Judas.
The spirit of the world is forever altering impalpable ;
forever eluding, in fresh forms, your attempts to seize it. In
the days of Noah, the spirit of the world was violence. In
Elijah's day it was idolatry. In the day of Christ it was
power concentrated and condensed in the government of
Home. In ours, perhaps, it is the love of money. It enters
in different proportions into different bosoms ; it is found in
a different form in contiguous towns ; in the fashionable
watering-place, and in the commercial city : it is this thing
at Athens, and another in Corinth. This is the spirit of the
world a thing in my heart and yours: to be struggled
against, not so much in the case of others, as in the silent
battle to be done within our own souls. Pass we on now to
consider
II. The victory of faith.
Faith is a theological expression ; we are apt to forget
that it has any other than a theological import ; yet it is the
commonest principle of man's daily life, called in that region
prudence, enterprise, or some such name. It is in effect the
principle on which alone any human superiority can be
gained. Faith, in religion, is the same principle as faith in
worldly matters, differing only in its object : it rises through
successive stages. When, in reliance upon your promise,
your child gives up the half-hour's idleness of to-day for the
holiday of to-morrow, he lives by faith ; a future supersedes
the present pleasure. When he abstains from over-indul-
gence of the appetite, in reliance upon your word that the
result will be pain and sickness, sacrificing the present pleas-
ure for fear of future punishment, he acts on faith : I do not
say that this is a high exercise of faith it is a very low one
but it is faith.
Once more : the same motive of action may be carried on
into manhood ; in our own times two religious principles
have been exemplified in the subjugation of a vice. The hab-
it of intoxication has been broken by an appeal to the prin-
ciple of combination, and the principle of belief. Men were
taught to feel that they were not solitary strugglers against
the vice ; they were enrolled in a mighty army, identified in
principles and interests. Here was the principle of the
Church association for reciprocated strength j they were
452 The Victory of Faith.
thus taught the inevitable result of the indulgence of the
vice. The missionaries of temperance went "through the
country contrasting the wretchedness and the degradation
and the filth of drunkenness, with the domestic comfort and
the health and the regular employment of those who were
masters of themselves. So far as men believed this, and gave
up the tyranny of the present for the hope of the future so
far they lived by faith.
Brethren, I do not say that this was a high triumph for
the principle of faith ; it was, in fact, little more than selfish-
ness ; it was a high future balanced against a low present ;
only the preference of a future and higher physical enjoy-
ment to a mean and lower one. Yet still, to be ruled by this
influence raises a man in the scale of being : it is a low vir-
tue, prudence, a form of selfishness ; yet prudence is a virtue.
The merchant who forecasts, saves, denies himself systemati-
cally through years, to amass a fortune, is not a very lofty
being, yet he is higher, as a man, than he who is sunk in
mere bodily gratifications. You would not say that the in-
temperate man who has become temperate in order merely
to gain by that temperance honor and happiness is a great
man, but you would say he was a higher and a better man
than he who is enslaved by his passions, or than the gambler
who improvidently stakes all upon a moment's throw. The
worldly mother who plans for the advancement of a family,
and sacrifices solid enjoyments for a splendid alliance, is only
worldly wise, yet in that manoeuvring and worldly prudence
there is the exercise of a self-control which raises her above
the mere giddy pleasure-hunter of the hour; for want of self 1
control is the weakness of our nature to restrain, to wait,
to control present feeling with a large foresight, is human
strength.
Once more : instead of a faith like that of the child, which
overleaps a few hours, or that of the worldly man, which
overpasses years, there may be a faith which transcends the
whole span of life, and, instead of looking for temporal en-
joyments, looks for rewards in a future beyond the grave,
instead of a future limited to time.
This is again a step. The child has sacrificed a day ; the
man has sacrificed a little more. Faith has now reached a
stage which deserves to be called religious ; not that this,
however, is very grand ; it does but prefer a happiness here-
after to a happiness enjoyed here an eternal well-being in-
stead of a temporal well-being ; it is but prudence on a grand
scale another form of selfishness an anticipation of infinite
rewards instead of finite, and not the more noble because of
The Victory of Faith. 453
t
the infinitude of the gain : and yet this is what is often
taught as religion in books and sermons. We are told that
sin is wrong, because it will make us miserable hereafter.
Guilt is represented as the short-sightedness which barters
for a home on earth a home in heaven.
In the text-book of ethics studied in one of our universi-
ties, virtue is defined as that which is done at the command
of God for the sake of an eternal reward. So, then, religion
is nothing more than a calculation of infinite and finite quan-
tities ; vice is nothing more than a grand imprudence ; and
heaven is nothing more than selfishness rewarded with eter-
nal well-being !
Yet this, you will observe, is a necessary step in the de-
velopment of faith. Faith is the conviction that God is a
rewarder of them who diligently seek Him ; and there is a
moment in human progress when the anticipated rewards
and punishments must be of a Mohammedan character the
happiness of the senses. It was thus that the Jews were
disciplined ; out of a coarse, rude, infantine state, they were
educated by rewards and punishments to abstain from pres-
ent sinful gratification: at first, the promise of the life which
now is, afterwards the promise of that which is to come ;
but even then the rewards and punishments of a future state
were spoken of, by inspiration itself, as of an arbitrary char-
acter ; and some of the best of the Israelites, in looking to
the recompense of reward, seemed to have anticipated, coarse-
ly, recompense in exchange for duties performed.
The last step is that which 'alone deserves to be called
Christian faith " Who is he that overcometh but he that
believeth Jesus is the Christ ?" The difference between the
faith of the Christian and that of the man of the world, or
the mere ordinary religionist, is not a difference in mental
operation, but in the object of the faith-^to believe that
Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian faith.
The anticipated heaven of the Christian differs from the
anticipated heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness
with which its imagery is perceived, but in the kind of ob-
jects which are hoped for. The apostle has told us the char-
acter of heaven. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him" which
glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as if
the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception
of the heavenly world, as of something beyond all power to
imagine or to paint. The apostle meant something infinitely
deeper : the heaven of God is not only that which u eye hath
454 The Victory of Faith.
not seen," but that which eye can never see ; its glories are
not of that kind at all which can ever stream in forms of
beauty on the eye, or pour in melody upon the enraptured
ear not such joys as genius in its most gifted hour (here
called " the heart of man ") can invent or imagine : it is
something whicli these sensuous organs of ours never can
appreciate bliss of another kind altogether, revealed to the
spirit of man by the Spirit of God joys such as spirit alone
can receive.
Do you ask what these are ? " The fruits of the Spirit
are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance." That is heaven, and therefore the
apostle tells us that he alone who " believeth that Jesus is
the Christ," and only he, feels that. What is it to believe
that Jesus is the Christ? That He is the Anointed One,
that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed life, the
blessed life Divine for thirty years ? Yes, but if so, the bless-
ed life still, continued throughout all eternity : unless you
believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ.
What is the blessedness that you expect? to have the
joys of earth with the addition of the element of eternity?
Men think that heaven is to be a compensation for earthly
loss : the saints are earthly-wretched here, the children of
this world are earthly-happy; but that, they think, shall be
all reversed Lazarus, beyond the grave, shall have the pur-
ple and the fine linen, and the splendor, and the houses, and
the lands which Dives had on earth : the one had them for
time, the other shall have them for eternity. That is the
heaven that men expect this earth sacrificed now, in order
that it may be re-granted forever.
Nor will this expectation be reversed except by a rever-
sal of the nature. None can anticipate such a heaven as
God has revealed, except they that are born of the Spirit ;
therefore to believe that Jesus is the Christ, a man must be
born of God. You will observe that no other victory over-
comes the world : for this is what St. John means by say-
ing, " Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that be-
lieveth that Jesus is the Christ ?" For then it comes to pass
that a man begins to feel that to do wrong is hell ; and that
to love God, to be like God, to have the mind of Christ, is
the only heaven. Until this victory is gained, the world re-
tains its stronghold in the heart.
Do you think that the temperate man has overcome the
world,Vho, instead of the short-lived rapture of intoxication,
chooses regular employment, health, and prosperity? Is it
not the world in another form which has his homage ? Or
The Dispensation of the Spirit. 455
do you suppose that the so-called religious man is really the
world's conqueror by being content to give up seventy
years of enjoyment in order to win innumerable ages of the
very same species of enjoyment ? Has he not only made
earth a hell, in order that earthly things may be his heaven
forever ?
Thus the victory of faith proceeds from stage to stage :
the first victory is, when the present is conquered by the fu-
ture ; the last, when the visible and sensual is despised in
comparison of the invisible and eternal. Then earth has
lost its power forever ; for if all that it has to give be lost
eternally, the gain of faith is still infinite.
III.
THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.
"Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." 1 Cor. xii. 4.
ACCORDING to a view which contains in it a profound truth,
the ages of the world are divisible into three dispensations,
presided over by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
In the dispensation of the Father, God was known as a
Creator; creation manifested His eternal power and God-
head, and the religion of mankind was the religion of nature.
In the dispensation of the Son, God manifested Himself to
humanity through man ; the Eternal Word spoke, through
the inspired and gifted of the human race, to those that were
uninspired and ungifted. This was the dispensation of the
prophets its climax was the advent of the Redeemer; it
was completed when perfect Humanity manifested God to
man. The characteristic of this dispensation was, that God
revealed Himself by an authoritative Voice, speaking from
without, and the highest manifestation of God whereof man
was capable, was a Divine humanity.
The age in which we at present live is the dispensation of
the Spirit, in which God has communicated Himself by the
highest revelation, and in the most intimate communion, of
which man is capable ; no longer through creation, no more
as an authoritative Voice from without, but as a Law within
as a Spirit mingling with a spirit. This is the dispensa-
tion of which the prophet said of old, that the time should
come when they should no longer teach every man his broth-
er and every man his neighbor, saying, " Know the Lord "
45 6 The Dispensation of the Spirit.
that is, by a will revealed by external authority from other
human minds " for they shall all know Him, from the least
of them to the greatest." This is the dispensation, too, of
whose close the Apostle Paul speaks thus : " Then shall the
Son also be subject to Him that hath put all things under
Him, that God may be all in all."
The outward humanity is to disappear, that the inward
union may be complete. To the same effect, he speaks in
another place, " Yea, though we have known Christ after the
flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no more." For this rea-
son the ascension was necessary before Pentecost could come :
the Spirit was not given, we are told, because Jesus was not
yet glorified. It was necessary for the Son to disappear as
an outward authority, in order that He might re-appear as an
inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God
manifested in a Christ without us, but as a Christ within us,
the hope of glory. To-day is the selected anniversary of
that memorable day when the first proof was given to the
senses, in the gift of Pentecost, that that spiritual dispensa-
tion had begun.
There is a twofold way in which the operations of the
Spirit on mankind may be considered His influence on the
Church as a whole, and His influence on individuals ; both
of these are brought together in the text. It branches, there-
fore, into a twofold division.
I. Spiritual gifts conferred on individuals.
II. Spiritual union of the Church.
Let us distinguish between the Spirit and the gifts of the
Spirit: by the Spirit, the apostle meant the vital principle
of new life from God, common to all believers the animat-
ing Spirit of the Church of God ; by the gifts of the Spirit, he
meant the diversities of form in which He operates on indi-
viduals ; its influence varied according to their respective pe-
culiarities and characteristics. In the twenty-eighth verse
of this chapter a full catalogue of gifts is found ; looking at
them generally, we discover two classes into which they may
be divided the first are natural, the second are supernatu-
ral : the first are those capacities which are originally found
in human nature personal endowments of mind, a character
elevated and enlarged by the gift of the Spirit ; the second
are those which were created and called into existence by the
sudden approach of the same influence.
Just as if the temperature of this northern hemisphere were
raised suddenly, and a mighty tropical river were to pour its
fertilizing inundation over the country, the result would be
The Dispensation of the Spirit. 457
the impartation of a vigorous and gigantic growth to the
vegetation already in existence, and at the same time the de-
velopment of life in seeds and germs which had long lain
latent in the soil, incapable of vegetation in the unkindly
climate of their birth. Exactly in the same way, the flood
of a Divine life, poured suddenly into the souls of men, en-
larged and ennobled qualities which had been used already,
and at the same time developed powers which never could
have become apparent in the cold, low temperature of natu-
ral life.
Among the natural gifts, we may instance these : teaching
healing the power of government. Teaching is a gift,
natural or acquired. To know, is one thing; to have the
capacity of imparting knowledge, is another.
The physician's art, again, is no supernatural mystery ; long
and careful study of physical laws capacitate him for his
task. To govern, again, is a natural faculty : it may be ac-
quired by habit, but there are some who never could acquire
it. Some men seem born to command : place them in what
sphere you will, others acknowledge their secret influence
and subordinate themselves to their will. The faculty of or-
ganization, the secret of rule, need no supernatural power.
They exist among the uninspired. Now the doctrine of the
apostle was, that all these are transformed and renovated by
the spirit of a new life in such a way as to become almost
new powers, or, as he calls them, gifts of the Spirit. A re-
markable illustration of this is his view of the human body.
If there be any thing common to us by nature, it is the mem-
bers of our corporeal frame ; yet the apostle taught that
these, guided by the Spirit as its instruments and obeying a
holy will, became transfigured ; so that, in his language, the
body becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost, and the meanest
faculties, the lowest appetites, the humblest organs, are en-
nobled by the Spirit-mind which guides them. Thus he bids
the Romans yield themselves " unto God as those that are
alive from the dead, and their members as instruments of
righteousness unto God."
The second class of gifts are supernatural : of these we find
two pre-eminent the gift of tongues, and the gift of proph-
ecy.
It does not appear that the gift of tongues was merely the
imparted faculty of speaking foreign languages it could not
be that the highest gift of God to His Church merely made
them rivals of the linguist; it would rather seem that the
Spirit of God, mingling with the soul of man, supernaturally
elevated its aspirations and glorified its conceptions, so that
20
458 The Dispensation of the Spirit.
an entranced state of ecstacy was produced, and feelings
called into energy, for the expression of which the ordinary
forms of speech were found inadequate. Even in a far lower
department, when a man becomes possessed of ideas for
which his ordinary vocabulary supplies no sufficient expres-
sion, his language becomes broken, incoherent, struggling,
and almost unnaturally elevated ; much more was it to be
expected that when divine and new feelings rushed like a
flood upon the soul, the language of men would have be-
come strange and extraordinary ; but in that supposed case,
wild as the expressions might appear to one coldly looking
on and not participating in the feelings of the speaker, they
would be quite sufficient to convey intelligible meaning to
any one affected by the same emotions.
Where perfect sympathy exists, incoherent utterance a
word a syllable is quite as efficient as elaborate sentences.
Now this is precisely the account given of the phenomenon
which attended the gift of tongues. On the day of Pente-
cost, all who were in the same state of spiritual emotion as
those who spoke, understood the speakers; each was as intel-
ligible to all as if he spoke in their several tongues: to those
who were coolly and skeptically watching, the effects ap-
peared like those of intoxication. A similar account is given
by the Apostle Paul : the voice appeared to unsympathetic
ears as that of a barbarian ; the uninitiated and unbelieving
coming in, heard nothing that was articulate to them, but
only what seemed to them the ravings of insanity.
The next was the gift of prophecy. Prophecy has several
meanings in Scripture ; sometimes it means the power of pre-
dicting future events, sometimes an entranced state accom-
panied with ravings, sometimes it appears to mean only ex-
position ; but prophecy, as the miraculous spiritual gift grant-
ed to the early Church, seems to have been a state of com-
munion with the mind of God lower than that which was
called the gift of tongues, at least less ecstatic, less rapt into
the world to come, more under the guidance of the reason,
more within the control of calm consciousness as we might
say, less supernatural.
Upon these gifts we make two observations :
J. Even the highest were not accompanied with spiritual
faultlessness. Inspiration was one thing, infallibility another.
The gifts of the Spirit were, like the gifts of nature, subor-
dinated to the will capable of being used for good or evil,
sometimes pure, sometimes mixed with human infirmity. The
supernaturally gifted man was no mere machine, no automa-
ton ruled in spite of himself by a superior spirit. Disorder,
The Dispensation of the Spirit. 459
vanity, overweening self-estimation, might accompany these
gifts, and the prophetic utterance itself might be degraded
to a mere brawling in the Church ; therefore St. Paul estab-
lished laws of control, declared the need of subjection and
rule over spiritual gifts : the spirits of the prophets were to
be subject to the prophets; if those in the ecstatic state were
tempted to break out into utterance and unable to interpret
what it meant, those so gifted were to hold their peace.
The prophet poured out the truths supernaturally impart-
ed to his highest spirit, in an inspired and impassioned elo-
quence which was intelligible even to the unspiritual, and
was one of the appointed means of convincing the unconvert-
ed. The lesson derivable from this is not obsolete even in
the present day. There is nothing perhaps precisely identi-
cal in our own day with those gifts of the early Church ;
but genius and talent are uncommon gifts, which stand in a
somewhat analogous relation in a closer one certainly than
more ordinary endowments. The flights of genius, we know,
appear like maniac ravings to minds not elevated to the same
spiritual level. Now these are perfectly compatible with
misuse, abuse, and moral disorder. The most gifted of our
countrymen has left this behind him as his epitaph, "The
greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind." The most glorious
gift of poetic insight itself in a way divine having some-
thing akin to Deity is too often associated with degraded
life and vicious character. Those gifts which elevate us above
the rest of our species, whereby we stand aloof and separate
from the-crowd, convey no moral nor even mental infalli-
bility : nay, they have in themselves a peculiar danger, where-
as, that gift which is common to us all as brethren, the ani-
mating spirit of a divine life, in whose soil the spiritual being
of all is rooted, can not make us vain ; we can not pride our-
selves on that, for it is common to us all.
2. Again, the gifts which were higher in one sense were
lower in another; as supernatural gifts they would rank thus
the gift of tongues before prophecy, and prophecy before
teaching ; but as blessings to be desired, this order is reversed :
rather than the gift of tongues, St. Paul bids the Corinthians
desire that they might prophesy. Inferior, again, to prophecy
was the quite simple, and as we should say, lower faculty of
explaining truth. Now the principle upon which that was
tried was that of utility not utility in the low sense of the
utilitarian, who measures the value of a thing by its suscep-
tibility of application to the purpose of this present life, but
a utility whose measure was love, charity. The apostle con-
sidered that gift most desirable by which men might most
460 The Dispensation of the Spirit.
edify one another. And hence that noble declaration of one
of the most gifted of mankind "I had rather speak five
words with my understanding, that I might teach others also,
than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue."
Our estimate is almost the reverse of this : we value a gift
in proportion to its rarity, its distinctive character, separating
its possessor from the rest of his fellow-men ; whereas, in
truth, those gifts which leave us in lonely majesty apart from
our species, useless to them, benefiting ourselves alone, are
not the most Godlike, but the least so ; because they are dis-
severed from that beneficent charity which is the very being
of God. Your lofty incommunicable thoughts, your ecsta-
sies, and aspirations, and contemplative raptures in virtue
of which you have estimated yourself as the porcelain of the
earth, of another nature altogether than the clay of common
spirits tried by the test of charity, what is there grand in
these if they can not be applied as blessings to those that are
beneath you ? One of our countrymen has achieved for him-
self extraordinary scientific renown ; he pierced the mysteries
of nature, he analyzed her processes, he gave new elements
to the world. The same man applied his rare intellect -to the
construction of a simple and very common instrument that
well-known lamp which has been the guardian of the miner's
life from the explosion of fire. His discoveries are his nobil-
ity in this world, his trifling invention gives him rank in the
world to come. By the former he shines as one of the bright-
est luminaries in the firmament of science, by the latter, evinc-
ing a spirit animated and directed by Christian love, he takes
his place as one of the Church of God.
And such is ever the true order of rank which graces oc-
cupy in reference to gifts. The most trifling act w T hich is
marked by usefulness to others is nobler in God's sight than
the most brilliant accomplishment of genius. To teach a
few Sunday-school children, week after w r eek, commonplace,
simple truths persevering in spite of dullness and mean ca-
pacities is a more glorious occupation than the highest
meditations or creations of genius which edify or instruct
only our own solitary soul.
II. The spiritual unity of the Church "the same Spirit."
Men have formed to themselves two ideas of unity : the
first is a sameness of form of expression ; the second an
identity of spirit. Some of the best of mankind have fondly
hoped to realize an unity for the Church of Christ which
should be manifested by uniform expressions in every thing ;
their imaginations have loved to paint, as the ideal of a
The Dispensation of the Spirit. 46 1
Christian Church, a state in which the same liturgy should
be used throughout the world, the same ecclesiastical gov-
ernment, even the same vestments, the same canonical hours,
the same form of architecture. They could conceive noth-
ing more entirely one than a Church so constituted that the
same prayers, in the very same expressions, at the very same
moment, should be ascending to the Eternal Ear.
There are others who have thrown aside entirely this idea
as chimerical ; who have not only ceased to hope it, but even
to wish it ; who, if it could be realized, would consider it a
matter of regret ; who feel that the minds of men are vari-
ous their modes and habits of thought, their original ca-
pacities and acquired associations, infinitely diverse ; and
who, perceiving that the law of the universal system is
manifoldness in unity, have ceased to expect any other one-
ness for the Church "of Christ than that of a sameness of
spirit, showing itself through diversities of gifts. Among
these last was the Apostle Paul : his large and glorious
mind rejoiced in the contemplation of the countless mani-
festations of spiritual nature beneath which he detected one
and the same pervading Mind. Now let us look at this'
matter somewhat more closely.
1. All real unity is manifold. Feelings in themselves
identical find countless forms of expression ; for instance,
sorrow is the same feeling throughout the human race ; but
the Oriental prostrates himself upon the ground, throws dust
upon his head, tears his garments, is not ashamed to break
out into the most violent lamentations. In the north, we
rule our grief in public ; suffer not even a quiver to be seen
upon the lip or brow, and consider calmness as the appropri-
ate expression of manly grief. Nay, two sisters of different
temperament will show their grief diversely ; one will love
to dwell upon the theme of the qualities of the departed, the
other feels it a sacred sorrow, on which the lips are sealed
forever ; yet would it not be idle to ask which of them has
the truest affection? Are they not both in their own way
true ? In the same East, men take off their sandals in de-
votion ; we exactly reverse the procedure, and uncover the
head. The Oriental prostrates himself in the dust before
his sovereign ; even before his (rod the Briton only kneels ;
yet would it not again be idle to ask which is the essential
and proper form of reverence ? Is not true reverence in all
cases modified by the individualities of temperament and
education ? Should we not say, in all these forms worketh
one and the same spirit of reverence ?
Again, in the world as God has made it, one law shows
462 The Dispensation of the Spirit.
itself under diverse, even opposite manifestations ; lead sinks
in water, wood floats upon the surface. In former times
men assigned these different results to different forces, laws,
and gods. A knowledge of nature has demonstrated that
they are expressions of one and the same law ; and the great
difference between the educated and the uneducated man is
this the uneducated sees in this world nothing but an in-
finite collection of unconnected facts a broken, distorted,
and fragmentary system, which his mind can by no means
reduce to order. The educated man, in proportion to his
education, sees the number of laws diminished beholds in
the manifold appearances of nature the expression of a few
laws, by degrees fewer, till at last it becomes possible to his
conception that they are all reducible to one, and that that
which lies beneath the innumerable phenomena of nature is
the One Spirit God.
2. All living unity is spiritual, not formal ; not sameness,
but manifoldness. You may have a unity shown in identity
of form ; but it is a lifeless unity. There is a sameness on
the sea-beach that unity which the ocean waves have pro-
duced by curling and forcibly destroying the angularities of
individual form, so that every stone presents the same mo-
notony of aspect, and you must fracture each again in order
to distinguish whether you hold in your hand a mass of flint
or fragment of basalt. There is no life in unity such as
this.
But as soon as you arrive at a unity that is living, the
form becomes more complex, and you search in vain for uni-
formity. In the parts, it must be found, if found at all, in
the sameness of the pervading life. The illustration given
by the apostle is that of the human body a higher unity,
he says, by being composed of many members, than if every
member were but a repetition of a single type. It is con-
ceivable that God might have moulded such a form for hu-
man life ; it is conceivable that every cause, instead of pro-
ducing in different nerves a variety of sensations, should
have affected every one in a mode precisely similar; that
instead of producing a sensation of sound a sensation of
color a sensation of taste the outward causes of nature,
be they what they may, should have given but one unvaried
feeling to every sense, and that the whole universe should
have been light or sound.
That would have been unity ; if sameness be unity ; but,
says the apostle, "if the whole body were seeing, where
were the hearing?" That uniformity would have been ir-
reparable loss the loss of every part that was merged into
Tke Dispensation of the Spirit. 463
the one. What is the body's unity ? Is it not this ? The
unity of a living consciousness which marvellously animates
every separate atom of the frame, and reduces each to the
performance of a function fitted to the welfare of the whole
its own, not another's : so that the inner spirit can say of
the remotest, and in form most unlike, member, " That, too,
is myself*"
3. None but a spiritual unity can preserve the rights both
of the individual and the Church. All other systems of
unity, except the apostolic, either sacrifice the Church to the
individual, or the individual to the Church.
Some have claimed the right of private judgment in such
a way that every individual opinion becomes truth, and
every utterance of private conscience right : thus the Church
is sacrificed to the individual ; and the universal conscience,
the common faith, becomes as nothing ; the spirits of the
prophets are not subject to the prophets. Again, there are
others, who, like the Church of Rome, would surrender the
conscience of each man to the conscience of the Church, and
coerce the particulars of faith into exact coincidence with a
formal creed. Spiritual unity saves the right of both in
God's system. The Church exists for the individual, just as
truly as the individual for the Church. The Church is then
most perfect when all its powers converge, and are concen-
trated on the formation and protection of individual charac-
ter ; and the individual is then most complete that is, most
a Christian when he has practically learned that his life is
not his own, but owed to others " that no man Jiveth to
himself, and no man dieth to himself."
Now, spiritual unity respects the sanctity of the individu-
al conscience. How reverently the Apostle Paul considered
its claims, and how tenderly ! When once it became a mat-
ter of conscience, this was his principle laid down in matters
of dispute : " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own
mind." The belief of the whole world can not make that
thing true to me which to me seems false. The conscience
of the whole world can not make a thing right to me, if I in
my heart believe it wrong. You may coerce the conscience,
you may control men's belief, and you may produce a unity
by so doing; but it is the unity of pebbles on the sea-shore
a lifeless identity of outward form with no cohesion be-
tween the parts a dead sea-beach on which nothing grows,
and where the very sea-weed dies.
Lastly, it respected the sanctity of individual character.
Out of eight hundred millions of the human race, a few feat-
Mres diversify themselves into so many forms of counte*
464 The Trinity.
nance, that scarcely two could be mistaken for each other.
There are no two leaves on the same tree alike ; nor two
sides of the same leaf, unless you cut and kill it. There is a
sacredness in individuality of character ; each one born into
this world is a fresh new soul intended by his Maker to de-
velop himself in a new fresh way ; we are what we are ; we
can not be truly other than ourselves. We reach perfection
not by copying, much less by aiming at originality ; but by
consistently and steadily working out the life which is com-
mon to us all, according to the character which God has
given us.
And thus will the Church of God be one at last will pre-
sent an unity like that of heaven. There is one universe, in
which each separate star differs from another in glory ; one
Church, in which a single Spirit, the Life of God, pervades
each separate soul ; and just in proportion as that Life be-
comes exalted does it enable every one to shine forth in the
distinctness of his own separate individuality, like the stars
of heaven.
IV.
THE TRINttTY.
"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your
whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Thess. v. 23.
THE knowledge of God is the blessedness of man. To
know God, arid to be known by him to love God, and to be
loved by Him is the most precious treasure which this life
has to give ; properly speaking, the only treasure ; properly
speaking, the only knowledge ; for all knowledge is valuable
only so far as it converges towards and ends in the knowl-
edge of God, and enables us to acquaint ourselves with God,
and be at peace with Him. The doctrine of the Trinity is
the sum of all that knowledge which has as yet been gained
by man. I say gained as yet. For we presume not to main-
tain that in the ages which are to come hereafter, our knowl-
edge shall not be superseded by a higher knowledge; we
presume not to say that in a state of existence future yea
even here upon this earth, at that period which is mysteri-
ously referred to in Scripture as "the coming of the Son of
Man" there shall not be given to the soul an intellectual
conception of the Almighty, a vision of the Eternal, in coin-
The Trinity. 465
parison with whose brightness and clearness our present
knowledge of the Trinity shall be as rudimentary and as
childlike as the knowledge of the Jew was in comparison
with the knowledge of the Christian.
Now the passage which I have undertaken to expound to-
day is one in which the doctrine of the Trinity is brought
into connection practically with the doctrine of our humani-
ty. Before entering into it, brethren, let us lay down these
two observations and duties for ourselves. In the first
place, let us examine the doctrine of the Trinity ever in the
spirit of charity.
A clear statement of the deepest doctrine that man can
know, and the intellectual conception of that doctrine, are
by no means easy. We are puzzled and perplexed by
words we fight respecting words. Quarrels are nearly al-
ways verbal quarrels. Words lose their meaning in the
course of time ; nay, the very words of the Athanasian creed
which we read to-day mean not in this age the same thing
which they meant in ages past. Therefore it is possible
that men, externally Trinitarians, may differ from each other
though using the same words, as greatly as a Unitarian dif-
fers from a Trinitarian. There may be found, in the same
Church and in the same congregation, men holding all possi-
ble shades of opinion, though agreeing externally and in
words.
I speak within the limit of my own experience when I say
that persons have been known and heard to express the lan-
guage of bitter condemnation respecting Unitarianism, who
when examined and calmly required to draw out verbally
the meaning of their own conceptions, have been proved to
be holding all the time, unconsciously, the very doctrine of
Sabellianism. And this doctrine is condemned by the
Church as distinctly as that of Unitarianism. Therefore let
us learn from all this a large and catholic charity. There
are in almost every congregation, themselves not knowing
it, Trinitarians who are practically Tri-theists, worshipping
three Gods; and Sabellians, or worshippers of one person
under three different manifestations. To know God so that
we may be said intellectually to appreciate Him, is blessed:
to be unable to do so is a misfortune. Be content with your
own blessedness, in comparison with others' misfortunes.
Do not give to that misfortune the additional sting of illib-
eral and unchristian vituperation.
The next observation we have to lay down for ourselves
is, that we should examine this doctrine in the spirit of mod-
esty. There are those who are inclined to sneer at the Triu-
20*
466 The Trinity.
itarian ; those to whom the doctrine appears merely a con-
tradiction a puzzle an entangled, labyrinthine enigma, in
which there is no meaning whatever. But let all such re-
member, that though the doctrine may appear to them ab-
surd, because they have not the proper conception of it, some
of the profoundest thinkers, and some of the holiest spirits
among mankind, have believed in this doctrine have clung
to it as a matter of life or death. Let them be assured of
this, that whether the doctrine be true or false, it is not nec-
essarily a doctrine self-contradictory. Let them be assured
of this, in all modesty, that such men never could have held
it unless there was latent in the doctrine a deep truth per-
chance the truth of God.
We pass on now to the consideration of this verse under
the following divisions. In the first place, we shall view it
as a triad in discord : " I pray God your whole spirit and
soul and body be preserved blameless;" in the second place,
as a Trinity in unity: "the God of peace sanctify you
wholly." We take then, first of all, for our consideration the
triad in discord : " I pray God your whole body and soul
and spirit be preserved blameless."
The apostle here divides human nature into a threefold
division ; and here we have to observe again the difficulty
often experienced in understanding words. Thus words in
the Athanasian creed have become obsolete, or lost their
meaning : so that in the present day the words " person,"
" substance," " procession," " generation," to an ordinary
person, mean almost nothing. So this language of the
apostle, when rendered into English, shows no difference
whatever between " soul " and " spirit." We say, for instance,
that the soul of a man has departed from him. We also say
that the spirit of a man has departed from him. There is no
distinct difference between the two ; but in the original two
very different kinds of thoughts two very different modes
of conception are represented by the two English words
" soul " and " spirit."
It is our business, therefore, in the first place, to under-
stand what is meant by this threefold division. When the
apostle speaks of the body, what he means is the ar.imal liie
that which we share in common with beasts, birds, and
reptiles; for our life, my Christian brethren our sensational
existence differs but little from that of the lower animals.
There is the same external form, the same material in the
blood-vessels, in the nerves, and in the muscular system.
Nay, more than that, our appetites and instincts "are alike, our
lower pleasures like their lower pleasures, our lower pain like
The Trinity. 467
their lower pain, our life is supported by the same means, and
our animal functions are almost indistinguishably the same.
But, once more, the" apostle speaks of what he calls the
"soul." What the- apostle meant by what is translated
" soul," is the immortal part of man the immaterial as
distinguished from the material : those powers, in fact, which
man has by nature powers natural, which are yet to survive
the grave. There is a distinction made in Scripture 'by our
Lord between these two things, " Fear not," says He, " them
who can kill the body ; but rather fear Him who can destroy
both body and soul in hell."
We have again to observe respecting this, that what the
apostle, called the " soul," is not simply distinguishable from
the body, but also from the spirit ; and on that distinction I
have already touched. By the soul the apostle means our
powers natural the powers which we have by nature.
Herein is the soul distinguishable from the spirit. In the
Epistle to the Corinthians we read " But the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness unto him ; neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth
all things." Observe, there is a distinction drawn between
the natural man and the spiritual. What is there translated
"natural" is derived from precisely the same word as that
which is here translated "soul." So that we may read just
as correctly: "The man under the dominion of the soul
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are
foolishness unto him ; neither can l\e know them, because
they are spiritually discerne'd. But he that is spiritual
judgeth all things." And again, the apostle, in the same
Epistle to the Corinthians, writes : " That is not first which
is spiritual, but that which is natural :" that is, the endow-
ments of the soul precede the .endowments of the spirit.
You have the same truth in other places. The powers that
belong to the spirit were not the first developed ; but the
powers which belong to the soul that 'is, the powers of
nature. Again in the same chapter, reference is made to
the natural and sp iritual body. " There is a natural body
and there is a spiritual body." Literally, there is a body
governed by the soul that is, powers natural : and there is
a body governed by the spirit that is, higher nature.
Let then this be borne in mind, that what the apostle
calls " soul " is the same v as that which he calls ? in another
place, the " natural man." These powers are divisible into
two branches the intellectual powers and the moral sense.
The intellectual powers man has by nature. Man need not
468 The Trinity.
be regenerated in order to possess the power of reasoning,
or in order to invent The intellectual powers belong to
what the apostle calls the " soul." The moral sense dis-
tinguishes between right and wrong. The apostle tells us,
in the Epistle to the Romans, that "the heathen manifestly
natural men had the "work of the law written in their
Jiearts ; their conscience also bearing witness."
The third division of which the apostle speaks, he calls
the " spirit ;" and by the spirit he means that life in man
w r hich, in his natural state, is in such an embryo condition
that it can scarcely be said to exist at all that which is
called out into power and vitality by regeneration the
perfection of the powers of human nature. And y^m will
observe, that it is not merely the instinctive life, nor the
intellectual life, nor the moral life, but it is principally our
nobler affections that existence, that state of being which
w r e call love. That is the department of human nature
which the apostle calls the spirit ; and accordingly, when the
Spirit of God was given on the day of Pentecost, you will
remember that another power of man was called out, differ-
ing from what he had before. That Spirit granted on the
day of Pentecost did subordinate to Himself, and was in-
tended to subordinate to Himself, the will, the understand-
ing, and the affection of man ; but you often find these spir-
itual powers were distinguished from the natural powers, and
existed without tnem.
So in the highest state of religious life, we are told, men
prayed in the spirit. % Till the spirit has subordinated the
understanding, the gift of God is not complete has not
done its work. It is abundantly evident that a new life was
called out. It was not merely the sharpening of the in-
tellectual powers ; it was calling out powers ^of aspiration
and love to God ; those affections which have in them some-
thing boundless, that are not limited to this earth, but seek
their completion in the mind of God Himself.
Now, what w r e have to say respecting this threefold state
of man is, it is a state of discord. Let us take up a very
simple, popular, everyday illustration. We hear it remarked
frequently in conversation of a man, that if only his will
were commensurate with his knowledge, he would be a great
man. His knowledge is great his powers are almost un-
bounded ; he has gained knowledge from nearly every de-
partment of science; but somehow or other you can not
tell why there is such an indecision, such a vacillation
about the man, that he scarcely knows what to do, and, per-
haps does nothing in this world. You find it remarked,
The Trinity. 469
respecting another class of men, that their will is strong,
almost unbounded in its strength they have iron wills, yet
there is something so narrow in their conceptions, something
so bounded in their views, so much of stagnation in their
thoughts, so much of prejudice in all their opinions, that
their will is prevented from being directed to any thing in a
proper manner. Here is the discord in human nature.
There is a distinction between the will and the under-
standing. And sometimes a feeble will goes with a strong
understanding, or a powerful will is found in connection
with great feebleness or ignorance of the understanding.
Let us, however, go into this more specially. The first
cause of discord in this threefold state of man is the state in
which the body is the ruler ; and this, my Christian brethren,
you find most visibly developed in the uneducated and irre-
ligious poor. I say uneducated and irreligious, because it is
by no means education alone which can subordinate the flesh
to the higher man. The religious uneducated poor man may
be master of his lower passions ; but in the uneducated and
irreligious poor man these show themselves in full force ; this
discord, this want of unity, appears, as it were, in a magnified
form. There is a strong man health bursting, as it were, at
every pore, with an athletic body ; but coarse, and rude, and
intellectually weak almost an animal. When you are re-
garding the upper classes of society, you see less distinctly
the absence of the spirit, unless you look with a spiritual eye.
The coarseness has passed away, the rudeness is no longer
seen : there is a refinement in the pleasure. But if you take
the life led by the young men of our country strong, ath-
letic, healthy men it is still the life of the flesh: the un-
thinking and the unprincipled life in which there is as yet no
higher life developed. It is a life which, in spite of its re-
finement, the Bible condemns as the life of the sensualist.
We pass on now to another state of discord a state in
which the soul is ruined. Brethren, this is a natural result
this is what might have been expected. The natural man
gradually subordinates the flesh, the body, to the soul. It is
natural in the development of individuals, it is natural in the
development of society : in the development of individuals,
because that childlike, infantine life which exists at first,
mid is almost entirely a life of appetites, gradually subsides.
Higher wants, higher desires, loftier inclinations arise ; the
passions of the young man gradually subside, and by degrees
the more rational life comes : the life is changed the pleas-
ures of the senses are forsaken for those of the intellect.
It appears natural, again, in the development of society.
470 The 'Inmty.
Civilization will subordinate the flesh to the soul. In the
savage state you find the, life of the animal. Civilization is
teaching a man, on the principle of this world, to subordinate
his appetites ; to rule himself; and there comes a refinement,
and a gentleness, and a polish, and an enjoyment of intellect-
ual pleasures ; so that the man is no longer what the apostle
calls a sensual man, but he becomes now what the apostle
calls a natural man. We can see this character delineated in
the Epistle to the Ephesians. " Then we were," says the
apostle, " in our Gentile state, fulfilling the desires of the flesh
and of the mind." Man naturally fulfills not merely the de-
sires of the flesh, but the desires of the mind. "And were,"
says the apostle, " children of wrath."
One of the saddest spectacles is the decay of the natural
man before the work of the Spirit has been accomplished in
him. When the savage dies when a mere infant dies when
an animal dies there is nothing that is appalling or depress-
ing there; but when the high, the developed intellect when
the cultivated man conies to the last hours of life, and the
memory becomes less powerful, and the judgment fails, and
all that belongs to nature and to earth visibly perishes, and
the higher life has not been yet developed, though it is des-
tined to survive the grave forever even the life of God
there is here ample cause for grief; and it is no wonder that
the man of genius merely should shed tears at the idea of
decaying life.
We pass on to consider the Trinity in unity. All this is
contained in that simple expression, " The God of peace."
God is a God of unity. He makes one where before there
were two. He is the God of peace, and therefore can make
peace. Now this peace, according to the Trinitarian doctrine,
consists in a threefold unity. Brethren, as we remarked, re-
specting this first of all, the distinction in this Trinity is not
a physical distinction, but a metaphysical one. The illustra-
tions which are often given are illustrations drawn from ma-
terial sources : if we take only those," we get into contradic-
tion : for example, when we talk of personality, our idea is
of a being bounded by space ; and then to say in this sense
that three persons are one, and one is three, is simply con-
tradictory and absurd. Remember that the doctrine of the
Trinity is a metaphysical doctrine. It is a Trinity a division
in the mind of God. It is not three materials ; it is three per-
sons in a sense we shall explain by-and-by.
In the next place I will endeavor to explain the doctrine
not to prove it, but to show its rationality, and to explain
what it is.
The Trinity. 471
The first illustration we endeavor to give in this is taken
from the world of matter. We will take any material sub-
stance : we find in that substance qualities-, we will say three
qualities color, shape and size. Color is not shape, shape is
not size, size is not color. They are three distinct essences,
three distinct qualities, and yet they all form one unity, one
single conception, one idea the idea, for example, of a tree.
Now we will ascend from that into the immaterial world ;
and here we come to something more distinct still. Kith*
erto we have had but three qualities ; we now come to the
mind of man where we find something more than qual-
ities. We will take three the will, the affections, and the
thoughts of man. Hife will is not his aifections, neither are
his affections his thoughts; and it would be imperfect and
incomplete to say that these are mere qualities in the man.
They are separate consciousnesses living consciousnesses
as distinct and as really sundered as it is possible for three
things to be, yet bound together by one unity of conscious-
ness. Now we have distincter proof than even this that
these things are three. The anatomist can tell you that the
localities of these powers are different. He can point out the
seat of the nerve of sensation ; he can localize the feeling of
affection ; he can point to a nerve and say, " There resides
the locality of thought."
There are three distinct localities for three distinct quali-
ties, personalities, consciousnesses ; yet all these three are
one.
Once more, we will give proof even beyond all that. The
act that a man does is done by one particular part of that
man. You may say it was a work of his genius, or of his
fancy ; it may have been a manifestation of his love, or an
exhibition of his courage ; yet that work was the work of the
whole man : his courage, his intellect, his habits of persever
ance, all helped towards the completion of that single work.
Just in this way certain special w>>rks are attributed to cer-
tain personalities of the Deity ; the work of redemption being
attributed to one, the work of sanctification to another. And
yet just as the whole man was engaged in doing that work,
8O does the whole Deity perform that work which is at-
tributed to one essential.
Once more, let us remember that principle which we ex-
pounded last Sunday, that it is the law of being that in pro-
portion as you rise from lower to higher life, the parts are
more distinctly developed, while yet the unity becomes more
entire. You find, for example, in the lowest forms of animal
life one organ performs several functions, one organ being at
47 2 The Trinity.
the same time heart and brain and blood-vessels. But when
you come to man, you find all these various functions exist-
ing in different organs, and every organ more distinctly de
veloped ; and yet the unity of a man is a higher unity than
that of a limpet. When you come from the material world
to the w r orld immaterial, you find that the more society is
cultivated, the more man is cultivated, the more marvellous
is the power of developing distinct powers. In the savage
life it is almost all one feeling ; but in proportion as the
higher education advances and the higher life appears, every
power and faculty develops and distinguishes itself and be-
comes distinct and separate. And yet just in proportion as
in a naticm every part is distinct, the unity is greater, and
just in proportion as in an individual every power is most
complete, and stands out most distinct, just in that propor-
tion has the man reached the entireness of his humanity.
Now, brethren, we^apply all this to the mind of God. The
Trinitarian, maintains against the Unitarian and the Sabellian,
that the higher you ascend in the scale of being, the more dis-
tinct are the consciousnesses, and that the law of unity im-
plies and demands a manifold unity. The doctrine of Sabel-
lianism, for example, is this : that God is but one essence
but one person under different manifestations ; and that when
He made the world He was called the Father, w r hen He re-
deemed the world He was called the Son, and when he sanc-
tified the world He was called the Holy Ghost. The Sabel-
lian and the Unitarian maintain that the unity of God con-
sists simply in a unity of person, and in opposition to this does
the Trinitarian maintain that grandness, either in man or in
God, must be a unity of manifoldness.
But we will enter into this more deeply. The first power
of consciousness in which God is made known to us is as the
Father, the Author of our being. It is written, " In Him we
live, and move, and have our being." He is the Author of
all life. In this sense He Is not merely our Father as Chris-
tians, but the Father of mankind ; and not merely the Fa-
ther of mankind, but the Father of creation ; and in thia
way the sublime language of the prophets may be taken ae
true literally, " The morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy ;" and the language of the can-
ticle which belongs to our morning service, " the deeps, the
fountains, the wells," all unite in one hymn of praise, one ev-
erlasting hallelujah to God the Father, the Author of their
being, "in this respect, simply as the Author of life, merely
as the Supreme Being, God has reference to us in relation to
the body. He is the Lord of life : in Him we live, and
The Trinity. 473
move, and have our being. In this respect God to us is as
j aw as the collected laws of the universe ; and therefore to
offend against law, and bring down the result of transgress-
ing law, is said in Scripture language, because applied to a
person, to be provoking the wrath of God the Father.
In the next place, the second way through which the per-
sonality and consciousness of God has been revealed to us is
as the Son. Brethren, we see in all those writers who have
treated of the Trinity, that much stress is laid upon this
eternal generation of the Son, the everlasting sonship. It is
this which we have in the creed the creed which was read
to-day " God, of the substance of the Father, begotten be-
fore the worlds ;" and, again, in the Nicene creed, that ex-
pression, which is so often wrongly read, " God of God,
Light of Light, very God of very God," means absolutely
nothing. There are two statements made there. The first
is this, " The Son was God :" the sepond is this, " The Son
was of God," showing his derivation. And in that, breth-
ren, we have one of the deepest and most blessed truths of
revelation. The Unitarian maintains a divine humanity a
blessed, blessed truth. There is a truth more blessed still
the humanity of Deity. Before the world was, there was
that in the mind of God which we may call the humanity of
His Divinity. It is called in Scripture the Word : the Son :
the Form of God. It is in virtue of this that we have a right
to attribute to Him our own feelings ; it is in virtue of this
that Scripture speaks of His wisdom, His justice, His love.
Love in God is what love is in man; justice in God is what
justice is in man; creative power in God is what creative
power is in man ; indignation in God is that which indigna-
tion is in man, barring only this, that the one is emotional,
but the other is calm, and pure, and everlastingly still. It
is through this humanity in the mind of God, if I may dare
so to speak of Deity, that a revelation became possible to
man. It was the Word that was made flesh ; it was the
Word that manifested itself to man. It is in virtue of the
connection between God and man, that God made man in
Plis own image ; that through a long line of prophets the hu-
man truth of God could be "made known to man, till it came
forth developed most entirely and at large in the incarnation
of the Redeemer. Now in this respect, it will be observed
that God stands connected with us in relation to the soul as
" the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world."
Once more : there is a nearer, a closer, and a more enduring
relation in which God stands to us that is, the relation of
474 The Trinity.
the Spirit. It is to the writings of St. John that we have to
turn especially, if we desire to know the doctrines of the
Spirit. You will remember the strange way in which he
speaks of God. It would almost seem as if the external God
has disappeared to him ; nay, as if an external Christ were
almost forgotten, because the internal Christ has been formed.
He speaks of God as kindred with us ; he speaks of Christ as
Christ in us ; and " if we love one another," he says, " God
dwelleth in us." If a man keep the commandments, " God
dwelleth in him, and he in God." So that the spiritual man-
ifestation of God to us is that whereby He blends Himself
with the soul of man.
These, then, my Christian brethren, are the three con-
sciousnesses by which He becomes known to us. Three, we
said, known to us. We do not dare to limit God ; we do not
presume to say that there are in God only three personali-
ties, only three consciousnesses : all that we dare presume to
say is this, that there are three in reference to us, and only
three ; that a fourth there is not ; that, perchance, in the
present state a fourth you can not add to these Creator,
Redeemer, Sanctifier.
Lastly, let us turn to the relation which the Trinity in
unity bears to the triad in discord. It is intended for the
entireness of our sanctification : " the very God of peace
sanctify you wholly." Brethren, we dwell upon that expres-
sion " wholly" There is this difference between Christianity
and every other system : Christianity proposes to ennoble
the whole man ; every other system subordinates parts to
parts. Christianity does not despise the intellect, but it
does not exalt the intellect in a one-sided way : it only
dwells with emphasis on the third and highest part of man
his spiritual affections ; and these it maintains are the
chief and real seat of everlasting life, intended to subordi-
nate the other to themselves.
Asceticism would crush the natural affections, destroy the
appetites. Asceticism feels that there is a conflict between
the flesh and the spirit, and it would put an end to that con-
flict ; it would bring back unity by the excision of all our
natural appetites, and all the desires and feelings which we
have by nature. But when the Apostle Paul comes forward
to proclaim the will of God, he says it is not by the crushing
of the body but by the sanctification of the body : " I pray
God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
In this, my Christian brethren, there is one of the deepest
of all truths. Does a man feel himself the slave and the vie-
The Trinity. 475
tira of his lower passions ? Let not that man hope to subdue
them merely by struggling against them. Let him not by
fasting, by austerity, by any earthly rule that he can con-
ceive, expect to subdue the flesh. The more he thinks of his
vile and lower feelings, the more will they be brought into
distinctness, and therefore into power; the more hopelessly
will he become their victim. The only way in which a man
can subdue the flesh is not by the extinction of those frel-
ings, but by the elevation of their character. Let there be
added to that character, sublimity of aim. purity of affection ;
let there be given grandeur, spiritual nobleness ; and then,
just as the strengthening of the whole constitution of the
body makes any particular and local affection disappear, so
by degrees, by the raising of the character, do these lower
affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision,
but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through
them.
This is the account given by the apostle. He speaks of
the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. And his reme-
dy is to give vigor to the higher, rather than to struggle
with the lower. " This I say, then, Walk in the spirit, and
ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh."
Once more : the apostle differs from the world in this,
that the world would restore this unity and sanctify man
simply from the soul. It is this which civilization pretends
to effect. We hear much in these modern days of " the
progress of humanity." We hear of man's invention, of
man's increase of knowledge ; and it would seem in all this,
as if man were necessarily becoming better. Brethren, it al-
ways must be the case in that state in which God is looked
upon as the Supreme Being merely, where the intellect of
man is supposed to be the chief thing that which makes
him most kindred to his Maker.
The doctrine of Christianity is this that unity of all this
discord must be made. Man is to be made one with God,
not by soaring intellect, but by lowly love. It is the Spirit
which guides him to all truth ; not merely by rendering
more acute the reasoning powers, but by convincing of sin,
by humbling the man. It is the graces of the Spirit which
harmonize the man, and make him one ; and that is the ei\d,
and aim, and object of all the Gospel : the entireness of sanc-
tification to produce a perfectly developed man.
Most of us in this world are monsters, with some part of
our being bearing the development of a "giant and others
showing the proportions of a dwarf: a feeble, dwarfish will
mighty, full-blown passions ; and therefore it is that there
476 Absolution.
is to be visible through the Trinity in us, a noble manifold
unity ; and when ' the triune power of God shall so have
done its work on the entireness of our humanity, that the
body, soul, and spirit have been sanctified, then shall there
be exhibited, and only then, a perfect affection in man to his
Maker, and body, soul, and spirit shall exhibit a Trinity ID
unity.
V.
ABSOLUTION.
"And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this
which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?"
Luke v. 21.
THERE are questions which having been again and again
settled, still from time to time present themselves for re-so-
lution ; errors which having been refuted, and cut up by the
roots, re-appear in the next century as fresh and vigorous as
ever. Like the fabled monsters of old, from whose dissever-
ed neck the blood sprung forth and formed fresh heads, mul-
tiplied and indestructible; or like the weeds, which, extir-
pated in one place, sprout forth vigorously in another.
In every such case it may be taken for granted that the
root of the matter has not been reached ; the error has been
exposed, but the truth which lay at the bottom of the error
has not been disengaged. Every error is connected with a
truth ; the truth being perennial, springs up again as often
as circumstances foster it, or call for it, and the seeds of er-
ror which lay about the roots spring up again in the form of
weeds, as before.
A popular illustration of this may be found in the belief
in the appearance of the spirits of the departed. You may
examine the evidence for every such alleged apparition ; you
may demonstrate the improbability ; you may reduce it to
an impossibility ; still the popular feeling will remain ; and
there is a lurking superstition even among the enlightened,
which in the midst of professions of incredulity shows itself
in a readiness to believe the wildest new tale, if it possess
but the semblance of an authentication. Now two truths
lie at the root of this superstition. The first is the re-
ality of the spirit-world and the instinctive belief in it. The
second is the fact that there are certain states of -health in
which the eye creates the objects which it perceives. The
Absolution. 477
death-blow to such superstition is only struck when we have
not only proved that men have been deceived, but shown be-
sides how they came to be deceived ; when science has ex-
plained the optical delusion, and shown the physiological
state in which such apparitions become visible. Ridicule
will not do it. Disproof will not do it. So long as men feel
that there is a spirit-world, and so long as to some the im-
pression is vivid that they have seen it, you spend your
rhetoric in vain. You must show the truth that lies below
the error.
The principle we gain from this is, that you can not over-
throw falsehood by negation, but by establishing the antag-
onistic truth. The refutation which is to last must be posi-
tive, not negative. It is an endless work to be uprooting
weeds : plant the ground with wholesome vegetation, and
then the juices which would have otherwise fed rankness
will pour themselves into a more vigorous growth ; the dwin-
dled weeds will be easily raked out then. It is an endless
task to be refuting error. Plant truth, and the error will
pine away.
The instance to which all this is preliminary, is the perti-
nacious hold which the belief in a human absolving power
retains upon mankind. There has perhaps never yet been
known a religion without such a belief. There is not a sav-
age in the islands of the South Pacific who does not believe
that his priest can shield him from the consequences of sin.
There was not a people in antiquity who had not dispensers
of Divine favor. That same belief passed from Paganism
into Romanism. It was exposed at the period of the Refor-
mation. A mighty reaction was felt against it throughout
Europe. Apparently the whole idea of human priesthood
was proved, once and forever, to be baseless ; human media-
tion, in every possible form, was vehemently controverted ;
men were referred back to God as the sole Absolver.
Yet now again, three centuries after, the belief is still as
strong as ever. That which we thought dead is alive again,
and not likely, it seems, to die. Recent revelations have
shown that confession is daily made in the country whose
natural manners are most against it ; private absolution ask-
ed by English men and given by English priests. A fact so
significant might lead us well to pause, and ask ourselves
whether we have found the true answer to the question.
The negation we have got, the vehement denial; we are
weary of its reiteration : but the positive truth which lies at
the bottom of this craving where is that ?
Parliaments and pulpits, senators and clergymen, have
478 Absolution.
vied with each other in the vehemence with which they de
clare absolution uu-Christian, un-English. All that is most
abominable in the confessional has been with unsparing and
irreverent indelicacy forced before the public mind. Still,
men and women, whose holiness and purity are beyond slan-
der's reach, come and crave assurance of forgiveness. How
shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is this
that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God
only ?" Shall we say it is all blasphemy ; an impious intru-
sion upon the prerogatives of the One Absolver ? Well, we
may ; it is popular to say we ought ; but you will observe,
if we speak so, we do no more than the Pharisees in this
text : we establish a negation ; but a negation is only one
side of truth.
Moreover, we have been asserting that for three hundred
years, with small fruits. We keep asserting, Man can not
give assurance that sin is pardoned ; in other words, man
can not absolve : but still the heart craves human assurance
of forgiveness. What truth have we got to supply that
craving ? We shall therefore rather try to fathom the deeps
of the positive truth which is the true reply to the error; we
shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the
craving contained in the Redeemer's words, " The Son of
Man hath power on earth to forgive sins." What power is
there in human forgiveness ? What does absolution mean
in the lips of a son of man ? These are our questions for to-
day. We shall consider two points.
I. The impotency of the negation.
II. The power of the positive truth.
The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human absolution :
they said, " None can forgive sins, but God only :" that was
a negation. What did they effect by their system of nega-
tions ? They conferred no peace ; they produced no holi-
ness. It would be a great error to suppose that the Phari-
sees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term that
is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew
that they felt no anxiety. They were anxious, in their way.
They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by
a man. To them it appeared license given to sin. If this
new teacher, this upstart in their ow T n language, " this fel-
low of whom every man knew whence he w r as," were to go
about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to
be at peace ; telling them to forget the past, and to work on-
wards ; bidding men's consciences be at rest ; and command-
ing them not to fear the God whom they had offended, but
Absolution. 479
lo trust in Him what would become of morality and relig-
ion ? This presumptuous Absolver would make men careless
about both. If the indispensable safeguards of penalty were
removed, what remained to restrain men from sin ?
For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness
than that which is restrained ; they could conceive no good-
ness free, but only that which is produced by rewards and
punishments law-goodness, law-righteousness: to dread
God, not to love and trust Him, was their conception of re-
ligion. And this, indeed, is the ordinary conception of re-
ligion the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the
word religion. The word religion means, by derivation, re-
striction or obligation obligation to do, obligation to avoid.
And this is the negative system of the Pharisees scrupulous
avoidance of evil rather than positive and free pursuit of ex-
cellence. Such a system never produced any thing but bar-
ren denial. "This is wrong;" "that is heresy j" "that is
dangerous."
There was another class of men who denied human power
of absolution. They were called Scribes or writers ped-
ants, men of ponderous learning and accurate definitions ;
from being mere transcribers of the law, they had risen to
be its expounders. They could define the exact number of
yards that might be travelled on the sabbath-day without
infringement of the law ; they could decide, according to the
most approved theology, the respective importance of each
duty ; they would tell you, authoritatively, which was the
great commandment of the law. The Scribe is a man who
turns religion into etiquette : his idea of God is that of a
monarch, transgression against whom is an offense against
statute law, and he, the Scribe, is there to explain the pre-
scribed conditions upon which the offense may be expiated ;
he has no idea of admission to the sovereign's presence, ex-
cept by compliance with certain formalities which the Scribe
is commissioned to declare.
There are therefore Scribes in all ages Romish Scribes,
who distinguish between venial arid mortal sin, and appor-
tion to each its appointed penance and absolution. There
are Protestant Scribes, who have no idea of God but as an
incensed judge, and prescribe certain methods of appeasing
Him a certain price, in consideration of which He is willing
to sell forgiveness ; men who accurately draw the distinc-
tion between the different kinds of faith faith historical and
faith saving ; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling ;
who treat the natural love of relations as if it were an idola-
try as great as bowing down to mammon ; who make intel-
480 Absolution.
ligible distinction between the work that may and the worls
that may not be done on the sabbath-day ; who seYid you
into a perilous consideration of the workings of your own
feelings, and the examination of your spiritual experiences,
to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you a
right to call God a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe
as much as the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called
him heretic. But in their way they are true to the spirit of
the Scribe.
Now the result of this is fourfold. Among the tender-
minded, despondency ; among the vainer, spiritual pride ; in
the case of the slavish, superstition ; with the hard-minded,
infidelity. Ponder it well, and you will find these four
things rife amongst us : despondency, spiritual pride, super-
stition, and infidelity. In this way we have been going on
for many years. In the midst of all this, at last we are in-
formed that the confessional is at work again ; whereupon
astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is
not to be borne that the priests of the Church of England
should confess and absolve in private. Yet it is only what
might have been expected.
With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Phar-
isaism, we have ceased to front the living fact we are as
zealous as Scribes and Pharisees ever were for negatives;
but in the mean time human nature, oppressed and over-
borne, gasping for breath, demands something real and living.
It can not live on controversies. It can not be fed on pro-
tests against heresy, however vehement. We are trying
w T ho can protest loudest. Every book, every journal, rings
with warnings. "Beware!" is written upon every thing.
Beware of Rome; beware of Geneva; beware of Germany;
some danger on every side ; Satan everywhere God no-
where; everywhere some man to be shunned or dreaded
nowhere one to be loved freely and without suspicion. Is it
any wonder if men and women, in the midst of negations,
cry, "Ye warn me from the error, but who will guide me
into truth ? I want guidance. I am sinful, full of evil ! I
want forgiveness. Absolve me ; tell me that I am pardon-
ed ; help me to believe it. Your quarrels do not help me ;
if you can not do that, it matters little what you can do.
You have restricted God's love, and narrowed the path to
heaven ; you have hampered religion with so many mysteri-
ous questions and quibbles that I can not find the w r ay to
God ; you have terrified me with so many snares and pitfalls
on every side, that I dare not tread at all. Give me peace ;
give me human guidance: I want a human arm to lean on."
Absolution. 481
Tliis is a cry, I believe, becoming daily more passionate
and more common. And no wonder that all our information,
public and private, is to the same effect that the recent
converts have found peace in Rome ; for the secret of the
power of Rome is this that she grounds her teaching, not
on variable feelings and correct opinions, but on facts. God
is not a highly probable God, but afact. God's forgiveness
is not a feeling, but a fact ; and a material symbolic fact is
the witness of the invisible one. Rome puts forward her ab-
solution her false, priestly, magical absolution a visible
fact, as a witness of the invisible. And her perversion pre-
vails because founded on a truth.
II. The power of the positive truth.
Is it any wonder, if, taught on every side distrust of man,
the heart should by a violent reaction, and by an extrava-
gant confidence in a priest, proclaim that its normal, natural
state is not distrust, but trust ?
What is forgiveness ? It is God reconciled to us. What
is absolution ? It is the authoritative declaration that God
is reconciled. Authoritative: that is a real power of con-
veying a sense and feeling of forgiveness. It is the power
of the Son of Man on earth to forgive sins. It is man, God's
image, representing, by his forgiveness on earth, God's for-
giveness in heaven.
Now distinguish God's forgiveness of sin from an arresting
of the consequence of sin. When God forgives a sin it does
not follow that He stops its consequences: for example,
when He forgives the intemperate man whose health is
ruined, forgiveness does not restore his health. Divine par-
don does not interfere with the laws of the universe, for it is
itself one of those laws. It is a law that penalty follows
transgression. Forgiveness will not save from penalty ; but
it alters the feelings with which the penalty is accepted.
Pain inflicted with a surgeon's knife for a man's good is as
keen as that which results from the knife of the torturer ; but
in the one case it is calmly borne because remedial in the
other it exasperates because it is felt to be intended by ma-
levolence. So with the difference between suffering which
comes from a sin which we hope God has forgiven, and suf-
fering which seems to fall hot from the hand of an angry
God. It is a fearful truth, that, so far as we know at least,
the consequences of an act are connected with it indissolubly.
Forgiveness does not arrest them ; but by producing softness
and grateful penitence, it transforms them into blessings.
This is God's forgiveness ; and absolution is the conveyance
21
482 Absolution.
to the conscience of the conviction of forgiveness : to absolve
is to free to comfort by strengthening to afford repose
from fear.
Now it was the way of the Redeemer to emancipate from
sin by the freeness of absolution. The dying thief, an hour
before a blasphemer, was unconditionally assured ; the mo-
ment the sinner's feelings changed towards God, He pro-
claimed that God was reconciled to him: "This day thou
shalt be with me in Paradise." And hence, speaking human-
ly, hence, from this absolving tone and spirit, came His won-
drous and unparalleled power with sinful, erring hearts;
hence the life and fresh impulse which He imparted to the
being and experience to those with whom He dealt. Hence
the maniac, freed from the legion, sat at His feet, clothed,
and in his right mind. Hence the outcast woman, whom
human scorn would have hardened into brazen effrontery,
hearing an unwonted voice of human sympathy, " washed
His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of
her head."
And this is what we have forgotten: we have not yet
learned to trust the power of redeeming love ; we do not be-
lieve in the omnipotence of grace, and the might oif an ap-
peal to the better parts, and not the slavish parts of human
nature. Settle it in your minds, the absolving power is the
central secret of the Gospel. Salvation is unconditional ; not
an offer, but a gift; not clogged with conditions, but free as
the air we breathe. God welcomes back the prodigal. God
loves without money and without price. To this men reply
gravely, It is dangerous to speak thus ; it is perilous to dis-
pense with the safeguards of restriction. Law ! law ! there
is nothing like law a salutary fear for making men holy.
Oh blind Pharisee ! had you ever known the spring, the life
which comes from feeling free, the gush of gratitude with
which the heart springs to duty when all chains are shat-
tered, and it stands fearless and free in the light, and in the
love of God you would understand that a large trusting
charity, which can throw itself on the better and more gen*
erous impulses of a laden spirit, is the safest as well as the
most beautiful means of securing obedience.
So far, however, there will not be much objection to the
doctrine: it will be admitted that absolution is true in the
lips of Christ, because of His Divinity. It will be said He
was God, and Grod speaking on earth is the same thing as
God speaking in heaven. No, my brethren, it is not the
same thing. Christ forgiving on earth is a new truth added
to that of God's forgiving in heaven. It is not the sam
Absolution. 483
truth. The one is forgiveness by Deity; the other is the
declaration of forgiveness by humanity. He bade the pal-
sied man walk, that they might know that " the Son of Man
hath power on earth to forgive sins." Therefore we proceed
a step farther. The same power He delegated to His Church
which He had exercised Himself. " Whosesoever sins ye re-
mit, they are remitted." Now perhaps it will be replied to
this, that that promise belongs to the apostles ; that they
were supernaturally gifted to distinguish genuine from
feigned repentance ; to absolve, therefore, was their natural
prerogative, but that we have no right to say it extends be-
yond the apostles.
We therefore bring the question to a point by referring to
an instance in which an apostle did absolve. Let us ex-
amine whether St. Paul confined the prerogative to himself.
" To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also : for to
whom I forgave any thing for your sakes, forgave I it in the
person of Christ."
Observe now : it is quite true here that the apostle ab-
solved a man whose excommunication he had formerly re-
quired: but he absolved him because the congregation ab-
solved him ; not as a plenipotentiary supernaturally gifted
to convey a mysterious benefit, but as himself an organ and
representative of the Church. The power of absolution
therefore belonged to the Church, and to the apostle through
the Church. It was a power belonging to all Christians : to
the apostle, because he was a Christian, not because he was
an apostle. A priestly power, no doubt, because Christ has
machB all Christians kings and priests.
Now let us turn again, with this added light, to examine
the meaning of that expression, " The Son of~Man hath pow-
er on earth to forgive sins." Mark that form of words not
Christ as God, but Christ as Son of Man. It was manifestly
said by Him, not solely as Divine, but rather as human, as
the Son of Man ; that is, as man. For we may take it as a
rule: when Christ calls himself Son of Man, He is asserting
His humanity. It was said by the High-Priest of humanity
in the name of the race. It was said on the principle that
human nature is the reflection of God's nature : that human
love is the image of God's love ; and that human forgiveness
is the type and assurance of Divine forgiveness.
In Christ humanity was the perfect type of Deity, and
therefore Christ's absolution was always the exact measure
and counterpart of God's forgiveness. Herein lies the deep
truth of the doctrine of His eternal priesthood the Eternal
Son the humanity of the being of God the ever-human
4.84 Absolution.
inind of God. The Absolver ever lives. The Father judgeth
no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son hath
given Him authority to execute judgment also because He
is the Son of Man.
But further than this. In a subordinate, because less per-
fect degree, the forgiveness of a man as man carries with it
an absolving power. Who has not felt the load taken from
his mind when the hidden guilt over which he had brooded
long has been acknowledged, and met by forgiving human
sympathy, especially at a time when he expected to be treat-
ed with coldness and reproof? Who has not felt how such
a moment was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how
the merciful judgment of some wise and good human being
seemed to be the type and the assurance of God's pardon,
making it credible* Unconsciously, it may be, but still in
substance really, I believe some such reasoning as this goes
on in the whispers of the heart "He loves me, and has com-
passion on me will not God forgive ? He, this man, made
in God's image, does not think my case hopeless. Well,
then, in the larger love of God it is not hopeless." Thus,
and only thus, can we understand the ecclesiastical act. Ab-
solution, the prerogative of our humanity, is represented by
a formal act of the Church.
Much controversy and angry bitterness has been spent on
the absolution put by the Church of England into the lips
of her ministers I can not think with justice if we try to
get at the root of these words of Christ. The priest pro-
claims forgiveness authoritatively as the organ of the con-
gregation as the voice of the Church, in the name of -man
and God. For human nature represents God. The Church
represents what human nature is and ought to be. The min-
ister represents the Church. He speaks therefore in the
name of our Godlike human nature. He declares a Divine
fact ; he does not create it. There is no magic in his absolu-
tion : he can no more forgive whom God has not forgiven,
by the formula of absolution, or reverse the pardon of him
whom God has absolved by a formula of excommunication,
than he can transfer a demon into an angel by the formula
of baptism. He declares what every one has a right to de-
clare, and ought to declare by his lips and by his conduct :
but being a minister, he declares it authoritatively in the
name of every Christian who by his Christianity is a priest
to God ; he specializes what is universal ; as in baptism, he
seals the universal Sonship on the individual by name, say-
ing, " The Sonship with which Christ has redeemed all men,
I hereby proclaim for this child ;" so by absolution he spe-
Absolution. 485
cializes the universal fact of the love of God to those who
are listening then and there, saying, " The love pf God the
Absolver I authoritatively proclaim to be yours"
In the service for the visitation of the sick, the Church of
England puts into the lips of her ministers words quite un
conditional: "I absolve thee from all thy sins." You know
that passage is constantly objected to as Romish and super-
stitious, I would not give up that precious passage. I love
the Church of England, because she has dared to claim her
inheritance because she has courage to assert herself as
what she ought to be God's representative on earth. She
says to her minister, Stand there before a darkened spirit, on
whom the shadows of death have begun to fall : in human
flesh and blood representing the Invisible with words of
human love making credible the love eternal. Say boldly, I
am here to declare not a perhaps, but a fact. I forgive thee
in the name of humanity. And so far as humanity represents
Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not put
into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He can not
bless whom God has not blessed he can not curse whom
God has not cursed. If the Son of Absolution be there, his
absolution will rest. If you have ever tried the slow and
apparently hopeless task of ministering to a heart diseased,
and binding up the wound that will bleed afresh, to which no
assurances can give comfort, because they are not authorita-
tive, it must have crossed your mind that such a power as
that which the Church of England claims, if it were believed,
is exactly the remedy you want. You must have felt that
even the formula of the Church of Rome would be a blessed
power to exercise, could it but once be accepted as a pledge
that all the past was obliterated, and that from that moment
a free untainted future lay before the soul you must have
felt that ; you must have wished you had dared to say it.
My whole spirit has absolved my erring brother. Is God
less merciful than I ? Can I dare I say or think it condi-
tionally ? Dare I say, I hope ? May I not, must I not, say,
I know God has forgiven you?
Every man whose heart has truly bled over another's sin,
and watched another's remorse with pangs as sharp as if the
crime had been his own, has said it. Every parent has said
it who ever received back a repentant daughter, and opened
out for her a new hope for life. Every mother has said it
who ever, by her hope against hope for some profligate, pro-
tested for a love deeper and wider than that of society.
Every man has said it who forgave a deep wrong. See, then,
why and how the Church absolves. She only exercises that
486 Absolution.
power which belongs to every son of man. If society were
Christian -^f society, by its forgiveness and its exclusion,
truly represented the mind of God there would be no ne-
cessity for a Church to speak ; but the absolution of society
and the world does not represent by any means God's for
giveness. Society absolves those whom God has not ab-
solved the proud, the selfish, the strong, the seducer ; so-
ciety refuses return and acceptance to the seduced, the frail,
and the sad penitent whom God has accepted ; therefore it
is necessary that a selected body, through its appointed or-
gans, should do in the name of man what man, as such, does
not. The Church is the ideal of humanity. It represents
what God intended man to be what man is in God's sight
as beheld in Christ by Him ; and the minister of the Church
speaks as the representative of that ideal humanity. Church
absolution is an eternal protest, in the name of God the Ab-
solver, against the false judgments of society.
One thing more : beware of making this a dead formula.
If absolution be not a living truth it becomes a monstrous
falsehood ; if you take absolution as a mystical gift conveyed
to an individual man called a priest, and mysteriously effica-
cious in his lips, and his alone, you petrify a truth into death
and unreality. I have been striving to show that absolution
is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft, but a living,
blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and
to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely,
in our lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin :
just so far as we do not exercise it, or exercise it falsely, we
drive men to Rome. For if the heart can not have a truth
it will take a counterfeit of truth. By every magnanimous
act, by every free forgiveness with which a pure man for-
gives, or pleads for mercy, or assures the penitent, he pro-
claims this truth, that " the Son of Man hath power on earth
to forgive sins " he exhibits the priestly power of humanity
he does absolve ; let theology say what it will of absolu-
tion, he gives peace to the conscience he is a type and as-
eurance of what God is he breaks the chains and lets the
captive go free.
The Illusiveness of Life. 487
VI.
THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which ht
should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed ; and he went out, not know-
ing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a
strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with
him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God." Heb. xi. 8-10.
LAST Sunday we touched upon a thought which deserves
further development. God promised Canaan to Abraham,
and yet Abraham never inherited Canaan : to the last he was
a wanderer there ; he had no possession of his own in its ter-
ritory ; if he wanted even a tomb to bury his dead, he could
only obtain it by purchase. This difficulty is expressly ad-
mitted in the text, " In the land of promise he sojourned as
in a strange country ;" he dwelt there in tents in changeful,
movable tabernacles not permanent habitations ; he had no
home there.
It is stated in all its startling force, in terms still more ex-
plicit, in the 7th chapter of the Acts, 5th verse, "And He
gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his
foot on : yet He promised that He would give it to him for a
possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no
child."
Now the surprising point is that Abraham, deceived, as
you might almost say, did not complain of it as a deception ;
he was even grateful for the non-fulfillment of the promise :
he does not seem to have expected its fulfillment ; he did not
look for Canaan, but for " a city which had foundations ;" his
faith appears to have consisted in disbelieving the letter, al-
most as much as in believing the spirit of the promise.
And herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, can
help us to interpret this life of ours. God's promises never
are fulfilled in the sense in which they seem to have been
given. Life is a deception ; its anticipations, which are God's
promises %to the imagination, are never realized; they who
know life best, and have trusted God most to fill it with
blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of dis-
appointments. And in the spirit of this text we have to say
that it is a wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it
thus.
488 The Illusiveness of Life.
The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise-
would not wish it otherwise ; their wisdom consists in disbe-
lieving its promises. To develop this idea would be a glori-
ous task ; for to justify God's ways to man, to expound the
mysteriousness of our present being, to interpret God is not
this the very essence of the ministerial office ? All that I
can hope, however, to-day, is not to exhaust the subject but
to furnish hints for thought. Over-statements may be made,
illustrations may be inadequate, the new ground of an almost
untrodden subject may be torn up too rudely ; but remem-
ber, we are here to live and die ; in a few years it will be all
over ; meanwhile, what we have to do is to try to under-
stand, and to help one another to understand, what it all
means what this strange and contradictory thing, which
we call life, contains within it. Do not stop to ask, there-
fore, whether the subject was satisfactorily worked out ; let
each man be satisfied to have received a germ of thought
which he may develop better for himself.
I. The deception of life's promise.
II. The meaning of that deception.
Let it be clearly understood, in the first place, the promise
never was fulfilled. I do not say the fulfillment was delay-
ed. I say it never was fulfilled. Abraham had a few feet
of earth, obtained by purchase beyond that nothing ; he
died a stranger and a pilgrim in the land. Isaac had a little.
So small was Jacob's hold upon his country that the last
years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a foreigner
in a strange land. His descendants came into the land of
Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with milk and
honey ; they found hard work to do war and unrest, in-
stead of rest and peace.
During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the prom-
ise may seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the later
years of David and the earlier years of Solomon ; but we
have the warrant of Scripture itself for affirming, that even
then the promise was not fulfilled. In the Book of Psalms,
David speaks of a hope of entering into & future rest. The
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this passage,
infers from "it that God's promise had not been exhausted
nor fulfilled by the entrance into Canaan ; for he says, " If
Joshua had given them rest, then would he not have spoken
of another day." Again, in this very chapter, after a long
list of Hebrew saints " These all died in faith, not having
received the promises." To none therefore had the promise
been fulfilled. Accordingly writers on prophecy, in order tc
The Illusiveness of Life. 489
get over this difficulty, take for granted that there must be
a future fulfillment, because the first was inadequate.
They who believe that the Jews will be restored to their
native land, expect it on the express ground that Canaan
has never been actually and permanently theirs. A certain
tract of country three hundred miles in length, by two
hundred in breadth must be given, or else they think the
promise has been broken. To quote the expression of one
of the most eloquent of their writers, " If there be nothing
yet future for Israel, then the magnificence of the promise
has been lost in the poverty of its accomplishment."
I do not quote this to prove the correctness of the inter-
pretation of the prophecy, but as an acknowledgment which
may be taken so far as a proof that the promise made to
Abraham has never been accomplished.
And such is life's disappointment. Its promise is, you
shall have a Canaan ; it turns out to be a baseless airy
dream toil and warfare nothing that we can call our own ;
not the land of rest by any means. But we will examine
this in particulars.
1. Our senses deceive us; we begin life with delusion.
Our senses deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and
color. That which afar off seems oval turns out to be circu-
lar, modified by the perspective of distance; that which ap-
pears a speck, upon nearer approach becomes a vast body.
To the earlier ages the stars presented the delusion of small
lamps hung in space. The beautiful berry proves to be bit-
ter and poisonous : that which apparently moves is really at
rest: that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual mo-
tion : the earth moves : the sun is still. All experience is a
correction of life's delusions a modification, a reversal of the
judgment of the senses : and all life is a lesson on the false-
hood of appearances.
2. Our natural anticipations deceive us I say natural in
contradistinction to extravagant expectations. Every hu-
man life is a fresh one, bright with hopes that will never be
realized. There may be differences of character in these
hopes; finer spirits may look on life as the arena of success-
ful deeds, the more selfish as a place of personal enjoyment.
With man the turning-point of life may be a profession
with woman, marriage ; the one gilding the future with the
triumphs of intellect, the other with the dreams of affeciion ;
but in every case, life is not what any of them expects, but
something else. It would almost seem a satire on existence
to compare the youth in the outset of his career, flushed and
sanguine, with the aspect of the same being when it is near-
21*
490 The Illusiveness of Life.
ly done worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, and
confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is
the land flowing with milk and honey ?
With our affections it is still worse, because they promise
more. Man's affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan
the tents of a night ; not permanent habitations even for this
life. Where are the charms of character, the perfection, and
the purity, and the truthfulness, which seemed so resplendent
in our friend ? They were only the shape of our own con-
ceptions our creative shaping intellect projected its own
fantasies on him : and hence we outgrow our early friend-
ships ; outgrow the intensity of all : we dwell in tents ; we
never find a home, even in the land of promise. Life is an
unenjoyable Canaan, with nothing real or substantial in it.
3. Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us.
The world's history has turned round two points of hope ;
one, the first the other, the second coming of the Messiah.
The magnificent imagery of Hebrew prophecy had described
the advent of the Conqueror; He came "a root out of a
dry ground, with no form or comeliness: and when they saw
Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire
Him." The victory, predicted in such glowing terms, turned
out to be the victory of submission the law of our hu-
manity, which wins by gentleness and love. The promise
in the letter was unfulfilled. For ages the world's hope has
been the second advent. The early church expected it in
their own day. " We, \vhich are alive, and remain until the
coming of our Lord."
The Saviour Himself had said, " This generation shall
not pass till all things be fulfilled." Yet the Son of Man has
never come ; or rather, He has been ever coming. Unnum-
bered times the judgment-eagles have gathered together
over corruption ripe for condemnation. Times innumerable
the separation has been made between good and bad. The
promise has not been fulfilled, or it has been fulfilled, but
in either case anticipation has been foiled and disappointed.-
There are two ways of considering this aspect of life.
One is the way of sentiment ; the other is the way of faith.
The sentimental way is trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist,
moralist, and preacher, have repeated in every possible
image, till there is nothing new to say, that life is a bubble,
a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is the way of
faith: the ancient saints ielt as keenly as any moralist could
feel the brokenness of its promises ; they confessed that they
were strangers and pilgrims here ; they said that they had
here no continuing city ; but they did not mournfully moralize
The Illusiveness of Life. 491
on this ; they said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so.
They i'elt that all was right ; they knew that the promise
itself had a deeper meaning : they looked undauntedly for
" a city which hath foundations."
II. The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this
delusiveness.
1. It serves to allure us on. Suppose that a spiritual,
promise had been made at first to Israel ; imagine that they
had been informed at the outset that God's rest is inward ;
that the promised land is only found in the Jerusalem which
is above not material, but immaterial. That rude, gross
people, yearning after the fleshpots of Egypt willing to go
back into slavery, so as only they might have enough to eat
and drink would they have quitted Egypt on such terms ?
Would they have begun one single step of that pilgrimage
which was to find its meaning in the discipline of ages ?
We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey.
Could a man see his route before him a flat, straight road,
unbroken by bush, or tree, or eminence, with the sun's heat
burning down upon it, stretched out in dreary monotony
he could scarcely find energy to begin his task ; but the un-
certainty of what may be seen beyond the next turn keeps
expectation alive. The view that may be seen from yonder
summit the glimpse that may be caught, perhaps, as the
road winds round yonder knoll hopes like these, not far
distant, beguile the traveller on from mile to mile, and from
league to league.
In fact, life is an education. The object for which you
educate your son is to give him strength of purpose, self-
command, discipline of mental energies ; but you do not re-
veal to your son this aim of his education ; you tell him of
his place in his class, of the prizes at the end of the year, of
the honors to be given at college.
These are not the true incentives to knowledge ; such in-
centives are not the highest they are even mean, and par-
tially injurious ; yet these mean incentives stimulate and
lead on, from day to day and from year to year, by a process
the principle of which the boy himself is not aware o So
does God lead on, through life's unsatisfying and false re-
ward, ever educating : Canaan first ; then the hope of a Re-
deemer ; then the millennial glory.
Now what is remarkable in this is, 'that the delusion
continued to the last ; they all died in faith^ not having re-
ceived the promises ; all were hoping up to the very last,
and all died in faith, not in realization j for thus God has
49 2 The Illusiveness of Life.
constituted the human heart. It never will be believed that
this world is unreal. God has mercifully so arranged it, that
the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the boy or
girl as you will that life is a disappointment ; yet however
you may persuade them to adopt your tone, and catch the
language of your sentiment, they are both looking forward
ito some bright distant hope the rapture of the next vaca-
tion, or the unknown joys of the next season and throwing
into it an energy of expectation which only a whole eternity
is worth. YoiMnay tell the man who has received the heart-
shock from which in this world he will not recover, that life
has nothing left ; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever
near the prize " wealthiest when most undone :" he has
reaped the whirlwind, but he will go on still, till life is over,
sowing the wind.
Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this
indestructible power of believing in spite of failure. In the
first centuries, the early Christians believed that the millen-
nial advent was close; they heard the warning of the apos-
tle, brief and sharp, "The time is short." Now suppose
that, instead of this, they had seeu all the dreary page of
Church history unrolled ; suppose that they had known that
after two thousand years the world would have scarcely
spelled out three letters of the meaning of Christianity,
where would have been those gigantic efforts, that life spent
as on the very brink of eternity, which characterize the days
of the early Church, and which was, after all, only the true
life of man in time ? It is thus that God has led on His
world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child, when
the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He
suffers him to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside
to pluck now and then a flower, to chase now a butterfly ;
the butterfly is crushed, the flower fades, but the child is
so much nearer home, invigorated and full of health, and
scarcely wearied yet.
2. This non-fulfillment of promise fulfills it in a deeper
way. The account we have given already, were it to end
there, would be insufficient to excuse the failure of life's
promise ; by saying that it allures us would be really to
charge God with deception. Now life is not deception,
but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and delusion.
We may paint wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or
marble ; this is delusion : but you may paint a picture, in
which rocks, trees, and sky are never mistaken for what
they seem, yet produce all the emotion which real rocks,
trees, and sky would produce. This is illusion, and this
The Illusiveness of Life. 493
is the painter's art : never for one moment to deceive by at-
tempted imitation, but to produce a mental state in which the
feelings are suggested which the natural objects themselves
would create. Let us take an instance drawn from life.
To a child a rainbow is a real thing substantial and pal-
pable ; its limb rests on the side of yonder hill ; he believes
that he can appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of
gems and gold hid in its radiant bow, he finds nothing but
damp mist, cold, dreary drops of disappointment that dis-
appointment tells that his belief has been delusion.
To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet it
never once deceives ; he does not take it for what it is not ;
he does not expect to make it his own ; he feels its beauty
as much as the child could feel it, nay infinitely more more
even from the fact that he knows that it will be transient ;
but besides and beyond this, to him it presents a deeper
loveliness ; he knows the laws of light, and the laws of the
human soul which gave it being. He has linked it with the
laws of the universe, and with the invisible mind of God ;
and it brings to him a thrill of awe, and the sense of a mys-
terious, nameless beauty, of which the child did not con-
ceive. It is illusion still ; but it has fulfilled the promise.
In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the soul, it is the
same. All is illusion ; " but we look for a city which hath
foundations ;" and in this the promise is fulfilled.
And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some, doubt-
less, it was delusion. They expected to find their reward in
a land of milk and honey. They were bitterly disappointed,
and expressed their disappointment loudly enough in their
murmurs against Moses, and their rebellion against his suc-
cessors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan was the
bright illusion which never deceived, but forever shone be-
fore as the type of something more real. And even taking
the promise literally, though they built in tents, and could
not call a foot of land their own, was not its beauty theirs ?
Were not its trellised vines, and glorious pastures, and rich
olive-fields, ministers to the enjoyment of those who had all
in God, though its milk, and oil, and honey, could not be en-
joyed with exclusiveness of appropriation ? Yet over and
above and beyond this, there was a more blessed fulfillment
of the promise ; there was " a city which had foundations"
built and made by God towards which the anticipation
of this Canaan was leading them. The kingdom of God was
forming in their souls, forever disappointing them by the un-
real, and teaching them that what is spirituals and belongs
to mind and character, alone can be eternal.
494 The Iliusiveness of Life.
We will illustrate this principle from the common walks
of life. The principle is, that the reward we get is not the
reward for which we worked, but a deeper one ; deeper and
more permanent. The merchant labors all his life, and the
hope which leads him on is perhaps wealth : well, at sixty
years of age he attains wealth ; is that the reward of sixty
years of toil ? Ten years of enjoyment, when the senses can
enjoy no longer a country-seat, splendid plate, a noble es-
tablishment ? Oh, no ! a reward deeper than he dreamed
of habits of perseverance : a character trained by indus-
try: that is his reward. He was carried on from year to
year by, if he were wise, illusion ; if he were unwise, delu-
sion ; but he reaped a more enduring substance- in himself.
Take another instance : the public man, warrior, or states-
man, who has served his country, and complains a,t last, in
bitter disappointment, that his country has not fulfilled his
expectations in rewarding him that is, it has not given him
titles, honors, wealth. But titles, honors, wealth are these
the rewards of well-doing? can they reward it ? would it be
well-doing if they could ? To be such a man, to have the
power of doing such deeds, what could be added to that re-
ward by having? This same apparent contradiction, which
was found in Judaism, subsists too in Christianity ; we will
state it in the words of an apostle : " Godliness is profitable
for all things ; having the promise of the life that now is, as
well as of that which is to come." Now for the fulfillment :
" If in this life only we have hope in Christ, then are we of
all men most miserable."
Godliness is profitable ; but its profit, it appears, consists in
finding that all is loss : yet in this way you teach your son.
You will tell him that if he will be good all men will love
him. You say that " Honesty is the best policy," yet in
your heart of hearts you know that you are leading him on
by a delusion. Christ was good. Was he loved by all? In
proportion as he, your son, is like Christ, he will be loved,
not by the many, but by the few. Honesty is not the best
policy; the commonplace honesty of the market-place may
be the vulgar honesty which goes no farther than paying
debts accurately ; but that transparent Christian honesty of
a life which in every act is bearing witness to the truth, that
is not the way to get on in life the reward of such a life is
the cross. Yet you were right in teaching your son this:
you told him what was true ; truer than he could compre-
hend. It is better to be honest and good; better than
he can know or dream : better even in this life ; better by so
much as being good is better than having good. But, in a
The Sacrifice of Christ. 495
rade coarse way, you must express the blessedness on a level
with his capacity; you must state the truth in a way
which he will inevitably interpret falsely. The true inter-
pretation nothing but experience can teach.
And this is what God does. His promises are true, though
illusive; far truer than we at first take them to be. We
work for a mean, low, sensual happiness, all the while He is
leading us on to a spiritual blessedness, unfathomably deep.
This is the life of faith. We live by faith, and not by sight
We do not preach that all is disappointment the dreary
creed of sentimentalism ; but we preach that nothing here is
disappointment, if rightly understood. We do not comfort
the poor man, by saying that the riches that he has not now
he will have hereafter the difference between himself and
the man of wealth being only this, that the one has for time
what the other will have for eternity ; but what we say is,
'that that which you have failed in reaping here you never
will reap, if you expected the harvest of Canaan. God has
no Canaan for His own ; no milk and honey for the luxury
of the senses : for the city which hath foundations is built in
the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells has
all the universe for his own "All things," saith. the apostle,
" are yours ; whether life or death, or things present, or
things to come ; if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's
Heed, and heirs according to the promise."
VII.
THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
" For the love of Christ constraineth us : because we thus judge, that if
one died for all, then were all dead : and that he died for all, that they which
live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for
them, and rose again." 2 Cor. v. 14, 15.
IT may be, that in reading these verses some of us have
understood them in a sense foreign to that of the apostle,
It may have seemed that the arguments ran thus Because
Christ died upon the cross for all, therefore all must have
been in a state of spiritual death before ; and if they were
asked what doctrines are to be elicited from this passao,\,
they would reply, " the doctrine of universal depravity, and
the constraining power of the gratitude due to Him who
died to redeem us from it." There is, however, in the first
place, this fatal objection to such an interpretation, that the
496 The Sacrifice of Christ.
death here spoken of is used in two diametrically opposite
senses. In reference to Christ, death literal in reference to
all, death spiritual. Now, in the thought of St. Paul, the
death of Christ was always viewed as liberation from the
power of evil : " in that He died, He died unto sin once," and
again, " he that is dead is free from sin." The literal death,
then, in one clause, means freedom from sin ; the spiritual
death of the next is slavery to it. Wherein, then, lies the co-
gency of the apostle's reasoning ? How does it follow that
because Christ died to evil, all before that must have died to
God ? Of course that doctrine is true in itself, but it is not
the doctrine of the text.
In the next place, the ambiguity belongs only to the Eng-
lish word it is impossible to make the mistake in the orig-
inal : the word which stands for were, is a word which does
not imply a continued state, but must imply a single finish-
ed act. It can not by any possibility imply that before the
death of Christ men were in a state of death it can only
mean, they became dead at the moment when Christ died.
If you read it thus, the meaning of the English will emerge
" if one died for all, then all died ;" and the apostle's ar-
gument runs thus, that if one acts as the representative of
all, then his act is the act of all. If the ambassador of a na-
tion makes reparation in a nation's name, or does homage for
a nation, that reparation, or that homage, is the nation's act
if one did it for all, then all did it. So that instead of in-
ferring that because Christ died for all, therefore before that
all were dead to God, his natural inference is that therefore
all are now dead to sin.
Once more, the conclusion of the apostle is exactly the re-
verse of that which this interpretation attributes to him : he
does not say that Christ died in order that men might not
die, but exactly for this very purpose, that they might die ;
and this death he represents in the next verse by an equiva-
lent expression the life of unselfishness : "that they which
live might henceforth live not unto themselves." The
" dead " of the first verse are " they that live " of the sec-
ond.
The form of thought finds its exact parallel in Romans vi.
10, 11. Two points claim our attention :
I. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ.
IL The influence of that sacrifice on man.
I. The vicariousness of the sacrifice is implied in the word
"for." A vicarious act is an act done for another. When
the Pope calls himself the vicar of Christ, he implies that he
The Sacrifice of Christ. 497
acts for Christ. The vicar or viceroy of a kingdom is one
who acts for the king a vicar's act, therefore, is virtually
the act of the principal whom he represents ; so that if the
Papal doctrine were true, when the vicar of Christ pardons,
Christ has pardoned. When the viceroy of a kingdom has
published a proclamation or signed a treaty, the sovereign
himself is bound by those acts.
The truth of the expression for all, is contained in this
fact, that Christ is the representative of humanity properly
speaking, the representative of human nature. This is the
truth contained in the emphatic expression, " Son of Man."
What Christ did for humanity was done by humanity, be-
cause in the name of humanity. For a truly vicarious act
does not supersede the principal's duty of performance, but
rather implies and acknowledges it. Take the case from
which this very word of vicar has received its origin. In
the old monastic times, when the revenues of a cathedral or
a cure fell to the lot of a monastery, it became the duty of
that monastery to perform the religious services of the cure.
But inasmuch as the monastery was a corporate body, they
appointed one of their number, whom they denominated their
vicar, to discharge those offices for them. His service did
not supersede theirs, but was a perpetual and standing ac-
knowledgment that they, as a whole and individually, were
under the obligation to perform it. The act of Christ is the
act of humanity that which all humanity is bound to do.
His righteousness does not supersede our righteousness, nor
does His sacrifice supersede our sacrifice. It is the repre-
sentation of human life and human sacrifice vicarious for
all, yet binding upon all.
That He died for all is true
1. Because He was the victim of the sin of all. In the pe-
culiar phraseology of St. Paul, He died unto sin. He was
the victim of sin He died by sin. It is the appalling mys-
tery of our redemption that the Redeemer took the attitude
of subjection to evil. There was scarcely a form of evil with
which Christ did not come in contact, and by which He did
not suffer. He was the victim of false friendship and in-
gratitude, the victim of bad government and injustice. He
fell a sacrifice to the vices of all classes to the selfishness of
the rich and the fickleness of the poor : intolerance, formal
ism, skepticism, hatred of goodness, were the foes which
crushed Him.
In the proper sense of the word He was a victim. He did
not adroitly wind through the dangerous forms of evil, meet-
ing it with expedient silence. Face to face, and front to
498 The Sacrifice of Christ.
front, He met it, rebuked it, and defied it ; and just as truly
as he is a voluntary victim whose body, opposing the prog'
ress of the car of Juggernaut, is crushed beneath its mon-
strous wheels, was He a victim to the world's sin : because
pure,*He was crushed by impurity; because just and real
and true, He waked up the rage of injustice, hypocrisy and
falsehood.
Now this sin was the sin of all. Here arises at once a dif-
ficulty : it seems to be most unnatural to assert that in any
one sense He was the sacrifice of the sin of all. We did not
betray Him that was Judas's act Peter denied Him
Thomas doubted Pilate pronounced sentence it must be a
figment to say that these were our acts ; we did not watch
Him like the Pharisees, nor circumvent Him like the Scribes
and lawyers ; by what possible sophistry can we be involved
in the complicity of that guilt ? The savage of New Zealand
who never heard of Him, the learned Egyptian, and the vo-
luptuous Assyrian who died before He came ; how was it the
sin of all ?
The reply that is 'often given to this query is wonderfully
unreal. It is assumed that Christ was conscious, by His
omniscience, of the sins of all mankind ; that the duplicity
of the child, and the crime of the assassin, and every unholy
thought that has ever passed through a human bosom, were
present to His mind in that awful hour as if they were His
own. This is utterly unscriptural. Where is the single text
from which it can be, except by force, extracted ? Besides
this, it is fanciful and sentimental ; and again it is dangerous,
for it represents the whole Atonement as a fictitious and
shadowy transaction. There is a mental state in which men
have felt the burden of sins which they did not commit.
There have been cases in which men have been mysteriously
excruciated with the thought of having committed the un-
pardonable sin. But to represent the mental phenomena of
the Redeemer's mind as in any way resembling this to say
that His conscience was oppressed with the responsibility of
sins which He had not committed is to confound a state of
sanity with the delusions of a half lucid mind, and the work-
ings of a healthy conscience with those of one unnatural and
morbid.
There is a way, however, much more appalling and much
more true, in which this may be true, without resorting to
any such fanciful hypothesis. Sin has a great power in this
world : it gives laws like those of a sovereign, which bind us
all, and to which we are all submissive. There are current
maxims in Church and State, in society, in trade, in law, to
The Sacrifice of Christ, 499
which we yield obedience. For this obedience every one is
responsible ; for instance, in trade, and in the profession of
law, every one is the servant of practices the rectitude of
which his heart can only half approve every one complains
of them, yet all are involved in them. Now, when such sins
reach their climax, as in the case of national bankruptcy or
an unjust acquittal, there may be some who are in a special
sense the actors in the guilt ; but evidently, for the bank-
ruptcy, each member of the community is responsible in that
degree and so far as he himself acquiesced in the duplicities
of public dealing ; every careless juror, every unrighteous
judge, every false witness, has done his part in the reduction
of society to that state in which the monster injustice has
been perpetrated. In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by
night, a house may be burnt, or a murder committed ; in. the
eye of the law, all who are aiding and abetting there are
each in his degree responsible for that crime ; there may be
difference in guilt, from the degree in which he is guilty
who with his own hand perpetrated the deed, to that of him
who merely joined the rabble from mischievous curiosity
degrees from that of willful murder to that of more or less
excusable homicide.
The Pharisees were declared by the Saviour to be guilty
of the blood of Zacharias, the blood of righteous Abel, and
of all the saints and prophets w r ho fell before He came. But
how were the Pharisees guilty ? They built the sepulchres
of the prophets, they honored and admired them ; but they
were guilty, in that they were the children of those that slew
the prophets ; children in this sense, that they inherited
their spirit, they opposed the good in the form in which it
showed itself in their day, just as their fathers opposed the
form displayed to theirs ; therefore He said that they belong-
ed to the same confederacy of evil, and that the guilt of the
blood of all who had been slain should rest on that genera
tion. Similarly we are guilty of the death of Christ. If
you have been a false friend, a skeptic, a. cowardly disciple,
a formalist, selfish, an opposer of goodness, an oppressor,
whatever evil you have done, in that degree and so far you
participate in the evil to which the Just One fell a victim
you are one of that mighty rabble which cry, " Crucify Him !
Crucify Him !" for your sin He died ; His blood lies at your
threshold.
Again, He died for all, in that His sacrifice represents
the sacrifice of all. We have heard of the doctrine of " im-
puted righteousness ;" it is a theological expression to which
meanings foolish enough are sometimes attributed, but it
500 The Sacrifice of Christ.
contains a very deep truth, which it shall be our endeavof
to elicit.
Christ is the realized idea of our humanity. He is God's
idea of man completed. There is every difference between
the ideal and the actual between what a man aims to be
and what he is ; a difference between the race as it is, and
the race as it existed in God's creative idea when He pro-
nounced it very good.
In Christ, therefore, God beholds humanity ; in Christ
He sees perfected every one in whom Christ's spirit exists
in germ. He to whom the possible is actual, to w T hom what
will be already is, sees all things present, gazes on the imper-
fect, and sees it in its perfection. Let me venture an illus-
tration. He who has never seen the vegetable world except
in Arctic regions, has but a poor idea of the majesty of
vegetable life a microscopic red moss tinting the surface
of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there per-
haps a dwindled oak ; but to the botanist who has seen the
luxuriance of vegetation in its tropical magnificence, all that
wretched scene presents another aspect ; to him those dwarfs
are the representatives of what might be, nay, what has been
in a kindlier soil and a more genial climate ; he fills up by
his conception the miserable actuality presented by these
shrubs, and attributes to them imputes, that is, to them
the majesty of which the undeveloped germ exists already.
Now the difference between those trees seen in them-
selves, and seen in the conception of their nature's perfect-
ness which has been previously realized, is the difference
between man seen in himself and seen in Christ. We are
feeble, dwarfish, stunted specimens of humanity. Our best
resolves are but withered branches, our holiest deeds unripe
and blighted fruit ; but to the Infinite Eye, who sees in the
perfect One the type and assurance of that which shall be,
this dwindled humanity of ours is divine and glorious.
Such are we in the sight of God the Father as is the very
Son of God Himself. This is what theologians, at least the
wisest of them, meant by " imputed righteousness." I do
not mean that all who have written or spoken on the subject
had this conception of it, but I believe they who thought
truly meant this ; they did not suppose that in imputing
righteousness there w T as a kind of figment, a self-deception
in the mind of God ; they did not mean that by an act of
will He chose to consider that every act which Christ did
was done by us ; that He imputed or reckoned to us the
baptism in Jordan and the victory in the wilderness, and
.the agony in the garden, or that He believed, or acted as if
The Sacrifice of Christ. 501
He believed, that when Christ died, each one of us died:
but He saw Humanity submitted to the law of self-sacrifice ;
in the light" of that idea He beholds us as perfect, and is
satisfied. In this sense the apostle speaks of those that are
imperfect, yet " by one offering He hath perfected forever
them that are sanctified." It is true, again, that He died for
us, in that we present His sacrifice as ours. The value of
the death of Christ consisted in the surrender of self-will
In the fortieth Psalm, the value of every other kind of sacri-
fice being first denied, the words follow, " Then said I, Lo, I
come to do thy will, O God." The profound idea contained,
therefore, in the death of Christ is the duty of self-surrender.
But in us that surrender scarcely deserves the name ;
even to use the word self-sacrifice covers us with a kind of
shame. Then it is that there is an almost boundless joy in
acquiescing in the life and death of Christ, recognizing it as
ours, and representing it to ourselves and God as what we
aim at. If we can not understand how in this sense it can
be a sacrifice for us, we may partly realize it by remembering
the joy of feeling how art and nature realize for us what we
can "not realize for ourselves. It is recorded of one of the
world's gifted painters that he stood before the masterpiece
of the great genius of his age one which he could never
hope to equal, nor even rival and yet the infinite superi-
ority, so far from crushing him, only elevated his feeling,
for he saw realized those conceptions which had floated
before him, dim and unsubstantial; in every line and touch
he felt a spirit immeasurably superior yet kindred, and he is
reported to have exclaimed, with dignified humility, "And I
too am a painter !"
We must all have felt, when certain effects in nature,
combinations of form and color, have been presented to
us, our own idea speaking in intelligible and yet celestial
language ; when, for instance, the long bars of purple, " edged
with intolerable radiance," seemed to float in a sea of pale
pure green, when the whole sky seemed to reel with thunder,
when the night-wind moaned. It is wonderful how the most
commonplace men and women beings who, as you would
have thought, had no conception that rose beyond a com-
mercial speculation or a fashionable entertainment are ele-
vated by such scenes ; how the slumbering grandeur of
their nature wakes and acknowledges kindred with the sky
and storm. " I can not speak," they would say, " the feelings
which are in me ; I have had emotions, aspirations, thoughts ;
I can not put them into words. Look there ! listen now to
the storm ! That is what I meant, only I never could say
502 The Sacrifice of Christ.
it out till now." Thus do art and nature speak for us, and
thus do we adopt them as our own. This is the way in which
His righteousuess becomes righteousness for us. * This is the
way in which the heart presents to God the sacrifice of Christ-,
gazing on that perfect Life we, as it were, say, " There, that
is my religion that is my righteousness what I want to be,
which I am not that is my offering,*ny life as I would wish
to give it, freely and not checked, entire and perfect." So
the old prophets, their hearts big with unutterable thoughts,
searched " what or what manner of time the spirit of Christ
which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand
of the sufferings of Christ, and of the glory which should
follow ;" and so with us, until it passes into prayer : " My
Saviour, fill up the blurred and blotted sketch which my
clumsy hand has drawn of a divine life, with the fullness of
Thy perfect picture. I feel the beauty which' I can not
realize : robe me in Thine unutterable purity :
" Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee."
II. The influence of that sacrifice on man is the introduc-
tion of the principle of self-sacrifice into his nature " then
were all dead." Observe, again, not He died that we might
not die, but that in His death we might be dead, and that
in His sacrifice we might become each a^ sacrifice to God.
Moreover, this death is identical with life. They who in the
first sentence are called dead, are in the second Denominated
" they who live." So in another place, " I am crucified with
Christ, nevertheless I live ;" death, therefore, that is, the sac-
rifice of self, is equivalent to life. Now this rests upon a
profound truth. The death of Christ was a representation
of the life of God. To me this is the profoundest of all truths,
that the whole of the life of God is the sacrifice of self. God
is love ; love is sacrifice to give rather than to receive the
blessedness of self-giving. If the life of God were not such, it
would be a falsehood to say that God is love ; for even in our
human nature, that which seeks to enjoy all instead of giving
nil is known by a very different name from that of love.
'All the life of God is a flow of this divine self-giving charity.
Creation itself is sacrifice the self-impartation of the Divine
Being. Redemption, too, is sacrifice, else it could not be love ;
for which reason we will not surrender one iota of the truth
that the death of Christ was the sacrifice of God the man-
ifestation once in time of that which is the eternal law of His
life.
If man, therefore, is to rise into the life of God, he must be
The Sacrifice of Christ. 503
absorbed into the spirit of that sacrifice he must die with
Christ if he would enter into his proper life. For sin is the
withdrawing into self and egotism, out of the vivifying life
of God, which alone is our true life. The moment the man
sins he dies. Know we not how awfully true that sentence is,
a Sin revived, and I died ?" The vivid'life of sin is the death
of the man. Have we never felt that our true existence has
absolutely in that moment disappeared, and that we are not ?
I say, therefore, that real human life is a perpetual comple-
tion and repetition of the sacrifice of Christ " all are dead;"
the explanation of which follows, " to live not to themselves,
but to Him who died for them and rose again." This is the
truth which lies at the bottom of the Romish doctrine of the
mass. Rome asserts that in the mass a true and proper sac-
rifice is offered up for the sins of all that the offering of
Christ is forever repeated. To this Protestantism has ob
jected vehemently, that there is but one offering once of
fered an objection in itself entirely true ; yet the Romist
doctrine contains a truth which it is of importance to disen-
gage from the gross and material form with which it has beer,
overlaid. Let us hear St. Paul : " I fill up that which is be-
aindhand of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh for his body's
sake, which is the Church." Was there then something be-
hindhand of Christ's sufferings remaining uncompleted, of
which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the com-
plement ? He says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul
for the Church in any form of correct expression be said to
eke out the sufferings that were complete ? In one sense it
is true to say that there is one offering once offered for all.
But it is equally true to say that that one offering is value-
less, except so far as it is completed and repeated in the life
and self-offering of all. This is the Christian's sacrifice. Not
mechanically completed in the miserable materialism of the
mass, but spiritually in the life of all in whom the Crucified
lives. The sacrifice of Christ is done over again in every life
which is lived, not to self but to God.
Let" one concluding observation be made self-denial, self-
sacrifice, self-surrender ! Hard doctrines, and impossible !
Whereupon, in silent hours, we skeptically ask, Is this possi-
ble ? is it natural ? Let preacher and moralist say what they
will, I am not here to sacrifice myself for others. God sent
ne here for happiness, not misery. Now introduce one sen-
tence of this text of which we have as yet said nothing, and
the dark doctrine becomes illuminated " the love of Christ
constraineth us." Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial, does
no good ; self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at
504 The Power of Sorrow.
all. If you give up a meal for the sake of showing powei
over self, or lor the sake of self-discipline, it is the most mis-
erable of all delusions. You are not more religious in doing
this than before. This is mere self-culture, and self-culture
being occupied forever about self, leaves you only in that
circle of self from which religion is to free you ; but to give
up a meal that one you love may have it is properly a relig-
ious act no hard and dismal duty, because made easy by
affection. To bear pain for the sake of bearing it has in it no
moral quality at all, but to bear it rather than surrender
truth, or in order to save another, is positive enjoyment as
well as ennobling to the soul. Did you ever receive even a
blow meant for another, in order to shield that other? Do
you not know that there was actual pleasure in the keen pain
far beyond the most rapturous thrill of nerve which could be
gained from pleasure in the midst of painlessness ? Is not the
mystic yearning of love expressed in words most purely thus,
Let me suffer lor him ?
This element of love is that which makes this doctrine an
intelligible and blessed truth. So sacrifice alone, bare and
unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead ; but self-sacrifice,
illuminated by love, is warmth and life ; it is the death of
Christ, the life of God, the blessedness and only proper life
of man.
VIII.
THE POWER OF SORROW.
" Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to
repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might
receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to
salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death."
2 Cor. vii. 9, 10.
THAT which is chiefly insisted on in this verse is the dis-
tinction between sorrow and repentance. To grieve over sin
is one thing, to repent of it is another.
The apostle rejoiced, not that the Corinthians sorrowed,
but that they sorrowed unto repentance. Sorrow has two
results ; it may end in spiritual life, or in spiritual death ; and
in themselves, one of these is as natural as the other. Sorrow
may produce two kinds of reformation a transient, or a per-
manent one an alteration in habits, which, originating in emo-
tion, will hist so long as that emotion continues, and then after
a few fruitless efforts be given up a repentance which will be
The Power of Sorrow. 505
repented of; or again, a permanent change, which will be re-
versed by no afterthought a repentance not to be repented
of. Sorrow is in itself, therefore, a thing neither good nor
bad : its value depends on the spirit of the person on whom
it falls. Fire will inflame straw, soften iron, or harden clay ;
its effects are determined by the object with which it comes
in contact. Warmth develops the energies of life, or helps
the progress of decay. It is a great power in the hothouse,
a great power also in the coffin : it expands the leaf, matures
the fruit, adds precocious vigor to vegetable life : and warmth
too develops with tenfold rapidity the weltering process of
dissolution. So too with sorrow. There are spirits in which
it develops the seminal principle of life ; there are others in
which it prematurely hastens the consummation of irreparable
iecay. Our subject therefore is the twofold power of sorrow.
I. The fatal power of the sorrow of the world.
IL The life-giving power of the sorrow that is after God.
The simplest/ way in w T hich the sorrow of the world works
death, is seen in the effect of mere regret for worldly loss.
There .are certain advantages with which we come into the
world. Youth, health, friends, and sometimes property. So
long as these are continued we are happy ; and because hap-
py, fancy ourselves very grateful to God. We bask in the
sunshine of His gifts, and this pleasant sensation of sunning
ourselves in life we call religion ; that state in which we all
are before sorrow comes, to test the temper of the metal of
which our souls are made, when the spirits are unbroken and
the heart buoyant, when a fresh morning is to a young heart
what it is to the skylark. The exuberant burst of joy seems
a spontaneous hymn to the Father of all blessing, like the
matin carol of the bird ; but this is not religion : it is the in-
stinctive utterance of happy feeling, having as little of moral
character in it, in the happy human being* as in the happy
bird.
*N~ay more : the religion which is only sunned into being
by happiness is a suspicious thing having been warmed by
joy, it will become cold when joy is over; and then when
these blessings are removed we count ourselves hardly treat-
ed, as if we had been defrauded of a right ; rebellious hard
feelings come ; then it is you see people become bitter, spite
ful, discontented. At every step in the solemn path of life
something must be mourned which will come back no more ;
the temper that was so smooth becomes rugged and uneven ;
the benevolence that expanded upon all narrows into an ever-
dwindling selfishness we are alone ; and then that death-
22
506 The Power of Sorrow.
like loneliness deepens as life goes on. The course of man la
downward, and he moves with slow and ever more solitary
steps, down to the dark silence the silence of the grave.
This is the death of heart; the sorrow of the world has
worked death.
Again, there is a sorrow of the world, when sin is grieved
for in a worldly spirit. There are two views of sin : in one
it is looked upon as wrong in the other, as producing loss -
loss, for example, of character. In such cases, if character
could be preserved before the world grief would not come ;
but the paroxysms of misery fall upon our proud spirit when
our guilt is made public. The most distinct instance we
have of this is in the life of Saul. In the midst of his apparent
frief, the thing still uppermost was that he had forfeited his
ingly character : almost the only longing was, that Samuel
should honor him before his people. And hence it comes to
pass, that often remorse and anguish only begin with expo-
sure. Suicide takes place, not when the act of wrong is done
but when the guilt is known, and hence, too, many a one be-
comes hardened who" would otherwise have remained tolera-
bly happy ; in consequence of which we blame the exposure,
not the guilt ; we say if it had been hushed up all would
have been well; that the servant who robbed his master was
ruined by taking away his character; and that if the sin had
been passed over repentance might have taken place, and he
might have remained a respectable member of society. Do
not think so. It is quite true that remorse was produced by
exposure, and that the remorse was fatal ; the sorrow which
worked death arose from that exposure, and so far exposure
may be called the cause : had it never taken place, respecta-
bility, and comparative peace, might have continued ; but
outward respectability is not change of heart.
It is well known that the corpse has been preserved for
centuries in the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that
when atmospheric air was introduced to the exposed surface
it crumbled into dust. Exposure worked dissolution, but it
only manifested the death which was already there ; so with
sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to pieces or
crumbles into dust, when it is revealed. Exposure did not
work death in the Corinthian sinner, but life.
There is another form of grief for sin, which the apostle
would not have rejoiced to see ; it is when the hot tears
come from pride. No two tones of feeling, apparently simi-
lar, are more unlike than that in which Saul exclaimed, " I
have played the fool exceedingly," and that in which the
publican cried out, " God be merciful to me a sinner." The
The Power of Sorrow. 507
charge of folly brought against one's self only proves that we
feel bitterly for having lost our own self-respect. It is a hu-
miliation to have forfeited the idea which a man had formed
of his own character to find that the very excellence on
which he prided himself is the one in which he has failed.
If there were a virtue for which Saul was conspicuous it was
generosity ; yet it was exactly in this point of generosity in
which he discovered himself to have failed, when he was
overtaken on the mountain, and his life spared by the very
man whom he was hunting to the death with feelings of the
meanest jealousy. Yet there was no real repentance there ;
there was none of that in which a man is sick of state and
pomp. Saul could still rejoice in regal splendor, go about
complaining of himself to the Ziphites, as if he was the most
ill-treated and friendless of mankind; he was still jealous of
his reputation, and anxious to be well thought of. Quite dif-
ferent is the tone in which the publican, who felt himself a sin-
ner, asked for mercy. He heard the contumelious expression
of the Pharisee, " this publican." With no resentment, he
meekly bore it as a matter naturally to be taken for granted
" he did not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven ;" he
was as a worm which turns in agony, but not revenge, upon
the foot which treads it into the dust.
Now this sorrow of Saul's, too, works death : no merit can
restore self-respect ; when once a man has found himself out
he can not be deceived again. The heart is as a stone: a
speck of canker corrodes and spreads within. What on this
earth remains, but endless sorrow, for him who has ceased
to respect himself, and has no God to turn to ?
n. The divine power of sorrow.
1. It works repentance. By repentance is meant, in Scrip-
ture, change of life, alteration of habits, renewal of heart.
This is the aim and meaning of all sorrow. The conse-
quences of sin are meant to wean from sin. The penalty an-
nexed to it is in the first instance, corrective, not penal. Fire
burns the child, to teach it one of the truths of this universe
the property of fire to burn. The first time it cuts its
hand with a sharp knife- it has gained a lesson which it nev-
er will forget. Now, in the case of pain this experience is sel-
dom, if ever, in vain. There is little chance of a child forget-
ting that fire will burn, and that sharp steel will cut; but
the moral lessons contained in the penalties annexed to
wrong-doing are just as truly intended, though they are by
no means so unerring in enforcing their application. The
fever in the veins and the headache which succeed intoxica-
508 The Power of Sorrow.
tion, are meant to warn against excess. On the first occasion
they are simply corrective ; in every succeeding one they as-
sume more and more a penal character in proportion as the
conscience carries with them the sense of ill desert.
Sorrow, then, has done its work when it deters from evil ;
in other words, when it works repentance. In the sorrow of
the world, the obliquity of the heart towards evil is not
cured ; it seems as if nothing cured it : heartache and trials
come in vain ; the history of life at last is what it was at
first. The man is found erring where he erred before. The
same course, begun with the certainty of the same desperate
end which has taken place so often before.
They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow
the wind. Hence I believe that life-giving sorrow is less
remorse for that which is irreparable, than anxiety to save
that which remains. The sorrow that ends in death hangs
in funeral weeds over the sepulchres of the past. Yet the
present does not become more wise. Not one resolution is
made more firm, nor one habit more holy. Grief is all.
Whereas sorrow avails only when the past is converted into
experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never
are to be forgotten.
2. Permanence of alteration ; for after all, a steady refor-
mation is a more decisive test of the value of mourning than
depth of grief.
The susceptibility of emotion, varies with individuals.
Some men feel intensely, others suffer less keenly ; but this
is constitutional, belonging to nervous temperament rather
than to moral character. This is the characteristic of the
divine sorrow, that it is a repentance "not repented of;" no
transient, short-lived resolutions, but sustained resolve.
And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the repent-
ance increases the grief diminishes. "I rejoice," says Paul,
that "I made you sorry, though it were but for a time."
Grief for a time, repentance forever. And few things more
signally prove the wisdom of this apostle than his way of
dealing with this grief of the Corinthian. He tried no arti-
ficial means of intensifying it did not urge the duty of
dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor even of gauging and
examining it. So soon as grief had done its work the apos-
tle was anxious to dry useless tears he even feared lest
haply such an one should be swallowed up with overmuch
sorrow. "A true penitent," says Mr. Newman, " never for-
gives himself." Oh false estimate of the Gospel of Christ and
of the heart of man ! A proud remorse does not forgive it-
self the forfeiture of its own dignity ; but it is the very beauty
The Power of Sorrow. 509
of the penitence which is according to God, that at last the
sinner, realizing God's forgiveness, does learn to forgive him-
self. For what other purpose did St. Paul command the
Church of Corinth to give ecclesiastical absolution, but in
order to afford a symbol and assurance of the Divine par-
don, in which the guilty man's grief should not be over-
whelming, but that he should become reconciled to himself?
What is meant by the publican's going down to his .house
justified, but that he felt at peace with himself and God ?
3. It is sorrow with God, here called godly sorrow ; in the
margin sorrowing according to God.
God sees sin not in its consequences but in itself; a thing
infinitely evil, even if the consequences were happiness to
the guilty instead of misery. So sorrow according to God
is to see sin as God sees it. The grief of Peter was as bit-
ter as that of Judas. He went out and wept bitterly ; how
bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to look on
sin as God does. But in Peter's grief there was an element
of hope ; and that sprung precisely from this that he saw
God in it all. Despair of self did not lead to despair of
God.
This is the great, peculiar feature of this sorrow : God is
there, accordingly self is less prominent. It is not a micro-
scopic self-examination, nor a mourning in which self is ever
uppermost : my character gone ; the greatness of my sin ;
the forfeiture of my salvation. The thought of God absorbs
all that. I believe the feeling of true penitence would ex-
press itself in such words as^ these : There is a righteous-
ness, though I have not attained it. There is a purity, and
a love, and a beauty, though my life exhibits little of it. In
that I can rejoice. Of that I can feel the surpassing loveli-
ness. My doings ? They are worthless, I can not endure to
think of them. I am not thinking of them. I have some-
thing else to think of. There, there ; in that life I see it.
And so the Christian gazing not on what he is, but on
what he desires to be dares in penitence to say, That right-
eousness is mine : dares, even when the recollection of his
sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say with Peter,
thinking less of himself than of God, and sorrowing as it
were with God "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thcu
knowest that I love Thee."
5 1 o Sensual and Spiritual Excitement*
IX.
SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.
*' Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the
Xord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess ; but be filled with
the Spirit." Eph. v. 17, 18.
THERE is evidently a connection between the different
branches of this sentence for ideas can not be properly
contrasted which have not some connection but what that
connection is, is not at first sight clear. It almost appears
like a profane and irreverent juxtaposition to contrast full-
ness of the Spirit with fullness of wine. Moreover, the
structure of the whole context is antithetical. Ideas are op-
posed to each other in pairs of contraries; for instance,
"fools" is the exact opposite to "wise;" "unwise," as op-
posed to " understanding," its proper opposite.
And here again, there must be the same true antithesis
between drunkenness and spiritual fullness. The propriety
of this opposition lies in the intensity of feeling produced in
both cases. There is one intensity of feeling produced by
stimulating the senses, another by vivifying the spiritual life
within. The one commences with impulses from without,
the other is guarded by forces from within. Here then is
the similarity, and here the dissimilarity, which constitutes
the propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salva-
tion. One degrades, the other exalts. This contrast then is
our subject for to-day.
I. The effects are similar. On the day of Pentecost, when
the first influences of the Spirit descended on the early
Church, the effects resembled intoxication. They were full
of the Spirit, and mocking by-standers said, " These men are
full of new wine ;" for they found themselves elevated into
the ecstasy of a life higher than their own, possessed of
powers which they could not control ; they spoke incohe-
rently and irregularly ; to the most part of those assembled,
unintelligibly.
Now compare with this the impression produced upon sav-
age nations suppose those early ages in which the spectacle
of intoxication was presented for the first time. They saw
a man under the influence of a force different from and i
Sensual and Spiritual Excitement, 511
some respects inferior to, their own. To them the bacchanal
appeared a being half inspired ; his frenzy seemed a thing for
reverence and awe, rather than for horror and disgust ; the
spirit which possessed him must be, they thought, divine ; they
deified it, worshipped it under different names as a god ; even
to a clearer insight the effects are wonderfully similar. It is
almost proverbial among soldiers that the daring produced
by wine is easily mistaken for the self-devotion of a brave
heart.
The play of imagination in the brain of the opium-eater is
as free as that of genius itself, and the creations produced in
that state by the pen or pencil are as wildly beautiful as
those owed to the nobler influences. In years gone by, the
oratory of the statesman in the senate has been kindled by
semi-intoxication, when his noble utterances were set down
by his auditors to the inspiration of patriotism.
It is this very resemblance which deceives the drunkard:
he is led on by his feelings as well as by his imagination. It
is not the sensual pleasure of the glutton that fascinates
him; it is those fine thoughts and those quickened sensi-
bilities which were excited in that state, which he is power-
less to produce out of his own being, or by his own powers,
and which he expects to reproduce by the same means. The
experience of our first parent is repeated in him : at the very
moment when he expects to find himself as the gods, know-
ing good and evil, he discovers that he is unexpectedly de
graded, his health . wrecked, and his heart demoralized.
Hence it is almost as often the finer as the baser spirits of
our race which are found the victims of such indulgence.
Many will remember, while I speak, the names of the gifted
of their species, the degraded men of genius who were the
victims of these deceptive influences ; the half- inspired
painter, poet, musician, who began by soothing opiates to
calm the over-excited nerves or stimulate the exhausted
brain, who mistook the sensation for somewhat half divine,
and became, morally and physically, wrecks of manhood, de-
graded even in their mental conceptions. It was therefore
DO mere play of words which induced the apostle to bring
these two things together. That which might else seem ir-
reverent appears to have been a deep knowledge of human
nature ; he contrasts, because his rule was to distinguish two
things which are easily mistaken for each other.
The second point of resemblance is the necessity of in-
tense feeling. We have fullness fullness, it may be, pro-
duced by outward stimulus, or else by an inpouring of the
Spirit. What we want is life, " more life, and fuller. " To
512 . Sensual and Spiritual Excitement.
escape from monotony, to get away from the life of mere
routine and habits, to feel that we are alive with more of
surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of
the gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. " To feel the years
before us." To be consciously existing.
Now this desire lies at the bottom of many forms of life
which are apparently as diverse as possible. It constitutes
the fascination of the gambler's life: money is not what he
wants were he possessed of thousands to-day he would risk
them all to-morrow but it is that being perpetually on the
brink of enormous wealth and utter ruin, he is compelled to
realize at every moment the possibility of the extremes of
life. Every moment is one of feeling. This too, constitutes
the charm of all those forms of life in which the gambling
feeling is predominant where a sense of skill is blended
with a mixture of chance. If you ask the statesman why it
is, that possessed as he is of wealth, he quits his princely
home for the dark metropolis, he would reply, " that he
loves the excitement of a political existence." It is this, too,
which gives to the warrior's and the traveller's existence such
peculiar reality ; and it is this in a far lower form which
stimulates the pleasure of a fashionable life which sends
the votaries of the world in a constant round from the capi-
tal to the watering-place, and from the watering-place to the
capital ; what they crave for is the power of feeling intensely.
Now the proper and natural outlet for this feeling is the
life of the Spirit. What is religion but fuller life ? To live
in the Spirit, what is it but to have keener feelings and
mightier powers to rise into a higher consciousness of life ?
What is religion's self but feeling? The highest form of re-
ligion is charity. Love is of God, and he that loveth is born
of God, and knoweth God. This is an intense feeling, too in-
tense to be excited, profound in its calmness, yet it rises at
times in its higher flights into that ecstatic life which glances
in a moment intuitively through ages. These are the pente-
costal hours of our existence, when the Spirit comes as
mighty rushing wind, in cloven tongues of fire, filling the
soul with God.
n. The dissimilarity or contrast in St. Paul's idea. The
one fullness begins from without, the other from within.
The one proceeds from the flesh and then influences the emo-
tions. The other reverses this order. Stimulants like wine
inflame the senses, and through them set the imaginations
and feelings on fire ; and the law of our spiritual being is,
that that which begins with the flesh sensualizes the spirit
Sensual and Spiritual Excitement. 5 1 3
whereas that which commences in the region of the spirit
spiritualizes the senses in which it subsequently stirs emo-
tion. But the misfortune is that men mistake this law of
their emotions; and the fatal error is, when having found
spiritual feelings existing in connection, and associated with,
fleshly sensations, men expect by the mere irritation of the
emotions of the frame to reproduce those high and glorious
feelings.
You might conceive the recipients of the Spirit on the
day of Pentecost acting under this delusion ; it is conceiv-
able that having observed certain bodily phenomena for
instance, incoherent utterances and thrilled sensibilities co-
existing with those sublime spiritualities they might have
endeavored, by a repetition of those incoherencies, to obtain
a fresh descent of the Spirit. In fact, this was exactly what
was tried in after ages of the Church. In those events of
Church history which are denominated revivals in the camp
of the Methodist and the Ranter, a direct attempt was made
to arouse the emotions by exciting addresses and vehement
language. Convulsions, shrieks, and violent emotions were
produced, and the unfortunate victims of this mistaken at-
tempt to produce the cause by the eifect, fancied themselves,
and were pronounced by others, converted. Now the mis-
fortune is, that this delusion is the more easy from the lact
that the results of the two kinds of causes resemble each
other. You may galvanize the nerve of a corpse till the ac-
tion of a limb startles the spectator with the appearance of
life. It is not life, it is only a spasmodic hideous mimicry of
life. Men having seen that the spiritual is always associated
with forms, endeavor by reproducing the forms to recall
spirituality ; you do produce thereby a something that looks
like spirituality, but it is a resemblance only. The worst case
of all occurs in the department of the affections. That which
begins in the heart ennobles the whole animal being, but
that which begins in the inferior departments of our being ia
the most entire degradation and sensualizing of the soul.
Now it is from this point of thought that we learn to ex-
tend the apostle's principle. Wine is but a specimen of a
class of stimulants. All that begins from without belongs to
the same class. The stimulus may be afforded by almost any
enjoyment of the senses. Drunkenness may come from any
thing wherein is excess : from over-indulgence in society, io
pleasure, in music, find in the delight of listening to oratory,
nay, even from the excitement of sermons and religious meet-
ings. The prophet tells us of those who are drunken, ani pot
with wine.
22*
5 1 4 Sensual and Spiritual Excitement.
The other point of difference is one of effect. Fullness of
the Spirit calms; fullness produced by excitement satiatea
and exhausts. They who know the world of fashion tell us
that the tone adopted there is, either to be, or to affect to be,
sated with enjoyment, to be proof against surprise, to have
lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have all keenness of
wonder gone. That which ought to be men's shame becomes
their boast unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion.
Whether this be real or affected matters not ; it is, in truth,
the real result of the indulgence of the senses. The law is
this ; the " crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears
with time;" for it has been well remarked that the terrific
punishment attached to the habitual indulgence of the senses
is, that the incitements to enjoyment increase in proportion
as the power of enjoyment fades.
Experience at last forbids even the hope of enjoyment ; the
sin of the intoxicated soul is loathed, detested, abhorred ; yet
it is done. The irritated sense, like an avenging fury, goads
on with a restlessness of craving, and compels a reiteration
of the guilt though it. has ceased to charm.
To this danger our own age is peculiarly exposed. In the
earlier and simpler ages, the need of keen feeling finds a nat-
ural and safe outlet in compulsory exertions. For instance,
in the excitement of real warfare, and in the necessity of pro-
viding the sustenance of life, warlike habits and healthy la-
bor stimulate without exhausting life. But in proportion as
civilization advances, a large class of the community are ex-
empted from the necessity of these, and thrown upon a life
of leisure. Then it is that artificial life begins, and artificial
expedients become necessary to sharpen the feelings amongst
the monotony of existence ; every amusement and all litera-
ture become more pungent in their character; life is no long-
er a thing proceeding from powers within, but sustained by
new impulses from without.
There is one peculiar form of this danger to which I would
specially direct your attention. There is one nation in Eu-
rope which, more than any other, has been subjected to these
influences. In ages of revolution, nations live last ; centuries
of life are passed in fifty years of time. In such a state, in-
dividuals become subjected more or less to the influences
which are working around them. Scarcely an enjoyment or
a book can be met with which does not bear the impress of
this intensity. Now, the particular danger to which I allude
is French novels, French romances, and French plays. The
overflowings of that cup of excitement have reached our
shores. I do not say that these works contain any thing
Sensual and Spiritual Excitement. 515
coarse or gross better if it were so : evil which comes in a
form of grossness is not nearly so dangerous as that which
comes veiled in gracefulness and sentiment. Subjects which
are better not touched upon at all are discussed, examined,
and exhibited in all the most seductive forms of imagery.
You would be shocked at seeing your son in a fit of intoxica*
tion ; yet, I say it solemnly, better that your son should reel
through the streets in a fit of drunkenness, than that the del-
icacy of your daughter's mind should be injured, and her im-
agination inflamed with false fire. Twenty-four hours will
terminate the evil in the one case. Twenty-four hours will
not exhaust the effects of the other ; you must seek the con-
sequences at the end of many, many years.
I speak that which I do know ; and if the earnest warning
of one who has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized,
can reach the heart of one Christian parent, he will put a ban
on all such works, and not suffer his children's hearts to be
excited by a drunkenness which is worse than that of wine.
For the worst of it is, that the men of our time are not yet
alive to this growing evil ; they are elsewhere in their stud-
ies, counting-houses, professions not knowing the food, or
rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' intellect-
ual life is sustained. It is precisely those who are most un-
fitted to sustain the danger, whose feelings need restraint in-
stead of spur, and whose imaginations are most inflammable,
that are specially exposed to it.
On the other hand, spiritual life calms while it fills. True
it is that there are pentecostal moments when such life reach-
es the stage of ecstasy. But these were given to the Church
to prepare her for suffering, to give her martyrs a glimpse of
blessedness, which might sustain them afterwards in the ter-
rible struggles of death. True it is that there are pentecos-
tal hours when the soul is surrounded by a kind of glory, and
we are tempted to make tabernacles upon the mount, as if
life were meant for rest ; but out of that very cloud there
comes a voice telling of the cross, and bidding us descend
into the common world again, to simple duties and humble
life. T^his very principle seems to be contained in the text
The apostle's remedy for this artificial feeling is " Speaking
to one another in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs."
Strange remedy ! Occupation fit for children too simple
far for men : as astonishing as the remedy prescribed by the
prophet to Naaman to wash in simple water, and be clean ;
yet therein lies a very important truth. In ancient medical
phraseology, herbs possessed of healing natures were called
simples ; in God's laboratory, all things that heal are simple
5 1 6 Purity.
all natural enjoyments, all the deepest, are simple too. At
night, man fills his banquet-hall with the glare of splendor
which fevers as well as tires the heart ; and at the very same
hour, as if they intended contrast, the quiet stars of God steal
forth, shedding, together with the deepest feeling, the pro-
foundest sense of calm. One from whose knowledge of the
sources of natural feeling there lies almost no appeal, has said
that to him,
" The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
This is exceedingly remarkable in the life of Christ. No
contrast is more striking than that presented by the thought,
that that deep and beautiful life was spent in the midst
of mad Jerusalem. Remember the Son of Man standing
quietly in the porches of Bethesda, when the streets all
around were filled with the revelry of innumerable multi-
tudes, who had come to be present at the annual feast.
Remember Him pausing to weep over his country's doomed
metropolis, unexcited, while the giddy crowd around Him
were shouting " Hosannah to the Son of David !" Remem*
ber Him in Pilate's judgment -hall, meek, self-possessed,
standing in the serenity of truth, while all around Him was
agitation hesitation in the breast of Pilate, hatred in the
bosom of the Pharisees, and consternation in the heart of
the disciples.
And this, in truth, is what we want : we want the vision
of a calmer and simpler beauty, to tranquillize us in the
midst of artificial tastes we want the draught of a purer
spring to cool the flame of our excited life ; we want, in
other words, the Spirit of the life of Christ, simple, natural,
with power to calm and soothe the feelings which it rouses :
the fullness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate !
X.
PURITY.
* l Unto the pure all things are pure : but unto them that are defiled and
unbelieving is nothing pure ; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. *
Titus i. 15.
FOR the evils of this world there are two classes of reme-
dies one is the world's, the other is God's. The world
proposes to remedy evft by adjusting the circumstances of
Purity. 517
this life to man's desires. The world says, Give us a perfect
set of circumstances , and then we shall have a set of perfect
men. This principle lies at the root of the system called
Socialism. Socialism proceeds on the principle that all
moral and even physical evil arises from unjust laws. If
the cause be remedied, the effect will be good. But Chris-
tianity throws aside all that as merely chimerical. It proves
that the fault is not in outward circumstances but in our-
selves. Like the wise physician who, instead of busying
himself with transcendental theories to improve the climate
and the outward circumstances of man, endeavors to relieve
and get rid of the tendencies of disease which are from
within, Christianity, leaving all outward circumstances to
ameliorate themselves, fastens its attention on the spirit
which has to deal with them. Christ has declared that the
kingdom of heaven is from within. He said to the Pharisee,
" Ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but
within ye are full of extortion and excess." The remedy for
all this is a large and liberal charity, so overflowing that
" unto the pure all things are pure." To internal purity all
external things become pure. The principle that St. Paul has
here laid down is, that each man is the creator of his own
world ; he walks in a universe of his own creation.
As the free air is to one out of health the cause of cold
and diseased lungs, so to the healthy man it is a source of
greater vigor. The rotten fruit is sweet to the worm, but
nauseous to the palate of man. It is the same air and the
vsame fruit acting differently upon different beings. To
different men a different world to one all pollution, to
another all purity. To the noble all things are noble, to the
mean all things are contemptible.
The subject divides itself into two parts.
I. The apostle's principle.
II. The application of the principle.
Here we have the same principle again ; each man creates
his o wn world. Take it in its simplest form. The eye creates
the outward world it sees. We see not things as they are,
but as God has made the eye to receive them.
In its strictest sense, the creation of a new man is the
creation of a new universe. Conceive an eye so constructed
as that the planets and all within them should be minutely
seen, and all that is near should be dim and invisible like
things seen through a telescope, or as we see through a
magnifyirig-glass the plumage of the butterfly and the bloom
upon the peach ; then it is manifestly clear that we have
5 1 8 Purity.
called into existence actually a new creation, and not new
objects. The mind's eye creates a world for itself.
Again, the visible world presents a different aspect to
each individual man. You will say that the same things you
see are seen by all that the forest, the valley, the flood,
and the sea, are the same to all ; and yet all these things so
seen, to different minds are a myriad of different universes.
One man sees in that noble river an emblem of eternity ; he
sloses his lips and feels that God is there. Another sees
nothing in it but a very convenient road for transporting his
spices, silks, and merchandise. To one this world appears
useful, to another beautiful. Whence comes the difference?
From the soul within us. It can make of this world a vast
chaos " a mighty maze without a plan ;" or a mere ma-
chine a collection of lifeless forces ; or it can make it the
living vesture of God, the tissue through which He can
become visible to us. In the spirit in which we look on it
the world is an arena for mere self advancement, or a place
for noble deeds, in which self is forgotten and God is all.
Observe, this "effect is traceable even in that produced by
our different and changeful moods. We make and unmake
a world more than once in the space of a single day. In
trifling moods all seems trivial. In serious moods all seems
solemn. Is the song of the nightingale merry or plaintive ?
Is it the voice of joy or the harbinger of gloom ? Sometimes
one, and sometimes the other, according to our different
moods. We hear the ocean furious or exulting. The
thunder-claps are grand, or angry, according to the differ-
ent states of our mind. Nay, the very church-bells chime
sadly or merrily, as our associations determine. They
speak the language of our passing moods. The young ad-
venturer revolving sanguine plans upon the milestones, hears
them speak to him as God did to Hagar in the wilderness,
bidding him back to perseverance and greatness. The soul
spreads its own hue over every thing ; the shroud or wed-
ding-garment of nature is woven in the loom of our own feel-
ings. This universe is the express image and direct counter-
part of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble-minded, and all
nature replies I am divine, the child of God ; be thou, too
His child, and noble. Be mean, and all nature dwindles into
a contemptible smallness.
In the second place, there are two ways in which this
principle is true. To the pure, all things and all persons are
pure, because their purity makes all seem pure.
There are some who go through life complaining of this
world ; they say they have found nothing but treachery and
Purity. 5 1 9
deceit ; the poor are ungrateful, and the rich are selfish. Yet
we do not find such the best men. Experience tells us that
each man most keenly and unerringly detects in others the
vice with which he is most familiar himself. *
Persons seem to each man what he is himself. One who
suspects hypocrisy in the world is rarely transparent ; the
man constantly on the watch for cheating is generally dis-
honest ; he who suspects impurity is prurient. This is the
principle to which Christ alludes when he says, *' Give alms
of such things as ye have ; and behold all things are clean
unto you."
Have a large charity ! Large " charity hopeth all things."
Look at that sublime apostle who saw the churches of Ephe-
sus and Thessalonica pure, because he saw them in his own
large love, and painted them, not as they were, but as his
heart filled up the picture ; he viewed them in the light of
his own nobleness, as representations of his own purity.
Once more : to the pure all things are pure, as well as all
persons. That which is natural lies not in things, but in the
minds of men. There is a difference between prudery and
modesty. Prudery detects wrong where no wrong is ; the
wrong lies in the thoughts, and not in the objects. There
is something of over-sensitiveness and over-delicacy which
shows not innocence, but an inflammable imagination. And
men of the world can not understand that those subjects and
thoughts which to them are full of torture, can be harmless,
suggesting nothing evil to the pure in heart.
Here, however, beware ! No sentence of Scripture is more
frequently in the lips of persons who permit themselves
much license, than the text, " To the pure all things are
pure." Yes, all things natural, but not artificial scenes
which pamper the tastes, which excite the senses. Inno-
cence feels healthily. To it all nature is pure. But, just as
the dove trembles at the approach of the hawk, and the
young calf shudders at the lion never seen before, so inno-
cence shrinks instinctively from what is wrong by the same
divine instinct. If that which is wrong seems pure, then the
heart is not pure but vitiated. To the right-minded all that
"is right in the course of this world seems pure. Abraham,
looking forward to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,
entreated that it might be averted, and afterwards acqui-
esced ! To the disordered mind " all things are out of
course." This is the spirit which pervades the whole of the
Ecclesiastes. There were two things which were perpetu-
ally suggesting themselves to the mind of Solomon ; the in-
tolerable sameness of this world, and the constant desire loi
5 2O Purity.
change. And yet that same world, spread before the serene
eye of God, was pronounced to be all " very good."
This disordered universe is the picture of your own mind.
We make a wilderness by encouraging artificial wants, by
creating sensitive and selfish feelings ; then we project every
thing stamped with the impress of our own feelings, and we
gather the whole of creation into our own pained being
" the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain togeth-
er until now." The world you complain of as impure and
wrong is not God's world, but your world ; the blight, the
dullness, the blank, are all your own. The light which is in
you has become darkness, and therefore the light itself is
dark.
Again, to the pure all things not only $eem pure, but are
really so because they are made such.
First, as regards persons. It is a marvellous thing to see
how a pure and innocent heart purifies all that it approach-
es. The most ferocious natures are soothed and tamed by
innocence. And so with human beings, there is a delicacy
so pure that vicious men in its presence become almost
pure ; all of. purity which is in them is brought out ; like at-
taches itself to like. The pure heart becomes a centre of at-
traction round which similar atoms gather, and from which
dissimilar ones are repelled. A corrupt heart elicits in an
hour all that is bad in us ; a spiritual one brings out and
draws to itself all that is best and purest. Such was Christ.
He stood in the world the Light of the world, to which all
sparks of light gradually gathered. He stood in the pres-
ence of impurity, and men became pure. Note this in the
history of Zaccheus. In answer to the invitation of the Son
of Man, he says, " Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give
to the poor, and if I have done wrong to any man I restore
him fourfold." So also the Scribe, " Well, Master, thou hast
well said, there is one God, and there is none other than
He." To the pure Saviour all was pure. " He was lifted
up on high, and drew all men unto Him."
Lastly, all situations are pure to the pure. According to
the world, some professions are reckoned honorable and some
dishonorable. Men judge according to a standard merely
conventional, and not by that of moral rectitude. Yet it
was in truth the men who were in these situations which
made them such. In the days of the Redeemer the publi-
can's occupation was a degraded one, merely because low
base men filled that place. But since He was born into the
world a poor, laboring man, poverty is noble and dignified,
and toil is honorable. To the man who feels that " the
Purity. 521
king's daughter is all glorious within," no outward situation
can seem inglorious or impure.
There are three words which express almost the same
thing, but whose meaning is entirely different. These are,
the gibbet, the scaffold, and the cross. So far as we know,
none die on the gibbet but men of dishonorable and base
life. The scaffold suggests to our minds the noble deaths of
our greatest martyrs. The cross was once a gibbet, but it
is now the highest name we have, because He hung on it.
Christ has purified and ennobled the cross. This principle
runs through life. It is not the situation which makes the
man, but the man who makes the situation. The slave may
be a freeman. The monarch may be a slave. Situations are
noble or ignoble, as we make them.
From all this subject we learn to understand two things.
Hence we understand the Fall. When man fell, the world
fell with him. All creation received a shock. Thorns,
briers, and thistles, sprang up. They were there before, but
to the now restless and impatient hands of men they became
obstacles and weeds. Death, which must ever have existed
as a form of dissolution, a passing from one state to another,
became a curse ; the sting of death was sin unchanged in
itself, it changed in man. A dark heavy cloud rested on it
the shadow of his own guilty heart.
Hence, too, we understand the Millennium. The Bible
says that these things are not to be forever. There are
glorious things to come. Just as in my former illustration,
the alteration of the eye called new worlds into being, so
now nothing more is needed than to re-create the soul the
mirror on which all things are reflected. Then is realized
the prophecy of Isaiah, " Behold, I create all things new,"
" new heavens and a new earth."
The conclusion of this verse proves to us why all these new
creations were called into being " wherein dwelleth right-
eousness." To be righteous makes all things new. We do
not want a new world, we want new hearts. Let the Spirit
of God purify society, and to the pure all things will be
pure. The earth will put off the look of weariness and
gloom which it has worn so long, and then the glorious lan-
guage of the prophets will be fulfilled "TheVorests will
break out with singing, and the desert will blossom as the
522 Unity and Peace.
XI.
UNITY AND PEACE.
" And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye ar
called in one body ; and be ye thankful." Col. iii. 15.
THERE is something in these words that might surprise
ns. It might surprise us to find that peace is urged on us as
a duty. There can be no duty except where there is a mat-
ter of obedience ; and it might seem to us that peace is a
something over which we have no power. It is a privilege
to have peace, but it would appear as if there were no power
of control within the mind of a man able to insure that peace
for itself. " Yet," says the apostle, " let the peace of God
rule in your hearts."
It would seem to us as if peace were as far beyond our
own control as happiness. Unquestionably, we are not mas-
ters, on our own responsibility, of our own happiness. Hap
piness is the gratification of every innocent desire ; but it is
not given to us to insure the gratification of every desire ;
therefore, happiness is not a duty, and it is nowhere written
in the Scripture, " You must be happy." But we find it
written by the Apostle Paul, " Be ye thankful," implying,
therefore, that peace is a duty. The apostle says, " Let the
peace of God rule in your hearts ;" from which we infer that
peace is attainable, and within the reach of our own wills ;
that if there be not repose there is blame ; if there be not
peace but discord in the heart, there is something wrong.
This is the more surprising when we remember the cir-
cumstances under which these words were written. They
were written from Rome, where the apostle lay in prison,
daily and hourly expecting a violent death. They were
written in days of persecution, when false doctrines were
rife, and religious animosities fierce ; they were written in
an epistle abounding with the most earnest and eager con-
troversy, whereby it is therefore implied, that according to
the conception of the Apostle Paul, it is possible for a Chris-
tian to live at the very point of death, and in the very midst
of danger that it is possible for him to be breathing the at-
mosphere of religious controversy it is possible for him to
be surrounded by bitterness, and even take up the pen of
controversy himself and yet his soul shall not lose its own
Unity and Peace* 523
deep peace, nor the power of the infinite repose and rest of
God. Joined with the apostle's command to be at peace,
we find another doctrine, the doctrine of the unity of the
Church of Christ. " To the which ye are called in one
body," in order that ye may be at peace ; in other words,
the unity of the Church of Christ is the basis on which, and
on which alone, can be built the possibility of the inward
peace of individuals.
And thus, my Christian brethren, our subject divides itself
into these two simple branches :
I. The unity of the Church of Christ.
II. The inward peace of the members of that Church.
I. The first subject, then, which we have to consider, is
the unity of the Church of Christ.
And the first thing we have to do is both clearly to define
and understand the meaning of that word " unity." I dis-
tinguish the unity of comprehensiveness from the unity of
mere singularity. The word one, as oneness, is an ambigu-
ous word. There is a oneness belonging to the army as well
as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and that
is the oneness of unity ; the soldier is one, but that is the
oneness of the unit. There is a difference between the one-
ness of a body and the oneness of a member of that body.
The body is many, and a unity of manifold comprehensive-
ness. An arm or a member of a body is one, but that is the
unity of singularity. Without unity, my Christian brethren,
peace must be impossible. There can be no peace in the one
single soldier of an army. You do not speak of the harmony
of one member of a body. There is peace in an army, or in
a kingdom joined with other kingdoms ; there is harmony in
a member united with other members. There is no peace in
a unit, there is no possibility of the harmony of that which is
but one in itself. In order to have peace you must have a
higher unity, and therein consists the unity of God's own
Being. The unity of God is the basis of the peace of God
meaning by the unity of God the comprehensive manifold-
ness of God, and not merely the singularity in the number
of God's Being. When the Unitarian speaks of God as om*,
he means simply singularity of number. We mean that He
is of manifold comprehensiveness that there is unity be-
tween His various powers. Amongst the personalities or
powers of His Being there is no discord, but perfect harmo-
ny, entire union ; and that, brethren, is repose, the blessed-
ness of infinite rest, that belongs to the unity of God " I
and my Father are one."
524 Unity and Peace.
The second thing which we observe respecting this unity
is, that it subsists between things not similar or alike, but
things dissimilar or unlike. There is no unity in the sepa-
rate atoms of a sand-pit ; they are things similar ; there is
an aggregate or collection of them. Even if they be harden-
ed in a mass they are not one, they do not form a unity :
they are simply a mass. There is no unity in a flock of
sheep : it is simply a repetition of a number of things simi-
lar to each other. If you strike off from a thousand five
hundred, or if you strike oif nine hundred, there is nothing
lost of unity, because there never was unity. A flock of one
thousand or a flock of five is just as much a flock as any oth-
er number.
On the other hand, let us turn to the unity of peace which
the apostle speaks of, and we find it is something different ;
it is made up of dissimilar members, without which dissimi-
larity there could be no unity. Each is imperfect in itself,
each supplying what it has in itself to the deficiencies and
wants of the other members. So, if you strike oif from this
body any one member, if you cut off an arm, or tear out an
eye, instantly the unity is destroyed ; you have no longer an
entire and perfect body, there is nothing but a remnant of
the whole, a part, a portion ; no unity whatever.
This will help us to understand the unity of the Church
of Christ. If the ages and the centuries of the Church of
Christ, if the different Churches whereof it was composed, if
the different members of each Church, were similar one in
this, that they all held the same views, all spoke the same
words, all viewed truth from the same side, they would have
no unity ; but would simply be an aggregate of atoms, the
sand-pit over again units, multiplied^ it may be to infinity,
but you would have no real unity, and therefore no peace.
No unity for wherein consists the unity of the Church of
Christ? The unity of ages, brethren, consists it in this
that every age is merely the repetition of another age, and
that which is held in one is held in another? Precisely in
the same way, that is not the unity of the ages of the Chris-
tian Church.
Every century and every age has held a different truth,
has put forth different fragments of the truth. In early
ages, for example, by martyrdom was proclaimed the eternal
sanctity of truth, rather than give up which a man must
lose his life In our own age it is quite plain those are
not the themes which engage us, or the truths which we put
in force now. This age, by its revolutions, its socialisms,
proclaims another truth the brotherhood of the Church of
Unity and Peace. 525
Christ ; so that the unity of ages subsists on the same prin-
ciple as that of the unity of the human body: and just as
every separate ray the violet, the blue, and the orange
make up the white ray, so these manifold fragments of truth
blended together make up the one entire and perfect white
ray of truth. And with regard to individuals, taking the
case of the Reformation, it was given to one Church to pro-
claim that salvation is a thing received, and not local ; to
another to proclaim justification by faith ; to another the
sovereignty of God ; to another the supremacy of the Scrip-
tures ; to another the right of private judgment, the duty of
the individual, conscience. Unite these all, and then you
have the Reformation one one in spite of manifoldness ;
those very varieties by which they have approached this
proving them to be one. Disjoint them and then you have
some miserable sect Calvinism, or Unitarianism ; the unity
has dispersed. And so again with the unity of the Churches.
Whereby would we produce unity ? Would we force on
other Churches our Anglicanism? Would we have our
thirty-nine articles, our creeds, our prayers, our rules and
regulations, accepted by every Church throughout the
world ? If that were unity, then in consistency you are
bound to demand that in God's world there shall be but one
color instead of the manifold harmony and accordance of
which, this universe is full ; that there should be but one
chanted note the one which we conceive most beautiful.
This is not the unity of the Church of God. The various
Churches advance different doctrines and truths. The
Church of Germany something different from those of the
Church of England. The Church of Rome, even in its idol-
atry, proclaims truths which we would be glad to seize. By
the worship of the Virgin, the purity of women ; by the rig-
or of ecclesiastical ordinances, the sanctity and permanence
of eternal order ; by the very priesthood itself, the necessity
of the guidance of man by man. Nay, even the dissenting
bodies themselves mere atoms of aggregates as they are-
stand forward and proclaim at least this truth, the separate-
ness of the individual conscience, the right of independence.
Peace subsists not between things exactly alike. We do
not speak of peace in a single country. We say peace sub-
sists between different-countries where war might be. There
can be no peace between two men who agree in every thing ;
peace subsists between those who differ. There is no peace
between Baptist and Baptist; so far as they are Baptists,
there is perfect accordance and agreement. There may be
peace between you and the Romanist, the Jew, or the Dis*
526 Unity and Peace.
senter, because Acre are angles of sharpness which might
come into collision if they were not subdued and softenedJby
the power of love. It was given to the Apostle Paul to dis-
cern that this was the ground of unity. In the Church of
Christ he saw men with different views, and he said, So far
from that variety destroying unity, it was the only ground
of unity. There are many doctrines, all of them different,
but let those varieties be blended together in other words,
let there be the peace of love, and then you will have unity.
Once more: this unity, whereof the apostle speaks, consists
in submission to one single influence or spirit. Wherein
consists the unity of the body ? Consists it not in this that
there is one life uniting, making all the separate members
one ? Take a way the life, and the members fall to pieces :
they are no longer one; decomposition begins, and every
element separates, no longer having any principle of cohe-
sion or union with the rest.
There is not one of us who, at some time or other, has not
been struck with the power there is in a single living influ-
ence. Have we never, for instance, felt the power where-
with the orator unites and holds together a thousand men as
if they were but one ; with flashing eyes and throbbing
hearts, all attentive to his words, and by the difference of
their attitudes, by the variety of the expressions of their
countenances, testifying to the unity of that single living
feeling with which he had inspired them? Whether it be
indignation, whether it be compassion, or whether it be en-
thusiasm, that one living influence made the thousand, for the
time, one. Have we not heard how, even in this century io
which we live, the various and conflicting feelings of the
people of this country were concentrated into one, when the
threat of foreign invasion had fused down and broken the
edges of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was
heard one cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes
and orders of this manifold and mighty England were as
one ? Have we not heard how the mighty winds hold to-
gether as if one, the various atoms of the desert, so that they
rush like a living thing across the wilderness? And this,
brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, the subjection
to the one uniting Spirit of its God.
It will be said, in reply to this, " Why, this is mere enthu-
siasm. It may be very beautiful in theory, but it is impossi-
ble in practice. It is mere enthusiasm to believe, that while
all these varieties of conflicting opinion remain, we can have
unity ; it is mere enthusiasm to think that so long as men's
minds reckon on a thing like unity, there can be a thing liks
Unity and Peace. 527
oneness." And our reply is, Give us the Spirit of God, and
we shall be one. You can not produce a unity by all the
rigor of your ecclesiastical discipline. You can not produce
a unity by consenting in some form of expression such as
this, " Let us agree to differ." You can not produce a unity
by Parliamentary regulations or enactments, bidding back
the waves of what is called aggression. Give us the living
Spirit of God, and we shall be one.
Once on this earth was exhibited, as it were, a specimen of
perfect anticipation of such a unity, when the " rushing
mighty wind " of Pentecost came down in the tongues of fire
and sat on every man ; when the Parthians, and Medes, and
Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, the " Cretes and
Arabians," the Jew and the Gentile, each speaking one lan-
guage, yet blended and fused into one unity by enthusiastic
love, heard one another speak, as it were, in one language,
the manifold works of God ; when the spirit of giving was
substituted for the spirit of mere rivalry and competition,
and no man said the things he had were his own, but all
shared in common. Let that spirit come again, as come it
will, and come it must ; and then, beneath the influences of a
mightier love, we shall have a nobler and a more real unity.
We pass on now, in the second place, to consider the indi-
vidual peace resulting from this unity. As we have endeav-
ored to explain what is meant by unity, so now let us en-
deavor to understand what is meant by peace. Peace, then,
is the opposite of passion, and of labor, toil, and effort.
Peace is that state in which there are no desires madly de-
manding an impossible gratification; that state in which
there is no misery, no remorse, no sting. And there are but
three things which can break that peace. The first is dis-
cord between the mind of man and the lot which he is called
on to inherit ; the second is discord between the affections
and powers of the soul ; and the third is doubt of the recti-
tude and justice and love wherewith this w r orld is ordered.
But where these things exist not, where a man is contented
with his lot, where the flesh is subdued to the spirit, and
where he believes and feels with all his heart that all is right,
there is peace, and to this, says the apostle, " ye are called"
the grand, peculiar call of Christianity the call, " Come
unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest."
This was the dying bequest of Christ : " Peace I leave with
you, my peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth give
I unto you :" and therein lies one of the greatest truths of
the blessed and eternal character of Christianity, that it ap*
528 Unity and Peace.
plies to, and satisfies the very deepest want and craving of
our nature. The deepest want of man is not a desire foi
happiness, but a craving for peace ; not a wish foi the grati-
fication of every desire, but a craving for the repose of ac-
quiescence in the will of God ; and it is this which Christiani-
ty promises. Christianity does not promise happiness, but it
does promise peace. "In the world ye shall have tribula-
tion," saith our Master, " but be of good cheer ; I have over-
come the world." Now, let us look more closely into this
peace.
The first thing we see respecting it is, that it is called
God's peace. God is rest : the infinite nature of God is in-
finite repose. The "I am" of God is contrasted with theT
am become of all other things. Every thing else is in a state
of becoming, God is in a state of being. The acorn has be-
come the plant, and the plant has become the oak. The
child has become the man, and the man has become good, or
wise, or whatever else it may be. God ever is ; and I pray
you once more to observe, that this peace of God, this eter-
nal rest in the Almighty Being, arises out of His unity. Not
because He is a unit, but because He is a unity. There is
no discord between the powers and attributes of the mind of-
God; there is no discord between His justice and His love;
there is no discord demanding some miserable expedient to
unite them together, such as some theologians imagined when
they described the sacrifice and atonement of our Redeemer
by saying, it is the clever expedient whereby God reconciles
His justice with His love. God's justice and love are one.
Infinite justice must be infinite love. Justice is but another
sign of love. The infinite rest of the "7" am " of God arises
out of the harmony of His attributes.
The next thing we observe respecting this divine peace
which has come down to man on earth is, that it is a living
peace. Brethren, let us distinguish. There are several things
called peace which are by no means Divine or Godlike peace.
There is peace, for example, in the man who lives for and en-
joys self, with no nobler aspiration goading him on to make
him feel the rest of God ; that is peace, but that is merely
the peace of toil. There is rest on the surface of the- cav-
erned lake, which no wind can stir ; but that is the peace of
stagnation. There is peace amongst the stones which have
fallen and rolled down the mountain's side, and lie there
quietly at rest ; but that is the peace of inanity. There is
peace in the hearts of enemies who lie together, side by side,
in the same trench of the battle-field, the animosities of their
souls silenced at length, and their hands no longer clenched
Unity and Peace. 529
In deadly enmity against each other ; but that is the peace
of death. If our peace be but the peace of the sensualist sat-
isfying pleasure, if it be but the peace of mental torpor and
inaction, the peace of apathy, or the peace of the soul dead
in trespasses and sins, we may whisper to ourselves, " Peace,
peace," but there will be no peace ; there is not the peace of
unity nor the peace of God, for the peace of God is the living
peace of love.
The next thing we observe respecting this peace is, that it
is the manifestation of power it is the peace which comes
from an inward power : " Let the peace of God," says the
apostle, " rule within your hearts." For it is a power, the
manifestation of strength. There is no peace except there is
the possibility of the opposite of peace, although now restrain-
ed and controlled. You do not speak of the peace of a grain
of sand, because it can not be otherwise than merely insignifi-
cant, and at rest. You do not speak of the peace of a mere
pond ; you speak of the peace of the sea, because there is the
opposite of peace implied, there is power and strength.
And this, brethren, is the real character of the peace in the
mind and soul of man. Oh ! we make a great mistake when
we say there is strength in, passion, in the exhibition of emo-
tion. Passion, and emotion, and all those outward manifest-
ations, prove, not strength, but weakness. If the passions of
a man are strong, it proves the man himself is weak if he can
not restrain or control his passions. The real strength and
majesty of the soul of man is calmness, the manifestation of
strength ; " the peace of God " ruling ; the word of Christ
saying to the inward storms, " Peace !" and there is " a great
calm."
Lastly, the peace of which the apostle speaks is tne peace
that is received the peace of reception. You will observe,
throughout this passage the apostle speaks of a something
received, and not done : " Let the peace of God rule in your
hearts." It is throughout receptive, but by no nieans inact-
ive. And according to this, there are two kinds of peace ;
the peace of obedience " Let the peace of God rule " you ;
and there is the peace of gratefulness "Be ye thankful."
V^ery great, brethren, is the peace of obedience : when a man
has his lot fixed, and his mind made up, and he sees his des-
tiny before him, and quietly acquiesces in it, his spirit is at
rest. Great and deep is the peace of the soldier to whom
has been assigned even an untenable position, with the com-
mand, " Keep that, even if you die," and he obediently re
mains to die.
Great was the peace of Elisha very, very calm are those
23
530 The Christian Aim and Motive.
words by which he expressed his acquiescence in the Divino
will. "Knowest thou," said the troubled, excited, and rest-
less men around him " Knowest thou that the Lord will
take away thy master from thy head to-day ?" He answered,
"Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace." Then there is the
other peace, it is the peace of gratefulness : " Be ye thank-
ful." It is that peace which tHe Israelites had when these
words were spoken to them on the shores of the Red Sea,
while the bodies of their enemies floated past them, de-
stroyed, but not by them : " Stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord."
And here, brethren, is another mistake of ours : we look
on salvation as a thing to be done, and not received. In
God's salvation we can do but little, but there is a great
deal to be received. We are here, not merely to act, but to
be acted upon. " Let the peace of God rule in your hearts ;"
there is a peace that will enter there, if you do not thwart it ;
there is a Spirit that will take possession of your soul, pro-
vided that you do not quench it. In this world we are re-
cipients, not creators. In obedience and in gratefulness, and
the infinite peace of God in the soul of man, is alone to be
found deep calm repose.
XII.
THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.
"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is per-
fect." Matt, v. 48.
THERE are two erroneous views held respecting the char-
acter of the Sermon on the Mount. The first may be called
an error o'f worldly-minded men, the other an error of mis-
taken religionists. Worldly-minded men men, that is, in
whom the devotional feeling is but feeble are accustomed
to look upon morality as the whole of religion ; and they
suppose that the Sermon on the Mount was designed only to
explain and enforce correct principles of morality. It tells
of human duties and human proprieties, and an attention to
these, they maintain, is the only religion which is required
by it. Strange, my Christian brethren, that men whose lives
are least remarkable for superhuman excellence, should be
the very men to refer most frequently to those sublime com*
ments on Christian principle, and should so confidently cor*
The Christian Aim and Motive. 531
dude from thence, that themselves are right and all others
are wrong. Yet so it is.
The other is an error of mistaken religionists. They some-
times regard the Sermon on the Mount as if it were a col-
lection of moral precepts, and consequently, strictly speaking,
not Christianity 'at all. To them it seems as if the chief
value, the chief intention of the discourse, was to show the
breadth and spirituality of the requirements of the law of
Moses ; its chief religious significance, to show the utter im-
possibility of fulfilling the law, and thus to lead to the nec-
essary inference that justification must be by faith alone.
And so they would not scruple to assert that, in the highest
sense of that term, it is not Christianity at all, but only
preparatory to it a kind of spiritual Judaism ; and that the
higher and more developed principles of Christianity are to
be found in the writings of the apostles. Before we proceed
further, we would remark here that it seems extremely start-
ling to say that He who came to this world expressly to
preach the Gospel, should, in the most elaborate of all His
discourses, omit to do so : it is indeed something more than
startling, it is absolutely revolting, to suppose that the let-
ters of those who spoke of Christ, should contain a more per-
fectly-developed, a freer and fuller Christianity than is to be
found in Christ's own words.
Now you will observe that these two parties, so opposed
to each other in their general religious views, are agreed in
this that the Sermon on the Mount is nothing but morality.
The man of the world says " It is morality only, and that
is the whole of religion." The mistaken religionist says
"It is morality only, not the entire essence of Christian-
ity." In opposition to both these views, we maintain that
the Sermon on the Mount contains the sum and substance
of Christianity the very chief matter of the Gospel of our
Redeemer.
It is not, you will observe, a pure and spiritualized Juda-
ism ; it is contrasted with Judaism again and again by Him
who spoke it. Quoting the words of Moses, He affirmed, " So
was it spoken by them of old time, but I say unto you "
For example, " Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt
perform unto the Lord thine oaths." That is Judaism. " But
I say unto you, Swear not at all, but let your yea be yea,
and your nay nay." That is Christianity. And that which
is the essential peculiarity of this Christianity lies in these
two things. First of all, that the mgrality which it teaches
is disinterested goodness goodness not for the sake of the
blessing that follows it, but for its own sake, and because h
532 The Christian Aim and Motive.
is right. " Love your enemies," is the Gospel precept. Why T
Because if you love them you shall be blessed ; and if you
do not, cursed ? No ; but " Love your enemies, bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for
them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye
may be the children of" that is, may be like " your Fa-
ther which is in heaven." The second essential peculiarity
of Christianity and this, too, is an essential peculiarity of
this sermon, is that it teaches and enforces the law of self-
sacrifice. " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out ; if thy
right hand offend thee, cut it off." This, brethren, is the law
of self-sacrifice the very law and spirit of the blessed cross
of Christ,
How deeply and essentially Christian, then, this Sermon
on the Mount is, we shall understand if we are enabled in
any measure to reach the meaning and spirit of the single
passage which I have taken as my text. It tells two things
the Christian aim and the Christian motive.
I. The Christian aim perfection.
IL The Christian motive because it is right and Godlike
to be perfect.
I. The Christian aim.is this to be perfect. " Be ye there
fore perfect." Now distinguish this, I pray you, from mere
worldly morality. It is not conformity to a creed that is
here required, but aspiration after a state. It is not de-
manded of us to perform a number of duties, but to yield
obedience to a certain spiritual law. But let us endeavor to
explain this more fully. What is the meaning of this
expression, " Be ye perfect ?" Why is it that hi" this dis-
course, instead of being commanded to perform religious du-
ties, we are commanded to think of being like God ? Will
not that inflame our pride, and increase our natural vain-
glory ? Now the nature and possibility of human perfection,
what it is and how it is possible, are both contained in one
single expression in the text, "Even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect." The relationship between father and
son implies consanguinity, likeness, similarity of character
and nature. God made the insect, the stone, the lily, but God
is not the Father of the caterpillar, the lily, or the stone.
When, therefore, God is said to be our Father, something
more is implied in this than that God created man. And so
when the Son of Man came proclaiming the fact that we are
the children of God it^was in the truest sense a revelation.
He told us that the nature of God resembles the nature of
man, that love in God is not a mere figure of speech, but
The Christian Aim and Motive. 533
means the same thing as love in us, and that Divine anger is
the same thing as human anger divested of its emotions and
imperfections. When we are commanded to be like God, it
implies that God has that nature of which we have already
the germs. And this has been taught by the incarnation of
the Redeemer. Things absolutely dissimilar in their nature
can not mingle. Water can not coalesce with fire water
can not mix with oil. If, then, humanity and divinity were
united in the person of the Redeemer, it follows that there
must be something kindred between the two, or else the
incarnation had been impossible. So that the incarnation is
the realization of man's perfection.
But let us examine more deeply this assertion, that our
nature is kindred with that of God for if man has not a
nature kindred to God's, then a demand such as that, " Be
ye the children of" that is, like " God," is but a mockery
of man. We say, then, in the first place, that in the truest
sense of the word man can be a creator. The beaver makes
its hole, the bee makes its cell ; man alone has the power of
creating. The mason makes, the architect creates. In the
same sense that we say God created the universe, we say
that man is also a creator. The creation of the universe was
the Eternal Thought taking reality. And thought taking
expression is also a creation. Whenever, therefore, there is
a living thought shaping itself in word or in stone, there is
there a creation. And therefore it is that the simplest effort
of what we call genius is prized infinitely more than the most
elaborate performances which are done by mere workman^
ship, and for this reason : that the one is produced by an
effort of power which we share with the beaver and the bee,
that of making, and the other by a faculty and power which
man alone shares with God.
Here, however, you will observe another difficulty. It
will be said at once, There is something in this comparison
of man with God which looks like blasphemy, because one
is finite and the other infinite man is bounded, God bound-
less ; and to speak of resemblance and kindred between
these two, is to speak of resemblance and kindred between
two natures essentially different. But this is precisely the
argument which is brought by the Socinians against the
doctrine of the incarnation ; and we are bound to add that
the Socinian argument is right, unless there be the similarity
of which we have been speaking. Unless there be something
in man's nature which truly and properly partakes of the
Divine nature, there could be no incarnation, and the demand
for perfection would be a mockery and an impossibility.
534 The Christian Aim and Motive.
Let us then endeavor to find out the evidences of this in-
finitude in the nature of man. First of all, we find it in this
that the desires of man are for something boundless and
unattainable. Thus speaks our Lord "What shall it profit
a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own
soul ?" Every schoolboy has heard the story of the youth-
ful prince who enumerated one by one the countries he
meant to conquer year after year ; and when the enumera-
tion was completed, was asked what he meant to do when
all those victories were achieved, and he replied, To sit down,
to be happy, to take his rest. But then came the ready re-
joinder, Why not do so now ? But it is not every school-
boy who has paused to consider the folly of the question.
He who asked his son why he did not at once take the rest
which it was his ultimate purpose to enjoy, knew not the im-
mensity and nobility of the human soul. He could not then
take his rest and be happy. As long as one realm remained
unconquered, so long rest was impossible ; he would weep
for fresh worlds to conquer. And thus, that which was
spoken by our Lord of one earthly gratification, is true of
all " Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again."
The boundless, endless, infinite void in the soul of man can
be satisfied with nothing but God. Satisfaction lies not in
having, but in being. There is no satisfaction even in doing.
Man can not be satisfied with his own performances. When
the righteous young ruler came to Christ, and declared that
in reference to the life gone by he had kept all the com-
mandments and fulfilled all the duties required by the law,
still came the question " What lack I yet ?"
The Scribes and Pharisees were the strictest observers of
the ceremonies of the Jewish religion, " touching the right-
eousness which is by the law " they were blameless, but yet
they wanted something more than that, and they were found
on the brink of Jordan imploring the baptism of John, seek,
ing after a new and higher state than they had yet attained
to a significant proof that man can not be satisfied with his
own works. And again, there is not one of us who has ever
been satisfied with his own performances. There is no man
whose doings are worth any thing, who has not felt that he
has not yet done that which he feels himself able to do.
While he was doing it, he was kept up by the spirit of hope ;
but when done the thing seemed to him worthless. And
therefore it is that the author can not read his own book
again, nor the sculptor look with pleasure upon his finished
work. With respect to one of the greatest of all modern
sculptors, we are told that he longed for the terminatioi? of
The Christian Aim and Motive. 535
his earthly career, for this reason that he had been satisfied
with his own performance : satisfied for the first time in his
life. And this expression of his satisfaction was but equiva-
lent to saying that he had reached the goal beyond which
there could be no progress. This impossibility of being sat-
isfied with his own performances is one of the strongest proofs
of our immortality a proof of that perfection towards which
we shall forever tend, but which we can never attain.
A second trace of this infinitude in man's nature we find
in the infinite capacities of the soul. This is true intellectu-
ally and morally. With reference to our intellectual capa-
cities, it would perhaps be more strictly correct to say that
they are indefinite, rather than infinite ; that is, we can affix
to them 110 limit. For there is no man, however low his
intellectual powers may be, who has not at one time or
another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration, which
seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the
effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the way
of his doing whatever he desired to do. With respect to
our moral and spiritual capacities, we remark that they are
not only indefinite, but absolutely infinite. Let that man
answer who has ever truly and heartily loved another. That
man knows what it is to partake of the infinitude of God.
Literally, in the emphatic language of the Apostle John, he
has felt his immortality " God in him, and he in God." For
that moment, infinitude was to him not a name, but a reality.
He entered into the infinite of time and space, which is not
measured by days, or months, or years, but is alike boundless
and eternal.
Again : we perceive a third trace of this infinitude in man,
in the power which he possesses of giving up self. In this,
perhaps more than in any thing else, man may claim kindred
with God. Nor is this power confined to the best of man-
kind, but is possessed, to some extent at least, by all. There
is no man, how low soever he may be, who has not one or
two causes or secrets, which no earthly consideration would
induce him to betray. There is no man who does not feel
towards one or two at least, in this world, a devotion which
all the bribes of the universe would not be able to shake.
We have heard the story of that degraded criminal who,
when sentence of death was passed upon him, turned to his
accomplice in guilt, in whose favor a verdict of acquittal was
brought in, and in glorious self-forgetfulness exclaimed
"Thank God, you are saved!" The savage and barbarous
Indian, whose life has been one unbroken series of cruelty
and crime, will submit to a slow, lingering, torturing death.
536 The Christian Aim and Motive.
rather than betray his country. Now, what shall we say to
these things? Do they not tell of an indestructible some-
thing in the nature of man, of which the origin is Divine?
the remains of a majesty which, though it may be sullied,
can never be entirely lost ?
Before passing on let us observe, that were it not for this
conviction of the Divine origin, and consequent perfectibility
of our nature, the very thought of God would be painful to
us. God is so great, so glorious, that the mind is over-
whelmed by, and shrinks from, the contemplation of His ex-
cellence, unless there comes the tender, ennobling thought
that we are the children of God, who are to become like our
Father in heaven, whose blessed career it is to go on in an
advance of love and duty towards Him, until we love Him
as we are loved, and know Him almost as we are known.
II. We pass on, in the second place, to consider the Chris-
tian motive "Even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect." Brethren, worldly prudence, miscalled morality,
says " Be honest ; you will find your gain in being so. Do
right ; you will be the better for it even in this world you
will not lose by it." The mistaken religionist only magni-
fies this on a large scale. " Your duty," he says, " is to save
your soul. Give up this world to have the next. Lose here^
that you may gain hereafter" Now this is but prudence,
after all it is but magnified selfishness, carried on into eter-
nity none the more noble for being eternal selfishness. In
opposition to all such sentiments as these, thus speaks the
Gospel "Be ye perfect." Why? "Because your Father
which is in heaven is perfect." Do right, because it is God-
like and right so to do. Here, however, let us be understood.
We do not mean to say that the Gospel ignores altogether
the personal results of doing right. This would be unnat-
ural because God has linked together well-doing and bless-
edness. But we do say that this blessedness is not the mo-
tive which the Gospel gives us. It is true the Gospel says
" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth ;
blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy ; blessed
are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they shall be filled." But when these are made our motives
when we become meek in order that we may inherit here
then the promised enjoyment will not come. If we a"re mer-
ciful merely that AVC may ourselves obtain mercy, we shall
not have that indwelling love of God which is the result
and token of His forgiveness. Such was the law and such
the example of our Lord and Master.
The Christian Aim and Motive. . 537
True it is that in the prosecution of the great work of re-
demption He had " respect to the recompense of reward."
True it is He was conscious how could He but be conscious
that when His work was completed He should be " glori-
fied with that glory which He had with the Father before
the world began ;" but we deny that this was the motive
which induced Him to undertake that work ; and that man
has a very mistaken idea of the character of the Redeemer,
and understands but little of His spirit, who has so mean an
opinion of Him as to suppose that it was any consideration
of personal happiness and blessedness which led the Son of
God to die. " For this end was He born, and for this end
came He into the world to bear witness unto the truth," and
" to finish the work which was given Him to do."
If we were asked, Can you select one text in which more
than in any other this unselfish, disinterested feature comes
forth, it should be this, " Love ye your enemies, do good and
lend, hoping for nothing again." This is the true spirit of
Christianity doing right disinterestedly, not from the hope
of any personal advantage or reward, either temporal or spir-
itual, but entirely forgetting self, " hoping for nothing again."
When that glorious philanthropist, whose whole life had been
spent in procuring the abolition of the slave-trade, was de-
manded of, by some systematic theologian, whether in his ar-
dor in this great cause he had not been neglecting his per-
sonal prospects and endangering his own soul, this was his
magnanimous reply one of those which show the light of
truth breaking through like an inspiration : he said, " I did
not think about my own soul, I had no time to think about
myself, I had forgotten all about my soul." The Christian
is not concerned about his own happiness ; he has not time
to consider himself; he has not time to put that selfish ques-
tion which the disciples put to their Lord when they were
but half baptized with His spirit, " Lo, we have left all and
followed Thee, what shall we have therefore ?"
In conclusion we observe, there are two things which are
to be learned from this passage. The first is this, that hap-
piness is not our end and aim. It has been said, and has
since been repeated as frequently as if it were an indisputa-
ble axiom, that "happiness is our being's end and aim."
Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The
Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness, and every one of
the sons of God must have something of that spirit which
marked their Master ; that holy sadness, that peculiar unrest,
that high and lofty melancholy which belongs to a spirit
which strives after heights to which it can never attain.
23*
538 . . The Christian Aim and Motive,
The second thing we have to learn is this, that on this
earth there can be no rest for man. By rest we mean the at-
tainment of a state beyond which there can be no change.
Politically, morally, spiritually, there can be no rest for man
here. In one country alone has that system been fully car-
ried out which, conservative of the past, excludes all desire
of progress and improvement for the future : but it is not to
China that we should look for the perfection of human socie-
ty. There is one ecclesiastical system which carries out the
same spirit, looking rather to the Church of the past than to
the Church of the future ; but it is not in the Romish that
we shall find the model of a Christian Church. In Paradise
it may have been right to be at rest, to desire no change ; but
ever since the Fall, every system that tends to check the on-
w"ard progress of mankind is fatally, radically, curelessly
wrong. The motto on every Christian banner is " Forward.'*
There is no resting in the present, no satisfaction in the past.
The last thing we learn from this is the impossibility of
obtaining that of which some men speak the satisfaction of
a good conscience. Some men write and- speak as if the dif-
ference between the Christian and the worldly man was this,
that in the one conscience is a self-reproaching hell, and in
the other a self-congratulating heaven. Oh, brethren, is this
the fact ? Think you that the Christian goes home at night
counting up the nobje deeds done during the day, saying to
himself, " Well done, good and faithful servant ?" Brethren,
that habit of looking forward to the future prevents all pride
and self-righteousness, and makes our best and only rest and
satisfaction to consist in contemplating the future which is
bringing us nearer and nearer home. Our motto, therefore,
must be that striking one of the Apostle Paul, " Forgetting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those
things which are before, I press towards the mark for th?
prize, of the high calling of God in Christ Jesua."
Christian Casuistry. 539
XIII.
CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.
"Is any man called being circumcised ? let him not become uncircumciaed,
Is any called in uncircumcision ? let him not be circumcised. Circumcision
is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the command-
ments of God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was
called. Art thou called being a servant ? care not for it : but if thou mayest
be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a serv-
ant, is the Lord's freeman : likewise also he that is called, being free, is
Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price ; be not ye the servants of men.
Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.'
1 Cor. vii. 18-24.
THE whole of these seven chapters of the First Epistle of
the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, is occupied with ques-
tions of Christian casuistry. In the application of the prin-
ciples of Christianity to the varying circumstances of life in-
numerable difficulties had arisen, and the Corinthians upon
these difficulties had put certain questions to the Apostle
Paul. This seventh chapter contains the apostle's answer to
many of these questions. There are, however, two great di-
visions into which these answers generally fall. St. Paul
makes a distinction between those things which he speaks
by commandment and those which he speaks only by per-
mission ; there is a distinction between wha^ he says as from
the Lord, and what only from himself; between that which
he speaks to them as being taught of God, and that which
he speaks only as a servant, " called of the Lord and faith-
ful."
It is manifestly plain that there are many questions in which
right and wrong are not variable, but indissoluble and fixed ;
while there are questions, on the other hand, where these
terms are not fixed, but variable, fluctuating, altering, de-
pendent upon circumstances. As, for instance, those in which
the apostle teaches in the present chapter the several duties
and advantages of marriage and celibacy. There may be cir-
cumstances in which it is the duty of a Christian man to be
married, there are others in which it may be his duty to re-
main unmarried. For instance, in the case of a missionary
it may be right to be married rather than unmarried ; on the
other hand, in the case of a pauper, not having the where-
withal to bring up and maintain a family, it may be propet
540 Christian Casuistry.
to remain unmarried. You will observe, however, that no
fixed law can be laid down upon this subject. We can not
say marriage is a Christian duty ; nor celibacy is a Christian
duty ; nor that it is in every case the duty of a missionary to
be married, or of a pauper to be unmarried. All these things
must vary according to circumstances, and the duty must be
stated not universally, but with reference to those circum-
stances.
These, therefore, are questions of casuistry, which depend
upon the particular case : from which word the term " casu-
istry " is derived. On these points the apostle speaks not
by commandment, but by permission : not as speaking by
God's command, but as having the Spirit of God. A dis-
tinction has sometimes beer drawn with reference to this
chapter between that whicn tne apostle speaks by inspira-
tion, and what he speaks as a man uninspired. The distinc-
tion, however, is an altogether false one, and beside the ques-
tion. For the real distinction is not between the inspired
and uninspired, but between a decision in matters of Chris-
tian duty and advice in matters of Christian prudence. It is
abundantly evident that God can not give advice ; He can
only issue a command. God can not say, " It is better to do
this ;" His perfections demand something absolute : " Thou
shalt do this ; tliou shall not do this." Whensoever, there-
fore, we come to advice, there is introduced the human ele-
ment rather than the Divine. In all such cases, therefore, as
are dependent upon circumstances the apostle speaks not as
inspired, but as uninspired ; as one whose judgment we have
no right to find" fault with or to cavil at, who lays down
what is a matter of Christian prudence, and not a bounden
and universal duty. The matter of the present discourse
will take in various verses in this chapter from the tenth
to the twenty-fourth verse leaving part of the commence
ment and the conclusion for our consideration, if God permit,
next Sunday.
There are three main questions on which the apostle here
gives his inspired decision. The first decision is concerning
the sanctity of the marriage-bond between two Christians.
His verdict is given in the tenth verse : " Unto the married
I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart
from her husband." He lays down this principle, that the
union is an indissoluble one.
Upon such a subject, Christian brethren, before a mixed
congregation, it is manifestly evident that we can only speak
in general terms. It will be sufficient to say that marriage
is of all earthly unions almost the only one permitting of no
Christian Casuistry. 541
change but that of death. It is that engagement in which
man exerts his most awful and solemn power the power of
responsibility which belongs to him as one that shall give
account the power of abnegating the right to change the
power of parting with his freedom the power of doing that
which in this world can never be reversed. And yet it is
perhaps that relationship which is spoken of most frivolously,
and entered into most carelessly and most w r antonly. It is
not a union merely between two creatures, it is a union
between two spirits ; and the intention of that bond is to
perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their deficien-
cies with the force of contrast, giving to each sex those ex-
cellencies in which it is naturally deficient ; to the one
strength of character and firmness of moral will, to the other
sympathy, meekness, tenderness. And just so solemn, and
just so glorious as these ends are for which the union was
contemprated and intended, just so terrible are the conse-
quences if it be perverted and abused. Eor there is no
earthly relationship w r hich has so much power to ennoble
and to exalt. Very strong language does the apostle use in
this chapter respecting it: "What knowest thou, oh wife,
whether thou shalt save thy husband ? or how knowest thou,
oh man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?" The very pow-
er of saving belongs to this relationship. And on the other
hand, there is no earthly relationship which has so much power
to wreck and ruin the soul. For there are two rocks in this
world of ours on which the soul must either anchor or be
wrecked. The one is God ; the other is the sex opposite
to itself. The one is the " Rock of Ages," on which if the
human soul anchors it lives the blessed life of faith; against
which if the soul be dashed and broken, there ensues the
wreck of Atheism the worst ruin of the soul. The other
rock is of another character. Blessed is the man, blessed is
the woman, whose life-experience has taught a confiding be-
lief in the excellencies of the sex opposite to their own a
blessedness second only to the blessedness of salvation.
And the ruin in the other case is second only to the ruin of
everlasting perdition the same wreck and ruin of the soul.
These, then, are the two tremendous alternatives : on the
one hand the possibility of securing, in all sympathy and
tenderness, the laying of that step on which man rises to-
wards his perfection ; on the other hand the blight of all
sympathy, to be dragged down to earth, and forced to be
come frivolous and commonplace ; to lose all zest and ear
nestness in life, to have heart and life degraded by mean and
perpetually-recurring sources of disagreement ; these are thu
542 Christian Casuistry.
two alternatives, and it is the worst of these alternatives
which the young risk when they form an inconsiderate union
excusably indeed, because through inexperience; and it is
the worst of these alternatives which parents risk not ex-
cusably but inexcusably when they bring up their children
with no higher view of what that tie is, than the merely pru-
dential one of a rich and honorable marriage.
The second decision which the apostle makes respecting
another of the questions proposed to him by the Corinthians
is, as to the sanctity of the marriage bond between a Chris-
tian and one who is a heathen. When Christianity first
entered into our world, and was little understood, it seemed
to threaten the dislocation and alteration of all existing rela-
tionships. Many difficulties arose ; such, for instance, as the
one here started. When of two heathen parties only one
was converted to Christianity, the question arose, What in
this case is the duty of the Christian ? Is not the duty sepa-
ration ? Is not the marriage in itself null and void ? as if it
were a union between one dead and one living? And that
perpetual contact with a heathen, and therefore an enemy of
God, is not that, in a relation so close and intimate, perpetual
defilement ? The apostle decides this with his usual inspired
wisdom. He decides that the marriage bond is sacred still.
Diversities of religious opinion, even the farthest and widest
diversity, can not sanction separation. And so he decides in
the 13th verse, "The woman which hath' a husband that be-
lieveth not, if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not
leave him." And, " If any brother hath a wife that believeth
not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put
her away" (ver. 12).
Now for us in the present day the decision on this point
is not of so much importance as the reason which is adduced
in support of it. The proof which the apostle gives of the
sanctity of the marriage is exceedingly remarkable. Practi-
cally it amounts to this : If this were no marriage, but an un-
hallowed alliance, it would follow as a necessary consequence
that the offspring could not be reckoned in any sense as the
children of God ; but, on the other hand, it is the instinctive,
unwavering conviction of every Christian parent, united
though he or she may be to a heathen, "My child is a child
of God," or, in the Jewish form of expression, " My child is
dean" So the apostle says, " The unbelieving husband is
sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the husband else were your children unclean ; but now
they are holy," for it follows if the children are holy in this
sense of dedicated to God, and are capable of Christian rela
Christian Casuistry. 543
tionship, then the marriage relation was not unhallowed, but
sacred an,d indissoluble.
The value of this argument in the present day depends on
its relation to baptism. The great question we are deciding
in the present day may be reduced to a very few words.
This question the baptismal question is this : whether we
are baptized because we are the children of God, or, whether
we are the children of God because we are baptized; wheth-
er, in other words, when the Catechism of the Church of Eng-
land says that by baptism we are " made the children of
God," we are to understand thereby that we are made some-
thing which we were not before magically and mysterious-
ly changed ; or, whether we are to understand that we are
made the children of God by baptism in the same sense that
a sovereign is made a sovereign by coronation. Here the
apostle's "argument is full, decisive, and unanswerable. He
does not say that these children were Christian, or clean, be-
cause they were baptized, but they were the children of God
because they were the children of one Christian parent ; nay,
more than that, such children could scarcely ever have been
baptized, because, if the rite met with opposition from one
of the parents, it would be an entire and perfect veto to the
possibility of baptism. You will observe that the very fun-
damental idea out of which infant-baptism arises is, that the
impression produced upon the mind and character of the
child by the Christian parent makes the child one of a Chris-
tian community ; and therefore, as Peter argued that Cor-
nelius had received the Holy Ghost, and so was to be bap-
tized, just in the same way, as they are adopted into the
Christian family and receive a Christian impression, the chil-
dren of Christian parents are also to be baptized.
Observe, also, the important truth which comes out collater-
ally from this argument namely, the sacredness of the im-
pression which arises from the close connection between pa-
rent and child. Stronger far than education going on before
education can commence, possibly from the very first mo-
ments of consciousness, we begin to impress ourselves on our
children. Our character, voice, features, qualities modifiod,
no doubt, by entering into a new human being, and into a
different organization are impressed upon our children.
Not the inculcation of opinions, but much rather the forma-
tion of principles, and of the tone of character, the derivation
of qualities. Physiologists tell us of the derivation of the
mental qualities from the father, and of the moral from the
mother. But be this as it may, there is scarcely one hero
who can not trace back his present religious character to
544 Christian Casuistry.
some impression, in early life, from one or other of his parents
a tone, a look, a word, a habit, or even, it may be, a bit-
ter, miserable exclamation of remorse.
The third decision which the apostle gives, the third prin-
ciple which he lays down, is but the development of the last.
Christianity, he says, does not interfere with existing rela-
tionships. First he lays down the principle, and then unfolds
the principle in two ways, ecclesiastically and civilly. The
principle he lays down in almost every variety of form. In
the 1 7th verse, " As God hath distributed to every man, as
the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk." In the
20th verse, " Let every man abide in the same calling where-
in he was called." In the 24th verse, " Brethren, let every
man wherein he is called therein abide with God." This is
the principle. Christianity was not to interfere with exist-
ing relationships ; Christian men were to remain in those re-
lationships in which they were, and in them to develop the
inward spirituality of the Christian life. Then he applies
this principle in two ways. First of all, ecclesiastically.
With respect to their church, or ecclesiastical affairs, he says
" Is any man called being circumcised ? Let him not be-
come uncircumcised. Is any man in uncircumcision ? Let
him not be circumcised." In other words, the Jews, after
their conversion, were to continue Jews, if they would.
Christianity required no change in these outward things, for
it was not in these that the depth and reality oi the kingdom
of Christ consisted. So the Apostle Paul took Timothy and
circumcised him ; so also he used all the Jewish customs
with which he was familiar, and performed a vow, as related
in the Acts of the Apostles, ' having shorn his head in Cen-
chrea ; for he had a vow." It was not his opinion that it
was the duty of a Christian to overthrow the Jewish system.
He knew that the Jewish system could not last, but what he
wanted was to vitalize the system to throw into it not a
Jewish, but a Christian feeling; and so doing, he might con-
tinue in it so long as it would hold together. And so it was,
no doubt, with all the other apostles. We have no evidence
that before the destruction of the Jewish polity there was
any attempt made by them to overthrow the Jewish external
religion. They kept the Jewish sabbath, and observed the
Jewish ritual. One of them, James, the Christian bishop of
Jerusalem, though a Christian, was even among the Jews re-
markable and honorable for the regularity with which he ob-
served all his Jewish duties. Now let us apply this to
modern duties. The great desire among men no'-v appears to
be to alter institutions, to have perfect institutions, as if they
Christian Casuistry. 545
would make perfect men. Mark the difference between this
feeling and that of the apostle, " Let every man abide in the
same calling wherein he was called." We are called to be
members of the Church of England what is our duty now ?
What would Paul have done ? Is this our duty to put such
questions to ourselves as these : " Is there any single, par-
ticular sentence in the service of my Church with which I do
not entirely agree? Is there any single ceremony with
which my whole soul does not go along ? If so, then is it my
duty to leave it at once?" No, my brethren, all that we
have to do is to say, "All our existing institutions are those
under which God has placed us, under which we are to mould
our lives according to His will." It is our duty to vitalize
our forms, to throw into them a holier, deeper meaning. My
Christian brethren, surely no man will get true rest, true re-
pose for his soul, in these days of controversy, until he has
learned the wise significance of these wise words " Let ev-
ery man abide in the same calling wherein he was called."
He will but gain unrest, he will but disquiet himself, if he
says, " I am sinning by continuing in this imperfect system,"
if he considers it his duty to change his calling if his opinions
do not agree in every particular and special point with the
system under which God has placed him.
Lastly, the apostle applies this principle civilly. And you
will observe he applies it to that civil relationship which of
all others was the most difficult to harmonize with Chris-
tianity slavery. " Art thou called," he says, " being a
servant ? Care not for it." Now, in considering this part
of the subject we should carry along with us these two rec-
ollections. First, we should recollect that Christianity had
made much way among this particular class, the class of
slaves. No wonder that men cursed with slavery embraced
with joy a religion which was perpetually teaching the
worth and dignity of the human soul, and declaring that
rich and poor, peer and peasant, master and slave, were equal
in the sight of God. And yet, great as this growth was, It
contained within it elements of danger. It was to be feared
lest men, hearing forever of brotherhood and Christian equal-
ity, should be tempted and excited to throw off the yoke by
force, and compel their masters and oppressors to do them
right.
The other fact we are to keep in remembrance is this
that all this occurred in an age in which slavery had reach
ed its worst and most fearful form, an age in which the em-
perors were accustomed, not unfrequently, to feed their fish
with living slaves; when captives were led to fight in the
546 Christian Casuistry.
amphuheatn with wild leasts or with each other, to
the Koman appetite lor Mood upon a Roman holiday. And
yet. fearful as it was. the apostle says, "ran' not" tor it. M
And tearful as war was in those da*ys, \\hon tho soldiers
came to John to bo baptised, ho did not recommend them to
join some "peace association," to use the inodorn tonn ; he
simply exhorted them to bo oontont \\ ith thoir \< .. , -
And' hence we understand the way in v>hich Christianity
was to work. It interferes indirootly and not directly with
i \.Ming institutions. No doubt it" will at length abolish
war and slavery, but there is not one case \\ horo wo tind
Christianity interfering with institutions, as such. K\ on
when Onesimus ran away and came to Paul, the apostlo sont
him baok to his master Philemon, not dissolving the connee-
tion botwoon them. And thon. as a eonsolation to the serv-
ant^ he told him of a higher fooli.ig a feeling that would
make him live, with the ohain and shaoklo upon his arm.
And so it was possible lor the Christian thon. as it is now, to
bo possessed ot the highest liberty even under tyranny. It
many times ooonrrod that Christian men found 'themselves
placed under an unjust and tvrannioal government, and eom-
pelled to pay unjust taxes. The Son of Man showed his free-
dom not by "refusing, but by paying them. His glorious lib-
erty could do so without any feeling of degradation ; obey-
ing the laws, not because they wore right, but luvauso insti-
tut ions are to be upheld with cordiality.
One thing in conclusion we have to observe. It is possi
ble from all this to draw a most inaccurate conclusion.
Some men have spoken of Christianity as if it was entirely
indifferent about liberty and all public questions as if with
such things as those Christianity did not concern itself at
alL This indifference is not to be found in the Apostle
Paul. While he asserts that inward liberty is the only true
liberty, he still goes on to say, " If thou mayost be free, use it
rather." For he well know that although it was possible for
a man to be a high and lofty Christian even though he v\
a slave, yet it was not probable that he would be so. Ont-
K*:u-d institutions are necessary partly to make a perfect
Christian character; and thus Christianity works from what
is internal to what is external. It gave to the slave the feel-
ing of his dignity as a man, at the same time it gave to the
Christian master a new view of his relation to his slave, and
taught him to regard him " not now as a servant, but above
* ^orvant, a brother beloved." And so by degrees slavery
passed into freed servitude, and freed servitude, under God's
blessing, may pass into something else.
Marriage and Celibacy. 547
There a*e two mistake* which are often made upon this
object : one is, the error of supposing that outward institu-
tion* are unnecessary for the formation of character, and the
other, that of supposing that they are off that is required to
form the human soul If we understand rightly the duty of
a Christian man, it is this : to make his brethren free inward-
ly and outwardly ; first inwardly, so that they may become
masters of themselves, rulers of their passions, Laving the
power of self-rule and self-control ; and then outwardly, so
that there may be every power and opportunity of develop-
ing the inward life ; in the language of the prophet, " To
break the rod of the oppressor and let the oppressed go
free."
XIV.
MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.
Bnt AM I j, brethren, the time is Aort: fe remained), that both the?
ha*ewmDea*tiioa**ffcerhad<e; and the? that weep, as thoagh
^ nm **& m *** t *
fast bar, as though ther possessed not; and they that Me due world, as not
basingit: fr die iaslira of diu world passe* away." I Cor. THL 29-3L
THE subject of our exposition last Sunday was an essen-
tial portion of this chapter. It is our duty to examine now
the former and the latter portions of it. These portions are
occupied entirely with the inspired apostolic decision upon
this one question the comparative advantages and merits
of celibacy and marriage. - , One preliminary question, how-
ever, is to be discussed. How came it that such a question
should be put at all to the apostle ?
In the church at Corinth there were two different sections
of society ; first there were those who had been introduced
into the church through Judaism, and afterwards those who
had been converted from different forms of heathenism.
Now it is well known, that it was the tendency of Judaism
highly to venerate the marriage state, and just in the same
proportion to disparage that of celibacy, and to place those
who led a single life under a stigma and disgrace. Those
converts, therefore, entered into the Church of Christ carry-
ing with them their old Jewish prejudices. On the other
hand, many who had entered into the Christian Church had
been converted to Christianity from different forms of hea-
thenism. Among these prevailed a tendency to the belief
(which originated primarily in the Oriental schools of philo*
548 Marriage and Celibacy.
ophy) that the highest virtue consisted in the denial of all
natural inclinations, and the suppression of all natural de-
sires ; and looking upon marriage on one side only, and that
the lowest, they were tempted to consider it as low, earthly,
carnal, and sensual. It was at this time that Christianity
entered into the world, and while it added fresh dignity and
significance to the marriage relationship, it at the same time
shed a splendor and a glory upon the other state. The vir-
ginity of the mother of Our Lord the solitary life of John
the Baptist the pure and solitary youth of Christ Himself
had thrown upon celibacy a meaning and dignity which it
did not possess before. No marvel, therefore, that to men so
educated, and but half prepared for Christianity, practices
like these should have become exaggerations ; for it rarely
happens that any right ideas can be given to the world
without suffering exaggeration. Human nature progresses,
the human mind goes on ; but it is rarely in a straight line,
almost always through the medium of reaction, rebounding
from extremes which produce contrary extremes. So it was
in the Church of Corinth. There were two opposite parties
holding views diametrically opposed to one another one
honoring the married and depreciating the unmarried life
the other attributing peculiar dignity and sanctity to celi-
bacy, and looking down with contempt upon the married
Christian state.
It is scarcely necessary to remind ourselves that this di-
versity of sentiment has existed in the Church of Christ in
almost all ages. For example, in the early ages, in almost
all the writings of the Fathers we have exaggerated descrip-
tions of the dignity and glory of the state of celibacy. They
speak as if the marriage state was low, carnal, and worldly ;
and the other the only one in which it is possible to attain
to the higher spiritual life the one the natural state, fit for
man, the other the angelic, fit for angels. But ordinarily
among men in general, in every age, the state of single life
has been looked down upon and contemned. And then
there comes to the parties who are so circumstanced a cer-
tain sense of shame, and along with this a disposition to-
wards calumny and slander. Let us endeavor to understand
the wise, inspired decision which the Apostle Paul pro-
nounced upon this subject. He does not decide, as we
might have been led to suppose he would, from his own pe-
culiarity of disposition, upon one side only ; but raises into
relief the advantages and excellencies of both. He says that
neither state has in itself any intrinsic merit neither is in
itself superior to the other. "I suppose, then," he says, * that
Marriage and Celibacy. 549
this is good for the present distress. Art thou bound unto a
wife ? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife ?
Seek not a wife. But and if thou many, thou hast not sin-
ned : and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Neverthe-
less, such shall have trouble in the flesh : but I spare you."
That is, I will spare you this trouble, in recommending a sin-
gle, solitary life. You will observe that in these words he
attributes no intrinsic merit or dignity to either celibacy or
marriage. The comparative advantages of these two states
he decides with reference to two considerations ; first of all
with respect to their comparative power in raising the char-
acter of the individual, and afterwards with reference to the
opportunities which each respectively gives for the service
of God.
I. With respect to the single life, he tells us that he had
his own proper gift from God ; in other words, he was one
of those rare characters who have the power of living with-
out personal sympathy. The feelings and affections of the
Apostle Paul were of a strange and rare character tending
to expansiveness rather than concentration. Those sympa-
thies which ordinary men expend upon a few, he extended
to many. The members of the churches which he had found-
ed at Corinth, and Ephesus, and Colosse, and Philippi, were
to him as children ; and he threw upon them all that sym-
pathy and affection which other men throw upon their own
domestic circle. To a man so trained and educated, the sin-
gle life gave opportunities of serving God which the marriage
state could not give. St. Paul had risen at once to that phi-
lanthropy that expansive benevolence, which most other
men only attain by slow degrees, and this was made, by
God's blessing, a means of serving his cause. However we
may sneer at the monastic system of the Church of Rome, it
is unquestionable that many great works have been done by
the monks which could not have been performed by men
who had entered into the marriage relationship. Such ex-
amples of heroic Christian effort as are seen in the lives of
St. Bernard, of Francis Xavier, and many others, are scarcely
ever to be found except in the single state. The forlorn
hope in battle, as well as in the cause of Christianity, must
consist of men who have no domestic relationships to divide
their devotion, who will leave no wife nor children to mourn
over their loss.
Let this great truth bring its improvement to those who,
either of their own choice or by the force of circumstances,
are destined hereafter to live a single life on earth ; and, in-
550 Marriage and Celibacy.
stead of yielding to that feeling so common among mankind
the feeling of envy at another's happiness ; instead of be-
coming gloomy, and- bitter, and censorious, let them remem-
ber what the Bible has to tell of the deep significance of the
Virgin Mary's life let them reflect upon the snares and dif-
ficulties from which they are saved let them consider how
much more time and money they can give to God that they
are called to the great work of serving causes, of entering
into public questions, while others spend their time and tal-
ents only upon themselves. The state of single life, however
we may be tempted to think lightly of it, is a state that has
peculiar opportunities of deep blessedness.
On the other hand, the Apostle Paul brings forward, into
strong relief, the blessedness and advantages of the marriage
state. He tells us that it is a type of the union between the
Redeemer and the Church. But as this belongs to another
part of the subject, we shall not enter into it now. But we
observe, that men in general must have their sympathies
drawn out step by step, little by little. We do not rise to
philanthropy all at once. We begin with personal, domestic,
particular affections. And not only is it true that rarely can
any man have the whole of his love drawn out except through
this domestic state, but, also, it is to be borne in mind that
those who have entered into this relationship have also their
own peculiar advantages. It is true that in the marriage-
life, interrupted as it is by daily cares and small trifles, those
works of Christian usefulness can .not be so continuously car-
ried on as in the other. But is there not a deep meaning to
be learned from the old expression that celibacy is an an-
gelic state ? that it is preternatural, and not natural ? that
the goodness which is induced by it is not, so to speak, the,
natural goodness of humanity, but such a goodness as God
scarcely intended ?
Who of us can not recollect a period of his history when
all his time was devoted to the cause of Christ ; when all
his money was given to the service of God ; and \vhen we
were tempted to look down upon those who were less ardent
than ourselves, as if they were not Christians? But now the
difficulties of life have come upon us ; we have become in-
volved in the trifles and the smallness of social domestic ex-
istence ; and these have made us less devoted perhaps, less
preternatural, less angelic but more human, better fitted to
enter into the daily cares and small difficulties of our ordi-
nary humanity. And this has been represented to us by two
freat lives one human, the other Divine one, the life of
ohn the Baptist, and the other, of Jesus Christ. In both
Marriage and Celibacy. 551
these cases is verified the saying, that "Wisdom is justified
of all her children." Those who are wisdom's children the
truly wise will recognize an even wisdom in both these
lives ; they will see that there- are cases in which a solitary
life is to be chosen for the sake of God; while there are
other cases in which a social life becomes our bounden dutjr.
But it should be specially observed here that that life
which has been given to us as a specimen of life for all, was
a social, a human life. Christ did not refuse to mix with the
common joys and common sorrows of humanity. He was
present at the marriage-feast, and by the bier of the widow's
son. This, of the two lives, was the one which, because it was
the most human, was the most Divine ; the most rare, the
most difficult, the most natural therefore the most Christ-
like.
II. Let us notice, in the second place, the principle upon
which the apostle founds this decision. It is given in the
text " This I say, brethren, the time is short : it remaineth
that both they that have wives be as though they had none,"
" for the fashion of this world passeth away." Now observe
here, I pray you, the deep wisdom of this apostolic decision.
In point of fact it comes to this : Christianity is a spirit,
not a law ; it is a set of principles, not a set of rules ; it is
not a saying to us, You shall do this, you shall not do that ;
you shall use this particular dress, you shall not use that ;
you shall lead, you shall not lead a married life. Christianity
consists of principles, but the application of those principles
is left to every man's individual conscience. With respect
not only to this particular case, but to all the questions
which had been brought before him, the apostle applies the
same principle ; the cases upon which he decided were many
and various, but the large, broad principle of his decision re-
mains the same in all. You may marry, and you have not
sinned ; you may remain unmarried, and you do not sin ;
if you are invited to a heathen feast, you may go, or you
may abstain from going ; you may remain a slave, or you
may become free ; in these things Christianity does not con-
sist. But what it does demand is this : that whether mar-
ried or unmarried, whether a slave or free, in sorrow or in
joy, you are to live in a spirit higher and loftier than that
of the world.
The apostle gives us in the text two motives for this
Christian unworldliness. The first motive which he lays
down is this "The time is short." You will observe how
frequently, in the course of his remarks upon the questions
552 Marriage and Celibacy.
proposed to him, the apostle turns, as it were, entirely away
from the subject, as if worn out and wearied by the com-
paratively trivial character of the questions as if this
balancing of one earthly condition or advantage with an-
other were but a solemn trifling compared with eternal
things. And so here he seems to turn away from the ques-
tion before him, and speaks of the shortness of time " The
time is short !"
Time is short in reference to two things. First, it is short
in reference to the person who regards it. That mysterious
thing time, is a matter of sensation, and not a reality ; a
modification merely of our own consciousness, and not actual
existence ; depending upon the flight of ideas long to one,
short to another. The span granted to the butterfly, the
child of a single summer, may be long ; that which is given
to the cedar of Lebanon may be short. The shortness of
time, therefore, is entirely relative belonging to us not to
God. Time is short in reference to existence, whether you
look at it before or after. Time past seems nothing ; time
to come always seems long. We say this chiefly for the
sake of the young. To them fifty or sixty years seems a
treasure inexhaustible. But, my young brethren, ask the
old man, trembling on the verge of the grave, what he
thinks of time and life. He will tell you that the three-
score years and ten, or even the hundred and twenty years
of Jacob, are but " few and evil." And therefore if you are
tempted to unbelief in respect to this question, we appeal to
experience experience alone can judge of its truth.
Once more : time is short with reference to its opportuni-
ties. For this is the emphatic meaning in the original
literally, " The opportunity is compressed, or shut in."
Brethren, time may be long, and yet the opportunity may
be very short. The sun in autumn may be bright and clear,
but the seed which has not been sown until then will not
vegetate. A man may have vigor and energy in manhood
and maturity, but the work which ought to have been done
in childhood and youth can not be done in old age. A chance
once gone in this world can never be recovered.
Brother men, have you learned the meaning of yesterday?
Do you rightly estimate the importance of to-day ? That
there are duties to be done to-day which can not be done
to-morrow? This it is that throws so solemn a significance
into your work. The time for working is short, therefore
begin to-day ; " for the night is coming when no man can
work." Time is short in reference to eternity. It was es-
pecially with this reference that the text was written. ID
Marriage and Celibacy. 553
those clays, and even by the apostles themselves, the day
of the Lord's appearance and second advent seemed much
nearer than it was. They believed that it would occur
during their own lives. And with this belief came the
feeling which comes sometimes to all. " Oh, in comparison
with that vast hereafter, this little life shrivels into nothing !
What is to-day worth, or its duties or its cares ?" All deep
minds have thought that. The thought of Time is solemn
and awful to all minds in proportion to their depth and
in proportion as the mind is superficial, the thought has
appeared little, and has been treated with levity. Brethren,
let but a mart possess himself of that thought the deep
thought of the brevity of time ; this thought that time is
short, and that eternity is long and he has learned the first
great secret of unworldliness.
The second motive which the apostle gives us is the
changing character of the external world. " The fashion of
this world passeth away " literally, " the scenery of this
world," a dramatic expression, drawn from the Grecian stage.
One of the deepest of modern thinkers has told us in words
often quoted, "All the world's a stage." And a deeper
thinker than he, because inspired, had said long before in
the similar words of the text, " The scenery of this world
passeth away."
There are two ways in which this is true. First, it is true
with respect to all the things by which we are surrounded.
It is only in poetry the poetry of the Psalms for example
that the hills are called " everlasting." Go to the side of
the ocean which bounds our country, and watch the tide
going out, bearing with it the sand which it has worn from
the cliffs; the very boundaries of our lanci are changing;
they are not the same as they were when these words were
written. Every day new relationships are forming around
us; new circumstances are calling upon us to act to act
manfully, firmly, decisively, and up to the occasion, remem-
bering that an opportunity once gone is gone forever. In-
dulge not in vain regrets for the past, in vainer resolves for
the^future act, act in the present.
Again, this is true with respect to ourselves. " The
fashion of this world passeth away " in us. The feelings we
have now are not those which we had in childhood. There
has passed away a glory from the earth the stars, the sun,
the moon, the green fields have lost their beauty and signifi-
cance nothing remains as it was, except their repeated
impressions on the mind, the impressions of time, space,
eternity, color, form ; these can not alter, but all besides has
24
554 Marriage and Celibacy.
changed. Our very minds alter. There is no bereavement
so painful, no shock so terrible, but time will remove or
alleviate. The keenest feeling in this world time wears out
at last, and our minds become like old monumental tablets
which have lost the inscription once graven deeply upon
them.
In conclusion, we have to examine the nature of this
Christian unworldliness which is taught us in the text. The
principle of unworldliness is stated in the latter portion of
the text ; in the former part the apostle makes an applica-
tion of the principle to four cases of life. First, to cases of
domestic relationship "it remaineth that they that have
wives be as though they had none." Secondly, to cases of
sorrow "and they that weep as though they wept not."
Thirdly, to cases of joy " and they that rejoice as though
they rejoiced not." And, finally, to cases of the acquisition
of worldly property " and they that buy as though they
possessed not." Time will not allow us to go into these
applications ; we must confine ourselves to a brief considera-
tion of the principle. The principle of Christian unworldli-
ness, then, is this, to " use this world as not abusing it."
Here Christianity takes its stand in opposition to two con-
trary principles. The spirit of the world says, " Time is
short, therefore use it while you have it ; take your fill of
pleasure while you may." A narrow religion says, " Time is
short, therefore temporal things should receive no attention :-
do not weep, do not rejoice ; it is beneath a Christian." In
opposition to the narrow spirit of religion, Christianity says,
" Use this world ;" in opposition to the spirit of the world
Christianity says, "Do not abuse it." A distinct duty arises
from this principle to use the world. While in the world
we are citizens of the world : it is our duty to share its joys,
to take our part in its sorrows, not to shrink from its diffi-
culties, but to mix ourselves with its infinite opportunities.
So that if time be short, so far from that fact lessening their
dignity or importance, it infinitely increases them ; since
upon these depend the destinies of our eternal being. Un-
worldliness is this to hold things from God in the per-
petual conviction that they will not last ; to have the world,
and not to let the world have us ; to be the world's masters*
and not the world's slaves.
The Christian Church a Family. 555
xv.
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.
"Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is
named." Eph. iii. 14, 15.
IN the verses immediately before the text the Apostle
Paul has been speaking of what he calls a mystery that
is, a revealed secret. And the secret was this, that the
Gentiles would be " fellow-heirs and of the same body, and
partakers of the promise in Christ by the Gospel." It had
been kept secret from the former ages and generations ; it
was a secret which the Jew had not suspected, had not even
dreamt of. It appeared to him to be his duty to keep as far
as possible from the Gentile. Circumcision, which taught
him the duty of separation from the Gentile spirit and Gentile
practices, seemed to him to teach hatred towards Gentile
persons, until at length, in the good pleasure and providence
of God, in the fullness of time, through the instrumentality
of men whose hearts rather than whose intellects were in-
spired by God, the truth came out distinct and clear, that God
was the Father of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, " for
the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him."
In the progress of the months, my Christian brethren, we
have arrived again at that period of the year in which our
Church calls upon us to commemorate the Epiphany, or
manifestation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, and we know
not that in the whole range of Scripture we could find a
passage which more distinctly and definitely than this brings
before us the spirit in which it is incumbent upon us to enter
upon this duty, In considering this passage we shall divide
it into these two branches :
I. The definition which the Apostle Paul here gives of
the Church of Christ ; and,
II. The name by which this Church is named.
I. In the first place, let us consider the definition given by
the Apostle Paul of the Christian Church, taken in its en-
tirety. It is this, " the whole family in heaven and earth."
But in order to understand this fully, it will be necessary for
us to break it up into its different terms.
1. First of all, it is taught by this definition that the
556 The Christian Church a Family.
Church of Christ is a society founded upon natural affinities
a "family." A family is built on affinities which are nat-
ural, not artificial ; it is not a combination, but a society.
In ancient times an association of interest combined men in
one guild or corporation for protecting the common persons in
that corporation from oppression. In modern times identity
of political creed or opinion has bound men together in one
league, in order to establish those political principles which
appeared to them of importance. Similarity of taste has
united men together in what is called an association, or a
society, in order by this means to attain more completely
the ends of that science to which they had devoted them-
selves. But as these have been raised artificially, so their
end is, inevitably, dissolution. Society passes on, and guilds
and corporations die ; principles are established, and leagues
become dissolved ; tastes change, and then the association or
society breaks up and comes to nothing.
It is upon another principle altogether that that which we
call a family, or true society, is formed. It is not built upon
similarity of taste, ner identity of opinion, but upon affini-
ties of nature. You do not choose who shall be your broth-
er; you can not exclude your mother or your sister ; it does
not depend upon choice or arbitrary opinion at all, but is
founded upon the eternal nature of things. And precisely
in the same way is the Christian Church formed upon nat-
ural affinity, and not upon artificial combination. " The
family, the whole family m heaven and earth ;" not made up
of those who call 'them selves brethren, but of those who are
brethren ; not founded merely upon the principles of com-
bination, but upon the principles of affinity. That is not a
church, or a family, or a society which is made up by men's
choice, as when, in the upper classes of life, men of fashion
unite together, selecting their associates from their own class,
and form what is technically called a society ; it is a com-
bination, if you will, but a society it is not a family it is
not a Church of Christ it can not be.
And, again, when the Baptists or the Independents, or any
other sectarians, unite themselves with men holding the same
faith aud entertaining the same opinions, there may be a sect,
a combination, a persuasion, but a Church there can not be.
And so, again, when the Jew in time past linked himself with
the Jew, with those of the same nation, th^re you have what
in ancient times was called Judaism, and in modern times
is called Hebraicism a system, a combination, but not a
Church. The Church rises ever out of the family. First of
all, in the good providence of God, there is the family, then
The Christian Church a Family. 557
the tribe, *then the nation ; and then the nation merges itself
into humanity. And the nation which refuses to merge its
nationality in humanity, to lose itself in the general interests
of mankind, is left behind, and loses almost its religious na-
tionality like the Jewish people.
Such is the first principle. A man is born of the same
family, and is not made such by an appointment or by arbi-
trary choice.
2. Another thing which is taught by this definition is this,
that the Church of Christ is a whole made up of manifold di-
versities. We are told here it is " the ichole family," taking
into it the great and good of ages past, now in heaven ; and
also the struggling, the humble, and the weak now existing
upon earth. Here, again, the analogy holds good between
the Church and the family. Never more than in the family
is the true entirety of our nature seen. Observe how all the
diversities of human condition and character manifest them-
selves in the family.
First of all, there are the two opposite poles of masculine
and feminine, which contain within them the entire of our
humanity which together, not separately, make up the
whole of man. Then there are the diversities in the degrees
and kinds of affection. For Avhen we speak of family affec-
tion we must remember that it is made up of many diversi-
ties. There is nothing more different than the love which
the sister bears towards the brother, compared with that
which the brother bears towards the sister. The affection
which a man bears towards his father is quite distinct from
that which he feels towards his mother ; it is something
quite different towards his sister ; totally diverse again, to-
wards his brother.
And then there are diversities of character. First the ma-
ture wisdom and stern integrity of the father ; then the ex-
uberant tenderness of the mother. And then one is brave
and enthusiastic, another thoughtful, and another tender.
One is remarkable for being full of rich humor, another is
sad, mournful, even melancholy. Again, besides these, there
are diversities of condition in life. First, there is the heir,
sustaining the nam'e and honor of the family ; then perchance
the soldier, in whose career all the anxiety and solicitude of
the family is centred ; then the man of business, to whom
they look up, trusting his advice, expecting his counsel ;
lastly, perhaps, there is the invalid, from the very cradle
trembling between life and death, drawing out aH the sym-
pathies and anxieties of each member of the family, and so
uniting them all more closely, from their having one* common
558 The Christian Church a Family.
point of sympathy and solicitude. Now, you will observe
that these are not accidental, but absolutely essential to the
idea of a family ; for so far as any one of them is lost, so far
the family is incomplete. A family made up of one sex
alone, all brothers and no sisters ; or in which all are devo-
ted to one pursuit ; or in which there is no diversity of tem-
per and dispositions the same monotonous repeated identity
a sameness in the type of character this is not a family,
it is only the fragment of a family.
And precisely in the same way all these diversities of
character and condition are necessary to constitute and com-
plete the idea of a Christian Church. For as in ages past it
was the delight of the Church to canonize one particular
class of virtues as for instance, purity or martyrdom so
now, in every age, and in every individual bosom, there is a
tendency to canonize, or honor, or reckon as Christian, only
one or two classes of Christian qualities. For example, if
you were to ask in the present day where you should find a
type of the Christian character, many in all probability
would point you to the man who keeps the sabbath-day, is
regular in his attendance upon the services of the Church,
who loves to hear the Christian sermon. This is a phase of
Christian character that which is essentially and peculiarly
the feminine type of religion. But is there in God's Church
to be found no place for that type which is rather masculine
than feminine? which not in litanies or in psalm-singing
does the will of God, but by struggling for principles, and
contending for the truth that life whose prayer is action,
whose aspiration is continual effort ?
Or again, in every age, amongst all men, in the history of
almost every individual, at one time or another, there has
been a tendency towards that which has been emphatically
named in modern times hero-worship leading us to an ad-
miration of the more singular, powerful, noble qualities of
humanity. And wherever this tendency to hero-worship ex-
ists, there will be found side by side with it a tendency to
undervalue and depreciate excellences of an opposite charac-
ter the humble, rneek, retiring qualities. But it is precisely
for these that the Church of Christ finds place. " Blessed
are the meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness, blessed are the poor in
spirit." In God's world there is a place for the wren and the
violet, just as truly as there is for the eagle and the rose.
In the Church of God there is a place and that the noblest
for Dorcas making garments for the poor, and for Mary
sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is for Elijah
The Christian Church a Family. 559
Confounding a false religion by his noble opposition, for
John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne, or
for the Apostle Paul " compassing sea ana land " by his
wisdom and his heroic deeds.
Once more, there are ages as well as times in our own in-
dividual experience, when we set up charity as if it were the
one only Christian character. And wherever this tendency
is found there will be found at the same time, and side by
side with it, a tendency to admire the spurious form of char-
ity, which is a sentiment and not a virtue ; which can sym-
pathize with crime, but not with law ; which can be tender
to savages, but has no respect, no care for national honor.
And therefore does this principle of the Apostle Paul call
upon us to esteem also another form or type of character, and
the opposite one ; that which is remarkable for in which pre-
dominates not so much charity as justice that which was
$een in the warriors and prophets of old ; who, perchance,
Aad a more strong recoil from vice than sympathy with vir-
tue ; whose indignation towards that which is wrong and
hypocritical was more intense than their love for that which
is good : the material, the character, out of which the re-
former and the prophet, those who are called to do great
works on earth, are made.
The Church of Christ takes not in one individual form of
goodness merely, but every form of excellence that can
adorn humanity. Nor is this wonderful when we remem-
ber who He was from whom this Church was named. It
was He in whom centred all excellence a righteousness
which was entire and perfect. But when we speak of the
perfection of righteousness, let us remember that it is made
not of one exaggerated character, but of a true harmony,
a due proportion of all virtues united. In Him were found,
therefore, that tenderness towards sinners which had no
sympathy with sin ; that humility which could be dignified,
and was yet united with self-respect ; that simplicity which
is ever to be met with side by side with true majesty ; that
love which could weep over Jerusalem at the very moment
when He was pronouncing its doom ; that truth and justice
which appeared to stand as a protection to those who had
been oppressed, at the same time that He scathed with in-
dignant invective the Pharisees of the then existing Jews.
There are two, only two perfect humanities. One has ex.
isted already in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
other is to be found only in the collective Church. Once,
only once, has God given a perfect representation of Himself,
" the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image
560 The Christian Church a Family,
of His person." And if we ask again for a perfect human!;;/,
the answer is, it is not in this Church or in that Church, or
in this man or in that man, in this age or in that age, but. in
the collective blended graces, and beauties, and humanities,
which are found in every age, in all churches, but not in every
separate man. - So, at least, Paul has taught us, " Till we dtt
come " collectively r , not separately " in the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect
man " in other words, to a perfect humanity " unto the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."
3. The last thing which is taught us by this definition is,
that the Church of Christ is a society which is forever shifting
its locality and altering its forms. It is the whole church,
" the whole family in heaven and earth." So, then, those who
were on earth, and are now in heaven, are yet members of
the same family still. Those who had their home here, now
have it there.
Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine.
It is this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense
in which the departed are ours more than they were before.
There is a sense in which the Apostles Paul or John, the good
and great of ages past, belong to this age more than to that in
which they lived, but in which they were not understood ; in
which the commonplace and every-day part of their lives hin-
dered the brightness and glory and beauty of their character
from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible for
men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal
from day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain stran-
gers to each other, mistaking each other's feelings, not com-
prehending each other's character; and it is only when the
Atlantic rolls between, and half a hemisphere is interposed,
that we learn how dear they are to us, how all our life is
bound up in deep anxiety with their existence. Therefore it
is the Christian feels that the family is not broken. Think
you that family can break or end ? that because the chair
is empty, therefore he, your child, is no more ? It may be so
with the coarse, the selfish, the unbelieving, the superstitious ;
but the eye of faith sees there only a transformation. He is
not there, he is risen. You see the place where he was, but
he has passed to heaven. ~So at least the parental heart of
David felt of old. " by faith and not by sight," >vhen speak-
ing of his infant child. "I shall go to him, but he shall not
return to me."
Once more, the Church of Christ is a society ever altering
and changing its external forms. " The whole family " the
Church of the patriarchs, and of ages before them ; and ve*
The Christian Church a Family. 561
the fiame family. Remember, I pray you, the diversities of
form through which, in so many ages and generations, this
Church has passed. Consider the difference there was be-
tween the patriarchal Church of the time of Abraham and
Isaac, and its condition under David ; or the difference be-
tween the Church so existing and its state in the days of the
apostles ; and the marvellous difference between that and the
same Church four or five centuries later ; or, once again, the
difference between that, externally one, and the Church as it
exists in the present day, broken into so many fragments.
Yet diversified as these states may bo, they are not more so
than the various stages of a family.
There is a time when the children are all 'in one room,
around their mother's knee. Then comes a time, still farther
on, when the first separation takes place, and some are leav-
ing their home to prepare for after-life. Afterwards, when
all in their different professions, trades or occupations, are
separate. At last comes the time when some are gone. And,
perchance, the two survivors meet at last an old, gray-hair-
ed man, and a weak, worn-out woman to mourn over the
last graves of a household. Christian brethren, which of
these is the right form the true, external pattern of a fam-
ily ? Say we not truly, it remains the same under all out-
ward mutations ? We must think of this, or else we may lose
heart in our work. Conceive, for instance, the feelings of a
pious Jew, when Christianity entered this world ; when all his
religious system was broken up the Temple-service brought
to a violent end ; when that polity which he thought was to
redeem and ennoble the world was cast aside as a broken
and useless thing. Must they not have been as gloomy and
as dreary as those of the disciples, when He was dead who
they " trusted should have redeemed Israel ?" In both cases
the body was gone or was altered the spirit had arisen.
And precisely so it is with our fears and unbelieving ap-
prehensions now. Institutions pass churches alter old
forms change and high-minded and good men cling to
these as if they were the only things by which God could
regenerate the world. Christianity appears to some men to
be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the
times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott comparing the de-
generacy of their descendants with the men of those days
lose heart as if "all things were going wrong. " Things are
not," they say, " as they were in -our younger days." No,
rny Christian brethren, things are not as they then were ;
but the Christian cause lives on not in the successors of
euch men as those ; the outward form is altered, but th
24*
562 The Christian Church a Family.
spirit is elsewhere, is risen risen just as truly as the spirit
of the highest Judaism rose again in Christianity. And to
mourn over old superstitions and effete creeds is just as un-
wise as is the grief of the mother mourning over the form
which was once her child. She can not separate her affec-
tion from that form those hands, those limbs, those features
are they not her child ? The true answer is, her child is
aot there. It is only the form of her child. And it is as un-
wise to mourn over the decay of those institutions the
change of human forms as it was unwise in Jonah to mourn
with that passionate sorrow over the decay of the gourd
which had sheltered him from the heat of the noontide sun.
A worm had' eaten the root of the gourd, and it was gone.
But He who made the gourd the shelter to the weary the
shadow of those who are oppressed by the noontide heat of
life lived on : Jonah's God. And so, brethren, all things
change all things outward change and alter; but the God
of the Church lives on. The Church of God remains un-
der fresh forms the one, holy, entire family in heaven and
earth.
II. Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the
name by which this Church is named. " Our Lord Jesus
Christ," the Apostle says, "of whom the whole family in
heaven and earth is named."
Now, every one familiar with the Jewish modes of thought
and expression will allow here that name is but another
word to express being, actuality, and existence. So when
Jacob desired to know the character and nature of Jehovah,
he said "Tell me now, I beseech thee, thy name" When
the Apostle here says, " Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the
whole family in heaven and earth is named" it v is but anoth-
er way of saying that it is He on whom the Church depends
who has given it substantive existence without whom it
could not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he
has expressed elsewhere " that there is none other name
under heaven given among men, whereby we may be saved."
Let us not lose ourselves in vague generalities. Separate
from Christ, there is no salvation ; there can be no Christian-
ity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us
clearly define and enter into the meaning of the words we
use. When we say that our Lord Jesus Christ is He " ol
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named," w r e
mean that the very being of the Church depends on Christ
that it could not be without Him. Now, the Church of
Christ depends upon these three things first, the recognition
The Christian Church a Family. 563
of a common Father; secondly, of a common humanity; and
thirdly, of a common sacrifice.
1. First, the recognition of a common Father. That is the
sacred truth proclaimed by the Epiphany. God revealed in
Christ not the Father of the Jew only, but also of the
Gentile. The Father of a " whole family." Not the partial
Father loving one alone the elder but the younger son
besides : the outcast prodigal who had spent his living with
harlots and sinners, but the child still, and the child of a
Father's love. Our Lord taught this in His own blessed
prayer " Our Father ;" and as we lose the meaning of
that single word our, as we say my Father the Father of
me and of my faction of me and my fellow-believers my
Anglicanism or my Judaism- -be it what it may instead of
our Father the Father of the outcasts, the profligate, of all
who choose to claim a Father's love ; so we lose the meaning
of the lesson which the Epiphany was designed to teach, and
the possibility of building up a family to God.
2. The recognition of a common humanity. He from
whom the Church is named, took upon Him not the nature
merely of the noble, of kings, or of the intellectual philoso-
pher but of the beggar, the slave, the outcast, the infidel,
the sinner, and the nature of every one struggling in various
ways. Let us learn then, brother men, that we shall have no
family in God, unless we learn the deep truth of our common
humanity, shared in by the servant and the sinner, as well as
the sovereign. Without this we shall have no Church no
family in God.
3. Lastly, the Church of Christ proceeds oat of, and rests
upon, the belief in a common sacrifice.
********
There are three ways in which the human race hitherto
has endeavored to construct itself into a family ; first, by
the sword ; secondly, by an ecclesiastical system ; and third-
ly, by trade or commerce. First, by the sword. The Assyri-
an, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, have done their
work in itself a most valuable and important one ; but so
far as the formation of mankind into a family was the object
aimed at, the work of the sword has done almost nothing.
Then there was the ecclesiastical-system the grand attempt
of the Church of Rome to organize all men into one family,
with an ecclesiastical, visible, earthly head. Being Protest-
ants, it is not necessary for us to state our conviction that
this attempt has been a signal and complete failure. We
now come to the system of commerce and trade. We are
told that that which chivalry and honor could not do which
564 The Christian Church a Family,
an ecclesiastical system could not do personal interest wifi
do. Trade is to bind men together into one family. When
they feel it their interest to be one, they will be brothers.
Brethren, that which is built on selfishness can not stand.
The system of personal interest must be shivered into atoms.
Therefore, we, who have observed the ways of God in the
.past, are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until He
shall confound this system as He has confounded those which
have gone before. And it may be effected by convulsions
more terrible and more bloody than the world has yet seen.
While men are talking of peace, and of the great progress of
civilization, there is heard in the distance the noise of armies
gathering rank on rank : east and west, north and south,
are rolling towards us the crushing thunders of universal
war.
Therefore there is but one other system to be tried, and
that is the cross of Christ a system that is not to be built
upon selfishness, nor upon blood, nor upon personal interest,
but upon love. Love, not self the cross of Christ, and not
the mere working out of the ideas of individual humanity.
One word only, in conclusion. Upon this, the great truth
of the Epiphany, the apostle founds a prayer. He prays,
" For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth
is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches
of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit
in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by
faith." This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles
was, according to him, the great mystery of love. A love,
brighter, deeper, wider, higher than the largest human heart
had ever yet dreamed of. But the apostle tells us it is, after
all, but a glimpse of the love of God. How should we learn
it more ? How should we comprehend the whole meaning
of the Epiphany ? By sitting down to read works of theolo-
gy ? The Apostle Paul tells us No. You must love, in
order to understand love. " That ye, being rooted and
grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all sainte
what is the breadth and length, and depth and height ; and
to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the
love of God than a thousand sermons one act of unselfish-
ness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling
to the outcast and " those who are out of the way," will tell
us more of the meaning of the Epiphany than whole volumes
of the wisest writers on theology.
The Law of Christian Conscience. 555
XVI.
THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
"Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with con-
science of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol ; and
their conscience being weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to
God : for neither, if we eat, are we the better ; neither, if we eat not, are we
the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a
stumblingblock to them that are weak. For if any man see fhee which hast
knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him
which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols ;
and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ
died ? But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak
conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to
offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother
to offend." 1 Cor. viii. 7-13.
WE have already divided this chapter into two branches
the former portion of it containing the difference betweer
Christian knowledge and secular knowledge, and the second
portion containing the apostolic exposition of the law of
Christian conscience. The first of these we endeavored to
expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to recapitu-
late the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different
form.
Corinth, as we all know and remember, was a city built
on the sea-coast, having a large and free communication with
all foreign nations; and there was also within it, and going
on amongst its inhabitants, a free interchange of thought,
and a vivid power of communicating the philosophy and
truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain, that to
a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the Gos-
pel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, pre-
senting itself to them, as it did, as a law of Christian liberty.
And so in Corinth the Gospel had "free course and was
glorified," and was received with great joy by almost all
men, and by minds of all classes and all sects ; and a large
number of these attached themselves to the teaching of the
Apostle Paul as the most accredited expounder of Christiani-
ty the " royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what
we read in this epistle, that a large number of these men re-
ceived Christianity as a thing intellectual, gind that alone
and not as a thing which touched the conscience, and s waved
and purified the arfections. Thus this liberty became to
566 The Law of Christian Conscience.
them almost all they ran into sin or went to extravagance
they rejoiced in their freedom from the superstitions, the
ignorances, and the scruples which bound their weaker
brethren ; but had no charity none of that intense charity
which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still strug-
gling in the delusions and darkness from which they them-
selves were free.
More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian
liberty, of expressing their opinions in the church, merely for
the sake of exhibiting the Christian graces and spiritual gifts
which had been showered upon them so largely; until by
degrees those very assemblies became a lamentable exhibi-
tion of their own depravity, and led to numerous irregulari-
ties which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle Paul.
Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been
given to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits
of attire Which had been consecrated so long by Grecian and
Jewish custom, and appeared with their heads uncovered jn
the Christian community. Still further than that, the Lord's
Supper exhibited an absence of all solemnity, and seemed
more a meeting for licentious gratification, where "one was
hungry, and another was drunken" a place in which earth-
ly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had tak-
en the place of Christian charity towards each other.
And the same feeling this love of mere liberty liberty
in itself manifested itself in many other directions. Hold-
ing by this freedom, their philosophy taught that the body,
that is, the flesh, was the only cause of sin ; that the soul was
holy and pure ; and that therefore, to be free from the body
would be entire, perfect, Christian emancipation. And so
came in that strange, wrong doctrine, exhibited in Corinth,
where immortality was taught separate from, and in opposi-
tion to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And afterwards
they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to main-
tain that the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no
longer capable of sin ; and that in the evil which was done
by the body the soul had taken no part. And therefore sin
was to them but as a name, from which a Christian conscience
was to be freed altogether. So that when one of their num-
ber had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed fornica-
tion, " such as was not so much as named among the Gen-
tiles," so far from being humbled by it, they w r ere " puffed
up," as if they were exhibiting to the world an enlightened,
true, perfect Christianity separate from all prejudices. .
To such a society and to such a state of mind the Apostle
Paul preached, in all its length, breadth, and fullness, the
The Law of Christian Conscience. 567
humbling doctrines of the cross of Christ. He taught that
knowledge was one thing that charity was another thing;
that " knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." He
reminded them that love was the perfection of knowledge.
In other words, his teaching came to this : there are two
kinds of knowledge; the one the knowledge of the intellect,
the other the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God
never can be known. He must be known by love for, "if
any man love God, the same is known of Him." Here, then,
we have arrived in another way at precisely the same con-
clusion at which we arrived last Sunday. Here are two
kinds of knowledge, secular knowledge and Christian knowl
edge ; and Christian knowledge is this to know by love.
Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which
treats of the law of Christian conscience. You will observe
that it divides itself into two branches the first containing
an exposition of the law itself, and the second the Christian
applications which flow out of this exposition.
I. The way in which -the apostle expounds the law of
Christian conscience is this: Guilt is contracted by the
soul, in so far as it sins against and transgresses the law of
God by doing that which it believes to be wrong: not so
much wh^t is wrong as what appears to it to be wrong.
This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the seventh and
eighth verses. The apostle tells the Corinthians these
strong-minded Corinthians that the superstitions of their
weaker brethren were unquestionably wrong. " Meat," he
says, " commendeth us not to God ; for neither if we eat are
we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse." He
then tells them further, that " there is not in every man that
knowledge; for some, with conscience of the idol, eat it as a
thing offered unto an idol." Here, then, is an ignorant, mis-
taken, ill-formed conscience ; and yet he goes on to tell them
that this conscience, so ill-informed, yet binds the possessor
of it : " and their conscience beinu: weak, is defiled." For ex-
ample there could be no harm in eating the flesh of an ani-
mal that had been offered to an idol or false god ; for a false
god is nothing, and it is impossible for it to have contracted
positive defilement by being offered to that which is a posi-
tive and absolute negation. And yet if any man thought it
wrong to eat such flesh, to him it was wrong; for in that act
there would be a deliberate act of transgression a delibe-
rate preference of that which was mere enjoyment, to that
which was apparently, though it may be only apparently,
sanctioned by the law of God. And so it w T ould carry with
568 77ie Law of Christian Conscience.
it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery whicli
belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong ; or as St.
Paul expresses it, the conscience would become defiled.
Here, then, we arrive at the first distinction the distinc-
tion between absolute and relative right and wrong. Abso-
lute right and absolute wrong, like absolute truth, can each
be but one and unalterable in the sight of God. The one
absolute right the charity of God and the sacrifice of Christ
this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole measure of
eternal right. But human right or human wrong that is,
the merit or demerit of any action done by any particular
man must be measured, not by that absolute standard, but
as a matter relative to his particular circumstances, the state
of the age in which he lives, and his own knowledge of right
and wrong. For we come into this world with a moral
sense ; or to speak more Christianly, with a conscience. And
yet that will tell us but very little distinctly. It tells us
broadly that which is right and that which is wrong, so that
every child can understand this. That charity and self-
denial are right this we see recognized in almost every na-
tion. But the boundaries of these two when and how far
self-denial is right what are ,the bounds of charity this it ie
for different circumstances yet to bring out and determine.
And so it will be found that there is a different standard
among different nations and in different ages. That, for ex-
ample, which was the standard among the Israelites in the
earlier ages, and before their settlement in Canaan, was very
different from the higher and truer standard of right and
wrong recognized by the later prophets. And the standard
in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, was truly and
unquestionably an entirely different one from that recognized
in the nineteenth century among ourselves.
Let me not be mistaken. I do not say that right and
wrong are merely conventional, or merely chronological or
feographical, or that they vary with latitude and longitude.
do not say that there ever was or ever can be a nation so
utterly blinded and perverted in its moral sense as to ac-
knowledge that which is wrong seen and known to be
wrong as right ; or on the other hand, to profess that which
is seen and understood as right, to be wrong. But what I
do say is this: that the form and aspect in which different
deeds appear, so vary, that there will be forever a change
and alteration in men's opinions, and that which is really
most generous may seem most base, and that which is really
most base may appear most generous. So, for example, as 1
have already said, there are two things universally recog*
The Law of Christian Conscience. 569
nized recognized as right by every man whose conscience
is not absolutely perverted charity arid self-denial. The
charity of God, the sacrifice of Christ these are the two
grand, leading principles of the Gospel; and in some form or
other you will find these lying at the roots of every profes-
sion and state of feeling in almost every age. But the form
in which these appear will vary with all the gradations which
are to be found between the lowest savage state and the
highest and most enlightened Christianity.
For example, in ancient Israel the law of love was ex-
pounded thus : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate
thine enemy." Among the American Indians and at the
Cape, the only homage, perchance, given to self-denial, was
the strange admiration given to that prisoner of war who
bore with unflinching fortitude the torture of his country's
enemies. In ancient India the same principle was exhibited,
but in a more strange and perverted manner. The homage
there given to self-denial, self-sacrifice, was this ?hat tht,
highest form of religion was considered to be that exhibited
by the 'devotee who sat in a tree until the birds had built
their nests in his hair until his nails, like those of the King
of Babylon, had grown like birds* talons until they had
grown into his hands and he became absorbed into the Di-
vinity.
We will take another instance, and one better known. In
ancient Sparta it was the custom to teach children to steal.
And here there would seem to be a contradiction to our prop-
osition here it would seem as if right and wrong were mat-
ters merely conventional ; for s-urely stealing can nevr be
any thing but wrong. But if we look deeper we shall see
that there is no contradiction here. It was not stealing
which was admired ; the child was punished if the theft was
discovered ; but it was the dexterity which" was admired,
and that because it was a warlike virtue, necessary, it may be,
to a people in continual rivalry with their neighbors. It was
not that honesty was despised and dishonesty esteemed, but
that honesty and dishonesty were made subordinate to that
which appeared to them of higher importance, namely, the
duty of concealment. And so we come back to the principle
which we laid down at first. In every age, among all na-
tions, the same broad principle remains, but the application
of it varies. The conscience may be ill-informed, and in this
sense only are right and wrong conventional varying with
latitude and longitude, depending upon chronology and ge-
ography.
The principle laid down by the Apostle Paul is this : A
5 70 The Law of Christian Conscience.
man will be judged, not by the abstract law of God, not by
the rule of absolute right, but much rather by the relative
law of conscience. This he states most distinctly looking
at the question on both sides. That which seems to a man
to be right is, in a certain sense, right to him ; and that
which seems to a man to be wrong, in a certain sense is
wrong to him. For example: he says in his Epistle to the
Romans (ver. 14) that, "sin is not imputed when there is no
law," in other words, if a man does not really know a thing
to be wrong, there is a sense in which, if not right to him, it
ceases to be so wrong as it would otherwise be. With re-
spect to the other of these sides, however, the case is still
more distinct and plain. Here, in the judgment which the
apostle delivers in the parallel chapter of the Epistle to the
Romans (the xivth), he says, " I know, and am persuaded of
the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but
to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is
unclean:" In other words, whatever may be the abstract
merits of the question however in God's jurisprudence any
particular act may stand to you, thinking it to be wrong, it
manifestly is wrong, and your conscience will gather round
it a stain of guilt if you -do it.
In order to understand this more fully, let us take a few
instances. There is a difference between truth and veracity.
Veracity mere veracity is a small, poor thing. Truth is
something greater and higher. Veracity is merely the cor-
respondence between some particular statement and facts
truth is the correspondence between a man's whole soul and
reality. It is possible for a man to say that which, unknown
to him, is false ; and yet he may be true : because if deprived
of truth he is deprived of it unwillingly. It is possible, on
the other hand, for a man to utter veracities, and yet at the
very time that he is uttering those veracities, to be false to
himselfj to his brother, and to his God. One of the most sig-
nal instances of this is to be seen in the Book of Job. Most
of what Job's friends said to him were veracious statements.
Much of what Job said for himself was unveracious and mis-
taken. And yet those veracities of theirs were so torn from
all connection with fact and truth, that they became false-
hoods ; and they Avere, as has been said, nothing more than
" orthodox liars " in the sight of God. On the other hand,
Job, blundering perpetually, and falling into false doctrine,
was yet a true man searching for and striving after the
truth ; and if deprived of it for a time, deprived of it with all
his heart and soul unwillingly. And therefore it was that at
tost the Lord appeared out of the whirlwind to confound the
The Law of Christian Conscience. 571
men of mere veracity, and to stand by and support the honor
of the heartily true.
Let us apply the principle further. It is a matter of less
importance that a man should state true views, than that he
should state views truly. We will put this in its strongest
form. Unitarianism is false Trinitarianism is true. But
yet in the sight of God, and with respect to a man's eternal
destinies hereafter, it would surely be better for him earnest-
ly, honestly, truly, to hold the doctrines of Unitarianism,
than in a cowardly or indifferent spirit, or influenced by au-
thority, or from considerations of interest, or for the sake of
lucre, to hold the doctrines of Trinitarianism.
For instance: Not many years ago the Church of Scot-
land was severed into two great divisions, and gave to this
age a marvellous proof that there is still amongst us the
power of living faith when five hundred ministers gave up
all that earth holds dear position in the Church they had
loved ; friendships and affections formed, and consecrated by
long fellowship, in its communion ; and almost their hopes
of gaining a livelihood rather than assert a principle which
seemed to them to be a false one. Now, my brethren, sure-
ly the question in such a case for us to consider is not this,
merely whether of the two sections held the abstract right
held the principle in its integrity but surely far rather,
this : who on either side was true to the light within, true to
God, true to the truth as God had revealed it to his soul.
Now it is precisely upon this principle that we are ena-^
bled to indulge a Christian hope that many of those who in
ancient times were persecutors, for example, may yet be
justified at the bar of Christ. Nothing can make persecu-
tion right it is wrong, essentially, eternally wrong in the
sight of God. And yet, if a man sincerely and assuredly
thinks that Christ has laid upon him a command to perse-
cute with fire and sword, it is surely better that he should,
in spite of all feelings of tenderness and compassion, cast
aside the dearest affections at the command of his Redeem-
er, than that he should, in mere laxity and tenderness, turn
aside from what seemed to him to be his duty. At least,
this appears to be the opinion of the Apostle Paul. He tells
us that he was " a blasphemer and a persecutor and injuri-
ous," that " he did many things contrary to the name of Je-
sus of Nazareth," that "being exceedingly mad against the
disciples, he persecuted them even unto strange cities." But
he tells us further, that " for this cause he obtained mercy,
because he did it ignorantly in unbelief."
Now take a case precisely opposite : In ancient times the
572 The Law of Christian Conscience.
Jews did that by which it appeared to them that they would
contract defilement and guilt they spared the lives of the
enemies which they had taken in battle. Brethren, the eter-
nal law is, that charity is right : and that law is eternally
right which says, " Thou shalt love thine enemy." And had
the Jews acted upon this principle they would have done
well to spare their enemies : but they did it, thinking it to
be wrong, transgressing that law which commanded them to
slay their idolatrous enemies not from generosity, but in
cupidity not from charity, but from lax zeal. And so do-
ing, the act was altogether wrong.
II. Such is the apostle's exposition of the law of Christian
conscience. Let us now, in the second place, consider the
applications, both of a personal and of a public nature, which
arise out of it.
1. The first application is a personal one. It is this : Do
seems to you to be right : it is only so that you will at
last learn by the grace of God to see clearly what is right.
A man thinks within himself that it is God's law and God's
will that he should act thus and thus. There is nothing
possible for us to say, there is no advice for us to give, but
this " You must so act." He is responsible for the opinions
he holds, and still more for the way in which he arrived at
them whether in a slothful and selfish, or in an honest and
truth-seeking manner ; but being now his soul's convictions,
,you can give no other law than this " You must obey your
conscience." For no man's conscience gets so seared by do-
ing what is wrong unknowingly, as by doing that which ap-
pears to be wrong to his conscience. The Jews' consciences
did not get seared by their slaying the Canaanites, but they
did become seared by their failing to do what appeared to
them to be right. Therefore, woe to you if you do what
others think right, instead of obeying the dictates of your
own conscience ; w r oe to you if you allow authority, or pre-
scription, or fashion, or influence, or any other human thing,
to interfere with that awful and sacred thing responsibili-
ty. " Every man," said the apostle, " must give an account
of himself to God."
2. The second application of this principle has reference
to others. No doubt, to the large, free, enlightened mind of
the Apostle Paul all these scruples and superstitions must
have seemed mean, trivial, and small indeed. It was a mat-
ter to him of far less importance that truth should be estab-
lished than that it should be arrived at truly a matter of
far less importance, even, that right should be done, than
The Law of Christian Conscience. 573
that right should be done rightly. Conscience was far more
sacred to him than even liberty it was to him a prerogative
far more precious to assert the rights of Christian conscience,
than to magnify the privileges of Christian liberty. The
scruple may be small and foolish, but it may be impossible
to uproot the scruple without tearing up the feeling of the
sanctity of conscience, and of reverence to the law of God,
associated with this scruple. And therefore the Apostle
Paul counsels these men to abridge their Christian liberty,
and not to eat of those things which had been sacrificed to
idols, but to have compassion upon the scruples of their
weaker brethren.
And this, for two reasons. The first of these is a mere rea-
son of Christian feeling. It might cause exquisite pain to
sensitive minds to see those things which appeared to them
to be wrong, done by Christian brethren. Now you may
take a parallel case. It may be, if you will, mere supersti-
tion to bow at the name of Jesus. It may be, and no doubt
is, founded upon a mistaken interpretation of that passage in
the Epistle to the Philippians (ii. 10), which says that " at
the name of Jesus every knee shall bow." But there are
many congregations in which this has been the long-estab-
lished rule, and there are many Christians who would feel
pained to see such a practice discontinued as if it implied a
declension from the reverence due to " that name which is
above every name." Now what in this case is the Christian
duty ? Is it this to stand upon our Christian liberty ? Or
is it not rather this to comply with a prejudice which is
manifestly a harmless one, rather than give pain to a Chris-
tian brother ?
Take another case. It may be a mistaken scruple ; but
there is no doubt that it causes much pain to many Chris-
tians to see a carriage used on the Loud's day. But you,
with higher views of the spirit of Christianity, who know
that " the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
sabbath" who can enter more deeply into the truth taught
by our blessed Lord, that every day is ,to be dedicated tc
Him and consecrated to His service upon the high princi-
ple of Christian liberty you can use your carriage you can
exercise your liberty. But if there are Christian brethren
do whom this would give pain then I humbly ask you, but
most earnestly What is the duty here ? Is it not this to
abridge your Christian liberty and to go through rain, and
mud, and snow, rather than give pain to one Christian con-
science ?
To give one more instance. The words, and garb, and
574 The Law of Christian Conscience.
customs of that sect of Christians called Quakers may be
formal enough ; founded, no doubt, as in the' former case,
upon a mistaken interpretation of a passage in the Bible.
But they are at least harmless ; and have long been asso-
ciated with the simplicity, and benevolence, and Christian
humbleness of this body of Christians the followers of one
who, three hundred years ago, set out upon the glorious en-
terprise of making all men friends. Now would it be Chris-
tian, or would it not rather be something more than unchris'
tiau would it not be gross rudeness and coarse unfeeling-
ness to treat such words, and habits, and customs, with any
thing but respect and reverence ?
Further : the apostle enjoined this duty upon the Corinth
ian converts, of abridging their Christian liberty, not mere-
ly because it might give pain to indulge it, but also because
it might even lead their brethren into sin. For, if any man
should eat of the flesh offered to an idol, feeling himself
justified by his conscience, it were well: but if any man,
overborne by authority or interest, were to do this, not ac-
cording to conscience, but against it, there would be a dis-
tinct and direct act of disobedience a conflict between his
sense of right and the gratification of his appetites, or the
power of influence ; and then his compliance would as much
damage his conscience and moral sense as if the act had been
wrong in itself.
In the personal application of these remarks, there are
three things which we have to say. The first is this: Dis-
tinguish, I pray you, between this tenderness for a brother's
conscience and mere time-serving. This same apostle whom
we here see so gracefully giving way upon the ground of
expediency when Christian principles were left entire, was
the same who stood firm and strong as a rock when any
thing was demanded which trenched upon Christian princi-
ple. When some required, as a matter of necessity for salva-
tion, that these converts should be circumcised, the apostle
says "To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an
hour !" It was not indifference it was not cowardice it
was not the mere love of peace, purchased by the sacrifice of
principle, that prompted this counsel but it was Christian
'love that delicate and Christian love which dreads to tam-
per with the sanctities of a brother's conscience.
2. The second thing we have to say is this that this
abridgment of their liberty is a duty more especially in-
cumbent upon all who are possessed of influence. There are
some men, happily for themselves we may say, who are so in-
significant that they can take their course quietly in the val-
The Law of Christian Conscience. 575
leys of life, and who can exercise the fullest Christian liberty
without giving pain to others. But it is the price which all
who are possessed of influence must pay that their acts
must be measured, not in themselves, but according to their
influence on others. So, my Christian brethren, to bring
this matter home to every-day experience and common life,
if the landlord uses his authority and influence to induce his
tenant to vote against his conscience, it may be he has se-
cured one voice to the principle which is right, or at all
events, to that which seemed to him to be right : but he has
gained that single voice at the sacrifice and expense of a
brother's soul. Or again if for the sake of insuring per-
sonal politeness and attention, the rich man puts a gratuity
into the hand of a servant of some company which has for-
bidden him to receive it, he gains the attention, he insures
the politeness, but he gains it at the sacrifice and expense of
a man and a Christian brother.
3. The last remark which we have to make is this :
How possible it is to mix together the vigor of a masculine
and manly intellect with the tenderness and charity which is
taught by the Gospel of Christ. No man ever breathed so
freely when on earth the air and atmosphere of heaven as the
Apostle Paul no man ever soared so high above all preju-
dices, narrowness, littlenesses, scruples, as he : and yet no
man ever bound himself as Paul bound himself to the igno-
rance, the scruples, the prejudices of his brethren. So that
what in other cases w T as infirmity, imbecility, and supersti-
tion, gathered round it in his case the pure high spirit of
Christian charity and Christian delicacy.
And now, out of the writings, and sayings, and deeds of
those who loudly proclaim " the rights of man " and the
" rights of liberty," match us, if you can, with one sentence
so sublime, so noble, one that will so stand at the bar of
God hereafter, as this single, glorious sentence of his, in
which he asserts the rights of Christian conscience above the
claims of Christian liberty " Wherefore if meat make my
brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world stand*
s^h, lest I make my brother to offend."
5/6 Victory over Death.
XVII.
VICTORY OVER DEATH.
" The sting of death is sin ; aiid the strength of sin is the la\r. Bui
thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord ,7eso5
Christ."! Cor. xv. 56, 57.
ON Sunday last I endeavored to bring before you the
subject of that which Scripture calls the glorious liberty of
the sons of God. The two points on which we were trying
to get clear notions were these : what is meant by being unr
der the law, and what is meant by being free from the law ?
When the Bible says that a man led by the Spirit is not un-
der the law, it does not mean that he is free because he may
sin without being punished for it, but it means that he is
free because, being taught by God's Spirit to love what His
law commands, he is no longer conscious of acting from re-
straint. The law does not drive him, because the Spirit
leads him.
There is a state, brethren, when we recognize God, but do
not love God in Christ. It is that state when we admire
what is excellent, but are not able to perform it. It is a
state when the love of good comes to nothing, dying away
in a mere desire. That is the state of nature, when we are
under the law, and not converted to the love of Christ.
And then there is another state, when God writes His law
upon our hearts by love instead of fear. The one state is
this, " I can riot do the things that I would " the other
state is this, " I will walk at liberty ; for I seek Thy com-
mandments."
Just so far, therefore, as a Christian is led by the Spirit, he
is a conqueror. A Christian in full possession of his privileges
is a man whose very step ought to have in it all the elasticity
of triumph, and whose very look ought to have in it all the
brightness of victory. And just so far as a Christian suffers
sin to struggle in him and overcome his resolutions, just sc
far he is under the law. And that is the key to the whole
doctrine of the New Testament. From first to last the
great truth put forward is The law can neither save you
nor sanctify you. The Gospel can do both ; for it is rightly
and emphatically called the perfect law of liberty.
We proceed to-day to a further illustration of this subject
Victory over Death. 577
of Christian victory. In the verses which I have read out,
the apostle has evidently tho same subject in his mind:
slavery through the law : victory through the Gospel.
" The strength of sin," he says, " is the law." God giveth
us the victory through Christ. And when we are familiar
with St. Paul's trains of thinking, we find this idea coming in
perpetually. It runs like a colored thread through embroid-
ery, appearing on the upper surface every now and then in a
different shape a leaf, it may be, or a flower ; but the same
thread still, if you only trace it back with your finger. And
this was the golden recurring thread in the mind of Paul.
Restraint and law can not check sin ; they only gall it and
make it struggle and rebel. The love of God in Christ, that,
and only that, can give- man the victory.
But in this passage the idea of victory is brought to bear
upon the most terrible of all a Christian's enemies. It is
faith here conquering in death. And the apostle brings to-
gether all the believer's antagonists the law's power, sin,
and death the chief antagonist of all: and then, as it were on
a conqueror's battle-field, shouts over them the hymn of tri-
umph " Thanks be to God, which giveth us tfie victory,
through our Lord Jesus Christ." We shall take up these
two points to dwell upon :
I. The awfulness which hangs round the dying hour.
II. Faith conquering in death.
That which makes it peculiarly terrible to die is asserted
In this passage to be guilt. We lay a stress upon this ex-
pression the sting. It is not said that sin is the only bit-
terness, but it is the sting which contains in it the venom of
a most exquisite torture. And in truth, brethren, it is no
mark of courage to speak lightly of human dying. We may
do it in bravado, or in wantonness ; but no man who thinks
can call it a trifling thing to die. True though tfulness must
shrink from death without Christ. There is a world of un-
told sensations crowded into that moment when a man puts
his hand to his forehead and feels the damp upon it which
tells him his hour is come. He has been waiting for death
all his life, and now it is come. It is all over his chance is
past, and his eternity is settled. None of us know, except
by guess, what that sensation is. Myriads of human beings
have felt it to whom life was dear ; but they never spoke out
their feelings, for such things are untold. And to every indi-
vidual man throughout all eternity that sensation in its full-
ness can come but once. It. is mockery, brethren, for a man
to speak lightly of that which he can not know till it corner.
25
578 Victory over Death.
Now the first cause which makes it a solemn thing to die
is the instinctive cleaving of every thing that lives to its own
existence. That unutterable thing which we call our being
the idea of parting with it is agony. It is the first and
the intensest desire of living things, to be. Enjoyment,
blessedness, every thing we long for, is wrapped up in being
Darkness and all that the spirit recoils from, is contained in
this idea, not to be. It is in virtue of this unquenchable im-
pulse that the world, in spite of all the misery that is in it,
continues to straggle on. What are war, and trade, and la-
bor, and professions ? Are they all the result of struggling
to be great ? No, my brethren, they are the result of strug-
gling to be. The first thing that men and nations labor for
is existence. Reduce the nation or the man to their last re-
sources, and only see what marvellous energy of contrivance
the love of being arms them with. Read back the pauper's
history at the end of seventy years his strange sad history,
in which scarcely a single day could insure subsistence for
the morrow and yet learn what he has done these long
years in the stern struggle with impossibility to hold his be-
ing where every thing is against him, and to keep an ex-
istence whose only conceivable charm is this, that it is exist-
ence.
Now it is with this intense passion for being that the idea
of death clashes. Let us search why it is we 'shrink from
death. This reason, brethren, we shall find, that it presents
to us the idea of not being. Talk as we will of immortality,
there is an obstinate feeling that we can not master, that we
end in death ; and that may be felt together with the firmest
belief of a resurrection. Brethren, our faith tells us one
thing, and our sensations tell us another. When we die, we
are surrendering in truth all that with which we have asso-
ciated existence. All that we know of life is connected with
a shape, a form, a body of materialism ; and now that that is
palpably melting away into nothingness, the boldest heart
may be excused a shudder, when there is forced upon it, in
spite of itself, the idea of ceasing forever.
The second reason is not one of imagination at all, but
most sober reality. It is a solemn thing to die, because it is
the parting with all round which the heart's best affections
have twined themselves. There are some men who have not
the capacity for keen enjoyment. Their affections have noth-
ing in them of intensity, and so they pass through life withaut
ever so uniting themselves with what they meet, that there
would be any thing of pain in the severance. Of course,
with them the bitterness of death does not attach so much to
Victory over Death. 579
the idea of parting. But, my brethren, how is it with human
nature generally ? Our feelings do not weaken as we go on
in life ; emotions are less shown, and we get a command over
our features and our expressions ; but the man's feelings are
deeper than the boy's. It is length of time that makes at-
tachment. We 'become wedded to the sights and sounds of
this lovely world more closely as years go on.
Young men, with nothing rooted deep, are prodigal of life.
It is an adventure to them, rather than a misfortune, to leave
their country forever. With the old man it is like tearing
his own heart from him. And so it was that when Lot quit-
ted Sodom the younger members of his family went on gladly.
It is a touching truth ; it was the aged one who looked be-
hind to the home which had so many recollections connected
with it. And therefore it is, that when men approach that
period of existence when they must go, there is an instinctive
lingering over things whicji they shall never see again. Every
time the sun sets, every time the old man sees his children
gathering round him, there is a filling of the eye with an
emotion that we can understand. There is upon his soul the
thought of parting, that strange wrench from all we love,
which makes death (say what moralists will of it) a bitter
thing.
Another pang which belongs to death we find in the sen-
sation of loneliness which attaches to it. Have we ever seen
a ship preparing to sail with its load of pauper emigrants to
a distant colony? If we have we know what that desolation
is which comes from feeling unfriended on a new and untried
excursion. All beyond the seas, to the ignorant poor man,
is a strange land. They are going- away from the helps and
the friendships and the companionships of life, scarcely know-'
ing what is before them. And it is in such a moment, when
a man stands upon a deck taking his last look of his father-
land, that there comes upon him a sensation new, strange,
and inexpressibly miserable the feeling of being alone in
the world.
Brethren, with all the bitterness of such a moment, it is
but a feeble image when placed by the side of the loneliness
of death. We die alone. We go on our dark mysterious
journey for the first time in all our existence, without one to
accompany us. Friends are beside our bed, they must stay
behind. Grant that a Christian has something like familiar-
ity with the Most High, that breaks this solitary feeling;
but what is it with the mass of men ? It is a question full
of loneliness to them. What is it they are to see ? What
are they to meet ? Is it not true, that, to tne larger numbei
580 Victory over Death.
of this congregation, there is no one point in all eternity on
which the eye can fix distinctly and rest gladly nothing
beyond the grave, except a dark space into which they must
plunge alone ?
And yet, my brethren, with all these ideas no doubt vivid-
ly before his mind, it was none of them that' the apostle se-
lected as the crowning bitterness of dying. It was not the
thought of surrendering existence. It was not the parting
from all bright and lovely things. It was not the shudder of
sinking into the sepulchre alone. " The sting of death is sin."
Now there are two ways in which this deep truth applies
itself. There is something that appals in death when there
are distinct separate acts of guilt resting on the memory ;
and there is something, too, in the possession of a guilty
heart which is quite another thing from acts of sin, that
makes it an awful thing to die. There are some who carry
about with them the dreadful secret of sin that has been
done ; guilt that has a name. A man has injured some one ;
he has made money, or got on by unfair means ; he has been
unchaste ; he has done some of those thousand things of life
which leave upon the heart the dark spot that will not come
out. All these are sins which you can count up and num-
ber. And the recollection of things like these is that agony
which we call remorse. Many of us have remembrances of
this kind which are fatal to serenity. .We shut them out,
but it will not do. They bide their time, and then suddenly
present themselves, together with the thought of a judg-
ment-seat. When a guilty man begins to think of dying, it
is like a vision of the Son of Man presenting itself and call-
ing out the voices of all the unclean spirits in the man
" Art thou come to torment us before the time ?"
But, my brethren, it is a mistake if we suppose that is the
common way in which sin stings at the thought of death.
Men who have lived the career of passionate life have dis-
tinct and accumulated acts of guilt before their eyes. But
with most men it is not guilty acts, but guiltiness of heart
that weighs the heaviest. Only take yesterday as a speci-
men of life. What was it with most of us ? A day of sin.
Was it sin palpable and dark, such as we shall remember
painfully this day year ? Nay, my brethren, unkindness,
petulance, wasted time, opportunities lost, frivolous conversa-
tion, that was our chief guilt. And yet with all that, trifling,
as it may be, when it comes to be the history of life does it
not leave behind a restless undefinable sense of fault, a vague
idea of debt, but to what extent we know not, perhaps the
more wretched just because it is uncertain ?
Victory over Death. 581
My Christian brethren, this is the sting of sinfulness, the
wretched consciousness of an unclean heart. It is just this
feeling, " God is not my friend ; I am going on to the grave,
and no man can say aught against me, but my heart is not
right ; I want a river like that which the ancients fabled
the river of forgetfulness that I might go down into it and
bathe, and come up a new man. It is not so much what I
have done ; it is what I am. Who shall save me from my-
self?" Oh, it is a desolate thing to think of the coffin when
that thought is in all its misery before the soul. It is the
sting of death.
Arid now let us bear one thing in mind the sting of sin
is not a constant pressure. It may be that we live many
years in the world before a death in our own family forces
the thought personally home : many years before all those
sensations which are so often the precursors of the tomb
the quick short cough, lassitude, emaciation, pain come in
startling suddenness upon us in our young vigor, and make
us feel what it is to be here with death inevitable to our-
selves. And when those things become habitual, habit
makes delicacy the same forgetful thing as health, so that
neither in sickness nor in health is the thought of death a
constant pressure. It is only now and then ; but so often
as death is a reality, the sting of death is sin.
Once more : we remark that all this power of sin to ago-
nize is traced by the apostle to the law " the strength of
sin is the law;" by which he means to say that sin would
not be so violent if it were not for the attempt of God's law
to restrain it. It is the law which makes sin strong. And
he does not mean particularly the law of Moses. He means
any law, and all law. Law is what forbids and threatens ;
law bears gallingly on those who want to break it. And
St. Paul declares this, that no law, not even God's law, can
make men righteous in heart, unless the Spirit has taught
men's hearts to acquiesce in the law. It can only force out
into rebellion the sin that is in them.
It is so, brethren, with a nation's law. The voice of the
nation must go along with it. It must be the expression of
their own feeling, and then they will have it obeyed. But
if it is only the law of a government, a law which is against
the whole spirit of the people, there is first the murmur of a
nation's disapprobation, and then there is transgression, and
then, if the law be vindicated with a high hand, the next
step is the bursting that law asunder in national revolution.
And so it is with God's law. It will never control a man
long who does not from his heart love it. First comes a
582 Victory over Death.
sensation of restraint, and then comes a murmuring of tho
heart ; and last, there comes the rising of passion in its giant
might, made desperate by restraint. That is the law giving
strength to sin.
And therefore, brethren, if all we know of God be this,
that He has made laws, and that it is terrible to break them ;
if all our idea of religion be this, that it is a thing of com-
mands and hindrances thou shalt, and thou shalt not ; we
are under the law, and there is no help for it. We must
shrink from the encounter with death.
We pass to our second subject Faith conquering in
death.
And, before we enter upon this topic, there are two gen-
eral remarks that we hav.e to make. The first is, The ele-
vating power of faith. There is nothing in all this world
that ever led man on to real victory but faith. Faith is that
looking forward to a future with something like certainty,
that raises man above the narrow feelings of the present.
Even in this life he is a greater man, a man of more elevated
character, who is steadily pursuing a plan that requires some
years to accomplish, than he who is living by the day. Look
forward but ten years, and plan for it, live for it ; there is
something of manhood, something of courage required to
conquer the thousand things that stand in your way. And
therefore it is, that faith, and nothing but faith, gives victory
in death. It is that elevation of character which we get
from looking steadily and forever forward till eternity be-
comes a real home to us, that enables us to look down upon
the last struggle, and the funeral, and the grave, not as the
great end of all, but only as something that stands between
us and the end. We are conquerors of death when we are
able to look beyond it.
Our second remark is for the purpose of fixing special at-
tention upon this, that ours is not merely to be victory, it is
to be victory through Christ. " Thanks be to God which
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Victory, brethren, mere victory over death, is no unearthly
thing. You may get it by infidelity. Only let a man sin
long enough, and desperately enough, to shut judgment al-
together out of his creed, and then you have a man who can
bid defiance to the grave. It was so that our country's
greatest infidel historian met death. He quitted the world
without parade and without display. If we want a speci-
men of victory apart from Christ, we have it on his death-
bed. He left all this strange world of restlessness calmly,
Victory over Death. 583
like an unreal show that must go to pieces, and he himself
an unreality departing from it. A skeptic can be a conquer*
or in death.
Or again, mere manhood may give us a victory. He who
has only learned not to be afraid to die, has not learned
much. We have steel and nerve enough in our hearts to
dare any thing. And, after all, it is a triumph so common as
scarcely to deserve the name. Felons die on the scaffold like
men ; soldiers can be hired by tens of thousands, for a few
pence a day, to front death in its worst form. Every minute
that we live sixty of the human race are passing away, and
the greater part with courage the weak and the timid as
well as the resolute. Courage is a very different thing from
the Christian's victory.
Once more, brethren, necessity can make man conqueror
over death. We can make up our minds to any thing when
it once becomes inevitable. It is the agony of suspense that
makes danger dreadful. History can tell us that men can
look with desperate calmness upon hell itself when once it
has become a certainty. And it is this, after all, that com-
monly makes the dying hour so quiet a thing. It is more
dreadful in the distance than in the reality. When a man
feels that there is no help, and he must go, he lays him down
to die quietly as a tired traveller wraps himself in his cloak
to sleep. It is quite another thing from all this that Paul
meant by victory.
In the "first place, it is the prerogative of a Christian to be
conqueror over doubt. Brethren, do we all know what
doubt means ? Perchance not. There are some men who
have never believed enough to doubt. There are some who
have never thrown their hopes with such earnestness on the
world to come, as to feel anxiety for fear it Should not all be
true. But every one who knows what faith is, knows too
what is the desolation of doubt. We pray till we begin to
ask, Is there one who hears, or am I whispering to myself?
We hear the consolation administered to the bereaved, and
we see the coffin lowered into the grave, and the thought
comes, What if all this doctrine of a life to come be but the
dream of man's imaginative mind, carried on from age to age,
and so believed, because it is a venerable superstition ? Now
Christ gives us victory over that terrible suspicion in two
ways first, He does it by His own resurrection. We have
got a fact there that all the metaphysics about impossibility
can not rob us of. In moments of perplexity we look bacK
to this. The grave has once, and more than once, at the
Redeemer's bidding, given up its dead. It is a world-fact
584 Victory over Death.
It tells us what the Bible means by our resurrection not a
spiritual rising into new holiness merely that, but also
something more. It means that in our own proper identity
we shall live again. Make that thought real, and God has
given you, so far, victory over the grave through Christ.
There is another way in which we get the victory over
doubt, and that is by living in Christ. All doubt comes
from living out of habits of affectionate obedience to God.
By idleness, by neglected prayer, we lose our power of real-
izing things not seen. Let a man be religious and irreligious
at intervals irregular, inconsistent, without some distinct
thing to live for it is a matter of impossibility that he can
be free from doubts. He must make up his mind for a dark
life. Doubts can only be dispelled by that kind of active life
that realizes Christ. And there is no faith that gives a vic-
tory so steadily triumphant as that. When such a man
comes near the opening of the vault, it is no world of sor-
rows he is entering upon. He is only going to see things
that he has felt, for he has been living in heaven. He has
his grasp on things that other men are only groping after
and touching now and then. Live above this world, breth-
ren, and then the powers of the world to come are so upon
you that there is no room for doubt.
Besides all this, it is a Christian's privilege to have victory
over the fear of death. And here it is exceedingly easy to
paint what, after all, is only the image-picture of a dying
hour. It is the easiest thing to represent the dying Chris-
tian as a man who always sinks into the grave full of hope,
full of triumph, in the certain hope of a blessed resurrection.
Brethren, we must paint things in the sober colors of truth ;
not as they might be supposed to be, but as they are. Often
that is only a picture. Either very few death-beds are Chris-
tian ones, or else triumph is a very different thing from what
the word generally implies. Solemn, subdued, full of awe
and full of solemnity, is the dying hour generally of the holi-
est men : sometimes almost darkness. Rapture is a rare
thing, except in books and scenes.
Let us understand what really is the victory over fear
It may be rapture or it may not. All that depends very
much on temperament ; and after all, the broken words of
a dying man are a very poor index of his real state before
God. Rapturous hope has been granted to martyrs in pe-
culiar moments. It is on record of a minister of our own
Church, that his expectation of seeing God in Christ becarna
30 intense as his last hour drew near, that his physician waa
Compelled to bid him calm his transports, because ii> so ex-
Victory over Death.
cited a state he could not die. A strange unnatural energy
was imparted to his muscular frame by his nerves over-
strung with triumph. But, brethren, it fosters a dangerous
feeling to take cases like those as precedents. It leads to
that most terrible of all unrealities the acting of a death-
bed scene. A Christian conqueror dies calmly. Brave men
in battle do not boast that they are not afraid. Courage is
so natural to them that they are not conscious they are do-
ing any thing out of the common way Christian bravery is
a deep, calm thing, unconscious of itself. There are more
triumphant death-beds than we count, if we only remember
this true fearlessness makes no parade.
Oh, it is not only in those passionate effusions in which the
ancient martyrs spoke sometimes of panting for the crushing
of their limbs by the lions in the amphitheatre, or of holding
out their arms to embrace the flames that were to curl round
them it is not then only that Christ has stood by His serv-
ants, an4 made them more than conquerors : there may be
something of earthly excitement in all that. Every day His
servants are dying modestly and peacefully not a word of
victory on their lips ; but Christ's deep triumph in their
hearts watching the slow progress of their own decay, and
yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are
still able to think and to plan for others, not knowing that
they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world
hears nothing of them ; and yet theirs was the completest
victory. They came to the battle-field, the field to which
they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy
was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with.
The last form in which a Christian gets the victory over
death is by means of his resurrection. It seems to have been
this which was chiefly alluded to by the apostle here; for he
says, " When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption
.... then shall come to pass the saying w T hich is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory." And to say the truth,
brethren, it is a rhetorical expression rather than a sober
truth when we call any thing, except the resurrection, victory
over death. We may conquer doubt and fear when we are
dying, but that is not conquering death. It is like a warrior
crushed to death by a superior antagonist refusing to yield a
groan, and bearing the glance of defiance to the last. You
feel that he is an unconquerable spirit, but he is not the con-
queror. And when you see flesh melting away, and mental
power becoming infantine in its feebleness, and lips scarcely
able to articulate, is there left one moment a doubt upon the
mind as to who is the conqueror, in spite of all the unshaken
25*
586 Victory over Death.
fortitude there may be ? The victory is on the side of death,
not on the side of the dying.
And, my brethren, if we would enter into the full feeling of
triumph contained in this verse, we must just try to bear in
mind what this world would be without the thought of a
resurrection. If we could conceive an unselfish man looking
upon this world of desolation with that infinite compassion
which all the brave and good feel, what conception could he
have but that of defeat, and failure, and sadness the sons
of man mounting into a bright existence, and one after an-
other falling back into darkness and nothingness, like soldiers
trying to mount an impracticable breach, and falling back
crushed and mangled into the ditch before the bayonets and
the rattling fire of their conquerors. Misery and guilt, look
which way you will, till the heart gets sick with looking at it.
Brethren, until a man looks on evil till it seems to bim al-
most like a real personal enemy rejoicing over the destruc-
tion that it has made, he can scarcely conceive the deep rap-
ture which rushed into the mind of the Apostle Paul when
he remembered that a day was coming when all this was to
be reversed. A day was coming, and it was the day of re-
ality for which he lived, ever present and ever certain, when
this sad world w r as to put off forever its changefulness and
its misery, and the grave was to be robbed of its victory,
and the bodies were to come forth purified by their long
sleep. He called all this a victory, because he felt that it
was a real battle that has to be fought and won before that
can be secured. One battle has been fought by Christ, and
another battle, most real and difficult, but yet a conquering
one, is to be fought by us. He hath imparted to us the vir-
tue of His wrestlings, and the strength of His victory. So
that, when the body shall rise again, the power of the law to
condemn is gone, because we have learned to love the law.
And now, to conclude all this, there are but two things
which remain to say. In the first place, brethren, if we would
be conquerors we must realize God's love in Christ. Take
care not to be under the law. Constraint never yet made a
conqueror : the utmost it can do is to make either a rebel or
a slave. Believe that God loves you. He gave a triumphant
demonstration of it in the cross. Never shall we conquer
self till we have learned to love. My Christian brethren, let
us remember our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it
deserves the name, is victory. We are not going forth to
mere battle we are going forth to conquer. To gain mas-
tery over self, and sin, and doubt, and fear: till the last cold-
ness, coming across the brow, tells us that all is over and
Victory over Death. 587
our warfare accomplished that we are safe, the everlasting
arms beneath us that is our calling. Brethren beloved, do
not be content with a slothful, dreamy, uncertain struggle.
You are to conquer, and the banner under which we are to
win is not fear, but love. " The strength of sin is the law ;"
the victory is by keeping before us God in Christ.
Lastly, there is need of encouragement for those of U8
whose faith is not of the conquering, but the timid kind.
There are some whose hearts will reply to all this, Surely
victory is not always a Christian's portion. Is there no cold
dark watching in Christian life no struggle when victory
seems a mockery to speak of no times when light and life
seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a real-
ity ? " Perfect love casteth out fear," but who has it ? Vic-
tory is by faith, but, O God > who will tell us what this faith
is that men speak of as a thing so easy ; and how we are to
get it ! You tell us to pray for faith, but how shall we
pray in earnest unless we first have the very faith we pray
for?
My Christian brethren, it is just to this deepest cry of the
human heart that it is impossible to return a full answer.
All that-is true. To feel faith is the grand difficulty of life.
Faith is a deep impression of God and God's love, and per-
sonal trust in it. It is easy to say, " Believe, and thou shalt
be saved," but well we know it is easier said than done. We
can not say how men are to yet faith. It is God's gift, al-
most in the same way that genius is. You can not work /of
faith; you must have it first, and then work/rom it.
But, brethren beloved, we can say, Look up, though' we
know not how the mechanism of the will which directs the
eye is to be put in motion ; we can say, Look to God in
Christ, though we know not how men are to obtain faith to
do- it. Let us be in earnest. Our polar star is the love of
the cross. Take the eye off that, and you are in darkness
and bewilderment at once. Let us not mind what is past.
Perhaps it is all failure, and useless struggle, and broken re-
solves. What then ? Settle this first, brethren, Are you in
earnest ? If so, though your faith be weak and your strug-
gles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of triumph now^
for victory is pledged. "Thanks be to God, which" not
shall give, but " giveth us the victory through our Lord Je-
sus Christ."
588 Man s Greatness and God's Greatness.
XVIII.
MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.
"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose
name is Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a
contrite and humble spirit." Isa. Ivii. 15.
THE origin of this announcement seems to have been the
state of contempt in which religion found itself in the days
of Isaiah. One of the most profligate monarchs that ever dis-
graced the page of sacred history sat upon the throne of Ju-
dah. His court was filled with men who recommended them-
selves chiefly by their licentiousness. The altar was for-
saken. Sacrilegious hands had placed the abominations of
heathenism in the Holy Place ; and piety, banished from the
State, the Church, and the royal Court, was once more as she
had been before, and will be again, a wanderer on the face of
the earth.
Now, however easy it may be to contemplate such a state
of things at a distance, it never takes place in a man's own
day and time, without suggesting painful perplexities of a
twofold nature. In the first place, suspicions respecting
God's character ; and, in the second place, misgivings as to
his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it worth
while to suffer for a sinking cause? Honor, preferment,
grandeur, follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To
be strict in goodness is to be pointed at and shunned. To
be no better than one's neighbors is the only way of being
at peace. It seems to have been to such a state as this that
Isaiah was commissioned to bring light. He vindicated
God's character by saying that He is " the high and lofty
One that inhabiteth eternity." He encouraged those who
were trodden down to perseverance, by reminding them that
real dignity is something very different from present success.
God dwells with him " that is of a contrite and humble spir-
it." We consider
I. That in which the greatness of God consists.
II. That in which man's greatness consists.
I. The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of
God's greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth eter-
nity. There are some subjects on which it would be good
Mans Greatness and God's Greatness. 589
to dwell, if it were only for the sake of that enlargement of
mind which is produced by their contemplation. And eter-
nity is one of these, so that you can not steadily fix the
tho'ughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar kind
of elevation, at the same time that you are humbled by a
personal feeling of utter insignificance. You have come in
contact with something so immeasurable beyond the nar-
row range of our common speculations that you are exalted
by the very conception of it. Now the only way we have
of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step by step, up
to the largest measures of time we know of, and so as-
cending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We can not
grasp eternity, but we can learn something of it by perceiv-
ing that, rise to what portion of time we will, eternity is
vaster than the vastest.
We take up, for instance, the history of our own country,
and then, when we have spent months in mastering the mere
outline of those great events which, in the slow course of re-
volving centuries, have made England what she is, her earlier
ages seem so far removed from our own times that they ap-
pear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity. But
then, when you compare those times with even the existing
works of man, and when you remember that, when England
was yet young in civilization, the pyramids of Egypt were
already gray with 1500 years, you have got another step
which impresses you with a doubled amount of vastness.
Double that period, and you come to the far distant moment
when the present aspect of this world was called, by crea-
tion, out of the formless void in which it was before.
Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought be-
yond even this. It has commanded us to think of countless
ages in which that formless void existed before it put on the
aspect of its present creation. Millions of years before God
called the light day, and the darkness night, there was, if
science speaks true, creation after creation called into exist-
ence, and buried in its own ruins upon the surface of this
earth. And then, there was a time beyond even this there
was a moment when this earth itself, with all its countless
creations and innumerable ages, did not exist. And again,
in that far back distance it is more than conceivable, it seems
by the analogy of God's dealings next to certain, that ten
thousand worlds may have been called into existence, and
lasted their unnumbered ages, and then perished in succes-
sion. Compared with these stupendous figures, 6000 years
of our planet sink into nothingness. The mind is lost in
dwelling on such thoughts as these. When you have pene
5QO Mans Greatness and God's Greatness,
trated far, far back, by successive approximations, and still
see the illimitable distance receding before you as distant
as before, imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel
dizzy and bewildered with new strange thoughts, that have
not a name.
But this is only one aspect of the case. It looks only to
time past. The same overpowering calculations wait us
when we bend our eyes on that which is to come. Time
stretches back immeasurably, but it also stretches on and on
forever. Now it is by such a conception as this that the in-
spired prophet attempts to measure the immeasurable of God.
All that eternity, magnificent as it is, never was without an
inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. It merely
expresses the existence of the high and lofty One that inhab-
itdth it. We make a fanciful distinction between eternity
and time there is no real distinction. We are in eternity
at this moment. That has begun to be with us which never
began with God. Our only measure of time is by the suc-
cession of ideas. If ideas flow fast, and many sights and
many thoughts pass by us, time seems lengthened. If we
have the simple routine of a few engagements, the same ev-
ery day, with little variety, the years roll by us so fast that
we can not mark them. It is not so with God. There
is no succession of ideas with Him. Every possible idea is
present with Him now. It was present with Him ten
thousand years ago. God's dwelling-place is that eternity
which has neither past nor future, but one vast, immeasurable
present.
There is a second measure given us of God in this verse.
It is in respect of Space. He dwelleth in the high and lofty
place. He dweHeth moreover in the most insignificant place
even the heart of man. And the idea by which the proph-
et would here exhibit to us the greatness of God is that of
His eternal omnipresence. It is difficult to say which con-
ception carries with it the greatest exaltation that of bound-
less space or that of unbounded time. When we pass from
the tame and narrow scenery of our own country, and stand
on those spots of earth in which nature puts on her wilder
and more awful forms, we are conscious of something of the
grandeur which belongs to the thought of space. Go where
the strong foundations of the earth lie around you in their
massive majesty, and mountain after mountain rears its
snow to heaven in a giant chain, and then, when this bursts
upon you for the first time in life, there is that peculiar feel-
ing which we call, in common language, an enlargement of
ideas. But when we are told that the sublimitv of those
Mans Greatness and God's Greatness. 591
dizzy heights is but a nameless speck in comparison with the
globe of which they form the girdle ; and when we pass on
to think of that globe itself as a minute spot in the mighty
system to which it belongs, so that our world might be an-
nihilated and its loss would not be felt ; and when we are
told that eighty millions of such systems roll in the world
of space, to which our own system again is as nothing ; and
when we are again pressed with the recollection that beyond
those farthest limits creative power is exerted immeasurably
farther than eye can reach -or thought can penetrate; then,
brethren, the awe which comes upon the heart is only, after
all, a tribute to a portion of God's greatness.
Yet we need not science to teach us this. It is the thought
which oppresses very childhood the overpowering thought
of space. A child can put his head upon his hands, and
think and think till it reaches in imagination some far dis-
tant barrier of the universe, and still the difficulty presents
itself to his young mind, "And what is beyond that barrier ?"
and the only answer is, " The high and lofty place." And
this, brethren, is the inward seal with which God has stamped
Himself upon man's heart. If every other trace of Deity has
been expunged by the fall, these two, at least, defy destruc-
tion the thought of eternal time, and the thought of im-
measurable space.
The third measure which is given us of God respects His
character. His name is Holy. The chief idea which this
would convey to us is separation from evil. Brethren, there
is perhaps a time drawing near when those of us who shall
stand at His right hand, purified from all evil taint, shall be
able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by the holi
ness of God. At present, with hearts cleaving down to
earth, and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy passion, we
can only form a dim conception relatively of that which it
implies. None but the pure can understand purity. The
chief knowledge which we have of God's holiness comes
from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what
impurity is God is not that. We know what injustice is
God is not that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, and
passion are, and deceitfulness, and pride, and waywardness
all these we know. God is none of these. And this is our
chief acquaintance with His character. We know what God
is not. We scarcely can be rightly said to know, that is to
feel, what God is. And therefore this is implied in the very
name of holiness. Holiness in the Jewish sense means sim-
separateness. From all that is wrong, and mean, and
ase, our God is forever separate.
592 Mans Greatness and God's Greatness
There is another way in which God gives to us a colicep
tion of what this holiness implies. Tell us of His justice,
His truth, His loving-kindness. All these are cold abstrac-
tions. They convey no distinct idea of themselves to ouf
hearts. What we wanted was, that these should be exhib
ited to us in tangible reality. And it is just this which
God has done. He has exhibited all these attributes, not
in the light of speculation, but in the light si facts. He
has given us His own character in all its delicacy of color-
ing in the history of Christ. Love, mercy, tenderness,
purity these are no mere names when we see them brought
out in the human actions of our Master. Holiness is
only a shadow to our minds, till it receives shape and sub-
stance in the life of Christ. All this character of holiness
is intelligible to us in Christ. "No man hath seen God at
any time, the only begotten of the Father He hath declared
Him."
-There is a third light in which God's holiness is shown to
us, and that is in the sternness with which He recoils from
guilt. When Christ died for man, I know what God's love
means ; and when Jesus wept human tears over Jerusalem, I
know what God's compassion means ; and when the stern
denunciations of Jesus rung in the Pharisees' ears, I can com-
prehend what God's indignation is; and when Jesus stood
calm before His murderers, I have a conception of what se-
renity is. Brethren, revelation opens to us a scene beyond
the grave when this shall be exhibited in full operation.
There will be an everlasting banishment from God's presence
of that impurity on which the last efforts have been tried in
vain. It will be a carrying out of this sentence by a law
that can not be reversed "Depart from me, ye cursed."
But it is quite a mistake to suppose that this is only a mat-
ter of revelation. Traces of it we have now on this side the
sepulchre. Human life is full of God's recoil from sin. In
the writhings of a heart which has been made to possess its
own iniquities in the dark spot which guilt leaves upon the
conscience, rising up at times in a man's gayest moments, as
it it will not come out in the restlessness and the feverish-
ness which follow the efforts of the man who has indulged
habits of sin too long in all these there is a law repelling
wickedness from the presence of the Most High which pro-
claims that God is holy.
Brethren, it is in these that the greatness of God consists
eternal in time unlimited in space unchangeable pure
in character His serenity and His vastness arise from His
own perfections.
Mans Greatness and God's Greatness. 593
II. We are to consider, in the second place, the greatness
of man.
1. The nature of that greatness.
2. The persons who are great.
Now, this is brought before us in the text in this one fact,
that man has been made a habitation of the Deity " I dwell
with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit." There is
in the very outset this distinction between what is great in
God and what is great in man. To be independent of every
thing in the universe is God's glory, and to be independent
is mail's shame. All that God has, He has from Himself
all that man has, he has from God. And the moment man
cuts himself off from God, that moment he cuts himself off
from all true grandeur.
There are two things implied in Scripture, when it is said
that God dwells with man. The first is that peculiar pres-
ence which He has conferred upon the members of His church.
Brethren, we presume not to define what that Presence is,
and how it dwells within us we are content to leave it as a
mystery. But this we know, that something of a very pecu-
liar and supernatural character takes place in the heart of
every man upon whom the Gospel has been brought to bear
with power. " Know ye not," says the apostle, " that your
bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost ?" And again, in
the Epistle to the Ephesians '.' In Christ ye are builded for
a habitation of God through the Spirit." There is something
in these expressions which refuses to be explained away.
They leave us but one conclusion, and that is that in all
those who have become Christ's by faith, God personally and
locally has taken up His dwelling-place.
There is a second meaning attached in Scripture to the ex-
pression. God dwells in man. According to the first mean-
ing, we understand it in the most plain and literal sense the
words are capable of conveying. According to the second,
we understand His dwelling in a figurative sense, implying
this that He gives an acquaintance with Himself to man.
So, for instance, when Judas asked, "Lord, how is it, that
Thor wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the world ?"
our Redeemer's reply was this " If a man love me he will
keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will
come uuto him and make our abode with him." In the
question it was asked how God would manifest Himself to
His servants. In the answer it was shown how He would
make His abode with them. And if the answer be any reply
to the question at all, what follows is this that God making
His abode or dwelling in the heart is the same thing exactly
as God's manifesting himself to the heart.
594 Mans Greatness and God's Greatness.
Brethren, in these two things the greatness of man con
sists. One is to have God so dwelling in us as to impart His
character to us ; and the other is to have God so dwelling in
us that we recognize His presence, and know that we are
His and He is ours. They are two things perfectly distinct.
To have God in us, this is salvation ; to know that God is in
us, this is assurance.
Lastly, we inquire as to the persons who are truly great.
And these the Holy Scripture has divided into two classes
those who are humble and those who are contrite in
heart. Or rather, it will be observed that it is the same class
of character under different circumstances. Humbleness is
the frame of mind of those who are in a state of innocence,
contrition of those who are in a state of repentant guilt.
Brethren, let not the expression innocence be misunderstood.
Innocence in its true and highest sense never existed but
once upon this earth. Innocence can not be the religion of
man now. But yet there are those who have walked with
God from youth, not quenching the Spirit which He gave
them, and who are therefore comparatively innocent beings.
All they have to do is to go on, whereas the guilty man has
to stop and turn back before he can go on. Repentance with
them is the gentle work of every jiay, not the work of one
distinct and miserable part of life. They are those whom
the Lord calls just men which need no repentance, and of
whom He says, " He that is clean needeth not save to wash
his feet."
Now they are described here as the humble in heart.
Two things are required for this state of mind. One is that
a man should have a true estimate of God, and the other is
that he should have a true estimate of himself.
Vain, blind man, places himself on a little corner of this
planet, a speck upon a speck of the universe, and begins to
form conclusions from the small fraction of God's govern-
ment which he can see from thence. The astronomer looks
at the laws of motion, and forgets that there must have been
a First Cause to commence that motion. The surgeon looks
at the materialism of his own frame, and forgets that matter
can not organize itself into exquisite beauty. The meta-
physician buries himself in the laws of mind, and forgets that
there may be spiritual influences producing all those laws.
And this, brethren, is the unhumbled spirit of philosophy
intellectual pride. Men look at Nature, but they do not
look through it up to Nature's God. There is awful igno-
rance of God, arising from indulged sin, which produces an
unhumbled heart. God may be shut out from the soul by
pride of intellect or by pride of heart.
Man's Greatness and God's Greatness. 595
Pharaoh is placed before us in Scripture almost as a type
01 pride. His pride arose from ignorance of God. " Who is
the Lord that I should obey his voice ? I know not the Lord,
neither will I let Israel go." And this was not intellectual
f pride ; it was pride in a matter of duty. Pharaoh had been
immersing his whole heart in the narrow politics of Egypt.
The great problem of his day was to aggrandize his own
people and prevent an insurrection of the Israelites ; and that
small kingdom of Egypt had been his universe. He shut his
heart to the voice of justice and the voice of humanity : in
other words, great in the pride of human majesty, small in
the sight of the high and lofty One-, he shut himself out
from the knowledge of God.
The next ingredient of humbleness is, that a man must
have a right estimate of himself. There is a vast amount of
self-deception on this point. We say of ourselves that which
we could not bear others to say of us. A man truly humbled
would take it only as his due when others treated him in the
way that he says that he deserves. But, my brethren, we
kneel in our closets in shame for what we are, and we tell
our God that the lowest place is too good for us : and then
we go into the world, and if we meet with slight or disre-
spect, or if our opinion be not attended to, or if another be
preferred before us, there is all the anguish of a galled and
jealous spirit, and half the bitterness of our lives comes from
this, that we are smarting from what we call the wrongs and
the neglect of men. My beloved brethren, if we saw ourselves
as God sees us, we should be willing to be anywhere, to be si-
lent when others speak, to be passed by in the world's crowd,
and thrust aside to make way for others. We should be wil-
ling to put others in the way of doing that which we might
have got reputation for by doing ourselves. This was the
temper of our Master this is the meek and the quiet spirit,
and this is the temper of the humble with whom the high
and lofty One dwells.
The other class of those who are truly great are the con-
trite in spirit. At first sight it might be supposed that
there must ever be a vast distinction between the innocent
and the penitent. It was so that the elder son in the parable
thought when he saw his brother restored to his father's
favor. He was surprised and hurt. He had served his fa-
ther these many years his brother had wasted his substance
in riotous living. But in this passage God makes no distinc-
tion. He places the humble consistent follower and the
broken-hearted sinner on a level. He dwells w T ith both with
him that is contrite, and with him that is humble. He sheds
596 Man's Greatness and God's Greatness.
around them both the grandeur of His own presence, and tha
annals of Church history are full of exemplifications of this
marvel of God's grace. By the transforming grace of Christ,
men, who have done the very work of Satan, have become as
conspicuous in the service of Heaven as they were once con-
spicuous in the career of guilt.
So indisputably has this been so, that men have drawn
from such instances the perverted conclusion, that if a man
is ever to be a great saint, he must first be a great sinner.
God forbid, brethren, that we should ever make such an in-
ference. But this we infer for our own encouragement, that
past sin does not necessarily preclude from high attainments.
We must " forget the things that are behind." We must
not mourn over past years of folly as if they made saintliness
impossible. Deep as we may have been in earthliness, so
deep we may also be in penitence, and so high we may be-
come in spirituality.
We have so many years the fewer to do our work in.
Well, brethren, let us try to do it so much the faster. Christ
can crowd the work of years into hours. He did it with the
dying thief. If the man who has set out early may take his
time, it certainly can not be so with us who have lost our
time. If we have lost God's bright and happy presence by
our willfulness, what then ? Unrelieved sadness ? IN ay, breth-
ren, calmness, purity, may have gone from our heart ; but all
is not gone yet. Just as sweetness comes from the bark of
the cinnamon when it is bruised, so can the spirit of the cross
of Christ bring beauty and holiness and peace out of the
bruised and broken heart. God dwells with the contrite as
much as with the humble.
And now, brethren, to conclude, the first inference we col-
lect from this subject is the danger of coming into collision,
with such a God as our God. Day by day we commit sins
of thought and word of which the dull eye of man takes no
cognizance. He whose name is Holy can not pass them by.
We may elude the vigilance of a human enemy and place
ourselves beyond his reach. God fills all space there is not
a spot in which His piercing eye is not on us, and His uplift-
ed hand can not find us out. Man must strike soon if he
would strike at all; for opportunities pass away from him,
and his victim may escape his vengeance by death. There
is no passing of opportunity with God, and it is this which
makes His long-suffering a solemn thing. God can wait,
for He has a whole eternity before Him in which He may
strike. "All things are open and naked to Him with whom
we have to do."
Mans Greatness and God's Greatness. 597
In the next place, we are taught the heavenly character
of condescension. It is not from the insignificance of man
that God's dwelling with him is so strange. It is as much
the glory of God to bend His attention on an atom as to
uphold the universe. But the marvel is that the habitation
which He has chosen for Himself is an impure one. And
when He came down from His magnificence to make this
world His home, still the same character of condescension
was shown through all the life of Christ. Our God selected
the society of the outcasts of earth, those whom none else
would speak to.
Brethren, if we would be Godlike, we must follow in the
same steps. Our temptation is to do exactly the reverse.
We are forever wishing to obtain the friendship and the in-
timacy of those above us in the world. To win over men
of influence to truth to associate with men of talent and
station and title. This is the world-chase, and this, breth-
ren, is too much the religious man's chase. But if you look
simply to the question of resemblance to God, then the man
who makes it a habit to select that one in life to do good to,
and that one in a room to speak with, whom others pass by
because there is nothing either of intellect, or power, or name,
to recommend him, but only humbleness, that man has
stamped upon his heart more of heavenly similitude by con-
descension, than the man who has made it his business to
win this world's great ones, even for the sake of truth.
Lastly, we learn the guilt of two things of which this
world is full vanity and pride. There is a distinction
between these two. But the distinction consists in this,
that the vain man looks for the admiration of others the
proud man requires nothing but his own. Now, it is this
distinction which makes vanity despicable to us all. We
can easily find out the vain man we soon discover what it
is he wants to be observed, whether it be a gift of person, or
a gift of mind, or a gift of character. If he be vain of his
person, his attitudes will tell the tale. If he be vain of his
judgment, or his memory, or his honesty, he can not help an
unnecessary parade. The world finds him out, and this is
why vanity is ever looked on with contempt. So soon as we
let men see that we are suppliants for their admiration, we
are at their mercy. We have given them the privilege of
feeling that they are above us. We have invited them to
spurn us. And therefore vanity is but a thing for scorn.
But it is very different with pride. No man can look down
on him that is proud, for he has asked no man for any thing.
They are forced to feel respect for pride, because it is thor
598 The Lawful and Unlawful Use of Law.
oughly independent of them. It wraps itself up in the con
sequence of its own excellences, and scorns to care whether
others take note of them or not.
It is just here that the danger lies. We have exalted a
sin into a virtue. No man will acknowledge that he is vain,
but almost any man will acknowledge that he is proud. But
tried by the balance of the sanctuary, there is little to
choose between the two. If a man look for greatness out
of God, it matters little whether he seek it in his own
applause or in the applause of others. The proud Pharisee,
who trusted in himself that he was righteous, was condemned
by Christ as severely, and even more, than the vain Jews
who " could not believe because they sought honor from one
another, and not that honor which cometh from God only."
It may be a more dazzling and a more splendid sin to be
proud. It is not less hateful in God's sight. Let us speak
God's word to our own unquiet, swelling, burning hearts.
Pride may disguise itself as it will in its own majesty, but in
the presence of the high and lofty One, it is but littleness
after all.
XIX.
THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW.
A FRAGMENT.
"But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully." 1 Tim. i. 8.
IT is scarcely ever possible to understand a passage with-
out some acquaintance with the history of the circumstances
under which it was written.
At Ephesus, over which Timothy was bishop, people had
been bewildered by the teaching of converted Jews, who
mixed the old leaven of Judaism with the new spirituality of
Christianity. They maintained the perpetual obligation of
the Jewish law (ver. V). They desired to be teachers of the
law. They required strict performance of a number of
severe observances. They talked mysteriously of angels
and powers intermediate between God and the human soul
(ver. 4). The result was an interminable discussion at
Ephesus. The Church was filled with disputations and con-
troversies.
Now there is something always refreshing to see the
Apostle Paul descending upon an arena of controversy, where
The Lawful and Unlawful Use of Law. 599
%
minds have been bewildered : and so much is to be said on
both sides that people are uncertain which to take. You
know at once that he will pour light upon the question, and
illuminate all the dark corners. You know that he will not
trim, and balance, and hang doubtful, or become a partisan ;
but that he will seize some grat principle which lies at the
root of the whole controversy, and make its true bearings
clear at once.
This he always does, and this he does on the present occa-
sion (ver. 5 and 6). He does not, like a vehement polemic,
say Jewish Ceremonies and rules are all worthless, nor some
ceremonies are worthless and others essential ; but he says,
the root of the whole matter is charity. If you turn aside
from this, all is lost ; here at once the controversy closes.
So far as any rule fosters the spirit of love, that is, is used
lawfully, it is wise, and has a use. So far as it does not, it is
chaff. *So far as it hinders it, it is poison.
Now observe how different this method is from that which
is called the sober, moderate way the ma media. Some
would have said, the great thing is to avoid extremes. If
the question respects fasting, fast, only in moderation : if
the observance of the sabbath-day, observe it on the Jewish
principle, only not so strictly.
St. Paul, on the contrary, went down to the root ; he said,
The true question is not whether the law is good or bad, but
on what principle ; he said, You are both wrong you, in
saying that the observance of the law is essential, for the
end of it is charity, and if that be got, what matter how ;
you, in saying rules may be dispensed with entirely and al-
ways, " for we know that the law is good."
I. The unlawful use, and
II. The lawful use of law.
I. The unlawful use.
Define law. By law, Paul almost always means, not the
Mosaic law, but law in its essence and principle, that is, con-
straint. This chiefly in two forms expresses itself 1st. a
custom ; 2d. a maxim. As examples of custom, we might
give circumcision, or the sabbath, or sacrifice, or fasting.
Law said, Thou shalt do these things ; and law, as mere
law, constrained them. Or again, law may express itself in
maxims and rules.
In rules, as when law said, "Thou shalt not steal" not
saying a word about secret dishonesty of heart, but simply
taking cognizance of acts.
I In maxims, as when it admonished that man ought to give
6oo The Lawful and Unlawful Use of Law,
a tenth to God, leaving the principle of the matter unteue/k
ed. Principle is one thing, and maxim is another. A prin-
ciple requires liberality, a maxim says one-tenth. A princi-
ple says, " A merciful man is .merciful to his beast," leaves
mercy to the heart, and does not define how ; a maxim sayi>,
" Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn."
A principle says, " Forgive ;" a maxim defines " seven
times ;" and thus the whole law falls into two divisions :
The ceremonial law, which constrains life by customs.
The moral law, which guides life by rules and maxims.
Now it is an illegitimate use of law. First* To expect,
by obedience to it, to make out a title to salvation.
By the deeds of the law shall no man living be justified.
Salvation is by faith : a state of heart right with God ; faith
is the spring of holiness a well of life. Salvation is not the
having committed a certain number of good acts. Destruc-
tion is not the having committed a certain number of crimes.
Salvation is God's Spirit in us, leading to good. Destruction
is the selfish spirit in us, leading to wrong.
For a plain reason, then, obedience to law can not save,
because it is merely the performance of a certain number of
acts which may be done by habit, from fear, from compul-
sion. Obedience remains still imperfect. A man may have
obeyed the rule, and kept the maxim, and yet not be perfect.
" All these commandments have I kept from my youth up."
" Yet lackest thou one thing." The law he had kept. The
spirit of obedience in its high form of sacrifice he had not.
Secondly. To use it superstitiously.
It is plain that this was the use made of it by the Ephe-
sian teachers (ver. 4). It seefned to them that law was
pleasing to God as restraint. Then unnatural restraints
came to be imposed on the appetites, fasting ; on the affec-
tions, celibacy. This is what Paul condemns (ch. iv., ver. 8) :
" Bodily exercise profiteth little."
And again, this superstition showed itself in a false rever-
encewondrous stories respecting angels respecting the
eternal genealogy of Christ awful thoughts about spirits.
The apostle calls all these, very unceremoniously, " end-
less genealogies" (ver. 4), and "old wives' fables" (ch. iv.,
ver. 7).
The question at issue is, wherein true reverence consists :
according to them, in the multiplicity of the objects of rever-
ence ; according to St. Paul, in the character of the object
revered God and right the true object.
But you are not a Avhit the better for solemn and reveren-
tial feelings about a mysterious, invisible world. To trem-
The Lawful and Unlawful Use of Law. 60 1
ble before a consecrated wafer is spurious reverence. To
bend before the majesty of right is Christian reverence.
Thirdly. To use it as if the letter of it were sacred. The
law commanded none to eat the shew-bread except the
priests. David ate it in hunger. If Abimelech had scrupled
to give it he would have used the law unlawfully.
The law commanded no manner of work. The apostles in
hunger rubbed the ears of corn. The Pharisees used the
law unlawfully, in forbidding that.
II. The lawful use of law.
1. As a restraint to keep outward evil in check
' The law was made for sinners and profane." .... Illus-
trate this by reference to capital punishment. No sane man
believes that punishment by death will make a nation's
heart right, or that the sight of an execution can soften or
ameliorate. Punishment does not work in that way. It is
not meant for that purpose. It is meant to guard society.
The law commanding a blasphemer to be stoned could not
teach one Israelite love to God, but it could save the streets
of Israel from scandalous ribaldry.
And therefore, clearly understood, law is a mere check to
bad men : it does not improve them ; it often makes them
worse ; it can not sanctify them. God never intended that
it should. It saves society from the open transgression ; it
does not contemplate the amelioration of the offender.
Hence we see for what reason the apostle insisted on the
use of the law for Christians. Law never can be abrogated.
Strict rules are needed exactly in proportion as we want the
power or the will to rule ourselves. It is not because the
Gospel has come that we are free from the law, but because,
and only so far, as we are in a Gospel state. " It is for a
righteous man" that the law is. not made, and thus we see
the true nature of Christian liberty. The liberty to which
we are called in Christ is not the liberty of devils, the liberty
of doing what we will, but the blessed liberty of being on
the side of the law, and therefore unrestrained by it in do-
ing right.
Illustrate from laws of coining, housebreaking, etc. We
are not under them ; because we may break them as we like ?
Nay, the moment we desire, the law is alive again to us.
2. As a primer is used by a child to acquire by degrees,
principles and a spirit.
This is the use attributed to it in verse 5 : " The end of
the commandment is chanty."
Compare with this two other passages " Christ is the end
26
GO 2 The Lawful and Unlawful Use of Law.
of the law for righteousness," and " Love is the fulfilling of
the law ;" " Perfect love casteth out fear."
In every law there is a spirit ; in every maxim a principle ;
and the law and the maxim are laid down for the sake of con-
serving the spirit and the principle which they enshrine.
St. Paul compares God's dealing with man to a wise pa
rent's instruction of his child see the Epistle to the Gala
tians. Boyhood is under law ; you appeal not to the boy's
reason, but his will, by rewards and punishments : Do this,
and I will reward you ; do it not, and you will be punished.
So long as a man is under law this is salutary and necessary,
but only while under law. He is free when he discerns prin-
ciples, and at the same time has got, by habit, the will to
obey. So that rules have done for him a double work, taught
hini the principle and facilitated obedience to it.
Distinguish, however. In point of time, law is first in
point of importance, the Spirit.
In point of time, charity is the " end " of the commandment
in point of importance, first and foremost.
The first thing a boy has to do is to learn implicit obedi-
ence to rules. The first thing in importance for a man to
learn is, to sever himself from maxims, rules, laws. Why ?
That he may become an Antinomian, or a Latitudinariau ?
No. He is severed from submission to the maxim because
he has got allegiance to the principle. He is free from the
rule and the law because he has got the Spirit written in his
heart.
This is the Gospel. A man is redeemed by Christ so far
as he is not under the law ; he is free from the law so faf
as he is free from the evil which the law restrains; he
progresses so far as there is no evil in him which it is
an effort to keep down ; and perfect salvation and liberty
are when we who, though having the first-fruits of the
Spirit, yet groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption,
" to wit, the redemption of our body " shall have been
freed in body, soul, and spirit, from the last traces of the
evil which can only be kept down by force. In other words,
90 far as Christ's statement is true of ?, " The Prince of this
arorld cometh, and hath nothing in me."
Tlie Prodigal and his Brother. 603
xx.
THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.
is And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I havo is
thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad : for this thy
bi other was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." Luke
xv. 31,32.
THERE are two classes of sins. There are some sins by which
man crushes, wounds, malevolently injures his brother man ,
those sins which speak of a bad, tyrannical, and selfish heart.
Christ met those with denunciation. There are other sins by
which a man injures himself. There is a life of reckless in-
dulgence ; there is a career of yielding to ungovernable pro-
pensities, which most surely conducts to wretchedness and
ruin, but makes a man an object of compassion rather than
of condemnation.
The reception which sinners of this class met from Christ
was marked by strange and pitying mercy. There was no
maudlin sentiment on His lips. He called sin sin, and guilt
guilt. But yet there were sins which His lips scourged, and
others over which, containing in themselves their own
scourge, His heart bled. That which was melancholy, and
marred, and miserable in this world, was more congenial to
the heart of Christ than that which was proudly happy. It
was in the midst of a triumph, and all the pride of a proces-
sion, that He paused to weep over ruined Jerusalem. And if
we ask the reason why the character of Christ was marked by
this melancholy condescension, it is that He was in the midst
of a world of ruins, and there was nothing there to gladden,
but very much to touch with grief. He was here to restore
that which was broken down and crumbling into decay. An
enthusiastic antiquarian, standing amidst the fragments of
an ancient temple surrounded by dust and moss, broken pil-
lar and defaced architrave, with magnificent projects in his
mind of restoring all this to former majesty, to draw out to
light from mere rubbish the ruined glories, and therefore
stooping down amongst the dank ivy and the rank nettles ;
such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature. He was
striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching
out in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He
might build it up again in fair proportions,. a holy temple to
the- Lord.
604 Tlie Prodigal and his Brother.
Therefore He labored among the guilty ; therefore He was
the companion of outcasts ; therefore He spoke tenderly and
lovingly to those whom society counted undone ; therefore He
loved to bind up the bruised and the broken-hearted ; therefore
His breath fanned the spark which seemed dying out in the
wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it was too
late, and that the hour of hopeless profligacy was come. It
was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, en-
couraging spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon
as a characteristic. " A bruised reed will He not break."
It was an illustration of this spirit which He gave in the
parable which forms the subject of our consideration to-day.
"VVe find the occasion* which drew it from Him in the com-
mencement of this chapter, " Then drew near unto Him all
the publicans and sinners for to hear Him. And the Phari-
sees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sin-
ners and eateth with them." It was then that Christ con-
descended to offer an excuse or an explanation of his conduct.
And His excuse was this : It is natural, humanly natural, to
rejoice more over that which has been recovered than over
that which has been never lost. He proved that by three
illustrations taken from human life. The first illustration in-
tended to show the feelings of Christ in winning back a sin-
ner, was the joy which the shepherd feels in the recovery of
a sheep from the mountain wilderness. The second was the
satisfaction which a person feels for a recovered coin. The
last was the gladness which attends the restoration of an
erring son.
Now the three parables are alike in this, that they -all
describe more or less vividly the feelings of the Redeemer
on the recovery of the lost. But the third parable differs
from the other two in this, that besides the feelings of the
Saviour, it gives us a multitude of particulars respecting the
feelings, the steps, and the motives of the penitent who is
reclaimed back to goodness. In the first two the thing lost
is a coin or a sheep. It would not be possible to find any
picture of remorse or gladness there. But in the third para-
ble the thing lost is not a lifeless thing, nor a mute thing,
but a being, the workings of whose human heart are all de-
scribed. So that the subject opened out to us is a more ex-
tensive one not merely the feelings of the finder, God in
Christ, but besides that,' the sensations of the wanderer him-
self!
In dealing with this parable, this is the line which we
lhall adopt. We shall look at the picture which it draws of
1. God's treatment of the penitent. 2. God's expostulation
The Prodigal and his Brother. 605
with the saint. God's treatment of the penitent divides it-
self in this parable into three distinct epochs. The period
of alienation, the period of repentance, and the circumstances
of a penitent reception. We shall consider all these in turn.
The first truth exhibited in this parable is the alienation
of man's heart from God. Homelessness, distance from our
Father that is man's state by nature in this world. The
youngest son gathered all together and took his journey into
a far country. Brethren, this is ilie history of worldliness.
It is a state far from God ; in other words, it is a state of
homelessness. And now let us ask what that means. To
English hearts it is not necessary to expound elaborately the
infinite meanings which cluster round that blessed expres-
sion, " home." Home is the one place in all this world
where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of con-
fidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of
guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us
to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unre-
served communications of full and confiding hearts. It is
the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without
any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of
ridicule. Let a man travel where he will, home is the place
to which "his heart untravelled fondly turns." He is to
double all pleasure there. He is there to divide all pain. A
happy home is the single spot of rest which a man has upon
this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities.
And now, my brethren, if that be the description of home,
is God's place of rest your home ? Walk abroad and alone
by night. That awful other world in the stillness and the
solemn deep of the eternities above, is it your home ? Those
graves that lie beneath you, holding in them the infinite se-
cret, and stamping upon all earthly loveliness the mark of
frailty and change and fleetingness are those graves th?
prospect to which in bright days and dark days you can
turn without dismay ? God in his splendors dare we feel
with Him affectionate and familiar, so that trial comes soft-
ened by this feeling it is my Father, and enjoyment can be
taken with a frank feeling ; my Father ha? given it me, with-
out grudging, to make me happy? All that is having a
home in God. Are we at home there ? Why, there is dem-
onstration in our very childhood that we are not at home
with that other world of God's. An infant fears to be alone,
because he feels he is not alone. He trembles in the dark,
because he is conscious of the presence of the world of spirits.
Long before he has been told tales of terror, there is an in-
stinctive dread of the supernatural in the infant mind. It is
606 The Prodigal and his Brother.
the instinct which we have from childhood that gives us the
feeling of another world. And mark, brethren, if the child
is not at home in the thought of that world of God's, the
deep of darkness and eternity is around him God's home,
but not his home, for his flesh creeps. And that feeling
grows through life; not the fear when the child becomes a
man he gets over fear but the dislike. The man feels as
much aversion as the child for the world of spirits.
Sunday comes. It breaks across the current of his world-
liness. It suggests thoughts of death and judgment and
everlasting existence. Is that home ? Can the worldly man
feel Sunday like a foretaste of his Father's mansion ? If we
could but know how many have come here to-day, not to
have their souls lifted up heavenward, but from curiosity, or
idleness, or criticism, it would give us an appalling estimate
of the number who are living in a far country, " having no
hope, and without God in the world."
The second truth conveyed to us in this parable is the un-
satisfying nature of worldly happiness. The outcast son
tried to satiate his appetite with husks. A husk is an empty
thing; it is a thing which looks extremely like food, and
promises as much as food ; but it is not food. It is a thing
which when chewed will stay the appetite, but leaves the
emaciated body without nourishment. Earthly happiness is
a husk. We say not that there is no satisfaction in the pleas-
ures of a worldly life. That would be an over-statement of
the truth. Something there is, or else why should men per-
sist in living for them ? The cravings of man's appetite may
be stayed by things which can not satisfy him. Every new
pursuit contains in it a new hope ; and it is long before hope
is bankrupt. But, my brethren, it is strange if a man has not
found out, long before he has reached the age of thirty, that
every thing here is empty and disappointing. The nobler
his heart and the more unquenchable his hunger for the high
and the good, the sooner will he find that out. Bubble after
bubble bursts, each bubble tinted with the celestial colors of
the rainbow, and each leaving in the hand which crushes it
a cold damp drop of disappointment. All that is described
in Scripture by the emphatic metaphor of" sowing the wind
and reaping the whirlwind," the whirlwind of blighted hopes
and unreturned feelings and crushed expectations that is
the harvest which the world gives you to reap.
And now is the question asked, Why is this world unsatis-
fying ? Brethren, it is the grandeur of the soul which God
has given us, which makes it insatiable in its desires with
an infinite void which can not be filled up. A soul which
The Prodigal and his Brother. 607
was made for God, how can the world fill it ? If the ocean
can be still with miles of unstable waters beneath it, then
the soul of man, rocking itself upon its own deep longings,
with the Infinite beneath it, may rest. We were created
once in majesty, to find enjoyment in God, and if our hearts
are empty now, there is nothing for it but to fill up the hoi-
lowness of the soul with God.
Let not that expression filling the soul with God pass
away without a distinct meaning. God is love and good-
ness. Fill the soul with goodness, and fill the soul with
love, that is the filling it with God. If we love one another,
God dwelleth in us. There is nothing else that can satisfy.
So that when we hear men of this world acknowledge, as
they sometimes will do, when they are wearied with this
phantom chase of life, sick of gayeties and tired of toil, that
it is not in their pursuits that they can drink the fount of
blessedness ; and when we see them, instead of turning aside
either broken-hearted or else made wise, still persisting to
trust to expectations at fifty, sixty, or seventy years, still
feverish about some new plan of ambition -what we see is
this : we see a soul formed with a capacity for high and no-
ble things, fit for the banquet-table of God Himself, trying
to fill its infinite hollowness with husks.
Once more : there is degradation in the life of irreligion.
The things which the wanderer tried to live on were not
husks only. They were husks which the swine did eat.
Degradation means the application of a thing to purposes
lower than that for which it was intended. It is degrada-
tion to a man to live on husks, because these are not his true
food,, We call it degradation when we see the members of
an ancient family, decayed by extravagance, working foi
their bread. It is not degradation for a born laborer to
work for an honest livelihood. It is degradation for them,
for they are not what they might have been. And there-
fore, for a man to be degraded, it is not necessary that he
should have given himself up to low and mean practices.
It is quite enough that he is living for purposes lower
than those for which God intended him. He may be a man
of unblemished reputation, and yet debased in the truest
meaning of the word. We were sent into this world to love
God and to love man ; to do good to fill up life with deeds
of generosity and usefulness. And he that refuses to work
out that high destiny is a degraded man. He may turn
away revolted from every thing that is gross. His sensuous
indulgences may be all marked by refinement and taste,
His house may be filled with elegance. His library may be
608 The Prodigal and his Brother
adorned with books. There may be the sounds in his man.
sion which can regale the ear, the delicacies which can stim-
ulate the palate, and the forms of beauty which can please
the eye. There may be nothing in his whole life to offend
the most chastened and fastidious delicacy ; and yet, if the
history of all this be, powers which were meant for eternity
frittered upon time, the man is degraded if the spirit which
was created to find its enjoyment in the love of God has set-
tled down satisfied with the love of the world, then, just as
surely as the sensualist of this parable, that man has turned
aside from a celestial feast to prey on garbage.
We pass on to the second period of the history of God's
treatment of a sinner. It is the period of his coming to him-
self, or what we call repentance. The first fact of religious
experience which this parable suggests to us is that common
truth men desert the world when the world deserts them.
The renegade came to himself when there were no more
husks to eat. He would have remained away if he could
have got them, but it is written, " no man gave unto him."
And this, brethren, is the record of our shame. Invitation
is not enough ; we must be driven to God. And the famine
comes not by chance. God sends the famine into the soul
the hunger, and thirst, and the disappointment to bring
back his erring child again.
Now the world fastens upon that truth, and gets out of it
a triumphant sarcasm against religion. They tell us that
just as the caterpillar passes into the chrysalis, and the
chrysalis into the butterfly, so profligacy passes into disgust,
and disgust passes into religion. To use their own phraseol-
ogy, when people become disappointed with the world it is
the last resource, they say, to turn saint. So the men of the
world speak, and they think they are profoundly philosophi-
cal and concise in the account they give. The world is wel-
come to its very small sneer. It is the glory of our Master's
Gospel that it is the refuge of the broken-hearted. It is the
strange mercy of our God that He does not reject the writh-
ings of a jaded heart. Let the world curl its lip if it will,
when it sees through the causes of the prodigal's return.
And if the sinner does not come to God taught by this dis-
appointment, what then? If affections crushed in early life
have driven one man to God ; if wrecked and ruined hopes
have made another man religious ; if want of success in a
profession has broken the spirit ; if the human life lived out
too passionately has left a surfeit and a craving behind
which end in seriousness ; if one is brought by the sadness
of widowed life, and another by the forced desolation of in-
The Prodigal and his Brother. 609
voluntary single life ; if when the mighty famine comes into
the heart, and not a husk is left, not a pleasure untried, then,
and not till then, the remorseful resolve is made, " I will
arise and go to my Father:" well, brethren, what then?
Why this, that the history of penitence, produced as it so
often is by mere disappointment, sheds only a brighter lustre
round the love of Christ, who rejoices to receive such wan-
derers, worthless as they are, back into His bosom. Thank
God, the world's sneer is true. It is the last resource to turn
saint. Thanks to our God that when this gaudy world has
ceased to charm, when the heart begins to feel its hollow-
ness, and the world has lost its satisfying power, still all is
not yet lost, if penitence and Christ remain, to still, to hum-
ble, and to soothe a heart which sin has fevered.
There is another truth contained in this section of the
parable. After a life of wild sinfulness, religion is servitude
at first, not freedom. Observe, he went back to duty with
the feelings of a slave : " I am no more worthy to be called
thy son ; make me as one of thy hired servants." Any one
who has lived in the excitement of the world, and then tried
to settle down at once to quiet duty, knows how true that is.
To borrow a metaphor from Israel's desert life, it is a tasteless
thing to live on manna after you have been feasting upon
quails. It is a dull cold drudgery to find pleasure in simple
occupation when life has been a succession of strong emo-
tions. Sonship it is not ; it is slavery. A son obeys in
love, entering heartily into his father's meaning. A servant
obeys mechanically, rising early because he must ; doing, it
may be, his duty well, but feeling in all its force the irksome-
ness of the service. Sonship does not come all at once.
The yoke of Christ is easy, the burden of Christ is light ;
but it is not light to every body. It is light when you love
it, and no man who has sinned much can love it all at once.
Therefore, if I speak to any one who is trying to be relig-
ious, and heavy in heart because his duty is done too formal-
ly, my Christian brother, fear not. You are returning, like
the prodigal, with the feelings of a servant. Still it is a real
return. The spirit of adoption will come afterwards. You
will often have to do duties which you can not relish, and in
which you see no meaning. So it was with Naajnan at the
prophet's command. He bathed, not knowing why he was
bidden to bathe, in Jordan. When you bend to prayer, often
and often you will have to kneel with wandering thoughts,
and constraining lips to repeat words into which your heart
scarcely enters. You will have to perform duties when the
heart is cold, and without a spark of enthusiasm to warm
26*
6 1 o The Prodigal and his Brother.
you. But, my Christian brother, onward still. Struggle to
the cross, even though it be struggling as in chains. Just
as on a day of clouds, when you have watched the distant
hills, dark and gray with mist, suddenly a gleam of sunshine
passing over reveals to you, in that flat surface, valleys and
dells and spots of sunny happiness, which slept before unsus-
pected in the fog, so in the gloom of penitential life there
will be times when God's deep peace and love will be felt
shining into the soul with supernatural refreshment. Let the
penitent be content with the servant's lot at first. Liberty
and peace, and the bounding sensations of a Father's arms
around you, come afterwards.
The last circumstance in this division of our subject is the
reception which a sinner meets with on his return to God.
" Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring
on his hand, and Shoes on his feet, and bring hither the fat-
ted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry." This ban
quet represents to us two things. It tells of the father's glad-
ness on his son's return. That represents God's joy on the
reformation of a sinner. It tells of a banquet and'a dance
given to the long-lost son. That represents the sinner's
gladness when he first understood that God was reconciled
to him in Christ. There is a strange, almost wild, rapture, a
strong gush of love and happiness in those days which are
called the days of the first conversion. When a man who
has sinned much a profligate turns to God, and it becomes
first clear to his apprehension that there is love instead of
spurning for him, there is a luxury of emotion a banquet of
tumultuous blessedness in the moment of first love to God,
which stands alone in life, nothing before and nothing after
like it. And, brethren, let us observe : This forgiveness is a
thing granted while a man is yet afar off. We are not to
wait for the right of being happy till we are good : we might
wait forever. Joy is not'delayed till we deserve it. JustTso
soon as a sinful man trusts that the mercy of God in Christ
has done away with his transgression, the ring, and the robe,
and the shoes are his, the banquet and the light of a Father's
countenance.
Lastly, we have to consider very briefly God's expostula-
tion with a saint. There is another brother mentioned in
this parabfe, who expressed something like indignation at
the treatment which his brother met with. There are com-
mentators who have imagined that this personage represents
the Pharisees who complained that Jesus was receiving sin-
ners. But this is manifestly impossible, because his father
expostulates with him in this language, "Son, thou art evel
The Prodigal and his Brother. 6 1 1
with me ;" not for one moment could that be true of the Phar-
isees. The true interpretation seems to be that this elder
brother represents a real Christian perplexed with God's
mysterious dealings. We haye before us the description of
one of those happy persons who have been filled with the
Holy Ghost from their mother's womb, and on the whole
(with imperfections of course) remained God's servant all his
life. For this is his own account of himself, which the father
does not contradict. " Lo ! these many years do I serve
thee."
We observe, then, the objection made to the reception of
a notorious sinner "Thou never gavest me a kid." Now,
in this we have a fact true to Christian experience. Joy
seems to be felt more vividly and more exuberantly by men
who have sinned much, than by men who have grown up
consistently from childhood with religious education. Rap-
ture belongs to him whose sins, which are forgiven, are
many. In the perplexity which this fact occasions, there is
a feeling which is partly right and partly wrong. There is a
surprise which is natural" There is a resentful jealousy
which is to be rebuked.
There is first of all a natural surprise. It was natural that
the elder brother should feel perplexed and hurt. When a
sinner seems to be rewarded with more happiness than a
saint, it appears as if good and evil were alike undistinguish-
ed in God's dealings. It seems like putting a reconciled en-
emy over the head of a tried servant. It looks as if it were
a kind of encouragement held out to sin, and a man begins
to feel, Well, if this is to be the caprice of my father's deal-
ing ; if this rich feast of gladness be the reward of a licen-
tious life, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and
washed my hands in innocency." This is natural surprise.
But besides this there is a jealousy in these sensations of
ours which God sees fit to rebuke. You have been trying to
serve God all your life, and find it struggle, and heaviness,
and dullness still. You see another who has outraged every
obligation of life, and he is not tried by the deep prostration
you think he ought to have, but bright with happiness at
once. You have been making sacrifices all your life, and
your worst trials come out of your most generous sacrifices.
Your errors in judgment have been followed by sufferings
sharper than those which crime itself could have brought.
And you see men who never made a sacrifice unexposed to
trial men whose life has been rapture purchased by Jhe
ruin of others' innocence tasting first the pleasures of sin,
and then the banquet of religion. You have been a moral
612 The Prodigal and his Brother.
man from childhood, and yet with all your efforts you feel
the crushing conviction that it has never once been granted
you to win a soul to God. And you see another man mark-
ed by inconsistency and impetuosity, banqueting every day
upon the blest success of impressing and saving souls. All
that is startling. And then comes sadness and despondency ;
then come all those feelings which are so graphically depict-
'ed here : irritation " he was angry ;" swelling pride " he
would not go in;" jealousy, which required soothing "his
father went out and entreated him."
And now, brethren, mark the father's answer. It does not
account for this strange dealing by God's sovereignty. It
does not cut the knot of the difficulty, instead of untying it,
by saying, God has Bright to do what He will. He does not
urge, *God has a right to act on favoritism if He please. But
it assigns two reasons. The first reason is, "It was meet,
right that we should make merry." It is meet that God
should be glad on the reclamation of a sinner. It is meet
that that sinner, looking down into the dreadful chasm over
which he had been tottering, should feel a shudder of delight
through all his* frame on thinking of his escape. And it is
meet that religious men should not feel jealous of one anoth-
er, but freely and generously join in thanking God that
others have got happiness, even if they have not. The spirit
of religious exclusiveness, which looks down contemptuously
instead of tenderly on worldly men, and banishes a man for-
ever from the circle of its joys because he has sinned notori-
ously, is a bad spirit. *
Lastly, the reason given for this dealing is, " Son, thou art
always with me, and all that I have is thine." By which
Christ seems to tell us that the disproportion between man
and man is much less than we suppose. The profligate had
had one hour of ecstasy the other had had a whole life of
peace. A consistent Christian may not have rapture ; but
he has that which is much better than rapture : calmness
God's serene and perpetual presence. And after all, breth-
ren, that is the best. One to whom much is forgiven has
much joy. He must have it, if it were only to support him
through those fearful trials which are to come those haunt-
ing reminiscences of a polluted heart those frailties those
inconsistencies to which the habits of past indulgence have
made him liable. A terrible struggle is in store for him yet.
Grudge him not one hour of unclouded exultation. But re-
ligion's best gift rest, serenity the quiet daily love of one
who lives perpetually with his Father's family uninterrupt-
ed usefulness that belongs to him who has lived steadily,
The Prodigal and his Brother. 613
ancl walked with duty, neither grieving nor insulting the
Holy Spirit of hie God. The man who serves God early has
the best of it ; joy is well in its way, but a few flashes of joy
are trifles in comparison with a life of peace. Which is best :
the flash of joy lighting up the whole heart, and then dark-
ness till the next flash comes or the steady calm sunlight
of day in which men work ?
And now, one word to those who are living this young
man's life thinking to become religious, as he did, when
they have got tired of the world. I speak to those who are
leading what, in the world's softened language of conceal-
ment, is called a gay life. Young brethren, let two motives
be urged earnestly upon your attention. The first is the
motive of mere honorable feeling. We will say nothing
about the uncertainty of life. We will not dwell upon this
fact, that impressions resisted now may never come back
again. We will not appeal to terror. That is not the
weapon which a Christian minister loves to use. If our lips
were clothed with thunder, it is not denunciation which
makes men Christians ; let the appeal be made to every
high and generous feeling in a young man's bosom.
Deliberately and calmly you are going to do this: to
spend the best and most vigorous portion of your days in
idleness, in uselessness, in the gratification of self, in the con-
tamination of others. And then weakness, the relics and
the miserable dregs of life you are going to give that sor-
ry offering to God, because His mercy endureth forever !
Shame shame upon the heart which can let such a plan rest
in it one moment. If it be there, crush it like a man. It is
a degrading thing to enjoy husks till there is no man to give
them. It is a base thing to resolve to give to God as little
as possible, and not to serve Him till you must.
Young brethren, I speak principally to you. You have
health for God now. You have strength of mind and body.
IL^HI have powers which may fit you for real usefulness.
You have appetites for enjoyment which can be consecrated
to God. You acknowledge the law of honor. Well, then,
by every feeling of manliness and generosity remember this :
now. and not later, is your time to learn what religion
means.
There is another motive, and a very solemn one, to be
urged upon those who are delaying. Every moment of de-
lay adds bitterness to after-struggles. The moment of a
feeling of hired servitude must come. If a man will not
obey God with a warm heart, he may hereafter have to do it
with a cold one. To be holy is the work of a lonjr life. The
6 1 4 John "s Rebuke of Herod.
experience often thousand lessbns teaches only a little of it;
and all this, the work of becoming like God,"the man who
delays is crowding into the space of a few years or a few
months. When we have lived long a life of sin, do we think
that repentance and forgiveness will obliterate all the traces
of sin upon the character? Be sure that every sin pays its
price : " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
Oh! there are recollections of past sin which come crowd-
ing up to the brain, with temptation in them. There are
old habits which refuse to be mastered by a few enthusiastic
sensations. There is so much of the old man clinging to the
penitent who has waited long he is so much, as a religious
man, like what he was when he was a worldly man that it
is doubtful whether he ever reaches in this world the full
stature of Christian manhood. Much warm earnestness, but
strange inconsistencies that is the character of one who is
an old man and a young Christian. Brethren, do we w r ish to
risk all this ? Do we want to learn holiness with terrible
struggles, and sore affliction, and the plague of much re-
maining evil ? Then wait before you turn to God.
XXI.
JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.
"But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodiashis brother
Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this
above all, that he shut up John in -prison." Luke iii. 19, 20.
THE life of John the Baptist divides itself into three dis-
tinct periods. Of the first we are told almost nothing, but
we may conjecture much. We are told that he was in the
deserts till his sho wing unto Israel. It was a period, proba-
bly, in which, saddened by the hollowness of all life in Is-
rael, and perplexed with the controversies of Jerusalem, the
controversies of Sadducee with Pharisee, of formalist with
mystic, of the disciples of one infallible rabbi with the disci-
ples of another infallible rabbi, he fled for refuge to the wil-
derness, to see whether God could not be found there by the
heart that sought Him, without the aid of churches, rituals,
creeds, and forms. This period lasted thirty years.
The second period is a shorter one. It comprises the few
months of his public ministry. His difficulties were over;
he had reached conviction enough to live and die on. He
John "s Rebuke of Herod. 6 1 5
knew not all, but he knew something. He could not baptize
with the Spirit, but he could at least baptize with water.
It was not given to him to build up, but it was given to him
to pull down all false foundations. He knew that the high-
est truth of spiritual life was to be given by One that should
come after. What he had learned in the desert was con-
tained in a few words Reality lies at the root of religious
life. Ye must be real, said John. " Bring forth fruits meet
for repentance." Let each man do his own duty ; let the rich
impart to those who are not rich ; let the publican accuse
no man falsely ; let the soldier be content with his wages.
The coming kingdom is not a mere piece of machinery which
will make you all good and happy without effort of your
own. Change yourselves, or you will have no kingdom at
all. Personal reformation, personal reality, that was John's
message to the world.
It was an incomplete one ; but he delivered it as his all,
manfully ; and his success was signal, astonishing even to
himself. Successful it was, because it appealed to all the
deepest wants of the human heart. It told of peace to those
who had been agitated by tempestuous passion. It promised
forgetfulness of past transgression to those whose consciences
smarted with self-accusing recollections. It spoke % of refuge
from the wrath to come to those who had felt it a fearful
expectation to fall into the hands of an angry God. And the
result of that message, conveyed by the symbol of baptism,
was that the desert swarmed with crowds who owned the
attractive spell of the power of a new life made possible.
Warriors, paupers, profligates some admiring the nobleness
of religious life, others needing it to fill up the empty hollow
of an unsatisfied heart ; the penitent, the heart-broken, the
worldly, and the disappointed, all came. And with them
there came two other classes of men, whose approach roused
the Baptist to astonishment.
The formalist, not satisfied with his formality, and the
infidel, unable to rest on his infidelity they came too
startled, for one hour at least, to the real significance of life,
and shaken out of unreality. The Baptist's message wrung
the confession from their souls : " Yes, our system will not
do. We are not happy, after all ; w6~ are miserable. Proph-
et, whose solitary life, far away there in the desert, has
been making to itself a home in the mysterious and the in-
visible, what hast thou got to tell us from that awful other
world ? What are we to do ?"
These things belong to a period of John's life anterior to
the text. The prophet has been hitherto in a self-selected
6 1 6 John "s Rebuke of Herod.
solitude, the free wild desert, opening his heart to the strange
sights and sounds through which the grand voice of orient-
al nature speaks of God to the soul, in "a way that books can
not speak.
We have arrived at the third period of his history. We
are now to consider him as the tenant of a compelled solitude,
in the dungeon of a capricious tyrant. Hitherto, by that
rugged energy with which he battled with the temptations
of this world, he has been shedding a glory round human
life. We are now to look at him equally alone ; equally
majestic, shedding by martyrdom almost a brighter glory
round human death. He has hitherto been receiving the
homage of almost unequalled popularity. We are now to
observe him reft of every admirer, every soother, every friend.
He has been hitherto overcoming the temptations of existence
by entire seclusion from them all. We are now to ask how
he will stem those seductions when he is brought into the
very midst of them, and the whole outward aspect of his life
has laid aside its distinctive and peculiar character ; when he
has ceased to be the anchorite, and has become the idol of
court.
Much instruction, brethren, there ought to be* in all this,
if we only knew rightly how to bring it out, or even to paint
in any thing like intelligible colors the picture which our
own minds have formed. Instructive, because human life
must ever be instructive. How a human spirit contrived to
get its life accomplished in this confused world : what a man
like us, and yet no common man, felt, did, suffered ; how he
fought, and how he conquered ; if we could only get a clear
possession and firm grasp of that, we should have got almost
all that is worth having in truth, with the technicalities
stripped off, for what is the use of truth except to teach man
how to live ? There is a vast value in genuine biography. It
is good to have real views of what life is, and what Christian
life may be. It is good to familiarize ourselves with the his-
tory of those wjiom God has pronounced the salt of the earth.
We can not help contracting good from such association.
And just one thing respecting this man whom we are to
follow for some time to-day. Let us not be afraid of seeming
to rise into a mere enthusiastic panegyric of a man. It is a
rare man we have to deal with, one of God's heroic ones, a
true conqueror ; one whose life and motives it is hard to
understand without feeling warmly and enthusiastically
about them ; one of the very highest characters, rightly
understood, of all the Bible. Panegyric such as we can give,
what is it after he has been stamped by his Master's
John J s Rebuke of Herod. 6 1 7
eulogy " A prophet ? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a
prophet. Among them that are born of women there hath
not risen a greater than John the Baptist." In the verse
which is to serve us for our guidance on this subject there
are two branches which will afford us fruit of contempla-
tion. It is written, " Herod being reproved by John for He-
lodias."
Here is our first subject of thought. The truthfulness of
Christian character.
And then next, he " shut up John in prison."
Here is our second topic. The apparent failure of religious
life.
The point which we have to look at in this section of the
Baptist's life is the truthfulness of religious character. For
the prophet was now in a sphere of life altogether new. He
had got to the third act of his history. The first was per-
formed right manfully in the desert that is past. He has
now become a known man, celebrated through the country,
brought into the world, great men listening to him, and in
the way, if he chooses it, to become familiar with the polished
life of Herod's court. For this we read : Herod observed
John, that is, cultivated his acquaintance, paid him marked
attention, heard him, did many things at his bidding, and
heard him gladly.
For thirty long years John had lived in that far-off desert,
filling his soul with the grandeur of solitude, content to be
unknown, not conscious, most likely, that there was any thing
supernatural in him living with the mysterious God in
silence. And then came the day when the qualities, so
secretly nursed, became known in the great world : men felt
that there was a greater than themselves before them, and
then came the trial of admiration, when the crowds congre-
gated round to listen. And all that trial John bore unin-
jured, for when those vast crowds dispersed at night, he was
left alone with God and the universe once more. That pre-
vented his being spoilt by flattery. But now comes the
great trial. John is transplanted from the desert to the
town : he has quitted simple life ; he has come to artificial
life. John has won a king's attention, and now the question
is, Will the diamond of the mine bear polishing without
breaking into shivers ? Is the iron prophet melting into
voluptuous softness? Is he getting the world's manners
and the world's courtly insincerity ? Is he becoming arti-
ficial through his change of life ? My Christian brethren, we
find nothing of the kind. There he stands in Herod's volup-
tuous court the prophet of the desert still, unseduced by
6 1 8 John 's Rebuke of Herod.
blandishment from his high loyalty, and fronting his patron
and his prince with the stern unpalatable truth of God.
It is refreshing to look on such a scene as this the highest,
the very highest moment, I think, in all John's history ;
higher than his ascetic life. For after all, ascetic life such as
he had led before, when he fed on locusts and wild honey, is
hard only in the first resolve. When you have once made
up your mind to that, it becomes a habit to live alone. To
lecture the poor about religion is not hard. To speak of un-
worldliness to men with whom we do not associate, and who
do not see our daily inconsistencies, that is not hard. To
speak contemptuously of the world when we have no power
of commanding its admiration, that is not difficult. But
when God has given a man accomplishments or powers
which would enable him to shine in society, and he can still
be firm, and steady, and uncompromisingly true ; when he
can be as undaunted before the rich as before the poor ; when
rank and fashion can not subdue him into silence : when he
hates moral evil as sternly in a great man as he would in a
peasant, there is truth in that man. This was the test to
which the Baptist was submitted.
And now contemplate him for a moment ; forget that he
is an historical personage, and remember that he was a man
like us. Then comes the trial. All the habits and rules of
polite life would be whispering such advice as this : " Only
keep your remarks within the limits of politeness. If you
can not approve, be silent; you can do no good by finding
fault with the great." We know how the whole spirit of a
man like John would have revolted at that. Imprisonment ?
Yes. Death ? Well, a man can die but once any thing,
but not cowardice not meanness not pretending what I do
not feel, and disguising what I do feel. Brethren, death is
not the worst thing in this life ; it is not difficult to die five
minutes and the sharpest agony is past. The worst thing in
this life is cowardly untruthfulness. Let men be rough, if
they will, let them be unpolished, but let Christian men in all
they say be sincere. No flattery, no speaking smoothly to a
man before his face, while all the time there is a disapproval
of his conduct in the heart. The thing we want in Christi-
anity is not politeness, it is sincerity.
There are three things which we remark in this truthful-
ness of John. The first is its straightforwardness, the second
is its unconsciousness, and the last its unselfishness. The
straightforwardness is remarkable in this circumstance, that
there is no indirect coming to the point. At once, without
circumlocution, the true man speaks. " It is not lawful for
John 3 Rebuke of Herod. 619
thee to have her." There are some men whom God has
gifted -with a rare simplicity of heart, which makes them ut-
terly incapable of pursuing the subtle excuses which can be
made for evil. There is in John no morbid sympathy for the
offender : " It is not lawful." He does not say, " It is best to
do otherwise ; it is unprofitable for your own happiness to
live in this way." He says plainly, " It is wrong for you to
do this evil."
Earnest men in this world have no time for subtleties and
casuistry. Sin is detestable, horrible, in God's sight, and
when once it has been made clear that it is not lawful, a
Christian has nothing to do with toleration of it. If we dare
not tell our patron of his sin we must give up his patronage.
In the next place, there was unconsciousness in John's rebuke.
We remark, brethren, that he was utterly ignorant that he
was doing a fine thing. There was no sidelong glance, as
in a mirror, of admiration for himself. He was not feeling,
This is brave. He never stopped to feel that after-ages
would stand by, and look at that deed oi nis, and say, " Well
done." His reproof comes out as the natural impulse of an
earnest heart. John was the last of all men to feel that he
had done any thing extraordinary. And this we hold to be
an inseparable mark of truth. No true man is conscious that
he is true ; he is rather conscious of insincerity. No brave
man is conscious of his courage ; bravery is natural to him.
The skin of Moses's face shone after he had been with God,
but Moses wist not of it.
There are many of us who would have prefaced that re-
buke with a long speech. We should have begun by ob-
serving how difficult it was to speak to a monarch, how del-
icate the ^subject, how much proof we were giving of our
friendship. We should have asked the great man to accept
it as a proof of our devotion. John does nothing of this.
Prefaces betray anxiety about self; John was not thinking
of himself. He was thinking of God's offended law, and the
guilty king's soul. Brethren, it is a lovely and a graceful
thing to see men natural. It is beautiful to see men sincere
without being haunted with the consciousness of their sincer-
ity. There is a sickly habit that men get of looking into
themselves, and thinking how they are appearing. We are
always unnatural when we do that. The very tread of one
who is thinking how he appears to others, becomes dizzy
with affectation. He is too conscious of what he is doing, and
self-consciousness is affectation. Let us aim at being natural.
And we can only become natural by thinking of God and duty,
instead of the way in which we are serving God and duty.
62O Johns Rebuke of Herod.
There was, lastly, something exceedingly unselfish in
John's truthfulness. We do not build much on a man's be-
ing merely true. It costs some men nothing to be true, for
they have none of those sensibilities which shrink from in-
flicting pain. There is a surly, bitter way of speaking truth
which says little for a man's heart. Some men have not
delicacy enough to feel that it is an awkward and a painful
thing to rebuke a brother: they are in their element when
they can become, censors of the great. John's truthfulness
was not like that. It was the earnest loving nature of the
man which made him say sharp things. Was it to gratify
spleen that he reproved Herod for all the evils he had done ?
Was it to minister to a diseased and disappointed misan-
thropy ? Little do we understand the depth of tenderness
which there is in a rugged, true nature, if we think that.
John's whole life was an iron determination to crush self in
every thing.
Take a single instance. John's ministry was gradually su-
perseded by the ministry of Christ. It was the moon wan-
ing before the Sun. They came and told him that, " Rabbi,
He to whom thou barest witness beyond Jordan baptizeth,
and all men come unto Him." Two of his own personal
friends, apparently some of the last he had left, deserted him,
and went to the new teacher.
And now let us estimate the keenness of that trial. Re-
member John was a man : he had tasted the sweets of in-
fluence ; that influence was dying away, and just in the prime
of life he was to become nothing. Who can not conceive the
keenness of that trial ? Bearing that in mind, what is the
prophet's answer ? One of the most touching sentences in
all Scripture calmly, meekly, the hero recognizes his des-
tiny " He must increase, but I must decrease." He does
more than recognize it he rejoices in it, rejoices to be noth-
ing, to be forgotten, despised, so as only Christ can be every
thing. " The friend of the bridegroom rejoiceth because he
heareth the bridegroom's voice, this my joy is fulfilled." And
it is this man, with self so thoroughly crushed the outward
self by bodily austerities, the inward self by Christian hum-
bleness it is this man who speaks so sternly to his sovereign,,
" It is not lawful." Was there any gratification of human
feeling there ? Or was not the rebuke unselfish ? Meant for
God's honor, dictated by the uncontrollable hatred of all evil,
careless altogether of personal consequences ?
Now it is this, my brethren, that we want. The world-
spirit can rebuke as sharply as the Spirit which was in John ;
the world-spirit can be severe upon the great when it is
John 's Rebuke of Herod. 6 2 1
jealous. The worldly man can not bear to hear of another's
success, he can not endure to hear another praised for accom-
plishments, or another succeeding in a profession, and the
world can fasten very bitterly upon a neighbor's faults, and
say," It is not lawful." We expect that in the world. But
that this should creep among religious men, that we should
be bitter that we, Christians, should suffer jealousy to en-
throne itself in our hearts that we should find fault from
spleen, and not from love that we shoujd not be able to be
calm and gentle, and sweet-tempered, when we decrease,
when our powers fail that is the shame. The love of Christ
is intended to make such men as John such high and heaven-
ly characters. What is our Christianity worth if it can not
teach us a truthfulness, an unselfishness, and a generosity be*
yond the world's ?
We are to say something, in the second place, of the ap-
parent failure of Christian life.
The concluding sentence of this verse informs us that John
was shut up in prison. And the first thought which sug-
gests itself is, that a magnificent career is cut short too soon.
At the very outset of ripe and experienced manhood the
whole thing ends in failure. John's day of active usefulness
is over ; at thirty years of age his work is done ; and what
permanent effect have all his labors left ? The crowds that
listened to his voice, awed into silence by Jordan's side, we
hear^ of them no more. Herod heard John gladly, did much
good by reason of his influence. What was all that worth ?
The prophet comes to himself in a dungeon, and wakes to
the bitter conviction that his influence had told much in the
way of commanding attention, and even winning reverence,
but very little in the way of gaining souls; the bitterest, the
most crushing discovery in the whole circle of ministerial ex-
perience. All this was seeming failure.
And this, brethren, is the picture of almost all human life.
To some moods, and under some aspects, it seems, as it seem-
ed to the psalmist, " Man walketh in a vain shadow and dis-
quieteth himself in vain." Go to any church-yard, and stand
ten minutes among the grave-stones ; read inscription after
inscription recording the date of birth, and the date of death,
of him who lies below, all the trace which myriads h/ive left
behind of their having done their day's work on God's earth
that is failure or seems so. Cast the eye down the col-
umns of any commander's dispatch after a general action.
The men fell by thousands ; the officers by hundreds. Cour-
age, high hope, self-devotion, ended in smoke forgotten by
the time of the next list of slain : that is the failure of life
622 Johns Rebuke of Herod.
once more. Cast your eye over the shelves of a public li-
brary there is the hard toil of years, the product of a life
of thought ; all that remains of it is there in a worm-eaten
folio, taken down once in a century. Failure of human life
again. . Stand by the most enduring of all human labors,
the pyramids of Egypt. One hundred thousand men, year
by year,, raised those enormous piles to protect the corpses
of the buried from rude inspection. The spoiler's hand has
been there, and the bodies have been rifled from their mau-
soleum, and three thousand years have written " failure "
upon that. In all that, my Christian brethren, if we look no
deeper than the surface, we read the grave of human hope,
the apparent nothingness of human labor.
And then look at this history once more. In the isolation
of John's dying hour there appears failure again. When a
great man dies we listen to hear what he has to say, we turn
to the last page of his biography first, to see what he had to
bequeath to the world as his experience of life. We expect
that the wisdom, which he has been hiving up for years, w r ill
distill in honeyed sweetness then. It is generally not so.
There is stupor and silence at the last. "How dieth the
wise man ?" asks Solomon : and he answers bitterly, "As the
fool." The martyr of truth dies privately in Herod's dun-
geon. We have no record of his last words. There were no
crowds to look on. We can not describe how he received
his sentence. Was he calm? Was he agitated? Did he
bless his murderer? Did he give utterance to any deep re-
flections on human life ? All that is shrouded in silence.
He bowed his head, and the sharp stroke fell flashing down.
We know that, we know no more apparently a noble life
abortive.
And now let us ask the question distinctly, Was all this
indeed failure ? No, my Christian brethren, it was sublimest
victory. John's work was no failure ; he left behind him no
sect to which he had given his name, but his disciples passed
into the service of Christ, and were absorbed in the Christian
Church. Words from" John had made impressions, and men
forgot in after years where the impressions first came from,
but the day of judgment will not forget. John laid the
foundations of a temple, and others built upon it. He laid it
in struggle, in martyrdom. It was covered up like the rough
masonry below ground, but when we look round on the vast
Christian Church we are looking at the superstructure of
John's toil.
There is a lesson for us in all that, if we will learn it.
Work, true work, done honestly and manfully for Christ,
. John 's Rebuke of Hercd. 623
never can be a failure. Your own work, my brethren, which
God has given you to do, whatever that is, let it be done
truly. Leave eternity to show that it has not been in vain
in the Lord. Let it but be work, it will tell. True Chris-
tian life is like the march of a conquering army into a for-
tress which has been breached ; men fall by hundreds in the
ditch. Was their fall a failure ? Nay, for their bodies
bridge over the hollow, and over them the rest pass on to
victory. The quiet religious worship that we have this day
how comes it to be ours ? It was purchased for us by the
constancy of such men as John, who freely gave their lives.
We are treading upon a bridge of martyrs. The suffering
was theirs the victory is ours. John's career was no failure.
Yet we have one more circumstance which seems to tell of
failure. In John's prison, solitude, misgiving, black doubt,
seem for a time to have taken possession of the prophet's
soul. AH that we know of those feelings is this : John
while in confinement sent two of his disciples to Christ, to
say to Him, "Art thou He that should come, or do we look
for another ?" Here is the language of painful uncertainty.
We shall not marvel at this if we look steadily at the cir-
cumstances. Let us conceive John's feelings. The enthu-
siastic child of Nature, who had roved in the desert, free as
the air he breathed, is now suddenly arrested, and his strong
restless heart limited to the four walls of a narrow dungeon.
And there he lay startled. An eagle cleaving the air with
motionless wing, and in the midst of his career brought from
the black cloud by an arrow to the ground, and looking
round with his wild, large eye, stunned, and startled there ;
just such was the free prophet of the wilderness, when Her-
od's guards had curbed his noble flight, and left him alone
in his dungeon.
Now there is apparent failure here, brethren : it is not the
thing which we should have expected. We should have ex-
pected that a man who had lived so close to God all his life
would have no misgivings in his last hours. But, my breth-
ren, it is not so. It is the strange truth that some of the
highest of God's servants are tried with darkness on the dy-
ing bed. Theory would say, when a religious man is laid up
for his last struggles, now he is alone for deep communion
with his God. Fact very often says, " No now he is alone,
as his Master was before him, in the wilderness to be tempted
of the devil." Look at John in imagination, and you would
say, " Now his rough pilgrimage is done. He is quiet, out
of the world, with the rapt foretaste of heaven in his soul."
Look at John in fact. He is agitated, sending to Christ, not
624 Johns Rebuke of Herod.
able to rest, grim doubt wrestling with his soul, misgiving
for one last black hour whether all his hope has not been de-
lusion.
There is one thing we remark here by the way. Doubt
often comes from inactivity. We can not give the philoso-
phy of it, but this is the fact, Christians who have nothing ic
do but to sit thinking of themselves, meditating, sentimental-
izing, are almost sure to become the prey of dark, black mis-
fivings. John struggling in the desert needs no proof that
esus is the Christ. John shut up became morbid and doubt-
ful immediately. Brethren, all this is very marvellous. The
history of a human soul is marvellous. We are mysteries,
but here is the practical lesson of it all. For sadness, for
suffering, for misgiving, there is no remedy but stirring and
doing.
Now look once more at these doubts of John's. All his
life long John had been wishing and expecting that the king-
dom of God would come. The kingdom of God is right tri-
umphant over wrong, moral evil crushed, goodness set up in
its place, the true man recognized, the false man put down
and forgotten. All his life long John had panted for that ;
his hope was to make men better. He tried to make the sol-
diers merciful, and the publicans honest, and the Pharisees sin-
cere. His complaint was, Why is the world the thing it is ?
All his life long he had been appealing to the invisible jus-
tice of Heaven against the visible brute force* which he saw
around him. Christ had appeared, and his hopes were strain-
ing to the utmost. " Here is the man !" And now, behold,
here is no kingdom of heaven at all, but one of darkness still,
oppression and cruelty triumphant, Herod putting God's
prophet in prison, and the Messiah quietly letting things
take their course. Can that be indeed Messiah ? "All this
was exceedingly startling. And it seems that then John be-
gan to feel the horrible doubt whether the whole thing were
not a mistake, and whether all that which he had taken for
inspiration were not, after all, only the excited hopes of an
enthusiastic temperament. Brethren, the prophet was well
nigh on the brink of failure.
But let us mark that a man has doubts that is not the
svil; all earnest men must expect to be tried with doubts.
All men who feel, with their whole souls, the value of the
truth which is at stake, can not be satisfied with a "perhaps."
Why, when all that is true and excellent in this world, all
that is worth living for, is in that question of questions, it is
no marvel if we sometimes wish, like Thomas, to see the prints
of the nails, to know whether Christ be indeed our Lord or
John s Rebuke of Herod. 625
not. Cold -hearts are not anxious enough to doubt. Men
who love will have their misgivings at times ; that is not
the evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid
doubting way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, mor-
bidly glad to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of
twilight, without the manliness to say I must and will
know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John ap-
pealed to Christ. He did exactly what we do when we
pray and he got his answer. Our Master said to his disci-
5les, Go to my suffering servant, and give him proof. Tell
ohn the things ye see and hear " The blind see, the deaf
hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached."
There is a deep lesson wrapped up in this. We get a firm
grasp of truth by prayer. Communion with Christ is the
best proof of Christ's existence and Christ's love. It is so
even in" human life. Misgivings gather darkly round our
heart about our friend in his absence ; but we seek his frank
smile, we feel his affectionate grasp : our suspicions go to
sleep again. It is just so in religion. No man is in the
habit of praying to God in Christ, and then doubts whether
Christ is He " that should come." It is in the power of
prayer to realize Christ, to bring Him near, to make you feel
His life stirring like a pulse within you. Jacob could not
doubt whether he had been with God when his sinew shrunk.
John could not doubt whether Jesus was the Christ, when
the things He had done were pictured out so vividly in an-
swer to his prayer. Let but a man live with Christ, anxious
to have his own life destroyed and Christ's life established
in its place, losing himself in Christ, that man will have all
his misgivings silenced. These are the two remedies for
doubt activity and prayer. He w r ho works, and feels he
works he who prays, and knows he prays lias got the se-
cret of transforming life-failure into life-victory.
In conclusion, brethren, we make three remarks which
could not be introduced into the body of this subject. The
first is : let young and ardent minds, under the first impres-
sions of religion, beware how they pledge themselves by any
open profession to more than they can perform. Herod
warmly took up religion at first, courted the prophet of re-
ligion, and then when the hot fit of enthusiasm had passed
away, he found that he had a clog round his life from which he
could only disengage himself by a rough, rude effort. Breth-
ren whom God has touched, it is good to count the cost be-
fore you begin. If you give up present pursuits impetuously,
are you sure that present impulses will last ? Are you quite
certain that a day will not come when you will curse the
2T '
626 John 's Rebuke of Herod.
hour in which you broke altogether with the world ? Are
you quite sure that the revulsion back again will not be as
impetuous as Herod's, and your hatred of the religion which
has become a clog as intense as it now is ardent ?
Many things doubtless there are to be given up amuse-
ments that are dangerous, society that is questionable. What
we give up, let us give up, not from quick feeling but from
principle. Enthusiasm is a lovely thing, but let us be calm
in what we do. In that solemn, grand thing Christian life
one step backward is religious death.
Once more : we get from this subject the doctrine of a res-
urrection. John's life was hardness, his end was agony.
That is frequently Christian life. Therefore, says the apos-
tle, if there be no resurrection the Christian's choice is wrong ;
" If in this life only we have hope in Christ, then are we of
all men most miserable." Christian life is not visible success
very often it is the apparent opposite of success. It is the
resurrection of Christ working itself out in us ; but it is very
often the cross of Christ imprinting itself on us very sharply.
The highest prize which God has to give here is martyrdom.
The highest style of life is the Baptist's heroic, enduring,
manly love. The noblest coronet which any son of man can
wear is a crown of thorns. Christian, this is not your rest.
Be content to feel that this world is not your home. Home-
less upon earth, try more and more to make your home in
heaven, above with Christ.
Lastly, we have to learn from this, that devotedness to
Christ is our only blessedness. It is surely a strange thing
to see the way in which men crowded round the austere
prophet, all saying, " Guide us, we can not guide ourselves."
Publicans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herod, whenever John ap-
pears, all bend before him, offering him homage and leader-
ship. How do we account for this ? The truth is, the spirit
of man groans beneath the weight of its own freedom. When
a man has no guide, no master but himself, he is miserable ?
we want guidance, and if we find a man nobler, wiser than
ourselves, it is almost our instinct to prostrate our affections
before that man, as the crowds did by Jordan, and say, " Be
my example, my guide, my soul's sovereign." That passion-
ate need of worship hero-worship it has been called is a
primal, universal instinct of the heart. Christ is the answer
to it. Men will not do ; we try to find men to reverence
thoroughly, and we can not do it. We go through life, find-
ing guides, rejecting them one after another, expecting no-
bleness and finding meanness ; and we turn away with a re-
coil of disappointment.
John y s Rebuke of Herod. 627
There is no disappointment in Christ. Christ can be our
souls' sovereign. Christ can be our guide. Christ can ab-
sorb all. the admiration which our hearts long to give. We
want to worship men. These Jews wanted to worship man.
They were right man is the rightful object of our worship ;
but in the roll of ages there has been but one Man whom we
can adore without idolatry: the Man Christ Jesus.
SERMONS
Jcmrtlj Seric0.
THE CHARACTER OF ELI.
"And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli. And the
word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision."
1 Sam. iii. 1.
IT is impossible to read this chapter without perceiving
that it draws a marked contrast between the two persons
of whom it speaks Eli and Samuel.
1. They are contrasted in point of years : for the one is a
boy, the other a gray-headed old man ; and if it were for
only this, the chapter would be one of deep interest. For
it is interesting always to see a friendship between the old
and the young. It is striking to see the aged one retaining
so much of freshness and simplicity as not to repel the sym-
pathies of boyhood. It is surprising to see the younger one
so advanced and thoughtful as not to find dull the society
of one who has outlived excitability and passion. This is
the picture presented in this chapter. A pair of friends
childhood and old age standing to each other in the relation-
ship, not of teacher and pupil, but of friend and friend.
2. They are contrasted, again, in point of office. Both are
judges of Israel. But Eli is a judge rendering up his trust,
and closing his public career. Samuel is a judge entering
upon his office : and the outgoing ruler, Eli, is placed under
very novel and painful circumstances in reference to his
successor. He receives God's sentence of doom from the
lips of the child he has taught, and the friend he has loved.
The venerable judge of forty years is sentenced by the judge
elect.
3. Still more striking is the contrast in point of character.
630 The Character of Eli.
A difference of character we expect when ages are so differ-
ent. But here the difference of inferiority is on the wrong
side. It is the young who is counselling, supporting, ad-
monishing the old. It is not the ivy clinging for its own
sake to the immovable wall, to be held up : but it is the
badly built, mouldering wall held together by the ivy, and
only by the ivy kept from falling piecemeal into ruin.
4. Once more : we have here the contrast between a judge
by office and a judge by Divine call. In the first days of
the judges of Israel we find them raised up separately by
God, one by one, one for each emergency. So that if war
threatened the coasts of Israel, no man knew whence the
help would come, or who would be Israel's deliverer. It
always did come : there was always one, qualified by God,
found ready for the day of need, equal to the need ; one
whose fitness to be a leader no one had before suspected.
But when he did appear, he proved himself to be Israel's
acknowledged greatest greatest by the qualities he dis-
played, qualities given unto him by God. Therefore men
rightly said he was a judge raised up by God. But it seems
that in later days judges were appointed by hereditary suc-
cession. When danger was always near, men became afraid
of trusting to God to raise up a defender for them, and making
no preparations for danger of invasion ; therefore, in the ab-
sence of any special qualification marking out the man, the
judge's son became judge at his father's death ; or the office
devolved on the high-priest. This was Eli's qualification, it
would seem. Eli was high -priest, and therefore he was
judge. He appears not to have had a single ruling quality.
He was only a judge because he was born to the dignity.
There is an earthly wisdom in such an arrangement nay,
such an arrangement is indispensable. It is wise after an
earthly sort to have an appointed succession. Hereditary
judges, hereditary nobles, hereditary sovereigns : without
them, human life would run into inextricable confusion.
Nevertheless, such earthly arrangements only represent the
heavenly order. The Divine order of government is the
rule of the wise and good. The earthly arbitrary arrange-
ment hereditary succession, or any other stands for this,
representing it, more or less fulfills it, but never is it perfect-
ly. And from time to time God sets aside and quashes the
arbitrary arrangement, in order to declare that it is only a
representation of the true and Divine one. From time to
time, one who has qualifications direct from God is made, in
Scripture, to stand side by side with one who has his qualifi-
cations only from office or earthly appointment; and then
The Character of Eli. 631
the contrast is marvellous indeed. Thus Saul, the king ap-
pointed by universal suffrage of the nation, is set aside for
David, the man after God's own heart : and thus the Jews,
the world's hereditary nobles, descended from the blood and
stock of Abraham, are set aside for the true spiritual succes-
sion, the Christian Church inheritors by Divine right, not
of Abraham's blood, but of Abraham's faith. Thus the he-
reditary high - priests in the genuine line of Aaron, priests
by lawful succession, representing priestly powers, are set
aside at once, so soon as the real High-Priest of God, Jesus
Christ, whose priestly powers are real and personal, appears
on earth.
And thus by the side of Eli, the judge by office, stands
Samuel, the judge by Divine call : qualified by wisdom, in-
sight, will, resting on obedience, to guide and judge God's
people Israel. Very instructive are the contrasts of this
chapter: We will consider
I. Eli's character.
II. Eli's doom.
1. Eli's character has two sides; we will take the bright
side first. The first point remarkable in him is the absence of
envy. Eli furthers Samuel's advancement, and assists it to
his own detriment. Very mortifying was that trial. Eli
was the one in Israel to whom, naturally, a revelation should
have come. God's priest and God's judge" to whom so fitly
as to him could God send a message ? But another is pre-
ferred : the inspiration comes to Samuel, and Eli is super-
seded and disgraced. Besides this, every conceivable cir-
cumstance of bitterness is added to his humiliation God's
message for all Israel comes to a boy : to one who had been
Eli's pupil, to one beneath him, who had performed for him
servile offices. This was the bitter cup put into his hand to
drink.
And yet Eli assists him to attain this dignity. He per-
ceives that God has called the child. He does not say in
petulance " Then, let this favored child find out for himself
all he has to do, I will leave him to himself." Eli meekly
tells him to go back to his place, instructs him how he is to
accept the revelation, and appropriate it : " Go lie down : and
it shall be, if He call thee, that thou shall say, Speak, Lord ;
for thy servant heareth." He conducts his rival to the pres-
ence-chamber, which by himself he can not find, and leaves
him there with the King, to be invested with the order which
has been stripped off himself.
Consider how difficult this conduct of Eli's was. Remem-
632 The Character of Eli.
ber how difficult it is to be surpassed by a younger brother,
and bear it with temper ; how hard it is even to be set right^
with meekness; to have our faults pointed out to us: es-
pecially by persons who, in rank, age, or standing, are oul
inferiors. Recollect how in our experience of life, in all pro-
fessions, merit is kept down, shaded by jealousies. Recollect
how rare generous enthusiasm is, or even fairness ; how men
depreciate their rivals by coldness, or by sneering at those
whom they dare not openly attack.
It is hard to give information which we have collected
with pains, but which we can not use, to another who can
make use of it. Consider, again, how much of our English
reserve is but another name for jealousy. Men often meet
in society with a consciousness of rivalry ; and conversation
flags because they fear to impart information, lest others
should make use of it, and they should thus lose the credit
of being original.
One soldier we have heard of who gave up the post of
honor and the chance of high distinction to cover an early
failure of that great warrior whom England has lately lost,
and to give him a fresh chance of retrieving honor. He did
what Eli did : assisted his rival to rise above him. But
where is the man of trade who will throw in a rival's way the
custom which he can not use himself? Where is the profes-
sional man, secular or clerical, who will so speak of another
of the same profession, while struggling with him in honor-
able rivalry, or so assist him, as to insure that the brightest
lustre shall shine upon what he really is ? Whoever will
ponder these things will feel that Eli's was no common act.
Now, for almost all of us, there are one or two persons in
life who cross our path, whose rise will be our eclipse, whose
success will abridge ours, whose fair career will thwart ours,
darken our prospects, cross our affections. Those one or two
form our trial; they are the test and proof of our justice.
How we feel and act to them proves whether we are just or
not. It was easy for Eli to have instructed any one else
how to approach God. But the difficulty was how to in-
struct Samuel. Samuel alone, in all Israel, crossed his path.
And yet Eli stood the test. He was unswervingly just. He
threw no petty hindrances in his way. He removed alL
He gave a clear, fair, honorable field. That act of Eli's is
fair and beautiful to gaze upon.
2. Remark the absence of all priestly pretensions.
Eli might with case have assumed the priestly tone.
When Samuel came with his strange story, that he had heard
a voice calling to him in the dark, Eli might have fixed upon
The Character of Eli. 633
him a clear, cold, unsympathizing eye, and said, " This is
excitement mere enthusiasm. I am the appointed channel
of God's communications ; I am the priest. Hear the
Church. Unordained, unanointed with priestly oil, a boy, a
child, it is presumption for you to pretend to communica-
tions from Jehovah ! A layman has no right to hear
Voices; it is fanaticism." Eli might have done this; he
would have only done what ordained men have done a
thousand times when they have frowned irregular enthusiasm
into dissent. And then Samuel would have become a mys-
tic, or a self-relying enthusiast. For he could not have been
made to think "that the Voice was a delusion. That Voice
no priest's frown could prevent his hearing. On the other
hand, Eli might have given his own authoritative interpreta-
tion to Samuel of that word of God which he had heard.
But suppose that interpretation had been wrong?
Eli did neither of these things. He sent Samuel to God.
He taught him to inquire for himself. He did not tell him
to reject as fanaticism the belief that an inner Voice was
speaking to him, a boy ; nor did he try to force his own in-
terpretation on that Voice. His great care was to put Sam-
uel in direct communication with God ; to make him listen
to God ; nay, and that independently of him, Eli. Not to
rule him; not to direct his feelings and belief; not to keep
him in the leading-strings of spiritual childhood, but to teach
him to walk alone.
There are two sorts of men who exercise influence. Tho
first are those who perpetuate their own opinions, bequeath
their own names, form a sect, gather a party round them
who speak their words, believe their belief. Such men were
the ancient rabbis. And of such men, in and out of the
Church, we have abundance now. It is the influence most
aimed at and most loved. The second class is composed of
those who stir up faith, conscience, thought, to do their own
work. They are not anxious that those they teach should
think as they do, but that they should think. Nor that tKey
should take this or that rule of right and wrong, but that th^y
should be conscientious. Nor that they should adopt their
own views of God, but that faith in God should be roused in
eamest. Such men propagate not many views; but they
propagate life itself in inquiring minds and earnest hearts.
Now this is God's real, best work. Men do not think so.
They like to be guided. They ask, What am I to think ?
and what am I to believe ? and what am I to feel ? Make it
easy for me. Save me the trouble of reflecting and the an-
guish of inquiring. It is very easy to do this for them ; but
27*
634 The Character of Eli.
from what minds, and from what books, do we really gain
most of that which we can really call our own ? From those
that are suggestive, from those that can kindle life within us^
and set us thinking, and call conscience into action not from
those that exhaust a subject and seem to leave it threadbare,
but from those that make us feel there is a vast deal more
in that subject yet, and send us, as Eli sent Samuel, into tho
dark Infinite to listen for ourselves.
And this is the ministry and its work not to drill hearts,
and minds, and consciences, into right forms of thought and
mental postures, but to guide to the Living God who speaks.
It is a thankless work ; for, as I have said, men love to have
all their religion done out for them. They want something
definite, and sharp, and clear words not the life of God in
the soul : and indeed, it is far more flattering to our vanity
to have men take our views, represent us, be led by us.
Rule is dear to all. To rule men's spirits is the dearest rule
of all ; but it is the work of every true priest of God to lead
men to think and feel for themselves to open their ears
that God may speak. Eli did this part of his work in a true
spirit. He guided Samuel, trained his character. But
" God's Spirit !" Eli says, " I can not give that. God's
voice ! I am not God's voice. I am only God's witness,
erring, listening for myself. I am here, God's witness, to
say God speaks. I may err let God be true. Let me be
a liar, if you will. My mission is done when your ear is
opened for God to whisper into." Very true, Eli was super-
seded. Very true, his work was done. A new set of views,
not his, respecting Israel's policy and national life, were to
be propagated by his successor ; but it was Eli that had
guided that successor to God who gave the views : and Eli
had not lived in vain.
My brethren, if any man or any body of men stand be-
tween us and the living God, saying, " Only through us the
Church can you approach God ; only through my conse-
crated touch can you receive grace ; only through my or-
dained teaching can you hear God's voice ; and the voice
which speaks in your soul in the still moments of existence
is no revelation from God, but a delusion and a fanaticism "
that man is a false priest. To bring the soul face to face
with God, and supersede ourselves, that is the work of the
Christian ministry.
3. There was in Eli a resolve to know the whole truth.
" What is the thing that the Lord hath said unto thee ? I
pray thee hide it not from me : God do so to thee, and more
also, if thou hide any thing from me of all the things that
The Character of Eli. 635
He said unto thee." Eli asked in earnest to know the
worst.
It would be a blessed thing to know what God thinks of
us. But next best to this would be to see ourselves in the
light in which we appear to others : other men's opinion is a
mirror in which we learn to see ourselves. It keeps us hum-
ble when bad and good alike are known to us. The worst
slander has in it some truth from which we may learn a les-
son, which may make us wiser when the first smart is
passed.
Therefore it is a blessing to have a friend like Samuel,
who can dare to tell us truth, judicious, candid, wise ; one to
whom we can say, " Now tell me what I am, and what I
seem ; hide nothing, but tell me the worst." But observe,
we are not to beg praise or invite censure that were weak.
We are not to askYor every malicious criticism or torment-
ing report that were hypochondria, ever suspecting, and
ever self-tormenting ; and to that diseased sensibility it
would be no man's duty to minister. True friendship will
not retail tormenting trifles ; but what we want is one friend
at least, who will extenuate nothing, but with discretion tell
the worst, using unflinchingly the sharp knife which is to cut
away the fault.
4. There was pious acquiescence in the declared will of
God. When Samuel had told him every whit, Eli replied,
"It is the Lord." The highest religion could say no more.
What more can there be than surrender to the will of God ?
In that one brave sentence you forget all Eli's vat-illation.
Free from envy, free from priestcraft, earnest, humbly sub-
missive that is the bright side of Eli's character, and the
side least known or thought of.
There is another side to Eli's character. He was a waver-
ing, feeble, powerless man, with excellent intentions, but an
utter want of will ; and if we look at it deeply, it is will that
makes the difference between man and man ; not knowledge,
not opinions, not devoutness, not feeling, but will the pow-
er to be. Let us look at the causes of this feebleness.
There are apparently two. 1. A recluse life he lived in
the temple. Praying and sacrificing, perhaps, were the sub-
stance of his life ; all that unfitted him for the world ; he
knew nothing of life ; he knew nothing of character. When
Hannah came before him in an agony of prayer, he mis-
judged her. He mistook the tremulousness of her lip for
the trembling of intoxication. He could not rule his own
household ; he could not rule the Church of God a shy, sol-
itary, amiable ecclesiastic and recluse that was Eli.
636 The Character of Eli.
And such are the really fatal men in the work of life, those
who look out on human life from a cloister, or who know
nothing of men except through books. Religious persons
dread worldliness. They will not mix in politics. They
keep aloof from life. Doubtless there is a danger in know-
ing too much of the world. But, beyond all comparison, of
the two extremes the worst is knowing too little of life. A
priesthood severed from human sympathies, separated from
men, cut off from human affections, and then meddling fatal-
ly with questions of human life that is the Romish priest-
hood. And just as fatal, when they come to meddle with
public questions, is the interference of men as good as Eli, as
devout and as incompetent, who have spent existence in a
narrow religious party which they mistake for the w r orld.
2. That feebleness arose out of original temperament. Eli's
feelings were all good : his acts were all wrong. In senti-
ment Eli might be always trusted : in action he was forever
false, because he was a weak, vacillating man. *
Therefore his virtues were all of a negative character. He
was forgiving to his sons, because unable to feel strongly the
viciousness of sin ; free from jealousy, because he had no
keen affections ; submissive, because too indolent to feel re-
bellious. Before we praise a man for his excellences, we
must be quite sure that they do not rise out of so many de-
fects. No thanks to a proud man that he is not vain. No
credit to a man without love that he is not jealous : he has
not strength enough for passion.
All history overrates such men. Men like Eli ruin families
by instability, produce revolutions, die well when only pas-
sive courage is wanted, and are reckoned martyrs. They
live like children, and die like heroes. Deeply true to na-
ture, brethren, and exceedingly instructive, is this history of
Eli. It is quite natural that such men should suffer well.
For if only their minds are made up for them by inevitable
circumstances, they can submit. When people come to Eli
and say, " You should reprove your sons," he can do it after
a fashion ; when it is said to him, " You must die," he can
make up his mind to die : but this is not taking up the cross,
Let us look at the result of such a character.
1. It had no influence. Eli was despised by his own sons.
He was not respected by the nation. One only of all he
lived with, kept cleaving to him till the last Samuel ; but
that was in a kind of mournful pity. The secret of influence
is will not goodness, not badness both bad and good may
have it ; but will. And you can not counterfeit will if you
have it not. Men speak strongly and vehemently when
The Character of Eli. 637
most conscious of their own vacillation. The j commit them
selves to hasty resolutions, but the resolve is not kept ; and
so, with strong feelings and good feelings, they lose influence
day by day.
2. It manifested incorrigibility. Eli was twice warned;
once by a prophet, once by Samuel. Both times he answer-
ed submissively. He used strong, nay, passionate expres-
sions of penitence. Both times you would have thought an
entire reformation and change of life was at hand. Both
times he was warned in vain.
There are persons who go through life sinning and sorrow-
ing sorrowing and sinning. No experience teaches them.
Torrents of tears flow from their eyes. They are full of elo-
quent regrets. You can not find it in your heart to condemn
them, for their sorrow is so graceful and touching, so full of
penitence and self-condemnation. But tears, heart-breaks, re-
pentance, warnings, are all in vain. Where they did wrong
once, they do wrong again. What are such persons to do in
the next life ? Where will the Elis of this world be ? God
only knows. But Christ has said, " Not every one that
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
heaven."
3. It resulted in misery to others.
Recollect what this weakness caused. Those young men,
Eli's sons, grew up to be their country's plague. They sap-
ped the moral standard of their countrymen and country-
women. They degraded the ministry. " Men abhorred the
offering of the Lord." The armies of Israel, without faith in
God, and without leadership of man, fled before the enemy.
All that was Eli's doing. A weak man with good feelings
makes more misery than a determined bad man. Lender a
tyranny men are at least at rest, for they know the worst.
But when subjects or children know that by entreaty, or
persistence, or intimidation, they can obtain what they want,
then a family or a nation is cursed with restlessness. Better
to live under bad laws which are firmly administered, than
under good ones where there is a misgiving whether they may
not be changed. There is no wretchedness like the wretched-
ness caused by an undetermined will to those who serve un-
der it.
638 Appointment of the First King in Israel*
n.
THE APPOINTMENT OF THE FIRST KING EN
ISRAEL.
"And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto you!
voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king over you. " 1 Sam.
xii. 1.
OUR subject to-day is the selection of the first king of Is-
rael.
We have arrived at that crisis in Israel's history when the
first shock occurred in her national life. That shock was be-
reft of part of its violence by the wisdom of a single man.
By the lustre of his personal character, by his institutions,
and by his timely concessions, Samuel won that highest of
all privileges which can be given to a mortal the power of
saving his country. He did not achieve the best conceiva-
ble ; but he secured the best possible. The conceivable best
was, that there should have been no shock at all, that Israel's
elders should have calmly insisted on a reformation of abuses :
that they should have come to Samuel, and demanded repa-
ration for the insulted majesty of Hebrew law in the persons
of the young judges, his sons, who had dared to dishonor it.
This would have been the first best. The second best was
the best practicable that the shock should be made as light
as possible; that Samuel should still control the destinies of
his country, select the new king, and modify the turbulence
of excess. So that Israel was in the position of a boat which
has been borne down a swift stream into the very suction of
the rapids. The best would be that she should be put back ;
but if it be too late for this, then the best is that there should
be in her a strong arm and a steady eye to keep her heal
straight. And thus it was with Israel. She plunged down
the fall madly, rashly, wickedly; but, under Samuel's con-
trol, steadily. This part of the chapter we arrange in two
branches :
I. Samuel's conduct after the mortification of his own re-
jection.
II. The, selection of the first monarch of Israel.
I. The tenth chapter broke off in a moment of suspense.
The people, having accepted Saul as their king, had been dis-
Appointment of the First King in Israel. 639
missed, and Samuel was left alone ; but his feelings were very
different from those which he had in that other moment of
solitude, when he had dismissed the delegates of the people.
That struggle was past. He was now calm. The first mo-
ment was a terrible one. It was one of those periods in hu-
man life when the whole meaning of life is perplexed, its
aims and hopes frustrated; when a man is down upon his
face and gust after gust sweeps desolately over his spirit,
Samuel was there to feel all the ideas that naturally suggest
themselves in such hours the instability of human affection
the nothingness of the highest earthly aims. But by de-
grees two thoughts calmed him. The first was the feeling
of identification with God's cause. " They have not rejected
thee, but they have rejected Me." Had it been mere wound-
ed pride, or pique, or family aggrandizement arrested, or am-
bition disappointed, it would have been a cureless sorrow.
But Samuel had God's cause at heart, and this gave a loftier
character to his sadness. There was no envenomed feeling,
no resentment, no smarting scornfulness. To be part of a
great Divine cause which has failed, is an elevating as well
as a saddening sensation. A conviction mingles with it that
the cause ot God will one day be the conquering side.
The other element of consolation was the Divine sympa-
thy. If they had been rebellious to their ruler, they had
also been disloyal to Jehovah. An unruly subject has had
a poor school in which to learn reverence for things heaven-
ly. Atheism and revolution here, as elsewhere, went hand-
in-hand. We do not know how this sentence was impressed
by the Infinite Mind on Samuel's mind ; all we know is, he
had a conviction that God was a fellow-sufferer. This, how-
ever, was inferior, in point of clearness, to our knowledge of
the Divine sympathy : Jehovah, the unnameable and awful,
was a very different conception from " God manifested in
the flesh." To the Jew, His dwelling was the peak round
which the cloud had wreathed its solemn form, and the thun-
ders spent themselves ; but the glory of the life of Jesus to
us is, that it is full of the human. The many-colored phases
of human feeling all find themselves reflected in the lights
and shadows of ever-varying sensitiveness which the differ-
ent sentences of His conversation exhibit. Be your tone of
feeling what it may, whether you are poor or rich, gay or
sad in society or alone adored, loved, betrayed, misunder-
stood, .despised weigh well His words first, by thinking
what they mean, and you will become aware that one heart
in space throbs in conscious harmony with yours. In its
degree, that was Samuel's support.
640 Appointment of the First King in Israel.
Next, Samuel's cheerful way of submitting to his fate is to
be observed. Another prophet, when his prediction was
nullified, built himself a booth and sat beneath it, fretting in
sullen pride, to see the end of Nineveh. Samuel might have
done this ; he might have withdrawn himself in offended dig-
nity from public life, watched the impotent attempts of the
people to guide themselves, and seen dynasty after dynasty
fall with secret pleasure. Very different is his conduct. He
addresses himself like a man to the exigencies of the mo-
ment. His great scheme is frustrated. Well, he will not
despair of God's cause yet. Bad as things are, he will try to
make the best of them.
Now remark in all this the healthy, vigorous tone of Sam-
uel's religion. This man, the greatest and wisest then alive,
thought this the great thing to live for to establish a king-
dom of God on earth to transform his own country into a
kingdom of God. It is worth while to see how he set about
it. From first to last, it was in a practical, real way by
activity in every department of life. We recollect his early
childhood ; his duty then was to open the gates of the tem-
ple of the Lord, and he did that regularly, with scrupulous
fidelity, in the midst of very exciting scenes. He was turn-
ing that narrow circumscribed sphere of his into a kingdom
of God. Afterwards he became ruler. His spirituality then
consisted in establishing courts of justice, founding acade-
mies, looking into every thing himself. Now he is deposed :
but he has duties still. He has a king to look for, public fes-
tivals to superintend, a public feast to preside over ; and
later on we shall find him becoming the teacher of a school.
All this was a religion for life. His spirituality was no fan-
ciful, shadowy thing ; the kingdom of God to him was to be
in this world, and we know no surer sign of enfeebled relig-
ion than the disposition to separate religion from life and
life-duties.
Listen: what is secularity or worldliness? Meddling
with worldly things? or meddling with a worldly spirit?
We brand political existence and thought with the name
" worldly " we stigmatize first one department of life and
then another as secular; and so religion becomes a pale,
unreal thing, which must end, if we are only true to our
principles, in the cloister. Spirituality becomes the exclusive
property of a few amiable mystics; men of thought and men
of action draw off; religion becomes feeble, and the world,
deserted and proscribed, becomes infidel.
IL Samuel's treatment of his successor, after his own rejeo
Appointment of the First King in Israel. 64 1
tion, is remarkable. It was characterized by two things-
courtesy and generosity. When he saw the man who was
to be his successor, he invited him to the entertainment ; he
gave him precedence, bidding him go up before him ; placed
him as a stranger at the post of honor, and set before him
the choice portion. This is politeness ; what we allude to is
a very different thing, however, from that mere system of
etiquette and conventionalisms in which small minds find
their very being, to observe which accurately is life, and to
transgress which is a sin.
Courtesy is not confined to the high-bred; often theirs is
but the artistic imitation of courtesy. The peasant who
rises to put before you his only chair, while he sits upon the
oaken chest, is a polite man. Motive determines every
thing. If we are courteous merely to substantiate our
claims to mix in good society, or exhibit good manners
chiefly to show that we have been in it, this is a thing in-
deed to smile at ; contemptible, if it were not rather pitiable.
But that politeness which springs spontaneously from the
heart, the desire to put others at their ease, to save the
stranger from a sensation of awkwardness, to soothe the
feeling of inferiority that, ennobled as it is by Jove, mounts
to the high character of a heavenly grace.
Something still more beautiful marks Samuel's generosity.
The man who stood before him was v a successful rival. One
who had been his inferior now was to supersede him. And
Samuel lends him a helping hand gracefully assists him to
rise above him, entertains him, recommends him to the peo-
ple. It is very touching.
Curiously enough^ Samuel had twice in life to do a sim-
ilar thing. Once he had to depose Eli, by telling him God's
doom. Now he has to depose himself. The first he shrank
from, and only did it at last when urged. That was deli-
cate. On the present occasion, with a large and liberal full-
ness of heart, he elevates Saul above himself. And that we
call the true, high Gospel spirit. Samuel and the people did
the same thing they made Saul king. But the people did
it by drawing down Samuel nearer to themselves. Samuel
did it by elevating Saul above himself. One was the spirit
of revolution, the other was the spirit of the Gospel.
In our own day it specially behooves us to try the spirits,
whether they be of God. The reality and the counterfeit, as
in this case, are singularly like each other. Three spirits
make their voices heard in a cry for freedom, for brother-
hood, for human equality. And we must not forget, these
are names hallowed by the very Gospel itself. They are in-
642 Appointment of the First King in Israel.
scribed on its forehead. Unless we realize them, we have no
Gospel kingdom. Distinguish, however, well, the reality
from the baser alloy. The spirit which longs for freedom
puts forth a righteous claim; for it is written, "If the Son
shall make you free ye shall be free indeed." Brotherhood
the Gospel promises brotherhood also "One is your Mas-
ter, even Christ ; and all ye are brethren." Equality yes.
" There is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircum-
eision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." This is the grand
federation, brotherhood, emancipation of the human race.
Now, the world's spirit aims at bringing all this about by
drawing others down to the level on which each one stands.
The Christian spirit secures equality by raising up. The
man that is less wise, less good than I I am to raise up to
my level in these things. Yes, and in social position, too, if
he be fit for it. I am to be glad to see him rise above me, as
generously as Samuel saw Saul. And those that are above
me, better than I, wiser than I, I have a right to expect to
elevate me, if they can, to be as wise and good as themselves.
This is the only levelling the Gospel knows. What was the
mission of the Redeemer but this ? To raise the lower to
the higher, to make men partakers of the Divine nature His
nature, standing on His ground ; to descend to the roots of
society, reclaiming the outcasts, elevating the degraded, en-
nobling the low, and reminding, in the thunder of reiterated
" woes," those who had left their inferiors in the dark, and
those who stood aloof in the titled superiority of rabbi of
the account to be rendered by them yet.
And if we could but all work in this generous rivalry, our
rent and bleeding country, sick at heart, gangrened with an
exclusiveness which narrows our sympathies and corrupts our
hearts, might be all that the most patriotic love would have
her. Brethren in Christ, I earnestly urge again the lesson
of last Sunday. Not by pulling down those that are above
us, not by the still more un-Christlike plan of keeping down
those that are beneath us, can we make this country of ours
a kingdom of Christ. If we can not practise nor bear to have
impressed upon us, more condescension, more tenderness, and
the duty of unlearning much, very much of that galling, in-
sulting spirit of demarkation with which we sever ourselves
from the sympathies of the class immediately beneath us,
those tears may have to flow again which were shed over the
city which would not know the day of her visitation : lulled
into an insane security even at the moment when the judg-
ment-eagles were gathered together and plunging for thei?
prey.
Appointment of the First King in Israel. 643
Once more : there is suggested to us the thought that Sam-
uel was now growing old. It seems by the eleventh and
thirteenth chapters, in connection with the text, tha^t the
cause which hastened the demand of the elders for a king
was the danger of invasion. The Ammonites and Philistines
were sharpening their swords for war. And men felt that
Samuel was too old for such a crisis. Only a few Sundays
ago we were considering Samuel's childhood, his weaning,
education, and call. Now he is old : his hair is gray, and
men beginning to feel that he is no longer what he was. A
high, great life : and a few chapters sum it all up. And such
n T /
is all me.
To-day we baptize a child ; in a period of time startlingly
short, the minister is called upon to prepare the young man
for confirmation. A little interval and the chimes are ring-
ing a merry wedding-peal. One more pause, and the winds
are blowing their waves of shadow over the long grass that
grows rankly on his grave. The font, the altar, and the
sepulchre, and but a single step between. Now we do not
dwell on this. It is familiar a tale that is told.
But what we mention this for is, to observe that though
Samuel's life was fast going, Samuel's work was permanent.
Evidence of this lies in the chapter before us. When Saul
came to the city and inquired for the seer's house, some young
maidens, on their way to draw water, replied ; and their re-
ply contained an accurate account, even to details, of the re-
ligious service which was about to take place. The judge
had arrived ; there was to be a sacrifice, the people would
not eat till he came, he would pronounce a blessing, after
that there would be a select feast. Now compare the state
of things in Israel when Samuel became judge. Had a man
come to a city in Israel then, there would have been no
sacrifice going on, or if there had, no one would have been
found so accurately familiar with the whole service ; for then
" men abhorred the offering of the Lord." But now the first
chance passer-by could run through it all, as a thing habitu-
al as a Church of England worshipper would tell you the
hours of service, and the order of its performance. So that
they might forget Samuel they might crowd round his suc-
cessor but Samuel's work could not be forgotten : years
after he was quiet and silent under ground, his courts in Bethel
and Mizpeh would form the precedents and the germs of the
national jurisprudence.
A very pregnant lesson. Life passes, work is permanent.
It is all going fleeting and withering. Youth goes. Mind
decays. That which is done remains. Through ages, through
644 Prayer.
eternity, what you have done for God, that, and only that,
you are. Ye that are workers, and count it the soul's worst
disgrace to feel life passing in idleness and uselessness. take
courage. Deeds never die.
III.
PRAYER.
" And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying,
my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me : nevertheless, not as I
will, but as thou wilt." Matt. xxvi. 39.
No one will refuse to identify holiness with prayer. To
say that a man is religious is to say the same thing as to say
he prays. For what is prayer ? To connect every thought
with the thought of God. To look on every thing as His
work and His appointment. To submit every thought, wish,
and resolve to Him. To feel His presence, so that it shall
restrain us even in our wildest joy. That is prayer. And
what we are now, surely we are by prayer. If we have at-
tained any measure of goodness, if we have resisted tempta-
tions, if we have any seTf-command, or if we live with aspira-
tions and desires beyond the common, we shall not hesitate
to ascribe all to prayer.
There is therefore no question among Christians about the
efficacy of prayer ; but that granted generally, then question-
ings and diversities of view begin. What is prayer? What
is the efficacy of prayer? Is prayer necessarily words in
form and sequence ; or is there a real prayer that never can
be syllabled ? Does prayer change the outward universe, or
does it alter our inward being ? Does it work on God, or
does it work on us?
To all these questions, I believe a full and sufficient answer
is returned in the text. Let us examine it calmly, and with-
out prejudice or prepossession. If we do, it can not be but
that we shall obtain a conclusion in which we may rest with
peace, be it what it eventually may. We will consider
I. The right of petition.
H. Erroneous views of what prayer is.
III. The true efficacy of prayer.
I. The right of petition. " Let this cup pass from me."
We infer it to be a right 1. Because it is a necessity of oul
human nature.
The Son of Man feels the hour at hand : shrinks from it,
seeks solitude, flies from human society feels the need of it
again, and goes back to his disciples. Here is that need of
sympathy which forces us to feel for congenial thought
among relations ; and here is that recoil from cold unsympa-
thizing natures, which forces us back to our loneliness again.
In such an hour, they who have before forgotten prayer be-
take themselves to God : and in such an hour, even the most
resigned are not without the wish, "Let this cup pass."
Christ Himself has a separate wish one human wish.
Prayer, then, is a necessity of our humanity, rather than a
duty. To force it as a duty is dangerous. Christ did not ;
never commanded it, never taught it till asked. This neces-
sity is twofold. First, the necessity of sympathy. We touch
other human spirits only at a point or two. In the deepest
departments of thought and feeling we are alone ; and the
desire to escape that loneliness finds for itself a voice in
prayer.
Next, the necessity of escaping the sense of a crushing
fate. The feeling that al^ things are fixed and unalterable,
that we are surrounded by necessities which we can not
break through, is intolerable whenever it is realized. Our-
egotism cries against it ; our innocent egotism, and the prac-
tical reconciliation* between our innocent egotism and hid-
eous fatalism is prayer, which realizes a living Person ruling
all things with a will.
2. Again, we base this right on our privilege as Children.
"My Father" that sonship Christ shares with us reveals
the human race as a family in which God is a Father, and
Himself the elder brother. It would be a strange family,
where the child's will dictates ; but it would be also strange
where a child may not, as a child, express its foolish wish,
if it be only to have the impossibility of gratifying it ex-
plained.
3. Christ used it as a right, therefore we may.
There is many a case in life, where to act seems useless
many a truth which at times appears incredible. Then we
throw ourselves on Him He did it, He believed it, that is
enough. He was wise, where I am foolish. He was holy,
where I am evil. He must know. He must be right. I rely
on Him. Bring what arguments you may: say that prayer
can not change God's will. I know it. Say that prayer ten
thousand times comes back like a stone. Yes, but Christ
prayed-, therefore I may and I will pray. Not only so, but I
must pray; the wish felt and not uttered before God, is a
* Mesothesis.
646 Prayer.
prayer. -Speak, if your heart prompts, in articulate words,
but there is an unsyllabled wish, which is also prayer. You
can not help praying, if God's Spirit is in yours.
Do not say, I must wait till this tumult has subsided and I
am calm. The worst storm of spirit is the time for prayer:
the Agony was the hour of petition. Do not stop to calcu-
late improbabilities. Prayer is truest when there is most of
instinct and least of reason. Say, " My Father, thus I fear
and thus I wish. Hear thy foolish, erring child let this
cup pass from me."
IL Erroneous notions of what prayer is. They are con-
tained in that conception which He negatived, "As I will."
A common popular conception of prayer is, that it is the
means by which the wish of man determines the will of God.
This conception finds an exact parallel in those anecdotes
with which Oriental history abounds, wherein a sovereign
gives to his favorite some token, on the presentation of which
every request must be granted. As when Ahasuerus prom-
ised Queen Esther that her petition should be granted, even
to the half of his kingdom. As when Herod swore to He-
rodias's daughter that he would do whatever she should re-
quire. It will scarcely be said that this is a misrepresenta-
tion of a very common doctrine, for they who hold it would
state it thus, and would consider the mercifulness and privi-
lege of prayer to consist in this, that by faith we can obtain
all that we wa.it.
Now, in the text it is said distinctly this is not the aim of
prayer, nor its meaning. "Not as I will." The wish of man
does not determine the will of God.
Try this conception by four tests.
1. By its incompatibility with the fact that this uniTerse
is a system of laws. Things are thus, rather than thus.
Such an event is invariably followed by such a consequence.
This we call a law. All is one vast chain, from which if you
strike a single link, you break the whole. It has been truly
said that to heave a pebble on the sea-shore one yard higher
up would change all antecedents from the creation, and all
^consequents to the end of time. For it would have required
a greater force in the wave that threw it there and that
would have required a different degree of strength in the
storm that again, a change of temperature all over the
globe and that again, a corresponding difference in the tem-
peraments and characters of the men inhabiting the different
countries.
So that when a child wishes a fine day for his morrow's
Prayer. 647
excursion, and hopes to have it by an alteration of what
would have been without his wish, he desires nothing less
than a whole new universe.
It is difficult to state this in all its force except to men
who are professionally concerned with the daily observation
of the uniformity of the Divine laws. But when the astron-
omer descends from his serene gaze upon the moving heav-
ens, and the chemist rises from contemplating those marvel-
lous affinities, the proportions of which are never altered,
realizing the fact that every atom and element has its own
mystic number in the universe to the end of time ; or when
the economist has studied the laws of wealth, and seen how
fixed they are and sure : then to hear that it is expected
that, to comply with a mortal's, convenience or plans, God
shall place this whole harmonious system at the disposal ol
selfish humanity, seems little else than impiety against the
Lord of law and order.
2. Try it next by fact.
Ask those of spiritual experience. We do not ask whether
prayer has been efficacious of course it has. It is God's or-
dinance. Without prayer the soul dies. But what we ask
is, whether the good derived has been exactly this, that
prayer brought them the very thing they wished for? FOT
instance, did the plague come and go according to the laws
of prayer or according to the laws of health ? Did it come
because men neglected prayer, or because they disobeyed
those rules which His wisdom has revealed as the conditions
of salubrity ? And when it departed, was it because a na-
tion lay prostrate in sackcloth and ashes, or because it arose
and girded up its loins and removed those causes and those
obstructions which, by everlasting law, are causes and ob-
structions? Did the catarrh or the consumption go from
him who prayed, sooner than from him who humbly bore it
in silence ? Try it by the case of Christ Christ's prayer
did not eucceed. He prayed that the cup might pass from
Him. It did not so pass.
Now lay down the irrefragable principle, "The disciple is
not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is
enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the
servant as his lord." What Christ's prayer was not effica.
cious to do, that ours is not certain to effect. If the object
of petition be to obtain, then Christ's prayer failed ; if the
refusal of His petition did not show the absence of the favor
of His Father, then neither does the refusal of ours.
Nor can you meet this by saying, " His prayer could not
succeed, because it was decreed that Christ should die ; but
648 Prayer.
ours may, because nothing hangs on our fate, and we
of no decree that is against our wish."
Do you mean that some things are decreed and some are
left to chance ? That would make a strange, disconnected
universe. The death of a worm, your death, its hour and
moment, are all fixed, as much as His was. Fortuity, chance,
contingency, are only words which express our ignorance of
causes.
3. Try it by the prejudicial results of such a belief.
To think that prayer changes God's will gives unworthy
ideas of God. It supposes our will to be better than His,
the Unchangeable, the Unsearchable, the All -wise. Can
you see the All of things the consequences and secret con-
nections of the event you wish ? and if not, would you really
desire the terrible power of infallibly securing it ?
Consider, also, the danger of vanity and supineness result-
ing from the fulfillment of our desires as a necessity. Who
does not recollect such cases in childhood, when some curi-
ous coincidences with our wishes were taken for direct re-
plies to prayer, and made us fancy ourselves favorites of
Heaven, in possession of a secret spell. These coincidences
did not make us more earnest, more holy, but rather the re-
verse. Careless and vain, we fancied we had a power which
superseded exertion, we looked down contemptuously on
others. Those were startling and wholesome lessons which
came when our prayer failed, and threw our whole childish
theory into confusion. It is recorded that a favorite once
received from his sovereign a ring as a mark of her regard,
with a promise that whenever he presented that ring to her
she would grant his request. He entered on rebellion, from
a vain confidence in the favor of his sovereign. The ring
which he sent was kept back by his messenger, and he was
executed. So would we rebel if prayer were efficacious to
change God's will and to secure His pardon.
4. It would be most dangerous, too, as a criterion of our
spiritual state. If we think that answered prayer is a proof
of grace, we shall be unreasonably depressed and unreason-
ably elated depressed when we do not get w r hat we wish,
elated when we do ; besides, we shall judge uncharitably of
other men.
Two farmers pray, the one whose farm is on light land,
for rain ; the other, whose contiguous farm is on heavy soil,
for fine weather ; plainly one or the other must come, and
that which is good for one may be injurious to the other.
If this be the right view of prayer, then the one who does
not obtain his wish must mourn, doubting God's favor 3 or
Prayer. 649
oelieving that he did not pray in faith. Two Christian
armies meet for battle Christian men on both sides pray
for success to their own arms. Now if victory be given to
prayer, independent of other considerations, we are driven
to the pernicious principle, that success is the test of right.
From all which the history of this prayer of Christ "deliv-
ers us. It is a precious lesson of the cross, that apparent
failure is eternal victory. It is a precious lesson of thia
prayer, that the object of prayer is not the success of its pe-
tition ; nor is its rejection a proof of failure. Christ's peti-
tion was not gratified, yet He was the One well-beloved of
His Father.
IIL The true efficacy of prayer * As Thou wilt."
All prayer is to change the will human into submission to
the will Divine. Trace the steps in this history by which
the mind of the Son of Man arrived at this result. First, we
find the human wish almost unmodified, that " that cup
might pass from Him." Then He goes to the disciples, and
it would appear that the sight of those disciples, cold, un-
sympathetic, asleep, chilled His spirit, and set that train of
thought in motion which suggested the idea that perhaps
the passing of that cup was not His Father's will. At all
events, He goes back with this perhaps "If this cup may
not pass from me except I drink it, Thy will be done." He
goes back again, and the words become more strong : " Nev-
theless, not as I will, but AS Thou wilt." The last time He
comes, all hesitancy is gone. Not one trace of the human
wish remains ; strong in submission, He goes to meet His
doom " Rise, let us be going : behold, he is at hand that
doth betray me." This, then, is the true course and history
of prayer. Hence we conclude
1. That prayer which does not succeed in moderating our
wish, in changing the passionate desire into still submission,
the anxious, tumultuous expectation into silent surrender,
is no true prayer, and proves that we have not the spirit of
true prayer.
Hence, too, we learn
2. That life is most holy in which there is least of petition
and desire, and most of waiting upon God : that in which
petition most often passes into thanksgiving. In the prayer
taught by Christ there is only one petition for personal good,
and that a singularly simple and modest one, " Give us this
day our daily bread," and even that expresses dependence
far rather than anxiety or desire.
From this we understand the spirit of that retirement fo?
28
650 Prayer.
prayer into lonely tops of mountains and deep shades of
night, of which we read so often in His life. It was not st
much to secure any definite event as from the need of holj
communion with His Father prayer without any definite
wish ; for we must distinguish two things which are often
confounded. Prayer for specific blessings is a very different
thing from communion with God. Prayer is one thing,
petition is quite another. Indeed, hints are given us which
make it seem that a time will come when spirituality shall
be so complete, and acquiescence in the will of God so en
tire, that petition shall be superseded. " In that day ye
shall ask me nothing;" "Again I say not I will pray the
Father for you, for the Father Himself loveth you." And
to the same purpose are all those passages in which He dis-
countenances the heathen idea of prayer, which consists in
urging, prevailing upon God. " They think that they shall
be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like
unto them : for your Father knoweth what things ye have
need of before ye ask Him."
Practically then, I say, Pray as He did, till prayer makes
you cease to pray. Pray till prayer makes you forget your
own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will. The Di-
vine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby
to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby
we learn to do without them ; not as a means whereby we
escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to
meet it. " There appeared an angel unto Him from heaven,
strengthening Him." That was the true reply to His
prayer.
And so, in the expectation of impending danger, our
prayer has won the victory, not w r hen we have warded off
the trial, but when, like Him, we have learned to say, "Arise,
let us go to meet the evil."
Now, contrast the moral consequences of this view of
prayer with those' which, as we saw, arise from the other
view. Hence comes that mistrust of our own understanding
which will not suffer us to dictate to God. Hence, that
benevolence which, contemplating the good of the whole
rather than self-interest, dreads to secure what is pleasing to
self at the possiVe expense of the general weal. Hence, that
humility which looks on ourselves as atoms, links in a mys-
terious chain, and shrinks from the dangerous wish to break
the chain. Hence, lastly, the certainty that the All-wise is
the All-good, and that " all things work together for good,"
for the individual as well as for the whole. Then, the selfish
ery of egotism being silenced, we obtain Job's sublime spirit,
Perversion, as shown in Balaam's Character. 65 1
" Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not
receive evil?"
There is one objection may be made to this. It may be
said, If this be prayer, I have lost all I prized. It is sad and
depressing to think that prayer will alter nothing, and bring
nothing that I wish. All that was precious in prayer iti
struck away from me.
But one word in reply. You have lost the certainty of
getting your own wish ; you have got instead the compen-
sation of knowing that the best possible, best for you, best
for all, will be accomplished. Is that nothing ? and will you
dare to say that prayer is no boon at all unless you can re-
verse the spirit of youi Master's prayer, and say, " Not as
Tkou wilt, but as /will?"
IV.
PERVERSION, AS SHOWN IN BALAAM'S
CHARACTER.
"And Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have sinned , for I knew
not. that thou stoodest in the way against me: now therefore, if it displease
thee, I will get me back again. And the angel of the Lord said unto Balaam,
Go with the men : but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou
shalt speak. So Balaam went with the princes of Balak. " Num. xxii. 34, 35.
THE judgment which we form on the character of Balaam
is one of unmitigated condemnation. We know and say
that he was a false prophet and a bad man. This is how-
ever, doubtless, because we come to the consideration of his
history having already prejudged his case.
St. Peter, St. Jude, and St. John have p issed sentence upon
him. " Having eyes full of adultery, and that can not cease
from sin ; beguiling unstable souls : a heart they have exer-
cised Avith covetous practices; cursed children: which have
forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the
way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of
unrighteousness, but was rebuked for his iniquity : the dumb
ass speaking with man's voice forbade the madness of the
prophet ;" " Woe unto them ! for they have gone in the way
of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for re-
ward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core ;" " But I have
a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that
hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a
stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things
652 Perversion, as shown in Balaam* Character.
sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication." And so we
read the history of Balaam familiar with these passages, and
coloring all with them.
But assuredly this is not the sentence we should have pro-
nounced if we had been left to ourselves, but one much less
severe. Repulsive as Balaam's character is when it is seen
at a distance, when it is seen near it has much in it that is
human, like ourselves, inviting compassion even admira-
tion : there are traits of firmness, conscientiousness, noble-
ness.
For example, in the text, he offers to retrace his steps as
soon as he perceives that he is doing wrong. He asks guid-
ance of God before he will undertake a journey : " And he
said unto them, Lodge here this night, and I will bring you
word again, as the Lord shall speak unto me." He professes
and in earnest " If Balak would give me his house full of
silver and gold, I can not go beyond the word of the Lord
my God, to do less or more." He prays to " die the death
of the righteous, and that his last end may be like his." Yet
the inspired judgment of his character, as a whole, stands re
corded as one of unmeasured severity.
And accordingly one of the main lessons in Balaam's his-
tory must ever be, to trace how it is that men, who to the
world appear respectable, conscientious, honorable, gifted, re-
ligious, may be in the sight of God accursed, and heirs of
perdition. Our subject, then, to-day is perversion :
L Perversion of great gifts.
II. Perversion of the conscience.
I. Of great gifts.
The history tells of Balak sending to Pethor for Balaam
to curse the Israelites. This was a common occurrence in
ancient history. There was a class of men regularly set
apart to bless and curse, to spell-bind the winds and foretell
events. Balaam was such an one.
Now the ordinary account would be that such men were
impostors, or endued with political sagacity, or had secret
dealings with the devil. But the Bible says Balaam's inspi-
ration was from God.
It did not arise from diabolical agency, or from merely
political sagacity : that magnificent "ode of sublime poetry,
given in chapter xxiv., is from God.
The Bible refers the inspiration of the poet, of the proph-
et, of the worker in cunning workmanship, to God. It
makes no mention of our modern distinction between that
inspiration enjoyed by the sacred writers and that enjoyed
Perversion, as shown in Balaams Character. 653
by ordinary men, except so far as the use is concerned.
God's prophets glorified Him. The wicked prophets glori-
fied themselves ; but their inspiration was real, and came
from God, and these divine powers were perverted
1. By turning them to purposes of sell-aggrandizement.
Now, remember how the true prophets of Jehovah spoke.
Simply, with no affectation of mystery, no claims to mystical
illumination. They delighted to share their power with their
fellows ; they said, " The heart of the Lord was with them
that fear Him ;" that the Lord " dwelt with an humble and
contrite heart." They represented themselves as inspired,
not because greater or wiser than their brethren, but be-
cause more weak, more humble, and dependent upon God.
Contrast Balaam's conduct. Every thing is done to show
the difference between him and others to fix men's atten-
tion upon himself the wonderful, mysterious man who is in
communication with Heaven. He builds altars, and uses
enchantments. These were a priest's manoeuvres, not a
prophet's.
He was the solitary self-seeker alone, isolated, loving to
be separated from all other men; admired, feared and
sought.
Balak struck the key-note of his character when he said,
"Am I not able to promote thee unto honor?" Herein,
then, lies the first perversion of glorious gifts : that Balaam
sought not God's honor but his own.
2. By making those gifts subservient to his own greed.
It is evident that Balaam half suspected his own failing.
Otherwise what mean those vaunts, " If Balak would give
me his house full of silver and gold ?" Brave men do not
vaunt their courage, nor honorable men their honesty, nor do
the truly noble boast of high birth. All who understand
the human heart perceive a secret sense of weakness in these
loud boasts of immaculate purity. Silver and gold, these
were the things he loved, and so, not content with commun-
ion with God, "with the possession of sublime gifts, he
thought these only valuable so far as they were means of
putting himself in possession of riches. Thus spiritual pow
ers were degraded to make himself a vulgar man of wealth.
There are two opposite motives which sw"ay men. Some,
like Simon Magus, will give gold to be admired and wonder-
ed at; some will barter honor for gold. In some the two
are blended ; as in Balaam, we see the desire for honor and
wealth wealth, perhaps, as being another means of insuring
reputation. And so have we seen many begin and end in
our own day begin with a high-minded courage which flat-
654 Perversion, as shown in Balaam s Character.
ters none ; speaks truth, even unpalatable truth ; but when
this advocacy of truth brings men, as it brought to Balaam,
to consult them, and they rise in the world, or in a court,
and become men of consideration, then by degrees the plain
truth is sacrificed to a feverish love of notoriety, the love of
truth is superseded, and passes into a love of influence.
Or they begin with a generous indifference to wealth-
simple, austere ; by degrees they find the society of the rich
leading them from extravagance to extravagance, till at last
high intellectual and high spiritual powers become the serv-
ile instruments of appropriating gold. The world sees the
sad spectacle of the man of science and the man of God wait-
ing at the doors of princes, or cringing before the public for
promotion and admiration.
II. Perversion of conscience.
1. The first intimation we have of the fact that Balaam
was tampering with his conscience is in his second appeal to
God. On the first occasion God said, " Thou shalt not go
with them ; thou shalt not curse the people ; for they are
blessed." Then more honorable messengers were sent from
Balak, with larger bribes. Balaam asks permission of God
again. Here is the evidence of a secret hollowness in his
heart, however fair the outside seemed. In worldly matters,
" think twice ;" but in duty, it has been well said, " first
thoughts are best ;" they are more fresh, more pure, have
more of God in them. There is nothing like the first glance
we get at duty, before there has been any special pleading
of our affections or inclinations. Duty is never uncertain at
first. It is only after we have got involved in the mazes and
sophistries of wishing that things were otherwise than they
are that it seems indistinct. Considering a duty is often
only explaining it away. Deliberation is often only dishon-
esty. God's guidance is plain, when we are true.
Let us understand in what Balaam's hollowness consisted.
He wanted to please himself without displeasing God. The
problem was how to go to Balak, and yet not to offend God.
He would have given worlds to get rid of his duty ; and he
went to God to get his duty altered, not to learn what his
duty was. All this rested upon an idea that the will of God
makes right, instead of being right as if it were a caprice
which can be altered, instead of the law of the universe,
which can not alter.
How deeply this principle is ingrained in human nature
you may see from , the Roman Catholic practice of indul-
gences. The Romish Church permits transgressions for a
Perversion, as shown in Balaams Character. 655
consideration, and pardons them for the same. Such a doc-
trine never could have succeeded if the desire and belief were
not in man already. What Balaam was doing in this prayer
was simply purchasing an indulgence to sin.
2. The second stage is a state of hideous contradictions $
God permits Balaam to go, and then is angry with him for
foiug. There is nothing here which can not be interpreted
y bitter experience. We must not explain it away by say-
ing that these were only the alternations of Balaam's own
mind. They were ; but they were the alternations of a mind
with which God was expostulating, and to which God ap-
peared differently at different times ; the horrible mazes and
inconsistencies of a spirit which contradicts itself, and strives
to disobey the God whom yet it feels and acknowledges.
To such a state of mind God becomes a contradiction.
" With the froward " oh, how true ! " thou wilt show thy-
self fro ward." God speaks once, and if that voice be not
heard, but is willfully silenced, the second time it utters a
terrible permission. God says, " Go," and then is angry.
Experience will tell us how God has sent us to reap the fruit
of our own willfulness.
3. We notice next the evidences in him of a disordered
diind and heart.
We come now^to the most difficult portion of the story:
" The dumb ass, speaking with man's voice, forbade the mad-
ness of the prophet." One of the most profound and pious
of modern commentators on this passage has not scrupled
to represent the whole transaction as occurring in a vis-
ion. Others have thought that Balaam's own heart, smiting
him for his cruelty, put, as it were, words into the ass's
mouth.
We care not. Let the caviller cavil if he will. There is
too much profound truth throughout this narrative for us
to care much about either the literal or the figurative inter-
pretation. One thing, however, is clear. Balaam did only
what men so entangled always do. The real fault is in
themselves. They have committed themselves to a false
position, and when obstacles stand in their way, they lay the
blame on circumstances. They smite the dumb innocent oc-
casion of their perplexity as if it were the cause. And the
passionateness the "madness" of the act is but an indica-
tion that all is going wrong within. There was a canker at
the heart of Balaam's life and his equanimity was gone; his
temper vented itself on brute things. Who has not seen the
like a grown man, unreasoning as a child, furious beyond
the occasion ? If you knew the whole, you would see that
656 Perversion, as shown in Balaam's Character.
was not the thing which had moved him so terribly ; you
would see that all was wrong inwardly.
It is a strange, sad picture this. The first man in the
land, gifted beyond most others, conscious of great mental
power, going on to splendid prospects, yet with hopelessness
and misery working at his heart. Who would have envied
Balaam if he could have seen all the hell that was working
at his beart ?
> Lastly, let us consider the impossibility under such circum-
stances of going back. Balaam offers to go back. The an-
gel says, " Go on." There was yet one hope for him to be
true, to utter God's words careless of the consequences ; but
he who had been false so long, how should he be true ? It
was too late. In the ardor of youth you have made perhaps
a wrong choice, or chosen an unfit profession, or suffered
yourself weakly and passively to be drifted into a false course
of action, and now, in spite of yourself, you feel there is no
going back. To many minds, such a lot comes as with the
mysterious force of a destiny. They see themselves driven,
and forget that they put themselves in the way of the stream
that drives them. They excuse their own acts as if they
were coerced. They struggle now and then faintly, as Ba-
laam did try to go back can not and at last sink passive-
ly in the mighty current that floats them on to wrong.
And thenceforth to them all God's intimations will come
unnatwally. His voice will sound as that of an angel
against them in the way. Spectral lights will gleam, only
to show a quagmire from which there is no path of extrica^
tion. The heavenliest things and the meanest will forbid
the madness of the prophet : and yet at the same time seem
to say to the weak and vacillating self-seeker, " You have
done wrong, and you must do more wrong." Then deepens
down a hideous, unnatural, spectral state the incubus as of
a dream of hell, mixed with bitter reminiscences of heaven.
Your secret faults will come out in your life.
we say to you be true.
Selfishness, as shown in Balaam s Character. 657
V.
SELFISHNESS, AS SHOWN IN BALAAM'S
CHARACTER.
"Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part ol
Israel ? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like
his !" Num. xxiii. 10.
WE acquainted ourselves with the earlier part of Balaam's
history last Sunday. We saw how great gifts in him were
perverted by ambition and avarice ambition making them
subservient to the admiration of himself; avarice transform-
ing them into mere instruments for accumulating wealth.
And we saw how his conscience was gradually perverted by
insincerity, till his mind became the place of hideous contra-
dictions, and even God Himself had become to him a he ;
with his heart disordered, until the bitterness of all going
wrong within vented itself on innocent circumstances, and
he found himself so entangled in a false course that to go
back was impossible.
Now we come to the second stage. He has been with
Balak : he has built his altars, offered his sacrifices, and tried
his enchantments, to ascertain whether Jehovah will permit
him to curse Israel. And the Voice in his heart, through all,
says, " Israel is blest." He looks down from the hill-top, and
sees the fair camp of Israel afar oif, in beautiful array, their
white tents gleaming ' ; as the trees of lignaloes which the
Lord had planted." He feels the solitary grandeur of a na-
tion unlike all other nations people which "shall dwell
alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations." A na-
tion too numberless to give Balak any hope of success in
the coming war. " Who can count the dust of Jacob, and
the number of the fourth part of Israel?" A nation too
strong in righteousness for idolaters and enchanters to cope
with, "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither
is there any divination against Israel ?" Then follows a per-
sonal ejaculation " Let me die the death of the righteous,
and let my last end be like his !"
Now to prevent the possibility of misconception, or any
supposition that Balaam was expressing words whose full
significance he did not understand that when he was
speaking of righteousness he had only a heathen notion of
28*
658 Selfishness, as shown in Balaam s Character.
it we refer to the sixth chapter of Micah,from the fifth
verse. We will next refer to Numbers xxxi. 8, and Joshua
xiii. 22, from whence it appears that he who desired to die
the death of the righteous, died the death of the ungodly,
and fell, not on the side of the Lord, but fighting against the
Lord's cause. The first thing we find in this history of Ba-
laam is an attempt to change the will of God.
Let us clearly understand what was the meaning of all
those reiterated sacrifices.
1. Balaam wanted to please himself without displeasing
God. The problem was how to go to Balak, and yet not
offend God. He would have given worlds to get rid of his
duties, and he sacrificed, not to learn what his duty was, but
to get his duty altered. Now see the feeling that lay at the
root of all this that God is mutable. Yet of all men one
would have thought that Balaam knew better, for had he
not said, " God is not a man, that He should lie ; neither the
son of man that He should repent : hath He said, and shall
He not do it?" But when we look upon it, we see Balaam
had scarcely any feeling higher than this God is more in-
flexible than man. Probably had he expressed the exact
shade of feeling, he would have said, more obstinate. He
thought that God had set his heart upon Israel, and that it
was hard, yet not impossible, to alter this partiality. Hence
he tries sacrifices to bribe, and prayers to coax, God.
How deeply rooted this feeling is in human nature this
belief in God's mutability you may see from the Romish
doctrine of indulgences and atonements. The Romish Church
permits crime for certain considerations. For certain con-
siderations it teaches that God will forgive crimes. Atone-
ments after, and indulgences before sin, are the same. But
this Romish doctrine never could have succeeded, if the be-
lief in God's mutability and the desire that He should be
mutable, were not in man already.
What Balaam was doing in these parables, and enchant-
ments, and sacrifices, was simply purchasing an indulgence
to sin ; in other words, it was an attempt to make the Eter-
nal Mind change. What was wanting for Balaam to feeJ
was this God can not change. What he did feel was this
- God will not change. There are many writers who teach
that this and that is right because God has willed it. All
discussion is cut short by the reply, God has determined it,
therefore it is right. Now there is exceeding danger in this
mode of thought, for a thing is not right because God has
willed it, but God wills it because it is right. It is in this
tone the Bible always speaks. Never, except in one obscure
Selfishness, as shown in Balaam's Character. 659
passage, does the Bible seem to refer right and wrong to the
sovereignty of God, and declare it a matter of will ; never
does it imply that if He so chose, He could reverse evil and
good. It says, " Is not my way equal ? are not your ways
unequal ?" " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ?"
was Abraham's exclamation in a kind of hideous doubt
whether the Creator might not be on the eve of doing injus-
tice. So the Bible justifies the ways of God to man. But it
could not do so unless it admitted eternal laws, with which
no will can interfere. Nay more, see what ensues from this
mode of thought. If right is right because God wills it, then,
if God chose, He could make injustice, and cruelty, and lying
to be right. This is exactly what Balaam thought. If God
could but be prevailed on to hate Israel, then for him to
curse them would be right. And again : if power and sov-
ereignty make right, then, supposing the Ruler were a demon,
devilish hatred would be as right as now it is wrong. There
is great danger in some of our present modes of thinking. It
is a common thought that might makes right, but for us there
is no rest, no rock, no sure footing, so long as we feel right
and wrong are mere matters of will and decree. There is no
safety, then, from these hankering feelings and wishes to alter
God's decree. You are unsafe until you feel, "Heaven and
earth may pass away, but God's word can not pass away."
2. We notice, secondly, an attempt to blind himself. One
of the strangest leaves in the book of the human heart is
here turned. We observe here perfect veracity with utter
want of truth. Balaam was veracious. He will not deceive
Balak. Nothing was easier than to get the reward by mut-
tering a spell, knowing all the while that it would not work.
Many a European has sold incantations to rich savages for
jewels and curiosities, thus enriching himself by deceit.
Now Balaam was not supernaturally withheld. That is a
baseless assumption. Nothing withheld him but his con-
science. No bribe on earth could induce Balaam to say a
falsehood to pretend a curse which was powerless to get
gold, dearly as he loved it, by a pretense. " If Balak would
give me his house full of silver and gold, I can not go beyond
the word of the Lord my God, to do less or more," was no
mere fine saying, but the very truth. You might as soon
have turned the sun from his course as induced Balaam to
utter falsehood.
Aud yet, with all this, there was utter truthlessness of
heart. Balaam will not utter what is not true ; but he will
blind himself so that he may not see the truth, and so speafc
a lie, believing it to be the truth.
660 Selfishness, as shown in Balaam s Character.
He will only speak the thing he feels ; but he is not careful
to feel all that is true. He goes to another place, where the
whole truth may not force itself upon his mind to a hill
where he shall not see the whole of Israel: from hill to hill
for the chance of getting to a place where the truth may dis-
appear. But there stands the stubborn fact Israel is bless-
ed; and he will look at the fact in every way, to see if he
can not get it into a position where it shall be seen no long-
er. Ostrich-like !
Such a character is not so uncommon as, perhaps, we think.
There is many a lucrative business which involves misery
and wrong to those who are employed in it. The man would
be too benevolent to put the gold in his purse if he knew of
the misery. But he takes care not to know. There is many
a dishonorable thing done at an election, and the principal
takes care not to inquire. Many an oppression is exercised
on a tenantry, and the landlord receives his rent and asks no
questions. Or there is some situation which depends upon
the holding of certain religious opinions, and the candidate
has a suspicion that if he were to examine, he could not con-
scientiously profess these opinions, and perchance he takes
care not to examine.
3. Failing in all these evil designs against Israel, Balaam
tries his last expedient to ruin them, and that partially suc-
ceeds.
He recommends Balak to use the fascination of the daugh-
ters of Moab to entice the Israelites into idolatry. (Num.
xxxi. 15, 16. Rev. ii. 14). He has tried enchantments and
sacrifices in vain to reverse God's will. He has tried in
vain to think that will is reversed. It will not do. He feels
at last that God has not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither
hath He seen perverseness in Israel. Now therefore, he
tries to reverse the character of these favorites, and so to re-
verse God's will. God will not curse the good ; therefore
Balaam tries to make them wicked ; he tries to make the
good curse themselves, and so exasperate God.
A more diabolical wickedness we can scarcely conceive.
Yet Balaam was an honorable man and a veracious man ;
nay, a man of delicate conscientiousness and unconquer-
able scruples a man of lofty religious professions, highly
respectable and respected. The Lord of heaven and earth
has said there is such a thing as " straining out a gnat, and
swallowing a camel."
There are men who would not play false, and yet would
wrongly win. There are men who would not lie, and yet
who would bribe a poor man to support a cause which he
Selfishness, as shown in Balaam s Character. 66 1
believes in his soul to be false. There are men who would
resent at the sword's point the charge of dishonor, who
would yet for selfish gratification entice the weak into sin,
and damn body and soul in hell. There are men who would
be shocked at being called traitors, who in time of war will
yet make a fortune by selling arms to their country's foes.
There are men respectable and respected, who give liberally
and support religious societies, and go to church, and would
not take God's name in vain, who have made wealth, in some
trade of opium or spirits, out of the wreck of innumerable
human lives. Balaam is one of the accursed spirits now,
but he did no more than these are doing.
Now see what lay at the root of all this hollowness : self-
ishness.
From first to last one thing appears uppermost in this his-
tory Balaam's self; the honor of Balaam as a true proph-
et therefore he will not lie ; the wealth of Balaam there*
fore the Israelites must be sacrificed. Nay more, even in
his sublimest visions his egotism breaks out. In the sight
of God's Israel he cries, " Let me die the death of the right-
eous :" in anticipation of the glories of the eternal advent,
"I shall behold Him, but not nigh." He sees the vision of a
kingdom, a Church, a chosen people, a triumph of righteous-
ness. In such anticipations, the nobler prophets broke out
into strains in which their own personality was forgotten.
Moses, when he thought that God would destroy His people,
prays in agony " Yet now, if Thou wilt, forgive their sins ;
and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book." Paul
speaks in impassioned words "I have continual sorrow in
my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from
Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,
who are Israelites." But Balaam's chief feeling seems to be,
"How will all this advance me?" And the magnificence of
the prophecy is thus marred by a chord of melancholy and
diseased egotism. Not for one moment even in those mo-
ments when uninspired men gladly forget themselves; men
who have devoted themselves to a monarchy or dreamed of
a republic in sublime self-abnegation can Balaam forget
himself in God's cause.
Observe, then : desire for personal salvation is not religion.
It may go with it, but it is not religion. Anxiety for the
state of one's own soul is not the healthiest or best symp-
tom. Of course every one wishes, " Let me die the death of
the righteous." But it is one thing to wish to be saved, an-
other to wish God's right to triumph; one thing to wish to
die safe, another to wish to live holily. Nay, not only 18
662 Selfishness, as shewn in Balaam 's Character
this desire for personal salvation not religion, but if soured,
it passes into hatred of the good. Balaam's leeling became
spite against the people who are to be blessed when he is
not blessed. He indulges a wish that good may not pros-
per, because personal interests are mixed up with the failure
cf good.
We see anxiety about human opinion is uppermost.
Throughout we find in Balaam's character semblances, not
realities. He would not transgress a rule, but he would vio-
late a principle. He would not say white was black, but he
would sully it till it looked black.
Now consider the whole.
A bad man prophesies under the fear of God, restrained
by conscience, full of poetry and sublime feelings, with a full
clear view of death as dwarfing life, and the blessedness of
righteousness as compared with wealth. And yet we find
him striving to disobey God, hollow and unsound at heart ;
using for the devil wisdom and gifts bestowed by God ;
sacrificing all with a gambler's desperation, for name and
wealth : tempting a nation to sin, and crime, and ruin ; sepa-
rated in selfish isolation from all mankind ; superior to Balak,
and yet feeling that Balak knew him to be a man that had
his price ; with the bitter anguish of being despised by the
men who were inferior to himself; forced to conceive of a
grandeur in which he had no share, and a righteousness in
which he had no part. Can you not conceive the end of one
with a mind so torn and distracted? the death in battle;
the insane frenzy with which he would rush into the field,
and finding all go against him, and that lost for which he
'aad bartered heaven, after having died a thousand worse
than deaths, find death at last upon the spears of the Israel-
ites ?
In application, we remark: 1st. The danger of great pow-
ers. It is an awful thing, this conscious power to see more,
to feel more, to know more than our fellows.
2d. But let us mark well the difference between feeling
and doing.
It is possible to have sublime feelings, great passions, even
great sympathies with the race, and yet not to love man.
To feel mightily, is one thing, to live truly and charitably,
another. Sin may be felt at the core, and yet not be cast
out. Brethren, beware. See how a man may be going on
uttering fine words, orthodox truths, and yet be rotten at
the heart.
The Transitoriness of Life. 663
VI.
THE TRANSITORINESS OF LIFE.
"So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unco
wisdom." Psalm xc. 12.
THIS is the key-note of the 90th Psalm. It numbers sadly
the days and vicissitudes of human life ; but it does this, not
for the sake of mere sentiment, but rather for practical pur-
poses, that it may furnish a motive for a wiser life of the
heart. We know nothing of the Psalm except that it was
the composition of "Moses, the man of God." It was writ-
ten evidently in the wilderness, after years of apparently
fruitless wandering : its tone is that of deep sadness re-
trospective ; its images are borrowed from the circumstances
of the pilgrimage the mountain-flood, the grass, the night-
watch of an army on the march.
See here, again, what is meant by inspiration. Observe
the peculiarly human character of this Psalm. Moses, "the
man of God," is commissioned not to tell truths superhuman,
but truths emphatically human. The utterances of this
Psalm are true to nature. Moses felt as we feel, only God
gave him a voice to interpret, and he felt more deeply than
all, what all in their measure feel. His inspiration lay not
in this, that he was gifted with legislative wisdom ; but
rather in this, that his bosom vibrated truly and healthfully
to every note of the still sad music of humanity. We will
consider
I. The feelings suggested by a retrospect of the past.
II. The right direction of those feelings.
1. The analogies of nature which correspond with human
life. All the images in this Psalm are suggested by the cir-
cumstances of their forty years' pilgrimage. Human life felt
to be like a flood the withering grass a sleep broken the
pain the start death the awakening a night-watch a
tale told, whose progress we watched with interest, but of
which when done the impression alone remains, the words
are gone forever. These are not artificial images, but natu-
ral. They are not similes forced by the writer into his serv-
ice because of their prettiness, but similes which forced
themselves on him by their truthfulness. Now this is God's
664 The Transitoriness of Life.
arrangement. All things here are double. The world with,
out corresponds with the world within. No man could look
on a stream when alone by himself, and all noisy companion-
ship overpowering good thoughts was away, without the
thought that just so his own particular current of life will
fall at last into the " unfathomable gulf where all is still."
No man can look upon a field of corn, in its yellow ripe-
ness, which he has passed weeks before when it was green,
or a convolvulus withering as soon as plucked, without ex-
periencing a chastened feeling of the fleetingness of all earth-
ly things.
No man ever went through a night-watch in the bivouac,
when the distant hum of men and the random shot fired told
of possible death on the morrow ; or watched in a sick-room,
when time was measured by the sufferer's breathing or the
intolerable ticking of the clock, without a firmer grasp on
the realities of life and time.
So God walks His appointed rounds through the year : and
every season and every sound has a special voice for the va-
rying phases of our manifold existence. Spring comes, when
earth unbosoms her mighty heart to God, and anthems of
gratitude seem to ascend from every created thing. It is
something deeper than an arbitrary connection which com-
pels us to liken this to the thought of human youth.
And then comes summer, with its full stationariness, its
noontide heat, its dust, and toil, an emblem of ripe manhood.
The interests of youth are gone by. The interest of a near
grave has not jet come. Its duty is work. And afterwards
autumn, with its mournfulness, its pleasant melancholy, tells
us of coming rest and quiet calm.
And now has come winter again. This is the last Sunday
in the year.
It is not a mere preacher's voice performing an allotted
task. The call and correspondence are real. The young
have felt the melancholy of the last two months. With a
transient feeling even amounting to a luxury the prophet-
ic soul within us anticipates with sentiment the real gloom
of later life, and enables us to sympathize with what we have
not yet experienced. The old have felt it as no mere ro-
mance an awful fact a correspondence between the world
without and the world within. We have all felt it in the
damp mist, in the slanting shadows, the dimmer skies, the
pale, watery glow of the red setting sun, shorn of half its
lustre. In the dripping of the woodland, in the limp leaves
trodden by heaps into clay, in the depressing north wind, in
the sepulchral cough of the aged man at the corner of the
The Transitoriness of Life. 665
street under the inclement sky, God has said to us, as He
said to Moses, " Pause, and number thy days, for they are
numbered."
2. There is also a sense of loss. Every sentence tells us
that this Psalm was written after a long period was past.
It was retrospective, not prospective. Moses is looking
back, and his feeling is loss. How much was lost ? Into
that flood of time how much had fallen ? Many a one con-
sumed, like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, by the wrath of
God. Many a Hebrew warrior stricken in battle, and over
him a sand-heap. And those who remembered these things
were old men " consuming" his strong expression, " their
strength in labor and sorrow."
Such is life ! At first, all seems given. We are acquiring
associations, sensations, new startling feelings ; then comes
the time when all give pleasure or pain by association by
touching some old chord which vibrates again. And after
that, all is loss something gone, and more is going. Every
day, every year this year, like all others. Into that flood
have fallen treasures that will not be recovered. Intimacies
have been dissolved that will not be reunited. Affections
cooled, we can not say why. Many a ship foundered, and
the brave hearts in her will be seen no more till the sea shall
give up her dead. Many a British soldier fallen before
Asiatic pestilence, or beneath the Kaffir assegai, above him
the bush or jungle is waving green, but he himself is now
where the rifle's ring is heard, and the sabre's glitter is seen,
no more. Many a pew before me is full, which at the begin-
ning of the year was filled by others. Many a hearth-stone
is cold, and many a chair is empty that will not be filled
again. We stand upon the shore of that illimitable sea
which never restores what has once fallen into it ; we hear
only the boom of the waves that throb over all forever.
3. There is, too, an apparent non-attainment.
A deeper feeling pervades this Psalm than that of mere
transitoriness : it is that of the impotency of human effort.
" We are consumed " perish aimlessly like the grass. No
man was more likely to feel this than Moses. After forty
years, the slaves he had emancipated were in heart slaves
still idolaters. He called them rebels, and shattered the
stone tables of the law, in sad and bitter disappointment.
After forty years the promised land was not reached. He
himself never entered it.
No wonder if life appeared to him like a stream, not mere-
ly transitory, but monotonous. Generation after generation,
and no change; much lost, apparently nothing was won. N0
666 The Transitoriness of Life.
prospect of better time had been. " The thing that hath
been, it is that which shall be." Here, too, is one of the great
trials of all retrospect the great trial of all earthly life.
The cycles of God's providences are so large that our nar-
row lives scarcely measure a visible portion of them. So
large that we ask, What can we effect ? Yet there is an al-
most irrepressible wish in our hearts to see success attend our
labors, to enter the promised land in our own life. It is a
hard lesson : to toil in faith and to die in the wilderness, not
having attained the promises, but only seeing them afar off.
So in the past year, personally and publicly. Personally
we dare not say that we are better than we were at the be-
ginning. Can we say that we are purer? more earnest?
Has the lesson of the cross been cut sharply into our hearts ?
Have we only learned self-denial, to say nothing of self-sacri-
fice ? And stagnation thus being apparently the case, or at
most but very slow progress, the thought comes, Can such
beings be destined for immortality ?
On a larger scale, the young cries of freedom which caused
all generous hearts to throb with sympathy have been stifled ;
itself trodden down beneath the iron heel of despotism all
over Europe and rendered frantic and ferocious. Can we
wish for its success ? Are the better times coming at all ?
So does the heart sicken over the past. Every closing year
seems to say, Shall we begin the old useless struggle over
again ? Shall we tell again the oft-told tale ? Are not these
hopes, so high, a mockery to a moth like man ? Is all but a
mere illusion, a mirage in the desert? Are the waters of
life and home ever near, yet never reached, and the dry hot
desert sand his only attainment ?
Let us consider
H. The right use of these sad suggestions. " So teach us
to number our days."
" So," because the days may be numbered, as in this Psalm,
and the heart not applied to wisdom. There are two ways
in which days may be numbered to no purpose.
1. That of the Epicurean "Let us eat and drink; for to-
morrow we die." There is a strong tendency to reckless en-
joyment when the time is felt to be short, and religion does
not exist to restrain.
[For example. In times of plague Athens Milan Lon-
don danger only stimulates men to seize to-day the enjoy-
ments which may not be theirs to-morrow. Again, at the
close of the last century, when the prisons of Paris resounded
with merriment, dance, and acting, a light and trivial people,
The Transitoriness of Life. 667
atheists at heart, could extract from an hourly impending
death no deeper lesson than this, " Let us eat and drink ; for
to-morrow we die."]
2. That of the sentimentalist.
It is no part of our Christian duty to think of decay in an
abject spirit. That which the demoniac in the Gospels did,
having his dwelling among the tombs, has sometimes been
reckoned the perfection of Christian unworldliness. Men
have looked on every joy as a temptation ; on every earnest
pursuit as a snare the skull and the hour-glass their com-
panions, curtaining life with melancholy, haunting it with
visions and emblems of mortality. This is not Christianity.
Rather it is so to dwell on the thoughts of death " that we
may apply our hearts unto wisdom." If the history of these
solemn truths does not stimulate us to duty and action, it
were no duty to remind ourselves of them. Rather the re-
verse. Better shut out such gloomy and useless thoughts.
But there is a way of dwelling amidst these facts which sol-
emnizes life instead of paralyzing it. He is best prepared to
meet change who sees it at a distance and contemplates it
calmly. Affections are never deepened and refined until the
possibility of loss is felt. Duty is done with all energy, then
only, when we feel, " The night cometh, when no man can
work," in all its force.
Two thoughts are presented to make this easier.
1. The eternity of God. "Before the mountains were
brought forth, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art
God." With God there is no Time it is one eternal Now.
This is made conceivable to us by a recent writer, who has re-
minded us that there are spots in the universe which have
not yet been reached by the beams of light which shone from
this earth at its creation. If, therefore, we are able on an
angel's wings to reach that spot in a second or two of time,
the sight of this globe would be just becoming visible as it
was when chaos passed into beauty. A few myriads of miles
nearer, we should be met by the picture of the world in the
state of deluge. And so in turn would present themselves
the spectacles of patriarchal life ; of Assyrian, Grecian, Per-
sian, Roman civilization ; and, at a short distance from the
earth, the scenes of yesterday. Thus a mere transposition in
space would make the past present. And thus, all that we
need is the annihilation of space to annihilate time. So that
if we conceive a Being present everywhere in space, to Him
all past events would be present. At the remotest extremi-
ty of the angel's journey, he would see the world's creation ;
668 The Transitoriness of Life.
at this extremity, the events that pass before our eyes U,
day. Omnipresence in space is thus equivalent to ubiquity
in time. And to such a being, demonstrably, there would be
no Time. All would be One vast eternal Now.
Apply this to practical wisdom. And this comes in to
correct our despondency. For with God, " a thousand years
are as one day." In the mighty cycles in which God works,
our years and ages are moments. It took fifteen hundred
years to educate the Jewish nation. We wonder that Moses
saw nothing in forty years. But the thought of the eternity
of God was his consolation. And so, shall we give up our
hopes of heaven and progress, because it is so slow, when we
remember that God has innumerable ages before Him ? Or
our hopes for our personal improvement, when we recollect
our immortality in Him who has been our refuge " from
generation to generation ?" Or for our schemes and plans
which seem to fail, when we remember that they will grow
after us, like the grass above our graves ?
IL Next, consider the permanence of results. Read the
conclusion of the Psalm, " Prosper Thou the work of our
hands upon us, oh prosper Thou our handiwork." It is a
bright conclusion for a Psalm so dark and solemn. To cor-
rect the gloom that comes from brooding on decay, it is
good to remember that there is a sense in which nothing
perishes.
1. The permanence of our past seasons. Spring, summer,
autumn, are gone, but the harvest is gathered in. Youth and
manhood are passed, but their lessons have been learnt. The
past is ours only when it is gone. We do not understand the
meaning of our youth, our joys, our sorrows, till we look at
them from a distance. We lose them to get them back again
in a deeper way. The past is our true inheritance, which
nothing can take from us. Its sacred lessons, its pure affec-
tions, are ours forever. Nothing but the annihilation of our
being could rob us of them.
2. The permanence of lost affections. Over the departed
ones Moses mourned. But take his own illustration "A
tale that is told." The sound and words are gone, but the
tale is indelibly impressed on the heart. So the lost are not
really lost. Perhaps they are ours only truly when lost.
Their patience, love, wisdom, are sacred now, and live in us.
The apostles and prophets are more ours than they were the
property of the generation who saw their daily life " He
oeing dead, yet speaketh."
3. The permanence of our own selves " The beauty of
The Transitoriness of Life. 669
the Lord our God be upon us." Very striking this. We
survive. We are what the past has made us. The results
of the past are ourselves. The perishable emotions, and
the momentary acts of bygone years, are the scaffolding on
which we build up the being that we are. As the tree is
fertilized by its own broken branches and fallen leaves, and
grows out by its own decay, so is the soul of man ripened
out of broken hopes and blighted affections. The law of our
humanity is the common law of the universe life out of
death, beauty out of decay. Not till those fierce young
passions, over the decay of which the old man grieves, have
been stilled into silence ; not until the eye has lost its fire,
and the cheek its hot flush, can " the beauty of the Lord our
God be upon us" the beauty of a spirit subdued, chastened,
and purified by loss.
4. Let us correct these sad thoughts by the thought of the
permanence of work. " Prosper thou the work of our hands."
Feelings pass, thoughts and imaginations pass : dreams pass :
work remains. Through eternity, what you have done, that
you are. They tell us that not a sound has ever ceased to
vibrate through space ; that not a ripple has ever been lost
upon the ocean. Much more is it true that, not a true
thought, nor a pure resolve, nor a loving act, has ever gone
forth in vain.
So then we will end our year.
Amidst the solemn lessons taught to the giddy traveller
as he journeys on by a Nature hastening with gigantic foot-
steps down to a winter grave, and by the solemn tolling of
the bell of Time, which tells us that another, and another,
and another, is gone before us, we will learn, not the lesson
of the sensualist enjoy while you can : not that of the feeble
sentimentalist mourn, for nothing lasts: but that of the
Christian work cheerfully.
" The beauty of the Lord our God be upon ua."
^ Oh, prosper Thou our handiwork."
67O Views of Death.
VII
VIEWS OF DEATH.
"Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happenetb
even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart,
that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than
of the fool forever ; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be
forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool." Eccles. ii. 15, 16.
THIS is the inspired record of a peculiar view of life,
Paul, with his hopefulness of disposition, could not have
written it, neither could John, with his loving, trustful spirit.
We involuntarily ask who wrote this ? Was it written by a
voluptuary a skeptic or a philosopher? What sort of
man was it ?
We detect the sated voluptuary in the expressions of the
first eleven verses of this chapter. We see the skeptic in
those of the 19th to the 22d verses of the third chapter.
And the philosopher, who in avoidance of all extremes seeks
the golden medium, is manifested in such a maxim as " Be
not righteous overmuch ; neither make thyself overwise :
why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not overmuch
wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die
before thy time ?" Or was it written by a man deeply arfd
permanently inspired ?
I believe it to have been written by none of these, or
rather by all four. It records different experiences of the
same mind different moods in which he viewed life in
different ways. It is difficult to interpret, or to separate
them ; for he says nothing by which they can be marked off
and made distinct from each other. Nowhere does Solomon
say, " I thought so then, but that was only a mood, a phase
of feeling that I have since seen was false, and is now cor-
rected by the experience and expressions of the present."
!Here is, at first sight, nothing but inextricable confusion and
false conclusions.
The clue to the whole is to be found in the interpreter's
own heart. It is necessary to make these few preliminary
remarks, as there is a tone of disappointment which runs
through all this book, which is not the tone of the Bible
in general. Two lines of thought are suggested by the
text.
Views of Death. 071
I. The mysterious aspect presented by death.
II. That state of heart in which it is mysterious no
longer.
I. To Solomon, in his mood of darkness, " there is no re-
membrance of the wise more than of the fool forever." But
it is not only in moods of dark perplexity, it is always a
startling thing to see the rapidity with which the wisest and
the best are forgotten. We plough our lives in water, leav-
ing no furrow ; two little waves break upon the shore, but no
further vestige of our existence is left.
[An accident happens to one of England's greatest sons ;
an announcement is made which stagnates the blood in a
country's veins for a moment, and then all returns to its
former channel. (Tennyson. " In Memoriam." " Let them
rave," he sleeps well.)
Country church-yard yew-tree upheaving roots clasping
round bones a striking fact that vegetable life outlives and
outlasts animal life.]
There is something exquisitely painful in the thought that
we die out and are forgotten ; therefore it is, that in the
higher walks of life people solace themselves with the hope
of posthumous reputation ; they think, perhaps, that then
only their true worth will be known. That posthumous
reputation ! when the eye is forever closed, and the heart
forever chilled here what matters it to him, whether storms
rage over his grave or men cherish his memory ? he sleeps
well. The commentators on this book have disagreed among
themselves about Solomon's character some have even
doubted whether he was finally saved or no. What matters
it to him now what is said of him ? what does it signify to
him what posterity thinks of him ? And so with us all : to
the ear that is turned into dust the voice of praise or of cen-
sure is indifferent. One thing is certain. God says, " Time
is short, eternity is long." The solemn tolling of the bell
seems to cry, There is something to be done ; there is much
to be done ; do it ! and that quickly !
Then again there are some who say, " What use is there
in doing any thing in this world ? It scarcely seems worth
while, in this brief span of life, to try do any thing." A
man is placed in a high situation, receives an expensive ed-
ucation at school and college, and a still more expensive one
of time and experience. And then, just when we think all
this ripe wisdom, garnered up from so many fields, shall find
its fullest use, we hear that all is over, he has passed from
672 Views of Death.
among us, and then the question, hideous in its suggostive-
ness, arises, " Why was he then more wise ?"
Asked from this world's stand-point if there is no life
beyond the grave, if there is no immortality, if all spiritual
calculation is to end here, why, then the mighty work of
God is all to end in nothingness: but if this is only a state
of infancy, only the education for eternity, in which the sou!
is to gain its wisdom and experience for higher work, then
to ask why such a mind is taken from us is just as absurd as
to question why the tree of the forest has its first training in
the nursery garden. This is but the nursery ground, from
whence we are to be transplanted into the great forest of
God's eternal universe. There is an absence of all distinc-
tion between the death of one man and another. The wise
man dies as the fool with respect to circumstances.
In our short-sightedness we think there ought to be a cer-
tain correspondence between the man and the mode of the
man's death. We fancy the warrior should die upon the
battle-plain, the statesman at his post, the mean man should
die in ignorance : but it is not so ordered in God's world, for
the wise man dies as the fool, the profligate man dies as the
hero. Sometimes for the great and wise is reserved a con-
temptuous death, a mere accident ; then, he who is not sat-
isfied unless the external reality corresponds with the in-
ward hope y imagines that circumstances such as these can
not be ordained by Eternal Love, but rather by the spirit
of a mocking demon.
There is always a disappointment of our expectations.
Xo man ever lived whose acts were not smaller than him-
self. We often look forward to the hour of death in which a
man shall give vent to his greater and nobler emotions.
The hour comes, and the wise man dies as the fool. In the
first place, in the case of holiness and humbleness, thoughts
of deep despondency and dark doubt often gather round the
heart of the Christian in his last hour, and the narrow-minded
man interprets that into God's forgetfulness ; or else deliri-
um shrouds all in silence ; or else there are only common-
place words, words tender, touching, and gentle, but in
themselves nothing. Often there is nothing that marks the
great man from the small m&n. This is the mystery of
death.
II. It depends on causes within us and not without us.
Three things are said by the man of pleasure : 1. That all
things happen by chance. 2. That there is nothing new.
3, That all is vanity, and nothing is stable.
Views of Death. 673
There is a strange special penalty which God annexes to
a life of pleasure : Every thing appears to the worldly
man as a tangled web a maze to which there is no clue.
Another man say3, " There is nothing new under the sun."
This is the state of the man who lives merely for excitement
and pleasure his heart becomes so jaded by excitement that
the world contains nothing for him which can aw r aken fresh
or new emotions. Then, again, a third says, "All is vanity."
This is the state of him who is afloat on the vast ocean of ex-
citement, and who feels that life is nothing but a fluctua^
ting, changeful, heartless scene.
Some who read the Book of Ecclesiastes think that there
is a sadness and uneasiness in its tone inconsistent with the
idea of inspiration that it is nothing but a mere kaleido'
scope, with endlessly shifting moods. Therein lies the proof
of its inspiration. Its value lies as much in the way of warn-
ing as of precept. Live for yourself here live the mere life
of- pleasure, and then all is confusion and bewilderment of
mind ; then the view which the mighty mind of Solomon
took, inspired by God, will be yours : life will seem as noth-
ing, and death a mere mockery. Be in harmony with the
mind of Christ, have the idea He had, be one with Him, and
you shall understand the machinery of this world. " The
secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." To the
humble pious heart there is no mystery. Tfoe world is intel-
ligible only to a mind in harmony with the Mind that made
it. Else all is confusion, unless you are in possession of His
idea, moved by His Spirit.
Hence it lies in a pure heart much more than in a clear
intellect, to understand the mystery of life and death. Solo*
mon's wisdom has left us only a confused idea.
Turn we now from the views of Solomon to the life of the
Son of Man. Men asked, "How knoweth this man letters,
having never learned ?" He gave a different explanation of
His wisdom. "My judgment is just; because I seek not
mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent
me."
He gives directions to us how to gain the same discern-
ment. "If any man will do His will, he shall know."
********
[One has just been taken from us to whom all eyes turned
~-Sii' Robert Peel.]
29
674, Waiting for the Second Advent*
vm.
WAITING FOR THE SECOND ADVENT.
" And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the p*
tient waiting for Christ." 2 Thess. iii. 5.
THE two Epistles to the Thessalonians contain, more ex-
pressly than any other, St. Paul's views respecting the sec-
ond Advent of Christ. The first epistle was written to cor-
rect certain enthusiastic views respecting that coming. But
the second epistle tells us that the effort had failed. For in
the mean while, another epistle had been forged in St. Paul's
name, asserting that the day was near, and so opening the
floodgates of fanaticism. To counteract this, he tells them
not to be shaken in mind by any word or letter as from him,
as that the day of Christ was at hand. And, contrary to his
usual practice, he writes the salutation at the close with his
own hand, making it a test hereafter of the genuineness of
his epistles.
Let us try to paint a picture of the state of the Thessalo-
nian Church. Such phenomena had appeared as might have
been expected to arise from a belief that the end of the
world was near. Men forsook their stated employments ;
the poor would not work, but expected to be maintained by
their richer brethren. Men, being idle, spent their time in
useless discussions, neglected their own affairs, gossipped,
and indulged a prying curiosity, into the affairs of others.
Hence arose the necessity for the admonition " Study to be
quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your
hands, as we commanded you ;" and so the apostle had
said, "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every
brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition
which he received of us. For yourselves know how ye
ought to follow us : for w r e behaved not ourselves disorderly
among you ; neither did we eat any man's bread for nought;
but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we
might not be chargeable to any of you."
Moreover, two opposite lines of conduct were adopted by
persons of different temperament. Some greedily received
every w T ild tale and mysterious prediction of the Advent,
and listened eagerly to every fanatic who could work upon
Waiting for the Second Advent. 075
the vulgar credulity. Others, perceiving that there was so
much imposture, concluded that it was safest to believe notl>
: ng ; and accordingly were skeptical of every claim to inspb
ration. In admonition of the first class, St. Paul says, " Prove
all things ; hold fast that which is good." In admonition of
the second, " Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesy-
ings."
The opposite tendencies of skepticism and credulity will
be found very near together in all ages. Some men refusing
to believe that God speaks in the signs of the times ; others
running after every book on prophecy, seeking after signs,
believing in miracles and imposture, mesmerisms, electro-biol-
ogies, winking pictures any thing provided it be marvellous
it is the same state of mind exactly !
To meet the evil of this feverish, disturbed state of the
Thessalonian Church, St. Paul takes two grounds. He first
points out the signs which will precede the second Advent :
Self-idolatry, excluding the worship of God. Sinful human-
ity, " the man of sin," in the temple of God. And this self"
worship deceiving by a show of godliness, and a power ap-
parently miraculous (such as our present self-laudations, phi-
lanthropies, marvellous triumphs as with Divine power, over
the material world). Besides this, punishment of falsehood
on the rejection of the true. These signs worked then and
now. St. Paul discerned the general law of Christ's king-
dom and its development as applicable to all epochs down
to the last. But next, St. Paul called the Church away from
this feverishness to the real preparation for the Advent.
The Church was on the tiptoe of expectation, and prepared
in the way above described. St. Paul summons them to a
real but not excited preparation. And this in two things :
1. The love of God. 2. Patience of the saints. We con-
sider
I. Preparation for the Redeemer's coming: the love of
God.
1. The love of God is the love of goodness. The old Sax-
on word God is identical with Good. God the Good One
personified goodness. There is in that derivation not a mere
play of words there is a deep truth. None loves God but
he who loves good. To love God is to love what God is.
God is pure, and he who loves purity can love God. God is
true. God is just ; and he who loves these things out of
God may love them in God ; and God for them, because He
is good, and true, and pure, and just.
No other love is real ; none else lasts. For example, love
076 Waiting for the Second Advent.
based on a belief of personal favors will not endure. Yon
may be very happy, and believe that God has made you
happy. While that happiness lasts you will love God. But
a time comes when happiness goes. You will not be always
young and prosperous. A time may come when misfortunes
will accumulate on you as on Job. At last, Job had nothing
left but life. The natural feeling would be," Curse God and
die." Job said, " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
Him." Plainly Job had some other reason for his love than
personal favors. God, the all-pure, all-just, all-holy, adorable,
because all-holy. Or again, you believe that Christ's suffer-
ings have purchased heaven for you. Well, you are grate-
ful. But suppose your evidence of personal salvation fades,
what then ?
Here, however, let me make a remark. The love of good-
ness only becomes real by doing good. . Without this it re-
mains merely a sickly sentiment. It gets body and reality
by acting. For example, we have been prating since the
Great Duke's death, of duty. Know we not that by merely
talking of duty our profession of admiration for duty will
become a cant ? This is a truth a minister of Christ feels
deeply. It is his business to be talking to others of self-sac-
rifice and devotedness. He of all men feels how little these
words mean, unless they are acted out. For an indolent
habit of admiring goodness is got easily, and is utterly with-
out profit. Hence Christ says, " Not every man that saith
unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ;
but he that doetli the will of my Father which is in heaven ;"
and hence, too, " If a man love me, he will keep my com-
mandments, and I will love him;" ""If ye know these things,
happy are ye if ye do them ;" " This is the love of God, that
we keep His commandments." The love of goodness is real
and healthy only when we do it.
2. The love of God is the love of man expanded and puri-
fied. It is a deep truth that we can not begin with loving
God, we must begin w r ith loving man. It is an awful com-
mand, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart
and soul and mind." It is awful and impossible at first.
Interrogate the child's conscience, he does not love God su-
premely ; he loves his mother, and his sister, and his brother
more. Now this is God's plan of nature. Our special hu-
man affections are given us to expand into a diviner charity.
We are learning "by a mortal yearning to ascend." Our
affections wrap themselves round beings who are created in
God's image ; then they expand, widen in their range ; be-
come less absorbed, more calm, less passionate, more philan-
Waiting for the Second Advent. 677
thropic. They become more pure, less selfish. Love was
given, encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for this end ....
that seK' might be annulled. The testimony of St. John is
decisive on this point. To him we appeal as to the apostle
who knew best what love is. His love to God was unearth-
ly, pure, spiritual ; his religion had melted into love. Let us
listen to his account. " No man hath seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is
perfected in us ;" u He that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?"
According to him, the thought of the invisible God is in-
tolerable. It would be shorn of its dazzling splendor by be-
ing exhibited in our brethren. So we can gaze on the re-
flected sunlight on the moon. According to him, it is
through the visible that we appreciate the invisible
through the love of our brother that we grow into the love
of God.
An awful day is coming to us all the day of Christ. A
day of triumph, but of judgment too. Terrible language de-
scribes it, " The sun shall be turned into darkness and the
moon into blood." God shall be felt as He never has been
yet. How shall we prepare for that august sight ? Not by
unnatural, forced efforts at loving Him whom no eye can see
and live ; but by much persistence in the appointed path of
our common affections, our daily intercourse, the talk man
holds with man in the hourly walk of the world's inter-
course. By being true to our attachments. Let not a hum-
ble Christian be over-anxious, if his spiritual affections are
not as keen as he would wish. The love of God is the full-
blown flower of which the love of man is the bud. To love
man is to love God. To do good to man will be recognized
hereafter as doing good to Christ. These are the Judge's
words : " Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto
one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me."
3. Personal affections.
[Guard what is now said from any appearance of repre-
senting it as actually attained by the person who describes
it. The love of God is a fearful and a lovely thing ; but
they who have reached it are the few.]
It is not merely love of goodness, but love of goodness
concentrated on the Good One. Not merely the love of
man, but the love of man expanded into the love of Him, of
whom all that we have seen of gentle and lovely, of true and
tender, of honorable and bright in human character, are but
the shadows and the broken, imperfect lights.
678 Waiting for the Second Advent.
It is here that the Jewish religion is the chief trainer of
the world. Revelation began with the personality of God.
All the Jew's discipline taught him this : that the law of
right was the will of a lawgiver. Deliverance from Egyp-
tian slavery, or Assyrian invasion, was always associated
with the name of a deliverer. Moses and the prophets were
His messengers and mediators. "Thus saith the Lord," is
ever the preface of their message.
Consequently, only from Jews, and Christians trained
through the Old Testament to know God, do we hear those
impassioned expressions of personal love, which give us a
sublime conception of the adoration of which human hearts
are capable. Let us hear David " Whom have I in heaven
but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire in
comparison of Thee ;" " My soul is athirst for God, yea,
even for the living God." And that glorious outburst of St.
Paul : " Let God be true, and every man a liar," which can
be understood only by those who feel that the desertion of
all, and the discovery of the falseness of all, would be as
nothing compared with a single doubt of the faithfulness of
God.
II. The other preparation is the patient waiting.
1. What is waited for? an Advent of Christ. We must
extend the ordinary meaning of this expression. There are
many comings of Christ.
Christ came in the flesh as a Mediatorial Presence.
Christ came at the destruction of Jerusalem.
Christ came, a Spiritual Presence, when the Holy Ghost
was given.
Christ comes now in every signal manifestation of redeem-
ing power.
Any great reformation of morals and religion is a coming
of Christ,
A great revolution, like a thunderstorm, violently sweep-
ing the evil away, to make way for the good, is a coming of
Christ,
Christ will come at the end of the world, when the Spirit
of all these comings will be concentrated.
Thus we may understand in what way Christ is ever com-
ing and ever near. Why it was that St. James said, " StaV
lish your hearts : for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh ;"
and " Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." And we
shall also understand how it was that the early Church was
not deceived in expecting Christ in their own day. He did
come, though not in the way they expected
Waiting for the Second Advent. 679
2, What is meant by " waiting ?"
Now it is remarkable that throughout the apostle's writ-
ings, the Christian attitude of soul is represented as an atti-
tude of expectation as in this passage, " So that ye come
behind in no gift ; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ ;" and again, " We are saved by hope : but hope that
is seen is not hope : for what a man seeth, why doth he yet
hope for ? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we
with patience wait for it." Salvation in hope : that was
their teaching. Not a perfection attained, but a perfection
that is to be.
The golden age lies onward. We are longing for, not the
Church of the past, but the Church of the future. Ours is not
an antiquated, sentimental yearning for the imaginary perfec-
tion of ages gone by, not a conservative stagnation content
with things as they are, but hope for the individual and for
the society. By Him we have access by faith, and rejoice in
hope of the glory that shall be revealed. A better, wiser,
purer age than that of childhood. An age more enlightened
and more holy than the world has yet seen. " Behold, the
tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them,
and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with
them, and be their God." It is this spirit of expectation
which is the preparation for the Advent. Every gift of no-
ble origin is breathed upon by hope's perfect breath.
3. Let us note that it is patient waiting.
Every one who has ardently longed for any spiritual
blessing knows the temptation to impatience in expecting it.
Good men who, like Elijah, have sickened over the degener-
acy and luxury of their times ; fathers who have watched
the obduracy and wild career of a child whom they have
striven in vain to lead to God ; such cry out from the deeps
of the heart, " Where is the promise of His coming ?"
Now the true preparation is, not having correct ideas of
how and when He shall come, but being like Him. " It is
not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Fa-
ther hath put in His own power ;" " Every man that hath
this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure."
Application. "The Lord direct you" unto this.
Consider what the Thessalonians must have felt in their
perplexity. Would that we had a teacher such as St. Paul,
ever at hand to tell us what is truth to distinguish be-
tween fanaticism and genuine enthusiasm between wild
false teaching and truth rejected by the many. " Here,"
might they have said, " were we bewildered. How shall
we hereafter avoid similar bewilderments without an infalli*
68o The Sinless ness of Christ.
ble guide ?" Instead of which St. Paul says, u The Lord di-
rect your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient
waiting for Christ."
God has so decreed, that except in childhood, our depend'
ence must be on our own souls. "The way of truth is slow,
hard, winding, often turning on itself." Good and evil grow
up in the field of the world almost inseparably. The scan-
ning of error is necessary to the comprehension and belief of
truth. Therefore it must be done solitarily. Nay, such an
infallible guide could not be given to us without danger.
Such a one ever near would prove not a guide to us, but a
hindrance to the use of our own eyes and souls. Reverence
for such a guide would soon degenerate into slavishness, pas-
siveness, and prostration of mind.
Hence, St. Paul throws us upon God.
IX.
THE SINLESSNESS OF CHRIST.
"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin ig the
transgression of the law. And ye know that he was manifested to take
away our sins ; and in him is no sin." 1 John iii. 4, 5.
THE heresy with which the Apostle St. John had to con-
tend in his day was an error of a kind and character which
it is hard for us with our practical, matter-of-fact modes of
thinking, to comprehend. There were men so over-refined
and fastidious, that they could not endure the thought of
any thing spiritual being connected with materialism. They
could not believe in any thing being pure that was also
fleshly, for flesh and sinfulness were to them synonymous
terms. They could not believe in the Divine humanity, for
humanity was to them the very opposite of that which was
Divine : and accordingly, while admitting the Divinity of
Jesus, they denied the reality of His materialism. They
said of His earthly life exactly what the Roman Catholic
says of the miracle he claims to be performed in the Supper
of the Lord. The Roman Catholic maintains that it is sim-
ply an illusion of the senses ; there is the taste of the bread,
the look of the bread, the smell of the bread, but it is all a
deception : there is no bread really there, it is only the spir-
itual body of the Lord. That which the Romanist says now
of the elements in the Lord's Supper, did these ancient here-
The Sinks sues s of Christ. 681
tics say respecting the body and the life of Jesus. There
was, they said, the sound of the human voice, there was the
passing from place to place, there were deeds done, there
were sufferings undergone, but these were all an illusion
and a phantasma a thing that appeared, but did not
really exist. The everlasting Word of God was making it-
self known to the minds of men through the senses by an
illusion ; for to say that the Word of God was made flesh, to
maintain that He connected Himself with sinful, frail hu-
manity this was degradation to the Word this was de-
struction to the purity of the Divine Essence.
You will observe that in all this there w r as an attempt to
be eminently spiritual ; and what seems exceedingly marvel-
lous, is the fact withal that these men led a life of extreme
licentiousness. Yet it is not marvellous, if we think accu-
rately, for we find even now that over-refinement is but
coarseness. And so, just in the same way, these ultra-spirit-
ualists, though they would not believe that the Divine Es-
sence could be mingled with human nature without degrada-
tion, yet they had no intention of elevating human nature by
their own conduct. They thought they showed great re-
spect for Jesus in all this : they denied the reality of his suf-
ferings ; they would not admit the conception that frail, un-
dignffied humanity was veritably His, but nevertheless they
had no intention of living more spiritually themselves.
It was therefore that we find in another epistle, St. John
gives strict commands to his converts not to admit these
heretics into their houses : and the reason that he gives is,
that by so doing they would be partakers, not of their evil
doctrines, but of their evil deeds. They were a licentious
set of men, and it is necessary to keep this in view if we
would understand the writings of St. John. It is for this
reason, therefore, that he says " That which was from the
beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with
cur eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled of the Word of Life, declare we unto you." It is for
this reason that he, above all the apostles, narrates with scru-
pulous accuracy all the particulars respecting the Redeemer's
risen body that he joined in the repast of the broiled fish
and the honey-comb : and that he dwells with such minute-
ness on the fact that there came from the body of the Re-
deemer blood and water : " Not water only, but water and
blood ;" and it is for this reason that in speaking of Anti-
christ he says, " Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God, and this is that spir-
it of Antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come."
29*
68 2 The Sinks sness of Christ.
So, then, we learn from this that the most spiritual of all
the apostles was the one who insisted most earnestly on the
materialism of the human nature of our Lord. He who
alone had penetrated into that realm beyond, where the
King was seen on His throne of light, was the one who felt
most strongly that in humanity there is nothing degrading.
In the natural propensities of human nature there is nothing
to be ashamed of: there is nothing for a man to be ashamed
of but sin there is nothing more noble than a perfect hu-
man nature.
My brethren, though the error of the ancient times can not
be repeated in this age in the same form, though this strange
belief commends itself not to our minds, yet there may be
such an exclusive dwelling upon the Divinity of Jesus as ab-
solutely to destroy His real humanity ; there may be such a
morbid sensitiveness when we speak of Him as taking our
nature, as will destroy the fact of His sufferings yes, and
destroy the reality of His atonement also. There is a way
of speaking of the sinlessness of Jesus that would absolutely
make that scene on Calvary a mere pageant in which He was
acting a part in a drama, during which He was not really
suffering, and did not really crush the propensities of His hu-
man nature. It was for this reason we lately dwelt on the
Redeemer's sufferings ; now let us pass onward to the fact of
the sinlessness of His nature.
The subject divides itself first, into the sinlessness of His
nature; and secondly, the power which He possessed from
that sinlessness to take away the sins of the world.
With respect to the first branch, we have given us a defi-
nition of what sin is " Sin is the transgression of the law."
It is to be observed there is a difference between sin and
transgression. Every sin is a transgression of the law, but
every transgression of the law is not necessarily a sin. Who-
soever committeth sin transgresseth also the law. Now
mark the difference. It is possible for a man to transgress
the law of God, not knowingly, and then in inspired language
w r e are told that " sin is noif imputed unto him." Yet for all
that, the penalty will follow whenever a man transgresses,
but the chastisement which belongs to sin, to known willful
transgression, will not follow.
Let us take a case in the Old Testament, which it may be
as well to explain, because sometimes there is a difficulty
felt in it. We read of the patriarchs and saints in the Old
Testament as living in polygamy. There was no distinct
law forbidding it, but there was a law written in the "fleshly
tables of the heart," against which it is impossible to trans
The Sinlessness of Christ. 683
gress without incurring a penalty. Accordingly, though we
never find that the patriarchs are blamed for the moral fault,
though you never find them spoken of as having broken the
written law of God, yet you see they reaped the penalty that
ever must be reaped in the case of one, degradation : in the
case of the other, slavery. Jacob's many wives brought dis-
sension and misery into his household, though he did it inno-
cently and ignorantly, and he reaped the penalty quarrele
and wretchedness. In all this there is penalty, but there is
not sin in all this, and therefore there was not excited that
agony which comes from the pangs of conscience after will-
ful sin.
Every misery that falls on man has been the consequence
of transgression, his own trespass or those of others. It may
have been his parents, his grandparents, or his far-back an-
cestors, who have given him the disadvantages under which
he labors. How shall we explain the fact that misery falls
alike on the good and on the evil? Only by remembering
whether it comes as the penalty of transgression ignorantly
done: then it is but the gentle discipline of a Father's love,
educating His child, it may be warning the child and giving
him the knowledge of that law of which he was hitherto ig-
norant. This wretchedness of the patriarchs, what was it
but the corrective dispensation by which the world learnt
that polygamy is against the law of God ? So the child who
cuts his hand with the sharp blade of the knife has learnt a
lesson concerning his need of caution for the future, and if
well and bravely borne, he is the better for it ; but if there
has been added to that transgression the sin of disobedience
to his parent's command, then there is something inflicted
beyond the penalty; there "is all that anguish of conscience
and remorse which comes as the consequence of sin. Now
we have seen what transgression is, let us try and understand
what sin is.
My Christian brethren, it is possible for us to mistake this
subject by taking figurative expressions too literally. We
speak of sin as if it were a thing, as if we were endowed with
it, like memory, or judgment, or imagination, as a faculty
which must be exercised. Now let us learn the truth of
what sin is it " is the transgression of the law." There
must be some voluntary act, transgressing some known law,
or there is no sin. There were those in the days of St. John
who held that sin was merely the infirmity of the flesh ; that
if a man committed sin, and he was to know that it was the
working merely of his lower nature, not of his own mind
his faith would save him.
684 The Sinlessness of Christ.
Another error was that of the Pharisees in the days of Jf;<
BUS ; and their error was precisely opposite. " Yes," said the
Pharisees, " sin is the transgression of the law. Holiness is
conformity to the law, and the lives of the Pharisees bein^
conformable to the ceremonial law, we stand before the world
as, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless."
The Redeemer comes, and He gives another exposition of
^in. " Sin is the transgression of the law," but there is a law
'written for the heart, as well as for the outward man. There
is a work to be done within as well as without. A murder
may be committed by indulging revenge and malice, though
the hand has never been lifted to strike. It is not the out-
ward act that constitutes alone the morality of Christ, it is
the feeling of the heart, the acts of the inner man.
But then there is another error from which we have to
guard ourselves. It is a sophistry in which some men in-
dulge themselves. They say, " Well, if the thought is as bad
as the act, why should we not therefore do the act ? I am
as guilty as if I had committed transgression ; why should I
debar myself from the enjoyment ?" "it is, I say, but sophis-
try, for no man that has any conscience can really so deceive
himself. The Redeemer's doctrine was that many a man
whose outward life was pure and spotless would have done
the transgression if he had had the opportunity. It is one
thing to say that he would have done it if he could, but it is
quite another thing to say that a man who has indulged the
thought, and has drawn back, is as guilty as if he had actual-
ly carried out the evil act. The difference lies in this the
one would have done it if he could, and the other could and
would not.
We read in the Bible of two men who exemplify this. They
both resolved to commit murder, and the opportunity w r as
given to each. Saul threw his javelin with right good will
at David's person ; he did all that resolution could do, it was
but what is called accident that left the javelin quivering in
the wall. Opportunity was given also to David.. He had
resolved to slay Saul, but when the tempting opportunity
came, when he was bending over Saul, full of the thought of
destroying his enemy, at the very last moment he paused
his conscience smote him he refused to strike. Which of
these was the murderer ? Saul was the murderer : he had
slain in his heart. It was but an accident that prevented it.
In the other case there had been the indulgence of a wrong
thought, but it was subdued. He might say, he might as
weM have slain his foe, but would you say that he was in the
same position as a murderer ? No, Christian brethren, let
The Sinlessness of Christ. 685
there be no sophistry of this kind among us. It is but a sub-
tle whisper from our great adversary that would beguile us.
Generally there is first a rising of an inclination which is
often no sin. This passes on to a guilty resolve one step
more, and the man has committed the sin.
Now let us turn to the character of our blessed Redeemer,
and we shall find him doubly free from all this as free in de-
sire as free in act. The proof of his perfect purity is to be
found in the testimony of His enemies, of His friends, and of
those indifferent to Him. We have first the evidence of His
enemies. For three long years the Pharisees were watching
their victim. There was the Pharisee mingling in every
crowd, hiding behind every tree. They examined His disci-
ples ; they cross-questioned all around Him ; they looked into
His ministerial life, into His domestic privacy, into His hours
of retirement. They came forward with the sole accusation
that they could muster that He had shown disrespect to the
Roman governor. The Roman judge, who at least should
know, had pronounced the accusation null and void. There
was another spy. It was Judas. If there had been one act
of sin, one failing in all the Redeemer's career that betrayed
ambition, that betrayed any desire to aggrandize Himself
in his hour of terrible remorse Judas would have remembered
it for his own comfort ; but the bitterness of his feelings
that which made life insufferable was that he had " betray-
ed innocent blood."
Pass we on to those who were indifferent. And first we
have the opinion of Pilate himself Contemporary historians
tell us that Pilate was an austere and cruel man, a man of
firm resolve, and one who shrank not from the destruction of
human life ; but we see here that for once the cruel man be-
came merciful : for once the man of resolve became timid. It
was not merely that he thought Jesus was innocent ; the hard
Roman mind w r ould have cared little for the sacrifice of an
obscure Jew. The soul of Pilate was pervaded with the feel-
ing that spotless innocence stood before him, and this feel-
ing extended even to Pilate's wife : for we find that she sent
to him and said, " Have thou nothing to do with that just
man." It was not because he was going to pass an unjust
sentence he had often done so before but she felt that
here was an innocent one who must not be condemned.
Now let us consider the testimony of His friends. They
tell us that during their intercourse of three years His was
a life unsullied by a single spot : and I pray you to remem-
ber that tells us something of the holiness of the thirty pre-
vious years ; for no man springs from sin into perfect right
686 The Sinlessness of Christ.
eousness at once. If there has been any early wrong-doing
though a man may be changed yet there is something
left that tells of his early character a want of refinement,
of delicacy, of purity; a tarnish has passed upon the bright-
ness, and can not be rubbed off. If we turn to the testimo-
ny of John the Baptist, His contemporary, about the same
j;e, one who knew Him not at first as the Messiah : yet
when the Son of Man comes to him simply as a man, and
asks him to baptize Him, John turns away in astonishment,
shocked at the idea. " I have need to be baptized of thee :
and comest thou to me ?" In other words, the purest and
the most austere man that could be found on earth was com-
pelled to acknowledge that in Him who came for baptism
there was neither stain nor spot that the water of Jordan
was needed to wash away. So we see there was no actual
transgression in our blessed Lord.
Now let us see what the inward life was; for it is very
possible that there may be no outward transgression, and
yet that the heart may not be pure. It is possible that out
wardly all may seem right, through absence of temptation,
and yet there may be the want of inward perfection. Of
the perfection of Jesus we can have but one testimony ; it
can not be that of the apostles, for the lesser can not judge
the greater, and therefore we turn to Himself. He said,
" Which of you can charge me with sin ?" " I and my Fa-
ther are one." Now we must remember that just in pro-
portion as a man becomes more holy does he feel and ac-
knowledge the evil that is in him. Thus it was with the
Apostle Paul; he declared, "I am the chief of sinners."
But here is One who attained the highest point of human
excellence, who was acknowledged even by His enemies to
be blameless, who declares Himself to be sinless.
If, then, the Son of Man were not the promised Redeemer,
He, the humblest of mankind, might justly be accused of
pride ; the purest of mankind would be deemed to be un-
conscious of the evil that was in Him. He who looked so
deeply into the hearts of others is ignorant of His own; the
truest of mankind is guilty of the worst of falsehoods ; the
noblest of mankind guilty of the sin of sins the belief that
He had no sin. Let but the infidel grant us that human na-
ture has never attained to what it attained in the character
of Jesus, then we carry him still farther, that even He whom
he acknowledges to be the purest of men declared Himself
to be spotless, which, if it were false, would at once do away
with all the purity which he grants was His. It was not
only the outward acts, but the inner life of Jesus which was
The Sinlessness of Christ. 687
so pure. His mind regulates every other mind ; it moves in
perfect harmony with the mind of God. In all the just men
that ever lived you will find some peculiarity carried into
excess. We note this in the zeal of St. John, in the courage
of St. Peter, in the truth-seeking of St. Thomas. It was not
so with Jesus : no one department of His human nature ever
superseded another : all was harmony there. The one sound
which has corne down from God in perfect melody, is His life,
the entire unbroken music of humanity.
We pass on to our second subject the power there is in
the manifested sinlessness of Jesus to take away the sins of
the world. There are two aspects in which we are to con-
sider this: first in reference to man, and secondly in reference
to God. Our subject to-day will confine itself to the first ;
on the other, we simply say this : there is, in the eternal con-
stitution of the heavenly government, that which makes the
life and death of Jesus the atonement for the world's sins.
Human nature, which fell in Adam, rose again in Christ ; in
Him it became a different thing altogether in God's sight
redeemed now, hereafter to be perfected.
But we leave this for the present, and consider how the
world was purified by the change of its own nature. " If I
be lifted up I will draw all men unto me." There are three
ways by which this may be done by faith, by hope, and by
love. It is done by faith, for the most degrading thing in
the heart of man is the disbelief in the goodness of human
nature. We live in evil, and surrounded by evil, until we
have almost ceased to believe in greatness of mind or char-
acter. The more a man increases in knowledge of the world,
the more does he suspect human nature ; a knowing man,
according to worldly phraseology, is one that will trust no
one. . He knows that he himself has his price, and he beiieves
that he can buy any one else : and this may be called the
second fall of man that moment when all our boyish belief
in goodness passes away; when such degradation and an-
guish of soul comes on, that we cease to believe in woman's
purity or in man's integrity ; when a man has fallen so low
there is nothing in this world that can raise him, except
faith in the perfect innocence of Jesus. Then it is that there
bursts upon the world that of which the world never
dreamed entire and perfect purity, spotless integrity no
mere dreaming of philosophers and sages though the dream
were a blessed thing to have; the tangible living Being be
fore us, whom we can see, and touch, and hear, so that a man
is able to come to his brother with trust in elevated humanity
and to say, u This is He of whom the prophets did write." '
688 The Sinks sness of Christ.
But secondly, trust in Divine humanity elevates the
by hope. You must have observed the hopefulness of the
character of Jesus his hopefulness for human nature. If
ever there were one who might have despaired, it was He.
Full of love Himself, He was met with every sort of unkind-
ness, every kind of derision. There was treachery in one of
His disciples, dissension amongst them all. He was engaged
in the hardest work that man ever tried. He was met by
the hatred of the whole world, by torture and the cross ; and
yet never did the hope of human nature forsake the Redeem-
er's soul. He would not break the bruised reed nor quench
the smoking flax. There was a spark mingling even in the
lowest humanity, which He would fain have fanned into a
blaze. The lowest publican Jesus could call to Him and
touch his heart ; the lowest profligate that was ever trodden
under foot by the world was one for whom He could hope
still. If He met with penitents, He would welcome them ;
if they were not penitents, but yet felt the pangs of detected
guilt, still with hopefulness He pointed to forgiven human-
ity : this was His word, even to the woman brought to Him
by her accusers, " Go, and sin no more ;" in His last moments
on the cross, to one who was dying by His side, He prom-
ised a place in Paradise : and the last words that broke from
the Redeemer's lips what were they but hope for our hu-
manity, while the curses were ringing in His ears ? " Fa-
ther, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Now it is this hopefulness that raises hope in us. Chris-
tian brethren, we dare to hope for that nature which Jesus
loved, we dare to forgive that nature which Jesus conde-
scended to wear. This frail, evil, weak humanity of ours,
these hearts that yield to almost every gust of temptation,
the Son of Man hoped for v/nem.
And thirdly, it is done also by love; hate narrows the
heart, love expands the heart. To hate is to be miserable ;
to love is to be happy. To love is to have almost the power
of throwing aside sin. See the power of love in the hearts
of those around Him. He comes to a desponding man,
nourishing dark thoughts of the world ; He speaks encourag-
ingly, and the language of that man is, " Lord, I will follow
thee whithersoever thou goest." He goes to a man who had
loved money all his life. He treats him as a man, and the
man's heart is conquered: "Behold, Lord, the half of my
goods I give to the poor." He conies to the coward, who
had denied Him, and asks him simply, "Lovest thou Me:"
and the coward becomes a martyr, and dares to ask to be
crucified. He comes to a sinful woman, who had spent
The Sinlessness of Christ. 689
sums on the adornment of her person, and the ointment
which was intended for herself was poured in love upon His
feet, mingling with her tears. " She loved much," and much
was forgiven.
And it was not during the Redeemer's life alone that the
power of His love extended. It was manifested also after
His death. There was the healing act done on the man who
asked for alms. For this the apostles were carried before
the Sadducees, and the man on whom this miracle was done
stood by them, full of strength and courage. The day be-
fore he had been a miserable, cringing suppliant, beseeching
pity from the passers-by. But all the wailing tone is gone ;
the attitude of the suppliant has passed away, and the reno-
vated cripple fronts the supreme judicature of Israel with a
lion heart. Ask you what has inspired and dignified that
man, and raised him higher in the scale of humanity ? It
was the power of love. It is not so much the manifestation
of this doctrine or that doctrine, that can separate the soul
from sin. It is not the law. It is not by pressing on the
lower nature to restrain it, that this can be done, but it is by
elevating it. He speaks not to the degraded of the sinful-
ness of sin, but He dwells upon the love of the Father, upon
His tender mercies ; and if a man would separate himself
from the bondage of guilt, there is no other way than this.
My Christian brethren, forget that miserable past life of
yours, and look up to the streams of mercy ever flowing
from the right hand of God.
My brethren, it is on this principle that we desire to
preach to the heathen. We would preach neither high
Church nor low Church doctrine. We desire to give* Jesus
Christ to the world ; and in pleading for this Society* I will
not endeavor to excite your sympathies by drawing a pic-
ture of the heathen world suspended over unutterable mis-
ery, and dropping minute by minute into everlasting wretch-
edness. It is easy to do this ; and then to go away calmly
and quietly to our comfortable meals and our handsome
habitations, satisfied with having demonstrated so tremen-
dous a fact. But this we say, if we would separate the world
from sin, and from, the penalty of sin, and the inward misery
of the heart attendant on sin in this world and the world to
come, it is written in Scripture, "There is none other name
under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved," than the name of Jesus.
* Church Missionary Society.
690 Christ's Way of Dealing with Sin.
X.
CHRIST'S WAY OF DEALING WITH SIN.
"And immediately, when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so rea-
soned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in
your hearts ? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be
forgiven thee ; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk ? But that
ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins (he
saith to the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed,
and go thy way into thine house." Mark ii. 8-11.
THIS anecdote is doubtless a familiar one to ns all.
The Son of God was teaching in a house full of listeners,
round which crowds were pressing. The friends of a poor
palsied man desired His aid. It was scarcely possible for
one person to edge his way through the press, where all
longed to hear, and none of the crowd were likely to give
place; but, for the cumbrous apparatus of a pallet borne by
four, it was impossible. Therefore they ascended by the
outside staircase, which, in Oriental countries leads to the
flat roof, which they broke up, and let their friend down in
the midst, before Jesus. No doubt this must have struck
every one. But the impression produced on the spectators
would probably have been very different from that produced
on Christ. They that saw the bed descending from the roof
over the heads of all, and who had before seen the fruitless
efforts that had been made to get in, and now remembered
that he who had been farthest from Christ was unexpect-
edly in a few minutes nearest to Him, could not have with-
held that applause which follows a successful piece of dex-
terity. They would have admired the perseverance, or the
ingenuity, or the inventiveness.
On none of these qualities did Christ fix as an explanation
of the fact. He went deeper. He traced it to the deepest
source of power that exists in the mind of man. "When
Jesus saw their/<r^YA." For as love is deepest in the being
of God, so faith is the mightiest principle in the soul of man.
Let us distinguish their several essences. Love is the es-
sence of the Deity that which makes it Deity. Faith is
the essence of humanity, which constitutes it what it is.
And, as here, it is the warring principle of this world which
wins in life's battle. No wonder that it is written in Scrip
Christ's Way of Dealing with Sm. 69.1
ture " This is the victory that overcometh the world, even
our faith." No wonder it is said, " All things are possible
to him that believeth." It is that which wrestles with diffi-
culty, remo\ 7 es mountains, tramples upon impossibilities. It
is this spirit which in the common affairs of life, known as a
" sanguine temperament," never says " impossible " and nev-
er believes in failure, leads the men of the world to their
most signal successes, making them believe a thing possible
because they hope it ; and giving substantial reality to that
which before was a shadow and a dream.
It was this " substance of things hoped for " that gave
America to Columbus, when billows, miles deep, rose be-
tween him and the land, and the men he commanded well-
nigh rose in rebellion against the obstinacy which believed
in " things not yet seen." It was this that crowned the
Mohammedan arms for seven centuries with victory : so
long as they believed themselves the champions of the One
God with a mission from Him, they were invincible. And
it is this which so often obtains for some new system of
medicine the honor of a cure, when the real cause of cure is
only the patient's trust in the remedies.
So it is in religion. For faith is not something heard of
in theology alone, created by Christianity, but it is one of
the commonest principles of life. He that believes a bless-
ing is to be got, that " God is a rewarder of them that dili-
gently seek Him," will venture much, and will likewise win
much. For, as with this palsied man, faith is inventive, ever
fertile in expedients like our own English character, never
knowing when it has been foiled ; and then nearest victory
at the very moment when the last chance has seemed -to fail.
We divide our subject into
I. The malady presented to Christ.
II. His treatment of it.
I. The malady, apparently, was nothing more than palsy.
But not as such did Jesus treat it. The by-standers might
have been surprised at the first accost of Jesus to the para-
lytic man. It was not, " Take up thy bed and walk ;" but
"Thy sins be forgiven thee." As with their faith, so it was
here. He went deeper than perseverance or ingenuity. He
goes deeper than the outward evil ; down to the evil, the
root of all evil, properly the only evil sin. He read in that
sufferer's heart a deeper wish than appeared in the outward
act, the consequences of a burden worse than palsy, the
longing for a rest more profound than release from pain
the desire to be healed of guilt. It was in reply to this tacit
692 Christ's Way of Dealing with Sin,
application that the words "Thy sins be forgiven thee*
were spoken.
Now, sin has a twofold set of consequences. 1. The natu-
ral consequences. 2. The moral consequences.
1. By the natural, we mean those results which come in-
evitably in the train of wrong-doing, by what we call the
laws of nature visiting themselves on the outward condition
of a sinner, by which sin and suffering are linked together.
As for example, when an intemperate man ruins his health,
or an extravagant man leaves himself broken in fortune ; or
when tyrannical laws bring an uprising of a people against
a tyrant : these are respectively* the natural penalties of
wrong-doing.
Here, apparently, palsy had been the natural result of sin ;
for otherwise the address of Christ was out of place and
meaningless. And what we are concerned to remark is,
that these natural consequences of sin are often invisible as
well as inevitable. Probably not one of the four friends
who bore him suspected such a connection. Possibly not
even his physician. But there were two at least to whom
the connection was certain the conscience of the palsied
man himself, whose awakened memory traced back the trem-
bling of those limbs to the acts of a youth long past ; and to
the all-seeing eye of Him to whom past, present, and future
are but one.
And such experience, brethren, is true, doubtless, much
oftener than we imagine. The irritable temperament, the
lost memory which men bewail, the over-sensitive brain, as
if causeless who can tell how they stand connected with
sins done long ago? For nothing here stands alone and
causeless. Every man, with his strength and his weaknesses,
stunted in body or dwarfed in heart, palsied in nerve or
deadened in sensibility, is the exact result and aggregate of
all the past all that has been done by himself, and all that
has been done by his ancestors, remote or near. The Saviour
saw in this palsied man the miserable wreck of an ill-spent
life.
2. Now quite distinct from these are the moral conse-
quences of guilt : by which I mean those which tell upon
che character and inward being of the man who sins. In
one sense, no doubt, Jt is a natural result, inasmuch as it is
oy a law, regular and unalterable, a man becomes by sin
deteriorated in character, or miserable. Now these are two-
fold, negative and positive the loss of some blessing, or
the accruing of some evil to the heart. Loss as when by
sinning we lose the capacity for all higher enjoyments ; for
Christ's Way of Dealing with Sin. 693
none can sin without blunting his sensibilities. He has lost
the zest of a pure life, the freshness and the flood of happi
ness which come to every soul when it is delicate, and pure,
and natural. This is no light loss. If any one here con-
gratulates himself that sin has brought to him no positive
misery, my brother, I pray you to remember that God's
worst curse was pronounced upon the serpent tempter. Ap-
parently it was far less than that pronounced on the woman,
but really it was far more terrible. Not pain, not shame
no, these are remedial, and may bring penitence at last but
to sink the angel in the animal, the spirit in the flesh ; to be
a reptile, and to eat the dust of degradation as if it were
natural food. Eternity has no damnation deeper than
that.
Then, again, a positive result the dark and dreadful lone-
liness that comes from doing wrong a conscious unrest
which plunges into business, or pleasure, or society, not for
the love of these things, but to hide itself from itself as
Adam did in the trees of the garden, because it dare not
hear the voice of God } nor believe in His Presence. Do we
not know something of a self-reproach and self-contempt,
which, alternating at times with pride, almost tear the soul
asunder ? And such was the state of this man. His pains
were but the counterpart and reflection of a deeper sorrow.
Pain had laid him on a bed, and said to him, " Lie there face
to face with God and think!" We pass on now to con-
sider
II. Christ's treatment of that malady.
By the declaration of God's forgiveness. Brethren, if the
Gospel of our Master mean any thing it means this the
blotting out of sin : " To declare His righteousness in the
remission of sins that are past." It is the declaration of the
highest name of God love. Let us understand what for-
giveness is. The forgiveness of God acts upon the moral
consequences of sin directly and immediately ; on the nat-
ural, mediately and indirectly.
Upon the moral consequences directly. Remorse passes
into penitence and.love. There is no more loneliness, for
God has taken up His abode there. No more self-contempt,
for he whom God has forgiven learns to forgive himself.
There is no more unrest, for " being justified by faith, we
have peace with God." Then the fountains of the great
deep are broken up, and unwonted Eappy tears can come
as with the woman in the Gospels. I pray you to observe
that this comes directly, with no interval " Being justified
694 Christ V Way of Dealing with Sin.
by faith." For God's love is not an offer but a gift ; not
clogged with conditions, but free as the air we breathe.
Upon the natural consequences, not directly, but indirectly
and mediately. The forgiveness of Christ did riot remove
the palsy ; that was the result of a separate, distinct act of
Christ. It is quite conceivable that it might never have
been removed at all that he might have been forgiven, and
the palsy suffered to remain. God might have dealt with
him as He did in David's case : on his repentance there came
to him the declaration of God's pardon, his person was ac-
cepted, the moral consequences were removed, but the nat-
ural consequences remained. " The Lord hath put away thy
sin, nevertheless the child which is born to thee shall die."
Consider, too, that without a miracle they must have re-
mained in this man's case. It is so in everyday life. If the
intemperate man repents he will receive forgiveness, but will
that penitence give him back the steady hand of youth?
Or if the suicide between the moment of draining the poison-
ed cup and that of death repent of his deed, will that arrest
the operation of the poison ? A strong constitution or the
physician may possibly save life ; but penitence has nothing
to do with it. Say that the natural penal consequence of
crime is the scaffold : Did the pardon given to the dying
thief unnail his hands? Did Christ's forgiveness interfere
with the natural consequences of his guilt ?
And thus, we are brought to a very solemn and awful con-
sideration, awful because of its truth and simplicity. The
consequences of past deeds remain. They have become part
of the chain of the universe effects which now are causes,
and will work and interweave themselves with the history
of the world forever. You can not undo your acts. If you
have depraved another's will, and injured another's soul, it
may be in the grace of God that hereafter you will be per-
sonally accepted and the consequences, of your guilt inward-
ly done away, but your penitence can not undo the evil you
have done, and God's worst punishment may be that you
may have to gaze half frantic on the ruin you have caused, on
the evil you have done, which you might have left undone,
but which being done is now beyond y.our power forever.
This is the eternity of human acts. The forgiveness of God
the blood of Christ itself does not undo the past.
And yet even here the grace of God's forgiveness is not in
vain. It can not undo the natural consequences of sin, but it
may by His mercy transform them into blessings. For ex-
ample, suppose this man's palsy to have been left still with
him, himself accepted, his soul at peace. Well, he is thence
Christ's Way of Dealing with Sin. 695
forth a crippled man. But crippling, pain are these neces-
sarily evils? Do we not say continually that sorrow and
pain are God's loving discipline given to His legitimate chil-
dren, to be exempt^from which were no blessing, proving
them to be " bastards and not sons?" And why should not
that palsy be such to him, though it was the result of his
own fault? Once, when it seemed in the light of the guilty
conscience only the foretaste of coming doom the outward a
type of the inward, every pang sending him farther from
God, it was a curse.^ Now, when penitence and love had
come, and that palsy was received with patience, meekness,
why may it not be a blessing ? What makes the outward
events of life blessings or the reverse ? Is it not all from
ourselves ? Did not dissolution become quite another thing
by the Fall changed into death; assuming thereby an en-
tirely altered character : no longer felt as a natural blessed
herald, becoming the messenger of God, summoning to high-
er life, but now obtaining that strange name the " king of
terrors ?" And in Christ, death becomes our minister again :
" Ours," as St. Paul says, " with all other things." The cross
of Christ has restored to death something more blessed than
its original peacefulness. A sleep now: not death at all.
And will not a changed heart change all things around us, and
make the worst consequence of .our own misdoing minister
to our eternal welfare ? So that God's forgiveness, assured
to us in the cross of Christ, is a complete remedy for sin, act-
ing on its natural consequences by transformation indirectly ;
on its moral results directly, by removing them.
Lastly, let us learn from this the true aim and meaning of
miracles. Let us attend to the account our Master gives us
of the reason why He performed this miracle. Read verses
9, 10. To say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," was easy, for no
visible result could test the saying. To say, " Take up thy
bed and walk," was not apparently so easy, for failure would
cover with confusion. He said the last, leaving the infer-
ence If I can do the most difficult, then of course, I can do
the easier. Here we have the true character of a miracle : it
is the outward manifestation of the power of God, in order
that we may believe in the power of God in things that are
invisible.
Now contrast this with the popular view. Miracles arc.
commonly reckoned as proofs of Christ's mission, accrediting
His other truths, and making them, which would be other-
wise incredible, evidently from God. I hesitate not to say
that nowhere in the New Testament are they spoken of in
this way. When the Pharisees asked for evidences and
696 Christ's Way of Dealing with Sm.
signs, His reply was, " There shall no sign be given you.*
So said St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians not si-ns.
but " Christ crucified." He had no conception of our modern
notion of miracles things chiefly valuable because they can
be collected into a portable volume of evidences to prov?
that God is love : that we should love one another: that He
is the Father of ail men. These need no proofs, they arc
like the sun shining by his own light.
Christ's glorious miracles were not to prove these, but
that through the seen the unseen might^be known ; to show,
as it were by specimens, the living Power which works in
ordinary as well as extraordinary cases. For instance here,
to show that the One who is seen to say with power, "Take
up thy bed and walk," arresting the natural consequences of
sin, is actually, though unseen, arresting its moral conse-
quences. Or again, that He who bade the waves " Be still "
in Galilee, is holding now, at this moment, the winds in the
hollow of His hand. That He who healed the sick and raised
the dead, holds now and ever in His hand the issues of life
and death. For the marvellous is to show the source of the
common. Miracles were no concession to that infidel spirit
which taints our modern Christianity, and which can not be-
lieve in God's presence, except it can see Him in the super-
natural. Rather, they were to make us feel that all is mar-
vellous, all wonderful, all pervaded with a Divine presence,
and that the simplest occurrences of life are miracles.
In conclusion. Let me address those who, like this suffer-
er, are in any degree conscious either of the natural or moral
results of sin, working in them. It is apparently a proud and
& vain thing for a minister of Christ, himself tainted with
sin, feeling himself, perhaps more than any one else can feel,
the misery of a palsied heart, for such a one to give advice
to his brother-men; but it must be done, for he is but the
mouthpiece of truths greater than himself, truths which are
facts, whether he can feel them all or not.
Therefore, if there be one among us who in the central
depths of his soul is conscious of a Voice pronouncing the
past accursed, the present awful, and the future terrible I
say to him, Lose no time in disputing, as these Scribes did,
some Church question, " whether the Son of Man hath power
on earth to forgive sins ;" nor whether ecclesiastical etiquette
permits you to approach God in this way or in that way a
question as impertinent as it would have been for the palsied
man to debate whether social propriety permitted him to ap-
proach the Saviour as he did, instead of through the door.
. My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which
Regeneration. 697
stand between your soul and God succeed in keeping you
away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force
your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all ita
ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the conse-
quences of sin, but the " cleansing of the conscience from
dead works to serve the living God ;" so that if you must
suffer you shall suffer as a forgiven man.
This is the time ! Wait not for another opportunity nor
for different means. For the saying of our Lord is ever ful-
filled, " The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent take it by force."
XI.
REGENERATION.
"Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." John
iii. 5-7.
THE Church of England has apparently selected this pas-
sage for the Gospel of Trinity Sunday, because the influences
of the entire Godhead are named in different verses the re-
generating influence of the Spirit, the limitations of the Son
of Man, and the illimitable nature of the Father.
It is a threefold way in which God has revealed Himself
to man as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. First, as a Father
in opposition to that doctrine which taught that the whole
universe is God, and every part of the universe is a portion
of God. He is the Father who hath made this universe
God distinct from us : outside of us : the Creator distin-
guished from the creation.
Secondly, God has revealed Himself as a Son, as manifest-
ed in humanity, chiefly in Christ. Throughout the ages past
there has been a mediatorial humanity. Man is in a way
the reflection of God's nature the father to the child. Th'e
prophets, the lawgivers, and especially Moses, are called me-
diators, through whom God's name was known. The media-
torial system culminated in Christ, attained the acme of per-
fection in One the man Christ Jesus the express image of
His Father. The Son is the human side of the mind ofGod.
Thirdly, God has revealed himself as the Holy Spirit: not
as a Father external to us, nor as reflected in humanity still
30
698 Regeneration.
outside us, but as God within us mingling with our being.
The body of man is His temple. " In Him we live and
move, and have our being." This is the dispensation of the
Spirit: He has told us that every holy aspiration, every
thought and act, that has been on the side of right against
wrong, is a part of His holy essence, of His Spirit in us.
This is the threefold manifestation made of Himself to us
by God. But this is not all, for this alone would not be the
doctrine of the Trinity. It is quite conceivable that there
might be one living force manifested in three different ways,
without its being a trinity. Let us try and understand this
by an illustration.
Conceive a circular thin plate of metal : above it you
would see it such ; at gome yards' distance, as an oval, side-
ways, edgeways, a line. This might be the account of God's
different aspects : in one relationship to us seen as the Fa-
ther, in another as the Son, in another as the Spirit ; but this
is not the doctrine of the Trinity, it is a heresy, known in
old times by the name of Sabellianism or modal Trinity, de-
pending on our position in reference to Him.
Further. This is not merely the same part of His nature,
seen in different aspects, but diverse parts of His complex
being persons: three causes of this manifestation. Just
as our reason, our memory, our imagination, are not the
same, but really ourselves.
Let us take another illustration. A single white ray of
light, falling on a certain object, appeal's red ; on another,
blue ; on another, yellow. That is, the red alone in one case
is thrown out, the blue or yellow in another. So the differ-
ent parts of the one ray by turns become visible ; each is a
complete ray, yet the original white ray is but one.
So we believe that in that Unity of Essence there are
three living Powers which we call Persons, distinct from
each other. It is in virtue of His own incommunicable Es-
sence that God is the Father. It is the human side of His
nature by which He is revealed as the Son, so that it was
not, so to speak, a matter of choice whether the Son or the
Father should redeem the world. We believe that from all
eternity there was that in the mind of God which I have
called its human side, which made it possible for Him to be
imaged in humanity ; and that again named the Spirit, by
which He could mix and mingle Himself with us.
This is the doctrine of the Trinity, explained now, not to
point the damnatory clause of the Athanasian creed, but
only in order to seize joyfully the annual opportunity of pro-
fessing a firm belief in the dogmatic truth of the Trinity.
Regeneration. 699
We now pass on to notice more particularly the revela-
tion to us of one mode in which that blessed Trinity works.
"This will divide itself into two subjects. First, we shall en-
deavor to understand what is meant by the kingdom of
God ; and secondly, we shall consider the entrance into that
kingdom by regeneration.
Our blessed Lord says, " Except a man be born again, he
can not enter into the kingdom of God." Now that expres-
sion the kingdom of God is a Jewish one. Nicodemus
was a Jew ; and we must therefore endeavor to comprehend
how he would understand it.
By the kingdom of God, a Jew understood human society
perfected that domain on earth where God was visible and
God ruled. The whole Jewish dispensation had trained Nic-
odemus to realize this. The Jewish kingdom was a theocra-
cy, distinguished from an aristocracy and a democracy. There
were two main things observable in this. First, it was a
kingdom in which God's power was manifestly visible, by
miracles, marvels, the cloud and fire pillars, and by appear-
ances direct from the King of kings. The second matter of
importance in this conception of the Divine kingdom was
that it was a society in which a person ruled. God was the
ruler of this society ; her laws all dated from God's will, and
were right because the will of the Ruler was right. "Thus
saith the Lord," was the preface to personal messages from
their King.
Bear in mind, then, that this was Nicodemus's conception
of the kingdom, and we shall understand the conversation.
He had seen in the works of Christ the assertion of a living
Will ruling over the laws of nature. He had seen wonders
and signs. Therefore he said, " We know that Thou art a
teacher come from God :" he saw that Christ in these two
senses fulfilled the two requisites of a Divine mission. He
had seen a society growing up in acknowledgment of the
rule of a person : 'but Christ told him that something more
was needful than this: it was necessary that the subject
should be prepared for the kingdom. It was not enough
that God should draw nigh to man; but that man must
draw near to God. There must be an alteration in the man.
" Except a man be born again he can not enter the kingdom
of God."
In other words, he distinguished between a kingdom that
is visible and a kingdom that is invisible. He distinguished
between that presence of God which man can see, and that
which man can only feel. This will explain apparent con-
tradictions in Christ's language.
700 . Regeneration.
To the Pharisee, on one occasion, He said, " If I by the
finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God
is come unto you." But again He said, " It is not lo here,
nor lo there. For the kingdom of God is within you."
There is a kingdom, therefore, in which the Eternal Spirit
moves, whereof the senses take cognizance. Nicodemus saw
that kingdom when he gazed on the miracles and outward
signs, and felt that they w^ere evidences, and from these and
from the gathering society around the Lord, drew the con-
clusion that no man could do these things except God were
-with him.
There w r as the outward manifestation. But there is
another kingdom which is the peculiar domain of the Spirit,
which " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered
into the heart of man to conceive," into which flesh and
blood can not enter. Of this kingdom Jesus said to Peter,
" Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath
not -revealed it." And of this St. Paul said, " Now this I
say, brethren, that flesh and blood can not inherit the king-
dom of God."
Unless an inward change takes place, though surrounded
by God's kingdom, we can not enter into it. The eye, the
ear, can take no cognizance of this; it must be revealed by
the Spirit to the spirit.
Pass we on, secondly, to consider the entrance into this
kingdom by regeneration. As there is a twofold kingdom,
so is there a twofold entrance.
1. By the baptism of water. 2. By the baptism of the
Spirit. Now respecting the first of these, commentators
have been greatly at variance. A large number of Prot-
estant commentators have endeavored to explain this pas-
sage away, as if it did not apply to baptism at all. But by
all the laws of correct interpretation, we are compelled to
admit that "born of water" has here a reference to baptism.
Into God's universe or kingdom \ve penetrate by a double
nature by our senses and by our spirit. To this double
nature God has made a twofold revelation. God's witness
to our senses is baptism ; God's witness to our spirit is His
Spirit. "He that believeth hath the witness in himself."
Now let us observe the strength of that expression of Christ,
" Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he can
not enter into the kingdom of God." A very strong expres-
sion, but not more so than the baptismal service of the Church
of England. "Born of water" is equivalent to regenera-
tion by baptism.
There are those who object to this formulary of our Church,
Regeneration. 701
because it seems to them to tell of a magical or miraculous
power in the hands of the priest. In answer to them, we
point to this passage of the inspired Word of God : let us
try and understand in what sense it is true that a man is
born of water. Now we hold baptism to be the sign, or
proof, or evidence, of a spiritual fact. It is riot the fact, but
it substantiates the fact.
The spiritual fact is God's covenant. Let us take an il
lustration. The right of a man to his property is in right ot
his ancestor's will ; it is in virtue of that will or intention
that the man inherits that property. But because that will
is invisible, it is necessary that it should be made manifest
in visible symbols ; and therefore there is a piece of parch-
ment by which it is made tangible, and that, though only
the manifestation of the will, is called " the will " itself.
Nay, so strongly is this word w r ith its associations rooted in
our language, that it may never have occurred to us that it
is but a figurative expression ; and the law might, if it had
been so chosen, have demanded another expression of the
will.
There have been cases in which a high-minded heir-at-law
has accepted the verbal testimony of another to the inten-
tions of his ancestor, where there has been no outward
manifestation whatever, and so has given away the property
because the inward will of his ancestor was to him all in
all.
Similarly, baptism is the revealed will of God : that is, it
is the instrument that declares God's will. God's will is a
thing invisible ; verbally, the will runs thus " Fear not, lit-
tle flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the
kingdom."
And just as the instrument which declares a will is called
by a figure of speech " the will " itself, although it is but the
manifestation of it, so the ecclesiastical instrument which de-
clares regeneration is called regeneration in the Bible and in
our Church service. Baptism is " regeneration " as a parch-
ment is a " will ;" and, therefore it is that we read in this
passage, " Born of water ;" and therefore it is that St. Peter
says, " Baptism saves us ;" and St. Paul says, " Buried with
Christ in baptism."
Lastly, we pass on to consider the entrance into this king-
dom by a spiritual change.
The ground on which Christ states it is our human nature,
We have a twofold nature the nature of the animal and the
nature of God, and in the order of God's providence we begin
with the animal. " Howbeit," says St. Paul. " that is not first
702 Regeneration.
which is spiritual, but that which is natural." Now the mo-
ment when these natures are exchanged is the moment of
spiritual regeneration.
A man is to be born of water, but far rather of the Spirit.
Of this expression there are several interpretations : first,
the fanatical one. Men of enthusiastic temperaments, chiefly
men whose lives have been irregular, whose religion has
come to them suddenly, interpreting all cases by their own
experiences, have said that the exercise of God's Spirit is ever
sudden and supernatural, and it has seemed to them that to
try and bring up a child for God, in the way of education, is
to bid defiance to that Spirit which is like the wind, blowing
" where it listeth ;" and if a man can not tell the day or hour
when he was converted, to those persons he does not seem to
be a Christian at all. He may be holy, humble, loving, but
unless there is that visible manifestation of how and when
he w r as changed, he must be still ranked as unregenerate.
Another class of persons, of cold, calm temperament, to
whom fanaticism is a crime and enthusiasm a thing to be
avoided, are perpetually rationalizing with Scripture, and
explaining away in some low and commonplace way the
highest manifestation of the Spirit of God. Thus Paley tells
us that this passage belongs to the Jews, who had forgotten
the Messiah's kingdom ; but to speak of a spiritual, regen-
erative change as necessary for a man brought up in the
Church of England, is to open the door to all fanaticism.
There is a third class, who confound the regeneration of
baptism with that of the Spirit, who identify, in point of
time, the being born of water and of the Spirit. And it
seems to them that regeneration after that is a word without
meaning. Of this class there are two divisions : those who
hold it openly in the Church of Rome, and those who do not
go to the full extent of Romish doctrine on this subject.
These will not say that a miracle has taken place, but they
say that a seed of grace has thus been planted. Whichever
of these views be taken, for all practical purposes the result
must be the same. If this inward spiritual change has taken
place at baptism, then to talk of regeneration after that must
be an impertinence. But, brethren, looking at this passage s
we can not be persuaded that it belongs to the Jew alone,
nor can we believe that the strength of that expression is
mere baptism by water. Here is recorded that which is
true not for the Jew or heathen only, but for all the human
race, without exception. " Except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit, he can not enter the kingdom of God."
In our life there is a time in which our spirit has gained
Regeneration. 703
the mastery over the flesh ; it is not important t6 know
when, but whether it has taken place.
The first years of our existence are simply animal ; then
the life of a young man is not that of mere instinct, it is a
life of passion, with mighty indignations, strong aversions.
And then passing on through life we sometimes see a person
in whom these things are merged ; the instincts are there
only for the support of existence ; the passions are so ruled
that they have become gentleness, and meekness, and love.
Between these two extremes there must have been a middle
point, when the life of sense, appetite, and passion, which had
ruled, ceased to rule, and was ruled over by the life of the
spirit : that moment, whether it be long or short, whether it
be done suddenly or gradually, whether it come like the
rushing mighty wind, or as the slow, gentle zephyr of the
spring whenever that moment was, then was the moment
of spiritual regeneration. There are cases in which this
never takes place at all ; there are grown men and old men
merely children still -still having the animal appetites, and
living in the base, and conscious, and vicious indulgence of
those appetites which in the child were harmless. These are
they who have not yet been born again. Born of water they
may have been, born of God's eternal Spirit they have not
been ; before such men can enter into the eternal kingdom of
their Father, that word is as true to them as to Nicodemus
of old, " Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born
again." Oh ! it is an awful thing to see a spectacle such as
that ; an awful thing to see the blossom still upon the tree
when the autumn is passed and the winter is at hand. An
awful thing to see a man, who ought to be clothed in Christ,
still living the life of the flesh and" of passion : the summer is
past, the harvest is ended, and he is not saved.
Now let us briefly apply what has been said.
1. Do not attempt to date too accurately the transition
moment.
********
2. Understand that the " flesh," or natural state, is wrong
only when out of place. In its place it is imperfection, not
evil. There is no harm in leaves or blossoms in spring but
in autumn ! There is no harm in the appetites of childhood,
or the passions of youth, but great harm when these are still
unsubdued in age. Observe, therefore, the flesh is not to be
exercised, but the spirit strengthened. This I say then,
" Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the
flesh."
3. Do not mistake the figurative for the literal.
704 An Election Sermon.
Baptism is regeneration figuratively : " The like figure
whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the put-
ting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good
conscience toward God), by the resurrection of -Jesus Christ"
********
The things to be anxious about are not baptism, not
confirmation ; but the spiritual facts for which baptism and
confirmation stand.
XII.
AN ELECTION SERMON.
A FRAGMENT.
"And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was snrnamed
Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which know-
est the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen, that
he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by
transgression fell, that he might go to his own place. And they gave forth
their lots ; and the lot fell upon Matthias ; and he was numbered with the
eleven apostles." Acts i. 23-26.
THIS is the account of the earliest appointment of an apos-
tle or bishop over the Church of Christ.
It stands remarkably distinguished from the episcopal
elections of after ages. Every one acquainted with Church
history knows that the election of a bishop in the first
centuries, and indeed for many ages, was one of the bitterest
and fiercest questions which shook the Church of Christ.
********
[Appointment by the people Presbyters Various cus-
toms. Anecdote of Ambrose of Milan. Appointment by
the Emperor or Bishop of Rome. Quarrel of ages between
the Emperor and the Pope.]
Contradistinguished from this in spirit was the first ap-
pointment which ended in the selection of Matthias. Holy,
calm, wise presided over by an apostolic and Christian
spirit.
It will be obvious at once why this subject has been
selected. During the course of this week, England will be
shaken to her centre with the selection of representatives
who shall legislate for her hereafter, either in accordance
with, or in defiance of, the principles of her constitution. In
some places, as fiercely as the battle was formerly carried on
An Election Sermon. 705
between Guelph and Ghibelline, or between faction and
faction in the choice of bishops, so fiercely will the contest
rage in the choice of representatives.
Delicate and difficult as the introduction of such a sub-
ject from the pulpit must be, yet it seems to me the im-
perative duty of a minister of Christ from which he can
not, except in cowardice, shrink to endeavor to make clear
the great Christian landmarks which belong to such an oc-
currence. But let me be'understood. His duty is not to in-
troduce politics in the common sense of the word, meaning
thereby the views of some particular party. The pulpit is
not to be degraded into the engine of a faction. Far, far
above such questions, it ought to preserve the calm dignity
of a voice which speaks for eternity, and not for time. If
possible, not one word should drop by which a minister's
own political leanings can be discovered.
Yet there must be broad principles of right and wrong in
such a transaction, as in any other. And, in discharge of
my duty, I desire to place those before you. We shall con-
sider
I. The object of the election spoken of in my text.
II. The mode of the election.
III. The spirit in which it was conducted.
I. The object of the election. To elect a bishop of the
universal Church.
It might be that in process of time the apostle so chosen
should be appointed to a particular city as St. James was
to Jerusalem. But it is plain his duty as an apostle was
owed to the general assembly and Church of Christ, and not
to that particular city; and if he had allowed local partiali-
ties or local interests to stand before the interests of the
whole, he would have neglected the duty of his high office.
Also, that if those who appointed him considered the in-
terest of Jerusalem in the first instance, instead of his quali-
fications as a bishop of the Church universal, they would have
failed in their duty.
In the third century, a bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, in a
celebrated sentence has clearly and beautifully stated this
principle "Episcopatus unus est, cw/ws," etc. The episco-
pate, one and indivisible, held in its entirety by each bishop,
every part standing for the whole. That is, if he were a
bishop of Carthage or Antioch, he was to remember that it
was not the interests of Carthage over which he had to
watch, but those of the Church of Christ; Carthage being
his special allotment out of the whole. And in a^ council
20*
706 An Election Sermon.
he was to give his voice not for that which might be good
for the men of Carthage, but for the Church of Christ.
The application is plain.
The nation is one its life is a sacred life. The nation
is the Christian people, for whom Christ shed His blood-
its life is unity its death is division. The curse of a Chris-
tian^ is sectarianism the curse of a nation is faction. Each
legislator legislates for the country, not for a county or
town. Each elector holds his franchise as a sacred trust,
to be exercised not for his town, or for a faction of his town,
not for himself, or his friends, but for the general weal of the
people of England.
Let me expose a common fallacy.
We are not to be biased by asking what charity does a
candidate support, nor what view does he take of some
local question, nor whether he subscribe to tractarian or to
evangelical societies. We are, in our high responsibility,
selecting, not a president for a religious society, nor a patron
of a town, nor a subscriber to a hospital, but a legislator for
England.
II. The mode of the election.
It was partly human, partly Divine. The human element
is plain enough in that it was popular. The choice lay not
with the apostles, but with the whole Church. One hundred
and twenty met in that upper chamber : all gave in their lots
or votes. The Divine element lay in this, that it was over-
ruled by God.
Here is the main point observable. They at least took
for granted that the popular element was quite separate from
the Divine. The selected one might be the chosen of the
people, yet not the chosen of God. Hence they prayed,
" Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show
whether of these two Thou hast chosen."
The common notion is, vox populi vox Dei. In other
words, whatever the general voice wills is right. A law is
right because it is a people's will. I do not say that we
have got the full length of this idea in England. On the
Continent it has long been prevalent. Possibly it is the ex-
pression of that Antichrist " who showeth himself that he is
God;" self-will setting itself up paramount to the will of
God.
The vox populi is sometimes vox Dei, sometimes not.
The voice of the people was the voice of God when the chil-
dren of Israel rescued Jonathan from his father's unjust sen-
tence ; and when the contest between Elijah and the proph-
An Election Sermon. 707
ets of Baal having been settled, they cried, " The Lord He is
God."
Was the voice of the people the voice of God when, in
Moses's absence, they required Aaron to make them a gold-
en calf for a god ? Or when, led on by the demagogue
Demetrius, they shouted, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ?"
Or when, at the instigation of the priests, led blindfold by
them they cried, " Crucify Him ?"
The politicians of this world eagerly debate the question,
how best to secure a fair representation of the people's voice,
whether by individuals or by interests fairly balanced ? a
question, doubtless, not to be put aside. But the Christian
sees a question deeper far than the^s not how to obtain
most fairly an expression of the people's will, but how that
will shall truly represent the will of God. There is no other
question at last than this.
And we shall attain this, not by nicely balancing interest
against interest, much less by mano3uvring or by cunningly
devised expedient, to defeat the cause which we believe the
wrong one ; but by each doing all that in him lies to rouse
himself and others to a high sense of responsibility.
It is a noble thought, that of every elector going to vote,
as these men did, for the Church, for the people, for God,
and for the right, earnestly anxious that he and others should
do right.
Else to speak humanly this was an appeal to chance
and not to God ; and every election, by ballot or by suf-
frage, is else an appeal to chance.
All, therefore, depends upon the spirit in which the election
is conducted.
What constitutes the difference between an appeal to God
and an appeal to chance ?
III. The Spirit.
1. A religious spirit. "They prayed and said, Thou, Lord,
which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these
two Thou hast chosen." Now, we shall be met here at once
by an objection. This was a religious work the selection
of an apostle; but the choice of a representative is not a re-
ligious work, only a secular one.
Here we come, therefore, to the very pith and marrow of
the whole question. The distinction between religious and
secular is true in a sense, but as we make it, it is false. It is
not the occupation, but the spirit which makes the difference.
The election of a bishop may be a most secular thing. The
election of a representative may be a religious thing St,
708 An Election Sermon.
Paul taught that nothing is profane. Sanctified by the
Word of God and prayer, St. Peter learned that nothing is
common or unclean.
* *******
[Many relics remain to us from our religious forefathers
indicative of this truth : Grace before meals ; Dei gratia on
coins of the realms ; " In the name of God," at the commence
ment of wills, oaths in court of justice ; prayers in universi*
ties before election of scholar's : all proclaim that the sim
plest acts of our domestic and political life are sacred or
profane according to the spirit in which they are performed ;
not in the question whether they are done for the State or
the Church, but whether with God or without God.]
Observe : it is not the preluding such an election with
public prayer that would make it a religious act. It is re-
ligious so far as each man discharges his part as a duty and
solemn responsibility.
If looked on in this spirit by the higher classes, would the
debauchery and the drunkenness which are fostered by rich
men of all parties among the poor for their own purposes, be
possible? Would they, for the sake of one vote, or a hun-
dred votes, brutalize their fellow-creatures ?
2. It is implied in this, that it must be done conscien-
tiously.
Each Christian found himself in possession of a new right
that of giving a vote or casting a lot.
Like all rights, it was a duty. He had not a right to do
what he liked. His right was only the duty of doing right.
And if any one had swayed him to support the cause of
Barnabas or that of Matthias on any motives except this
one "You ought " he had so far injured his conscience.
The conscience of man is a holy, sacred thing. The worst
of crimes is to injure a human conscience. Better kill ths
body. Remember how strongly St. Paul speaks, " When ye
sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience.;
ye sin against Christ." And that sin, remember, consisted in
leading them to do a thing which, though right in itself, they
thought wrong.
Now there is an offense against the laws of the State which
all men agree in treating with a smile.
My brethren, bribery is a sin a sin against God. Not
because a particular law has been made against it, but be-
cause it lowers the sense of personal responsibility, blunts
the conscience, dethrones the God within the man's soul, and
erects selfishness, and greed, and interest, in His stead. ATM!
An Election Sermon, 709
whether you do it directly or indirectly directly by giving,
indirectly by withdrawing, assistance or patronage vou sin
against Christ.
3. It was not done from personal interest.
There were two 'candidates, Barnabas and Matthias. Now
if the supporters of these two had been influenced chiefly by
such considerations as blood-relationship, or the chance of
favor and promotion, manifestly a high function would have
been degraded.
In secular matters, however, we do not judge so. A man
generally decides according to his professional or his person-
al interests. You know almost to a certainty beforehand
which way a man will vote, if you know his profession. If a
man be a fanner, or a clergyman, or a merchant, you can
pretty surely guess on which side he will range himself.
Partly, no doubt, this is involuntary the result of those
prejudices which attach to us all from association. But it is
partly voluntary. We know that we are thinking not of
the general good, but of our own interests. And thus a
farmer would think himself justified in looking at a question
simply as it affected his class, and a noble as it affected his
caste, and a working-man as it bore upon the working-
classes.
Brethren, we are Christians. Something of a principle
higher than this ought to be ours. What is the law of the
cross of Christ ? The sacrifice of the One for the whole, the
cheerful surrender of the few for the many. Else, what do
we more than others ?
These are fine words patriotism, public principle, purity.
Be sure these words are but sentimental expressions, ex-
cept as they spring out of the cross of Christ.
********
Application.
I have endeavored to keep entirely unseen my own politi-
cal views. I may have failed, but not voluntarily.
Remember, in conclusion, the matter of paramount import-
ance to be decided this week is, not whether a preponderance
shall be insured for one of the great parties which divide the
country or the other. That is important, but it is second-
ary. The important thing to be devoutly wished is, that
each man shall give his vote as these men did conscientious-
ly, religiously, unselfishly, lovingly.
Better that he should support the wrong cause conscien-
tiously than the right one insincerely. Better be a true
man on the side of wrong, than a false man on the side of
riijht.
7io haze Blessing kis Sons.
XIII.
ISAAC BLESSING HIS SONS.
" And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim,
so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him,
My son : and he said unto him, Behold, Jiere am I. And he said, Behold
now, I am old, I know not the day of my death : now therefore take, I pray
thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take
me some venison ; and make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to
me, that I may eat ; that my soul may bless thee before I die. " Gen. xxvii. 1-4,
Ix chapter xxv. we find Abraham preparing for death by
a last will : making Isaac his heir, and providing for his
other children by giving them gifts while he yet lived, and
so sending them out into the world. In this chapter, the
heir himself is preparing to die. The rapidity with which
these chapters epitomize life, bringing its few salient points
together, is valuable as illustrative of what human existence
is. It is a series of circles intersecting each other, but going
on in a line. A few facts comprise man's life. A birth a
marriage another birth a baptism a will and then a
funeral : and the old circle begins again.
Isaac is about to declare his last will. It is a solemn act,
in whatever light we view it, if it were only for the thought
that we are writing words which will not be read till we are
gone. But it is solemn, too, because it is one of those acts
which tell of the immortal. First, in the way of prophetic
prescience. Is it not affecting to think of a human being, not
sick, nor in pain, with his natural force unabated, calmly sit-
ting down to make arrangements for what shall be when he
is in his last long sleep ? But the act of an immortal is visi-
ble also in that a dead man rules the world, as it were, long
after his decease. Being dead, in a sense he yet speaketh.
He is yet present with the living. His existence is protracted
beyond its natural span. His will is law. This is a kind of
evidence of his immortality : for the obedience of men to what
he has willed is a sort of recognition of his present being.
Isaac was not left without warnings of his coming end.
These warnings came in the shape of dimness of eyes and
failing of sight. You can conceive a state in which man
should have no warnings : and instead of gradual decay,
should drop suddenly, without any intimation, into eternity.
Such an arrangement might have been. But God has in
Isaac Blessing his Sons. 7 1 1
mercy provided reminders. For we sleep in this life of ours
a charmed sleep, which it is hard to break. And if the road
were of unbroken smoothness, with no jolt or shock, or un-
evenness in the journey, we should move swiftly on, nothing
breaking the dead slumber till we awake suddenly, like the
rich man in the parable, lifting up our eyes in heaven or in
hell. Therefore God has given these reminders. Some of
them regular such as failing of sight, falling out of hair, de-
cay of strength, loss of memory which are as stations in
the journey, telling us how far we have travelled : others
irregular such as come in the form of sickness, bereave-
ment, pain like sudden shocks which jolt, arouse, and awaken.
Then the man considers, and like Isaac, says, " Behold, I am
old, I know not the day of my death." We will consider
I. Isaac's preparation for death.
II. The united treachery of Jacob and Rebekah.
1. Isaac's preparation for death. First, he longed fof the
performance of Esau's filial kindness as for a last time. Esau
was his favorite son : not on account of any similarity be-
tween them, but just because they were dissimilar. The re-
pose, and contemplativeness, and -inactivity of Isaac found a
contrast in which it rested, in the energy and even the reck-
lessness of his first-born. It w r as natural to yearn for the
feast of his son's affection for the last time. For there is
something peculiarly impressive in whatever is done for the
last time. Then the simplest acts contract a kind of sacred-
ness. The last walk in the country we are leaving. The
last time a dying man sees the sun set. The last words of
those from whom we have parted, which we treasure up as
more than accidental, almost prophetic. The winding up of
a watch, as the last act at night. The signature of a will.
In the life of Him in whom we find every feeling which be-
longs to unperverted humanity, the same desire is found : a
trait, therefore, of the heart which is universal, natural, and
right. " With desire I have desired to eat this passover with
you before I suifer. For I say unto you, I will not drink
henceforth of the fruit of the'vine until that day when I
drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." It was the
jLast Supper.
2. By making his last testamentary dispositions. Appar
ently they were premature, but he did. not defer them: part-
iy because of the frailty of life, and the uncertainty whether
there may be any to-morrow for that which is put off to-day :
partly, perhaps, because he desired to have all earthly thoughts
done with and put away. Isaac lived thirty or forty years
7 1 2 Isaac Blessing his Sons.
after this: but he was a man set apart: like one who in
Roman Catholic language had received extreme unction, and
had done with this world ; and when he came to die, there
Tvould be no anxieties about the disposition of property to
harass him. It is good to have all such things done with
before that hour comes: there is 'something incongruous in
the presence of a lawyer in the death-room, agitating the last
hours. The first portion of our lives is spent in learning the
use of our senses and faculties : ascertaining where we are and
what. The second, in using those powers, and acting in the
given sphere : the motto being, " Work, the night eometh."
A third portion, between active life and the grave, like the
twilight between day and night, not light enough for work-
ing, nor yet quite dark, which nature seems to accord for un-
worldliness and meditation. It is striking, doubtless, to see
an old man hale and vigorous to the last, dying at his work
like a warrior in armor. But natural feeling makes us wish,
perhaps, that an interval might be given : a season for the
statesman, such as that which Samuel had, on laying aside
the cares of office, in the schools of the prophets ; such as
Simeon had, and Anna, for a life of devotion in the temple ;
such as the laborer has when, his long day's work done, he
finds an asylum in the almshouse ; such as our Church de-
sires, where she prays a&rainst sudden death : a season of in-
terval in which to watch. And meditate, and wait.
II. The united treachery of Jacob and Rebekah. It was
treachery in both ; in one sense it was the same treachery.
Each deceived Isaac and overreached Esau. But it would
be a rough estimate to treat the two sins as identical. This
is the coarse, common way of judging. We label sins as by
a catalogue. We judge of men by their acts ; but it is far
truer to say that we can only judge the acts by the man.
You must understand the man before you can appreciate his
deed. The same deed done by two different persons ceases
to be the same. Abraham and Sarah both laughed when in-
formed that they should have a son in their old age. But
Sarah's was the laugh of skepticism ; the other, the result of
that reaction in our nature by which the most solemn
thoughts are balanced by a sense of strangeness or even
ludicrousness. The Pharisees asked a sign in unbelief :
many of the Old Te&tament saints did the same in faith.
Fine discrimination is therefore necessary to understand the
simplest deed. A very delicate analysis of character is nec-
essary to comprehend such acts as these, and rightly to ap
portion their turpitude and their palliations.
Isaac Blessing his Sons. 7 1 3
In Rebekah's case the root of the treachery was ambition ;
but here we find a trait of female character. It is a woman's
ambition, not a man's. Rebekah desired nothing for herself,
but every thing for Jacob : for him spiritual blessing at all
events, temporal distinction. She did wrong, not for her
own advantage, but for the sake of one she loved. Here is a
touch of womanhood. The same is observable in the reck-
lessness of personal consequences. So as only he might gain,
she did not care. " Upon me be the curse, my son." And it
is this which forces us, even while we must condemn, to com-
passionate. Throughout the whole of this revolting scene of
deceit and fraud, we can never forget that Rebekah was a
mother. And hence a certain interest and sympathy are sus-
tained. Another feminine trait is seen in the conduct of Re-
bekah. It was devotion to a person rather than to a principle.
A man's idolatry is for an idea, a woman's is for a person. A
man suffers for a monarchy, a woman for a king. A man's mar-
tyrdom differs from a woman's. Nay, even in their religion,
personality marks the one, attachment to an idea or principle
the other. Woman adores God in His personality, man adores
Him in His attributes. At least that is, on the whole, the
characteristic difference.
Now here you see the idolatry of the woman : sacrificing
her husband, her elder son, high principle, her own soul, for
an idolized person. Remark that this was, properly speaking,
idolatry. For in nothing is a greater mistake made than in
the conception attached to that word in reference to the
affections. A mother's affection is called, by many religious
people, idolatry, because it is intense. Do not mistake. No
one ever loved child, brother, sister, too much. It is not the
intensity of affection, but its interference with truth and duty,
that makes it idolatry. Rebekah loved her son more than
truth, i. e.,more than God. This was to idolize. And hence
Christ says, " If any man love father or mother moro than me,
he is not worthy of me." You can only test that when a
principle comes in the way. There are persons who would
romantically admire this devotion of Rebekah, and call it
beautiful. To sacrifice all, even principle, for another what
higher proof of affection can there be ? Oh, miserable sophis-
try ! The only true affection is that which is subordinate to
a higher. It has been truly said, that in those who love lit-
tle, love is a primary affection ; a secondary one in those who
love much. Be sure he can not love another much who loves
not honor more. For that higher affection sustains and ele-
vates the lower human one, casting round it a glory which
mere personal feeling could never give.
7 14 Isaac Blessing his Sons.
Compare, for instance, Rebekah's love for Jacob with thnt
of Abraham for his son Isaac. Abraham was ready to sacri-
fice his son to duty. Rebekah sacrificed truth ami duty to
her son. Which loved a son most ? which was the .noblei
love ? Even as a question of permanence, which would last
the longer? For consider what respect this guilty son and
guilty mother could retain for each other after this : would
not love turn into shame and lose itself in recriminations?
For affection will not long survive respect, however it may
protract its life by effort.
Observe, again : monsters do not exist. When you hear
of great criminality, you think of natures originally mon-
strous, not like others. But none are liars for the sake of
lying. None are cruel for cruelty's sake. It is simply
want of principle that makes glaring sins. The best affec-
tions perverted that is the history of great crimes. See
here : there is no touch of compunction from first to last.
The woman seems all unsexed. She has no thought of her
defrauded eldest son : none of her deceived husband.
There is an inflexible pursuit of her object, that is all. It
is wonderful how ambition and passion dazzle to all but the'
end desired. It is wonderful how the true can become
false, and the tender-hearted hard and cruel for an end.
Nor is this lesson obsolete. Are there no women who
would do the same now ? Are there none who would
sacrifice a son's principles or a daughter's happiness to a
diseased appetite for distinction ? Are there none who
would conceal a son's extravagance, foster it, furnish it
means unknown, or in an underhand way, in what is called
the manoeuvring of fashionable life ; and do that for family
advancement from which the strong sense and principle of
a father would recoil and revolt ? And all this, not because
they are monsters, but because their passion for distinction
is inflamed, and their affections unregulated.
Now look at Jacob's sin. He was not without ambition ;
but he had not that unscrupulous, inflexible will which
generally accompanies ambition and makes it irresistible.
A bad man naturally he was not : nor a false man : but
simply a pliable and weak man. Hence he became the
tool of another the agent in a plan of villainy which he
had not the contrivance to originate. He was one of those
who, if they could, would have what they wish innocently.
He would not play false, yet he would unjustly have. He
was rather afraid of doing the deceit than anxious that the
deceit should not be done. Here was the guilt in its germ.
He had indulged and pampered the fancy; and be sure he who
Isaac Blessing his Sons. 715
wishes a temporal end for itself, does, or will soon, will the
means. All temptations and all occasions of sin are power-
less, except as far as they fall in with previous meditations
upon the guilt. An act of sin is only a train long laid, fired
by a spark at last. Jacob pondered over the desire of the
blessing, dallied with it, and then fell. Now observe the
rapidity and the extent of the inward deterioration. See
how this plain, simple man, Jacob, becomes by degrees an
accomplished deceiver ; how he shrinks at nothing ; how,
at first unable to conceive the plan devised by another, he
becomes at last inventive. At first the acted falsehood a
semblance ; then the lie in so many words ; then the
impious use of the name, "The Lord thy God brought it
me." How he was forced by fear and the necessities of
begun guilt into enormity : deeper and deeper. Happy the
man who can not, even from the faint shadows of his own
experience, comprehend the desperate agony of such a
state : the horror mixed with hardening effrontery with
which a man feels himself compelled to take step after step,
and is aware at last that he is drifting, drifting, from the
great shore of truth like one carried out by the tide against
his will, till he finds himself at last in a sea of falsehood, his
whole life one great dream of false appearance.
Let us apply this briefly.
Doubtless perverted good is always different from origi-
nal vice. In his darkest wanderings, one in whom the Spirit
strives is essentially different from one who is utterly de-
praved. Sensibility to anguish makes the difference, if
there were nothing else. Jacob, lying in this way, plunging
headlong, deeper and deeper, was yet a different man from
one who is through and through hollow. Grant this and
yet that fact of human pervertibility is an awful fact and
mysteiy. Innocence may become depraved: delicate purity
may pass into grossness. It is an appalling fact. Trans-
parency of crystal clearness may end in craft, double-deal-
ing, contrivance. Briefly, therefore
1. Learn to say " No."
2. Beware of those fancies, those day-dreams, which repre-
sent things as possible which should be forever impossible.
Beware of that affection which cares for your happiness more
than for your honor.
Lastly, in the hour of strong temptations, throwing our-
selves off self, distrusting ourselves, let us rest in Him who,
having been tempted, knows what temptation is ; who " will
not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able, but will
with the temptation also make way to escape, that we
be able to bear it." 1
?i 6 Salvation out of tJte Visible Church.
xiv.
SALVATION OUT OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH.
"Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabltha, which by ra.
terpretation is called Dorcas : this woman was fail of good works and alms,
deeds which she did," etc. Acts ix. 36.
" There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centuri jn of the
band called the Italian band," etc. Acts x. 1.
Two events are connected with St. Peters stay at Joppa:
the miraculous restoration of Dorcas, and the vision which
prepared for the reception of Cornelius into the Christian
Church. The apostle was at Lydda, when he was summoned
by the news of the death of Dorcas to Joppa, about twelve
miles distant. Now observe here the variety of the gifts
which are bestowed upon the Christian Church. Four
characters, exceedingly diverse, are brought before us in
this ninth chapter : Paul, a man singularly gifted, morally
and intellectually, with qualities more brilliant than almost
ever fell to the lot of man ; Peter, full of love and daring, a
champion of the truth ; Ananias, one of those disciples of the
inward life whose vocation is sympathy, and who, by a single
word, " brother," restore light to those that sit in darkness
and loneliness ; lastly, Dorcas, in a humbler, but not less true
sphere of divine goodness, clothing the poor with her own
hands, practically loving and benevolent.
W, err in the comparative estimate we form of great and
small. Imagine a political economist computing the value
of such a life as this of Dorcas. He views men in masses :
considers the economic well-being of society on a large
scale : calculates what is productive of the greatest good for
the greatest number. To him the few coats and garments
made for a few poor people would be an item in the world's
well-being scarcely worthy of being taken into the reckoning.
Let the historian estimate her worth. The chart of time lies
unrolled before him. The fall of dynasties and the blending
together of races, the wars and revolutions of nations that
have successively passed across the world's stage these are
the things that occupy him. What are acts like hers in the
midst of interests such as these and of contemplations so
large ? All this is beneath the dignity of history. Or again,
let us summon a man of larger contemplations still To the
Salvation out of the Visible Church. 7 1 7
astronomer, lifting his clear eye to the order of the stars, this
planet itself is but a speck. To come down from the universe
to the thought of a tiny earth is a fell descent ; but to de-
scend to the thought of a humble female working at a few
garments, were a fall indeed.
Now rise to the Mind of which all other minds are but
emanations and this conception of grand and insignificant
is not found in His nature. Human intellect, as it rises to
the great, neglects the small. The Eternal mind condescends
to the small ; or rather, with It there is neither great nor
email. It has divided the rings of the earthworm with as
much microscopic care as the orbits in which the planets
move : It has painted the minutest feather on the wing of
the butterfly as carefully as It has hung the firmament with
the silver splendor of the stars. Great and small are words
which have only reference to us.
Further still : judging the matter by the heart, ascending
to the heart of God, there is another aspect of the subject :
great belongs only to what is moral infinitude and eternity
are true of feelings rather than of magnitude, or space, or
time. The mightiest distance that mind can conceive, cal-
culable only by the arrow-flight of light, can yet be meas-
ured. The most vast of all the cycles that imagination ever
wanted for the ages that are gone by, can yet be estimated
by number. But tell us, if you can, the measure of a single
feeling. Find for us, if you can, the computation by which
we may estimate a single spiritual affection. They are abso-
lutely incommensurable these things together, magnitude
and feeling. Let the act of Dorcas be tried thus. When
the world has passed away, and the lust thereof, "he that
doeth the will of God abideth forever." The true infinite,
the real eternal, is love. When all that economist, historian,
philosopher can calculate, is gone, the love of Dorcas will
still be fresh, and living, in the eternity of the illimitable
Mind.
Observe, once more, the memorial v/hich she left behind
her. When Peter went into the upper chamber, he was
surrounded by the poor widows, who showed him, weeping,
the garments she had made. Tliis \vas the best epitaph : the
tears of the poor.
There is a strange jar upon, the mind in the funeral, when
the world is felt to be going on as usual. Traffic and pleas-
ure do not alter when our friend lies in the upper chamber.
The great, busy world rolls on, unheeding, and our egotism
suggests the thought, So will it be when I am not. This
world, whose very existence seems linked with mine, and to
7 1 8 Salvation out of the Visible Church.
subsist only in mine, will not be altered by my dropping out
of it. Perhaps a few tears, and then all that 'follow me and
love me now will dry them up again. I am but a bubble on
the stream : here to-day, and then gone. This is painful to
conceive. It is one of the pledges of our immortality that
we long to be remembered after death ; it is quite natural.
Now let us inquire into its justice.
Dorcas died regretted : she was worth regretting, she was
worth being restored ; she had not lived in vain, because she
had not lived for herself. The end of life is not a thought,
but an action action for others. But you, why should you
be regretted ? Have you discovered spiritual truth, like
Paul ? Have you been brave and true in defending it, like
Peter ? or cheered desolate hearts by sympathy, like Ananias ?
or visited the widows and the fatherless in their affliction,
like Dorcas ? If you have, your life will leave a trace behind
which will not soon be effaced from earth. But if not, what
is your worthless, self-absorbed existence good for, but to be
swept away, and forgotten as soon as possible ? You will
leave no record of yourself on earth, except a date of birth,
and a date of death, with an awfully significant blank be-
tween.
The second event connected with St. Peter's stay at Joppa
was the conversion of Cornelius.
A new doctrine was dawning on the Church. It was the
universality of the love of God. The great controversy in
the early history of Christianity was, not the atonement, not
predestination, not even, except at first, the resurrection, but
the admissibility of the Gentiles to the Church of Christ.
It was the controversy between Christianity, the universal
religion, and Judaism, the limited one. Except we bear this
in mind, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles will be
alike unintelligible to us.
The germ of this truth had been planted by Stephen. St.
Paul was now raised up as his successor, to develop it still
further. So that now a very important crisis had arrived.
For it has been well observed, that had St. Peter's accept-
ance of this truth been delayed by leaving it to gradual
mental growth, the effects would have been incalculably dis-
astrous to Christianity. A new apostle had arisen, and a
new church was established at Antioch ; and had St. Peter
and the rest been left in their reluctance to this truth, the
younger apostle 'would have been necessarily the leader of a
party to which the elder apostles were opposed, and the
Church of Antioch would have been in opposition to the
Church at Jerusalem : a timely miracle, worthy of God, pre-
Salvation out of the Visible Church. 7 1 9
vented this catastrophe : at the very crisis of time St. Peter's
mind, too, was enlightened with the truth.
The vision was evidently in its form and in its direction
the result of previous natural circumstances. The death of
Stephen must have had its effect on the apostle's mind.
That truth for which he died, the transient character of
Judaism, must have suggested strange new thoughts, to be
pondered on and doubted on ; add to this, the apostle was
in a state of hunger. In ecstasy, or trance, or vision, things
meet for food presented themselves to his mental eye. Evi-
dently the form in which this took place was shaped by his
physical cravings, the direction depended partly upon his
previous thoughts concerning the opening question of the
Church. But the eternal truth, the spiritual verity conveyed
by the vision, was clearly of a higher source. Here are the
limits of the natural and the supernatural closely bordering
on each other.
And this is only analogous to all our life. The human
touches on the Divine, earth borders upon heaven the lim-
its are not definable. " I live," said St. Paul. Immediately
after, he corrects himself: "yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me." Man's spirit prays ; yet is it not " the Spirit making
intercession for us with groanings which can not be uttered ?"
As if the mind of man were hardly to be distinguished from
the mind of God. We are on the brink of the world unseen
on the very verge of the spirit-realm. Everywhere around
us is God.
Now the contents of this vision were a vessel let down
from heaven, full of animals, domestic and wild, clean and
unclean. This was let down from heaven, and taken up to
heaven again. All had come from God, so that the truth
conveyed was clear enough. These distinctions of clean and
unclean were but conventional and artificial, after all tem-
poral arrangements, not belonging to the unalterable. God
had made all and given all. The analogy was not difficult
to perceive. God is the Creator of mankind. He is the
universal Father. All have come from Him. Sanctified by
Him, there can be no man common or unclean.
Against even the first part of this St. Peter's -mind revolt-
ad " Not so, Lord." It is not a little remarkable that the
two first to whom this expansive truth was revealed were
bigoted men : St. Paul the Jewish, St. Peter the Christian
bigot. For St. Peter was a Christian, yet a bigot still. Is
this wonderful and rare ? or are we not all bigots in our
way, the largest-minded of us all? St. Peter was willing to
admit a proselyte : the admission of an entire Gentile was *
720 Salvation out of the Visible Church,
stumbling-block; afterwards he could admit a Gentile, but
hesitated to eat with him. There are some of us who can
believe in the Christianity of those who are a little beyond
our own Church pale ; some who even dimly suspect that God
may love the Jew ; some, too, who will be ready, with quali-
fications, to acknowledge a benighted Roman Catholic for a
brother; but how many of us are there who would not be
startled at being told to love a Unitarian ? how many who
would not shrink from the idea as over-bold, that he who is
blind to the Redeemer's Deity, yet loving Him with all his
heart, may perchance have that love accepted in place of
adoration, and that it may be at our peril that we call him
" common or unclean ?" Oh ! there w r as a largeness in the
heart of Christ, of which we have only dreamed of as yet
a something, too, in these words, " God hath showed me that
I should not call any man common or unclean," which it will
require, perhaps, ages to develop.
At the same, or nearly the same time when this was taking
piace at Joppa, a manifestation, somewhat similar, was going
on at Caesarea, a day's journey distant. Remark here the
coincidence. There was an affinity, it seems, between the
minds of these two men, Peter and Cornelius a singular,
mysterious sympathy. Nay, more than that, very shortly
before, a similar phenomenon had been felt in the mind of St.
Paul, more than a hundred miles off, in a valley near Damas-
cus ; concerning all which we can say little, except that it is
very plain there is a great deal more going on upon earth
than our ordinary life conceives of. In the scientific world,
similar coincidences perpetually take place : discoveries, ap-
parently unconnected, without any apparent link between
the minds which make them, are announced from different
parts of the world almost simultaneously. Xo man, perhaps,
has been altogether unconscious of mental sympathies, coin-
cidences of thought, which are utterly inexplicable. All that
I deduce from this is the solemn awfulness of the universe in
which we live. We are surrounded by mystery. Mind is
more real than matter. Our souls and God are real. Of the
reality of nothing else are we sure : it floats before us, a fan-
tastic shadow-world. Mind acts on mind. The Eternal
Spirit blends mind with mind, soul with soul, and is moving
over us all with His mystic inspiration every hour.
In Csesarea there was a cohort of soldiers, the body-guard
of the governor who resided there. They were not, as was
the case in other towns, provincial soldiers, but, being a
guard of honor, were all Romans, called commonly the Ital-
ian band. One of the centurions of this guard was Cornelius
Salvation out of the Visible Church. 721
" a devout man." A truth-loving, truth-seeking, truth-find-
ing man ; one of those who would be called in this day a
restless, perhaps an unstable man ; for he changed his religion
twice. He had aspirations which did not leave him content-
ed with paganism. He found in Judaism a higher truth, and
became a proselyte. In Judaism he was true to the light he
had : he was devout, gave alms, and even influenced some of
the soldiers of the guard, as it would appear (ver. 7). The
result was as might have been expected. "He that hath,
to him shall be given." Give us such a man, and we will
predict his history. He will be ever moving on ; not merely
changing, but moving on, from higher to higher, from light
to light, from love to love, till he loses himself at last in the
Fountain of Light and the Sea of Love. Heathenism, Juda-
ism, Christianity. Not mere change, but true, ever upward
progress. He could not rest in Judaism, nor anywhere else
on earth.
To this man a voice said, " Thy prayers and thine alms
are come up as a memorial before God." Prayers that we
can understand ; but alms are then works, after all, that by
which men become meritorious in the sight of God ? To
answer this, observe : Alms may assume two forms. They
may be complete or incomplete. Alms complete works
which may be enumerated, estimated deeds done and put
in as so much purchase ten times ten thousand such will
never purchase heaven. But the way in which a holy man
does his alms is quite different from this. In their very per-
formance done as pledges of something more ; done with a
sense of incompleteness ; longing to be more nearly perfect
they become so many aspirations rising up to God ; sacri-
fices of thanksgiving, ever ascending like clouds of incense,
that rise and rise in increasing volumes, still dissatisfied and
still aspiring. Alms in this way become prayers the high-
est prayers; and all existence melts and resolves itself into a
prayer. " Thy prayers and thine alms ;" or if you will, " Thy
prayers and thy prayers," are come up to be remembered ;
for what were his alms but devout aspirations of his heart to
God?
Thus, in the vision of the everlasting state which John saw
in Patmos, the life of the redeemed presented itself as one
eternal chant of grateful hallelujahs, hymned on harps whose
celestial melodies float before the Throne forever. A life of
prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of self-devot-
ing love. There was no merit in those alms of Cornelius;
they were only poor imperfect aspirations, seeking the ear
of God, and heard and answered there
31
722 Salvation out of the Visible Church.
All this brings us to a question which must not be avoided
the salvability of the heathen world. Let us pronounce
upon this, if firmly, yet with all lowliness and modesty.
There are men of whose tenderness of heart we can not
doubt, who have come to the conclusion that without doubt
the heathen shall perish everlastingly. A horrible conclu-
sion : and if it were true, no smile should ever again pass
across the face of him who believes it. No moment can,
with any possible excuse, be given to any other enterprise
than their evangelization, if it be true that eternity shall
echo with the myriad groans and agonies of those who are
dropping into it by thousands in an hour. Such men, how-
ever, save their character for heart at the expense of their
consistency. They smile and enjoy the food and light just
as gayly as others do. They are too affectionate for their
creed ; their system only binds their views ; it can not con-
vert their hearts to its gloomy horror.
We lay down two principles: No man is saved by merit,
but only by faith. No man is saved, except in Christ.
"There is none other name under heaven given among men
whereby we must be saved."
But when we come *o consider what is saving faith, we
find it to be the broad principle of trust in God, above all
misgivings, living for the invisible instead of the seen. In
Hebrews xi. we are told that Noah was saved by faith.
Faith in what ? In the atonement ? or even in Christ ?
Nay, but in the predicted destruction of the world by water ;
the truth he had, not the truth he had not. And the life he
led in consequence, higher than that of the present-seeking
world around him, was the life of faith, " by the which he
condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness
which is by faith." Salvation, therefore, is annexed to faith.
Not necessarily faith in the Christian object, but in the
truth, so far a> it is given. Does God ask more?
Again : the Word revealed itself to men before it was
manifested in the flesh. Before this universe was called into
being, when neither star nor planet was, the Father was not
alone. From all eternity He contemplated Himself in
Another Himself in Himself; else God had not been love.
For another is required for love. To lose and find one's self
again in another's being, that is love. Except this, we can
not conceive love possible to Him. But thus with the other,
which was His very self; in language theological, the Eter-
nal Son in the bosom of the Father; God thrown into objec-
tivity by Himself. There was a universe before created uni-
verse existed ; there was love when as vet there was none
i Salvation out of the Visible Church. 723
except Himself on whom that affection could be thrown;
and the expression of Himself to Himself, the everlasting
Word, filled eternity with the anthem of the Divine solilo-
quy. Now this word expressed itself to man before it min-
gled itself with flesh. " Before Abraham was, I am." Read
we not in the Old Testament of revelations made to men in
visions, trances, day-dreams, sometimes in voices, articulate
or inarticulate, sometimes in suggestions scarcely distin-
guishable from their own thoughts?
Moreover, recollect that the Bible contains only a record
of the Divine dealings with a single nation ; His proceedings
with the minds of other people are not recorded. That large
other world no less God's world than Israel was, though in
their bigotry the Jews thought Jehovah was their own ex-
clusive property scarcely is scarcely could be named on
the page of Scripture except in its external relation to Israel.
But at times, figures, % as it were, cross the rim of Judaism,
when brought in contact with it, and passing for a moment
as dim shadows," do yet tell us hints of a communication and
a revelation going on unsuspected. We are told, for exam-
ple, of Job no Jew, but an Arabian emir, who beneath the
tents of Uz contrived to solve the question to his heart which
still perplexes us through life the co-existence of evil with
Divine benevolence; one who wrestled with God as Jacob
did, and strove to know the shrouded Name, and hoped to
find that it was love. We find Naaman the Syrian, and
Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian, under the providential and
loving discipline of God* Rahab the Gentile is saved by
faith. The Syrophenician woman by her sick daughter's
bedside, amidst the ravings of insanity, recognizes, without
human assistance, the sublime and consoling truth of a uni
versal Father's love in the midst of apparent partiality. The
"Light which lighteth every man that cpmeth into the
world" had not left them in darkness.
From all this we are constrained to the conviction that
there is a Church on earth larger than the limits of the
Church visible ; larger than Jew, or Christian, or the Apostle
Peter, dreamed ; larger than our narrow hearts dare to hope
even now. They whose soarings to the First Good, First
Perfect, and First Fair, entranced us in our boyhood, and
whose healthier aspirations are acknowledged yet as our in-
structors in the reverential qualities of our riper manhood
will our hearts allow us to believe that they have perished ?
Nay. " Many shall come from the east and west, and shall
pit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the king-
dom of heaven." The North American Indian who WOP
724 The Word and the World.
shipped the great Spirit, and was thereby sustained in a life
more dignified than the more animalized' men amongst his
countrymen; the Hindoo who believed in the rest of God,
and in his imperfect way tried to " enter into rest," not for-
getting benevolence and justice these shall come, while
"the children of the kingdom" men who, with greater
light, only did as much as they " shall be cast out."
These, with an innumerable multitude whom no man can
number, out of every kingdom, and tongue, and people, with
Rahab and the Syrophenician woman, have entered into
that Church which has passed through the centuries, absorb-
ing silently into itself ail that the world ever had of great,
and good, and noble. They were those who fought the bat-
tle of good against evil in th^ir day, penetrated into the in-
visible from the thick shadows of darkness which environed
them, and saw the open Vision which is manifested to all, in
every nation, who fear God and work righteousness to all,
in other words, w r ho live devoutly towards God, and by love
towards man. And they shall hereafter " walk in white, for
they are worthy." * * * * It may be that I err in this. It
may be that this is all too daring. Little is revealed upon
the subject, and we must not dogmatize. I may have erred ;
and it may be all a presumptuous dream. But if it be, God
will forgive the daring of a heart whose hope has given birth
to the idea ; whose faith in this matter simply receives its
substance and reality from things hoped for, and whose con-
fidence in all this dark, mysterious world can find no rock to
rest upon amidst the roaring billows of uncertainty, except
" the length, and the breadth, and the depth, and the height,
of the love which passeth knowledge," and which has filled
the universe with the fullness of His Christ.
XV.
THE WORD AND THE WORLD.
"And ; t :ame to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having
/assed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus ; and finding certain disci-
ples, he said unto them, Have } r e received the Holy Ghost since ye believed ?
And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be
any Holy Ghost," etc. Acts xix. 1, 2.
WE consider, to-day, the nineteenth chapter of the Acts
of the Apostles, but first we must make some preliminary
remarks.
The Word and the World. 725
The second missionary journey of St. Paul was done, and
he had left Europe for Asia. The object of his travel was
threefold. 1. To complete, in the temple of Jerusalem the
vow which he had begun at Corinth (xviii. 18, 21). 2. To
visit Antioch, the mother-church of Gentile Christianity,
where his presence was much needed (xviii. 22). 3. To re-
visit the churches of Galatia, and strengthen those who had
been tempted by false teaching in his absence (xviii. 23).
The last two of these objects were connected with one sin-
gle point of interest. It was the Jewish controversy, which
was then at its height. The council of Jerusalem had de-
cided that a Gentile was not dependent for salvation on the
Jewish law (xv. 23-29). But another question remained
still open : Was a Christian who did not obey the law on
the same level as a Christian who did obey it ? Was it not
a superior religious standing-ground, to add the ritual life
to the life of faith?
With this question the whole of the Epistle to the Gala-
tians is occupied. That epistle does not deal with the ques-
tion, whether the ritual law is necessary for salvation ; but
with this whether a Gentile Christian became a higher man
than before by a ceremonial life ; whether, in St. Paul's words,
"having begun in the spirit," he could be "made perfect
through the flesh."
At Antioch that question assumed a practical form. The
Jewish and Gentile Christians had lived in harmony, until
certain zealous ritualists came from Jerusalem, where St.
James presided. Then a severance took place. The law-ob-
serving disciples admitted these new converts to be Chris-
tians, but would not admit their standing in the Church to
be equal to their own. They denied their complete brother-
hood. They refused to eat with them. A Christian, not ob-
serving the ceremonial law, was to a Christian who did ob-
serve it very much what a proselyte of the gate was to an
ancient Jew.
Two men of leading station yielded to this prejudice,
though it was destructive of the very essence of Christianity.
These were St. Peter and Barnabas. The " dissimulation,"
as St. Paul calls it, of these two apostles suggests two in-
structive lessons.
The yielding of Barnabas reminds us of the insecurity of
mere feeling. Barnabas was a man of feeling and fine sensi-
bilities. He could not bear to have his relative Mark severe-
ly judged (Acts xv. 36-39, and Col. iv. 10). It pained him
to the heart to see that Paul, when he first essayed to join
himself to his disciples^ was misunderstood (Acts ix. 2^, 27).
726 The Word and the World.
He was a " son of consolation." He sold his property to dis-
tribute to the Christian poor (Acts iv. 36, 37). He healed
many a broken heart. But he wanted just that firmness
which men of feeling so often want the power of standing
steadily by a principle.
The unsteadiness of St. Peter exhibits a different truth.
It tells that a fall, however it may qualify a man for giving
advice to others similarly tempted, does not qualify for future
consistency, nor for the power of showing mercy in the high-
est way. No doubt St. Peter's fall, after his conversion, pe-
culiarly fitted him for strengthening his brethren. But sin
weakens the power of resistance. He who yields once will
more easily yield the second time. He who shrunk from
standing by his Master found it fearfully easy to shrink from
abiding by a principle. Sin indulged breaks down the bar-
riers between good and evil, and turns strength into weak-
ness ! And failure does not make men merciful to others.
St. Peter is just as hard to the Gentile Christians, expelling^
them from Christian society for that which he knew to be in-
different, as if he had always been firm in his own integrity.
He only can judge of error and show mercy, who has been
" tempted, yet without sin." This nineteenth chapter is di-
visible into three chief subjects :
I. The baptism of John's disciples.
II. The burning of the "Ephesian letters."
HI. The tumult occasioned by the worshippers of Diana.
I. When St. Paul came to Ephesus, he found twelve disci-
ples of John, bearing the name of Christians, but having a
very imperfect form of Christianity. Now the baptism of
John, which was all these men knew, means the doctrine of
John that cycle of teaching which is briefly symbolized by
the chief ritual act of the system. The system of John was
contained in a very narrow range of truth. It was such
truth as we might have expected from a man who had been
so disciplined. It was John's lot to be born into the world
in a period of highly-advanced society ; and in that hot-bed
of life-fictions, Jerusalem, the ardent mind of the young man
found nothing to satisfy the cravings of its desire. He want-
ed something deeper and truer than the existing systems
could afford him. He went to the Sadducee and the Phari-
see in vain. He found no life in the Jewish ritual no assist-
ance from the rabbis. He went into the wilderness to
commune with God, to try what was to be learned from Him
by a soul in earnest, without church, ministers, or ordi-
nances. The heavens spoke to him of purity, and the river by
The Word and the World. 727
hisJ side of God's eternity. Locusts and honey, his only food,
taught him that man has a higher life to nourish than that
which is sustained by epicurean luxuries. So disciplined
John came back to his countrymen. As might be expected,
no elaborate theology formed any part of his teaching. " We
want a simpler, purer, austerer life. Let men be real.
Fruits worthy of repentance fruits, fruits, not profession.
A new life. Repent." That was the burden of John's
message.
A preparatory one evidently, one most incomplete in itself.
It implied the need of something additional, as St. Paul told
these converts. " John verily baptized with the baptism of
repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe
on Him who should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus."
And none felt more distinctly than John that his was mere-
ly an initial work. That was a touching acknowledgment of
the subordinate part he had to perform in the construction of
the world's new life. " He must increase, but I must de
crease." The work of John was simply the work of the axe.
" The axe is laid to the root of the trees ;" to destroy, not to
build ; to cut up by the roots ancient falsehoods ; to tear
away all that was unreal ; to make a clearance that the light
of day might come in. A great work, but still not the great-
est.
And herein lay the difference between the two baptisms.
John baptized with water, Christ with the Holy Ghost and
fire. The one was simply the washing away of a false and
evil past ; the other was the gift of the power to lead a pure,
true life.
This was all that these disciples knew ; yet remark, they
are reckoned as Christians. They are called " certain disci-
ples " that is, of Jesus. They knew little enough of Chris-
tianity ; they had not so much as heard whether there be
any Holy Ghost. The doctrine of the Trinity they knew
not, nor that of sanctification, nor probably that of the atone-
ment. And yet in the Word of God they are called disci-
ples of Christ.
Let us learn from that a judgment of charity. Let not
the religious man be too prone to talk with contempt of a
legal spirit* Let him not sneer at "merely moral men."
Morality is not religion, but it is the best soil on which re-
ligion grows. He who lives an honest, sincere, honorable
life, and has strong perceptions of moral right and moral
wrong, may not have reached the highest stages of spiritual-
ity ; he may " know only the baptism of John ;" he may
aim as yet at nothing higher than doing his duty well, " ac*
728 The Word and the World.
cusing no man falsely, being content with his wages," giving
one coat out of two to the poor; and yet that man, with
scanty theology and small spiritual experience, may be a
real ""disciple" in the school of Christ, and one of the chil-
dren of the Highest.
Nay, it is the want of this preparation which so often
makes religion a sickly plant in the soul. Men begin with
abundance of spiritual knowledge ; they understand well the
" scheme of salvation ;" they talk of religious privilege, and
have much religious liberty ; they despise the formal spirit
arid the legal spirit. But if the foundation has not been laid
deep in a perception of the eternal difference between right
and wrong, the superstructure will be but flimsy. I believe
it is a matter of no small importance that the baptism of
John should precede the baptism of Christ ; that is, that a
strict life, scrupulous regularity, abhorrence of evil perhaps
even something too austere, the usual accompaniment of sin-
cerity at the outset should go before the peace which comes
of faith in Christ. First the blade, then the ear, then the full
corn in the ear. You can not have the harvest first. There
is an order in the development of the soul, as there is in the
development of the year of nature, and it is not safe to force.
Nearly two thousand years were spent in the Divine gov-
ernment in teaching the Jews the meaning of holiness, the
separation of right from wrong. And such must be the or-
der of the education of children and of men. The baptism
of repentance before the baptism of the Spirit.
The result which followed this baptism was the gifts of
tongues and prophecy. On a former occasion I endeavored to
explain what is meant by the gift of tongues. It appeared,
then, that " tongues " were not so much the power of speaking
various languages, as the power of speaking spiritual truths
with supernatural and heavenly fervor. This passage favors
that interpretation. The apostle was there with twelve new
converts. To what purpose was the supposed use of various
languages among such a number, who already understood
one another? It would seem more like the showing off of
a new accomplishment than the humble character of Chris-
tian modesty permits. If this gift simply made them lin-
guists, then the miracle was of a temporary and earthly
character. But if it consisted in elevating their spiritual in-
tuitions, and enabling them to speak, " not in the words
which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual," then
you have a miracle celestial indeed, worthy of its Spirit-
Author. If it were only a gift of languages, then the mira-
The Word and the World. 729
cle has nothing to do with us; but if it were the elevating
of the natural faculties by God's Spirit to a higher and di-
viner use, then we have a marvel and a truth which belongs
to all ages. The life is the light of men. Give life, and
light follows. Expand the heart, and you enlarge the intel-
lect. Touch the soul with love, and then you touch the lips,
with hallowed fire, and make even the stammering tongue
speak the words of living eloquence.
This was the gift of tongues that followed the reception
of the Divine Spirit.
II. The second subject in the chapter is the burning of
the " Ephesian letters."
Ephesus was the metropolis of Asia. Its most remarkable
feature was the temple of Diana one of the wonders of the
world. It contained a certain image, misshapen, of a human
form, reported by tradition to. have fallen from the skies;
perhaps one of those meteoric stones, which, generated in th.rf
atmosphere,. and falling to the ground, are reckoned by the
vulgar to be thunderbolts from heaven.
This image represented Nature, the prolific nurse and
source of all life, and the worship was a worship of Nature.
Upon the base of the statue w r ere certain mysterious sen-
tences, and these, copied and written upon papers and amu-
lets, were known far and wide by the name of " Ephesian
letters." This was the heathen form of magical superstition.
But it seems there was a Jewish practice of the occult art
besides. They used certain incantations, herbs, and magi-
cal formulas, said by tradition to have been taught by Sol-
omon, for the expulsion of diseases and the exorcism of evil
spirits.
The state of Ephesus, like that of Corinth and Athens, was
one of metropolitan civilization ; and it is nothing strange
that in such a stage of social existence, arts and beliefs like
these should flourish ; for there is always a craving in the
soul of man for something supernatural, an irrepressible de-
sire for communion with the unseen world. And where an
over-refined civilization has choked up the natural and
healthy outlets of this feeling, it will inevitably find an un
natural one. The restless spirit of those times, dissatisfied
with their present existence, in spite of itself feeling the deg-
radation of the life of epicurean indolence and selfishness,
instinctively turned to the other world in quest of marvels.
We do not wonder to find atheism and abject superstition
co-tenants of the same town or the same mind. We do not
Qiarvel that in the very city where reasonable Christianity
31*
730 The Word and the World.
could scarcely find a footing, a mob could be found scream-
ing for two hours, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians !" that
when men had "not so much as heard whether there be any
Holy Ghost," wise men and men in authority should be be-
lievers in " the image which fell down from Jupiter." Ephe-
sus was exactly the place where Jewish charlatans and the
vendors of "Ephesian letters" could reap a rich harvest from
the credulity of skeptical voluptuaries.
It is difficult to know what to say about this Oriental
magic. ' Shall we say that it was all imposture ? or account
for its success by the power of a highly-excited imagination ?
or believe that they were really making use of some unknown
powers of nature, which they themselves in ignorance sup-
posed to be supernatural ? Little can now be decided.
That the magicians themselves believed in their own art is
plain, from the fact of the existence of these costly " Ephesian
letters," and scientific " curious books," which had appar-
ently reached the dignity of an elaborate system ; and also
from the fact that some of them, as the seven sons of Sceva,
believed in Christianity as a higher kind of magic, and at-
tempted to use its formula, as more efficacious than their
own. "We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth."
Had they been only impostors, they would have taken Paul
for an impostor too.
Here was one of those early attempts, which in after ages
became so successful, to amalgamate Christianity with the
magical doctrines. Gnosticism was the result in the East,
Romanism the result in the West.
But the spirit of Christianity brooks no amalgamation.
The essence of magic consists in this : the belief that by
some external act not connected with moral goodness, nor
making a man wiser or better communication can be in-
sured with the spiritual world ; and the tutelage of God or
some superior spirit be commanded for a mortal. It mat-
ters not whether this be attempted by Ephesian letters,
amulets, charms, curious books or by sacraments, or by
Church ordinances or priestly powers whatever professes to
bring God near to man, except by making man more like to
God, is of the same spirit of Antichrist.
The spirit-world of God has its laws, and they are unal-
terable. They are such as these : " Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God ;" "Blessed are the merciful
the peacemakers the meek the poor in spirit ;" " If any
man will do His will, he shall know ;" " If a man love Me
he will keep My words : and My Father will love him, and
We will come unto him. and make our abode with him/
The Word and the World. 73 1
This is Christianity, There is no way of becoming a par-
taker of "the powers of the world to come," except by hav-
ing the heart right with God. God's presence, God's pro-
tection, is the privilege of the humble, the holy, the loving.
These are the laws of the kingdom of God's Spirit, and no
magic can reverse them. The contest was brought to an
issue by the signal failure of these magicians to work a mir-
acle the man possessed leaped upon the exercisers, and they
fled wounded, upon which there was great consternation in
Ephesus. The possessors of curious books came, confessed
their guilt, and burnt them with their own hands in the
apostle's presence.
You will observe in all this the terrible supremacy of
conscience. There was struck a chord deep in the moral
nature of these men, and it vibrated in torture. They could
not bear their own secret, and they had no remedy but im-
mediate confession. It is this arraigning accuser within the
bosom that compels the peculator, after years of concealed
theft, to send back the stolen money to his employer, with
the acknowledgment that he has suffered years of misery.
It was this that made Judas dash down his gold in the
Temple, and go and hang himself. It is this that again and
again has forced the murderer from his unsuspected security
in social life, to deliver himself up to justice, and to choose
a true death rather than the dreadful secret of a false life.
Observe how mightily our moral nature works for health
and peace, if there be no obstruction ; but for disease and
torture, if it be perverted. But, anyhow, it works, and with
living, indestructible force, as the juices of vigorous life, if
obstructed, create and feed gigantic disease.
Consider, in the next place, the test of sincerity furnished
by this act of burning the Ephesian letters. First of all it
was a costly sacrifice. They were valued at fifty thousand
pieces of silver. In those days, copies were not multiplied
by printing ; and the possessor of a secret would take care
not to multiply it. Rarity created costliness. The posses-
sion of one such book was the possession of a fortune. Then,
again, there was the sacrifice of livelihood. By these books
they got their living. And a man who had lived to thirty
or forty years of age in this mode of life was not young
enough to begin the world again with a new profession. It
w r as to throw themselves almost into beggary. Moreover,
it w r as the destruction of much knowledge that was really
valuable. As in the pursuit of alchemy real chemical se-
crets were discovered, so it can not be doubted that these
curious manuscripts contained many valuable natural facts.
732 The Word and the World.
To burn them was to waste all these to give the lore ao-
cumulated for years to the winds.
Once more: it was an outrage to feeling. Costly manu-
scripts, written with curious art, many of them probably the
heirlooms of a family, many which were associated with a
vast variety of passages in life, old feelings, old teachers
.and companions, these were to be committed mercilessly to
tthe flames. Remember, too, how many other ways there
were of disposing of them. Might they not be sold, and the
proceeds " given to the poor ?" Might they not at least be
made over to some relative who, not feeling any thing wrong
in the use or possession of them, would not have his con-
science aggrieved ? Or might they not be retained, the use
of them being given up, as curious records of the past, as the
treasure-stores of so much that was beautiful and wise?
And then conscience arose with her stern, clear voice.
They are the records of an ignorant and guilty past. There
must be no false tenderness ; the sacrifice must be real, or it
is none. . To the flames with them, till their ashes are strew-
ed upon the winds, and the smoke will rise up to heaven a
sweet savor before God.
Whoever has made such a sacrifice as this and every
real Christian in the congregation in some shape or other
has will remember the strange medley of feeling which ac-
companied the sacrifice. We should err if we expected such
a deed to be done with feelings entirely single. There is a
mixture in all such sacrifices. Partly fear constrained the
act, produced by the judgment on the other exorcists; part-
ly genuine remorse ; partly there was a lingering regret as
leaf after leaf perished in the flames ; partly a feeling of re-
lief, and partly a heavy sense of loss in remembering that
the work of years was obliterated, and that the past had to
be lived afresh as a time wasted ; partly shame, and partly
a wild tumult of joy, at the burst of new hope, and the pros-
pect of a nobler life. We can not, and dare not, too closely
scan such things. The sacrifice was made, and He who
knows the mixture of the earthly and the spiritual in His
creatures' hearts doubtless accepted the sacrifice.
There is no Christian life that has not in it sacrifice, and
that alone is the sacrifice which is made in the spirit of the
conflagration of the "Ephesian letters," without reserve,
without hesitation, without insincere tenderness. If the
slaveholder, convinced of the iniquity of the traffic in man,
sells the slaves on his estate to the neighboring planter, the
mark of sincerity is wanting ; or if the trader in opium or in
spirits quits his nefarious commerce, but first secures the
The Word and the World. 733
value of all that remains in his warehouse or in his ships,
again there is a something which betokens the want of a
heart true and honest; or if the possessor of a library
becomes convinced that certain volumes are unfit for his
shelves, immoral, polluting the mind of him that reads them,
and yet can not sacrifice the brilliant binding and the costly
edition without an equivalent, what shall we say of these
men's sincerity ?
Two things marked these Ephesians' earnestness the vol-
untariness of their confession, and the unreserved destruction
of these records and means of evil. And I say to you, if there
be a man here before me with a sin upon his heart, let him
remember conscience will arise to do her dreadful work at
last. It may be when it is too late. Acknowledgment at
once, this is all that remains for him to relieve his heart of
its intolerable load. If he has wronged a man let him ac-
knowledge it and ask forgiveness; if he has defrauded him
of his due, or kept him from his rights, let him repair, restore,
make up ; or, if the guilt be one with which man inter-
meddleth not, and of wliich God alone takes cognizance, on
his bended knees this night, and before the sun of to-morrow
dawn, let him pour out the secret of his heart, or else, it may
be that in this world, and in the world to come, peace is ex-
iled from his heart forever.
III. We shall consider, thirdly, the sedition respecting Di-
ana's worship. First under this head let us notice the speech
of Demetrius in which observe :
1. The cause of the slow death which error and falsehood
die : shot through and through, they still linger on. Existing
abuses in Church and State are upheld because they are in-
tertwined with private interests. The general good is im-
peded by private cupidity. The welfare of a nation, the es-
tablishment of a grand principle, is clamored against because
destructive of the monopoly of a few particular trades. The
salvation of the world must be arrested that Demetrius may
continue to sell shrines of Diana. This is the reason why it
takes centuries to overthrow an evil, after it has been proved
an evil.
2. The mixture of religious and selfish feelings. Not only
" our craft," but also the worship of the great goddess Diana.
Demetrius was, or thought himself sincere ; a man really
zealous for the interests of religion. And so it is with many
a patriotic and religious cry. " My country " " my church "
" my reli'jion " it supports me. "By this craft we have
our wealth."
734 The Word and the World.
3. Numbers are no test of truth. What Demetrius said,
and the town-clerk corroborated, was a fact that the whole
world worshipped the great goddess Diana. Antiquity, uni-
versality, popularity, were all on her side ; on the other, there
were only Paul, Gaius, Aristarchus. If numbers tested truth,
Apollos in the last chapter need not have become the brilliant
outcast from the schools of Alexandria, nor St. Paul stand in
Ephesus in danger of his life.
He who seeks Truth must be content with a lonely, little-
trodden path. If he can not worship her till she has been
canonized by the shouts of the multitude, he must take his
place with the members of that wretched crowd who shout-
ed for two long hours, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians !"
till truth, reason, and calmness were all drowned in noise.
Let us notice the judicious speech of the town-clerk, or
chamberlain more properly, in which observe
1. The impression made by the apostle on the wiser and
calmer part of the community. The Asiarchs, or magistrates,
were his friends. The town-clerk exculpated him, as Gallio
had done at Corinth. Herein we see the power of consis-
tency.
2. The admitted moral blamelessness of the Christians.
Paul had not " blasphemed " the goddess. As at Athens, he
had not begun by attacking errors, or prejudices, or even su-
perstitions. He preached truth, and its effect began to be
felt already, in the decline of the trade which flourished by
the sale of silver models of the wondrous temple a statistical
fact, evidencing the amount of success. Overcome evil by
good, error by truth. Christianity opposed by the force of
governments, counterfeited by charlatanism, sneered at by
philosophers, cried down by frantic mobs, coldly looked at
from a distance by the philosophical, pursued with unrelent-
ing hatred by Judaism, met by unions and combinations of
trades, having arrayed against it every bad passion of human-
ity went swiftly on, conquering and to conquer.
The continental philosophers tell us that Christianity is
effete. Let this narrative determine. Is that the history of
a principle which has in it seeds of death ? Comes that from
the invention of a transient thought of man's, or from the
Spirit of the everlasting ages ?
Solomon s Restoration. 735
XVI.
SOLOMON'S RESTORATION.
"Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? yet among many
nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of his God." Nehem.
xiii. 26.
THERE is one study, my Christian brethren, which never
can lose its interest for us so long as we are men : and that
is, the investigation of human character. The deep interest
of biography consists in this that it is in some measure the
description to us of our own inner history. You can not un-
veil the secrets of another heart without at the same time
finding something to correspond with, and perchance explain,
the mysteries of your own. Heart answers here to heart.
Between the wisest and the worst there are ten thousand
points of marvellous resemblance ; and so the trials, the frail-
ties, the bitterness of any human soul, faithfully traced out,
ever shadow out to us a portraiture of our own experience.
Give but the inner heart-history of the most elevated spirit
that ever conquered in life's struggle, and place it before the
most despicable that ever failed, and you exhibit to him so
much of the picture of his own very self, that you perforce
command his deepest attention. Only let the inarticulate
life of the peasant find for itself a distinct voice and a true
biographer, let the inward struggles which have agitated
that rough frame be given faithfully to the world, and there
is not a monarch whose soul will not be thrilled w r ith those
inner details of an existence with which outw r ardly he has not
a single thought in common.
It "is for this reason that Solomon's life is full of painful
interest. Far removed as he is, in some respects, above our
sympathies, in others he peculiarly commands them. He
was a monarch, and none of us know the sensations which
belong to rule. He was proclaimed by God to be among
the wisest of mankind, and few of us can even conceive the
atmosphere in which such a gifted spirit moves, original, in-
quiring, comprehending, one to whom Nature has made her
secret open. He lived in the infancy of the world's society,
and we live in its refined and civilized manhood.
And yet, brethren, when we have turned away wearied
from all those subjects in which the mind of Solomon expati-
ated, and try to look inward at the man, straightway we
7 36 Solomon s Restoration.
find ourselves at home. Just as in our own trilling, petty
history, so we find in him, life with the same unabated, mys-
terious interest ; the dust and the confusion of a battle, sub-
lime longings, and low weaknesses, perplexity, struggle ; and
then the grave closing over all this, and leaving us to marvel
in obscurity and silence over the strange destinies of man.
Humbling, brethren, is all this, at the same time that it is
most instructive. God's strange dealings with the human
heart, when shall they cease their interest for us ? When
shall it be that life, with all its mysteries, will tire us to
look upon? When shall it be that the fate of man shall
cease to wake up emotion in man's bosom.
Now, we are to bear in mind that the career of Solomon is
a problem which has perplexed many, and is by no means an
easy one to solve. He belongs to the peculiar class of those
who begin well, and then have the brightness of their lives
obscured at last. His morning sun rose beautifully ; it sank
in the evening, clouded, and dark with earthy exhalations
too dark to prophesy with certainty how it should rise on
the morrow.
Solomon's life was not what religious existence ought to
be. The life of God in the soul of man ought to be a tiling
of perpetual development ; it ought to be more bright, and
its pulsations more vigorous every year. Such, certainly, at
least to all appearance, Solomon's was not. It was excel-
lence, at all events, marred with inconsistc ncy. It was orig-
inal uprightness disgraced by a fall, and thac fall so prolong-
ed and signal that it has always been a disputed question
among commentators whether he ever rose from it again at
all. But the passage which I have selected for the text, in
connection with one or two others, seems to decide this ques-
tion. " Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things ?"
that is, marriage with foreign wives ? " Yet among many
nations was there no king like him who was beloved of his
God." Now there can be no doubt of the view given us in
this verse. Six hundred years after Solomon had been sleep-
ing in earthly dust, when all contemporaries were dead, and
all personal feeling had passed away, when history could
pronounce her calm verdict upon his existence as a whole,
Nehemiah, in this passage, gave a summary of his character.
He speaks to us of Solomon as a saint a saint in whom
saintliness had been wonderfully defaced imperfect, tempt-
ed, fallen ; but still ranked among those whom God's love
had pre-eminently distinguished.
Now let us compare with this the prophecy which iiad
been uttered by Nathan before Solomon was born. Thus
Solomon s Restoration. 737
he spoke in God's name to David of the son who was to suc-
ceed him on the throne : " I will be his father, and he shall
be iny son. If lie commit iniquity, T will chasten him with
the rod of men," L e., the rod as a human being uses it, for
correction, not everlasting destruction " and with the stripes
of the children of men. But my mercy shall not depart away
from him, as I took it from Saul." In this we have a distinct
covenant, made prophetically. God foretold Solomon's terri-
ble apostasy ; and with it He foretold Solomon's restoration.
And there is one point especially remarkable. He parallels
Solomon's career with Saul's. Saul began well, and Saul
ended ill. Just so it was with Solomon. Here was the par-
allel. But farther than this, God distinctly warned, tho par-
allel did not go. Saul's deterioration from good was perma-
nent. Solomon's deterioration, dark as it was, had some
point of essential difference. It was not forever. Saul's life
darkened from morning brightness into the gloom of ever-
lasting night. Solomon's lite darkened too, but the curtain
of clouds was rolled aside at last, and bcfcro the night set in
the sun shone out in serene, calm brilliancy.
We take up, therefore, for our consideration to-day, the life
of Solomon in these two particulars.
I. The wanderings of an erring spirit. " Did not Solomon
king of Israel sin by these tilings '?"
II. The guidance of that spirit, amidst all its wanderings,
by God's love. " There was no king like unto him who was
beloved of his God."
I. " Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things ?"
This is the first point for us to dwell on the wanderings of
a frail and erring human spirit from the right way. That
which lay at the bottom of all Solomon's transgressions was
his intimate partnership with foreigners. " Did not Solomon
sin by these things ?" that is, if we look to the context, mar-
riage with foreign wives. The history of the text is this :
Nehemiah discovered that the nobles of Judah during the
Captivity, when law and religious customs had been relaxed,
had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab ; and
then, in his passionate expostulation with them, he reminds
them that it was this very transgression which led to the
fall of the monarch who had been most distinguished for
God's favor. In the whole Jewish system, no principle was
more distinct than this the separation of God's people from
partnership with the world. Exclusiveness was the princi-
ple on which Judaism was built. The Israelites were not to
mix with tlie nations; they were not to marry with them;
Solomon s Restoration.
they were not to join with them in religious fellowship or
commercial partnership. Every thing was to be distinct
as distinct as God's service and the world's. And it was this
principle which Solomon transgressed. He married a prin-
cess of Egypt. He connected himself with wives from idola-
trous countries Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians,
Hittites. And then Nehemiah's argument, built on the eter-
nal truth that friendship with the world is enmity with God,
is this : " Did not Solomon sin by these things ?"
That Jewish law, my brethren, shadowed out an everlast-
ing truth, God's people are an exclusive nation ; God's
Church is forever separated from the world. This is her
charter, " Come out from among them, and be ye separate,
saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing ; and I will
receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be
my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." God's
people may break that charter, but they do it at their own
peril. And we may be very sure of this, when a religious
person begins to feel an inclination for intimate communion
with the world, and begins to break down that barrier which
is the line of safety, the first step is made of a series of long,
dark wanderings from God. We are to be separate, breth-
ren, from the world. Mistake not the meaning of that word.
The world changes its complexion in every age. Solomon's
world was the nations of idolatry lying round Israel. Our
world is not that. The world is that collection of men in
every age who live only according to the maxims of their
time. The world may be a profligate world, or it may be a
moral world. All that is a matter of accident. Our world
is a moral world. The sons of our world are not idolaters,
they are not profligate, they are, it may be, among the most
fascinating of mankind. Their society is more pleasing, more
lively, more diversified in information than religious society.
No marvel if a young and ardent heart feels the spell of the
fascination. No wonder if it feels a relief in turning away
from the dullness and the monotony of home life to the
sparkling brilliancy of the world's society. No marvel if
Solomon felt the superior charms of the accomplished Egyp-
tian and the wealthy Tyrian. His Jewish countrymen and
countrywomen were but homely in comparison. What won-
der if the young monarch felt it a relaxation to emancipate
himself from the thraldom of a society which had little to
interest his grasping and restless mind, and to throw himself
upon a companionship which had more of refinement, and
more of cultivation, and more of that enlargement of mind
which his own gifted character was so fitted to enjoy ?
Solomon s Restoration. 739
It is no marvel, brethren. It is all most natural, all most
intelligible a temptation which we feel ourselves every
day. "The brilliant, dazzling, accomplished world what
Christian with a mind polished like Solomon's does not own
its charms ? And yet now, pause. Is it in wise Egypt that
our highest blessedness lies ? Is it in busy restless Sidon ?
Is it in luxurious Moab ? No, my Christian brethren. The
Christian must leave the world alone. His blessedness lies
in quiet work with the Israel of God. His home is in that
deep, unruffled tranquillity which belongs to those who are
trying to know Christ. And when a Christian will not learn
this when he will not understand that in calmness, and
home, and work, and love, his soul must find its peace when
he will try keener and more exciting pleasures when he
says, I must taste what life is while I am young, its feverish-
ness, its strange, delirious, maddening intoxication, he has
just taken Solomon's first step, and he must take the whole
of Solomon's after, and most bitter experience, along with it.
The second step of Solomon's wandering was the unre-
strained pursuit of pleasure. And a man like Solomon can
not do any thing by halves. What he did, he did thorough-
ly. No man ever more heartily and systematically gave
himself up to the pursuit. If he once made up his mind
that pleasure was his aim, then for pleasure he lived. There
are some men who are prudent in their epicureanism. They
put gayety aside when they begin to get palled with it, and
then return to it moderately again. Men like Solomon can
not do that. No earnest man can. No ; if blessedness lies
in pleasure, he will drink the cup to the dregs. Listen to
what he says : " I sought in mine heart to give myself unto
wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom ; and to lay
hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the
sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the
days of their life." That was a pursuit of pleasure which
was at least decided and systematic manly. Observe,
brethren, we have none of the cool, cautious sipping of en-
joyment there. We have none of the feeble, languid at-
tempts to enjoy the world which make men venture ankle-
deep into dissipation, and only long for courage to go a lit-
tle farther. It is the earnestness of an impassioned man, a
man who has quitted God, and thrown himself, heart and
soul, upon every thing that he tries, and says he will try it
fairly and to the full.
" Let us see what the world is worth." Perhaps some
minds amongst us now are not altogether strangers to a
feeling such as this. There is many a soul, formed for high-
74-O Solomon s Restoration.
er and better things, that has, at one time or another, lost
its hold on God, and felt the impulse of its own desires urg-
ing it on forever, dissatisfied, restless, panting for a celestial
fruit which seems forbidden, and half expecting to find that
fruit in life's excitement. These are the wanderings of an
erring spirit.
But, my brethren, let us mark the wanderings of an im-
mortal soul infinite in its vastness. There is a moral to be
learnt from the wildest worldliness. When we look on the
madness of life, and are marvelling at the terrible career of
dissipation, let there be no contempt felt. It is an immortal
spirit marring itself. It is an infinite soul, which nothing
short of the Infinite can satisfy, plunging down to ruin an<d
disappointment. Men of pleasure, whose hearts are as ca-
pable of an eternal blessedness as a Christian's, that is the
terrible meaning and moral of your dissipation. God in
Christ is your only Eden, and out of Christ you can have
nothing but the restlessness of Cain ; you are blindly pursu-
ing your destiny. That unquenched impetuosity within you
might have led you up to God. You have chosen instead
that your heart shall try to satisfy itself upon husks.
There was another form of Solomon's worldliness. It
was not worldliness in pleasure, but worldliness in occupa-
tion. He had entered deeply into commercial speculations.
He had alternate fears and hopes about the return of his
merchant-ships on their perilous three-years' voyage to India
and to Spain. He had his mind occupied with plans for
building. The architecture of the Temple, his own palace,
the forts and towns of his now magnificent empire, all this
filled for a time his soul. He had beirun a system of nation-
al debt and ruinous taxation. He had become a slaveholder
and a despot, who was compelled to keep his people down
by armed force. Much of this was not wrong, but all of it
was dangerous. It is a strange thing how business dulls the
sharpness of the spiritual affections. It is strange how the
harass of perpetual occupation shuts God out. It is strange
how much mingling with the world, politics, and those things
which belong to advancing civilization things which arc
very often in the way of our duty deaden the delicate sense
of right and wrong. Let Christians be on their guard by
double prayerfulness when duty makes them men of business
or calls them to posts of worldly activity. Solomon did
things of questionable morality which he never would have
done if he had not had the ambition to distinguish himself
among the princes of this world. Business and worldliness
dried up the springs of his spirituality. It was the climax
Solomon s Restoration. 74 *
of Solomon's transgression that he suffered the establishment
of idolatry in his dominions.
There are writers who have said that in this matter Solo-
mon was in advance of his age enlightened beyond the nar.
rowness of Judaism, and that this permission of idolatry was
the earliest exhibition of that spirit which in modern times
we call religious toleration. But, my brethren, Solomon
went far beyond toleration. It is written, when Solomon
was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods ;
for he went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians,
and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. The
truth seems to be, Solomon was getting indifferent about re-
ligion. He had got into light and worldly society, and the
libertinism of his associations was beginning to make its im-
pression upon him. He was beginning to ask, Is not one re-
ligion as good as another, so long as each man believes his
own in earnest ? He began to feel there is a great deal to be
said for these different religions. After all, there is nothing cer-
tain ; and why forbid men the quiet enjoyment of their own
opinion ? And so he became what men call liberal, and he
took idolatry under his patronage. There are few signs in a
soul's state more alarming than that of religious indifference,
that is, the spirit of thinking all religions equally true the
real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false.
II. We are to consider, in the last place, God's loving
guidance of Solomon in the midst of all his apostasy. My
Christian brethren, in the darkest, wildest w r anderings, a man
to whom God has shown his love in Christ is conscious still
of the better way. In the very gloom of his remorse there
is an instinctive turning back to God. It is enumerated
among the gifts that God bestowed on Solomon, that He
granted to him " largeness of heart." Now that largeness
of heart which we call thoughtfulness and sensibility, gen-
erosity, high feeling, marks out, for the man who has it, a
peculiar life. Life becomes an intense thing : if there be
guilt, then his life will be desolating remorse ; if love, then
the very ecstasy of blessedness. But a cool, commonplace
life he can not have. According to Scripture phraseology,
Solomon had a great heart ; and therefore it was that for
such a one the discipline which was to lead him back to God
must needs be terrible. " If he commit iniquity, I will chas-
ten him with the rod of men." That was God's covenant,
and with tremendous fidelity was it kept.
You look to the life of Solomon, and there are no outward
reverses there to speak of. His reign was a type of the reign
742 Solomon s Restoration.
of the power of j.eace. No war, no national disaster, inter-
rupted the even flow of the current of his days. Xo loss of
a child, like David's, pouring cold desolation into his soul
no pestilences nor famines. Prosperity and riches, and the
internal development of the nation's life, that was the reign
of Solomon. And yet, brethren, with all this, was Solomon
happy ? Has God no arrows winged in heaven for the heart,
except those which come in the shape of outward calamity?
Is there no way that God has of making the heart gray and
old before its time, without sending bereavement, or loss, or
sickness? Has the Eternal Justice no mode of withering
and drying up the inner springs of happiness, while all is
green, and wild, and fresh outwardly ? We look to the his-
tory of Solomon for the answer.
The first way in which his aberration from God treasured
up for him chastisement, was by that weariness of existence
which breathes through the whole book of Ecclesiastes.
That book bears internal evidence of having been written
after repentance and victory. It is the experience of a ca-
reer of pleasure ; and the tone which vibrates through the
whole is disgust with the world, and mankind, and life, and
self. I hold that book to be inspired. God put it into the
heart of Solomon to make that experience public. But, my
brethren, by " inspired," I do not mean that all the feelings
to which that book gives utterance are right or holy feel-
ings. St. John could not have written that book. St. John,
who had lived in the atmosphere of love, looking on this
world as God looks on it calmly, with the deep peace of
heaven in his soul, at peace with himself, and at peace with
man could never have penned the book of Ecclesiastes.
To have written the book of Ecclesiastes a man must have
been qualified in a peculiar way. He must have been a man
of intense feeling large in heart, as the Bible calls it. He
must have been a man w r ho had drunk deep of unlawful
pleasure. He must have been a man in the upper ranks of
society, with plenty of leisure and plenty of time to brood
on self. Therefore, in saying it is an inspired book, I mean
the inspired account of the workings of a guilty, erring, and
yet, at last, conquering spirit. It is not w r ritten as a wise
and calm Christian would write, but as a heart would write
which was fevered with disappointment, jaded with passion-
ate attempts in the pursuit of blessedness, and forced to God
as the last resource.
My younger brethren, that saddest book in all the Bible
stands before you as the beacon and the warning from a God
who loves you, and would spare you bitterness if He could.
Solomon s Restoration. 743
Follow inclination now, put no restraint on feeling say that
there is time enough to be religious by-and-by forget that
now is the time to take Christ's yoke upon you, and learn
gradually and peacefully that serene control of heart which
must be learnt at last by a painful wrench forget all that,
and say that you trust in God's love and mercy to bring all
right, and then that uuok of Ecclesiastes is your history.
The penalty that you pay for a youth of pleasure is, if you
have any thing good in you, an old age of weariness and re-
morseful dissatisfaction.
Another part of Solomon's chastisement was doubt. Once
more turn to the book of Ecclesiastes. "All things come
alike to all : there is one event to the righteous and to the
wicked ; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean ;
to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not." In
this, brethren, you will observe the querulous complaint of a
man who has ceased to feel that God is the Ruler of this
world. A blind chance, or a dark destiny, seems to rule all
earthly things. And that is the penalty of leaving God's
narrow path for sin's wider and more flowery one. You lose
your way ; you get perplexed ; doubt takes possession of
your soul. And, my Christian brethren, if I speak to any
such, you know that there is no suffering more severe than
doubt. There is a loss of aim, and you know not what you
have to live for. Life has lost its meaning and its infinite
significance. There is a hollowness at the heart of your ex-
istence. There is a feeling of weakness, and a discontented
loss of self-respect. God has hidden His face from you be-
cause you have been trying to clo without Him or to serve
Him with a divided heart.
But now, lastly, we have to remark, that the love of God
brought Solomon through all this to spiritual manhood.
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God,
and keep his commandments : for this is the whole duty of
man." In this, brethren, we have the evidence of his victory.
Doubt, and imprisonment, and worldliness have passed away,
and clear activity, belief, freedom, have taken their place. It
was a terrible discipline, but God had made that discipline
successful. Solomon struggled manfully to the end. The
details of his life were dark, but the life itself was earnest ;
and after many a fall, repentance, with unconquerable pur-
pose, began afresh. And so he struggled on, often baffled,
often down, but never finally subdued ; and still with tears
and indomitable trust, returning to the conflict again. And
so when we come to the end of his last earthly work, we find
the sour smoke, which had so long been smouldering in his
744 Solomon s Restoration.
heart and choking his existence, changed into bright, clear
flame. He has found the secret out at last, and it has filled
his whole soul with blessedness. God is man's happiness.
" Fear God, and keep His commandments : for this is the
whole duty of man."
And now, brethren, let us come to the meaning and the
personal application of all this. There is a way let us not
shrink from saying it there is a way in which sin may be
made to minister to holiness. "To whomsoever much is
forgiven the same loveth much." There was an everlasting
truth in what our Messiah said to the moral Pharisees :
"The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of
God before you." Now these are Christ's words ; and we
will not fear to boldly state the same truth, though it be
liable to much misinterpretation. Past sin, brethren, may be
made the stepping-stone to heaven. Let a man abuse that
if he will by saying, " Then it is best to sin." A man may
make the doctrine absurd, even shocking, by that inference,
but it is true for all that. "All things work together for
good to them that love God." All things, even sin. God
can take even your sin, and make it work to your soul's
sanctification. He can let you down into such an abyss of
self-loathing and disgust, such life-weariness, and doubt,
and misery, and disappointment, that if He ever raises you
again by the invigorating experience of the love of Christ,
you will rise stronger from your very fall, and in a manner
secured against apostasy again. Solomon, king of Israel,
sinned, and, by the strange power of the cross of Christ,
that sin gave him deeper knowledge of himself, deeper
insight into the mystery of human life, more marvellous
power of touching the souls of his brother-men, than if he
had not sinned. But forget not this, if ever a great sinner
becomes a great saint, it will be through agonies which none
but those who have sinned knoAV.
Brethren, I speak to those among you who know some-
thing about what the world is worth, who have tasted its
fruits, and found them like the Dead Sea apples hollowness
and ashes. By those foretastes of coming misery which
God has already given you, those lonely feelings of utter
wretchedness and disappointment when you have returned
home palled and satiated from the gaudy entertainment,
and the truth has pressed itself icy cold upon your heart,
" Vanity of vanities " is this worth living for ? By all that,
be warned. Be true to your convictions. Be honest with
yourselves. Be manly in working out your doubts, as
Solomon was. Greatness, goodness, blessedness, lie not in
Joseph's Forgiveness of his Brethren. 745
the life that you are leading now. They lie in quite a
different path : they lie in a life hid with Christ in God.
Before God is compelled to write that upon your heart in
disgust and disappointment, learn "what is that good for
the sons of men which they should do " all the days of
their life under the heaven. Learn from the very greatness
of your souls, which have a capacity for infinite agony, that
you are in this world for a grander destiny than that of
frittering away life in uselessness.
Lastly, let us le#rn from this subject the covenant love
of God. There is such a thing as love which rebellion
can not weary, which ingratitude can not cool. It is the love
of God to those whom He has redeemed in Christ. " Did
not Solomon, king of Israel, sin ? and yet there was no
king like him who was beloved of his God." Let that, my
Christian brethren, be to us a truth not to teach carelessness,
but thankfulness. Oh ! trembling believer in Christ, are
you looking into the dark future and fearing, not knowing
what God will be to you at the last ? Remember, Christ
" having loved His own who are in the world loved them to
to the end." Your salvation is in the hands of Christ; the
everlasting arms are beneath you. The rock on which your
salvation is built is love, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against you.
XVII.
JOSEPH'S FORGIVENESS OF HIS BRETHREN.
" And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said,
Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil
which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying,
Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph,
Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin ; for
they did unto thee evil : and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the
servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto
him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face ; and they
said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not :
for am I in the place of God ? But as for you, ye thought evil against me ;
but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is thiy day, to save much
people alive. Now, therefore, fear ye not : I will nourish you, and your little
ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them. " Gen. 1. 15-21.
CHRISTIANITY is a revelation of the love of God a de-
mand of our love by God based thereon. Christianity is a
revelation of Divine forgiveness a requirement thereupon
that we should forgive each other.
32
746 JosepKs Forgiveness of his Brethren.
" A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one
another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another"
(John xiii. 34) ; " Ye call me Master and Lord : and ye say
well, for so I am. If I, then, your Lord and Master, have
washed your feet ; ye also ought to wash one another's feet.
For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have
done to you" (John xiii. 13-15) ; "Forgive us our debts, as
we forgive our debtors " (Matt. vi. 12) ; " Beloved, if God so
loved us, we ought also to love one another" (1 Johniv. 11) ;
" Fo?bearing one another, and forgiving one another, even as
God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Ephes. iv. 32).
Now these duties of love, forgiveness, service, are called
" new commandments." But we should greatly mistake if
we suppose that they are new in this sense, that they were
created by the Gospel, and did not exist before. The Gospel
did not make God love us ; it only revealed His love. The
Gospel did not make it our duty to forgive and love ; it only
revealed the eternal order of things, to transgress which is
our misery. These belong to the eternal order and idea of
our humanity. We are not planted by Christ in a new ar
bitrary state of human relationships, but redeemed into the
state to which we were created.
So St. John says, " I write no new commandment unto you,
but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning.
The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from
the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto
you, which thing is true in him and in you ; because the dark-
ness is past, and the true light now shineth " old, because
of the eternal order of love ; new, because shown in the light
of the love of Christ. Christianity is the true life the right
humanity.
Now the proof of this is, that ages before Christ appeared,
they who gave themselves up to God to be led instead of to
their own hearts, did actually reduce to practice, and mani-
fested in their lives, those very principles which, as princi-
ples, were only revealed by Christ.
Here, for instance, three thousand years before Christ, Jo-
seph, a Hebrew slave, taught by life's vicissitudes, educated
by God, acts out practical Christianity one of its deepest
and most difficult lessons. There is nothing in the New Tes-
tament more childlike than this forgiveness of his brethren.
Some perhaps may be shocked at dwelling on this thought :
it seems to them to derogate from Christ. This is as if they
thought that they honored Christ by believing that until He
came no truth was known that He created truth. These
persons tremble at every instance of a noble or pure life
Josep/is Forgiveness of his Brethren. 747
which can be shown in persons not enlightened by Christian-
ity. But, in truth, this is a corroboration of Christianity.
Christianity is a full revelation of the truth of life, into which
every one who had been here had, in his measure, struck his
roots before. It is simply " the truth, the same yesterday,
to-day and forever." And all instances of such a life only
corroborate the truth of the revelation.
We divide our subject into two parts :
I. The petition of the brethren.
IT. Joseph's forgiveness.
1. The petition was suggested by their own anticipations
of vengeance. No\v whence came these anticipations ? I
reply, from their own hearts. Under similar circumstances
they would have acted so, and they took for granted that Jo-
seph would. We suspect according to our nature, we look
on others as we feel. Suspicion proves character, so does
faith. We believe and suspect as we are. But unless there
had been safety for them in Joseph's heart, a guaranty in the
nobleness of Joseph's nature, their abject humiliation would
have saved them nothing. Little they knew the power of
hate, the sweetness of revenge, if they fancied that a grudge
treasured up so many years would be foregone on the very
verge of accomplishment for the sake of any satisfaction,
prayer, apology.
Now the error of Joseph's brethren is our error towards
God. Like them, we impute to God our own vindictive feel-
ings, and, like them, we pray a prayer which is in itself an in-
sult or absurd. We think that sin is an injury, a personal
affront, instead of a contradiction of our own nature, a de-
parture from the Divine harmony, a disfigurement of what
is good. Consequently we expect that God resents it. Our
vindictive feelings we impute to God : we would revenge,
therefore we think He would. And then in this spirit, " For-
give us," means, " Forego thy vengeance. Do not retaliate.
I have injured Thee ; but lo ! I apologize, I lie in the dust.
Bear no malice, indulge no rancor, O God !" This is the
heathen prayer which we often offer up to God. And just
as it must have been unavailing in Joseph's case except there
were safety in Joseph's character, so must it be useless in
ours unless in God's nature there be a guaranty which we
think our prayers create. Think you that God, if revenge-
ful, can be bought off by prayer, by rolling in the dust, by
unmanly cries, by coaxing, or flattery ? God's forgiveness is
the regeneration of our nature. God can not avert the coi>
sequences of our sin.
748 Joseph's Forgiveness of his Brethren.
We must get rid of these heathen ideas of God. God'a
forgiveness is properly our regeneration. You can not by
prayer buy off God's vindictiveness ; for God is not vin-
dictiveness, but love. You can not by prayer avert the
consequences of sin, for the consequences are boundless,
inseparable from the act. Nor is there in time or eternity
any thing that can sever the connection. If you think that
you can sin, and then by cries avert the consequences of
sin, you insult God's character. You can only redeem the
past by alteration of the present. By faith in God's love,
by communion with His Spirit, you may redeem yourself;
but you can not win the love of God by entreaty unless that
love be yours already yours, that is, when you claim it.
2. Next, observe the petition was caused by their father's
insisting on their asking pardon.
He recognized the duty of apology. For Jacob knew
that Joseph bore no malice. Not to change Joseph, but to
fulfill their obligations, he gave the charge that required sat-
isfaction. We know how false conceptions are of satisfac-
tion : in the language of the old duel, to give satisfaction
meant to give one who had been injured by you an opportu-
nity of taking your life. In the language of semi-heathen
Christianity, to satisfy God means to give God an equivalent
in blood for an insult offered. No wonder that with such
conceptions the duty of apology is hard almost impossible.
W"e can not say, " I have erred," because it gives a triumph.
Now the true view of satisfaction is this to satisfy, not re-
venge, but the law of right. The sacrifice of Christ satisfied
God, because it exhibited that which alone can satisfy Him,
the entire surrender of humanity. The satisfaction of an
apology is doing the right satisfying doing all that can be
done.
It may be our lot to be in Jacob's circumstances : we may
be arbiters in a dispute, or seconds in a quarrel. And remem-
ber, to satisfy in this sense is not to get for your friend all
his vindictiveness requires, or to make him give as little as
the other demands, but to see that he does all that should of
right be done.
His honor ! Yes ; but you can not satisfy his honor by
glutting his revenge, only by making him do right. And if
he has erred or injured, in no possible way can you repair his
honor or heal his shame except by demanding that he shall
make full acknowledgment. " I have erred" it is very hard
to say ; but because it is hard it is therefore manly. You are
too proud to apologize, because it will give your adversary an
advantage? But remember, the advantage is already given
Joseph's Forgiveness of his Brethren. 749
to him by the wrong that you have done, and every hour
that you delay acknowledgment you retain your inferiority ;
you diminish the difference and your inferiority so soon as
you dare to say, " I did wrong ; forgive me."
3. Plea as servant of the same God (ver. 17). Forgive-
ness is not merely a moral but a religious duty. Now re-
member this was an argument which was only available in
behalf of the Jews. It could not have been pleaded for an
Egyptian. Joseph might have been asked to forgive on
grounds of humanity ; but not by the sanctions of religion,
if an Egyptian had offended him. For an Egyptian did
not serve the God of his fathers.
How shall we apply that ? According to the spirit in
which we do, we may petrify it into a maxim narrower than
Judaism, or enlarge it into Christianity. If by " servants
of the God of our fathers," we mean our own sect, party,
church, and that we must forgive them, narrow indeed is the
principle we have learnt from this passage. But Judaism
was to preserve truth Christianity to expand it. Christian-
ity says, just as Judaism did, "Forgive the servants of the
God." Its pleas are, " Forgive : for he is thy fellow-servant.
Seventy times seven times forgive thy brother" But it ex-
pands that word "brother" beyond what the law ever
dreamed of God is the Father of man. If there be a soul
for which Christ did not die, then that man you are not, on
Judaistic principles, bound to forgive. If there be one whom
the love of God does not embrace in the Gospel family, then
for that one this plea is unavailing. But if God be the
Father of the race, and if Christ died for all ; if the word
"neighbor" means even an .alien and a heretic; then this
plea, narrowed by the law to his nation, expands for us to all.
Because the servant of our Maker and the child of our Father,
therefore he must be forgiven, let him be whosoever he may.
II. Let us consider, in .the second place, Joseph's forgive-
ness.
1. Joseph's forgiveness was shown by his renunciation of
the office of avenger " Am I in the place of God ?" Now
this we may make to convey a Christian or a heathen sense,
as we read it. It might read we often do read it we often
say it thus : " I will not avenge, because God will. If God
did not, I would. But certain that He will do it, I can wait,
and I will wait, long years ; I will watch the reverses of for-
tune ; I will mark the progress of disease ; I will observe the
error, failing, grief, loss ; and I will exult and say, ' I knew it,
but my hand was not on him; God has revenged me better
75 Joseph's Forgiveness of his Brethren.
than I could myself.' ' This is the cold-blooded, fearful feel
ing that is sometimes concealed under Christian forgiveness.
Do not try to escape the charge. That feeling your heart
and mine have felt, when we thought we were forgiving, and
were praised for it. That w r as not Joseph's meaning. Read
it thus : " If God does not, dare I avenge ? ' Am I in the
place of God ?' Dare I
" ' Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge His justice, be the God of God ?' "
So speaks St. Paul, " Vengeance is mine." Therefore wait,
sit still, and see God's wrath ? No ! " Therefore, if thine en-
emy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink." This is
the Christian revenge.
I say not that there is no such thing as the duty of re-
dressing wrongs, especially those of others. There is a keen
sense of w r rong, a mighty demand of the heart for justice,
which can not be put aside. And he who can not feel indig-
nation against wrong can not, in a manly way, forgive injury.
But I say, the only revenge w r hich is essentially Christian is
that of retaliating by forgiveness. And he who has ever
tasted that Godlike feeling of forbearance when insulted ;
of speaking w r ell of one who has slandered him (pleasure all
the more exquisite if the slanderer does not know it) ; of
doing service in requital of an injury; he, and only he, can
know how it is possible for our frail humanity, by abnegating
the place of God the Avenger, to occupy the place of God
the Absolver.
2. Joseph forgave, or facilitated forgiveness, by observing
the good results of what had seemed so cruel (ver. 20).
Good out of evil that is the strange history of this world,
whenever we learn God's character. No thanks to you.
Your sin dishonored you, though it will honor God. By our
intentions, and not by the results, are our actions judged.
Remember this tenaciously : forgiveness becomes less diffi-
cult, your worst enemy becomes your best friend, if you trans-
mute his evil by good. No one can really permanently in-
jure us but ourselves. No one can dishonor us : Joseph was
immured in a dungeon. They spat on Christ. Did that sully
the purity of the one, or lower the Divine dignity of the
other?
3. He forgot the injury. He spake kindly to them, com-
forted them, and bade them fear not. An English proverb
has joined forgiving and forgetting. No forgiveness is com-
plete which does not join forgetfulness. You forgive only so
far as you forget. But here we must explain, else we get
Joseph's Forgiveness of his Brethren. 751
into the common habit of using words without meaning.
To forget, literally, is not a matter of volition. You can by
will remember you can not by an act of will forget you
can not give yourself a bad memory if you have a good one.
In that sense, to forget is a foolish way of talking. And
indeed to forget in ihe sense of oblivion would not be truly
forgiving ; for if we forgive only while we do not recollect,
who shall insure that with recollection hate shall not return ?
More than that. In the parable of the forgiving debtor,
you remember his sin in this sense was not forgotten. Fresh
sin waked up all the past. He was forgiven ; then he was
reminded of the past debt, and cast into prison. Not for his
new offense, but for his old debt, was he delivered to the
tormentors it was not forgotten. But the true Christian
forgiveness, as here in Joseph's example, is unconditional.
Observe he did not hold his brethren in suspense; he did
not put them on their good behavior; he did not say, "I
hold this threat over you if you do it again." That is for-
giving and not forgetting. But that was a frank, full, free
remission consoling them trying to make them forget
neither by look or word showing memory, unless the fault
had been repeated. It was unconditional, with no reserve
behind. That was forgiving and forgetting.
To conclude. Forgiveness is the work of a long life to
learn. This was at the close of Joseph's life. He would not
have forgiven them in youth not when the smart was fresh
ere he saw the good resulting from his suffering. But
years, experience, trial, had softened Joseph's soul. A dun-
geon and a government had taught him much; also his fa-
ther's recent death. Do not think that any formula will
teach this. No mere maxims got by heart about forgiveness
of injuries no texts perpetually on the tongue will do this
God alone can teach it : By experience ; by a sense of human
frailty ; by a perception of " the soul of goodness in things
evil ;" by a cheerful trust in human nature ; by a strong sense
of God's love ; by long and disciplined realization of the aton-
ing love of Christ : only thus can we get that free, manly,
large, princely spirit which the best and purest of all the pa-
triarchs, Joseph, exhibited in his matured manhood.
752 A Thanksgiving Day.
xvni.
A THANKSGIVING DAY.
"Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said nnto him, BehoV),
&OU art made whole : sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The
man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made hinj
whole." John v. 14, 15.
THE man to whom these words were spoken had been
lying, only a few days before, a helpless, hopeless sufferer
among the porches of Bethesda, together with a number of
others affected in a similar manner. By a singular, unex-
pected, and miraculous event, he was rescued from his calam-
ity, while the remainder were left to the mercies of public
charity, or to avail themselves of the mysterious spring of
Bethesda.
It was a time of festival in Jerusalem, the streets were
probably echoing with the voice of mirth and festivity, with
the sounds of them that kept holiday : but it was to this con-
gregation of the sick and the miserable that the Redeemer
bent his steps; it was what might have been expected from
the Son of Man "The whole need not a physician, but they
thr-t are sick." It was the office of the Man of Sorrows to
ooothe the wretched ; and of all the crowded scenes that day
enacting in the Holy City, the "great multitude of impotent
folk, of blind, halt, withered," found that their abode was the
most congenial atmosphere t<> the soul of the Redeemer.
And in all this we have but a miniature representation of
the world as it is now. Jerusalem contained within its walls,
within its proud battlements, and amidst its stately temples,
as much wretchedness and as much misery, separated only
by a thin partition from its abodes of luxury and state, as
our own metropolis does now. It is a miniature representa-
tion of the world in this, so full of outward show and of in-
ward wretchedness. It is a representation of the world we
live in, inasmuch as it is a place where selfishness prevails;
for there was affixed a certain condition to the healing of the
spring, that the man should be the first ; if he were not the
first, no miracle took place, and there was one more friend-
less wretch.
This man had no one to give him the little assistance re-
quired. For thirty-eight years he had been lingering here,
and there appeared to have been no visitor who would sup
A Thanksgiving Day. 753
ply what was wanting of the ties of blood or relationship.
It is, I say, but a representation of what this world is, when
the love of God has not touched the heart of man. It is a
representation of the world, too, in this, that with suifering
there is frequently appointed the remedy. The remedy is
often found side by side with the pain it may relieve, if we
could but make use of it. It is so in both bodily and spirit-
ual maladies there is a remedial system, a pool of Bethesda,
everywhere springing up by the side of sin and suffering.
It is a representation of the world, also, that the presence
of the Son of Man should be felt rather in scenes of sorrow
than of joy. It is not in the day of high health and strength,
when our intellect is powerful, our memory vigorous, when
we feel strong in. our integrity and our courage, but when
our weakened powers have made us feel that we are " a
worm and no man ;" when our failing faculties convince iis
that, except for our connection with immortality, our minds
would be as nothing; when we feel temptation getting too
strong for us, and that we are on the brink of falling then
it is that we are taught there is a strength not our own, be-
yond any thing that we possess of our own. It is then that
the presence of the Son of Man is felt ; then is the day of our
merciful and mysterious deliverance.
And there is another resemblance to be noted. The Sa-
viour of the world went into the Bethesda porches, and out
of the great number of sufferers he selected one not because
of his superior righteousness, not for any merit on his part,
but for reasons hidden within His own Almighty Mind. So
it is in the world one is taken, another is left ; one nation
is sterile, another is fertile ; one is full of diseases from which
another is exempted ; one man is surrounded with luxuries
and comforts, another with every suffering which* flesh is heir
to. So much for the miniature of the world exhibited by
the pool of Bethesda.
Now in connection with this subject there are two branch-
es in which we will arrange our observations.
I. The cause of this man's disease.
II. The history of his gratitude.
I. Concerning the cause of his disease, we are not left in
any doubt, the Redeemer's own lips have told us what it was
" Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." So we
see there was a strange connection between this bodily mal-
ady and moral evil, a connection that would have startled all
around if it had been seen. No doubt the men of science,
versed in the healing art. would have found some cause for
32*
754 A Thanksgiving Day.
his malady connected with the constitution of his bodily
frame ; but the Redeemer went beyond all this. Thirty-
eight years before, there had been some sin committed, pos-
sibly a small sin, in our eyes at least, of which the result had
been thirty-eight years of suffering ; and so the truth we
gather from this is, there is a connection between physical
and moral evil ; a connection, my Christian brethren, more
deep than any of us have been accustomed to believe in.
But most assuredly, many of the most painful forms of dis-
ease that come upon the body depend upon the nervous con-
stitution ; and the nervous system is connected inseparably
with the moral state more than men suppose. Often where
we have been disposed to refer the whole to external causes,
there has been something of moral disorder in the character
which makes that constitution exquisitely susceptible of suf-
fering and incapable of enjoyment. Every physician will
tell us that indulged passions will lead to a disturbed state
of body ; that want of self-control in various ways will end in
that wretched state when the light that falls on the eye inflicts
torture, the sounds that are heard in the ear are all discord,
and all this beautiful creation, so formed for delight, only
ministers to the sufferings of the diseased and disorganized
frame. Thus we see that external suffering is often connect-
ed with moral evil, but we must carefully guard and modify
this statement, for this is not universally the case ; and it is
clear this was the Saviour's opinion, for when the disciples
came to Him on another occasion asking whether the blind
man or his parents did sin, He answered that neither had
sinned, plainly showing that there was sometimes physical
suffering for which there was no moral cause. In that case
it was not for his own sin, or even that of others it baffled
all the investigations of man to explain it.
Now, we must remember this when we see cases of bodily
suffering : we must consider that there is a .great difference
between the two senses in which the word punishment is
used. It may be a penalty, it may be a chastisement : one
meaning of punishment is, that the law exacts a penalty if it
is broken notice having been given that a certain amount
of suffering would follow a certain course of action. All
the laws of God, in the physical world, in the moral world,
or in the political world, if broken, commonly entail a penal-
ty. Revolutions beset a nation, shaking its very founda-
tions, owing to some defects in the justice or wisdom of its
government, and we can not say that all this comes from the
dust, or springs out of the ground. There are causes in the
history of past events that will account for it. The philo-
A Thanksgiving Day. 755
sophical historian of future years will show the results of.
some political mistake, continued perhaps for centuries, by
the rulers of this nation. So in the moral and in the physi-
cal world there are laws, as it were, that execute themselves.
If a man eat a deleterious herb, whether he does it willing-
ly or unconsciously, the penalty will fall on his body. If a
man touch the lightning-conductor, not knowing that the air
is charged with electricity, no holiness on his part will pre-
vent the deadly stroke. But there is another kind of law,
written in the hearts of men, and given to the conscience,
when the penalty is awarded as the result of moral trans-
gression, and then it becomes a chastisement, and the lan-
guage of Scripture then becomes the language of our hearts.
It is the rod of God that hath done all this.
There is another thing that we must bear in mind, that
there are certain evils which fall upon man over which he
can have no control. They come as the result of circum-
stances over which he has no power whatever. So, we read
in the Second book of Kings, the child of the Shunammite
went out amongst the reapers ; he was suddenly seized with
a deadly pain in his head, was taken to his mother, sate upon
her lap, and died at noon. A sunstroke had struck that
child ; but to say that from any fault of his he was selected
as the object of suffering, when the rest of the reapers were
spared, would be as unjust as to say that those upon whom
the Tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all the Gali-
leans.
Moreover, to understand this we must recollect that the
laws of God and the penalties of God are not miracles. If
the penalty comes as the consequence appointed by God
Himself, to follow certain sins, it is a natural punishment, but
if it comes with no connection, it is then an arbitrary punish-
ment. So, if a man educates a child ill, and he turns out a
bad man, there is the natural connection between the penalty
arid the guilt. But if a man, pursuing his journey, is struck
with lightning, there is no penalty there. Now, in the Old
Testament we find a natural punishment falling on Eli. He
allowed his children to grow up without correction, and the
contempt and scorn of the whole nation fell upon that family,
and the father actually died in consequence of the shock of
his children's misconduct. But if the father had died in bat-
tle, or by an accident, then it would have been unjust to say
that there was any connection between his misconduct and his
sudden death ; it would have been an arbitrary connection.
The punishments of God are generally not arbitrary : each
Jaw, as it were, inflicts its own penalty. It does not execute
756 A Thanksgiving Day.
one that belongs to another. So, if the drunkard lead a life
of intoxication, the consequence will be a trembling hand
and a nervous frame ; but if he be drowned in the seas when
sailing in the storm, he is punished for having broken a natu-
ral law, not a moral law of God. Let us then bear in mind
that if the ship convey across the ocean the heavenly-mind-
>ed missionary and the scoffing infidel, if the working of the
vessel be attended to, and there is nothing unusual in the
winds and the waves, they will convey the one to his desti-
nation as safely as the other.
Now, the application we must make of all this is, if a man
perish when out on a sabbath-day, we have no right to say
that he dies because he has broken the sabbath. If famine
or pestilence visit the land, it may be explained by the in-
fringement of some of God's natural laws; the earth may
not be rightly cultivated, sanitary means have not been
taken to stop the pestilence ; but we have no right to say
that they come in consequence of political relations which
are not to our mind, or of regulations of policy of which we
disapprove.
There is one thing more. It is perfectly possible that
transgressions against the natural laws of God may, in the
end, become trespasses against His moral law, and then the
penalty becomes chastisement. The first man that drank the
fermented juice of the grape was perfectly innocent, even if
it caused intoxication ; but when he found how it affected
his brain, it became sin to him thenceforward. The first
time that a man enters into society which he finds hurtful
to his religious feelings, he may have done it innocently ;
but when he sees how it lowers the tone of his character, he
must mingle amongst them no more. So want of cleanli-
ness in some Alpine regions may result from ignorance of
the laws of nature ; but when, in more crowded populations,
it is ascertained that it is productive of disease, and injurious
to those around them, then the infraction of the natural law
is stigmatized as a higher degree of turpitude. That which
was a penalty becomes something more of chastisement from
the wrath of God. So it is that science goes on enlighten-
ing men more and more as to the laws of God's physical
world, and telling them what they must and what they must
net do, in order to lessen the amount of bodily suffering
around us.
My Christian brethren, we have spoken of these things at
some length, because all these considerations have been
brought into our view by that pestilence,* from which w
* The cholera.
A Thanksgiving Day. 757
celebrate our deliverance this day ; partly the result of
causes over which man has no control, and partly the result
of the disregard of natural laws ; partly, also, from the pres-
ence of moral evil amongst us. That these three distinct
classes of causes have been present may be proved by trac-
ing its history. They who have made it their duty to trace
out its progress tell us that its origin was in 1818, in Bengal,
when it arose during the overflow of the River Ganges ; and
then, dividing into two streams of pestilence and death, it
passed through the world ; one going to the east, the other
to the west. The eastern current passed on till it reached
the shores of China ; the western moved slowly on with gi-
gantic tread, decimating nations as it went, cutting off nine
thousand of the British army ; and passing through Persia
and Arabia, it destroyed twelve thousand of the pilgrims to
Mecca, till it paused mysteriously and strangely on the very
verge of Europe as if the voice of God himself had said,
"There is danger near ; set thine house in order." By 1830
it had reached the metropolis of Russia. In 1831 it was
doing its dreadful work in our own capital, while eighteen
thousand fell in Paris alone ; and it then passed on, as a
winged messenger, across the ocean to America.
There was then a strange disappearance of the pestilence
for four or five years, till 1837, when it appeared first in the
southern parts of Europe, and gradually rolled its relentless
course onward to our shores. In all this you will perceive
something over which we have no control. It has pursued
its way not guided by moral evil or by physical causes, but
by some cause, explain it as you will as electricity, or any
other conjecture it is one that baffles every effort to stay
its progress. It has taken the same road, too, that it took
on its former visitation. The common food of man seems
changed into something poisonous, the very air is charged
with contagion ; every thing proclaims it as a visitation from
the Almighty. And in the very character of the disease
there is something that marks it out from all other diseases:
it has been truly said, that in its worst cases there is but one
symptom, and that one is death. A man is full of health
and strength, and in two hours he is gone. It is a disease
which in its best form is terrific. That being who just now
stood before you in perfect health, is in a moment a cold,
livid, convulsed mass of humanity, fighting with the foe
that threatens to overcome him.
But yet we find, in spite of all this, that in the progress of
this strange disease, great mistakes have been made by man.
From the circumstance of the poorer classes being the chief
758 A Thanksgiving Day.
sufferers, they fancied that it was inflicted by the higher;
and, in some places they rose against them, accusing them of
poisoning the wells. And we find Christians so mistaken as
to look on all this suffering, not as the natural connection
between sin and its penalty, but as having some arbitrary
connection with the sin of others, from which they them-
selves and their own party are free.
But, in the next place, we find that it really has been
caused in some degree by the transgression of the laws of
nature ; for whatever may have been the secret origin of the
disease, whatever may be the mystery of its onward course,
still we know that there are certain conditions usually neces-
sary to make it destructive. So we find that in India it was
the natives who for the most part suffered, those whose con-
stitutions had less stamina than our own. And here we see
that debility produced by over-work, bad air, crowded dwell-
ings, have been the predisposing causes ; and this tells us,
if ever visitation could speak, that affliction cometh not out
of the dust, neither does sorrow spring from the ground. It
has no direct connection with moral character, except on pe-
culiar points. Place a worldly man and a holy man in tiie
same unfavorable circumstances for receiving the disorder,
and you will not find the one has any charm to escape the
fate of the other.
But we do find that this disease is increased and propa-
gated by human selfishness. We read of the crowds at
Bethesda, of whom it was said, there was no man to put
them into the water ; and so it is now. The poor, the helpless,
the neglected, have been the chief sufferers. Out of two hun-
dred and forty-three who in this place have suffered from that
and similar causes, one hundred and sixty-three were re-
ceiving parish relief. And in this there is something that
tells us not merely of ignorance, but of selfishness ; for when
commissioners went through the length and breadth of the
country to examine into the statistics of the disease, we were
met by the startling fact that medical science, that careful
nursing, could do nothing while our crowded graveyards, our
teeming and airless habitations, our worn-out and unhealthy
population, received and propagated the miasma ; and ev-ry
time that a man in the higher classes perished, it was as if
the poor neglected man had spoken from the grave ; or, as
if God himself had been heard to speak through him. He
seems to say, " I can prove to you now my relationship.
You can receive evil from me, if nothing else has ever passed
between us ; the same constitution, the same flesh and blood,
the same frame were once ours ; and if I can do it in no oth
A Thanksgiving Day. 759
et way, I can prove, by infecting you, that I am your broth
er still."
Once more : it has been produced in a degree by moral
evil ; vice has been as often the predisposing cause as any
other external circumstance, in certain cases. I say in cer-
tain cases, not in all. A man might have been a blasphem-
er, or a slanderer, but neither of these sins would affect
him ; but those sins which are connected with the flesh, sen'
suality, drunkenness, gradually pervade the human frame,
and fit it for the reception of this disease.
II. But we will pass on to consider the history of this
man's recovery, and of his gratitude. The first cause for
gratitude was his selection. He alone was taken, and others
were left. He had cause for gratitude, also, in that he had
been taught the connection between moral evil and its pen-
alty. He had been taught the certainty of God's laws, how
they execute themselves, and, more blessed than all, he had
been taught that there was a Personal Superintendence over
all the children of men. The relief had come from the per-
sonal interposition of the Son of Man. He went and told the
Jews that it was Jesus who had done this. And this ex-
plains to us the meaning and the necessity of a public ac-
knowledgment of our gratitude. It is meant to show this
nation that it is not by chance, nor by the operation of
science, nor by the might of man, that we have been rescued,
but that our deliverance comes direct from God.
Let us observe the popular account (for John gives us the
popular account) of the angel troubling the water. It mat-
ters not whether it is scientifically to be proved or not, the
secret causes lie hid beyond our investigation ; but this you
can observe, that it was a religious act, that it was not done
by chance, that there were living agents in the healing pro-
cess. The man of science in the present day would tell you
what were the ingredients in the spring how it told on the
cellular tissue, or on the nervous fabric ; but whatever he
may make of it scientifically, it is true morally and relig-
iously ; for what is every remedy but the angel, the messen-
ger of God sent down from the Father of all mercy, the
Fountain of all goodness ? So when we celebrate a day of
national thanksgiving, it is but the nation's voice, arising in
acknowledgment of a Parent's protection that these things
come not by chance, but that there is personal superintend-
ence over this world, and this deliverance is the proof of a
Father's love.
Once more : a day of thanksgiving is meant to be a wan*
760 A Thanksgiving Day.
ing and a reminder against future sins. " Sin no more, lest
a worse thing come unto thee." And it has ever been so,
that the result of panic has been reaction. After excitement
comes apathy ; after terror has been produced, by danger
especially, comes indifference, and therefore comes the warn-
ing voice from the Redeemer "Sin no more, lest a worse
thing come unto thee."
But we may perhaps say, "J!/// sin did not produce this
disease. It was no doing no fault of mine ; it came from
causes beyond my control. The pestilence now has wreaked
its vengeance ; I find I had nothing to do with it, and I may-
dismiss the subject from my mind." My brethren, let us
look into this a little more deeply. It was not directly your
sin that nailed your Redeemer to the cross, but the sin of
the cruel Pharisees, of the relentless multitude ; yet it is
said, "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." It
arises all from this circumstance, brethren there are two
worlds, a world of evil and a world of good. The Son of
Man came as the perfect and entire representation of the
kingdom of holiness. He came in collision with the world
of evil ; He died for sinners for the sins of others of all
who partake of the nature of moral evil : and therefore by
their sin they nailed the Redeemer to the cross. All those
who opposed themselves to Jesus would have opposed them-
selves to Moses, Zacharias, and Abel ; they allowed the deeds
of their fathers, and were partakers of the blood of all the
prophets that had been slain upon the earth.
The men who join in a crowd, aiding and abetting the
death of any individual, by the law of every country are
held guilty; and now, though there may have been no dis-
tinct act of selfishness by which any man has perished at
your hands; though there have been no distinct want of
care for the poor still I may fearlessly ask you all, Christian
brethren, does not your conscience tell you how little the
welfare and the comfort of others has been in your thoughts?
As far as we have taken a part in the world's selfishness ; as far
as we have lived for self and not for our neighbors ; as far
as we have forgotten the poor sufferers lying in the porches
af Bethesda not directly, but indirectly, all that has fallen
upon this land may have been sent as a chastisement to us.
And there is this to be explained " Sin no more ;" mean-
ing apparently, that if a man did not sin, nothing more
would happen. Are we to understand, then, that if a man
has been blameless he will never suffer from sorrow or sick-
ness? or that if a man will avoid sin, he will never be visit'
ed by death ? To have said that would have been to contra
Christian Friendship. 761
diet the history of the Redeemer's own life and death. He
died, though He sinned not. How then, brethren, can we
understand it? Why, we can understand it but in this way,
by recalling to our memory what has been already said of
the difference between the punishment and the penalty. If
a man live a humble and holy life in Christ Jesus, there is no
promise that if plague visits his land it shall not come nigh
him. Live in purity, live in unselfishness; there is no
promise that you shall not be cut down in a day ; there is
nothing in religion that can shield you from what the world
calls trouble from penalty ; but there is this that which
would have been chastisement is changed into penalty.
The Redeemer suffered death as a penalty ; but by no
means as chastisement ; on the contrary, it was the richest
blessing which a Father's love could bestow upon His well-
beloved Son, in whom He was well pleased. So it will be
with every one of us. He who lives to God, rests in his Re-
deemer's love, and is trying to get rid of his old nature to
him every sorrow, every bereavement, every pain, will come
eharged with blessings, and death itself will be no longer the
king of terrors, but the messenger of grace, the very angel
of God descending on the troubled waters, and calling him
to his Father's home.
XIX.
CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP.
"Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the
Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before
him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name."
Mai. iii. 16.
THE first division of our subject is suggested by the word
" then." When ? They did thus in the times of Malachi.
It is only in reference to those times that we can extract the
true lesson from the conduct of the holy men whose behav-
ior he praises. We will consider
I. The times of Malachi.
II. The patience of the saints in evil times.
I. Not much is known of the Prophet Malachi, or his exact
date. We are sure, however, that he was the last prophet
of the old dispensation. He lived somewhere between the
restoration from captivity and the coming of Christ.
762 Christian Friendship.
Thus much we know of those times from history : The
Jews were restored. From chap, iii., ver. 1 0, we learn that the
Temple had been rebuilt. But Israel's grandeur was gone,
although still enjoying outward prosperity. The nation had
sunk into a state of political degradation, and had become
successively subject to the Persians, Syrians, Romans. It is
precisely that political state in w r hich national virtues do not
thrive, and national decay is sure. * * * *
Italy Spain.
They had a glorious past. They had the enlightenment of
a present high civilization. But with this there was a want
of unity, manhood, and simple virtues. There was just suf-
ficient gallingness in the yoke to produce faction and sullen-
ness ; but not enough curtailment of all physical comforts
to rouse the nation as one man to reconquer freedom. It
was a state in which there was no visible Divine interfer-
ence.
Compare this period of Israel's history with all w r hich had
preceded it. These four hundred years belong to profane
history. The writings of that period are not reckoned in-
spired, so widely do they differ from the Scripture tone.
There were no prophets, no flood of light, " no open vision."
The Word of God was precious as in that time between the
death of Joshua and the calling of Samuel.* Except this soli
tary voice, prophecy had hushed her harp.
Now, what was given to Israel in that period ?
I reply, retrospect, pause, and prospect.
Retrospect, in the sublime past which God had given her
for her experience. " They have Moses and the prophets, let
them hear them." On them they were to live their nation's
sacred history ; God's guidance and faithfulness ; the sure
truth that obedience was best.
Prospect, in the expectation of better times.
Dim, vague hints of the Old Testament had pointed them
to a coming revelation a day in which God should be near-
er to them, in which society should be more pure. An ad-
vent, in short.
And between these two there was a, pause.
They were left by God to use the grace and knowledge al
ready given by Him.
Now this is parallel to God's usual modes of dealing. Foi
example, the pause of four hundred years in the land of
Egypt, between the bright days when Abraham talked with
God, and the deliverance by Moses.
The pause in Canaan when the Israelitish commonwealth
* Four hundred and thirty-one years.
Christian Friendship. 763
was left, like a building, to settle down before being built
higher, between the times of Joshua and of Samuel.
The pause in the captivity, and now again a pause.
A pause after each revelation until the next.
So, in the natural world. Just as in summer there is a
gush of nature's forces and a shooting forth; and then the
long autumn and winter, in which is no growth, but an op-
portunity, taught by past experience, for the husbandman to
manure his ground, and sow his seed, and to wait for a new
outpouring of life upon the world.
And just as in human life, between its marked lessons
there is a pause, in which we live upon past experience
looking back and looking on. Experience and hope, that is
human life : as in youth,^ expecting manhood, and then look-
ing for future changes in our condition, character, so in all
God's revelation system there have been periods of " open
vision," and periods of pause waiting ; when men are left
to experience and hope.
It is in vain that we have studied God's Word if we do
not perceive that our own day and circumstances are parallel
with those of the prophet MalachL We live in the world's
fourth great pause.
Miracles have ceased. Prophecy is silent. The Son of
God is ascended. Apostles are no longer here to apply in-
fallible judgment to each new circumstance as it arises, as
St. Paul did to the state of the Corinthian Church.
But we are left to the great Gospel principles which have
been already given, and which are to be our food till the
next flood of God's Spirit, the next revelation that which
the Scripture calls " the second advent."
And the parallel holds in another respect. The Jews had
but undefined hints of that which was to be. Yet they knew
the general outlines and character of the coming time ; they
knew that it would be a searching time, it was to be the
" Refiner's " day ; they knew that He should turn the hearts
of the fathers to the children : and they knew that the mes-
senger age must be preceded by a falling back on simpler
life, and a return to first principles, as Malachi had predicted,
and as John the Baptist called them to. They knew that it
was an age in which the true sacrifice would be offered.
And so now we know not yet what shall be ; " but we
know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for
"ve shall see Him as he is." " And every man that hath this
nope in Him purifieth himself."
We know that it will be the union of the human race
they will be "onefold" ,
764 Christian Friendship.
This is the outline and character of the revelation ; and
we may work, at least, towards it. " Ye are not in darkness,
that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the
children of the light, and the children of the day." " Where-
fore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even
as also ye do." To strive after personal purity and attempt
at producing unity, that is our work.
We rest on that we have, and hope for that we see not.
And only for the glimpse that hope gives us of that, is life
worth having.
II. Let us consider the conduct of different classes in these
evil times.
1. Some lived recklessly.
Foremost among these were the priests, as has been al-
ways found in evil times. The riot of a priest is worse than
that of the laity. Mutual corruption. Against the priests
Malacbi's denunciations are chiefly directed.
He speaks of the profanation of the sacred places (chap.
i. 6, 7). Of sacrifice degraded (ver. 12, 13). Vice honored
(chap. ii. ] 7). In that they called good evil and evil good.
By these men belief in God was considered ridiculous.
And then it was that one of those glorious promises was
made, to be fulfilled in after-times. Malachi foresaw that
the Gentiles would take up the neglected service (chap. i. 10.
11), and the vision of a universal kingdom of God became
the comfort of the faithful few.
2. Others lived uselessly, because despondingly.
The languor and despair of their hearts is read in the
words (chap. iii. 14, 15); and indeed it is not surprising: to
what point could good men look with satisfaction ? The na-
tion was enslaved, and worse they had become slaves in
spirit. Their ancient purity was gone. The very priests
had become atheists. Where was the promise of His coming?
Such, too, is the question of these latter times. And our re-
ply is from past experience.
That dark day passed, and a glorious revelation dawned
on the world. From what has been, we justly infer what
will be. Promises fulfilled are a ground of hope for those
yet unfulfilled. Where is the promise now of holier times ?
Yes, but remember the question seemed to be just as unan-
answerable then; it was just as unanswerable in the days of
the Judges, and in the captivity in Egypt and in Babylon.
This "Scripture was written for our admonition, on whom
the ends of the world are come." Then the consolation of
St. Peter becomes intelligible, " We have a more sure word
Christian Friendship. 765
of prophecy ; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as
unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn,
and the day-star arise in your hearts."
3. But in these evil times there were a few who com-
pared with one another their hopes, and sought strength in
Christian communion and fellowship. Of them the text
speaks.
This communion of saints is twofold : it includes church
fellowship and personal friendships.
It is plain that from church fellowship they could gain lit-
tle in those days. Unity there was not, but only disunion.
Over that state Malachi lamented in that touching appeal
" Have we not all one Father ? hath not one God created us ?
why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother,
by profaning the covenant of our fathers ?" Israel had for-
gotten that she was a family.
And it is true that in our day church fellowship is almost
only a name. The Christianity of the nation does not bind
us as individuals. Well does the Church ? Are there many
traces of a common feeling? When church privileges are
insisted on to produce unity, do they not produce division?
Are not these words of the prophet true of us ? Where are
the traces ot Christian brotherhood ?
Here in this town ? here in this congregation ? at the
holy supper which we join in to-day? Shall we meet to get
private good, or to feel we are partakers of the same Body
and the same Blood ? Therefore to insist on church union
as the remedy would be to miss the special meaning of this
verse. The malady of our disunion has gone too deep to be
cured by you or me.
We will consider it, therefore, in reference to Christian
friendship. We find that within the outward Jewish Church
there was an inner circle, knit together by closer bonds than
circumcision or the passover by a union of religious sym-
pathies. " Then they that feared the Lord spoke often one
to another:" they " thought upon His name."
Let us consider the blessing of Christian friendship. It
euch times it discharges a double office.
1. For the interchange of Christian hope and Christian
feeling. It is dreary to serve God alone ; it is desolate to
have no one in our own circle or family from whom we can
receive sympathy in our hopes. Hopes die.
2. It is a mighty instrument in guarding against tempta
tion. It is a safeguard, in the way of example, and also as a
standard of opinion. We should become tainted by the
world if it were not for Christian friends.
766 Reconciliation by Christ.
In conclusion, cultivate familiar intimacy only with those
who love good and God.
Doubtless there are circumstances which determine inti-
macies, such as rank, station, similarity of tastes. But one
thing must be paramount to and modify them all com-
munion in God. Not in a sectarian spirit. We are not to
form ourselves into a party with those who think as we do,
and use the formulas that we do. But the spirit of the text
requires us to feel strongly that there is a mighty gulf be-
tween those who love and those who do not love God. To
the one class we owe civility, courtesy, kindness, even tender-
ness. It is only those who love the Lord who should find in
our hearts a home.
XX.
RECONCILIATION BY CHRIST.
"And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by
wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled." Col. i. 21.
THERE are two, and only two kinds of goodness possible :
the one is the goodness of those who have never erred ; the
other is the goodness of those who, having erred, have been
recovered from their error. The first is the goodness of those
who have never offended ; the second is the goodness of those
who, having offended, have been reconciled. In the infinite
possibilities of God's universe, it may be that there are some
who have attained the first of these kinds of righteousness.
It may be that amongst the heavenly hierarchies there are
those who have kept their first estate, whose performances
have been commensurate with their aspirations, who have
never known the wretchedness, and misery, and degradation
of a Fall. But whether it be so or not is a matter of no*
practical importance to us. It may be a question specula-
tively interesting, but it is practically useless, for it is plain
that such righteousness never can be ours. The only religion
possible to man is the religion of penitence. The righteous-
ness of man can not be the integrity of the virgin citadel
which has never admitted the enemy ; it can never be more
than the integrity of the city which has been surprised and
roused, and which, having expelled the invader with blood
in the streets, has suffered great inward loss.
Appointed to these two kinds of righteousness there are
Reconciliation by Christ. 767
two kinds of happiness. To the first is attached the blessing
of entire ignorance of the stain, pollution, and misery of guilt
a blessed happiness : but it may be that it is not the great-
est. To the happiness resulting from the other is added a
greater strength of emotion ; it may not have the calmness
and "peace of the first, but, perhaps, in point of intensity and
fullness it is superior. It may be that the highest happiness
can only be purchased through suffering : and the language
of the Bible almost seems to authorize us to say, that the
happiness of penitence is deeper and more blessed than the
happiness of the righteousness that has never fallen could
be.
There are two kinds of friendship that which has never
had a shock, and that which, after having been doubted, is
at last made sure. The happiness of this last is perhaps the
greater. Such ^eems to be the truth implied in the parable
of the prodigal son : in the robe, and the ring, and the fatted
calf, and the music, and dancing, and the rapture of a father's
embrace : and once more, in those words of our Redeemer,
" There is more joy among the angels of heaven over one
sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons
that need no repentance." All these seem to tell of the im-
measurable blessedness of penitence. Arid this, then, is oui-
subject the subject of reconciliation.
But the text divides itself into- two branches:
I. Estrangement.
II. Reconciliation.
Estrangement is thus described: "You that were some-
time" (that is, once) "alienated and enemies in your mind
by wicked works :" in which there are three things. The
first is the cause of the estrangement wicked works ; the
second is the twofold order ; and thirdly, the degree of that
estrangement; first of all, mere alienation, afterwards hostili-
ty, enmity.
And, first of all, we consider the cause of the estrange-
ment "wicked works." Wicked works are voluntary
deeds ; they are not involuntary, but voluntary wrong.
There is a vague way in which we sometimes speak of sin,
in which it is possible for us to lose the idea of its guilt, and
also to lose the idea of personal responsibility. We speak of
sin sometimes as if it were a foreign disease introduced into
the constitution : an imputed guilt arising from an action
not our own, but of our ancestors. It is never so that the
Bible speaks of sin. It speaks of it as wicked works, volun-
tary deeds,^ voluntary acts ; that you, a responsible individ-
768 Reconciliation by Christ.
ual, have done acts which are wrong, of the mind, the hand,
the tongue. The infant is by no means God's enemy ; he
may become God's enemy, but it can only be by voluntary
action after conscience has been aroused. This our Master's
words teach, when He tells us, " Suffer little children to
come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." And
such again is the mystery of Christian baptism. It tells us
that the infant is not the' child of the devil, but the child of
God, the member of Christ, the heir of immortality. Sin,
then, is a voluntary action. If you close your ear to the
voice of God, if there be transgression of an inward law, if
you sacrifice the heart and intellect to the senses, if you let ease
or comfort be more dear to you than inward purity, if you
leave duties undone, and give the body rule over the spirit
then you sin ; for these aro voluntary acts, these are wicked
works.
The result of this is twofold. The first step is simply the
step of alienation. There is a difference between alienation
and hostility : in alienation we feel that God is our enemy j
in hostility we look on ourselves as enemies to God. Alien-
ation " you that were sometime alienated " was a more
forcible expression in the apostle's time than it can be to us
now. In our modern political society, the alien is almost on
a level with the citizen. The difference now is almost noth-
ing ; in those days it was very great. The alien from the
Jewish commonwealth had no right to worship with the
Jews, and he had no power to share in the religious advan-
tages of the Jews. The strength of .the feeling that was ex-
isting against the alien you will perceive in that proverbial
expression quoted by the Redeemer, " It is not meet to take
the children's bread, and cast it to the dogs" In the Roman
commonwealth, the word had a meaning almost stronger
than this. To be an alien from the Roman commonwealth
was to be separated from the authority and protection of
the Roman law, and to be subjected to a more severe and
degrading kind of penalty than that to which the Roman
citizen was subject* The lash that might scourge the back
of the alien offender might not fall on the back of a Roman
citizen ; and this it was that caused the magistrates of Phil-
ippi to tremble before their prisoners when the Apostle
Paul said, " They have beaten us openly, uncondemned, be-
ing Romans." The lash was the alien's portion.
On reference to the second chapter of the Ephesians we
find a conception given of alienation in the twelfth verse,
where the apostle, speaking of the Ephesian converts, says,
"That at that time ye were without Christ, bejng aliens
Reconciliation by Christ. 7^9
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the
covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
the world." This, brethren, is alienation, exclusion to
have no place in this world, to be without lot or portion in
the universe, to feel God as your enemy, to be estranged
from Him, and banished from His presence : for the law of
God acts as its own executioner within our bosoms, and
there is no defying its sentence ; from it there can be no ap-
peal.
My Christian brethren, hell is not merely a thing here-
after, hell is a thing here ; hell is not a thing banished to
the far distance, it is ubiquitous as conscience. Wherever
there is a worm of undying remorse, the sense of having
done wrong, and a feeling of degradation, there is hell be-
gun. And now respecting this. These words, " banishment
from God," "alienation," though merely popular phrases,
are expressions of a deep truth it is true they are but pop-
ular expressions, for God is not wrath. You are not ab
solutely banished from God's presence. The Immutable
changes not. He does not become angry or passionate
whenever one of the eight hundred million inhabitants of
this world commits a sin. And yet you will observe there
is no other way in which we can express the truth but in
these popular words. Take the illustration furnished to us
last Sunday : it may be that it is the cloud and the mist that
obscure the sun from us : the sun is not changed in conse-
quence : it is a change in our atmosphere. But if the phi
losopher says to you, the sun in its splendor remains the
same in the infinite space above, it is only an optical delu-
sion which makes it appear lurid : to what purpose is that
difference to you? to you it is lurid, to you it is dark. If
you feel a darkness in your eye, coldness in your flesh, to
what purpose, so far as feeling is concerned, is it that philos-
ophy tells you the sun remains unchanged ? And if it be that
God in the heaven above remains love still, and that love
warms not your heart ; and that God is Light, in whom is
no darkness at all, yet He shines not in your heart ; my
Christian brethren, let metaphysics and philosophy say what
they will, these popular expressions are the true ones, after
all ; to you God is angry, from God you are banished, God's
countenance is alienated from you.
The second step of this estrangement reaches a higher de-
gree still ; it is not merely that God is angry, but that we
have become enemies to God. The illustration of the pro-
cess of this we have seen in our common everyday life.
It is sometimes the case that strength of attachment set-
33
770 Reconciliation by Christ.
ties down to mere indifference, even changes to hatred. The
first quarrel between friends is a thing greatly to be dread-
ed ; it is often followed by the cessation of all correspond-
ence, the interruption of that intercourse which has gone on
so long. Well, a secret sense of self-blame and of wrong
will intrude, and the only way in which w r e can escape it is
by throwing the blame elsewhere. You see by degrees a
cankered spot begins, and you look at it and touch it, and
irritate it until the mortification becomes entire, and that
which was at first alienation settles down into absolute ani-
mosity.
And such is it in the history of the alienation of the soul
from God. The first step is to become indifferent, com-
munion is interrupted, irregularity is begun, sin by degrees
widens the breach, and then between the soul and God there
is a great gulf fixed. Observe by what different ways dif-
ferent classes of character arrive at that. Weak characters
have one way, and strong and bold characters have another.
The weak mind throws the blame on circumstances ; unable
itself to subdue its own passions, it imagines there is some law
in the universe that so ordains it ; insists that the blame is on
circumstances and destiny, and says, "If I am thus it is not
my fault ; if I am not to gratify my passions, why were they
given to me ? ' Why doth He find fault, for who hath re-
sisted His will?' " And so. these weak ones become by de-
grees fatalists ; and it would seem, by their language, as if
they were rather the patient victims of a cruel fate, the
blame belonging not to them, but to God.
The way in which stronger and more vicious characters
arrive at this enmity is different. Humiliation degrades,
and degradation produces anger; you have but to go into
the narrow and crowded streets of the most degraded por-
tions of our metropolis, and there you will see the outcast
turning Avith a look of defiance and hatred on respectability,
merely because it is respectable : and this, brethren, many
of us have seen, some of us have felt, in our relation towards
God. That terrible demon voice stirs up within us, " Curse
God and die." Haunted by furies, we stand, as it were, at
bay, and dare to bid defiance to our Maker. Nothing so
proves the original majesty of man as this terrible fact, that
the creature can bid defiance to the Creator, and that man
has it in him to become the enemy of God.
We pass on, in the next place, to consider the doctrine of
reconciliation. We need scarcely define what is meant by
reconciliation. To reconcile is to produce harmony where
there was discord, unity where before there was variance.
Reconciliation by Christ. 771
We accept the apostle's definition of reconciliation. He saya
that " Christ hath made of twain one new man, so making
peace." Now the reconciliation produced by Christ's atone-
ment is fourfold :
In the first place, Christ hath reconciled man to God,
In the second place, He hath reconciled man to man.
In the third place, He hath reconciled man to himsell
And in the fourth place, He hath reconciled man to duty.
In the first place, the atonement of the Redeemer has rec-
onciled man to God, and that by a twofold step : by exhibit-
ing the character of God ; and by that exhibition changing
the character of man.
Brethren, the sacrifice of Christ was the voice of God pro-
claiming love. In this passage the apostle tells us that
" Christ has reconciled us to God in the body of His flesh
through death." We will not attempt to define what that
sacrifice was we will not philosophize upon it ; for the
more we philosophize the less we shall understand it. We
are well content to take it as the highest exhibition and the
noblest specimen of the law of our humanity that great
law, that there is no true blessedness without suffering, that
every blessing we have comes through vicarious suffering.
All that we have and enjoy comes from others' suffering.
The life we enjoy is the result of maternal agony; our very
bread is only obtained after the toil and anguish of suffering
myriads ; there is not one atom of the knowledge we possess
now which has not, in some century of the w r orld or other,
been wrung out of Nature's secrets by the sweat of the brow
or the sweat of the heart. The very peace which we are en-
joying at this present day, how has that been purchased ?
By the blood of heroes whose bodies are now lying moulder-
ing in the trenches of a thousand battle-fields.
This is the law of our humanity, and to this our Redeemer
became subject the law of life, self-surrender, without which
reconciliation was impossible. And when the mind has com-
prehended this, that the sacrifice of Christ was the manifesta-
tion of the love of God, then comes the happy and blessed
feeling of reconciliation. When a man has surrendered hi in-
self in humbleness and penitence to God, and the proud spirit
of self-excuse has passed aw r ay : when the soul has opened
itself to all His influences and known their power : when the
saddest and bitterest part of suffering is felt no longer as
the wrath of the Judge but as the discipline of a Father :
when the love of God has melted the soul, and fused it into
charity : then the soul is reconciled to God, and God is
reconciled to the soul : for it is a marvellous thing how tha
/7 2 Reconciliation by Christ.
change of feelings within us changes God to us, or rather
those circumstances and things by which God becomes visi-
ble to us. His universe, once so dark, becomes bright : life,
once a mere dull, dreary thing, " dry as summer dust,"
springs up once more into fresh luxuriance, and we feel it to
be a divine and blessed thing.
We hear the voice of God as it was once heard in the
warden of Eden whispering among the leaves : every sound,
once so discordant, becomes music, the anthem of creation
raised up, as it were, with everlasting hallelujahs to the
eternal throne. Then it is that a man first knows his im-
mortality, and the soul knows what is meant by infinitude
and eternity ; not that infinitude which can be measured by
miles, nor that eternity which can be computed by hours ;
but the eternity of emotion. Let a man breathe but one
hour of the charity of God, and feel but one true emotion of
the reconciled heart, and then he knows forever what is
meant by immortality, and he can understand the reality of
his own.
The second consequence of the Redeemer's atonement is
the reconciliation of man to man. Of all the apostles, none
have perceived so strongly as St. Paul that the death of
Christ is the reconciliation of man to man. Take that one
single expression in the Epistle to the Ephesians " For He
is our peace who hath made both one." Observe, I pray
you, the imagery with which he continues, " and hath broken
down the middle wall of partition." The veil or partition
wall between the court of the Jew and Gentile was broken
asunder at the crucifixion. St. Paul saw in the death of
Christ a spiritual resemblance to that physical phenomenon.
Christ was not only born of woman, but under the law ; and
He could not become, as such, the Saviour of the world ; but
when death had taken place, and He was no longer the Jew,
but the Man, no longer bound by limitations of time, and
place, and country, then He became, as it were, a Spirit in
the universe, no longer narrowed to place and to century,
but universal, the Saviour of the Gentile as well as the Mes-
siah of the Jew.
Therefore it was that St. Paul called the flesh of Christ a
veil, and said the death of Christ was the taking down of
"the middle wall of partition" between Jew and Gentile:
and therefore it is by the sacrifice of Christ, and by tha"
alone, man can be thus reconciled to man : and on no other
possible basis can there be a brotherhood of the human race.
You may try other ways: the men of the world have tried,
and doubtless will go on trying, until they find that there is
Reconciliation by Christ. 773
no other way than this. They may try by the principle of
selfishness, the principle of moral rule, or the principle of
civil authority. Let the political economist come forward
with his principle of selfishness, and tell us that this is that
by which alone the wealth of nations can accrue. He may
get a nation in which there are a wealthy few and miserable
many, but not a brotherhood of Christians. Suppose you
say, men should love one another. Will that make them
love one another ? You may come forward with the crush-
ing rule of political authority. Papal Rome has tried it and
failed. She bound up the masses of the human race as a
gigantic iceberg ; but she could give only a temporary prin-
ciple of unity and cohesion.
Therefore we turn back once more to the cross of Christ :
through this alone we learn there is one God, one Father,
one baptism, one Elder Brother in whom all can be brothers.
But there is a something besides, a deeper principle still.
We are told in this passage we can be reconciled to man by
the body of Christ through death. And now, brethren, let
us understand this. By the cross of Christ the apostle
meant, reconciled by the spirit of the cross. And what was
that spirit ? It was the spirit of giving, and of suffering, and
of loving, because He had suffered. Say what we will, love
is not gratitude for favors which have been received. Why
is the child more beloved by the parent than the parent by
the child? Why did the Redeemer love His disciples more
than they loved their Master ? Benefits will not bind the
affection; you must not expect that they will. You must
suffer if you would love; you must remember that "it is
more blessed to give than to receive." The Apostle Paul
felt this when he said reconciliation was produced through
the body of the flesh of Christ by death.
Once more : man becomes by the Redeemer's atonement
reconciled to himself.
That self-reconciliation is necessary, because we do not
readily forgive ourselves. God may have forgiven us, but
we can not forgive ourselves. You may obtain a remission
of the past, but you can not forgive yourself and get back
the feeling of self-respect, unity within, rest, by sitting still
and believing tliat God has forgiven you, and that you have
nothing left to look for ? My brethren, there is a spirit of
self-torture within us which is but a perversion of nobleness,
a mistake of the true principle. When you have done
wrong, you want to suffer. Love demands a sacrifice, and
only by sacrifice can it reconcile itself to self. Then it is
that the sacrifice of Christ replies to this, answers it, satisfies
774 Reconciliation by Christ.
it, and makes it plain. The sacrifice of Christ was suffering
in love, it was surrender to the will of God. The Apostle
Paul felt this : when that Spirit was with him he was recon-
ciled to himself. He says, "I am crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." If
ever you devoted yourself to another's happiness or amelio-
ration, so far and so long as you were doing that you forgave
yourself; you felt the spirit of inward self-reconciliation ; and
what we want is only to make that perpetual, to make that
binding which we do by fits and starts, to feel ourselves a
living sacrifice, to know that we are, in our highest and best
state, victims, offered up in love on the great altar of the
kingdom of Christ, offered by Him to God as the first-fruits
of His sacrifice ; then we are reconciled to ourselves " by the
blood of His flesh through death."
And lastly, through the atonement of the Redeemer, man
becomes reconciled to duty. There is no discord more terri-
ble than that between man and duty. There are few of us
who fancy we have found our own places in this world ; onr
lives, our partnerships, our professions, and our trades, are not
those which we should have chosen for ourselves. There is
an ambition within us which sometimes makes us fancy we
are fit for higher things, that we are adapted for other and
better things than those to which we are called. But we
turn again to the cross of Christ, and the mystery of life be
comes plain. The life and death of Christ are the reconcilia-
tion of man to the duties which he has to do. You can not
study His marvellous life without perceiving that the whole
of its details are uncongenial, mean, trivial, wretched cir-
cumstances from which the spirit of a man revolts.
To bear the sneer of the Sadducee and the curse of the
Pharisee ; to be rejected by His family and friends ; to be
harassed by the petty disputes and miserable quarrels of His
followers about their own personal precedence ; to be treated
by the government of His country as a charlatan and a dema-
gogue ; to be surrounded by a crowd of men, coming and
going without sympathy ; to retire and find His leisure in-
truded on and Himself pursued for ignoble ends these were
the circumstances of the Redeemer's existence here. Yet in
these it was that the noblest life the world has ever seen was
lived. He retired into the wilderness, and one by one put
down all those visions that would have seduced Him from
the higher path of duty ; the vision of comfort which tempt-
ed Him to change the stones of this world into bread the
vision of ambition which tempted Him to make the king-
doms of this world His own by seeking good through evil;
Reconciliation by Christ. 775.
the vision which tempted Him to distrust God, and become
important by pursuing some strange, unauthorized way of
His own, instead of following the way of submission to the
will of God.
He ascended into the transfiguration mount, and there His
Spirit converses with those of an elder dispensation, who had
fought the fight before Him, Moses and Elias, and they spoke
to Him of the triumph which He had to accomplish in death
at Jerusalem. And He went down again with calm, serene,
and transfigured faith, and there, at the very foot of the
mount, He found His disciples engaged in some miserable
squabble with the Scribes and the Pharisees about casting
out a devil. And this life of His is the only interpretation
of this life of ours the reconciliation of our hearts with what
we have to do. It is not by change of circumstances, but
by fitting our spirits to the circumstances in which God has
placed us, that we can be reconciled to life and duty. If the
duties before us be not noble, let us ennoble them by doing
them in a noble spirit ; we become reconciled to life if we
live in the Spirit of Him who reconciled the life of God with
the lowly duties of servants.
And now one word in conclusion. The central doctrine of
Christianity is the atonement. Take that away and you ob-
literate Christianity. If Christianity were merely the imita-
tion of Christ, why then the imitation of any other good man,
the Apostle Paul or John, might have become a kind of
Christianity. If Christianity were merely martyrdom for
truth, then, with the exception of a certain amount of degree,
I see no difference between the death of Socrates and the
death of Jesus Christ. But Christianity is more than this.
It is the At-one-ment of the Soul. It is a reconciliation which
the life and death of Christ have wrought out for this world
: the reconciliation of man to God, the reconciliation of man
to man, the reconciliation of man to self, and the reconcilia-
lion ol' Jnan jo duty.
776 The Pre-eminence of Charity.
XXI.
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHARITY.
" And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves : for charitj
shall cover the multitude of sins." 1 Peter iv. 8.
THE grace of charity is exalted as the highest attainment
of the Christian life by St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John.
These three men were very different from each other. Each
was the type of a distinct order of character. And it is a
proof that the Gospel is from God, and that the sacred writ-
ings are inspired from a single Divine source, that personal
peculiarities are not placed foremost in them, but the fore-
most place is given by each to a grace which certainly was
not the characteristic quality of all the three.
It is said in these modern days that Christianity was a
system elaborated by human intellect. Men, they say, philos-
ophized and thought it out. Christianity, it is maintained,
like ethics, is the product of human reason. Now had this
been true, we should have found the great teachers of Chris-
tianity each exalting that particular quality which w r as most
remarkable in his ow r n temperament. Just as the English
honor truthfulness, and the French brilliancy, and the Hin-
doos subtlety, and the Italians finesse and naturally, be-
cause these are predominant in themselves we should have
found the apostles insisting most strongly on those graces
which grew most naturally in the soil of their own hearts.
Indeed, in a degree it is so. St. John's character was ten-
der, emotional and contemplative. Accordingly, his writings
exhibit the feeling of religion and the predominance of the
inner life over the outer.
St. Paul was a man of keen intellect, and of soaring and
aspiring thought which would endure no shackles on its free-
dom. And his writings are full of the two subjects we might
have expected from this temperament. He speaks a great
deal of intellectual gifts; very much of Christian liberty.
St. Peter was remarkable for personal courage. A soldier
by nature : frank, free, generous, irascible. In his writings,
accordingly, we find a great deal said about martyrdom.
But each of these men, so different from each other, exalts
love above his own peculiar quality. It is very remarkable.
Not merely does each call charity the highest, but each names
The Pre-eminence of Charity. 77';
it in immediate connection with his own characteristic virtue,
and declares it to be more Divine.
St. John, of course, calls love the heavenliest. That we
expect from St. John's character. "God is love. He that
dv/elleth in love dwelleth in God ;" " No man hath seen God
at any time : if we love one another God dwelleth in us."
But St. Paul expressly names it in contrast with the two
feelings for which he was personally most remarkable, and,
noble as they are, prefers it before them. First, in contrast
with intellectual gifts. Thus, "Covet earnestly the best
gifts : and yet show I unto you a more excellent way :
though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and
have not charity, it is nothing." Gifts are nothing in com-
parison of charity. Again, " We know that we all have
knowledge : knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up."
Knowledge is nothing in comparison.
Next, in comparison of that liberty which was so dear to
him. Christian liberty permitted the converts the use of
meats, and the disregard of days from which the strict law
of Judaism had debarred them. Well, but there were cases
in which the exercise of that liberty might hurt the scruples
of some weak Christian brother, or lead him to imitate the
example against his conscience. "If thy brother be grieved
with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably" Liberty
said, You have a right to indulge ; but Charity said, Refrain.
So that, according to St. Paul, there is one thing, and one
only, to which Christian liberty must be sacrificed. That
one is Christian love.
Now let us see how St. Peter does honor to the same
grace, at the expense of that which we should have expected
him to reckon the essential grace of manhood. Just before
the text, we find the command, " Be sober, and watch unto
prayer." This is a sentence out of St. Peter's very heart.
For in it we have prayer represented as the night-watch of a
warrior, armed, who must not sleep his watch away. " Be
sober, and watch" the language of the soldier and the sen-
tinel ; words which remind you of him who drew his sword to
defend his Master, and who in penitence remembered his own
disastrous sleep w^hen he was surprised as a sentry at his
post. But immediately after this "And, above all things,
have fervent charity amongst yourselves." Sobriety, self-
rule, manhood, courage, yes ; but the life of them all, says
St. Peter, the very crown of manhood, without which sobriety
is but prudent selfishness, and courage is but brute instinct
is love.
Now I take that unanimity as a proof that the Gospel cornea
33*
778 The Pre-eminence of Charity.
from one Living Source. How came St. Peter and St. John,
so different from each other, and St. Paul, who had had
almost no communion with either of them, to agree, and
agree so enthusiastically, in this doctrine love is over all
and above all; above intellect, freedom, courage unless
there had streamed into the mind and heart of each one of
them light from One Source, even from Him the deepest prin-
ciple of whose being, and the law of whose life and death,
were love ?
We are to try, to-day, to understand this sentence of
St. Peter. It tells us two things
I. What charity is.
II. What charity does.
I. It is not easy to find one word in any language which
rightly and adequately represents what Christ and His apos-
tles meant by charity. All words are saturated with some im-
perfect meaning. Charity has become identified with alms-
giving. Love is appropriated to one particular form of hu-
man affection, and that one with which self and passion mix
inevitably. Philanthropy is a word too cold and negative.
Let us define Christian charity in two sentences: 1. The
desire to give. 2. The desire to bless.
]. The desire to give. Let each man go deep into his own
heart. Let him ask what that mysterious longing means
which we call love, whether to man or God, when he has
stripped from it all that is outside and accidental ; when he
has taken from it all that is mixed with it and perverts it.
Not in his worst moments but in his best, what did that
yearning mean ? I say it meant the desire to give. Not to
get something, but to give something. And the mightier, the
more irrepressible this yearning was, the more truly was his
love love. To give whether alms in the shape of money,
bread, or a cup of cold water, or else self. But be sure,
sacrifice, in some shape or other, is the impulse of love, and
its restlessness is only satisfied and only gets relief in giving.
For this, in truth, is God's own love, tha w T ill and the power to
give. " It is more blessed to give than to receive." There-
fore God is the only blessed One, because He alone gives and
never receives. The universe, teeming with life, is but God's
love expressing itself. He creates life by the giving of Him-
self. He has redeemed the world by the giving of His Son.
" God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son." The death of Christ was sacrifice. The life of God ia
one perpetual sacrifice, or giving of Himself and shedding
forth of His Spirit. iClse it would not be love.
The Pre-eminence of Charity. 779
And so, when the poor sinful woman gave her costly oint-
ment with a large profuseness, Christ saw in it an evidence
of love. " She loved much." For love gives.
2. The desire to bless. All love is this in a degree. Even
weak and spurious love desires happiness of some kind for
the creature that it loves. Almsgiving is often nothing
more than indolence. We give to the beggar in the street,
to save ourselves the trouble of finding out fitter objects.
Still, indolent as it is, it is an indolent desire to prevent pain.
What we call philanthropy is often calm and cool too
calm and cool to waste upon it the name of charity. But it
is a calm and cool desire that human happiness were possi-
ble. It is, in its weak way, a desire to bless. -Now, the love
whereof the Bible speaks, and of which we have but one
perfect personification viz., in the life of Christ is the desire
for the best and true blessedness of the being loved. It
wishes the well-being of the whole man body, soul, and
spirit ; but chiefly spirit.
Therefore, He fed the poor with bread. Therefore, He
took His disciples into the wilderness to rest when they were
weary. Therefore, " He gave Himself for us, that we, being
dead unto sin, might live unto righteousness." For the king-
dom of God is not bread only and repose, which constitute
physical happiness, but goodness, too ; for that is blessed-
ness.
And the highest love is, therefore, the desire to make men
good and Godlike ; it may wish, as a subordinate attainment,
to turn this earth into a paradise of comfort by mechanical
inventions ; but far above that, to transform into a kingdom
of God, the domain of love, where men cease to quarrel and
to envy, and to slander and to retaliate. " This, also, we
wish," said St. Paul, " even your perfection."
Concerning this charity we remark two points.: 1. It is
characterized as fervent. 2. It is capable of being cultivated.
1. "Fervent." Literally intense, unremitting, unwearied.
Now, there is a feeble sentiment which wishes well to all so
long as it is not tempted to wish them ill, which does well to
those who do well to them. But this, being merely senti
rnent, will not last. Ruffle it and it becomes vindictive. In
contrast with that, St. Peter calls Christ's spirit, which loves,
those who hate it, " fervent " charity, which does not tire,
and can not be worn out ; which loves its enemies, and does
good to them that hate it. For Christian love is not the
dream of a philosopher, sitting in his study, and benevolent-
ly wishing the world were better than it is, congratulating
himself, perhaps, all the time on the superiority shown by
780 The Pre-eminence of Charity.
himself over other less amiable natures. Injure one of these
beaming sons of good-humor, and he bears malice : deep, un-
relenting, refusing to forgive. But give us the man who, in
stead of retiring to some small, select society, or rather as-
sociation, where his own opinions shall be reflected, can mix
with men where his sympathies are unmet, and his tastes
.are jarred, and his views traversed, at every turn, and s'till
'can be just, and gentle, and forbearing.
' Give us the man who can be insulted and not retaliate ;
meet rudeness and still be courteous; the man who, like the
Apostle Paul, buffeted and disliked, can yet be generous,
and make allowances, and say, "I will very gladly spend and
be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you,
the less I be loved." That is " fervent charity."
2. Again, it is capable of being cultivated. We assume
that, simply because it is enjoined. When an apostle says,
"Save fervent charity among yourselves," it is plain that it
would be a cruel mockery to command men to attain it if
they could do nothing towards the attainment. It would be
the same insult as saying to the deformed, "be beautiful."
For it is wanton cruelty to command where obedience is im-
possible.
How shall w r e cultivate this charity ?
Now, I observe first, love can not be produced by a direct
action of the soul upon itself. You can not love by a resolve
to love. That is as impossible as it is to move a boat by
pressing it from within. * The force with which you press on
is exactly equal to that with which you press back. The re-
action is exactly equal to the action. You force backward
exactly as much as you force on. There are religious per-
sons who, when they feel their affections cooled, strive to
warm them by self-reproach, or by unnatural effort, or by the
excitement of what they call revivals trying to work them-
selves into a state of warm affection. There are others who
hope to make feeble love strong by using strong words.
Now, for all this they pay a price. Effort of heart is fol-
lowed by collapse. Excitement is followed by exhaustion.
They will find that they have cooled exactly in that propor-
tion in which they warmed, and at least as fast.
It is as impossible for a man to work himself into a state
of genuine fervent love as it is for a man to inspire himself.
Inspiration is a breath and a life coming from without.
Love is a feeling roused not from ourselves, but from some-
thing outside ourselves. There are, however, tw r o methods
by which we may cultivate this charity.
1. By doing acts which love demands. It is God'? mer-
The Pre-eminence of Charity. 78 1
ciful law that feelings are increased by acts done on princi-
ple. If a man has not the feeling in its warmth, let him not
wait till the feeling comes. Let him act with such feeling
as he has ; with a cold heart if he has not got a warm one ;
it will grow warmer while he acts. You may love a man
merely because you have, done him benefits, and so become
interested in him, till interest passes into anxiety, and anx-
iety into affection. You may acquire courtesy of feeling at
last, by cultivating courteous manner. The dignified polite-
ness of the last century forced man into a kind of unselfish-
ness in small things, which the abrupter manners of to-day
will never teach. And say what men will of rude sincerity,
those old men of urbane manners were kinder at heart with
real good will, than we are with that rude bluffness which
counts it a loss of independence to be courteous to any one.
Gentleness of manner had some influence on gentleness of
heart.
So, in the same way, it is in things spiritual. If our hearts
are cold, and we find it hard to love God and be affectionate
to man, we must begin with duty. Duty is not Christian
liberty, but is the first step toward liberty. We are free
only when we love what we are to do, and those to whom
we do it. Let a man begin in earnest with I ought he
will end, by God's grace, if he persevere, with the free bless-
edness of I will. Let him force himself to abound in small
offices of kindliness, attention, affectionateness, and all those
for God's sake. By-and-by he will feel them become the
habit of his soul. By-and-by, walking in the conscientious-
ness of refusing to retaliate when he feels tempted, he will
cease to wish it : doing good and heaping kindness on those
who injure him, he will learn to love them. For he has
spent a treasure there : "And where the treasure is, there
will the heart be also."
2. The second way of cultivating Christian love is by con-
templating the love of God. You can not move the boat
from within ; but you may obtain a purchase from without.
You can not create love in the soul by force from within it-
self- but you may move it from a point outside itself. God's
love is the point from which to move the soul. Love begets
love, Love believed in, produces a return of love : we can
not love because we must. " Must " kills love ; but the
law of our nature is that we love in reply to love. No one
ever yet hated one whom he believed to love him truly.
We may be provoked by the pertinacity of an affection
which asks what we can not give ; but we can not hate the
true love which does not ask but gives. Now this ifl ths
782 The Pre-eminence of Charity.
central truth of Christ's Gospel : " We love Him because H
first loved us ;" " Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought
also to love one another ;" " God is love."
It is the one, almost only" struggle of religious life, to be-
lieve this. In spite of all the seeming cruelties of this
life ; in spite of the clouded mystery in which God has
shrouded Himself; in spite of pain and the stern aspect
of human life, and the gathering of thicker darkness and
more solemn silence round the soul as life goes on, simply to
believe that God is love, and to hold fast to that, as a man
holds on to a rock with a desperate grip when the salt surf
and the driving waves sweep over him and take the breath
away I say that is the one fight of Christian life, compared
with which all else is easy: when we believe that, human af-
fections are easy. It is easy to be generous, and tolerant,
and benevolent, when we are sure of the heart of God, and
when the little love of this life, and its coldnesses, and its un-
returned affections, are more than made up to us by the cer-
tainty that our Father's love is ours. But when we lose
sight of that, though but for a moment, the heart sours, and
men seem no longer worth" the loving : and wrongs are mag-
nified, and injuries can not be forgiven, and life itself drags
on, a mere death in life. A man may doubt any thing and
every thing, and still be blessed, provided only he holds fast
to that conviction. Let all drift from him like sea-weed on
life's ocean. So long as he reposes on the assurance of the
eternal faithfulness of the Eternal Charity, his spirit at least
can not drift. There are moments, I humbly think, when we
understand those triumphant words of St. Paul, "Let God be
true, and every man a liar."
II. What charity does.
It covereth a multitude of sins.
Xow the only question is, whose sins does chanty cover?
Is it that the sins of the charitable man are covered by his
charity in God's sight ? Or is it the sins of others over
which charity throws a mantle so as not to see them ?
Some wise and good men have said the first. Love oblit-
erates sin in the sight of God ; and assuredly it might be
this that St. Peter meant. No doubt whole years of folly
we outlive " in His unerring sight, who measures life by
love." Recollect our Master's own words "Her sins, which
are many, are forgiven her : for she loved much."
Nevertheless, that does not seem to be the meaning of
this passage. A large number of deep thinkers have been
convinced^that St. Peter is here describing Christianity, and
The Pre-eminence of Charity. 783
the description which he gives of it as most characteristic is,
that it hides out of sight, and refuses to contemplate, a mul-
titude of sins which malevolence would delight to see. It
throws a veil over them and covers them. At all events,
this is true of Christian charity : and we shall consider the
passage in that sense to-day.
There are three ways, at least, in which love covers sin.
1. In refusing to see small faults. Every man has his
faults, his failings, peculiarities, eccentricities. Every one of
us finds himself crossed by such failings of others, from hour
to hour. And if he were to resent them all, or even notice
all, life would be intolerable. If for every outburst of hasty
temper, and for every rudeness that wounds us in our daily
path, we were to demand an apology, require an explanation,
or resent it by retaliation, daily intercourse would be impos-
sible. The very science of social life consists in that gliding
tact which avoids contact with the sharp angularities of
character, which does not argue about such things, does not
seek to adjust or cure them all, but covers them, as if it did
not see.
Exceedingly wise was that conduct of the Roman pro
consul at Corinth which we read of in the Acts. The Jews,
with Sosthenes at their head, had brought a charge of heresy
against the Christians, and tried it at the Roman law. Gal
lio perceived that it was a vexatious one, and dismissed it ;
drove them from the judgment-seat. Whereupon the Greeks,
indignant at the paltry virulence of the accusation, took Sos-
thenes, in his way from the judgment-seat, and beat him even
in Gallio's presence. It is written, " Gallic cared for none of
these things." He took no notice. He would not see. It
was doubtless illegal and tumultuous, a kind of contempt of
court a great offense in Roman law. But Gallic preferred
permitting a wholesome outburst of healthy indignation, to
carrying out the law in its letter. For he knew that in that
popular riot human nature was throwing off an incubus. It
was a kind of irregular justice, excusable because of its
provocation. And so Gallio would not see. He covered the
transgression in a wise and willful blindness.
That which the Roman magistrate did from wise policy,
the Christian spirit does in a diviner way. It throws over
such things a cloak of love. It knows when it is wise not to
see. That microscopic distinctness in which all faults ap-
pear to captious men, who are forever blaming, dissecting,
complaining, disappears in the large, calm gaze of love.
And oh ! it is this spirit which our Christian society lacks,
and which we shall never get till we begin each one with his
784 Tlie Pre-eminence of Charity.
own heart. What we want is, in one word, that graceful
tact and Christian art which can bear and forbear.
That was a rude, " unpardonable " insult offered by Pe-
ter to his Master w T hen he denied Him. In His hour of trial,
he refused to seem even to know Him. We should have said)
I will never forget that. The Divine charity covered all.
Ask ye how ? " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? Feed
my sheep."
2. Love covers sin by making large allowances. In all
evil there is a " soul of goodness." Most evil is perverted
good. For instance, extravagance is generosity carried to
excess. Revenge is sometimes a sense of justice which has
put no restraint upon itself. Woman's worst fault is per-
verted self-sacrifice. Incaution comes from innocence. Now
there are some men who see all the evil, and never trace,
never give themselves the trouble of suspecting the root of
goodness out of which it sprung. There are others who love
to go deep down, and see why a man came to do wrong,
and whether there was not some excuse, or some redeeming
cause : in order that they may be just. Just, as " God is
just, and the just ifier of him that believeth in Jesus."
Not as the passage is sometimes quoted just, and yet the
justifier ; as if there were some difficulty in reconciling God's
justice and God's mercy : but just and the justitier, just and
therefore the justitier. Merciful because just.
Now human life, as it presents itself to these two different
eyes, the eye of one who sees only evil, and that of him who
sees evil as perverted good, is two different things. Take
an instance. Not many years ago, a gifted English writer
presented us with a history of ancient Christianity. To his
eye the early Church presented one great idea, almost only
one. He saw corruption written everywhere. In the his-
tory of the ascetics, of the nuns, of the hermits, of the early
bishops, he saw nothing noble, nothing aspiring. Every-
where the one dark spectacle of the Man of Sin. In public
and in private life, in theology and practice, within and with-
out, everywhere pollution. Another historian, a foreigner,
has written the history of the same times, with an intellect
as piercing to discover the very first germ of error, but with
a calm, large heart, which saw the good out of which the er-
ror sprung, and loved to dwell upon it, delighting to trace
the lineaments of God, and discern His Spirit working where
another could see only the spirit of the devil. And you rise
from the two books with different views of the world ; from
the one, considering the world as a devil's world, corrupting
towards destruction; from the other, notwithstanding all,
The Pre-eminence of Charity. 785
feeling triumphantly that it is God's world, and that His
Spirit works gloriously below it all. You rise from the study
with different feelings : from the one, inclined to despise your
species ; from the other, able joyfully to understand in part
why God so loved the world, and what there is in man to
love, and what there is, even in the lost, to seek and save.
Now that is the " charity which covereth a multitude of
sins."
It understands by sympathy. It is that glorious nature
which has affinity with good under all forms, and loves to
find it, to believe in it, and to see it. And therefore such
men God's rare and best ones learn to make allowances ;
not from weak sentiment, which calls wrong right, but from
that heavenly charity which sees right lying at the root of
wrong. So the Apostle Paul learned to be candid even to-
wards himself. " I obtained mercy, because I did it igno-
rantly, in unbelief." His very bigotry and persecuting spirit
could be justified by God, and by men who see like God. It
was wrong, very wrong ; he did not palliate it ; he felt that it
had made him " the chief of sinners," but he discerned that his
had been zeal directed wrongly not hate, but inverted love.
So too, over the dark grave of Saul the suicide, the love
of friendship could shed one ray of hope. He who remem-
bered of Saul only his nobler nature and his earlier days,
when his desolate character was less ambiguous the man
after God's own heart whose love refused to part with the
conviction that that light which was from God was not
quenched forever, though it had set in clouds and thick dark-
ness dared to say, "Saul and Jonathan were lovely in their
lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." Would
you or I have dared to hope over a grave like Saul's? So,
too, over the grave of the prophet whose last act was disobe-
dience, love still dared to hope, and the surviving prophet
remembered only that he had shared the gift of prophecy
with himself. "Alas, my brother /" A sinner, who had died
in sin, but as our own burial service nobly dares to say, in
the hope of intense charity, " To rest in Thee, as our hope w
this our brother doth." And so, lastly, in the blackest guilt
the earth has seen in memory of which we, in our Christian
sharity, after eighteen hundred years, brand the descendant
Tews with a curse, which is only slowly disappearing from
our minds there was one Eye which could discern a ground
on which to make allowance, "Father, forgive them; for they
know not what they do."
Let us dismiss from our minds one false suspicion. The
man who can be most charitable is not the man who is mm-
786 The Pre-eminence of Charity.
self most lax. Deep knowledge of human nature tells us \\
is exactly the reverse. He who shows the rough and thorn) 1
road to heaven is he who treads the primrose path himself.
Be sure that it is the severe and pitiless judge and censor of
others 1 faults on whom, at a venture, you may most safely fix
the charge, " Thou art the man !" I know not why, but un-
relenting severity proves guilt rather than innocence. How
much purity was proved by David's sentence of an imagin-
ary criminal to death ? How much by the desire of those
Pharisees to stone the woman taken in adultery ? Convicted
by their own consciences, they went out one by one; yet
they had longed to stone her. No : be sure you must be
free from sin in proportion as you would judge with the al-
lowance and the charity of Christ Jesus. " Tempted in all
points, yet without sin." " Wherefore also, He is a merciful
High-priest."
3. Lastly, charity can tolerate even intolerance. Let no
man think that he can be tolerant or charitable as a matter
of self-indulgence. For real charity and real toleration he
must pay a price. So long as they are merely negative so
long as they mean only the permission to every one to think
his own thoughts and go his own way the world will bear
them. But so soon as charity becomes action, and toleration
becomes earnest, basing themselves on a principle, even this
the conviction that at the root of many an error there lies
a truth, and within much evil a central heart of goodness,
and below unwise and even opposite forms, the same essen-
tial meaning so soon charity and toleration exasperate the
world secular, or so-called religious.
For instance, if, with St. Paul, you affirm, " He that ob-
eerveth the day, observeth it to the Lord ; and he that ob-
serveth not the day, to the Lord he observeth it not," toler-
ating both the observance and the non-observance, when you
perceive the desire of doing God's will existing in both, you
can not avoid the charge of being careless about the question
of the sanctities of a day of rest. Or if, with St. Paul, you say
of some superstitious idolatry, that men ignorantly worship
God in it, their worship being true, their form false you can
not avoid the stigma of seeming for the time to be tending
to that idolatry. Or if, with the Son of God, you recognize
ihe enthusiasm of nature, which passion had led astray in de
vious paths, you can not escape the imputation of being " a
friend of publicans and sinners." This is the price which a
man must pay for charity. His Master could not escape the
price, nor can he.
And then comes the last and most difficult lesson of love
T/ie Unjiist Steward. 787
to make allowances even for the uncharitable. For surely
below all that uncharitableness Avhich is so common, there is
often a germ of the life of love ; and beneath that intoler-
ance, which may often wound ourselves, a loving and a can
did eye may discern zeal for God. Therefore St. Paul saw
even in the Jews, his bitterest foes, that " they had a zeal for
God, but not "according to knowledge." And therefore St.
Stephen prayed, with his last breath, " Lord, lay not this sin
to their charge." Earth has not a spectacle more glorious
or more fair to show than this love tolerating intolerance ;
charity covering, as with a veil, even the sin of the lack of
charity.
XXII.
THE UNJUST STEWARD.
" And the lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely :
for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children
of light. And I say unto you, 'Make to yourselves friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness ; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting
habitations." Lukexvi. 8, 9.
THERE is at first sight a difficulty in the interpretation
of this parable ; apparently there is a commendation of evil
by Christ. We see a bad man is held up for Christian imita-
tion. Now let us read the parable.
"And He said also unto his disciples, There was a certain
rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused
unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him,
and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee ? give
an account of thy stewardship ; for thou mayest be no longer
steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall
I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship : I
can not dig ; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to
do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may re-
ceive me into their houses. So he called every one of his
lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much
owest thou unto my lord? And he said, A hundred meas
ures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit
down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And
how much owest thou? And he said, A hundred measures
of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write
fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward be-
cause he had done wisely : for the children of this world are
in their generation wiser than the children of light."
788 The Unjust Steward.
The difficulty we have spoken of passes away when we
have learned to distinguish the essential aim of the parable
from its ornament or drapery. There is in every parable the
main scope, and the ornament or drapery. Sometimes, if we
press too closely the drapery in which the aim and intention
of the parable is clothed, we get quite the contrary of our
Redeemer's meaning. For example, in the parable of the un-
just judge there is the similarity, that both God and the un-
just judge yield to importunate prayer ; but there is this
difference, that the judge does it from weariness, and God
from love. The judge grants the widow's request, lest, he
says, " by her continual coining she. weary me ;" and God
answers the petitions of His people from, love : and encour-
ages earnestness and sincerity in prayer because it brings
nan nearer to Him, elevating and ennobling him, while it
makes him feel his entire dependence on God.
So here in this parable : it is the lord it is not Christ, but
the master who commended the unjust steward. And he
did so, not because he had acted honorably, faithfully, grate-
fully, but because he had acted wisely. He takes the single
point of prudence, foresight, forecast.
Let us consider the possibility of detaching a single quali-
ty from a character, and viewing it separately.
So do we speak in everyday life. We quote a passage ad-
miringly, from an infidel writer for example, Gibbon ; but
thereby we do not approve his infidelity. We may admire
the manly bearing of a prisoner in the dock or on the scaffold,
while we reprobate the crime which brought him there. We
may speak enthusiastically of a great philosopher ; we do not
therefore say he is a great man, or a good man. Perhaps we
are charmed by a tale of successful robbery ; we wonder at
its ingenuity, its contrivance, feel even a kind of respect for
the man who could so contrive it : but no man who thus re-
lates it is understood to recommend felony. We admire the
dexterity of a juggler as dexterity.
So it was with "this parable of Christ. He fastened on a
single point, excluding all other considerations. The man
had planned, he had seen difficulties, overcome them, marked
out his path, held to it steadily, crowned himself with suc-
cess. So far he is an example. The way in which he used
his power of forecasting may have been bad ; but forecast it-
self is good. Our subject to-day includes :
I. The wisdom of this world.
II. The pattern of Christian consistency.
I The wisdom of this world. There are three classes
The Unjust Steward. 789
of men. Those who believe that one thing is needful, and
choose the better part, who believe in and live for eternity ;
these are not mentioned here : those who believe in the
world and live for it ; and those who believe in eternity, and
half live for the world.
Forethought for self made the steward ask himself, "What
shall I do ?" Here is the thoughtful, contriving, sagacious
man of the world. In the affairs of this world, the man who
does not provide for self, if he enter into competition with
the world on the world's principles, soon finds himself thrust
aside ; he will be put out. It becomes necessary to jostle
and struggle in the great crowd if he would thrive. With
him it is not, first the kingdom of God ; but first, what he
shall eat, and what he shall drink, and wherewithal shall he
be clothed.
Note the kind of superiority in this character that is com-
mended. There are certain qualities which really do elevate
a man in the scale of being. He who pursues a plan steadi-
ly is higher than he who lives by the hour. You can not but
respect such a one. The value of self-command and self-de-
nial is exemplified in the cases of the diplomatist who mas-
ters his features while listening ; the man of pleasure who is
prudent in his pleasures ; the man of the world w r ho keeps his
temper and guards his lips. How often, after speaking hastily
the thought which was uppermost, and feeling the cheek
burn, you have looked back in admiration on some one who
held his tongue even though under great provocation to speak.
Look at some hard-headed, hard-hearted man, with a front
of brass, carrying out his worldly schemes with a settled plan,
and a perseverance which you perforce must admire. There
may be nothing very exalted in his aim, but there is some-
thing very marvellous in the enduring, patient, steady pur-
suit of his object.
You see energies of the highest order are brought into play.
It is not a being of mean powers that the world has beguiled,
but a mind far-reaching, vast ; throwing immortal powers on
things of time; on a scheme, perhaps, which breaks up like a
cloud-phantom or melts like an ice-palace.
It is a marvellous spectacle a man reaching forward to se-
cure a habitation, a home, that will last. A man counting his
freehold more his own than the pension for life : sagacious,
meeting with entire success : the success which always attends
consistency in any pursuit. If a tradesman resolve to save
and be frugal, barring accidents, he will realize a competency
or a fortune. If you make it your business to please, you
will be welcome in society. So we find it in this parable,
790 The Unjust Steward.
This man, one of the world, contrived to secure for himself fi
home. And the children of this world are consistent, and
force the world to yield them a home. It is no use saying
the people of the world are not happy.
I shall now endeavor to explain this parable. The term
" steward " is not to be taken exactly in its modern meaning.
The tenants paid their rents, not in money, but in kind, that
is, in produce, and the rent was a certain proportion of the
crop, and would therefore vary according to the harvest.
Say, for illustration, the landlord here called " the lord "
received as rent the tenth part of the crop ; then, if the
produce of an olive-yard was a thousand measures of oil,
" the lord " was entitled to a hundred measures. And sim-
ilavly in the case of an arable farm, a rent of a hundred meas-
ures of wheat would represent a crop of a thousand measures.
According to the parable, it appears that it depended on the
good faith of the tenant to state truly the amount gathered
in ; and against false returns the chief check was provided in
the steward. If he acquiesced in the deception, there was
generally no detection or check. We read in this case he
permitted the bill to be taken, and an account given, in the
one instance of eight hundred, in the other, of five hundred
instead of a thousand measures. Thus he got gratitude from
the tenants, who considered him a benevolent man, and count-
ed his expulsion an injustice. We have here a specimen of
the world's benevolence and the world's gratitude. Let us
do the world justice. Gratitude is given profusely. Help
a man to build his fortune, and you will win gratitude.
The steward got commendation from his lord for his world-
ly wisdom. Such is the wisdom of this world wise in its
contriving selfishness; wise in its masterly superiority; wise
in its adaptation of means to ends ; wise in its entire success.
But the success is only in their generation, ana their wis-
dom is only for their generation. If this world be all, it is
wise to contrive for it and live for it. But if not, then con-
sider the word is, " Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be
required of thee ; then whose shall those things be that thou
bast gotten ?"
II. In contrast with the wisdom of the children of this
world, the Redeemer shows the inconsistencies of the chil-
dren of light. "The children of this world are wiser in their
generation than the children of light."
This is evidently not true of all. There have been men
who have given their bodies to be burned for the truth's sake ;
men who have freely sacrificed this present world for the
The Unjust Steward. 791
next. To say that the wisest of the sons of this world is half
as wise as they, were an insult to the sanctifying Spirit.
But " children of light " is a wide term. There is a dif-
ference between life and light. To have light is to perceive
truth and know duly. To have life is to be able to live out
truth and to perform duty. Many a man has clear light who
has not taken hold of life. Many a man is the child of light
who does not walk as the child of life.
So far as a man feels that eternity is long, time short, so
far he is a child of light. So far as he believes the body noth-
ing in comparison with the soul, the present in comparison
with the future ; so far as he has felt the power of sin, and
the sanctifying power of the death of Christ ; so far as he
comprehends the character of God as exhibited in Jesus
Christ he is a child of light.
Now the accusation is, that in his generation he does not
walk so wisely as the child of the world does in his. The
children of the world believe that this world is of vast im-
portance. They are consistent with their belief, and live for
it. Out of it they manage to extract happiness. In it they
contrive to find a home.
To be a child of light implies duty as well as privilege.
It is not enough to have the light, if we do not " walk in the
light." " If we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk
in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." .
And to hold high principles and live on low ones is Chris-
tian inconsistency. We are all more or less inconsistent.
There is no man whose practice is not worse than Ins pro-
fession. No one who does not live below his own standard.
But absolute inconsistency is, when a man's life, taken as a
whole, is in opposition tc his acknowledged views and prin-
ciples. If a man say that 'it is more blessed to give than to
receive," and is forever receiving, scarcely ever giving, he is
inconsistent. If he profess that to please God is the only
thing worth living for, and his plans, and aims, and contriv-
ances are all to please men, he is wise for the generation of
the children of the world ; for the generation of the " chil-
dren of light" he is not wise. See, then, the contrast.
The wisdom of the steward consisted in forecasting. He
felt that his time was short, and he lost not a moment.
Every time he crossed a field it was with the feeling, This is
no longer mine. Every time he left his house he felt, I shall
soon leave it to come back no more. Every time he went
into a tenant's cottage he felt, The present is all that may be
given me to make use of this opportunity. Therefore, he
Bays with dispatch, "Take thy bi)! 3 and write down,"
79- The Unjust Steward.
Now the want of Christian wisdom consists in this, that
our stewardship is drawing to a close, and no provision if
made for an eternal future. We are all stewards. Every
day, every age of life, every year, gives us superintendence
over something which we have to use, and the use of which
tells for good or evil on eternity.
Childhood and manhood pass. The day passes : and, as its
close draws near, the Master's voice is heard "Thou mayest
be no longer steward." And what are all these outward
symbols but types and reminders of the darker, longer night
that is at hand? One by one, we are turned out of all oui
homes. The summons comes. The man lies down on his
bed for the last time; and then comes that awful moment,
the putting down the extinguisher on the light, and the grand
rush of darkness on the spirit.
Let us now consider our Saviour's application of this parable.
" And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness ; that, when ye fail, they may
receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful
in that which is least is faithful also in much : and he that is
unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye
have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will
commit to your trust the true riches ? And if ye have not
been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give
you that which is your own ?"
There are two expressions to be explained.
1. " Mammon of unrighteousness." Mammon is the name
of n Syrian god, who presided over wealth. Mammon of un-
righteous** ss means the god whom the unrighteous worship
wealth.
It is not necessarily gold. Any wealth ; wealth being
weal or well-being. Time, talents, opportunity, and author-
ity, all are wealth. Here the steward had influence.
It is called the mammon of unrighteousness, because it is
ordinarily used, not well, but ill. Power corrupts men.
Riches harden more than misfortune.
2. " Make friends of." This is an ambiguous expression.
Those who know it to be so scarcely are aware how widely
it is misunderstood. To make friends of, has, in English, two
meanings. To make friends of a man, in our idiom, is to con-
vert him into our ally. We meet with those .who imagine
that the command is to make riches our friends instead of
our enemies.
But the other meaning is " of," i. e., out of, by the use of,
to create friends in a word, to use these goods of time in
such a way as to secure eternal well-being.
The Unjust Steward. 793
"Make to yourselves friends." I will explain "friends"
as a home. There may seem to be great legality in this in
junction.
Yet on this subject the words of Scripture are very strong.
" Sell that thou hast, and give unto the poor, and thou shalt
have treasure in heaven ;" "Provide yourselves bags that wax
not old ; a treasure in the heavens, that fadeth not away ;"
"Lay. up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through and steal." Do not be afraid of the expression.
Let itT stand in all its bold truthfulness. Goodness done in
Christ secures blessedness. A cup of cold water, given in
the name of Christ, shall not lose its reward.
Merit in these things there is none. Oh, the man who
knows the torment of an evil heart, and the man who is
striving to use his powers wisely, is not the man to talk of
merit in the sight of God. There is no truth more dear to
our hearts than this not by merit, but by grace, does heaven
become ours.
But let us put it in another way. Wise acts, holy and un-
selfish deeds, secure friends. Wherever the steward went
he found a friend. The acts of his beneficence were spread
over the whole of his master's estate. Go where he would,
he would receive a welcome. In this way our good actions
become our friends.
And if it be no dream which holy men have entertained,
that on this regenerated earth the risen spirits shall live
again in glorified bodies, then it were a thing of sublime an-
ticipation, to know that every spot hallowed by the recol-
lection of a deed done for Christ, contains a recollection
which would be a friend. Just as the patriarchs erected an
altar when they felt God to be near, till Palestine became
dotted with these memorials, so would earth be marked by a
good man's life with those holiest of all friends, the remem-
brance of ten thousand little nameless acts of piety and love.
Lastly, they are everlasting habitations.
If the children of the world be right, it is not all well with
them; but if the children of light'be right, it is well ever-
lastingly.
Nothing is eternal but that which is done for God and
others. That which is done for self dies. Perhaps it is not
wrong: but it perishes. You say it is pleasure, well enjoy
it. But joyous recollection is no longer joy. That which
ends in self is mortal ; that alone which goes out of self into
God lasts forever.
794 The Orphanage of Moses.
XXIII.
THE ORPHANAGE OF MOSES.
A SERMON PREACHED ON BEHALF OF THE ORPHAN SOCIETY.
" And when she had opened it, she saw the child : and, behold, the babe
wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews'
children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to
thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called tha
child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away,
and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took
the child, and nursed it." Exod. ii. G-9.
THIS is the account given of the discovery of a foundling
orphan. Moses was an orphan o/o^avoc, bereaved; ordi-
narily it means one bereaved by death. But it matters not
whether it is by death or otherwise ; it is truly an orphan
if it be in any manner deprived of a parent's care. Here
the child Moses was not bereaved by death, but by political
circumstances.
In the book from whence our text is taken, we are told that
three laws were enacted against the liberties of Israel:
1. To keep down the population the political economy
of those days devised, as a preventive check, the slaughter
of the males.
2. To prevent their acquiring any political importance,
the officers set over them were Egyptians. No Israelite was
eligible to any office not even as a taskmaster.
3. To prevent their acquiring knowledge, they were pro-
hibited from the slightest leisure : their lives were made
bitter with hard bondage, in brick and mortar.
No penal statutes were ever more complete than these,
If any penal statutes could have prevented the growth of
this injured nation, these must have succeeded. Numerically
limited, rendered politically insignificant, and intellectually
feeble, the slavery of Israel Avas complete.
But wherever governments enact penal laws which are
against the laws of God, those governments or nations are,
by the sure and inevitable process of revolution, preparing
for themselves destruction. As when you compress yielding
water, it burst at last.
Pharaoh's laws were against all the laws of Nature, or,
77te Orphanage of Moses. 795
more properly speaking, against the laws of God : and Na-
ture was slowly working against Pharaoh. He had made
God his enemy.
Against these laws of Pharaoh a mother's heart revolted.
She hid her child for three months. Disobedience to this
Egyptian law, we read, was faith in God so says the Epistle
to the Hebrews. " By faith Moses, when he was born, was
hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a
proper child ; and they were not afraid of the king's com-
mandment."
At last concealment was no longer possible, and the
mother placed her child in an ark among the reeds of the
river Nile. And there a foundling orphan he lay, who was
to be the future emancipator and lawgiver of Israel.
In order to understand these verses, I divide them into
two branches :
I. The claims of the orphan.
II. The orphan's education.
And first. By apparent accident, if there be such a thing
in this world of God's, the daughter of Pharaoh came down
to the river to wash, and, among the reeds she saw the chest
in which lay the child.
Now the first claim put forward on her compassion was
the claim of infancy.
The chest was opened. The princess "saw the child."
That single sentence contains an argument. It was an
appeal to the woman's heart. " It mattered not that she was
a princess, nor that she belonged to the proudest class of the
most exclusive nation in the world. Rank, caste, nationality,
all melted before the great fact of womanhood. She was a
woman, and before her lay an outcast child.
Now, let us observe, that feeling w r hich arose here was
spontaneous. She did not feel compassion because it was
ner duty so to feel, but because it was her nature. The law
'of Egypt forbade her to feel so for a Hebrew child.
We commit a capital error when we make feeling a matter
of command. To make feelings a subject of law destroys
their beauty and spontaneity.
When we say ought that a woman ought to feel so and
BO we state a fact, not a command. We say that it is her
nature, and that she is unnatural if she does not. There is
something wrong her nature is perverted. But no com-
mand can make her feel thus or thus. Law, applied to feel-
ing, only makes hypocrites.
God has provided for humanity by a plan more infallible
796 The Orphanage of Moses.
than system, by implanting feeling in our natures. It was a
heathen felt thus.
Do not fancy that Christianity created these feelings of
tenderness and compassion by commanding them. Chris-
tianity declares them, commands them, and sanctions them,
because they belong to man's unadulterated nature. Chris*
tianity acknowledges them, stamps them with the divine
seal; but they existed before, and were found even among
the Egyptians and Assyrians. What Christianity did for all
these feelings was exactly what the creation of the sun, as
given in the Mosaic account, did for the light then existing.
There was light before, but the creation of the sun was the
gathering all the scattered rays of light into one focus.
Christian institutions, asylums, hospitals, are only the reduc-
tion into form of feelings that existed before.
So it is, that all that heathenism held of good and godlike,
Christianity acknowledges and adopts centralizes. It is
human Christian ours.
2. Consider the degiadation of this child's origin. "This
is one of the Hebrews' children." The exclusiveness of the
Egyptian social system was as strong as that of the Hindoo.
There was no intermixture between caste and caste between
priest and merchant. This child was, moreover, a Hebrew
a slave an alien reckoned a hereditary enemy, and to be
crushed.
In these rigid feelings of caste distinction the princess
was brought up. The voice of society said, It is but a
Hebrew. The mightier voice of nature no, of God spake
within her, and said, It is a human being bone of your
bone, and sharing the same life.
That moment the princess of Egypt escaped from the
trammels of time-distinctions and temporary narrowness,
and stood upon the rock of the Eternal. So long as the
feeling lasted, she breathed the spirit of that kingdom in
which there is " neither Jew nor Gentile, barbarian, Scythian,
bond, nor free." So long as the feeling lasted, she breathed
the atmosphere of Him who " came not to be ministered unto
but to minister."
She was animated by His Spirit who came to raise the
abject, to break the bond of the oppressor. She felt as He
felt, when she recognized that the very degradation of the
child was a claim upon her royal compassion.
3. The last reason we find for this claim was its unpro-
tected state it wept. Those tears told of a conscious
want the felt want of a mother's arms. But they sug-
gested to the Egyptian princess the remembrance of a
The Orphanage of Moses. 797
danger of which the child was unconscious helpless ex<
posure to worse evils famine ; the Nile flood ; the croco-
dile. And the want of which the exposed child was con<
scious was far less than the danger of which it was uncon
scions.
Such is the state of orphanage. Because it is unprotected,
it is therefore exposed to terrible evils. There are worse
evils than the Nile, the crocodile, or starvation.
Suppose the child had lived. Then, as a boy in the hands
of a taskmaster or slave-driver, he would have become cal-
lous, hard, and vicious, with every feeling of tenderness dried
up. Nothing can replace a parent's tenderness. It is not
for physical support merely that parents are given us, but
for the formation of the heart. He wept now; but the
fountain of the orphan's tears would have been withered and
drie^i up, and instead of the tender man which he afterwards
became, he would have become a hard-hearted slave.
Let us suppose, again, the case of a girl orphaned. Then
you have the danger infinitely multiplied. There would have
been no one in all the land of Egypt to redress the wrongs
done to a Hebrew maiden. There are men in this world to
whom, putting religion out of the question even, the very fact
of wanting protection is cause sufficient for them to render
protection. There are men to whom defenselessness is its
own all-sufficient plea : there are men in whose presence the
woman and the orphan, just because they are unshielded by
any care, are protected more than they could be by any
laws.
But remember, I pray you, that there is another spirit in
the world the spirit of oppression, and even worse ; the
spirit against which Jewish prophets rose to the height of a
divine eloquence when they pleaded the cause of the father-
less and the widow; that spirit which in our own day makes
the daughter of the poor man less safe than the daughter of
the rich ; that spirit of seduction, than which there is nothing
more cowardly, more selfish, more damnable. For alas! it
is true that to say that a girl is unprotected, fatherless, and
poor, is almost equivalent to saying that she will fall into sin.
II. We pass on now to consider the orphan's education;
and first I notice that it was a suggestion from another.
The princess felt compassion, and so far was in the state
of one who has warm feelings, but does not know how to do
good. Brought up in a court, born to be waited on, nursed
in luxury, ignorant of life and how the poor lived, those feeL
ings might have remained helpless feelings.
798 The Orphanage of Moses.
Then, in the providence of God, one stood by who offered
a suggestion how she might benefit the child, " Shall I go and
call a nurse ?" In other words, she suggested that it would
be a princely and noble thing for Pharaoh's daughter to
adopt and educate it.
And now observe the value of such a suggestion : what
we want is not feeling emotions are common, feelings super-
abound. In the educated classes, feeling is extremely refined,
but is much occupied with imaginary and unreal troubles;
and the reason why, with such warm feelings so little good is
done, is that we want the suggestion how to do it.
Observe how differently the Bible treats this, from what
the painter or the novelist would have done. A painter
would have shown the majesty and beauty of the royal
actor. A romance would have given a touching history of
womanly sentiment. But the Bible, being a real book, s^ays
little of the emotion merely mentions it and passes on to
the act to which the feeling was meant to lead.
Brethren, we often make a mistake here ; we are proud of
our emotions, of our refined feeling, of our quick sensibilities ;
but remember, I pray you, feeling by itself is worthless it is
meant to lead to action, and if it fails to do this it is a danger
rather than a blessing ; for excited feeling that stops short
of deeds is the precursor of callousness and hardness of heart.
Your sensibility is well but what has it done?
We feel the orphan's claims, and now comes the question,
how shall we do them good ?
Let us observe that Moses was nursed by a Hebrew matron.
She was one of his own grade. It would have been a capital
error to have given him to an Egyptian nurse. Probably,
the princess left to herself would have done so. But then
he would have been weaned from his own race. In heart,
sympathies, feelings, he would have been an Egyptian. Nay,
he would have been more exclusive; for the hardest are
almost always those who have been raised above their for-
mer position. The slave's hardest taskmaster is a negro. The
one who is most exclusive in his sympathies is usually the
raised merchant, or the one recently ennobled.
This great thing is to emancipate the degraded through
their own class. Only through their own class can they be
effectually delivered; the mere patronage of the great and
rich injures character.
So it was with Judaism; so it was with Christianity.
The Redeemer was made of a woman " born under the law
to redeem them that were under the law." He who came
**' Breach t ne Gospel to the Door, was born of a poor woman,
The Orphanage of Moses. 799
But it was not only a Hebrew nurse to whom Moses was
given, it was a mother his own mother who nursed him ;
and from her he heard the story of his people's history.
From her he learned to feel his country's wrongs to be his
own. In the splendor of Pharaoh's court he never could
forget that his mother was a slave, and that his father was
working in brick and mortar, under cruel taskmasters.
From the princess he gained the wisdom of Egypt he
was taught legislative science. From hardship he learned
endurance and patience. Instruction ends in the school-room,
but education ends only with life. A child is given to the
universe to educate.
Now let us see the results of this training on his intellect-
ual and moral nature.
1. Intellectually. We will only notice the spirit of inquiry
and habit of observation. To ask " Why ?" is the best
Christian lesson for a child. Not the " why " which is the
language of disobedience, but that " why " which demands
for all phenomena a cause. It was this which led Moses on
Mount Horeb to say, "I will turn aside and see this great
sight, why the bush is not burned." So it was that Moses
found out God.
2. In the moral part of his character we note his hatred of
injustice and cruelty; ever was he found ranged against
oppression in whatever form it might appear. He stood
ever on the side of right against might, whether it was to
avenge the wrong done by the Egyptian to one of his
Hebrew brethren, or to rescue the daughter of the priest of
Midian from the oppressing shepherds. He became, too, a
peacemaker. Thus we get a glimpse of the moral and
intellectual nature of the man who afterwards led Israel out
of Egyptian bondage, and who, but for the education he had
received, might have become as degraded as any of the
nation he freed from slavery.
At the present day, that child who might have become so
degraded, stands second but to One in dignity and influence
in the annals of the human race. Take, for one example, the
Jewish sabbath. Thousands upon thousands of that nation,
fond of gain and mammon as they proverbially are said to be,
yet gave up their gains yesterday, and voluntarily surren-
dered that one day in addition to this day which, by the law
of the land, they are obliged to keep holy. And all this in
obedience to the enactments of that orphan child, who three
thousand years ago commanded the sabbath-day to be kept
holy. In those days the Pharaohs of Egypt raised theii
memorials in the enduring stone of the pyramids, which still
8oo The Orphanage of Moses.
remain almost untouched by time. A princess of Egypt
raised her memorial in a human spirit, and just so far as spirit
is more enduring than stone, just so far is the work of that
princess more enduring than the work of the Pharaohs ; for
when the day comes when those pyramids shall have crum-
bled into nothingness and ruin, then shall the spirit of the
laws of Moses still remain interwoven with the most hallowed
of human institutions. So long as the spirit of Moses influ-
ences this world, so long shall her work endure, the work of
that royal-hearted lady who adopted this Hebrew orphan
child.
It now only remains for me to say a word on the claims
of that institution for which I am to plead to-day the Fe-
male Orphan Asylum in this town. It was established in
1823, and for years its funds flourished; lately they have
fallen off considerably, and that not in consequence of fault
in the institution itself, but simply for this cause, that of
those who took it up warmly once, many have been removed
by death, and many have altered their place of residence, and
also because many fresh calls and institutions have come for-
ward, and thus have excluded this one. The consequence
has been a sad falling off of funds. Last year the expend-
iture exceeded the receipts by one hundred pounds.
Within the walls of that institution, now almost dilapida-
ted and falling into decay, there are twenty-four female or-
phan children, received from the age of six to sixteen ; not
educated above their station, but educated simply to enable
them "to do their duty in that state of life to which it has
pleased God to call them."
And now I earnestly desire to appeal to you for this object
by the thoughts that have to-day been brought before you.
Because they are children, I make an appeal to every moth-
er's and woman's heart ; because they are females, young
and unprotected, I make an appeal to the heart of every man
who knows and feels the evils of society ; because they be-
long to the lowest class, I make an appeal to all who have
ever felt the infinite preciousness of the fact that the Saviour
of this world was born a poor man's child.
My beloved Christian brethren, let us not be content witb
feeling ; give, I pray you, as God has prospered you.
Christianity and Hindooism. 80 1
XXIV.
CHRISTIANITY AND HINDOOISM.
A FRAGMENT OF AN ADVENT LECTURE.
" Hear, O Israel : The Lord our God is one Lord : And thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might." Deut. vi. 4, 5.
IT is ray intention, in giving the present course of lectures,
to consider the advent of our Lord in connection with the
cause of missionary labors. This connection is clear. His
advent is the reign of God in the hearts of men ; and it is
the aim of the missionary to set up that kingdom in men's
hearts. There is also a more indirect connection between
the two, because at this time the Church Missionary Society
is celebrating its jubilee. It is now fifty years since the first
mission was established at Sierra Leone, where, although
they who composed that little band were swept oif one
after another by jungle fever their groans unheard, them-
selves unwept, and almost unhonored yet there rose up
other laborers after them ; and a firm footing was at length
gained in that dark heathen land.
On the Epiphany of next year we are to celebrate this ju-
bilee in Brighton ; and it has seemed to me a good prepara-
tion, that we should occupy, in thought, some field of mis-
sionary exertion, and look at the difficulties which those
have had to contend against, who have gone out in that
work. There can be no doubt as to which shall be first cho-
sen for our contemplation. India, with its vast territories
and millions of people, comes first, both as being one of our
own possessions, and by the heavy responsibilities attaching
to us on account of it.
We propose, therefore, to give some account of Hindoo
superstition ; and here I would remark, there are three v. ays
of looking at idolatry.
I. There is the way of the mere scholar that of men who
read about it as the school-boy does, as a thing past a cu-
rious but worn-out system. This scholastic spirit is the
worst ; for it treats the question of religious worship as a
piece of rmtiquariariism, of no vital consequence, but just cu-
rious and amusing.
34*
8o2 Christianity and Hindoo ism.
II. There is the view taken by the religious partisan.
There are some men who, thinking their religion right, de-
termine therefore that every one who differs from tnem is
wrong. They look with scorn and contempt on the religion
of the Hindoo, and only think how they may force theirs
upon him. In this spirit, the world can never be evangel-
ized. A man may say to another, " I can not understand
your believing such folly," but he will not convince him so
of his error. It is only by entering into the mind and difi>
culties of the heathen that we can learn how to meet them
and treat them effectually.
III. There is the way of enlightened Christianity. In this
spirit stood St. Paul on the hill at Athens. The beauty of
Greek worship was nothing to him. To him it was still idol-
atry, though it was enlightened ; but he was not hard
enough not to be able to feel for them. He did not denounce
it to them as damnable; he showed them that they were
feeling after God, but blindly, ignorantly, wrongly. " Whom
ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
The religion on which we are going to dwell to-day is
one of the most subtle the world has ever received. It has
stood the test of long ages and of great changes. The land
has in turn submitted to the Macedonian, the Saracen, the
Mohammedan conqueror; yet its civilization, and its ways
of thinking, have remained always the same in stagnation.
We marvel how it has happened that their religion has re-
mained sufficient for them. Let us look at it.
L We take, as the first branch of our subject, the Hin-
doo conception of Divinity. We start with the assertion,
that the god whom a man worships is but the reflection of
himself. Tell us what a man's mind is, and we will tell you
what his god is. Thus, amongst the Africans, the lowest
and most degraded of mankind, forms of horror are rever-
enced. The frightful, black, shapeless god, who can be
frightened by the noise of a drum, is their object of worship.
Our Scandinavian forefathers, whose delight was in the
battle and the sea-fight, worshipped warlike gods, whose
names still descend to us in the names given to the days of
the week ; they expected after death the conqueror's feast in
Walhalla, the flowing cup, and the victor's wreath.
Look at Christianity itself. W r e profess to worship the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we do not all worship
the same God. The God of the child is not the God of the
man. He is a beneficent being an enlarged representation
(to him) of his own lather. The man whose mind is cast ia
Christianity and Hindooism. 803
a #tern mould worships a God who sits above to administer
justice and punishment. The man who shrinks from the
idea of suffering worships a placable God, who combines the
greatest possible amount of happiness for the race with the
least possible amount of pain.
[Now, consider the man who worships God as He appears
in Jesus Christ.]
There are two things distinctly marked in the Hindoo re-
ligion : The love of physical repose ; and mental activity^
restlessness, and subtlety. Theirs are ideas passing through
trains of thought which leave our European minds marvel-
ling in astonishment.
Their first principle is that of God's unity. We are told
by some that they have many gods, but all those who have
deeply studied the subject agree in this that they really
have but one. This Hindoo deity is capable of two states
1. Inaction; 2. Action. The first state is that of a dream-
less sleep, unconscious of its own existence ; all attributes
have passed away it is infinite nothing. We remark in men
generally a desire for rest ; in the Hindoo it is a desire mere-
ly for indolence. Far deeper lodged in the human breast
than the desire of honor or riches is seated the desire for
rest : there are, doubtless, eager, earnest spirits, who may
scorn pleasure, but, nevertheless, they long for rest. Well
and rightly has the Hindoo thrown this idea on God ; but
he has erred in the character of that repose.
There are two kinds of rest: 1st. There is the rest de-
sired by the world. 2d. There is the rest we find in Christ.
The active mind, if out of its proper sphere, corrodes itself,
and frets itself with plans and projects, finding no rest. The
rest of Christ is not that of torpor, but harmony ; it is not
refusing the struggle, but conquering in it ; not resting from,
duty, but finding rest in duty.
The sabbaths of eternity have kept the Supreme Mind in
infinite blessedness : on our restless, unquiet, throbbing
hearts, God has been looking down, serene and calm. When
chaos took lovely form and shape, then that rest began
not in the torpor of inaction, but in harmonious work. " My
Father worketh hitherto." God works in all the smallest
objects of creation, as well as in the largest. Even in mid-
night stillness harmonious action is the law ; when every
thing seems to slumber, all is really at work, for the spirit of
life and the spirit of death are weaving and unweaving for-
ever.
We remark that to this god of Hindostan there rises no
804 Christianity and Hindooism.
temple throughout the length and breadth of the land. If
you ask in astonishment, why is this? the Hindoo replies,
" Pure, unmixed Deity is mind, and can not be confined to
place ;" and well does he here teach us that God is a Spirit :
but in his idea there is an exhibition of a god without quali-
tiesa deity whom man may meditate on, and be absorbed
in, but not one to be loved or adored.
Here is his first error ; here we can teach him something
that God is a personal Being.
Personality is made up of three attributes consciousness,
character, will. Without the union of these three, the idea
is imperfect. Personality the Hindoo Deity has none ; there-
fore he can not be loved.
Now when we look at God as revealed in Jesus Christ,
He appears to us as having a mind like ours ; the ideas of
number, of right and wrong, of sanctity, are to God precisely
what they are to man. Conceive a mind without these, ana
it may be a high and lofty one, but there can be no com-
munion with it. But when Christ speaks of love, of purity,
of holiness, we feel that it is no abstraction we worship.
II. We shall consider as the second branch of our subject
the Hindoo theory of creation.
We have spoken of the Hindoo Deity as capable of two
states that of perfection, or rest ; that of imperfection, or
unrest. The Hindoo thinks that a time arrives when rest
becomes action, and slumber becomes life ; and when, not
willing to be alone, feeling solitary in his awaking, God
wishes to impart life ; therefore He creates.
Here again, we recognize a partial truth. In the Scrip-
tures we never read of a time when God was alone. What
is love but this, to find ourselves again in another? The
" Word," we read, " was with God " before the world began.
What the word is to the thought, that is Christ to God.
Creation was one expression of this of His inmost feelings
of beauty and loveliness ; whether it be the doleful sighings
of the night-wind, or the flower that nestles in the grass,
they tell alike of love. So has He also shown that love on
earth, in the outward manifestation of the life of Christ not
only in the translated Word which we have beautiful as it
is, but in the living Word. Read without this, history is a
dark, tangled web, philosophy a disappointing thing. With-
out this light society is imperfect, and the greatest men small
and insignificant. From all these we turn to Christ ; here is
that perfect Word to which our hearts echo, where no one
syllable is wrong.
Christianity and Hindooism. 805
There are two Hindoo theories of creation : the gross
view held by the many ; the refined one held by the philoso-
pher and the Brahmin. Yet these two so mix and intermin-
gle that it is difficult to give to European minds a clear no-
tion of either of them separately. We will leave the popular
view for another time, and we will try to deal now with the
metaphysical and transcendental one. It is this creation
is illusion the Deity awaking from sleep. The universe is
God: God is the universe; therefore He can not create.
The Hindoo says, You, and I, and all men, are but gods
ourselves in a wretched state of dream and illusion. We
must try to explain this in part by our own records of times
which we can all remember, when we have lain in a state
between dreaming and waking a phantasmagoric state,
changing, combining, altering, like the kaleidoscope, so that
we hardly knew realities from unrealities. " Such," says the
Hindoo, " is your life a delusion." I merely tell of this be-
cause it colors all Hindoo existence ; the practical results we
shall consider another time. For this the visionary con-
templator of Brahm, and the Fakeer, sit beneath the tree,
scarcely eating, speaking, or thinking ; hoping at length to
become absorbed into that calm, dreamless, passive state
which to them represents perfection.
One truth we tind acknowledged in this theory is the un-
reality of this world. Nobly has the Hindoo set forth the
truth that the world is less real than the spirit. "What is
your life ? it is even a vapor." Ask you what we are to live
for ? The child, on whose young face the mother now gazes
so tenderly, changes with years into the man with furrowed
brow and silvered hair ; constitutions are formed and broken,
friendships pass, love decays, who can say he possesses the
same now that blessed him in his early life ? All passes
whilst we look upon it. A most unreal, imaginative life.
The spirit of life ever weaving the spirit of death ever un-
weaving; all things putting on change.
In conclusion, we observe here a great truth the evil of
self-consciousness. This self-consciousness is all evil. He
who can dwell on this and that symptom of his moral nature
is already diseased. We are too much haunted by ourselves ;
we project the spectral shadow of ourselves on every thing
around us. And then comes in the Gospel to rescue us from
this selfishness. Redemption is this to forget self in God.
Does not the mother forget herself for a time in the child ;
the loyal man in his strong feelings of devotion for his sover
eign ? So does the Christian forget himself in the feeling that
he has to live here for the performance of the will of God.
806 Rest.
[And now contrast the Hindoo religion with the Chris
tian.]
The Hindoo tells us the remedy for this unreality is to be
found in the long unbroken sleep. The Christian tells us the
remedy is this, that this broken dream of life shall end in a
higher life. Life is but a sleep, a dream, and death is the
real awaking.
XXV.
REST.
"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me : for I am meek and
lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.'' Matt. xi. 28, 29.
No one, perhaps, ever read these words of Christ without
being struck with their singular adaptation to the necessities
of our nature. We have read them again and again, and we
have found them ever fresh, beautiful, and new. No man
could ever read them without being conscious that they rea-
lized the very deepest and inmost want of his being. We
feel it is a convincing proof of His divine mission that He
has thus struck the key-note of our nature, in offering us rest.
Ancient systems were busy in the pursuit after happiness.
Our modern systems of philosophy, science, ay, even of theol-
ogy, occupy themselves with the same thought ; telling us
alike that " happiness is our being's end and aim." But it is
not so that the Redeemer teaches. His doctrine is in words
such as these : " In the world ye shall have " not happiness,
but " tribulation ; but be of good cheer, I have overcome
the world ;" " In Me ye shall have peace." Not happiness
the outward well-being so called in the world but the in-
ward rest which cometh from above. And He alone who
made this promise had a right to say, " Take my yoke upon
you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart ; and
re shall find rest unto your souls." He had that rest in Him-
self, and therefore could impart it; but it is often offered by
'*H'ii who have it not themselves. There are some, high pro-
fe -sors of religion too, who have never known this real rest,
un 1 who at fifty, sixty, seventy years of age, are as much
slives of the world, as when they began, desiring still the
honors, the riches, or the pleasures it has to give, and utterly
neglecting the life which is to come.
Rest. 807
we turn to the history of Christ we find this repose
characterizing His whole existence. For example, first, in
the marriage-feast at Cana, in Galilee. He looked not upon
that festivity with cynical asperity ; He frowned not upon
the innocent joys of life : He made the wine to give enjoy-
ment, and yet singularly contrasted was His human and His
Divine joy. His mother came to Him full of consternation,
and said, " They have no wine :" and the Redeemer, with
calm self-possession, replied, " Woman, what have I to do
with thee ? mine hour is not yet come." He felt not the de-
ficiency which He supplied.
We pass from the marriage-feast to the scene of grief at
Bethany, and still there we find that singular repose. Those
words which we have seen to possess an almost magical
charm in soothing the grief of mourners congregated round
the coffin of the clead " I am the resurrection and the life :
he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never
die " speak they not of repose ? But in the requirements of
these great matters many men are not found wanting ; it is
when we come to the domesticities of their existence that
we see fretting anxiety comes upon their soul. Therefore it
is that we gladly turn to that home at Bethany where He
had gone for quiet rest. Let us hear his words on the sub-
ject of everyday cares : " Martha, Martha, thou art careful
and troubled about many things ; but one thing is needful."
We pass on from that to the state in which a man is tried
the most : and if ever we can pardon words of restlessness
and petulance, it is when friends are unfaithful. Yet even
here there is perfect calmness. Looking steadfastly into the
future, He says, "Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour
eometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every
man to his own, and shall leave Me alone : and yet I am not
alone, because the Father is with Me."
Once more, we turn to the Redeemer's prayers. They
are characterized by a calmness singularly contrasted with
the vehemence which we sometimes see endeavoring to lash
itself into a greater fervor of devotion. The model prayer
has no eloquence in it ; it is calm, simple, full of repose.
We find this again in the 17th chapter of St. John. If a
man feels himself artificial and worldly, if a man feels rest-
less, we would recommend him to take up that chapter as
his best cure. For at least one moment, as he read it, he
would feel in his soul calmness and repose ; it would seem
almost as if he were listening to the grave and solemn words
of a divine soliloquy. This was the mind of Him who gave
8o8 Rest.
this gracious promise, u Come unto Me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." We repeat these
words as a matter of course ; but I ask, Has that repose been
found ? has this peace come to us ? for it is not by merely
repeating them over and over again that we can enter into
the deep rest of Christ.
Our subject this day will be to consider, in the first place,
the false systems of rest which the world holds out, and to
contrast them with the true rest of Christ. The first false
system proposed is the expectation of repose in the grave.
When the spirit has parted from the body after long-
protracted sufferings, we often hear it said that the release
was a happy one ; that there is a repose in the grave ; that
there " the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are
at rest." ^ay, at times, perhaps, we find ourselves hazard-
ing a wish that our own particular current of existence had
come to that point, when it should mingle with the vast
ocean of eternity.
There is in all this a kind of spurious Pantheism, a sort of
feeling that God is alike in every heart, that every man is
to be blessed at last, that death is but a mere transition to a
blessed sleep, that in the grave there is nothing but quiet,
and that there is no misery beyond it. And yet one of the
deepest thinkers of our nation suggests that there may be
dreams even in the sleep of death. There is an illusion
often in the way in which we think of death. The counte-
nance, after the spirit has departed, is so strangely calm
and meek that it produces the feeling of repose within us,
and we transfer our feelings to that of the departed spirit,
and we fancy that body no longer convulsed with pain, those
features so serene and full of peace, do but figure the rest
which the spirit is enjoying ; and yet, perhaps that soul, a
few hours ago, was full of worldliness, full of pride, full of
self-love. Think you that now that spirit is at rest that it
has entered into the rest of Christ ? The repose that be-
longs to the grave is not even a rest of the atoms composing
our material form.
There is another fallacious system of rest which would
place it in the absence of outward trial. This is the world's
peace. The world's peace ever consists in plans for the re-
moval of outward trials. There lies at the bottom of all
false systems of peace, the fallacy that if we can but produce
a perfect set of circumstances, then we shall have the perfect
man ; if we remove temptation, we shall have a holy being:
and so the world's rest comes to this merely happiness and
outward enjoyment. Ay, my Christian brethren, we carry
Rest. 809
these anticipations beyond the grave, and we think the
heaven of God is but like the Mohammedan paradise a
place in which the rain shall beat on us no longer, and the
sun pour his burning rays upon us no more. Very often it
is only a little less sensual, but quite as ignoble as that fabled
by Mohammed.
The Redeemer throws all this aside at once as mere illu-
sion. He teaches just the contrary. He says, " Not as the
world giveth, give I unto you." The world proposes a rest
by the removal of a burden. The Redeemer gives rest by
giving us the spirit and power to bear the burden. "Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of Me, and ye shall find rest
unto your souls." Christ does not promise a rest of inaction,
neither that the thorns shall be converted into roses, nor that
the trials of life shall be removed.
To the man who takes this yoke up in Christ's spirit,
labor becomes blessedness rest of soul and rest of body.
It matters not in what circumstances men are, whether
high or low, never shall the rest of Christ be found in ease
and self-gratification ; never, throughout eternity, will there
be rest found in a life of freedom from duty : the paradise
of the sluggard, where there is no exertion ; the heaven of
the coward, where there is no difficulty to be opposed, is not
the rest of Christ. " Take my yoke upon you." Nay, more
if God could give us a heaven like that, it would be but
misery ; there can be no joy in indolent inaction. The curse
on this world is labor ; but to him who labors earnestly and
truly it t^irns to blessedness. It is a curse only to him who
tries to escape from the work allotted to him, who endeavors
to make a compromise with duty. To him who takes Christ's
yoke, not in a spirit of selfish ease and acquiescence in evil,
but in strife and stern battle with it the rest of Christ
streams in upon his soul.
Many of us are drifting away from our moorings ; we are
quitting the old forms of thought, and faith, and life, and are
seeking for something other than what satisfied the last gen-
eration : and this in a vain search for rest.
Many are the different systems of repose offered to us,
and foremost is that proposed by the Church of Rome. Let
us do her the justice, at all events, to allow that she follows
the Redeemer in this it is not happiness she promises, she
promises rest. The great strength of Romanism lies in this,
that she professes to answer and satisfy the deep want of
human nature for rest. She speaks of an infallibility on
which she would persuade men, weary of the strain of doubt,
to rest. It is not to the tales of miracles, and of the per-
8 10 Rest.
sonal interference of God Himself; but to the promise of an
impossibility of error to those within her pale, that she owes
her influence. And we say, better far to face doubt and
perplexity manfully; to bear any yoke of Christ's than be
content with the rest of a Church's infallibility.
There is another error among many Dissenters ; in a dif-
ferent form we find the same promise held out. One says,
that if we will but rely on God's promise of election our
soul must find repose. Another system tells us that the
penalty has fallen upon Christ, and that if we believe we
shall no longer suffer. Narrowing their doctrines into one,
as if all the want of the soul w r as to escape from punishment,
they place before us this doctrine, and say, believe that, and
your sdul shall find repose.
We have seen earnest men anxiously turning from view
to view, and yet finding their souls as far from rest as ever.
They remind us of the struggles of a man in fever, finding no
rest, tossing from side to side, in vain seeking a cool spot on
his pillow, and forgetting that the fever is within himself.
And so it is with us; the unrest is within us: we foolishly
expect to find that tranquillity in outward doctrine which
alone can come from the calmness of the soul.
We will not deny that there is a kind of rest to be found
in doctrine for a time : for instance, when a man, whose only
idea of evil is its penalty, has received the consoling doctrine
that there is no suffering for him to bear: but the unrest
comes again. Doubtless, the Pharisees and Sadducees, when
they w r ent to the baptism of John, found something of repose
there ; but think you that they went back to their daily life
with the rest of Christ ? We expect some outward change
will do that which nothing but the inward life can do it is
the life of Christ within the soul which alone can give repose.
There have been men in the Church of Rome and in the
ranks of dissent who have indeed erred grievously, but yet
have lived a life of godliness. There have been men in the
true Church as Judas, who was a member of the true
Church who yet, step by step, have formed in themselves
the devil's nature : the rest of Christ pertains not to any one
outward communion.
Before we go farther, let us understand what is meant by
this rest ; let us look to those symbols about us in the world
of nature by which it is suggested. It is not the lake locked
in ice that suggests repose, but the river moving on calmly
and rapidly in silent majesty and strength. It is not the
cattle lying in the sun, but the eagle cleaving the air with
fixed pinions, that gives you the idea of repose combined with
Rest. 811
strength and motion. In creation, the rest of God is exhibit-
ed as a sense of power which nothing wearies. When chaos
burst into harmony, so to speak, God had rest.
There are two deep principles in nature in apparent con-
tradiction one, the aspiration after perfection ; the other,
the longing after repose. In the harmony of these lies the
rest of the soul of man. There have been times when we
have experienced this. Then the winds have been hushed,
and the throb and the tumult of the passions have been blot-
ted out of our bosoms. That was a moment when we were
in harmony with all around, reconciled to ourselves and to
our God ; when we sympathized with all that was pure, all
that was beautiful, all that was lovely.
This was not stagnation, it was fullness of life life in its
most expanded form, such as nature witnessed in her first
hour. This is life in that form of benevolence which expands
into the mind of Christ. And when this is working in the
soul, it is marvellous how. it'distills into a man's words and
countenance. Strange and magical is the power of that col-
lect wherein we pray to God, " Who alone can order the un-
ruly wills and affections of sinful men, to grant unto His
people that they may love the thing which He commands,
and desire that which He promises; that so among the
sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may
surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found."
There is a wondrous melody in that rhythm ; the words are
the echoes of the thought. The mind of the man who wrote
them was in repose all is ringing of rest. We do not won-
der when Moses came down from the mount on which he
had been bowing in adoration before the harmony of God,
that his face was shining with a brightness too dazzling to
look upon.
Our blessed Redeemer refers this rest to meekness and low-
liness. There are three causes in men producing unrest: 1.
Suspicion of God. 2. Inward discord. 3. Dissatisfaction
with outward circumstances. For all these meekness is the
cure. For the difficulty of understanding this world, the
secret is in meokness. There is no mystery in God's deal-
ings to the meek man, for "the secret of the Lord is with
them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant ;"
there is no dread of God's judgments when, our souls are
meek.
The second cause of unrest is inward discord. We are
going on in our selfishness. We stand, as Balaam stood,
against the angel of the Lord, pressing on whilst the angel
of love stands against us. tust as the dove struggling
812 Rest.
against the storm, feeble and tired, is almost spent, until
gradually, as if by inspiration, it has descended to the lower
atmosphere, and so avoided the buffeting of the tempest*
above, and is then borne on by the wind of heaven in entire
repose: like that is the rest of the soul. While we are un-
reconciled, the love of God stands against us, and, by His
will, as lon<* as man refuses to take up that yoke of His, he
is full of discord; he is like the dove struggling with the
elements aloft, as yet unconscious of the calm there is below.
And you must make no compromise in taking up the burden
of the Lord.
Lastly, unrest comes from dissatisfaction with outward
circumstances. Part, perhaps the greater part, of our misery
here comes from over-estimation of ourselves. We are slaves
to vanity and pride. We think we are not in the right sta-
tion ; our genius has been misunderstood ; we have been
slighted, we have been passed by, we have not been reward-
ed as we ought to have been. So long as we have this false
opinion of ourselves, it is impossible for us to realize true
rest.
Sinners, in a world of love, encircling you round on every
side, with blessings infinite upon infinite, and that again mul-
tiplied by infinity : God loves you : God fills you with en-
joyment ! Unjustly, unfairly treated in this world of love !
Once let a man know r for himself what God is, and then in
that he will find peace. It will be the dawn of an everlast-
ing day of calmness and serenity. I speak to some who
have felt the darkness, the clouds, and the dreariness of life,
whose affections have been blighted, who feel a discord and
confusion in their being. To some to whom the world,
lovely though it be, is such that they are obliged to say, "I
see, I do not feel, how 7 beautiful it is."
Brother men, there is rest in Christ, because He is love ;
because His are the everlasting verities of humanity. God
does not cease to be the God of love because men are low,
sad, and desponding. In the performance of duty, in meek-
ness, in trust in God, is our rest our only rest. It is not in
understanding a set of doctrines ; not in an outward compre-
hension of the " scheme of salvation," that rest and peace are
to be found, but in taking up, in all lowliness and meekness,
the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ.
"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and hoi)
place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of
the contrite ones."
The Humane ^uuty. 813
XXVI.
THE HUMANE SOCIETY.
A SERMON PREACHED ON ITS BEHALF.
"While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house
certain which said, Thy daughter is dead ; why troubles! them the Master
any further? As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith
unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And he suffered
no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James.
And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the
tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. And when he was come in,
he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not
dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put
them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that
were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. And he took
the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi ; which is, being
interpreted, Damsel, (I say unto thee,) arise. And straightway the damsel
arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were
astonished with a great astonishnient. . And IIP charged them straitly that
no man should know it ; and commanded thr.t something should be given her
to eat." Mark v. 35-43.
I PLEAD to-day for a society whose cause has not been ad-
vocated in this chapel for many years. It is now exactly ten
years since a collection was made in Trinity Chapel for the
Humane Society.
Its general objects, as every body knows, are the preser-
vation of the life of drowning persons, by precautions pre-
viously taken, and by subsequent remedies. But this vague
statement being insufficient to awaken the interest which the
society deserves, I propose to consider it in its details, and
to view these as in the pulpit we are bound to do from
the peculiar Christian point of view.
It is remarkable that there is a Scripture passage which,
point by point, offers a parallel to the work of this Society,
and a special sanction and a precedent, both for its peculiar
work and the spirit in which it is to be done. I shall con-
sider
I. This particular form of the Redeemer's work.
II. The spirit of the Redeemer's work.
I. We find among the many forms of His work
1. Restoration from a special form of death. I can not
class this case with that of Lazarus.
8 14 The Humane Society.
The narrative seems to distinguish this from the other mir-
acle. Christ says, " She is not dead, but sleepeth." Hence
this particular case was one of restoration from apparent
death. The other case was that of restoration from real
death.
Here, then, is our first point of resemblance.
Before this society was formed, persons apparently suffo-
cated were left to perish. Myriads, doubtless, have died who
might have been saved. But the idea of restoration was as
far from them as from the friends of Jairus. They would
have laughed the proposer " to scorn." But, Christlike, this
society came into the world with a strange message re-
vealed by science, but vitalized by love a Christlike mes-
sage : " Be not afraid : he is not dead, but sleepeth."
Now the sphere of the society's operations is thus defined :
" To preserve from premature death persons apparently
dead from either drowning, hanging, lightning, cold, heat,
noxious vapors, apoplexy, or intoxication." They are, con-
sequently, large, taking cognizance not merely of cases of
drowning only, but all of the same generic character sus-
pended animation, apparent deatji, asphyxia.
[Causes foul air, in drains and brewers' vats, accidental
hanging, mines, cellars, wells.]
In England their causes are more peculiarly extensive, be-
cause of our sea-girt shores, and because of the variable
climate, which to-day leaves the ice firm and to-morrow has
made it rotten and unsafe.
2. Here was the recognition of the value of life. The force
of the whole petition lay in one single consideration " she
shall live."
It has been often said that Christianity has enhanced the
value of life, and our charitable societies are alleged in evi-
dence ; our hospitals ; the increased average of human life,
which has been the result of sanitary regulations and im-
provements in medical treatment. But this statement needs
some qualification.
The value attached to life by the ancient Egyptian was
quite as great as that attributed to it by the modern English-
man. When Abraham went into Egypt he found a people
whose feeling of the sacredness of life was so great that they
saw God wherever life was ; and venerated the bull, and the
fish, and the crocodile. To slay one of them was like mur-
der.
And again : it could not be said that we owe to Christian-
ity the recognition of the honor due to one who saves life.
The Humane Society. 8 1 5
The most honorable of crowns was that presented to one who
had saved the life of a Roman citizen.
Nay more: instead of peculiarly exalting the value of life,
there is a sense in which Christianity depreciates it. " If a
man hate not his own life he can not be my disciple.'' The
Son of Man came to be a sacrifice : and it is the peculiar dig-
nity of the Christian that he has a life to (jive.
Therefore we must distinguish.
It is not mere life on which Christianity has shed a richer
value. It is by ennobling the purpose to which life is to be
dedicated that it has made life more precious. A crowded
metropolis, looked at merely as a mass of living beings, is no
more dignified, and far more disgusting, than an ant-hill with
its innumerable creeping lives. Looked on as a place in
which each individual is a temple of the Holy Ghost, and
every pang and joy of whom has in it something of infinitude,
it becomes almost priceless in its value.
And again : Christianity differs from heathenism in this,
that it has declared the dignity of the life of man not mere-
ly that of certain classes. It has not " saved citizens," but
saved 'men.
[Consider the worth of a single soul.]
Hence this is appropriately called the Humane Society,
that word originally "meaning human. It is no Brahminical
association, abstaining from shedding animal blood and living
on no animal food, but it recognizes the worth of a life in
which God moves, and which Christ has redeemed.
It is human life, not animal, that it cares for. The life of
man as man, not of some peculiar class of men.
3. We consider the Saviour's direction respecting the
means of effecting complete recovery. He " commanded that
something should be given her to eat."
Observe His reverential submission to the laws of nature.
He did not suspend those laws. It did not seem to Him that
where law was, God was not ; or that the proof of God's
agency was to be found only in the abrogation of law. He
recognized the sanctity of those laws which make certain
remedies and certain treatment indispensable to health.
[Sanitary regulations are as religious as a miracle.]
And in doing this He furnished a precedent singularly close
for the operations of this society. It is one great part of the
object of its existence to spread a knowledge of the right
methods of treatment in case of suspended animation. It
has compiled and published rules for the treatment of the
816 The Humane Society.
drowned, the apparently suffocated, and those struck by sud
den apoplexy.
And consider the indirect results of this, as well as the
direct.
Such cases occur unexpectedly. No medical aid is near.
Friends are alarmed. Presence of mind is lost. The vulgar
means resorted to from superstition and ignorance are almost
incredible. But gradually the knowledge is spread through
the country of what to do in cases of emergency. Many
here would be prepared to act if a need arose. I have been
present at such a case, and have seen life saved by arresting
the rough treatment of ignorance acting traditionally. But
in that and most cases, the knowledge had been gained from
the publications of this society.
An immense step is gained by the systematic direction of
attention to these matters. Every one ought to know what
to do on a sudden emergency, a case of strangulation, of suf-
focation, or of apoplexy ; and yet, this forming no definite
part of the general plan of education, there are comparative-
ly few who have the least idea what should be done before
medical aid can be obtained. Probably thousands would be
helpless as a child, and human life would be sacrificed.
IL We consider the spirit of the Redeemer's work.
1. It was love.
It was not reward not even the reward of applause
which was the spring of beneficence in the Son of Man. He
desired that it should be unknown. He did good because it
was good. He relieved because it was the expressu n of His
own exuberant loving-kindness.
2. It was a spirit of retiring modesty.
He did not wish that it should be known. But his disciples
have made it known to the world.
Now observe, first, the evidence here afforded of His real
humanity. Why did Christ wish to conceal, and the apostles
wish to publish abroad his miracles ? Take the simple view,
and all is plain. Christ, the man, with unaffected modesty,
shrank from publicity and applause. The apostles, with
genuine human admiration, record the deed. But seek for
some deeper and more mysterious reason, and at once the
whole becomes a pantomime, an unreal transaction acted on
this world's stage for effect, as though we should say that He
was wishing to have it known, but for certain reasons He
made as if He wished it to be concealed. Here, as usual, the
simple is the sublime and true.
Observe, however, secondly : That publication by the apos-
The Humane Society. 817
ties sanctions and explains another part of this society's
operations. Its office is to observe, to record, and to reward
acts of self-devotion. Certain scales of reward are given to
one who risks his life to save life, to the surgeon whose skill
restores life, to the publican who opens his house to receive
the apparently dead body. And every year lists of names
are published of those who have been thus distinguished by
their humanity. The eyes of the society are over all Eng-
land, and no heroic act can pass unnoticed or unhonored by
them.
Now distinctly understand on what principle this is done.
It is an apostolic office. It is precisely the principle on which
the apostles were appointed by God to record the acts and
life of Christ. Was this for Christ's sake? Nay, it was for
the world's good. That sacrifice of Christ recorded, pro-
nounced Divine, has been the spring and life of innumerable
sacrifices and unknown self-devotion.
And so the rewards given by this society are not given as
recompense. Think you that a medal can pay self-devo-
tion ? or a few pounds liquidate the debt due to generosity ?
or even, that the thought of the reward would lead a man to
plunge into the water to save life, who would not have
plunged in without any hope of reward ? No ! But it is
good for the world to hear of what is generous and good.
It is good to appropriate rewards to such acts, in order to
set the standard. It is right that, in a country where enor-
mous subscriptions are collected, and monuments are erected
to men who have made fortunes by speculation, there should
be some visible, tangible recognition of the worth and value
of more generous deeds.
The medal over the fire-place of the poor fisherman is to
him a title / and, truer than most titles, it tells what has been
clone. It descends an heirloom to the family, saying to the
children, Be brave, self-sacrificing, as your father was.
3. It was a spirit of perseverance.
They laughed Him to scorn, yet He persisted. Slow, calm
perseverance amidst ridicule.
In the progress of this society we find, again, a parallel.
When the idea of resuscitation was first promulgated, it was
met with incredulity and ridicule. Even in 1773, when Dr.
Hawes laid the first foundation of the Humane Society, it
was with difficulty he could overcome the prejudice which
existed against the idea, and he had to bear the whole cost
of demonstrating the practicability of his theory. For one
whole year he paid all the rewards and expenses himself, and
then, attracted by the self-sacrificing ardor with which he
35
818 Three Times in a Nations History.
had given himself up to the idea of rescuing human life,
thirty -two gentlemen, his own and Dr. Cogan's friends,
united together in furtherance of this benevolent design, and
thus laid the foundation of the Humane Society.
Here note the attractive power of self-denying work; the
Redeemer's life and death has been the living power of the
world's work, of the world's life.
XXVII.
THREE TIMES IN A NATION'S HISTORY.
" Ant 1 >vhen he v, r as come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, say-
ing, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which
belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days
shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and
compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even
with the ground, and thy children within thee ; and they shall not leave in
thee one stone upon another because thou knewest not the time of thy vis-
itation." Luke xix. 41-44.
THE event of which we have just read took place in the
last year of our Redeemer's life. For nearly four years He
had been preaching the Gospel. His pilgrim life was draw-
ing to a close ; yet no one looking at the outward circum-
stances of that journey would have imagined that He was
on His way to die. It was far more like a triumphal journey,
for a rejoicing multitude heralded His way to Jerusalem with
shouts " Hosanna to the Son of David !" He trod, too, a
road green with palm branches, and strewn with their gar-
ments ; and yet in the midst of all this joy, as if rejoicing
were not for Him, the Man of Sorrows paused to weep.
There is something significant and characteristic in that
peculiar tone of melancholy which pervaded the Redeemer's
intercourse with man. We read of but one occasion on
which He rejoiced,- and then only in spirit. He did not
shrink from occasions of human joy, for He attended the
marriage-feast; yet even there the solemn remark, appa-
rently out of place, was heard " Mine hour is not yet come."
There was in Him that peculiarity which we find more or
less in all the purest, most thoughtful minds a shade of
melancholy ; much of sadness ; though none of austerity.
For, after all, when we come to look at this life of ours, what-
ever may be its outward appearance, in the depths of it there
is great seriousness; the externalities of it may seem to be
Three Times in a Nations History. 819
joy and brightness, but in the deep beneath there is a strange,
stern aspect. It may be that the human race is on its way
to good, but the victory hitherto gained is so small that we
can scarcely rejoice over it. It may be that human nature
is progressing, but that progress has been but slowly mak-
ing, through years and centuries of blood. And therefore
contemplating all this, and penetrating beyond the time of
the present joy, the Redeemer wept, not for Himself, but for
that devoted city.
He was then on the Mount of Olives ; beneath Him there
lay the metropolis of Judea, with the Temple in full sight ;
the towers and the walls of Jerusalem flashing back the
brightness of an Oriental sky. The Redeemer knew that she
was doomed, and therefore with tears He pronounced her
corning fate : " The days shall come that thine enemies shall
cast a trench about thee, and shall not leave in thee one
stone upon another." These words, which rang the funeral
knell of Jerusalem, tell out in our ears this day a solemn les-
son ; they tell us that in the history of nations, and also, it
may be, in the personal history of individuals, there are three
times a time of grace, a time of blindness, and a time of
judgment.
This then, is our subject the three times in a nation's
history. When the Redeemer spake, it was for Jerusalem
the time of blindness ; the time of grace was past ; that of
judgment was to come.
We Uke these three in order: first, the time of grace.
We find it expressed here in three different modes: first,
" in this thy day ;" then, " the things which belong to thy
peace ;" and thirdly, " the time of thy visitation." 1 -" And from
this we understand the meaning of a time of grace ; it was
Jerusalem's time of opportunity. The time in which the Re-
deemer appeared was that in which faith was almost worn
out. He found men with their faces turned backward to the
past, instead of forward to the future. They were as chil-
dren clinging to the garments of a relation they have lost ;
life there was not, faith there was not only the garments
of a past belief. He found them groaning under the domin-
ion of Rome ; rising up against it, and thinking it their
worst evil.
The coldest hour of all the night is that which immediately
precedes the dawn, and in that darkest hour of Jerusalem's
night her light beamed forth ; her wisest and greatest came
in the midst of her, almost unknown, born under the law, to
emancipate those who were groaning under the law. His life,
the day of His preaching, was Jerusalem's time of grace.
820 Three Times in a Nation s History.
During that time the Redeemer spake the tilings which be
longed to her peace : those things were few and simple. He
found her people mourning under political degradation. He
told them that political degradation does not degrade the
man ; the only thing that can degrade a man is slavery to
sin. He told men who were looking merely to the past, no
longer to look thither and say that Abraham was their father,
for that God could raise up out of those stones children to
.Abraham, and a greater than Abraham was there. He told
them also not to look for some future deliverer, for deliver-
ance was already come. They asked Him when the king-
dom of God should come ; He told them they were not to
cry, Lo here ! or,lo there I for the kingdom of God was with-
in ; that they were to begin the kingdom of God now, by
each man becoming individually more holy, that if each man
so reformed his own soul,, the reformation of the kingdom
would soon spread around them. They came to Him com-
plaining of the Roman tribute ; He asked for a piece of
money, and said, " Render unto Caesar the things that be
Caesar's, ami to God the things that be God's;" plainly tell-
ing them that the bondage from which men were to be de-
livered was not an earthly, bat a spiritual bondage. He
drew the distinction sharply between happiness and blessed-
ness the two things are opposite, although not necessarily
contrary. He told them, "" Blessed are the meek 1 Blessed
are the poor in spirit !'* The mourning man, and the poor
man, and the persecuted man these were not happy, if hap^
piness consists in the gratification of all our desires; but they
were blessed beyond all earthly blessedness, for happiness is
but the contentment of desire, while blessedness is the satis-
faction of those aspirations which have God alone for their
>nd and aim.
All these things were rejected by the nation. They were
rejected first by the priests. They knew not that the mind
of the age in which they lived was in advance of the tra-
ditional Judaism, and, therefore, they looked upon the Re
deemer as an irreverent, ungodly man, a sabbath-breaker.
He was rejected by the rulers, who did not understand that
in righteousness alone are governments to subsist, and, there
fore, when He demanded of them justice, mercy, truth, they
looked repon Him as a revofutionizer. He was rejected like-
wise by the people that people ever ready to listen to any
demagogue promising them earthly grandeur. They who on
this occasion called out, "Hosanna to the Son of David," and
were content to do so, so long as they believed He intended
to lead them to personal comfort and enjoyment, afterwards
Three Times in a Nations History. 821
cried out, " Crucify Him ! crucify Him !" " His blood be on
us, and on our children ;" so that His rejection was the act
of the whole nation. Now, respecting this day of grace we
have two remarks to make.
First : in this advent of the Redeemer there was nothing
outwardly remarkable to the men of that day. It was al-
most nothing. Of all the historians of that period, few in-
deed are found to mention it. This is a thing which we at
this day can scarcely understand ; for to us the blessed advent
of our Lord is the brightest page in the world's history : but
to them it was far otherwise. Remember, for one moment,
what the advent of our Lord was to all outward appearance.
He seemed, let it be said reverently, to the rulers of those
days, a fanatical freethinker. They heard of His miracles,
but they appeared nothing remarkable to them ; there was
nothing there on which to fasten their attention. They heard
that some of the populace had been led away, and now and
then, it may be, some of His words reached their ears, but to
them they were hard to be understood full of mystery, or
else they roused every evil passion in their hearts, so stern
and uncompromising was the morality they taught. They
put aside these words in that brief period, and the day of
grace passed.
And just such as this is God's visitation to us. Generally,
the day of God's visitation is not a day very remarkable out-
wardly. Bereavements, sorrows no doubt, in these God
speaks ; but there are other occasions far more quiet and un-
obtrusive, but which are yet plainly days of grace. A scruple
which others do not see, a doubt coming into the mind re-
specting some views held sacred by the popular creed, a sense
of heart-loneliness and solitariness, a feeling of awful misgiving
when the future lies open before us, the dread feeling of an
eternal godlessness, for men who are living godless lives now
these silent moments unmarked, these are the moments in
which the Eternal is speaking to our souls.
Once more : that day of Jerusalem's visitation her day
of grace was short. It was narrowed up into the short
space of three years and a half. After that, God still plead-
ed with individuals ; but the national cause, as a cause, wa?
gone. Jerusalem's doom was sealed when He pronounced
those words. Again, there is a lesson, a principle for us : God'?
day of visitation is frequently short. A few actions often
decide the destiny of individuals, because they give a desti-
nation and form to habits ; they settle the tone and form of
the mind from which there will be in this life no alteration.
So it is in the earliest history of our species. In those rnys-
822 Three Times in a Nations History.
terious chapters at the commencement of the book of Gene-
sis, we are told that it was one act which sealed the destiny
of Adam and of all the human race. What was it but a very
few actions, done in a very short time, that settled the destiny
of those nations through which the children of Israel passed
on their way to Canaan ? The question for them was simply,
whether they would show Israel mercy or not ; this was all.
Once more : we see it again in the case of Saul. One cir-
cumstance, at the most, two, marked out his destiny. Then
came those solemn words, " The strength of Israel can not lie
nor repent. The Lord hath rent the kingdom from thee this
day." From that hour his course was downward, his day
of grace was past.
Brethren, the truth is plain. The day of visitation is aw-
fully short. We say not that God never pleads a long time,
but we say this, that sometimes God speaks to a nation or to
a man but once. If not heard then, His voice is heard no
more.
We pass on now to consider Israel's day of blindness. Ju-
dicial blindness is of a twofold character. It may be pro-
duced by removing the light, or by incapacitating the eye to
receive that light. Sometimes men do not see because there
is no light for them to see ; and this was what was done to
Israel the Saviour was taken away from her. The voice of
the apostles declared this truth : " It was necessary that the
word should first have been spoken to you ; but seeing ye
put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlast-
ing life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles."
There is a way of blindness by hardening the 'heart. Let
us not conceal this truth from ourselves. God blinds the eye,
but it is in the appointed course of His providential dealings.
If a man will not see, the law is he shall not see ; if he will
not do what is right when he knows the right, then right
shall become to him wrong, and wrong shall seem to be right.
We read that God hardened Pharaoh's heart ; that He blind-
ed Israel. It is impossible to look at these cases of blindness
without perceiving in them something of Divine action.
Even at the moment when the Romans were at their gates,
Jerusalem still dreamed of security; and when the battering*
ram was at the tower of Antonia, the priests were celebrating,
in fancied safety, their daily sacrifices. From the moment
when our Master spake, there was deep stillness over her
until her destruction ; like the strange and unnatural stillness
before the thunder-storm, when every breath seems hushed,
and every leaf may be almost heard moving in the motion-
less air ; and all this calm and stillness is but the prelude lo
Three Times in a Nations History. 823
the moment when the east and west are lighted up with the
red flashes, and the whole creation seems to reel. Such was
the blindness of that nation which would not know the day
of her visitation.
We pass on now to consider, lastly, her day of judgment.
Her beautiful morning was clouded, her sun had gone down
in gloom, and she was left in darkness. The account of the
siege is one of the darkest passages in Roman history. In
the providence of God, the history of that belongs, not to a
Christian, but to a Jew. We all know the account that he
has given us of the eleven hundred thousand who perished
in that siege, of the thousands crucified along the sea-shore.
We have all heard of the two factions that divided the city,
of the intense hatred that made the cruelty of Jew towards
Jew more terrible than even the vengeance of the Romans.
This was the destruction of Jerusalem the day of her ruin.
And now, brethren, let us observe, this judgment came in
the way of natural consequences. We make a great mistake
respecting judgments. God's judgments are not arbitrary,
but the results of natural laws. The historians tell us that
Jerusalem owed her ruin to the fanaticism and obstinate
blindness of her citizens ; from all of which her Redeemer
came to emancipate her. Had they understood, " Blessed
are the poor in spirit," " Blessed are the meek," and " Blessed
are the peacemakers ;" had they understood that, Jerusalem's
day of ruin might never have come.
Now let us apply this to the day we are at present cele-
brating. We all know that this destruction of Jerusalem is
connected with the second coming of Christ. In St. Matthew
the two advents are so blended together that it is hard to
separate one from the other ; nay, rather, it is impossible, be-
cause we have our Master's words, " Verily, I say unto you,
this generation shall not pass till all be fulfilled." Therefore
this prophecy, in all its fullness, came to pass in the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem. But it is impossible to look at it without
perceiving there is also something farther included ; we shall
understand it by turning to the elucidation given by our
Lord Himself. When the apostles asked, Where shall all
these things be ? Hi* reply was, in effect, this : Ask you
where ? T tell you, nowhere in particular, or rather, every-
where ; for wheresoever there is corruption, there will be
destruction " where the carcass is, thither will the eagles be
gathered together." So that this first coming of the Son of
Man to judgment was the type, the specimen of what shall
be hereafter.
And now, brethren, let us apply this subject still more
824 Three Times in a Nation s History.
home. Is 'there no such thing as blindness among our-
selves? May not this be our day of visitation ? First, there
is among us priestly blindness ; the blindness of men who
know not that the demands of this age are in advance of
those that have gone before. There is no blindness greater
than that of those who think that the panacea for the evils
of a country is to be found in ecclesiastical union. But let
us not be mistaken : it is not here, we think, that the great
danger lies. We dread not Rome. Xo man can understand
the signs of the times, w r ho does not feel that the day of
Rome is passing away, as that of Jerusalem once did. But
the danger lies in this consideration we find that w r here the
doctrines of Rome have been at all successful, it has been
among the clergy and upper classes ; while, when presented
to the middle and lower classes, they have been at once re-
jected. There is, then, apparently, a gulf between the two.
If there be added to the difference of position a still further
and deeper difference of religion, then who shall dare to say
what the end shall be ?
Once more : we look at the blindness of men talking of
intellectual enlightenment. It is true that we have more
enlightened civilization and comfort. What then ? will that
retard our day of judgment? Jerusalem was becoming
more enlightened, and Rome w r as at its most civilized point,
when the destroyer was at their gates.
Therefore, let us know the day of our visitation. It is not
the day of refinement, nor of political liberty, nor of advan-
cing intellect. We must go again in the old, old way ; we
must return to simpler manners and to a purer life. We
want more faith, more love. The life of Christ and the
death of Christ must be made the law of our life. Reject
that, and we reject our own salvation ; and, in rejecting that,
we bring on in rapid steps, for the nation and for ourselves,
th day of judgment and of ruin.
Inspiration. 825
XXVIII.
INSPIRATION.
"We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and!
not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good
to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written,
The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. For whatsoever
things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through
patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Rom. xv. 1-4.
WE will endeavor, brethren, to search the connection be-
tween the different parts of these verses.
First, the apostle lays down a Christian's duty "Let
every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edifica-
tion." After that he brings forward as the sanction of that
duty, the spirit of the life of Christ "For even Christ
. pleased not Himself." Next, he adds an illustration of that
principle by a quotation from Psalm. Ixix : "It is written,
The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me."
Lastly, he explains and defends that application of the
psalm, as if he had said, u I am perfectly justified in apply-
ing that passage to Christ, for ' whatsoever things were
written aforetime were written for our learning.' "
So that in this quotation, and the defense of it as con-
tained in these verses, we have the principle of apostolical
interpretation ; we have the principle upon which the apos-
tles used the Old Testament Scriptures, and we are enabled
to understand their view of inspiration. -This is one of the
most important considerations upon which we can be at this
moment engaged. It is the deepest question of our day :
the one which lies beneath all others, and in comparison of
which the questions just now agitating the popular mind
whether of Papal jurisdiction or varieties of Church doc-
trine in our own communion are but superficial : it is this
ffgrand question of inspiration which is given to this age to
solve.
Our subject will break itself up into questions such as
these : What the Bible is, and what the Bible is not ?
What is meant by inspiration ? Whether inspiration is the
same thing as infallibility? When God inspired the minds,
did He dictate the words ? Does the inspiration of men
mean the infallibility of their words ? Is inspiration the
Bame as dictation ? Whether, granting that we have the
.35*
826 Inspiration.
Word of God, we have also the words of God ? Are the op-
erations of the Holy Spirit, inspiring men, compatible with
partial error, as His operations in sanctifying them are com-
patible with partial evil ? How are we to interpret and ap-
ply the Scriptures ? Is Scripture, as the Komanists say, so
unintelligible and obsciire that we can not understand it
without having the guidance of an infallible Church ? Or is
jit, as some fanciful Protestants will tell us, a book upon
^which all ingenuity may be used to find Christ in every sen-
tence ? Upon these things there are many views, some of
them false, some superstitious ; but it is not our business
now to deal with these ; our way is rather to teach positive-
ly than negatively : we will try to set up the truth, and
error may fall before it.
The collect for this day leads us to the special considera-,
tion of Holy Scripture ; We shall therefore take this for our
subject, and endeavor to understand what was the apostoli-
cal principle of interpretation.
In the text we find two principles : first, that Scripture is
of universal application ;
And second, that aH the lines of Scripture converge to-
wards Jesus Christ.
First, then, there is here a universal application of Scrip-
ture. This passage quoted by the apostle is from the sixty-
ninth Psalm. That was evidently spoken by David of him-
self. From first to last, no unprejudiced mind can detect a
conception in the writer's mind of an application to Christ,
or to any other person after him ; the psalmist is there full
of himself and his own sorrows. It is a natural and touching
exposition of human grief and a good man's trust. Never-
theless, you will observe that St. Paul extends the use of
these words, and applies them to Jesus Christ. Nay, more
than that, he uses them as belonging to all Christians ; for,
he says, " Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were
written for our learning." Now this principle will be more
evident if we state it in the words of Scripture, " Knowing
that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpreta-
tion:" those holy men spake not their own limited individual
feelings, but as feeling that they w r ere inspired by the Spirit
of God. Their words belonged* to the whole of our common
humanity. No prophecy of the Scriptures is of any private
interpretation. Bear in mind that the word prophecy does
not mean what we now understand by it merely prediction
of future events in the Scriptures it signifies inspired teach-
ing. The teaching of the prophets was by no means always
prediction. Bearing this in mind, let us remember that the
Inspiration. 8? 7
ftpostle says it is of no private interpretation. Had the Psalm
applied only to David, then it would have been of private
interpretation it would have been special, limited, particu-
lar ; it would have belonged to an individual ; instead of
which, it belongs to humanity. Take again the subject of
which we spoke last Sunday the prophecy of the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem. Manifestly that was spoken originally at
Jerusalem ; in a manner it seemed limited to Jerusalem, for
its very name was mentioned ; and besides, as we read this
morning, our Saviour says, " This generation shall not pass
until all be fulfilled."
But had the prophecy ended there, then you would still
have had prophecy, but it would have been of private that
is, peculiar, limited interpretation ; whereas our Redeemer's
principle was this : that this doom pronounced on Jerusalem
was universally applicable, that it was but a style and speci-
men of God's judgments. The judgment-coming of the Son
of Man takes place wherever there is evil grown ripe, when-
ever corruption is complete. And the gathering of the
Roman eagles is but a specimen of the way in which
judgment at last overtakes every city, every country and
every man in whom evil has reached the point where there
is no possibility of cure.
So that the prophecy belongs to all ages, from the de-
struction of Jerusalem to the end of the world. The words
of St. Matthew are universally applicable. For Scripture
deals with principles ; not with individuals, but rather with
states of humanity. Promises and threatenings are made
to individuals, because they are in a particular state of
character ; but they belong to all who are in that state, for
" God is no respecter of persons."
First, we will take an instance of the state of blessing.
There was blessing pronounced to Abraham, in which it
will be seen how large a grasp on humanity this view of
Scripture gave to St. Paul. The whole argument in the
Epistle to the Romans is, that the promises made to Abra-
ham were not to his person, but to his faith ; and thus the
apostle says, "They who are of faith, are blessed with faith-
c -.il Abraham."
We will now take the case of curse or threatening. Jonah,
by Divine command, went through Nineveh, proclaiming its
destruction ; but that prophecy belonged to the state in
which Nineveh was ; it was true only while it remained in
that state ; arid therefore, as they repented, and their state
was thus changed, the prophecy was left unfulfilled. From
this we perceive the largeness and grandeur of Scripture in*
828 Inspiration.
terpretation. In the Epistle to the Corinthians, we find the
apostle telling of the state of the Jews in their passage to-
wards the promised land, their state of idolatry and glut-
tony, and then he proceeds to pronounce the judgments
that fell upon them, adding that he tells us this not merely
as a matter of history, but rather as an illustration of a prin-
ciple. They are specimens of eternal, unalterable law. So
that whosoever shall be in the state of these Jews, whosoever
shall imitate them, the same judgments must fall upon them,
the same satiety and weariness, the same creeping of the
inward serpent polluting all their feelings ; and therefore he
says, "All these things happened unto them for ensamples."
Again, he uses the same principle, not as a private, but a
general application ; for he says, " There hath no temptation
taken you but such as is common to man."
We will take now another case, applied not to nations,
but to individuals. In Hebrews xiii. we find these words
from the Old Testament, " I will never leave thee nor for-
sake thee ;" and there the apostle's inference is that we may
boldly say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what
men shall do unto me." Now, when we refer to Scripture,
we shall find that this was a promise originally made to
Jacob. The apostle does not hesitate to take that promise
and appropriate it to all Christians ; for it was made, not to
Jacob as a person, but to the state in which Jacob was ; it
was made to all who, like Jacob, are wanderers and pilgrims
in the world ; it was made to all whom sin has rendered out-
casts and who are longing to return. The promises made to
the meek belong to meekness ; the promises made to the
humble belong to humility.
And this it is which makes this Bible, not only a blessed
book, but our book. It is this universal applicability of
Scripture which has made the influence of the Bible uni-
versal : this book has held spell-bound the hearts of nations,
in a way in which no single book has ever held men before.
Remember, too, in order to enhance the marvellousness of
this, that the nation from which it emanated was a despised
people. For the last eighteen hundred years the Jews have
been proverbially a by-word and a reproach. But that con-
tempt for Israel is nothing new to the world, for before even
the Roman despised them, the Assyrian and Egyptian re-
garded them with scorn. Yet the words which came from
Israel's prophets have been the life-blood of the world's de-
votions. And the teachers, the psalmists, the prophets, and
the lawgivers of this despised nation spoke out truths that
have struck the key-note of the heart of man ; and this, not
Inspiration. 829
because they were of Jewish, but just because they were of
universal application.
This collection of books has been to the world what no
other book has ever been to a nation. States have been
founded on its principles. Kings rule by a compact based on
it. Men hold the Bible in their hands when they prepare to
give solemn evidence affecting life, death, or property ; the
sick man is almost afraid to die unless the book be within
reach of his hands ; the battle-ship goes into action with
one on board whose office is to expound it ; its prayers,
its psalms are the language which we use when we speak to
God ; eighteen centuries have found no holier, no diviner
language. If ever there has been a prayer or a hymn
enshrined in the heart of a nation, you are sure to find its
basis in the Bible. There is no new religious idea given
to the world, but it is merely the development of something
given in the Bible. The very translation of it has fixed
language and settled the idioms of speech. Germany and
England speak as they speak because the Bible was trans-
lated. It has made the most illiterate peasant more familiar
with the history, customs, and geography of ancient Palestine
than with the localities of his own country. Men who know
nothing of the Grampians, of Sriowden, or of Skiddaw, are
at home in Zion, the Lake of Gennesareth, or among the rills
of Carmel. People who know little about London, know
by heart the places in Jerusalem where those blessed feet
trod which were nailed to the cross. Men who know noth-
ing of the architecture of a Christian cathedral, can yet tell
you all about the pattern of the holy temple. Even this
shows us the influence of the Bible. The orator holds a
thousand men for half an hour breathless a thousand men
as one, listening to his single word. But this Word of God
has held a thousand nations for thrice a thousand years spell-
bound ; held them by an abiding power, even the universal!
ty of its truth ; and we feel it to be no more a collection of
books, but the book.
We pass on now to consider the second principle contained
in these words, which is, that all Scripture bears towards
Jesus Christ. St. Paul quotes these Jewish words as fulfilled
in Christ. Jesus of Nazareth is the central point in which
all the converging lines of Scripture meet. Again we state
this principle in Scripture language : in the book ot Revela-
tjon we find it written, " The testimony of Jesus is the spirit
of prophecy," that is, the sum and substance of prophecy,
the very spirit of Scripture is to bear testimony to Jesus
Christ. We must often have been surprised and perplexed
830 Inspiration.
at the way in which the apostles quote passages in reference
to Christ which originally had no reference to Him. In our
text, for instance, David speaks only of himself, and yet
St. Paul refers it to Christ. Let us understand this. We
have already said that Scripture deals not with individuals,
but with states and principles. Promises belong to persons
only so far as they are what they are taken to be ; and con-
sequently all unlimited promises made to individuals, so far
as they are referred merely to those individuals, are necessa-
rily exaggerated and hyperbolical. They can only be true
of One in w^hom that is fulfilled which was unfulfilled in
them.
We will take an instance. We are all familiar with the
well-known prophecy of Balaam. We all remember the
magnificent destinies he promised to the people whom he
was called to curse. Those promises have never been fulfill-
ed, neither from the whole appearance of things does it seem
likely that they ever will be fulfilled in their literal sense.
To whom, then, are they made ? To Israel ? Yes ; so far as
they developed God's own conception. Balaam says, "God
hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen per
verseness in Israel." Is this the character of Israel, an idol-
atrous and rebellious nation ? Spoken of the literal Israel,
this prophecy is false ; but it was not false of that spotless-
ness and purity of which Israel was the temporal and imper-
fect type. If one can be found of whom that description is
true, of whom we can say, the Lord hath not beheld iniquity
in him, to him then that prophecy belongs.
Brethren, Jesus of Nazareth is that pure and spotless One.
Christ is perfectly, all that every saint was partially. To
Him belongs all : all that description of a perfect character
which would be exaggeration if spoken of others, and to this
character the blessing belongs ; hence it is that all the frag-
mentary representations of character collect and centre in
Him alone. Therefore, tho apostle says, "It was added until
the seed should come to whom the promise was made."
Consequently St. Paul would not read the Psalm as spoken
only of David. Were the lofty aspirations, the purity and
humbleness expressed in the text, true of him, poor, sinful, err-
ing David? These were the expressions of the Christ within
his heart the longing of the Spirit of God within Him ; but
they were no proper representation of the spirit of his life,
for there is a marvellous difference between a man's ideal
and his actual between the man and the book he writes a
difference between the aspirations within the man and the
character which is realized by his daily life. The promises
Inspiration. 831
are to the Christ within David ; therefore they are applied to
the Christ when He comes. Now, let us extract from that
this application.
Brethren, Scripture is full of Christ. From Genesis to
Revelation every thing breathes of Him, not every letter of
every sentence, but the spirit of every chapter. It is full of
Christ, but not in the way that some suppose ; for there is
nothing more miserable, as specimens of perverted ingenuity,
than the attempts of certain commentators and preachers to
find remote, and recondite, and intended allusions to Christ
everywhere. For example, they chance to find in the con-
struction of the temple the fusion of two metals, and this
they conceive is meant to show the union of Divinity with
Humanity in Christ. If they read of coverings to the* taber-
nacle, they find implied the doctrine of imputed righteous-
ness. If it chance that one of the curtains of the tabernacle
be red, they see in that the prophecy of the blood of Christ.
If they are told that the kingdom of heaven is a pearl of great
price, they will see it in the allusion that, as a pearl is the
production of animal suffering, so the kingdom of heaven is
produced by the sufferings of the Redeemer. I mention this
perverted mode of comment, because it is not merely harm-
less, idle, and useless ; it is positively dangerous. This is to
make the Holy Spirit speak riddles and conundrums, and the
interpretation of Scripture but clever riddle-guessing. Put-
ting aside all this childishness, we say that the Bible is full
of Christ. Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the
past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sac-
rifices, nay even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of
what we want, the answer to every longing the type of
perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Get the habit a glorious one of referring all to Christ.
How did He feel ? think ? act ? So then must I feel, and
think, and act. Observe how Christ was a living reality in
St. Paul's mind. "Should I please myself?" "For even
Christ pleased not Himself;" "It is more blessed to give
than to receive."
832 The Last Utterances of Christ*
XXIX.
THE LAST UTTERANCES OF CHRIST.
"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finishscU
ind he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." John xix. 30.
THERE are seven dying sentences of our Lord's recorded
\\\ the Gospels; one recorded conjointly by St. Matthew and
St. Mark, three recorded by St. Luke, and three by St. John.
That recorded by the first two evangelists is, "My God, my
God, why hast thoa forsaken me ?" Those preserved by St.
Luke only are, " Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be
with me in paradise;" " Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do ;" and, " Father, into Thy hands I com-
mend my Spirit." The three recorded by St. John are these :
" I thirst ;" " Behold thy mother ; behold thy son ;" and
lastly, " It is finished." And these seven group themselves
into two divisions: we perceive that some of them are the
utterances of personal feeling, and others are the utterances
of sympathy for others.
These are,
therefore, the two divisions of our subject to
day
I. The natural exclamations of the Man.
II. The-utterances of the Saviour.
The first of those which we class under the exclamations
of the Man, referring to His personal feelings, is," I thirst;"
in answer to which they gave Him vinegar to drink. Now
upon first reading this, we are often tempted to suppose, from
the unnatural character of the draught, that an insult was
intended; and therefore we rank this among the taunts and
fearful sufferings which He endured at His crucifixion. But
as we become acquainted w T ith Oriental history, we discover
:hat this vinegar was the common drink of the Roman arm; .
their wine, and therefore was the most likely to be at hanu
when in the company of soldiers, as He then was. Let it be
borne in mind that a draught was twice offered to him: once
it was accepted, once it was refused. That which was re-
fused was the medicated potion wine mingled with myrrh
the intention of which was to deaden pain, and therefore
when it was presented to the Saviour it was rejected. And
the reason commonly assigned for that seems to be the true
The Last Utterances of Christ. 833
one : the Son of Man would not meet death in a state of stu-
pefaction, He chose to meet His God awake.
There are two modes in which pain may be struggled with
through the flesh, and through the spirit; the one is the
office of the physician, the other that of the Christian. The
physician's care is at once to deaden pain either by insensi-
bility or specifics; the Christian's object is to deaden pain
by patience. We dispute not the value of the physician's
remedies, in their way they are permissible and valuable ; but
yet let it be observed that in these there is nothing moral ;
they may take away the venom of the serpent's sting, but
they do not give the courage to plant the foot upon the ser-
pent's head, and to bear the pain without flinching. There-
fore the Redeemer refused, because it was not through the
flesh, but through the Spirit, that He would conquer ; to
have accepted the anodyne would have been to escape from
suffering, but not to conquer it. But the vinegar or sour
wine was accepted as a refreshing draught, for it would seem
that He did not look upon the value of the suffering as con-
sisting in this, that He should make it as exquisite as possible,
but rather that He should not suffer one drop of the cup of
agony which His Father had put into His hand to trickle
down the side untasted. Neither would He make to Him-
self one drop more of suffering than His Father had given.
There are books on the value of pain; they tell us that if
of two kinds of food the one is pleasant and the other nau-
seous, we are to choose the nauseous one. Let a lesson on
this subject be learnt from the Divine example of our Master.
To suffer pain for others without flinching, that is our
Master's example ; but pain for the mere sake of pain, that is
not Christian ; to accept poverty in order to do good for oth-
ers, that is our Saviour's principle ; but to become poor for
the sake and the merit of being poor, is but selfishness after
all. Our Lord refused the anodyne that would have made
the cup untasted which His Father had put into His hand
to drink, but He would not taste one drop more than His
Father gave him. Yet He did not refuse the natural solace
which His Father's hand had placed before Him.
There are some who urge most erroneously the doctrine
of discipline and self-denial. If of two ways one is disagree-
able, they will choose it, just because it is disagreeable; be-
cause food is pleasant and needful, they will fast. There is
in this a great mistake. To deny self for the sake of duty is
right to sacrifice life and interests rather than principle is
right; but self-denial for the mere sake of self-denial, torture
for torture's sake, is neither good nor Christlike. Remem-
834 7^ Last Utterances of Christ.
ber, He drank the cooling beverage in the very moment of
the sacrifice ; the value of which did not consist in its being
made as intensely painful as possible, but in His not flinching
from the pain, when love and duty said, Endure.
His second exclamation was, " My God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken me ?" We will not dive into the deep mysteries
of that expression we will not pretend to be wiser than
what is written, endeavoring to comprehend where the human
is mingled with the Divine we will take the matter simply
as it stands. It is plain from this expression that the Son of
God felt as if He had been deserted by His Father. We
know that He was not deserted by Him, or else God had
denied Himself, after saying, " This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased." And they who maintain that
this was real desertion, attribute that to the Lord of Love
which can alone belong to Judas the desertion of innocence
therefore we conclude that it arose from the infirmities of
our Master's innocent human nature. It was the darkening
of His human soul, not the hiding of God's countenance. He
was worn, faint, and exhausted ; His body was hanging from
four lacerated w^ounds; and more than that, there was much
to perplex the Redeemer's human feelings, for He was suffer-
ing there, the innocent for the guilty. For once God's law
seemed reversed ; and then came the human cry, " My God,
my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ?"
And now, brethren, observe in this, that it arose apparently
from the connection of the Redeemer's death with sin. When
the death-struggle of the flesh begins, and w r e first become
aware of the frailty of our humanity, then the controversy of
God with the soul is felt to be real by reason of our con-
sciousness of sin ; then is felt, as it were, the immense gulf
that separates between the pure and the impure. In the
case of the Son of Man this was, of course, impossible ; con-
sciousness of sin He had none, for He had no sin ; but there
was a connection, so to speak, between the death of Christ
and sin, for the apostle says, " In that He died, He died unto
sin once." " He died unto sin ;" there w r as a connection be-
tween His death and sin, though it was not His own sin, but
the sin of the whole world. In that moment of the apparent
victory of evil, the Redeemer's spirit, as it would appear, felt
a darkness similar to ours when sin has hidden our conscious-
ness of God. When death is merely natural, we can fee 1
that the hand of God is there; but when man interferes, and
the hand of God is invisible, and that of man is alone seen,
then all seems dark and uncertain. The despondency of
the Redeemer was not supernatural, but most natural dark-
The Last Utterances of Christ. 835
ness. The words He used were not his own, but David'?
words ; and this proclaims that suffering such as He was then
bearing had been borne before Him the difference was in de-
gree, not in kind. The idea of piety struggling with, and victo-
rious over evil, had been exhibited on earth before. The idea
was imperfectly exhibited in the sufferings of Israel regard-
ed as typical of Christ. In Christ alone is it perfectly pre-
sented. So also that wondrous chapter, the fifty-third of
Isaiah, justly describing both, belongs in its entireness to
Christ : He therefore adopted these words as His own.
The last personal ejaculation of our Redeemer was,
" Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit." We take
this in connection with the preceding ; for if we do not, the
two will be unintelligible, but taking them together, it De-
comes plain that the darkness of the Redeemer's mind was
but momentary. For a moment the Redeemer felt alone
and deserted, and then, in the midst of it, He cried out,
"Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit." In that
moment He realized His inseparable union with the Father.
And now I would observe, if I may do it without being
misunderstood, that the Redeemer speaks as if not knowing
where He was going " Into Thy hands," that is sufficient.
It is as well to look at these things as simply as possible.
Do not confuse the mind with attempting to draw the dis-
tinction between the human and the Divine. He speaks
here as if His human soul, like ours, entered into the dark
unknown, not seeing what was to be in the hereafter : and
this is faith, or, if it were not so, there arises an idea from
which we shrink, as if He were speaking words He did not
feel. We know nothing of the world beyond, we are like
children ; even revelation has told us almost nothing con-
cerning this, and an inspired apostle says, " We know not
yet what we shall be." Then rises faith, and dares to say,
" My Father, I know nothing, but, be where I may, still I
am with Thee;" "Into Thy hands I commend my Spirit."
Therefore, and only therefore, do we dare to die.
We pass on, secondly, to the consideration of those utter-
ances which our Master spake as the Saviour of the world.
The first is, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what
:hey do." From this expression we infer two things : first,
that sin needs forgiveness ; and, secondly, that forgiveness
can be granted.
Sin needs forgiveness, or the Redeemer would not have so
E rayed. That it needs forgiveness we also prove, from the
ict that it always connects itself with penalty. Years may
separate the present from your past misconduct, but the re-
836 The Last Utterances of Christ.
membrance of it remains; nay, more than that, even those
errors which we did ignorant! y carry with them their retri-
bution ; and from this we collect the fact that even errors,
failures in judgment, need God's forgiveness. Another
proof that sin needs pardon is from the testimony of con-
science. In all men it speaks, in some in but a feeble w r his-
per, in others with an irregular sound, now a lull, and then a
storm of recollection ; in others, conscience is as a low per-
petual knell, ever sounding, telling of the death going on
within, proclaiming that the past has been accursed, the pres-
ent withered, and that the future is one vast terrible blank.
In these several forms, conscience tells us also that the
sin has been committed against our Father. The perma-
nence of all our acts, the eternal consequences of every small
thing done by man, all point to God as the One against
whom the sin is committed ; and, therefore, that voice still
speaks, though the thing we have done never can be undone.
The other thing that we learn from that utterance of Christ
is, that the pardon of sin is a thing possible, for the utterance
of Christ was the expression of the voice of God it was
but another form of the Father saying, " I can and I will for-
give."
Remark here a condition imposed by Christ on the Divine
forgiveness when He taught His disciples to pray : " If ye
forgive men from your hearts, your Father will forgive you;
but if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in
heaven forgive you." It is natural to forgive on a dying
bed ; yet that forgiveness is only making a merit of necessity,
for we can revenge ourselves no more. There is abundance
of good-natured charity abroad in the world; that charity
which is indiscriminating. It may co-exist with the resent-
ment of personal injury, but the spirit of forgiveness which
we must have before we can be forgiven, can be ours only
so far as our life is a representative of the life of Christ*
Then it is possible for us to realize God's forgiveness.
The second utterance which our Lord spake for others
rather than Himself was, "To-day shalt thou be with me in
paradise."
Now, what we have here to observe on is the law of per-
sonal influence ; the dying hour of Christ had an influence
over one thief he became converted. The first thing we
remark is, that indirect influence often succeeds where di-
rect influence has failed. Thus, when the Redeemer select-
ed His disciples, and endeavored to teach them His truth,
that was direct influence ; but when He prayed for them, and
those disciples heard Him, and then came to Him with this
The Last Utterances of Christ. 837
petition, "Lord, teach us to pray," that was indirect in-
Duence; and so in this instance, while praying for Himself,
He did influence the mind of the dying thief, though that
influence was indirect. Indirect influence is often far more
successful than that which is direct ; and for this reason,
the direct aims that we make to convert others may be con-
tradicted by our lives, while the indirect influence is our very
life. What we really are, somehow or other, will ooze out,
in tone, in look, in act, and this tells upon those who come in
daily contact with us. The law of personal influence is mys-
terious. The influence of the Son of God told on the one
thief, not on the other ; it softened and touched the hearts
of two of His hearers, but it only hardened others. There
is much to be learnt from this, for some are disposed to write
bitter things against themselves because their influence on
earth has failed. Let all such remember that some are too
pure to act universally on others. If our influence has failed,
the Redeemer's was not universal.
The third utterance of our Master on the cross, for others,
not for himself, was, " Behold thy mother!" He who was dy-
ing on the cross, whose name was Love, was the great philan-
thropist, whose charity embraced the whole human race.
His last dying act was an act of individual attachment ten-
derness towards a mother, fidelity towards a friend. Now
some well-meaning persons seem to think that the larger
charities are incompatible with the indulgence of particular
affections ; and therefore, all that they do, and aim at, is on
a large scale they occupy themselves with the desire to
emancipate the whole mass of mankind. But, brethren, it
not unfrequently happens that those who act in this manner
are but selfish after all, and are quite inattentive to all the
fidelities of friendship and the amenities of- social life. It
was not so, if we may venture to say it. that the Spirit of the
Redeemer grew, for as He progressed in wisdom and knowl-
edge, He progressed also in love. First, we read of His ten-
derness and obedience to His parents, then the selection of
twelve to be near Him from the rest of the disciples, and
then the selection of one, more especially, as a friend. It
was through this, that, apparently, His human soul grew in
grace and in love. And if it were not so with Him, at all
Events it must be so with us. It is in vain for a man in his
slying hour, who has loved no man individually, to attempt
\o love the human race ; every thing here must be done by
legrees. Love is a habit. God has given to us the love of
relations and friends, the love of father and mother, brother,
sister, friend, to prepare us gradually for the love of God ; if
838 The Last Utterances of Christ.
there be one stone of the foundation not securely laid, the
superstructure will be imperfect. The domestic affections
are the alphabet of love.
Lastly, our Master said, " It is finished," partly for others,
partly for Himself. In the earliest part of His life, we read
that He said, " I have a baptism to be baptized with ;" to
Him, as to every human soul, this life had its side of darkness
and gloom, but all that was now accomplished: He has drunk
His last earthly drop of anguish, He has to drink the wine
no more till he drink it new in his Father's kingdom. It was
finished ; all was over ; and with, as it were, a burst of sub-
dued joy, He says, " It is finished."
There is another aspect in which we may regard these
words as spoken also for others. The way in which our Re-
deemer contemplated this life was altogether a peculiar one.
He looked upon it, not as a place of rest or pleasure, but
simply, solely, as a place of duty. He was here to do his
Father's will, not his own ; and therefore, now that life was
closed, he looked upon it chiefly as a duty that was fulfilled.
We have the meaning of this in the seventeenth chapter of
this Gospel : " I have glorified Thee on earth, I have finished
the work w r hich Thou gavest me to do." The duty is done,
the work is finished. Let us each apply this to ourselves.
That hour is coming to us all ; indeed it is, perhaps, now
come. The dark night settles down on each day.
"It is finished." We are ever taking leave of something
that will not come back again. We let go, with a pang,
portion after portion of our existence. However dreary we
may have felt life to be here, yet when that hour comes the
winding up of all things, the last grand rush of darkness on
our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden wrench from all
we have ever known or loved, the long farewell to sun, moon,
stars, and light brother men, I ask you this day, and I ask
myself, humbly and fearfully, What will then be finished ?
When it is finished, what will it be ? Will it be the butter-
fly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of un-
interrupted sin and selfish gratification ; or will it be, " Fa-
ther, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do ?*
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